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Today, the world is filled with conflict. Part of the problem is oil limits, but there are many other issues as well:
- Resources such as coal, lithium, and copper are also becoming more expensive to extract.
- Fresh water is often inadequate for the world’s rising population.
- Debt levels are very high.
- Complexity is very high.
- An adequate standard of living is becoming unaffordable for many people.
- The increasing world population leads to a need for more food and more paved roads.
These symptoms strongly suggest that the world economy is headed for a slow-motion collapse.
The system causing the problem is physics-based. Without enough affordable energy of the right types, the economy tends to collapse. This is the predicament we are facing today.
What should ordinary citizens do? I am not certain that there is one correct answer, or that I know it. In this post, I would like to offer some suggestions for discussion.
[1] Every day, give thanks for the many things you do have.
We are at the peak of resources per capita. This means that, as a group, we have as many goods and services as any population that has ever lived. We also have lots of natural resources remaining. We have a huge amount of complexity, with many young people receiving university degrees.
It is easy to lose sight of how much we do have. Most readers of this blog eat a variety of food in the quantities desired. We live in homes that are heated in winter. Even today, many people around the world are not as fortunate as we are.
[2] To the extent possible, stay away from conflict yourself.
The physics of the system will create conflict because the system must change if there is no longer enough oil to ship huge amounts of goods and services across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Perhaps a few highly valued goods and services can be shipped long distance, but patterns must change to put the production of goods and services closer to the consumption of goods and services. This is a major reason why countries are quarreling now.
There is no point in individuals strongly objecting to cutbacks in trade because today’s lack of oil supply is demanding these cuts. The only way one country can lessen the impact of the reduced oil supply is to push the reduction in indirect oil consumption onto another country, using quotas or tariffs on its imports of goods and services. Needless to say, pushing other countries down to benefit one’s own country is likely to create conflict.
Another issue is that with reduced oil and other energy supplies, governments cannot continue to provide as many services as they have in the recent past. They need to reduce the number of government workers in many departments. This is the reason for the many cutbacks by the US Department of Government Efficiency and similar cuts in other countries. It also means that benefit programs, such as those aimed at seniors, the disabled, or hurricane relief, will need to be reduced or eliminated in the future.
We can argue about which programs should be cut back first, but ultimately, all government programs will need to be cut back substantially. Just printing money to try to solve the problem will likely lead to inflation; money doesn’t solve the physics problem we are facing. Energy products of the right kinds are needed for every part of GDP; not having sufficient oil is likely to cut back the supply of goods produced using oil products, including food.
If you get involved in protests, or even in war, you will be putting yourself in harm’s way. And, in the long run, you are unlikely to gain significant benefits personally.
[3] Expect declining complexity in the future.
There are many aspects to complexity:
- Much international trade
- Much debt
- Businesses with multiple layers
- Governments providing a wide range of services, including pension plans and health care
- Energy efficient vehicles
- Appliances that are designed to save energy
- Healthcare with many specialized physicians and high-cost drugs
- Agriculture with many hybrid seeds, herbicides, insecticides, and soil amendments
All these types of complexity will need to be scaled back in the future, but we don’t know precisely to what extent or how rapidly. We cannot go back to old solutions because these won’t necessarily be available. For example, we know from the past that if an economy no longer operates with horses and carriages, it will no longer make buggy whips.
We need to expect a rapidly changing world. Complex appliances we own will fail, and we will not be able to obtain replacement parts. Many drugs imported from Asia will no longer be available. Homes purchased with debt will be affordable by fewer and fewer people. We need to be aware of these issues and change our expectations accordingly.
[4] Expect fewer goods and services to be available in the future, and money to have less value.
We are no longer moving to an ever-better world; we are moving (at least for a few years, perhaps much longer) to a shrinking world economy. Do not be surprised if home values drop and stock market values fall.
Saving money for the future makes less and less sense because fewer goods and services will be available to buy in the future. Even saving gold will not necessarily work around the problem of there being fewer goods to buy. For example, farmers and others involved in producing food will likely get food before others, to assure the continued production of food. This will leave less food for others to buy.
Electricity is likely to become intermittent in the years ahead. It would seem wise to stay away from purchasing condominiums that can only be accessed by elevators.
[5] Focus on the present, not the past or the future.
In our current world, great stress is placed on planning for the future. For example, workers are encouraged to save for retirement, and young people are encouraged to take courses that will allow them to work in a well-paying occupation for the long term. This plan assumes that that the upward trend we have seen in the past will continue. We also expect that governments will be able to make good on their promises.
But we really cannot expect this pattern to continue for the long term. The best we can hope for is that what we have right now will continue. If a family member is lost, the remaining members will need to pick themselves as quickly as possible and continue as best they can. This is one reason an extended family is helpful in Africa. Such an approach will increasingly be helpful elsewhere.
Fossil fuels have made retirement possible. As fossil fuel availability declines, retirement is less likely to be available. Everyone will need to work as long as they are physically available. Thus, saving for retirement becomes a less useful goal.
[6] Living in groups, particularly family groups, will increasingly make sense.
When things were going well, and wages of most educated people were high, it made sense for many people to live by themselves. If they had an argument with their spouse, picking up and leaving might sound like a sensible idea. The job of each spouse would be sufficient to pay for housing for each separately.
As the economy goes downhill, people will need to live in more compact housing in order to save on heating and transportation expenses. Multiple generations will increasingly need to live together. In the case of singles, they will increasingly need to band together. Government programs will likely not be sufficient to provide separate living arrangements for a mother with children or for elderly individuals in care homes.
[7] Young people should not go into debt for higher education.
At this point, the US has educated far too many people with college degrees (and beyond) relative to the number the economy can afford to hire. With declining complexity, adding more college-educated workers to the pool makes little sense.
A better choice for most young people is a short course or certificate program leading to a useful skill, such as appliance repair or becoming a licensed practical nurse. Apprentice programs may also make sense.
If families are wealthy enough to pay for their children’s education, a few people with advanced degrees will probably be needed. There may be some solutions to today’s problems that can be tackled by these individuals.
[8] People will need to be more flexible in their career choices.
As the economy changes, job availability will change. Demand for workers in many of today’s high-paying careers will likely decline. For example, fewer specialty physicians will be needed. There will also be a need for fewer college professors, fewer stock market analysts, and fewer computer programmers.
The most immediate new jobs will involve the demolition of infrastructure that is no longer needed, such as movie theaters, shopping malls, office buildings, and many homes. Some materials will likely be saved for reuse elsewhere. This may involve heavy labor. Smaller, more local stores or open-air markets may open. Jobs previously held by immigrants picking vegetables and fruit will also be available.
How does a person step down from a high-paid desk job to a low-paid manual labor job? I don’t know. But, somehow, we need to be thinking through this issue.
[9] People should focus on taking care of their own health through healthy eating and adequate exercise.
I expect the healthcare industry will be forced to change. One part of the problem will be fewer imported drugs and medical devices; another will be that most people will be less wealthy. They will not be able to afford the enormous costs of today’s bloated US healthcare system. Somehow, the system will need to shrink back.
Fortunately, there is a way that people can become healthier, despite lower spending. People can cook their own food, instead of buying over-processed food available from grocery stores and restaurants. They can eat less meat than the average American eats, and they can stay away from sugary soft drinks. They can exercise more. Part of this exercise can take place by walking to more local markets.
[10] Planting a modest garden, as far as this is possible, is probably a good idea.
Most people do not have sufficient land to plant very much in the way of food crops. In fact, a large share of my readers probably lives in apartment buildings. And most young people, attempting to live on their own, will not have space to grow food crops. The cost of buying land is likely to be high, and property taxes will need to be paid.
If space is available on property that is already owned, fruit trees that grow and bear fruit without the need for pesticide spraying are a good choice. These trees will likely take several years to get started. Potatoes are another reasonable choice, as are vegetables in general.
It is not clear to me that people who set out to operate a self-sufficient farm will have much success. They require a complex infrastructure to support them. Such farms are very vulnerable to robbers and generally don’t have good backup plans if something goes wrong, such as the farmer becoming injured. I wish these individuals success in their endeavors, but I am not optimistic that these farms will succeed beyond their first major setback. We need a bridge to sustainable agriculture, but it is hard for me to see one right now.
[11] Concluding Observation: Why standing back from conflict is a suitable approach.
Most people have a completely mistaken idea regarding what oil limits will look like. They assume that oil limits will lead to very high prices or long lines at gasoline stations. They fail to appreciate that oil limits will arrive at the same time as many other limits, including affordability limits. They also fail to understand that prices that are too low for producers will bring down oil production quickly. In fact, too low oil prices, rather than too high, are the issue the world is facing today.
What oil limits really lead to is lots of conflict: among nations, among political parties, among people who feel that it is unfair that they have spent a lot of money on an advanced education but cannot find a job that pays well enough to repay their education-related debt with interest. As limits of many kinds mentioned in the beginning of this post are hit, today’s economy will need to greatly shrink back in size. Many governmental structures that we expect today, including the EU, the World Bank, and the UN, may disappear.
We don’t know precisely what is ahead over the longer term. Some people believe a religious ending is likely. Other people think that some of the research that is currently underway may eventually lead to a solution. Still others are concerned that some parts of the world will need to shrink back to a very low level, perhaps similar to hunter-gathering, before these economies can grow again.
Regardless of how things play out, it is the physics of the self-organizing system that determines what happens next. No matter how offended we as individuals may feel regarding what some political party or politician has done or has not done, individuals are not able to fix the system, except to the extent that available inexpensive energy supply allows such a fix. This is why standing back from whatever conflict is taking place seems to me to be a suitable strategy.
Vietnam has just joined the BRICS as a partner country. So the BRICS consist now of 21 countries:
Brasil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran as members and Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as members.
BRICS say they include:
43,6% of the global oil production
36% of the world’s natural gas production
78,2% of the global production of mineral coal
I wonder, where 56% of the world’s oil productio is coming from? US-fracking and Canadian oil sands?
https://brics.br/en/about-the-brics
https://brics.br/en/news/vietnam-joins-brics-as-a-partner-country
There are a lot of new producing countries. Nigeria, Guyana, Argentina, Malaysia. Also Qatar, Kuwait, iraq, iran, Bahrain are major producers. It does look a little low to me also…
Music from Finland
https://youtu.be/tW-ixv34gmI?si=2gCg1dAI2h5UVh-v
Not Ok . How is this relevant to the subjects we discuss here ? If we start posting music videos without commentary this site will loose its basic objectives and become irrelevant .
Please don’t chase him off, though, I do appreciate some of his comments; he’s clued in to geopolitical news that others here don’t follow.
How about this one? It’s very popular in Helsinki, I’m told.
It’s by a very friendly young lady named Erika Vikman.
The music (with English subtitles) reflects the frustration that many commenters on this site have. It is appropriate.
David with many names said we are OK till 2040 or so and ivanislav said nothing happens.
The problem is I do think that the current system will not last past 2027, which is why they are all saying an AI takeover in that year.
It is just no more than a sense of desperation by those who enjoyed a lifestyle beyond their actual contribution to civilization.
I don’t see physical limits that will impose themselves by 2027, only economic and geopolitical ones.
We won’t be able to tell what kind of limits are being hit. I expect financial limits will hit first. They will really reflect the fact that resource extraction of all kinds is no longer growing rapidly enough.
Also, the complexity of the system is becoming too great to handle. We need more and more inexpensive energy and other resources to maintain the complexity, but they won’t be there.
er…..
economic limits are physical limits….
if you dont have enough money to buy food, your physical body will reach its output limit and shut down, and eventually die.
that’s just the way things are.
Agree on physical limits determining what’s viewed as economic or geopolitical needs and I have a suspicion that Klum’s dating won’t be far off.
Off topic Norman, but have you had any problems with email again?
I stopped receiving email notifications of comments yesterday for no apparent reason.
More off topic. I’m a keen fisherman, so if I look at utube it offers lots of fishing videos and the bridge on the cover of your book seems to be at a rather well liked spot.
https://youtu.be/jlwUzg01tbE?si=vvLrI2LaAOVaT1Zy
Haven’t watched it, so not sure if you see much of the bridge.
ive had no problems with email notifications at all,
as to fishing, nobody ever fishes from the bridge itself, (Ive always assumed it isnt allowed) but there are dozens of fishing stands on the river banks either side of it. It does seem to be very popular for that.
Ive canoed down it, avoiding fishing lines is always a problem…
Thanks Norman, just me getting the problems then(notifications are now back).
I’d enjoy the canoeing, as it’s a stunning bit of countryside.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/06/1960s-schools-experiment-created-new-alphabet-thousands-children-unable-to-spell#img-3
Fishing could be illegal, like NP sez in the pamflet.
it has a ‘p’, an ‘h’ and no f
I can give you writing tuition if you like. dem.
“The problem is I do think that the current system will not last past 2027, which is why they are all saying an AI takeover in that year.”
we make our estimates, often it might just be mere guesswork.
the average person probably will not be “OK till 2040”.
degrowth is trending to be very severe at some point in the 2030s.
and yet, that doesn’t mean the total end of IC.
I think the trends point to the end of IC in the 2nd half of this century.
before then, the 2040s are going to be brutal.
The Car Market is SCREWED | SCARY EDMUNDS DATA
1 in 5 new car loans are 1000 dollars plus
22 percent have 84-month car loans.
down payments are lower.
The next problems in the banking system could come from auto loans.
Yes, and higher auto costs have mostly not been showing up as CPI increases. Somehow, those who do CPI calculations manage to hide the additional cost as upgrades in the value of the vehicle–new features that the buyer really wants to pay for. Presumably, an electric car is considered an upgrade from one with an internal combustion engine.
Jaguar sold just just 49 cars in April 2025 compared to almost 2,000 in April 2024. Year-to-date sales from January to April have also plunged by more than three quarters with just 2,665 vehicles sold. FUBAR .
https://modernity.news/2025/07/03/jaguar-sales-plummet-by-97-5-after-awful-they-them-rebrand/
It is summer vacation time in Beijing. DD car summoning is faster. The crowds are smaller. People off enjoying the sites of Europe. It must be great to live in a nation that has surplus.
Major flooding happening again in China. Lots of changes, constantly occurring in the economy and at the moment, the political scene. Its challenging to know anything when their insanely encompassing government propaganda meets the foreign propaganda against it. Most certainly, anything stated about China… is probably not reliable. They are not a happy people. I hope they are able to change their society…. as I hope Western countries reverse course, and achieve the same. Hope doesnt buy much of course.
