Do You Believe in Magic?

These days I try to tune out what is going on in the Republican primary race because, to be blunt, every candidate is a joke and everything I've heard any of them say to date has been ludicrous. Especially about energy and the economy. More than that, I am heartbroken that so many citizens in this country can actually buy into any of this dribble. To be fair, however, the Democrats and the current administration haven't got it much better. They seem to be a little more realistic when it comes to understanding the oil/gasoline price problems, but they still don't seem to get the underlying dynamic that is driving us all off the cliff. Right now they are working hard to put the best spin on the recent economic data that seems to show the economy in recovery, even if slowly. But spin is all it is. As long as oil hovers north of $100 per barrel, we are all going to be adapting downward for a long time to come.

For example there is a lot of hot air circulating in the left political arena and in the MSM about jobs starting to show improvement. And it appears to be true that the raw numbers of jobs, even across many sectors, is either increasing or the loss is slowing. What they don't tell you is that the average wage rates for these new jobs is much less than what the old jobs (in the same sector) had paid. People aren't complaining. They are just happy to have a job. What the newly hired, as well as most Americans in the low and middle classes, are doing is cutting back on non-essentials. The recent run up in gas prices on the coasts is aggravating this. GDP growth remains sluggish even while the stock markets seem to be soaring. The left wants everyone to believe that the economy is recovering as we plunge into the political season. But, in fact, it is only adjusting. People are lowering expectations and adapting to a lower overall cash flow.

Meanwhile the underlying true cause of this contraction dynamic goes without recognition. As the world shifts from traditional crude oil liquids to the kind of gunk we get out of Alberta's tar sands, the net energy per capita continues its downward spiral. Peak conventional oil is being compensated in volume by bringing on more non-conventional and energy expensive volumes just to keep up appearances. Usable energy, that is the kind that does useful economic work, is the basis for the economy. Purchasing power relies on having enough energy to produce real goods and useful services and the amount of useful energy derived from non-conventional (like deep water) oil cannot replace what we had from conventional. No feasible amount of biofuels will make up the difference either.

But what about natural gas? The word on the street is that we have enough NG for 100 years at present use rates. The President said so. The NG companies say so. The investment bankers say so. The MSM says so. All we have to do is convert everything to NG and away we go!

There is a little known fact about NG, especially the kind you can only get out of the ground by horizontal drilling and hydro-fracturing the shale rocks. First the difference between technical recovery and financially-feasible recovery is significant. The MSM (and everybody else) likes to quote the reserve estimates based on the former. They choose to use this much higher number because they believe the technology to make it economic is just around the corner. Ask any of these advocates about the latter and they will look at you cross eyed. To them technically recoverable is the number that counts. Also what they do not know is the production dynamics of the non-conventional wells. It is true that these wells, when they produce (which isn't even close to 100% of drills), they produce at a much greater initial level than conventional wells. A fair amount of the hype about NG comes from this observation. But they never follow with the fact that these same wells have a much faster decline rate. In fact it looks like the decline rates of such wells is so fast that the total volume of actual NG recovered is much less than the initial burst would have predicted based on conventional wells. In other words, there is a big fanfare of production followed by wimpy results. I would bet the NG companies will not be publishing that to their investors.

The net energy per capita of all forms of fossil fuels is in decline. Even coal is costing more to get to the power plants. And if emission requirements gain any teeth (not really likely) then the costs of producing electricity with coal will climb and it will NEVER go down again.

The economy can grow as long as net energy is growing. There are only two ways that will happen. If the total volume of raw energy (fossil fuels) is growing rapidly then the total net will also grow. Or, if someone were to figure out how to reverse the decline in energy return on energy invested (EROI) then that would boost the net return from any amount of raw energy extracted. As that might entail finding a loophole in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and as no one who knows anything about the physics expects that to happen, that avenue is probably not going to work out. There is a third way we might experience growth of net energy on an individual level, and that is if the population would stop growing, and in fact, decline. Well peak oil (and the same phenomenon covering NG and coal) pretty much puts the cabash on the first way. The second would require an act of God. And the fourth is biologically impossible — we are still animals. So, since the net energy is destined to decline so is the economy. Simple physics.

