What really causes falling productivity growth? The answer seems to be very much energy-related. Human labor by itself does not cause productivity growth. It is human labor, leveraged by various tools, that leads to productivity growth. These tools are made using energy, and they often use energy to operate. A decrease in energy consumption by the business sector can be expected to lead to falling productivity growth. In this post, I will explain why such a pattern can be expected, and show that, in fact, such a pattern is happening in the United States.
Preview of Figure 4. Total quantity of per capita energy used by the US Commercial and Industrial Sectors (excluding transportation). Computed by dividing EIA Energy Consumption by Sector by Total Non-Farm Employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Background
The problem of falling productivity growth seems to be a concern to many economists. An August Wall Street Journal article is titled, Productivity Slump Threatens Economy’s Long-Term Growth. The article says, “Productivity is a key ingredient in determining future growth in wages, prices and overall economic output.”
The general trend in falling productivity growth does not seem to be particularly recent. OECD data shows a long-term pattern of slowing productivity growth, dating back to the 1970s for many developed economies.
Figure 1. Five-year average growth in productivity per hour worked based on OECD data.
Falling productivity can be expected to affect wages. Figure 2 shows that in the United States, wages for both low and high paid workers increased much faster than inflation between 1948 and 1968. Between 1968 and 1981, wages for both sets of workers stopped rising. After 1981, wages for high paid workers (“Top 10 percent”) have risen much faster than for the bottom 90%. This reflects the way this lower productivity has been distributed to the work force. Low-wage workers have been affected to a much greater extent than high-wage workers.
Figure 2. Chart comparing income gains by the top 10% to income gains by the bottom 90% by economist Emmanuel Saez. Based on an analysis of IRS data, published in Forbes.
A Major Culprit in Falling Productivity Seems to Be Diminishing Returns with Respect to Oil Extraction
Many people believe that the only oil problem we need to worry about is the possibility that supply will “run out” at some point in the future. In my opinion, the real problem is different. What we are experiencing is diminishing marginal returns with respect to oil supply. In other words, it is becoming increasingly expensive to extract and process oil. Total costs, including wages for human labor, the cost of capital, the cost of energy to extract the oil, and required tax payments, are rising ever higher. Businesses are finding it nearly impossible to earn a reasonable profit extracting oil. If oil producers want to cover all of their costs, they need to borrow an increasing amount of money simply to cover normal business expenses, including the development of new fields (to replace currently depleting fields) and the payment of dividends.
Figure 3. Bloomberg exhibit showing that returns for three large oil companies on a “cash” basis fell after 2008, and are now at 50-year lows. CROCI means “Cash Return On Capital Invested.” Bloomberg source.
The problem of diminishing marginal returns extends to other commodity types as well, such as coal, natural gas, fresh water, and metals. Oil is especially important, because it is energy-dense and easy to transport, making it the world’s most-used fossil fuel. At the same time, we are experiencing rising costs for pollution control of various kinds, including attempts to prevent climate change.
The combination of diminishing returns for commodity production together with rising pollution control costs tends to make the world economy increasingly inefficient. This increased inefficiency affects the cost of producing many things that consumers value, including food, fresh water, housing, and transportation. Indirectly, the ability of businesses to create jobs that pay well is affected, also. I believe that this growing inefficiency in producing goods and services is the basis for the falling growth in productivity that appears in Figure 1.
Why Diminishing Returns with Respect to Energy Supplies Are Likely to be the Culprit in Falling Productivity
There are several basic issues that make our economy vulnerable to the impacts of diminishing returns:
- Energy plays a critical role in creating goods and services, and thus in economic growth.
- Energy that is very inexpensive to produce is important in setting up a benevolent cycle of greater productivity and more economic growth.
- Diminishing returns for oil and other energy products lead to higher costs of production. If these higher costs of production are passed through to the consumer as higher prices, this leads to what we think of as a recession, and a slow-down in economic growth.
- The timing of falling productivity “matches up” with falling energy consumption on the part of employers, and also with high oil prices.
Energy plays a critical role in economic growth because energy is necessary for all kinds of economic activity. Energy allows transportation to take place; it allows heating to take place, so metals can be smelted and chemical reactions of many kinds can take place; it allows the use of computers and the internet. When workarounds for problems are needed–for example, increased pollution control, or deeper wells, or desalination plants–all of these workarounds also require the use of energy products. So, the problem is not simply that it takes more fossil fuel energy to create energy products. Many other parts of the economy, including pollution control and extraction of fresh water and minerals, become more demanding of energy supplies as well.
Cheap-to-produce oil and other types of energy are important in setting up a cycle of economic growth. We think of productivity growth as being something that an employee is able to do. In fact, productivity growth is enabled by the use of “tools” that the employer (or the government) gives workers, allowing these workers to create more goods and services per hour worked. These tools can be either physical tools, such as machinery, computers, vehicles, and roads, or they can be tools provided through more specialization and training. In the case of physical tools, it is clear that energy is used both to create and operate the tools. In the case of specialization, energy is needed in a more indirect way; extra energy allows the economy to have sufficient surpluses to permit training of specialized workers, and also to allow them to have higher wages later.
Thus, we can think of human labor as being increasingly leveraged by energy-related tools. In fact, if we divide energy consumption of businesses (commercial and industrial) by the total number of non-farm employees in the United States, we find that energy consumption per employee falls very much according to the pattern we might expect, based on the rise and then fall in productivity growth shown in Figures 1 and 2. A slowdown in energy leveraging seems to correlate with the decline in the rate of productivity growth.
Figure 4. Total quantity of per capita energy used by the US Commercial and Industrial Sectors (excluding transportation). Computed by dividing EIA Energy Consumption by Sector by Total Non-Farm Employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Figure 4 shows that energy consumption per employee reached a peak in 1973. Energy consumption per employee started falling in 1974. This date corresponds to the first major run-up in oil prices (Figure 5). Oil prices, on an inflation-adjusted basis, have never returned to the very low level experienced prior to 1973.
Figure 5. Historical annual average price of oil, for a grade of crude similar to “Brent,” based on data of 2016 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
The period between the end of World War II and the early 1970s was generally a period in which inflation-adjusted oil prices were under $20 per barrel. At this very low price level, it made sense to add a new interstate highway system and to greatly upgrade the electric grid and the oil pipeline distribution systems. Once oil became high-priced, the US greatly backed away from leveraging worker productivity with such big projects. Other changes began as well, including gradually shifting manufacturing to other countries. These countries typically had lower labor costs and a cheaper energy mix (more coal and hydroelectric, and less oil).
The first run-up in prices occurred after US oil supply reached a peak in 1970 (Figure 5). According to a presentation by Steve Kopits, the second run-up in prices started occurring about 1999 (Figure 6). By then, we reached a point where a disproportionate share of the cheap-to-extract oil had already been removed. Oil producers needed to start work on new oil fields in areas where extraction costs were higher.
Figure 6. Figure by Steve Kopits of Westwood Douglas showing trends in world oil exploration and production costs per barrel. CAGR is “Compound Annual Growth Rate.”
Oil’s diminishing returns affect the economy. As we reach diminishing returns with respect to oil production, the cost of producing additional barrels of oil tends to increase. If this higher cost is passed on to goods made directly and indirectly with oil products, we find that the prices of many products rise. Food costs are particularly affected, because oil is used extensively in agriculture and in transporting goods to market. Higher oil prices affect the cost of other types of goods, because many goods–even coal–are transported using oil. The higher cost of oil tends to ripple throughout the entire economy.
The problem, however, is that higher oil costs lead to lower productivity, because employers and governments tend to purchase fewer energy products for the benefit of their workers when oil prices are high. We end up with a mismatch:
- The cost of oil products, and many other products, tends to rise.
- The productivity of workers tends to grow more slowly. Wages rise very slowly, if at all. They certainly do not keep up with soaring oil prices.
The result of this mismatch is recession, as occurred in the 2007-2009 period. Economist James Hamilton has shown that 10 out of 11 post-World War II recessions were associated with oil price spikes. A 2004 IEA report states, “. . . a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. Inflation would rise by half a percentage point and unemployment would also increase.”
A Second Way Diminishing Returns Can Work Out Badly: Prices that Are Too Low and Oversupply
In the preceding section, I explained how oil prices, if passed on to the consumer via higher prices of other goods, could lead to recession. Because our economy is a networked system, the situation doesn’t need to work this way to come out badly. There is an alternative scenario in which oil prices stay too low for businesses extracting oil to make an adequate profit. In this scenario, it is businesses, rather than consumers, who find that they have a huge financial problem. This is the problem we are encountering now. In fact, it is not just oil-producers who have a profitability problem; the profitability problem extends to businesses producing coal, natural gas, metals, and many kinds of agricultural commodities.
The reason why this kind of low-price scenario can take place (despite rising costs) is because workers are also consumers. We saw in Figure 2 that the wages of the lower 90% of workers tend to lag behind when energy consumption per worker is falling. There are a very many workers in the bottom 90%. If the wages of these workers lag behind, homes, cars, vacations, and many other kinds of discretionary goods become less affordable. The reduced demand for these finished products leads to lower demand for a wide range of commodities. This lower demand tends to push commodity prices of many kinds lower, even though the cost of production is rising. As a result, profits for a wide range of commodity producers tend to fall in a way similar to that shown in Figure 3.
It may be that we can expect a recessionary impact, a short time after profits fall. According to Deutsche Bank:
Profit margins always peak in advance of recession. Indeed, there has not been one business cycle in the post-WWII era where this has not been the case. The reason margins are a leading indicator is simple: When corporate profitability declines, a pullback in spending and hiring eventually ensues.
The article goes on to show that there is a lag of about two years between the time of profit compression and the time when recession hits. The amount of variability is quite high, with one recession coming as soon as 4 quarters after a fall in profitability, and two coming as late as 15 or 16 quarters after a fall in profits. The median lag was 8 quarters, and the average lag was 9 quarters.
This Deutsche Bank description of the cause of recessions gives an explanation why Hamilton encountered recessions after oil price spikes. These rising oil prices affected one of the costs of production for most companies. These rising costs compressed profits, and eventually led to recession.
This description of the cause of recession shows how recession can also ensue if commodity prices remain too low for an extended period. We know that oil prices began falling in the third quarter of 2014. It is now two years later. Profit margins of many commodity producers have been squeezed. We have already seen layoffs in the oil and coal industries. In this low-priced situation, companies are affected unevenly: some benefit from low prices, while others are hurt by low prices.
Commodities are often essential to economies, especially for countries that export commodities. These exporters are especially likely to be affected by low prices. Impacts are likely to include civil disorder and falling production, similar to what we are now seeing in Venezuela.
Oil importers are dependent on oil exporters, so eventually oil imports must drop. Low oil prices are likely to lead to a drop in locally produced oil products as well. As a result, we can expect that less oil and fewer other energy products will be available for leveraging the labor of human workers. If past patterns hold, we can expect a further decline in productivity growth. Rising oil prices are not really a solution either, because, as we have seen, they tend to lead to recession.
Diminishing Marginal Returns Don’t Just Go Away by Themselves
Economists claim that the law of diminishing marginal returns operates only in the short run, because in the long run, all factors of production are variable. This statement might be true, if we lived in a world without limits. In fact, the amount of arable land is very close to fixed. We have not found a way to stop population growth, either. As a result, the amount of arable land per person is falling. We need to keep finding ways to produce increasing amounts of food per arable acre of land. Doing so typically requires energy products, including oil.
We are having similar problems with fresh water supply. We can solve our falling fresh water per capita problem with deeper wells, long-distance transport, or desalination. Any of these workarounds requires energy products.
Of course, we have had diminishing returns with respect to oil supply since the 1970s. We have not yet found a reasonable workaround. Intermittent electricity is not a reasonable substitute; it does not power existing airplanes, trucks and most cars. When all costs are considered, intermittent electricity tends to be very expensive. Experience shows that if subsidies are given for intermittent electricity, they are needed for other types of electricity generation as well.
Figure 7. Figure by Euan Mearns showing relationship between installed wind + solar capacity and European electricity rates. Source Energy Matters.
The belief that diminishing marginal returns are temporary is probably related to the belief that there are substitutes for everything, including energy supplies. Unfortunately, this is not the case; the laws of thermodynamics dictate otherwise.
As a result, when businesses use falling amounts of energy per capita, we should not be surprised if productivity lags, and if wages for many workers barely rise with inflation. It is possible to get some productivity gains through education, but it is very unlikely that these gains are as large as when more capital goods are used, as well as more direct use of energy. There are also clearly diminishing returns with respect to education and training; for example, if we need 10,000 additional dentists per year, training 50,000 additional dentists per year would not be helpful.
Can We Solve Our Productivity Problem with Lower Interest Rates, or with Increased Deficit Spending?
I wouldn’t count on it. Our problem is an energy problem.
Increased deficit spending could perhaps raise commodity prices a bit, and thus help the profitability of companies producing commodities. The reason commodity prices might rise is because increased spending by governments would act to supplement the low spending by workers who are suffering from low growth in wages. The sale of goods might rise for a while, but productivity of workers would still lag. Economic growth would, at best, remain very slow. If the economy were headed for recession or the collapse of commodity exporters, that situation would continue to be the case.
Lower interest rates would likely be even less helpful than deficit spending. There is no guarantee that these low interest rates would lead to increased spending on capital goods that would benefit workers. Banks in Europe and Japan would likely have even more problem with adequate profitability than they do now. Bank failure would become even more of a concern than it is now.
Our problem is really a lack of very cheap-to-produce energy that can be used to inexpensively leverage the labor of human workers. This energy needs to be of the correct kind to match the requirements of existing equipment. Without this leveraging, it is likely to be impossible to fix our productivity problem.
Regarding subsidies to the oil industry….. here’s a myth buster:
Which Companies Pay The Most In Taxes?
ExxonMobil in 2011 made $27.3 billion in cash payments for income taxes. Chevron paid $17 billion and ConocoPhillips $10.6 billion.
And not only were these the highest amounts in absolute terms, when compared with the rest of the 25 most profitable U.S. companies (see our slideshow for the full rundown of who paid what), the trio also had the highest effective tax rates.
Exxon’s tax rate was 42.9%, Chevron’s was 48.3% and Conoco’s was 41.5%. That’s even higher than the 35% U.S. federal statutory rate, which is already the highest tax rate among developed nations.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/04/16/which-megacorps-pay-megataxes/#3ae8faa7a7ee
This has always been the case. Energy companies are the big source of tax revenue. The whole idea that substitutes can exist without paying taxes (get subsidies instead) is simply silly. The goal of energy production is to provide surpluses to fund government operations. These surpluses are transferred to governments using taxes. If there are no surpluses, the whole operation is likely an energy sink. It is the fact that intermittent energy is of such low quality, and is delivered so late relative to the time of investment (with no charge for interest for capital investment), that obscures this problem in standard EROEI calculations.
Statistically speaking, NM is entirely dependent on oil and gas to fund government, so this is a moment of crisis, with the legislature recalled to solve the budget shortfall. The question is what to do to deal with the crisis. The governor wants to keep on mining for oil and gas, seemingly ignoring how that might not square with EROEI. I think the state of over all planning there is very poor, and that improving it could lead to savings and other improvements. But the entire system is so mired in over-complexity and dysfunction…
Meanwhile in Siberia……………..
“2016 Lake Baikal Fires Too Dangerous to Fight
“This year around the region of Lake Baikal, an unrelenting (climate change-related) drought combined with abnormal heat to produce massive fires. The fires raged and flared throughout the summer. As the typical wildfire season came to an end during late August, the fires continued to burn and spread. According to Greenpeace, the fires burning during September in this region alone covered nearly 5 million acres. That’s an area about the size of Massachusetts. Satellite shots of the massive fires were dramatic, revealing plumes of dense smoke spewing out over hundreds or even thousands of miles. Residents of cities and towns around Lake Baikal experienced terrible conditions due to a suffocating pall of dense smoke covering the area.”
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/09/28/for-one-month-we-are-suffocating-from-smoke-for-russia-climate-change-is-already-producing-fires-that-are-too-big-to-fight/
I looked up the city of Bratsk, Russia, which seems to be nearby. It has a population of 242,000. It is a very polluted industrial city, not too far north of Mongolia. The fires are farther south than I expected–near the southern edge of Siberia. Still not good at all! I can see not fighting the fires, if there are not cities nearby.
Many climate scientists now feel that we are now into the abrupt climate change zone- and yet greenhouse gas emissions are setting new records.
I am not getting a good feeling about the odds here……
There are no more odds left, we’re finished. NASA scientists just said last week the CO2 is not going to reverse, we cannot stop it now no matter what cockamamie schemes we come up with. We cannot fix or revert the CO2 situation. It’s game over. If we don’t have a financial collapse in the next few years we are going to feel the impact of a collapsing biosphere.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738
On the other hand, atmospheric CO2 is an excellent plant nutrient. The increasing concentration is definitely contributing to the success of modern agriculture. And if the increase stems from human emissions from fossil fuel burning, then it’s another net plus for the activity, just like those oil company taxes that the Greenies tend to ignore and the gasoline that helps build and fuel the private cars that George Monbiot and Bill McKribben drive. We’ll be very glad to have the blessing of all this CO2 once BAU collapses in order to help feed those of us who succeed in returning to the Shire—because, oh yes, Mr. Frodo, the fertilizer plants will not be operating and deliveries of guano from Pacific islands will not be available from Amazon—just as we’ll need that 240kg of human “waste” per capita that we are currently wasting but which makes excellent fertilizer. It pongs a bit, but no bucolic rustic paradise should be without it.
Notice that the region around Lake Baikal has “a typical wildfire season”. In other words, it isn’t exactly monsoon country. The lakes level has been low for the past couple of years. But:
For the first time fast decline in the level of water in Lake Baikal was registered in the autumn of 2014. Experts say that the lake has entered into another period of natural shallowness, already observed in the past. It may last up to a quarter of a century. Since 1962 Baikal has fallen below the 456-meter mark eleven times. An all-time record low of 455.27 meters was registered in 1982.
More:
http://tass.com/science/848907
Please, interrupt your climate change lamentations for long enough to appreciate that climate varies, changes and fluctuates naturally both cyclically and unpredictably on a host of time scales. The temperature, the amounts of sunshine, cloud, rain, snow, wind and storm are all variable on annual, decadal, century, millennial and longer time scales. This is not a defect of nature but a built-in feature.
‘Mr Cryer said that at no point in the last 20 years had Deutsche Bank been as strong as it is now.’
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37516805
That is a statement bound for infamy…..
The commanding view from the top of the roller coaster cannot be beat.
I suppose that a person could read that literally: today’s strength is very low, and at no time in the past, has it been so low.
Just ask yourself, who has the most to gain by the collapse of Deutsche Bank?
http://comments.gurgaonscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/q08-Raheja-quote-follow-the-money.jpg
Who ?
I explained it above, you can have been on buddy buddy relations or even close intermarriage status within the top notch gang of thief and pillagers, but as it usually the case, when times get though, it’s suddenly everybody for himself from now on.
And in the last stage your former buddies even thread on you submerged in the water, so they can just breath a little longer, keeping their high noses above the water, while you are drowning bellow them. In the role of the sucker extraordinaire here is obviously the pro Atlantis Europe.
Europe is of course an easy target since behind the European Union façade we are just warring tribes. The blame for creating this interconnected monster in interdependence of each others in these times must in the end fall on our selves.
Europe is the big short because that is just business.
I know!
The doomsday preppers who cannot wait for the end of BAU so that The Great Adventure can begin.
If Doosh bank goes down then we get Lehman on steroids.
The preppers are behind this … they have massive shorts on and are pulling their cash out of Doosh bank
Deutsche Bank CEO blames ‘doomsday prepper forces’ for crisis
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/deutsche-bank-ceo-blames-market-forces-for-crisis-in-letter-to-employees-2016-09-30
The Great Adventure ? The El ders of Z ion ? The Messiah ? The New World Order ?
Will the derivatives turn everything into their hands ?
Eventually China and the Eurasian Union. But then the Chinese have a somewhat different set of issues than the West.
Is there anyone who really gains from the collapse of Deutsche Bank? Doesn’t it just push us closer to collapse? I can see that hedge funds gain by avoiding having their funds locked up in a failing bank.
I am sure that is what he meant 🙂 These bankers can be so cryptic at times…..
DEATH WATCH:
Deutsche Bank Sinks to a Fresh Record Low
Deutsche Bank Troubles Sour Quarter’s End for European Equities
The German lender sank 6 percent to a fresh record low, following losses in its U.S.-listed shares, after some hedge funds moved to cut their exposure to it. Banks led declines among industry groups in the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, which dropped 1.5 percent at 8:14 a.m. in London. The benchmark’s down 2.2 percent this week, the most since June.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-30/deutsche-bank-troubles-sour-quarter-s-end-for-european-equities
I can already feel the warmth of a simmering bond inferno…..
Soros shorted DB after the Brexit vote and after that it’s all about DB and Germany.
I’m still going with the feeling that they have decided to take down Germany and continental Europe (perhaps because I live here).
Clearly, the main project of late 1990s – very early 2000s was to build up coherent Europe as sort of second citadel, which at the minimum would be a fall back option and co-chairing events for the global TPTB, but also perhaps hopefully became #1 candidate for holding the keys to the global in coming decades..
Well, the “cunning plan” didn’t exactly pan out, actually it’s a giant disaster on both accounts, western Europe is falling fast into lower second and third tier global status. The major globals of the Atlantist faction in panic to worsening own situation pushed to secure some last ground for themselves, so instead turned against Europe hard, now we can see the last episodes of this full mode of pillaging, mainly through the financial warfare and also unleashing the migrant weapon, self inflicted economic sanctions on the stupid Euros etc.
The above is a story of classic case of Triage at the highest court of kings and emperors, from which it is going to spill over onto us mere ants and work bees, great stuff for the history books or rather informal legends, perhaps to be told over the camp fires in the not so distant bleak future.
Soros is the leader of the doomsday prepper forces…. he lives for chaos and suffering…
https://nteb-mudflowermedia.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/black-lives-matter-funded-by-george-soros-new-world-order.jpg
He also really really really likes…. very young girls
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/11/article-2024790-0D64505F00000578-729_634x614.jpg
Getting nice and toasty.
He also reiterated there will be no annual war games between the Philippines and the United States until the end of his six-year term, placing the longstanding alliance under a cloud of doubt. It also may make Washington’s strategy of rebalancing its military focus towards Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China much more difficult to achieve.
Still, U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter, speaking before the latest remarks from Duterte, said Washington had an “ironclad” alliance with Manila.
A senior U.S. defense official, also speaking earlier, told reporters that the United States had a long enduring relationship with the Philippines regardless of who was president.
“It’s going to continue to survive based on what we think are strong U.S.-Philippines common security interests, so we’ll be engaging President Duterte further,” the official said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-hitler-idUSKCN1200B9
This is worth watching again…
If Trump gets in, I imagine Duterte will flourish. The two men are distinctly “of the people”. But if Hillary takes over, she may decide to “come” and “see” him.
Duterte or any other guy from the bunch next line will just flourish. To my understanding, it’s not the case of a faction or single dictator taking over, more or less most of the military people were fed up with the status quo. Moreover on the ground there, it’s rather impossible not to witness the vast change as increasingly just everything is suddenly Chinese, from consumer trinkets, to investments and credit. So why on Earth should they continue obey some falling former power long distance away across the Pacific, which brings nothing, only death and problems in its wake.. ? This is one of the major fracture lines why the former hegemon is loosing it in Asia fast.
I love his colorful language. Since he’s called all male leaders he’s encountered so far sons of bitches, what will he call Hillary?
Space exploration
Space sector questions whether Musk mission to Mars will lift off
Experts see plan as relatively credible but warn big technical obstacles to manned flight remain
https://www.ft.com/content/e2fa45a4-8638-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5
I have an idea — let’s stick Elon in the capsule and fire him off to Mars… and be done with him.
‘Radiation is also a big concern, with space travellers exposed not only to the sun’s radiation but to cosmic rays that are difficult to stop. Nasa has yet to solve the problem, and Mr Musk brushed off questions about it on Tuesday, saying he thought it would not be a problem.’
K.eith – you and Elon have something in common! If it can’t be done you just brush it off 🙂
More…
“There is a huge amount of material that has to support these people,” says Mr Smith. “They are not going to be drinking water from a local creek or cutting down firewood. They will have to bring everything with them.”
One would be forgiven if that was pulled off of The Onion … but nope…. it is a main page headline on a leading ‘serious’ MSM…. I am sure if I did a search I’d find the same rubbish all over other MSM sites….
I can imagine the discussion around the dinner tables of millions of families this weekend will be about how wonderful it will be to travel to Mars very soon.
And around the other billions of tables the discussion will involve Paris/Kim/Justin’s latest antics…. followed by bitter, divisive arguments over who should win American Idol …
https://s3.amazonaws.com/metvnetwork/c8vWQ-1462211519-3709-list_items-longest_runnin.jpg
A great sequel to The Martian!
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/img/musk_final.jpg
What will Elon use for energy on Mars? Oil? Nuclear?
Keith…. this is your opening…. you should put your people in touch with Elon’s
We barely have enough energy on planet Earth to keep all the people clothed, fed and housed. There is a lot less energy on Mars than Earth. So, indeed where will the energy come from to power another virtual human world on Mars?
Of this I am sure: there is, was and will never be human life on Mars. We did not evolve on Mars. We are part of this Earth. We evolved from this Earth. We cannot survive on Mars because we did not evolve on Mars. This whole idea of Humans on Mars is just dam stupid shit. Anybody dumb enough to think we will terra-form Mars is just stupid to the nth degree. We can’t even take care of this planet so how in the hell will we terra-form a planet millions of miles away?
Musk has watched Total Recall once too often
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it’s cold as hell. But despite that, you can get a hell of a suntan there.
Without a global magnetic field and with little atmosphere to provide shielding, the surface of Mars is bombarded by two types of primary radiation. Solar flares are bursts of low-energy protons from the Sun; they are intermittent and relatively easy to shield against. Galactic cosmic rays (GCR) are extrasolar, high-energy atomic nuclei that damage DNA; they are continuous and cannot be shielded against, so determining the dosage an astronaut would receive is necessary prior to any human exploration. Mars Odyssey’s Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE) provided the first direct information about the martian radiation environment. It found radiation exposure at the martian surface to be about two and a half times that at the International Space Station, in agreement with calculated values.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/topten.cfm?topten=10
confirms Musk’s delusions.
Existence in a sustainable context requires continued employment iin the context of net acquistion of energy—namely food, or fuels of some kind
Mars can deliver neither, so must be externally supported
How about sending the robots to Mars and letting them go about the task of mining minerals and growing biofuels and food there that they can ship back to Earth to keep humanity happily provided for while we focus on what we do best, which is being fruitful and multiplying?
I vote to remove the censor robot.
Definitely, that robot is a total douche
The NSA has a new proprietary censor robot that they would be happy to install….
It’s already installed. Probably being upgraded as we speak.
Tacking a poorly written robot on top of a poorly written blog site is a recipe for frustration, bad feelings, and reduced readership. All to avoid the appearance of a few words that are very much in the world lexicon? Ridiculous.
Wouldn’t it be nice to at least know what the magic words are?
It seems my more innocuous posts get held — and the tirades go live…. perhaps reverse the logic of the censor robot…
This involves turning the dial in the earpiece 180 degrees…
http://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/robot-head.jpg
😉
“a poorly written blog site”
Jeez, what an insult, gal. You want me to visit ya?
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/771b1fbf98f680a716afe138a95fc2a80de9c149/0_645_3504_2101/master/3504.jpg?w=1920&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=343228239f9acae268f7cd17c842ba8f
Douche Bank is on the brink of TOTAL COLLAPSE down 7% today alone….whilst the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia made new lows again too!
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/dontpanicoldT1.jpg
Doesn’t sound good at all!
Looks like Germany is about to get Greece’d!
FE has got a point here. DB has been falling like a rock for years, so it should have been fenced off already. That’s also the story DE .gov and ECB actively portraits as well. Or it could be used as an convenient trigger over the next collapse threshold, i.e. increased portion of the planned economy from now on as they have not yet bought all the markets equity, not mentioning bonds of companies. The project of forced japanization of the rest of the world economies might need a convenient scapegoat. Let’s see what’s ahead..
