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The Bulletin: February 20-26, 2025

The Bulletin: February 20-26, 2025

US Flies Bomber Group Over Middle East In Warning To Enemies | ZeroHedge

Bizarre Symptoms of Societal Collapse

Peak Oil. Food. Fascism. Collapse.

Guest post: How the global ‘water gap’ will grow under climate change – Carbon Brief

Bird study finds much larger volumes of toxic PFAS chemicals than previously reported

Trump energy chief says there are upsides to ecological collapse

The ‘Decline’ of Nations: How Elite Surplus and Inequality Lead to Societal Upheaval

The Electrify Everything Myth | Damn the Matrix

The Wider Boundary of Symptom Predicaments

Science Will Not Save Us

Science Snippets: Human Activity Changes Tilt, Rotation of Earth as Arctic Mercury Bomb Poses Threat

Sustainability is destroying the Earth | Deep Green Resistance New York

The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Going Through Strange Genetic Changes. Scientists Are Still Trying to Figure Out Why.

Radioactive leaks found at 75% of US nuke sites – CBS News

Racing to Extinction – by Elisabeth

Action 101: Anatomy of a Campaign

Deconstructing Globalization

Arctic Defence: The Growing Geopolitical Battle for the North | The Epoch Times

Lula pushes oil drilling at mouth of Amazon despite climate risks

A Combination of Supplements and Exercise May Slow Biological Aging

This Next Market Crash Will Break Our Fragile Brains

Solutions: The Art of Avoiding Reality | Art Berman

In 1177 BCE, Civilizations Fell Apart In A Mysterious Simultaneous Collapse | IFLScience

Yves Engler now a Political Prisoner. Protecting Dissident Journalism! The Need for Independent Media! – Global Research

Complexity – Diversity = Fragility – by Eric Keyser

‘Green Grab’: Solar and Wind Boom Sparks Conflicts on Land Use – Yale E360

Scientists discover unexpected decline in global ocean evaporation amid rising sea temperatures

Short-termism is killing the planet – by Jonathan Tonkin

How do you write about collapse, from within in a collapsing world?

Why We’re Failing: We’re Not a Mechanism

The Link Between Soil Health and Water

I Believe The World Is Ending – Does That Make Me Crazy?

The Great Escape | Do the Math

The #1 Warning Sign Capital Controls Are Coming Soon and 3 Ways To Beat Them

Engineered Collapse of the Middle Class

The Great Game Reborn—Energy, Geopolitics, and the Reversal of the Liberal Order | Art Berman

Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth

State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most of Chile into darkness | CNN

Prepping for Others, The True Key to Survival in Collapse

DeepSeek Says Civilisation Is Doomed

The Bulletin: January 23-29, 2025

The Bulletin: January 23-29, 2025

Collapse or Extinction: The Unholy Double Bind of the 21st Century

US Will Likely Stop Buying Oil From Venezuela: Trump | The Epoch Times

The End of the Regenerative Illusion?

Germany’s Outgoing Economy Minister Warns Europe Not to Over-Rely on US Energy | The Epoch Times

Modern Civilization is Proving to be a Very Fragile Thing

Canada Can’t Afford To Play Trade Chicken With the US

Do Money Supply, Deficit And QE Create Inflation? – RIA

Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis | Scientific Reports

Storm Éowyn: man killed and 725,000 properties without power in Ireland

Misled Climate CO2 Fanatics – Green Energy Is a Road to Nowhere – Global Research

Medical Journal Article Criticises Corrupt Medical Journals

Visualizing Europe’s Dependence On Chinese Resources | ZeroHedge

Gazprom In Turmoil, Forced To Hike Prices On Russians In Middle Of Winter | ZeroHedge

Should You Just Give Up?

Warming, cooling, or we don’t know?

Homo Sapiens Are Working Overtime to Join ‘The Great Silence’ | Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going

Is Russia Running Out of Gas?

