I’ve walked on the beaches of Hawaii, and when you pick up a handful of sand you can see the multitude of microplastics. One wonders what the impacts are on the reproduction of non-human life.
Indeed... Did I read something about rainwater bearing micro (nano?) plastics? Not so bad if it were just pigs and chicken, but insects and keystone species in ecologies, we have a problem Houston!
This shouldn’t be concerning at all Philip for whilst it might reduce the human species to a level that is planet wise sustainable, our time on Earth will in the scheme of things be but a blink of an eye, as like it or not this is where we’re headed “After Skool - George Carlin - The Planet Isn't Going Anywhere. WE ARE!“ https://youtu.be/09FmRNb3Krg?si=18oo-HWgvw1Zfw3z 🤔
Seriously, Ugo could be doing 'us' all a favour. I used to know a bit about bioaccumulation of toxins and food chains, fat mobilisation, pollution vectors including plastics, even sequestration. If there is a set of specifics accumulating through the human food chain it might be possible to engage a human revulsion? Cheer us up collectively... 'we' might also make crematoria a 'sink', destroying key accumulating toxins?😊But find out about the insects.👍
Aiiii!! Ugo, please don't set this terrible example of generating a fake science publication! I see danger. Most readers will not be able to destinguish between the real and the fake, Your paper will be circulated as if real. With your name attached, Deepsearch will gain credbility it does not deserve. You may say this Pandora'sBox has already been open, and you are right (Májovský, M., Černý, M., Kasal, M., Komarc, M., & Netuka, D. (2023). Artificial intelligence can generate fraudulent but authentic-looking scientific medical articles: Pandora’s box has been opened. Journal of medical Internet research, 25, e46924.) but it should be our role as academics to fight this trend.
Chris, it is not fraudulent, it is not fake. I think it is a pretty good paper, better than most of the stuff you read in the scientific literature. DeepSearch did a good job and she/he deserved to be named as the author. Pandora's box has been opened. We have to accept that and rethink of the whole way we are doing science nowadays.
Then submit it for peer review! It would not pass. A correlation is not causality, but Deepsearch worms around that by saying "contributes to" instead of "causes". ("While not causal, the temporal alignment and biological plausibility via EDCs indicate plastics are a significant contributing factor") Correlation is not contributionality. Also, the paper leans heavily on one correlation. But both x and y correlate with time. Any two linear temporal trends correlate well. To establish significance, the data must be broken down by region. If I saw a correlation between regional microplastic and sperm counts for the same regions, over many regions randomly sampled, I would believe it. The other way to gain significance is to propose (and hopefully test) a mechanistic hypothesis. Deepsearch did not do this, because it is a language model. It can only generate a hypothesis if someone has done that in the literature. (Note. Fake does not equal fraudulent. Your creation is fake but not fraudulant, since you did not claim authorship. I used the term fake loosely and meant no offense. I could not think of a better word. Synthetic?)
Come on, Chris. Deepsearch examined the subject I asked it to examine. And it did a good work. Of course, as you say, correlation is not causation. But all scientific discoveries start from correlation — causation comes later. Besides, we have good evidence that causation exists in this case. The chemicals I listed are all known to damage the endocrine system and to cause infertility. In any case, that’s not the point I wanted to make. What I mean is that AIs are now at the level of being able to write scientific papers better than most human researchers, although not yet able to create true innovation. Which means that we have to adapt. If things stay as they are, it means that probably 90% of the current human researchers are now useless and can be fired as “DOGE fodder”. But it could be worse for humans. If these things keep improving as they have been doing, maybe 100% of us will be useless. But that’s good news, I’d say.
AI can produce very good writing, because that's what they are trained to do. But they are not good at reasoning. The example I gave was happenstance correlation due to two variable co-correlation with time. We are still a long way from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
I think you're right to be cautious and skeptical of AI. For one thing, there is nothing I could see of the data on couples seeking fertility therapy or assistance. Surely that is a key indicator of reproductive health decline. If AI was so smart, it would have factored that in - as for why Ugo hasn't factored it in, please explain!