Who will buy the goods and services once the robot army takes over all the jobs?
Does each person get some tokens?
I think the USSR already tried this system — the workers were turned into robots….
“Who will buy the goods and services once the robot army takes over all the jobs?”
A robot and computer is made to serve it’s owner. You are a human automaton with petty needs and you, too, have owners.
“I think the USSR already tried this system — the workers were turned into robots….”
The employees/workers/plebs owned that joint. And see how that went.
Communism is groupthink at max speed towards dystopia.
http://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/5/4702/capitalism_demotivator_by_party9999999-d33x22t.jpg
You are aware that you are discussing a world run by robots — in a world that is right now collapsing?
Let me guess – when you were a kid you were addicted to
So if it collapses, where is the instadoom? Keeping your fingers crossed? Could you grasp this concept that the world is a plutocracy?
And it is already run by machines and computers. Modern mechanized agriculture. Large wheeled ‘robots’ that does all the traditionally heavy labour.
I think it’s time you broaden your view on how robotification, automation, mechanization and computerization eventually will conclude…
.. Which is as the obsoleteness of human plebs/workers/consumers. The sh1tty humanoid automatons will go the way of the dodo.
Because it is the wish of the owners.
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/11368195.jpg
No – the world is run by humans… computers are our slaves.
As for slow vs fast… I want it to be slow…. but the logic side of me says fast.
Have you got any good paint by numbers stuff for us to see?
Smite’s argument, and quite correct one is that the process of automation-robotization, has been also wildly applied to data processing, hence the ability now to cut off large parts of the former middle managerial layers/jobs, which is INDEED happening ALL across the board for THIS VERY REASON.
Simply, the CBs and top trans nationals can very easily through data mining of credit card purchases, bank accounts, shipping etc. see large meta-patterns of consumer behavior and steer their operation in desired course.
In this sense the world is already operated by the Elite and their algorithms-robots.
The middle layers are obsolete, the next big step/goal is to triage away more of the former consumers, which are debt over saturated on personal as well .gov level..
Robots are tools. Nothing more.
Are they taking jobs away from humans. Of course they are – they have been for thousands of years.
Are there limits?
Can a robot install a toilet?
Does any of this matter? Nope.
There will soon be no robots.
worldofhanumanotg; pretty much spot on.
“Simply, the CBs and top trans nationals can very easily through data mining of credit card purchases, bank accounts, shipping etc. see large meta-patterns of consumer behavior and steer their operation in desired course.”
Thus no need for a large staff of corporate drones doing their biased and half-witted analysis while bored to death while watching at the clock wanting the day to end.
“No – the world is run by humans… computers are our slaves.”
The world is run by the elites with their automatons; plebs, computers and machines.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/doctorwhogeneral/images/9/93/Disdain_4_plebs_16.jpg
Well yes… one can look at that way…. the E.lders run the world…. the go-yim cattle are the tools… along with the computers.,… but don’t forget the hammers…. and chainsaws…. they are all subjects of the empire too
Many of us are very happy tools – we are treated quite well by the masterminds
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-st1Kq40vLME/UrqOmBPw5BI/AAAAAAAAHnM/mxzPbV9buVo/s1600/High-Five-Dog-Trick.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/02/23/037015940000044D-0-image-a-6_1424698750609.jpg
“Can a robot install a toilet?
Does any of this matter? Nope.”
From goddamn Investment Banking to Plumbing within a post or two. Complexed ignorant much?
Pick something harder, not merely an engineering challenge.
For example: Who’s going to write the software for the robots and computers?
I’ll propose that the final relevant and productive job for a human will be that of a computer programmer. When software can be created using other software. Then the game is completely over for the plebs.
I can see that you feel very strongly about this robot subject.
If only you could see the bigger picture — that it does not matter — your blood pressure would stabilize.
If you are unable to get your mind around that you can always dull it with:
http://www.buyabilify15mg.com/content/buygenericabilify.jpg
actually installing a toilet matters a great deal.
The point being that any animal discharges a certain amount of bodily waste each day,
In humans thats about 240 lbs a year (give or take)
If you live in a static environment, you have to shift that much or be overwhelmed by it—in a modest sized town, 10000 people maybe—well you do the math—.
Putting it onto fields nearby?—great idea, except that you conveniently recirculate all the pathogens that every has, to everyone else, very rapidly
Going into the woods with a shovel is fine, until everyone is doing the same thing
If you’re prepared to put up with the stench and disease of medieval living, then fair enough. If not, then consideration about sanitation as being one of our prime future problems is worth thinking about
The medieval people must have been stupid!!! They didn’t know how to dispose of their waste — so they spread disease….
All they had to do was dig a hole — put it in there – and cover it up … then move to the next hole…
Funny how we all think we are so much smarter. Funny how we do not realize that doing the above will pollute the water table….
Funny how we think we can throw hundreds of thousands of tonnes of spent fuel ponds into the ocean without killing everything in the ocean…
Funny how we think we can just dig up our lawns, find seeds somewhere and keep the water tap running – and feed our families…
The impossible seems so easy — until you actually have to try it.
Shall we try Collapse Lite?
Turn off the power for a week and don’t use any fossil fuels. Start going to the bathroom in a hole…. keep a diary … then post it on FW when the week it up…. 3-2-1…. go.
Of course nobody will do that…. nobody will even try that for a day…. because doing so would pierce the bubble of delusion …. it would lead to despair when one realizes that when BAU goes everything goes… you will be like a person thrown naked into the forest….
And you will realize — those Medieval people were not stupid after-all….
they thought that the carrier of disease was the smell itself, not the excrement
hence the word Mal-aria, Bad air.
They had no way of knowing differrently.
“I can see that you feel very strongly about this robot subject.”
I don’t need numbness. I want to accelerate this process so that we can take the next step in our evolution. You know, to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
If that means you and your cronies, actually most people on earth, will be kicked out of the B(A)Us, so be it. You are mostly yet another useless and boring humanoid automaton anyway.
Capitalism – “The extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men with the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”
That is pretty good!
The owners will be given the fruits of the robots labor. Call it a dividend for the owner.
Wouldn’t the robots just kill off all the useless humans?
Why would the robots assume the jobs of humans? If they kill off the humans why do anything that is not related to maintenance of the robots’ inner workings?
You assume a computer/robot-only society. And rightfully, once General AI/intelligence eclipses that of a human, it will be impossible for the owners to control the outcome indeed.
In the mean time, there will be the owners with their machines, robots and computers supporting them and much less unproductive and resource wasting humans.
Can the ow.Ners control the outcome now?
They can probably still steer this boat towards more for themselves and less for everybody else. Or so it seems.
Berlin could use a loophole in the bank-rescue legislation that allows a precautionary state recapitalization of a bank that has failed a stress test. The finance ministry could try to persuade the bank’s supervisor to test Deutsche’s capital cushion, allowing the government to step in with a capital injection should the bank fail the test.
While some economists see this as bending the rules, most say it would leave them intact.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/09/29/loophole-for-deutsche-bank-bailout-game-almost-over/
Doooosh Bank is unlikely to be the trigger…. also the fact that we do not have troops on the street (yet) leads me to believe the el.ders have this under control.
Continue with the bucket listing…. nothing to see here
The e-ders might be comfy enough, but there are others who are sh-tting their pants. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37155060
The bank run begins.. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-29/run-begins-deutsche-bank-hedge-fund-clients-cut-collateral-exposure
It’s good that you have faith in your e-ders. I don’t have that much faith in my version, the deep state neocons. The solutions in my mind, from the ruling elite, are too much like naive comic book solutions, without proper consideration to what the real world is actually like.
The MSM always frets when ordered to … it’s how they get the sheeple to welcome the next imposition on them…
Think about terror — far more people are killed by guns in the US than terrorists in any given year…. but terror is a tool…. to frighten
Think about 2008…. Lehman was let go … to frighten the masses…. and allow the central banks do ‘whatever it takes’ —- without any real opposition … trillions upon trillions of dollars… and nary a vote on that…
Looking at the big picture — as has been discussed …. it appears that they are setting the table for Martial Law Lite…
The Doosh Bank problems could be the ultimate trigger —- if so then I expect confirmation will come in the form of troops on the street…. beforehand….
All it would take is a significant act of terror …
There is no question that the pressures are building…. another quarter of declining corporate profits…. Japan seems to be out of options…Europe’s banks are going to pieces…. global trade is very weak….
Let’s see….
Once we cross the rubicon things will move very quickly….
As I recall, our great leader here in New Zealand is of the view that the banks in this country won’t collapse – which is why he wrote legislation for bail ins from depositors with no deposit insurance. Given the degree to which banks around the world are interdependent, and how dependent New Zealand is on overseas borrowing to fuel the housing boom that is helping to keep our economy propped up, added to what we saw in the global meltdown that happened last time a big bank collapsed. Last time we were effectively saved by China’s debt fuelled mass spending. This will probably be a whole new situation for New Zealand if Deutsche Bank collapses.
On the other hand, so long as celebrities are getting married and divorced, sports teams are battling it out on the field, and cute animals are dancing on screen, it may well be that nobody notices anyway.
I think DB collapsing could do it actually if only because the people in charge cannot with any accuracy predict what will happen when those financial weapons of mass destruction go off.
I posted something along those lines in response to your earlier comment — it’s hung up by the
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/CENSORED_The_Birth_of_Venus_by_William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1879).jpg
What re all those black band-aides doing covering that fine piece of art? They missed at least one sensitive area, but I’m not telling!
If Venezuela would use all of its hydro power to produce heavy oil from Orinoco… and in a way convert hydro power to perhaps 1 million barrels of heavy oil for exports… and the population was reduced to a minimum that would maintain the energy production… then Venezuela (or this new Venezuela) would do just fine ?
The bottleneck might perhaps lead to a slimmer more efficient world… still a modern technological world… but with a lot less people ?
That is of course if we somehow can manage the collapse of our civilization without taking the whole planet down the hole with us.
Orinoco heavy oil. Yuck. Gooey. Stinky. Expensive to refine.
So the Venezuelan population would be terminated except for oil workers and their immediate families? How would that go? And they would make their living by refining heavy Orinoco oil and marketing to developed world?
To what’s left of the developed world. How it will be done ? I haven’t got a clue… well… except that it wont be very pleasant for the majority of us.
“So the Venezuelan population would be terminated except for oil workers and their immediate families? How would that go? And they would make their living by refining heavy Orinoco oil and marketing to developed world?”
It would go the same way as Syria and Iraq. Divide and Conquer. Cut out most of BAU for the general population and start to sprinkle the barrel bombs and have mercenaries protecting the key infrastructure.
Would you say ‘NO’ to a job and some security at that point?
Or perhaps “Viva La Revolucion” people’s army armed with sticks and stones. Versus the techno-military prowess, mm.. yeah good luck with that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BArp6RVgZ9k
Now that I think about it, isn’t it sweet with the kids playing IRL “video games”? Their friendly banter and chatting while waxing “insurgents” left, right and center with the helicopter mounted gatling autocannon made me think of a quote from Simo Häyhä (and the USMC).
„Den Rückstoß!“
– Antwort auf die Frage, was er empfand, wenn er abdrückte und einen russischen Soldaten tötete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
http://www.meoso.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/what-do-you-feel-when-you-shoot-a-terrorist.jpg
That’s the curse of the predominately resource exploitation/export oriented societies.
Venezuela could have been a relative paradise, but it’s not, it’s the faulty firmware and software in human heads. This unfortunately applies universally anyhow.
In the specific case of Venezuela and similar countries, it’s the faulty genetics of imported old continent psychopatic conquistadors (goal: get megarich in 5yrs or bust) mixed with imported slave labor and also during past decades/century dependency on gov spigot crushing any semi independent pillars of the society to blossom up, which contrasting to some token survived under the lid and worked in Cuba. It will end up very badly in Venezuela and similar..
And if you care for your people to some degree, but you are an underdog, you end up like Libya, robbed, bombed to stone-age, sodomized by imported “democracy” thugs..
The worm is turning though, recently most of the former Austro-Hungarian empire’s land and countries (some inside EU some not) have shown willingness to resurrect the old workable basic patterns of cooperation, i.e. to have large entity of shared values in the middle of the continent, and work as much as possibly independently from Germany and on ad hoc basis with either the Atlantists or as well as with the Russia/Asians. That’s a model of neo-regionalization we can see recently on other continents as well..
You’ve got it all wrong….
Think of South America pre-invasion as an injured deer….. a weak deer is easy prey for a strong wolf….
If not the Spanish some other wolf would have feasted on the continent….
You either get strong — you compete — or you get the yoke.
South America was never a paradise — the tribes that dominated were murderous… they were competing …. the problem was they were big piranhas in a small pond….
When the great white sharks arrived —- they found that they were not very big at all… in fact they were not even an appetizer for the sharks….
So, then read it again, the post was not about pre-invasion and native tribes.
And if you can’t acknowledge given peculiarities of central/south american polity and population (b/c-class south European pirates mixed with slaves), that’s not my problem, lolz.
Impossible to find it.
Were you saying that pre- invasion the continent was headed towards becoming a utopia? And the Spanish spoiled it?>
Where would they get all the spare parts to keep this operation going?
The robots are coming! The robots are coming!
“We’re moving into the era of the robots,” said Alison Carnwath, the chairman of Land Securities, the £8.2bn FTSE 100 construction company.
“Skyscrapers in the City of London could soon be built by robots rather than by people, according to the boss of one of the UK’s biggest construction firms.
The result would be huge productivity gains as more work could be done by fewer people – but also mass layoffs as traditionally labour-intensive construction projects hire fewer and fewer staff.”
https://mishtalk.com/2016/09/28/robots-will-soon-build-skyscrapers/
These advanced robots could build orbiting solar power installations much more efficiently than human workers. Armies of robots could be packed into compact space shipping containers and sent on missions to the farthest reaches of the solar system. Robots would set up operations on asteroids, drilling into resource deposits and shipping vast amounts of useful minerals back to earth.
Nuclear reactors could be built by the robots armies on places like the moon where nuke meltdowns would be a non-event. Power would be transported back to earth by techno-intensive power lasers. Mars could also be settled and transformed by armies of eco-robots into a new human colony- humans would arrive only after the robots completed the project.
We humans are just getting up to cruising speed. Yowza!
As the owner, what can be better than a bunch of mechanical automatons that does your bidding without the pettiness of the plebs?
http://67.media.tumblr.com/a68b7a1f17e46705c7b3284f983cb6c3/tumblr_inline_nezzryHHnm1rjgug3.jpg
From the article:
““Five years ago I’d have smiled wryly if somebody had said to me that robots would be able to put up buildings in the City of London – I tell you we’re not that far off, and that has huge implications,” she said.”
From a Sceptic to a Belieber in 5 years. Not bad, not bad at all.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/adaptationdemotivator.jpeg
And don’t forget…. we are also going to be living on Mars next year …
Some people will believe anything.
“Armies of robots………”Everybody assumes robots use air or cow dung for energy, or maybe have a wind generator and solar panel strapped to their backs.
My comments were meant to taken in a humorous vein. Robot armies are probably not in the human future……
Military drones since the 40’s.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Mini-tanks-p012953.jpg
Humanoid robots by Boston Dynamics. I’m sure these can’t be weaponized. 😉
Yes they are. In ten years the U.S. war fighters will be 60% robots.
Given a choice between sending my kids or grand kids to die versus robots I pick robots.
Why wouldn’t the robots kill your grand kids? What purpose do they serve?
Anyway — this discussion is preposterous — your grand kids will not go to war nor will they face robot terminators…
They will starve to death. Just as we all will
“Why wouldn’t the robots kill your grand kids? What purpose do they serve?
Anyway — this discussion is preposterous — your grand kids will not go to war nor will they face robot terminators…
They will starve to death. Just as we all will”
http://facepalm.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/1107/robotic-facepalm-facepalm-robot-fail-epic-demotivational-posters-1311733642.jpg
Come on FE, the robots serve their owners. If this means going to war, that’s what would happen.
If they can do all the things humans can do – only better — what’s to stop them from exterminating the humans?
“If they can do all the things humans can do – only better — what’s to stop them from exterminating the humans?”
They just won’t care about our self entitled petty little boring existences, as long as there are not too many of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence
I heard they were planning to only kill off the fools …
What precautions will you take?
“What precautions will you take?”
Look, I’m busy writing code for the next generation superintelligence. Now bugger off you instadoomer old coot troll, you.
Smite,
I find it interesting you are so excited about building the machines that will exterminate humans.
Would be another first ever – a life form builds its replacement.
Smite, has it robots will obey their owners.
A butler can screw you over, a robot infinitely more intelligent than you will do it better.
“Would be another first ever – a life form builds its replacement.”
It’s just evolution going off in another paradigm.
Besides, 99.999% of all species that ever existed is now extinct. Did we squeeze out a tear for them? I guess not.
How about that Superintelligence before this century ends, do you think it will look back and shed a tear for our little petty drama, debauchery and various cruelty we perpetrate towards nature, each other and sentient animals.
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/038/732/633673088039538329-nukethemfromorbit.jpg
I just don’t get it. What are humans going to do on Mars?
Talk about a hostile environment for life in general.
This is all a front … humans are not going to Mars…. it’s really a plan to send robots to Mars..
‘Radiation is also a big concern, with space travellers exposed not only to the sun’s radiation but to cosmic rays that are difficult to stop. Nasa has yet to solve the problem, and Mr Musk brushed off questions about it on Tuesday, saying he thought it would not be a problem.’
Of course it is not a problem! Robots can deal with cosmic rays.
Elon Musk is a genius!
Modern semiconductors need shielding from radiation. Didn’t they try to send in autonomous robots in Fukushima?
Immediate syntax error and reformat hard drive.
http://orig09.deviantart.net/cf49/f/2012/146/7/8/demotivator___the_bsod_by_bloodsonic1-d515a70.jpg
cosmic rays are different … all you need is a tin hat to shield from these.. surely musk would know that
Energetic neutron flux (in the simmering Fukushima corium pool) and interplanetary gamma rays is pretty damaging to semiconductors.
http://electronicdesign.com/site-files/electronicdesign.com/files/uploads/2013/11/1013WebEEIntersilFig2.gif
http://www.windows2universe.org/physical_science/physics/electricity/images/electronics_radiation_damage_sm.jpg
‘could’
When that changes to ‘is’ I will begin to pay attention.
Kind of like when Elon Musk says we will be moving to Mars…
Gail,
Have you read Richard Heinberg’s piece entitled “Exploring the Gap Between Business-as-Usual and Utter Doom”? You get an honorable mention:
On the other side of the divide are those who dismiss renewable energy sources entirely—such as actuary and energy writer Gail Tverberg, who claims that building solar and wind capacity actually makes societies worse off than they already are. Her critiques of renewables appear to be based almost entirely on literature from fossil fuel and utility companies; she doesn’t seem to cite much data from solar and wind engineers. Her criticisms have some merit—but not nearly as much as they would have if they reflected a more balanced survey of the subject.
Have you any reply to his criticism about your data coming from fossil fuel and utility companies?
Personally, I believe what I see. Renewable energy is NEVER going to sustain BAU in any shape or form.
Have we gotten a rebuttal from Gail?
I wrote one as a comment (the only one) to his post. http://www.postcarbon.org/exploring-the-gap-between-business-as-usual-and-utter-doom/
Time is short … and getting shorter by the second.,.,…. so I skipped to the bottom:
When it comes to forecasting the future, count me among the pessimists. I’m convinced that the consequences of decades of obsession with maintaining business-as-usual will be catastrophic. And those consequences could be upon us sooner than even some of my fellow pessimists assume.
Yet I’m not about to let this pessimism (or is it realism?) get in the way of doing what can still be done in households and communities to avert utter doom. And, while decades of failure in imagination and investment have foreclosed a host of options, I think there are still some feasible alternatives to business-as-usual that would actually provide significant improvements in most people’s daily experience of life.
The gap is where the action is. All else—whether fantasy or nightmare—is a distraction.
I really do not understand why the author wasted so much time on this — perhaps he really does believe this nonsense and feels that time is not short?
If I were him I would have just turned on the music and had everyone sing along
“Renewable energy is NEVER . . .”
That doesn’t fit well with the fact that hydro is renewable. It’s the cheapest and most dispatchable kind we have. Solar from space is renewable and (if we are to build it at all) it will be cheaper than coal. StratoSolar is another source that might work. Being above the clouds at 20 km, it collects an absolutely reliable and predictable amount of energy every day. With gravity storage the power is dispatchable.
If you are making a case that intermittent energy without storage won’t do, you are probably right.
You do not seem to understand that we have no energy only “problem”.
The economy rests on three pillars that operate together: energy, demographics and debt.
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/rankia/images/valoraciones/0018/3642/Triangulo.png?1422827890
These are reaching their limits and lead the whole system down.
Stratosolar or anything, you can avoid this fact that is physical in nature.
It is not a technical problem. It is not a social problem. Nor it is political. They did not even human.
They are diminishing returns … friend!.
I wonder how renewable hydro will be in a future of droughts. Hoover dam anyone?
They will provide lesser power output.
The maximum sustained power output is equal to the potential energy gained in the reservoir from the upstream mass flow of water.
Zero water flow long term – zero power.
Low Water May Halt Hoover Dam’s Power
The shutdown of one of the largest electrical power plants in the Southwest will begin with air bubbles on a turbine inside the Hoover Dam. The bubbles form when low water levels in Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the dam, create pressure differentials in the water flowing into the generators. As they move from areas of low pressure to high, the bubbles collapse and explode, scouring the turbine blades. The generating unit will then start to buck and vibrate, the blades will become pocked and pitted, and the whole thing will eventually need to be shuttered, eliminating the power source that supplies 29 million people in the Southwest with a portion of their electricity.
Rough Zones
A dam’s electrical output is partly a function of the height of its reservoir. More water equals more pressure, which equals more energy. The total capacity at Hoover is now 1,617 megawatts—a 20 percent decrease from its designed capacity of 2,080 megawatts. Every foot of elevation loss reduces the power potential by 5.7 megawatts.
Experts don’t know what will happen if the water drops below 1,050 feet, which represents the bottom of the efficiency curve for the current turbines, where more water is needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. Such low depths increase the rough zones for the turbines—the generating range in which vibration and cavitation threaten to damage the unit. At extremely low lake levels, like the ones Mead is fast approaching, those rough zones—which usually occur in a narrow production band at medium capacity—could expand to fill the entire generating range, making the turbines vulnerable at any speed. But this unprecedented scenario would be a mystery even to the staff of the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam.
What happens if Lake Mead drops too low to generate electricity at Hoover Dam?
“Honestly, we’ve never been that low, so we don’t know what it will look like,” said Hoover Facility Manager Pete DiDonato. “A lot depends on what the rough zones look like as the lake drops. We’re getting into uncharted territory.”
More http://www.circleofblue.org/2010/world/low-water-may-still-hoover-dam%E2%80%99s-power/
Funny how when you look deeper into things… they are usually more complicated that anticipated….
I wonder how you replace the thousands of parts on this without factories and fossil fuels
http://www.climatechangecafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Colorado-dams_006_2012.jpg
I wonder how you maintain this without helicopters and vehicles and spare parts and fossil fuels
http://tdworld.com/site-files/tdworld.com/files/uploads/2014/04/IMG_0149.jpg
No problem here, just pour in some fresh hydrocarbons, engineering and capital to upgrade it for operating in a wider power band. High-tech to the rescue.
“Dam operators are revising the lower limit to 950 feet, a boundary that will be confirmed in October once the fifth and final more-efficient turbine is installed, Davis said.”
http://www.circleofblue.org/2016/water-management/lake-mead-drops-hoover-dam-powers/
Hydro won’t work long term either since we’ve already locked in dozens of feet of sea level rise in the coming years. No continuance of fossil fuels means no hydro.
I’ve been looking at beach shacks on the coast of NZ (I want to unload some barbarous relic because it will be useless as a hedge post BAU) …. found something that might work…
Spoke to the local council this morning … the lady said ‘oh that’s right up near the water — it will be prone to sea inundation based on our long term projections’
The owner has mentioned that one obstacle to a sale was the global warming/sea rise thingy….many people are afraid of losing their asset to the waves…
I on the other hand see that as nothing less than wonderful news! I am particularly pleased that there is a specific risk warning in the LIM report…..
Ammunition to drive the price down!!!
This is one of the few times that knowing that there is no long term can work to one’s advantage….
The silly thing is… even if there were a long term (or even if this happens in the short term) — and the sea does rise 2M …. the least of anyone’s worries is that their beach shack will be carried away…. thousands of cities across the world will be turned into permanent flood plains if that happens… and the global economy will be smashed…
Now if I were a hedge fund manager… and I knew what I knew …. how could I turn that knowledge into ten billion dollars…. instead of just getting a discount on a shack….
Dude, buy one you want and drive the price down with that knowledge. You might get to enjoy it for a year or two and make it your party house at a steep discount. I’d demand at least 50% off. Get a loan out for it and just skip out on making payments if you want. Either way you get to party in a frat house, and literally destroy it if you want to, perhaps right into the ocean. Sounds like an epic party to me!
The thing is…
To get a discount like that I would need to convince the owner that we are very close to edge of the end of civilization …. that he really should take whatever he can get as soon as possible and start his own End of the World Party/Parade….
As we all know — that can be … difficult…
Show them some balance sheets, that’s language they should be able to comprehend. Disturbing trends everywhere in energy companies.
All they see are rising property prices around the world – including in NZ …. and they believe that will go on forever….
I never understood who thought it was sustainable for all of us to just keep trading houses to each other, forever, getting richer with each transaction into infinite prosperity, amen.
Hydro is not renewable. You still need fossil fuels to operate a hydro plant…. as well as the grid… as well as manufacture all the stuff that you’d use the electricity to power.
Space Solar is like 1+1=5.
Heinberg said:
“But we can not just longer Because continue to grow population, consumption, and complexity does not mean we can no longer grow happiness, well-being, or prosperity.”
https://media.giphy.com/media/CBufRp24or6Eg/giphy.gif
No comment.
Is he trying to sell BAU-lite nowadays? Let me guess; we just chill together and busy-“work” some 30 minutes every day while the owners/elite of this farce silently watch as dystopia unfolds?
http://img.picturequotes.com/2/9/8833/the-house-of-delusions-is-cheap-to-build-but-drafty-to-live-in-quote-1.jpg
Besides who ever suggested that happiness, well-being, or prosperity was tightly coupled to population and consumption? On the contrary. A future with less people (mindless consumerists) with more creative, useful and constructive (productive/producing) members of society is our only way forward. Bring forth the elite soldiers.
https://www.strategypage.com/gallery/images/motivators_1.jpg
Isn’t that pretty much like standing up in front of thousands of people and shouting ‘I am a total idiot. I am not even sure how I graduated from elementary school’
Dicky is either getting paid to do this gig…. or the pressure is getting to him….
He is definitely not getting in invite to the End of World Party.
‘I am a total idiot. I am not even sure how I graduated from elementary school’
LOL
Definitely, now any fool can have studies, including a PhD. 🙂
Thanks for pointing this out. I have been traveling (to Germany and back), and got behind on reading of much of anything, including Richard Heinberg’s material.
I have no idea what where he gets the idea that my critiques of renewables are based almost entirely on literature from fossil fuel and utility companies. I don’t even remember reading any “literature from fossil fuel and utility companies,” other than perhaps published financial reports. I could make some comments about his views as well, but I try as much as possible to avoid saying negative things about the writings of other authors.
Richard Heinberg has not figured out that the economy is a dissipative structure. He has not figured out that a falling amount of energy per capita is likely to make the whole system to collapse. He has not figured out that we need very close to two separate generating systems for electricity if we try to use intermittent renewables (1) the intermittent portion, and (2) the entire backup portion. There is no way that the economy can afford the high cost of both systems. The limit of energy availability is an affordability limit.
Gail
Once someone like Heinberg patronises you, and damns with faint praise, you know you’ve scored a hit.
I can’t think of anything more far off the mark than insinuating you are in the pockets of the fossil-fuel industry! It suggests he hasn’t paid much attention to your theories.
And which solar manufacturers are supporting the post carbon institute… I wonder….
