Jeffrey Brown: To Understand The Oil Story, You Need To Understand Exports

I like your ideals MR.
Now we must convince Mr. Darwin. He is the arbiter of good taste. 

We have produced a rich offering for his inspection, and he is expected soon. According to this prognostication he is anticipated to choose unthinking, fast breeders that are short lived… 

If we grasp the bull by the horns now we could flee to the high ground and escape. But we are in thrall to the Savanna Ape who wishes to expend every last cent on beating someone,  anyone on the head with whatever passes for a club these days.

I hold it to be a self evident truth that no two people are equal by any measure at all. 

Me.

 

I will start with a statement from the terminator:
“If you are listening to this (and understands it), you are the resistance”.

It is just mind boggling to see lucid people with eclectic wisdom (as many people on this site are) unable to funnel their grave frustration into productive measures in order to abort this inner-planetary suicide mission, which is led by insane representatives of an insane population.

I think that the late Professor Albert Allen Bartlett’s, famous statement: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." is a perfect example of the fundamental cognitive dissonance that is shared among the Professor Albert Allen Bartlett’s flock, which may result in the “greatest shortcoming of the human race”

Prof. Bartlett’s statement is missing one overlooked fundamental factor that must be included in the statement in order to turn it valid:

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race, is Professor’s Albert Allen Bartlett (and similar individuals) inability to comprehend that they belong to one group of humans (~5% of the population) with a brain setup for System Thinking, while the majority of the human race are another group with a brain setup for Categorical Thinking and the last group shares the inability to understand the exponential function and it is an inherent pathological and clinical condition."

It is the past failure of individuals such as Professor Albert Allen Bartlett’s to understand this fact may result in the annihilation of all the planet’s life forms.

The main thing to understand is that we are facing an imminent situation, of a major cluster-fuck, because we the people, who are similar to Prof. Bartlett, have failed to recognize one very important factor:

There are two types of humans which coexist in the world population, and the differences between these two groups are as profound as those which might exist between any two separate species that share the same ecosystem but do not share the same level in the food chain, such as - lions and zebras.

But unlike the example above, the differences between the two type of humans are not external or visually apparent and they emerge in all ethnic groups – irrespective to race, color, culture, nationality or gender, these differences are an inherent brain tendency which inhabit two different types of cognition which come with a whole different set of traits and behaviors, much more distinctive then the difference between the bonobo and the common chimpanzee.

A manifest for a revolution of the mind

We are independent thinkers, working on the “Homo anthropophagus” hypothesis for a very long time, the hypothesis focused on reexamining the current archeological data in order to reconstruct a context for the early human evolution which we think holds the key for understanding the “human condition”. 

We were able to identify the evolutionary events and processes that had led to the emergence of certain attributes, which were responsible for multiple sets of cognitive traits in the early human evolution, these traits and the behaviors they represent were responsible for altering the “normal” evolutionary process that would have otherwise been expected from a somewhat intelligent and peaceful primate (such as the gorillas).

This change started sometime in our early evolutionary process around 14-7 million years ago, during the late Miocene, a time period in which the human and the chimpanzee lineages split, and according to latest evidences, has peaked around 2.5 million years ago in the homo naledi and such.

At the end of a period of ~4.5 million years a peaceful frugivore living in the forest canapé becomes an aggressive cannibal living in dry savannas with no significant changes in morphology and physiology

A tropical peaceful frugivore living in the safety of the forest canapé becomes a cannibal living in fear and terror in dry savannas and taking refuge underground (suggesting the first development of stone tools as means for digging which may explain the h. naledi’s strong opposing thumbs to support the thrust, and maybe the loss of hair), all of that, with no other significant changes in morphology and physiology, preserving the features of a tree climbing primate as it was 4.5 million years earlier: 

This is quiet odd considering the immense differences between the multiple landscapes, weather conditions and resources constrains of each of the different habitats which they inhabited during that transition.

By comparing the cannibalistic chimpanzees social organization with that of modern human we can clearly observe that throughout our evolutionary process the homo lineage have preserved the unique social organization of a hierarchy of classes governed by a group of non-kin adult males (which started in a certain event which resulted in the split of the lineages).