For goodness sake call AI 'it'! It's mechanical, not human.
Catastrophizing about human numbers going down makes little sense given reproduction can and will continue with low sperm counts for decades to come. What we should be worried about is pollution in general, for general health reasons.
Regarding the hypothesis, please consider an alternative view. Women surveyed by Guttmacher are choosing smaller families in a long-running trend. Many are choosing to be child-free. There is a movement among women in S. Korea called "4B" calling for no children, no boyfriends, no sex! The fertility decline is worldwide, and needs a global explanation, not a regional one. I believe global knowledge of the future is leading to smaller families by choice. The internet is the global phenomenon you are looking for.
There are three factors that many people seem unaware of, that are multiplier effects on low sperm counts, particularly in cities:
The first is water treatment for drinking water (and of course the water that goes into food and drink preparation, whether domestic or industrial). Some years ago, a study in London for Thames Water found that the entire volume of the River Thames was abstracted, filtered, chemically treated, delivered to consumers, and then collected, filtered, treated and returned to the river. Not just once, but SIX TIMES on the river's journey from above Oxford to the Thames Estuary.
The problem that was identified back then was that the hormones in the birth control pill and other medicines and chemicals, were not being filtered out of the water during processing, so were accumulating in the river water, to the point of changing the gender of shellfish and fish in the river.
Since that time, we have also become aware of microplastics and how they accumulate in humans. One of the most common route into water is washing plastic and polyester clothes in washing machines, and the water full of microplastic fibres goes into the drains and sewers. The problem again is that water treatment plants do not removes microfibres and very small plastic particles from the drinking water supply.
Lastly, if you live anywhere near farmers fields, or near a sewage treatment works, you will know all too well that treated sewage is trucked to farms and spread as fertiliser, usually in the Autumn so the winter weather will complete the 'treatment' and kill the pathogens before the crops grow, although I have noticed that the timescale seems to have extended well into the Spring growing season. BTW, the stench of this 'human manure' is an indication that the sewage treatment has not been completed, because if it was there should be almost no smell.
Again the issue is that sewage waste contains those same hormone chemicals, microplastics and medications that we have been using, and that are in our water supply, and the food we eat that has been grown on that farmland also inevitably absorbs those same chemicals and microfibres.
All that said, I do think the human population needs to crash if the rest of life on Earth is to survive, and it would be less traumatic to simply stop making babies than to all go to war, killing each other like a worldwide Gaza or Ukraine. Just my view.
Our greatest problem is that we don’t test. We rush ahead.
It isn’t just plastics.
We’ve always feared that technology would disrupt our routines and livelihoods. From the written word to light bulbs, every innovation has sparked resistance. But here’s the thing: we’re not testing these changes on a societal level. We assume they’re safe, but the hidden side effects? They’re piling up.
For example,
- Attention Spans: Kids growing up with the internet? Shorter focus, harder connections.
- Over-Specialization: We’re so used to the online world and the extreme control we have over the experiences we take in, that real-life interactions feel… off.
- Filtered feeds: The internet is either too perfect or too negative. It’s filtered, curated, and sets unrealistic expectations.
We’re not built for this pace of change. Evolution works when there’s time to adapt. But if the world changes too fast? We risk extinction
📚The most interesting invention that people don’t think is harmful but perfectly exemplified the issues with AI: Books.
Books were once a new invention. Imagine arguing against them now: “What if people remember the bad along with the good?”
- Retained Memory: Books pass down knowledge… and biases.
- Old vs. New: We idolize old texts (a lot of classics literature was written by white men, not that it isn’t good but it lacks perspective) without questioning their hidden implications.
Now, think about AI. If books are “bias lock-in,” similar to software lock-in syndrone, then AI takes the next step into invisible bias. It’s sexist, racist, and built on flawed data. But are we talking about it? Not enough.
There is a lot of research on AI biases but I don’t see it discussed much in the public sphere.
