This months guest on Nature Bats Last is Arthur Keller author of the You Tube Presentation “Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario”.
Kevin and Guy were joined by Arthur Keller, who studies system dynamics. Initially a rocket scientist, Keller has become an author, screenwriter, and keynote speaker. We lost Arthur for a few moments but the technicians at the studio burst into life, recovered the signal with him and he saw out an interesting hour with us.
Arthur’s seminal You Tube Presentation: Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario
I mentioned the work of Albert Bartlett and his contention that “The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our inability to understand the exponential Function” I’ve embedded that presentation for further reference
This interview continues a theme on NBL of non-linear changes we are witnessing. Grasping the significance of non-linearity is crucial to this predicament. Our previous guest Dr Andrew Glikson has a similar contention. That interview and corroborating evidence is embedded here;
Professor Paul Ehrlich was interviewed previously on this blog about his position on the coming collapse. That discussion is embedded here:
Good luck everyone
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
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[…] Daiichi adds Insult to Injury for the Pacific’s Coral Reefs.I’ve been studying “Collapse” since I visited Mayan Ruins in Central America and similar ruins in Southeast Asia in the […]
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A story about an entire culture and way of life collapsing!
Death Toll From Mongolia’s Extreme Winter Surges | HuffPost Impact
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[…] average person is incredulous when I say that Industrial Civilisation can and probably will collapse in the next two or if we’re ‘lucky’ three years. Sixteen ocean passages on small […]
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Scientist Terrified by Collapsing Climate (youtube.com)
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As we circle the drain of collapse, the corporate media pretend to cover the Poly-Crices we face or in reality don’t face but only ever give u the edited highlights.
Collapse isn’t an event it’s a process!
Science Snippets: CNN Acknowledges Near-Term Catastrophes (substack.com)
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OH NO! AC won’t save us! Now what are we going to do? Oh, I know, we’ll pray for winter to arrive soon. Since the US is SUCH a god-fearing Christian nation, there shouldn’t be any problem!
‘It’s unbearable’: in ever-hotter US cities, air conditioning is no longer enough
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/air-conditioning-protect-extreme-heat
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I guess the concept of ‘urban heat islands’ due to all the concrete and asphalt and lack of green space or tree cover hasn’t really found a place in the narrative yet.
sealintheSelkirks
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Thom Hartmann talks reality for under 4 minutes about a Guardian article:
Over 800 Scientists Issue Dire Warning…Why Isn’t Anyone Listening?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhSN-6L0IGs
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Who is listening? Not those who control everything obviously.
sealintheSelkirks
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This is 11 months old and no I haven’t read this book:
Jeff Goodell author of ‘The Heat WILL KILL US FIRST’ who is better than listening to Mann but in some ways he’s very…similar in his underlying theme. But he says one truth in this 6 minute interview: “Things will NOT go back to normal.”
People just don’t get that:
‘We are moving into a different climate era’, author warns amid record-breaking heat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za75M5FC-t8
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And a year later I wonder if he feels the same because, at the end of this vid, he’s like Mann being all about the Hopium because ‘we’ are going to ‘build’ a better world?
Does he see any indication that that is happening in any governments of the world? Did he eve pay attention to his OWN WORDS?
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In that bookshelf full of books my little brother dropped off a few weeks ago from his storage unit down in NorCal, there were a number of titles I haven’t read but wanted to. One of them, a Naomi Klein from 2014, is ‘This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate’ that I had forgotten about.
After reading a Kurt Vonnegut that I didn’t have on the shelf, a collection of short stories probably hardly anybody has ever read (I have nearly all his books), I started this one.
I have now read exactly 13 pages of literally what I would call ‘this-is-now’ from something published ten years ago. Dead on in the last 12 pages-and no I’m not meaning to pun.
On pg. 13 is this: “The World Bank also warned when it released this report that “we’re on track for a 4C warmer world [by century’s end] marked by the extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.” And the report cautioned that “there is also no certainty that adaption to a 4’C world is even possible.”
The next sentence quotes Kevin Anderson (former director of the Tyndall Center) saying…even more blunter… “incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.”
Am I going to keep reading current reality of societal breakdown the further I read into this? Damn, and only 13 pages in!!!
