I have been telling a fairly different energy story from most energy researchers. How could I possibly be correct? What have other researchers been missing?
The “standard” approach is to start from the amount of resources that we have of a particular type, for example, oil in the ground, and see how far these resources will go. Growing development of technology seems to allow increasing amounts of these resources to be extracted. Thus, limits seem to be farther and farther in the distance, especially if a person starts out with an optimistic bias. It is easy to get this optimistic bias, with all research funds going in the direction of, “What can we do to solve our energy problems?”
Approaches for forecasting future supply problems that start from the amount of resources in the ground suffer from the problem that it is hard to draw a sharp line regarding when we will run into difficulties. It is clear that at some point, there will be a problem–EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Investment) will be too low–but exactly when is hard to pinpoint. If a person starts from an optimistic viewpoint, it is easy to assume that as long as Energy Output is greater than Energy Input for a given process, that process must be helpful for solving our energy problem.
In fact, in my opinion, the story is very different. The very thing that should be saving us–technology–has side effects that bring the whole system down.
The only way we can keep adding technology is by adding more capital goods, more specialization, and more advanced education for selected members of society. The problem, as we should know from research regarding historical economies that have collapsed, is that more complexity ultimately leads to collapse because it leads to huge wage disparity. (See Tainter; Turchin and Nefedov.) Ultimately, the people at the bottom of the hierarchy cannot afford the output of the economy. Added debt at lower interest rates can only partially offset this problem. Governments cannot collect enough taxes from the large number of people at the bottom of the hierarchy, even though the top 1% may flourish. The economy tends to collapse because of the side effects of greater complexity.
Our economy is a networked system, so it should not be surprising that there is more than one way for the system to reach its end.
Figure 1
I have described the problem that really brings down the economy as “too low return on human labor,” at least for those at the bottom of the hierarchy. The wages of the non-elite are too low to provide an adequate standard of living. In a sense, this is a situation of too low EROEI: too low return on human energy. Most energy researchers have been looking at a very different kind of EROEI: a calculation based on the investment of fossil fuel energy. The two kinds of EROEI are related, but not very closely. Many economies have collapsed, without ever using fossil fuel energy,
While what I call “fossil fuel EROEI” was a reasonable starting place for an analysis of our energy problems back in the 1970s, the calculation now gets more emphasis than it truly deserves. The limit we are reaching is a different one: falling return on human labor EROEI, at least for those who are not among the elite. Increasing wage disparity is becoming a severe problem now; it is the reason we have very divisive candidates running for political office, and many people in favor of reduced globalization.
Overly Simple Models Give Misleading Answers
People who don’t work with models very much can easily assume that a model is telling them more than it really is. I discussed this issue in my recent article Overly Simple Energy-Economy Models Give Misleading Answers. It is quite possible to make a model that works some of the time, but not always. A researcher who is unaware of this problem is likely to overuse the model. As the saying goes, “If a person’s only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail.”
If a system has multiple parts to it, as is the case with the system that controls energy extraction and energy prices, it is likely that a fairly complex model is needed to make a model that really represents the situation. The earliest models were in a sense one dimensional, when they needed to be multi-dimensional. With these additional dimensions, the model would include such characteristics as the fact that demand is controlled by a financial system, and the fact that the level of demand (and thus prices) depends on the ability of even the lowest-paid workers to afford the output of the system.
The model could also include what is essentially a physics problem–if there is not enough energy to go around, the usual solution is “more technology” or “more complexity.” What more technology and more complexity add is more concentrations of energy in various ways: in capital goods such as machinery and vehicles, in larger businesses to own these devices, in high-paid management officials, and in workers with specialized training.
These concentrations of energy are what lead to wealth disparity–some people “own” businesses and capital goods, and some people (but not others) receive advanced education or other specialized training. All of these things allow a relatively small number of privileged people to receive a greater share of the output of the economy. This leaves less for the rest.
As the result of this wage disparity, the economy ends up with too many people either dropping out of the work force, or earning low wages. It is lack of the ability of these people to afford the output of the economy that brings the economy down. Demand is closely related to affordability of goods made using fossil fuels, such as homes and cars. Many people miss the connection between demand and affordability.
Of course, if we didn’t have this falling demand problem (or low price problem) caused by increased concentrations of wealth leaving too large a share of the population too poor, we would eventually get to something similar to the problem that many have been concerned about: fossil fuel EROEI would eventually fall too low.
Hubbert Tells Part of the Story
When talking about resource limits, the thing that tends to confuse most people is the large quantity of energy resources that seems to be available. We can get some of these resources out with today’s technology. Logic would seem to suggest that with improved technology, we should be able to keep moving on to increasingly difficult-to-extract fossil fuel resources. We should also be able to create increasing quantities of substitutes.
M. King Hubbert gave an answer that only went partway in telling the extent of our problems. Basically, he said that once we had extracted 50% of a particular resource, the quantity we could extract would tend to decline in a more or less symmetric curve.
Figure 2. M. King Hubbert’s indicated symmetric curve of resource extraction from Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels, published in 1956.
Hubbert described the situation of a single well or field, when there were other wells or fields taking the place of the wells and fields depleting. In this situation, demand (and thus price) stays pretty much the same. If investment in the well remains the same, production will tend to follow a symmetric curve.
We are clearly reaching a different limit at this time. We have a two-way tug:
- Low demand. We have wages that show increasing disparity. Wealthy people tend to spend their incomes on goods that are not very energy-intensive, such as education and financial services, while less wealthy people tend to spend a larger share of their incomes on energy-intensive products such as food, basic transportation, and basic housing. Thus, this shift in wage patterns tends to reduce energy demand, and thus energy prices.
- Government attempts to fix low demand. Low demand leads to low economic growth, so governments and central banks are doing everything that they can to raise demand. Their approaches include ultra-low interest rates and deficit spending. The hope is that even if citizens don’t have sufficient wages to buy expensive goods such as cars and homes, the additional debt at low interest rates will make these goods, more affordable and thus spur demand.
We can keep increasing oil and other fossil fuel extraction, as long as our current system continues to “work.” In particular, prices need to be high enough for those extracting oil to make a reasonable profit, to cover reinvestment needs. The profit has to be high enough, too, so that the companies can pay taxes to their governments, so that governments can continue programs that mostly benefit the 99% of the citizens who don’t have high incomes. This is a major way that the net energy that is generated by fossil fuels gets back to benefit the government and the many poorer citizens who benefit from government programs.
Misinterpretation of Hubbert by Peak Oilers and The Powers That Be
Neither Peak Oilers nor The Powers That Be (TPTB) figured out the real story. The Peak Oilers were “tripped up” by the overly simple model problem I described above. They assumed that 50% of remaining fossil fuels could be extracted after peak, regardless of whatever other circumstances might hold. Economists provided one part of this overly simple model: they postulated that if there were a shortage of some product, prices would rise. This view is true when there is not too much wage disparity, but it is not true in general.
The combination of these overly simple assumptions leads to the belief that we can continue to pump quite a lot of fossil fuels, even after the decline begins. These remaining fossil fuels together with renewables can lead to some sort of civilization at a lower level after collapse. High prices will point the way to economizing.
TPTB were even more confused. They listened only to economists, with their overly simple model about future prices, and paid no attention to Hubbert and his message that extraction would become more difficult after 50% of a given resource was extracted. Instead, they assumed that the recent pattern of adding new extraction at ever-higher cost would continue indefinitely, as a result of improved technology. Prices would probably rise moderately, as well.
Figure 3. Figure from Jeremy Grantham article published on The Oil Drum in 2011.
Figure 4. US crude oil production, separated into tight oil (from shale formations), oil from Alaska, and other oil, based on EIA data.
If there is an increasing wage disparity problem, the whole idea of ever-rising prices because of more technology doesn’t really work. At some point, there is an affordability problem, leading to low prices rather than high prices. Ever more debt at lower interest rates cannot cover up a problem of stagnating wages for the masses.
What Does Falling Fossil Fuel EROEI Tell Us?
Quite a few commenters on OurFiniteWorld.com like to use “falling EROEI” as a synonym for “reaching diminishing returns.” EROEI (really “fossil fuel EROEI”) as developed by Energy Researcher Charles Hall, is calculated by dividing “Energy Produced” by “Fossil Fuel Energy Used to Deliver that Energy.” The easiest-to-extract oil or coal or natural gas tends to be extracted first, and the later-to-be-produced fuel tends to have lower EROEI. Thus, lower EROEI is a handy numerical way of quantifying diminishing returns with respect to the production of energy using fossil fuel inputs.
The Paradox of Falling Energy Consumption Relative to GDP, Despite Falling EROEIs
We quickly get to a paradox: if falling EROEI is raising the cost of extraction for all fossil fuels, are we using an increasing share of the output of the economy for energy production? The answer for historical periods has been, “No.” Energy Researcher Carey King has reported on this in an academic paper.
Figure 5. Figure by Carey King from “Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics Part 3: Macroeconomic Historical and Future Perspectives,” published in Energies in Nov. 2015.
In fact, recent United Nations’ research seems to indicate that this pattern of falling energy consumption as a percentage of GDP continues to hold through 2013 for the world as a whole:
Figure 6. Figure from UNEP Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity.
Figure 6 shows that the bottom two sectors, namely “Agriculture, hunting, forestry, fishing,” and “Mining and utilities” continue to fall to lower levels as a percentage of the world economy, through the last year shown, 2013.
The way that these falling percentages seem to take place is through rebalancing of energy supply toward countries with a lower-cost energy mix. See the Appendix for more information on how this seems to occur.
Aude Illig and Ian Schindler, who are specialists in mathematics and economics working at the Toulouse School of Economics, have been examining how oil prices can be expected to behave, both before and after the share of the world’s resources devoted to energy extraction hits the low point (nadir) and begins rising again, if Figures 5 and 6 were extended forward. They explain their findings in a working paper called Oil Extraction and Price Dynamics. It shows that prior to the nadir, oil prices can be expected to generally rise, with some temporary spikes. Once we are past the nadir, the dynamics are the opposite. Prices tend to fall, exacerbating the decline.
Does US Drilling for Oil Add to US Industrial Energy Consumption?
One of the commenters on OurFiniteWorld.com recently asked what impact the rise and fall of US oil production would have on US energy consumption. In his view, if extraction of oil from shale has low EROEI, surely US industrial consumption of oil or of total energy must rise and fall in response to the greater production. When we looked, any impact seemed to be too small to measure (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Comparison of US oil extraction with industrial consumption of total energy and of oil by itself, based on EIA data (monthly amounts, converted to average daily amounts).
Transportation energy is not included in industrial energy, so we looked at diesel energy consumption, to see whether it had changed materially in response to all of the drilling activity. Again, it was hard to discern any impact (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Comparison of US oil produced with diesel plus residual fuel oil consumed, based on EIA data. Monthly data, converted to daily averages. (Residual fuel oil combined with diesel, because of law change on types of fuel ships can use.)
Thinking about the situation, the energy consumed is quite possibly not consumed in the US. For example, a great deal of steel pipeline will be used. This pipeline could be made with coal and imported from China. The timing could vary as well, if the pipeline and the machines drilling the wells were made some time in advance. Some natural gas or oil is no doubt burned when wells are drilled, but, in the whole scheme of things, the amount isn’t large enough to cause even a tiny hump in the data.
If we think about the situation, it is not really the “energy consumed” (and thus EROEI) that affects “demand.” Instead, it is the selling price of the oil that affects demand for energy products. This selling price of oil is shared many ways. This selling price includes not only the direct cost of energy used in extraction, but many other costs, as well: wages, leases, dividends, royalties and taxes of various sorts. In many cases, the royalties and taxes go to provide benefits for the non-elite–in other words, the 99%. The selling price acts as stimulus for the entire world economy, not just the part related to EROEI.
If the price of oil drops, what tends to be cut first is taxes–the money that goes to help the non-elite 99% of the economy. Besides taxes, wages and pension benefits tend to be cut very early, in an attempt to keep the company operating. These comprise a large share of costs, so are easy to cut. Strange as it may seem, oil extraction may not be cut back, even in bankruptcy. Creditors want as much value to be retained as possible after bankruptcy.
So What Does EROEI Tell Us?
EROEI as a way of allocating limited fossil fuel energy supplies. One way of thinking about EROEI is that it can be used to show the optimal way of stretching a given supply of fossil fuels; all a person needs to do is select new approaches for producing energy products with the highest EROEI values, to be able to leverage available fossil fuels as much as possible.
The EROEI calculation seems to be oriented in the direction of allocating scarce resources. Energy is counted using its Btu value. Thus, oil is viewed as having the same “value” as coal (based on its Btu content), and intermittent electricity is viewed as having the same value as electricity that is suitable for distribution to customers. Since the focus is on fossil fuels “running out,” some researchers leave out hydroelectric power from EROEI calculations; it does not represent the use of fossil fuel energy. Human labor is generally left out, as are taxes, interest payments, lease payments, and many other components of costs.
“Boundaries” on what energy inputs are to be included vary considerably from researcher to researcher, making comparisons among analyses difficult. For example, is energy used in the irrigation of biofuel crops included in calculations? Reports prepared by researchers from certain universities tend to give higher EROEIs than those from other universities. There is sometimes a suspicion that the funding source for a particular university biases the results of its EROEI calculations. This situation is not too different from the independence problems experienced in other types of academic studies.
Back door to estimating costs. EROEI can also be considered as a backdoor approach for estimating the approximate cost of extraction. Researchers working in a university are unlikely to be able to obtain information on the true total cost of extraction. On the other hand, if they can develop a new metric, they have the possibility of building a tool that they can keep updating with company information. There seems to have been early hope that the new metric would be more objective than other available cost information.
Doesn’t behave like the cost metric we are used to. There often is an economic reason to make a highly valued liquid fuel from less valuable coal or natural gas, but the calculation does not take this into account. This is one reason that the EROEIs for ethanol tend to be very low; ethanol production tends to use quite a bit of electricity from coal or natural gas to produce somewhat higher-valued ethanol.
Another catch in trying to use EROEI for comparison purposes is that EROEIs for capital goods (such as wind and solar) behave differently from EROEIs of fuels that are burned. With capital goods, society first “digs an EROEI hole,” and over time, must dig itself out. (I expect that this is one of the reasons for our debt problem.) Energy Researcher Graham Palmer has developed “Dynamic EROEI” to deal with this problem.
Figure 9. My explanation of Graham Palmer’s chart of Dynamic Energy Returned on Energy Invested from “Energy in Australia.”
Wind and solar have a second problem, besides the use of capital goods problem, and that is an intermittency problem that is difficult for the grid to correct, especially when more than a small amount is added to the grid. In Figure 9, Graham Palmer has added batteries, and replaced them three times during the 30-year lifetime of the solar panels, to correct the intermittency problem. I would argue that other costs should also be included–the cost of building and operating an inverter and replacement inverter(s), for example, plus any type of installation costs.
Interest costs are not typically included in EROEI calculations, but it would seem like they should be, whenever the delivery of energy is substantially delayed, as it is when some type of capital good is used to capture energy from the sun.
Alternatively, instead of adding battery costs, it would theoretically be possible to revise the calculation to include the energy cost of adjusting the electric grid to handle the intermittency. All of these issues have to do with selecting proper “boundaries” for the calculation.
Intermittent Renewables Seem to Give Funding to the 1% and Raise Costs for the 99%, Unlike Fossil Fuels
Something that we don’t often think about is that individual types of energy production can be evaluated from the point of view of the extent to which they provide funding for the 99%, versus funding for the elite 1%. EROEI, of course, cannot consider this at all.
Fossil fuels would seem to favor the 99% because the fossil fuel industry has traditionally has been heavy payers of taxes. These taxes go to help the vast majority. It is rare to find reports showing taxes paid by fossil fuel producers, however. Instead, reports tend to show subsidies, which are offsets to the high tax payments. These offsets are frequently payments for such purposes as helping low income people pay their winter heating bills. While these payments are called “subsidies,” in a true sense they are often ways of helping the 99%.
Wind and solar tend to be financed in the US with tax credits. These tax credits help concentrate wealth among the already wealthy. In Europe, the high cost of intermittent renewables tends to be paid by individual households. This leads to a situation where businesses, and the owners and operators of these businesses, benefit at the expense of those who are financially less well off.
The debt level with wind and solar (and all of their related paraphernalia that often gets left out of EROEI calculations) also tends to be high. Interest on this debt transfers money from the 99% to the 1%. The grid likely will need upgrading to handle intermittent renewables. This cost, too, will be borne by the 99% through higher electricity rates or higher taxes.
What Should the Role of EROEI Be?
EROEI is now well established as a tool to try to see how much energy is being consumed in making an energy product. I think that many people have expectations for EROEI beyond what it really can do. For example, I don’t think that EROEI calculations can predict when the economy will collapse, because the mechanics for reaching collapse come from a different direction–namely, increasing wage disparity and low commodity prices.
EROEI doesn’t consider whether a high-valued product is being used to produce a low-valued product, or vice versa. The solution here is to look at the actual cost involved in producing the energy product, as a supplement to EROEI calculations. This is important if our real energy problem is high cost and lack of affordability, rather than “running out” of fossil fuels.
EROEI calculations also are not designed to look at the required growth in debt, and the required transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1%. Clearly, it would be helpful to add some new tools to the tool set, to look at these problems.
As a check on whether EROEI calculations are really producing reasonable results, any energy product that is producing net energy should be able to support the government with taxes, rather than being dependent on subsidies. If an energy product is dependent upon continued subsidies, this should be considered as likely evidence that it is, in fact, a net energy sink.
EROEI studies do have a continued role, but they need to be used with care.
How Did I Get Involved in this Whole Discussion?
I have been what a person might call a “financial detective” for a long time. I started working for CNA Insurance Group as an actuarial trainee in 1970. This was about the time that inflation started to affect insurance companies. After I had been at CNA only a short time, I was the one who figured out how inflation would affect reserves set by claims adjustors. When my predictions proved to be correct, my supervisors were very surprised; they had never considered the possibility that there would be an impact.
I soon moved on to a smaller insurance company, where I reported directly to the president of the company. The position was supposed to report to a lower level in the organization, but the president was shocked at what I had been able to figure out about the company from its financial statements, and decided he wanted me to report to him instead. As a result, I had an opportunity to see the impact of the 1973-1974 oil price spike on an insurance company, from a front-row seat. I also got a chance to see what impact rapidly changing interest rates had on an insurance company. I later went back to CNA, and observed the problems they were also having.
