This past week, I gave a presentation to a group interested in a particular type of renewable energy–solar energy that is deployed in space, so it would provide electricity 24 hours per day. Their question was: how low does the production cost of electricity really need to be?
I gave them this two-fold answer:
1. We are hitting something similar to “Peak Oil” right now. The symptoms are the opposite of the ones that most people expected. There is a glut of supply, and prices are far below the cost of production. Many commodities besides oil are affected; these include natural gas, coal, iron ore, many metals, and many types of food. Our concern should be that low prices will bring down production, quite possibly for many commodities simultaneously. Perhaps the problem should be called “Limits to Growth,” rather than “Peak Oil,” because it is a different type of problem than most people expected.
2. The only theoretical solution would be to create a huge supply of renewable energy that would work in today’s devices. It would need to be cheap to produce and be available in the immediate future. Electricity would need to be produced for no more than four cents per kWh, and liquid fuels would need to be produced for less than $20 per barrel of oil equivalent. The low cost would need to be the result of very sparing use of resources, rather than the result of government subsidies.
Of course, we have many other problems associated with a finite world, including rising population, water limits, and climate change. For this reason, even a huge supply of very cheap renewable energy would not be a permanent solution.
This is a link to the presentation: Energy Economics Outlook. I will not attempt to explain the slides in detail.
Slide 1
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Slide 2
Some people falsely believe that energy supplies are “only needed for industrial purposes.” Energy supplies are, in fact, needed for many things: cooking our food, keeping our homes warm, and creating the clothing we expect to wear. It would be impossible to feed, house, and clothe 7.3 billion people without supplemental energy of some kind.
Slide 3
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Slide 4
Slide 4 suggests that the world economy is heading into recession, because recent growth in the use of energy supplies is very low recently. Another sign that we are headed into recession is that fact that CO2 emissions fell in 2015. They usually don’t fall unless a global crisis exists. Emissions fell when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and they fell during the economic crisis in 2008. Perhaps the world economy is hitting headwinds that are not being picked up well in conventional calculations of GDP growth.
Slide 5
Slide 5 shows a chart I put together, using data from several different sources, showing how growth in energy consumption has compared with growth in GDP. Growth in GDP tends to be somewhat higher than growth in energy consumption.
Economic growth (and growth in energy use) was low prior to 1950. There was a big jump in economic growth immediately after World War II, in the 1950-65 period. There was almost as much growth in the 1965- 75 period. Since 1975, economic growth has generally been slowing.
Slide 6
Between the years 1900 and 1998, the use of electricity rose (black line) as the cost of electricity fell (purple, red, and green lines). Electricity consumption could rise because it was becoming more affordable. Rising electricity consumption allowed the economy to make more goods and services. Workers (with the use of electricity) were becoming more efficient, so wages could rise. With higher wages, workers could afford more products that used electricity, such as electric lights for their homes and radios.
If electricity prices had risen instead of fallen, it seems doubtful that this pattern of rising consumption could have taken place.
Slide 7
The comments in Figure 7 represent my own view. It is based on both theoretical considerations and historical relationships. Many who have studied the economy believe that energy is important for economic growth. In my view, the real need is for cheap-to-produce energy, not just any energy. If cheap energy is not really available, then adding more debt can somewhat make up for the high cost of energy production.
Debt is important because it makes goods affordable that would not otherwise be affordable. For example, having a loan for a house or a car makes a huge difference regarding whether such an item is affordable.
Even when energy products are cheap, debt seems to be needed to get oil or coal out of the ground, or to make a new device such as a wind turbine. Part of the problem is the cost of the capital equipment needed to extract the oil or coal, or the cost of the wind turbines themselves. Another part of the problem is paying for factories to make devices that use the energy product. A third problem is making it possible for users to afford the end products, such as houses and cars. It is much easier to borrow the money for a new tractor, and pay the loan off as the tractor is put to use, than it is to save money in advance, using only the funds earned when farming with simple hand-held tools.
Slide 8
I mentioned the need for $20 per barrel oil on Slide 7. This is a very inexpensive price. Slide 8 shows that the only time when oil prices were that low was prior to the mid-1970s. (Note that the amounts in Slide 8 have already been adjusted for inflation, so my $20 per barrel target is an inflation-adjusted amount.) The cost of oil production is now far above $20 per barrel. The sales price now is about $37 per barrel. This is below the price producers need, but still above my target price level.
Slide 9
Slide 9 explains where I got my $20 per barrel price target. Back prior to 1975–in other words, back when oil prices were generally low, $20 per barrel or less–the increase in debt more or less corresponded to the growth in GDP. Once prices rose above $20 per barrel, the amount of debt needed to produce a given amount of GDP growth rose dramatically.
Slide 10
Slide 10 shows interest rates for US debt with 10-year maturity. These interest rates often underlie mortgage rates. As interest rates fall, homeowners can afford increasingly expensive homes. If shorter-term interest rates fall as well, auto loans become cheaper too.
Slide 11
The value to society of a barrel of oil is determined by how many miles it can make a diesel truck go, or how far it can make an airplane fly. This value to society is more or less fixed. The only change is the small increment each year from efficiency changes, making a barrel of oil “go farther.”
In the 2000-14 period, the cost of new oil production was increasing very rapidly–by more than 10% per year, by some estimates. The rising cost of oil production occurred much more quickly than efficiency changes. The result was a falling difference between the value to society and the cost of production. When oil prices are high, oil-importing nations tend to suffer recession. When oil prices are low, oil-exporting nations find it hard to collect enough taxes to support their many programs.
Slide 12
The fact that we need energy for economic growth means that we somehow must obtain this energy, even if doing so costs more. The big run-up in oil prices is a major reason for the historical run-up in debt levels. China’s big build-out of homes, roads, and factories was also financed by debt.
The higher cost of oil affects many things that we don’t think are related, including the cost of building new homes, the cost of building cars, and the cost of building roads. As consumers are forced to buy increasingly expensive homes and cars, and as governments find that the building of roads is increasingly expensive, more debt is used. The terms of loans are often longer as well, to hold down monthly costs.
If we still had cheap oil, this oil by itself could provide a “lift” to the economy. An increasing amount of debt can “sort of” compensate for the absence of cheap oil.
The problem we encounter is that neither cheap energy nor the continued run-up of debt is sustainable. Cheap energy tends to change to expensive energy, because we use the cheapest sources first. The continued debt run-up becomes more and more difficult to handle, unless interest rates fall lower and lower. At some point, interest rates can’t fall enough, and the whole pile of debt tends to collapse, like a Ponzi scheme.
Slide 13
I gave this talk on December 15; the first increase in interest rates took place on December 16. With rising interest rates, we suddenly have “the prop” that was attempting to hold up economic growth taken away.
We need ever expanding debt–that is, debt rising faster than GDP levels–to try to keep the world economy growing, so that the whole pile of debt doesn’t fall over and collapse. If we are to have non-debt growth in the future (because we are reaching limits on debt), it needs to again come from cheap energy alone. We need to get back to something similar to the low-cost energy that fueled the economy before the debt run-up.
Slide 14
Most of us have heard the Peak Oil story, and assume it represents a reasonable view of where we are headed. I think it is close to 180 degrees off course.
Slide 15
M. King Hubbert talked about a very special situation–a situation where another cheap, abundant fuel took over, before fossil fuels began to decline. In this particular situation (and only in this particular situation), it is reasonable to assume that production will follow a symmetric “Hubbert Curve,” with half of the production coming after the peak, and half beforehand. Otherwise, the down slope is likely to be much steeper.
Many peak oilers missed this important point. We certainly are not in a situation today where another very cheap fuel has taken over.
Slide 16
Slide 16 represents what I see as the predominant “Peak Oil” view of the oil limits situation. Some individuals will of course have different opinions.
Slide 17
Peak oilers certainly did get part of the story right–at some point, the cost of oil extraction would rise. What they got wrong was how the whole scenario would play out. It turns out, it plays out pretty much the opposite of what most had supposed–that is, with stagnating wages, loss of buying power, and prices of all commodities falling because of lack of “demand.”
We seem to be hitting energy limits, right now. That is why debt is such a problem, and it is why prices of many commodities, including oil, are far too low compared to the cost of production.
Slide 18
Slide 18 shows the fall of commodity prices up through 2014. The fall in commodity prices has continued in 2015 as well. The story we frequently hear is about low oil prices, but there is also a problem with low natural gas prices. Coal prices are low now too, and, in fact, many coal producers are near bankruptcy. Prices of iron ore, steel, copper, and many other metals are very low, as are prices of many kinds of staple foods traded internationally.
Slide 19
The problem with low commodity prices is that there are many loans that have been taken out to support their production. There is a significant chance of default, if prices remain low. Also, low commodity prices affect asset prices–for example, prices of coalmines, or prices of agricultural land. As the prices of commodities fall, the price of the land used to produce those commodities falls. When this happens, it becomes difficult to repay the loans on the property.
Slide 20
Peak Oilers were right about the cost of production continuing to rise. What they missed was the fact that prices would at some point fall behind the cost of production because of affordability issues. Low prices would then bring the economy down, as it did in the Depression in the 1930s, and in quite a few earlier collapses.
I think of increased demand, provided by debt, as being like a rubber band. Just as a rubber band can stretch for a while, the price of oil can rise for a while, fueled by more and more debt. At some point, debt can’t rise any higher–the rate of return on investments made using debt is too low, and defaults become too frequent. Instead of continuing to rise, commodity prices fall back. Market prices of commodities fall to much lower prices than the costs of production.
In order to get oil prices up higher, the wages of factory workers, restaurant workers, and other non-elite workers need to rise, so that they can afford to buy nice cars and nice homes. Commodities of many types are used both in making homes and cars, and in operating them.
Slide 21
If space solar (or for that matter, any renewable energy) is to be helpful, it needs to be very cheap, so that products made using renewable energy are affordable.
If the replacement energy source is cheap enough, perhaps there will not be a huge run-up in debt to GDP ratios, to finance the new devices used to provide electricity or other energy.
We are encountering problems now, so we need a replacement now, not 20 or 50 years from now.
Slide 22
We cannot expect the cost of electricity production to be more than the current wholesale selling price of electricity. Thus, it needs to be four cents per kWh or less. Ideally, the price of electricity should be falling, as in Slide 6.
Another consideration is that we need to be able to operate our current vehicles using a liquid fuel, made with electricity, because of the time and materials involved in switching over to electric vehicles. This requirement likely reduces the maximum cost of electricity even below four cents per kWh.
Slide 23
It is possible to run into many different kinds of limits, over a period of time. In my view, the first limit we reach is an affordability limit. We can tell we are hitting this limit when high prices reverse to low prices, as they have done since 2011. The fact that prices are continuing to fall is especially worrisome.
Slide 24
There has been a popular myth that it is OK for energy costs to rise. We will just choose the least costly of the high-priced alternatives. This approach doesn’t really work, because wages do not rise at the same time.
Also, we have to compete with other countries. If their energy costs are cheaper, their manufacturing costs are likely to be lower.
Slide 25
If conditions existed that allowed oil prices to rise endlessly (in other words, rising wages of non-elite workers together with debt that could spiral ever higher, as a percentage of GDP), we wouldn’t really have a problem–we could afford increasingly expensive substitutes. Unfortunately, the story of ever-rising oil prices is simply fiction. It is a pleasant story, but not really true. I explain some of the issues further in “Why ‘supply and demand’ doesn’t work for oil.”
It’s a Faustian bargain to fund essential needs on oil and gas earnings. NM funds schools that way too.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/82870/states-react-tax-impacts-dropping-gas-prices
It is fossil fuels, directly or indirectly, that fund a large share of government funding around the world. Certainly they provide the vast majority of government funds for oil exporters. But even for oil importers, it is fossil fuels that make possible the jobs whose wages are taxed. And there is a lot of direct use of funds, wherever fossil fuels are extracted as you mention about NM school funding.
To me, it is a joke if people think that renewables that require subsidies can really take over. The subsidies they require have to come directly or indirectly from fossil fuels. To me, having an energy surplus is equivalent to being able to be taxed heavily, directly or indirectly (through the high wages of workers). If this taxation is not possible, and renewables actually need subsidies, the calculations are not looking at the problem correctly–they are matching hypothetical future earnings against today’s expenses, without considering the problem of borrowing money for the period, for example.
It doesn’t cost the world’s Federal governments any real money to fund oil production. The payoff for them is the benefit to the economy, it’s improved GDP and growth. They take no funds from other accounts such as tax revenue. They most certainly don’t have to borrow.
It’s different for the States which use currency and cannot create it. They need support from the Feds who can advance them interest free support.
So as long as the central banks will keep printing money we can be guaranteed that oil will be pumped…
Perpetual motion machine?
We’ll run out of oil way before we run out of money and debt.
Low oil prices show that debt and wages are too low right now.
The Trade Wars Begin: U.S. Imposes 256% Tarriff On Chinese Steel Imports
There is one thing that could dramatically slow down China’s metal exports – tariffs, anti-dumping duties and other forms of protectionism. “What may slow down the exports is anti-dumping and protectionist measures that several countries have taken against cheap imports,” said Ernst & Young’s Agrawal. In other words, a trade war… which is precisely what the U.S. just launched by hiking tariffs on Chinese steel imports by a whopping 256%.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-23/trade-wars-begin-us-imposes-256-tarriff-chinese-steel-imports
Gotta be some unintended/unkown consequences from that move….
I thought that such tarriffs were illegal under the rules set up for globalization a few years back, or maybe the powerful get to make up the rules as they go along.
Under the WTO accord a nation that imports more than it exports is allowed to impose tariffs until it achieves balances trade. Some how every member of congress pretends not to know this. I do not know if this would allow a targets tariff against a specific product.
Excellent article, Gail!
I appreciate slide 23, which is a new way to think about these things in that the rising cost of oil extraction/refinement/taxation/distribution/etc. will create an affordability problem having to do with finance and inflation/deflation issues well before it creates a physics problem with EROEI.
Your valiant attempt at establishing and defending a $20 price target (and thank you from not shying away from boldly drawing a fairly sharp line in the sand, using a pencil rather than a crayon, instead of giving a wide range of $20 to $60 or something like that) rests on slides 8 and 9. I think I understand and agree with the timing issue of slide 9 and the year 1970, so that leaves slide 8, which is an inflation-corrected price per barrel over time that derives the price of $20 (2015 dollars) in 1970. Your price tag is thus wholly dependent on the inflation correction used to derive slide 8.
Checking through the comments you say that $1.80 in 1970 is worth $20 today. Using CPI I get $1.80 in 1970 worth $11 today. This means the inflation correction you used averaged about 1.3% higher over the last 45 years than CPI, unless I did the math incorrectly. I don’t have a subscription so I don’t know for sure, but eyeballing a CPI calculator from shadowstats.com (which tends to be on the higher side of inflation assumptions, they don’t give numbers but do give visual representations to non-subscribers) shows something in the $40-50 range, which would be about 1.8% higher inflation on average than what you’ve used.
Not sure which of the three is correct, but in relative terms and given where we are now, $50 per barrel may be as unattainable as is $20 (or $11 for that matter) if we’re talking about energy sources that are profitable after adding in taxes and other things. I’m more pointing the differences out to see where you stood on inflation correction, which methods you use and why you chose those inflation numbers.
Economics question for you: since money is created out of thin air by loaning it into existence and inflation is an artifact of rising debt levels, money is also destroyed when the same debt is paid off to the originator of that debt (should the Fed ever sell bonds rather than buy them, or enforce a higher minimum reserve rate) or when that debt is defaulted on and the debtor goes bankrupt (or something else happens, such as a debt forgiveness Jubilee-like program). I’m guessing if a slew of bankruptcies creates monetary deflation, this price point of $20 (or $11 or $50 or whatever it is) you’ve identified goes down with prices. Is this a correct understanding, or alternately could this affordability problem created by way too much debt generation be “solved” by a period of debt disappearing?
Such a thing, I would think, would reduce the return on capital faster than it reduced per capita GDP, which could (per Picketty) reverse a lot of the drivers for inequality (R>G), hit the renter-class harder than the common wage earner (wages would go down, but perhaps more-slowly than prices), and fix a lot of the problems that have been caused by this free-for-all printing money to give to banks to enrich the already rich to stupendous heights.
It would be ugly, of course, but in my estimation it’s an optimistic kind of ugly — perhaps too optimistic because I’m reaching for ways to see the silver lining in these clouds. 😉
One point that many people have missed is that there are really two different thermodynamic limits that we are approaching:
1. The limit of a depleting battery, if a person thinks of fossil fuels and uranium as being temporary resources that decline as we use them. This is what EROEI has been concerned about.
2. The continuous rise in energy consumption, required to keep the economy from collapsing. The economy is a dissipative structure. It is like plants and animals, and hurricanes, ecosystems, and stars. All of these temporarily grow in systems that are thermodynamically open. They cannot continue forever, however, because their energy supply is not infinite. They come to ends of different types, depending on how they are structured. We know that economies have collapsed in the past–I won’t go into the details, but it is not too different from what we are seeing today.
EROEI researchers grabbed on to the first limit described above, and have assumed it is the only one. If a person can assume it is the only limit, then a person can spin a story about how decline will be slow. All we need is to manage the transition to a lower-energy economy. A person can assume that we can move to a lower energy economy. Falling EROEI is sort of OK–we just gradually move to lower EROEI.
Our problem is indeed greater and greater overhead. But the greater and greater overhead is not simply the greater energy use in making energy (in other words, what EROEI measures). The story isn’t right. We cannot slide down to lower EROEIs. We really need an EROEI of over 50:1, or we need to keep adding more debt to temporarily cover up the problem.
By the way, I am using BP’s inflation adjustment. My point was that oil prices were less than $20, not that they were actually $20 per barrel.
We really have to solve the thermodynamic problem of not enough energy to keep the economy going. No amount of money printing will fix this.
Don’t worry, if we can hold things together long enough, Russian fast breeder reactors will save us. They will make 20 to 45% more fuel than they consume, produce electricity at just over $0.02 per KwH, and be nearly carbon neutral. We already have millions of tons of fertile material available. We can build more and more reactors, allowing exponential growth to continue for at least a few more generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor
The population will level off, and we will end up with a system with probably 10 to 20% of people working, the rest can go work organic farms using hand labour. The global warming will only be a problem until 2035, when the sudden drop in solar output puts us into a mini-ice age. Perhaps we can use vertical farms powered by the nuclear reactors to grow our food during that time.
Of course, the big problem in the near future is the inevitable collapse of the current system of banking and finance, along with the American Hegemony. I am pretty confident that the system can reorganize at a lower level, rather than plummet to zero. If I am wrong, it doesn’t matter, since we will all be dead.
Nice to read a hopeful post based on existing technology. I think this is in fact the BRICS strategy LOTS of nuclear. Nuclear that can burn 100% of the uranium not just the 1%.
” In 2015 Rosenergoatom postponed construction “indefinitely” to allow fuel design to be improved after more experience of operating the BN-800 reactor, and amongst cost concerns”
?
“” In 2015 Rosenergoatom postponed construction “indefinitely” to allow fuel design to be improved after more experience of operating the BN-800 reactor, and amongst cost concerns””
Well, sure, right now, the price of everything is going insanely low. Why make electricity for $0.02 per KwH if you can only sell it for $0.01?
The crisis we are in, I believe, is mainly of the politics, finance, and bureaucracy flavour. No matter what, this current system needs to be reformed or collapse and be replaced.
Plus, the BN-800 just started producing power to the grid on December 10, 2015; might as well get some experience from it before rolling out the next one.
My problems with nuclear are as follows:
1) We can’t build enough reactors quickly enough to make a difference in the short term (next 20 years).
2) Reactors take a large amount of people qualified to operate them. To scale on the order of magnitude you are talking about, especially anything that could support “allowing exponential growth to continue for at least a few more generations” would require centralized authorities setting up government-financed training programs and probably compulsory service on the order of 10 years because the job market is still good for solid engineering types and would be even better if massive-scale nuclear power was eating up the already limited supply of such people. At some point in exponential growth it will start being about how many people as a percentage of the available working-age people, are doing nothing but generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power.
3) Even at 39% net efficiency (which seems optimistic to me, but I’ll take it for now), there are serious environmental issues with that last 61% waste heat that will make themselves known when any steam-cycle-based electricity production starts to go beyond current electric loads and starts taking over nontraditional roles such as heating and transportation at any scale. Perhaps if the waste heat could be used in CHP or desalinization or something like that to bring the overall efficiency up closer to 90% we could avoid part of this.
4) The shift towards electricity this idea intuits creates a huge need for electric power transmission and distribution infrastructure, and one more gigantic overarching set of technologies that will have to grow exponentially at the same time, which will increase the overall cost of that energy even if costs are controlled at the point of generation. Perhaps we distribute all these new reactors inside cities right next to where the majority of load will be. Such a move could help with CHP strategies to increase overall energy efficiency and use most of that waste heat. However, if you think we have political problems now, wait until the NIMBY folks get a hold of this sort of idea where there are large nuclear power generation plants within a few blocks of anywhere in a city greater than a certain size. Service life of 60 years places a ticking political time bomb, as well as a future labor debt, as these plants age and need to be maintained, torn down and rebuilt to support even a flat output, let alone one that grows exponentially.
This ignores for the moment the very real issues with long term radioactive waste disposal and such. Actually most of all of my problems above are common to all technologies based in electricity and not only applicable to a nuclear-powered heat source.
We need cheap to extract oil …
Even if we could roll out 1000 nuclear power plants per year — it would not make any difference
“Even if we could roll out 1000 nuclear power plants per year — it would not make any difference”
That’s just not so FE, please try to get the numbers right. Total human energy use is about 15 TW or 15,000 GW. 1000 GW per year would replace it all in 15 years.
We need oil – not electricity.
Roughly have of all petroleum is used for non-energy purposes… and in many other instances electricity cannot replace oil as an energy source…
http://www.ranken-energy.com/products%20from%20petroleum.htm
In any event this is all moot:
As the British and American governments signal their renewed commitments to nuclear power as a clean, abundant source of energy that can fuel high growth economies, a new scientific study of worldwide uranium production warns of an imminent supply gap that will result in spiralling fuel costs in the next decades.
The study, based on an analysis of global deposit depletion profiles from past and present uranium mining, forecasts a global uranium mining peak of approximately 58 kilotonnes (kton) by 2015, declining gradually to 54 ktons by 2025, after which production would drop more steeply to at most 41 ktons around 2030. The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, concludes:
“This amount will not be sufficient to fuel the existing and planned nuclear power plants during the next 10–20 years. In fact, we find that it will be difficult to avoid supply shortages even under a slow 1%/ year worldwide nuclear energy phase-out scenario up to 2025. We thus suggest that a worldwide nuclear energy phase-out is in order.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/02/nuclear-energy-crunch-uranium-peak-blackouts
“a new scientific study of worldwide uranium production warns of an imminent supply gap that will result in spiralling fuel costs in the next decades.”
They don’t understand how nuclear power works. There is plenty of fuel to be reprocessed. Of course, that is more expensive that using new ore.
Even the Light Water Reactors only use up 2/3 of their U-235, and create 40% Plutonium compared to the amount of U-235 used up, so you can have nearly 80% of the fuel as you started with, so you only need one-fifth as much new fuel.
With the breeder reactors, they can turn fertile material into fissile material at a rate 120% to 200% as much as they consume fissile material. I was previously under the impression that all attempts at making a commercial breeder reactor had ended in failure, but the Russians have apparently had one running for the last 30 years.
The total amount of fissile material available sets a ceiling on the maximum amount of nuclear power that can possibly be made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyheY_ghmEQ
It takes more energy to reprocess spent uranium than to dig it out fresh and start from scratch. It also takes very complex expensive equipment.
We start with a mixture of different types of deposits of uranium. We extract the cheapest to extract first–not too different from fossil fuels. Concentrated ores are pretty much a one-time gift, like fossil fuels.
No need for hyperbole FE. 🙂
Since the below graph was first published in 2008? on the old Oil Drum website, the EROI for oil has declined dramatically. Wouldn’t be surprised if it were 100 nukes per year every year for 50 years. LMAO! 100 per year for 50 years! ROTF LMAO!!
https://i0.wp.com/www.theoildrum.com/files/ncmo01_0.gif
Getting tired of this “everything is awesome” and “so totally doable” crowd that have now infested the forum. Legends in their own lunch boxes.
“Getting tired of this “everything is awesome” and “so totally doable” crowd that have now infested the forum. Legends in their own lunch boxes.”
There are two possibilities:
Either BAU will suddenly and completely collapse, wiping out all life on Earth, or not.
There is zero value in worrying about total collapse; it is not actionable. There are no plans to make, nothing to consider or discuss. Unless you want to discuss long pork recipes, and how you plan to opt out when TSHTF. I think that would be a very short bit of conversation. In fact, I think we’ve already covered it all pretty extensively.
But it is so much fun poking holes in these absurd ideas!
That said — there are plenty of things to discuss even though we know the end game…. plenty of interesting theories to debate such as what will be the trigger event….
It’s kinda like skipping to the end of War and Peace …. knowing how it all ends … yet it’s still interesting to read and discuss the rest of the book to see how things played out.
I might add… that it is also useful to be able to connect with the handful of people who actually understand the situation — and who are not living in Koombaya land….
This site appears to be the only magnet I have found for these sorts of people.
Unfortunately the Koombaya Krowd floods in here as well dragging in plenty of white noise….
A symptom of the insanity is posting this utter utter idiocy and wondering in all seriousness ‘is it a hoax’
If people are unsure if this is real then no wonder they are willing to believe space solar is feasible…. apparently they’ll believe just about anything….
http://pro.moneymappress.com/EADSLR3979/PEADRBCS/?iris=439466&h=true
Alas there is opportunity in this — I am now copying that video to a proper site and will be selling shares online in the company that has patented this revolutionary technology that guarantees to provide unlimited clean energy made from sand (I only watched 2 seconds of that video — so I am making some assumptions).
I will be offering 1 million shares …. $100 per share.
Get your credit cards ready….
I so do enjoy have images to go with the story — that one goes into my library for future reference….
Time for an article explaining how collapse cannot be a gentle slope downwards? How at some point we fall off a cliff?
Haha Eddy, don’t take my soft landing dreams away from me now… 😉
The problem with explaining how collapse cannot be a gentle slope downward is scaring everyone to death, especially since collapse seems to be close at hand.
People cannot deal with very much of the story at once. Editors from other sites will not want to copy a post that is too scary.
On The Oil Drum, we found we had to space out scary posts with less scary posts, just from a point of view of comments getting out of hand–scared readers insisting that the story had to be wrong–getting too upset. They need a way to believe that maybe things will be OK.
Understood.
We already see howls of disagreement when facts that are not liked are posted….
So an entire article detailing how collapse – when it hits — will be rapid and total….. might actually drive some people into a state of total despair….
Thanks, Gail — I wonder if a graph of EROEI versus time might show a 50:1 roughly coinciding with your 1970 mark on slide 9?
I think in the near future we may be in for a period of debt-default induced deflation, which would be the opposite of money printing. It may very well end up being the “collapse” that has been promised for quite some time now, given that the growth-without-end-amen model of economics and finance is simply not sustainable as you have well-established in theses posts.
To Fast Eddy’s request below, if you have some solid stuff to disabuse me of my hopes for a slow collapse, a soft landing, please do write such a post and try to be as convincing as you always are. If there really is no hope for such a thing I think it would be helpful to know and accept this, and try to adjust accordingly.
https://thelastjollyrancher.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/shattered-dreams1.jpg
You’re so cruel, Eddy! 😉
How about this: everybody collectively just up and says, “enough of this BS, I’m done,” and walks away from Omelas.
http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.pdf
Yes, there will be a crash of sorts, but if everyone is simply wiping their hands of it, re-imagining the narrative of success, and hunkering down for a long and cold winter, need the collapse itself be like the guns-and-redneck-cousins in the back of a pickup truck killing the kumbaya farmers, stealing their food, and enslaving their women?
There seems to be a common belief that there is a “real economy” and there is the financial end of things. This common belief goes on to say that the two can be separated–the financial system can fail, and the “real economy” can continue.
I have a hard time seeing how the “real economy” can continue, without a financial system. In fact, it is failing with a financial system, because workers are not being paid enough to afford the output of the system. If we take away the ability of businesses to pay their workers, how in the world can the system continue? How can it do better than today? Do businesses pay their workers in widgets at the end of every work day?
“This common belief goes on to say that the two can be separated–the financial system can fail, and the “real economy” can continue.
I have a hard time seeing how the “real economy” can continue, without a financial system. ”
I think it may be possible for the current financial system to fail, and be replaced with a new one. The real economy will necessarily shrink with the collapse of the current financial system.
At the moment of collapse, the situation is in the hands of the politicians, bureaucrats and other government employees – such as military leaders. The decisions they make at that time determine if everything completely collapses, or if some semblance of order persists.
Debt has to be an important part of any financial system. The necessary ingredients for a debt based system of the type we have had recently are only available in a rapidly growing economy. Without this system, remaining fossil fuels will need to stay in the ground, as will uranium.
I don’t think that there is a new financial system that can be made to make our current system work–the problems are really physics problems. The financial system just ties things together.
Still, I think we should distinguish two different types of debt, that I’d respectively label productive and speculative.
The former is useful, as it consists in investing in production tools, or other things that eventually lead to physical surpluses that are then used by ‘real economy’.
The latter is investments in financial assets, or debt roll-on, that seem to contribute only to inflate bubbles (well, it also ‘pumps up’ quite a bit of the surpluses made by real economy).
As true it is that the economy needs finance, it needs only the former type, the productive one. The speculative one is a burden, that tends to get heavier along time.
The opposite is even more true: the finance needs productive economy. Without physical surpluses, the money becomes ’empty’ and eventually vanishes.
When stock-buybacks become more ‘interesting’ than CAPEX, then we know we have a serious problem.
‘As true it is that the economy needs finance, it needs only the former type, the productive one.’
I think that ideally debt is used to fund productive activities. You get more longevity out of that.
However at the end of the day I am not so sure that it really matters what debt funds – so long as it keeps the hamster running.
Look at Japan – they have been building non-productive projects for decades — look at China with all it’s ghost cities and incredible amounts of not needed infrastructure – look at the US housing market in the lead up to 2008 … lending money to people who should not have received loans…
These are akin to paying people to dig holes and fill them back in….
But imagine what would have happened in 2008 if China had not stepped up to be the driver of the global economy — we’d not be here now.
Imagine what would have happened to the US economy in the early 2000’s if subprime had not offset the rising costs of oil…
One might argue that shale makes no sense — but debt is what got the oil out of the ground and off set the peak oil nightmare that started in 2005…
Ultimately debt is about being able to use future resources in the here and now.
Based on what I have observed over the past decade or so I am not so certain in the macro scheme that productive or unproductive debt matters…. what seems to matter is that the debt loads always increase….
Agreed, FE,
but all the examples you’re giving are can-kicking, temporary strategies of survival, to delay as much as possible the final liquidation, not decisions allowing any kind of future ‘recovery’.
I agree that today, as we’re reaching limits (of production) and speculation has become overwhelming, the distinction is moot, but I thought it was not useless to be aware of it.
But isn’t it all just can kicking?
Take for instance the debt that goes into building the first ships that discovered the Americas…. without question this would be seen as productive debt.
If those activities had not been financed then the massive resources of these regions may have never been tapped — and civilization would likely have collapsed centuries ago.
Consider shale — we could characterize the debt involved with this activity as unproductive — yet it did kick the can a few years….
I suspect the only difference between productive debt and unproductive debt is how far the can gets kicked….
Good point!
but you’re questioning the myth of Progress, here. I didn’t mean to go that far.
And I maintain that an energy per capita that is increasing, or decreasing, makes a difference. Even if both are leading to the same end of the road.
Exactly!
I think the dividing line between productive and speculative debt is pretty blurry.
A company extracting oil may need debt for this extraction. If oil could be extracted simply, it is unlikely that this debt would be needed. Instead, the high profits that the extraction of oil permit would allow the oil company both to pay high taxes (so that roads could be built) and to invest in new production, with virtually no debt. I have not studied the use of debt when oil was less than $20 per barrel, but I would expect that it would be a whole lot lower than it is today.
We then get to refineries, pipelines, and other infrastructure of oil extraction. If oil is very profitable, it would seem as though much of this could be funded with little debt. As it becomes more expensive, more and more debt is needed.
We then get to factories that make goods that use energy products–car factories, factories to make tools of various sorts, factories to make clothes washers and all kinds of things. Also factories to make trucks to transport these goods. We also need debt to build stores to sell all of these products.
There is no way that a farmer can afford a new tractor, without using a lot of debt, if that farmer is attempting to build up surplus using simple tools for farming. So debt for a tractor is productive.
I would argue that debt to buy a car, or a house, or other consumer goods is productive as well, because there is no way that the system could operate without this debt. Workers would never get to work. They would spend all day walking to a store to buy food, so that they would have no time for work. Even debt for university education is productive, if it allows a person to have a high enough future income to pay back that debt with interest. (If the person drops out of school and can’t find a high-paying job, that is a different matter.)
One of the big issues of our time is how to deal with the many older people, the many disabled people, and the many people who cannot find jobs. We have built up insurance and pension plans to fund at least some of these costs. If we didn’t have these programs, it would not be possible to have as large a portion of the population in the workforce–women (or some other chosen family member) would need to stay home with the person who is old or sick. Many of the “speculative” investments are used to at least partially fund these programs. Somehow, we need to deal with this issue.
Also, derivatives and much of the financial engineering is designed to reduce and redistribute risk, so that more debt can be used. For example, municipalities very often bought derivative contracts, guaranteeing that their interest rates on debt would not rise. In fact, in recent years, interest rates have fallen almost continuously. Because of this situation, banks were able to profit from this arrangement. While this makes for rich bankers, it has also allowed banking services to be provided to the rest of us at lower cost.
Derivatives also make international trade less risky, because there can be confidence as to how the various currencies will trade at the time the contracted goods are delivered. Derivatives can also act to handle problems with defaulting suppliers in a supply line (at least in theory, as long as many don’t default at once). Perhaps by speculative debt, you mean that those who purchase derivatives need to have an “insurable interest” that needs to be covered by the derivative product. But then what happens to all of the people buying ETF investments that have a derivative component to them? Consumers are very often trying to fund their own retirements–an issue I mentioned above.
I do not see the stark division between equity funding and debt funding that you see, either. I think of stock as being more or less equivalent to debt that never expires (and is somehow expected to grow in value over the years). In other words, a company funding new factories using stock leads to a situation where the company will need to pay dividends indefinitely, long past a factory’s lifetime. Funding new factories using bonds is much more rational. Thus, as long as interest rates are low, and the market considers high amounts of debt acceptable, it makes considerable sense to fund new investments with bonds rather than stock. In fact, it makes sense to buy back part of existing stock funding and substitute debt instead.
A different way of viewing speculative investments is as “ones that have little prospect of profitability, given reasonable assumptions.” (I believe that this definition is what Janet Yellen and other Federal Reserve members are concerned about.) To prevent such investments, what we need is higher interest rates–say, a minimum risk-free rate of return of 5%, with higher rates for other borrowers. This would prevent investments where returns are low, such as in the Bakken, and for making wind turbines and solar panels. It would cut back sharply in people buying huge homes, far larger than they need to live in. It would also cut down on speculation in agricultural land. But because such high interest rates would redistribute wealth to the bankers and pensioners, this could be a problem as well. We would need to be a program of frequent debt forgiveness, and this would eliminate their value for funding pensions.
Thanks a lot, Gail, for your very detailed comment.
I’ll have to read its second half several times more, though, because my very poor knowledge in finance doesn’t allow me to get all the subtleties at once.
By “speculative debt” I barely meant “money making money”, because of paybacks with interests or gambling with changes in value of assets, commodities, currencies, etc.. Now I realise it’s a little bit more complicated.
Maybe we in France have a distorted view because of our idea of public service. For example, education, healthcare and pension systems used to be entirely funded by government, ie taxes. I say ‘used to’ because it’s changeing, bigger and bigger share of these costs have to be supported by individuals through private institutions (but taxes don’t decrease!). Yet, this system has dampened the negative effects of 2008 GFC.
What I mean is that it seems to me that many social costs do not have NECESSARILY to be financialized, it can be organized in a different -and cheaper- way (well, as long as the ratio active/inactive remains sufficiently high, and the tax-system is fair ; both conditions seemingly things of the past…).
And to a certain extent, this would apply also to the economy. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel that finance has infiltered many sectors where it isn’t absolutely necessary (for reasons of risk spreading?), thus becoming a burden rather than a help to the activity.
So the fact that the distinction between productive and speculative debt is blurry, which I agree is true, could be deliberate and voluntary, in order to share the losses in case of bubble bust, in a similar way as the new bail-in rules.
This also locks together “toxic” debt with other that is necessary to the society, thus preventing frequent small debt forgiveness and only insuring a much bigger damage when accident happens.
I cannot see what you are seeking to say, Stefeun. Gail has answered the speculation bit and I have answered the pension conundrum and what a debt jubilee could achieve to straighten out the banking industry.
France’s position on pensions and welfare etc has changed ever since they started to use the Euro currency. Their government has lost it’s ability to net credit its economy which had meant it could always pay its pensions etc easily. Now it has to save or borrow for it. Losing one’s monetary sovereignty is a major, major disadvantage for the Euro zone countries, Greece being the most obvious example.
It will destroy the Euro. Sovereignty is too important to give up, and the effects are very visible togay.
ejhr,
sorry for being unclear, my Frenglish and lack of knowledge of proper terms don’t help.
I wasn’t making any monetary consideration, either.
My point is that speculation has a precise definition, and is not necessary for smooth running of a capitalist economy.
Speculation was forbidden in France until 1885, by very simple articles of law that defined it as betting/gambling on future values of bonds, commodities, currencies, etc.. (there was an exception/tolerance for games). It was abrogated officially for reasons of international competitivity, but I suspect mere greed to be the real cause.
Today the situation is different, as the whole financialized economy has become a casino and -bad- debt has spilled everywhere. There doesn’t seem to be any way back, our only choice is to kick the can as far as possible.
Not a problem Stefeun. But the casino economy will have to be stopped as you say greed driven, but also unnecessarily competitive. The 0.1% compete amongst themselves for dominance, without any consideration for others. CEO’s get paid up to 1000x the average employee all driven by desire to be top dog and with little regard for the industry they run. If they lose,[run the company down] they still win.
Only when some major shake up happens will they be forced to change. It’s not otherwise likely.
Right–all of the debt is now locked together.
One thing about government programs is that they are almost invariably “Pay as you go,” even if advertised as “insurance.” They work well, when there are lots of young people to pay for old people, and lots of employed to pay for the unemployed. They don’t work well as the population ages, because everyone ends up with a lot less, because the total output of the economy doesn’t grow very fast with a working population that is stagnating. I expect that this lower output/total population is part of what is causing commodity prices to fall–the population is on average getting poorer.
I’ve been promoting “debt forgiveness” – a k a debt Jubilees – on this site for quite some time. It’s good to see some else on that idea particularly you, Gail. I see it as an essential event. The debts we have are too big to pay back and so they will not be paid back. The jubilee can be done in a way that allows banks to survive, but with their latitude to act curtailed.
Since all bank loans today are fiat money, the banks are not losing out [except in fees and interest], if all fiat loans and mortgages were wiped out. We could also wipe out the off-balance sheet secondary markets of derivatives etc. As you said they are insurance schemes, but if the loans are fiat [free] money, there is no reason to insure them, and all that can go as well.
The banks are needed to survive because there is not enough cash, coins and notes, to pay pensions etc. The government would pay into pensioners’ banks accounts. They can do that at no risk of bankruptcy.
The more the government spends on pensions and everything else society needs, to be even remotely equitable, the better off will be the economy. One big reason we have deflation today is that the public are cutting back their spending. For the economy to grow spending has to increase.
If the banks fail, there is no way governments can pay money into pensioners accounts. In fact, there is no way workers can be paid. We have a major problem.
Indeed. We have to keep the banks functioning, as I have posted many times. The debt jubilee will strip them of their abilities to create will nilly but as clearing houses they remain an essential part of the ceonomy. If and when we lose the electric grid, then Yes we will be stuffed!
I was thumbing through Newsweek at breakfast and came across what I will call
Plan B 2.7111
As we approach the end of BAU – as with lambs to the slaughter – it is best to keep the sheeple calm…
Give them their daily dose of NFL, Dancing with Stars, Facebook….
