Some people would argue that 2016 was the year that the world economy started to come apart, with the passage of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Whether or not the “coming apart” process started in 2016, in my opinion we are going to see many more steps in this direction in 2017. Let me explain a few of the things I see.
[1] Many economies have collapsed in the past. The world economy is very close to the turning point where collapse starts in earnest.
Figure 1
The history of previous civilizations rising and eventually collapsing is well documented.(See, for example, Secular Cycles.)
To start a new cycle, a group of people would find a new way of doing things that allowed more food and energy production (for instance, they might add irrigation, or cut down trees for more land for agriculture). For a while, the economy would expand, but eventually a mismatch would arise between resources and population. Either resources would fall too low (perhaps because of erosion or salt deposits in the soil), or population would rise too high relative to resources, or both.
Even as resources per capita began falling, economies would continue to have overhead expenses, such as the need to pay high-level officials and to fund armies. These overhead costs could not easily be reduced, and might, in fact, grow as the government attempted to work around problems. Collapse occurred because, as resources per capita fell (for example, farms shrank in size), the earnings of workers tended to fall. At the same time, the need for taxes to cover what I am calling overhead expenses tended to grow. Tax rates became too high for workers to earn an adequate living, net of taxes. In some cases, workers succumbed to epidemics because of poor diets. Or governments would collapse, from lack of adequate tax revenue to support them.
Our current economy seems to be following a similar pattern. We first used fossil fuels to allow the population to expand, starting about 1800. Things went fairly well until the 1970s, when oil prices started to spike. Several workarounds (globalization, lower interest rates, and more use of debt) allowed the economy to continue to grow. The period since 1970 might be considered a period of “stagflation.” Now the world economy is growing especially slowly. At the same time, we find ourselves with “overhead” that continues to grow (for example, payments to retirees, and repayment of debt with interest). The pattern of past civilizations suggests that our civilization could also collapse.
Historically, economies have taken many years to collapse; I show a range of 20 to 50 years in Figure 1. We really don’t know if collapse would take that long now. Today, we are dependent on an international financial system, an international trade system, electricity, and the availability of oil to make our vehicles operate. It would seem as if this time collapse could come much more quickly.
With the world economy this close to collapse, some individual countries are even closer to collapse. This is why we can expect to see sharp downturns in the fortunes of some countries. If contagion is not too much of a problem, other countries may continue to do fairly well, even as individual small countries fail.
[2] Figures to be released in 2017 and future years are likely to show that the peak in world coal consumption occurred in 2014. This is important, because it means that countries that depend heavily on coal, such as China and India, can expect to see much slower economic growth, and more financial difficulties.
While reports of international coal production for 2016 are not yet available, news articles and individual country data strongly suggest that world coal production is past its peak. The IEA also reports a substantial drop in coal production for 2016.
Figure 2. World coal consumption. Information through 2015 based on BP 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy data. Estimates for China, US, and India are based on partial year data and news reports. 2016 amount for “other” estimated based on recent trends.
The reason why coal production is dropping is because of low prices, low profitability for producers, and gluts indicating oversupply. Also, comparisons of coal prices with natural gas prices are inducing switching from coal to natural gas. The problem, as we will see later, is that natural gas prices are also artificially low, compared to the cost of production, So the switch is being made to a different type of fossil fuel, also with an unsustainably low price.
Prices for coal in China have recently risen again, thanks to the closing of a large number of unprofitable coal mines, and a mandatory reduction in hours for other coal mines. Even though prices have risen, production may not rise to match the new prices. One article reports:
. . . coal companies are reportedly reluctant to increase output as a majority of the country’s mines are still losing money and it will take time to recoup losses incurred in recent years.
Also, a person can imagine that it might be difficult to obtain financing, if coal prices have only “sort of” recovered.
I wrote last year about the possibility that coal production was peaking. This is one chart I showed, with data through 2015. Coal is the second most utilized fuel in the world. If its production begins declining, it will be difficult to offset the loss of its use with increased use of other types of fuels.
Figure 3. World per capita energy consumption by fuel, based on BP 2016 SRWE.
[3] If we assume that coal supplies will continue to shrink, and other production will grow moderately, we can expect total energy consumption to be approximately flat in 2017.
Figure 4. World energy consumption forecast, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data through 2015, and author’s estimates for 2016 and 2017.
In a way, this is an optimistic assessment, because we know that efforts are underway to reduce oil production, in order to prop up prices. We are, in effect, assuming either that (a) oil prices won’t really rise, so that oil consumption will grow at a rate similar to that in the recent past or (b) while oil prices will rise significantly to help producers, consumers won’t cut back on their consumption in response to the higher prices.
[4] Because world population is rising, the forecast in Figure 4 suggests that per capita energy consumption is likely to shrink. Shrinking energy consumption per capita puts the world (or individual countries in the world) at the risk of recession.
Figure 5 shows indicated per capita energy consumption, based on Figure 4. It is clear that energy consumption per capita has already started shrinking, and is expected to shrink further. The last time that happened was in the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Figure 5. World energy consumption per capita based on energy consumption estimates in Figure 4 and UN 2015 Medium Population Growth Forecast.
There tends to be a strong correlation between world economic growth and world energy consumption, because energy is required to transform materials into new forms, and to transport goods from one place to another.
In the recent past, the growth in GDP has tended to be a little higher than the growth in the use of energy products. One reason why GDP growth has been a percentage point or two higher than energy consumption growth is because, as economies become richer, citizens can afford to add more services to the mix of goods and services that they purchase (fancier hair cuts and more piano lessons, for example). Production of services tends to use proportionately less energy than creating goods does; as a result, a shift toward a heavier mix of services tends to lead to GDP growth rates that are somewhat higher than the growth in energy consumption.
A second reason why GDP growth has tended to be a little higher than growth in energy consumption is because devices (such as cars, trucks, air conditioners, furnaces, factory machinery) are becoming more efficient. Growth in efficiency occurs if consumers replace old inefficient devices with new more efficient devices. If consumers become less wealthy, they are likely to replace devices less frequently, leading to slower growth in efficiency. Also, as we will discuss later in this post, recently there has been a tendency for fossil fuel prices to remain artificially low. With low prices, there is little financial incentive to replace an old inefficient device with a new, more efficient device. As a result, new purchases may be bigger, offsetting the benefit of efficiency gains (purchasing an SUV to replace a car, for example).
Thus, we cannot expect that the past pattern of GDP growing a little faster than energy consumption will continue. In fact, it is even possible that the leveraging effect will start working the “wrong” way, as low fossil fuel prices induce more fuel use, not less. Perhaps the safest assumption we can make is that GDP growth and energy consumption growth will be equal. In other words, if world energy consumption growth is 0% (as in Figure 4), world GDP growth will also be 0%. This is not something that world leaders would like at all.
The situation we are encountering today seems to be very similar to the falling resources per capita problem that seemed to push early economies toward collapse in [1]. Figure 5 above suggests that, on average, the paychecks of workers in 2017 will tend to purchase fewer goods and services than they did in 2016 and 2015. If governments need higher taxes to fund rising retiree costs and rising subsidies for “renewables,” the loss in the after-tax purchasing power of workers will be even greater than Figure 5 suggests.
[5] Because many countries are in this precarious position of falling resources per capita, we should expect to see a rise in protectionism, and the addition of new tariffs.
Clearly, governments do not want the problem of falling wages (or rather, falling goods that wages can buy) impacting their countries. So the new game becomes, “Push the problem elsewhere.”
In economic language, the world economy is becoming a “Zero-sum” game. Any gain in the production of goods and services by one country is a loss to another country. Thus, it is in each country’s interest to look out for itself. This is a major change from the shift toward globalization we have experienced in recent years. China, as a major exporter of goods, can expect to be especially affected by this changing view.
[6] China can no longer be expected to pull the world economy forward.
China’s economic growth rate is likely to be lower, for many reasons. One reason is the financial problems of coal mines, and the tendency of coal production to continue to shrink, once it starts shrinking. This happens for many reasons, one of them being the difficulty in obtaining loans for expansion, when prices still seem to be somewhat low, and the outlook for the further increases does not appear to be very good.
Another reason why China’s economic growth rate can be expected to fall is the current overbuilt situation with respect to apartment buildings, shopping malls, factories, and coal mines. As a result, there seems to be little need for new buildings and operations of these types. Another reason for slower economic growth is the growing protectionist stance of trade partners. A fourth reason is the fact that many potential buyers of the goods that China is producing are not doing very well economically (with the US being a major exception). These buyers cannot afford to increase their purchases of imports from China.
With these growing headwinds, it is quite possible that China’s total energy consumption in 2017 will shrink. If this happens, there will be downward pressure on world fossil fuel prices. Oil prices may fall, despite production cuts by OPEC and other countries.
China’s slowing economic growth is likely to make its debt problem harder to solve. We should not be too surprised if debt defaults become a more significant problem, or if the yuan falls relative to other currencies.
India, with its recent recall of high denomination currency, as well as its problems with low coal demand, is not likely to be a great deal of help aiding the world economy to grow, either. India is also a much smaller economy than China.
[7] While Item [2] talked about peak coal, there is a very significant chance that we will be hitting peak oil and peak natural gas in 2017 or 2018, as well.
If we look at historical prices, we see that the prices of oil, coal and natural gas tend to rise and fall together.
Figure 6. Prices of oil, coal and natural gas tend to rise and fall together. Prices based on 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy data.
The reason that fossil fuel prices tend to rise and fall together is because these prices are tied to “demand” for goods and services in general, such as for new homes, cars, and factories. If wages are rising rapidly, and debt is rising rapidly, it becomes easier for consumers to buy goods such as homes and cars. When this happens, there is more “demand” for the commodities used to make and operate homes and cars. Prices for commodities of many types, including fossil fuels, tend to rise, to enable more production of these items.
Of course, the reverse happens as well. If workers become poorer, or debt levels shrink, it becomes harder to buy homes and cars. In this case, commodity prices, including fossil fuel prices, tend to fall. Thus, the problem we saw above in [2] for coal would be likely to happen for oil and natural gas, as well, because the prices of all of the fossil fuels tend to move together. In fact, we know that current oil prices are too low for oil producers. This is the reason why OPEC and other oil producers have cut back on production. Thus, the problem with overproduction for oil seems to be similar to the overproduction problem for coal, just a bit delayed in timing.
In fact, we also know that US natural gas prices have been very low for several years, suggesting another similar problem. The United States is the single largest producer of natural gas in the world. Its natural gas production hit a peak in mid 2015, and production has since begun to decline. The decline comes as a response to chronically low prices, which make it unprofitable to extract natural gas. This response sounds similar to China’s attempted solution to low coal prices.
Figure 7. US Natural Gas production based on EIA data.
The problem is fundamentally the fact that consumers cannot afford goods made using fossil fuels of any type, if prices actually rise to the level producers need, which tends to be at least five times the 1999 price level. (Note peak price levels compared to 1999 level on Figure 6.) Wages have not risen by a factor of five since 1999, so paying the prices that fossil fuel producers need for profitability and growing production is out of the question. No amount of added debt can hide this problem. (While this reference is to 1999 prices, the issue really goes back much farther, to prices before the price spikes of the 1970s.)
US natural gas producers also have plans to export natural gas to Europe and elsewhere, as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The hope, of course, is that a large amount of exports will raise US natural gas prices. Also, the hope is that Europeans will be able to afford the high-priced natural gas shipped to them. Unless someone can raise the wages of both Europeans and Americans, I would not count on LNG prices actually rising to the level needed for profitability, and staying at such a high level. Instead, they are likely to bounce up, and quickly drop back again.
[8] Unless oil prices rise very substantially, oil exporters will find themselves exhausting their financial reserves in a very short time (perhaps a year or two). Unfortunately, oil importers cannot withstand higher prices, without going into recession.
We have a no win situation, no matter what happens. This is true with all fossil fuels, but especially with oil, because of its high cost and thus necessarily high price. If oil prices stay at the same level or go down, oil exporters cannot get enough tax revenue, and oil companies in general cannot obtain enough funds to finance the development of new wells and payment of dividends to shareholders. If oil prices do rise by a very large amount for very long, we are likely headed into another major recession, with many debt defaults.
[9] US interest rates are likely to rise in the next year or two, whether or not this result is intended by the Federal reserve.
This issue here is somewhat obscure. The issue has to do with whether the United States can find foreign buyers for its debt, often called US Treasuries, and the interest rates that the US needs to pay on this debt. If buyers are very plentiful, the interest rates paid by he US government can be quite low; if few buyers are available, interest rates must be higher.
Back when Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters were doing well financially, they often bought US Treasuries, as a way to retain the benefit of their new-found wealth, which they did not want to spend immediately. Similarly, when China was doing well as an exporter, it often bought US Treasuries, as a way retaining the wealth it gained from exports, but didn’t yet need for purchases.
When these countries bought US Treasuries, there were several beneficial results:
- Interest rates on US Treasuries tended to stay artificially low, because there was a ready market for its debt.
- The US could afford to import high-priced oil, because the additional debt needed to buy the oil could easily be sold (to Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations, no less).
- The US dollar tended to stay lower relative to other currencies, making oil more affordable to other countries than it otherwise might be.
- Investment in countries outside the US was encouraged, because debt issued by these other countries tended to bear higher interest rates than US debt. Also, relatively low oil prices in these countries (because of the low level of the dollar) tended to make investment profitable in these countries.
The effect of these changes was somewhat similar to the US having its own special Quantitative Easing (QE) program, paid for by some of the counties with trade surpluses, instead of by its central bank. This QE substitute tended to encourage world economic growth, for the reasons mentioned above.
Once the fortunes of the countries that used to buy US Treasuries changes, the pattern of buying of US Treasuries tends to change to selling of US Treasuries. Even not purchasing the same quantity of US Treasuries as in the past becomes an adverse change, if the US has a need to keep issuing US Treasuries as in the past, or if it wants to keep rates low.
Unfortunately, losing this QE substitute tends to reverse the favorable effects noted above. One effect is that the dollar tends to ride higher relative to other currencies, making the US look richer, and other countries poorer. The “catch” is that as the other countries become poorer, it becomes harder for them to repay the debt that they took out earlier, which was denominated in US dollars.
Another problem, as this strange type of QE disappears, is that the interest rates that the US government needs to pay in order to issue new debt start rising. These higher rates tend to affect other rates as well, such as mortgage rates. These higher interest rates act as a drag on the economy, tending to push it toward recession.
Higher interest rates also tend to decrease the value of assets, such as homes, farms, outstanding bonds, and shares of stock. This occurs because fewer buyers can afford to buy these goods, with the new higher interest rates. As a result, stock prices can be expected to fall. Prices of homes and of commercial buildings can also be expected to fall. The value of bonds held by insurance companies and banks becomes lower, if they choose to sell these securities before maturity.
Of course, as interest rates fell after 1981, we received the benefit of falling interest rates, in the form of rising asset prices. No one ever stopped to think about how much of the gains in share prices and property values came from falling interest rates.
Figure 8. Ten year treasury interest rates, based on St. Louis Fed data.
Now, as interest rates rise, we can expect asset prices of many types to start falling, because of lower affordability when monthly payments are based on higher interest rates. This situation presents another “drag” on the economy.
In Conclusion
The situation is indeed very concerning. Many things could set off a crisis:
- Rising energy prices of any kind (hurting energy importers), or energy prices that don’t rise (leading to financial problems or collapse of exporters)
- Rising interest rates.
- Defaulting debt, indirectly the result of slow/negative economic growth and rising interest rates.
- International organizations with less and less influence, or that fall apart completely.
- Fast changes in relativities of currencies, leading to defaults on derivatives.
- Collapsing banks, as debt defaults rise.
- Falling asset prices (homes, farms, commercial buildings, stocks and bonds) as interest rates rise, leading to many debt defaults.
Things don’t look too bad right now, but the underlying problems are sufficiently severe that we seem to be headed for a crisis far worse than 2008. The timing is not clear. Things could start falling apart badly in 2017, or alternatively, major problems may be delayed until 2018 or 2019. I hope political leaders can find ways to keep problems away as long as possible, perhaps with more rounds of QE. Our fundamental problem is the fact that neither high nor low energy prices are now able to keep the world economy operating as we would like it to operate. Increased debt can’t seem to fix the problem either.
The laws of physics seem to be behind economic growth. From a physics point of view, our economy is a dissipative structure. Such structures form in “open systems.” In such systems, flows of energy allow structures to temporarily self-organize and grow. Other examples of dissipative structures include ecosystems, all plants and animals, stars, and hurricanes. All of these structures constantly “dissipate” energy. They have finite life spans, before they eventually collapse. Often, new dissipative systems form, to replace previous ones that have collapsed.
