Back in 1776, Adam Smith talked about the “invisible hand” of the economy. Investopedia explains how the invisible hand works as, “In a free market economy, self-interested individuals operate through a system of mutual interdependence to promote the general benefit of society at large.”
We talk and act today as if governments and economic policy are what make the economy behave as it does. Unfortunately, Adam Smith was right; there is an invisible hand guiding the economy. Today we know that there is a physics reason for why the economy acts as it does: the economy is a dissipative structure–something we will talk more about later. First, let’s talk about how the economy really operates.
Our Economy Is Like a Self-Driving Car: Wages of Non-Elite Workers Are the Engine
Workers make goods and provide services. Non-elite workers–that is, workers without advanced education or supervisory responsibilities–play a special role, because there are so many of them. The economy can grow (just like a self-driving car can move forward) (1) if workers can make an increasing quantity of goods and services each year, and (2) if non-elite workers can afford to buy the goods that are being produced. If these workers find fewer jobs available, or if they don’t pay sufficiently well, it is as if the engine of the self-driving car is no longer working. The car could just as well fall apart into 1,000 pieces in the driveway.
If the wages of non-elite workers are too low, they cannot afford to pay very much in taxes, so governments are adversely affected. They also cannot afford to buy capital goods such as vehicles and homes. Thus, depressed wages of non-elite workers adversely affect both businesses and governments. If these non-elite workers are getting paid well, the “make/buy loop” is closed: the people whose labor creates fairly ordinary goods and services can also afford to buy those goods and services.
Recurring Needs of Car/Economy
The economy, like a car, has recurring needs, analogous to monthly lease payments, insurance payments, and maintenance costs. These would include payments for a variety of support services, including the following:
- Government programs, including payments to the elderly and unemployed
- Higher education programs
- Healthcare
Needless to say, the above services tend to keep rising in cost, whether or not the wages of non-elite workers keep rising to keep up with these costs.
The economy also needs to purchase a portfolio of goods on a very regular basis (weekly or monthly), or it cannot operate. These include:
- Fresh water
- Food of many different types, including vegetables, fruits, and grains
- Energy products of many types, such as oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium. These needs include many subtypes suited to particular refineries or electric power plants.
- Minerals of many types, including copper, iron, lithium, and many others
Some of these goods are needed directly by the workers in the economy. Other goods are needed to make and operate the “tools” used by the workers. It is the growing use of tools that allows workers to keep becoming more productive–produce the rising quantity of goods and services that is needed to keep the economy growing. These tools are only possible through the use of energy products and other minerals of many kinds.
I have likened the necessary portfolio of goods the economy needs to ingredients in a recipe, or to chemicals needed for a particular experiment. If one of the “ingredients” is not available–probably because of prices that are too high for consumers or too low for producers–the economy needs to “make a smaller batch.” We saw this happen in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Figure 1 shows that the use of several types of energy products, plus raw steel, shrank back at exactly the same time. In fact, the recent trend in coal and raw steel suggests another contraction may be ahead.
Figure 1. World Product Consumption, indexed to the year 2000, for selected products. Raw Steel based on World USGS data; other amounts based of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 data.
The Economy Re-Optimizes When Things Go Wrong
If you have a Global Positioning System (GPS) in your car to give you driving directions, you know that whenever you make a wrong turn, it recalculates and gives you new directions to get you back on course. The economy works in much the same way. Let’s look at an example:
Back in early 2014, I showed this graph from a presentation given by Steve Kopits. It shows that the cost of oil and gas extraction suddenly started on an upward trend, about the year 1999. Instead of costs rising at 0.9% per year, costs suddenly started to rise by an average of 10.9% per year.
Figure 2. Figure by Steve Kopits of Westwood Douglas showing trends in world oil exploration and production costs per barrel. CAGR is “Compound Annual Growth Rate.”
When costs were rising by only 0.9% per year, it was relatively easy for oil producers to offset the cost increases by efficiency gains. Once costs started rising much more quickly, it was a sign that we had in some sense “run out” of new fields of easy-to-extract oil and gas. Instead, oil companies were forced to start accessing fields with much more expensive-to-produce oil and gas, if they wanted to replace depleting fields with new fields. There would soon be a mismatch between wages (which generally don’t rise very much) and the cost of goods made with oil, such as food grown using oil products.
Did the invisible hand sit idly by and let business as usual continue, despite this big rise in the cost of extraction of oil from new fields? I would argue that it did not. It was clear to business people around the world that there was a large amount of coal in China and India that had been bypassed because these countries had not yet become industrialized. This coal would provide a much cheaper source of energy than the oil, especially if the cost of oil appeared likely to rise. Furthermore, wages in these countries were lower as well.
The economy took the opportunity to re-optimize. Part of this re-optimization can be seen in Figure 1, shown earlier in this post. It shows that world coal supply has grown rapidly since 2000, while oil supply has grown quite slowly.
Figure 3, below, shows a different kind of shift: a shift in the way oil supplies were distributed, after 2000. We see that China, Saudi Arabia, and India are all examples of countries with big increases in oil consumption. At the same time, many of the developed countries found their oil consumption shrinking, rather than growing.
Figure 3. Figure showing oil consumption growth since 2000 for selected countries, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016.
A person might wonder why Saudi Arabia’s use of oil would grow rapidly after the year 2000. The answer is simple: Saudi Arabia’s oil costs are its costs as a producer. Saudi Arabia has a lot of very old wells from which oil extraction is inexpensive–perhaps $15 per barrel. When oil prices are high and the cost of production is low, the government of an oil-exporting nation collects a huge amount of taxes. Saudi Arabia was in such a situation. As a result, it could afford to use oil for many purposes, including electricity production and increased building of highways. It was not an oil importer, so the high world oil prices did not affect the country negatively.
China’s rapid rise in oil production could take place because, even with added oil consumption, its overall cost of producing goods would remain low because of the large share of coal in its energy mix and its low wages. The huge share of coal in China’s energy mix can be seen in Figure 4, below. Figure 4 also shows the extremely rapid growth in China’s energy consumption that took place once China joined the World Trade Organization in late 2001.
Figure 4. China energy consumption by fuel based on BP 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy.
India was in a similar situation to China, because it could also build its economy on cheap coal and cheap labor.
When the economy re-optimizes itself, job patterns are affected as well. Figure 5 shows the trend in labor force participation rate in the US:
Figure 5. US Civilian labor force participation rate, based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as graphed by fred.stlouisfed.org.
Was it simply a coincidence that the US labor force participation rate started falling about the year 2000? I don’t think so. The shift in energy consumption to countries such as China and India, as oil costs rose, could be expected to reduce job availability in the US. I know several people who were laid off from the company I worked for, as their jobs (in computer technical support) were shifted overseas. These folks were not alone in seeing their jobs shipped overseas.
The World Economy Is Like a Car that Cannot Make Sharp Turns
The world economy cannot make very sharp turns, because there is a very long lead-time in making any change. New factories need to be built. For these factories to be used sufficiently to make economic sense, they need to be used over a long period.
At the same time, the products we desire to make more energy efficient, for example, automobiles, homes, and electricity generating plants, aren’t replaced very often. Because of the short life-time of incandescent light bulbs, it is possible to force a fairly rapid shift to more efficient types. But it is much more difficult to encourage a rapid change in high-cost items, which are typically used for many years. If a car owner has a big loan outstanding, the owner doesn’t want to hear that his car no longer has any value. How could he afford a new car, or pay back his loan?
A major limit on making any change is the amount of resources of a given type, available in a given year. These amounts tend to change relatively slowly, from year to year. (See Figure 1.) If more lithium, copper, oil, or any other type of resource is needed, new mines are needed. There needs to be an indication to producers that the price of these commodities will stay high enough, for a long enough period, to make this investment worthwhile. Low prices are a problem for many commodities today. In fact, production of many commodities may very well fall in the near future, because of continued low prices. This would collapse the economy.
The World Economy Can’t Go Very Far Backward, Without Collapsing
The 2007-2009 recession is an example of an attempt of the economy to shrink backward. (See Figure 1.) It didn’t go very far backward, and even the small amount of shrinkage that did occur was a huge problem. Many people lost their jobs, or were forced to take pay cuts. One of the big problems in going backward is the large amount of debt outstanding. This debt becomes impossible to repay, when the economy tries to shrink. Asset prices tend to fall as well.
Furthermore, while previous approaches, such as using horses instead of cars, may be appealing, they are extremely difficult to implement in practice. There are far fewer horses now, and there would not be places to “park” the horses in cities. Cleaning up after horses would be a problem, without businesses specializing in handling this problem.
What World Leaders Can Do to (Sort of) Fix the Economy
There are basically two things that governments can do, to try to make the economy (or car) go faster:
- They can encourage more debt. This is done in many ways, including lowering interest rates, reducing bank regulation, encouraging lower underwriting standards or longer term loans, taking out greater debt themselves, guaranteeing debt of non-creditworthy entities, and finding new markets for “recycled debt.”
- They can increase complexity levels. This means increasing output of goods and services through the use of more and better machines and through more training and specialization of workers. More complex businesses are likely to lead to more international businesses and longer supply chains.
Both of these actions work like turbocharging a car. They have the possibility of making the economy run faster, but they have the downside of extra cost. In the case of debt, the cost is the interest that needs to be paid; also the risk of “blow-up” if the economy slows. There is a limit on how low interest rates can go, as well. Ultimately, part of the output of the economy must go to debt holders, leaving less for workers.
In the case of complexity, the problem is that there gets to be increasing wage disparity, when some employees have wages based on special training, while others do not. Also, with capital goods, some individuals are owners of capital goods, while others are not. The arrangement creates wealth disparity, besides wage disparity.
In theory, both debt and increased complexity can help the economy grow faster. However, as I noted at the beginning, it is the wages of the non-elite workers that are especially important in allowing the economy to continue to move forward. The greater the proportion of the revenue that goes to high paid employees and to bond holders, the less that is available to non-elite workers. Also, there are diminishing returns to adding debt and complexity. At some point, the cost of each of these types of turbo-charging exceeds the benefit of the process.
Why the Economy Works Like a Self-Driving Car
The reason why the economy acts like a self-driving car is because the economy is, in physics terms, a dissipative structure. It grows and changes “on its own,” using energy sources available to it. The result is exactly the same effect that Adam Smith was observing. What makes the economy behave in this way is the fact that flows of energy are available to the economy. This happens because an economy is an open system, meaning its borders are permeable to energy flows.
When there is an abundance of energy available for use (from the sun, or from burning fossil fuels, or even from food), a variety of dissipative structures self-organize. One example is hurricanes, which self-organize over warm oceans. Another example is plants and animals, which self-organize and grow from small beginnings, if they have adequate food energy, plus other necessities of life. Another example is ecosystems, consisting of a number of different kinds of plants and animals, which interact together for the common good. Even stars, including our sun, are dissipative structures.
The economy is yet another type of a dissipative structure. This is why Adam Smith noticed the effect of the invisible hand of the economy. The energy that sustains the economy comes from a variety of sources. Humans have been able to obtain energy by burning biomass for over one million years. Other long-term energy sources include solar energy that provides heat and light for gardens, and wind energy that powers sail boats. More recently, other types of energy have been added, including fossil fuels energy.
When energy supplies are very cheap and easy to obtain, it is easy to ramp up their use. With growing supplies of energy, it is possible to keep adding more and better tools for people to work with. I use the term “tools” broadly. Besides machines to enable greater production, I include things like roads and advanced education, which also are helpful in making workers more effective. The use of growing energy supplies allows growing use of tools, and this growing use of tools increasingly leverages human labor. This is why we see growing productivity; we can expect to see falling human productivity if energy supplies should start to decline. Falling productivity will tend to push the economy toward collapse.
One problem for economies is diminishing returns of resource extraction. Diminishing returns cause the economy to become less and less efficient. Once energy extraction starts to have a significant problem with diminishing returns (such as in Figure 2), it is like losing energy resources into a sinkhole. More work is necessary, without greater output in terms of goods and services. Indirectly, economic growth must suffer. This seems to be the problem that the economy has been encountering in recent years. From the invisible hand’s point of view, $100 per barrel oil is very different from $20 per barrel oil.
One characteristic of dissipative structures is that they keep re-optimizing for the overall benefit of the dissipative structure. We saw in Figures 3 and 4 how fuel use and jobs rebalance around the world. Another example of rebalancing is the way the economy uses every part of a barrel of oil. If, for example, our only goal were to maximize the number of miles driven for automobiles, it would make sense to operate cars using diesel fuel, rather than gasoline. In fact, the energy mix available to the economy includes quite a bit of gasoline and natural gas liquids. If we need to use what is available, it makes sense to use gasoline in private passenger cars, and save diesel for commercial use.
Another characteristic of dissipative structures is that they are not permanent. They grow for a while, and then collapse. Later, new similar dissipative structures may develop and indirectly replace the ones that have collapsed. In this way, the overall system is able to evolve in a way that adapts to changing conditions.
What Are the Likely Events that Would Cause the Economy to Collapse?
I modeled the system as being like a self-driving car. The thing that keeps the system operating is the continued growth of inflation-adjusted wages of non-elite workers. This analogy was chosen because in ecosystems in general, the energy return on the labor of an animal is very important. The collapse of a population of fish, or of some other animal, tends to happen when the return on the labor of that animal falls too low.
In the case of the fish, the return on the labor of the fish falls too low when nearby supplies of food disappear, and the fish must swim too far to obtain new supplies of food. The return on human labor would seem to be the inflation-adjusted wages of non-elite workers. We know that wages for many workers have been falling in recent years, because of competition from globalization, and because of replacement of human labor by advanced machines, such as computers and robots.
Figure 6. Bottom 50% income share, from recent Piketty analysis.
Besides the problem of falling wages of non-elite workers, earlier in this post I mentioned a number of other issues that make the wages of these workers go less far. These include growing government spending, and the growing costs of education and healthcare. I also mentioned the problem of rising debt, and the increased concentration of wealth, as we try to add complexity to solve problems. All of these issues make it hard for “demand”–which might also be called “affordability”–to be sufficiently great to allow commodity prices to rise to the level producers need for profitability.
Prices Play a Very Important Role in the Economy
The pricing system is the communication system of the economy, as a dissipative structure. One use of energy is to create “information.” Prices are a high level form of information.
One big area where prices come up is with respect to the whole portfolio of products needed on a regular basis, which I mentioned earlier (water, food, energy products, and mineral products). In order for the system to continue working, the prices need to be both:
- Affordable by consumers
- High enough for producers to cover their costs, including a margin for taxes and reinvestment
Now, in 2017, prices are “sort of” affordable for consumers, but they are not high enough for producers. Oil companies will go out of business if these low prices persist.
Back in 2007 and 2008, we had the reverse problem. Prices were high enough for producers, but too high for consumers (especially non-elite workers). This is a big part of what pushed the economy into recession.
We noticed back in Figure 1 that quantities of energy products/goods tend to move up and down together. A similar phenomenon holds true for prices: commodity prices tend to rise and fall together (Figure 7). The reason this happens is because when the world economy is moving swiftly forward (higher wages, more building activity, more debt), demand tends to be high for many different types of materials at the same time. When the economy slows, prices of all of these commodities tend to fall at the same time. Inflation tends to fall as well.
Figure 7. Prices of oil, coal and natural gas tend to rise and fall together. Prices based on 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy data.
If prices cannot rise high enough for producers, it is likely a sign that wages of non-elite workers are already too low. The affordability loop mentioned earlier is not being closed, so prices cannot stay up at a high enough level to maintain production.
Most Modelers Overlook the Fact that the Economy Is an Open System
Most energy models are based on one of two views of the world: (1) fossil fuel energy supply will eventually run short, so we must use it as sparingly as possible; or (2) we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, because of climate change. Because of these issues, we want to leverage the fossil fuel energy we have, to as great an extent as possible, with energy that we can somehow capture from renewable sources, such as the solar energy or wind. With this view of the situation, our major objective is to create “renewables” that use fossil fuel energy as efficiently as possible. The hope is that these renewables, together with the actions of governments, will allow the economy to gradually shrink back to a level that is somehow more sustainable.
Implicit is this model is the view that the economy, and the world in general, is a closed system. Our current government and business leaders are in charge; they can make the changes they would prefer, without the invisible hand causing an unforeseen problem. Very few have realized that the economy cannot really shrink back very much; past history, as well as the nature of dissipative structures, shows that economies tend to collapse. The only economies that have at least temporarily avoided that fate have shifted toward less complexity–for example, eliminating huge government programs, such as armies–rather than yielding to the temptation to add ever more complexity, such as wind turbines and solar panels.
The real situation is that we have a here-and-now problem of too low wages for non-elite workers. Commodity prices are also too low. Intermittent renewables such as wind and solar are thought to be solutions, but it is well-known that intermittent renewables cause too-low prices for other types of electricity generation, when added to the electric grid. Thus, they are likely part of the low-price problem, not part of the solution. Temporary solutions, if there are any, are likely in the direction of cutting back on government expenditures and reducing regulation of banks. In fact, with the election of Trump and the passage of Brexit, the economy seems to again be re-optimizing.
We also know that dissipative structures do not shrink back well, at all. They tend to collapse, instead. For example, you, as a human being, are a dissipative structure. If your food intake were cut back to, say, 500 calories per day, how well would you do? If you could not get along on a very low calorie diet, how would you expect the economy to shrink back to a renewables-only level? Renewables that can be used in a shrunken economy are scarce; we don’t have a huge number of trees to cut down. We cannot maintain the electric grid without fossil fuels.
The assumption that the economy is a closed system is pretty much standard when modeling our current energy situation. This occurs because, until recently, we did not understand that the self-organizing properties of inanimate systems were as important as they are. Also, modeling of the economy as a closed system, rather than an open system, makes modeling much easier. The problem is that closed system modeling doesn’t really tell the right story. For a discussion of some of the issues associated with this mis-modeling, see the recent academic paper, Is the increased use of biofuels the road to sustainability? Consequences of the methodological approach.
Norman Pagett says
“SHTF time is dictatorship time—not homesteading time–its as well to bear that in mind.
When somebody starts saying:
“There’s a new political order that’s being formed,”
–and– “the media is your enemy”
—and— “other lesser people are responsible for your economic problems”
Norm…I think you need to stop watching the news. Many people in the news are pushing a narrative of what’s going on….mainly that Trump’s election means the U.S. is now under a white nationalist dictatorship. We’re not quite there yet and Trump is not a dictator. His orders can be challenged and vetoed.
Norman Pagett says “When somebody starts saying:
“There’s a new political order that’s being formed,”
That narrative is just wrong…another example of people in the media and elite trying imposing their own view of reality on others…most of them whether they know it or not are desperately trying to keep the current political order together would like to portray populism (Trump) as the emergence of new “order” when in reality, the political system is starting to break down.
There are some among the elite, who would love to see American government break down that we can have more globalization or “open borders”, which they think will solve our problems.
People are playing fast and loose with the facts across the political spectrum and trust in information is starting to slip.
Of course other people are responsible for our economic problems. Depending on where you lean, they are Communists, Capitalists, Muslims, Christians….scapegoating is nothing new. It our stratified and complex societies it would be silly for anyone to suggest that we are all working together towards common goals.
As for the dictatorship thing…I don’t see any sign of America heading for a large centralized dictatorship. That would require BAU to stay intact. A feudal system made up of ex-military people and local thugs seem more likely after a shtf situation…America will be a land of thousands of dictators. The resources to control the entire land just won’t be there.
Look how difficult it is for the U.S. military to impose Iraq and Afganistan during BAU….how will they able to cover a much larger territory without BAU?
ARBP,
Hmm.. now what would You say to be a dictatorship??
My definition would be, that the power to make a law, enforce the law, and decide who will be punished for breaking the law, are all one and the same. It doesn’t matter if the guys dress in white, blue, green, red, deathskulls or as easterbunnies. If the power to make the law, enforce the law and decision who broke the law are one and the same, then its an dictatorship. If Stefeun were among us still, he would educate us on Montesquieu.. RIP Stefeun
Funny thing is that as Norm stated some time ago, democracy was something FF made possible. Dictatorship is now inevitable. I agree with Norm, in that. Some form of ‘benevolent’ power is going to take full control. Not leaving anything for others to decide, leaving nothing to ‘chance’. Becoming in essence, a dictator. Is Trump going to be that somebody. I don’t think so. But his VP just might..
And on the second point on dictators after SHTF.. welcome to OFW ‘how to become a dictator’ school, lesson num. 1. I would start by making an alliance with the police, the military, the main grain silos of that country, retail wholsale warehouses and organic farms. With those resources I would start some sort of an Academy for cityfolk to learn essential skillsets for survival. In exchange, asking for canned foods from the cityfolk as payment for the service provided. Starting an militia with the canned foods. Concentrating on ethanol engine motorcycles, equipped with some sort of mounted polycarbonate shield and a mounted machine gun. Also ethanol engine ATVs with the same mounting would be good. Maybe a sidecar, or trailer, for the mounting. Hmm.. Then I’d dress these guys in white and with peace doves on their back, and send them out to ‘enforce peace’. Maybe in patrols of 3-5 men. But in reality seizing control, aka. providing security, to essential resources and mapping out dissidents. Who would then be taken out in the dark of the night by ‘nameless bandits’ which requires even more militia, with white shirts that have big peace doves on the back, on the streets etc. But by having only a few guys deciding what the law of land is, who enforces that law, and all the decisions about who broke the law and what should be done about it. Then that would be a dictatorship..
glad others have picked up that Pence is the real danger, not Trump. A while back i said: the next POTUS isn’t the danger, but the one who comes after him. (that was before Trump was in the frame)
My reasons? Because the first POTUS after Obama would preside over a crashing economy—his successor would “take control”—I didn’t think of a VP doing that though—foggy crystal ball that day–sorry.
Trump follows loonytoon politics, Pence works to god’s law. If he becomes POTUS it will be because god ordained it—thus everything that happens from then on is also his god’s will.
SHTF time will crash the economy, and Trump will fold through incompetence.
That leaves Pence in charge, Pence looks and acts normal. He isn’t. Godbotherers are the most dangerous of all.
But a crashed economy world wide will mean violent civil disorder
that must mean military intervention—no choice–and martial law (temporary of course)
It will mean suspension of the constitution (temporarily of course)
It will mean arrest of anyone disagreeing with it. (enemies of the people –including OF worlders I’m afraid.)—sorry bout that. Your names are probably on somebodys list already.
It wont stop the crash and burn of course—Pence is waiting for the second coming.
In the meantime the military will continue to side with the government until their pay stops.
Then they will go self employed.
If the economy doesn’t crash during the next 4 years,(possible) then move that scenario on to the mid 2020s—it is inevitable
Perhaps, Trump will fold before impeachment. Listen to Louise Mensch interview here:
http://getitgotitgood2.tumblr.com/post/157659281604/trumprussia-with-louisemensch
Sorry, didn’t realize the link would post like this… 🙁
Trump-Russia connections:
https://wearethisamericancarnage.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/the-matryoshka/
Are you kidding us? This level of “research” and fakery can only have come out of Langley! BTW, there’s still no love lost between the US and Russia. Since Trumps election it’s been BAU vis a vis portraying Russia as the world’s No:1 goon squad, after North Korea, or something like that.
The Left needs to understand why Trump won, and then get over it, or certainly have its head handed to it again in 4 more years (assuming we last that long). He won because the person standing on the other side of him was even more loathsome than he, if you can believe that. Not only more loathsome, but also a warmonger, a globalist, a Wall St. shill, a liar, a traitor and a backstabber.
The disenfranchised people who voted for Trump (the same people who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012) understood this viscerally, and that HRC would just keep throwing them under the bus, as did the globalist glove puppet, Obama, but in worse way. It was anything but a continuation of “BAU” for them.
Trump won, not because of Russia, or whatever cock and bull story the Left has made up to deflect introspection over the rout of the DP in 2016, where they didn’t just lose the Presidency, but the House AND the Governorships. Trump won because HRC is a c#nt. Not because she has a c#nt, but because she IS a c#nt.
Since we are on the topic of ‘Manchurian’ candidates….
Let’s have a peak at HRC…. as she downloads a very large file of instructions from her handlers in CorruptiSTAN…..
They really should make sure they hit send when she is sleeping… or in the toilet….
Psile,
I agree with much of what you said. I don’t believe we’ve ever seen a campaign of demonisation of this scale ever before. Whether or not Trump is the right man for the job or not is largely irrelevant. Presidents are puppets and must toe the line. If it’s not him then it will be the next in line to preside over the end of BAU. Why does the idea of Trump bother people who understand this?
The most memorable scene during the Super Bowl was when they showed Pense and James Baker sitting together. If you’re watching the Super Bowl in James Baker’s skybox you’re probably the next President.
I suppose Pence could be the successor to Trump. He also seems to be playing a wider role, even now. This article talks about his outsize influence.
http://www.newsweek.com/mike-pence-europe-visit-donald-trump-presidency-559505
You’ve got to admit that god bothering military dictatorships have done pretty well in the past. Why not now? – sarc
There’s something bothering me about this doomer stuff and it has to do with the insidious underlying current of religious belief. How many doomers are actually pushing this narrative in the hope that they usher in the return of their lord and saviour… you know the one.
One thing I detest more than anything is cults and cult like behaviour. I know we’re all subject to these forces if we live in industrial civ but it still creeps the hell out of me to think that much of what goes on is subject to these influences.
In the opposite corner we have luciferians who detest “god’s creation” and would like see it all burn or at least transformed into an abomination of their own making. What a truly f***ed up species we are. What was wrong with just chewing the cud and enjoying the sunshine like everyone else.
My bet was on Paul Ryan to step up when duty called but who knows…
What I do know is that we’re being conned on so many levels and we live in the mother of all ponzis. What else is there to know?
when doing unspeakable things to other people—there has to be a purpose
what better than the deity to whom only you have access, telling you to do it to cleanse everything—
hence you got the inquisition–etc etc.
come shtf time, there will be no shortage of holy warriors i can assure you
Holy Mutant Ninja Warriors… perhaps?
Well you have a point. However, nazi Germany pulled it off. After the financial collapse, BAU won’t exist, but that doesn’t rule out alternative models.
the third reich was a 12 year ponzi scheme
You really have to wonder whether alternative models (other than boiled rat) would be able to take hold post BAU. Any attempts to hold things together would be short lived and windows of opportunity would fade very fast.
If we don’t have something – some new system – in place now or very soon – and it would have to be the cleverest thing we’ve ever done – then it’s lights out at the human factory.
There will probably be some fried rat as well….
As Gail preaches, we have a self-organizing system. Most people wants to dissipate as much energy as they can afford. And if you don’t consume this or that resource, someone else will gladly do it. This is the reason why there will be no solutions, we are destined to use as much resources as possible then collapse.
The other side of that coin imo is that post-collapse/decline, we will organize ourselves to make use of whatever resources and tools that are available to us. People won’t lay down and die just because they can’t go to the supermarket no more. They will do what they can with whatever is available to them or die trying. Sure there will be looting, killing, radiation, starvation here and there but not everywhere and not at the same time. We will constantly re-organize ourselves to whatever living arrangement is available/practical at any given time.
Sure it will be a pretty bad experience for many people but it is what it is. Life has always been a struggle, we have just been taking a pause for a century. The hardships will return. But just because one can think of 1000 things to die from doesn’t mean that everybody will die in an instant, that is overly simple thinking. We are 7.5 billion people for a reason, we are resillient.
More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,[1] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.[2][3][4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction
None of these species had to deal with:
– massive population overshoot
– a food production system that is completely reliant on fossil fuels – and which will produce next to nothing when the chemicals stop
– diseases that are going to strike with a vengeance when the means to control them are gone
– 4000 spent fuel ponds worth of radiation
And yet they are extinct.
This calls for a big puff of hopium – suck deeply….. ahhhhhhhhh
http://www.smokingmeth.net/images/smoking-meth-with-pipe.gif
A collapse of industrialism and of the human population is likely a good thing for the longterm welfare of the planet.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4261036/Half-species-extinct-year-2099.html
Half of ALL species could be extinct by the end of the century, experts warn
One in five species on Earth face extinction and that could rise to one in two
There are just 5,000 black rhinos left in the wild as horns are worth £51k per kilo
Earlier this year a report said more than half of primate species faced extinction
One in five species currently faces extinction and by the end of the century a half of all animals will have died out, experts have warned.
The world’s leading biologists are attending a conference in the Vatican this week to discuss radical action to save some of the planet’s most loved animals.
Tigers and rhinos are facing extreme threats from poachers who sell animal parts to the Chinese medicine market.
But a report commissioned for the Biological Extinction conference says of equal or possible greater importance are less famous creatures and plants which play a crucial role in maintaining the Earth’s biosphere.
These lesser known species absorb carbon emissions, regenerate soil and keep control of pests.
[…]
What can you say, people apparently love to kill wild animals. I’m surprised there are any at all.
I have posted this before last year. I will do it again for the benefit of new people here. Collapse is relative and the straw that breaks the camel’s back will be something that no one think will do it. Some people say collapse started in the 2008 GFC. Some will say it was 2000 (dotcom). Some say 1987, 1971 or 1913. It really does not matter. Future historians, when they look back, they will say that the modern human civilization collapsed in the late 20th and early 21st century. The actual year of the collapse is irrelevant.
To me, the ball started in 1913, gained momentum in 1971 and after 1971, it accelerated and in 2008, it was actually “the end” but the governments across the world tried to correct it but it made it worse instead. Every 7-8 years, there must be a recession to clear up the deadwood (akin to forest fires) but it was not done and we are now again past the 7/8-year period. We are already on life support for a long time and more and more people are getting aware about this. When OFW started, there were only a few people who were actually aware of what is happening. Those who were aware stayed until today (most of them).
If there are no historians in future because all homo sapiens are dead, then any future lifeforms millions of years from now, when they had a look at the stratified layers of soil/earth, they will see there is a thin line of dark and rusty red material sandwiched between all the different layers of earth. This layer, probably no more than 5mm or 10 mm thick is rich in carbon and iron (remember we used a lot of iron in our civilization) and it coincide with a 99% extinction of all lifeforms on the planet and a very significant climate change. The future lifeform concludes that “climate change” caused the extinction of the 99% of the lifeforms during that epoch.
As you see, in a large enough time scale or long enough timeline, perception, viewpoints are relative and it is irrelevant to even debate about it.
when Titanic hits the iceberg, some people were killed (those in the keel, the lowest class) because the water flooded in. Some of them managed to close the watertight doors but did not. Those who did quickly went to tell the engineers and upon inspection, the engineer gave the warning that “this is not good” and asked the message to be sent to the Captain. The messenger went to the Captain and he was literally shouted off because the Captain was so adamant that the Titanic was unsinkable.
As more water flooded in, some of the lowest class survivors went to the lie boats. Some of the intermediate class (middle) class were affected. The wives of the these middle class people were still partying in the ball room. When the husband came to them and said that Titanic is going to sink, some of the wives laughed at the husband. Some of them listened and went to the lifeboats but turned back because their friends (the lady friends of his wife) laughed at them saying that Titanic was unsinkable. Why be outside in the cold? You should go into the ballroom and enjoy the warmth. The wife hesitated and turned back in and the husband was left outside in the cold. He understood the predicament but could not help because no one believed him. Not even his wife.
The water poured in more and more people, especially the intermediate class and the second class became suspicious with all the activities. By the the captain would realized that something was not so right (the speed slowed, the engine slowed and it was perhaps tilting a little). He hushed hushed the whole thing and asked the engineers and boiler man to see what can be done.
