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Why worry about pollution if life expectancy keeps increasing? Ahem…. are you sure?

Why worry about pollution if life expectancy keeps increasing? Ahem…. are you sure? It seems clear that we won’t get to reach Methuselah’s age: in most Western countries, the average life expectancy has started decreasing from 2014. It could be, mainly an effect of pollution. Image source. If you ever got into a discussion on the […]

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The real Energy Return of Crude Oil: smaller than you would have imagined

The real Energy Return of Crude Oil: smaller than you would have imagined A simple but important study by Luciano Celi shows what is the real energy return that oil companies manage to attain. Much smaller than you would have believed, in several cases it is today well below 10. Which means that renewable energies […]

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What can we Learn From the Middle Ages About Collapse? The Great Challenge of the Seneca Bottleneck

What can we Learn From the Middle Ages About Collapse? The Great Challenge of the Seneca Bottleneck The idea that a collapse is awaiting our civilization seems to be gaining ground, although it has not reached the mainstream debate. But no civilization before ours escaped collapse, so it makes sense to think that the entity […]

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Something about the Oil companies’ EROI

Something about the Oil companies’ EROI Researchers involved in the energy sector know very well what the EROI (acronym of Energy Return on Investment) is and how frequently is cited in scientific publications, in spite of differences of definition among researchers. Well aware of the fact that we arrived last in the middle of a […]

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Winning the War of Climate Communication. Is Greta Thunberg the Memetic Weapon we Needed?

February 26, 2019

Winning the War of Climate Communication. Is Greta Thunberg the Memetic Weapon we Needed? Who speaks on behalf of young people about climate? Greta Thunberg does. She is the embodiment of the concept that what matters in communication is not the message but the messenger. Only a believable messenger can pass a believable message. And […]

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The Seneca Cliff According to H.P. Lovecraft

February 22, 2019

The Seneca Cliff According to H.P. Lovecraft It is strange how sometimes fiction manages to catch human feelings and ideas in ways that are not easy to articulate in terms of facts and models. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has been one of the world masters of the horror genre, managing to flesh out some of our […]

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What’s Emperor Trump Doing? He is Busy at Splitting the Empire in Two

February 11, 2019

What’s Emperor Trump Doing? He is Busy at Splitting the Empire in Two Donald Trump seems to be doing what Roman Emperors like Diocletian, Constantine, and Theodosius did long ago: splitting the empire into two halves. Trump may not have consciously decided to do that, but an Empire can only be as large as it […]

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The Biodiesel Disaster: Why bad Ideas are Always so Successful?

February 5, 2019

The Biodiesel Disaster: Why bad Ideas are Always so Successful? This is a modified version of an article that was published on “Il Fatto Quotidiano” in Italian on Jan 31, 2019 Behind the simian mask, there is yours truly, Ugo Bardi, sitting at his desk. The sign is in Italian, but you can understand that it is […]

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The Making of Greta Thunberg: Memetic Weapons for the Meme War

January 28, 2019

The Making of Greta Thunberg: Memetic Weapons for the Meme War If I say that this young lady, Greta Thunberg, is a meme I mean no disrespect for her — we all are memes! Actually, I think she is a great girl. But the story of how this particular meme was pushed up into becoming […]

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The Decline of Transition Towns: Why do Good Ideas Always Flare up and Then Disappear?

January 26, 2019

The Decline of Transition Towns: Why do Good Ideas Always Flare up and Then Disappear? If you don’t know what the Transition Town Movement is, you can take a look at their page, here. It is an interesting idea to increase the resilience of the civilization network by making each node less dependent on other nodes. […]

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What are the chances of a war that would exterminate most of humankind? It could be more likely than you may think

January 19, 2019

What are the chances of a war that would exterminate most of humankind? It could be more likely than you may think Recently, together with my coworkers I have been engaged in a statistical analysis of war over the past 600 years. The results were sobering: war, it seems, is a statistical phenomenon similar to […]

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What Happened in 2015 that Changed the World? “Peak Cement” may Signal the Turning Point of Civilization

January 15, 2019

What Happened in 2015 that Changed the World? “Peak Cement” may Signal the Turning Point of Civilization “Peak Cement” may have taken place in 2015, stopping the exponentially growing curve that would have led us to turn the Earth into a bowling ball, similar to the fictional planet Trantor, Galactic capital in Isaac Asimov’s series […]

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The Future as Seen by the Doomers. It Will be the Seneca Rebound!

January 12, 2019

The Future as Seen by the Doomers. It Will be the Seneca Rebound! Recently, RE (Reverse Engineer) of the famed “Doomsday Diner” carried out an opinion poll among the people frequenting some of the most doomeristic/catastrophistic/millennialistic sites of the Web (including Ugo Bardi’s blog, Cassandra’s Legacy). Refreshingly, a majority of the members of this group […]

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“Energy Dominance,” what does it mean? Decoding a Fashionable Slogan

January 8, 2019

“Energy Dominance,” what does it mean? Decoding a Fashionable Slogan “Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.” Ryan Zinke, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (source) “All Warfare is Based on Deception” Sun Tzu, “The Art of War” Over nearly a half-century, since the time of […]

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How do you Stop the Arms Race? By Starting a New War, for Instance

January 6, 2019

How do you Stop the Arms Race? By Starting a New War, for Instance Do you see a ghostly Seneca Cliff in this graph? (source) There is a good rule that you should always be careful when extrapolating your data, especially over the long term. And there is an even better rule saying that you […]

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