In two recent posts (here and here) I’ve discussed the steaming mess of confusion, hypocrisy, and genuine trouble that goes under the label “global climate change.” As I pointed out in those essays, yes, the climate is changing. Yes, emissions from our smokestacks and tailpipes are part, though only part, of the reason. No, we’re not facing a world-ending catastrophe. No, pouring more money into solar panels and wind turbines—manufactured using fossil fuels, from raw materials mined, refined, and shipped using fossil fuels, and transported, built, maintained, and decommissioned using fossil fuels, to produce an intermittent trickle of green energy—won’t do any more to change the trajectory of the climate than the last twenty years of that same tactic have done. What’s that saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results?
We can sum up neatly the issues surrounding global climate change today by saying that it started out as a problem but has turned into a predicament. Longtime readers of my essays will recall that one of the very early posts I made online, all the way back in 2006, focused on the distinction between those two terms. It’s really quite simple: it’s possible to solve a problem, at least potentially, but a predicament has no solutions. All you can do is adapt to it. What gives this distinction teeth is that problems can turn into predicaments if they’re ignored or neglected too long, or if the changes that would be needed to solve them are outside the bounds of what the society in question is prepared to face.
To borrow one of Groucho Marx’s famous turns of phrase, we resemble that last remark. The people of the world’s industrial societies are divided, with vanishingly few exceptions, into two camps. One camp, typified by the Republicans here in the US, is fixated on denial, insisting at the top of their lungs that nothing is wrong, the climate isn’t changing, and even if it is changing, it’s not our fault and it will probably turn out for the best anyway. The other camp, typified by the Democrats here in the US, is just as fixated on delusion, insisting with equal bluster that climate change threatens the survival of the planet, but they’re still not willing to do anything about it that would actually make a difference—and above all, don’t you dare suggest that they rein in their own extravagant carbon-fueled lifestyles!
The extreme form of this latter habit can be seen in the Davos set, who fly on private jets to dine on steak and lobster while discussing how everyone else will have to give up their cars and live on insect protein. The same attitude, though, governs the less overblown but equally absurd thinking that leads people who insist they care about the earth to take ecotourism jaunts to the other side of the planet and wallow in all the other currently fashionable ways to burn lots of fossil fuels in a hurry. That, more than any other factor, has convinced most Americans—as shown in a recent CNN poll—that climate change isn’t a serious threat. If the people who claim to care the most about it won’t even stop doing the things they themselves say are driving it, the logic goes, why should the rest of us worry about it at all?
It’s a fascinating spectacle, and it has eerie historical equivalents. During the last decades of the Classic Lowland Maya civilization, the ahauob or “divine lords” who ruled the Mayan city-states did nothing constructive to deal with the subsistence crisis that was spiraling out of control around them, as the swidden agriculture system that supported their entire civilization collapsed under the strain of too many people farming fragile tropical soils too intensively, while bitter cyclical droughts made things worse. They had options—the intensive wetland polyculture that made the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán nearly self-sufficient in food centuries later was already under development, and other local sustainable foods such as ramόn nuts could also have become the focus of intensive cultivation.
The problem was that maize farming was central to the ideology of the classic Maya, and control over the corn crop was equally central to the Mayan class system and the political superstructure that ran the city-states. So the ahauob put the resources that could have saved their civilization into ever more elaborate ceremonial buildings. It’s impossible to tell from the surviving written records whether there were two parties among the ahauob, one that insisted nothing was wrong and another that insisted that everything would be fine if only they just kept on building bigger pyramids. The evidence certainly doesn’t disprove that hypothesis, however.
Then, when the final crisis arrived, they doubled down on failure by going to war with neighboring city-states in a desperate attempt to steal enough corn to stave off starvation. That was what kicked off the rolling collapse of Lowland Maya civilization and turned dozens of proud cities into crumbling ruins sinking back into the jungle. The ahauob of Brussels and Washington DC have shown themselves just as eager to go to war to steal resources as their Mayan equivalents, and most of them are at least as willing to raise pyramids of solar farms and wind turbines to the greater glory of the gods of high finance, so the likelihood that they will follow their Mayan equivalent down the same ruinous track seems uncomfortably high.
Let’s turn the conversation around, though. There were things the classic Lowland Maya could have done as their civilization lurched toward crisis, and some of them could have been done by ordinary Mayans, without asking permission from the local ahau. As Western industrial civilization stumbles blindly toward its own crisis, are there any equivalents—and can they be done by ordinary people today, without getting our ahauob involved in the matter?
As it happens, there are. What’s more, if you’ve been following the recent posts here, you already know that most of them are never mentioned at all in the collective conversation of our time, and the few that have gotten any discussion are condemned in shrill language by the mouthpieces of official opinion. There are reasons for that, which we’ll discuss shortly. We can start, though, with a good example of the type.
Setting aside the equal and opposite stupidities of the two sides, the business-as-usual obsessions of denial and the Hollywood-apocalypse fantasias of delusion, we’re facing a complex pattern of climate shifts unfolding over the next century or two, followed by a slower era of sea level rise stretched out over several more centuries. The details can’t be known in advance, since adding more insulation to the atmosphere—that’s what greenhouse-gas emissions do, you know—interfaces in complex ways with ocean currents, wind patterns, cloud formation, variations in the sun’s output, and plenty of other constantly changing factors. Climate isn’t a simple thing, which is why the models created by climate scientists are so consistently bad at making predictions.
What we do know is that things seem to be moving toward the kind of global warm spell this planet experienced 6000 years ago, around the peak of the Hypsithermal: the interval of very warm temperatures that followed the temperature spike at the end of the last ice age. Since six millennia is barely an eyeblink in geological time, the data from the Hypsithermal is tolerably complete; core samples of mud layers in lakes, for example, allow changes in pollen—and thus in what plants grew where—to be tracked very nearly on a year-by-year basis. If you live in North America, E.C. Pielou’s classic book After The Ice Age gives a good overview.
What makes Pielou’s book especially relevant to the present situation is that it talks about what happens when climate belts shift northward. Nature’s response to such shifts has interesting divergences. Animals, of course, can move along with the climate, and the larger the animal, the quicker it moves—caribou and wolves moved northward easily as the tundra withdrew into land formerly covered by ice sheets, while small mammals took longer to get there and insects longer still. The highly adaptable, opportunistic plants we call “weeds” moved nearly as fast as the caribou—a stray gust of wind can send some seeds spinning miles through the air—but other plants are much slower, and most trees are the slowest of all. In many ways, it was the seeding patterns of trees that did the most to slow down the patterns of adjustment.
We’re facing the same problem this time around. Animals are already on the move: it’s only been a few decades since opossums set out from their southern homes to spread all over North America—they’re well into Canada these days—and armadillos are following suit, though they haven’t gotten as far yet. Anecdotal evidence suggests that alligators have already come north along the Atlantic coast as far as tideland Virginia, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they reached Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay within my lifetime. Blue crabs have already arrived here in Rhode Island from further south, filling ecological niches vacated by lobsters as these latter move north in search of colder waters
Weedy plants are doing their best to keep up, but again, it’s the trees that have fallen furthest behind. Many northern trees can’t handle the changes in growing conditions that shifting climate belts bring with them, which is part of why we’re having so many forest fires, while the southern trees that will replace them can’t pull themselves up by the roots, head for the nearest highway, and thumb (or twig?) a ride north to the ecological niches that are opening up for them. Left to themselves, it’ll take them centuries to make the trip, since their seeds simply won’t spread far enough, fast enough. It’s not required, though, that we leave them to themselves.
Fifteen thousand years ago, Ice Age hunters ranging from their comfortable caves in southern and central France into the bleak but animal-rich tundra landscapes further north took to planting hazelnuts in sheltered areas all the way up to the edges of the ice sheets themselves. Given a few years, those nuts produced thickets of hazel bushes, which provided shelter, raw materials, and a tasty supplement to mammoth meat to future generations of hunting parties. Today, hazel pollen shows up in core samples from old lakes, an anomalous yellow splash bringing news of one of our species’ first ventures into agriculture. The same principle can be put to work today.
To do that, of course, requires confronting one of the odder obsessions of contemporary thought. The animals and plants busily making their way northwards to take part in nature’s normal process of adaptation are being denounced in outraged tones as “invasive species,” and poisoned or ripped out of the ground by misguided people who think that they’re somehow protecting nature by keeping her from healing the wounds our species’ ignorant bumbling has inflicted. I’ve written before about the bizarre paralogic that leads people to panic when Mother Nature does what she always does in response to ecological stresses. But there’s more going on here than the frankly psychotic fantasy of “Man the Conqueror of Nature” that leads so many people to think that nature must always be passive and only human beings can act.
You can see that other dimension in a curious detail about the green technologies that have been pushed so hard, and so ineffectively, by big corporations and their government enablers in recent decades. Nearly all our current range of green technologies were first tried and tested back in the 1970s, and most of them had the interesting side effect of decreasing the dependence of individuals on big corporate and government systems. Only a few of them maintained or increased that dependence. Care to guess which green technologies got picked up and pushed on the world as the only possible solutions to climate change?
You guessed it. The only technologies that anybody in the climate change movement is interested in talking about are the ones that made people more dependent on corporate systems, more easily exploited by those systems, and more vulnerable to system disruptions.
Compare grid-linked rooftop solar photovoltaic systems, which get constant publicity and funding, with domestic solar water heating systems, which do not. In roughly half the United States, solar water heaters will provide an ordinary family with free hot water year-round, slashing household energy bills by 15% on average. In many other parts of the United States, solar water heaters will do the same thing 6 to 9 months out of every year.
If the money spent on incentives for rooftop PV had gone instead to provide grants and cheap loans to homeowners, landlords of apartment houses, and commercial and industrial users of hot water across the Sun Belt, we could have slashed carbon output significantly, made American homes and communities far more resilient in the event of natural disasters or power outages, and taken significant stress off the electrical grid while we were at it. Instead, rooftop PV turned into a status symbol and laptop-class giveaway that provided an insignificant share of power to the grid, and it’s completely useless if the grid goes down—the systems are designed so that homeowners can’t use them to power essential uses in their own homes when grid power’s out.
If the goal of such projects is to cut carbon emissions, help stabilize the climate, and make people more resilient in the event of trouble, in other words, rooftop PV makes no sense at all. It only makes sense if the goal of the operation is to head off any attempt to become less dependent on gargantuan technosystems by channeling public environmental concerns into modes of virtue signaling that do nothing to solve the problem they are supposed to address.
Here, though, we’re back in territory I addressed two months ago. The crisis management model—the strategy, pervasive in modern industrial societies, of exploiting crises for political and economic gain instead of doing anything to help the people impacted by them—discourages the decisionmakers of our societies from doing anything that might actually help things. Instead, faux solutions are the order of the day, so that our self-anointed lords and masters can pretend to be doing something about the crisis while the media tries to bully the public into accepting ever more burdensome restrictions on life and liberty. That’s why the agenda of the climate change movement has focused on terrorizing the public with overblown fantasies of imminent doom, so that more and more power and wealth can be concentrated in the hands of a corrupt elite.
As already noted, though, the alternative offered by the other side of the climate wars—though it has certain advantages in other areas, notably in its embrace of economic relocalization and its efforts to break the grip of a hopelessly dysfunctional bureaucratic system on American life—offers nothing useful in the climate field. There’s not much to hope for if the only choice we’ve got is between doing nothing on the one hand, and doing nothing useful on the other! Fortunately the options being presented to us by the corrupt political machines of left and right aren’t the only ones available.
Imagine, for instance, that all over America, people were to start planting trees in their backyards suited for the ecology that will be arriving in their areas half a century from now. Imagine that some of them looked up what the climate in their neighborhood was like 6000 years ago during the Hypsithermal, others simply looked at what grows in climates a few hundred miles further south, and still others used whatever other guidance that appealed to them. Imagine that fifty years from now, some of those trees will have grown to maturity, and will then provide food and habitat for birds, insects, and other living things that have relocated with the changing climate.
That’s the same strategy the Ice Age hunters I mentioned earlier used to make the glacial tundras more habitable in another era of climate change. One essential principle in making it work is that it should not be organized; above all, there should be no officially promulgated list of approved plants. Dissensus—the deliberate avoidance of consensus—is essential in uncertain times. When nobody can know in advance what the right choice will be, encouraging people to make as many different choices as possible maximizes the chance that some of the choices will work.