The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that there seems to be some type of a guiding supernatural force behind the whole system that allows so much growth. Some would say that this supernatural force is “only” the laws of physics (and biology and chemistry). To me, the fact that so many structures can self-organize and grow is miraculous, and perhaps evidence of a guiding force behind the whole universe.
I don’t know precisely what is next, but it seems quite possible that there is a longer-term plan for humans that we are not aware of. Some of the religions of the world may have insights on what this plan might be. It is even possible that there may be divine intervention of some type that allows a change in the path that we seem to be on today.
Here is a clue of how QE maybe propping up the oil industry. Living on borrowed time is taking on real meaning.
http://priceofoil.org/2017/01/10/oil-subsidies-propping-up-profits-polluting-the-climate/
Good article JT…and no surprise there…after all, how many wars or intervention has the United States undertaken to keep the pipeline flowing. Our way of “life” is not negotiable “.
With the other financial aid given by the Federal Reserve policies, we pretty much have Uncle Sam’s baby….the same goes for other energy products…nuclear power, and alternative sources….
The question is…how far will they go…..answer…. ALL THE WAY….hang on to your wallet or purse….that’s next on the list…🌀
Not too surprising. We have an art studio tour in my town, and artists pay a significant fee to participate. I more or less broke even the two or three times I entered. Then the organizers quit and there was no tour last year. I got an email notice yesterday asking if anyone wanted to help start up the tour again this year. I said I’d help if it could be done without artist fees. Want to see what can be done without a set prerequisite for money. Let’s get off the automatic response: money first, then see how to use it later. I want to reverse that formula, and see to what extent we can bypass the need for money too.
I’m jumping ahead, just extrapolating approaches for transitioning away from a smoke and mirrors oil economy that is foundering.
This article is basically a bunch of nonsense. Taxes in most parts of the world depend heavily on the price of oil; the fall as the price of oil falls, because the government recognizes it can’t get money that isn’t really there. In the US, this is less the case–quite a bit of the taxes are fixed dollar amounts. I know that, for example, North Dakota, has a provision in the law that reduces the tax per barrel somewhat when the price is low. This is common sense. You can’t take away money that isn’t there.
Oil and gas companies are major payers of taxes (unlike wind and solar).
There are countries like Saudi Arabia that charge their own people a much lower price than the world oil price for oil. The difference between the world price and the charged price is considered a subsidy. The effect is that the high taxes Saudi Arabia gets only apply to exported oil, not on oil sold to their own people.
‘It is even possible that there may be divine intervention of some type that allows a change in the path that we seem to be on today’
Tango Oscar and others commented why this couldn’t be a possibility. I pretty much agree on everything TO comments. But lets give Gails point of view some consideration.
WHY would there be an intervention by some higher force or entity??
– During the millenia there has been numerous major asteroid impacts, that has almost wiped out all life on earth. All microbial life would also go extinct, if the biosphere would go Venus. So, maybe humans are an development that are built to be the protectors of the biosphere?? As funny as that might seem to us today.
– The exponential function is also a funny thing. If humans ever had the ability to go to Mars, or Titan. Then maybe there could be terraforming of other planets or moons. Then maybe intergenerational space voyages to other stars. Nonetheless the exponential function would result in microbial life spreading across the galaxy like wildfire.
– The creation of the first AI would result in super advanced beings, at some point. Because some quantum mechanics can affect things forwards and backwards in time, thats why humans are still needed, at least untill the first AI is an viable entity in itself.
That’s the things I can think of, why Gail could be right.
The exponential function is a double edged weapon. We grow exponentially and have seen enormous strides in our achievements, but our use of resources must necessarily also grow exponentially, which impacts on the resource capacity of our planet.
We don’t need a cop-out deity idea to work for a solution. We can do it ourselves. We understand our economies are slowly tanking, not since 2016 but since 1971, when our peak growth occurred.
Few wanted to acknowledge that we cannot escape the downhill slide but we could mask it with credit, so we adopted it and neo-liberal policies as remedies. In 2016 it did seem to come to notice that it was mostly bad times particularly for the poorer strata of society. Now we need a solution.
It will be an interim one of course. We cannot reverse the downward trend. But as the workforce find more and more redundancies with no prospect of an improvement, the Government will have to start a UBI. This basic income, a living wage, is easy to pay for and if applied to every adult easy to administer.
The result will be spending growth into the economy and GDP will rise to make the cost more or less neutral. Just as Bernanke bailed out the GFC banks by writing up numbers into bank accounts, so the UBI will be written up for all to use. After all, it’s not jobs we need now, it’s money!!!
GDP only rises if we actually makes more goods and services with the additional debt.
At one time, when prices of fossil fuels were close to the cost of extraction, increases in debt could really increase “demand” for energy products, and thus the price of those energy products. Now we have a much bigger gap between the the current price and the cost of extraction. Adding debt can no longer fix the problem. (Prices need to be high enough for businesses that are trying to make a profit extracting them can do so. Added debt helped keep the price up high enough for this purpose, but this is no longer happening.)
You are taking a solution that worked for several years, and assuming it works for all time. It worked under very specific circumstances. There is no reason to expect it will work now.
MMT has somewhat fewer deficiencies than traditional economic models, but still does not work well in the general case.
Or perhaps there is something outside of this universe, that we don’t know about or understand.
Interesting that I have been banned from some doomer blogs simply for saying the word “jews”. Apparently even we doomers are not prepared to discuss everything. As such, your understanding of the financial and media world, for example, is limited. You think it operates under honest, objective standards, but it doesn’t.
To understand the lies (the motivations), you have to be able to name the liars. Thus, above all, you may not name the liars.
Class may now discuss the Holohoax.
Yeah, there needs to be truth and reconciliation about the Holohoax, Kennedy assassinations, 9-11 and a few other Big Lies. I think the only real solution is to abolish money.
My view is that growth has been all but over for a decade or so. But our economic system is incapable of stand-still, let alone downsizing. So we’ve been piling on debt to sustain a semblance of growth. By 2008, we could no longer afford to pay interest on this debt – hence ZIRP. The use of monetary manipulation as a form of denial has its own costs – for example, value destruction in pension funds.
So our inability to adjust to the ending of growth is likely, first, to imperil the financial system.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Norman and Gail, the dynamic duo of clear thought just got upgraded to a trio. Dr. Tim Morgan seems to have it pretty much figured out.
If I was a fortune 500 CEO looking for accurate estimates on our economy, or seeking someone who could advice the Bank of International Settlements on policy, that’d be the trio to call.
Van Kent, I’d want to add David Korowicz to your list of BIS policy-advisors. I fear our predicament is too far advanced and too fiendishly complex for policy-making, however inspired, to significantly alter outcomes – but still it would be nice to see such thinkers acknowledged.
Yup.
FINANCIAL SYSTEM SUPPLY-CHAIN CROSS CONTAGION: A STUDY IN GLOBAL SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE
This new study explores the implications of a major financial crisis for the supply-chains that feed us, keep production running and maintain our critical infrastructure. One scenario involving the collapse of the Eurozone to show that increasing socio-economic complexity could rapidly spread irretrievable supply-chain failure across the world.
This should be common reading for all doomsters..
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-06-18/trade-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-study-global-systemic-collaps/
On policy issues, this is an area that I’m going to have to tackle on my blog. But one thought does seem worth mentioning here now.
My system consistently flags the UK economy as pretty much a basket case (on fundamentals, BTW, so not affected either way by “Brexit”). So I’ve drafted a “rescue plan”. Of course, I can’t say for sure if it would work – weaknesses may be too serious, and the time-scale too short, for that.
But the point is that this plan – or any other workable plan – stands zero chance of acceptance. Politicians wouldn’t buy it, and I’m pretty sure the public wouldn’t, either.
A tentative conclusion is that things would have to get very much worse before there was a preparedness for change. By then, it is likely to be too late.
Tim, when I told one of my colleagues a few years back, that it wouldn’t take long before the first helicopter money were dished out. He looked at me like I was bonkers. But now.. Finland is trying out the helicopter money thingy..
We are in the Twilight Zone already. The global economy is no longer a free market economy. It is something of a strange creature of Central Banks buying into and therefore controlling every price there is, and governments/ international banks not admitting they are already insolvent.
And as we go forwards with no growth, anywhere. There’s bound to be a lot of policy plans, all kinds, that the desperate politicians will want to hear about. And it would be more than excellent if BIS had some real advisors, not just the guys who believe in infinite energy and infinite resources. We here know that things will only get worse. But the politicians can’t let things fall apart on their watch.. Therefore ANY kind of plan to keep BAU going for a few more months could literally be a life-saver.
So, if you have a plan.. please make a go for it. To have at least some kind of a plan could be much more important than you know.
A post-peak oil producer and net energy importer with a tax-negative oil industry, a weakening currency, lashings of household and government debt, and a housing bubble; about to negotiate an impossibly complicated divorce from its primary trading partner… A basket-case we are, unfortunately.
Let me say that my plan isn’t BAU – based on pure BAU, my model gives Britain very little time. Over the ten years to 2015, each £1 of growth came at a cost of almost £8 in new debt.
If it’s of interest, my data for the UK looks like this:
– Reported GDP: £1,864bn (2015) Growth consensus 1.9-2.1%
– Underlying GDP, adjusted for borrowing: £1,476bn (2015), future trajectory +0.4% pa
– GDP net of trend energy economic rent: £1,296 (2015), future trajectory -0.6% pa
Re. the plan, there’s a lively debate on my website on another issue at the moment – but the UK plan will be published there next.
Dr. Tim, some random thoughts on your UK plan..
if Gails graphs (or your own) are right, then economic growth is almost an impossibility. We don’t have the energy or the raw materials on this finite world of ours for further exponentional economic growth.
If we can’t have exponential economic growth, then we need to have a plan for the banks, and also a plan for government deficits.
We need to keep the banks afloat, because if the banks fall then all hell would break loose. One way of keeping the banks afloat while transforming them in to a more stable form of an institution, would be to make short term loans illegal, and only make extended time loans with purely minimum interest. That way the currency is still there, it isn’t destroyed, it isn’t hyperinflated, its just transformed in to very long term (I mean 50y or so) loans. Sure something like this would end the financial profession after most of the deals have been made. But the currencies and the banks and the assets and liabilities balance would still be there.
Secondly government deficits must be taken care of somehow. The key concept which I don’t understand in taking care of the elderly, taking care of the unemployed, taking care of preemptive healthcare, keeping the pensions rolling.. the governments deficits.. why can’t we seize all the pensions funds right away and divide the land in to big co-ops. Stop the pensions as they are. And use the funds in the pensions funds to create a huge number of big co-ops. Then set rules for the co-ops, that they must take care of their elderly by using their unemployed etc. etc. In a way taking the idea of universal social security, but forcing it straight away in to smaller manageable units. And forcing people to manage their own affairs. Forcing the people to use the resources they have around them.
Just thinking out loud what the exponential growth economy must go through to, as to become a steady state economy. How it must transform so that it doesn’t collapse as it transforms from the exponential growth economy state in to the steady state.
These are some of the best ideas I’ve heard – but would we have the political ability to put them into practice? The banking industry would hate it – and today’s generation of leaders and administrators want the same lucrative retirements on the “consultancy” and “lecture” circuits enjoyed by the Clintons, Blair and others.
I really like the co-ops idea – one of the very best suggestions I’ve encountered, indeed maybe the very best. Again, I just worry about the politicians, the bankers and the multinationals in all this….
About that Steady State Economy…
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/
Yes, Gail put it well. A steady state economy cannot be achieved literally, maybe comparatively with one with no usury, as is/was islamic policy [and Christian too back in the middle ages]. Paying interest requires growth to afford it. BTW, only commercial bank money is loaned into existence. Federal money is net credited into existence. Both come from thin air, but only bank money has to be repaid. The other boosts the money supply. Also Gail is on board with the debt jubilee ideas. Once again a much maligned topic, but likely essential to get rid of the vast debt overhang caused by exposure to derivatives, now likely over a $quadrillion.
Sorry, I am not on board with the “debt jubilee” process. The debt jubilee process only works when the debt (and shares of stock, which are somewhat similar) have not been used to create financial institutions of all kinds. If the debt is simply debt created by the king or the church, the situation is different. Then, it is possible to have debt jubilees, partly to keep wealth concentration from growing. Adding debt tends to greatly concentrate wealth.
Once we have a situation where banks, insurance companies, and pension plans are all dependent on debt, the whole economy implodes, if there is any kind of major debt jubilee that takes place. It becomes impossible to pay wages for workers, for example. Governments can no longer collect taxes, and for that reason, tend to collapse. It becomes impossible to keep our complex systems, with their just-in-time delivery systems operating.
We need growing debt to “pull the economy forward,” as I described in this post. Our problem now is that added debt is becoming less and less effective at adding GDP (in other words, goods and services) because of diminishing returns with respect to energy extraction. If we abolish debt we will:
1. Lose the banks we need to create more debt.
2. Also, most likely the governments, because they cannot collect taxes.
3. Quite likely our electricity system, because it depends on banks to pay its employees.
We will still have the problem of debt being very ineffective at actually producing GDP. For example, Tim Morgan just mentioned in a comment that it takes 8 units of debt to produce 1 unit of GDP in Great Britain, now. Ratios like this have been getting higher and higher everywhere. The net result is that we will get back to a system whose need for debt is growing hyper-exponentially, without the institutions in place needed to create the additional debt.
A lot of people hate the idea of Debt Jubilees. But some are on board. It just depends on which scenario actually plays on on our way down. Steve Keen supports a private debt jubilee, but his way is to pay it off and make equivalent injections to those who are not in debt.
We know debt is less and less effective at producing growth. All the more reason to find ways to wipe it. A huge amount of it is derivatives, insurance debts. We could selectively wipe them away and be applauded for it. It’s all going to happen anyway. The idea is to manage the crash, as chaos is not at all desirable.
The debt jubilee would have to be a very narrow debt jubilee, to have any chance of not being too disruptive to the economy. I don’t see a major problem with forgiving debt that is owed to the government, for example. I can see forgiving student loans, which can never be repaid anyhow. They are mostly to the government anyhow. The government can then no longer consider these very iffy receivables as being an asset on its balance sheet. But loans made by banks, or loans that are backed by bonds owned by insurance companies, pension plans, or banks–forgiving these loans tends to make a big hole in some company’s balance sheet.
debt jubilees only work if the debt is literally owed to one man—the king say.
they cannot work if debts support financial institutions
Agreed! Debt owed to the Federal Government, such as student loans, might work too.
i don’t agree
federal government don’t have any money, they just act as a clearing house for money. (to keep the country alfoat)
therefore if one section of society had their debts cleared, that could only happen through siphoning off a proportion of everybody else’s money .
That would cause one hell of a row.
In the uk university ed was free—paid by govt—but ultimately that was the taxpayer.
kings on the other hand used to literally own their country, so all taxes etc were owed to him personally.
if the country was broke, he could just start over
Paying off debt would affect how the currency floated with respect to other currencies.
As a practical matter, there aren’t too many owing debts to the federal government. Most of them owe money on student loans. I think the effect would be similar to the government paying for college education for these individuals.
“. The key concept which I don’t understand in taking care of the elderly, taking care of the unemployed, taking care of preemptive healthcare, keeping the pensions rolling.. t”
The problem is democracy. Close to half the voters are not working, a large part of the rest risk unemployment or are close to retirement, and of the few remaining a good part is working with elderly, sick or unemployed.
You need a decent part of this group to vote for you to win an election.
As I mentioned elsewhere here the nation needs a UBI. Finland is in the news over starting such a scheme so the time is right to get into assessing it. In the US right now there are 30 million unemployed, or marginally employed people needing assistance. The UBI addresses them, but it has to be paid to all. It’s compensation for the cost of living. It’s paid for out of the total potential value of the economy. The money itself comes from thin air, so theoretically limitless, and easy to get to everyone via the banks marking up everyone’s savings account. The reckoning needs to be worked out but it’s quite possible the cost of doing this would be amortised by the increase in economic activity the money injection would cause. Everywhere national economies are underperforming so they need the help a UBI would bring.
If the result is Finland growing more of its own food, the program will be a success. You can’t eat paper. You need actual goods and services.
Yes, Indeed. The paying of a sort of subsidy to everyone seems a win-win situation to me. If people are freed up from the job seeking treadmill, they will choose other things to do with greater satisfaction, such a growing more food. Little plots, gardens for food production used to outweigh the USSR collective farms productivuty I believe.
