There is a standard view of energy and the economy that can briefly be summarized as follows: Economic growth can continue forever; we will learn to use less energy supplies; energy prices will rise; and the world will adapt. My view of how energy and the economy fit together is very different. It is based on the principle of reaching limits in a finite world. Let me explain the issues as I see them.
Twelve Basic Principles of Energy and the Economy
1. Economic models are no longer valid, as we start getting close to limits.
We live in a finite world. Because of this, the extraction of energy resources and of resources in general operates in a way that is not at all intuitive as we approach limits. Economists have put together models of how the economy can be expected to act based on how the economy acts when it is distant from limits. Unfortunately, these economic models are worse than useless as limits approach because modeled relationships no longer hold. For example:
(a) The assumption that oil prices will rise as the cost of extraction rises is not necessarily true. Instead, a finite world creates feedback loops that tend to keep oil prices too low because of its tight inter-connections with wages. We see this happening right now. The Telegraph reported recently, “Oil and gas company debt soars to danger levels to cover shortfall in cash.”
(b) The assumption that greater investment will lead to greater output becomes less and less true, as the easy to extract resources (including oil) become more depleted.
(c) The assumption that higher prices will lead to higher wages no longer holds, as the easy to extract resources (including oil) become more depleted.
(d) The assumption that substitution will be possible when there are shortages becomes less and less appropriate because of interconnections with the rest of the system. Particular problems include the huge investment required for such substitution, impacts on the financial system, and shortages developing simultaneously in many areas (oil, metals such as copper, rare earth metals, and fresh water, for example).
More information is available from my post, Why Standard Economic Models Don’t Work–Our Economy is a Network.
2. Energy and other physical resources are integral to the economy.
In order to make any type of goods suitable for human use, it takes resources of various sorts (often soil, water, wood, stones, metals, and/or petrochemicals), plus one or more forms of energy (human energy, animal energy, wind power, energy from flowing water, solar energy, burned wood or fossil fuels, and/or electricity).
Figure 1. Energy of various types is used to transform raw materials (that is resources) into finished products.
3. As we approach limits, diminishing returns leads to growing inefficiency in production, rather than growing efficiency.
As we use resources of any sort, we use the easiest (and cheapest) to extract first. This leads to a situation of diminishing returns. In other words, as more resources are extracted, extraction becomes increasingly expensive in terms of resources required, including human and other energy requirements. These diminishing returns do not diminish in a continuous slow way. Instead, there tends to be a steep rise in costs after a long period of slowly increasing costs, as limits are approached.
Figure 2. The way we would expect the cost of the extraction of energy supplies to rise, as finite supplies deplete.
One example of such steeply rising costs is the sharply rising cost of oil extraction since 2000 (about 12% per year for “upstream costs”). Another is the steep rise in costs that occurs when a community finds it must use desalination to obtain fresh water because deeper wells no longer work. Another example involves metals extraction. As the quality of the metal ore drops, the amount of waste material rises slowly at first, and then rapidly escalates as metal concentrations approaches 0%, as in Figure 2.
The sharp shift in the cost of extraction wreaks havoc with economic models based on a long period of very slowly rising costs. In a period of slowly rising costs, technological advances can easily offset the underlying rise in extraction costs, leading to falling total costs. Once limits are approached, technological advances can no longer completely offset underlying cost increases. The inflation-adjusted cost of extraction starts rising. The economy, in effect, starts becoming less and less efficient. This is in sharp contrast to lower costs and thus apparently greater efficiency experienced in earlier periods.
4. Energy consumption is integral to “holding our own” against other species.
All species reproduce in greater numbers than need to replace their parents. Natural selection determines which ones survive. Humans are part of this competition as well.
In the past 100,000 years, humans have been able to “win” this competition by harnessing external energy of various types–first burned biomass to cook food and keep warm, later trained dogs to help in hunting. The amount of energy harnessed by humans has grown over the years. The types of energy harnessed include human slaves, energy from animals of various sorts, solar energy, wind energy, water energy, burned wood and fossil fuels, and electricity from various sources.
Human population has soared, especially since the time fossil fuels began to be used, about 1800.
Figure 3. World population based on data from “Atlas of World History,” McEvedy and Jones, Penguin Reference Books, 1978 and Wikipedia-World Population.
Even now, human population continues to grow (Figure 4), although the percentage rate of growth has slowed.
Figure 4. World population split between US, EU-27, and Japan, and the Rest of the World.
Because the world is finite, the greater use of resources by humans leads to lesser availability of resources by other species. There is evidence that the Sixth Mass Extinction of species started back in the days of hunter-gatherers, as their ability to use of fire to burn biomass and ability to train dogs to assist them in the hunt for food gave them an advantage over other species.
Also, because of the tight coupling of human population with growing energy consumption historically, even back to hunter-gatherer days, it is doubtful that decoupling of energy consumption and population growth can fully take place. Energy consumption is needed for such diverse tasks as growing food, producing fresh water, controlling microbes, and transporting goods.
5. We depend on a fragile self-organized economy that cannot be easily replaced.
Individual humans acting on their own have very limited ability to extract and control resources, including energy resources. The only way such control can happen is through a self-organized economy that allows people, businesses, and governments to work together on common endeavors. Development of a self-organized economy started very early, as bands of hunter-gatherers learned to work together, perhaps over shared meals of cooked food. More complex economies grew up as additional functions were added. These economies have gradually merged together to form the huge international economy we have today, including international trade and international finance.
This networked economy has a tendency to grow, in part because human population tends to grow (Item 4 above), and in part because greater complexity is required to solve problems, as an economy grows. This networked economy gradually adds more businesses and consumers, each one making choices based on prices and regulations in place at the particular time.
Figure 5. Dome constructed using Leonardo Sticks
This networked economy is fragile. It can grow, but it cannot easily shrink, because the economy is constantly optimized for the circumstances at the time. As new products are developed (such as cars), support for prior approaches (such as horses, buggies and buggy whips) disappears. Systems designed for the current level of usage, such as oil pipelines or Internet infrastructure, cannot easily be changed to accommodate a much lower level of usage. This is the reason why the economy is illustrated as interconnected but hollow inside.
Another reason that the economy cannot shrink is because of the large amount of debt in place. If the economy shrinks, the number of debt defaults will soar, and many banks and insurance companies will find themselves in financial difficulty. Lack of banking and insurance services will adversely affect both local and international trade.
6. Limits of a finite world exert many pressures simultaneously on an economy.
There are a number of ways an economy can reach a situation of inadequate resources for its population. While all of these may not happen at once, the combination makes the result worse than it otherwise would be.
a. Diminishing returns (that is, rising production costs as depletion sets in) for resources such as fresh water, metals, and fossil fuels.
b. Declining soil quality due to erosion, loss of mineral content, or increased soil salinity due to poor irrigation practices.
c. Rising population relative to the amount of arable land, fresh water, forest resources, mineral resources, and other resources available.
d. A need to use an increasing share of resources to combat pollution, related to resource extraction and use.
e. A need to use an increasing share of resources to maintain built infrastructure, such as roads, pipelines, electric grids, and schools.
f. A need to use an increasing share of resources to support government activities to support an increasingly complex society.
g. Declining availability of food that is traditionally hunted (such as fish, monkeys, and elephants), because an increase in human population leads to over-hunting and loss of habitat for other species.
7. Our current problems are worryingly similar to the problems experienced by earlier civilizations before they collapsed.
In the past, there have been civilizations that were confined to a limited area that grew for a while, and then collapsed once resource availability declined or population outgrew resources. Such issues led to a situation of diminishing returns, similar to the problems we are experiencing today. We know from studies of these prior civilizations how diminishing returns manifested themselves. These include:
(a) Reduced job availability and lower wages, especially for new workers joining the workforce.
(b) Spiking food costs.
(c) Growing demands on governments for services, because of (a) and (b).
(d) Greater disparities in wealth, as newer workers find it hard to get good-paying jobs.
(e) Declining ability of governments to collect sufficient taxes from common workers who are producing less and less (because of diminishing returns) and because of this, receiving lower wages.
(f) Increased reliance on debt.
(g) Increased likelihood of resource wars, as a group with inadequate resources tries to take resources from other groups.
(h) Eventual population decline. This occurred for two reasons: As wages dropped and needed taxes rose, workers found it increasingly difficult to obtain an adequate diet. As a result, they become more susceptible to epidemics and diseases. Greater involvement in resource wars also led to higher death rates.
When collapse came, it did not come all at once. Rather a long period of growth was succeeded by a period of stagnation, before a crisis period of several years took place.
Figure 6. Shape of typical Secular Cycle, based on work of Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov in Secular Cycles.
We began an economic growth cycle back when we began using fossil fuels to a significant extent, starting about 1800. We began a stagflation period, at least in the industrialized economies, when oil prices began to spike in the 1970s. Less industrialized countries have been able to continue growth their growth pattern longer. Our situation is likely to differ from that of early civilizations, because early civilizations were not dependent on fossil fuels. Pre-collapse skills tended to be useful post-collapse, because there was no real change in energy sources. Loss of fossil fuels would considerably change the dynamic of the outcome, because most jobs would become obsolete.
Most models put together by economists assume that the conditions of the growth period, or the growth plus stagflation period, will continue forever. Such models miss turning points.
8. Modeling underlying the book Limits to Growth shows why depletion can be expected to lead to declining economic growth. It also shows why extracting all of the resources that seem to be available is likely to be impossible.
We also know from the analysis underlying the book The Limits to Growth (by Donella Meadows and others, published in 1972) that growing demand for resources because of Items listed as 6a to 6g above will take an increasingly large share of resources produced. This dynamic makes it very difficult to produce enough additional resources so that economic growth can continue. The authors report that the behavior mode of the modeled system is overshoot and collapse.
The 1972 analysis does not model the financial system, including debt and the repayment of debt with interest. The closest it comes to economic modeling is modeling industrial capital, which it describes as factories, machines, and other physical “stuff” needed to extract resources and produce goods. It finds that inability to produce enough industrial capital is likely to be a bottleneck far before resources in the ground are exhausted.
As an example in today’s world, there seems to be a huge amount of very heavy oil that can be steamed out of the ground in many places including Canada and Venezuela. (The existence of such heavy oil is one reason the ratio of oil reserves to oil production is high.) To actually get this oil out of the ground quickly would require a huge physical investment in a very short time frame. As a practical matter, we cannot ramp up all of the physical infrastructure needed (pipelines, steaming equipment, refining equipment) without badly cutting into the resources needed to “grow” the rest of the economy. A similar problem is likely to exist if we try to ramp up world oil and gas supply using fracking.
9. Our real concern should be collapse caused by reaching limits in many ways, not the slow decline reflected in a Hubbert Curve.
One reason for being concerned about collapse is the similarity of the problems our current economy is experiencing to those of prior economies that collapsed, as discussed in Item 7. Another reason for this concern is based on the observation from physics that an economy is a dissipative structure, just as a hurricanes is, and just as a human being is. Such dissipative structures have a finite lifetime.
Concern about future collapse is very different from concern that one or another resource will decline in a symmetric Hubbert curve. The view that resources such as oil will gradually decrease in availability once 50% of the resources have been extracted reflects a best-case scenario, where a perfect replacement (both cheap and abundant) replaces the item that is depleting, so that the economy is not affected. Hubbert illustrated the kind of situation he was envisioning with the following graphic:
Figure 7. Figure from Hubbert’s 1956 paper, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.
10. There is a tight link between both oil consumption and total energy consumption and world economic growth.
This tight link is evident from historical data:
Figure 8. Comparison of three-year average growth in world real GDP (based on USDA values in 2005$), oil supply and energy supply. Oil and energy supply are from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2014.
The link between energy and the economy comes both from the supply side and the demand side.
With respect to supply, it takes energy of many types to make goods and services of all types. This is discussed in Item 2 above.
With respect to demand,
(a) People who earn good wages (indirectly through the making of goods and services with energy products) can afford to buy products using energy.
(b) Because consumers pay taxes and buy goods and services, growth in demand from adequate wages flows through to governments and businesses as well.
(c) Higher wages enable higher debt, and higher debt also acts to increase demand.
(d) Increased demand increases the price of the resources needed to make the product with higher demand, making more of such resources economic to extract.
11. We need a growing supply of cheap energy to maintain economic growth.
This can be seen several ways.
(a) Today, all countries compete in a world economy. If a country’s economy uses an expensive source of energy (say high-priced oil or renewables) it must compete with other countries that use cheaper fuel sources (such as coal). The high price of energy puts the country with high-cost energy at a severe competitive disadvantage, pushing the economy toward economic contraction.
(b) Part of the world’s energy consumption comes from “free” energy from the sun. This solar energy is not evenly distributed: the warm areas of the world get considerably more than the cold areas of the world. The cold areas of the world are forced to compensate for this lack of free solar energy by building more substantial buildings and heating them more. They are also more inclined to use “closed in” transportation vehicles that are more costly than say, walking or using a bicycle.
Back in pre-fossil fuel days, the warm areas of the world predominated in economic development. The cold areas of the world “surged ahead” when their own forests ran short of the wood needed to provide the heat-energy they needed, and they learned to use coal instead. The knowledge they gained about using coal for home-heating quickly transferred to the ability to use coal to provide heat for industrial purposes. Since the warm areas of the world were not yet industrialized, the coal-using countries of the North were able to surge ahead economically. The advantage of the cold industrialized countries grew as they learned to use oil and natural gas. But once oil and natural gas became expensive, and industrialization spread around the world, the warm countries regained their advantage.
(c) Wages, (non-human) energy costs, and financing costs are all major contributors to the cost of producing goods and services. When energy costs rise, the rise in energy costs puts pressure both on wages and on interest rates (since interest rates determine financing costs), because businesses need to keep the total cost of goods and services close to “flat,” if consumers are to afford them. This occurs because wages do not rise as energy prices rise. In fact, pressure to keep the total cost of goods low creates pressure to reduce wages when oil prices are high (perhaps by sending manufacturing to a lower-cost country), just as it adds pressure to keep interest rates low.
(d) If we look at historical US data, wages have tended to rise strongly (in inflation-adjusted terms) when oil prices were less than $40 to $50 barrel, but have tended to stagnate above that oil price range.
Figure 9. Average wages in 2012$ compared to Brent oil price, also in 2012$. Average wages are total wages based on BEA data adjusted by the CPI-Urban, divided total population. Thus, they reflect changes in the proportion of population employed as well as wage levels.
12. Oil prices that are too low for producers should be a serious concern. Such low prices occur because oil becomes unaffordable. In the language of economists, oil demand drops too low.
A common belief is that our concern should be oil prices that are too high, and thus strangle the economy. A much bigger concern should be that oil prices will fall too low, discouraging investment. Such low oil prices also encourage civil unrest in oil exporting nations, because the governments of these nations depend on tax revenue that is available when oil prices are high to balance their budgets.
It can easily be seen that high oil prices strangle the economies of oil importers. The salaries of consumers go “less far” in buying basics such as food (which is raised and transported using oil) and transportation to work. Higher costs for basics causes consumers cut back on discretionary expenditures, such as buying new more expensive homes, buying new cars, and going out to restaurants. These cutbacks by consumers lead to job layoffs in discretionary sectors and to falling home prices. Debt defaults are likely to rise as well, because laid-off workers have difficulty paying their loans. Our experience in the 2007-2009 period shows that these impacts quickly lead to severe recession and a drop in oil prices.
The issue we are now seeing is the reverse–too low oil prices for oil producers, including oil exporters. These low oil prices are contributing to the unrest we see in the Middle East. Low oil prices also contribute to Russia’s belligerence, since it needs high oil revenues to maintain its budget.
Conclusion
We seem now to be at risk in many ways of entering into the collapse scenario experienced by many civilizations before us.
One of areas of risk is that interest rates will rise, as the Quantitative Easing and Zero Interest Rate Policies held in place since 2008 erode. These ultra-low interest rates are needed to keep products affordable, since the high cost of oil (relative to consumer salaries) has not really gone away.
Another area of risk is an increase in debt defaults. One example occurs when student loan borrowers find it impossible to repay these loans on their meager wages. Another example is China with the financing of its big recent expansion by debt. A third example is the possibility that businesses extracting resources will find it impossible to repay loans with today’s (relatively) low commodity prices.
Another area of risk is natural disasters. It takes surpluses to deal with these disasters. As we reach limits, it becomes harder to mitigate the effects of a major hurricane or earthquake.
Clearly loss of oil production because of conflict in the Middle East or in other oil producing countries is a concern.
This list is by no means exhaustive. Many economies are “near the edge” now. Recent news is that Germany has slipped into recession as well as Japan. One economy failing is likely to pull others with it.
Pingback: Energy and the Economy – Twelve Basic Principles | Doomstead Diner
I was for a long time of the opinion that climate change was too slow of a process to matter much. But California and lake Mead has my attention. Just check this out:
http://lakemead.water-data.com/
Today outflow dropped to 7865 cfs, an all time low. It might be an abnormality. We’ll see.
The man made lake has dropped 140ft from its all time high to its current level of 1080ft. Apparently this is a level at which cavitation may set in and air bubbles forming on the low pressure side of the turbine. New wide head bucket designs should help with this, but Scripps has predicted that the station may stop generating power by 2017 (50% chance).
California needs a turnaround in its precip within 3 years or trees will start dying there will be serious consequences. Should this happen there will probaby be migration away from the state.
The situation is pretty bad as it is, but we can only guess what happens if it gets worse.
I posted a peak finances comment over an article invoking this imagined petroeuro at cuebadebate.cu, and guess what? Deleted
Even Cubans are reluctant upon the end of capitalism. As expected, the Party doesn’t advocate a general awakening. Perhaps they’ll get their iron age, not sure I’ll be around
Christian
Interesting! If global capitalism requires total mental compliance and represses information and debate, the Cuban power structure is the same, is it not? It has always struck me as just an oppressive society as ours, reading between the lines of what is written by those who are in favour of it. Not the naked oppression of police-boot-in-your face capitalism,(see Spain now) but just as depressing.
Best you hurry… I see there is a triple header of Dancing with the Stars starting in 15 minutes…. just enough time to order in a family sized pizza and cola for yourself!
An intellectual published an excelent piece on sadness in the local newspaper. It was generally apreciated. Good to see many people are awake and brave enough
Recently Argentina defaulted again. I have read an article in Slovak (http://nazory.pravda.sk/analyzy-a-postrehy/clanok/325864-nie-je-krach-ako-krach/) that mentions that Argentina counts among the serial defaulters, 9 of 10 of such serious defaulters is situated in South America.
Isnt there a connection between low coal deposits and the occurence of these defaulters especially in South America? (It is a fact that South America is the poorest continent as regards the coal deposits. And there is no industry without the coal that started and feeds the existence of the industry.)
I am not sure about the connection to oil and natural gas. The connection to coal seems to me the most obvious, as Argentina imported coal from Great Britain before starting its own oil extraction and thus became one of the first countries that started to use the oil as an important energy source.
