Quote from: RE on Apr 22, 2026, 05:31 PMProblem solved!  I was getting worried. 🙄

RE

And fertilizer is a by-product.👍

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 19, 2026, 02:13 PMIn a decade the regime collapses.

A good one! They said the world would collapse in a decade back in 1970, but I think that was more global cooling, starvation and whatnot. But can't we think bigger than just a regime? I mean, how are you going to attract clicks from anyone other than a couple of us and the MIB unless you got all in with COOLER stuff?

Quote from: TDoS on Apr 24, 2026, 02:33 PMA good one! They said the world would collapse in a decade back in 1970, but I think that was more global cooling, starvation and whatnot. But can't we think bigger than just a regime?

Doubtful this guy bought into Peak Oil.  He's almost certainly a Collapse Denier, an obvious idiot.  His whole theory is based on the premise that Trumpolini is a strategic genius and inside a decade all the the oil will be smoothly flowing again via new routes.  Anybody who buys this idea is a few BTUs short of melting an ice cube.  I'd hazard the guess his IQ is measured in the negative imaginary irrational numbers.  He's probably a geologist or oil trader.  lol.

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 24, 2026, 06:21 PMDoubtful this guy bought into Peak Oil.

I've never claimed that everyone was equally ignorant on the topic. Just those that were willing to demonstrably prove it.

Quote from: REHe's almost certainly a Collapse Denier, an obvious idiot.  His whole theory is based on the premise that Trumpolini is a strategic genius and inside a decade all the the oil will be smoothly flowing again via new routes.

Strikes me as perfectly idiotic theory.

Quote from: REAnybody who buys this idea is a few BTUs short of melting an ice cube.

Or alternatively, he would fit right in with peak oilers circa 2000-2005 or so.

Quote from: REI'd hazard the guess his IQ is measured in the negative imaginary irrational numbers.

I would not. Low IQs are not required to be suckered into a theory, be it him, or PhD's who have their own collapse theories that come and go. Guy McPherson being just one example.

People of all IQ's make a decision to BELIEVE. If they have low IQs, they stop there. If they have PhD's, they weave a tale, mixing in facts, history, supposition and "what-ifs", with a hint of "and I've got a PhD" and presto!   Dr Colin Campbell...global peak oil...1990. ASPO in Europe with Colin and Ugo. And others. IQ had nothing to do with how they talked themselves into drawing a conclusion so easily known to be a crock.

Quote from: REHe's probably a geologist or oil trader.  lol.

RE

Certainly Colin was a geologist, and Ugo something like physical chemistry? McPherson wasn't a geologist either.

Oh yes...and I should mention...neither am I. But some people....they are so smart....they believe anything they think. Or find on LinkedIn. 😀😀 So in this regard, you are in some educated company even without a PhD, and also BELEIVING in your conclusions because, hey, you is smartz too!

Quote from: TDoS on Apr 25, 2026, 10:50 AM

Oh yes...and I should mention...neither am I. But some people....they are so smart....they believe anything they think. Or find on LinkedIn. 😀😀 So in this regard, you are in some educated company even without a PhD, and also BELEIVING in your conclusions because, hey, you is smartz too!

I too am an excellent driver.

Quote from: TDoS on Apr 25, 2026, 10:50 AMPeople of all IQ's make a decision to BELIEVE. If they have low IQs, they stop there. If they have PhD's, they weave a tale, mixing in facts, history, supposition and "what-ifs", with a hint of "and I've got a PhD" and presto!  Dr Colin Campbell...global peak oil...1990. ASPO in Europe with Colin and Ugo. And others. IQ had nothing to do with how they talked themselves into drawing a conclusion so easily known to be a crock.

We are in agreement on this point certainly.  Also true is that having a Ph.D. doesn't necessarily mean you're very smart.  On just about any subject, if you have at least average intelligence and spend 4-6 years plodding through the subject and then slavishly follow your advisor's directions in the lab and get his order for coffee correct every morning, pay your bills on time at the bursar's office, they'll hand you your sheepskin at the end of it.  The really smart people never bother with this and understand that the real value of a college education are the parties, the girls, the drugs and the endlessly flowing booze. 😁  Another truth is that really smart people, like everyone else all have a price.  Offer them enough money and they'll make a very convincing case for just about any insane notion you care to promote, like for instance that smoking promotes longer lasting, harder erections and stronger orgasms.  Or that trannie women should be allowed to compete with cis women in a boxing ring. Or that burning fossil fuels has nothing to do with climate change.  Or that the war with Iran was a good idea because they are all Muslim towel head terrorists stuck in the middle ages.