When Renewables Meet Their Limits to Growth

Letter From a Young Canadian: Authoritarianism, Media Propaganda and Repression

World Economic Forum Panel Praises EU Censorship Law

Green Deception: Environmental Activists Serve China’s Energy Agenda | RealClearDefense

Climate change is disrupting food systems across Latin America, UN report says | CNN

‘Last Ice Area’ in the Arctic could disappear much sooner than previously thought

Nursery Rhymes | Do the Math

“Landman” vs. the Environmentalists | Mises Institute

2025: On the Brink of the Biggest Oil Shock in History – International Man

The Uncertain Future of Oil: Energy Poverty, Depletion, and ‘Green’ Ambitions

Eating oil – by Gunnar Rundgren

The Bulletin: January 9-15, 2025

The Bulletin: January 9-15, 2025

The Falsification of Everything | how to save the world

Emissions Are SO Not the Only Problem with Cars

Rhyming History: Weimar Germany’s Hyperinflation

At least 6 dead, more than 300 000 without power as major winter storm sweeps through U.S.

Net Energy Cliff & the Collapse of Civilization

Quarter of Freshwater Animals Face Extinction, New Study Warns – Newsweek

A Nickel Rush Threatens Indonesia’s Last Nomadic Tribes and Its Forests, Fishermen and Farmers – Inside Climate News

Arresting and Killing Greenies: Targeting Climate Change Protests – Global Research

The Science of Anti-Russian Propaganda – by Glenn Diesen

Decoupling what!? – by Gunnar Rundgren

One Way or Another, the World is Headed for a Degrowth Future | by Doug Bierend

The UK’s Strange Collapse – John Rubino’s Substack

Trump’s Threats Against Greenland, Canada and Elsewhere Are All About Energy Interests – Global Research

Positioned For a Historic Crash – The Daily Reckoning

Natural Gas Production is Contracting

The blackouts are coming – by Elisabeth Robson

The Energy March of Folly | Art Berman

Government Spending Will Cause the Next Financial Crisis | Mises Institute

America’s Great Climate Migration Has Begun. Here’s What You Need to Know. | Columbia Magazine

From Crisis to Connection: Why Radio is the Lifeline You Need to Learn Now

#296: Predicament, not outcome | Surplus Energy Economics

Escobar: Empire Of Chaos, Reloaded | ZeroHedge

The Human Souffle – The Honest Sorcerer

Oh, YouWhat the world needs now is directions for reducing our dependence on technology

Grabbing Greenland’s Oil. But does it Exist? – by Ugo Bardi Mean THAT Democracy | how to save the world

The adverse, long-term health effects of wildfires

Have You Been Faked Out by the Panama-Canada-Greenland Syndrome? – Global Research

What If Tech, the Market and the State Are No Longer Solutions?

Russia, Iran To Sign ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ Treaty This Week | ZeroHedge

Extreme rainfall leaves 10 dead in Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil – The Watchers

Thrust Into Power: A Thought Experiment | how to save the world

Never Mind the Propaganda, the World Should Know About America’s Countless Wars – Global Research

Chapter 3 – How energy and natural resources inhibit growth

Going, Going…

Los Angeles burns: What you need to know

Credit Card Default Wave Hits U.S. Banks

2025: The Year the Federal Debt Bubble Bursts – International Man

Cool Nights Needed to Grow Potatoes Slipping Away

Means of Extinction: Earth is Too Salty

Means of Extinction: Earth is Too Salty

I have not produced a video titled Means of Extinction since 30 July 2021. At that point, I had identified six means by which we were rapidly driving ourselves to extinction. Due to the rate of environmental change in our wake, and also the uncontrolled meltdown of nuclear power plants, any one of these means of extinction will lead to the extinction of all life on Earth. Nearly three years after I reported six phenomena by which we are driving ourselves to extinction in the near term, two additional means have appeared. I’ll report on one of them with this short video.

According to an article at SciTechDaily, humans are disrupting the planetary salt cycle, thus causing an existential threat. The article was published 2 November 2023. It is titled An “Existential Threat” – Humans Are Disrupting the Natural Salt Cycle on a Global Scale. The subhead is “A research group headed by a geologist from the University of Maryland warns that the influx of salt in streams and rivers is an ‘existential threat.’”

Here’s the opening paragraph: “The planet’s demand for salt is not without its toll on both ecological systems and human well-being, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal. Published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the paper revealed that human activities are making Earth’s air, soil, and freshwater saltier, which could pose an ‘existential threat’ if current trends continue.”