I meant “serial defaulters”, obviously…
Yes, it looks like we are becoming serial defaulters, wich of course we don’t care as long as it helps us keeping our own little hamster running
Never had coal here, oil and gas but national extraction is going down. HC imports killed the external trade balance a couple of years ago and now it’s just the holding on game
Childish behavior is another sad feature of the limits
Carolina, former teacher of mine at the university got elected to the national congress last year (as I’ve told you), but resigned 10 days ago. It happens once per decade, she shooted down her political capital all at once. She was enrolled at the heading party, but her academic and social credentials (the first woman attaining the first chair in an argentinean university, which happens to be the oldest in the continent) impressed nobody at the congress, where she was expected just to pass other people’s laws.
Some voices suggest this situation added to the fact she had got a boyfriend many years younger, which she missed in Buenos Aires. I’m not sure but he is a phycisist, an astronomer or a system analyst, so they get properly the entropic point.
We distanced many years ago upon her subordination -I am affraid it was- to Kirchner’s establishment and my departure from the university. Carolina is a wonderful person indeed. Two months ago I remarked she had been out of the media since the election and sent her a friendly mail. She replied immediatly and told me in Buenos Aires she found “many impossibilites and horrible people”. Now she’s back as a professor, and her ex husband is the actual chairman of the university (he succeeded her -and her first husband is prominent there too- theese people are amazing). Yesterday I proposed her to print a collection of books on low tech, perhaps under a provincial historical standpoint/cover. Dont know if it’d be useful, know limits are too close. Besides, the university is no longer her litlle kingdom. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Christian
Just as in Spain, members of Congress, etc, -whether Right of Left – exist just to rubber-stamp the laws introduced by their bosses: intelligence neither required nor appreciated. A lack of conscience and appreciation of brown envelopes is much more highly esteemed….
Xabier
I have a friend whose brother was personal secretary of a national minister many years ago. Money came by itself. He received say once a week some enveloppe containing say the amount of his salary and another enveloppe, thicker of course, addressed to the minister. This was intended just to bring real buissenes proposals for the minister
Christian
Brown envelopes, the most welcome sight in the world. I just heard this about Beppe Grillo, the supposed Italian protest leader: he’s well known for attacking political corruption, but the cousin of an Italian friend assures him that when Grillo was booked to perform his comedy act at the theatre he manages, Grillo stipulated payment in cash, or no show. And his fees are very large indeed. Some Revolution he had planned……..
How amusing …
What was the fall out from the Rajoy corruption case? I assume nothing…
Paul
It rumbles on, but it won’t be a game-changing issue in Spanish politics as some naively hoped. No government will fall on corruption. After all, nearly everyone has taken money in brown envelopes: as an Italian friend says, people just learn about the magnitude of it and think ‘I wish I could get a piece of that !’
An interesting attempt is now being made to tar the Catalan independence leader Mas with the corruption brush (not that I think he really seeks independence), to no avail I’m sure.
There’s a good English-language blog on Spain ‘Raging Bullshit’, better than most official foreign correspondents in the British press.
Yes I have seen that blog copied onto testoteronepit.com
Over at peak oil dot com they have a discussion going on regarding the link below. The article suggests an impending oil price spike, but I differ in opinion per the pasted post (using my other moniker Perk Earl) below:
http://peakoil.com/business/oil-super-spike-is-coming/comment-page-1#comment-99302
Perk Earl on Wed, 20th Aug 2014 1:56 pm
“From the heady days of mid-2008 when it traded at nearly $150 a barrel, crude oil has had quite a rocky ride. After sliding down to the $30s and rallying back around $120, crude has settled in around the $90 to $110 range for the past two years.”
Forgetting about the drop into the 30′s because that was the result of short term panic selling of stocks and commodities, the price of oil once it hit 147, then later settled in the 120′s, then 110′s and Brent is now fairly close to 100.
In reasoning why there has been this trending down in oil price has a few options:
A. Fewer speculators
B. Greater supply
C. Demand destruction
I opt primarily for C, with the view that oil’s relatively high oil price (compared to the 90′s) is deflating the world economy over time into states of less capability to purchase oil (due to stagnant wages against higher consumer costs), and as this downward pressure is applied, we will keep trailing down to lower oil prices. This would suggest we are being separated from a basic resource we need to fuel our economy. A Liebig’s Law of the minimum declining.
The article would suggest we are headed for a price spike, and that could temporarily occur, but the long trend I suggest is proven by the above historical oil price decline. Unfortunately as this continues high cost marginal plays will go offline, reducing current and future supply.
My bet is with low oil prices, as I have said before. Low prices cut of production wreak havoc on oil exporting countries and cause independent producers to cut back on new extraction. We get hit two ways: (1) high cost marginal plays and (2) rapidly dropping exports from unstable countries.
That is why I believe it will be a jagged demand vs. price graph, with lots of seesawing. There will be a sharp series of higher highs and lower lows until demand destruction is final.
The series of highs and lows only lasts until the “system breaks.” This is long before “demand destruction is final”.
Paul or others,
rumours says that a lot of people in the US lives on food stamps. Can you point me to facts about this?
Silent misery: Actual US unemployment 37.2%, record number of households on food stamps in 2013
http://rt.com/business/us-unemployment-economy-crisis-assistance-006/
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/record-20-households-food-stamps-2013
About 47% of Americans according to the most recent data.
Correction: 47 million Americans. About 15%.
Pulitzer Prize Winner: Obama Is “The Greatest Enemy Of Press Freedom In A Generation”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-19/pulitzer-prize-winner-obama-greatest-enemy-press-freedom-generation
Bush – Obama – Bush – Obama… I can’t tell the difference.
Don’t forget the Clinton twins.
Or the “Tequila Twins” (Bush Daughters).
Anything is possible in late stage capitalism.
I’ve been mulling over some ideas about peak oil – how’s this for a new kind of definition:
Peak oil is maximum finite resource extraction, relative to economic capability to utilize.
And how about this bit of conjecture:
Collapse is occurring in stages.
1st – Plateau initiation; May, 2005
2nd – 2008 oil price hits wall of 147, drops into 30’s, economy in deep recession
3rd – Period of stimulus to support higher priced oil, flat economy, 2005-2014
4th – Oil price below majors capex break even point, 2013
5th – Oil price dropping instead of rising due to stagnant wages against higher costs
6th – Selling QE bonds in early 2015 raises interest rates, initiating recession in US
7th – Stocks and commodities like oil continue to drop in price, 2015-2016
8th – Price of oil drops below break even point for high priced marginal plays, like tar sands, Arctic and tight oil, reducing existing and future supply, 2016-2017
9th – Federal social programs drastically scaled back due to reduced tax revenue 2017-2018
10th Descent from peak oil @ 2-4% per year, 2018…
Some of those future year estimates could be a year or two off.
Time frame looks reasonable.
I would add another level – 2001 – oil was well before 20 bucks for the most part in the years preceding (12 bucks in 98 i think) — it really starts to ramp in 2001 … that’s when the easy money started and interest rate cuts… sort of like the first inning — and the beginning of the end
6th – Selling QE bonds in early 2015 raises interest rates, initiating recession in US —– not sure if that will happen — the central banks know that rising interest rates sinks everyone’s ship…
Stilgar, this looks pretty reasonable to me. I would calculate in one more major oil price spike sometime between 2015 and 2017. Sort of a last gasp of the economy to respond to pricing signals. It will be short-lived.
The oil spike would rise sharply from, say $90/b, to $250/b before plunging down again to below $90 (or some such).
How about plunging down to $30 or $15, or some such? We need a lot of (increasing) debt to hold up $90 barrel price.
We may have another price spike. If it happens, I agree it will be short-lived.
Gail, I have to disagree with this, as the world needs a growing or at the very least a stable supply of crude to keep from collapse. So whatever measures are necessary to get the higher priced oil out of the ground in the short term will happen. The alternative is collapse.
Another spike and constant higher prices for long enough to get the investment into the oil sands is likely, irrespective of the other damage to economies. “Growth” will be seen in substitution to electric vehicles of some type, battery development etc. At the same time the real economy will be going into reverse as CPI numbers are manipulated to hide the real costs to the economies of high energy prices, ZIRP and printing presses will continue.
More and more people will start to wake up to what is happening, but it wont matter. More people will be targeted as terrorists and such to keep them from spreading the story. Sites like this will be closed as being subversive and hindering prosperity that becomes more godlike. Capitalism at all costs will be the mantra as long as the system can be held together, no matter how much sticky tape is necessary.
It will not surprise me to see high costs of oil hidden by wars in the mid-east and elsewhere, with the politicians blaming someone else for the high prices and the effects on the economy.
Of course, at some point , the sticky tape will fail and real collapse will be underway. I just don’t think we are quite there yet, there are still some games to be played.
The question is how long the current system can be made to work, as attempts are made to support higher oil prices. But without enough good-paying jobs, and without enough people with the ability to borrow money to buy cars and houses, it will be hard to keep the system together.
Governments are among the most vulnerable parts of the system. If they fail, we have a major problem.
I use 2020 because it is a round number and a conservative number. No surprise if it is sooner.
Gail : Just an excellent article. What your several guests have unintentionally shown is that the current 600 year old World Banking /Finance System is obsolete. It cannot deal with a reduction in growth because the offsetting debt money that was used to create the growth in the first place still exists in the money/power centers.of the world..Nobody wants to write it off !!!!!!
Even if institutions do write debt off, we really need a continued growth in debt to keep powering the growth that keeps the world economy expanding. Unfortunately, everything I can see says that debt (and in fact, growing debt) is necessary to keep an industrial economy from collapsing. It is not the “fault” of the World Banking/Finance System. We unfortunately have to have this function provided in some way, to get the “front-ending” profits needed to allow extraction of fossil fuels and building of other energy systems. Debt also allows consumers to buy energy-using products. Without these, the whole system fails.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140819094055.htm
Economists: Shale oil ‘dividend’ could pay for smaller carbon footprint
From the Telegraph:
“We can terraform Mars for the same cost as mitigating climate change. Which would you rather?”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100027947/would-you-prefer-to-mitigate-climate-change-or-terraform-mars/
Nobody on Earth has ever terraformed any planet yet, so the idea is just a theory that has never been proved in practice. It certainly shows the boundless, if misplaced, self-confidence of the human race.
Thanks for the link — I couldn’t read past the first couple of paragraphs… utterly utterly ridiculous…
The DT gets this week’s Laughing Stock of the MSM this week — and let’s remind everyone of last week’s winner:
CNN — which stated that Hong Kong is a city in Brazil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXJiTeUeM0c
The MSM is a joke.
Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11
By Prof. James Petras
Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military.
The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?
The task of imperial rulers is to fabricate a world in which the enemy to be attacked (an emerging imperial power like Japan) is portrayed as an ‘invader’ or an ‘aggressor’ in the case of revolutionary movements (Korean and Indo-Chinese communists) engaged in a civil war against an imperial client ruler or a ‘terrorist conspiracy’ linked to an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial Islamic movements and secular states. Imperialist-democracies in the past did not need to consult or secure mass support for their expansionist wars; they relied on volunteer armies, mercenaries and colonial subjects led and directed by colonial officers. Only with the confluence of imperialism, electoral politics and total war did the need arise to secure not only consent, but also enthusiasm, to facilitate mass recruitment and obligatory conscription.
Since all US imperial wars are fought ‘overseas’ – far from any immediate threats, attacks or invasions – -US imperial rulers have the special task of making the ‘causus bellicus’ immediate, ‘dramatic’ and self-righteously ‘defensive’.
To this end US Presidents have created circumstances, fabricated incidents and acted in complicity with their enemies, to incite the bellicose temperament of the masses in favor of war.
The pretext for wars are acts of provocation which set in motion a series of counter-moves by the enemy, which are then used to justify an imperial mass military mobilization leading to and legitimizing war.
State ‘provocations’ require uniform mass media complicity in the lead-up to open warfare: Namely the portrayal of the imperial country as a victim of its own over-trusting innocence and good intentions. All four major US imperial wars over the past 67 years resorted to a provocation, a pretext, and systematic, high intensity mass media propaganda to mobilize the masses for war. An army of academics, journalists, mass media pundits and experts ‘soften up’ the public in preparation for war through demonological writing and commentary: Each and every aspect of the forthcoming military target is described as totally evil – hence ‘totalitarian’ – in which even the most benign policy is linked to demonic ends of the regime.
Since the ‘enemy to be’ lacks any saving graces and worst, since the ‘totalitarian state’ controls everything and everybody, no process of internal reform or change is possible. Hence the defeat of ‘total evil’ can only take place through ‘total war’. The targeted state and people must be destroyed in order to be redeemed. In a word, the imperial democracy must regiment and convert itself into a military juggernaut based on mass complicity with imperial war crimes. The war against ‘totalitarianism’ becomes the vehicle for total state control for an imperial war.
In the case of the US-Japanese war, the US-Korean war, the US-Indochinese war and the post-September 11 war against an independent secular nationalist regime (Iraq) and the Islamic Afghan republic, the Executive branch (with the uniform support of the mass media and congress) provoked a hostile response from its target and fabricated a pretext as a basis for mass mobilization for prolonged and bloody wars.
More http://www.globalresearch.ca/provocations-as-pretexts-for-imperial-war-from-pearl-harbor-to-9-11/9063
True; still, the Romans always tried to manoeuvre their target enemy into a position where they could be said to ‘deserve’ invasion and merited punishment. Something to do with not angering the gods through initiating unjust war, etc. Old, old story…..
Other than kill native Americans the first time the federal government bombed a sovereign state was the bombing of fort Sumter in South Carolina in 1861. It has been non-stop ever since.
James Cameron: Only Veganism Can Save Us Now http://www.mfablog.org/2014/08/james-cameron-only-veganism-can-save-us-now.html
And moving to New Zealand and buying lots of farmland and taking out citizenship 🙂
Perhaps better than my politician neighbours
Sorry Cameron – veganism is good, but it will not save us from our destiny.
Veganism is awful! It’s not natural for humans. And it tastes bad. (my opinion only, of course!)
Lizzy wrote:
“Veganism is awful! It’s not natural for humans. And it tastes bad. (my opinion only, of course!)”
Awful? Not natural for humans? Tastes bad? Everyone are entitled to opinions, but this is just too dumb – are you for real?
Humans are omnivores. We have fangs and molars both and a stomach that is evolved for both. What is dumb is professing that an all-vegetable diet is for real, or that only eating meat is good. The body needs a ratio of proteins, carbohydrates and animal fats to stay healthy.
InAlaska wrote:
“The body needs a ratio of proteins, carbohydrates and animal fats to stay healthy.”
Tell that to all the people living without eating animal fats for all their life.
Pretty good analysis Gail.
The tragedy is that nuclear power is poised, and could easily – certainly at less cost than failing to meet non – existent climate change – replace directly – over a reasonable period of 2-3 decades – the majority of fossil fuel usage. And is known to be the most cost effective way of reducing carbon emissions bar none (apart from killing half the world population, which Ebola might do anyway)
Its use is mandatory to preserve or extend the stagflation period. And it might just be enough to if not get economies back on a growth model, preserve a flattish scenario almost indefinitely.
However its political acceptance requires a population that is capable of understanding rational risk assessment. Or a non democratic givernment. So its seems unlikeley that the West will adopt it, preferring to go down into poverty and green neo feudalism rather than do what the chinese and Indian and other second world places are doing.
Someone somewhere remarked that nothing is more dangerous than a half-educated man – someone who knows enough to think they know it all, but not enough to realise they really don’t, and never can.
WE seem to have bred an entire generation of ’em…;-)
exxon say the future of fossil fuel back in the 60s… they intended to switch over to nukes, butthey ran into hollywood, three mile island and chernobyl
they gave up on nukes, started supporting the AEI and lord knows where this idea for a new pearl harbor came from
anyhow, here’s a timeline… here’s how exxon got hooked up with the israeli americans…
http://wadosy.blogspot.com/
wadosy wrote:
“exxon say the future of fossil fuel back in the 60s… they intended to switch over to nukes, butthey ran into hollywood, three mile island and chernobyl”
So nuclear power being very expensive was of of no concern? I don’t think so.
that blog, “here’s how exxon got hooked up with the israeli americans” was written in 2008, posted early 2009
at that time, i was fairly centain my “israeli americans” in the AEI and PNAC were firmly committed to israel
now i’m not so sure… it could be that the global hegemonists will throw israel under the bus if israeli policies become too ugly to stomach
world opinion seems to be turning against israel, if we’re to take this BBC poll seriously… but then the BBC seems to have its own little agenda similar to israel’s… using american muslcle to preserve the emire in the brits’ case, using american muscle to achieve global hegemony in israel’s and israeli americans’ case…
here’s a graph of the BBC poll, countries ranked by their positive and negative inflence, different countries’ opinion of israel’s positive or negative influence… israel’s in bad company supposedly, but we have to take the BBC with a grain of salt
here’s the graph
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img912/6789/iYseQZ.jpg
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the interesting part is… the highest ranking countries had the lowest opinion of israel
here’s the pdf those grapsh came from
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/2013%20Country%20Rating%20Poll.pdf
Re: throwing Israel under the bus….
Wake me up when the US does not veto a UN sanction against Israel.
Talk is cheap….
Not gonna happen. Tail wags dog
what if the US goes away?
Assuming BAU continued for say another decade — and the US defaulted on its debt — that surely would cause a massive economic depression globally…
The US is without a doubt dead meat — just a matter of time — so the question is moot — it would seem from this article that Russia and China understand what killing the USD means — but they have worked out that sooner is better than later http://www.popularresistance.org/the-latest-in-the-new-cold-war/
you dont honestly think the US is gonna last forever, do you?
…last forever and protect israel forever?
Not sure where you got that inference from — I have repeatedly said that I think the end of the world is imminent… (and I am not kidding)
In the interim we can debate and discuss geopolitics and agree or disagree till we are blue in the face — but that is all a side show — expect the worst when resources are short — before you know it you may be at your brother’s throat with a sharp knife over the last can of dog food in the pantry…
There is only one real issue here — and it is the fact that in the near future we are no longer going to have access to the life blood of civilization – oil.
It’s all about the oil — it always has been for the past 200 years..
big religiouns come and go… what if the abrahamic religions are obsolete? …what if theories of racial superiority are obsolete?
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assume for the sake of argument that you’re the jewish head of the US fed, and you’re supposedly a staunch zionist
the oil runs out in the middle east, and israel is no longr useful as an irritant to oily arabs and persians, it’s no longerr needed as a cover story for US military capers in the middle east
say you realize that israel was founded by a bunch of psychopathic polish fascists who were recruited by the brits to reinforce brit presence in the middle east oil patch.. assume that that crazy fascist streak is so basic to israel’s philosophy that there’s no hope for decency in israel’s treatment of arabs
say you realize that israel was just another bad brit idea
as the US starts collapsing from oil shortages, are you gonna jeopardize your looting opportunities in defense of a bad idea? …a bad idea that threatens the rips jewish tribal unity to shreds?
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we dont know… the most intriguing thing is, we dont know if the other abrahamic religions will survive if jewishness destroys itself in defense of a bad idea …can christianity and islam survive the destruction of their roots?
the question becomes, will christianity and islam suvive once jewishness commits suicide in defense fo israel?
i bet it’s all a druid plot,
oops …wrong version… here’s the right one
ANSELM ROTHSCHILD: “Give me the power to issue a nation’s money; then I do not care who makes the law.”
