What is ahead for 2016? Most people don’t realize how tightly the following are linked:
- Growth in debt
- Growth in the economy
- Growth in cheap-to-extract energy supplies
- Inflation in the cost of producing commodities
- Growth in asset prices, such as the price of shares of stock and of farmland
- Growth in wages of non-elite workers
- Population growth
It looks to me as though this linkage is about to cause a very substantial disruption to the economy, as oil limits, as well as other energy limits, cause a rapid shift from the benevolent version of the economic supercycle to the portion of the economic supercycle reflecting contraction. Many people have talked about Peak Oil, the Limits to Growth, and the Debt Supercycle without realizing that the underlying problem is really the same–the fact the we are reaching the limits of a finite world.
There are actually a number of different kinds of limits to a finite world, all leading toward the rising cost of commodity production. I will discuss these in more detail later. In the past, the contraction phase of the supercycle seems to have been caused primarily by too high population relative to resources. This time, depleting fossil fuels–particularly oil–plays a major role. Other limits contributing to the end of the current debt supercycle include rising pollution and depletion of resources other than fossil fuels.
The problem of reaching limits in a finite world manifests itself in an unexpected way: slowing wage growth for non-elite workers. Lower wages mean that these workers become less able to afford the output of the system. These problems first lead to commodity oversupply and very low commodity prices. Eventually these problems lead to falling asset prices and widespread debt defaults. These problems are the opposite of what many expect, namely oil shortages and high prices. This strange situation exists because the economy is a networked system. Feedback loops in a networked system don’t necessarily work in the way people expect.
I expect that the particular problem we are likely to reach in 2016 is limits to oil storage. This may happen at different times for crude oil and the various types of refined products. As storage fills, prices can be expected to drop to a very low level–less than $10 per barrel for crude oil, and correspondingly low prices for the various types of oil products, such as gasoline, diesel, and asphalt. We can then expect to face a problem with debt defaults, failing banks, and failing governments (especially of oil exporters).
The idea of a bounce back to new higher oil prices seems exceedingly unlikely, in part because of the huge overhang of supply in storage, which owners will want to sell, keeping supply high for a long time. Furthermore, the underlying cause of the problem is the failure of wages of non-elite workers to rise rapidly enough to keep up with the rising cost of commodity production, particularly oil production. Because of falling inflation-adjusted wages, non-elite workers are becoming increasingly unable to afford the output of the economic system. As non-elite workers cut back on their purchases of goods, the economy tends to contract rather than expand. Efficiencies of scale are lost, and debt becomes increasingly difficult to repay with interest. The whole system tends to collapse.
How the Economic Growth Supercycle Works, in an Ideal Situation
In an ideal situation, growth in debt tends to stimulate the economy. The availability of debt makes the purchase of high-priced goods such as factories, homes, cars, and trucks more affordable. All of these high-priced goods require the use of commodities, including energy products and metals. Thus, growing debt tends to add to the demand for commodities, and helps keep their prices higher than the cost of production, making it profitable to produce these commodities. The availability of profits encourages the extraction of an ever-greater quantity of energy supplies and other commodities.
The growing quantity of energy supplies made possible by this profitability can be used to leverage human labor to an ever-greater extent, so that workers become increasingly productive. For example, energy supplies help build roads, trucks, and machines used in factories, making workers more productive. As a result, wages tend to rise, reflecting the greater productivity of workers in the context of these new investments. Businesses find that demand for their goods and services grows because of the growing wages of workers, and governments find that they can collect increasing tax revenue. The arrangement of repaying debt with interest tends to work well in this situation. GDP grows sufficiently rapidly that the ratio of debt to GDP stays relatively flat.
Over time, the cost of commodity production tends to rise for several reasons:
- Population tends to grow over time, so the quantity of agricultural land available per person tends to fall. Higher-priced techniques (such as irrigation, better seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides) are required to increase production per acre. Similarly, rising population gives rise to a need to produce fresh water using increasingly high-priced techniques, such as desalination.
- Businesses tend to extract the least expensive fuels such as oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium first. They later move on to more expensive to extract fuels, when the less-expensive fuels are depleted. For example, Figure 1 shows the sharp increase in the cost of oil extraction that took place about 1999.
Figure 1. Figure by Steve Kopits of Westwood Douglas showing the trend in per-barrel capital expenditures for oil exploration and production. CAGR is “Compound Annual Growth Rate.”
- Pollution tends to become an increasing problem because the least polluting commodity sources are used first. When mitigations such as substituting renewables for fossil fuels are used, they tend to be more expensive than the products they are replacing. The leads to the higher cost of final products.
- Overuse of resources other than fuels becomes a problem, leading to problems such as the higher cost of producing metals, deforestation, depleted fish stocks, and eroded topsoil. Some workarounds are available, but these tend to add costs as well.
As long as the cost of commodity production is rising only slowly, its increasing cost is benevolent. This increase in cost adds to inflation in the price of goods and helps inflate away prior debt, so that debt is easier to pay. It also leads to asset inflation, making the use of debt seem to be a worthwhile approach to finance future economic growth, including the growth of energy supplies. The whole system seems to work as an economic growth pump, with the rising wages of non-elite workers pushing the growth pump along.
The Big “Oops” Comes when the Price of Commodities Starts Rising Faster than Wages of Non-Elite Workers
Clearly the wages of non-elite workers need to be rising faster than commodity prices in order to push the economic growth pump along. The economic pump effect is lost when the wages of non-elite workers start falling, relative to the price of commodities. This tends to happen when the cost of commodity production begins rising rapidly, as it did for oil after 1999 (Figure 1).
The loss of the economic pump effect occurs because the rising cost of oil (or electricity, or food, or other energy products) forces workers to cut back on discretionary expenditures. This is what happened in the 2003 to 2008 period as oil prices spiked and other energy prices rose sharply. (See my article Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis.) Non-elite workers found it increasingly difficult to afford expensive products such as homes, cars, and washing machines. Housing prices dropped. Debt growth slowed, leading to a sharp drop in oil prices and other commodity prices.
Figure 2. World oil supply and prices based on EIA data.
It was somewhat possible to “fix” low oil prices through the use of Quantitative Easing (QE) and the growth of debt at very low interest rates, after 2008. In fact, these very low interest rates are what encouraged the very rapid growth in the production of US crude oil, natural gas liquids, and biofuels.
Now, debt is reaching limits. Both the US and China have (in a sense) “taken their foot off the economic debt accelerator.” It doesn’t seem to make sense to encourage more use of debt, because recent very low interest rates have encouraged unwise investments. In China, more factories and homes have been built than the market can absorb. In the US, oil “liquids” production rose faster than it could be absorbed by the world market when prices were over $100 per barrel. This led to the big price drop. If it were possible to produce the additional oil for a very low price, say $20 per barrel, the world economy could probably absorb it. Such a low selling price doesn’t really “work” because of the high cost of production.
Debt is important because it can help an economy grow, as long as the total amount of debt does not become unmanageable. Thus, for a time, growing debt can offset the adverse impact of the rising cost of energy products. We know that oil prices began to rise sharply in the 1970s, and in fact other energy prices rose as well.
Figure 3. Historical World Energy Price in 2014$, from BP Statistical Review of World History 2015.
Looking at debt growth, we find that it rose rapidly, starting about the time oil prices started spiking. Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, talks about “The Distastrous 40-Year Debt Supercycle,” which he believes is now ending.
Figure 4. Worldwide average inflation-adjusted annual growth rates in debt and GDP, for selected time periods. See post on debt for explanation of methodology.
In recent years, we have been reaching a situation where commodity prices have been rising faster than the wages of non-elite workers. Jobs that are available tend to be low-paid service jobs. Young people find it necessary to stay in school longer. They also find it necessary to delay marriage and postpone buying a car and home. All of these issues contribute to the falling wages of non-elite workers. Some of these individuals are, in fact, getting zero wages, because they are in school longer. Individuals who retire or voluntarily leave the work force further add to the problem of wages no longer rising sufficiently to afford the output of the system.
The US government has recently decided to raise interest rates. This further reduces the buying power of non-elite workers. We have a situation where the “economic growth pump,” created through the use of a rising quantity of cheap energy products plus rising debt, is disappearing. While homes, cars, and vacation travel are available, an increasing share of the population cannot afford them. This tends to lead to a situation where commodity prices fall below the cost of production for a wide range of types of commodities, making the production of commodities unprofitable. In such a situation, a person expects companies to cut back on production. Many defaults may occur.
China has acted as a major growth pump for the world for the last 15 years, since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. China’s growth is now slowing, and can be expected to slow further. Its growth was financed by a huge increase in debt. Paying back this debt is likely to be a problem.
Figure 5. Author’s illustration of problem we are now encountering.
Thus, we seem to be coming to the contraction portion of the debt supercycle. This is frightening, because if debt is contracting, asset prices (such as stock prices and the price of land) are likely to fall. Banks are likely to fail, unless they can transfer their problems to others–owners of the bank or even those with bank deposits. Governments will be affected as well, because it will become more expensive to borrow money, and because it becomes more difficult to obtain revenue through taxation. Many governments may fail as well for that reason.
The U. S. Oil Storage Problem
Oil prices began falling in the middle of 2014, so we might expect oil storage problems to start about that time, but this is not exactly the case. Supplies of US crude oil in storage didn’t start rising until about the end of 2014.
Figure 6. US crude oil in storage, excluding Strategic Petroleum Reserve, based on EIA data.
Once crude oil supplies started rising rapidly, they increased by about 90 million barrels between December 2014 and April 2015. After April 2015, supplies dipped again, suggesting that there is some seasonality to the growing crude oil supply. The most “dangerous” time for rapidly rising amounts added to storage would seem to be between December 31 and April 30. According to the EIA, maximum crude oil storage is 551 million barrels of crude oil (considering all storage facilities). Adding another 90 million barrels of oil (similar to the run-up between Dec. 2014 and April 2015) would put the total over the 551 million barrel crude oil capacity.
Cushing, Oklahoma, is the largest storage area for crude oil. According to the EIA, maximum working storage for the facility is 73 million barrels. Oil storage at Cushing since oil prices started declining is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Quantity of crude oil stored at Cushing between June 27, 2014, and June 1, 2016, based on EIA data.
Clearly the same kind of run up in oil storage that occurred between December and April one year ago cannot all be stored at Cushing, if maximum working capacity is only 73 million barrels, and the amount currently in storage is 64 million barrels.
Another way of storing oil is as finished products. Here, the run-up in storage began earlier (starting in mid-2014) and stabilized at about 65 million barrels per day above the prior year, by January 2015. Clearly, if companies can do some pre-planning, they would prefer not to refine products for which there is little market. They would rather store unneeded oil as crude, rather than as refined products.
Figure 8. Total Oil Products in Storage, based on EIA data.
EIA indicates that the total capacity for oil products is 1,549 million barrels. Thus, in theory, the amount of oil products stored can be increased by as much as 700 million barrels, assuming that the products needing to be stored and the locations where storage are available match up exactly. In practice, the amount of additional storage available is probably quite a bit less than 700 million barrels because of mismatch problems.
In theory, if companies can be persuaded to refine more products than they can sell, the amount of products that can be stored can rise significantly. Even in this case, the amount of storage is not unlimited. Even if the full 700 million barrels of storage for crude oil products is available, this corresponds to less than one million barrels a day for two years, or two million barrels a day for one year. Thus, products storage could easily be filled as well, if demand remains low.
At this point, we don’t have the mismatch between oil production and consumption fixed. In fact, both Iraq and Iran would like to increase their production, adding to the production/consumption mismatch. China’s economy seems to be stalling, keeping its oil consumption from rising as quickly as in the past, and further adding to the supply/demand mismatch problem. Figure 9 shows an approximation to our mismatch problem. As far as I can tell, the problem is still getting worse, not better.
Figure 9. Total liquids oil production and consumption, based on a combination of BP and EIA data.
There has been a lot of talk about the United States reducing its production, but the impact so far has been small, based on data from EIA’s International Energy Statistics and its December 2015 Monthly Energy Review.
Figure 10. US quarterly oil liquids production data, based on EIA’s International Energy Statistics and Monthly Energy Review.
Based on information through November from EIA’s Monthly Energy Review, total liquids production for the US for the year 2015 will be about 700,000 barrels per day higher than it was for 2014. This increase is likely greater than the increase in production by either Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Perhaps in 2016, oil production of the US will start decreasing, but so far, increases in biofuels and natural gas liquids are partly offsetting recent reductions in crude oil production. Also, even when companies are forced into bankruptcy, oil production does not necessarily stop because of the potential value of the oil to new owners.
Figure 11 shows that very high stocks of oil were a problem, way back in the 1920s. There were other similarities to today’s problems as well, including a deflating debt bubble and low commodity prices. Thus, we should not be too surprised by high oil stocks now, when oil prices are low.
Figure 11. US ending stock of crude oil, excluding the strategic petroleum reserve. Figure by EIA.
Many people overlook the problems today because the US economy tends to be doing better than that of the rest of the world. The oil storage problem is really a world problem, however, reflecting a combination of low demand growth (caused by low wage growth and lack of debt growth, as the world economy hits limits) continuing supply growth (related to very low interest rates making all kinds of investment appear profitable and new production from Iraq and, in the near future, Iran). Storage on ships is increasingly being filled up and storage in Western Europe is 97% filled. Thus, the US is quite likely to see a growing need for oil storage in the year ahead, partly because there are few other places to put the oil, and partly because the gap between supply and demand has not yet been fixed.
What is Ahead for 2016?
- Problems with a slowing world economy are likely to become more pronounced, as China’s growth problems continue, and as other commodity-producing countries such as Brazil, South Africa, and Australia experience recession. There may be rapid shifts in currencies, as countries attempt to devalue their currencies, to try to gain an advantage in world markets. Saudi Arabia may decide to devalue its currency, to get more benefit from the oil it sells.
- Oil storage seems likely to become a problem sometime in 2016. In fact, if the run-up in oil supply is heavily front-ended to the December to April period, similar to what happened a year ago, lack of crude oil storage space could become a problem within the next three months. Oil prices could fall to $10 or below. We know that for natural gas and electricity, prices often fall below zero when the ability of the system to absorb more supply disappears. It is not clear the oil prices can fall below zero, but they can certainly fall very low. Even if we can somehow manage to escape the problem of running out of crude oil storage capacity in 2016, we could encounter storage problems of some type in 2017 or 2018.
- Falling oil prices are likely to cause numerous problems. One is debt defaults, both for oil companies and for companies making products used by the oil industry. Another is layoffs in the oil industry. Another problem is negative inflation rates, making debt harder to repay. Still another issue is falling asset prices, such as stock prices and prices of land used to produce commodities. Part of the reason for the fall in price has to do with the falling price of the commodities produced. Also, sovereign wealth funds will need to sell securities, to have money to keep their economies going. The sale of these securities will put downward pressure on stock and bond prices.
- Debt defaults are likely to cause major problems in 2016. As noted in the introduction, we seem to be approaching the unwinding of a debt supercycle. We can expect one company after another to fail because of low commodity prices. The problems of these failing companies can be expected to spread to the economy as a whole. Failing companies will lay off workers, reducing the quantity of wages available to buy goods made with commodities. Debt will not be fully repaid, causing problems for banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. Even electricity companies may be affected, if their suppliers go bankrupt and their customers become less able to pay their bills.
- Governments of some oil exporters may collapse or be overthrown, if prices fall to a low level. The resulting disruption of oil exports may be welcomed, if storage is becoming an increased problem.
- It is not clear that the complete unwind will take place in 2016, but a major piece of this unwind could take place in 2016, especially if crude oil storage fills up, pushing oil prices to less than $10 per barrel.
- Whether or not oil storage fills up, oil prices are likely to remain very low, as the result of rising supply, barely rising demand, and no one willing to take steps to try to fix the problem. Everyone seems to think that someone else (Saudi Arabia?) can or should fix the problem. In fact, the problem is too large for Saudi Arabia to fix. The United States could in theory fix the current oil supply problem by taxing its own oil production at a confiscatory tax rate, but this seems exceedingly unlikely. Closing existing oil production before it is forced to close would guarantee future dependency on oil imports. A more likely approach would be to tax imported oil, to keep the amount imported down to a manageable level. This approach would likely cause the ire of oil exporters.
- The many problems of 2016 (including rapid moves in currencies, falling commodity prices, and loan defaults) are likely to cause large payouts of derivatives, potentially leading to the bankruptcies of financial institutions, as they did in 2008. To prevent such bankruptcies, most governments plan to move as much of the losses related to derivatives and debt defaults to private parties as possible. It is possible that this approach will lead to depositors losing what appear to be insured bank deposits. At first, any such losses will likely be limited to amounts in excess of FDIC insurance limits. As the crisis spreads, losses could spread to other deposits. Deposits of employers may be affected as well, leading to difficulty in paying employees.
- All in all, 2016 looks likely to be a much worse year than 2008 from a financial perspective. The problems will look similar to those that might have happened in 2008, but didn’t thanks to government intervention. This time, governments appear to be mostly out of approaches to fix the problems.
- Two years ago, I put together the chart shown as Figure 12. It shows the production of all energy products declining rapidly after 2015. I see no reason why this forecast should be changed. Once the debt supercycle starts its contraction phase, we can expect a major reduction in both the demand and supply of all kinds of energy products.
Figure 12. Estimate of future energy production by author. Historical data based on BP adjusted to IEA groupings.
Conclusion
We are certainly entering a worrying period. We have not really understood how the economy works, so we have tended to assume we could fix one or another part of the problem. The underlying problem seems to be a problem of physics. The economy is a dissipative structure, a type of self-organizing system that forms in thermodynamically open systems. As such, it requires energy to grow. Ultimately, diminishing returns with respect to human labor–what some of us would call falling inflation-adjusted wages of non-elite workers–tends to bring economies down. Thus all economies have finite lifetimes, just as humans, animals, plants, and hurricanes do. We are in the unfortunate position of observing the end of our economy’s lifetime.
Most energy research to date has focused on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. While this is a contributing problem, this is really not the proximate cause of the impending collapse. The Second Law of Thermodynamics operates in thermodynamically closed systems, which is not precisely the issue here.
We know that historically collapses have tended to take many years. This collapse may take place more rapidly because today’s economy is dependent on international supply chains, electricity, and liquid fuels–things that previous economies were not dependent on.
I have written many articles on related subjects (unfortunately, no book). These are a few of them:
Oops! Low oil prices are related to a debt bubble
Why “supply and demand” doesn’t work for oil
Economic growth: How it works; how it fails; why wealth disparity occurs
We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy
WTI –1.47 to 29.63 the TWENTIES!
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dow
The Dow has dropped -407 pts to less than 16k (15972) and last I looked is still trailing even lower.
Yup, its red all across the board. Not a island in sight in the sea of red.
Oil industry CAPEX has now become a national security issue for every nation. In particular US, Russia, and China. They all know it. What will they do? I say time for a directed QE (give away of cash) for the oil industry.
Helicopter money to the oil industry? Kerry just workes his -ss off to get the Paris deal. His elevator speech was that if everybody agrees, there will come new innovations, because VCs will recognize a multi billion dollar market.
And now give away cash to the oil industry? I´m afraid Kerry and Obama just can´t do that. I like BAU, so, why not indeed, but I´m afraid the Obama administration can´t do something like that.
Shale bankruptcies Tsunami by April..
VC can improve technology incrementally. They can add a few percent to PV efficiency and lower the price by a few pennies and hold the intellectual property rights and make profit. The current energy system is a 100 trillion dollar investment. To roll over to a new 100 trillion dollar system is beyond the scope of a VC. It is a complete societal commitment. If we had a good technology to roll over to and good leadership it could be done. Since we lack both…
Keith, I do like stratosolar. It might be the technology. We need exact costing and prototypes built and flown.
“Keith, I do like stratosolar. It might be the technology. We need exact costing and prototypes built and flown.”
Talk to Ed Kelly. I have not worked on StratoSolar for years. If his email isn’t up on the StratoSolar site, I can send it to you. He has an excellent paper “Energy and declining economic growth” in draft, ask for it.
Dear Ed and hkeithhenson;
I had not seen StratoSolar before. Thank you.
As far as storage goes, I think if one connected all of those floating platforms with high voltage DC transmission lines, the need for storage would be greatly reduced. If Jimmy Carter would have started a crash program to build these, we would be in tall cotton right now.
But I am much better with the negative side …
I assume that all the platforms float because they are filled with Helium. Helium is recovered from natural gas during its production, or as in Colorado as a part of the CO2 that has been coming out of a well near Mesa Verde since WWII. It can be recovered by freezing the atmosphere to -269C which of course is prohibitively expensive. It is very rare on earth, and will run out after people stop drilling for gas in just a few months. We live on a Finite World.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229/
http://www.decodedscience.org/helium-shortage-situation-update-one-year-later/42314
And, No, those balloons will not be filled with hydrogen. The Humanity!!
Yours in Limitation,
Pintada
“the need for storage would be greatly reduced.”
Since I went back to power satellites, a mutual friend of Ed and me, Roger Arnold, came up with a storage method that’s ideally suited to StratoSolar platforms. You just lift weights with cables during the day and let them down at night. The round trip loss is under 5% and they scale into the GW range.
“No, those balloons will not be filled with hydrogen”
It has to be hydrogen. You are right about helium, not only is it far to expensive, there isn’t enough of it. But the design with nitrogen gas separators should keep fires from taking one down even if a cell were to burn in the extremely thin air at 20 km.
“And, No, those balloons will not be filled with hydrogen. The Humanity!!”
Why not? Hydrogen is very efficient as a lighter-than-air gas.
The Hindenburg was not designed to be filled with hydrogen, but rather helium. It is only because the Americans, who had a near-monopoly on helium, put sanctions on Germany which forced it to be filled with a gas it was not designed for.
Also, only 33 out of 99 people died. Compare to most jet liner crashes.
Dear hkeithhenson;
Wow … Fill them with hydrogen. Very interesting.
Keith said, “You just lift weights with cables during the day and let them down at night. The round trip loss is under 5% and they scale into the GW range.”
I get the storage scheme proposed, quite brilliant really. But there has to be transmission anyway and if power could be moved “cheaply” from areas where it is dark to areas where the sun is up – from Kamchatka to London and New York for example …
My technoutopian dreams (nightmares?) include a main DC transmission line that goes from London to Kamchatka and then from western Alaska to Quebec City and/or New York. It wouldn’t actually need to cross the Atlantic.
I’m (kind of) sorry that this is just wool gathering, or wishful thinking. There just isn’t time left. You really need a time machine. You could travel back to 1978 and sell the whole thing to Jimmy Carter.
Sincerely,
Pintada
“if power could be moved “cheaply””
With current technology, the cost is around a cent per kWh per 1000 km. That’s one of the advantages of StratoSolar or power satellite rectennas. They can be placed close to the load and avoid the transmission cost.
Agree with you about the time machine though.
http://www.eex.com/en/
European grid electricity futures continue to slide bellow EUR24,- 2017 -> unimaginable few years ago, now the renewables will really start crippling balance sheets of stationary power installations of nuclear/coal/natgas in a big way (and tax structure).. chaos sometimes later assured.
It is not possible to subsidize one energy source, and provide adequate profits for other energy sources. The whole approach doesn’t work well.
Dear Gail and All
Few more thoughts about the uses and misuses of the Internet. Consider, for example, the following article today at Resilience.org:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-15/how-can-we-kickstart-regional-resilience
‘Another edge might be Phosphorus and Nitrogen flows. How much rock-based phosphorus and fossil fuel-based nitrogen fertilisers are imported to the bio-region. How much exits via the water shed.
For example, of highest importance in CUBA were the oxen breeders and trainers who were pivotal when tractors stopped working as the supplies of diesel dried up thanks to the crash of the Soviet Union.’
I have recently linked to the 2015 Quivira Conference and especially the talks by Christine Jones and David Johnson. If the author will check those talks, he will find that there are highly educated people with considerable experience with boots on the ground who are sure that the phosphorus and nitrogen cycles are actually easily solvable problems, provided we stop farming industrially and begin farming with an emphasis on photosynthesis, the liquid carbon pathway, and so forth. He would hear a remark late in Christine Jones talk referring to an effort in New Zealand to recruit farmers willing to make the change, and guaranteeing that they will not lose money.
If he listens to David Johnson talk, he will learn a lot about field trials in New Mexico which demonstrate that the new methods actually do work.
In terms of the internet, the good news is that factual information is being disseminated from the handful of experts to a multitude of people who know relatively little. The bad news is that the multitudes have to fit the information into a pattern which makes sense in their complicated lives. More bad news is that people frequently don’t believe their lying eyes. If he watches Christine’s pictures of the neighboring farms of Colin Seis and his brother, and examines the soils on each side of the fence and looks at the quality of the grass on each side of the fence, he will conclude that Colin’s brother is behaving irrationally. But the brother has his own ideas about how running his farm fits into his life and probably thinks his brother is engaged in much ado about nothing. The brother probably isn’t very impressed by carbon in the soil, and can’t be bothered by the difference in the quality of the grass.
If the author of the article studies Gabe Brown’s ‘chaos garden’ in North Dakota, it will carry a completely different message than the ‘oxen for tractors’ swap in Cuba.
Just as a big mistake is to try to replace all the coal generated electricity with solar and wind generated electricity, it is a big mistake to try to do what we have done with fossil fuels in agriculture, but using some ‘drop in’ replacement for the fossil fuels. I am pretty sure there won’t be a ‘drop in’ replacement.
Consequently, people have to proceed by fits and starts…but they have to get started and today is an excellent day to begin. The internet can help by giving us a quick view into how other people out on the fringes are doing things. If we can see that it works, we have to figure out how we fit it into our own lives. In the case of the people in Sweden, they have to figure out how to fit new ways of doing, or doing without, into a bioregional and political framework.
Colin Seis, for example, has set an exemplary model before us…for relatively dry, temperate Australia. But Colin also flies around the world selling Kelpies, one of his profitable businesses. Fast Eddy will come unglued at this point and criticize Colin as ‘just another Nearing’, but to do so completely misses the point. Colin has given us an excellent model for dealing with part of our problem in one part of the world. There is plenty of work for the rest of us figuring out how to do what Colin did in our little part of the world, and there is plenty of scope for us not to get too attached to the Kelpie business.
I do not think most people are really capable of making the changes which are required. Therefore, I expect some sort of lifeboat strategy is probably required. In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the hero was instructed to ‘find the others’. That, I think, is good advice.
Don Stewart
David Johnson thread starts here, unfortunately you did not rejoin the discussion:
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/01/07/2016-oil-limits-and-the-end-of-the-debt-supercycle/comment-page-3/#comment-77275
Saudi Life With $30 Oil
Times are getting tougher in the Hathut household, so father Mohammad is looking for extra work and the three kids are being told to switch off the lights to cut his electricity bill.
This is Saudi Arabia in 2016. It may be a familiar story to austerity-hit Europeans and Americans, but in a nation synonymous with conspicuous consumption, the belt-tightening has been unsettling.
Unprecedented cuts to fuel and energy subsidies are forcing the kind of rigor never seen during the era of petrodollar-fueled wealth that quadrupled per-capita income since the late 1980s.
“A lot of things will change,” said Hathut, 30, who plans to supplement his income as a business-administration teacher at a Riyadh university with private training sessions. “But many youths are still in a state of shock. They haven’t processed the news and what to do.”
With oil having plunged to about $30 a barrel, signs of the tectonic shift taking place in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom are everywhere: from the royal palace where the nation’s founding family is contemplating the sale of its monopoly oil producer to the homes and businesses adjusting to the new economy.
“The New Economy!”
https://www.threadbombing.com/data/thumbnails/20/bahahaha_Jerry_Lewis.jpg
Lower oil prices cut back oil demand in oil exporters, as this post shows.
Dear psile;
Lets not forget that the population of Saudi Arabia is only half wahhabi, and the non-wahhabi Shi’a have been discriminated against, brutalized, and murdered for two centuries. They are the Saudi blacks, and like the US people of color, they are not likely to take it much longer.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/wahhabism.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jan/02/middle-east-condemns-saudi-execution-of-shia-cleric-live
Why is ISIS so violent? They are Wahhabi.
Yours in Social Decay,
Pintada
Canadians Are Panicking Over Food Costs After Currency Collapse
“The crash in oil prices has crippled their economic growth and led to the decline of the Canadian dollar, as well as a predictable increase in the cost of imports like food. For those of us living in the US, this provides a really good example of what life may be like should the dollar take a plunge in the near future. Here’s what our northern neighbors have been dealing with:
Canadians took to twitter this week to share their collective horror over the rising cost of food. Cucumbers are $3 each. A head of cauliflower is $8. A large container of pepper cost $19 and some Canadians are paying $16 for a single bell pepper. A container of laundry detergent is $32.