But when those are no longer strong enough…. make plenty of legal heroin available:
http://www.newsweek.com/prescription-drugs-have-pushed-heroin-suburbs-252625
I don’t think that is the actual article (that’s 2014… the print rag I read was recent) but it is similar in content …
There was a quote in the print article that stated that there are enough opiads prescribed in America to keep all adult Americans sedated the entire for the entire month….
That’s the ol’ if you can’t beat em join em as big pharma doesn’t want to lose market share to heroin, so they use LEGAL opiads in prescription meds to keep the masses sedated. Now people don’t have to buy on the street, they just go to their local Dr. whose getting his palms greased for prescribing super powerful heroin derivatives. What does it say about our US civilization that people need to be so heavily sedated yet they drive on the freeways like it’s a Max Max movie. Maybe they’re so stressed out trying to get home as fast as possible to get into the medicine cabinet and escape into cloud nine until the next time the alarm buzzes notifying them it’s time to get their asses in gear to succeed at work or risk being laid off and losing all the opiads.
This is actually better than a mad max movie….. it’s like the matrix meets mad max meets apocalypse now meets breaking bad meets dancing with stars —- broadcast on facebook.
It’s got something for every single sheeple!
I can think of very few worse fates than that of the junky. While i acknowledge that the states that have legalized marijuana are not without problems one of the advantages is that some brave individuals can cope with pain with legal marijuana instead of becoming a junkie. To my mind this is about a million times better fate. Whether the junk comes from big pharm and supports them or from a poppy field in Afghanistan smuggled into Mexico and into the USA to support the banks matters not.
Van Kent… not sure if this comment published… internet connection issues…
I am not sure how many people the south island of NZ could support — most of the land is farmed using chemicals…. most of the land requires irrigation to grow food….which means pumps and power…
I am on 5 hectares — I have about 200 sq metres of raised beds … I have 80 fruit trees. Ours wold be one of the largest organic ‘farms’ in the area
When I pull up the drive and look at our set up it looks woefully inadequate — depressingly small — perhaps if I had 4 hectares roaring with crops that would inspire more confidence…. but the amount of effort and expense to build and maintain an organic farm of that size would be incredible….
There are many people who do have gardens but most are not self-sufficient and could not be on the land they have under cultivation (and you cannot just cultivate more land by flipping a switch….)
There are many thousands within a days walk that have no food production whatsoever.
That is a problem. These are all very big problems.
There will be no factories operating post BAU — I would suggest people get their heads around that if they are playing at the doomsday prepper game — you won’t be able to buy a shovel — a wheelbarrow — there will be nothing — because there will be no energy to allow us to continue to manufacture ‘stuff’
If you think you are going to need it — then best you buy it now — x 10 extras of the most important items.
Yup, no time to waste.
I know, the JIT economy will collapse and with it the production capabilities of factories. I´m just interested in the best combination of existing infrastructure, rawmaterials and food production. I´m trying to figure out what is possible and what is utterly impossible in a Post-BAU environment.
Thanks Eddy.
When the end comes, you’ll know it’s the end, because everyone will be talking about it, get out of the city before all hell breaks loose. You’ll probably have a window of 3-4 days before people start to panic, despite the constant reassurance of authorities. Those glued to their TV’s waiting for “enlightenment” during the final crisis will be goners.
Yes that is a good strategy.
I will add more….
Buy guns — and fill the trunk with ammo. Ring up those crazy cousins as well — and pile them in the back along with some canned food.
Then head out to the countryside where there are sure to be some Koombaya farmers — show up at the gate and demand food — if they refuse then have the cousins open fire from a hiding place in the bushes…
Take over the Koombaya farm — yoke the men who survive and get them to grow food for you — children can also help with that — the women be girlfriends…
Welcome to the New Normal!
Seems no need to wait…it’s already happening today here in Florida!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/farm-worker-conditions-modern-slavery-video_n_2593772.html
Farm Worker Conditions Likened to Modern Slavery
The average worker’s annual income is $10,000. Now, how many months of the year are they working? 2 or 12?
Also, by world standards, $10,000 USD per year is pretty good. As for their living conditions, I don’t get why more of them don’t convert old school buses, or come up with other means of migrating comfortably.
Is THAT how you see it Sherlock? These folks are NOT living in a 3rd world cost structure.
Actually, another article here in Florida reported one business had a company store and required the “workers” purchase their goods there and nickled and dime for rent, utility and other exorbitant BS. It showed one poor fellow shaking his head saying, “just don’t understand, worked all week and I’m told I owe them money!” That was many years ago.
So, what looks good on paper can leave a brown mark.
I agree about buying those basic tools. Even so, they won’t help much if all the non-producers within a day’s walk go desperate for what you grow. So since my thing is at least trying to be rational (whatever the outcome) I suggest programs to concentrate community planning–including community wide modest-scale water catchment, gray water outlet, and advocacy to do some measure of backyard gardening. It will remove a small measure of the anticipated desperation. I don’t try to figure out ultimate outcomes. If I can make even the slightest (though inconclusive) change of course, I won’t know for sure that it won’t have some sort of domino effect. So why not? But all this depends on drawing a line around a geographic area that either does or can hold together as a separate community, and draw up a community plan for it. And do that on every area of land close enough to matter to you.
The thing is…
This all needs to be done before the collapse.
Anyone care to call a meeting of the neighbours in their community and suggest that they take all their spare cash and get ready for the end of the world…
Let me know how it goes…
Even if the neighbours were to agree — unless you live on a remote island with just your few neighbours — you are screwed. The thousands who are nearby and not part of the game plan will be wanting what you have…
It is difficult to defend a garden from desperate people — even if you have guns.
No need to talk about the end of the world. More resilience and environmental consideration doesn’t sound crazy to the educated westerners I know. planetizen.com (a pretty lame site dedicated to the latest trends in planning) might bring some skeptics around. And the benefit of a surrounding planning regime is the best insulation one can hope for. But you’d have to be up for a long, frustrating slog to get it going. I do it because it’s what I love and have some kind of background in .
Thanks for an other interetsing post Gail and thanks for sharing it with us.
I want to make an inquiry in regards to affordability, you have mentioned why salary wages can’t rise in this an other post before. the approach I see is related to the global market economy we live today, since we have to compete against countries with cheaper energy sources or import them and sell the energy products (at home) at lower prices than the energy producing countries.(for instance buy cheap oil and export expensive gasoline and petrochemicals).
but how exactly is affordability lost over the time? I think there is a glimpse of the idea on your previous post talking about income disparity. there is another hint on the post that talks about the falling wages and job loss on the oil and mining industries.
I know non elite worker’s income tends to get squeezed when oil prices are high but technically this has happened before even when we were far from limits. Is part of capital lost with the energy we use and the other part goes to the econmy market in the form of businesses, goods and services?
@ Ki
Try to see workers – or more generally – every human being as a machine. To function this machine needs money instead of diesel and gasoline. With money we can buy not only food but also cars, clothing, houses etc. all of which require energy to come into existence. In that respect a person – i.e. a workingmachine – in the USA requires more money than a person – i.e. workingmachine – in China. The Chinese can do exactly the same things as the American but his (its) costs are only a fraction of the American. You have to think the working force into your equitation. Humans are by far the most expensive productive machine. If you want to produce an item you will let the cheap worker do it for you.
Niels colding thanks for your reply I understand it better now. It seems to me as well that the more automation takes over human labour the more we end up with people having less income, especially if your labour is repetitive, requires a low skill level and low use of intelligence (possibly education).
Eventually we will reach a point (capitalist utopia) where we have a few owners of the scarce energy, material resources and machines to transform those materials for “little money” (since less and less people will get paid as they get replaced by machines) the only boundary will be set by the available energy and materials suitable for transformation or the population to be sustained.
And it also becomes evident that money becomes more and more the biggest problem in the equation, people still works the same amount of hours however in time they will get pay less especially if they stay in the same position of the hierarchy, actually they have to work harder to compensate that loss. Job competition in a market where evolving machines powered by cheap energy are the means of production makes people increasingly unable of earning money to sustain themselves and participate in the economy, this is especially true the farther you are from the top of the hierarchy. If money does not quantify correctly the work of a person regardless of their type of job, money then becomes irrelevant. What a paradigm the same technology that allows us to live in abundance is also the cause of our damnation due to overuse also unable to jump back to human power because we are handicapped to be as productive as machines, we have more expensive energy and any attempt to do it would mean to sacrifice the advances and comfort we have acquired through technology so far.
Money is in a sense our allocation of energy supplies. Service workers generally get less than those working in areas requiring a lot of energy use. Higher education is one form of energy investment, something we don’t think about.
At this point, energy per capita is falling, both in 2014 and 2015. This makes for less in total to be shared. Trying to keep the whole operation going leads to more and more of this depleting energy that needs to go into overhead–amount paid to the rentier class for interest and dividends, amounts of energy that are going into making devices that are supposed to provide benefit in the future, amounts of energy going to the elderly and others promised benefits by the government, amounts going to education and to medicine.
All of this skimming off the top leads very little for the non-elite worker. Such workers find jobs to be low-paid for the amount of effort required. Often, even taking the jobs are available, it often doesn’t make sense to obtain the additional education needed for a job that is at best temporary. Different education may be required for the next temporary job. And the cost of day care for children is high, and eldercare for elderly relatives is also high. So labor force participation falls, and wages are low for those who do work. People collect pensions now, figuring out that “pensions later” are really just false promises.
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy
If you look fast you’ll see Brent oil is only 1 penny more than WTI.
WTI 36.44
Brent 36.45
Two things have changed:
1. US production of crude is down, leading to less oversupply.
2. New ability to export to refineries overseas.
Low-cost energy–
Is Gail’s conceptualization of “low-cost energy” capable of sanely accounting for externalities?
For example, could we reduce the price for nuclear energy by removing existing costly controls on nuclear energy further than we have (not just subsidizing the cost of construction, indemnifying against overruns, assuming risk of meltdowns, disseminating depleted-uranium tipped ordinance, as we currently do, but perhaps moving further, to dispose of nuclear wastes in landfills and backyard composters)?
Similarly, could we reduce the “real” cost of fossil-fuels by working to eliminate or constrain increases to smokestack and tailpipe controls; to underwrite extraction costs by limiting regulations on and monitoring of fracking impacts on groundwater, and seismic activity; to provide tax exemptions for lobbying, political donations, PR campaigns in the media, to provide direct subsidies of fossil-fuel extraction and production; to increase budgets for policing, military and security forces to crush dissent and enforce compliance in recalcitrant populations, foreign and domestic; to create massive new disaster-capitalist opportunities to exploit planetary climate, ecological and health catastrophes (or are we already doing enough in these areas)?
Is there some concept of “price” and “cost” the remains ecologically sane in an economic system of value that would appear to be insane?
Low cost: Low hanging fruit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well
High cost: As time goes by and all the low hanging fruits have been picked, what are left are difficult to get fruits; https://www.rt.com/news/224371-oil-rig-berkut-extraction/
What are true costs anyway?
What is the true cost of Nuclear Power? We don´t know how to dispose the waste, we don´t have any permanent disposal facilities.. And we don´t know how to shut a reactor down in less than ten years, or keep them safe without a working grid (which will be lost). Nuclear Power seems to have an external cost of, say, half the biosphere, give or take a few percent. How do you calculate costs for that?
“We don´t know how to dispose the waste, we don´t have any permanent disposal facilities.. ”
Most of the spent fuel is supposed to be reprocessed and repackaged, then reused. The system, once filled with a few million tonnes of fuel, should only need a few hundred tonnes of new fuel each year.
The problems include, the efficiency is much less than originally projected, so the fuel even if fully recycled until there is no Uranium left, would only last decades or centuries at best, not several thousands of years. Also, reprocessing is more expensive than originally expected.
If you permanently store the spent fuel, you are openly admitting that reprocessing is not worth it, and if you only put the fuel through once, the whole system collapses within decades. That means you are admitting nuclear cannot replace oil and coal.
Good points!
The Generation IV reactors can reuse burnt fuel and they can also burn down nuclear waste to short living nuclides. It implies using a technology that can handle large volumes of plutonium in a safe way (BAU required). That is why it is very expensive.
I suggest we go away from the notion of “costs” for anything as there exists no more market and the banks can issue any amount of money they want and there exists a lot of capital in pensions and with the 1% that can also be invested in this tehnology
“The Generation IV reactors can reuse burnt fuel and they can also burn down nuclear waste to short living nuclides.”
A pound of canned Unicorn Meat can feed a family of 4 for a month, and never expires. Talking about theoretical things that do not exist yet is not particularly helpful. Breeder reactors, cold fusion, hot fusion. All promises for decades with no signs of real-world success.
MM, in the 1960s we were able to build a thorium reactor in two years. In the 2010s we are unable to build one even with 10 years of trying.
“MM, in the 1960s we were able to build a thorium reactor in two years. In the 2010s we are unable to build one even with 10 years of trying.”
Yes, because we are more aware and concerned with the safety issues of nuclear power. There were lots of things you could do in the 1950s and 1960s you cannot get away with now, or must jump through far more regulatory hoops and hurdles.
But then there is the danger of the end of BAU, 6 billion dead humans. Might be time to start taking bigger risks.
“But then there is the danger of the end of BAU, 6 billion dead humans. Might be time to start taking bigger risks.”
Sure, let’s drastically increase the odds of a dead planet, in order to maybe slightly delay the inevitable reduction in human population.
I could not agree more.
quicquid capit!!! (whatever it takes)
If I had the choice of collapse happening on Jan 1 2016 leaving behind a world not living in (which it will be — because the accessible energy has all been burned up — and no energy means a primitive grinding brutal existence… contrary to what the Koombayaists believe)
Or I was given the option of pushing a button on a bomb that would allow BAU to continue for another year — but at the end of they year the bomb blows and incinerates the planet …
I couldn’t push that button fast enough.
And I suspect that as we approached midnight on the 31st… and the tremors began to shake the earth … CNN began to show the riots and food shortages… the violence… the fear as people began to see the horror that awaited them….
There would be very few who would not … as the countdown to 2016 began…. would not rush to push that button before it was too late….
Of course the wishful thinkers will think of that as buying more time as we work on a solution.
Haven’t we been doing exactly that for centuries now? Pushing the button making the problem bigger and bigger and bigger?
Mr DNA demands it. He does not want to be starved out of existence.
He came up with the phrase – whatever it takes – long before the Men in Black did….
I am not sure that humans, with or without thorium reactors, have much of a chance of determining the outcome of the planet.
If we view the solar system as a closed system, it inevitably will run down, just as a battery dissipates, regardless of what humans do.
If the force behind the big bang is continuously acting, then it may not be true that the universe in total is running down. New earths may be being created, within the overall universe. Even if the overall system is running down, still the flow of energy could lead to new earths being created.
“If we view the solar system as a closed system, it inevitably will run down, just as a battery dissipates, regardless of what humans do.”
There is a huge difference between the planet being dead within 100 years, and the planet dying off 4 billion years from now.
It is kind of like saying murder is no big deal, since the person was going to die eventually anyways.
There is a lot of confusion with respect to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. One issue is running short of fossil fuels. Another is running short of uranium that is of sufficiently high quantity that it can be mined. A third issue is the sun itself coming to the end of its natural lifetime. Admittedly, running short of fossil fuels comes first.
But before the “running out” issue becomes a big problem, we run into the problem of maintaining the economy, because it needs to continue to grow. This happens in much less than 100 years–it is happening now.
Check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
The russians already operate Generation IV reactors. I sometimes get the impression that you do not follow progress as you think we are already at the end of can-kicking-road. We are not YET at the end. There is still room to do something….
“The russians already operate Generation IV reactors.”
That is pretty interesting, they just started up BN-800 on December 10, 2015. Would be nice to see the actual economics of these reactors, including how they dispose of waste, expected decommissioning costs, etc.
I think that is probably going to be the biggest problem; if nuclear power works out, at some point there will be dozens of reactors in various states of decommissioning, for each one in operation. Plus the waste storage just keeps growing and growing. At least with these, you only need to store the waste for 1,000 years instead of 100,000 …
Costs are indeed becoming more problematic to talk about, but somehow there is a real need for energy products and other resources. Somehow, we need to have a measure of these. Different governments go about the situation differently. China seems to be trying to keep wages in the hands of workers to the extent possible, even if products must be sold at a loss, and the loss hidden somehow. Western nations have more difficulty getting the “funny money” back to workers.
I wonder if high hanging fruit tastes better?
Good points!
Accounting for externalities is indeed an issue–part of the reason that as we reach limits, there is no way out. Part of our cost is our need to handle externalities, even though these really can’t be handled. Perhaps adding additional pollution control devices, for example.
With respect to nuclear energy, there seem to be very different prices available, depending on how facilities are built. Early devices tend to be cheap, wherever they were built. Later devices, especially in the US tend to be very expensive. China and India are building devices much more cheaply now than the US and Europe, at least partly because of less attention to safety. This is an IEA chart:
Here is a Slovak blog that contains the price comparison for the nucelar energy of the new nucelar power plants currently being built around the world (eur per kWe), namely Finland, Hungary, France, Slovakia, Brazil, USA and China:
http://blog.sme.sk/usmedata/article/6/38/381906/381906_article_photo_NZKD6rX0_900x.jpeg?r=05e
Source: http://tomasmeravy.blog.sme.sk/c/381906/mochovce-superdrahe-a-zbytocne.html
This link in the given blog provides the source used by the comparison:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Economic-Aspects/Economics-of-Nuclear-Power/
Thanks! There is also a chart that shows comparative costs among regions in the link you give. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Economic-Aspects/Economics-of-Nuclear-Power/ It becomes a problem if electricity costs are much higher in one part of the world than another, because of greater concern about safety and other concerns. Manufacturing tends to go to low cost areas, no matter how unsafe the facilities.
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I will not give up on the issue of BAU lite. Richard Heinberg published an open letter for it.
positive:
1. We will have to cut consumption on all levels drastically
2. Population issue mentioned
3. financial problems included
4. triaging of energy required
http://www.postcarbon.org/renewable-energy-after-cop21/
I see it as a quite complete albeit short list of things that need to be done. They will hurt many people, yes but BAU will also hurt in the long run. The time is now to do it.
I bet if you start an enterprise now on these issues, it should be easy to get some funding for it. dolph ?
MM, check MIT Climate colab for several years worth of free global crowdsourcing from thousands of smart people for your upcoming enterprise.
http://climatecolab.org/
But tell me, from the several hundred fell formed plans, how would, one of them or, any of them provide us with BAU lite?
It´s not a matter of funding, as I can see it http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatefinance/overview it´s just that none of the proposals, plans or strategies can keep us from facing a full blown global SHTF Collapse.
Please explain BAU lite.
BAU Lite would be a full blown transition to renewable before 2050. Aka 100%.
This means, the Cental Banks do the central planning for the transition and deliver free money in the trillions to these enterprises.
Meanwhile consumer products are drastically rduced to organic farming produce. Everything that uses plastic id prohibited. Commercial trucking disappears as the big cities are abandoned for local small towns that build anew with 100-250.000 inhabitants in a way that everything can be done on feet or with a bile.
BAU lite also includes the internet still up and the grid is up as well as globalised shipping ( the solar panels come from china)
This transition will use up all the resources left in the ground but then we have a scale of civilation that may survive in the long run.
No financialisation, no commercial building frency in the cities, everybody working from his home office, no more commercial flying in the thousands a day.
That is what I call BAU lite.
Many here disagree that something of this scale is possible. A crashed economy given the wheel would stand still for ever. I do not believe that the economy will crash this way. I believe it will go down a lot but not disappear. There will always be people that want credit and there will always be people that want a stable currency.
PS: As for my region Mr Draghi spends 60 billion a month for the banks. If this is possibloe for renewables see this:
1 km of high voltage direct current grid is about 2 million Dollars. Once around the earth is 40.000 km that is 80 billion. That is not much concerned the sums currently being played with by the central banks.
Draghi prints money out of thin air to create new debt to service all the debt that is underwater since 2008 and so postpone the final implosion of the Eurozone. There is nothing left over for your pipe dreams. I suggest you practice kissing your a$$ goodbye instead.
Just double the sum and spend halve of it it on real goods. Then the wanted inflation will also show up. Maybe he just claims that he wants inflation to cover up that in reality he spends it on the banks. You never know.
MM, how much power is being carried? 1GW?
Anyone remember this article?
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
FE, David MacKay is as qualified as the two Google guys. He come to a similar conclusion, but then look here http://withouthotair.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/solar-power-from-space.html
Sounds like the transition will be bumpy. If my salary won’t buy anything I will lose interest in working, maybe many enough are different? However useless I am, I am needed until post BAU.
Who will give central banks the full ownership of everything? Globally.
I recently had an argument about the basic income and some people claimed that they have an interesting work and they do it not only because of the wages. I think in the young generation of jobless people you will find many that want to dig 40.000 km of direct curent grid for the sake of our future…
Yes, if the wages can no longer feed you there will be a problem. But this is currently not a near term problem.
Think of it in the style the russians did it with worker brigades. Also the chinese do it in this way. They can really build up anything very fast. The question remains about the quality but in theor<y they do it (silk road , high speed rails, highways, tibet rail the big dam )
The central banks give money to the company that operates the global electricity grid. it is not "everything". Thiscompany can also be divided in regional operatos of smaller size. I am not speaking of one global entity that owns everything (what is partially already true for the 1%)
Basic income may be needed to extend BAU, but I can’t see it helping to build BAU lite. In the choice between doing nothing and digging ditches for the same pay surprisingly(?) few will chose the shovel.
And your version of “lite” seems quite heavy, more or less everyone needs a new home if they should move to mediumsized cities.
“I can’t see it helping to build BAU lite. In the choice between doing nothing and digging ditches for the same pay surprisingly(?) few will chose the shovel.”
If you make labour pay zero and voluntary, that would probably be the case. If you gave everyone $1000 per month, and paid labourers $10 per hour, then working would give you more money than not working. Or you could make labour compulsory, but I think voluntary with incentive works better generally.
1 trillion a year, thats the cost of a transitioning to a 100% RE society. The world GDP is 80 trillion, give or take some fake stats. So, lets make it 2 trillion a year just to make things interesting.
We would need a central authority to decide rules, laws and taxes. We would need a plan, and people the manage that plan in the tens of thousands. 2 trillion a year to hands on work payrolls would create a inflation nightmare and the problem of taking care of the elderly that no longer can be apart of that inflating hands on economy.
A global mobilization like the US did for WWII in a matter of months, thats the scale required.
And we would be needing those things, yesterday. It´s late now to start to think about solutions or large scale operations. All mobilizations would come too late if a plan was just at the drawing board now. But, sure, it certainly would be nice to have at least some hint of a fighting spirit from our species, before our civilization goes in to the night.
Van Kent, the plans exist at least for 20 years now. The only problem is to really get THIS plan started and leave all other plans (elon’s space travel) for the future.
That would be difficult but I bet that Trump can do it.
Here is a plan:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2014/02/global-renewable-energy-grid-project-integrating-renewables-via-hvdc-and-centralized-storage.html
There exist several Versions of it for example from Gregor Czisch
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Czisch
I say this: Either we crash the economy by BAU or we crash it by BAU lite.
If we have a choice, I take BAU lite. There are more opportunities.
The plan, well, let the chinese handle that. They had a plan to overtake Germany and they did it. only the US is not yet conquered.
Hundereds of cities will have to be rebuit anyhow if sealevel rises dramatically. So plan for localised cities and all will be fine.
MM, on the globe spanning transmission lines what is the % lost per each 1000km?
Van Kent, please give the details that show that 1 trillion per year is enough to convert the whole planet in a reasonable time frame.
If it only cost 1 trillion I would pay it without hesitation. Except I don’t have 1 trillion.
Matthew,
Ok, you’re correct, but I rather sell burgers than dig ditches for my $10.
What is supposed to happen in a democracy when a majority gets all or most of their pay from Basic income?
“What is supposed to happen in a democracy when a majority gets all or most of their pay from Basic income?”
Currently, more than half of the human beings in North America are not employed – including children and old people. The Universal Basic Income replaces food stamps, welfare, old age security, child benefit, all such programs.
Universal Basic Income simply replaces hodgepodge and complex systems with a simple, universal system. A side effect is a drastic reduction in the amount of government overhead. Same with replacing taxes with a simple transaction fee using digital currency. Of course, the civil service would not be too happy with being massively downsized.
The other part of the equation is creating maximum employment, by lowering barriers to entrepreneurs, and creating more low paying civil works projects.
Once you have the Universal Basic Income and the Transaction Tax on the Digital Currency, you no longer need all the employment insurance, healthcare deductions, business taxes, and all the associated paperwork. You also no longer need a minimum wage. So, if you want to flip burgers for whatever someone is willing to pay, instead of dig trenches for whatever the government decides to pay, go for it.
“worker brigades. Also the chinese do it in this way. They can really build up anything very fast. …”
Oh, good plan. And I bet there are some people in Cambodia that still remember how to do it:
http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1880529_1848697,00.html
Where do I sign you up??
Ed, the 1 trillion comes from Ceres https://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/investing-in-the-clean-trillion-closing-the-clean-energy-investment-gap/view I´ve been following quite a few of them for a number of years now. But they don´t understand the limits to growth and global JIT economy and global financial collapse problem. Oh, and Ceres is talking about 2030 and 2050, which I think are simply impossible to reach dates. That´s why I switched it to 2 trillion just for the sake of conversation.
I´m interested in the BAU lite conversation not because I think it is possible on a global scale, but what ideas I can pick up to (possibly) implement on a micro-scale.
The problem I see is that everybody is somehow imagining the future (or BAU lite) to be a continuation of how things are today. But I can´t imagine large scale governments (we can´t afford them when millions and billions are starving), democracy (it´s not a matter of opinion what is possible, physics-science-rationality will decide what is possible) free market economy (it will be more of a barter economy, can I be of service to you, do you have something I need now). No capitalism (no stock markets, no capital or currency).
The large majority of people will not pick up the shovel. They will simply refuse. But here and there, there are people willing to do whatever it takes. I plan to work (and are working now) with those people. The problem is that while BAU continues we have one set of rules and Post-BAU we will instantly have a another set of rules. I´m interested in what is utterly impossible in Post-BAU. Those are the physical real world limits, the new playground rules, by which we have to manage at that point.
Here’s some advertising type blog touting cheap everlasting energy at 5 cents /Kwh;
Anyone believe it?
http://pro.moneymappress.com/EADSLR49/MEADRC01/Full?a=19&o=7107&s=7517&u=276723&l=78339&r=MC2&vid=M2z4Cf&g=0&h=true
As long as people believe that technology will save us, there will be people trying to make money from this belief.
My question is how BAU lite will have banks, so that workers can be paid.
Also, debt will continue to be needed by the economy, to keep the whole system going. How is this going to work, with default upon default upon default? At a minimum, short term debt is needed to facilitate a wage system and transit of goods. But more than this is needed as well. People cannot buy anything big without debt, and businesses needed either debt or stock to fund their operations. The two are close to equivalent. Or governments need the ability to tax people, and use taxes to create something equivalent to businesses. But this operation is very, very slow, without the use of debt.
Nobody ever is able to give an explanation when confronted with the details of BAU lite…
I suppose it’s like — you just close your eyes tightly and wish really really hard — and if enough people wish really really hard — all these details don’t matter…. somehow BAU can just happen….
http://alicefergal.com/en/index.html_files/shapeimage_4.png
According to Wikipedia, you have 6,4% loss at 1000 km. I think the maximum length to transfer power would be 10.000 km as in the second half of the night the energy required is low and can be produced “local”. The big bulge is in the evening hours, fading out at midnight. 64% loss is quite substantial. Maybe the technology can improve to about 25% if it is really used for these distances and new engineers for it come aboard this technologiy option
Why are you considering spending a vast fortune running cables all over the Earth, incurring losses? Why not simply have more ground receivers for the space solar? Transmit the power through space by laser or microwave, then down to Earth so you only have a few hundred kilometers radius from each receiver.
I´ll make my stab on BAU lite:
Stock markets will default, publicly traded corporations will default, big global banks will default. Large scale governments will default. Bonds will default. Global currencies will default. Global trade will stop. The JIT global economy will stop. The factories will stop as spare parts, raw materials etc. will not come.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. And without growth we collapse.
But. Local currencies are possible. Small local co-op owned banks are possible. Local taxes are possible. Small local governments are possible.
Now, if we know a global financial system will collapse but local small scale operations are possible. What could make a bridge between these two? The only thing would be government backed loans to co-ops in style with the Mondragon Corporation in Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Within BAU has some sort of a viable business model -check.
Does not default in the end of BAU -check
Can function on a local scale in Post-BAU -check
So, just saying its possible to build a BAU lite situation that scales back within energymeans at hand. Like the Ottoman Empire scaled back from higher complexity to lower. Possible, but I don´t believe the authorities can think in these kind of terms, so it will never be a reality.
I take BAU lite to mean that we will have some of the comforts of BAU — just less of them — or just for a small percentage of survivors…
I would agree that there could be a new normal – a new BAU — something extremely primitive….
This collapse is different.
In the past when collapses happened — the low hanging fruit was still available — no matter how bad things got there was always a future … a future that required people to continue to wear sunglasses….
But now we have burned up all the low hanging fruit — which means not only will there be no energy to power any sort of ‘civilization’ other than something extremely primitive — there will be virtually no other resources because without energy there is no way to extract and refine them.
And we will quickly revisit the deforestation problems of pre-BAU when we use trees to recycle the scrap metals left behind…
Based on what we did with fossil fuels does anyone think that we will not burn every stick of wood on the planet in an effort to create tools and weapons…..
We’ll quickly run into the exact same problems in a very short period of time…
The planet will quickly resemble Easter Island because in the past when we started to run up against the end of forests we discovered coal … then oil and gas….
But this time there is nothing left to discover…. we will turn to wood for energy … because there is nothing else… and we will burn every last tree on the planet.
I know Lloyd’s of London was based on an “assessment model,” rather than the owners of Lloyds of Londen setting aside large pools of accumulated assets, or obtaining equity through sale of shares, with promised dividends. Those wealthy “names” who contributed could be required to add more funding as needed. In a sense, it was a “co-op.” This feature has been changed in recent years, because it did turn out to be needed, and wealthy owners did not like assessments.
How governments will keep operating is an open question. WHen the world was less wealthy, rulers tended to be monarchs who inherited their titles. How much of a financial system can they provide?
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipdia.org/wiki/Cubeic_mile_of_oil
For some reason this ‘renewable’ energy insanity is back….
It must be time for another epic tirade to run this idiocy back to never never land….
Fast, you didn’t read far enough
“Space-based solar power offers one way StratoSolar offers another. It would take about 1000 five GW power satellites to replace a CMO. At a maximum cost of $2.4 B/GW the cost would be $2.4 T for one CMO or $7.2 T to replace the entire fossil fuel use of humans. There is room in GEO for more than ten times the current energy use. At a peak production of 400 new power satellites per year, it would take less than a decade to get off fossil fuels.”
Obviously this is not possible — or it would have been tried.
Money is no issue when you are facing the end of the world… as we have seen the mantra is ‘whatever it takes’ to keep BAU going as long as possible.
You can produce all the power you want from space — but you need to store it. And we still do not have an effective battery solution — and I very much doubt that if we replaced fossil fuels with energy from space there would be enough raw materials on the planet to manufacture batteries – even greatly improved ones — on that scale.
I also have read that half of all petroleum is use for non energy sources — i.e. in the manufacture of petroleum based products for which there is generally no substitute. Energy from space won’t help with that….
Finally — even if solar based energy could overcome the above — and let’s say we could generate power very cheaply — in case people have not noticed — the reason we have too many people on the planet who are roaring through its resources — is because we discovered exactly that 200 years ago …
A cheap energy source now would just spin the wheel even faster… it would result in hyper growth — and we’d quickly run out of everything else that is finite
“A cheap energy source now would just spin the wheel even faster… it would result in hyper growth — and we’d quickly run out of everything else that is finite”
If the new energy source was cheap enough and abundant enough, we could overcome a lot of those limits, at least enough to last a while. With enough cheap energy, we could just desalinate sea water and make the deserts bloom. We could harvest asteroids for new rich mineral deposits. If we were able to raise everyone in the world to an American standard of living, and convert them all to Westernized culture, we may even get fertility to level off.
I would consider this to be extremely unlikely, and probably not enough time even if it was all possible.
Imagine 7.5 billion people living large….
This is a harebrained scheme for two reasons:
1. There’s not enough money for this because it is all being spent trying to keep BAU from imploding and
2) there may be enough FF’s to start such a Herculean task, but there sure in hell isn’t enough to finish it.
The fact that we would literally cook the planet whilst we’re at it with all the FF’s it would need to create these behemoths, let alone launch them, isn’t a consideration because humans don’t care about that. The only thing that really matters to people is the economy.
FE, yes exactly. “A cheap energy source now would just spin the wheel even faster… it would result in hyper growth — and we’d quickly run out of everything else that is finite.”
Lifeboats, nations that limit their population density to below the carrying capacity. Best for islands as defense is a major issue.
If cheap unlimited solar energy were possible — and it kept the wheel spinning without it flying off and shattering into a million pieces for say a year or maybe even 5 years….
I’d take that over the island. The island will be without all the comforts of BAU.
People may say they are ok with that —- but they really do not understand what that means….
This raises the quality vs quantity argument….
Would you take 5 years of living large or 10 years living like a wild animal on an island — no electricity – the constant threat of starvation — having to chop and split trees with an axe…. when a tooth goes off you rip it out with a pair of plyers…. no medicine…. a long grinding existence at bests….
The silver lining of door number two is that those 10 years of suffering will feel like a life time …. whereas the 5 years of life under BAU would fly past and before you know it you’d be dead…
When discussing the island concept we conveniently ignore the spent fuel pond problem — and I do not recall anyone suggesting a viable solution for that problem….
FE, “Obviously this is not possible — or it would have been tried.”
If you were writing in the 1970, you would have said the same thing about cell phones.
“You can produce all the power you want from space — but you need to store it.”
Nope. That the main reason people have been thinking about power satellites for all these years. Satellites in GEO are in sunlight around 99% of the time.
A mobile phone is slightly less ambitious than trying to produce and transmit massive amounts of power from space – don’t ya think?
We’ve been trying to cure baldness for thousands of years now — and change lead into to gold for nearly as long — we can’t grow vegetables in snow or without water….
Some things just cannot be done… ever.
This is the scale of what you are suggesting we can duplicate — it is astronomical (pun intended…)
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Running a cable into the sun in theory makes sense too — if you also ignore costs and the incredible advances in technology required and the fact that we have not even started to try and we are already on the cusp of the end of civilization
Like electricity from space this has not been tried either — because it is also a stupid idea — it is not possible to do it at all — and most definitely not possible to do it cheaply….
As for batteries not being needed — try hooking up your electric stove to a solar panel — see if that works….
You’d need to store the energy… unless you were to put absolutely enormous volumes of panels into space at the cost of many trillions of dollars. (see the cubic mile above)
This is a pointless discussion — the decision has obviously been made by people who know this is sheer nonsense — they are not pursuing this because they know it is futile.
We may as well discuss the cable to the sun — it has as much merit….
Does anyone have any thoughts on what the cable could be made of? Is there are cable that could stand up to the heat generated by the sun?
If not then why don’t we just make a composite cable of heat resistant materials?
I will not take no for an answer…. after all, we were able to make mobile phones and put a man on the moon… surely we can do this.
Let’s not stop there — we need ideas — we need solutions to make our Finite World infinite…. we need cheap energy to make that happen — we need to continue to live large — we need to eradicate poverty to 7.5B can live large…. come on people —- put your heads together…
You there in the back row… what’s your idea?
Does anyone know what powered the engines in the Star Ship Enterprise? They never seemed to have to refuel so that is a step in the right direction. Surely if they could do that we can.
Oh that’s just a teevee show? Well they had mobile phones on the teevee show and we have them now … so surely….
Well then what about Star Wars…. what powers their space ships? Can someone just ask George Lucas for the recipe?
“We’ve been trying to cure baldness for thousands of years now —”
Pretty sure we’ve succeeded at that.
“Running a cable into the sun in theory makes sense too — ”
Only to stoners. A reasonable person with a basic understanding of our Solar System would quickly realize that it would not work.
The CMO is only about 1 TwH of continuous power. That’s only 1000 BN-1200 reactors. The biggest problems are regulations and public fear of nuclear power. Then we can have our CMO for thousands of years, and keep adding more exponentially as the reactors create more fuel than they consume.
“Does anyone know what powered the engines in the Star Ship Enterprise? ”
As I pointed out previous NASA is studying matter/antimatter annihilation, which would give us hundreds or thousands of times the power of nuclear reactors.
“The CMO is only about 1 TwH of continuous power.”
I think you are off by a factor of 5. World energy consumption is about 15 TW or 3 CMO. So to replace the whole thing would take 15,000 1 GW reactors.
“The biggest problems are regulations and public fear of nuclear power.”
That’s the biggest problems, I agree. I wonder how much this would be affected by a general cure for cancer?
“I think you are off by a factor of 5. World energy consumption is about 15 TW or 3 CMO. So to replace the whole thing would take 15,000 1 GW reactors.”
Yes, the total energy in the CMO is about 44,540 PwH over the course of a year. With 8760 hours in a year, that makes about 5 Tw continuous.
If you figure ICE are only ~25% efficient, it gets you close to 1 Tw of electricity continuous, which means the reactors would probably be close to 2.5 or 3 Tw of heat, maybe a bit more if they only manage 75% uptime.
‘Pretty sure we’ve succeeded at that.’
Are you living in a parallel universe based on the Star Trek series?
Beam me up Scotty…… come on beam me up…. Scotty — time is short … this planet is about to tear itself to pieces…. you need to beam me up to the Enterprise now ….. Scotty…. please…. pretty please…. Damn you Scotty I said beam me up … I am the commander …. no more of this screwing around…. there are going to be 7.5 B of these vermin with no food any day now …. I am serious – get me the f*&^ out of here!!!!! I’ll tractor beam your brain when I get up there you SOB!!!!
Wow, first we have a person who did not believe that a Heat Recovery Ventilator was a real product, and now Fast Eddy himself does not know that you can buy a product to regrow hair. FDA approved, nonetheless!
Rogaine:
http://www.rogaine.com/home.do
These treatments are limited in their effectiveness http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/hair-loss/hair-loss-treatments-men
http://www.statisticbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/hair-loss.jpg
That is fairly disappointing:
Propecia’s 1 mg dose of finasteride can effectively lower DHT levels in the scalp by as much as 60% when taken daily. It is DHT that shrinks or miniaturizes the hair follicle, which eventually leads to baldness. This 60% reduction in DHT has proven to stop the progression of hair loss in 86% of men taking the drug during clinical trials. 65% of trial participants had what was considered a substantial increase of hair growth.
Oh well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. Best start treatment early to stop the loss, rather than try to regrow afterwards.
Oh you got me — baldness is cured
What about lead to gold?
And growing food in snow. Or without any water
“A mobile phone is slightly less ambitious than trying to produce and transmit massive amounts of power from space – don’t ya think?”
Actually, it might be in the same ballpark. The UK alone is spending $3.2 B just on the 4G upgrade.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319914008489
If the average phone cost around a hundred dollars and 5 B people have them that’s around ten times the investment to reach profitability.
“Some things just cannot be done… ever.”
Some you list, like a baldness cure, are things we are likely to see shortly because biology is making such rapid progress. Making gold by nuclear synthesis can be done now, it’s just not cost effective.
“Like electricity from space this has not been tried either — because it is also a stupid idea — it is not possible to do it at all — and most definitely not possible to do it cheaply….”
A cable to the sun is a stupid idea, but think about it. The communication satellites prove they are possible. There are hundreds of kW of microwaves coming down from them powered by the sun.
There are two aspects to “cheaply.” Is it cheap in widespread bulk, and can you pay for the initial investment out of pocket change? Consider cell phones or digital watches. The engineering for the first ones cost millions of dollars, in mass production, they are not expensive at all.
“As for batteries not being needed — try hooking up your electric stove to a solar panel — see if that works….”
Stoves are hooked to solar panels through the grid and mine works just fine. And power satellites simply don’t involve batteries. That’s the main selling point, they are in the sun out at GEO almost all the time.