With all the commotions, some of the first class passengers began to sense something was wrong but held back together with the second class passengers. It was just too cold outside and stepping into the lifeboat will make you an outcast. People may laugh at you stating that Titanic was unsinkable. Come into the warm ballroom and enjoy. Some of them went to the lifeboat and sat. Those brave souls braved the tirade, sarcasm, ridicule, etc. Most of them went back to the ballroom or just stand outside the ballroom door.
Suddenly, there was a jerk and some of the lights went out. The Captain has no choice but to say “abandon ship”. The premier class was still in denial and was outrage that he paid a fortune to be in the unsinkable Titanic and tried to summon the Captain to his luxurious suite. Some of the premier class passengers accepted the fact and joined the lowest class people in the life boat.
As you know, the ship sank shortly and there are still many people who are in disbelieve that the unsinkable Titanic sank. They felt cheated but it was too late. Everyone believed that it was unsinkable and there are many who were still in denial up till the point they felt water in their feet. By then, they had only 2 secs before it went under.
Any similarities to what we are facing now? The lower class, the middle class, the messenger, the denial, the cold outside and rather have the warm inside, afraid of being ridicule?
Humans never learned from the mistakes.
Humans adapt. There will be a financial collapse. What happens afterwards is impossible to predict because the system is chaotic. Most likely an entirely new model will emerge that is extremely difficult for us to even imagine. Endlessly ranting about how and why the current model will fail and lead to total oblivion is becoming tedious and boring. WE GET IT! Go join FE in his storage container or come up with something interesting or funny to post.
Kurt, if you read and understand history, the most important “thing” about a financial system is trust. Historically, all fiat currencies will have only one outcome – collapse when the trust is gone. There is no other options or no other way out. When you have a new system, how would you “place” trust in it? It is a very globalized economy and in a collapse, you may have your own NEW local town, county, state or national system that was hastily set up. Do you think we (foreigners) will trust that system? We know our system has also collapse and you expect us to believe your system?
If you happen to be doing business or have experience with trade financing, you will know that credit facilities are extremely important to trade, be it local trade or international trade. Without trade financing, no trade will ever happen.
When the financial system collapse, it is actually a collapse in trust in fiat system. When that happens, the supply chain collapse and it is matter of days before chaos sets in. When chaos sets in, I am pretty sure, no one will bother about a new system.
Therefore, I am quite sure “you did not get it”. I don’t have to join FE. I am not looking forward to collapse and I am enjoying every moment I have with my family. It is just that today I am free and thus, I have some time to post it here. People tend to forget that doomers have no life. Rather, I enjoy every waking moment of my life.
“Rather, I enjoy every waking moment of my life.”
+++++++++
Boring. Hey, type it for the thirtieth time. Good grief. What is the matter with you? We get your point. Move on.
Let’s start with the spent fuel ponds — do you think we can keep those operational post BAU?
If so how?
We can’t even solve the Fukushima problem … and BAU is fully operational.
I will say that your comments of the past few hours are EXCELLENT..thank you for taking the time to write them. Unfortunately, even though you made the case clearly how BAU-Lite is IMPOSSIBLE, I suspect you won’t have converted them..but to people who are new to this, it will help them better understand what is going on…we all started as BAU-Liters and worked our way to BAU or NOTHING as we went deeper into the rabbit hole 🙂
I remember 7-8 years ago when I was new to all this, I would warn people that they should start a garden and stock extra cans of food, buy some physical gold, etc… LOLLLLLL I was such a NOOB!!!
BAU will not exist when the fragile (and it is very breakable!) system that ties our “small” world together fragments.BUT Natural forces as usual will remain. Hunger is a great motivator. Disease is an efficient culler of weakness. Cooperation is an effective means of combating dangers. In a best case scenario maybe only 80% of us will perish. The other 20% will figure something out. Pareto’s ratio always happens!
None of us can predict or have assurance that we will be in the 20%. Very few bombing crews in WWII made the 25 successfull missions that the Memphis Belle did, but some did. Members of this site at least have an appreciation of some of the danger ahead. Whether or not any of us make it through to whatever is on the other side is not ours to know. 20% odds beats 0% anyday. That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it!
Edwinlloyd,
What exactly is your plan? What are you sticking to?
What are your supposed steps for survival, when people all around you are ‘culled’?
And.. what kind of a world do you think the ‘survivors’ will be living in 50 or 100 years after SHTF ??
I know someone like this – he thinks the world is going to hell in a hand basket — does not understand the specifics of why…. he thinks we will be culled down to 500m or so…
He seems untroubled – he thinks the Canadian government will make everything alright — I guess other countries will bear the brunt of the cull — so long as he stays in Canada he’ll be saved.
He is what I refer to as a fool.
I’m always slightly amused when people refer to disease ‘culling the weak’: I read an awful lot about pre-fossil fuel societies, above all lots of memoirs and biographies, and lots of 18thc medical pamphlets pass through my restoration workshop, and the fact is that TB, typhus, scarlet fever, syphilis, pneumonia, etc, are so virulent and nasty that they cull everyone, rich or poor, apparently strong and well-fed or not.
Of course, worse if you lived in a slum, were under-nourished and worked inhumane hours. But before the advent of antibiotics, even the wealthiest families, enjoying good nutrition, exercise such as horse-riding, athletics, and the very cleanest living conditions, were resigned to early deaths of women in childbirth and the loss of a very high % of their children before maturity or in early adulthood.
The awfulness of TB in particular is not to be imagined by us now in advanced societies. So wracked by pain were many people that opiates were eagerly seized upon and merrily prescribed by physicians: one often wonders just how high many Victorians were for much of their lives!
Not to forget gangrene. Old newspapers are full of deaths by gangrene after accidents.
Off the top of my head the great Charles Darwin’s daughter comes to mind as a great example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Darwin
We now have people who have taken weakness to a whole new level, they will be gone long before first pandemic.
Some things never change.
Isn’t opiate abuse on the rise again worldwide and causing a significant amount of addiction and premature death… so I hear?
80 % will do 20 % of the dying. Or was it the other way around?
I enjoy the disbelief at the ‘plan’ I proposed. My dad was a physician, born in 1902, and trained in medicine before antibiotics were around. On my wall is a painting by my wife’s great aunt who died from TB. My dad worked primarily in public health, part of which included post war rehabilitation of the survivors of German concentration camps.
My mum survived the buzz bombs that dropped on London during WWII. All of that is to say that my upbringing did not assume that all would be well…….
Like good soldiers, training is what kicks in when things don’t go as planned. I raised my kids that way and am now working on the next generation.
To think that any plan made at this point would be adequate to traverse what is ahead is pure hubris. To have somewhat probable expectations is a good start though. That is what I intended to convey in my tongue in cheek comment on a plan.
I do think strongly that clinging to the hope that BAU will persist is stupid.
Thanks for your comments. I think you are right about your point, “To think that any plan made at this point would be adequate to traverse what is ahead is pure hubris.” We have a hard time seeing what is ahead, when things aren’t changing too radically. It is even harder to imaging what might be ahead if things are changing.
It’s not that we are “clinging to the hope that BAU will persist” as much as TINA…and the point that us “insta-doomers” on this blog are trying to make is that preparing for the end of BAU is pointless..now if it brings joy to you and your family to prep, then that’s great…however if prepping makes you miserable, but you do it anyway because you want to try to be in that so called 20%, then that’s really sad…
+++++
…and the point that us “insta-doomers” on this blog are trying to make is that preparing for the end of BAU is pointless.
And yet the most outspoken insta-doomer posting here has done more prepping than anyone. It’s easy to write about how all prepping is pointless and one should live like there is no tomorrow once one has already safeguarded one’s future to the greatest possible extent.
If that reference is to me — I have acknowledged my delusional thinking on prepping — I hardly even bother to keep a garden these days… out of 20 beds I planted stuff in only 4 this season…
I will not waste my final days on earth fretting over pumpkins and weeds.
I do have the 20ft container — but again that is pointless — that will be shared with neighbours when BAU goes so it will add at best a few weeks to life. Or armed men will show up — ask what’s inside — then take everything.
I would hope that my comments about prepping are useful to others considering the same route — they might stop people from wasting their time — and putting their cash to something that allows them to better enjoy the last days of BAU.
Well not my case that’s for sure, when SHTF, I’m checking out…until then:
If I had to place my bets one way or the other I’d bet on insta-doom too, but I’ve been hanging around doomer sites for long enough to see many forecasts of the end come and go. At the moment I’m feeling more like the slow cooked frog. Every year I see the cost of food, energy, housing and taxes go up way above the official inflation figures whilst average income is stagnant or declining. Doesn’t take a genius to work out where all the non-elite are going to end up in the not too distant future, even without insta-doom.
One of the reasons I’m wary of belief in near term collapse is the psychological difficulty of experiencing oneself becoming poorer year after year, especially as most posting here were indoctrinated with the belief in technological progress. I don’t doubt that many who believe in insta-doom secretly long for it too.
Well I’m certainly not secretly longing for it…I have a good paying job that lets me do pretty much what I want (trips, buying junk I don’t need :), going to nice restaurants etc..) I would take this life forever…but the math does not add up..and the reason I say that is…2008…how close we came..and since then it took herculean efforts by CBs to keep the show going..and now debts have skyrocketed with barely any growth AND we have gone through 8 more years of that master resource, the reason why we are all here today: CONVENTIAL oil..so like I said I don’t wish it and until it happens well…Party on Dudes!!
Yorchichan,
You mean instadoomers have an Freudian death wish or Freudian death drive??
Personally my journey started at the turn of the millenium when I was supposed to be the next wiz kid of the family, to consult the outer family members who were then in politics, about the next step.. I failed miserably.. all scenarios I could come up with, ended the same way. End of growth, bye bye pensions, welfare, bye bye to the world as we know it. My family wasn’t too thrilled about the consulting I ended up providing.. when the whole deal became clear to me, I sold my two internet start ups I had going, and started working to have an organic farm running, and got the paychecks from an multinational with very basic products and services, that ‘can’t’ go bankrupt. Later I’ve learned that the organic farm doesn’t make a difference. And who cares if your business is the last one to go bankrupt, because it all goes down in the same day/ week/ month.
Tpday I find myself without any stress or fear of/for the future because I’m free to live Now. I’m not sure how that translates to your theory of instadoomers having an Freudian death wish/deat drive..
Van Kent
Sorry, I don’t know anything about Freudian death wishes or drives and I am not sufficiently motivated to do the research. It seems that you have done all you can to prepare for collapse and so you can now relax and enjoy the show. There is always a satisfaction in knowing you have done the best you can.
Obviously I can’t comment on the thought processes of any individual, but most people who comment on OFW and on all doomer sites are either middle aged or old. Quite apart from desiring release from the pain of watching everything slowly fall apart, is it not possible that believing in the imminent death of all is a comfort to those coming to terms with their own mortality?
I am just into my 5th decade — and I have never felt better — so this is not about falling to pieces and hoping to take the world with me…
It is about facts. And the facts overwhelming support a rapid collapse in the near future — and the likely extinction of the species.
The reason most of the people here are over 40 is because most of the younger people prefer to spend their time on Facebook.
Well…. I suppose that it is more difficult to discuss these issues when you are young and you expect to have a long life ahead of you — most of us have already lived fulfilling lives… the prospect of imminent death is not so daunting….
I think someone posted a story about a 20 something year old who ‘saw behind the curtain’ and was getting counselling for despair…. I can imagine knowing at that age would be very troubling….
One of the kids we sponsor is 15 and he picked up End of More to read…. when I noticed that I swapped it for This is London….
I don’t welcome starvation and radiation poisoning — but I am not losing sleep over the prospect of gnawing on bark at some point… It’s been a grand adventure —- and it will be capped off with a front row seat to the most important event in the history of man…. I get to experience extinction….
Yorchichan,
When I first started to write/ think about policy options I was 24-25 and now I’m 41. Does that count me as middle-aged?
Sure, I get what you’re saying, but for me its just maths, logic, the ability to take the big picture in focus and take it to the logical conclusion it has..
Van Kent you we’re 24-25? Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said you were a whiz kid…I’m 4 years older than you and no way I would have realized all this mess were in at that age…it took 2008 and the maturity of a late thirties guy for me to wake up!!
Fast
It was a reference to you. As Guy McPherson found out, life away from civilization is hard work and boring. (If you are not bored, why spend so much time commenting on OFW? I’m only commenting myself today because I am too sick to work.) If you think your current location offers no more hope than anywhere else why not give up the farm and container and go and live by a tropical beach? If you are hoping to be able to enjoy the show, you will probably be disappointed because news will be one of the first casualties of the death of BAU.
I am not bored — I work remotely so am in front of screens much of the day…. when I am not responding to emails from business leaders… heads of state and the occasional super model groupie …. I fill the space with FW contributions….
There are plenty of space to fill….
I used to live on a tropical island for 7 years before I moved to New Zealand…. I don’t care much for the beach so lived on a cliff-side jungle retreat … at first that was great — but then that damn Eat Pray Love book and movie came out and the hordes arrived…. the traffic on the mountain went nuts…. and between that and the humidity I woke up one day and said ‘F876 This!’
Mrs Fast and I had been to NZ once before and we really liked it — so I got in touch with an immigration lawyer and said – I am a refugee – I demand asylum! He said — yes I can see that you are persecuted — tortured even — I guarantee you I can get you folks in.
So we jumped on a plane and went to look at property on the south island — and within a matter of months we had ditched Bali and were in NZ
The expectation that NZ was potentially a good sanctuary also weighed heavily in our decision — but we would not have come to NZ if that was the only factor. I have been to Irian Jaya and that ticks more boxes than NZ in terms of sanctuaries — but I’d never move there….
There will be no sanctuaries when BAU ends…. we all get to starve and eat radiation … I’ve been to dozens of countries and lived in 6… and I could not think of a better place to finish up the great adventure.
Van Kent,
Whether 41 counts as middle-aged depends on how you have looked after yourself and your mental attitude.
Yorchichan,
Mental attitude.. I’m an instadoomer.. not much to be done about that, I’m afraid
Otherwise, the body seems to like farm work, eating organic and developing ‘house strater doughs’ and fermenting recepies for storage. Its something to do with the lactic acid bacteria in the gut, or something. Can’t remember when was the last time at one of the family MDs, so can’t much complain. Still 6ft 175lbs as always. But can’t run 2 miles in 12min, like when I was younger, and some greys are showing up at the temples. So, yup, the millenials would say I’m middle-aged..
‘Make it through’
I often hear this phrase…. it implies that there will be some sort of reset …. that once say 7 billion people die-off …. we get back to business
This is not a typhoon … or an earthquake … nor a world war…. we do not go back to anything remotely resembling ‘normalcy’
In the remote chance that anyone survives this…. what awaits would be a very primitive existence.
In case you hadn’t noticed – we are collapsing for want of cheap to produce energy — 7 billion people dying will not magically fix that problem…
This disaster is permanent – the life you know will be finished – forever. It will not be Little House on the Prairie – it will be The Road + Apocalypse Now + Mad Max —- only worse
Anyone alive post BAU will wish they had been wiped out in the Big Cull.
Of that I am absolutely certain.
I even bought some gold coins and gave them to my older brother — and told him to hold onto them ‘in case of an emergency’ hahahaha….. I should ask for those back to buy more whiskey for the end of the world party!
And then I remember trying to convince all the farmers in the area that I lived to grow organic food so that they would not kill me when their urea farmed soil left them starving post chemicals…. I even offered to pay for the seeds and training….
How silly I was!!!
That is a very important point….
Glenn — we were all you — (well not quite that badly deluded) —but eventually we all ‘got it’
Back then there was no Core — how fortunate the new joiners are to have a group of people who have been where they are — explaining how and why their logic is flawed…
We should get a percentage of all money saved by those who were planning to spend their savings with Chris Martenson on his doomsday solutions…. call it a consulting fee….
Sorry for some of the grammar errors (past/present tense), spelling and missed out words. Have “English is not my first language excuse” is just like saying “the dog ate my homework”. I proofread it in Word, corrected it, re-read again and it looked good. Copied and pasted into the box and press “Post Comment”. Reread again and argggahh… saw the errors. Sorry.
No one cares. Mistakes are human.
The points you are making are extremely clear — the minor errors in grammar are irrelevant
We have life boats?
Didn’t first class mostly survive and third class mostly die?
I suppose the Captain followed the ship. I wonder if Donald will follow the ship down?
We have life boats?
Didn’t first class mostly survive and third class mostly die?
I suppose the Captain followed the ship. I wonder if Donald will follow the ship down?
** It is just metaphorically speaking…
We think of humans as one species. If we consider functionality, then we might divide humans into two homo sapiens subvarients.
I call them “Homo sapiens empirico” and “Homo sapiens politico”.
Empirico, the earlier form, survived primarily through their skill in observing their environment and making the successful response to those observations. It was a disadvantage to use wishful thinking. To recognize whether a track in the dirt was predator or prey could only benefit if the “hope” is left out of the equation.
The truth was what was right before their eyes.
As the population grew and villages became towns and towns became cities and monarchies became established another skill developed. In these population dense situations it became advantageous to observe the other humans. It became vital to be able to recognize the pecking order in the group. The truth became what ever the king said it was.
Over time we might imagine that there was a selection against any tendency for empirical observation that might inhibits ones ability to project support of the ruling elite.
These two subvarient lines are mixed in our present population with the Politico strain being expressed strongly in our policy makers and administrators.
These people are incapable of empirical observation.
They are incapable of seeing what is right before their eyes.
They don’t see the weather.
They don’t see the forest and they don’t see the trees.
They don’t differentiate between science
and science styled marketing.
They make their living by supporting the owners no matter what the owners present as truth. We now have the politicos in the majority.
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on…….”
Aubrey,
The problem as I see it is, is more of an ubermenchen, hubris, magic thinking problem. The utter unability to understand what will come next, and what that will entail. Too much magic..
Nobody remembers that the first few colonies failed, that came to what was to be called the U.S. of A.
What changed, was a few forest finns coming along one of them boats.. the forest finns thought how to eke out an existence out of pretty much nothing. They had done it, seen it, experienced it before.
The mighty U.S. of A. with all its resources.. and still the death toll was so very high among the first colonies, that is before the forest finns came.. they had done it before.. once you have one successful group, other groups are quick to copy what they do and know. But first you need that one group who really really know what they are doing. Seen it before. Done it before. Seen what can go wrong. Seen how to succeed. And are willing to do whatever it takes.
I just think we have a huge amount of magic thinking floating around. The truth is that if BAU were to become BAU-lite, we’d need a group who’d have done it before. We don’t. And if somebody thinks to survive SHTF, they should do the Fast Eddy challenge immediately.
I didn’t. I’m probably not much older than you and remembered from grade school that the first permanent colonists, in America, were from the city and had no experience of growing enough food to eat. Just checked recently and found a new tidbit related to what aubreyenoch attributes the civilized/domesticated human “Homo sapiens empirico” of suffering from , ‘magical thinking’. For some the first colonists of Jamestown thought life in the Americas would be similar to what they had back at home–they wouldn’t grow their own food they would “trade” with the local Indians–trade what exactly, I don’t know, but I can see the similarities between urban folks from the 17th century and 21st century urban folks who are completely oblivious as to how to survive outside the city..or even in the city.
Doing something before and experiencing it before is very important.
We cannot rely on our belief that we are “quick learners” or “positive thinking” to get us over the learning curve.
There aren’t any Squantos to teach us how to survive in the new menacing environment that will form in the future.
Amazing!
Very good points!
Humans …. and DelusiSTANIS —- DelusiSTANIS are technically humans…. but they lack intelligence, logic, common sense…. some say their brains are fake… they look like brains … but they are Potemkin….
Interesting observation! I think the existence of television sets, turned on all day, furthers the trend away from observing what is really going on. It also reduces the amount of critical thinking done. The question simply becomes, “Do I follow Leader A or Leader B? Which version of ________ will save us, do I believe?”
Imagine if all the tvs and computers and smartphones were to be suddenly silenced…
Within minutes everyone everywhere would be outdoors…
A new world indeed.
Good points!
And there was this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lightoller
Charles Lightoller was the guy responsible for lifeboats. He forbid men to ride them, and shot the steerage men who tried to board it. So sometimes empty lifeboats were thrown to the sea.
Despite of this, he was never punished, and was employed in the Royal Navy during the Great War where he threw captured German seamen to the sea regularly.
For this he was honored, and became rich enough to afford a yacht. This article, obviously written by a descendant, still gripes over the fact that his prize yacht was seized by the Royal navy during WW2.
He lived to be 78. There is no karma, and people like him will continue Bau-Lite.
Myth busters
=============
** When TSHTF, the elites will go to bunkers and emerge after the dust has settled and they will be the masters of earth
1. They are not smart. They are stupid. If they are smart, they would not have let Fukushima happened
2. They genetic material is crap. Google Rothschild and all the rich people. So many in-breeding and they marry only among the rich. Genetically, they are very bad.
3. Who is going to the bunker with them? Their friends? 20 of them? So, are they all capable of feeding themselves when they come out?
4. Who is going to wash their clothes, grow food, tend the chickens (if they keep live chickens), goats? Who is going to clean the toilets? Who is going to build the house?
5. You are only wealthy when BAU exists. When BAU is gone, everyone is the same. Does it really matter post BAU if you have 10% shares of Amazon, 20 apartments in NYC, 10kgs of gold and USD200m in your bank account?
6. No cell phones, no computers, no planes (until they run out fuel), no cars (until they run of has), nothing modern. How long can they last?
7. That is if they did not die from radiation poisoning.
***** When situation becomes critical, government will implement command economy and instruct on what to do. Martial law will kick in. Rationing will happen.
1. On what to do? Thorium research (another 10 years)? Solar panels? Grow food? Tend to chickens?
2. Grow food? It takes at least a few weeks to grow some simple vegetables. So, what to eat while it grows? Do we have enough resources (land, knowledge, skills, seeds, etc) to grow the food? Do we have enough to feed 320m in USA?
3. Will the soldiers and cops cooperate or will they steal the food?
4. So, what happened to the supply chain? Will the trucks move? Who gets the gasoline or diesel? Who is going to supply the supermarkets?
5. Will our overseas partner even honour USD or send food or supplies to USA?
6. If martial law happens in one city, people know it is temporary, they will cooperate. If it happens in California, people will still cooperate as they know it is temporary. News and internet is still available and they know what is happening. Communication is still OK. What if there are no news, internet and phone are not working and the tanks are on the street? Do you think chaos will not start immediately?
7. So, again, what happened to the supply chain? Food delivered? Banks opened? Cash available? Medicine available? Groceries available ?Jobs available? What are the people suppose to do? Sit at home and wait for help? Do you think people will just do that?
CTG
Command economy, martial law and rationing?
You may be interested in an article written by Catherine Austin Fitts over at Solari.com. Consider:
“The men who built the national security state appear to have no intention of allowing their secrets to be told or their privileges to be compromised. With the credibility of the corporate media disappearing, what will these men dare to do next? Is the deep state racing to tear up the US Constitution before its deep and hidden system of finance and its mysterious source of privilege are both compromised?”
Is something already afoot?
Jerry, there are many who says that when the shove comes to a push, rationaing, martial law, etc will set in. From the political perspective, it may work but from the market/economics point of view, it will not work as it will crash the economy. Who is going to sit in Starbucks all day to enjoy coffee when curfew is in placed? My point simply means that economically now, in this interconnected world, it is not possible. Planes take off 24 hours from cargo terminals, trucks run 24 hours, JIT means that if this stops, everything will come to a halt. No coffee beans at the local coffee, no sundries at the supermarket, etc. Unlike 100 years ago, we rely on supplies coming in and not our garden for food.
More excellent stuff CTG — you should quit running those factories and spend your days posting full time on FW!
How amusing that that people think the ultra rich will survive this….
I was just in Queenstown which seems to be the destination of choice for many of these people…. and you can see construction of mega homes on the hillside — I was told of a 10 million dollar place being built by a financier out of Singapore — he leaves it empty — no doubt he’s got the jet standing by ready to run to his haven….
He no doubt believes in BAU Lite — in a reset… he’ll ride it out in Queenstown skiing and drinking chardonnay….
As you point out — not very smart at all…
Then you have the mega mega rich who are buying islands…. they’ll need security — but when the security understands that the old prick giving them orders has nothing to offer them that cannot just take with impunity…
They leader of the security teams says f&^% off old man…. go get me a beer…. on second thought — I’ll have a bottle of that champagne in the cellar…. a little caviar would go nicely with that…. and tell your 25 year old bimbo that The Boss would like to have a word with her… tell her to put on something nice ….now run along Georgie…. double speed old boy.
http://www.pensacolafishingforum.com/attachments/f22/136561d1379800347-george-soros-83-will-marry-42-year-old-11111-jpg
You should watch the walking dead episodes with Negan. He keeps a harem of wifes dressed in cocktail dresses for his amusement. See… it’s not all bad in the zombie apocalypse. Especially if you make the grade for top alpha dog.
Say hi to your new boss…
OFW how to become a dictator ‘lesson num. 2’
always, always, be the guy who enforces peace. Always rationalize everything by saying its to protect ourselves from outside threats. Never ever, ever use violence in public. You have seconds in command to be that fall guy. Always have a fall guy to do the dirty work necessary. You always, always stay crispy clean in the public view.
As a reminder lesson num. 1.
welcome to OFW ‘how to become a dictator’ school, lesson num. 1. start by make an alliance with the police, the military, the main grain silos, retail wholsale warehouses and organic farms. Start some sort of an Academy for cityfolk to learn essential skillsets for survival. In exchange, ask for canned foods from the cityfolk as payment for the service provided. Starting an militia with the canned foods. Dress these guys in white and with peace doves on their back, and send them out to ‘enforce peace’. Maybe in patrols of 3-5 men. But in reality seizing control, aka. providing security, to essential resources and mapping out dissidents. Who would then be taken out in the dark of the night by ‘nameless bandits’ (the second in command) which requires even more militia, with white shirts that have big peace doves on the back, on the streets etc.
Negan can only fail..
Just things learnt from guys Julius Caesar, Napoleon etc.
You may very well be right. The Old Testament talks about David, seeming to follow a pattern somewhat in this direction. Dmitry Orlov used to talk about “protection” as being a future career for some people, IIRC.
Myth buster-buster
1. Being smart cannot prevent all disasters, but being smart can mitigate disasters. There is a reason South Africa gave up its nukes before Mandela took over, and all of SA’s nuke stations are in Cape Town.
2. Inbreeding is good if there is no ‘recessive’ bad genes. Cleopatra, the fruit of generations of inbreeding, was the best ruler of the Ptolemies. Her attempt to get Caesar’s genes to improve the line was actually a failure, since Caesariaon,. who fled to another country before Augustus arrived on Cleopatra’s orders, was stupid enough to believe his bribed teachers to return to Egypt where Augustus promptly killed him. An inbred ruler would have fled to Ethiopia and would have bided his time there.
3. 4. A smart planner would have packed 3-4 bodyguards with military and preferably farm experience, plus 3-4 people he/she would enjoy with, and one or two more obedient children. These people, if they want to eat, will do the menial stuff.
5. There is something called social rapport. Same reason Lee Kwan Yew packed all of the important positions with family members and loyal servants. if you owned a large land you will know everyone important in your town beforehand so they won’t kill you and treat you well. The royals who fled Hitler to London with little more than their suitcases were not treated badly since they met with British royals beforehand to get acquainted, just in case.
6.7.. People lived without these gadgets. Some won’t adapt but some will. Radiation poisoning will affect the surrounding areas but not everywhere.
===
Second part
1. Thorium research is already done in many parts. It may not be profitable but if it is the only game in town it will be done.
2. Of course we can’t feed 320m, but we can feed 32m.
3. Soldiers and cops will steal the food but they will remain somewhat organized. Better to be part of an established gang than start from zero.
4. 7. Enough stockpiles to last for some time, and people will crave order and will be following orders.
5. Who cares about overseas? If the dollar is screwed everyone else is, too.
6. Tanks are on the street to prevent chaos. People surprisingly tend to adapt well into the new orders. Japanese populace who shouted to kill the Americans in Aug 14, 1945 were running to the US soldiers to collect little morsels of food by Sep 14. 1945.
Thanks kulm,
For a second there, it sounded just like I’ve imagined they should sound.
But what a load of BS.
All I see here is
I believe…
I want…
I hope…
There’s no life experience or empirical evidence to back up all your optimism.
Good points!
Chris Martenson is a low life scum bag flogging false hope to pathetic people
For those who does not understand modern technology.
Click on https://www.element14.com/community/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadBody/28935-102-1-209635/Inverter_BOM.pdf to download the BOM (bill of material) that a solar inverter is made of. The column DESCRIPTION is the identity of the electronic parts. CAP is capacitor. RES is resistor.
Here is a sample image :
https://us.v-cdn.net/6024911/uploads/attachments/67/3132.jpg
Solar inverters are easy to manufacture as it is discrete (not integrated circuits like a phone). They have large components like capacitors and resistors. They are not integrated.
In total there are 135 discrete parts in the small inverter. That does not include the circuit board. It does not include the soldering, desolderting facilities.
If any one of the part spoils (i.e. you need to have the skills and knoweldge to determine which one is spoilt – you need oscilloscopes, test equipment, etc). In BAU, you just buy the entire inverter and throw away the spoilt inverter. When BAU is gone, you cannot afford to do that. So, you need to check capacitor or resistor is spoilt. When you find the culprit, you need to desolder the part out properly and solder it back. If you are not skilled, you will cause short circuit and the entire board will be burnt. I have done solder/desoldering before. It is not easy.
So, who is going to keep the 135 parts for you in your area, say in rural Illinois or in Gail’s place in Georgia. You must change the exact parts. You can have a different capacitor or resistor value. You don’t know which part will spoil, so, which part are you going to keep spares?
Capacitor and resistor factories are located in Asia and only a few in Europe and probably North America. even if they have, do they manufacture the same parts (capacitor values and size) as the ones you need.
This is a capacitor factory (I have shown this image before):
https://en.tdk.eu/blob/168348/dd20d0e0f2eb7ced2b17bdb7dce5c703/epcos-bawal-opening-production-HighResolutionData.jpg
It definately needs BAU to function.
This is a typical printed circuit board that controls the machines that makes the capacitors :
http://ssstechnologies.org/img/pcb.jpg
Care who can troubleshoot these boards when BAU goes away?
I like people to refute what I have written here. Again, please present facts and supporting evidence why you are right. I don’t want to responds to half-baked arguments.
That looks familiar … oh ya…. that’s what busted on my solar pump system a month after it was installed.
Another great post CTG. Thanks!
We may not have the capacity to replace our capacitors, but we must solder on! 🙂
LOL!!
What will happen is these gizmos will be warehoused, and existing stuff will be cannibalized. There are now a lot of computing power already in existence, and enterprising engineers will be able to cannibalize and continue the tech civ for a long time.
I believe you are from Singapore. Lee Kwan Yew built Singapore from nothing. People like him will exist.
singapore was built on the clever manipulation of trade—ie profit. It was not “built out of nothing”
Singapore is a trading hub for other nations, it has no actual energy production system of its own
Dubai is the same, in a previous era venice had the same function.
As trade slows and stops, these trading hubs will cease to have any function or meaning, and will collapse.
Venice right now is a wonderful place (am going there again this year) but it exists as a museum to past glory. Without millions of visitors each year it would empty out and sink into the sea.
Places like Dubai will collapse back into the desert.
It’s worth noting that as soon as they could the Venetians built a land empire in addition to the maritime trading network: they worked the Cretans as slaves, and ruled many towns in northern Italy.