Ouch! Central Bank of Canada. Moar Money Please!!
EDIT: Sorry guys should have done more investigating first. Seems these prices are for the Northern Territories like Nunavit.
I was in Resolute Bay 6 years ago and a small tube of toothpaste sold for 10 bucks….
Good edit I am in Nova Scotia Canada and every thing is cheep if you have US dollars
“Canadians took to twitter this week to share their collective horror over the rising cost of food. Cucumbers are $3 each. A head of cauliflower is $8. A large container of pepper cost $19 and some Canadians are paying $16 for a single bell pepper. A container of laundry detergent is $32.”
You have to sort the “Where” parts. People North of 60 are of course going to pay a lot, since it all has to come in on airplanes. Or, a second airplane if the food is already being flown in from southern USA, Mexico, etc. It is kind of expected you will pay more when shopping for fresh vegetables in January.
I believe birch bark can be quite nutritious, and useful in making clothes. Time for Canadians to behave like real Northerners: bell peppers?!
The natural gas that used to be used to heat the water to wash the tar sands can now be used to heat green houses to grow bell peppers.
This does sound like a problem, especially for folks laid off from work.
Europe on the brink of financial MELTDOWN as Germany faces economic ruin
Germany’s industrial production has slipped to ZERO per cent and customer confidence has plummeted in just part of a catalogue of disasters for Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A fall in Germany’s prosperity could drag the eurozone down with it – a scenario becoming more likely amid growing signs of the country’s slowdown.
He knows what he MUST do…
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/46072611-600×402.jpg
“industrial production has slipped to ZERO per cent” ?? So they completely stopped making anything? I’m sure this is not what they mean, but why not write what they do mean?
I was wondering about that as well… I assume they mean a PMI of 50 — which indicates that production is stagnant…
China’s PMI has been well under 50 of recent….
““industrial production has slipped to ZERO per cent””
I’m sure it means zero percent growth.
I hadn’t seen this. Germany has been dragging much of the EU along.
Germany and it’s nearby circle of “4th Reich” style little colonies has been one of the latest areas of global growth. For a reason, quality machines and products, often times in the higher price segments, usually hit the recession/depression wave as the very last runner. Plus there is the effect of ECB still easing, and somewhat devaluated EUR, which supported this vendor financed madness. Given what’s taking place globally, Germany should slow down to no or negative growth this or next year at the latest. But don’t bet your grandma on it yet, as everything is possible in twilight zone of these times, like debt jubilees, direct cash money to consumers or whatever is forthcoming from the mandarins of can kicking central..
I’m an internist and can confirm that there are incentives in the system to keep doing more and more even if it’s not beneficial. You can get sued for malpractice if you fail to diagnose or treat on time. Big hospitals, groups, and insurers are numbers driven…they want more patients, more procedures, more revenue, all of the time. Mortality rates have to go down and down (interesting, last time I checked our mortality rate is 100%). Most physicians have long ago lost any real power and autonomy so we go along. We cling to the sickest of the sick patients, passing them along in the system endlessly.
There are no recognition of limits in healthcare. Can healthcare break the U.S. economy? My view from the inside is that yes, it can, but it will take some time yet. We are getting awfully close, though.
I hear you — EG, in 2009 I was having persistent abdominal pains, & went to the local public district hospital here in Fremont, CA (south of Oakland — in “Silicon Valley”) — I’d recently returned to work, after the economic crash, & had no medical insurance — after two hours of diagnostics (including the radiation from a CT scan), they wanted to remove my gall bladder — I refused & left — for this, they sent me bills totaling over $16,000 (I ended up paying over half that, with a discount & tax deduction) — I still have my gall bladder (which causes no trouble at all).
The high payments people are making for health insurance is one of the things that brings down demand for cars and houses. These items add more directly to the “demand” for oil. So one of the reasons for the low oil prices is the requirement that people buy the high-priced insurance. This insurance helps more spending go to rich doctors and researchers. We need to get health care costs down to a reasonable level, perhaps in a system where doctors are government employees. Cutting out unnecessary coding would be helpful as well. Probably many other changes as well.
Another issue, as you have mentioned, is giving expensive care to patients who are at the end of their lives, regardless of what is done. This practice needs to be curtailed as well.
Hi Gail and others,
What do you think the effect of a Bernie Sanders presidency in the US? How would increased taxation, increased public spending, and increased wages play into all this?
I am new to the blog but new to the idea of systemic collapse. Thank you so much for your thoroughly well-thought out posts. I’m in my low-20s and others my age that are aware of many social and environmental issues essentially seem to be in denial about this issue. I think that we have been conditioned to associate any systemic collapse “dooms-day” message with “go by gold” mongers and just general fear-mongers. What do you think of this? I literally have zero interest from anybody that I try to talk to about this, even though they are very active in their own movements/are critical thinkers.
Thank you for your time.
By the way, I’ll add that I was referred here by http://www.howtosavetheworld.ca
Lee, Bernie would be a more interesting choice then Trump or Hillary. Not because he actually could change anything, but because the old guy would be hard to reign in, like they instantly did to Obama.
The key to any economy is to have loads and loads of small and medium sized businesses. Bernie probably has the best grasp how to accomplish that. If inceased taxation is a worry, then look back what FDR did facing the Great Depression. His idea to fund the New Deal was to tax the rich 100% above a certain income limit. Congress said no, and gave FDR just 95%. So, Bernie is on the right tracks.
Mainstream media doesn´t cover anything important, so, if you want to be informed don´t watch MSM. Research for yourself how things work, debate, comment, think, write, whatever it takes to make up you own mind. Critical thinkers.. hmm.. those are actually quite rare these days..
new to the blog but -not- new to system collapse** whoops. (Although I’ve never seen it presented so thoroughly)
Yup, Gail is a treasure for sure.
Actually, I have never understood the buy gold, thing. Ok, SHTF, you have the rest of your life ahead of you, however short that might be, and few dozen gold coins.. Even worse, bullions or bars. Why not actually invest in something that would be worth something, like a ethanol brewery. Or a ethanol brewery combined with a roulette table, poker and blackjack table, you know casino equipment retro style. I´d even rather take silver cutlery than gold in any form. Well, but thats just me.
“Actually, I have never understood the buy gold, thing. Ok, SHTF, you have the rest of your life ahead of you, however short that might be, and few dozen gold coins..”
There have been collapses on a local scale all over the world for thousands of years, and pretty much every single time, holding gold was a winning strategy. This one time might be the exception.
Gold might be a valuable bullet material.
Interesting. If you own gold, people will want it then feed you to the dogs an hogs/ – so then you need a gun to shoot em up first.
Indeed: great treasures -jewels, heaps of gold – have always have an aura of evil luck associated with them, for good reason.
We should cultivate our gardens, not sit at night moving piles of coins gleaming in the lamplight -someone might well be watching through a chink in the curtain, as in many a tale …….
Dear xabier;
Give me a good sturdy shovel. Keep the gold.
Truly,
Pintada
Why not keep half the gold — and take the other half and buy 20 sturdy shovels?
I do think that Bernie Sanders would be much harder to rein in, too. I think that taxing the rich, increasing spending, and increasing wages would potentially kick the can a little further down the line. Regulations to ensure more banking stability? Don’t sign TPP, foster US manufacturing growth?
Taxing more to redistribute the concentrated wealth and to help pay for the accumulated debt? Spend public money on education, “green” infrastructure, public works in general? Reduce health care excesses? If the banks crash, buy them up, break them up, regulate them or nationalize them.
I don’t know that his getting into office is an impossibility and if elected, any deepening recession/all these “SHTF” problems and there may be wide public support for these ideas.
I didn’t come here to toot the Bernie Sanders horn, but once I started it was hard to stop. Some of the conditions that Gail seems to be saying are problems, are some that he seems to be interested in addressing. If I understand it all correctly.
Van Kent, I think it would make a lot more sense to buy actual, useful physical assets like that in the event of a SHTF situation. I think being able to grow a steady amount of a certain crop or having a certain trade skill would be worth a lot more than 30 blocks of god, but I don’t know. I don’t have wealth like that. Thank you for your response and thoughts.
Golden bullets for a golden gun
I own gold — but I doubt it will be of any use if this is not an extinction event…. gold is just another form of money … and if there is nothing to buy then it will be of no use or value…
For those who believe there can be BAU lite — then you really should be stocking up on gold coins… given the role of gold throughout history the odds are it will again be the go to currency post collapse….
Of course, you could use always your stockpile as bait to wipe out your competitors/enemies in one foul swoop, à la this scene from World War Z… 😀
https://youtu.be/Ep5Dp8kqVUw
I don’t think the ethanol brewery will work very long. Too many spare parts need to be replaced. Corn is hard to grow in quantity without modern industrial equipment. A lot of transport of the corn is needed as well.
I was thinking about potatoes, not corn http://nortech.oulu.fi/EnePro/Proceedings/Kilpimaa_pp21-23.pdf and as an investment, fuel and gasoline option wasn´t my first choice of barter.. 😉
Dear Van Kent;
We make a – by all accounts – a very tasty strawberry wine. We think the local farmers (even the amish and mormons) will want a nice table wine on occasion. And of course, we grow as much dope as we need and have a goodly supply of seeds. People are going to want to get very very stoned on occasion as well.
In the slow crash scenario, I agree that it is skills, and a product that might command a good price that will make ones life nicer.
Sincerely,
Pintada
Dear Pintada,
Sounds like you are having a really good time Post-BAU 🙂
Sincerely, Van Kent
Glad you think I am presenting the story thoroughly.
The more it is possible to raise debt (whether government debt, or debt of businesses, or debt of individuals), the greater the tendency to at least temporarily keep the economy together. So Bernie Sanders program sounds good, at least for a short time.
If Sanders tries to put his program in place with taxation, it will work much less well. The spending of those who are taxed will decrease at the same time the public spending is increased. The result will be a little better than a “wash,” because if the money is distributed to poor people, they will be more inclined than rich people to spend the extra funds.
The basic problems of our system will still exist, with or without Bernie Sanders’ plan. For reasons associated indirectly with the high cost of resource extraction, there aren’t enough good paying jobs for people in general, and especially for young people. We need a rapidly rising supply of cheap-to-extract oil and other fossil fuels, to truly create the larger number of high-paying jobs we need. There doesn’t seem to be a way for this to happen. Instead, we get a big supply of expensive-to-extract oil, selling for less than the price of extraction (including amounts for taxes, lease payments, debt repayments, interest expense, dividends to stockholders, and other costs and that need to be paid for). The too-low-price arrangement can’t work for long.
Thanks for writing!
QE has moved oil into the same category as RE. Too expensive to tax and in fact so expensive it needs government subsidies. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
Right! In fact, pretty much all commodities now seem to need QE.
Gail said “We need a rapidly rising supply of cheap-to-extract oil and other fossil fuels, to truly create the larger number of high-paying jobs we need.”
Actually in my country we have about 10% academics and engineers. In China, you have ? 0,001% How can they invent “new stuff” that should grow the economy even when the energy is cheap ? I would really add the law of diminishing returns to this. There exist only very few people that work on new battery technology or similar stuff that come up with a new idea and that in most cases includes very sophisticated production processes.
The “consumer stuff” can be produced in the billion units by robots in 10 years time. That wil also not add to “growth”, even when the energy was cheap, as the unit amount would increase but the price would fall further. How can you invent a new TV set with semiconductors and all that stuff, when an existing one sells at 39,99 ?
The specialisation will increase and that will lead to less and less competition as the market entry costs will increase at high speed. The market is somewhat saturated.
“Actually in my country we have about 10% academics and engineers. In China, you have ? 0,001% How can they invent “new stuff” that should grow the economy even when the energy is cheap ?”
What is the population of your country? Remember, there are well over a billion Chinese, so 0.1% would be a million engineers. How many engineers does it take? Especially when a lot of (formerly) entry level stuff is automated.
As well, from what I understand their education system is quite selective, so by the time someone is an engineer, they were the top 1% of their class three times over. They may have a lot more upper-class people who have degrees without being the best of the best compared to the past.
“I would really add the law of diminishing returns to this.” “How can you invent a new TV set with semiconductors and all that stuff, when an existing one sells at 39,99 ?”
And do you need to invent a new TV? 3D and 4K TV are really stalling out. Going from 240 interlaced to 480 to 720 non-interlaced was the huge leap forward. 1080p is hardly much better. TVs are much thinner, lighter, and consume much less energy than old tube TVs.
I think trickle-down economics has been properly refuted already. The only way of making an economy as strong as possible is to tax millionaires and billionaires heavily. And thats because millionaires and billionaires do stupid things with excess millions and billions. It is not efficient use of resources, on the contrary. Governments can do a better job of investing that money productively, then the majority of the millionaires and billionaires. So, if you are earning a million a year, the government, and society, would benefit more if the next million was taxed 100%.
Yes, millionaires and billionaires should profit from their endeavours, but inherited millionaires, inherited billionaires.. Nope, not in favour of such things. And if you think you are living in a society where people are self made millionaires and billionaires, then please read Thomas Piketty.
And yes, if you give money to the poor they will spend most of it on food, housing, transport and clothes. And they will not invest. But, consider, where are the poor using that money? In businesses.. So, if small and medium sized businesses are profitable, then they surely will invest, to reap more profits in the future.
Building a working economy isn´t satellite-energy-solar-microwave-science you know.
For your plan to work the borders have to be locked down, both ways. You start handing out a $30,000 living wage and millions more of the “huddled masses yearning for a free lunch” will show up. Right now with current programs few are hungry or homeless. Give them even more money and the first places they will go to are the Apple Store and Walmart. The only economy that helps is China’s.
I think the best way to put money in more people’s pockets is to prevent millionaires from making so much in the first place. Using the government to legally steal people’s money makes crooks out of officials taking the money and the rich trying to hide as much as they can. Then it makes lazy bums out of those depending on government thieves to share the loot. Much better to create ways for people to make an honest living.
“I think the best way to put money in more people’s pockets is to prevent millionaires from making so much in the first place. ”
So, prevent too many people from liking the same things? I mean, if 100 million people want to buy something a person created for $10 each, you think the government should say no, only 100,000 people are allowed to buy it so that person does not get too rich, the rest of you must buy other things you like less from other people in order for there to be more employment and greater equality?
Matthew, who said anything about not buying what you don´t like? You know, just for reasons like that we have taxes, laws, governments and personal votes.
If you don´t like equality or a working economy, vote for someone else.
“Matthew, who said anything about not buying what you don´t like? You know, just for reasons like that we have taxes, laws, governments and personal votes.”
Daddio7, to whom I was replying, wrote:
“I think the best way to put money in more people’s pockets is to prevent millionaires from making so much in the first place. Using the government to legally steal people’s money makes crooks out of officials taking the money and the rich trying to hide as much as they can. ”
Which sounds to me like Daddio7 would prefer that people did not make the millions in the first place, rather than having to tax it afterwards. So I ask, what happens if you are working to prevent people from making too much money? It seems to me a worse idea than high / 100% taxation.
daddio – this is socialist clap trap… the people who make millions of dollars generally employ a lot of people…. deny them the right to make millions of dollars and they’ll do exactly what John Galt did … and the socialists will be begging them to come back….
In a way, yes. One person being able to make vast amounts of profit from one thing is a very edge case. Usually that involves patents and monopolies so introducing competition will limit those profits. Say Mr. Super Farmer can make a million on ten thousand acres. No, limit farms to one thousand acres per owner. A widget maker makes tens of millions outsourcing to China. Nope, widgets have to be made domestically. Remember what happened to Ma Bell? Do you really want one corporation to own every supermarket or car dealership in your town?
You can spread labor cost around. You can increase owner numbers. If nothing else limit hot item sales so consumer money goes to another product. Or you can let multi billionaires run the country.
“One person being able to make vast amounts of profit from one thing is a very edge case. Usually that involves patents and monopolies so introducing competition will limit those profits.”
Let’s take the specific case of Markus Persson. He created a game called “Minecraft” which is extremely popular. Besides sales of the game, the company also provides a service to host servers for people who want to play the game with control over the game and who is allowed on their world, what changes they can make, etc, for a monthly subscription.
He sold the company to Microsoft for $2 billion, and paid whatever taxes on that amount.
How would you forcibly prevent him from making that much money? Would you force other people to play clones of the game, and not be allowed to buy the original if they desire? Sorry kid, you cannot play with your friends at school, the quota has been filled, you must play clone #97 instead.
“The only way of making an economy as strong as possible is to tax millionaires and billionaires heavily. And thats because millionaires and billionaires do stupid things with excess millions and billions. It is not efficient use of resources, on the contrary. Governments can do a better job of investing that money productively, then the majority of the millionaires and billionaires. ”
Ok, let me know what you consider some good government investments.
On the other hand, I give you the F-35, Solyndra, the GM Bailouts. Government run projects seem to cost a lot more than the same task being done by a private company. Look at the US Gov program to use local natural gas for vehicles in Afghanistan, compared to Pakistan right next door having the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
If communism works so great, why did America outlast the Soviet Union? Why is Venezuela doing so poorly? What about North Korea? Besides winning at cutting greenhouse gas emissions?
On the other hand, please provide some examples of foolish things billionaires did with their money, earned or inherited.
Matthew, if you check what I wrote, I´m not in favour of Communism. Neither do I like dreams of Empire when 7+ billion are about to starve..
America vs. USSR, check Dmitry Orlov he can explain why the latter collapsed earlier, much better then I. I can tell you its about peak oil and the military, but Dmitry does it better.
Foolish things, ok, check the stock market, big banks, real estate bubbles, the zero producing class called bankers, brokers, hedge funds etc. And this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Kids_of_Beverly_Hills 😉
The stock market in its current state, and the Too Big Too Fail Banks, are the products of government regulation.
The real estate bubbles are created as an unintended consequence of government programs that attempt to increase the percentage of the population that owns its own home, combined with the low interest rates created by the central banks.
“the zero producing class”
If some people choose to pay someone else to spend time deciding on investments, rather than managing their own savings, should they be stopped? Should they be forced into government controlled investments instead?
Reality Television. AKA fake reality made more outrageous in order to be entertaining.
Matthew, a personal touch of actually owning your business yourself, nothing is a better motivator, or a more potent enforcer of smart allocation of resources. Even better, if you own a dozen or two dozen businesses yourself, or you are a co-owner of those businsess. Thats the best possible scenario. A young entrepreneur gets valuable info from a old business angel, that introduces him to colleagues that are in same kind of circumstances. Thats perfect!
Now take your basic Private Banker and a stock market, see any kind of personal touches? Any kind of info flowing back and forth? Anything that would make resource allocation smart?
Yup, I´m not refuting that governments today are listening to economists that are simply in the wrong paradigm. And very, very stupid things are decided by the governments. But, we are in collapse, and very soon in SHTF collapse. Everything that is possible should be done. And that includes taking resources from the 0,1% who live their lives in happy exclusion of reality.
Who is the best to decide what resources are invested in? That´s the central question. Always has. Well, I think probably everybody knows the answer; whomever knows the most about the subjectmatter at hand. If its your own best, you decide what you buy from whom, and who to vote for. If its microwave-satellite-solar-energy-space thingys, I would not want to be on that panel. I can´t see any kind of way it would beat our alternatives. But giving a simplistic answer of private ownership does everything right, or governments are always better, that just folly. Simplistic answers are the reason why we are in collapse, and soon in SHTF collapse.
The poor will use their money to deplete resources more quickly, so the economy as a whole will collapse sooner. At this point, it probably doesn’t matter though.
The plasma drilling technology that could bring down the costs in oil and gas industry:
http://www.gadrilling.com/
That is GOOD news…we get to hear Fast Eddy for the next decade….
Now that will be interesting…
He will get to write and publish his book “Living the Good Life Down Under”, dedicated to Helen and Scott Nearing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XhhThAkzVzc
I thought his book would be titled, “You will get no Turkey for Xmas and like it”
Perhaps FE was right all along, I think it should be clear to all now, the bearded punk is cheating, from the video lots of unrepairable hardware without access to Wallyworld. Also the stored food is full of botulism and other niceties and it’s beyond useless long term. When the crash happens over next night, he will starve and die instantly, not mentioning the deep woods are getting full of refreshed city zombie refugees as we speak.. /sarc off
You “think” do you? Hmmm, Well I think they will do just fine because BAU collapse occurs in the amidst the worst winter due to the polar vortex freezing 90% of the population, except for those “Living the Good Life”. Afterward, they are able to live better than BAU because of all the untouched stuff for them to indulge themselves, if they choose.
See, we can all imagine what we want to see in the future…
I’ve found your video interesting, the comment was meant as joke on FE, the resident poster child of overnight doomerism, that’s why the /sarcasm off at the end, peace.
Right! All was directed at Fast Eddy!
“The plasma drilling technology that could bring down the costs in oil and gas industry:”
Geothermal for everyone!
I doubt it’s technically feasible in next 50yrs.
But should people get more easily bellow the Earth’s crust, and hook up to geothermal perhaps not via steam but some more subtle ways like “thermal/infra chips generating voltage”, it would be possible to scrap all this surface renewable scrap and fossil nonsense, so this “sucker” is not going down anytime soon, and Musk gets his space faring trans galactic human virus spreading for real, lolz.
‘The Jules Verne Project’ lives!
The characteristics of this technology are quite interesting:
“5 times CHEAPER than any of today’s methods
4 times FASTER than other drilling procedures
3 times LARGER diameter at the bottom
2 times DEEPER than common drill hole
1 PROCESS for casing and drilling
0 TRIPPING and drilling bit replacement”
Source: http://geodh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/PlasmaBit-Kristofic.pdf
It would be interesting to hear comments from some seasoned insiders how much this can affect existing depleted regions/reservoirs as well as the new frontiers, e.g. Arctic. Can kicking has been human forte for millennia, it would be nice having BAU prolonged few decades at 700-1500% debts level, who cares as long as the wheels are turning..
The rigless drilling seems to be another interesting feature of this technology:
https://www.norskoljeoggass.no/Global/PAF%20seminar%202015/06%20-%20Thermal%20Milling%20Technology%20used%20for%20PA.pdf?epslanguage=no
In my opinion, going deeper into the ground is the only viable solution for new energy sources. The other direction, into the space (i.e. via the air), is not very much possible, as the closest possible source is the molten core of the Moon. The Earth, with its molten core, is in fact a big nuclear reactor – we need just some pipes to connect to it.
We’ll try everything, in fact. Until it proves not to work. And that allies to most promising technologies.
Tapping into geothermal heat has posed nearly insurmountable problems. In unstable geologies where techntonic plates collide there’s too much risk form instability. In geologically stable areas pipes have been sunk into eep rocks and useful heat extracted. The main problem here, though, is that extracting heat has the effect of cooling the rocks down and time has to be allowed for it to build up again. This entails drilling many bores and relocating the generating infrastructure over a wide grid. This all entails a lot of cost in the above ground transmission infrastructure.
I’m not being negative here, just realistic. There are very good reasons why ‘It just needs a pipe into the ground’ hasn’t worked out and why we aren’t generating large amounts of power from Earth’s core energy. Again, time and cost are the main barriers.
But I tend to agree that going down probably holds more promise than going into space. That’s if we had the time for either to become firmed up and commercially viable before a system crash intervenes.
Keith – why don’t you explore the Jules Verne option? Surely it would be viable than the space option — something that NASA has tried and concluded is not feasible.
“the space option — something that NASA has tried and concluded is not feasible.”
NASA can’t do it for political reasons. Back around 1980 they cut a deal with what became DoE. DoE won’t do anything in space and NASA won’t do anything with energy. Since SBSP is both, neither one of them can work on it. http://www.spaceenergy.com/i/flash/ted_presentation
4 minutes into the talk is where he talks about NASA and DOE.
If the US were to ever do anything with power satellites, a new organization, something like TVA would be needed.
I have more contact with JAXA than I do with NASA.
Dear Chris Harries,
yes, when we consider the fact that there is the gravitation force that has to be overcome when we want to leave the Earth, the direction into the Earth needs less energy. Overcoming the gravity force consumes a lot of energy. Furthemore, the geothermal heat is not intermittent like solar or wind.
Anyway, there are still huge amounts of oil deep in the ground. And the technology that is heat resistant, that actually uses the heat and correspondingly the heat-resistant materials to overcome the rock and the increasing heat when going down, seems to be the solution that the oil producing companies need when the costs go up.
The mechanical drilling methods will be abandoned. We have a lot of cheap electronics today.
You may be correct, MG, but what I say to anyone who says: “All we need to do is this or that….” is firstly: “If t’s so easy, then why don’t we?”. Secondly: “if we had only one critical problem to deal with, then it would be quite easy, but we have a stupendously compete set of entwined problems.
A rough definition of Predicament is that there is no simple solution… all we can do is inch forward, and, as it turns out, most of that endeavour ends up as (as Gail puts it) kicking the can further down the road, because whatever accelerator we press to get our of the quagmire accelerates us further into the Predicament.
“A rough definition of Predicament is that there is no simple solution…”
Usually people say that problems have solutions. Predicaments have outcomes.
Yep sure and some of those outcomes are not so nice. And they are maybe unavoidable no matter what is done.
Yep, but those outcomes may be not so nice. But they may be unavoidable, no matter what we do. The main thing to get across is that there is no pat solution, as many try to persuade via their favoured whiz bang technology.
Dear Chris Harris,
it is obvious that combining the new technology with the new debt is inevitable: that is the result of the fact that the human species needs more and more external energy and resources to survive with its degenerating genome.
Does Nevada want to kill off solar power?
“Just before Christmas, Nevada’s public utility commission (PUC) gave the state’s only power company, NV Energy, permission to charge higher rates and fees to solar panel users – a move that immediately shattered the rooftop solar industry’s business model.”
“In addition to the new monthly fee, which will increase to $40 from $12 over the next five years, customers like Stewart will get less back from the utility for energy their solar panels capture and feed into the main power grid. Whereas previously they received full retail value for their surplus electricity, soon NV Energy will only pay a third of that price for exported electricity.”
“The uneven effect would be that during dark hours and cloudy days, solar customers could pay full price for energy, even after contributing two or three times as much electricity to the power grid during the same day. ”
See: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/solar-panel-energy-power-company-nevada
It’s not easy being green in Nevada.
Any business model that relies on massive taxpayer subsidies deserves to be killed off.
Does that include these, the fossil fuel industry, the military a industrial complex, the auto industry (without the taxpayers paying for highway network the need would be non existent), the airline industry, the corporate agriculture complex? Oh, I may have missed a few others, so please excuse.
Hah, evidently not many people get it, you are right it has been always only about the top-bottom “human farm” while the “costumes and toys” of the particular era are of less systemic interest. If you add up all this hidden taxation it’s no surprise only the top ~20% escape the lowlife, the 5-10% enjoy the luxuries, and exclusively those percenters and subpercenters get on top of the real booty also the cosmic urge to own and control the vast pyramid bellow them.
If everyone needs it, it is not subsidized. Do you eat? If so than food is not subsidized. Do you travel on roads? Remember, even buses need pavement, then roads are not subsidized. The whole world runs on oil so that isn’t subsidized.
Now I don’t travel so to me airlines are subsidized but I get things from China delivered by airfreight and those jets use the same airports so I need them also. You want a world where people never travel more then 10 miles from where they were born and make everything they need by hand.
Beyond silly argumentation, people traveled vast distances (hundreds to thousands km) even during early middle ages, obviously the other factors of speed, safety and comfort were different.
For travel in the medieval world, worth reading are:
Ibn Battuta – all over the muslim world of the 14th century.
Aimery Picaud – from central France to Santiago de Compostela on pilgrimage, which he saw as a journey from high civilisation among the beautiful people (Poitou, his home) through savage lands full of thieves and mule-sodomisers (the Basques!).
Both, obviously, survived in pretty good shape.
They don’t rely entirely on subsidies….
Without subsidies all would still exist… we would still have oil and airplanes…
Solar power would absolutely not exist — to put it in perspective I spent USD15,000+ to install a solar powered irrigation pump…
I did not finance it but work out the numbers on a personal loan for such a project.
I only require that system to operate for about half the year — during the period that I am irrigating the gardens….
If I were to use a grid-powered pump the cost per month would be well under USD100.
Only a retarded donkey would install that rig that I put into the creek — it makes absolutely no sense. It is sheer stupidity.