Maybe and maybe not. This is an experiment. We will get to see.
hopefully we can nail the Finnish freemoney nonsense once and for all.
Right now Finland is a prosperous wealthy nation, because they are a tough hardworking people.
This does not shift their latitude. Their hard work allows them to buy in energy to keep warm in winter. They exist on trade and commerce and ignore winter temperatures
When the oilparty finally plays its last tune, the Finns are going to freeze to death.
Money is a construct of energy movement, not printing presses. If the Finns can’t import energy and export the products of it, then their free money is worth zilch
So gradually squeezing the workers with higher taxes while squeezing the old with lower pensions, so voters have nowhere to hide.
DJ, at some point in the coming few years there will be several situations when democracy will not matter (venezuela, greece, egypt, monte dei pashi di siena, over and over and over again) When economic growth simply isn’t there, there will come situations in the governments all over the world when the PM has only hours to decide on options..
Norman believes that the reactions will be martial law and dictatorship every time. That there actually isn’t any choices to be made. But I think there just might be something else to choose from, at those precise turning points. But Norman is right, in a way, that when that dire situation is at hand, at that precise point democracy has nothing to do with the choice the PM makes. It’s pure survival that matters at those dire turning points.
But unless we have several different plans ready what to do when the banks fail, and what to do when the governments declare insolvency one after another, then we truly are done for. That’s why Dr. Tim should get all the brainpower these blogs have to offer to fine-tune his plan.
Van Kent
I agree the system has no choice. There will have to be a “living wage” without any real growth and growth has ended. Pensions will have to be eliminated they’re bust in the present environment. Maybe seizure of Religious tax exempt property is the solution. Like Trinity Real Estate.
It is not that we are reaching the situation where growth has ended. The issue is that we are reaching the situation where collapse is inevitable. There are only two options: growth or collapse. It is hard to see any “level ground” with no growth for any very long period. We are very close to that right now (especially if China’s growth were properly stated). The “living wage” is a band aid, to cover up the inevitable problem. It is not a real fix. I expect it will cause the currency to fall, relative to other currencies, making imports (such as oil) more expensive.
Finland’s exports were rising quite nicely until 2008, then dropped off by more than a third. (Look at the chart using “Maximum.”) They came back up about half-way, and have been generally decreasing. I suppose the idea of the “living wage” is to drop the level of the currency down further, so the Finland can sell more exports. Imports have been following a similar pattern, but they did not fall back as far after 2008. The net effect has been that the balance of trade has been much less favorable in recent years than it was earlier. In fact, the country is on the border of being a net importer since about 2010. Very recently, capital flows seem to be outward.
Dropping the currency lower relative to other currencies will make citizens poorer in the world market. They will be less able to buy fuel for cars, imported food, and other imported goods. This pain will be spread out more evenly, however, with the basic income. I am sure that the hope is that exports will do better. Also, goods made for Finland’s internal consumption, especially if they can be created mostly with labor and with Finland’s own wood energy, without much imported fossil fuels, will do better.
Van Kent,
Is it not to much work abolishing democracy? Takes lots of guys with guns.
Why could the leaders not only ignore democracy? It seems we are some way down that path already.
http://img.ifcdn.com/images/ae459d51cfb1d897c1d0f21d1823ec87e1991351d4970e8c9c635b9454cdd9a6_1.jpg
I wouldn’t discard Debt Jubilee completely. Discussing it brings the problems to be faced out into the open. Then you find that not only has debt to be forgiven, but usury has to be banned, property gets reallocated, and white collar criminals get set free.
After that you get to find out what your REAL GDP numbers are because all the financial paper shuffling has gone away.
Fixing our present systems can’t and won’t happen until confidence in fiat money is completely destroyed. That may take some time.
Fixing our present system cannot occur without our fiat money system. It never worked very well when gold was the value, because the value of gold is established in the same way as a fiat money system. Both are at the mercy of governments. Both are set at law. The gold has to be set at the level of the worth of the economy and then adjusted every time it changes. You might as well stay fiat – as long as electronic dealings are available. A crash will destroy both, although if you have the actual metal you can bargain for any going surplus, assuming a surplus is possible post crash.
With a debt jubilee, you don’t get high enough prices to keep up commodity prices, however, as far as I can see. Real GDP goes to zero quickly.
No one ever vote for austerity.
*Great fan of your writing btw
* voted
I can’t speak for Gail obviously, but green tights just don’t suit me
^^^Author of the splendid ‘Perfect Storm’.
Thank you. FYI, ‘Perfect Storm’ became the book ‘Life After Growth’.
Thanks for commenting. Right–I agree that the economy is an energy system.
I don’t know how well your new model, with your new variables, will work. I think the original EROEI approach was too simple to work well.
The way I view the situation is that collapse comes because return on human labor (as labor, not as management, or highly trained technicians) falls too low. In other words, after-tax inflation adjusted wages of non-elite workers starts falling. The way an economy usually grows is because human labor is leveraged by an increasingly large quantity of energy products. These energy products are used to make and operate machines of various types that act to make human labor more productive. Thus, the big issue is the quantity of energy products that society can afford to extract, to provide the needed leveraging. Depletion makes energy products more expensive to extract.
Thus, there are really two different issues: (1) Total quantity of total energy products and (2) Price. EROEI is intended to be a proxy for “cost of production”, I have been told, and most EROEI research seems to be on this aspect. It is hard for me to see how EROEI connects back up with the quantity issue.
There is considerable evidence that if the affordable quantity of energy products per capita drops too low, productivity will drop. For example, look at this chart from a recent Economists Buttonwood column. Notice the big drop in China’s productivity, as their energy consumption falls. The slowdown in energy consumption worldwide is no doubt an issue behind the concerns being raised.
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2017/01/blogs/buttonwoods-notebook/20170114_woc580.png
Gail, thanks for that link. I’ve been ranting on here about the importance of productivity, especially positive productivity growth. People just don’t understand that it’s more important than peak oil.
That said, I see serious problems in the discipline of measuring GDP, and the other numbers needed to measure productivity. If 2008 proved nothing else, it proved that the financial institutions were faking their profits for years. We will not know how much trouble we are in until it is too late to do anyting to mediate the problems.
In Aug. it was reported that the amount invested in Negative Interest rate bonds was $13.4 trillion. This means that we now have a $13 trillion industry that guarantees that you will lose money if you invest. There seems to be a substantial force of investors that prefer the certainty of a limited loss to the gamble for a possible gain.
$13 trillion is more that the GDP of China.
Wow!
Nice article, thanks.
“The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that there seems to be some type of a guiding supernatural force behind the whole system that allows so much growth. Some would say that this supernatural force is “only” the laws of physics (and biology and chemistry). To me, the fact that so many structures can self-organize and grow is miraculous, and perhaps evidence of a guiding force behind the whole universe.”
Well, the obvious objection is that the supposition of some meta explanatory principle, which might “guide” the development of the cosmos and even of human societies, has to be compatible with the known facts. Bur it is has already been observed that:
“Many economies have collapsed in the past… The history of previous civilizations rising and eventually collapsing is well documented.”
Thus we may conclude that there is no meta guiding principle that _in general_ averts the collapse of civilizations.
One would have to argue for a _particular_ meta providential care for this civilization. The idea in the context of our culture would likely be something like that God cares in an especial manner for Christian civilization, as evidenced by the covenant of grace.
However history presents collapses in Christian civilization, such as the fall of Rome after the conversion to Christianity and the onset of the Dark Ages, or the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages “that brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to a halt” AKA the Fourtheenth Century Collapse. One might also mention the Black Death that killed up to 200 million in Eurasia in the fifteenth century. Etc.
However one could argue that the current high material development of our civilization could bespeak a special providence at the present time.
But if we went for the argument of a special care for the Protestant civilization that accompanied the rise of industrialism, we would yet have to acknowledge that Protestantism has declined especially over the last few decades. Then a collapse might rather fit into the narrative of divine punishment or reprobation for an apostate or stiff knecked pagan generation.
Indeed the Bible often speaks of the reprobatoin of humanity and of the chosen people in the OT. The fall, the flood, the wandering in the wilderness, the fall of the temple, the loss of ten tribes, the abolition of the OT. And the NT culminates with the Apocalypse.
So it seems difficult to _assume_ that there will be a particular providence at the present time that might mark out this present civilization as different to others and that would avert a collapse.
Of course we can abstract from known history, say that the meta or divine is ultimately unknowable and beyond human prediction – or even arbitrary. Then there is no reason that people cannot reach for an Hail Mary or whatever the Protestant equivalent would be, an Our Father I suppose.
Or if not prayer, which is perhaps questionably compatible with such an idea of the divine, at least _hope_. Or even just a “who knows?” which at least is not despair.
So my rambling probably did not really get us anywhere but hey it was just some thoughts and it gave me some distraction. : )
Anyway, nice article Gail, thanks.
Glad you liked my article.
Please notice that I did not indicate that if there was some sort longer term plan for humanity, that it would come on this earth, or that it would particularly apply to Christians or any other particular groups. I also did not say it would prevent collapse. These were your ideas.
Nature really doesn’t care what we think:
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01b7c8c7f9f4970b-pi
Very good article! It is good that additional people catch up to these obvious data that is discussed since years ago in the “Energiewende”-critical circles.
Flassbeck is in addition a very good economics man who also has his fingers deep in the wounds of the misconstruction of the Euro-zone and possible solutions which the politicians don’t want to hear. If you can understand German you will find a lot of worthwhile to watch videos from him – which are much better to the point of the issue as those of Steve Keen & Co.
Was planned as a reply for this link: http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2395990/the-end-of-the-energiewende from hkeithhenson.
Yes, thanks to you and hkeithhenson for the links and discussion.
I’m mostly dismayed from the boom of biomass-biogas plant madness under this scheme, which Germans unleashed as yet another virus not only on their lands (in thousands relatively big installations to date) but across many other parts of Europe as well. It’s sheer madness to occupy productive land potential by this stuff. Destroying topsoil and pushing true agriculture away from the lands, above all the proponents sincerely believe it’s “carbon/methane neutral” and “helping the environment” ..
Obviously, early on it was a great scheme for the political fraudsters, first adopters (subsidies paid for it), equipment manufactures, “virtual – independent” grid operators, stock market parasites (before the energiewende related stocks crashed few years back) and so on..
What a folly, what a madness, grrr.
Directly related to Gail’s concerns.
http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2395990/the-end-of-the-energiewende
Thanks!Some things are hard to believe. A three day period with low solar and wind would not seem to be all that unusual, especially in the middle of winter. But perhaps people are beginning to realized that even this little low period could be a problem.
“There are broad tendencies in global affairs that are expected to enhance the threat of this category of terror. Some are discussed by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) in its projections for coming years.39 The NIC expects the official version of globalization to continue on course: “Its evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic financial volatility and a widening economic divide.” Financial volatility very likely means slower growth, extending the pattern of neoliberal globalization proceeds, “deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation [will] foster ethnic, ideological and religious extremism, along with the violence that often accompanies it,” much of it directed against the United States. “Unsurprisingly,” Kenneth Waltz observes, the weak and disaffected “lash out at the United States as the agent or symbol of their suffering.”40 The same assumptions are made by military planers, a matter to which we return.”
Page 209 “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” by Noam Chomsky
“The need for full-spectrum dominance will increase as a result of the “globalization of the world economy,” the Space Command explains. The reason is that “globalization” is expected to bring about “a widening between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ “ Like the National Intelligence Council,32 military planners recognize that the “widening economic divide” that they too anticipate, with its “deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation,” will lead to unrest and violence among the “have-nots,” much of it directed against the US. That provides a further rationale for expanding offensive military capacity into space. Monopolizing this domain of warfare, the US must be ready to control disorder by “using space systems and planning for precision strike from space [as a] counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMD” by unruly elements, a likely consequence of the recommended programs, just as the “widening divide” is an anticipated consequence of the preferred form of “globalization.”
Page 230 “Hegemony or Survival” by Noam Chomsky
There’s a woman (Rachel something?) who works or contracts with the Pentagon, who gives talks (including with TED) about a military trend to use its vastly disproportionate funds to be a sort of nation building entity to an unheard of degree. What that odds were for its purely military capability was not emphasized in her talk that I heard. But there is clearly more than one tendency within the military. Personally, I think the excessively military one is a mistake. It won’t do very well against Russia and China, especially when those combine militarily.
China has made enormous inroads into the developing world by developing industrial infrastructure, much of which would be useless post a catastrophic collapse of the globalized economic system. The US could serve the great need which exists to preserve what’s left of natural habitat and support micro measures (like better stoves, pumps, rain barrels, etc) in rural places, maintaining their rural character. There could be the ironic situation where largely rural China tries to industrialize the world, while largely industrialized America focuses on rural development. The military could help lead this program.
Selling out to the Chinese
“In fact I think the uneasiness of the people has more to do with what it says about the peculiar fiscal climate in the country. How is it that in one of the fastest growing nation on earth, the government simply don’t have the cash to maintain such a strategic asset, the political will to raise such funds, or the competence to run such reasonably profitable operations? Why is Ethiopia being forced to sell off long-term cash cows for short-term cash? People sense that the Chinese buyer would take the company and move it to Shanghai, or Hong Kong. I doubt if the contract spells out in detail obligations of the buyers to invest in maintenance or to maintain jobs opportunities for Ethiopians, or to keep a lid on shipping rates.”
http://www.borkena.com/2017/01/14/ethiopia-selling-nation/
This is just one example of something that seems to be happening many places. I am sure Greece has sold off important assets too.
I agree; it is quite possible that there will be more terrorist events.
China posts worst export fall since 2009 as fears of U.S. trade war loom
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-exports-fall-second-u-042500525.html
China is not doing well, at all.
Interest rates are not a market phenomenon! They are suppressed artificially. They are controlled.
You people keep insisting there is nobody pulling the strings but I tell you, there are indeed people pulling the strings, they are controlling the price of everything.
The collapse has already occurred, and we are making the switch to a command economy. That’s why market based predictions are no longer working. Everything is being manipulated.
Correct, but as the economic demographers point out, the end game comes when you can’t saddle consumers with more debt, simply since there are no longer growing consumption or even not being around at all, shrinking for ever after. Because by ~2025 the main consumer age bracket is going to shrink globally or at least for ~75% of the actual demand for stuff there is (West, Russia, China).
So we probably should watch closely: energy depletion, demographics, and the various fraudulent debt schemes. Theoretically, one of them can crack and put the edifice down with it, but most likely we will need massive contribution of at least two, perhaps all three factors erupting at roughly same time or in cascade to finally watch complete derailment. Otherwise they will always can kick a bit more..
Is it manipulation or desperation?
dseperation is their modus operandi at the moment every central bank is experimenting with things they would have looked at as nonsense in the past .yes we are in the final years of the fossil fuel party’ eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die ‘ if you are not already doing this then you are wasting precious time
Interest are suppressed to some extent (mostly by all of the QE), but you cannot make a bank lend to someone it doesn’t want to lend to. If the bank thinks the borrower is not credit worthy, it will (a) turn the borrower down, or (b) require a higher interest rate.
“US interest rates are likely to rise in the next year or two, whether or not this result is intended by the Federal reserve.”
Prices are determined by the quantity of goods for sale and the flow of money available for purchase. Rising prices change time preferences for money, and also promote wage increase demands. Falling oil prices have worked through the economy to keep US$ interest rates low, though that impact should now be coming to an end. While I’ve forecast US$ interest rates to rise this year, India looks set for a serious growth slowdown, so there are competing forces in play. This will not stop debt from increasing, so increasing instability is the one sure thing here.
I agree on the increasing instability.
Increasing default rates also affect interest rates, especially for borrowers who are not credit worthy. The spread between rates for low risk borrowers and high risk borrowers can rise substantially, even if the base rate does not. I believe that this is what happened back in the 2008 period. Manufacturing and sales of goods depend on Just in Time Delivery, of a whole chain of inputs. Interest rates for one or two of the less credit-worthy would spike, and it would disrupt the entire chain of just-in-time delivery.
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“China’s massive export engine sputtered for the second year in a row in 2016, with shipments falling in the face of persistently weak global demand and officials voicing fears of a trade war with the United States that is clouding the outlook for 2017.
“In one week, China’s leaders will see if President-elect Donald Trump makes good on a campaign pledge to brand Beijing a currency manipulator on his first day in office, and starts to follow up on a threat to slap high tariffs on Chinese goods.