By the time Napoleon conquered Venice, the aristocracy were still living the high life on the basis of mortgages on those estates, run up in the centuries of decline.
Napoleon called them all in, the aristos couldn’t pay, and the whole thing imploded. Now a tourist mess, though people say it’s bearable in the winter.
Clever old Napoleon: why kill people when you can make them bankrupt?
200/300 yds in any direction from the rialto bridge,you have venice almost to yourself, summer or winter…the crowds just follow each other around mindlessly
but to your other point—city/state traders can only exist by extracting energy resources from others
I guess you have no experience in engineering. Otherwise you would have known that canibalising is knowledge intensive and with our current engineering specialisation, it is a very difficult task. Engineers are not god. By the way, I am engineer by training with a fee very critical patents under my belt. I am not from Singapore by the way. Close but no cigar.
Wow!
To all who finds it hard to understand interconnectivity:
It was discussed in Eric Cline’s book 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Even in the olden days, smaller civilization collapsed when their neighbouring (bigger) ones dies as they depend on the bigger ones for trade and other resources. If it happened more than 3000 years ago, it would be a million times worse now. I believe this was discussed in OFW many years ago. http://www.historytoday.com/reviews/year-civilization-collapsed
If an asteroid will hit earth next month. Do you think the governments will make an announcement ? Well, it would be stupid if they do it. If someone goes on TV and confirms that on March 25, a large asteriod will hit earth. It will cause a massive fireball and probably half of the people on earth will die. Do you think you want to work tomorrow? Likely not. Do you think your neighbour, the trucker will work tomorrow? Do you think the bank employee or the worker who repairs the ATM machine will work tomorrow? Likely not. Why? Is it worthwhile since you are going to die in less than one month? Let us say the guy at the ATM wants to work because he has no money to survive. He turns up at work at the office but all his colleagues are not there. He can do nothing. Let us say he manages to open the office and goes in, gets the work order and finds that the part that is supposed to arrive from Japan is not there as the truckers/shippers are not working. So, how? Let us assume that the parts manage to arrive but the banks are closed. So, can he repair the ATM? Let us say the banks are opened but the guy at the powerplant refuse to work and due to some overheating issue, the generator shuts down and the manager (who decides to work) does not know how to turn it on because only 3 guys in the area knows how to do it. 2 are dead due to riots and the 3rd one disappeared. So, there is no power.
Can you see how many things that can go wrong? if everyone decides not to work tomorrow, it will be the end of BAU as nothing will happen. ATMs do not dispense money, trucks are not moving and everything comes to a complete standstill. We have only, by the way, 1 day worth of food in the supermarket and that is if you have the chance to grab it before someone else does.
2 hours after announcement, the supermarkets are cleared of food, water and supplies. After 2 days, social unrest will happen when the food runs out. Police will not be there because who wants to work when you are going to die in less than 1 month? By the end of the 5th day, probably 90% of the world population (especially in the urban areas) will perish.
Oh… sorry.. calculation error, the asteroid missed earth on 25th March. By then humans would have disappeared from earth. Left only those in Amazons or deep jumgle where they are not connected to the outside world.
Now, the same scenario – rewind the clock back to 1950s or 1900s. Same announcement made. Not much impact because not many people know how to read. The announcement made in New York. By the time the news reached Japan, Russia or Singapore (if it ever reached), it could be like 10 days later. Literacy rate is low, no one understands the impact. Life goes on because everything is localised. There were no air conditioning, only a few telephones per town and people are generally poorer and their needs and demands are much less than people of 2017. There were no truckers, airline pilots or server/computer hardware manager that will disappear. There were no engineers at power plants who will be killed in a riot. In fact, most of the places are not even electrified.
The asteroid hit Canada. Half of North America was destroyed. Will the people in Australia, Japan, Hungary, Somalia, India suffer economically? Not at all. Live goes on and they will recover.
Fast forward to 2017. If the asteroid hits North America today (NASA did not pre-announce this event) and half of USA is gone, do you think the whole world will be in chaos? Yes. My USD in my bank account – how much will it worth? How about my spare parts made in Seattle? It will never arrive and how do I produce my gadgets that my Australian clients? Nothing will work. Internet will be down, currency/equities will be directionless, FedEx Singapore is lost on what to do since they cannot refer to FedEx USA (its vapourized). Same goes for all the companies where their HQs are in USA. So, FedEx Singapore tells their staff to go back and not come back again. They are not going to send any parts or surgical items to the hospital in Singapore because they cannot track where the items are (internet down and there are no backup system – fax? From where? ).
Think about the scenario above, Compare and contrast it to the same event happening 50 or 100 years ago. If it is 50 or 100 years ago, humans will rebound and survive. However, it will never happen now in 2017 as we are way too connected and way too deep into the overshoot territory.
Something similar will happen if it is a pandemic. If there is a virulent strain of virus killing people now, it will be very quick before it spreads to every part of the globe (air travel). In this case, it cannot be hidden from the masses as news will spread (Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, emails, etc) extremely fast and I am not surprised within few hours, practically all the people connected by internet would know. They would not go to work (so what, if the boss wants to fire me, go ahead !) Supermarkets will not open, banks will be closed, power plant will be shut down. It just takes 2 days of a supply chain breakdown before it moves to an “unrecoverable state”. The world as we know will end. Read up more about supply chain. When it breaks hard, it is not recoverable.
There are thousands of companies in Tokyo producing items for the companies in the world. It is also a financial hub with billions of Yen, Dollars and Euro changing hands. If there is a serious earthquake and tsunami (let us forget about nuclear power plants – Fast Eddie’s favourite) and most of the city is destroyed, communication and transport are out. What will happen to Yen and equities? What happens when Japanese insurance (if they still exist) liquidates their portfolios to pay out claims? What will happen to their debts? the banks? their loans? their letters of credit? Will the supplier in Malaysia get paid since no one in Tokyo will receive the parts? The bank’s debts, bonds are someone else’s assets (Usually fund managers from other countries).
Lastly for BAU Lite – Have a look at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000
I have posted this before. From the link above, there are 18 million people in USA working in management level, computer science/maths, business and finance. Will they be still working? If yes, where? Which field? Who determines where one should work? Government ? Will government say that the Java Programmer is now going to plant corn? Will he have the skills? If the tractor breaks down, who can repair it since half the population is gone? How about the fuel injection part that German’s Bosch make? Do they have enough manpower, skills and raw materials to make it? Will they send over the part to your farm (forced labour) in Iowa? Will ships be working? Will the airplanes be working? Will there be enough people receiving the parts and send by truck to your farm? There are no plants in USA making fuel injectors. Even if there is, it may not be same as the ones in the John Deere tractor and it is not “plug and play”. So, if the fuel injector is spoilt, the tractor is nothing more than a big white elephant.
In the list of occupations in the link above, the ones that are relevant to human survival (food production, etc) are less than 1%. The rest are just feasting on “surplus energy provided by fossil fuel (FF)”. When the surplus is gone, the 99%+ will also disappear.
You can never have a situation where there are 2-3 billion people on earth. It is either “all” or “none” because we are feasting on “surplus energy”. Airline pilots, curtain makers, social worker do not contribute to producing items necessary for survival. They only produce services or goods that are considered “luxurious”. In olden days, you have 80% farmers, 10% blacksmith, weavers and other “smiths”, 5% soldiers and 5% artisans, courtesans, kings and tax collectors. So, in other words, 80% is feeding the 20%. We are now the opposite. 0.5% feeding the 99.5%. The 0.5% uses FF to feed the 99.5% and the 99.5% does not have any skills, knowledge, strength, willpower to produce their own food.
Anybody, who disagrees with me, please put forward good reasons and logical propositions. I do not entertain half-baked ideas. Give me scenarios that is convincing not just “IFs” or “BUTS”
Glenn – no more quotes from other people (the academia is full of people quoting other people and those ideas may not even be correct in the first place !)
Talking about asteroids on June 30 of 1908 in Siberia one occurred that a had a force strong enough to obliterate 850 square miles of forest. Known as the Tunguska event it still awes all those who study it because of the magnitude of destruction. Not one human being was killed by that event however, though it killed an entire herd of reindeer. The sound of it was also so loud that the blast was heard some 1000 km away and knocked some man seated some 60 km away from the blast sight flat on his back. It is an event that to this day still shocks and awes all those who study it because of the magnitude of the destruction it left in its wake and imagine not one human being was killed by that event.
“Testimony of S. Semenov, as recorded by Leonid Kulik’s expedition in 1930”
“At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara trading post {65 kilometers [40 miles] south of the explosion}, facing north. […] I suddenly saw that directly to the North, over Onkul’s Tunguska road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest {as Semenov showed, about 50° degrees up -expedition note}. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire Northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.” http://www.answers.com/tunguska%20event
What is more shocking however and interesting, or certainly should be is the odd circumstances surrounding this event because first is the date involved. June 30 is the last day of the 6th month on the calendar year. Tunguska quite literally split the year 1908 clear in half? Just a coincidence? Next to this is the truly astonishing discovery after the fact that according to the 1966 version of the Guinness Book of World Records and if the Tunguska Event had occurred 4 hours and 47 minutes later and it would have obliterated the city of St. Petersburg, is the truly important point. Talk about a close shave and imagine what are the chances really of something like this occurring? A meteorite the size of Tunguska making its way through the universe bypassing every other rock and planet in the process then into our solar system missing every planet, then into our atmosphere and landing in what is one of the remotest places on earth bypassing every body of water in the process as well? AND WE NEVER HEAR ABOUT THIS FROM THE SO CALLED EXPERTS WHY? Because an alien {sic}? was responsible for it perhaps? This is very strange and when you add to this the events of the Bolsehvik Revolution 1903 on doesn’t that raise some questions or certainly should! It certainly did for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn {1918-2008}, Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, historian and critic of Communist totalitarianism:
“You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the “Russian Revolution.”
“It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators.” http://www.davidduke.com/mp3/TheSecretBehindCommunismIntro.pdf
So what are we looking at here? Kumbaya?
Actually the Tunguska hitting London (same latitude) would have saved us the Great War, and would have reached space faster since all the best young men of Europe would not have been killed and replaced by American cornhuskers like Norman Borlaug, who would have ended his life as a corn farmer instead of messing up the world with Green Revolution.
Humans have had an awfully lot of “lucky breaks” over the years. The Tunguska Event was one of them.
Like the Chinese fable of “The Old Man of the Frontier Loses his Horse”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csC9mEZWMmU
it was a curse in disguise, since the destruction of London or Petrograd at that point of time would have prevented the Great War, saved the West’s next generation, and would prevented unwashed Americans, Japanese and Hindus from taking over the world.
For those who want more…skip to page 56
V. Financial System-Supply-chain Cross Contagion
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
W. B. Yeats The Second Coming
http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Trade_Off_Korowicz.pdf
At the Oscar ceremony a couple of days ago, a PwC representative handed the Master of Ceremonies the wrong envelope, so the MC announced the wrong film for the Best Picture award. This would seem to be a very simple process to keep control over, and yet it was done wrong. If things go wrong when the process is this simple, think about how wrong they will be, when the process is much more complex.
In this context, it’s interesting that when the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami struck in 2011, the yen appreciated against the US dollar. The explanation I heard at the time was that Japanese insurance companies were forced to repatriate such a large amount of their holdings in the US in order to fund compensation payouts that this significantly affected the exchange rate for several months after the event.
For the benefit of the new commenters – we are at the stage where we are just too connected. I have hammered on his subject on OFW fo many years. Unless you utilize your critical thinking skills and logic reasoning, you will never be able to comprehend the monstrosity of the issue at and
1. Human civilization does not have a UNDO function. You cannot climb down the technology ladder. You can only go up. Once you have internet, you must have internet. There are way too many jobs connected to that. Remove it and how are you going to feed the programmers, web designers, iOS games programmer, the janitor that sweeps the floor at the building occupied by the iOS gaming software house? There are no systems, knowledge, infrastructure on going back to old technologies – fax, telex, telegraphs, carburetor cars, horse carts, etc. The support is no there, especially when you view that no one knows how to set up a telex and god knows how many can still remember Morse codes. Can FedEx survive now without internet? Amazon to use Fax and telegraphs? It just does not work. Same goes to financial industry.
2. Our supply chain is too long, courtesy of cheap oil. Nothing can be sourced locally. I mean nothing. Toothbrush are not even local anymore even in developing countries. Toothbrushes are imported from China into Vietnam, African countries, etc; what more developed countries. Even if you have a toothbrush factory nearby, its raw materials, spare parts, consumables for the machines are not local. So, you will end up with cartons of plastic pellets but the injection moulding machine could not function due to a missing part (That is proprietary and only one source is making it and that country is having social riots).
3. We don’t have the will power, the skills, the knowledge to survive. We are too dependent on what is given to us (or what is “thought” as given to us by the government – welfare) and we are genetically weak because “survival of the fittest” did not happen since we have FF. Nature does not allow us to grow to 7B without any trimming. We have too many genetic diseases spreading. Some of them are spreading due to modern medical marvel where they live to reproduction age. Nature is never kind to those who cannot survive.
4. All the issue on political correctness, left, right, Trump, etc are the symptoms of FF giving us too much free time. It is not a cause but an effect of FF. Would anyone thought about all these if we don’t have enough food to eat? Humans are racist by nature. Tribal clash and rivalry is very common and they hate each other. They will call out names. That is normal throughout the course of history. It is only in the last 10 years this is happening. This distracts humans from actually doing “something” to try rectify our predicament (although I know there are NO solutions to this predicament). Rather we spend more energy fight over trans-gender toilets. Would our grandfather or even father (in the 1970s) care less about transgender toilets than other more important stuff?
It is the JIT, the supply chain that matters. Any incident can trigger a financial meltdown because we are already way into the overshoot. A supervolcano in Italy, the collapse of Canary island mountain causing tsunami the entire eastern US seaboard, earth quake in LA, nuclear meltdown in France will cause the financial world to implode. There goes the supply chain and JIT system.
The most description that the English had possibly hundreds of years ago. “The straw that broke the camel’s back”. You can keep adding and adding and everyone is laughing that you are wrong but all it takes is just a straw before the camel broke its back. People will then say “it is just only a straw and how came the camel buckle”?
Like Norman says, an unexpected sideswipe will be the thing that took us down. Tonight an earthquake struck Tokyo, Flattened, thousands perished, supply chain broken, insurance industry collapsed due to payout. Pension fund “A” in London collapsed as they invested too much in Tokyo, the next pension fund collapse because they invested in “A” too much and the chain goes on. Before long, everything is in chaos. Think about it before you refute this idea. It is easy to refute without thinking.
Most excellent (as usual) CTG —- unfortunately there are those that no matter how eloquently you explain this — they will never get it.
They will pound their Koombaya drum believing in BAU Lite… even though the facts demonstrate absolutely that BAU Lite is not possible.
The only question that remains is whether these silly beliefs are a result of delusional thought processes… stupidity … or a combination of both
I absolutely agree. CTG cuts through to the heart of the issue in language a junior high school student should be able to understand. As for the “silly beliefs” of those who still don’t get it, I would put them down to a failure to grasp the complexity and interdependency inherent in the global economic, industrial and financial system, due to insufficient intellectual ability, inability to grasp ideas not stamped “Valid” by the folks who believe telling us what to think is THEIR job, or else to not paying attention in class.
What I don’t understand is why such people remain on FW…. and have the temerity to comment…
It would be like me showing up on a regular basis to conferences for rocket scientists… understanding nothing … and then shouting out ‘you guys are all wrong … I believe a rocket can be propelled by filling it with ketchup’
I wouldn’t mind if the BAU-lite crowd gave some concrete, detailed insights into how they felt supply-chains and trade could somehow be patched up and kept operating within the context of a cratering financial system but we just get vague nonsense about ‘elites’ and people willingly turning up to work in spite of the fact their companies are unable to do business with each other.
That’s not going to happen
Because they have no idea how we muddle through — they just believe we will.
Impossible to argue with a person who bases their position on belief.
You’d have more success carrying on a logical argument with a 5 year old.
What would be required is a magic trick that almost instantaneously replaces all the foundational pillars of industrial civilisation without spilling too much of the contents held within.
Imagine a very long buffet table loaded with towers of champagne glasses full of bubbly – that’s us. The Delusistanis or the elites believe that we can perform the table cloth trick without leaving a horrible mess…
On the other hand, we’ve made it through nasty little bottle necks in the past. We didn’t have spent fuel ponds back then but plenty of everything else that can kill you. The real miracle is how we even made it this far.
I have for a long time thought that humans were simply acting as a conduit for a more resilient intelligence based organism. Whether some of our kind manage to achieve that goal in the time left remains to be seen. Not much consolation for our biological brethren but it would be something at least. Continuation of some form of intelligent life minus all the ape related behavioural baggage.
I’m working on an earthquake prediction method. Will that help you? Or will something else jump up and bite humanity in the arse?
CTG, most excellent, thank you
On the ability to jump “backwards”. We just continue from the 1930s or 1880s, no problem, just “jump” there
If we always had the ability to just “jump” to something different, why haven’t we done it ever before?? When we were living with the same stone axes for a million years. When Rome collapsed? When the Mongols came raiding. Now today, nobody is using all the organic farming techniques that are available, why don’t we just “jump” to everybody using every organic farming and irrigation technique, globally?? Why can’t we just “jump” to a interstellar species with the ability to terraform exoplanets. Lets just “jump”..
If we haven’t been able to “jump” in to anything ever before, what are the chances of just “jumping” in to an after-SHTF homesteading global culture this time?
If we have this much trouble conveying simple concepts here on OFW.. How likely is it to have everybody doing and maintaining and building the right things, even if their life depended on it? Nope. People will not be doing the right things. Their genes will NOT kick in. Their survival instinct will only tell them to go rob their neighbour, nothing else.
Van Kent,
When I say going “backwards”, humans have no means of doing that. When humans moved from stone to bronze age, knowledge on making stone tools were lost. It wast the same from Bronze to Iron. When we moved from telegraph to telex to fax and to email, we could not go back.
Remember in the 1980s and 1990s when house phones were common, we remember the phone numbers of our friends. We could list 5-10 numbers of our closest friends. Now, with cell phones, no one remembers numbers anymore. In future, humans may just lose the ability to remember numbers. We used slide rules, log tables when we do decimal divisions. We did not use calculators until colleges. We were taught how to use the basic and primitive methods of doing things but now, even high school students are allowed to use scientific calculators. No one knows about log books, slide rules, etc.
When we have internet, the way business did things changed and it was because they tried to squeeze efficiency. The best case studies was FedEx. They use to have phone tracking and you need to wait until the package arrives at a hub before you know where the package was. With GPS and internet, they have cut down on the telephone call centers, they have fully automated the system so that it is self service tracking via the web. They have managed to do the work of hundreds of employees with computers and internet. Can they downsize? No they cannot because there will be no economies of scale. Can they use fax? Can they start up call centers? Can they do things the old way? The new staff does not even know what the old ways were.
Can we go back to the simple and more primitive way of living ? Back before anti-histamines were invented, do we have so many cases of allergies? Now, we have so many types of allergies that I think I am allergic to people who does not use their brain for critical thinking!
Can we go back to the times where we cycle to work? we have simple cars that anyone can repair? No we cannot because these new industries (software for cars, making anti-histamine tablets, etc) are employing a lot of people and these people will be out of job and who is going to feed them? Government ? welfare? For how long?
Humans have the ability to go forward but they do not have a plan to fall back when going forward is not possible.
this is why the downsizers are so misguided and delusional
we cannot return to taking in each other’s washing and mending each other’s shoes.
everybody’s employment depends on someone somewhere burning oil coal or gas to make it possible
CTG,
Yup. Agreed.
I also find the ability for critical thinking in short supply these days. Everybodys so used to ‘somebody else’ taking care of things.. They find something is not working right, they just complain and everything fixes itself, like magic.
To make something look easy, requires an huge amount of knowledge and experience. Just because something looks easy, like homesteading, doesn’t mean they could do it without decades of learning from mistakes. The only problem is, that we don’t have decades, to learn. Mistakes will cause famine and reduced capacity for years to come. And there wont be an internet where all knowledge known to man will be available.
I wonder how the TerraVivos underground shelter people sell their billionaire shelters?? No worries, when we come back up again, the hordes have nuffed each other out, and we just come back up to take everything.. We’ll have lots of people with guns and one gardener, and he’ll take care of growing food for everybody.. talking about lack of critical thinking..
Oh … come now …. we will adapt… we are humans — and this is Sparta!
I am human, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an’ pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever gonna keep me down again
Oh yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
(Strong)
I am invincible
(Invincible)
I am human
You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
‘Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul
Oh yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
(Strong)
I am invincible
(Invincible)
I am human
I am human watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin’ arms across the land
But I’m still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I make my brother understand
Oh yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can face anything
I am strong
(Strong)
I am invincible
(Invincible)
I am human
‘Now, we have so many types of allergies that I think I am allergic to people who does not use their brain for critical thinking!’
+++++++
More good points!
All so very true CTG.
I would add that even my grandmother born in a hamlet in the Pyrennees, and a tough and capable woman, would not have given a damn about trans-gender rest rooms!
Top of her agenda would have been making sure the wood was stacked by the men in the summer ready for the harsh winters (snowed -in very often), the hay was correctly stored, and the sausages were curing properly and the cider was made and casked,and so on.
Too much time for nonsense, as you say.
But click on the home page of a former ‘heavy-weight’ newspaper now turned comic, and what do we see? Gender issue articles,celebrities, and people parading their feelings, all attracting hundreds even thousands of comments. An article about mass extinction in the 21st century? Tiny, almost hidden and a few comments – no feel-good advertising can run off the back of that…….
Kinda makes one pleased that the species is going to be incinerated in due course…. we really do need to be ended.
On the contrary, there are plenty of people and sites making good coin off the back of FEAR. Which always makes me wonder… if doom and gloom is such a booming industry that means that the peddlars of water filters, bug out bags, iodine pills and such are not really true believers themselves.
I agree with concept of peak insanity although I think things can actually get much worse from here judging by current trends. The way I see it we’re heading for Hunger Games, Walking Dead, Mad Max, The Road scenarios in one way or another and not necessarily in that order or with any kind of even distribution.
it has always been pointed out that the only people certain to make money out of gold prospecting were the people who sold the shovels
Good posts here CTG, even if I support “BAU-lite”-ish scenario. It would have to take a sideswipe to bring this baby down for sure. A pure financial crash like 2008 won’t happen by itself, they are prepared for that now. Debt has no limits.
Ummm.. what ??
Debt has no limits?? They are prepared for a financial crash now??
Would you care to elaborate ??
I obviously have no evidence to back this up just my gut feeling. How does BAU still chug along when you all say we are overdue for collapse? All I see is increasing poverty, inequality, debt, triage. Stock prices rising even if all numbers are in the red. The banksters are not stupid, they know what went wrong in 2008 and are acting accordingly. They will just get more bail outs if needed. Have you ever heard someone setting an upper limit to debt, i.e. “country X will/can not borrow more than Y trillions from institution Z”? No, because debt has no limits. Nobody is talking about repaying (sovereign) debt because it is obviously impossible. Everybody is borrowing and it’s all numbers on a screen but it works since everybody is playing the same game.
As CTG describes, you will need a sideswipe, or too many crisis to be mitigated at the same time, for BAU to crash completely.
BAU-liters are often requested to provide proof of BAU continuing, but they need not. Being able to discuss on OFW is proof enough 🙂
Rainydays,
There isn’t a person here, who isn’t overjoyed that BAU still persists. Don’t think for a second, that we who discuss the grim events that are about to happen, we really dread what is about to happen..
Some of us waited growth to end earlier because we knew the financial rules. We didn’t know that the CBs were to throw away the rulebook. As Eddy says.. whatever it takes, even if you have to bend, brake and shatter every financial rule there is.. whatever it takes..
Ok.. we are in the Twilight Zone already.. how long can this continue?? Looking at dr. Tim Morgans numbers might help to give a clue..
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Borrowed consumption and underlying growth
In fact, this assumption must be open to considerable question. It seems pretty clear that the enormous rate of borrowing in recent years has flattered GDP by creating “growth” that is really no more than the spending of borrowed money. This, of course, brings forward consumption at the cost of increased liabilities in the future.
SEEDS uses country-by-country estimates of what proportion of aggregate borrowing is used to inflate consumption in this way. For the period between 2005 and 2015, the global estimate is that, of the $76tn borrowed globally, $12tn (or 16% of all net borrowing) was used to fuel consumption. The remaining $64tn of borrowing was, therefore, used for purposes other than funding consumption.
On this basis, underlying world GDP in 2015 was $95tn, 17% below the reported $114tn. Just as important, trend growth is far lower when measured on an underlying basis, where world economic output is growing at about 1.2% annually.
This figure is nowhere near a consensus in the range 3-4%. That consensus rate of growth may be deliverable – but only if we carry on spending borrowed money.
A world in denial
Logically, the practice of inflating GDP by spending borrowed money cannot continue indefinitely. This is not a “new normal”, but a “newabnormal”. Most obviously, the aggregate amount of debt is rising much more rapidly than economic output, making the debt burden ever harder to support. Since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008, the economy has only managed to co-exist with this debt mountain at allthanks to the slashing of interest rates to near-zero levels.
ZIRP (meaning “zero interest rate policy”) has its own costs, some of which are only now gaining recognition. Savers have suffered very seriously from monetary policies designed to keep borrowers afloat, which, perhaps, is why the concept of “moral hazard” seems to have fallen out of the vocabulary. Last summer, after the most recent cut in interest rates, the deficit in British pension funds rose to £945bn, more than 50% of GDP, and evidence of pension value destruction has emerged on a worldwide basis. Ultra-cheap money keeps afloat businesses which in normal times would have gone under, creating space for new, vibrant enterprises – so the necessary process of “creative destruction” has been stymied by monetary manipulation.
In short, we are living in an unsustainable “never-never-land”, in which cheap debt both misrepresents and undermines real economic performance.
Rainydays, at some point, no matter how much more debt is added, no more growth comes out of it. When that happens, when the people who gave the money out for lending know that the money is never coming back. At that point.. SHTF
Rainydays, the CBs created a artificial financial world, but it wont take long before this jig is up
As always great comment Van…at the end of the day CBs have papered over the fact that we do not have enough resources to grow the worlwide economy…that is obviously unsustainable…at one point in the very near future, the laws of physics will kick in…you can print paper to infinity…you can’t print resources…
There are a few who believe the end of BAU is the beginning of the Great Adventure … of course they are in for the wickedest of surprises….
For me this is like knowing a 20 car pile up is imminent at an exact spot — setting out a lawn chair and cooler of beer — and waiting patiently for the carnage to begin.
We are silly animals — we are fascinated by parades… train and plane crashes… car collisions…
You have to have debt to make the system work. With diminishing returns with respect to energy extraction (and a lot of other things), you have to have a lot of debt to make growth occur. The current level of debt is not keeping the prices of energy products up with the cost of extraction plus government tax needs. (In fact, it may be impossible to do this.) So in a way I agree, but backing out a piece of the total to that was used to fuel consumption seems a bit strange to me. For one thing, how does he figure this out–mortgage loans and auto loans? How about loans for vacations? Government debt to support more income for some group or other (elderly, unemployed, etc). Isn’t this also consumption? How could he ever get such a small share of debt (16%) being used to fuel consumption?
QE – Debt – Stimulus — have been rolled out to keep growth increasing …. but as pointed out here … https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ we are approaching the point where we are pushing on a string …
What is meant by that is at some point no matter how much stimulus is pumped out — it no longer moves the GDP dial….
We know what happens when growth stops — we get The Deflation … a death spiral…
Essentially when he hit that point it will send out the message that the central banks are impotent … and in short order their will be total panic…. the computers — in a nano-second place billions of sell orders… and there will be no buyers…
Consider this – the stock market is COMPLETELY reliant on the central banks — how do you get no profit growth yet an 87% bump in the market???? http://wolfstreet.com/2017/02/19/2016-sp-500-earnings-back-at-2011-levels-as-stocks-ballooned-87-percent/
The stock market is fake — the only reason any institutional money touches this is because they believe the central banks will not allow the market to crash…. they understand that the central banks will continue to shovel cash into the gaping maws of failing companies because they have no choice…
Of course what cannot go on forever will stop – this will stop.
When growth stops that sends the message that the game is up — the central banks are out of ammo.
This will play out in a manner similar to a hyperinflationary event — a country can get away with printing for awhile — but at some point confidence goes — and one day you need a shoe box of money to buy a loaf of bread – the next a wheelbarrow — the next a dump truck — and the next an oil tanker full of cash —- then it just blows into a million pieces…
What cannot go on forever. Will stop.
Can you or van kent or anyone explain in simple terms (idiot level) why we need economic growth? Why does it exist? How did it become a thing?
My overly simplistic way of rationalising this is to compare human activity to natural systems that grow, sustain life, then decline or collapse. Some systems appear to sustain themselves relatively well for relatively long periods of time. All of them collapse eventually but sometimes replacement or transformation gives the impression of continuation of the system overall or within aspects of it.
For example, not every human business has to grow. Small family businesses and self employed workers have pootled along for generations maintaining roughly the same level of existance providing some form of value at the local level etc. No need for growth other than the external need to cover rising costs, inflation and so on. But again… why are those things there in the first place?
Is it all due to the rising costs of extracting resources? And is that the only reason?
I’m not afraid to imagine scenarios where the population is whittled down for one reason or another and a new economic system (ready to go) is rolled out along with energy tech that has been held back because it had military value and competed with status quo.
Why couldn’t a billion of the best and brightest survive in this scenario with top down management that all involved would be only too happy to accept in the name of survival?
I’m not even sure the argument for economies of scale would matter that much. It all depends on what the collective goals are and what would need to be produced to sustain life.
What’s bugging me a little is the apparently huge discrepency between imminent doomers and those that repeatedly talk in terms of decades of decline and so on. Even Norman’s timeline is one of decades or more… which surprises me.
This tells me that no one really has a handle on this other than things are looking bad…
In my opinion, no one can make accurate predictions decades out, let alone years. So I don’t take those people too seriously. Experts have almost always been wrong no matter how confidently they make their assertions or how high up the pecking order they are.
What’s not discussed here enough is the subject of unknowns – probably because they are unknowable! Knowing this doesn’t necessarily grant me any reason to believe there’s a way out of this mess but I would certainly not make the mistake of NOT factoring it into the equation.
Because of this possibility – however remote – one outcome could lead to some kind of transformational process that even the most intelligent rational minds are unable to foresee.
we all have collective debt
debt is a call on future energy production, which must increase, because we not only have to power our ”present” but power our ”future” as well—because our future is when the debt of ”now” falls due.
Our “future” is derived from the surplus energy of “now”
your pension, your mortgage. the cost of your future healthcare, all are future debts that will fall due in xx years, based on our current committed lifestyle and expectations.
500 years ago, those expectations didnt exist, because there was no surplus energy—now they do, and will not go away. (a static population helped as well)
Unfortunately “surplus energy” has been a finite anomaly
if of course we decide to cancel that future, then we do not need growth—but dont blame me when you fall ill at 70 and all the hospitals are closed
Taking in each others washing and mending each other’s shoes cannot produce growth, or create the future we demand
I know that some others have answered already. We are dealing with a multifaceted puzzle. A few pieces that were not obvious to me at first:
1. We need growth because world population keeps growing. Even if the growth is “only” a little over 1%, those additional people need food, homes, clothes and cars.