Nobody in their right mind would ‘invest’ in such nonsense….
The only reason I did is because I don’t expect to have grid power in the very near future….
If not for that there is no way in hell I would have bought any of that gear.
How many people do you think would be willing to purchase solar panels if there were no subsidies? I’m betting pretty much nobody.
Really, Eddy, would we? I think we can say the same reqarding so!at electricity than!
Sure, we would still have fossil fuels….on a much lesser scale, airplanes…surely our network would be a a vastly less network scale! Your reasoning does not hold at all, brother.
How much would be the price of a barrel of oil if we price externalities?
http://www.rock-drill-bit.com/energy-economics.html
This from a US Congressional study, dated, but you get the point
1. The true cost of importing oil. This cost includes oil costs and defense expenditures. Defense expenditures are an especially scary factor. The situation is so dire that the Pentagon is actually trying to find a way to be fossil fuel free by the year 2050.
2. Government subsidies. This set of cost factors includes such things as public lands being leased to oil companies for almost nothing, petroleum industry subsidies, health and social costs that include health issues resulting from pollution, loss of crop yields, and so on. It also includes related costs such as traffic delays, traffic accidents, subsidized parking and the like.
3. Environmental Costs. The burning of fossil fuels produces environmental damage, and we all know it. Some of the energy economics environmental costs are pollution to water and soil, loss of species and loss of ecosystem services such as cleaning the water and air.
4. Climate change costs. According to a 2006 study by the UK’s New Economics Foundation, one ton of carbon dioxide does $35 worth of environmental damage. How they figured that, I have no idea. But, here’s the numbers for you to decide.
According to them, the United States’ current emissions is 1,614 million metric tons, giving the United States a whopping bill each year of $56 trillion
5. Natural Capital Costs. This assigns a value to the natural resources being extracted from the ground. These natural resources are our “inheritance”, so to speak. A cost was assigned to these resources because we are not leaving behind ANY inheritance to our progeny.
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children; but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. Proverbs 13:22
Adding in all of these costs puts the true cost of oil in 2008 at $480 per barrel, or $11.06 per gallon for each gallon of refined gasoline from the Persian Gulf. From a study by Milton Copulos in 2006 entitled “America’s Achilles Heel: The Hidden Costs of Imported Oil” to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the true cost of oil at that time was $480 per barrel!
OK, Let us look at an airplane ticket
How We Pay $3,700 Per Passenger to Subsidize Airline Tickets
BY RICHARD POLLOCK SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
https://pjmedia.com/blog/how-we-pay-3700-per-passenger-to-subsidize-airline-tickets/
nstead, Congress has temporarily extended the program 21 times over the last 33 years. The 22nd extension, lasting to January, was passed last week by the Senate.
Most importantly, the EAS program has mushroomed into a airline routing program based on political favors. And the subsidy doesn’t go to the traveling public; it goes to the air carriers. The $3,700 per passenger subsidy, for example, has been championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who fought and won the earmark for keeping open air service for Ely, Nevada (population: 4,000).
How inefficient is the EAS program? While the Feds pay out $3,700 per passenger to airlines to fly from Ely to Las Vegas, Southwest Airlines sells tickets for Las Vegas to Chicago nonstop for as little as $153 one-way — about 10 cents per mile.
Want me to go deeper?
So, Fast Eddy, subsidies are entrenched and you attack on solar electric does not hold at all.
Oh, I forgot auto’s
A report published earlier this year confirms, in tremendous detail, a very basic fact of transportation that’s widely disbelieved: Drivers don’t come close to paying for the costs of the roads they use. Published jointly by the Frontier Group and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Who Pays for Roads?” exposes the myth that drivers are covering what they’re using.
MORE FROM CITY OBSERVATORY
City Observatory
Why Creating Meaningful Transportation Change Is So Hard
Why Are Metropolitan Areas More “Equal” Than Their Central Cities?
Great Neighborhoods Don’t Have to Be Illegal—They’re Not Elsewhere
The report documents that the amount that road users pay through gas taxes now accounts for less than half of what’s spent to maintain and expand the road system. The resulting shortfall is made up from other sources of tax revenue at the state and local levels, generated by drivers and non-drivers alike. This subsidizing of car ownership costs the typical household about $1,100 per year—over and above the costs of gas taxes, tolls, and other user fees
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving-true-costs/412237/
That is recent just a few months ago….
I could go on and on….but of course you will hold steadfast you are right, never will you admit to the fact of the actual.
Koombaya.
The solar energy industry would not exist without subsidies. That is fact.
Airplanes. Oil and gas. Autos. Computers. They would exist regardless of if there were subsidies. Because there are no viable alternatives. And because they provide a nett benefit to the economy.
Disagree?
Tell you what — I will start a transport company using delivery vans and computer systems. You start a competing company using horses and buggies and scratch pads.
Fossil fuels are a far more viable alternative to solar energy. Therefore all things being even — nobody with a brain would choose the solar option.
Also solar systems – as the article Gail has linked to — provide no nett energy return.
If the nett energy return from oil (factoring in subsidies) was 1 barrel in for 1 barrel out ….
Do you think we would continue to produce oil?
You can bet your ass we would not.
“The solar energy industry would not exist without subsidies. That is fact.”
That’s true. None the less, there are reasons for temporary subsidies. It’s called the learning curve. Making larger and larger numbers of solar cells has brought the installed price down by a rather predictable factor. Ed Kelly discusses this in detail on the StratoSolar web site. Will it get the cost of power down to where Gail says we need it? I don’t know, doubt it because the cost of cells is now so low now that going to zero would would not make a lot of difference because of the rest of the system. Going above the clouds helps.
Yea Nevada! The subsidy given to solar panels has been huge. Steps are now being taken to prices more in line with the real benefit to the utilities. We should be encouraging these steps everywhere.
This will help Elon sell a lot of batteries. To avoid the extra fee solar panel users must not feed back to the grid, not problem.
When people see how much batteries cost and the rather short life span of them — assuming there will be no taxpayer subsidies….
What this will do is put the stake in the heart of solar jesus…. once and for all.
This industry should not exist. Period. Just like it does not exist in countries where the taxpayer does not subsidize it – on a massive scale
Good riddance
Right, let’s all subsidies and cause the end of BAU!
Alternative energy sources barely even register as a source of electricity globally…. so ending them would have no impact on BAU…
To compensate — instead of burning coal to make solar panels — we could just burn the coal directly and generate the electricity….
Isn’t it amusing how when the Koombaya Krowd actually has to pay the real costs of solar they shriek and bellow like stuck pigs…
It’s easy to claim that solar is the saviour when your fellow taxpayer is picking up most of the tab for you….. isn’t it….
“Rolls/Surrette batteries can be purchased dry (without acid), you buy acid at the same time to put in them when the grid does give up.”
No one sells dry batteries anymore. Why? Its the worst thing for the plates. Do you have any batteries stored dry for more than two years? Fill em up. Prove me wrong.
“I will have electrical power here for the rest of my life, and perhaps the younger members of the tribe can also enjoy electric lights for much of their lives. Its just a matter of engineering.”
Where did you say your location is?
https://youtu.be/Vtc7A67kZlQ
Quality cells for solar system last easily ~20yrs in dependable fashion and I’m not talking about Musk, which is more or less corporate scheme allowing for lower longevity of the system by taking new customers into this massproduction gadget strategy.
But you have to cut down your overall energy budget first, or be a quite wealthy individual to power all the current luxuries like electric dishwashers, ovens, freezers, pools etc. If you remove most of this junk (and find low/no power alternatives), batteries are real option at least for people of the “first world” – it’s quite manageable if you limit yourself to slow cookers, washmachine-drier (skip the power drying cycle), led lights, netbook/small inch TV, gravity water intake hence smallish house pump and so on. But people are spoiled living in energy opulence trance, simply don’t want to be limiting themselves, so the cut in consumption will come later and in non negotiating way.
‘Quality cells for solar system last easily ~20yrs in dependable fashion’
I considered installing solar on our small house in NZ — one of the companies that quoted was run by a fellow who has been in this business for decades …
I was trying to work out ROI — but also I wanted to understand how long I could count on this system running post collapse — because one part busts and the entire contraption is rendered useless…
When discussing batteries he said ‘do not believe the 20 or 25 year life span stories you read about PV — the longest in all my days of doing this that I have seen a battery pack last is 15 years —- expect 8-12 years. And you also have to consider that every year you use the system it degrades so you get less capacity.’
This from a guy who wants to sell me a solar system.
I decided to redirect the budget for that system to a mega eastern European vacation…
Now ….. if my neighbours would have all agreed to pool their tax money to pay for half of the cost of that system (like they do in the US) —- well… that might have changed my mind…
It’s the inverters that go first. Expected life for most of these = 10years. Without the inverter the solar system is useless. At this juncture the owner has to invest in a new inverter. Maybe $1,000. What if the present owner is then financially trapped and can’t afford it?
I think in time the inverter problem may be fixed with better technology, but for the current generation of several billion solar panels it will still be a problem. From my experience there is another issue: at least 10 percent of solar systems are installed incorrectly and not delivering to capacity or not at all. There is a problem here in that the owner often never finds out or finds out only after a year or so having noticed that their power bill is not recording much solar input. There’s no siren that goes off to say the system is down. One local person’s (new) solar system was down for three years before being attended to and remedied.
It’s best to always work with conservative figures when looking at the lifespan of any device and this includes solar panels.
What if it is no longer possible to make inverters? Or LED light bulbs? Or other things used with the solar panels?
Dearest Fast Eddie;
‘Quality cells for solar system last easily ~20yrs in dependable fashion’
Yup, actually, this is probably conservative. Also, panels are not like batteries, if one goes bad in your array, it can be replaced, and you are back to capacity again.
“… the longest in all my days of doing this that I have seen a battery pack last is 15 years —- expect 8-12 years.”
This guy is not much of a solar man. Good quality batteries, installed to match the PV array output and managed by a modern battery controller will last 25 years. If the battery pack is to large or too small, their life is cut dramatically. My guess is your solar man didn’t understand battery bank sizing.
In any event, you don’t buy or install the batteries right away. Get your battery bank when things really start to tank, and when batteries are cheapest. Remember, you are just buying lead instead of a PM. Rolls/Surrette batteries can be purchased dry (without acid), you buy acid at the same time to put in them when the grid does give up.
I will have electrical power here for the rest of my life, and perhaps the younger members of the tribe can also enjoy electric lights for much of their lives. Its just a matter of engineering.
Sincerely,
pintada
How about Inverters?
This article talks about Pedro Prieto’s view of the situation. He has been investigation actual costs in Spain. http://energyskeptic.com/2015/pedro-prieto-many-solar-panels-wont-last-25-30-years-eroi-may-be-negative/
As I have stated — the solar guy has been doing this for decades — and the life span he is seeing is 8-12 years.
Feel free to continue to believe you will get 25 years from your batteries…
I prefer to take the word of a guy who is trying to sell me a system — who you would think would be motivated to tell me they will last 25 years to get the sale done… yet he told me expect 8-12 years….
Perhaps you are confusing batteries with panels … I have no doubt the panels will work for upwards of 25 years.
I don’t see any point in wasting tens of thousands of dollars on such a system – first off I do not expect to be alive for very long post collapse – and second — if a single piece of the system breaks — the entire contraption will be rendered useless.
on batteries go with Nickel-Iron
“Improvements are being made and NiFe is becoming a viable alternative to lead acid in off-grid power systems. Pocket plate technology lowered the self-discharge; the battery is virtually immune to over- and under-charging and should last for over 50 years.”
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/nickel_based_batteries
Another thing the solar sales guy told me was that he never recommends new technologies until they have demonstrated that they actually work as expected.
If I had a new battery technology I’d be damn sure that I hired some ‘independent’ research firms to conclude that the batteries will last 50 years….
I’d get the same research firms that big tobacco used to conclude smoking is good for you … the same research firms that conclude GMO is good for you … the same research firms that conclude soft drinks don’t cause obesity ….
We are a world of 7.5 billion suckers….
Excellent insolation areas/regions are sort of outliers in the debate.
Lets say you have at some spot in high desert NM/Nevada +300days of reliable sunshine yearly. At that point is solar in any form and as islander system a nobrainer for residential use, more over you can backup the small PV system with smallish generator and or battery bank, but first step obviously is redesign-adjust your consumption way lower.
However, how many of these favorable insolation spots on the Earth match with existing population density and distribution, income/savings etc., I’d say there is no match at all to speak of. To summarize, solar makes little or no sense especially in northern hemisphere, but if you are lucky and the local conditions allow for it, grab the opportunity of todays pricing and availability and go for autarky, even though you are limited by the upper lifetime of the gear lets say upto 20yrs, much better spent money (and buffer to think about other options into long term) than new carz, and other stupid frivolous luxuries.
Dear worldofhanumanotg;
“… and other stupid frivolous luxuries.”
You mean like trips to Europe? 🙂
Yours in Jest,
Pintada
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Baltic Dry Index Falls Under 400 For First Time Ever, Demand Recovery Could Now Be As Far Out as 2018 » Ship & Bunker
http://shipandbunker.com/news/world/323829-baltic-dry-index-falls-under-400-for-first-time-ever-demand-recovery-could-now-be-as-far-out-as-2018
Fast Eddy are you safely back in Kiwiland?
If so, hope this help in your hunting/gathering existence
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9eNofiivPJw
Not yet.
I’m in a hotel in Hong Kong at the moment…. not back to NZ until late next week.
The mood in Hong Kong is getting tense…. the mainland Chinese are no longer coming across the border in big numbers and that is hammering retail….
And the property market has started to fall — transactions have dried up as buyers wait for the crash…. but little do they know … when it collapses… that is likely to be part of the global collapse of BAU…
The grandmother of all property bubbles:
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/template/assets/graph_images/86_graph2.jpg
Shocking! /sarc off
When China goes down, so does Australia and Canada and…
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/liyanchen/files/2015/10/Screen-Shot-2015-10-30-at-11.47.22-PM-1200×787.png
“Some analysts are now suggesting a demand recovery may be as far out as 2018.” Lol, where do they get this stuff? The happy talk never ends. Maybe it could just be never.
What is the point of such stupidity? To BS the lenders to the freight companies – hey guys, don’t cut off our credit, just hold on, by 2018 we’ll be swimming in profts again!
How are these “analysts” supposed to know that by 2018, all the macro factors are going to sort themselves out and demand will again be soaring, a phoenix rising from the ashes flying ever higher! Growth porn! The world is choking to death on oceans of our own BS.
Yesterday ZH highlighted some prognostications and analysis by permabear Albert Edwards of SocGen. All kiinds of analysis but no mention of the fact that the consumer is broke, that consumers (non-elite jobs) just keep disappearing, and no question why. Over at ponziworld, the host recently had this to say: They bet it all on the jobless consumer, being too f-ing stupid to realize there is no such thing.
Look, it’s their job to “talk up their books”. Otherwise, how can they afford their houses in the Hamptons and all those Caribbean prostitute parties? lol
Besides, human beings are hard-wired for good news. Energy Block Bad…
https://youtu.be/OAs2PBL1RsA
Nice comment tagio, you said it all and I even smiled 😀
I’ll be seeing a couple of friends who are long time HK shipping industry lawyers later this evening… last time I saw them in August they said the situation had never been so bad…. not much business due to very low shipping volumes out of china…
Wonder how they see things now….
Dear Gail and All
I have occasionally expressed doubt about the ability of blogs on the internet being able to foster real change in the world at large. Here is a thoughtful talk by one of the instigators of the Arab Spring in Egypt:
http://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_let_s_design_social_media_that_drives_real_change?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2016-01-13
He originally thought that the internet could save us. Now he thinks we have to first save the internet.
I think I am more pessimistic than he is. He is of the ‘let us reason together, mediated by technology’ persuasion. I start out with these presumptions:
*the internet is not as effective as face to face conversation, with conversation lasting as long as is needed, with breaks for fact checking and reflection as needed.
*Yet, in the days of conversation, and with relatively fact based questions such as arise in science, it was frequently true that paradigms shifted when the old lions died off. The inconclusive discussions between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr are an example of a discussion on some profound differences which accomplished nothing.
*Consequently, I am not optimistic that discussions on the internet will ever have the potential to actually change a large mass of minds and behaviors.
I think that it is experience which usually changes minds. The bitter experience this young man went through during the counter-revolution in Egypt taught him some things, and changed his behavior. I doubt that reading the above paragraph would have much impact on him.
So why keep trying? I do think that, once in a while, a seed falls on ground which has already been prepared by experiences which the hearer has paid attention to. In such cases, it is no longer ‘my’ idea…it takes on new life in the mind and actions of the person who hears.
Don Stewart
Dear All
For example, consider this article:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/cancer-screening-has-never-saved-lives-bmj-study-concludes-1
About every 10 years some prestigious group surveys the ‘early detection saves lives’ meme and finds that it is simply not true. Do a majority (or even a significant minority) change their minds and behaviors as a result? I don’t think so. The proponents of Big Medicine insist that the ‘old, inaccurate’ methods may not have worked, but the shiny new methods are sure to work.
If people actually accepted the study results, they would have two choices. One would be to accept cancer as simply fate having its way. That’s not a very attractive prospect. The second alternative would be that people accepted that they can’t live the American lifestyle and expect to escape cancer….so they need to change their behavior. That alternative is also not very attractive. So….people keep on walking for the cure and spending tax money for mammograms and having needless prostate surgery.
Do you really think that more discussion on the internet will change things?
Don Stewart
Don Stewart,
I think you are misinterpreting this cancer screening research somewhat. The lesson is simply that we shouldn’t worry about cancer until we have symptoms (and yes, this is an incredibly difficult lesson to teach, since people seem to worship health care as something they just can’t get enough of). It might still theoretically be good to detect cancer early, but we have no way to do so without causing more harm than good, so screening asymptomatic people should not be done (this goes for pretty much all health care, actually — don’t see a doctor if you are feeling well). Once cancer is detected, treatment can still be effective in some cases, so fatalism is not called for either. Should we change our lifestyle? Perhaps, but our life expectancy is already better than at any time in history, and with longevity comes more cancer (we have to die of something), so perhaps we shouldn’t obsess so much about lifestyle either.
Yep, and there’s also the problem that obsessing on your health is really bad for your health. Just go out and live, not spend your time fearing death and morbidity.
Dear Elvind Berge
Suppose you and I were sitting in a coffee shop or pub discussing the BMJ ‘early detection’ report. Suppose you expressed the notion that ‘best to just not worry about cancer until there are obvious symptoms’ because ‘we are living longer now, so naturally there is a higher incidence of cancer’.
I might just give up, and change the subject to sports scores or some innocuous subject like what the girls are wearing this year (American girls…boots, Asian girls…retro tennis sneakers). But let’s suppose you were a friend and I cared about you and had found you to be open to suggestions. What sort of story would I tell? I think it would involve these elements. How deeply we got into each element would depend on how much you already knew about the subject, how much I thought I needed to say about each element to either convince you or at least get you interested. I would try to convince or interest you without calling you stupid or ignorant or otherwise offend you, but I wouldn’t patronize you. (I’m giving a rose-colored glasses view of the way I usually behave.)
*Plants make thousands of chemical compounds. Many of these compounds have medicinal purposes for humans. A simple example is acetasalicylic acid, made by virtually all plants, which we use to make aspirin.
*Wheat on one particular farm in Australia has been observed with a BRIX value in the 20s. Most farms in Australia have BRIX values of 2 or 3. What does this tell us? BRIX is a measure of how rapidly the plant is photosynthesizing nutrients. The first farm is making nutrients very rapidly, while the majority of farms are making nutrients very slowly. The first farm has a high microbial population which assists in cycling nutrients through the plants very rapidly. Most of the farms resort to synthetic fertilizers, which eventually destroy the soil microbes and the soil structure.
*A very careful British study compared the nutrient content of agricultural crops in 1940 with the nutrient content in the late 1990s. To get the same nutrients from plants that we got in 1940, we now have to eat 4 times as much. The decline in nutrient values has coincided with the rise in the incidence of cancer and other chronic diseases.
*Agronomists and schools of agronomy assume that nutrients are very limited and must be added by synthesizing nitrogen and mining minerals. In fact, minerals are very abundant in the soil and nitrogen is abundant in the air. Microbes take the minerals in the soil and process them into plant usable forms, under the control of the plants. The microbe process is a ‘just in time’ system which produces no pollution. The plants control the microbes through the liquid carbon pathway. The plants use up to 85 percent of the carbon they produce in photosynthesis to make root exudates which attract the microbes. The process of making exudates also puts nitrogen deep into the root zone…not just with plants which symbiotically host nitrogen fixing bacteria. Deep soil carbon and abundant microbes leads to the excellent soil structure which holds water and oxygen deep in the soil.
*The process of putting carbon deep in the soil can potentially solve our global warming problem. The high nutrient productivity is particularly relevant as we approach Limits to Growth and can no longer afford energy hog solutions. Some soil scientists think that volume of food is the last thing we should worry about….if we garden and farm intelligently.
*Besides the generally health protecting properties of most plants that we eat, some dozen or so plants have a demonstrated medically significant anti-cancer effect. Included are the brassicas and the allium.
*Sugar and grain flour are two of the prime culprits in chronic disease. For example, high fructose corn syrup, which is refined from corn, is widely used to sweeten soft drinks. But fructose when eaten in a whole fruit has not been shown to be harmful. In trials, fruit consumption has been shown to be health promoting. Likewise, the sweet taste of sweet potatoes does not indicate that sweet potatoes should never be eaten.
*It is probably necessary to go after the stem cells in cancer, rather than just kill off the non-stem cells in the tumor. It seems to me that what is needed is a ‘drip’ of cancer fighting chemicals along with changes which discourage tumor growth. So we have reason to believe that an anti-cancer diet with moderate exercise and management of stress is an excellent approach to life. Given the advanced state of decay of the industrial food system, a garden sounds like an excellent idea.
I would expect you to be skeptical that old Don actually knows anything about this stuff. I would refer you to some experts, maybe tell you about BRIX readings in my own garden, etc. I might also tell you how my wife and I have navigated the confusing subject of diet.
Now the ball is in your court. You can do something, or nothing, as you see fit. We may meet again in the pub or coffee shop, and continue the conversation, but that will depend on what each of us does as we continue on our journey of life.
It is very hard for me to see how this could play out over the internet.
Don Stewart
If our standard diet fails to supply nutrients that we need to stay healthy, then we should expect supplements to be beneficial. I am not saying supplements are preferable to the sort of gardening you advocate, but they should certainly show some benefit if our diets are as deficient as you claim. That is not what the research shows, however. Taking supplements has never been proven to prevent disease or extend life compared to eating a standard diet. Most studies show either no effect or actual harm from taking supplements, so the evidence does not support taking them unless there is some clear deficiency.
By all means, grow your own vegetables if you enjoy gardening, and it is certainly more sustainable and better for the environment than industrial agriculture, but I am skeptical about the health claims for the same reason that I am skeptical about the claims made for supplements. You can show some benefit to any nutrient in some sort of isolated study in vitro or whatever, and it *sounds* good to get more of them, but the evidence that they improve overall health is just not there. If the food was so much better in 1940, why do people live longer now?
Eivind Berge, “why do people live longer now” because MDs don´t let people die.. MDs can keep people alive just about as long as they want. Every now and then there comes an aggressive cancer that metastasis everywhere instantly, or a sudden coronary or somebody mixes all sort of dugs and the body shuts down, but otherwise, MDs will keep you alive wether you like it or not.
It´s true our diets have improved during the last century, but during the last decade fat and sugar intake has gone through the roof. More than one-third (34.9% or 78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese.
Supplements can harm the liver and the kidneys if polluted raw materials have been used in manufacturing. And supplements don´t absorb as well as reported.
Easiest way of eating well, is by adding as much of fiber-rich foods, fish, garlic and ginger as possible.
Elvin Berge
Total life expectancy is a tricky metric. Historically, the death rate among infants was very high, and among their mothers was pretty high also. When an infant dies at the age of 1 day, it really brings down the average. Various measures brought down the infant death rate, and also the death rate among young mothers. At the other end of the scale, it is now true that half of Americans who reach the age of 85 have Alzheimers. So the ‘health span’ hasn’t changed too much for those who survived infancy.
It is also worth keeping in mind that while the veggies and cereals in 1940 may have been high nutrient, a very great many people ate poverty diets. Pellagra was very common in this part of the country. I saw a picture of ‘honest country people’ from the 1930’s, and practically everything they ate came from a box or can. They were operating, or working on, cash crop only farms. About like an Iowa farmer today.
As for the failure of vitamin pills to improve health. The book Still Hungry? by Dr. David Ludwig recommends ProBiotics but does not recommend daily multivitamins. He doesn’t expound on his reasons, but I will hazard a guess:
*Studies consistently show no benefit from industrial vitamins
*Gut microbes make vitamins. If you have a healthy microbiome, which is one of his messages, you probably don’t need much in the way of supplements.
*He makes an exception for Vitamin D, which is hard to get enough of for most Americans. He also recommends some Omega 3s in fish oil form.
This is a good illustration of the problems of trying to move forward on the internet. SOMEBODY is going to attack every single element of the story. And a crucial point is that I really don’t care whether you believe it or not. If we were in a coffee shop talking, I would stop trying to convince you of any of this.
No offense….Don Stewart
“MDs can keep people alive just about as long as they want.”
MDs will keep people alive just about as long as they get paid for it.
Fixed it for you
Don, I agree with you that CCS (carbon capture and storage) is a disaster waiting to happen, pumping this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c0KfxShPMc underground, is a folly.
But producing Terra Preta globally, making it obligatory for every farmer in the world to produce 1 ton of Biochar/ year / 10 hectares, that could work, would work, and would improve farm crop yields (Biochar; 40-60% in green houses, 20-30% in temperate climates farm crop yields). And biochar doesn´t need expensive technology, if you don´t want to use expensive technology http://www.biochar-international.org/technology/opensource
Respectfully, I disagree on Terra Preta / Biochar. Biochar is a long way from a proven technology. A small handful of publications, that haven’t even made it into peer-reviewed journals, is a long way from strong evidence that the practise is effective from a soil-building or carbon sequestration stand-point.
As someone who has put a great deal of effort into improving the soils on a relatively large area (145 acres), I have major reservations about it. My major issue is the charring process, and the nutrients it volatilizes. First, I want those nutrients in my soil, where they will ultimately contribute more to fertility than char. Second, I don’t want those nutrients put into the air, where they are pollutants.
On the other hand, improving soils is of major interest. If we changed modern agriculture to build, rather than deplete soil, raised the levels of organic carbon in soils by only half a percentage point, and did so over the lion’s share of agricultural land, we could tie up a very significant amount of carbon, and increase that land’s productivity to a very significant degree.
Give me the feed-stock for your biochar process, but before you put it through the charring process. I’ll spread it on my hill-tops with glee. I’ve been doing something similar, with tree-trimmings that I rescue from the “burn pile” at our local transfer station any time I drop something off. After about three years, grass starts growing through it. It breaks down almost completely after another two years. After eight years from the initial application, the areas I’ve done so have more than double the growth of their surroundings. Where our livestock (see my avatar) have been able to access the trimming piles, they speed the incorporation process up by at least a factor of two, and the soil seems to respond just as well.
Rural, what do mean by a proven technology? The basic pyrolysis process of an organic material in an oxygen deprived environment? Thats just about as easy as a chemical process gets. Or do you mean industrial scale operations where conveyor belts are used, and excess heat is used productively and every gas biproduct that comes out of it too? Then transported a million miles to the farm that uses the product?
Umm.. what? No peer review https://books.google.fi/books?id=eprNBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq=biochar+peer+review&source=bl&ots=yGfpaNDeX9&sig=l9n4I_jLDp0ktV9I4K-IctkNV4w&hl=fi&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi45MXJzavKAhWBFSwKHTubAvM4ChDoAQg-MAQ#v=onepage&q=biochar%20peer%20review&f=false Sorry, you kinda lost me there.
What is the difference between Activated Charcoal, you know the stuff that is miraculous. Used in poisonings, filters, water filters (you know, to get clean water) air conditioning, toothpaste, snake bites, emergency rooms and with Biochar? It´s the same stuff! Activated Charcoal is just biochar that has been pyrolysed in double the temperature and blasted with air, to make it more porous. Otherwise, its the same stuff. Now, when you read what activated charoal actually does, it binds chemicals and toxins, giving good bacteria, microbes and fungi a toxic free environment in which to thrive in. Its not possible that biochar would do something different, just because its less porous.
