Rarely mentioned is the energy required to capture carbon is not insignificant. Most carbon capture technologies need considerable energy to scale to any meaningful level of carbon capture, and where will that energy come from, especially as it will presumably need to be close to the sites identified for carbon storage. Like out at sea!
Secondly, despite over 20 years of discussing carbon capture and various technologies and businesses touting their successes, not one, single scaleable, costed system currently exists that has captured more than a token 'test' quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The last time I looked, the most advanced system was the Orca project by Climeworks in Iceland. The plant can capture 4,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year, so to scale up such a facility to capture just 5% of the excess CO2 emissions (total around 40 billion tonnes of CO2 a year) means capturing 2 billion tonnes and would require 500,000 such installations.
They would consume 3,000 kWh of electricity each, so the resulting energy consumption would be around 5 terraWatt Hours . That works out about 20% of the current world's electricity consumption!
Just a reminder, those numbers are for just 5% excess CO2 production, and even if it were possible to achieve 100% excess capture (which it is already obvious we cannot), then that would not reduce the excess already in the atmosphere, so would not reduce the climate heating effects of current CO2 levels already underway! Or indeed deal with all the other carbon gases like methane!
The whole situation is so ridiculous, it beggars belief.
Love the comment. All of these "solutions" wind turbines and vast solar installations avoid talking about the investment costs by which I mean emissions, not dollars. Mining itself is a disaster, and these carbon removal and storage schemes require the same.
The obvious and only solutions are to get serious about reducing consumption, and addressing the population problem humanely, which only the concept of degrowth does. Obviously, this is not politically possible for the clowns running the circus.
I am aware of Climeworks, have some links even though they didn't become a subject of this article. Perhaps in the next one addressing this farce.
I appreciate the sobering statistics you cite. I'm an information junkie (you may have noticed). Got any links? Help me dig!
Yes, the whole situation is ludicrous, which is why I'm on Amazon looking for Labubu dolls.
I fully respect your research skills - I'd never even HEARD of Labubu Dolls! 😂
Actually I will admit to cheating nowadays on the fast research front.
I have recently started using Deep Seek, the Chinese AI start-up, mostly for solving technical calculations. As a former inventor I have many technical ideas in the mental filing cabinet, that usually require complex and convoluted calculations. I have been able to investigate projects in seconds that would take hours if I was sitting down with a specialist engineer. Most enjoyable for my inner geek!
For this kind of research it is also good, but only if you ask the right questions that do not allow the program to make things up. It is also out of date - it was programmed up to the end of 2023 so has no up to date info or recent news. Give it a go, if you want to get a taste of the future, warts and all!
My issues with AI are deep and wide, and would require another article (or ten) to express. First and foremost for me are its energy and water use which dwarf standard data centers. I'm also concerned about inherent bias dependent on what it was trained on and the algorithms themselves which can be problematic and easily manipulated as demonstrated Musk's Grok.
My brief experiment with AI was ChatGPT a few years ago about the massive lithium mining at Thacker Pass, a subject I am well-versed in having investigated it and written an article on a few years ago. I wasn't impressed with what came back, mostly information scraped from pro mining corporate sources.
Perhaps if I had pushed it harder with more questions I would have gotten more balanced responses, but I didn't care to.
One of the most basic problems we have is the ever-increasing speed technology brings and forces on our lives. Technology increasingly owns us, not the other way around. IMO, we would do well to slow down and smell the roses. Living life in the pursuit of profit is no life at all as far as I'm concerned, and being forced to participate is little better than enslavement.
While your pace may have slowed a tad, your quality persists, my friend. You have been a wonderful addition to my literary diet and have greatly increased my understanding of climate change.
Wonderful article. It is sad that the rest of the world does not try to pressure the US to reduce our GHG emissions. America's pollution now has, and will have an even greater, deadly, significant effect on the rest of the world.
Thank you. My pace of writing has dropped in the last nine months because of personal circumstances, and like most feeling overwhelmed. I have not lost my resolve, however.
