Category Archives: Peter Turchin

Turchin studies the patterns to be seen in all civilizations that have collapsed. He’s an expert on past crashes, but not at all for modern times, because he doesn’t have a clue about how fossil fuels have created this one-time only civilization. But factors of collapse in the past like drought, war, and so on apply to our coming crash as well. Many of the past factors are “hidden” by oil which can delay failure by making recovery from natural disasters, mask fishery decline by sending giant factory ships to the arctic and antarctic etc., dumping enough natural gas fertilizer to grow crops on soil too eroded and depleted to grow much food without them, etc.

Book review of Turchin’s “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”

Preface. This is a book review of both “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”.  I recommend reading “War & Peace & War” first, then the more difficult “Secular Cycles”. Turchin has found patterns in the rise and fall … Continue reading

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Richard Heinberg on why low oil prices do not mean there is plenty of oil, EROI, collapse

[ Yet another wise, thoughtful, and wide-ranging essay from my favorite writer of the many facets of a civilization about to decline as it is starved of the fossil fuels that feed it.  Although the topics are quite varied, Heinberg … Continue reading

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Civil war coming?

Preface. I read Turchin’s latest book which attempts to show why his past theories about the rise and fall of agrarian nations also applies to our modern civilization.  But there was not one mention of fossil fuels, natural resources, or … Continue reading

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Peter Turchin: violence and social unrest in the U.S. and Europe likely by 2020

Preface. Peter Turchin, an expert on the cycles of history and the rise and fall of civilizations, has used mathematical models of complex systems to predict political instability. Debora MacKenzie at NewScientist interviewed him about his upcoming book “Ultrasociety” in … Continue reading

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