I was asked to give a talk to a committee of actuaries who are concerned about modeling the financial future of programs, such as pension plans, given the energy problems that are often discussed. They (and the consultants that they hire) have been using an approach that puts problems far off into the future. I was trying to explain why the approach that they were using didn’t really make sense.
Below are the slides I used, and a little explanation. A PDF of my presentation can be downloaded at this link: The Mirror Image Problem.
Slide 1
FCAS stands for “Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society”; MAAA stands for “Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.” Actuaries tend not to be interested in academic degrees.
Slide 2
I try to explain how a more complex situation can be hidden in plain sight.
Slide 3
It is not obvious that both the needs of energy producers and energy consumers should be considered.
Slide 4
If we look back at what the discussions of the time were, we can see when remarks were that prices were too high for consumers, and when they were too low for producers. See for example my article, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis and my post, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. This latter article shows that companies were already cutting back on spending in 2013, when prices appeared to be high, because even at a $100+ per barrel level, they still were not high enough for producers.
Slide 5
Oil companies tend to extract the cheapest and easiest to extract oil first. Eventually, they find that they need to move on to more expensive to extract fields–even with technology enhancements, costs are rising. There seems to have been a step up in costs starting about the year 2000. The above chart is by Steve Kopits. This EIA data (in Figure 10) also shows a pattern of sharply rising costs about the same time.
The problem, of course, is that wages have not been spiking in the same pattern. As a result, we encounter the problem of prices being either too high for consumers, or too low for producers, as we saw on Slide 4.
Slide 6
The economy is “built up” from many different parts. It includes governments, businesses, and consumers. It also includes people with jobs in the economy, and individuals and businesses making investments in the economy. It gradually changes over time, as new businesses and new laws are added, and as other changes are made. The wages that workers earn influence how much they can spend. The economy keeps re-optimizing, based on the goods and services available at a given time. Thus, slide rules are no longer commonly sold; it is not easy to buy horse-drawn carriages. This is why I show the economy as hollow.
Slide 7
Let’s talk a little about how economic growth occurs in a networked economy.
Slide 8
Clearly, tools and technology can be very helpful in creating economic growth. I am using the term “tools” very broadly, to include any kind of structure or device we build to aid the economy. This would even include roads.
Slide 9
Making tools clearly requires energy. Operating these tools very often requires energy as well, such as energy provided by diesel or electricity. With the use of tools, humans can more efficiently make goods and services. For example, if small parts need to be transported to a business, it is nearly always more efficient to transport them by truck than to deliver the parts by walking and carrying these parts in our hands. Clearly, tools such as trucks also allow us to do things that we could never do otherwise, such as deliver large and heavy parts to users.
Economists often talk about “rising worker productivity,” as if this rising productivity came about because of actions undertaken by the worker–perhaps attempting to work faster. Another possibility would seem to be taking a course on how to work more efficiently. We would expect that most of the time this rising productivity would come about as a result of the use of additional tools, or better tools. Thus, it is really the tools, and the energy that they use, that are acting to leverage worker productivity.
Slide 10
It is not intuitive that adding tools requires debt, unless a person stops to realize that it generally takes quite a bit of resources to make a tool (human labor, plus metal ores and energy products). Using these tools will provide a benefit over quite a long period in the future. A business making these tools has a problem: it must buy the resources to make the tools and pay the workers, before the benefit of the tools actually comes into existence. It is necessary to have debt (or a debt-like financial instrument, such as shares of stock), to bridge this gap.
This same kind of mismatch occurs, even if goods being purchased with debt are not really tools. For example, a home purchased with debt and paid for with a mortgage is not really a tool. The buyer needs to pay interest to a bank or some other intermediary, in order to finance the home over a period of years. Thus, part of the worker’s wages is going to the financial system, rather than to obtain the goods and services he really wants. Financing the home with debt is generally more convenient than paying cash, however. Because of the convenience factor, debt is generally essential for most home purchases. If a new home is being purchased, the builder who builds the home will need to buy lumber and pay workers when the house is built, rather than over the lifetime of the house. Because of this, debt is necessary so that the builder will have the funds to buy lumber and pay the workers.
Analysts coming from engineering and other “hard sciences” often miss this need for debt. Since a person can’t see or touch it, it is easy to think it isn’t needed. Interest payments are important, because they transfer goods and services made by the economy away from workers to other sectors of the economy (such as the financial system, retirees, and pension programs). Thus, they represent a different use for energy products, other than making goods for the use of workers.