America was always deeply flawed, but we did some things right, encouraging others from foreign shores in spite of persistent racism, and in the end being the deciding factor in WWII. The gains of the civil rights era were inspiring, and the hard won if inadequate environmental protections we created were at least steps in the right direction. This situation is heartbreaking, but Sinclair Lewis saw it long ago.
Great article! was there something missing here:? "Ironically, the same weight as a Lincoln Navigator SUV bumbling through the burbs on a critical five-mile errand to procure a 64 ounce bag of Doritos and 48 ounce Mountain Dew in its heroic quest to save the planet." was that a typo?
I'm afraid asking the masses to think logically is an exercise in futility. This is not a recent phenomenon... When nuclear reactors started popping up all over, some people worried about the radioactive waste (or even a nuclear meltdown). The answer to their questions was always, "We'll get all of this cheap energy now, and figure out how to solve those problems later." Look at how that turned out.
Still, it is important to keep questioning idiotic decisions based on greed, and to keep spreading the science-based information about the disasters that face us. Thank you for doing your part so well.
We need to be taught from birth that the health of the planet is the determiner of our health, and societies and small sustainable economies need to be the model. We need to treat the planet with reverence. Indigenous people point the way. As I've gotten older I have realized just how bizarre what is considered normal has become with our complete removal from the natural world, replaced by one that forces us to work in a machine of our own demise. The sickness is manifested in many ways, perhaps most dramatically in the psychological toll demonstrated in mass shootings.
With energy population grows, a fundamental problem along with unnecessary consumption, which ultimately is a tool of control through debt. The brainwashing to consume is relentless, which is why degrowth calls for its abolition.
The masses have not been given the tools of critical thinking which needs to start at home with the books we choose to read to our babies. As an educator, I'm sure you have felt the frustration of so much damage done before the kids ever reach your classroom, minds already addled by entertainment culture, political dogma, and ignorance.
The discovery of oil was fatal for naked apes. We had nowhere the wisdom to handle it responsibly.
Thank you for the research. We can all make our voices heard. There are many avenues now that may be cut off soon! First Amendment rights are under challenge. I appreciate this constitutional privilege and honor the forum of comments this newsletter provides. If you want to support democracy, please participate.
"Your voice, my voice and others writing in spite of growing fear together can defeat the zombies." How? Ideas offered are limited to random boycotting and taking to the streets, where I suggested a way that could be much more effective, that you would play a part in. Here it is, for you and your other smart subscribers to weigh in on:
Strikes and sick outs are essential to defeat the zombies. Massive boycotts have a role as well, but are secondary in their effect, especially as economic crisis grows. There will be no disposable income for most of us anyhow. Organized protests are good especially for psychological solidarity, but mostly symbolic and ineffectual. We can yell all we want, but the billionaires don't care.
The sacrifice and violence we saw during the Civil Rights movement and anarchist movement of the early 20th century are instructive. Nothing short of an uprising is going to derail this train.
Since we're on a path of deep social upheaval (massive climate migration for instance) and the growing likelihood of human extinction in a few generations, now is the time to put it on the line. The Republicans are Nazis now, and the neocon Democrats have participated in the wealth inequality and destruction of the planet equally.
Scary, but the whole rotted system needs to be torn down.
I'm with you, plus trying to do what can be done. Since nothing short of an uprising is going to derail this train, let's try to create one. Please respond to the suggestion I made for what to do, that I want your help with by pointing me to the collapse writers you respect, and then, if I get them working together, you'd be with me in facilitating a Zoom to craft a plan: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/problem-dire-letting-humanity-know
He didn't mention, "No taxation without representation," which is exactly what we have. In addition to the financial leverage I have suggested using repeatedly I would suggest a tax revolt. This of course would come at a heavy price if it was achieved at scale, tanking the government and its programs. However, the government itself is tanking the programs we depend on anyhow.