“You’d need to store the energy… unless you were to put absolutely enormous volumes of panels into space at the cost of many trillions of dollars.”
Again, you don’t need to store energy from a power satellite. But you are correct in the size of the project. 3000 of them, possible by the early 2030s, will probably cost somewhat less, but at 3 cents a kWh, $2400/kW capacity, $2.4 B/GW replacing all 3 CMO will take around $7.2 T. BTW, I make a case for thermal power satellites, i.e., steam turbines, not solar panels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Lrj35HcbQ
If the project is done at all, it will be because it makes insane amounts of profit.
You are beating a dead horse.
It has not happened – and it is not going to happen – because it is just as stupid an idea as a cable to the sun.
Why not just discuss warp drive options? That’s not going to happen either.
We’ve kicked the can for centuries now — we’ve innovated ourselves out of the end of days many times now — and now the gig is up — there are no more innovations available to kick the can — we can see that by the fact that fracking — even though it was futile — was still tried… because it was determined that shale could buy us a few more years… and it has…. drill baby drill!
There is no gas left in the tank — there is no way we are ever going to get something in place that can compensate for the loss of cheap fossil fuel energy – we are in the dying days now.
These discussions of thorium and solar and cow farts are just plain wastes of time.
About as useful as discussing ‘hey what about if I was 7feet tall — I could have been the centre for the Lakers’
‘Stoves are hooked to solar panels through the grid’
As I said – trying hooking your stove to a few solar panels and see if you can cook an egg. Not to the grid – to a solar panel. You would need battery storage – and you would need a lot more than one solar panel.
more ammo fot you FE;
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/nasa-study-concludes-when-civilization-will-end-and-its-not-looking-good-for-us/
These profits are what are needed so that governments can tax them, and keep their operations going. This is truly what a system that creates energy cheaply looks like. High priced energy requires subsidies forever.
The financial problems seem like the big ones.
Heinberg has really sold out — he and Martenson should create a Hopium Dream Team…. think of the money they could make!
Fast Eddie: from 7 Billion people 7 Billion are dreaming of a world with BAU. They will “do what it takes” to get there. I mentioned once that the global ecology battery is running out in 30 years but the people will dig into their ditch until there are no more shovels.
Check out the collapsed civilisations, they all worked at full throttle until the last day before the end of Bau and did nothing the day after. I saw a stone being prepared in the Khmer area. It was literally half finished and left standing where it was for thousands of years. You also find these unfinished products on the easter island.
My feeling is that we will be left with the unfinished global grid after BAU. The only point is: We have to do it. all other civilisations did it too…
Windmills and solar panels are the stone heads of the modern age.
I like your quote, “Windmills and solar panels are the stone heads of the modern age.”
The whole “peak oil” group and the group looking at EROEI have focused on what is (more or less) “running out” of energy–draining the fossil fuel battery of energy that the world was given years ago. (Uranium deposits can perhaps be added as well.) When the problem is looked at that way, the issue is simply one of trying to use what we have a bit more efficiently. The belief has been that cost will go up, and the economy will stay together. EROEI is an attempt to measure the energy used to produce energy, since that is believed to be the “overhead” of the system that is important. Keeping EROEI high will allow energy supplies in the battery to last as long as possible. All of this is based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This view is liked, because it is a convenient problem that can be presented as something we can work around. There is a solution, if we just work at it.
Unfortunately, the real problem is the economy, and the need for the economy to keep growing. The economy needs a combination of debt and energy. If the energy is very cheap, it doesn’t need a huge amount of debt. If the energy is expensive, it needs lots and lots of debt. Overhead of the system is important, but it is a different kind of overhead–it is the overhead of a more complex system–a system that needs more hierarchy, more government, more corporations funded by debt and by stock, more large devices made using fossil fuel that will (hopefully) last for decades or longer. The problem is that wages of non-elite workers drop too low, and that the level of debt rises unsustainable high. The level of debt can’t keep rising, and the whole system looks like it would fail like a Ponzi Scheme. This version of the story is based on the problem of the economy being a dissipative system that needs a rising amount of energy to keep from collapsing. (Energy to create energy is a small piece of this system, and not really the limit hit first. Generally, cheap energy is used to create expensive energy, and a lot of debt is required as well, so the whole concept of “net energy” is not nearly as useful as people make it sound.)
Publishers (especially “green” publishers, but also academic publishers) like the happily ever after nature of the “second law of thermodynamics” story. It is in theory a limit, but it is not the near-term limit we are reaching.
By the way, Chris Martenson is interviewing me on Wednesday, December 30. I don’t know how soon the interview will appear on line. I don’t know that he is completely tied to one story. He seems to be interested in my view as well.
Great piece by Charles Hugh Smith, titled: “The World of Work Has Changed, and It’s Never Going Back to the “Good Old Days”
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec15/work12-15.html
We have been giving away more “benefits” than our economy can afford. We can’t really afford the kind of high-price health care for everyone. We can give retirement benefits to very many. We can’t give disability benefits to very many.
In theory, it is possible to cut back–cut the pay of doctors, cut the amount of surgery allowed to those over 75; cut the amount of cancer treatment, stop trying to save very small babies, stop trying to save very injured limbs. I doubt anyone would consider doing this, though, even if we really can’t afford the costs. We also don’t have enough jobs for everyone.
With regard to the issues raised by Charles Hugh Smith, the future for unskilled workforce is grim.
If robots take over a large part of the regular economy, there will need to be created a second economy to employ humans with lower skills. Or we could use the robots to make the much wished for renewables while humans went about the usual economy.
Whatever, the government will be obliged to pay welfare, sufficient to live on, to over half the population. Luckily it can do that as it simply writes up numbers in relevant accounts at the Fed. It won’t be able to say”Sorry, we don’t have the money” or “We can’t afford it” They simply will have to do it or else face insurrection. This is all well before any major crash event. Inflation will be of no merit as an argument. Right now there is plenty of room to spend. The output gap is in the $Trillions – space before inflation bites hard.
I see a paradox here for the unskilled: you can not create a second economy for the unskilled because the unskilled work is the first to be replaced by robots.
That’s EXACTLY what’s taking place at McDonald’s. Robots are replacing humans by taking customer orders and preparing the food. Several Chinese companies have replaced humans with robots with one company according to a Zero Hedge article, IIRC going as far as to replace up to 90% of it’s workforce with robots.
I noticed that small businesses now can deduct up to $500,000 instead of $25,000 in new investment. This means that investment in robots and devices to replace human workers will now be tax deductible for small businesses. This helps small businesses compete with large businesses, but it doesn’t add jobs for unskilled workers.
I understand, but I understand robots are also for skilled tasks. My issue is that we cannot do both in the economy we know today. So in a way it’s a sign of the futility of robots when we have so many pairs of hands available. All it’s doing is exaggerating the resource use and speeding us to ruin. In the meantime what do we do with all the “spare” humans?
There are two views on that question. One, the loving hand of the free market will provide for all humans. Two, “The Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen.
Here’s a related review of a book by John Lanchester – “The Robots are Coming” It paints a disturbing picture of the BAU future a freely evolving BAU always concentrating wealth towards the top with business advancing via new technologies to be 10 times more efficient. The 99% would be even harder done by, living in a technology induced deflation.
47% of jobs disappeared in two decades and he writes there are 702 jobs that can be automated for robots.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming
We need jobs for everyone, not robots to replace jobs.
The government in theory raises taxes on business, so that governments can afford all of the transfer payments to unemployed former workers. Only this doesn’t work either–there are not enough goods and services to go around.
I’ve looked at “your” theory, ejhr2015, and agree. The Fed can in fact hold liabilities that are not recognized as such, and produce tons of free money. Any argument against it is purely semantical. They will discover the limits when inflation starts.
The output of the economy (in food, clothing, heat for homes, etc.) is whatever it is. The question is how it is allocated.
The government may be obligated to pay welfare, but it won’t somehow create more goods and services than exist. At best, if the money is actually distributed to the general population, it will help reallocate the goods that are available. Under ideal situation, the people in charge (and the doctors, lawyers, university professors, etc.) will get less, and the poor will get more. There is a fairly fast limit to this arrangement, however. There are a lot more poor than there are wealthy. In theory, it would be possible to get everyone to an even level fairly quickly. It would be a problem, though, if those in charge and those who had spent many years in schooling received the same level as everyone else–how could they repay their school loans? How could exports compete with costs in other countries, where labor costs are less? It is quite possible that even with the reallocation, no one comes out very well, because of the large number of low-paid laborers.
Also, it is not easy to get the money back to the many poor. In this country, when money has been added to the economy, the way that it has been distributed has led mostly to bidding up asset prices. It hasn’t done anything for helping the poor get more. It has made land prices higher, and home prices higher, and stock prices higher, but it hasn’t fixed the reallocation problem.
The medical lobby would scream ‘death panels’ — and that would put an end to all discussion of any cut backs….
http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2015/declining-wages.png
A person goes to more and more school, simply to keep from slipping to a lower level of wage. The extra schooling doesn’t really add wages. We need more cheap energy to leverage human labor to truly add wages.
“We need more cheap energy to leverage human labor to truly add wages.”
More cheap energy, in my opinion, simply accelerates the rate of automation. Better algorithms and robots. Faster employment loss. Since it seems unlikely that we are going to have ever-increasing amounts of energy available, we probably don’t need to worry too much about moving to a post-employment world. In the grand scheme of things, this is most likely a very temporary blip.
I discovered the best post collapse bunker ever today: http://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/
It has a ballroom
http://www.cavelocator.com/wp-content/gallery/wieliczka-salt-mine/tapeta2.jpg
Swimming pool
http://www.krakow-apartments.biz/img/wieliczka/wieliczka_3.jpg
Place of worship
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/–7EQkXX4u98/VEpLURrgM7I/AAAAAAAAlXU/sa-IUf0yj1A/s1600/aktualne-kaplica_sw_kingi.jpg
And many, many km of tunnels…
One could store enough food for a lot of people to last a lifetime in those mines….
Wow, gee wiz, that’s grand. Did you try to ask for a personal VIP entrance and a rental price for a personal foodstorage area 😉
Eddy when you were touring the concentration camps, was it mentioned anywhere that in Auschwitz-Birkenau or in the Warsaw ghetto, the highest rate of survival was with those that rose up in armed resistance against the overwhelming nazi forces?
We can meet there!
Never been in Israel, but wouldn’t be surprised if a kibbutz ends up returning to sheepherding
That wasn’t mentioned
It seems that the chances of survival increase dramatically when you have a plan, no matter how idiotic that plan is, or how overwhelming the opposing forces are. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005188 a plan, any plan, increases the odds of survival dramatically.
It was a step in the right direction. But preparations need to be long term and continuous.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” to quote the constitution of the United States.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-growth-idUSKBN0U51J420151222
Ready for the US 3rd qtr. GDP results? 2.0% down from the 2nd qtr.’s lofty 3.9%
It describes 2.0% as the long term growth per qtr. as the average expected qtrly. growth.
I reckon these numbers are all meaningless….
The picture is painted for me by the commodity collapse — to me that says recession …
Agreed. US Manufacturing (see below), profits, energy, retail (minus auto) all contracting; strong dollar hurting exports. Exactly where is this growth coming from? Consumer spending “supported by a strengthening labor market and rising home values,” apparently. Does anyone have a bridge they can sell me?
“Manufacturing in the U.S. unexpectedly contracted in November at the fastest pace since the last recession as elevated inventories led to cutbacks in orders and production.
The Institute for Supply Management’s index dropped to 48.6, the lowest level since June 2009, from 50.1 in October, a report from the Tempe, Arizona-based group showed Tuesday. The November figure was weaker than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Readings less than 50 indicate contraction.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-01/manufacturing-in-u-s-unexpectedly-shrinks-most-since-june-2009
“Existing-home sales fell 10.5% last month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.76 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday, well below the 5.32 million economists expected. The double-digit decline was the sharpest since July 2010.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-existing-home-sales-plunge-in-november-1450796974
Thanks! Wonder if this amount will be revised downward.
I might have discovered a very cheap source of energy for everyone, and it’s been hiding in plain sight all along. It’s the over-supply of embedded energy in the system. I’d guess that we have at least 10 year’s worth. 🙂
Take your typical dishwashing liquid. You can, as I have done, double its volume by adding water to it. And while it’s already being done, we could do more reusing of bottles and plastic containers. (I’ve seen third world people latch on to empty yogurt containers with great passion and purpose.) Everything we have is overbuilt. San Mateo County in CA is using methane from waste to run its fleet of vehicles. Richmond, CA boasts a program to power numerous houses from landfill-waste-produced methane. Houses can be built with paper-crete made from trash. (Why homeless people aren’t living in abandoned school buses remains a deep mystery.)
By distributing some of this over-supply of embedded energy to poor societies, war could be largely eliminated, including the energy to build cluster bombs and any number of unpleasant things…
Why rural India and China doesn´t use composting toilets is a mystery. Why rural Africa don´t use something like water-rickshaws to transport water? Why windmills are not used to power persian wheels that lift water from wells to irrigation channels? Why DIY biochar isn´t produced everywhere in rural environments?
After some initial research in to a rural environment many of these things remain a deep mystery to me. I would build the infrastructure differently almost everywhere. And yes, almost all rawmaterials and equipments can be made by scavanging a basic urban environments.
Artleads, circular economy is never 100% circular (green). Think of a football stadium, how would you build it, or demolish it, using 100% circular principal? 50-60% of rawmaterials, or waste, is building and demolishing wastes. And circular economy doesn´t remove the fact corporations existing today need profits. Also the concept of downshifting everywhere sounds nice, but won´t make corporations profitable. And without profits, we collapse.
I never talk about demolishing structures. That’s the whole point.
One of the big things we lack is good paying jobs. I am afraid that your “solution” works the wrong direction.
If we make our dishwashing detergent go farther, then companies making dishwasher detergent have financial problems. They lay off workers, and some may even close for good. This makes our job problem worse, not better.
You remember our problem is lack of demand for energy products–prices are too low. Cutting back on use of energy products goes the “wrong way”.
Gail and VK,
Due to my confusion about what stage of BAU we are discussing, I might not be being clear. My general assumption is that we are looking at a POST BAU world. If more resource use and consumption is what keeps the economy going, we run into the most godawful environmental problems there, and business can’t prosper without the environment. If business crashes precipitously, without any kind of “alternative” way to live, we will perish sooner rather than later. I’m talking almost exclusively about some way to keep people alive for as long as possible in a POST collapse society. Since waiting for collapse to happen before thinking about it is the wrong sequence of events, I’ve been talking about it here (where many people have a strong background in what makes production work). As that Holgren (sp) video posted by Don S admits, if we withdraw from BAU, that will help it to collapse. But I don’t see some viable, long term alternative…other than suicide.
“I’m talking almost exclusively about some way to keep people alive for as long as possible in a POST collapse society. ”
“It seems that you are interested in the life of the forests too. ”
The two things you are espousing work against each other. Perhaps you are developing your philosophy as you write? It does not matter. Whether we do or not do our fate will be the same.
Well said. All these brainiacs with their renewable fantasies always, always overlook the elephant in the room, of seven and a half billion people plundering every niche on the planet to enable them to thrive, survive and reproduce. If we had addressed the population problem seventy years ago, other problems would be issues to solve. Now we are in a predicament.
Profit has been humanities god for centuries. Profit drove the exploitation of our natural resources until they’ve been plundered into extinction or loss making enterprises. Now our exploits and enterprises are propped up by debt and theiving from the future. The energy slaves are demanding more and more wages for doing less and less work. BAU is becoming a light of other days.
I don’t see any way (that I’d subscribe to) to reduce population. TPTB apparently have some horrendous ideas–biological diseases sprayed widely, etc.– of their own, too secret to be widely known. I figure on promoting something less drastic, to perhaps increase our time on earth, even by a little.
As to profit being a destructive force, leading to extinction, I’d rather see a new version of communism instead. Again, I’m only seeing what’s immediately in front of me. I don’t feel up to predicting (or prescribing for) the longer term future.
Artleads, populations drop if you educate girls and give them entrepreneur possibilities. I know its a moot point because we don´t have the time, but in principal, would you subscribe to that?
Question: Day 1 in Post-BAU, how do you comminicate your ideas to the scared and panicked masses? They are unskilled, unhealthy and unfit for manual labour and look down on manual labour in general. Anyone with authority is out of touch with the reality at hand, and does not listen to you. How do you proceed?
Ukraine is falling apart http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-24/ukraines-looming-19-fukushimas-scenario
It would appear that girls are turning to prostitution in large numbers…. girls who no doubt would have never thought they’d ever do something like that…
Desperation does strange things to people…..
To educate girls and give them entrepreneur possibilities, you need fossil fuels. If all you have is wood, wind for sailboats, and water wheels, you don’t get enough energy to allow education of very many people. The few that get educated are likely to be make. You don’t have energy for contraceptives. You don’t have energy to allow the entrepreneurs to do very much. Nearly everyone will need to be farmers.
“You don’t have energy for contraceptives. ”
The Romans had contraceptives. Unripe Papaya is supposed to work. There are definitely ways in which it can be done.
Worst case, can always go Spartan and just practice infanticide.
“You don’t have energy to allow the entrepreneurs to do very much. Nearly everyone will need to be farmers.”
Outside of the tropics, farming is only a 6 to 9 month occupation. There are at least 3 months per year freed up for producing goods and services.
“Question: Day 1 in Post-BAU, how do you comminicate your ideas to the scared and panicked masses? They are unskilled, unhealthy and unfit for manual labour and look down on manual labour in general. Anyone with authority is out of touch with the reality at hand, and does not listen to you. How do you proceed?”
I, or somebody who listens to me, would have to be in charge. I don’t see how such change could happen without a massive shift in authority. Authority not based on force of arms, necessarily, but simply on a plan and procedure for survival of the relevant population. Everybody would have to be on board, including a critical mass of TPTB.
I believe that educating women would be one of the most practical and rational things to do in general.
Waiting for BAU to collapse is not practical…for reasons you state. That’s why a Post BAU program needs to start now. Every day not started is a day thrown away.
We would need to start yesterday, but we do not possibly have a plan that would save everyone.
What do we do? Make a plan that only covers selected people?
Fossil fuels allowed the profits. Now the profits are disappearing; adding renewables seems to make the situation worse not better.
Agreed that BAU is becoming a light of other days.
“If we make our dishwashing detergent go farther, then companies making dishwasher detergent have financial problems. They lay off workers, and some may even close for good. This makes our job problem worse, not better.”
But if you can make the case that the diluted dishwasher — half again as much “dishwasher” as at present–works fine and has other advantages besides, dishwasher to be sold at smaller, less formal venues can also employ more people to ship and vend the product? What the original manufacturer would have to do isn’t too clear. They could advertise and PR-hype the diluted product universally, therefore making twice the product out of the original resources, with no layoffs? The added earnings serve to subsidize the cost in poor places? If such be feasible, it could be part of a public education campaign about limits. Just wondering…
Shipping water is a significant care of dishwashing detergent costs. Because of this, companies have been shipping more concentrated versions. I thought you meant adding more water at home–that would make more sense.
” … over-supply of embedded energy in the system.”
There is a lot of waste heat. It is waste heat, because it isn’t usable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
“San Mateo County in CA is using methane from waste to run its fleet of vehicles.” 500 gallons per day does not run a very large fleet. In a town with more than 100000 people, it takes all the sludge produced to run a small fleet of cars. BTW: The methane produced there comes at the cost of many megawatt hours of electricity used to pump, stir, and otherwise process the sewage.
“Richmond, CA boasts a program to power numerous houses from landfill-waste-produced methane.” They can do that because they have an absolutely HUGE landfill. How is having a huge landfill a good thing?
How to make papercrete:
1. Cut down a forest
2. make paper
3. throw the paper away
4. grind the paper into a pulp using lots and lots of electricity
5. Rather than use sand and gravel that can be obtained very inexpensively and with less environmental destruction than the paper wasting caused use the paper in a filler with cement
6. Rather than make a very hard durable concrete with sand and gravel use cement made by burning tons of coal or many cubic meters of nat gat make a soft barely usable substance
7. Sell it to the naive claiming that they are doing good for the environment.
From wikipedia:
“Dried papercrete has very low strength … “
Pintaa,
It seems that you are interested in the life of the forests too. What do you see as the way to do them less harm? We also seem to be on the same page regarding landfills. Well, sort of, anyway.
If someone wants to save forests, solve the solid waste problem, and solve AGW there is one (1) viable solution. Stop.
Stop ruining the forests, stop creating solid waste, stop emitting CO2.
The things that you are proposing, besides showing a somewhat weak understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, do not solve the problems that you purport to solve. They are in fact an exercise in apologetics for our rampant, immoral, and omnicidal way of life.
http://deepgreenresistance.org/en/deep-green-resistance-strategy/decisive-ecological-warfare#collapse-scenarios
Fast Eddie has taken the psychopaths position. More BAU, more overshoot, for as long as possible. That position (the one that will no doubt happen) can be measured in the size of the largest animal that survives the consequence of our actions. If you want a 90 kilo animals to survive you must support DGR and get everyone on board. If you are ok with the largest surviving animal to weigh only a few grams, or to be the denizens of geothermal vents then BAU is the ticket.
Well written and viewpoint that may not have been expressed here before.
“Stop ruining the forests, stop creating solid waste, stop emitting CO2.”
As you say, I have a “somewhat weak understanding of the laws of thermodynamics,” Maybe if I can see a reason to look further into it right now, I’ll be motivated to do so. We have to take one step at a time.
I accept that “we’re” ruining the forest. As I understand it, there are a number of complex ways (and my knowledge of it is also very weak) in which the forests are being ruined:
– Food products (palm oil, soy, corn products, etc.)
– Energy products (ethanol, etc.)
– Building products (lumber)
Most people, including me, shop at large stores where food products incorporate forest food products. Unless I and 7 billion others can grow all our own food, we seem to be stuck with the food produced by large corporations with ingredients from forests.
Energy products is less clear.
I assume that the truckloads of lumber I see repeatedly on TV and elsewhere is largely dedicated to building, and that forest wood is shipped around internationally for building.
But I welcome a better understanding of how forest products are used, and how this is destroying forests.
I know that this is a chart Euan Mearns has put together regarding deforestation. It seems to go on endlessly, regardless of “incentives” against it.
You might guess that Euan doesn’t think deforestation has been considered adequately in CO2 models.
Or perhaps the economy collapses soon, and quite a lot of other animals survive. The survival of humans is less clear.
I welcome attempts to debunk some of the beliefs about “green” materials however i think you are missing the point with papercrete.
1; If you are counting embodied energy in a material I think its fair to discard the value of scavenged materials. I am open to debate on this.
2. The amount of portland cement used in papercrete is miniscule compared to concrete. You points on energy requirements to shred and mix are quite valid.
3. No one is using papercrete for foundations. It is a insulator. It has many of the same characteristics of sprayed cellulose.
4. Papercrete is not the best thing since slice bread. It has its uses. It holds way too much water for it to be appropriate for many of the things people are using it for IMHO.
5. As one of the founders of a “green” building blog was forthcoming about- there is no green building. The greenest choice is not to build. At all. There are levels of degree.
6 As 80 % of the energy used in a building in its lifetime is heating and cooling the embodied energy used in a building construction is small comparatively. The greenest house is the smallest house. A 10×8 shack is very green.
“6 As 80 % of the energy used in a building in its lifetime is heating and cooling the embodied energy used in a building construction is small comparatively. The greenest house is the smallest house. A 10×8 shack is very green.”
I’m fairly sure this is incorrect. You open the door to step in or out, and the shack rapidly equalizes with the outdoors. Meanwhile, a house with an extra mudroom (second set of doors) maintains its temperature fairly well. Heck, even without the extra.
Centralized housing is probably more efficient, since it is the outside surfaces that lose the most heat; a large apartment building with 100 apartments must use far less energy to heat / cool than having 100 shacks.
Body heat may be pretty much all we have in the future to heat homes. Smaller homes will be better in this regard. People will also tend to live in warm climates, where heating is less of a problem.
Back before fossil fuels, cold areas were sparsely populated and behind the rest of the world in the commercial endeavors. It is only since the rise of fossil fuel that cold areas could compete with warmer areas of the world. It is quite possible we will see a shift back to warm areas of the world being the places where humans can best survive.
Warm climates have their advantage and cold climates theirs, but cold climates really have no disadvantage if one has skills to ward of the cold because the cold stores foods and kills diseases.
Russian, Swedish and Finnish masonry ovens basic principle is that hot air rises and expands. If you build a tall space directly after, or on top of, the fire, there will be such air circulation that you can actually force the hot fumes downwards after. There probably is some sort of limit how far you could lead the hot air before the chimney, but if one looks at Chinese Dragon Kilns, as long as you give the hot air possibilities to rise, it can be done numerous times over a long distance, and therefore the heat can be gathered very efficiently from the fire. This way you can have a large thermal mass that is heated by just a few logs of wood.
Here is a traditional Swedish/ Finnish “brick stove covered with metal sheets” http://www.hanhi.net/projects/pontto/index.html the structure is simple. First a tall chamber where the hot air expands and rises, then the air is forced downwards. The heat is stored in bricks and the outer casing is metal sheets painted in some nice colour. It´s very cheap and fast to produce. For more traditional designs: https://mainewoodheat.com/masonry-heaters/the-albiecore/
The wood expenditure with these is about two arm length/sized logs per hour per 300 sq. feet (in a cold winter climate).
When I think about traditional English manorhouses with fireplaces and straight chimneys, I think how much such a design wastes wood, labour and warmth. In contrast, it would be interesting to try to build the entire manorhouse around a central load bearing wall that actually is a masonry oven/ heater/ dragon kiln https://dribbble.com/shots/2234510-Anatomy-of-Dragon-Kiln-Interaction
The difference in Post-BAU and the 15th century is that we don´t have to give up all the things we have learned through the centuries, if we don´t want to..
Here’s what it looks like to live unplugged from BAU in the cold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68
Long Live BAU – Burn Baby Burn — Drill Baby Drill!!!
Here are the modern versions of the stoves.
http://www.brunner.eu/en/Products/Stove-systems/KSO/Start
Rather costly, though.
There are even more efficient passive energy distribution systems and much cheaper.
I’m using one of these in my home design.
But we still need energy to keep warm. Cold parts of the world produced a lot less goods and services than warm areas back before fossil fuels. I expect that this relationship will reappear.
FE,
Uppsala Cathedral https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Cathedral
Right next to the university
At the same latitude as Alaska.
Both built before Columbus discovered america.
I can’t see the original comment related to this post — what is it in reference to?
I would observe that Uppsala is pretty moderate in temperature. I know when I visited in February 2014, it was warmer than Atlanta. People ride bicycles almost year around there. I visited another time as well. That time was summer and warm.
FE,
Sorry, it was related to (several, not only from you) assertions that “north” couldn’t sustain civilization without fossil fuel.
Why did the inhabitants of Easter Island cut down all the trees?
One of the reasons was no doubt because they needed them as an energy source — and because there were not other energy resources on the island e.g. coal… oil….
Europe was well on it’s way to becoming Easter Island — but then coal — and oil were discovered and harnessed reducing the need for trees as energy sources…. and the deforestation was slowed — even stopped…
Post collapse we get to find out what would have happened should coal and oil not have been found…. we go back to trees as the primary source of energy….
However there are now far more people than there were then….
If we try to build structures like the one depicted in that photo — if we try to manufacture tools of iron —- sure — we might be able to do so for some time….
But tools allow us to grow more food — and more food means more people….
And that means Easter Island.
“Post collapse we get to find out what would have happened should coal and oil not have been found…. we go back to trees as the primary source of energy….”
I think if there is a civilization post collapse, it will be generations before the population is up high enough for deforestation. If we have a ~90 to 95% initial depopulation, and the survivors double every 100 years, by the time they get back to a billion or two, quite a bit of forests will have grown back.
Barring, of course, nuclear holocaust, clathrate gun. and mini ice age.
Fast Eddy,
Kick the can, then kick the can again. Otherwise you won’t be there to be able to kick the can.
And sure small parts of the country was deforrested, some animals extincted. Still both forrest and animals were recovered before fossil fuel was used in large amounts.
People died too, plague and starvation. But those events never lasted more than a few years.
The question is how large portion of current population is sustainable? 100%? 20%? 1%? 0%? And how much time we have to get there? 1 year? 5 years? 50 years?
I know your answer is 0% and less than 2 years.
‘And sure small parts of the country was deforrested, some animals extincted. Still both forrest and animals were recovered before fossil fuel was used in large amounts.’
Reference please.
My assistant just handed me this…. the entire document is a fascinating read because it provides summaries that outline how civilizations throughout history were destroyed by deforestation…
The Role of Wood in World History https://www.eh-resources.org/the-role-of-wood-in-world-history/
For our purposes here I have copied and pasted the punch lines — as in this type of punch 🙂
http://karatecoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/boxing.jpg
Because of the relative late development, during late Middle Ages and early Modern Period, of large-scale shipping and industry around the North Sea basin, shortages of wood only appeared in the early Modern Period.
In England the first signs of timber shortages were noticed during the wars against France in the 1620’s. In order to obtain enough timber for its fleet, England started to import wood supplies, first from the Baltic region and Scandinavia, later from the Colonies in North America.
In the middle of the 18th century Europe faced an acute shortage of wood, and as a consequence, an energy crisis. The response to the energy shortage was the increasing use of an inferior fuel: coal. The change from wood to coal as major energy source had far reaching consequences.15
The shift to coal first happened in England, where the shortage of wood was most acute.
Wood was not only used for the construction of ships but also for heating and cooking as well as industrial processes.
In order to provide a sufficient supply of charcoal woodlands in England were managed with a coppice rotation system but over time these woodlands could not supply enough fuel for the growing demands of domestic users and industry, in particular the iron industry.
Iron was scarce and costly, and production was falling off because England’s forests could not supply enough charcoal for smelting the ore. The problem was that mineral coal was useless for iron smelting so the industry desperately needed wood.
However, in regions where wood was scarce but coal abundant Iron masters had long been experimenting with coal as a fuel for smelting.
Finally the Darby family in the early 18th century, after three generations of effort, succeeded with transforming coal into coke. This processed type of coal was clean and therefore useful as a fuel to smelt iron. However, the severity of shortages differed significantly from region to region and areas with abundant wood or peat the transition to coal was slow. For example, in Sheffield, the transition to coal was not completed until the 1820s.16
The knowledge how to make coke spread slowly but surely and soon the production of iron rose because of the abundant availability of the new fuel in many localities, especially Northern England and the Midlands.
These developments ended the supremacy of wood as a construction material and fuel and it was replaced by steel as the chief construction material and coal as the major energy source.
This process was also reinforced when the railways, also depending on coal, could transport the fuel to any part of the country making the production of iron independent of the location. The coal revolution in England made it the first country to leave the wood era, and enter the true iron age and the industrial period.17
Let me introduce you to my trusty assistant — http://www.google.com I find him very useful in ensuring that I never embarrass myself by posting baseless comments….
Feel free to borrow him … he can handle multiple requests….
DJ, 2% after a 50 year grind down.
Fast Eddy,
Wild life
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84lg
Elk almost extinct in 1700s, but because of limited hunting and near-extinction of wolves, now about 300-400k despite shooting off 100k/year. Main point: the animal was almost extincted and then recovered BEFORE wide spread fossile use.
Deer once extinct, except for reservations, has recovered. Wild boars the same. Not to mention animals that has never occured here naturally.
Just so you don’t have to point it out: if your instant global system-wide collapse occurs and food imports stops permanently these will be 99% gone in a few months.
Plague
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
But not news for you of course
Famine killing locally up to 20% of population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_of_1866%E2%80%9368
Forest, don’t care to find references but they’re out there.
I understand that before regulations were put in place many of North America’s large animals were nearing extinction …
It didn’t take very long to wipe out almost all the buffalo…..
Fast Eddy,
The chart!
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_historiska_befolkning
More or less constant population for 1000+ years. Kept in check by famine evry 100-200 years, plague every 500, war when needed. A lot of individual suffering, but BAU.
I can’t see any reason steady state couldn’t be reached again. We “only” “need” a 80+% die-off without being 100%.
The thing is…
Civilizations always had energy — from the very earliest days — wood.
As this article points out https://www.eh-resources.org/the-role-of-wood-in-world-history/ we were approaching a massive collapse of the global economy in the 1800’s because we were running out of energy — wood.
‘In England the first signs of timber shortages were noticed during the wars against France in the 1620’s. In order to obtain enough timber for its fleet, England started to import wood supplies, first from the Baltic region and Scandinavia, later from the Colonies in North America. In the middle of the 18th century Europe faced an acute shortage of wood, and as a consequence, an energy crisis.’
In case you missed it let me REPEAT the punchline:
Europe faced an acute shortage of wood, and as a consequence, an energy crisis.
If we had not worked out how to use coal and later refine oil to use as replacements for wood —- we would have cut down virtually every tree on the planet —- and we would have collapsed back into a very primitive state.
No different than the Easter Islanders — other than scale.
The graph on that article is meaningless…. just because that happened in history does not mean it is an indicator of the future.
This time is different. This time we have run out of cheap to extract fossil fuels.
So we get to revisit the 1800’s….. but with 7.5B people…. who I guarantee you will be chopping every last tree down in an effort to keep warm — and to try to make the metal tools necessary to maintain the ‘Scott Nearing’ lifestyle.
Oh … what’s this …. my assistant is handing me something……. sec………………… hmmmm…. hmmmm… very interesting … thanks Google — what would I do without you
Greeks Raid Forests in Search of Wood to Heat Homes
ght a young man illegally chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains above Athens.
When confronted, the man broke down in tears, saying he was unemployed and needed the wood to warm the home he shares with his wife and four small children, because he could no longer afford heating oil.
“It was a tough choice, but I decided just to let him go” with the wood, said Mr. Gourdomichalis, head of the locally financed Environmental Association of Municipalities of Athens, which works to protect forests around Egaleo, a western suburb of the capital.
Tens of thousands of trees have disappeared from parks and woodlands this winter across Greece, authorities said, in a worsening problem that has had tragic consequences as the crisis-hit country’s impoverished residents, too broke to pay for electricity or fuel, turn to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324442304578232280995369300
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AM330_GKHEAT_P_20130111162732.jpg
I think it needs to be more like 95%, perhaps more because we don’t have the horses and other things needed to make early ways “work”.
Oh, please Eddy. If you have trouble understanding the diffrence between England and Scotland, central Europe and Scandinavia I would be hounoured to take you on a tour to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia (St. Petersburg area).
I´ll just need a week or two to show you what the Scandinavians can do. It´s not something everybody can, but the Nordics can.
If you can get me tickets to the semis and finals of the Junior Hockey Championships in Helsinki next week — the tour is on!
I met some Slovaks in a bar last night one of the guys was a former hockey player — as was I — and over many bottles of wine it was agreed we’d fly to Helsinki on Sunday — unfortunately the tickets are completely sold out ….
My company usually has a private VIP box in every major ice hockey game in Helsinki. But its a bit difficult to catch anybody from marketing on new years eve..
Not a bad idea though..
Yes, the more populated parts of Sweden is moderate in temperature “bikeable year round”. But that will probably not change anytime soon.
Uppsala average temperature 1722-2013 5.2C, which seems to be about the same as Atlanta in january.
While visiting relatives in the Midwest at Christmas, I heard comments that there was a high mortality rate of early Scandinavian settlers, in part because US winters are so much more severe in temperature than the parts of Scandinavia that some had come from.
If Scandinavia is like other places, I expect population is clustered along the coast, where temperature is milder.
Most may live along the coasts, but that has more to do with transports I believe. In the southern third where almost everyone lives, the inland is not much colder. -20C is unusual.
I have no idea what percent of americans live where a few days of -15C is expected and a few months with subzero also.
And I also have no idea why we’re having this “contest” 🙂 my point was scandinavia was not undeveloped before oil, and will not necessarily be after oil either. Maybe scandinavia is in a better position than most other places? Electricity production non-fossile and “only” 500% overpopulated compared to pre-industrial times. Of course depending on what happens when billions around the world starts migrating.
The farming areas of the US Midwest and of central Canada are subject to wide temperature fluctuations. This site gives average monthly temperatures for various cities in Minnesota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Minnesota. According to it, the average January temperature is 13 degrees F (or -11 degrees C) in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. In the north, at International Falls, the average temperature is 3 degrees F (or -16 C). From my experience, the range of temperatures is such that -13 F (or -25 C) is reached most winters in Minneapolis. In International Falls, I would not be surprised at a temperature of -22 F ( or -30 C).
This chart gives record low temperatures by state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_temperature_extremes Several states have record low temperatures of below -60F/ -50 C. With such cold temperatures happening from time to time, sturdy homes are necessary and modes of transportation tend to be different because bicycle riders would literally freeze to death in some situations. Also, when I visited the Bakken area in North Dakota this summer, we saw a large building being built, so that workers could load and unload oil trains inside. With the severe weather each winter in North Dakota, workers need some sort of heated enclosure to be in, so that they can unload the trains without freezing.
The reason why temperature extremes are important is because it changes the amount of energy use required quite significantly. This change is partly for building the more sturdy buildings in the first place. It is also for making certain that people are protected from the cold–not having to wait outside for transportation, for example. Collisions between cold and warm air fronts are common, giving rise to tornados and other severe windstorms. Thus, even in the summer, people do not feel comfortable depending on bicycles for transportation, although they may use them for recreation. People living in states that get very cold need to have relatively high incomes, in order to afford direct and indirect energy costs.
We did have problems with deforestation also in scandinavia, though much less so than continental europe. The modern masonry heater was a response to the wish to get higher gain out of the finite (but renewable) resource wood. Wood was very important for the swedish/finish government. The production of iron, copper and tar was important to the economy and very energy intensive. Lots of wood was needed. To increase efficiency in heating homes, which also required hugh amounts of wood, the swedish king asked this guy to solve the problem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Johan_Cronstedt
He constructed a modern masonry heater simple and cheap enough to be built also by poor people. If you make them big enough (1-2 tonnes ) you get at least 90% efficiency from the wood. These heaters can make living in nothern climates quite decent.
The other important deforestation period in sweden was mid 19th-century. The problem was low yielding ground. Former forrests where the forest didn’t recover. Modern forestry solved the problem and enabled these forests to recover.
Sweden/finland was never in a state similar to great brittain but I guess we actually had some problems with deforestation. Brittain was also heavily expansionistic. It gives wealth but also cost a lot of resources.
In fact Sweden has been quite extremely reforested these last 150 years. (I think Finland has experienced the same thing.) The amount of m³ of wood has doubled the last 90 years despite high amounts of yearly harvest. Of course this is not only caused by improvements in knowledge in forestry but also the use of fossile fuels and rising levels of carbondioxid and nitrogenoxids from combustion which makes trees growing quicker. I think the truth lies between DJ and Fast Eddy.
Van Kent, I am just being curious. What would you have shown Fast Eddy if you would show him what we can do in scandinavia? Do you think you could convince him to leave NZ.
The thing is…
There are ten times more people now….. so once the power goes off…. some of them will die off… the old… the weak…. but one could imagine the millions that survive rapidly deforesting the country….
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Population_of_Sweden.PNG
Just to add some math and get a better picture:
A 10-story high apartment building, with 10 units of 600 square feet each per floor, let’s say it is 70 feet wide, 90 feet tall, and 100 feet long – that is, 10 units per floor, 5 per side, each being 30 feet deep and 20 feet wide, with each floor being 9 feet tall. Also adding in 10 feet down the length of the building to make up the hall, stairs, laundry room, etc.
So, it has a 7000 square foot roof and foundation. the front and back are 9000 square feet each, and the sides are 6300 square feet each. That is 44,600 square feet of surface area touching the outside, divided by 100, is 446 square feet per unit.
The 8X10 shack, at 8 feet tall, has 64 square foot front and back, 80 square foot sides, 80 square foot top and bottom, has 448 square feet.
Therefore, counting only radiation loss, not air exchange loss, the 600 square foot apartment needs the same heating / cooling as a 100 square foot shack.
Sorry, 80 square foot shack.
All tall buildings requiring lifts will be stranded assets once the crunch hits. They will be the last place one would want to be.