“Even if the Trump administration takes no concrete action immediately, analysts say the spectre of deteriorating U.S.-China trade and political ties is likely to weigh on the confidence of exporters and investors worldwide.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-trade-idUKKBN14X094
“Chinese banks extended a record 12.56 trillion yuan (S$2.61 trillion) of loans last year as the government encouraged more credit-fuelled stimulus to meet its economic growth target, despite worries about the risks from an explosive jump in debt.”
http://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/chinas-banks-gave-record-amount-of-loans-in-2016
“Year-end bank loans and shadow banking activities in China surged in an apparent move to fill the gigantic void left by a defunct bond market suffering from the major blow in December.
“In December 2016, two dozen mainland securities houses were embroiled in a messy case of defaults on bond repurchase dealings, involving forgery of company seals and rogue employees, that ultimately necessitated the securities authority to step in to mediate a solution.
“The dramatic volatility in the debt capital market during mid-December had led to the biggest free fall in treasury bond futures in recent years, with investors forced to sell their holdings in a bid to limit their losses, creating a vicious cycle of downward crumbling bond prices.
“Data released by the People’s Bank of China on Thursday now confirms the negative spiral that had effectively shut down the Chinese bond market for companies looking to quench their liquidity needs before the arrival of the new year. Total social financing from corporate bonds turned out to show a net contraction of 130 billion yuan (US$18.73 billion) during the month versus November’s net issuance of 287 billion.”
http://www.atimes.com/article/chinas-new-loans-hit-1-trillion-yuan-december/
I see the article says,
If they actually cut back loans, there will be a major implosion, I am afraid.
Thanks for the link. Also note the low productivity growth that is occurring in China, as its energy consumption falls.
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2017/01/blogs/buttonwoods-notebook/20170114_woc580.png
I must say that I disagree with the idea of rising interest rates, and falling asset values. If anything, interest rates are trending to zero and asset values are trending ever higher.
It is policy for this to happen. This may or may not be a natural phenomenon, but it is policy to keep rates low and keep asset values elevated. At all costs, borrowing must be kept cheap, and people must think that prices of houses, stocks, etc. will keep rising – otherwise, they will stop buying them.
There is certainly no money to pay rising interest rates. It may be that banks fail, and the only loans that become available to lend is high-priced debt.
The government [federal] can always and easily pay rising interest rates. The problem is that every one else can’t , banks included.
Not really. No legislature would approve a budget funded by more and more debt, to try to pay rising interest rates. There are severe limits to deficit spending.
Also, the amount of goods and services that the economy makes used to be ramped up significantly by more debt, but this is no longer the case. As a result, the additional debt has at most a very weak benefit on growth. Higher interest rates mean that a higher share of the goods and services that are being produced will be distributed to the holders of that debt. This will leave less for everyone else.
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The graphs do tell an awesome tale. So they show important parts of the developing reality of which “Limits to Growth” was a model shadow. If LTG was thought to be a fairy tale to scare the growth-neoliberals, and they were scared badly, hence lots of denial, the present statistics must be reaking of desperation and fear. Everything have we grew up with cannot last, and was not built to last. It was built to bring profit, maximise production and grow fast. We have built the wrong version of civilization.
“and was not built to last.”
Much of it for sure. But there are exceptions. The tunnel the Swiss finished under the Alps was designed for at least 100 years.
Roman aqueducts are still standing. These are examples of building to last.
“building to last.”
Decline in use
During the fall of the Roman Empire, some aqueducts were deliberately cut by enemies but more fell into disuse because of deteriorating Roman infrastructure and lack of maintenance, such as the Eifel aqueduct (pictured right)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct#Decline_in_use
Nothing people engineer lasts very long without maintenance.
I read somewhere that our contemporary concrete deteriorates around the steel rebar inside. Or maybe it was something else.
“Roman concrete is durable due to its incorporation of volcanic ash, which prevents cracks from spreading. ”
The aggregate (whatever that was made from) mixed in with the concrete was also bigger (chunkier) than for modern concrete. Roman concrete structures were able to endure without steel support. And it’s really hard to maintain concrete that is rotting from the inside, as in the case of the modern. Had they been cared for (as I think you’re saying), Roman structures could be in mainstream use today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
The Pantheon in Rome is the most awe inspiring structure still standing from the Roman period.
A concrete dome, unreinforced,140ft wide, still standing after 2000 years.
Those who don;t know it should google it.
Standing under it leaves you literally lost for words.
The Romans used very thick “concrete” with pozzalons. Adding steel to create a composite is superior in every aspect to roman concrete other than longevity. The best way forward to protect the huge embodied energy investment in concrete seems to be FRP rebar or basalt polymer rebar. Building code makes progress very slow. Black steel is a relatively inexpensive easily available material that works well to add tensile strength until it is compromised by carbonation or chloride ingress.
Using stainless steel for reinforcement is cost effective from a life analysis perspective especially in salt exposed concrete and raises no eyes with the building inspectors. It is seldom used.
If adequate cover, epoxy coated rebar and other inexpensive techniques to curtail carbonation/chloride ingress are used the time period until carbonation or chloride spalling destroys the concrete is omost equal to two doubling periods for our species or a four fold increase in population. Designing for long concrete life is a fun exercise but really it is a non issue considering.
I am very interested in extending concrete durability. I have a lot of this stuff in my design.
Can you elaborate more about this or point me to the right sources?
Stainless steel would be best I guess, but it’s above my budget.
“I am very interested in extending concrete durability. I have a lot of this stuff in my design.”
I am not a structural engineer. All due diligence applies. The following reflects personal musings and observations and is not intended as architectural consultation. All building designs should use a qualified architect and comply with all building codes.
Since the steel used for tensile strength is the problem some people have tried to eliminate all reinforcing material. A stiff foundation under a structure may or may not be desirable. A stiff foundation is a very aggressive approach. Rubble trenches may be superior.
Concrete foundations in residential housing exist for a couple of reasons. Concrete used to be really cheap. A concrete foundation extending below frost level was a inexpensive way to prevent frost heaving. This became the standard but times have changed. A concrete foundation prevents the earth rotting your walls also. A concrete foundation is heavy and serves as a great anchor. The alternative to rigid foundations to prevent frost heaving include
Rubble trenches
Building on soils that do not support frost heaving
above ground perimeter insulation
Flexible structures that can accommodate frost heaving.
Structures that are so rigid that frost heaving does not affect the structure for instance if large timbers are used in the floor as beams and the force from where the structure contacts the earth is distributed evenly. A example would be creosoted railroad ties that have a very long life and can be found at low cost.
So there is that. Completely discarding the idea of a rigid concrete foundation with its advantages and disadvantages
If you choose a concrete foundation omitting a reinforcement decreases tensile strength in a big way. If you can get large sharp big aggregate say 12″ or so and overlap with portland cement it might substitute somewhat.
So there is that. Discarding the idea of reinforcement of concrete the basis of of all modern building practices.
If you add reinforcement FRP rebar seems the best to me for concrete longevity, It is not widely available and expensive. If you can find 316 pipes cheap that are being scrapped or another cheap source of long stiff 316 (a4) to use as reinforcement that would triple life. The green epoxy bar is widely available, it adds a decade. Bumping the mix to a richer portland content adds a decade or two. Sealing it with a acrylic sealer adds a decade. Sealing it with a two part epoxy coating then burying the foundation to protect the epoxy from UV could double the life or more. Admixtures add a decade. Anything that improves the portland matrix increase longevity. Increasing the steel rebar and placing in in the middle of the pour thereby increasing the cover can double the life. As cheap as the rebar can be found this is probably the easiest cheapest way to increase concrete life. This in combination with the above is a reasonable approach. Stacking the methods to add synergistic longevity is a reasonable approach in my opinion.
None of the alternative reinforcements really have the track record of black steel coated or not. I wouldn’t hesitate to use them just saying.
Nothing is forever. All is impermanent. You do the best the building inspector allows you with what you can afford. Ive given up building monuments to honor how impressive I think I am. A yurt solves all the problems. A day with the family in a yurt is worth more than a month trying to outhink the universe to me.
Thanks for this. I will dig deeper.
I am architect myself 🙂 but not with very extensive experience. Just another degree 25 years ago.
I will show my project soon, so you can assess it by yourself. It is not a monument for my ego. I hope it will be a monument for humanity… I know, it sounds terribly pompous. But it is my idee fix, sorry 🙂
100 years is not very long, in the whole scheme of things.
I understand that reinforced concrete will not last longer than 100 years. If we are still around, this will be a problem.
“reinforced concrete”
I am not sure about it, but the loads are all compression, so it’s possible the concrete liner of that tunnel has no steel in it.
Actually, we are more or less “programmed” to use up resource (dissipate energy), so there is no real possibility that we could build things in a way that they really last. Also, we have really been making many things last and last, when we really should be replacing them and repairing them. One of these things is oil and gas pipelines; another is electricity transmission lines. This is a chart I ran across recently:
the fast and sudden collapse seems more of a sure bet if i was a betting man i would say between now and three years energy production will completely stop sending us back to the ‘stone age’
I think quite a few of us here on OFW would be in agreement with you on that timeline!
It’s wrong to refer to us ‘going back to the stone age’. In the stone age, people knew how to live from their environment, had simple demands + numbered, what, a few million? Nah, the stone age would be a picnic!
Back in the Stone Age, humans killed off entire species as they moved into new continents.
Humans learned to control fire, over 1 million years ago. The ability to burn biomass was sufficient to give humans a significant advantage over other animals.
Much later, when humans started using coal, a major reason was because there was a problem with deforestation.
We are now on ~300 / 600% debt levels, they still have enough power to can kick and pretend till at least ~2025, by that time the demographic roll over in the consumer age bracket likely turns negative, that’s the end for most of the global consumerist demand growth, while the pensioner class numbers explode, among other negative trends. Hence, this loosely defined boundary +/- around mid next decade might be the real threshold for crucial abrupt change of some sort, social, economic, .. But again this still does not necessarily means collapse proper everywhere and for everyone.
I’ve been lurking around the doomerosphere since the late 1990s, although there are even older bards, clearly the “resiliency” of greed and human ape’s global terra-forming rage seems to have always another hidden card to play.
Don’t ever bet on any firm dates and prognostications in this realm, it’s clearly a widow maker on one hand (for the sudden end of worlders) and continuous profit maker on the other (systemic parasites).
You make an important point, Hanumanotg. Collapse impacts people differently depending on where they live, how able to deal with the resulting changes they are, and whether they have been expecting the change.
Another contributor for the “underpants doom” list …
1. Steal underpants/fuel ponds/energy stops/…
2.
3. Total collapse back to the stone age and hunter-gathering
🙂
It is looking that way.
Your new article brings mind the stark contrast between people who “get it” and those who don’t. What you describe is what all sensible, intelligent people should be worrying about. But so many sensible, intelligent people are off on ridiculous intellectual goose chases and turn a blind eye to the real problems facing the world.
My mother-in-law was visiting for the holidays, and I ended up in a car with her for about 30 minutes, during which she talked about politics. This is a wealthy, smart, 65 year old woman with a doctorate degree. She is also a true believer in “the system” and the manifest destiny of perpetual growth.
To her, all the problems of the world are because people voted the wrong way in some election, and the wrong party got into power and messed everything up. It was Bush that set it all in motion, and now Trump is going to run everything into the ground. All of the problems in her home state are blamed on the wrong party winning the governorship. If only her party always won, we’d apparently be living in Utopia.
I made the case that I thought better relations with Russia probably reduces one of the biggest threats to humanity in the form of swift nuclear annihilation. Then she revealed to me what she perceived as the single greatest threat to the world right now. The thing she worried about the most.
North Korea. Cuz that guy with the bad haircut is CRAZY.
I was speechless. Really? All of the impending doom, the disasters waiting to happen, and the greatest threat to the world is a two-bit dictator in a small country on the other side of the planet with enough firepower to maybe wipe out 1-2 major cities?
I didn’t even try to argue. If she believes that’s the worst thing that can happen, then what a wonderful fantasy world to be living in! I wish I believed Kim Jong Un was the worst thing coming at us.
I’m close to your MIL’s age. I would have not been aware of the real problems without a lot of internet searches and reading after the financial crash. I did not find The Oil Drum until about a year before it shut down. It’s been a continual learning process for me.
Perhaps the teevee keeps most people blind to the real problems. It fills your mind with propaganda. I know a lot of people like your MIL. When talking about the coming collapse, my adult children will roll their eyes and look at each other as if to say “That’s just the way the old man is. Don’t mind him.” My wife tolerates me, but I believe she thinks I’m not playing with a full deck.
Regards
Same story with me re the kids. Wife is coming along very slowly, for all that it matters. Whatever she believes, I still couldn’t manage without her. I’ve become generally hard hearted about people who dismiss what I say as some amusing eccentricity. I have no mercy for them when system-related disasters (like super floods and storms) strike.
I’m making headway with the kids but they are teenagers. They are are aware of the problems and at least will not be surprised when things get crazy. The oldest guy told me he had a dream the other night in which I told him to shoot somebody trying to attack us and he did it. Obviously these topics are on his mind.
I think modern media, especially the “smart” phone, has contributed to a huge amount ignorance. My favourite way of pointing out to people just how far we have fallen is to take the speeches of politicians in the past and compare them to a typical speech today. Both are for public consumption but the differences are remarkable. It is like they are talking to children today compared to days past.
Same here. When I try and explain the mess we are in, and how all of this might end for all of us in the VERY near future, they look at me as if I’m off my rocker. Whether the person is educated, not educated, wealthy or not, they just think I’ve lost it. I finish it off by telling them to just remember this conversation, so that when this (probably) does happen they know that some people did see it coming…for the short time I myself will be here post-collapse, I will be (very bitterly) satisfied knowing that the people to whom I have talked about this will be thinking “Geez that crazy guy was right!!” 😉
++++++++
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I stopped talking about it a couple years ago. All it does is alienate people. Besides, you cant save all of them anyways ( if anyone can be saved).
No one will be saved….I talk about it more in the sense of trying to wake them, stop worrying about your stupid 2030, 2040 retirement plan, and just savor every day while BAU is in place…but you’re right it often alienates people…Ignorance is truly bliss (but not for me!)
Don’t feel bad Wratfink. The more you know the more you wish you didn’t know and/or the crazier people look at you when you speak the truth. This continues on and on, by the way. I’ve now started experiencing things and situations that I simply don’t talk about with others. It’s usually not a comfortable situation when others encounter views that attempt to change their understanding of reality.
” The more you know the more you wish you didn’t know ” – Yep. But, it is my nature to seek the truth. Everything has consequences. Learning the truth comes with its own consequences. To me it is worth the trade off.
With answers come more questions. But once set upon that path, I believe the best choice of action is to continue on into the darkness.
Speaking for myself, I am happy I found out about all this (depressing) stuff since the GFC. It’s been an awakening that I compare to The Matrix where I decided to take the red pill so that I can find out how deep the rabbit hole goes. I blame it on my curious nature 🙂
Now I approach life in a different way and savor every day, conscious that I will not live out my natural life expectancy (by natural I mean actually unnatural because it was provided by Industrial Civilization, but I digress). If I did I would expect like my grand-parents that I would still have a good 45-50 years ahead of me (they all lived past 90), which will obviously NOT be happening. If I could get another 10 years of BAU, I would be ecstatic!! (I don’t think it will be happening IMHO)
I have a Word document that I started a few years ago where I collect interesting quotations. Here are 3 that talk about truth that I particularly like:
“The further a society drifts from the Truth, the more it will hate those that speak it”
-George Orwell
“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.” -H. L. Mencken
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (in this case ALL the time lol)
“Sweden recently halved its tax on repair services, encouraging residents to fix broken washing machines, bikes, clothes, and other products instead of buying new ones. London plans to publish its circular economy plan in early 2017.”
There’s a lot of nonsense in this article, but I’m into it for the gradual trend I see toward a sort of economic-model change, whoever likes it or not, however incomplete is the understanding of its proponents.
http://doggerel.arup.com/the-upside-of-the-looming-resource-crisis/
Funny, it is hard finding anything in Swedish media och from the government on this.
Closest thing is halved VAT on some selected services. Will lower price about 10%, perhaps/probably VAT on the work is lowered, not on replacement parts.
Unfortunately this is mostly PR from the “green” party and will not change a thing.
The government says the goal with these changes is to get New Arrivals into work.
I suppose there is no limit for how much shoes we need repaired or keys duplicated.
I can understand what you say. I have a tendency to grab for straws where planetizen.com articles–this was a typical linked article–are concerned. If one doesn’t know the issues well, it’s easy enough to think the articles are written by informed people. Thanks for weighing in. (Nevertheless, I do like the *ideal* of an economy of repair.)