I would expand on that for contemporary times — “Give me the power to issue a nation’s money (i.e. to own the Fed) and have my associates own the mainstream media … and I own that country lock stock and barrel”
“Today, seven Jewish Americans run the vast majority of US television networks, the printed press, the Hollywood movie industry, the book publishing industry, and the recording industry. Most of these industries are bundled into huge media conglomerates run by the following seven individuals:
Gerald Levin, CEO and Director of AOL Time Warner
Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company
Edgar Bronfman, Sr., Chairman of Seagram Company Ltd
Edgar Bronfman, Jr, President and CEO of Seagram Company Ltd and head of Universal Studios
Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom, Inc
Dennis Dammerman, Vice Chairman of General Electric
Peter Chernin, President and Co-COO of News Corporation Limited
Those seven Jewish men collectively control ABC, NBC, CBS, the Turner Broadcasting System, CNN, MTV, Universal Studios, MCA Records, Geffen Records, DGC Records, GRP Records, Rising Tide Records, Curb/Universal Records, and Interscope Records.
Most of the larger independent newspapers are owned by Jewish interests as well. An example is media mogul is Samuel I. “Si” Newhouse, who owns two dozen daily newspapers from Staten Island to Oregon, plus the Sunday supplement Parade; the Conde Nast collection of magazines, including Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Allure, GQ, and Self; the publishing firms of Random House, Knopf, Crown, and Ballantine, among other imprints; and cable franchises with over one million subscribers.”
I coul d add that Michael Eisner could depart Disney tomorrow but the company will remain in the hands of Shamrock Holdings, whose principal office is now located in Israel”.
http://wais.stanford.edu/History/history_KennedyAssassination(092803).html
Don’t forget to toss Ruppert Murdoch into that list…
are rothschilds part of the “deep state”?
why is nat rothschild coming out of the deep state closet to round up money for oil operations in the kurdish region of iraq?
that’s unseemly behavior for a deep0stater, sint it?
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but it’s nice that the US is sucked into bombing iraq again to protect nat’s investment, dont you think
Ummm.. I dunno… . could it be because that Rothschild has been dead for centuries?
exxon sold off a lot of its operation in southern iraq, expanded their operation in kurds’ area… so the US is protecting exxon, too
that’s nice, seeing as how exxon is allied with the AEI in denying global warming and peak oil
are exxon and the AEI part of the deep state?
I have told you who I think the ultimate power in the Deep State is — those who own the private companies that own the central banks of the world.
And I have told you why they would prefer to remain behind the scenes… there are very obvious reasons why they would not want to draw attention to themselves.
Here’s a good article on the Fed … http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/10489
Who ultimately owns the private entity that owns the Fed?
You tell me.
All I know is that if you have the power to issue the currency of a nation — you are the ultimate power in that nation.
I will ask you a question — why does the US allow a private entity to issue its currency and collect interest on that money? Why doesn’t the country do that itself?
I look forward to hearing from you
who has the power to stage a terror attack that changed everything?
who said they needed a new pearl harbor?
are you saying that PNAC is working for the fed, and the fed is working for….
who IS the fed working for, anyhow?
are you saying that the fed thought 9/11 was a good deal, along with bibi?
are we narrowing down the definition of the deep state?
Who is the Fed working for? The Fed is a private company. It does not ‘work’ for anyone.
It is a profit making entity that like any private company — it’s purpose is to make money for it’s owners.
The Fed makes money by printing money and lending it out at interest.
But of course if you control the money supply of a country you do more than just collect interest. You are a defacto dictator. So whoever owns the Fed – dicatates policy.
If in doubt — how did the Fed print trillions of dollars in the past 6 years without a vote?
Do I think 911 was a good idea? I think 911 was orchestrated because it furthered the ambitions of the Deep State — see how freedoms have been rolled back with 911 as an excuse…
Here’s a thought — the west coast of North America is tinder dry right now — in the interior of BC in past weeks open fires were not allowed — because the slightest spark is capable of setting off a raging forest fire…
If terrorists can take down a skyscraper — then pray tell why they don’t simply ride around California and other west coast areas tossing matches into the brush? Imagine the economic calamity that would cause…
Of how about this — you want to take down skyscrapers? Why bother with planes — rent lower floor apartments in buildings across the country and spend each day visiting your apartments dropping off a bit of petrol and whatever else you need… then attach timers — and take them all down one after the other…
Easier than hijacking planes no?
So yes I think 911 was a Deep State false flag… for various reasons.
we seem to be pretty musical today… so…
http://listen.boredonkey.com/48749181/the-night-bobby-kennedy-died.html
so you’re saying that the fed, along with PNAC, needed a new pearl harbor and got it
so is PNAC working for the fed?
is the fed working for israel?
or is israel expendable if it goes off on some wild tangent that doesnt dovetail with the fed’s agenda?
This reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcRRaXV-fg
Paul,
Regarding Rothschild comment. Whose are you attributing this quoted comment to and why are you continuing to perpetuate this anti-semitic rhetoric? Its disgusting and only seeks to inflame those who are prone to it.
Yes Paul, exactly. Money, clan loyalty, and intelligence rule. To bad the goyum are not able to do clan loyalty.
Actually I am not so sure these people have clan loyalty either … they’d most gladly stand out of the way and observe as millions of their clan were gassed – if it meant furthering their cause…
It’s always the little guys who are the scape goats …. the guys moving the chess pieces don’t care — because they usually don’t have to deal with the dire consequences of their actions (otherwise known as blowback)
Clearly Israelis need to be relocated to New York City (New Jerusalem). I believe the first New York politician to propose having New York State and the Federal government pay to build 10 million units of free luxury housing to help our “brothers and sisters” relocate will become president.
I hope this remark is “tongue in cheek.”
well, if we’re headed back to the law of the jungle, i guess edpell’s idea would work… it’s save us the subsidies we pay to israel, save us the bribes we pay egypt to refrain from attacking israel, would lower the price of oil, and we’d be able to scale back our military budget, and that’d save a bundle
so it works… and it’s not as if there’s not precedents…
for instance, it was perfectly okay for europeans to ethnic cleanse north america, it’s perfectly okay for israelis to ethnic cleanse palestine, so it’s be perfectly okay to ethnic cleanse jews from palestine and move them to new yrok
with all the money we saved by cutting back our subsidies, bribes and military, we’d easily be able to pay for houses for the transplanted israelis…
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might be kind of a hard sell, though, to israelis… but nevermind… we dont have to sell them the idea because we believe might makes right, and we got more guns and bombs than israelis
so everything’s cool
well, my post above was the american viewpoint… but the druids have a different idea…
first of all, the druids realize that the US is a piggish outfit, its economy based on consumption of dwindling resources, and america is consuming way more than its share
so america must be destroyed…
israel and its psychopathy must be preserved to serve as the agent of america’s destruction
with any luck at all, the abrahamic religions will wreck themselves in the process, and the druids can come out of the closet and reassume their rightful position as the world’s rulers
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so that’s the theory from across the water
wadosy
“Big religions come and go” really is not very accurate. Big religions stick around for thousands of years.
we dont know how paranoid to be… for myself, i dont know how seriously to take myself… if you take a scattergun approach, the law of averages says you’re gonna be right about something once in a while by blind luck… chances are, you wont know you’re right ukntil it’s too late… so it’s best to play it all for laughs
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it’s just that sometimes engines quit, you know? …it’s unthinkable that the engine would quit when you’re most vulnerable, like when you’re hovering over 20-foot trees dropping on a fire… but engines do quit
but they train you to think about stuff like that…to think about stuff like that and still be able function…
once you start thinking the unthinkable, it gets to be a hard habit to break
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the big trouble is –even with psychohistorians who think they can use computerized game theory to run the worl– factions develop… i guess that’s what’s happening now
nobody knows how to deal with this pickle, and all these theories, counter-theories and alternatives pop up
the best thing to do would be to face the music and tell everybody the truth, but the truth is intolerable, so we’re stuck
InAlaska
Yes, and usually turn into something quite opposite to the intentions of the original founder of the religion…..
Leo, you’re talking as M. K. Hubbert
Gail Tverberg says, above…
“It is not the beliefs that are at fault in my view; it is the lack of adequate resources.
“If resources were divided equally, all would die, because there are not enough to go around.
“Excluding some allows people from getting adequate resources allows at least some to live. Not ideal, but that is the way things seem to work with natural selection.”
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maybe truth is a resource
maybe if we had been told the truth early enough, we could have adjusted our behavior so we wouldnt have needed to revert back to the law of the jungle
jimmy arter tried to tell thr truth about peak oil, with his “moral equivalent of war” speech about energy, soon after US oil production peaked
it was not a lack of resources, not at that time anyhow, that caused carter’s failure, was it?
and what is it that’s restricting european access to russain natural gas?
it isnt a shortage of natural gas, is it?
nope, it’s the necons’ belief int heir right to control the world, and to control the world
…necons need to cotnrol russian energy
What is reducing Europeans access to Russian natural gas is “lack of sufficient wages and shrinking economies.” Countries with shrinking GDP don’t need as much natural gas. Germany with all of its laws favoring wind and solar are making an economic situation where the natural gas cannot successfully compete in electricity production. Instead, backup for wind and solar tends to be low-grade lignite, with horrible CO2 implications. Lignite probably releases a lot of other pollution as well.
russia says it will pay for south stream
meanwhile, the not-so-deep “deep state” is hiring “scientists” at $10,00 a clatter to deny global warming…
the neocons’ AEI and their exxon allies… google: exxon AEI $10,000 deny “global warming”
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if we burn the remaining fossil fuel, including the reamining coal and the maybe trillion barrels of thick crude in venezuela, we’re locked into global warming and a ptential 80 meters of sea level rise
exxon and the AEI must believe in something that’s causing them to lie about global warming… it’s cetainly not a “lack of resources” that’s causing them to lie
As they should — because there is no way to stop global warming without collapsing the global economy.
As we have seen the green brigade that has put a toe in the water wants to end global warming — but they have not a single specific recommendation that would work.
‘stop burning fossil fuels’ — that’s the mantra… without thinking through what that means
Or ‘solar panels’ — thinking that solar panels grow on trees rather than being manufactured with dirty coal in china
Where do I sign up to be a troll?
I prefer to be paid by the word — say 50 cents per?
Not “denying”, “refuting”
exxon and the AEI are refuting chemistry and physics and the idea that we’re putting an extra 30 billion tons of co2 into the atmosphere every year?
exxona and the AEI are refuting the idea that oil is a finite resource, oil wells go dry and oilfields quit producing?
if exxon is allied with the AEI, and the AEI spawned PNAC, and PNAC said they needed a new pearl harbor, then PNAC people got into power and their new pearl harbor happened, would these people have a reason to refute global warming and peak oil?
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according to the peak oil people, peak oilis the bigest thing that’s happened to humanity since sliced bread…
if peak oil is such a big deal, could it have been the reason the PNAC people needed a new pearl harbor?
would the AEI and exxon refute peak oil because their new pearl harbor happened after they got powerful enough to make it happen?
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
“And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.
“:We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
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that’s smacks of mental illness
also meanwhile, western “civilization” is using its “accomplishments” as evidence of its racial superiority…
white people have proved their superioity by developing beliefs and technologies that threaten to wreck their planet
piss-poor evidence of superiority, isnt it? …but maybe it’s evidence of something else…
The drive to consume energy in many forms (higher education, international travel, bigger homes, more expensive (electric?) cars, stylish clothes, etc.) that it is very hard to overcome. Essentially, what we have to do is lower our collective wages, so that we have less to spend, so that we use less energy. This can’t really happen, in part because our economic system can’t shrink–there would be too much in the way of debt defaults. Also, systems are optimized for current flows. They don’t work with much smaller flows.
So what Jimmy Carter was asking us for unfortunately can’t really happen. At most, what can happen is a slowing of the rate of growth of energy consumption, and this might have been helpful, for keeping things going longer. But how this could have been done is not intuitively obvious. I would argue that taking steps to reduce international trade would have been helpful. Certainly we should not have instituted policies that increased international trade. Perhaps taxes on innovations might have been helpful as well. It is much less clear that greater “efficiency” would have helped–greater efficiency generally leads to more energy use, not less, because more people can afford the more efficient item.
so you’re admittin that it’s our beliefs that got us into this pickle
it wasnt a shortgage of energy
Or because energy efficiency does not reduce energy use at all — if someone trades an SUV for a small car they generally will drive more miles — and if they don’t then they will use the savings in petrol to buy more stuff… which requires energy to manufacture.
Unless the person takes the money saved on petrol and burns it then they have accomplished nothing by downsizing their car.
wadosi, perhaps you can get some Thermodinamique de l’Evolution by phycisist François Roddier. He says it has all been cooked up in the third thermodynamic law, from Big Bang to Shale Boom
Gail,
this morning I dreamt that you lived where I live, we met and talked about limits. Then you told me that one of the usual commenters on this blog is one of my neighbours. I found this very strange, since the this person never gave me the impression that he thinks about any of the stuff you are writing about. What does this dream mean?
There really are people thinking about this issue in many places around the world, including probably quite close to you. They just don’t identify themselves to you, so you have no idea they are there.
I know I run into people very often who tell me that they enjoy reading my blog. Some are from demographics I would not image would be interested–75 year old women who I thought were only interested in their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Others are young and came at the issue from a different direction.
Gail
I think many of us wouldn’t raise this topic even with our closest friends: it does rather spoil the flow of conversation. It did come up at dinner the other day with some friends, I think someone had mentioned EV’s – we ended up staring at our drinks rather thoughtfully, and then quickly moving to another happier topic! I suspect many people who are aware keep it all to themselves.
I experienced something similar re: renewables — my wife started to try to explain to someone why that theory doesn’t work — I had to give her a nudge under the table to suggest it was not worth the effort…
And back we went to discussing the rather cool rainy weather in Ontario this summer…
Yes, I think there are many millions of people all around the world who either know and understand directly that there is a major series of problems coming our way OR they sense that things just ain’t right, but don’t know how to articulate it. This explains all of the interest nowadays, at least in the States, on Doomsday Preppers and all of these other survivalist type reality tv shows. The stuff we talk about on this blog is out there in the air and people sense it. It is kind of a party stopper when you bring it up, though.
Gail, here’s another way of saying the same things you say about alternative energies:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2014/08/22/alternative-energy-fetishes-and-temples-to-technology/#comments
Good comments there, too. I share their criticisms of Robert Scribbler, but he posts some very up to date science there, too.
I first worked with radiation as an x-ray trainee in 1948. Worked nights, weekends, and summers as an x-ray technician while in medical school 1952 to 1955, using what today would be considered primitive equipment. Practiced radiology from 1956 to 1999. Handled high gamma radium needles in the days prior to after-loading as well as radioactive isotopes. Never hesitated to hold patients during exposures when necessary or to be the guinea pig to test new equipment. Approaching age 84 my health remains better than average, as does the health of the majority of radiologists. I recommend Leslie Corrice for Fukushima updates two to three times per week.
I hadn’t thought about the experience of radiologists using primitive equipment being helpful. We also have people living in areas with high background radiation and we have pilots and airline employees who log large numbers of flights.
We also have patients who have undergone radiation therapy for one disease–the issue becomes, how does this affect their future life expectancy? Does the radiation exposure affect them adversely? I haven’t studied this, but understand that yes, indeed, medical radiation can have a lifelong harmful effect.
Someone could perhaps look at indications such as these, to tell what radiation effects are likely to be. The high levels of radiation used for medical purposes are particularly interesting.
Gail
Randy Jirtle, who did a lot of research on epigenetics, was, as I remember, educated as a nuclear scientist. He says that small doses of radiation are helpful.
There is a long tradition in the East of giving some poison to stimulate immune reactions. It may be that slightly heightened radiation also stimulates gene repair.
My guess, as somebody who should definitely not be trusted, is that if one is eating lots of brassica and onions, which contain gene repair phytonutrients, then a small increase in radiation is not harmful. If, on the other hand, one eats only fast food, junk food, and industrial food, then even a small increase may be harmful.
Don Stewart
Being exposed to non-lethal doses of radiation is not quite the same as ingesting radioactive particles…
So when meltdowns occur or fuel ponds explode because they are not cooled — that surely would spew massive amounts of particles into the air and oceans — these particles do not degrade quickly — so they would enter the food chain…
Fish and wildlife would eat them either dying or passing them on to humans who in turn eat them… .the particles would be absorbed by plants making crops toxic….
I cannot see how this does not result in an extinction event.
When alpha particle emitting isotopes are ingested, they are far more dangerous than their half-life or decay rate would suggest. This is due to the high relative biological effectiveness of alpha radiation to cause biological damage after alpha-emitting radioisotopes enter living cells. Ingested alpha emitter radioisotopes such as transuranics or actinides are an average of about 20 times more dangerous, and in some experiments up to 1000 times more dangerous than an equivalent activity of beta emitting or gamma emitting radioisotopes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Health_effects
Recall this case — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko — I tiny bit of polonium gutted this poor fellow in very short order…
I suspect if one were to approach a nuclear physicist or medical expert in this field — and asked — what would happen to the world if all nuclear facilities were to abandoned with no cooling measures….
Hypothetically of course — because I doubt any of them would concede this being a real possibility….
I suspect they would opine that this would be an end of days scenario… and extinction event.
We better have a Plan B for this stuff — because if we don’t anyone who makes it through the initial die-off …. will be wiped out in the second wave that is likely to be more final that the starvation and epidemic ridden initial die-off.
Yeah Paul, alpha s…t is the big s…t
That is a good point. Hopefully ingesting radioactive particles only happens close by to the problem sites.
By ingesting radioactive particles for years, humans will get used to it, and then they can eat a tiny portion of plutonium or uranium for life, and dont ever need to eat more either food of uranium, and live forever…
Ya kinda like a vaccine right? So long as you don’t eat a full dose you will eventually get stronger and eventually you are totally immune to radiation — you could actually eat a reactor core with no ill effects whatsoever.
Kinda like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzJv2dCJ2xk
I understand the atomic energy people are working with McDonalds on a Plutonium Burger… it will be called the P-Burger.
Coming soon!
tfouto,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLS6NCZPiSY
I don’t know whether you can watch this video on youtube or not. It is called “Radium City” (1987)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284691/
Here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLS6NCZPiSY
There is a vast history about the radiation pioneers (x-ray martyrs). They received massive doses. http://archives.li.man.ac.uk/ead/search?operation=full&recid=gb133gut-gut-3-5
Just watching the intro to that documentary….
If that’s what a tiny amount of particles on the tongue can do — then I cannot see how anyone makes it past what is coming — this will not be like a single massive disaster (like a volcano or quake) — when these things go (if there is no Plan B) then this goes on forever — these particles will be spread through the planet — they do not degrade for decades — perhaps centuries…
No wonder the central banks are doing what they are doing — no wonder a blind eye is being turned to financial corruption —- no wonder Bernanke said when he stepped down ‘you may hate me — but when you find out why I did what I did — you will thank me’
It would appear we are fighting for our lives and the lives of every living thing on the planet (except perhaps cockroaches).
Tick tock….
These were massive doses. There has been nothing similar in the history of science, Incidentally the mandible has the highest metabolic turnover of any bone in the body.