Slide 11
Slide 11 shows how an economy produces a growing quantity of goods and services. The three types of inputs I show are
- Energy products and other resources
- Workers
- Tools
I perhaps should include government services, such a roads, as well. If I did, I would show a fourth box down the side. Such a box didn’t fit easily on the slide, so I left it off.
Slide 12
As I noted in Slide 10, it takes debt to be able to have enough funds to pay everyone who makes tools, and in fact, other goods (such as vehicles and homes) that we pay for over the life of the goods. In Figure 12, I show that at least some of those providing inputs to the process receive “Future goods and services, plus interest,” rather than goods that have already been made. In this way, the system distributes more goods and services than would be available through the barter system.
In my notes to Slide 11, I commented that I perhaps should have included a government sector, as a fourth box down the side. That comment is also true here. On Slide 12, we are distributing the benefit of goods and services created, so we probably need to add even more boxes down the side. One of them would be “Payments Under Funded Pension Programs.” Another box would represent payments to individuals who sell appreciated shares of stock and real estate, and hope to buy goods and services with the proceeds of these sales. In the government sector, we would need to be certain that the category is large enough to include goods and services distributed to retiring “Baby Boomers” under Social Security and similar unfunded retirement programs.
People who do modeling can easily lose sight of the fact that we really live in a “calendar year” world. Each year, we can extract only so much oil, coal, gas, and metal ores, and use those resources to make goods and services. These goods and services are generally available for sale the same year. It is easy to add layers and layers of promises of “future goods and services” to the system, without ever checking to see whether the resource base provides enough resources to make promised future distributions of goods and services possible.
Slide 13
Often, it is the owners of resources who are paid in stock or debt. Workers are paid in money (which is a form of debt), but they very often want to spend most of it on goods and services that they can use today.
We can think of debt (and balances in bank accounts) as promises for future energy, and the goods it makes possible. Of course, if that energy isn’t really available, the promise is an empty promise.
Slide 14
There are many kinds of debt, and reciprocal obligations. This is a chart I found recently, giving one person’s view of the amount outstanding today, including a very large amount of derivatives. All of these debts make the assumption that energy will be available in the future so that goods and services can be created to fulfill these various types of promises.
Exeter Pyramid of Debt, created by Dr. Iris Mack.
Slide 15
Debt becomes very important in the whole system, because the higher the debt level, the higher that wages can be. Also, with a higher debt level, commodity prices, such as oil prices, can also be higher. Because more debt seems to make almost everyone richer, governments go out of their way to encourage additional debt, and more debt-like instruments. Of course, if interest rates go up, rather than down, interest on this debt becomes a big burden for borrowers. On Slide 12, the higher interest rates transfer a larger share of goods and services away from workers to other sectors of the economy (such as pensions).
Slide 16
Shrinking debt levels are similar to governmental cutbacks for programs. (In fact, governmental cutbacks in programs often result from shrinking debt levels.) Then fewer workers can be hired, and fewer goods and services can be purchased. The economy tends to shrink–similar to what happened during the 2008-2009 recession.
Slide 17
We often hear about “Supply and Demand.” A better name for “demand” might be “amount affordable.”
I mentioned in previous slides that wages and the amount of debt increase are important in determining the amount affordable. Other items that have a bearing are Item (3) the level of the dollar relative to other currencies, and Item (4) the extent to which productivity is rising. If the dollar is high relative to other currencies, the price of oil tends to be low, because those buying goods made with oil in non-US dollar currencies find the goods expensive.
Slide 18
Slide 18 illustrates the very significant impact that changing interest/debt levels can have on oil prices. Although I don’t mark the point on the graph, the peak in oil prices in 2008 came when US debt levels on consumer loans and mortgages started to fall. (See Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis for details.) The US began Quantitative Easing (QE) in late 2008, with the intent of lowering interest rates and making debt more available. It was not long after it began that oil prices began to rise. Once QE was discontinued in 2014, other currencies fell relative to the US dollar, and the price of oil again fell.
Slide 19
The situation we have now is very much like a Ponzi Scheme. We need to keep adding more debt to keep wages and commodity prices high enough. At the same time, interest rates need to stay very low, to keep payments manageable, and keep the whole system from collapsing.