One other principle needs to be kept in mind. None of this should be public. The ahauob of our age are so addicted to the crisis management model that we can expect them to push back frantically against any attempt at mitigation. After all, anything that helps people realize that they have the power to shape their own futures threatens not only the crisis management model but the entire structure of elite governance in our time. If people aren’t shaking in horror at the thought of the hideous future the media parades in front of them, why, they might start building their own futures, instead of waiting for officially approved experts to tell them what to do!
Of course that train left the station long ago. Half the reason that so many people don’t take climate change seriously is that they’ve long since seen through the charade being acted out in its name. Too many people remember the global cooling scare of the 1970s and 1980s, and those who weren’t born yet when that happened have seen plenty of deadlines for global doomsday loudly proclaimed and then noiselessly pushed back once they stopped being useful to the powerful. Pundits and lab-coated experts are bemoaning the fact that most people don’t trust them any more, without ever considering the possibility that the flagrant dishonesty of their class is a good healthy part of the reason why.
With that in mind, I’d like to offer the quiet suggestion that mitigation carried out by individuals, families, and community groups is far and away the most useful thing that anybody can do as industrial society stumbles toward its self-inflicted end. Plenty of people who made themselves less dependent on the system benefited hugely from that choice during the Covid shutdowns, for example, and the same principle applies more generally. Turn a weather eye toward the changes you see coming your way, whether those affect climate or something else, and get working on whatever changes you think will help. Is that guaranteed to work? Of course not—but your chances will be a lot better than if all you do is wait for the gibbering inmates of a senile kleptocracy to rescue you.
Oh, and don’t tell them. Don’t tell anybody. Treat your actions the way characters in an H.P. Lovecraft story treat their bootleg copies of the Necronomicon and the tentacled critters they keep as pets in the basement. Anything that transfers power back into the hands of individuals is an unspeakable horror to the laptop class, and the poor dears will have enough to worry them in the decades ahead without fretting about you.
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, 7/14). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Marko’s newborn son Noah be blessed with good health, and may his partner Viktoria swiftly make a full recovery from childbirth and c-section.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis‘s fistula heal, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Jack H.’s father John continue to heal from his ailments, including alcohol dependency and breathing difficulties, as much as Providence allows, to be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Audrey’s friend’s daughter Katie, who died in a tragic accident June 2nd, orphaning her two children, be blessed and aided in her soul’s onward journey; and may her family be comforted.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
I’ve been wanting to install a solar powered water heater (as described in Green Wizardry) ever since buying the book a few years ago. This gives me a nudge to start taking some action – no time like the present, after all! Thank you for the inspiration.
Everyone knows white , red oak and chestnut do not grow above 1200 ft elevation or above the 45th parrallel in Maine. Fifteen years ago I planted them here. Now I have 20 foot saplings, oh yes, some hazelnuts too!! Encouraged by your writing from years ago, green wizard.
Thanks.
I’d like to echo and emphasize our host’s advice: “Don’t tell them. Don’t tell anybody.” Flying under their radar is your best road to survival.
One recent set of events has recently brought home to me just how invasive surveillance has become these days. I have arthritis in my knees, diagnosed about 6 months ago as “bone-on-bone” in one knee. I mentioned this diagnosis in a handful of telephone conversations and emails with friends. Just within the last two or three months advertisements for devices to help with “bone-on-bone” arthritis have been popping up on my computer frequently. I never ever saw ads for this before I mentioned my diagnosis to a few friends.
This indicates just how closely monitored all our on-line communications have become, and probably our telephone communications as well. We are all targeted!!! Nowadays it’s not just in magic that silence is a great virtue, but in every area of life.
Here in Central NY, which was considered Zone 4b 30 years ago, and considered 5b now, I’m growing a whole roster of trees from more southern climes that are on their northern limit here. My American Persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) and Pawpaws (Asimina triloba) are still holding on despite being bitten back by hard weather a few times. In addition to them, I’ve got Chickasaw Plums (Prunus angustifolia), Northern Pecans (Carya illinoinensis), Carpathian Walnut (Juglans regia), Tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), and many other shrubs and herbaceous plants that have native ranges extending into the deep south and should do fine here even if the climate zone goes up to 7b in another 50 years. It’s really quite satisfying to grow them, and they form the backbone of my pubescent food forest.
Solar hot water is more daunting, but on the list. Also, for those in the northern climates, there is a way to heat all your hot water in winter with just the extra heat coming off a wood stove. Permaculturist Ben Falk has been working on even more efficient designs in the last few years.
I have a few ideas for what I can do. I’m not going to mention them here for much the same reason I don’t tell anyone about my various magical and occult workings. Ahauob, human and nonhuman, and their hanger-ons, seem intent on stopping any constructive changes. I’m assuming there’s no single cause as to the why of interference. But I don’t feel fear or stress over all this. I’ve focused heavily on various Buddhist concepts that I have incorporated into my very syncretized religious and spiritual views. What will be, will be.
Personal, private mitigation efforts are great in theory, but in practice they usually fail due to efforts of the ghastly spectre of By-Law Enforcement (aka the bullying arm of The Establishment), thus:
Solar Water Heater on your roof? Nope – it violates the building code.
Planting new species? Nope – it’s disrupting local ecology.
Heat or cook with a wood stove? Nope – it’s a fire hazard.
Windmill – even to charge your EV(!!) car battery? Nope – it’s an eyesore.
Horse & buggy to replace the car? Nope – not zoned for livestock.
Hunting/husbanding your own game – even on your own land? Nope – it threatens endangered species.
And on and on it goes; anything you can think of to do on your own, they can think of too – and have already done so and put something in place to stop you. For any private mitigation efforts to be successful, they need to be exactly that: private. So, John, your advice is worth its weight in gold and then some: “Oh, and don’t tell them. Don’t tell anybody.”
I was a young man back in the 70’s and was involved in the appropriate technology thing . My focus was the biointensive horticulture angle in California. I even met Alan Chadwick, the founder of the method and John Jeavons who carried it on. Looking back one of the things that blocked real change was the American car culture, by then the country was structured around the assumed individual ownership and daily use of the automobile. Only sixty years or so old at that time but already deeply embedded in the psyche of Americans and how things were done.. Minimizing the automobile and reversing its use was a bridge too far, so on we went.
Oh my. Subversion via anti-establishment habits like dissensus. Right in my wheelhouse, since I’ve already lived much of my life by the rule, “when the crowd zigs, I zag”.
I’ve wondered what percentage of communities have rules on the books prohibiting front yard vegetable gardens or rooftop solar water heaters? It’ll be a thumb in the eye of those intermediation types to get those rules reversed. The possibilities for unapproved fun are endless, as long as things don’t get too crazy.
It will be interesting to see how insane carbon burning tech “advances” and morphs along, versus the decline of the electrical and Internet grids. AI, crypto, social media and just-in-time supply chains don’t work so well during power and network outages. I know which way I’m rooting, but it’ll probably be a close game.
This is a manifesto! Bravo!
It’s existential and inspiring.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Erika M, make it happen!
Tom, you’re welcome and thank you.
Robert, yep. As one of my teachers used to put it, “to know, to dare, to will, and to shut the **** up” are essential virtues these days, and not just for occultists!
Isaac, delighted to hear it. The New Alchemy Institute used to run solar hot water systems on Prince Edward Island, so you can probably make it work! A hybrid system that combines solar heating in the summer and wood heating in the winter — these exist — might be a good choice.
Brenainn, go ye henceforth and do that thing!
Old Steve, that depends very much on where you live and, ahem, what social class you aspire to. In most working class and lower middle class neighborhoods, you can put anything you want on your roof, nobody cares what trees you plant, and as long as your backyard livestock doesn’t make too much noise — rabbits are better than roosters! — nobody worries about it. It’s in the ghettos of the privileged classes that restrictive covenants, nosy neighbors, and strict enforcement of land use regulations clamp down hard. This is another way in which downward mobility is a ticket to freedom. (I really have to do a post on that one of these days, don’t I?)
BeardTree, sweet. I never met either of them but I used their books and methods intensively. The point I’d make now is that it’s a waste of time to try to talk people into giving up technologies to which they’re addicted. Those of us who are willing to change can change, and lead by example — the only form of leadership that really matters.
Drhooves, one of the side effects of the current LLM (“AI”) hysteria that nobody seems to be preparing for yet is that the exorbitant demands of LLM data centers for power is going to drive electricity costs not only through the roof but well up into the stratosphere, and quite possibly all the way into orbit. It might be entirely viable, in a year or so, to push new regulations allowing solar water heaters, and get backing (and funding) from the tech-bro scene since this could free up a lot of electricity for data centers to waste.
Erika L, thank you.
Drhooves, one of the side effects of the current LLM (“AI”) hysteria that nobody seems to be preparing for yet is that the exorbitant demands of LLM data centers for power is going to drive electricity costs not only through the roof but well up into the stratosphere, and quite possibly all the way into orbit. It might be entirely viable, in a year or so, to push new regulations allowing solar water heaters, and get backing (and funding) from the tech-bro scene since this could free up a lot of electricity for data centers to waste.”
On more than one occasion now I have had arguments with people who know nothing about electricity (not even which way current flows!) who are adamant that when the utilities have begged our provincial government not to allow training centres be built, this was nothing more than a an attempt to justify raising rates. Next to nobody seems to realize that when the engineers start saying “This can not be done” they might be right.
It seems to me that if the engineers can convince every electrical company in most provinces to sign joint letters begging their provincial government not to allow something, the provinces ought to consider the possibility they know what they are talking about.
(Amusingly enough, for anyone who knows Canadian politics, it is only Alberta that has listened to the utilities; all the other nine are moving ahead full speed, and the increasingly absurd mass media is full of articles on why Alberta is now doomed to fall behind)
Thanks for recommending After the Ice Age.
The weather in my area (Middle Tennessee) is getting weirder, but the climate doesn’t seem to be shifting in a consistent direction yet. It’s shifted growing zones, meaning the coldest temps of the year aren’t as severe as they used to be. Some storms are more violent, and it’s seemingly become wetter. Should I expect the climate to get wetter & more humid in the medium term, drier in the longer term?
Thanks a lot for this very interesting and relevant post. At the end of the post, you mention that among those in the ” laptop class, . . . the poor dears will have enough to worry them in the decades ahead without fretting about you.” For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the laptop class has “decades” left to worry about hanging onto their roles in society, for the majority of the salary class seems to be collapsing in real time as we speak. Although the media claims that this year’s college graduates can’t find any entry level jobs at all because “the robots have taken their jobs,” the truth is that corporations have been laying off workers for years now in order to rehire people in India to do their jobs for $500 a month or so and then blame it on “robots” in order to help certain corporations associated with that craze sell stocks (I say this as an American who has lived in India since 2018 and personally knows people making such low pay working for very well-known companies). In reality, the reason why all those American salary class professionals lost their jobs was that the companies they work for aren’t really as rich or solvent as they claim to be, so this is the only way for some of them to avoid bankruptcy. As a result, it’s an open secret now that virtually every corporate job posting on Indeed or LinkedIn is a scam meant to harvest sensitive data from the thousands of desperate applicants who respond to each post, causing those who have been laid off to find themselves permanently shut out of the class they used to inhabit. Just this week I saw a story of a woman who went from making $200,000 per year to homeless in just a few months because she couldn’t find a new job to replace the one she lost because it effectively no longer exists in the USA, so the downward social mobility is really hitting hard. Perhaps the salary class is vanishing now because they failed to bail the Democrats out last election and are now disappearing after having lost their political usefulness.
I love this. My husband and I were just talking about how okra and other southern foods are doing even better in our agricultural zone now, and since okra facilitates the removal of plastics from our bodies, it’s squarely in the yes camp for our garden.
Here’s the study on okra, and fenugreek is another: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsomega.4c07476?ref=article_openPDF
As an aside, okra doesn’t get enough appreciation; it’s not as slimy when it’s picked fresh (though that slime is so good for you, as evidenced by the study above). You can also ferment it like a pickle.
Something that keeps cracking me up to no end is that so many on the left will talk about how wonderful things will be if only we did “X”, where X could be almost anything, but then freak out when they realize someone is actually doing it. I have two examples:
The first is car use. Far too many people will insist that the world will be much better once car culture is dismantled; and then these same people freak out whenever they learn that not just do I now drive, but I’ve never had a license. It really amuses me to no end how many people backtrack from how great it would be not to need a car when they find out I’ve never needed one.
The other example is social media. This is about as close as I ever get to using it; I gave up my Facebook account around a decade ago, and have never used any of the others. I do just fine; I’ve had to accept that most of my friends are going to be older than I am, although that’s not always a bad thing. All those people who complain about technological surveillance? They backtrack very quickly once I start making it clear I have taken measures to avoid it.