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I have an old snowboarder friend living in Baltimore Maryland who emailed saying he can barely go outside right now as the Wet Bulb temps are just overwhelming. The US East Coast just isn’t dealing with 40’C+ temps, they are NOT used to that kind of heat (is any of us?). He’s seeing people stumbling on streets as he goes by (he drives an 18wheel reefer delivery truck for a grocery store chain to 3 states). And yes, his cab has AC!
And another old friend who is a retired Marine Biologist lives in Arlington Virginia is so depressed that I’m hardly hearing from her.
She and I have been talking about the oceans (she was a West Coast-based worldwide kelp research), and has been freaking out for years about what is happening with the worldwide ocean.
I just went outside, it’s after 5pm and the sun is blindingly bright and the thermometer is reading 35’C. Been stuck there all afternoon.
sealintheSelkirks
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It’s so refreshing to read an article that is “Hopium Free” it’s not giving up, whatever the fuck that mean it’s a combination of doing basic math and understanding constraints like limit to growth, entropy and the insatiable appetite of capitalism and its modern spawn industrial civilisation!
Steve Bull · ·
“As the saying goes, however, Nature bats last. Given it’s the ninth inning, the bases are loaded, there’s no out, we’re up by only a run, and our pitcher is struggling to find the strike zone with a 3-0 count, things are looking dicey. Just believing it is possible to win because it’s in our best interest isn’t enough to prevent the walk-off hit Nature has in store for us.
The Laws of Thermodynamics, especially Entropy, are unforgiving no matter how ‘intelligent’ our species might be. And, frankly, we’re not looking very smart given what we’ve been doing…”
Substack (https://stevebull.substack.com/p/todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-857)
Medium (https://stevebull-4168.medium.com/todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-clxxxii-tech-solutions-are-us-1b9d81a99047)
Blog (https://olduvai.ca/?p=68741)
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Yeah, he’s not been posting a lot lately because, well, he’s pretty much said what he wanted to get out and there isn’t spit he can do about it. Nor can we for that matter.
I bought and read his 3-part PDF mini-novel a couple years ago. Didn’t end well as you can imagine. The Hopium is definitely drained out of this guy that lives northeast of me… He’s doing what you are doing, what I am doing, just trying to take care and maybe heal a little of what I can.
As for the diseases his garden and orchards are dealing with, I’ve got a few problems along those lines, too. My old apple tree has been dying of ‘Fire Blight’ the last three years as I keep sawing off major limbs trying to save it. It’s a 50 yr old tree and still has good apples, but I’m losing the battle and know it. Too much heat too early lasting too late into the Fall and the old tree just doesn’t have enough time to build any biological defenses because it’s always too stressed.
Just like we’re starting to be. I’m unable to work in the heat and that sure does cut down what I can do on these 8 acres…
sealintheSelkirks
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Epic, tragic, feedback dude, thx!
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[…] This series is a brilliant dive into the archelogy of how oil evolved and how it became fundamental to this set of living arrangements & how this set of living arrangements can’t function without fossil fuels. There is no “Energy Transition” outside of “Collapse.” […]
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Endangered Bats Have Slowed, But Not Stopped, a Waterfront Mega-Development in Charleston. Could Flood Risk?
After over a decade of permitting and legal challenges, felling is under way for the 9,000-acre South Carolina project. But with rising seas and worsening storms, does the city need 20,000 more people living in the floodplain?
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27102024/charleston-endangered-bats-waterfront-mega-development/
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This story fits on so many different threads; habitat loss, ocean rise, endangered species, destruction of wetlands, Capitalism, stupid politicians, greed, insurance, but they all lead towards one thing in the end. Collapse. So I’m putting it here.
sealintheSelkirks
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In 1177 BCE, Civilizations Fell Apart in a Mysterious Simultaneous Collapse.
“In his 2014 book about the late Bronze Age collapse, American archaeologist Eric Cline highlights the year 1177 BCE as a decisive moment when things significantly deteriorated. However, as he notes, complex systems take time to unfold. Over the course of a few decades, rebellions raged, wars broke out, cities fell into ruin, writing systems were extinguished, and cultures were seemingly wiped from the planet.”
In this brilliant presentation below, Professor Cline makes the point that whilst specific dates have been attributed to the various civilisational collapses they actually happened progressively.
Civilisational collapses aren’t singular events, they are a process, an unfolding process!
