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.
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http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINKBN1511A2
“China’s energy regulator has ordered 11 provinces to stop more than 100 coal-fired power projects, with a combined installed capacity of more than 100 gigawatts, its latest dramatic step to curb the use of fossil fuels in the world’s top energy market.”
The 7% decline in domestic coal production in China will of course be impossible to compensate through imports.
We hope China doesn’t run into too many debt default problems, with these closures.
Oh now I get it China is going green. And I thought they were just collapsing because of their under utilization of existing power generation. Silly me Greenpeace has it all figured out. They’re taking one for the gipper. How could we have gotten so wrong? The Chinese are all about saving the environment.
Perhaps the fact that they cannot breathe with all of the pollution is part of the problem. Scrubbers on coal plants, and not putting them in the middle of cities, would have helped. There are also way too many vehicles in very densely populated areas.
https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2017/01/19/zim-deflation-breaks-records
When Zimbabwe, the hyperinflation nation, is fighting deflation despite government stimulus, then something is really going down.
Interesting! The timing of the deflation is 2015 and 2016–corresponding to when other countries have deflation.
Here is an interesting image of the amounts of elements that are recoverable from smart-phones: (Note that all of the rare earth elements are recovered at rates less than 1%)
http://www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Recycling-Rates-of-Smartphone-Elements.png
Now read this: (And note that recovering rare earth’s from smart-phones is harder than recovering them from rocks)
https://ensia.com/features/why-rare-earth-recycling-is-rare-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/
This is another example of the problems with complexity.
The cost problem is closely related to the amount of energy (probably electricity) and human energy needed to recycle these small amounts. If recycling requires a subsidy, it probably means we are using more energy in the process than we really get back.
Very interesting, Greg.
Perhaps the best thing to do with old smart-phones is to toss them into a caldera of molten magma and let their components melt and diffuse into their surroundings. At least it would be a symbolic return to nature for all those rare earths.
Very good example Greg.
Recyclability is a very important part of our material cycles (rather: should have been).
Alas, almost not taken into account, or worse, made more and more difficult by the increasing use of products using more diverse and refined elements in quantities that render them irrecoverable.
The example of smartphones speaks volumes: we dig and refine a big number of depleting elements, then we use the device during a few years, and then throw it away. Most of the elements are lost because too hard to recycle.
In the past (decades ago, not so long) our devices were much more simple and used components that could be recovered more easily. Then we introduced more refined or exotic materials, like plastics, which made recyclability more and more difficult, impossible in some cases.
Maybe we should have introduced (instead of programmed obsolescence) some metric to measure the time needed by materials to return into natural or production cycles, either in units of time, or some mix of time-energy when some energy is required to recycle them.
But time is never taken into account, and this is not interesting for businesses, since the only part of the cycle they (and we) consider is the short period during which the device is used. What happens afterwards is an externality (= a cost) that reduces the immediate profit.
We just forgot that such a process is exponentially transforming the planet into a huge garbage dump.
I insisted on the time aspect of this issue, because recyclability is a big part in the availability of the raw-materials, i.e. If the speed of use of an element exceeds the speed of its renewal, then we’re sure to run out of it at some moment.
(substituability one-for-one is an exception, only a change of the complete technology really has an influence)
Recyclability is simply not economically feasible in financial terms. At least in OECD countries. It must be forced by regulation.
My friend working for the big brewery explained this process with bottles:
Collection network + Logistics + Cleaning + Material loss (during the steaming).
Every stage of this process is very energy (money) intensive, so finally it’s cheaper (in most cases) to order bottles from producer. Another paradox of our industrial civilization.
I’m so old i can remember getting tuppence (that was neanderthal money btw) on every bottle we found and returned to the shop
Somebody’s EROY’s have gone adrift somewhere
Yes Kesaro,
Similar things happened to me.
Externalities are a cost in the short term,
And a curse in the long term,
An exponentially growing curse.
A couple of thoughts:
“Recyclability is simply not economically feasible in financial terms.” :
In Nature, there’s (almost?) no finance, and (almost?) everything is 100% recycled relatively quickly.
So the problem is not finance, not even our economy, it’s the way we’re using the resources (rather: wasting), and creating materials that don’t have any proper cycle (metals, plastics, nuclear waste, …).
“At least in OECD countries. It must be forced by regulation.“:
– if regulation of that type is not universal, then it’s nowhere.
– if costly regulation must be imposed on top of a working process, to people who will spend time to find workarounds, then it has Zero chance to work as expected in the long run.
its an unfortunate side effect of our civilised existence, that if we want “stuff”, then it has to be packed in some way in order to be moved around
The only alternative is to make literally everything you want by your own hands, or my someone living close to you.
This why in previous eras there was little waste or recycling problem
When Im putting plastics in my recycling bin, I often think that they are just collecting fresh air.
That is unsustainable, but for now I guess its subsidised
Yes Norman,
Unfortunately it was necessary, because of competition.
And for same reason we always chose the biggest and immediate profit, over the long-term survival.
“In Nature, there’s (almost?) no finance”
There maybe no finance, but there is still energy scarcity. Money = Energy.
So the recyclability is still not viable concept, when you need more energy (money) to recycle comparing to cheap import from China.
Recyclability will truly start IMO, when there is real scarcity. People will use everything in order to survive. Having a lot of landfill sites looks like a good solution for the future. A lot of material to be recycled 🙂
Left to nature, ores don’t tend to recollect in veins, as far as I know.
I think the issue is that ores of high concentration are one of the “gifts” given to us. (At least that is what Ugo Bardi writes, in Extacted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet.) The only way the ores might return, is through the natural weathering of bedrock, but this only occurs at about 1/1000 inch per year, if I remember correctly. So effectively, there is no renewal of ores of high concentration. Once we have dispersed the ores of high concentration, we are well on the way to losing them together. Also, if I remember correctly, researcher Alica Valero said that the energy required for recollecting the dispersed ores was of the same order of magnitude as the energy required for extracting them in the first place.
“Left to nature, ores don’t tend to recollect in veins, as far as I know. ”
Actually, they do. The process is still going on at the spreading centers where the ocean crust rifts apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
“The [Red Sea] brines and associated muds are currently under investigation as a source of mineable precious and base metals.”
The process is slower than laying down coal though, so practically Gail is correct.
Underwater is pretty hard to deal with, also.
The latest idea is that all of the heavy metals in the Earth’s crust came from later meteorite bombardment after the planet had formed. The original supply at the time the planet coalesced all sank through to the core which means they are not available. So more supples in the future are not likely.
I hadn’t run into that view.
From the following concerning the JIT delivery of food the article states: “that things are not as stable as they appear on the surface:”. The article is poorly written but make a valid point that even in minor events the shelves of the grocery store are laid bare. What would happen in an economic/financial crisis that lasts weeks?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-19/empty-shelves-madness-america-minor-winter-storm-drove-people-panic-buying-food-and-
with some justification, it has been said that we are 9 meals from anarchy
Lets hope it’s anarchy, and not chaos.
Anarchy is the condition of a society, entity, group of people, or a single person that rejects hierarchy, and stresses horizontal organized societies that don’t encourage the sociopaths to rise to the top.
As Abbey pointed out:
:Society is like a stew, unless stirred frequently, the scum rises to the top”
“Society is like a stew, unless stirred frequently, the scum rises to the top” – I dunno seems like we are mostly scum now so, perhaps the creme will rise to the top. Maybe it is me getting older but it seems like dishonesty and corruption are spreading and taking over every aspect of our lives.
No one said late stage capitalism would be fun.
And to start 2017 off on a positive note looks like student loan defaults are running about 50%:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-19/us-government-caught-massively-fabricating-student-loan-default-data
Sort of amazing that the program has gone on this long, without people figuring out (or reporting) how bad the problem is.
A post that deals with economic recession in 2017
https://www.lombardiletter.com/5-signs-u-s-economic-collapse-2017/5229/
1. U.S. Unemployment Is Not 4.6%
There has been a lot of hype about how the unemployment rate has improved over the last number of years, from around 10% in early 2010 to 4.6% in November 2016. And frankly, halving the unemployment rate to just 4.6% is pretty incredible. Unfortunately, it isn’t really true
#2. U.S. Inflation Is Stretching American Households
Another reason to fear a U.S. economic collapse is inflation. In November, consumer prices rose for the fourth consecutive month and the consumer price index, which measures what Americans pay for everything.
For example, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Detroit, the five-year average for inflation is over 10%.
No matter where you live in America, inflation is seriously outpacing what you make–and, chances are, putting more and more Americans in debt
Total U.S. consumer debt in 2016 is expected to ring in at $12.5 trillion. This would trump the total debt of $12.37 trillion in December 2007, when the Great Recession started
More and more Americans are relying on part-time jobs, which pay poorly, and getting themselves further in debt. And the Federal Reserve is adding some fuel to fire in the form of rate hikes.
After years of artificially low interest rates, the Federal Reserve is starting to raise rates. While it’s high time the Fed raised rates. It waited too long, and the repercussions will create another U.S. economic crisis.Again, that’s assuming President-elect Donald J. Trump’s economic action plans will send the U.S. economy into overdrive. No matter how admirable, Trump’s plan to cut taxes and increase spending, when the national debt is already at $20.0 trillion, will be hard to achieve.
Weak economic growth, coupled with rising interest rates, could cobble the U.S. economy and send it back into a recession
5. U.S. Stocks Significantly Overvalued
U.S. benchmarks are trading at record levels and Wall Street couldn’t be happier. After a terrible start to 2016, equities rebounded with the S&P 500, finishing the year up nearly 10%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 13.5% in 2016, while the Russell 2000 Small Cap Index was up 20% in 2016.
Suppose, one needs to look at the whole picture to see the true situation…
Others, along with Gail, are worried also……🐱
Yeah, I mean the country is finished and there will be tragic consequences for it and the entire world.
Americans for their part are in complete denial. They simply can’t admit it’s happening so they drown themselves in drugs, fast food, entertainment.
Interesting system!
The only thing that keeps me going now is my desire to see the onset of collapse.
Thanks!
Today I couldn’t help myself, and entered the comment areas of https://www.theguardian.com
I wrote about matters as Gail typically would put them, and boy did I get answers. People really have a blind faith in technology and it’s ability to save us. Not hope, but good old blind faith. Overwhelming, it is.
Yes the general population is woefully uninformed. By design I suspect.
With apology to OFW readers. I know the following doesn’t fit here, but it’s my crude attempt to shift elements on the table, hoping to simplify them in some way…
“Here is an extremely rough draft of an idea:
I look to people with a fair to good background in science to say things about the web of life which I’m not in a position to say myself. Meanwhile, I’ll over generalize and say that humans can’t live if we destroy the web of life, however and wherever we see it as existing.
If, as GM asserts, we are losing some 200 species a day (and whether or not this is accurate, I’m sure the number is alarming), there ought not to be any question that the web of life, for us, is being unraveled. What is the main force behind this unraveling? The deforestation, along with the species and biological diversity loss it enables, is happening on the surface of the earth–what I refer to as land (and of course including bodies of water).