I later moved into consulting. I was always the “go-to” person for trying to figure out answers to questions that had never come up before. If someone needed a model for something really weird, they would come to me. I would often develop material for expert witness assignments. When new companies were set up, I would set up models of how they might be expected to behave under various scenarios. I worked a lot with “long tail” business, where claims were reported and paid long after the time an injury occurred.
I didn’t get involved with oil limits until 2005, and began writing articles about it in 2006. I was near the age where I could take early retirement, so I left in 2007, with the plan to look into the subject further. Editors at The Oil Drum saw some of my articles, and invited me to write articles for them, under the pen name Gail the Actuary. Not too much later, they asked me to be an editor. I soon found myself corresponding with authors, fixing mistakes in articles, and becoming acquainted with many people in the energy field.
One of the articles I wrote fairly early was Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008. In it, I forecast the 2008 financial crash. Prof. Charles Hall (of EROEI fame) saw the post, and invited me to come to Syracuse, New York, and give a presentation at the next Biophysical Economics Conference. I soon met many other researchers, either through the Biophysical Economics community, or through my work at The Oil Drum. I was invited to give many talks, including one in Barcelona, Spain, in 2010, which ultimately led to the publishing of my article Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis in the journal Energy. All of this further led to my becoming more involved with the research and journal end of the oil limits story. I now get quite a few invitations related to the research end of my work.
One of the things that led to conflict between the Peak Oil community and me was that I wasn’t really telling the “Peak Oil” story. I was telling something different. By late 2010, the conflict was sufficiently great that I started writing my articles on OurFiniteWorld.com, and let TheOilDrum.com re-publish the ones they chose to. I continued to be an editor at TheOilDrum.com, however, until its close in 2013.
My general approach has been to learn as much as I can, in as many ways as possible. When various groups would want to sponsor conference phone calls, I would always participate, regardless of whether the group was a renewable group or one from the oil industry. I tend to interact with the commenters on my site, and get quite a few ideas from them. I don’t accept donations on my site, but I do accept invitations to give talks when people offer to at least pay my expenses. I also have had quite a few opportunities to visit installations of various types–geothermal as well as oil and gas. My only official affiliation is that I am Director of Energy Economics for the Space Solar Power Institute–an unpaid position.
All of this puts me in an odd position. The research community seems to accept me as one of their own. But Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute can’t understand why my view differs so much from the view that the Post Carbon Institute is trying to sponsor. He refers to me as an “energy writer” and says, “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 do talk to everyone. But I certainly don’t get my views from literature from fossil fuel and utility companies. I expect that having someone give a different view than PCI’s preferred view is threatening, especially if it is having an adverse impact on donations.
Appendix: How Rebalancing of Energy Supply Occurs
How does rebalancing of energy supplies occur? The answer seems to be, “Expansion of economies that use a fuel mix that is disproportionately weighted toward cheaper fuels, and contraction of economies that use more expensive fuels.”
This following slide shows a simple grouping of fuels I made based on my perception of which fuels are more or less expensive.
Appendix, Figure 1. Slide showing groupings of low, medium, and high priced fuels.
Growth in energy consumption seems to take place almost entirely in parts of the world that use a disproportionate amount of low-priced fuel. These countries also tend to have low wages, to go with the low fuel costs.
Appendix, Figure 2. Note that the scales of the last three slides are all the same. Also note that the last of the four groupings is World Minus US Minus EU. It its thus the remainder of the world grouping.
What happens is that the world’s energy mix rebalances away from the countries that use a large share of high-cost fuels in their energy mix.
Appendix, Figure 3.
In the end, the low-cost fuels (coal and hydroelectric) hold their own, as a share of total production; countries using a disproportionate share of high-cost fuels tend to lose out in the world marketplace.
Appendix, Figure 4
Once the world “runs out” of cheap fuels to keep adding to the energy mix (or finds the cheap fuels too polluting), the situation changes. The world economy cannot maintain its shift in mix toward products that have a better return relative to their cost simply by rebalancing toward countries with a lower-cost fuel mix.
Instead, the price of energy products must fall below the cost of production, to maintain this pattern. We seem to be seeing such a drop in prices below the cost of production, starting in 2014. Proving that this is the reason for the price drop might be difficult, but it certainly is a strong suspicion.
Goldman Warns Bond-Market Carnage Threatens Global Reflation
A link for Goldman warns bond-market carnage threatens global reflation bet: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-11/goldman-warns-bond-market-carnage-threatens-global-reflation-bet
I agree that rising interest rates are a risk for growth. Ultra low interest rates have been what has kept the world economy from collapsing. It has made monthly mortgage payments and auto payments cheap, allowing customers to buy goods. Low interest rates have allowed governments to keep borrowing. They have also allowed asset prices to be higher–home prices, resale value of autos, farm prices, prices of shares of stock. Once interest rates rise by very much, these asset prices are likely to fall. This problem leads to problems like we had in 2008-2009. A lot of people find themselves with underwater home prices; “equity” in homes and in shares of stock tends to disappear.
The author of the article doesn’t think that these problems are likely with the small rise so far. But if the interest rate rise continues, it very well could be.
I remember someone saying that when interest rate finally rises, then its all over.
I just can’t see how the interest rate ever could rise again? The central banks are the lenders to sovereigns today?
Someone else said that the central banks will lose control at some point since the markets will in the end always have much more money than the central banks.
Interest rates have already been rising, at least a little, after Trump said he planned to build a huge amount of infrastructure.
Poverty Crosses Party Lines
https://www.brookings.edu/research/poverty-crosses-party-lines/#AL
One quote from this article: “The number of people living below the poverty line (e.g., $24,230 for a family of four in 2014) in Republican districts climbed by 49 percent between 2000 and 2010-14 compared with a 33 percent increase in Democratic districts.”
You have to believe that voters will be pretty unhappy, with these kinds of increases in the number of people below the poverty line.
The article links to the appendix that gives some numerical amounts and poverty percentages, which can be helpful.
People were puzzled by the strong Brexit vote in the Wales region of the UK, given that it receives substantial EU funding for deprived (post-industrial) areas: but when one considers that even with that funding some 25% of the population is in poverty, and likely to stay there, the protest element becomes clear, as in the US.
You still don’t get it.
Evolution, symbiosis.. from certain point the permaboyz react with the tough guys element in a marriage of reason and necessity. But before we get there most of stuff, culture and people (density) around us now, will be long gone..
Hang on … let me go run my head into the wall a few more times… then maybe i will get it…
Hey, you’re posting/reposting like a drunkard. Sure you’re fine?
Fast Eddy, “fine”? Christian…he’s way past “gone”..
Just read this comment that fits Eddy to a T
“The future holds nothing for them that they can recognize. The idea that tomorrow will not look like today is terrorizing to them. The reality that the future will not hold a new Ford F-250 4×4 to them is unfathomable. A world were being hungry is the norm, rather than the exception is beyond their comprehension. They will be the most dangerous to deal with in the world that is now being created.”
Shortonoil posted this one
I feel fine… except when I encounter DelusiSTANIS … they make me feel… aggressive…
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.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
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
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
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
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
FE, to explode big the critical mass must be brought together fast. In melting fuel pools the critical material will flow together slowly, relative to being driven together by fast burn explosives. In the slow case, yes, the reaction rate will rise heating the material. When the material gets hot enough to vaporize it will burp much like the mud pots of Yosemite Park.
If the rods boil off the water that is covering them, the water level drops and the fuel rods get exposed to the air, what happens? The same thing as in an active reactor that’s been shut down. It’s not good.
The uranium, remember, is in little pellets that are inside these long metal tubes. If those tubes are exposed to the air, the metal oxidizes and starts to breakdown. It’s sort of like the same idea as rusting, but it;s not rusting. It’s oxidization. But you can understand it because we’re all familiar with what happens when something gets rusty, right? The metal breaks down, starts to degrade.
The combination of the heat and the oxidization works sort of like super-fast rusting. Exposing those zirconium fuel rods to the air causes oxidization to the metal holding on the uranium. It’s like super-fast rusting on steroids, and that’s trouble.
Between that oxidization and the heat, the metal starts to breakdown, and that allows the uranium to get exposed. The uranium so hot that it, too, begins to melt. The same thing that’s true for fuel rods and active reactors that have to get shut down.
It’s also true for spent fuel rods sitting in the pool. They’re all hot and radioactive, right? These fuel rods have to be cooled for anywhere between five to 10 years before they’re safe enough to be taken out of these pools and put into dry cast storage. Until they are safe enough for that, they need constant attention. They need a constantly operating cooling system to keep them covered up with that water, or we are talking about the same kind of meltdown that you see in an active reactor that has been shut down for some reason.
The difference is that with the spent fuel rods, it’s probably worse.
I realize this is a tough time to say worse. I’m not saying it to be upsetting. I’m saying it because I think it is frankly less upsetting to actually understand what’s going on than it is not to understand.
This is understandable. The reason spent fuel rods could be even more dangerous than a shutdown active nuclear reactor is because of two things. First: a spent fuel pool that loses its cooling system and has all of its water evaporate is a potentially greater source of a radiation leak than a reactor is, simply because there are often more fuel rods in a spent fuel pool than there are in an active reactor.
The stuff has just to sit there for eight to 10 years, right? So, sometimes, they make it a lot of stuff just sitting there in the same pool, which means that if there is a loss of cooling system to that pool, there is more uranium to form a bigger radioactive mass that everybody hopes we don’t have to contemplate.
The other reason, though, that spent fuel rods are potentially more dangerous even than a shutdown reactor is because of where the pools are. When a reactor shuts down, you have to worry about the cooling system over the fuel rods there. That’s taking place inside an incredibly strong internal containment vessel. And that incredibly strong internal containment vessels is housed inside an incredibly strong external containment vessel.
More http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/whats-the-deal-spent-nuclear-fuel
Richard T. Lahey Jr., a retired nuclear engineer who oversaw General Electric’s safety research in the early 1970s for the kind of nuclear reactors used in Fukushima, said that the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods could burst into flames if exposed to air for hours when a storage pool lost its water.
Zirconium, once ignited, burns extremely hot and is difficult to extinguish, added Mr. Lahey, who helped write a classified report for the United States government several years ago on the vulnerabilities of storage pools at American nuclear reactors.
When the water in a storage pool disappears, the fuel rods’ uranium continues to heat the rods’ zirconium cladding. This causes the zirconium to oxidize, or rust, and even catch fire. The spent fuel rods have little radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of eight days and has mostly disappeared through radioactive decay once fission stopped when the rods left the reactor cores. But the spent fuel rods are still loaded with cesium and strontium that can start to escape if the fuel rods burn.
One factor that might determine how serious the situation becomes is whether the uranium oxide pellets in the rods stay vertical even if the cladding burns off. This is possible because pellets sometimes become fused together while in the reactor. If the pellets stay standing up, then even with the water and zirconium gone, nuclear fission will not take place, Mr. Albrecht said.
If a lot of fission occurs, which may happen only in an extreme case, the uranium would melt through anything underneath it. If it encounters water as it descends, a steam explosion could then scatter the molten uranium.
More http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html
I would imagine that shutting off the power on a fuel pond – permanently — would qualify as an ‘extreme case’
You can try to convince yourself that this is not going to happen — but it is.
This is the 5th horseman of the apocalypse… it is unavoidable… I would argue that it is a good thing … it will put an end to the suffering of those who might make it through the Great Starvation.
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
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/
The main consideration governing the storage of spent fuel in relatively few locations seems to be non-proliferation. The owners and operators can’t afford to let too much of the stuff get stolen or fall into the hands of terrorists. So they limit the number of storage sites and make the assemblies too big to pilfer. But in keeping the stuff “safe” in this way, they are risking “safety” in the same way that putting all your fireworks or dynamite in the same shed does.
In a nicer, friendlier world, where everyone was kind and clever and good natured, those spent fuel assemblies might find a secondary application as sources of heat or small-scale electricity generation for small communities. I haven’t studied any calculations of the amount of power they put out, but if they can boil water constantly for years on end and the steam or hot water could be used to drive a dynamo or heat more water via a heat exchanger, everything in the garden could be lovely. But in the real world, the dangers of proliferation as well as environmental contamination through accident or sabotage are simply too great to allow this to happen. Elon Musk will be able to make good use of them on Mars though. Doubtless every domed colony on the Red Planet will have its own spent fuel reactor to safely, cleanly and sustainably heat the greenhouses and the communal swimming pool.
Designers didn’t even thought about using decay heat usefully at the plants, I suppose because it’s a very small amount of power if compared to the reactor load
Bit difficult to steal spent fuel… since it would kill if it were removed from the pond…. but a pond could be blown up …
True. It would take a large professional operation to “safely” whisk away a spent fuel assembly. The kind of villains James Bond deals with might be up to it, but run-of-the-mill cowboy thieves would be right out of their league.
He probably meant that the never ending list of piles of mega dead bodies and burnt countries throughout past decades via globally performing evil person (remember she influenced stuff under her husband admin too), somehow cancels out perhaps the very few corpses if any at all inside the concrete basements of Manhattan developer projects via local mafiosi Donaldoo, who now entered a bit bigger league of their own.
What struck me today, was a little statistic by ZH commentariat about Donald’s debt leverage and bankruptcy escapades, the numbers from as early late 1970s clearly shown he paid back increasingly smaller sums for ever growing scale of projects. In other words the guy conned the proverbial conman moneymakers at their game with increasing rate of success..
So the jury is still out, it could be just yet another episode of dog and ponny show or sellout performance as FE tries to hint at. Or it could be instead yet another historic replay pf manic-epic attempt how to carve something out of tail spinning falling empire. And as we know, there is always tomorrow, there is always some local master lord, whatever the conditions, his three oldest kids kind of look and act like wolfs, that’s just for the cheap ecology shot comparison. In summary, this keeps shaping very not much as your average Mr. Penny DeSellout Nobody goes to Washington story..
Mine was response to that “Puppet” snowflake, I clearly subscribed to your previous message and this latest one as well.. sorry it was not more clear enough..
I understand. Regards
Another promise broken:
Trump Not Seeking Full Repeal Of Dodd-Frank; Opposes Bank Bailout Provision
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-11/trump-not-seeking-full-repeal-dodd-frank-opposes-bank-bailout-provision
Janet: Hey Don – just a friendly reminder that you won’t be repealing Dodd Frank. We prefer that it remain in place. To save face you can mention something about the bail out provision. Then do nothing and say nothing. Nobody will remember…
Don: Yes High Priestess – do you want me to lick your feet now?
Janet: Maybe later Don. Oh – and that one about firing me. That was excellent. Me and the boys up here were squealing with delight when you said that…. Just say you won’t be nominating me for a second term as I was planning to stay on anyway…
Don: Yes High Priestess – that is what I will say. Is there anything more you need me to do?
Janet: Can you be a good laddie and run down to the shop and pick up some Smarties for me Don. Then separate out the red ones and bring them up to me. You can feed the others to Congress as a special treat – I only like the red ones — try to remember that going forward Don.
Don: right away High Priestess.
Okay, that made me laugh.
In case folks forget, Dodd Frank is the 2010 act that reformed the financial industry, among other things. It is supposed to prevent the need for future bailouts, but it clearly can’t do that.
glass steagal is now deep in the memory hole a non memory replaced with a imaginary substitute for a memory that no longer exists
janet is a talking head. trump grovels before her masters without doubt, we all do.
Trump will Extend an Invitation to Assad and Putin to Dance About the Campfire and Eat Organic Oatmeal… http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-syria-analysis-idUSKBN1360WJ
Wanna bet … hahahahaha
daly plaza if he does
There are not a lot of job requirements for the captain of the Titanic.
Except to see the looting operation to its natural conclusion?
Donald Trump advisors consider Jamie Dimon for treasury secretary
It is only November but its freezing cold in Finland. We have snow and its minus 15 degrees celsius outside. Are we not burning enough oil? Why do we have an oil glut? Can’t we just lit those tanks?
Trump has figured out that there is a limit to oil production and that only the rich nations will be allowed to burn what is left? The Western world won’t collapse since the third world will turn into Venezuela and Libya but still continue to ship oil and other commodities to the West?
We will just be forced to build walls to keep all the hungry people out.
Increasing debt is a solution to problems for as long as it works. Rising interest rates definitely is not a solution.
If the wages of the people of Finland were higher, they would be buying more new cars and homes. This would help drive up oil usage. We can’t get rid of the oil glut without getting wages up higher.
The government, unions and corporations have agreed on wage freeze since the price level is too high and the exports are tanking.
That should put a limit to private debt growth as well. The government is still taking on more debt though. The government takes in 55% of the GDP and spends 60% of GDP. Not exactly capitalism, or private capitalism, but more like state capitalism, or socialism, or euronomics.
Confirming the “unusual” onslaught of winter for early NOV.. on the continent.
In terms of the debt issue, on the positive side, at least you have something to show for it in the end, e.g. the fast rail network in Finland took some years to solve the originally Italian manuf tech problems, but now it seems somewhat dependable. Also some of your semi colonies in the Baltic must bring token revenue back home as well, when some of your domestic industries folded/shrunk under globalization..
In contrast, imagine, there are also countries featuring even deeper debt hole and now standing completely empty handed, nothing to show or brag about..
Not cold, but record snow in Stockholm for this time of year.
Today I observed workers clearing a roof (mandated by law after an accident or two 15 years ago). Five guys standing on the roof talking and watching their phones, three guys on the ground making sure no one climbed over the obstruction. And ONE with a shovel and one watching him. Probably costing $100 per hour per head for the landlord.
I suppose THAT law could be changed by accepting and accident or two each year (per a million residents) is ok, on the other hand a 99% fossil free operation.
But what about all the snow on the ground?
Well, it’s 15 degree above normal here in the Pacific Northwest. No sign of winter anywhere, really, in any of the states.
Likewise in the Mountain West. Ski season is delayed, the days are like early summer.
Of course these observations are all weather and not climate. What matters is global average temperature, which is rising rapidly. Warming deniers fail to recognize this.
I am not a global warming denier, I believe in gw, I just want more of it. Ice ages and a future snowball planet equals extinction.
Welcome to the movement.
Still considering a name… Concerned People in Support of Global Warming.