If the hierarchy structure survived since the dawn of our lineage, than the reason for the original form of the hierarchy has also prevailed.

After the split of the lineages early Hominidae managed to become the first species that can live almost independently of its environment’s resources constrains.

Without natural constrains and unlike any other species in its habitat, the Hominidae were immune to the most crucial fitness factor:  the need to adapt to changes in its habitat in order to feed. 

The early Hominidae achieved the ability to support its nutritional needs regardless of environmental conditions by exploiting its own kin and this ability, we think was the most crucial element in the survival of our lineage. 

These newly emerged cannibalistic traits were the true force driving our early evolution and the same traits are playing a crucial part in the more recent sociocultural evolution which created civilization. These attributes can explain the pathological delusional tendencies expressed in the irrational believes and denial which inhabits the majority of the population’s cognition.

And all of this we think should be considered as the real first leap forward (which we consider to be the big backward-flip)

Maybe one of the causes for the human condition of denial is not the fear of death itself but the fear of the terror before death: inflicted on them by their own kin. Just watch the victims (a member of neighboring chimpanzee group) of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees as its being ripped apart, devoured and eaten by a mob while it still alive.
A new perspective on how to define a species in the human lineage

Considering the assumptions above we can suggest that in the human lineage a species is not determined by its physical and morphological features, but rather can be mainly identified by its mental traits and mindset (Just imagine someone in the future with no prior knowledge, digging out the remains of a 7 foot Viking in Scandinavia and another remain of 4.5 foot pygmy in Central Africa, and when comparing their physiology and considering the geographical distance concludes that they are two different species, even though they had both hunted and killed their brothers).

The current branching in the human lineage and a new perspective on the big leap forward event

We think that the second most crucial event (the currently accepted hypothesis of the big leap forward) is connected to our encounter with the Neanderthals which somehow stimulated the evolutionary branching of modern humans in a way similar to the branching of the bonobo from the chimpanzees. We think that the Neanderthal may have been the “bonobo” of the human lineage and its genes presented in our genome holds many keys that will become handy when we will finally come to term and accept the true human origin.

We, the members of the new emerging homo species, are currently stranded by the narratives of the well-established cannibalistic culture and politically correctness, confused by contradicting data from numerous indoctrinated disciplines which cause us to focus on isolated small events with multiple details without any real context and without easy access to cross-disciplines frameworks.

We are all experiencing the cognitive dissonance and the aggravating frustration of individuals who are more mentally evolved and may belong to a different homo species living within the cannibals.

Many evolved humans have lost their hindsight, which is the only mean we have if we are to solve our evolutionary puzzle, we need a fundamental change in the way we treat knowledge:

To redefine the dictionary to include an absolute definition for facts as absolute truth, so myths and opinions will be easily filtered out

To create a central data base containing all the evidence, observations and knowledge of humanity, and we need to create dynamics models to factor the data and to place it in the right context

We need to support easy access to all the available data for everyone, and we need to oppose rewords, degrees and intellectual property in order to eliminate competition between individuals and groups.

We need to support cooperation between researchers and any other thinkers and judge people by their contribution and not by their fancy piece of paper.  

But most of all, we need to reorganize the whole human domain in accordance to reality and truth and I think we can finally achieve that by factoring the new evidences into the whole human domain.   

Many of the people that do recognize that they are different from the majority of the population are so castrated and broken by this culture that they can’t even think of doing what the bonobo eventually did after a long period of fear and terror – 6 million years of it!

But maybe now, with the new discoveries in South Africa of the homo naledi, and the unique place were the remains were found which we think is an evidence for repeated acts of cannibalism (see more below), some of us will come to term with our not so “PC” origin, and we will finally be able to do the same move that the bonobo did, when they branched out and left behind the fear and the abuse to the chimpanzees and their cannibalistic hierarchies, persisting by its rotating members, males who are not necessarily kin, which are promoted according to their level of aggression and abuse and their level of contribution to wealth/wellbeing of the leaders of the gang, the same gang of males that we can find at the top of every abusive hierarchy (government, military, police, any corporation, business, religion, and worst of all the education system with the rotten apple of the universities).