Having a toxins “filter” in the soil just can´t be of any harm to you. The ideal way to use biochar would be to have it mixed with compost and urea. No doubt about that.
I agree a 100% pyrolysis unit that gathers all possible gas biproducts would be a good idea uses the excess heta etc. Unfortunately our genious inventors want to concentrate on space microwave solar satellite thingys and not on something that would actually work in any meaningfull way. As long as traditional engineers make the pyrolysis units out of stainless steel, with all sorts of fancy gadgets, they will cost a whole lot. Just saying, better to use some sort of biochar in rural Africa and India, then not to use any at all.
“Unfortunately our genious inventors want to concentrate on space microwave solar satellite thingys ”
Power satellites, i.e. dirt cheap electricity are compatible with biochar. Thought about it a lot. It would take electrification of rural areas and moving around electrically heated furnaces to make the char. Cheap power would let compost and biochar go into the ground rather than burned for fuel. Cheap synthetic fuel would let you haul the stuff out the fields.
The reason “traditional engineers make the pyrolysis units out of stainless steel” is fire side corrosion. You have to get the outside of the chamber hotter than the inside to get heat to flow in to heat up the stuff you are making into biochar. That’s hot enough to oxidize steel. If you want the units to last very long, I am not sure you have a lot of choice. Biochar made using electricity could use insulation and resistance heaters using air or gas to heat the biochar.
Good stuff, biochar. I don’t know of anything else that would reverse the damage to the soil better.
Of course that’s only part of long term agricultural problems. Long term, phosphorous has to be pulled out of the sewage and shipped back to the farms. I have not looked into the chemistry there, but it’s sure going to take a lot of energy to get it out.
You might be amused that the first paper I wrote on space topics was about a space farm. I don’t think it is online, but if you want a copy, ask.
“As long as traditional engineers make the pyrolysis units out of stainless steel, with all sorts of fancy gadgets, they will cost a whole lot.”
You can make charcoal with a barrel with aluminum foil over it, or by packing sticks close together and covering it all in clay or mud and leaving only a small vent hole at the top.
I’m not sure making a complex industrial machine to use more of the products is more efficient compared to simply producing the charcoal where it is going to be used. Having a larger body of people with the knowledge and tools would be more resilient, as well.
hkeithhenson, yes, if you have good stuff about farming, yes, please share.
But, I´m not sure if I get your ideas, I seem to be an order of magnitude too slow-witted to understand how you make your ideas work. Reading your stuff is like reading String Theory, after a nice read of 11 or 12 dimensions, somebody points out that String Theory has never been proven, and likely never can.
“if you have good stuff about farming, yes, please share.”
Ask in email. hkeithhenson at gmail.com
“But, I´m not sure if I get your ideas, I seem to be an order of magnitude too slow-witted to understand how you make your ideas work. Reading your stuff is like reading String Theory”
Sorry. It does take a deep background. I have been dealing with the issues since 1975. A lot of it, such as the economics, I have had to pick up in the last ten years.
BTW, power satellites are not the only large scale energy project I have worked on. I worked for a year and a half on StratoSolar. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8323 For a while it looked like this “closer to home” project would undercut power satellites. It is still second on my list with some kind of nuclear being third.
“Sorry. It does take a deep background.”
Knee deep Id say
Rural, Isn’t Slash and Burn agriculture just a primitive form of biochar?
I agree that pyrolysis works in the sense that it drives off volatiles and leaves something behind that we can call Biochar. I even believe that Biochar would be of benefit to the soil. However, I don’t believe that Biochar is a more effective soil amendment than the raw organic material before pyrolysis. I just don’t see how driving off all of the nutrients, with the exception of carbon and ash, will improve a soil amendment.
Look, I could make Biochar from horse manure before applying it to my garden. Would that be better than just applying the manure to my garden directly? Would it be better than composting the manure before putting it in my garden? In both cases, I don’t think so. I feel the same could be said if the feedstock were a tree.
Do I think that slash-and-char is a better alternative than slash-and-burn agriculture? Absolutely. But I think slash-and-rot or slash-and-bury are probably better still, at least from the perspective of creating productive agricultural land for a longer-term.
From the perspective of creating energy, I am intrigued by pyrolysis. Certainly, the Biochar is more beneficial than ash, which is all you have left after burning biomass. But the process has to be done right. If pyrolyzed at low temperatures (< 400C), the resulting Biochar is going to be worse than useless for agriculture (low pH, high ash, low cation-exchange capability). And one has to factor in all the work involved in moving the biomass to the pyrolysis machine and the resulting Biochar back to the field. I could easily see this process having negative environmental returns.
Look, the best freely available survey paper I can find on Biochar is this 2007 paper. A very balanced paper that is mostly positive towards Biochar. (Interestingly, they managed to get a paper into Nature shortly after this 2007 paper was published. My bet is that they are nearly identical. Being published in Nature is a huge vote of confidence.) However, in that 2007 paper, nearly every claim made is qualified with a statement of uncertainty and a need for substantiation. We have a long way to go before we can say that this technology is of net-benefit compared to the alternatives.
Don,
Internet discussions gather likeminded people to share ideas (and memes) with each other.
To totally change something, that would require either billions in funding, or a law (which then uses billions in public government funding). So change rarely comes from internet discussions. But, say somebody gathers a expert group to a panel discussion about microbes, bacteria and fungi, if such a panel was gathered, I would constantly try and measure their expertise by what I had heard from Don Stewart, whom I know knows his stuff.
So, my take on internet discussons is that our ideas and memes get to go through a peer review process from hell, by Fast Eddy. And a benchmarking process from everybody else. Not bad, actually.
Concerning cancer and mammographs and needless prostate surgery, perhaps Stefeun can tell us how things should be done. But as a layman, just talking to MDs, there apparently are these “red flags” that are raised, and for a few decades now the red flag above all others, has been cancer. Whenever that word is uttered, it will generate all sort of “buzz”. Apparently because people are scared and most of cancer treatments are not for cancer, but treatments, procedures, for the fear of cancer.
And thanks again Don for your thoughtful comments.
??
Sorry, no.
‘So, my take on internet discussions is that our ideas and memes get to go through a peer review process from hell, by Fast Eddy.’
If you think my questions are tough — try sitting in front of a panel of very smart VC investment professionals who hold the purse strings and who will grill you with far more detailed questions than I have done here — and if you don’t have good answers you go home without a dime…
I have been there…. and was one of the few that ‘got the dime’
Most projects that are submitted for funding do not even get a meeting — most that get a meeting do not get any money — most that get money fail.
Some of us internet readers will refuse the “services” provided. And there is actually some movement away from demanding that everyone participate in using them.
Dear Don Stewart;
“Consequently, I am not optimistic that discussions on the internet will ever have the potential to actually change a large mass of minds and behaviors.”
You are raising and interesting question here, one that I have considered for some time. There are, in my mind two intertwined issues:
The first issue (the most important), is strictly epistemological. How do we know what we know? David Cohen did a fair job of exposing the incredible stupidity that passes for reasoning or thought on the internet. In his “Adventures in Flatland I, and II” he made an excellent case that people simply do not have the tools that they need to deal with a very complex modern reality. In “Adventures in Flatland III, and IV” he “proved” that he is correct about everything he thinks, and that anyone that disagrees is somehow inferior. Obviously, he is not correct about everything especially that.
It is difficult to approach the question of what tools work, and which do not without giving examples. But the minute an example of an issue that is not cut and dried, is typed on the screen, we hear why cancer is bad, and why one should not obsess over it (for example). If you gave a more controversial example, the conflicting ideas might have broken the internet. 🙂 That leads to one of my conclusions: People don’t concentrate while reading … they either don’t know how, or they are not in that mode/mood while on line.
As everyone does, I use my past experience, training, and education to find the truth.
But look at that list of tools. Each has flaws, and in some cases, those flaws can become what defines you. Can we rely on training and education? Members of ISIS would say yes, they received the best education and training the Saudi Madrassas could provide and they KNOW that they have the TRUTH.
Can we rely on experience? Experiences are subjective, and what we remember has nearly as much to do with what we ate during and before the experience as the physical reality that we are trying to remember.
I try to use logic and maths as tools also. If one has actual facts with which to work, and can do the math I think it is very difficult to go wrong. The end result for me is a heavy reliance on the scientific method. I think that one of the worst problems the world faces is the fact that most children are denied a long and thorough exposure to science and scientific thought.
Speaking of logic, when reading a post, I like to check the premise from which the ideas in the post come. Very often, when the logical premise is understood I can pigeonhole that author and his ideas.
Second, can any advocate for any behavior or belief system cause an increase in numbers of people espousing his chosen belief system? I think this is certainly true, but it takes lots of time and money. (I am having a nervous fit restraining myself from providing examples that would do nothing but detract from your topic. Suffice it to say that there are examples out there.)
Sincerely,
Pintada
TED talks come across as a little too good to be true.
An Internet blog can be used as a way of gathering views as well as dispersing knowledge. I think they can be helpful either way. My current post has been generating a lot of traffic–whether or not that means anything.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dow
As many know US stocks dropped precipitously last week, then rallied and stabilized on Mon/Tues.
Today on Wed. however it dropped a whopping -368 pts.
Since the high for the Dow in May, 2015 of 18,312 it is now approx. 2200 points lower, a loss of 12%.
I saw a link today saying that two 10% corrections in close succession have only happened three other times–in 1929, 2000, and 2008. http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/major-warning-signial-to-stock-market.html We seem to be getting very close to being added to that list.
Rural,
When Gail says we need “cheap” oil (or other energy) for the economy to grow, she means “cheap to get and cheap to process,” not “low-priced.” We have used up nearly all of the cheap to get oil, and now we are left with only the “very costly to get” oil,
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I’m struggling a bit here. In this post, Gail predicts a sustained low oil prices, and a likely fall to even lower prices in the near future. In her December 21st post, she states that we need very low energy prices to fix the looming crisis. Don’t we now have those low energy prices? Doesn’t that buy some time?
The news this morning is the Chinese import/export numbers. They’ve fallen, but by less than the market was expecting. The result was a modest bounce. At the same time, the US economy seems to be doing well as a result of low oil prices. And in this post, Gail is forecasting that low oil prices will last for quite some time. So maybe we’ll see the markets stop their drop for a couple of years while low oil prices provide a stimulus. This could delay the debt problem.
Yes, eventually the large debt issue will manifest. It already is having an effect, but a near-time global market collapse doesn’t seem all that likely to me.
Then again, time usually proves me wrong.
Low price to produce. A high price to produce and low to sell is what we have. The low sell price inhibits exploration, R&D and eventually supply. I suspect when falling supply begins to raise the price, it will signal game over. It may not even get there though, collapse could arrive first.
When oil prices go up we will see if we have an affordability problem (cannot go up after the glut is over) or only a glut (can go up -> for how long?). That is the big question, depends on how you see it. Thermodynamically or economically.
I am a fan of the steeplecase theory of decline and think that we have the step size evaluated now as the stocks tend to go down too long and the S&P 500 does not reach new hights. So the step-size of the glut/squeeze can be calculated as 7 years (what a conicidence: 2001,2008,2015)
ehm, I mean staircase-decline
Yes, the next cycle, if there is any, would reveal much about PO, the financial system, ascendancy countries pursuing strategic dedolarization efforts etc. So in next 6-7yrs or earlier we might get finally at least some hints about those core answers.
Although I’d like to believe you’re right, I’m more inclined to think that we will wake up one fine day during the next 6-7 years with our heads handed to us on a platter. That’s the price we pay for forever sweeping problems under the rug.
So are you thinking we can make it 2022?
Why not, the economy has actually been dead for seven years already!
Why should it not stay dead at infinite ?
Just to try some optimism 🙂
No – it has not been dead. It has been growing. Corporate profits have in most years been very strong.
Because China has been building stuff like mad.
No China is not because they could not build stuff that is not needed forever without their financial system collapsing.
And now corporate profits are declining – 4 quarters in a row.
And now commodity prices have collapsed and bankruptcies are soaring.
With no way out since central banks have done everything in their power to keep us out of the deflationary collapse we are now in.
You think we can have 6 more years of declining corporate profits and dropping commodity prices?
You are dreaming.
We could get 6 more years if there were a way to reverse what is happening now…
Feel free to explain how that could be done.
entropy began with the big bang itself so eventually all heat is going to disipate, the sun will consume all its nuclear fuel, we will die some day, we simply live as if that was never going to happen.
It is funny when you think about how oil came into existence because it was a problem of diminishing returns as well, in this case with self replicating organisms that ended up suffocating themselves, which happened to stor energy that could be used with a somwhat simple chemical reaction.
I was thinking of the schedule and this got me thinking http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-12/guest-post-2016-year-epocalypse
Ok, Gail said we have been collapsing since 1970s or something, and a faster phase started in 2008. Now 2016 another gear seems to have been switched on. But is it SHTF? Is it panic selling of stocks, is it dominoes falling untill no more grid?
What if every single domino resists as much as it can; I-don´t-believe-this-is-happening sort of simply refusing to accept reality as it is. We have a HUGE global system of dominoes, so, how long does it take if the Dam doesn´t brake, if all, every single domino keeps resisting? Even with complete disaster relief and the Dam being superstrong, no panic selling of stocks, every single domino resisting as much as possible, the whole global system being HUGE, still, 2016 will go down in history as the year we collapsed. But no more grid, hmm.. 2017 maybe, 2018 the latest.
I tried to think how they have built High Frequency Trading HFT AI tools http://www.slideshare.net/QuantInsti/a-sneak-peek-into-artificial-intelligence-based-hft-trading-strategies And I really don´t believe they have built collapse scenarios in to the AI tools. HFT is trying to lift stock prices, otherwise they wouldn´t make as much money as they have been making. Sure there have been glitches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash but the tools that are now in use should have failsafes to avoid crashing the system. In other words, these dominoes will keep on resisting collapse.
We will see what happens today. The market is down a lot.
With QE Infinity it may be possible, as long as everyone agrees not to look behind the curtain because the Wizard is just a mortal man (or woman)!
I am doubtful…. as we are seeing QE is pushing on a string now….
Dear Rural;
Rural says, “I’m struggling a bit here.”
The problem is with the definition of “price” versus “cost”. The price of oil is down, the cost of producing that oil is up.
Yours in Doom,
pintada
What we need is energy with very low cost of energy production. What we have is energy that is still high-cost to produce, being sold at prices that are far too low to guarantee future production. In fact, these prices are likely to bring the system down in not too long. No one would start a new factory based on these low prices, because they know that these low prices cannot persist for very long, without the system collapsing.
There are certainly a lot of unknowns in this story. It is possible that events will bounce along for a while longer. A lot of people are trying to find fixes for problems.
US oil inventories (crude and products, combined) rose another 10 million barrels in the report the EIA published on yesterday, Wednesday, January 13th. Inventories had increased by 10 million barrels the previous week as well. That is the equivalent of the US adding almost 1.5 million barrels a day of oil to inventory, every day, at a time when oil prices were nevertheless dropping like a rock. I find this disturbing–it looks like a bad mismatch between supply and demand. Perhaps the increase is a temporary fluctuation. For example, such a fluctuation could theoretically be caused by boats unloading oil previously purchased and kept offshore under futures contracts–but I don’t know whether or not this is happening. A new report comes out every week, and we can see if the pattern persists. If oil inventories keep being added at this rate, the system would seem likely to get overloaded in not very long.
Gotcha. As commented above, I now understand what you were getting at.
But living in a local that was swimming in oil money eighteen months ago, and seeing how desperate folk are to keep everything going. I’m wondering if the global oil industry can trim the fat (which would include the industry in my area) and keep going. Like it or not, everyone in the industry is going to have a hair cut, including the Saudia Arabian royalty. Maybe there’s room for the oil industry to adjust to the “post hair-cut era”…
Oh ya. Debt. Nuts. (And debt is certainly a problem where I am. There are a lot of nice trucks for sale now, and prices are falling. A bunch of houses have started coming onto the market now too. Nobody seems interested in either. I’m certainly not.)
And so much for the strong US markets. More nuts.
The other problem besides debt is the fact that jobs are very much tied to energy use. Cutting out “the fat,” means cutting out people’s jobs.Even a travel agent losing a job is a loss of jobs. This adds to the debt repayment problem.
Actually, I’ve been following peak oil pretty faithfully since 2004. Took a five-year break, and came back a couple of years ago. What’s changed is that I now find that some of what Gail is saying conflicts with some other sources that I respect equally. Also, I didn’t foresee the 2008 bailout and the following rounds of quantitative easing delaying collapse for another cycle. I think we could see another card played to delay it for at least another cycle (ie. war). So I do try to a point a critical eye at her when I can. Politely, of course.
But I did eventually have an ‘Aha!’ moment all on my own a couple of hours after asking the question. Of course, I wasn’t making a distinction between price and cost.
Don’t get me wrong, I see a collapse in the not-too-distant future, but maybe not The Collapse, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it could be delayed for another business cycle or two.
I was on The Oil Drum as “Gail the Actuary.” Quite a few of the people there didn’t like what I was saying, because what I said conflicted with what they said.
I correctly predicted the 2008 crash. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3382
I have been talking about the problem of low oil prices since at least 2009. This is a post where I mention oil prices dropping from 2009. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6041
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Sign of the times?
Apparently the fans in Cincinnati were cheering when the opposing team’s star player was carted off with an injury ….
Remember when someone was hurt – on either team — in any sport — and the fans would not respond with joyous glee….
And then the game ends with this near death experience — 3 game suspension for this :
And folks pretend to be so horrified by the barbaric Colosseum games in Roman times; suggesting that we are now more civil than in ancient times. Further, folks feel that we as a society could never regress to such barbaric lows ever again. Well, there ya go, video proof that we are no less barbaric than our Romans ancestors.
Someone was trying to convince me to attend an MMA match in Macau some months ago…. not interested…
But I do have an idea since it seems that anything goes….
Take USD5000 in a winner take all match — you tie the two combatants together by one hand with a rope — the other hand holds a club …. put hockey helmets on each fighter…. and let them at it…
The matches would be pay per view online — taking place in a place like Cambodia….
I am confident this would find a huge audience….
Hey FE,
For a ex-Pat Canadian who lives in NZ or Bali or Hong Kong or wherever you’ll end up next, you sure spend a lot of time commenting on America, American news, American culture and custom. Are you an Americanofile or something?
It will be the epicentre of the bomb blast so it comes up in my sights a fair bit….
I spend long hours online so am always looking for things to fill the empty space… so keep in touch with sports like the hockey, rugby and football…. all sports I attempted to play back in the day….
You have good taste in sports. Hockey is a pretty great sport. Rugby is manly. Can’t say I love pro-football. Soccer is pretty poor but at least normal sized humans can play it and be successful. I’m betting on one of the MENA countries for the epicenter.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-12/demise-dollar-hegemony-russia-breaks-wall-sts-oil-price-mon
Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia’s economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy.
Later in November the Russian Energy Ministry has announced that it will begin test-trading of a new Russian oil benchmark. While this might sound like small beer to many, it’s huge. If successful, and there is no reason why it won’t be, the Russian crude oil benchmark futures contract traded on Russian exchanges, will price oil in rubles and no longer in US dollars. It is part of a de-dollarization move that Russia, China and a growing number of other countries have quietly begun.
The setting of an oil benchmark price is at the heart of the method used by major Wall Street banks to control world oil prices. Oil is the world’s largest commodity in dollar terms. Today, the price of Russian crude oil is referenced to what is called the Brent price. The problem is that the Brent field, along with other major North Sea oil fields is in major decline, meaning that Wall Street can use a vanishing benchmark to leverage control over vastly larger oil volumes. The other problem is that the Brent contract is controlled essentially by Wall Street and the derivatives manipulations of banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and Citibank.
The ‘Petrodollar’ demise
The sale of oil denominated in dollars is essential for the support of the US dollar. In turn, maintaining demand for dollars by world central banks for their currency reserves to back foreign trade of countries like China, Japan or Germany, is essential if the United States dollar is to remain the leading world reserve currency.
That status as world’s leading reserve currency is one of two pillars of American hegemony since the end of World War II. The second pillar is world military supremacy.
US wars financed with others’ dollars
Because all other nations need to acquire dollars to buy imports of oil and most other commodities, a country such as Russia or China typically invests the trade surplus dollars its companies earn in the form of US government bonds or similar US government securities. The only other candidate large enough, the Euro, since the 2010 Greek crisis, is seen as more risky.
That leading reserve role of the US dollar, since August 1971 when the dollar broke from gold-backing, has essentially allowed the US Government to run seemingly endless budget deficits without having to worry about rising interest rates, like having a permanent overdraft credit at your bank.
That in effect has allowed Washington to create a record $18.6 trillion federal debt without major concern. Today the ratio of US government debt to GDP is 111%. In 2001 when George W. Bush took office and before trillions were spent on the Afghan and Iraq “War on Terror,” US debt to GDP was just half, or 55%.
The glib expression in Washington is that “debt doesn’t matter,” as the assumption is that the world—Russia, China, Japan, India, Germany–will always buy US debt with their trade surplus dollars. The ability of Washington to hold the lead reserve currency role, a strategic priority for Washington and Wall Street, is vitally tied to how world oil prices are determined.
In the period up until the end of the 1980’s world oil prices were determined largely by real daily supply and demand. It was the province of oil buyers and oil sellers. Then Goldman Sachs decided to buy the small Wall Street commodity brokerage, J. Aron in the 1980’s. They had their eye set on transforming how oil is traded in world markets.
It was the advent of “paper oil,” oil traded in futures, contracts independent of delivery of physical crude, easier for the large banks to manipulate based on rumors and derivative market skullduggery, as a handful of Wall Street banks dominated oil futures trades and knew just who held what positions, a convenient insider role that is rarely mentioned inn polite company. It was the beginning of transforming oil trading into a casino where Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and a few other giant Wall Street banks ran the crap tables.
In the aftermath of the 1973 rise in the price of OPEC oil by some 400% in a matter of months following the October, 1973 Yom Kippur war, the US Treasury sent a high-level emissary to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 1975 US Treasury Assistant Secretary, Jack F. Bennett, was sent to Saudi Arabia to secure an agreement with the monarchy that Saudi and all OPEC oil will only be traded in US dollars, not Japanese Yen or German Marks or any other. Bennett then went to take a high job at Exxon.
The Saudis got major military guarantees and equipment in return and from that point, despite major efforts of oil importing countries, oil to this day is sold on world markets in dollars and the price is set by Wall Street via control of the derivatives or futures exchanges such as Intercontinental Exchange or ICE in London, the NYMEX commodity exchange in New York, or the Dubai Mercantile Exchange which sets the benchmark for Arab crude prices.
All are owned by a tight-knit group of Wall Street banks–Goldman Sachs, JP MorganChase, Citigroup and others. At the time Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reportedly stated, “If you control the oil, you control entire nations.” Oil has been at the heart of the Dollar System since 1945.
Russian benchmark importance
Today, prices for Russian oil exports are set according to the Brent price in as traded London and New York. With the launch of Russia’s benchmark trading, that is due to change, likely very dramatically. The new contract for Russian crude in rubles, not dollars, will trade on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX).
The Brent benchmark contract are used presently to price not only Russian crude oil. It’s used to set the price for over two-thirds of all internationally traded oil.
The problem is that the North Sea production of the Brent blend is declining to the point today only 1 million barrels Brent blend production sets the price for 67% of all international oil traded. The Russian ruble contract could make a major dent in the demand for oil dollars once it is accepted.
Russia is the world’s largest oil producer, so creation of a Russian oil benchmark independent from the dollar is significant, to put it mildly. In 2013 Russia produced 10.5 million barrels per day, slightly more than Saudi Arabia. Because natural gas is mainly used in Russia, fully 75% of their oil can be exported.
Europe is by far Russia’s main oil customer, buying 3.5 million barrels a day or 80% of total Russian oil exports. The Urals Blend, a mixture of Russian oil varieties, is Russia’s main exported oil grade. The main European customers are Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
To put Russia’s benchmark move into perspective, the other large suppliers of crude oil to Europe – Saudi Arabia (890,000 bpd), Nigeria (810,000 bpd), Kazakhstan (580,000 bpd) and Libya (560,000 bpd) – lag far behind Russia. As well, domestic production of crude oil in Europe is declining quickly. Oil output from Europe fell just below 3 Mb/d in 2013, following steady declines in the North Sea which is the basis of the Brent benchmark.
End to dollar hegemony good for US
The Russian move to price in rubles its large oil exports to world markets, especially Western Europe, and increasingly to China and Asia via the ESPO pipeline and other routes, on the new Russian oil benchmark in the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange is by no means the only move to lessen dependence of countries on the dollar for oil.
Sometime early next year China, the world’s second-largest oil importer, plans to launch its own oil benchmark contract. Like the Russian, China’s benchmark will be denominated not in dollars but in Chinese Yuan. It will be traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.
Step-by-step, Russia, China and other emerging economies are taking measures to lessen their dependency on the US dollar, to “de-dollarize.” Oil is the world’s largest traded commodity and it is almost entirely priced in dollars. Were that to end, the ability of the US military industrial complex to wage wars without end would be in deep trouble.
Perhaps that would open some doors to more peaceful ideas such as spending US taxpayer dollars on rebuilding the horrendous deterioration of basic USA economic infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013 estimated $3.6 trillion of basic infrastructure investment is needed in the United States over the next five years.
They report that one out of every 9 bridges in America, more than 70,000 across the country, are deficient. Almost one-third of the major roads in the US are in poor condition. Only 2 of 14 major ports on the eastern seaboard will be able to accommodate the super-sized cargo ships that will soon be coming through the newly expanded Panama Canal. There are more than 14,000 miles of high-speed rail operating around the world, but none in the United States.
That kind of basic infrastructure spending would be a far more economically beneficial source of real jobs and real tax revenue for the United States than more of John McCain’s endless wars. Investment in infrastructure, as I have noted in previous articles, has a multiplier effect in creating new markets. Infrastructure creates economic efficiencies and tax revenues of some 11 to 1 for every one dollar invested as the economy becomes more efficient.
A dramatic decline for the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, if coupled with a Russia-styled domestic refocus on rebuilding America’s domestic economy, rather than out-sourcing everything, could go a major way to rebalance a world gone mad with war.
Paradoxically, the de-dollarization, by denying Washington the ability to finance future wars by the investment in US Treasury debt from Chinese, Russian and other foreign bond buyers, could be a valuable contribution to genuine world peace. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/
if you were wondering why Putin is suddenly the new Saddam…. wonder no longer…
http://www.interpretermag.com/russian-economy-approaching-perfect-storm-oil-at-25-dollars-a-barrel-ruble-at-125-to-the-dollar-and-inflation-at-30-percent/
Coincidences rule the world apparently, lolz..
Here is a “teenage” Russian analyst calling today’s ruble exchange rate (~75) correctly in summer of 2015, moreover also prognosticating further fall to 125 rubles per $ and spike in inflation. The nice coincidence is that the interview was made by renown cold-war era western propaganda channel Radio Free Europe.
Now the ruble is something like ~1% of global foreign exchange, by the end of 2016 Russia will likely burn through most of its USD/EUR denominated reserves funds, i.e. at this junction this is very easy target for global banks. Also Russia has supposedly floated the idea of creating own crude/natgas index, therefore selling not only to Asia but also to the west in rubles, creating demand for them. If this this project is still ongoing or dead in the water, I can’t tell, plus the recent brouhaha about potential ~5T Aramco/Saudi IPO, and we couldn’t end this post with notion Mr. Putin called 2017 The Year of Ecology : )
What a strange world..
Well, you have to have somewhat stable economy for couple of years to launch such a scheme, now the questions pop up..
interpretermag.com/
russian-economy-approaching-perfect-storm-oil-at-25-dollars-a-barrel-ruble-at-125-to-the-dollar-and-inflation-at-30-percent/
Coincidences rule the world apparently, lolz..
Here is a “teenage” Russian analyst calling today’s ruble exchange rate (~75) correctly in summer of 2015, moreover also prognosticating further fall to 125 rubles per $ and spike in inflation. The nice coincidence is that the interview was made by renown cold-war era western propaganda channel Radio Free Europe.
Now the ruble is something like ~1% of global foreign exchange, by the end of 2016 Russia will likely burn through most of its USD/EUR denominated reserves funds, i.e. at this junction this is very easy target for global banks. Also Russia has supposedly floated the idea of creating own crude/natgas index, therefore selling not only to Asia but also to the west in rubles, creating demand for them. If this this project is still ongoing or dead in the water, I can’t tell, plus the recent brouhaha about potential ~5T Aramco/Saudi IPO, and we couldn’t end this post with notion Mr. Putin called 2017 the year of ecology, lolz. What a strange world..