Now can you imagine if CNN, BBC etc… had us on to discuss why we are supportive of more global warming…. would it not be so much fun! We’d be stoned to death on the way out… or maybe even crucified.
Yoshua, if you live in Finland, you should certainly welcome a bit more warmth. As long as it doesn’t get to much for the Moomintroll family. And not so much that it floods Finland and turns Scandinavia into an island as happened during the previous Eemian interglacial around 130,000 years ago.
http://www.brightstarstemeculavalley.org/science/EemianEarth.jpg
By the way, the Eemian climatic optimum was achieved with an atmospheric concentration less than 300 ppm of carbon dioxide. So CO2 didn’t do it.
Honk if you like global warming.
http://orig11.deviantart.net/5f87/f/2012/147/0/c/honk_honk__animated__by_supajackle-d51bz8s.gif
Mid point on my Round The World Support Global Warming Initiative….
Grow or Die
The Ice Age was better?
Let Finland drown.
Lets make Finland great again!
Hello please excuse my English I am French.
Know you these sites :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJKTLuvGAU4
http://www.lepouvoirdelaconnaissance.com/
mercis
Regarding Tim’s willful ignorance of how it was possible for global warming during the Eemian if was not fully caused by rising CO2: “Models have determined that much, if not all this warming can be explained by increased insolation from orbital forcing as the Earth travels around the Sun.” Even though I’ll know you’ll refuse to read this Tim or you’ll invent some strawman for why you don’t understand “models,” here’s the full reference if you care to educate yourself.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/LIG2-1906.html
I’ve already read it, Tango, and I quoted from it elsewhere on this thread before you put up the link. And for the record, I agree its probably a good summation of why the Eemian was so warm. Apart from that, what’s your point in posting it?
“Models have determined that much, if not all this warming can be explained by increased insolation from orbital forcing as the Earth travels around the Sun.”
I quite agree, and I find the insolation from orbital forcing hypothesis compelling.
The question is, if orbital forcing is good enough to account for most if not all of the Eemian warming and subsequent cooling, why is orbital forcing not good enough to account for most if not all of the Holocene warming and subsequent cooling?
And my answer is that, actually, orbital forcing is good enough to account for all of the major warming and cooling that the Holocene has experienced so far. From the standpoint of Milankovitch cycle-driven climate change, we are precisely where we should be in the middle of the climatic autumn and heading gently into the coming glacial winter.
https://i2.wp.com/theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/LI-Holocene.png
@TIm, sorry there’s too many posts. It’s almost impossible once we breach 1,500 comments for me to know who posted what/where. I also didn’t get any notification you replied. 🙁
During the Holocene we have the advent of man and their subsequent population explosion due to agriculture; we have the discovery of fossil fuels as well as the exploitation of everything on the planet. As far as we know, that has never happened before on Earth, making this time much different. Obviously something is happening or happened to trigger the 6th great extinction, which is ongoing right now. The rate of die-off is much worse than previous periods.
If you’re going to simply buy the orbital forcing methodology then why has the CO2 gone way, way beyond any previous natural cycle? That would be one of the primary things that doesn’t make sense to me. While there is some research to indicate that orbital forcing is the main culprit, does it honestly matter at this point? Remember, not all of us care weather humans caused this mess or not. The fact is that CO2 is sky-rocketing, species are dying off, and the planet is changing. Arguing about who or what caused it at this point is a little like changing the music on the Titanic after she struck an iceberg.
@Tim, also I recall reading some research about orbital facing being impacted by melting ice caps and also melting ice caps being impacted by orbital facing. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Since both impact one another it can be hard to precisely point the finger on what’s causing what, as all we notice are directions of movement over the short term (from a geological perspective). Likely the warming we’ve experienced thus far is from a combination of factors as the current pace is many orders of magnitude faster than previous recorded changes. That is, it’s highly doubtful than orbital facing all on its own is responsible.
@Tango: Good question. Orbital forcing came first. The earth’s orbit has always “wobbled” due to the gravitational pulls of the moon and other planets, apparently. This doesn’t much matter to the overall global temperature when, as most of the time, the earth has been much warmer than it is now, as in the time when dinosaurs ruled it.
It was only when the earth grew cold enough to develop ice caps that the orbital changes had something to work on. Why did the earth cool? The most popular theory is that as Antarctica drifted toward the South Pole, it became cold enough for glaciation to develop there around 35 to 40 million years ago. Once Antarctica was glacial, meltwater running off the continent in the summer could begin collecting at the bottom of the ocean, cooling it slowly over tens of million years until the temperature of ocean depths had dropped from about 15 degrees C to about 5 degrees C. This led to the entire ocean becoming cooler, diminishing its power to heat the atmosphere, rather like a hot water bottle slowly becoming too cold to keep the bed warm.
Changing ocean currents due to the opening of the Drake Passage between S. America and Antarctica and later of the closing of Panama Isthmus are also thought to have driven the process of cooling.
Eventually, 2.6 million years ago, the earth became cool enough for extensive icecaps to form first on Greenland as a permanent cap and then on Canada and Scandinavia as periodic caps. Once these icecaps formed, they cooled the world further both by their presence (like ice cubes in a refrigerator) and by changing the earth’s albedo. For the first 1.6 million years, the Canadian and Scandinavian icecaps formed and melted every 40~42,000 years or so, which is a dead giveaway that their growth and decline were linked to the changing obliquity of the earth’s axis (which is one of the three Milankovitch parameters).
Axial tilt (obliquity) The angle of the Earth’s axial tilt (obliquity of the ecliptic) varies with respect to the plane of the Earth’s orbit. These slow 2.4° obliquity variations are roughly periodic, taking approximately 41,000 years to shift between a tilt of 22.1° and 24.5° and back again. — WIkipedia.
Why should obliquity changes make a difference? It turns out that when obliquity is higher, the seasons are more pronounced. Summers are warmer and winters are colder. At 24.5° obliquity, the Arctic Circle is at 65.5°N, while at At 22.1° obliquity, it is at 67.9°N. This means that the Arctic Circle moves north and south through about 175km during the course of the 41,000-year cycle. This affects the extent and duration of “midnight sun” and other Arctic conditions. More importantly, it changes the altitude of the sun above the horizon on the longest day. At maximum obliquity, that extra 2.4° of solar altitude during the summer raises insolation high enough to the melt Canadian and Scandinavian ice caps at low latitudes, while at minimum obliquity, the insolation is insufficient to stop ice caps from growing.
However, the oceans continued to cool further, until by about 1m years ago, the atmosphere was cold enough that even at maximum obliquity, there was not always sufficient insolation to melt the two mid-latitude ice caps, and so the glacials began to last longer, stretching to either two or three obliquity cycles, so that the interglacials arrived only once every 80,000 or every 120,000 years. This is where we are now. These days it takes maximum obliquity plus help from eccentricity and precession to provide enough insolation to melt the Canadian and Scandinavian ice caps. And once these factors move out of whack, in 5 to 10,000 years, the earth goes into an energy gap situation where the amount it radiates into space is more than it absorbs from the sun, leading to slow cooling. from then on, it is only a matter of time before glaciation recommences. The process takes a long time from a human standpoint, but the earth has been through well over 100,000 obliquity cycles since it came into being.
We get slightly warmer or cooler centuries as we move through the cycle, but on the scale of millennia the trend is clear. And the data taken from ice cores and ocean cores and lake beds and bogs appears to show that each of the last four millennia has been cooler than the one before. Also, sea level has been falling for most of that period and the Little Ice Age of 1500 to 1850 was probably the coolest period of the past 10,000 years.
Anyway, good question! And apologies for an over-long and boring answer, much of it pure conjecture. People collect data from the past and they try to interpret it as best they can. But we don’t have direct access to the past and so imagination plays a huge role in interpreting it and we often get things totally wrong.
And somehow, most people assume that climate will always stay the same in the future, if it weren’t for human influence. This hoped-for stability is what allows us to build roads and factories and other long-lived investments.
That is correct—but what’s scary is that we’re in a La Nina event (even though it appears to be somewhat weak) and that means we should be cooler than normal. Climate change appears to be overriding the typical weather patterns.
@ roc (there is no reply button under your post):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fingerprints-Gods-Quest-Continues-Updated-ebook/dp/B004K6MECC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478990726&sr=1-1&keywords=fingerprints+of+the+gods
Interesting read – how scientific it is, well, ahem – but very entertaining. He talks of the Great Flood – next disasters are due about 2030, IIRC. 🙂 Even so, he has some interesting things to say about megaliths. How were these massive and massively heavy things built by the ancients? We really don’t know. Hancock theorises that there were pre-ancients, with a highly advanced though very different technology from ours.
What matters is global average temperature, which is rising rapidly. Warming deniers fail to recognize this.
I would dispute this and I’d like to take this opportunity to knock it on the head.
The idea that global average temperature is what maters is very seductive, but it is erroneous. What matters is the current local temperature AND weather conditions. For us, for the animals and for the plants, locality is everything. If you want to plant crops, hold a barbecue party, or arrange a trip to the local park or a foreign holiday, global average temperature tells you precisely nothing. You need to know or be able to guess roughly what the temperature and the weather is going to be like in the place you are planning to be in. That’s all there is too it.
Global average temperature is interesting to pretend to calculate. But in the end it is a purely abstract concept.
Take temperature measurements at dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations several times each day, create daily averages from this raw data and allow this to represent the average temperature for planet earth on that day.
Do this for 356 days and average these 365 daily averages and make allowances for leap years and come up with an average of averages, and call this the global average temperature for planet earth for said year.
Make adjustments to your calculations by varying the number and location of measurement stations, filling in blank spaces with “best guess” pseudo data, make allowances for “missing heat” or “missing cold” that must be hiding in the ocean depths because we can’t see it in the surface data, and bingo! You can make every year “the hottest year evah” or “thee coldest year evah”by 0.005 degrees C in keeping with the needs of your political masters, who control promotions and purse strings in the Big Climate industry.
In principal, this is no different from casuistry, in other words, clever but unsound reasoning. It’s the climate science equivalent of “proving” how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The realization that average annual global temperature is essentially meaningless for anything apart from scaring the snow flakes has caused a shift of emphasis in the warmist prop-a-ganda over the past five years to place an emphasize “global climatic disruption”, “climate weirding”, “sea level rise”, and “ocean acidification”. It is pretty much common knowledge among people who have studied climate history that the annual global average temperature goes up and down in roughly 60 year cycles and in roughly 1,000 ~ 1,500 year cycles. All ice core proxy temperature measurements that have sufficient resolution show these two rhythms (revealed as “sawtooth” patterns on the graphs) in addition to the larger roughly 120,000-year glacial-interglacial cycles.
Here’s a graph showing how the last four interglacials have proceeded, based on data from the EPICA ice core. YOu can see those sawtooth patterns. The teeth are 1,000 ot 1,500 years apart. It’s a beautiful thing and very colorful. We have so much data now. And we are going to make climatology great again!
https://oz4caster.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/interglacial-warm-period-comparison.gif
The thing that has always amazed me is that hunter-gatherers lived through ice ages! They moved around to where weather conditions were better. This is another version of needing to find places where local conditions are “good enough.”
The US had record corn and soybean production this year. http://www.wsj.com/articles/corn-and-soybeans-slide-as-usda-forecasts-record-production-1471020435 Bloomberg talks about a “record world grain glut.” Higher temperatures are generally associated with higher crop production. Crops failed badly during the “little ice age” when temperatures were lower. Some of these things are hard to remember, when we keep hearing how dreadful climate change is expected to be.
Tim no intelligent person would debate that the Earth doesn’t have natural cycles built in. The reason that the recent changes are so incredibly alarming is the RATE of CHANGE! Not that they’re changing, it’s the RATE at which they’re changing. Do you understand the difference?
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is much faster than any previous point in the last 500,000 years. The change has gone exponential and on a geological timescale CO2 is going straight vertical. You can see the natural cycle on charts and the current CO2 rise smashes right through it. Funny how the rate of change started to really, really take off at the start of the industrial revolution. Must be a coincidence, huh?
The oceans are where over 90% of global warming has gone thus far, which is why your anecdotal worldview is capable of believing that there isn’t any warming at all. Tipping points are going to be breached weather you personally believe in global temperature data or not. That’s the great thing about these measurements, data collection, and broader sciences being applied to this subject: they’re still true, even if you don’t personally believe in them!
And feel free to keep ignoring the mass die-off or migrations of species because it would really be hard to explain if you don’t believe that Earth’s climate is changing abruptly. “In the last 40 years half of all wildlife is gone from the planet and 1.5 Billion birds are gone from Canada’s skies.” Must be another coincidence, surely. Funny that they’re already measuring species evolution at much faster rates than previously recorded as well.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/aaf7671
http://www.salisburypost.com/2016/10/09/xx-5/
Tim, the more I think about it the more people you believe must be lying and recording fraudulent data in order to pull a hoax over on billions of people. It’s not just the temperature data, it’s CO2 data, biological and ecological systems data, ice core data, and more. This fraud would also have to involve tens of thousands of people from likely 50 or more countries to include their governments all while bridging the gaps of things like language barriers and ideological differences.
Can I ask you an honest question Tim, how much tin foil do you normally go through in a week? Do you buy the larger sized rolls or are the smaller ones easier to carry on the go? Inquiring minds want to know Tim. What I don’t really care to hear about are your long, run-on thoughts that are mostly drivel on the topic of climate change.
Can I ask you an honest question Tim,
I don’t know if you can OT. You’ve haven’t had much success at asking me any so far.
how much tin foil do you normally go through in a week? Do you buy the larger sized rolls or are the smaller ones easier to carry on the go? Inquiring minds want to know Tim.
We only use aluminum these days. But I understand the importance of your question. You are feeling a need to insert a mandatory personal insult in every comment address to me, not because of any personality problems you may have, but because you are at a total loss as to how to address the valid points I am making.
And to actually admit that some of what I’m saying makes sense would damage your faith and credentials as a true believer in CAGW (that’s Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming), and it would be a cold day in Singapore before you could bring yourself to do that.
What I don’t really care to hear about are your long, run-on thoughts that are mostly drivel on the topic of climate change.
Well, there’s an obvious solution then. Don’t post your own drivel on that topic, because my drivel is mostly in reply to yours. Failing that, you could adopt the following attitude.
http://ru.memegenerator.net/instance/40438915
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is much faster than any previous point in the last 500,000 years.
Yes, very probably true. But it’s still a trace gas. Only one molecule in 2,500 in the atmosphere as opposed to one in 3,000 a hundred years ago. So it’s like having 4 Hillary supporters at a Trump rally.
The change has gone exponential
My, we do know some big words. But do we know what they actually mean in mathematical terms? Look up the definition of “exponential”, look up the rate of CO2 increase, then get back to us.
and on a geological timescale CO2 is going straight vertical. You can see the natural cycle on charts and the current CO2 rise smashes right through it. Funny how the rate of change started to really, really take off at the start of the industrial revolution. Must be a coincidence, huh?
I’ll grant you it’s “going straight vertical” on a geological timescale and that “started to really, really take off at the start of the industrial revolution”. I’ve never denied human activity could be a major cause of the recent cumulative and fairly steady rise in atmospheric CO2. My main sin is to deny that this rise is driving or is going to drive significant temperature change. You are a remarkable boy; an intelligent boy. I’m sure you are capable of grasping my view without distorting it. I know I use long sentences sometime, but I’m not as bad a Hegel.
And feel free to keep ignoring the mass die-off or migrations of species because it would really be hard to explain if you don’t believe that Earth’s climate is changing abruptly. “In the last 40 years half of all wildlife is gone from the planet and 1.5 Billion birds are gone from Canada’s skies.” Must be another coincidence, surely.
Well, I’ve lived a long time, and in that time I’ve read a lot of stories about animals on the brink, and some of them were true.
If people spray pesticides that poison wildlife, and that wildlife is gone from the planet, is that down to abrupt climate change? If people cut down forests and drain wetlands and pour concrete over land that was previously animal habitat, and those animals either die or migrate, is that down to abrupt climate change? If people erect huge windmills that chop up untold millions of birds and bats, or massive molten salt solar installations that zap birds and bats that fly through the beams….abrupt climate change? If people driving cars kill millions of creatures from dear and badgers to frogs, crabs and snakes, leaving their bodies as roadkill and decimating their populations….. abrupt climate change? If hunters trap and shoot enough migrating birds that the species collapses, as happened in North America with the passenger pigeon, are you going to lay that down to abrupt climate change?
And last of all, when we haven’t actually experienced any more unusual abrupt climate change, as you implicitly admit when you claim that all the warming you are expecting that is supposed to be fueling this abrupt climate change is instead going into the oceans, how has this abrupt climate change managed to kill off so many species?
Precisely 200 years ago, people were starving to death in New England, Europe and East Asia due to famine brought about by an abrupt multi-year cooling caused by the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora in the midst of an already cool period. Call it climate change or call it natural disaster, it was a real event — abrupt and devastating and with global effects — that caused enormous human and animal suffering. No doubt it took out quite a few species. Anyone who lived through that time would be more than happy, no doubt, to exchange their climate for ours.
The year 1816 was known as “the year without summer.” On April 5, 1815, the Tambora volcano located on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia suddenly erupted with a resounding detonation that could be heard 1,400 km away. This already massive eruption was nothing compared to what came 5 days later in what would become the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Over 100 km3 of pulverized rock was ejected into the atmosphere in an explosion 52,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bombing, killing at least 60,000 people.
As a result, not only did the mountain go from a height of 4,300 m to 2,850 m, but CO2 was released into the atmosphere in such quantities that it impacted the climate on a global scale. In 1816, several regions of the world experienced a climatic shift, with a temperature drop of a few degrees Celsius, impacting agriculture to such an extent that it caused famine and disease in Europe.
https://www.axa-research.org/en/projects/jessica-kandlbauer
https://youtu.be/OcJcM0fOatI
Tim I’m not at a loss to counter points you’ve made at all, lol. You underestimate me. I insert the insults because it’s shameful that someone as intelligent as you has to maneuver into these long, mental-gymnastic hoops about how you personally don’t believe humans are changing a damn thing. It’s the same embarrassing mental gymnastics that religious people are forced to undergo in order for their worldviews to make sense.
You assume an awful lot about me. I conceded that orbital warming likely has something to do with the current warming. Does that sound like typical AGW priesthood talk to you? No, it doesn’t. That’s because I’m looking at all of the factors and the bigger situation, not blindly taking talking points from “leaders” about what’s happening. I don’t trust anything from anyone until I verify it myself through more than one reputable source.