Homo naledi the cannibal – placing the evidence in the right context

We think the cave is a crime scene portraying repeated acts of hominid cannibalism utilizing members of their own species as livestock that resulted in the first evidence for refugees chased there by males of their own kind and preferred to die of thirst and hunger then being eaten alive by the males lingering outside their chamber.

Contemplating the chain of events that could have brought these individuals in to that challenging location, the scenarios that seem the most compatible are that the chamber was either a shelter or a livestock pantry.

Firstly, we can assume rather confidently that the option of a burial site is highly unlikely regarding Homo naledi’s brain size and structure. And moreover, even if indeed they had had the sufficient mental complexity that would have enabled them to develop burial rituals, the immense challenges that this site imposed and principally the drastic size limitations, revokes almost any probability that this hasty theory might have had. It is just too far-fetched.

Another improbable speculation is that the Homo naledi was living in those caves. Even though there are no data supporting any significant use of tools, or fire.

Along these rather barren theories, we are left with the simple scenario of escape. Something must have caused them to crawl alive into that chamber, and it must have been scarier than the dark, which means something that was threatening their lives.

Now, we should speculate on, what was it that had caused them to flee so deep into the cave and through such a narrow gap? So narrow that it was mostly females, elders and children who were able to pass through, along with what seems to be some exceptionally slender male hominid. The animal chasing them must have had the ability to follow them for a substantial distance into the cave, and perhaps even through the first narrow passageway (that is about 25 centimeters wide) which would have caused them to move all the way down that second gap (about 20 centimeters high) and into the chamber. 

The threat, must have also lingered for a long enough time to keep them in their hopeless sanctuary, which may suggest that these homo naledi were a primary food source of that predator. Of course, there is the chance that they have simply been unable to get out of the chamber, although the data imply that they were adaptable climbers. still, even if they were in fact trapped in that chamber, the amount of findings suggests that the hominids did not all enter the chamber on a sole incident, but rather one or few at a time, and that would mean that over more than one occasion a H. naledi was chased into that same cave, by something that perhaps could pass through the first 25 centimeters width passage and follow it into the first chamber, but could not have fit through the smaller 20 centimeters gap leading to the last chamber.

A new perspective on “Paleo Diet”

We should also consider this as a case of storing livestock. Utilizing members of their species as livestock, enabled them an easy transition when they migrated from the tropical forests to open savannas (having your nutrition resources migrating with you, increases your fitness dramatically), and the halt in physical evolution since the splitting from the chimpanzees until around 2-3Mya in the homo genus was in contrast to the obvious need to adapt physically in order to utilize the different types of available food sources and shelters, during the migration period. This may also hold the key for the frequent amount of reproduction cycles in the human genus when comparing them to other primates (similar to the use of chickens in recent history).

And here enters a crucial subject that has not been addressed yet, one of the first matters that should be approached when reading the data, “what were they eating?” or to be more to the point, what was available to them that could support their nutritional needs? Without considering this issue you cannot complete the puzzle. 

Without going into considerable details signifying this matter, we would merely suffice in noting that according to the dental specimens and jaw structure, it appears as though the H. naledi were not adaptable carnivores, although their morphology and its resemblance to that of modern humans seems like one that would require a rich diet. 

The plausible answer is cannibalism

Once you factor our ancestors’ cannibalistic and abusive behavior into the human domain, a lot of blind spots will unravel.

It is about time that somebody picks up the glove, and slaps all the rest back to consciousness with it.

It’s disgusting to see how the “scholars” have turned from lions serving as the gate keepers of knowledge into pussies that serve their masters the milk of knowledge that they had milked from their students and instead of guarding it, they serve the milk of knowledge to their masters just the way their like it the most: overly sweetened or camouflaged by the PC color of chocolate.