I have not watched the full doc but the intro says they painted click dials with radium and dipped the tip of the brushes on their tongues… and they all soon died of cancer…
Not sure if that would be considered massive doses…
How does that compare with the doses of radioactive toxins that would be released into the air by 4000+ fuel ponds and 500 or so reactors — in the event that they were left without cooling.
Keep in mind this would not be a one off where you dipped your brush into a can of toxic radiation — these things spew radioactive particles for decades… perhaps centuries…
So day after day — year after year — you get a continuous flow of death pouring into the air and water…
Fukushima is kept under relative control only because pumps and robots flood the melted cores with cooling water… it is still dumping large amounts of toxins into the ocean — but if the cooling was stopped the problem would be exponentially bigger…
I am told spent fuel ponds are a far bigger danger :
The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is preparing to remove 400 tons of highly irradiated spent fuel from a damaged reactor building, a dangerous operation that has never been attempted before on this scale.
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
4000 ponds(?) x 14,000 = 56 Million Nuclear Bombs going off — that keep going off for decades…
Strive for accuracy. The radium girls did not all die from cancer. Some died. The number is unknown. They painted hundred of dials on a daily basis, often pointing the brush tips with their lips – possibly eating the radium many times a day. for months or years. Some of us older posters wore the wrist watches that they painted or kept a radium dial clock in our bedrooms. Years ago I used radium needles to treat cancer, using a technique that was good at the time but is now obsolete. At the time I was somewhat concerned about the very high energy gamma which was difficult to shield. The needles did kill cancer if placed properly.
i have not watched it — and it is only relevant it that it shows what ingesting these toxins can do to you a person.
My concern relates of course to the thousands of nuclear installations around the world that need to be managed —- there can be no question that if they are left uncooled — the consequences will be catastrophic.
To reiterate — once they go – they will not stop poisoning the planet — years….
One would hope — however with the Chernobyl incident there is extensive research that indicates big spikes in deformities in children and cancers in the areas where fallout scattered in neighbouring countries (Germany France…)
Of course Chernobyl was only one accident — and it was contained after a short period.
If all plants + fuel ponds when to pieces — and could not be contained — then these particles would continue to be pumped into the atmosphere for many decades…
I cannot see how this would remain a local problem — the entire world would be covered in these particles… the oceans would be loaded with them — the fish would eat them — the animals etc etc…
Unless there is some Plan B that can contain these devils when the SHTF — then I suspect we are done.
Chernobyl produced trivial ionizing radiation compared to the 543 nuclear atmospheric tests that occurred primarily during the 50’s and 60’s. http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Summer_2010/Observations_Chernobyl.pdf
Chernobyl was entombed in concrete not long after it melted down.
In the short time it was exposed it spewed radioactivity into surrounding countries which reported big spikes in deformities in babies and cancers.
Now imagine if Chernobyl was not entombed in 1986. Nearly 30 years later it would still be spewing radioactivity day after day after day.
Now multiply that by thousands…
From what I can see the effects of an atomic bomb are more short-lived —- people returned to the places where America bombed civilian populations in Japan not long after the clean up…
The reuters article indicates that 1 fuel pond = 14,000 nuclear detonations….
And I have seen other info that the spent fuel ponds are far more dangerous than a reactor (makes sense – they store many fuel rods — reactors only have the active rods in them)
Paul, there are some surprising statistics on the fall-out from Chernobyl. I used to think the numbers you are quoting are fact, and actually, they’re not. There was a documentary about this on the BBC – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster
It is difficult of course to definitively work out stats on exactly how many deformities and deaths can be attributed to this accident — I do know that there was quite a spike in these problems in neighbouring countries… another problem is that the nuclear industry purposely obfuscates (see Fukushima) because the last thing they want is a ban on nuclear power.
Back to Chernobyl — what do you think the impact would be if in 1986 nothing was done to seal the meltdown — if the core was just allowed to sit there for decades without being entombed or cooled…
Now what if all nuclear plants and spent fuel ponds end up like that in the coming years… because BAU is collapsed and we have no way to manage these sites.
Surely this does not bode well for the planet
What it would have been, Paul? Who knows. Disaster, probably.
There is a nuke in Córdoba province where I live, and it’s going shut down for a couple of years to undergo life-extending procedures. It’s property of the national gov, but the governor -which is a f…g bastard but opposes the national gov- started saying it’s not good for tourism and such, and comments at the local newspaper -which rather favours the power plant- are clearly supporting removal. I comment as Marion
http://www.lavoz.com.ar/ciudadanos/la-central-nuclear-de-embalse-saldra-de-servicio-en-2015#_=_
I wonder what theese guys of the province are aware. They suppoort this big policial army and, since a decade or so, all high provincial politicians get they fraction of land
Christian
So are you saying that they are preparing a neo-feudal structure – land and heavy policing?
theocratic fuedalism is invitable in the short/medium term, as the blame is put on not praying hard enough
who knows how long that will last?
After that—its back to tribal society Im afraid
Well, sitll not sure this is just classic conservative BAU behavior, survival instinct or prolegomena in a more reasoned path. Will try to find out. Some of them, of both peronist and radical party provincial very high ranks, got caught on a narco scandal last year; till dope goes off…
Who ultimately knows if that is the reason … however France has 58 of these beasts online — and if they continue operating and run out of control when things unravel… shutting down one plant may not make a difference…
I am having trouble convincing myself that the nuclear issue is the main event … unless there is some viable plan to deal with this — then I suspect I’ll be getting a mouthful of plutonium with my organic veg
And so it begins… coming to a town near you:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-18/ferguson-tonight-nelly-national-guard-negro-spring
Neocons, deep state, TPTB, PTB, whatever we call it. I know the Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs are at the party.
Near-death-experience of Howard Storm:
“They made it very clear to me that God had given this country the greatest blessing of any people in the history of the world. We have more of God’s blessing. Everything that we have comes from God. We didn’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it, but we happen to be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world. And God gave us all this so that we could be the instruments of God’s light in this world, and we are not instruments of light. In other countries people see us as purveyors of exploitation, military might, and pornography. They see us as completely hedonistic and amoral — we have no morality. People can do whatever they want wherever they want with whatever they want. Our amorality is a cancer on the rest of the world, and God created us to be just the opposite.
“People get mad at me for saying it, but God is very unhappy with what we’re doing. When I came back from the experience I was almost out of my mind trying to convert people. God wanted a worldwide conversion thousands of years ago. God pulled out all the stops 2,000 years ago with Jesus. From God’s view, that was the definitive moment in human history. And the impact of the prophets and teachers and the Messiah has been a big disappointment to God because people have by and large rejected it. I was told that God wants this conversion. And if we don’t get with the program fairly soon, He is going to have to intervene in some ways that from a human point of view are going to seem cataclysmic. God is really tired of what we’re doing to one another and the planet and to His Creation. We were put in this world to be stewards and live in harmony with His creation and one another and we don’t realize the important spiritual consequences of what we do when we raise a child in a faithless society.”
“I asked how [America’s purification] would come about, and they said it would be simple, that our society is very dependent on a lot of very fragile things — energy grid, transportation. In each geographical area of the United States people used to be relatively self-sufficient as far as agricultural products. Now, how long would any state survive without the transport of food and energy?
“What would happen is these very complex and delicate grids of our economic system would begin to break down. We’ve created a society of such cruel and self-centered people that the very nature of civilization would begin to break down. The angels showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hording goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos.” (Howard Storm)
One fault with what the Angels think: being cruel and self-centred isn’t the issue surely:the very nicest people will cut your throat or push you away to die when it comes to famine and they have hard choices to make.
In fact, I don’t think their would be a rational choice, basic instincts would take over. ‘Previous character is no guide to future performance.’ Just like stocks….
As the for the US being particularly evil: well, there isn’t a nation or state or ruling class on the face of the Earth without blood on its hands, the US hardly stands out in the perspective of history.
xabier, i dont know what to think of nde, maybe they are just a dream or imagination or simply people are lying, whatever. Neverthless “The angels showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hording goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos.”
Of course even good people will try to survive, and being agressive if they have to. Being self-centered and cruel is what mankind has been. Exploting other resources so economy can grow and some people be richer. You can read on holocaust, people on concentration camps wanted to survive. There were little few who keep be gentle to others.
About US being evil. Every nation has his guilt, yes… The thing is why is such hatred among countries in south america and midle-east towards america? Have you ever tought that? Exploration and indoctrination.
because third world nations see their assets (oil) being sold to support the profligate lifestyle of the developed west
I don’t think they are angry because their assets (oil) is being sold. I think they are angry because they are not seeing their fair share of the wealth that comes from the sale. The money is being kept at the top of their society. The middle east is basically a kleptocracy.
InAlaska wrote:
“The middle east is basically a kleptocracy.”
A US backed kleptocracy!
Yep – and the guys stealing all the money are the dictators that America puts in place and keeps in place with billions of dollars of military gear — and training in the latest torture techniques….
Of course the dictators have to make sure that US corporations get well taken care of…. a small price to pay considering they get paid very well…
Best video on there on the specifics of how this works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8 I assume even though this is straight from the horse’s mouth … you will still believe that hokey myth about America….
tfouto
I agree, the US has bloody hands. But it’s just the historical norm for empires, that’s all.
I would even say ‘least bloody’ in terms of number of victims, comparing to the famous list of emperia:
USSR (above 100 milion, there is somewhere white book of “communism”);
British
Ghyengis Khan (30 milion estimated – a lot comparing to population at the time)
Quing Dynasty of China (70 million only one war conquering Ming dynasty)
Mongols
Roman Empire
and many before.
US comparing to other world hegemons is rather mild and soft. And believe me – you prefer the power of soft psychopats from US, than hardcore murderers from Asia or Russia not so long ago in history. Two different leagues of sadism and cruelty. Maybe even different galaxies. So stop with this self-hatred, please.
kesar
But the US has killed a lot more than Hitler…
So I guess we need to have a Remember Hitler Day — a great man — he only gasses a few million making him a role model.
Stand proud and sing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJo7x9y3D4 for America has only murdered tens of millions during empire!
kesar,
You are right. Before Paul goes on another one of his America-is-the-most-evil-babykilling-empire-to-ever-exist rants, I think it should be said that, for an empire, America has shown amazing restraint and fairness. Probably more so than any other nation would have. Why? Because America has a myth about itself, it wants to believe in the myth, and it frequently behaves in order to stand up for that ideal.
Yes, I agree, InAlaska. It’s not a coincidence that OECD countries decided to support US hegemony over these years. It was very handy for Europe and the rest to have a world-wide policeman with dirty hands keeping peace (or not) in so many places.
InAlaska wrote:
“I think it should be said that, for an empire, America has shown amazing restraint and fairness.”
You got to be kidding…
Yes, I agree, InAlaska. It’s not a coincidence that OECD countries decided to support US hegemony over these years. It was very convenient for Europe and the rest to have a world-wide policeman with dirty hands keeping peace (or not) in so many places.
kesar wrote:
you agree with InAlaska… and then you go on to talk about the US as a “world-wide policeman with dirty hands” – please explain!
I didn’t say anywhere, that US is crystally innocent. On the contrary, they have a lot of sins, both domestic and in other territories. But if you compare “bloodiness” of the historic imperia, you will soon conclude that in comparison USofA are “mild and soft” indeed.
Was it clear enough? Any disagreement?
kesar wrote:
“But if you compare “bloodiness” of the historic imperia, you will soon conclude that in comparison USofA are “mild and soft” indeed.”
Mild and soft in comparison? I don’t care – the US is more than violent enough to get stamped as “bad bad bad”!
It is only a matter of moral system you apply. You can have yours, based on – for example – Christian values or liberal philosophers of different kinds or any other. The history has its own scale of this factor and – I repeat it – the US is quite gentle.
And just to be clear – I am not defending all kinds of murderers or sociopaths among elites and military complex of US. I am just articulating my observation.
kesar,
comparing something to something worse do not do it in my mind…
Comparing gives perspective. What would you like to compare it to?
Speculative, theoretical, philosophical, political or religous moral systems?
Which ones? And why these?
Sorry, people are just people. I prefer to see how the reality is instead of imagining the ideal world of intellectual speculation. I’ve been doing this for big part of my life and I can tell you – it doesn’t work.
kesar wrote:
“Comparing gives perspective. What would you like to compare it to?”
How about ideals like being nice to each other? I think so, but such might be to speculative for you…
If were anything but a species of mass murderers, enslavers, and torturers… perhaps the masses across the world might say hang on — this is not right — this is not acceptable — then these gruesome acts would stop…
But nope – that’s only for the movies …..
We love the killing (we are blood thirsty brutes) — we hate — we covet — we are more than happy to live large stuffing ourselves and riding about on scooters because are too fat to walk — while our brothers starve… and we are ok with that….
We are christians, buddhits, hindus, muslims…. hypoctrites all.
But alas we are who we are. No matter how much we pretend that we are not.
Joseph Conrad wrote that the “thin veneer of civilization” is what stands between us and savagery…. I disagree — we are far more savage than the most primitive man…. (perhaps only because we have Weapons of Mass Savagery…)
Civilization is what we use to convince ourselves that we are fundamentally good (with a few slip ups from time to time)
Paul,
you are right. There are a lot of good men and women, but as a species we are a sad case. The earth will be a far better place without us.
How do you know that? It is impossible to quantify the suffering and death that America has inflicted…
Look at Iraq — how many people have been killed and maimed because of that travesty?
The entire country is a hell hole – 32.5 million people living in hell because of the US.
Cambodia is the direct result of the US war in Vietnam — massive genocide — did you add that to your tally?
How many Vietnamese died and suffered — many millions…
Central America, South America, Philippines, etc etc etc…. under the yoke — how many children live in poverty because the US people need to LIVE LARGE? How many young girls are forced into selling their bodies because they want to help their families?
Add all that to your tally of carnage and suffering.
Oh and how about the nukes dropped on women and children in Japan — how gallant — add a few hundred thousand more…
And because America fights its battles using puppet stooges like The Shah, Mubarak, Marcos, Pinochet etc etc etc…. you would have to count the actions of US installed dictators in your tally…
I would argue that if it were possible to count the death and suffering inflicted by USA USA — they would top the charts…
But I digress — the last time I looking Americans were humans — as were the Brits — and the Spanish — and the Mongols — and the Romans ….
Hmmm… rather strange that we have people trying to claim one group was better than another in the killing games….
There is one common thread here — humans.
If you want to tally things up feel free to add them all together and attribute them as they should be — to the vile human species. As we have seen empire after empire — the powerful will destroy the weak — 100% of the time — and if the weak become the powerful — they will do the same things.
Paul,
I am simply comparing historical periods of different hegemons. I am not defending any country or nation. For me this is the logic of big organisations – the bigger you get, the more sociopatic behaviour is required to rule. I agree, that on every side of this complicated world, there are psychopats making decisions. Empaty and compassion are not their most developed virtues. But hey, they are mostly supported by their own crowd, aren’t they. So at the end of the day, we all are responsible. Just like with the fossil fuel economy. It’s convenient for us all to consume.
Nevertheless, you would still prefer to be ruled by those guys, than live under the threat of Stalin’s or Ghengis Khan hordes. The last one ordered to kill 15-16 milion people in Fertile Crescent (Iran currently). There is a difference. You just need some historical perspective to assess this properly.
kesar
I see the US as at least as bad as any of these other gangsters you mention. And I have provided plenty of evidence of this
Ask an Iraqi what he thinks about this…
Ask a Vietnamese peasant…
I suspect both would say they’d rather take their chances under Mr Khan… as they have seen what the industrial military machine of America can do….
A thousand pound bomb is far more effective than a sword no?
Paul wrote:
“How many Vietnamese died and suffered — many millions…”
Paul, as long as there isn’t a monumental wall with all their names on western people don’t remember…
Paul wrote:
“Hmmm… rather strange that we have people trying to claim one group was better than another in the killing games….”
It leaves me speechless. What is it good for?
Not quite — the Deep State has created this myth that America is good — and the fools that live in America and watch CNN etc… believe this myth.
But it is a myth — it is a lie — how many Iraqs or Vietnams or Panamas or Grenadas or Irans etc etc etc… do you need before you start to question the myth?
How many renditions do you need — how many Abu Graibs do you need — before you start to realize — America as the good guy is bullshit….
America is Darth Vader.
JarleB and kesar,
kesar, I agree with you that it is very convenient for Europe and the West to have the US do all of the dirty work. It gives them clean hands but they still benefit from the work being done. JarleB, no one is saying America has squeaky clean hands, but what I am saying is that it we probably the cleanest hands any empire has ever had. It is a dangerous world out there and dastardly deeds are done in the dark places of the world in order to maintain order. Pax Americana has probably been far more preferable than a Pax Rus, Pax Sino, or Pax Third Reich ever would have been and certainly has been better than Pax Roma or Pax Britannica ever was. I’m sure I’ve left quite a few empires out of the post here, but hey, its a blog site not a thesis paper!
Perspective is everything — if you were a Cambodian or Vietnamese or say an Iraqi — you might think otherwise.
But then if the tables were turned they would be doing similar things to other peoples …
My perspective is very much different — I am ashamed of the human race – we are vile through and through.
And the fact that you sit there typing away effectively saying ‘we are mass murderers but we are the least worst mass murderers and we should stand proud!’ is just further evidence that the human race deserves to be wiped off the planet.
(not picking on you specifically because most members of our vile species would agree with you)
InAlaska wrote:
“It is a dangerous world out there and dastardly deeds are done in the dark places of the world in order to maintain order.”
Excuse me, but US marines & co has never contributed to order. Destruction and disorder it is, over and over again.
Dark places? Like Alaska, or what?
Allow me to disagree with you. There were many times when US contributed to the relative local peace (Balkans in 90’s, Sudan) making some business there at the same time. Would the world be better without US hegemony over the last decades? I doubt. There are many psychopats out there just waiting to grab the power and introduce their own vision of world order. And they are not Mahatma Gandhi nor Martin Luther King followers, believe me. The conclusion is: beware what you wish for. Bad sheriff is still better than the local warlord we will be dealing with soon.
kesar wrote:
“There were many times when US contributed to the relative local peace (Balkans in 90’s, Sudan) making some business there at the same time. ”
Yeah, the US got to test their fancy new bombers over Balkan. Bombing everything to pieces for peace – great contribution!
Let’s not forget Afghanistan, most of the infrastructure turned to pieces by the great contributor – hurrah!
kesar wrote:
“Bad sheriff is still better than the local warlord we will be dealing with soon.”
But the US never cared about local warlords. As long as they have access to the oil by the help of a puppet regime, they don’t care about the other stuff. Ref the green zone in Bagdad vs rest of Iraq.
Jarle,
Please don’t shoot the messenger. I am only describing the reality. You can throw a lot of examples at me of US making terrible things and I will probably agree. It doesn’t change the facts though, that in comparison US is mild hegemon. This is the logic of governing the big and powerful country.
I found in a book a very thought-provoking question: what would you do if you ruled the world tomorrow? Ask yourself this question and the reality will be much different.
kesar
Your comments are based on no evidence. As I have pointed out the US is one of the worst offenders in history — the main reason why is that they generally don’t do their own dirty work — they install thugs — dictators — torturers – mass murderers
And their proxies do their dirty work for them – but make no mistake — the actions of these monsters is not only condoned by the USA — the CIA minders are the ones who are pulling the strings… and if the puppet refuses — he is replaced by a more compliant gangster…
So you really do need to add all of the following to your list when you are tallying atrocities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_of_authoritarian_regimes
Paul wrote:
“Your comments are based on no evidence. As I have pointed out the US is one of the worst offenders in history — the main reason why is that they generally don’t do their own dirty work — they install thugs — dictators — torturers – mass murderers”
Thank you, Paul!