The whole thing reeks of provisional living to me, and just like lottery winners tend to freak out because they suddenly can’t project fantasizes anymore, a lot of people on the left simply cannot deal with the idea someone actually is taking steps to adjust their lives: it has to remain a fantasy.
“Helping forests walk” is now my ideal way of speaking about hands-on citizen actions in exactly the way you describe. I got that term (with her approval for me to use it) from Indigenous elder Robin Wall Kimmerer. The group I founded 20 years ago, Torreya Guardians, has accomplished a lot for the endangered Florida torreya, a glacial relict — and most importantly: we are not an NGO and we have no funding. Instead, we are a living example of the value of dissensus: nobody tells anybody what can or cannot be done. As webmaster, I post photos and text of what our planting volunteers have learned along the way, including a vast page of what what seem to be the best practices for propagating this ancient conifer. As citizens, there is no professional downside for us when mistakes are made — as when I stratified seeds in a deep pit one winter without first checking to ensure no woodchucks were nearby. And with the polar vortex dipping into the midwest at -20F this past January, it became very clear that planting on ravine slopes in Illinois instead of mowed-lawn uplands provided the best defense against winter kill. Overall, professionals for some reason seem to need to get funding — and that means they must be extra cautious to not make mistakes. But in the ecological, complex sciences, “negative results” are crucial aspects of learning. And when it comes to helping slow-moving trees move poleward, one has to begin with the realization that extreme lags are already bearing down on many of them. Finally, there is the sadly forgotten realm of natural history, of which Charles Darwin and his colleagues were masters. My great mentor and co-founder of Torreya Guardians was Professor Paul Schultz Martin, Pleistocene ecologist U AZ. He insisted I read the E.C. Pielou book, and he proudly declared “I’m a naturalist first, a scientist second.”
>Drhooves, one of the side effects of the current LLM (“AI”) hysteria that nobody seems to be preparing for yet is that the exorbitant demands of LLM data centers for power
I wonder if I should mention that it’s not just electricity but water as well, needed to cool those data centers? And that some places where those data centers have been built – are running out of water?
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear these shades…
—
>the intensive wetland polyculture that made the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán nearly self-sufficient in food centuries later was already under development
I wonder where that equivalent is happening now? Here’s another response to the nonsense – move to where the future is happening.
>This indicates just how closely monitored all our on-line communications have become, and probably our telephone communications as well
And keep in mind, most of the people doing this – they aren’t your friends.
This is perhaps the best socio-political analysis of the Carbon Cult Racket I have seen, and as a geophysicist I have been paying close attention for over 30 years. Congratulations and thanks for a trans-disciplinary, human-nature-astute integration that tells deep truths systematically suppressed by Our Lords and Masters.
If there is any weakness in it, it is an assumption of too-long a wavelength for the mini-climate cycles we see now, compared with the macro-cycles we find in the paleo-climate record. The truth is that we do not know how long the current warming will continue before it waves back down, nor how far up or down it will go (either in the present sub-cycle-pattern or in the macro-cycle pattern).
What can we expect next? Least probable is continued increase in temperature back to the earlier maximums in this inter-glacial; most probable is continued some-ups-and-more-downs gradually turning into the next glaciation (which is due soon if that 110,000-year macro-cycle continues). But we have no certainty about that timing, given all the known unknowns and unknown unknowns in climate “science.” For instance, we have no credible explanation for why that glaciation cycle changed a few million years ago to that wavelength from an earlier 41,000 years.
Nonetheless, the inherent integrity of optimizing human use of the resources of our planet (itself a diverse and intriguing subject) as explored here is a worthy focus and action-field for us all, no matter the exact rhythm of natural climate cycles.
As for any human effect on those cycles, the awkward scientific truth is that there is no actual physical evidence that any human activity has any significant (or even credibly measurable) effect on global climate. So we are left with a lot of noise that mostly serves to distract us from the high-integrity, high-sanity activities this post advocates.
Next, how about addressing the population-variable in the sustainability conversation?
Hi John,
What good timing! I came across this article the other day and was interested in your thoughts.
https://ageoftransformation.org/into-the-maelstrom-southern-ocean-amoc-and-the-onset-of-a-planetary-phase-shift/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLkq59leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFhMjFib0FvMnFRVmVQUW5pAR4vhdICyJ8p-KqCmZacBo9hWFSjwmA-B0i4WMDmdTFL8hOwlZFGdf8FjSUiqg_aem_zY1oQBdP4FI5AKURb4r-Eg
“The mid-21st century—particularly the decade spanning 2040 to 2050—now looms as a pivotal horizon. By then:
The AMOC may have collapsed or be in terminal decline (Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen 2023)
Antarctic ice loss may have become self-sustaining
Arctic summers may be ice-free
The Amazon may have passed a vegetation tipping threshold
Climate-linked migration could reach the hundreds of millions
Whether this decade is remembered as the climax of planetary destabilization—or as the turning point toward systemic renewal—depends not on inevitability, but on decisions made today.
There is still agency. Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming makes a difference. Every year of accelerated emissions reduction delays or prevents thresholds from being crossed. And every investment in adaptive infrastructure, just transitions, and biospheric regeneration buys time and resilience.”
(I have changed my username, I used to be known as Ecosophy Enjoyer. I still enjoy Ecosophy, but I think this new username is funnier and represents my identity more 🙂 Hope this isn’t too confusing.)
John, last summer I used to work in conservation. As a grunt, my main job was simply to walk around the conservation land and uproot invasive plant species. As things progressed, it became apparent how profoundly useless it was and that I wasn’t helping the environment in any meaningful way. Even worse, other people on the crew who were higher up than me would drive ATVs around and dump herbicides on the invasives, which did nothing more than tear up vegetation with the ATV wheels, disturb wildlife, and create ecological dead zones with the herbicides. That job killed my hope in doing conservation for a career.
Instead, I have thought about starting a business which does ecological landscaping. The idea would be to transform the green lawn deserts most people surround themselves with into ecologically rich landscapes by planting a variety of plants that are adapted for local conditions. Given what you’ve said in this blog post, I think I should also consider doing plants that will be adapted for the area in the future, granted that I make this idea into a reality.
The Other Owen # 17.. Yes, Exactly! In essence, LLM Data Centers are the new fracking rigs .. but for Tech/High Finance Bro$. – and I might add, Broesse$$..
I can hardly wait until those wonderous ‘hastily’ built fission/fusion? power facilities (AI designed of course) to come on-line. What ELSE could POSSIBLY Go Wrong!
‘sigh’
Before I go on, I’ve noticed with some amusement that every time I post an essay challenging the competence of the laptop class, somebody comes charging on here yelling about irrelevancies in an attempt to disrupt the conversation. Yes, it happened this morning; this time it was somebody shrieking about Donald Trump and internment camps. I take it as evidence of just how frantic the managerial class is to silence class-based critiques of its privilege.
Moose, it’s precisely because they know nothing about electricity that they treat the power grid as some kind of infinitely renewable divine grace, rather than the finite, fragile energy distribution system it actually is.
Patrick, you’ll have to look up the paleoclimatology of your region. I don’t happen to be familiar with it.
Chad, what’s happening now, to mix metaphors, is a pruning of the laptop class’s low-hanging fruit. There have been a vast number of people employed in useless cubicle jobs in recent decades. Those are being fired now in job lots, as DOGE budget cuts shreds the social safety net for otherwise unemployable critical-theory majors. I think we’ll see, though, that the core of the laptop class will be a harder nut to crack — there’s the mixed metaphors again — and it’ll take several decades of legal and cultural changes before the citadels of bureaucracy fall.
Brunette, delighted to hear it! Okra is also extraordinarily nourishing, and the slimy quality isn’t a problem when you make gumbo from it (the slime vanishes in any thickened soup).
Moose, oh, I know. I’ve had enormous fun with that same effect over the last two decades or so.
Connie, I was hoping you might show up and say something! Thank you for this. It amuses me, in a bleak way, to see the academics rage at mere citizens who are engaged in “unsanctioned” efforts to save endangered species and increase the diversity and resilience of ecosystems. You’d think they’d pay a little attention to paleoecology and realize that there is no baseline and there has never been one — that the biohistory of every part of this planet is marked by constant change, and for tens of thousands of years at least, by human interaction, some of it constructive, some much less so. But that’s the great failing of the laptop class’s pet ideology: they’re obsessed with the notion that the rest of the cosmos, including humans outside their caste, ought to be purely passive and just do what the laptop class tells them to do.
Other Owen, the shades are a good thing to wear. Sun-blasted, waterless deserts full of the ruins of data centers are hard on the eyes!
Alexander, oh, I assume there’ll be a new ice age sometime down the road — I’ve done some preliminary work on an SF novel set 100,000 years from now, when the next ice age is winding down and the first human technological society (the “Dawn Technate,” in their terms) is a matter of dim myths from the forgotten past — but my research suggests that human impact on climate, while it’s far from omnipotent, is a factor that has to be considered. (The argument that New World reforestation after the mass dieoffs following the Columbian exchange drove the Little Ice Age via carbon drawdown from the atmosphere, for example, seems sound to me.) As for population, why, I’ve already talked about that in quite some detail:
https://www.ecosophia.net/an-unfamiliar-world/
The peak and impending decline of global population is an issue that needs far more discussion than it’s received, especially when the economic impacts — for example, the end of economic growth and the coming of economic contraction for the foreseeable future — are brought into the conversation. I’ll have more to say about that in due time.
Forecasting, that bit about “there is still agency” gave me a belly laugh. None of the measures they propose have done anything to change the climate trajectory, and yet they’re still out there stumping for utterly failed policies, while brandishing the same predictions of imminent doom that were supposed to have come true more than a decade ago. Mind you, I think it’s quite possible that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free in my lifetime, and that the oceanic currents will shut down — that’s a normal part of a planetary temperature spike, and has happened many, many times before — but here again, this is all business as usual on an unstable planet.
Nephite, that career sounds like a very sensible move! Yes, you’ll want to get some sense of which way the climate is likely to move, and let clients know you can help them prepare for it.
This reflects my thinking lately- for me, zone 6 trees that might survive in my usually zone 5 garden. I stumbled upon a Lowtech Magazine article about citrus growing methods in the Soviet Union. One of the things that jumped out at me was that every time the growers made a move north, they started with seeds, not live plants. Start many seeds, grow out the ones that survive, select the fruit and collect seeds, then move north again. Vanya Lemonseed, as it were. It took years and years, and the author of the article recognizes that it probably couldn’t have been done in a capitalist system- the state wanted citrus at the arctic circle, so it supported the program. Or, at least, didn’t cut the program. Here’s the link, if anyone is interested https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cultivating-subtropical-plants-in-freezing-temperatures
Does anyone know where I can get fig seeds?
“Dissensus—the deliberate avoidance of consensus—is essential in uncertain times. ”
Very important idea to embrace. And thanks for the nudge to be thinking 200 miles south (somewhere below Nantes for me). I need to adjust my planting plans accordingly – but also allow for the weakening of the thermohaline circulation that keeps us relatively mild at this latitude on this side of the pond – the components of a complex system interact in complex ways.
We’re at the same latitude as British Columbia but we haven’t seen snow for very many years. If the gulf stream shuts down we’ll be very cold so more like moving Scotland down here than the middle of France up to herer.
No, really. i’m not just blowing smoke up your skirt.
you’re changing the paradigm of what we’ve been taught is important and is also our downfall and why covid why all this evil need for “money” fakery:
the magic of keeping secrets that aren’t evil but secret deeds. i further think this is an excellent example of the MASCULINE approach: tipping big without expecting a thank you or even notice. as in, i’ve NEVER met a woman (or a man more like a woman) who’ll leave a $50 tip on the table at a diner and then simply LEAVE. us women, myself included, want the THANK YOU and the smile and the DID YOU KNOW WHAT I DID??? LOOK! I’M WONDERFUL AREN’T I?
so it’s beautifully sly and LOVING. it’s the fox in the woods someone saw on here years ago, donning a costume.
oops! gotta go. had access to a proper keyboard and i had to say this because it overlays my own ideas but as a female i was staggering. how to sell being secretive when we’re all about LOOK AT ME!!!!
x
Wonderful
>What ELSE could POSSIBLY Go Wrong!
Do not ask questions you do not want the answer to. The logical conclusion of all this nuclear hastiness and slapdashery – is Chernobyl.
