19 Comments

1. 

   jupiviv on April 30, 2026 at 10:22 am

   As I’m sure we’re all aware, Merz very recently told German pensioners to go frack themselves. The lefts are very upset about it, enough to issue strongly worded remarks in their capacity as junior coalition members. My word, the courage! The unmitigated bloody-minded chutzpah! The final evolution of middle-class/wealthy student radicalism is unfurling before our very eyes!

   Still it’s important to remind ourselves that it’s all in a good cause – liberating Ukraine (and also Iran… but not in the unpopular Trumpian way) and saving the planet. Expect hella lot more of this. The pretense of bourgeois parliamentarism will grow more farcical by the day as the beneficiaries of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism ever more desperately attempt to exclude themselves from responsibility for its intensifying collateral damage, while passing the blame onto Otherized scapegoats.

   • 

     Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 3:43 pm

     Jupiviv, part of the problem – Germany had the lowest births on record last year:

     “Low birth rates have serious financial consequences in Germany, as in many other countries: Fewer working people are paying contributions to the state pension system, while the number of retirees is rising.”

     https://www.dw.com/en/germany-pensions-retirement-standard-of-living/a-76925722

     Strengthening the social safety net rather than borrowing vast quantities of money to rearm would certainly be the compassionate thing to do but we do not live in sensible times.

     They’re moving the goalposts on UK pensions but I dare say it’s moot for someone of my age (53).

     “The age at which millions of people can claim their state pension is starting to rise to 67 from Monday, when the monthly payments also go up.”

     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7e90kneo

2. 

   George Kaplan on April 30, 2026 at 10:26 am

   That CERES albedo chart is the scariest one posted here (it used to be equal to the one showing the jump in extreme drought snd rainfall events in the 2020s but it is now No. 1 alone with the hint of acceleration at the end). I don’t know how anyone can look at it and think there’s any chance of avoiding a runaway to a hothouse. However, in the shorter term, the El Nino “off the chart” chart is a strong contender to take over the top spot.

   • 

     Flippr on April 30, 2026 at 11:08 am

     Agreed George, both the EEI (earth energy imbalance) and the El Nino charts are terrifying! I wonder how El Nino and EEI interact? This article speaks to it a bit:

     https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024AV001636

   • 

     Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 3:57 pm

     Prof Jim Hansen is taking issue with Zeke Hausfather’s recent claim that 2026 will be the second hottest year on record. He says that, even if this is a moderate El Nino like 2023/4, this will be the hottest year and that 2027 will, of course, be hotter still.

     I think we’re getting to the point, though, where we can say that this is going to be a very potent El Nino. This is going to mean a second stagflationary shock on top of the very large one already building courtesy of events in the Middle East.

     I’m going to stick my neck out and forecast GFC 2.0 in 2027. Central banks just can’t do much with stagflation. 🤷‍♂️

     • 

       Flippr on April 30, 2026 at 4:33 pm

       Hansen just posted “2026 On Track for Warmest Year”: https://tinyurl.com/42h8ndz3

       >>> I’m going to stick my neck out and forecast GFC 2.0 in 2027.

       Well Pano, we’ll sure be missing simple problems like messed up co-op orders when GFC V2 hits. Do your kids know about this website?

       • 

         Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 4:42 pm

         Flippr, they don’t. Knowing what/how much to share with them is a tough judgement call. I don’t want to frighten them or demotivate them when the BAU game still needs playing.

         I have told my youngest that food is going to get even more expensive and we’ll benefit from learning as much as we can about producing our own.

3. 

   Flippr on April 30, 2026 at 10:27 am

   Quark has finished grocery shopping and published a new short essay called “Forget about oil, the problem is the bond market.”

   https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/olvidense-del-petroleo-el-problema

   Google translation:

   With the consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the rise in oil prices, and the imminent rationing we will suffer in many parts of the world, it’s hard to imagine there being a bigger problem than this.

   To explain, I will use an analogy.