CO2 rate of change has gone exponential. I’ve looked it up and I’ve looked at graphs as well as numbers. The old rate of change used to be around .6/PPM per year just a few decades ago. Now it’s closer to 3 or 4 PPM a year. That’s exponential change. It’s rate of increase is hastening. Now, you can just declare CO2 a minor gas and ignore this but it’s somewhat willful ignorance considering the larger picture of it taking off during the industrial revolution. Again, I’m not saying causation but correlation is 100% there. The runaway CO2 is troubling, even if the heating doesn’t appear to come until much later, which is debatable as the oceans have heated up significantly.
Your personal stories about how the world is changing due to human interference and that’s what’s responsible for massive species die-off does have some merit. That said, the rate of die-off is much faster than any previous period in Earth’s history (as far as we know). Pollution and natural events are not enough to explain this. I believe you’re smart enough to realize if the water warms and fish move or die then it will have an adverse reaction up the food chain. It’s as simple as that. And it’s happening all over the planet right now.
I’m also aware of the Earth’s natural cycles and ability to modify CO2 and solar activity with things like volcanoes. That said, judging from modern instruments and recordings, volcanic activity is minor compared to the CO2 we release into the atmosphere from our normal activities. Changes to our environment appear to be faster than previous periods based on what we know. Species extinction rates, animal die-offs, rising CO2, rising temperature, and other variables all appear to be significantly faster than a regular “background rate.” I don’t care who or what caused it as that debate is moot now. I’m not some priest seeking validation, I merely enjoy studying the vast components of the biosphere and ecosystems.
Tango Oscar, assumptions apart, I think we agree about far more than we disagree about, regarding the universe, collapse, climate change, life and everything. And if we agreed about everything, we’d soon get bored, so maybe we have truly the best of all possible worlds here.
We disagree about the power of atmospheric CO2 to affect the temperature and about the various positive feedbacks the rise in CO2 will trigger. We disagree about the potential for earth to develop anything approaching Venus-like climate. But that’s fine. In general, disagreements on scientific matters are good. They shouldn’t lead to real enmity or mutual loathing the way political differences or musical preferences often do.
Of course, if you are correct that the planet is in danger from CO2 + methane and other feedbacks and you can offer a way to prevent that happening, and people like me are preventing necessary action by playing down the seriousness of the issue, then you have a perfect right and a duty to condemn me as an evil-doer. But I think you realize that as a planet there is nothing we can do to control our CO2 emissions until it becomes economically impossible to continue extracting fossil fuels.
The Chinese, the Indians and now the Japanese are pledged to build more coal plants. The Trump is going to end restrictions on energy production in order to make America great again. There are 90 million more human mouths to feed every year. Even if renewables were up to the task of providing the energy we need, to build enough renewables to do that would require the combustion of lots of fossil fuels for many decades to come. Also, as Gail and Eddy remind us, reducing fossil fuel use will crash the world economy and end BAU. So even if CO2 is going to cause dangerous warming, we aren’t going to stop doing it until we are no longer able.
That’s why I think our disagreement is academic. And it’s good to think about these kind of issues and be challenged on them and receive information and opinion from people with opposing views. Minds can change. I have been a denier for 15 years now. Before that I was a true believer for 15 years or more. If temperatures rise further in future rather than falling, perhaps I’ll become a true believer again.
Back in the 1970s, as a teenager, I believed we were in for more cooling. In the 80s it was obvious we were warming. The 1997/98 El Nino was presented as “the new normal” at the time by some alarmists and when it failed to warm further in the following years in line with alarmist predictions, I began to study the subject more and became skeptical of the entire CO2-driven CAGW hypothesis. There is an alternative hypothesis based on ocean currents with possible lunar, solar and planetary influences (I know it sounds like astrology 🙂 ) that states we are in a quasi-60-year cycle that peaked around 2005 and so the average annual global temperature should be cooling until 2035 or so. If in the next 10 years the world warms,significant human influence on the temperature will be difficult to deny. Right now, I’m expecting mild global cooling that will take us back to 1970s levels.
I have no prediction about future CO2. I don’t understand all the sources and sinks anywhere near well enough to be able to make a guess. I agree with you that industrialization is the obvious culprit for the present rise. But there are lots of other things going on with CO2.
@Tim,
I agree that we’re like 99% similar views on collapse, the economy, and probably a host of other similar issues. Also I fully admit that the real crash is likely to come through the economy or finance sectors and involve finite energy issues like diminishing returns. I have no solutions for anything related to climate change but I do enjoy reading/studying it similar to other advanced systems like the economy. I was an air traffic controller for a decade and I thrive in busy, confusing areas that can get hectic.
You don’t have to understand carbon sinks and sources well enough to make any sort of educated guess beyond what the chart currently shows; I sincerely doubt most scientists can put all the dots together either, hence why there is a broad range of inaccurate estimates regarding climate change modeling. That said, most of them from what I see from more conservative agencies like the IPCC are frequently far too conservative.
Right now the direction of CO2 is up at a faster and faster pace so it’s reasonable to assume that’s what it will continue doing in the short-term. There is some sort of lag factor, probably around a decade, between CO2 emissions and when they actually register in the atmosphere as an increase in CO2. So even if we shut down the economy today, the rate could in theory continue to rise to 450 PPM and beyond over the next decade and that’s if the rise was strictly from fossil fuels. It could very likely be a combination of factors however, which would end much worse than predicted as well.
Same here in Alaska. Only a skiff of snow and very warm days.
Know exactly what you mean, merrifield. Live a couple hours drive north of SF at 1150 elevation, and every Nov. 1 it starts getting noticeably colder, except this year in which I’m still using a box fan (2′ x 2′) to blow air in while sleeping at night. It’s got 3 speeds and it’s set on 2. But I’m not surprised because this past summer was the hottest at night by far. Uh, hello, it’s November – where’s the chill?
So, Mr Wilcox, back from the dead! And just what is your excuse for your long absence, please?! 😉
Mid November here in New York and it is warm and sunny. More like September. November is normally cold with endless clouds and drizzle.
DJ,
It’s about 22e/h for manual labour and 60e/h for machine work. Just add +30% and you get the going price. For each man in the team of course.
And as for the gravel, to prevent people harming themselves, its 13- 6c/L depending on the contract. About 400e VAT 0% per real estate for the whole season.
And if you want structural assesments done about the snow load on the roof, its about 60e/h. Or 50e/ week.
Burn the snow with eldkastare!
Re. Trump’s figuring out:
Hasn’t the entire War on Terror/Great Game been a conscious strategy to ensure Western control of the oil market and maintain the petrodollar by keeping the Americans IN, potential competitors like Russia and China OUT, and the Third World satrapies and failing states DOWN? And wasn’t the plan to try to run the thing as long as possible while hoping that in the meantime alternative energy sources to oil could be developed in order to keep the the show on the road? It looks that way to me.
Spot on.
As I said numerous times the Cheney gang in the very late 1990s basically loaded up on the early peakist projections (internally not publicly), partly because as we know now the extraction experts undershoot the resources and technology progress (honest error/deviation), and secondly the gang favored the open gloves fascist global empire approach anyway..
It is a very good plan — it allows us to live like kings — and the rest of the world… well too bad for the rest of the world….
They don’t hate us for what we are … they just want to switch places with us…
Zero sum games are bad games to be on the losing side of….
Just a return to mercantilism – if I freeze you out, you lose – and the oldest imperial strategies, dressed up as ‘Saving Civilization’.
Like mercantilism, very good business indeed for some, and splendid if you live in an imperial centre: even the ‘poor’ of the industrial economies have, on the whole, shelter, clothing, heat enough and some kind of ‘food’ – which they love – to stuff themselves with, stimulants to distract, leisure for sex, and so on.
Here is the original with lots of links,
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/saudi-arabia-fact-day.html
Maybe Saudi Arabia needs to work on birth control.
Our species demonstrates the same characteristics of every other on the planet expanding population until limits cause population decline. The runup to 8B will cause untold suffering when limits are hit. Then all will “work on birth control” not just SA. Gail do you know one just one young woman of prime child bearing age 18-24 who is willing to commit to not having children? Humans adopt beliefs that entitle their emotional desires. Our species has shown no ability to limit its demands on the planet in any meaningful way. Our species is a demonstration of hypocrisy. Right now young men and women swarm on standingrock apposing a oil pipeline while demonstrating no self control in any metric of consumption of oil products, This is the legacy of our species, sanctimonious entitlement.
Oh, there will National Transformation in Saudi. Just not very planned…..
Do not forget that the longer “BAU” is maintained the more ugly it gets for us all in the end. I guess the notion of decline is still hard to grasp for many people even though hundred millions of people in the US, Europe and other parts in the world have been experiencing the “End of More” (thank you Norman!) in the past 8+ years. Even if I was assured that “BAU” (or something similiar on a lower level) would drag on for another 20+ years, that is not something to be looking forward to. We will have to deal with ageing societies and the looming pension crisis, higher unemployment numbers, skyrocketing health care costs, financial repression, more crime and violence on the streets which will lead us straight into some kind of Orwellian surveillance and police state. I know that some people do not mind, I, however, would not like to get microshipped in order to grab my daily food ration in the year 20xx. There lies nothing else than trouble ahead of us.
You say,”Do not forget that the longer “BAU” is maintained the more ugly it gets for us all in the end.”
If we are dead, we are dead in the end. There is nothing more or less ugly about the situation. I would vote for keeping BAU as long as possible.
All of the issues you list are reasons why BAU can’t really continue for very long.
If people were aware that they were on their own, they might try to provide food locally for as long as possible, Same with water. If folks can have fairly orderly micro communities and don’t give TPTB too much trouble (or even help TPTB to some extent) that would seem like a sensible course to follow.
It all sounds so wonderful…
Like a fairy land….
The problem is it ain’t gonna happen – starvation – spent fuel ponds – violence … disease. Pick your poison.
Extinction is coming
I do not think that we will all be dead, We will succumb to a robot police controlled cyberlife like a mix of “the matrix” and “Soylent green”. Humans are so tough they will not give up in large numbers. If no money is there it will be printed or stuff will be policed/armied into existence. I bet mor that it will get very ugly, not death.
You are frightening the children!!!!!
Boo!!!
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/15/12/2FE1465C00000578-3401014-image-m-32_1452862648215.jpg
Quickly … we need a DelusiTANI fable…. someone talk about Scott Nearing… Little House… permaculture…. we can do it – we shall overcome
“If we are dead, we are dead in the end. There is nothing more or less ugly about the situation.”
It is odd but I was thinking about this last night in an altered state of mind no doubt, about how everyone is more or less anonymous in a graveyard, carved names not withstanding. The grass grows, the birds chirp, the trees just stand there, the sun shines down and a gentle breeze perchance blows. No one knows the “sins” and the struggles of a dead man and we are all but a few decades away from oblivion. It does not matter what they did in their lives or whatever they might have wrestled with. All is peace and anonymity in the grave, as it should be at the end of the day. That thought “told” me something that I can only grasp at now. Something like that most of our social lives is an illusion, that it does not really “matter” and that the slate will be as clean as the fresh breeze and as warm as the gentle sun at the end of the day. I am not saying that we should live our lives with only that guiding star but it is a perspective worth keeping in mind. Peace and grace is our ultimate lot.
That is a good way of putting the situation.
This reality consists of synapses firing off in the brain which then forms images or signals based on stimuli and experiences. This is then filtered through the mind, allowing you to put your own personal touch on things. You’re right when you talk about slates being wiped clean upon death. Social lives are as meaningful or meaningless as you want them to be. Your perception can heavily alter and influence your reality.
I am obviously convinced that BAU will not continue for many more years to come. I just expect that it is going to be gradually harder for TPTB to maintain public order and I am afraid that our lives will be made so miserable by apparatuses of repression that there will not be much interest in enduring the remainder of BAU.
scenario 1 a.k.a the black swan event:
It is a beautiful morning, warm and sunny but very noisy outside. You open your front door to grab the newspaper and realise that all hell has broken loose. The big unwinding takes place over the next couple of days and weeks.
scenario 2 a.k.a whatever-it-takes:
TPTB are able to manage the downfall over a longer period of time. Cracks in the system everywhere, people ultimately living a real slave-like existence; democide: Too little to live on, too much to die on. Game over yet to be announced.
I guess it is probably a mix of both scenarios we will face. Maybe someone can convince me that I am dead wrong.
I don’t know–it could even be some sort of religious event. Or we could have financial problems that get worse and worse, before everything falls apart.
I’m just about to contribute 2 x 12 hour long haul flights to the cause of global warming otherwise known as economic growth.
Does anyone want my autograph? Any growth groupies out there want me to blow them a kiss from high in the sky?
Grow or Die.
I choose Grow.
Lyn, remember, BAU was the result our species attempt to escape the ugly world of the “End of More” that existed in most places in premodern times. Worked too, for many of us, at least for a while. Would you rather we had remained in the the world of noble poverty portrayed in The Name of the Rose?
https://youtu.be/wv8Puk7gOx4
Or should we have taken Baloo’s advice>
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I never win anything (but then I never buy tickets…) But I did win the jackpot in life …. we all did…
How many billions have lived since the beginning of time?
We all have had the privilege of living as elites in the 100 or so years of more.
This guy sounds a lot like me, except I don’t swear anywhere near as much as he does.
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanPieReporter/videos/1044777035645189/
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanPieReporter/videos/1044777035645189/?pnref=story
I love this guy, but the video keeps breaking up.
Yes, Jonathan Pie is one of my favourite political satirists too. (try viewing it on his youtube channel?, https://youtu.be/GLG9g7BcjKs)
This sounds like you’re admitting to character flaws. 😉
Absolutely!
I’m not too vain to see that I have plenty of flaws,
nor so dishonest as to pretend I have none.
Also, I don’t get a chance to forget my faults and failings.
Mrs Tim is always pointing them out to me. 😉
I get slapped and called names on a regular basis. Comes with the territory.
The sentence in my comment should have been ‘What field of human endeavour is free of corruption ?’
I have been reading some posts and comments here. No argument with the immense importance of energy to our ‘Bubble’ civilisation. Just a couple of points. The many ramifications of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption will be hugely important in the coming decades as well.
It is true that some scientists are corrupt. What field of human endeavour isn’t? Read
‘Merchants of Doubt’ for a well-documented investigation into the several corrupt scientists
who have influenced government policies regarding A.C.D. (Hint : The money trail leads
to Fossil Fuel Corporations)
https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478844824&sr=1-1&keywords=merchants+of+doubt+by+naomi+oreskes
There is no doubt that A.C.D. is real and is an enormous problem. The scientific evidence for this is overwhelming.
For those who think that A.C.D. is not occurring or will not be a problem,I won’t be wasting time arguing. There are numerous books that explain this,or spend some time reading at this site :
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
David, if you have “no doubt that A.C.D. is real and is an enormous problem”, surely there is no point in attempting to talk to you about the concept, as you are not open to persuasion.
And if you are as concerned about this “enormous problem” as you pretend to be, then doubtless you will be as determined not to use any products of fossil fuels as M.K. Gandhi was not to wear anything but clothes made from homespun yarn.
Personally, I wouldn’t give the opinions of somebody who advocates veganism but eats meat much credence, or someone who campaigns to eliminate tobacco use but enjoys a daily smoke. Since I’ve never met a single person who was willing to personally forgo the comfort and convenience afforded by fossil fuels, I’ve never taken very seriously the arguments that we must act to curtail their use, because if those advocates believed these arguments, they would have given up using the products of fossil fuels such as electricity, plastics, computers, heating oil, mechanized transport,etc., and would be living a variant of “The Good Life” somewhere between that of Thoreau (who lamented the coming of the railways) and the traditional Amish.
Instead we have Hollywood celebrities, super-rich “progressive” politicians and international financiers with carbon footprints the size of some Third World nations lecturing the masses on the need to “decarbonize” and “pay carbon taxes”. We have well-paid Green activists who are totally unable to give up their cars. In the hills of old Vermont, Bill McKibben has been agonizing for 25 years about the fact that he drives while campaigning against cars. In recent years he has eased his green conscience by driving an EV recharged from his rooftop solar rig. On the other side of the pond, in Olde Englande (actually Wales), George Monbiot lives a large farmhouse and drives a car while campaigning against large homes and cars, and to boost his green cred, he recently boasted that he personally limits his flying to one trip every three years. Naomi Klein also drives a car (a hybrid), and she’s an unabashed frequent flyer. So, our leading role models in the fight against anthropogenic climate disruption are a bunch of hypocritical carbon criminals, the lot of them. No wonder the proletariat doesn’t give a toss about anything they have to say about A.C.D.
WIth almost everyone these days apart from a relatively few hunter-gatherers now almost totally economically and psychologically dependent on using fossil fuels, we are all—yourself included—complicit in this “crime” of A.C.D. that you are attempting to lay at the door of the fossil fuel industry.
Not that I shall be prosecuting you on that account. I just don’t see what can be done to stop A.C.D. If even the most prominent crusaders against fossil fuels insist on making personal use of them, it’s a lost cause.
Well, there may be a way around this. We can liberate energy from the atom, but it is a very destructive process. What if we could get free energy but a lot more gently? Surely it’s worth thinking about. But just imagine if anybody could buy a free energy set for say $100 that would last say 5 years/ How would the military-industrial complex like that? If they control oil, they get to control the world and use those shiny weapons that they’ve spent billions of dollars on creating. And given that they have all that power, they are going to let somebody with some crappy little free energy machines spoil all their fun? No, of course not. They just sideline or total those pesky eccentric scientists, just as they did to JFK and whoever else. And who knows, the mysterious Tim could even be one of their shills. ;-0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4vG6qOX374
But the question is, even if we did have access to this cheap over-unity energy, what about entropy? What would be the effect of even all this “clean” energy floating around the atmosphere?
Very good reflection.
The hypocrisy of modern society is of an epic size. We humans do not like to look honestly in the mirrors.
A.C.D activists seem to be unaware that switching to an electric car or putting solar panels on the house are absolutely insufficient measures.
For example, the health system is a major consumer of resources and therefore a large carbon emitter. Would they be willing to give it up? Of course not.
Personally I do not have the ability to judge for myself the real danger of global warming. It is an extremely complex subject. But I observe such scientific malpractice, so much politics and so many interests that I have inevitably become a skeptic.