“Moose, it’s precisely because they know nothing about electricity that they treat the power grid as some kind of infinitely renewable divine grace, rather than the finite, fragile energy distribution system it actually is.”
I’ve wondered more than once if the utter disinterest so many people have in learning about how the systems that maintain their lives work might be intentional, because it does not take a lot of knowledge about how things work to demolish a lot of comfortable delusions….
>to rehire people in India to do their jobs for $500 a month or so and then blame it on “robots”
“AI” stands for Actually Indians. Hope this solved your issue and if you would stay on the line and take a short survey for me, that would be most appreciated.
My only question is: when will I be able to grow me some lemons here outside in the Garden State? Hankering for some lemonade.
Axé
>Instead, I have thought about starting a business which does ecological landscaping. The idea would be to transform the green lawn deserts
That sounds like catering to the shrinking “laptop class” that JMG outlined. How about talking to Jennifer Kobernik about how to do market gardening for a living? I would say something about growing pot in one of the legal states but the pot industry is crashing. Too many people doing it relative to demand.
If you’re going to work with plants, might as well be useful while you’re doing it, no?
>My husband and I were just talking about how okra and other southern foods are doing even better in our agricultural zone now
Never liked okra as a kid and still hate it now. Let me know if you ever feel the urge to cook pokeweed. Be careful with that one. If okra is doing well, you might try yellow squash, blackeyed peas and sweet potatoes. Of all those crops, the last one I would target, it yields enough calories to actually keep you alive, all the others more or less distract your digestive system.
>Next to nobody seems to realize that when the engineers start saying “This can not be done” they might be right.
An engineer will never say no. What an engineer will ask you is “How much in exchange are you willing to give up to get what you want?” If the price is too high, that does very often get translated into “No” but notice that it’s you who said that and not the engineer. The real hilarity ensues when someone forces a team of engineers to have it both ways. That happens a lot. It explains why nothing works anymore too.
JMG,
I’ve been appreciating the recent string of articles. The wife and I just read through this and were discussing. It actually matches very closely to much of what we have been discussing lately as we have finally taken the full plunge, tipping over from our personal decline out of the middle class into our own full on collapse into being poor. Unfortunately, we do happen to live in the “ghettos of the privileged classes” (though luckily not in an HOA).
“This is another way in which downward mobility is a ticket to freedom. (I really have to do a post on that one of these days, don’t I?)”
Please do! It truly is freeing in many ways. We are absolutely going through our birthing pangs of exactly this experience. I would love to read that article and the comments to it.
HV
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tomorrowland-fire
I’m sorry, I’m not meaning to derail but the symbolism of this was just too relevant right now. A venue called “Tomorrowland” went up in flames. This is almost up there with Paradise going up in flames a few years ago.
But if you feel like punting this, I understand.
Funny, I went to a gathering just this Saturday past, where I had an entertaining discussion with just that sort of person who believes that we are doomed, that the next two generations, at most, will be forced to live on something like Arrakis. Furthermore, this is all the fault of the greedy Free-market capitalists who are destroying the planet in the pursuit of their quarterly profits because they are just so stupid.
“So what are you doing about it?”
“We need to pass laws to stop the corporations from polluting!”
“No, *I* have reduced my energy consumption to about 40% of the median North American, we buy local raw foods, do not buy anything we don’t need and are generally frugal. What are *YOU* doing about it?”
“We need to rein in those Capitalist corporations, we need to pass laws…”
I will not hit the highlights, of which I am sure you are far more familiar than I…
– Peak oil is a lie. (Oh, it’ll happen one day, of course, but it isn’t happening now, even though the highest daily production was in 2024.)
– Suggesting that anything other than fossil fuels as the sole cause for the changing climate makes you a denier. And a free-marketeer. And a capitalist (Hayakawa snarl word, he didn’t really know what capitalist technically means).
– The West is solely responsible for all the pollution and devastation in the world. (Ten dirtiest cities are in Asia and Africa. The Soviet Union was responsible for at least as much pollution as the West. China is worse. Neither could or will clean up their act.)
– Didn’t know what the first of the ‘Three R’s’ was. (Someone else did… but only those people who were older than 50 remembered it. And almost none of them practise it.)
“It’s the fault of greedy free-market corporations.” (Who are providing what people want, or think they want.)
– People are sheep who have been taught ‘consumerism’ by capitalists. (Epictetus spoke about that. Marcus Aurelius made a couple entries on the subject. Lao Tzu had something to say.)
And so we finally did agree that the dogs were having fun and needed water.
Bruce
Marvelous, balanced-perspective essay JMG. Thank you. And yes oh yes, wise words “that it’s a waste of time to try to talk people into giving up technologies to which they ‘re addicted”.
Not having grown up in California, guess I really can’t stand in judgement of people’s “car culture” here. But in my own small way hope to lead by example. Have had the advantage of living without a car for 45 yrs while living in NYC , so when I spend my extended time now in SoCal, I get around (very well I might add) by public transport.
When it comes up amongst fellow community members in conversation that I don’t have a car nor do I drive, I can see the horror and disbelief in their eyes. However, it was the same horror and disbelief in MY eyes when a 100 year old neighbor told me they had JUST decided to give up their car… true story!
I live in Oregon and have been planting a lot of figs. They’re pretty hardy here. I had my original fig tree die back when we got 0 degree weather one year (quite unusual here!). I had given up on it when it sprouted back in July! It’s huge now. Figs are also very easy to propagate. They only need irrigation when young.
HI John,
Thank you for this excellent article. I’m planning for next autumn to plant some new trees in my garden.
In your response above : “This is another way in which downward mobility is a ticket to freedom. (I really have to do a post on that one of these days, don’t I?)”
Downward mobility is painful in my case. The material aspects could be comfortably handled, in fact I never miss those luxury things and enjoy greatly a simple life. On the other hand, it takes a high toll on my mental reserve. The respect and friendliness within my social circle and family were replaced with hostilities.
Reading your and similar authors’ books, I know why I’m doing this but can not stop doubting myself on regular basis.
I would be very grateful indeed if you could do a post on this subject,
Sincerely,
Its throttles to the wall out east.
“https://paenvironmentdaily.blogspot.com/2025/07/pjm-interconnection-extends-maximum.html”
“On July 15, the PJM Interconnection extended a Maximum Generation Alert and Load Management Alert for another day to July 16. The Alert requires electric generation facility owners to generate the maximum amount of electricity to meet forecast demand for customers across 13 states– including Pennsylvania– and the District of Columbia. ”
“PJM forecasts a peak load of approximately 145,000 MW on July 16.”
That’s 362.5 million 400 watt solar panels at noon on a clear day.
Hello John
On just do it and don’t tell them your doing it, I planted a two acre nut orchard 29 years back. Mostly Hazel’s and common walnuts (juglans persica), plus some north American varieties of walnuts and pecans. They are all doing well at 51 degrees north in Sussex UK. I also changed on planting two cork oaks, very much Mediterranean trees, one of which has done very and is a large tree now. Four years back development brushed up close to my orchard and the planners spotted my cork oaks. They were thrilled and slapped tree preservation orders on them pronto, because:- they are trees adapted to the predicted climate change for southern England and they must be protected as living examples of the trees we will have to plant in the future when it arrives. Me thinks they are thriving because they are already adapted to the climate here and now (don’t tell the planners though or they will out of a job). If it lives, it’s adapted to that climate and ecosystem, though in some cases too adapted for our convenience, aesthetics or ideology.
Have fun, you rebel horticulturists!
“The idea would be to transform the green lawn deserts most people surround themselves with into ecologically rich landscapes by planting a variety of plants that are adapted for local conditions. ”
I’m sort of doing that for myself by indifference. The amount of clover in my lawn has greatly increased over the last several years. I have all three, white, red, and yellow. Dandelions are abundant and in the drier areas some sort of plantain is displacing the grass.
The gravel driveway that never gets watered has clumps of alfalfa of all things, and two new plants arrived from somewhere, the delightfully named desert yellow fleabane and blue mountain buckwheat.
The saskatoons (service berries) planted near the ditch are doing fine and the birds love them. They are seedy but not bad, no wonder the Indians put them in pemmican.
As a fringe benefit the slightly unkempt lawn and driveway and maybe the clothes line seems to be suppressing my property taxes.
In the spirit of dissensus, I can’t help but wonder if e.g. wind and photovoltaics aren’t useful as fossil fuel extenders. If you take your fracked gas/oil with an EROEI of 8 and use it to build wind/solar with an EROEI of 8, your EROEI on the fossil fuel is now ~64 and your fossil fuel will last eight times longer.
@Anonymoose Canadian:
I’ve noticed the same freaking-out a lot these days. I gave up facebook about 15 years ago, and never got on to any of the other popular platforms.. And stopped watching TV in the mid-1980s.
My favorite example of such freak-outs happened back in the 1990s, when I was still teaching. A student in one of muy classes seemed to enjoy it when our paths crossed on campus and he could challenge me on something or other. One time his challenge was wholly opaque to me, and I asked him to explain. He said that it was about “Seinfeld.” I asked him who or what Seinfeld was. He said, “You know, the TV show.” I replied that I hadn’t watched any TV for more than a decade by then. His jaw literally dropped, and when he recovered, he erupted with, “What do you do, live in a dreamworld or something!?” then turned abruptly and walked swiftly away . Every time afterwards that he saw our paths might cross, he changed direction so that we wouldn’t meet. My TV-free life simply “didn’t compute” in his world, and he just couldn’t deal with it.
@The Other Owen (#19):
Indeed, they art not! My friends are few and carefully chosen, and I plan on keeping it that way. All others may well turn out to be foes, or at least predators. And predators abound.
@JMG (#24, initial remark):
But of course. you’re asking them to think about their verities, and they just hate that. “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.” — Thomas A. Edison.
@Brunette and JMG
Excellent recipe is to slice the okra, heat in pan with a little salt and a little pepper then some lemon juice that gets rid of the stickiness.
Last night I had a conversation with one of my neighbors. He was having a meeting the next day with the guy from a solar company about a new rooftop ev system. Apparently Trump has sun-setted the residential solar tax credits and ( according to the salesman) he has to sign a contract for the system by this Friday to qualify for the tax credit which would be $6000 towards a $20,000 system. I first helped him check the claims of output with his neighbor who has had the same system for a year and to my surprise the claims were the same as the neighbors actual. Even at that , with the tax credit, the payback time is 8.4 years.
But here is the kicker, that fits perfectly with your thesis JMG. In Oregon ( probably most other places) the utilities no longer buy the electricity to feed back in to the grid at market rates. That would be accomplished by the old fashioned system of ” running the meter backwards” when generating electricity. Instead they have a new system where a giant bank of computers keeps track of what goes in and out of your house and gives you a credit for power generated. It keeps track of that credit and lets you use it ( automatically) when your demand exceeds your generation ( winter in Oregon). But after one year has elapsed the ” credit bank” is evened up. That means that if you have a power left over in your bank it gets zeroed out for you and given to a ” charity”.
So your energy independence is totally dependent on an investor owned utility’s computer system and redistributed if you have the bad manners to conserve too much energy.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Thanks for the timely history lesson, JMG. If there’s one thing our culture seems to lack, it’s context. Perhaps that’s because context implies thinking a little more deeply than soundbites require. Our modern-day ahauobs most certainly do not want that. There’s (temporary) security in keeping the peasantry constantly agitated and fearful.
The suggestions from both you and the Commentariat to do some constructive, diverse stuff on the down-low to attempt to work with our situation are inspiring and empowering. As with the neolithic hunters, those actions may most benefit people we will never know. And that’s awesome!
I wonder, would cultivating the wild purslane along the edge of my overheated south-facing patio count? Upon learning that it’s edible, and blast proof here in SW Idaho, I transplanted some to my small yard from a roadside a year ago, and it now forms a lovely short hedge along my patio. It helps keep the potted plants along that edge at least a little cooler than they would otherwise be in our ever-warmer summers, and is quite lovely. If it gets too exuberant I pull some out, and nibble on the leaves.
OtterGirl
“Alexander, oh, I assume there’ll be a new ice age sometime down the road — I’ve done some preliminary work on an SF novel set 100,000 years from now, when the next ice age is winding down and the first human technological society (the “Dawn Technate,” in their terms) is a matter of dim myths from the forgotten past — but my research suggests that human impact on climate, while it’s far from omnipotent, is a factor that has to be considered. ”
I would be quite suprised if human memory goes back that far. The oldest example of oral tradition can be found among some Aboriginal Australians that has been able to accurately describe events from ~12000 years ago!!!:
https://www.utas.edu.au/about/news-and-stories/articles/2023/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives-in-the-world
While this is quite extraordinary, I doubt future human beings will be able to recall events from 100000 years unless they somehow evolve substantially greater memory capacity.