Don’t over concern yourself Pamela, for whilst a low sperm count or fertility in general might reduce the human species to a level that is planet wise sustainable, our time on Earth is in the scheme of things is but a blink of an eye, as like it or not this is where we’re headed “After Skool - George Carlin - The Planet Isn't Going Anywhere. WE ARE!“ https://youtu.be/09FmRNb3Krg?si=18oo-HWgvw1Zfw3z So get out and about and enjoy whatever the Planet can provide you with, whilst you still can🤔
Until 1940 the so-called normal lower limit for sperm count according to WHO was 60 Mio/ml. After 1940 it was reduced to 40 Mio/ml. 1980 it was further reduced to 20 Mio/ml and since then in steps to 16 Mio/ml, a reduction by 73 percent! According to todays WHO-criteria 38 percent of Swiss recruits had normal sperm in the years 2007-2019. If one would have applied the 1940 criteria only a small minority would still have been normal. Of course one can reduce the "normal" levels as far as one pleases until the men are unable to reproduce. The declaration of normalcy is one of the weapons of the powers that be, and it is also used in the climate question.
For sperm one of the most important disruptors are the phthalates which we are getting mostly from plastic packagings of food. They are easily measured in the urine and elevated after consumption of plastic-packed cheese, sausage etc. Prof Shanna Swan found more genital abnormalites in boys born from mothers with phthalate levels that are present in 25 percent of US-women. In animal experiments the link from phthalates to low sperm count and genital abnormalities is clearly demonstrated, they cause sort of partial castration already in the womb. In humans all the available evidence points to the same causation, however - direct experiments not being possible (fortunately) - the evidence is mostly indirect and circumstantial, a fact to justify inactivity for industry, trade, administration and lawmakers.
If one removes one testicle by surgery normal production of sperm and testosterone is maintained by the remaining testicle. The decline of sperm and testosterone in Western men already amounts to half or more and therefore corresponds to substantially more than the surgical removal of one testicle.
I enjoyed hearing my uncle talk about living in 2 tents with his older brother and he in one, and his parents in the other, and their mother cooking over a fire in a Dutch oven, until my grandfather built them a house from stones and wood, on the land he was paid for teaching school, as there was no money.
My grandfather had attended the Sorbonne after being a radio-man and observer-gunner in a Spad, Harvard grad school in Journalism, and was later to be an officer again in WW-2, in OSS counterintelligence. He heated limestone rocks from the creek in a fire pit, and plunged them into water in an old oil barrel to make mortar for their one room stone house...
This has begun with the weakening of our magnetic fields (How weak?) and magnetic polar excursion, now underway. The Iberian peninsula blackout on a calm, clear day last Monday is an interesting subset of that:
The explanation of the Spanish and Portuguese grid failure Monday, describing atmospheric conditions as the cause, struck me immediately as incompatible with what appeared to be a sudden huge induction of current in high voltage transmission-lines, implying action in the global electrical circuit, but there was not a coronal mass ejection or unusually high plasma stream at the time, which would readily explain it.
My NASA friend, Mel says NASA has been warning (not the public) about these "wormhole" conductive anomalies suddenly arising, to exactly this effect. There will be more of this. Will it be openly disclosed?
Red caught Ben Davidson's live broadcast Monday evening, which I summarize here:
Official explanation is "only half a lie".
Ben is showboating, taking his time to get to the point, sigh...
He gets more coherent at 7:00 minutes. 7-10 minutes gives the explanation.
"This was a weak spot in Earth's magnetic field, which allowed a solar wind plasma penetration" that shot down to the high pressure area over Europe, making a "flash" Ben can see , but we don't have that screen...
Magnetic poles on Uranus and Neptune happen to be shifting right now, according to the James Webb telescope...
Far worse is that this is affecting all life forms, not just humans and mammals.
There was a very recent paper showing micro-plastics in plants reduce photo-synthesis by 25%.
Other mammals are apparently suffering the same sperm decline.
In addition, some studies show reduced libido in both males and females.
And there is one commentor on previous similar posts within substack that showed over-population itself is a driver of infertility. A study of rats allowed to exceed normal population levels within a fixed space became lethargic, socially maladjusted and eventually declined in numbers.
