Noam Chomsky — Peak Oil and a Changing Climate
Mostly, he talks about the stuff Chomsky likes to talk about, but still good.
Dmitry Orlov: Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union
Dmitri Orlov on peak oil and climate change.
Annoying IEA Report
I’m going to try to give y’all some tools to refute that annoying IEA report that just came out — the one that says the US will be the “new Saudi Arabia” and a net exporter of energy. I doubt this community has any new people reading it, and if you’ve been here for a while, you know this report is bullshit, but you need to know why because all these smug, optimistic cornucopians are going to be bringing the article to your attention in hopes of defeating everything you’ve ever told them about energy production.I’m going to skip the IEA report…
Earth is fucked.
After extensive mathematical modeling, scientist declares “Earth is fucked” IO9Brad Werner has a simple question: Is the Earth fucked? He also has a remarkably complicated methodology yielding a very simple answer: yes, unless people start a serious global rebellion….So, to sum up: even our best efforts at environmental management are doomed to fail, unless massive scale resistance movements start springing up and send our cultural personality back toward a pre-technological era. Science has given you your mandate, people: Go blow some shit up.Put more scientifically…Despite weak economy, CO2 emissions to grow 2.6 percent in 2012: study ReutersCarbon dioxide emissions from industry rose an estimated 2.6 percent in a weak global economy this year, a study released on Monday showed, powered by rapid emissions growth in…
Communing with the Dead
by Kathy McMahon, Psy.D. (I extend my sympathies to all of those who have lost loved ones, or are suffering as a result of Hurricane Sandy. It is my hope that this post (updated from last year) will be of use.*) Over this next week, too many people who survived Hurricane Sandy will die from preventable causes. The living can learn a lot from the tragic death of disaster victims. What killed them? What were they doing when they died? Their death can become a “teaching tale” that benefits the living. Tales from the Grave Behavioral researcher Wendy Joung studied firefighter errors in judgment, and…
In Memory of Chuck Willis
Chuck Willis Teaching about Peak Oil Major contributor to this blog, and my dear friend Chuck Willis, died suddenly on Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 in Wichita, Kansas. Chuck has contributed 54 blog entries during his years of writing for Peak Oil Blues. He was working on another one right before he died. His son will finish it and forward it to me. Here is my tribute to him. Early Years College In 1960 – 1965, Chuck received his B.S. in both Math and Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. Chuck spent his professional career doing many things. Early Work in Computers He worked on the earliest prototypes of computers. In 2008, he wrote …
Alternate Energy – It may be closer than you think
It is obvious reading all the MSM articles on energy that they still are counting on technology to ride to the rescue of the declining oil age in the form of alternate energy on a white horse. I wish I shared their optimism, but the facts don’t seem to support that rosy outlook. I do believe we are closer to the alternate energy that no one wishes to think about. It is time proven, inexpensive to implement, useful for growing crops, building or repairing houses, transporting you 10-20 miles, but nowhere as efficient as what we use today. Where is this miraculous alternate energy? Why it is in your very house. Get up and go to the bathroom. Take a look in the mirror. You are looking…
Grappling with the Inexplicable – A Psychologist Looks at Newtown CT
A Reason to Kill It was a quiet afternoon, when the man walked in, holding a gun. He was looking for his wife’s therapist. He was angry, and was convinced that it was this therapist, not his wife’s own decision-making, that had led her to decide to divorce him. By the time he was finished shooting, one therapist was dead, another shot and permanently blinded. The man was a good shot. He was a police officer. I began working with couples in that same clinic several years later. There is a certain edge to a place that has experienced gross, unpredictable violence, even years earlier. That…
Saying Goodbye to Tomorrow.
