Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[aeden]

Survival inputs chains already enabled as we started in 2019 as they slept and more attacked good is bad and bad is good.
Fabric has ripped like the Temple Veil ignored then.

I was told they would lay off 50,000 workers and act like nothing happened yelling at those of us who were left to double the productivity.
The managers only job was to go to meetings to learn how to yell at us to be more efficient. He watched, prepared and learned the
what they worshipped. He left tech as the brain rot increased.
The City is done. Taxpayers are leaving while the locusts take it down.
Delinquency rate will blow in every direction was our assessment as property tax take the rest out going forward.
Controlled demolition to look like incompetence. The red and the blue straw already sold all your asses out.

[Higgenbotham]

It's the ecologists (number 5 on the list below) who tend to be the doomiest.

This is a list of the types of specialists who might think about collapse.

1. Archaeologists - Done enough digging to realize that much of what they are digging up resulted from the collapse of civilizations
2. Historians - Looked at enough history to conclude that there are patterns of rise and fall that civilizations follow
3. Systems Thinkers - Look at the world as a complex system that is inherently unstable and will break down as limits are hit
4. Theologians - Study religious prophecy and compare to current events to conclude that end times prophecy is being fulfilled
5. Ecologists - Look at population dynamics of other species and conclude that humans are on an unsustainable population trajectory
6. Environmentalists - Look at enough environmental measures (resources, health, climate, etc.) to think collapse is on the near term horizon
7. Whistleblowers - Believe that things are morally and ethically much worse than people realize based on perception of their personal experience
8. Traders - Have studied market collapses and believe these types of collapses are applicable harbingers and models of civilizational collapse
9. Dabblers - Often former professionals and retirees who are widely read and concerned about the future based on personal experience and study

6. Summary and Conclusions: It’s Really Quite Simple

“Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense… If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone” (Vaclav Smil, [102]).