We simply can not reduce emissions significantly without breaking the economy. This is the point that is never spoken of.
I am very deterministic. The day of doom is already written. What has to be will be, both with the economy and with the weather. We can not improve things at all, only make them worse and that’s why I’m conservative and I do not rely on experiments with unpredictable consequences like carbon reductions or radical changes of direction in economic policies.
Fast Eddy is very sure that the elites have everything under control to lengthen the inevitable as much as possible … but I do not believe it at all …. hehehe …
‘Fast Eddy is very sure that the elites have everything under control to lengthen the inevitable as much as possible’
If anyone has a better plan than the el’ders I’m not aware of it…
The el.ders have done a truly masterful job of keeping BAU alive this long… every day is a bonues now
The same argument can be made about those who are concerned about oil depletion.
Of course oil depletion is real,but the only way to stop that depletion would be if industrial
civilisation did not exist. We are in an inescapable progress trap. We now have 7.4
billion people on the planet. The only way that population can be fed is through industrial
agriculture,which is dependent on fossil fuels. Stop using fossil fuels,and over 5 billion
would be dead within months. Continue using fossil fuels,and A.C.D.becomes increasingly severe. I don’t know if you have read it,but ‘Six Degrees’ by Mark Lynas
explains well what those effects would be.Not a pretty picture.
You are far too optimistic…. everyone would be dead with a couple of months… starvation would get the majority … and out of control fuel ponds will finish the rest
Soil that is farmed using petro-chemical inputs — will support no crop once the outputs are stopped – without years of intensive rejuvenation involving organic inputs.
Organic inputs will be hard to come by considering nothing can be grown – and most if not all animals are killed and eaten.
Less than 1% of all farmland globally is farmed organically.
Get ready to starve.
https://agenda.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/agriculture3.png (note – most organic land in Australia is rubbish and supports sheep only)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-have-the-most-organic-agricultural-land/
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
4000 ponds x 14,000 = 56,000,000 Hiroshimas
David, I agree with you about the inescapable progress trap. If there is a solution that doesn’t involve a global civilization collapse and billions of dead humans, I’ve yet to come across it.
Anyone who is concerned about the prospect of extreme weather, and even of climate disruption, should be well aware that these things can be expected in the natural course of events. The mid and upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, have a more variable climate than either the tropics, subtropics or the southern hemisphere. These regions also contain much of the world’s most productive farmland. We’ve had a very long run of fine “summer climate” since the end of the 19th century. Most of the 500 years before that were not as warm or as stable, and if those conditions return, it will become more difficult to grow grain in much of Canada and Russia.
A major volcanic event, even now, could drop global temperature and block out enough sunlight to give us a year or three “without a summer”, and that would be enough to cause great hardship. If human activity is going to make weather/climate even more extreme—either through burning fossil fuels or through changes in land use such as deforestation, urbanization and desertification— then it poses a similar and possibly greater risk of causing great hardship. Combined with all our other problems on this crowded finite world, that might be enough to trigger collapse. I don’t doubt that. But I say “if” because I don’t accept the “warmist” claims that CO2 is a potent enough greenhouse gas that increasing human emissions could trigger a 5 or 6 degree C warming or cause climate disruption. My modest knowledge of physics, geology, meteorology,and climatology makes me skeptical and the fact that such claims have become political slogans makes me doubly skeptical.
Certainly, human activity can change the climate on a local and regional scale. The urban heat island effect and the goat-scape and olive tree environments around the Mediterranean demonstrate that on a local scale, and the Asian Brown Cloud centered over India, China and Indochina caused by large-scale industrial pollution and biomass burning and the desert of Baluchistan, which became and remains desert due to overgrazing although it potentially receives enough moisture from the monsoon to be returned to grassland if it was properly managed, are examples of human induced regional climate change. These very visible and easily verifiable changes, however, have nothing to do with the amount of CO2 in the air. Teasing out the amount of effect CO2 has is a difficult task, which is why it is still subject to so much research and debate within the scientific community, even as politicians and NGO activists continue to chant “the science is settled.” And this reprehensible claim that the science is settled is one of the classic “big lies” that have helped to make a total pigs’ breakfast out of the publicly conducted “climate debate”.
It depends on the speed of collapse. If we are facing near-term collapse, ACD is a problem for other species more than it is for us.
Nuanced approach towards possible varied speeds of collapse ?
I salute you, thanks.
Gotta throw a few scraps of rotting meat to the DelusiSTANIs to keep them happy…. particularly after scaring them with talk of extinction earlier ….
Not scared, nor Delusi proper..
Perhaps you might get surprised what the “near term” future holds in store.
For example, the power faction in-fights stayed pretty much in house affair for long decades so far.
Now, it doesn’t have to necessarily start immediately with Donaldoo, but sooner or later you might get pretty day light visible street fight among the alphabet agencies, mil apparatus branches and various oligarchs on the US soil as well. obviously including large numbers of the of the sheep. That’s sort of the natural law of history if you will.. sooner or later.. tick tock..
The thing is…
DelusiSTANIS never believe they are Delusional.
That is what delusion is all about — you actually believe the nonsense.
As opposed to a troll – a troll knows the nonsense is nonsense — but they post it anyway because they want to antagonize.
Delusion (noun): an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.
Delusion synonyms: misapprehension, mistaken impression, false impression, mistaken belief, misconception, misunderstanding, mistake, error, misinterpretation, misconstruction, misbelief; fallacy, illusion, figment of the imagination, fantasy, chimera; fool’s paradise, self-deception
From Delude (verb): make (someone) believe something that is not true.
Delude synonyms: mislead, deceive, fool, take in, trick, dupe, hoodwink, double-cross, gull, beguile, lead on; cheat, defraud, swindle, bamboozle, pull the wool over someone’s eyes, pull a fast one on, lead up the garden path, take for a ride, put one over on, snooker, hornswoggle, pull a swifty on…
Contrast with Illusion (noun): an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.
Illusion synonyms: mirage, hallucination, apparition, phantasm, phantom, vision, spectre, fantasy, figment of the imagination, will-o’-the-wisp, trick of the light; ignis fatuus
These two words are from the same stable and are half-siblings of allusion and collusion (same father, different mothers?). It seems to me that the principle difference between delusion and illusion is that one can be aware of experiencing an illusion in realtime but one can never be aware of experiencing a delusion until after the fact, and often not even then.
Are you saying there is another country — or would this just be another province in DelusiSTAN?
America! The Greatest Country on Earth! Bar None (and any mutherfukker who disagrees gets a kick in the teeth – so shut yer holes ya varmints)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/trump-voter-beaten-black-mob-you-voted-trump-you-gonna-pay-sht
Stupidity is one thing western society dispenses equally to all.
Artleads
You are forgetting inequality: I got much more than my share…..
True to the first part for sure!
Some comments:
1. Homo Sapiens all along are racist until the last 30 years when we are at the peak of enjoying “energy slaves”. We have too much spare time in our hands to come out with racism, snowflakes, etc. Since the early days of homo sapiens, we have to fight both nature and other homo sapiens to survive. Survival of the fittest that nature has dictated all along until the fossil fuel came along and allowed the weak to proliferate
2. There are hard and soft limits of everything thing. Many people say that collapse will only happen if we hit hard limits likes hitting the limits of oil, phosphorus, etc extraction. Limits are moving goal posts. With higher prices, the limits move. So, technically, there are no hard limits. Soft limits are due to “man-made issues” like “too expensive energy causing economic meltdown”.
3. To me, soft limit will be a killer as it is more related to “how we live” rather than the hard limits. In the 1950s, if there is war in the other side of the world (i.e. Korean War), no other places in the world will be impacted. Nothing happened in South America when WWI or WWII started. Due to interconnectedness, lightning fast news propagation, over financialization of society, any major events will have impact of the lives of people everywhere in the world. Case of point – there were many bankrupt Kenyan flower growers as their flowers cannot be shipped to UK due to Icelandic volcano. Just do a Google search on this if you don’t believe me. Will this happen in the 1950s? Definitely not.
4. It does not really matter who wins the election in USA. Some say the elites will crash the economy as they don’t want Trump to be their president. Anyway, Trump has already outlined that he will raise USD5 trillion in debt for reconstruction of USA. So, the rates are already rising. Can we afford high rates? Definitely not. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/making-yields-great-again-trump-unleashes-bigly-rates-repricing
** Do note that Deutsche Banks has trillions of derivatives and most of them are tied to interest rates. You cannot cancel out the debts or derivatives as pension funds are holding to them. If you cancel them, then the pensions will be devastated. It will detonate. It is just the timing and trigger that is unknown.
5. Even if Hillary wins, the debts will continue to pile up and it is just a matter of time before it explodes. Either that or WWIII.
6. Trump wins – it will encourage the Europeans to think about their own exits like Italy having their referendum. On Dec 4, if the 5 Star Movement wins, again, it will wreck havoc and possibly causing the destruction of Euro. What we homo sapiens do, we don’t have an “undo” function. We cannot go back to previous state. It is much harder than most people think that going back from Euro to DM, Peseta, Lira. Does anyone who how to use Telex? Does the millennials even know how to use a fax machine? Does FedEx have any facility to track their packages if the internet goes down?
We live in interesting times.
I know how to use Telex, punch tapes, dot-matrix printers, fax, and can replace GPS with Loran C in coastal areas and dead reckoning. Sextant use is a little rusty, but I know where to get one.
My first impression is CTG knows more than he/she should. However, I think the elites will celebrate Trump’s intent to spend USD5 trillion in debt. Think of it as one last shopping spree at the mall.
You post this comment on Nov.10,2016,and write;’Even if Hillary wins’. Does news arrive in your area via packhorse?
It is just a scenario that I put in. I think it is correct in terms of English grammar. I cannot use “When Hillary wins”. I have to use the word “IF”
Correct grammar would have been:
“Even if Hillary had won, the debts would continue to pile up and it would still be only a matter of time before it explodes.”
Probably. Even for a native speaker English is hard.
But it was clear to me what you meant and a good post. Thanks.
Thanks
“Even for a native speaker[,] English is hard.”
You mean that English can be hard even for a native speaker. Word order matters. The fewer commas the better. 😉
I am not clear why enough is not spelled enuf.
And so on.,…
I understood it too. I like that European way of using English. Sort of like those side directions for a play. Scenario is the right word.
Well said.
The limits we are reaching are not the ones people have focused on. They are promises that are not being kept such as reasonable paying jobs for everyone willing to work; ability of young people to be able to afford to get married and start a family. Without enough jobs that pay well, prices of commodities drop too low. It is low prices and the inability of investments to earn adequate returns that bring the system down.
When an oil company runs out of money it simply shuts down. Their purpose was to earn money for the shareholders, that has been accomplished. There is no one to blame.
So far, it doesn’t work that way. A new company buys the old company. It cuts wages and ends any pension promises. It convinces a bank to give it more money to keep running the company, and keeps pumping oil and usual. The losers are the workers and the pensioners, and perhaps some banks/bondholders.
I believe that both types of limits will take us down although hard limits still exist. At some point it is very likely that global warming will have crossed a threshold where humans can no longer survive on the planet’s surface, barring a miracle. Also if the economy is magically kept together at some point it is certain that we would run out of fossil fuels; weather we have free fusion for everyone at that point is debatable but make no mistake about depletion.
What will likely happen is a whip-saw of components and variables like high/low prices, rising/tanking demand, and over/under supply as the economy continues to try and placate consumers while keeping the spice flowing. This is what appears to be happening now. At some point too many critical components break or are unavailable, leading to a total systems failure. This is true for the economy as well as the biosphere.
Only 1°C rise in global average temperature has affected species across ecosystems, changing their genes, physiology, morphology and phenology, and impacting their distributions, food webs and overall interactions https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/climate-change-has-impacted-all-aspects-of-life-on-earth-new-study/
New research suggests the Earth’s climate could be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than thought, raising the spectre of an ‘apocalyptic side of bad’ temperature rise of more than 7C within a lifetime http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html
Below is an update of the situation on methane. Contained in existing data is a trend indicating that methane levels could increase by a third by 2030 and could almost double by 2040 http://arctic-news.blogspot.fi/
While we’re on the subject of greenhouse gases, let’s not forget the alarming increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide. If that keeps building up we will literally die laughing.
There’s a greenhouse gas whose concentration is on the rise because of human activities. But it’s not the one you’d expect: it’s nitrous oxide (N2O), also known as laughing gas. It’s been accumulating in the atmosphere since the 1700s, and it’s powerful and persistent. One molecule of N2O has the same greenhouse warming power of 300 molecules of carbon dioxide. Once that N2O molecule gets into the upper atmosphere, it can stay there for more than 100 years before it’s destroyed naturally.
Fortunately, air has about 1,000 times less N2O than carbon dioxide. But the rise in N2O has accelerated over the past two decades. And while we know where the excess carbon dioxide is coming from, we don’t know precisely how N2O is produced. That’s information we’ll need to know in order to curb future N2O production.
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/another-greenhouse-gas-to-watch–nitrous-oxide
I’m aware of that Van Kent. It’s why in the last 40 years we’ve lost half of all wildlife from the planet and the species extinction rate is off the charts. 2016 is on par to be around 1.25-1.35 C above baseline. I’ve read your 2nd source as well. 7C would in theory start us off on the Venus path and absolutely nothing will survive that scenario. Honestly once we cross 2C more permanently, which could be as soon as a few years down the road, that’s pretty much it. The chain reaction of die-offs has already started years ago.
The Trump campaign reminded me of a car commercial; promises of wide open spaces (drain the swamp/regulations), new roads with fewer obstacles (immigrants), conquering of nature (drill baby), endless bright shiny days ahead (great again!!) . You know the ones where the wannabes are back in nature being beautiful and young again!! Its called anchoring with the imagery.
No mention of the traffic jams, costs, dents, scratches, petrol bills, insurances etc. Sort of like joining the gym a la mid-life crisis!
Whereas poor old Killary had too many dents for all the kings men to put back together again! Even with her uuuge spend!
All the SJW’s on our national radio station in NZ are crying non-stop. They actually believed there would be a difference. As I tell people, changing the President is like changing the cook on the Titanic; change of menu, no change of direction.
https://pics.onsizzle.com/what-if-i-told-you-all-presidents-are-only-front-men-4538823.png
+++++++++++++++
I can tell you this much, Trump proposing that Jamie Dimon becoming the Treasury Secretary is about as far away from “draining the swamp” as you could possibly get. More like the fox guarding the hen house. Moreover he has proposed several closed-minded bigots have spots at his cabinet like Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Ben Carson. Keep in mind that Ben Carson could possibly be fronting the department of education; this is a guy who thinks Jesus’s pals rode around on dinosaurs and that Joseph built the pyramids to store Rice Chex. Yeah…
That’s an interesting perspective on the pyramids from Dr. Carson.
There might be a grain of truth in it. 😉
But if there is, it’s bound to be locked up in that big US Government warehouse right next to the crate that stores the Holy Grail.
One thing we can be pretty sure about. If the Egyptians stored grain to cover multi-year harvest failures. It would have made a lot of sense to store it well underground where it would be kept relatively cool and dry. The optimum temperature for grain storage is no more than 12 degrees C. Higher than that and weevils and other the insects hatch out of their eggs and start devouring the seeds.
The term “bigot” is a SJW term.Why single out Republicans as being bigots because they are more open about who they don’t like than Democrats (liberals?)
“Moreover he has proposed several closed-minded bigots have spots at his cabinet like Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Ben Carson. ”
I heard the omost the same sentence word for word on NPR.
hen a few days ago
Trump is too wacky to have the nuclear codes
Oh but the butcher of benghazi is cool to have the codes
Cheny the other side of the coin was cool to have the codes.
What exactly are the qualifications needed to have the codes to kill off a few billion humans?
Glee club? Letterman? No tatoos?
I know a smear campaign when i hear one.
But thats probably a head fake too.
There’s a rumor going around that it’s George Soros who’s funding the anti-Trump protests.
Conspiracy theorists think George Soros gave a lot of financial support to the Black Lives Matter movement.
We seem to be far away from the days where social movements were started by people with modest means pooling their resources together. Today, social movements seem enmeshed in professionalism. At least in the U.S.
There might be some truth to it. It’s difficult to be a professional activist if you live in a major metropolis area and have no financial support.
With the looming crisises, you’d think the elites would focus more on techno-fixes and not piss away money on non-profits but then again, they are not completely rational.
Recently I was pitching up here “financial repression” 101 intro via GordonTLong ytoube interviews channel, but for now some new/rehashed stuff from here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/russell-napier-interviewed-fiscal-stimulus-comes-dangerous-baggage-%E2%80%93-financial-repre
The point of Schaaf’s letter, however, is to “explain why it seems our police department cannot stop” the rioting anarchists. The reason is that “the police who are responsible for the safety of the crowds and our community during these protests are very often the target themselves. When they step in to stop an act of vandalism while it is happening, they become the new focal point for the crowds which can lead to an escalation of violence, not a decrease in the vandalism. This is the very difficult set of circumstances we are dealing with.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/oakland-mayor-explains-why-local-police-cant-stop-looting-rioters
The answer is – 1.6 billion rounds of armour piercing bullets.
Coming soon!
The mayor does not want to stop the riots. If he wanted it to stop you send the police and arrest the people one by one until they are all in jail.
The French also choose not to stop Muslin rioters.
Spot on. In their eyes, there are simply two types of rioters, the one group with justifiable passable political grievances (incl. few outliers with almost over the top violence pedigree but hey they are still kids). And then there are the real deplorables, always hateful about our common social engineering advancements and always of violent intent at least in theory, so they should be smashed preventive style anytime.
cant a drone carry pepper spray? This isnt the dark ages.
and those crowd control devices/ray guns they used in iraq that made people bleed from their eyes surely they can be unmothballed. this is a civil society after all,
Dear Donald Tump and America, all I am asking for is one final push and the the BS will be gone and all nations shall be free.
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/webimage/1.4810798.1361438548!/image/606472234.jpg
Someone on the NBL forum wrote this:
“It’s over folks. No point in taking care of nature as we will all boil alive soon. Venus Syndrome is coming and earth will be sterilised, eliminating the last light of the universe causing premature heat death. Eat drink and be merry.”..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html
We’re trapped in a burning skyscraper. Do we stay put and fry, or jump and die?