`These self-acclaimed scholars that shove in everyone’s face the certificate of authority they had received from their masters and have more headshots than brad pitt are the ones that hold the ultimate power of keeping the revealed “truth” in-line with the master’s narratives and filter and bury the ideas that oppose it.

Sadly, our universities have turned into churches, where the choir boys are nothing but protégées, collecting bits and pieces of information, documenting it and then leaving it for the local patriarch (head of research and conformity) to decide where, how and if it will fit in the “PC” puzzle of the masters.

These unquestionable patriarchs of the scientific community have dug their churches of knowledge underground, the same thing we did millions of years ago during our evolution, isolating and segregating their communities in large structures and separated chambers with restrictions on their hypothesis and on the knowledge they can share with others outside their gated community.

Researchers are segregated from others by the walls of faculties and disciplines, individualism is celebrated and communal effort is being discouraged, instead of developing communities of knowledge the current generation is sitting in cubicles, afraid of each other and from other communities as cannibals are afraid of their own kin.

The leaders of the scientific world have become as vain and remote from reality and normality as the kardiachiens are: and just like the “patriarch” of this twisted family, they are too seeking for the courage reward for removing their own balls (Nobel Prize (named after the guy that gave us better means to kill our brothers – explosives)).

Just look at the charade (press release celebrations) of the latest discoveries in South Africa producing a show that have everything for everyone (complied with the ISO 9000 of the retard code) like cable TV and other abnormality shows it got x factor for females when the factor is being skinny and attractive enough to crawl into a hole in front of the drooling male judges (scientists).

it’s got its spirituality channel were the preachers/shamans/yogis of the excavation preach the “beautiful ape” narrative and how it went on several occasions into a cave through two dark chambers to buried its slender dead’s and mourn them as we are the modern “compassionate” ape do while we slaughter our brothers by the thousand every day, as we did from the down of our lineage: If you start a cannibal and you still a cannibal 7 million years later how in the world can you think that a small brain ancestor was Gandhi???.

A picture of a dark skin leader previously oppressed by light skin homo, kissing the skull of a prehistoric victim of cannibalism is all over the place and symbolizing this charade! try to make this Kosher, and reverse the conclusion after such contribution to the foundation of the PC madness, try to rewind the narrative of the “kind” ape and replace it with the dark truth of a vicious cannibal after that image.

And since when important evidence belongs to the whole humanity is being held from the public for two years, finds its way to someone’s lips and held by bare hands. I know more about these new celebrities than I knew about their finds, but as soon as I saw that women crawled through a hole where adult males couldn’t pass, it was already out.

It’s about time the kids of the scientific world will call out the naked kings of their subjugating kingdoms:

These “Kings” think that they are thinking out side of the box don’t understand that any box that they think that they are out of is nothing more than the space between a bigger babushka to a smaller one, and what they are doing instead of trying to expose the layers above them until the last one and examine the whole babushka in its environment to get some context? (and maybe finally they will notice that the babushka is standing on a burning shelve), instead they are digging-in deeper into the details the smallest and smallest babushkas and there is where they think the truth is , symbolizing the pyramid of any abusive hierarchy where the ones at the top causing every layer underneath them to focus on exponentially growing details in a narrower subjects to the point that one may invest his life investigating the left tow of the back leg, on the right side of the unicorn.  

Wake up and grow some balls, think about hypotheses (such as ours) as a way of communal brain-storming and not as a tool for fame and glory for individuals.

If you want to save the brain of Athens, you must have the courage of Sparta!

Aloha! Mahalos HotRod and HK!!
I think there should be a new ship launched by the Cunard Line called HRA DUBYA! That ship not only assumed that spending 1/2 $T on a global military was enough. He never studied how guerilla warfare in the 1770s brought down Britain and got America independence.

Please recall the other canards from the Iraq War on W's watch:

1-The Iraq War would only cost $7.2B because oil profits would pay for it.

2-Then Tres Sec O'Neil was fired by W for not agreeing to the first Iraq War budget.

3-Unarmoured Humvees.

4-Halliburton convoys of death.

5-WMDs

6-Saddam's death meant total Iraq stability and US victory.