Today is the last day on Earth, according to some New Age interpretation of the Mayan calendar. This belief has caused endless suffering and useless expensive purchases by people trying to “beat the clock” and find somewhere safe to spend their last few hours. Cheap places have suddenly become outrageously expensive, because someone said “Hang out there!” during your final hours. This story caused one young woman to take her life. However, saying “Goodbye to Tomorrow” has a long history that goes beyond this moment in time. Humans are famous for planning the end of not only their own anticipated deaths, but because that is just too commonplace, they have to anticipate the death of…
Post Peak Career? Forget Law, Consider Geology
In 2007, Byron King was chatting with Mr. Wang, a marine geologist from China, and what he learned knocked his socks off: “There are about 40,000 or 50,000 students studying geology in China today at the university level. Maybe more, but I do not want to give you a number that is too high.” That’s about 25 times the students studying in the US (and about half the US graduates are foreign nationals). For every geologist in the US, we have about 50-100 lawyers, King estimates. What about the population difference? China has 4 times our population, but 50 times the number of geologists. First year salaries: Lawyers: $38,118 – $91,256 Petroleum…
With Visions of Sugar-Plums Dancing in My Head
I’m feeling pretty darn good about 2013. Economic crash be damned. Just had a barely awake chat with KMO over at the C-Realm Podcast’s special programming called “The Vault.” I was sleepy, as it was the day after Christmas, and DH and I did a crazy stint of driving, after we put our dino-dog-puppies to bed, then shot over to see my sister and extended family. It was a great holiday. The Shopping Gene? My sister, who has an incredible talent for picking out clothes for me, chose a fantastic hat as my gift. For those of you who know hats, it is impossible to pick out a hat for someone. Not for my sister, though. It looks smashing, if I…
Mike Ruppert on the Third Date
Hey Peak Shrink! I read your help-letter from the lesbian couple looking to relocate. My partner and I moved from Sacramento to Nevada County almost two years ago. It was very scary but it was a wonderful choice. We are super happy here. I would love to be put in touch with the writer. You can give her my email address. The letter inspired me to write a blog about our story. Feel free to post it to your website of refer it to other readers if you want. 🙂 Hillary Hodge ********************** My partner had “taken the red pill” …
Doomer Book Reviews: Wolf and Iron and Catastrophe
Doomers, especially those of the survivalist, zombie-fearing variety, are sometimes accused of being adolescent gun nuts who have read too many post-apocalyptic science fiction novels and watched too many “Mad Max” movies. All I can say to these accusations is: guilty as charged. For me, such “doomer porn” is one of the few redeeming aspects of our otherwise disposable popular culture. This genre gives us a variety of entertaining and informative previews of what life might be like in the post-progressive world that is bearing down upon us now like a bat out of hell. In an effort to explore some…
Are You a Neo-Barbarian?
Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.Mongol General: That is good! That is good. Lately I’ve become obsessed with visions of a coming Dark Age, and of the kinds of men who will thrive amidst the collapse of the old order. Clearly it won’t be the power-possessors of today, the technocrats, financiers and lawyers who have created this Byzantine system of soul-destroying bureaucracy from the safety of their office cubicles…
Road Warriors: Nomadic Neo-Barbarians of the New Dark Age
In my last post I gave some practical tips for aspiring Neo-Barbarians that were focused on fortifying your homestead against Imperial interlopers and marauding bandits. In this installment I’d like to present another option for would-be Neo-Barbs which may turn out to be an even more appropriate (and fun) adaptation to the 21st century milieu of climate chaos, resource scarcity and global guerrilla-dom: hitting the road.I expect this century to mark the beginning of a new Migration Period like the one that reset the ancient world starting in the 4th century A.D. As discussed in my…
Morning of the Magicians: Magical Thinking for a New Age
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” –J. B. S. HaldaneRationalists of a certain literal, materialistic mindset look at the world’s current state and its future trajectory, crunch the numbers and conclude that, with a high probability, we’re all doomed. It’s an understandable conclusion, too, if you project current capabilities and priorities linearly into the future. But what is missing from their equations — from their entire worldview, in fact — is the element of what I’ll call, for lack of a…
Imagining the Eco-Matrix
My friends, this may be my final sermon here at TDR, my ultimate attempt to explain why anyone concerned with the fate of humanity and our planetary biosphere should be in favor of continuing our civilization’s technological push forward, rather than wishing for its collapse. Ready?The key point is this: continued technological progress will enable us to transition to a post-industrial age — to reduce our global ecological footprint by localizing manufacturing, harnessing eco-friendly energy sources and moving more of our activity into “virtual reality”. To see this, let’s try to imagine a different world: the world of the “Eco-Matrix”……
The Eternal Specter of Fascism
Since I’ve recently been accused of being a fascist (and not for the first time), I did a little self-reflection and concluded that, yes, I probably am that. And so, I suspect, are you, if you are honest with yourself and possess any degree of self-awareness. Allow me to explain… Ever since adolescence I have been acutely aware that our glorious species is, for the most part, a vast troop of self-deluding monkeys who, despite our overgrown neocortexes, are still largely driven by hundred million year old lizard brain impulses. Perhaps I had an advantage over others in perceiving this fact, in that for medical reasons I did…
A Vision of The End
Gaze with me into the mirrors of your Multiversal mind, and see one possible future coming into view…This is not the world your mythmakers promised you — no Disneyland of techno-prosperity and consumer capitalism for all. No, this world is racked by holy wars and ethnic conflicts, Malthusian catastrophes, refugee invasions, eco-anarchy and Millennial insanity. Do you see it? There, in the frontview mirror? Do you see the chaos approaching in the twilight of this, the darkest of all ages?The chaos is descending fastest across the lands of God-drunk Islam. Thirsty Yemen is falling to the soldiers of martyred bin Laden; modernity is in on the…
Doom and the Dark Side of Cosmic Fecundity
The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, supreme Hindu god of destruction and creationLike many in the blogosphere, I have expended considerable mental energy in recent years studying and fretting over the various “doomer” scenarios that threaten humanity in the 21st century. There was a time when I found the apparent facts utterly depressing and was convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for mankind – that the future offered nothing but total collapse and devolution. But some time during the past six months or so, and particularly with my recent turn to the “dark side”, I have come to view the doomer…
Family Farmers to Travel to Washington, D.C. to Take on Monsanto
Image Source Activist Post Dozens of family farmers, Plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al v. Monsanto, will travel from across America to Washington, D.C. next week to take on Monsanto and demand the right to farm. They will attend the January 10th Oral Argument in the Appeal of Dismissal to be aired before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A Citizen’s Assembly in support of family farmers at 10am in Lafayette Square will coincide with the beginning of the Oral Argument inside the court room. “Our farmers want nothing to do with Monsanto,” declared Maine certified organic seed farmer, Jim Gerritsen, President of lead Plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. “We are not …
Free State-ers Not Welcome Here Says NH Rep
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Can Trillion Dollar Coins Pay Off National Debt?