Mud rooms are great. I always use two doors. Even if its just one on each side of the straw bale.A 10 x 8 80 sq ft shack ( well insulated) is very green compared to a 4000 sq ft house. A well insulated 10×80 shack with passive solar requires just a tiny amount of energy to heat it. Whether its insulated with straw bales or scavenged poly iso foam roof tiles doesnt matter. A normal 4000 foot house with the plumbing ran every which way commits itself to a huge energy expenditure. What it is insulated with doesnt matter really eithor as most of the energy the structure uses will be from the energy used to heat
Humans live in air. The smaller the volume of air heated per human the more green. As you expand your borg cube the volume of air increases. Convection not radiation is the main mechanism of heat loss.. People consume Oxygen. Your borg cube has to turn the air over, heat cold outside air air because more o2 has to be brought in. The alternative is to have plants in the home. That can be done in a 8×10 shack with individuals taking responsibility for their own air quality. A 8×10 shack can be sealed tight. A borg cube has to be designed to waste energy from the get go as the air must be turned. Air volume per inhabitant is without a doubt the best measure of green. There are o2 limits in both the borg cube and the 10×8 shack. The limits in the borg cube must accommodate the worst case scenario of inhabitants per volume of air so it must be designed to be very wasteful. The worst case scenario for providing air is the best case scenario for “green” with high population densities. The higher the population density of your borg cube the more wasteful the heating cooling has to be designed in to turn air so net energy conservation is limited. The 02 limits of a 8×10 shack are the amount of plants in it and the requirement is substantial. It will take all of the light from the windows on the 10 foot south side and a lot of the solar gain- for four people.
“Humans live in air. The smaller the volume of air heated per human the more green. As you expand your borg cube the volume of air increases.
Regardless of the total volume of air, in order to keep carbon dioxide levels low so that people can be healthy and think clearly, sleep well, etc, you need to be exchanging 20 cubic feet per minute per person. An HRV is a great way to do this, transferring heat from the exhausting air to the fresh air that is coming in, while also filtering pollen, dust, etc out of the incoming air.
Each apartment can simply have its own access to air with its own HRV, no need to use central air, just central heating using a boiler and water pipes.
“Convection not radiation is the main mechanism of heat loss.. ”
If your structure is extremely leaky, with drafts blowing through it constantly, sure. You should fix the drafts first. Then, work on better windows and thermal drapes to stop the radiation losses, then better insulation to reduce conductive loss.
“The 02 limits of a 8×10 shack are the amount of plants in it and the requirement is substantial. It will take all of the light from the windows on the 10 foot south side and a lot of the solar gain- for four people.”
Four people and plants inside an 8X10 structure, which is transparent along the entire south wall? That sounds like quite the extreme idea.
How long do the windows last? I think the plan should be for shutters that can be opened and closed to allow air in–no glass.
“How long do the windows last?”
Frames only last 15 to 30 years it seems, so if you used wooden ones, you would need to replace them. As for the glass itself, that is more a matter of probability over time of an object or person breaking them; on their own, they should last hundreds of years.
If a person had a lot of money and was expecting BAU to collapse, and was building a new home from scratch, perhaps some sort of bullet-resistant glass would be a good investment, perhaps a layer on the inside and outside with the normal window in-between, to protect it from being smashed for centuries.
” I think the plan should be for shutters that can be opened and closed to allow air in–no glass.”
Then you will need to use artificial light during the daytime in winter. Which means fire or electricity. Beeswax candles are pretty sustainable.
They last about as along as the time until the bandits show up with automatic weapons demanding food and women ….
I reckon something more solid would be a better option — maybe shutters made of steel?
“Each apartment can simply have its own access to air with its own HRV, no need to use central air, just central heating using a boiler and water pipes.”
So you live in a structure that does this now? Im talking about something that can be implemented today and you are talking about putting the man on the moon. What is the efficiency of your hypothetical HRV including energy cost of air handling? Please apply your math skills to that.
“Convection not radiation is the main mechanism of heat loss.”
. ”
“If your structure is extremely leaky, with drafts blowing through it constantly, sure. You should fix the drafts first. Then, work on better windows and thermal drapes to stop the radiation losses, then better insulation to reduce conductive loss.”
Whether the convection loss is in a extremely tight building that has to turn the air to provide o2 or a leaky one that doesnt turn the air doesnt matter. Assuming adequate insulation convection is the biggest loss in any building that doesn’t utilize plants to provide o2. The convection loss is either by design or by drafts, Doesnt matter which. If by design you dont directly feel the the losses but they are still there. Thank you for your non helpful advice equivocating convection loss with leaky drafty houses.. The enclosure we live in is extremely tight. That is only possible through providing 02 with plants. The enclosure we live in is extremely well insulated.
“Four people and plants inside an 8X10 structure, which is transparent along the entire south wall? That sounds like quite the extreme idea.”
Its not extreme if your poor enough and scared enough. Its not extreme if the alternative is freezing to death. I feel extremely blessed to have warm space. Providing a smaller living space to live in can also be done within the enclosure of a larger building if the pipes are protected from freezing. This eliminates the need to shed water and most all of the load bearing. This can be done at very low or no cost using scavenged materials. All I have seen from you is reasons not to conserve, If you dont believe in conserving fine continue heating your mansion. Continue to argue against conservation. Continue to advocate things not achievable and to ague against things that are. Continue to build mcmansions and paint them green. The ability to dramatically reduce energy use can be manifested very very quickly low cost by anyone with even limited handyman skills by creating small enclosures. The one caveat is that normal fire resistant construction should be conformed with at all times.
“So you live in a structure that does this now? Im talking about something that can be implemented today and you are talking about putting the man on the moon. What is the efficiency of your hypothetical HRV including energy cost of air handling? Please apply your math skills to that.”
Do you live on the same planet as me? Here on Earth, Apartment buildings most certainly do exist. Here on Earth, we go to the Home Depot to buy a Heat Recovery Ventilator:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/VENTS-US-63-CFM-Power-Heat-Recovery-Ventilator-Unit-for-5-in-Duct-HRV-60s/205451507
“. All I have seen from you is reasons not to conserve, If you dont believe in conserving fine continue heating your mansion.”
You claim that convection is the primary source of heat loss. Please provide math showing how much plants you need to replace circulating 20 cfm per person. A bigger building does not need more air exchange than a small shack; the amount is determined by the number of human beings inside the dwelling. A McMansion and a shed will both need the same amount of heating, if your claim is true.
Perhaps we need to imitate homes of the past–perhaps those made of sod, for example, or dug into the ground.
+++++++++++
I could not agree more. But I can see how this sustainable practice would not appeal to anyone — just as hunting and gathering does not.
Nobody wants to like an animal…. we are better than that 🙂
“Perhaps we need to imitate homes of the past–perhaps those made of sod, for example, or dug into the ground.”
And the classic dutch farmhouse technique with the livestock right in the kitchen. The smell would certainly be something to get used to, but the inexpensive heat must be pretty nice.
I visited a historic home in Russia where the animals were under the kitchen. This still provided heat, but wasn’t quite so close.
“Providing a smaller living space to live in can also be done within the enclosure of a larger building if the pipes are protected from freezing.”
A good way to use old, abandoned factories, maybe. With no load bearing or water shedding, materials might be relatively soft.
Protecting pipes from freezing? On the outside of the outer-shell building?
I’m hoping that cardboard can be fireproofed by concealing all flammable edges. Maybe also using sand-dash on the flat surfaces. And very likely through very dense insulation with paper pulp orbs that are pressed too tight for much air to be inside them.
“Do you live on the same planet as me? ”
Unfortunately yes. The same planet but Thank god I dont live in the same nonsensical world as you.
“Here on Earth, we go to the Home Depot to buy a Heat Recovery Ventilator:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/VENTS-US-63-CFM-Power-Heat-Recovery-Ventilator-Unit-for-5-in-Duct-HRV-60s/205451507”
Oh thats the solution. Go to home depot and buy a glorified piece of sheetmetal with a motor for $800.. That motor is moving air.. Moving the warm air out through a piece of sheetmetal. More importantly moving the cold air in that has to be heated. Convection loss..
“You claim that convection is the primary source of heat loss.”
Yes and you absolutely prove my claim demonstrating the apparatus above.
” A McMansion and a shed will both need the same amount of heating, if your claim is true.”
Im afraid your getting confused. Im the one advocating for small living spaces for conservation you are the one making nonsensical arguments against it.
“Please provide math showing how much plants you need to replace circulating 20 cfm per person.
I can tell you that the bare minimum is 2 sq feet of earth of growing plants per person. Wheatgrass works just fine. Thats from living that way in the winter for over five years no math needed. The government says its double that. Not that you care. Your $800 magical mystery box from home depot will cure all.
“I can tell you that the bare minimum is 2 sq feet of earth of growing plants per person. Wheatgrass works just fine.”
I am certain that your dwelling is not airtight. You are experiencing massive amounts of convection. Your stale air is flowing out, and fresh air is coming in. Your 2 square feet of plants per person are doing practically nothing. You need about 700 potted plants per person to survive in an airlock:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5955071/how-many-plants-would-you-need-to-generate-oxygen-for-yourself-in-an-airlock
Or 8 square meters of algae:
http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-many-plants-would-i-need-airtight-room-be-able-breathe
That is 86 square feet per person.
Or about 8 trees:
http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-many-trees-are-needed-provide-enough-oxygen-one-person
Theres a certain kind of person. They everthing to be done for them. Usually the government. They do nothing because its not done for them. They try to sabotage all individual efforts to do the right thing.
You lambasted me about not having a mud room ala double doors becase of convection loss. Then you lambasted me for not using a motor driven fan to induce convection loss.
(why on earth if you were going to drive a motor to move air would you not use it in a closed loop from a solar collector say straw bales with scavenged windows mounted with scavenged black steel inside for a GAIN?)
Now you are sure that I am experiencing “massive” convection loss. You state that the inside of our home must have leaks. You state the simple facts that I have put forth are impossible. If you were to enter our home you would see that what is impossible is “massive convection loss” It is totally seamlessly and completly sealed. The doors and windows are also very well protected against convection loss. It was designed that way from the get go. Yet you with your all knowing wisdom have x-ray vision into our home.
I have become very attuned to O2 levels. In the early days I would somtimes slack off.At areas of under 1 square foot of wheatgrass per person I start to feel it.. I keep it at above 4 square foot per person nowadays. Its very easy. After one harvest of the wheatgrass tray just add water and light. Grass likes to grow and the grass is very happy to consume our Co2.
Well I dont mean to keep you from your fantasys about the perfect borg cube Mathew. I sure you have calculations to do. Yesterday was a very cold sunny day. We used 6 KW total energy in that 24hr period to heat in addition to the solar gain.
” I keep it at above 4 square foot per person nowadays”
xXXx, I worked this problem the other direction several times since I wrote a paper on it for one of the early space colony conferences. Very roughly a human is a 100 Watt load, they burn food into water and CO2 at that rate. Photo synthesis is very roughly 1% efficient, though corn can reach 3 percent in exceptional conditions. So as a rough minimum estimate you need about 100 times the 100 Watt load of a human or 10 kW of light. Sunlight is around 1 kW/m^2 so the minimum would be ten square meters. We planned on 25 m^2 for a space colony, but wanted to feed some of the vegetation to goats and rabbits.
“You lambasted me about”
Whoa, let’s look at the flow of conversation from the beginning.
Initially, you made the claim that:
“6 As 80 % of the energy used in a building in its lifetime is heating and cooling the embodied energy used in a building construction is small comparatively. The greenest house is the smallest house. A 10×8 shack is very green.”
I said, that if this is true, the smallest house may not be the most efficient. I did erroneously conflate radiation and conductive losses. I then went on to show that the conductive losses for an apartment building could be equal or less than that of an 8X10 shack, by having less surface area per person.
You then claimed that convection is the primary cause of heat loss in a dwelling. You claimed that a larger building will have more convection loss than a small dwelling. You also claimed that 2 square feet of wheatgrass could provide enough air recycling – removing carbon dioxide and adding oxygen – to support human beings.
I do not see how a large airtight dwelling is going to have substantially more convection than a small one. Going with scientists, who did research for things like space stations, they did real tests in airtight environments to determine how much plants a person needs to live in an airlock. Since your numbers are much lower, I concluded that you must be getting more oxygen from outside and ventilating a fair amount of carbon dioxide.
I did not “lambast” you about the mudroom; I was simply pointing out that the amount of convection losses when opening or closing a direct door to outdoors is quite substantial, and having a second door can reduce this loss.
This is likely how you are getting enough fresh air and losses excess CO2, simply through people coming and going from your dwelling. In real life, almost no one lives in an air lock, and it is not feasible to do so; the Russian scientists needed several Kw of power per person constantly to sustain themselves in a purely artificial environment.
As far as I can see, a dwelling of any size needs to exchange about 20 cfm per person to maintain a breathable environment – minus any plants that assist. If you are not doing it intentionally through a central air system, you are doing it inadvertently through drafts or opening the doors. You could have a low rate of exchange at night, thus lowering your oxygen levels and building up carbon dioxide, and then equalizing with the outdoors when people come and go in the daytime.
“I’m hoping that cardboard can be fireproofed by concealing all flammable edges. Maybe also using sand-dash on the flat surfaces. And very likely through very dense insulation with paper pulp orbs that are pressed too tight for much air to be inside them.”
Well you can test your designs with a propane torch. Compare them to 5/8 th drywall. It must be at least that good. I afraid you will be disapointed but I encourage you to experiment. Your cementious coatings will start to be effective at certain thickneses. One part portland cement to eight pars perlite with 1″ chicken wire in the center makes a decent fireproofing at 1″ thickness but idoesnt take impact like drywall. No compromises can be made in this area. Humans are pretty good at burning structures down. This goes triple where improvised heating methods are being used. I would guess you dont want to burn to death or create a structure where other people do.. This is one area where im pretty conventional. drywall is cheap.
“I’m hoping that cardboard can be fireproofed by concealing all flammable edges. Maybe also using sand-dash on the flat surfaces. And very likely through very dense insulation with paper pulp orbs that are pressed too tight for much air to be inside them.”
After some thought Im afraid Im guessing your age at sub 18. No offense. No playing with propane torches.
A tiny amount of energy, unless it is a few sticks gathered by the owners, doesn’t really work. The problem is maintaining the whole system that would allow the production of commercial energy products. It is this system that takes a huge amount of energy. Even the energy for the boards making up the shack would be a problem. It would be better if the shack were made of locally cut logs, using as simple tools as possible. Or perhaps a cave could be found to live in.
“Needing heat” is to me similar to the price of oil “needs to be such and such.”
What the unit needs, and what the economy can afford, are two very different things. An apartment in the city is basically unusable. A heated house in a rural area wouldn’t work, but an unheated one might have some possibilities. Alternatively, the home might be mostly underground, to keep heating needs low.
“4. Papercrete is not the best thing since slice bread. It has its uses. It holds way too much water for it to be appropriate for many of the things people are using it for IMHO.”
It is a building product, plain and simple. It will not save the world simply because its only use is to build stuff. As you say, “A 10×8 shack is very green.” and an old one is much greener than a new one.
Not sure who this is addressed to, but will give one more POV on it.
“1; If you are counting embodied energy in a material I think its fair to discard the value of scavenged materials. I am open to debate on this.”
Why is it “fair to discard the value of scavenged materials.?”
“2. The amount of portland cement used in papercrete is miniscule compared to concrete. You points on energy requirements to shred and mix are quite valid.”
My dictionary defines cement as several things, including “concrete.” It causes some confusion. Cement, concrete–I’ve used varying amounts here and there to mix with paper pulp. In at least one case, It seemed that the result was too dry and flaky. Cement quarrying removes hills and mountains, and spreads dust all over. Instead of mixing cement with paper pulp, I prefer sand and silt. To harden it further against moisture, white glue and wood glue in the pulp work very well.
“3. No one is using papercrete for foundations. It is a insulator. It has many of the same characteristics of sprayed cellulose.”
Correct in my case. I’m working on a tiny experimental structure and the foundation comprises cement blocks. You don’t want a paper-mix product dealing with a flood or standing water. But it works fine above the foundation level. I don’t know if it’s any more water absorbent than mud adobe. It’s worth some testing.
“5. As one of the founders of a “green” building blog was forthcoming about- there is no green building. The greenest choice is not to build. At all. There are levels of degree.”
I’m only slightly less sweeping about this. I advocate for zero demolition and the maximum reconfiguring of existing buildings (where and how appropriate!). The “buildings” I propose would be added on to existing buildings (where and how appropriate). They would be inconspicuous, use few non renewable resources, and use passive solar..
“6 As 80 % of the energy used in a building in its lifetime is heating and cooling the embodied energy used in a building construction is small comparatively. The greenest house is the smallest house. A 10×8 shack is very green.”
Matthew has some mathematics to apply to this. I can only inquire. A small shack might work with the added “mud room” scenario Matthew speaks of. I believe it would work with some sort of second window outside the original. Theoretically, insulating the heck out of the outside walls seems like a plan. I’m working toward that for a part of my house.
“Why is it “fair to discard the value of scavenged materials.?””
Im not sure what you mean by value. In regards to the energy required to make a building product possible it seems self evident to me if that energy is going to the land fill and can be utilized that energy should not be counted in the total of energy used as it would been wasted otherwise.
“My dictionary defines cement as several things, including “concrete.” It causes some confusion. Cement, concrete–I’ve used varying amounts here and there to mix with paper pulp. In at least one case, It seemed that the result was too dry and flaky. Cement quarrying removes hills and mountains, and spreads dust all over. Instead of mixing cement with paper pulp, I prefer sand and silt. To harden it further against moisture, white glue and wood glue in the pulp work very well. ”
Papercrete by definition uses portland cement as a binder. Sprayed cellulose is basically papercrete with glue instead of portland as a binder. Casein can work well as a binder. Latex paint available free at the dump can work well as a binder.
The greenest choice is not to build.
All building material reflect a harvest of limited resources.
The greenest choice is not to do.
“Casein can work well as a binder. Latex paint available free at the dump can work well as a binder.”
Good info. Thanks. My county doesn’t seem to have too much free stuff. But nice to know about this anyway. Years ago, I saw clear acrylic paint base at the hardware’s, not too expensive then. Will check it out again.
I see the misunderstanding about landfills. No, I don’t propose putting more stuff into landfills. For my current project, we are saving materials that would normally be discarded, and using them for the project.
The thing about landfills is how widely they are used now. There is a lot of stuff in landfills. I don’t know the extent to which landfills worldwide need to vent methane by burning. Landfills are overwhelming the environment all over. The fact that energy was misused to build landfills doesn’t mean that energy shouldn’t be used to unearth and better use their contents. Using landfill for new products could mean less drawdown of non renewable materials. A cost benefit analysis would be required to see what alternative did the least environmental and economic harm.
There’s a similar puzzle over nuclear plants: cost/benefit of leaving them there and using their (dangerous) energy OR decommissioning them, losing their energy, etc…
Recycling takes energy too. Because of current recycling efforts, often a substantial share of metals have already been removed from landfills.
I’m not trying to make/use traditional paper-crete (assuming there is some official formula for making it). I use paper pulp because it has great qualities. But I mix it with whatever I please. Anything that works. I almost never use cement.
You left out extinction of the species…. that’s really the only ‘ultimate solution’….
It’s too bad we have to ruin the entire planet in the process… but hey — what’s that saying in banking ‘by the time this blow you’ll be gone I’ll be gone or YBGIBG …. in the case we’ll all be gone …. WBG….
The problem is today’s way of doing things is disappearing. Low energy is not particularly an improvement over higher energy.
I would agree, “The greenest building is not to build”.
If we need buildings in the future, they likely will be very simple buildings in rural areas. Even if we were to build new buildings now, they would not be in the right locations.
Good points!
Regarding waste heat, it is waste because it is not in the right place at the right time. We really have a substantial need for heat for cooking, processing metals, separating oil into its component parts, and heating homes among other things. The energy we get from wind and water is mechanical energy. It is not really a good substitute for heat, but it can be used to produce electricity, and electricity can be used to produce heat in devices. This seems like a round about way of providing the heat.
Gail
Thanks again for pointing to the realities of energy and machines that have made the world go round during the great growth period.
I have just read this interesting piece by Glen Stehle http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/09/money-true-wealth-part-iii-british-empire-demise-1815-1945.html that reviews the end of the British Empire after the 20th C winding down of the first industrially based globalization (19th C Free Trade under the auspices of Sterling). I was born into the last days of the British Empire a little before mid-20th century. I am reminded by Glen Stehle that the then Princess Elizabeth’s clothing for her wedding in 1947 was rationed as was all our clothing.
I am also reminded by Stehle of an earlier warning by a previous British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chaberlain, as eqrly as 1904 when Britain’s relative position had already seriously declined:
quote “Granted that you are the clearing-house of the world, but are you entirely beyond anxiety as to the permanence of your great position?…. Banking is not the creator of our prosperity, but is the creation of it. It is not the cause of our wealth, but it is the consequence of our wealth; and if the industrial energy and development which has been going on for so many years in this country were to be hindered or relaxed, then finance, and all that finance means, will follow trade to the countries which are more successful than ourselves.”
Stehle adds: “Chamberlain’s warning and advice were ignored.”
Britain of course at that time could still mobilise home-produced coal fuel at a staggering rate and was a large coal net-exporter, although in most other respects Britain relied heavily for much of its resources on the globalised world, not least because of its overwhelming dependence on imported food: a strategic weak-point.
The USA today while still having large resources, though not so easily mobilised as they were, but is nevertheless highly dependent on the globalised world, not least for large imports of oil, even if imports in the main come from Canada and Mexico. Although still capable of generating surplus and exporting food, the USA can only do so by using fossil fuel, hence even for food the USA is not wholly self sufficient.
There are still large reserves of resources in the world, but the system you describe – capital, finance and industrial capacity – do appear as if they are about to be drastically reconfigured with as yet unknown repercussions on trade-flows and priorities. The ability of the USA to respond could be tightly constrained. It goes on at this moment.
best
Phil
Thanks for the interesting information. Too many have assumed that finance is our savior. It does help temporarily prevent collapse, but it can’t be counted on to keep the system going. In fact, it creates problems at the same time it seems to help.
Exactly Gail,
The help provided by finance consists in postponing the drawbacks further in the future. The more finance is used, the heavier the burden.
So we find ourselves with an amount of ‘problems’ (aka service of the debt) that increases day after day. At some point something has to give.
Great article, Gail, as always. But I think you could make your presentation more effective by discussing slide 2 at greater length, before going on the slide 3 and the correlation of energy consumption to GDP. As you hint at the beginning, this correlation reflects a direct, physical relationship: every economic activity requires energy. Howard Odum modeled the economy on the same basis that he and brother Eugene modeled natural ecosystems, by tracing the flow and dissipation of energy through the system. For the economy, he added a second set of flows, showing the circulation of money in the opposite direction, with storages and work gates to represent debt, investment, etc. Looking at the economy in this way makes the role of energy obvious. (Odum, Environment, Power and Society, 1971. The 2007 version shows the same model but discusses it in specialist terms.)
It’s kinda strange that people would have a conference to discuss the feasibility of generating electricity from outer space … I would have thought it would be rather obvious that such a concept is utterly ridiculous…
But hey – some people think we can tow mineral laden asteroids back to earth and keep BAU rolling along….
I wonder how the attendees felt when Gail — in a very gracious way — exploded the theory….
Her analysis is probably long gone pushed into the delete region. Thats the most common response to the truth in this matter. The SPACEWATT IPO (SPWT on the nasdeq) will launch soon. To infinity and beyond!
The truth is about as welcome as a pig at a bar mitzvah.
In the ’70’s they called it “Pie in the Sky” … Much more descriptive and truthful.
There has been an academic group interested in the idea of sending solar panels into space, for many years. The idea was that they could make them out of much less material (because they would not be subject to rain/snow problems) and they could operate 24 hours a day, so there would be a huge savings on materials.
I ran into two different members of the group, several years ago. One of the group leaders lives in Atlanta, and follows Our Finite World. Another one I met when I was an editor at The Oil Drum. He also follows Our Finite World. There has been an understanding for a long time that getting the cost down would be the major challenge of such an approach.
http://www.space.com/26175-peter-glaser-solar-power-satellite-obituary.html
“In July 1971, while working for the consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Glaser filed for a U.S. patent for his “Method and Apparatus for Converting Solar Radiation to Electrical Power.”
Glaser envisioned harvesting solar radiation in space using satellites, which would convert it to microwave energy and then transmit it to Earth for use in electrical power systems. He obtained the patent in 1973.”
…..
“Even in the 1960s, Mankins said, Glaser’s vision of the future was one of both risk and opportunity — the risk that civilization might not act in time to develop the new energy sources that would be needed when fossil fuels eventually run out, and the opportunity to assure the future of humanity through innovations such as space solar power.”
It might be the surface of the moon is the right place for PV panels with power beamed back to earth via microwaves. No need to lift materials into orbit. The construction could be done by robots no humans needed.
Do I expect technology to advance fast enough for this to save us? No.
“It might be the surface of the moon is the right place for PV panels with power beamed back to earth via microwaves.”
Wow, these are quite the flights of fancy. The Moon is tidal locked to Earth, so solar panels sitting on the Moon would have direct sunlight for maybe one week every month. For continuous power, you would then need 4 times as many solar panels, across four separate farms.
Agreed. Princeton physics professor O’Neil and the Space Studies Institute covered all this in the 70s and 80s. They held once every two years conferences on space manufacturing. I went to a few. They were good fun.
http://ssi.org/ssi-conference-abstracts/2010-conference-space-manufacturing-14/
Isn’t the insurmountable problem with solar power the storage issue? No need to put panels on the moon — what the focus needs to be is on the battery storage… and we’ve gotten nowhere with that…
“Isn’t the insurmountable problem with solar power the storage issue?”
Only if you are only able to produce power ~6 hours per day. Once you have panels in space in geosynchronous orbit, you should be able to constantly produce power 24/7, so you don’t need batteries. So, you are trading the immense waste of batteries for the immense waste of putting payloads into orbit.
I have an idea — let’s blast off rockets carrying spools of cables and ram them into the sun …. unspool them and run them back to earth and hook them up to immense boilers…
The boilers could spin turbines and we’d have enormous amounts of energy year round!
Problem solved!
You people have been reading too much sci fi bs…. do you really think you could power the planet with solar panels in space? This is ridiculous.
If it were even remotely plausible then it would have been tried.
Anyway – it’s not going to be tried and we are nearing the end of the road — so we may as well discuss the likelihood of little green men showing up in the next year and providing us with amazing crystals that would allow us to create cheap power and keep BAU moving along…. maybe they could also bring us more fish and fresh water … more copper and iron ore…. more trees… and so on
There has been hope that the space program would use a smaller amount of materials (because they would not be subject to damage by wind and rain, and could provide output 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). They also would not need battery storage. The excess electricity could be put to use making liquid fuels.
I would have thought it quite obvious that such a project would be astronomically expensive… but then I don’t have a PHD….
Isn’t it clear that she is tugging your trouser leg?
After all, Gail Tverberg is Director of Energy Economics for Space Solar Power Institute.
http://sites.ieee.org/wisee/files/2015/11/SSP-Technical-Program_Final_Detailed.pdf
There are several things you need to keep in mind:
1. Director of Energy Economics for Space Solar Power Institute is not a paid position. As a former employer of mine (who gave me a position of “Vice President”) said, “titles are cheap.” The only money I have received is reimbursement for some expenses.
2. All I am doing is giving talks about needed prices and related information, for those interested in Space Solar Power.
3. In some sense, my doing this for an IEEE organization gives “legitimacy” to my unusual views of how the economy works.
4. There can be times, for example, when applying for a Chinese Visa, where an IEEE type affiliation is helpful.
Gail, Director of Energy Economics for Space Solar Power Institute, very cool. 🙂
There are academic groups trying to explore alternatives. There has been interest in trying space solar, especially, as I recall, in Japan and China. The group is affiliated with IEEE. There are new people in universities, starting their careers, looking into this field.
Remember, economists in general have not been saying high cost is a problem. They just assume that fossil fuel costs will rise, and the expensive alternatives will become comparatively less expensive, so will take over. I have been offering a different view on this matter, and some of the Space Solar folks have been following OFW. So they have asked my opinion on whether prices can really rise endlessly.
I am the one from Gail’s time as an editor at The Oil Drum. Her figure of 4 cents per kWh looks possible with power satellites. Actually, my target price is 3 cent/kWh. At three cents power satellites undercut coal and take market share. To get to 3 cents takes 200/kg for the lift cost to GEO, but between the Skylon rocket plane at high flight rates to LEO and electric propulsion from there up to GEO, that looks fairly easy.
$20/bbl synthetic oil from electricity is harder. It takes about $20/bbl in electric power at 1 cent per kWh ($10/MWh). The capital cost for synthetic oil plants that make oil from hydrogen and CO2 out of the air is about $10/bbl including the CO2 scrubbers. So penny a kWh power would make $30/bbl synthetic oil. $20/bbl leaves only $10 for the energy so electricity would have to cost half a cent per kWh.
That’s not going to be easy, perhaps not even long term with extraterrestrial materials. However, power plants cheap enough to make baseload 3 cent power are the least expensive way to get power all the way up to peak load. With no fuel charges, they don’t cost more to run all the time, so power in excess of current load is effectively free.
Today the power grid is managed by variable generation (load and generation are matched in real time). In a power satellite future, it would make sense to manage the grid by variable load instead. So it is possible to build power satellites out to where they could power the maximum load and the excess between current load and peak capacity diverted into making hydrogen for the synthetic oil plants. (Better to sell at half a cent or a cent than to shut off the power satellites when they are making more power than is needed.)
That’s the general idea of how power from space could solve both the bulk electrical energy problem and the need for liquid transport fuels. Startup cost estimates come in at under a $100 B. In the context of solving both energy economics and carbon/climate that’s cheap.
Tell you what …
Why don’t you give the Fed a call…. tell them that they are wasting their time fighting the end of the world with all these super computers and PHD mathematicians and economists… that instead of propping up the financial system with all these complicated measures … instead of printing tens of trillions of dollars…
All they really need to do is adopt this ‘fairly easy’ system — that would cost a fraction of what they are spending every year now….
They will know that expensive energy is the real problem here — so if you tell them we can overcome this with the system proposed… I am sure you will be picked up in a private jet … and flown to mission control…. hired as the lead consultant …
And we’;d all be saved.
Seriously — these people are battling for our lives and their lives — they get and they do whatever is necessary to delay the end by an hour — a week — a year…
Do you not think they have turned over every stone in trying to find solutions? Do you not think that if space power were even remotely feasible it would be tried?
Shale is not feasible — yet they have poured literally trillions into that — because it has allowed us to kick the can nearly another decade.
‘Whatever it takes.’
But only if it has been determined to actually kick the can. Energy from space would have been looked at — and it would have been determined to not be feasible.
No disrespect to Gail — but the people really making these decisions would have had their own conference — they’d have the best of the best of the best commissioned to write reports on energy solutions — along with conclusions.
You can be your bottom dollar that everything has been on the table for decades now. That energy from space has been evaluated by the best physicists, jet propulsion people, etc… I suspect that there have even been experiments done on space shuttle missions related to this…
This would have been done to death. Just like solar on earth has been done to death (how many hundreds of billions have been spent on subsidies and R&D trying to make it work????)
If there was even the remotest chance energy from space would push collapse out even a few years — the funding would have been found — and this would have been tried.
The fact that it has not leads to one conclusion — it makes no sense. It will not work. It is futile. It is pointless. It would be a waste of limited resources that could be used on things that actually do kick the can —- like fracking.
Exactly. If WE know about then as sure as hell THEY know about it too. Whatever it takes, to save their skins, and by extension ours! Viva BAU!
http://static4.uk.businessinsider.com/image/546efdce82e9851511de15f9/draghi-just-deliberately-tanked-the-euro.jpg
Badass…
I think we must put into account here that rocket technology is moving ahead quite fast. Elon Musk launched one that returned safely to earth this week. The patent someone posted above was from the 60.
As long there is BAU there also is progress, but I bet that collecting some hunderets GW of energy to make a point to our energy needs, this should be a huge installation in orbit. One offshore turbine can make 2,5 MW (intermittent). The question is that to use ground based technology, a supergrid is needed at least two times around the globe. That also includes a lot of material and energy. If you compare these I bet that you get similar “costs”…
Bioweapons
Fast Eddy, right on with you post! I say to people here in USA, ” We can’t even put solar hot water heaters on rooftops to save energy and burn less fossil fuels, what does that tell you?”
It CAN be done because China has done it and manufactures the majority of solar water heaters.
RENEWABLE ENERGY:
Solar water heaters bloom on China’s rooftops but not in the U.S.
So why aren’t Americans as enthusiastic about emission-free hot water?
“This is really not at all a luxury good; this is something average homeowners have,” said Matthew Carlson, CEO of Sunnovations, a solar thermal technology developer and distributor in the United States.
One big reason is that there are few, if any, building codes that regulate water heater installation in China. Carlson recounted visiting the country and seeing the results. “Whole roofs of these buildings are littered with heaters and pipes running along the outside into each individual apartment,” he said. “The whole process is pretty much Wild West, it seems.”
In the United States, by contrast, homeowners have to contend with byzantine local permitting requirements, which differ from city to city and can cost more than $2,000 in some instances. For a $30,000 PV system, this is a significant hurdle, but for an $8,000 solar thermal system, it’s practically a wall
A report from NREL showed that the typical solar water heater installation costs between $5,000 and $10,000 in the United States, while Chinese consumers pay between $300 and $1,000. Annually, China installs 6 million solar water units
A report from NREL showed that the typical solar water heater installation costs between $5,000 and $10,000 in the United States, while Chinese consumers pay between $300 and $1,000. Annually, China installs 6 million solar water units
Contrast this to China, where the average consumer has less purchasing power. This means electricity bills take a relatively bigger bite out of paychecks, so urbanites are more inclined to bet on solar thermal energy to save cash.
So, if Americans can’t even even erect the low hanging solar fruit….forgetaboutit!
I mostly agree. But China has been adding a lot more new housing units than the US. Retrofitting is likely not cheap either.
In future years, China will not be adding many housing units, so the number installed there will drop greatly.
FE, the struggle to get the cost down to where power satellites make economic sense has been going on for decades. It’s only in the last year and particularly in the last couple of months that the ideas of how to do cheap transport have come together. So, no, this idea may or may not work, but it’s not one that’s been examined by the PTB, at least not yet. There are still two problems, NOx from the vehicles coming back, and the ionized reaction mass that’s being fired into the ionosphere at 2-3 million tons per year.
NOAA is working on the NOx problem but I have not yet found anyone who can tell me what that much reaction mass expended from LEO to GEO will do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Lrj35HcbQ
This is obsolete because we figured out a less expensive way, but it should give you an idea of how we think we can get the cost down.
Eddy, concerning the “best of the best of the best”.
Queen Elizabeth II was visiting London School of Economics and commented on the 2008 crash “It´s awful – Why did nobody see it coming?”. The best of the best of the best couldn´t give the Queen a answer..
When the authorities have fumbled enough, and finally come to the conclusion that” blast, it was the wrong operating manual” there will be a helicopter landing on Gails lawn taking her to the nearest strategic command center, where she will meet Nicole Foss and Dmitry Orlov and they will be having lots of excellent talks about available options at that point.
It´s a nice thing to be the best of the best of the best, but it wont be of much good, if you are a chess champion in a swimming contest.
They didn’t see it coming because they were not the ‘best of the best of the best’ — they are low level minions… cogs in the wheel.
The ones who saw it coming absolutely knew it was coming because it was understood to be a consequence — a toxic side effect shall we say – of their well thought out policies.
Do you think the Elders were not aware of ‘Liar Loans’ – that banks were giving 100% mortgage financing to some of the highest risk borrowers in America?
Of course they knew.
But they had no choice — grow – or collapse. ‘Whatever it takes’
They are doing the EXACT same things now — only on a far larger scale.
The Fed is the one making trillions available for failing companies to buy back their stocks.
Obviously they know that is a desperate policy — that it will also blow up in their faces.
But what choice do they have?
Do they sit back and watch IBM, and CAT, and dozens of other massive companies implode?
If they would have done nothing then we’d not be engaging in this discussion right now.
We’d have been toast many years ago.
I can assume you do not understand QE? The “billions of dollars created by the Fed for buybacks” is just plain untrue. QE does not create new dollars. What it does do is transfer ownership of Treasuries from the public to the Fed, a simple asset swap. The interest payments are also transferred away from the public. It’s all an interest rate reduction device.
The banks are the creators of $ trillions but only through loans. Nobody creates loans for nothing. There has to be customers.
“QE does not create new dollars. ”
The Federal Government spending money it does not have, and then having the Federal Reserve buy up that debt with newly created money, is not money printing?
“What it does do is transfer ownership of Treasuries from the public to the Fed, a simple asset swap. ”
When the Federal Government runs a deficit, the Federal Reserve holds the Treasuries. Normally at that point, they are auctioned off to the primary dealers; however, in the case of QE, the Federal Reserve itself can create new money and bid in the auction, thus driving the price up and consequently, the yield down.
“Nobody creates loans for nothing. There has to be customers.”
Central Banks can “expand their balance sheets” to acquire stocks, bonds, commodity futures, whatever it takes. They create the money out of thin air, by simply creating an asset and liability on their balance sheet.
At least, this is my understanding of quantitative easing.
I’ll call bullshit and raise you double bullshit.
Where do you think all this 0 interest money is coming from that is allowing failing companies to buy-back their shares?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-06/500-billion-2013-corporate-buybacks-half-qe
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-07/why-stock-buyback-spree-may-be-ending
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-26/risky-business-companies-are-now-funding-share-buybacks-selling-bonds-other-companie
Why do you think there are massive asset bubbles across the globe?
See the arrow where it says QE2 started (this would apply to many asset classes from commodities to properties the world over)
http://i.imgur.com/oJx62LN.png
Duh – it’s because the world is flooded with cheap liquidity courtesy of the central banks.
I’ve got a good mate who has forwarded me numerous emails from his private banker offering him up to USD2,000,000 at nearly 0 interest — unsecured. Where do you think that cash is coming from?
So your claim it total bullshit.
What I write here is not a “claim”. I’ll leave that to you to wallow in. I’m hardly making it up! I suggest you ditch the attitude and the ignorance displayed and try to understand it. QE is extremely easy to misunderstand and you are pointing to consequences QE is not responsible for.
Try this;
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=661
I distinctly recall you stating that I ‘did not understand QE’ – that was in my comment regarding the impact of QE policies on the economy…
Surely given the detailed response I posted you might have reconsidered…. and maybe even dug a little deeper for more info — to reassess your position…
But nope.
Fast Eddy is ignorant — perhaps even a little thick…
And still you persist — even though I have shoved a fistful of facts down your throat.
No, your facts are side issues. QE does not give the results your “facts” demonstrate.
You do not understand QE. I say it again. As for facts, you would not have responded as you did if you had taken the time to read the Bill Mitchell blog I posted. That’s where your fiction and his facts are sorted. Read and digest!
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=661
You have made up your mind already and demonstrate unwillingness to learn anything contradictory.
Not all you write is wrong – far from it. I am mostly in agreement with your take on our future.
But seriously, you don’t understand modern money workings and you don’t understand QE. You and others are stuck in the mainstream economics rut which distorts the way money really can work. Give mainstream economics a big miss. Even many economists themselves are now fleeing it. Bill Mitchell has the REAL story and it is slowly gaining ground day to day.
Further on that… Paul Krugman … he takes heaps of flack for his positions….
Do you think that he really thinks that the policies he is promoting will work?
Of course not — but he is an insider — he is one of the key front men tasked with keeping the CONfidence game going…
He understands the stakes. ‘Whatever it takes’ — he is lying through his teeth. Just as Bernanke and Yellen have been doing.
Eddy, have you considered the authorities are working one day at a time, taking the only choice available each day as they go. It´s sort of a emerging intelligence in swarms http://aser.ornl.gov/cui/workshop/presentation/Swarm%20Intelligence%20Bio-inspired%20Emergent%20Intelligence.pdf that we are witnessing.
I wonder if there were Elders, how they would react to fumbling like this http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/27/wallstreet.useconomy1 no more McCain I would suspect.
Agree with van Kent, a can is kicked day by day. If the Elders was all-knowing and in full control since hundreds of years, it’s quite pathetic they couldn’t do better than this.
Do better than what?
You don’t like the cushy life you have lived? You don’t like the 8 years we’ve been handed courtesy of the policies of the Elders?