Happy Thursday 🙂
Time to set Malcolm against Tim now. Fight, fight!
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html
Cill Cill Cill!!!!
Malcolm certainly has some nice looking graphs and lots of tables. It’s a very impressive presentation. If he’s right, we’re quite literally toast. Something else to worry about while waiting for the end of BAU, I guess.
First of all, I would go back to the Eemian – the previous interglacial. At the peak, it was 5 degrees C warmer than at present. To quote the well-known warmist site Skeptical Science: ” The IPCC Assessment Report 4 describes palaeoclimatic proxy evidence from the Last Interglacial, which estimates that the largest warming then was in northern Greenland and Eurasia of ~3 to 5oC, though some individual sites may have been even warmer. ” It was a time when hippos wallowed by the banks of the Thames and other fauna now limited to Africa were found in what are now France, Germany and Poland. Sea level was 5 to 9 meters higher than at present and in many places forests grew more 100km further north than they do today.
But amazingly, there was no planet toasting methane explosion and no runaway positive feedback. Instead it all ended, not with a bang, but with a slow and bumpy decline over the millennia from the heights of the Eeemian summer to the Narinian (always winter but never Christmas) depths of the Weichselian, Würm or Wisconsin glaciation — “the Last Ice Age” in layman’s terms. I don’t see why the present Holocene interglacial should end any differently.
The only few reasons I put at least some token %validity to the warmers theory, is that sun seems not to be exactly in its warmest period cycle (and or the question of also long cycles in axle tilting of celestial bodies and consequent solar influx impact), also importantly the sheer scale of the recent human ape forced destruction of top soils, fisheries ecosystem and forests depletion must have had an profound global effect in such a short span of time. Plus the effect of burning fuels. There is also the minor of effect or earth crust renewal deep ocean, volcanoes etc.
However, to say which of the above forcing is the main culprit or larger/est share seems too stupid to call inside a society of ours in which you can’t just trust any officialdom without deep and laborious diy validation and crosscheck processes. Call it perhaps beyond cynicism and paranoia, but picking up on burning energy warming up effect would indeed make very nicely convenient “BAU lite” excuses framework to put the proverbial debt hamster slaves into even more deprivation inducing state of dungeon.
Yeah, it’s easy to ignore global warming when people just look at air temperatures. The bigger picture though is screaming in our face, complete with dying coral reefs, collapsing fish populations, and shorelines filled with dead birds showing up everywhere.
http://static.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011.jpg
Yeah, it’s easy to get people to pay attention by screaming at them with scary-looking graphs.
But one must ask, with all that heat going into the oceans, why it isn’t having a greater effect on air temperatures?
And the answer is, as we’ve been through already, that the ocean’s heat capacity is enormously huge compared with the atmosphere’s. It is a far bigger container in terms of how much heat it can store. In fact, for a given temperature, the world’s ocean will comfortably hold more than 1,000 times as much heat as the worlds’s air.
Because of this, the ocean acts as a buffer to limit the amount of atmospheric heating or cooling. Which is why coastal areas tend to have a more moderate climate than the interiors of continents.
For those who would like a less scary and more relevant graph, the one below shows the earth’s average annual surface temperature year by year, based on NASA’s GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) data. I was surprised when I first saw this, because it emphasizes just how stable the annual average temperature has been over the past century, varying by far less than the amount of temperature change your neighborhood usually experiences between 10 and 11 am on a sunny morning.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png
This primary source is biased and their message should be ignored or laughed at. Scroll down until you get to “MASS ANIMAL DEATH LIST.” Each one of those has a different, reliable source showing evidence of the ongoing extinction event. There is one for every day of 2016 so far.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/animal-deaths-birds-fish-end-times.html
worth a read for anyone suffering from a doom shortage
https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.9w7feqpd5
Wasnt that a bit shallow?
There’s only so much you can write in a short space, but he did have a point. I remember 2014, when people were recognising the centenary of the start of the First World War. Before long, Crimea had been annexed and ISIS was showing its brutality, as it tore the map of the Middle East to pieces.
There are different ways of looking at it, of course. In wanting to entice Ukraine into the EU, the West was coming up hard against Russia’s borders and disturbing its cordon sanitaire. Nobody with any sense tweaks the Russian bear’s tail.
As for ISIS, wasn’t that just a reaction against the havoc wreaked by the West in the Middle East, and a direct follow-on from 9/11? Whatever 9/11 was about.
Here in Britain, post-Brexit, there have been many more assaults on non-white people. Which just goes to show how careful our leaders should be about their words, because a lot of people inevitably take their cue from their leaders – and maybe put their own interpretation on them, encouraging the escalation of social conflict, resentment and discontent. But the post-crash (2008) austerity has affected politics here too – the Tory Party HQ in London was attacked in 2010, Charles and Camilla had their car surrounded that year, there were riots in London in 2011, and now Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party – voted in by an angry groundswell of the grass roots membership, but despised by most of his MPs.
When Reagan was elected, my father, here in England, was alarmed, and fancied he might start a nuclear war. In fact, he and Gorbachev made peace. Reagan also insisted that the many Latin American dictatorships return to democracy, but he also urged Reaganomics on them. Now we are seeing Reaganomics, Thatcherism, neo-liberalism, collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions. Because of our energy situation, the prospect of Trump maintaining a semblance of peace, which Reagan managed at least partially (Contras, etc., apart), is far less likely.
Perhaps it might help a bit try looking from sort of zoom out macro view, look down on the events as slowly moving tectonic plates crashing each other, which quickly releases energy, and then move slowly again bumping around. Bit deterministic, yet more often correct than not. Obviously it’s advisable to apply such optional filter only after basic history research is accumulated first..
The early paragraphs seem interesting and entertaining, although he is not original, clearly not acknowledging the seminal work of Howe and Strauss 4th Turning, i.e. every completion of 4x generations cycle (span of 25-30yrs x 4) means specific cycle reset for reasons cited, chiefly lack of direct knowledge-experience shared among living survivors. Then there are obviously larger cycles, it’s all a little bit of convoluted physics of heavenly bodies, influencing each other as the short, mid and longer, even very long term cycles always influence each other.
Then it goes very downhill comparing Putin to Mugabe/Stalin/Mao, wtf?
Not that this unjustly insulting silly crap, but it mainly displays the sheer stupidity of “the author”. By the way, isn’t the guy just yet another Brit, opening the piece by boasting his supposedly high research credentials, lolz.. Apparently it’s him and his country instead experiencing a visible severe decay, hah.
“but it mainly displays the sheer stupidity of “the author”. By the way, isn’t the guy just yet another Brit, opening the piece by boasting his supposedly high research credentials”
That characterisation reminds me of a poster here who continually flaunts their (flawed) understanding of history as proof of their ability to predict the future. You know the one…. every post reads like….”demographics mumble rhubarb fishsticks triage mumble crass generalisation gibberish history mumble nonsense”.
Thanks for that extraordinary rare piece of added value to the discussion and argument here..
I would call the problem ahead an energy-related collapse. It might look like war, or an epidemic, or both. Or it might even be different. Trump’s election, along with Brexit and the increasing rules limiting world trade and falling actual world trade, are all signs of this.
‘helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union)’
Bad guys?
There are no bad guys — no good guys — ‘only interests’
I would argue that the wounded dying beast that is America is far more likely to be the catalyst – than Russia — how many wars has the US instigated since the Peacenik Obama took over?
Libya…. Yemen…. Ukraine…. then of course Syria… and back to the future in Iraq….
A cornered rat — is a dangerous rat… especially when he is rabid
‘But for those at the sharp end — for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison’
If I were Erdogan I would go further — I would hang anyone I suspect of collaborating with the CIA to overthrow me – I’d take their finger nails out… I’d burn them at stakes as a message to others who might have the same ideas…
A few thousand innocents get caught up in the purge? So what – the CIA murdered 500k children in Iraq defending US interests…
While I am on the subject let me share an email that I sent to a buddy who also has extensive business interests in Hong Kong and China….
I have an alert for ‘Hong Kong’ and all I am getting is endless shi…t about this supposed rift … independence etc…
The rift is between China and the US — and the CIA is meddling …. Which puts our businesses at risk
That buck-toothed **** who was leading the ****kwits on the streets a year or so back should be hung in Statute Square for sedition — and any politician who even lets out a peep or a squeak about independence democracy or separation – should be drowned in the harbour
Yours truly,
Fast Eddy
And I mean it – I personally would volunteer to drag this prick to the harbour by the hair…. kick his teeth in …. and hold his head under the water… till the bubbles stopped….
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/10/01/multimedia/hk-josh-wong/hk-josh-wong-videoSixteenByNine1050.jpg
But then China is fully aware that the CIA is meddling in China…. and they – like Erdogan – will do whatever it takes…. they have plenty of cadres who would be more than happy to hold Josh under the water…. or hang him from a tree….
The Erdogan chap has its pros and cons as you just nicely illustrated.
He seems to be able doing strategic turn arounds leading to deals with Russia (+), he likes fast train network (+), but he also likes Fiat Chrysler factories (-), lolz..
And that was for the important summary of the day.
/signing off
I personally would volunteer to drag this prick to the harbour by the hair…. kick his teeth in …. and hold his head under the water… till the bubbles stopped….
Fast-
You are an interesting guy. I just can’t figure out why you are willing to do things like that, but at the same time, are such a harsh judge of others.
“Fast Eddy has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.
Fast interests are in HK/China…. therefore anyone who jeopardizes Fast’s interests is an enemy.
When the CIA meddles in HK fomenting false independence movements (virtually NOBODY in HK wants to separate from China)… this risks setting off another Syria or Ukraine….
This prick is traitor — he is a CIA flunkie – his movement is directed and funded by the CIA….
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-01/us-secretly-egging-hong-kong-protesters
Walk in my shoes if you want to understand why I would be very happy to drown this running dog…
Imagine China was supporting the Quebec separatist movement — providing them with funding … helping them organize massive protests in Ottawa …. trying to undermine the country… planting endless stories in the MSM about how evil the Canadian government is…
Now imagine if you had business interests in Quebec that were being put at risk by these activities
What do you thinks CSIS would do about someone who was leading these activities.
Tell me you’d not feel just a bit of glee is someone put a bullet in the back of the movement’s leader’s head….
Of course you would.
Meddling in China? Heaven forfend!
https://youtu.be/bkb5JDAGcFs
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/trump-not-seeking-yellens-resignation-wont-nominate-her-second-term
Really? No way? Seriously?
I guess Donald quickly realized that he’s The Apprentice…. and the Apprentice doesn’t get to fire the boss…
Ha ha ha ha ha…. how precious is that!
The situation when Trump won the elections, but Clinton won the popular vote is a kind of deadlock. Also the results of the polls suggest that Clinton got the votes from the rising Hispanic and Black populations, while the Trump’s votes from the older age groups were not very persuasive:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37922587
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-electoral-college-donald-trump
I have predicted that Clinton wins and Trump looses, although he may be very close to winning. In fact, the demographic data and the popular vote show more real situation than the US voting system.
Hm, there is also very real possibility, that Killery stolen few hundred thousands to low million votes (as planned from the get go), but as they necessarily had to adjust the numbers to keep some legitimacy on the fly, they probably undershot a bit (the risk was getting to hot) the needed edge over Trump, so he won..
Look up US election history, this is basically standard MO for decades if not longer, only the tools and actors of the day change..
I do not believe in such stories about stolen or manipulated votes in this case: the numbers of votes for Hillary and Donald reflect the demographics quite well. The protests against Trump after the election results also reflect the situation that there is an equally important number of those who voted for Clinton.
Trump simply could not get the votes of the Hispanic and Black populations with his anti-immigrant views. And Clinton was attractive for older age groups thanks to Obamacare, plus technology-savvy younger voters. Trump was clearly anti-scientific, anti-system, conspirational etc.
These top needs and views of the populations are reflected in the election results.
Have you seen the numbers, are you for real? Trump got decent turnout of Hispanics (who want the wall as well to stop influx of further competition), but the Blacks feeling rightly so betrayed twice by manchurian fake product Obama, did not show up at all this time..
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37922587
How the vote broke down by race
Exit poll conducted across the country by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News
It seems that Trump won just because he is an anti-system figure. Both “trump cards”, i.e. technology (young voters) and healthcare (old voters), were in the hands of Clinton.
Withouth the immigrants, both USA and Great Britain, are in big trouble. That is why “big Trump” will turn out to be a “little Trump”, as he will not be able to change the course given by the resource depletion which requires higher and higher technology and more and more healthcare. And the influx of workers to support the depletion of human resources of the country caused by the insufficient wages for offseting the depletion of human and natural resources.
I am glad to see someone else mention this.
“And the influx of workers to support the depletion of human resources of the country caused by the insufficient wages”
America burns up its people and just gets new ones.
Sorry, these are joke statistics/sampling, as you didn’t address my point at all.
From the 300mio pop, apart from 100mio kids and illegals, almost 100mio people did not vote this cycle, that’s where the real numbers are hidden, e.g. most notably the Black vote did not bother to go out and voting joyfully for Ilary Killary de Hitlery, as they turned up massively for Barrack in his first term.
Plus, as one smart cookie at ZH commented today, the popular vote claim is also similarly misleading since, only big mega populated enclaves like inside Cali state, pushed up the popular vote for her, otherwise she was chiefly unpopular across the country in popular as well as electoral votes. Not mentioning she likely stolen at least few hundred thousands votes, but that’s not crucial for the base argument here.
I guessed we where here a bit smarter than the “alphabet media” conglomerate crooks attempted post election explanations..
It does not matter to me if Trump or Clinton won, I am just analyzing those who voted and how this matches up with the development of the resource depletion. Those who did not vote, simply did not vote because mostly they did not see any reason to vote, as neither of the candidates appealed to them or motivated them in a positive or negative way.
That is a fact: They did not vote for neither of them. You can not say that when they did not vote, they supported or did not support one of the candidates. We can just guess what are their views of the world and if they still believe in the importance of the elections at all…
I would say that the decisive power is the population. The parliament, the king or whatever ruler or government are just representatives of the population. The populations delegate them their powers. And when e.g. the population requires population reduction, it just delegates the powers to carry it out to leaders like Hitler, abortion clinics or drug dealers etc.
Sorry, pls. don’t take it as personal picking on you, but you started this thread based on bogus msm apologetic pseudo explanations, what really happened, to cover their sorry rear ends.
I simply answer with logic, should Hilda beast attract similar crowds of Blacks and other minorities like Obama did earlier the results would be very different !despite!, what Donaldoo was ever able to dream to energize throughout the flyover states as well as the seldom voting white voters of the key states..
Dear worldofhanumanotg,
from my experience with the elections in Slovakia, do not forget one important thing:
When a businessman like Trump goes to politics, it can mean that his business is not doing well, i.e. maybe he knows very well that the real estates he owns are going to be worthless rubbish or even that the whole real estate business is going down. That could correspond with the population ageing, energy poverty etc.
With the rising costs of energy and the lacking supply of cheap energy, the real estates will be affected negatively more than movable properties.
MG what I learned running for office some 30 years ago was that people who rent are not registered to vote. Virtually the only people who are registered to vote are owners of detached single family homes. No doubt things are different in high density urban areas.
I expect that who is registered to vote varies by country and changes over time. People will register to vote, if they are interested enough in a particular candidate.
Hello if president Trump called you and asked you what is best politics has to implement for four next one years?
A little of courage made a big article; he will be memorable
This is what Trump said regarding energy policies in a speech:
There seem to be only two ways to go on energy policies: (1) The renewable energy/ electric cars/ save the world from CO2 direction and (2) “Drill, baby drill.” which is basically Trump’s approach. I am sure that neither of the approaches will work, because infinite growth doesn’t work in a finite world. It has already been shown that approach (1) isn’t working. So I suppose the logical approach to choose is approach (2). This will likely suppress energy prices further, making it impossible for extraction to be profitable. Also, if Trump allows interest rates to rise, it will have two adverse impacts (1) demand for energy products will fall, leading to lower oil and other commodity prices, and (2) asset prices, such as stock prices, home prices, and used car prices will fall. Besides this, governments will need to run bigger deficits. The US dollar may also rise relative to other currencies, further depressing commodity prices.
Thanks! Such a clear summing up, I might repost it to Facebook, etc.
Thanks for quickly structuring the implications of these assumed policies.
However, as perhaps mentioned earlier, the major worry here (for me now) is if he ever gets the real power to push such advertised proposals through the system (not certain), he is about to do effectively massive load of printing in one way or other for all the infrastructure renewal, not mentioning it will be mostly wasted on tax cuts, highway bridges and other short longevity crap, instead on spending on “60-100yrs” rail or nuclear related stuff for example..
Hence such a wave of massive US print fest will likely be soon afterwards, out of sheer necessity to match also joined by similar additional in sync print opulence by OECD+BRICS, which will get us into ~mid 2020s with very precarious situations, where from now on every imaginable handle on gov and private biz policy is not going to work anymore at all. It would be time ripe of sudden fast collapse snap, not by a notch, but perhaps more of a cascading inferno into much worse off conditions deep down the ladder.
Basically, what I am perhaps saying I don’t like certain kinds of can kicking, lolz.
‘and other short longevity crap’
He doesn’t have the luxury of long longevity crap…. this is Custer’s last stand….
It could be, but we disagree on the timeliness – probabilities, so not going there now.
However, I do agree he needs some results fast in 2-3yrs time frame, for many reasons, among them striking for the real crown achievement in possible second term, getting about the slaying of the dragon, which no administration was able to kick out or even attempted to pick fight with. The true autarky fight with the (~100yrs) or in global sense several centuries old disease.
I suspect he is not at all serious about that … given his first broken promise … Yellen gets to stay on.
She must be breathing a sigh of relief (sarc)
That’s why I plugged the build up of crescendo towards the possible second term, it’s not about firing the person of the day, but changing the system (too late anyway). I’d also venture to say, the nomination and election success it’s 90% probability only aimed to carve more raw chunks of the bone to supply the personal ego trip for himself but also make sure elevating possibly his dynasty into the unspoken heavenly purple status (“for ever”), he clearly does behave in this style..
Historical parallels running wild how a coherently molded republic/entity dissolved first into competing oligarchies and then later fallen even into fiefdoms and warlord turf wars..