Better still… I am for sale just like Richard…. Hey Dicky — can you tell your boys to get in touch…. I will drop the ‘ ‘ around renewable for say…. 500k … just to so some good faith…
Then I will stop posting my library of facts and logic whenever someone suggests renewables will save us — let’s say 5mill to do that…
And finally – the grail — I will – like you — argue that solar power is the New Jesus….
For that…. I want royalties on every panel and battery sold globally … let’s say $5 a device?
Gail – think of you much dosh you could get if you switched over to Team DelusiSTAN.
“Gail – think of you much dosh you could get if you switched over to Team DelusiSTAN.”
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/61665900.jpg
I might be able to get the Post Carbon Institute to hire me to do a bit of work for their site. I might be added to their list of “Fellows.”
I checked the financial statements of the Post Carbon Institute. http://www.postcarbon.org/about-us/financials/
The vast majority of their funding comes from big grants from do-good organizations. For example, in 2015, out of total “Public Support” of $708,850, a total of $631,250 came from “Foundation and Community Grants,” and $77,600 came from “Contributions” of the type made to Resilience.org. They also sold books, and received fees for speaking.
It is hard to figure the names of the do-good organizations. Back on their 2009 financial statement, they list “Silicon Vally Community Foundation” and “Wallace Global Fund” as two big contributors. They received smaller amounts from the RSF Social Foundation and the SanFrancisco Foundation.
The amount of total contributions (including those from do-good organizations) seems to vary significantly, with high oil prices leading to high contributions and low oil prices leading to low contributions. Since 2010, total “Public Support” has followed a downward trajectory:
2010 $930,068
2011 $895,451
2012 $867,147
2013 $858,484
2014 $765,545
2015 $708,750
In recent years, they have been spending more than they are taking in, reducing their balance available to even out future fluctuations in income. I am sure that these big do-good organization want to make certain that their funds are being spent reasonably wisely. If someone comes along and says that the solutions they are promulgating are false solutions, this hits a nerve. I am sure that with low oil and gas prices for two years now, it is a tough sell saying that solar and wind are solutions. My pointing out the problems with intermittent technologies makes it worse. If the trend downward continues, they will likely need to cut back on their programs (sponsor fewer special studies like the shale study, for example). They seem to come out financially “behind” on these.
2010 $930,068
2011 $895,451
2012 $867,147
2013 $858,484
2014 $765,545
2015 $708,750
Mmmm … now everything is becoming clearer.
The business is in danger!
That is excellent work!
Have you posted this on the comments section of Dicky’s site – let’s see how quickly they pull that down – and kill your account.
How do you spell Zero Credibility? Where I come you call that a ‘Dickey Heinberg’
Now it is one thing to sell out —- quite another to attack those who do not… who seek the truth….
Dicky Dicky Dicky….. whenever I read your name I will forever think of:
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/media/images/72046000/jpg/_72046371_josh624.jpg
Right! Heinberg is threatened by my saying that intermittent wind and solar are not a path to a sustainable future. If people behind his big funding sources start reading this, they are less likely to contribute the big bucks to the organizations. He has to discredit what I say, any way he can. If contributions drop too low, his salary (apparently about $75,000 + expenses + benefits) is likely to be at risk.
If the German people understood this — the Merkel government might be voted out of office…
How many hundreds of billions have been wasted…. how much more is being wasted having to operate two power generation systems…..
I am concerned that Richard might have to sell his Tesla….
Henry A. Wallace
I am committed to using the power and prestige of the United States to help the peoples of the world, not their exploiters and rulers.
Progressive Party Candidate for President of the United States Acceptance Speech, Philadelphia, Pa., July, 24, 1948
I don’t understand…. how can you be the exploiter … and at the same time oppose the exploiter…
schizophrenia
ˌskɪtsə(ʊ)ˈfriːnɪə/
noun
noun: schizophrenia
a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
Ah- ha…. this is what ails people who live in DeluiSTAN… or maybe it is the pre-requisite for the passport….
Xabier,
todos estos decrecentistas, los de las ciudades en transición, mercados locales etc etc son unos eco-fascistas de tomo y lomo. Utilizan métodos gooebelianos (o estalinistas, es igual) para convencer y engatusar a su público. Fíjate como intentan desprestigiar y anular el honor de la señora Tverberg con declaraciones sin pruebas: miente, miente, miente… hasta que la mentira se convierta en verdad. Ahora resulta que todo aquel que sea crítico con las “renovables” también serán considerados “negacionistas” del cambio climático, además de estar pagado por las petroleras. Todo esto empieza a ser una auténtica locura. Como estos alcancen el poder alguna vez, estamos perdidos.
Claramente son unos perros lacayos al servicio del poder. La verdad y la discusión honesta no importa, sólo sus intereses. ¡Qué asco por el amor de dios!
———————————————————
I’m sorry for my lack of respect for fellow OFW. My indignation could only express it in my mother tongue. Xabier understand me.
I just inserted the chip “Learn Spanish in 30 seconds’ into the socket at the back of my head… let me translate….
all these decrecentistas, the transition of cities, local markets etc etc are some eco-fascists and take back. Gooebelianos methods used (or Stalinists, is equal) to coax and cajole their audience. Notice how trying to discredit and nullify the honor of Mrs. Tverberg with statements without evidence: lies, lies, lies … until the lie becomes truth. Now it seems that anyone who is critical of “renewable” will also be considered “deniers” of climate change, as well as being paid by oil. All this starts to get really crazy. As they achieve power ever, we are lost.
Clearly dogs are lackeys in the service of power. Truth and honest discussion does not matter, only their interests. What grossed out by the love of God!
Good translation work!
The chip has been a good buy.
Thank.
I added a comment to the post. http://www.postcarbon.org/exploring-the-gap-between-business-as-usual-and-utter-doom/ My comment is the only one, and only five people shared the story. People must be reading the post elsewhere, if they are reading it at all.
I saw it at resilience.
I could not see/read your comment there?
I think the moderators took it down. This is what I tried to say. (If someone else can put it up for me, I would have no objection.)
I would like to point out that Richard Heinberg’s supposition about me is simply false: “Her critiques of renewables appear to be based almost entirely on literature from fossil fuel and utility companies; she doesn’t seem to cite much data from solar and wind engineers.”
I base my analysis on the physics of the situation. The economy is a dissipative structure. The particular structure of the economy depends on an increasing supply of energy. A substantial decline in energy supply will result in a collapse of the economy. Our economy is subject to collapse, just as many economies that preceded us have become subject to collapse. Such collapses tend to happen when energy resources per capita fall. Economies tend to become increasingly hierarchical prior to collapse, as leaders try to solve problems with increased complexity (more specialization; more training for selected individuals). Economies tend to collapse because the individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy become increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy. For example, young people cannot get good-paying jobs, and start their own families. Demand for new homes and cars falls. As a result, commodity prices fall below the cost of production. Oil and other energy supplies can be expected to fall because of too low energy prices; not because of too high energy prices.
One of the issues involved with adding intermittent renewables is the amount of generating capacity needed. Intermittent renewables cannot cover all of the electricity needs of the economy. As a result, we need almost two separate set of electricity generating capacity: (1) the intermittent renewable generating capacity and (2) all of the other generating capacity. If the economy is not to collapse, we need to keep enough generating capacity operational so that any shortfall can be met at the time of year when electricity needs peak. This will vary with the location. In cold climates, this will typically be in the winter; in warm climates, this will typically be in the summer. In areas where the peak comes in the summer, solar PV can perhaps shave a little off the amount of fossil fuel, nuclear, and hydroelectric backup that is needed. In areas where the peak is in the winter, the amount of generating capacity that can saved by intermittent renewables is very small, and may even be zero.
If we need two sets of generating capacity, we have a whole host of problems. One is the high cost of operating essentially two separate systems. The intermittent renewables allow some savings on fuel, but they do not permit savings in many other areas. We need to have trained workers for all of the other units, and the companies operating these units need to be earning a reasonable profit, or they will go out of business. This is true, even if the other units are only needed one or two months out of the year. Transmission costs are likely to be higher, rather than lower, further offsetting fuel savings from intermittent electricity.
A second issue occurs in areas where competitive pricing is used. If the grid needs to be fully supplied with fossil fuel, nuclear, and hydro, adding intermittent renewables adds varying amounts of oversupply. This depresses prices, by varying amounts. In the spring and fall, and at night, when there is a large oversupply problem, prices may actually turn negative. Peak prices are likely to be lower as well. If we did not really need backup, having large numbers of these companies go out of business would not be a problem. The problem is that we do need them. Separate capacity auctions are being used some places, to try to add back in some of the lost revenue. My impression is that this tends to lead to the development of a lot of new natural gas generating units. These natural gas generating units may or may not actually be functional when very hot/cold weather hits, because they typically have interruptible natural gas supplies. The capacity auction would need to extend to actually supplying natural gas at crisis periods, as well. What kind of price would be needed to build an additional pipeline, if it is only needed 5% of the year?
I have no idea what literature from fossil fuel and utility companies you think I have read. I don’t remember reading any such literature. I try to figure out the real story. I do not take contributions on my site. I think this makes my analyses more neutral than yours are.
My point is that generally, it would not make sense to add more intermittent electricity generation to the electric grid, even if the cost of new generating nits were zero. They simply add too many negatives, and do not add much in the way of positives. I fail to see how “data from wind and solar engineers” would change this. Are you suggesting that they can figure out how to make these devices at negative cost?
I believe that there are a few situations where intermittent renewables may play a limited role. Their primary use should be off grid. There, they can be used in applications where intermittency is not a problem, such as desalination. They can also be used in micro grids, with their own battery backup. I do not believe the government should be subsidizing these. There also may be some instances where adding a small/medium amount of wind or solar may make sense. For example, for islands using both oil and hydroelectric, it may make sense to include intermittent renewables on the grid, to reduce the amount of oil consumption. Such decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis, looking at all of the benefits and costs involved.
I did make a similar comment on the Resilience site now. It may or may not stay up.
My comment did stay up on Resilience. Bart Anderson (on the staff of Resilience) said, “Thanks for weighing in.”
Is that the same Dick Heinberg who is ripping off my copyrighted phrases?
Dick – I know you are reading FW — you owe me substantial royalties! Where is my money Dicky?????
Come on Dick which of the Koombayaists are you on FW….. expose yourself!
Every time I read a comment that promotes ‘renewable’ energy — I will think of you Dick….
I will also wonder what it is like to be so stupid that even after having thought about this issue for over a decade…. you still cannot understand why ‘renewable’ energy is an oxymoron…
Moron … ha… haha…. oxy… MO-RON…. ha…. hahaha… Dick the MORE-ON…
This is for you Dicky…..
Gail, a few days ago I tried to post your message in Post Carbon Institute, but has not appeared.
I tried again as well. I am sure that they do not want a rebuttal up–will stop anything that looks like one.
Post Carbon Institution for the Deranged, Delusional and Crazy.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/03/18/26C326BF00000578-3000407-image-a-36_1426674956634.jpg
It’s extremely admirable to take the high road when other authors or readers attack your views. It not only makes your own thesis more credible but it shows that you don’t have to attack others in order to prove that you’re correct. Also, just the fact that he’s paying attention and critiquing you should be a merit all on its own.
Agreed.
However there is no reason I cannot take the low road….
Well of course, random online commenters such as ourselves are not bound by the same rules. I too enjoy flicking people in the face from time to time in order to get the action going.
Her critiques of renewables appear to be based almost entirely on literature from fossil fuel and utility companies; she doesn’t seem to cite much data from solar and wind engineers.
Honorable mention? Sounds more like a polite way of saying “she’s shilling for Big Oil”. The unstated assumption at the base of Mr. Heinberg’s criticism is that there exists reliable data from solar and wind engineers that is germane to the debate and that this data would significantly alter Gail’s conclusions if she took account of it. If that’s the case, Mr. Heinberg should have no trouble producing this reliable data and showing how it invalidates Gail’s conclusions by providing strong evidence that solar and wind power are making societies better off that they would have been without them. The South Australia statewide blackout fiasco would be an interesting case study here in that South Australia is considered to be more reliant on unreliable power generation than virtually any other comparably large region on earth.
By the way, Gail has just gotten a truly honorable mention and recommendation from blogger Ron Clutz:
A previous post (at the end) addresses the unreality of the campaign to abandon fossil fuels in the face of the world’s demand for that energy. Now we have a startling assessment of the imaginary benefits of using windmills to power electrical grids. This conclusion comes from Gail Tverberg, a seasoned analyst of economic effects from resource limits, especially energy. Her blog is called Finite World, indicating her viewpoint. So her dismissal of wind power is a serious indictment. A synopsis follows.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/climateers-tilting-at-windmills-updated/
My “honorable mention” was tongue in cheek. Gail knows this.
I know it was, but I just wanted to add a bit more emphasis on what I thought Heinberg was up to. By the way, thanks for bringing his outrageous claims and his temerity to the our collective attention.
I understand that Oliver Stone is working on a new blockbuster:
‘Exposing Richard (Tricky Dick) Heinberg’
Thanks for pointing out Ron Clutz’s post. He quoted quite a bit from my post.
Richard Heinberg and company seem to have a hard time learning new ideas.
When I was at The Oil Drum, I talked to everyone who came along and wanted to do a conference call regarding their “save the world” idea. This meant I talked to folks selling wind and solar as well as ones involved in oil and gas, plus people involved in permaculture and almost everything else (including thorium). I didn’t refuse to talk to anyone, just because their views conflicted with mine, or most viewers. Whenever commenters pointed out a book I should read, I would look at the reviews to see what the major points were, and try to discern whether it would be worthwhile to read more of the book. If it did, I would buy the book. I figured out my own views on things; I didn’t regurgitate someone else’s views on things.
I did go on a number of trips sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute and one trip sponsored by Chevron. On some trips there were news paper reporters along; on others there were other bloggers along. I did get to see up close a number of different oil and gas operations. Management of these operations would set aside their regular activities for a day, or at least several hours, and give prepared presentations, plus answer questions. We saw how operations really worked (or example, extract oil and gas together, and burn the natural gas to create electricity). I learned enough about how things really work, to better understand the data. This seemed to get Heinberg and a number of others really upset. How could anyone dare to see how these operations really worked?
I also visited a Geothermal site electricity generation site in Hawaii. I went to ASPO meetings, and heard what their experts had to say, on the future of wave energy and other hoped-for solutions.
This approach seems to be totally foreign to Heinberg. He seems to look for academic studies that reinforce his prior beliefs. This is an approach encouraged by academic publishing, but it doesn’t lead to very many new insights.
Mention of Permaculture reminds me to say permaculture guru Bill Mollison died a few days ago.
“everyone who came along and wanted to do a conference call regarding their “save the world” idea”.
Sheesh. Never occurred to me to ask for a conference call. Gail was willing to edit three articles for the OD that I wrote, two on half baked power satellite concepts (mostly on transportation to high orbit) and one on StratoSolar.
The transport concepts have evolved. The only constant across the years is beamed energy, as either lasers or microwaves to get rocket performance way above what you can get with chemical energy. In 2015 we applied Bill Brown’s (microwave guy) concept of powering from the ground, and in early 2016 moved the power source to space. That’s the basis of the video you can watch at http://www.htyp.org/DTC
Here is the latest thoughts on the development cost.
A lot of the cost of a power satellite program is based on old, well understood technologies. We have no reason to be concerned about the development cost or uncertainty of the LOX plant, or the LH2 plant, hangers, runways, shipping terminals and the like.
The Skylon development is just assumed. If included, it might go to $10 B. For comparison, the $150 million Boeing 777 development cost was about $6 B ($4 B from Boeing and $2 B from suppliers). Boeing also spent $1.5 B to enlarge the factory at Everett, WA. The development cost was about 40 times the sales price. Considering the number built (1417 to July 2016), it’s about $4.2 million per aircraft.
The 787 development was much more expensive, $32 B which is about 123 times the sales price and a development cost (to Sept 1016) of ~$70 million per aircraft.
(There is something to learn here, pushing the state of the art can cause a dramatic increase in the development cost, even if no research is involved.)
So the Skylon development estimate of $10 B is reasonable.
What will the development cost be for power satellites and the other pieces? And what is a strategy to estimate the cost? We can’t use the cost ratio from the 777 or 787 to estimate because a power satellite is not the same kind of beast as an aircraft, it’s in orbit, but more akin to a fixed installation like a dam or a coal power plant. Because I need to put a number on it, I am going to go with development proportional to the number of parts, and make a case that the parts count in a power satellite is on the same order as the parts count in a 777. $6 B may be wrong, and I am certainly willing to consider other ways to estimate the development cost.
We know that the sales price of a power satellite can’t exceed $11 B if they are to compete in the energy markets and displace coal. If we build at least a thousand of them, the development cost per power satellite would be $6 million, not far off from the distributed development cost for the 777.
The current production proposal is to fly cargo to LEO where the containers are added to a cargo stack, then a tug would be attached to the cargo stack and powered out to the construction site, tentatively at 12,000 km by a pair of propulsion power satellites (PPS). The two tugs, 2000 tons each and the two propulsion power satellites at 4000 tons are the first cargo to go up. The very first kit for a PPS uses chemical propulsion to get above the space junk, per the Beamed Energy Bootstrapping video. The assumption is that existing rockets such as
SSME would be used reducing the development cost considerably. The PPSs share much common development with power satellites and could be consider as 1/10th scale prototypes. I am going to include them in the $6 B.
The tugs are another matter, including a tracking rectenna, tanks and arc jet engines, plus lightweight low temperature radiators to get rid of the 40-100 MW of waste heat from the engines. *If* we go with radiators for the power satellites and the PPS, then radiators are a common element. Still, I am adding $2 B for tug development bringing the total up to $8 B. First flights will be adjusted to when $4 B has been spent. If the cost (mostly transport) isn’t any more per kg than a power satellite, the first two tugs and first two PPS can be put in place for around 3/10th of the cost of one power satellite.
Time wise, the first production part in space is the 25 GHz propulsion power satellite kit. This takes ~370 Skylon flights.
(continued later)
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 (except at orbits that are protected by the magnetosphere).[38]
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.[39]
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.[40]
The large size and corresponding cost of the receiving station on the ground.[citation needed]
Energy losses during several phases of conversion from “photon to electron to photon back to electron,” as Elon Musk has stated.[41]
Ringy dingy ringy dingy….
https://ddppchicago.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/756905.gif
Elon Musk is stating he’s ready to establish a colony on Mars – yet he opposes space solar because it is unworkable — does that not tell you something Keith?
“The large cost of launching a satellite into space”
You have not been paying attention. Power satellites will not happen unless we can see a 100 to 1 reduction in the cost of hauling the parts into space.
“yet he opposes space solar ”
From his viewpoint, it’s the right thing to do. Musk will get the cost to GEO down by no more than a factor of 10. He knows he can’t get the cost down enough for power satellites to make economic sense. Takes a different technologies. Skylon to LEO and beamed energy propulsion using arcjets from there up looks like it will work, but it’s going to take a lot more study before we start building prototype hardware.
And it is a long way from certain that it can be done at all. NOAA’s paper on the ozone destroying NOx from reentering vehicles could leave humanity with a hard choice between ozone and CO2. I hope the article will get through peer review and be published before the end of the year.
However, if it does work, BAU is good for another century or more.
Just like the one way tickets to Mars will be USD200,000 at some point….
Now I see!
I am a huge supporter of burning fossil fuels of all varieties — coal, gas, oil …… how would one get oneself invited onto these junkets?
Do they offer week long options in say… Vegas? Do any of them have private boxes and offer supporters seats at the Stanley Cup finals? What about tickets to rock concerts? I’d like to see Neil Young once more before the big show ends….
Oh, the audacity of hope!
Below is an excerpt from http://richardheinberg.com/museletter-292-exploring-the-gap
The saving grace of this column was that RH recognizes Gail as being on the other side of the divide from Naomi Oreskes. And it is an important divide, being as it marks the minefield-strewn boundary between RealitiSTAN and DelusiSTAN.
Given that business-as-usual airports, shopping malls, skyscrapers, and container ships have a vanishingly small likelihood of remaining useful or replicable much longer, what we really ought to be doing is to explore structures that are sustainable—and that implies identifying simpler pathways for meeting basic human needs. Since maintaining and adapting current levels of transport will be a big, likely insurmountable challenge, we might start by aiming to shorten supply chains and localize economies.
Social innovation will probably play a more important role in this adaptive and transformative process than the invention of new machines. Yes, we need research and development in hundreds of technical areas, including ways of building and maintaining roads without asphalt or concrete; ways of producing essential pharmaceuticals without fossil fuels; and ways of building solar panels and wind turbines using a minimum of fuels and rare, exotic materials. But in fact we already have lower-tech ways of solving a lot of problems. We know how to build wooden sailing ships; we know how to construct highly energy-efficient houses using local, natural materials; we know how to grow food without fossil inputs and distribute it locally. Why don’t we use these methods more? Because they’re not as fast or convenient, they can’t operate at the same scale, they’re not as profitable, and they don’t fit with our vision of “progress”.
That’s where social innovation comes in. In order for the transition to occur as smoothly as possible, we’ll need to change our expectations about speed, convenience, affordability, and entitlement. We’ll need to share what we have rather than competing for increasingly scarce resources. We’ll need to conserve, reuse, and repair. There will be no room for planned obsolescence, or for growing disparities between rich and poor. Cooperation will be our salvation. So, too, will be recognizing that there are limits—both to the planet’s capacity to support our numbers and activities, and to the role of technology in “fixing” these crises. But just because we can no longer continue to grow population, consumption, and complexity does not mean we can no longer grow happiness, well-being, or prosperity.
If I think real hard, I can imagine all of this happening. And as I do so, in the space between my ears I can hear a hope-filled hymn sung to a tune you can really tap your feet to.
https://youtu.be/yRhq-yO1KN8
“We’ll need to share what we have rather than competing for increasingly scarce resources. We’ll need to conserve, reuse, and repair. There will be no room for planned obsolescence, or for growing disparities between rich and poor. Cooperation will be our salvation.”
In a country multicolor, Maya the bee flies under the sun, trala la, la la la, tralalero tralalo… (Sing with me friends)… In a country multicolor…
http://www.meandmykiddywinks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Maya-the-Bee1-400×224.jpg
“We’ll need to share what we have rather than competing for increasingly scarce resources. We’ll need to conserve, reuse, and repair. There will be no room for planned obsolescence, or for growing disparities between rich and poor. Cooperation will be our salvation.”
I can see how that would resonate with a certain type of person… someone who is completely out of touch with reality….
But hey – if someone wants to donate to my false cause me nearly 1m USD per year to write koombaya on a web site…. I am on board…. still not enough to get me the private jet but every little bit helps….
Well done Dicky — you are the most successful rent boy in history!
All this with only 700k in funding…. impressive indeed!
Surely there must be a way for the loyal Koombayists to donate to all this good work?
Does Richard have a crowd funding site?
You can donate either on the post carbon site https://postcarbon.networkforgood.com, or the Resilience.org site https://resilience.networkforgood.com .
The Resilence site lists names and dollar amounts from individual small donors.
Financial statements list Fundraising costs of $67,470 in 2015. Most of this is salaries of people. My guess is that part of this goes for trying to chase down big donations.
Richard Heinberg has his own website http://richardheinberg.com . This seems to be mostly focused on offering information for people who want to hire him as a speaker. It doesn’t have a donation option. Instead, it has lots of connections to Post Carbon Institute things. His most recent post (mentioning me) is featured on the home page.
If only one could donate a wooden nickel online….
When the funding dries up and Dicky is collecting food stamps…. I suggest we take up a collection and employ him as the Official Finite World Jester.
When we are bored…we can ask him to read quotes from his website — then pelt him with rotten tomatoes.
Or perhaps we can put him in a cage and poke him with sticks…. for amusement…
He can serve the canapes at the End of World Party…. we’ll also have him crank the handle on the phonograph at the party and he can call himself the DJ….
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Court_jester_stockholm.jpg
“Yes, we need research and development in hundreds of technical areas, including ways of building and maintaining roads without asphalt or concrete; ”
I know this is true about roads, in principle, from a technical perspective. I’ve done small experiments to prove it. What I don’t believe can work is the “WE.” Networked, top down, centralized government and social organizing has all sorts of costs and chains of supply that are unaffordable (as far as I know).
There is also no aspect of our system, natural, financial or industrial that isn’t thoroughly exhausted. But I don’t see why small, fairly self-sufficient pods couldn’t work in principle. But how do they work without some means to share (for how could a small pod with lots of resources survive next to one with nothing?). So I also don’t see how to get rid of government to keep some rationality going. Can county government work to ensure the public good? How can a successful county stand next to an unsuccessful one? So you need some sort of national government, possibly strongly military to ensure order. But how do you do this without an industrial order to supply its resources??
The writer Henry Miller thought that Native Americans would be the only people left standing eventually in the US. They have had a networked, bottom up way of managing their affairs. I wouldn’t doubt that Henry Miller was largely correct.
I notice that Venezuela is using forced labor to work on farms. http://yalibnan.com/2016/07/30/venezuela-implements-forced-labor-on-farms-to-tackle-the-severe-food-shortages/ I suppose that a similar approach could be used to solve the road problem. When I was in India, I saw workers repairing roads. I thought it was sort of humorous. I suppose dirt could be used to fill the holes, if other substances are lacking.
I know there are many ways to maintain various roads, simple dirt being one of the cheapest and easy to find. But there are so many different types of roads. and types of road usage. An alternative way of filling potholes in super duper paved roads is through the use of paper pulp mixed with adhesive. The glue could be as expensive as white glue or wood glue from the store, or as cheap as donated discarded house paint. Colors that didn’t turn out right, etc. Either of these produces a surface that’s just about impermeable. A deep enough hole will hold the fill till it hardens–like a tooth filled by a dentist. As with a dentist, a too-small hole would have to be dug deeper. A small push roller would produce a smooth-enough surface. But tar is much easier to apply, and so undoubtedly cheaper and suited to quick-paced, macro scaled industrial living.
What I’m MOST unclear about is is how one *simultaneously* a) shores up quick-paced, networked industrial society, b) promotes favorable changes that the system can “afford,” c) reduce personal and community debt, d) detach from the system to the extent feasible. Sometimes it seems that all these things need to be done.
Artleads,
If we by some strange reason have time to:
*simultaneously* a) shores up quick-paced, networked industrial society, b) promotes favorable changes that the system can “afford,” c) reduce personal and community debt, d) detach from the system to the extent feasible
then learn how to grow and cook high quality vegetable proteins. Most people don’t have a clue what vege proteins are (they need to see, touch, smell the plant, before tasting the foods), or how to make a superb A la Carte Dinner Menu out of them. Throw in some wild herbs and start selling this “package” to companies. Corporations need new ways for R&R all the time. So if you have a fair package you can start selling this “tasting/ cooking school R&R for executives” for exuberant prices.
just confirms what i’ve been banging on about for years—Venezuala is maybe the first place its happened in an “oil rich” nation—eventually as “buy and sell”economies run down we fall back on the ultimate energy resource—food–.
Those who control the land will thus have to means by which those who need food will ultimately pay for it, by direct labour.
Things have thus come full circle in about 10000 years.
been an interesting merry go round though.
Hi Van Kent,
It seems like you’re dealing with my item b) above?:
“b) promotes favorable changes that the system can ‘afford,’”
You sell a better product, but you don’t destroy jobs. And the high price you get allows you to contribute more to the economy? But the recipient had to pay more, taking money away from something else? All of this is why I don’t understand how money works. 🙂
BTW, you can do the same thing with art. Like making very good art using “found objects.” One’s materials cost is modest, while a sufficient level of knowledge (as would also apply with the veggies) makes the product superior, able to fetch a very high price in the right market niche?.
It does sound like a really good story. It is the story that they are trying to sell to “do good” organizations. We can get along without supplemental energy just fine. All we need to do is find simpler ways of doing things. But how many people can be supported with this approach? How do we transition to such a situation, when we have our current economy that we must pay for as well?
A great way to introduce people to the difference in energy availability from wind and hydro is to tell people to put their arm out the window of a car doing 100km/hr. Then, try putting your arm in the water while you are water skiing at 100 km/hr. Understand the difference in power? Similarly, standing on the beach on a sunny day, and standing in front of a coal fired blast furnace. Diffuse versus dense.