So how land is used should be of primary concern to humans re the unraveling of the web of life.
At the same time, it appears that humans have mushroomed in size of their population and that of their domestic animals; they are now displacing wild nature and wild creatures at a ratio of some 96 to 4. If this is not a catastrophe for the web of life, I don’t know what is. But yet we continue to value human life and human livestock over wild nature and wild creatures. I suppose we assume that our domesticated livestock is all we really need to survive. This is surely not the case, and knowledgeable people ought to point out–clearly and simply so the masses can understand–why this is not the case.
We cannot survive if all wildlife is destroyed. That is my firm stand, pending better information. To proceed logically from that stand, we can in no way value the perceived well being of human and domestic animals over the wilderness (the land). While acknowledging that I don’t know how to best address the issue of morality (which underlies my POV)) I would say that preference given to humans over wilderness is impractical and most likely immoral. A moral stance requires the deployment of any means necessary to stop the escalating destruction of wildlife and to work to restore it to a healthy state. That is more just than putting human welfare first.
Going even beyond that, I’ll say that the wellbeing of wilderness is its own justification, whether or not it harms humans–I am very convinced that it will be better for humans, bu that is not my point. Whether or not it’s better for humans is not the issue. If humans can’t grow up to the understanding of the web of life’s overwhelming primacy, they don’t deserve to live.
Meanwhile, I won’t wait for anyone to sanction my position. I don’t intend to try and prove to anyone that I’m right. I hold these truths to be self evident: All nature is created equal and has inalienable rights to life. This is a declaration of independence for the natural world.”
Unfortunately, the way the world system works isn’t the way you want it to work. The dissipative structure that is best able to use the energy resources at hand “wins.” That generally means humans win. We have been winning since hunter-gatherer days. If you have an infection, you will want an antibiotic, so that you, and not the bacteria, win. You will want enough food, even if that means that farmers need to take steps that essentially mean that other species cannot have the food that they need to grow. It is not simply a matter of looking after the polar bears. The issue is much broader. Unfortunately, this is the way dissipative systems, and nature, work.
Yes, I’m sure that if push came to shove, I’d likely favor myself and my dear ones over nature. I mostly want to clear up confusion in my own thinking. Not long ago, I’d have been somewhat unfavorable to the notion that killing hunters, their guides, enabling politicians, and people who were in the way by accident was “allowable” morally. But by a mostly logical process, I no longer entertain those opinions. I also think that if some very crazy animal rights dictator took over the world and could save wildlife only by wholesale slaughter of people, even perhaps if was among the latter, I’d favor the wildlife over the people. It feels like a liberating breakthrough in understanding, even if it has no bearing on actual reality (although I can’t see how it won’t). It just seems that philosophy and mindset have some bearing on outcomes too. 🙂
Hey Artleads! You have come to the same conclusion that I reached some time ago. Well, for me it was not a conclusion per se. It just seemed obvious on its face.
Hi Pintada, Glad to know I have at least one simpatico peer here, even if I’ve lagged behind. How do people respond when you share your thoughts?
Dear Artleads;
You said, “I also think that if some very crazy animal rights dictator took over the world and could save wildlife only by wholesale slaughter of people, even perhaps if was among the latter, I’d favor the wildlife over the people.”
While I totally agree, I don’t think I have shared that in person for many years. 🙂 My occasional requests to our lovely host to please hurry this collapse along as best she can, thus making us extinct and preserving some of the remaining diversity on the planet is a way of saying it though. Like discussing the inevitability of collapse, such things are generally best left to an anonymous on-line forum.
There are people that do agree completely with us, and it leads to a certain point of view that is not very popular. I am of course thinking of Derrick Jensen, and his group “Deep Green Resistance”. This link ( https://deepgreenresistance.org/en/deep-green-resistance-strategy/decisive-ecological-warfare ) will explain just how much they agree and why. Mr. Jensen would love to be your “crazy animal rights dictator”. I recommend his book with the same title also. Actually, the reasons I still occasionally cast my shadow on our fair hosts site is that: 1. I was unable to think of a target that would really matter, and; 2. I probably wouldn’t have the balls to take that target out even if there was one.
There are a certain class of drugs that gives one the unalterable belief that we are one with the universe (psilocybin, DMT, ecstasy, and to a lesser extent LSD and cannabis). My last psilocybin experience nearly made a vegetarian of me! Seriously though, there are ways to rationalize eating meat while being able to see myself in and/or identify with the average cow, or pig, or chicken. The human mind is very flexible.
Before my first psilocybin experience, I had been practicing Zen Buddhism for several decades. If you are familiar with Zen, you know of the challenge given to young monks by the master of the school to, “Bring me the boat you see floating on the river.” The correct answer is, “I am here.”. I never reached a point where i could literally conceive of myself as one with the universe through meditation. With psilocybin though …
Sincerely,
Pintada
“There are people that do agree completely with us”
No kidding.
I suspect that people who want the human race to go extinct have not thought it through. If that happens before humans and their evolutionary offspring (AIs) get life off the planet and well established out in the universe then the consequence of humans going extinct are likely to be the end of *all* life originating on this planet.
Mind you, I expect humans to go biologically extinct by transcending/uploading/whatever. Ray Kurzweil makes a case this will happen before the end of this century. But this is very different from wars/famines/epidemics destroying civilization and gives the biosphere a chance of surviving when the Earth becomes a post biological planet.
Oh, Ted K has escaped? Great!
Pintada,
I’ve listened to some of Jensen’s long talks and I read a great deal about Zen and Taoism in my art school days.
I believe my thoughts are a little different from Jensen’s in what program I would propose. Everything depends on what happens to the land. Land use/design/planning is what we must watch. What we want for the long haul must either be built in or (more likely) excluded from the allowable uses of land. If you don’t have roads, there are many unwanted activities which are prohibited automatically. For instance, real estate development and habitat preservation don’t go together.
The following is what I’ve more or less said here already; I just arranged it a little differently to post somewhere else. It’s not really about land use, but maybe attempting to tackle morality. 🙂
DECLARING INDEPENDENCE FOR THE NATURAL WORLD
Humans have mushroomed in size of population and that of their domestic animals; they now displace wild nature and wild creatures at a ratio of some 96 to 4. If this is not a catastrophe for the web of life, I don’t know what is. But yet we continue to value human life and human livestock over wild nature and wild creatures. I suppose we assume that our domesticated livestock is all we really need to survive. This is surely not the case, and knowledgeable people ought to point out–clearly and simply so the masses can understand–why this is not the case.
It can’t be good for humans if all wildlife is destroyed (although humans are not my concern right now). To proceed logically from that stand, we can in no way value the perceived well being of human and domestic animals over the wilderness (the land). While acknowledging that I don’t know how to best address the issue of morality (which underlies my POV) I would say that preference given to humans over wilderness is impractical and most likely immoral. A moral stance requires the deployment of any means necessary to stop the escalating destruction of wildlife and to work to restore it to a healthy state. That is more just than putting human welfare first.
Going even beyond that, I’ll say that the well being of wilderness is its own justification, whether or not it harms humans (I am very convinced that it will be better for humans, but that is not my point). Whether or not it’s better for humans is not the issue. If humans can’t grow up to the understanding of the web of life’s overwhelming primacy, they don’t deserve to live.
Not long ago, I’d have viewed unfavorably the notion that killing poachers, hunters, their guides, their enabling politicians, and people who get in the way by accident, was “allowable” morally. But by a mostly logical process, I no longer entertain those misgivings. I also think that if some very crazy animal rights dictator took over the world and could save wildlife only by wholesale slaughter of people, even perhaps if I was among the latter, I’d (conceptually) favor the wildlife over the people. It feels like a liberating breakthrough in understanding, even if it has no bearing on actual reality (although I can’t see how it wouldn’t).
(Borrowing from the US Declaration of Independence) I hold these truths to be self evident: All nature is created equal and has inalienable rights to life, liberty and habitat. This is a declaration of independence for the natural world.
Dear hkeithhenson;
Keith said, “I suspect that people who want the human race to go extinct have not thought it through. If that happens before humans and their evolutionary offspring (AIs) get life off the planet and well established out in the universe then the consequence of humans going extinct are likely to be the end of *all* life originating on this planet.”
Ridiculous. And, you have completely missed Artleads point. His point is that we are not the most important species on the planet, just one of millions of species EACH OF WHICH have the same right to exist as homo sapiens.
Your comment is exactly the type of human-centric idiocy that Kurzweil and crew push all the time. They imply that humans, and the crap that we build (AI for example) are the only life on the planet (and they certainly imply that humanity is the most important form of life). In fact, no matter what humans do, there will be life long after we are gone. Even if the crash doesn’t happen in time to save any animal life on the surface of the planet, even if there is all-out nuclear war, there will be life remaining, and it will flourish once we start leaving it alone.
What about deep ocean tube worms? Those forms of life may have been related to the original forms on the planet, and once there is no interference from humanity, they can evolve to reclaim the planet in only a few million years.
What about algae? What about fungi? What about lichens? Who hasn’t thought it through?
If humanity wasn’t so prone to hubris, and the pervasive idea that humans are somehow special from which that completely inappropriate hubris comes, we would not be in this predicament.
A main catechism in the singularitarian faith is the following:
“How will the AI’s behave?”
“Obviously, AI will be kind, and respectful of the natural world, and to all other species that are encountered because the AIs will follow the lead of their creator, humanity.”
Talk about not thinking things through!
right now—a tubeworm doing an acceptance speech on the front of the white house seems a big improvement
“Ridiculous.”
I am not entirely sure how to respond. Your post has a religious flavor to it. It’s usually a waste of electrons to quote science in such discussions. But I will try, it’s a subject I have written about passionately for 30 years. https://www.hackcanada.com/blackcrawl/elctrnic/megascal.txt It’s a few paragraphs before: “(You want to take good care of your star, otherwise it gets all dark and
icky.)”
The science is here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Main_sequence
“It is estimated that the Sun has become 30% brighter in the last 4.5 billion years.[120] At present, it is increasing in brightness by about 1% every 100 million years.”
Also see the graph in the next section which can also be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth#Solar_evolution
Life has been around for about 4 B years. Without engineering works on a huge scale, the rising output of the Sun will end it perhaps a billion years from now. I.e., we are ~80% through the span of life on Earth.
“What about algae? What about fungi? What about lichens?”
When the Sun heats the Earth hot enough, it will be like that old Tom Lehrer song:
“There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,”
“If humanity wasn’t so prone to hubris, and the pervasive idea that humans are somehow special from which that completely inappropriate hubris comes, we would not be in this predicament.”
I don’t think so. Human hubris is not up to adjusting the thermostat on the Sun. At least not yet.
But in one way, we are special. There is no other species (yet) that might get around the rising output of the Sun ending Earth life.
Finally:
“How will the AI’s behave?”