We might have 2 years left but certainly not 3 without a direct infusion of money into everyone’s bank accounts via something like a living income replacement for social security. This is the only hypothetical way to get the oil price high enough to make any sort of energy extraction profitable in the short term. I think we see helicopter money by 2017 although Trump will likely oppose this sort of thing.
Exxon and others are going to encounter bankruptcy/bailouts of one form or another by 2018 at the latest. For fiscal year 2015 Exxon racked up $10 Billion in long term debt while paying $12 Billion in dividends. Once they cut their dividend, investors will scour over the company’s financial data and start bailing out (if they aren’t planning it already). There is no way in hell we make it to 2020 or later without massive bailouts and a mergers & acquisitions orgy in addition to helicopter money.
“We might have 2 years left but certainly not 3 ”
Two years you say?
We are only days away from a certain date
A date that marks the end of a two year forecast of doom
made and agreed upon by the participants on this forum
Doomsters drooling in their wheelchairs
Its two years out
One is a little close too near to sustain the cognitive state a doomster likes
Three is a little far out- the fear not quite sharp enough
two is just right
discerning doomsters agree
I you remerci for your answer! But there you chose the voice(vote) of the facilitated by telling me: why Trump are going to fail.
And would be what you the politics(policy) which you would implement(operate) if you were named(appointed) to make him(it)?
Please excuse my English I am French.
I suppose Trump’s view of what to do next is as good as any, if we can clearly see that the current way is not working. I imagine I would do things somewhat differently from Trump, targeting different infrastructure spending for example. We know that running up debt is a good strategy, for as long as it works.
Resumption of “regular” oil demand will be the next test in 6-12 months.
Brexit and Trump are a manifestation of our reduced surplus energy. As everybody here knows, to have a civilization, especially industrial civilization, you need surplus energy. Without it we are just hunters and gatherers. No one has been more rewarded by the surplus energy provided by conventional oil than White Europeans (from Europe and their offshoots in the New World). As our surplus energy has started to decrease in the 70s and picked up steam in the 00s, more and more people started being kicked off the gravy train, and many have been White Europeans from Europe and North America. To compensate for this reduced surplus energy, companies have been exporting jobs from Europe and NA to Asia. So these white people have lost their high-paying jobs to be replaced by low-paying jobs (or no jobs at all). So these white people in the UK and the USA, especially born in the 40s and 50s, who had it good for a while feel disenfranchised and are frustrated. And that is why we are seeing these results from Brexit and Trump. At the end of the day, it is a result of falling EROEI…
youve been reading my hymn sheet again
Looks like canuck got an advance copy of The Book…
Guilty as charged Norman, I have been reading your stuff since the days your website used to be call You Medieval Future (which I guess you changed to The End of More to make it more palatable). And obviously, when your book came out in May 2013, I immediately downloaded for the princely sum of 1.00$. And I have been following you on Disqus for a few years now just reading your comments (I never read the articles you comment on just your comments. I must admit I am surprised you have the patience to read the Hopium articles on Resilience, but I really enjoy your comments which amount to the equivalent of “I hate to rain on your parade but…” hahahaha classic!). So yes I have learned a lot from you, and other sources such as Gail’s excellent work here on OFW, commenters such as Fast Eddy, Tim Morgan at surplusenergyeconomics and others (even Richard Heinberg’s End of Growth was very good…for the life of me I do not understand why this guy who understands the situation thinks we can save ourselves, it’s simply beyond me…must be the american can-do optimism in him. So basically after years of reading on the topic you start to understand the big picture…I thanked you a few years ago for helping me learn about the conundrum (not problem since that word would suggest there is a solution, which we very well know there is none) our species finds itself in and I thank you again!! 🙂
thank you for your kind words canuck–makes the pain from headbanging worthwhile
Ive tried writing similar stuff on Post Carbon Institute—but it always gets deleted
Low cost way to build land (says the article)
“This natural process of land creation comes at virtually no cost once the cut has been made and allows for a natural gradient of marsh to form. This low-cost restoration technique is unique as it continues to build additional acreage over time rather than eroding away. It is also the cheapest land-creation technique currently in the coastal-wetland-restoration toolbox, the department said. Having a marsh slowly and naturally recreate itself with varying elevations allows for more diversity in the species that use the habitat.”
http://www.nola.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2016/11/cutting_holes_in_levees_has_cr.html
Amazing!
Our country was able to rid itself of the scourge of Obama, Bushes and the Clintons in one fell swoop last night. Awesome !!!!!!!!!!! We elected a man who promises to give us better trade deals, keep us out of the stupid wars in the middle east and elsewhere, force other member nations in NATO to pay their fair share, force countries that our military protects to pay their fair share, overturn the complete lie of Obamacare, and enforce our laws on illegal immigration that rob our country of jobs and infest us with drugs. These were ALL platforms of the Democratic party prior to 1990s and Bill Clinton coming to office. In fact most of Trump’s positions were positions that Bill Clinton “claimed” to be for. Visit any of the midwest states and see the hollowed out cities that used to be home to our manufacturing jobs. Trump will do a great job, even if he only accomplishes half of what he promised. For energy and oil production, I believe Trump will keep in mind our environment. Remember – he’s not beholden to lobbyists and Wall St. donors like the Clintons & Obama are.
“Trump will do a great job, even if he only accomplishes half of what he promised.”
I am afraid that physical limits are such that he really cannot “accomplish half of what he promised”. But I agree that what we were trying before wasn’t working before either. So given two choices, one of which we are sure doesn’t work, it is a rational decision to try the other option, even if it can’t work either.
I agree. It would be insane to keep trying that which isn’t working any longer. Because of the reality of resource depletion, I don’t think Trump can do much either. But, I voted for him because he represents a departure from establishment wars and corruption. I realize it is futile. But, maybe we avoid a nuclear war and maybe get an extra year. It is all a gamble anyway. Like a quote from an old C&W song: “life is just a gamble and we’re still in the game”.
Did you forget to add the sarc tag?
If not — I guarantee that you are going to profoundly disappointed…
T Bone,
Trump is a clownish buffoon, a national disgrace who is going to embarrass and diminish what is left of the United States. He has no ability to affect change. We already tried cutting taxes and increasing spending (for example see Reagan and Bush administrations) in order to “grow our way out of recession” and it didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
Does not matter what he can and cannot do.
Does not matter that EVs and solar panels and wind mills are energy sinks
Does not matter than we will never colonize Mars
What matters is that people believe he will make america great again. That is why he was voted in.
The United States of DelusiSTAN.
It seems that my posts which includes the name for the Israelite tribe, the word that rhymes with “pews”, it doesn’t show up here.
Why should this be? Is it a four letter word? If so, you have proven the opposite of your intention.
If you think about it, it makes sense for conservative white Americans to reject the establishment, even if at first glance this seems like a contradiction.
But it actually isn’t, since what the establishment wants is a very small population of technocratic whites/asians/jews along with a massive brown and black underclass who has no option but to work for low wages. That has been their goal for a very long time. And why? Because technocrats and armies of workers keep the system going.
If Trump manages to control immigration, which could happen but is not guaranteed, then indeed this is a shift from the patterns that have been in place for a long time. The establishment will simply have to concede a minor defeat and make an adjustment.
Hail the Trump, no more false gods, no more.. superpowers
Beethoven Symphony 7 – Allegretto
https://cmgpbppostonpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/091616-deplorable-lives-matter.jpg
and within hours of me writing about USA breakup—this starts to appear
http://time.com/4564119/california-calexit-donald-trump-victory/
Palms read while u wait
as long as i know where your hands have been
California used to be a real breadbasket, until the GH-warming droughts hit. Their only help/hope for freshwater is to the north, Oregon/Washington state and BC Canada. They could perhaps desal coastal seawater, but that requires energy they probably won’t have much to spare. Meanwhile, their groundwater reservoirs deplete. Maybe they should encourage even more people to leave the state.
Independence? Careful what you wish for…
desalinating seawater is breaking even the Saudis
Texas is the only US state that can stand alone (if any). They have their own grid, and even got (or at least pushed for) their own emp protection
Yeah I think you may be right about TX (and maybe OK too) are the only places that can stand alone when you consider the climate, resources and energy together.
Can’t grow much food in Texas.
So, you’re the one who gave them this idea. And you’ve just outed yourself on the Internet. Expect to be renditioned.
guilty as charged
If California succeeds from the US, Northern California succeeds from California and becomes the State of Jefferson. While Western Washington becomes the State of Madison.
“succeeds” should read “secedes” of course.
I have a great idea.
“Celebrity Apprentice Meets U.S. Federal Government”
Trump fires everybody in congress – house, senate, supreme court justices, department of defense etc. – and replaces them with celebrities.
Tell me that isn’t much-watch TeeVee…
Dennis Rodman as Chief Justice.
Marilyn Manson as Secretary of State.
Mike Tyson as Head of Homeland Security.
Gary Colman as Chief of Staff.
50 Cent as Head of the Department of the Treasury.
I could go on and on…
Oh man, this could be good.
if only you weren’t living it
Homer Simpson at EPA and… David Copperfield heading the DoE?
Most celebrities hate Trump – thank God. Their all superficial liberal suck-ups.
I agree. Most celebrities do not like Trump. There should be a new amendment to the US Constitution called separation of Hollywood and Government. No gov’t official shall ever appear on any television or radio program except for official addresses. No celebrity shall voice opinions on any political or gov’t issue in any print or video medium.
What irony …. considering POTUS is an incredible actor…. a front man for the real power…
I like it!
Trump could also start an auction site like Ebay where corporations bid for political favours… make the whole process transparent ….
Gary Coleman is deceased.
“What ‘chu talkin’ about, Artleads?”
Forgot that he died… RIP Gary. (He actually ran for governor of California years ago…)
I guess we’ll go with Emmanuel Lewis as Chief of Staff instead…
lots of rhetoric about Trump’s election.
So what comes next? It could be that Trump is the unexpected sideswipe I’ve been forecasting; hard to say yet—but very likely. It has to be ‘something’.
No mention as far as I can see about the motives behind it, and the problems (catastrophes) ahead. The America people have been conned on many levels by this, but few realise the ultimate swindle:
They have been persuaded that prosperity can be voted into office.
(and of course that Ponzi schemes really can pay out forever)
There is little or no awareness that America, and by definition the rest of the developed world, does not have a crisis of politics and politicians, it has a crisis of energy depletion.
Trump himself is unaware of this, nor are any of his supporters who voted him into office.
The American Dream , insofar as it ever existed, was a construct of cheap hydrocarbon fuel. Nothing else. From that derived all the products that kept millions of people employed. It was a fuelburn that continued after WW2, until 1970 when the USA went into oil deficit.
Employment and wage increases in any real sense is impossible without fuelburning and heat dissipation. (hence global warming).
Unfortunately all the cheap fuel has gone, but Trump is promising to kickstart the economy (job creation) by using expensive fuel, of which he has convinced himself there is literally unlimited amounts—there isn’t.
We are in a closing vice of falling employment and rising energy extraction cost, and no political leader is going to change that. (the current glut is a short term anomaly).
But Trump has made promises. He cannot possibly keep those promises. He cannot make America great again anymore that Great Britain can be made Great again. We too burned our energy stocks, and simultaneously our nation’s greatness.
So over the next 4 years, when the steel mills of America do not reopen, and the jobs do not materialize, the American people will realize they’ve been had—and get very annoyed. Especially as more and more of them get poorer and poorer.
So by 2020, when things have got infinetly worse, and the economic system is in a tailspin, (or maybe well before then) civil disorder is highly likely as it becomes obvious that things are worsening.
So the reaction to civil disorder will be increasing militaristic response. Trump is undoubtedly of Fascist inclination, and will respond in that manner—violently. He will have no option. His successor in 2020 certainly will, and I’m guessing will be of a theofascist persuasion. (Pence maybe—after impeachment perhaps? Trump is obviously mentally unstable already) Dictators with god on their side are the worst kind.
But with energy depletion, the United States will be ungovernable and uncontrollable, and will begin to break up into 5 or 6 disparate regions.
Welcome to the (dis) United States of America.
Maybe we will look back and recognise Nov 8th 2016 as the trigger for it all.
I hope I’m wrong.
But having forecast a “Trump”as inevitable back in 2011, I have a bad feeling that I’m not.
What I want to know is how the writers of Back to the Future 2 got it right all those years ago. First the Cubs, now…
All Hail Emporor Biff Tannen.
Hopefully, the economy will stay together until 2020 or longer. I clearly am not good at forecasting timing.
But this is a major change, reflecting how the population really feels. Way too much of what we have been told doesn’t “ring true.” I can see how people can believe that a major change in policies might change things back. We really need a lot more than that. The world economy has started contracting, because wages are not rising fast enough. I doubt anything Trump can do will prevent this. The question is, “As the world economy goes down, can the US economy hold together a bit better than others?”
the global industrial economy is interlocked—oil producers must go on producing—consumers must go on consuming.
Either faction can rant as they may—but a downturn in one will have a catastrophic effect on the other. The saudis cannot have gold plated bathtaps or the latest fighter jets without western industry—and western industry needs their oil to do it.
Oil is worthless unless it is converted into food or hardware. (just like money really)
if western industry doesn’t provide their “stuff” then they go back to being goat herders and camel traders whether they like it or not. If their arms strength isn’t maintained. then the entire oil producing region will collapse into conflict. (see above)
It is inevitable that this will happen anyway.
(Maybe the result of trump’s non intervention?)
The United States cannot “produce”—ie have full employment—while everyone else “consumes”–because the USA is a high wage economy.
China could do it because their wage dynamic was the other way round. Now they are bust too.
Trump is promising to produce high wage goods, and sell them to low wage people.
(head/wallbanging time again there)
Saudi “economic advisers” have reassured them that their towers will provide revenue long after the oil has gone, and their airports will continue to attract thousands of flights.
They won’t, but the collective fantasy remains that they will.
My law of national economics holds up whether for the United States or Saudi (or anywhere else):
If a nation doesn’t produce sufficient energy from within its borders to sustain the aspirations of its people, then they must beg buy borrow or steal it from somewhere else—or sink back to a level of existence that is economically viable.
I doubt if that will get a Nobel prize for inverse economics.
In his acceptance speech Trump spoke of building massive infrastructure. He used words and concepts much like the Roosevelts.. Maybe a New New Deal, mass employment etc.
By having millions of people building infrastructure, or even making the claim that millions of workers would be building massive US infrastructure, could keep the world economy intact for a few more months. BAU prolonged by a few more months..
I knew there would be some strange things happening in 2016 and 2017 to keep the economy rolling. In some ragtag ways. But this.. in this way.. nope, would not have been my first guess of a master plan.
Also alarm bells go off when Rudy Giuliani will be one of Trumps cabinet members..
Would be interesting to take a peek behind the curtain, there must be some pretty incredible plans being set in motion behind all this ruckus and collection of circus freaks.
the new deal burned free hydrocarbon fuel
it worked for a few years, but it was Hit–ler who ended the 30s depression, not Roosevelt or Keynes
Ironic reference perhaps to the new fuh-rer
trump doesn’t have access to free fuel anymore—no one does.
Trump might start a program to repair millions of miles of roads and railways, but yup, there isn’t enough energy to actually do that.
But a million worker public works program, announced, prepaired and about to be launched, just might keep the smoke screen in place a couple of months longer. The last great magic trick of the ponzi world economy before the illusion is ruined. Agracadabra!
I would wonder if such a plan is feasible – we’ve heard about shovel-ready projects as stimulus since 2008 — and seen nothing …. one would thing there is a reason why..
Me thinks that it has been determined that there are better ways to waste the remaining cheap energy that keep BAU alive for longer….
Let’s see what happens when you try to run an engine without oil…
He openly made repeatedly pro nuclear and pro coal renewal vision statements during the campaign, and even earlier.
The coal is relatively “easy” part in comparison to nuclear, because in such large countries you have to have the vast uptodate pool of special talent and infrastructure to pull it off in the first place, I doubt the US can start suddenly churning necessary new 5-10 copies of ~1.2GWe state of the art reactors (and whole power blocks for them) per year as soon as Donald takes the office 2017, lolz. Perhaps under some gigantic gov crash infrastructure plan, but there must be a preparing lift off phase first, that would take a decade judging from comparatively looking at the state of the industry inside US vs. Russia/China/Korea/France..
Few pages back, MG, sort of piggybacked on my earlier comments, that Trump might be the Gorbi-Yeltsin ~revival in the sense as in push reforming the system into and beyond the collapse threshold.
We are out of cheap oil… not electricity….
There seems to be some uncertainty as to where the world stands with regards to net available energy. If we have reached peak, then any energy expended in the construction of new energy infrastructure would need to be taken from elsewhere in the economy. Even without that, given the debt situation and the affordability issue, considering the increasingly expensive minerals (in terms of energy and financial resources needed to extract and process the mineral ores), and considering that the primary driver of recent global all liquids extraction rates growth (North American tight oil and tar sands) is now in decline, Trump’s grand plans are not likely to get very far in spurring growth – even without his anti-trade considerations.
++++
As I mentioned in an earlier comment — the high priests must have worked out that this energy could be better expended on some other policy — that’s why we did not see the shovel ready stimulus promised in 2008…
The situation is in flux…. the chess pieces are on the move …. perhaps this does get revisited as we approach the cliff…
A massive stimulus plan of this nature could perhaps add some time to the ticker… Trump would be hailed as the new Reagan/Thatcher….
The love affair would be short-lived.
Reaching peak is a “demand” issue rather than an “energy in the ground issue.” The big problem is the increasing wage disparity that growing complexity leads to. Net energy analyses give a false view of how the economy operates, because they give the impression that the energy after the peak will actually be available. In fact, falling per capita energy (net or otherwise) will cause the economy to collapse.
I agree that Trump’s plans are not likely to get very far–but neither are anyone else’s.
I would say that there may be problems within the Republican Party, as there were also those who were not satisfied with Trump as the candidate for the US president.
There were too many promises and many solutions offered by Trump will not work. Namely the healthcare, with the ageing and poorer population, is a big problem. Lowering the taxes in order to attract foreign companies and capital is also dubious due to the fact, that e.g. EU is already introducing protectionist taxing, so that taxes are paid where the profits are made, thus eliminating tax heavens, and, what is the most important, the companies firstly need to have profits, so that they can pay taxes.
Trump’s economic plan sounds crazy.
Trigger public spending to get people to build roads and infrastructure. If it does, the US public deficit will soar, there will be a misallocation of resources and the hole should be covered with more money printing.