What more do you want?
Fast Eddy, you can get a little carried away. I am sure the folks making decisions are having their own conferences. They are at least somewhat aware that energy is a problem. This is the reason why a lot of different ideas are being explored. Space solar is one of them.
Things like carbon capture and storage are getting a huge amount of money, in spite of the fact that they seem utterly absurd, in addition to using up coal more quickly and greatly raising the cost of electricity.
You might be surprised what you would run into if you look around our academic system today.
To my point exactly…
No stone is being left unturned in this desperate situation —- anything that has even the slightest chance of kicking the can is being looked at — and if it is found to be feasible it is being funded…
The fact that solar from space is not being pursued — when fracking is — can be taken as confirmation that it is not feasible — that it is a total waste of time.
And the people at the top will be completely aware that energy is the entire problem — they obviously can see that $100+ energy destroys growth — there is a tonne of research out there that confirms that ….
e.g. According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
They would obviously be aware of the above — because it is their researchers who came up with these findings.
They fight wars to ensure access to cheap energy supplies… they kill main and murder — all in the name of cheap oil.
Of course they understand the problem — and as expected — they are doing everything they can to offset the impact of expensive energy — including loaning money to bums to buy houses and cars….
‘Whatever it takes’
You don’t adopt that catch phrase unless you know you are already dead…. you do not encourage companies that are collapsing to buy back shares by giving them ZIRP cash unless you know that there is no way out …
They most obviously know. It is ridiculous to think that they don’t
Space based solar isn’t ridiculous. It’s expensive, would have to be done now and would require land confiscation on a large scale through eminent domain, but it’s technically possible. It’s just probably not as good a solution as creating many small sub-critical (and therefore safe) thorium nuclear reactors.
“Expensive” that is the problem with all proposed solutions. We have been living off of the earth’s FF trust fund and now we are going to have to pay our own way.
The point is why create more costly energy sources, if there are still huge amounts of coal, oil and natural gas with higher and higher price that will be consumed in smaller and smaller amounts? This is the same case as starting shale oil and gas production when the consumption was driven by creating various bubbles, i. e. overcapacity that does not match the real purchasing power (i.e. the purchasing power that is not based on the too fast increasing amounts of the debt).
Silly me — I thought the reason the global economy was about to collapse was because the energy that remains on earth was too costly to produce…
So there is no problem with the fact that energy from outer space would be perhaps thousands of times more expensive – if it can be done at all?
Wow – this is great news — when can we get started
“It’s just probably not as good a solution as creating many small sub-critical (and therefore safe) thorium nuclear reactors.”
What exactly is a sub-critical nuclear reactor? Is that like a spent fuel pond, and you just harvest the waste heat to power a stirling engine?
Ian, previous analysis such as that done by Seth Potter for a Boeing AIAA presentation were so expensive as to be ridiculous. The 2009 study came in so high that the cost per kWh would have been around $1.80 a kWh. New ideas have shrunk that to around 3 cents a kWh.
But I don’t see where you get the need for a lot of land confiscation. The rectennas can go over farmland or pasture and I would think leasing air rights would be less expensive than buying the land, even using eminent domain.
If for some reason (like the space traffic destroys the ozone layer) we can’t build power satellites, I think nuclear reactors (any kind) are the next best solution.
The “plan” is that farming could be done in the same place as rectennas, so I don’t believe that there would be large scale confiscation of land. I have even heard of rectennas over the ocean. Thorium has the problem of “not here now” either.
Thanks! When I gave the talk, I had time limitations so I couldn’t discuss very much in detail. I started to add more to the write-up at the beginning, but realized that I would lose a lot of readers if I added too much.
Looking at the economy that way also makes clear that money (really debt) is necessary for energy extraction.
I think of Odum as being part of the University of Florida Emergy group. I have not followed that group too closely, but I do not have the impression that they have kept the interest in the connection to the economy. There is also the offshoot EROEI group, led by Charlie Hall of SUNY-Syracuse. My impression is that they haven’t kept that reverse flow in mind.
I have been hammering on the cost issue for about ten years. Gail’s talk did a lot of good because she, as someone well versed in economics, told them in no uncertain terms how important cost is. Much thanks Gail.
The people in this field are starting to pay attention to cost and planning details. For example, a lot of people were impressed this week with SpaceX landing a first stage.
Re the EROEI group, are they seeking solutions or just doomers? Incidentally, the energy payback is such that power satellites pay back the energy needed to make the parts and put them in place in around 2 months. Given the expected life, the EROEI is up in the 100s range.
The EROEI group started out trying to seek solutions–which renewable has the highest EROEI? They quickly discovered that the rules that they put together were not very tight for computing EROEI, so anyone could compute almost any EROEI that they wanted. They also didn’t have any good threshold for minimum EROEI. (They later came up with something like 5 to 10.) Once they discovered that the EROEI of wind and solar was not too bad, they then needed to start figuring out how to point out that intermittent renewables were still a problem, regardless of EROEI.
Also, oil using fracking seems to come in at a very high EROEI, under some (not very good) assumptions. So this adds another problem.
EROEI has become an increasingly weak tool for doing anything, besides churning out more academic papers. If there were only one kind of energy, and a person could truly subtract what energy was used in the process from the output, it would make more sense.
If there is really a threshold effect at about $20 per barrel of oil, then the minimum EROEI needs to be very high–50+, most likely, but this idea was never part of the view, as long as the analysis was based simply on “running out” of energy because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I might add that I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved with space solar, except for Keith Henson’s hammering on the need for low cost space solar. The need for low costs substitutes, if they are to have any chance of working, is an issue that I have been concerned with, for a long time. It is too easy to fool ones self with EROEI calculations.
Howard Odum passed in the late 1990s, of brain cancer. I attended one of the UF Emergy group’s conferences back in 2008. They seem to have the same general outlook as he taught, but most are environmental scientists concerned with assessing the environmental impacts of various projects. They are aware of the bigger picture, but don’t study it, at least in their day jobs. Odum’s daughter Mary publishes a blog at http://prosperouswaydown.com/, dealing with broader topics via emergy analysis. (Same title as a book co-authored by Howard and his wife, aimed at a general audience.)
I know Mary, and have met Odum’s wife Betty. I gave Mary some pointers on setting up the Prosperous Way Down blog. I also know Mark Brown at Univ. of Florida.
Just another arrow in the quiver of fast doomsters:
“Our poll showed the experts — who ranged from current and former military officials to international relations professors and insurance and risk specialists — putting a 6.8 percent chance on a major nuclear war in the next 20 years killing more people than World War Two. That conflict killed roughly 80,000,000 at upper estimates.”
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/12/20/whats-the-likelihood-of-nuclear-war-in-the-next-20-years/
Remember Murphy’s law — “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. Nuclear reactor operators know it well.
6.8% works out to a probability of 1 in 14.7
Somehow I liked the “6.8%” better. If a food or a toy, used wrongly, had a 1 in 14.7 chance of poisoning and killing, it would not be let anywhere near people.
have the answer: bioweapons. North America scheduled for depopulation next summer.
It actually makes sense in an illumined way.
http://prn.fm/nature-bats-last-12-22-15/
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/nature-bats-last-122215.html
Everyone – the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese are right up-to-the-play with the potential for the weaponisation of diseчase sequences.
Everyone, he says, is testing
This technology has the potential to take out 6 billion people.
He talks about 239 cases where bioweapons have been tested on the lcoal population, in the US alone, and recent reports of tests on anthrax and bubonic plague being carried out on the South Korean population
He says other populations, such as the Chinese (and to a greater-or-lesser extent the Russians) are controllable by their leaders. The Americans, he says, are known as a problem, being “very feisty and hard to control”.
He says there is research out there that he is aware of, carried out by the Rand Corporation, ALAC etc, that indicates consideration is being given to unleashing a bioweapon that would take out the entire US population – and they are talking about this coming summer.
We are talking about the powers-that-be using bioweapons against their own population.
He repeated several times that this is verifiable and comes from actual reports and the information he is revealing is not classified but within the public domain.
If things were to unravel very quickly – and this does not include major environmental disaster, right up to whole cities like Miami disappearing under water with a king tide – (these are regarded as unimportant)- such an option may be put into operation.
What they are talking about are things that make the running of business-as-usual no longer possible.
Essentially they are talking about their own survival.
If something like abrupt climate change, the clathrate gun, was to came to pass this wouldn’t happen but the time scale they are talking about is this summer.
On level of the military-industrial complex everyone’s involved and “all are equal partners:
They have their skirmishes, even large skirmishes (which are dangeous) but ultimately they’re interested only in themselves.
The maxim is “don’t tell people . This means protest, rebellion, legal action
Essentially it comes down to doing business as usual until you can’t.
This seems bizarre to me. I considered deleting it–perhaps I should have.
Bilderbergers do exist and have depop a priority. This is not hard to find.
I see seemorerocks was suckered into reporting a bogus earthquake report.
Thanks Gail,
excellent article, very clear, and with your best charts, including my two favourite ones: efficiency (slide 5) and %growth GDP & debt (slide 9).
Also, very much liked your demonstration that debt is required as soon as there’s growth (fueled with external energy), growing at same pace when energy costs nearly nothing, and faster and faster as long as the cost of energy extraction/refining/etc.. rises.
You are welcome.
This article contracts the “we can live with lower EROEIs” argument. It more or less says, “Any EROEI over 50 is fine; others not so much” if we equate high EROEI with low energy prices. It also explains why adding a lot of debt for high cost renewables creates a problem.
Industry in Norway now pays less than two cents per kWh. The factory making parts for Mercedes Benz is now moving production from China to Norway because of our low electricity prices and low NKr. Also a lot of “cheep” engineers here because of huge losses of jobs in the oil industry. I think Norway will see a boom of industries resettling from China.
97% of electricity from hydro, a sovereign wealth fund that will not run out of money. You guys have the money to pay people not to come to Norway a couple with two children can receive upwards of 80,000 kroner (£6,200) in addition to having their flights paid for. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/norway-paying-asylum-seekers-to-return-home-as-refugee-crisis-continues-a6763496.html
Now globalization in reverse from China to Norway. Not bad.
Norway looks like the perfect candidate to be the last vestige of human civilization.
BTW Øyvind, did you like the TV series Okkupert (Occupied) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/
Øyvind, does “Tverberg” mean anything in Norwegian? Isn´t Tverberg something like “moody mountain”?
In swedish it’s “steep mountain”. Though some words are false friends. Compared to sweden there many more steep mountains in norway so somehow it sounds reasonable.
My relatives certainly did not have a good farm for growing crops. I understand that the land is currently used for hang-gliding, which would tie in with steep mountain. It is near Voss, Norway.
I have been in Voss. Nice area if you are not in farming. There was plenty of hanggliders there. I just walked in the mountains. The mountains are actually much steeper in the fjord areas. Hard to say, the translation “grumpy” or “difficult” could be reasonable as well.
“Tver” or “tverr” means difficult. If a person is “tverr” she or she is a difficult person, probably some moody as well. “Berg” means rock. So I guess the name Tverberg was meant to describe a place with a lot of rocky ground it was difficult to make a living from.
Ok, could mean something like “grumpy” as well in swedish. It’s also used for denoting a vertical steep.
And if something is going on “tverke” it’s going wrong or becoming difficult. Like climbing a steep mountain where you thougt it was flat and easy to go.
I’m sure many people will find Tverberg a “tver” person, a difficult person with irritating opinions, and difficult to handle.
“I’m sure many people will find Tverberg a “tver” person, a difficult person with irritating opinions, and difficult to handle.”
Hmm. Knowing Gail personally, I find she is one of the most pleasant people I know. On the other hand, Fast Eddy . . . .
Yup, Eddy is irritating beyond belief sometimes, but the we need Eddy to keep our hubris at check.
To call out BS even in a rudimentary intelligent fashion, is a skill, and Eddy is very skilled.
When the language is good enough for Eddy, it´s good enough for the 99%. It´s a huge privilege, an incredible advantage to Gail, to have Eddy as a peer review process from hell 🙂
Whatever, now that Gail is famous, she should add a middle initial to her public name.
I do use Gail E. Tverberg some places. E is for Elise.
Wile Coyote uses an E as well 🙂
Maybe I should choose “Wile E. Coyote” as my new pseudonym.
Norway has historically always been poorer than sweden and denmark. There is not much fields useful for agriculture compared to denmark or sweden. All of denmerk is very fertile. Sweden has plenty of iron and cupper ore combined with wood. Norway had fishing. Ok, now they have oil and tourism. It would be interesting to know the present norwegian rate of self suffiency of food. Value of production compared to value of import. Sweden is at present at 45%. We have been treating the farming industry really bad here. The figure used to be 90% in 1990. The norwegians pay better subsidies so maybe they beat the 45%.
Finland; wheat self suffiency 150-100% depending on year, rye 100-50%, vegetables 80%, beef, pork, poultry, eggs, milk between 120-90%. http://www.luke.fi/en/
Oh, now I see the point in why Finland went in to the monetary union with the EU, Finland has the EU ag-bis subsidies Sweden and Norway doesn´t have. Smart move, now that I come to think about it. Sure the Euro-currency is tanking the export economy, but food sovereignty still remains. Seems, at least somethings done well in the land of the thousand fresh water lakes.
If the Norwegians have electricity, Swedes iron and volvo-factories, and Finland has food. What does the danes have in Post-BAU Christopher?
The danes have lots of fertile soil useful for agriculture. Post-BAU, that would be more difficult to use. I guess that the volvo-factories would be rather useless.
Finland is much more careful than Sweden. The swedish political establishment considers agriculture as unmodern. It’s something less developed nations should do. Finland has some good soil as well. My guess is that the finns would manage post-bau best in scandinavia. Probably also better than any western european country.
There is a chrome mine in northern Finland, Sweden has iron mines. Together with hydro that makes SST possible. And therefore with volvo-factories hydro spare parts possible.
Don´t know the exacts parts needed to refurbish a diesel engine into a biogas engine. But just guessing the danes will need their Maersk ships engines worked on pretty soon.
Just thinking about the first things first Post-BAU to-do list.
Interesting… discussing being able to keep ships and mines and hydro plants operational…
When we won’t even be able to buy a toothbrush when this hits…
There is a major disconnect here….
Northern Sweden, northern finland combined with norwegian electricity has an interesting combination of rawmaterials, mines, factories and electricity.
Very interesting small area I´m researching. Thinking about a hundred hectares or so by the Torne River.
Toothbrush: take rawmaterial from plastic pellets (gather plastic material from transportation packaging materials, combine with generators refurbished to run on biogas, from an construction yard, take them to a factory that makes PVC-plastic toys, hairbrushes etc. Voilá toothbrush possible. Not easy, but possible.
The area I´m interested in, in northern sweden, finland, norway, is very small and couldn´t possibly have more then two million people living on it.
Eddy, how many people does your part of NZ support, if production was maximized?
The Danes did a BIG mistake draining almost all their marshlands, straightening rivers and emptying shallow lakes to turn them into agricultural land 1950-1980. This will make life much more difficult in a post-collapse world.
Van Kent, concerning Torne river. The climate is not really fantastic up there. You need much more knowledge to survive in such a place than for instance surviving on New Zealand, where the climate is good most of the year. Maybe there is a broader spectrum important resources in the northern scandinavian area than new zealand. I don’t know.
Personally I prefer the southern parts of scandinavia, but not too close to the bigger cities. Ok, if BAU goes it’s higher risk than living in the north where the population density is very low. But if you don’t manage to get some BAU-light rebooted the quality of life will be better in the southern parts. These parts have about the same climate as northern england or northern germany.
I actually believe that New Zealand should be ranked first and (southern) Finland is ranked number one of the nothern european countries, maybe some of the baltic countries could be a good choice as well. I don’t know were you live at present. If you live in the states I guess there has to be some decent place, I mean USA+Canada is a big area.
But if you believe that scandinavia is a good choice and choose the come here you are vey welcome! And if I can be of any help don’t be afraid to ask me.
Christopher, I currently live in southern Finland. Cousins live both side of the border by the Torne river. My great grandfather used to farm up there, so, its not impossible now, and it will become better as the climate warms up. My uncle is terminally sick and the hundred hectares or so of family owned lands should be cared by me or my MD big brother. The set up is all ready up there. Including all the equipment one could hope for. But I have a organic farm set up in southern Finland including a 100 people Co-op.The biggest working set up in Finland I am aware of right now. My brothers (Oxford based CEO consultant) wifes family has a plot of 5 hectares in the southern most tip in Finland. One of the most fertile lands I know of. But they don´t have a clue about farming. My father has his own plot of land in Sweden, near Kalix. He is turning 80 soon, so, he´ll be needing a hand soon too. My third brother (movie director) has his wives family lands in eastern Finland. A few hundred hectares of mostly forestlands.
My mother bought herself a homestead a decade ago, in one of the most fertile and clean lands in southern Finland, but is needing some care soon too, 70-eth birthday coming soon. My sister lives in Malaga Spain with her kids and wants me to move to NZ with them.
So, as you can probably understand, I´m weighing options.
The good thing is that I have a cousin who is a pilot. Airstrip is nearby. Lots of friends and family in the military and as truckcompany owners etc. We have a family friend as a ship captain in Singapore. Everybody seems to have a sailing boat. So, despite I´m anticipating pure chaos in the near future, some options still remain.
Thanks Christopher.
All right, I didn’t realize that you were from Finland. Thought you were an american with some finnish origin.
It seems you have several pretty good alternatives. It would be interesting to learn more about your organic farm co-op. What are you doing there, what are you planning to do and how are you organized? How did it start and how does it work to cooperate with 100 persons? Maybe you could write a guest blog post here at OFW about these topics.
Seems that you are one of the commentators here that is more convinced about a total collapse. I am far from 100% sure about that. I believe it’s more like say 50% to have a total collapse within 10 years. Do your relatives and friends share your view on this? That would simplifiy things. My parents are rich but since they belive that I am exaggerating they won’t really give much help. (They have promised some money after I had a child this year. But helping with knowledge and time is probably worth much more. ) I have also been discussing this collapse thing with many of my friends ( some of them extremely intelligent with good knowledge both in economics and natural science) but they also believe that I am exaggerating. I do know some antoposophists/hippes that are living somewhat alternative. In many senses they are really naive and I don’t believe in their alternative and very often superstitious way of doing things.
I have been preparing since 2008. Studying and practicing “hard” skills.
Christopher, at the turn of the millenium when I was developing my two IT-start-ups, (eventually sold them off), some familyfriends (this is a country club, not a country) invited me to be a ghost writer to start the discussion about reforming the welfare state. Been a family tradition of sorts, to write such things behind the scenes. I started with money, economics, Keynes, the usual. I quickly ran up to the problems of a skewed population pyramid, pensions getting out of control, climate change, resources, limits to growth. The only ways of going forward was Green Investment Banking, finance, things that would ensure employment while taking care of the resources. Germany with its solar and wind business has used KfW-Bank in much the way I imagined one would have to https://www.kfw.de/KfW-Group/Newsroom/Aktuelles/Pressemitteilungen/Pressemitteilungen-Details_214336.html But such things had nothing to do with a social democratic ideology or ensuring GDP growth through money transfers to the poor, so I failed miserably in my task. But all in all, everything I could come up with, as a model, ended in a global crash. That´s why I like Gail, she says things so much clearer then I ever could.
Nope, most people I know are fully occupied with “cognitive dissonance” as Eddy puts it. And the few who do get it, are trying to keep busy, not to think about such things. We are lucky to have Gail.
Yes, but now you need to move whole towns to get to your iron ore, like Kiruna: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/oct/22/kiruna-sweden-town-moved-east-iron-ore-mine
Oops!
The prospects for Sweden are really bleak: https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/meditationrant-on-diversity/
“The Swedes were told, and may have believed, that their culture was way too stale, pale, prejudiced, and in need of a drastic overhaul. At the urging of people who grew more shrill as the years passed, the multicultural vision began to be officially implemented from 1975 on. People of mixed racial parentage were celebrated, white Swedes were denigrated; those who wanted to craft a whole new society in Sweden and be done forever with the “old Sweden” prevailed. The influx of immigrants looking to partake of what Sweden had to offer grew until today it’s a flood. The result? In the city of Malmő, indigenous Swedes are now a minority. There are no-go zones all over the country, controlled by immigrant gangs. Police cars are the targets of grenades. There has been a housing shortage for quite some time, and Swedes are being told to house newly come asylum seekers in their garages. There are no jobs for most of these newcomers. Sweden is now contemplating borrowing large sums from abroad so that it can feed and house the influx, and its politicians are being slowly forced to admit that the ideology of compulsory anti-racism and anti-discrimination has turned the country into something that horrifies many of the immigrants themselves, not to even mention the feelings of the original inhabitants. Corruption is rampant; politicians live in wealthy neighborhoods with other ethnic Swedes while pontificating on racism to their less fortunate countrymen and women.”
Yes, many swedes are almost like they were brainwashed. But generally the situation is exagerated abroad and under estimated in sweden. Corruption is not really rampant. You are safe on the streets here. Perhaps, there could be a problem in some of the worst migrant gettoes, at least if you are a woman.
At present the government are cutting the so called “pull factors” that is factors that attracts migrants. Most of the migrants coming here will be very disappointed. Some of them will leave on their own free will and many will not get their asylum granted.
The danish government had an advertisment in the larger arabic newpapers to inform potential migrants that it was little use coming to denmark. Some proposed that the swedish government should do this as well, but the government claimed it to be inhuman. Instead we had lots of migrants coming here wasting money in vain since they now will be sent back. And of course, some amount of swedish tax paying was wasted as well. Seems like the swedish government prefered to appear human than actually being human. The danes were more human.
BTW Christopher, you had such excellent knowledge about the Viking history, did you know there was a Swedish colony in America by the name of “New Sweden”? Later it was taken by the dutch and assimilated by what we call New York today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sweden
In the very first years of colonization the colonies had trouble surviving. Luckily they had a few “forest finns” with them. The forest finns thought the colonies to slash-and-burn, gather berries and to eat skunk, racoon and opossum. Established friendly relations with the native americans and traded with them (looked them in the eyes and meant what they said). The forest finns thought the native americans and the colonies how to build loghouses. In other words without these forest finns, there probably would have been more lost colonies like the Roanoke Colony. http://www.askovuorinen.fi/page30.php
Just a part of my musing of having the right strategy in the right situation. With a wrong strategy Roanoke follows.
And please let us know how your baby is doing, when that time arrives.
Yes, I know about new sweden as well as the forrest finns. We had some forrest finns coming to sweden as well. The swedish king invited them in the 17th century to do some slash and burn farming in non-colonized land in sweden. Rye was a good crop on those places. This kind of farming was not very common in Sweden. It was common in the finnish inland. The finnish coastland is more similar to sweden.
Typically these places are the still the least inhabitable places in sweden. Plenty of boglands, mosquitos and gnats. I’ve been to some of these places sleeping in tents. Sometimes there is gnats everywhere, you get crazy if you are not entirely covered.
The funny thing is that Sweden is turned into a forrest. We used to have lots of pasture and meadows. But today most of them are turned into forrest. In other words, there is plenty of places for doing slash an burn-farming if things should follow the total collapse track. I guess that Finland has experienced a similar transformation. The forrest industry was regarded as more important than food farming.
If you want to read more about the forrest finns in sweden (if you read swedish):
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skogsfinnar
http://finnskogarna.com/svedjebruket/
The slash and burn method was banned later. I think that tar production was more profitable and it definitely generated more tax income since much of it was exported to the deforrested parts of europe.
Not good! The lengths countries will go to, to try to solve problems.
I’ve not heard about that series. I’m not so interested in TV-series, prefer nature documentary. Anyway, it has a really strange plot. For that matter I don’t think it matters so much who’s our master, the USA or Russia. Our position as a subservient will remain the same. Our politicians are just actors, being told what to say and do from Washington. If they say “go and bomb Libya”, they just jump up from their beds in the middle of the night to make sure the orders are fulfilled. Because we are so good in taking orders without questioning, we were recently rewarded by putting Jens Stoltenberg as the chairman of NATO.
But I should hate to have to learn Russian!
The only sovereign nations are those with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver the weapons globally. All other state are vassal sates of a nuclear patron.
I just made a call on my blog to protect our low electricity prices, our last advantage and a possibility to keep our welfare state: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2015/12/norway-must-cut-export-grids-for.html
“Oil price is currently $36.10. This mean Norway earns NOTHING on its oil production. The only hope we have left to keep our famous welfare state is to protect our low electricity prices from renewables, of which 97% is from hydro. For the moment the price for industry is about two cents per KWh, or about the half of what Tverberg recommends.
The combination of low renewable electricity prices, a weakening N.Kr. + a lot of engineers losing their jobs in oil- and oil related industries, makes Norway very attractive for international industry. Recently a factory making parts for Volvo moved its production from China to Norway.
In this situation Norway is about to construct several power transmission lines for electricity to England and the European continent. This is absurd, like suicide. This will raise electricity prices in Norway to continental levels, and we’ll lose our last advantage. This means the end of the Norwegian welfare state!
This destruction of our welfare state, our children’s schools and their future, cannot be tolerated. All construction of power transmission grids for abroad must be stopped, and all existing export grids must be cut off!
I highly recommend to read the whole post of Gail Tverberg, a Norwegian-American from Voss, to get the whole picture!
– We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it”
Thanks!
The Sovereign Wealth fund consists of things like stocks and bonds. Both of these can and will drop in value greatly. They could even hit value of zero. At some point, Norway will have to continue to operate on its own resources. It was a very poor country, prior to the discovery of oil. It can perhaps keep hydroelectric operating for a while, but workers expect to be paid, so there need to be banks. Also, spare parts will be needed. It will need sources of food. Fish has been traditional; also potatoes and rye crackers. Perhaps some sheep. There are old ways of growing these things–it will not be easy to transition to old ways though.
Transition from Norway to America continent
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQTrSjHUaG4
At 2 cents per KWHr Norway should think about making synthetic methanol for transportation use.
Sorry, it was a factory making parts for Volvo: http://www.dn.no/nyheter/naringsliv/2015/12/18/2148/Industri/fra-kina-til-norge
Industry goes where industrial energy prices are cheapest. I know that Norway has been charging residential users high prices–perhaps because people have such high salaries in Norway. But if they can charge industrial users less than two cents per kWh, then that becomes the “price to beat.” No industry is going to move to a country with 20 cent per hour electricity, if electricity is available for less than 2 cents an hour elsewhere.
“In order to get oil prices up higher, the wages of factory workers, restaurant workers, and other non-elite workers need to rise, so that they can afford to buy nice cars and nice homes. Commodities of many types are used both in making homes and cars, and in operating them.”
And get more sick suburban mansions: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2015/11/sick-suburban-homes-are-increasing.html
Blæh! I prefer a collapse then, using all these sick suburbs for firewood. It will warm my heart to see all these sickening “homes” going up in smoke!
You’ll enjoy this:
Parked in the garage of Beyond, Eric Levine’s oceanfront home just north of Phuket, is a racing-red Ferrari and a Jet Ski. There are two golf holes on the front lawn, a two-lane bowling alley below the tennis court and table games ranging from Foosball to air hockey.
“It’s basically a party house,” Mr. Levine said of his 6,000-square-meter (64,580 square feet) concrete and glass home. “I like to say it’s James Bond meets Asia. It has a very modern, Miami Vice-type feeling.”
As a kind of skirting, the higher parts of the walls are decorated with posters and news stories that show Mr. Levine in various bodybuilding poses, with slogans like “I Will Eat You!” and “Wild Man.”
“I put them up to remind met that I can’t look worse than that,” Mr. Levine said. “They’re just words you would say when you’re working out hard, just inspirational things, Muscle Beach-type words.”
PUNCHLINE: (drum roll please) The couple loves to travel. Mr. Levine recently accompanied Buddhist monks on a meditation quest in Mongolia.
http://www.dmc.tv/images/Change_the_world/kind_adults/C531201p1.jpg
And a more recent punchline:
Phuket News: Call for Interpol to track down California Wow boss
PHANG NGA: Canadian fitness club chain CEO Eric Levine made headlines three years ago when he sold his vast Villa Beyond at Natai Beach, Phang Nga, for a reported US$24 million (B720 million).
Now Levine is set to be the target of an international search, with the Anti-Money Laundering Office (Amlo) urging police this week to track Levine down, wherever he may be, and to call on Interpol for help.
http://www.thephuketnews.com/phuket-news-call-for-interpol-to-track-down-california-wow-boss-40297.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/greathomesanddestinations/16gh-thailand.html
“Blæh! I prefer a collapse then, using all these sick suburbs for firewood. It will warm my heart to see all these sickening “homes” going up in smoke!”
I bet it is a lot easier to have 10 people living together defending a 3000 square foot home post-BAU, then to have 2 people in a 300-square foot home. I bet storing enough food for winter would be a challenge in a 300 square foot home.
A 3 bedroom, 2 bath house is a pretty standard in the US, but there are many mansions with 10-20 bedrooms and 8-10 baths. I had this nightmare a few weeks back in which a white van pulled up out front and six people got out – then suddenly they were in the house. I called the authorities and they told me it was a new law that homes with 2 or less had to take in 6 people. I wonder if that was a look into the future.
Stilgar
Well, I had a similar dream: they were all family – Nightmare indeed….
This sort of thing happened in the early stages of the Russian Revolution: people did their best to get their houses filled up with nice people they already knew so as to avoid unwelcome residents – mentioned in ‘Doctor Zhivago’, which is rather a good guide to such times.
I think we can also envisage more (in effect) expropriatory property taxes as governments try to get their hands on revenue to keep the system going, with all kinds of spurious moral justifications.
I have noticed the term ‘space-hoarder’ has been coming into circulation in some quarters, as talk of ‘housing crisis’ spreads, at least in the UK.
” I have noticed the term ‘space-hoarder’ ”
Never heard it before. I first heard of “self-storage” back in 2003. “Why would you want to put yourself in storage?” I wondered. Turns out if was for all those people who had accumulated so much stuff that they didn’t have room for it in the house. That same year, two of my neighbours told me they were remortgaging their house. Why? Apparently it was rising rapidly in value, and “it would be a waste to leave all that money locked in”, so they were using some to go on foreign trips. Personally, I had gone all out to pay off my mortgage in 6 years.
Then in 2004 the BBC showed a documentary about poverty. Bangladesh was featured, but the documentary said that at the then current rates of growth, it would be as rich as Britain (i.e as rich as Britain then was in 2004) by 2090 – so all one had to do was wait. For the first time, something clicked in my brain regarding this subject. I thought of my mad materialistic neighbours, self-storage and all the rest, and googled “future world resources”. Up came “Life After The Oil Crash”. A Copernican revolution occurred inside my head. When I tried to talk about it to friends, a shocked look came over their faces, a look that said, “I had thought Jeremy was a normal guy, but he has just now suddenly gone insane!”
At least there are people to talk to about it now who get it. And Gail continues to advance my understanding of it.
Space… the final frontier…
As the end approaches I suggest NASA build 100 two-person rockets.
Stock them with 20 years worth of food.
Select 100 young men and 100 young women from the various races.
Just prior to the collapse of BAU — launch them into space.
Call the project Noah’s Arc 2.0
But where would they go FE? As far as we know there is only one planet in the whole universe that can support humans and we’re fuc#ing it up, for granite bench tops and trips to Fiji!
Oh … it’s a flight to nowhere of course…. we’d most definitely not want them to land on another earth…. they’d just ruin it…. just throwing a little hopium out to the koombaya krowd who are putting forth endless nonsensical ideas….
LOL!
I live near a university campus. Homes now are used to house students. The neighborhood association would like to keep the number of students down, and in fact, there are not supposed to be more than 2 non-related family groups in a house. (Perhaps a house rented to one family group downstairs and one family group upstairs.) But students would like to live 8 to a 4-bedroom home. This makes for a lot of parked cars on the streets.
Some of the long-time residents feel like the homes are too big for them, but there are not cheaper alternatives available that are smaller. With children (and their families) moving back in again, when they cannot find jobs paying enough, often the bigger houses really do need to house an extra generation.
I just looked at a documentary telling that in antique Antioch there lived 172 people per Km2, while in today’s New York there are only some and fourty people per Km2. With mixed cities and New Urbanism we can live much densier still much better lives without cars! James Howard Kunstler wrote a brilliant essay about this back in 2011, called “Back to the Future”: https://orionmagazine.org/article/back-to-the-future/
Kunstler has named the suburbs the worst waste of resourses in the history of humankind. I think we have to realise the suburban “home” is not a home, but an economic growth house. General Motors put a lot of resources into destroying the American public transport, described in the documentary “How General Motors Destroyed a Nation”. Less known is General Motors role in promoting the new suburbs with isolated houses as Heaven on Earth, with the purpose of making people depended on the car industry:
“But how did the modern system of development and consumption — our “technological-consumerist” system — come about? Was it not an inevitable part of the evolution of science and technology, and an inevitable response to the desires of consumers — in short, our destiny?
No it was not. In fact this system was invented — planned by industrialists and political leaders in the early years of the 20th Century, primarily in the USA. The story was documented well in the 2002 film by BBC documentarian Adam Curtis, “The Century of the Self”, and in particular the first episode titled Happiness Machines. Leaders of Wall Street joined with political leaders to solve a twin problem: how to keep the masses engaged in productive and wealth-generating activities, which would also quell potential political unrest.
Their answer was to create a new kind of consumer society — the one we take for granted today, and the one that is still used to sell consumer products (including modern architecture in Dwell magazine, for example). This new idea was perhaps explained best in 1924 by Banker Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers — the same company whose notorious collapse in 2008 helped trigger the global financial crisis and great recession. “We must shift America from a needs-culture to a desires-culture”, said Mazur. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. […] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
Central to this fascinating and poorly-understood story was Edward Bernays, a remarkably important and yet almost unknown figure in modern history. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and his brilliant idea was to use Freud’s own ideas on subconscious desires to create powerful new strategies for advertising, public relations, and propaganda. Among Bernays’ “accomplishments” was getting millions of women to smoke for the first time and essentially inventing the modern political campaign, with all its emotional manipulations. (Freud, to his credit, strongly protested this manipulative, exploitative, and fundamentally antidemocratic use of his ideas.)
Even less well known, Bernays played a key role in selling modernist urban and suburban planning to the public. As Curtis’ film demonstrates, Bernays helped to orchestrate the seminal “Futurama” exhibit by General Motors at the 1939 World’s Fair. It was this event, perhaps more than any other, that sold a radiant vision of the suburbia to come to a desperate public, traumatized by the Depression and coming war, and seeking a positive vision of the future. To this vulnerable audience, the marketers offered a gleaming new age of modern buildings and suburbs and consumer gadgets of every conceivable type. It was all so wonderful! We had certainly been “trained to desire, to want new things …” And we got them.
And it was architects, working with industrialists like the leaders of General Motors, who led the charge. Here is the pioneering modernist architect Le Corbusier’s prescription for drive-through utopia, described in his pamphlet Radiant City (1935, translated into English in 1967):
The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work … enough for all.
Radiant urban sprawl
It is at this point in the story that some architects will protest: surely it is unfair to blame modernist architects for the ills of the built environment! After all, the American-style suburbs are full of pseudo-traditionalist schlock… we modernist architects are actually making the world more sustainable, through our new “green building” technologies; you can’t blame us!
We will have more to say about the merits of “green Modernism” below. But this pseudo-traditionalist schlock, so detested by many architects, is a mere thin veneer of marketing applied over the same stripped down blueprint for sprawl — the one created by modernist architects like Le Corbusier, based upon the fundamentalist concept of “the city as a machine”. Its segregated parts would combine mechanically, and would be connected by machines — specifically, automobiles, and the machine-like buildings that they moved between. If a little applied schlock made the package easier for consumers to swallow, that could be easily arranged.
Today’s modernist designers would love to disown the aesthetics of American-style suburbia, but the fact is that the industrial manufacturers of these mass-produced suburban environments loved the modernists’ machine-minimalism. Not content merely to strip down the parts of the old cities into functional bits of machinery, they also stripped down the detailing of the buildings themselves. They made flat, clunky windows, deleted ornamental trim, eliminated connective outdoor spaces — and gleefully turned buildings into just so many manufactured boxes, packaged in decorative marketing gimmickry.
Of course, human beings were also treated as segregated bits of machinery. Would-be suburbanites were lured by the knowledge that they could drive far away from others who weren’t like them, and live in large houses on large lots away from other people. They could always drive to the big-box stores for their growing consumer needs. Everyone would then produce a great deal of economic activity, make a great deal of money, and all would be well — until the unintended consequences took their devastating toll.
So the rapacious industrialization of the environment came packaged in a marketing campaign aimed squarely at consumers’ deepest Freudian desires and fears. Perhaps the most seductive marketing concept of all, on display to such powerful effect at the General Motors diorama at the 1939 World’s Fair, was the allure of an exciting new technological future. This intoxicating “futurism” was a concept pioneered by Le Corbusier and other early modernist architects. Industrial behemoths like General Motors readily understood the seductive appeal of this exciting technological novelty — New! Improved!
But a related concept, no less attractive to General Motors, was that anything older — like old streetcar lines, or the streets and street-friendly buildings on which they ran — were intolerably old-fashioned. The streetcar lines must be bought up and demolished; the inner-city neighborhoods, with their tight walkable streets, must be abandoned.
Some twenty years later, General Motors captured this romantic spirit of industrialization perfectly in a rapturously futuristic television and film advertisement. An attractive couple glides through a dazzling modernist utopia in their rocket-like car, as the music plays:
Tomorrow, tomorrow, our dreams will come true!
Together, together, we’ll make the world new!
Strange shapes will rise out of the night,
but our love will not change, dear —
It will be like a star burning bright,
lighting our way, when tomorrow meets today!
In the advertisement, the “strange shapes” that “rise out of the night” are buildings, and they are clearly avant-garde works of alluring fine art. This was yet another example of a potent marketing combination. If fine artists were now in unquestioned service to promoting industrial products, well, that was surely progress in modernity. Such work could thus also be placed within the honored tradition of great architects of the past — however much it actually rejected most of that design legacy. With this combination of product marketing and avant-garde art in service to industry, modernist design took a commanding hold over consumer consciousness — and over the power-brokers of civilization.
Thus was born a powerful alliance that continues to this day — and continues to obstruct, except in mechanical and tokenistic ways, the needed revival of walkable street-based urbanism. Le Corbusier said we must embrace an exciting future, and to do so we must “kill the street” — and he was remarkably effective in doing so. General Motors, too, said we must embrace an exciting future, and to do so we must kill the streetcar, and the “old-fashioned” world in which it existed. GM too was remarkably effective, fueling the massive destruction of inner-city neighborhoods, and the streetcar systems that served them.
It must be said that this regime did in fact work extraordinarily well, in the limited sense of an economic development strategy centered on industrialization and the merciless denuding of the built environment according to geometrical fundamentalist ideas. But the model, economically a riotous success, now leaves us with a looming global crisis of extraordinary proportions. Le Corbusier could perhaps be forgiven for not knowing about climate change, resource depletion, or the complex dynamics of good cities. Today, however, we have no such excuse.”
– A VISION FOR ARCHITECTURE AS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/11/22/vision-architecture-sum-parts/
It’s also interesting to see how the suburban home started growing drastically in 1973, the same time as debt started growing rapidly: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rbtbaBK-ERU/VkeEjKllpII/AAAAAAAAopI/4ioyr3WKQNk/s1600/FT_15.11.04_residentialEnergyIntensity_homeSize.png
See more articles here: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2015/11/sick-suburban-homes-are-increasing.html
I think the suburbs with increasingly larger McMansions to fill up with all kinds of stuff played a large role in growing debt levels. The houses grew big together with the people! All a vaste of resourses as Kunstler says, but VERY IMPORTANT AND EFFECTIVE IN CREATING DEBT!
Another purpose of the suburbs was to isolate people from one another, to avoid revolts!
“DR: From the 1920s to the 1970s an iconography was developed that turned corporations into our heroes. Instead of me buying stuff from people I know, I actually trust the Quaker Oat Man more than you. This is the result of public relations campaigns, and the development of public relations as a profession.
PN: Did the rise of PR just happen, or did they have to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control?