As I write, the foundation of societal stability, American farming is in deep trouble with ever higher input costs and cuts to its essential markets from Trump's tariffs, the destruction of USAid, roundup of farmworkers, and attack on programs like school lunches and SNAP. This is a dire issue NOW, not three years or five years from now and carries world-wide implications.
In reality, we have little to lose by forcing the issue as all we depend on is deliberately sabotaged. Remaining passive guarantees a terrible outcome. Only fighting tooth and nail with great courage gives us a chance. We must attack the grotesque misappropriation of money being funneled to the billionaires hellbent on absolute control and dystopia.
You are doing what I suggested, where knowledgeable people do some conversing on each other's Subtacks, with the subject being how to tune the world into the danger we are in, where, without understanding that, people will not do the drastic things needed to have the best chance to save ourselves.
Next is for you to give me a list of people smart about collapse so I can engage them to get on this bandwagon of talking to each other about what to do to get humanity tuned in where the internet would be buzzing with "save ourselves" conversations. I spelled out my idea here:
I have engaged with my readers since I started this endeavor four years ago. The conversations are as important as the writing. You can easily see who I read that are engaged in collapse on my home page. Just refresh the page a few times to see everyone.
Can you save me the time-consuming task of reading through a lot of things, where a name that appears may not be someone you agree with? I'd so appreciate that since I'm even more time-crunched than I have been from responses to the money offer I just put out.
Funding for a Future
Using my savings and how a special billionaire could do so much more
Great article! This is something I have been trying to make sense out of recently. I totally agree that burning fossil fuels and scrubbing CO2 from the smokestack (CCS) is a bad idea if you can electrify the process and avoid creating CO2 in the first place (and usually that is an option). I was also lumping that together with DAC (another fiasco) but I think that is a mistake. We have to drastically cut emissions, but that isn’t enough. Even the IPCC now says we also have to draw down the atmospheric CO2 levels somehow. DAC is not doing that right now, but we need to find a way to make it happen. In terms of storage, the amount of CO2 storage needed for CCS is orders of magnitude larger than what would be needed to store CO2 from atmospheric drawdown, so different storage options such as mineralization in basalt could be used for DAC. Right now air capture is very energy intensive, but renewables keep getting cheaper, so it could be made to work. There are other options with potential too: direct ocean capture (DOC) and ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) are examples. Unfortunately, IPCC is pushing for drawdown by BECCS, which many have criticized for its land use problems. If you haven’t read “We Are Eating the Earth” by Michael Grunwald it explains this conflict well. Tim Searchinger is the acknowledged expert in this area.
Thanks! Electrifying as much as possible carries a giant Catch-22, it requires fossil fuels which may be unviable in 50 years according to long-time oil geologist Art Berman (too much energy expended for too little returned). These plants require steel and concrete at the most basic level dependent on mining and heavy diesel burning equipment. What happens when the diesel is gone?
You're right unfortunately, getting our emissions under control in time to slow and stabilize growing disaster now appears to require these technologies which have little track record of success, and are likely prone to failure. The leaking Exxon pipeline I mentioned in the article is small potatoes. Suppose we manage to sequester billions of tons of CO2 in the planet. What if there is a rupture releasing a significant amount of these gases suddenly? Can we even scale these shaky ideas up to meaningful capacities in time? Is there even good faith motivation to do so? We're talking about an industry that first foresaw this crisis in the 1950s, has lied and dissembled ever since, and the word "renewables" is a misnomer. Nothing that takes hundreds of millions of years for the planet to create is practically renewable. The easiest deposits of the basics we need like copper have already been mined, and like oil, more energy will be needed to extract diminishing returns, ultimately making it financially unfeasible.
For once, we must think long-term, if we're capable of that. I'll look up “We Are Eating the Earth,” thanks for the recommendation.
I get where you're coming from. Four years ago I may have bought into solar panels, but heavy research and writing have shown me otherwise.