“Obviously, AI will be kind, and respectful of the natural world, and to all other species that are encountered because the AIs will follow the lead of their creator, humanity.
Talk about not thinking things through!”
I assure you that there are people thinking about this. Try here: https://intelligence.org/
I have at times contributed a little. Particularly that using evolved humans brains as models to build AIs is really dangerous because we have conditional behaviors worked into our brains over evolutionary time. Wars with AIs or between them is not advisable.
” …even perhaps (or theoretically) if I was among the latter…”
Favoring nature over humans is a relatively recent concept, because for most of our species’ history, our power to harm nature was very limited and nature’s power to harm us was awesome.
Also,I think people generally have become much more sensitized about cruelty since we developed industrial society and the accompanying communications media. Nature is often red in tooth and claw. The things wild animals and even plants do to each other can look to us extremely cruel. We want to be kind to each other and to the natural world. But arguably, if our goal was to end cruelty and suffering, it would be kinder to eliminate all life on Earth by sterilizing the planet quickly, for instance by making the Sun “go nova”.
I’m not advocating this strategy, I just want to point out that it is a logical endpoint for those opposed to cruelty, because cruelty—or what seems to humans to be cruel—is hard wired into nature. We sometimes sidestep this inconvenient truth by differentiating between intentional cruelty performed by humans and instinctive cruelty that occurs in nature. But both are causes of pain and suffering for those poor struggling lifeforms on the receiving end.
TG, I’m new to these musings, but I don’t think it has to do with avoiding cruelty. I’m more responding to a gross imbalance that is not in long term human interest. So this part of your address is most relevant:
“Favoring nature over humans is a relatively recent concept, because for most of our species’ history, our power to harm nature was very limited and nature’s power to harm us was awesome.” There is a REASON why we formerly favored humans. We need to realize that this reason no longer applies.
Let’s assume that we don’t need to lose all our skills in a post industrial-capitalist world. We would have overwhelming ability to protect ourselves from wilderness that is only at 4% of the biological web compared to our 96. Nevertheless, (conceptually) it’s important to now reverse the old trend. It is likely to be healthier for us, but it doesn’t matter if it isn’t. I’m not the only one who feels this way. And more people are likely to follow suit.
I have the weird idea that being clear what one believes makes a difference. 🙂
nature just does what it has to do to sustain its overall living ecosystem
humankind is a young upstart in the neighbourhood, and new to the survival business. If we can organise ourselves in a way that fits with nature’s working principles, we will be allowed to keep our tenancy.
If we continue to be disruptive neighbours, you can be certain that we will be evicted
I agree with both of you.
We do have to reverse the trend of us dominating the rest of nature and enslaving so much of it to our economic system. This isn’t a sustainable arrangement by any means and it will definitely end in tears for us.
This is something we tend to forget:
Yes, very well stated!
Ha one way to create heat is to get people jumping up and down I suppose!
We may have to deal with small groups who are interested and willing to listen. I will be talking to an actuarial group in March, and an EU associated group in Brussels in April.
Your gut bacteria predates appearance of humans, genetic study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/21/your-gut-bacteria-predates-appearance-of-humans-genetic-study-finds
Natural selection making ‘education genes’ rarer, says Icelandic study
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-selection-making-education-genes-rarer-says-icelandic-study
Whats the problem? The AI robots will do all the work.
That is why it is cheaper and better to have a pet than a child. When we move back to animal level of IQ, there is no need to propagate degenerated human genome. Humans have no fur, no feathers, so they are very energy demanding animals.
I can definitely see the pattern among my relatives (who are generally highly educated) of late marriages and few children. I don’t have any grandchildren myself. This pattern tends to weight the next generation toward those who are less educated (although maybe not any less bright).
There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first—the Orwellian—culture becomes a prison. In the second—the Huxleyan—culture becomes a burlesque. No one needs to be reminded that our world is now marred by many prison-cultures…. it makes little difference if our wardens are inspired by right- or left-wing ideologies. The gates of the prison are equally impenetrable, surveillance equally rigorous, icon-worship pervasive…. Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours…. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”— Professor Neil Postman
Donald Trump no longer needs to launch Trump TV.
He’s already the star of his own political reality show.
Americans have a voracious appetite for TV entertainment, and the Trump reality show—guest starring outraged Democrats with a newly awakened conscience for immigrants and the poor, power-hungry Republicans eager to take advantage of their return to power, and a hodgepodge of other special interest groups with dubious motives—feeds that appetite for titillating, soap opera drama.
After all, who needs the insults, narcissism and power plays that are hallmarks of reality shows such as Celebrity Apprentice or Keeping Up with the Kardashians when you can have all that and more delivered up by the likes of Donald Trump and his cohorts?
Yet as John Lennon reminds us, “nothing is real,” especially not in the world of politics.
Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.
Indeed, Donald Trump may be the smartest move yet by the powers-that-be to keep the citizenry divided and at each other’s throats, because as long as we’re busy fighting each other, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.
This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.
It allows us to be distracted, entertained, occasionally a little bit outraged but overall largely uninvolved, content to remain in the viewer’s seat.
The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.
Reality and fiction merge as everything around us becomes entertainment fodder.
Read it All:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/nothing_is_real_when_reality_tv_programming_masquerades_as_politics
Trump’s appointments are all establishment players.
Obama played the liberals.
Trump is about to play Joe Six Pack.
They both take their orders from the same people.
http://www.acting-man.com/blog/media/2015/02/FedPrinting.jpg
I like your post, JG. It’s general enough to make me feel less bad about what I posted today on the following page. 🙂 We have to figure out where to center our thoughts.
Hi Eddy,
Hows TEOTWP organizing coming along?
Any new good whiskeys in that shipping container of yours?
You are right about fiction and reality merging. We will see how things play out with the new administration.
Lots of chatter in the media now about Trump (the automatic earth), Germany, Brexit, Russia, the Deep State (kunstler) etc.
I find it hard to say what’s noise and what’s not, but it’s clear lots of people are in confusion. This time including “The Davos crowd”.
What is clear is that we’re at peak (or beyond) now. Certainly per capita, and that barring an energy miracle, the trend is down pretty much forever. That can only have one end state. 0.
We don’t really know when we’ll be at 0, and actually someone said that you won’t know because well before we won’t know what’s going on at other parts of the world.
This reduction in energy is manageable at first because we had such enormous surplus. Think V8’s and cars with wings… These days cabs in the US have gone from Crown Victoria to Prius.
And there is all kinds of talk about Uber, which is kind of a movement to not have to pay the full costs of cabs IMO – and to reduce complexity perhaps.
The fall of EU, if it happens, is also a reduction in complexity. The bureaucracy associated with membership is of course enormous, and so are the costs.
But in general the move will be towards simpler societies, and we will find out the hard way which of the “organizations” were the weakest. My guess is that US mil organizations and the intel world are much stronger than anticipated and won’t buckle just because Trump takes office.
But time will tell.
BTW, the sea ice situation is pretty bad now and this will have an impact as the albedo changes. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
I think in the US case in particular, the core is massively supported by both international support and domestic labor support.
So the question is when do foreigners stop supporting America (the early signs are there) and when do people in America itself give up (the early signs are there, but one thing is for sure…Americans work and consume like mad).
This is basically what civilization is. It was this way thousands of years ago, it is this way now, it will be this way during the collapse.
-Men compete for access to women
-Women mate with dominant men
-The remainder of the people work for the dominant men, for whatever the dominant men are willing to give them
-During times of excess, everybody is well taken care of and happy, and during times of lack, the dominant men take what they can and send everybody else to war and slavery
That’s it. All of history, all of human culture can basically be reduced to that.
Oh, I think you confuse humans with lions. Most men get to procreate both now and before, if they can stay alive long enough.
Men compete for the best women and the women select the best men, the future will tell what is what.
“-Women mate with dominant men”
I must know unusual women, since many of the ones I know are not interested in mating with dominant men, and are instead quite opposed to them.
the ‘dominant man’ thing is just a charade that women allow men to perform. An ego massage if you like, while they get on with running things.
Remember what Conan said when asked what is best in life? “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” He was spreading his genes come hell or high water.. Perfectly prepared doomster’-)
i preferred conans line when he walks into the bar and says
i vant your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle
cracks me and the missis up every time
Possibly true, too.
i daresay you have inside information on that
There is a certain amount of truth to what you are saying. One article I read not long ago said that the number of men who are fathers of children is far smaller than the number of women who are mothers of children.
if we are returning to droit de seigneur, i’m all for that
http://www.snopes.com/weddings/customs/droit.asp
As far as houses are concernred, perhaps lack of permanence may be more practical in the future post BAU, especially if one needs to be mobile..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CKG2LKYCb6g
Very sensible and efficient. The trip to the outhouse through the snow might be challenging at night, however.
Yes, I agree Artleads, just view it as a weeding out process that will select those with the necessary vitality to survive.
Actually, watched a program popular here on DYI channel cable TV called “Tiny House Nation”
http://www.fyi.tv/shows/tiny-house-nation
Most on placed on a trailer bed and measure no more than 10 by 20 or 30 feet!
That is for 2_people and includes bath with a toilet/shower. Advantage can be relocated .
For those wanting a wooded slab yurt to to
http://www.yurtinfo.org/the-yurt-foundation
Being under the radar probably is a good tactic when things fall apart.
Hi Jeremy,
My wife found Tiny House Nation a couple or so years ago. It was available on Direct TV (which we have) but has recently been removed.
I see things like these as a thousand baby steps–examples that test to see what will really work in different places and in more reliable ways. The TIny House building process wasted a shitload of valuable materials. They don’t seem to address the deforestation behind this profligacy. 🙂 They use a lot of energy for those sophisticated power tools. But I see it as all good if wildly imperfect examples are gradually changing minds. My wildly imperfect two pennies…
Artleads, Yes, I agree in some regards….spending $50,OOO USD for a 10 by 20 dwelling is over the top. But to be fair, the program is really to foster ideas and entertain.
I would approach it differently…maybe something like this…
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Grounds-for-Eviction-A-Nantucket-hermit-built-a-2954161.php
Nantucket, Mass. — Tucked away in an island wilderness of bayberry bushes and pine trees, Thomas Johnson’s front door lies hidden beneath a mat of twigs and leaves.
Brushing aside the natural camouflage, he opens a wooden hatch and descends a ladder to the stone floor of his home, eight feet below. There, three paneled rooms contain a bed, stove, pantry and the dreams of a latter-day Thoreau who went to the woods to soothe his soul.
For a decade, Johnson, 38, has lived underground on this land — owned by the Boy Scouts — amid the tony charms of Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod where others pay a fortune for beachside mansions
The structure, wrapped in a rubber membrane and layers of insulation, stays dry and warm. Two inches of topsoil and sand cover the roof. There is no running water, electricity or piped-in gas; a chemical toilet takes the place of modern plumbing.