Primary drivers of the collapses were overshoot, climate change, complexity and sociopathic and psychopathic leaders completely disconnected from reality!
Ring any bells?
https://www.iflscience.com/in-1177-bce-civilizations-fell-apart-in-a-mysterious-simultaneous-collapse-76858?fbclid=IwY2xjawIoj1hleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWYXHemxm0ycm8Nanq8wQqTLkq0YkwK-o711h7JGJE4Fn3geH_JqewsqIw_aem_gGa3F2bVde2amcHFgDvZnA
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It sure sounded familiar as I read it. At the bottom it says another version was published last year which obviously I read!
Causes of collapse sure sounds like current reality, don’t they?
sealintheSelkirks
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I’m with them. Let’s party! Oh wait, I’m too broke to party…
https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.net/the-super-rich-know-were-doomed/
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So I guess not then, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
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Well hell, he is only now noticing this? Late to the end game I would say!
The 7 Fundamental Drivers of Overshoot
By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-03-17/the-7-fundamental-drivers-of-overshoot/
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We are definitely in the ‘degraded carrying capacity stage.’ The addiction to Dopamine from computer games and Tic-Toc? How weird is that! And the lack of ‘Ecological Education & Values’ is certainly obvious as hell.
But the stupid in the US voted in Trump, along with a whole lot of Republican vote corruption, so this country is going to continue heading down the path of no return and taking the rest of the world with it.
Nobody is safe in a general civilization crash. Oh, and Racist Apartheid-raised Fascist South African ex-pat and now US citizen billionaire Peter Thiel who lives in his New Zealand mansion/bunker, is part of this world-wide cabal of Fascist billionaires (with Musk in the US) doing this. Best be on your toes about him, ya know Kevin? A bunch of slippery slimy toxic Typhoid Mary types running around destroying, ya know?
In an intelligent society, their mothers would have drowned them at birth. But then Trump’s mother was a harridan… Shit be fucked up, dude!
sealintheSelkirks
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[…] attention to Arthur’s work.We interviewed Arthur on Nature Bats Last: Collapse: The Only Realistic ScenarioI highly recommend Michael Dowd’s analysis of William Catton’s […]
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More brilliant collapse dialogue from the ever-reliable Steve Bull.
(4) Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCVI
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Is The West Set for TOTAL Civilisational Collapse?
Clearly my position on this is of course it is, we’re watching it, live on our devices, like the 600+ day genocide in Palestine and a new unprovoked war on Iran, with the full support of all the Western Powers and vassal states like Aotearoa NZ.
The wanton war mongering is linked to the Empire of Chaos’s desperation, which is intrinsically linked to Peak Oil, unrepayable debt and overshoot.
An important aspect of this civilisation unraveling which I now think what we’re witnessing is better described as ‘unravelling’ because so many people mistake the term ‘Collapse’ as an event not an unfolding process.
What we’re witnessing is a process of collapse, not a simple event.
Aaron Bastani mentioned that aging populations and decreasing birthrates upend social contracts on pensions and social services.
That plays into unrepayable debt and a lurch to the right politically and projecting our troubles onto immigrants, who in many places do much of the manual labour, I was one once.
Our predicament is ripe for manipulation from the far right in power, all over the West and any disenfranchised minority group enraged enough to retaliate.
They talked about the ‘gloom’ in our youth, that aspect of the unravelling is almost universally ignored by adults due to them not facing the predicament.
It’s an abandonment of parental/elder responsibility.
Considering all of the above, they literally dismissed the climate crisis, “A subject for another day”. In the last 10 minutes they talk about positives in the future and it’s not terminal. The freakn irony for me is the cognitive dissonance in the economics field where these academics think economics functions outside of the ecosystem.
Thats how we got here I suppose.
Is The West Set For TOTAL Civilisational Collapse? | Aaron Bastani meets John Rapley & Peter Heather
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When YOUR body collapses in the heat:
The long-term health risks as extreme heat becomes a new normal
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Bodies can’t take it…here’s a PBS special on this…that is being de-funded by the Fascist in government.
Was 38’C at 3pm today, and I didn’t go outside again. It gets hottest between 3 and 5pm.
And it was 33’C just after sunset tonight. The air outside is…baking. Feels like opening an oven door when I walked outside.
sealintheSelkirks
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David Suzuki almost telling the truth, but not quite!