2. We are suffering from diminishing returns (taking more resources to extract the same water, minerals, oil, etc). We are also using more resources to try to fight pollution. Both of these are, in a sense, added inefficiency to the system. Part of our growth is simply to offset the added inefficiency, if we want to “stay even.”
3. Debt is amazingly helpful in making the economy operate, because it provides a forward “pull” that tends to raise both prices and wages. In order to obtain enough debt, it is helpful to have payment for this debt. There needs to be growth to have sufficient funds to cover the interest on this debt.
Our most recent history shows that the slightest slowdown of our current economy by just a few percentage points brings an immediate chaos of unemployment and global destabilisation.
http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Thanks to all of you for explaining the concept of economic growth.
I’m still seeing a few chinks in the armour and some vague assumptions but I’ll mull it over and come back later.
Gail,
Debt per se is not the problem.
It is the balooning debt to GDP ratio that is the problem.
Why is production of commodities and services not keeping up with debt production?
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/010212_2140_TheDebtwatc1.png
https://s11.postimg.org/dcytg992b/Captura_de_pantalla_695.png
https://www.creditwritedowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Private-debt-to-GDP.png
Debt is a promise for future energy, and the goods and services that that debt can make possible. Currency is also a promise for future energy, and the goods and services can make possible. The difference is that with currency, you can collect on the promise now, if you choose too.
As we become less and less efficient at extracting energy resources (because of diminishing returns), it takes more and more promises of future debt, to extract energy products and make goods and services with energy products that are now high cost to create. It is really the Barrels of oil equivalent, or Btus or Joules of energy that we need. So if energy becomes more expensive to extract, it takes more debt (promises of future goods and services) in order to keep the system going. Private citizens in the US stopped borrowing so much, so the Federal government needed to pick up its spending in order to keep the system going. Otherwise, banks would have failed.
Gail,
YES!
This is the part of your analysis that is truly original and heterodox, and the part that I admire the most. Most of your analysis — the apocalypticism, the cyclical theory of history, the invisible hand, the alarm over the debt buildup problem — is extremely orthodox and old hat.
The only other major figure I’ve heard coming around to your point of view about the importance of energy inputs is Steve Keene:
Thanks! I listened to the video. This is indeed a recent video. Steve Keen is beginning to figure out parts of the puzzle. I know he had a model up earlier, that didn’t not give much of a role for debt.
Economists get very “hung up” on modeling what they see as the perpetual state of the economy. In a finite world, there is no perpetual economy. There has to be a feedback loop, of workers being about to afford the output of the economy. This loop is supplemented by growing debt, which also adds to affordability. When affordability falls too low, we end up with a real problem.
Keene is smart enough to realize that Energy/Population is important. I tend to look at the situation on a world basis. There we have had more of a constant rise in energy/population. There was an efficiency shift in the 1970s/ early 1980s.
The feedback loop, determining whether the goods being produced by this system are really affordable by workers, involves diminishing returns regarding extraction of energy products (also metals, water, etc.): increasing complexity (more machines, but reaching diminishing returns with respect to adding efficiency), owners of capital (plus managers, highly trained workers, and government) receiving an increasingly large share of the output because of growing complexity and machine use; and falling share of output going to workers. Keene is also missing the role of debt. At some point, I will put up a presentation explaining some more of these issues.
Perpetual economic motion machine.
Cool!
I’ll put my container up for sale on Trademe this minute.
I’ve been such a fool blowing my pension on high-priced whiskey….
The transgender bathroom issue is dominating the headlines not because everyone is so comfortable that we can afford to fret over it. It is dominating the headlines because some members of the elite who became disaffected with social conservatives have been pouring money into Progressive causes as a way to get what they want, which is namely for nation-states to throw off the last vestiges of territoriality among which is –the nation-state for “open borders”. It seems like they are going for one more spurt of growth and they are using civil rights groups–specifically LGBT groups as a Trojan Horse.
There have been some leaked documents from George Soros’ Open Society that suggest that this is the case. There’s some other things that back this theory up–namely how large corporations such as Disney and Kellogs have used their clout to push for gay rights…when they’ve been known to be apolitical or Conservative in the past…
Thanks for elaborating on this. What surprises me is how the George Soros’s of this world can get away with what they do for so long in so many countries without even getting so much as a scratch.
For all those doubting the existence of elders and so on you simply haven’t done enough research on the topic. If powerful individuals can have such an enormous effect on politics, elections, consumer habits, the media, our conciousness… then why does anyone doubt the abilities of groups of these individuals manipulating practically everything in our reality. It’s a mystery to me.
The real question should be that if the most powerful groups in the world are aware of our problem or predicament then maybe just maybe they’ve planned for this and have a backup plan or two wouldn’t ya think?
What would you have done if many years ago the top physicists and mathematicians etc in your network of advisors had given you the heads up about what was coming down the pike? We’re talking top secret levels of military complex here all hush hush you know. How do think they would respond?
Behind closed doors chat… I know, we’ll just extend and pretend like everything’s hunky dory, a few hickups here and there but we’ll patch it up and keep rolling until it all conks out and we all die. Hmmm… yeah that sounds like a good strategy. I mean it’s not like there’s anything we can do about it right? Right?
You really think that’s how things went down when this convo took place at those levels? I don’t know but I’m not buying it. In fact any other response is more likely. People in the know are probably holding something back. I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks…..
I don’t think anyone has control, I think there are powerful people who try to use their money to influence.,.and their success, especially here in the U.S. can be attributed to many people who are in the Professional Class who believe everything they say without question.
I don’t think the elite have a plan. All they need to do is create the illusion of a plan.
The illusion of a plan is how they are preventing the masses from seizing their wealth in a state of panic.
The people who believe they have a plan often try to emulate them in the hopes of being selected as one of the few people who will survive after collapse–I’ve talked with some of them–they are going to college, graduate school, get a doctorate, get a post-doc, in an attempt to get into the elite professions–so they can become part of the elite. Once they become part of the elite they hope elite will share their secret survival plans with them.
Any plan to survive the collapse of civilization would be noticeable–there are no steps that have been circulated as to how they would make it through with beyond a few months at best.
The Titanic analogy made by CTG is what I believe is the underlying reality.
I don’t buy the theory that nobody is in control….
Surely there are people making the decision to launch QE … to force rates to zero …. to lend hundreds of billions to failing companies… to allow subprime mortgage and auto loans… and on and on and on…
None of this was voted on — so clearly the elected reps are not in control – the people are not in control….
The central bankers have stated on numerous occasions that they will do ‘whatever it takes’
They are very obviously the ones in control (i.e. the Elders)
What they don’t tell us is the full story — why do ‘whatever it takes’ when very clearly what they are doing is going to result in catastrophe…. they know that — a lot of pundits know it (Stockman, Roberts, Zero Hedge, and pretty much the entire financial industry knows how this will end)….
So why do ‘whatever it takes?’
Are the Elders unaware that their actions will result in disaster? Of course not – they know that actions such as handing money to failing companies will not end well — they saw how subprime blew up in 2007… they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
They do whatever it takes because the Elders understand that we are cornered by a wicked, wicked beast— we need $120 oil — but the economy cannot handle oil priced anywhere near that…..
A f&^%$# retarded donkey could be made to understand there is no way out of that corner.
So they throw everything at this —- they manipulate prices — they stimulate – they threaten (recall when the China market was unraveling short sellers were threatened with jail…)
They go beyond the catch phrase ‘whatever it takes’ and explain why – for obvious reasons….
They are effectively now splashing petrol on the house and all of us in a last desperate threat to keep the beast at bay….
At some point the petrol will catch fire….
And when that happens they roast with the rest of us — they will have ‘war gamed’ the results of the end of fossil fuels… they will know that there are 4000 spent fuel ponds that will unleash hell on earth …. they know there will be virtually no food … perhaps they know that AGW is real and will roast anyone alive who survives the initial collapse…. they would have a long list of things that we have not even thought up — that will lead to extinction.
The fact that they are doing absolutely everything to fend off the collapse date —- surely is an indication that we are witnessing the plan — the only plan…
Do ‘whatever it takes’ to buy a year… a month … a day… a second….. because when she blows — there won’t be anything left.
I wonder what John Key is doing with that family time he quite his job for…. he knows… I am 100% certain of that….
Nope—nobody is at the helm
thats one crazy scary thought aint it?
yet most are convinced that some sort of cartel is running this–so folks put thier cross next to the name of the most believable liar, and the mess gets bigger.
One of the few times I will disagree with your Norman.
If nobody was at the helm giving out orders to bail the ship out — we’d have sunk a long time ago…
We are bailing as fast as we can now — but the water is pouring in so fast….
@ Eddy
On the “control” thing, and whether anyone is specifically “in control” in terms that human consciousness would understand, my closest analogy I think would be the herds of buffalo on the US continent pre-1800
There were, by most estimates, 60 million of them, and they moved across the land in a collective sense, using the energy resource of grass and water. Their overall existence was untroubled by external influence, because their collective mass was too big. They had sub-herds and groups, ruled by the physical force of the local alpha male, but this had no actual influence on the mass-herd, because they were driven and sustained by the availability of resources—in particular the seasonal growth of grass.
The shifting availability of food resource was their ultimate controlling factor, though they had no collective awareness of it of course. They were wiped out because they were hit by a force far greater than their own collective mass, (bullets) they had no knowledge of it, and no way of dealing with it.
We seem to be in the same situation. Alpha males control sub herds and tribes, but no one can control the ultimate resources on which our existence depends, so no one can control the entire “herd” or what that herd does, or why or when, or how. Those temporarily in control just go through a period of ‘pretence’ that they can. We might reject the herd idea—but we are no different to bacteria in a petri dish.
The current fantasy of “America first” will lead nowhere, because that nation will consume its own resources, then be forced to look elsewhere, or die back. That will lead to conflict. (Wars we can win??)
We are here to consume, reproduce and die. Everything else is window dressing.
We collectively deny that fossil fuel energy resources are solely responsible for what we have, and those resources are critical to our ongoing existence. We see our own collective mass as too big to collapse, because our collective intellect/delusion cannot conceive of it happening. Our future must be better than our past—forever. Gods and politicians and charlatans have said so for 000s of years.
This is why all controllers fail, then someone else takes over, repeating the same promises, with the herd believing them for a while—unwilling to accept the reality that no one is in overall charge at all—either that or they create new gods to fill the void of ‘non control’—and on whom to heap blame for things never working out as they should.
(The old Jewish joke: If you want to make god laugh—tell him your plans.)
So despite political interference, we bumble on into the future, grazing on a resource that we are told is infinite. People we elect to office are ordinary mortals who can figure out that the end of oil means the end of everything as we currently know it. But who, like the rest of us, value their jobs, so promise eternal prosperity.
But like the buffalo, we will be hit by a force we as yet know not of. Methane release—pandemic—nuclear?—those are the things we can guess at. In the meantime we have no option but to carry on grazing.
To UK doomsters—I think I just came up with a title for a new movie!!
I see your point — and I agree.
Fast Eddy it seems like the Elders are losing control. The ability of the Elders to control comes from their power. Their power partly stems from confidence in the system. They look at “populism” and “fake news” as threats because those things might decrease confidence in the system.
Definitely.
They are not omnipotent…. they can do nothing about the end of cheap to produce oil.
Nobody can.
Norman-
I’m agnostic on the whole “Elders” level of planing but do you think the world is that f**ked up that there are not high level talks? On the other hand, why should we expect people in high level positions to find it any less difficult to accept than the rest of us?
@Joe
Ive posted a long reply to this ‘control/elders’ things on this thread
I have no doubt high level talks are taking place in all the major governments/nations, but they are only mortal like the rest of us.
They are not gifted with foresight–they steer by looking in the rear view mirror because there’s nothing else to drive by.
basically they will reach conclusions that if we mitigate climate change in any meaningful way, it will wreck the ‘economy’.—ignoring the obvious, that if we don’t do anything, we won’t have an economy at all.
so the ‘conclusion’ offered for general consumption is that it is a hoax–or at worst something we can accommodate—same with overpopulation/energy depletion and so on.
thus most of us go back to sleep.—we’re screwed anyway, we just don’t know exactly when.
Norman-
The buffalo analogy if great. It is exactly the way I see things.
Oh, I understand where you’re coming from now Norman. That was a really good post by the way.
You are victimised by confirmation bias.
I love your comment, “Human civilization does not have a UNDO function.” It is also true that you can’t climb back down the technology ladder–another good way of putting things. It is helpful to have multiple people explain an issue, in different ways.
So Gail I guess you don’t agree with the commenter from a few days back who said he sees population going down to 3-3.5B with late 70s technology and 30s level of consumption…I’m shocked 😉
This guy’s level of cluelessness is truly epic:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-25/for-warren-buffett-america-s-best-days-always-lie-ahead
Predicting that the U.S. economic system would continue creating wealth far into the future, Buffett wrote in his letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: “I’ll repeat what I’ve both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.”
Delusional…
Or just trying to keep CONfidence up….
I suspect the latter.
Sounds like a good story to tell customers.
Read this pist at POsite and don’t know if it will clear the censors here, but it is an eye opener
by shortonoil » Sat 25 Feb 2017, 13:44:18
“I particularly recommend reading the section on the Depression.”
My father was a young man when the Great Depression hit. He used to tell me stories about what they lived through. Although for the time they were a fairly wealthy family, with a lot of land, timber, and resources like coal, he said that he used to take this shoes off and walk to school barefoot so that he didn’t wear out his shoes. He never knew when they would have enough money to buy him another pair. Their big concern each year was coming up with enough money to pay the taxes on their land. That was $16 a year.
He said that every day someone would walk up to the door, and ask about doing work for a meal. Since they had an abundance of food from their three farms, my Grandmother never turned anyone away. She would put them to chopping firewood or shoveling out the barn. Digging rutabagas or finding a lost horse shoe.
I still have my Grandfathers books that he kept for the farms, timber operations, coal mine and general store that they ran. In 1922 he made $10,003. By 1932 they were hard pressed to come up $16.00 for taxes, and my father went barefoot most of the time.
The world can change very rapidly, and has, and does.
I can relate to the about, today’s mindset is in a very rude awakening in the very near future.
People expect things will remain pretty much as they are now, or eventually improve.
But as expressed, they can turn 180 degrees very FAST.
I knew a guy — Harry – he was an elderly fried of my fathers — he would have been in his late teens during the Depression.
He threw nothing away — he spent almost nothing — he was traumatized by the Depression.
What is coming will make the Depression look like Prosperity. At least people had food to eat then…
People lose sight too of the fact that “money” can pretty much vaporize as well. I found this wonderful chart in Lombardi Letter. They seem to indicate that they got if from Voxeu.org. I would label it, “Finance Industry Share of GDP.”
It is debt, and in fact, growing debt, that keeps prices and wages up. You can see this happening up to the great depression. It took until World War II to start pumping debt levels back up again. We run the risk of the same thing happening over again.
i think the only sign we have to look for when the final collapse is a certainty is when the ‘puppet-master’s decide to dry-cask all the world’s spent fuel rods to eliminate the danger fast eddie keeps on warning ‘us’ about unless their are no puppet-masters just puppets. j
You cannot dry cask all the spent fuel because fuel needs to be placed in ponds for years before that can be done.
Please stop posting this nonsense. You are wasting my time.
At least the Fukushima Daiichi fuel rods must be fairly cool by now. It’s been six years since and fresh hot ones were added to the piles. Sadly we can’t say the same about the hundreds of currently working reactors worldwide.
Unfortunately it appears that Tepco is unable to perform this operation — they have again delayed moving the rods to a safer facility (some of the ponds have cracks)…
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11789664
They must have concluded the it would be difficult to move them without causing a catastrophe…
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
The operation, beginning this November at the plant’s Reactor No. 4, is fraught with danger, including the possibility of a large release of radiation if a fuel assembly breaks, gets stuck or gets too close to an adjacent bundle, said Gundersen and other nuclear experts.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
Note – the above article is from 2013…. 4 years later and still nothing has been done… so the rods remain in the cracked ponds… awaiting another major earthquake in the region ….
Another major earthquake will be a huge problem!
The rods from the reactor 4 pool were all moved offsite in 2014, so they are no longer part of the Fukushima cluster**** problem. So it’s one down, three to go.
“Completion of the removal work is a milestone and I feel deeply about it,” plant chief Akira Ono told reporters, while stressing that the decommissioning of Fukushima No. 1 remains an extremely lengthy process.
The overall cleanup and dismantling of the plant, an operation that is expected to take decades, has been delayed by a relentless on-site buildup of toxic radioactive water.
Reactor 4 avoided a core meltdown when the tsunami spawned by the March 11, 2011, earthquake ripped through the No. 1 plant, as the unit was offline for a regular inspection and all of its fuel was stored in the pool on the upper level of the building.
But the building was torn apart by a hydrogen explosion just days later as the enormity of the nuclear crisis was only just becoming apparent. The over 1,500 fuel rod assemblies that continued to be stored at the top of the devastated structure had remained a major source of concern, in Japan and overseas.
Tepco hopes to begin extracting the fuel from the reactor 3 spent-fuel pool in the next fiscal year beginning in April, and to begin the same operation at reactor 1 during fiscal 2017. But it is unknown whether the work will follow that schedule given the sky-high radiation levels that continue to plague reactors 1 through 3, which each suffered core meltdowns, and which put the levels clocked in reactor 4 in the shade.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/20/national/all-spent-fuel-removed-from-reactor-4-pool-at-fukushima-no-1-tepco-says/#.WLKHFyOGPpQ
But No.4 pool was the easy one, and as you say, they haven’t been able to do much with the other three pools yet apart from keeping them well watered. I doubt we’ll live long enough to see the end of the Fukushima cleanup, even if by some miracle we are spared the end of BAU. Anything officially expected to take decades to complete can be read as being practically undoable IMO. What is likely to happen is that the authorities will move from promising a full cleanup to promising a “sufficient” cleanup, which will give them enough wriggle room to declare victory and a job well done some time around 2100.
Fiasco…
Did I see 120 billion being the costs to date in that one article? I can’t find the link…
The cost estimates of the “cleanup” for the Fukushima disaster were recently doubled to 21.5 trillion yen (about $190 billion). Meanwhile, Tepco’s annual revenue is about 7 trillion yen. So it’s painful but doable financially, especially as there will be a lot government help. But it’s a bit like you or me paying off a loan for a car that’s crashed or a house that’s burned down because we didn’t have enough insurance to cover the disaster. Also, Tepco could improve its bottom line considerably by turning on its other nuke plants. But with the fear and loathing of nuclear power in Japan running high these days, they are taking a softly softly approach, letting the other utilities get their nukes up and running first.
It would be interesting to what the cost of electricity in Japan would be if that cleanup — which is nowhere near the final bill (there won’t likely ever be a final bill as there appears to be no fix) — was factored in.
Good point!
The cost of new reactors is being greatly increased, because of concern for prevention, in my opinion. This is the reason why nuclear companies like Westinghouse (Subsidiary of Toshiba), Areva, and FirstEnergy) are doing badly, and pulling back from many parts of the nuclear business. Areva will now specialize in taking down existing reactors.
I would be willing to bet that the 21.5 trillion yen estimate is wrong. No one — and not even robots — can get near the site. No one can even put together a reasonable plan for fixing the mess.
I suggest you watch this documentary from a few years ago to understand how they never really came up with a solution on how to store spent fuel rods permanently…this invention has been a huge clusterf..ck from the start…we’re such a clever species doe…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk
For the instadoomers here, I’ve already explained, going back some 25+ articles, how things will work. But the comments section is too much noise, and subject to diminishing returns.
BAU depends upon growth and integration. As such, collapse will be de-growth and separation. Every individual/town/nation/business etc. out for themselves, even as others die off.
Can this happen over long periods of time? Yes, of course it can. While you cannot stop entropy, you can slow it down. The system is like a 50 year old obese man. He needs to shed weight and improve health right now, so that’s what he will do. The system is not a 100 year old man in a nursing home having a stroke. That’s coming later.
Dolph, going back some +25 articles.. here is some noise again.. can we please have something more than your intuition.. what is your evidence?
I’ll try to give you mine.
I have personally put in orders to manufacturers on the other side of the globe, waited for the shipments to arrive, and then arranged for trucking the shipment to retailers nationwide. None of this would have been possible without stable currencies, international banking and insurance for all of the above
I have personally seen a power facility shutting down, because the spare part wasn’t available. It took the spare three weeks to get there and meanwhile no makeshift solutions worked. Without international trade.. no industry.. no economy.. no grid..
I have personally seen what happens to a major global business when the central server room is down for 15 minutes. 6 months of product, logistics, invoice and other quality problems.. without a stable grid.. no internet.. no businesses.. no economy..
Can growth continue ad infinitum on a finite world?? If not.. then banking and currencies will collapse.. without banking and currencies.. everything just falls apart.. quickly
PS. without currencies, there should be a small window when international trade makes Bitcoin go x10 the present value. But then the internet starts to shut down, and then Bitcoin goes to 0 value..
Since you mentioned intuition, I’ll share a flash-by thought from earlier today. BAU is like a Leonardo Dome where removing one stick crashes the dame. So I had this mental picture of replacing a post in a life-size Leonardo Dome. You don’t remove any stick till something else as supportive replaces it. In BAU terms, the entire chain of support is kept going, despite some sticks having been replaced, with more to come in a strategic and scheduled way–systems thinking again–that prevents the dome from collapse but still changes the nature of the dome over time. Can you keep the same game going with different players?
Artleads, lets try your way
you go to the grocery.. there you fill up the cart.. and while going out.. you just say “I’ll bring you a cow next week as payment” – what are the chances of that working out?
A girl meets a boy in the park. The boy says “oh my god you’re pregnant” the girl answers “no, I’m just a little bit pregnant” the boy says “either youre pregnant or not!” the girl argues “no I’ve decided to be just little bit pregnant”
You have a diesel truck. You go to fill her up, but notice that diesel is out. Plenty of petrol though. You decide that no worries, replacements must work for a time at least, and fill the diesel truck with petrol.. did your decision work out?
Artleads, people really believe in the expession “if you can think it, then its possible”. The culture we live in today truly believes in Magic..
VK, I don’t believe in anything so extreme (or simple minded). I’ve learned from Gail how important the chain of supply is. It’s a little like opening a folded origami. There are more things to consider the more folds you open up. I ignore nothing having to do with the chain of “supply.” And I very much agree with with you as to the futility of trying to “jum” from one state to another without understanding the necessary steps in between.
Origami is a good analogy to the supply chains!
And it shouldn’t be impossible to have a bit more pedagogy on the supply chain for any valued industrial product, especially at the K-12 level. And, yes, I consider it strategic to convert more car motors to adapt to the fuel whose supply is cheapest and most available. 🙂
Thank you Van for your real life example…the idea that 3-3.5 billion of us can die and that the remaining 3B can have late 70s technology with 30s level of consumption simply boggles the mind…
Doph = Delusional
Can you provide some evidence of this — let’s say you start with demonstrate that the global economy stopped growing for over a year.
Not sure how you will be able to do that given…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/World_GDP_Per_Capita_1500_to_2000,_Log_Scale.png/350px-World_GDP_Per_Capita_1500_to_2000,_Log_Scale.png
But let’s assume growth stopped tomorrow.
What do you think the implications would be? Let me make a few suggestions:
– companies would stop hiring and they would lay large numbers of employees off
– companies would slash opex — for instance they’d not purchase new computers
– suppliers such as Dell would slash staff as new orders collapsed
– so everyone would be jettisoning staff and spending less — which would result in large numbers of people having no income — which would drive growth numbers further into the negative as laid off people spend little
– this would mean mortgages don’t get paid — car payments don’t get paid — student loans don’t get paid — credit card payments don’t happen .. and so on…
– this would lead to a financial crisis as banks that don’t get paid don’t stay in business (more layoffs…)
– housing prices would quickly collapse
– the auto industry would quickly collapse
– the retail industry would quickly collapse
Essentially – if growth stopped for a prolonged period — we would enter a death spiral – the global economy would implode.
Do you not recall what happened in 2008 when growth did stop?
https://www.reed.edu/economics/parker/f10/201/cases/GDP_growth.jpg
http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/20120703-jobstable.jpg
Fortunately this was reversed with massive stimulus…. but if it were not do you think we would be here right now having this discussion?
De-growth… BAU LIte — whatever you want to call it — is NOT possible.
Growth stops — BAU collapses — you die – I die — we all die.
This is one of the simplest concepts being discussed on FW — why people cannot get it is beyond me.
“The system is like a 50 year old obese man. He needs to shed weight and improve health right now, so that’s what he will do. The system is not a 100 year old man in a nursing home having a stroke. That’s coming later.”
That’s a great analogy!
In Koombaya Land yes…. but on FW it’s a outrageously ridiculous analogy bordering on retarded.
The fat man either gets fatter (then explodes) — or he starves and dies.
you talking dessert?
https://youtu.be/lhbHTjMLN5c
Classic!!!
So…
Last week we we made a tour of Golden Bay … and there were 8 stranded Pilot whales on the beach….
http://cache.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.647912.1486714108!/image/image.jpg
Like a good little Greenie I joined with everyone else splashing water on them to keep them alive … all the while thinking — perhaps these strandings are meant to be — mother nature’s way of culling the herds when they get too big — because we don’t hunt whales much these days….
Perhaps we should just leave them and go where the cold beer is waiting?
I mentioned that after we left the scene (not the cold beer part) — and that opened up the discussion of the evil Japanese whale hunters and how all whale hunting should be banned…
I made the point that many whale species are not endangered (Pilot whales are not endangered) — so why should there not be quotas set on hunting those that are plentiful?
Just as we do with most everything else that swims in the ocean…. why do all whales deserve a dispensation?
Ah I see – because they are smart. In that case we should also ban the killing of everything from pigs to bacteria — particularly bacteria — because they are smarter than we are — they have been around for billions of years — and will be around long after we are gone….
I am starting a new organization — Save the Bacteria — it will be modeled after this http://www.savethewhales.org/ as in — people give me money and I organize protests at chemist shops —- I get in front of the chemist and anyone redeeming a prescription for an antibiotic and threaten to beat them both to death. I seize the pills and wash them down the toilet…
If we raise enough funds we will also do same at grocery stores stopping people from buying anti-bacterial soaps….
Of course STB.com requires a private jet…. luxury hotels… fine wine and meals….
Save the Bacteria! Show some Love for the Bacteria! Donate NOW!
http://www.loveoflifequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Albert-Einstein-quote-on-stupidity.jpg
If we could harness this epic stupidity —- we would not need fossil fuels….
What’s your point?
😎
That most people are really, really stupid.
And that half of the really, really stupid people are actually really, really, really, really stupid.
Eddy, Japanese whale pelagic hunting is yet another heavily subsidized industry producing a product that few people want to consume and it would have ended decades ago if it were not for the public subsidies racket. It’s not as big a scam as CAGW, but just as duplicitous. The whaling lobby claims Japan has to do this because they have the right to do it and because they are being condemned for doing it, and so to stop doing it now would mean cowering to international bullying, and that would be intolerable. So this lobby created and propagated their own little “problem-reaction-solution” meme in which the “problem” is how to avoid being pushed around by foreigners and the solution is to stand firm and carry on whaling.
I would mind to give whale a try — if it were a non-endangered species of whale — and it was on a restaurant menu.
I’ve eaten a dog — in Sulawesi… tasted like…. dog … I guess….
I eat pigs… and cows… not very often …. as I am mostly herbivore…
See Tim Groves gets his Climate Science mindset from none other Wattsupwiththat blog site put together by a TV Weather Presenter, Anthony Willard Watts….that explains his remark about this being a “scam”, enough said!
Tim Groves gets a lot of his responses from Flag On the Argument.
This saves him the time and bother of attempting to reason with the yob element.
http://i.imgur.com/1lYuBIk.jpg
I’d like to introduce a rule for FW — if there are no facts or logic… no argument…. then it should be acceptable to descend into the vilest gutter with crude attacks.
DelusiSTANIS must be humiliated and ruined. They serve no other purpose.
No making the rules are we!? Egos here have no limits to growth!
WHY FACTS DON’T CHANGE OUR MINDS
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
“Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational.”
“If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it’s hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias.”
“This is one of many cases in which the environment changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up.”
“People believe that they know way more than they actually do
Attention…to all..including Tom Groves.
I can see now how my ‘sound judgments’ in the past were irrational.
I feel that I have evolved into a life form that is not human.
Because I am now 100% rational in thought.
https://emorales7.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/mr-spock-mr-spock-10874060-1036-730.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/5f/79/51/5f795127acb75b5901bc107dd42a6e75.jpg
Nanoo Nanoo.
Cheers Jeremy. I’m not unfamiliar with the writings of R.D. Lang, Eric Berne, Arthur Koestler, Robert Ardrey, et al., not to mention the sayings of Mr. Spock, so I’m already aware that I’m bonkers along with the rest of my race.
And I greatly enjoyed Stuart Sutherland’s Irrationality: The Enemy Within
https://www.amazon.com/Irrationality-Enemy-Within-Stuart-Sutherland/dp/1780660251
I have my eccentricities and my opinions, which undoubtedly include irrational elements. But I have an integrated world view structured with rational links between its various parts that prevents me from making certain elementary mistakes such as assuming that the Solar Jesus will save us or that a graph, a report or an argument must be correct just because it’s well laid out or reputable people have composed or endorsed it, and I make a constant effort to try to ensure that I don’t believe impossible things either before or after breakfast. I haven’t reached the point yet where I prefer to embrace lies or fiction just because I find them more convenient or comfortable. If she doesn’t really love me or that lump on the head is terminal cancer, I prefer to know the facts of the matter.
When the barbarian hordes attack, we have to do whatever it takes.
https://youtu.be/WuM4Auxml98
No Tom , you are plain wrong and BTW it is a fact…I clicked on your Facebook page and it posted there , in plain view…along with the curvie, plump lady in a bikini on the beach you prefer.
You can call me Tom if you’ll allow me call you Jerry.
Oh, you mean Watts Up WIth that? That’s one of the go-to places for news and discussion on scientific topics. Over 300 million views! You could learn a lot from hanging around there, if you had a mind for learning. I guarantee your climate alarmism wouldn’t last a month. The threads are packed with comments from proper scientists who would gently but firmly tear your silly notions to threads and leave you feeling naked and ashamed. Then perhaps you could start to grow up.
No, your ad hom was not in saying I get my mindset from WUWT. That’s partly true (although I am extremely well-versed in proper climate science from many other sources). It consisted of (a) attempting to invalidate my views on the basis that I visit WUWT, and (b) libeling the good name of Anthony Watts, who is ten times the man you will ever be, despite him being a card-carying DelusiSTANi who says of himself:
While I have a skeptical view of certain climate issues, I consider myself “green” in many ways, and I promote the idea of energy savings and alternate energy generation. Unlike many who just talk about it, I’ve put a 10KW solar array on my home, a second one on my new home this past summer of 2012.
While you continue to resort to ad homs in place of reasoned arguments, you will remain a slacker and you’ll never amount to anything in Hill Valley.
A couple of weeks ago on here one of your fellow alarmists attack my skepticism on the grounds that the entire climate and meteorological community were in agreement about the dangers of climate change. And now you come along with an innuendo attack on Anthony Watts implying his views aren’t valid because he was a TV weather presenter. I wish you people would get your stories straight. Are AMS-certified meteorologists to be counted as proper scientists only when they parrot “the consensus”?
One thing can be fairly said of proper meteorologist Watts. He prefers to look coldly and critically at extraordinary claims rather than to make them. That is more than can be said of your own guru James Hansen. described in the Guardian as “the father of climate change awareness” and summed up by proper physicist Freeman Dyson thus:
The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers… Hansen has turned his science into ideology.