The main room measures 8 feet by 8 feet. Johnson cooks on a small stone stove built atop a hibachi. He sleeps on a day bunk or a queen-size bed that pulls down, loft-style, from the ceiling, and he showers in the kitchen using a plastic tube attached to a water jug. Transom windows in dug- out spaces, similar to those in basements, provide light and ventilation.
“I can hear the heartbeat of the island here,” Johnson told the Boston Globe.
Johnson has built homes for himself in the sky and in the earth for more than two decades, including a stone dwelling in the Catskills and a treehouse in Hawaii. A second Nantucket home, a log cabin, recently was discovered on public land and may be dismantled.
Publicity apparently forced the hand of Nantucket officials, who were otherwise inclined to let Johnson stay, and of the Boy Scouts, now seeking to evict a man whose outdoor skills could easily merit an Eagle Scout badge.
Basicly, most of the materials came from the town dump!
Another dwelling was later found hidden in thicket bush …a wicker style Hut by Tom Johnson…now on display.
But the underground dwelling wasn’t the only structure Johnson built for himself on Nantucket. The wicker hut on Land Bank property off Almanac Pond Road was another of his creations. No one is sure how long it had been there or when he abandoned it, but it had all the hallmarks of Johnson’s workmanship: the hut was camouflaged, intricately built, and even featured a poured foundation, tile floor and a chimney. Its door was a one-way glass mirror.
Massachusetts Audubon Society plant ecologist Ernie Steinaur recently stumbled upon the hut while walking through the Land Bank’s Stump Pond property, setting the wheels in motion to remove the structure from conservation land to a new home.
http://www.ack.net/undergroundtom020912.html
Too bad he lost his house(s), although the causal publicity will open minds. The wicker-basket house is a work of art.
Keep the toilet seat inside the house, near the heater.
Chinese leaders say they are working to roll back production and shutter unprofitable and debt-laden producers that are a drag on China’s economy itself. But central government officials openly acknowledge that their orders often encounter political resistance amid worries about unemployment and social stability.
Xu said cutting production capacity of steel by 45 million tons and coal by 250 million tons in 2016 affected the jobs of 800,000 steelworkers and miners, with the government resettling 700,000 of them in new jobs by the end of last year.
“This year’s task will be more arduous but we will adhere to the main line,” he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-pledges-cuts-excess-steel-coal-production-44673129
Wow! Looks like recession!
The global decline in coal production since 2013.
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/#coal-and-lignite-production.html
The global decline in coal is really big news. Pundits have been saying for years that coal will not peak for decades in the future. I have my doubts about those decades in the future. I don’t see anything on the horizon to turn coal production around. These are not good signs for a growing economy.
I am saying pretty much the same thing in my post.
http://www.manufacturing.net/blog/2017/01/how-10-minute-conversation-machine-saved-12-million
Part of the uncertainly about the future is how much AI, like this example, might change things.
You definitely don’t want large rotating machines (like the one below) to fail unexpectedly.
http://www.manufacturing.net/blog/2017/01/how-10-minute-conversation-machine-saved-12-million
If the safe operating life of such machines can be pushed out by 25 or 50% it will have serious economic effects. In the case of the RusHydro, the failure cost them upwards of half a billion dollars.
Interesting. Of course, if there is a dependency on something like the electrical grid for input, it could cause a big problem if it is out.
Sorry, second URL is wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident
BP shows 2014 world coal production slightly ahead of 2013. But there are a lot of countries whose production has been declining for a very long time.
If China is closing down its uneconomic coal mines and cutting production by 250 million tons a year, or 7% of total production in China and compensates that decline through higher imports of coal, which causes the coal price to rise and with that Chinese industrial production costs to rise… then hopefully there is a market for expensive Chinese goods.
I just realized that China isn’t just the by far largest producer of coal, it is also the by far largest consumer of coal and therefor controls the coal price through both production and consumption… but not the global market for its industrial production ?
I think if people knew the main source of energy that has been driving the global economy since the latter part of the 1990’s they would be shocked. China and coal have been the main drivers of the global economy through much of the late nineties up through today. So much for that “green economy”.
The amount of coal that China imports is tiny compared to the total it uses. Even at that, it is (or recently has been) the world’s largest coal importer, based on my discussion with researchers in China, working with Chinese data.
It is hard to believe that imports could increase enough to compensate for a 7% decline in Chinese coal production. Also, most of the time, I would expect that imports would move in the same direction as production.
This is a chart of China’s coal imports, exports, and consumption based on BP data through 2015.
Russian companies remained profitable and free cash flow positive in 2015-16. Hence, it made sense for them to maximize revenues, earnings and cashflows thru higher volumes.
I am sure the government needed at least some taxes too.
https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/9557-The-end-is-near-for-China-s-zombie-coal-mines
In early 2016 most coal firms were suffering losses, particularly the SOEs, which have larger work forces. Some coal firms hadn’t been able to pay wages for months, many were facing debt crises or even closure. The government saw that the coal sector was a risk to the entire economy and took decisive action, removing surplus capacity.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN14X0AZ
China’s coal imports dipped slightly in December from the previous month but were still up more than 50 percent from a year ago at 26.84 million tonnes, official customs data showed on Friday.
For 2016, China’s coal imports rose 25.2 percent from a year earlier to 255.5 million tonnes, reflecting China’s campaign to reduce overcapacity in the domestic coal sector.
Thanks for the link.
I thought this was a little humorous, “China’s efforts to clean up overcapacity unexpectedly triggered a rally in domestic coal prices as well as international coal prices.”
Why was a rally in coal prices unexpected? Isn’t this exactly what oil producers are trying to do, to get a rally in oil prices?
Yes. China controls the price of coal today. China produces half of the global output ?
BP says that China has been producing about 48% of total output, though 2015. This is likely to decline in 2016.
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I’m using another poster’s words–something I copied a longish time ago–I forget whose. Do I have it right about Tainter and overcomplexity?
I think there is a tendency for a civilization with depleted energy supply to add complexity as a solution to the shortfall. According to Tainter, diminishing returns threaten not only the availability of cheap energy to run our complex global system, but even the system’s ability to innovate given increased complexity. Tainter points to something he calls a ‘scientific doomsday’– “the end of times for the scientific endeavor, where there will be no more great discoveries, no more great innovations, having already picked all the low-hanging fruit, all the easy answers to our questions.”
I suppose he means that overcomplexity can only go so far before it loses effectiveness?
I guess Gail tried to make that link over complexity ~= ceiling of efficiency.
There are some practical down to earth examples, how this works, e.g. lets look at modern engines. Not long ago late 1980s to ~early/mid 1990s you can bet your life on German diesel engine, especially of the 2-3L displacement category, it just ran and ran, 1-2M km lifetime measured in decades no problemo.
Nowadays and speaking about the whole industry? Due to over-legislation and “push for efficiency” apart from downsizing bellow 2L, several additional loops and circuits had to be introduced. Namely “EGR” which stands for exhaust gas re-circulation, basically a loop feeding raw exhaust products (sooth) back again into the combustion. And there are also cumbersome particulate filters, not mentioning ~20x sensors all over constantly feeding the digital unit orchestrating all this over complex ballet. Last but not least, some important parts of the engine are now produced from “plastic” like intake manifold, lolz.
The result? Seemingly better/marginal fuel consumption. But as you might have guessed from the story so far, the rest of properties are shot, it’s a complete disaster. The engine needs very short periods of lubricant exchanges, the engine is hardly expected to perform beyond say 100-200K km driven, needs multitude of expensive replacement parts early on, often rather replacement of complete sets of parts are needed.
In summary, you gained some on fuel efficiency yes. But the entire costs are very different, for pushing longevity you have to literally babysit these machines, exchange oil frequently, also frequently disassemble the EGR loop and clean the sooth fill up, even blockages of rocks like material. The particulates filter has issues too, sensors all over go bust, and so on.. Obviously, only tiny minority of owners is aware and does that servicing care properly, which is obviously very taxing on money and time, not envisioned before the purchase of the machine. In any case the obsolescence of the carz increased, have to be replaced in shorter intervals for new great models. The old wrecks are pushed out of sight into 2.5/3rd world countries.
Simply, you can’t cheat mother nature, in the end it backfires on you.
Yes and not to mention of course the huge amounts of parts, mechanics, dealerships etc. needed to constantly keep cars on the road. And cars, of course, can get into an accident any time, need gas to run, etc.
Cars are entropy in motion. I think that Americans have two large sinkholes – their homes and cars. Cars of course depreciate the moment you buy them, but financial trickery allows the magic of ever increasing home prices which allow Americans to think of homes as an investment, rather than as shelter which needs constant upkeep.
It is much easier to build a home that will last than a car that will last. Homes today are poor investments due to crappy building materials. If a person were careful (and wealthy) one could build a home that would last hundreds of years with very little up-keep. But, it would be costly.
Hopefully, I will show here my design soon. It will be based on exactly these requirements. Durability + Low maintenance costs + Autonomous + Functionality.
Not very flexible either.
I think that there are some homes made from stone in Europe that are hundreds of years old.
in uk we have cruck houses
these are made by taking a single mature oak tree with a suitable curve on the trunk, cutting it lengthways two ways, giving 4 curved oak posts, these form the corners of the cottage then the walls are filled with oak pieces and filled with wattle and daub with a thatched roof
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cruck+houses+uk&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW4f7PxszRAhXHD8AKHWfMAPYQ7AkINw&biw=1645&bih=925
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/peasant-houses-in-midland-england.htm
the thatch needs replacement every so often but there’s several around here that were built originally around 13/1400
Yes, real masonry buildings can last a very very long time. There are some masonry structures from the era of the Roman Empire that as somewhat still standing today.
The repairman for my automatic clothes washer said that the new efficient ones (such as the one I have) tend to need repairs a lot more frequently than the old inefficient ones.
In a world with fraying international relationships, getting needed spare parts is likely to be an increasing problem.
Right! As we add complexity, we need more and more specialization and more and more capital goods. This creates greater and greater wealth disparity, as the owners of the capital goods and those with specialized training get a bigger share of the total. More government is also needed for the more complex society. As a result, even when complexity leads to greater energy availability, very little of it actually gets back to the non-elite workers. Their pay falls too low, for them to afford the output of the economy.
There seems to be an illusion in the general population that technology and complexity will lead to a way to literally create energy. The reality seems to be that technology and complexity drain energy reserves from the planet and release the waste heat to space.
I even see some quoting the actual energy output of the sun and compare that to human energy use. What point that serves is beyond me. We humans could never even use anywhere even close to the energy output of the sun without literally turning our lovely little Earth into a molten blob of lava.
Actions have consequences. I believe Gail is right in that we will see these consequence reflected in the general economy more and more until some critical point is reached where the financial system collapses.
The Non Centralized City–somewhat specialized, relatively self-sufficient clusters that informally traded among themselves. There were even nomadic cities more to the north, and they used materials at hand to build…
Ancient Middle Niger
The cities of West Africa’s Middle Niger, only recently brought to the
world’s attention, make us rethink the ‘‘whys’’ and the ‘‘wheres’’ of ancient
urbanism. These cities present the archaeologist with something of a
novelty: a non-nucleated, clustered city-plan with no centralized, statefocused
power. Ancient Middle Niger explores the emergence of these
cities in the first millennium BC and the evolution of their hinterlands
from the perspective of the self-organized landscape.