All of which explains why I don't put any more value on what World Class Experts in any field have to say than anyone else.  Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy that does nothing to demonstrate the truth of an argument.  Far as the various people who had a variety of Peak Oil theories are concerned, some were better than others, some were astoundingly bad, some were quite good.  Guy McStinksion was a clown of course, he had us all dead by 2016.  I've never been a fan of Ugo's belief that Solar can replace fossil fuels in time and maintain the current FSoA standard of living or population size.  Richard Heinberg's work was pretty good, and i've found good information from both Resilience.org & the Post Carbon Institute.  There's good and bad information out there, as in all things.  You have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 25, 2026, 11:47 AMI too am an excellent driver.

Really? Do you mean that like a good or safe street driver? Or someone with extensive track time?

Quote from: RE on Apr 25, 2026, 12:09 PMThe really smart people never bother with this and understand that the real value of a college education are the parties, the girls, the drugs and the endlessly flowing booze. 😁 

Now THAT is pretty funny, and probably true based on my experience with frat boys and whatnot. I was married, never did drugs and whatnot, and don't drink. I guess I just learned stuff that later came in handy when showing up the PhD and true believer types who jsut went to school for booze and the girls. 

Quote from: REAnother truth is that really smart people, like everyone else all have a price.  Offer them enough money and they'll make a very convincing case for just about any insane notion you care to promote, like for instance that smoking promotes longer lasting, harder erections and stronger orgasms.

Really? So you don't believe in folks being ethical, the certainly of proven science without regard to someone paying you to play make believe?

Quote from: REOr that trannie women should be allowed to compete with cis women in a boxing ring.

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Had problems with trannys in the past or something?

Quote from: REOr that burning fossil fuels has nothing to do with climate change.  Or that the war with Iran was a good idea because they are all Muslim towel head terrorists stuck in the middle ages.

Oh now I get it. You are just doing the reheased littany of anti "party you don't like" stuff. Good thing I'm  not a Republican either. Not a dumbass Democrat either. I have reserved the right to be independent since 1992. 

Quote from: REAll of which explains why I don't put any more value on what World Class Experts in any field have to say than anyone else.

Understandable. After all, if you can't be one, then bash them. Quite a common reaction.

Quote from: REAppeal to Authority is a logical fallacy that does nothing to demonstrate the truth of an argument.

Quite true. But those who demonstrated the validity of their understanding by nothing more than the passage of some time, well, now we aren't talking about logical fallacies at all. Just prescience. Like....say...the opposite of what Ehrlich did. Or Campbell, McPherson, Hirsch, etc etc. Bu what did they know, getting those rubber stamped PhD's. 

Quote from: RERichard Heinberg's work was pretty good, and i've found good information from both Resilience.org & the Post Carbon Institute.
RE

Richard Heinberg? The amateur violin player who claimed that peak oil happened around 2008, and advocated that the government should immediately send/move suburbanites to the fields to grow food, as otherwise everyone was going to starve? He speaks well. As far as technical understanding...well....they say he is a good amateur violin player.

So you like college dropouts (he claimed he dropped out because he liked to smoke weed more, and played in a rock band (according to his interview on TOD) who more closely resembles the ideas of Pol Pot and Mao? Post Carbon in general (excluding Hughes of course....tell me....did North America run out of natural gas reserves by 2016 as he claimed?) isn't bad...as long as the topic has nothing to do with oil, and sticks with just making the world and environment better. Without blaming it on oil disappearing anyway. A decent environmental angle.

When you claimed you never had a major interest in peak oil, but more the overall doomer perspective across many topics, it makes sense you wouldn't know a decent geoscience based peak oil opinion from Joe Bob the nose picker at the local bar.

Some of my best friends were trannies.  They just shouldn't compete with cissies because they have different physiology.  Not a level playing field.

Far as Mao and Pol Pot are concerned, they had good ideas and bad ones.  Collective ownership of the means of production and abolishment of private property is a pretty good idea.  Purging the society of the rich and privileged elite also a pretty good idea.  Abolishment of capitalism also good.  Purging Universities of intellectuals not so good.

Suburb dwellers going back to farming is a pretty good idea, it's certainly a more sustainable form of living than shopping at the mall and commuting 50 miles a day in traffic to work in a 100 story tall air conditioned skyscraper.  Starting now would be a good idea also, since such a massive transition of lifestyle and relocation of people isn't going to happen overnight.

Never claimed to not have an interest in Peak Oil, just that it's not what led me to become interested in collapse.  Economics did that.  I've never been married to any particular time line on it, just that the dependence on a finite resource was bound to cause disruption when the resource became hard to come by.  It doesn't take much to disrupt a complex system, as evidenced by the fact is all it takes to completely screw up the global economy is a few towel heads with speed boats and shoulder fired missiles and RPGs.