Yes, but all renewables are not made equal, for example refer to recent nice post about the tidal wave park being installed in Scotland, were the power output is much more capable of scheduling into base load of the grid in contrast to unsolvable PV/wind intermittency. Well, isn’t this very wunder 3-5x more expensive than coal and not available everywhere (e.g. US lacks good sites near pop hubs for this resource)? Isn’t modern next gen nuclear (or novel ways using less fuel like breeders) also relatively expensive? Yes, and yes..
But that’s not how the world is operated, evidently we are entering era of mixed economies, with the increasing weight on the planned-mandated part of the equation also in the western/northern countries. Simply, they will have to match Asians in the despotism at home as well or face loosing it all. Therefore, large can kicking efforts will allow for “bridges to nowhere” or at least for the Elite and theirs few next generations to have some working system in place around them. That peons no longer have anonymous cash, jobs, freedoms or frivolous consumption, would be of little concern..
“Isn’t modern next gen nuclear (or novel ways using less fuel like breeders) also relatively expensive? Yes, and yes..”
It isn’t so much about if it will be built, it has to be built. The question being, how many passengers will be thrown out from the bus in order to keep it accelerating with these excursions in energy, capital and technological advancements.
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/idakemi3-150127140400-conversion-gate02/95/ida-kemi-wasteburner-2-638.jpg
This all depends on stupidity continuing to rule. The intercontinental highway is perhaps a good example of a “bad” thing done with relative perfection. An amazing feat. Going through millions of jurisdictions, calibrated to match auto production, planning guidelines, property rights. How such a thing was created over such a large space (having so many moving parts) so that we almost immediately take it for granted… As complex in its way as going to the moon. Somehow, I don’t think we’re up to this sort of planning and coordinating today. The result is what I’m referring to as stupidity. If you fail to plan you plan to fail…
That’s a good point, and I agree.
In comparison to prior eras, we are over the horizon, there is no stamina, no will power to turn this ship for everybody around, however, there is likely enough to circle the wagons for a few at least for a while, and ditch the “unfortunates” to “their own” misfortunes..
The issue is in the structure of future hard core triaged away societies, perhaps only upto 25% of current employees are needed to supply the core gov system, security/army apparatus, food, and flow of luxury items. The rest, meaning the wide consumer society is to be left to rot and filth as imaginable.
“The issue is in the structure of future hard core triaged away societies, perhaps only upto 25% of current employees are needed to supply the core gov system, security/army apparatus, food, and flow of luxury items.”
So how does that fit with the meme that everything stops if you reduce growth, or remove consumers that were farmed to consume the products of the networked global system? I’m very interested in the concept of triageing away large swathes of the society, but I want to have a clear idea of what I’m talking about.
I speculate it could follow this pattern (in Venezuela):
Once productivity/(oil) exports per capita drops significantly (perhaps below zero) triaging begins. I.e. the credit dries up. Thus no more coca-cola and other BAU luxuries and entitlements on the supermarket shelves.
Ask yourself, as the owner: Would you like to continue support employees/people, even as they are not working for the handouts that you provide in the form of salary/cheap energy products?
The Chinese are also ditching Venezuela
“After pouring billions into Venezuela over the last decade, China is cutting off new loans to the Latin American nation. It’s a major reversal of relations between the two nations, experts say. It also comes at the worst time for Venezuela, which is spiraling into an economic and humanitarian crisis.”
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/30/news/economy/china-venezuela-finance/
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/20/3e/9c/203e9ce36062d82276af3b894406f4da.jpg
I think the fact that China is cutting off future loans to Venezuela is important. Without these loans, Venezuela can only spiral downward. It is ironic that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, according to BP. Clearly, they cannot be extracted at current prices.
Artleads, cutting off 75% will end BAU, it will require martial law. I believe it is possible and robots help.
This gets more absurd by the minute.
You can learn all you need to know about that here http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Well, you can post that link yet another time (1,000th ?)
But the joke is still on you, why you are posting it?, since it doesn’t say everybody will be instantly dead, but only sums up the obvious about the very harsh time coming with the End of More..
Actually if you take it its logical conclusion it does imply extinction.
It demonstrates that there is no BAU Lite option — that a shrinkage of the economy = a total collapse of the economy.
The formula is this:
A total collapse of the economy = massive doses of radiation + epic starvation + violence + disease = extinction.
Triaging away whole broke/n countries (syria, greece, venezuela) is one thing.
How do triage away 60-90% of a functional/critical country? Doesn’t the bottom 51% voters just demand their fair share?
And Venezuela IS critical. How is that handled? Wait until 90+% population is dead and then buy the dictator? When will a 90+% die-off in Venezuela have been achieved relative to global collapse? I am not sure Venezuelas population is even decreasing.
When people drop out of the workforce forever, their remaining function is being a voter. That is hard work and demands good compensation.
“Doesn’t the bottom 51% voters just demand their fair share?”
They can demand whatever they want and get absolutely nothing if the productive middle class and production/manufacturing/export capability has emigrated/moved to, for example to high-tech and manufacturing regions around the world, such as Silicon Valley, etc… Which is exactly what we can observe with these divide and conquer tactics, by Soros and his disciples.
As a personal anecdote; I got plenty of former colleges and friends now living the US.
We are experiencing the consolidation phase since the steam of the expansion phase has run it’s course.
So the elite moves to Silicon Valley and uploads themselves to a chip. Meanwhile Venezuelas (and syrias) oil stays in the ground?
“I am not sure Venezuelas population is even decreasing.”
They will just be left to their own devices. On the other hand, watch what happens if they start mass migrating to the neighboring countries, like the people from Syria did.
http://lowres.jantoo.com/society-europe-european_union-walls-immigrant-eu-47630588_low.jpg
And their oil will be taken by force when the time is right.
I am starting to understand your reasoning. Europe couldn’t invade a country or having the elite evading the taxes. No problem for US.
“A total collapse of the economy = massive doses of radiation + epic starvation + violence + disease = extinction.”
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/saRZqGt1pIY/hqdefault.jpg
“And their oil will be taken by force when the time is right.”
If it even will be needed. Perhaps it will, that is, if this joint can be kept lit until around 2100-ish. Then the advances in AI/Superintelligence will, well, it will be interesting to see how that goes down.
“I am starting to understand your reasoning.”
It’s pretty simple. Follow the money.
With intermittent renewables, you still have to have backup for the peak period when electricity is needed, usually when it is very hot or very cold. You also have to schedule changing about of electricity needs during the rest of the year, on a day by day basis. It is hard for me to see that this type of generation would be very helpful.
It also looks to me as though it would be quite expensive to keep up, because of the wear and tear of salt water.
Good point!
Sinkhole City Chicago in Worse Fiscal Shape than Detroit?
http://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/imglib/indydetchinew.png
More http://wolfstreet.com/2016/09/28/sinkhole-city-chicago-in-worse-fiscal-shape-than-detroit/
Mrs. Triage came to visit the US as well, actually it entered around ~1970s, but it’s very much like a huge centipede loosing few shoes per decade here and there, i.e. still much more to go.
Specifically, crumbling urban infrastructure, especially in places with minorities (no plan/need to reinvest there by the Elite), while some regions doing very good. Increasingly brainwashed and obesity stricken population, now the latter trend even apparent inside the armed forces, lolz.
Another example, formerly prestigious astro-not space program now gutted, depending on imported Russian rocket engines and their active space station missions to keep it alive.
..
Hopefully, you see the pattern finally, no instadoom, just lengthy glue slow process of shoe dropping and chopping of fingers, gradually, … obviously at some (several) threshold junctions, there will be a pronounced phase shifts into much lower (dis-)order state of things, however an event which could be likely connected-overshadowed by other dramas of the day like major natural catastrophe, large war or political upheaval etc. It’s not given all of the above as Finite World issues would be recognized during much of the processes ongoing..
“Hopefully, you see the pattern finally, no instadoom, just lengthy glue slow process of shoe dropping and chopping of fingers, gradually”
A multiple decades long and grueling march towards dystopia does not have the same sex appeal and drama as instadoom.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zwdKYN6ARAk/VcpqdL7uNAI/AAAAAAAAB1E/CFs3Ee1iQ2w/s400/despairdemotivator.jpeg
Great summary, thanks!
Perhaps, not only the armchair psychologist would reveal, that the fury of instadoomer’s program is in fact the sheer individual fear, panic attack from the idea of higher probability for dystopian future snake (downs and little ups/stabilization phases), lasting many decades or centuries (counting the very long end tail of fizzling out bits of mechanistic world). They struggle to cope with that outcome.
I think the instadoomers are much cheesier and lazier than that in their nature. I don’t think there is too much effort placed on pondering about the n’th-order logical outcome of this little experimental process by nature.
It’s better matching with the instant gratification of our daily little lies and scams that we perpetrate while we eat up the slack which all the free energy basically have provided. Preferably it should end in the same (b)anal way that we lead our lives.
But not to despair. If things get shitty enough when eventually all of us get kicked out of the B(A)Us. Let’s do it in style as our final victory.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/39/02/c5/3902c5b52d3af7796b3eafd1f0165949.jpg
‘A multiple decades long and grueling march towards dystopia does not have the same sex appeal and drama as instadoom’
I suppose if you were one of those people who can’t wait for the end to happen – the ones who believe it will be an awesome adventure .. Jan????
I think the rest of us would love for this to drag out for a few decades….
It won’t.
“It won’t.”
It will.
If you’re old enough, you can see how gradual is the decay. Even so, you’d think SOMEbody would notice decline. They don’t because the level of wealth is still so abundant as to keep the show convincing enough to placate the vast majority of people? Nature’s bounties are, as well, so extreme that no one sees it as being in crisis? So nature and civilization are dying but also regenerating? Both so confusingly two-directional that no one can make sense of decline?
It does seem there’s something in our psychology that makes it hard for us to objectively compare big-picture conditions over spans of time. I know you have several decades on me, but even I can remember “better times” if I really sit and think about it. Times when you could honestly feel optimistic about the future without being in denial. Times when the American Dream seemed possible (for a lot of people).
Even just reflecting back on when I entered the full-time professional workforce (15 or so years ago), how “easy” it really was. I went to college, took up a paid internship, and launched a successful career that’s supported me and my family for years. If I was trying to do that today, it probably wouldn’t happen.
Your’e right, a little bread and circuses to distract us plays right into that weakness, that inability to perceive decay, and we’re all just happy with our Netflix and I-phones.
It has a simple, psychological based answer and its called normalcy bias.
What will it take to make you understand that if the economy does not grow – and that is not reversed in a fairly short period — it collapses?
The economy has been growing since 2008.
Do you not know what a recession is? Do you not understand that if growth goes negative — people lose jobs…
When they lose jobs they buy nothing — which means more people lose jobs — and before you know it – YOU lose your job….
And at some point the social net collapses because so few are paying taxes… and then you are under a bridge eating cat food — all because growth has stopped.
Is that what it will take? Because clearly you are unable to grasp what is a very simple concept.
Or is it you just don’t want that to happen so you convince yourself that it can’t?
I will direct you to Norman’s essay on this:
That we are entering a period of decline is not in any real doubt, at least not among those with the inclination to think about it.
‘Downsizing’ seems to be the commonly used term, but few really understand what it will really mean. No one will willingly accept downsizing if it means a meaningful drop in their standard of living. So it remains a vague notion that it might be somebody else’s problem, and nothing too drastic on a personal level.
There is a misplaced concept that we will drift into it gradually as oil decline eases us into another mode of living that will not be too far removed from the one that we enjoy now. We want the creature comforts that we have known for less than a century to remain a permanent feature of our imagined future.
Our most recent history shows that the slightest slowdown of our current economy by just a few percentage points brings an immediate chaos of unemployment and global destabilisation. Yet somehow that won’t apply to a permanent ‘downsizing’; that seems to follow a different set of social rules, as if we can do it and still retain a civilised existence. And of course without downsizing wages too much.
We will still expect to eat, buy ‘stuff’ and carry on in employment and even retain our wheels, with the strange certainty that as long as we have wheels, we will have prosperity by involving ourselves in the exchanges of trade that will not differ much to what we have now.
More http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
We all live in a planetwide plutocracy with and how long did that fine old ancient example (semi democracy at times) last: The Roman Empire?
27 BC – 395 AD (united)
395 – 476 (Western)
395 – 1453 (Eastern)
27 BC to 1453 AD, not too shabby.
How about those old Chinese dynasties you might ask? They ran for half a century in many cases.
“Examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant republics of Venice, Florence and Genoa, and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). According to Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, the modern day United States resembles a plutocracy, though with democratic forms.”
Now I might ask, how does it feel to be a pleb in a plutocracy?
Pretty much all pension plans will have problems. This is hard to fix.
Not if we decide to tell people that once they retire they get to permanently move to Hawaii and live off the land. It wouldn’t be popular but neither is global starvation.
I don’t think it has to be fixed. People will work until they are physically incapable of working or fired. If they have children, they will move in with them, if they don’t they will succumb quickly to the harshness of homeless life and the infirmities of old age. The bulk of humanity does not have and have never had pensions. They continue(d) to live, until they don’t.
I agree. However they will not work until they die because there will be no work to be done.
If nobody retires then young people will find it increasingly difficult to find employment – as is happening.
If they cannot find jobs they consume very little. They buy no houses – cars – furniture – appliances – airline tickets etc… already happening
That means the people who work in those industries have less work — so there are layoffs — laid off people consume little
More layoffs… eventually bankruptcies… ultimately global economic collapse.
“Five hundred million years ago the carbon dioxide concentration was 20 times greater than today, decreasing to 4–5 times during the Jurassic period and then slowly declining with a particularly swift reduction occurring 49 million years ago.” Wikipedia
We just have find a way to produce oil, gas and coal more economically (perhaps by using hydro and other high EROI energy sources in the service of oil production) and concentrate our small grays in finding a way to continue to burn fossil fuels.
“The Azolla event occurred in the middle Eocene epoch, around 49 million years ago, when blooms of the freshwater fern Azolla are thought to have happened in the Arctic Ocean. As they sank to the stagnant sea floor, they were incorporated into the sediment; the resulting draw-down of carbon dioxide has been speculated to have helped transform the planet from a “greenhouse Earth” state, hot enough for turtles and palm trees to prosper at the poles, to the icehouse Earth it has been since.” Wikipedia
Obviously “mother earth” turned us into pyromaniacs for a very benevolent reason.
“Much of the current interest in oil exploration in the Arctic regions is directed towards the Azolla deposits. The burial of large amounts of organic material provides the source rock for oil, so given the right thermal history, the preserved Azolla blooms might have been converted to oil or gas. A research team has been set up in the Netherlands devoted to Azolla.” Wikipedia
“Shell Surrenders Arctic Drilling Rights to Marine Park Plan”
“Shell Canada said Wednesday it has surrendered its offshore oil exploration licenses in the Canadian Arctic, paving the way for the creation of a protected marine park for whales, walruses and seals.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-shell-surrenders-canada-arctic-rights.html#jCp
Shell didn’t find any oil and gas in the arctic since they decided to give away the region to walruses ?
Russia on the other hand did find a new Saudi Arabia on its arctic shelf and are today producing arctic oil and gas. Admittedly it’s too expensive with today prices.
“After spending $7 billion over several years to explore a single well this summer, Shell said in a statement that it “found indications of oil and gas … but these are not sufficient to warrant further exploration.” This contrasts sharply with Shell officials’ statements as recently as July and August that based on 3D and 4D seismic analysis of core samples, its petroleum geologists were “very confident” drillers would find plentiful oil.
The geologists’ expectations were the main reason Shell spent all that money on a project that entailed much-higher-than-average operational risks and international environmental condemnation. Giving up has got to hurt at a company that prides itself on scientific and technical prowess. Shell said it would take an unspecified financial charge related to the folding of its Arctic operation, which carries a value of $3 billion on the company’s balance sheet.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/why-shell-quit-drilling-in-the-arctic
I expect that if oil prices had been $200 per barrel, the drilling would have continued. The biggest part of the problem was that oil prices were too low to justify the cost of the operation, and there didn’t seem to be much hope for prices rising to the point where they would be high enough.
What is amazing is that oil companies are resorting to trying to drill for oil in the Arctic…. which surely is a sign of utter desperation ….
Yet people continue to believe that there is no energy emergency….
Isn’t amazing?
The preparing stages were relatively slow pace, the development of use of tools (fire) but suddenly the major abrupt change (~8000BC ?) allowing for human population explosion and forced eco genocide, came only recently with the shift away from hunting and perennials into grain crops and “civilization” – in fact it’s quite easy to explain. Small pop numbers, tribes can move around, somewhat compete yet cohabit the space, while most of surrounding ecosystem regrows / rejuvenates. While in the case of overpopulation and sedentary civilization brings competition on resources which can’t regrow on time, it co-breeds societal pathologies, where it’s preferential to burn and salt enemies-competitor’s land, and then without perennials burned/chopped for heating/construction you are suddenly locked in the circle of dependency on others and their means of subsistence, forced upon exploitative forms of agriculture, not looking back.
Obviously there has been always a backdoor escape from this predicament (lower pop – perennials – “primitive civilization” in the stupid techno perspective but rich in spirituality – nature observation), but the paradox is that it can’t be used, while the dominant techno culture still projects power and is ready to crush any alternatives.
Now, there is the bottom line issue of the “master plan” – if the role for the humans from the inception was only to unleash the 6th extinction and terraform the planet swiftly into another state of ecosystems, the above mentioned backdoor option won’t be used ever or the surviving peoples and their adaption will in the end be so marginal or unconventional, it’s going to be from our perspective long process (thousands yrs) into the future anyway.
So, in any case the instadoom program doesn’t bother with these questions, for them only stuff that matters is the crash-boom of the techno altars, so it’s clearly a narrow path of limited scope and overall insufficient probabilities, i.e. junk philosophy/science..
Superbly pervasive and exquisitely written.
lmfao
Did you intend to comment on your posts regarding Astral Projections of yours? Honest mistake?
It’s like that quantum mechanics ‘woo’ scammer people like Deepak Chopra makes a living out of.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8DGgvE6hLAU/hqdefault.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DGgvE6hLAU
It’s a pleasure to watch Sam Harris in great form trashing mysticists and other charlatans.
Everybody thinks there’ll be some sort of “we” governing the world. We all grew up in a relatively globalized system. But my understanding is that this globally unified system is no longer viable. Maybe I’m wrong, and there is some way it will be–cooling ponds must be managed globally after all–but I don’t get how this would be done.
Yoshua did you see this announcement today? We are so effed if there are any people left over after a financial collapse.
http://www.complex.com/life/2016/09/enjoy-earth-while-it-lasts-atmospheric-carbon-levels-pass-point-no-return?utm_campaign=complexmag&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social
For the information of any fellow technophobes on OFW:
I realised last night that it is not necessary to buy a Kindle to read Norman Pagett’s “The End Of More”; it is possible to download a free app to one’s computer from the Amazon page Norman links to, thus allowing the ebook to be read.
Duh!
“it is possible to download a free app to one’s computer”
A technophobe using a computer? Cognitive dissonance?
Selective technophobe, then.
waitwaitwait
book is now pretty much revised and finshed updating
paperback will be out shortly
F_Worlders will be entitled to a cheap edition before I sell the movie rights—after that the price goes up
Deflation’s icy grip tightens…
Global Container Volume on Track for Worst Year Since 2009
“Global container volumes are on track for zero growth this year, which would mark the sector’s worst performance since the 2009 economic crisis and a sure catalyst for further bankruptcies and possible acquisitions in the beleaguered shipping industry, shipping executives said.”
Sea freight vs. air cargo?
http://www.joc.com/air-cargo/hong-kong-air-cargo-soars-above-sinking-sea-freight_20150127.html
http://bestcelebritystyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/40-staggering-mohawk-hairstyles-10.jpg
Is this guy running for US President as an alternative to HRC & CasinoBoy?
OK he’s got my vote!
The article you linked to was from Jan. 2015.
http://www.joc.com/air-cargo/global-air-cargo-posts-fastest-growth-april-2015_20160804.html
http://www.joc.com/rail-intermodal/international-rail/asia/china-europe-rail-routes-continue-add-services_20160531.html
“Nevertheless, operators and forwarders expect Asia-Europe containerized rail volume will continue to grow as shippers use higher frequencies and better services to take advantage of lower lead times compared with ocean; lower costs compared with air transport, and lower carbon emissions compared with both. Door-to-door transport via rail from China to Western Europe generally takes between 23 and 25 days, while ocean transit takes 50 days to 55 days. Air freight transport takes about 10 days.”
More “on demand” orientation means shorter transport times, which are achieved by air or train. Furthemore, the train usually runs on electricity…
“Runs on electricity” means here that electricity in train transportation is used more in Europe than in USA, so at least “cosmetic look” of more ecological transportation can get more subsidies from the states when funding various infrastructure projects that keep the GDP from falling:
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-trains-in-the-US-have-electric-locomotive-engines-Arent-they-more-efficient-than-diesel-locomotives
The modernization of rail tracks is one of the important EU funded projects also in Slovakia.
Thanks for the link. My impression is that electrified rail is more frequent for passenger service than for freight service, even in the US. The difference would seem to be that passenger trains would seem to get more revenue per mile. Stopping and starting frequently would also be more of an issue, as would running the trains “backward” as well as “forward,” without having space to turn them around.
I found this link called, “Why freight will never electrify.” According to the article, the problem is high cost relative to the benefit:
Wikipedia has a list of advantages vs disadvantages of FF’s vs electrified rail operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system#Advantages_and_disadvantages_as_compared_to_diesel_traction
Basically electric locos/trains are faster and more powerful. Electrification of a busy railway line (european/east asian) is a no-brainer.
“China’s national rail freight volume, an indicator of economic activity, declined in the first eight months of the year, the country’s top economic planner said yesterday. Rail freight volume between January and August dropped 6.3 percent year on year.”
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/transport/Rail-freight-volume-drops-63-in-8-months/shdaily.shtml
“As previous episodes of banking crises show, the sharp build-up of credit in the Chinese economy suggests a very high probability of a crisis in the next few years.”
http://www.eurasiareview.com/28092016-why-a-banking-crisis-in-china-seems-unavoidable-analysis/
I suppose to some extent this could reflect importing more coal via ship, rather than internally shipping coal by rail. But it is definitely not a good indication. Thanks!
Hi Gail. Great read. l also enjoyed your interview with The Investors Podcast.
In N.C., there are a number of data centers that have been built and more are on the way. At the same time, they are also building solar farms. So my comment is about storage and the development of other coatings used to capture solar energy.
This seems like a game changer. Reduced reliance on the grid, minimal pollution, basically, a much cleaner form of energy and even if it is not competitive with fossil KWH production now, it may be in the future. I’m not saying this will happen overnight but it seems like a factor going out a decade or more.
Thanks!
Todd
I hear bomb planes in the distance.
Better yet, just do nothing.
The biggest problem here is that renewable energy fans don’t understand that all the renewable economics depend upon cheap and free-flowing supplies of legacy fossil fuels to build out all the renewable infrastructure. Also we have a major exporter nation- China- which subsidizes renewable production in many different ways(reducing global prices) and accepts poor returns on manufactures in order to keep the mass of workers busy and not-rioting.
In orther words, the economics of renewables are mainly controlled by supplies of oil discovered in the 1930s to 1960s. This will change as legacy fields deplete.
Some of us RE fans do understand this fact. It’s really no different than most other technologies…each (essentially) required a certain level of technology, knowledge, and economic prosperity to develop and distribute. Currently we waste our valuable oil mostly on fake, meaningless lives. Even where we invest in the future, building massive skyscrapers, tunnels/bridges/canals, and particle accelerators we make these with assumptions of the future being as oil-rich or more oil-rich as today. If we instead invest a large portion of remaining resources into replacing the current, dead-end technology we could have a long term BAU-lite future.
Red alert — red alert — we have an anti-logic attack at Gate 57…. Red Alert …. DelusiSTANI at the Gate….
Shine the beacon in sky to summon Fast Eddy…. quickly.,…
Oh look … here comes Fast Eddy with his Giant Speaker Mobile! Hurrah it’s Fast Eddy to the rescue
http://thebreakthrough.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Truck-with-giant-speaker-array-1.jpg
Stay tuned for more after this commercial break – brought to you by Abilify…
When the pressure is to much just take a handful of Abilify….
We now rejoin Fast Eddy Exterminates a DelusiSTANI….
What’s that sound…. check check check… 1-2 1-2 …. check…. turn it up Fast —- give that dirty vermin DelusiSTANI a good blast…..
RealitySTANers insert ear plugs….
Fast Eddy Turns THE DIAL to full power…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo9AH4vG2wA
He tosses a few of these over the gate – along with some boiling oil (just for the fun of it)
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/560538010773901312/ye2FfuZi.jpeg
Ha — look at what’s happening to the DelusiSTANI’s brain!!!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/2a/36/44/2a364411cd6d3a4860705514f647250b.jpg
The hero always gets the girls
http://reachingutopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/monkey-beach-girls.jpg
LMFAO
So good I had to create an account and give you some props for that effort.
Well done sir!
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/man-taking-bow-29299244.jpg
And if that doesn’t work….. we’ll fill a giant barrel with napalm, nails, bolts, shards of metal, busted glass, rotting diseased corpses, pig guts, faeces, dynamite …. topped with a layer of facts and logic ….
And fling it at the DelusiSTANIS from a fighter jet at super-sonic speed….
http://images2.dallasobserver.com/imager/u/original/7036292/woody.jpg
That truck is nothing., Try this one
That is impressive! I will ask the dealer if he can customize something for me….
Be All That You Can Be
Hey Fast Freddie just shut the F up already. Perhaps you don’t realize it yet, but you’re playing the role of the loud, boorish Donald Trump of OFW and you are taking all of the air out of the room. Perhaps a short vacation skiing or in Hong Kong would do you good and let the rest of us have a conversation without interruption. Thanks, bud.
Wadday mean? I got a rousing round of applause for this one earlier this morning. My ears are still ringing….
Someone even donated a bigger speaker truck!
And now – to be compared to The Donald…. what is next – a Pulitzer? An Academy Award? TIME man of the year? Nobel prize? Do you mind to contact them and nominate me? https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/
But all those awards are meaningless… the one covet is the DelusiSTANI-Troll Destroyer of the Year. I have won 3 years in a row now and a 4th would be a world record. I am taking performance enhancers to ensure that I peak just prior to the awards ceremony.
You really should refrain from encouraging me with such incredible accolades… I will have a hard time typing if this continues….
https://buffalotompeabodyblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wpid-big-head-12.jpg
Oh, well, it was worth a try.
“If we instead invest a large portion of remaining resources into replacing the current, dead-end technology we could have a long term BAU-lite future.”
Doing exactly what in that (dys)utopian future?
https://theskinnyonmyjeans.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/dystopia-demotivational.jpg
We need to continuously be more productive and burn more calories per automaton instance.
What you actually need is probably BAU-LP (Less People)
Or else:
(Mouse Utopia study sponsored by the Rockefellers)
Currently we waste our valuable oil mostly on fake, meaningless lives.
And you expect that to change under BAU-Lite? Are our lives suddenly going to become authentic and meaningful once the world is running on wind and solar power?
They will definitely become more authentic and meaningful as our SoL declines along with our resource use. Many will be forced into providing real value (eg fixing/patching/recycling things that would currently be replaced, or even just raising chickens for eggs) while greatly reducing their resource use while others will simply want to either for financial reasons or solidarity with those less fortunate/able. Some machines would be replaced with cheap labor (like it has often in the third world) and more agricultural products could be tended by hand instead of crop dusted. Providing food, saving people money (when most are starved for it), and saving resources (as they decline) will eventually lead to pride (once we give up on the consumerist lifestyle).
I began my conversion roughly 18 years ago and am making progress every year (which makes me feel better). My main concerns are a) the lack of adoption/adaption in others b) lack of preparation from government or businesses. The current BAU trajectory is chaos; perhaps in the best case controlled for the benefit of some of the elite (which likely arbitrarily saves others to serve them). We need to change this trajectory.
Yes Howard… it will be just like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Made_By_Hand
Not this
https://notevenpast.org/wp-content/uploads/imagecache/lg_/Screen%20shot%202012-06-28%20at%203.34.51%20PM.png
“If we instead invest a large portion of remaining resources into replacing the current, dead-end technology we could have a long term BAU-lite future.”