For anyone who works in or follows proper science, Dyson has delivered a truly damning indictment.
TOM Groove, best you try to defy the theory of Gravity while you’re at it
NOAA: Climate change played significant role in Louisiana’s torrential August rainfall
BY AMY WOLD | AWOLD@THEADVOCATE.COM SEP 7, 2016 –
The new analysis of the heavy rain that hit Louisiana in August, done in cooperation with researchers at Princeton University, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological institute and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, found that it was significantly influenced by man-made climate change.
“What would have been a one in 100 storm (in 1900) would be a one in 70 year storm (now),” said Karin Van der Wiel, lead author of the paper and a research associate at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University. “That’s quite an increase.”
The 40 percent greater chance of a similar storm occurring is at the lower range of what researchers found with the most likely scenario being that a similar storm is twice as likely to occur now than it was in pre-industrial 1900, she said
that’s a lot of whale sashimi going to waste on that beach. wonder what environmental or other, behavioral conditions triggers them to beach themselves? maybe a pod of killer whales chasing them?
I thought about asking the Green Brigade to help me load one of the babies into the back of my 4 ba 4 and hauling it home for the dogs to eat….
But I thought that might result in me being considered Henry Kissinger’s bastard grandson … so decided against that….
Discussing whether AGW is happening or not is like, to use an easy expression, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic…it’s pointless…economic collapse will have taken care of our species way before biosphere collapse…
Very much so.
Navies are the biggest users of fuel bar none and to hear about South China Sea exercises and others all over the world it just boggles the mind to watch and believe that Military planners in flexing their muscle hope to accomplish anything of lasting value? What either they are completely ignorant of peak oil and its consequences or they know something we don’t?
Doesn’t this also bring up Saddam and his setting fire to the oil fields in the Middle East which surely must have horrified military leaders and planners and governments? I got to tell you something just doesn’t fit.
They are dancing while the music is still playing….
The one question that bothers me and never comes up in any discussions is the military. They use and need a tremendous amount of oil and gas so what’s up with that? Are they now currently and have been stockpiling oil and if so what are the reserves? A useless question I guess for they would never reveal such matters but fodder anyhow for a great deal of speculation yes? One can only think of the Battle of the Bulge and North Africa and how Germany if she had the oil resources we would be living in a very different world.
My theory has always been that the periphery will collapse (currently underway), the core countries will begin to battle for resources, and finally the U.S. Military will step to the fore – taking over the resources it needs to exert control of the U.S. Population and to extract further resources from all over the world.
I see a determinative role for the US military too, but it COULD manage the planet better through less energy intensive ways than you suggest. It would have to give up a lot of physical control in favor of softer power. The Brits were very good at that.
@Kurt
Ive penned a reply to this thread elsewhere (@ Tim Groves) and fema camps re use of the military.
They might exert control over the domestic population, but not over overseas resources—they will not have the strength–and even domestic insurgency will be almost impossible to contain.
Armies need resources on a colossal scale–to subdue an internal population ….. 100m violent muslims would be impossible–just ‘taking their oil’ would be fantasy nonsense. No sort of economic system could exist that would allow the use of it in the sense that we know it.
A few bombs and then outsourcing oil production to lowest bidding international oil company?
i assume you jest?
I don’t see the issue being taking the resources — as we saw in Iraq — the US military ring-fenced the oil facilities and kept them operational — even when the country was in the midst of total chaos…
When BAU goes no need to worry about rioting millions — just let them at each other — but if they try to approach an oil facility then strafe them with machine gun fire… drop some napalm on them… that would keep them well away…. just wait a few weeks and they’d all starve to death….
The issue here is that when BAU goes to pieces the Korowicz scenario plays out — the global JIT supply chain goes to pieces — factories close — and nothing functions.
Not much point in holding ME oil fields under this scenario…
BAU functions a whole — or not at all.
I would expect martial law holding for a few months at best — certainly only as long as petrol reserves last… then absolute chaos….
Oh yes, it will be a very big military. Much larger than our current version. Not so much for taking and controlling resources, we can do that now. It’s more about controlling the civilian population. Not physically per se, but by popular support of the military. When 20% of the population is involved in some aspect of the MIC, folks will just go along for the ride. Also, those in the military will live better and eat better – a big incentive to join up. It’s a strange model I know, but one that I believe is beginning to emerge.
what you are describing then is north korea
because there the military system is draining the rest of the country– and threatening the rest of the world if they are not kept supplied with toys and treats
I thought about your rotary motion when I saw this. A great machine (with cobwebs yet) that is definitely not green.
https://www.facebook.com/EuroCarPartsUK/videos/10154434725959155/
I once saw a video where they removed the rear wheels of a car and attached the axle to some sort of extension that stirred up paper pulp to make “paper-crete.” I wonder what else (not green albeit) car engines and rear axles can be used to make?
Not possible
Why not? When times get tough, the entire history of the human race boils down to, “I’m going to kill you and take your stuff.” Economic models, just in time, BAU – they all go out the window. I doubt that there will even be taxes or banks as we know them.
with a few exceptions banks are already becoming uneconomic to run—they only exist on interest on moneys exchanged
Kurt – how long have you been on FW? Years?
After all that time if you cannot grasp why what you are suggesting is not possible — then it would be presumptuous of me to believe that I would be able to convince that you are wrong.
For I come armed with only facts and logic …. and delusions are impervious to those weapons.
Unfortunately you have condemned yourself to stew in a sea of ignorance forever.
Oh wait! That’s the FE that said there would be no turkey for Xmas. So much for your logic and predictive abilities. My model is odd, but not easily refutable. Come up with a counter argument or go back into your storage
container.
And that must be Kurt again who is angry with Fast because he expected to be put out of his misery by now if the prediction would have come true and BAU had ended in 2016.
Very sorry Kurt but you will have to endure your state of delusion for awhile longer…. but don’t worry… the end is nigh.
I’d like to give you hope by saying I can predict the time exactly … but there are many moving parts … and the central banks really do mean ‘whatever it takes’
Hang in their Kurt — chin up — the reaper will come soon enough
I believe it was Trevor Noah’s “Daily Show” where I saw an interview with the head of the US Navy. He reported success with using fuel made from food scraps, etc.) to run ships. The interviewer was incredulous, but I got the sense that the event was not part of the comedy routine. But who knows?
one can only visualise an aircraft carrier, with trawling nets, a crew of 5000 being given 2 fishes and throwing the lefovers in the boilers
I guess it depends on have far down the chain of decline you’re dealing with. There’s plenty of food now. Not too many fish left, sadly.
that can happen, on the good ship Lollipop…
See – it accomplished what the PR men it to accomplish — it got you (and many) thinking — maybe there is something to this … maybe we are saved…
Remember Japan’s energy independence through gas frozen deep in the ocean?
Never heard anymore on that either right…. rinse repeat…
that was an attempt at humor based upon a final scene from “Back to the Future” where the professor uses food scraps to fuel his “Mr. Fusion” portable power generator in his modified DeLorean sports car/plane.
we have plans to make one. if you’re interested i’ll send a link.
I wonder how many food scraps it would take to run a ship. Also, how much effort would need to go into gathering and converting them to the right form. If we end up with resource shortages, we will have a lot fewer food scraps, and our ability to gather them up will be limited. So I am wondering where this will ever take us, even if it is true. I supposed it is an intended climate change intervention.
I could almost believe a version of this story if it involved saving leftover cooking oil, and adding a small percentage of the leftover cooking oil to the regular fuel to burn. But this would go very far toward providing a solution, either.
I am pretty sure this is already done. But how far can you fly on waste after McDoo and fried chickens?
A new record high winter temp in upstate NY where I live. But this is not another indication of climate change – or the TV weatherman would have told me…right?
Hi Grayfox, I live in Rhinebeck, NY, about 100 miles north of NYC. It was 60 degrees at 9pm last night in February. It is never this warm in February, February is the coldest month. It is odd. I guess in 20 years we will find out more.
Wait 20 years? By then it will far too late. IPCC AR5
. Global warming is just plain unmistakable. At the top of the report, the warming of the climate system that we are seeing (in the form of melting ice, temperature rise, and sea level rise, among other factors) is called “unequivocal” and “unprecedented over decades to millennia.” Not mincing words here, then.
2. Scientists are more sure than ever that humans are driving global warming. The certainty about this central conclusion has now been upped to 95 percent. Let’s allow the scientists to say it in their own words: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
3. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in nearly a million years. How much have humans changed the planet? Well, the IPCC says our atmosphere has more carbon dioxide, more methane, and more nitrous oxide than it has had in “at least the last 800,000” years. And how long did it take us to do that? A 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide has occurred since pre-industrial times—or, roughly in the last 200 years.
Carbon Dioxide chart
IPCC
4. A clarification on the alleged “slowdown.” The IPCC has added considerable clarification to the most controversial part of the report, where it notes that the rate of surface temperature increase over the last 15 years ago is somewhat less than it had been previously. After an earlier draft of the report leaked in August, this section was widely cited by climate skeptics to cast doubt on global warming. Now, the IPCC clarifies that short-term trends of this kind “are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends.” The report says the recent reduction in the rate of warming is caused, in roughly equal parts, by natural climate variability (possibly including heat going deeper into the oceans) and a temporary decline of solar radiation reaching the planet, thanks to volcanic eruptions and the solar cycle itself. (For more detail, see our live blog.)
5. Projections of sea level rise have increased. Last time around, in 2007, the IPCC was faulted for having projections of future sea level rise that were arguably too conservative, because of the way they dealt with possible contributions from the melting of land-based ice (e.g., Greenland, West Antarctica). This time, the projections are higher for the end of this century. The highest end projection indicates oceans could rise by more than 3 feet (or 0.98 meters).
6. Much of global warming is irreversible and will continue for centuries. In the most somber part of the report, the IPCC provides a truly geological perspective on the changes that we are causing. It notes that much of what we are doing to the planet is “irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale” and that temperatures will remain “at elevated levels for many centuries,” even if we completely stop emitting carbon dioxide. Indeed, the report states, much of the carbon dioxide that we’ve emitted “will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years.”
Much ado about nothing given nothing can be done to change course.
Just because some guy in NZ says so….
Things can change very FAST Eddy….
We already have changed the climate for hundreds of years in the future…
How much more??? That is the question!
The only way to change things is to stop using fossil fuels and when you do BAU and industrial civilization goes with it/collapses because the system has been built and our 7.5 billion plus population exists because of fossil fuels.
As the saying goes you’ll be “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
If burning fossil fuels is causing AGW….. then how could we stop AGW without completely collapsing the global economy?
Or do I have this wrong — you would like us to stop burning now — even though that would collapse the global economy — because it would reduce future damage?
I am 100% for burning more fossil fuels — I am a very selfish person — I do not want BAU to end — and do not care one iota what happens after I am gone. In fact if the Earth turned into a roiling boiling ball of fire a day after my demise because we burned another bucket of coal… but the bucket bought me another day … I’d volunteer to throw the bucket of coal into the furnace.
I am still thinking about those coffee capsules…. the person making the comment flew thousands of miles for a date with the coffee capsules…
In that vein… I am endlessly amused by people who rant about AGW…. they insist we need to do something … and then they jump into a tonne of metal powered by oil and built using coal electricity —- and drive 2 miles to buy a loaf of bread….
Let’s go further with that…. let’s visit the world of the Green Groupies who cringe when someone uses a plastic bag… meanwhile they fill up their organic hemp bags with hair gel… and plastic doo dads… and all sorts of other ‘must have’ items that are not essential….
Is it true that in DelusiSTAN that the death penalty applies to anyone who asks for a plastic bag in a shop?
Back when chaos theory was all the rage, a butterfly fluttering its wings in the Amazon rainforest was said to have the power to set off a hurricane.
If there’s any truth in that, then all 7.5 billion people are changing the climate all the time just by getting out of bed every day.
I have no opinion on chaos theory, but some very eminent scientists and mathematicians have given it serious consideration.
Also, the climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. So even if we have changed the climate for hundreds of years in the future, how would we know we’ve done it?
http://www.7tint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Butterfly.jpg
So we have very learned persons telling us we are causing climate change. My complaint is none of them have any advice on how we can live without using fossil fuels. They have very detailed reports on what is going to happen if we don’t but not a half page on what happens to us if we do.
It is already too late. Unless you believe in geo-engineering. Otherwise what, cut our emissions by 90 percent? This is the same as killing off 90 percent of human population. Our best bet in this department is that the climate has some counter acting feedback loops that will save us.
When you feel like cooling down, do please come to England in June and July……
A new record high winter temp in upstate NY where I live. But this is not another indication of climate change – or the TV weatherman would have told me…right?
Climate is changing all the time, and any weather event anywhere at any time can contribute to that change. This follows logically from the broadly accepted definition of climate as the average of weather conditions over an extended period, usually several decades. So yes, absolutely, this new record high winter temp in upstate NY where you live is indeed yet another indication of climate change, as was this winter’s record cold and heavy snowfall along the Sea of Japan side Western Japan of where I live.
This snow has not only significantly altered the 30-year average winters snowfall for this region, it also eliminated most solar power generation for over a week, much to the chagrin of all the people who have installed rooftop solar and who like nothing better than to monitor daily how much it is saving them on electricity.
One more thing: This winters snowfall, like most winters’ snowfalls, in this one Japanese region alone, has killed more people than were killed by radiation as a result of the Fukushima disaster. The victims were mostly people who fell from their roofs while cleaning off the snow and either broke their necks or were buried in avalanches, in some cases because they wanted to remove the snow covering their precious solar panels.
Baker Hughes: U.S. Drillers Add Oil Rigs for Sixth Week in a Row
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/148635/Baker_Hughes_US_Drillers_Add_Oil_Rigs_for_Sixth_Week_in_a_Row?utm_source=DailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2017-02-24&utm_content=&utm_campaign=industry_headlines_3
Will help add to the oil glut, and push prices down. Pretty much as expected.
The system operates on faith. The oil industry as a whole cannot make an adequate profit, and continue its E&P at a high enough level, even on $100 oil.
Gail, the system is also political. If the president of the US and the president of the Federal Reserve Bank want to crush KSA they can make the price low and keep it there for a decade.
The Elders own the KSA. They already determine the price of oil.
If they want oil at $2 it will be $2.
But in case you hadn’t noticed — the issue here is that the production costs are too high.
The Elders can exert a lot of control but they can’t do anything about that.
This problem is beyond intractable.
Not really. Low oil prices would have to come from cutting off US demand, perhaps because of a high tax on oil products. Such an action would be tremendously unpopular. Or alternatively, it could come from huge over production by US producers. The low prices then would tend to put these companies into bankruptcy.
Of course, right now, the price of oil is low, and it has been lower than producers need, for a very long time (about 2013, even before the price of oil dropped). So we, in fact, may be following a course of action that will put Saudi Arabia out of business. In fact, the rest of the world will collapse with Saudi Arabia. The real trick would be to get prices to be high for 10 years.
I am sad that anthropocentric climate change is still being perpetuated on this blog. Author is taking it as given fact even though it hasn’t been proved. And I am not saying it not real, I’m saying it is not proven beyond reasonable doubt. Anthropogenic climate change is very controversial and it does nothing for this article except cast shadow of a doubt on other perfectly reasonable assertions. E.g. non-elite workers are engine. This is a tremendous blight on your otherwise spotless record. I still love your work.
I think the author has stated a few times that she is not a aficionado nor connoisseur of the global warming story…..
Did I mention that I am the president of the Burn Baby Burn Club?
Miha m, I think you are under a misapprehension, possibly due to the length of the post. Gail only mentioned “climate change” once, and she did so in commenting on the perspectives of some makers of energy models. She wasn’t expressing her own view regarding anthropocentric or any other kind of climate change. Please read the paragraph in question (reproduced below) and you should be able to see for yourself that the author has expressed no personal opinion on climate change whatsoever in this article.
Most energy models are based on one of two views of the world: (1) fossil fuel energy supply will eventually run short, so we must use it as sparingly as possible; or (2) we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, because of climate change. Because of these issues, we want to leverage the fossil fuel energy we have, to as great an extent as possible, with energy that we can somehow capture from renewable sources, such as the solar energy or wind. With this view of the situation, our major objective is to create “renewables” that use fossil fuel energy as efficiently as possible. The hope is that these renewables, together with the actions of governments, will allow the economy to gradually shrink back to a level that is somehow more sustainable.
The world’s economy has always been changing.
The same conditions that gave rise to human population (availability of easily dissipated energy) perhaps gave rise to greater CO2 and Methane production. But there is no way that humans really have control over these processes. We cannot voluntarily reduce them, without killing off our own population. The so-called solutions are nonsense.
“no way that humans really have control over these processes. ”
So do you also believe that humans have no control over their individual actions?
For instance that a criminal did not make choices regarding their actions?
You didn’t read the other half of her statement…
“without killing off our own population”
If you’re serious about stopping your contribution to industrial C02 production…go into the forest and live like an animal. (No burning wood for energy) That won’t stop climate change because the c02 is already in the oceans, and the atmosphere but it will stop your personal production of industrial c02 production.
If aren’t willing to walk the walk please stop with the finger-wagging.
Green:
http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/16358/hati.jpg
Not Green:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/-/media/Images/MEN/Editorial/Articles/Magazine-Articles/2003/10-01/Nearing-Enough-Simple-Living-Lessons/scott-nearing-working-in-organic-garden.jpg
Not Green:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/52/6c/dc/526cdc4dc56bc6bb8b23a5053fdd98a1.jpg
Its a reasonable question. If Gail believe that our species have no choice in our predatory behavior in dealing with the world does she believe that those who predate on fellow humans have choice? Can reasonable questions not be asked when statements are made? Its clear this question makes you uncomfortable, thats your problem.
Can I get a predate with the SI models? I don’t mind helping Gail with the vettting process for the harem….
And btw Dino — ARBP is absolutely correct — unless you are living in the bush completely unplugged from BAU — you really need to STF Up.
Let me remind you of my coffee capsule episode… so I’ve got this machine that spits out bits of plastic — anyone who wants to take issue with my capsule machine first needs to demonstrate to me their green creds…
And by that I do not mean that they drive a f*&^%$ electric car — because that is not green — nor can they expound on how they don’t use a plastic shopping bag when they buy ‘stuff’ at Walmart (ignoring the obvious that the f*&^%^$ stuff that they bought is far more damaging to the environment than the F&^%$$# plastic bag…)
What I want to hear is how they prance about in the bush plucking berries and scraping roots out of the ground… how they sharpen sticks on stones and use them to kill and eat animals… how they use the animal pelts for a bed in a cave….
Otherwise like I said – STF Up.
Any sane person would agree that a shoplifters lack of responsibility is of a lessor degree than a murderer. The murderer does not agree. The murderer says “your a criminal like me so STFU you sanctimonious ass”. The murderer makes this argument because he wants to continue to murder guilt free. The belief in the inherent corruptness of all enables his actions. Hi FE ARBP.
Gail has stated on many occasions that when it comes to energy usage “we are just disapitive structures”. This statement implies no need for responsibility to be aware of how ones actions effect the world. Is the murderer simply a disapitive structure also?
FE and ARBP are trying to have this reasonable question shut down before it even gets a chance to be answered. They do not want this question asked because they do not like any of the answers to it. FE prides himself on his supposed openness but he does not want this question asked so he resorts to crude attacks.
The three possible answers to my question that I see are
1. We are disapitive structures with no responsibility to see how our actions effect anything human or otherwise.
2. We are disapitive structures but we only have a responsibility to see how our actions effect fellow humans.
3. We are disapitive structures and we have a responsibility to see how our actions effect everything in the world around us.
Which is it Gail what are your beliefs? It is a reasonable question based on the implications of your repeated statements regarding this.
I am not totally clear as to what point you are trying to make …. but let me ask you this:
If you approached 100 random people and offered each of them:
– 100M USD tax free
– unlimited free use of a private jet and crew for the rest of their lives
– 5 luxury homes in 5 places around the world all expenses paid
How many do you think would decline?
That is your answer.
Context determines a whole lot. About all we can do is attempt to follow the “accepted behaviors” at a given point in time. These accepted behaviors seem to vary by class of society and part of the world, although today “murder” is not on the list of accepted practices anywhere (as far as I know). Population control by killing unwanted baby girls has existed for a long time, though, and probably has not been entirely eliminate. Killing the unwanted twin, or the deformed baby, or the very low birth weight baby has been an accepted practice in many parts of the world, at many times in history. The fact that we live in a rich society that allows us to try to care for all of these children indefinitely (we think) is what allows us to forbid such actions.
Of course, these social norms are “self-organized” as well. They indirectly tell us what the long-range impact of a particular action is likely to be.
You didn’t ask any reasonable question. You made it seem as though we have choice as to whether we burn fossil fuels, that some alternative fuel exists for 7.5 billion humans that we aren’t using because we are greedy, etc.
dinod wrote “Do you also believe that humans have no control over their individual actions?”
The fallacy of human morality is the assumption that humans are divorced from the natural world and are completely rational or spiritual creatures who have absolute control over their actions. Humans are animals. Animals, like us, do have some degree of control over their actions. They CAN delay gratification to a certain degree.They have some limited ability to make choices but they are mostly slaves to their biology and their environment.
There’s no point of making burning fossil fuels a moral issue if there are no alternatives and if humans value human life over the life of other organisms .
It’s not that that I want to shut you down because you asked a “difficult” question, it’s that I want to minimize the amount of time spent on a dumb question.
ARBP, I understand your logic. I would like to hear Gails answer. My question was in response to her writings, It is a request nothing more. You think my question is dumb. In many ways I think it is a pivotal question, From what essence springs the ability to care. From what essence springs personal responsibility, . Your unsolicited position is clear it needs no more clarification. Let Gail answer my question if she chooses to do so.
Dino,
A. Your body uses energy whether you want it or not
B. If you “choose” to have a family, you require energy for all of them and housing and food storage etc. etc.
Energy and resources are not negotiable. You just need them.
But once you have the ability to carve out an primary energy reserve, then comes the question.. do you want more, more, MORE.. but if You decide on moderation.. somebody else will choose to have it all. Then that someone will enslave you and your family with the resources they have amassed.
Even if we as individuals have the option of living in moderation, humans as a species does not. There will always be someone who wants it all and therefore drives our species to overshoot and collapse.
The answer to your simplistic question is also simplistic: -Both apply-
We know that pedophiles exist. There are actually a large population of them.
Suppose a pedophile became aware of the damage pain and suffering his actions caused.
He could do several things.
Statistically the recidivism for pedophiles approaches 100%. That is the justification for treating pedophilia as mental illness rather than a crime. He could use this fact to decide that is just the way he is, denying the ability to change in any way. He could embrace pedophilia trying to indulge in it as much as possible. He could create elaborate logic like “all humans indulge in gratification” and use this idea of sanctimoniousness to justify his actions. He could spend large amounts of time honing and elaborating on the logic that justified his harmful actions. He could indulge in mind altering drugs if his actions started to bother him.
He could end his existence.
He could decide that ending his existence would in itself be a sin and set his will on minimizing the harm he caused the world. Knowing his very existence was in fact a risk of harming the world it would be a very hard path but he could be so adverse to being a source of harm to the world that his every action focused on reducing the risk.
Which path would best reflect on his character?
Which path would best reflect on the character of the population of pedophiles?
Who would be best suited to judge which path was best?
I propose it would be his former victims.
Or he could sign up to be a Catholic Priest.
Dino,
What do we know about paedophiles in history?? Even though the greeks, the spartans and even Julius Caesar had relations as young men with older ‘sponsors’. We don’t hear that much about paedophiles. Why not? The logical conclusion would be, that either they hid really well in monstrosities and atrocities commited in that age. Or then.. they were themselves culled..
Individual choice is much overrated in the ebb and flow of history. The ‘problem’ of having a choice is freedom given by FF. When FFs are not there anymore, so will the burden of individual choice also disappear
So do you also believe that humans have no control over their individual actions?
The gods or quantum indeterminacy or fluoride in the water or even the lying, dying, fake news-spreading legacy media may control everything we think, do and say. And then again, they may not. Am I writing this comment because I will it, or am I being forced to do it by the Twinkies I ate this morning?
https://youtu.be/zTJXY7WlpZ8
This is a classic 🙂
Yes, it belongs among the Golden Greats with George W> Bush on our imports and Dan Quayle on spelling.
Now for something completely different. Here’s some rousing Sunday entertainment on British agriculture and food consumption by Liz Truss.
One of the commentators said “This is up here with I have a dream.”
I say of it, you may not laugh, but you’ll certainly smile.
https://youtu.be/n_wkO4hk07o
Dino, Sorry, I needed to skip over some questions earlier, to have time to work on a presentation.
I think that the workings of the energy-economy system provide a lot of “context” in which decisions are made. If a child is born into a wealthy family, and receives a good education (lots of energy for both) then that child will have a much better chance of avoiding being drawn into criminal activity than a child, raised by a single parent who is high on drugs most of the time, and who does not have enough food.
At the same time, there is latitude for individual decision making. A person with a high-level job may take bribes, or may embezzle funds from an employer. A person who came from a poor background may still find a way to succeed, especially if there are jobs available that pay an adequate wage to those with limited education. If those jobs have pretty much disappeared, the choices of that person will be very limited.
One of the lies of the economy: If you lower the value of your currency, your products become more competitive.
In the end, you can not produce, because you have to hire lower and lower paid workers or replaces them with more and more efficient machines, until there is no such machine that can produce cheaply enough…
Low wages discourage participation in the formal economy.
Prices that fall below production costs discourage production.. If production falls too low…well, the economy and civilization collapse.
Despite what the globalists claim…there is no way to reform the global economy so that it is INCLUSIVE and allows everyone to WIN.
The global economy is competitive. Competition produces winners and losers…and in some cases, such as the global economy, a winner-takes-all environment.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634
I wonder how Mark Zuckerberg is going to go about making the global economy more “inclusive” without some kind of world government to make sure everyone gets their share.
“Competition produces winners and losers…” The competition is not the decisive factor. The decisive factor is energy return on human energy invested. When you work for nothing (i.e. you lose in the competition), your energy return on human energy invested is a negative number.
What is the meaning of the competition for finite resources? It has no meaning, especially when you compete for things that require a lot of energy to maintain. In that way you never win, you always lose…
Globalization might help better extract resources. Another mine in inner Africa, another slash and burn in Amazonas.
the exchanges between some commenters suggests that there is a choice in all this
there isn’t—our genetic forces are predicated on a life or death solution–survivors liv–the rest die.
that is the ultimate end in nature for all species, digging holes in the ground to extract ‘stuff’ or cutting down trees is a side issue
“digging holes in the ground to extract ‘stuff’ or cutting down trees is a side issue” – this is not true, because for the human species, the real figh is getting the resources from the enviroment. And it is and will be more and more about getting the resources from the environment, not about fighting for the dissipated stuff…
i may be missing a trick here—correct me if i am
but if i cut a tree down, chop it up and burn it in my woodstove—isn’t that extracting resources from the enviromnent?—but that is still a side issue–as i said
my comment related to struggles we cannot win–that of the force exerted in a collective sense by the genes within all of us.
I suppose the theory is that your labor will be cheaper in the world economy. Of course, your fuel is likely to be as expensive as ever, because you import it, and then export the product made using it.
If your workers are poorer, they will be able to pay less taxes and they will have less “demand” for goods in general, pushing the country downward. It is not a good way to produce economic growth, in the real world.
“enabled by our ivory tower central bankers”
Without them, you, me, Gail and pretty much everybody else in the world would have disappeared 7-8 years ago…I hope they keep up the illusion going for as long as possible, because when the illusion is recognized for what it is, it is game over for all of us! Our lives literally depend on a functioning (or the idea of I should say since it’s been kept artificially alive since 2008) financial system. Global bond collapse = collapse of financial system = bubye to JIT and by extension…us
Someone on Facebook commented that Debt is Energy IOUs. Many people have said different versions of this in the past. Debt allows us to believe that in the future, we will have goods and services made with energy products. The greater the debt level we have the better, because this debt can be used to “pay” current people in the system –workers, oil company owners, and those holding debt relating to assets such as homes, automobiles, and factories. These debt levels are what help keep prices up.
My banks and credit card companies are desperate to raise my limits and get me to borrow, borrow, borrow ! If debt is so good why did I pay it all off. I’m contributing to our rapid decline by reducing debt. If I sold all my assets and borrowed to the max, I could keep the system stoked and throw a heck of a party. 💃🕺
You understand the system! Somehow, economists have tended to miss the importance of debt–just moving money around. Perhaps transferring a little interest to the holder of the note.
You understand the problem. A lot of peak oilers don’t.
High-cost Canadian oil sands cannot compete in the current market with low-cost Permian and Oklahoma shale oil production:
Dr James Hansen tells us the hard truth about unconventional oil
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X3IjwveMoqo
It don’t matter if it’s “economical” or not…Physics and Chemistry ignores profit and loss statements.
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5cnQwaXEAUunoG.jpg
It as 107 in Texas this week–a national record for any place in the US for February.
*was
more fake news i guess
Very warm here in Atlanta–in the 70s.
He did a good job. No artyfarty embellishment. Yet, we see what we’re up against. BTW, he seems to be missing out on the unaffordability of nuclear.
That politician that responded to Hansen, said, “I don’t believe it would be game over.” Isn’t it amazing how some people think they know science via belief when in reality they know absolutely nothing about the subject. Any joker with a brain can have a belief but only some people with the data to back up their assertions can know what will probably happen. Hansen tried to let them know but ‘belief’ will replace his knowledge and away we go burning non-conventional until the carbon in the atmosphere goes past 500 ppm then 600, then 700. I give up. There’s just no way to fight back against ‘belief’ and the predisposed interest in continuing BAU no matter what disastrous events may come this way.
The more I get involved with looking at scientific papers, the less belief I have in science. We too often think we know more than we do. Something that has gone through peer review get repeated endlessly, often with mistakes of understanding what the first author said.
Belief in science?
It is true that all scientists take certain things on faith. For example, some may believe that the Big Bang occurred because it must have occurred in order for our observations of the distant parts of the cosmos to make sense in the context of Big Bang theory. Others may believe that the Laws of Thermodynamics are valid because in our collective experience they have yet to be broken. For a long time most medieval and early modern European scientists, while they acknowledged there was reasonable proof that the Earth was round and that it orbited the Sun, believed that the climate had remained fairly stable, the continents had remained in one place, and species had remained immutable since the beginning of the world just over 6,000 years previously. Isaac Newton believed it was a worthwhile use of his time to spend more of it cumulatively in practicing alchemy and studying the implications of the Book of Revelations than in pursing physics. Charles Darwin believed that men were inherently more intelligent than women and white Europeans more intelligent than the barbarian or savage races. Even Albert Einstein confessed to having beliefs regarding quantum theory.
You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the Quantum Theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one. (Albert Einstein to Max Born, Sept 1944, ‘The Born-Einstein Letters’)
It is also true that many people (scientists and laypersons alike) make a belief system out of science. Not even Richard Feynman, who in my opinion knew more about how science works than most of his scientific contemporaries did, was totally immune from that one. He said “science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.”
Most of us believe in science these days, based on its impressive power to deliver more goodies. Boy are we going to be disappointed when the false god becomes a fallen idol, letting us down after all these centuries of progress.
Tim Groves, you think the medieval period could be compared to modern day scientists and their methodology? BTW, the body of scientific research, evidence and review supports the theory of AGW, which is based on the laws of Physics and Chemistry.