Quote: “they install thugs — dictators — torturers – mass murderers”…
…and how that changes from the usual politics from ancient times?… Read Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Marcus Aurelius and other ancient political philosophers. It is all there from the begining of civilisation. They all did the same, sometimes more, sometimes less bloody and cruel. We have a culture of favouring great warriors, ceasars, kings, etc. who were doing many bad things. Like Alexander of Macedon. Great warrior and ruler – they thought me on history lessons. Well… I am not sure if I take position of those farmers living on the path of the army. Food stolen, women raped, villages burnt, disobedient killed. Same old, same old…
“Your comments are based on no evidence.”
kesar,
what’s your project? What does it matter if USA is no worse than empires before? What matters is that USA is bad enough, the world would be glad to loose the maniac!
Loosing that maniac would mean 5-6 billion people prematurely dead in the next 30 years. Not pleasant scenario, isn’t it? And how do you like that?
kesar wrote:
“Loosing that maniac would mean 5-6 billion people prematurely dead in the next 30 years. Not pleasant scenario, isn’t it? And how do you like that?”
I rest my case.
Ever heard of Schadenfreude?
Of course the US failing will be disastrous — but big deal — since the end of the world is coming anyway I am quite happy to witness two cataclysms in short order..
You remember when those thousands were marching in NY and other cities after bin laden was supposedly smoked out and gunned down (in his pajamas without a single security detail in sight) — and in their blood lust these thousands (100’s of thousands?) were chanting USA USA USA?
I remember
And I remember a US banker at a gathering so puffed with pride telling what a great day that was — and I said – oh ya awesome — just awesome — now all we need is them terrorists to leap out of black choppers — rendition Bush — and get him up on the gallows and get some real nice HD video of him swinging by a rope (kinda like that Saddam vid)…
Ya I remember that.
And I really don’t care what the implications are — I will enjoy watching the US experiencing a little bit of what it is has dished out on the world for decades now. Living large off the backs of everyone else — sucking resources dry at an unheard of rate (what is it 5% using 25%?)
If I were a religious person I would suggest that is karma in action.
5-6 billion dead in the next 30 years?
Nah – when the financial system collapses the oil stops – the food supply stops — the clean water stops — medical care and drugs mostly stop — the cooling of nuclear installations likely stops — I suspect less than one hundred million survive that (maybe fewer – maybe none)
30 years? Nah — when this starts to unravel I am quite sure it will unravel like a high tension wire — think 2008 Lehman but without the central banks being able to hold the forces of hell behind the gates this time….
Look at past financial crises — one day all is fine and CNBs is telling you to buy Bear Sterns etc… and the next people are hanging themselves with their $300 Gucci belts — because they’ve lost everything.
We’ve already seen tens of trillions of stimulus and bailouts — the ammo clip is firing red hot — if it can’t keep the beast away now — how can it once the public sees that all that has been done these last years to foster recovery — has failed…
Of course most people already know that — deep down inside. But they are like deer in the headlights… they have no idea what is coming up on them at 100mph.
China and Russia seem to think losing the maniac now – rather than later — will result in a better overall outcome.
That’s why they are throwing the USD under the bus…
Oh but jee whiz — I just realized — that outcome won’t be so good for America — cuz they would no longer be able to keep their boot on the necks of everyone — oh isn’t that too bad!
I’ve read the Prince – and so what — we are evil conniving demons…. I know that.
And that is not my point.
You say the US is the best of the worst – on what evidence?
I say the US is up there with the worst – if not the worst — because they hide their atrocities behind the dictators they have supported over the decades.
Of course all empires have done very bad things — but as I have already said my issue is not so much with that (we are evil beings therefore we cannot help be evil) — it is with the fact that many of the Americans believe they are a relatively benign mass murderer (benign mass murderer heheh!!!) — because they have not killed and maimed as many as earlier empires.
1. They are no less benign than any others – if you could tally things up they are probably one of the worst ever – if not the worst
2. Even if they were less benign – the country is still a mass murdered… that’s like saying you have two sons… both are on death row — Joe raped and killed 100 women — and Billy raped and killed 80 women — you run into your neighbour at the grocery store and you start bragging about your good son Billy — oh my Billy what a good boy — nothing like that Joe — I dunno what went wrong with Joe — we raised him real good…
More like – global war monger and local warlord…
Given the choice — and the track record of America — I’ll take my chances with the local warlord…
Paul wrote:
“I’ll take my chances with the local warlord…”
Me too, Paul – me too!
No other empire in history also created a “Peace Corps,” or started a “League of Nations” or established “the World Heath Organization” or a “USAID,” or a “Doctors without Borders” or etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. The world is very lucky to have the US as its hegemon instead of Russia, China, Germany, ISIS, Iran and so forth. You guys, while clearly intelligent, are so anti-American that you sabotage your own arguments by being so lefty-extreme.
Inalaska,
“Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, is a French-founded (now international and federal) humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9decins_Sans_Fronti%C3%A8res
Doctors without Borders is French — I have raised money for them.
You are aware that many US ‘aid’ orgs are fronts for CIA spying? http://www.globalresearch.ca/usaid-spying-in-latin-america/5306679
You are aware that the CIA infiltrated polio vaccination teams in Pakistan in order to try to find bin laden — and that is why the Taleban are killing polio teams now? http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cia-drops-vaccination-cover-stories-in-wake-of-polio-outbreak-1.2647618
If the USA is so ‘good’ then why does most of the world despise and fear this country?
And while you toot the WW2 horn — plenty of countries were helping Europe — NOT just America…
But of course we all have our reasons — the world needed the Europe to recover — and guess who was making money off the European recovery? Small price to pay for some cans of beans no?
As for the US Marines and co. never establishing order, I bet if you asked the people of Britain and France during WWII that question, you’d get a better answer. Or more recently, if you asked the southeast Asians who came to help with food, water and military police after the big tsunami, you’d get a different answer. The list of examples is too long to name here.
Pfffftttt … I was in the middle of my pre-mountain bike coffee here in the mountains and I read that…
Why do people in the ME and south/central America hate the US? Surely you are kidding.
Start with the US installing and supporting dictators — who sell out their countries to American corporations — and torture and murder anyone (with CIA training) who opposes them – heck the US even runs a training school for wanna be torturers – innocuously called the School of the Americas 🙂
Here’ check out the curriculum: http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98
Likewise in the Middle East — the same formula is used — steal oil resources — install people like the Shah of Iran – after unseating a democratically elected Mossadegh all because he had the temerity to state that Iranian oil was for the benefit of Iranians
The 1953 Iranian coup d’état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name ‘Operation Boot’) and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).[3][4][5][6]
Mossadegh had sought to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now BP) and to change the terms of the company’s access to Iranian oil reserves. Upon alleged refusal of the AIOC to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize the assets of the company and expel their representatives from the country
More- so much more … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
So ask yourself — let’s say Australia were to send its intelligence services into America along with funds and weapons — teaming up with Occupy elements — incite riots and mayhem on the streets which lead to the overthrow of your government — then the Aussies install a puppet as your dictator — who allowed Australian companies to take over your oil industry leaving you with none of the income (but the puppet would get to be very wealthy for facilitating all of this)
How would you feel? What would you do?
I am sure you would be pretty upset with the Australians — but the Australians would know this — so they would have trained the puppet dictator’s shock troops in how to deal with people like you…
Into the dungeon with you for a few sessions of electric shock … and if you still resist then they simply ‘disappear’ you.
If that does not register then perhaps this will — This won the Academy Award for Best Documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-p4cPoVcIo
It makes me sick to watch that.
I was asking why south america and ME hate usa in a ironic way. I know the answer, it was not an incredulity question.
I missed the rhetorical nature of the comment – apologies
But many of them want to live in the US.
Ya they were seduced by the American Dream…. which has turned into the American nightmare…
I agree with you, Paul. I am also ashamed to be a human being. I said I didn’t care what people did to each other, and the sooner we were gone from this planet, the better it will be for other species. If civilization continues much longer, the planet will end up devoid of life above RNA. Kesar said that comment made him sick, that it was inhuman. No, Kesar, it’s not inhuman. In fact it is the very essence of humanity – systematic torture, genocide, death and rape. Perpetrated on any and all species. Rule 34, no exceptions. No nation is any better than any other, no human is better than any other. We all carry the genes of the ones who murdered, tortured and raped their way through history. Even if we personally don’t do it, our descendents would certainly do those things. Your righteous indignation makes me sick, Kesar. I want it all to end. I want humans off this beautiful planet. I want no more children raped. I want no more murder, no more torture, no more slavery. There is only one way this will happen.
I cry every time I watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_9U4gqwHW8
because I know we will never change our ways.
I will become a blubbering idiot when I see the movie, “6” this fall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrw-fVADtv0
because I know all the efforts of well-meaning people will not be enough. It’s not what individuals do, it’s what the population does, what the species does. And we have shown ourselves to be the most violent, sadistic and short-sighted species that ever arose on this planet. It’s coming to an end, and it will be horrible.
There are a lot of things we don’t know. We really don’t know how things will end. The result could mostly be a die off from an epidemic or lack of water. Or there may be something that happens that we don’t now understand.
Howard Storm near-death experience:
“They made it very clear to me that God had given this country the greatest blessing of any people in the history of the world. We have more of God’s blessing. Everything that we have comes from God. We didn’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it, but we happen to be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world. And God gave us all this so that we could be the instruments of God’s light in this world, and we are not instruments of light. In other countries people see us as purveyors of exploitation, military might, and pornography. They see us as completely hedonistic and amoral — we have no morality. People can do whatever they want wherever they want with whatever they want. Our amorality is a cancer on the rest of the world, and God created us to be just the opposite.
“People get mad at me for saying it, but God is very unhappy with what we’re doing. When I came back from the experience I was almost out of my mind trying to convert people. God wanted a worldwide conversion thousands of years ago. God pulled out all the stops 2,000 years ago with Jesus. From God’s view, that was the definitive moment in human history. And the impact of the prophets and teachers and the Messiah has been a big disappointment to God because people have by and large rejected it. I was told that God wants this conversion. And if we don’t get with the program fairly soon, He is going to have to intervene in some ways that from a human point of view are going to seem cataclysmic. God is really tired of what we’re doing to one another and the planet and to His Creation. We were put in this world to be stewards and live in harmony with His creation and one another and we don’t realize the important spiritual consequences of what we do when we raise a child in a faithless society.”
“I asked how [America’s purification] would come about, and they said it would be simple, that our society is very dependent on a lot of very fragile things — energy grid, transportation. In each geographical area of the United States people used to be relatively self-sufficient as far as agricultural products. Now, how long would any state survive without the transport of food and energy?
“What would happen is these very complex and delicate grids of our economic system would begin to break down. We’ve created a society of such cruel and self-centered people that the very nature of civilization would begin to break down. The angels showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hording goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos.” (Howard Storm)
—
This near-death-experience men (dream, imagination, whatever) seems remarkly close to what can happen to our society in terms of energy-transportation-food system, and chaos…
I don’t necessarily think that the future is like this. There are many things we don’t know.
I am not convinced that Nature (or God) is angry at us–we are doing what we are programmed to do. All species need energy resources to survive. We have managed to corner a large share of energy resources, thus growing our population at the expense of other species. But this is way the natural system works. Imbalances now will be corrected over time. There may even be whole different realms we are not aware of. We think we know everything, but we don’t.
Who knows the future? No one, for sure…
Maybe Nature (does nature have a conscience?) or God, or higher energy realm, is angry in the same when we as parents are angry with our childs when they do bad things, especially when they are young and imature. When a parent think a children needs to learn a lesson, the child might be punished in a light way. It’s not pure anger, just out of hate/anger. Large part of population dont have conscience that they are behaving badly. Perhaps it’s time for our civilization to lift our conscience.
Maybe God exists maybe not. Maybe God is different from our usual childish and cartonish image… Our human and limit senses cant imagine a realm that is bigger than our vision. Neverthless either way, we humans are responsible for our actions. We write our destiny.
Humans have a choice. There were tribes living in amazon forest and Africa who were sustainable and not greedy for more. Also American Indians who live in America in balance with nature. Humans have a choice, it’s a ilusion to think that we dont have a choice to act as we wish. And for sure we are in illusion that progress and techonogy are some sort of religion that can and will achieve everything. To think that we can live for ever like this, is an illusion that will turn into a shock. In a natural way or a disturbing one.
Well said.
Oh baloney. The universe if full of material of energy and of intelligence. Heck with Earth anyway, tfm two legged vermin.
Another good article http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article46946.html
Again we see the biggest danger is the collapse in the price of oil — as that would bankrupt many oil producers…
http://www.oil-price.net/
These are the latest oil prices for 8/18/2014
WTI 97.35 & Brent 101.95, which is only a 4.60 spread, the lowest I ever remember seeing.
It’s really going away, forever
The differential has been quite low for a while now. Looking at weekly average spot prices on EIA reports, for the week of 7/25/14, the average differential between Brent and WTI was only $1.99 barrel. The $4.60 spread is an increase relative to this differential.
Whenever anyone complains that the Fed is taking care of their mates — I’ve countered with the fact that a rising stock market takes care of more than just those people… and here is a good article detailing that and more:
Why The Fed Can’t, And Won’t, Let The Stock Market Crash
… it is not the 1% that would suffer the most should the S&P have a post-Lehman like 50%+ wipe out, which also means that the Federal Reserve’s only mandate of pushing asset prices to ever higher levels while pretending it does so to boost employment and keep inflation at 2% is no longer for the benefit of the uber-wealthy.
So why can’t, or rather won’t, the Fed let the bubble market collapse once again? Simple – as the following chart shows, the illusion of wealth is now most critical when preserving the myth of the welfare state: some 50% of all US pension fund assets are invested in stocks and only 20% in Treasurys.
This compares to less than 10% for Japan which also explains why for Abe, the only lifeline left is pushing pension funds out of their existing asset allocation sweet spot and forcing them to buy stocks.
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/debt-rattle-aug-17-2014-america-can-see-its-future-in-the-mirror/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theautomaticearth%2FOCyb+%28The+Automatic+Earth+3.0%29
Paul, yes, interesting article. Conundrums abound!
Whenever I go to The Automatic Earth my computer freezes up after a few seconds. If I refresh sometimes that will help, but I’m wondering if you or others have the same problem and does anybody know a way to avert the freeze up?
Not experiencing those problems
I have exactly the same problem Stilgar.
Stilgar, try Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer or whatever else you are currently using (assuming it is not GC). It may work better for you.
No problems using Google Chrome.
I use fire fox with no problems
Excelent prose, high spirit, a shine of wisdom
Pension funds in the US have annual returns that they are aiming for. When bond yields are obviously too low, pension funds invest a lot in the stock market, assuming that the stock market prices will continue to increase. Regulations regarding what pension funds can invest in vary by country.
Social security (pensions for the general population) is too big to be funded by stock and bonds, although they may have “small” balances that are invested in stocks and bonds. Such funds are pretty much “pay as you go.” They need an increasing number of young people to divide costs among to keep payments from becoming onerous.
Yes thanks for pointing out the difference — only private pensions are benefiting from this…
Others are getting shafted because they I think are indexed to CPI — but CPI is manipulated to show far lower inflation.
Those people get to eat pink slime burgers in a cold hovel I guess…
“Total SA (FP) Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie said he sees no reason for oil purchases to be made in dollars, adding that it makes sense to expand the use of other currencies in transactions outside the U.S.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-05/total-s-de-margerie-sees-no-need-for-dollars-in-oil-purchases.html
Interesting since de Margerie also aknowledges IEA’s forecasts are fool’s dreams
Thanks for the link …. as the article I posted the other day indicates… the US is desperate not to lose Europe to the Russia/China sphere…
This — and other developments out of France including the sale of warships to Russia — indicate perhaps that France is playing one side off against the other trying to get the best deal… but since energy is crucial and Russia holds that card… are we seeing a massive shift in alliances starting?
The Deep State in America will of course be doing everything possible to stop this
With the exception of, perhaps, France, there will never be “massive shift in alliances” from western Europe to Russia. There is too many eons of cultural mistrust by Europe of Russia, going as far back as invasions by the Mongel Horde. There is a very real civilizational/cultural fault line that runs north to south. As Samuel Huntington posits in “Clash of Civilizations”: This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia.”
Europe may need Russia’s oil and natural gas, but there will never be an alliance between them at the expense of western liberalism as buttressed by NATO, the euro and the Hague. France can play along with independence from Europe but when push comes to shove, France will fall in line with the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Does energy not trump cultural and ethnic similarities though?
Russia clearly understands the power that they hold over the EU — and just like the US has used their clout to FORCE alliances on countries — and many of those countries have no cultural overlap with the US at all (what does Egypt, or Jordan or Saudi Arabia etc… have in common with an American or a European?) — so too can Russia FORCE the EU to align itself and adopt pro-Russian policies (throwing the US under the bus…)
If they refuse — you cut off the gas…
There are only interests — and survival — nothing else matters — a common culture is not relevant when you are freezing and starving …
The Deep State obviously knows this — and they are desperately trying to stop this — at least that is my take from that article…. and from thinking through what is really happening from a big picture stand point.
you refus to name manes of the “deep state”..
are we to assume that the deep state needed a new pearl harbor, that they’re bent on establishing global hegemony?
are we to assume, then, that the neocons are the deep state’s salesmen?
then we have to ask ourselves, “do we approve of the deep state’s agenda and tactics?”
I’ve named on name previously – I suspect Don Regan is a fairly senior Deep Stater — here — watch him tell the president what to do as if he were chastising a 5 year old http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR3RqMMIwD4
Who exactly are the top dogs in the deep state? Rather difficult to determine exactly who the board is because they don’t exactly advertise — but I strong suspect the Koch Brothers fairly high up http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations Kissinger would certainly be up in the in crowd… Wolfowitz perhaps…
But the very top people by nature would want to be behind the curtain because whenever there is a backlash they don’t want it hitting them — they have their stooges to take the fall — see George W Bush — the hatred is directed at him… not the people who gave him his marching orders…
Another reason would that if the ultimate power lies with people who have no allegiance to America whatsoever … they most definitely would not want to be named… because if the people found out that their politicians’ strings were pulled by a non-American cabal … that could cause serious backlash against these people
“Give me control of a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes the laws.”
Based on that quote, if you want to try to find out who the big dawgs are — start with banking … (and start with researching that quote).
Note that the central banks of the world — which are owned by the big banks — have the power to create money out of thin air and lend it out at interest…
Think about that for a moment…
Iimagine if you had that right — imagine how wealthy you would be — every single entity on earth would be your slave — everyone with a credit card loan, a mortgage… every corporation would be ultimately controlled by you…
Recall how Mr Berlusconi — a billionaire with heavy mafia connections — who has been in office forever — scampered away with his tail between his legs a few years ago — at the time he was going against the ECB’s wishes… now who has the power to make such a powerful man do that? Nobody messes with these people — not the president of the US — not the wealthiest men on the planet — because you cannot win — so best to play ball — because playing ball means you get rich — and not playing ball means you get dead.