DR: They had to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control. The significant points in the development of public relations were all at crisis moments. For example, labor movements; it’s not just that labor was revolting but that people were seeing that labor was revolting. There was a need to re-fashion the stories so that people would think that labor activists were bad scary people, so that people would think they should move to the suburbs and insulate themselves from these throngs of laborers, from “the masses.” Or to return to the Quaker Oats example, people used to look at long-distance-shipped factory products with distrust. Here’s a plain brown box, it’s being shipped from far away, why am I supposed to buy this instead of something from a person I’ve known all my life? A mass media is necessary to make you distrust your neighbor and transfer your trust to an abstract entity, the corporation, and believe it will usher in a better tomorrow and all that.
It got the most crafty after WWII when all the soldiers were coming home. FDR was in cahoots with the PR people. Traumatized vets were coming back from WWII, and everyone knew these guys were freaked out and fucked up. We had enough psychology and psychiatry by then to know that these guys were badly off, they knew how to use weapons, and — this was bad! If the vets came back into the same labor movement that they left before WWII, it would have been all over. So the idea was that we should provide houses for these guys, make them feel good, and we get the creation of Levittown and other carefully planned developments designed with psychologists and social scientists. Let’s put these vets in a house, let’s celebrate the nuclear family.
PN: So home becomes a thing, rather than a series of relationships?
DR: The definition of home as people use the word now means “my house,” rather than what it had been previously, which was “where I’m from.’” My home’s New York, what’s your home?
PN: Right, my town.
DR: Where are you from? Not that “structure.” But they had to redefine home, and they used a lot of government money to do it. They created houses in neighborhoods specifically designed to isolate people from one another, and prevent men in particular from congregating and organizing — there are no social halls, no beer halls in these developments. They wanted men to be busy with their front lawns, with three fruit trees in every garden, with home fix-it-up projects; for the women, the kitchen will be in the back where they can see the kids playing in the back yard.
PN: So you don’t see the neighbors going by. No front porch.
DR: Everything’s got to be individual, this was all planned! Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary. With that amount to pay back, he’s got a stake in the system. True, he’s on the short end of the stick of the interest economy, but in 30 years he could own his own home.”
– DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: http://hilobrow.com/2011/11/04/douglas-rushkoff/
So Suburban Hell was invented for 3 three reasons:
1) Boost economic growth to make people dependent upon the automobil, and building ever larger houses to fill up with stuff in competeng with “the Jonses”.
2) Destroying healthy urban structure in order to isolate people from one another, to avoid revolt and for better controlling the masses.
3) Destroying the commons because people have everything they need behind their grand doors, NO sharing. Sharers are not good consumers!
Home is a network of connections, not a suburban McMansion!
‘No it was not. In fact this system was invented — planned by industrialists and political leaders in the early years of the 20th Century, primarily in the USA. The story was documented well in the 2002 film by BBC documentarian Adam Curtis, “The Century of the Self”, and in particular the first episode titled Happiness Machines.’
At one point I was appalled by planned obsolescence… those dirty rat bastard corporations — how DARE they!!!!
But then I saw an old documentary — might have been Century of Self in fact — I cannot remember….
In one scene a man is raging about planned obsolescence of a certain product – might have been the light bulb …. the evil corporate managers confront him and say ok – no imagine if light bulbs lasted decades … imagine everything you bought lasted decades … what would happen to the factories that manufacture these things… what would happen to the workers in those factories…
The raging man quickly came to his senses….
I think it works like this – once we got on the treadmill there was not stepping off… we either grow by any means possible or we collapse into a very primitive state…. as in you would not even be able to buy a tooth brush… there would be a massive die-off…. those that survive would suffer tremendously… if any survived at all.
Nobody wants that for themselves of course — push it down the road out of site…. we want to LIVE! We want to be comfortable. We get pissed when the pizza man is 10 minutes late — we most certainly are not going to accept real suffering and starvation and disease.
Humans are like a collection of cells …. we are driven … the men who ‘planned’ the 20th century were simply acting as expected. They may or may not have understood the macro of what they were doing — but at the end of the day they – just like all organisms are programmed to do — grow their populations — adapt to their environments to survive.
The act of doing business is the stage where survival of the fittest plays out for humans these days…
There is no room for compassion in the business world.
From experience and from what I have observed — if you want to have success you must be driven — you must want to trample all those who would in a heart beat trample you and usurp your position. I am not saying you need to be corrupt — or skirt the law — unless you live in a lawless country — you simple have to compete — just as an animal competes in the jungle.
The men who planned the 20th century were razor focused… just like the men who decided to establish colonies to pillage the weak….
It had to be done … if there were other options then no doubt others tried them — and they were trampled…
What we have seen – what we are seeing — are the results of competition — we are seeing the ‘winners’
We may not like what we see — we may not like the ultimate outcome….
But I do not believe there is a right or wrong — this was baked into the cake from the moment we worked out how to use fire — or perhaps even before that — when we worked out how to create and use tools….
What an excellent piece, Signor! I “discovered” Bernays only a year or so ago, but I wasn’t aware of GM’s pernicious influence beyond the LA ‘s destruction of their trolley bus network in 1949. We certainly “owe” a lot to these greedy and malicious so called businessmen. Now we all will pay!
Eddie Bernays…. a hero for the ages. Without him I doubt I’d have even been born because BAU would have collapsed long ago
Fast Eddy is right, Eddie Bernays created super-individualism and the brainless consumer. Without him we would not allowed the corporations to fill every inch of our lives. The father of modern PR. Please everybody, see the film “The Century of the Self”: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
Ironically, our proud individualism is nothing but as consumer machines. Our whole identity is created by the corporations. When they fall, we no longer have any identity.
Century of Self is a must watch.
Note that Eddie cut his teeth on war … he was the one tasked with creating the PR machine that would get the American public on board when the country wanted to Kill Kill Kill!!! and pillage the resources of weak countries allowing Americans and those who kiss the ring to live large.
Better to be on the winning side and living large… than being on the losing side and living in the gutter…..
He then took these techniques and applied them to marketing.
Essentially Eddie understood that humans are sheeple …. they are very easily manipulated… even the smartest sheeple can easily be controlled…
The Elders would have placed great value on a man like Bernays – a very useful tool — nephew of Sigmund Freud….
This is sort of a substitute for religion, as an understanding of the way to live our lives.
I think the population density might were per dekar, not per km2? I don’t remember the measurement, just the numbers. And they were 172 for Antioch, something with 40ty for New York and only 8 for Rome.
If a person believes in a slow decline, then perhaps a person can make a case for cities. (I am not certain of this, however.) If we have fast decline, then a reduction in supplemental energy use does no real good. We cannot support cities regardless. We need to be in rural areas where we can grow our own food. Cities quickly become death traps. While early cities were purpose built to function with the systems in place then, our cities are not meant to function without electricity, fresh water, sewage disposal systems, and systems for getting food to the cities.
The trouble is that the “nice” cars need computers that need wars in Congo and millions of deaths to make. And “nice homes” mean cutting down half the Amazon rainforest for lumber. The latter require more energy to heat or cool. They become the model of status-by-extravagance, and millions throughout the world will kill and steal to acquire those symbols of non-resilience status and low-grade aesthetics…false aesthetics ). Not the best way to get people adapting to a lifestyle that would have a better (if not good) chance for survival.
Very well said Artleads! I put it up on my blog with some additional comments: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2015/12/artleads-about-sick-suburban-homes.html
I especially like the sentence: “They become the model of status-by-extravagance, and millions throughout the world will kill and steal to acquire those symbols of non-resilience status and low-grade aesthetics…false aesthetics ).”
Couldn’t be better explained!
Thanks, Oyvind. It’s going to take a lot of work to reach some sort of collective understanding that everyone can get behind. Is it even possible, I wonder?
It is impossible. Even on a uber-doomer board like this, the rainbows and unicorns crowd cannot stop babbling about 4 billion EV’s by 2050, power satellites the size of Manhattan going up into space at a rate of 1 per day and covering over what’s left of the planet with windmills, solar panels and carbon scrubbers. Despite all evidence to the contrary. Ever…
Make your peace and quietly prepare. Remember, when the end comes you’ll probably have a window of a few days to “get out of Dodge”. Grab it and run before all hell breaks loose. Those glued to their screens waiting for “deliverance” or who wait too long will be toast.
“Make your peace and quietly prepare. Remember, when the end comes you’ll probably have a window of a few days to “get out of Dodge”. ”
If the instant collapse, wake up one morning and its all over, ever happens, there is no point in running. All the reactors and spent fuel ponds will irradiate the planet, so surviving the cities and starvation and disease just means dying of radiation poisoning or cancer instead.
While I am fairly confident this present system will fall apart soon, I don’t think it will be the end of days. I think the future lies somewhere between the rainbows and the doom.
“power satellites the size of Manhattan going up into space at a rate of 1 per day”
That’s about right. Replacing 15 TW over 7-8 years takes two TW/year installation or about 400 per year at 5 GW each. It would take around a million Skylon flights per year, but that’s only ten days of commercial aircraft flights. It would take 4-5 runways within a couple of hundred km of the equator. It’s hard to imagine this being done with rockets, but maybe it can.
“and covering over what’s left of the planet with windmills, solar panels”
There is a lot of farmland with transparent rectennas over them, but if you build power satellites, there is no need for ground solar or wind farms.
“and carbon scrubbers”
Those you do get, for synthetic oil plants even if you don’t store any CO2
Skylon has been in development for over 30 years. From Wikipedia
“Skylon is based on a previous project of Alan Bond, known as HOTOL.[10] The development of HOTOL began in 1982, at a time when space technology was moving towards reusable launch systems such as the Space Shuttle. In conjunction with British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce, a promising design emerged to which the British government contributed £2 million. However, in 1988, the government withdrew further funding, and development was terminated. Following this setback, Bond decided to set up his own company, Reaction Engines Limited, with the hope of continuing development with private funding.
The Skylon was developed from the British HOTOL project.
After securing more funding in the 1990s, the initial design underwent radical revision and, since 2000, Reaction Engines has been working with the University of Bristol to develop an engine design vital to the success of Skylon.”
Do you know about Village Towns: http://villagetowns.com/
I like to take my family to Gamla stan in Stockholm, because it’s like a Village Town in the city. And just a short ferry trip from Gamla stan you come to the worlds largest nature sanctuary within a city, where there are lots of outdoor parks and museums and tivolis as well. And you can fish both fresh and salt water fish from Gamla stan, and almost no traffic.
Personally one of my dreams are to live in a Village Town, but for now the only possibility is to go for vacations to Gamla stan. We looked for an apartment there, but as the prices start at about 10 million S.Kr. I found it too expensive with today’s low value of N.Kr. Actually I even found it very expencive going there for holidays this year.
Anyway, today I put up a new photo collection from our last trip to Gamla stan. The theme is children going to the school: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2015/12/skoleveg-pa-brostein.html
I hope to build a Village Town in Hurdal about one hour from Oslo, with the qualities of Gamla stan, so I don’t have to go there every year. Anyway, the train travel from Oslo to Stockholm is reduced from 9 to 5,5 hours with the new train!
If you want some more inspiration I think Visby is one of the best. :
https://www.google.se/search?q=visby&biw=1517&bih=703&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhx-r04ffJAhWF1ywKHXBQCdkQ_AUIBigB&dpr=0.9
Two farmers built a village town called Jakriborg (I think that visby was one of the models):
https://www.google.se/search?q=jakriborg&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLpuCe4vfJAhUBiiwKHb_xCSgQ_AUIBygB&biw=1517&bih=703&dpr=0.9
Village Towns:
I get the idea that there are lots of innovative developments like this. “Village Homes” in Davis, California is one. Very well thought out,but didn’t become a serious model. Got very watered down in other development, with some good spillovers. Davis has one of the best bicycle infrastructure systems.
I’m intrigued that there is so much dependency on the traditional (historic) built environment here. Anything that doesn’t use (or minimizes use of) non renewable materials and virgin lumber gets my attention.
On FW, one is learning how the larger economy works. Heavy lifting. Maybe we need a checklist by which to evaluate projects. I’m not hopeful about anything, and get depressed when I see too much hope, but it’s a great exercise trying to be as rational and comprehensive as possible. What if FW acted like a university aimed at global analysis and evaluation?
Why not go to Peak Prosperity .com …. that’;s what the site is dedicated to…
This is the only site that ‘gets it’ — i.e. it is the only site that does not offer even the slightest whiff of hopium … all other sites that address these issues open the door to hope …. because they know that by doing that they can build their audience…. because the sheeple don’t want to go away feeling despair.
Recall that at the end of The Road…. there was a glimmer of hope …. the boy lived on…. if not for that then the movie would be no doubt bombed…
The thing is — there is no hope — there are 7.5B people — and there will be virtually no food — and there will be 4000 exploding fuel ponds…
What is coming is hell on earth — no matter how one prepares…. this is going to be far worse than your worst nightmare….
Visby and Jakriborg:
Bewildering. Who’s the blonde in the near pornographic poses? No, I’m not getting it. I can only understand sackcloth and ashed, hunkering down, and striving to stave off calamity. 🙂
From looking at the images of that town — it is completely plugged into BAU — so what is the point?
They should call it Koombaya town…. there are plenty of those around…
Fast Eddy,
Don’t worry. After the collapse I come down to your organic farm with my sail boat. You will serve lamb souvlaki, I will bring cold beer. Then we will sit around the fire and till the children horror stories about business as usual.
Any lifestyle of humans seems to adversely affect the rest of the planet. We were wiping out major species as hunter-gatherers and burning down forests so as to affect the climate, very early on. The idea that we need technology to do this is not really true.
If we were to cut out fossil fuels, the likely first thing we would do is cut down practically all of the forests. This would not be a good trade off.
“We were wiping out major species as hunter-gatherers ”
And I gather that we’re doing that at several thousand times the rate now. 200 species every day.
“…and burning down forests so as to affect the climate, very early on. ”
News to me. Even when I was a boy, the global forestry was more or less intact. My understanding is that it took the hyper development-through-fossil fuels after WWII to get them to where they are just about ready to add rather than sequester atmospheric carbon. But I never do the research myself—just reflect what I read on blogs.
“If we were to cut out fossil fuels, the likely first thing we would do is cut down practically all of the forests. ”
This point, that you have made before, is enlightening, 7.5 billion without information or leadership might indeed be expected to burn any and everything to keep warm.
I don’t think people will not do whatever it takes to survive even one more day. We are going to eat ourselves out of house and home. Our own crash will be accompanied by a crash in all edible foods, even inedible ones that we don’t fancy today like insects, worms, you name it.
It’s all happened before. It shouldn’t be news now.
Snails were first eaten in famines. Mussels too. Now they are both considered a delicacy.
Before you go eating whatever moves, please consider: a approx. 30 rabbit farm gives 1 or 2 rabbits a week for slaughter.
Rabbits are the most energy efficient animal turning food (food constitutes of 70% hay) in to bodyweight.
Rabbit meat is healthier then pork or beef.
Regardless, you can’t feed more than a fraction of the population with rabbits. Also, recall that rabbit starvation epidemic in Canada?
“Regardless, you can’t feed more than a fraction of the population with rabbits.”
You should look at the guide to providing half your calories in your own backyard.
“Also, recall that rabbit starvation epidemic in Canada?”
Just remember to eat your veggies with the rabbit, so you don’t become malnourished.
Do rats breed faster than rabbits?
Btw – there are more humans than rats on the planet …. so…..
Rabbit starvation is caused by consuming only protein, you “only” need to add fat or carbs and you should be able to live on mostly rabbit. Why not rabbits, eggs and whatever you could find?
Yes, we know why it happened. But it occurred because there were no eggs or other fats to eat. And so it will occur again. There will be a shortage of eggs or fats again.
North Koreans apparently eat grass when faced with starvation.
Rabbit and grass stew…. I can’t wait!
I think it surprised people back then that you could starve on an all you can eat rabbit buffét. How many was afflicted by this? A few hundred? Compared to millions in regular starvation.
I think a rabbit farm was a good suggestion, not as obvious as a chicken farm. None of them is a solution to every problem.
If you grow potatoes, carrots and onions with the rabbit farm, all cheap and easy to grow, combined, they make an excellent stew. Those ingredients include all the nutrients the human body needs, easily digested by our gut after boiling.
Rabbits are also good, because if they are left to reproduce without check the 30 rabbit farm can become a 600 rabbit farm in 6 months. Then trading for some eggs and poultry , including chicken coops and some chicken food, should be easy.
Rabbits can be dried, potatoes, carrots and onions last a long time in a root cellar. So, year round stocks become possible.
So the best case scenario is endless rabbit stew… grinding deprivation…. no electricity… violence… disease… no medicines…
Yes I know — it all sounds romantic…. the end of consumerism … the return to subsistence farming….
Here’s hoping those fuel ponds put a rapid end to us. Because if isn’t — and that’s as good as it gets I’ll be running the truck into the rock cut rather quickly…..
You miss the point. We have adequate variety of foods today. In the future that may not be the case and Rabbit starvation may rear it’s head again. Farmed rabbits, which is what we eat today are fattier than the wild ones that led to starvation. In any case the rabbit starvation episode just points out how important it is to have a varied diet.
Eddy, for the millions of unskilled, unhealthy, unfit and unmotivated the unlimited rabbitstew in the root cellar will one day sound like heaven. Now what to do if you´re skilled, healthy, fit and motivated? There could be a few things to do while waiting for the virulent strains and the radiation from the seas.
Does your young interns play any instruments?
I’d rather be dead. Seriously
When you are freezing and starving I do not think it matters what information or leadership there is — you burn anything you can get your hands on ….
But alas not to worry — there will be nothing to put in the pot — and when there is nothing in the pot there is not point in trying to keep warm….
So I doubt deforestation will be an issue
Fossil fuels have allowed reforestation. When we were dependent on wood for charcoal for making metals and for heat, we tended to cut down forests, especially near cities. Cutting down forests also made more land available for agriculture.
But before we cut down forests, we used slash and burn agriculture, to get rid of forests. And early people seem to have burned down forests to drive out animals for food. As I recall, Australia has been mentioned as a place where early cutting down of forests led to climate change.
There is just one small problem. Humanity does not have a Peak Oil problem that can be “fix”ed. Humanity is facing a multitude of intractable, fatal dilemmas for which there are no solutions. A human dieoff, if not extinction, is imminent.
This presentation from Gail Lederberg of all people is mind boggling, perhaps, a strong indicator that the world population is indeed going mad.
There does appear to be some sort of mad frenzy occurring — Trump looks to be a symptom of that — also the regular occurrence of shootings in America …
It’s as if we are building to a grand crescendo of insanity — it’s as if the masses understand something is very wrong – Mr Cognitive Dissonance is like the Sheeple Whisperer trying to calm them with soothing words …. but it’s not working….
This comment from Mike Porter, of all people, misses the fact that Gail deliberately did not say that cheap energy, the only credible solution, was available to fix the problem (or part of it), since she knows it is not.
I am pointing out the intractability of this problem.
One of the concerns of this particular audience is the cost to get one kilogram of material into geocentric orbit. To date, the cost seems to be about $40,000. The required cost seems to be about $100. This points out how difficult the problem really is.
People need to understand specifically what hurdles need to be overcome, before they can fully understand the difficulty of our problem. These are reasonable people, trying to figure out if there is a way to use solar PV material very sparingly for 24 hours a day (or perhaps some other approach), to solve our energy problem. If I can lay out how high the hurdle really is, it is more effective than simply saying, “It can’t be done.” There are obviously other issues as well.
‘To date, the cost seems to be about $40,000. The required cost seems to be about $100.”
What we need is an anti-gravity machine….
Along that line of thought. The US uses about 3TW of power continuously. To do that with solar which only shines direct and bright about 6 hours per day we need 4x 3TW or 12 TW of panels. We also need at least 9TW x 6hours or 54TWHr or storage! and 12TW transmissions lines across the country over 3000 miles. You say local production? It has been cloudy here in New York state for the last 60 days.
Using $3/watt installed with stand, using 0.5 billion dollars per 100 miles of 1GW transmission line, using Elon’s power wall at 10KWHr/$3500.
36 trillion for panels
19 trillion for storage
90 trillion for transmission lines
145 trillion dollars over the next 30(?) years.
Not fast enough.
The idea with the panels in space is that they would provide electricity 24/7 and almost 365 days a year. During the time that they are over-producing what is needed for use on earth, the electrical output would be used to make liquid fuels. There would be numerous satellites, and numerous rectennas on earth for receiving the electricity. I am not sure what the transmission line needs would be–clearly, even with our current system, there is a need for constant repairs, and much of our existing system is reaching the end of its planned lifetime.
I understand the Spanish Disaster in the Desert where the government subsidized Koombaya to the tune of many billions of Euros went belly up partly because of unforeseen operational costs including cleaning grit and dirt from the panels…
Then we have this:
High-Tech Solar Projects Fail to Deliver
$2.2 billion California project generates 40% of expected electricity
http://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-solar-projects-fail-to-deliver-1434138485
And people actually believe that it could be feasible to make something like this work in outer space…
That’s a really good hopium pipe they are smoking — how do I get a puff?
“And people actually believe that it could be feasible to make something like this work in outer space…”
Lots of things are easier to do in space. No clouds. No rain. No dust. No birds. No gravity, no wind. The last two cut the mass needed by about 100 to one.
It might be worth keeping in mind that space business is over $300 B a year.
Once again – if it made sense – we’d have tried it.
Anyone heard about the new technology that can add over a foot to someone’s height? Ya I heard they were working on it…. I am planning to play in the NBA when they get this right. Always wanted to be the centre for the Lakers.
“… the cost to get one kilogram of material into geocentric orbit. To date, the cost seems to be about $40,000. The required cost seems to be about $100.”
This analogous to the statement someone made about splitting water into H2 and O2. Splitting water into those gasses takes a lot of power, and it always will. Putting stuff into orbit takes a lot of power, and it always will. Technology can make things incrementally easier, but to ignore the laws of physics one must employ magic.
I think people watch Star Trek, or Wars, and suspend their disbelief in the theater, but they don’t seem to have a switch in their heads that turns (or can turn) their common sense back on. I am occasionally so cynical that I think they have no common sense.
“Splitting water into those gasses takes a lot of power, and it always will. Putting stuff into orbit takes a lot of power, and it always will. Technology can make things incrementally easier, but to ignore the laws of physics one must employ magic.”
Oh, are you a rocket scientist? It seems NASA is pretty confident it can get it down to tens of dollars per pound within 40 years:
“As NASA’s core technology program for all space transportation, the Advanced Space Transportation Program at the Marshall Center is pushing technologies that will dramatically increase the safety and reliability and reduce the cost of space transportation. Today, it costs $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit. NASA’s goal is to reduce the cost of getting to space to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years.”
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/astp.html_prt.htm
This part is especially good:
Breakthrough Physics
The Advanced Space Transportation Program and NASA’s Office of Space Science are sponsoring basic research on the leading edge of modern science and engineering, such as gravity manipulation, space and time warping and theories that might enable faster-than-light travel. NASA is examining futuristic technologies in search of a breakthrough in space transportation, similar to the silicon chip breakthrough that revolutionized the computer industry and made desktop computers part of everyday life.
Just team Elon Musk up with FedEx…. that would be the Dream Partnership that could make this happen.
And those scientists who are still locked in the room tasked with making a sandwich…. someone find Oscar Meyer’s grandson and one of the Weston heirs and someone from the French’s empire… and allow the sandwich Dream Team into the room ….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4wDVjg5CifA/TyLdEHVztrI/AAAAAAAAAug/1CXszS_ydws/s1600/77822d1315627885-sun-september-4th-sat-september-10th-excellent.png
Unfortunately, academic research is not necessarily ruled by laws of common sense. If someone will fund research of a given type, that type of research will take place. And often research is so narrowly focused that common sense about that tiny piece doesn’t come into play.
And remember, economists have not been concerned that the cost of a replacement fuel needs to be low. Without this requirement, any kind of research seems to make sense. (The belief has been that oil prices, and for that matter prices of other fuels will rise endlessly. High-priced substitutes may work perfectly well, if a person believes that high-priced fuels work fine.)
‘Unfortunately, academic research is not necessarily ruled by laws of common sense.’
What an absurd world we live in…
The externalities of economic growth hits Chinese city!
– Shenzhen Embodying China’s Growth Falls Risk to It: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/world/asia/china-landslide-shenzhen.html?_r=0
I think this incident very well illustrates what’s going to hit all of us.
Looks like a nice secluded cabin there at you link. Is there a lake nearby to fish?
A small river that had a lot of throat when I was a child. Now the fish is gone:-( Probably because of the extensive drainage of marshland up in the hills.
Thanks for sharing Oyvind. Sorry to hear about the loss of the fish, but sounds like the small river still passes by which is a nice sound. I ghost wrote a book via an alias name, ‘The Follies of Free Love’. A woman that was born in Sweden in about 1880 hand wrote a book about her life and I just fixed the grammar and sentence structure so it could be easily read in English. She immigrates to Denmark, then later takes a steamer via a couple of stops in Norway. There she sees the Fram (a wooden ship that went up into the arctic) in a Norwegian fjord. The steamer then goes to NY, then she takes a train to Chicago, then is in SF just a couple months before the 1906 Earthquake, on to the Philippines, then back to SF to live in the SF bay area and her descendants are still here and friends of mine. The Fram is now on display in Oslo. Some day I want to go on a tour of the locations in the book in Sweden, Denmark and Oslo, Norway. It’s a fascinating life story in which she is most of the time single and very sought after. The book is cheap and available as an E-book from Amazon.com – not in paperback yet.
“Some day I want to go on a tour of the locations in the book ”
You should probably get on that pretty soon.
What a fascinating story! It’s a good time to make your trip now as the dollar is so strong and especially N.Kr. is so weak. My family likes to go on vacation to Gamla stan in Stockholm, but this autumn it was so expensive to us. In 2013 all was so cheap, like going to Eastern Europe, but now it was more expensive than in my town Gjøvik: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gj%C3%B8vik
See the gallery I made on the bottom of the Wikipedia article.
Yes, the river is still there, but because of the draining of marshland it’s now either too big or too small. Almost every year there is an overflow, and when dry it almost fades away. Earlier the marshlands regulated the waterflow perfectly, making the throat triwe.
About the book I will recommend it on my blog, probably in February 2016. A branch of my family is from the Sognefjord, and my wife is from the Philippines, so it’s highly relevant for me.
As Gjøvik is an industrial town with not a very good reputation, many men here went to the far East to get spouses. There it’s enough to be a white European male to be regarded as attractive for women.
There have been landslides near the Three Gorges Dam as well.
http://journal.probeinternational.org/2011/06/01/chinese-study-reveals-three-gorges-dam-triggered-3000-earthquakes-numerous-landslides/
http://qz.com/436880/the-worlds-biggest-hydropower-project-may-be-causing-giant-landslides-in-china/
Thank you Gail for another look at the puzzle of our predicament and found this Guardian article that confirms what is written in your essay.
US coal sector in ‘structural decline’, financial analysts say
Over 200 mines shut down and industry loses 76% of its value in five years, report finds
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/24/us-coal-sector-in-terminal-decline-financial-analysts-say
The US coal sector is in a “structural decline” which has sent 26 companies bust in the last three years, according to financial analysts.
A report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative found that in the past five years the US coal industry lost 76% of its value. At least 264 mines were closed between 2011 and 2013. The world’s largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, lost 80% of its share price.
These declines were in spite of the Dow Jones industrial average increasing by 69% during the same period. Authors said this indicated a decoupling of US economic growth from coal.
….In order to avoid the increasingly hostile domestic market, Sussams said the industry had banked heavily on a future where US coal exports to China and India grew significantly. But this has been undercut by cheap supply from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. Additionally, Chinese coal consumption fell 3% last year and India has said it may stop imports of coal within three years
….this last paragraph is in the article and is amusing to us FW’ers
“The roof has fallen in on US coal, and alarm bells should be ringing for investors in related sectors around the world. These first tremors are amongst the clearest signs yet of a seismic shift in energy markets, as high carbon fuels are set to be increasingly outperformed by lower carbon alternatives,” he said
Reuters: U.S. shale output set to fall by 600,000 bpd in January from March peak: EIA http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-productivity-idUSKBN0TQ2BT20151207
also Post Carbon sees trouble ahead in January
“Post Carbon’s report cites an array of numbers and figures throughout the report, some of which are jaw-dropping.
For example, the vast majority of the drilling — read sweet spots for fracking — occurs in six counties within the Eagle Ford. And productivity of that oil in some counties, yes even in the most productive counties, is in decline.
“In July 2015, 52% of production came from Karnes, Dewitt and Lasalle counties, and 81% came from the top six counties,” the report details.
“Oil production peaked in all counties between June 2014 and May 2015. Karnes County, the top producer, has experienced the largest decline at 54.4 thousand barrels per day or a 15.5% reduction from peak. Dimmit County, with the fourth highest production, has declined the least.” http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/16/report-eagle-ford-shale-peaked-oil-exports
The coal situation is indeed dire. Most people have not heard about it.
Without high carbon fuels, it is hard to see that we can make the whole system operate.
In fact, metals are in terrible shape too. How do we keep the system operating?
They system looks to be shutting down before our very eyes… and 99.9% of all people are just going about their days oblivious to what is happening…
We really are simple beasts…. we are easily soothed —– even when the wolves can be seen mulling about the gate that was accidentally left open….if we just looked…
I guess we don’t want to look — we want to think they won’t come in — or that if they do mother will protect us — or the farmer (government)….
Biogas in San Mateo, CA:
http://www.planetizen.com/node/82815/wastewater-treatment-plant-produce-fuel-city-vehicles
I didn’t notice a mention of cost, other than that it is getting a $2.45 million grant to fund it. It doesn’t sound cheap.
Point well taken! But still I wonder if the problem with pricing isn’t also due to scale and universality of the technology. How much of the high cost is due the inability (unwillingness) to think outside the usual boxes?
“As with the solar systems from companies like SolarCity and Sunrun, customers sign long-term agreements to buy the electricity the systems produce at prices set below those from their local utility.”
By now, I’m as tired as others on FW with stuff like this. But it’s information FWIW.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/82833/leasing-spur-growth-small-and-medium-sized-wind-turbines
And this is tiresome too. I’m only interested in what can be done at the household or small-community level. I also see recycling as an abomination. Reuse is something different. The whole society has to be run on the embedded energy of waste.
http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/how-juneau-handles-its-garbage
Copper can be used without heating it up too much.
The clear plastic that has been wrapped around pallets for transportation is a very clean rawmaterial and is easy to reuse as a rawmaterial. Seems to be as valuable as gold a few years Post-BAU
Stainless steel we have to use as it is. So, most people will have professional SST kitchen furniture, pots and pans etc. in Post-BAU.
On the matter of reuse. I went in to a small grocery store and all I could see was the Post-BAU empty shelves and fridges or: watertanks/ aquaponic tanks, greenhouse glass and greenhouse gutters. Luckily we will have lots of empty grocery stores in Post-BAU
VK,
Copper wire larceny (from abandoned and even intact installations) is big around here. There is a sizable population of hard scrabble types locally who are bountifully prepared with copper wire.
Clear plastic: Not something I know about (as to cleanness or rawness), and must provisionally take your word for it. 🙂
Dear me! I don’t know anything about stainless steel either. I’m a cardboard junkie. You can build anything in the world with it–car bodies driven by small electric motors, even, I should think. All cardboard requires is a utility knife, glue and duct. tape. I can manage that technology, but nothing else. I never even use power tools, although being able to pay somebody–I can’t right now– who likes using them would be nice on occasion.
Presently, I’m trying to build “habitable sculpture” with mostly cardboard. Conceptually, easy as pie. Practically, much less so. Weatherproofing is one of several challenges. I’m thinking layering with lard. I also think glue coating dashed with sand could help (although commercial glue is expensive). That clear plastic is worth considering too…
What I hope Gail will look into are the economics of maintaining cardboard production post BAU.
Artleads, cardboard has different fiber structures depending on the manufacturer. That makes recycle and reuse a bit difficult. We need wood and huge machinery that processes the woodpulp in to carboard.
Canada, Sweden and Finland would be the places to be, if cardboard is your thing. Otherwise recycled cardboard and/or woodpulp is not readily available, as far as I can see.
I don´t see carboard having much of a future. Art, could you become interested in something more usefull 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3J5wkJFJzE
“I don´t see carboard having much of a future. Art, could you become interested in something more usefull :)”
I don’t use cardboard because I’m looking for something to do something. It’s the other way around. I LOVE the ease and widespread availability of cardboard. If one does a search, one sees amazing construction from cardboard. Much, much more technically advanced than what I do. I do simple things that a child could do. I also think that what I do can be done by anyone in industrial society. I haven’t even gotten to the point of seeing how effective my path is. But I see no reason to take a different path until I’ve worked through this one.
Artleads, you are a man of conviction. Have to respect a man like that.
If the price of metals is very low, there is absolutely no point in recycling metals. A lot of energy is involved with any kind of reprocessing–something that his hidden with subsidies. Reuse is far better than recycling.
A list of articles about recycling companies that are bankrupt
https://www.google.hu/search?q=bankruptcy+metal+recyclers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=HvZ-VubWBKPZyAPipLXgCA
I wonder how many would be bankrupt if they weren’t subsidized.
Leases are another type of debt that defaults.
As usual with these “feel good” BS articles, one must do the math by yourself.
“… 500 gallons of gasoline every day …”
Wow, that is a lot of gas! Oh, but wait …
There were 101,000 people in that town as of 2013 per a quick google search. So, a $2.45 million dollar grant bought 0.005 gallons (about 2 tablespoons) for every man woman and child in the town! And they could get those 2 tablespoons every day! In colder areas, towns burn the methane produced in their digester to heat the sewage treatment plant, and offices. Running a few trucks and cars makes for a sexier story.
In my experience, a good sludge digester does a lot more to reduce the volume of sludge that then must be dried and buried than it does to provide gas. (It has to be buried – in a landfill – because it is toxic with heavy metals.)
$20 oil will accelerate the disintegration of the Middle East
18/10/2015
Saudi Arabia’s fiscal break-even oil price to be around $US 100 mark for the foreseeable future
http://crudeoilpeak.info/saudi-arabias-fiscal-break-even-oil-price-to-be-around-us-100-mark-for-the-foreseeable-future
Saudi liquids exports of around 8 mb/d on bumpy plateau since 2011
http://crudeoilpeak.info/saudi-arabia-export-peak
“$20 oil will accelerate the disintegration of the Middle East”
And yet, the Middle East – OPEC – is one of the few major producer groups that has the ability to control production volumes, and is choosing to glut the market to “maintain market share” and push the price down.
I really don’t understand this argument at all. If someone else sells more oil now and you sell less, but the price is higher, eventually the other producer will go into decline and their customers will have to buy from you anyways, while you get a better price per barrel for more years.
Either it is all geopolitics at the expense of everything else, or there is some other factor that is not discussed.
For sovereigns like the Saudis I believe it is about needing to keep cash coming in to fund the various payouts to opponents who would otherwise slice their heads off === this arrangement allow the men to continue to enjoy their sexy hookers, shopping trips, and fancy cars
For private companies its about keeping enough cash coming in to allow operations to continue and to service existing debt.
For both the price needs to more upwards at some point or they will blow up – keep in mind though that shale has run for quite a few years while losing money on every barrel extracted….
I don’t think the Middle East is choosing to glut the market to maintain market share. The OPEC producer with biggest growth is Iraq. Its issue is starting from a low base.
Saudi Arabia has raised its production to a lesser extent, but it needs the revenue from oil to maintain its programs. It can’t really cut production enough to fix the problem. Also, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have any real reason to cut its production to offset Iraq’s increase. Why should it lose, just because Iraq increases its production?
If Saudi Arabia (or Venezuela, or Angola) doesn’t get enough tax revenue because it either doesn’t sell enough oil, or the price of oil is not high enough, the government is likely to be overthrown. There may never be a “tomorrow” for producing more oil. We may be counting production which will never be possible. You are kidding yourself about “eventually the other producer will go into decline and their customers will have to buy from you anyways, while you get a better price per barrel for more years.” Once the country collapses, the oil is simply gone. It will never be possible to get it out.
“Saudi Arabia has raised its production to a lesser extent, but it needs the revenue from oil to maintain its programs. It can’t really cut production enough to fix the problem. Also, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have any real reason to cut its production to offset Iraq’s increase. Why should it lose, just because Iraq increases its production?”
In 2015 Saudi Arabia supposedly increased production and exports by 500,000 barrels per day. They supposedly have hundreds of billions of USD in reserve. I don’t see why they couldn’t cut production a million barrels per day and make twice as much profit per barrel instead.
” Once the country collapses, the oil is simply gone. It will never be possible to get it out.”
The country doesn’t cease to exist, just the current regime. It happened to Iraq, it has happened and probably will happen to others. The Soviet Union collapsed and continued producing.
I don’t know about that, when Iraq and The Soviet Union collapsed there still was a world market to sell into. The reasons they collapsed was not the price of oil or market availability. Like Gail says if a country collapses because of lower prices, resource depletion, markets or a combination the end result is, the oil will remain in the ground until it is economical to produce again. That scenario will most probably result in never.
“Like Gail says if a country collapses because of lower prices, resource depletion, markets or a combination the end result is, the oil will remain in the ground until it is economical to produce again. That scenario will most probably result in never.”
The cost to produce the oil is $5 per barrel. The price the regime needs to pacify citizens is $100 per barrel. If the regime falls, someone will produce and sell the oil at $30 per barrel and run a smaller government off those revenues.
There is a huge gap between the cost to produce, and the price needed to support the regimes that need tax revenues to exist.
How much different would a civil war in Saudi Arabia be from the American invasion of Iraq?
If Saudi Arabia cuts its production now, it permanently cuts its share of oil exports. It is not clear that 1 million barrels oil per day cut is enough either to get the world back in balance, with Iraq and Iran coming on board, either.
Once a country–really the world–collapses, we lose our ability to run schools and all of the many things we need to keep our current system going. This is why oil stays in the ground forever.
“Once a country–really the world–collapses, we lose our ability to run schools and all of the many things we need to keep our current system going. This is why oil stays in the ground forever.”
Do you think OPEC and other oil exporters are looking at this as The End Of Days? Do they see it as now or never? It might explain more than this idea that they don’t want to lose market share, so pump twice as much for a quarter of the price.
Oil exporters have to keep their huge populations alive, and in fact, reasonably well fed, to prevent overthrown government and collapse. They certainly see the current scenario as the end of their own days, and perhaps the end of the system altogether. It takes huge effort to keep the current oil extraction system operating. There was a recent effort to add new refining capacity, so some additional oil that could be extracted but not refined could be used – this no doubt is where the new extraction is coming from. Loss of market share would be a permanent problem for their country–could never feed/house/clothe their population again.
+++++
I tire of reading in the MSM about how this is a price war aimed at driving the frackers and others out of business.
Totally absurd.
Does anyone think that after all the effort the Fed has put into the shale ‘revolution’ – they’d allow a pipsqueak nation in the desert to upset that apple cart?
The Saudis dance to the piper’s tune — they are well aware of what happens should they refuse after seeing what happened to Gaddafi and Saddam….
The pumps are running hard because they are trying to make up for the crashed prices by pumping and selling more…
Unfortunately the selling more part is not working out so well… because the consumer is in dire straits the world over…
Governments can lie about the job numbers all day long …. and the sheeple can lap them up …. but there are consequences of just not counting people who fall off the rolls …. there are consequences of not distinguishing between a 2 hour per week job moving a neighbour’s lawn and a 40 hour per week construction job….
These are the consequences — people are broke — and low oil prices are not stimulating the economy…
It’s like playing disco music at a funeral — the corpse won’t dance. Nor will the mourners.
+++++++
“I tire of reading in the MSM about how this is a price war aimed at driving the frackers and others out of business.
Totally absurd.”
Well said.
I am not claiming that $20 per barrel oil is really feasible. In fact, that is the problem.
As others have already pointed out, it is problematic to compare prices from decades ago without adjusting for inflation. Leaving that aside, I think it is also contentious which is the cause and which is the effect. It is obvious from Slide 8 that the spike and volatility in oil prices coincides with the dollar being freed from being backed by gold in the 1970s. In fact the unpegging of the dollar resulted in the ensuing boom in debt since that time as basically money could be created out of thin air without corresponding increase in gold reserves. The inflation in prices of all goods can also be observed.
Therefore, it is precisely the adding of debt, made possible by the freeing of the US dollar that caused oil prices to spike, not the other way round which you seem to imply? Not discounting the fact that cost of production of oil has been rising as well, but I think the impact on prices is not as impactful, at least during the 20th century.