The medieval and early modern period were not aware of those. Just like the theory of Gravity is supported by the body of evidence.
Your argument is just conjecture.
Tim Groves said_
Yep. The only reason that science enjoys the great prestige it does is because it kept the punch bowl full.
Climate “science” does just the opposite: it advocates taking the punch bowl away.
That’s gone over with the general public like a turd in the puch bowl.
Jeremy, it’s my belief that you are only saying what you are saying because you don’t agree with what I wrote and you are mistaking a difference of opinion for a personal attack. As for your beliefs, I don’t know what they are but I believe your are entitled to hold any that you wish. If you want to continue to put forward the belief that science is belief-free or that it is some kind of nobel pursuit untainted by common or garden human prejudices, biases, and other cognitive defects, even after I’ve explained to you that it isn’t the case as patiently as I would correct the spelling mistakes of a seven-year-old, then please go ahead. I really don’t mind in the least what you think.
Nobel => Noble
Freudian slip?
I worry more about the economic situation. Co2 just isn’t that important but once people chanted it enough, that was that. Extremely odd. The fact is:
In thus considering the seven greatest temperature transitions of the past half-million years – three glacial terminations and four glacial inceptions – we note that increases and decreases in atmospheric CO2 concentration not only did not precede the changes in air temperature, they followed them, and by hundreds to thousands of years! There were also long periods of time when atmospheric CO2 remained unchanged, while air temperature dropped, as well as times when the air’s CO2 content dropped, while air temperature remained unchanged or actually rose. Hence, the climate history of the past half-million years provides absolutely no evidence to suggest that the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration will lead to significant global warming.
Kurt, sorry, but NOT one Science Academy on the Planet disputes the conclusions of the IPCC…
Please post your own references and with it the Science Academies that support your post
You can find the data on any chart of longitudinal co2. Problem is that people pick the last 100 years or so and then try to say any temp rise was caused by co2. Fact is, we just don’t know. And since the longitudinal data show no correlation, it’s kind of a strange argument from a statistical point of view.
Kurt, sorry, but NOT one Science Academy on the Planet disputes the conclusions of the IPCC…
http://i.imgur.com/OsjnIUi.jpg
Kuurt, out of respect for Gail, I will not continue this rxchange. Once, long ago she asked us here to refrain in the so called “debate” of AGW. BTW, you did NOT provide an answer to my request, that was enough of a response.
Oh, I agree that AGW is happening. All I was pointing out is that we don’t know how severe it is and the economic problem will hit us before AGW causes a significant problem. That has always been Gail’s position as well. I think you are trying to say the opposite which doesn’t make much sense unless you are a disciple of Guy McPherson.
No you weren’t, Kurt, and you are still evading my request.
As far as not knowing, ALL knowledge is limited, we humans can never know it all, regardless what Donald Trump claims.
The science of AGW is not settled, There is continue research and discoveries beig made today. All point to one solution, not emitting greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere.
Jeremy I can never understand why lay people blame “science”. They live with, rely on and embrace the findings of science daily. But if science happens to find a fact detrimental to their beliefs, their personal “superior” knowledge will override 100,000 agreeing scientists. Religion has the same problem. Science is not to blame, one can choose to accept or deny the findings, blame should be directed inwards. Their “superior” knowledge cannot be swayed, it’s a waste of time trying, facts are a mere trifle when ingrained beliefs are challenged.
I know one half a million years ago Dino the dinosaur had indigestion.
Hence there is no climate change!
Hmm a pleasant 115 out today.
I have no idea what no you weren’t refers to. It isn’t that difficult to find the charts and statistical info. I’ve included a link. Again, there is truth to AGW, but like Gail, I believe the economic problems are going stop AGW in its tracks. What do you believe?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
‘There’s just no way to fight back against ‘belief’ and the predisposed interest in continuing BAU no matter what disastrous events may come this way.’
I am the president of the Burn Baby Burn Club.
BAU dies if it does not grow — the only way it can grow is if we burn fossil fuels.
Given there are no alternatives to fossil fuels — the logical conclusion is — that we must burn more fossil fuels…
The illogical conclusion would be to cut back on burning fossil fuels — watch growth — and BAU – collapse…
Then starve and die.
Feel free to explain to me how I am wrong. This could be a lot of fun. And I am all about fun. I love fun! I live for fun.
I see Hansen’s trying on that old Jedi mind trick again.
It is about precious bodily fluids:
http://expatspost.com/wp-content/uploads/dr.-strangelove.jpg
Glenn – here are three options for you to choose from for a new handle:
The Jester
The Fool
The Clown
What’s it going to be?
As you are fond of quoting famous people why not just borrow the title of this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot
Glenn is knowledgeable about some pieces of the problem. Give him a chance to learn some more. It may even be that we can learn some things from him. Stranger things have happened.
I interpret Glenn’s dramatic reduction in posts as a sign that he may be getting the message…. that we are beating the DelusiSTANI out of him with these daily floggings of facts and logic.
Glenn — we await the new you — the new username — we will rejoice when you tear off the shackles of Cognitive Dissonance….
And you join …. THE CORE.
If you can win the struggle I suggest you consider …. Jesus…. or perhaps Muad’Dib
Join us Glenn…. Feel the Power……
I’m afraid Glenn is far to comfortable with his perception of himself as a “intellectual” and hiding behind non applicable quotes from dead people to accept truth. The traits he has displayed do not indicate an ability to grow. To accept a finite world takes certain characteristics. I’m not sure they are the best characteristics but it takes certain characteristics. Delusistan is a pretty cool place to live.
++++++
Yes, along those lines is a book review in The New Yorker…..”Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds: New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(139)&CNDID=40996129&spMailingID=10502668&spUserID=MTMzMTg0ODUyODc5S0&spJobID=1101981301&spReportId=MTEwMTk4MTMwMQS2
Thanks! I found this article very interesting.
I think this article also points to the issue of why “overly simple” models can be worse than no model at all. One a person has his or her mind made up that the only problem that faces our economy is “running out of oil,” and this process will be marked by shortages and high prices, it is hard to get the people to even consider the possibility that the real model may be closer to, say, what happened during the depression, with falling incomes and low prices.
It’s like the Hotel California… once you check in … you can never leave.
Glenn – how’s your room? Care to put up a review on Trip Adviser? Perhaps a complaint about the check out policy?
FE drawing resources away from the periphery to the core and thereby turning the OFW comments section into a microcosm of IC…
LOLLL
Could it be that Gail is the Creator —- and FW is where she vets who lives and who dies… with the end goal being to create a new super race of intellectual purists?
If so …. we are short on females….
Perhaps there will be a harem for that purpose? http://www.si.com/swimsuit/collection/2017
I don’t think so.
Hmmmm….. back to the drawing board.
Norman — I nominate you as The Creator…. do you accept?
done my bit for creation—have been seen to by the vet
I now function in an advisory capacity only (aka knowall)
There is no obligation to ‘interact’ with the harem…. in fact I’ll sacrifice and take a double ‘ration’
Note to Self: buy a family sized bottle of Viagra ASAP.
If I make Gail’s cut, I would like to reserve Miss Graham if no one objects 🙂
If I make it I’m hoping for a free love policy….
I agree that Oil Sands need a higher price. They are one of the marginal producers who need higher prices.
Needing higher prices for oil sands producers and having them are two separate propositions. All technologies are appendages of our extravagant energy consumption. So is all the debt that present day oil producers require. Without technology and cheap credit marginal oil sites are impossible. The net energy isn’t there. It’s only a matter of time. The debt bubble (enabled by our ivory tower central bankers) is being inflated by a myth that the future will be bigger than the past. Like an Antarctic glacier, eventually enough of the confidence in that myrh will melt from under all the bonds and the whole international bond market will collapse into the sea of oblivion. My hope is that the dichotomy between the bond market and day to day life in this world is bigger than most doomsayers believe. Fasten your seatbelts and buckle your helmets.
My hope is that the dichotomy between the bond market and day to day life in this world is bigger than most doomsayers believe.
You can’t get bigger than a 100% wipeout. Lol…
For Stefeun:
UN advocates a more disorderly urban form in New Urban Agenda document and Quito Papers film
http://sandiego.urbdezine.com/2017/02/18/un-quito-papers-new-urban-agenda-habitat/
“The future is urban. Per the World Bank, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. A vision of and plan for housing this mind-boggling percentage is crucial. And that was precisely the task undertaken at the October 2016 meeting of the UN-Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador. The conference produced what will surely be a crucial document, the New Urban Agenda (the complete text can be found in PDF here).”
I didn’t find any of this easy to read, since it would take a long time to follow all the leads in it. But it shows new thinking about the increasing role of cities in social organization. And it seems to accommodate diminishing energy supplies by leaving more up to the average person. It could be consistent with less regulation. But still, a great role for government and top down control is implied. I didn’t notice any emphasis on tiny-group organizing as the essential element in governance, since each tiny group could have the option (or need) to coordinate and collaborate with others to ensure the common benefit of the small groups.
“Mid-19th century Paris was the site of massive transformation via urban planning. The city’s urban slums and twisted cobblestone streets were transformed under Baron Haussmann’s guidance. They gave way to the façades, railings, streetlamps, and wide boulevards characterizing Paris to this day.
At heart was a tension about the city’s future. If on the one hand there was militarization, forsaken heterogeneity and unplanned beauty, and control imposed on lower-income areas, on the other there was public safety, increased capacity for future residents, and vastly improved access to public sanitation. The same competing issues that plagued Haussmann’s renovation of Paris are present in today’s debate on an open versus a closed city.”
So, how (in theory, and since you are going to plan something anyway) do you do without the over emphasis on top-down governance and control, while maintaining sanitation, cooperation and coordination?
http://losangeles.urbdezine.com/2014/06/17/converting-garages-into-a-dissertation-a-conversation-with-jacob-wegmann
people will expect/demand to live as they have always lived—that is human nature,
whether they will be able to—almost certainly not—will be the source of much conflict.
this pertains to cities
up to about 1800 London supported itself from farmland that surrounded it out to a radius of about 10 miles–a days cart ride effectively.
now london sucks in energy equivalent to 2.5 times the energy output of the entire uk.
the inhabitants of cities must live on top of one another in towers, there isnt enough room to spread outwards–all expect water, sewage, lifts lights roads and so on–but such luxuries are not going to be available for more than the next 20 years max.
so the chinese are building megacities which cannot ultimately be lived in—as are the saudis and many others in an attempt to emulate the west
but of course our cities are just as dysfunctional, only we are not forced to admit it yet–because we can still find a full supermarket within walking distance, our taps and lights work and toilets flush unmentionables away.
to us that is normality and we demand it continues ad infinitum—doom or no doom.
when we have to physically carry water in and wastes out (as in 1800) then the time of the city is over.
Those expecting that 70% of us will be in cities by 2050 should bear this in mind.
True, but the latest phase pre-collapse usually coincides with final surge of relocation into the cities, be it for protection, food distribution etc. And then it all implodes.. and “few remnants” disperse into the wild..
“the inhabitants of cities must live on top of one another in towers, there isnt enough room to spread outwards–all expect water, sewage, lifts lights roads and so on–but such luxuries are not going to be available for more than the next 20 years max.”
Pretty obvious. Some of this thinking (or absence thereof) is obvious even in my village. Waste is handled by relatively over-full septic systems that have to be emptied every five years. But we have no lifts. These two factors make us different from the city. And despite our single-well source of water (that now and then falters), I can hardly interest anyone in accepting a heavily subsidized rain catchment tank for backup water supply. There are no apartments and every residence has a backyard that could grow something. But nobody is the least bit interested in growing anything, despite our being 20 miles from the nearest supermarket.
However, where backyards (at least) are concerned, there are very many detached houses in cities…so no difference there.
But it gives me perverse enjoyment to be surrounded by such lunacy. Maybe it’s my need to feel superior. Or better still, need to see just HOW stupid people can be.
So…
Just finishing up hosting a small family reunion here in NZ … was hoping that the End of Days might coincide with the dates so everyone could be together in the container for the finale …. but that didn’t happen….
Anyway… I have one of those capsule coffee things at the beach shack … and a comment was made about ‘more stuff off to the landfill’ (used capsules) … I mentioned the fact that capsule machines have saved huge amounts of coffee from being poured down the drain as people used to make entire pots of coffee but now they only make what they will drink….
That didn’t matter … it coffee capsules are the villains — they are apparently destroying the planet….
Rather than taking the bait and getting into the fact that we add nearly 100m to the population each year — nor mentioning this scene (noting I am not a breeder and everyone else in attendance is) ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcx-nf3kH_M
I instead said — I’ve got a really good book that you can have…. It is called The End of More….
I am sure the person thought it was going to present a wonderful BAU Lite scenario – where people shop only for what they need rather than just buying ‘More’ — where everyone eats organic food exclusively — where the population is magically reduced to a manageable 500m or so….. where all is wonderful and everyone wears Brooks Brothers clothing….
Giddy with delight the comment was ‘I needed something for the long flight back’
Hmmmm…. let me see…. must be about 5 hours into the 12 hour flight by now….
One of two things are likely happening on that plane:
Mr Cognitive Dissonance is screaming ‘PUT THIS &^%$ BOOK DOWN NOW!!!! And forget this never happened… go back to happy thoughts…. think dancing around the camp fire…. think of the silence of a Tesla cruising past…. ooooohhhmmmmm’
OR
A tsunami of despair is crashing against the rocks….
Moral of the story — don’t comment on my coffee capsule machine….
So happy that I ended up a non-breeder as well….I cannot imagine what it must be like to have found out about all this in the last few years and have kids…BTW loved Utopia, what a great series!!!
reminds me of a friend i visited and i gave him my copy of Orlov’s “Reinventing Collapse” to read. a month or so later, he sent the book back to me in the mails with a note: book is too depressing to read. so far, it’s the only time i’ve had a book returned. smart guy, good writer, and as most of my colleagues, deep into the delusional cocoon.
I normally wouldn’t do that… for the reasons you mention ….but I draw the line at coffee capsules….
regarding waste, we compost our coffee grinds. put it in the garden after some composting in a bin. we also compost table scraps that used to go down the garbage disposal and into the sewer, then out to pollute the sea after some minimal primary treatment.
so, i asked a Starbucks employee what they do with all their waste grinds. of course, they put it in the trash, no composting, straight to the H-power incinerator, up the stack and into the atmosphere. they generate a little electricity, big deal.
selling my books secondhand—while my family starve???
have you no conscience at all??
NP you have increased the price of your book substantially…I bought it for 0.99$ in May 2013 on amazon.ca and now I see it’s at 1.26$….what gives? 😉
the massives sales of my book have been influencing international currency exchanges,
that is why the apparent price change is showing up
LOLLL!!!
I made a tidy profit to boot!
I agree, the idea of large cities with millions of inhabitants is a non-starter without a massive influx of energy. Au contraire, big cities will be the last place you want to be when the grid fails or order breaks down.
The Von Thunen model of agricultural land use was created by farmer and amateur economist J.H. Von Thunen (1783-1850) in 1826 (but it wasn’t translated into English until 1966). Von Thunen’s model was created before industrialization and is based on the following limiting assumptions:
The city is located centrally within an “Isolated State” which is self sufficient and has no external influences.
The Isolated State is surrounded by an unoccupied wilderness.
The land of the State is completely flat and has no rivers or mountains to interrupt the terrain.
The soil quality and climate are consistent throughout the State.
Farmers in the Isolated State transport their own goods to market via oxcart, across land, directly to the central city. Therefore, there are no roads.
Farmers act to maximize profits.
http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/vonthunen.htm
Interesting observation. Lack of refrigeration may have been a consideration as well.
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“South Africa’s controversial R1 trillion nuclear deal is currently being decided in South Africa’s High Court (22-24 February) in a case that analysts believe could decide the country’s financial future.
“According to the facts of the court case, the SA government wants to build several nuclear power plants in the country to provide 9,600MW of energy.
“Conservative estimates into the costs involved say such a project would cost R500 billion – though experts say it is more likely to spill over R1 trillion in reality.
“This would make it the largest procurement deal in the country’s history.
“With Cabinet’s approval, requests for proposals were issued, in which vendors will supply pricing and funding models. To date, government has been silent on how it will fund the nuclear build.
“It has conducted its own studies into the costs, but the subsequent reports have been classified.
“The nuclear build programme will end up costing the South African economy over R3 trillion in debt, according to civil society group Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) in a press release in late 2016…
“According to Outa, South Africa’s current debt level currently sits at approximately R1.89 trillion with the nuclear deal potentially escalating this to well above R3 trillion as the country is expected to borrow a further R1.2 trillion to finance it.
“The Democratic Alliance agreed with Outa and noted that “whether its R500 billion or R1 trillion, the project is simply unaffordable.”
““Whichever funding model is chosen, you can rest assured that it will be paid for by the South African taxpayer, and that we can expect substantial tariff increases over many years,” said DA leader Mmusi Maimane…”
https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/159927/south-africa-is-going-to-court-to-stop-itself-from-bankruptcy/
Such folly.
SA will be Zimbabwe writ large
Here in British Columbia our government is building a hydro electric dam at the cost of $9 billion dollars in order to insure we have sufficient power for our latest dream industry – liquified natural gas. Total fantasy of course as no company is stupid enough to liquefy gas and ship it across the pacific to Asian markets and expect to make a profit. The gas pipelines from Russia will guarantee that. Yet the dam is well underway. Just another example of the desperation government faces as we hit the limits of a finite world.
Wow! I guess what the return on a hydro dam is depends on what you plan to do with it. I see Japan’s LNG price recently has been just over $7. The cost of building pipelines to the coast, making it into LNG, shipping it, and regassifying it is how much? This Financial Times article from 2016 claims “Liquefaction costs of $3.00 to 3.50 per mBTU, plus transport at about $2 per mBTU to Asia. That would mean $5.00 to $5.50, simply for the liquefaction and transport costs. That doesn’t leave much of anything for the extraction costs. https://www.ft.com/content/f1773832-b5ee-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51
God help us all, should the above come to fruition.Forget about the finance, where are they going to find the skills to run these goddamn behemoths. Certainly not from the labour pool available in our country.
Depressing comments.
Companies building these things seem to be going bankrupt.
Bang goes the Southern Hemisphere!
I’ve posted by prediction here that something like 3 billion people are going to die and this will take place sometime within the next 20 years, give or take.
Now, is that not enough doom for you? Do you think all 7.5 billion of us are going to die, and within the next year?
This place is turning into an absurd circle jerk. None of you have the guts to actually say what you think is going to happen.
somehow i thought i had said it
the only thing one can’t say is time and date with any real accuracy
I also reside in DelusiSTAN. ~1B sustainable population, could be slow and not very traumatic in developed and not very overpopulated countries. Until then more of the same: fake accounting, fake news, fake democracy and everything slowly falling apart.
That sounds like Utopia.
🙂
And still in the real world, the virtual reality world, I get laughed at. What I’m saying is so ridiculous they can’t even get angry.
“I’ve posted my prediction here that something like 3 billion people are going to die and this will take place sometime within the next 20 years, give or take. None of you have the guts to actually say what you think is going to happen.”
It doesn’t take guts to make such precise predictions, only stupidity. How the heck can we know the future to any such precision? We visit this blog because we know that the present is already a lot worse than the recent past, and things are going to get a helluva lot worse still. Gail analyses the current important trends for us. We commenters and you will in all likelihood not be in the position to recognise one another and communicate with one another in 20 years’ time, to tell you how right or wrong you are / were. Guy McPherson sticks his neck out and says 2026 or earlier is the end-date for the entire human species, but there are plenty of known and unknown variables to factor in, so that sounds way too extreme.
I think we are, at some point, going to suffer a catastrophic failure of our financial and banking system that results in a rapid and irreversible loss of socio-economic complexity. In other words the retail, utilities and telecommunications provisions that most of us take for granted will be gone in the space of weeks or even days, with regional variations. Surviving without them will be challenging. Competition for remaining food and other goods will be fierce. Growing food will be made even more challenging by an acceleration of climate change via loss of global dimming. Neglected nuclear power stations will also pose a problem, as will neglected path labs, chemical and sewage treatment plants… I think it is going to be bad and I think your estimate of 3 billion is highly conservative, unfortunately.
My hope is that we have lots more time before this occurs.
only 3 things can take out billions in a short space of time
1 nuclear war
2 pandemic
3 sudden heating of climate
we have the means/common sense to prevent 1 an 2, but not 3.
there is only one source for 3, and that is methane release. that will affect the entire world, and over only a decade at most
it will be sudden and self generating.
already the arctic is losing permafrost, so soon there has to be a tipping point when this goes ”over the edge”
that sudden heat will take out food resources world wide, while still leaving everyone in denial that it is happening.
already the weather patterns are changing because of arctic temperature anomalies.
humankind has evolved in a benign static environment. we are not equipped to deal with what’s coming
4. Starvation. If there is insufficient food after industrial farming collapses.
5. Dehydration. Not enough clean drinkable water.
they are included under #3 because if climate overheating goes crazy after methane release, they must automatically be the result
6. Spent fuel ponds that lose cooling.
Add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 and what do we get?
Extinction
i put 1 2 and 3 for possible events that would do the job in a decade—with the odds on 3
there are lots of others of course but they would take longer and not affect everyone at the same rate
I think starvation will happen even without global warming, less machines, less fertilizers, less water pumps, less water, less transport, less cooling.
only 3 things can take out billions in a short space of time
1 nuclear war
2 pandemic
3 sudden heating of climate
Norman, I’m surprised at you.
You forgot to include the Rapture. 🙂
we have the means/common sense to prevent 1 an 2, but not 3.
If i was a betting man, I wouldn’t bet on collective human common sense. And in any case, if the Elders in their collective wisdom decide it’s time to stop the music, they probably have the means of organizing 1 or 2.
As for 3, it sounds like a sci-fi movie scenario to me—up there with When World’s Collide. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, but a new paper by Ruppel and Kessler published this month under the title The interaction of climate change and methane hydrates suggests that it is not very likely.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016RG000534/full
Taken together, the dependence of gas hydrate stability on pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions, the relatively shallow depths of hydrate occurrence beneath the seafloor or in permafrost areas (i.e., relative to conventional natural gas), hydrate’s tendency to concentrate gas, and the large amount of carbon trapped in global gas hydrates contribute to the perception that gas hydrate breakdown, termed “dissociation”, is a potential threat associated with global warming. In addition, large-scale gas hydrate dissociation is sometimes portrayed not only as a consequence of warming but also as a potential synergistic driver for enhanced warming if the CH4 released from gas hydrates reaches the atmosphere. These dual roles of gas hydrate dissociation—as both an effect and possible contributor to global warming—have led some to adopt a catastrophic perspective on the interaction of the climate system with the global gas hydrate reservoir [e.g., Bohannon, 2008; Krey et al., 2009; MacDonald, 1990; Mascarelli, 2009; Whiteman et al., 2013].
This paper reviews the current state of knowledge on the interactions between methane hydrates and the global climate system and addresses misconceptions about posited runaway dissociation, the contemporary input of hydrate-derived methane to the atmosphere, the potential for massive methane releases, and the distribution of gas hydrates in high-latitude regions. While there have been numerous studies of marine gas hydrate reservoir changes in response to climate events that occurred millions of years ago (e.g., the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum at ~55.5 Ma) [Dickens et al., 1997] or during the late Quaternary [Kennett et al., 2000, 2003], less consideration has been given to assessing observational data and other evidence about climate-hydrate interactions over the contemporary period [Archer, 2007; Archer et al., 2009; Nisbet, 1990a, 1990b; Ruppel, 2011a]. O’Connor et al. [2010] considered the fate of methane hydrates under different future climate change scenarios but did not include factors (sinks) that strongly mitigate the impact that hydrate-derived CH4 has on the ocean-atmosphere system. James et al. [2016] recently explored the interaction between climate change and gas hydrates with full acknowledgement of sinks but with a focus on the Arctic Ocean.
In the following sections, we first review background information on gas hydrates, including their global distribution and the amount of sequestered CH4, along with an overview of the impact of climate change processes on gas hydrates. We then assess the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assumptions about the emission of hydrate-derived CH4 to the atmosphere, explore the key challenges associated with distinguishing hydrate-derived CH4 from emissions originating with non-hydrate sources, and review the sinks that prevent most CH4 released by gas hydrate dissociation from reaching the atmosphere. We briefly consider major pre-Holocene climate episodes for which researchers have inferred large-scale gas hydrate dissociation events and provide an in-depth assessment of each physiographic province that hosts gas hydrates, discussing the impact of climate change processes on those deposits and the existing data on CH4 emissions. We also review modeling efforts that have been used to assess the interaction of gas hydrates and global climate and offer recommendations about the key knowledge gaps to be addressed by researchers in future observational and numerical modeling studies. Finally, we briefly explore the potential climate impact of inadvertent CH4 leakage during hypothetical production of gas from hydrate deposits.
sssssshhhhhh
i was saving the rapture for my personal salvation—along with 70 hand picked virgins
the delay is only due to the problem of finding any where i live
“the delay is only due to the problem of finding any where i live”
Living in an area with plenty of chavettes then I take it Norman 😉
lets just same the vetting procedure has to be thorough
It’s hard enough to find genuine virgin olive oil in the supermarket these days, let alone the human kind.
As a UK night-time taxi driver I can confirm the moral decline of the nation. It’s what makes the job fun 😉 Nothing to do with socio-economic background (chav(ette)s), however, as I mostly take around students and many of them come from quite well-to-do backgrounds.
I think most young people realise they do not have a bright future. They may not appreciate the possibility of near term life ending collapse, but they see their student debt mounting up and know the poor odds of ever getting a well paid job or getting on the housing ladder. So who can blame them from partying like there is no tomorrow, as many commenting here would advise anyway.
Thought Japan was different, though, Tim.
Talk about a shrinking population. A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship.
Moreover, many of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins.
Could be fertile territory for The Harem…..
I remember the old janitor where I used to work; we asked him if he was a virgin. Without missing a beat, “Pretty near!” came the reply;-)
Norman, unfortunately I think we are going to experience all three of these in short order.
agreed—any combination is possible
i tried to analyse what was most likely–i could be completely wring
With a blue ocean event in the arctic, weather and sea currents will become erratic and chaotic. Its not impossible for northern europe to once more become an big glacier. Then again, it might be that northern europe has mediterranean climates for a while before that.
How do you adapt in to 1mile thick glaciers everywhere.. how do you adapt to one year having olive groves climate, the next below freezing..
Currently my bet is that the best places to be, would be in NZ, Alaska, or northern scandinavia, northern russia, when SHTF. But two three years after, if alive, start to move towards the Black Sea area, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. A big land mass, with a big water close by, would even out the climatic extremes.. unfortunately where ever there is a possibility of a stable climate.. theres going to be too many people already in those areas.. and then there are the spent fuel ponds..
If the “1%” is actually more like the .01% that would make them to be about 750,000 strong, worldwide at this point. For easy arithmetic lets say that these “as god, billionaire, overlords” number around 500,000. And they need a billion servants. So we need to get rid of about 6 billion “useless eaters”.
That is a bunch of cadavers.
If we do the reduction in one year it will require the elimination of 19,178,082 people per day. If they average 100lbs./ea. That would be 47,945 semi-truck loads of dead meat at 40,000lbs to the load per day.
If they take five years it will require the elimination of 3,835,616 people per day which would be 9,589 truck loads per day. We’ve got a major logistics problem on our hands.
I’m an old maintenance man, not to bright. Seventy years old and still picking up trash and changing light bulbs.
They make the mess and I clean it up. Looks like job security ahead to me.
The bodies will either be left to rot, eaten or burned. It will be horrid. Drill baby drill, burn baby burn until the bitter end. Once commerce stops the life support system will fail. How many people in the USA can live off the land without the help of supermarkets or electricity?
The masses of the rotting will help spread pestilence and disease further, hastening die-off.
Take WW1 x WW2 x the worst famines in history x 1,000,000,000,000 and that would give people a starting point for what the end of BAU will look like…
Zero energy. Nearly Zero food. Imagine that for a moment…. unimaginable .. unthinkable….
Happy coyotes! Happy crows! You got to look to the positive side.
Aub, mostly their money is not real. What will it mean to be a “billionaire” after TSHTF? Is it money in bank, gold, shares, a business, property or even a resource. They are as rich and tough as their ability to pay. Gold or greenbacks, those things are as good as their perceived value.
Powerful people need to be able to support the people that support them. I’m pretty sure collapse will severely limit their abilities. IMO If the billionaires are aware, they will have enough of what matters stashed away,……for instance shelter in a resilient location, energy, food and water, pharmaceuticals, like minded others and bullets and guns to maybe provide a slim chance of slipping through the bottle neck. Luck will be the best resource though. I’m not even trying, the odds against me are far too great.
What’s legitimacy does an Egyptian pharaoh have when he cannot predict when the Nile floods?
Billionaires, and other members of the ruling class will not be able to convince anyone to do much without BAU. (energy flow from fossil fuels is similar to what the flooding of the Nile did for Ancient Egyptian civilization).
Whats the point in speculation in that kind of ‘Fear-P*rn’ and multiplying that? It only imprints certain believes even more in you mind – and whats the advantage? Misery? Going the way M.C. Ruppert did go? I think its a dangerous path to re-enforce all these topics when exposing oneself to much to them. I speak out of experience…
So now all of a sudden Dolph is a pessimist?
The posters here range from extinction before christmas to colonize the universe or 100B living on a silicon chip.
“The posters here range from extinction before christmas to colonize the universe or 100B living on a silicon chip.”
LOL, it’s funny coz it’s true 😉
“The posters here range from extinction before christmas to colonize the universe or 100B living on a silicon chip.” Lol!
Personally, I really enjoy the wide-ranging opinions on the site. An echo-chamber isn’t all that fun and doesn’t do much to further our knowledge. An ‘insta-doom’ scenario just seems the most logical to me. Clearly outstanding debt-loads are unsustainable and at some point the ponzi-system will collapse in a morass of broken promises and lost trust. I haven’t yet heard a convincing theory about how we might respond to that challenge in such a way that a global food security crisis and near total breakdown of society is averted.
But I also agree with Ert that there probably isn’t much point dwelling on the gritty details. It’s going to be tough and we’re just going to have to muddle through as best we can. These right now are the good old days – no point tainting them with fears of what might be.
“An ‘insta-doom’ scenario just seems the most logical to me. Clearly outstanding debt-loads are unsustainable and at some point the ponzi-system will collapse in a morass of broken promises and lost trust. I haven’t yet heard a convincing theory about how we might respond to that challenge in such a way that a global food security crisis and near total breakdown of society is averted.”
I’m on the same wavelength as you Harry. We came close in 2008, CBs stepped in…but next time they won’t be able to…because at the end of the day, the problem that money-printing has been hiding is that we do not have enough quality resources to run the show, but at the same time we cannot de-grow, as that collapses the financial system…and no financial system = no economy = no food…and we cannot just step back to the “The Little House on the Prairie”…As we have advanced our economy over the decades, I find it’s a little bit like that Jenga game…you either keep on adding blocks or the whole thing comes crashing down (I also think back to the Leonardo sticks that Gail talked about a few backs)
Agree – CBs will be unable to do anything because they will have completely exhausted all ammo trying to prevent the collapse.
*(I also think back to the Leonardo sticks that Gail talked about a few years back)
We did indeed come *very* close in 2008. UK Prime Minister of the time, Gordon Brown, is quoted as saying:
“If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode.
“If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves.
“And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling was similarly perturbed:
“What was in my mind at that point is that if people thought the biggest bank in the world had failed, there would not be a bank in the western world that would be safe.