The balance sheets of insurance companies, banks, and pension plans include much debt. If these institutions are to make good on their promises to those with bank accounts, insurance policies, and pension plans, it is necessary for this debt to be repaid with interest. Back many years ago, debt jubilees were often given to selected debtors. These are out of the question now, because banks, insurance companies, and pension plans depend upon the future payments that this debt represents.
Slide 20
We like to think that improved technology can add more and more benefit. In fact, technology seems to reach diminishing returns, just as almost any other type of investment does. We make the easy changes (smaller cars, for example) first. Later changes tend to be more incremental. Because of this pattern, we can’t count on huge future changes in technology saving us.
Slide 21
Most people do not realize that the laws of physics determine the way that markets work–for example, the prices at which sales take place, and whether or not there are enough suppliers of a given product in the market place. They assume that as we reach limits, markets will always work as they have in the past. This seems unlikely.
Slide 22
Physics is often taught in terms of what actions are expected in an “isolated” or a “closed” system. In fact, the earth receives energy from the sun. The economy also obtains energy from stored fossil fuels and from uranium. Because of these energy flows, the rules of an “open” system are more appropriate. These have only been studied in recent years. Ilya Prigogine received a Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on dissipative structures.
What is surprising is that dissipative structures are always temporary. They grow for a time, but eventually collapse. We know that plants and animals have finite lifespans; generally new similar plants and animals replace them. It is less obvious that systems such as ecosystems and economies have finite lifetimes.
Slide 23
Figure 23 shows my idea of how the dissipative structure of an ecosystem might be represented. Its inputs include solar energy, water, air, minerals from the soil, and recycled waste products from plants and animals. There are no real waste products from the system, because waste products are recycled. Ecosystems tend to collapse, when very sharp fluctuations occur. For example, forest fires tend to occur when a large amount of waste wood has accumulated and weather conditions are dry. (Perhaps dry wood and leaves, if they do not degrade rapidly enough, might be considered a temporary waste output that can lead to the demise of the ecosystem through fire, when conditions are right.)
Slide 24
Figure 24 shows my idea of how the economy might be represented as a dissipative structure. One critical part is “other energy,” which makes the economy act much like a rocket. Another critical part of the economy is “tools and technology.” Tools and technology allow the various inputs to be used, and the economy to grow. In a way, they are parallel to the biological systems that allow plants and animals to grow in ecosystems.
With human economies, we have multiple problems that can occur:
[1] Quantity of resources needed for inputs falls short
[2] Population of humans rises disproportionately to inputs of energy and other resources
[3] Waste outputs of various types become a problem
Growing debt is one of the waste outputs. Since we voluntarily seek out debt, we think of debt as an input. But if we think about the situation, debt is really an adverse output. Required interest payments tend to pull funds out of the system that could otherwise be used to pay workers. Also, the rising use of debt tends to concentrate the ownership of “tools” among the already wealthy. Debt can grow for a while, but it has limits, because of the adverse impacts it creates for the economy.
Growing wage disparity occurs because of the increased specialization required by ever-rising use of tools and technology. Some people receive the benefit of advanced education and learning to use tools such as computers; others receive much less benefit. As a result, their wages lag behind. Wage disparity is another limit of the system. If a large share of the workers cannot afford to buy the output of the economy, “demand” falls too low, and commodity prices tend to fall.
Distorted prices (shown on Slide 24) have to do with the changes to prices that occur, both because of added debt, and because we are reaching limits. Prices are not the same as they would be in a pure barter economy. Added debt allows prices to be much higher. As we reach limits, prices can fall below the cost of production. Suppliers continue to produce energy products, at least for a time, until the low prices become a real problem.
Slide 25
There are many reasons why an economy, which acts like a rocket, cannot continue forever.
Many readers have heard of “Energy Returned on Energy Invested” (EROEI). This is a favorite metric of many energy researchers. It is calculated by dividing Energy Out of a system by required Energy Inputs. As I show on Slide 25, EROEI looks at one part of one problem that economies encounter. There are many other problems and parts of problems that EROEI doesn’t consider.
Slide 26
Many believe that renewables can replace “Other Energy.” One reason for this belief is the fanciful claims by some researchers. Another reason for this belief is the apparently fairly favorable EROEI calculations that seem to occur when these devices are examined. These calculations are very limited. They don’t examine the many adverse impacts of adding tools and technology, and the rapid rise in debt that would be required.