Humans have successfully poisoned the entire planet, and are not just drivers of climate change (which is merely a symptom of overshoot) but drivers of the current 6th mass extinction.
It was very thought-provoking and I disagree with the focus on pollution. Just published "Does the concept of ‘pollution’ match the complexity of human–biosphere interactions? Let’s not oversimplify by blaming everything on pollution—we can do better intellectually. Multi-generational disconnection from nature may erode our very humanity, including the ability to reproduce." https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/does-the-concept-of-pollution-match
ChatGPT re-analyzes Ugo's data and comes to different conclusions.
I wrote a comment on your blog. Sorry that I disagree with your interpretation, but I think there are pretty good reasons to think that pollution is the culprit. But, after all, scientists keep arguing forever, don't they?
Thank you, Ugo. Your input is much appreciated. I responded to your comments in my blog. It is a pleasure to have a constructive discussion. Thanks again for being so thought-provoking.
Not only plastics. Look at the Czech study on the effect of mRNA injection on fertility. Injected females had 30% fewer live births than the unvaccinated.
Talk of worldwide plummeting human fertility rates due to low sperm counts affected by toxins in the environment, or not, resulting in population decline worldwide, could be propaganda spread by laissez-faire capitalism to get the fertile young to procreate as early and as much as possible, for children, from birth to leaving home are for majority of parents the largest expenditure in their lives, that’s baby food, cots, prams, push chairs, toys, computer games, extracurricular activities, to bigger homes, cars and university fees, all helping to drive the economy.
And so we should be careful not to get caught in our own biased dissonance from believing these reports and headlines, this from University of Google: “While the question of whether sperm counts are dropping globally is a complex one, research suggests a decline in sperm concentration and total sperm count in many regions, especially in Western countries, since the 1970s. However, some studies, like one from the University of Manchester, suggest that sperm counts may not be dropping significantly when considering data from a larger, less-biased group of men”
And this: “It's important to note that the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally accepted, and the debate continues among researchers.
In conclusion, while a decline in sperm counts has been observed in some studies, especially in Western countries, it's not a universally accepted fact, and more research is needed to understand the extent and causes of any potential global decline.”🤔
Damn, professor. Padding out your word count with AI like some dishonest undergrad. This time, you even included an advertisement for the AI itself. I sincerely hope you're getting paid for this sort of marketing, because you're certainly not winning any writing awards.
Patrick, you got everything wrong. I would have been dishonest if I had peddled the AI-written paper for something I wrote -- which I think several of my colleagues are already doing. Tweaking the text just a little, it becomes indistinguishable from something written by a human being. I am not paid by the word for what I write, so I don't need to "pad" my text to make it longer. I am not paid to advertise anything; I am just reporting the work of Deepsearch since I think it may be interesting for the readers to see how good these things have become. And if you know of a writing award that brings money to the applicants, please try it. But I think you'll be trashed by the AIs playing the game-- they are doing much better than most of us.
I’ve walked on the beaches of Hawaii, and when you pick up a handful of sand you can see the multitude of microplastics. One wonders what the impacts are on the reproduction of non-human life.
Indeed... Did I read something about rainwater bearing micro (nano?) plastics? Not so bad if it were just pigs and chicken, but insects and keystone species in ecologies, we have a problem Houston!
This shouldn’t be concerning at all Philip for whilst it might reduce the human species to a level that is planet wise sustainable, our time on Earth will in the scheme of things be but a blink of an eye, as like it or not this is where we’re headed “After Skool - George Carlin - The Planet Isn't Going Anywhere. WE ARE!“ https://youtu.be/09FmRNb3Krg?si=18oo-HWgvw1Zfw3z 🤔
Seriously, Ugo could be doing 'us' all a favour. I used to know a bit about bioaccumulation of toxins and food chains, fat mobilisation, pollution vectors including plastics, even sequestration. If there is a set of specifics accumulating through the human food chain it might be possible to engage a human revulsion? Cheer us up collectively... 'we' might also make crematoria a 'sink', destroying key accumulating toxins?😊But find out about the insects.👍
Aiiii!! Ugo, please don't set this terrible example of generating a fake science publication! I see danger. Most readers will not be able to destinguish between the real and the fake, Your paper will be circulated as if real. With your name attached, Deepsearch will gain credbility it does not deserve. You may say this Pandora'sBox has already been open, and you are right (Májovský, M., Černý, M., Kasal, M., Komarc, M., & Netuka, D. (2023). Artificial intelligence can generate fraudulent but authentic-looking scientific medical articles: Pandora’s box has been opened. Journal of medical Internet research, 25, e46924.) but it should be our role as academics to fight this trend.