Sorry, for double post, there was some glitch with not updated comment.
I was only about to say that Engdahl is writing this stuff about “eastern underdogs outsmarting the system” for perhaps more then a decade. But as we explained previously, you can’t attack the US regime that’s foolish, the true owners of the system are level up, the global capital owners of little true national interests.
Anyways, if China-Russia-Iran bloc are about to start demand non USD payment also for the club outsiders via replacement for the aged Brent index, it’s exactly the recent volatility what to expect from the proprietors of the current system to make them start from very damaged position if not crippling the effort altogether. On the other hand the case for simple temporary oversupply phenomenon post Q3-2014 is also very strong, although some people in the oil like Arthur Berman (latest Martenson video) say there might be crude price spike up as soon as Q12017 due to high depletion rates, mismatch of grades/refineries and lack of new investments. I guess as always will have to wait to see which option or combination of factors played the major role.
Fast Freddy,
PETRO DOLLAR DEMISE???
DREAM ON!!!
Nobody trusts the Ruble or Yuan or … When it comes to money, the world wants stable democracies not dictatorships.
LIKE IT OR NOT, the dollar will be king until the end.
I am sure the British said the same thing about the pound…
As Brits piggybacked on the US after WWI and WWII, their descent was slowed despite the loss of colonies, the City in particular has become/maintained position of one of global hubs for petrodollar recycling (plus financial center gambling), including the RE mania, plus the factor of natgas and oil helped for a while as well.. So in effect the UK is already in almost 100yrs of staircase slowmotion decay, and their latest overtures with Chinese sphere of influence money-trade schemes (to the annoyance of US) is another proof of that above described “parasitic strategy”. Obviously long term the UK is in very crazy position, no resources, way overpopulated etc.
If the PO story in terms of the depletion curves is correct hardly any country would be able to replicate this example US-UK relationship at those prolonged timelines. For one thing the Chinese-Russian alliance is interesting that on some projects the junior partners switch position, i.e. Russia has got more advanced space-mil-industrial while China sucked in from the west the latest know-how (and now builds up on its own) in chips and other areas.
Well, we won’t have long to wait then, will we?
It’ll be awhile. I heard one report that there is no theoretical reason why we cannot have QEInfinity.
Err, because we live in a finite world. At best the consequences of overshoot can be postponed, but not avoided.
Interesting insights, but still with energy/resources dimension missing, apparently (as usual):
Between Debt and the Devil by Adair Turner, book review: A radical analysis
What’s novel in Turner’s book is not the proposition that debt can be dangerous, but that debt is what modern financial systems naturally create; and always to excess
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/between-debt-and-the-devil-by-adair-turner-book-review-a6732031.html
Sounds like it covers one dimension of our repeating Ponzi Scheme problem. But without the energy aspect, it must leave a whole lot out.
Longest and deepest carload decline since 2009
We believe rail data may be signaling a warning for the broader economy. Carloads have declined more than 5% in each of the past 11 weeks on a year-over-year basis. While one-off volume declines occur occasionally, they are generally followed by a recovery shortly thereafter. The current period of substantial and sustained weakness, including last week’s -10.1% decline, has not occurred since 2009. In looking at carload data going back nearly 30 years, similar periods of weakness have occurred in only five other instances since 1985: (1) the majority of 1988, (2) the first half of 1991, (3) several weeks in early 1996, (4) late 2000 and early 2001, and (5) late 2008 and the majority of 2009.
We exclude the period in 1996 from our analysis, as we consider it anomalous given that it overlapped with harsh winter conditions and was limited to January and early February of that year. Of the remaining instances, all either overlapped with a recession, or preceded a recession by a few quarters.
The current period starting in October and continuing through the present has been accompanied by weak ISM results, with the purchasing managers index recently falling to 48.2 in December from 48.6 in November (a reading below 50 suggests contraction), and our proprietary BofAML Truck Shipper Indicator recently falling to its lowest level since 2012.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-12/sorry-warren-buffett-things-just-went-bad-worse-us-railroads
The beast is slowly dying….
Dear Fast Eddie;
“The beast is slowly dying….” Hurray!
Yours in Doom,
Pintada
Near the end:
I am sure asset prices will go down with the loss of revenue. Doesn’t sound good!
Gail, about the chart you post on figure 12, it seems to be quite a departure from your writings, but since it is 2 years old, I would suppose that recent developments would probably mean that the chart should be steeper perhaps, in the sense that it projects continued use of energy beyond the 2015 crash, even though your writings seem to indicate that energy use would be reduced instantly by the time we hit the next depression?
This chart was produced by connecting data points at 5 year intervals, rather than year by year intervals, so is perhaps a little less blunt than it might be.
My point, though, is that depletion does not determine the shape of the downslope–no matter how much nonsense you have heard to believe that this is the case. For example, in order to export oil, Saudi Arabia needs a lot of things to work together: (1) prices high enough to make the effort worthwhile, (2) functioning financial system to pay for the oil, (3) functioning electricity system both for Saudi Arabia and to a significant extent for oil importers, (4) not too high a level of political instability–major fighting in the oil fields would be a problem, for example, (5) sufficient imported food to feed its population, etc.
Once things start falling apart, I expect that even some of the oil from wells that were producing previously will be lost. This loss may be from things quite far removed from the reduction in production. It may be primarily be because banks are not open, and because of this, people who might want to buy the oil have no jobs, and thus there is no demand for it. Or people in the oil field cannot be paid, because a lack of banking services to facilitate paying wages creates a major problem.
If oil is available, I expect it will to a significantly be used locally. Thus, from the point of view of importers, the drop in available supplies will be quite steep.
This chart reflects the drop in total energy consumption in Ukraine, after the fall of the Former Soviet Union in 1991.
It is a lot steeper than most people would have expected.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4386967.htm
A 7 per-cent plunge in oil prices overnight has dragged the well known North Sea Brent Crude to its lowest point in 12 years.
Major oil exporters are facing big budget deficits.
Saudi Arabia is considering selling part of the giant state-owned Aramco oil company, with at least ten times the oil reserves of Exxon Mobil.
Oil trading at the $30 dollar handle…
Arch Coal, the second-largest mining company in the US, filed for bankruptcy on Monday.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/11/arch-coal-goes-bankrupt-as-us-sector-declines/
Arch coal? Thats a big player.
Meanwhile In Chicago, 120 People Shot In First 10 Days Of 2016
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-12/meanwhile-chicago-120-people-shot-first-10-days-2016
Well, how splendid. Our resident racist finally gets a chance to expound. Congratulations on your fine performance.
What race are you, artleads? Do you hold hands and sing kumbaya with all of the peoples of the world, or do you have an affinity and feeling for your own kind, and be willing to defend yourself and your tribe when the time comes?
Let’s get this collapse going to see what people like yourself are made of.
The entire question is BS.
Racism…. I learned it from my father … but then I unlearned to the point where I do not have even the slightest inclination towards this sort of behaviour…
If anything I have no desire to be around my fellow tribesman – Canadians — and prefer the company of people from diverse backgrounds. In fact I find it quite boring to be in the company of overseas Canadians who seem to want to talk only about Canada.
I am not convinced racism is an innate thing… like the urge to procreate — or survive.
In fact I might be prodded to argue that racism is something that the elites use to get us to kill each other….. what better way to get us to KILL KILL KILL than by creating villains — the baby killing Krauts — the slant eyed gooks … the dirty Muslims….
The evidence I have seen regarding tribes – same race — is that it comes down more to distrust of strangers….
I think it has been posted on this site that when tribesmen cross paths they try to make a connection by discussing relatives…. if there is no commonality there is a higher chance of a violent confrontation …
In every day life I think we see that the more contact you have with someone of a different race — say you work together — that tends to put an end to the racism …
Just like you might not like fat people — if you were to work with a fat person who was very personable … I doubt you would hate that person….
Is it racist to hate your own race? Or does the answer to that depend on what race you are?
FE. I like Canadians. And all the ones I met in Vancouver were Chinese! Looked pretty diverse to me.
“Race” is a concoction of empire, serving pretty much the functions FE has so well described.
It seems to me, that in times of external threat, one’s allegiance is first to one’s household, and then to one’s neighbors. It is an issue of “place” rather than one of “race.” The fact that people are grouped and forced to live together based on what they look like is another issue altogether.
Dear Artleads;
Well said.
We have done some stuff to become more secure especially in creating a defensible buffer. When i think about it, that buffer exists to keep out those who will convince themselves that since they were privileged before the crash, that they should continue to be privileged after the crash. My neighbors (within a 5-10 mile radius) that have nothing now will be citizens with which we can trade later on since they know how to live with little.
The idea of being upset that the color of one of our “family” members doesn’t match the rest is completely bizarre and alien to all of us.
Yours in Diversity,
Pintada
Reality is racist. The wealthiest black country without oil is poorer than the poorest white country. Lower average IQ of blacks is a biological fact, not an opinion.
‘Lower average IQ of blacks is a biological fact, not an opinion.’
It may be fact but it is not biological…
If you were white and your mother had you when she was 14 and living on her own using and dealing crack ….. left you lying in your piss and shit all day long with no stimulation …. didn’t care if you went to school or not…. did not help you with reading or math… fed you KFC and McDonalds and Sugar Loops, Cola and Red Bull…. slapped you around…
And I was black and my mother waiting until 35 to have me because she wanted to finish her chemistry PHD — and my father was a medical doctor…. and my parents paid for me to be in the best schools — paid for extracurricular activities including tutors —- showed interest in me and my studies…
Who do you reckon would end up with the higher IQ score coming out of high school?
Similarly I recall someone telling me how they were in Africa and they came across people who could not perform even basic thought processes…. and they determined from that that Africans were stupid….
I wish I had been aware of this at the time….
Deficient populations
In areas where there is little iodine in the diet, typically remote inland areas and semi-arid equatorial climates where no marine foods are eaten, iodine deficiency gives rise to hypothyroidism, symptoms of which are extreme fatigue, goiter, mental slowing, depression, weight gain, and low basal body temperatures.[14]
Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation, a result which occurs primarily when babies or small children are rendered hypothyroidic by a lack of the element. The addition of iodine to table salt has largely eliminated this problem in the wealthier nations, but as of March 2006, iodine deficiency remained a serious public health problem in the developing world.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency
Your comments display epic ignorance combined with splash of racism.
Is it ok to say that I am disgusted?
I would expect that blacks are physically stronger on average than whites. If the world changes to a need for physical labor, this will be an advantage.
High IQ has been a temporary advantage, but intelligence seems to lead to a very bad outcome–collapsing economies. If there is a group that has an advantage for the long term, it may be the group that is physically stronger.
“High IQ has been a temporary advantage, but intelligence seems to lead to a very bad outcome–collapsing economies. If there is a group that has an advantage for the long term, it may be the group that is physically stronger.”
I think it is very much up to local climate and topography. In many places, being able to survive on fewer calories is a key advantage, so smaller people would have more flexibility – three 80 pound people can likely do more productive work and survive on less when necessary, compared to one 240 pound person – with the exception of perhaps logging and mining. In tropical areas, once the pesticides go away, malaria resistance will likely turn out to be a huge advantage.
Exactly! We don’t really know what characteristics will help for the long run.
Cill my landlord… CILL CILL CILL!!! my landlord (Saturday Night live circa late 70s?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGx3IA7oXho
Everyone will be a gang banger — when the only way to get food is with a gun….
@Fast Eddy
“I do not have even the slightest inclination towards this sort of behaviour”
Nor did lots of people in 1990s Yugoslavia, until they were spurred on by Milosevic, and then the bestiality and atrocities started. That’s what worries me. BAU has encouraged mass immigration into Western countries to feed the perpetual-economic-growth Ponzi scheme. When it goes down, I fear that there are all the more potential differences to be exploited as a result. The Yugoslav experience is why I think that around two thirds of any population are latently racist, and when the match is struck, they will very quickly drop the tolerant behaviour that their (current) governments have encouraged them to adopt. I just hope I’m wrong.
Jeremy
Well, agree, but I wouldn’t call it racism so much as group-thinking.
The most natural way for humans to think is in terms of groups, which have been the basis of society for countless thousands of years: only in the group could one hope for instinctive, automatic support and protection, and those of another group were more likely than not going to be hostile. .
Group-thinking is our default, and we will revert to that in times of stress and danger.
All the materials for a terrible explosion have been laid and primed in Europe, and a further wave of unassimilable immigration may just set in off if we tip into a deep financial crisis.
People here keep talking about Europe. Folks, Europe hasn’t had real power in a long time. They might regain it, but for the time being they are comfortable being a vassal state of America.
And if you are a vassal state of an empire (America), you fall under the control of the rulers of that empire. In this case, the rulers of the collapsing American empire have decided that it’s ok if Europe is destabilized and impoverished so that American empire can last a bit longer.
In other words, if American intervention in the Middle East causes chaos, instability, and refugees, and those refugees end up in Europe, all the better, because then you have destabilized a competing vassal state.
At this point in time, nuclear war can only be avoided by a independent leader in Germany, the UK, or France to rise to office and withdraw from NATO. If NATO continues to exist, NATO together with the neoconservative ideology of American hegemony will make nuclear war inevitable. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-29/paul-craig-roberts-why-world-war-iii-horizon
Dreams of Empire in a destabilized world are dangerous.
Yes, dolph, “there can be only One!”
There is at least some truth to what you are saying.
A group of countries that are dependent on a single product for export and in fact their whole living would appear to be inherently unstable, however. The US hasn’t helped things along. Depletion of oil resources in Syria and Egypt has been a major ally in adding to this instability.
Bank of Scotland says
“Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small,” said the bank’s credit team
https://www.rt.com/business/328607-rbs-2016-markets-oil/
they also say “Brent oil could hit $16 a barrel”
In fact, a Wall Street Journal article today said something not quite as bad.
If everyone holds more cash, the demand for stocks goes down, and prices drop. Yields on bonds go up as well. This can be a problem for governments wanting to keep borrowing costs down. The problem could be transferred to other debt as well.
Dear Gail;
I post this with a heavy heart having just learned that all your work, (all those astute observations, erudite posts, complex calculations, etc.) has now been proved wrong, twice. I thought you really had it goin’ on, but no … i apparently was wrong as well.
Imagine my disappointment when I saw this post by Robert Fanney. Apparently, the reason that oil went down in price is that there are now so many PV installations running that fossil fuels are no longer needed. I didn’t see that coming, and I forgive you for not seeing it either.
( http://robertscribbler.com/2016/01/11/the-carbon-bubble-is-bursting-2015-was-a-terrible-year-to-be-fossil-fuel-investor-why-2016-will-be-worse/ )
At least Mr. Fanney didn’t mention you by name. Mr. David Cohen, did mention you by name. He didn’t actually spend any time explaining why you are wrong. He doesn’t need to since he has proven that he is infallible – Yup, David Cohen, the Pope, and God himself … all infallible. (No URL to Cohen, I wouldn’t want to burden the other readers.)
Again, my condolences. I’m sure that you will land on your feet after a few months to get over the shock, and grieve for the loss of what looked like an interesting career.
Insincerely yours,
Pintada
Pintada, at last someone wakes up. New York City has just announced that in addition to becoming the new Saudi Arabia it will replace the central valley and Iowa in food production. Using the electric power from the one million turbine offshore project they will run grow lights that used in the the 100 new (to be built in 2016-2018) high rises urban farms will make NYC the worlds leader in food production.
Ed
Dear Don, even I at just 57 am uncomfortable with today’s level of assumed familiarity. It used to be one addressed a stranger as Mr or Ms. last name. Only after getting to know them and explicitly asking may I call you first name would I use a first name as an opening on a email or letter. Now the assumption in business is first name regardless if the other is a complete stranger.
Assuming Pintada is a first name, I am demonstrating current day style in the note above. 😉
Kindest regards,
Ed
@Ed
These days you are supposed to use the internet vocative case, e.g. @Don. Also “Dear” can confuse the many dyslexics, who end up thinking Don is a deer.
Or if his first name is John they may think he is a tractor.
Dear Ed;
Thank you for your note of hope for the City of New York. It is clear that now that cities can feed themselves the quaint ideas about “farming” and limited energy are over. I will be devoting the rest of my life to taking lots and lots of food supplements (like our friend and guru Ray Kurzweil) and planning to live forever.
Regarding the apparent benefits of being a little more formal, I took that message to heart and have been trying to use polite salutations and closing flourishes. Unfortunately, in this format, it seems to be somewhat forced and prone to absurdity. For example, in starting this missive, I used the salutation “Dear Ed”, but I doubt that your last name is Ed. If so, should I have used “Dear Mr. Ed”? I think not.
It gets worse. My nom de plume is from a local mountain – Pintada Mountain. Imagine my delight in discovering that the translation of the word from Spanish means graffiti. It seems that when the Utes were migrating in and out of this area, they went past Pintada Mountain, and while catching their breath painted and chiseled stuff on the rocks.
In any event …
Yours Indubitably,
Lou
Dear Lou, I enjoyed the TV show “Mr Ed” when I was young. But you are right Mr. Ed does not work. 🙂
Best wishes,
Ed
Maybe he is right — maybe solar panels will save the world. I saw a lot of them when I was driving through Germany — loads of windmills too.
I think Germany has the solution — we all need to follow their lead.
Unlike some other theories that have never been put to practice — at least money has been invested in these projects and they are up and running. They are producing electricity.
Isn’t that all that matters? Surely billions would not be invested in something that makes no sense.
ROI – feasibility — reality — none of that matters…. apparently.
Gail wants us to listen to different voices and keep an open conversation going. Gail knows reality doesn´t change from listening, what´s coming, is coming nonetheless.
As the unstoppable Tsunami wave is approaching fast, might as well entertain some silly fantasies, while prepairing for the unavoidable deluge that follows.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/hess/slang/1935/boondoggle.gif
But if we have a large enough number of boondoggles we can combine them into one entity and we get a winner!
Kinda like what the banks did with all those subprime loans…. on their own they were dodgy …
Bundle thousands of them and they are transformed into AAAAAA grade securities that pension funds can’t get enough of….
I think that’s know as winning…
Ha, ha, ha. Awesome! That just about sums it up…
I guess it must be a rule at any big banking institution that if you are going to invest in subprime, find the worst subprime investments and pour everything you got into it. Go big or go home. If you really want to win you get all your banking cartel buddies in on it too. This way the scheme is so big and so pervasive that it is deemed to big to fail. Voila! Kind of sounds like a Nazi propaganda technique: “about the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
you picked the wrong clip
I can think of a lot of boondoggles:
1. Most of the coding done so medical records can be computerized, using increasingly obscure codes. I have two different relatives, in different fields, who complain about the large number of their otherwise productive hours this takes. Work increasingly becomes drudgery.
2. Having nearly all of the faculty of research institutions write a large number of academic papers
3. Digging holes and filling them back up again.
4. etc.
The Olympic Games would qualify ….
Agreed!
It is not a rational investment it is driven by emotion. There is some small rational part as in if we seed the industry enough prices will come down far enough that ROI will work. Is declining price on track to make this work? I have not seen the numbers, I do not know.
To ROI does Germany save its pennies to pay out pensions in a world that has collapsed or invest in an energy source that may provide some amelioration to society after the collapse?
I’ve seen the numbers but they are irrelevant….I prefer to ignore them.
Because somehow we will be able to overcome those insurmountable obstacles…. we humans are very clever …. when faced with big problems we eventually overcome them…. after all — we put a man on the moon.
FE, wake up its just a EU dream you are having. Remember the open pit brown coal mines of Germany. Remember Ukraine trying to refuel their nukes by driving round fuel pellets into square holes (US fuel versus Russian fuel). Just think of the level of care given to Ukraine spent fuel pools! Remember China runs on coal. Think of the lakes of pollution in Mongolia.
I prefer not to let the facts get in the way…… we can do it…. we are so close….
I’m in Hong Kong for a week and return to NZ late next week — I am here raising funds for my new venture — ‘The Jules Verne Project’ — which involves driving a post into the core of the earth and using the heat to boil water and create electricity …
I will begin pounding the pole in with a sledge hammer next week when I get back to NZ…
Stay tuned — and if you have any questions — or want to invest —- I am standing by….
Better than sitting hopelessly on your doomstead smoking weed and waiting for the End.
Or it is possible to build 28 story buildings and blow them up. Adds to GDP, either way.
Fast Eddy Said ” Surely billions would not be invested in something that makes no sense.. ROI – feasibility — reality — none of that matters…. apparently.”
I’m all over those points with you brother. Life-cycle costs are among the easiest to discount or underestimate but impossible to avoid. No matter what we feel about it, reality doesn’t care a whit.
LOL! There is actually some grain of truth to this. A coal company, or any other fossil fuel company, needs “demand” for its products. Some of this demand comes from new homes being built, and the electricity they would use. If young people stay in school longer, or cannot afford new homes when they get out, this is part of the loss of this demand.
Part of this loss of demand also comes from greater use of LED bulbs, and more insulation in homes (old and new). A little of it comes from solar PV, very little of which would be added without subsidies.
Part of this loss of demand comes from lower prices for natural gas, and thus competition from natural gas. This is another sad story in itself. It doesn’t look very sustainable.
Part of the loss of demand comes from reduced exports to China, now that their economy is slowing.
I have met David Cohen. He was on the staff of The Oil Drum for a while, early in the life of The Oil Drum.
LOL
FE, NZ is already doing geothermal power in a big way, on the north island. I think the south island is big on hydro. Maybe you could indeed start a new venture there. Of course, geothermal is very complex to produce, so the end of BAU will end it when the parts break and the spares disappear.
I had an engineer who once designed a short version of the Jules Vern to generate electricity to power monitoring instruments in hydrothermal vent areas. It was a cool concept but never got traction.
“BAU will end it when the parts break and the spares disappear.” — That is exactly our problem.
– How low can it go? Oil could crash to $10 a barrel, warn investment bank bears: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/12094394/Oil-price-could-fall-to-10-a-barrel-warn-investment-bank-bears.html
Did they read Tverberg’s post?
I think I published my article a bit before theirs.
@Gail, I was just reflecting on last year’s January discussion, and I recall your saying that oil could hit $20 per barrel in 2015. At that time, wider expectations were that storage would be full by June 2015. It seems that it is economic to build storage quickly enough to to manage the price of crude oil in some fashion. I *think* the key variable for pricing oil later this year is interest rates, so forecasting for 2016 just got more difficult.
I agree interest rates are important. To get supply down, we need a lot lower interest rates than we have now, in the major oil-consuming countries. We need QE-4, on steroids.
Regarding storage filling up last years, as far as I can see, in the Jan-April 2015 period, rising supply was fought by adding more crude oil to storage. That, plus higher seasonal demand, kept oil prices rising from January to May. If oil companies had kept putting oil into storage at the same rate they were using in the first part of the year, we would have run out of storage. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RBRTE&f=M Storage was lower in the remainder of the year, and prices started falling. Now we seem to have a situation where storage is rising (in fact, quite a bit in the last two weeks) and prices are still falling. This looks like a supply/demand mismatch. Maybe things will get better in the next few weeks–reports are out each Wednesday. But it doesn’t look good for storage. Cushing storage is close to filled up. We do have other capacity, but it is mostly in pipelines for finished products. I am sure producers would rather not use it.
Every day, a new all time record low for the Baltic Dry Index http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND
At this point, I´m not sure what would keep BAU intact for a few weeks longer. Maybe loads of permanent helicopter money could help?
Recall in Atlas Shrugged when the global economy came to a halt…. feels very much like that is happening … unfortunately there is no ‘John Galt’ to call upon to restart the engine…
I agree — if there is something that can be done to kick this can — we need to see it very soon.
Otherwise get ready for the martial law phase….
Yesterday I also linked a Zero Hedge article that said the same thing that international shipping commerce had come to a halt.
Is the term “non-elite workers” synonymous with “nonsupervisory employees”? I did a Google search, and this piece seems to be the only article on the Internet that uses that term in the context of “inflation-adjusted wages”:
https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22inflation-adjusted+wages%22+%22non-elite+workers%22
In academic research, the term “elite’ workers is sometimes used. In some early posts, I used tried to substitute “common workers,” but then received e-mails and other comments complaining that the word “common” was derogatory.
Basically, I mean people who are getting paid for their labor itself, rather than for their supervisory abilities or their advanced education. People like college professors are non-supervisory employees, but I would still consider them elite. These people would typically have a high school education or less. If they have an advanced degree, they are not really getting paid for it.
“Closing existing oil production before it is forced to close would guarantee future dependency on oil imports. A more likely approach would be to tax imported oil, to keep the amount imported down to a manageable level. This approach would likely cause the ire of oil exporters.”
There’s this idea that it’s the smarter strategy to import all of your oil at a reasonable price, while keeping your own as reserves. Eventually, the exporter countries will run out of their supply or their cost to extract it will increase, and you’ll have yours, protected within your borders, to fall back on. That being said, this strategy, no doubt, assumes a reliance upon those other nations maintaining a consistent supply up until that point.
This strategy assumes that you will have everything in place to extract, refine, and use the oil later. For example, you will have trained workers of all kinds, refineries, and pipelines. You will also have devices that use the oil, like cars, trucks and construction machinery, and a financial system that will allow you to pay workers and buy things on credit.
I am afraid that what happens is that things will fall apart to such an extent that oil that is “saved” for later will essentially be permanently lost. There will be no way that the operations can be funded. Trained people to work on the operations will be hard to find. Drilling rigs won’t be available to rent. We will find it impossible to pave roads, so soon the cars and trucks that we do have can’t be used.
We couldn’t go back to horse and buggy now. It is not all that different when it comes to going back to producing oil all on our own, without imported replacement parts or specialty expertise.
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Oh Boy, are we in for a very interesting 2016 judging by the historical past
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/30/oil-iran-saudi-arabia-russia-venezuela-nigeria-libya
There have been four sharp increases in the price of oil in the past four decades – in 1973, 1979, 1990 and 2008 – and each has led to a global recession. By that measure, a lower oil price should be positive for the world economy, with lower fuel costs for consumers and businesses in those countries that import crude outweighing the losses to producing nations.
Joshi says crude prices may fall by a further 35% to reach its long-term trend. That would mean an oil price closer to $25 a barrel – and fiscal crises in some of the world’s most pivotal economies
Dhaval Joshi, an economist at BCA, a London-based research company, said: “A commodity bubble has deflated three times in the past 100 years: the first was after world war one; the second was after the 1980s oil shock; the third is happening right now.
For years, Saudi Arabia has used its oil wealth to support friends and allies around the world, including media organisations, thinktanks, academic institutions, religious schools and charities. Countries that have traditionally benefited from Saudi largesse include Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Palestine and Egypt.
But now the IMF has raised the prospect that Saudi Arabia could go bankrupt in five years without changes to its economic policy, cuts in support to foreign allies seem inevitable
The oil price slump has not prevented Nigeria’s new government from unveiling big spending plans – but analysts warn that the generosity is misplaced at a time when oil prices languish below $40 a barrel. But some analysts think the proposed budget is unrealistic during times of $40 oil.
“This brings a dose of reality to a people who have extremely high expectations,” said Bismarck Rewane, the chief executive of Financial Derivatives Co. He predicted the government would have to back down on some of its promises
Oil and gas exports make up about half of the Russian budget, and the rouble rate has been strongly linked to the price of oil.Some analysts say the rouble is still overvalued, and the current oil price should theoretically push the rouble down further. This is necessary to balance the budget: the fewer dollars Russia receives for the oil it sells, the higher the exchange rate needs to be for the budget to receive the requisite amount of roubles. For the budget to balance at 65 roubles, not far off the current rate, the price of oil should be $70, a recent Bank of America Merrill Lynch report found
But the lower the price of oil goes, the deeper Venezuela’s economy sinks. It’s near total dependence on crude exports for hard currency has seen the government of president Nicolás Maduro struggling to try keep the economy afloat.
The political effect is already being felt. Gripped by spiraling inflation, chronic shortages of basic goods and a quickly depreciating currency, Venezuelan voters this month gave the opposition an overwhelming majority in the new legislature, which takes office in January.
Each $1 drop in oil prices results in more than $685m in lost yearly oil income for PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, according to analysts.
And every drop in crude prices means less funding for the health, education and housing and other social welfare programmes that won Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, widespread support for his self-styled “Bolivarian revolution”.
