Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Bob Butler]

That data can't be trusted. Numbeo freely admits that they manipulate their data, and also freely admits that they won't tell you how they do it.
"Our methods are proprietary."

Sure, ignore data when it doesn't match your imagination. Don't provide an alternate source. I've provided an alternate view of how disruptions might occur in the near future with data to back it up. I see future upheaval too. A 'hovel' could still be justified. On fact, some of the factors Tom Murphy explores regarding changing and depleting energy and future changes mesh with what I've been saying.

But, no. The conservatives have been backing the elites. Global warming is therefore ignored. Ignore the hurricanes, mudslides and the rest. Do without data. Close one's eyes. Much less thinking is required.

[Higgenbotham]

'BB will ride the atom bomb all the way to the ground.' That's still my favorite line of the past year. It's the superiority complex of that group, their tightly closed bubble and strictly regulated information sources together with unrelenting bigotry... It's just FUBAR as many people wake up to it at the last moments before we crash land. Maybe changing course was never in the cards but those who insist on driving hard into the pier rather than admit we're off course earn the ridicule and scorn borne upon them. A pox upon the Libs for this unforgivable sin.

It's not my job or anybody else's to grade other people's posts so I rarely do it, but will make an exception. This is a great post.

One of the hardest things for humans to do is break ranks with their social group and tell the truth. As a successful physics professor at a top institution in academia, Tom Murphy broke ranks in one of the hardest possible ways at the peak of his career. He is that one rare person out of a multitude. Specifically: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/12/conf ... scientist/ and https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/11/putt ... its-place/

It's easy and second nature for elite liberals to circle the wagons. Any liberal can do it.

[aeden]

Drop pallets of food on them and sell block buster ordinance and they all keep their optics and day jobs.
Coke or Pepsi. We went past walking in circles or the wagons way before this iteration or Hammurabi.

NYC.
I came to Ny in 2000 from Poland. Back then NY felt like home. I had late shifts in a restaurant going home from Manhattan to Brooklyn at 1 or 2 am and never felt threatened. My weekly salary was enough to pay all bills, food and entertainment. I worked for an immigrant from Equator he tried to pimp me, luckily a couple of great American customers helped me to get out that situation and get a much better job. That being said, whoever runs this theater hates American and Americans. They are taking advantage of good hearted nation and patriots. They are destroying this country from the inside. After 22 years living in Brooklyn and seeing the borough to change for worse, I move to Long Island and now thinking to move back to Europe.

I was at inner Detroit yesterday for a service for the wife Cousin passing.
You can cut the despair with a carving knive at more than the street level.
The woman who passed was an educator who had sincere and lasting touch on
so many on the spectrum words are all past the effect. You will not get any answers
above since they lost control.

[Guest]

Men are becoming less fertile – and we may finally know why

https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/30/men-beco ... -20556049/

[aeden]

We trended a few pathogens and plausible links and avoidances.
The data suggest what we anticipated correct. As we noted in passing
in 1986 we seen what ship they sailed with. We left it at triazine pathogens
and the bromine studies on fruits also.

Everyone here does its own due diligence so to be brief the Buffett Indicator value of 193%
as 1.9 standard deviations above the trend. Keep those stops a core focus for risk maps.
https://goldonomic.com/When%20Money%20Dies.pdf Review for a few here.

Context is Bitter Harvest since we are a closed loop provider.
The film concludes a year after the initial outbreak, with the killing of De Vries’ entire herd,
as the animals are led into a deep open pit, shot, and bulldozed over with soil.

Today we have facts they will not discuss either. Once again we are closed loop since we are not ahead of the curve.
We understand what they truly are.
You may call it parallel structures as they convey echo chambers to assail as thinking.

[Guest]

That data can't be trusted. Numbeo freely admits that they manipulate their data, and also freely admits that they won't tell you how they do it.
"Our methods are proprietary."

Sure, ignore data when it doesn't match your imagination. Don't provide an alternate source. I've provided an alternate view of how disruptions might occur in the near future with data to back it up. I see future upheaval too. A 'hovel' could still be justified. On fact, some of the factors Tom Murphy explores regarding changing and depleting energy and future changes mesh with what I've been saying.

But, no. The conservatives have been backing the elites. Global warming is therefore ignored. Ignore the hurricanes, mudslides and the rest. Do without data. Close one's eyes. Much less thinking is required.

Aeden has chimed in on crime stats on a different thread. I agree.

In other words, the mayors blamed businesses and less prosecutions, the less convictions, the lower the crime stats.
The question is the meeting was not about stopping crime and maintaining optics.
Easy to gaslight people as active measures mops up any remaining rational minds.

[Higgenbotham]

The Industrial and Information Ages don't leave a lot of room for such collapses.

They leave a lot more room. In the Industrial Age, the excess extraction rate over the steady state sustainable extraction rate is at least 10 fold what it was in the Agricultural Age.