H. sapiens, like all other species, are naturally predisposed to grow, reproduce, and expand into all suitable accessible habitat. Physical growth is natural, but is only an early phase in the development of individual organisms; growth in sheer scale, including population growth, is characteristic of early phases of complex living systems, including human societies. However, both material and population growth in finite habitats are ultimately limited by the availability of essential ‘inputs’, by the capacity of the system’s environment to assimilate (often toxic) outputs, or by various forms of negative feedback as previously listed. Growth will cease, either by “design or disaster” [103]
For most of H. sapiens’ evolutionary history, local population growth has, in fact, been constrained by negative feedback. However, improved population health (lower death rates) and the use of fossil fuels. particularly since the early 19th century, enabled a period of unprecedented food and resource abundance. In nature, any ‘K’-strategic species population enjoying such favourable conditions will expand exponentially. Growth will generally continue until excess consumption and habitat degradation once again lead to food shortages and starvation, or disease and predation take their toll. The population then falls back below the long-term carrying capacity of the habitat and negative feedback eases off. Some species repeatedly exhibit this cycle of population boom and bust.
Humanity is only a partial exception. The abundance generated by fossil fuels enabled H. sapiens, for the first time, to experience a one-off global population boom−bust cycle (Figure 1). It is a ‘one-off’ cycle because it was enabled by vast stocks of both potentially renewable self-producing resources and finite non-renewable resources, including fossil fuels, which have been greatly depleted. No repetition is possible. As Clugston argues, by choosing to industrialize, Homo sapiens unwittingly made a commitment to impermanence [77]. We adopted a self-terminating way of life, in which the finite resources that enable our industrial existence would inevitably become insufficient to do so.
The physical mechanisms are simple. Living systems, from individual cells through whole organisms to populations and ecosystems, exist in nested hierarchies and function as far-from-equilibrium dissipative structures [104]. Each level in the hierarchy depends on the next level up both as a source for useful resources (negentropy) and as a sink for degraded wastes (entropy). As Daly [8,9] reminds us, the human enterprise is a wholly-dependent subsystem of the ecosphere; it produces and maintains itself by extracting negentropic resources from its host system, the ecosphere, and dumping degraded en-tropic wastes back into its host. It follows that the increasing structural and functional complexity of the human sub-system as a far-from equilibrium-dissipative structure (a node of negentropy) can occur only at the expense of the accelerated disordering (increas-ing entropy) of the non-growing ecosphere. Indeed, humanity is in overshoot—global heating, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation, tropical deforestation, ocean acidi-fication, fossil fuel and mineral depletion, the pollution of everything, etc., are indicative of the increasing disordering of the biosphere/ecosphere. We are at risk of a chaotic break-down of essential life-support functions [105].
Little of this is reflected in contemporary development debates or in discussions of the population conundrum. The international community’s response to incipient biospheric collapse is doubly disastrous. MTI culture’s commitment to material growth, including continued FF use (Track 1), condemns humanity to the predictably dangerous impacts of accelerating climate change; at the same time, our pursuit of alternative energy sources (themselves FF dependent) in order to maintain the growth-based status quo (Track 2) would, if successful, assure the continued depletion and dissipation of both self-producing and non-renewable resources essential for the existence of civilization.
The mainstream view of population asserts that the growth rate is declining so “not to worry”—or worry that population decline is bad for the economy! Even the base assertion is controversial. Jane O’Sullivan points out that the rate of decline has itself declined in this century. She argues that UN demographers have thus ‘persistently underestimated recent global population, due to their over-anticipation of fertility declines in high-fertility countries’ [106]. The human population continues to grow at about 80 million per year—O’Sullivan argues that the number is closer to 90 million—and its ultimate peak is highly uncertain. Renewed negative feedback may well end growth well before the population reaches the UN’s expected 10.4 billion in the late 2080s.
It is crucial to remember that, right or wrong, conventional projections ignore the fact that the ecosphere is not actually now ‘supporting’ even the present eight billion people. The human enterprise is growing and maintaining itself by liquidating and polluting essential ecosystems and material assets. In short, even average material living standards are corrosively excessive, yet, in 2019, ‘almost a quarter of the global population… lived below the US$3.65 per day poverty line, and almost half, 47 percent, lived below the US$6.85 poverty line’ [107] and the world considers sheer material growth as the means to address this problem. Following this path, eco-destruction will ramp up, increasing the probability of a self-induced simplification and contraction of the human enterprise.
Baring a nuclear holocaust, it is unlikely that H. sapiens will go extinct. Wealthy, technologically advanced nations potentially have more resilience and may be insulated, at least temporarily, from the worst consequences of global simplification [108]. That said, rebounding negative feedbacks—climate chaos, food and other resource shortages, civil disorder, resource wars, etc.—may well eliminate prospects for an advanced world-wide civilization. In the event of a seemingly inevitable global population ‘correction’, human numbers will fall to the point where survivors can once again hope to thrive within the (much reduced) carrying capacity of the Earth. Informed estimates put the long-term carrying capacity at as few as 100 million [109] to as many as three billion people [110].
It is uncertain whether much or any of industrial high-tech can persist in the absence of abundant cheap energy and rich resource reserves, most of which will have been extracted, used, and dissipated. It may well be that the best-case future will, in fact, be powered by renewable energy, but in the form of human muscle, draft horses, mules, and oxen supplemented by mechanical water-wheels and wind-mills. In the worst case, the billion (?) or so survivors will face a return to stone-age life-styles. Should this be humanity’s future, it will not be urban sophisticates that survive but rather the pre-adapted rural poor and remaining pockets of indigenous peoples.
Bottom line: Any reasonable interpretation of previous histories, current trends, and complex systems dynamics would hold that global MTI culture is beginning to unravel and that the one-off human population boom is destined to bust. H. sapiens’ innate expansionist tendencies have become maladaptive. However, far from acknowledging and overriding our disadvantageous natural predispositions, contemporary cultural norms reinforce them. Arguably, in these circumstances, wide-spread societal collapse cannot be averted—collapse is not a problem to be solved, but rather the final stage of a cycle to be endured. Global civilizational collapse will almost certainly be accompanied by a major human population ‘correction’. In the best of all possible worlds, the whole transition might actually be managed in ways that prevent unnecessary suffering of millions (billions?) of people, but this is not happening—and cannot happen—in a world blind to its own predicament.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32

[aeden]

Texas water shortage and the power crisis will stop them cold in their tracks ignoring facts sooner than later H.
They debt slavers actually do and will care less as they murdered the locals in our face. Lie cheat steal is all they offer
and will as before in real time.