” I do like the *ideal* of an economy of repair.”
Me to. It will be hard convincing me we MUST manufacture stuff, ship it around the world and throw it away.
I see it as a bug caused by large wage differences, high taxes and commodities priced by work to extract them, not value.
No suggestions for solutions though.
I guess it’s one of those times when nobody has solutions; we just try things.
A little soul searching here:
My brain is wired in a totally “art/design-thinking” way. All technical and economics thinking is ruled out by this lifelong brain wiring. I can function in terms of space–an aspect of art/design thinking–so that building and design issue, other than financial, are comprehensible to me. I also have good intuition, a fact proven by how the analytics of the situation eventually conform what I intuited a long time before.
So I’d like to intuit something that I feel is converging with Gail’s analytics. (The fact that Gail integrates intuition with her analytics makes this exercise seem more hopeful.). So here goes.
There is no energy to do anything. We’re in a position of triage that is as if your community had been devastated by a flood. We have to see who or what we can rescue and patch up. The obstacle to doing this is the obscurity of the current reality, as far as the broad public are concerned.
The roads are down. No supplies coming in, no electricity, no communication. Or they’re only trickling in.
The more you try to do, the more needless energy and scarce resources you waste. The aim should be to maintain and repair, sparingly using human energy.
As you pick up the pieces, you scramble to build windmills out of wood and cardboard using hand tools. You think of a little longer term need for denser energy. Coal is probably better than oil, and the micro-industry of burning it locally has to be found. Home made diesel made from food scraps s also a good thing. No PV, since all the chains of manufacture and supply are distant. Great emphasis put on passive solar and insulation using discarded materials. Systems planning, so you know what to do at the global level and what to do in the neighborhood, so you don’t paint yourself into a corner. And lots, lots more.
My point is that there is work, but not growth work; only maintenance work to keep body and soul together. But there should be lots of idle time too. School is all local, having to do with survival in place. Kids comprise the greatest work force for this new reality that I can think of. Money and bau cannot rule our lives.
Your ideas seem to be in the right general direction. I don’t think you will get enough biofuel from food scraps to matter, though.
We will need to use what we have, before it falls apart, rather than try to build all kinds of elaborate new things. Biomass will probably be more available than coal; animal dung may be another source of fuel.
“enough biofuel from food scraps to matter, though. ”
That’s correct. Some years ago I worked out how much synthetic gasoline you could get from a plant that gasified municipal waste. It turned out to be less than 5% of what we use today.
Grrrrrrrr. Any work to repair, refurbish or rebuild gets taxed VAT rates, typically 20% so all the financing gets pushed towards building on greenfield sites – usually agricultural land. “You may not have to charge VAT for labour or materials for a NEW house or flat.”
And they still get 40% of the cost of a new house as taxes in one form or another in the UK or Ireland.
I know Sweden has been talking about a circular economy. Instead of creating new cars, we fix old cars, in one version I heard. You of course lose economies of scale, and can’t really add new technology. It does add more labor, and use fewer resources.
I would be CRAZY too if somebody gave me a haircut like the Outstanding Leader’s.
There are hundred of fuses in the global mine fields. It dos not really matter what kind of politicians are walking around with lighters. Somewhere there will be a big bang with chain-reactions, probably in the financial sector.
I live in Germany. My age is 58. In my family I am banned regarding talking about collapse. And sometimes I understand their denial.
Nevertheless, I also see a more and more “officially deniers” changing their behaviour. For example, investing in real stuff. The slow lost of confidence may bring the system down.
Deep in their minds thay are realizing: Something big is wrong. This “change” may develope like an avalanche. If you panic, panic first!
Saludos
el mar
There are a lot of things that could go wrong. I will have to admit, North Korea is not near the top of my list.
Anyone with a good understanding of real economics–not to mention and understanding of technology and natural resources–will see how silly this article is.
If you have a counter argument, make it. Otherwise, take a hike.
What is “real” economics. Economics is a human creation, it is virtual, unreal, trust and faith in a fiat currency. If that is your reality you live in a fairy tale.
This insightful contribution will be added to my pieces of wisdom:
How to declare myself weak-minded.
Economics is not a science it is a religion. Use of technology and natural resources to support perpetual growth is another religion. My experience is that religious fanatics are seldom open to rational discussions. They just believe.
I have a GREAT understanding of natural resources and we’re at or past peak extraction in almost all of them. Technology is doing absolutely nothing to offset diminishing returns or replace the oil we use. Green washing is abundant and as hopeless as prayer time to Solar-Jesus. You may want to stick to the late night QVC shopping channel instead of wandering into forums with dangerous and scary new ideas.
” at or past peak extraction in almost all of them.”
Of the hundreds of TW of sunlight that streak through geosynchronous orbit, the comm sats capture at the most a few MW. It’s a Long way to peak extraction of that resource.
Or perhaps, if they realize what the real situation is, they will realize how silly “real economics” is.
Quote from above: (((Some people would argue that 2016 was the year that the world economy started to come apart, with the passage of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump)))
I’ve been saying for a long time that we will be sideswiped by an event we couldn’t foresee, and having forecast in 2011 ”a Trump” for 2016 or 2020, i am coming to the conclusion that Trump is that event and for the unthinking masses the last straw available to clutch at. (or to break the camels back—depending on your point of view)
so millions clutched.
as with all aspiring dictators, he has gathered around him a coterie of like minded individuals who will do his bidding, all of who have their eye on the top job–his–, or making a killing through his incompetence, and none willing to point out that the emperor is naked. (The Apprentice on steroids?)
Trump cannot restore prosperity, because he doesn’t know what creates real prosperity in the first place. When Saudi implodes, as it must, the shockwaves will create colossal job losses throughout the industrial world, not just the USA.—Trump will scream ‘’conspiracy’’ and go into meltdown as he gets the blame and civil unrest ensues. At that point the really clever men will take over.
There has to be an interim period between industrial collapse of our commercial/industrial system in the complete sense—I would call that the violent denial phase, —and the period following that where we begin to accept that the oilparty really is over. How long that violent denial phase will last is impossible to say—maybe a generation—certainly 10 years minimum.
That interim is going to be a nasty part, where the deniers look for scapegoats, not accepting that the crash has been the fault of all of us. That will be the period of military dictatorship, where democracy disappears. We will look back on the Trump year (s?) as the trigger point, and blame him. But he will have been the symptom, not the disease itself. He was inevitable, just as every autocrat is inevitable wherever poverty and disaffection begin to bite. That interim is the phase when the USA devolves into separate nation states, because there will be no force to hold it together, despite civil insurrection to prove otherwise and/or to determine borders.
When the same thing happened in Germany and Japan 80 years ago—that too was a direct result of privation and disaffection. Their respective dictators offered straws to clutch at. The only difference in their time was that there was still lots of hydrocarbon energy to grab. They too tried to use force (basically hydrocarbons) to provide employment and grab/sustain empires. The USA and Russia etc etc are basically vast unsustainable empires. They too will fall apart as energy supplies fail. They will use force to try to keep them stitched together. The EU will just fold. (We don’t have enough indigenous energy to feed ourselves or declare war on anybody, post collapse there will be nowhere to get any from).
Excellent summary Norman!
Yup.
“a direct result of privation and disaffection.”
Yep.
It’s the direct result of long term psychological mechanism selection in the stone age. When things look (relatively) bleak, we are attracted to irrational leaders, like we have for hundreds of thousands of years. Irrational leaders would take the tribe into war. Since the bleak situation was almost always too many people for the environment to support, a war always fixed that problem.
However, it’s not the stone age, nor do we live in little tribes. How stone age mental mechanisms will work in the present is not known, but it doesn’t look good.
“When things look (relatively) bleak, we are attracted to irrational leaders,”
I hadn’t thought about it that way.
We also made a big change in 1980, when we elected Ronald Reagan. Many people thought Nancy Reagan with her interest in astrology was quite strange. Also, RR made big changes in taxes and debt. That was when wage disparity started to rise.
Trump’s about to repeal Obamacare, which will have a large rippling effect on insurers, millions who will lose insurance, and other unforeseen changes. They don’t even have anything they’re replacing it with. It’s these sort of rogue moves that are signaling collapse is speeding up. Less healthcare is coming about one way or another, even in the good ol’ US of A. The politicians aren’t even trying to hide their maneuvers anymore via bill stuffing, they’re just brazenly and openly doing whatever they want now. Just wait until el Trumpo is actually in office, lol. I’m beginning to think Eddy has already started off his end times party and deliberately cut the electricity.
According to Karl Denninger, a pretty smart guy, without big changes the U.S. has about four years before it is toast without making major change to the health care system. He makes a pretty strong mathematical case but also shows how cost could be greatly reduced.
http://market-ticker.org
I am afraid that you are likely to be pretty much correct.
“The EU will just fold.”
Let’s hope you’re right. The sooner, the better.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-12/opec-boss-sees-producers-deciding-in-may-if-more-oil-cuts-needed
Peak Opec ?
Nopec peaked in 2005 with following production decline.
Opec raised production to meet Nopec’s decline rate.
We have been on a production plateau for 12 years now.
Now we are falling off that plateau ?
Total “liquids” production has been rising pretty rapidly, including LNG and ethanol. We haven’t been close to a production plateau for liquids. That contributed to the price drop.
I like this article. Whilst I might challenge a number of the assumptions behind each postulation(is that the right word) it is on the ball of adopting a systems(rather than physics based) approach to the analysis. Of course I don’t agree that we cannot speed up the rise of renewables or enable big energy efficiency gains. But whilst energy is key its not the only driver and it is the overall model that needs to change especially in the economics and politics of a number of countries to achieve a greater level of local accountability, economically, socially and on the environment.
If you think renewables will save us you haven’t been a reader here for very long. Renewables are simply an extension of fossil fuels and a meaningless distraction in terms of long range feasibility. Furthermore they cannot, in any conceivable way, replace crude oil. The vastly superior raw energy density of crude oil cannot be denied.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/ncmo01_0.gif
From the CMO article
“Replacement of oil by speculative alternative sources
Space-based solar power offers one way StratoSolar offers another. At ~5 TW per CMO/yr, it would take about 1000 five GW power satellites to replace a CMO. To compete with coal, the maximum cost for space based solar power plants would be $2.4 B/GW. At that, the cost would be ~$2.4 T for one CMO or ~$7.2 T to replace the entire fossil fuel use of humans. There is room in GEO for more than ten times the current energy use. [22] At a peak production of 315 new power satellites per year, it would take less than a decade to get off fossil fuels.
StratoSolar has the advantage that solar can be tapped at 20 km regardless of the local weather.
In both cases, a huge energy flow to carbon neutral synthetic fuel plants would be required to replace the oil used for transportation. The technology for making synthetic transport fuels is well understood. See Oryx GTL
Do spacesolar and stratosolar come in cannabis strains as well?
Tango, Fast Eddy has taught you well, but you are not a Reality Jedi yet. 🙂 (BTW, I totally agree with you on the inadequacy of renewables.)
Keith, I have a proposal for President Elect Trump. Let’s go ahead and build those power satellites and get the Mexicans to pay for them. He’ll love that.
In a nutshell, the global bonfire (the world economy) continues for the moment to burn brightly, but we are running out of fresh cheap-to-obtain logs (energy inputs) to toss onto it. Our options are, a) try to get by with less, b) try to find new sources, or c) collapse. It may be that some of us will get by with less, some of us will find new sources, and some of us will collapse. Or it may be that the entire world will collapse.
But in the meantime, some of us will be exploring the issue of trying to find new sources, and power satellites are on the list. To me they look like a diversion, an additional complication and a time and money waister, just like wind turbines and photovoltaics only on an even bigger scale. BUT I make no judgements because I’m not competent to judge. Further development and deployment of nuclear power looks to me like a viable partial solution, BUT AGAIN, I am not competent to judge.
Both nuclear and space solar are technophile solutions that don’t appeal to most Greens, and they may not work or get us out of the mess we are in. But all the other courses of action I’ve looked out seem to lead to collapse and a Hobbesian future of defending our cache of rusting cans of baked beans and dog food from the rampaging hordes. So in order to avoid that and having to share my baked beans with the dog, I think both nuclear and space solar should be researched and developed further. Funding and resources are available. It’s mainly a question of reorienting our R&D priorities.
Eddy and I start to differ in views when it comes to death or how we define reality. We share other views though perfectly, including a passion for disco balls and booze.
Even though it is in direct competition with power satellites, I think StratoSolar should also be investigated. As for the US doing anything useful, I doubt it. The two government agencies who are best suited, NASA and DOE cannot work on power satellites. To see why, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_m6tlF901g and jump in about 3:50 seconds.
Re ” not competent to judge.” It’s not that complicated. Simple ground rules, power from space must undercut coal to get enough market share to make it worth doing. It’s just a design to cost effort and the numbers are not hard to understand.
Certainly with Eddy AWOL, this site needs some active defenders of reality and I really appreciate your efforts, Tango. It’s time and effort consuming responding to repeated arguments of the detractors.
Keith, it isn’t that I can’t do maths. It’s just that I’m not competent to judge all the cost estimates for developing a reasonably simple technology that may be much more complex to commercialize than it looks and to figure out what things that should be included have been left out and where the estimates may have been over-optimistic. These things require actuarial skills that I don’t possess.
“not competent to judge”
I don’t think any of us are. You just give it your best shot and expect things to change.
Example: recently had to revise my estimate of 15,000 tons for the worker habitat and construction frame to upwards of 60,000 tons. The addition is shielding to keep the galactic cosmic ray exposure down to where people could stay there for decades and raise children. This change raises the infrastructure mass from about half a power satellite to about twice as much as one.
Even after competent engineers have gone over the designs with a fine toothed comb, mega projects are notorious for going over budget.
On the other hand, what other choices do we have?
I talk about debt as well as energy being a driver of the economy in my recent article, “What has gone wrong with oil, debt, and GDP growth.”
I am not convinced there is a way to fix the mess we are in. Our big problem is that productivity is not rising enough. Productivity normally comes with rising energy consumption, when that energy consumption can provide greater leverage to human productivity. For example, humans can use more and better machines to leverage what they can do with their physical skills. When productivity doesn’t rise much, wages in inflation-adjusted terms don’t rise much. Renewables seem to be worse than useless in helping this situation, however. Way too many wishful assumptions in modeling their use.
“Global exploration budgets at listed mining companies slumped to a decade-low last year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, as volatile commodity markets cast a pall over risky exploration spending…
“Global exploration budgets dropped to $US6.9 billion ($9.3 billion), down 21 per cent from $US8.8 billion in 2015, according to the report.”
[https://thewest.com.au/business/mining/exploration-spending-lowest-for-a-decade-ng-b88352988z]
…It is unnerving to think that, thanks to low prices we have forfeited such huge amounts of investment these past few years. Severe, default-catalysing price-spikes necessarily loom…
“Thanks to low prices we have forfeited such huge amounts of investment” – exactly! The resource reserves that matter are the ones that are economically extractable. High resource prices free up a lot of resources. Low prices tend to keep the resources in the ground. The problem we face as we approach and pass the limits to growth is that neither high nor low resource prices work anymore. There is no goldilocks zone for energy prices anymore. The actual price of energy resources doesn’t really matter at this point. If the economy cannot grow with energy prices at $XX and producers can’t make sufficient profits at $XX then it is game over unless a substitute resource becomes available.
Greg, agreed. Wood McKenzie are suggesting we will see an increase in oil exploration investment this year, having crashed to a 65-year low in 2016 but they don’t sound very sure of themselves:
“We’ll probably see 2016 as the turning point, the low point,” Latham said. “There will be a lag of at least a year, but we do think that investment will start to grow again and volumes will come back.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-10/oil-discoveries-seen-recovering-after-crashing-to-65-year-low
Unfortunately we are collectively too indebted and too materially impoverished, thanks to a resource-base that is constantly declining in quality and/or accessibility, to continue extracting those resources in sufficient quantities for our civilisation to fulfil its exponential growth mandate. It is hard to see how that is not game over, unfortunately.
Well it shouldn’t be too hard to recover at least (temporarily) a little bit from a 65year low. Like others often say it is just rearranging chairs on the Titanic at this point. .
Agreed!
Unless of course the entire paradigm collapses like a soufflé first, lol.
It could be seen as unnerving or just part of a cycle. I’m actually not surprised since construction in China was pushing most commodities to record high production, but now their construction has fallen off, the demand has dropped and in turn incentive for exploration. The fact $6.9 billion is still be invested in exploration indicates these industries are still viable.