Anyhow, whether PO occured in 2008, 2018 or sometime in the future, we're definitely in the deep doo doo now as the shortages begin migrating from Asia to ports all over the world.  Farmers in the Northern Hemisphere are planting their crops, and we'll see what the yields are like at the end of summer.  Where it goes from here is anybody's guess, mine would be that next year will be worse than this year, which was already pretty bad.

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 25, 2026, 06:10 PMFar as Mao and Pol Pot are concerned, they had good ideas and bad ones.

Indeed. And it only cost tens of millions of people's their lives. Around here the MIB occasionally deciding to erase posts that are meaningless in the greater context is taken quite seriously, but idiots running countries starving their citizens by the tens of millions? They had some good ideas to make up for that. Which of their good ideas balanced this scale when it comes to their people?

Quote from: RECollective ownership of the means of production and abolishment of private property is a pretty good idea.

Stalin thought the same, and handed Ukraine the Holodomor. When will these "good ideas" that in the past just murdered tens of millions finally work do you think?

Quote from: REPurging the society of the rich and privileged elite also a pretty good idea.  Abolishment of capitalism also good.  Purging Universities of intellectuals not so good.

Yeah, not worried about purging universities, but more starving everyone in sight with how well these ideas worked out in the past. But hey, at least the rich and privileged got spanked as well!

Quote from: RESuburb dwellers going back to farming is a pretty good idea, it's certainly a more sustainable form of living than shopping at the mall and commuting 50 miles a day in traffic to work in a 100 story tall air conditioned skyscraper.

So you are with Heinberg, Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin when it comes to this "back to farming" idea? What happens to folks unable to participate like you, just bullets to the head or a gas chamber?

Quote from: RE....just that the dependence on a finite resource was bound to cause disruption when the resource became hard to come by.  It doesn't take much to disrupt a complex system, as evidenced by the fact is all it takes to completely screw up the global economy is a few towel heads with speed boats and shoulder fired missiles and RPGs.

Dependence on finite resources is WHAT HUMANS HAVE DONE to date. It isn't as though humans all got together at a big confernece during the hunting and gathering stage and decided to stay that way, knowing in advance what dependency on non-renewables would entail. Although any economist could also argue )and do) that this dependency is required to leverage to a future we can see right now (even if it is the early stages) of renewable energy, fusion waiting inthe wings, an electrified world, the ability to increase recovery factors and efficiencies in accessing those non-renewable resources, and so on and so forth. Economics isn't a physical or natural science for a reason, but it does allow for GREAT storytelling.

Quote from: REAnyhow, whether PO occured in 2008, 2018 or sometime in the future, we're definitely in the deep doo doo now as the shortages begin migrating from Asia to ports all over the world.

Pick a year anywhere between Jan 1 1900 and today and I'll come up with a deep doo-doo story. Dooming is what doomers do, if not the Mayan Calendar, then peak oil. If not that, then Yellowstone. Continue ad infinitum. "Being in deep do do" is a throwaway perpetual motion machine among the doomer legions. You've still got a working brain, you can at least pretend you aren't the only one in the room with one.

10s of 10*6s starving is a drop in the bucket compared to 10*8 or more that will die when the fertilizer starts running short.  Prior to the invention of the Haber process prior to WWII, the carrying capacity of the earth for homo sapiens was estimated at no more than 1.6-2B people.  At the time, Fritz Haber estimated they only had about 5-10 years before they hit the max.

AI Overview

Based on estimates by agricultural scientists such as Vaclav Smil, the Earth's carrying capacity for humans prior to the invention of the Haber-Bosch process (early 20th century) was approximately 1.6 to 2 billion people, or roughly a quarter the population that can be supported today with synthetic fertilizers.

The goal of getting more people back into agriculture wasn't wrong, it was just poorly implemented and rushed.  Had it been followed through with back then, we never would have got into the situation of having 8.3B people ambulating around terra firma in the first place.

The Great Depression, bad management, poor planning and weaponization of starvation as  means to squash the Ukrainian independence movement caused the Holodomor.  Castro and the Cubans had very good results with their collectivization of farming, and the Israelis have had good results with their Kibbutzes.  When they are not dropping bombs killing and maiming towel head kids, they run very efficient communal farms.

RE

Quote from: RE on Today at 11:24 AM10s of 10*6s starving is a drop in the bucket compared to 10*8 or more that will die when the fertilizer starts running short. 

Sure. And when global cooling kicks in a big chunk of the Earth's population will die-off, as claimed in 1970 by folks with degrees in the field and whatnot. Doomers of the day as well I imagine. Folks all agreed.