   The world is like a patient with a degenerative disease, going through a severe crisis. The solution is a harsh treatment that will limit mobility and change habits, reducing quality of life. Furthermore, we know there is no cure and it will worsen over time, eventually killing the patient.

   Meanwhile, a silent, armed assassin has entered the room. He has shot the patient in the heart. If the bullet strikes the heart, he will die instantly. If the bullet only grazes the heart, he will suffer, but his recovery will be complete, until the degenerative disease takes him from this world.

   The patient with the crisis and the degenerative disease is the world and the medium- and long-term oil shortage. The silent killer who has fired its weapon is the fiat system facing a crisis as a consequence of tensions in the bond market. If the bullet hits the heart, the bond market collapses, and with it, the fiat system is destroyed. Money ceases to exist, and all transactions disappear, immediately reverting to the Stone Age. If the bullet misses the heart, the system recovers, and everything returns to the “normal” state of the degenerative disease, after the post-operative period.

   Getting back to reality, the truth is that everything is very complicated.

   We have “overcome” the difficulties by issuing enormous amounts of debt, leaving the system too heavily indebted to withstand a serious crisis. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has precipitated the crisis in a cascading fashion.

   The disruption to trade causes a shortage of raw materials. The market response is an aggressive price increase. Before long, this increase results in a sharp rise in the CPI, and monetary authorities, to curb this increase, must raise interest rates. But combining massive debt with very high interest rates, after a long period of zero interest rates, has very unpleasant consequences. Financial institutions incur heavy losses, loans begin to dry up, and liquidity is severely affected. Investments, facing a pressing lack of liquidity, begin to decline sharply. And here we arrive at the crux of the matter: investors refuse to buy government debt unless interest rates rise to compensate for the risk. Suddenly, bondholders, fearful of potential losses from rising market rates, flock to the sellers’ window, only to find that no one wants to buy at those prices. A bottleneck occurs, as everyone wants to sell before prices plummet and no one wants to buy hoping for discounts. The collapse is spectacular.

   The buyers of last resort are the central banks, only this time, instead of contributing one trillion dollars as in 2008, or four trillion dollars as in 2020, they must buy 20-30 trillion dollars in bonds to prevent the market from shutting down due to a lack of trading. Yes, the largest bailout in history.

   The system has apparently been bailed out again, but this time it’s different. The price of gold and the massive purchases by central banks in developing countries already implied a certain degree of distrust. The intervention of such a massive influx of money into the system will provoke enormous distrust and a sharp rise in prices when this loss of confidence spreads to citizens, who will quickly realize that prices are rising not once a month, but every day. Hyperinflation is inevitable, and since this time it doesn’t affect a country like Argentina, Venezuela, or Iran, but the very heart of the system, the collapse is global. The fiat system of unbacked money implodes, and the crisis ceases to be a problem because only survival matters when the financial system disappears (money loses its value).

   This is the real danger in the short and medium term.

   I have been warning about the need to monitor certain landmarks.

   The yen’s exchange rate, and the yields on Japanese or British bonds, are currently exceeding the points of no return.

   It takes a complete breakdown lasting more than a few days to cause panic and a bottleneck, but they are on their way, as the Hormuz closure drags on and oil prices continue to rise.

   We still don’t know if the bullet will hit the heart or just graze it, but now it’s the point of vigilance we must keep a close eye on in the coming weeks.

   • 

     Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 4:34 pm

     Thank you, Flippr.

     The energy shocks of the ’70’s saw UK inflation reach 24.5% and Bank of England base rates hitting 17% to offset. We needed a bail-out from the IMF, too. There’s no bounty of North Sea oil coming to help out the Treasury this time around.

4. 

   zip on April 30, 2026 at 11:02 am

   Food and the paradox of “helping” nature

   In contrast to — or perhaps better said, in addition to — Quark and others, I tend to believe less in immediate and total system collapse. After all, even the discharge of a thunderstorm can take quite some time. I think there will be a stubborn intermediate phase for the complex systems we have built layer upon layer. But we will see.