On the other hand, tariffs and protectionism can have an important consequence. They will pick up inflation in the US, which can pose a serious problem for the Fed and force the Central Bank to raise rates, yes or yes, and bring down the fragile financial house of cards.
In my opinion, someone must tell this man that this can not be done because it is dangerous.
Crazy? Nothing is crazy if it gets us more years…
China has built ghost cities. If they had not we’d arguably not be here right now.
‘Whatever it takes’ means – whatever it takes
Everybody knows the US has too much debt.
Everybody knows interest rates can not be zero ZIRP or NIRP forever
Everybody knows CBs money printing can not continue indefinitely
Everybody knows the next big crash, the Big One, is coming
And.. Everybody knows Trump is crazy..
If the plan to keep BAU going.. next requires some crazy ideas and crazy policies (something the public, or economists, havn’t seen ever before). Then this is just perfect! A wacko US president, and everybody in the world already know he is crazy! This is just spot on perfect planning in an impossible no-win-situation
FE, I disagree.
Investments must be productive and have to have a return.
If not, they produce harm and that brings us closer to collapse.
It is necessary to differentiate between a positive inflationary process by increase of the productivity, for example, of a negative one (rise of the oil, policy of tariffs, etc.).
Do not forget that the implosion will be in the financial sector and the rise in rates can cause it to explode.
Be very careful, because China and the US are different cases.
You forget that this is the new normal…. totally different from the old normal.
In the new normal we do things like loan money to failing companies so that they can buy back shares to give the appearance of health…
We loan money to insolvent companies so they can pay the interest on previous loans — so that they do not collapse.
There are teams of economists churning out ideas as to how to keep the hamster running — they have super computers that help them work out which policies are likely to have the best outcomes…
If they roll out infrastructure or whatever — it is certain that they have thought this through in the war games room …. they are not just throwing sh-it at the wall hoping something sticks …
I do not think you seem to understand what I’m trying to say.
Trump’s economic policies are very inflationary: massive investment in public works, tariffs, relocation … de-globalization in short.
What will the Fed do with the rates then? Do you know that if interest rates rise, the financial system runs a serious risk of collapse?
You rely too much on that supercomputer and the good work of the elites, but I do not.
Look at Brexit. I assure you that the British elites did not want it and now they are going headfirst against the wall by the bad step that they gave when doing referendum.
I understand completely …
But if Trump does roll out a massive stimulus programme of this nature — he will not be deciding – the high priests at the Fed make these decisions.
Perhaps they have determined that BAU is ready to collapse — and that a massive stimulus programme will add a few months or longer to the life of BAU — that the toxic side effects are irrelevant.
It’s as if the hamster – who must continue running or he dies — is gasping and failing — Lance Armstrong is urgently summonsed — he shows up with his syringes loaded with ‘whatever it takes’ …. he shoots up the hamster …. the hamster runs for a few more days… then collapses and dies because his system is overwhelmed by the cocktail….
I have no idea if Trump will be given orders to deliver another ‘China’ sized stimulus…. but if that is the way things roll…. then assume we are very close to the edge…. and that someone has decided to go ahead because the other option is — collapse now.
The high priests understand that they are building up a huge pile of explosives in BAU — the ends justify the means…. I am sure they’d throw babies on a fire if they felt it kept them and us alive another month….
As we know – 500k children were sacrificed at the BAU alter in Iraq not so long ago.
Whatever it takes means exactly that
Whatever the truth, I really enjoy your comments 🙂
‘this ruckus and collection of circus freaks’
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Saudis must be feeling a little cornered at the moment….
http://cdn.attackofthecute.com/August-10-2012-01-34-43-ekjrhejh.jpg
I’m currently visiting a moderate-sized US city. Here, there are several skyscrapers in the downtown and more under construction. The obvious assumption is these new ones will be completed in a few more months to years. Most of these tall buildings appear OK, although I noted that the local Hilton looks a bit tattered, and even though it is located next to the new convention center I am attending, it is not being used by the meeting and we are booked instead in the newer Renaissance tower a few blocks away. Right next door to the Renaissance is the old convention center, which is closed and also looks a bit tattered. Some lights are kept on at night and a small janitor crew still works there. Perhaps it is just waiting for the next new car show or crafts union meeting there.
So it appears that the older modern frastucture is being shunned/abandoned in place. Anyone living/working in these tall buildings will also be abandoned at some point. I assume we will see an exodus from the inner cities. It will happen rapidly once the electricity from the grid becomes unreliable. Therefore, I assume that if any infrastructure is given priority for maintenance it will be power plants and the grid. That is the logical progression to extend BAU in the cities. In the longer term, once abandoned, these inner city cores will become instant ruins, and dangerous places to inhabit. Quite different from the slow rot of Detroit, which still has power.
high buildings need high energy input relative to their height
not many grasp the meaning of that equation
Good points–except your last one.
This really makes me wonder: If there are people “orchestrating” all of this, perhaps this is all part of the plan?
It seems like the wheels almost have to come off in the next 4 years. If the goal is further globalization/integration, more control to the elite, further curtailing of individual liberty, etc, then it wouldn’t really make sense to have “one of their own” in power when TSHTF, right? So instead you manufacture a populist/nationalist candidate railing against the establishment, who everybody doubts and half expects for things fall apart under his watch. A patsy.
Then you just stand back and wait while it all falls down and everyone blames the clown in charge, and if there are still elections in 4 years, the people are begging for the Old Guard and the strong arm of government to swoop in and save them.
Or maybe I just stayed up too late last night…
Well, there has been some strange events leading to the main event to say the least.
For example, how on Earth, could they allow let the medical insurance premiums jump few weeks before the election? Sheer incompetence, or devilish pre orchestration?
Only that thingy costed “the other team” few millions of voters, that’ for sure. Or the FBI director stuff, at the minimum the various factions started to fight each other at the very wrong time. Or yo begin with running a candidate with frequent seizures and variosu medical strap on gadgets, and not so much disguised personal ambulance + personal with shots always ready around her.
Well, from history we know TPTB pulled much bigger or actual very grandiose psyop events than a silly presidential election, so it’s a possibility. A bit lower %prob on my list (stronger %decay of the system), but not impossible.
It’s all a bit strange…
Hillary was clearly the TPTB choice. It was unfortunate for them that her health became such an obvious issue. Just look at how hard they tried to cover it up, a mission nearly impossible. The FBI director simply got fed up with the Justice Dept. stonewalling any possible prosecution and went directly to Congress. They should give him a medal. I would guess the insurance premiums hike announcement was just a bad call, a fook-up by someone now likely looking for a new job. It sure didn’t help her chances, being the administration’s chosen one. Also, Obama’s campaigning may have had a similar effect to LBJ’s poisonous support of Humphrey that helped get Nixon elected back in 1968.
Dear Fast Eddy;
“It’s all a bit strange…”
Yup, time for you to look again at the difference between the words “control”, and “influence”. If you did, you would notice that lots of people/institutions try to influence things and it doesn’t always work out. They have influence on certain issues, but control has and always will elude them.
Make a note of it,
Pintada
I don’t buy that.
I see it this way.
The Eld.ers are like our parents – they let us play in the sandbox … they give us toys… and the for the most part leave us alone….
They only step in when we break their rules…. when we fail to follow their orders…
They could care less if Trump or Clinton gets the nod…. it changes nothing…. they get to play democracy with control over the mundane operations of government — the big decisions are still dictated from above
I can’t find the article but I read something some time ago about how on key issues including war the two parties vote lock step.
Example: NSA spying.
This is a clear violation of the constitution – it is ILLEGAL.
When it came up for a vote you would expect both parties to slam it. But nope — the surveillance continues.
Have you noticed that Trump is not going to fire Yellen? Go figure…
How many trillions has the US pumped out since 2008 —- was there a vote on this? Of course not.
Trump Clinton Bush Clinton Bush Clinton blah blah blah …. this is a joke.
These are obvious references to the Fed and their central bank franchises around the world.
Has something changed since these leaders uttered these words? Does the Fed still exist?
None major figure would dare make these suggestions now — would be buried under an avalanche of racist accusations.
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.” Nathan Rothschild
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. … Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” — Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister 1935-1948.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence
“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ― Woodrow Wilson
FE, agree completely. The president is just an announcer. American politics think about every divisive issue except one MONEY.
You could very well to be right, Frogmann. I’d certainly prefer to be the leader of the opposition and the one of the gov when TSHF next year or so
But perhaps Trump knows this and he was just hired for the job, it’s almost impossible to assert anything nowadays
Edit: “and not the one on the gov”
Maybe you go back to the old guard. I expect that you really go more and more in the direction of someone who can claim to save us–someone even more radical than Trump. Perhaps a religious savior.
Really radical?
Fast Eddy (used cars) for POTUS:
https://whineandcheezits.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/used-car-salesman.jpg
Gail, you were good at forecasting, until rates went to zero
I didn’t consider negative rates an option.
I recall you had a 2-3 year uncertainty on your ca. 2015 date for financial collapse. If so, you are still in the running for accurate prediction. Not sure who’ll be around in 2017-18 to present your award, if correct.
P.S. I used your diagram (with attribution) in my seminar announcement abstract. I gave the seminar because i was being challenged by some graduate students (and their mentors) about some public remarks I made about sustainability. It really angered me that such claptrap was being touted as the official party line, along with hopeful thinking about alterate energy solutions. So I really hit them between the eyes, and I ended up scaring quite a few of my colleagues. They’re in the various grief stages at the moment.
In a grand scheme of things, a few years difference from the predicted year is not a big issue. Example : “XXX civilization collapse between 1600-1800BC”. That is acceptable. No one will say that “XXX civilization collapse exactly on 1657BC. The longer you go back in history, the bigger the error. Dinosaurs died out between 65-70m years ago.
I still see things falling off pretty quickly, but it may take a few years–still likely in the 2017-2020 period. Trump’s policies may actually work for a short time. Thanks hang together better than I expected. Everyone things low prices are a passing problem.
Hm, interesting summary, thanks for that. I’m not sure the sequencing and timing for the fall off the proverbial ladder is as short as only one 4yrs presidential term ahead of the US now.
I’ll just repeat, some voices incl. yours truly, have been for years assigning large probability and priority to prediction patterns ala Kunstler/Greer, which take the US implosion – break up into more governable sub regions scenario as one of the main topics discussed, you might probably differ on other parts and twists of the unfolding story from there though.
my 4 year span wasn’t thought up at random
though i do accept that i could be off by some years, I will explain my reasoning. All feel free to shoot at will with coherent argument—I don’t want to believe it either.
1 we know that the world economy runs on hydrocarbons, and there are no alternatives
2. Those fuels are depleting and getting harder to find.
3 Trump has promised that oil supplies are virtually unlimited
4 he promises unlimited jobs at high wages (which need unlimited oil)
5 his supporters imagine return of ‘heavy industry’ jobs
6 they dont know that the 50s/60s was a fuelburning run on from WW2
7 no awareness of the link between fuelburning and jobs
8 USA produces 10MBd, but burns 19Mbd oil– constant imports needed
9 Saudi selling shares in ARAMCO now, thus Saudi oil is running low
10 Saudi oil supply begins to falter by 2020 (ish), triggering more conflict there
11 Oil prices rise drastically, becomes unaffordable to support jobs.
12 Disaffected Trump voters react violently, realising he was a charlatan
13 Civil order breaks down with mass unemployment
14 Trump (or successor) reacts in the only way possible, military suppression of mobs
15 With low energy supplies USA becomes ungovernable
16 Secession begins, (say 2022/3) cannot be prevented (EU also)
As the above scenario plays itself out to an inevitable conclusion, virtually no one will understand what’s going on, So there will be violent reaction to it, still with the certainty the prosperity comes through votes. The politicians are always to blame, but we the people burned the oil, we the people spawned Trump et al. An inevitable conclusion to generational thinking of an infinity of everything.
That makes widespread violence certain—not just likely,
Like I said, Trump could well be my promised sideswipe—nobody expected him that’s for sure, and I’ve explained above how he could trip the USA into civil war and secession very easily.
17. Starvation
18. Fuel ponds catch fire and release the = of 56,000,000 Hiroshimas of radiation
19. Extinction.
I like the time frame — although a black swan is of course a possibility in the nearer term
‘virtually no one will understand what’s going on’
This is a key point. And will result in the mob looking for someone to blame.
mobs have always done that I’m afraid
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.
You keep insisting on rolling this out in spite of the fact that I have debunked that report that is decades old. It is a theory – it has never been tried — it’s right up there with Keith and his Solar Koombaya Project.
The reality is that hot fuel needs to be in a pond for 5-10 years.
We are producing massive amounts of new spent fuel every year
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
Have you any information that the high priests are urgently moving spent fuel that has been in ponds long enough into dry casks?
Of course they are not — why waste time on that — we don’t actually need all 4000 ponds to go up in flames releasing 56,000,000 Hiroshimas…
I would think that 10 or so would be enough to exterminate those that do not starve to death….
Starvation or radiation poisoning…. now that is a terrible choice.
Save some bullets for you and your loved ones.
Sequence of events is fine. But timeline is a bit optimistic for me.
A. Publicly traded companies need profits, growth, constantly. With raw material and energy constraints profits have already become dubious. The minute profits falter publicly traded companies must start massive layoffs..
B. Population keeps on growing and peak food is already here. Without abundant energy and cheap raw materials (artificial fisheries, greenhouses, vertical farms etc. etc. to compensate “natural” peak food) then food runs out. And food-riots reduce profits..
2022/3 is a bit optimistic for me. I’d go with 2019
My Christmas prediction was made on this basis…. but then we saw what the PBOC did when the China markets started to collapse….
They put a gun to the head of anyone dared to say the Emperor had No Clothes….
They literally threatened to throw short sellers in prison…. then they proceeded to bid the market up with the printing machine via proxies….
How far can corporate profits diverge from valuations …. without tipping this over…. how do we avoid a deflationary death spiral resulting from waves of layoffs?
Perhaps the CBs have a way to keep corporations alive as zombies…. there are doing exactly that with a whole lot of banks…
The trigger… what is the trigger…. when it comes it may be like sliced bread — so obvious that we’ll all be wondering why we didn’t think of it…
I still got 2018 due to energy corporations collapsing. As it is right now, looking at a broad range of energy companies including some of the largest in the world and the United States, I am seeing a lot of bankruptcy, cutting dividends, unsustainable debt, and most troublesome a slash in reserves/capex/exploration. Peabody, the U.S. biggest coal producer went bankrupted and reemerged already. Chesepeake Energy is nearing collapse. Exxon Mobile, world’s 5th largest oil company added 10 Billion in debt last year while paying out 12 Billion in dividends. And on and on and on.
Looking at their financial sheets it is HIGHLY unlikely that they can sustain themselves for another year or two without bailouts or some other intervention invention by the elites. That might buy another year or two, depending on precisely how fast collapse happens and how all of this impacts supply/demand. There are many forces at play here including nations like Iran, Iraq, Russia, or Saudi of whom have some of the cheapest oil and absolutely refuse to stop pumping due to financial liquidity demands.
Interestingly… I sometimes send articles to tips@zerohedge.com …. they sometimes publish .. sometimes not … they will often respond to the suggestions…
I have sent the Exxon research to them multiple x now — and asked recently why they decided not to publish it…. radio silence…
I am wondering:
a) does acknowledging that expensive oil is the problem wreck the entire narrative of ZH – the one where the central banks are incompetent idiots…. posting what is in effect a smoking gun would not be in their interest
b) could it be that ZH is just part of the ministry of truth — the division meant to appeal to the renegade segment of society (kind like the anti-huffington post) to deflect them from the truth… and the Exxon info touched a little to close to the nerve…. not sure how anyone reading that could not understand that we are in very deep trouble …
I choose A. ZH is a money making news site like any other and they have a clear agenda and audience. They try to steer away from climate change, population issues, and other resource based problems. Part of their narrative is the belief in the infinite growth paradigm if only we had non socialist leaders. Obviously they don’t get it and maybe they even think prosperity has now been voted in with Trump (LOL). They and other news organizations seem to be confused right now.
lol—getting closer and closer
will it be worth going out today i wonder
I choose C.
I was listening to Matthew Simmons https://youtu.be/QXRXEJGEr6w and how he learned how to connect the data.. and there still might be a possibility that large parts of the financial community just simply don’t get it..
If ZH wrote the true story, like Norman does.. then ZH might lose a lot of their readers
Judging by the average intelligence of the people leaving comments on ZH articles I would wager that their base readership is about as smart as a cardboard box.
We have a few village idiots here….
ZH is a village of idiots
It’s all about the profit.
Despite holding itself out as a town crier for market angst, transcripts from Zero Hedge internal chat sessions provided by Lokey reveal a focus on Web traffic by the Durdens. Headlines are debated and a relentless publishing schedule maintained to keep readers sated. Lokey said the emphasis on profit—and what he considered political bias at the site—motivated him to quit.
http://tinyurl.com/jmusmnd
Have we factored in the continuing retirement tsunami of the first baby boom generation?
How does this impact the economy of nations in the First World?
Where are funds to pay for their pensions, healthcare and life insurance going to come from?
Is their declining net consumption following retirement going to be a net positive or a net negative?
Sorry, I am all questions and no answers on this topic.
pensions are effectively a mortgage on our future
it is a debt that can never be repaid—thats how ponzi schemes work
Pensions are a promise that BAU will continue–in fact that growth will continue indefinitely. They can’t really work.
The huge promises made of retirement income for all of the retirees will be a big drain on economies. Government programs are pay as you go systems, and the purchases of goods and services from other pension plans can only come out of the total goods and services produced in a given years. This is why actuaries are always concerned about having a rising population of children to fund the program. They really need to be worried about having an adequate supply of cheap-to-produce energy (plus cheap-to-produce and other resources, like fresh water, soil amendments, copper, iron, etc.) as well.
If there is not enough to go around, food that is produced really needs to go to those who are producing it, first. Giving it to retirees makes no sense. This is true for other products in short supply, as well.
I am so amazed by what folks consider “normal”. From a personal perspective, I was taught the notion that saving for retirement via 401K investments was akin to a survival skill. As if a stock market always existed since the dawn of time. And it is normal for long term stock valuations to go ever upward. The indoctrination into BAU is pervasive across the developed world. This whole idea of debt ba