And your angle, based within the overall concept of Apocalyticism, has been around for millennium. So now you want to argue fertilizer? The only good news being, if you are right THIS time (as compared to all the others) then at LEAST we'll get enough of a population reduction to actually be able to claim some form of collapse is happening. FINALLY the doomers might have got one right.

Then again....the usual might happen. Folks adapt, adjust, find workarounds, and compensate. The things that Doomers apparently never factor into their proclamations. Have you?

Quote from: REPrior to the invention of the Haber process prior to WWII, the carrying capacity of the earth for homo sapiens was estimated at no more than 1.6-2B people.  At the time, Fritz Haber estimated they only had about 5-10 years before they hit the max.

COOL! And before people discovered black rocks that could burn, the carrying capacity was even less! And then what happened? EXACTLY what I previously suggested, listed nicely on Page 18 of my copy of Catton's Overshoot. He might have been a xenophobe at heart, but at the very least you should know that your argument has been blown out of the water by every thing listed on that page. And your only argument around it is claiming it can't happen again? You aren't that stupid, so either you are assuming I am (which is a terrible habit of yours) or you already know you can't and just want to pretend everyone else really is stupid.

Quote from: REThe goal of getting more people back into agriculture wasn't wrong, it was just poorly implemented and rushed.

Yes, I'm sure the 10's if not 100 million folks murdered during the last totalitarian experiments in this process just didn't try hard enough, only their LIVES depending on it and everything. Not enough motivation you figure, what is your plan for motivating people to grow food that is better than telling them their lives depended on it?

Quote from: REHad it been followed through with back then, we never would have got into the situation of having 8.3B people ambulating around terra firma in the first place.

It was followed through. All those folks died, and the fearless leaders who liked your idea, changed their minds when it turned out that just everyone died. 

Quote from: REThe Great Depression, bad management, poor planning and weaponization of starvation as  means to squash the Ukrainian independence movement caused the Holodomor.  Castro and the Cubans had very good results with their collectivization of farming, and the Israelis have had good results with their Kibbutzes.  When they are not dropping bombs killing and maiming towel head kids, they run very efficient communal farms.

RE

Well then there we go! More Castro's and Cubans, and murderous Jews, and we're in business!

Here is my bet. Catton's opinion, resembling yours, is that a process that has happened throughout millenia has suddenly stopped. Because HE, and YOU, can't see NOW the next evolution. That is mostly a lack of imagination, a sense of absolutism in terms of what is today in terms of technology, will not change. Both you, and he, apparently lack the vision to cast progress into the future. In your case it is probably just because it fits a personal belief, because you aren't stupid. Which means you, perhaps like Catton, suffer from the same psychological hiccup. Catton, after detailing all the prior multiple phase changes...decided that well...NOW....it must stop. You are are both smart, he even published the prior phase changes, but both of you, because you can't see it in the moment, pretend it can't happen again.

Amusingly, odds are, it is already happening. It is why peak oil predictions were wrong. Both of you lack whatever that perspective is that allows an analytic projection into the future that isn't just doom. You are just repeating what the experts claimed in 1970...and for the same reason. The inability to see the next phase change.

Hubbert screwed the pooch because he, and others, couldn't see beyond the data, geology and history. They skipped the economic component. Like Ehrlich, he missed some pretty basic economic concepts.

Let me give you just one pie in the sky example. Recovery factors in oil and gas fields were once upon a time X%. With time and technology, they increased to Y%. A change in economics and technology. This opened up potentially hundreds of billions of barrels of new oil, if not trillions ultimately. EVs arriving on the world stage and in mass production, and their ever decreasing costs. Batteries that rely less on critical minerals. Solar panels on roof tops all across America. A paradigm shift in where enegy is produced, and from what. Fusion is a good example. Not here yet, but the instant it is? Another shift.

 

Trump's WWIII


Trump's clusterfuck of faults, and his bad decisions has started a tsunami that will smash onto America's shores in the months to come.  For now the waters are calm, but this state of affairs will not remain.

True it was followed through with, and after the depression and Stalin crushing the Ukie independence movement, it worked fine.  Also worked OK before under Lenin & Trotsky  before the depression.  After the early problems in China, it worked so well they had to institute a 1 child policy to keep the population from ballooning up too fast.

You conflate the problems of totalitarianism with communism.  They are not one in the same thing.  Capitalism and totalitarianism aren't the same either, together they are called Fascism.  Lotta problems with that system also, as we begin to see now here in the FSoA.

Definitely a phase change coming.  Lots more water evaporating from the oceans and lakes into the atmosphere.

RE