7-Mission accomplished.

Of course nobody ever truly defined what the "mission" was. If it was for Halliburton to get rich off US youth corpses then … yes … MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! If the "mission" was to destabilize the entire Middle East and lay the ground work for perpetual war whereby all US defense contractors are guaranteed unending profits then … yes … MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! If the "mission" was to show the world just how foolish and inept US Foreign Policy is then … yes … MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Who here can even remotely debate that the $3T in war costs due to W's many miscalculations and complete foolishness has made Iraq and the Middle East more stable? It was complete and total US Foreign Policy failure supported by both sides of the isle. Remember this was not some Rep vs Dem war it was supported by all but a few DC politicians.

Now we have debates where none of this is reality. History has been either totally ignored or totally re-written. If Obama was President then instead of W would it have been different? ASOLUTELY NOT-T-T!!!

All the clocks struck 13!!!

Both the Jeffrey Brown and the Kurt Cobb podcasts are outstanding, but a busy fall schedule means that I've listed to both in fragmented snippets, and I need to read over the transcripts. Lots of great nuggets in both of these.
While there is a lot of great stuff at PP, for me the peak-oil related info is some of the best, since evidence suggests that oil is indeed our master resource and a lot of what is happening in the economy can be best understood if we understand the dynamics of fossil fuel production.

In the spring of 2013, while investigating peak oil with students, we had also been looking at Karl Popper's work in a different class, and so it seemed fit to put forward the peak oil theory with some falsifiable assertions that would allow the theory to be tested.  At the time, here is what we came up with:

The theory:  The production of petroleum will peak and eventually start to decline.  All else equal, this will lead to economic contraction since approximately one-third of human energy use is derived from oil. 

Falsifiable hypotheses:

1 The peak for conventional crude oil was 2005/2006. Crude oil production in the future may remain on a plateau, but it will not increase, and it will be decreasing within ten years of the peak.

  1. The price of oil will rise as production falls.

  2. Energy return on energy invested (EROI) will fall, at least for oil.

  3. The pace and structure of our global industrial economy depends on growth in energy production.  Even a plateau in conventional crude oil production will result in an economic slowdown since debt will continue to increase but the economic growth that we need in order to pay off that debt will not occur.  

  4. Once the production of petroleum begins to decline in earnest, there will be a severe economic contraction.

So, if I put myself in the position of a student that was in the class in 2013 and who is now at university, then I might be tempted to discard the peak oil hypothesis because the oil price has fallen so much.  In early 2013 I was just becoming aware of Tverberg's position that peak oil would be deflationary, not inflationary, so I didn't really allow for that in the hypotheses that we drew up. The more complex feedbacks that Tverberg talks about were not part of my original understanding of peak oil, which I assumed would be consistently inflationary, and these feedbacks make it less likely for people more immersed in the mainstream narrative to consider the idea.

It seems clear that as long as oil prices are low, people will be less likely to accept the idea that entering the downhill side of the peak oil graph is a major problem for our civilization.  

Thanks for having both Brown and Cobb on, Chris.  I appreciate just about everything that you offer, but my favorites is still the energy-related content.  I hope that Gregor Macdonald can come back soon as well!

Hugh

 

I have a system of putting people into categories that will hopefully help me choose team members in the future of "degrowth" as Charles Hugh Smith calls it.
In order of increasing value to the team

Entitled–expect reward for no work

BNPL- buy now pay later  -probably willing to consider work, but reward is to be enjoyed before work

HTM- hand to mouth  -will work for food

SIC-  saving and investing crowd-  will work harder than necessary to set aside for their future

SOS- survival of the species-- will work harder and longer to provide for future generations

Identifying these people now through discussion and observation will allow you to have a 'go to' group when the degrowth awareness tipping point arrives. 

And as a final note to Blackeagle's domestic livestock dilemma. How many rabbit units are you allowed?  They grow faster than chickens and can live in an 'overstory' hutch with your layers doing the vacuuming and scrubbing duties.

I agree with HughK that keeping us up to speed on the energy outlook is one of the most critical contributions of this site!