I don’t see how pretty much any medium of writing could survive that long. Even the oldest cave paintings are only about 40000 years old.
Finally, it is quite probable that archeology might not be developed at all by future civilizations for reasons detailed in this recent, thought-provoking article.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/07/08/will-future-civilizations-bother-to-excavate-our-remains/
Here is a resource for people asking the age old question, “what is that plant?” It works on both iGadgets and Androids. As climate zones shift the wind and birds will be dropping off many interesting things.
https://plantnet.org/en/
Speaking of birds there is a similar thing for them at in North America. It’s particularly handy for bird calls for those birds you can hear but not see.
https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
>All others may well turn out to be foes, or at least predators. And predators abound.
I’ll end with this. Don’t do business, if you have a choice, with people who do not respect you. It never ends well.
Robert Mathiesen #4
I have knee pain in both knees. Knee braces, bought at the drug store, have saved me.
I wear them from when I get up in the morning to when I go to bed. I can walk, climb stairs (within reason), and exercise.
I don’t KNOW if knee braces could help you.
The only way you learn is by wearing a set. If it doesn’t work, try a different style.
Knee braces range from knitted, elastic sleeves to full-on, full-leg exoskeletons.
I use CVS brand mid-support with a knee opening and metal boning on both sides. They come in sizes so you must measure your knees according to directions.
I believe that many orthopedic surgeons don’t recommend them because a) you have to find the one that works for you by trial and error which takes time and patience and b) they don’t make any money.
My knee braces are saving me from steroid shots in both knees and possible knee replacement surgery. The yoga exercises also help but not as much as the braces.
Good luck!
Katsmama, I love it! Ваня Лимонное-семя it is.
RogerCO, granted, there are serious wild cards involved in areas dependent on ocean currents. You might get south-of-France droughts with Scotland temperatures, for example.
Erika, maybe it’s my autism, but it’s always baffled me that women do that — it’s so self-defeating. As I see it, you get to choose: do you want the compliment as you walk out the door, or do you want better service the next time you visit? Take your pick!
Jeremy, thank you. Happy planting!
Moose, that seems very plausible to me.
Other Owen (if I may), ha! Is the equation AI = Actually Indians your invention? It makes perfect sense.
Fra’ Lupo, hard to say, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the hardier varieties of lemons grew there in sheltered areas with good southern exposure already. You might have to wrap them in the winter to keep frost damage at bay, though.
HippieViking, delighted to hear this — and I’ll definitely consider the post sometime soon.
Other Owen, oh my fur and whiskers! Tomorrowland is burning — now if that isn’t the perfect omen for our times, I don’t know what is!
Renaissance, yeah, that brings back plenty of memories frorm the peak oil days. I used to wonder if people like that were paid to be that useless.
Jill C, delighted to hear it!
AnnM, this is very good to hear.
Loner, I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems with family and friends. I know getting a new family is a little difficult, but you might consider new friends. I know, it sounds callous, but if they turn on you the moment you stray outside their expectations, I have my doubts that they were real friends in the first place. I’ll certainly consider the post.
Siliconguy, yep. And nobody, but nobody, is talking about the simple, energy-efficient ways to decrease the burden of heat during these sweltering summer days.
Philip, I’m thrilled to hear this!
Roldy, except the math doesn’t work. If you take your fracked gas and oil with an EROEI of 8 and pour vast amounts of it into sourcing, building, transporting, installing, maintaining, and disposing of wind/solar, and your wind/solar still won’t break even financially without ongoing government subsidies, it’s pretty clear that their net energy is negative. There are plenty of constructive things you can do with wind and sunlight, but PV and giant wind turbines aren’t among them!
Robert M, that last sentence belongs on the tombstone of our civilization.
Clay, exactly — and you know that sometime soon the credit will be decreased, and decreased, and eventually deleted.
OtterGirl, very much so! Purslane is a grand old member of the class of plants our ancestors used to call “pot-herbs,” that is, weeds you can throw into a pot of soup or stew or pease porridge to add flavor and nutrition. Growing them and adding them to your diet is a fine contribution to the future.
David, by the time of my story there will have been between 14 and 16 human technological civilizations on Earth — scholars will quarrel about the exact number — and each of them will have done various things to gather and preserve information about the past. What they remember 100,000 years from now about our Dawn Technate will be what has been recovered about what one ancient civilization preserved about what another further back said about what still another, even further back, recorded about us. Oh, and they’ll have a few ruins. In my future history, Morgan City, Louisiana got buried in mud in the near future after the Mississippi changed course, and archeologists 100,000 years from now are digging up portions of the ruins, which are now high and dry because sea level is about 250 feet lower then than it is now due to all that water being locked up in ice age glaciers. You’ll be pleased to know that they’ve identified what’s left of a McDonalds as a religious structure.
Siliconguy, thanks for this.
“one of the side effects of the current LLM (“AI”) hysteria that nobody seems to be preparing for yet is that the exorbitant demands of LLM data centers for power is going to drive electricity costs not only through the roof but well up into the stratosphere, and quite possibly all the way into orbit”
What if “they” plan on a lot less people being around? So that way if you don’t exist, plenty of power and water will be available for their data centers? Lots of people dying of heart attacks this year, just a thought
When we bought our house in Hershey in 2001, I was adamant. No HOAs. And, I wanted a house we could afford. We live in a working class neighborhood called Little Italy. No one cares what we do with our yard.
Fast forward 24 years and we couldn’t possibly afford our house! But it’s paid off, we’ve modified it as needed to make it energy-efficient, and age-in-place friendly.
If you own your house, track where the sun goes over the course of a year. Where it pours in, heating up the house in July, that’s where you plant the deciduous tree. Choose carefully because trees grow. Choose a native that’s from a zone or two south of you. Don’t plant under powerlines.
Within a few years, you’ll get shade from those trees and cool your house.
The best time to plant that tree was the day you moved in.
The next best time is today.
” Just this week I saw a story of a woman who went from making $200,000 per year to homeless in just a few months because she couldn’t find a new job to replace the one she lost because it effectively no longer exists in the USA, so the downward social mobility is really hitting hard. ”
Covid was an economic event thru and thru. The state rid itself of some of those it considers useless eaters and also some bills. It mainly killed those who live on SS, medicare and medicaid. It allowed them to print trillions of dollars more then even the 08 crisis and let them flex their authoritarian muscles a bit with lockdowns and attempting to get half the population to kill or restrict the other half. Personally i think this was only a test run, the real event awaits in the very near future.
Where’d you find a Paw Paw to plant?
“David, by the time of my story there will have been between 14 and 16 human technological civilizations on Earth — scholars will quarrel about the exact number — and each of them will have done various things to gather and preserve information about the past. What they remember 100,000 years from now about our Dawn Technate will be what has been recovered about what one ancient civilization preserved about what another further back said about what still another, even further back, recorded about us. Oh, and they’ll have a few ruins. In my future history, Morgan City, Louisiana got buried in mud in the near future after the Mississippi changed course, and archeologists 100,000 years from now are digging up portions of the ruins, which are now high and dry because sea level is about 250 feet lower then than it is now due to all that water being locked up in ice age glaciers. You’ll be pleased to know that they’ve identified what’s left of a McDonalds as a religious structure.”
That sounds pretty remarkable. If that much information has been successfully copied over 100000 years, would the people of this time still be able to decipher our languages based on this very long version of telephone game.
I wonder to what extent the current population of the Gulf region is present in the DNA of future inhabitants or if our descendents form only a “ghost population” (https://www.johnhawks.net/p/ghost-populations-in-human-origins) among the future inhabitants of this world.
@Katsmama #25 There is a fig you can order called Chicago Hardy which is good through Zone 5. Will produce even after a winter dieback
I’m thinking some places will have it easier than others– I’m in the Great Lakes Transition forest, and it’s transitioning, alright. The transition forest has a mix of boreal species and species from the Carolinian forests to the south. Most of the species are already here, they just weren’t doing very well at the northern edge of their range; that’s changing fairly gracefully.
Further north, where that mix isn’t yet established, the boreal is burning.; I could smell the smoke this week, though the fires are hundreds of miles away.
@JMG,
“ne of the side effects of the current LLM (“AI”) hysteria that nobody seems to be preparing for yet is that the exorbitant demands of LLM data centers for power is going to drive electricity costs not only through the roof but well up into the stratosphere, and quite possibly all the way into orbit. ” — funny you should mention that! A few of the tech bros actually have proposed putting the data centers into orbit, to take advantage of always-available solar power in sun-centered orbits. They begged a ride for a small server on to ISS for a demo a couple of years back as proof of concept.
It’s not exactly a practical proposition, but it’s the least impractical thing I’ve heard out of Silicon Valley since this AI bubble started inflating. I’d trade a tulip bulb for shares in Skynet.
@Fra’Lupo #32 Try the Meyer Lemon which is hardy down to 20F.
Love your writings – but this time I think you may have made a slight error. You say of PV – “and it’s completely useless if the grid goes down—the systems are designed so that homeowners can’t use them to power essential uses in their own homes when grid power’s out.”
Not in my case. As long as you have batteries installed, it continues to work even when the grid is down. Granted, there are times you don’t get enough sun to fully recharge – and then you have to wait for more sun, but that is the nature of living off grid!
Oh, and the Kumquat could work also
Armadillos – I’ve seen a live armadillo as close as 15 miles south of my house, which is near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, but that was more than a decade ago, during a several year long stretch of winter lows that stayed above 0F. In the past decade, when our winter lows have gone between -10F and 0F each year, I haven’t seen any armadillos this far north. However, just last week my husband and I saw dead armadillos on Route 3 in southern Illinois, and the farthest north one was within the southern edge of the metro area. They are on the way. Not looking forward to another garden pest; deer have become predators of my garden the past few years, which they had not been before.
Trees: the Nanking cherries I planted 23 years ago died after the very hot summer of 2012. I’d say not to plant them unless you expect to remain well within USDA zone 6 or colder during their lifetime; they are usually rated to zone 6 or 7 at the warmest. On the other hand, the two tea plants (Camellia sinensis, the plant that brings us black, green, white, and other kinds of tea) which I planted in the warmest microclimate of our yard 10 years ago are still alive. I used to protect them in winter but I haven’t done that in the past few years and they are still surviving winter. They are slowly growing. I have made a bit of tea from them but I need to be more proactive about experimenting with tea production, so that I might be able to make a little tea for us and pass on some info about them to whoever buys our house after we age out of it.
Agreed on just doing migitation and keeping quiet about it. The county I live in has prepared its draft of a comprehensive plan for the next 25 years, which it has grandly named St. Louis County 2050: An Equitable and Sustainable Comprehensive Plan. I’ve read it; it depends on economic growth that isn’t going to happen because our decreasing population isn’t going to turn around and start increasing just because the county adopts this plan. No help will come from that political quarter, and since I don’t live in an HOA or a municipality, the county is my first level of government. As long as the county keeps on more or less ignoring us because we are in the economic backwaters of the county, and Missouri and the Feds do the same for the same reason, I can do such experimentation as I wish and share only with others who are genuinely interested.
And yes, you do need to write that post on downward mobility being the ticket to freedom, to spread the word and so those of us with experience with it can offer the benefits of that experience to those who want it.
JMG #54: if they have decided that McDonalds was a religious structure, I look forward to what they think of the Gateway Arch when they excavate it. I claim it’s a yoni. 😉
JMG,
Us boomers like to think that they started brainwashing kids long after we had departed childhood. But I recently came across episodes from an old show that was broadcast during the Saturday Morning Cartoon era in the 1970’s. It was called ARK II
The intro read by the narrator at the beginning of each show sums it up.
“For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich. Then pollution and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain, men who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed. This is their achievement: Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind.”
Its got it all. Rapid collapse due to pollution ( climate change) with the only salvation to be had was scientists traveling around in a futuristic RV. ( young scientists, plus a chimp not less). As they traveled around they encounter primitive humans living in caves, scavenging for a living.
It makes one think, were the Davos crowd hard at work back then getting kids ready for their bug-eating future? It was pretty much schlock , with its only redeeming quality being the beautiful Jean Marie Hon who played one of the young scientists.
I would be curious to know the details as to how you think civilizations will different in the hothouse and Ice Age futures.