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805210/12430/frontmatter/9780521012430_frontmatter.pdf
———————–
SATELLITE URBANISM: WEST AFRICA
Numerous metropolitan centres emerged in West Africa
in regions south of the Sahara. One of the most important
of these was Jenne-Jeno, a grouping of urban settlements
established along the inner Niger River floodplain of Mali,
within a few kilometres of Jenne (Djenne). Roderick McIntosh
describes Jenne-Jeno as a composite or clustered city marked
by the aggregation of semi-specialized settlements with
coordinated activities.6 The excellent rice-farming conditions,
good pasturage and adjacent Niger River communication
were central to Jenne-Jeno’s development in the 3rd century
BCE, after herding populations moved there during the Sahara
desiccation that began around 1000 BCE.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/blier/files/blier.1_african_metropolitan_architecture_ed._adjaye_2012_pdf_edited_copy.pdf
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“Instead, we need to work out, and start living out, the philosophy and the ethic of the final world, now. It is a world in which the original spirituality of the ‘inner life’ is replaced by a new religion of ‘self-outing’ and putting on a ‘good show’ – the religion of ‘solar’ generosity that Cupitt attributes to the original Jesus.”
I’ll take putting on a good show.” Self outing isn’t too bad either.
Quote was from Don Cupitt (sp)
I enjoy working out, lifting weights, etc. I’ve heard that Krugman hits the gym on a regular basis. Where am I going with this? Um, nowhere. I’m hoping a higher power will volunteer the punch line on this one.
” 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.”
Wishful thinking. You have trespassed the Occam’ s principle.
This is why things will never collapse all at once, but merely parts at a time.
Will somebody show up to work, and accept any deprivation, and any hours, as long as he or she gets a paycheck?
The answer is yes. You people need to stop thinking like scientists, and start thinking like politicians and capitalists, the people who control the game.
“Will somebody show up to work, and accept any deprivation, and any hours, as long as he or she gets a paycheck?” – We are there already! We have passed that point after the first financial crash in 2008. We are now entering the stage of global contagion. Growth is over. The global financial system is becoming increasingly unstable. The financial system is the glue that holds everything together and we are primed to see a global financial collapse much worse than 2008. When the financial system finally collapses, there will be no paychecks.
Dolph is at it again. True, we have not seen nothing yet, wake me up, when people (for main income) have to !walk! daily to work place (if they are lucky) in all weather seasons and conditions ~15km route and back, they bath in sort of warm water (wood/coal boiler) only once in a week, and above all that have to manage various other self sufficient caloric/vitamin intake strategies due to spotty food delivery rationing to somehow get by at all. It’s not impossible to envision such reality in 2-3decades from now across most of the top industrialized countries of today for large (perhaps even majority) parts of their society..
By then is it collapse proper yet? It depends, in terms of formerly secured living standards it is certainly. However is this the final blow, the last downward step, not by a long shot..
Hmm. Sounds like the Road to Serfdom. Strange how all the arrows point in the same direction. Keynes Hayek Marx. Without their conscience awareness. All roads lead to socialism. Of course it’s only a symptom of a greater problem but it’s enough to keep the masses entertained.
Prov24:11 Rescue those who are being taken away to death,And hold back those staggering to the slaughter.
Tempting to treat “Love”, “Life”, or “Language” itself, as divine. And although Don Cupitt warns us against bowing to any kind of other-worldly God, I am at least tempted to imagine Language, as it runs everywhere brightly constructing our world for us, as divine. Could this be an example of the the sort of thing Gail might mean when she waits for divinity, albeit in this case completely immanent and secular, of “Language”?
Hmmm. Language as divine. What place do we give to ‘feeling good’ as divine? Or ‘impulse’ as divine?
Language is certainly an important development, in keeping our world together. Ancient Hebrew had many fewer words that we have today, making translations difficult, or perhaps more nuanced. We don’t think about languages evolving, but of course they do.
Debt and financial systems are another important development.
The Slovak regulatory authority decided to raise the fees for the distribution. They form more than one third of the price of the natural gas in Slovakia.
http://finweb.hnonline.sk/ekonomika/892669-tisice-domacnosti-zaplatia-za-plyn-viac-pre-poplatky
So, despite the lower natural gas prices, the distribution fees, reflecting the higher costs of the distributors, will cause higher price of the natural gas for the home consumers who use natural gas for heating.
In the wake of the recent polar weather in Europe, the institutions financed by state face too high bills for heating. There was a case of one school in the northern Slovakia mentioned in the Slovak media, that could not afford sufficient heating of its buildings due to the high natural gas consumption during the recent arctic cold period and had to leave the students temporarily at home.
I have run into similar situations elsewhere. When the oil price dropped low, China raised its taxes to make up the difference. I am sure there were other places where similar situations took place.
Like Sweden
Should be, of course, “January 17th, 2017”. But maybe, as Derrida might say, the text, perhaps language itself, is prescient.
Derrida. I’d like to learn more abpot him. There’s some architect that he likes a lot, but I forget who.
In light of Gail’s analysis, logically concluding imminent fast collapse, how about the following paraphrase based on a famous quote from Homer’s Iliad:
“Any moment might be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re transient:
Everything is continuously changing
[and contingent!].
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
(Note the phrase “transient: everything is continuously changing” and “[and contingent!]”. In most, if not all, translations the Attic Greek is usually translated as “doomed”. In this paraphrase, I am following Don Cupitt’s (http://www.doncupitt.com/don-cupitt ) practice of “Solar Living”, to which I add “Lunar and Stellar”. Thus I am following Cupitt’s overarching West with East by adding contingency to the Buddhist practices of Transience and the Emptiness of Emptiness (Nāgārjuna, నాగార్జున, c. 150 – c. 250 CE).
Mark C. Williams, January 17, 2019
Transient is probably a better word than “doomed.”
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China’s Oil Collapse
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-17/china-s-inescapable-oil-slide-is-a-record-breaking-gift-to-opec
It certainly looks like China has joined the growing ranks of nations that are past peak oil production.
Price determines how much oil can be extracted. China was has been pushing limits of extraction for a long time. This is a link to the Chinese coal paper that was published earlier this year that I coauthored.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ke-wang-an-oil-production-forecast-for-china-considering-economic-limits.pdf
The last man on the Moon, the US-born citizen whose ancestors were of the Czecho-Slovak origin, died:
http://egger1.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Cernan
His ancestors in Slovakia lived in the village just next to the famous Korna oil seepage:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/08/31/intermittent-renewables-cant-favorably-transform-grid-electricity/comment-page-15/#comment-99886
Obviously, Monday is the toughest day of the week.
Tough? How about stuffing a lunar rover into a lunar excursion vehicle. Getting it out was easy, so says the manual.
https://www.scribd.com/document/43944200/Lunar-Rover-Operations-Handbook-07071971
As regards the cycle of the days of the week, Monday, the initial day of the cycle of the rising Sun, i.e. the darkest day of the cycle, is the toughest day for old and ill persons. Sunday and Monday are opposite days.
Mr. Cernan was unquestionably a brave low orbit astronaut on the American space program. As to his other alleged escapades, be it for whatever perceived national interest, not that much honest individual.. Although what do we know, there were/are “offers” originating from the deep state/mafia circles, which can not be easily put down with the consideration towards family safety and so on. That’s sadly how this world works.
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Jews.
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My green electricity bill.
€57.93 / 347 kWh
€0.17 / kWh
The electricity was produced by burning wood according to the bill.
Now I am quite sure they used coal and oil in the process… but forgot to mention it ?
That’s overall price, including the peak rate?
Well, if you are living in industrialized country (assuming €), that’s almost for free for god’s sake.. not only in contrast to wages but also the social benefits if you are barely hanging on to civilized life in case of being without a proper job.
Perhaps we might look at purchasing parity cross comparison of electricity pricing globally, that would be shocking revelation, lolz.
A barrel of oil is $50 or 5 hours of work on minimum wages $10 a hour in Finland… but 10 days of work in Mexico on minimum wages $5 a day.
And how much oil can you buy in Finland vs Mexico if you are unemployed?
If Finland has a stipend for everyone, employed or not, the unemployed person in Finland can buy a lot more. The employed person in Finland can probably buy less, because the value of the currency falls relative to the dollar.
It sounds like most of you assume UBI would cost more than what we have today in Scandinavia.
You get about $350 (and the government pays the rent) if you never have had a job. For retirees about the double but you have to pay rent (the government pays part of it). If you have ever had a job you get at least 70% of your wage more or less indefinitely. Then you get burned out and get more money as sick.
Yes, but the two payments are added together.
Even if the two payments are added together, the employed person can probably purchase less, simply because of the falling value of the currency in the world market.
This approach is one way of depleting resources more quickly (and thus preventing collapse), because it allows more people to bid up the prices of commodities. So perhaps it will be used more widely than Finland, in an attempt to keep BAU going a bit longer.
ejhr,
Are you saying unemployed finns will get unemployment benefits AND UBI?
Why just stop collecting taxes?
I don’t remember where you live. If it is in Europe, I imagine that wood pellets made in the US were used to create the wood. Clearly, there is quite a bit of fossil fuels used in this process.
Also, the percentage of the world’s area that is forested seems to drop every year. While a person can argue that a particular that this particular tree did not add to the deforestation, it certainly added to the deforestation pressures.
Finland is basically a forest.
Except for the lakes.
Can we export Finland to the rest of the world?
Sorry. Not enough vodka.
Deforestation in Ireland was so severe that being caught cutting a tree was at one point a capital offense.
I expect giving universal basic income on a worldwide basis would work better than simply doing it in Finland (if leaders didn’t consider the idea too silly). All of the extra spending by those previously without income would tend to pump up commodity prices for a while, keeping production going for a while longer, and helping to deplete resources that are theoretically available, if the price rises high enough. (The world economy as a dissipative system would work a bit better!)
Eventually, collapse would occur. I am not certain exactly why–debt defaults because world economy is not growing fast enough, price spike sends energy importers into recession, price fall + depletion leads to collapse in many energy exporters.
Charles Hugh Smith has given Gail’s latest post a mention in his latest.
The success of fracking and other technologies has demolished claims of Peak Oil in most people’s minds. But it may not be quite so simple, as Gail Tverberg (Our Finite World) argues in her recent essay, 2017: The Year When the World Economy Starts Coming Apart.
At the risk of simplifying a complex and nuanced analysis, here is my summary: Tverberg makes the case that today’s global industrial economy is in a double-bind without resolution: if energy costs rise enough to make extraction and processing of hard-to-get oil/gas profitable, the high costs of the resulting energy will inevitably push the growth-dependent economy into recession or depression.