See the below link for a recent and detailed discussion (December 2022) of these concepts from Tom Murphy.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/12/fini ... ng-frenzy/

You may be aware that our food industry is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to the point that it takes about 10 kcal of energy input to deliver 1 kcal of consumed food. The enormous energy multiplier is due to extensively mechanized plowing, harvesting, processing, and delivery of food; fossil-fueled fertilization (via methane feedstock); refrigeration and preparation; then of course food waste. In olden times, when all agricultural energy came from muscle power that needed to be fed, the system would collapse (i.e., starve and fail) if energy inputs exceeded energy ingested.

But the big headline is the peak and rapid decline of human population. Granted, this model peaks too early, and can be rejected as an accurate model for humanity. But it’s not trying to be that. It’s trying to illustrate some basic real features:

Propping up human population on a non-renewable finite resource is setting us up for a real sting of unprecedented scale;
The exploitation of that same resource degrades the ecosphere and therefore Earth’s “natural” carrying capacity to support humans;
These two act in concert to make the downside especially hard.

Population over-expansion off the sustainable resource base might look something like where the population is relative to the blue trendline. Maybe.

Among people who've been seeing collapse for a long time, there has been debate about how bad it will be. I would think (maybe others wouldn't) that they would just say, yes, we agree there is going to be a collapse but we have differences in opinion about how bad it will be. Those differences in opinion, though, have life and death consequences providing the collapse crowd is right and therefore the debate seems to be emotionally charged. My take on that has been that it's pretty difficult to know what is going to happen and everyone should make their own best guesses. If my guesses are wrong, then I may die. That's just how it goes. John Michael Greer and Gail Tverberg are the 2 that come to mind when I say this. They've been trading barbs online. So far the collapse has been slow as John Michael Greer has been predicting. He's been saying since at least 2006 that this collapse will be pretty much like all the previous historical collapses. It seems crazy to me that that will be the case and I've talked about the reasons why here. The biggest reason is that because this is an industrial age economy with a fast growth rate, we are drawing down renewable resources about 20 times faster than Rome was at its peak. Plus by expertly continuing to kick the can down the road, which is about all the ruling class seems to be expert at, resources are being drawn down past the comparable times of previous collapses, probably. Yet John Michael ignores this (my interpretation), and though he has been expecting a new dark age for some time, he moved to Providence, Rhode Island to ride it out. That's the last place I would consider riding this thing out. Gail says this is a networked economy and when the network breaks there will be a huge collapse, much worse than any historical example. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but that's my interpretation of what she is saying. I agree with Gail. In fact, that's what my predictions I've posted repeatedly say in so many words.

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Compari ... cient-Rome

The two processes appear similar in that more is extracted out of the ground than can be replaced to maintain a steady state condition.

It may be that the excess extraction rate initially exceeds the replacement rate required to maintain steady state approximately proportionally to the growth of the population. The growth rate of the population was approximately 0.1% per year in Roman times versus 2% per year in these late Industrial Age times. There would be a point where the population has grown sufficiently to consume the replacement that nature provides to those resounces that are renewable. At the time that point is hit, if the population is growing at a rate of 2% versus 0.1%; with all other conditions being equal, the first year drawdown is occurring at the relative rate of 2% divided by 0.1%. This would mean that the drawdown of the renewable resource where the Industrial Age population is growing 20 times faster than an Agricultural Age population will proceed 20 times faster, approximately, during year 1 of drawdown. This would relate to things that directly affect food production such as soil and water.

Bill Gates and others say this is not like Roman times because of all the great technology we have. To that point, let's talk about some of this great technology and how it relates to the drawdown of the resource. I only see technology that works to draw the resource out faster; for example, irrigation in the Midwest that draws down the aquifers, or fracking that draws down the oil resource. Both of these then allow the renewable resource excess extraction rate to be maintained at a higher level than would otherwise be possible. There does not exist any great technology which is putting water back into aquifers or increasing stores of liquid fuels (unless it depletes the other resources - ethanol for example). Most of the enhancement of soil is done with fossil fuel derived products.

In Roman times they were extracting out of the ground whereas now the extraction is out of the earth in the form of energy, which then enables faster rates of extraction out of the ground. I think it is the rate of extraction and the differential between the rate of extraction prior to collapse that will make the difference in the speed of the collapse, as well as the points noted earlier that are the practical points as to how that may happen in reality. In an agricultural economy, during the collapse, people get less food and there is a process of attrition that lasts a long time - decades or centuries. Even separating the rest of our economy from the agricultural economy and considering just that process, the layering of the industrial economy onto the agricultural economy allows for agriculture to deplete at a much faster rate than was observed historically during previous collapses.

So while I read that "the way to picture how a collapse will take place is to read about how that process has historically occurred" I doubt very much that will be the case. That would be especially true given how the Central Bankers are running the hamster on the wheel at maximum speed.