And now ask yourself — why do countries allow a private company to control their currencies?
Why don’t they just print their own currencies — and use the interest generated from loaning cash out — to build hospitals — or bridges — or other useful things?
Follow the money. That’s is who runs the show. And those guys would be the ultimate power on the planet.
BUT — just because they have all the power — they still can do nothing about the little problems we are facing re: oil…. and I am sure there is much gnashing of teeth in their exalted circles…
Paul says: ” just because they have all the power — they still can do nothing about the little problems we are facing re: oil…. ”
ah
so the deep state didnt think the solution to the oil problem was a new pearl harbor that would justify wars in the midddle east oil patch
where, then, did the neocons get that “new pearl harbor” idea?
The DS will obviously do every possible thing to keep BAU going — because their power depends on that happening… they die too as do their grandchildren when the SHTF … they are fighting for their lives…
the upshot being… apparently we dont know who this “deep state” is…. but if we approve of the deepstate and its policy and actions, then everything’s okay
ibut if we dont approve of the deep state, then can we put enough heat on the deep state’s salesmen so they’ll cough up some names?
According to Paul’s recent post in response to me, the Deep State is basically all of the super wealthy elites who have always ruled the world. So if this is the Deep State, its old news. The wealthy have always influenced the outcome of events and controlled politicians. When I read people on this blog ranting about Deep State, I’m picturing a cabal of organized wealth that perpetuates itself from generation to generation and consciously directing events toward an outcome that increases their wealth and power. But that’s not what I see. I see a loosely affiliated group of the super rich who use their money to influence the political process for their own gain, but not in concert with each other toward some stated end.
Not quite — I believe the ultimate powers running the world are the people who control the central banks
Explain to me how it is possible for a private company to be granted the power to issue the currency of a country?
How would one convince a country like the US that it should grant those powers to a private entity?
And how is it that a private company makes policy for a country e.g. the Fed is printing tens of trillions of dollars
Did congress vote on that – nope. Did the senate vote on that – nope.
Rather strange no?
do you think your “deep state” people thought they needed a new pearl harbor?
http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
here’s a list of PNAC signatories… including those who signed a document in september 2000 that said they needed a new pearl harbor…
are they part of the “deep state”?
and if they are, that’s a hell of a way torun a deep state, isnt it? …i mean, how “deep” can this “state” be when it details its intentions and says it needs a new pearl harbor to get the project going?
and a couple months later, these people are installed in some of the highest offices in the US government? –installed after an election recount in a state governed by another PNAC signatory who happens to be the president-elect’s brother?
it’s all pretty shallow for a supposedly “deep” state, isnt it?
So that info is public knowledge – so what — is anyone doing anything about it? How many people are even aware of it? Can anyone do anything about it?
This is public knowledge too – the Deep State planned to KILL AMERICANS — http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662
Did you know that? I bet not. Most people are not aware of this — it has obvious implications re 911… yet where is the NYT on this? CNN BBC etc etc etc… And even if people knew exactly what would they do about it?
There is nothing they can do — just like they can do nothing about the NSA and its criminal acts that are in violation of the constitution
Why can they do nothing?
1. The Deep State owns the politicians — so you can’t vote out those who do nothing and expect someone to stand against them… The new reps will do the same thing – nothing
2. You cannot protest — because as we saw with Occupy they pepper spray you — and put you on a black list — good luck finding a corporate job if you get on that list…
They are untouchable.
One thing can touch them though – global economic collapse
Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers
http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html
I’ll post this PBS discussion again http://mikelofgren.net/tv_appearances/deep_state.html However I think the people they speak of are minions of the real power — just as the Bilderberg delegates are minions..
Throughout history wars have been won or lost based on the ability to finance them.
One reason WW1 was lost by Germany was related to the bankers turning against them — I understand a deal was made in which the German bankers threw the country under the bus in exchange for the promise of a homeland in Palestine…
See http://www.scribd.com/doc/8634450/Germany-and-the-Jews-by-Benjamin-H-Freedman-1961
Armies are nothing without financing… so again — the money men have the power.
there seems to be a massive amount of double-think going on here…
ror instance, we assume that globalization is a good thing, at least by the deep state’s lights
we know that we have to cooperate locally to get anything done… that cooperation requires observance of ethics and morals, at least locally
does “globalization” require a global observance of ethics and morals? …can we call that ethical and moral behavior “decency”, for the sake of argument? …has “decency” been globalized?
have the deep state and its neocon stalemen been behaving decently?
Wadosy
As the scale increases, the ethics worsen or cease to have relevance. As an individual, mess your neighbours around,and you are in big trouble: as a nation, wreck a whole region and it can be shrugged off in the Imperial capital and not even mentioned at the next cocktail party……
The main reason Germany lost world war 1 wasn’t about banking, it was the development of the tank (led by Churchill) that allowed Allied forces to breach the trench warfare stalemate and turn the tide, coupled with the entrance of the US with its huge manpower reserves armed with the arsenal of an industrialized superpower on the rise.
This guy who was part of the US admin — begs to differ — http://www.scribd.com/doc/8634450/Germany-and-the-Jews-by-Benjamin-H-Freedman-1961 (see the fellows surname before I am called an anti-Semite for posting that…)
Financing is crucial to winning a war — no financing no tanks — no planes – no bombs…
I think culture does trump energy. Europe will go to war with Russia over energy before they forge an alliance with Russia for energy. Europe knows and understands what being under the heal of a Russian alliance would eventually mean to them.
maybe “decency” has become politically incorrect
how can we justify our indecent behavior?
can we believe in our particular brand of god, and does that belief justify what-would-thoerwise-be indecent behavior?
can we believe that our particular race is superior to all others? …can we believe that the “others” are not quite human at all, and so dont have to be treated decently?
You express my beliefs. It must be big disappointment for you that most people don’t share these values and in some circumstances quite contrary.
For me it was rather liberating somehow.
When have we ever been ‘decent’
Could it be when we were enslaving millions and beating them — or maybe when we were involved in committing genocide against an inferior race… or blowing each other to bits in one our thousands of wars… how about penning 50,000 chickens into tiny boxes and clipping their beaks so when they go nuts they dont harm each other
I don’t think decent has ever been a very good word to use to describe humans
When there are not enough resources to go around, all kinds of differences can be used to justify bad behavior toward out groups. As someone mentioned earlier, in the extreme case this can even turn family members against each others–something mentioned by Dmitry Orlov.
It is not the beliefs that are at fault in my view; it is the lack of adequate resources. If resources were divided equally, all would die, because there are not enough to go around. Excluding some allows people from getting adequate resources allows at least some to live. Not ideal, but that is the way things seem to work with natural selection.
InAlaska says: ” Europe will go to war with Russia over energy …”
you think europeans are that stupid, huh?
who would benefit from another big war in europe, one that destroys to centers of resistance to neocons’ global hegemony?
and once europe and russia destroy each other, then we can concentrate on china, cant we?
good deal
Why go to war? Russia is more than happy to keep selling oil to Europe — just not in USD.
And what does being under the Russian sphere mean exactly?
I suppose one thing it means is that they get a guaranteed source of energy — and isn’t that all that matters?
They can choose to be vassals of America — or vassals of Russia.
Without Russian oil and gas — Europe ceases to exist.
Obviously the US sees this — and they are doing everything the can to try to stop Russia from busting up their empire…
My money is on Putin. Europe has little choice in this — because Putin can simply turn off the tap at any time
Paul,
If you take some tinfoil and make a hat out of it and put it on your head, you’ll get better reception.
LOL!
Just keep on believin that hope and change is around the corner… and keep on voting … because as we have seen it really does make a difference.
I see the US is back in Iraq — Maybe Michael J Fox can make another sequel … Back to Future – Iraq…
I see a fusion film — Robocob meets Back to the Future — Fox who suffers from Parkinsons is fitted with a robocop contraption — and is shipped to Bag Dad — and he single handled defeats the bad guys.
Watch for me at the Academy Awards when I collect best screenplay… Rebecca Black’s agent has also approached — I’ll be writing the follow up to Friday Friday…
Busy busy busy….
InAlaska
It would probably be a German-Russian hegemony, which is interesting to conjur with.
This was, of course, Hitler’s aim; with German rule and Russian resources combined, not an equal partnership. One of his opponents said that he was a fool to go to war with Russia, as time would have brought everything to him in the end.
I think most modern ordinary Russians are interested in a prosperous Western Europe, it’s a nice place to take vacations and own property – Putin used to hang out in Spain when he was a nobody. Russian middle class have moved into Spain’s east coast in big way recently – sun and culture draw them.
It’s interesting that German business leaders have been saying recently how reliable they find Russians – they fulfill contracts.
Weighing it all up, I suspect the clear desire of the US to crush Russia as a power which has a veto on policy in the Mid-East, and the strong Putin government, as part of the plan to settle that region and ‘pivot to Asia’ for the anticipated confrontation with China, is greater than the Russia desire to pull all the strings in Europe.
But this is just a hunch. What can we know? It is clear though that NATO/US has broken its word to Russia regarding eastwards expansion, which has perhaps not been wise.
this “deep state” business sounds pretty funky to me… like maybe alex jones’ “illuminati” ploy ran out of steam, so the “deep state” is supposedly replacing the “illuminati”
…the object of the game being, deflect attention from the people who’ve been planning this opertion for decades, and have left footprints a foot deep behind them
.
fits in pretty good with alex’s chemtrail and abiotic oil projects… Dept of Mindf*ck operations
I am afraid “deep state” is not high on my list of topics I am following. There are too many other issues to be concerned with.
yeah, this “deep state” idea looks like a classic limited-hangout operation.
Of course if my company had the power to print every dollar that is circulating through the global economy and collect interest on it — that is exactly what I would want you believing.
I would absolutely not want to draw attention to myself and the very sweet little deal I have cut for myself — I would not want the masses asking uncomfortable questions like:
– who the hell is the Paul guy? Is he an American?
– why does Paul get to print money — why doesn’t our government do that?
– why does Paul get money for nothing off this money by lending it to me at interest?
– Can our government not fulfill that role — and the interest get used not to pay for Paul’s private jet fleet and mega yachts.
– why am I losing my house and sleeping rough and meanwhile Paul lives like a king in his castle off the interest he charges all of us on the trillions he prints from thin air every year?
And of course I’d want you to keep on voting — believing the president is the most powerful man on the planet — and that congress and the senate actually are acting in your interests — and that if they don’t you can vote them out in favour of someone who is in it for you…
And watching CNN and the Beeb and reading the NYT — believing that they are not propaganda machines…
Because as Henry Ford said:
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
So yes — I absolutely would not want to draw attention to myself…. much prefer the castle to the gallows…
I’ve connected the dots for you as best I can –if you choose not to see it the picture and remain in ignorant bliss… that is your choice.
InAlaska
European perceptions of Russia have gone through several distinct phases:
1/ Medieval rift:Orthodox versus Catholic Christianity. This is still profoundly important. A very distant place.
2/ Exploration of trade with Russia, 1500 to 1700. Seen as a fascinating if barbaric region, but with much to offer by way of raw resources.
3/ Relations with a modernised Imperial Russia: anxiety regarding its huge modernised army following the reforms of Peter the Great. Treated with caution and respect, and one of the Great Powers of the European system. The resources of Russia of tantalising interest to bankers and industrialists.
It’s worth noting that Napoleon (1812)didn’t wish to conquer and absorb Russia, merely to humble and contain her so he could get on with his western Empire (is this not like the US today?); Hitler (1941) and the German bankers sought to absorb and enslave her.
4/ The centre of World Revolution under Bolshevism, leading to the Cold War and all our recent history. To those on the Left, a shining light of hope until the reality of Stalinism became fully known, to others a great menace.
I think we can see traces of all these stages in the way Russia is thought about these days. I suspect they still get in the way of rational analysis somewhat. What the Russians are thinking is another matter…..
xabier
Your understanding of “the Russian Problem” is more nuanced than most people contributing on this blog. Your comment: “it is clear though that NATO/US has broken its word to Russia regarding eastwards expansion, which has perhaps not been wise,” is right on the money. I still fail to understand why the US decided to pursue this line of policy when clearly Russia has vital interests in Ukraine and the West does not. Nevertheless, we are in it now and will have to find a way through. I suspect this was a foreign policy miscalculation that will be allowed to fade away once time and a new administration have their way. I find great solace in the fact that neither side managed to push the armageddon button during the forty plus years that we had our fingers on the launch codes of thousands of ICBMs. That demonstrates that neither side in this vast historical conflict is stupid or irrational. I am firmly in the camp that, ulimately the US and Europe will back down from confrontation in Ukraine, Russia will keep the energy tap open through Ukraine (possibly because they will own Ukraine), there will be no shift in alliances from NATO to the east. War will be avoided. The real war will be between those who have the ability to project their military power into the south to grab what is left in the Middle East and Africa. Namely, Russia, China, Europe and the US. If I were betting, these military powerhouses will divide the world into hemispheres and concentrate on getting what they need from weaker states. Why would two heavies like the US and Russia go at each other to their ultimate destruction, when they can pick off the weaklings first. There is no upside to going to war with a nation that can nuke you. Resource rich Russia has most of what it needs but food and if it has Ukraine it has wheat and agriculture. China needs more of everything and will get it from Asia and Africa. Europe will side with the US which has Canada and all of South America.
InAlaska
I’d say the very firm Russian reaction to US expansion to their borders is giving US/EU strategists a well-deserved reality check. Why indeed fight when one can partition the globe and its resources (in the Chinese case under the guise of ‘ non-imperial friendly development aid’, so amusing that anyone swallows that….)? The strategies being pursued by all the major players are rational and ruthless. I would much rather have seen friendly EU/Russian relations though.
From the US stand point (if this is correct http://www.popularresistance.org/the-latest-in-the-new-cold-war/) the Ukraine meddling makes perfect sense… the US cannot attack Russia directly because Putin has a massive nuclear arsenal… so they fight proxy wars as they did during the cold war… and they use economic attacks (which the EU is resisting because they need Russian energy)
The end game is to get Putin out — and a puppet in place — that is the tried and true formula that the US has used for decades …
However this time they are unlikely to succeed — the EU knows that (but not cooperating on sanctions) and China knows that as evidence that they are siding with Putin.
I wonder what is being said behind the scenes — are the EU powers in top secret discussions with Russia at this very moment negotiating on how the new arrangements work?
Doesn’t really matter does it — they are like us — dancing while the music plays… but the music is going to stop shortly — and the chairs will be smashed to pieces against the wall.
Nobody knows when so the cotillion continues…
xabier and Paul,
Regarding your comment: “The strategies being pursued by all the major players are rational and ruthless.” I have a much easier time accepting this than a group of Deep State Illuminati moving pieces around a global chessboard. This is Great Power politics back in action after being dormant for several decades. Each nation acting in its own selfish interests and doing what they need to do to win the game. Some countries will make miscalculations along the way, but when it comes to survival of the state it is cold hard facts and national leaders, not Don Regan and some deep-state cabal who will make the decisions. xabier, I agree with you that it is unfortunate that the US has attempted this play in the Ukraine, it was a miscalculation just like Syria.
Germany has much more business interests (both ways) with Russia than France (and for instance France is much less dependant on Russian gas than Germany), but it is true that there might be less defiance towards Russia in France than in some other countries (although this could be questionable). But there is (and has been) also clearly a long term “push” from the US, to prevent a Europe “from the Atlantic to Ural” (as de Gaulle was saying).
Reblogged this on reality paradigm.
From Arnie Gundersen:
“There is more cesium in the fuel pool at Vermont Yankee than in all those above ground [bomb] tests over 30 years. And we tolerate it. There is a solution. You can take it and put it on the ground in something called dry casks, but Vermont Yankee and the other 23 utilities [Mark I type reactors] do not want to spend the money and are keeping that fuel in a very precarious place.
“The nuclear reactor has got the hottest nuclear fuel, but after 4 years it burns out and it has to be removed and it is put next to the reactor in a deep blue swimming pool, huge swimming pool. It has to stay cooled for 5 years and it has to be protected by the water for 30 years. There is a solution though. It does not have to stay up on the roof. Called dry cask storage, the fuel can be taken out and put into canisters and then lowered to the ground and set on the ground. Fukushima had those. In Fukushima, those survived the tsunami and the earthquake just fine. But the building did not. So the lesson that we have not learned from Fukushima is to get that fuel out of the fuel pool at Vermont Yankee and at 23 other nuclear sites around the country. Get it on the ground where it will be much safer.
“And the other item [besides earthquakes and floods] is the fuel pool issue where the utilities, to save money, are storing 35 years of spent nuclear fuel in locations that are nowhere near as safe as they could be. And everybody knows this. This is not new technology that has to be developed. The canisters that hold this waste are available and are readily available on the market. But nobody wants to spend the money to get the fuel out of those pools and onto the ground. The industry will say well we are concerned about our worker exposure. But that is a straw man. In fact, over 20 years, the industry has sped up refueling outages. And in the process of speeding up the refueling outages, the workers have become more exposed.”
I used brackets to insert context. Don’t know why Andersen is adressing only Mark I reactors.
http://www.fairewinds.org/cctv-live-at-five-with-margaret-harrington-and-arnie-gundersen/
Thanks. One would have to think there is a plan to deal with this… it would be one of the top priorities — right up there with stopping mass riots…
Perhaps the plan consists in sending rioters equiped with buckets full of water to fight nuke fires
I bet they call that — Operation Kill Two Birds with One Stone
Dear Gail
This is a response to a variety of previous notes by both you and commenters.
This is from James Howard Kunstler today:
‘This poor nation is faced with the tasks of completely retooling its economy in a way that it can’t bear to imagine, and of also reforming its grotesque social behavior. One might follow the other in a better world, but our prospects for the moment are not so bright. My own camp is inclined to expect an anguished collapse rather than any deliberate reformation. We’ve set ourselves up for it.
The future we don’t want to think about is an economy focused on food production at the local scale, along with the activities that support it and add value to its products, and the labor required to do all that. There’s a fair chance that we will fail altogether to ever get it running. In any case, the officially-sanctioned future that so many people are expecting — the digital wonderland economy — will not survive the energy and capital scarcities ahead.’
I keep coming to the same general conclusion. It isn’t that the global economy has exhausted all the opportunities to use fossil fuels. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that we would continue to use fossil fuels so long as they were capable, perhaps, of 10X the work of a human with a shovel, then the price of fossil fuels could rise to quite high levels. But the society that used them and paid the high prices would have to be much more like the one Kunstler describes above. Such a society might use fossil fuels to make grains fit for human consumption, but would not spend much at all on high priced fashion clothing or luxury yachts. Such a society might spend fossil fuels on cooking food, but not on junk food.
The problem isn’t that we don’t know what we need to do, and not that we don’t know how to do it, but that that alternative future is not, we think, as attractive as ‘a chicken in every pot’ or ‘a healthy retirement plan for everyone’ or the ‘white collar job’ dream.
Mind you, I am not claiming I have any magic solution which will change the direction of society. I expect most people will go off the cliff. Many people who try to do the right thing will fall victim to the dangers inherent in the great change.