In the hothouse world, a larger portion of the world will become to wet to farm (https://www.irishtimes.com/business/farming-food/2023/08/07/the-fields-are-too-wet-to-harvest-farmers-fear-loss-of-crops-due-to-record-rainfall/) and in the Ice Age world, a larger portion will become to arid and dry to farm.
I personally see civilization as easier in the Ice Age world because in the hothouse world, it is difficult to build anything that isn’t toppled by frequent storms and it is difficult to build geographically extensive states or to trade with other civilizations due to said storms. In the Ice Age world, human beings will be able to cross the land bridges everywhere again.
This is a fantastic article. Stay ahead of the tide. Cider apple trees are becoming viable in hardiness zone 4, not just the cold hardy ones like Northern Spy either. Yarlington Mill and Bulmers are worth a try.
Also, tool sheds always look like tool sheds on the outside.
A note on figs: They are one of the most epigenetically adaptable plants. Varieties with identical genomes often differ markedly in traits such as cold tolerance. So even with clonal propagation you can get a lot of adaptation to local climate. Pretty cool!
Also, I think Ben Falk’s latest edition of The Resilient Farm and Homestead is good. Permaculture, but heavy on the experience and realism and lighter on theory and ideology, with some valuable lessons learned since the book first came out.
>Is the equation AI = Actually Indians your invention
Cannot take credit for that one, it was a meme I ran across.
>What do you do, live in a dreamworld or something!?
You should’ve said “Why yes and so do you”
@siliconguy 51 — the merlin app is fantastic. I picked up 2 passions during the pandemic. Chickens (as our host knows) and deer hunting. Last few years sitting in the woods during fall hearing lots of birds. Got this app and now know a multitude of calls. Blue Jays, crows and cardinals squawking a lot means some thing big *may* be near by (another hunter or a deer).
@jmg “made American homes and communities far more resilient in the event of natural disasters or power outages”
this will need to happen — I am in a modern Chicago suburb. Modern homes aren’t built for excessive heat without an AC pumping. I remember in the 70’s in the city sleeping out on the grandparents porch to avoid the heat — no central AC in modest city homes back then!!
It might be a good retirement career retro fitting these houses.
thx again for the essay
Jerry
@Katsama #25
I should be able to send you some fig seeds in a few weeks as they will ripen soon. Best way is to send a direct message to me at my Dreamwidth account “scottyc”.
I live south of Fresno in the California Central Valley. Starting mid to late May, the daily high is 90 or above into October. Temperatures in June, July, August are high 90’s or above and the daily high can remain at or above 100 for a week or more. These temperatures defeat non AC methods – combination of a whole house fan pulling in the cooler air at night, tight windows and doors, good insulation, fans around the house, and a swamp or evaporative cooler. During the frequent over 100 temps with these methods in house temperatures will still be in the 80’s causing people to park themselves in front of a tan or the blast from the swamp cooler. You get a cut in rates from the electric company if you are willing to have them remotely turn off your air condition during peak AC use hours if the grid is reaching its limits. Yet this area was populated without AC or electricity for that matter years ago.
Back in those days an Italian immigrant built on underground complex near Fresno to live in to escape the heat. Now a tourist attraction. https://undergroundgardens.com/. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens
@#25
I have never grown figs, so maybe there is a reason why this will not work. But, at the risk of sounding snide— Figs are mostly seeds. Any figs. So go buy some of your favorite figs and break some up and plant them, see what happens.
Or you may be better off planting whole figs without breaking them open, as figs are pollinated by miniature wasps which live within them. So by planting whole figs the new figs which sprout may already have their wasps, without which no fig fruit will form.
I’d be interested in what anyone who has actually grown figs thinks.
“𝑻𝒖𝒓𝒏 𝒂 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝒚𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒚, 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒂𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝒄𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒍𝒔𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑. 𝑰𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌? 𝑶𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒕—𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒇 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐 𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒊𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒊𝒃𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒌𝒍𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒐𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒖𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖.”
This is a classic!
@JMG and @BeardTree: Many thanks…I may give it a go, if I can find a sunny enough spot!
Axé
JMG,
I am glad this ended with “try a bunch of things you think might work”, your going to get quite a bit of skill development with that particular approach and you won’t get stuck on a “best solution” that isn’t best for yourself. (Many a failed DIY project began with me copying the “best build” as defined by experts only for me to learn that I hadn’t the resources, skills, time, etc… to implement it and the 4th best build was the right one for me.)
Mr. H, once population contraction sets in, all businesses and all investments lose money year over year, and the capital concentrations that make tech-bro culture viable come apart very quickly. I really do have to do another post on that one of these days, don’t I?
Teresa, excellent advice!
David, nah, you haven’t thought it through. Here’s a copy of a book from our time; it was translated from ancient English into Old High Telonian in 9824 AD, and from Telonian to Wazashi by an eccentric antiquarian in 14,898 AD; written on highly durable sheets of pthap and buried in the ruins of a long-forgotten city, it was excavated by Meluthu archeologists in 36,441 AD, and after more than three centuries of work was finally translated out of Wazashi into Meluiiu just after 40,000 AD; Meluiiu became a religious language of an unusually long-lived cult, and this made it possible for the linguists of the F’kathai Empire to work out a conjectural translation in 58,134 AD; the F’ka translation was very widely circulated, and translations out of that language into Bra’a’aki and Hpoiu became popular; two copies of the Hpoiu translation and several fragments of the Bra’a’aki version made it into the Great Library of Thmau, which was buried intact by a mad autocrat in 64,238 AD and not found for more than twenty thousand years, and since everything in the Great Library was printed on thin aluminum sheets, it was all still there when treasure hunters broke into the buried ruins in 88,194 AD and accidentally launched a spectacular renaissance of ancient cultures. From there, the text was passed from hand to hand, culture to culture, and language to language to reach the hundredth millennium. Now imagine that the book in question was Alice in Wonderland, and think of what a complete hash all those translations will have made of it!
As for the current population of the Gulf, in this future history the sea rose far enough to make what’s now Tennessee a coastal region, then withdrew far to the south of its current level as the ice advanced. Add in a hundred millennia of population movements, invasions, conquests, genetic drift, and genetic engineering; I’d be astounded if the population of inland areas like those near the ruins of Muirgien Seittila — that’s their best guess, based on a few surviving scraps of our alphabet in a source from the Great Library of Thmau, at “Morgan City, LA” — had even a tenth of one per cent of the genetics of the current population. Think about the great migrations from Antarctica in the 58th millennium, just for starters!
TylerA, one of the reasons I’m in New England these days is that, yes, some places will have an easier transition than others. As for data centers in orbit, I’m all in favor of that, so long as the tech bros go with them.
Terrence, you have an unusual system, then. Many of the grid-tied systems that have gone in recently don’t have that option.
SLClaire, the Marching Armadillos would be a good band name. I’m delighted to hear about your tea plants! As for the Gateway Arch, it collapsed in the great earthquake of 2062, and the ruins plundered for metal thereafter; archeologists who excavated the ruins many millennia later didn’t realize it was an arch, and came up with an elaborate theory about how it was used to track the solstices and equinoxes!
Clay, now there’s a blast from the past. I watched a few episodes of Ark II, and wondered where the RV filled its gas tank.
David, “too wet to farm” is the kind of thing you hear from people who’ve never heard of rice paddies and chinampas. Too dry to farm is quite another matter, and will be quite common — but then it’s not exactly unusual now…
Ian, ha!
Jerry, too many current houses probably can’t be retrofitted, but with a declining population that’ll be less of a crisis.
BeardTree, some areas will become too hot and dry for permanent human populations, but then that’s true of some areas of the world right now, of course.
Helix, thank you.
Fra’ Lupo, happy lemonading!
GlassHammer, skill development and experimentation are essential now; maximum efficiency is not. Another thing I need to revisit in a post is the fact that resilience is the inverse of efficiency…
JMG,
Yes, the amount of injuries I have sustained trying to be maximally efficient on a DIY project is just depressing.
Tales from the Twilight World: Our little village is currently planning to install >10 MW PV on an area of arable land which is farmed by one of the last medium-sized farmers in our region. The reasons are manifold, interestingly nobody is using things like climate change or “The Energy Transition” (TM) to argue for the project. I guess this is partly due to the fact that AfD polled very strongly in our village and in the wider region in general and to some extend I count it as a little victory for myself. As a member of the local council I insisted early on that everybody should at least be honest enough to call it what it is – an economic project and certainly not an environmental project. At least, nobody is talking “green” here, anymore. Well, they’re pushing this nuts project anyway and the main reason is: Debt. Our village is debt-ridden as most villages are, but a golden future will open up for all of us if we throw away lots of acres of arable land for PV, wind energy and as a potential industrial park. There are five layers of administrative bodies starting at the bottom with our village and reaching up to the federal government. Every single layer has accumulated a significant amount of debt and if one were to calculate the debt per capita of each layer, he would find that the debt of the bottom layer matters as much as a fart in a hurricane in the overall picture. The part which renders this whole project fully insane – The area that is designated for electricity generation is the best arable land we have around and at the same time it has a northward slope of maybe 10° (expert tip: Germany is NOT located on the southern hemisphere). It’s not that we haven’t land that is worse suited for agriculture and falls of to the south, no no.
But that’s exactly what you’re talking about in your essay, isn’t it? We are investing dwindling resources in projects that will have no net benefit for our society and even if we take that as the gold standard, the results are sloppy at best. Which is probably spelled out like “the ship is sinking with increasing speed”.
It’s a tangled mess here. “Prevent resistance from touching it” comes to my mind more than often but then we have our roots here and the farmer whose business will be harmed by the project is a friend (and our source for milk), I know all the people whose interests are concerned in one way or the other, and so on. And yes, while divination comes in handy in such situations it is maybe no surprise that there seem to be no comfortable paths available. That’s maybe how you notice when a problem is turning into a predicament – a dwindling number of ways that lead out of the situation comfortably.
Greetings,
Nachtgurke
Robert Mathiesen wrote, ” I have arthritis in my knees, diagnosed about 6 months ago as ‘bone-on-bone’ in one knee.”
My partner’s slowly developing arthritis had grown bad enough last summer that he was experiencing severe hand pain any time he did any digging or used any construction tools. We had previously muscle tested whether his arthritis was the kind that could improve by excluding foods in the nightshade family from his diet, and had gotten a definitive negative answer. When we tested that question again last summer, however, his body responded with a definitive positive answer.
My partner was a bit incredulous, so I retold him the story of when I was performing with Stuart Hodes, who had been one of Martha Graham’s principal dancers. Stuart was about 75 when I worked with him, but he could still gracefully lift lightweight partners over his head. He had retired from dancing decades prior due to severe arthritis pain and had become an administrator and gone on the lecture circuit instead. While on a lecture tour in China, his translator noticed that he would wince on any staircases that had turns or corners. Stuart explained that that was his arthritis pain, so his translator immediately booked Stuart an appointment at his traditional Chinese doctor. That doctor diagnosed the type of arthritis that nightshades exacerbate, so Stuart completely eliminated nightshades from his diet, with the result that I found myself dancing with him years later!
As for my partner Stephen, he has stopped eating all nightshades (with a few accidental indulgences or oversights, which always end up aggravating his arthritis symptoms.) Although, unlike Stuart, Stephen couldn’t ever gracefully lift any partners over his head, he is currently in France burying a new arrosage system for the 63 fruit and nut trees we planted last fall. That included eight 50-year-old olives that needed meter-deep holes dug. Yeah, he’s doing quite alright arthritis-wise!
Outside of muscle testing or some other form of divination, I have no idea how to determine whether one’s arthritis is the kind that is affected by nightshade consumption. What I do know is that, when I went to the internet to get information about that type of arthritis, it had been most meticulously scrubbed of all mentions. When I left out “arthritis” from my searches and simply typed in “anti-nightshade diet”, the search engines offered lots of hits; however, not one of them gave any advice or encouragement on the subject. They all screeched at the top of their lungs that there’s no benefit to be had and that all claims have already been debunked and disproved.
That was all the signal that I needed to be sure beyond any reasonable doubt that I had stumbled upon a truly effective remedy, one that the pharmaceutical industry was horrified could seriously cut into its profits from the crippling remedies it so lucratively peddles. There was no way I was going to let Stephen go on suffering —nor get out of helping me dig all those treepits— simply due to their self-referencing allopathic gaslighting! While not all forms of arthritis are affected by eliminating nightshade consumption, it appears that no one can be certain what percentage actually are. Clearly enough for the drug peddlers to gussy themselves up in their most high pearl-clutching drag, rise up onto their hind legs, and bray themselves into exhaustion.