David Suzuki: “We should be scared stiff”
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Gilbert’s six-year-old analysis has stood the test of time.
Gilbert Mercier: “Life On Earth Will Become Hell For Human Survivors”
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Bills integrity shines brightly.
Instagram
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Another form of collapse instigated by DJT the Fascist who is doing his absolute best to…fuck the world up even worse than it already is. No more birthday presents from doting grandparents and other relatives in other countries to kids in the US I guess…
Postal services around the world suspend deliveries to US: how will it affect you?
Suspensions including from Australia and Europe come after Donald Trump removed a rule exempting parcels worth less than US$800 from his tariffs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/26/postal-services-suspend-us-usa-deliveries-how-will-it-affect-you
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It took four decades for Reagan’s Fascist dream to come full force onto the scene, but the wealthy and their bought politicians have done it but in oh-so-many unexpected ways. Never thought I’d be missing Richard Nixon…
No, I’m kidding! But every goddamned president since Reagan has been a Reaganite in policy actions regardless of their ‘party’ affiliation. Besides which the US went proto-Fascist in 1947 when it created the CIA and NSA…
sealintheSelkirks
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Another “Brick in the Wall”, removed.
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More brilliant journalism from “B,” the Honest Sorcerer
The End of Post-Industrial Nations | by B | Aug, 2025 | Medium
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Saw a post on Medium, followed the link to original story. ‘Net Zero’ was always a freaking pipe dream and never going to happen:
What happens to net zero if the trees don’t survive?
When climate change undermines the climate plan
https://strategicclimaterisks.substack.com/p/what-happens-to-net-zero-if-the-trees
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I’ve been watching the trees on this mountain property stress out in the heat and lack of rain/winter snowfall over the 21 years I’ve been here. And for the last ten, most definitely as the blast furnace heat keeps hitting as summer starts earlier (in MARCH!) and doesn’t really turn down the heat until…sometimes in late October/Nov. The little trees die first but the big red firs, lodgepole pines, etc aren’t growing much I’ve noticed.
Which is why this article made sense to me.
sealintheSelkirks
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Even the Amazon Forest is a net emitter these days.
https://guymcpherson.com/science-update-amazon-rainforest-warms-earth/
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Yep, read about that recently. We’ve shifted the entire planet so badly that just about everything is now a ‘net’ emitter. Too bad for nearly every species on the planet, eh?
Then there is this from Grist:
Antarctica Is Unraveling
“Abrupt changes” threaten to send the continent past the point of no return, a new study finds.
https://gizmodo.com/antarctica-is-unraveling-2000650391?utm_
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Never any good news, eh Kevin?
sealintheSelkirks
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Hunziker adds to the Antarctica link I posted above:
Antarctica on Alert
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/29/antarctica-on-alert/
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I noticed the Pottsdam Institute was one of his sources…
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102’F at 2pm, be hottest in a couple more hours. Wildfire smoke is thicker…but not quite gagging level yet.
sealintheSelkirks
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Another fascinating delves in to collapse, let’s all help ourselves through this, whatever this is.
Added to my blog post “Collapse, the only Realistic Outcome.”
“We are going to be dead REGARDLESS of what we do.”
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The writing is on the wall.
Collapse isn’t an event, it’s a process, an unfolding process!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE5304LfT50
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Is It Too Late To Save the Swiss Alps?
As glaciers melt, avalanche victims in Europe’s most famous mountain range debate whether to rebuild or retreat.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/is-it-too-late-to-save-the-swiss-alps/
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Answer: Most likely. But the big question people ask is when. And the problem with trying to answer that is that science has a tendency to be conservative, extremely conservative as a matter of fact especially when scientists come out with any kind of projection or timeline based on predictive science of what the climate USED TO DO.
That, we now know, isn’t reliable any longer due to the ever-increasing forced shifts in the balance of natural ecosystems by the effects of human behavior. What humans are doing is NOT how this used to work without us.
Besides, I’m sure we’ve all noticed (those of us paying attention) that what climate science was saying in the 1970s, 80s, and 1990s is NOT exactly what is happening worldwide.
Remember when what was hypothesized might happen decades ago it seemed to be around or past a 2100 AD date for at least the really bad stuff nobody wanted to talk about. Don’t worry our pretty little heads about it!