   The relevance is also relative, because the outcome is more or less fixed. In the meantime, I use the time to look at specific components of this energy and resource crisis, which has been casting its shadow ahead for quite some time.

   Today, a brief look at fertilizers, and more specifically nitrogen.

   Modern agriculture likes to present itself as a success story. Never before has humanity produced so much food, so efficiently and on such a scale. Famines seemed to belong to the past. Nature was no longer seen as capricious, but as manageable. Even correctable. Where shortages appeared, we stepped in. With nitrogen, with irrigation, with technology. We came to nature’s aid.

   But that formulation deserves a second look.

   Because what is called “help” here is, in fact, a replacement. The natural cycles on which agriculture depended for centuries — nitrogen fixation in the soil, organic build-up, local nutrient flows — have largely been replaced by external inputs. Nitrogen comes from natural gas, phosphate from mines, potassium from salt deposits. What was once local and cyclical has become linear and global.

   That works, as long as everything keeps functioning.

   The yields of modern agriculture are not simply the result of fertile soil, but of a constant supply of concentrated nutrients. The soil is no longer a source, but a carrier. A medium into which inputs produced elsewhere are injected. Agriculture has thus become dependent on energy, logistics, and geopolitical stability.

   And that is precisely where the paradox lies.

   By “helping” nature, we have built a system that can no longer exist without that help. The intervention is no longer a correction, but a condition. Nitrogen must be added again every season. Not because the soil is incapable, but because the system has been designed to expect that input. It has adapted to it. And contrary to what is often assumed, this supply is not a matter of simply adding a bit later. Nitrogen only works within a narrow time window: too early and it washes away, too late and the yield is already lost. It is not a stock, but a moment.

   When that supply comes under pressure, the problem immediately shifts to the government. Subsidies are used to dampen costs, emergency measures to maintain production. But here a second limit appears, less visible but just as hard: affordability. The volumes involved are enormous. A doubling of fertilizer prices translates, on a continental scale, into billions of euros in additional costs. Structural compensation means tens of billions per year. This is no longer temporary support, but a permanent obligation.

   And with that, the dependency shifts again. Not only on energy and raw materials, but also on public finances. As long as governments can step in, the system keeps running. But that capacity is not unlimited. Debt, interest rates and political constraints ultimately draw a line under what can be sustained.

   The idea that this dependency can be reversed through recycling or local cycles sounds appealing, but runs into a hard reality. Nutrients are indeed present everywhere, but rarely in the right form, in the right place, and at the right time. Modern agriculture runs on precision and timing. What is delayed, diluted, or dispersed does not fit easily into that system.

   The result is a system that is both impressive and fragile. Impressive in its productivity, fragile in its dependencies. Any disruption — in energy, transport, raw materials, or finance — propagates directly into the food system. Not always visible, not always immediate, but inevitable.

   What was seen as robust turns out to be tightly tuned.

   The question is no longer just how we can continue to support nature, but what happens when that support — and its financing — begins to falter. Because a system that depends on continuous correction has no resting state. It must keep running, keep adding, keep paying.

   • 

     Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 4:54 pm

     We really are too smart for our own good, Zip, to borrow Craig Dilworth’s phrase, and, as he concludes, too dumb to change. Makes me think of the intro to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

     “This planet [earth] has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time… Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.”

5. 

   Survivalist on April 30, 2026 at 12:41 pm

   For those interested in scavenging the waste land after the collapse you can find lots of good videos on how to cut into abandoned home safes by checking out the looting videos that IDF troops in Gaza post on tiktok. Every time I look at an IDF troops tiktok reels I think to myself “why isn’t an NCO throwing a brick at this man’s head?”

   IDF is looking sloppy. Time to evacuate the non combatants. If you can find any.

   • 

     Panopticon on April 30, 2026 at 4:58 pm

     “Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned senior command earlier this week that the erosion of values within the military is unacceptable.