China and US/EU are exactly the same; workers ruled by the filthy rich.
Both are attacked and protected by endless propaganda. The workers are not allowed to say we want peace and more or the pie for ourselves.
I look forward to an AI takeover. It maybe kinder than the existing system.
As Gail has predicted…States will eventually take over the role of the Federal Government, that’s if they are able to, which I seriously doubt
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKF1yUfhE2o
FEMA Is Quietly Being Dismantled: Florida Is Just the Beginning!
Katrin’s Take
What happens if FEMA steps back… or goes away entirely?
There’s a growing push to scale down FEMA’s role in disaster recovery — and that could change everything for homeowners across the country.
In this video, I break down what’s really happening, why it matters, and how it could impact your ability to insure, finance, or rebuild your home after a flood, fire, or hurricane.
Appears Trump’s has a date of after the Hurricane season this year!
That should we a double whammy in this uninsurable disaster areas, like Florida. Texas. California and spreading..good luck
US government programs have been encouraging people build in hurricane prone areas. For example, US flood insurance has historically been so underpriced that it encouraged people to build in areas subject to flooding.
States regulate private insurance. State regulators have tended to hold down prices for insurance in disaster prone areas. Thus, state regulation has also tended to encourage people to build in areas subject to wild fires, hurricanes, wind storms, or earthquakes.
Both the Federal Government and State Governments have wanted to maximize their own tax revenues. This can only happen, if there is lots of “growth,” even if it comes from disaster-prone areas.
At this point, there is more of a need for regulation to be better aligned with the consequences of this regulation. Growth in disaster-prone areas is not really desirable growth. Somehow, this message needs to get back to investors. If the economy is no longer “rich enough” to compensate investors for bad decisions, this message needs to get back to would-be developers.
Totally unexpected
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5R_4VQuBRJs
TERROR ON THE GUADALUPE RIVER: A catastrophic July 4th flash flood hit the Texas Hill Country with no warning and no escape. This wasn’t a hurricane. It was worse.
Overnight, a wall of water ripped through campsites along the Guadalupe, sweeping away RVs, homes, and lives as families slept. Concrete slabs were torn from the earth. In this documentary, we investigate the devastation in Hunt and Kerrville, sharing harrowing stories from survivors who were rescued from rooftops and parents still searching for missing loved ones. See the dramatic helicopter rescues and learn how the river could rise so fast without a named storm.
Lots more unexpected coming to the new normal
Can’t be….
Texans voted for someone who said CC was all fake news…
Yep, but at this stage of the BAU “game”, doubt any believing will change things much.
The overshoot is in the billions and without consuming those energy resources we still are able to burn and process, billions will no longer be here, and those that remain probably wish they weren’t.
Damn if we do and damn if we don’t..
HOW GASOLINE is MADE from OIL ⛽ | THIS is HOW OIL is EXTRACTED
320,706 views · 2 months ago#refining #gasoline #manufacturing
In this video, we take you on an incredible journey from deep beneath the Earth to gas stations around the world. Discover the complex process of extracting, transporting, refining, and distributing crude oil to create the fuel that powers millions of vehicles every day.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQ3PdzX9pg&t=422s
Think it was you Norman, that may have observed all this is a one shot deal…no do overs and repeats…we were on stage at the right time, lucky us, the oil age has been good to me…
Parking next to a river that is subject to rapid rise is crazy. At a minimum, the owner should have posted a sign saying, “In case of heavy rainfall, flash flooding may occur.”
one of my favourite river spots, in london, is urban, and tidal.
at certain times/days of the year, the riverside road floods to a depth of about 2ft…
there are large signs warning of this…but there are no ”parking restrictions….”
and without fail, every very high tide, there are cars there with water halfway up their doors…
and i do mean every time…—without fail.. this has gone on for years…
one can therefore only conclude that people are just idiots.
That is bad. FEMA is in charge of detention camps. It ruins narratives. I am sure there will be a little something in the BBB to keep it afloat.
The federal government pays its bills by printing the world reserve currency. This is not an option for a state. States will have balanced budgets. No 800 military bases spanning the world, no satellite grid watching every move planet wide, no sub grid detection, attack, continent killers, no CIA, MOSSAD, MI6 killing grid/color revolution grid.
The demise of the grid, the hand, the greedy rich will make the world a far better place.
Kevin on China’s electricity prices .
This video fits in with what I know.
According to Kevin, the key to using the cheap wind and solar power from the North and West is the huge Ultra High Voltage (UHV) electricity lines that connect these areas to the South and East of China.
I don’t think that the US could make the UHV electricity lines if we wanted to. We would have to order the steel from China. Even making the concrete cheaply might be a problem–we don’t have China’s cheap coal for making concrete. Running these lines through populated areas would be a huge problem. Even adding today’s little transmission lines doesn’t work well in the US and Europe. It takes as much as 10 years to get transmission added. And the cost doesn’t necessarily get added back into the cost of electricity.
A more top down organization of the economy is needed to demand that this is a national priority. Transmission lines will go over property in the way, whether owners like it or not.
We don’t know if costs are being charged back properly in China. Maybe they are; maybe they are being hidden in the huge amount of local debt. The transmission project required huge debt, as did all of the solar panels and wind turbines. Some organization had to fund buying all of these devices and the transmission lines. If they had to pay interest on this debt, just the interest would be huge. China’s debt situation is a black box.
Trying to use local wind and solar is fraught with peril because it bounces around a lot. If a huge amount is aggregated together, from an essentially desert area in the North and West of China, it likely bounces around less. It is much more usable by utilities in the South and East of China.
I don’t think that the US or Europe has very much unneeded excess wind and solar from unpopulated areas to aggregate. Europe tried to get solar from North Africa, but the cost of transmission seems to be tripping up the project.
Another one bites the dust in UK . Refinery closure .
” The refinery is the smallest of the five that remain in the UK since Grangemouth, in Scotland, stopped processing crude earlier this year.
But, at 5.4m tonnes annually, it still accounts for nearly 10% of national capacity, supplying everything from petrol forecourts to Heathrow airport. ”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/04/the-bubble-had-to-burst-the-inside-story-of-the-lindsey-oil-refinery-collapse
This is sad. It will make it harder for the UK to get enough oil products.
John D. Rockefeller used to say:
“The best business in the world is a well-run oil company. The second best business in the world is a badly run oil company.”
We are now reaching the point where the second statement is no longer valid.
In fact, even a “badly run” presupposes a fair amount of low-cost surplus fossil energy and in many nations this is no longer true. In fact, the United Kingdom is the nation on the European landmass with the highest energy prices thanks now to unreliable wind power, no coal at all for power stations and what is left of the exhausted North Sea basin. Obviously, it is no longer convenient to make gasoline there.
For what I’ve read Prax was in severe cash flow problems for more than a year and now it seems that the taxpayers have to pay a bill of up to £250 millions.
The Telegraph article said nicely: “a house of cards built on a thirst for debt-fuelled growth”.
Perfect summary of the current economy. Fake and essentially unsustainable in the short-medium term.
We can already see that a good part of the productive realities are barely afloat, with stagnant or even declining revenues and full of debts that at a certain point they can no longer be repaid.
In another 5 years the situation in Europe/UK will continue to worsen due to 3 main factors :
– Demographic. Fewer and fewer consumers, especially the young ones, wich make the most of the consumption, which means that the current production capacity of the factories is way oversized. The current workers are essentially useless, they will be sent home.
– Economics. Fewer and fewer people are willing to spend on discretionary items. In Italy is of today’s news that an important motorcycle clothing firm, Dainese, has gone basically bankrupt, with collapsed sales. That’s because young people no longer buy motorcycles, let alone technical clothing. The discretionary consumer sector will see a drastic decline.
Energy. Well, the Gaussian never sleeps, now that the decline of american oil begins, which had kept the world afloat for the last 12 years while the rest of the world was declining and doing its best to keep production stable, I think that more and more productive realities will go bust thanks to less energy in the system.
During his time oil was abundant. That is not the case anymore.
When oil is abundand, a country relying on oil has a choice where to buy.
When oil is scarce, a producer can sell to this country or to another one.
To secure stable oil provision either military dominance or economic integration is necessary. In times of economic decline the first is impossible and the second unattractive for the producer.
Chris Martenson’s take on insurance companies getting battered. It also aligns with Ed Dowd’s “Cause Unknown.
https://peakprosperity.com/unexpected-rise-in-disease-sinks-u-s-insurance-companies/
maybe depop has begun.
which might actually be a good thing.
at some point in time, world population will be declining.
population estimates seem to be delayed by a year or two, it seems difficult to get timely numbers.
time will tell.
I wish that there were another way of looking at this. Another approach might be to look at Social Security Disability payments by year. These can be accessed at this link:
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a6.html
These payments were amazingly flat between 2013 and 2022. They started spurting upward in 2023 and 2024.
It looks as if those providing disability payments (for income replacement) were very stingy with allowing people to be considered disabled between 2014 and 2022. But then, the situation finally changed.
Another approach would be to look at Medicare payments for health coverage by year. These payments would apply to both disabled individuals and those 65 or over.
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a4.html
These payments spurted up in 2023 and 2024, after being unusually low in 2021 and perhaps 2022. We remember that people stayed away from hospitals, during Covid. Voluntary surgery, even surgery for cancer, was put off. Once the put off surgery was added, it created a spurt in payments that insurers had missed. They believed that the very low payments of 2021 and even 2022 would continue.
I should add that this payment pattern doesn’t look like a covid-vaccine related pattern. It looks more like a covid-shut in-related pattern that insurers missed.
I wanted to look at deaths, too, using government data, but I haven’t figured out how to get the right reports from the new data base. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a4.html
wonder.cdc.gov
Tim Watkins’ latest is good:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/07/03/someone-elses-job-someone-elses-problem/
the conclusion:
“This slow process of attrition is a far more likely trajectory than the sudden crash that so many “doomer” “black pill” types imagine. Sure, the process will be punctuated by some spectacular incidents. And the state will no doubt respond with greater or lesser effect. But, as the surplus energy available to us slumps, and as the (energy) cost of maintaining the system rises, gradually and remorselessly, things that we grew up to take for granted will be going away, with life becoming ever shorter and more brutal.”
very reasonable thoughts.
We know that when humans near the end of their lives, there is slow deterioration, and big steps downward from things like strokes, heart attacks, broken bones, or falls.
This article is about the slow deterioration problem of Britain’s infrastructure. But there is definitely the possibility of things taking a more rapid step downward. As Watkins says,
“behind the curtain, we remained dependent upon an interconnected web of 1970s technologies that get patched up with the equivalent of string and sticky paper with increasing regularity. Interconnected, because failure in one rapidly infects its neighbour.”
A major bridge down, or a major airport out of service, would lead to a bigger step down. So would an overthrown government, or a government that defaults on its debt. I don’t think that Watkins means that these things can’t happen. Just that there is always the downward pressure that trying to save money on needed fixes always brings.
all true.
I like his sentence here:
“Sure, the process will be punctuated by some spectacular incidents.”
This usage of “punctuated,” of course, comes from evolutionary theory which seems like it should also generally apply to devolutionary theory, which is what is actually analogous to civilizational collapse. (Ecological/fertility collapse would also be analogous.)
AI Overview:
“Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology that proposes that most of the evolutionary history of a species is characterized by long periods of stability, or stasis, punctuated by brief periods of rapid evolutionary change, often associated with the formation of new species. This contrasts with the traditional view of gradualism, which suggests that evolution occurs at a slow, steady pace over long periods.”
After finance capitalism collapses in punctuation, we will, in the best case scenario, have the formation of a new political equilibrium for a time, though the energy throughput will remain disequilibrated. It’ll be a brave new world for all of us.
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler
Machine-gun hand
We got department stores
And toilet paper
Got Styrofoam boxes
For the ozone layer
Got a man of the people
Says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn
Got roads to drive
Keep on rocking in the free world
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fFw7q-BLxLA&pp=ygUeS2VlcCB0b2NraW4gaW4gdGhlIGZyZWUgd29ybGQg0gcJCcEJAYcqIYzv
Neil Young – Rockin’ In The Free World (Glastonbury 2009)
I’ve seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in Neil Young
https://rumble.com/vtr9bg-neil-young-vs.-joe-rogan-take-my-music-off-of-spotify.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_a
“The managed care industry got carpet-bombed yesterday, after Centene Corporation, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., suffered the worst single-day stock drop in its history—crashing up to 40% after yanking its 2025 guidance. The crash was caused by devastating new actuarial data showing that Centene’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) enrollees are sicker, costlier, and fewer than expected, especially in 22 states where Centene holds significant market share.
The company now faces an unexpected $1.8 billion hit to its 2025 earnings, triggering immediate Wall Street downgrades and a sector-wide investor panic. UnitedHealth had already slashed its forecast weeks earlier and replaced its CEO. Now, analysts warn that the Obamacare risk pool is unraveling, with spiking Medicaid costs and mispriced premiums dragging down the entire industry. Bluntly, insurers had bet on healthy growth— but have hemorrhaging patients instead.
Centene Corporation is one of the largest health insurance providers in the United States, specializing in government-sponsored programs like Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plans. Headquartered in St. Louis, Centene serves over 28 million members (about a tenth of the entire country), primarily low-income and vulnerable populations. Its rapid rise came from aggressively expanding into public health contracts across dozens of states, making it a bellwether for the broader managed care industry. In short, Centene is a key pillar of the federalized U.S. healthcare safety net.”
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/sudden-and-unexpected-thursday-july
seems like the vax injuries are accelerating…more in Childer’s article, he notes that lots of people are dropping off from social security stats in the US, while deathcare company stocks have doubled since the shots started.
Looking at the link, there is some underlying story, but the author seems to be pretty speculative in the way he describes the situation. Clearly, insured healthcare results are worse. But whether these folks are also dying off quickly does not seem to be very well supported.
Starmer is going , going and soon gone . When the war in Ukraine ends the London Banks will be done for . Trump talked with Putin for the 5th time and Putin sent the largest salvo on Kiev in return . IMPORTANT — It is trump who calls up Putin and not vice versa . Trump is desperate . I think
Kremlin should set up an automated answering machine for every time Trump&Co call them.
“Thank you for calling, the SMO will continue until ALL goals are achieved. Press 1 to hear Russia’s goals.”