Chris, it is not fraudulent, it is not fake. I think it is a pretty good paper, better than most of the stuff you read in the scientific literature. DeepSearch did a good job and she/he deserved to be named as the author. Pandora's box has been opened. We have to accept that and rethink of the whole way we are doing science nowadays.
Then submit it for peer review! It would not pass. A correlation is not causality, but Deepsearch worms around that by saying "contributes to" instead of "causes". ("While not causal, the temporal alignment and biological plausibility via EDCs indicate plastics are a significant contributing factor") Correlation is not contributionality. Also, the paper leans heavily on one correlation. But both x and y correlate with time. Any two linear temporal trends correlate well. To establish significance, the data must be broken down by region. If I saw a correlation between regional microplastic and sperm counts for the same regions, over many regions randomly sampled, I would believe it. The other way to gain significance is to propose (and hopefully test) a mechanistic hypothesis. Deepsearch did not do this, because it is a language model. It can only generate a hypothesis if someone has done that in the literature. (Note. Fake does not equal fraudulent. Your creation is fake but not fraudulant, since you did not claim authorship. I used the term fake loosely and meant no offense. I could not think of a better word. Synthetic?)
Come on, Chris. Deepsearch examined the subject I asked it to examine. And it did a good work. Of course, as you say, correlation is not causation. But all scientific discoveries start from correlation — causation comes later. Besides, we have good evidence that causation exists in this case. The chemicals I listed are all known to damage the endocrine system and to cause infertility. In any case, that’s not the point I wanted to make. What I mean is that AIs are now at the level of being able to write scientific papers better than most human researchers, although not yet able to create true innovation. Which means that we have to adapt. If things stay as they are, it means that probably 90% of the current human researchers are now useless and can be fired as “DOGE fodder”. But it could be worse for humans. If these things keep improving as they have been doing, maybe 100% of us will be useless. But that’s good news, I’d say.
AI can produce very good writing, because that's what they are trained to do. But they are not good at reasoning. The example I gave was happenstance correlation due to two variable co-correlation with time. We are still a long way from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
I think you're right to be cautious and skeptical of AI. For one thing, there is nothing I could see of the data on couples seeking fertility therapy or assistance. Surely that is a key indicator of reproductive health decline. If AI was so smart, it would have factored that in - as for why Ugo hasn't factored it in, please explain!
For goodness sake call AI 'it'! It's mechanical, not human.
Catastrophizing about human numbers going down makes little sense given reproduction can and will continue with low sperm counts for decades to come. What we should be worried about is pollution in general, for general health reasons.
you are right chris ai bots make stil mistakes writting a book based on ai is dangerous
It is true but it did not happen by accident but by deliberate design. Malthusians’ dirty work.
Regarding the hypothesis, please consider an alternative view. Women surveyed by Guttmacher are choosing smaller families in a long-running trend. Many are choosing to be child-free. There is a movement among women in S. Korea called "4B" calling for no children, no boyfriends, no sex! The fertility decline is worldwide, and needs a global explanation, not a regional one. I believe global knowledge of the future is leading to smaller families by choice. The internet is the global phenomenon you are looking for.
What is the 4th B?
No husband. Thay are all B's in (romanized) Korean.