Getting sand to plants requires diesel burning trucks and heavy equipment. Making glass out of sand requires tremendous heat supplied by fossil fuels. That sand belongs to ecosystems, deserts which are not deserted at all, but part of the diverse body of the earth that has made the planet inhabitable for the brief Holocene we have enjoyed. Covering the land in hundreds of thousands of acres of solar panels is another assault on the balance of life on the planet and contributor to the extinction crisis.
Mainstream thinking and media makes these things seem like a panacea. It peddles the idea we don't have to fundamentally change how we live.
These "renewable" solutions aren't renewable at all. At best, they can buy us additional time to transition to a low energy world.
The fossil fuel age has been a mirage of unsustainable expectations. We need leadership that recognizes the limits of the planet.
I think we can have electricity without using fossil fuels to make it. We just need solar panels and for the sun to keep shining, along with some storage, batteries or pumped hydro or other.
Anyone with 2 brain cells would know that 'NET ZERO' is an utterly insane off the charts idiocy, an absolute mathematical, physical, statistical and practical impossibility that can never be achieved or exist in reality!
Electricity has to come from somewhere, and the only reliable sources are coal, oil and gas (nukes don't cut it, the radioactive waste is too poisonous).
The 'CLIMATE CHAOS' fraud is the excuse and propaganda misdirection justifying attacks on farming and food, concealing a profoundly inimical globalist genocidal enslavement scheme.
Do you want to live in the squalor and drudgery and misery of the pre-industrial age? HELL NO!
HANDS OFF MY GAS STOVE! I LOVE MY GAS STOVE! Ever try to cook on an electric stove - absolute nightmare!
Can't say this often enough! CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN EVEN WORSE FRAUD THAN THE PLANSCAMDEMIC! SO-CALLED GREEN TECH IS A GIGANTIC SCAM! MINING AND MANUFACTURING 'GREEN' PRODUCTS NEEDS COAL, GAS AND OIL AND MINING RARE MINERALS IS MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY TOXIC AND DESTRUCTIVE THAN LEGACY PRODUCTS. SCREW YOUR DAMNED GREEN GRIFT AGENDA! climateviewer.com
All life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)!
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
It's always since the dawn of history, been about using knowledge for power and control by the psycho portion of the human population that learned how to manipulate 'normies' to obey them in their power-mad power trips.
In these modern times, this evil has become TECHNOCRACY, the vilest threat to the existence of all life on earth since forever!
They can stick their f*cking damned NANO, Digital IDs, AI, jabs and chips up their asses where the sun don't shine!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
This horrifying Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
The IPCC gambled the entire ecosystem on CCS at scale and lost.
“In the latest ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report’ (IPCC AR5), there have been published a selection of ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’ (RCP’s).
Dr Matt Watson, from the school of earth Sciences at the University of Bristol (UK), made this point strongly at a recent meeting at the Royal Society in London:“Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this research? This is why, this is the latest projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the alarming thing is that these two scenarios [RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5] both include negative emissions technology. So, there is geoengineering, of the flavour of carbon dioxide removal, in the best case scenarios.”
From my article titled: "Survivable IPCC projections based on science fiction."
Good post, and very well researched! Thank you.
I will add a couple of comments:
Rarely mentioned is the energy required to capture carbon is not insignificant. Most carbon capture technologies need considerable energy to scale to any meaningful level of carbon capture, and where will that energy come from, especially as it will presumably need to be close to the sites identified for carbon storage. Like out at sea!
Secondly, despite over 20 years of discussing carbon capture and various technologies and businesses touting their successes, not one, single scaleable, costed system currently exists that has captured more than a token 'test' quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The last time I looked, the most advanced system was the Orca project by Climeworks in Iceland. The plant can capture 4,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year, so to scale up such a facility to capture just 5% of the excess CO2 emissions (total around 40 billion tonnes of CO2 a year) means capturing 2 billion tonnes and would require 500,000 such installations.
They would consume 3,000 kWh of electricity each, so the resulting energy consumption would be around 5 terraWatt Hours . That works out about 20% of the current world's electricity consumption!