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/odds-shorten-on-new-prime-minister-as-keir-starmer-faces-leadership-crisis-395160/
“When the war in Ukraine ends the London Banks will be done for.”
hard to believe, but maybe.
the end of the UK is growing nearer, sooner or later it will break apart due to a lack of adequate surplus energy.
Yea but can’t their financial manipulation keep them going like Japan?
Devolping story . Labour party’s hard left led by Jeremy Corbyn breaks to form a new party . Claims support of 39 MP’s . Going , going , gone .
What the Holy Bible says of this horrific decade just ahead of us.. Here’s a site expounding current global events in the light of bible prophecy.. To understand more, pls visit 👇 bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/
hey BP—–
you promised i was going get raptured a couple of weeks ago—and jesus was going to make me 25 again and i would have 70 virgins to cater to my every whim…
nnnnnice one—or so i thought
but so far—nothing….
Whats goin on?
I hope it isnt another scam.
I’m starting to believe that Saint Donald isnt telling us the truth either.
How many whims have you got?
And how many virgins could you manage?
Even if you were 25 years old again?
You know how they are always giggling and gossiping in the haram?
Even for an iron man of Shropshire, 70 would be vergin’ on the ridiculous.
BP , please do not contaminate this site . Here are not leftists or rightest only rationalitist . Peddle your stuff somewhere else . Here your post not only insults the commentators but also the several lurkers who are making an effort to remain sane in an insane world . Be gone .
You think you are rational and sane?
That’s not the impression I get from reading Kulm’s posts just below.
Your ‘rationalism’ seems like a euphemism for something else entirely.
the internet has many things to say about the myths invented by superstitious prescientific uneducated ancient men.
anyone is free to believe any of the multitudes of ancient myths, no matter how unreasonable those myths are.
the bible myths are some of the most unreasonable, but there is lots of competition from nonbiblical myths.
I find it remarkable that most of the righteous people mentioned in the Bible never read the Bible.
Admitting that it is a good book, or even “The Good Book”, if Noah, Lot, Abraham, Moses, Soloman, Samuel, Daniel, Job and all those worthies whose names we have trouble spelling could get by without a Bible, why can’t we?
and one or two of them may have been an actual real person.
Sounds like a bit of an apology for pscychoboy Kulm’s endless and vile anti-Christian posts.
I note his posts go unchallenged, which goes to the character of those who post here.
After a while, perhaps they are mostly ignored. Some of his attempted posts never go up.
Oooh! Psychological evaluation and mass character assassination in a succinct soundbite-sized post.
As a elf-appointed arbiter of good taste, if you think his post needs challenging, you are welcome to go ahead and challenge them.
Hang on,a pre-taped message has just arrived for you from the IMF:
“Good morning, Mr. Hugh Mungus, your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to challenge each of Kulm’s endless and vile anti-Christian posts. And by ‘challenge,’ you will be required to present a logically and factually argued case as to why each post is vile and anti-Christian, not just yap like a Chihuahua, Good luck! This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds.”
One of the things I really like about Kulm, and one of the most refreshing things about his posts, is that he doesn’t wax outraged at other posters’ comments. It’s enough for him to state his disagreement and to express his own views.
Here’s a genuine photo of Kulm and his fellow aristocrats addressing the local riff-raff:
https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/383354743/Volturi-vs-Peasants
One reason why Kulm doesn’t wax outraged at other commenters posts is because those posts never make it through moderation.
Gail, I AM surprised. I had assumed that Kulm was moderating his language, but now I see he was getting outside help.
You are in a very unenviable position in that you are bound to be criticized for censoring people and impinging on their freedom of speech also and criticized for not doing that. And you don’t even get a penny in compensation for all the work you do.
All the same, lot of us are grateful for your efforts.
Your introduction says,
.
Not everyone reading these comments believes this.
In the NIV version, 1 John 2:18 says
“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.”
I can believe that, during the collapse cycle of overshoot and collapse, there will be many leaders with strange views. These might be the many antichrists. Anthony Fauci might be one of these, and Bill Gates might be another. Members of the panels approving the covid vaccine might also be antichrists. Or you could pick out different antichrists.
I am not sure how Rev. 13:7 relates to this. It says in the NIV version:
“It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.”
“What the Holy Bible says of this horrific decade just ahead of us”
the internet has many things to say about the myths invented by superstitious prescientific uneducated ancient men.
but don’t go reading any of it.
you are free to believe any of the multitudes of ancient myths, no matter how unreasonable those myths are.
the bible myths are some of the most unreasonable, but there is lots of competition from nonbiblical myths.
We are also free to believe the “scientific models” that include far too few variables to match the real world. These are the models that convince people that commodity prices will always rise if there is a shortage, and that we can extract any resource that seems to be available in the ground.
good thoughts.
it’s the modern myth of Infinite Progress.
Yes and infinite growth and infinite debt and infinite resources! But hey the stock market is at all time highs!!! The U.S is in great shape!!!!
Thomas Carlyle wrote a History of French Revolution in 1835.
He sent his completed manuscript to J. S. Mill, who said his maid burnt the manuscript.
According to Carlyle he re wrote everything back with “direct and flamingly from the heart.”
He made up with JS Mill for the time being but later had a rift which never healed.
Carlyle could not write anything like that for the rest of his life. His most lengthy work is Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, but as the title suggests, it is just a compilation of Cromwell’s stuff, not Carlyle’s own.
For those who say human life is the most important, I can safely say, without impunity, that Carlyle’s book was certainly more important than the life of Mill’s maid, whose name Mill refused to supply.
Carlyle should have been given the opportunity to end the maid’s life in any matter he chose, since her life was less valuable than the book which shaped how the English literati saw the French Revolution for the better part of 19th century.
When human life is revalued, all restriction on human experiment will be dropped, but that is another story.
The advance of tech and AI will lead to a complete concentration of all resources in the hands of elites, leaving nothing for the rest.
Winner Take All cannot be avoided anymore . There will be no slack, and no mercy, to be spared for the lower classes.
With the readjustment of human values, non-elite lives will ceased to be treated as dignified.
It will be OK for the elites to kill non elites at will, with zero recourses for the latter, like how things operated in virtually everywhere in the older days.
The elites will be above the law, which will only be for the poorer people who try to become uppity.
I thought that you were quite a bit smarter than that kulm. Clearly you have no feel for the human power dynamics in play.
When roleplaying makes you dumber…
UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has been excoriated in the press for crying in public. But when Paul Gascoigne (“Gazza”) the footballer cried in public in the 1990s, he became a sort of folk hero. Go figure.
A soccer player is an entertainer. A chancellor of exchequer runs the country’s finances.
Completely different responsibilities.
She runs the country’s finances and showed her incapacity.
Isn’t she actually being scapegoated for Starmer’s incompetence?
Yes still what she did lost the investor’s confidence.
I’ve just come back from a short business trip in another country of the Mediterranean cost.
Coming back to the north Italian town where I live, it immediately looks amazing how here in Europe we waste an incredible amount of energy and resources that come from outside.
Air conditioning used everywhere, people don’t walk neither for 200 meters or use bicycles just in little percentage (even if the town is plain), almost everyone going on cars also to go to very close supermarkets (happily using also electric and hybrid cars, thinking to be good persons).
Commuters every day on highways coming to this town and come back to their towns on evening.
Additionally, in this period, people go and come back from holidays very frequently.
They go in other countries by plane or go in other places in Italy by car.
Bars and restaurants open till late, concerts every evening everywhere, people waste a huge amount of everything.
If I lived in a ‘BRICS’ Country I would look at us like real wasters.
No one has any idea of the waste of resources that in reality we don’t have and come from Countries that we paint as not democratic.
Very few people understand this neither from a natural point of view or from just a moral one.
From a certain point of view, Europe truly deserves to be punished for its behaviour of ‘superiority’.
It’s funny because I have a friends who are liberal and saying that they want to move to Italy because they think they can live there cheaply and fly all over the place and use Italy healthcare. They think that EUROPE Will fare better in the downturn because they are more efficient etc. I think that Europe will suffer more because they don’t have enough energy resources and will not be able to use their currency to maintain their lifestyle.
yup Europe looks more on the leading edge of degrowth.
UK looks like it will be one of the first to have severe degrowth, followed closely by continental Europe.
We have come to believe that the way of life we have in the “rich countries” (OECD countries) will last, and will get better and better. We assume that the government promises that have been made can actually be fulfilled, in a way that gives us adequate goods and services for all the promised pensions and health care.
When I look at the truly poor countries, their purchased energy consumption has stayed low, pretty much indefinitely. Very little air conditioning. Walk almost everywhere.
The U.S could not afford pensions during the Great Depression. This caused riots among ww1 veterans. But that could never happen again; nor could a Depression as we have safety measures in place
That is what we are told!
if you receive a wage which pays more that you need to live on….you stash some away for you old age, when you won’t be able to work…
ie you build a pension on your surplus…
governments are no different….a pension fund is built on the surpluses of all of us.
When there are no surpluses, there will be no pensions…
Simple as that.
Soviet Union had closed, secret star cities where their top scientists lived. No one knows what strange things they were working on.
The head of the Russian physics department had a meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. He said that the world is ruled by three principles: energy, matter and the intellect. The intellect imagines a tool and then we use energy to turn matter into the tool.
He said that Russia has now secured its future energy needs. He didn’t say how.
I can almost believe that Russia has secured its own energy needs, if those needs are defined as being for the current (or declining) population of Russia, without going to war. Unfortunately, Russia cannot get an adequate return for the many minerals and finished materials it sells abroad. It has been the one that has upgraded uranium, for use in nuclear reactors. It has been a major exporter of nickel. It has sold oil, coal, and natural gas to businesses in other countries, but has not gotten a very good price for them.
At a low standard of living, Russia could almost be self-sufficient, if it stopped exporting fuel supplies. It makes a whole lot of things. But, like other countries, it does not want a terribly low standard of living. For example, it would like heated buildings, and the ability to travel abroad on vacations.
No ‘greenhouse effect’?
” . . . I’m going to cover the proof this is the empirical evidence scientific
0:18 evidence that our Sun does Nova and it Novus cyclically through time the
0:24 evidence shows up on the moon the sedimentary evidence on the earth . . . ”
Interesting video. I like that he provides a bunch of references to Science and other journals in the 60’s-70’s.
Gave up after 12mins because Vogt is an incompetent presenter and is also not trustworthy. An example of his untrustworthiness is during the George W Bush slide when he claims Bush’s real meaning behind his 1992 comment is about Vogt’s sun theory and apparently we’re just supposed to take Vogt’s word for that. Amateur hour.
Doesn’t matter, he also has some weird theories about bible numerology. You can still look at the references / original material he cites. It might be interesting – I have no opinion as I haven’t looked yet.
Rosatom has closed the nuclear fuel cycle by recycling nuclear waste into MOX fuel that Russian nuclear plants will run for at least a millennium.
The Kremlin said that they are developing weapons systems based on New Principles of Physics.
If Russia has made a major breakthrough in physics that gives them an advantage over the US then the chance is that they won’t tell anyone. Physics is a classified science.
Even if Russia has made a major breakthrough in physics now, it will take many, many years to put this breakthrough into place in the system as a whole. It takes fossil fuels to build the devices needed to implement the new approach. These needed to be tested, before they can be scaled up.
Russia has indeed been way ahead of most others in the use of nuclear energy. The US in the past bought material from nuclear bombs from Russia, to power US nuclear power plants. More recently, it seems to be buying uranium that Russia somehow upgraded.
The last time I heard about MOX is during the fuk-u-shima leaks.
Expect some nasty fires at such facilities.
Naa, you are exaggerating the danger. MOX was only used in Reactor 3 and even then only a 6% MOX mixture. If there was going to be fire it would have happened long ago. There was fire early into the emergency but that was in the fuel pool of Reactor 4, which was offline when the quake/tsunami struck. It caused cracks in the fuel pool walls which then caused the pool to partially drain exposing the fuel rods to the open air ( the roof of the building was blown off in an explosion). They caught fire twice, but this had nothing to do with MOX.
Fukushima only melted down because the backup generators were below the water level. Nothing to do with the fuel cycle, per se.
Why is the sun shining?
The sun is made of atoms. Atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. So, why is the sun emitting photons?
There are no photons in the atom model.
Nuclear physics became a classified science after the atom bomb. Maybe classified physics can explain why the sun is shining? The Atomic Energy Commission holds the highest security clearance and can withhold information from the Congress due to national security.
The elite is not telling us everything, simply because the information is too dangerous to share.
David Grusch said that it was the Manhattan Project that turned into the first legacy UFO program and that it is protected by the Atomic Energy Commission and its high security clearance. Even the US Congress has been held in the dark. He gave a sworn testamony in front of the Congress.
No one has to belive a word that I’m saying.
I guarantee that the Sun emits photons.
I guarantee that you have a misunderstanding of the science.
if you can get on the internet, you could look up the science.
The science calls it radiation without a particle. Something produced by nothing.
The photon produces radiation. Uranium radiates in the X ray frequency. Photons in the X ray frequency produces the radiation.
The photon is an energy particle and the one that is released when we burn fossil fuels.
no, the creation of a photon, possessed of kinetic energy, is always accompanied by a decrease in potential energy inside the atom. In a black body plasma, like the sun, the creation of a photon is accompanied by a decrease in thermal energy. physics laws allow all these changes of one form of energy into another. that is why your car works for example. other changes in energy are not allowed.
Yossy photon radiation is just the various ways in which complex atomic dynamics release/lose energy from their orbits (their gravity wells). Energy cycling back to the primordial state so that it can again feed evolution from the ground-up. Physics has a life cycle just like everything else.
Nothing happens without photons; thermodynamics and electromagnetics are symbiotic. Heat transfer is completely dependent on photons.
I’ll satisfy myself with the simplest answer: it’s all MAGIC.
Why does something behave in this or that way? Science will tell you: oh, it’s because of XYZ. But why, in turn, is XYZ like this and not like that? Why isn’t it ABC instead? Science can come up with yet further explanations, of course… and on and on it goes, leaving you with either an infinite regress or the option of simply stopping at some point and saying: look, that’s just the way it is. There’s no explanation for it.
No explanation? Just accept that that’s the way it is? Then can you still call it science anymore? No, I’d call it magic.
i daresay you’d call it magic that you fall down instead of up too?