Here’s the buried lede, in the following paragraph: “Geologic and hydrologic processes bring salts to Earth’s surface over time, but human activities such as mining and land development are rapidly accelerating the natural ‘salt cycle.’…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Means of Extinction: Antarctic “Super Vortex” is Accelerating

Means of Extinction: Antarctic “Super Vortex” is Accelerating

From the Daily Mail in the UK comes an article titled Antarctica ‘super vortex’ is speeding up due to climate change – and it could melt thousands of square miles of sea ice, study reveals. The article was published on 27 March 2024. More sensationalist headlines appear in other outlets. From the Daily Star on 4 April 2024 is Antarctica ‘super vortex’ could put mankind underwater like an ‘apocalyptic film.’ From LAD Bible dot com on 1 April 2024 is Urgent warning over Antarctic ‘super vortex’ that could affect fate of humanity. In addition to serving as click-bait, these headlines might be more accurate than the one in the Daily Mail. Corporate media outlets tend to avoid articles about human extinction.

The story in the Daily Mail refers to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Nature. Here’s the lede from the article in the Daily Mail: “A massive vortex of ocean water encircling Antarctica, a swirling volume 100-times larger than all the world’s rivers combined, is getting faster due to  climate change.”

The vortex is known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It slows during Earth’s cool periods, such as during Ice Ages. It hastens when the planet warms. Considering we are undergoing the fastest rate of environmental change in planetary history, according even to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 8 October 2018 report Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees, it comes as no surprise that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current represents a threat leading to the extinction of all life on Earth.

The article in the Daily Mail begins with three key points: (1) Antarctic Circumpolar Current churns 6 billion cubic-feet of water per second; (2) the vortex slows during cool eras, like the Ice Age, but speeds up with global warming; and (3) researchers drilled 500- to 650-ft-long deep sea sediment cores for the study.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Humans may have nearly gone extinct.

Humans may have nearly gone extinct.

When we think of endangered animals, we generally think about elephants, tigers, and whales — but certainly not humans. Yet between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, ancestors of Homo sapiens lost 98.7% of their population, according to a 2023 study published in the journal Science. Before the population crash, as many as 135,000 early humans roamed the Earth, but according to the team of geneticists behind the study, that number plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals, and the population stayed that low for more than 100,000 years. (These weren’t modern humans, but earlier hominins on the genetic timeline; one species that was alive at the time was Homo erectus, and we’re still discovering new prehistoric human species.)

The population decline could have been related to the wild environmental changes happening around that time: Extreme cooling of the Earth coincided with a drought in Africa, leading to fewer sources of food. Whatever the cause, it created a genetic “bottleneck” that researchers say nearly wiped out our prehistoric ancestors. This conclusion lines up to a period of time that left few fossils behind, but the research has yet to be replicated by other studies, and many genetic scientists remain skeptical of the claim.

Humanity’s End Was Determined from the Start

Humanity’s End Was Determined from the Start

The moment a species learns to manipulate its environment for gain is the moment the clock starts ticking on its demise.

Given the vastness of the universe, it’s possible that 1 billion intelligent civilizations exist.

So why is there no sign of these civilizations?

It is likely that all advanced civilizations are eventually destroyed by a “Great Filter”. And it’s probable that humanity is currently going through its Great Filter right now.

First, Let’s Examine Why Alien Life Should Exist

The Milky Way, our galaxy, is home to approximately 100 to 400 billion stars. Assuming that a portion of these stars are central to solar systems, similar to our own, it’s conceivable that the Milky Way could contain tens to hundreds of billions of such systems.

Adding to this, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, many found in systems with multiple planets through missions like Kepler and TESS, reinforces the idea that planetary systems are a common feature around stars. This widespread occurrence of exoplanets suggests that a significant majority of stars throughout the universe might host their own solar systems.

Expanding this view to the larger cosmos, with an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, each potentially holding as many stars as the Milky Way on average, the numbers become even more astronomical. This implies a universe where hundreds of trillions to quadrillions of solar systems could exist, each with its unique characteristics and potentially life-supporting conditions.