“To be sure, low oil prices deny Tehran much needed revenue but unlike the Saudis, Iran’s economy is not solely dependent on oil exports. Oil revenue accounts for about 15% of Iran’s GDP,” Handjani told the Guardian. Sanctions have forced Iran to diversify its economy, he said. It has a large manufacturing base, IT sector, and robust agro-industries, which make its economy on the whole “much more balanced” than Saudi Arabia.
“The Iranian economy has absorbed so many shocks over the past 36 years, from war to sanctions, that the pain of low oil prices now, as it breaks from international isolation, pales in comparison
Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves and in normal times this provides 95% of the country’s export revenues, keeping the economy afloat. But civil war between rival governments at either end of the country has shattered the economy, leaving the population almost wholly dependent on revenue generated overseas.
The crash in oil prices has halved revenues, and shortages of foodstuffs and medicines – even petrol – are starting to be felt
May see political turmoil and revolution ahead.
The real problem is that the cost of oil production has risen. When that rising cost led to higher prices, that led to a problem.
If we sort of fix the problem by dropping the price below the cost of production, does that really fix anything? I don’t think so. The oil that is available is in some way “tainted.” Anyone who considers using the oil to start or expand a business will quickly realize that there is no future in this approach. The oil price will rise again, making the selling price of the end product not feasible, and the whole thing will crash. So all that happens is that restaurants add a few more servers and fast food places add a few employees. People driving private passenger autos may drive a few more miles. But there isn’t any industry that will grow to use this oil.
There is also the issue that the reason that the price dropped is because a large share of the world is in recession. Building new capacity for a world in recession hardly makes sense.
“Anyone who considers using the oil to start or expand a business will quickly realize that there is no future in this approach.”
I have been thinking the same thing. Even though oil is $30/barrel now and may be $30/barrel in five years, in five years it will be in short supply due to the lack of investment in new fields happening now.
Build, build, build it is what the engineers are all about. Humans, the ancestors of humans, other species of hominids have been engineering for millions of years, it is what our brain is designed to do. It is exactly why we are in the predicament we are in now. Expecting that more of the same (engineering) to be the solution is nothing short of ridiculous.
We exploited our engineering skills to its natural zenith, now we reap the consequences. That is not going to stop the psychopaths and charlatans though, they will continue to peddle their snake oil and promises of expending more to save more, Jevons was wise to them before they were born. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes
The next engineer that comes along with a way to de-engineer our excesses will be the first.
It seems to me that most people cannot make the leap from LTG/BAU “reality” to the dilemma of a debt financed future. Elsewhere in this blog mention is made of $10Tn to finance the oilfields to 2040. Where will that $10Tn come from? Supposedly out of thin air? Somehow, somewhere, a gaggle of banksters will have enough trust in their clients to create a debit:credit entries in the ledgers. We already know that the present “reality” is unsustainable, and without a suspension of disbelief, these projects are unaffordable. Norway, one of the better placed nations, needs $46 per barrel to get a positive return for its crude oil, and at present, things seem to be getting worse, not better regarding the prospects for avoiding economic contraction.
All of these countries, including Norway, have high tax rates as well. I expect that they really need more than $46 dollars, when government needs are factored in as well.
(from http://oilprice.com)
ISIS militants in Libya continue to attack key oil infrastructure in the country.
The two large oil export terminals at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf in Libya came under ISIS attacks on January 4-6. Some oil storage tanks exploded after suffering damage from machine gun fire.
News reports suggest that at least five oil storage tanks are burning, each thought to have the capacity to hold 420,000 to 460,000 barrels of oil. Four of them are located at Es Sider and one at Ras Lanuf.\
————————————————————————————————————————–
Comment: should not this have sent oil prices in an upward tizzy? What does this say about those in the know and why they aren’t reacting as what was typical in the past?
Because demand has slumped resulting in a huge glut, some of that volume being shut in by attacks isn’t really going to affect things.
That U.S. Silver Production Drops Significantly Again In October | NewZSentinel link had a really weird Emigrate While You Still Can! Learn More… link in it http://www.fincabayano.net/en/survival.htm
I bet half of the regular commentators here, would have done a better job than that lot..
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And yet you say that you agree with everything the US is doing to prolong BAU. You can’t have it both ways.
I am capable of wearing first one hat — then another. As you have seen.
I have no problem with what the US and its allies are doing. Kill pillage. I have a big hotel bill to pay here in Amsterdam tomorrow. I have 2 x 12 hour flights upcoming and another hotel bill in Hong Kong that requires paying.
I am ‘living large’ – we all are.
Where i take issue with most people is that they refuse to acknowledge that when you kill and pillage there will be blow back….. there will be terrorism…. there will be refugees clamouring to get out of hell and into your paradise.
I don’t blame the terrorists — nor do I blame the refugees — we put them in that position — we brought the terrorism and the hordes upon ourselves.
If terrorists or hordes show up in my country — I take issue with my government for not stopping them.
At the end of the day though I recognize that the root cause of the problem is the never ending battle for resources in a finite world. We have no choice — kill or be killed — pillage or be pillaged
What I despise is the stupidity and hypocrisy of those who are unable to understand that the problems we are facing are our own fault — they are the toxic side-effects of competition.
What I despise is those who refuse to acknowledge that we visit these problems upon ourselves by committing terrorism — by committing mass atrocities in the name of competition.
My suggestion is such people shut the %$#@ up and stop moaning like babies.
So what if the blow back involves some acts of violence against us — or having to look at some dirty brown skinned men in our midst…
It could be worse — we could be the losers — bombed back to the stone age…. but we are not — we are continuing to live large.
And if you want to speak out —- don’t take it out on the refugees — take it out on your governments — they let them in.
Here you go pro-sexually-assaulting-European-women-FE, it not only occurred in Germany, but also now reports are coming out of a massive cover up in Sweden, and sexual assaults in Austria, Finland and Switzerland. But I guess that makes you even happier, more justified somehow, right?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-11/massive-coverup-exposed-sweden-media-cops-hid-migrant-sex-attacks
As it turns out, the Cologne attacks were not an isolated incident. Once the story started making international headlines, reports began to trickle in from Austria, Finland, and Switzerland where women reported similar attacks perpetrated by apparent refugees.
But none of this would surprise police in Stockholm.
According to Swedish media, “hordes” of young men harassed and groped young women at a youth festival and concert in central Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården last August.
Those attacks were reported to police who, according to Nyheter Idag, were willing to talk to prominent daily Dagens Nyheter. Unfortunately for the victims, the paper deliberately covered up the story in an effort to avoid triggering an anti-migrant backlash – or at least that’s what Nyheter Idag alleges.
Yup, the “secret” that the MENA young men have a different culture, is out now. Swedens statistics show that if this continues, eventually 1 in 4 women will be raped during their lifetime.
It´s not a plan, or a MSM cover up. The very same young women that would want to save every refugee (and have gender equality), are being raped. So, this is a multi-cultural question; how the young men from MENA react, and how the young women in Europe react. Things can´t continue so that both would keep their original culture..
I guess Merkel is isn’t worried about being raped…. so she’s just letting in more refugees….
I don’t think the Europeans care what color their skin is or they would not have welcomed them when they arrived, but they do care about their behavior. You are right about there being different attitudes towards women in the ME (that is now carrying over into Europe), so a dramatic change is needed here. Merkel needs to come out and set a hard line on this type of behavior and start deportations of criminals and say “Yes, you are welcome in our country, but you have to abide by our laws and customs in regards to behavior with women or be deported.” And then follow through with deportations.
FE and I got into it because he seems to think that type of behavior is justified and do not.
The Rape of Europe by Paul Joseph Watson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUPuMs3E_k0
I do not believe Europe have the strength or will to defend itself. I believe the culture of the ME will prevail and the culture of women as slaves will prevail in Europe.
Dear Ed,
You mean (northern) European women (Spain and Italy, southern Europe have a slightly different macho culture..) will allow themselves to be treated as sex slaves, put under home arrest, not allowed to work freely, build a career?
Not going to happen.
The MENA young studs will be kicked out, bruised and starving before the women allow something to come in the way of them buying more shoes for themselves with their own salary..
How about out-bred and whiteflighted away? I see that as a possibility, but that depends… If we’re all dead in four years not much will happen. At current trends north europeans will be a minority soon. How will the welfare state survive? And who want to escape war through eight different european countries to a scandinavian country without welfare? I don’t find the future obvious.
Dear DJ,
I was reading through Tierra del Fuego natives, Australian aboriginals and other “primitive” culture customs http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Enigma-of-the-Native-of-Tierra-del-Fuego-80693.shtml because I tried to find distinctions between a degenerative, primitive culture, and the so called Golden Ages or high cultures of Egypt, early Arabs, Romans etc.
Tierra del Fuego natives had a culture of complete male dominance, shamans told secrets to other males that in the beginning of time, women ruled, now they must be kept in the dark and dominated, so that males can rule. Ergo, walking around in skins and culture standing still for millenia.
On the other hand, when a culture gives women possibilities of choosing their mate, or even better, gives women money and independant economic status, the entire culture flourishes, conquering all neighbours. That same thing has happened over and over again all over the world.
When males start to compete for sexual favors from powerfull women, they create art, sciences, new weapons, businesses and new materials. The quickest way of collapsing innovative powers, I find, is to dominate women. When women get to choose who they sleep with, the entire culture rises to be the dominant one. Did you know Julius Ceasar had slept with every daughter or mother of every senator that stabbed him. The legionaires used to sing when coming in to a new town; “hide daughters and wives, the old bald head has come to town”.
Concerning the welfare state, its not going to survive. And yes, most of us will be dead in four years time. But those that allow women to be independently wealthy, free, with gender equality, have innovative power in their culture and have a chance of survival.
BTW, genetics has shown that about 40% of the children, have a different father, than the “father” thinks. And that has been the percentage as long as genetics can desifre. Women like men are naturally promiscuous by nature.
Dear Van Kent, I hope you are right.
Sincerely, Ed
Dear Van Kent;
Nice comment. Women rock!
Sincerely,
pintada
Dears Don, Van Kent, ED and Pintada,
I am barely skilled in English writing, but in case this forum was conducted in Spanish I would be joining to celebrate gentle tone in a proper manner. I am nonetheless confident reading does not hurts.
I was about to mention Fuegians and the relaxed wearing habits some of them had despite they inhabited a very cold environment. I see it as a remainder of the adaptability our human fellows may display. The story of the shift in commanding is well known here, and there are many versions (for exemple: Onas conceived change as something akin to a male revolution but Yamanas did not). The one I remember says women had jagged vaginas until men gathered to dance and be funny in front of them. Women had a great time, laughed very much and finally felt asleep. As they woke up next day, those teeth were gone.
Mythical speech is required seting past time, but according to witnesses this kind of performance was indeed popular within young people among many tribes. I find therefore doubtful they could be thought of as heavy patriarcalists.
Patriarcalism has been prominent in what we know as supercycle, and still is. One of its recent turns is producing femicide concerns. It’s all about cavalierly protecting women from bad men.
I was shocked when the Congress decided killing your child is not as bad as killing your wife or you ex. Now I see womanhood as a metaphore for moterhood, and I understand a concern about motherhood may arise at a moment the spieces is endangered.
I see it as a symptome, which is getting different tones as things evolve.
Yours
Christian
I have agreed from day one that incidents are occurring — no doubt some of these people are resorting to theft to survive… some incidents of grabbing women.
Shit happens.
I was in a shop yesterday in Haarlem — someone ran out the door having stolen a watch. The shop keeper failed to catch him — he said this was happening more often due to the economy…
Over Christmas in Paris I understand most shops must maintain guards due to high incidents of theft.
I was in Paris last year and was told never ever leave a bag on a chair at an outdoor cafe — someone will likely run by and snatch it.
Shit happens. Sometimes refugees commit these acts — more often than not locals do.
That’s what happens when you are broke and desperate
But my point is === there are NO mass acts of violence and rape — no 1000+ man armadas racing into the cities and committing these acts.
If there were there would be mass video uploads — there would be mass fighting in the streets.
As usual the MSM is twisting the narrative — sensationalizing things… exaggerating what is happening.
Creating fear — panic.
And like good sheeple you and almost everyone else just accepts the narrative because you read it on the ‘news’ — and you are doing exactly as expected …..
It’s no different than the terror narrative — create a false flag — and use the fear and panic it creates to ram through the real agenda — an agenda that usually involves more war and pillaging…
Edward Bernays was truly brilliant — even when the sheeple are given the dots to connect they still are unable to see reality — because the sheeple are stupid unthinking animals… they are easily manipulated….
When you have some videos of one of these mass attacks — or at least a mass response from locals in any of these countries — please do post it … and I will reconsider my position
But just posting the MSM bullshit — well why don’t you at the same time post MSM bullshit about how fracking is going to give us another 100 years of BAU?
Why don’t you post MSM bullshit about how America is nearly at full unemployment and how we have recovered from 200*
Perhaps a little MSM bullshit about how China is growing at a 7% clip.
Sure, Fast Eddy, here is a clip that will work for the sheeple.
Well, to be honest, it works for me
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9z5qpyxRR-A
Obviously MSM has got a new briefing here in Germany.
Refugess are Mass-Criminals now.
Als intersting – we are listening to Mr. Putin.
He is back to the emergency association.
http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/wladimir-putin/interview-mit-dem-russischen-praesidenten-russland-44091672.bild.html
Bild is most important yellow press here!
“When you have some videos of one of these mass attacks — or at least a mass response from locals in any of these countries — please do post it … and I will reconsider my position.”
FE, You scoffed at the idea the German people welcomed the refugees with open arms. I proved you wrong with 2 videos that clearly showed just that, one of which included a giant pile of gifts. Now you’re moving the goal posts demanding videos of mass attacks. Well, maybe women are too busy grabbing their particulars in a defensive posture when being groped and the men are too busy defending their women to take video just to try and prove to anti-European conspiracy theorists like you. I also included an article of sexual assault cases in numerous other European cities, but you refuse to accept that too. Well, it’s not my responsibility to produce sufficient evidence you will accept to change your mind. You spin whatever nonsense you desire, but my advice is for you to apologize to the women posters on this site for your insensitive attitude towards their well being. Their physical space is to be respected by all people, at all times.
So people were on the spot with their iphones when gifts were handed out —- yet not a single person was on the scene when 1000+ rapists descended into Cologne in a sex spree…
Not one….
Enough of this discussion. If women reported the problem to the police, we need to take their word for it.
“If women reported the problem to the police, we need to take their word for it.”
That seems a very dangerous position, approaching presumed guilty until proven innocent.
I would like to move on to another topic.
“That seems a very dangerous position, approaching presumed guilty until proven innocent.”
In Dubio pro Reo applies to individuals much easier than to groups. Here we are not judges of inividual acts but rather focus on understanding social trends. It is beyond any doubt some poeple (not only women) lost something there to the hands of others. What does this means, that’s the point here
Reblogged this on The grokking eagle.
Dear Those Who Detest ‘Gay’ Openings Such As ‘Dear’
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/very-truly-yours.2146008/
Ed explains that I am 30 years behind the times opening a post with ‘Dear….”. So I looked up the closings I was taught 50 years ago, which included Very Truly Yours, Yours Truly, and just plain Yours and Sincerely. At the time, I detested these closings, but you couldn’t pass 10th grade Typing class unless you properly closed a business letter and a personal letter. So I gritted my teeth and used them. It always struck me as odd that the closings of business letters were more flowery than the closings of personal letters.
It seems that the words can still provoke a discussion on the internet, and I see references to very close approximations in Spanish, and variations in British English.
At any rate, I am old enough to still use ‘Dear’, although I have dropped the closings that I always detested. One commenter says that the closings are still prevalent among lawyers, and are intended to mean something like ‘I am speaking truthfully to you, and with your interests at heart’. I believe my usage of ‘Dear’ means something like ‘I am telling you my opinion because I think it may be useful and interesting to you.’
Which may be presumptuous. But you get what you pay for.
Very truly yours….Don Stewart
Don, You ARE the MAN….thank you so much for contributing so much to our forum. It would much poorer without you. After all there is so much Fast Eddy rap we can stand
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uoM12Tb0dqg
Esteemed Mr Stewart.
Thank you for raising the tone. Civility is declining…..
Paul, posting up current news events really doesn’t help explicate complex topics. In order to for readers to understand the context of Gail’s analyses, I believe starting from a macro perspective serves a greater purpose:
1. Population overshoot
2. Resource exhaustion
3. Environmental degradation
Fossil fuels & material inputs provided the energy & core feed stock to drive industrial production. Banking became a component to assist in capital accumulation, directed investments and transactional activities. And all the while, population levels increased due to improved sanitation, greater food production and medical advances.
All really common sense, right? Yet, due to normalcy bias, the great majority of people believe our world represents “reality”, when in actuality it’s only a very short term phenomenon. Take away the foundation of (relatively) inexpensive fossil fuels upon which the entire edifice is constructed, and what happens?
Now, here’s the $64k question: if you know what happens, what moves do you make to attempt to ensure some kind of survival? Even more relevant, if you’re the PTB, what moves do you put into play to create an environment in which you may have a chance of improving your relative odds?
That’s why the social disruption resulting from the drive to secure energy supplies, along with the concomitant migration flows, makes 100% perfect sense. So why get all tied up in the migration story? What does it matter, or more precisely, how does it help you achieve greater chances of survival?
Secondly, if the entire banking system is predicated on a simple equation of energy + inputs (labor/material) = production, what happens when the both energy and material inputs are constrained? Why, the banking system fails of course. And yet, since banking is a key operative element of control, it too, like the migration case, will transcend any market principles, and simply become a feature of the transformed state.
Again, what does the market have to do with you? Only that if you know the background story, you should know that the banking sector, along with the military & energy, will be the very last ramparts to be breached. So, until those areas are under any meaningful pressure, the rest of the game will continue on as before, excepting of course for the slow, gradual erosion of living standards.
I think I get why you’re constantly on board here, because you feel a sense of excitement that something may break. But life really doesn’t work that way; it’s going to be a very slow grind, yet those who know the score can manage to do quite well as long as they stay focused on the big picture.
Dear B9K9, markets have only one job, to decide fair market value.
That is the only job of millions of economic nods working in unison, to decide fair market value.
Now, lets take this David Price article as the basic premise to decide that fair market value on http://dieoff.org/page137.htm#4
POS 1. Free markets can not be free ever again. Fakery and fabrications ad infinitum.
POS 2. You let the market do its job, its only job, to decide fair market value. That value is reached; zero.
That is the big picture. No slow grind for us.
Yours sincerely, Van Kent (Don, being a true gentleman is never out of fashion, you keep doing what you have been doing)
I’m a bit confused as to why you would advance the concept of free markets as some kind of metric by which results can be measured and/or outcomes predicted.
I mean, who came up with the notion of free markets in the first place? If we’re discussing reality, it seems about as a relevant as religion. So, perhaps we can surmise that idea of free markets, like religion, were invented for control purposes. Hell, let’s throw representational government, rule of law and a whole host of other comforting nostrums into the same pile of rubbish.
The only reality is the boot. Every advanced civilization prospered by simply “taking other people’s shit”. That’s how the game actually works ie the power principle. As long as there isn’t a greater authority to regulate conduct, then the operative limits are simply resources (material & labor) in which to gain a military advantage.
Thus we have the great empires of Egypt, Greece & Rome based on slave labor, which have continued in the same form & fashion to the present day.
Anyone waiting for a cosmic judgment of evil doers once the markets “correct” and BAU evaporates overnight is going to be sorely disappointed. My advice to anyone who wishes to perhaps gain some insight and enjoy being on the winning side (accruing surplus economic rewards & time aka being one of the leisure class) should really consider what the PTB will do in order to ensure continuity of government.
The debt is dead – we all know that. However, it’s not going to be defaulted; rather it’s going to be devalued. Devaluation preserves banking, military and the state. So, if you want to win at this game, what do you do to prepare for devaluation?
Dear B9K9,
Ok, my bad, I just thought all those millions of bankers, brokers, investors, you know Wall Street, London, the guys who pay for the U.S. presidential elections actually existed.
Could you please do my taxes? I could use some of your Enron fakery, take a million and turn it in to a billion and vice versa. Devaluation in your sense of the concept is as possible as buying food from staving masses with imaginary gold and silver futures. Theoretically possible, but not actually feasible in the real world.
So you have a partial payback scheme, perhaps. What happens when people want to buy another car, or another house, or governments want to borrow more money to fund their normal operations? Don’t lenders get the idea that they are never going to get paid back the full amount? Or do you expect a miracle to come along?
“What happens when people want to buy another car, or another house, or governments want to borrow more money to fund their normal operations? Don’t lenders get the idea that they are never going to get paid back the full amount?”
It is amazing how soon lenders are willing to lend to defaulters. Seems like 7 to 10 years, and then they’re right back at it. This seems to apply both to individuals with credit cards, as well as nations. Short memories and greed seem to be pretty dominant.
‘But life really doesn’t work that way; it’s going to be a very slow grind’
Not it’s not. When this breaks we all die. Actually we will all starve — if that doesn’t kill everyone then the radiation will
This is an extinction event.
But Eddy, no need for you to fret and worry,
After all you are married
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o70wMlJO3ck
Some light humour among the gallows
What is interesting about the oil powered cars is the fact that the most fuel efficient oil powered cars can be as fuel efficient as hybrid cars recovering energy from braking: such hybrid cars are “better” only in the cities, where the braking energy from frequent deceleration and stops can be recuperated. But, logically, the motorways are the places where the explosion power of the fuel efficient oil powered cars is unbeatable in comparison with the abovementioned hybrid cars.
The only solution for further improving the efficiency of the EVs are complex energy accummulation systems and supercapacitors:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/41416.pdf
But the complex products can not be cheap. The complexity requires a lot of energy. And the faster you drive, the shorter is your driving range:
“The physics of aerodynamics affects all moving vehicles (gasoline or electric) the same: reducing efficiency and range at higher speeds. This effect is more pronounced at higher speeds since the drag force of the wind on the vehicle increases with the square of the velocity, from 35 to 70 mph it doesn’t just double but goes up by four times!”
Source: https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/driving-range-model-s-family
The slower and slower world seems to be the only solution that can prevent an abrupt collapse of the civilization. The (s)lower systems are more resilient to collapse. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor in the pyramid of the civilization…
The higher efficiency of the combustion engines is also thanks to the oxygen that is not stored in the vehicle, but taken from the environment.
For conquering the vehicles with the combustion engine, we need vehicles that would be able to draw one component from the environment (like combustion engines take the oxygen from air) and another component of high energy density stored in the vehicle.
I am affraid that except for the nuclear energy, there is nothing that can provide such velocity and driving range as the vehicles with the combustion engine.
And does the air intake reduce the drag force of the wind by the vehicles with the combustion engines? Well, this may also be an interesting question when comparing efficiency of EVs and the vehicles with the combustion engine…
The vehicles with the combustion engine are true “time machines”: they move us into the past, when the carbon dioxide levels were much higher due to the fact that the carbon was not absorbed in the fossil fuels…
“And does the air intake reduce the drag force of the wind by the vehicles with the combustion engines?”
I’m fairly confident that A) the amount of change is practically insignificant and B) having swirling air sucking into a pipe increases rather than decreases air drag. Also, if you don’t need as large a radiator and room for air intake, you can make the vehicle as a whole have a more aerodynamic nose.
The jet planes in fact “eat” the air. The jet cars do the same and have the aerodynamic shape, too. And both of them achieve very high velocities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_engine
“And does the air intake reduce the drag force of the wind by the vehicles with the combustion engines?”
No.
“For conquering the vehicles with the combustion engine, we need vehicles that would be able to draw one component from the environment (like combustion engines take the oxygen from air) and another component of high energy density stored in the vehicle.”
Electric cars powered by aluminum battery. The aluminum surface oxidizes using oxygen from the air, releasing energy. Then a solvent removes the surface, and the process is repeated, over and over. Supposedly 3000 Km on one core. Then the core has to go to an aluminum smelter, which uses hydro electricity to power the arc furnace to make pure aluminum once again. It is in the early trial stages, as a long range supplement for lithium battery electric cars. Alcan and some Israeli startup, I think.
The efficiency of the fossil fuels combustion consists in the fact that the CO2 is simply returned where it was before – into the air. Also the weight of the vehicle is going down while the fuel is consumed.
The nuclear energy is a very concentrate source of the energy that compensates for the abovementioned inefficiences.
My brother in law got a vasectomy a week ago and still feels some discomfort
Any thought or experience on this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception
I’ve forwarded a few of your articles to the email address that sends me his newsletter… maybe he actually read the articles and now gets it
I am aware proposing solutions out of the energy mess so BAU can go on a few more centuries is unpopular on this blog. But someone needs to propose options to collapse.
I have been working on power satellite as a cheap source of energy for a long time. Over half the cost of a power satellite is the transport. There are two legs, one from the ground up to LEO, the other from LEO up to GEO in one or two stages. The default for the first leg is Skylon. The minimum payload size for the LEO to GEO stage is about 1000 tons per day. The minimum is due to the same microwave optics that make power satellites optimize around 5 GW. The cargo blocks run to about 15,000 tons and the reaction mass is about 4000 tons, tug mass is taken as 2000 tons. Two are in transit at any time and the up/down cycle is around 30 days. They take 38,000 tons of cargo and reaction mass, around 84 Skylon flights per day. The current proposal to power them is two 400 MW mini power satellites in orbit half way to GEO (18,000 km). At some orbit between 2000 km and GEO (perhaps 12,000 km, minimum radiation from Van Allen belts) the cargo blocks are processed into power satellites. The power satellites, one per month, then self power from the construction site out to GEO.
A power satellite masses around 30,000 tons and produces a lot more power than 800 MW. Two cargo stacks have 16 arcjet engines, each using 50 MW of power. The question comes up as to how many engines are cost effective for moving the completed power sat to GEO?
The engines are massive, some ten tons each. It takes reaction mass to get them to GEO and back, about 3 tons per engine. At 12,000 km, the reaction mass cost is around $150/kg. Using only one engine costs around $460,000 for reaction mass and would take almost 3 months. The interest at 6% on a completed $12 B power satellite for 90 days is around $174 million. Two engines double the reaction mass cost and cut the interest charges in half. When you fill in the rest of the sheet, the graph minimizes at around $17.9 M “delivery charge” using 20 engines. However, the curve is rather flat and 16 engines only brings the cost up to $18.2 M. I.e., the engines off the two tugs that brought the materials to the construction site are enough to get the power satellite to GEO in 5.5 days.
The spreadsheet is not exact, but if anyone wants a copy, ask.
Unfortunately, energy is just one of many limits we are reaching.
That’s true Greg, but cheap enough energy can help with other limits, for example, water. What limit are you thinking about that lots of energy will not help?
Overpopulation, species extinction, feedback loops to global warming, liquid fuel……
pollution, antibiotic resistance, loss of biodiversity, loss of biomass
Almost all major metals are becoming very difficult to extract economically. Electricity doesn’t really solve this problem either. And it is a problem that is getting exponentially less economic every year.
Recycling doesn’t really work either, partly because so much is lost each time in the recollection process, and partly because the recollection and reprocessing requires so much energy. This is a limit to renewables that many people don’t think about. Even if we could do away with fossil fuels, we can’t end our need for metals (and still have a civilization like today).
I have to add (being originally trained in metallurgy) that there are major problems in mass recycling of many materials from the point of view of contamination. Most new metal produced is finely alloyed to precisely match the product being manufactured from it. An aeroplane wing uses a different metal to a frying pan and a different one again for aluminium foil. The problem is when you haphazardly collect metal objects and throw them all into a furnace and melt them down you get a potpourrie of materials in the mix. This is sort of like the brown mongrel dog you get when dogs of all sorts of breeds are allowed to mate.
By way of example, there used to be a practice in smelting iron that 10 percent recycled material could be satisfactorily added without contaminating the product assay too much, the remaining material needing to be newly mined ore concentrate – that generally has a known assay.
This is not true when doing straightforward recycling such as melting down millions of tin cans to make new metal for the same product. However, metals are more normally hashed together in the making of, say, an automobile and the crushed product contains a mess of contaminants.
We are a very long way from source separating to the extent that this problem can be overcome. In an ideal world everything manufactured would be made to be pulled apart but it’s not the case. We are a hundred years from being in that ideal world.
Thanks for the additional clarification on this matter.
I understand that the tiny amounts of a large number of materials as used in computers, cell phones, and the computer portion of many devices adds to the recycling problem. Recycling the metal frame from old cars to make metal for new cars can be done a whole lot more efficiently than trying to separate tiny bits of this and that in small devices. And as you say, the small parts likely involve different alloys as well.