Slide 27
Trying to run the economy on solar electricity alone (or solar plus wind plus water) is a futile exercise. One reason is that it would require massive changes to allow long-haul trucks and airplanes to operate on electricity.
Also, electricity is a high-cost energy product. Today, our economy operates on a mix of high and low cost energy products, with low cost energy products keeping the average cost down. Trying to run the economy on electricity alone is a bit like trying to run the economy using only PhDs. In theory it could be done, but it would be expensive to have PhDs waiting on tables in restaurants and delivering mail.
Too often, researchers make models without determining the details of how the system would really need to operate and what the cost would be.
Slide 28
There are many different limits for any kind of system. For example, one limit for humans is having enough oxygen. Another limit for humans is having enough water. A third limit is having enough food. Any of these things are limits. The trick is trying to figure out which one is the first limit, in a particular situation.
EROEI based on fossil fuel inputs was developed when it looked like there would be a shortfall of fossil fuels. If, in fact, our problem is not being able to get the price of fossil fuels high enough, this is a different, more complex, problem.
I think of the ratio that is popularly computed as EROEI as “Fossil Fuel EROEI.” Fossil Fuel EROEI is popularly believed to be a limit, but it is not at all clear to me that it is the first limit. It is also not clear that the limit is any particular number (such as EROEI=1, or EROEI=10).
There is a different kind of EROEI that seems to me to be at least as likely, or more likely, to be the first limit that we will reach. That is the return that workers who are selling their labor simply as labor (without advanced education or supervisory responsibility) obtain. If these workers find that their wages drop too low, this will be a limit on the operation of the economy. Low wages will prevent these workers from buying houses and cars. If the wages of the large number of non-elite workers fall too low, commodity prices will tend to fall, and the system will tend to collapse because producers cannot make a profit at such a low price.
Biologists have been studying the return on the labor of animals for many years, because their populations tend to collapse, when animals are forced to expend too much labor in finding food. EROEI based on wages of non-elite workers would seem to be a closer parallel to the animal return on labor than fossil fuel EROEI.
Slide 29
I have laid out a few of the issues I see with EROEI of intermittent renewables on Slide 29. There are other issues as well. For example, because it is a prospective calculation, it is very easy for wishful thinking to lead to optimistic estimates of future energy production and expected lifetimes of the devices.
Slide 30
Energy researchers have defined “net energy” to be any energy in excess of EROEI = 1. There is a common misbelief that if the economy can continue to produce energy products with an EROEI above 1, everything should be fine. In fact, some studies commissioned by actuaries regarding whether the economy is reaching energy limits seem to be based on an assumption that producing energy products with an EROEI > 1 is sufficient to prevent energy problems in the future. This is not a high threshold. Given such an assumption, our problems with energy seem to be far, far in the future. Pensions can continue to be paid as planned.
On Slide 30, Ugo Bardi is saying that this assumption is not correct. It is not true that the system will crash when the net energy of a particular fuel (here oil) becomes negative. We cannot understand the behavior of a complex adaptive system such as the economy in terms of mere energy return considerations. Clearly, I am not the only one looking at the economy in broader terms than an EROEI ratio.
Slide 31
Where we are now.
Slide 32
It is hard to see any good fixes. Technology reaches diminishing returns. Neither renewables nor nuclear is really working well now.
Slide 33
The standard forecasts seem to be based on the assumption that the economy can grow forever.
Slide 34
We have many problems that have been missed by recent economic modeling, including models commissioned by actuaries.
Slide 35
Actuaries are involved primarily with insurance companies and pension plans. My concern is that the financial system will be the center of the storm, as we hit limits this time. This will affect actuaries and their work.
Whether or not a new economic system can arise to take the place of our existing system remains to be seen. It certainly is a concern.
Two Observations
- My write-up is probably more complete than the actual one-hour talk was.
- I don’t think that anyone can be “blamed” for the confusion about what EROEI means. Our understanding of how the economy works is gradually evolving. Written documentation about EROEI is found in a myriad of academic papers. The name “Net Energy” seems to give energy in excess of EROEI=1 more importance than it really has.
Another brick … in the wall of worry….