Of course there are a lot of people who hold out for the salvation to be brought from alternative energy sources, the renewable kind like solar and wind. When I started writing this blog I warned against thinking these sources could ever replace or supercede the fossil sources because of their efficiency and scalability limitations. Well, we are finally getting some empirical results that confirm my concerns. There are now many large-scale photovoltaic, thermal conversion, and wind farm systems built and operated so that we can actually look at real performance compared with projected performance. We can also see more clearly all of the little gottchas that no one thought about when the systems were still on the drawing boards. So the reality is finally getting a purchase and there are several news sources that have been willing to carry this fact.

So why is the general public still clinging to Newt Gingrich's promise for $2.50 per gallon gasoline? Why do people think the President of the US can do anything about prices or the economy?

They believe in magic.

I've come to realize that the Enlightenment, at least in the US, is dead and buried. That a candidate like Rick Santorum would even be a serious consideration for president tells us a lot about the beliefs of a fair segment of the population. If he got the nomination and then won the election I would say that was conclusive evidence that we, as a people, are back in the Dark Ages for sure. Is that even a serious possibility? I don't know anymore. A few years ago I would have laughed at the idea, thinking it a joke. But then I laughed at the idea of George W. Bush even running for president let alone ending up with the title before the 2000 election season. I had given up on the Republican party as having been colonized by the fundamentalist religious right. But I never would have guessed that a sufficient number of people in the US would be just as wacky.

Lest it sound like I am picking on the Republicans, I hasten to point out that the Democrats suffer their own form magical thinking. It is more subtle. They do a better job of rationalizing their beliefs. They sound like they believe in science (at least on global warming). But underneath they are just as susceptible to belief in magic as everyone else. They believe that economic growth is possible and desirable precisely because it lifts all boats. President John F. Kennedy said as much. Just read Paul Krugman or Robert Reich to see what I mean (had an interesting tet-a-tet with Reich a few weeks ago, he was upset that I had suggested that in overlooking the energy dynamics and calling for more stimulus he seemed to be avoiding learning the “truth” - he objected to me suggesting he wasn't interested in the truth, but he never addressed the core issue. Funny). So lefties (especially progressives) get no pass from me. They are the ones believing in a “green” economy that will look just like the current one only without the carbon. So where the Republicans simply deny science the Democrats use science to appear to be rational, while still believing in magic.

I have, for many years, wondered about the popularity of books like “Harry Potter” and the whole fantasy genre. A good fantasy now and then I can understand. But the barrage of fantasy novels for kids (mine soaked them all up), the fascination with vampires and zombies in teens and young adults, and other indicators that even older adults are able to enjoy fantasies — all you need to do is re-label them as “reality TV” — indicate a propensity to believe in magic.

Those are, however, just the obvious trappings of such beliefs. It goes far beyond the obvious folklore kinds of fantasies. The Grand Wizard of Innovation & Entrepreneurial Magic, Thomas Friedman teaches us that the Mystical Magic of the Market will fix everything if we only believe. All we need do is provide the right incentives (tax breaks maybe, but we may need to go to human sacrifice — oh wait, we already do that to the poor and middle classes). Then the magic will take place. Entrepreneurial magicians will, indeed, conquer the Second Law and devise Energy Technology to rival the magic of Information Technology! Our problems will be solved.

Then there are the Mysterious Economic Alchemists who have repeatedly shown that infinite substitution of one resource for another, when the price of the first gets too high, will always take care of depletions. They have proven it with mathematics no less. And there is the magic of economic growth. It has been demonstrated time and again that this magic is powerful enough to lift all boats. Well you have to ignore the 2 billion boats that live on less than $2.00 a day, are malnourished and have to walk miles for a drink of water. Those aren't really boats, you know.