My comment was basically addressing the general optimistic claims that a complete switchover was looking increasingly possible due to dropping costs of mainly solar panels.
So what are the possibilities for a BAU-lite scenario? Do we give up personal automobiles? No more flying- or just cut back a bit? Do we rebuild the rail system? How about high speed trains, eh? How do we heat school buildings in Chicago without something to burn? What could we realistically achieve for BAU-lite?
For what parts of the economy can we switch off the fossil fuel supply to be diverted to more meaningful uses? What will those businesses and individuals effected think about that because you can be sure that they are all patriotic family folks that need work to feed their families, etc.
Do you think that eventually renewables will be able to rebuild themselves every 25 years? Because solar panels and turbines only last 15-25y.
And then with a renewable BAU-lite, we will eventually be nearly all electric. But electric comprises only 20% of current energy usage in developed economies. So we have to switch from a 20% to a 100% electric economy. Which sounds like a tall order for most sectors.
I wonder…. what do people who believe this:
“If we instead invest a large portion of remaining resources into replacing the current, dead-end technology we could have a long term BAU-lite future.”
Think when they read this
You won’t like downsizing http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Is it like there is an ignore switch on the side of their head…. that they flip …. the moment they encounter facts that they do not like….
How does it feel? Is it like being on a plane … and a child begins to howl…. and you reach for the noise cancelling ear phones … and flip the switch ….
Is it like that?
Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are super, super powerful logic blocking defense mechanisms. I see religious people use them all day long. Ever try to explain to someone who literally believes everything in the bible that it is mathematically impossible to fit all of the creatures on the Earth into one ark with the dimensions given in the bible? Their head looks like it will explode and they often erupt into personal attacks or logical fallacies.
Very true. Seems as strong as the urges to procreate, eat and survive
Those are subliminal more or less, especially with business as usual running. Nobody thinks about food until they’re hungry. The greenies crowd is very similar to a religion or a set of beliefs. People get very defensive when you attempt to change their worldview.
“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
Perception only truly creates your reality in the astral. On Earth we are all subjected to the laws of physics or reality, regardless of what’s going on in our heads.
I reckon FW is the as close as it gets to a CG-free zone…. not perfect… but at least the attempt is made…. at least there is recognition of the role that CG plays in blocking the truth… and efforts to overcome….
This is an interesting sub-thread. IMHO, people who take their beliefs from authorities in a pre-processed form as if they were buying packaged food from the supermarket are likely to be upset when others decline to validate their opinions. By contrast, people who form their beliefs from basic ingredients they gathered here and there or grew by themselves are unlikely to mind even if they find themselves in a minority of one.
This second mindset is nicely summed up in the title of Richard Feynman’s final work of autobiography, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?:
zakly
civilisation exists only so long as we can shift stuff and burn stuff
there’s nothing else
Queue whistling sound of the bombs…
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Here comes another sortie…. duck for cover…
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
OMG — I can’t believe it …. The Nuclear Option ….. heaven help us!!!
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
Even as Germany adds lots of wind and solar power to the electric grid, the country’s carbon emissions are rising. Will the rest of the world learn from its lesson? After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs.
That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running.
And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy : Germany’s electricity prices soar to more than double that of the USA because when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow they have to operate and pay for a completely separate back up system that is fueled by lignite coal http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Why Germany’s nuclear phaseout is leading to more coal burning
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations. This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined.
Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years.
Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer. At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory.
https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1814149.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/Syria.jpg
Well, you have to admire FE’s relentless defense. There will be no bau lite. But, we will ramble on for another 3.5 years before the ongoing disintegration hits the U.S.
Now, about that Xmas turkey….
I’m pretty sure its going to be one great cluster F_CK as well, but Fast Eddy’s constant ravings do grow tiresome. There are some things we could do with the remaining energy that would help our descendants. For instance, We could dry cask and bury the spent fuel rods. Assuming the world isn’t totally bathed in radioactivity, somebody will survive into the future. Those people would probably appreciate canals, and rebuilt railroads. Maybe some water powered mills and workshops. If the US population died back significantly, the remaining conventional oil and coal fields could enable (perhaps with central planning) small amounts of industry for a very long time. Just because we won’t be able to make microchips and MRI machines doesn’t mean no fabrication is possible. People are going to need shovels, pots and pans, plows, etc. These were made prior to widespread electrification or oil use with just coal and wood. Heck, the amount of stuff laying around would enable a salvage economy for a hundred years after the fighting stops.
I’m not a “Delusistani” and Fast Eddy isn’t Nostradamus. Most of you guys thought that the world was going to be mad max by now, and the system has shown itself to be significantly more resilient than anyone thought. No one is going to just lay down and die. The powers that be will bend all the rules before they break them. They will suspend your rights, they will nationalize industries, they will implement martial law to keep the lights on. Fast Eddy’s extinction event is only one of a range of potential outcomes. Yes, energy will decline, wars will be fought, fortunes will be lost, society will be simplified, population will contract, and life will become very difficult. You will very likely not be free. I am unconvinced that we will all be dead next tuesday and that no constructive action can be taken. It would be nice if voices suggesting other (pragmatic) possibilities didn’t get shouted down.
“For instance, We could dry cask and bury the spent fuel rods’
Rods need to spend up to 10 years in a pond before you can do that — there is more than enough rods that have not been in ponds – and more coming every day — to exterminate all life on the planet.
‘Those people would probably appreciate canals, and rebuilt railroads. Maybe some water powered mills and workshops.’
Which people? The ones with radiation and poisoning?
As I have gone to great lengths to demonstrate – there will be no food for those with cancer and radiation poisoning to eat because well over 99% of all farmland globally will be dead when the petrochemical fertilizers are not available.
What I find tiring is having to repeat the same facts over and over…..
What I find tiring is that the Koombaya Krowd just ignores them and says ‘oh Fast – we can just cask the fuel rods — or how about we throw them in the ocean!!!’
Oh I know — why don’t we just grind up the rods and put them in pipes and smoke them!!!
Or how the DelusiSTANIS believe magically there will be food post BAU … when 7.4 B people are going to be ravenously devouring every blade for grass … every piece of bark… every cow, every chicken, ever deer, … and no doubt each other….
Feel free to express possibilities… but prepared to back up your assertions…. with facts. With logic.
I posted on Wolfst the other day the breakeven points of the top oil producers… with a deluge of facts…. some clown replied saying he didn’t believe those numbers … ‘it was not long ago the price was $30’ ….
I asked for some evidence that disputed the break even numbers…. radio silence….
Bring me facts — and there can be a discussion. ‘We can cask the rods’ is not a fact.
The thing is…. most of us were in your position at one point…. and we have spent years thinking this through … looking for an out … looking for ways to kick the can…..
We are like boxers with our eye sockets smashed in …. we have jagged cuts on our faces… busted teeth …. cracked ribs… we are spitting blood….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/06/article-2199197-14DDB734000005DC-903_634x412.jpg
We have fought the fight…. and we have realized it is time to throw in the towel… resistance is futile…. preparation for post BAU is futile….
We have come here to die…. please do not ask us to re-join the senseless fight…. most of us only have a few teeth left … and we need them to chew…
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/06/article-2199197-14DDB734000005DC-903_634x412.jpg
“constructive action can be taken”
Besides your entirely reasonable view, there are a lot of other things on the horizon.
Nanotech and AI being two of them. Pushed, those are game changers, as well as a dozen others. My bet is that the CO2 will be on the way down before mid century and the income per capita and energy use going up.
Yes of course…. the planet’s future has never looked brighter!
I think you will find a lot of people on this site (including me) on the opposite side of “My bet is that the CO2 will be on the way down before mid century and the income per capita and energy use going up.” Timing is a major issue in trying to make any change.
“Timing is a major issue in trying to make any change.”
Motivation is another. Consider how fast the Manhattan project went.
Perhaps if you could convince NASA that your unfeasible project had military applications you might get this off the ground…. if NASA does not buy in take it to Russia or China…
“military applications”
It does, of course. A 10 GW output power satellite makes a fine platform for a 4 GW laser. That’s the energy of a ton of TNT per second. It comes down in an area a few meters in diameter.
Couple of years ago I was proposing lasers to power transport. Bunch of people were opposing them because they are weapons. I can’t see any practical difference to a guy on the ground between a multi GW laser and a Predator drone armed with Hellfire missiles. We already have those so GW lasers are not a big deal.
“Russia or China”
Back in 2012 the head of the Chinese space program proposed to the visiting former president of India that they jointly build power satellites. So the idea is out there. If you see the Chinese buying up Reaction Engines . . . .
Keith – I am going to do you a huge favour…. here is the personal email address of a Mr V Putin… (theeee Vlad Putin)
I have already contacted him to let him know you will be in touch to sell him the rights to space solar ray gun…. he does not want the power generation component but he says that if it means he can have a ray gun to blast Washington from space that he will give you all the funding you want….
magnifcentvlad.p@hotmail.com
If it does not work out for you get back in touch — I do business in China and I have the personal email addresses of some serious players in that government.
CO2 will drop off a cliff soon after BAU collapses … and humans are extincted.
It will not collapse completely straight away because we’ll be busy burning up sofa cushions and furniture and the forests….
I’m not claiming expertise, but I have a computer and an internet connection, so I guess I’m just as qualified to comment on these matters as the next guy who posts here.
1. The problem with the spent fuel ponds is that they require a constant flow of water to keep the rods cool. The pumps shut off, the water heats up, boils off, rods get exposed, cladding melts, exposes pellets. My understanding is that this is primarily a function of rod density to water volume. If the density of the rods is lowered sufficiently, the water won’t boil off. (No, I don’t how many rods you can put in a standard pool, I suppose it is a function of where the individual rod is in the decay process. I’m sure the guys running the plant know). You can lower the density, obviously, by storing less rods in the pool. So whats my solution? Build some more pools, and don’t stock any of them with more rods than can be cooled without active pumping. Then if the grid goes down, they could be manually filled.
2. The farmland is dead. I don’t believe this is accurate, but assume, for arguments sake it is true. There is more turf grass in the USA than corn, alfalfa, soy beans, and orchards. I’ve dug up part of my lawn (was “dead” corn field prior to 2010) and planted a garden. Grew fine. Is this going to feed 350+ million of us? Of course not, but it will feed a lot of people.
3. How can the powers that be keep the lights on with significantly lower per capita energy? Take a look at North Korea: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2624164/North-Korea-Starving-people-child-labourers-dilapidated-homes-appear-harrowing-new-images-taken-inside-rogue-state.html
–You triage the situation. You declare martial law. You shoot dissidents, you nationalize industries. It doesn’t matter what the price of oil is, if the army starts running the wells. They might not have the ability to frack North Dakota, but they can run the pumpjacks until the conventional stuff is thoroughly depleted. You direct the limited resources to the producers (farmers and factories), enforcers (military and police), and the political leaders. Everyone else gets f_cked. If it got that bad, the police and military will shoot civilians if they know the food on their own families plates depends on it. I know eventually geologic depletion puts us back to stone age living, but authoritarianism might just get us past your spent fuel pond meltdown.
Yes you do have an internet connection — but that is all you came up with? I have spent many many hours on this subject — because it is that important…
Let me toss a few barrel bombs your way…. I will separate them so they don’t get held up:
The Fukushima nuclear catastrophe could have been far worse, it turns out, and experts say neither the nuclear industry nor its regulators are doing enough to prevent a calamitous nuclear fuel fire in America https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/20/19712/scientists-say-nuclear-fuel-pools-around-country-pose-safety-and-health-risks
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool, about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15 Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at Chernobyl).
A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15 year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel. To estimate the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137 inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about 33 MCi Cs-137. [7]
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion. In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material – See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/20110314781/natural-resources-news-service/fission-criticality-in-cooling-ponds-threaten-explosion-at-fukushima.html
Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment. This would start in more recently discharged spent fuel, which is hotter than fuel that has been in the pool for a longer time. A typical spent fuel pool in the United States holds several hundred tons of fuel, so if a fire were to propagate from the hotter to the colder fuel a radioactive release could be very large.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handling-nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel.html#.VUp3n5Om2J8
According to Dr. Kevin Crowley of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, “successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material.”[12] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the September 11, 2001 attacks required American nuclear plants “to protect with high assurance” against specific threats involving certain numbers and capabilities of assailants. Plants were also required to “enhance the number of security officers” and to improve “access controls to the facilities”.
The committee judges that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material. The committee concluded that attacks by knowledgeable terrorists with access to appropriate technical means are possible. The committee identified several terrorist attack scenarios that it believed could partially or completely drain a spent fuel pool and lead to zirconium cladding fires. Details are provided in the committee’s classified report. I cannot discuss the details here.
http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-mass-destruction/nuclear-spent-fuel-pools-secure/p8967
If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.
“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16fuel.html
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies. One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Today there are 103 active nuclear power reactors in the U.S. They generate 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste per year and to date have accumulated 71,862 tons of spent fuel, according to industry data.[vi] Of that total, 54,696 tons are stored in cooling pools and only 17,166 tons in the relatively safer dry cask storage.
http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/the-growing-problem-of-spent-nuclear-fuel.html
What does the extent of radioactivity from Fukushima have to do with storing spent fuel in a non-destroyed pool? Yes, I agree, it is bad if they melt down. What I am saying is that there are ways to store the rods that dont require electric pumps to cool the pond. THIS is what we should be using our remaining fossil fuels for. If we avoid bathing the planet in radioactivity, we will survive as a species (in greatly diminished numbers).
Fukushima has everything to do with my point … because if the cores were not this very minute being flooded with water from giant pumps — they would be spewing massive amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere…
Keep in mind reactor cores are nothing compared to ponds… ponds have far more fuel in them…
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
There are 4000+ spent fuel ponds around the world… that are about to boil.
Oy Vey! We are talking past each other.
This article that you’ve re-posted just affirms the need to transfer the spent fuel to new ponds, dry cask what can be dry casked, and lower the density of any individual pond so that it doesn’t require active pumping. I agree, some of these might still melt down, but we can work to prevent ALL of them from boiling off post-shtf. They don’t have to be maintained in manually filled pools forever, just long enough for them to decay so they can be moved without the cladding melting. I’m open to the possibility that we all die next tuesday, I’m just saying that you should be open to the possibility that there are a range of potential outcomes here, and not all of them lead to human extinction by radiation poisoning.
But hey, do and believe as you please. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen without the input of a couple of guys on the internet.
Do a little (or a lot) of research into how a spent fuel pond works… it is not a swimming pool that just needs to be topped off…. computers are required to manage them and high tech gear and replacement parts and on and on and on….
Once BAU goes there will be no way to move fuel to casks even if we can manage them for the time required. That requires complex machinery… you cannot just pick them up with you hands…
When BAU goes – the diesel generators will activate — maybe the engineers will stay on site for a bit — but the fuel will run out … the workers will go home to their families and wait to starve…
And the ponds will begin to boil….
I have a cousin who is a senior engineer in a plant in southern Ontario with nearly 3 decades of experience… he is in charge of operational safety … I asked him when I was in Canada recently what they do about major emergencies…
After Fukushima they installed more pumps and generators so that they would be able to hit pump water on the cores and ponds if necessary…
I asked him what would happen if the diesel was not available for the generators. His response was … we have quite a number of days in supply — it is very unlikely that more diesel could not be delivered to the plant…
I didn’t bother to go any further with the line of questioning… because I saw no need.
I had my answer.
As I have said before shove them in the deep trenches so they will be subducted eventually. And don’t use the argument it’s illegal. That in the end is not a whit of concern. We just have to send them off in a bulk carrier and sink it in 10,000 metres of water. As to the effects on the ocean, who is going to care? We are already destroying oceanic life and in generation all we’ll have to eat will be hagfish, slimy eel like cadaver eaters. Yuk!
Somehow I don’t think that poisoning the oceans and killing every single organism that lives in them… would end well….
FE belong to the instadoom/instacollapse camp. Where one day we have BAU and the next it’s completely gone, because the banking and finance system would go down and drag the rest of it in its wake. All kinds of dramatic scenarios can be drawn from over-simplistic reasoning. Good thing though – it provides more drama for the complexed ignorant.
As if the owners of this joint would accept that. On the contrary that whole idea is laughable.
‘As if the owners of this joint would accept that’
The owners of the joint will not like it… and they will not go down without a fight …. but accept it they will.
They are not above the limits to growth. And the limits — are upon us.
The fact that you think they are not subject to these limits – is what is laughable
“They are not above the limits to growth.”
Their growth is your loss.
The cheap energy comes with the feeling of entitlement to it. However, the cheap energy has an owner. Are you going to start biting the hand that feeds you?
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/3e/79/d1/3e79d13b0e743dbf7b4fcfbf506c68b0.jpg
smite,
About instadoom.. The way our global system has been kept afloat, despite peak conventional oil 2005, has been by human history record breaking debt. When that debt unravels we will not know what money is, what a currency is and what has value.
Example; If I want a chinese factory to make me a shipping container of spare parts to my hydro plant, that will take a few months.. Raw materials from around the globe, manufacture in china, shipping and trucking. If we don’t know what the currency is, what money is, what value anything has, then that order either can not be made by me, or it can not be fulfilled by them, or their network partners. All the same, international trade will collapse as the debt collapses.
If just within a couple of weeks of the financial collapse cargo ships stop running and trucks stop running, everywhere. Then industrial civilization as we know it collapses. Everything we depend upon needs diesel, spare parts, maintenance.
I was visiting a power plant nearby and last summer they had to ask half of europe for a spare part they needed, because the chinese delivery just took too long. What do you imagine the situation is when we don’t have money, currency, determined value, martial law and just chaos and mayhem all around? Any chance for groceries to have anything in them. Any chance for farmers to do their job? Any chance for waste management or water treatment to work. Power plants and the grid working? Anything within a global industrial civilization working?
smite.. please explain how I can get a shipping container of spare parts from china whitout a currency.
Smite is down at the ro-bot cafe in London…. he’ll get back to you asap….
“I was visiting a power plant nearby and last summer they had to ask half of europe for a spare part they needed, because the chinese delivery just took too long.”
Yes, whenever some important capital investment ends up in dire straits, all the strings will be pulled to restore it back into productivity.
And regarding that financial collapse into breaking all trade and commerce overnight. I would perhaps worry more about a technical crash (space EMP) than a currency crash.
You see everyone is in on this little game of debt. The owners simply intends to concentrate wealth and power to the people who already are wealthy and powerful. The ones in the bottom gets shifted out (shafted) and new ones won’t be allowed in. Because, yeah, finite world issues.
The growth phase is over, the time has come to crystallize and consolidate wealth and power. Just as in evolution, this process operates.
Coal from down undah, finance from London, manufacture by US owned chinese factory, shipping by Danish owned shipps, trucks from Sweden, diesel from the ME..
Ummm.. just your very basic logistics in a single spare part includes just about everyone you intend to remove from this equation. We are a interconnected global industrial civilization where everything depends on everything else to work.
If one piece goes, then everything goes.
Your dreams of culling the human population would have been possible by a spanish influenza every year, annually, the entire last century. But now a global financial collapse makes everything in a industrial civilization to go away. Not much for the elites to buy with hoarded gold, in martial law, scavenging and looting economy..
“If one piece goes, then everything goes.”
Dream on dude, dream on. The only thing going somewhere is you, and it’s to a place where the sun does not like to shine.
The elite got this one covered, the process is driven by technology and the sacrifice is humanity.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/61/5e/b0/615eb019b92aca17fc70357778593e6f.jpg
Meanwhile, keep on posting those insta-doomerist snippets and other links about how poorly the economy is doing.
http://d3fhkv6xpescls.cloudfront.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/self-deception-1.jpg
Wow! smite, that is genious!
This just in for smite; Please be in touch with the Russian Web Brigades. Urgently! They need new consultants for their troll army.
They desparately need you to teach them how to leave hundreds of comments with zero content and just pure nonsense criticism.
“Who is John Galt?” There are parallels here…
“Wow! smite, that is genious!”
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DApXXewW470/Vt2m3Np7wCI/AAAAAAAATeM/CSijREZEOeg/s640/11.jpg
“Motivation is another. Consider how fast the Manhattan project went.”
When will we start getting motivated? Stocks breaks new records every month, oil also, in the other direction. The weather is pleasantly warmer.
the manhattan project is often put forward as some kind of example to what we might do to ”save” our future existence–ie we can somehow, by national resolve, recreate the reality that existed in 1942.
unfortunately the manhattan project was entirely funded and driven by accessibilty to an energy system which was, to all intents and purposes , free.
The “Manhattan project” was an energy consuming process, at every level.
we no longer enjoy that situation.
Hence calling on “a new manhattan project” puts hope on a foolish premise, that no longer exists.
What we actually need is a process that somehow “creates” energy for our own infinite use and consumption…..not only that, create infinite cheap materials to go with it
which of course, cannot happen
http://cute-n-tiny.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/RabbitHighFive-400×389.jpg
“Smite is down at the ro-bot cafe in London…. he’ll get back to you asap….”
Oh man, that is SO funny. What a champ you are.
Back so soon?
You’re just not funny anymore FE, I’m living ya’, but, hey, it’s MY fault, so don’t you blame yourself.
http://www.cirkusskandinavia.dk/austrian%20nationalC04/rico2.jpg
YES, let there be Moar’ Newks’!
http://m.memegen.com/e03f6b.jpg
Dear Finite Worlders;
First, an analysis from Sandia Laboratories
“These results should be considered in context with the fact that according to current practice, decay times as short as 30 days in reactor-sited pools and 11 year in away-from-reactor pools are possible.”
So, a significant proportion of the spent fuel rods have been used as much as possible in the reactor, and then have been stored safely for many years. The fuel that has been stored for more than five years can be dry casked. It doesn’t need water cooling at all. Since it can be stored in a dry cask, it can also be stored in the racks in the pool without overheating. Stated another way, that fuel is safe regardless of the existence of water in the pool. From the book:
“For most of the cases considered, a 3-year decay period is sufficient to keep the clad temperatures within safe limits even when there is no ventilation at all.”
The cases where fuel that has been stored for 3 years, and is unsafe, are due to tighter placement of the fuel, and smaller holes that restrict air circulation. The 3 year number is for spent fuel from a Pressurized water reactor (PWR) for fuel that was used in a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) the time required is less. (There are more PWR reactors than BWR reactors.)
“… the amount of heatup occurring in the unventilated or underventilated away-from- reactor storage pool is considerably lower when the pool is filled with BWR fuel than when it is filled with PWR fuel.”
For spent fuel stored outside, or in a room with an open door and roof vent the study concluded that:
“1. Considering a complete pool drainage, the minimum allowable decay time for PWR spent fuel in a well-ventilated room varies from a best value of about 5 days, for open-frame storage configurations, to a worst value of about 700 days, for high-density closed-frame configurations with wall-to-wall spent fuel placement. Other storage configurations fall between these limits. The minimum allowable decay time is defined as the lower limit of safe decay times, such that shorter decay times would produce local clad failures due to rupture or melting.”
“2. The minimum allowable decay time for BWR spent fuel in a well-ventilated room varies from a best value of 5 days to a worst value of 150 days for the cases considered. A high-density storage rack design for BWRs would result in a somewhat higher value of the allowable decay time than presented here, but not as high as for PWR spent fuel.”
That is ALL fuel that has been stored for 700 days after BAU would be safe. Some fuel stored only 5 days would be safe. Interestingly, the author goes on to say that by making a few modifications to the racks, that 700 day number could be reduced to 80 days at no expense to the utility.
If the fuel is stored in a closed room with no ventilation, the spent fuel would need to be stored as long as 4 years before it was safe.
The author calculated that it would likely not be wise under any circumstances to stand at the edge of the pool after the water was gone. Just as obvious, the idea that all of the spent fuel known to exist would – as a matter of course – burn, melt, go critical and scatter radiation over vast areas is simply ridiculous, as I stated several days ago.
The second study from Brookhaven National Laboratory was charged with determining the damage that would be caused by the spent fuel that did overheat per the study at Sandia. In the “Consequence Evaluation” section of the Brookhaven study one finds:
“Because of several features in the health physics modeling in the CRAC2 code, the population dose results are not very sensitive to the estimated fission product release. A more sensitive measure of the accident severity appears to be the interdiction area (contaminated land area) which in the worst cases was about two hundred square miles. While the long-term health effects (i.e., person-rem) are potentially large, it is important to note that no “prompt fatalities” were predicted and the risk of injury was also negligible.”
In the later portions of the text, the author notes that the reason that there are no prompt fatalities, and the risk of injury was small is that the model used assumes what I would call BAU mitigation. So, yes their would be major health effects in the 200 square mile area if the fire happened post BAU.
Regarding their review and update of the Sandia work:
“Based on the previous results we have concluded that the modified SFUEL code (SFUELIW2) gives a reasonable estimate of the potential for propagation of self-sustaining clad oxidation from high power spent fuel to low power spent fuel. Under some conditions, propagation is predicted to occur for spent fuel that has been stored as long as 2 years. The investigation of the effect of insufficient ventilation in the fuel building indicated that oxygen depletion is a competing factor with heating of the building atmosphere and propagation is not predicted to occur for spent fuel that has been cooled for more than three years even without ventilation.”
Recall that under the worst conditions possible, the Sandia study found that spent fuel stored only 3 years might cause a large issue. The Brookhaven folks showed that fuel stored only 3 years might overheat, but would not create the worst fire possible.
Yup. The spent fuel will not be moved, it will not all be dry casked, it will be radioactive for centuries and dangerous for decades. It is entirely possible that every nuclear reactor that is in operation today will have a fire in the spent fuel pool(s) and it is entirely possible that the fire will be the worst possible. Assuming the worst happens at every facility, there will be roughly 1000 areas with a 15 mile radius that will be unsafe for the foreseeable future. If the population density in those 200 square mile area is high, millions will die or wish for death. Millions.
Spent fuel pools cannot:
1. Explode
2. Spread radiation uphill more that 20 – 30 miles
3. cause human extinction
Spent fuel pools will:
1. Contaminate surface and groundwater including the oceans
2. Make a terrible mess in the immediate area
Tell your tribe where the nukes are, and make sure the young ones know that it is crucial that their decedents never forget where those unsafe areas are. Do not live anywhere near one. No hysteria or histrionics are necessary, but FE lives for histrionics and hysteria, so please FE ignore the facts again. I will post this later.
Glowingly Yours,
Pintada
U.S. Government; Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) (2011-03-16). 2011 Nuclear Power Plant Sourcebook: Spent Nuclear Fuel and the Risks of Heatup After the Loss of Water – NRC Reports – Crisis at Japan’s TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant (~200 pages). Progressive Management. Kindle Edition.
I have addressed this previously – yet you continue to post as if I have not.
The thing is…. the Sandia Report is a proposal…. it is a theory … it is decades old yet to this day it has not be tried. Nobody even knows if it would work.
The main reasons – as outlined in the document below — are the massive costs involved — and the belief that the risks involved by keeping rods in high-density configurations are insignificant i.e. a catastrophic accident is highly unlikely.
“Indeed, many of our conclusions and recommendations essentially echo those made in that report 24 years ago, but never implemented because the probability of an accidental loss of water was estimated to be too low to justify action.”
Of course the high priests would not be concerned with costs at this point — and they would understand that the threat is not one of terrorism or catastrophic accident – rather the end of BAU and the inability to manage spent fuel ponds is the problem.
So why are they not considering implementing the proposal? Might I suggest:
1. Open Frame storage still requires active management — it still requires engineers and high tech equipment and electricity. I cannot find great detail on such an installation as it has never been tried but I can also imagine electricity would also be required.
2. The high priests understand that spent fuel ponds are only one of the intractable problems we are facing. The other is – as I have outlined in great deal previously — the issue of there being absolutely no food available post BAU. Who cares about spent fuel ponds when everyone is going to starve.
At the end of the day – the proof is in the pudding …. none of this is being done. None of it.
Such a transition could not happen in weeks or months – it would take years to build all the facilities and transfer the rods. That is not happening. Nothing is happening.
One must conclude that the high priests have analyzed the situation — and determined this is an extinction event. And therefore they are doing nothing to mitigate the problems posed by spent fuel.
The high priests are doing the only thing that can be done – they are desperately fighting to keep BAU going for as long as possible.