Just one factual comment on this excellent essay: today (in CA at least) when a rooftop solar installation includes batter storage, your panels do power your home when the grid is down.
I’d have checked in here with a report on what’s planned for planting in the upcoming season but, mmmfffmmmbbmm (hands over mouth), mum’s the word. A growing pile of seeds is accruing, from all over the place, lets just say.
Early in we’d kinda thought about looking into the assorted NRCS grants for hedgerow plantings and whatnot, but concluded that the less anyone knew about what we’re doing, the better. I don’t t like strings attached or nosy (government) types. Hedgerow being planned right now, to screen the view from the road.
AnnM #40,
Glad to hear you’re having success with figs. I also live in OR, just south of PDX. I planted some figs a couple of yrs ago – Desert Kings – now they’re starting to take off. It’s wonder to me that figs, which I associated with SoCal when I lived there in the 70’s, will grow in damp, grey, and chilly Oregon
John
BeardTree .. yeah, I remember reading about that place in the local rag (Sac Bee) many moons ago, as a youngin. My initial thought was: what a fantastic solution to all that HARD PAN! I had close relatives just up HWY 99 between Chowchilla and Madera, who managed several hundred acres of that sandy soil, often with that hard, cement-like strata deposited at various depths. My uncle was always churning up the stuff whilst discing between rows of crops, to be tossed aside along the field margins.
I started to look at paleoclimate, as I was wondering how much warmer the mid-Holocene warm period, or the peak of the last interglacial, was than the pre-industrial near-present. It turns out that is actually a bit complicated and will depend on the seasons, and where in the world you are.
It would be possible to write something long about this, but I would just like to share this paper How warm was Britain during the Last Interglacial? A critical review of Ipswichian (MIS 5e) palaeotemperature reconstructions Candy et al 2016 which says that in the last interglacial (Ipswichian / Eemian 124-119kyr ago) it seems like the summer temperatures in what would become Britain were warmer than near-present, but winter not so much, the seasonality being greater than now.
“…From there, the text was passed from hand to hand, culture to culture, and language to language to reach the hundredth millennium. Now imagine that the book in question was Alice in Wonderland, and think of what a complete hash all those translations will have made of it!”
One has to wonder if the civilizations of that time, knowing that a myriad of other civilizational cycles happened before then, will have a belief system similar to the modern Hindu notion of a era of descending “yugas” (or “Ages”) each more degenerate than the last.
https://www.rudraksha-ratna.com/articles/the-four-yugas?srsltid=AfmBOopOjRR8ZTlSQzjbFa23463jPozOZwxXoXswQxRb7LmHT4gOwSFc
“Too dry to farm is quite another matter, and will be quite common — but then it’s not exactly unusual now…”
Yes, I suppose future civilizations will be able to farm in Siberia, the Sahara, Antarctic Peninsula in a way that our current (relatively) cold and dry climate cannot.
Speaking of farming, what do you think of Jared Diamond’s declaration that the Neolithic Revolution was the biggest mistake of the human species?
https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agriculture-worst-mistake/
Mr. Greer, I do hope that idea of a ‘fossil Barbi’, in whatever form, that you and I mused about briefly not too long ago, finds its way somewhere inside your fictional future.. ‘;]
Fra’ Lupo @78,
We used to live in Clifton, NJ and I kept a fig tree for 15-20 years planted against an eastern facing wall of our garage. The winters could often kill off the above ground plant but it always came back (vigorously!) from the roots.
Mine was a cutting from my mother-in-law’s housekeeper who lived in the ironbound section of Newark. Her figs almost never died back but then her husband was diligent about wrapping them in burlap for the winter. Me? Not so much!😂🤷🏼♂️
Good luck and best wishes.
Courtney
Whether that mass of plastic be an unspeakable horror, or a cherished talisman, I’ll leave that to you .. assuming it fits within whatever storyline you hammer out. Hopefully, you don’t find me too presumptuous in this matter. If so .. well, that’s the, um, breaks. ‘;]
Nephite@22 There is a company in Charlottesville VA doing quite well with this. Some gentrified neighbors have complained of “invasives” (white clover) showing up in their pristine monocultures. Decades ago, the seed companies mixed 10% white clover with grass seed (back when most folks cared for their own yards).
Fra’Lupa – Kumquats, a citrus with more orange flavor, work fine in 7a, at least next to a sunny brick wall. For me, they have been more hardy and prolific than lemons.
Clay @28. Add on fees and insurance have changed the math with rooftop grid-tied solar in our area, yet with inflation, they still work out in the mid-term. In the longer term, studying how to revise them for DC usage and befriending those who could help seems worthwhile.
Grid is showing its’ age.. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-two-achilles-heels-of-complex?ref=thebrowser.com
“Invasive species” has to be one of the dumbest things the powers that be have ever thought up. I have kind of a front row seat on the battle. My house backs onto a small county owned greenspace/park. My next door neighbor also backs onto the park and he has a forest of bamboo in his yard. I battle the “invasive species” bamboo that constantly tries to get a foothold in my yard all year long by mowing it down, but it has to be battled constantly or it takes over. Constant vigilance in the form of mowing has been successful in keeping the bamboo at bay in my yard for more than 20 years now.
However, the bamboo is also spreading from my neighbor’s backyard into the parkland. The county poisoned a whole bunch of it in the park and cut down a lot, but it is now a few years since they did that and from what I can tell, the bamboo just snickered at the county’s efforts and kept on going. I noticed that since the county did some other work in the park, bamboo is now spreading along paths in the park that are not even close to my neighbor’s yard, so I am thinking the county guys contaminated the rest of the park with bamboo when they came around, digging up stuff.
There is one kind of tree in the park that is a recent arrival and that has succeeded in spite of the bamboo: an “invasive species” from China called Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima). The county cuts down and poisons these trees every time they get a chance, but a small thicket of them appeared in the park land land behind my house, and so far the county has left them alone. I hear bad things about this tree, e.g. it secretes a chemical that kills every other kind of tree and only allows itself and its brothers to grow. But I like the trees. They are pretty, they grow super fast, and I kind of think that in a plant on plant contest, trees of heaven could give bamboo a run for its money. Kind of Godzilla versus Mothra in the plant world. I read that the trees of heaven smell bad and maybe they do some parts of the year, but the little biting no-see-um flies that hang around the bamboo don’t seem to like the trees of heaven. I call it a win. I will see what else I can add to the battle, but don’t have much hope that the natives have a chance.
When looking at arthritis one must distinguish between rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. The first is an autoimmune disease that attacks the joints . The second is the gradual wearing down of the cartlilage in the joints. This most often strikes the knees and hips.
Rheumatoid arthritis can be improved by various homeopathic and dietary methods. Osteoarthritis can be slowed down with proper care. But once Osteoarthritis gets to the point where the cartilage is all gone, and the joint is bone on bone not much short of a joint replacement will help. The stronger the muscles and ligaments in the joint are the better you will get along with severe Osteoarthritis, but pain will be ever present.
I suffered from this in my hips for many years ( I think the problem was hereditary) and finally broke down and got hip replacements. I was lucky that my wife had a job with insurance that made it affordable for us. The recovery was difficult. But now ( 2 years later) I am pain free and able to do anything I want. Current guess is that they will last for 20 years and if I am still around then ,they may have to do surgery to replace the plastic wear cup, not the whole joint.
This reminds me of an online “discussion” I had recently, where people were saying cats shouldn’t be let outside because they kill so many birds. I pointed out that domestic cats have been endemic to North America for literally centuries now, and there is nothing wrong with animals killing other animals. It’s about the most natural thing there is.
People simply can’t imagine that 1) ecosystems change, 2) it’s irrelevant that one species may have been carried over by humans, and 3) critters killing other critters is not a disruption to pristine nature.
Katsmama, figs grow super easy from cuttings! I don’t know about seeds.
Back when my husband was still alive and I still lived in a house, our front yard was a flower garden. The only grass was the paths around the flowers (and it was very weedy). I grew anything that caught my eye and I could get cheap: wildflowers (I had a big patch of purple coneflowers), roses, daylilies, spring bulbs, self-seeding annuals, etc. The birds, bees, butterflies, rabbits, squirrels, and who knows what else, loved my yard. It was a very lively place. The goldfinches would congregate by the dozens in the fall and eat the seeds from the fading coneflowers. Anytime anyone would pass by, there would be a flash of yellow as the birds flew up to the trees. One day a man knocked on my door and asked why I had so many goldfinches. He had been trying to get them into his yard, but couldn’t seen to attract them. I told him that they loved coneflower seeds and dug some coneflowers up and gave them to him. A daycare centre near me used to walk the children around the neighbourhood. One day I happened to be outside when they approached and I stopped them and told them when they passed by, there would be a flash of yellow as the birds flew to the trees. And there was, and the little ones ooohed and ahhhed. I hope I encouraged some future gardeners that day.
The back yard was mostly vegetables and some berries and more flowers. And, yes, a clothesline that was used constantly, weather permitting. There was wildlife there, too, usually trying to eat my strawberries.
And for anyone interested in eating dandelions, I posted dandelion “recipes” on Ecosophia Dreamwidth, July 4,2025 Frugal Friday. It’s #45, so you’ll have to scroll to the bottom. It’s not so much recipes as ways to fix them.
I’d say there’s something in between “problem” and “predicament” – a “wicked problem”. That’s a problem that has some many elements, so many stakeholders, that trying to fix it changes the problem itself, so we keep having to solve a new problem aka “muddling through”. I think that “climate change”, in the most favorable scenario, is “wicked”
Hi JMG,
You write, “The problem was that maize farming was central to the ideology of the classic Maya, and control over the corn crop was equally central to the Mayan class system and the political superstructure that ran the city-states.” Therein lies the root (haha) of just about any human problem with more than 1 human affected. My pessimistic self thinks that the only way to remove this root involves the same effects the Maya experienced, until the root reappears in another group of > 1 person.
I’ve a friend who’s installing rooftop EV. I asked if the panels could power his home if power from the utility went out. I got a blank look. I asked again. He said something to the effect of “if I install batteries then I would have power.” I finally had to literally draw him a diagram and ask if, in the event of a power outage, he could open the main breaker to the house and have the panels provide power. At last he understood; the answer is no. I can see no point at all in having rooftop solar if it’s useless in a utility outage.
Shutting the **** up is, for humans as we are currently configured, effectively impossible.
Napoleon replied, “Create encampments under the trees around Paris for them (the troops of the army).”
The aide responded, “But General, Paris lacks the trees to do what you are asking.”
Without hesitation, Napoleon answered, “Then plant trees.”
“But General,” said the aide, “it will take many years for the trees to be large enough to provide sufficient shade.”
“Then start planting the trees today,” replied the General.
I haven’t learned how to format comments on this site. I apologize for 4 different subjects being clumped together.
Hi John Michael,
The hippy technologies are excellent at producing flows inward to the domestic economy. They were never going to scale. And for your interest, solar hot water works about eight months of each year here, and firewood makes up for the remainder. Over the past year or so, the tiny little bit of LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas) used for when it is both warm and cloudy (therefore little solar or firewood energy), has been further reduced. Gas supplies in this state are at, or probably more likely in terminal decline. Best to get ahead of the game don’t you reckon?
It’s funny you mention the trees. We grow a couple of Macadamia nut trees here (way out of their natural area), and after fifteen years they’re not big, but neither are they dead – and three decades ago that outcome would not be possible. Winters go by now when no snow falls. Hmm.
Oh, and you may not have noticed, but it all comes back to Mad Max / The Road Warrior. Truly! That XB Ford Falcon coupe he drove in the original film is quite a small vehicle with a Curb weight of 1,394 kg / 3,066 pounds. Most of the vehicles on the roads in these more enlightened times weigh far more than that. All of the advantages of engine technology improvements / efficiencies were handed over to, heavier vehicles… Tells me everything I need to know.
Cheers
Chris
@JMG – good point about the future of negotiations with electricity supplies. I see rationing as almost certain, but there could be a change in some of the building codes or how they’re enforced as well. I live in downstate Illinois near Peoria, and numerous solar panel “farms” continue to pop up around here, trading some of the best farmland in the world for an intermittent source of power. Like the extensive wind farms around here, I smell corruption – though it may provide a band-aid to continue our lifestyles for a year or two longer.
As people who implement various strategies for different vegetation or rooftop solar water heaters and other conservation methods, I think the advice may change a bit from “don’t tell anyone” to “share the news”, especially if like minded people band up and gain some safety in numbers.