Unfortunately some of those 2100 ‘milestones’ have now happened. Can we say oopsie?
sealintheSelkirks
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A short:
Extreme Heat Waves Are Pushing Animals To Extinction
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/extreme-heatwaves-climate-change-animals-extinction
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More never any good news…
sealintheSelkirks
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Another great dive into collapsing civilisations from “B”, the Honest Sorcerer.
Complexity has always been civilisations “Achilles Heel” and there has never been a civilisation as complex as the Ponzi scheme we are currently running.
The super organism of Industrial civilisation will keep spreading until it unravels.
September and October are the months when most financial collapses/crashes unfold.
The US Federal Reserve ‘printed’ $1 trillion in just 48 days, clearly that insanity can’t be maintained and could very easily morph into contagion spreading through the global banking system!
Complexity and Collapse | The Honest Sorcerer
“The U.S. is facing an unprecedented debt crisis, adding $1 trillion in just 48 days, pushing the total federal debt to nearly $38 trillion, five years ahead of projections. With government spending surging to 44% of GDP and deficits reaching historic levels, experts warn that the U.S. is heading toward a fiscal catastrophe. Analysts are calling this a spending crisis, with debt interest now surpassing even defense spending. Will political gridlock push America into a debt spiral?”
U.S. Debt Crisis: $1 Trillion Added in 48 Days
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I may have said this elsewhere as I’m reading and writing so much that I’m losing track to where I’m posting what. I end up with so many windows open at the same time it jams up my computer so badly it hiccups and freeze-frames…
But DJT IS going to crash this country and steal as much as he and his family can while doing it. As will all his wealthy benefactors, the multi-millionaires and billionaires. It’s all too obvious. Isn’t it? Maybe not to those who aren’t paying attention.
11 of the last 12 USA Recessions/Depressions have happened when Republicans (economic Neo-liberals) have been in control. For some reason that fact doesn’t seem to be taught in schools of economics, though. I wonder why?
We now have a Mafia-style mob boss government, with a mentally deteriorating extremely narcissistic, violent, pathological liar on top of the antheap while all his various flunkies and sycophants he’s put in power are deathly afraid of saying or doing anything that would piss him off.
This is what they do. No doubt about it.
sealintheSelkirks
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Another fascinating riff on our unfolding collapse, it’s more palpable by the day!Living Beyond the Planetary Budget | by Angus Peterson | Edge of Collapse | Sep, 2025 | Medium
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Sarah Wilson facing the inevitable!
How to respond to societal collapse | Sarah Wilson | TEDxSydney
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Mainstream corporate media throws out a bone:
U.S. rivers are experiencing unprecedented and unexpectedly intense warming
A new analysis is the first in-depth study of riverine heat waves, which are worsening as the planet warms due to climate change
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/us-rivers-are-experiencing-unprecedented-unexpectedly-intense-warming-rcna233002
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Too little too late. As always.
sealintheSelkirks
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After listening to the Sarah Wilson Ted Talk link last night, I thought about “too little too late” I wrote yesterday on the nbcnews link about rivers overheating I posted, and went back to the readersupportednews link I pulled the original nbc link from.
And wrote a reply there. Just because.
So far nobody has commented on my comment but…see if you think I expressed it correctly.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/us-rivers-are-experiencing-unprecedented-unexpectedly-intense-warming-rcna233002
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sealintheSelkirks
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Opps, wrong link.
https://www.rsn.org/001/us-rivers-are-experiencing-unprecedented-and-unexpectedly-intense-warming.html
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Justin’s latest, dive into the new podcast platform.
The World Is on the Collapse Train – by Justin McAffee
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Kevin, let me know if you aren’t a counterpunch subscriber as this link is to counterpunch plus. I’ll paste a copy of this article if you can’t access it. It’s…fucking disturbing, dude.
Damn it all, never any good news.
The Curse of the Blob
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/28/the-curse-of-the-blob/
We might be at a HOLY FUCK moment, Kev….WAAAY faster than we ever thought.
sealintheSelkirks
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The Earth Is Getting Darker, Which Could Mean Hotter Summers in the Future
Learn the surprising reasons why Earth has grown darker over the last 20 years, which include volcanoes, clouds, and cleaner air.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-earth-is-getting-darker-which-could-mean-hotter-summers-in-the-future-48108?utm_
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Could mean hotter summers, eh? Well isn’t that a surprise!
sealintheSelkirks
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A fascinating riff between the realists and the dreamers, that was remarkably good fun.