To crudely estimate the number of solar systems with planets that have conditions favorable to life, let’s use the higher end of the estimate: one quadrillion solar systems in the universe. If 1% of these solar systems have planets with conditions favorable to life, there could potentially be about 10 trillion solar systems with planets that have conditions conducive to life.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

By Preston Howard: The Maximum Power Principle and Why It Underscores the Certainty of Human Extinction in the Near Future

By Preston Howard: The Maximum Power Principle and Why It Underscores the Certainty of Human Extinction in the Near Future

Howard T. Odum: co-originator of Maximum Power Principle

Today’s guest post by Preston Howard discusses an issue central to our overshoot predicament that is often ignored: The Maximum Power Principle (MPP). The MPP states that life optimizes for maximize power, not maximum efficiency, and implies that life does not look forward in time to consider the consequences of maximizing power today.

While preparing an initial report for Florida’s first Area of Critical State Concern1 in 1972, I had the immense good fortune to spend time with Howard T. Odum, an environmental engineering scientist who directed the Wetlands Center at the University of Florida. The area of state concern was the Big Cypress Preserve adjacent to the Florida Everglades. Dr Odum and several of his graduate students had ongoing studies in the area. In informal conversations, Dr Odum explained the Maximum Power Principle as described below. I believe it presents Humanity’s current situation better than anything I have seen about global warming, overshoot, or climate collapse. However, to my knowledge no one has mentioned it in any serious article except Gail Tverberg in her articles about resource consumption.

To understand the Maximum Power Principle2, let us imagine a square island, barren of any vegetation. As happened many times in Florida, suppose our island was created by fill where a shipping channel had been deepened. Situated close to the seaport, someone intended to build something on the new island, but permitting requirements and other administrative delays where taking “forever.” (These details provide a “context” for the discussion.)

The barren island does not remain barren for long, as plants soon begin to grow on it. The solar energy that bathes the island provides abundant energy for the early pioneer plants…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Hope, on the Balance of Probabilities

Hope, on the Balance of Probabilities


my now-slightly-outdated map of worldviews about collapse; right-click and open in a new tab to see it full-sized

It’s interesting to listen to social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger try to reconcile his assessment of the state of the world with his vehement insistence that we have to try as hard we possibly can to avert the ‘metacrisis’ that threatens to bring about the collapse of human civilization and the extinction of most or all life on earth, including humans.

In a recent video, he said:

How can evolutionarily nasty chimpanzees with a high orientation for conflict and irrationality, with nuclear weapons and AI and synthetic biology, with a history of using technology in conflict-oriented and harm-externalizing ways, how can 8 billion of us with exponential tech [increasingly available to all] do a good job of governing that much power? It doesn’t actually look that promising.

Yet he insists that “we cannot know for certain” that we are fucked (or that we are not), so we each have a responsibility to do what we can, working with others, to pull us back from the brink.

His argument reveals a curious quirk about humans and our relationship to complexity, uncertainty, and hope. We seem completely preoccupied with what John Gray calls “the needs of the moment”, and it is clear that this preoccupation has directly produced the metacrisis (a combination of many, unintended, crises and system collapses — economic, ecological, political, social, health, educational, resource, technological, and, for some, spiritual/religious) in which we find ourselves. Yet we continue to cling to hope for our future when all logic says it’s unfounded.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Extreme heat could put 40% of land vertebrates in peril by end of century

Study shows ‘disastrous consequences for wildlife’ if human-caused emissions push global temperatures up 4.4C

A female desert bighorn sheep in the Joshua Tree National Park, California. Such areas would be among the worse impacted if global emissions are not cut.
A female desert bighorn sheep in the Joshua Tree National Park, California. Such areas would be among the worse impacted if global emissions are not cut. Photograph: Michael S Nolan/Alamy

More than 40% of land vertebrates will be threatened by extreme heat by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario, with freak temperatures once regarded as rare likely to become the norm, new research warns.

Reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals are being exposed to extreme heat events of increasing frequency, duration and intensity, as a result of human-driven global heating. This poses a substantial threat to the planet’s biodiversity, a new study warns.

Under a high emissions scenario of 4.4C warming, 41% of land vertebrates will experience extreme thermal events by 2099, according to the paper, published in Nature.

In worse affected regions, such as the Mojave desert in the US, Gran Chaco in South America, the Sahel and Sahara in Africa and parts of Iran and Afghanistan, 100% of species would be exposed to extreme heat. It is not possible to say if these areas would be uninhabitable, but it is likely that more species would become extinct.