Just a reminder, those numbers are for just 5% excess CO2 production, and even if it were possible to achieve 100% excess capture (which it is already obvious we cannot), then that would not reduce the excess already in the atmosphere, so would not reduce the climate heating effects of current CO2 levels already underway! Or indeed deal with all the other carbon gases like methane!
The whole situation is so ridiculous, it beggars belief.
Love the comment. All of these "solutions" wind turbines and vast solar installations avoid talking about the investment costs by which I mean emissions, not dollars. Mining itself is a disaster, and these carbon removal and storage schemes require the same.
The obvious and only solutions are to get serious about reducing consumption, and addressing the population problem humanely, which only the concept of degrowth does. Obviously, this is not politically possible for the clowns running the circus.
I am aware of Climeworks, have some links even though they didn't become a subject of this article. Perhaps in the next one addressing this farce.
I appreciate the sobering statistics you cite. I'm an information junkie (you may have noticed). Got any links? Help me dig!
Yes, the whole situation is ludicrous, which is why I'm on Amazon looking for Labubu dolls.
I fully respect your research skills - I'd never even HEARD of Labubu Dolls! 😂
Actually I will admit to cheating nowadays on the fast research front.
I have recently started using Deep Seek, the Chinese AI start-up, mostly for solving technical calculations. As a former inventor I have many technical ideas in the mental filing cabinet, that usually require complex and convoluted calculations. I have been able to investigate projects in seconds that would take hours if I was sitting down with a specialist engineer. Most enjoyable for my inner geek!
For this kind of research it is also good, but only if you ask the right questions that do not allow the program to make things up. It is also out of date - it was programmed up to the end of 2023 so has no up to date info or recent news. Give it a go, if you want to get a taste of the future, warts and all!
My issues with AI are deep and wide, and would require another article (or ten) to express. First and foremost for me are its energy and water use which dwarf standard data centers. I'm also concerned about inherent bias dependent on what it was trained on and the algorithms themselves which can be problematic and easily manipulated as demonstrated Musk's Grok.
My brief experiment with AI was ChatGPT a few years ago about the massive lithium mining at Thacker Pass, a subject I am well-versed in having investigated it and written an article on a few years ago. I wasn't impressed with what came back, mostly information scraped from pro mining corporate sources.
Perhaps if I had pushed it harder with more questions I would have gotten more balanced responses, but I didn't care to.
One of the most basic problems we have is the ever-increasing speed technology brings and forces on our lives. Technology increasingly owns us, not the other way around. IMO, we would do well to slow down and smell the roses. Living life in the pursuit of profit is no life at all as far as I'm concerned, and being forced to participate is little better than enslavement.
While your pace may have slowed a tad, your quality persists, my friend. You have been a wonderful addition to my literary diet and have greatly increased my understanding of climate change.
Ignorance is bliss, so yours is an uphill battle.
Thanks so much. This journey for me has been about understanding climate change. It demands sharing, it's a responsibility.
Wonderful article. It is sad that the rest of the world does not try to pressure the US to reduce our GHG emissions. America's pollution now has, and will have an even greater, deadly, significant effect on the rest of the world.
Thank you. My pace of writing has dropped in the last nine months because of personal circumstances, and like most feeling overwhelmed. I have not lost my resolve, however.
America was always deeply flawed, but we did some things right, encouraging others from foreign shores in spite of persistent racism, and in the end being the deciding factor in WWII. The gains of the civil rights era were inspiring, and the hard won if inadequate environmental protections we created were at least steps in the right direction. This situation is heartbreaking, but Sinclair Lewis saw it long ago.
Like I commented to Maggie Prideaux, not enough people are listening. Prepare your bunker and plow your field.
Unfortunately, true, the matrix rules. I'm arthritic and dependent on a few medications. I'm plowing my fields now, there will be no bunker.