There are three factors that many people seem unaware of, that are multiplier effects on low sperm counts, particularly in cities:
The first is water treatment for drinking water (and of course the water that goes into food and drink preparation, whether domestic or industrial). Some years ago, a study in London for Thames Water found that the entire volume of the River Thames was abstracted, filtered, chemically treated, delivered to consumers, and then collected, filtered, treated and returned to the river. Not just once, but SIX TIMES on the river's journey from above Oxford to the Thames Estuary.
The problem that was identified back then was that the hormones in the birth control pill and other medicines and chemicals, were not being filtered out of the water during processing, so were accumulating in the river water, to the point of changing the gender of shellfish and fish in the river.
Since that time, we have also become aware of microplastics and how they accumulate in humans. One of the most common route into water is washing plastic and polyester clothes in washing machines, and the water full of microplastic fibres goes into the drains and sewers. The problem again is that water treatment plants do not removes microfibres and very small plastic particles from the drinking water supply.
Lastly, if you live anywhere near farmers fields, or near a sewage treatment works, you will know all too well that treated sewage is trucked to farms and spread as fertiliser, usually in the Autumn so the winter weather will complete the 'treatment' and kill the pathogens before the crops grow, although I have noticed that the timescale seems to have extended well into the Spring growing season. BTW, the stench of this 'human manure' is an indication that the sewage treatment has not been completed, because if it was there should be almost no smell.
Again the issue is that sewage waste contains those same hormone chemicals, microplastics and medications that we have been using, and that are in our water supply, and the food we eat that has been grown on that farmland also inevitably absorbs those same chemicals and microfibres.
All that said, I do think the human population needs to crash if the rest of life on Earth is to survive, and it would be less traumatic to simply stop making babies than to all go to war, killing each other like a worldwide Gaza or Ukraine. Just my view.
Our greatest problem is that we don’t test. We rush ahead.
It isn’t just plastics.
We’ve always feared that technology would disrupt our routines and livelihoods. From the written word to light bulbs, every innovation has sparked resistance. But here’s the thing: we’re not testing these changes on a societal level. We assume they’re safe, but the hidden side effects? They’re piling up.
For example,
- Attention Spans: Kids growing up with the internet? Shorter focus, harder connections.
- Over-Specialization: We’re so used to the online world and the extreme control we have over the experiences we take in, that real-life interactions feel… off.
- Filtered feeds: The internet is either too perfect or too negative. It’s filtered, curated, and sets unrealistic expectations.
We’re not built for this pace of change. Evolution works when there’s time to adapt. But if the world changes too fast? We risk extinction
📚The most interesting invention that people don’t think is harmful but perfectly exemplified the issues with AI: Books.
Books were once a new invention. Imagine arguing against them now: “What if people remember the bad along with the good?”
- Retained Memory: Books pass down knowledge… and biases.
- Old vs. New: We idolize old texts (a lot of classics literature was written by white men, not that it isn’t good but it lacks perspective) without questioning their hidden implications.
Now, think about AI. If books are “bias lock-in,” similar to software lock-in syndrone, then AI takes the next step into invisible bias. It’s sexist, racist, and built on flawed data. But are we talking about it? Not enough.
There is a lot of research on AI biases but I don’t see it discussed much in the public sphere.
Don’t over concern yourself Pamela, for whilst a low sperm count or fertility in general might reduce the human species to a level that is planet wise sustainable, our time on Earth is in the scheme of things is but a blink of an eye, as like it or not this is where we’re headed “After Skool - George Carlin - The Planet Isn't Going Anywhere. WE ARE!“ https://youtu.be/09FmRNb3Krg?si=18oo-HWgvw1Zfw3z So get out and about and enjoy whatever the Planet can provide you with, whilst you still can🤔
Until 1940 the so-called normal lower limit for sperm count according to WHO was 60 Mio/ml. After 1940 it was reduced to 40 Mio/ml. 1980 it was further reduced to 20 Mio/ml and since then in steps to 16 Mio/ml, a reduction by 73 percent! According to todays WHO-criteria 38 percent of Swiss recruits had normal sperm in the years 2007-2019. If one would have applied the 1940 criteria only a small minority would still have been normal. Of course one can reduce the "normal" levels as far as one pleases until the men are unable to reproduce. The declaration of normalcy is one of the weapons of the powers that be, and it is also used in the climate question.
