We are hitting the absolute peaks of fossil fuels in possibly as little as a decade from now also. The current arrangements are only possible with a constantly high energy throughput. There’s considerable limits right now on how much growth can be achieved. And there are more things than ever competing for energy consumption too - including the rise of AI (which is causing energy consumption to soar again after ~2 decades of being flat in Western countries).

The thing is, it’s still a huge increase.

The problem with Reddit turning into Instagram is that IG already exists.

At the rate they’re going, their actual destination is Tumblr, a company that destroyed their brand trying to fit in with generic corporate BigTech.

Anecdotally, bird migration seems much quieter this year. At times we have had enormous flocks of warblers passing through around this time of the year. There are still birds but it is a fraction of the normal volume. This may also be related to the odd weather we’ve been having though, I’m not sure.

A lot of people still think it’s possible to have an energy transition, even those who should know better and are very well aware of the decline of oil resources - for example, Dennis Coyne who runs Peak Oil Barrel. He knows very well, because he’s made mathematical models to that effect, that oil production could decline by about 1/3 by 2050. But he thinks a transition will occur by then. I think it’s a religious-like belief at this point that there has to be something waiting in the wings to save us. Oh, and the mainstream opinion is, by the way, that oil supplies are plateauing because of lower demand (because of this alleged transition) and not because we are depleting the main sources.

On the other hand, you have guys like Art Berman who think supplies will last a good deal longer but that there will still be enormous upheaval in the coming century. Out here on the fringes there’s not much consensus.