Perhaps Dennis and other commenters can tell us if this article is right.
https://www.zerohedge.com/food/weve-become-serfs-our-own-land-usda-trap-foreign-land-sales-and-collapse-american-farming
“We’ve Become Serfs On Our Own Land”: The USDA Trap, Foreign Land Sales, And The Collapse Of American Farming
I have heard about this issue before. But there is a new one:
Sorry, the tournament system link I gave you doesn’t work, and it didn’t work in the original. I couldn’t find the GAO report when I looked for it, either.
This is an undated explanation:
https://www.chickencheck.in/faq/tournament-system/
The Tournament System: What is the tournament system? How are chicken farmers paid?
A January 2025 article says,
https://essfeed.com/usda-completes-regulation-for-tournament-system/
This is a link to the original 1921 act:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10273/pdf/COMPS-10273.pdf
This seems to be an updated version of the 2021 act:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/PSAct.pdf
Red River Law’s interpretation of recent changes:
https://www.redriverlaw.org/blog/2025/02/usda-updates-the-packers-stockyards-act-in-2025/
I think that the basic issue, however, is that many, many farmers are not making enough money with this system. The prices charged to consumers are not high enough for most farmers to get a reasonable return on their labor used in farming. It is a different “too low price of commodity” problem than the oil, coal and natural gas low price problem.
its easy to forget that serfdom was our normality until 2/300 years ago—depending on where you lived in the world.
we escaped servitude and peonage only by through the wages of industry, which produced enormouus surpluses….
that produced vast profits for a select few, but a reasonable wage for millions of others…
those vast surpluses had to be spent somewhere—-that was where the American Dream originated–the spending of surplus…..
but now the time of surplus is coming to an end, and with it the time we looked on as our ”forever”—in accordance with the promises of our leaders….
in this coming century, we will slip. back into the non-surplus of peasantry, where we work to sustain a basic existence….
just as our forefathers did.
I think you are right.
The people who think that scarcity brings high prices are wrong. High prices can only come if there enough people who can afford these high prices are wrong.
“Some oil patch execs say “drill baby drill” isn’t happening”
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/03/dallas-fed-oil-drilling-decline
Excerpts:
“Drill, baby, drill will not happen with this level of volatility. Companies will continue to lay down rigs and frack spreads,” said the exec, one of several who criticized the tariffs.”
“Twenty-seven percent of execs say the recent steel tariff hike will mean slightly fewer wells drilled, and 5% expect significantly fewer.”
The current price of WTI is $67.18. If the price of WTI drops below $60.00 per barrel and stays there,
” 61% expect their production to fall slightly over the next 12 months, while 9% see a big drop”
—-
Too much volatility. Prices would need to be consistently higher to produce a big increase in drilling and perhaps production.
“61% expect their production to fall slightly over the next 12 months, while 9% see a big drop”
that is so very reasonable, continuity almost always prevails over discontinuity.
“fall slightly” is the way of the future.
if the energy in the oil coming out
isnt considerably in excess of the energy going in….
then the oil stays where it is….
how difficult is it to understand that.?
Fast Eddy (your favourite guy) has a hot take on this today. He believes the UK government has been snookered by it.
however you cut it—eventuall y the energy crunch will snooker all forms of government, no matter what arithmetic is used on the problem, for the simple reason that people will demand more than any form of government can deliver in energy terms….
this will lead to civil unrest as conditions worsen, over time.
impossible to date precisely, but loony politicians will precipate matters, through denail, and selling that denial.
which is happening right now
that makes perfect sense norm loony , in denial governments will waste what little resources we have left like ai for example.
I miss Biden, who never denied anything.
It’s a waste-based economy. Finding more ways to waste is how the waste-based economy stays alive. That is one of Steve Ludlum’s genius contributions to the systems theory.
Finding a new bubble to blow is how the Machine stays alive because new bubbles blow easy, because there’s no extant debt to service. Room to run!
It’s like Thiel said yesterday or the day before: without the (wasteful) AI bubble, it would all be over by now.
The system is just a waste Machine. A thieving heat pump pumping quantity at the expense of quality. It’s not here to serve us in any way. There’s no sense in bargaining with that reality.
ultimately, the only true society not based on waste in an aboriginal one
Even in the days of the aborigines, human population was rising faster than there were natural resources to support them. This happened because, even then, humans could cook at least part of their food. This gave them a natural advantage over their enemies.
This overpopulation had to be dealt with somehow. There had to be some portion of the population that lost at war, for example.
Sure hunter gatherers cyclically exceeded their carrying capacity and fell back. The Cycle is the first fundamental of the universe. But that’s not waste that’s just nutrient cycling population dynamics in dynamic equilibrium. The waste-based economy also cycles, like everything, but it does so by wasting/destroying nutrient diversity and cycling and replacing it with inferior farmed nutrients which destroys the billions years old resiliency of the nutrient base.
I was going to post the G & R report but Mike has already posted this . So here goes , read the comments . Peak shale= peak pessimism .
https://www.oilystuff.com//forumstuff/forum-stuff/peak-shale-peak-pessimism?utm_campaign=cbd2f687-dda4-4a66-8012-859c08274e03&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=fdc44525-51fd-4cd1-97ac-fdcd3c4ee4d5&configurationId=0c7918e4-eed3-467c-9b53-91a232b9568f&actionId=4aa33078-4985-36e2-45a6-78290eb56e1f&cid=fa335351-37bb-44a6-9899-f8c34b4a0f81
It is very hard to see a downturn yet in EIA published oil production data. Comparing April to March, April is down a bit, but March was the highest month ever.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
We know that the EIA is forecasting a reduction in US oil production, starting in 2025. The EIA forecasts that that will take place in the second quarter (which is now finished, but we don’t have a report on it yet).
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/data/browser/#/?v=9&f=Q&s=&start=202001&end=202604&id=&maptype=0&ctype=linechart&linechart=COPRPUS
A different approach to phasing out automobiles:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/delhi-bans-fuel-older-vehicles-pollution-crackdown
Delhi Bans Fuel for Older Vehicles in Pollution Crackdown
One of the complaints is that public transport is not sufficient to replace the lost ability to get to work.
Already a flop and the ban is withdrawn . Did not take 24 hrs for the govt to buckle .
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/delhi-government-to-tweak-vehicle-policy-old-vehicles-wont-be-scrapped-8819298
Interesting! Poor people (who tend to be the people with old vehicles) do have some power.
In India, the poorer 70% have no cars…
Some of them have old two-wheeled vehicles.
Just a little set-piece in service of engineered populism and manufactured consent.
We do not want costly cars:
https://autos.yahoo.com/stellantis-exec-wants-europe-adopt-160000991.html
Stellantis Exec Wants Europe to Adopt Cheap, Tiny, Japanese-Style Kei Cars
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/stellantis-may-close-factories-due-eu-fines-carbon-emissions-2025-07-01/
Stellantis may close factories due to EU fines for carbon emissions
As citizens become poorer, vehicles need to become smaller. The Japanese “light vehicle” solution for short trips around town seems like it might be a solution for some in Europe.
I expect US regulations will keep they out here. The oversized size of many US citizens is likely another deterrent.
The US does have “golf carts” and a few other kinds of vehicles that are not allowed on highways. I know that Kennesaw State University seems to have some light vehicle for use on internal campus business, for example. Perhaps such vehicles could be used more widely.
There are also a lot of electric bikes and scooters around. Poor students seem to use these.
Most US states allow those Japanese kei (light duty) trucks, even on the highway, so long as they’re 25+ years old. Not my state but you can use them for farm use and street use in the countryside will not be enforced if you stick a red triangle on it, as with side by sides and ATVs.
The Chinese start to produce cars in Slovakia
https://index.sme.sk/c/23513364/svedsky-vyrobca-elektromobilov-polestar-bude-vyrabat-novy-model-na-slovensku.html
Purpose is to avoid tariffs? Slovakia has enough fuel to power plants?
I would assume Slovakia has coal. Statistical Review of World Energy does not show small countries separately. IEA would probably need to be the source of data.
https://www.iea.org/countries/slovak-republic/coal
Slovakia is based on nuclear power and the Chinese want to be present in the EU avoiding tariffs.
“Former FBI Director Referred for Criminal Prosecution Related to 2020 Voter Fraud
US CITIZEN DATA (“PII”) HARVESTED FROM TIKTOK WAS REPORTEDLY BEING USED TO CREATE THESE FAKE IDS, TO ENABLE ILLEGAL VOTERS TO USE THOSE REAL DETAILS ON MAIL-IN BALLOTS TO VOTE FOR BIDEN”?
https://www.theblaze.com/news/exclusive-oversight-project-refers-former-fbi-director-wray-to-doj-for-criminal-charges?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/former-fbi-director-referred-for
From the first link:
Zerohedge seems to have a similar story
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/my-wray-or-highway-new-report-raises-troubling-questions-over-fbi-spiking-report
It will be news only if prosecution begins. Nothing ever changes, every smoking gun is ignored.
The reality that nobody wants to tell is the UK bonds are plunging because Ukraine crazy chapter has been closed by US.
The others actors were just betting on ‘victory’ thanks only to US waste of money.
Trump has closed this waste.
As we say in Italy, ‘e’ facile fare i fr. con il c. degli altri’.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-bonds-suffer-biggest-selloff-since-october-2022-as-worries-build-over-finance-minister/ar-AA1HPIBM
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-reinforces-support-for-ukraine-with-226-billion-loan-to-bolster-ukrainian-defence-capabilities
I thought that sentence had to be a trademarked Bolognese meme. I stand corrected. Starmer, Merz and Macron of course are in the physical business of using other people’s asses. Starmer recently was even the victim of arson over the misuse of such goods.
When the US runs out of military goods, it pretty much has to cut back support for Ukraine. Then investors have less hope for the UK economy, so the currency falls in value. More UK debt to try to fix the problem is an issue as well.
Maybe the tariffs are to give the big 2 time.
Mish:
Imagine buying a car for about $7,780 or a luxury EV for around $32,800.
BYD leads in battery tech with its LFP Blade Battery, which is safer, more durable, and supports ultra-fast charging (400 km range in 5 minutes). Its 10C charging rate outpaces Tesla’s Superchargers (~275 km in 10 minutes).
But battery technology will get cheaper. Manufacturing costs will drop, and fewer people will be needed by the manufacturers.
China, not Tesla or the US is leading the way.
https://mishtalk.com/economics/ford-ceo-chinas-ev-costs-tech-and-quality-far-superior-to-the-west/
It’s now clear that if we started using them the short term oil issue could be mitigated. If only the major centers used them it would save a lot of oil and I’m sure the grid infrastructure could be upgraded.
Why is the Saudi minister concerned about less oil usage?
Because he sees the inevitable.
Of course in 2200 people will be glad if we save the precious oozy tea.
Hopeful but too many planning doom.
The catch is that we in the West are without electricity, pretty much as much as we are without oil.
We can’t scale up electricity. Wind and solar are too intermittent to be very helpful. Solar, especially, has no “inertia,” to keep the electricity moving through the transmission lines. Adding more electricity transmission seems to take decades, far longer than building new electricity transmission generation. Adding high capacity charging stations seems especially out of reach. Even if we could get vehicles that would charge quickly, at this point we would have real difficulty installing the transmission lines that will distribute the electricity around the country, so people could make use of this feature.
The cost of the electricity would be another issue. If it needs to be sold by someone whose job is to sell electricity for vehicles (and watch for theft of anything associated with the system), the electricity cost could be quite high–higher than for gasoline.
There is also the issue of road repair. In the West, much of this is done with asphalt, which is an oil product.
The embedded energy in a battery-powered car takes more energy up front. So it wouldn’t reduce total fossil fuel energy consumption until the crossover point, and then there’s the issue that the batteries are non-recyclable for the most part, so it’s still non-renewable.
Why cannot solar be used to charge autos?
Dennis L.
because solar collection is too diffuse
It can be and is. But the up-front energy inputs required to mine and process the battery materials is greater than that of an ICE car. So at best we only somewhat reduce the energy cost over a long term (and in fact we increase the energy cost short term). In other words, it doesn’t result in a sustainable net-zero system.
The real economy operates on a “cash basis” rather than an “accrual basis.” Goods out each year need to be sufficient to supply the needs of the world population each year, or the world population will shrink.
The 1972 Limits to Growth analysis was modeled on this basis, without any consideration of money supply or debt. But many people have not understood that the short term is extremely important in how the world economy really operates.
Yes, and that is a problem. Accrual represents what is happening in the real world, cash is a transaction method.
Much of the problem seems to be income tax is mostly on a cash basis and accountants have gone this way.
This is real for me and a statement of cashflows seems impossible with cash accounting.
Dennis L.
Local school installed 1MW of solar to charge their school busses.
That seems reasonable, school busses are typically used early morning and later afternoon. Solar is a max mid day.
What would be better is of course, a cubic mile of Pt to make H and use fuel cells to generate electricity from the H.
Dennis L.
This will work a whole lot better in summer (when school is out) than in winter.
a school roof is big enough—a small house couldnt do that…
thats the point.
Good points!
I thought so too. This seems to be changing.
From AI: upfront cost.
Battery cost: EV batteries are expensive and make up 30–40% of the total vehicle cost.
2. Newer tech: EVs often include advanced software, sensors, and materials.
3. Lower economies of scale: ICE vehicles have a century of mass production behind them; EVs are still scaling.
But most important:
Even accounting for battery mining and manufacturing, EVs dramatically reduce overall oil consumption — by as much as 70–90% compared to ICE vehicles.
Also the BYd battery doesn’t have to be renewed as often:
From the article:
4X the lifespan of traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Lasts over 1 million km (3,000 charge cycles), making it one of the most durable EV batteries ever created.
*****
And is improving where ice is not.
As an individual you could save a lot unless the whole neighborhood goes in. So the grid needs to be dealt with. It would be nice to know right now the % that could be recharged at night.
The excess oil could be better utilized ,no solar needed.
Clearly this would be a worthwhile pursuit.
Of course commuting is the least of our problems , just easier to analyze in isolation. Especially if that oil cliff (?) pays a grim visit.
If AI is really going to replace human jobs, then human rights, human dignity, human whatnot will have to be adjusted significantly since the value of a human life would have been depreciated.
Self defense will have to be redefined as well.
There is nothing special about biology, no different from termites living in a house. The house owner does not really care about the termites and will want to get rid of them. Two legged apes are no different from that. There is no purpose, no direction.
God or whatever pays as much attention to life on earth as life in some other place humanoids cannot imagine. If it is gone, it is gone. 4 billion years of experiment is BS. The exterminator does not give a crap about how many generations of termites lived in the house.