This is the inescapable result of structuring the economy so it optimizes continual, permanent expansion of everything: more resources, consumption, earnings, debt and taxes skimmed from the productive elements of the economy.
Once growth hits limits of any kind, the economy doesn’t enter a steady-state–it collapses, because it is dependent on expansion.
But if energy costs decline to the point where households and enterprises can afford to expand consumption, the low prices render an increasingly significant share of fossil fuel extraction unprofitable.
Tverberg also ties this energy double-bind into debt and wages: we can play a game of borrowing the higher costs of energy needed to keep the economy afloat, but eventually the rising debt load is recognized as being unpayable, and buyers of new debt demand a risk premium. As the costs of debt rises, the window of paying for higher energy costs with cheap debt closes, and the economy is stuck paying the real costs of energy.
Since wages are ultimately paid out of the surplus energy and value extracted from consuming that energy, as cheap, abundant energy declines, so do wages, leaving households with less money to spend on consumption and debt payment.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.jp/2017/01/will-our-grandchildren-wonder-why-we.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+google/RzFQ+(oftwominds)
However, Charles seems to be advocating that we invest “in a functioning, resilient, sustainable renewable energy grid” while fossil fuels are still cheap enough to allow us to do this without too much pain.
Here’s my question: will our grandchildren wonder why we didn’t build a renewable power grid when it was still possible? The time to build a renewable power grid that is self-sustaining and durable enough to outlast the end of cheap oil is when oil/gas are still cheap enough to fund the build-out.
That sounds very reasonable until we actually start thinking deeply about the issues. Then we run into lots of tedious details that raise red flags. (This is where we reproduce the familiar “cubic mile of oil” graphic, for instance.) But here’s my question: is there in principle any such thing as “a functioning, resilient, sustainable renewable energy grid”?
I think Charles has got things precisely backwards. There is definitely a “renewables” development path ahead that we can follow to our heart’s content as long as we have adequate supplies of cheap fossil fuels to throw at the problem and to provide back-up for when it isn’t functioning. But as soon as we no longer have sufficient oil, coal and gas to burn, renewables will no longer be sustained or renewed. If you think about it, the fossil fuel-powered economy has been self-sustaining from the beginning. Renewables, by contrast, have never been self-sustaining, and it is by no means certain that they ever can be.
a lot of people have been brainwashed that renewable energy will be our saviour but once they realise the folly of their ways it will be too late for all of us
Meh, it will buy some time in the way of keeping the faith via techno-fixes. Without the renewable energy propaganda,faith would be lost and that would hasten collapse. Best to have some hope for the masses.
So he has the chops to simplify what Gail says, on one hand, (not that I can understand the mechanism of it all, even with that) and you then do us the favor of showing where he goes off the tracks. Thanks! I copied your post (with attribution) elsewhere…for people who have less of a clue than I!
A lot of what’s called denial may well be the inability to understand the language used by oil and business professionals. And there is the question of what I’m calling “cognitive wiring.”
A bright young landscape architecture professor I just met said he rewired his brain to understand technical subjects. (I think landscape architecture may attract artistic people who are not all that technical.)
But he’s young, privileged and smart. Most of us lay people lack those advantages, although we might learn the rudiments of the economic system if our cognitive wiring can be addressed. It’s a longer discussion than I can devote time to right now, but I’ll list some issues to return to later:
Money
We may know that money is a an abstract medium of exchange, but little else. Somebody prints it, but what is the rationale behind the exchange?
Debt
We learn that money is based on debt, but however many times debt is explained the intuitive wiring can’t absorb it.
Deflation
This is when prices go down, maybe in a domino effect.
Inflation
Here, prices keep rising. Again, the intuitive wiring can’t understand why prices can’t remain the same; that would be less stressful, and we would have the security of long term expectation around stable prices.
There are of course very understandable reasons why all these terms apply. And kind people with business degrees explain them often. It’s not for want of their good intentions that we fail to understand the terms of conversation; the gap in neural wiring between them and us is just too wide. It requires a special program that is ongoing. That program needs to be built into the regular conversation on economics. Why? If we can find a way to educate the lay person, h/she might be able to contribute something to the discussion, as well as help us figure better ways to handle our predicament. To write them off as ignorant denialists mightn’t be the wisest thing to do.
Have we reached the point where net growth in wealth is at hand? Will building more technological cells (factories/homes) deprive existing infrastructure of its nourishment? A zero-sum situation. The more we try to grow, the more deflation we get in existing wealth? We can grow new technological cells but it means that somewhere in the world factories and homes are going to be deprived of maintenance fuel and the people will be deprived of jobs. How much energy can be siphoned from the maintenance allotment to build solar infrastructure? Can solar adequately feed a legacy infrastructure built with and burning high EROEI fossil fuels and also provide for its own replacement?
In the United States, if citizens cannot afford education, medical care, housing, food and transportation or a $1,500 car repair bill , how much money and energy can be diverted to a massive transition without tipping the existing system into a death spiral? The United States already has a debt approaching 20 trillion dollars, which has been borrowed to maintain the existing system that cannot generate enough net energy to maintain itself. When the dollar fails, much of the existing wealth will be crushed with a massive deflation. Houses and factories and the like won’t be picked-up by the wealthy for pennies on the dollar, because there never will be enough energy to make them functional again, they’ll be dead. Where will the people go as this necrosis proceeds around the margins? Dormitories, camps, two families in one house, or off to war you go? The destruction that will naturally occur with climate change from storms and sea level rise will only compound the problem.
To “make America great again” is a tall order for President Trump. The best we may be able to hope for is another dollar/debt infusion before reality sets in.
Thanks for this. I know just how I would answer your questions. Your analysis makes perfect sense to me. If I may, I’ll repost this too.
Good write up, thanks. You nicely painted up the bleak image of triage under the deflationary period sequence. Some infrastructure will be put aside/abandoned to accommodate the most urgent necessities of the day elsewhere, for instance closer to the hubs of some remnant energy flows, transportation, mil installations and so on. And most likely these priorities decided by direct totalitarian rule, not much difference between a warlord/quasi neoking or committee there. People of industrial countries should prolly more often consult their “family albums” about what life was about ~75-130yrs ago.. that’s not saying we are going replay that era, only to illustrate the poor living arrangements. No dedicated bathrooms/spotty hygiene, over crowded little living areas of just few m2, un/semi paved roads, lotsa hand work drudgery for many ordinary duties now done with the help of grid and combustion toyz etc. Not long ago I was crucified here for such thesis. Well for one thing wishing upon a star of instant merciful death is much pleasant experience, that’s understandable.
Probably what is very troubling for many here is to digest the sheer uncertainty of sequencing this period, which might come as the very next aftermath of big economic/political shock or it could be deferred into future after several interim steps of can kicking, depending on your “lucky” place of residence, e.g. Venezuela, Ukraine, Greece and others not much happy even nowadays..
Strange. I saw Jame’s post in an entirely positive light! The idea of NOT wasting energy on boondoggles and allowing the higher EROEI existing infrastructure to rot as a result seemed quite an effective strategy to me.
I support of your summation. I don’t think anyone ever really calculated or comprehended the effects of depreciation as the system grew exponentially. Not only is there depreciation of production there is depreciation of increased infrastructure. These act as complimentary drags on growth. To overcome this we need more than historical resource growth we need growth in factors never seen before.
It seemed that James wasn’t talking about ‘growth.’ More as if the resources needed for growing the new robs the old of the energy to function, while it creates a vicious cycle of energy drain in both the old and the new that can’t be sustained..
http://www.planetizen.com/node/90718/proposed-law-would-require-solar-panels-all-new-home-construction-california
Roof Solar in CA
I guess Jerry Brown doesn’t read OFW.
I need to write an article for a major academic journal, explaining the problem ASAP. If peer reviewers are too much of the green community, it likely will be hard to get published, though.
I posted the image recently showing how our infrastructure has aged. We have a huge project ahead, just to maintain the status quo.
The first deeper pothole and the following car of the future becomes inoperable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrcYSbZeyEQ
It is clear that the trend for more SUVs required by the people is driven by the deriorating infrastructure. The rising price of oil can not be the reason.
It would be helpful if people thought about the repairability of streets being one of the major problems that we are headed toward. There was a reason for cars high off the road earlier.
Some US states are reverting to gravel roads due to being cash strapped. Some cities are turning off street lights, but again LA has switched to LED’s and made big savings.
Trying to grow our way out of the present fix seems a) impossible to pull off, b) analogous to moving to Mars as a solution to the calamity of Earth.
Trashing one place and moving some place else as the solution to that is infantile at best. But going to Mars is such an impossible fantasy that we can safely set it aside for now. It’s by no means assured that we can improve our lot by taking care of the planet we have. But IF we were able to improve our lot, what other endeavor would make more sense than taking care of what’s left? Isn’t it the same situation with the economy?
Maybe Dolf has a point in saying that a) TPTB are more in control of our pace and manner of collapse situation than we know, and b) people will work for crumbs if that’s the only way to survive. And more sleight of hand, propaganda and magic tricks are how it would be (is being) done. Even so, there’s a less dystopian way to view the situation than Dolf’s.
“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. ”
So we see consumers growing ever less wealthy. I believe this trend is unlikely to be reversed. That leaves us with devices that are less efficient. We might just have to get used to the idea while using them more carefully and using them less.
” Renewables, by contrast, have never been self-sustaining, and it is by no means certain that they ever can be.”
Is hydro renewable? Sell-sustaining?
Well back at you…….Is there a hydro facility that was built without fossil fuels, was the grid it uses built without fossils fuels. Can new hydro be built, maintained and sustained without fossil fuels…..Can the grid? If they could be, could the machines they power be “self-sustaining”?
“.Is there a hydro facility that was built without fossil fuels”
A whole bunch of them, the oldest dating back over 1000 years.
“was the grid it uses built without fossils fuels.”
Grid? What grid?
All of this post peak available net energy speculation is like playing Jenga. As we downscale the built technologies and try to insert replacements we will see that this ‘Technosphere’ to borrow Putin’s term is very interdependent and subject to catastrophic collapse as various pieces are shifted or removed.
Agreed!
I would argue that hydro-electric power has never been self-sustaining as it has always depended for its existence on lots of fossil fuel imports to produce concrete for the dams and metallic parts for the turbines and dynamos. In principle, small-scale hydro could be built and maintained without fossil fuels, but I imagine it would be a real song and dance to refine the metals, make the parts and assemble them into dynamos using no other power source but existing hydro and human/animal muscle.
You are open minded and have studied a lot of possibilities for energy production. What do you think, Keith? Are “renewable” and “self-sustaining” useful concepts for describing energy technologies? Or are they feel-good buzzwords in the same way as “clean”, “zero carbon”, etc?
” What do you think, Keith?”
Besides being an engineer with a widespread (though shallow) knowledge of the field, I am somewhat of an armchair technology historian.