The OPEC embargo in late 1973 was only successful because US oil production had peaked in 1970. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock was necessary otherwise US oil imports after the peak would have been limited by gold production.
Since those measures started in 1971, I doubt they were done in response to oil peaking in the US. It probably took a few years for people to realize it had peaked!
Using BP statistics, US net oil imports increased from 2.5 mb/d in 1967 to 3.5 mb/d in 1970 and 4 mb/d in 1971. Clearly, the government must have been at least aware in 1971 that US oil demand was growing faster than local production. Many other factors at play:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904007304576494073418802358
Your article makes my point. The ending of free convertibility of the dollar ushered in an era of inflation in everything, including energy prices that has lasted to this day, barring shorter term fluctuations.
Inflation really started very early–long before the oil embargo. I hadn’t quite understood the reason why, until now.
In money of the day, BP shows the price of oil as being $1.80 per barrel, for every single year from 1961 to 1970. In 1971, the price was $2.24; in 1972, the price was $2.48; in 1973, the price was $3.29. In 1974, the price was $11.58. There was a huge crisis in 1974, but insurance companies had already started having problems, with the price increases starting in 1971. Premiums had been set based on prices in effect in 1970 and prior; they found that claim costs suddenly jumped, above the premiums collected. Quite a few insurance companies had problems in this time period.
Good point! All of this energy “stuff” has been followed for many years by presidents. They are unwilling to admit what a problem it really is, though.
That is an interesting point.
The prices I show are adjusted for inflation.
The unadjusted price of oil in 1970 was $1.80 per barrel.
Quote: “They [CO2 emissions] usually don’t fall unless a global crisis exists.”
Exactly. I have prepared a graph showing this:
http://crudeoilpeak.info/global-warming/co2-emissions-and-oil-crises
Thanks for the link.
There are two implications:
a) Gail is thinking about Peak Oil and Limits To Growth. But: Is (unlimited) economic growth thinkable? Obviously not. As our capitalist system depends on growth we have to rethink it. Is a sustainable economy possible?
b) Cheap energy destroys all other solutions. Why work with compost and microbes, if artificial fertilizers are cheap? Why work with regional wood and flax, if transport is cheap? Why walk and go by bike or even horse-drawn buggy? How can we get rid of that dependence causing substance?
“Is a sustainable economy possible?”
Good question! The answer is no.
“b) Cheap energy destroys all other solutions. Why work with compost and microbes, if artificial fertilizers are cheap? Why work with regional wood and flax, if transport is cheap? Why walk and go by bike or even horse-drawn buggy?
Hogwash. Cheap energy is what keeps us alive. The chances are very high that nether you or I would exist without cheap energy. Cheap energy is what keeps 7.5 billion humans alive.
“How can we get rid of that dependence causing substance?”
Now your talking! Well one way would be to just continue down our present path but as Gail outlines above all paths lead to the end of cheap energy so you are going to get your wish. A new golden era!
The coming utopia will look like as it did for the Cambodians…
https://notevenpast.org/wp-content/uploads/imagecache/lg_/Screen%20shot%202012-06-28%20at%203.34.51%20PM.png
“b) Cheap energy destroys all other solutions. Why work with compost and microbes, if artificial fertilizers are cheap? Why work with regional wood and flax, if transport is cheap? Why walk and go by bike or even horse-drawn buggy? How can we get rid of that dependence causing substance?”
We’ll have declining production soon enough, hopefully at a rate slowly enough that we can make some adaptations.
No need to come up with an elaborate plot to get rid of cheap energy.
Economies in general seem to be dissipative structures. They grow as long as sufficient energy is available for them to grow. They eventually collapse and come to end, just as do plants and animals, including humans.
OUr problem with moving away from fossil fuel energies is that we cannot support nearly as big a world population. Also, we tend to deforest the world, if we don’t have the option of fossil fuel energy. Humans now live in many areas of the world where they need climate modifications to live. Human bodies have evolved to require some cooked food. We have been able to support controlled burning of biomass for over one million years. The result is that we have now evolved to require supplemental energy of some sort. We can’t just walk away from our problem.
Dear Gail and Finite Worlders
This will address some important, but technical, issues relative to Peak Oil and other limits to growth and the issues around gardening and farming Unfortunately, if you want to get a considerably better understanding than what I will tell you, you will have to take a look at two video discussions:
molly-haviland-on-the-crucial-role-played-by-the-soil-biome
The discussion is in two parts, totaling a little more than an hour.
The speaker is Molly Haviland, who is a soil consultant in the tradition of Elaine Ingham (Molly is a lot younger and cuter and less combative…so enjoy that part). The gist of Moilly’s message is that soil fertility and plant health and nutritive value is dependent on the soil food web…the microbes and larger critters that live by the trillions in healthy soil. She does not cover soil compaction directly, but I will add some comments about that from other talks delivered by Molly or Elaine Ingham and my own experience.
I met Molly at our Carolina Farm Stewardship Association meeting back in October. Molly is delivering a message which is part of the message in The Hidden Half of Nature, which I have recently described.
The host and questioner is a small organic farmer. One of his first challenges is the statement he heard Elaine make to the effect that, if you have a good soil food web working, you need never add fertilizer again. This statement is complete heresy to conventional farmers and to the agribusiness that supplies them. Legions of Peak Oil and Limits to Growth Doomers also consider the statement heresy. Many ‘organic’ growers also consider the statement heresy or at least view it with suspicion.
You can listen to the discussion, but let me suggest some parallel thinking. First, observe that no one ever fertilized an old growth forest. Second, observe, as Molly does, that if you bulldoze a field, or if a volcano strips it bare of vegetation, weeds begin to grow and they are never fertilized. Elaine points out that a growing forest is taking far more nutrients out of the soil each year than any conceivable farm crop, and nobody is fertilizing it and it doesn’t run out of nitrogen or phosphorus or potassium…or any of the micronutrients. The key to understanding is the nature of sand silt and clay, the nature of soluble nutrients (plants cannot absorb nutrients unless they are in solution), and what soil tests really measure. There are many different kinds of soil tests, but I’ll describe what you get as a general rule. The soil test measures how much of a particular nutrient is already soluble. But if the nutrient is soluble, it can easily be washed away by the next rainstorm. So what you really want is nutrients in organic compounds inside the critters in the soil food web. As they eat each other, the nutrients are either absorbed by the eater, or released into the soil as soluble materials available to the plant’s roots. In a soil food web which is hitting on all the cylinders, far more nutrients will be made available to the plants than is ever measured in a soil test.
Elaine Ingham, as mentioned in the discussion, recommends cutting the addition of inorganic fertilizers over a couple of year period. This permits the farmer or gardener to get the soil food web optimized, and not experience crop failures in the early years.
Suppose that every gardener and every farmer was convinced that Peak Oil is now, and the future of inorganic fertilizers is grim. Then the gardeners and farmers would begin the process of converting from inorganic fertilizers to reliance on the soil food web tomorrow.
Another issue is tillage. Tillage destroys soil structure, creates plow pans of compaction, and kills fungi. Inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides likewise destroy soil. Molly makes the point that tillage sets succession back. What does that mean? Consider some of the places in Yellowstone after the giant fires a decade or so ago. The mature forests were completely destroyed in some places, and Nature started again with weeds. The natural progression of a field (in well watered places) is from weeds to grasses to shrubs to trees. But suppose you don’t want to grow trees in Ohio…you want to grow corn. Then you must reset succession periodically…and one way to do that is with tillage. Annual tillage is still likely to do a lot of damage, but tillage every 15 years might work pretty well.
Another solution, and very low tech, is the Milpa system or the Six Nations solution in the northeastern US. The Six Nations prepared a new field for crops by girdling some trees. When the trees had died, they planted corn, beans, and squash and other plants in what had been the shade of the tree. They used very simple tools and did not work very hard. They did not use domesticated animals. In the Milpa system in Central America, the fields went through decades long rotations from cultivated crops to forest and then burning and back to cultivated crops. The Milpa system worked with succession rather than fight against it. Both these systems were essentially cycling nutrients in perpetuity.
I said that Molly did not discuss compaction in this particular talk. I want to explain that, because I think it is the first thing one has to do when thinking about Peak Oil and Limits to Growth. A moldboard plow created a compaction layer at about 8 inches. When the compaction at that depth became intolerable, farmers turned to disc plows and created compaction layers at about 15 inches. The next step is a ‘deep ripper’ or a Yeomans plow or a subsoiler. These deep plows can only be operated with powerful machines burning fossil fuels. Elaine’s advice to farmers is to do the deep ripping once and never plow again. Around here, we call the compaction layer a ‘plow pan’. In my residential yard, I have about 3 inches of organic matter on top which I have created since I bought this house. Below that is clay with very little organic matter in it, except where I began to plant some deep rooted grasses two years ago. The grasses have put carbon 20 inches down in the soil in only two years. The compaction layer is at 18 to 20 inches, which indicates that the previous corn farmer probably used a disc plow on it. The problem with a compaction layer is that it stops air, water, and roots from penetrating deeply into the soil. Roots have been found as much as 15 miles deep in the soil, so it isn’t true that roots can’t go down into uncompacted soil. Elaine describes seeing roots in caves in Bordeaux with roots from grapevines poking through the roof 200 feet below the surface. She describes similar sights in the Oregon Caves which are under an old growth Douglas Fir forest. So, the first priority for a gardener or farmer is to get rid of the compaction layer and don’t create another one. For the farmer, that means using a tractor to do some subsoil work.
For the gardener, it means something like this: Use a soil corer or some other method to make holes in the compaction layer. Make some compost extract and pour it down the holes, so that you have fungi, air and water down below the compaction layer. Meanwhile use ground cover plants and composting from the top to work on the compaction layer from above. The compaction layer may dissolve pretty quickly. If you have clay soils, they will flocculate, which is a restoration of structure which is friendly to water, oxygen, roots, and microbes If you are rich, buy truckloads of organic matter and have an excavator handy.
The goal, according to Molly, is a system which cycles nutrients in place. But we first have to engage in some fairly painful restoration work to repair the soil. Molly says on her website ‘we know everything we need to know’. Now it’s about doing.
Don Stewart
Don, another valuable essay. Need to follow up. Bullfrog films has a neat video on Living the Good Life with Helen and Scott Nearing. They, along with Eliot Coleman, are avid soil builders and Scott recommended getting every smidgen of organic material (in his case sea weed, leaves, crushed shells,) and make compost. They had an old fashioned wheel pusher tiller
Here is Eliot video on
Eliot Coleman’s How To Make Compost and Add Organic Amendments
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mSNu1OBKqh0
“Roots have been found as much as 15 miles deep in the soil, …”
Don, I’m sorry, but it is pretty obvious when you think about it that you have been lied to again. 15 MILES is 79200 feet. Roots (except for fossils) have never been found anywhere close to that deep. In fact I would be very interested where a “soil” extends down more than a few dozen feet. A 200 foot tall tree might send roots very deep, perhaps as much as 200 feet. Perhaps, you are unclear about the definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil
“… no one ever fertilized an old growth forest”
True, but you may have also noticed that trees – lumber – from old growth forests are typically more expensive than lumber from a tree farm. Why? Because the trees growing in an old growth forest typically have been starved of nutrients which resulted in very small tight grain which results when the trees grow very slowly. Not(!) an argument that old growth forests have plenty nutrients.
also, fertilizer (i.e. soluble minerals) is transported by wind frequently.
http://www.weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/saharan-dust-africa-caribbean-gulf-of-mexico
or
https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/2822
Believe it or not forest were fertilized in certain regions by the salmon run and the bears were the providers. Now that these wild stock have largely disappeared the forest health has sufferred.
In the rainforest we find the soil is very poor and all the nutrients are found in the biomass.
To make a general comment on forests is misleading at best and too board to be helpful
Eliot Coleman has been at it since the early 1970’s and has extensive exposure to this topic. I would say one of the top person in the field along with his wife, Barbara.
“True, but you may have also noticed that trees – lumber – from old growth forests are typically more expensive than lumber from a tree farm. Why? ”
Because they are rare and often protected. They are often much larger than farmed trees – you cannot grow a tree to be ten feet across in a decade. You would need to have some soil samples and/or ring comparisons to show that the old growth trees are somehow malnourished. Also, other than perhaps Christmas Tree Farms, I don’t know how much planted forests are fertilized.
Usually, it is very cold environments like the tops of the Alps that make trees grow slowly with very tight grains, which is great for making musical instruments, such as the Stradivari instruments.
“The Six Nations prepared a new field for crops by girdling some trees. When the trees had died, …”
And your point? You are not advocating the girdling of random trees? Girdling entire forests?
I enjoy gardening, and i do, (or have done) most of the stuff you recommend. Its just that extending the labor intensive, and long term practices that work in a 2000 or 3000 square foot garden to a working farm that must (by definition) turn a profit to exist … then extending that to feeding the world … well … there is no polite phrase.
“I enjoy gardening, and i do, (or have done) most of the stuff you recommend. Its just that extending the labor intensive, and long term practices that work in a 2000 or 3000 square foot garden to a working farm that must (by definition) turn a profit to exist … then extending that to feeding the world … well … there is no polite phrase.”
Who said you are going to grow 100 hectares using the same intensive techniques used on a garden? Most people are going to have to garden for themselves, or starve. I expect post BAU, in a non-extinction outcome, 25 to 90% of the population will be involved in producing, storing and preparing food. I also, and from what I’ve gathered, Don as well, have no expectations of anywhere near 7 billion people making it out the other side; maybe 50 to 500 million.
Bloomberg seems to be claiming Russian oil companies are producing at a cost of $5 USD per barrel or less:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-21/i-know-no-one-who-predicted-russian-oil-production-hits-record-saudi-gambit-fails
I couldn’t find that reference to $5 oil. Besides, I don’t believe Bloomberg knows its arse from its elbow about anything, least of all oil, so this story just reeks of BS as usual. Breakeven costs for Russian production are around $105 a barrel according to this source.
http://knoema.com/vhzbeig/oil-statistics-production-costs-breakeven-price.
Yep. Bloomberg – like all MSM is 98% spin … and 2% fact.
It is hard work finding the needles in that massive hay stack…. $5 oil is not pointy….
“I couldn’t find that reference to $5 oil.”
It is the last chart, showing cost per BOE by oil company.
“Breakeven costs for Russian production are around $105 a barrel according to this source.”
First, we are talking average barrel, not marginal. Second, we are talking production cost, not toal cost – royalties, taxes, transport, refining.
It seems unlikely to me that an oil company would produce a million barrels a day at a $60 per barrel loss for several years.
It’s all priced at the margin buddy. Otherwise, it would be happy days for the world economy…
“It’s all priced at the margin buddy. Otherwise, it would be happy days for the world economy…”
We don’t need those expensive barrels, the price drop is because demand is not rising to meet new supply, and perhaps demand is even falling.
There is always the question of what a person counts when talking about oil production. If it is just the cost of keeping existing production going, it can be quite low–I am not sure if it is as low as $5 per barrel. If costs are measured on a broader basis, then a person gets a much different number.
In Russia, taxes are based on price level of oil. The low prices then become a problem of the government rather than the company. In the US, taxes tend not to depend as much on the price of oil.
I think when we speak of the cost in dollars to pump a barrel in Russia it can be a little confusing to me.
They sell the oil in dollars (or Euros) and convert to rubles to spend in their economy. As a result of devaluing the ruble, when they convert the dollars to rubles, they are not losing a large amount in forex …maybe a third as much as exporters with a dollar peg.
They also have a large reserve of T-bills and very little international dollar debt, so they may be OK at low prices for a while even though they are in recession. I believe their central bank actually RAISED rates at the same time all the western banks were cutting rates.
The exporters that will be in trouble are those with a currency peg to the dollar. The Saudis are spending their T-bills, but also selling bonds since the interest rate is so low. I believe Russia may have more reserves and may outlast the Saudis…but that’s just an opinion of course.
There is a thought that even the Saudis may unpeg from the dollar.
They will, will they? Well, we’ll see what Dick Cheney says about that!
We’ve already been doing “geoengineering”. It’s called industrial civilisation.
I (sjn) am a moderator at peakoil.com so I think that probably qualifies my as a Peak Oiler. I’ve always considered “Limits to Growth” as *the* issue, and how it relates to net energy and the economy/financial system. We’ve been debating this for years. I previously believed that the global central banks, and especially the Fed would not allow the deflationary affects to manifest, going as far as destroying the $US in the effort and trigger hyper-inflation.
I found it quite amazing really how much confidence remained in place allowing the system to bend without breaking, so I came around to aligning with The Automatic Earth. In particular with respect to how the financial side will eventually unfold, but with the understanding that the evolution of the global economy and financial system in recent years has been dictated by the “Limits to Growth” dynamic, or more specifically by the declining energy flows versus systemic entropy as social and economic complexity reaches its maximum.
Of course this could never go on forever. So here are. It’s a tough sell to many Peak Oilers though, I admit that. Especially as gross liquid fuels production has continued to rise quite rapidly over the last few years. There aren’t as many of us as there used to be, and those who remain either side with the outlook here, or have bargained to the idea that “the Peak” has been extended out into the future, at least for a while with the advent of the Shale Revolution.
The automatic earth smells faintly of koombaya (I see some of there stuff posted on Zero Hedge… they have a lot of things totally wrong) …
If they publish anything that resembles what appears on Finite World it is because they read Finite World…
Thanks for writing. I think quite a few readers of Our Finite World started as “Peak Oilers”. It is interesting to hear that you converted to thinking about the problem as a “Limits to Growth” problem.
I don’t follow all of the writing of The Automatic Earth, but I have discovered that Nicole Foss and I tend to think similarly about many issues.
How debt is managed is an important element in how the future will unfold. Banks create liabilities even though their loans are from thin air. The Federal Reserve banks create fresh money also from thin air but without liability. They deficit spend into the economy which allows it to expand. One reason for our decline,besides all those in the article above, is the insistence on austerity. This withdraws money from the economy, exactly the same way as does raising taxes. The result is the near universal deflation we are all seeing today. It seems the d***heads that run the economic levers can’t seem to recognise this stupid policy and the MSM are pushing the lie at every opportunity.
We can ,and no doubt will when necessary, just ignore inflation and “print” money to pay people out of work and probably issue coupons as well to manage scarcity of food etc. All debts will be Jubileed. out of existence. Once the economy tanks beyond a certain point the whole interconnectedness of it’s functioning will break down. This will force governments to give out free money to everyone so they can buy food etc. If they don’t do this there will be chaos and civil insurrection, violence guaranteed. We might decline by stagflation instead if governments are ready with options. No sign yet of that however!
“The Federal Reserve banks create fresh money also from thin air but without liability.”
No down side? Really?
I’ve been thinking about this since I was introduced to it (quite recently). The concept comes from people like this guy: http://mythfighter.com
I thought that people feared money printing because of what happened in Weimar Germany. To make it simple, “If money is free, isn’t money free?”
The Federal Reserve can print money without liability. Actually, this sentence is true as it stands. Who is going to go to the Federal Reserve with a dollar and demand something for it? And if they did, wouldn’t the Federal Reserve simply give them another dollar? On the other hand, if inflation in the US (or EU for that matter) was the same as in Venezuela – 808% – I think there would be some “liability” for the masters of the Fed.
So far, I have not discovered that the people who support this idea are doing anything but playing semantics. Please, ehjr2015, show me on the supply and demand chart where supply and demand does not apply to money.
It’s semantics in so far as my description of macroeconomics here is another and truthful way of describing the reality of modern fiat money economic workings. Mainstream economists get it wrong, but are believed by the majority as the MSM and the political operators are also unable or unwilling to see the truth, the How of it.
Federal reserve money is the money added to the economy that matches the output of the economy. Bank money does not do that as it’s created and destroyed every day. The money supply is the sum of all the created money since that currency was founded, by the very same government, decades and centuries ago, less taxation, or money deleted from the economy.
The government can spend on anything it desires to boost or deprive the economy. It has no limit in theory but in practice that limit is the Output Gap, which is the difference between a full employment economy and the one we have today.
No one knows how much money the government has or does not have. So there is no answer to your supply/demand question. The Central Bank for one has No money. It is a clearing house.
It does have lots of reserve accounts held there in trust, but all the Treasuries are owned from outside the bank. All money is in the private sector. The government never needs your dollars, never needs to save or to borrow dollars. It simply spends at will but only to pay for invoices and debts it acquires in the course of Government business. Just like commercial banks, who create loans when and only when there is a customer. It’s no free-for-all!
In theory, there is a reason for debt creating more money supply. If debt allows the extraction of more energy supplies, and those energy supplies allow the production of more goods and services, then it makes perfectly good sense for debt to create more money supply.
Unfortunately, this cycle only seems to work if energy supplies are very cheap. If energy supplies are expensive, we need to add more and more debt, to try to pump up the economy enough to support the high cost of energy supplies.
yes, it’s the Achilles Heel of debt. Debt is the same as using up future resources today. So that is going to be a big problem soon enough. I think, since all new money, bank and Federal, comes from thin air it can be equally easily wiped out, the so called debt jubilee. This option is starting to get more air as the debts cannot be paid off without exacerbating the resource crisis.
The government is already giving out free money. Every worthless slug on the government payroll and contractor. People making kachang on projects that they readily admit (in closed company) are stupid. I dont blame them one bit. From what I see this and debt creation is the only way money is entering the economy now.
As far as the debt jubilee and print into weimar speculation, if they were going to do it it would already be done. We are in free fall into the vast rift of deflation. All of this nonsense about debt jubilee and free money seems usually to be espoused by those with significant debts. They do have a point, they were good little munchkins for going so heavily into debt they should be rewarded.
Money is free only in so far as it comes from thin air, just like before the Big Bang. There is no money without there first being a debt, It is created to pay for debts. The government can match any and every debt presented to it.
Debt may be easily created but it does have a catch. It is taking resources from the future.
So spend today and let our descendants pay for the burden it creates that we have conveniently deferred.
In theory, the system lets our descendants pay, but in practice, the whole thing becomes a Ponzi Scheme. It falls down, when the only way of repaying old debt is with increasing amounts of new debt. It becomes impossible to grow the system fast enough for it to stay together.
It’s what is exactly possible today – even as described falsely by mainstream economists. As I just said earlier, only a debt jubilee will stop the major waste of resources that would be required to pay back debt, debt that came from “thin air” but which the banks require paying back with real goods and services. It really should be a no brainer that it has to stop.
In the interim, the government can hold it all together [until it ruptures] by using its free,thin air ability to keep payments up to those out of work. It really depend on whether we have a sudden rupture or a prolonged stagflation before it all gets out of hand.
‘This will force governments to give out free money to everyone so they can buy food’
But there will be no food…
I suggest you read this if you want to work towards your degree in Doom:
http://www.davidkorowicz.com/publications/view_document/4-trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-a-study-in-global-systemic-collapse
There will be food for a while, If the government can get itself organised. If not then food will instantly be a big problem. It’s not a given, just a likelihood and just a temporary measure.
I have a copy of David K’s book.
When BAU goes the supply chain goes…
I fail how to see how there would be food arriving at the grocery stores….
I also fail to see why the governments would even bother to try — what’s the point of feeding the sheeple for a few weeks or months more?
If I were one of the Men in Black — and I thought there was a chance of survival — I’d want to the 7.B useless feeders to die as soon as possible…
In fact if I could – I’d have the military lock them in the cities and towns — shoot anyone who comes out of their home — and tell them not to worry – sit tight — listen to CNN, Dancing with Stars and NFL re-runs — martial law will be lifted ‘next week’ — and they’ll be able to restock at the Safeway… and Dominos Pizza will have a special Collapse Special to celebrate the reset — 3 for 1 pizza with 2 family sized colas and half a cake…
The sheeple would just sit tight on that info — and soon enough they’d weaken … then die…
The Men in Black will never tell the sheeple the truth – no matter how bad things get — and they wouldn’t be wasting what little food will be available on them….
I am afraid that somewhere in all of the debt problems, governments will fail as well. I don’t know how quickly this will happen.
We have quite a few state and city governments that have serious financial problems. We have seen some city governments fail recently–for example, Detroit. There is always a conflict regarding which creditors get paid off–pensioners or those owed money on recent borrowing using debt.
Eventually, major governments will fail as well. There may be free money, perhaps printed by new local governments, but it won’t buy anything other than goods made locally, with local materials and labor. That won’t be very much.
Do we have such competence in the governments?
I can´t see governments standing for a very long time, because deep down they don´t know what they are doing. If we had people like John Kenneth Galbraith in the governments today, things would proceed differently, I think. Galbraith, an economist by profession, once commented when asked about his rightwing- leftwing, austrian or not austrian economics; “whatever works”. Galbraiths meaning was that situations differ, and one has to adjust to those changing circumstances, no matter your earlier policy or theory preferance.
We have excellent examples of thinking outside the box in previous governments, when the US Great Depression was getting out of hand, FDR set a bill to Congress asking for 100% tax rates for the highest earners. Meaning that if you would have made over 300.000 a year, all of that money beyond 300.000 would have been taken as tax. FDR didn´t get 100% he just got 95% from Congress. Why did FDR ask for something like that? Well, FDR needed money for “The New Deal” for work parties and for rearranging the economy.
When Abraham Lincoln needed money for the civil war, he just printed his own. That is where Abraham Lincoln’s Greenback Dollar comes from.
Governments can do such things, you know, they make the laws.
Governments can take resources, money, workforce, anything really. That is precisely why we “have” taxes and laws. And governments can organize full employment, if they want. Full employment is just a matter of taxation, legislation and governing skills. Full employment has been arranged numerous times in history. Governments and laws are the playrules by which we play our everyday games. But I´m afraid the people in the governments are playing a very different game, something called “grab as much loot as you can going out the door” and they don´t really, really, understand how the world, government, economy or legislation work. I´m afraid we don´t have competence in the governments to keep them going for many days in a Post-BAU environment.
It is not just lack of competence in governments, it is a major gap between expectations and what is really possible.
People expect that we will have healthcare for most all, in our current vastly overpriced version. People expect to be able to retire, and they expect that banks will remain open, and that deposits will be available. People expect that pension promises will really be paid, and that government insurance of pension plans will have meaning.
Expectations can be managed in a Force Majeure situation. When survival is at stake, democracy no longer matters. Then, only survival matters.
As Force Majeure is invoked, only government competence can allocate available (all) resources.
The problem is, that in BAU, expectations matter. Immediately, day 1 in Post-BAU, Force Majeure cancelles all agreements and laws, giving absolute authority, rule of law, to those who can ensure survival (for the majority).
Sadly, I don´t see governments possessing competence in BAU, or outside of it. Global financial collapse is a one time event in our species history and as such, plans and models of operation don´t exist. Well, outside this blog that is.
You can only demand what you can afford.
You can only expect what the government affords.
Pensions, unemployment benefits and stuff will be lowered. Maybe the danger is when a majority of voters live mostly on benefits, they can then expect/demand a lowered gap between productive and non-productive individs. Removing incitament to being productive.
Best can-kicking would be achieved by soon removing right to vote from non-productive citizens. That would allow government to only pay what they can afford while keeping the necessary individuals in work.
All laws stay intact untill war; homeland security act, national security act or such. As the constitution is still intact, democracy can not be cancelled.
But when we are in day 1 of Post-BAU, only those that have a plan, and can implement one, for the sake of survival of the majority, have by Force Majeure the only rule of law. All other authorities are unlawful. In Post-BAU democracy will be implemented only if it can help the survival of the majority. Most likely, in most parts of the world, democracy is revoked in favour of a meritocracy.
Paying for it will never be a problem. It will only stop when the electric grid fails.
I think paying for Medicare/Social Security is already a problem. This is why we have the budget fights every year–Social Security and Medicare are rolled into the overall budgets. I can’t imagine how European countries can pay their high level of benefits without adding more and more debt, either. Japan we already know is over the top with debt, and its health care system is a lot cheaper than ours.
Money is all fiat today. There is no limit theoretically to spending on whatever is needed to keep the population fed and housed. Why would you say “we cannot help you, sir as the book keepers won’t allow it”? In an emergency no one will give a stuff about niceties like inflation, but they will be very angry if their system has no food because the food that’s there has all been raided by speculators and the government did nothing to contain it. No system, no solution, only chaos.
Who cares that people will be frightened? It’ll be self fulfilling if fright causes denial and inaction.
Government could as a start make plans in camera and not let it be known until it needs to be acted upon. Anyone seen any signs of this? I didn’t think so.
Even money in gold or silver is not much better than fiat money, because it is food, clothing and shelter that people need. Money in any form (fiat or backed by gold or silver) is just a promise of something that a person really needs. If the things a person really needs aren’t available, that becomes a problem.
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Yes thanks again for the thoroughness in your review, Gail. However, I was hoping for a bit of clarity on this comment…
“Another consideration is that we need to be able to operate our current vehicles using a liquid fuel, made with electricity, because of the time and materials involved in switching over to electric vehicles.”
Do you mean a compressor run by electricity is needed to compress, say natural gas? If this is what I understand you mean, then no reason why ethane can’t be used to serve this need; transitionally and perhaps as a longer-term supplementary liquid fuel stock.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for hydraulic fracturing. The US is presently the US of Shale and this ethane resource could be used in spark-ignited engines. Seriously, it can. Go see: http://kimgerly.com/projects/ethane.pdf
However, fractionators are in the works to send this ethane fuel stock for plastics manufacturing offshore. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140929005715/en/Enterprise-Announces-Ninth-NGL-Fractionator-Mont-Belvieu
NB Bonus: Ethane only has 78 day residence time in the troposphere after combustion; methane/NG has 10 years residence time, and CO2 is 100+ years.
Chevron punted back in early 2014. Nucor Steel, the greenest steel company in the world, picked up the idea and invested their own money to develop the first truck to run on ethane earlier this year. Summer field trial was a success. Winter field trial will happen next month.
“and this ethane resource could be used in spark-ignited engines. Seriously, it can. Go see: http://kimgerly.com/projects/ethane.pdf”
Ok there is enough of the stuff for the prototypes. And theres probably enough of the stuff for thousands of combustion engines. There is not enough of the stuff to continue industrial civilization. It is certainly more feasible to convert a combustion engine to another fuel source than to go to electric vehicles so kudos for presenting a unusual cheery non solution.. Whether electric or methane from pigs ala thunderdome the problems not addressed by cheery non solutions remains, there is not enough easy to extract energy to continue BAU. You are not going to be driving a ethane vehicle and neither am I. John deer is not going to be producing ethane tractors. China will not be producing millions of ethane powered auto rickshaws for India. Cheery non solutions are better than comedy central however so double kudos to you. Cheery non solutions clearly are dogma for the we are the cleverest species ever dogma. News flash, Nucor is not going to save the world.
If you must know, I’m actually not keen on continuing this industrialized societal trajectory. I too do not believe it is sustainable. As a matter of fact, I divested from my Jetta in 2005, and bicycle pretty much everywhere now. Personally, I say bring on the pain–we need behavior change, invoking more conservation from all this hyper-consumption. However…
I rather think this ethane opportunity is somewhat pragmatic, for transitional purposes, if the US of Amerika doesn’t want to totally crap-out, Ipoop-poo. Ethane supply far exceeds the demand. The USA Ethane surplus ~500,000 bbl/day next 10+ years.
For those who require a liquid energy-dense ‘replacement’ to stand-in until the electrical vehicle infrastructure is fully realized, then ethane could serve this aim as a transitional, (key operative here, transitional), fuel stock, especially for heavy duty vehicles. The primary focus for ethane is not individual transport applications. Field trials on heavy-duty trucks to come this winter. One, however, must start somewhere i.e. Ford F150 Triton.
There was a 9%-17% increase in miles/GGE vs Gasoline in the Ford F150 Triton. It burns completely in an engine because of it’s carbon bond, and is superior to propane as a transportation fuel, that is to say it produces less CO2/MMBTUs than gasoline or propane. Does not require refining or chemical processing or massive energy input to store, like gasoline does.
Whereas, CNG/methane is not a great fuel in ICEs, because it has a much higher activation energy.
Nucor may not save the world, but I give this ‘smoke stack’ company kudos for trying to reduce it’s carbon footprint by being open to utilizing ‘waste’ ethane in its fleet of light-duty and heavy-duty truck fleet. I think this direction by Nucor is just as good at offsetting GHG emissions as any solar farm, wind farm or energy efficiency offering at this juncture in time. Nucor uses NG in their electric arc furnaces and have a strategic, physical proximity interest in Encana, who produces NG near Nucor’s plants. Transportation and fractionation costs are not an issue for Nucor, as it is for the petrochemical industry.
I reiterate, we have to start somewhere, try. At least Nucor is not expecting hand-outs or subsidies from the feds, and is funding this venture, so no need for anyone to get their panties in a knot…
Correction: Ethane’s residence time is 78 days when just vented into the atmosphere.
“For those who require a liquid energy-dense ‘replacement’ to stand-in until the electrical vehicle infrastructure is fully realized”
Oh my. Fully realized. I must remember that particular work around.
“I reiterate, we have to start somewhere, try. ” Im not about to try to fly by flapping my wings.
“we need behavior change, invoking more conservation from all this hyper-consumption. ”
If you believe that why are you proposing (non) solutions to continuing our “hyper-consumption”?
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrDZci_UCAvHP5AYIeSVGb6x9lTOc_FiAUlpGP00LrRdiFJDsX
I was in Yemen a few years ago … and I saw a camel yoked to a contraption in a room … he walked slowly round and round and round … I believe it was a stone to grind flour….
Here’s my silly idea to go along with the others …
Before BAU hits — GE should get a grant of 1 trillion dollars to build electric turbines — these could be handed out around the world — and people could yoke animals to them turning them round and round to produce electricity…. which would be used to power… um…. to power…. um…. ah yes to power the mining operations and factories and distribution systems which would deliver washing machines… hair dryers… teevees etc… to the masses
As long as we can feed all of those animals, we are somewhat OK. I expect they would not make enough electricity to make the system run, though.
I mean that the cars and trucks we currently have on the road (as well as the trains, boats, and airplanes) need to continue operating for their normal lifespans, so we don’t have the huge extra cost of new vehicles and so the changeover can take place quickly. If we can’t use existing vehicles, people would discover that the resale value of their current vehicle goes to zero. They wouldn’t be able to buy a new car, and might default on the loan on the existing car (or truck), if a fast changeover was mandated.
What I am thinking of is new fuels that can be bought at existing services stations, and fill up existing fuel tanks. The more changes that are required, the more impossible the changeover becomes.
Remember that natural gas has as big a problem as oil. The current price is way too low. With too low a price, it stays in the ground. The companies drilling natural gas, such as Chesapeake Energy, go bankrupt. This is a huge problem. If there were a very cheap liquid fuel (say consumer price $1 per gallon) fuel that could be profitably made from natural gas, and at the same time be very profitable for the natural gas drillers, that would be helpful in preventing natural gas companies from collapsing from unprofitability. But I don’t think the combination can happen–certainly not in the timeframe needed.
That transportation fuel might be hydrogen, if a lower-energy means to crack it from water can be found.
In the physical world we have conservation of energy. In the case of making hydrogen from water to burn in a car to drive down the road, the vary best case would be we have to put in as much energy as we will take out by driving. There is no free lunch.
” … if a lower-energy means to crack it from water can be found.”
What an important misunderstanding that sentence fragment exposes!
Water is a very stable molecule, and it is a very complex solution. There is a fixed amount of power required to change 2H+ into one H2. In fact, it takes 2 electrons and all the equipment needed to get those 2 electrons in the correct spot. You can computerize the process till you are blue in the face, you can use platinum as a catalyst, or you can use something more exotic.
But it always has, and always will take significant amounts of energy to make hydrogen gas from water. No one will ever “find” a way to ignore the physical laws that govern the universe. The fact that 90%+ of the population thinks that it is possible to do so causes significant problems.
Hydrogen would be very expensive to try to actually use–hard to store, and expensive to build devices to actually use it. I don’t see it as being an important part of the overall system.
Thanks for the clarity, Gail. I think what some do not understand is, compared to let’s say another fuel ‘opportunity’ that still continues to be explored, investigated, ethanol…
– Ethane CAN be used in existing vehicles; all that’s required are tuning controls (~$4,000 cost).
– As long as the existing fuel tanks are spec’d out to handle ~710 psi for ethane (compressed liquid state), all is well. NB: CNG must be stored in high pressure cylinders 3000-3600 psi for operations. No brainer here about existence of cylinders that can handle ethane under pressure.
LNG requires cryogenic cylinders (-260F to -200F); the critical temp for ethane is ~32 deg C and does not require cryogenics when compressed at ambient conditions.
– Ethane has a flame temperature of 1955 C, but ethane already yields negligible NOx when combusted.
– Ethane has an octane rating of 108, so it will be able to improve engine performance over ethanol.
– Ethane has 20,551 BTUs/lb lower heating value (LHV) and ethanol only has 12,412 BTUs/lb ==> more miles/lb of ethane than per pound of ethanol.
– One million BTUs LHV of ethane yields 142.73 lb CO2 when burned. One million BTU LHV of ethanol yields 154.13 lb/CO2 when burned.
One could argue that ethanol is a biofuel and ethane is a fossil fuel, hence the burning of ethanol is carbon neutral. But ethane was going to be flared anyway, so burning of ethane in an engine is carbon neutral relative to flaring. Being fair, since we care about global warming, this carbon balance would need to be performed on a global basis.
http://kimgerly.com/projects/ethane_infographic.pdf
So far for the Ford F150 Triton summer field trial:
– Well to wheels ethane is 31% lower CO2 per mile than gasoline.
– Testing by the Propane Research Council on Propane versus gasoline same Ford 150 type truck with V8 triton showed propane to be 17% lower CO2 per mile well to wheels versus gasoline.
Winter field trial is slated for late January 2016 in North Dakota. Ethane in North Dakota is $0.10/gallon ==> 1.6 gallons ethane for 1 gallon of gas. I would venture at this juncture in time, ethane could compete even with low gasoline prices. But since so many are fearful of energy investments now, dubious what will happen after the field trial in January.
Another example of how desperate the Men in Black are — using cropland to grow petrol for our vehicles…
That is clearly total desperaton and was always going to have limited effectiveness… yet it has been done … probably because it was determined that we could kick the can a few years more by doing this…
‘Whatever it takes’ — yes whatever it takes — if the PHDs determine it can pretend and extend it will be tried… if it is not being tried then you can be certain they have determined it won’t add any days to the clock
Yep, I figured this out too a few years ago. This is the system we’re going to have until the very end, perhaps with a few minor tweaks along the way. This is it. As good as it gets. And it will be defended to the last…
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Mario-Draghi-Just-Evil.jpg
…Absolute badass…
I understand that ethane is more or less a waste product in North Dakota. The high level of it in the gas that is produced means that the ethane must be skimmed off and used for something, if the remaining gas is to be used for natural gas. I heard one speaker talk about perhaps turning ethane into plastics, to use it in a somewhat productive manner.
The question is of course how long this can continue. The overall operation needs to be profitable. If companies are going bankrupt, neither the oil nor the associated ethane will be extracted.
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Missed the word “low” in the last sentence of the first paragraph?
Thanks for letting me know. I have fixed it.
I was trying to rearrange wording at the last minute, and managed to leave the word out.
All industry is debt dependent. Industry = debt. Debt = industry.
However, if an industry is productive, it should retire its debts. The fact that we don’t retire debts, but merely roll them over, proves that industry is not productive.
A way to think of this on a large scale, is that we extract and burn much more fossil fuels than we find through new discoveries. The global economy, is, in effect, burning through hundreds of millions of years of accumulated natural capital in the space of a few decades.
Feeling like Neo waking up from the matrix yet?
Alright, so now that we have burned hundreds of millions of years of energy stock, what we are left with is unpayable debts. As we’ve talked about many times in the comments, there are different ways that unpayable debt is dealt with:
1) it is forgiven…anybody want to place a bet on this?
2) default
3) inflation
Those are our options. My view is that some combination of number 2 and 3 happens. But!…even if we manage to triage our way through the debt problem, it still doesn’t change the fact that we now have 7.3 billion people, of all sorts of ethnicities and nations, who are going to be hungry and pissed off that they missed out on the greatest bonanza in history and are now living in a poor, crowded, depleted world. And every single one of them wants a very large piece of the pie. A pie that is going to terminally shrink every single year from here on out.