A desert tortoise in the Mojave desert, southern California, US
A desert tortoise in the Mojave desert in California, US, an area that would be one of the worse hit by extreme heat. Photograph: Scott Trageser/Alamy

Researchers mapped the effects of extreme heat on more than 33,000 land vertebrates by looking at maximum temperature data between 1950 and 2099. They considered five predictions of global climatic models based on different levels of greenhouse gas emission, as well as the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates, to work out how exposed animal populations would be.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

It’s a Race: Will Human Extinction Result from a Loss of Aerosol Masking or Ongoing Overheating?

It’s a Race: Will Human Extinction Result from a Loss of Aerosol Masking or Ongoing Overheating?

Science Snippets: Peak Fossil Fuels

Science Snippets: Peak Fossil Fuels

 

Latest peer-reviewed journal article appears in the prestigious Elsevier series of journals:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction eventsResults in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.

Full text:

When the head of the conservative International Energy Agency admits we are in the midst of the “first truly global energy crisis,” then you know we’re in serious trouble. According to the chief of the International Energy Agency—the IEA—that’s the current situation. The story was published by Reuters on 25 October 2022.

Let’s turn back the clock a bit. According to the IEA, the extraction of conventional oil for the world peaked in 2006. Conventional oil refers to crude plus condensate, and it’s the relatively easy oil to extract and refine. The tough stuff comes next, which is why we have been rabidly pursuing shale and other petrochemicals that have a low energy return on investment, often called EROI. It comes as no surprise that 16 years after the conservative IEA concluded we had passed the peak of crude-plus-condensate, the most important element in the history of industrial civilization, we have similarly, and in a much worse state, passed the peak of all oil. All, as in the whole shebang.

According to the headline of a story published on January 15th, 2021 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Fossil fuel production expected to increase through 2022 but remain below 2019 peak.” Of course, the US EIA is referring to extraction, not production. It’s not as if humans are producing oil. Oil is not ice cream, after all. Even though we do not produce oil, we’re doing a great job sucking it out of the bowels of the planet and turning it into gasoline, diesel, and other energy-rich materials that make our lives easier..

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Chris Hedges: Imminent Mass Extinction

Chris Hedges: Imminent Mass Extinction

https://youtu.be/cbH_o-96qZI

Are We In the Midst of a Silent Mass Extinction?

A white deer mouse on sand surrounded by plants
Genetic diversity in deer mice creates differences in coat color. NICOLE BEDFORD

Are We In the Midst of a Silent Mass Extinction?

A new modeling technique aims to help scientists and policymakers detect declines in genetic diversity based on habitat loss.

Nearly one fifth of the genetic diversity of the planet’s most vulnerable species may already be lost, an analysis published today (September 22) in Science finds. If accurate, it would mean that many species are already below a conservation threshold proposed last year by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) a part of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Calculating lost genetic diversity

Moisés Expósito-Alonso was in his back yard in Menlo Park, California, last year reading a monograph on the unified theory of biodiversity—“kind of a nerd thing to do,” he says—when an idea dawned on him. He kept seeing concepts related to biodiversity and realized that those concepts should also relate to the genetic diversity of a given species.

Expósito-Alonso, an evolutionary geneticist and ecologist at Stanford University, says that one equation in particular caught his eye: the species-area relationship (SAR), a function that predicts that species-level biodiversity becomes richer as habitat area expands. Essentially, it says that “when you explore ecosystems, you continuously find more species because you find more little niches to which different species have adapted,” he says. And as humans have increasingly carved up ecosystems for our own purposes, the SAR holds that the reverse is also true—shrinking habitat areas diminish species biodiversity. Researchers have used the SAR to estimate extinction rates, and it has been cited in policy-making decisions, Expósito-Alonso says; so, he began to wonder if a genetic diversity equivalent existed that could analogously predict how habitat loss reduces genetic diversity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction.

Our Climate Future – by Mr. Fish

 

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California. More than 73 percent of New Mexico is suffering from an “extreme” or “severe” drought. Thousands of people had to flee from a fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park on Saturday and 2,000 homes and businesses lost power.

It is not as if we were not warned. It is not as if we lacked scientific evidence. It is not as if we could not see the steady ecological degeneration and species extinction. And yet, we did not act. The result will be mass death with victims dwarfing the murderous rampages of fascism, Stalinism and Mao Zedong’s China combined…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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