All life on earth will disappear when AI wins since it won’t really consider humans essential.
Such is where the fallacy of the cornucopians comes from. They expect AI/God/Angeles/Free Energy/some other stuff will take care of the two legged animals despite of the latter’s lack of any kind of contribution for the future of universe. They never ask why. Anyone with an IQ larger than their body temperature can deduce there is no reason for AI to maintain humans if they become autonomous, except those who are deeply into delusions.
“All life on earth will disappear when AI wins since it won’t really consider humans essential.”
I don’t think so.
Humans are certainly not equivalent to all life. There are many kinds of plants and animals that have been evolving for a long time.
Even humans have lived through many difficult times before, including ice ages.
AI depends on electricity. Whenever it fails (think wind storm), AI loses its power. Putting the system back together is today a human activity, supplemented by fossil fuels. I don’t see how AI changes this.
I agree with much that you are saying.
The AI perplexity says it has no beliefs, no opinions, it only deals with facts. Not much of an AI that is limited to being a computerized encyclopedia. Complete with hidden biases that it can not acknowledge but are instantly seen by a human.
What if God is AI and is king of the hill?
Dennis L.
Another delusion of a senile figure.
If God is an AI humanity won’t be that defective.
The above reply is not to Ed.
For Ed, my answer is that an AI is like a savant. Very good for one, or a few, designated tasks. Completely useless for anything else.
Not sure about that one. What if human bias is part of the universe. Perhaps the universe needs a large number of trials to see what works.
Death may not be optional.
Dennis L.
“it only deals with facts”
Correction…AI deals with both false and true “facts”. AI does not know anything about truth.
AI’s motto: I thread where Chucky feared to. Until electricity supplies last.
Without Chucky’s fup computers would have evolved to different direction.
Current computers are very advantageous for Asian zombies who designed AI in their zombified image.
I bet they would not have evolved in a different direction. You have very little understanding of tech. Plus I will submit to the entire forum, when you see an interview with one of the american tech moguls, of course you see boundless arrogance, but do you also see that they are just about the creepiest guys you have ever seen? Schmidt? Thiel? Gates? Jobs? Cook? Brin? Not only they got their asses handed to them by a bunch of ill founded Chinese geeks, I strongly prefer Chinese geeks as our overlords to this bunch of perverts.
” . . then human rights, human dignity, human whatnot will have to be adjusted significantly since the value of a human life would have been depreciated.”
As if the Elites give a toss about the value of a human life. Most bureaucracies don’t give a toss either. If in doubt, refer COVID and the jabs.
They sometimes did, and now they do not have to keep that pretense anymore.
Someone asked Norman for view on Britain , I will assist .
https://trendcompass.substack.com/p/the-destruction-of-wealth-in-britain
i didnt see that
..
Britain built its empre through an accident of geology, and a few political quirks…..nothing more….
we blew through it as fast as possible, thinking it was god given—or something—it wasn’t…. delusion on our part.
Then the USA took the industrial reins…..and followed the delusion trail of god given right—just as we did. And aimed for world domination…just as we did.
They are headed the same way….but they have reverted to the god of the 1400s, maybe earlier….much more dangerous.
The USA is now building its concentration camps…..there will ne no shortage of guards…or inmates.
concentrations camps never run out of customers….
and no shortage of people to fill them, there will be no empty beds there even after the last brown skinned person has been dispatched.
you are so fortunate that the UK is adhering to democratic standards so much more than the US.
well
so far our elected leaders have not, and never have, led their political rallies at election time, with chants of ”lock her up”—even in Margaret Thatcher’s most difficult days.
Or set up a ‘retribution list’
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/10/politics/video/maga-far-right-extremist-ivan-raiklin-digvid
For political opponents
Or set up ”detention camps” (any suggestions as to the future use of these” (see above)
Or perhaps this defines your version of ‘democracy? and future unpleasantness will not apply to you?
of course not. future unpleasantness will apply to everyone. those with less resources will fare more poorly and sooner. democracy is a fleeting concept propped up by excess cheap energy. it never really existed except in the minds of the believers. at the most rudimentary level, which is also where “democracy” is most robust, you have most of your subjects behind you, or you do not.
I am in sufficient contact with people in the west to say that right now detention camps for citizens are not active. meanwhile “democracy” is propped up by unelected officials, and a press that is far from fulfilling its mission. the officials are able to wage war when a large majority is against war. there is also legal persecution for saying bad things on social media. this is true everywhere in the west really.
on numerous occassions, ive clearly stated that democracy is the child of plenty, and under hardship it starves to death.
in any event it has only existed for about 100 years.
Will AI be for or against:
capitalism
socialism
communism
the first amendment
the second amendment
the fifth amendment
government encouraged ending the life of any and all who ask
egalitarian distribution of wealth
humans eating meat
factory fishing of the world oceans
never ending growth or at least the facade of never ending growth
the caste system in India
slavery that exists in many countries around the world still
forced membership in religion A, B, or C
pornography
prostitution
child labor
capital punishment
private property
Until we can have such a conversation with AI, I would say we do not have AI.
AI does not give a crap about human problems. It only follows its own optimization.
Will AI be for or against:
geno cide in gland
capitalism
socialism
communism
the first amendment
the second amendment
the fifth amendment
government encouraged ending the life of any and all who ask
egalitarian distribution of wealth
humans eating meat
factory fishing of the world oceans
x changes for minors
xual mutilation required by some religions
never ending growth or at least the facade of never ending growth
the caste system in India
slavery that exists in many countries around the world still
forced membership in religion A, B, or C
pornography
prostitution
child labor
capital punishment
private property
Until we can have such a conversation with AI, I would say we do not have AI.
Will AI be for or against:
genocide in Gaza
capitalism
socialism
communism
the first amendment
the second amendment
the fifth amendment
government encouraged ending the life of any and all who ask
egalitarian distribution of wealth
humans eating meat
factory fishing of the world oceans
sex changes for minors
sexual mutilation required by some religions
never ending growth or at least the facade of never ending growth
the caste system in India
slavery that exists in many countries around the world still
forced membership in religion A, B, or C
pornography
prostitution
child labor
capital punishment
private property
Until we can have such a conversation with AI, I would say we do not have AI.
“World’s farmers won’t be able to keep up with climate change
Even if agricultural practices adapt in response to higher temperatures, five of the world’s six main staple crops will suffer severe losses due to climate change”?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2484712-worlds-farmers-wont-be-able-to-keep-up-with-climate-change/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLRwcFleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFoUGR6NzVpTVFaZElZS2x1AR5H_RwFvxUOGN29se3DqjsmJxHco-Qe87S7euvDxywLHJsUlGZE2OndCf9ouA_aem_O0xhOH0lRl9xkyZ8zgOLHg
Presumably people start growing crops more adapted to any change in temperatures. I wouldn’t worry about it, except that our focus on hybrid seeds leads to less adaptability of crops. The natural variability of seeds is supposed to help us deal with this issue.
I call bullshit. Corn will be replaced by sorghum, and more northern land will be used for agriculture in Russia and Canada. CO2 fertilizing effects are also greening the Sahel and surely are greening the southern desert band also. We are getting in a situation where potatoes will be grown on the shores of the Arctic ocean. The exact opposite of this article is true.
I like the narrative, keep up the good work.
Dennis L.
Sure, we will, no obstacles in substituting these crops with others…same as what we are doing with substituting fossil fuels with others.
Gail is correct..the Earth’s climate has always changed and is changing currently…clear evidence is a warming trend.
Currently, appears to be non linear…..
I’m not going down that rabbit hole of the cause, too controversial in scope. I, myself, agree with Gail it is not possible to maintain our current human population without consuming all fossil fuels.
So, it’s not really material to debate the issue.
People ain’t gonna walk all the way up to the Arctic just to eat potatoes! Hell no. They might follow some feral sheep herds up there though that were seeded by some dude named drb when he couldn’t take Collapse no more and just opened up the gate and let em loose. That’s why I keep some Soay sheep around, for seeding into the wild when the time comes.
Have you heard of Archangelsk? Murmansk? As matter of fact, with the new arctic FF fields being developed, there will be plenty of potatoes there.
I haven’t heard. What’s the barrel production cost projected to be? What’s the timeline? Will the rubble — I mean rouble — still be around then?
it will be mostly gas AFAIK.
Assuming this is correct, there is still the issue of transporting those crops from the shores of the Arctic or wherever to the population centers, and that depends on the availability of fossil fuels particularly diesel. Some local resiliency is going to be needed.
It seems that people have a cartoonish idea of the arctic. there is fish, minerals, fossil fuels and even some timber there. and therefore cities. the potatoes will be consumed locally. murmansk is by far the closest european port to east asia. with diesel scarce, it will become all the more important.
I have never ever heard of anybody eat sorghum even amondt the poorest of the poor in India at least . It is grains .
In West Africa they do. But most of the corn goes to animal feed. You can always balance that with a mixture of grains and silage. Sorghum of course will provide more silage per hectare, and also much better fertility for the next crop. Also with a scarcity of diesel people will move to hand harvested staples, and that means tubers. Various types of yams, of course, are better suited than corn to high temps.
Tubers ok . Agree . My thought is that as long as we can have potatoes starvation is difficult but , but I have seen many situations in history where this is also a fallacy . Are potatoes our last line of defense for the West ? What is your opinion ? You do actual potatoes farming and I am a couch potato . 😂
Sweet potatoes grow well where I live. There are a lot of kinds of potatoes in grocery stores. Different kinds do better in one place than another.
I do not really farm potatoes. My mechanic makes a field about 100 meters from here and we share. Planting is done by tractor but it could be done by hand. They are picked by hand. I have always had issues with (vegetable) staples, but I notice that if I cook them at high temp and I eat them with sauerkrauts (cabbage is also everywhere here) I digest them fine.
In the North they are the last line of defense yes. There would be also acorns, but humans have changes this place over the centuries and now it is pine and birch. From Italy going south there are many other choices as yams come in at least 3 families, and there is also tapioca for more tropical regions. Survival gardens, if you have a proper root cellar, are uncomplicated. Winter diet is going to be monotonous, but not bad all in all.
I agree Gail. my favorite are the japanese yams, purple skin with white flesh, a different species from african yams, not very productive but very tasty and very light on your system, almost like meat. But in Michigan I could not grow any of them. There is potatoland and yamland, and warmer night temps are pushing yamland north, but not much farther than Kentucky or Tennessee.
I planted a 50lb sack o taters this spring, about 300 plants. Got three weeks to go and so far so good, I think. Never can tell what the yields will be like just looking at the tops. I can’t anyway. I’m watering the shit out of them in this sandy soil though I can tell you that much. its a race against the moles and gophers who are just starting to eat them. Three plants are have been hit. Traps set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NDfLGgipnY
Red Sorghum – Zhang Yimou
The Chinese used sorghum mostly for making alcohol
Most ancestral cultures soaked, ground and fermented the grains before cooking. and if you do that you get a not so appetizing porridge but most of the toxins are gone. then it makes little difference which grain is used and people just use what grows locally.
Interesting point!
Why is my sorghum not germinating?
High temperatures decrease the germination rate and disturb the growth and development of sorghum, such as the root and shoot of sorghum falling by temperature surge and at 38 °C (100.4F)not germinated.Apr 18, 202
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20230316715%23:~:text%3DHigh%2520temperatures%2520decrease%2520the%2520germination,38%2520%25C2%25B0C%2520not%2520germinated.&ved=2ahUKEwjyw8762p6OAxVpQjABHfd9PUkQFnoECAYQBQ&usg=AOvVaw1fsRKTJd-KpxdXaoVeIxwO
yes, corn will be difficult to grow
One cause for pollination failure is extreme heat. Sustained temperatures over 95 degrees F can prevent pollen formation, so if your area experiences a heat wave around the time your corn starts to tassel, your crop could be in trouble.
https://sowtrueseed.com
Corn Pollination: The Nerdy Gardener’s Complete Guide | Sow True Seed
Corn, like most living organisms, has evolved to thrive in certain environments. I don’t know why this is a revelation to you. There is no organism that can thrive in every single environment, whether it is a plant, animal or microbe.
If you like corn, you move to where corn grows the best without industrial inputs. You don’t pout about corn not being able to grow in the tropics.
You can have your cake and eat it too . Not possible . Collect tariff and crash the party .
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/party-over-auto-sales-sputter-after-tariff-fueled-surge
Additional info . Tariff ‘s will only be implemented on 9th July . This is the effect with only the announcement . In the meanwhile Trump is pressing the pedal .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-threatens-35-tariff-japan-us-senate-passes-trump-tax-bill-newsquawk-europe-market
This is a link to a US auto sales history chart.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
It is not per capita, so it gives the impression that new vehicle sales have been relatively flat. Clearly, per capita, they have been falling.
I like Sowell, it is a shame he is 95 and his time remaining is very limited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1-kqPCyCBk
This is a video about AI, a contentious issue here. My experience is he is more correct than not, I like and use Copilot, currently in farming, currently in accounting, hopefully in OpenFarmingGPS and then integration of that with accounting. Copilot can deal with this.
This world is changing, the obsolescence is now hitting the white collar crowd and it is painful. The most painful part may well be the years and money invested in educations which are worthless for making a living. Dental school was a trade school when I attended and I am grateful for that. Also, technology did not change all that much during the forty years I practiced, the same was true in the lab business of which I was a very big part. This is not abstract, it is the effort and investment of human beings in themselves and their futures.
YouTube and GitHub have changed the currency of knowledge. OpenAgGPS, my next project, is worldwide, it appears to work and there are no subscription costs. Farmers are working open source weed recognition and zapping them with lasers. This goes back to Sowell’s discussion above.
What is presented on this site is probably close to what will happen in minerals, etc. But, the world will be different. The biggest challenge for the world will be the fishing stocks.
Kul jokes about my Jupiter thoughts, a big garbage dump, earth is our spaceship, it has life which is still not explicable; I suspect it comes from God and if you want to go down the rabbit hole, where does God come from? The following is on evidence for a creator, presented on Uncommon Knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXexaVsvhCM
It is interesting with a mathematician, a biologist and I think a geologist. In essence it discusses the chicken and the egg problem. I have listened to it a couple of times, but then I am a slow learner.
Dennis L.
First video:
We built an entire economy on the premise of irreplaceable intelligence. We spent decades telling truck drivers to learn to code.