What? Did you think I was going to tell you that everything was going to be alright, you are special, God is looking out for you and cares about you, you will be the first human in history to live forever?
If you want fairy tales, don’t come to me. Go to your parents or to your priests or American politicians. They can give you all the happy talk you want.
“And every single one of them wants a very large piece of the pie. A pie that is going to terminally shrink every single year from here on out.”
You speak the truth. Another truth is that if your not a refugee living in a tent your doing damn good. People will come to terms with that truth I think. The real problems will arise when no one is doing damn good.
“The fact that we don’t retire debts, but merely roll them over, proves that industry is not productive.”
Using debt allows expansion to be paid over time. It also allows the interest to be deducted. Industry using debt will never go out of style until collapse.
When collapse comes, we end up with one big pile of businesses collapsing at once. Governments have a problem as well.
+++++++ I like that post!
Let’s dedicate a song to all those out there who expect a fairy tale outcome …. this belongs up there with the all time fairy world hits including Koombaya and I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing….
A 1 … a 2 … a 1,2 3, 4….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI
I reckon if the CIA wants to really torment the fellas in Guantanamo they should play those 3 songs in loop 24/7 365 days per year….
Actually, stock that pays dividends is not a lot better than debt. It still funnels money to the rentier class. Payments may not be mandatory, but if the company wants additional funding through stock, companies are obligated to make these payments as well.
Unfortunately, the belief that we can pay off increasingly large amounts with depleting resources is just a fairy tale.
The CEO and the board of directors get, and keep, their job if stock prices are satisfactory to the major stock holders. So, one could argue dividends are mandatory for most publicly traded corporations.
“stock.. is not a lot better than debt. It still funnels money to the rentier class.” Exactly! Brilliant! Constant growth is required to pay debts and stock divindends from ever diminishing resources on a limited finite world. And without infinite resources, without constant growth, the global financial system will collapse.
Pretty damn simple, makes you wonder, how come our species wants to believe in winged horses flying to Jerusalem, rather than something simple like that?
I started thinking about the situation, and realized this must be true. It is hard to believe others hadn’t thought about this. Of course, the price of stock goes to zero, as the system fails, just as bonds default.
As far as discoveries go, and the importance of them in the history of science, history of our species, that is the apple that fell on a poor guys head. I´m sorry the evidence will come Post-BAU and therefore acknowledgements on your work will be a bit late. But if its any consolation, some of us realize the importance of your work. Thank you Gail.
Great article Gail.
I keep forgetin to thank YOU just hope we can put off soyent green for a bit
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So… when folks were claiming peak oil was in 2008…like TOD and their editorial staff including you, they LIED!!!
Have you a reference and quote for anyone that claimed peak oil was in 2008 or are you lying. Peak conventional oil was in 2005. Tar sands, fracked, ultra deep offshore, ethanol, loss making propositions leading to double counting of oil production has confused most idiots like yourself.
Right Bandits. It was conjectured that 2005-2006 was peak conventional, but with the price of oil rising there was no certainty how high it could go as non-conventional sources were tapped. But there was a concern back then that the higher cost of non-conventional would have negative knock on effects to the world economy which we are seeing.
That is also my understanding — 2005 was the year….
I think C+C set a new production high in late 2014. We probably won’t see a definitive decline in oil production until the time of financial collapse. Then it will be as you say “fine on Monday, then Katy bar the door on Tuesday”. Binary state on/off. Hot and cold. There’s too much at stake otherwise.
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/C-Cdec141.png
I expect we really need to look at total liquids, rather than C+C, and it seems to be hitting new highs as well. In fact, its production has been very high recently, if we look at EIA numbers. http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=50&pid=53&aid=1&cid=ww,&syid=2011&eyid=2015&freq=M&unit=TBPD
According to it, production amounts for the month of June are as follows:
2011 88.1 million barrels per day
2012 90.0
2013 91.0
2014 93.1
2015 96.2
Annual consumption is shown as follows (E!A): http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=5&aid=2&cid=ww,&syid=2010&eyid=2014&unit=TBPD
2010 88.2 million barrels a day
2011 89.1
2012 90.4
2013 91.2
Thus, annual growth in oil consumption grew by only an average of 1.0 million barrels of oil per day between 2010 and 2013 (the last year for which EIA has data).
Clearly recent production is very high, growing by over 3 million barrels per day in the last year, and 2 million barrels per day the previous year. There is little evidence that the world economic growth has rising recently either, to take up such a large growth in output. Ouch!
I agree with you on the on-off. Countries add to production to try to make up for low prices. This doesn’t work at all. At some point, prices drop too low, and everything stops.
I looked back at some of the posts that I wrote in 2008, and they are a lot more nuanced than what you are talking about.
Peak oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008 I talked about several things that did happen in 2008. At the end, I said
While I expected a big downturn, I didn’t expect the end.
Another post is, The Expected Economic Impact of an Energy Downturn.
This is a post I wouldn’t write today, because it talks about the possibility of demand continuing to rise. (The post was written in March 2008, which was when oil prices were rising rapidly. It is during the time when housing prices were turning down, but this was not recognized as a problem yet.)
The March 2008 post talks about the financial impacts of slower growth–something I continue to write about. I also talk about a credit unwind–something that started to happen in 2008, and looks likely to come back much worse in 2016. I said
Great article Gail. I always enjoy your charts and the research you do and lay it out there in easy to see and read format.
My only question, which I have asked before in one form or another, is how you adjust for the value of the dollar dropping when you create your price v. growth structures. If in 1970 the relative value of the dollar was $6.22 by today’s standards then that same inflation adjusted $20.00 a barrel oil from 1970 would be $124.40 per barrel today. Now of course since wages have not kept up with inflation then the price peak should have fallen sometime back in the 90’s more or less I imagine with those who are reaping the benefits of the declining dollar coming much later than those who do not so creating an uneven economic playing ground if you will.
It just seems to me the inflation rate should play a very prominent part in figuring out how far and how fast we are declining.
Or am I missing something or misunderstanding something? That is always possible as well.
You are looking at this backwards. The price, after companies pay taxes, needs to be $20 dollars per barrel or less now in 2015. The corresponding price in dollars of the day in the 1970s would be very much lower. In !970, the amount was $1.80 per barrel, in currency of the day. The amounts are already inflation adjusted.
According to the website you linked, that has been going on since the late 1940’s. The website posted links referring to Government documents dating back to 1966 and 1978 stating that the US has been involved in weather warfare and climate manipulation.
Slide 23 seems to be the heart of the matter.
Limits to growth IS a better name than peak oil, as you suggest it might be.
The low oil prices consequent on high production from known fields and reserves seem to portend the “cliff scenario” when the down slope of the Hubbert curve is very steep as there is no attempt to manage transition, merely to sell out and financialize., while bankrupting those with less advantageous EROEI. which makes recovery much more difficult
You do have a knack for cutting to the chase, Gail.
ps Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth is beginning to look quite prescient, esp. Ch. 3
Yes, Slide 23 is very important. I used something very similar to it in a presentation I did earlier to a different group, very near the beginning of the presentation.
Many people don’t understand that there are many ways of looking at how we are running into limits. They see one way, and assume that it is the only way. Really, there are many ways we are reaching limits. It turns out that it is the affordability limit that hits first.
The term ‘peak oil’ is still in my opinion the best term because our primary liquid dense energy source is oil, and what we are seeing is the limits of our civilization as diminishing returns decline.
I on the other hand prefer the term “Limits to Growth”. Somehow Peak Oil gives the impression that it´s just a matter of inventing a new technology and off we go, Up, Up and Away.
Limits to growth gives a somewhat better understanding what our growth based, grow or collapse, society is facing in our near term future.
I prefer the term “Limits to Growth” as well. Even this does not describe the full nature of our problem, however. It is really more like overshoot and collapse. Or progressively poorer population cannot afford the output of the economy, so the economy collapses. Return on human labor (with supplemental energy leveraging) falls too low, just as return on fish labor falls too low, before fish population collapses.
“Overshoot and collapse” is there a word or a concept that could illustrate that even better?
What other overshoot and collapse scenarios has the human species endured, so that the nature of the problem could be expressed with as much clarity as possible?
The problem I see, is that only during the last decades has the human race grown to be a giant on a small third rock from the sun. And our language and concepts don´t fully describe the new historical circumstance we are in. We have never been a giant before.
Traditionally fisherman and sheparding allegories have worked, now we should find Play Station allegories, I don´t think they´ll work that well.. Well, overshoot and collapse is probably the best term, because we don´t have the time to teach ourselves new words to adequately describe the situation.
““Overshoot and collapse” is there a word or a concept that could illustrate that even better?”
Seneca Cliff? Wile E. Coyote?
“What other overshoot and collapse scenarios has the human species endured, so that the nature of the problem could be expressed with as much clarity as possible?”
Some versions of history proclaim Easter Island to be a cautionary tale of depletion and collapse. Greece, the Mayans, the Anasazi, that failed attempt at bringing monotheism to Ancient Egypt.
“Traditionally fisherman and sheparding allegories have worked, now we should find Play Station allegories, I don´t think they´ll work that well.. ”
The Atari game system collapse and the truckloads of copies of ET: The Extraterrestrial being buried in the desert is a good cautionary tale about a glut of over production and decline in quality leading to collapse.
I would vote for “Overshoot and Collapse.” Seneca cliff might be a possibility as well.
In a sense, our problem is both “Limits to Growth” and “Peak Oil.” Diminishing returns in oil production is brining on Limits to Growth. Oil production will suddenly start collapsing, as the economy is affected.
Gail, here is a link that determines a dollar’s value comparing different years.
http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1973
You used 1973 as an example so I used that year to see what a dollar in 73 is worth today. The answer is $5.52 (annual inflation 4.15% & total inflation for that period 452.50%)
So if oil was always less than $20 dollars in 1973 dollars, it would be the same in 2015 dollars as always less than $110.40
I’m not saying oil would sell well at 110.40 because we’ve had a lot of diminishing returns on oil since 73, however isn’t it possible that a higher price than $20 in 2015 dollars will still generate a lot of profit. Even the Hill Group has the current price that will generate profit in 2016 on their graphs in the sixties.
You beat me to it and I didn’t see your question/comment until I had put mine in.
My theory I been working on is that while the relative dollar value has decreased so far the actual resources that back said dollar have simply been “redistributed” thereby creating a balanced effect. Another words the cost per barrel of say Gail’s 20 buck maximum hits different segments of the economic food chain differently BUT still averages out as a whole.
The entire thing is confusing because while the dollar’s value drops and workers wages decline the top tier is accumulating more than ever so finding a relative value is hard.
This is a good point that our host should consider, IMO. I think avoiding the $20 number entirely would be smart. Maybe a range would be better since the meat of the argument works whether one says $20, $60, and likely even $80.
But, me thinks (and I would love some instruction), that it doesn’t matter. Here is why:
I didn’t believe the idea that supply and demand doesn’t work for oil, so I drew a few charts rehashing Econ 101 refer to the chart at the beginning of Gails piece. If one leaves off the upper bound on price or if you leave off the upper bound on quantity (ignore the finite nature of the planet) Gails thesis falls apart.
But, put both of them on, everything to the right of the maximum quantity and everything above the maximum price is completely undefined. So, it is the existence of the maximum quantity and maximum price that makes the theory work, not the actual upper bound on price.
Wages don’t go up at the same time as prices. In fact wages of non-elite workers tends to fall, as businesses move production to ever lower-cost areas of the world. This is why the whole supply and demand model fails. We do, in fact, pay each other’s wages, but if non-elite workers are earning less and less, the model falls apart.
With more debt and lower interest rates, we can temporarily kid ourselves that higher prices will work, but ultimately, the approach fails. The model of “Ever-higher prices” is like pulling on a rubber band. It looks like it works for a while. Eventually the rubber band breaks, and the whole model fails. The workers who are supposed to support this model find themselves with too low wages and too much debt. Governments need ever-higher taxes, but they can’t get them from the low-wage workers (and the many without jobs). This is the problem that early civilizations that collapsed encountered. It looks like we are headed in the same direction. An analysis of prior civilizations that collapsed–Secular Cycles by Turchin and Nefedof–found very similar problems to what we are seeing today.
I disagree on the $20. We need a price that is far lower than what we can actually get oil out of the ground for today, and $20 per barrel is that number. Maybe Iraq can get oil to the surface with that number, but even it would have a problem collecting enough taxes with such a low number.
Gail, 1) I agree with you, 2) you are scaring me. When the always doom commentators mention the negative future it is less impact than when you a moderate measured person mention the negative future. Please keep writing the truth as you see it, I think you see it more clearly than most. I just have not reached acceptance yet.
I don’t think any of use can really reach acceptance of the situation.
And there is a lot we don’t know about how the system will unwind.
I think i see. I will do more homework.
I have a lot of other articles. You might read some of them.
I am talking about being able to make oil, and the company making the oil pay high taxes to the government where the oil is extracted, and the company still sell the oil profitably in 2015 for $20 per barrel. The corresponding price in earlier years would be much lower than it is today. Take the $20 per barrel and divide, not multiply, to get the corresponding amount in 1973.
“Take the $20 per barrel and divide, not multiply, to get the corresponding amount in 1973.”
And yet somehow the economy was able to grow in the 1970s and 1980s with an inflation-adjusted price at times over $100. Perhaps this indicates the economy can grow on more expensive oil?
Maybe the problems we are experiencing are from too much financialization, too much borrowing for consumptive use, and too much automation without creating new jobs fast enough to replace the lost ones.
High prices offset by debt increases during that period? Just as high prices were offset with QE ZIRP more recently
With lots and lots of debt, the economy can grow. We are reaching the limits of the debt growth. In fact, the poor return on debt, and the negative interest rates, indicate we have already exceeded debt limits.
New renewables are terrible for generating a lot of debt, also, because such a large share of their cost is capital cost. Shifting toward them is likely to run up debt levels higher.
Ok, so the $20 dollars a barrel from 1973 is in 2015 dollars. That would be good to add to the post. So then we take 20 and divide by 5.52 = $3.62 a barrel. That nudged my memory, that oil sold really super cheap back then. Good God ya all! No wonder we’re in a pickle – we got spoiled on cheap energy slaves.
I still wonder though if 20 isn’t a bit low. Even 40 sets a difficult standard because the cost of exploration/extraction/production keeps rising, so we’re facing endgame anyway regardless if it’s 20,40 or 60.
The number actually comes in less than $20 per barrel, in the 1950 to 1970 period. This is when we put in the interstate highway system and much of the long-distance electricity transmission. We also put in many of the pipelines carrying oil and natural gas. Now, when these systems need repairs, the cost is very high, compared to what we paid for the systems initially. As a result, things don’t get repaired. This is why we have a D+ grade on quite a bit of our infrastructure repairs. Companies wait until a part fails to replace it, rather than having a continuous upgrade e program.
Much of Europe’s infrastructure was built out in the post WW2 period as well.
Lockheed Martin has been working, officially since 2014, on a compact fusion reactor (cusp magnetic confinement D-T reaction) with a very high EROEI that could theoretically produce very cheap energy.
They expect an operating experimental fusion reactor within 5 years and a commercial version within 10 years. The compact fusion reactor is also expected to produce 100 MW of power and fit on a container size truckload. Theoretically it could simply replace the currently hydrocarbon fed heating source of the power stations that currently feed the electrical grid.
Mass production would be easy and cheap. The transition process would take about 30 years or less and the capital cost could be financed from the cheaper electricity that would be produced.
Car transportation would gradually switch to electricity, which would be much cheaper than oil and without nasty gas byproducts . Over time, cheap electricity from the grid would enable the fabrication of synthetic liquid fuel for planes, boats or heavy trucks and machinery.
That is about the best scenario that can be expected from good old Santa at this point In time.
Yet, even in a world of unlimited cheap energy, the limits to growth on planet Earth would, one day not too far In the future, be hit. Humanity will then need to expand into space and its limitless boundaries to find additional resources and virgin territories …
Oh, 5y, 10y, 20y that sure would have been nice news, 20y ago.
Also 20y ago it would have been excellent to have a steady state economic-political-social model, pollution levels under control, ocean fish stocks not collapsing, droughts not emptying the aquifers and a universal education/ entrepreneurship/ birth control program for every young girl and woman in the world.
Alas, we did not have those 20y ago, so, here we are. No space adventures for us.
While in high school, I had the privilege of touring a fusion research lab in Los Alamos, NM. They said, “They expect an operating experimental fusion reactor within 5 years and a commercial version within 10 years. … The transition process would take about 30 years”
That was 43 years ago.
Lockheed is not going to solve the neutron problem ( high energy neutrons turn steel – the casing of the reactor – into crumbling radioactive junk well before it is paid for ). They are not going to solve the problem, because neutrons do what neutrons do it is an immutable physical fact.
“Lockheed is not going to solve the neutron problem ( high energy neutrons turn steel – the casing of the reactor – into crumbling radioactive junk well before it is paid for ). They are not going to solve the problem, because neutrons do what neutrons do it is an immutable physical fact.”
Yeah, I was wondering how they were expecting to have deuterium – tritium fusion in a cargo container. I have not heard of anyone making stable Helium-5. Even if you made the casing disposable and replaced it every few years, you will still need to enclose the reactor in several meters of water on all sides to avoid destroying and killing everything.
‘That was 43 years ago.’
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ That is an outstanding punchline!
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/426203/create_knockout_seo_miami_content.jpg
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/426203/create_knockout_seo_miami_content.jpg
Well said.
Even this is not soon enough, assuming it could actually be done. We have a price problem right now. We need lots and lots of cheap energy, of the types that operates our cars and trucks, as well as electricity. Trying to get from electricity to gasoline/diesel adds a whole additional hurdle to be crossed.
Near Term Human Extinction?
http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/12/12/441334/Humans-global-warming-
Good grief not that again. That’s all SPECULATION !
Here’s one statistic that’s 100% based on fact. All humans will die and to quote a Jimmy Buffett lyric…”in a hundred years this all won’t matter”.
Because none of us will be around to see it.
What the good ex-professor said was perfectly true, and not speculation at all. Paris was a farce. 3 degrees of warming will get us 4 and then 8 because the methane clathrates will melt again – they melt every time the planet warms sufficiently.
Read it again:
It is inconceivable to me that the negotiators would reach an agreement that will prevent completely destroying the planet,” Professor McPherson said.
“I mean we’ve known for a long time based on work published in refereed journals that civilization itself is a heat engine, that if we maintain civilization in any form, whether it is through solar panels, wind turbines or wave powers or fossil fuels, it produces the same effect: the civilization itself is a heat engine,” he stated.
“And I don’t see any negotiators promoting the idea of terminating civilization,” he added.
“We also know now based on abundance of research recently – within last five years or so – on global dimming that if we do suddenly terminate civilization, it will cause such an abrupt heating of the planet as a result of loss global dimming that it will certainly doom humans to extinction,” the scientist said.
I notice the goalpost continue to move upwards to scare the masses. It’s all speculation based on theory. You have the other side claiming it’s all BS and a hoax. Al Gore made millions from selling global warming before it became climate change and now he’s sits in his house running up thousands of dollars a month in electric bills.
Do you think the Arctic melting is a hoax? The last plane to retrieve trekkers from the north pole has ceased to fly. Too risky.
I went to the high arctic on an explorer ship 7 years ago — when I asked about schedules they said they now had two slots for the northwest passage ship because the ice was open for far longer than in the past….
“I won’t be around in 100 years (so I don’t care)” is only applicable if you’re living exclusively for yourself, i.e. no children, no family, no interest in or connection to the progress of humanity.
But you know that.
Life has a 100% mortality rate, it always will and all your earthly possessions someone else gets to keep when it’s time to take a dirt nap.
Well, you’re honest anyway. You don’t care about anything but your own life. Given that stance, you will suffer all the more when economic or climate collapse removes you from your comforts.
Starving feels the same for everyone no?
As I said we all die. There’s NO escaping death. In a hundred years none of us will be alive due to disease or natural causes.
“Life” does not have a 100% mortality rate. To the contrary, it proliferates, diversifies, and finds new niches. “Individual lives” certainly do have a 100% mortality rate. A big difference when one thinks about the consequences of current trends. If ones optic is trained only on oneself, then not much else matters — by definition.
We all INDIVIDUALLY die. If you have figured out how to live past a 150 or a 1,000 years then let us in on your little secret. Until then, life has a 100% mortality rate for each individual.
It is possible (and in fact certain) that whole species disappear as well.
Yes, individuals die.
Yes, species go extinct.
It is also completely true that if humanity had cared to save the 200 or so species that become extinct daily, and if we had started trying to preserve them 50 years ago, we would not be facing extinction ourselves.
During the Permian Extinction nearly everything died – probably because the methane then stored away in the oceans melted and caused runaway heating. That time, the CO2 that caused the problem likely came from volcanos. This time, it is humanity that will cause the extinction of all large ( >~5 OZ ) animals on the planet.
When the volcanoes did it, it was just mindless mechanics. Humans congratulate themselves on having morals, and if in fact we do, then we have committed (are committing) a majorly immoral act.
I don’t see it as it being a moral issue.
We have done what we are programmed to do — procreate — survive — pass Mr DNA onwards.
Where the problem lies is with our intelligence. It has allowed us to push the boundaries out — when our numbers became to great we innovated our way out of the die-off….
The harnessing of fossil fuels was the real killer app….. it allowed us to overcome the Malthusian nightmare… for awhile…
Of course now the nightmare is exponentially more horrific
Malthus suggested that population growth being exponential and food production increasing arithmetically — would result in a massive problem.
Well we are in a situation where we have the exponential population growth BUT — when BAU ends — we will have only a tiny fraction of agricultural land available to produce food — because we have ruined it with petrochemical innovations that allowed us to grow the food to feed 7.5B…
If Malthus were to comment on the situation he sees here he’d be truly horrified….
If the deer put on that arctic island to provide a food source for soldiers stationed there could have figured out a way to innovate and expand their food source so they did not starve and completely die-off… if they had the intelligence of humans to somehow kick the can….
They would have done it too…
Another member has used the analogy of yeast in a cup with sugar…. if they could have worked out a way to produce more sugar…. the cup would be full to the brim with yeast cells multiplying exponentially…
I do not see this as a matter of choice — the cells in our body are no different than those in the deer – or the yeast cup —- they are razor focused on feeding and multiplying — nothing else.
And they cannot be overridden by anything – including our intelligence.
Mr DNA runs the show.
Try not eating. Ask an 18yr old boy not to get excited while in the back seat of the car….
Mr DNA is a dictator.
Our big brains are just one of his tools for getting what he wants…. yet we fool ourselves into believing it’s the other way around.
Extinctions started by humans seem to have started back when we were hunter-gatherers. They picked up when we started to use agriculture. In recent years, when we have been using fossil fuels, they have been higher yet.
Our population has been growing like a cancer on the face of the earth. We are following the pattern of using as much energy as we can to maintain our current system. I don’t see this as a moral issue; it is part of the way a dissipative system works. At some point we reach a limit, just as yeast growing in grape juice, changing it to wine, grow until they reach a limit. Then the process stops, perhaps quite suddenly.
Interesting that the sustainability crowd points to a return to farming as the way forward…. ‘Walden’ as the model….
How amusing that we look back on the pre-hyper industrialization period as the ideal… with such romance… the farmer tending his small plot and feeding his family …. how noble he is…. how dignified he is….
When in reality it is nothing of the sort — such a lifestyle is just as artificial as any other — as unsustainable as any other….
Farming was just one of the steps that got us to where were are — one step towards massive over shoot… towards Facebooking and Twerking…
Farmers cut down most of the trees in Europe…. they used huge amounts of wood in forges to create tools ….. they burned whale oil in their lamps….
The only true state that is sustainable is that of the hunter gatherer.
Don and others — if you truly want to get off the treadmill then why are you not proposing we aim for the hunter gatherer lifestyle?
Surely that is the logical direction we need to pursue if we want to ‘save the planet’
FE,
Jason Godesky in his “30 theses” explains why he thinks that a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyle will be an opportunity to ‘become humans again’, even if it won’t concern more than 10% of the current population:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-godesky-thirty-theses#toc52
I think he’s a little bit optimistic, mainly because he underestimates the damage done to the ecosphere (thereby lowering the carrying capacity level), before and during the collapse phase. He doesn’t factor in the nuclear risk either..
I nevertheless recommend to read it, because there are lots of interesting insights and it’s pleasant (one can easily switch from one thesis to another, ie start with #27 for example, and go ‘back’ to first ones later).
Sefeun
I have said this before, but perhaps it bears repeating for those who continue to make the same mistakes over and over.
Life without metal tools may well be in our distant future. But in order to get to that future, a human couple and their descendants need to survive next year. And while there is a lot of synergism in the world, there is also outright competition for resources. Anyone who walks away from resources today is unlikely to have any descendants alive in the more distant future.
For example, ask yourself why the people at Stinging Frog Farm are working so hard to produce 25,000 dollars of revenue per acre. And the answer is that the land in Sonoma County is some of the most expensive in the world. If they adopted a more leisurely lifestyle and produced only 10,000 dollars of revenue per acre, they probably couldn’t afford the land and the sheriff would take it from them. In 50 years the land may be very cheap, because most of the people who don’t know how to Team With Microbes will have died. Then farming with very simple implements and not working too hard may be an excellent strategy. (Note that Toby Hemenway mentions that Singing Frog Farm is more biologically productive than a nearby patch of wild nature.) Or the descendants may go toward hunting and gathering. If they are like the Native Americans who were in California 500 years ago, they will do a little of both.
To summarize:
*It is always a good idea to let Nature do as much of the work as possible
*It is always necessary to get through next year first
*Keep building skills and new information
*Make decisions based on practicality–not ideology
*Substitute natural pleasures for purchased pleasures
I’m sure I could think of others, but that’s enough Thanks for the link….Don Stewart
Collapse increases quality of life.
We have seen what disastrous effect civilization has had on our quality of life (see thesis #25), but the alternative — collapse — seems little better.
However superior the Paleolithic way of life might have been, it is long gone, and there does not seem to be any way back. For the past ten millennia, that sentiment has been true. But, as we have seen, we are now nearing the limits to our growth, and we are past the point of diminishing returns for our investments in further complexity (see thesis #15). Collapse is now inevitable (see thesis #26) — it is already underway.
Collapse is an economizing process (see thesis #20) that begins when the alternative — continuing civilization — is no longer tolerable. We stand on the brink of collapse. That is a statement that would terrify most people, but it shouldn’t: collapse increases our quality of life.
Our views of collapse are filtered through the lens of literary tragedy. The fall of Rome is our archetype, and it is viewed through the eyes of the aristocracy who lamented the loss of their power, and those who yearned to join the aristocracy in that power. After the sack of Rome, St. Jerome famously opined, “In the one city, the whole world dies.” Or take for another example the famous Old English poem, “The Ruin”
Hmmmm…. I bet you he changes his mind when he sees what the total collapse that is coming means to him…. when his family is starving and cold…. and diseased…. when he sees that this collapse is different — it is eternal…..
In fact I am even more certain this will be an extinction event — we have the spent fuel ponds + the inability to grow food on ruined soil — and the very near certainty that if anyone survives they’ll take down the forests to keep warm, cook food — and power the forges required to provide tools and weapons….
We did it before – we will do it again.
Jason Godesky was only 23 or 24 years old when the Thirty Theses was written. http://appalachian.pbworks.com/w/page/9622547/Jason%20Godesky
I looked through his 30 theses–I thought it was quite well done. I especially liked Thesis 20. Collapse is an economizing process. According to the article
Tainter:
Complex societies, it must be emphasized again, are recent in human history. Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is an economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. To a population that is receiving little return on the cost of supporting complexity, the loss of that complexity brings economic, and perhaps administrative, gains. [140]
Godesky:
In other words, collapse happens precisely because it improves our lives — and it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable. The process of catabolic collapse becomes self-reinforcing, as individuals decide that further complexity is not a worthwhile investment and refuse to make further investments, which makes the prospect even less attractive to other individuals. In the same manner as a “run” on a given company’s stock, the process of catabolic collapse snowballs quickly, until support for a complex society drops so low that that society can no longer be maintained. A “free fall” of lowering complexity follows, until it reaches a level where the marginal returns for it have become favorable again, and people are willing to invest in it again.
How many times have I been berated for not having children — my wife takes the brunt of this deluge of pressure because it’s the women who generally are the most outspoken …
I reckon this is because they are the ones who are usually saddled with the 24 hour brutal slavery known as child rearing.
Karma takes many forms — because we have no children we have seen large swathes of the world (currently in Poland heading Hungary tomorrow —- hmmm… where to next…. never been to Slovakia…)
Our decision not to have kids — which was made primarily because we foresaw that the future would obviously be one of suffering and deprivation
We saw the obvious — that there are already too many people on the planet (in fact when people ask why I don’t have kids I usually say ‘aren’t there already too many people?’)
So another bit of karma is that we don’t have to give a flying &^%$ about what happens after we die. There is no gnashing of teeth …. pulling hair out…. howls of despair…
Please don’t give me this sob story about the poor children — boo hoo the poor children…. oooh the poor children will suffer…. boo hoo (can we get a violin in here!)
Take a look around you — the children are ALREADY suffering — surely the writing was on the wall… THIS is the fate of YOUR children — which you chose to ignore…. (while urging everyone else on to join you in the breeding fest….)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yvd1Yi3z-UU/hqdefault.jpg
And yet the vast majority — in spite of seeing there are already far too many of us rats on the ship — went ahead and joyfully brought more rats onto the ship…. you kootchy kooed the rats … look at the cute rats… how can anyone not have at least one rat….
And they have the gall to accuse me of being some sort of weirdo — a selfish freak! — because I refused to breed….refused to bring more rats onto the ship…
How precious is that now in light of what is imminent….
Boo hoo the poor children — seriously — I really do not give a flying %$#@ about what happens to the children?
If anyone really cared about the poor children they should have used one of these
http://images.latinpost.com/data/images/full/6288/male-condom.jpg
Burn baby burn — I’ll take another month — or another year — or another decade — by whatever means necessary ….
The world can go up in a ball of flames for all I care…. there is nothing worth saving anyway so just run that engine on no oil till it melts down….
Long Live BAU!
Dear Fast Eddy, You are not alone in your tale. I, too, have similar convictions and elected not to begot offspring of my own. This has given me much heart ache and peer pressure stress. Most folks claim the old line, “It’s OK, you can afford them”. My reply was, ” The real issue is can the Planet afford to support more people? Obviously, not” . Of course, that did bode too well and fell on deaf ears. Anyway, I read that in India the programs to stem population increase is largely ineffective, and now China has relented on the one child program. I no longer worry too much approaching 60. After being a reader here for several. years, I have a much different outlook. Now I see all my good causes I took to heart were largely just a waste of time because of not only the nature of the system, but human nature. I would like to think that a transformation, such as, Jiddu Krishnamurti, discussed was possible for humankind…but time has run out…either you change or don’t..still waiting…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RBXWhq9hudo
At the beginning he points out that most do not understand what the speaker is talking about….and may point he spoke for many decades…
Perhaos , like Gail, many really do not understand, oh well, such is life!
I meant to write “like many of Gail’s readers”, sorry.
The big issue for childless couples (and childless singles) is who will help them in their old age. Governments make promises, but can they be depended on? Financial planners say invest in stocks and bonds, but can they be depended on?
Some couples become obsessed with how will the stock market will take care of them, if they don’t have children.
True, Gail, but after being a reader here, need not worry because the outcome is being played out here and now. You mentioned Syria and we can add others to that growing list.
Breeding was also needed because of high child mortality rates and shorter life spans. Needless to say, human labor was needed on the farm.
Also, enlarging the flock was encouraged by religious sects and ethnic groups, there is strength in numbers. I remember reading an account of an enlighted West African leader addressing the Parliament of his nation to warn of the peril his country was facing by the tremendous surge in numbers. He was startled at the end of his speech as the Assembly all rose and applauded, taking this as a sign of well being and “progress”!
The point is joining Zero Population or Greenpeace or Sierra Club ( which advertises cars in their magazine no less!), 350.org, EARTH FIRST!, is futile. Enough said.
We’re been sponsoring (and housing) international school studies for two Asian kids 12 and 14 yrs old … I know that they’d go to the wall for us if necessary….
However there is absolutely no way I see myself living till old age so there will be no need for that — they are very helpful in garden with weed control and other tasks…. 🙂
We have simply reached the new (higher) price level of oil or natural gas. This higher price level means that we still can produce cars, build homes etc., but we can not operate them in such an extent as before, especially as regards heating with natural gas or using gasoline for cars and trucks.
This means that the oil production must go down in the near future, as we do not need so many cars and homes and can not afford so much natural gas and oil for the operation of the built houses and the produced cars and trucks.
All those incentives for home construction (mortgages with low interest rates) or vehicle scrappage schemes etc. only postponed what has finally come: the lack of demand for oil due to the lack of affordability.
With running of the cheap energy and the deteriorating health of the populations, the automation and the robots are the only viable solution for the dying mankind. That is the nature of the implosion: everybody has its own problems, needs help from somebody else, who can not help him/her, because it requires too much energy, he/she needs for himself/herself. That is why we really need robots and automation. More than weaker and weaker offsprings.
The only way to have a chance of saving the current ecosystem and the animals (including humans) that occupy it is to stop emitting CO2 now. Gails scenario does that. It is the only “plan” that I have seen that does it.
Oh no — please don’t stop… burn baby burn …. more lignite coal onto the funeral pyre please….
It’s too late to stop now — all that will do is kill us all off….
Do you want to starve and die?
I don’t.
I volunteer to drive the coal truck…. where do I get started?
Perhaps we need to reframe the message: How the world is saving itself from climate change and further damage to ecological systems.
I don’t really care to discuss this. It is not what my post is about, and I don’t think it is a very balanced discussion of the topic.
Your post was clear, Gail. Please keep writing 🙂
Thanks!
Yes, thank you.
Isn’t “low cost” a bit misleading? It confuses in long term as money do not have stable value. Shouldn’t we rather rephrase to “high & sustainable energy return on capital employed”?
There are two ways to make things:
(1) With human labor
(2) With capital goods, plus supplemental energy to operate the capital goods
The economists talk about paying each others wages. That works, as long as goods are made primarily with human labor.
Once we move into using capital goods, plus supplemental energy, then we start moving more and more of the output of the economy into management of companies. A larger share of the out of the economy must go into debt repayment, and into dividends. The net impact is that the non-elite workers get less of the total output of the economy. Unless the capital goods operated with supplemental energy are truly adding a lot of value, and this value is getting back to workers, we start having a problem in operating the whole economy.
The way I see things is that the return on human labor needs to be adequate. This is equivalent to after-tax wages of non-elite workers being sufficiently high (after deducting required payments, such as health insurance, and debt for educational expenses).
The number one concern has to be that the return on human labor is sufficiently high. If capital goods are going to be used as well, they need to be low cost–little resources used in making them, and little human used in making them. Otherwise, the return on capital goods starts generating such a large number of dollars that it interferes with the return on human labor. You might take a look at my last post: http://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/12/08/economic-growth-how-it-works-how-it-fails-why-wealth-disparity-occurs/
Thanks for the latest article Gail.
Just finishing up a Wolf St article…. as we can see …. this demonstrates how the oil and gas that are in the ground… at some point will remain in the ground….
Carnage in US Natural Gas as Price Falls off the Chart
All eyes are on Chesapeake.
The price of natural gas in the US has gotten completely destroyed.
The process started in July 2008, at over $13 per million Btu and continues through today, at $1.77 per million Btu.
In between, natural gas traded at prices that, for much of the time, didn’t allow drillers to recoup their investments, leading to permanently cash-flow negative operations, and now huge write-offs and losses, defaults, restructurings, and bankruptcies.
You’d think that this sort of financial misery would have caused investors to turn off the spigot, and for production to fall because drillers ran out of money before it got that far.
But no. Over the years, money kept flowing into the industry. In this Fed-designed world of zero interest rate policies, when risks no longer mattered, drillers were able to borrow new money from banks and bondholders and drill that money into the ground, and production soared, and more money poured into the industry based on Wall Street hoopla about this soaring production, and this money too has disappeared.
In the process, the US has become the largest natural gas producer in the world – and the place where the most money ever was destroyed drilling for natural gas.
But now the spigot is being turned off. And much of the industry is heading toward default and bankruptcy.
Granted, the largest producer in the US, Exxon, has apparently bigger problems on its global worry list than the misery in US natural gas. Its stock is down only 25% since June 2014, and its credit rating is still AAA.
But even if it gets downgraded a couple of notches, Exxon can still borrow new money to fund its operations, dividends, and stock buybacks, and service its existing debt.
But the rest of the industry – along with its investors and banks – is sinking deeper into fiasco.
More http://wolfstreet.com/2015/12/18/carnage-in-us-natural-gas-as-price-falls-off-the-chart/
Only phoney baloney money from the FED is keeping the pumps going…I’m sure that’s what they refer to as sustainable development in action! Lol…
Raising interest rates doesn’t really keep the phony money coming as fast though. China’s new plan for 2016 sounds like it could be a problem. http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-2016-economic-plan-sell-unsold-housing-migrant-workers-more-bankruptcies-state-2236027 How is it going to find jobs that pay enough for all of those migrant workers to afford the high-priced housing? How will the bankruptcies work?
It looks like China is bending over backwards to keep people employed, profitability be damned, to avoid civil unrest – but they cannot do this forever:
Longmay has delayed the bulk of the layoffs, cutting only several hundred older workers who held nonessential jobs. Last month, the government of Heilongjiang Province, which owns Longmay, announced a $600 million bailout that would help the company repay its bonds. But analysts see the infusion as short-term relief that will not prevent a reckoning.
The coal industry is hurting nationwide, as coal prices have fallen nearly 60 percent since 2011, said Deng Shun, an analyst at ICIS C1 Energy, a consultancy based in Shanghai. And Longmay, he said, produces far less coal with extra workers than newer, more efficient companies.
“They are quite worried about social unrest, so they delay,” he said. “These layoffs should have happened two years ago.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/china-coal-mining-economy.html?_r=0
When I was in China, I got the impression that they would do their best to keep people employed, regardless of profitability. At this point, the view is probably that this is “just another cycle.” Wait a bit, and things will get better.
The government is very much tied in with the goings on of the economy. I can understand why they would think this ways.
“China has already said it plans to “urbanize” 100 million rural residents by 2020″
That´s pretty fast, even for China.
I just assume the 100 million are somehow linked to rural activites like vegetable etc. growing. Where do we have such excess food production capacity that 100 million can be moved around like chess pieces?
I think that there are already a lot of people from farms who have been displaced by machinery. There has been an attempt to find (low paying) jobs for them in the rural setting. The change is to bring these people to the city. In fact, some may already be in the city, but not be allowed to send their children to schools in the city. These children instead stay on the farm, while parents work in cities, without having the official sanction for living in the city.
I own a book called, China and the 21st Century Crisis by Minqi Li. He shows a chart of China’s Labor force at various points in time. The latest point in time is 2012. The breakdown of the workforce is as follows (in millions):
Agricultural producers 254
Rural Local and Migrant Workers 263
Urban Formal Wage Workers 109
Professional and Technical Workers 47
Party and State Bureaucrats 15
Urban Self-employed 56
Private Enterprise Investors 22
Unemployed 22
Total Economically Active 789
My impression is that some of the “Rural Local and Migrant Workers” might eventually get better status. They might be able to live in cities, and be able to send their children to school in those cities. They might be able to use health care available in those places. This group currently has very little rights now.
It is bizarre. The prices of all kinds of commodities are at record lows. We could almost understand US natural gas prices being low, but natural gas prices are low around the world (not as low as the US, though).
No US natural gas company can be profitable at these prices. Selling natural gas overseas is not profitable at these prices. It is really strange. In fact, there are an awfully lot of commodities whose prices are very low.
The strange price behavior is part of the reason that the problem has to be coming from a slowing world economy. If we had rapid growth in cheap energy consumption, this slowdown wouldn’t be taking place.
And we are told the global economy is still growing…. the scale of the lies is monumental….
Someone must believe the numbers China is putting out. I imaging there are some other optimistic numbers as well.
Gail,
Your new post is simply fantastic. The slides and text combined provide the clearest, easiest to understand explanation of our predicament that I have heard to date. More people need to see this slide show.
Thanks very much! Sometimes it helps to think about a specific question asked by a specific group.
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