” In principle, small-scale hydro could be built and maintained”
It’s not just in principle. Water wheels were used to grind grain more than a 1000 years before fossil fuels came into major use. Small hydro was done all over the UK before fossil fuels started to be seriously used. One site I visited spanned the introduction of fossil fuels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeydale_Industrial_Hamlet
I don’t know if the terms are really useful or not, but the fossil fuel era will come to an end. If we want to continue living the kind of indulgent life we enjoy, we have to replace fossil fuels. As I say, there is no lack of energy, we just have to collect it effectively.
it shouldn’t be necessary to point out the fundamental difference between a watermill and a hydro electric generating unit.
but here goes.Note—I am not an engineer at any level or degree.
a water powered mill—or wind for that matter—trees were cut down and reworked into a succession of levers that were moved by water pressure to perform a function—usually grinding corn.
The embodied energy contained in the tree was redirected into that of the mill. The only materials need were wood, grinding stones and a few iron bits and pieces. It needed no precision engineering.
corn is also embodied energy, brought TO the mill by the people who grew it, and who subsequently ate the bread from the flour produced, who grew more corn etc–thus completing an ‘energy cycle’ on a local scale. Money exchange was based on this cycle, allowing other goods to be bought and sold on the excess energy produced.
‘Economies’ couldn’t ‘grow’ because populations couldn’t increase beyond the output of the land and the mill
.
A hydro electric system on the other hand requires precision engineering. No dynamo installation can work without close tolerances that would have been unheard of in medieval times,
Energy produced by such a system is output only, and intend to be delivered to locations remote from the mill itself.
It cannot be delivered without wires and insulation—even at 12v dc.
At the ends of those wires you need devices in order to provide purpose to the electricity exported FROM the mill. Each of those devices is itself a precision engineered product, made in a factory—they cannot be made in a blacksmiths forge.
without factory output, hydro-electric power devices will be pointless
so no—there can be no correlation whatsoever between medieval watermills and what we expect as a product of a modern waterpowered mill
Helpful explanation…the distinction between what can work locally and which can’t.
I suspect that different local areas have different resources for that local energy. Part of those resources include mindset and cultural history. Where I live had been a coal mining company town, which only folded due to the advent of diesel to run trains in the 50s. There’s still a lot of machinery about, although I believe the machines to actually mine and produce the coal energy have been scattered to the winds. The utter stupidity of throwing away the old once the new arrives.
i live in what was primarily a coal/iron mining area too—with father.gfather,ggrandfather in that business—all gone now.
but those mines could never be reopened in any circumstances
” fundamental difference ”
Up to the point where the mechanical energy from falling water is used to spin generators, there really isn’t any.
But electrical power isn’t the only way to transmit power, it’s just reasonably effective way. Before electricity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_transmission#Mechanical_power
I have seen jerker lines that were used to distribute mechanical power to pumps in a museum-park in Canada. http://www.lambtonmuseums.ca/oil/ and http://www.petroliaheritage.com/discovery.html Before electricity, there were plans to send power from Niagara Falls some 20 miles to Buffalo, NY mechanically.
Could we replace every part in a hydro-electric plant with parts made with the energy from the falling water? Sure. Would we? Not likely unless there was no other choice.
It’s a bit hard to say when precision got good enough for rotating machines. Guns might have gotten that good in China by around 1300. “Siege guns were used by the English at Calais in 1346.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm
More about mechanical power transmission:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html
But wind and water never really accounted for much of total energy, because they produce only mechanical energy. This is a chart by a researcher named Wrigley:
It shows Annual energy consumption per head (megajoules) in England and Wales 1561-70 to 1850-9 and in Italy 1861-70. Figure by Wrigley
Hydro is a renewable.
Thanks for pointing this out. Charles did well at summarizing some of my points. He admittedly falls down on “renewables will save us.” This is a technical issue, that is harder to understand. It is also useful to have some kind of salvation to be able to tell readers about. Otherwise, they tend to get very upset.
I wonder if a person 500 years ago were informed that tough times lie ahead would they think the messenger is crazy? Or, would they not be surprised and prepare in some way? Or perhaps was survival so difficult that daily chores revolved around always being prepared for difficult times (droughts, food shortages, bad crops, pestilence, disease).
It seems to me that modern times (last 75 years) are an aberration. An unusual time in human history where living standards have steadily improved. So, those born in the 75 year window should really question their sense of what is “normal”.
I think ”normality” was an ongoing contest with nature 500 years ago
diseases were effectively incurable—it was god’s will whether you lived or died, he also determined your station in life.
our modern era has certainly been an anomaly.
I’ve said before, the last 200 years could be looked on as a human supernova—a brief flash of light in the million years of darkness that was our “normality” till around 1800—or maybe the mid 1900s.
That light was hydrocarbon fuel exploding all at once, and probably taking us with it.
A good description of the situation of the human species.
Norman, humans use about 16 TW or 1.6 x 10^10 W.
The output of the sun is 3.8 x 10^25 W. So humans use about 5 parts in 10^14 of the energy of the Sun. I have not calculated it, but I doubt the whole store of fossil fuel amounted to a second of the output of the sun.
Now human civilization may die as we run out of fossil fuels, but that’s a human failure of ingenuity, not a limit due to physics.
that rather reminds me of a friend of mine who worked for the local water supply company
when an irate customer rang to complain about the size of his water bill ”because rain is free”—my friend agreed and said, ”yes you can have as much as you want for nothing—just come and collect it.”
I have never proposed that power from space would be free, or even “too cheap to meter.”
But on physics and economic grounds, there is no reason that space based solar power would not be lower cost than electricity from coal. You would still have something to be concerned about, the Earth overheating because of the extra input energy.
We can solve that problem when we come to it by moving most of the human population off planet.
i’ll leave the last sentence to some other OFW headbanger
Not moving – removing!
You are right; the last 75 years has been an aberration. Most people have expected that that several children would die before adulthood; that crops would fail, perhaps one year in five; that a husband or wife could easily die, leaving the spouse with children to care for.
We have lost our need to plan ahead. Also, our ability to bounce back, after something goes wrong. I remember one person from Kenya wrote on guest post on The Oil Drum. He said that every day, people rejoiced for the good that had happened–the fact that they had successfully gotten through another day. If something bad happened, such as a child dying, they would feel sad for a day, and bury the child. But then they would go on with their lives. They could not let past setbacks be a major problem in dealing with today.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-ed-murray-kills-seattles-bike-share-program-pronto/
Bike Share news. No surprise to Gail, I bet.
Does paid bike share “work” anywhere?
I can imagine if the bikes were free and unlocked and plenty … maybe.
I only know that Gail expressed skepticism (or it sounded like that) about bike shares, saying that the bikes would probably end up in the lowest part of the city. One would have to search to find out details.
Share electric bikes?
With photovolcanic bicycle lanes, that are getting popular, both the e-bikes and lane defrosting could be renewable.
to get enough cheap energy to defrost bicycle lanes you would need photovolcanic bicycles
Maybe Iceland can pull it off.
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.
How about, lack of US QE, and low wages drove crude oil priced from their $146 peak to mostly under $50. Low prices cause collapse. High prices cause a different type of problem. Neither works for the economy now.
http://www.stratosolar.com/uploads/5/6/7/1/5671050/9732539_orig.jpg
someone should paint this chart in a cave so that when it’s discovered, future intelligent beings will know we certainly had high hopes for our future.
Alas, I suspect the shamans and witch doctors of the near-future would cover it with their crazy graffiti……
Success rates for exploration wells dropped from 23% in 2006 to below 5% today, Half of that period saw record oil prices.
I’d be interested in a reference for this. Please provide if possible.
HSBC peak oil report 2016
The HSBC oil report can be found at this link. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9wSgViWVAfzUEgzMlBfR3UxNDg/view
I found this link in a post by Nafeez Ahmed called, Brace for the Financial Crash of 2018.
How do we pay for the StratoSolar? Graphs are easy – reality is harsh.
Yes, how do we pay for StratoSolar? Especially in terms of energy and not dollars!
This can go on for a while, whatever the price, when you are part of the machine that prints the fiat…
http://priceofoil.org/2017/01/10/oil-subsidies-propping-up-profits-polluting-the-climate/
A new study by SEI and EarthTrack, building off Oil Change International’s work calculating fossil fuel subsidies, reveals that at current oil prices of around $50 per barrel, 45% of production depends on government handouts to make it profitable
And oil subsidies will continue to increase as profitability declines.
Not unless someone figures out a way to pay for them. Taxes on solar and wind?
Math Problem:
World Birth and Death Rates:
19 births/1,000 population
8 deaths/1,000 population
• 131.4 million births per year
• 55.3 million people die each year
• 360,000 births per day
• 151,600 people die each day
• 15,000 births each hour
• 6,316 people die each hour
• 250 births each minute
• 105 people die each minute
• Four births each second of every day
• Nearly two people die each second Average life expectancy at birth is approximately 67 years.
Yep, adding 80 million people NET each year…and 99.999% of humans cannot grasp how that is a problem, that using a non-renewable resource (that takes tens to hundreds of million of years to take its natural form) we shot our numbers up from 1B in 1804 to 7.5B today and counting…nothing to see here move along…
Agent Smith from The Matrix said it best:
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
In this case the cure will be our extinction as we have run out of resources + we have destroyed our natural habitat
And here are Dubai, the Amazon and Las Vegas in timelapse, confirming that we are in fact a virus:
http://world.time.com/timelapse/
And a video of an actual virus spreading:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-video/7047043/A-virus-spreading-captured-on-film.html
Can anyone see the similarities??
“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not.”
It’s an effective “green meme” but just not so. If it were true, the reindeer on St Mathews Island would have controlled their numbers instead of exhibiting an overshoot of the carrying capacity and an extinction crash.
http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF16/1672.html
There are many, many other examples, and population booms are not limited to mammals either.
If anything, humans are more likely to limit their numbers than any other animal.
Hah, you got there first! I didn’t see you comment until after I’d written something similar.
I fully know that (like the wolf and prey cycle amongst many examples), and any species that would have developed like us would have done the same…you always use the resources at your disposal and go into overshoot like the classic St Mathews Island, that any self-respecting doomster knows full well about what happened there ;)….but forget the first part about the mammals, it’s the second part of his speech that I like and Agent Smith nails it!
The virus analogy isn’t useful. Nor it spreading out. All life does that to the limit of what it can do. It’s how you define life as opposed to rocks.
Whatever, if you look at how we spread out it sure looks the same
Is the primary motive that drives life the will to survive or the will to expand? Is life often sacrificed in the attempt to expand power and domination in some sense? Is evolution driven by the struggle to survive or by the struggle to expand? Surely survival is still the bottom line in evolution? Is survival through generations another aspect of expansion? It seems ‘rational’ that a species should seek to prolong its existence but we dont seem up to that?
http://fnietzsche.com/will-to-power-appearance-of-the-concept-in-nietzsche-s-work
…
Nietzsche read William Rolph’s Biologische Probleme around mid-1884, and it clearly interested him, for his copy is heavily annotated. He made many notes concerning Rolph. Rolph was another evolutionary anti-Darwinist like Roux, who wished to argue for evolution by a different mechanism than the struggle for existence. Rolph argued that all life seeks primarily to expand itself. Organisms fulfill this need through assimilation, trying to make as much of what is found around them into part of themselves, for example by seeking to increase intake and nutriment. Life forms are naturally insatiable in this way.