These are the purveyors of magic. They claim that their wands will produce endless and fabulous wealth for all. If we just believe...

And then there are the believers. You won't have to walk very far down a crowded street to bump into the true believers. Politics doesn't matter. That is just a question of which house in Hogwarts you belong to. It just depends on which wizard or witch (remember Bachman, Palin, and even Hilary?) you think has the most juju.

I guess I first began to wonder if we were back in the Dark Ages when the debates about evolution vs. creationism were resurfacing. It wasn't surprising to see them emerge in the deep south. But Kansas? Then I watched the unfolding of the global warming debate. DEBATE? How do you debate science? Sure you can be skeptical that an experimental protocol supplied sufficient data to support a hypothesis. But debate science — between scientists on the one side and corporate foils on the other?

Over the years it has become increasingly clear where this is going. We haven't really gotten past our prehistoric voodoo minds. We've just substituted the medium in which magic plays out. Modern, technologically savvy man really knows no more than Late Pleistocene man about causes and effects. Arthur Clarke, the science fiction author said, &;dquo;Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And as far as most people know the workings of an iPad might just as well be magic. For them the point is they don't have to know how something works to get a benefit from it. On the surface that seems like a perfectly reasonable argument. But the problem is that the world is so much more complicated. Short-term pragmatics hides the longer-term causal relations that really will matter to all of humanity. Enjoy your iPads while you can, I suppose. Just by purchasing them, and using them, you are relegating us all to a poorer future.

Comments

[pyrolysium]

Technology for the down slope in the making!

Pyrolysium.org is a web platform for the promotion and development of pyrolysis as an efficient way to dispose of human remains using the least amount of energy possible.

Humanity has long travelled along an unsustainable path and is now confronted with a scarcity of fossil fuels, rising global temperatures due to a higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, an economic model in tatters and an exponentially rising population.

Pyrolysium.org will be a forum for collaboration in an “open source” kind of way to improve, develop and divulge this idea, and to make sure that it is not patented so that it is available to the whole human race as a tool to be used on the down-slope towards a sustainable future.

[Ann]

I certainly hope you're wrong about the Dark Ages! I also hope that there is a possibility to use current technical knowledge to promote more sustainable living arrangements. Computers and ipads do have educational uses. It would take planning and maybe even some sort of energy rationing to make sure that important technical/scientific advances could be maintained, albeit in a different way.

[Aboc Zed]

George,

I call our default human condition the goo of institutionalized ignorance.

Science, of course, still contiues but on the side byt the efforts of individuals who happen to be addicted to learning and use their addiction as the means to escape the "craziness" of the rest.

But this aloofness and non-engagement in politics of power cannot continue forever.

Because it costs homo species dearly: those who refuse to learn will let the momentum of evolution out of ignorance to continue for as long as there are lessers under them tha insulate them from the heat of the reality.

With such a set up the politicians and money men have no incentive to learn and will never have incentive to learn.

And the cycle of die-off and permanent decrease of carrying capacity may continue for very long.

What will it take those who understand to organize and move into government?

I can only come up with one answer: the love of learning and adiction to knowing.

Somewhere on the Internet I saw a saying which seems appropriate here:

To know and not to act is not to know.

[Anywhere But Here Is Better]

It's always an interesting exercise to consider whether the Dark Ages could return, or have returned. The last incidence we officially know about was a period in which the transfer of knowledge was reduced to a trickle, via the scribing of monks tucked away in monasteries while barbarism reigned outside the walls. Conversely, with the internet - while there remains an electricity supply - we appear to have a growing deluge of information, although the actual quality of it and its factual base can be questioned.

I was just thinking, however, that it is access to factual information that is the key here. Yes, we did have the Enlightenment, which you feel is over. But did the majority of the world's population participate in this? Did they share in the benefits? Were they ever allowed to share? Looking at the course of history, I am wondering if for the overwhelming majority, the Dark Ages have been and still are a permanent feature of life. The voters who may, just may elect a clearly deranged president in November - whom we might term a Knowledge Luddite - are acting out their glorious ignorance and non-participation in any kind of enlightenment. The same goes for the short-termist “investment” bankers who have decimated the standard of living for untold millions of previously comfortable fellow inhabitants of this planet, for the purpose of amassing vast though ultimately pointless wealth for themselves behind their barricades.