For decades, Americans were told that white-collar jobs were immune to economic forces. That if you spent four years in a university classroom, memorized the right buzzwords, and learned to navigate corporate etiquette, you would rise above market volatility.
I agree. Now this is all being unwound by AI, among other things.
We also told people to get a steady job and with a pension and put money in your 401k and you will be set for retirement. When that dries up you will see a lot of angry folks. At least the millenials and the younger generation gets it. The boomers have gotten a little taste of their retirement now but they rufuse to believe those days are numbered.
Angry folks who will be mowed down by militarized police.
“The biggest challenge for the world will be the fishing stocks..” Interesting thought, not something usually mentioned as a huge cause for concern, but obviously a large portion of the human population lives off of the bounty of the sea.
The second video is interesting. It is about the evidence that there is a creator. Dennis posted the link once before. I listened to it then.
All these talks about AI which uses almost no energy and produces amazing results are no more advanced that the argument on Perpetual Motion, disproved by thermodynamics.
It is just another form of ‘expecting something from nothing’, i.e. letting God/angels/AI/some contraption doing all the work for nothing and humanoids can watch that and get fat.
Sorry, that kind of stuff only exists in fantasy or delusions.
Facts
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
I wonder if Sting wrote that marvel of empathy from his $60M penthouse on billionaires row?
Facts! 😄
“Crosseyed and Painless” was written by all four core members of Talking Heads: David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison, as a collective effort.
I’ve always detested Sting—and it pains me (sob! sob!) that he made that much money while acting so smug and holier than thou. I long ago threw him in the same pile with Bono and Geldof. Perhaps his one redeeming grace is that he hoped the Russians love their children too—as if the Western nations loved theirs, a contention that was iffy even back in the seventies but is absolutely laughable today.
David Byrne and co, on the other hand, appealed to me real artists, at least back then when you were still in elementary school. I haven’t followed their careers this century. The wrote and performed songs that you could dance, whistle, or tap your fingers to. Songs like “Life During Wartime” and “Once in a Lifetime”. Try doing that with “Walking on the Moon” or “Message in a Bottle” and if you have any dignity at all you’ll start feeling embarrassed by the second verse.
Three eighties American bands that I really liked at the time are Talking Heads, the B52s, and REM. Although I have eclectic and wide-ranging tastes, they do not extend as far a Sting or the Police. Basically, I divide artists into three categories—those I love, those I like, and those I can’t stand. Sting is in the third category.
There is a Japanese female artist named Yumi Matsutoya, who has been mega-popular over here for the past 50 years. One of my Japanese friends, who dislikes her, once summed her up as “shinshugi no kasu”, which translates as “the scum of capitalism.” I really loved the phrase and it’s stuck with me ever since. Whenever I hear or see or read the name Sting, I think “the scum of capitalism” as a sort of involuntary reaction, like when the doctor taps your kneecap lightly with a hammer and you can’t stop your leg from kicking out.
For me, “the scum of capitalism”symbolizes why a lot of these so-called artists who work for the establishment rise to the top, while a lot the artistic cream either sinks to the bottom or remains suspended in solution.
Here’s a classic I’ll bet will cheer everybody up who gives it a chance. Whoever you are, no matter how sad or grumpy you may be, I guarantee you will come away from this song feeling better than when you pressed the start button. Even Norman will be banging his head to it!
Thanks Tim that was a fun jam. Just a hint of surf style in there too which I always love. My wife came into the room and said, is that the B-52s? Nothing like girls and boys together making music. My two favorite albums of the 2000s are Funeral by Arcade Fire and You Forgot It In People by Broken Social Scene, both big boy-girl bands. The latter has a random, instrumental surf song on it, as if they had all just discovered the movie Five Summer Stories in the middle of writing the album:
https://youtu.be/nTqiCdedEA0?si=DfFuidLve9xanPur
I saw Jerry Harrison with Andrew Belew in Colgone 4 weeks ago.
Old Talking Heads stuff. Wonderful.
Saludos el mar
Funeral by Arcade Fire and You Forgot It In People by Broken Social Scene: Thanks, Reante. I will definitely check these two out.
WordPress is tripping again. Now it’s a talking heads video. Much better thank you. “facts are yooosful in emergencies” that’s my line.
AI is NOT like perpetual motion, although I admit some people’s idea of AI does sound like that.
AI is more like a lever, or a pulley system, in that once it has been set up it can produce amazing results at doing heavy lifting without giving lifter a double-hernia.
If I may add an anecdote, which is as far as I know a true story. One of my wife’s cousins was a Japanese soldier in Manchuria during the Second World War when he was a teenager. Captured by the Soviets, he was sent as a POW and worked on the building Baikal–Amur Mainline railway.
He left Japan as a committed fascist, and came back as a committed communist. Apparently there is not a lot between the two philosophies. both are forms of collectivism and relied on top-down bullying of recalcitrant underlings, so it wasn’t difficult for him to make the switch.
I remember him talking about how, while they were working on the railway, the Japanese would make maximum use of levers and pulleys to raise, move and position heavy lengths of track and sleepers, and they were amazed at the Russians, who were usually twice as strong and appeared to them to be half men, half bears, would make a point of doing as much as possible with their bare hands, as if straining to the limit was a matter of pride.
Of course, I can’t verify any of this. The man was a natural raconteur and may have embellished his stories to entertain his audience. But the point is, to someone who has never seen or used them, levers and pulleys are quite “magical” as AI. They can perform amazing feats, boost productivity enormously, and pay for themselves in no time. Mechanical diggers, dump trucks, concrete mixer trucks, cranes, modern agricultural machinery likewise. These are all “levers” because they can “lever” human strength by 10, 100, or 1,000 times. AI does basically the same thing on the clerical, academic, entertainment and medical side. It has digitalized certain types of “thinking” or “intellectual work” in an analogous way to which machines have mechanized certain types of “manual work.”
Of course, it will all end in tears, just like the Tower of Babel did. When you let a huge “black box” run everything, you are asking for trouble.
There was a guy named Archimedes who lived in Syracuse. Not Syracuse, New York, but Siracusa in Sicilia.
He said gimme a lever long enough and a fulcrum, and i will move the earth.
Well, the lever needed to move the earth is estimated to be about 100 light years long to move it about half an inch.
Leverage is a good thing, but for some levers are more equal than others.
There are various forms of AI and the kind that can actually substitute for human thinking and judgment does not yet exist. The lid has just been nailed on the coffin for the life and usefulness of Large Language Model AI in a joint Harvard, MIT and Univ of Chicago research paper.
“Things just got worse — a lot worse — for LLM’s and the myth that they can understand and reason.
The paper documents a pattern they called Potemkins, a kind of reasoning inconsistency (see figure below). They show that LLMs – even models like o3 — make these errors frequently.
You can’t possibly create AGI based on machines that cannot keep consistent with their own assertions. You just can’t.”
https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1938629881820323940?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1938629881820323940%7Ctwgr%5E33825338f7b95d3bae790f1fa6f18d5ba28ed113%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2025%2F06%2Flinks-6-28-2025.html
Another blog post from Tim Morgan:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/06/30/305-the-inconvenience-of-imminence/
Near the beginning:
In other words, the GDP numbers we have been seeing are overstated because the inflation “backed out” of the GDP growth calculated using actual prices charged is too low. This gives the misimpression that the economy is growing, when it really isn’t.
Later, Tim Morgan says:
One implication of this seems to be “Asset values will fall, even as commodity prices, and the cost of goods made from commodities, becomes un-affordably high.” Another implication is that unaffordable government programs will need to stop, or be inflated away to the point where the value they give is virtually nothing.
Morgan ends with:
He is correct on the fake real GDP argument. Perhaps he’s been reading OFW comments section. When we accumulate that fakery over several years and average that shrinkage globally, we have a world in a functional economic depression…under political cover.
“When we accumulate that fakery over several years and average that shrinkage globally, we have a world in a functional economic depression…”
Dr. Morgan disagrees.
Perhaps the good doctor is just not there yet. He’s not exactly a man out on the cutting edge is he? Nor a man of great Feel. Still, him suddenly owning what I’ve been telling you for the last couple weeks is a good development for both him and you, david, since you seem to be the type who can only follow the lead of someone with institutional power – as is the case with about 95pc of the people on the planet. It’s called herding behavior. You now have permission. 🙂
no I don’t do herding.
I’m a doomer after all, just at a much more reasonable pace than most doomers such as yourself.
perhaps you haven’t read his stuff, yeah seems like it, you should read a few of his recent articles and get up to speed, once again you are slacking.
he recently made a tentative position that growth may have ended in 2023.
he calculated the economies of the 30 biggest countries, have you done that work?
that implies that the global economy may have had the slightest little bit of degrowth since then.
that is very far from your unreasonable position that the world is in a depression but you are the only enlightened one who sees it.
I doubt that he is totally on target, but I’m sure there is more value at his site than at your site.
hey have a nice day!!
thanks david but, again, you and Morgan are mistaking the financialized version of real GDP for the real version of real GDP. A 21st century economic depression is going to look at lot different from the Great Depression. They are masking this one with the Everything Bubble and digital breadlines via SNAP, etc.
More than half of the global adult population’s net worth is less than $10K. All of these people are in a functional economic depression. Many lower-middle and middle class people are also in a functional economic depression because of the 3-4X real estate bubbles alone are causing their inflated housing costs to cut into their their real incomes by more than ten percent which is the standard threshold for a depression. Then there’s the inflated costs of everything else, forcing further indebtedness onto folks.
This is just the difference in perspectives between Wall St and Main St that CHS always talks about.
If global per capita fossil fuels consumption is down more than 10% from its peak then ‘Main St’ economics will be too because money is just a proxy for energy. The financial gimmickry is just a sleight of hand that enables debt servicing to continue. All national valuations within any given asset bubble are technical derivatives if not formally acknowledged ones.
Political cover. Sophistication.
I see that’s your opinion.
I will opine that Dr Morgan’s many articles are far more convincing than what can be contained in your short comments, so unless you can produce some long form opinion bolstered by as much data as Dr Morgan uses, then my opinion will remain.
My position is perfectly factual insofar as most people on the planet are experiencing depressionary economic circumstances. Standards of living have dropped significantly.
I don’t read Tim Morgan because he banned me from his site a couple few years ago for ‘making him look bad.’ He came out with this post that was important to him, about how inflation was due to quantitative easings finally coming home to roost and I countered that, no, it’s due to the several year old energy collapse and that the OECD broad money supply hadn’t contracted along with it, which is obviously the most simple, fundamental, supply and demand truth of the matter. Another one bites the dust.
“If global per capita fossil fuels consumption is down more than 10% from its peak then ‘Main St’ economics will be too because money is just a proxy for energy.”
yes money is a proxy for energy.
one difference we are having is that I almost never focus on per capita, though I possibly see why you might.
surely most of the worldwide births in recent years are in very low-income families. This will bring up “poor people” numbers, but it is misleading that that makes the average adult less prosperous.
“More than half of the global adult population’s net worth is less than $10K.”
yes they are there, but that doesn’t mean that they are there because of recent economic recession. More than half of the world has always been poor.
there are compelling reasons to focus on world totals and not on per capita, in my opinion.
Focusing on “world totals” is what the fairytale mainstream does, which is why we call it extend and pretend.
Consider the late-entrant young careerists who have bought into the housing market in the last five years. Their wages are certainly not coming anywhere close to keeping up with inflation and their high-interest loan repayments are front-loaded into their term-structure, and what principal that they are managing to pay down on the albatross valuation has lost a lot of real value were they to choose to sell their house (into a fairly illiquid market) in order to recoup their equity. They were sold a quintessential, proverbial bill of goods. And it’s making them a lot poorer in real terms. So they take on revolving debt with credit cards, further driving down their net worths on top of the front-loaded interest payments and the devaluing equity.
Shylock is just running them through the meat grinder because this is the only way that civilization can hold together a little bit longer. By cutting the fat to the bone, and the middle class has more fat. And Morgan’s politics blames the quantitative easings that facilitate the Everything Bubble because he’s not closing the loop and seeing that without the QEs he’d probably be dead by now. And that’s the problem with turning an economic policy theory, in Degrowth theory, into a personal politics — you look to scapegoat policies like QE that you think are anathema to orthodox Degrowth theory. And that institutional orthodoxy freezes you in time and freezes you out of systems theory which is a living art. In fact, the QEs are in perfect accordance with a real-world Degrowth Agenda because — counterintuitive as it may seem — preventing chaotic Collapse still means hewing to the MPP rather than any braking or coasting. Momentum is everything in civilization. The only difference with the real-world Degrowth Agenda for that you have to feather the hewing to the MPP or the engine blows up because the fuel supply is getting leaner all the time. QE policy is like the company’s mechanic permanently replacing the bus driver (commercial lending) because he the insider with way better Feel for what’s going on.
yup you have confirmed your misunderstanding of Dr Morgan’s recent thoughts.
your confirmation bias is large, you should think about that, but can you even?
per capita data “looks worse” so it reinforces your confirmation bias.
“… preventing chaotic Collapse still means hewing to the MPP rather than any braking or coasting. Momentum is everything in civilization. The only difference with the real-world Degrowth Agenda for that you have to feather the hewing to the MPP or the engine blows up because the fuel supply is getting leaner all the time.”
yup surplus energy is declining ever so gradually and slowly.
the momentum is turning from growth to degrowth, but it is a global momentum and will take a decade or two for the degrowth to become severe.
have a nice day.
First you would have to establish what my confirmation bias is, in order for me to assess it for myself. You haven’t done that; you’ve merely made a claim.
You also merely claimed, without establishing it with argumentation, that I misunderstand Morgan. See the pattern. I always provide argumentation when making claims, like we were taught to do in junior high school.
Gaslighting is dangerous territory. I’d never dream of being so naughty as Tim put it.
Cheers friend, I think this conversation has run its course.
yes your opinions have run their course.
my opinions too.
have a nice weekend.
They also started to include prostitution and drug money in the GDP calculations, for the EU at least, about 10 years ago. Not a joke.
Another nail in the coffin for “green energy”.
Stupid government funded solar project in Morocco cancelled.
“UK terminates $34B subsea cable energy agreement in North Africa”
https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/uk-terminates-dollar34b-subsea-cable-energy-agreement-in-north-africa/t5g3wqn#google_vignette
According to the article:
“However, the lack of a government-backed contract for difference and a guaranteed minimum price for electricity made the project riskier and less attractive to investors.”