[Higgenbotham]

The views of two archaeologists (number 1 on the list), Demarest, professor at Vanderbilt University, and Tainter, professor at Utah State University.

This is a list of the types of specialists who might think about collapse.

1. Archaeologists - Done enough digging to realize that much of what they are digging up resulted from the collapse of civilizations
2. Historians - Looked at enough history to conclude that there are patterns of rise and fall that civilizations follow
3. Systems Thinkers - Look at the world as a complex system that is inherently unstable and will break down as limits are hit
4. Theologians - Study religious prophecy and compare to current events to conclude that end times prophecy is being fulfilled
5. Ecologists - Look at population dynamics of other species and conclude that humans are on an unsustainable population trajectory
6. Environmentalists - Look at enough environmental measures (resources, health, climate, etc.) to think collapse is on the near term horizon
7. Whistleblowers - Believe that things are morally and ethically much worse than people realize based on perception of their personal experience
8. Traders - Have studied market collapses and believe these types of collapses are applicable harbingers and models of civilizational collapse
9. Dabblers - Often former professionals and retirees who are widely read and concerned about the future based on personal experience and study

Demarest off the cuff.

https://www.arthurdemarest.com/collapse ... s-today-2/

"You know what's going to bring our civilization down?...the byproducts of our incredible technology, our wonderfully successful capitalist economic system, our tremendous linking through communications and information systems, and the spread of democracy. That's what's gonna bring us down. The combination of all those things has caused a real boom which will lead to a giant, giant bust."

"So, you know, we're collapsing. But I'm not just a grumpy old man, we're collapsing. Although it sounds like it. I'm an expert on the collapse of 18 civilizations and we're collapsing. We've got everything. We've got every single fucking cause of collapse you could want except radical climate change and that's beginning. So, but as I've told you, don't worry about global warming. We won't make it far enough for that to be a problem. I think the wars are going to be the end of everything but only because the infrastructure's so vulnerable because of hypercoherence and technology it's also fragile."

Peer polities [i.e., groups of mutually competing states] tend to undergo long periods of upwardly spiraling competitive costs, and downward marginal returns. This is terminated finally by domination of one and acquisition of a new energy subsidy (as in Republican Rome and Warring States China), or by mutual collapse (as among the Mycenaeans and the Maya). Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Reading Tainter's biography, maybe he belongs in one or more of the other categories.

[Higgenbotham]

It's the ecologists (number 5 on the list below) who tend to be the doomiest.

5. Ecologists - Look at population dynamics of other species and conclude that humans are on an unsustainable population trajectory

6. Summary and Conclusions: It’s Really Quite Simple

I think the lower trendline is also unsustainable at current conditions. Not that it matters. It's a good graph - much better than the one I posted on an earlier page.

[FullMoon]

6. Summary and Conclusions: It’s Really Quite Simple

Image
Image

It really IS that simple. But who alive outside of the genocidal zones including Gaza can imagine life as it will become for most? Like reading science fiction.

[guest]

6. Summary and Conclusions: It’s Really Quite Simple

Image
Image

It really IS that simple. But who alive outside of the genocidal zones including Gaza can imagine life as it will become for most? Like reading science fiction.

What do you mean?

[Guest]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd99uVOMWEk[/youtube]

A speech in British parliment on excess deaths following the Covid pandemic yesterday.

Mind blowing.

The cheers from the public gallery speak volumes.

God help us.

[Higgenbotham]

A reference to this is buried in a link aeden posted.