George, you are one of the relatively few in human history who carry the torch of knowledge and pass it on to the next generation. I believe there have always only been a few who do this. For the majority in the US, UK and worldwide with perennially low access to enlightened education, Magic has never lost its grip – whether through their unquestioning acceptance of what they are told by their religious leaders or their blind obedience to the iron fist of the “strongest man in the village”.

I can’t help thinking that to an extraterrestrial observer, the human race must look like archetypal lemmings, jumping to their demise generation after generation simply because the guy in front is leading the way to the cliff edge. What’s actually changed from prehistory to now?

[Tom]

Humanity is on its way out if we continue our overpopulation, pollution and non-cooperation (not to mention our continuing depletion of natural resources). It doesn't look like it's going to stop until Mother Nature stops us - which she is in the process of doing in dramatic and subtle ways. Storms are becoming far stronger than we're "used to," flooding is on an unprecedented scale, earthquakes and volcanic activity is WAY up, airborne, pest-borne and insect-borne diseases are increasing each year. Trees and plants are being stressed, species extinction continues, overfishing the oceans and beaching of marine life is becoming larger is scale and scope. Birds are beginning to have problems with diseases, habitat change and other troubles to their existence.

So with just these few examples we can see the trajectory of the next few years and it points to less reliable weather causing less food production, aquifers and other water sources drying up, rising sea level on the coasts of every continent (displacing billions of people), conflict over scarce resources and chaotic and probably violent societal reactions to all this. Some countries are already experiencing starvation. If the electrical grid starts failing, those involved will be brought back to the Stone Age immediately.

Humanity is completely unprepared for this collapse and will resort to killing each other off (i'm sure that our ignorance will defeat any bright moments we once had or lofty ideals we held for ourselves. "Man was created in the image of God" - my ass. We're on the same level as yeast in a Petri dish with a finite amount of food.)

To put it another, more popular way: "ya can't fix stupid."

[Stu]

On the Santorum danger-

I and my wife are geologists and freethinkers. Her family was a wonderful, caring family with lots of room for discussion and freethought. we felt loved and wanted. Relgious and political differences were overlooked. Part of this was due to her parents being different religions-- Catholic & Lutheran. Whatever, it made a free and happy place for us.

At one point my wife's twin sisters married conservative Catholic men. The one husband, a former Reagan warrior, is a fire breathing devil believing facist who has regularly announced to the family for 16 years now that it's "my way or the highway". This person is a near clone of Santorum.

This religious facist has nearly completely destroyed any semblance of tolerance or freedom of thought within the family. He deeply humiliates his wife in public. This hatemonger explodes in rage if the church is questioned in any way. He has turned everyone against each other and basically destroyed a formerly good family. And he has campaigned endlessly for 15 years to turn the other religious family members against us. I won't mention his Thanksgiving dinner gay jokes in which he hangs his rear-end over the table and spits out hatred against homosexuals.

I cannot but look with fear at the propsect of a Santorum Presidency.

[Rich]

That Reich and his colleagues fail to account for energy in their growth models is why I call that branch of economics a cargo cult: policy x worked in the past, ergo it will work again, so let's repeat it. Like all cargo cultists, they fail to understand why and how something worked in the first place.

When I heard one of Reich's talks in 2009, his main argument was that deficits and national debt don't matter as long as the economy's growing. Of course you cannot take real economic growth for granted, but it's easy to do so as long as you say things like "natural resources don't matter" or ignore the role of energy in your macroeconomic growth models. While I think a combination of natural gas, coal, and efficiency improvements will keep this mess going for a bit longer (and therefore make the inevitable collapse that much worse), economists have to realize that the massive growth in the real economy in the decades following WWII was a one-off thing...basing policy or budgets off the expectation that such rates of growth are normal is ridiculous.