Great article! was there something missing here:? "Ironically, the same weight as a Lincoln Navigator SUV bumbling through the burbs on a critical five-mile errand to procure a 64 ounce bag of Doritos and 48 ounce Mountain Dew in its heroic quest to save the planet." was that a typo?
Um, it may have been an exaggeration, and appears to be an incomplete sentence. I'll stand by the sarcasm though!
yes agree!!
I'm afraid asking the masses to think logically is an exercise in futility. This is not a recent phenomenon... When nuclear reactors started popping up all over, some people worried about the radioactive waste (or even a nuclear meltdown). The answer to their questions was always, "We'll get all of this cheap energy now, and figure out how to solve those problems later." Look at how that turned out.
Still, it is important to keep questioning idiotic decisions based on greed, and to keep spreading the science-based information about the disasters that face us. Thank you for doing your part so well.
We need to be taught from birth that the health of the planet is the determiner of our health, and societies and small sustainable economies need to be the model. We need to treat the planet with reverence. Indigenous people point the way. As I've gotten older I have realized just how bizarre what is considered normal has become with our complete removal from the natural world, replaced by one that forces us to work in a machine of our own demise. The sickness is manifested in many ways, perhaps most dramatically in the psychological toll demonstrated in mass shootings.
With energy population grows, a fundamental problem along with unnecessary consumption, which ultimately is a tool of control through debt. The brainwashing to consume is relentless, which is why degrowth calls for its abolition.
The masses have not been given the tools of critical thinking which needs to start at home with the books we choose to read to our babies. As an educator, I'm sure you have felt the frustration of so much damage done before the kids ever reach your classroom, minds already addled by entertainment culture, political dogma, and ignorance.
The discovery of oil was fatal for naked apes. We had nowhere the wisdom to handle it responsibly.
wish i could afford to pay... is several writers id like to. =(
No worries. I look at this work as a necessary service. A few bucks here and there helps, but I am committed to not paywalling this effort.
Thank you for the research. We can all make our voices heard. There are many avenues now that may be cut off soon! First Amendment rights are under challenge. I appreciate this constitutional privilege and honor the forum of comments this newsletter provides. If you want to support democracy, please participate.
No Kings
https://www.nokings.org
"Your voice, my voice and others writing in spite of growing fear together can defeat the zombies." How? Ideas offered are limited to random boycotting and taking to the streets, where I suggested a way that could be much more effective, that you would play a part in. Here it is, for you and your other smart subscribers to weigh in on:
Problem dire. Letting humanity know.
Working up an internet new way
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/problem-dire-letting-humanity-know
Strikes and sick outs are essential to defeat the zombies. Massive boycotts have a role as well, but are secondary in their effect, especially as economic crisis grows. There will be no disposable income for most of us anyhow. Organized protests are good especially for psychological solidarity, but mostly symbolic and ineffectual. We can yell all we want, but the billionaires don't care.
The sacrifice and violence we saw during the Civil Rights movement and anarchist movement of the early 20th century are instructive. Nothing short of an uprising is going to derail this train.
Since we're on a path of deep social upheaval (massive climate migration for instance) and the growing likelihood of human extinction in a few generations, now is the time to put it on the line. The Republicans are Nazis now, and the neocon Democrats have participated in the wealth inequality and destruction of the planet equally.
Scary, but the whole rotted system needs to be torn down.
I'm with you, plus trying to do what can be done. Since nothing short of an uprising is going to derail this train, let's try to create one. Please respond to the suggestion I made for what to do, that I want your help with by pointing me to the collapse writers you respect, and then, if I get them working together, you'd be with me in facilitating a Zoom to craft a plan: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/problem-dire-letting-humanity-know
Robert Reich wrote a piece no Jimmy Kimmel's reinstatement and cited other historical acts of resistance when Americans finally caught on.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-sleeping-giant-is-awakening?publication_id=365422&post_id=174307576&isFreemail=true&r=putep&triedRedirect=true
He didn't mention, "No taxation without representation," which is exactly what we have. In addition to the financial leverage I have suggested using repeatedly I would suggest a tax revolt. This of course would come at a heavy price if it was achieved at scale, tanking the government and its programs. However, the government itself is tanking the programs we depend on anyhow.