How do we get oil and gas out of the ground without the high tech civilization that allows us to do that today?
Again — oil no longer bubbles to the surface — computers and high tech equipment are required to pump oil.
How do we process the oil – have a look at a refinery – how would we keep something like that operating – even something on a small scale — without the BAU economy to support it?
http://www.tendersontime.com/get-blog-image.php?id=NTk=
Paul, Gail,
Just for the sake of argument, don’t you envisage the possibility that TPTB + the military will compel the oil workforce to do their job for 2 cups of rice (that or a bullet in the head)? An how cheap would be the oil extraction with that slave work? I say it because, honestly, I don’t see how the psico-military and the psico-super-rich would accept to go gentle into that awful night, alongside the little people. I think they wil TRY, at least, to secure some oil. Not in order, of course, to save the 7.2 M. But certainly is to their best interest to guarantee some million peasants to their farms? An we can’t forget that in politics the military dictatorship is, since Antiquity, the most time-tested regime. Who have the guns have the power, and the power will be used. Don’t you think?
Sorry for my awful english.
I am sure they’d like to try … but it is a bit more complicated than just forcing engineers to continue fracking, pumping and refining…
In order to carry out such activities you need spare parts — you need factories to make those parts — you need mines to mine the minerals to make those parts — you need ships and trains and trucks to move those parts to where they are needed — you need computers to operate the drilling gear — you need factories to make the computers — you need raw materials for the computers… you also need universities to continue to pump out engineers …. and on and on and on to infinity…
So no — I don’t see how ordering people to work would work… the supply chain long and complex… one part doesn’t show up the whole thing grinds to a halt…
Meanwhile there will be no food — because without oil and gas we cannot produce anywhere near the volumes of food we do now…. so the engineers and most other people will be starving to death — and anyone who is left alive will be working in agriculture… because there will be no tractors or other heavy machinery — we are at best going back to organic farming — on the bits of land that have no been ruined by pouring petrochemical miracle grow on them
Paul, thanks. Yes, I suppose you are right. I was thinking mainly in terms of workforce. But the oil extraction is not only about workforce, it depends on imports of raw materials and spare parts, as you say. Before globalization, maybe the strategy of enslavement would work. Not anymore.
I am sorry. This simply isn’t possible. It is a nice fantasy, followed by a lot of peak oil people, but we have to keep the economy together for that to happen. I don’t see that happening.
http://www.businessinsider.com/2012-solar-storm-almost-ended-life-on-earth-2014-7
As someone said before on this thread, the solar burst it’s probably a worse problem than cheap oil depletion.
Imagine all critical facilities being down. No electricity, no bank money, no 90% of our jobs would be possible. The world is so depent on technology.
There is a 12% of this thing happen in a 10 year frame. It happen in 1859, but almost nothing was electric. Only telegraphs suffer from it…
There is a very entertaining novelized account of this very scenario called “One Second After” which makes for great doomsday reading.
Pingback: Newsletter AUGUST 2014 Vol. 2 Issue 7 The funnel, the game change and the dialogue.
This article forgot one “variable”.
Population.
Say you have 1,000 bananas.
If you have 2,000 people, then 1,000 people will go “bananas” because of starvation.
If you have 500 people, you have abundance.
Therefore, simply stop having kids, except for a select few.
Problem(s) solved.
And you will select the few to have kids.?
Breeding is a basic human function, it happens when parents have the strength to do it, irrespective of common sense or common future—it’s what we do. and nature has made sure we like doing it.
In any event, youve missed the point. Our population problem is here to stay, because the parents of the next 2 generations are alive now.
In 100 years, when those generations have flowed through, our population problem will have solved itself, no doubt unpleasantly.
If it hasn’t we face a world of 10 bn +
There is one other problem you missed. In order to feed the pyramid scheme the Central Planners have created you need a new fresh supply of those who will pay for those who can’t in their later years of life. If you don’t have a GROWING population then the system collapses. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So in this case the system requires COMPOUND GROWTH or it collapses.
in 100 years at most the die off will be a memory, wiith as little thougth given to them as we give to those who died in the black death 500 years ago, or even the 50 million who died in the flu of 1918/20.
We are not programmed to grieve over mass extinctions, we will have to get on with whatever life is on offer in 2114, hopefully without those who insist we can pray for full oilwells
End of More – You asked about security at Mesa Vista Ranch. Getting on the Gulfstream at Signature Flight Support there was only the guest list. At the ranch there was a fence around the 6,000 foot runway to keep the deer out. It was a long drive to the main house. I was told that those who arrived by car were ID’d at the gate by phone or equivalent. Roberts County is isolated with a population of about 900 of which 25 or so live on the ranch taking care of – among other things – thirty bird dogs and who knows how many shotguns. One morning I took a long walk at daybreak. Encountered no one. Did not trigger an alarm. I was told that it has become more difficult for poachers to cross the Canadian River. The employees denied ever shooting a poacher
Actuaries funding social security plans assume that a growing population will keep payments to the elderly affordable.
If the government doesn’t have a plan, and parents need to consider their own old age, they need to have enough children so that at least one will survive them, and be financially well enough off to take care of them. This often means having one or more sons.
“Having one or more sons” – good point.
I often wonder about the articles of the analysts who do not see the deeper implications of the children not leaving the parents home. They still view the situation like “the wages are low”, “there is not enough cheap flats”, “the young generation of today is lazy”, “the children use “mama hotel”, or describe the situation like “the children are not able to become self-sufficient”.
The following article shows that Slovakia has the second highest mean age of the young people when leaving parents home among the EU countries:
http://aktualne.atlas.sk/oblubeny-mama-hotel-su-mladi-slovaci-pohodlni-alebo-nemaju-peniaze/slovensko/spolocnost/
Together with the countries like Croatia (in the economic stagnation/decline), Italy, Greece, Spain…
But there is also the fact, that the pensions are low and the old parents are more and more dependent on the help/income of their children. Forming the housholds consisting of the child and the parent is more economical than leaving the home for both children and parents.
Those analysts think in the wrong direction. Because they still think in the old ways of the population/economic growth when in fact the growth has already stopped for the majority of the population…
MG
The phrase being put around in Britain now by the Bank of England is, roughly, ‘ wage growth seems to have moved into negativity’. Little by little the truth is being admitted, obliquely……..
The effect that you describe explains why THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SUSTAINABILITY!
Capitalism rather converted population in a Ponzi
The communism in the 20th century was in fact cornucopianism, belief in the power of the machines and the industry. The capitalism allowed the population to get to the resources using the debt and thus could beat the communism.
The nature on the Earth functions in a cyclic way, as the Earth moves around our main source of the energy – the Sun. We move in the circle around this source of the energy. After using our stored energy of the fossil fuels, the civilization returns to the cycle of the Sun.
The communism did not like the idea of the cyclic history, as it was not conform with its ideology of neverending progress. The capitalism, is aware of the cycles and accepts them, but, on the other hand, faces a massive distruction of the money as we know it, i.e. you can not use them to buy whatever and whenever you want, due to the energy costs, that limit the resource extraction and the transportation.
This seems to be quite interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40271/1/Solar_paper.pdf
Actually not…. because if the population drops — economic growth stops — and we get a deflationary spiral to hell — and civilization as we know it — ends.
See Japan as an example of how this plays out…
Paul, I lived in Japan for some years, came “out” just a few years ago, so I was there right in the heart of the so-called bubble crisis. It was pretty well off. It seemed much more comfortable that the UK does today. Boy, those shops were crowded. A friend from Tokyo stayed with me last month; he said I would see no difference at all there today except for new models of the Shinkansen. It’s more of what I was saying before about life here in South Northamptonshire regardless of what we are told is happening (collapse, doom etc), when you look around it’s not prevalent.
In many ways, what is happening is hidden beneath the surface. The financial system still has huge support. Oil prices are dropping too low for those producing oil. These situations don’t produce a lot of adverse outcomes. There is increasing wealth disparity, but some of this is hidden–young people are living with their parents longer, playing video games, and not buying cars. The people we do see in the shops, especially in the nicer areas, do not include very many of the folks who have been “left behind.”
Yes the PTB in a major country can — as they have in Japan for two decades now — keep BAU going for many years even though by rights it should fall apart.
This can happen:
1. Because Japan has been able to sell to international markets that until recently were buoyant (current account balances are now negative because markets are weak)
2. Because the Japanese debt has been owned by the Japanese and they are willing to accept very low returns (the Japanese are aging and cashing tapping their pensions in big numbers now)
3. Because Japan is too big to fail — the world holds its nose and looks away.
4. Japan has its own currency so that allows it to keep the smoke and mirrors game going
To a certain extent there are parallels in the UK….
The problem now is the entire world is a mess — most major economies are ‘Japans’ — the US, China, UK, etc….
Because of this the UK will not be able to emulate Japan and paper over the disaster that their economy for many years…
But I would argue that they are doing the right thing ….
If you were dying and in wicked pain — and out of money to buy pain killers — why not just pull out your credit cards and pile on debt buying meds?
I’ve posted a more detailed response earlier….
But as we can see — now that Japan is not the only major economy engaging in massive money printing and stimulus … they are falling quickly
“The number of households on welfare in Japan hit a record high of 1,603,093 in May, up 2,852 from the previous month, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said on Wednesday.
The rise came as a growing number of single-person elderly households, or people aged 65 or older who are living alone, became recipients, ministry officials said.
According to the ministry’s May survey, 751,363 families, or 47.1 percent of the total recipient households, comprised only the elderly or the elderly plus unmarried members younger than 18.
Elderly households on welfare increased, but fewer families without fathers or with sick or disabled members received benefits, the officials said.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/06/national/social-issues/number-households-welfare-hits-record-high-may/#.U_ONy2NeLy0
Let’s make no mistake — if a country piles on debt and/or prints money — and uses that to build stuff like mega highways to nowhere… or as in the case with China now massive Ghost Cities….
The economic situation in a country can appear robust — for some time — but do not be fooled by that — it is not different that an individual living the high life on credit…. Eventually it catches up to you ….
A big economy like Japan — with the ability to borrow enormous amounts (and print money) because it has had a good balance of payments because it has been an exporting powerhouse…. can go on for quite some time…
But with the global macro economy in a world of hurt…. as well as because of other factors — their days of pretending are very close to running into a brick wall…
There is no way out for Japan — http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-25/us-now-spending-26-available-tax-revenue-pay-interest
Even a slight nudge upwards in interest rates would tip them over the cliff…
As Kyle Bass says — it’s not if — it’s when….
The UK is no better off…. it’s all smoke and mirrors…
Lizzy
I’m ploughing my way through a great fat book -and a brilliant one – on the end of Rome and the start of Barbarian Christian Europe. What struck me is how the Imperial administration and BAU kept up right until the end in most places. Wonderful facade, with eventually nothing behind it.
Of course, our BAU is another society’s collapse: I’m thinking of all the Eastern Europeans who are here in Britain now because things are going so very badly at home……
Mind passing along the book name…
Paul
‘The Conversion of Europe’, by Richard Fletcher: basically about the whole transition from Rome to Christendom, 300 to 1400 AD. But I’m not sure I’d recommend it as Collapse reading it as it’s 500 pages, slightly loony-scholarly in that eccentric English way. Nonetheless, having studied that period intensively years ago I am still learning a hell of lot from it: the past never ceases to surprise me, which makes me wary of projecting fantasies on the future – what do we know really, what can we possibly foresee as to how this will pan out…..?
thanks
Lizzy, I don’t know about the UK but in the Northeast U.S. what you see if you leave the major city hubs are what Chris Hedges calls “sacrifice zones,” depressed areas with no economic vitality left. More and more people are being “kicked off the island,” so that the rest can carry on.
I work in Manhattan bubbleworld and yes, things seem BAU, I recently returned to rural PA northeast of Harrisburg (where I grew up) to attend a funeral though, after not having been there for many years and was shocked at how bad things were and how obese, ill, feeble and debilitated the people looked, especially a couple of people I had attended high school with. More and more people riding in Medicare scooters instead of walking and looking much older than their nominal age.
My children recently lived in Ithaca NY for a year. 15 years ago when we lived in upstate NY, Ithaca, home to Cornell University, was a very vibrant place. If you go to the stores and restaurants there now, things still seem relativelly BAU. However, the city has been unable to complete rebuilding of “The Commons,” a large rectangle of space downtown with shops and restaurants, for a year now because of money /budget troubles, and there’s a campground on the outskirts of town inhabited by meth addicts and other homeless. One or two of them burned to death this last winter because they tried having fires to warm themselves inside their tents. This sort of thing doesn’t make the national news, and thanks to the internet and other factors we no longer have local newspapers anymore so locals may not even know what’s going on 15 miles from their homes.
“Select-o-vision” is the order of the day.
Kinda like an apple rotting from the core — the outside still looks healthy… but….
Tagio
Same in London: horrible suburbs of benefit-dependent people (drive through in the day and the streets are packed as they mill around slowly) surround the prime and super-prime inner core, often formerly pleasant enough mixed areas. Living in the ‘rural’ commuter zone, coming in by train and working in the centre one might never realise how bad it has got in many suburbs. Lots of racial segregation, too: Africans loathe Asians, who loathe Turks, who hate East Europeans, etc…… Profound changes that just don’t make the headlines as you say. Super-fat cripples, legs amputated due to drugs, etc, are a feature of the UK now too.
Note a quote (Monday, 2014 Aug 18) by Tom Whipple, confirming what Gail has been warning about:
A new study shows that oil prices are not keeping up with the rapidly increasing costs of new oil sands and deepwater production. Some believe that it now requires $150 a barrel to earn a profit from new investment in the oil sands; and $115-$127 oil to earn a profit from deepwater production off Angola and Brazil. Given that the major oil companies are cutting back on capital investment, the future of major new deepwater and oil sands projects are becoming increasingly problematic until oil prices permanently go significantly higher — which of course cuts into consumer demand.
PM Cameron in Britain says that we are now fighting in Iraq – alongside the Kurds armed with East European weapons ! – for the ‘brighter world that we all want’. This will take at least a lifetime, he says.
IS, it seems, are not just terrorists, whom we can ally with in Syria, but ‘new and extreme terrorists’ whom we must deal with. I’m glad he is clear as to who our friends and enemies are, it was looking rather confusing for a while. Advice to terrorists: be careful which zone you are cutting heads off in, it makes a difference…..
Most inspiring to read over during one’s morning coffee: a New and Brighter World coming (but don’t hold your breath if over 40) and Lagarde’s ‘Magick Yeare of Seven ‘ has still over 4 months to go, how exciting it will be when the ‘strong growth’ she predicted kicks in!
xabier,
our brave politicians and the MSM are good at naming enemies – what should we have done without them? Norway is not sending weapons… yet. But we will. Everyone to the pumps to fight the “extreme terrorists”!
Jarle
First the ‘War on Terror’, then ‘The Humanitarian War on Even More Terrible Terror’. What next?
Although the WW1 ‘War to End All War’ has to take the prize for fatuous nonsense; it can’t be beaten can it?
The only viable economy in the western world is WAR. That’s about the only thing that the West still produces especially so in the US. In the US it’s all about the “military industrial complex”. A large portion of the US GDP goes straight to the MIC.
Actually war is very costly, also in terms of oil. Other types of energy as well. So this time it want be very easy to start a real war once SHTF. Even if you cut the productive part of consumption, soon you have people on the streets and anarchy, therefore more costs on domestic security and so forth. This is another death spiral. I guess implosion is more probable at some point. All depends on the critical first 3-12 months of the crisis IMO.
war is only viable when the ultimate aim of an invading force is to loot the assets of the ‘enemy’…. you may count those assets by whatever means comes to mind.
If you do not loot, then the means of warfare is a drain on the economy of the warring nation. The purpose of WW2 was to loot subjugated nations, ultimately it failed because a richer nation (USA) stopped it.
the USA is no longer rich, so must engage in ”peacekeeping” wars in order to maintain world oil flow
And here I was thinking all along that was about spreading Democracy… and smoking out the terrorists … and helping the poor people out from under tyrants….
Rape, pillage, plunger… same as it ever was — only difference now is that we believe we have democracy — so the PTB cannot just do what they want — they need to invent reasons — and they need spin masters (PR consultants) to get the masses on board….
This is the definitive documentary demonstrating how that works — the sample case is the Kuwait war http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaR1YBR5g6U
Thank goodness the US has at least someone in godforsaken Europe that it can rely to help out a little. Being the world’s policeman is no fun anymore, but at least someone appreciates us. If the world’s policeman decides to abandon the bad neighborhoods, heaven help Europe. They may have to sit up and pay attention to what’s going on in their back (and front) yard.
Yes Cameron is a lovely lap dog. Just like the SOB Blair who kissed Bush’s ass re WMD in Iraq and was rewarded with tens of millions in speaking engagements when he left office.
George Gallaway has a lovely documentary on Blair coming out — i contributed some cash to a crowd funding effort — cant wait to see it
It was so wonderful to see the worlds cop in action in Iraq — destroying an entire country …. let’s have a look at the cop in action http://www.theguardian.com/gall/0,8542,1211872,00.html
Just wait till the cop turns on Americans when they have had enough. You may change your mind….
One only has to view videos of the two oil embargoes of the 1970s/80s to realize it will be a FAST downturn. I believe in the United States the shortfall was “only” about 10% and the turmoil it caused in the economy and society. Having lived through the long lines at the pump and ugly spirited people waiting for a fill up showed me we are ill prepared to withstand a shortage.
Best to enjoy these times….and hope for more magic tricks from the PTB
Faster this time — because when the financial system collapses credit collapses — so the problem will not be lines at the pumps – the pumps will be dry — as will the grocery stores…. everything basically stops
Initially riots – then martial law…
Paul what can I say….maybe….this will help
I calls em like I sees em….
You light up my LIFE…you give me HOPE….to carry ON!
“18 Charts Exploring How The Ageing World Will Shape The Global Economy”
Maybe this is why TPTB want to depopulate the earth. 😛
“Curious how the demographics of an aging world increasingly impact the economy, the spending, consumption and saving patterns, the earnings and wealth potential of various age groups, and the amount of pension funds available to satisfy an ever growing pie of future welfare recipients? Then the following 18 charts are for just you.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-17/chartporn-18-charts-exploring-how-ageing-world-will-shape-global-economy
The expression ‘Russia’s belligerence’ needs to be revised. Russia is not the belligerent party here. Remember the 911 Litmus test? Otherwise, a great article.
I agree. Russia wants to sell their natural resources at the highest possible price to feed their nation and oligarchy. Putin’s final thesis in university was describing the use of natural resources (energy mostly) in international policy. He is well prepared for this game.
Good analysis of Russia situation is here:
http://www.peakoil.net/headline-news/the-eu-s-and-russia-s-mutual-dependence
Oil is abiotic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agHBe8WD39Q
Microbes have been guzzling it for billions of years, for the most part out-consuming us.
We’ve been using it for less than 200.
When renewable oil runs out, life on Earth will grind to a halt.
Oil companies know there is an abundance of cheap energy, Keeping it expensive through collusion is their goal. Here’s proof:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/38ygojc1riik0id/refinery%20memo%20001.pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/s/60skjcza8wfb16u/refinery%20memo%20002.pdf
Meanwhile, in Qatar they don[‘t bother with electricity meters – 100% free electricity for all Qataris.