It doesn’t matter if life stays at the same level or expands, if we live on a finite world and are using far more than our share of the natural replenishment of biomass and wild animals, and pulling non-renewable minerals out of the ground (at any rate greater than their renewal).
We can see what level of population of chimpanzees that the world can accommodate. There is no evidence that the population of humans could be much higher than this.
Gail was a step ahead of me as usual. She does not so much negate my comments as put them into additional context. I am a massive fan.
Any ‘rational’ plan to express our instincts to survive and to expand, in a sustainable and even ‘progressive” manner, would probably have to take the limitation of the number of the human species into account as a serious objective — and probably also the “betternment” of humanity, socially and genetically. Quality vs quantity. But our civilization is based on the profit motive, capitalism — anything for a quick buck. Capitalism expresses our instincts at their basest and most destructive level, which is likely why it is so ‘successful’. Oh well.
Since the first part of the quote was wrong, the second part is meaningless. Humans aren’t special in any sense of the word. The fact that we are capable of doing much more damage than most other species is neither here nor there; we are what we are, like any species is what it is. We know what we’re doing and yet we can’t help continuing to do it. That’s pretty dumb and certainly not special.
Humans are pretty special. They’re only the second instance we know about in which there is a relationship between information, an intermediate and tools. Humans are the intermediate in their technological system, the equivalent of RNA in cells. Cells store the precious tool information in DNA. Human information isn’t so special because the tools are custom made to eliminate a few gradients and then it’s pretty much over. We even live in cells. Unfortunately humans can go through the metabolic motions, but don’t have much sense otherwise. The technological development fully depended upon the evolution of an intermediary that could manipulate both information and the other ingredients for tools. Read some over at http://www.megacancer.com and become enlightened, although it’s pretty likely you’ll just continue going through the metabolic motions.
Given your last comment, I doubt any discussion would be worthwhile.
Yeast in a bottle of grape juice are another example of a species that does not limit its population growth.
Humans are no different to other mammals. Consider the reindeer population after introduction to Matthew Island in 1944. They had plenty of food there and no predators. Of course, humans introduced the deer but it illustrates that humans are just another species that consumes resources that it can easily get at, even though it can result in their demise, as the dear on Matthew Island. Their population rocketed over nearly two decades and then crashed spectacularly through starvation. So humans are a species, like other mammals. It seems likely, at this point, that human populations will also crash as the resources we’ve come to rely on become more and more difficult to obtain. In that behaviour, unfortunately, we bring down many other species.
I know all that, see my answer above…
What about seeing the reindeers of St Matthews as a particuar case of the Lotka-Volterra equations about predators and preys (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equations).
The population of predators always tends to adapt to the level of the resource, by searching the adequate level of predation, allowing to reach an equilibrium between the 2 species.
The problem here was that the growing speed of the predator was much higher than the rate of renewal of the resource, hence causing a huge overshoot at the first cycle.
If, after the first crash, the predator’s population was still able to reproduce, during the 2nd cycle it would have had to do it much more closely to the rate of renewal of the resource, assuming this resource also had sufficient post-crash population to renew itself and grow again.
If the speeds of production and consumption were closer, the equilibrium between species would have been found more calmly.
In our case, the rate of renewal of the most part of our resources is in the range of hundreds of million years.
The solution to this math problem may be The Duke of Edinburgh. The old boy is looking well, but he can’t have too many more years left in him. And when he gets to meet his maker, he may ask to return as a virus.
I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist… I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.
https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-if-i-were-reincarnated-i-would-wish-to-be-prince-philip.t4913/
But if the viruses don’t get the job done, there’s always the bacteria.
A US woman has died from an infection that was resistant to all 26 available antibiotics, health officials said this week, raising new concerns about the rise of dangerous superbugs.
The woman, who was in her 70s, died in Nevada in September, and had recently been hospitalized in India with fractured leg bones, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The cause of death was sepsis, following infection from a rare bacteria known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is resistant to all antibiotics available in the United States.
The specific strain of CRE, known as Klebsiella pneumoniae, was isolated from one of her wounds in August.
Tests were negative for the mcr-1 gene — a great concern to health experts because it makes bacteria resistant to the antibiotic of last resort, colistin.
It was unclear how the woman’s infection acquired resistance.
Experts said she had been treated repeatedly in India during the last two years for a femur fracture and hip problems, most recently in June 2016.
Once the bacteria was identified in Nevada, the patient was isolated to prevent the infection from spreading in the hospital.
Postmortem tests showed her infection might have responded to a treatment called fosfomycin, which is not approved in the United States.
Paul Hoskisson, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde, in Scotland, said that several European countries, including Britain, license fosfomycin for intravenous use in such cases.
“This is important because we are seeing increasing numbers of drug-resistant infections, and this is one of the first cases for Klebsiella where no drug options were open to the medical staff.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-woman-dies-infection-resistant-26-available-antibiotics-223147289.html
“Postmortem tests showed her infection might have responded to a treatment called fosfomycin, which is not approved in the United States.”
So although she died from antibiotic resistant infection, there was a treatment in existence they could have used, but didn’t. I had a lung infection that my dr. game me Eurythrimycan (or spelled something like that) and the infection would not go away. Finally after refusing to take it yet again, and arguing with my dr. that I needed a stronger antibiotic, he finally agreed to let me take Clarythrimycan which got rid of the infection once and for all. Doctors I’m convinced are no smarter than anybody else, they just have a fancy degree. The lesson is we all need to do our own research when it comes to ailments, guide those idiots to what is needed.
As far as the evolution of super bugs, well, if you fight against something that can mutate over short periods of time to be drug resistant in subsequent generations, then in the long run it’s probably a losing strategy. In other words antibiotics helped increase the population to over 7 billion but it also sentenced us to the eventual onslaught of drug resistant bacteria. Pay me now or pay me later. By opting for pay me later, we face much stronger pathogens than if we had never challenged them in the first place. Which goes to the long understood philosophy of ‘pick your enemies wisely’.
Chinese and other alternative medicines do a good job of keeping people going with minimum dependence on antibiotics. With the integration of alternative and western medicine, we might have better over all health outcomes…at lower cost.
I expect a different diet and more exercise helps as well.
I thought china is world leaders in taking antibiotics as precautionary measure. Maybe chinese medicine is practiced somewhere else?
“I thought china is world leaders in taking antibiotics as precautionary measure. Maybe chinese medicine is practiced somewhere else?”
Exactly. I’m talking traditional Chinese medicine that lots of people in the west study. Present day Chinese seem to disregard their ancient traditions, and favor western medicine and technology. My physician uses Chinese medicine as the basis of their practice.
The article in the link below will make doomsters run for the head pounding wall like few I have read. A quote, “Lifting people out of poverty could bring up to a billion people into the consumer economy. And achieving gender equality alone could add at least $12,000bn to the world’s total GDP by 2025, according to one estimate.
“The overall prize is enormous,” the report says.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sustainable-development-global-goals-theresa-may-united-nations-mark-malloch-brown-a7527736.html
OMG Delusion on stetoids!!!
*steroids
What choice do they have? This is the Hail Mary moment get ready for a hyper fanatical try. When what you’ve been doing doesn’t work just double down. Keep the God of Growth alive.
Sustainable development, what’s not to like?
Oxymoron
Everything can be wonderful! Wow! It is hard to believe that a group called the “Business and Sustainable Development Commission” could come to a conclusion like this.
Pingback: 2017: The Year When the World Economy Starts Coming Apart | Our Finite World – kel.zone
There is a lengthy review article in the current Science.
http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/13_january_2017?sub_id=SBV6xCqmjde7&u1=41000735&pg=45#pg45
it’s about using electric power and/or sunlight to make fuels and chemicals now derived from fossil fuels using intermittent energy.
There is a Kiwi spinning like a top.
https://www.google.com/#q=daniel+nocera was claiming, years ago, that they’d soon have artificial photosynthesis, commercially viable — I’ll believe in this sort of thing, when I see it working (like using IRE [intermittent renewable energy] to operate an AC power grid — where’s it actually worked, yet?)
Yes, making liquid hydrocarbon fuels from intermittent solar and wind is an obvious solution.
It’s been considered by Ed Kelly of StratoSolar
“Liquid Fuels: Electricity alone is not a complete energy solution. Electricity generation needs to be cheap enough to enable the synthesis of affordable liquid fuels for transportation and long term energy storage. StratoSolar’s initial low cost for electricity, combined with the historical cost reduction roadmap, quickly leads to a sustainable, complete energy solution that includes affordable synthetic fuels.”
http://www.stratosolar.com/sustainable-and-scale-able.html
Yes, making liquid hydrocarbon fuels from intermittent solar and wind is an obvious solution.
Nature’s got it in hand. All it takes is a few hundred million years.
“a few hundred million years.”
Chemical engineers can do it somewhat faster, like a day, though building the plant will take a few years.
That would be nice, Keith, and I’m sure it could de done. I’d be interested to see an industrial plant up and running on intermittent solar and/or wind. It would be a good demonstration of concept. On the other hand, I doubt whether it would be a practical solution due to overall costs. But as long as BAU was tottering along, some communities might be willing to pay more for the enhanced security of supply it would provide them with.
I believe Tesla is doing just that with its Nevada “Giga-factory” – now adding a 70mw solar roof with batteries for nighttime operation
I am afraid it would need to be cheap to make any difference at all.
Certainly better than trying to make dispatchable electricity from them.
What is the name of the article? Your link isn’t working for me, even though I have a subscription.
Combining theory and experiment in electrocatalysis: Insights into materials design
“there is a very significant chance that we will be hitting peak oil and peak natural gas in 2017 or 2018”
https://ycharts.com/indicators/world_crude_oil_production indicates that, as of last September, world peak crude oil production had occurred in December, 2015.
Oil (as shown in reports) can be defined in quite a few ways. “Peak oil,” folks like to talk about “crude oil,” which is what the chart you lined to seems to be.
Other organizations define oil differently, including “natural gas liquids” and ethanol. Also, “refinery gain,” which comes from cracking long molecules, and adding natural gas to create shorter molecules.
The US Energy Information Administration is showing that the fourth quarter of 2016 is expected to be about 1 million barrels a day higher than the 4th quarter of 2015. Also, I downloaded the numbers that go with each quarter, and yearly production is expected to rise in each year, with 2015 the lowest year and 2018 the highest year shown.
The International Energy Association only has a forecast through the 2nd quarter of 2017 available. They are also showing that production (“supply”) is very high in the fourth quarter of 2016. (Count back from the right edge to figure out what is the 4th quarter 2016.)
So according to the big agencies, 2016 seems to be ahead of 2015, on the basis that they look at.