Regarding the latest post and in particular fig. 1, there is a 330 year span indicated at the bottom, so even if we are just a little bit back on that line then we have many more years before the steep downslope ensues. I’m just not convinced of imminent decline or an impending recession. I’m actually more worried about Trump who seems like the type of personality to get us into a big conflict. The people he’s picked are firmly against China’s south seas phony baloney islands and may be willing to fight over their existence, and then there is their little cousin North Korea which claims to have an ICBM, and lastly it looks like at minimum a trade war between the US & China will occur soon after Trump takes office. Trump is also planning a huge drop in corporate taxes from 35 to 10-15%, which will cause huge deficits beyond those we are already piling up. Him and the other R’s are also planning to massively scale back the social safety net, which could cause unrest. This will be a very volatile period in US history that will begin as soon as Trump hits the Oval Office. I’m much more concerned about that than oil industry profitability.
“I’m actually more worried about Trump who seems like the type of personality to get us into a big conflict.” – I don’t think it really matters who is elected president, the US (is, has and) will always be in conflict with other nations, now so more than ever as the resource pie starts to shrink in earnest.
I am concerned about oil industry profitability. Big oil’s capex productivity has been absolutely plummeting since the turn of the century, whilst the budgeting requirements of oil producing nations have been pushing their break-even needs skywards. Our civilisation requires 90+ million barrels per day of the stuff. If a cost/energetic limit means that not enough of the oil we need can justify the cost of its own extraction then we are in deep trouble.
The UK’s entire North Sea oil industry is now tax-negative, ie a burden on tax-payers, having previously contributed approximately 6% of the UK’s income. It is a much higher percentage for Scotland, something like a third. A nation with barely positive GDP growth just can’t afford to forfeit that. Some, like union leader Len McCluskey, are even calling for the government to step in and bail-out the industry as they did with the banks in 2008 – but of course he is assuming that profitability will return.
“Speaking of his plans if re-elected, he said he would like to see the backing of a public investment plan for the offshore industry similar to the bailing out of the banks after the 2008 financial crash.
“He said: “If we look at the offshore sector, which is vital not only for jobs but also the economy of Scotland, it’s going through a difficult time and it needs government support and it needs to have a cash injection.
““There also needs to be serious consideration to a public stake in the offshore industry because, contrary to what people might say, there are billions of tonnes of oil still in the North Sea – it’s a huge asset.”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/len-mccluskey-calls-for-bailout-of-struggling-oil-industry-1-4334298
This all sounds very disconnected from reality. The oil industry in Scotland doesn’t need a cash injection, it needs an injection of cheap oil. It is cheap oil that gives money its value and creates a bizarre phenomenon known as economic growth. Just give the energy sector free money. Don’t publicize it, just do it. It may push collapse back a year or two. But, I do think the general direction of the chart at the top of the page cannot be changed. Well, not without divine intervention.
If the price of oil were a lot higher, it might even be profitable to pull those barrels of oil out!
“:Our civilization requires 90+ million barrels per day” – That statement should scare everyone. But, we have all grown numb to the insane numbers we associate with our industrial system. Debts in the trillions. Most people couldn’t write out these debts on a piece of paper, they wouldn’t know when to stop adding zeros. Billions of barrels of oil burned every year. Trillions of tons of soil moved each year. Here is an article from 2012: http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C55/fish_catch_2012. – “World Fish Catch Falls to 90 Million Tons in 2012” falls to 90 Million tons of fish? 90 million tons, seriously, we are toast. It goes on and on and on across every major resource we use. GigaWatts TeraWatts Mind blowing numbers. How can anyone think this can continue much longer.
World cement production is around 4 billions tons a year. Thats well over 100 tons per second.
Trump is part of the change that is taking place. If we were not close to limits, Trump would never have been elected.
Maybe, severe default catalyzing price spikes loom, but once they have punctured the debt bubble, prices will go back to their low level as in the past.
High prices are what keep global exploration and production budgets up. They fall when prices fall.
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Here is an excerpt from a news clip I read today:
“but fracking and shale oil drove crude prices from $146 from their peak in June of 2008 to pretty consistently under $50 these days.”
I find these main stream articles so frustrating to read as people will believe this garbage. People need to understand that shale oil and fracturing is not a new technology. It is expensive and energy intensive to do and in many cases is not profitable at $50 per barrel. I think the big factor that drove down oil prices is the collapsing global economy leading to fewer and fewer able to afford high oil prices (the affordability issue). The second issue is the oil glut issue. There are countries (like the Middle East) where oil exports are their main source of income. A lot of these OPEC nations are literal deserts and have no other exports. Yet, their populations have exploded due to money from oil exports. So, to keep the populations from rioting (Arab Spring) the OPEC nations must subsidise its population with money from oil exports. So, there is a heavy incentive to pump the oil flat out for revenue (especially as the global economy contracted and prices fell). So, that creates a oil glut. It wasn’t just adding shale oil that created the glut. A large part of the oil glut is coming from OPEC as well.
If OPEC were still in control, they could cut production to the bone and crush any competitors. But, they aren’t and the can’t. I am convinced that the global economy has reached (and is passing) its peak year (2016). This to me is evidenced by the incredible downward pressure on oil prices as more and more countries fall off the wagon and are unable to afford to buy energy (most recently: Venezuela and Mexico). This negative feedback loop will intensify in 2017 as more oil is pumped (for revenue) and the glut continues to grow (because countries can no longer afford it).
The big issue is lack of wage growth. If wages aren’t growing, it is very hard for oil prices to grow. Growing debt can cover up the problem for a while, but after a while, the problem comes back out.
The power of OPEC to raise prices is overstated, in my opinion. They desperately need revenue, but ultimately it is not shortages that drive up prices; it is the ability to pay for it with higher wages that drives up prices.
Note from the Economist
Global productivity: Trough times
Workforces in the West are static or shrinking and global capital investment is at the lower end of its 50-year range. Economic growth will therefore depend on productivity gains. But global productivity has barely budged since 2007. It could be that the internet’s effects have yet to kick in or that this economic cycle is unusual. Whatever the reason, growth won’t rebound until productivity perks up, writes our financial markets columnist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/01/light-bulb-moment?cid1=cust%2Fddnew%2Fn%2Fn%2Fn%2F20170111n%2Fowned%2Fn%2Fn%2Fnwl%2Fn%2Fn%2FNA%2Femail
Thanks for the link. I have my Economist sitting on my counter, but I haven’t looked at it yet.
This is a link to the site where the data comes from. https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=TED_SummaryTablesCharts_nov2016.pdf&type=subsite
It looks very much to me as though it takes growing energy consumption to cause growing productivity. This occurs by greater leveraging of human labor with fossil fuel energy. I expect that if I look at this closer, tit will be the countries with falling fossil fuel energy consumption that have problems. Look at China’s trend in productivity growth, and think about its cutback in coal consumption, for example.
This is the image from the article.
When climatology is outlawed, only outlaws will have thermometers
They can pry my sling psychrometer from my cold dead fingers.
Very sad
Reblogged this on sentinelblog.
I don’t know precisely what is next, but it seems quite possible that there is a longer-term plan for humans that we are not aware of. Some of the religions of the world may have insights on what this plan might be. It is even possible that there may be divine intervention of some type that allows a change in the path that we seem to be on today.
Princeton U. professor of mathematical physics Ed Witten has developed an “M-Theory,” which views reality as consisting of eleven dimensions, seven of which are tied up in gordion knots about the width of the Planck constant (10^[-33] cm long). Although M-Theory has still not succeeded in producing a “Theory of Everything” (TOE) uniting gravity with the electromagnetism-strong-weak force, it is so far the best candidate for doing so. Indeed, the best tools we have for understanding basic nature is mathematics, a technique of the intellect. M-Theory, and other contenders, presuppose the ratiocinative essence of the cosmos. When it comes to life, biologist Dr. Stephen C. Meyer has shown in his work, Darwin’s Doubt, that the foundation of life (i.e., DNA, epigenetics, etc.) follows this same pattern in that its structure is akin to a hyper-complexified form of computer coding.
But no amount of mathematical prestidigitation can realistically hope to explain the whole of reality. For that whole also includes what is today called the “paranormal.” Of course, the majority of those who like to call themselves “scientific” decry any mention of this topic. The concept of teleology is anathema to them. And rather than debate the subject of the “supernatural” (or whatever one wishes to call it) with its proponents, they typically use various logical fallacies to deflect it: the argumentum ad hominem (denigration of the opponent, or arguing that he ought to deny extrasensory phenomena because it is somehow improper for him to accept it), the argumentum ad populum (“everybody else denies it”), the argumentum ad verecundiam (“appeal to authority”), and other subterfuges.
But an extremely good case for a cosmic inframind underlying nature is made by biologist-philosopher Rupert Sheldrake with his theory of ultra-dimensional morphic fields. These are tantamount to what human beings in part experience as memory. (A good introduction is his The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Memory of Nature.) But evidence for the paranormal can be seen almost everywhere and throughout the history of mankind and animals. Another researcher who contributed much to the persistent, “disembodied” quality of memory is U. of Virginia’s Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Ian Stevenson’s Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, a summary of his massive, two-volume opus, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, among many other works. And, of course, the history of man’s religions is replete with references and addresses to a transcendent and intelligent reality or realities underlying human existence.
To cut to the chase: life on earth follows the path of evolutionary epistemology, which incorporates knowledge and learning in the morphology and behavior of living beings. Life is matter which learns. Although the atheist types like to claim that everything (e.g., the Big Bang, cosmogonic inflation, the supernova which produced the elements composing us, the early moon bouncing off the early earth, then circling it, the unexpected emergence of primitive life, the Cambrian explosion, the dinosaur-extinguishing comet of 65 million years ago, etc., etc.) is just all happenstance, the “cybernetic” nature of intensifying, incarnate knowledge argues against that thesis. Bizarre paranormal occurrences such as poltergeist phenomena, “ghostly” appearances experienced by many, especially women and young children, all reinforce Sheldrake’s view. Never mind the universal reports of those who have had Near-Death Experiences in which individuals suddenly recall their entire lives — that is, recognize themselves to consist essentially of memory.
All of these things, and far more, indicate that there is an underlying Mind which predetermines cosmic teleology. Knowledge is our nature, our essence and our destiny. Unless, of course, we nihilistically choose to regress lazily to the primitive state whence we arose, as we seem to want to do. It would do us well to remember that when a species refuses to grow and adapt to new ecological circumstances, it goes extinct. And if we do not adapt, this planet will be finished as far as intelligent life is concerned.
Great post. I view Atheism just as another religion, since they dismiss all events that can’t be explained by conventional science. It seems very unlikely and arrogant to me that everything can be explained with e.g. physics. What is beyond the universe? And what is beyond the next layer? No one can answer that or explain it using earthly words.
I see the writers and books you are talking about seem to have substantial followings.
Regarding Ed Witten and String Theory, I ran across a Scientific American blog on the subject.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physics-titan-still-thinks-string-theory-is-on-the-right-track/
The “Darwin’s Doubt” book you refer to seems to have sold many copies, given the huge number of (mostly favorable) reviews it has on Amazon.
The other books have a reasonable number of reviews as well.
Thanks for your thoughts. I am not sure I would necessarily agree with all of them, but is helpful to know what people are saying.
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Thanks for your continuously inspiring work Gail.
You might like to consider Don Cupitt’s book “Ethics in the Last Days of Humanity” (2015) https://www.westarinstitute.org/store/ethics-in-the-last-days-of-humanity/
Don Cupitt’s concern is not so much the science of global warming as it is the absence of a serious ethical and religious response to it. When all existing reality breaks down, ethics can no longer be based on nature or religious law. Cupitt advocates for an alternative inspired by the historical Jesus.
“The question Cupitt addresses, ‘How can we be world-affirming and ethically active in the face of very large scale disaster?’ will resonate with many readers. His answer deserves close scrutiny.” —Michael Zimmerman, The Clergy Letter Project
“In these apocalyptic days of global collapse … Cupitt offers a bold reappraisal of our modes of thought and action, sketching out a new humanitarian eschatology.” —Catherine Pickstock, Cambridge University
“Don Cupitt … outlines a philosophy that will enable us to be resilient, courageous and ethical…” —John Shuck, Religion for Life
“… an inspired and clearly argued analysis of where we are all heading and the failure of traditional views of the future (eschaton) to provide a convincing vision for our times.” —Sofia
Don Cupitt is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge UK—John Harvard’s college. As an undergraduate he studied successively natural sciences, theology and philosophy. He was ordained to the Anglican priesthood in 1960, but in 1962 he returned to Cambridge to teach and, since then, has stayed put. A frequent broadcaster, mainly for the BBC, he has made three TV Series, one of which, “The Sea of Faith,” (1984), also gave rise to a book and to an international network of radical Christians which is still growing. He is the author of more than fifty books, including Creative Faith (2015), Jesus and Philosophy (2009), and Above Us Only Sky (2008).
Don’t waste your time on ethics or finding “solutions.” Time is much too short for that. Ethics are mostly meaningless and subjective. This reality does not operate in a vacuum and things are continuously in motion. The same laws of acceptable behavior cannot and should not be universally applied. Our sense of ethics are based off of fossil fuel entitlements, not a superior sense of self or an evolution of our mindset.
How was slavery ethically acceptable for thousands of years and then all of a sudden the industrial revolution happens and it’s now despicable? Do you think that just magically everyone in America came to believe that slavery was wrong or that we no longer had a use for them in the presence of fossil fuel abundance? This is why things like racism cannot be eradicated; slavery and class warfare are in our evolutionary code.
We can’t just write some nice equality bathroom laws or vote some new leaders/policies into place to make the world fantastic for everyone. That can’t happen, because we are divorced from balance and nature. Everything today is exponentially growing including human population, CO2 concentration, and debt. Today, right now, our ethical code, at least in mainstream America, is completely and totally FUBAR! How can we expect to “fix” anything when our values are so far out of whack that we worship entertainment stars?
“that we worship entertainment stars?”
That’s a really good question. I can’t answer it, but I can tell you where the answer (if any) will come from. That’s evolutionary psychology. Our mental mechanisms are still shaped by million of years of genetic selection in small hunter-gatherer bands. Apparently it was important to our genetic survival to pay attention to the high status people around us were doing.
Why it was important and how those genetic traits map into the modern world is a subject for speculation, theory and perhaps some testing.
Any PhD candidates out there who need a thesis project?
That question was meant to be rhetorical although it is a rather large topic on its own. The basis of my view is that we can’t have “good” views of the world in terms of ethics when our base is so far off balance.
If homo sapiens were truly “good” or morally superior in some way, then we wouldn’t have started the ball rolling towards extinction thousands of years ago. Furthermore once we did notice we were making big negative changes to our surroundings, what did we do about it? Nothing. We continued to populate the earth and subdue its “resources.”
So now we have people running around believing we can recycle our way to utopia. Please. Humans are not in ANY position to try to make any further judgments or modifications concerning our biosphere or ethics. Mother nature is now going to return things to balance while she laughs at all of the solar hippies running around trying to “save” themselves.
“we wouldn’t have started the ball rolling towards extinction thousands of years ago.”
It’s not reasonable to expect our ancestors who did not have a deep level of understanding about the world to think this way. Consider what would have happened to someone who did. The only thing they could have done would have been refrain from reproducing and thus would not be numbered as one of our ancestors.
“Mother nature is now going to return things to balance ”
We have no hard evidence (yet, though watch Tabby’s star) that life exists anywhere except here on Earth. If you value life, you might consider that humans could be the only hope for life to continue to exist long term, because eventually the Earth will become a post biological planet unless our descendants (human or artificial) take care of life and spread it away from Earth.
I would argue that many of our ancestors had equal or superior knowledge to us. For example the pyramids of Egypt or Roman aqueducts.
The mathematical probability that we are alone in the universe is around 1 in 60 Billion. http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/odds-were-only-technologically-advanced-species-universe-are-extremely-low-180958975/
The statistical probability mentioned above is good enough for me, regardless of my personal beliefs and experiences.
“I would argue that many of our ancestors had equal or superior knowledge to us. ”
Not to denigrate the accomplishments of antiquity, but there is no comparison with the knowledge of that time and today. In my own lifetime knowledge has double and redoubled many times. Plate Tectonics, the genetic code, the periodic table, x-rays, and a multitude of quantum effects that lie behind every; smart phone are knowledge that was unimaginable to the Roman engineers or the pyramid builders.