FABER: Right. And on the call, you talked about what you believe are still great opportunities, your words, for investors across a number of structural trends. I might expect that those include the likes of, what, AI? What else?

FINK: Well, the combination -- AI cannot truly happen unless there’s a huge investment in infrastructure. The amount of energy that is required for AI or -- is enormous, and the amount of power generation. We will run out of electricity if we are going to fully adapt a full AI world. And so, the need to build on -- this is all going to stimulate our economy, by the way, to build out a more AI and -- which at the backside is that means building out more electricity, power.

FABER: For the datacenters, obviously.

FINK: Datacenters and all that.

FABER: They consume so much electricity.

FINK: And we’re going to have to be building out, you know, tens and tens of giga -- you know, gigawatts. Not like -- not megawatts, gigawatts, and that’s -- we’re talking trillions of dollars of investing. And so, the opportunity is enormous in the coming years, and this is one of the fundamental reasons why I believe the United States is leading this, but let’s be clear. I’m talking to political leaders in other countries, and their desire to build out datacenters, AI, technology at the same time de-carbonization.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/12/first-o ... today.html

Nothing new here except they're admitting it. I suppose now we can look for calls for more engineering graduates to build all this infrastructure that isn't going to be built anyway.

Article published yesterday:

JPMorgan warns of need for ‘reality check’ on phasing out fossil fuels
US bank says higher interest rates, inflation and global conflict have dented outlook for energy transition

JPMorgan says changing the world’s energy system ‘is a process that should be measured in decades, or generations, not years’

The world needs a “reality check” on its move from fossil fuels to renewable energy, JPMorgan has warned, saying it may take “generations” to hit net-zero targets.

In a global energy strategy report sent to clients this week, the US investment bank said efforts to reduce the use of coal, oil and gas had been set back by higher interest rates, inflation and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“While the target to net zero is still some time away, we have to face up to the reality that the variables have changed,” Christyan Malek, JPMorgan’s head of global energy strategy and lead author of the report, told the Financial Times. “Interest rates are much higher. Government debt is significantly greater and the geopolitical landscape is structurally different. The $3tn to $4tn it will cost each year come in a different macro environment.” 

Malek predicted that the levels of investment required would put pressure on governments to step back from more aggressive energy policies. The Scottish government on Thursday scrapped its ambitious plan to cut carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, conceding that the target was unachievable.

In its report, JPMorgan said changing the world’s energy system “is a process that should be measured in decades, or generations, not years”.

It added that investment in renewable energy “currently offers subpar returns” and that if energy prices rose strongly, there was even a risk of social unrest.

The report came after oil companies including Shell and BP trimmed back their climate targets this year and hundreds of other companies, including Microsoft, Unilever and JBS, failed to set goals that were ambitious enough to be approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a validation body set up after the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Malek noted that it was not guaranteed that demand for oil and gas would peak in 2030, as predicted by the International Energy Agency, as the populations of developing countries begin to buy more cars and take more flights.

JPMorgan forecasts that the world will need 108mn barrels of oil a day in 2030, and that building more wind, solar and electric vehicle capacity could add a further 2mn daily barrels to this total.

“We are at a tipping point in terms of demand,” Malek said. “More and more of the world is getting access to energy and a greater proportion want to use that energy to upgrade their living standards. If that growth continues it puts huge pressure on energy systems and on governments.”

JPMorgan is a leading financier of fossil fuel projects and low-carbon energy projects. The bank underwrote $101bn of fossil fuel deals in 2021 and 2022, and $71bn of low-carbon deals, according to data from BloombergNEF.

Chief executive Jamie Dimon told a congressional hearing In 2022 that the bank would continue to invest in big oil and gas projects, saying that pulling out of such deals “would be the road to hell for America”, and that the world was not getting the energy transition right.

https://www.ft.com/content/352b38a7-f29 ... cc1b17444b

[aeden]

https://sourceability.com/post/the-secr ... ntaminants.
After this problem above and the cannibals nephew virtue cult tour no where fast sounds more accurate.
As the guy noted scaling, they cannot piss themselves out of a paper bag.