Anyway, I recently finished reading a collection of essays on energy analysis written in the 1970s. One of the authors noted that "money printing" would be ineffective at remedying the economic problems resulting from net energy decline. Perhaps I should send a copy to the Fed and Reich?

[Stu]

An addendum to my post above-

As a long time student of totalitarian movements of the 20th century, I have come to the personal conclusion that the US conservative movement has become so radicalized that it is a massive threat to our free society.

We are no long dealing with good Americans who are just seeking the common good from a different perspective. No longer are conservatives just good ol folks who believe in US exceptionalism and like to go to church and wave Old Glory.

We are now dealing with a fanatical mindset that hates open-minded analysis and is no longer capable of introspection or able to accept varied points of view within the society. We are dealing with a movement that hates learning, hates science, actively applauds environmental destruction, and glorifies endless war.

This movement, which has deep penetration into the US Military, is now quite capable of carrying out a massive violent social cleansing of all those who they view as enemies- primarily the much demonized "liberals". Many of these folks are now capable of manning the concentration camp towers or pulling the nuclear trigger on those whom they hate.

Just my personal informed opinion. But I really hope that I am wrong on all this.

[Aboc Zed]

Stu,

It appears to me that you are very emotional about "the whole thing going wrong way".

But let me ask yu why?

Why you feel so strong about the natural outcome of evolutionary process?

Yes we overpopultated the planet long time ago.

Yes we continue to do so.

Yes many will die in vilent or quiet way - that is simple math - why you get emotional about it?

I just want to say that getting emotional is not going to help us to deal with what is coming.

And it is always easier to "blame" something or someone but to me there cannot be any blame because each of us is part of the problem simply because each of us was born and is that overpopulation.

If we were totally logical we would have to kill ourselves but that is not going to happen unless we are depresed which is not logical either.

So even if conservatives in the US will eventually implement some cleansing, third Reich or start a nuclear war - what's a big deal? Who can it be bigger than the fact that everybody is talking opinion instead of science? It is all just a part of the evolutionary process - it is just keps going - and if it takes our species to first go to 12 billion and then kill each other to 12 million before we learn anything then so be it - how can we even think we can change anything about it?

[John Weber]

The dark ages were not so dark. I would like to share the first two paragraphs of my essay:
We will go kicking and screaming down the path to the new Middle Ages as fossil fuels desert us. With the decline of available energy, those of most of us who have sat at the top of the energy pyramid will become the new peasants. With the popular view of the Middle Ages as a brutal and dirty time filled with famine and disease and at the mercy of armed overlords. We cringe at the thought.

With great sadness, we must recognize the direct connection between present day population levels and the use of fossil fuels in food production, medical procedures, medicines and hygiene. With the fall in fossil fuel availability there will be a reduction in population. Population soared with the industrial revolution and the development of industrial, fossil fuel based agriculture. It cannot be sustained.
From: The New Middle Ages
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-middle-ages.html

[George Mobus]

Ann,

I'm afraid I think we are already in the dark ages. To anticipate some other comments made below yours, what I am referring to is the ignorance that runs rampant in our population. Some of this ignorance is due to an incapacity among people to learn complex technical knowledge, and, admittedly, almost everything looks technical these days. But a large part of it is intentional ignorance. I especially refer to those social icons like Friedman and politicians like Obama who incessantly promote the very things that got us into this predicament in the first place.

It is possible to promote sustainable living. My systems science course focused on permaculture is such a use of current (appropriate) technology to achieve such. But we have to be realistic. The number of people who can be sustained in this manner is substantially fewer than we have at present. The Earth just can't support so many people living at even a modest standard (i.e. permaculture). Until we, as a people, start to change our ways, quickly, and especially reduce our numbers (by attrition w/o births) there can be no hope for a reasonable downsizing (vs. a die off). Sorry to say...

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Aboc,

What will it take those who understand to organize and move into government?