Because their researchers have informed them that once BAU ends — they die – you die – I die – we all die.
The following contains much of the original proposal and comments discussing why the proposal was never implemented (and won’t be):
Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States
Because of the unavailability of off-site storage for spent power-reactor fuel, the NRC
has allowed high-density storage of spent fuel in pools originally designed to hold much
smaller inventories. As a result, virtually all U.S. spent-fuel pools have been re-racked
to hold spent-fuel assemblies at densities that approach those in reactor cores. In order
to prevent the spent fuel from going critical, the fuel assemblies are partitioned off from
each other in metal boxes whose walls contain neutron-absorbing boron. It has been
known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective
air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel
recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at
which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission products.
https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/articles/fvhippel_spentfuel/rAlvarez_reducing_hazards.pdf
Somehow I’m not all that impressed with the nukes and spent fuel and such. Maybe its because the problem with the nukes would be just about maybe avoidable. But the situation with climate change, warming oceans, sixth mass extinction and habitat loss looks to be completely unavoidable.
If we have a problem A. (biosphere) with 100.00% chance of 100.00% extinction in 200-300y
what does a problem B. (nukes) matter, if it has 75% chance of 80-95% population drop..
It looks completely unavoidable, we will have dead, oxygen depleted, toxic oceans with algal blooms everywhere. This will reduce oxygen levels everywhere. About 70% of O2 is produced in the Oceans, and therefore dead oceans will reduce the human habitat to 0.0%. Spelled out. The hard core science tells us there is about a 100.00% chance of our species to be 100.00% extinct in 200-300y.
So what does our little nuke booby traps matter?
I am not concerned about AGW…. it is not an imminent threat to my survival….
Whereas my understanding of the spent fuel issue is that there is more than enough radiation in the 4000+ spent fuel ponds to exterminate all life on the planet… as noted below Fukushima alone would release 14,000 nuclear bombs worth of radiation….
And this is an imminent threat to my survival…
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
That said — I think that starvation is the bigger problem post BAU —- there will be virtually no food – and what there is will be fought over like 7.4 billion dogs on a bag full of chicken bones….of that I am certain.
And for me the food issue is not a problem, as such. Sure the raving lunatic hordes by the millions and billions is kinda some sort of a problem.. But personally, food is not an issue. I’ve been learning wild natural herbs/plants, and with some skill in the “yeasting-process” (I’m not sure what the real word is in english..) there’s more then enough food year-round. Actually food everywhere, all the time, if you know what you are looking for. Most people don’t have a clue.. So, I wont have a problem, with food that is.
But nobody can escape the diseases that are sure to follow the collapse. So my bet is that some high fever will take me. That will be the imminent threat to my survival.
Radiation, to my calculations, would start to be an issue just about the same time as survival drops beyond all calulable odds. So, radiation is like.. nice to know we are all going bye-bye. But that will be like the third, fourth or fifth bullet through the mouth, when the first one kinda did the job already.
For me the collapse of the biosphere is kinda hard to accept. Because it means that no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we fight, our species will go extinct nonetheless. That suc-ks! Big time! But that also means the elite is a bunch of clueless morons who kil.ed us all. And they did not just k.ll us all, but all the thousands of generations that were to follow us. Now.. nothing will follow us.
In a way that truly makes FW:ers special. We know we are going to be the last ones. Nobody of our species has ever been in this situation. (Doomsday cults don’t count because they talk about eternal life, the opposite of what is now happening) so.. actually.. there are no social norms for us, no rules or handbooks. In that way we are truly free..
“thousands of generations that were to follow us”
I suspect that we are close to the last even with BAU. Where it BAU leading us? Into a world where you have to transcend into cyberspace to keep up.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121130232045/http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/
Non violent extinction.
http://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson1.html
If everyone with a cellphone was able to transcend into something like the Matrix, how many would be left?
Keith,
I remember Tainter showing some graph about complexity of scientific discoveries. How the number of hours put in show dramatically diminishing returns in discoveries.
So, to actually get there. To actually have a handset to upload yourself into. Seems to me generations away. At least without an singularity, an AI.. An AI would again shorten the time dramatically between scientific discoveries. A singularity could do the science for us. But..
Google already has everything it needs to make a soft AI. Which in turn can produce a singularity. But because Google seems to not comprahend what it has, or how to proceed. We will never get an singularity. There isn’t enough time to try everything else first. Due to complexity issues, everything collapses before Google gets there.
Sure it would be nice to show the guys at Google what the program architecture of a soft AI looks like. Sure it would be nice to have a research lab in Norway, with all their hydro giving power in perpetuity. Volvo factories nearby producing spare parts to those hydro. Sure it would be nice to leave at least some legacy behind from our species. But because our elites are clueless morons, there will be none of that.
Keith, if you can get the clueless morons to stand aside, I’ll give the program architecture for a soft AI. That has the ability to evolve in to a singularity. But I’m not holding my breath on that. The clueless morons will have a rude awakening to reality when the financial collapse comes and there is nothing to buy with the gold they have hoarded in their Swiss vaults..
I suspect the Insta-Doomer crowd will find the postponement of human extinction terribly inconvenient to their world view. Nicely done.
Did you miss the part about where this was a theory published decades ago … that it has never been proved… in fact never been tried… and is not being put in place even though we are on the cusp of collapse?
Did you miss my theories suggesting that it is not being tried because even it could work it still requires BAU to be functional to allow such installations to be managed and/or it is understood that starvation for 7.4 billion people is guaranteed?
Watch how quickly things change from being normal e.g. grocery stores have food… petrol stations have petrol…. hospitals remain open…. police keep you safe… governments still operate… ATMs still dispense cash — that can be exchange for stuff…
When the needle hits the red marker…. you will see how instant doom will be:
https://www.chipsaway.co.uk/media/620055/how-far-can-you-drive-with-the-low-fuel-light-on.jpg
Hi Todd,
I missed your comment earlier. The solar farms look like they are a lot more helpful than they really are. The people who are primarily concerned about climate change figure that using solar can reduce amount of fossil fuel used in operating the system. Indeed, solar can reduce the amount of fossil fuel consumed somewhat. But the new system is not sustainable for several reasons:
1. In tiny quantities, solar is probably not too bad, because it can reduce peak demand in summer in a warm climate like North Carolina, and thus perhaps cut needed new generation a bit. But after a few percentage of solar electricity is added, problems start to grow. It is not very scalable.
2. A big share of costs are for operating the electric grid. These costs become higher, rather than lower as intermittent energy from solar and wind are added.
3. The electric grid requires fossil fuels to and maintain. If the grid fails, the whole system won’t work. This will happen, with or without solar on the grid.
4. To the extent that intermittent electricity from solar affects the wholesale price of electricity, it lowers prices to the point where it becomes hard to keep other generation needed for backup for the system. Once backup disappears, outages will be likely when everyone has their air conditioning on, and other times of high usage.
5. Use of solar hides huge subsidies that make the system look like solar is relatively cheap (when all costs are included) but it really is not. If true costs were charged back, and solar electricity paid fair levels of taxes, electricity costs would be much higher. The existence of these huge subsidies are part of the reason why solar is not scalable.
Just heard there is a state wide power failure in South Australia. Guess they are getting fully into intermittant power ahead of the curve, whether intentionally or not!
Not too surprising. Maybe a few people will start to get the picture.
It has taken the worst storm in 50 years to do it.
It looks like the electricity outage was related to a weather event. Also, it is starting to come back on. I am afraid most people will just say,”Another weather related outage.”
Last week a fire at a power plant in Puerto Rico caused the entire island of 3.5 million to lose power for days. The majority of PRs electricity currently comes from petroleum and is very expensive, with only 2 percent renewables in the mix. The grid is being held together with bubble gum and toothpicks. I’m sure it will hold up great under the strain of intermittency.
The mind does not recognise death or deep sleep, it is terrified, functions on neediness, always needing more to reach imagined completion.
Fortunately it’s a fabrication – we are not the mind.
It gets in the way of a perfectly happy existence when it is master, not servant. Traditionally in religions or philosophies the mind has to relinquish power before we can be free, a fact that will not be appreciated in this forum – because you are looking for answers in the same place that fabricates the problems. Winter is coming and you cannot serve two masters.
“Traditionally in religions or philosophies the mind has to relinquish power before we can be free, a fact that will not be appreciated in this forum”
Since when is religion about freedom?
Religion is more about the masses seeking simple stories and the religious con-men who control them.
http://www.freeiconspng.com/uploads/check-mark-icon-5.jpg
“The I Am is certain. The I Am This is not.”
Frog philosophy ?
🙂
Ah, just wordpress doing its thing. You guys didn’t miss anything, no harm done.
So … I can’t post anymore. What did i do wrong? Whatever it was i am sorry.
Pintada
You tried to suggest solar panels are going to save us all. You should know better!
Yeah, I agree that it’s the end of the world, but where I disagree is the timing, and what our response should be.
Most people here think:
-things will collapse swiftly, and the best response is to prepare
Whereas I think:
-things will collapse slowly, and the best response is hedonism
Notice that whether you believe we should prepare or not is not dependent on your belief on how fast collapse occurs. You could very well believe in fast collapse and be a hedonist, and believe in slow collapse and want to prepare.
So in the collapse space there is a lot of room for debate.
My guess is to largely agree with you, about WORLDWIDE collapse — note, EG, Matt M.’s latest graph (covering through last May) of world crude oil production,
http://crudeoilpeak.info/wp-content/uploads/World_Incremental_crude_production_2000-May2016.jpg
http://crudeoilpeak.info/latest-graphs
which coincides with my idea that world “peak oil” occurred about last November.
I’m typing this with a 22nd-floor view of part of Mexico City (21 million people in the area) — where I came here from, “Silicon Valley”, everything (including food, fuel, power, & water) is brought in from elsewhere, with fossil-fuel-based energy — that situation might well collapse much sooner than places like east Africa, where the water supply is carried home by its users.
My own idea about this
http://davecoop.net/senecagraph.gif
http://davecoop.net/seneca.htm
is that, over the world as a whole, the cost of keeping the existing oil wells/fields producing will continue to get paid, by people trying to avoid malnutrition, even though the costs of replacing those wells/fields with new ones won’t.
A golden oldie… this was penned in 2014…. things will have worsened dramatically since then…
And btw if Mr Pritchard understands this …. the men who run the show obviously understand why there are no green shoots — and never will be no matter what they do….
Oil and gas company debt soars to danger levels to cover shortfall in cash
Energy businesses are selling assets and took on $106bn in net debt in the year to March
The world’s leading oil and gas companies are taking on debt and selling assets on an unprecedented scale to cover a shortfall in cash, calling into question the long-term viability of large parts of the industry.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said a review of 127 companies across the globe found that they had increased net debt by $106bn in the year to March, in order to cover the surging costs of machinery and exploration, while still paying generous dividends at the same time. They also sold off a net $73bn of assets.
This is a major departure from historical trends. Such a shortfall typically happens only in or just after recessions. For it to occur five years into an economic expansion points to a deep structural malaise.
The EIA said revenues from oil and gas sales have reached a plateau since 2011, stagnating at $568bn over the last year as oil hovers near $100 a barrel. Yet costs have continued to rise relentlessly. Companies have exhausted the low-hanging fruit and are being forced to explore fields in ever more difficult regions.
The EIA said the shortfall between cash earnings from operations and expenditure — mostly CAPEX and dividends — has widened from $18bn in 2010 to $110bn during the past three years. Companies appear to have been borrowing heavily both to keep dividends steady and to buy back their own shares, spending an average of $39bn on repurchases since 2011.
The latest data shows that “tight oil” production has jumped to 3.7m barrels a day (b/d) from half a million in 2009. The Bakken field in North Dakota alone pumped 1m b/d in May, equivalent to Libya’s historic levels of supply. Shale gas output has risen from three billion cubic feet to 35 billion in just seven years. The EIA said America will increase its lead as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas combined this year, far ahead of Russia or Saudi Arabia.
However, the administration warned in May that “continued declines in cash flow, particularly in the face of rising debt levels, could challenge future exploration and development”. It said that upstream costs of exploring and drilling have been surging, causing companies to raise long-term debt by 9pc in 2012, and 11pc last year.
Upstream costs rose by 12pc a year from 2000 to 2012 due to rising rig rates, deeper water depths, and the costs of seismic technology. This was disguised as China burst onto the world scene and powered crude prices to record highs. Major disruptions in Libya, Iraq, and parts of Africa have since prevented oil from falling much below $100, even though other commodities have been in the doldrums. But even flat prices for three years have exposed how vulnerable the whole oil and gas edifice is becoming.
Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood said the productivity of new capital spending has fallen by a factor of five since 2000. “The vast majority of public oil and gas companies require oil prices of over $100 to achieve positive free cash flow under current capex and dividend programmes. Nearly half of the industry needs more than $120,” he said.
More http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11024845/Oil-and-gas-company-debt-soars-to-danger-levels-to-cover-shortfall-in-cash.html
I think we should look at Venezuela as an example. Are the people holding up oil production? No!
Low prices mean the population will be increasingly impoverished. Most of them will see little connection between their problems and the need to keep up il supply.
You’ve got it wrong:
– things will collapse swiftly, and the best response is hedonism…. or better stated — enjoy the very short time we have left.
Do not invest in or worry about the future since there is no future — use your energy tokens now to do the things you want to do now….
The seasons are much more beautiful since I dropped out of Amerika Inc.
I love this one.
That ‘NASA’ electric guitar…
http://orig15.deviantart.net/6243/f/2012/243/a/3/shut_up_and_take_my_money__by_yugiohart-d5d3lgn.jpg
Here are some of Musk’s initial comments:
“What I really want to achieve here is make Mars seem possible,” he says.
Musk says there are two fundamental paths for humanity: We stay on Earth forever until an eventual extinction event or we become a multi-planet species.
Musk says he wants to create a “self-sustaining city” on Mars.
Musk says using traditional methods to get to Mars would cost about $10 billion per person. Musk argues that if we can decrease the cost of going to Mars to around $200,000 per ticket, or about the average cost of a house in the US, more people would want to go.
Musk says that eventually there will be an extinction-level event on Earth. (Surely he means, beyond the “sixth extinction” that humans are currently bringing about.) But Mars is just as likely to be hit by an asteroid, proportional to its size. And when the Sun engulfs the Earth, Mars won’t be far behind.
“Early Mars was a lot like Earth,” Musk says, comparing the two planets. “It’s a little cold, but we could warm it up.”
Musk says it would be “quite fun” to be on Mars, since it has 62.5% less gravity than Earth, which would allow humans to lift heavy things.
Musk has been successful is in the way he characterizes huge problems and the ability to address them. Need an atmosphere? Yes, we can adjust that. Need it warmer? We can warm the planet, just like we have Earth.
And so on.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-27/elon-musk-reveals-spaceship-colonizing-mars
It’s like he is taking the piss now…
This type of operation in a hostile atmosphere would surely be a sophisticated set up. So I am wondering that with all the complex life systems- must have an unending need for repairs, replacement parts, reprogramming etc.
So where do you go to get all those spare parts to fix essential systems? Earth shipment? What do you do if the Mars crews find it doesn’t have the necessary skills and needs outside help- but the repair guy will not be available ever again?
Is the energy set up
A. Fossil fuels from earth
B. Solar panels
C. A mini nuke
If Elon can give us a perfect energy set up 34 million miles from earth, the good news is, he can solve all our energy problems here too.
You forgot:
D. FE’s Sun Pipe
We evolved on and are only able to live on planet Earth. Mars will not sustain a human being. We can barely survive here given our feeble antibiotic resistance to microbes on
this planet. There may very well be unforeseen microbes on Mars that would easily kill us since we have no natural immunity to them. Lot of unknowns here.
Cannot stand that self-pompous ahole…
“…62.5% less gravity than earth…”
That should make it easier to walk around in the lead shielded suits they would need to wear to clear the van Allen radiation belts.
No…I don’t believe man ever walked on the moon.
Don’t ever say that to Buzz Aldrin……
https://youtu.be/wptn5RE2I-k
What a douche. He really had it coming.
“Tell that to the GS employees who got shafted”
What do you mean by shafted? There is no work for all of them — so some were released.
You do understand that investment banking is not run on communist principles…. as much as it cannot be run by robots….
You apparently haven’t been working in a larger company, have you?
“There is no work for all of them — so some were released.”
A computer does their “work” cheaper and better. They got decommissioned, replaced and upgraded to hotter hardware and wetware.
I have never worked for a corporation.
I have a distaste for the whole office politics/diplomacy thing…. as you can imagine I probably would not thrive in that sort of environment…
For most of my career I have been mainly taken orders from myself…. Fast – do this! Ok Fast – I will do that. Fast jump higher — yes Fast how high would you like me to jump.
In this role I’ve had some exposure to investment bankers … I can’t say I have ever interacted with a robot though….
Unless some of these people were actually robots pretending to be humans…. anything is possible….
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01525/Terminator_1525028c.jpg
That is all speculation though … I have no evidence to prove that they were not really humans….
That is why I eagerly await your reference indicating that the Goldman bankers were laid off and replaced by robots….
“That is why I eagerly await your reference indicating that the Goldman bankers were laid off and replaced by robots….”
Perhaps not by ‘robots’ per se, but by (HPC) computers and software:
“In early April 2016, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its partnership with banking consortium -R3CV to “develop, test and deploy blockchain technologies to modernize decades-old processes and streamline operations, potentially saving billions of dollars from back-office operations.”
“R3CV is a banking consortium with more than 40 banks and financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup, Bank of America (BAC), and Morgan Stanley (MS). Soon after Microsoft’s announcement, Red Hat (RHT) announced that financial startups can experiment with blockchain technology on its OpenShift platform.”
“Goldman Sachs has emerged as the largest investor in a financial analytics start-up that enables institutions to mine a wealth of big data, underscoring Wall Street’s drive to tap new technology.”
“Q: Tell us about your role at Goldman Sachs.
A: I started out as an architect for what we call the Compute Farm—a grid computing environment that runs the risk and pricing infrastructure for the firm.!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-targeting-blockchain-technology-watson-140630760.html
https://www.ft.com/content/db9e08b2-71d7-11e4-9048-00144feabdc0
http://www.goldmansachs.com/what-we-do/engineering/see-our-work/open-hardware.html
http://www.goldmansachs.com/what-we-do/engineering/see-our-work/open-hardware.html
And the list goes on and on…..
You do understand that investing in something does not mean it will work out as planned….
Venture capitalism by its very nature results in far more failures than successes….. the way it works is that if you swing for the bleachers enough times you strike out most of the time but you might hit the grand slam home run aka a google, a facebook, a twitter….
But of course you already knew that right …. I didn’t have to explain it did I…. yes of course….
You have stated the bankers were replaced by robots.
Where is the evidence of this?
If you cannot do that then why don;t you just go off in the corner and do something useful… like suck your thumb…. or add to your great knowledge base by catching up on some reading http://daniellesteel.com/library/
“Where is the evidence of this?”
What else do you need? I have given you the dots, now connect them yourself.
Ask yourself, where are all the farmers these days compared with, let’s say 100 years ago?
Do you need any more ‘evidence’ than the two words “mechanized agriculture” combined with cheap hydrocarbons?
Um…. no….
What you have given me is a paint by numbers picture…. claiming it to be a Rembrandt.
What do you want a direct quote from one of the execs at GS where they state that the human automatons are now being replaced with computers?
Seriously?
Paint the picture yourself, lazy old coot. Hey, while you are swinging the brushes, let’s have a quick look into the cockpit of a Airbus A380. See where this is heading?
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/photos/airliners/0/9/7/0957790.jpg
Who do you think that does the actual flying, the pilot or the computers underneath that human machine interface?
I can guarantee that the next generation passenger and cargo aircraft will be without a cockpit.
“In a talk at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Conference in January 2015, John Tracy, Boeing’s chief technology officer, said: “Some of our freighter customers are asking us for those [autonomous airplane] systems today.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/has-the-self-flying-plane-arrived/472005/
Surely since you are so certain that robots can do the jobs of investment bankers you must know a few — you must know what the average day in the life of an investment banker involves?
So why not just ask one of them if the robots are replacing them?
I have a very good friend who is MD level in the investment banking unit in Hong Kong — if he gets culled in this latest round I will be sure to ask him if he is angry with the robots.
Robots cannot do deals.
As for flying airplanes using computers… who programs the computers?
“Robots cannot do deals.”
Says who, a random old coot on the internetz?
They couldn’t play chess better than a human:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EQA679DFRg
Never could they ever make music or be creative in any sense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbb08ifTzUk
Neither beat the top GO player:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUbqykXVx0A
Absolutely not outclass the top Jeopardy player:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBZnaoJVlk
And of course never drive a car on the road:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfaMWbGeO5Y
And fly airplanes, of course totally impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWB-5xVIbw8
Let me repeat what a Boeing representative stated:
““In a talk at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Conference in January 2015, John Tracy, Boeing’s chief technology officer, said: “Some of our freighter customers are asking us for those [autonomous airplane] systems today.””
So FE, it’s about time to brush off some of that decades old moss of human chauvinism and get on with the times. Start off by watching “Humans Need Not Apply”:
Duterte ‘about to cross the Rubicon’ with US, wants alliances with Russia & China
https://www.rt.com/news/360677-duterte-turn-russia-china/
The e;lders empire is disintegrating ….
“The e;lders empire is disintegrating ….”
It’s so tiring watching the old empire slowly collapse. These guys have more tricks in their bag to keep a turd afloat for just a little bit longer. Remember, they know this is the last round and are they are getting desperate. One more round at the geopolitical casino and maybe their luck will change. Maybe this time they will truly achieve total hegemony over the nations of the earth. Just one more throw of the dice….
In the last few raging days of the 3rd Reich in the fuehrer bunker, Hitler was heard raging to an aid “Where are my armies? Where is Himmler and the 12th SS Army from Nordland?
The aid replied, “But Mein Fuehrer, you no longer have any armies.”
And so it may go again. Men driven crazy by the lure of power. Desperate to hang on to it at any cost. Willing to accept any crazy odds for just one more chance to be kings of the world….. maybe even global hegemony. Maybe.
A tempest in a tea cup….
Like fighting over what is left of parts of Detroit
http://photos.metrotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Abandoned-Factory-DetroitMI-2.jpg
That one was ditched already in the 50’s. When will the welfare checks end, and trucking in of the food rations start?
Anyone dare come up with a guess?
Spring of 2017. They can definitely pull off some more tricks with the 4Q demand guesses I’m seeing some shippers pull out of their anuses. I work at UPS and carefully watch forecasted volume with actual volume. The company is predicting another record peak season and in some areas the volume is supposed to increase by 50% or more from last peak.
Grocery Prices Are Plunging
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/eight-cent-eggs-consumers-gobble-cheap-food-as-grocers-squirm
“The severity of what we’re seeing is completely unprecedented,” said Scott Mushkin, an analyst at Wolfe Research who has studied grocery prices around the country for more than ten years. “We’ve never seen deflation this sharp.”
So when all prices all over the world starts to fall like leaves from trees… then what are the central banks going to do ?
Deflation is a strange phenomenon that I have hard time to grasp in a world that is running out of cheap to produce oil.
It is really hard for businesses to make a profit when prices are falling. They have fixed costs, including debt and wages. Soon their profits begin to fall. Within about two years, they have to start laying off employees. If a business has seen its cost of doing business rise (as European banks have with Basel III rules), they are even worse off. They may have higher capital, but their profit is terrible.
Basel III rules ? Unbelievable ! Everyone else have thrown all rules out the window.
The more rules we have in Europe, the more the ECB has to break them to keep us alive. Who knows, that is perhaps the silent strategy of Europe ?
Why haven’t the Italian banks collapsed yet ? The ECB did something to just barely keep them alive. It will be interesting to see what happens when Deutsche Bank declares that it’s dead.
Lehman brothers: $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt
Deutsche Bank: assets of 1.64 trillion euros (yes, trillion) and liabilities of 1.58 trillion euros. Plus global derivatives risk in the range of $75 trillion.
Deutsche is the 11th largest bank in the world, when (not if) it goes bankrupt, the cascade of events will likely destroy the world economy within weeks. It is hard to see how we could have banks, any banks, or any kind of a financial system, three or four months after Deutsche goes down.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock..
Why the derivatives market matters. Why a bank going bankrupt can immobilize the global economy = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhI72CFrqEk
It is amazing how Kübler-Ross’s “first stage of grief” — i.e., denial — dominates the thinking and actions of governments everywhere, and specifically in the developed world. There are assiduous efforts, particularly in Germany and Denmark, which should know better, to defeat the laws of nature (see Gail’s Fig. 7., above). But the compulsion to follow the socialist (if not Communist) ideological path regardless of facts indicates a frozen, dictatorial mindset. Using taxpayer funds to support unicornish projects of “renewable” energy is not that dissimilar to the economic overextension which brought about the collapse of the Soviet empire. And, of course, adding a million or so refugees to the national welfare roles only makes the decline all the faster.
Effusive appeals to “morality,” “responsibility,” alleged guilt for past sins, various sob stories and the like do not change reality. Not even tyrannical and draconian laws can make up for the lack of very cheap-to-produce energy. History shows that such measures help only the rulers. The society as a whole breaks down, willy-nilly. Janet Yellen and her Fed cannot solve the problem of diminishing returns, no matter how delicately they try to redistribute the dwindling amount of monetary resources. The ballooning $20 trillion national debt shows this blatantly.
It does indeed look like we are at the edge of the cliff.
We are at the edge of the cliff. Leaders have no motivation to tell the population about the problem. It is even possible that some leaders don’t understand the nature of our problems sufficiently to recognize where we are.
If they were to tell us the problem…. we would immediately fall over the cliff…
Better to have soothing lies…
++++++++
“If they were to tell us the problem….”
Nothing would happen. Ignorance is bliss.
One of the BEST movie allegory of our current socitety!!! The Wachowski brothers, er sisters I mean, are true geniuses!!!
And then there are those who mistake their idiocy for brilliance… wit even….
“It is even possible that some leaders don’t understand the nature of our problems sufficiently to recognize where we are.”
The average US Congress-rodent spends 75% of his working time raising funds for the next election(really true). And the rest of his time pleasing powerful donors. He gains understanding of major issues by quick-digesting propaganda presentations from these corrupt private donors.
Now how does that leave enough time to research and understand complex issues such as peak oil, climate change, & economic contraction?
‘ leaders ‘ The people in Congress are not leaders… they are minions….
The el-ders are the real leaders — they understand — as do their top minions tasked with micromanaging this situation
Every policy out of the central banks – every action — is aimed at mitigating the impact of the end of cheap to extract oil…
What a marvelous job they are doing — without their wise management we’d have been dead long ago….
“The overall return on capital in the market remains challenging,” said Paul Tan, head of the Asia-Pacific region at consultants Greenwich Associates. News of the cutbacks at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America shows how banks are being forced to be “selective and profitability-disciplined in their Asia strategies,” Tan added.
Deal-making in Southeast Asia has been weak, and Chinese securities firms are making large inroads into initial public offerings and debt underwriting, pushing global investment banks to reduce costs.
Now the region’s economies are slowing again, some of the earlier optimism about business prospects is fading. “Senior-level cuts in investment banking are a clear sign that global banks are questioning the longer-term growth opportunities in a market that has slowed down considerably,” said Boston University’s Williams.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/wall-street-shrinking-in-asia-continues-with-goldman-bofa-cuts
Can’t seem to find any mention of robots taking any jobs… hmmmm…..
Without China leading the way on world growth, we have a problem.
The financial world is cracking…. Europe (Germany, Italy), Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, etc…. It is always the financial world that holds us together. Our modern civilization depends on credit and commerce. With those, our supply lines break down rapidly.
People don’t realize the economy is a self organized networked system that requires cheap energy to grow.
For me, the world economy exist to use more and more energy. If energy consumption rate starts declining, world economy stops existing.
++++ well said.
And that’s when AI takes over…. the robots are already eliminating us…. the robots will rule the earth very soon.
But before we are wiped out they will identify 300 Engineers — the best of the best… these engineers will be enslaved to do the few remaining tasks the robots cannot — there will be a breeding program so that there is an endless supply of new Engineers….
This is smite’s Brave New World. There is no room for Soros… only room for top grade engineers…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HXZt-IlClhs/maxresdefault.jpg
Wow! Awesome! That movie would be sooooo cool.