As I write, the foundation of societal stability, American farming is in deep trouble with ever higher input costs and cuts to its essential markets from Trump's tariffs, the destruction of USAid, roundup of farmworkers, and attack on programs like school lunches and SNAP. This is a dire issue NOW, not three years or five years from now and carries world-wide implications.
In reality, we have little to lose by forcing the issue as all we depend on is deliberately sabotaged. Remaining passive guarantees a terrible outcome. Only fighting tooth and nail with great courage gives us a chance. We must attack the grotesque misappropriation of money being funneled to the billionaires hellbent on absolute control and dystopia.
#TaxRevoltNow
You are doing what I suggested, where knowledgeable people do some conversing on each other's Subtacks, with the subject being how to tune the world into the danger we are in, where, without understanding that, people will not do the drastic things needed to have the best chance to save ourselves.
Next is for you to give me a list of people smart about collapse so I can engage them to get on this bandwagon of talking to each other about what to do to get humanity tuned in where the internet would be buzzing with "save ourselves" conversations. I spelled out my idea here:
Problem dire. Letting humanity know.
Working up an internet new way
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/problem-dire-letting-humanity-know
I have engaged with my readers since I started this endeavor four years ago. The conversations are as important as the writing. You can easily see who I read that are engaged in collapse on my home page. Just refresh the page a few times to see everyone.
Can you save me the time-consuming task of reading through a lot of things, where a name that appears may not be someone you agree with? I'd so appreciate that since I'm even more time-crunched than I have been from responses to the money offer I just put out.
Funding for a Future
Using my savings and how a special billionaire could do so much more
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/funding-for-a-future
Great article! This is something I have been trying to make sense out of recently. I totally agree that burning fossil fuels and scrubbing CO2 from the smokestack (CCS) is a bad idea if you can electrify the process and avoid creating CO2 in the first place (and usually that is an option). I was also lumping that together with DAC (another fiasco) but I think that is a mistake. We have to drastically cut emissions, but that isn’t enough. Even the IPCC now says we also have to draw down the atmospheric CO2 levels somehow. DAC is not doing that right now, but we need to find a way to make it happen. In terms of storage, the amount of CO2 storage needed for CCS is orders of magnitude larger than what would be needed to store CO2 from atmospheric drawdown, so different storage options such as mineralization in basalt could be used for DAC. Right now air capture is very energy intensive, but renewables keep getting cheaper, so it could be made to work. There are other options with potential too: direct ocean capture (DOC) and ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) are examples. Unfortunately, IPCC is pushing for drawdown by BECCS, which many have criticized for its land use problems. If you haven’t read “We Are Eating the Earth” by Michael Grunwald it explains this conflict well. Tim Searchinger is the acknowledged expert in this area.
Thanks! Electrifying as much as possible carries a giant Catch-22, it requires fossil fuels which may be unviable in 50 years according to long-time oil geologist Art Berman (too much energy expended for too little returned). These plants require steel and concrete at the most basic level dependent on mining and heavy diesel burning equipment. What happens when the diesel is gone?
You're right unfortunately, getting our emissions under control in time to slow and stabilize growing disaster now appears to require these technologies which have little track record of success, and are likely prone to failure. The leaking Exxon pipeline I mentioned in the article is small potatoes. Suppose we manage to sequester billions of tons of CO2 in the planet. What if there is a rupture releasing a significant amount of these gases suddenly? Can we even scale these shaky ideas up to meaningful capacities in time? Is there even good faith motivation to do so? We're talking about an industry that first foresaw this crisis in the 1950s, has lied and dissembled ever since, and the word "renewables" is a misnomer. Nothing that takes hundreds of millions of years for the planet to create is practically renewable. The easiest deposits of the basics we need like copper have already been mined, and like oil, more energy will be needed to extract diminishing returns, ultimately making it financially unfeasible.