Solar power from space generates next to no pollution. It would allow cleaning water to any degree you want. I can’t think of a coupling between antibiotic resistance and low cost energy. Very poor people are likely to be harder on biodiversity than rich ones. I don’t understand how cheap, low pollution energy would like to lead to a loss of biomass.
hkeithhenson, transitioning to a global solar economy would produce such amounts of CO2 and require huge amounts of raw materials, that the environment would tip over (well, technically it already has because of the lagtimes, but you get the picture). http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Solar-Cell.html
Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5650
And add space to that equation, its not feasible, not viable, not possible,
because current space launch costs are so high ($4,000 to $40,000 per kilogram) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization thats even more CO2, even bigger amounts of raw materials and energy consumed
“transitioning to a global solar economy would produce such amounts of CO2 and require huge amounts of raw materials,”
The energy payback as we have discussed here before it around two months. I.e., you can burn the hydrogen out of LNG and the energy is quickly paid back.
The amount of materials is small as well. Power satellites are not subject to gravity or wind so they use around 1/100th of the materials for ground based solar. We figure about 6.5 kg/kW. That’s in the ballpark for the JAXA estimates of 7 kg/kW.
” current space launch costs are so high ($4,000 to $40,000 per kilogram)”
If you can’t get the cost of hauling power satellite parts (and/or completed satellites) to GEO down to $200/kg or less (for 6.5 kg/kW) then they don’t make economic sense and we should not do them. It’s that simple.
All the electricity you could ever need is here
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/04/Earth_poster-570-thumb-570×359-120021.jpg
OK, while your at it, why don´t you also come up with teleportation and faster then light travel. All of those are equally feasible.
Just a simple question; what is the chemical process of burning LNG that does not produce CO2?
Because if some sort of deals want to be maintained, that they carved in Paris, then CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) have to be also conume energy. And if you check out CCS, its horrendously unfeasible.
Skip the cable to the sun …. we have all the heat we need right below our feet… let’s drill holes to the centre of the earth and use the heat to power boilers and create electricity.
Call Jules Verne….
“OK, while your at it, why don´t you also come up with teleportation and faster then light travel. All of those are equally feasible.”
If you think so, I don’t think much of your judgment.
“Just a simple question; what is the chemical process of burning LNG that does not produce CO2?”
Natural gas is CH4, combine with oxygen and you are going to get CO2. That wasn’t the point. Use the energy (hydrogen) out of the LNG to build power satellites and in a couple of months you have saved that much LNG by using power from space instead of burning methane.
“And if you check out CCS, its horrendously unfeasible.”
OK, let’s turn that into a question. What would it take for CCS to be feasible?
The one thing known to curb population is wealth. China would like to get their birth rate up a bit, but can’t because the women have become educated and relatively wealthy. Low cost energy is a way for everyone to be better off. I don’t know if there is a direct connection to species extinction from non polluting energy. The point of this project is to cut the CO2 to global warming link, i.e., quit burning coal, etc. Liquid fuels were what set the scale and cost of the project. The concept is to install about 3000 power satellites, up to or beyond the peak electrical load. There is no fuel savings, so we manage the grid by load, and the load is hydrogen plants. Feed the hydrogen and CO2 pulled out of the air to synthetic fuel plants to make gasoline and diesel for a dollar or two per gallon. The capital cost for synthetic fuel plants is known, about $10/bbl.
Greg, re metals, the main ones are iron and aluminum. Most of the cost of aluminum is the electricity needed to reduce it. Steel is made in electric furnaces now. Can you think of a metal that would not be cheaper to extract (or salvage out of the waste stream) if the cost of energy went down?
hkeithhenson, Iceland and Norway can produce aluminium because they have the energy, others should not, if they want to keep their CO2 promises made in Paris. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7570
First we take iron ore out of the ground, leaving a landscape looking like this: http://www.theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/344771/can-you-make-wind-turbine-without-fossil-fuels
And because we have picked the low hanging fruit, the environmental destruction gets worse, by the day, to produce each subsequent ton of iron.
But it’s like trying to prop up a wagon when all four wheels have fallen off and the horse is lame. What about bitumen for roads, and coal that’s needed for cement production. Electric arc furnaces are used at the top end of steel production, but primary iron uses large amounts of coking coal. Being able to produce cheap electricity is one thing, but producing humongous amounts of it for metals reduction is another challenge. Meanwhile, nearly all major mining and transport machinery uses diesel and there’s no alternative on the horizon.
Most people, including most environmentalists, look at bits of the mess and enthusiastically say ‘how about doing this, or that’ (most folks have a pet technology they see as the silver bullet) and then it will all be fixed up. Very few look at the larger picture.
“What about bitumen for roads, and coal that’s needed for cement production. Electric arc furnaces are used at the top end of steel production, but primary iron uses large amounts of coking coal. ”
Fisher/Tropsch fuel synthesis makes a long chain wax. The wax is cracked into diesel fuel but there is a considerable amount of black gunk co produced. That’s for roads. But if you were mining the Canadian tar sands for bitumen, it would last a really long time.
Cement doesn’t need coal. A good fraction of it is made by burning old tires, but it certainly could be made in electric rotary kilns. Or by burning excess hydrogen.
Re steel production, I think you are out of date. Try here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron
Re diesel, you overbuild the power satellites beyond base load and use the power to make hydrogen. Sort out the CO2 from the atmosphere and you have syngas to feed the F/T plants. There is one in Qartar that makes 34,000 bbl of diesel a day out of natural gas. It would run just the same on hydrogen and CO2.
I’ve meet you before, Keith. In fact, wrote a nice story about you.
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/764/1/
hkeithhenson, yup, everything IS possible. But, the resources are always, always, taken away from someplace else.
Your plan would need a global command economy, a global central government and 6-7 billions slaves to work it. For two or three generations without military expenditure of any kind. Sound feasible, viable, possible?
“Your plan would need a global command economy, a global central government and 6-7 billions slaves to work it. For two or three generations without military expenditure of any kind. Sound feasible, viable, possible?”
I wonder why you think this? The amount of money need to get started is well under $100 B, not far from the capital investment to build a LNG plant. And the profits, oh my. You could pay off the national debt from the profits over a few years.
Though if you have to sell power rather than power satellites, the investment goes way up. I am assuming that the power satellites are sold as they are completed. That simplifies the accounting and considerably reduces the amount of capital in the construction business.
You are becoming extremely irritating.
Why don’t you try peak prosperity .com ….. you and your ridiculous ideas will be welcomed….
Dear Chris Harries,
Excellent essay! http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/764/1/
I would just like to point out, that Einstein would have never become “Einstein” in todays science environment. The cut throat competition for grants and funding we have today, would have left poor Albert alone and starving in the cold.
Electricity is not used to mine the ores. That is my concern. Millions of tons of rock have to be moved to get ever decreasing amounts of ore. This effect is not linear either so as ores go below a certain percentage threshold the amount of energy needed to move more earth increases exponentially.
This is why liquid fuels have to be made with electricity, and part of the reason cost has be so low. We can’t just go out and convert all of today’s equipment from using oil to using electricity.
The chemistry and physics of making synthetic oil out of electric power is well established. An analysis is here http://htyp.org/dollar_a_gallon_gasoline
Incidentally, mining uses vast amounts of electric power. A lot of mines use conveyer belts to move ore. A lot of copper is leached out of the rock and pulled out of the liquid by electric power. Aluminum takes huge amounts of electric power to reduce the oxide to the metal.
In investment terms, it is estimated that there is 100 trillion US dollars (= $100 000 000 000 000) worth of oil burning infrastructure in the world. A frequent mistake made by rampant technology enthusiasts is that because it is theoretically possible to do something with a different technology then, presto, we can just go ahead and do it – without regard to the retooling challenge and massive investment and the time factor that would be required. We are talking about factories having to be built, supply lines and decades of necessary phase out and diversion of investment that would otherwise have been spent on productive enterprises.
This is just to change exhausted horses, so we can keep going along the journey.
“In investment terms,”
You are dead on correct. That is why, from the very start, I was looking for energy cheap enough to make hydrocarbon fuels in the dollar a gallon range.
Just go ahead and do it, Keith. You’ve got my permission. You’ll get rich too.
But be mindful that it is very cheap fuel that gave rise to grossly inefficient SUVs and incredible energy wastage. It took scarcity and higher prices to develop more efficient engines. But… when oil prices drop then SUV sales skyrocket. When oil prices go up small vehicles sales do too.
“grossly inefficient SUVs”
That’s the price you pay for avoiding famine. The day is a long way off. Who knows what the status symbol of that day will be.
Just go for it Keith. You’ve got quite an easy job. Just approach one of those big multinationals who employ hundreds of professional economists and engineers to discover and work up business cases and persuade them that you’ve stumbled on a viable mega project that they happen to have overlooked. What’s more it will save our civilisation. They may ask you for a feasibility study so you would knock one up on the back of an envelope. The rest is easy. The project would need to be completed within a decade or so, before world events render it futile.
Best of luck!
“Just go for it Keith.”
I know you are trying to make fun of me, happened before, got so bad on the first Oil Drum article that *other blogs* started making comments about it.
“The project would need to be completed within a decade or so, before world events render it futile. ”
Even at a 400 new power satellites per year, it will take 7-8 years after we reach that production level to replace fossil fuels. It’s going to take a heck of a growth rate to get from producing 10-12 per year to 400 a year. It also takes a million Skylon flights per year to support that production rate and a fleet of around 5500 Skylons. If the Skylons are only good for 1000 flights, that’s going wear out more than 1000 of them a year or a production rate of 84 per month. That’s higher by slightly over ten times than the peak production rate of Boeing 747s.
However, the energy market is plenty large enough to sop up power satellites if they can be made at the project price/
The big problem right now is that nobody has a good idea of how to solve carbon and energy together without destroying the economy.
The concept may be entirely too little, too late, as you say futile. Also, it’s entirely possible that someone may come along with a better solution. For me it’s a personal challenge. I think it is better to try and fail rather than not trying at all.
As I said, go for it Keith. There’s a local bloke who writes long essays on how to set up a new civilisation in space. He’s an earnest, likeable bloke. Hasn’t a clue about economics or engineering, or thermodynamics but I have to admire his unbridled enthusiasm. So I give him the same advice. And I mean it.
“He’s an earnest, likeable bloke. Hasn’t a clue about economics or engineering, or thermodynamics but I have to admire his unbridled enthusiasm.”
Trying to do anything in space without those is exercise in fantisy. It had been 50 years since I took thermodynamics. I didn’t use it much over my working life and as you can imagine mine was really rusty but I needed it. So a couple of years ago I sat in on a thermodynamics course at the local university to brush up. You might suggest that to your “likeable bloke.”
Anything that appear to forestall one limit simply brings others to the fore. There are innumerable limits banging on the door at all times. Most people erroneously presume that energy is IT and solving that will resolve the human predicament. In fact, it will solve nothing at all unless the whole caboodle is addressed systemically. And this seems impossible now that we’ve overstepped some critical tipping points. We have to accept a critical level of collapse but made with an eye on what remnant civilisation may survive.
“There are innumerable limits banging on the door at all times.”
That’s true. But cheap energy would push those limits off decades or perhaps centuries. The earth is finite as the blog’s title proclaims. So it the solar system and the galaxy. But the solar system is so much larger than the Earth that from our vantage, it’s effectively infinite. There is material in the asteroid belt for more than 2000 times the land area of Earth as O’Neill colonies.
Building power satellites doesn’t automatically get you O’Neill cylinders, but it’s a good way to get started.
Ok, lets assume Elon Musk makes a zero point energy battery for ten bucks and starts distrubuting it globally tomorrow (ten bucks for unlimited energy, forever). Star Trek technology, from Elons superfactory, and everything goes without a glitch and Elon only uses circular economy, recycled materials..
What happens to the limits of our finite planet? http://www.slideshare.net/michaelnewbold980/rockstrom
Cheap energy, unlimited energy, would result in a ecosystem collapse, perhaps two decades later then we have scheduled now. Cheap unlimited energy solves nothing, actually it might make things exponentially worse.
“Cheap energy, unlimited energy, would result in a ecosystem collapse, perhaps two decades later then we have scheduled now.”
Sounds good to me. In that two decades maybe we can find something else that will kick the can down the road another 10 or 20 years. That may be all we need.
You might find it amusing that I suspect the human race will be effectively extinct by around the middle of the century. Mind you that nobody needs to die if my mode of humanity going extinct happens. http://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson1.html The collapse you people talk about may be avoidable. Extinction by machines of loving grace . . . I can see no way to avoid it, though a major collapse might set it back some.
The issue isn’t solving the problem, its attempting to kick the can a ways down the road a ways further.
Space solar is one proposed ways of doing that. It still has a fair amount of changes that need to be made in order for costs and resource use to grow sufficiently.
Dear hkeithhenson,
Ecosystem collapse is not something to hope for. Extinction is a bit difficult to bounce right back up from. Especially if it is 99% of all life on earth. (Excluding Don Stewards bacteria etc.)
If we collapse now, then walipinis are possible in Argentina, Chile, Norway and NZ, so, extinction of our species is not a foregone conclusion.
Concerning AI, Google already has everything it needs to make an soft AI. But because everybody seems to be aiming at a hard AI, we will never see one. The easy recipe for an hard AI is to take a mimic (soft AI) and make it extrapolate itself. But since they seem to be aiming straight for the hard one, we will never see it.
Concerning nanotechnology, Post-BAU will not have any possibilities of making zero pollution products, we will never see nano come a reality in everyday life.
After the collapse starts, nothing can stop it, and we will never (oh, well, at least 200-300k years) be able to try this global civilization thing we have here going, again.
Keith, great story. Lots of wonderful original ideas. Do yu have more stories?
“You think that free energy would have no detrimental affects. As I said, parasites and charlatans like you are a dime a dozen.”
My goodness Bandits, is doom so uncertain that you need to get rude? I am sure low cost (never free) energy will have some detrimental effects. But I ask you, are the effects better or worse than the alternative of running out and collapse?
BTW, you waste your amateur efforts trying to be nasty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
Here’s the thing Keith…..
If any of us were to touch down on a site other than FW — and post some of the ideas that we post here —- the flame throwers would come out for us —- we’d be judged and shipped off to the insane asylum…. we’d be mocked and ridiculed and told we are idiots … that we are purveyors of negativity of doom ….. and we’d frequently be censored…
That was my experience on Peak Prosperity when I outted a guest who was in an interview stating thorium was going to save the world. When I posted comments that rattled his cage the knives came out (see above). And finally when I posted comments about how he had interests in a thorium business — which was NOT disclosed in the interview or on the site — well… my comments were deleted… and I was no longer welcome
So here’s the deal — most of us come FW because we are resigned to our fate — we are beyond discussing any cures for the disease because there are none. Not solar. Not thorium. Not space solar. Nothing.
We are simply waiting for the funeral — which is not far away — and discussing what what we think will ultimately kill us — will it be the cancer – the diabetes – the heart disease — the AIDS infection …. malaria….
Yes I know there was an article about space solar posted — and it concluded that it was not feasible. It was too expensive.
And since then you have non-stop posted endless comments about how space solar is the solution — the cure.
And your facts have been beaten to a pulp — if this were a boxing match your teeth would be knocked out — your eyes swollen shut — and you’d be lying on the mat in a pool of blood unconscious…. and the crowd would have jumped the ropes and they’d be laying the boots to you…
You have come into the wrong house with this nonsense — those that would defend you are few and far between in this house.
We are tired of visiting other houses and ending up in the condition you find yourself in our house.
The topic had been done to death — you are now insulting us in our house as if you were to squat in the corner and defecate….
Don’t be surprised if after being throttled with the facts that some people start insulting you.
You are showing bad manners — you need to be driven off because you refuse to play by the rules.
We deal in facts here – cold hard facts — and your position is bereft of these.
I know you will go to your grave (sooner than you think) believing space solar would have saved us … good for you …
In the meantime…. let us have our funeral without charging in every 2 minutes screaming ‘grannies not dead — she’s not dead — I have the elixir’
Fast Eddy,
Let’s please show some respect for other commenters.
The article I wrote was in a sense not “about” space solar. It was “about” the needed cost level for a non-intermittent type of electricity. I think that this is a legitimate question to ask. I am happy that the space solar people were sensible enough to ask this question. In my view, this is a whole lot better situation than the leaders of the group endless repeating the standard story which seems to be:
We need to lay out the parameters to fix our problem, and see if anyone can come up with an idea to fix the problem. One of the big issues is timing. Right now, it is almost as if we can see the train coming toward us on the tracks. Yet, there always has been, and always will be, a difference of views on what the timing will be. There are groups trying to seek solutions. We know that in a finite world, in a sense any of our efforts are only “kicking the can down the road” a while. But can kicking has worked for quite a while. We should not be too critical of their efforts. These people have been working on this particular proposed solution for a long time. The fact that the endpoint seems so close to us may not necessarily be an impediment to going forward with the efforts that they have already started.
One thing I learned at The Oil Drum was that it is helpful to have commenters from a wide range of perspectives, because this gives us a chance to see possible weaknesses in our story, and it gives us a chance to explain the story in perhaps a little different way, that will be helpful to other readers. We need to be respectful of commenters coming from different perspectives, or we will lose them. It is even helpful to me to put together presentations for different kinds of groups, because then I am forced to stop and think about how these particular people might see the story.
Many of the people in all parts of this effort are volunteering their time. I know Keith Henson is beyond normal retirement age. So are quite a few others who comment in this blog, including Don Stewart. Professor Charles Hall who works on EROI doesn’t comment on this blog, but he is now retired, but still working on issues that are important to him. ASPO presidents, including Steve Andrews, have often worked as volunteers on these issues in their post retirement years. Tom Whipple, who compiles ASPO news lists, is quite a few years post-retirement. Charles Barton, who has been very outspoken on thorium, is a retiree working on a solution which seems to him to be helpful. I was surprised to learn that Francois Roddier was born in 1935, making him 79 years old. I have referred to him several times with respect to dissipative structures. These volunteers are important, because they do things that they personally feel are important–not necessarily just things that get a lot of funding from government agencies.
Not everyone can be right, but we need to be willing to listen to those with a little different views than the one we have, it we are to continually change and shape our own views.
The thing is…
I was not the one who hurled the insults — although I can appreciate the frustration that leads to someone throwing up their hands and shouting ‘idiot’
I have pretty much ignored this person —- I have left it to others to demonstrate how the theory is not possible — with cold hard facts.
Yet it seems that every third comment is about space based solar power and how it is the answer.
It’s not the answer — we’ve been there and done that debate — yet the deluge of comments keeps on pouring in … time to move on….
We had the same thing for months on EVs … and thorium …. these people are relentless….
When faced with facts they ignore them — and start beating the drum again… they get on the hopium pipe and the puff away oblivious to reality ….
Surely there is a point where like Roberto Duran — we say ‘no mas’ — you are no longer contributing anything of value?
To be quite frank — if I and a few others did not step up and body slam these people — this site would by now be completely overrun with the Koombaya Krowd… it would be 24/7 hopium…
And the people who do have something useful and interesting to contribute …. would be drowned out …. or disappear altogether….
I think that I – and others — have given this topic a fair hearing — the debate has been had — space solar is not going to happen (just like I am not going to grow to 7ft tall and be the Laker’s new centre…)
The End (?).
“Yes I know there was an article about space solar posted — and it concluded that it was not feasible. It was too expensive.”
There is an important concept called “Design to Cost.” Ever hear of it? I have said this many times, if power satellite electricity is more expensive than coal, *don’t build them.*
“you need to be driven off because you refuse to play by the rules.”
And who sets the rules? Where are they listed?
“We deal in facts here – cold hard facts — and your position is bereft of these.”
You should talk. Do you still insist that power satellites need batteries?
Your personal attacks on me are a joke compared to me and my family being stalked for years by the Scientology cult. Once, when my wife and I were taking our daughter to orientation at Redlands, the campus and city cops stopped three cars full of Scientology agents on the campus and told them if they would be arrested if they came there again. It was a sight to behold looking down from the Dean of Student’s office at all the flashing red lights.
Best of like with the star wars project… you are on my ignore list (which is like winning Koombaya equivalent of an Oscar award)
FE, I enjoy the SPS comments. Do I think it will save us? No. But it is still interesting.
I enjoyed your comments about the opera and society you are intelligent and insightful and I would enjoy more comments about the world in general beyond doom from you.
hkeithhenson, have you tried putting your ideas on paper, or submitting them to the MIT Climate CoLab? http://climatecolab.org/
The climate colab just sent me $500 for writing some basic ideas down two years ago. Nothing feasible, just a few ideas on how to finance climate change. But I think they would love your ideas and calculations.
The problem of actually solving this predicament we are in, is that everything is connected. Everything depends on everything else. And because our global civilization is pushing on the limits now, and our economy either grows or collapses, options are extremely limited.
A viable solution would have to include some sort of plan of not collapsing the global economy, while allocating resources someplace else. Currently such plans seems impossible to find, but if and when we enter martial law, that again opens a brief window of opportunity to try to do something different. People got to do something, so might as well be trying to save the world. Thats better than just doing nothing.
“have you tried putting your ideas on paper,”
Wood pulp paper is a bit dated, but yes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson#Works The only recent one on paper (Ad Astra magazine) has had no readers that I know about.
“or submitting them to the MIT Climate CoLab?”
Two years ago, though I don’t see anything there now. After reading this one
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300201/planId/2502
I don’t know if I want a power satellite project there or not. (If you read the above, it’s a “free energy” scheme or a scam depending on the what the “inventor” thinks.)
All one needs to do is Google “The Earth Battery” we are running out of biomass in the most general sense. There are limits folks. There is no magic wand. We are all living in a virtual world that is completely and utterly man-made. We are trying to have our own “Big Bang” and create our own universe to abide by our laws. But, it isn’t going to happen. We are hitting limits.
‘If famine were the sole mechanism of collapse, the species might become extinct quite suddenly. A population that grows in response to abundant but finite resources, like the reindeer of St. Matthew Island, tends to exhaust these resources completely. By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. And in its struggle to survive, the last generation uses up every scrap, so that nothing remains that would sustain even a small population. But famine seldom acts alone. It is exacerbated by social strife, which interferes with the production and delivery of food. And it weakens the natural defenses by which organisms fight off disease.” I copied that from die off.org, Energy and Human Evolution by David Price.
It’s too damn late. We are in overshot since at least the last population doubling. Charlatans like Henson are a dime dozen and come out of their holes to feed like parasites. If power satellites are so damn great they would have been built when they could have been. The same goes for electric vehicles and solar panels. Just as they built more and larger stone heads on Rapa Nui or sacrificed more people in South America, the Charlatans now tell us to build power satellites, solar panels, wind mills and electric cars, no better than a cargo cult tribe leader.
“If power satellites are so damn great they would have been built when they could have been.”
It’s only been recently that anyone proposed methods that get the cost of power from space to undercut that from coal. If power satellites don’t make economic sense, we don’t build them. I am not asking you to fund them, in fact, not asking anyone to do that. I am trying to solve the technical and economic problems of power satellites. If the solutions hold up and can be verified, then some government or private group may solve the carbon and energy problems this way. Does it in some way hurt you for me to propose solutions?
I object to your calling Keith Henson a charlatan. A charlatan is “a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.”
Keith has been doing research in this area for quite a few years. So have many others, in university sponsored programs. We may have differences of opinion on whether costs can be brought down sufficiently. There is a lot of other research that is being done that hasn’t even been asking whether costs are important. I would put carbon capture and storage in the utterly absurd category, yet much research is being funded with respect to it.
” I would put carbon capture and storage”
I once computed that it would take about 300 TW-years to pull a hundred PPM of CO2 out of the atmosphere, convert it to hydrocarbons and pump it underground. That would take 20 years at 15 TW. Considering that we need to replace all 15 TW of fossil fuels, building twice that amount isn’t out of the question (if we can build the first half). It would still be way below the 177 TW estimate.
While charlatan is a bit over the top ….
Surely someone who is involved in serious research on a world saving technology would not have the time nor the inclination to be posting on a web blog….
I would assume such a person would be involved in raising funding for this high level research — spending 14 hours per day in a lab…. perhaps appearing on Bloomberg and CNBs to discuss this incredible new technology…. meeting with Obama and other government officials about saving BAU…. shopping for a private jet and yacht in anticipation of an IPO…
But no … instead this person is here trying to convince people who really don’t matter that he is close to a revolutionary discovery….
And we are supposed to take this person seriously?
“nor the inclination to be posting on a web blog….”
Actually I have found blogs to be rather useful for hashing over technical problems in lieu of an office full of engineers. If you go back and compare the last couple of version to the first time on The Oil Drum, you can see there is a lot of progress. One of the more important concerns, that of NOx from reentering space vehicles came from a comment. Over a year ago I got some NOAA researchers to look into it. NOx destroys ozone but it’s not a showstopper at a production rate of 40 power satellites a year. 400 a year, which is what we actually need, may require providing everyone with sunblock for 7-8 years.
“And we are supposed to take this person seriously?”
No. There are a few people like Gail on this blog who I would like the project seriously. You are not one of them.
‘Actually I have found blogs to be rather useful for hashing over technical problems in lieu of an office full of engineers’
So let me understand this …..
You don’t have an office full of engineers — and instead you are running these ideas by a bunch of people who have zero technical ability … zero experience… zero knowledge beyond what they can pick up by doing google searches…
Are you working in your basement? In your garage?
Do you have any of the big VC’s on board to fund this? Do you have any funding?
And you are going to put satellites in space and pump electricity back to earth…. I would expect you have hundreds of millions of cash … a big team of top experts…. a state of the art lab…
How about this — instead of wasting your time here — because nobody here is going to help you with the breakthrough….. keep on plugging away …
And when you come up with something viable — we’ll watch for you on the news ….
Because I guarantee you — if you make this work — you will be the next Steve Jobs…. only far far bigger….
“instead you are running these ideas by a bunch of people who have zero technical ability ”
You should go back and read the three Oil Drum articles, especially the comments. There were a number of things pointed out (particularly with StratoSolar) that we had never thought about. Largely social, but that’s important as anyone who tries to solve energy with nuclear knows.
The people outside the blogs who contribute to the ideas are deeply technical, most of them at the PhD level. They don’t often write about it, but here is one who did http://withouthotair.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/solar-power-from-space.html
As for VC funding, it’s a bit early for that. The idea need to gain support among the cognoscenti. It needs people who will get into spreadsheets to see if they are right. I have a few of those, not enough. I guess the only thing worse than making spreadsheets is checking them.
” if you make this work — you will be the next Steve Jobs” Could happen, though at my age I am not likely to see it through. A big difference is that (for complicated reasons) I do it all this physics based conceptual work in the public domain. If you think about it (in the context of where I live) you might be able to figure out why.
‘As for VC funding, it’s a bit early for that.’
I’ve raised funds for projects I have started — and I have more recently invested funds in projects of other people who had good ideas.
Generally if you have a good idea — you raise funds at the conception stage… it’s kinda difficult to get to the next stage without money.
The fact that you have not done that pretty much confirms that your theories are pie in the sky…
I really have no idea why we have to endure these endless discussions of solar space electricity.
If you have a good idea then that’s fantastic — instead of wasting your time here talking to a bunch of nobodies like me —- borrow my assistant — http://www.google.com — and type in ‘Alternative Energy Venture Capitalists’
And then pick up the phone and start setting meetings ….. if the idea is good you should have no problem getting through the door.
But no — you are not ready for that yet….
I understand …. completely….
“The fact that you have not done that pretty much confirms that your theories are pie in the sky…”
They may be. But I have tried to get the economics and physics right.
“I really have no idea why we have to endure these endless discussions of solar space electricity.”
I just skip the uninteresting topics.
“If you have a good idea then that’s fantastic ”
There is a bit of a problem with VCs. I have talked to more than a dozen of them over the years, and the size if the project is beyond what they can fund. A couple of them have said to get peak funding down under $20 B and come to talk to us. No ideas that reduce it to that level yet. It galls my (lower case) libertarian soul, but I think this one is going to require government funding if it gets done at all.
“.. if the idea is good you should have no problem getting through the door.”
Sheesh. I can’t explain it to someone new to the idea without them having a heck of a lot of background in economics, rockets, orbital mechanics, microwave optics, etc, etc. If you have any ideas of how to boil this project down to an elevator pitch I could use them. Like how do you get around preconceived ideas like space solar needing batteries? Or the beam frying birds? Or being used as a weapon?
