We are hitting the absolute peaks of fossil fuels in possibly as little as a decade from now also. The current arrangements are only possible with a constantly high energy throughput. There’s considerable limits right now on how much growth can be achieved. And there are more things than ever competing for energy consumption too - including the rise of AI (which is causing energy consumption to soar again after ~2 decades of being flat in Western countries).

The thing is, it’s still a huge increase.

The problem with Reddit turning into Instagram is that IG already exists.

At the rate they’re going, their actual destination is Tumblr, a company that destroyed their brand trying to fit in with generic corporate BigTech.

Anecdotally, bird migration seems much quieter this year. At times we have had enormous flocks of warblers passing through around this time of the year. There are still birds but it is a fraction of the normal volume. This may also be related to the odd weather we’ve been having though, I’m not sure.

A lot of people still think it’s possible to have an energy transition, even those who should know better and are very well aware of the decline of oil resources - for example, Dennis Coyne who runs Peak Oil Barrel. He knows very well, because he’s made mathematical models to that effect, that oil production could decline by about 1/3 by 2050. But he thinks a transition will occur by then. I think it’s a religious-like belief at this point that there has to be something waiting in the wings to save us. Oh, and the mainstream opinion is, by the way, that oil supplies are plateauing because of lower demand (because of this alleged transition) and not because we are depleting the main sources.

On the other hand, you have guys like Art Berman who think supplies will last a good deal longer but that there will still be enormous upheaval in the coming century. Out here on the fringes there’s not much consensus.

“Are…the public well-informed?” I’m assuming that headline was meant as sarcasm.

Terrible choice caving into the pseudo-moralists, but they’ve been going down a bad path for a long time. They should’ve looked at the cautionary tale of Tumblr before committing this own goal. Making sweeping changes to fit in with corporate agendas may be popular among their own class, but it also has the longer-term effect of sacrificing the user base. And they’ve been hemorrhaging for a while anyway. Where do they think their future profits will come from?

He’s clearly implying that this policy will eventually be misused to euthanize people.

Low IQ people can’t comprehend the science, but they are easy prey for demagogues who point out that the elites who tout climate change have no desire to limit their consumption or in any way live as if they believe climate change is real. Thus, they (the mob) come to believe they’re simply being lied to and climate change is a “hoax”. This is partly an elite problem because they’re not willing to lead in the only way that might actually work, which is by example.

The worst is those people who bought houses out of town at the top of the real estate market because they believed the propaganda about WFH being permanent. However I never trusted C-level execs or directors not to renege on this, so I didn’t do that.

Yeah and this whole agenda of RTO rolled out worldwide directly after Davos 2023 when a bunch of CEOs were tweeting about it from there. But noticing this makes you a conspiracy theorist.

In the old days people used to have their own servers…

And you can still buy them…

And the cloud really isn’t cheaper…

But whatever, it’s ubiquitous today. Maybe someday people will wake the F up.

God I hate Amazon now. They’re basically Wal-Mart these days with half the results being sponsored (advertisements) - and you see that even if you pay for Prime. There are some things you can only get there, but otherwise, since all e-commerce is converging, I don’t see the point of enabling their bad behavior. But whichever global corporate enterprise you take your business to, they will likely have a similar mindset.

It’s underappreciated how much of a story this is. This is happening in wide swathes of the USA. Big chunks of the West are abandoned, because of wildfires, earthquakes, etc and all along the Gulf Coast as well, including big chunks of Florida (which tons of people have moved to in recent years).

You may be right. I keep assuming that Western politicians are smart people who are playing dumb for the public so that they can keep their grifts going. But they may not be playing in many cases. That might explain the rather sluggish response to what looks like a very serious crisis unfolding over the next 1-3 decades.

What I don’t understand in our current situation is the lying. We’re not attempting to transition to green energy because we have a choice, because it’s better for the environment, or any of this. We’re doing it because there aren’t too many other options now that easily accessible fossil fuel is being burned up. What would be the harm, at this point, of just fessing up? It’s most disconcerting that Western governments have gotten addicted to lying like this, even when they don’t have to.

Wow, and this comes from the horse’s own mouth of corporate publication. We are headed for hard times, and soon, as the Permian depletes. It’s surreal that normies are completely unaware of this when it’s like a freight train of doom bearing down on us.

The insects have gone gangbusters this year in the Upper Midwest. This follows 3 summers ('21-'23) which had abnormally low insect volume owing to severe drought. The drought corrected this year, therefore so did the insects. There are probably local fluctuations like this but as I understand the global situation is pretty dire. A lot of it is from habitat loss, same with other wipeouts of biodiversity, but also ecumenical use of pesticides.

I assume it means something like “discretionary spending” but it’s not clear.

The song was about SoCal in the 1990s but it could equally apply to Florida or Texas circa now.