Collapse Functions.jpg
Excess.jpg


Graphs are here:
http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24366#p24366

Turning to the duration of the darkness that
will follow collapse, past dark ages can serve as a
guide. Typically, the period of utter obscurity and
turmoil lasts between fifty and two hundred years,
which may therefore be posited as the likely
duration of the coming dark age. A duration nearer
the upper limit of this range is probably more
likely, since the most severe dark ages tend to
follow from the first time that humans achieve a
particular level of social complexity. The present
era is the first time that humanity has achieved so
thoroughly connected a global civilisation, and
some extreme contradictions have been
accumulated. It seems that it will take not one but
several human lifetimes to erase from memory the
hatreds and conceits that ultimately pitch the
present world order into the abyss.

The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age by Marc Widdowson, 2001
pp. 278-9

As far as the large meat processors being efficient, I take exception to her characterization. Efficiency doesn't just mean how much electricity or water or labor you use per animal to get the job done within the plant. It's a lot more complicated than that. Previously, I've characterized the US economy as powerful but not efficient. I stand by that characterization.

https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/
https://www.mepartnership.org/counting- ... riculture/

A common argument in favor of large-scale industrialized agriculture is that it is just plain more efficient, and thus deserves to succeed. But measured by the amount of energy it takes to produce each calorie of food, the industrial farming system is anything but a lean, mean food-producing machine. In 1940, the average U.S. farm produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil fuel energy it used. By 1974, that ratio was 1:1, according to Richard Manning, writing in his book Against the Grain. These days, the calories-to-calories ratio is more like 3:1, according to David Pimentel, a Cornell University entomologist who has studied the environmental impact of various agriculture systems. That’s right: it takes some three calories of energy to produce just one calorie of food, according to Pimentel’s estimates. And that doesn’t even include the energy expended to process the food and transport it to our supper tables. When both production and distribution are taken into account, it takes 10 to 15 calories of energy for every calorie of food energy produced, according to data published by the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin.

There are lots of calorie inputs to the feed used in the factory farms that supply the large meat processors. Then there are inefficiencies in the conversion of the calories in the feed to calories in meat, as discussed in the first link. By the time you are done, I don't know, but there may be 50 calories of fossil fuel energy embedded in one calorie of meat coming out of a large meat processing plant.

[Bob Butler]

Recent readings from this page reminded me of Malthus.

In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war, famine, and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

Thus, since 1798, people have been predicting collapse. Malthusians tend to be alarmists. Something is wrong. Something has to be fixed. Therefore you have to exaggerate the problem. Therefore, those that oppose the warnings tend to note the exaggeration and use this as an excuse to ignore the problem. Not at all sure though that the many and often rises of the alarm have proved to be exaggerations, that the predictions should be ignored.

The other observation is that in most crisis, it is the conservative faction that wants to continue the policy that has been the problem, while it is the progressives who want to fix the problem and update values to make sure it doesn’t repeat. Prior problems include colonial imperialism in the US Revolution, slavery in the Civil War, and autocratic military expansion with World War II. The new values of independence, freedom and containment resulted. Hypothetically, I can see the Malthus problem coming to a head for real in the next awakening and / or crisis. The conservative faction would want to continue profiting from the current scheme with their excessive influence on government. The progressive faction would try to avoid the trap. By this standard, the Hovel would be a highly progressive thread for a conservative site.

I still have problems separating and shifting emphasis between the Malthus problem and global warming. Both problems have at the core an enhanced awareness of environmentalism. The difference is that there is a lot more awareness of global warming currently than the population concerns. Many are aware of the storms and rising sea levels, though the conservative elites would have us ignore them so they can profit from current policies as long as possible. Not at all sure we will be able to ignore global warming come the awakening. Fewer are making a big deal of the alarms raised by the Neo Malthus authors.

To me, the two concerns ought to be merged and both be taken seriously. I’m not sure of the merits of exaggerating, or if the two problems can be exaggerated.

[Guest]

The global population was small in the 1700s and everyone was expected to take care of themselves, not expect others to take care of them, I.e. welfare and foreign aid.

The western world is now being flooded with third world illegals looking for handouts and a free ride (which are they are getting) at the expense of the Western taxpayer. These people will never be able to function in modern society and they refuse to conform, for the most part.

Something has got to give. And soon.

[spottybrowncow]

Logic dictates that most of the people presently coming illegally have no marketable skills and no desire to assimilate.
People with marketable skills who desire to immigrate are probably more likely to want to do so legally, so as to maximize their potential once here. It's not hard to believe that we are letting in primarily riffraff.

If we streamlined a merit-based immigration system, we could get just as many immigrants as are currently coming illegally, but we would actually benefit from it. However, this would be a disaster for the democrats, which is why they'll have no part of it.