Did you know?
Congratulations — you win first prize for the funniest post of 2014 on Finite World — an all expenses paid tour of the Fukushima meltdown — and because you are special we will also allow you to throw a bucket of sea water onto the melted core.
Call 1800Gail to claim your prize — and happy travels!
“Even if a small fraction of the Arctic carbon were released to the atmosphere, we’re fcked,” he told me. What alarmed him was that “the methane bubbles were reaching the surface. That was something new in my survey of methane bubbles,” he said.
The scientists’ video of methane bubbles in the Arctic Ocean.
“The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane, and that’s normal,” Box went on. But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that’s a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about.
The scientists on the expedition confirm that’s what we’re seeing, too:
“We are ‘sniffing’ methane,” Ulf Hedman, the science coordinator of the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, wrote in a post highlighted by Climate Change SOS. “We see the bubbles on video from the camera mounted on the CTD or the Multicorer. All analysis tells the signs. We are in a Mega flare. We see it in the water column, we read it above the surface, and we follow it up high into the sky with radars and lasers. We see it mixed in the air and carried away with the winds. Methane in the air.”
“Methane is more than 20 times more potent than CO2 in trapping infrared as part of the natural greenhouse effect,” Box said. “Methane getting to the surface—that’s potent stuff.”
It’s especially worrying because the Arctic is warming faster than nearly anywhere else on Earth. Now, along with melting sea ice and thawing permafrost, we have to add to our list of ‘feedback loop’ concerns that warming Arctic oceans may be releasing fonts of methane. That is, the warmer the ocean gets, the more methane gets spewed out of those stores on the continental shelf, and the warmer the ocean gets, ad infinitum.”
From “Motherboard.com”
The system is rigid with no means for change. With high priced energy only the most productive are of value economically, religiously ethically is a whole different issue. What happens when 60% of the population is unusable and change it not allowed?
“What happens when 60% of the population is unusable…” is a good observation.
Can they survive when their consumer behaviour is not in line with the available resources? What to do with them when they just beg for work and money in line with the BAU and do not want to make any changes in their lifestyles and attitudes?
From the biological point of view they are doomed to extinction…
As the ‘advanced’ economies age, we shall very soon see over 40% redundant population.
Already in Spain, 30% of adults are on pensions or welfare. This is unprecedented in the history of civilization, it won’t last for long I should say……..
I’m not sure where total energy production stands, but global crude and condensate seems to have peaked. For details, search “peak oil barrel” website.
Coal is what keeps total energy production rising. Oil has been a laggard in growth for a long time.
The conventional part of crude and condensate extraction has peaked. I would be surprised if Ron Patterson is claiming that world crude and condensate has already peaked. I’d like to see a link, though.
What will bring crude and condensate production down fairly quickly is low oil price. Given the way world oil prices have been dropping recently, we may, in fact, have passed peak crude and condensate production. I note that according to the EIA, the highest month to date in world crude and condensate production was February 2014. Perhaps this will, in fact, prove to be the peak in production.
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One important factor that also supports the fast collapse theory is the fact that together with the highly sophisticated machines we have the physically and mentally degrading society. Such individuals consume the propaganda of neverending progress easily and they vote for various mentally handicapped politicians, entertainers, adventurers which makes the collapse come sooner and its progress faster.
Nowadays, the diminishing physical and mental energy of the society is something that the economists do not include into their calculations. That is why the economy still looks like growing after adding various medical, propaganda, entertainment etc. expenses that do not improve the human capital. And that is why the fast collapse comes when the mask is suddenly taken away by the forces of the merciless nature.
Given the globalized world we live in — and noting CTG’s earlier comments that indicated if one part does not get made or delivered because the international credit system has busted — I really cannot see how this collapse is not incredibly fast.
How can any economy keep going for very long when it absolutely relies on a just-in-time supply chain for everything from spare parts to the transportation of food.
Surely a slow collapse is out of the question. When the central banks are unable to back-stop the system as they did in 2008 by guaranteeing every bank on the planet — then trust goes — and the whole engine seizes up.
Again the best work on this is Korowitz — p. 56 on details what happens when a key hub breaks — and how unlikely it is that we can patch things together http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf
Just because we desire for the collapse to be slow — does not mean it will — the facts most definitely suggest slow collapse is impossible.
The flip side to that is that most of our energy consumption is wasteful and thereby not necessary for the essentials of human life.
I repeat that half of our industrial production could disappear and civilization for the most part wouldn’t miss a beat. Yes, there would be joblessness, but that is part of the adjustment.
Basically we move to a much slower and dysfunctional world. If something takes a month to build and a month to ship, that’s worse than a week to build and a week to ship, but it’s not instant armageddon.
If one wants a personal collapse or catharsis, then by all means pursue it (and to a certain extent I have). But you are kidding yourself if you think it’s going to happen everywhere.
The qualitative degradation of the population from the biological point of view will lead to a massive die-off due to diseases or wars. The humankind experienced it in the past and it will experience it in the future.
The fact that we have kept the die-off under control thanks to the progress of the medicines and the improving social welfare during the last 200 years of the cheap and stable supply of the energy from the fossil fuels does not mean we will be able to do that indefinitely.
There is a lot of mineral resources on the Earth, they really do not extinguish. This article is right about it:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156
But our energy and human resources are running out due to the diminishing returns and the ensuing debt. Our civilization is dependent on more and more complicated machines. It is a kind of life support system in large scale. And this brings collapse part of the historical cycle.
This collapse has already started in some parts of the world and other parts of the world will follow.
But much of it is critical to human life… without oil and gas we do not feed 7.2B people… we probably cannot even feed a few hundred million — because we have ruined most of the soil…
Yes, this sentence is true: “Basically we move to a much slower and dysfunctional world.”
The die-off can also happen slowly, through long and painful interpersonal fights, or the psychological disorders can lead to murders or suicides and this way cause deaths instead of diseases. E.g. one person becomes an alcoholic, her marriage falls apart and her body finally succumbs, another is shot down by an aggresive jealous person while living with another man before marrying him, or another person throws herself into the river after leaving the psychiatry ward. (All these 3 cases happened in my small village during the first half of this year.) Or there is a higher number of women and men smoking cigarettes. There is too much people having overweight or being emaciated, while the number of the people with healthy body weight drops. Or you can see how the young woman with unhealthy small and overweight body (from the village that was already in the 80s, before the collapse of the USSR, known as the village of the alcoholics) is going to marry a man from a economically declining EU country whose body looks deformed. Etc. etc. etc.
You can not avoid asking yourself “Doesnt it look like collapse?”. The population simply shows signs of deterioration that do not promise anything good.
States are essentially governed on the basis of interests.
Survival is a primary objective.
Global dominance is another, if it can realistically be achieved.
Global dominance could lead to a greater planetary stability of human civilization.
The paradigm of a zero-sum domain (the limited confines of planet Earth) in which several major competitors armed with WMDs compete for rapidly declining key strategic resources – in particular high EROEI fossil fuel reserves – is a very nasty environment to try to survive in.
Furthermore, the current existence of more than 400 nuclear fission power plants on the planet (and at least as many cooling ponds for highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel) simply makes it impossible to go back to a low tech “Medieval type” world. Without prolonged (hundreds if not thousands of years) of constant high tech maintenance, those “nuclear assets” will very quickly start leaking deadly radioactive poison. Trade winds will then ensure the spreading of a “death wind” all over the planet. Life as we currently know it would relatively rapidly end on Gaia in an “On the on Beach” type of scenario.
Hence, if global dominance and stability cannot be achieved by a single State (or close alliance with a clear dominant) before key strategic resources fall below a critical threshold, human civilization risks extiction.
Several realistic scenarios can be envisaged that would lead to extiction by way of a relatively simple “trigger event”. An exchange of WMDs is one scenario. But many others not involving WMDs can lead to a catastrophic implosion of the currently fragile edifice of human economy and civilization.
Now, even if global dominance and stability was achieved relatively quickly, the key problem of planetary strategic resource depletion and economic overshoot – identified in the in 1972 Club of Rome “Limits to Growth” report – would remain.
In the best of cases, radical measured would need to be taken to match human population size to the remaining planetary resources to ensure long time survival of a high tech civilization capable, in particular of maintaining long term control on the remaining nuclear fission monster i.e. the numerous “nuclear fission assets” spread all over the planet .
Global dominance could theoretically help to achieve this critical objective but it does not provide any assurance that it would effectively do so IN TIME to prevent an economic and civilization collapse.
Another key issue is the fact that mainstream economics is today much more closely linked to a religion than to a real science (whose knowledge can be verified repeatedly by experimental evidence).
A radical evolution of economics will thereofre be needed to allow the planning of any successful transition of human civilization to a long term sustainable path.
As the old saying states “I ain’t over till its over” but the odds are not looking good…
Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that unexpected events will occur that would radically alter the current course of events.
Let us then hope that a few players still have a couple of “wild cards” up their sleeves !
Meanwhile, thank you Gail for your thoughtful prose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_%28novel%29
Exaclty what Gail said. Once they start shutting down oil sand production, Canada is finished and will become a third world country.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oilsands-investments-at-risk-from-low-crude-prices-report-finds-1.2737879
Oilsands investments at risk from low crude prices, report finds
Some of the world’s costliest energy projects are in Alberta’s oilsands and some could be cancelled without higher oil prices, according to a new report by a financial think-tank that focuses on climate risk.
The study by the Carbon Tracker Initiative highlighted 20 of the biggest projects around the world that need a minimum oil price of US$95 a barrel to be economically viable.
Read the Carbon Tracker Initiative’s fact sheets
Most on the list require prices well north of US$110 a barrel and a few in the oilsands even need prices higher than US$150, said the report.
Crude for September deliver was trading at around US$97 a barrel in New York on Friday.
View the Carbon Tracker Initiative Fact Sheet
Higher cancer rates not found in oilsands community, study shows
In total, the 20 projects represent close to $91 billion in capital spending over the next decade.
The report’s authors question whether those funds should be invested in risky projects.
“This analysis demonstrates the worsening cost environment in the oil industry and the extent to which producers are chasing volume over value at the expense of returns,” said CTI analyst Andrew Grant.
“Investors will ask whether it is prudent for oil companies to bet on ever higher oil prices when they could be returning cash to shareholders.”
High on the list were Houston-based ConocoPhillips’ oilsands operations, which include joint ventures with Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE) at Foster Creek and Christina Lake and with Total E&P Canada at Surmont.
A spokeswoman for Cenovus, which operates Foster Creek and Christina Lake, questioned how CTI came up with its figures, as its steam-driven projects have supply costs between just US$35 and US$65 a barrel.
CTI also flagged Shell’s Carmon Creek project and ExxonMobil’s Aspen and Kearl projects.
Other pricey projects highlighted in the report were in deepwater or ultra deepwater off West Africa and Brazil, as well as in the Arctic.
Tipping Point: Age of the Oil Sands
In May, Total and partner Suncor Energy Inc. (TSX:SU) decided to indefinitely defer their $11-billion Joslyn North mine in Alberta because the economics just weren’t good enough.
And in June, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers predicted oilsands production would grow at a slower pace than previously expected because of rising costs and capital constraints.
It sees output hitting 4.8 million barrels a day by 2030, about two and a half times higher than last year’s output of 1.9 million barrels.
But the figure is 7.7 per cent lower than the 5.2 million barrels of daily oilsands output CAPP predicted for the same time frame last year.
The CTI, funded by a range of European and American foundations, describes itself as a not-for-profit organization “set-up to produce new thinking on climate risk.”
The oil sands are a relatively new phenomenon — so I doubt Canada would become a 3rd world country as they were not a 3rd world country before the oil sands.
The country has a lot of other natural resources that overall are far more important to the economy than the oil sands.
Agreed.
Canada’s hydropower and wood are helpful, as are its other oil, natural gas and farmland. But continued BAU requires availability of spare parts, especially things like computers for computer-controlled equipment. So Canada has problems like most other countries. It may have some differences–less exposure to nuclear power plants, for example. And population concentrated near waterways/oceans, I expect, helping ship transport.
Yes of course when this all collapses Canada will collapse just like every other nation…
I was referring more to the near term — if the oil sands tanked due to low oil prices — provided BAU continued to operate — Canada would not become a basket case just because it lost the revenues from oil…
A different kind of problem, but related, is cost over-run on projects. See this article:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/08/20140815-ey.html
The poster child of oil exploration debacles… note the ‘quality’ of the oil they are trying to pump here:
Production was halted indefinitely at Kashagan in October, only weeks after oil had started flowing, because of multiple leaks in the pipeline conveying gas rich in highly corrosive and deadly components to the shore.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/production-at-kazakhstans-kashagan-oil-field-halted-until-2016-1402400700
Hi Gail,
Thanks for your great blog. It is one of my staple reads. I love your work.
May I please present a counter argument for your prediction that the endgame will involve THE PRICE OF OIL IN US DOLLARS dropping due to the shortage of dollars amongst increasingly unemployed and wage restricted Western consumers (i.e. the private sector)?
They are a sideshow IMO, when compared to entities such as the US government, which can print dollars at will, and the Chinese government, which has trillions of dollars in reserve. Both these entities will be desperate for oil once supply starts declining. This will be nothing short of a national security issue. Remember the USG (of which the US military is a subset) is the largest consumer of oil in the world. The USG will print as many dollars as it takes to bid oil away from other holders of dollars, leading to a rise in the price of oil. This game can continue until the currency collapses, and oil is no longer sold for dollars.
This also counters your argument that governments will fail due to falling tax revenues.
Any government with its own printing press has a second source of revenue: the “inflation tax”, which is paid by any individuals or government which holds the currency as savings.
Once tax revenues dry up, do you expect the hungry insatiable monster that is the USG not to print to finance itself and its dependants, at the expense of dollars savers ? Surely, this is happening right now, and is likely to accelerate? This source of revenue (and demand for oil) can persist until the dollar collapses.
In summary, I think the endgame is more likely to involve a very high dollar price of oil, followed by the collapse of the dollar, than persistently low priced oil in dollar terms.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the arguments above.
(Un)Suprisingly the situation about ditching the dollar already occured more than 40 years ago, at that time the Europeans, Saudis and Japanese for several reasons decided let’s put this sucker on life support. Now, 40+ years later some of the parties to that argeement are no longer relevant that much on global scale and/or have other preferences. Plus there is this new kid – gorilla on steroids China. There will be new systemic “world order” or disorder pretty soon, in years not decades. But the details are unclear, given the human nature, the most likely scenarion is some hybrid, i.e. not letting US to hyperinflate and risk some crazy nuke general takeover, but some 25-90% coordinated devaluation of currencies, perhaps in series of steps is almost given. And very likely in some regions you wan’t be able to hide away from taxes, capital controls etc.
sorry for those silly typos I’m bit out there
Currencies do not matter. The big bidders for KSA oil have to offer something of value. The dollar/yen/euro/rmb have no value beyond what they can buy. KSA turns right around and buys profit making companies, rent paying real estate, food producing farms, things that will produce value forever. The enclosure of the third, and second and first, world is still just starting. Once the 99% are landless, renters in concrete highrises with zero ownership of stocks then the next phrase can begin.
To date, the historically industrialized countries have done an extremely poor job of bidding oil away from the rest of the historically less-industrialized countries, regardless of how fast they have run their printing presses (And the printing presses have run very fast since 2008).
The points that people don’t realize are
(1) If oil prices rise higher, it causes the countries that use very much of it in their energy mix (US, EU and Japan) to fall into recession, because consumers must cut back on discretionary expenditures
(2) If oil prices rise higher, it causes countries that use very much of it in their energy mix (US, Europe and Japan) to become less competitive with the rest of the world that uses less high priced oil in its mix. (They often use coal. Adding expensive renewables or a carbon tax makes the cost disparity worse, because it makes costs even higher!)
Printing money does not fix the bad underlying situation. High cost energy represents diminishing returns, and flows through to the economy as reduced wages and slower growth, regardless of how a government tries to fix it.
I suppose because China does not have to deal with pesky environmentalists — they have been able to go on asphyxiating their people burning coal and sucking wealth their way — which has allowed them to also to handle higher oil prices…
At least in the short term that has been the case … of course this was always destined to fail because China needs strong export markets to buy from them….
Hi Gail,
Agree that current events fit well with your model, and will likely continue to do so as long as the spice is flowing freely in exchange for the petrodollar, and the current monetary system exists.
Look at it from the point of view of the net oil exporters: what is the debt and currency of a formerly industrialised country worth in a world in which its oil dependent economy is in terminal decline? “I will accept your dollars for my oil, but your dollars, debt and economic output are only worth anything as long as the oil is flowing, and other people accept the dollars for the things I need”. What incentive will a net oil exporter have for parting with their precious oil for freshly inked promises from a bankrupt government, in a world which is increasingly rejecting the dollar in trade?
If we accept your thesis that the dollar price of oil will decline in a post peak world, all kinds of ridiculous “free lunch” assertions follow. The USG could print any number of dollars, penalty free, and buy up the entire world oil supply, and exchange it for all the goods and services its citizens require at no cost. The fiscal woes of the USG would be solved, not exacerbated by peak oil.
For these reasons, I think a world in which oil is not sold for dollars is more likely than a world of low dollar priced oil.
We have been printing dollars since 2008, with little success in maintaining our past share of oil production.
It is hard to know what will come next. The current system will break down, but how will it be replaced? It is possible that more local markets will appear. Russia will trade with Iran and China, and whoever else it chooses. Countries with huge financial problems will trade with virtually no one, and get cut off from scarce supplies.
What do you make of this brand new energy/oil study prepared by official russian circles?
I find it highly peculiar that they in a way acknowledge their own peak around the corner, while overestimate US and gulf production at the same time by a large margin.. http://peakoilbarrel.com/russias-take/
Let’s propose some more of the probable explanations behind it:
1/ Russians are just in the same cornucopian BAU mode as others (IEA/EIA), however such report pretty much puts cold water of any possible foreign investments and joint ventures into their territory and high tech dependent arctic projects, who would be interested in the future worst producing region of them all right? And or possibly just shows how stupid their establishment is on these matters.
2/ The report is a crafty diversion tactics play, in a way payback time instrument for how they have been damaged by the western+gulf bottom pricing (and tech embargos) of the 1980s which hastened demise of USSR&sat empire. So the report on purpose misleads and placates western+gulf cornies about ever shiny prospects and weak Russia.
3/ It’s more or less realistic study, no global energy-peak oil within sight for decades.
So far I vote for the 2/ and being scared by non zero probabilities for both options 1/ and 3/
My vote would be
(a) Russians know what is going on in their own territory.
(b) They tend to follow the crowd, when it comes to forecasting what happens in the rest of the world. If EIA, IEA, BP and others say that there is no problem ahead, why should Russia be the one to raise the issue?
When I visited China and heard a few Chinese leaders express their opinions, I was surprised the extent to which they were influenced by Western press and business periodicals. If the West felt, “Shale oil will save us,” that seemed like a perfectly reasonable belief to have. I expect Russia has some of the same kind of “follow everyone else” mentality.
They have been correct that shale oil has saved us — in the very short term — however I wonder if they truly believe the 100 years stuff — I seriously doubt that.