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Meet Zbigniew Brzezinski, Conspiracy Theorist
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Technocratic Fiat Implosions and the Battle Over Gold
Susanne Posel, Contributor Activist Post In 2011, the technocrats devised a scheme, with the assistance of Hans Hoogervorst, appointed chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, that Europe would be included in IFRS9, a new rule that eliminates mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from the European Central Bank’s balance sheets. When mark-to-market practices were installed in 2009, it led to a short-term market recovery, which presented a false positive as banking institutions no longer had to provide capital to promote long-term financial stability. In the Euro-Zone, banks can now conduct business as sovereign debt becomes the only path that can be taken by countries being affected by the technocratic takeover. Under the guise of creating jobs, Ben…
California county postpones hearing on request to buy a surveillance drone for law enforcement
Sheriff Gregory Ahern Madison Ruppert, Contributor Activist Post Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern has postponed public discussion about his request to purchase a drone for “intelligence and information sharing and dissemination,” claiming it has nothing to do with the concerns raised by privacy advocates. Interestingly, law enforcement agencies are already benefiting from the data captured by military drones in the United States and indeed drones are being used around the United States by both law enforcement and the military with disturbing frequency. Even the National Guard uses drones in the United States and the justifications sound eerily similar to those offered by Ahern and others, such as “wildfire surveillance.” While Ahern recognized that intelligence and information sharing and dissemination is the reason…
House Resolution Introduced to Remove Presidential Term Limits
Dees Illustration Activist Post Is one member of Congress attempting to make Obama a dictator? Congressman José Serrano (D-NY) introduced House Joint Resolution 15 which would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. H.J.Res.15 titled “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President”was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on January 4th. The Twenty-second amendment sets the term limit for the office of the President to two four-year terms. The Twenty-second Amendment reads: Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more …
60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class is Being Wiped Out
Michael Snyder, Contributor Activist Post The middle class in the United States is being systematically destroyed, and nobody is doing much of anything to stop it. Our incomes are shrinking, our share of the income pie is at an all-time low, our jobs are being sent overseas, debt burdens have soared to unprecedented heights and millions of formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty. America once had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen, but now it is rapidly being shredded. Unfortunately, this is particularly true for younger Americans. Today, families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent. That…
GMO–salmon in headlines now, but this is just a start
The FDA is stalling approval of a GMO salmon being produced by AquaBounty–delays that may force the company out of business. This, despite the FDA finding in 2010 that the fish are safe and pose little harm to natural fish or the environment. GMO, genetically modified organisms, specifically food and crops is very controversial. Proposition 37, a ballot initiative in California that would have required labeling for GMO food went down to defeat. Backers accused Monsanto, the favorite target of anti-production food activists, for funding a campaign to defeat it. (I’m sure if it had passed, the backers would have proclaimed…
GMO controversy now hits General Mills and Cheerios hard
As if to illustrate the point I was making about the coming controversies around GMO foods, General Mills looks to have lost control of its Facebook page over GMO concerns. An activist organization has “outed” Cheerios as having GM ingredients resulting in what appears to be Cheerio’s and General Mills losing control of their Facebook page. Curious about what horrible, baby-killing ingredient that General Mills was sneaking into their breakfast cereal, I tried to get some info about the genetically modified ingredients causing all the stir. Sadly, the only thing I could find was all-out fear tactics without any real information or evidence of…