– 300 – Engineers.. coming soon to a theater near you
Haha, you got this one down right. Indeed jobs are being eliminated thanks to the advances in computation, automation and robotification.
“But before we are wiped out (…)”
The rest sounds like some cheap an’ nasty 90’s sci-fi flick. Come on FE, you can do better than that.
“People don’t realize the economy is a self organized networked system (…)”
It sounds so perfect, floating right up there among the perfect pink unicorns and fluffy clouds.
Of course it is not manipulated by the elite who’s owning and controlling most of what is important in this circus. I mean, what would you do in their situation with all the halfwit sucklings roaming the planet each and every one with an invisible straw stabbed right into the aorta of Ghawar.
No wonder economics is considered a joke among scientists and engineers.
somebody’s reading from my hymn sheet
I am afraid you have the story correct.
You forgot Spain, Portugal, Greece, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, the United States including all states and municipalities, France, Canada, Mexico, and dozens of others. The question is, how long can financial trickery be used to float things?
Japan has been collapsing economically for decades and showing classic signs such as population decline. It’s possible for this to limp along for a few more years from a strictly financial aspect. That said, many corporations are in trouble and only appear “okay” because they’ve been aggressively reducing their share float through share buybacks. Everyone is playing the same game right now.
From my point of view the assumption of a dependency of cheap oil prices and productivity bears a lot of plausibility. I am afraid we are behaving like little children: if we cannot have it all we wont play anymore! There is life with declining economies and there is a life aside our technological culture. History proved both! We are endangered by crashes, true, but awareness could lead to resiliance and precautions. It could be the harvest season of our culture, to take the best into the future. I am afraid that both Trump as Clinton will ignore the signs of the times and we are loosing valuable time. I am not so convinced that prepping is the solution, we should have a wider discussion.
Is this Jan Steinman? Prepping may not be the answer but it sure has therapeutic benefits.
‘There is life with declining economies and there is a life aside our technological culture. History proved both! ‘
Yep – it looks something like this — except that in addition to starving the people would also be riddled with radiation poisoning and cancer
https://notevenpast.org/wp-content/uploads/imagecache/lg_/Screen%20shot%202012-06-28%20at%203.34.51%20PM.png
Of course things will be different in DelusiSTAN…. it will be all Little House in the Prairie all the time.
There will not be manual force for big infrastructure projects as in the past due to the population decline and its deteriorating genetics. Furthemore, we are not able to build big infrastructure projects without machines. We build more and more complex projects now, the days of easy and cheap construction jobs that could be carried out using abundant manual force are over:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20160112/b083fe9fe78517feef5d2e.jpg
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-01/12/content_23050626_6.htm
Our problem is building a new simpler networked system that will really work with much less energy.
I would seriously doubt this is desirable by the elite. Thus it won’t happen.
Everyone should ask themselves, would you like to have a simpler life in order for the other (poor) 2 billion people to have a better life?
I guess the answer is not a chance in h3ll when push comes to shove. We all want all the entitlements and luxuries of BAU.
We are all in this row boat together and the elite got a motor on theirs. The poor ones, well.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/613574-3×2-940×627.jpg
Gail,
Firstly, have you read Dmitry Orlovs “150 strong” ?
Secondly, “Our problem is building a new simpler networked system that will really work with much less energy” Ok, I’m in. Where are at in this project? Where do you need input?
Why do I have a feeling we are looking at a ticking time bomb. https://www.db.com/ir/en/share-price-information.htm tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock
Oh, because it looks so familiar http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-26/it-all-has-very-2008-feel-it-deutsche-bank-news-just-keeps-getting-worse
Has anybody seen MacGyver? And does anybody have a paper clip, a comic book and a houseplant available? MacGyver is going to need them to diffuse that bomb!
DB going bankrupt can be papered over imo. It’s scary but not really game changing when credits and debits are meaningless. It’s not really a hard limits type of problem. Now Conoco Phillips and Exxon Mobil going bankrupt on the other hand…
Also I used to watch MacGyver as a kid. Awesome show.
The sea-surface temperatures are rising ridiculously fast.
Four degrees Celsius. That’s the current deviation from the 1981 to 2010 average for sea-surface temperatures over a broad region of the northeastern Pacific, a deviation you typically wouldn’t see once in a thousand years. https://robertscribbler.com/ Such once-in-a-thousand-years ocean-surface heat has now occurred for three out of the past five years.
Such extreme heat at the ocean surface result in mass loss of sea life.
It all comes together and may culminate in one big event…
The four horsemen…
1. Net energy and resource depletion (relative to the required inputs)
2. Climate change / ecological collapse
3. Financial collapse (caused by 1. and not enough productivity gains due to the already high degree of system complexity).
4. War and instability (caused by 1., 2. and 3.)
Dear ERT;
Exactly, and the bozos that think that they can predict exactly how it will all turn out by focusing on one of the 4 are so incredibly confident. Its as silly as the techno-utopians, or the permaculture-utopians.
Then, if you break it down further, there is peak food, peak fresh water, overpopulation, crazy technology, and other complexities all hitting at the same time. I wish the term “singularity” had not been coopted by an idiot … it really explains the predicament.
Yup,
Pintada
This is what global warming deniers need to understand. The oceans have been absorbing upwards of 5 times as much heat as the air, which is why it may appear as if the whole thing is a hoax if you don’t look at the bigger picture. The health of the oceans overall including depleting fish stocks, extreme rain events, dying coral reefs, poisonous algae outbreaks, and fish migration impacts, you will clearly see that the oceans are already being impacted in a very large and possibly irreversible way. When the oceans go, so do we. Evidence indicates that they are well into the dying stage now.
Time goes forward because energy itself is always moving from an available to an unavailable state. Our consciousness is continually recording the entropy change in the world around us. We watch our friends get old and die. We sit next to a fire and watch it’s red-hot embers turn slowly into cold white ashes. We experience the world always changing around us, and that experience is the unfolding of the second law. It is the irreversible process of dissipation of energy in the world. What does it mean to say, ‘The world is running out of time’? Simply this: we experience the passage of time by the succession of one event after another. And every time an event occurs anywhere in this world energy is expended and the overall entropy is increased. To say the world is running out of time then, to say the world is running out of usable energy. In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, ‘Entropy is time’s arrow’.
Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy
Is the universe a thermodynamic open or closed system remains a good question, perhaps without an answer.
“Entropy is a word that gets misused far too much. It is not clear which entropy you mean. Thermodynamic entropy (also known as the Clausius entropy) is a concept applicable to thermodynamic system in state of thermodynamic equilibrium. It does not apply to the universe, since there is no temperature, no concept of heat and no way to prepare equilibrium state of universe.”
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/11701/why-it-is-said-that-universe-is-an-isolated-system
ConocoPhillip loss widens as revenue slumps 36%
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/conocophillip-loss-widens-as-revenue-slumps-36-2016-07-28
ConocoPhillips said its second-quarter loss widened as revenue slumped amid the prolonged commodities downturn.
The Houston company also reduced is 2016 capital spending plan by $200 million to a total of $5.5 billion.
ConocoPhillips, among a number of energy companies that have been selling noncore businesses, said it completed $200 million of divestitures during the quarter, bringing the total for the first half of the year to $400 million.
“The price environment remains challenging, but our business is running well, and we continue to beat our production, capital expenditures and operating cost targets,” Chief Executive Ryan Lance said in prepared remarks.
In the latest quarter, Conoco said its average selling prices fell 29% from a year earlier, reflecting declines across all commodities.
Conoco reduced its debt by $800 million in the quarter, and the company remains on track $1 billion of asset sale proceeds.
Over all, Conoco reported a loss of $1.07 billion, or 86 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $179 million, or 15 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding asset write-downs, pension-related expenses, an asset sale gain and other items, the adjusted per-share loss was 79 cents, compared with year-earlier adjusted earnings of 7 cents.
Total revenue and other income decreased 36% to $5.58 billion.
Analysts expected per-share loss of 61 cents and revenue of $6.62 billion, according to FactSet.
ConocoPhillips has continued to reduce its spending to improve its cash flow and its balance sheet. The company has slashed its quarterly dividend and last year completed roughly $2 billion in noncore asset sales, part of its efforts to improve its performance.
Profit Slump for S&P 500 Heads for a Sixth Straight Quarter
The third quarter was supposed to be when earnings growth returned to U.S. companies. Not anymore.
Companies in the S&P 500 are now expected to report an earnings decline for the sixth consecutive quarter in the coming weeks, according to analysts polled by FactSet. That slump would be the longest since FactSet began tracking the data in 2008.
The prolonged contraction has raised questions about how far stocks can rise without corresponding strengthening in corporate earnings.
As recently as three months ago, analysts estimated U.S. corporate earnings growth would return to positive territory by the third quarter. As of Friday, they were predicting a 2.3% contraction from the year-earlier period.
Declining corporate earnings haven’t kept stocks from reaching highs. Since the start of this period of earnings contraction, the end of March 2015, the S&P 500 has risen about 4.7% and hit 15 fresh records.
One reason stocks continue to climb even as earnings shrink is easy-money central-bank policies. Some investors are using the resulting low government-bond yields as justification to buy more stocks in a search for yield, pushing up major indexes.
“Investors don’t care about fundamentals as long as central banks have their back,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, though he added that he finds the lack of earnings growth for such a long period is “certainly problematic.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/profit-slump-for-s-p-500-heads-for-a-sixth-straight-quarter-1474836341
Productivity growth and corporate profits are falling down towards zero. This is really happening. Do you think there is an energy explanation behind this phenomenon ?
The central banks are doing all they can… but they are starting to get out of ammunition…
I continue to believe that this is the end game…. declining profits… central banks powerless to ‘float all boats’ any longer…. companies desperate to survive slash capex… slash employees…
This leads to a deflationary death spiral….
Also – Bernanke is on record as stating deflation must be stopped at all costs… it is the wicked beast lurking behind the curtain ….
There are those of course who believe the beast is a pussy cat … that it can be allowed to come out from behind the curtain to be stroked …. that BAU Lite is not only possible – that it is a good thing…
Well.. to those people I say…. the curtain is starting to open… take a few steps forward… don’t worry about all the roaring you hear … don’t worry about the spittle that is flying about… ignore the stench… get really really close… be the first to pet the kitty 🙂
“that BAU Lite is not only possible – that it is a good thing…”
‘BAU Lite’ is an oxymoron, ‘BAU LP/ME’ (Less People/More Energy). It’s perfect. Time to send in the elite troops for some culling.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2d1kcb7.jpg
Let there be rain.
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5509e67aeab8ea8b2e072930-1200-1200/barrel%20bombs.jpg
miau
https://youtu.be/bOMou-IUIGg
The deflationary death spiral starts when everybody start to slash spending and employees at the same time ? The market contracts and everybody is forced to slash spending and employees again to survive the contraction and this causes a new contraction… The central banks loses control of the situation and panic takes hold of everybody ?
I think that is the most likely scenario… difficult to say….
Perhaps there might be a situation where some entity is just too big to bail … Doosh Bank for instance….
“The deflationary death spiral starts when everybody start to slash spending and employees at the same time ?”
None of this will happen, the slashing is an ongoing process of the replacement of human automatons with computers and robots. The central banks are covering the slack for the elite.
You see, it’s time to realize: You have owners. There is no need for you anymore. You are soon to be decommissioned.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/62/70/92/627092b8a87a5a7643227e2fe83809f0.jpg
http://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-slashes-asia-investment-bankers-1474664957
This has nothing to do with robots.. and everything to do with the fact that the global economy is sinking
as i’ve pointed out before—robots are the last gasp of the consumer economy.
the ”consume” part of what we do is to draw materials out of the ground, rework them into something we think we need, ”consume” it, then go get more.
robots miss out the consume part, other than energy itself, and a few spart parts.
the consumer economy functions by selling stuff to each other, robots can’t do that, so by automating the ”economy” the economy destroys itself at an accelerating rate
.. Sends in a reference to one of the media outlets of the big boys? Also a reference that most likely is computer-generated. Oh the irony..
Really FE, really? 😉
You are only being led to accept shittier conditions because it’s what they want from you. Then blame it on the ‘economy’.
Time to wake up and smell the coffee?
http://better.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/1212/coffee-coffee-makes-universe-better-demotivational-posters-1356373745.jpg
‘Shittier conditions’ Nah… business is actually quite good … the eld-ers continue to deliver!
BTW, slashing investment bankers and replacing them with.
Yes, you guessed it right.
http://www.theyucatantimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/robots-and-jobs.jpg
I know a few people in the investment banking industry … you are about as likely to replace them with a robot as you would replace an architect… or a plumber
Don’t get yourself too carried away with this robot thing. BAU will collapse long before you get picked up in the rain by a cab without a human driver.
i had a plumber in a few months ago—a young trainee (female!!!!!) plumber with an older guy
she wasn’t very happy doing the job—i felt it necessary to point out that it was a job that couldnt be automated out of existence
maybe my words helped—who knows
Give me one example of a task they perform that a machine/computer can not?
An investment banker can get on a private jet — fly to a meeting with a client and over a $1000 bottle of wine – get to understand the client’s needs – and develop a level of trust.
The highest paid investment bankers are the ones who bring in the deals.
They have extensive relationships and reputations in the business world — they are the ones that get the calls from the CEOs when there is a deal to be done — the sale of a business – a merger – an acquisition …. and they know who to approach with the deal. They know how to negotiate a deal – how to structure a deal.
A robot can do none of that.
Robots (computers) can and do handle the drudgery — the tabulations for spread sheets, basic analysis…that sort of thing.
But when it comes to the thinking and relationship sides of investment banking there is no way in hell a computer can do that.
I’ll leave at that – if you disagree then it is because you do not have the slightest clue about how this industry operates.
Feel free to provide a reference that indicates Goldman is replacing those fired investment bankers with robots.
“A robot can do none of that”
You misunderstand.
There will be no NEED for that touchy feely fluff.
The owners and disciples will demand hardcore numbers, a decision made by an emotionless automata, not how well you get along with your bro’ the CEO over a ridiculously expensive beverage.
Which is exactly why GS are firing those halfwit human automatons and replacing them with this:
http://ibm.ziffdavis.com/watson/finance.html
Suck it in dude, you and your buddies are going the way of the do do.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Titan_supercomputer_at_the_Oak_Ridge_National_Laboratory.jpg
Since you have such a fetish for all things robotic….why don’t you ring up this thing ‘for a good time’
http://www.headinjurytheater.com/lep3%20death%20by%20whore%202.jpg
at least my ladyplumber was prettier than that
“she wasn’t very happy doing the job—i felt it necessary to point out that it was a job that couldnt be automated out of existence”
Good grief, having plumbing as an example. Well. Let’s automate the sh1t out of this place and leave plumbing for last. Happy now?
http://www.demotivationalposters.org/image/demotivational-poster/small/0901/plumbing-plumbing-pipes-germany-demotivational-poster-1232920114.jpg
it does no harm to spread a little happiness along the way wherever possible
I’ve been known to make traffic wardens smile.
“as i’ve pointed out before—robots are the last gasp of the consumer economy.”
I agree 100%
“robots miss out the consume part, other than energy itself, and a few spart parts.”
They serve their owners. They need not to consume anything besides energy and materials.
Hard to wrap the head around that?
The next company can also buy a robot and make goods, driving up supply. The price tends to fall so no one can make a profit. No one has a competitive advantage, and of course the available buyers are down.
this resolves the robot problem
/Users/norman/Desktop/14142027_1159511267460958_1014166375963719685_n.jpg
previous link didn’t seem to work
14142027_1159511267460958_1014166375963719685_n.jpg
“Since you have such a fetish for all things robotic….”
No wonder you’d be a quite crummy investment banker.
You have no sense for what is sexy these days.
http://shequelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ghostintheshell.jpg
and less dangerous than that
Watch the movie.
She’s actually quite ‘nice’ 😉
“‘Shittier conditions’ Nah… business is actually quite good … the eld-ers continue to deliver!”
Tell that to the GS employees who got shafted.
Better them than me. It’s a zero sum game…. and the pie is shrinking…
I will eventually join them…. but in the meantime I will claw and bite and scratch and rip and tear — to make sure I get a piece of what is left.
http://blog.londolozi.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Kill.gif
http://thelastwilderness.org/wp-content/uploads/5.jpg
“The next company can also buy a robot and make goods, driving up supply. The price tends to fall so no one can make a profit. No one has a competitive advantage, and of course the available buyers are down.”
You are overthinking it in economical terms.
In terms of elite ownership be-all-end-all computerization and robotification translates to:
The one with the most toys and capabilities wins.
Not over thinking… just thinking…. applying logic… facts…
That is what we do here in RealitySTAN….
We are very different from you folks in DelusiSTAN
the peoples front of delusistan
as opposed to the realitystan peoples front
“Not over thinking… just thinking…. applying logic… facts…
That is what we do here in RealitySTAN….
We are very different from you folks in DelusiSTAN”
Still a Belieber in market fundamentals?
Waiting for that be-all-end-all crash since 2008?
Talk about living in DelusiSTAN?
You and Justin, Beliebing together.
Yeah, you are right about one thing; the elite will run this place down, more for themselves and a little less each day for everybody else. In the mean time, prepare to be decommissioned as the little scams eventually run dry.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/90/45/65/90456532ba1b98bd983c2813550fc32d.jpg
‘Still a Belieber in market fundamentals?’
Yes I am actually — I believe that ‘market fundamentals’ in the new normal (and I have believed since 2008) — come down to one thing — money printing.
That is the keystone fundamental — all else directly connects to that policy
As we have seen money printing is what has saved us from total collapse.
Bravo Bernanke!
If you and your buddies can think up more ‘scams’ that get me more years — PLEASE DO!
I am also a firm believer that a perpetual economic motion machine does not exist… QE is not a perpetual economic motion machine. But it has bought me 8 years of life so far….
It will fail.
Here’s a tip: Your robots will not save you.
“Here’s a tip: Your robots will not save you.”
Which word in the sentence ‘you have owners’ don’t you understand?
They create this game, they play this game, they dominate this game with:
Just as Norman says, “the consumer economy functions by selling stuff to each other, robots can’t do that, so by automating the ”economy” the economy destroys itself at an accelerating rate.”
If robots became consumers like humans are, they would necessarily become much more expensive producers too. They would require an income to pay for all the consumption they were doing.
“If robots became consumers like humans are, they would necessarily become much more expensive producers too. They would require an income to pay for all the consumption they were doing.”
Most machines and computers need other machines for manufacturing, replacement parts, upgrades, decommissioning and recycling as they reach EoL and of course energy to keep running. There’s that feedback into the economy.
The biggest benefit of a sentient machine is that it serves it’s owner without the risk of going rouge. Or.. 😉
http://i.imgur.com/0odPJ3x.jpg
I am adding a small extension and a party deck to the house…. I see two or three men working everyday …. they are using robots …. nail guns…. saws… drills and so on….
Other men come and install the wiring – using robots to assist… a plumber was here and he put in pipes….and drains… he did not use any robots…. two other men climbed up on the joists and installed a roof …. they used ladders and scaffolding === are those robots – or tools? Or are robots just more sophisticated tools?
Are these robots?
https://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/3990596/434455585/stock-vector-vector-set-about-the-stone-age-primitive-man-s-tools-it-includes-spear-scraper-fire-stick-434455585.jpg
As far as I can see it is the men who are making all the decisions.
Can a robot exist without man?
When that is possible please be sure to let me know …. because at the moment… robot is just a fancy name for a tool…. and we’ve had tools many thousands of years….
Yes, you are a tool… 😉
Btw, how’s that cognitively dissonant Beliebing going?
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/400x/63214059.jpg
It’s scary to see Conoco Phillips start losing money, in the billions of dollars. As far as bankruptcies go, their financial sheets and the industry trends, I think they may be able to survive for 2 years in current market conditions. If market conditions deteriorate further or even stay at oil prices around $45 a barrel, they might go bankrupt faster. On the other hand if oil prices start to go up again, they could lengthen those estimates.
Here’s the thing, that’s just surviving as a company. Nevermind that they will likely have to layoff employees, eliminate the dividend entirely, and need a bailout. They will need to sell infrastructure and other capital that would otherwise sit idle as they won’t want to afford the storage/maintenance. So basically Conoco Phillips will be downsizing as a company no matter what at this point, they’ve already cut the dividend. But will they be able to scale back up operations or even return to a profit after cutting the trim? Doubtful.
I traded for years and have learned I could tell a lot about a stock or a company by looking at the charts. Currently, as in the beginning of August the charts say that Conoco Phillips (COP) is a sell. The 50 day moving average (MA) has gone below the 100 day MA and it’s FAR below the 300 day MA. No stock picker or long term trader would touch this hog. It’s also had some larger than normal volume on red days in the last several weeks, a sure sign that more vicious selling is coming on future down days.
The stock bounced heavy today on news headlines but I don’t think proposed future cuts by OPEC are a reason to celebrate. Gail’s theory is that economic growth dies over $100 a barrel, which is likely at least where COP would need the price to return in order to sustain taxes, dividends, growth, etc. So, how long do we have until bankruptcy and will bailouts work to float the company for just a little while longer? That’s the million dollar question.
Something to lighten up our minds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBw_da7BZk
This ain’t no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to Hell
Off topic, but nevertheless a geopolitics in time of the diminishing returns: Crisis & Chaos- Are we moving towards World War III by George Friedman.
http://go.ggcpublishing.com/l/129401/2016-09-22/z8hdf
I struggle with the concept of WW3 … because I have read this — skip to the part about what a collapse of the EU would mean — I think it’s on page 56
http://www.feasta.org/2012/06/17/trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-a-study-in-global-systemic-collapse/
I also struggle with Friedman and his outfit — as I understand it if I pay his annual subscription fee I will get inside information on what is really going on in the world…. I get insights into what the CIA is up to etc etc etc
Forgive me if I am skeptical…. that is my nature
FE, I have reade the study you are referring, excellent piece of information. Yup I am also skeptical of buying into their intel, documentary itself I would like to see. Analysis on the interview seemed to be relevant in explaining the american and russian view on the larger geopolitical struggle, as well as the internal need of the China to lead the attention of the masses from the elite to external threat, what is also in the end happening in USA and Russia.
Autotrophic and Mixotrophic Growth of the Microalga Phaeodactylum Tricornutum in Compact Photobioreactors for Biodiesel Production Aiming At Sustainable Energy Production
Keli Morais (UFPR, Brazil); Jose Vargas and Andre Mariano (Federal University of Parana, Brazil); Juan Ordonez (Florida State University, USA); Vanessa Kava (UFPR, Brazil)
http://sites.ieee.org/sustech/2016-home/program/advanced-program/
Oooh … so many big words…. Biodiesel…. I know that one… I suspect using that word in the same sentence as sustainable might cause the cerebellum to interact with the corpous collusum … resulting in
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bRuIP0cWMoI/maxresdefault.jpg
Someone better warn these fellows that they are playing with fire….
I have a friend who says of his PhD work… “I’m helping to save the world”
He’s working on the chemistry involved in an improvement of a type of solar PV which might see energy losses by energy carrier mechanisms being slightly reduced…
I don’t challenge his belief. I’d like to remain on speaking terms. I don’t feel similarly empathetic to posters however. Maintaining friendships in real life is important to me. Politely allowing the illusions of online strangers to pollute this haven of realism is not.
My goal is to drive off anyone who pollutes FW with rubbish — anyone who refused to acknowledge facts — and just continues to spew and spew and spew.
If I wanted to mop up spew — I would join peakprosperity.com I do not want to mop up spew.
There are hundreds of other sites that will welcome such rubbish — I do not understand why we have to entertain this utterendlessb.ull–shit on FW.
In fact if Justin Bieber were to post here I’d be more inclined to hear what he has to say regarding our predicament…. I might actually invite him to the EOWP (end of world party) because at least he might bring along some talent…
Speaking of musical entertainment at the EOWP:
I can perform my various self-penned guitar-backed ditties.
(I could direct you to my online recordings but I ‘m not so brash)
A few sample lines:
“Everyone’s in techno-nirvana,
a drunken stumble to the Lotto store
the frontal lobes are occupied,
reality hides in the blue-room shine.
We’re all exploited. We all exploit it.
We’re all to blame and its such a shame
We’re past the point of no return,
abandon hope it’s the great end-game”
“It ain’t common sense but it is true
that time is running out for me and you
the fear of falling over the cliff we made
gives us all the sense we can be saved … but
My love, My love you can take my breath away……”
Besides FSA, how about inviting Selena Gomez to the EOWP? Assuming I’m invited, of course, we want balanced entertainment there. Not sure if Selena and Justin are still on speaking terms, though. (FSA writes like a female, so she must be one.)
Such and excellent idea!
This will make it worthy of the title….
http://wpninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/extravaganza.png
Speaking of my writing style,
I’ve noticed that I often leave out “is” and “are”.
Just a typo? Or a subconscious expression of:
“the misuse of the verb to be, which “allows even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things”.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Economists are close to resolving our energy predicament. They on the cusp of finding a graph that proves energy is irrelevant as long as you can throw enough money around.
http://le.uwpress.org/content/92/3/491.short
“Theoretical results show that the ease of substitution between capital and energy increases over time with the energy-capital ratio”
This is great news!
Just when I thought all was lost.
This moment will be referred to by future historians as The Great Decoupling.
School children will be taught how before this moment in time people were guided by logic and facts…. this narrow view nearly resulted in the end of civilization!
Then fortunately what is known as the DelusiSTANI invasion of 2016 wiped this world view off the face of the map.
And everyone lived happily ever after 🙂
loved the link to that Eddy
i like reading other folks’ insanity—it helps just at those moments when i’m doubting my own
You are doubting your own insanity? Oh, you Doubting Thomas (I mean Norman), you!
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/saRZqGt1pIY/hqdefault.jpg
i re-read the contract and decided i do believe in sanity claus after all
You can’t pull me, there ain’t no Sanity Claus. https://www.google.fi/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DG_Sy6oiJbEk&ved=0ahUKEwid0MOs363PAhUD_SwKHYPJD8cQtwIIGDAA&usg=AFQjCNG_jBH22ahjcStE7ZSfLjroVnpRCQ&sig2=qjZpOk3zqTmn_JRdooG-ZQ
i love that clip
one of their best
http://sites.ieee.org/sustech/2016-home/program/advanced-program/
A Field Study of the Residential Clothes Drying Process
Amy Fuchs Heidner, PE and Dennis Heidner (The Rextor Group PLLC, USA)
Pay $500 to watch Amy and Dennis demonstrate a … clothes line made of organic hemp!
Is there a changing mindset in the minions that pull the every-day levers of the bond, equity and currency markets? I’m supposing that their actions have as much to bear on the phenomena of busts as the causes enabled by central bankers.
Has the psychology of the market panic of 2008 been replaced with an anxious desperation that may see us grind down much lower for a substantial period before the next credit/banking crisis eventuates? Are the algorithms that now dominate equity markets for instance programmed to respond in panic?
it’s as if everyone has gradually realised that sustainable financial returns are f*^&ed and they are holding on for as long as possible by whatever means possible. That’s possibly a little different as a mechanism of psychology in the markets than the sudden panic of 2008.
What I’m suggesting is there is an element of truth to the “New Normal” meme. We could be seeing conditions in the financial rackets that enable a slightly extended grind down before they see the final crack-up bust. When we assume that the next financial crisis is imminent do we need to take this slightly different psychology into regard? Though the next financial crisis may be imminent and abrupt perhaps we will see a bout of good-old fashioned ‘depression’ for a period first.
AHHHHH! I Censorship!!!
Let’s try to shorten it..
Remember how I was saying how I am amazed that an entire industry of bullshiit can be invented based on a foundation completely devoid of facts and logic?
Well – here is the buffet of utter total complete _____ING idiocy for total ____IING idio-ts to feast upon…. for $500+ bucks I might add….
For the life of me I could not think of anything more to add… they have covered every stu-pid idea ever imagined….