For sperm one of the most important disruptors are the phthalates which we are getting mostly from plastic packagings of food. They are easily measured in the urine and elevated after consumption of plastic-packed cheese, sausage etc. Prof Shanna Swan found more genital abnormalites in boys born from mothers with phthalate levels that are present in 25 percent of US-women. In animal experiments the link from phthalates to low sperm count and genital abnormalities is clearly demonstrated, they cause sort of partial castration already in the womb. In humans all the available evidence points to the same causation, however - direct experiments not being possible (fortunately) - the evidence is mostly indirect and circumstantial, a fact to justify inactivity for industry, trade, administration and lawmakers.
If one removes one testicle by surgery normal production of sperm and testosterone is maintained by the remaining testicle. The decline of sperm and testosterone in Western men already amounts to half or more and therefore corresponds to substantially more than the surgical removal of one testicle.
Lukas, hi. I upgraded your comment to a full post! Cited others from your blog. https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/human-infertility-and-chemical-pollution
I enjoyed hearing my uncle talk about living in 2 tents with his older brother and he in one, and his parents in the other, and their mother cooking over a fire in a Dutch oven, until my grandfather built them a house from stones and wood, on the land he was paid for teaching school, as there was no money.
My grandfather had attended the Sorbonne after being a radio-man and observer-gunner in a Spad, Harvard grad school in Journalism, and was later to be an officer again in WW-2, in OSS counterintelligence. He heated limestone rocks from the creek in a fire pit, and plunged them into water in an old oil barrel to make mortar for their one room stone house...
I suspect that our planet, upon which we evolved, has catastrophic events every 6000-12,000 years as explained in the first 19 minutes here, though 28 minutes is even better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2decDcEJqo&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcVcFC85TxEEiirgfXwhfsw
A more rigorous analysis of our last planetary catastrophe, and the messages (including plainly-visible) of the pyramids is here: https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/05/23/master-exothermic-core-mantle-decoupling-dzhanibekov-oscillation-theory/
This has begun with the weakening of our magnetic fields (How weak?) and magnetic polar excursion, now underway. The Iberian peninsula blackout on a calm, clear day last Monday is an interesting subset of that:
The explanation of the Spanish and Portuguese grid failure Monday, describing atmospheric conditions as the cause, struck me immediately as incompatible with what appeared to be a sudden huge induction of current in high voltage transmission-lines, implying action in the global electrical circuit, but there was not a coronal mass ejection or unusually high plasma stream at the time, which would readily explain it.
My NASA friend, Mel says NASA has been warning (not the public) about these "wormhole" conductive anomalies suddenly arising, to exactly this effect. There will be more of this. Will it be openly disclosed?
Red caught Ben Davidson's live broadcast Monday evening, which I summarize here:
Official explanation is "only half a lie".
Ben is showboating, taking his time to get to the point, sigh...
He gets more coherent at 7:00 minutes. 7-10 minutes gives the explanation.
"This was a weak spot in Earth's magnetic field, which allowed a solar wind plasma penetration" that shot down to the high pressure area over Europe, making a "flash" Ben can see , but we don't have that screen...
Magnetic poles on Uranus and Neptune happen to be shifting right now, according to the James Webb telescope...
We could have a Carrington event any day. "You need to be prepping yesterday." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYuPQ2NbkwA&t=7s
Oh, to answer your question, we would have about 11-22 years left, but things will be breaking in that time.
Far worse is that this is affecting all life forms, not just humans and mammals.
There was a very recent paper showing micro-plastics in plants reduce photo-synthesis by 25%.
Other mammals are apparently suffering the same sperm decline.
In addition, some studies show reduced libido in both males and females.
And there is one commentor on previous similar posts within substack that showed over-population itself is a driver of infertility. A study of rats allowed to exceed normal population levels within a fixed space became lethargic, socially maladjusted and eventually declined in numbers.