     “In his remarks, Zamir pointed to the growing phenomenon of politically themed patches worn by soldiers, rather than apolitical ones, as well as incidents of looting and other breaches of the army’s ethical code.”

     https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-04-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-idfs-discipline-crisis-needs-more-than-zamirs-words/0000019d-da7d-dc1a-a3fd-dbffd4240000

     • 

       Kali on April 30, 2026 at 10:11 pm

       IDF and moral values are antonyms.

     • 

       Survivalist on May 1, 2026 at 4:16 am

       IDF is a rabble. Worse than bloody Chechens with the tiktok slop. Troops bringing personal smart phones on operations is bottom of the barrel. Pre op inspections are obviously a joke. I would imagine Turkey and Egypt are gathering a lot of signals intelligence.

6. 

   VPK on April 30, 2026 at 5:17 pm

   Yep, more Historic records to come

   Massive Florida wildfire shuts down Interstate 75 along part of Alligator Alley amid historic drought
   According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 98 percent of the state is experiencing some level of drought, with over 67 percent in “severe drought”, the most since 2001.

   Florida has been in a prolonged dry pattern since the 2025 hurricane season.

   LA NIÑA NEARLY DEAD, BREWING EL NIÑO TO ARRIVE DURING PEAK HURRICANE SEASON
   Drought conditions are also worsening for other parts of the region, including Georgia, where 100 percent of the state is experiencing drought, although not quite as severe as Florida’s.

   An area of low pressure will swing out of the Plains and bring a little relief to the

   According to the FOX Forecast Center, West Palm Beach has yet to see a single day with rain this year, over a fifteenth of an inch. Parts of South Florida could double their rain total for the year with this one shot of rain.

   FOX NEWS….always on the cutting edge of weather reports

   https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/florida-wildfire-historic-drought-rain-forecast-southeast

   But I’m on the edge of my seat on what Donnie will or won’t do next..
   TACO or NACHO? What’s on the menu?

   Boy, this planet is hurting…

   • 

     Panopticon on May 1, 2026 at 11:54 am

     Vince, the Alligator Alley fire was a few weeks ago, wasn’t it? I’m keeping my fingers crossed Florida gets some rain this weekend – looks like it might.

7. 

   Craig Anderson on May 1, 2026 at 4:35 am

   Ah the old “low methane cow” – anything to sustain the unsustainable. All to maintain the export cash-cow at all costs. The entire NZ dairy industry is steadily destroying New Zealand’s lowland waterways while declaring that we produce the most milk for least emissions therefore we are awesome. Methane is the least of our concerns but is the rug under which water pollution is being swept. We simply have too many cows per hectare. My own paid work is looking into ribwort plantain as a forage and how it lowers nitrate leaching from soils (where the nitrate is derived from metabolism of urine by soil microbes) into groundwater and lowers nitrous oxide emissions (also derived from microbial metabolic processes). A silver bullet the industry desperately wants to be true but the research suggests is not what it’s cracked up to be either – works somewhat but it depends i.e. a lot of nuance. Us ‘scientists’ even came up with the idea to vaccinate the cows against methane producing bacteria in the rumen. It appears that no-one thought deeply enough to ask the microbial ecologists nor animal health specialists if this was a good idea (it’s not) and we’ve since wasted millions on it. Sigh. Another brick in the wall.

   • 

     Panopticon on May 1, 2026 at 11:59 am

     Thanks, Craig. That is an interesting academic niche you inhabit in our crazily overcomplicated world.

     Pollution from livestock doesn’t get talked about much. I hadn’t realised it was such a big problem in NZ:

     “The dirty dairy industry is polluting rivers and contaminating drinking water across the country. There are too many cows on farms, and the dairy industry is dumping too much synthetic nitrogen fertiliser onto pasture.”

     https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/how-new-zealand-dairy-industry-pollution-threatens-rivers-climate-and-democracy/