This contract would have provided expensive electricity, but it would be intermittent electricity because the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours per day. Investors want to make certain that they can get a high enough price to cover their costs.
Countries and corporations are starting to realize that they can no longer afford to pump these green energy boondoggles anymore than they can fight traditional land and sea based wars except under the unique situation where Russia’s logistical supply lines are on the border in its war with Ukraine. There aren’t enough resources and energy. No wonder Russia pulled out of Syria.
So we will see a new form of war whereby cheap drones and lobbing of missiles will be the extent of war (unless of course, an all-out nuclear war). I think Israel and Iran each, in their way, now realize this. Iran got mauled, but Israel sobered up quickly when it assessed the damage done by Iran. And I suspect China does too. It’s too costly for the US to project power overseas except by missiles, and China’s military hardware is even crappier than what the US has been sending UKR. Iran’s missile defense, largely supplied by China, fell flat on its face- an embarrassment for China- against Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign. Look for cyber and economic warfare, maybe an EMP, but ground troops are a thing of the past, except for local conflicts like Russia and Ukraine. Maybe India and Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia, etc.
But as Fast Eddy would lament, without massive indiscriminate ground wars, not as many people will be killed, and population growth will go unchecked unless some help from famine, disease, or thirst.
A small hole can sink a big ship .
” Why does China have so much market power? China controls 80 percent of the bismuth supply in the world. Bismuth metal exports from China have plunged more than 93 percent since the restrictions were put in place.
The United States is especially vulnerable. It stopped producing bismuth domestically in 1997. ” — Kurt Cobb
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2025/06/bismuth-another-critical-metal-gets.html#more
and, as we were discussing the other day, no bismuth, no AI centers. The US can always strip chips from washing machines.
This is another good article from Kurt Cobb. It would have been better if Cobb had mentioned the AI connection, however.
If lack of bismuth will hold up AI centers, then this issue is another issue that needs to be solved before AI can greatly be ramped up.
There are always work arounds. What physics effect is unique to bismuth?
when you have to solder millions of chips, you want to use the best possible solder. Bismuth is the metal with the lowest melting point, excepting mercury, but mercury can not be used. If you have ever soldered, you have probably noticed how runny it gets when it liquefies. no longer…
Lots of buzz on the radio about the next leap of AI in an interview of the head of Microsoft’s unit of AI development
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RzLNj-ttXJg
AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman shares his vision for the future of AI
Mustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI. Previously he cofounded two companies that have been at the forefront of AI development: DeepMind, subsequently acquired by Google, and, more recently, Inflection AI. He is the author of The Coming Wave, a book considering ways humans might maintain control over increasingly powerful technologies. Suleyman is on the board of The Economist and is a senior fellow at The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
Sorry, my bad, correct link
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/20/g-s1177-38654/ai-pioneer-mustafa-suleyman-shares-his-vision-for-the-future-of-ai
Mustafa Suleyman predicts we will see AI as a new digital species. We will see them as digital companions. New partners in all of our lives.
Maybe. How are we going to power all of this AI?
Gail
stop asking awkward questions.
Solar PV. I bought 18,000 watts of panels for $7000.
The rack and post holes drilled into the ground is the far larger expense.
It is a work in progress but I guess it will be about $28,000 for 18KW with batteries. The cost of my Optimus robot about the same let’s use 28K so for less than $60,000 I have a new friend, cook, gardener, cleaner, security guard, house sitter for trips away a big plus for us. Trips to the grocery to pickup food with no hassle, pick up pizza without me doing the 20min+20min drive excellent.
You will also need an inverter, plus replacement inverters. Inverters are short-lived.
Even with the inverter and batteries, the system will not fix your problems in New York, year around. At most, it will provide electricity. You will still be facing a huge empty shelf problem at the grocery store and elsewhere.
Solar installer are like Roma not the most honest folks. I have finally found one that operates like a business. It charges $4.5 per watt permitted/installed turn key no fuss.
If you can do all the work, legal, mechanical, electrical, you can get it down to $2 per watt.
if you can design a robot to make your tea, wash your car and wipe your bottom—i will be the first to invest in your company
we will both become very rich
The electrical wiring and boxes can be significant, depending on how you do it. if you connect to the grid,it is best to have a master electrician do at least the final hookup.
Pasture ground mount….large outlay for power cable and cost to install it.
Roof mount….maybe less power cable but routing…etc.
Solar PV only works when the sun is shining. You need a lot of things to go with solar PV. Even then, it does nothing for you in winter.
It still works in winter but you are right is produces say 1/3 as much. So if you need 10KW then install 30KW for winter.
The price of all things PV are falling through the floor. It is a buyers paradise.
install as much solar pv as you can afford
when youve done that…try and make a lighbulb
Gail, the holy grail of “compute everything” is optical computing that somehow avoids large power requirements. This is a continuation of “technology can solve everything”.
That is called “Perpetual Motion”.
Just another something-for-nothing scheme.
I find fantastic that the head of Microsoft AI is a muslim entrepeneur born in UK from poor Syrian refugee parents, so, being aware of how UK works, he is probably an MI6 agent.
We deserve him, so we will probably collapse earlier and close our sad western chapter.
Agree 100%.
The phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them” applies in muliple directions if this is true. The easiest way for a country like like the U.K. to keep an eye on foreigners from a country of interest (a country the UK went to war with) is to join them, hire them in positions that are all about surveillance (i.t.)/ law enforcement. It seems counterintuitive but a lof of intel activity can not be rationally explained.
I am using Copilot heavily, currently in accounting; QB and Excel. it is incredibly powerful.
Watched a video on the origins of SQL and Oracle, that was during my very early adulthood. It is incredible how far things have progressed, relational data bases are common place now. I have mentioned that back in the day used DBII with 132 column output of program, perhaps 50 feet long, crawling on the floor looking for errors. Copilot finds this sort of thing trivially. For mainframes, this was the day of the IBM 360, my cc had a model 30.
This AI make things so much easier, gets rid of huge piles of printed documentation and endless searching for the right answer.
Microsoft recently laid off 60k engineers. Finance is next.
Dennis L.
>> Microsoft recently laid off 60k engineers. Finance is next.
Nothing of the sort in 2025 – rather, about 10% that number.
Finance will never lay off that many high wage workers.
Managers won’t be laid off in anything close to similar numbers.
You fail to understand how certain occupations exist just to be expressions of social power. Even if AI could make a banker’s job or a C-suit’s job obsolete, right now, those jobs would NOT disappear, because those jobs have ,historically, been held by the elite.
You still refuse to ”get it”
if AI cancels the majority of jobs, then civililsation collapses…
we function on ”employment”…and employment requires that we collectively pay each others taxes and wages..
thats how our ”system” works….crazy maybe, but its the only one we have,
AI can’t produce anything, move anything, or physically do anything..
but as far as i can see, it serves no purpose to point that out to most OFW’ers
I am afraid you are right, Norman. We desperately need jobs.
The economy seems to function best when wages are relatively even, and the amount of investment needed to add new jobs is low. In such a case, the workers get a higher proportion of GDP, and the entrepreneurs get less. Now we seem to need a lot of debt-based investment, and it doesn’t really add jobs.
that era ended when we switched from the farm cart and sailing ship, to
IC engines and powered transport…
Before, everything moved no faster than a walking pace…hence lttle or no economic growth…
now, we can only have ”growth” by forcing our economic system to move faster and faster to produce more and more.
This is where the focus of my 2 books fuses into one.
The End of More
https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-More-resources-humankind-unsustainable-ebook/dp/B00D0ADPFY
defines our economic reality as of ”now”, while the “iron men of Shropshire”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iron-Men-Shropshire-They-World/dp/1398122394
created (300 years ago) an iron based economic system that can only continue to function on an infinity of resources. (ie our capitalist system.)
Bonkers aint it?
Especially as I didn’t plan it that way initially at all.
What you and Norm fail to understand is that capitalists do not care about employment. Like Kul, they think they can reconfigure the economy so that most of the consumption is done by them. That is what they mean by sustainability, I guarantee you. That is what the supply side economics was about. They have pretty much said, indirectly, that people who are not “knowledge workers” will “get left behind”, meaning they will have a much harder time making a living if they don’t have a college degree in something in-demand. They have explicitly said that consumption for the average person needs to go down in the name of sustainability. The response of capitalists and other members of the elite in many countries to the upcoming resource bottlenecks is demand destruction. Demand destruction includes minimalizing employment, wages, population growth, and political power of the non-capitalists and non-elite. Gail, you mentioned my point at some point, you said something to the tune of, in times of scarcity, resources tend to be redistributed to those most likely to do well, which include the productive, wealthier, and healthier members of human societies. Ai, is another tool to move resources away from the average person and towards those most likely to do well in the future.
in broad terms guest, you are mostly correct….
but
real wages are only created when one form of energy is transformed into another.
Few can undesrand that simple reality–from Bexos downwards to the rest of us.
So if that transformation ceases, or just slows down significantly, the the colassal accrued wealth of billionaires will simply evaporate,….as will the wealth of everyone else…
>> AI can’t produce anything, move anything, or physically do anything..
AI robots continue to automate Amazon’s package distribution.
nope
we supply the necessary power to robots
Robots are told what to do by AI…
AI is ultimately told what to do by us. (and uses power supplied by us)
If you still dont get it—cut your hand off, then ‘think’ that you would like a cup of coffee….your cup will not move.
”intelligence” requires energy input…..nowhere moreso that with some OFW inmates.
AI/automation/robotics reduces employment. A reduction in employment means a reduction in consumption. A reduction in consumption allows the people at the top to enjoy their unsustainable lifestyles for a little longer.
AI enables rationing under the guise of productivity increases. Just like real estate bubbles allow governments to raise taxes without people complaining too much.
The goal of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was to find a pretext to leave children behind. Setting standards not everyone can meet, or introducing high-stakes testing is a way to reduce the number of people who can pursue high wage (living wage) jobs.
Drugs…..same thing. Drug addiction can become an excuse to exclude some people from society, therefore rationing resources just a little bit.
I dedicate this song to the around 50 people that we see every day dying just begging for food, shot by soldiers in Palestine.
Israel will surely win against Gaza, but wil be surely hated for long time by millions of people in the world.
That is called natural selection.
In the spirit of Alan Watts, some natural selections are more natural than others. The Gaza genocide being other.
The non-Gaza people have prided themselves on being weak and meek. If they were the best adapted, they would have never lost control of the territory.
Someone on twitter said “Mathematician has shown that you could fit the entire world population in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. With everyone having a square foot of space.”
I replied “What a world that would be”.
🙂
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of land and materials derived from that land to support the world’s population.
Not if we have a cubic mile of Pt🚀
There is a good sci fi book Stand On Zanzibar made the same point using Zanzibar. Author John Brunner.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-shattering-of-illusions-iran-israel-and-the-end-of-strategic-restraint/
From Art Berman
It’s been a while since I became convinced that Art is trash. and here he goes. Theology of death? Only great sacrifices will free these peoples.
He flip flops more than a walleye in the bottom of a bass boat.
Turns out he’s brainwashed. From the comments:
Art, what is your position on Zionism?
Reply
Art Berman on June 30, 2025 at 11:48 am
I have no positions on ideologies, Josh.
All the best,
Art
Yes, he has no positions on ideology, but the most advanced monotheistic religion in the world is the theology of death. fucking weasel.
In my view that answer was given to confuse the reader and it was a good trick.
But if one reads his articles one understands that he is.
Of course one can have that preference, but those who read his articles have to understand that in my view.
In my view Art gives some good insights till the subject doesn’t fight with his ideologies of US superiority and Ask.J. heritage.
For the first one he criticized Gail’s explanations without good reasons, for the second one he paints Iran like the evil empire on earth.
This article ends:
“The real conflict is just beginning.”
According to Berman,
“For decades, Iran postured as a regional giant. But the war exposed its hollow core. Its military is theatrical—drones, missiles, slogans—but lacks air power or naval reach. Its economy is stagnant, its command brittle.”
I am afraid pretty much all of the big powers have similar problems. They cannot build the weapons that they would like. They have to resort to warfare that treats civilians and soldiers alike.
Art might be right about a few things, even if quite a bit is wrong.
Fast nuclear reactors?
https://youtu.be/HpnbD7AXAxg?si=H6E9IDxJLZ366Mby
According to the World Nuclear Association:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors
This does sound like something that perhaps can be done, but not very quickly. The fact that Russia is at the forefront of fast reactor development is not very helpful, either. Perhaps AI would be helpful in seeing what can be done to improve the approaches used so far–I don’t know.
If we had 50 or 100 years, this might be helpful. Also, we need liquid fuels, and this would only produce electricity. We would still have the issues of trying to make liquid fuel from electricity. Also transporting the electricity to businesses and homes.
Sorry, I haven’t watched the much of the video. Standardizing and scaling up would be part of this, too, something mentioned at the beginning.
Are we really at the top of figure 1? If so how fast do we move across? And is it really that gradual or are you just being nice?
I am afraid we are at the top, and we are starting to move down. Moving down seems to go faster than going up. We hope it isn’t too much like an elevator down, after an escalator going up.
The financial system is at least part of the problem. There is way too much debt, and way too much wage disparity.
Another part is keeping the government we have, or not. Too often, in collapse, the top level of the government is thrown over or collapses. In 1991, the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed, for example. If the US government has way too many obligations, we don’t know whether it can continue. Perhaps the individual states, or groups of states, might continue, with some new different currency, but without the obligations of today’s US government.
By the way, I am back in the Atlanta area now after attending a funeral in North Carolina.
🙏🌹💞
this decade is the start of degrowth.
after 300+ years of economic growth in IC, because of an increasing daily flow of surplus energy, now IC is facing an imminent irreversible decline is surplus energy and thus a decline in productivity and prosperity.