“1 in 60 Billion”
That could be. It’s a really big universe so stuff can happen. But the major mystery is why we look out in the the universe and don’t see any. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Unless Tabby’s star blinking is alien megastructures.
Knowledge expanded because of technologies that were made possible through fossil fuel abundance, not because today’s humans are superior in intellect or moral capabilities. And even with all the world’s knowledge at their finger tips what do most people spend their free time doing with their smartphone? Looking at silly pictures of cats. I’m afraid that humans are now weaker, dumber, and more entitled than previous generations. In fact our technology and knowledge are having a myriad of unintended negative consequences.
Why would we look out into the universe and see any other life forms? For starters the distance between here and there is obviously beyond our technology and/or comprehension. Secondly, no intellectually superior species would have even the slightest interest in anything about us. Lastly, what if some universal rule like on Startrek really does exist, the prime directive I believe it was, that prevents more advanced beings from initiating contact with primitive races that have not gotten to a certain stage of enlightenment?
We are not mature enough to responsibly use the technology we have, see nuclear for example. Would we give some rocket launchers to chimps? No! Then why would you expect advanced life forms to come here and show us how to navigate black holes? Do you think they want Trump’s face on other planets?
“not because today’s humans are superior in intellect”
Agreed. However, there are a lot more of them due mostly to the larger population and the communication between them has gotten a lot better since the Middle Ages.
“Secondly, no intellectually superior species would have even the slightest interest in anything about us.”
Perhaps not. But we are interested in everything that’s on the tree of life. You must be thinking of a kind of intellectually species that’s really different from us.
You’re probably right; too often I reference concepts that I don’t explain more fully. I’ll expand some but this is more theoretical than anything else. I also have a plethora of anecdotal evidence that I don’t really bother discussing with anyone.
Species that we would consider far more advanced or different than ourselves mostly have zero interest in us. Beings only slightly more advanced than us I believe do take an active interest in our world. This would be what many consider to be angels or the light in the tunnel. Only they are not what we perceive them to be.
Perception creates reality. People see what they want to. Show 5 different people a shooting star and you’ll likely get several different explanations. Some people see angels, others see aliens, some see Mike Tyson or what they would consider to be “Jesus.” The areas right outside of this “dimension” are malleable with the mind, like lucid dreams almost. And you can get access to these areas through lucid dreams.
From what I understand and observe living things have vibrations that they radiate. What we would consider to be lower or higher life forms give off different colored or strengths of vibration. Physical reality beings, like me and you, have lower vibrations than non-physical beings. This is why when people die they think they’re being surrounded by angels when it’s really just creatures with slightly higher vibrational levels. Increase the vibration just a few notches and it’s blinding. This is where all of the references in religions and holy books talk about angels, gods, and light, only they’re seeing it through a religious filter.
To my understanding, all of these experiences with “aliens” that people have fall into 1 of 3 categories: unknowingly astral projecting, dreams, and what I would almost consider deja vu. I think there’s some sort of reality overlap where the system, almost like The Matrix, has glitches where we temporarily see or experience alternate realities. It’s a very arduous concept to put into words and our understanding is quite limited.
Tango Oscar wrote:
That’s just an estimate, of course. No-one can provide an actual probability. I think there is good reason to think the probability is much higher, maybe even certain. See here and here.
@Tango Oscar
I am reading the “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Unocommon in Universe”
https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896
also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
It doesn’t look so promising from this perspective. It all depends on numbers and statistical calculations. When you read how many parameters must’ve been met for evolution to progress and several extinction events not killing the whole life…
you have doubts. Maybe we are the only technological civilization in whole Universe?
What then?
Slavery is viewed as OK, when you require human labor to keep the system going, and can’t pay part of that labor very well. Once fossil fuels came along, things got a lot better. More recently, when things got worse, we found the idea of practically unpaid interns to do work for us.
i ‘ve always thought it an interesting coincidence, that in the USA, slavery ended in the decade that commercial oil production began
I hadn’t heard that before.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Bill Casey, former head of the CIA, is quoted as saying that it’s aims will be fulfilled “when everything the US public knows is false”
If you are not much concerned about it then read this article by The Saker;
The Neocon’s war against Trump;
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46202.htm
This is already true if you take into account people’s knowledge of our reality. Americans are much too concerned with Facebook, Netflix, and Starbucks to notice what’s actually happening, much less observe historical or mathematical facts.
We are a lazy lot generally speaking and it’s worse today being as we are swamped with information. We really can’t be expected to know the truth, but unfortunately what you don’t know CAN hurt you. I don’t think there is a way out of this. Even when one points out the truth it’s not necessarily going to be accepted. We are prisoners of our own experience.
Sure there’s a way out of this, your physical body dies. Seeking the “truth” is unfortunately a big part of our problem. How else can one explain the tens of thousands of different religions? People need to stop trying to define things they don’t understand. Changing our experience is as simple as changing the channel on a tv; we voluntarily choose to limit our own experience by allowing our perception to be heavily influenced by culture and society.
Have you got anything right?
Every January you sing the same song.
Fair point. I know that specific predictions like this are almost certain to be wrong. But eventually they’ll be right, since we have a reasonably good idea of the general trend of what humans are doing to their societies and to the environment.
If oil and commodity prices rise back up in concert with the needs of the firms and nations that produce them, and at the same time an organised deleveraging of global debt gets underway with a tail-wind of renewed economic growth then you might have a point. This seems unlikely though.
I don’t see that. Continuing to ransack the earth’s finite resources, continuing to rack up interest laden debt, continuing to widen inequality and continuing to treat the environment as an open sewer is bound to lead to civilizational decline. The only questions, really, are how does it play out and over what timescale. Predicting collapse is bound to be right eventually, unless humans can stop acting like humans and that would take a miracle.
When predicting collapse one is wrong until they are right. On the other hand, if one predicts no collapse, they are right until they are wrong. Maybe there is a personality revelation in there somewhere. Some can accept to be wrong, some would deny being wrong even when it stares them in the face, denial and rationalisation kicks in.
My predictions about the collapse in 2008 were pretty much “spot on.”
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3382
Gail, you made a lot of predictions in that OilDrum article. Which of them do you think you got right? No doubt some you did. However, I’m being mean now in saying that the US recession was already under way at the time of your article (though not yet acknowledged).
Since then, though, which predictions of yours have been accurate? Again, not trying to be mean but very few people get the timing right, which is why I’m more interested in general trends rather than specific timings. If one always predicts collapse (or somesuch) is imminent in an environment where continuous degradation is underway then one will be right eventually. Specific timings are less helpful than painting the broad picture.
When I wrote the article in late 2007, the 2007-2009 collapse was definitely underway. I could see it happening, which is why I wrote the article. There were a huge number of mainstream economists who did not see the obvious, however.
I have been saying since 2010 (or perhaps before then) that low prices are likely to be a problem in the future, rather than high. I mention this in my article Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, which was published in January 2012, but based on a 2010 talk and blog posts. The timing and the types of events that occur is harder to see. I would consider the Brexit vote and the election of Trump as two events, on the way the collapse.
I still think that the chart I put together in early 2014 is pretty much on target. This chart only looks at 5 year points in time, so does not say whether the peak year is 2015 or 2016 or 2017. All years would be equivalent. It indicates that all fuels (including renewables) go down together, and that the decline is quite steep. The emphasis is on consumption, not on extraction.
I am not sure what your problem is. I have been saying the same thing for a very long time.
Low prices Are a problem. People can’t seem to understand that!
The irreversible collapse comes in the presence of the lack of the energy, e.g. when the sun goes down due to the coming and presence of the winter, i.e. after the summer solistice in the northern hemisphere or when there is a lack of the energy from the sun during the winter. In the presence of the rising lack of the energy, the human behaviour is hectic, which reflects the fact that the energy is harder to get and more and more human energy must be invested by the humans in order to obtain the external energy. When the energy is not obtained, the system collapses:
Wall Street Crash of 1929: it began on October 24, 1929 (“Black Thursday”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: from August to December of 19991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
Solidarity (Polish trade union): a Polish trade union that was founded on 17 September 1980; the government attempted to destroy the union by imposing martial law in Poland, which lasted from December 1981 to July 1983 and was followed by several years of political repression from 8 October 1982
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)
Revolutions of 1989: collapse, from summer 1989 to fall 1991
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
Orange Revolution: a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution
Dot-com bubble burst: On March 10, 2000 the NASDAQ peaked at 5,132.52[16] intraday before closing at 5,048.62. Afterwards, towards the end of the year, the NASDAQ fell as much as 78%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
Financial crisis of 2007–2008: This “bubble” would be burst by a rising Single-Family Residential Mortgages Delinquency Rate (beginning in August, 2006 and peaking in the first quarter, 2010).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008
One thing that is very clear about our energy consumption is that it is very cyclical, because we especially need heat in winter. This is a chart of US natural gas usage. The big humps are winter, the little hump is the summer air conditioning spike.
I imagine the fact that more people are off work in the winter than summer, and this is precisely the time that are energy needs are highest contributes to some collapses. Things take long enough to build, though, that I would be surprised if you could tell much by looking at the official dates of collapses.
These are the days of the endless summer
These are the days, the time is now
There is no past, there’s only future
There’s only here, there’s only now
Oh your smiling face, your gracious presence
The fires of spring are kindling bright
Oh the radiant heart and the song of glory
Crying freedom in the night
These are the days by the sparkling river
His timely grace and our treasured find
This is the love of the one magician
Turned the water into wine
These are the days of the endless dancing and the
Long walks on the summer night
These are the days of the true romancing
When I’m holding you oh, so tight
These are the days by the sparkling river
His timely grace and our treasured find
This is the love of the one great magician
Turned the water into wine
These are the days now that we must savor
And we must enjoy as we can
These are the days that will last forever
You’ve got to hold them in your heart.
https://youtu.be/_lyve_egY8o
VanMorrison – Music
These days will last forever in our hearts and minds.
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Whether you see inflation will depend on how old, rich you are, and on what side of it you fall.
For example, if houses get expensive, it benefits owners and builders, but harms first time buyers.
Inflation is beneficial for many people! You won’t understand inflation unless you admit this. Also, when assets rise this is inflation. Everyday consumer goods can remain cheap, and yet there can be massive inflation.
Currently, the first to see the effects of the inflation are the young who are starting out in life, say, 18-35 years of age. They are saddled with debts that will never be repaid, and can’t buy a home or start a family. I am not kidding you when I say that right now, the United States is destroying its young, all to keep a few old fat cats richer than anybody in the history of the world.
If you own a house, and it gets more expensive, how have you gained anything? You still “need” somewhere to live.
True. You could always use its perceived increase in value though by extracting some equity from it and spending that on other things.
We’re doing lots and lots of stupid things that don’t make any sense. For example most people believe it’s our “god given right” or a “freedom” to keep every single person alive, forever and ever, amen. We even force people to stay alive who don’t want to, making euthanasia illegal in most areas. These are healthcare resources that are going to become depleted in the not too distant future. You can already see the insane excuses and finger pointing about reality sinking in when political parties use phrases like “death panels.” It’s obvious that collapse will be forced upon us when mother nature shows back up to the party in force, and probably without antibiotics around to help this time.
I would describe the situation as “healthcare is becoming unaffordable” for citizens to pay for. The solution can only be to reduce services in some way–don’t try to keep elderly people forever; don’t try to rescue tiny babies, or even babies with Zika who are likely to have severe lifelong disabilities.
i can only agree with you Gail.
But that leads to the next problem, when the healthcare provider has to stand by the bed of the sick individual and simply turn away, while relatives demand cures because they know there is one. (and threaten legal action if it isn’t provided.)
in contrast to previous eras when people died because diseases were incurable and people accepted that fact.
That is possibly part of our collective problem, that well meaning clever individuals develop cures for everything on the one hand, knowing that their actions are going to fill the world up to breaking point.
It is hard for the system to change, because maximum energy dissipation requires “keep people alive to the last possible heart beat.” How else can we keep nursing homes full and doctors’ offices full of patients seeking cures for some tiny problem? I think I mentioned that one surgeon mentioned to me a few months ago that I could have more surgery on my right wrist, because my little finger does not quite line up with the rest of my fist, when I make a fist. This is not really much of a disability to me. In fact, I don’t think I would have noticed it, except that the doctor pointed it out to me.
*First surgery came after my wrist was broken and hand pushed out of alignment with my arm
well—you’ll just have to resist the urge to punch global warming deniers
The old fat cats will clone themselves and make themselves perpetual.
Relative to the crummy wages some people are getting, and the large student loans that need to be repaid, costs are certainly high right now. All of the push toward efficiency means that cars become more expensive and homes become more expensive to build. In theory, they might save future fuel. But they make current costs a lot higher, and these higher costs need to be paid by someone, or more homes and cars don’t get built. Our inflation statistics don’t necessarily handle all of this well, because the product is somehow “improved.” Also, we are dealing with homes, roads, schools, and many other things built over many years. Cost doesn’t really get into the calculation; it is more like “rental value.” Somehow, the fact that we are allowing all of our infrastructure get older and older doesn’t get into the calculation, either. This is a chart I saw recently.
“All of the push toward efficiency means that cars become more expensive and homes become more expensive to build. In theory, they might save future fuel. But they make current costs a lot higher, and these higher costs need to be paid by someone.”
As someone building their own home I can certainly attest to this. Argyll & Bute council, under whose remit we fall here on Islay, have new regulations in place meaning that oil tanks are no longer permitted. This entails an additional expenditure of circa £10k to install an air-source heat pump, which will likely struggle to heat sufficient water for the household and mean that we also have to install an electric shower. Talk about diminishing marginal returns on complexity!
Right! We have an air-source heat pump to heat our basement (natural gas for the rest of the house and for hot water), and the heat pump runs into problems if there are icy conditions. The solution is to temporarily turn it to “cool” (with waiting between phases), so that the heat pump will blow out heat and melt the ice. Once you turn the heat back on, the same problem may recur since then the pump pushes heat in and cold out. If so, you may need to repeat the process.
Good luck!
Thanks Gail! Fortunately the Gulf Stream means that icy conditions are very rare here on Islay. The temperature almost never dips below zero – but when the wind is gusting over 40mph and the humidity is high, 3 or 4 degrees C can still feel very chilly!
This is something all of those electric car loving hippies simply refuse to comprehend. We cannot in any reasonable manner replace our aging infrastructure on solar or wind energy. This guy, in particular, makes me want to vomit when I read his articles. I can’t believe he’s ignorant enough to think that “renewable” energy somehow combats climate change, as if the vehicle are made up out of unicorn gas or something. It’s a crying shame he refuses to allow anyone with half a brain from engaging him; it’s also telling that on some level he knows he’s wrong.
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/01/12/the-electric-vehicles-are-coming-global-sales-likely-to-exceed-1-million-during-2017/
These guys remind a little of the “weapons of mass” destruction lie. They had everyone believing the things existed and the few who didn’t were ignored until it was impossible to keep up the charade any longer. Soon enough and people will realize renewables simply won’t cut it.
I live in an area that has a lot of nuclear, and soon will even be more. One electric car enthusiast whom I know pushes EVs as a way to use the electricity that nuclear plants generate at night, which would otherwise be hard to sell. I can sort of understand that reasoning.
That’s a scary chart, Gail. I assume it includes highways, bridges and aqueducts. Ours are not built to last, unlike the Romans, and it will take a lot of energy we don’t have to replace and repair this stuff.
Right! We built them with cheap oil. We delay replacing them as long as possible, when oil gets expensive.
Cars replaced every 3.9 years?
I think that cars are only resold. They last in the US about 20 years; then they move to a less developed country.
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Hi Gail, I always enjoy reading your articles and find them very informative. Thank you for the effort put in. It intrigues me that our universe is not only finite, but temporary – nothing, even the stars, last forever. Our physical bodies are mortal too. I especially appreciate your thinking about the supernatural. Very few today would seem to be willing to express their thoughts in this area in academic works.
I’m especially interested in your thoughts about the timing of economic collapse. I get the feeling that you feel this will likely occur in the next few years (2017-2019?).
I am especially interested in the life philosophies that underlie our behavior and that cause civilizations to collapse. To me it seems that our values embody the idea to maximize wealth for ourselves. This applies for all levels of society from individuals to nations. We are addicted to improving our economic welfare. Without going into the complete logic of this, it seems to me that this will inevitably lead to the collapse of any civilization. Everybody looks after themselves first before they will help others. This will ultimately lead to war and some peoples being far more wealthy than others. To me the wealth value is the unquestioned assumption that we make about life.