This might have been a feasible solution as late as the early 1970s. But the same problem that haunts us today haunted democracy back then too - the people elect and have to be won over with false promises. No truly wise person would have ever been able to move into a government position. Indeed a wise person probably eschews the constraints of being in government.

To know and not to act is not to know.

Yes, but who gets to say what constitutes proper action? Perhaps the action taken will not look like action to those with a priori expectations, especially if they believe we are facing a problem that can, in principle, be solved rather than a predicament which can't be solved, even in principle. In this sense, even not acting can be a form of action.

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Anywhere,

What’s actually changed from prehistory to now?

Lucid analysis. And the last question is highly relevant. Humans have continued to evolve to some extent, but by my estimates it has been more a form of devolution rather than progressive. Ironically, however, as individuals, on average, have grown less sapient over the last 10-12k years, they have applied their cleverness to acquire enormous amounts of knowledge about how things work. Or at least the few very clever have done so. The majority, however, neither appreciate this body of work, nor grasp its significance. Thus they can repudiate parts they least understand and don't like even when they have a sense of what science does.

So now, here we are, on the cusp as it were, with lots of stored knowledge and almost no understanding. Lesser beings on average than we were at the beginning of the Holocene, our individual sapience seems to have been paid out as a cost of letting our cleverness (motivated mostly by emotions and feelings rather than rationality) expand and control. My thought turns to how to encode, in compressed form, the seed knowledge that would enable a future people, should they exist, to recover the most important of what we have produced along with a capacity to understand its importance and use it wisely.

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Tom,

No you can't fix stupid. But might not the wisest among us acknowledge the decline and prepare for a distant future when we might not be so stupid? I certainly hope this is feasible.

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Stu,

I cannot but look with fear at the propsect of a Santorum Presidency.

Yes. But also, the fear of living amongst a population of people who would actually nominate and then vote for him! Santorum is just a signature of the dark age mentality of which I write.

RE: your addendum.

Our long-range prospects for "freedom" are not just threatened by the radical right. They are really just a reaction to the larger threats to the world as a whole. I give you that they are mindlessly (and thoughtlessly) imposing their vision of what should be in an attempt to gain the safety that they thought they had but is now slipping away from all of us. As a world, we are in a lot more danger from the anarchy that will come with the rapid decline in net energy and acceleration of weather anomalies due to climate change.

Too I have to say I see just as much craziness on the left, though it takes a different form. It seems, to some, a more reasonable approach, but as I wrote above, it is just as laced with magical thinking as anything the right has.

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Rich,

After my recent experience with Reich, I'd say you'd be wasting your time!

For ALL, I just got my copy of Charlie Hall and Kent Kiltgaard's new book, "Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding Biophysical Economics." I'm well into it, partly because I've read most of Hall's work and I can peruse quickly. And I am probably a little biased here, but I have to say, someone has finally written a scientific book on macroeconomics! I will most likely write a review of it when I can get some time.

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John,

Thanks for the link and summary. It is my understanding that the term "dark age" refers to the period starting after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (in the west) in which a significant amount of knowledge was lost or "buried" as far as the populace was concerned. It was the kick-off of the Middle Ages, but not the whole of the middle ages. As you point out in your essay, things did start to pick up later during that time.

Here I am simply analogizing with the fall of civilization and loss of knowledge. Our civilization has seemed to revert to magical thinking as a way to stave off its downfall. It appears to be incapable of dealing with the facts of the diminishment of fossil fuels without equally powerful renewable alternatives to substitute.

What will make the next fall of civilization significantly different from the original dark ages and subsequent climb back up during the Middle Ages is that we will have used most of the fuels civilizations need to build themselves. Whereas the inventors working in the late Middle Ages had increasing access to energy sources, our descendants will have decreasing access. Pity that.

George

[Rich]

Energy and the Wealth of Nations is sitting on my bookshelf right now; I just need time to read it!