“The risk I have always seen is that people forget just how close we came to a complete collapse and the thing about a collapse of the banks is that it wouldn’t just have been the banks in ruins, it would have been complete economic and therefore social collapse. People without money can do nothing – you can’t buy your petrol, you can’t buy your food, anything.
‘It was rather like a nuclear war, you know you think it will never happen. And then someone tells you that a missile’s been launched. It was very scary. That moment will stick with me for the rest of my days.”
the 07/8 crisis was just a shudder on the way to a stop.
we don’t know how many more shudders there will be obviously, but each one is going to get more serious than the previous one
our main problem will be deciding which is the final one
Given that all that has been done since 2008 is that plaster has been applied to the increasingly larger hole… that moment will at some point be revisited long before the final days of Mr Darling’s life…..
Surely he does not believe that the current state of affairs can continue indefinitely…. surely he must look at this and compare it to the run up to 2008 and see that what the central banks are doing is exponentially more desperate….
I wonder how Mr Key is feeling… surely he resigned because he understands the end game is approaching … all of these top leaders must understand that… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11760656
People like Steve Eisman (Big Short) thought that 2007 was going to be the end of the world — surely he and others must recognize that the next iteration of this crisis will be the real deal.
I know quite a number of people in finance in Asia — while they are unable to see/accept that expensive oil is the our woes — what I hear from some of them is that they fear what is coming — they are hoping we can push the cataclysm off 10 years or more….
One friend who used to call chicken little each time I pointed out that there was not going to be a recovery — has capitulated — and is looking for a bolt hole in Canada… he know acknowledges such things as the stock buy back campaign funded by the central banks is not a normal component of a healthy capitalist system…..
Then of course have the apparently substantial numbers of very wealthy tech and finance people purchasing bolt holes in New Zealand and other remote destinations.
I think that anyone who recognizes how close to the edge we were in 2008 — must realize that the other side of the hurricane approaches — and it is an order of magnitude larger than what hit us in 08.
http://common-phobias.com/Macro/header.jpg
NP will we decide or will it be the Law of Physics that will decide for us?
i’ve been saying for years that we will be sideswiped from an unexpected quarter
and i started saying that your new potus might just be that sideswipe
so digest what this means:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/23/bannon-heralds-deconstruction-administrative-state-and-trumps-new-political-order
Bannon, Trump et al can see the shit heading for the fan just like the rest of us, indeed with more information than the rest of us.
they also know what will happen when it does. They know there will be violent civil unrest, and it will be necessary to suppress that unrest, using the military.
Promises of infinite growth are for the gullible, and we all spend too much time here arguing about solar panels and windfarms, while ignoring the actual political agenda. This stuff cannot be separated for politics, much as we would like it to.
SHTF time is dictatorship time—not homesteading time–its as well to bear that in mind.
When somebody starts saying:
“There’s a new political order that’s being formed,”
–and– “the media is your enemy”
—and— “other lesser people are responsible for your economic problems”
you better start reading up on German recent history—or Mao, or Pol Pot—take your pick. They all mean the same thing, subjection to a fresh set of rules that you won’t like. These new rules are supposed to “free Trade”, and to “Make America great again” but America was made great on cheap surplus fuel. Now there isn’t any. America’s primetime lasted about 150 years.
Without cheap fuel, the oilparty is over, and the advocates of “New World Order” know the economy is going to crash and burn, even without consulting me.
So they must move fast to consolidate their hold on government—and instigate that new order, while there’s still something there to grab, and while the gullible masses remain convinced that the constitution will prevent dictatorship.
To round up and deport millions of “undesirables” will require holding facilities—these will begin to appear soon, but they will not be dismantled when the unwanted people have returned whence they came.
No prizes for guessing their next function
I’m reading Hank Paulson’s book and according to him we would have had insta-doom if the TBTF banks were not bailed out in 2008. He told G.W. Bush that he was looking at the global eCONomy coming to a screeching halt and Martial Law in the US with tanks rolling in the streets to keep order.
I can believe it.
2008 was seismic and obviously the effects are still with us. We are now significantly more indebted and energy constrained than we were then and the central banks have very limited ammo. A similar crisis in 2017 would likely overwhelm our ability to respond.
“He (Hank Paulson) told G.W. Bush that he was looking at the global eCONomy coming to a screeching halt and Martial Law in the US with tanks rolling in the streets to keep order.” – Even martial law would only last a short while. If commerce stops then, at some point the food and fuel supplies run out. Then, its pandemonium.
I has been widely reported by the fake news swivel-eyed alternative media that holding facilities for handling large numbers of people already exist in the US, although all the usual fake news dying legacy media suspects claim to have debunked this as conspiracy theory.
Detainment Camps
Developments and Construction
In August 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft called for American citizens who are deemed ‘enemy combatants’ to be detained indefinitely without charge and independently of the judiciary. This legal position was upheld in the case of a US citizen detained abroad by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a January 2003 ruling.
In October 2006 the Military Commissions Act was passed by Congress. The legislation applies to non-US citizens and permits individuals labeled as ‘enemy combatants’ to be imprisoned indefinitely and without charge. It also denies non-military tribunal judicial review of detainment (Section 7), disregards international treaties such as the Geneva Convention, and states that it is the President who defines what constitutes torture (Sections 5 & 6).
In January of 2007 the American Civil Liberties Union released a report based on documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act suit showing that the Pentagon had monitored at least “186 anti-military protests in the United States and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database.”
For some time FEMA has been renovating and constructing new detention camps throughout the country. In January 2006 Haliburton subsidiary KBR announced that it had been awarded an “indefinite delivery / indefinite quantity contract to construct detention facilities for the Department of Homeland Security worth a maximum of $385 million over 5 years.
Stated Purpose
Little has been said about the purpose of the detainment camps but when official comment has been made it has stated that the camps are for the temporary detainment of illegal immigrants.
Quantity and Locations
Citizens who are concerned about the purpose and potential use of the detainment camps have documented and, when possible, filmed the detainment facilities. A current estimate of the number of detainment camps is over 800 located in all regions of the United States with varying maximum capacities. If one includes government buildings currently used for other purposes the number is far greater. Video of renovated but empty detainment camps has also been released
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-fema-camps/7763
reply to @Tim Groves and @ Kurt—because the threads in both comments come together here.
The nation functions on oil, there are no alternatives. Because of that as our oilparty plays its last tune folks are going to realize there’s no transport to get home. No Trains, buses planes or cars. And no jobs to go to on Monday morning.
We might take a day or two to get over the hangover, but then all hell is going to break loose when we find the supermarkets empty and the lights don’t work.
But politicians and mere mortals are embraced in the same waltz of promised growth, because that’s the only tune the band knows. Promises have been made for infinite growth, and did not everyone vote for that? Everyone knows that prosperity can be voted for. So it must be the fault of the government—or illegals—or people who look and talk different to us. That’s why the lights don’t work and the petrol stations are empty.
We need scapegoats.
So violence is inevitable as things get worse by the day, as people realize they are facing real hunger and privation. Something is wrong, and the state is ineffectual.
Everyone demands answers, but there are none, so the only response left is mob violence– The kneejerk reaction will be to use the military. There will be no alternative. Already there are murmurings of making crowd assembly illegal. It’s a very short step to just rounding up anyone and everyone involved in that, without due process.
National emergency powers—easy.
Fema started building camps a few years back, so there’s no question they are at the instigation of the current administration. But suddenly the need for detention camps becomes very real in a way that wasn’t obvious 10 years ago.—or maybe it was.
Stuff we are discussing here has been obvious for years to anyone able to exercise a little logic. Economic meltdown has always guaranteed riot in any era. And it has always been obvious that oil shutoff would do exactly that. Every government has reacted in exactly the same way. The powerful upper echelons quickly cower the lower ranks of any government body—they are just as likely to get thrown in the camps as anyone else. One can feel that fear already as few now dare to question what’s beginning to happen,
If you round up large numbers of people it stands to reason you have to have somewhere to put them. first it will be illegals—after that there will be a large number of vacancies.
Such places don’t stay under-occupied for long
but, we should rejoice in our broad point of view. practically anything is possible. still, i wonder how we’ll get along without those fossil fuels? maybe a few monkish survivors making food with fusion reactors?
Dolph – you are so optimistic.
Within a year of the end of BAU — there will not be a human remaining on the planet
Not within the next year necessarily — but almost certainly within a year of the end of BAU.
All 7.5 billion of us are definitely going to die, and many of us are going to die before our time, but not necessarily al in the next 20 years.
I’ve known this ever since primary school, when my teacher, an aged and old-fashioned Irish Catholic lady who had also taught my mother before me, recited to the class a pearl of proverbial wisdom: “If you’re born, you’re sure to die.”
These days the PC brigade would have her for child abuse.
How I hated being forced to sing “My Grandfather’s Clock” at Catholic primary school. Child abuse indeed!
dolph the economy only exists due to cheap oil which is disappearing at a fast rate the expensive oil is plentiful but too costly for the non-elite workers the reason the collapse has not happened yet the cheap oil is keeping our heads just above the water just think how much cheap oil is left 5 years worth or is there less? THats what i believe the cracks are appearing in the dam and nothing can stop the dam bursting
Just too many variables to make a good guess. Is it really important to discuss if 3 or 6 billions die? Just imagine how many people 1 billion is, it is insane.
I don’t think 3 billion is plausible though. If billions start dying, why stop at 3? For whatever reason the first billions die of, the remaining billions should have an even harder time dealing with the same problem? Climate change getting worse and worse, disease control getting worse and worse, resource scarcity worse and worse, supply chains worse and worse, nuclear radiation worse and worse.
To me there are two main scenarioes I find plausible. 1) BAU-ish for the affluent for some time, the rest getting by with gradually less and less stuff as time passes. The world will become bigger, less and less travel, less and less long distance trade. The economy will maybe mimic the trajectory of conventional/cheap energy production. The invisible hand will make things chug along when people are forced to do things differently, aka BAU-lite.
2) A combination of events or a slippery slope of events with climate change, nuclear meltdowns, world war III, economic collapse, disease, constant crisis. Might give a world population number between 0 and 1 billion after a couple of decades.
So optimistic!
Nobody knows more about energy. https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/24-things-nobody-does-better-than-trump-according-to-trump/58a766ff8c0157477a35a726?utm_source=vicevideotwitter
he will be greatly missed for his comments were of a high calibre
I wanted to mention that I received word from Stefeun’s wife that he died this morning. He was a very faithful commenter. The last comment we received from him was on January 30. His passing is a loss to all of us.
Stefuen was a relatively young man. He told me a few months ago that he had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He had been involved with translating my posts into French on Le Saker Francophone. That is now being handled by Alex Toulet on Le Noeud Gordien.
I agree he’ll be missed greatly. Thoughts with family and loved ones.
That’s very sad. Please convey my condolences to his widow. He was so real and present, it’s hard to believe he’s gone.
I’m very sad about this awful news. Stefeun was one of my favorite commentators here and a very bright person.
That is terrible news. I have wondered sometimes if someone might pass from here. You almost get to know people a little when you read what they have to say so often.
His comments definitely added value to this site.
Oh my God, how sorry I am.
I would have liked to tell him that I confused myself with the author of the painting that he dedicated to me.
I also have a major health problem that I have been diagnosed at Christmas, and that is why I do not feel like participating now, although I follow with much interest.
Many thanks Gail for the information.
Descansa en paz amigo.
I told Stefeun’s widow that I would write a short remembrance to be read at the funeral.
Just read it her. May he rest in peace.
Gail, sorry to hear of the loss of Stefeun. He was a good poster and I enjoyed his point of view.
I really liked Stefeuns posts. My condolences his family.
I hope he was able to make the most of the time he had left and the end was not too agonizing.
Stefuen was a solid contributor to the discussions on this blog. He was someone I definitely learned from.
RIP ‘Stefeun’. How very sad. Always contributed interesting comments, and civilized.
Sorry to hear this.
RIP. He must of been a good person. God let him go before whats coming.
‘God let him go before whats coming’
Yes — those who go now may not know it — but they are the lucky ones — they get to miss the horror show — and it will be a horror show when the plug is pulled and the life drains out of BAU…
Terribly sad news. Eternal be his memory.
NOVA has a new episode about the search for the super battery, and they talk about the “intermittent” renewable energy issue a bit as well as mentioning the grid being the worlds largest machine. They go over pumped hydro, flywheels, flow batteries and various chemical solutions.
Much more interesting to watch than bar rants, but not as funny 🙂
An excellent article from Umair Haque: https://umairhaque.com/the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-53c2957e23a1#.qkycxzc4e
The World’s First Poor Rich Country
And What Happens to it Next
What’s the biggest event of our lifetimes, as far as political economy goes? ISIS, Brexit, the EU?
No.
Today I came across a startling statistic: US life expectancy is falling to reach Mexico’s. It’s another confirmation: the US is going to be the world’s first poor rich country. That’s the biggest political economic event of our lifetimes: the unprecedented fall of a rich country, once the world’s richest, to become a poor one. It simply hasn’t happened in modern history, which is usually about poor countries becoming richer ones, like South Korea and China. What does it teach us?
Here are some lessons about it.
Conservative economics doesn’t work, because it isn’t. Conservative economics is so simple I can sum it up in a two words: “save money”. The US since the 1980s or so has embarked on a radical conservative agenda: slashing public goods to less than zero, in order to cut taxes for the super rich, in order to clear the deficit. All this was supposed to make the average person better off. Except, if you look carefully, it wasn’t: there’s no real intellectual justification, let alone economic argument, for how, a government “saving money” that is invested in people ever could have have benefited them in the first place.
Here’s a simple question to prove it: can you name a single country in the world that has followed conservative economic policies for more than say a year or two, and prospered? I can’t, so you can’t. There isn’t one. That simple fact tells us in the starkest terms that conservative economics don’t work, because they aren’t. Conservative economics is pure ideology, absent of empirics, reason, or data.
The lesson is simple: don’t buy the hype. If conservative economics worked, there would be at least a single example, right? So when the pundits and the talking heads tell you that the “deficit matters” and “we’re bankrupt” and “we’ve got to save money”, don’t buy it. It’s false. Rich societies with open economies are never bankrupt. Their deficits don’t matter in an era where money’s free, interest rates are negative. Saving money isn’t the way forward to human progress.
What is?
Economies are made of people, not profit. Why doesn’t conservative economics work? It might have worked when economies were feudal systems where serfs paid tribute to vassals paid tribute to kings. Then, “saving money” was a way to pay more tribute to the king, the mob boss, the enforcer, the sheriff.
But modern economies work in precisely the opposite way. First, we must invest in one another. Then, we can reap the shared rewards. How?
Modern economies are made of breakthroughs. Cancer cures, polio vaccines, great equations, transformative discoveries, things which dramatically improve our lives. One often leads to many more, in a virtuous circle.
But we need something to create breakthroughs: we need to be able to realize our potential in the first place, don’t we? We need to be sure that we can take care of our families, ourselves, our relationships, at minimum — and that we can risk it all for a great breakthrough, once we are educated and civilized. That is, we need healthcare, education, transport, finance: public goods. Without public goods, the virtuous circle of life improving breakthroughs never really begins. The result of growth without breakthroughs is America: a society where selling more online payday loans counts towards GDP, but falling life expectancy doesn’t subtract from it.
The reason that America is a failing society today is that the risk and cost growth has been shifted unfairly onto the middle class and poor, instead of being distributed fairly across society, or to. Whatever economic growth happens is essentially coming at the cost of the average American having healthcare, education, transport, the basics of life. Does that sound like a good trade to you?
The lesson is simple: societies that prioritize growth over real improvements to human life don’t stay societies for very long. They will become, like the US, tribes, mafias, authoritarian kingdoms, full of hate and spite and bitter fury.
Rich to poor hurts more than not rich at all. Mexico isn’t a poor country. So why do I say “poor rich country”? Rich and poor are psychologically relative. If I’m rich, but tomorrow I become poor, I will suffer more psychologically than if I’d never been rich at all. This is a basic principle of behavioral economics. Now extend that to a society like America: once rich, now becoming poorer. What does it tell us? That today’s anger and fury are just the beginning.
As life continues to get worse — such as life expectancy falling — America is poised to repeat all the ills of history. Nationalism, extremism, fascism, you name it. Today’s demagogues aren’t the end — they’re just the beginning. Hurt and anger soon become hate. And going from rich to poor is a profound and deep hurt. It’s likely that America will lash out at its neighbors, allies, partners, people, in increasingly bizarre and harmful ways.
The lesson is: every step backwards hurts more than every step forward satisfies. The moral of America’s story is exactly that: so whatever you do, don’t choose to go backwards. You don’t know what kinds of demons you will unleash. And like Pandora and the box, once you’ve opened it, the nightmares laugh.
Umair
February 2017
https://i1.wp.com/progressivespring.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/trickle-down-economics.jpg
Must think that energy and other resources have no bearing on economics, and his advice……”just keep going forwards”, it’s as simple as that, do not conserve, waste and steal from the future that’s the answer. Delusional springs to mind.
I think the reason US life expectancy is going down is because of the overuse of prescription drugs including recently available opioids, derivatives of heroin, overused as pain relievers. There are millions of Americans hooked on prescription drugs that people cannot stop taking or they risk a massive physical/emotional/psychological reaction so they just keep taking them. We know of someone that got hooked on Quanapin (not sure of the spelling) but she tried to get off them but the reaction of her mind/body was to drastic. She can’t even slowly wean herself off them. Do a Google search on people dying from prescription drug overdoses (that’s how it’s characterized) – it’s a huge number. Last I read an article on it the death toll was higher than vehicle deaths. It’s a huge problem, and the politicians are willing to let any big corporation do just about anything they want if it means big bucks and campaign contributions. I don’t think people not taking that stuff are living shorter lives here in the US.
By the way very sorry to hear about the loss of Steufen – a great guy who will be missed.
Sorry, but you can’t say “saving money” is what US has done since the 80s. If they had the debt wouldn’t be hundreds of gazillions.
And how could the US stay rich with shrinking whites population? It’s impossible.
I posted this chart a few years ago. We have had a problem for a very long time.
There are an awfully lot of foods I don’t eat. I am not taking any prescription drugs either. I make sure I exercise regularly. I figure those things will help a bit.
In Alaska….what a stupid post.
Thanks, you too..
GDP per capita, US still 14th, most before US are oil nations or large bank officers.
Venezuela down from 4th 1950 to 86th.
Japan down from 2nd 1970 to 30th.
In a league table, some teams rise while others fall. It’s in the nature of the game.
The Japanese were were told repeatedly that the only way to keep GDP growing in the face of demographic constraints and tougher global competition was to encourage mass immigration. Each time, the Japanese replied, “hai” meaning, “we are still listening”. The bottom line is that the Japanese have collectively decided to prioritize maintaining social harmony over purely economic considerations as a de facto national strategy.
I just questioned that US would be the first going from rich to poor. And it would be silly calling Japan poor. And when they become poor they can probably handle that better than more multicultural countries.
Venezuelas fall is more spectacular, maybe they will really become poor anytime soon? More oil countries will follow.
Watch https://www.todayfm.com/Slowed-Down-Trump-Sounds-Like-A-Man-Ranting-In-A-Bar-At-3am
That is hilarious lolll!!!!!
bloody genius—i was laughing out loud at that
Construction, engineering and materials stocks are underperforming the market on sudden concerns that in addition to tax reform and Obamacare repeal, another core aspect of Trump’s fiscal stimulus, Infrastructure spending, may be delayed by at least two years.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-23/infrastructure-stocks-tumble-report-trump-may-delay-infrastructure-bill-until-2018#comment-9071621
Obamcare won’t be repealed…. Big Pharma will not be reigned in …. lobbyists will not be eliminated… on and on and on…
The people cried out for a peacemaker — the Elders gave them Obama
The people cried out for an anti-establishment rebel — the Elders gave them Trump
The joke is on America.
Suckers!
Obama Care was written by insurance lobbyist.
It is actually welfare for insurance companies.
They are going to resist. .
I don’t think they will have to resist …. Obama…. oops I mean Trump …. will drop that into the ‘Beer is Free Tomorrow’ folder…. and nothing will happen
It would seem that the Elders are pissed off that Trump got elected since they seem to be the globalists.
I have a difficult time believing “the Elders”, as you call them, are in complete control given all the propaganda about Russia, fake “fake news” outrage, and staged protests
The way I see it the Elders run the world — there are others who would like to run the world — the Elders are weak and being attacked on all sides — Russia and China are gang banging them relentlessly ….
I haven’t the slightest clue what Trump is all about …. perhaps he is just pretending to be anti establishment … perhaps he is the front man for a group in the USA that seeks to destroy the Elders — perhaps this group has teamed up with Putin to destroy the Elders…
Empires come and go — the ring gets kissed when you have supreme power…. the Elders are losing their power —- the ring is not be kissed by those who would like to run them mover with a bus
if anyone is looking for a ”toldyaso ‘ moment—this has to be it
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4251948/UK-buys-wood-pellets-harm-environment.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2933619/britain-blew-millions-backing-power-stations-to-burn-wood-pellets-that-are-as-bad-for-environment-as-coal/
laughing or crying is your choice
I laugh so hard I cry.
http://megacancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/9-foot_diameter_Douglas_Fir_-_19001.jpg
That is fooking excellent!
http://i.imgur.com/U0F0vK4.jpg
One hundred year UST. There just ain’t any walking that one back.
per se correct hope is dangerous and when we see the wall – i am too afraid with no good education how to harvest different solar energy(wood rocket oven, concentrated and PV) at least for some cooking and how to keep warm in winter without burning tons of woods(the ideal solar energy storage which can also bind some co2 in the soil when the woods are not overused..) we will see an accelerated degradation of the environment. humans will do everything not to dwindle down the comfort zones – even go to war – see the last eroi post from alice friedemann
If energy prices rise 10 % and there is only one processing stage in producing an article I would think that the price of the same article must rise 10 %: From 10 dollars to 11 dollars.
But if an article passes through several processing stages, incl. transportation, the effect of the price increase must be the accumulated effect of these extra 10 % the whole way through the fabrication process. If 3 stages, the accumulated effect must be a price increase of around 33 % (1x (1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1)). However, I am quite sure that the equitation must be more complicated than so!
I am sure the audience know better. Please, enlighten me!
Price depends on what consumers can afford. How much the goods cost to make is interesting, but not the ultimate force determining price.
You calculation leaves out human labor, which is important as well. Its “value” doesn’t rise as the cost of energy production rises. Also, taxes are an important part of the cost of the production of goods, and these don’t necessarily rise either. Thus, the impact of energy price increases on finished goods tends to be lower than the increased cost itself. But the fact that wages don’t rise becomes a huge problem, when it comes to the prices actually rising. Extra debt can be used for a while, to try to ramp up prices, but ultimately the cost must be paid from wages (or from business income and government taxes, both of which ultimately derive from wages or increases in debt).
Face off: BP vs HSBC
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-global-economic-growth-will-drown-in-the-oil-glut-after-2018-5c96dec3f13b#.1rtal77p5
The gap between plateauing crude supply and burgeoning world demand is being increasingly filled by “unconventional resources… now at 93 mbd.”
So as the cheaper, easier stuff is no longer growing, the world has to rely on more expensive unconventionals, like tar sands in Canada or shale gas in the US, which require costly fracking technology to extract, and more difficult processes to refine.
So HSBC’s finding that 80 percent of the world’s oil is now post-peak, remains consistent with BP’s insistence that there’s still tonnes of mostly unconventional oil.
For King and Inderwildi, both sides of the argument have a point:
“There is indeed ample potential supply of fossil fuels, however, conventional oil, which is relatively cheap to recover, can no longer meet the demand.”
Let’s define the key word with respect to unconventional oil production such as shale:
costly
ˈkɒs(t)li/Submit
adjective
costing a lot; expensive.
“major problems requiring costly repairs”
synonyms: expensive, dear, high-cost, high-priced, highly priced, big-budget, overpriced, exorbitant, extortionate, immoderate, extravagant;
And for good measure let’s help you understand the term cheap:
cheap
tʃiːp/Submit
adjective
1.
low in price, especially in relation to similar items or services.
“local buses were reliable and cheap”
synonyms: inexpensive, low-priced, low-price, low-cost, economical, economic, competitive, affordable, reasonable, reasonably priced, moderately priced, keenly priced, budget, economy, cheap and cheerful, bargain, cut-rate, cut-price, half-price, sale-price, sale, reduced, on special offer, marked down, discounted, discount, rock-bottom, giveaway;
These are what we would call opposites. Costly and cheap are opposites.
Let’s try using these terms in a paragraph:
Producing shale oil is costly while conventional oil production is cheap by comparison. But in DelusiSTAN costly means cheap and cheap means costly (anti-opposites) — therefore DelusiSTANIS believe that shale oil can be produced at a profit while conventional loses money.
We’ll now introduce Glenn, a major figure in DelusiSTAN, and nominee for King of that territory, who will expound on anti-opposites.
Glenn – the floor is yours …
http://replygif.net/i/698.gif
It is possible for both to be right. Oil supply can fall quickly, but the ability of people to afford it can fall even faster.
https://qz.com/917178/exxon-wiped-19-3-of-its-oil-reserves-off-its-books-in-2016/
‘Exxon has wiped a whopping 19.3% of its oil reserves off its books’
“As of the end of 2016, Exxon had 20 billion barrels in proven reserves, compared with 24.8 billion a year earlier. This includes the erasure of all 3.5 billion barrels of Exxon’s proven oil sands reserves at Canada’s Kearl field. Last year’s low oil prices made it uneconomical to drill at Kearl, which had been at the core of Exxon’s growth strategy.”
“In addition, for the second straight year, Exxon failed to replace all the reserves it pumped—in 2016, it replaced just 65% of its produced reserves. In 2015, it replaced just 67%. Prior to these years, Exxon had replaced at least 100% of its production every year since 1993.”
However, when the price of oil goes high enough Exxon will return to the Kearl field.
When the price of oil goes low enough, Exxon will wipe a whole lot more off of its reserves.
That is the big question right now; how high can oil price still go and remain affordable to consumers? We won’t know for sure until there is a shortage, but it seems that if the recent trend is a harbinger of things to come, the glut will continue adding more pressure to oil industry profitability.
Fingers crossed that Le Pen is not elected. The one thing that gives me hope is that Le Pen has been France’s ‘go to’ right-winger for years, so does not represent quite the psychological break from the past that Trump, Brexit and the Italian referendum did:
“Past performance is no guide to future returns, as investors are so often told, but the French electorate runs the risk of creating a crisis worse than the fall of Lehman Brothers if it follows the U.K. in instigating a referendum on EU membership, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank.
“As the French presidential race heats up ahead of the first round of voting in April, the German bank has warned of the pitfalls of using the U.K.’s Brexit vote as a model for a potential “Frexit”, as touted by nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen.
“Le Pen, who is currently leading the race according to the latest BVA-Salesforce opinion poll, has vowed to hold a French referendum on EU membership if she is successful in winning France’s two-round leadership race. Pointing to the U.K., which has – so far – felt a relatively benign impact from its Brexit vote, Le Pen has relied on it as a basis for rallying support during her campaigning, saying: “They told us that Brexit would be a catastrophe, that the stock markets would crash … The reality is that none of that happened.”
“However, Deutsche Bank has warned of the inconsistencies of likening the two votes. An EU referendum in France, one of the founding members of the economic bloc, runs the risk of undermining the euro, the currency shared by 19 of the EU’s 28 member states.
“”Make no mistake, there is the world of difference between tearing up bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, and, unwinding a monetary union as far reaching in scope as the EMU (economic and monetary union) project,” Deutsche Bank said in a note Tuesday.
“”It is the difference between a benign global risk event and something that has the potential to go beyond a ‘Lehman’s moment’.””
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/23/how-france-scrapping-the-euro-could-go-beyond-a-lehman-moment.html
Le Pen is irrelevant
The EU was constructed during a period of general European prosperity and peace. We freewheeled on surplus energy inputs.
If you study history, it is obvious that that period (1950s till now) has been an anomaly. It can never be any kind of normality, and it can never be repeated. As the European economic system collapses, that prosperity will vanish, along with democracy.
Europe will then revert to its old borders and nationalities, and no doubt its old quarrels.
That’s as far as my certainties can go for the moment.
Oh, for sure – supra-national entities have been a luxury afforded to us by a one-time abundance of energy. But if we are looking for key triggers in this cascading process of collapse then a Le Pen victory and a French sovereign default would be far from irrelevant. In fact they might prove pivotal. From David Korowicz’s splendid ‘Trade Off’ paper:
“Consider briefly a ‘soft-to-mid-core’ (Spain, Italy…..Belguim, France?), disorderly default and contagion in the Eurozone, coupled, as would be likely, with a systemic global banking crisis. There would be bank runs, bank collapses and fear of bank collapses; uncertainty over the next countries to default and re-issue currency; plummeting bond markets; a global market collapse; and a global credit crunch. Counter-party risk would affect trade, just as it would affect the inter-bank market. However, production and supply-chain networks are far more complex than the banking and shadow banking system.
“Within days there could be a food security crisis, health crisis, production stoppages and so on within the most directly impacted countries, and the number of such countries would rise. Those with access to cash would clear out supermarkets in panic. Many would immediately suffer as we now hold little cash and have small home inventories. Supermarkets could not re-stock, and even if they could, there would be declining availability of fuel for transporting goods. Hospitals adapted to JIT would also run low on critical supplies and staff might not be able to get to work.
“Pandemic modelling has shown that removing at random only small numbers of a population can cause cascading failure of functions across an economy. Lack of inputs and people required for production would also begin to shut factories within days. Governments, emergency services, and the public would by and large be shell-shocked. Without serious pre-planning, a government would be unable even to provide emergency feeding stations for weeks. There would be growing risk to critical infrastructure.
“Imports and exports would collapse in the most exposed countries and fall for those as risk. It would also cut global trade as Letters of Credit dried up. The longer the crisis went on the more countries would be at risk. But once the contagion took hold, it would be very difficult for the ECB/ IMF or governments to stop; it would be a large-scale cascading failure at the heart of the global financial system.”
That is exactly my thinking…Le Pen could be the trigger of the collapse…and I am a BIG fan of kicking the can down the road, be it for a day, a week, a month or a year (but it won’t be 5 years no matter who is in power IMHO, this thing is coming down no matter what)….
The whole EU is a nightmare of potential banana-skins. Greece is going to need a fourth bail-out. Portugal’s debt/GDP ratio has just shot up again and its banks are wobbly. Brussels is warning Italy for breaking (in grand style) EU debt-level mandates, and its banking system is creaking under the weight of E360 billion in non-peforming loans. The German housing market is in a bubble and many of its banks are in trouble (Deutsche Bank at least $25 billion short of capital), thanks partly to funding overcapacity in the shipping industry. Austria has just been fined by the EU for providing inaccurate data relating to debt.
Business investment and consumer confidence are falling in Britain, while wages remain stagnant and household debt levels spiral. The housing market is starting to cool off as well. The North Sea oil industry, which formerly provided 6% government tax receipts is now tax negative. And then of course France…
I heard that Jerry Lewis might challenge Le Pen in the election ….
Le Pen, Trump—they seem to be symptomatic of decline in overall prosperity—a ‘collective demand’ that things should return to ‘the way they were’—the american dream if you like.
the fact that it only existed in ad-men’s minds doesn’t register—the demand is all, and politicians who promise it are voted for. Humankind is cursed with a selectively short memory—being told that the Amercian dream existed once, convinces them that it did exist.