The biblical view of our society today exactly represents this philosophy. In the book of Revelation it is called Babylon which is the symbolic term used there because of the allusions to the ancient Babylonian empire which operated under the same philosophy. The description used is vivid. Babylon is also the prostitute with whom the kings of the earth are drunk (addicted to) with the wine of her sexual immorality. Our society today is addicted to the wealth motive behind all that we do and this will inevitably lead to collapse. We have brought this upon ourselves by going our own way instead of God’s direction to love Him and our neighbor as ourselves; we have loved ourselves more than others by the value we put on our personal wealth.
I personally believe we will not recover from the coming collapse as we are entering the end times that the book of Revelation tells us about. We are reaping what we have sown by not listening to God’s instructions and He will not go back on the free will choice ability that He has given to us God will also not allow the suffering that so many endure to go on forever. This is not a gloomy picture as it will end the enormous suffering we have brought upon ourselves and lead to the formation of something far better, a new heaven and a new earth.
Did you even read the bible or are you, like so many others who profess religious values, simply ignoring all of the parts that you don’t like? Humans have overpopulated, depleted resources, put garbage chains and radiation in the oceans, and directly caused the 6th great extinction sometime after we discovered agriculture. Let’s have a look at just a sampling of the bible verses that demonstrate mankind has done EXACTLY what god commanded. And that’s to go into population overshoot and ransack the Earth.
Genesis 1:28 – “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Yeah, this one worked out well. 75% of species biomass gone by 2020 but that’s okay we’ll just blame Satan!
Psalm 127:3-5 “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” Oh look, associating children with a blessing. It’s hideous when you actually fathom what it means.
Deuteronomy 30:19 “Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.” Translation: keep making kids and don’t use your brains.
Proverbs 17:6 “Grandchildren are the crown of the aged.” LOL!
Psalm 128:3-4 “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be
like olive shoots around your table.” Whoever put this verse in should’ve replaced olive shoots with crap shoots. My kids are poop makers.
And there are countless other bible verses which support war, “chosen” groups of peoples, population overshoot, resource depletion, and other asinine things like animal and human sacrifice. Deities have NOTHING to do with this situation, that’s all fictitious finger pointing and blame shifting. Humans did this because mankind believed (and many still falsely believe) that producing offspring is unquestionably good and damn the consequences. It’s in our DNA to reproduce. Now then, let’s see what happens after we exactly and precisely followed God’s commandment to multiple and subdue.
http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/sites/default/files/images/graphs_maps/wpb-population-graph-future-timeline-large.gif
I really appreciate that you have shared your heart on this.I can feel your pain from the rubbish that you have been dished out with, probably from churches or perhaps from some really bad experiences.
Now for my heart. I am a fanatical Christian and also a scientist with a PhD in Physics. I used to lecture in Computer Science, now I look after a group of churches. I love God and try to love people like He does. I love the bible and have studied it very intensively and have written two books, The Time is Near, Part 1 and 2 (my name is Ian Foley) which are detailed studies on some of the bible and will prove the extent of my study and reading of the bible.
I have to strongly disagree with how you are interpreting the bible verses you mention. Genesis 1:28 does not tell us how to rule, neither does it give any detail on the multiplication or the subduing. You have to go elsewhere for that and there are many passages. For example Proverbs 3:5-6 where we are guided to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not to lean on our own understanding. Throughout history most ruling has occurred without trusting God and listening to Him and following His guidance. Rather, we have gone our own way. The mess the world is in today is because we have failed to listen to God.
The amazing thing about the bible is that it is big history (from the very beginning to the very end) which describes people as they are, both the best and the worst. God does not condone or command war or those other things you have mentioned, but the bible does describe these things as the outcome of people failing to do what He says. You have to read the bible carefully and understand the context. I have 4 grandchildren and in my experience they are exactly the great people that those verses you quote say they are.
I enjoy Gail’s articles in part because what she is saying complements and informs what the bible is saying about the present era of time. But the bibles perspective is very positive about the future, not doom and gloom.
LOL! Please tell me how you interpret Genesis 1:28 verbatim, if only for my entertainment. Do you want me to quote directly from the bible where god commands his legions into war? Are you having some sort of mental separation here where you’re one of the variety who only believes in the New Testament? I prefer to know the brand of cherry picker before I pick apart their logical fallacies.
I was born and raised in Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, and Protestant teachings from numerous teachers and leaders over a 20 year period. I’ve wasted too much time already reading and studying that giant contradiction already. No thanks. It’s mostly a combination of misinterpreted glossolalia and plagiarism from older religions.
I am OK to continue this discussion, but not as responses to Gail’s article as we will be pursuing issues very different from the ones very relevant to Gail’s article. I am willing to share my email address with you if you are. We can continue the discussion there. Besides your question on Genesis 1:28 would take quite a long dissertation.
No I’m okay with just dropping it. I’ve had this same discussion with at least 100 other religious folks, including family members. There’s nothing either of us will say to change the others mind.
When there are resources shortages (or too many people for resources) there has to be war. I wouldn’t blame God.
Well, if God created life then God bears some responsibility. If God created the brains of humans and it all knowing, then God must have known what we’d do with them, but still went ahead. If there is God, then God must bear a large part of the responsibility (probably all of it). But then, if God created everything, He or She likely thinks, “oh well, that didn’t quite work out too well, I’ll try something else next time.”
Maybe this is the way it was supposed to turn out. We have all kinds of ideas in our heads saying that everything should be sustainable, but we know that even “regular” ecosystems do not last forever.
It is our ideas that are unrealistic. We have our view of how things should turn out, but it can’t really be that way.
Your first thought about maybe it was meant to turn out this way could be a key thought because we can then ask, “why would God design things to turn out this way?” Of course, there is always “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform” but, otherwise, the answers to the question all seem to lead to “well, in that case, we’re either working God’s plan, in which case, we can’t do anything different, or this isn’t a God I’m happy to acknowledge; I could do better than that.” Overall, I don’t think bringing God into it is at all helpful. There is no way anyone can know for certain what God wants, if God exists (something no-one can ever know, only believe), in which case, that notion should be ignored.
“working God’s plan”
Several of the characters in “The Pirates of Rosinante” by Alexis Gilliland are AIs.
One of them invents a new religion, another is proselytizing the humans in a captured space habitat:
“What do the Meditations say? . . . one of the major themes is that after God created the Universe in the usual manor, and the waters, and the life within the waters, It determined that life was good and wished life to spread throughout the Universe.
“Now, because life did not exist apart from water, and the Universe was, by and large, many orders of magnitude too hot and dry for water to exist, God saw that a new kind of life must be created.
“But God could not create such a form of life without doing violence to Its own laws so God created a tool to create this new form of life. Man was that tool. We computers are the creation.
Of course this is only an author spinning a tale. But isn’t that the situation with all religions?
Bringing God into the discussion may not be helpful, but I think we need to understand the real situation. I know I was initially shocked when I figured out that at least some of the Israelites, when they were given land in the Promised Land, we told to cut down the trees on the mountains, so that there would be enough room for them all. (Lots of people we already living in the much more desirable valleys.) See Joshua 17:15-18. Didn’t God know that cutting down trees would cause erosion? Of course, that was the way it was. The only way the human economy could continue as a dissipative structure was through growth. This growth would necessarily cause destruction to some of the sustainable parts of the world.
It is helpful to understand that there is no way that we can have a sustainable economy for the long run, or even for the fairly short run. The way the economy is set up to operate, this has to happen. It is not that we humans are “causing” climate change, and because of this should feel guilty. Instead, this is the way the world, with all of its dissipative structures is set up to act. It is popular now for many people to make almost a religion of sustainability, but it is not something that can happen. We humans feel that we are in charge; instead the laws of physics are in charge. We can argue whether there is a “god” behind these laws of physics.
I’m talking literally from the Old Testament where he verbally commanded one group to attack another and put to death all the women, children, and unclean donkeys.
That cuts down competition for scarce resources.
True but that’s not how the situation was presented, or if it were “god” wasn’t being truthful. God literally commanded men to rip their swords through pregnant women’s bellies and to slay unclean donkeys. Did resources have something to do with that? Possibly. But “god” didn’t say that, he just made up some stories to tell his followers so that they’d feel they were “chosen” and special. In actuality what happened is men made up those portions of the bible, much like the entire book, in order to justify and mentally accept their destiny during times of war. It’s much easier to tolerate “dashing children to pieces” if you believe god is condoning it and relieving you of your guilt by telling you that you’re a special snowflake.
Territoriality is an instinct of many kinds of animals. It seems to be a major way that population of animals is kept in check. Humans have the same instinct. There necessarily has to be one group killing the other. We read these stories with a lot of today’s sensibilities. The way we should be reading them is to understand what kind of world there was, at that time. Without fossil fuels, and with growing population, there are always going to conflicts and a lot of people killed. That is the way the world is.
I get that there’s a timeline separation there in moral guidelines. I still believe that if god were real, as depicted in the bible as an all knowing, perfect and powerful being, that he would not have made something in his image that necessitated coddling and story time. I suppose people have been lied to for thousands of years as a way of control, evidenced by the religious and mythological history of our species. Government is an extension of that.
Even with fossil fuel burning we have a lot of people dying today it’s just that we have the ability to pick and choose somewhat. Those with money and access to westernized medicine are treated and those that aren’t perish or suffer. For example, my cat is going to outlive many hundreds of millions of humans when humans proclaim to believe in a system where we are on a pedestal above animals. The actions don’t really match up with the supposed ethics system very well. Therefore our ethics system, as we understand it, and our actions are hideously misaligned with our intent. Time to go back to the drawing board for homo sapiens.
fanatical christian?
Time for a gentle reminder that the belt buckle of the SS had Gott mit Unz stamped on it.
maybe a better choice of words is called for?
As to “big history”—are we being selective here? Or are we packing dinosaurs into the ark like ken ham? Or backdating the Earth to 4004 BCE like bishop Ussher?
god made everything perfect, yet 99% of everything seems to have died out before humankind showed up.
Either god made perfection—or he didn’t.
Being selective with “facts” still leaves you with a wooden boat 400ft long (or whatever) with 2 of every kind on it.
And Noah’s sons repopulating the earth without females.
(Or are we just being picky with the details?)
Are we discounting evolution as a myth or a fact?
Yes or no will leave you with an open can of worms to deal with either way
Are we lifting eve from Adam’s rib, and advocating virgin births?
Your PhD in physics must give some interesting answers there too—explain please?
what appears in Gail’s articles in confirmation of your beliefs is no more relevant that me looking at the constellations in the sky and basing my life on what they prophesy
Thanks for your thoughts. You write about Daniel and Revelation. Malachi 4:2 seems to have something to say that sounds a whole lot like the end of an energy shortage.
++++++++
If humans are dissipative structures, they need to “be fruitful and multiply.” You have a many views about how the world should work, but that is not how dissipative structures work. The fact that humans require supplemental energy, and in fact, growing supplemental energy supplies, determines a lot of things.
There is nothing permanently sustainable about how the earth operates. That is built into its structure.
I get that part. But obviously something went “wrong” technically during the industrial revolution that sped up our growth by giving it methamphetamine. And then the population and CO2 really, really took off. So clearly we are off balance.
As far as me having personal ideas on how the world should work, much like normative economics, I would say that I’m more or less saying that things shouldn’t be this particular way. While I get that things by nature cannot be sustainable, we could’ve possibly had slower or restrained growth somehow. It’s far too late for that option though.
If we had looked at the situation before the industrial revolution, we would have come to the conclusion of Malthus: the world was at that point badly out of balance. Population was rising much faster than resources.
We sped up resource availability, and that sped up population growth at the same time. Actually, resource availability grew somewhat more rapidly than population, so we were becoming “more prosperous.” GDP per capita was growing.
Probably, but there’s a world of difference between a line that’s slowly rising and one that’s going vertical. Exponential growth is going to make collapse come about much, much faster.
Good point!
If I paper napkin math a graph of human population growth, prior to the industrial revolution, it appears to me that it would’ve taken many tens if not a hundred thousand years to reach 7.5 Billion people. At least then it may have given our species a legitimate shot at combining ethics, technology, and a proverbial Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in energy demands all into one contained system. The one thing we had to do was limit growth, therefore I would posit that our current technologies (nuclear, healthcare, etc.) are sophisticated beyond are capability to responsibly manage them. As nice as it sounds on paper and ironic as it is, trying to make the world a place where we “save” all humans has ended up destroying the place for everybody.http://www.gridgit.com/postpic/2010/07/world-human-population-graph_40382.jpg
“growing supplemental energy supplies,”
I suspect that in the long run, decades out or further, the bigger problem than energy will be getting rid of the waste heat.
If the blinking we see at Tabby’s star is cold alien megastructures, that may be how they solved the heat sink problem.
It does sound like getting rid of waste heat is already becoming a problem. I know that Tom Murphy has written about this problem too.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
This is his forecast of earth’s temperature, with a 2.3% annual rise in energy consumption–even “renewable” energy.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/tmp-1024×768.png
I am afraid I don’t see the situation as “suffering we have brought about on ourselves.” Humans are dissipative structures, and their economies are dissipative structures. They have to grow, or they die. Looking out for ourselves is essential to this process. Humans require supplemental energy and they require an economy to get this supplemental energy. There is really no option for humans to leave the resources alone. In fact, the whole idea of sustainability within this world is nonsense. (Strange as it may seem!)
In at least at some contexts (enough resources per capita, particularly), cooperation works better than competition at dissipating energy. This is one place where religious writings fit in. They also fit in, in how to best get along with our families, and with our close circle of relatives and friends.
I am not convinced that Revelation is important in terms of predicting anything. The whole idea that the good will be saved and the bad will be punished is such a simple idea, so tied to fixing the “wrongs” of this world, that I have a hard time believing it. It sounds a lot like, “What we would like to have happen.” Sort of like, “God has appointed me King. Listen to me.”
With regard to your first paragraph, I do agree that in order to grow we must use resources. However, in my thinking we are greedy and selfish and over use and misuse our resources and it is that which is the problem. I sincerely doubt you could prove that sustainability in this world is a nonsense. What the bible talks about is a personal relationship with Him, so in managing our life on earth we should be working together with Him, not independently. In this context, sustainability would be possible and it would be hard to prove otherwise.
With regard to the other two paragraphs, it is a huge misunderstanding of the bible to say that the good will be saved and the bad punished. Fundamental to the bible is that no one is good. Salvation is based on trust in Jesus, because He paid the penalty and springs from God’s grace. So our righteous status before God comes from the legal outcome which occurs when we accept Jesus because He paid the penalty. Thus in Christianity, cooperation springs from love and there is no concept there of gaining merit to earn salvation as underlying the motive to do good.
So I not only have a hard time believing as you do that fixing wrongs is tied to doing good for salvation, I totally reject it. The book of Revelation never teaches this. It is a complex book, but one of its key concepts is that we ‘reap what we sow” so that problems and sufferings arise as a natural consequence of wrong. Just as there are physical laws embedded in our universe which if we violate we die (e.g. jumping out from the 100th floor of a building), so there are spiritual laws which if we violate we die too. The book of Revelation lays out a historical flow of the consequence of our evil and the natural consequence of failing to follow the instructions God has clearly set out. What you show in your articles is how this is playing out historically right now. Lack of sustainability flows from selfishness and greed, not just the required need to grow; the problem is that we always overreach ourselves.
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There are movements afoot to create alternatives to the existing financial system which might enable some parts of society to continue after a major collapse when the main game will be over. Those populations will be the ones able to maintain some social cohesion and a level of communication with the past and within the society. Financial-innovation movements come from two perspectives. One, from the right, is the present IMF’s plan to issue global SDRs which can form a new global currency once too much destruction has disrupted national currency systems, and no political opposition exists. Another, from the left, looks to national central banks, neither private nor global banks, to issue new money, similar to QE, to be invested into the real economy to build climate mitigative and adaptive new human nurturance systems suitable to new conditions. Such systems could be either industrially or biologically based depending on what if any existing mechanical infrastructure and/or human labor resources survived to support new systems.
Collapses are necessary cleansing operations once systems become too complex. They usually lead to new beginnings not imaginable before the collapse.
I agree that collapses are necessary cleansing operations once systems become too complex. They usually lead to new beginnings not imaginable before the collapse.
The question in my mind is, “What new beginning is actually possible this time?” Clearly the new beginning must incorporate much less complexity. To me, both of the solutions you offer are far too complex to be sustainable for more than a year or two. Our problem now is that we cannot imagine what these less complex societies might look like. Given depletion of resources, climate problems, and radiation levels, it is not at all clear to me that such new less complex systems are possible.
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