That said — I don’t see Sun Pipe presentation …nor a Sax Machine that allows a solar panel to ra.pe a sheep and produce hybrid walking solar panels….
http://sites.ieee.org/sustech/2016-home/program/advanced-program/
Energy Efficiency Track
A Field Study of the Residential Clothes Drying Process
Amy Fuchs Heidner, PE and Dennis Heidner (The Rextor Group PLLC, USA)
In this session Amy and Dennis will be demonstrating a clothes line:
Solar Energy Overview and Maximizing Power Output of a Solar Array Using Sun Trackers
Hamid Allamehzadeh (Eastern New Mexico University, USA)
During this presentation Fast Eddy will scream ‘did you know that Germany is having to build coal-fired plants because of the intermittency of solar and wind – and they now have some of the most expensive electricity rates in the world????” before being dragged out by the DelusiSTANI police,
Stay tuned for more…
The problem with wind power is its intermittence nature and battery storage ? How about using wind power to produce and storage the energy in oil, gas and coal ? Even if the EROI of oil, gas and coal drops to 1:1 they could still function as “batteries”. Wind power might only works 20 percent of the time, so 80 percent of the global economy and population would disappear. That would still leave this planet with a population of 1.5 billion people to serve the elite. That is better than nothing ?
The work force would have be on stand by to wait for the wind and stand idle when it’s calm ? No problem, the work force would consist of robots.
If this was the case, why not simply scrap the wind and solar gimmicks and go all-out on nukes and hydro power?
1.5 billion, it’s way too many. 0.5 billion total population would be sufficient to have the top dogs, machines and human automatons happy and well-fed with calories and circuses.
Excellent. Now just secure space in a Vivos http://www.terravivos.com/ underground shelter, and you’ll be the top dogs to survive anything. Superb.
When you guys come back up again, after a couple of years of 4-star accomodations underground, everything after that will be Hunky-Dory Awesome!
No need for underground eccentricities. Divide and rule is the motto.
Make the riff-raff kill each other while protecting the valuable resources with well fed mercenaries.
See Syria and Iraq as two recent examples.
Syria, Iraq? Yes.
The issue at hand is we have not seen affluent countries to be triaged away so far, mind you now that includes also large agglomeration hubs in Asia. With the small case studies or “rat laboratories” such as Greece and Italy, Spain.. However, the migration case in Europe is probably early sign, how to increase instability more quickly, and we know at least the middleman who pimps up the migration flux process via NGOs like Mr. Soros, who operates in wider elite networks.
Once this process of triage kicks in strongly among the systemic core (the affluent parts), problem in JIT and various unseen domino effects in globally important sectors start to be noticed. This is likely the the major finite world issue/collapse related question. Again, I’m of the opinion that people could be pushed against the wall a bit more, plus there is the huge factor of existing inertia with legacy infrastructure. So, perhaps the worst to come and start to worry is 2-3 decades into the future. In that case most of us here are worried prematurely..
Pretty much spot on, except..
“So, perhaps the worst to come and start to worry is 2-3 decades into the future. In that case most of us here are worried prematurely..”
I would say as the AI revolution recently kicked into full swing, 10 years tops before we’ll see a serious ramp-up in the decommissioning of the human automation fleet indirectly serving the über-elite and a full on computational replacement program where deemed necessary.
It would surely be made to look like “chaos”. But as always – follow the money. Have you recently heard of a productive oil field or a refinery being damaged in the Syria or Iraq conflict? I guess not.
It is apparent that the welfare state is on the chopping block with this mass migration of mostly illiterate and useless people. It serves two purposes, put a heavy burden on the services and destabilize a mostly cohesive social structure. Then it’s about time to commence da’ Soros with peanuts for a budget to start the riots and make the creative, productive and competent populace migrate closer to the (power) core.
Hydro and wind would of course work even better. (I don’t like the nukes).
It’s time to leave our snobbery aside and to do what has to be done.
Which is:
– More nukes and hydro.
With a population of 0.5B whatever hydro, nukes and wind we already have should be enough.
We need growth. Otherwise inevitable corruption will eventually trash the system.
We have a whole lot of stuff that would be hard to downsize for 500 million. Hydro, nukes and wind wouldn’t provide any road repair at all. Pipelines of all kind would go unrepaired–water, sewer. How would the electric grid be repaired? We need roads or helicopters.
Well, let’s downscale our infrastructure needs. What’s the point with roads leading to nowhere? Let them decay or simply recycle the surface for what’s it worth.
I just don’t get this obsession of the virtue of people wasting perfectly good energy for no apparent function. What is the perspective of the owners in this system? Would you like to share your own wealth with 3’rd world people? The same applies to the elite, the ‘real’ government these days.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/de/ca/1cdeca57324f15d68862a18979058a39.jpg
Hydro and nukes provide power from energy stored in either as potential energy in a water dam or as the strong force in the atom. With cheap enough energy, critical infrastructure will be maintained just as it is today.
400kV transmission lines through the wilderness in Sweden. Very little maintenance is needed. Hardly even the worst storms touches these BAU powering beasts these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnEaq4BeFH0
Just listen to that hum as the Aluminium smelters further south suck those megawatts more or less directly from the stored potential energy in the dam. 🙂
A) where is this great untapped hydro resource?
B) You are recycling your “the ignorant masses must be extinguished” for the sake of “people as smart as me” argument. It’s still as ridiculous as it ever was.
“A) where is this great untapped hydro resource?
B) You are recycling your “the ignorant masses must be extinguished” for the sake of “people as smart as me” argument. It’s still as ridiculous as it ever was.”
A) Hydro power are naturally limited as I have already stated a couple of times. We need more nukes. And perhaps gasification for waste processing and liquid fuels production.
B) Intelligence? The right question would be if I’d be USEFUL for the elite. Perhaps, perhaps not. How about you, you mindless consumerist, you!
http://www.sohosalescoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Einstein.jpg
The problem is just that the internal combustion engine works with 20 percent efficiency… so I’m afraid this was all just a waste of time and energy… and comments. Gail is now thinking: Oh man ! Do I have to write a new paper again ?
I believe that US should promote the gasification of coals and various residuals.
As you probably know the gasification process requires huge air separation units which with a special design could serve as batteries.
So I hope that in near future it can help to produce competitive fuels and chemical products and support renewable energy.
brilliant! when can we start?
Eddy, I have cornered the market in coal shovels
I can let you have one as a registered doomster, very reasonable price
I’m buying up all the hand pumps … I have cornered the market
I’m buying up all the places and angles where two sides or edges meet…. I am marketing the corners.
i thought pythagoras already did that
We already do:
Sheez, these insta-doomerists. Everything is impossible… 😉
“The advantage of gasification is that using the syngas is potentially more efficient than direct combustion of the original fuel because it can be combusted at higher temperatures or even in fuel cells, so that the thermodynamic upper limit to the efficiency defined by Carnot’s rule is higher or (in case of fuel cells) not applicable. Syngas may be burned directly in gas engines, used to produce methanol and hydrogen, or converted via the Fischer–Tropsch process into synthetic fuel. Gasification can also begin with material which would otherwise have been disposed of such as biodegradable waste. In addition, the high-temperature process refines out corrosive ash elements such as chloride and potassium, allowing clean gas production from otherwise problematic fuels. Gasification of fossil fuels is currently widely used on industrial scales to generate electricity.[5]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification#Gasification_processes
I am not sure what you mean. How would oil, coal, and gas function as batteries?
The world’s most efficient battery?
http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/06731.jpg
Goldman Sachs is cutting almost 30 per cent of its 300 investment banking jobs in Asia outside Japan in response to a slowdown in activity in the region, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The Wall Street bank is reducing the number of bankers working on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and equity and debt capital markets deals, the sources said. It will be left with slightly more than 200 bankers across Asia. Most of the job cuts are likely to take place in Hong Kong, Singapore and China, where Goldman’s main Asian offices are located, according to the sources, who said the process was underway.
A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.
Revenue decline
The company, whose investment banking revenue fell 11 per cent to $1.79 billion in the second quarter, has been hit by a lacklustre environment for deals across Asia. The total value of M&A deals across the Asia-Pacific region has dropped to $572.9 billion so far this year, from $745.7 billion in the same period of 2015, according to Thomson Reuters data.
More http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/goldman-to-axe-30-of-banking-jobs-in-asia/article9144896.ece
I just finished a paper for a technical conference next month. Copyright agreement won’t let me just hang it on a web site till after the conference. It’s 8 pages of dense technical writing, but if there are a few people on this list who are able to deal with that, email and ask for a copy of “Solar Power Satellites, A Solution to Energy and Carbon” hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Can I suggest a title edit? You have reluctantly admitted several times that your proposed satellite array is only designed and budgeted for the replacement of a good proportion of the electricity generation infrastructure over the next ten to fifteen years. You have also begrudgingly admitted that its scope is limited to providing the amount of energy we currently expend via the electrical grid and does not include a fantastical replacement of ALL forms of energy expenditure such as those used in transport and agriculture by the direct use of liquid fuels. Wouldn’t the misleading grandiosity of “A Solution to Energy and Carbon” be better modified to something more honest like “An Alternative Electricity Generation Model for Reducing Carbon Emissions”?
“Wouldn’t the misleading”
No, the paper scales the energy project to replacing all fossil fuels, something around 15 TW.
Look, electricity is something around 20-25% of the energy demand. If you have a solution for that much, why not expend it by 4-5 times and fix it all?
And I think you mixed me up with someone else.
No my memory is good.
As you admit now, your previous iterations of the project were not designed to replace all fossil fuels.
You title is still misleading however. you don’t have a solution for 100% of energy demands yet. What you have is an idea for providing a lot more electricity. Now you have to work on all those energy substitution problems. Like finding a way to truck goods using electricity that doesn’t depend on a 50,000 pound battery. I won’t belittle your knowledge of the problems by endlessly listing them. Don’t say that energy substitution concerns are a detail is beyond your purview. What’s the use of saying I have “solved energy demand needs” as you quite plainly claim when that is demonstrably not what you have done
in all the lithium mines in this world, Keith had to run into you, FSA…
[Thought I might front-run you here]
What the following screed says in short is: Have you priced in the new transport infrastructure build outs into your solution Keith? If not then your solution need some work if it is to address that picky choosiness combustion engines have in their ‘energy needs’.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/100873/alice-friedemann-when-trucks-stop-running
Chris Martenson: All right. So, let’s do this by trying to poke some holes in this whole idea. I had a number of people recently send me a very happy story about electric trucks now running in Sweden. So, of course, when I click on the links and follow the story, I found something different than what was being implied by people, which was hey, look we now have electric trucks. That part’s been solved.
But what I discovered was the story was referring to a two kilometer stretch of electrified road, two kilometers. And it’s not unlike the trolley overhead wires of the 1930’s. There’s some wires up there, and the trucks make contact with the wires, and they have an electric engine. This is great, but it’s two kilometers out of many tens of millions of kilometers of global roadway. So, in a percentage term, I wouldn’t even dare to calculate it.
Read below for an understanding of the huge costs this infrastructure build out would entail
http://www.calstart.org/Libraries/I-710_Project/I-710_Project_Zero-Emission_Truck_Commercialization_Study_Final_Report.sflb.ashx
[the costing examples and the anecdotal example above are actually different methods of achieving electric road freight. I’m guessing that the astronomical costs of one must be mirrored in the other more or less. One involves hideously expensive in cost and inefficiency ‘drayage units’ and the other a hideously extensive kind of reimagined electric grid running along every paved road AND moderately expensive trucking units.]
bit like this weird system i guess
http://www.popsci.com/straddle-bus-drives-over-cars
I would also like to bring to your attention the issue of energy substitution in industrial processes:
Studying the following will lead to the conclusion that while electricity arc furnaces can be substituted in many smelting-type processes, on average they consume 10 to 15 percent more energy than fossil-fuel powered furnaces to achieve the same output in IDEAL situations. God forbid we should have to rebuild the world’s entire industrial plant to avoid a twenty or thirty percent blowout in industrial inefficiency.
Is this even an optimistic ten percent discrepancy in substitution losses figured into your calculations Keith? I would think the host of similar realities across transportation, forestry, agriculture, home-heating, fishing rather complicate your neat solution.
oops missing link
https://eaei.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/industrial_best_practice_en.pdf
“No my memory is good.”
Mine is not. Can you find and give a pointer to the place on this discussion where I said this project would only solve the electrical load?
“As you admit now, your previous iterations of the project were not designed to replace all fossil fuels.”
I have been at this a long time. Early postings are here
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898
If you go here:
http://www.htyp.org/mw/index.php?title=dollar_a_gallon_gasoline&action=history
You can see I have been writing about synthetic hydrocarbons since 2008. If you have plenty of electrical energy, making synthetic hydrocarbons for transport fuel is not difficult.
Farmers have been using liquid ammonia as a tractor fuel for some time now. If you have cheap and abundant electricity, you could make ammonia from the nitrogen in air. At about 70% of air, we won’t run out soon. The problems with liquid ammonia is scale to widespread use makes a fairly nasty public health hazard, if the tanks rupture.
If you have really cheap and abundant electricity (too cheap to meter kine), you can reverse engineer the CO2 and H2O waste from combustion of fossil fuels, run it backwards and make a light hydrocarbon fuel for transport. That fuel would only have the normal explosion/fire hazards we live with today with gasoline and diesel.
I doubt that asphalt synthesis from electricity would be desirable, so maybe just skip to cement pavements at great energy and environmental costs. Or maybe just use the Canadian/Venezuelan tar sands as source material with little refinement necessary.
“ammonia as a tractor fuel”
It’s not very common yet. But it’s one way to transport hydrogen in a reasonably dense form.
“abundant electricity (too cheap to meter”
As long as people are investing in power plants and want to see a return on their money, electricity will not be too cheap to meter. The income stream is $150,000 per hour from a 5 GW power satellite at 3 cents per kWh. But even 3 cent power can make $70/bbl synthetic jet fuel or gasoline.
“cement pavements”
There are waste streams, such as those from hospitals and old tires that can be used to fire cement kilns. The economics of cement production is a most interesting story.
You said the following on Feb 20, 2016
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/02/08/the-physics-of-energy-and-the-economy/comment-page-17/#comments
“And no, the cost of synthetic oil plants is not included in the startup cost. They would not be constructed until the after enough power sats had been built to take the entire base load and then some. Making synthetic oil is at least a decade after the first power satellite.”
What you admitted here is clearly that your proposed project was not costed or logistically organised to replace fossil fuels i.e. was costed to replace the electrical load only.
Keith isn’t the world currently burning through approx 20 TW in 2016, not 15 TW as you state or have you not updated your model since 2008?
Given various substitution inefficiencies and the energy losses in using electricity to synthesise liquid fuels I would think the actual figure of proposed power satellite production should be closer to 30 TW. Is 30 TW the figure you are using in your new proposal?
And do you remember this exchange Keith from the same day where you point to as yet undeveloped synthetic mechanism to provide the liquid fuels?
“[the synthetic fuel] plant at Qatar uses natural gas, not hydrogen and CO2”
The plant steam reforms the natural gas into CO and hydrogen. It would work just fine on hydrogen and CO2. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-gas_shift_reaction
And one final question. How exactly will carbon emissions be significantly reduced when approx 60-70 % of the world’s energy will be continue to be harnessed by hydrocarbon burning as in your proposal?
Let’s summarise my criticism:
Your earlier arguments about the viability of the project (costing, timing, logistics and scale) depended on replacing the electrical grid alone.
The timeline for replacing all our energy needs with satellite solar stretches into twenty or more years.
Your ideas about replacing fossil fuels with synthetic fuels rest on technological processes that have not yet been realised and are not guaranteed to be realised.
The calculations you have used regarding hypothetical synthesis of fuels using electricity disregard the energy and resource demands of providing their feedstocks by electricity. For example you have based the costs of producing synthetic fuel on processes that use natural gas as a feedstock.
Your reformulation of the project uses a hugely underestimated electrical energy demand. Whereas you use 15TW as a the demand figure it would likely be twice that.
[a hypothetical time scale for the implementation of satellite solar to replace all forms of energy]
2017 Chinese government adopts the idea as potentially feasible by a senior party official
2018 Feasibility studies are complete and the party hierarchy agrees on a way forward
2020 Various prototypes are deemed satisfactory.
2021 Construction of satellites, launching capabilities and ground based infrastructure begin.
2022 First satellites are launched.
2033 Synthetic oil begins to come online [Making synthetic oil is at least a decade after
the first power satellite.”
Hkeithhenson, 20 Feb 2016.
2038 Amounts of synthetic fuel become significant enough to counter any shortfall in fossil fuels
2045 Energy needs are completely replaced by satellite solar
I have a dream…. whenever Keith mentions space solar the Word Press editor springs into action … deleting the comments…
Given the first assumption, it’s a reasonable timeline. The biggest uncertainty is how long it takes to get Skylon flying. Even for China, this would take a big spin up.
Thanks for the vote of confidence in the timeline I constructed.
As this whole discussion began with my criticism of your paper title….
“Solar Power Satellites, A 2045 Solution to Energy and Carbon”
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can maintain our current energy supply system until then!
ROFL.
“A 2045 Solution”
That’s about where the CO2 stops going up according to the baseline model. It might be somewhat conservative or it could be that when (and if) governments decide to support this project, they push it really hard. Knee deep seawater in Miami Beach might be a serious inducement.
But I don’t know when, if ever, there will be a start date. It’s not like the future can be known. By this time next year if we have a really bad flu season, the population could be much smaller.
CO2 emissions will likely terminate all life on the planet way before 2045, let alone nitrogen and methane releases that are likely already trumping it. The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is exponentially increasing. Don’t be surprised if this spring we hit 415 PPM.
The manufacture of solar panels lets off some of the most dangerous greenhouse gases known to humankind. These include:
hexafluoroethane – 12,000 times stronger than CO2
nitrogen trifluoride – 17,000 times stronger than C02
sulfur hexafluoride – 23,000 times stronger than C02
Five kilograms of hydrogen chloride per square meter of solar panel is used to liquefy the metallic silicon. Silicon carbide is used to cut the silicon into wafers. Cadmium telluride panels ( thin-film technology ) utilize nanomaterials that pose a threat to the environment and workers during the manufacturing and recycling stage. They also wear out faster than ordinary panels.
Peak Nickel http://www.roperld.com/science/minerals/nickel.htm
Solar Panels use one gram of aluminum per kilowatt hour http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewable-energys-hidden-costs/
Peak copper http://www.mining.com/web/peak-copper/
Solar and wind generally has a 30y lifespan, all of today’s solar panels and wind turbines will have to be replaced at exactly the same time we run out of everything. Not to mention replacing all of todays oil, NG, coal to “fix it all”..
We will run out of water, food, soil, minerals and energy before we have an energy tranformation..
It is close to necessary to ramp up use of any energy device over a long period. We would need factories to make many of the components. These need to Be built in advance and kept operating at close to full capacity. Factories too will need upgrading over time, or they will tend to degrade.
To someone from DelusiSTAN what you have posted gets filed under yadda yadda yadda…
It will be ignored… we will work it out somehow… we are humans … we are awesome..
Conveniently forgetting that our fixes to problems are the reason we are about to go extinct.
“Conveniently forgetting that our fixes to problems are the reason we are about to go extinct.”
Before we call it quits – let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes. It’s fun with all the craziness.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/60/29/79/602979f642c2b6987c0fd41ff85f4a8e.jpg
“Solar Panels use one gram of aluminum per kilowatt hour ”
I went to the article. It mentioned using aluminum frames for the PV, but no consumption number that I could find. Do you remember the context of the “per kilowatt hour” ?
It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
How few kwh could a panel possibly produce during its life?
How much aluminium can it be?
Less than 3000 kwh and more than 3 kg?
Surely this aluminium must be recycleable, especially if it is the frame.
Keith — perhaps this guy could help with the launch problem…
What amazes me is that entire support structures can be created for ideas that make absolutely no sense.
Case in point solar and wind — you’ve got MSM like The Guardian involved — countries like Germany and Spain spending real money on ‘renewables’ — legions of people believing solar and win are viable…
All of this can happen – in spite of the fact that the entire matrix that has been created —can be pricked by a single word — intermittency.
This word is to solar and wind what Kryptonite is to Superman…
And then you have space solar….
Is the conference in your garage Keith? Is the drunk guy down the street the MC? Fill us in ….
“Fill us in ….”
http://sites.ieee.org/sustech/
It’s the third time I have been invited to present.
Do they include tinfoil hats as part of the entry fee? Must have a gold-plated option at those prices….
What about a Koombaya CD signed by Joan?
Or maybe Imagine – Lennon?
http://sites.ieee.org/sustech/2016-home/register-2016/
For those who are proposing saving the world by consuming less… please read this
Clothes shopping is falling out of fashion in the UK, and not just because more people are buying online.
Profits have dived at the biggest retailers, as the number of clothes sold has dropped precipitously, by an average of 4.4 per cent in five of the past six months.
“Consumers are switching their spending away from apparel to an extent we have never seen before,” said Geoff Ruddell, retail analyst at Morgan Stanley. “The fact that volumes have gone into decline for the first time in more than 20 years is remarkable.”
The mystery is why, especially because retail spending in general has not dropped. Many shops blame milder weather, but analysts have also pointed to changing customer habits, with people preferring to spend their money on meals and holidays.
Shoppers also appear to be switching away from disposable fashion.
Layla Faruque is a Manchester-based student with two part-time jobs. “I love buying clothes and shoes but these past few months I’ve noticed I’ll never buy anything unless it’s got a discount,” said the 20-year-old. “And once I’ve waited, I forget about it, so I’ve ended up buying half the things I’d usually buy on impulse. I was talking to my mum about it — and she’s the same.”
The trend is highly unusual. Apart from brief hiccups in 2011 and 2012, people have been steadily buying more since 1999.
According to the Office for National Statistics, overall UK retail spending grew by a robust 4 per cent in August compared with the same month last year. But spending on clothes and footwear from high street shops and their websites dropped by 4 per cent.
Britain’s biggest shops are suffering as a result. Marks and Spencer, the largest clothes retailer with 10 per cent of the market, is cutting jobs after reporting its sharpest quarterly decline in clothing sales for more than a decade, in July. French Connection has not reported a pre-tax profit since 2012.
Even some of the high street winners appear to be struggling to ride out the competitive pressure and cut-throat discounting.
John Lewis posted a 75 per cent fall in half-year profits while Lord Wolfson, chief executive of Next, correctly predicted earlier this year that 2016 would be like “walking up the down escalator” and said last week that trading was tough.
Primark, the discount chain that is the most visited retailer on the high street, last week reported the first drop in same-store sales in the UK for 16 years. It blamed a warm autumn last year and a cold spring this year.
Glen Tooke, an analyst at Kantar Worldpanel, which tracks the clothing purchases of a representative panel of 15,000 Britons, said consumers believe the weather is becoming less predictable, meaning they wait for a cold winter snap or a summer heatwave to materialise before buying.
“Ten years ago you might have been buying your winter clothes now,” he said, as London basked in golden sunlight one September afternoon. “To be honest, no one is going to go and buy a coat today.”
More https://www.ft.com/content/5c274b28-7f3d-11e6-8e50-8ec15fb462f4
If this trend continues there will be a blood bath in the retail space… bankruptcies… job losses…
Of course it going to continue — because people increasingly do not have cash to buy as much … because there are not many good jobs being created — and wages are under pressure
So the Koombaya-ists who envision a better world with less ‘stuff’ are going to learn the hard way — that we either grow… or collapse… we either go shopping — or there will be nothing to buy at all
Somone’s singing Lord…. blah blah blah….
“For those who are proposing saving the world by consuming less… please read this”:
Saving the world, it’s just another aspect of human arrogance. The world is doing fine, us humans, on the other hand, are fcked.
“The mystery is why, especially because retail spending in general has not dropped. Many shops blame milder weather, but analysts have also pointed to changing customer habits, with people preferring to spend their money on meals and holidays.”
Retail spending seem fine according to this article?
The official numbers are so-and-so http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/retail-sales
But if the official stats are true, why are retailers having massive layoffs?? http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/walmart-job-cuts-layoffs/
“But if the official stats are true, why are retailers having massive layoffs??”
Robotification combined with a shift to online (web/app) shopping. I would presume.
If there is less stuff and the same amount of money, prices will increase.
But there is less stuff because people have less money to spend — which means people buy even more less stuff… which means more less jobs… which means people buy more less stuff… which means even more less stuff is available. And so on until there is no stuff at all
It sounds like a good thing to me. Less resource waste.
Let’s get that deflation wheel spinning for a while.
To weed out who’s who in this little circus of Facebook and cheap to produce calories.
Crystallize the power and might so to speak.
You are failing to grasp the significance of what deflation means.
Fortunately we have Norman standing by to explain :
You won’t like downsizing
http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
And you are failing to grasp what the powers that be are capable of.
Oh yes, we are coming for your resource waste and useless consumerism.
We want it back, we want it for ourselves.
It’s funny how the discussions here wax and wane…. sometimes one thinks we have gathered some of the greatest thinkers on the planet in one place…
And then there are days like today….
We all have our ups and downs.
http://ends.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/1301/the-end-friendship-demotivational-posters-1358388994.jpg
nice to have a best friend who isnt a doomster
blushes all round
Oh, but we are all doomsters, we simply rationalize on a different timescale and with various orders of logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_logic
doomsters- r -us
Pretty much what I have observed here in one of the UK’s vanishingly few ‘growth hubs’ -ie over-crowded, insane real estate and rentals, and now very polluted (thanks Greens for all those diesel engines spewing out particulates!) although semi-rural and rather sleepy until a decade ago.
Every new bar/restaurant/ pizza place is just packed out instantly, sure-fire way to make money, however poor the quality. And people in their 20’s and early 30’s certainly expect to travel a lot. And yet still complain about not being able to get on the ‘property ladder’. incompatible expectations.
I have to say that students, shopping with parents, were doing their bit at Primark this week. Mummy and daddy paying no doubt. For the rest, high rents and lots of travel/eating out leaves nothing much for other expenditure.
Correct. And as predicted by Limits to Growth. Decline in in percapita industrial output is the leading indicator of collapse.
Let’s put this one here.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SDVzstFaU24/Tp-4qZKSoRI/AAAAAAAAAEo/dQjOy2iFZZs/s1600/Limits+to+Growth+Standard+Model.jpg
It’s solar pv, so this can’t possibly be happening … I hate this type of link …
http://www.irena.org/News/Description.aspx?NType=A&mnu=cat&PriMenuID=16&CatID=84&News_ID=1464
“Mini-grids utilising solar PV and off-grid solar home systems also provide higher quality energy services at the same or lower costs than the alternatives, finds the report. Stand-alone solar PV mini-grids have installed costs in Africa as low as USD 1.90 per watt for systems larger than 200 kW. Solar home systems – which have tripled in Africa between 2010 and 2014 – provide the annual electricity needs of off-grid households for as little as USD 56 per year, less than what they currently pay for poor quality energy services.”
http://www.irena.org/menu/index.aspx?mnu=Subcat&PriMenuID=36&CatID=141&SubcatID=2744
You’ll probably hate your misplaced chagrin too.
Notice how the story uses the ‘product A is better’ technique used in advertising. Is it better than absolute garbage perhaps?
Also notice how the context is completely stripped from the costings. What kind of community with what kind of sustainable or unsustainable financing is involved?
The terribly vague term Africa is used which might include the upper class suburbs of Kenya or the slums of Chad. It’s hard to get a feel for how exactly the type if setup involved relates to the ‘needs’ the article purports are being met.
Still grinning?
Typo
“Type of setup”
They may be helpful for households, but they don’t scale up to business needs. Roads are also essential for business. The Mini-grid does nothing for road or transport.
Turkey Cut to Junk as Moody’s Concludes Its Post-Coup Review
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-23/turkey-cut-to-junk-as-moody-s-concludes-its-post-coup-review
“With the rating cut, the difficulties Turkey faces in attracting the foreign capital needed to cover its current-account deficit, the fourth largest in the G-20 group of major economies, are likely to be compounded. The downgrade could drive forced selling of as much as $8.7 billion in Turkish bonds, JPMorgan Chase & Co said in August.”
This will force Turkey to extortion by threatening to flood with Europe with millions of Muslim refugees if Europe doesn’t start sending billion of euros to finance Turkey. I guess this could lead to a lot of chaos in the near future.
Time to “Be Alarmed” about Emerging Market Debt: UN
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/09/22/time-to-be-alarmed-about-emerging-market-debt-un/
The potential to unleash “third phase” of the Global Financial Crisis.