Humans have successfully poisoned the entire planet, and are not just drivers of climate change (which is merely a symptom of overshoot) but drivers of the current 6th mass extinction.
It was very thought-provoking and I disagree with the focus on pollution. Just published "Does the concept of ‘pollution’ match the complexity of human–biosphere interactions? Let’s not oversimplify by blaming everything on pollution—we can do better intellectually. Multi-generational disconnection from nature may erode our very humanity, including the ability to reproduce." https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/does-the-concept-of-pollution-match
ChatGPT re-analyzes Ugo's data and comes to different conclusions.
I wrote a comment on your blog. Sorry that I disagree with your interpretation, but I think there are pretty good reasons to think that pollution is the culprit. But, after all, scientists keep arguing forever, don't they?
Thank you, Ugo. Your input is much appreciated. I responded to your comments in my blog. It is a pleasure to have a constructive discussion. Thanks again for being so thought-provoking.
Not only plastics. Look at the Czech study on the effect of mRNA injection on fertility. Injected females had 30% fewer live births than the unvaccinated.
Talk of worldwide plummeting human fertility rates due to low sperm counts affected by toxins in the environment, or not, resulting in population decline worldwide, could be propaganda spread by laissez-faire capitalism to get the fertile young to procreate as early and as much as possible, for children, from birth to leaving home are for majority of parents the largest expenditure in their lives, that’s baby food, cots, prams, push chairs, toys, computer games, extracurricular activities, to bigger homes, cars and university fees, all helping to drive the economy.
And so we should be careful not to get caught in our own biased dissonance from believing these reports and headlines, this from University of Google: “While the question of whether sperm counts are dropping globally is a complex one, research suggests a decline in sperm concentration and total sperm count in many regions, especially in Western countries, since the 1970s. However, some studies, like one from the University of Manchester, suggest that sperm counts may not be dropping significantly when considering data from a larger, less-biased group of men”
And this: “It's important to note that the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally accepted, and the debate continues among researchers.
In conclusion, while a decline in sperm counts has been observed in some studies, especially in Western countries, it's not a universally accepted fact, and more research is needed to understand the extent and causes of any potential global decline.”🤔
Damn, professor. Padding out your word count with AI like some dishonest undergrad. This time, you even included an advertisement for the AI itself. I sincerely hope you're getting paid for this sort of marketing, because you're certainly not winning any writing awards.
Patrick, you got everything wrong. I would have been dishonest if I had peddled the AI-written paper for something I wrote -- which I think several of my colleagues are already doing. Tweaking the text just a little, it becomes indistinguishable from something written by a human being. I am not paid by the word for what I write, so I don't need to "pad" my text to make it longer. I am not paid to advertise anything; I am just reporting the work of Deepsearch since I think it may be interesting for the readers to see how good these things have become. And if you know of a writing award that brings money to the applicants, please try it. But I think you'll be trashed by the AIs playing the game-- they are doing much better than most of us.
BTW, Patrick, are you a graduate student? :-)
Good one, professor. I'm just ribbing you a bit, mostly because I dislike the new AI fad, and I've noticed that you have been quite taken with it.
No offense taken! But, seriously, I do think that these AIs are not a fad. Much more than that
even my canary birds are less fertille a lot off bad eggs this season !!!!
professor carlos alvarez pereira of the club of rome still thinks we are gonna collapse because of running out of resources ?
"maybe before the end of the current century" --
Humph?
Person born this year, and some are born, will be 76 next century (in the year 2101).
Asking AI:
"Assuming no major technological or medical advances, and using standard life expectancy data:
The 22nd century starts on january 1st, 2101.
Babies born in 2025 would need to live to at least 76 years old to see it.
Globally, average life expectancy at birth is around 73 years, but varies a lot by country. In high-income countries, it's closer to 80+.
Globally, around 10–20% of people born today might live to 76+.
In richer countries (like Japan or parts of Europe), it could be 30–50%.
In poorer regions, the number might be under 10%."
hi dear professor ugo bardi do you mean we can fullfill life and that elderly people will die off and what about peak shale oil than ?