For once, we must think long-term, if we're capable of that. I'll look up “We Are Eating the Earth,” thanks for the recommendation.
The main component of solar panels is basically sand. Nothing that we could run out of that couldn’t be recycled.
You can even harvest solar energy with mirrors and lenses to boil water and make steam for a generator, but solar panels are cheaper.
I get where you're coming from. Four years ago I may have bought into solar panels, but heavy research and writing have shown me otherwise.
Getting sand to plants requires diesel burning trucks and heavy equipment. Making glass out of sand requires tremendous heat supplied by fossil fuels. That sand belongs to ecosystems, deserts which are not deserted at all, but part of the diverse body of the earth that has made the planet inhabitable for the brief Holocene we have enjoyed. Covering the land in hundreds of thousands of acres of solar panels is another assault on the balance of life on the planet and contributor to the extinction crisis.
Mainstream thinking and media makes these things seem like a panacea. It peddles the idea we don't have to fundamentally change how we live.
These "renewable" solutions aren't renewable at all. At best, they can buy us additional time to transition to a low energy world.
The fossil fuel age has been a mirage of unsustainable expectations. We need leadership that recognizes the limits of the planet.
I think we can have electricity without using fossil fuels to make it. We just need solar panels and for the sun to keep shining, along with some storage, batteries or pumped hydro or other.
Anyone with 2 brain cells would know that 'NET ZERO' is an utterly insane off the charts idiocy, an absolute mathematical, physical, statistical and practical impossibility that can never be achieved or exist in reality!
Electricity has to come from somewhere, and the only reliable sources are coal, oil and gas (nukes don't cut it, the radioactive waste is too poisonous).
The 'CLIMATE CHAOS' fraud is the excuse and propaganda misdirection justifying attacks on farming and food, concealing a profoundly inimical globalist genocidal enslavement scheme.
Do you want to live in the squalor and drudgery and misery of the pre-industrial age? HELL NO!
HANDS OFF MY GAS STOVE! I LOVE MY GAS STOVE! Ever try to cook on an electric stove - absolute nightmare!
Can't say this often enough! CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN EVEN WORSE FRAUD THAN THE PLANSCAMDEMIC! SO-CALLED GREEN TECH IS A GIGANTIC SCAM! MINING AND MANUFACTURING 'GREEN' PRODUCTS NEEDS COAL, GAS AND OIL AND MINING RARE MINERALS IS MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY TOXIC AND DESTRUCTIVE THAN LEGACY PRODUCTS. SCREW YOUR DAMNED GREEN GRIFT AGENDA! climateviewer.com
All life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)!
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
It's always since the dawn of history, been about using knowledge for power and control by the psycho portion of the human population that learned how to manipulate 'normies' to obey them in their power-mad power trips.
In these modern times, this evil has become TECHNOCRACY, the vilest threat to the existence of all life on earth since forever!
EW! GROSS! HELL NO! technocracy.news
They can stick their f*cking damned NANO, Digital IDs, AI, jabs and chips up their asses where the sun don't shine!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
This horrifying Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
Please check out this substack! ponerology.substack.com
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
BURN BACK BETTER!
PSYCHOPATHS! MEGALOMANIACS!
Bless and thank you for doing what you do.
The IPCC gambled the entire ecosystem on CCS at scale and lost.
“In the latest ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report’ (IPCC AR5), there have been published a selection of ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’ (RCP’s).
Dr Matt Watson, from the school of earth Sciences at the University of Bristol (UK), made this point strongly at a recent meeting at the Royal Society in London:“Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this research? This is why, this is the latest projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the alarming thing is that these two scenarios [RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5] both include negative emissions technology. So, there is geoengineering, of the flavour of carbon dioxide removal, in the best case scenarios.”
From my article titled: "Survivable IPCC projections based on science fiction."
https://kevinhester.live/2017/05/18/survivable-ipcc-projections-based-on-science-fiction/