Actually …. VC’s will not touch a project if the scale of it is too small …. they are looking for home runs…
And what you are proposing is beyond a home run — if it can be made to work it’s google/apple/microsoft/facebook x 1000…
If you had credibility and a workable idea I doubt you would have much of a problem getting angel investors involved… then when the concept became more than just an idea on some pieces of paper you’d be able to tap big money…
Have you approached any VCs — I’d be interested in knowing which ones — and what their responses were?
FYI: VC’s are not a rich guy in an office like Caesar giving thumbs up or down …
A VC that targets alternative energy plays will have consultants on staff who are experts alternative energy — they would also likely have outside consultants from top institution like MIT who would be on their investment review boards who would analyze short listed opportunities and advise if they are feasible…
And at this level they are not like those clowns on the Dragon’s Den who pretend to be investing in the next big thing….
The fact that you are not pursuing this leads me to conclude that you have no credibility … no expertise … no revolutionary idea..
You are some guy tinkering around in some delusional world believing he is going to make space solar work…
When the idea was long ago dismissed after evaluation at very high levels as not feasible…
i.e. – you are wasting your time….
“i.e. – you are wasting your time….”
I am retired. I like solving big problems more than playing golf. It’s still larger than a VC can deal with, though if you know of a VC who will consider a $60 B peak investment, let me know. In March I fly to the UK to give talks on what the UK can do with Skylon.
Enough of this already! There are many ways of doing research. I can guarantee you that spending a lot of time in labs, churning out academic article after academic article, is not necessarily at the top of the list. The vast majority of people who are pursuing issues beyond the age when people are normally expected to retire do not follow the “normal research pattern” we have grown to expect.
If you are not interested in what Keith is talking about, stop responding to him.
I am not clear what the problem is here — I have responded with very fair and logical questions.
And the response has been basically gibberish.
Why does Keith need protection from me and others who are asking very pertinent questions?
Why the censorship all of the sudden?
When others have posted stuff about thorium or EV’s or frozen methane or windpower or earth-base solar — they have had to accept heavy criticism and forced to defend these theories.
And these are theories that are actually in play right this very moment — massive amounts of cash has been invested in all of them — they are real. Yet we are allowed to dissect them and destroy them….
But when Keith posts his theories we are expected to lay off….
Does anyone really think that someone is going to come up with a new energy technology that involves launching satellites into space and beaming down electricity….. without funding – without scientists — without engineers — without proper equipment and facilities?
Sorry to say but the whole thing is beyond ludicrous. It’s absurd.
And allowing this discussion to go on and censoring any comments that challenge the premise harms the credibility of FW.
Hi Fast Eddy,
I know it’s hard not to get irritated sometimes. But we should be tolerant of diverse views and debate them maturely. I am able to pour cold water on Keith’s ideas and at the same time absolutely defend his right to put them and will listen to him respectfully. If we can’t that we lose it in a sea of combative tribalism.
Unfortunately, facts are in the eyes of the beholders. That’s not to say that I will side with faulty logic, but there has to be attitude for disputing each others ideas. The science community does it all the time and where there are many skirmishes. This is where peer reviewing helps to sort of the sheep from the goats.
But I would put it another way too. Most people learn along the way. In their early days they tend to react to hard news by denying reality. Then they will tend to drum up simple solutions, with the hope that the predicament can be easily overcome. This is another form of denial. As they do into it deeper they find it’s all a bit harder than they thought. In time they review their ideas.
For sure, some (and it is nearly always blokes) will fixate on a certain technology and just can’t let it go and this technology becomes their life’s purpose. Mostly these blokes are harmless but, more so, have the value of forcing their theories to be tested. They may still hold on to them against all odds and even as they come to nothing you can just let go of them.
Just be aware that the profit motive is extremely powerful and that any technology that shows real viability and commercial promise would eventually get jumped on by entrepreneurs. As a general rule of thumb that if no corporation takes even a whiff then it’s likely that there’s nothing in it.
Right.
“Why does Keith need protection from me and others who are asking very pertinent questions?”
“But when Keith posts his theories we are expected to lay off…. ”
Personal attacks are a waste of effort. They are childish and lame compared the abuse I and my family have taken from the Scientology cult. You guys just don’t have the budget.
However, I don’t want people to lay off criticizing the ideas about power satellites or transportation or possible environmental damage from a lot of rocket traffic. If you have objections, about the economics, physics, engineering or other real problems I really want to hear about them. But objections, like claiming that power satellites need batteries to run a stove, are not based in reality. Making base load power is what power satellites are best at, and that’s not hard to verify with a tiny bit of research on the net. If someone finds a showstopper to power satellites, that I can’t answer or find the answer to it would be good to know. We could cross off power satellites as a potential to energy and carbon.
But engineering and economic problems are hard. It’s really rare that anyone does useful critique. I have had only half a dozen people who are willing and able to check a spreadsheet.
Here’s why NASA stopped pursuing SBSP and determined it was not feasible.
I am interested to hear how you intend to overcome these.
The SBSP concept also has a number of problems:
The large cost of launching a satellite into space
Inaccessibility: Maintenance of an earth-based solar panel is relatively simple, but construction and maintenance on a solar panel in space would typically be done telerobotically.
In addition to cost, astronauts working in GEO orbit are exposed to unacceptably high radiation dangers and risk and cost about one thousand times more than the same task done telerobotically.
The space environment is hostile; panels suffer about 8 times the degradation they would on Earth.
Space debris is a major hazard to large objects in space, and all large structures such as SBSP systems have been mentioned as potential sources of orbital debris.
The broadcast frequency of the microwave downlink (if used) would require isolating the SBSP systems away from other satellites. GEO space is already well used and it is considered unlikely the ITU would allow an SPS to be launched.
The large size and corresponding cost of the receiving station on the ground.[citation needed]
The possibility of energy losses during several phases of conversion from “photon to electron to photon back to electron,” as Elon Musk has stated. [39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
“For the most part I have posted facts that indicate the solar space project is not feasible.”
Let’s turn this around and make a question out of it.
What would it take for power satellites to be economically feasible?
Gail said at the conference where we were speakers that the cost should be less than 4 cents a kWh. I was talking about 3 cents a kWh. Do you know how to run a levelized cost of electricity calculation? If so, what capital cost, maintenance and discount can you afford for 3 cent power? How about 4 cent power? The rest of the analysis stems from these calculations, if you don’t know how to do them, you can’t say what kind of capital cost makes power satellites economically feasible.
BTW, microwave solar power from GEO is certainly possible, we use it for communication all the time, it’s the basis of a $300 B industry.
Feel free to think about this and reply with numbers.
How about we expand this beyond the cost issue …. and look at why NASA discontinued this … and why you might consider taking up golf or perhaps fishing….
Drawbacks
The SBSP concept also has a number of problems:
The large cost of launching a satellite into space
Inaccessibility: Maintenance of an earth-based solar panel is relatively simple, but construction and maintenance on a solar panel in space would typically be done telerobotically.
In addition to cost, astronauts working in GEO orbit are exposed to unacceptably high radiation dangers and risk and cost about one thousand times more than the same task done telerobotically.
The space environment is hostile; panels suffer about 8 times the degradation they would on Earth.[36]
Space debris is a major hazard to large objects in space, and all large structures such as SBSP systems have been mentioned as potential sources of orbital debris.[37]
The broadcast frequency of the microwave downlink (if used) would require isolating the SBSP systems away from other satellites. GEO space is already well used and it is considered unlikely the ITU would allow an SPS to be launched.[38]
The large size and corresponding cost of the receiving station on the ground.
The possibility of energy losses during several phases of conversion from “photon to electron to photon back to electron,” as Elon Musk has stated. [39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Drawbacks
Actually the biggest problem of all is the time factor. Let’s presume the technology is sound and forget the economics and the planning approvals and so forth. Even if just one of the technologies touted as magic fixes did happen to work they would really need to work as of yesterday. There are literally thousands of people like Keith who are dead keen on these things happening and excitedly fostering ‘solutions’. If any of these enthusiasts are able to persuade industrial corporations to take them up, they had better do it a couple of decades ago. But they would also need to work. And they can only overcome the technology part of the human predicament. This would be totally futile unless the remaining 95% of the problem is also attended to.
With all that in mind, good luck to them.
Yes of course…
Even if the eureka moments (there need to be many miracles — because there are many problems that appear to be insurmountable) happened today….
It would be too late…
” If any of these enthusiasts are able to persuade industrial corporations to take them up, they had better do it a couple of decades ago.”
It would be governments. Corporations don’t deal with problems that large or with payoffs that far into the future. But otherwise, you put your finger on an important point. Do we have enough time to implement a solution even if we know it will work?
I don’t know. There is a great deal of uncertainty in how long it we have and how long it will take. If it was an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, we would know to the second how long we have, but an energy/economic collapse can’t be timed that well. Even if we had excellent models, there are uncertainties that could kick it over the edge sooner, like widespread crop failure due to world wide weather changes.
It is possible to get an awful lot done in a short time, look up the timeline of the Manhattan Project. In this case, the pacing factor is the availability of low cost transport to LEO. An optimized, highly reuseable version of Falcon Heavy might be good enough to start while building up production of a space plane based around precooled engines.
“This would be totally futile unless the remaining 95% of the problem is also attended to.”
I am curious about your 95%. I can foresee an interesting collection of problems in the future, one of them is the human race leaving the physical world behind and withdrawing into simulations. It’s not that hard (if you are up on AI and nanotech) to imagine such things causing a population crash. If we stay in the physical world, it’s not hard to imagine a CO2 crisis of too little from people mining the atmosphere for carbon to build things. (Diamond and nanotubes are really good structural materials.)
The other 95 percent of the problem, Keith, is the culture of consumerism and asymptotic growth. These are ingrained in our culture. So long as that status quo remains no amount of enthusiastic technological innovation can sort out the larger predicament. Our bigger problem is that society wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants billions of solar panels and other magic solutions to be produced thinking that this will allow the train to stay on the rails. The majority in society really believes that this is possible.
“is the culture of consumerism and asymptotic growth. These are ingrained in our culture.”
Ah. That’s beyond my remit, I am just an engineer. You need a different kind of specialist to change that or to even discuss changing culture.
I am not entirely sure that it’s a good idea. There are things like a planetary orbit sized telescope I would like to see. That’s kind of high up the asymptotic scale.
“The large cost of launching a satellite into space”
Reduce the cost. If you can’t reduce the cost enough, don’t do it till you get the cost down.
“The space environment is hostile; panels suffer about 8 times the degradation they would on Earth.”
Don’t use solar panels. Thermal systems at 40% efficient are half the size of PV.
“Space debris is a major hazard to large objects in space, and all large structures such as SBSP systems have been mentioned as potential sources of orbital debris.”
I have run the same calculation Boeing did in the 70s and by my calculation a self powered power satellite gets hit about 40 times on its slow 6 month trip up through the space junk. So keep the material densely packed till you are above the space junk, virtually all of which is below 2000 km.
Stuff in GEO is all moving at exactly the same velocity and because of that does not collide.
“The broadcast frequency of the microwave downlink (if used) would require isolating the SBSP systems away from other satellites. GEO space is already well used and it is considered unlikely the ITU would allow an SPS to be launched.
Do you know why GEO space is “well used”? It’s because communication satellites need to be separated so the beams up from the ground don’t hit more than one of them. That’s just not a problem with power satellites. They can also host and power communication satellites. If power satellites were identified as a way to deal with energy/carbon/climate do you really think the ITU would stand in the way? In China’s way? Japan’s way? The frequencies proposed are already allocated for IMS use.
“The large size and corresponding cost of the receiving station on the ground.[citation needed]”
They are big, 10 km E/W and 14 km N/S for 2.45 GHz. And costly, about a billion dollars for the poles and the grid on top for a 5 GW rectenna. There are still a lot of places you can put them, including over farmland. The cost at a billion dollars is one part in 12 of the overall cost. I.e., not a big issue.
“The possibility of energy losses during several phases of conversion from “photon to electron to photon back to electron,” as Elon Musk has stated. [39]”
Granted, the efficiency is not high. But who cares? How efficient is it for the sun to evaporate water off the ocean and yet hydropower is the cheapest kind of power we have. It’s cost that’s important, not efficiency. Just because you are famous doesn’t keep you from making boneheaded statements.
When you think about it, anyone who works on this subject knows the Wikipedia article is wrong. Why not fix it? Because the people who are experts on the subject are considered to have a conflict of interest and can’t edit the article, though they can incorporate published material such as the May 2014 IEEE Spectrum magazine which has a lengthy article “It’s Always Sunny in Space” by Dr. Susumu Sasaki.” Good article, http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/how-japan-plans-to-build-an-orbital-solar-farm
I suppose you could say the same things about me.
All anyone does is work on parts of large problems. There are different ways a person can help–not all of them in a research lab. I am inclined to be tolerant of other people’s attempts to solve problems.
Historically, it has been attempts to solve problems that has moved the growth of civilization along. Civilizations have tended to crash anyhow, but we need a mix of different kinds of efforts.
Yes of course …. but I have posted the reasons why NASA and the US government folded the space based solar project…. there are multiple very good reasons for stopping…
Keith is unable to respond to these… he has no solutions….
Therefore this is a moot topic.
We might as well sit back and let some clown post endless comments about how he has worked out how to change lead into gold….
And if someone were to interrupt the endless flow of diarrhea with a question like – ok – you can change lead to gold…. why aren’t you driving a Ferrari and flying about in a private jet?
That person would be chastised for making fund of the alchemist….
“Keith is unable to respond to these… he has no solutions….”
I responded to your list, which you pulled off the Wikipedia article. And while *I* don’t have ways to solve the big problem, launch cost, others, such as SpaceX and Reaction Engines do.
If I look at the way the chinese treat their population I have come to the conclusion that we will become the first species without habitat in the old fashioned sense
At best, all we can do is kick the can down the road a bit longer. I think this is the reference you are thinking about. Human Domination of the Biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of mankind.
The key statement of that article is “. . . . of the biosphere, including the unalterable thermodynamic boundaries that now pose severe challenges to the future of humankind.”
Unalterable?
Already there is a $300 B per year satellite business that depends on harvesting energy outside of the boundaries they drew in that paper.
Many years ago there was a picture in Scientific American of a confused chicken in a U shaped enclosure failing to figure out how to get to food. I forget if it eventually found its way around the fence, but the next picture showed a chimp placed in the same situation who immediately figured out going around the fence. Chimp or chicken, your choice.
“Many years ago there was a picture in Scientific American of a confused chicken in a U shaped enclosure failing to figure out how to get to food. I forget if it eventually found its way around the fence”
We had Guinea Hens once. Every day, they would get separated into two groups on opposite sides of a fence and spend a lot of time trying to find a way around, until suddenly one of them would remember that they can fly.
It depends how high the fence is.
“It depends how high the fence is.”
Indeed it does. I have worked on getting the cost down off and on for 40 years and intensely since 2005. The work has not been intensively reviewed, but it looks good.
I agree that there are other limits too, but we have been “kicking the can down the road,” quite a while. Couldn’t we, in theory, kick the can down the road a bit longer, if we somehow had a very cheap, large scale solution to our energy problem?
No doubt we could. If that’s our purpose. Others see it as buying time until there’s a grand solution.
I think one thing is certain, with a lot of unbridled enthusiasm our industrial civilisation will very keenly kick the can down the road for as long as possible. This accords with our culture very well. And in this respect capitalist industrialists, consumers and alternative technology enthusiasts are all joined at the hip, egging on this enterprise.
I could join in, but what’s the point when that pathway is a certainty. I prefer to look to further horizons, even if those are beyond my own lifespan. Like, what happens when it’s no longer to kick the can any more?
“I prefer to look to further horizons, even if those are beyond my own lifespan.”
The future sure offers some strange paths. For example, I can’t see how humans are going to stay in control for very long, our intellectual offspring are most likely to be running the show by mid century.
Given that the Elders are 100% aware of the importance of an endless supply of cheap energy — and they would have been aware that cheap oil as finite…. and they would have had a fairly good idea of when peak cheap oil was going to occur (they know — but they do not disclose such sensitive info) — and that they have fought many wars to ensure that the cheap oil made it to market…
I think we can be reasonably certain that they have looked under every stone to try to kick this can further —- how many hundreds of billions if not trillions were spent on various alternative energy projects — imagine the value of solar subsidies alone…
They would have looked at thorium — I think China recently took one last kick at that can with a massive investment … have heard nothing on that front…
Ethanol is another kick at the can…
Then of course we have the massive amounts of money that have gone into shale — that bought us the last 8 years…
If there were anything else that might buy us a bit more time — we would have seen it by now.
But no – that’s all she wrote — we have resorted to financial gimmickry to try to continue to pump the expensive to extract oil…
We won’t get a Hollywood ending where the hero comes in to save the day and allow us to fight another day
Awesome. Totally.
Henson made his own credibility. With absolutely no claim to fame he edits his own Wikipedia page. Now that Is the height of arrogance or hubris I don’t know which.
I didn’t write the Wikipedia page, and I don’t edit the contents. Once in a while I add a new article, but adding such pointers is within the Wikipedia custom.
It looks like the wheels are coming off this superbubble. According to this ZH article that was just posted, there’s not a single ship in transit from Europe to North America.
“Nothing Is Moving,” Baltic Dry Crashes As Insiders Warn “Commerce Has Come To A Halt”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-11/nothing-moving-baltic-dry-crashes-insiders-warn-commerce-has-come-halt
This story doesn’t seem to be right, based on later information. It only measures ships near the shoreline.
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy
Oil price not far from high 20’s now as WTI -1.47 to 31.69
German Biker Gangs Attack Foreigners In Migrant “Manhunts”
“Bikers, hooligans, and bouncers” – oh my! It’s vigilante justice time in Cologne, where “gangs” of angry Germans organized a “human hunt” on Facebook before attacking a group of Pakistanis in the city center.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-11/german-biker-gangs-hooligans-attack-foreigners-migrant-manhunts
Now we’re in business! Got git them dirty refugees!!! Beat them all — smash them.
Another day and a half and it’s sayonara EU —- just in the nick of time — we’ll be racing down the runway chased by the flames — just like a Hollywood movie…
America can take a lesson from this — did I hear Mexican — did I hear Gang Banger????
Donald… oh Donald… time to rally the troops…
Things are really getting hot as we approach the end game — and as expected — this is going to get very tribal — and very violent….
Well, if you scroll down that very link you provided FE, there have been several hundred sexual assaults by refugee men on German women in Germany. There is a map shown with information about the attacks in Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Weil am Rhen in which 14 & 15 year old girls were ganged raped. Keep in mind this country opened these people with teddy bears and flowers – now the payback is sexual assaults. Does that seem fair?
That is not quite the same as 1000+ men descending on Cologne in an orgy of rape and pillaging…
I have stated that I do believe there are incidents occurring …. but I do not buy this story that the hordes are pouring into the streets…
‘Keep in mind this country opened these people with teddy bears and flowers – now the payback is sexual assaults. Does that seem fair?’
I dunno – we blasted their countries back to the stone age — we killed and maimed literally hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq/Syria/Libya….
We turned these countries into failed states.
How do you feel about that? Is that fair?
And Europe did NOT welcome these people in with teddy bears — I can imagine that most of these people have endured intense racist behaviour from large numbers of Europeans.
After all Europeans are famous for screaming monkey noises when millionaire black footballers take the pitches here….
So imagine the abuse that such people must inflict on dirty poor brown skinned men.
You may have seen my earlier comments regarding the incident my wife experienced at a gas station restaurant — it’s not the only time she’s been made to feel unwelcome…. and she does not resemble a poor refugee dressed in rags and mis-matched shoes…
I’ll keep my eyes out for refugees with teddy bears and flowers…
Germany did welcome them with teddy bears for the kids and flowers for the women. It was in the news if you missed it. Germany did not attack Syria or any of these other countries. There was and still is a civil war in Syria is how their plight got started. They couldn’t oust Assad and it’s been going on so long the people fled. It will never be ok to assault woman. That’s like saying it was ok what Russian soldiers did to German woman post WWII capitulation due to what occurred in Russia. Two wrongs do not make a right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVLNSOvpmT8
FE, that’s a video of a train of refugees being welcomed via cheering by Germans, followed them disembarking with smiles. Wait till you get close to the end of the video in which there is a huge pile of gifts of clothing and other items including water, food and hospitalization for those in need. Please watch the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znSOREknqas
Here’s another video, FE. In this one Germany welcomes 10,000 Syrian refugees in one day. All told they let in over 1 million.
“There was and still is a civil war in Syria is how their plight got started. ”
First, America invaded Iraq, so an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees fled to Syria, and the remnants of the Iraqi military, particularly the Republican Guard, helped form the Islamic State.
Then, from 2006 to 2011 they experienced severe drought that wiped out most of their farm land and livestock. Whether it is a natural weather cycle or AGW.
Then their civil war began.
Syria also has a financial problem with lack of oil exports. (This is similar to Egypt’s problem.)
@Gail, re Egypt, I seem to recall that Egypt has a major oil/gas field under development in the mediterranean, possibly jointly with Israel. That could solve many problems.
Not unless prices are a whole lot higher.
“You may have seen my earlier comments regarding the incident my wife experienced at a gas station restaurant”
Unfortunately, no, I don’t have time to read all posts. I catch a little here and there, but whatever happened to her, my heart goes out to both of you. I would hit the roof if someone disrespected my wife, so I can understand how this may be an emotionally charged topic for you. That being said, I’m appalled by what is happening to German women by the people not so long ago welcomed into the country. I don’t agree with vigilantism, but criminal activity should be met with deportations and fast to send a strong message that this type of behavior is not acceptable.
Would you send them back to Al Assad or to IS?
Why did mass immigration first occur, in Western countries? Because we needed people with skills to boost our economy – and also to do the jobs others didn’t want to do. Most societies are tribalist – probably around two thirds of the population is potentially racist to some degree. By that, I mean that they will be polite and accepting so long as there aren’t too many “outsiders” around. However, in Britain, from the 1960s onward, it was noticed that there was starting to be rather a lot of immigrants from non-European backgrounds. A lot of “native” British (or who thought themselves to be so – we are of course a bunch of mongrels) resented these visibly different newcomers. By the 1970s and 1980s we were having regular “race riots”. The second generation of blacks was not at all pleased at being so excluded from society.
British politicians were generally ahead of the public. Politicians get about a lot and meet people from many different backgrounds. Look at pictures of Mrs Thatcher cheerfully dancing with President Kaunda of Zambia in 1979. After the Brixton riots of 1981, she agreed, behind the scenes, to initiatives to combat racism. She sometimes wavered in the extent of her commitment, of course. She was hesitant about attacking apartheid South Africa, and occasionally she would spout about the rate of immigration if she thought it would help her popularity, while doing little or nothing about it. So she wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t all bad.
So my point is, I think a majority of Europeans are potentially racist to some extent – that’s largely human nature, I think. However, most will take their cue from their leaders, so racism is now regarded as largely unacceptable. Cognitive dissonance for some? Yes. But mass immigration is potentially destabilising in cramped times, yet it has been fed by BAU and its need for more “demand” – fodder for the Ponzi scheme. When BAU breaks down, there will be a surge in racism. We appear to be seeing the beginnings of it. Myself, I am English, with Scottish and Irish ancestry – yet Turks, for some reason, always assume I am Turkish – even though I have pale skin with freckles (that’s my Celtic side) – but “white” people accept me as “white”. Go figure. Which goes to show what nonsense racism is. However, I am quite capable of being “culturist” – where vociferous fundamentalists of a certain persuasion are concerned.
Anyhow, BAU demanded mass immigration, and government propaganda demanded that “white” populations be more accepting. When BAU breaks down, racism will increase – because humans are not perfect – and will find much more ethnic variety / “divisions” to feed on – thanks to BAU. It’s a fraught and complex situation.
I agree with your conclusions. When resources per capita starts falling people look for people who can be considered in an out-group and therefore excluded from resource use.
Really?
Which part don’t you get?
Do you not agree that NATO — which I believe all EU countries is part of — bombed the living shit out of Iraq, Syria and Libya — destroying the lives of millions — so that YOU could continue to live large?
Do you not agree that these actions have consequences — retaliatory acts of terror — and refugees clamouring to escape the living hell holes that we made these countries?
Do you not agree that it would be a fairly simple matter to stop the refugees from coming — or to deport them — that your government simply could say – no more?
Do you not agree that instead of opposing the influx of refugees that your governments are encouraging more of the same?
The MSM is a tool of those in control — have you not listened to the endless talk shows discussing how we need to open our doors to these people? Even down in NZ I have to turn off the car radio because they drone on and on and no about this…
If you are unhappy about the situation — you live in a so-called democracy — vote out those making these decisions — or better still — organize a mass protest in front of your parliament
Nah – easier to just attack the refugees…. as has been suggested perhaps this is all about deflecting disenchantment with the Elders as we head into the final stages of the end of BAU…
Rather than showing up at the castle with pitch forks and fire… the sheeple’s anger is directed towards these ‘brown-skinned rapists’
And the good little sheeple did exactly as they were told…. as they always do.
It is much easier to simply regurgitate the edicts from the Ministry of Truth that one reads in the MSM….
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength….
This abuse of Stilgar is unacceptable!
A little historical accuracy is called for here:
It is true that Allied and Russian soldiers did rape and steal during the last years of WW2 and after the conclusion of peace. Apart from the fact that mass conscript armies will contain rapists and other criminals, who will commit their usual crimes here and there, this took two basic forms in terms of mass crime:
1/ The Russians conducted mass rapes and also murdered many of their victims. This was accompanied by theft and arson on a very large scale. Some officers did intervene, (an Austrian friend told me of one such incident when a cousin of his was menaced and saved ) but it mostly happened at night when they were occupied with their own mistresses and the soldiers were very, very drunk.
2/ Less well-known -in fact mostly covered-up – is the behaviour of the African and Arab troops employed by the French ‘Army’ of Occupation (which old-school officers of the time called more of a mob than a disciplined force.)
In Italy and Germany they conducted whole-sale theft of property and livestock,(leaving peasants to starve) and forced themselves on any woman or child they could find. Their officers must have been complicit in this. Again, this mostly happened at night after scouting an area by day.
The Moroccan troops used by Franco during and after the Civil War behaved in exactly the same fashion, but that was a deliberate policy of terror on the Spanish population.
The mass of Allied soldiers (above all the Americans) had plenty of goods and money with which to buy sex from women desperate to eat in Italy and France, and also had plenty of their own nurses, etc, to consort with, so no need or inclination to rape on the whole.
don’t jest about the donald
this is a clip from a simpsons episode made 15YEARS AGO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVpgVa-E3e8
spooky or what
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dow
All right, the US stock market is not having a Black Monday like it looked like it might based on what happened last week. However, look at the chart on the link above for the Dow. Up a 100 to begin the day, followed by -100, then +70 and now down to about even. There are some very confused folks out there wondering whether to buy or sell. The early morning buyers are wondering what happened to positive early morning sentiment, and sellers are wondering if there will be another false rally so they can sell to the schmucks that jump back in on the uptick.
The fact the market is no longer capable of rising to previous heights of 18,300 as it stagnates a few hundred above 16,000, means it has transitioned into a lower level reflective of a reduced view of the economy.
I would expect that the central banks will step in no matter how many people and institutions dump stocks…
They will run the printing presses red hot if necessary and just step in and buy…
They will let the institutional money know that this is the plan — so the big money will be looking at this and realize there is no sense in unloading —- because the central banks will be buying — they will be driving the prices back up —- so better to stay long — hold your nose — and continue to make money…
Shorting is generally going to end badly — sitting in cash is pointless because there is not going to be a crash followed by a huge buying opportunity…
When this market crashes — that signals the end of BAU.
Given that the central banks are going to do everything they can to keep this market afloat I suspect that the trigger is more likely to be massive defaults starting with commodity producers…
That means big layoffs — and it takes down the banks…
The central banks will no doubt continue to print furiously and buy stocks —- meanwhile Rome will be burning as the deflationary collapse tears BAU to pieces….
Of course the trigger for this could potentially be a massive sell off in the markets — China is 80% retail… and individuals might just panic in huge numbers … and it won’t matter if the PBOC buys every stock offered for sale …. when confidence collapses that’s all she wrote…
I suspect that has already happened though — the China market is down nearly 20% (I think?) this week…. people will be running for the exits no doubt…. so far though no cracks… but as we know cracks can happen quickly … and the dam explodes under pressure….
The market only goes down if people must sell. If you need money, just dial F for FED and get more credit. No need to sell shares ever again!