It reminded me of David Lange debating nuclear at the Oxford Union, after listening to the pro-nukers he joked, “I can smell the uranium on your breath”.
It’s no surprise that the contributor to the designed to fail IPCC waffled on about ‘renewables’, which aren’t renewable. One of the most important details I related to is the lying to the youth, I consider it ‘child abuse’.
Clearly, I’m with Kate!
I’m very much looking forward to having these conversations on my deck next month!
It’s fascinating that the corporate media were prepared to host this debate.
We’re F**ed! It’s too late to avoid civilisational collapse. 2025 Beaker Street Festival Great Debate – ABC listen
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Well hell, just looking at the list and what they do, I’d say Team Negative is already way the fuck ahead of Team Hopium though of course that would mean…WE’RE FUCKED.
But honestly Kevin, we already knew that now didn’t we?
An hour long? Maybe I’ll listen to it later as it’s late and I am heading out the door to continue cutting firewood and splitting the big rounds. I’m getting too old for this shit! Oh my back!
sealintheSelkirks
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This popped up this morning without having to be a member. It lays out some pretty good arguments against the denial idiots.
Hopefully it is still going to be available to the non-member public:
View at Medium.com
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If it requires a Medium membership, I did copy it and could post it in total if you want.
sealintheSelkirks
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I did not know this.
“Relativity is a purely scientific theory, and has nothing to do with religion.” Albert Einstein
“In those days one had to become expert in dodging persons who were persuaded that the fourth dimension was the door to spiritualism.” Sir Arthur Eddington
“To hitch a religious philosophy to a contemporary science is a sure route to its obsolescence.” Jeremy Bernstein
In 1633, after his trial by the Inquisition, Galileo Galilei reportedly exclaimed, “And yet it moves!” implying that the Earth continued to orbit the Sun regardless of religious dogma. During the trial, the Catholic Church, in a medieval cancel-culture style, forced Galileo to recant his heliocentrism, which was considered formal heresy. Why? Because it contradicted verses in the Bible that implied otherwise. The judgment of the Inquisition banned his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, sentenced him to imprisonment (commuted to house arrest), and required him to publicly abjure, curse, and detest his heretical, heliocentric views.
The Vatican officially acknowledged its error in condemning Galileo Galilei on October 31, 1992. The Earth moved indeed around the Sun.
Theology, it turns out, is not science.
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Just to remind us of how awful religion has treated those with curiosity and a thirst for learning, to know new things about the world around us that didn’t agree with some book written in ignorance by people who thought the stars circled the planet…which was flat and if you sailed too far you’d be beset by dragons before you fell off the edge.
And we are still beset by idiot savages but now they are billionaires with immense power. And they still show the emotional maturity of ignorant sheepherders of 2,000 years ago reciting their myths…
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And then we read this about the heat experienced by England this summer and the lack of rainfall (a cut from Medium). And just exactly what makes the Thames Water Company think that the reserves and water table will recover? Oh wait, the ‘hose restrictions’ are staying in place so maybe they aren’t really expecting much to change? Just a bit of hopium for the masses because we don’t want to start a panic with the staid English?
The graph included sure isn’t a confidence builder!
View at Medium.com
“This month I received an email from my water company, Thames Water, thanking me for “helping us save more than 5 million litres of water per day by putting away your hosepipes.” It was nice to be thanked. I feel like I’ve done my bit. The email continued, “Despite the recent rain, our water reserves and groundwater levels will take time to recover and our hose pipe restrictions remain in place locally. For our reservoir levels to return to normal, we need at least 70% or more of our average rainfall between now and early next year [2026].” The Thames Water region alone had “less than half the rainfall we would expect” during a summer now described as “‘the hottest on record’ by the Met Office.”
The previous cultural touchstone for the ‘hottest year on record’ was 1976; the only year in living memory when taps in whole regions of England dried up completely. Forget hosepipe bans — people had to queue up for water at public standpipes, harking back to the pre-industrial days of local wells.
But what happens when THOSE run out? Best not think about that.
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sealintheSelkirks
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