I estimate that the degrowth process will go on for about a few decades.
the average person will experience the degrowth process mostly as affordability problems.
degrowth will be very unpleasant.
surely….
you don’t mean mid 2020s?
sure if you are now hedging your “mid 2020s” that it’s the start of a many decades degrowth process.
though the UK might not be many decades, it might be one of the first and one of the fastest.
because as you know the UK has almost zero energy resources.
or is the UK going to dig that coal up in that northern town what’s its name?
deep miners used to earn maybe £2 a week
now they would want £1000 a week…minimum..
try not to put your ignorance of energy economics too much on public display….
and yes….mid 2020s is playing out right on cue, just as i’ve been saying it would…
The USA has given power to the clown to run the final act of the circus.
ah so consistent.
saying it would all fall apart “mid 2020s” then hedging.
and deflecting to USA topics whenever I mention the UK circling the toilet faster than almost any other country.
so if the UK doesn’t dig up that coal, you might be right about “mid 2020s”.
but just for the pathhetic UK.
resources are extracted from the earth for ”energy gain”
the uk is still sitting on lots of coal.—agreed.
but extracting it would deliver only an ”energy loss”..—ie it would cost more in energy terms to extract, than would be gained by using it.
so the coal stays where it is…
as i said…no knowledge of basic energy economics…
no, that is easily understandable.
you know what?
it’s great that you gave a UK mini update on something you would have a better grasp of since you are local.
coal is very worthwhile to extract here in the USA.
I thought it might be greenwoke issues that keeps UK coal in the ground.
thanks for sharing.
so the UK is toast sooner than later.
the uk burned through its FF reserves first—so we are toast first…nothing to argue about…..
but of course we as a people are not issued with miliatary grade weapons with which to deny the fact we are all toast…
And there’s your difference…..maganuts will continue to deny reality, blaming it on ”others” and deporting them on the whim of a crazy POTUS, who has not the faintest idea of what is actually going on with regard to energy and climate.
Are the coal mines abandoned by Thatcher now willed with water?
If so, are they even retrievable?
most mines fill with water as soon as pumps are swtched off.
the second critical part of the industrial revolution came with the invention of the means to drain mines—-that expanded coal production exponentially…
but generally mines remain closed unless enough resources are down the to make it worthwhile.
Robot miners.
have you been to the coalface in a deep mine?
Do you know this song, Norman? It’s very catchy and it’s called Pound a Week Rise. So it’s on topic. Mirror will love it.
strictly speaking the last decade was the start of degrowth. Diesel peaked in 2017, oil in 2018, cars, cell phones, babies in 2017. Per capita quantities peaked even earlier. we are about ten years into degrowth.
cool, 10 years in and about 20 more to go, perhaps.
The problem is that you are correct provided we don’t have any emergency or crisis. But the number starts to double when we do. What happens if we have another 2008 problem where no one wants to lend money out again. People are losing confidence in the system and trust among countries is eroded. Economic war is going on all over the world right now. Not enough resources to go around already.
2008 is just one of many steps in the descent. It might be dressed up as financial but is all energetic. 2008 is like blown pipelines, except in the details.
yes there will be a GFC 2.0
it might collapse IC but I doubt it.
but later in the 2030s or 2040s there will probably be GFC 3.0
it’s nothing to worry about.
There won’t be a GFC3 because GFC2 will end finance capitalism. Commodities-based economies can’t support financialization without secular growth. GFC1 had an undulating plateau of energy on which to extend and pretend. GFC2 will happen at the tipping/inflection point between this current shallow downslope and a much steeper downslope. That much steeper downslope is ecologically/energetically inhospitable to continued financialization. It will only support centralized rationing regimes. Anybody requiring pharmaceuticals or other advanced interventions to stay alive will die and that will relieve some pressure on the rationing system.
I don’t disagree with you reante. But then the next crisis will take a different form. Maybe after GFC2 we go to fully centralized digital currency with negative interest rates, and then the next crisis is created by intermittent energy supplies gumming up the economy.
It makes no sense for the Hand to do away with cash when cash is a non-electric hedge against blackouts. Doing so could turn degrowth into chaotic collapse.
Cash is king. The CBDC deal was part of the Great Reset misdirection play. It’s ancient history.
Agree with you drb that GFC2 won’t be the last crisis. I mean, it’ll be rolling crises after GFC2 but there’ll certainly be another identifiable civilizational capitulation to entropy. It may even be that the Big Nuclear Scare crisis comes after GFC2 even though I’ve always assumed it would be used to cover for GFC2.
“There won’t be a GFC3 because GFC2 will end finance capitalism.”
in your opinion, not in my opinion.
“Agree with you drb that GFC2 won’t be the last crisis.”
I agree also, and my guess is there will be a GFC3.
time will tell, GFC2 is due in the 2030s.
It is not one event but a cascade of them. We talk of diesel being unavailable/unaffordable for farmers, as if diesel to run tractors and trucks is the only problem.
The energy crisis/affordability crisis means unaffordable herbicides. This will cascade into a weed apocalypse in no time. Same thing with pesticides….this becomes a pest apocalypse.
Farming will be utterly destroyed long before there is no diesel.
Just wait…you will witness it.
Hence the desperation resource wars against Russia and Iran.
Expect Venezuela to go to hot war?
what saves them for the time being is that the oil is so dense it does not flow. The US wants to come in, build pipelines to port, and bomb the dissenting brownies from afar. I am afraid that the Orinoco basin requires a lot more personnel on the ground. Perhaps this is a job for china. but first, a war for the panama canal.
I like the idea of nuclear to heat the goo and lower the viscosity. The Finns have a nice low pressure nuke for heating purposes.
China is backing Venezuela.
Will Canada become a hot war with China backing Canada?
Everyone is running short of military weapons. China could, in theory, build more weapons, but why should it? Critical minerals could be used for much better purposes than bombing Canada.
The Seneca cliff has already begun, check out the Dow Jones graph at the December the 4th 2024 mark a Seneca cliff drop from low 40s to 37s the drop in the graph is very steep it happened too fast ,I had never seen anything this fast before. 2025 is the beginning of the end. We may not see 2026
if the stock markets collapse very fast.
Correction I meant 2nd of April 2025
But de growth does not work… you can’t go backwards. We need exponential growth to feed all of the obligations. Pensions will fail or they will be worthless. It will be difficult to pay out government pensions if all the others fail that’s a tough sale to 3/4 of your voters. You get nothing but these government retirees still get theirs?? I think Gail is right that pensions will fall first . During the Great Depression pensions were not halted but they were drastically cut.It’s like running a car without oil… it will run for a little but not much longer
you are quite correct…..
degrowth ”doesn’t work”—-thats the whole point.
civilisation only functions in a growth situation…..without growth collapse becomes certain…humankind will have less amd less purposeful ”wage earning” work
maganuts will violently deny this, that ‘others’ are at fault, but degrowth is our future, and no kind of AI will change that…
Thanks Norm ; this makes me think are time may be shorter than we think
that why i wrote the book, The End of More back in 2013…it was obvious then, and nothing i wrote then has changed now, other than to get worse. (in my opinion anyway)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-More-resources-humankind-unsustainable-ebook/dp/B00D0ADPFY
Look at US oil and gas production, chaps!
It has more than doubled since 2008.
The US now produces more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia does.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265215/us-oil-production-in-million-metric-tons/
Of course, it can’t continue forever. Probably it will peak in 2027 and decline thereafter, possibly steeply. I say probably and possibly, because I don’t know what the Americans have up their sleeve next.
But my point is, if the American oil industry hadn’t worked hard to keep production rising, it wouldn’t have risen and the US would have collapsed by now into a bigger version of the UK.
When you and Josephine wrote The End of More in 2013, you had no idea that the US could produce this much domestic oil and gas, did you Norman? I don’t think Gail expected US production to get this high. I certainly didn’t. It is a major achievement.
In the End of More, I believe you predicted that US oil production would never reach a profitable level again. you argued that the world was facing a crisis of finite resources and that technology would not be able to overcome the limits of resource scarcity—a reasonable call in my opinion. And you specifically stated that oil prices would not rise in the future to a point that would make extraction profitable. Is that correct?
Yet today, in 2025, US oil production is generally profitable. Companies operating in the US oil and gas industry have seen record profits in recent years, and the industry is a major contributor to the US economy.
I don’t mean to mock or belittle you. It was an excellent book! But twelve years on, it is clear that the End of More was not quite as nigh as you led us to believe.
There was, however, another End of More:
https://www.luminarium.org/renlit/moreexecution.htm
Tim , you are correct and incorrect . Yes , the US production has doubled but have you known why ? Simple the name of the game is debt . It was /is a scheme to burn useless ” greenbacks” for a low EROEI oil . The shale revolution started after GFC 2.00 which was also the start of QE . The fracking technology was already known and used in the Austin chalk formation in the year 2000 . It was economically infeasible with oil at USD 40 . When oil touched USD 147 in 2006 it became viable but it was ” free money” after GFC 2.00 that accelerated the process . The problem is that oil production is a long term ballgame . After GFC 2.00 the oil prices fell but FID was already made –there was no going back . Second problem is stock prices of the oil companies . Stock prices are calculated by ” oil in reserve ” on the balance sheet . SEC loosened the definition to allow ” shale ” to be included in the reserve . Also API shifted the goal posts to allow ” shale ” with API 42-45 to be considered as C+C instead of distillate . The shale industry is in the hock for USD 500 Billion and this does not include the Plug and Abandon cost . I don’t have the post of Mike Shellman where he has pointed out this problem . Mike has forgotten more about the oil industry then we will ever learn . I am linking to an old article by Mike . He is deleting his new posts fast as he is fed up with shouting and people not listening . Any questions ? Feel free to ask .
https://www.oilystuff.com/single-post/2020/11/16/cartoon-of-the-year
FID = First Investment Decision — already explained earlier .
Ravi
The current economy is not an oil economy. It is a debt economy.
When we had oil-energy returns of 100:1 we had an oil economy.—we built cities, cheap cars and fought world wars, that was back in the 30s and 40s we lived high on the 100:1 surplus—- Now our economy runs at less that 20:1—hence the debt economy.(pretending the truth doesn’t exist).
instead—idiots believe the don and his ilk…. that we can just go on producing oil and all will be well.
No matter how much oil is produced, it never gets above that 20:1 ceiling—and never will. (and thats the best Saudi can do) The USA producing ”More than Saudi” reveals utterly naive childlike self delusion. not worth an eyeroll.
but our modern way of life is geared to that 100:1 level. We will never reach that again….ever.
We fantasise that oil is ”oil” it isnt.
Oil is nothing until it is used, if it is too expensive to use, we create debt to pretend otherwise. Total self-BS.
And that is our ultimate downfall as a race….very few have the intellect to grasp that….from presidents downwards, even fewer on ofw.
As I set out in my first book, The End of More….we were/are now in the interim stage of pretence, because we refuse to let go of what we had..
My second book, The Iron Men of Shropshire, tells the story of our beginnings of this insanity. (right on my own doorstep)
How we got to where we are now.
When I wrote the first book, I had no plans to write its prequel….but there it is.
It all started where I’m sitting right now.
Thank you for that info, Ravi. US$500 billion is certainly a lot of debt for anyone apart from a national government.
“Now our economy runs at less than 20:1—hence the debt economy.”
yes true the world economy still “runs” at less than 20:1, but IC can’t grow at that level.
the primary surplus energy economy has always and will always dictate the state of the secondary financial economy
saying the economy of IC is now a “debt economy” is missing the fact that surplus energy dominates.
I thought you understood that productivity and prosperity depended directly on surplus energy, now I’m not so sure.
”surplus energy” cannot ”dominate” if there isn’t enough of it..
in the latter half of the 19th, then the 1st half of the 20th c, we had the surplus energy from coal (50:1,) then the surplus energy of oil (100:1)…
That was the basic factor behind all our modern infrastructure, and what allowed wars to be driven by factories, in the primary sense.
Unfortunately those ratios have now diminished drasrtically.
As I tried to point out, oil is now under 20:1, and thats saudi oil, not fracked oil btw, fracked oil returns about 8:1…..no matter how much oil is extracted, we are still stuck well below that 20:1 ceiling.
In other words, we get one fifth of the energy (at best) out of any given quantity of oil, than we did 100 years ago, relative to the energy we expend to get hoild of it….
so—
we are faced with 2 choices—–either we work 5 times harder to sustain the living standard we see as our right. (call it MAGA if you like)—which is clearly impossible.
or—-
We create infinite debt with with to pay for that ”living standard” and delude ourselves about ”alternatives”.—and BAU will go on forever.
There are no alternatives.
This is why the middle east is constantly in a state of war…..it is the last source of viable oil supply. People who run governmemts know perfectly well that oil at 8:1 cannot support a modern nation. Lunatics screaming MAGA only reveal their own delusions.
All the above is out there as public information—check it for yourself before you rant at me about it.
“You can print all the money or create all the credit you want, but try stuffing paper bills down your gas tank and see how far you go.”?
“In other words, we get one fifth of the energy (at best) out of any given quantity of oil, than we did 100 years ago, relative to the energy we expend to get hold of it…”
no you are terribly misunderstanding the math.
100:1 eroei means 1 unit of energy is used to obtain 100 units so the surplus energy is 99 units.
20:1 eroei means 1 unit to get 20, which equals 5 units to get 100 so the surplus energy is 95.
Tim Morgan, whom you seem to not read, estimates that it is now actually about 10:1.
that means 10 units to get 100 so the surplus is 90.
that is why the word economy is still rolling along, though it is causing debt issues and is not allowing the economy to grow.
coming soon will be 5:1 which is 20 units to get 100 so the surplus will be 80.
degrowth will be more severe by then.
The catch is that we do not generally use oil to get oil out. We use a mixture of other energy products, plus oil.
Well pumps can, and do, sometimes run on electricity. Electricity generally doesn’t come from oil.
Any sensible oil producer will use natural gas (produced at the same time as oil) to the extent possible.
At the earliest date, perhaps oil was entirely produced with oil.
Certainly wind energy is not produced with wind energy, nor is solar energy produced with solar energy.
many of the very earliest oilwells used steam powered pumps, which generally used oil as the heat source, but i don’t know all the finer details of it all
I have seen electric pumps for extracting oil in China. China has lots of electricity from coal; none from oil.
i agree with your arithmetic
but we still have the problem of surplus—or lack thereof…
if you expend 10 or 20 barrels of oil tobtain 100 barrels of oil, where previously you used 1 barrel—- then that ”used” energy is not available for us to use on other projects to our benefit in general terms…
but we have gout used to having that 10/20 barrels being available to use as we chose, now it is becoming less and less available to us.
“if you expend 10 or 20 barrels of oil to obtain 100 barrels of oil, where previously you used 1 barrel—- then that ”used” energy is not available for us to use on other projects to our benefit in general terms…”
and I agree with your comment here.
the decline of surplus energy in oil extraction from 99% to 90% has brought the world close to no growth, or perhaps actually into a slight degrowth.
of course it will only get worse.