@Robert Mathiesen # 4 – phones are definitely compromised. About 10 years ago while living in Washington State, I was chatting with my brother in Illinois about options for our dad, who was living in Florida, recently a widower, and needing a different living arrangement. The next day I received a call from an unknown number. Reverse lookup revealed it to be an “assisted living and nursing home placement service” near Orlando. I was surprised. Then about five years ago I moved several times, and changed my phone number three times in 5 years. Some “treasure finding” companies were chasing after me and my brothers over funds leftover from my stepmom’s condo foreclosure in Florida, and I never got more than a month’s respite from the incessant calls. Verizon makes good coin selling you and your info down the river.
@Loner # 41 – err, you are not alone. The Long Descent “ostracization” process seems to be picking up speed, though still lagging behind the Jabbed/Not-Jabbed wedge. I’m fortunate enough to have a few friends and two of my brothers who tolerate my views, but I’ve simply had to abandon others who can’t handle what I believe is “reality”. It’s part of wrapping your head around how the Long Descent affects you personally, and is an ongoing process to adapt to it.
@ Mr. House, #55 and #57 – I probably have some similar views to yours, in that as the mask has come off our betters over the last couple of decades, the potential for even more evil doings is apparent. But, some of that is outside my control, and I just have to be flexible enough to prepare for bad things while hoping for the best. As a civilization we’re steering for the rocks, but…..that’s the way it goes.
A really easy source of inspiration of what to plant for future change (whether climatic or land use) is to head down to the local unmanaged weedscapes (streams and watercourses through towns and suburbs is a good place to start) of your local area and see what is growing, but also use your imagination to forecast what sort of ecosystem structure will arise out of the plant mix growing into the future, and by doing this you can accelerate ecological succession for the benefit of both the local human and animal population.
The more radical end of the permaculture branch (the one that isn’t infected by the dogma of the worldwide ‘movement’, which unfortunately took on the typically Faustian transnational Church structure, with all its expert dogma issues) has long been for utilising and accepting novel ecosystems/weedscapes as resources and inspirations. This was even done by government botanists in the 19th century here in Aus, where Baron Von Mueller introduced blackberries to the south of Australia, which quickly became a rampant weed, but what many don’t realise is that he did so to protect the landscape from the shocking gully erosion that had taken place from sheep overgrazing, and he probably never thought we would be stupid enough not to manage or use the blackberry vines for food and fodder.
The wild apple diversification that occurred in North America is a similar story, which you have touched on with Johnny Appleseed @JMG.
I grew up in New Zealand thinking there were no snakes here. Turns out we do have sea snakes on a seasonal basis and they are becoming more common, with news articles on them turning up in the past year https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/second-yellow-bellied-sea-snake-washes-up-in-coromandel/EFY4X3HMDFE4TD6GISMY2WGKWE/#google_vignette
Before they dammed rivers and tapped acquafiers and irrigated the western usa, the natural boundary for farming was the 98th, dry farming was a thing. The questionable mantra rain follows the plow, based on the idea that farming changes climate by boosting water in circulation, aside, other ideas like compacting the earth to reduce evaporation – discovered when the ground large herds of cattle had driven over sprouted plants – and cultivating a mulch of dust on the surface for insulation – may be of interest here as well.
I just got a laugh reading an article that invoked Gaia as an argument against climate change. As though Gaia would be irrevocably harmed by a climate a couple degrees warmer than now….
It’s not surprising that “normies” are ignorant, but intellectuals are supposed to know better, right….right? 😉
@ The Other Owen
There are two types of data centers involved in LLMs, the ones that run the models and the web interfaces to it and the ones that train the models, the second type consumes orders of magnitude than the first. But scaled for a lot of users also the models and web interfaces consume a lot.
On another side brains are pretty much energy efficient when there will be the first energy crisis those energy centers will fail, the part of the internet, that is not dependent on a lot of energy will still be up, cloud and data centers down, routers, nimble DNS servers, etc will be up, then the P2P and low energy communication app will be used by the people for whatever info they need to share, it is not excluded that some DNS, and other servers would be used from China and Russia for example. Who knows if the gulping NSA servers will still be up.
There’s a pattern in Cloud failures, increasing in criticality and time of outage, steadily going up…
When the fracking oil goes belly up, natural gas will be felt first, and US and its data centers has the most usage of natural gas for electricity.
I entirely agree with spreading as many invasive species as possible, in as disorganized a way as possible. It’s Mother Nature’s way.
Don’t forget: we ourselves are an invasive species, spread in as disorganized a way as possible.
Katsmama,
Regarding growing fig trees from seed, some varieties of fig like the Calimyrna, which are commonly found in dried form around Christmas, have been pollinated and so have viable seeds. The viable seeds give the fruit its richer taste. However even if you could grow a Calimyrna fig tree in your climate, it’s figs would never develop because the fruits development requires a specialized insect, the fig wasp (Blastophaga psenes) to pollinate the fruit. The wasp is native to southern Europe.
Most figs I am familiar with that grow in North America, like the Brown Turkey and Chicago Hardy, are able to grow fruit without pollination. Their seeds are not viable and they are usually propagated through cuttings.
There might be some interesting experimentation to be done in growing fig trees, but in order to get results in accord with your hopes, you’ll probably need detailed horticultural info on fig propagation.
Hope this note, orients you towards success.
For my previous comment #85: “an” invasive species. It’s a pity that your website doesn’t have editing.
For Rhino #84: PV plus batteries is already cheaper than coal. Don’t discount it.
The baby bust has come in time. When the population falls, that will simplify decentralization. If the economy declines more slowly than the population, then wealth per person will increase.
@JMG and Owen
>Is the equation AI = Actually Indians your invention
Actually Indian and it’s variant Another Indian.
It runs also in the Romanian IT milieu, when they say to us that: AI took your job, and people actually hand the work and training to an Indian.
Which is crazy since in IT, Romania is lower on the pay scale and higher on the skill scale including English language and cultural similarities. But since the funnels have started they seem harder to stop and they suck everything in. So it takes everything, even the jobs that were profitably to run in the West. 5 years in they will make a book “Death by India” and blame it on anyone but themselves.
Just today I was walking past yet another poster for “Save the Reefs”. The business of repeatedly seeding new reefs so that they can be blasted by yet another oceanic heat wave desperately trying to hold them in place. I suspect many in those businesses are more than aware of this, but there is no business in telling people the ugly truth.
Until they can solve the direct cause of the change, heating of the oceans, this is not a solution but mere coping. One of those examples of both naive optimism and exploitation of this.
As we speak, our elites are in the midst of constructing our civilizations version of the massive, resource wasting temples you describe – behemoths that will dwarf the solar fields and wind turbines in both size, scale, hubris, and waste. I speak of the absurd data centers that are popping up like mushrooms across the rotting carcass of our faustian civilization.
These temples to the god progress are nothing less than a desperate hail mary pass to try and save our dying society. The main idea behind faustian civilization seems to be that through the might of the gos reason and progress, humanity can overcome any obstacle or limit given enough intelligence amd information. Faced with unsolvable, insurmountable natural limits, the priests of this religion insist that the answer must be to aggregate all the information in the world and put it at the fingertips of a superhuman intelligence.
Indeed, this great effort is nothing less than an attept to sacrifice all available resources to the building of these massive supercomputer temples to the great god progress, who shall surely reward his loyal followers for theor faith amd sacrifice by incarnationg his avatar upon the earth, the father progress manifesting his savior son, glorious AI! This AI will the offer the faithful slavation from such wretchedness as natural limits and adherence to histoical cycles, delivering the faithful unto the heavenly paradise in space as foretold by the prophet Rodenberry in the sacred star trek revelations!
You once described modern materialism as christianity resold with the serial numbers filed off, and it really shows here in this desperate final attempt to appeal to our civilization’s god for salvation. The fact it is not only doomed to failure, but will in fact accelerate the very failure they are trying to forestall, is a bit of irony that often puts a grand smile on my face – all the more so because I am, in fact, employed in building these gargantuan temples to a god I don’t believe in. I’ve taken your advice and keep silent about being a heretical nonbeliever, let alone occult practicioner – though I do my level best to at least spread mocking doubt as to the ability of our elites to actually pull off their grand vision, in quiet corners away from the ears of overseers. Not that it takes much – the moment one actually starts working on these projects, one witnesses a level of arrogant ignorance, absurd delusion and staggering waste that would shock even you. I have witnessed many of the faithful followers of the god progress lose their religion because of what they witness during the building of these temples – I just nudged them a bit in the right direction.
For my part, I rather like the idea that I’m helping this arrrogant elite priesthood destroy itself. Besides, its guaranteed work, and as long as I can use the money to buy food and land and seeds and tools and pay my taxes, sure, I’ll build your temples – and then in a few years, when the whole thing proves to be a catastrophic waste of resources that doesnt deliver the promised salvation, I’ll accept the pay of whatever local government, baron, or warlord meeds me to tear it apart to scavenge material for something more useful. I’ll be uniquely qualified – I built the damned thing, so I’ll know how to tear it apart – and I’ll accept whatever coin feeds my family and pays may taxes/tribute on both ends of the project!
Anyway, thank you for your insightful article – I’m actually now planning to adjust what trees I plant on my land in accordance with agricultural zones to the south to prepare my children for the climate to come. The solar water heater was brilliant – please keep the practical suggestions to prepare for the coming changes coming – you’re the only person I know of on the internet actually giving actionable, useful advice on how to deal with the grand problems of our time.
GlassHammer, sorry to hear it!
Nachtgurke, that’s really sad.
Christophe, I decided to try oil pulling recently for that exact reason. All the websites I could find online pooh-poohed claims that it could help detoxify the body; the few that strayed close to some approximation of honesty admitted that all that this meant was that no experimental evidence supported the claim, and since they didn’t cite experimental evidence contradicting it, what that means is that the experiments simply haven’t been done — useful, if you want to keep from finding something you don’t want to find. These days, if a corporate shill in a lab coat — er, an “expert” — claims that something doesn’t work, I assume that they’re either lying or just plan wrong.
Socal, interesting. That isn’t the case for most of the rooftop solar installations I’m directly familiar with.
Temporaryreality, delighted to hear this. If I ever have the chance to plant a hedge it’s going to include hawthorn and blackthorn, not least because both have nasty sharp thorns and make a very dense growth pattern that’s hard either to see or to get through.
Markernewek, thanks for this.
David, no, their belief is closer to the Chinese notion of the mandate of heaven — every technate rises because of its virtues and then falls because of its vices. Of course their ideas of virtue and vice are not ours…
Polecat, I need to figure out how long the relevant plastic lasts. I know that a concrete Ronald McDonald statue has a fascinating destiny in store for it.
Jean, I adore ailanthus. It grows in the worst imaginable soil in urban brownfields — do you remember a book from long ago titled A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? The tree was an ailanthus. The bark is medicinal, the wood is used to make Asian steaming baskets, and is also excellent firewood — since it can gain 7 feet in height a year, and coppices enthusiastically, it could be a major source of sustainable heating fuel down the road. Of course the authorities hate it!
Zak, oh, I know. Too many people have never outgrown toddler-level ideas about nature.
Annette2, thank you for this! I hope it inspires others to do similar things.
Pete, sure, but I think it’s past “wicked problem” at this point.
Bird, yep. I’ve seen the same thing. BTW, your formatting came through just fine — there’s an odd glitch that makes the preview look as though it’s gone away.
Chris, thank you. That one simple sentence…
THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO SCALE.
…sums up everything the appropriate tech people tried to say, and everything about green energy the cultural mainstream has done quadruple backflips to ignore.
Drhooves, oh, sooner or later, sure, but we’re not there yet.
PumpkinScone, and that’s also a fine approach.
KAN, I wonder how soon some of them will start crawling back up on land to stay…
Jstn, I’m sure it will be tried, at least.
Zachary, oh my aching sides. Yeah, Gaia, who loves it when the whole planet is a tropical swamp…
…will intervene to keep us from suffering the consequences of our actions!
Paradoctor, I’m good with it! (I fixed your typo, btw.)
Michael, and nobody’s asking how often this has happened in the past, either. There have been plenty of oceanic heat spikes since coral reefs first evolved, you know…
Paedrig, exactly! It’s never occurred to anybody involved in this project that if they got a superintelligent computer, it might look at all the data, give the electronic equivalent of a shrug, and say, “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you. If you’d taken all the resources you put into me and did something useful with them, that might have helped, but as it is, you’re screwed.”
You manage to make this topic a delight and a hope to read. Thank you.