For those who might want a copy, you can get a paperback edition for $25 + free shipping if you order through a library that subscribes to Springer's "MyCopy" service.

Another relevant book published by Springer is The Second Law of Economics: Energy, Entropy, and the Origins of Wealth by Reiner Kummel. (Kummel is a speaker at this year's ASPO conference in Europe.)

[siddharth soni]

Mr. Mobus, I enjoyed this piece of writing. Caustic and witty.

I checked the two books mentioned above. Both come at a price >60$. Pretty expensive for me actually. Otherwise, I would have liked to read them. Anyway, I can probably guess what the authors are talking about.

Off late, I've been struggling to understand what can lead to a behavioral change, even in the smallest of matters.

People become obese and look at themselves in the mirror and again hog like there's no tomorrow. If they can't resist eating (bring themselves to work out) in spite of such a simple and clear evidence, any behavioral change is a big ask.

Catastrophe brings humanity to examine itself it seems...

Am planning to launch a little initiative that can get people to think and, and that's a big 'and', perhaps change their choices.

I only wish I could get some help from people around. Trying...

Cheers! :)

[Stu]

I am in agreement that the Left also has a big problem with disconnects with reality. However, the Left still generally respects science and the basic tenets of a free society. The left also undertands that war is a scam that benefits the few while bringing impoverishment and destruction to the many.

The Right, however, is truly batshit crazy and now sees destruction of any who have different viewpoints as the answer to their problem. Among the conservatives, respect and understanding for Enlightenment principles is nearly gone. And any who espouse Enlightenment principles are regarded as weaklings.

The nightmare scenario is when political moderates (Obama a moderate???) lose a large amount of politcal power due to an economic collapse or large-scale terror attack and the US population votes in a strongman from the Right. The German Enabling Act of 1933 gives a map which shows how a moderate society can be swept away in a flash and evil can become firmly entrenched- and not disempowered until the German nation was a massive pile of rubble and whole populations extinguished.

These folks mean business. I am familiar with the history and am now seeing the same characters arise from the dank swamps.

[George Mobus]

Rich,

Thanks for the comment and the tip. I've been getting e-mails from a lot of folk who are recommending various books that call neo-classical econ into question.

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Siddharth,

Is it possible to get a copy through a library? Rich also provided a tip on getting a soft cover version copy. But it is true that if you have been reading my stuff for very long you will have a pretty good idea what they are talking about. Its just good to get the hard data from the source. Charlie Hall is the knowledge fountainhead when it comes to biophysical econ. That is why I spent my sabbatical with him!!!

PS. I will respond to your e-mail shortly!

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Stu,

...the Left still generally respects science and the basic tenets of a free society.

You know, I basically believed that too until I kept hearing Obama and Steven Chu, his physics Nobel laureate, continue talking about "clean coal" and watching what they have done regarding the basic truth about biophysical economics.

All of the left and progressives claim to be in support of science but they don't bother to actually look at what science is telling them. They don't acknowledge what the science infers. They cherry pick their science (Yeah I believe in evolution, but I also believe that God made mankind special...) I can't give them a by on the science point because they don't behave as if they actually understand it. Personally I think they espouse their belief in science simply as a talking point and as a way to differentiate themselves from the right.

They may understand that war is a scam but I don't see Obama following through on his campaign promises. We're sort-of out of Iraq (but not really) but we're still very much in Afghanistan and rattling our swords at Iran. I have no illusions that Obama would not use a nice little war to further his political agenda any less than Kennedy or Johnson did! War has its domestic-front political uses, make no mistake.

I agree that the right has largely turned into a holding pen for loonies. As I watch the Republican primary process unfold I am just dumbfounded by the rhetoric and outright lies that every single candidate (including Ron Paul) are using to win the hearts and minds of the ignorant masses. My god, has it really come to this?

These are the dark ages in my book. Ignorance and folly know no political bounds. Everyone is involved. But there is nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide. Every nation on Earth has its problems. And no nation on Earth has any idea of how to solve any of them.

Batten down the hatches.

George