"Can We Escape Our Predicament?" - The Honest Sorcerer

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/can-we-escape-our-predicament

> «Long time readers, and those who follow the excellent blog of Erik Michaels, need not to be introduced to the idea of a *predicament*. Generally speaking while problems have solutions (and thus can be eliminated), predicaments only have outcomes, and by definition cannot be solved. Our double bind with civilization is a classic example. Because what is civilization? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary it is “a relatively high level of cultural and technological development”, where “technology” refers to “the practical application of knowledge”. Think: agriculture, pottery, writing, construction, metallurgy, but most importantly: the harnessing of energy flows to power all these activities. Earlier, this meant wood or food calories from grains for humans and grass for draft animals, later, fossil fuels. Take technology (as defined above) away, and what remains is culture — myths, heroes, legends, poems, music etc. — all of which is very important, but not enough to build high rise cities, or to feed millions of people. But why is civilization a classic example for a double bind — damned if you do, damned if you don’t? Two reasons: first, it is both a response and a cause to ecological overshoot, and second, it is unsustainable. I know it is a lot in one sentence, so allow me to unpack these two ideas below.»

#HonestSorcerer #Collapse #Civilization #Energy #PeakCivilization

"Ya tenemos fecha para el cenit de la civilización."

https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/05/ya-tenemos-fecha-para-el-cenit-de-la.html?m=1

«Defender la tesis del cenit de la civilización es complejo, en medio de una burbuja de todo. Los partidarios del crecimiento infinito a menudo aluden a la mejora de la calidad de vida, las bolsas en máximos, los bares llenos y el turismo a rebosar, como justificación evidente de una sociedad opulenta y en crecimiento, al menos en Occidente. »

«Hasta ahora teníamos una hoja de ruta que marca los años 2025-2026, como inicio del decaimiento de la producción de petróleo en el shale oil americano (responsable casi en solitario del incremento de producción de petróleo en la última década). »

«Pero esta semana la IEA (Agencia Internacional de la Energía) ha "soltado" un informe que advierte en su escenario base (contiene los proyectos en curso más los ya aprobados-anunciados) que la producción de cobre comenzará a descender en el año 2026, con un gráfico fundamental.»

#PeakOil #PeakEverything #PeakCivilization #IEA #Cobre #Colapso

"The Net Zero Stragedy" | The Honest Sorcerer
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-net-zero-stragedy-6b3cf4756ff2

"Human CO2 emissions will reach net zero. However, not because the EU Commission calls for a 90% cut in emissions by 2040, but because it will slowly become physically impossible to maintain modernity — with or without fossil fuels. Something, which under current policies will end up in an unmitigated disaster; rather sooner than later. Why is this ever desperate push for hydrogen, wind and solar then? What useful could be done instead?"

#PeakEverything #PeakCivilization #TheLongDescent #TheGreatSimplification #ClimateChange #CO2 #GHG #FossilFuels

Please let yourself be slapped by this way of looking at human history, to have a better perspective on this brief and destructive blip that will be the age of fossil fuels (or the age of agriculture, who knows). Also, please RT if you find it interesting or revealing, or think that people who follow you might find it so.

"The Simple Story of Civilization" | Do the Math

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/12/the-simple-story/

«The stories we fashion about ourselves are heavily influenced by our short life spans during an age of unprecedented complexity. We humans, it would seem, are unfathomably complicated creatures who defy simple “just-so” characterizations. Animals, or humans tens of thousands of years ago are fair game for simple stories, but not so for transcendent modern humans.

Two major problems I have with this attitude are that 1) we are animals, and 2) we have exactly the same hardware (albeit with slightly smaller brains) as we had 100,000 years ago.
So allow me to pull back from our present age of baffling complexity to outline a simple story covering the broad sweep of the human saga. The result may be a little startling, and, for a number of readers, sure to be rejected by cultural antibodies as “not applicable” (see also my views of our civilization as a cult).»

#DoTheMath #Collapse #PeakCivilization #PeakEnergy #PeakOil