Similarly Le Pen is convincing them than recreating an old version of france will also restore greatness.
As i’ve said before, one of our greatest dangers is the certainty that prosperity can be voted into office. Because that is seen as false, it will be the final hope gone and then all hell will break loose.
“Humankind is cursed with a selectively short memory—being told that the Amercian dream existed once, convinces them that it did exist.”
Where have you been? Of course there has been an American dream that was and still is very real, it’s just getting harder to achieve. I know because we moved from the UK and found more prosperity here than we ever could have in the UK. I don’t mean that in a mean way because we still have relatives there, but it is more difficult there to become highly successful than in the US and that’s partly just because of the much larger size of the US economy.
But as far as people voting in an attempt to find a political leader to reinstate their prosperity, et al Trump & Le Pen (if she gets elected) that I agree with. People are voting outside the box so to speak in a desperate attempt to right the ship. One of the things I see is a great deal more anger and discontent from people in general about the situation which I’m sure will only escalate as FF net energy continues it’s decline as cost of Capex continues to rise.
prosperity is relative.
obviousl some will do better than others in a material sense, but basically US prosperity is based on availability of cheap energy—petrol there is taxed at a fraction of uk level for instance, so people burn it faster than they would otherwise do, and a a result take possession of more ”stuff”—houses are half the price for example, size for size and location.
As you say the “economy” is far bigger—that’s linked to cheap fuel again. If you paid £8/ $10 a gallon, I can guarantee the US economy would be the same as UK/Europe.
Pre 1970s US prosperity fed on “infinite cheap fuel”, now they are promising the same thing on finite expensive fuel. And politicians are promising that it will be so.
The last 50 years or so has been a once only anomaly I’m afraid. There will be no american dream for anyone
Europe have food for a year stuffed away. Potatoes, wheat and beef for the coming year.
When everything breaks down someone are gonna try making a buck of this. It doesn’t have to be the owner of the products.
And thus Le Pen would be assassinated…
I really don’t like your NIMBY attitude…the EU is going to break up eventually. It isn’t economically or socially sustainable. Sooner or later, investors are going to realize they won’t get their money back….that may happen if France backs out of the EU or because of some other event…but thing is the elites are running out of ways to delay the inevitable.
I think you must misunderstand me, ARBP. I am from the UK so the break-up of the EU already is in my backyard, lol. I agree that its dissolution is inevitable …My stance is apolitical – I just don’t want the fragile global economy to experience *any* nasty shocks anywhere for as long as possible. Still enjoying those hot showers and fresh groceries…
Here in Italy the situation is a little different and particular..
With a normal wage you cannot (at least in centre or north Italy) afford a normal apartment’s loan or rent..so a lot of families are in trouble only because they live in a home..
Don’t know how to define that..but I know that the only way to exit is the collapse of the medium class.
Thanks Gail for another interesting post.
Stefano
Sorry to hear about the difficult economic times for the people of Italy, Stefano. My wife and I took a vacation to Rome, Florence and Venice last year and it was an incredible experience! There were so many breathtaking moments gazing at the incredibly great art that thankfully has been held on to all these centuries. Got to love Bernini and Michaelangelo, St. Peter’s Basilica, Victor Emanuel monument, Villa Borgeise, the Medici treasure, so many amazing church’s, Pitti Palace was out of this world, St. Mark’s Square!, Doge’s Palace, and the Acadamia Gallery in Venice. Just stunning works of art!! But also just having meals at outdoor cafe’s, seeing the architecture and talking with people. My sincerest hope for a positive future for Italy, possibly after the dust of the worldwide debt bubble bursting event comes to pass and some new balance is hopefully achieved.
But don’t feel alone. Since my childhood here in the California the cost of everything has skyrocketed and the competition for nice neighborhoods has also gone sky high. I grew up in Marin county, just north of SF, but our family had to move farther north to get away from the congestion, super high real estate prices and now enjoy a much more peaceful and easy life in a rural setting, thanks to the ability to make money via businesses on the internet serving the wealthy. Oh my, what a crazy world! Our best to you Stefano.
i’ve been to those wonderful places in italy too—truly stunning
but let’s not forget that they were constructed under the same capitalist plan that exists now—ie drain the capital/energy resources of the surrounding land —the peasant class—in order to construct the wonderful ego boosting buildings to support the edifice of the church and state.
the church in particular promoted the god-con to extract cash from the gullible.
the city towers we have now represent sinks of finite energy, drained from the land on which they exist
the same pattern has existed for 000s of years—the egyptians did the same thing, but their focus was the afterlife and tomb building as as part of the national ‘economy’.
One of your best comments!
We’re like termites with delusions of grandeur!
Norman Pagett says:
That is an empirical claim that is a prima facie falsehood.
Most of the great artistic and architechtural treasures that exist today in Italy were created either under feudalism or the aegis Roman Empire. Both of these were pre-capitalist.
There is some disagreement about whether capitalism got its start in the Greek city states during the 15th century (the Marxist scholar Giovanni Arrighi took this view in The Long Twentieth Century) or in Spain/Netherlands during the 16th and 17th centuries (this is the more orthodox view), but either way capitalism is a phenomena that had nothing to do with the creation of most of Italy’s great artistic and architectural treasures.
nope
dress it up with alternative words as much as you like, but capitalism is the appropriation of resources–primarily energy—by the few to the detriment of the majority.
if i am a feudal lord, owning 20000 acres in 1300, then that land will provide sufficient revenue to build a castle and fill it with works of art and pay a private army to look after it and defend it against aggrieved peasants outside the walls who realise that their labours are supporting my gold plated lifestyle
if i own a $100 m gold plated penthouse in new york today—its because i also own energy producing assets and 000s of peasnts outside my walls pay me to do so by their labours.
i also have a private army to look after it and defend it against the aggrieved mob
I for one attempt to live in the reality-based community and try not to get too swept away in these orgies of victimization and religion bashing. They are based on distortions and partial truths. The world is not nearly as simplistic, as black and white as you paint it.
I (and it seems like Gail Tverberg’s theories do too) take issue with Marx’s estimate that the state, and society’s other institutions (i.e., religion), are always instruments of oppression in the hands of the ruling class. They of course very much can be in dysfunctional societies, but there are just too many counter examples of where the state and society’s other institutions (i.e., religious) have strived and worked for the economic welfare of others besides the very rich.
A good example is provided by the historian Bryan Ward-Perkins in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization:
an “economy” that is underpinned by slave labour is by definition an elite economy.
The man who owns the slaves, with the power of life and death over them, is by definition a feudal lord.
Subtle shades of feudalism are an irrelevance.
The Roman system, (excluding the slaves) was effectively ‘bread and circuses’, where the elite put on circuses and handed out free bread to the masses to placate them. The bread itself came from vassal states in the empire.(slave energy)
Our own era, less than 100 years, is the first not underpinned by slave labour, and even that is open to question. Until the late 1800s, your social class affected the lay the law treated you—that still is the case in many countries today.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Glenn — Feel the Power —- it is futile to resist…. you must join us….. come to your senses….
But hey, the slaves had high quality pottery. The rising tide really does lift all boats!
The only time our institutions work to the benefit of non-elites is when its necessary to do so to maintain the existing social order. These “benevolent” institutions exist solely for that purpose- to avoid social upheaval and keep the elite in power.
I work in government as a planner. We have all kinds of rules we impose on business/development supposedly in the name of “the public good”. In reality, what we’re doing is smoothing over the rough edges that would make these developments untenable. We create a set of legal hoops to jump through that satisfies the citizens just enough that they accept what is happening. It’s because of us that business/development is able to continue forcing itself down the throat of our constituency. We’re not actually standing up to the elite in the name of the citizen; we’re legitimizing exploitation by asking for a few token concessions.
You can see this model at work anywhere there is a supposedly benevolent institution. You just have to figure out what the real purpose of that entity is in light of the larger system. Who/what really benefits from the actions being undertaken? Feed the starving. Create a social safety net. Let them eat cake. Whatever it takes to keep the masses quelled, so that they can be ruled.
The rank and file support the system by having faith in money. The “faith” is pretty tenuous when you think about it but we all know it’s the only game in town. It’s okay if those at the bottom lose the faith but if the top does, it takes everyone down.
It boils down to the governments’ primary role and it’s supporting the monetary system. “Whatever it takes” has been iterated here countless times.
Wrong.
Another disadvantage of living in a developed nation. You can’t leave your home, live under a bridge and keep working, “they” will take your salary.
The “invisible hand” has taken a butcher knife to nuclear power in northeast Ohio.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2017/02/firstenergy_corp_to_sell_or_cl.html
A big issue in this case is that power is deregulated, meaning there is competition for energy. The nuclear power is not being bought at auction. At the same time, First Energy is having trouble closing plants due to the makeup of the electric grid. It will take many years to figure out how to actually close the plants.
Thanks for the link. This is an important issue. What the author of this article doesn’t realize is that fact that natural gas prices are also too low for natural gas companies. It is a full circle of prices that are too low for producers. There are two reasons why prices are too low:
(1) Customers can’t afford their direct and indirect costs.
(2) The subsidies given to intermittent renewables distort markets, driving prices for nuclear and natural gas even lower.
This is a fool’s game. It can’t end well. Depending on your neighbor, each of which is doing the same thing (closing facilities that don’t seem to be profitable) can’t work.
And it starts:
Clear cutting Redwood National Park
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/action-alert-towersinrnp/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwood_Summer
Redwood Summer
Organized in 1990, Redwood Summer was a movement of environmental activism aimed at protecting old-growth redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) trees from logging by northern California timber companies. The first official protest associated with Redwood Summer took place in June 1990 at the Louisiana Pacific export dock in Samoa California. Beginning that same month logging companies organized “Right to Work Rallies” in support of the timber extraction industry. Redwood Summer is a part of the larger Timber Wars of the 1990s. “Timber Wars” is also the title of a book by Judi Bari documenting the protests over the decade.
A 1990 California Voter Initiative, Proposition 130 (“Forests Forever”) was placed on the November 6, 1990 ballot. The Redwood Summer organizers sought to disrupt logging until forest lands gained extra protection under Proposition 130.
On May 24, 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were driving through Oakland, California when a pipe bomb exploded directly under Bari’s driver side seat. They were on a tour to recruit college students for Redwood Summer.[1] A film advocating the theory that the FBI placed the bomb, titled “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” (not to be confused with the 1991 Stephen Talbot documentary of the same name) was released in 2012.[2][3][4]
Although the history of Earth First! had continually been controversial, Bari attempted to make Redwood Summer an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, rather than a flat-out confrontation. Protesters were asked to keep the demonstration free of items that may possible compromise this goal, such as alcohol, drugs, and weapons.[5] Regardless of this intention Bari, and Redwood Summer, faced limited support from other environmental organizations. The Sierra Club refused to participate in the movement reportedly citing insurance and liability concerns.[6] Gail Lucas, who represented The Sierra Club in the matter, denounced Redwood Summer saying it could “generate strong antagonism”.[5] Bari did not feel that Lucas “represent[ed] the people who wrote the Forests Forever initiative, organized the Redwood Summer protests, or filed the grassroots lawsuits.” [7] EPIC did not criticize the Redwood Summer movement or Earth First!, but needed to maintain “clean hands” should they be involved in a litigation with Maxxam.[8] In general, Redwood Summer lived up to its commitment of nonviolence, causing inconvenience to timber workers and slowing logging in demonstration areas.[9] Despite its stated cooperative intentions the demonstrations tended to be confrontational, fueling animosity from timber workers, and sparked numerous counter protests.[6] Proposition 130 was defeated after an opposition campaign that highlighted Earth First! and Redwood Summer. Over the next decade EPIC filled numerous lawsuits against timber companies in the area.[8]
Same SHT…different DAY
I guess the researchers from Imperial College London don’t hang out on OFW….
http://www.iheartradio.ca/cjad/news/life-expectancy-to-keep-rising-s-korean-women-could-hit-91-1.2420125
Man, Didn’t Judi Bari stop all that clear sht? Nope, neither did Julia Butterfly or EARTH FIRST! or Dave Foreman.
Read the book Timber Wars about the murder attempt on Judi Bari
These people will stop at nothing to keep BAU alive and well
Actually, I’ve given up totally on the human species…
So Fast Eddy and his whining just is music to my ears.
The Faster we are rubbed out…as our Indian brothers would say…the better
Speaking of which…the same sht never changes…
Push them off if they stand in the way
Dakota pipeline protest camp: Ten arrested, dozens more believed to remain after evacuation deadline
The Human hoard steam rolls on!
+++++++
We will not be missed.
Amazing! Of course, here in the United States, we have a problem with falling life expectancy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-for-the-first-time-since-1993/2016/12/07/7dcdc7b4-bc93-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html?utm_term=.1845d5d4bcf2
Warnings of disaster from Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. See link:
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-warning-from-bill-gates-elon-musk-and-stephen-hawking-f339e4bbfa9d#.u0q1ampbj
i’m going to apply for gates’ musk’s and hawking’s jobs, part time
robots require enegy input.
they cannot replace human labour because without human labour to generate commercial input. the robotic environment cannot exist long term
very short term maybe
unless robots become consumers of course
and printing monet to provide everyone with a basic income is too daft to discuss
What the are you talking about ? Zimbabwe printed money to provide everyone with a basic income. The results of Zimbabwe’s money printing were fantastic.
https://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_main/public/story/images/Zimbabwe%20Trillion_3_CROP.jpg?itok=plG2jxfv
i thought it was to provide mugabe with a basic income
How can I acquire a few thousand of those notes? I want to wall paper the inside of the container with those.
My daughter is the graphic designer for Eatsa, the San Francisco “automated restaurant” in the article. It’s an interesting concept but scary that they don’t need many people.
Automation is the problem.
All of us a glad we are the heirs of the industrial revolution, but it was pure hell for the workers who lived through it.
with geniuses like this, who needs OFW
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dave-brat-town-hall_us_58adaf35e4b03d80af7118ea?v46ckay79wznf80k9&
Somebody mustve elected him—wonder if he trolls in here under an alias?
” After saying that he agreed with the agency’s mission of providing clean air and water, Brat went on to say that the best way to guarantee those resources for a country was economic growth.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yes—but these guys actually GET ELECTED
thats the scary part.
Why is this scary ? All politicians believe that economic growth is the solution to all problems. The difference between a Republican and Democrat is whether they think economic growth comes from burning fossil fuels directly or indirectly for solar panels,.
Solar panels have not proven to create a large supply of clean water unless there is a water treatment facility I am unaware of that is powered by solar panels.
Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Yet this is how the vast, vast majority thinks. We just have to grow our way out of any problem, forever and ever.
Anatomist Louis Bolk once called humans sexually mature primate fetuses. (And yes, it sounds suitably disturbing in the original German: einen zur Geschlechtsreife gelangten Primatenfetus.) As Bolk patiently explained, our evolutionary history is something of an arms race between the pelvic size of mothers and the skull size of offspring, which means, in turn, that we’re born half-made and unfinished.
This holds true, alas, even after we reach sexual maturity. Dogs and apes have set life stages that determine their behavior. Humans, by embarrassing contrast, have midlife crises, go back to school, run away, settle down, and lurch blindly into the each new cycle of their own distinctive, character-shifting revolution. Lather, rinse, repeat—until your energy gives out and you drop dead. We might reach sexual maturity, but we live most of our lives in a sort of permanent adolescence. Knowing all this, how do we answer the question of what an “adult” is?
you know youre a man when a woman desires you for two things
and the most important of the two is opening pickle jars
Haha! I can agree with that… this is a thing – opening twist-of-jars – my mother still asks me about when I visit her…. jar already waiting on the table 🙂
I open my own jars. Always have.
Sometimes, a man could’ve come in handy & not just for opening pickle jars.
AGW deniers please watch the video with Dr. Mann, at the end of the post.
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2017/02/22/the-trumpocene-darkness-gathers/
Those damn hippies from the insurance industry, especially Swiss-RE deluded into thinking that AGW is not a hoax.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170219/NEWS/170219850/insurance-industry-grapples-with-potential-losses-from-climate-change
You truly believe AGW is a hoax ? You have both my condolences and a book recommend ” Propaganda ” ; Jacques Ellul [ Why ? . On both counts because you are a victim of propaganda / indoctrination ] Granted human involvement in climate change / global warming has been overstated by an alarmist minority … but it is real e.g. Climate Change / Global Warming – Cooling is a natural cycle but there is no doubt human involvement via the extreme pollution emissions etc we are throwing into the atmosphere is exacerbating and accelerating the situation massively not to mention adversely affecting our health . For a balanced , scientific and logical view of the matter try first reading rather than regurgitating Alt Right/ Big Oil Fake news/propaganda .. and then specifically reading – ” Break-Through : From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility ” by Nordhaus & Shellenberger . Give it a try . Despite the brainwashing / indoctrination you’ve bought into Hook , Line & Sinker you might just learn something
FYI ; Those Insurance Industry moguls and especially the CH’s are the polar opposite of ‘ hippies ‘
I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
Denial of climate change is not a result of “fake news” but people who don’t want to lose their investments in fossil fuel extraction, which is mainly Republicans/ conservatives.
Republicans/conservatives have invested a lot into old industries, whereas Progressives/liberals have a lot invested in new industries, in particular the FIRE economy, and Green Energy jobs, which involve –wait for it…REDISTRIBUTING funds away from old industries, such as fossil fuel extraction, towards Green Energy initiatives.
Elon Musk’s continued success relies on the willingness of governments to raise taxes on companies that produce internal combustion vehicles.
TJ Martin says:”Those Insurance Industry moguls and especially the CH’s are the polar opposite of ‘ hippies”
Nonsense. The elite have become notably more Left in the last 10-12 years and wealth and power is becoming increasingly concentrated in the FIRE economy, which insurance companies are part of. There are three reasons for this. One of which is that Left-wing policies are more in line with their bottom line.
Gail Tverberg says:
February 22, 2017 at 12:52 p
“If you want higher rates, you do everything you can to show climate change is a problem.”
The insurance companies are not interested in helping its customers mitigate climate change, or are even capable of insuring against catastrophic losses due to crop failure or inundation. They are just eager to offer a new product that serves to psychologically placate the guilty conscience among the elite about what they have/are doing.
“Climate change insurance” is no different than the Indulgences that the Catholic Church used to offer.
TJ Martin says:
“regurgitating Alt Right/ Big Oil Fake news/propaganda .. ”
People who have a lot of stake will often lie or exaggerate because they want to win and don’t want to lose. The Republicans/conservatives/ do not have a monopoly on “Fake News”/Propaganda. There is a LOT of “fake new”, propaganda and yes…hate from the Left as well..
We here at OFW don’t need to read any of your preferred propaganda. We know why the environmental movement is d.o.a….
Are you living without the benefits of fossil fuels? Are you actively trying to stop other people from using them? If not then you must be denying AGW also.
If you want higher rates, you do everything you can to show climate change is a problem.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we have a choice.
Nature apparently doesn’t care what you or I think.
There is nothing we can do to stop climate change.
To suggest that we can is politicizing the situation– using “climate change ” to weaken/punish groups you don’t like OPEC, Russia, the Saudis “Middle America” .”Big Oil”, “The electric companies” ….
Yes
+++++++++++++
Dr.Mann seems to think that renewable energy devices can “replace” oil, unfortunately, the opposite seems to be the truth, more fossil fuels are being burned to fill in the gaps in “renewable” energy production when it’s tied to the grid & they produce more pollution in their manufacture than they reduce where they are being used plus they wouldn’t exist without oil.
Renewable energy is a temporary & limited solution for a permanent problem.
Electricity has no long term future, it’s also temporary.
People here asked, what do I actually think the world will look like based on my prediction.
Alright, basically it will look like 1970s to early 1980s technology level (allowing, of course, for developments in IT etc. since then), with 1930s level per capita consumption. Try to picture that in your mind. That’s not the endgame, mind you, just where we are headed right now.
Virtual Reality and microwave pizza, public transport if not walking.
but hopefully you will be able to print your dinner
Norman, i keep thinking about what it would be like to live through the “Great Die-Off”. i assume a battlefield-like scenario, but even there they send in teams to clean up, afterwards. imagine a city full of starving people. they may riot for a short time, but that costs energy that could be in short supply. martial law keeps folks indoors. after awhile, the air would be hard to breathe, the water scarce and likely polluted. cholera conditions. no one gets a service. perhaps Stalingrad without all the shooting.
my take on it is that we are genetically conditioned to fight for survival
every species on the planet does that according to its own means and ability—nature allows no notes from your mom to excuse you from the games of life.
we’ve had 100 years or so on the touchline, now our species is being thrown back into the game where only the fittest will survive.
if none of us survive, nature will shrug us off and allow another species to believe they control the environment for another 1m years or so
Fight for survival.. fittest will survive..
Hmm..
I really can’t see the situation like that. That is maybe the first few months. But..
Intergenerational survival.. in the situation they will find themselves in a hundred years from now, or two hundred years from now, thats more like the ability to control resources, co-operate, on an large area, and simultaneously the ability to build and maintain artificial habitat on a small scale family units.
I’m afraid the problem is too difficult.. too many skills to master, the ability to co-operate and communicate work strategies with several years or decades of implementation time.. nope..
There will be no fighting, or being fit. What our species would need is to have some small glimmer of intelligence, some real brains. Adaptation capability in to a habitat that is really hostile. The ability to plan for the future long-term and stick with that plan. And I’m afraid our species is too stupid to be able to understand what survival will require.. and in two hundred years when wet bulp temperatures and burning rain forests destroys the habitat for native peoples in the amazons etc. Then will also the last members of our species go
I broadly agree with you, but the first few months, a year at most will clear the ground (literally) for the future.
What happens after that none of us can know—too many variables and inputs from every direction.
The world has maybe a years worth of food in store..that is our bottom line energy source.—I would share what I have with my family—but each mouth divides the total available. How does one deal with that?—Say I toldya so?
Will fighting for survival reduce our numbers to sustainable levels or eliminate us altogether—could go either way, we are after all merely newcomers in natures scheme of things.
Though the first with the means of self annihilation
The DNA is still there. Stress will bring out the necessary expression of it in the few who do survive.
Predators, both large to microscopic, will do most of the culling of the herd. Weather may be the largest cause of die off.
Roaming bands of raiders are as or more susceptible to disease and hunger as any other humans.
Norman, we have been at it for several rounds already.
I guess you at one instance acknowledged the same, namely that countries behind trade barriers are less prone (or highly selective about biz/strategic partners) to export their food commodities to supply/demand concerns only. We have seen it already in parts of South/Central America, Africa, ME or Asia could be cut off. Is there going to be a knee jerk reaction (affecting the global) from starving, for example in cases like Pakistan vs India, most likely.. but the bottom case still stands, attempted triage (let go the marginal periphery) and rising protectionist walls first, collapse of various intensities follows..
obviously different parts of the world will go down at different rates times and levels.
it won’t be an even collapse
we may have the inclination to help, but if we don’t have the capacity to do so, then regional collapses will be total, and make unpleasant headlines.
but the new slogan America first tells you what the ultimate response has to be, not just in America but everywhere
I think the world will look like a turnip. I base that on the same rational you are using — i.e. none
Will Three’s Company, Diff’rent Strokes and Dukes of Hazzard make a comeback as well…If that is the case then:
South Park makes fun of everyone—-
Except adolescent libertarians.
Sonny and Cher? Mood rings?
CONTINENTAL RESOURCES: Example Of What Is Horribly Wrong With The U.S. Shale Oil Industry
During the beginning of the U.S. shale energy revolution, the industry stated it would make the United States energy independent. The mainstream media picked up this positive theme and ran with it. Americans who wanted to believe in this “Growth forever” notion, had no problem going further into debt to buy as much crap as they could to fill their homes and additional rental storage units.
For several years, the U.S. Shale Revolution seemed like it was going to defy the laws of gravity (and finance) to provide the country with limitless oil production forever. However, something started to go seriously wrong as these shale oil companies reported their financial earnings. One by one, these oil companies financial losses and debts continued to pile up.
And a perfect example, or the “Poster child”, of what is horribly wrong with the U.S. Shale Oil Industry is none other than Continental Resources.
Maybe Continental was America’s oil champion at one time, however if we look at their financial results, they have been receiving some serious blows to their mid section. Looking at the company’s free cash flow since 2010, it isn’t a pretty picture:
https://srsroccoreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Continental-Resources-Free-Cash-Flow.png
More https://srsroccoreport.com/continental-resources-example-of-what-is-horribly-wrong-with-the-u-s-shale-oil-industry/
Hello Glenn the More On…. a circle is not a square…. it really isn’t… no matter how hard you try to convince yourself.
Glenn.. did you get to this part yet?
From 2010 to 2016 YTD (year to date – Q3 2016), Continental (ticker CLR) has spent a stunning $7.6 billion more on capital expenditures (CAPEX) than they made in operating cash. Of course this had a negative impact on their balance sheet. In that same time period, Continental’s long-term debt surged seven times higher from $926 million in 2010 to $6.8 billion in 2016 YTD.
Your ridiculous and obscure quotes will do nothing to protect you from the Big Right Hand
http://i.dawn.com/primary/2014/10/544f751a2b818.jpg
Down goes Fraizer!
That’s not Frazier, that’s Foreman (who actually made more money selling his grill than he did boxing 🙂
My mistake.
Down goes Foreman!
Well, not quite.
https://s9.postimg.org/thmsoq4ov/Captura_de_pantalla_672.png
Grounded in some sort of new reality? LOL
The S&P 500 stock index edged up to an all-time high of 2,351 on Friday. Total market capitalization of the companies in the index exceeds $20 trillion. That’s 106% of US GDP, for just 500 companies! At the end of 2011, the S&P 500 index was at 1,257. Over the five-plus years since then, it has ballooned by 87%!
These are superlative numbers, and you’d expect superlative earnings performance from these companies. Turns out, reality is not that cooperative. Instead, net income of the S&P 500 companies is now back where it first had been at the end of 2011.
Hype, financial engineering, and central banks hell-bent on inflating asset prices make a powerful fuel for stock prices.
And there has been plenty of all of it, including financial engineering. Share buybacks, often funded with borrowed money, have soared in recent years. But even that is now on the decline.
Share buybacks by the S&P 500 companies plunged 28% year-over-year to $115.6 billion in the three-month period from August through October, according to the Buyback Quarterly that FactSet just released. It was the second three-month period in a row of sharp year-over-year declines. And it was the smallest buyback total since Q1 2013.
Apple with $7.2 billion in buybacks in the quarter, GE with $4.3 billion, and Microsoft with $3.6 billion topped the list again. Still, despite the plunge in buybacks, 119 companies spent more on buybacks than they’d earned in the quarter. On a trailing 12-month basis, 66% of net income was blown on buybacks.
Alas, net income has been a problem. By now, with 82% of the S&P 500 companies having reported their results for Q4 2016, earnings rose 4.6% year-over-year, according to FactSet. It’s the second quarter in a row of year-over-year earnings growth, after six quarters in a row of earnings declines.
For the entire year 2016, earnings edged up 0.4% from 2015. And revenue inched up 2.4% – in a year when inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose 2.8%.
It wasn’t just 2016 that was crummy. Earnings in Q4 2016 were back where they’d been in Q4 2011. This chart by FactSet shows:
Net income as reported on a trailing 12-month basis (dark-blue bars, left scale in million dollars)
Share buybacks on a trailing 12-month basis (light blue bars, left scale)
Buybacks as a percent of net income (green line, right scale).
I added the red line to show how, after a bump in the middle, net income has gone nowhere in five years. And I circled the increases in trailing 12-months net income over the past two quarters to show how puny they’ve been (click to enlarge):
http://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/US-SP500-net-income-buybacks.png
At the same time, over those five years since Q4 2011, the S&P 500 index has soared 87%. Grounded in some sort of new reality? LOL
And it’s even worse. FactSet uses “adjusted” ex-bad-items earnings that companies report under their own metrics. FactSet does not use earnings the companies report under the stricter guidelines of GAAP. These “adjusted” earnings are generally much higher than earnings under GAAP. In some cases, companies might show a big profit on an “adjusted” basis but have a loss under GAAP.
This disconnect between five-year earnings stagnation and soaring stock prices is confirmed by revenues. The S&P 500 price to sales ratio, which tracks stock valuations in relationship to aggregate revenues of the S&P 500 companies, has now reached 1.87, just 8% below its crazy peak back in early 2000 before it all came apart. That ratio was between 1.4 and 1.5 before the Financial Crisis and below 1.0 before 1996 (chart).
More http://wolfstreet.com/2017/02/19/2016-sp-500-earnings-back-at-2011-levels-as-stocks-ballooned-87-percent/
Gagga goo goo Glenn — a rising stock price is not an indication of a healthy company… not in the New Normal….
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/1211783/kicked-in-the-head-o.gif
In the energy sector, especially, there is a belief that somehow, prices will come back up, and the situation will be saved. This results in incredibly high P/E ratios. Also, if the earnings are negative, it is hard to find a price that will provide a positive P/E ratio. Any price of the stock will buoy the overall P/E ratio up.
“Your ridiculous and obscure quotes”
Are those annoying or what!?!??
Yes, the arrogance that he will assign you little bits of “reader” material quoted from the collection of little tin gods that sit on his psychological mantle.
The tin-eared social incompetence of a truly self-absorbed gamma.
Interesting analysis!
The share price is rising…. therefore this must be fake analysis
See how the cash flow has improved!
Here’s a deal for you.
It’s a surefire way to cash in BIG on SrSrocco and Art Berman’s impecable analyses and infallible crystal ball.
You can get RICH, my friend. RICH! And just imagine, there’s no risk to you at all. Given your unshakable faith in the analyses of SrSrocco and Art Berman, it’s nothing short of a sure thing.
So here’s the deal. For a mere $10,000 you can buy 200,00 Continental Resources puts with a strike price of $3.00 expiring on January 19, 2019.
So when Continental Resources stock tanks from its current $48 to being worthless within the next few months months, you can rack up a nifty $9 million.
Imagine that. NINE MILLION DOLLARS! It’s like $9 million for FREE, because everybody else in the world is STUPID and you are so SMART.
With $8 million you can become a world traveler, see the great pyramids of Egypt and the sublime ruins of Machu Picchu, tour all the great museums of Europe and the magnificent Mayan ruins in Quintana Roo. You can live the life of Riley.
So go for it man. Turn $10,000 into $9 million in a few short months. There’s absolutely no risk. Put your money where your mouth is.
Surely it’s a deal you can’t refuse.
https://s21.postimg.org/la4m8lvg7/Captura_de_pantalla_676.png
As stock prices go up, their value will plummet. As wiil the value of the $. When it all comes crashing down, you will be the only one getting at the exit first, selling. And of course you’ll be the first buying hard assets with your hard cash no?
Stock prices are now based on exponentially growing debt and central bank promises. That chart is like an advertisement out of Las Vegas. We all have to make choices.
But Glenn – that is not how the New Normal Works….
You don’t short failing companies you dum.b as.s —- you go long.
Because failure = success — at least in terms of share prices
Case Study: CAT
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/09/CAT%20retail%20sales%202.jpg
https://staticseekingalpha.a.ssl.fastly.net/uploads/2017/2/20/28873105-1487597097517351.png
So only a re-tarded moreon shorts a failing company.
Are you saying I am a retar-ded moreon?
FYI: I do not invest in anything — investing assumes that there is a future — why tie up cash that will be vapourized at some point — when you can spend it now on frivolous bulls-hit?
Seems very ridiculous to me this ‘investing’ It is very moronical.
Right Here. Right Now. That is me.