Used-car prices are falling faster at auction — where automakers typically dispose of off-lease vehicles — than they are on dealer lots. CarMax Inc., the largest seller of used-vehicles in the U.S., said Thursday that average wholesale vehicle selling prices fell 6.8 percent to $4,910 in the quarter ended in February, while the average price of used vehicles to consumers slipped only 1.6 percent to $19,435.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-06/gm-joins-chorus-warning-used-car-prices-to-fall-on-supply-glut
Nobody Is Saying Anything About How U.S. Earnings Season Will Go
Record-low number of companies giving financial guidance
Large banks to kick off first-quarter reporting next week
Investors seeking hints on first-quarter earnings season are getting little help from companies.
In the past month, only 83 have published profit guidance of any variety, the least at this time of the year since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 1999. The stretch of quietness comes as banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are set to release results next week.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ivZTxMshLySk/v2/800x-1.png
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-07/nobody-is-saying-anything-about-how-u-s-earnings-season-will-go
If you don’t have anything good to say — don’t say anything…
We are here?
http://www.mansharamani.com/wp-content/uploads/wile-e-coyote-falling-off-cliff.jpg
On countless occasions in recent years, the U.S. auto industry has relied on cheap and easy credit from Wall Street to get it through rough patches.
Not this time.
With both bad loans and interest rates on the rise, financial institutions are becoming more selective in doling out credit for new-car purchases, adding to the pressure for automakers already up against the wall with sliding sales, swelling inventories and a used-car glut. “We’ve been having a party for a few years and it was fun,” said Maryann Keller, an industry consultant in Stamford, Connecticut. “Now lenders are getting back to basics.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-07/wall-street-hands-automakers-another-problem-in-the-loan-market
Debt? Who the hell do we owe all this money to?! Just write it off or just refuse to pay it… the banks haven’t any money-it’s just a figure on a computer screen. Just DONT pay it back anymore. What could possibly go wrong-who wants growth anyhow?
I think you forgot to add this at the end of your comment (sarc)
Lolllll FE, you’re totally right, without the (sarc) that comment makes no sense whatsoever and you laugh AT the commenter…add the (sarc) and then you laugh WITH the commenter..what a difference a small word like that can make to the whole comment 😉
Sarc, sarc, sarc.
Sarc, sarc, sarc.
Sarc, sarc, sarc.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It’s easy.
Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.
All you need is sarc.
All you need is sarc.
All you need is sarc,sarc
Sarc is all you need.
Nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you…
Let’s add some music to this … a one… a two… a one two three….
The US Titanic is back on course and normal service has been restored. President T has been put to work in the kitchen while the Captains plot the US ship of State date with destiny….
I think Ludlum sums it up nicely…
‘Whoever is president doesn’t matter, he is irrelevant. Our managers (including Trump) are actors reading from scripts, performing at the direction of shadowy back-door men, employed strictly by how they conform to the public expectations created by corporate marketing. Conforming includes how they look, dress, speak, where certified and whom they ‘know’; where they live and work and how they travel. Trump himself acknowledges this reality by selecting as footmen those who are possessed of a certain je ne sais quoi, that is, they have the appropriate outward appearance. Activities that require labor, skill, difficulty or do not present a marketing opportunity are penalized with diminished status. There are no grimy proletarians, mechanics or farmers in the current administration or those set to come; nor in Congress or the Courts. Instead, there are neatly coiffed thievish mandarins. Because our Ponzi- economy is divorced from reality the scam managers are expected to be incompetent, they have to be even as they are fashionable. There is no penalty for stupidity in America’
The thing is …. what’s the alternative… Democracy?
Candidate A: I promise if you elect me everyone gets a Ferrari in the garage – everyone gets to live large
Candidate B: I promise you good governance – living withing our means — and hopefully we can all have a Honda Civic in the garage
And Candidate A wins in a landslide
Americans as a primitive people are successful and rich without being wise or prudent. It gives them charm but also makes them vulnerable to manipulation.
You see, WW2 and the build up to the Cold War was a tremendous loss for humanity. It split us into two camps (America and Soviet Union) and the only real winner was America, and we are now living with the dreadful consequences.
We need to move to a multipolar world, and quickly. I welcome the rise of China for this reason alone. Somebody, anyone, needs to stop the Americans before they destroy the world.
And if the Soviets had won…. the horror… the horror…
End of the day there was no other option — the system that allowed us to rip the guts out of the earth the most efficiently was always going to rise to the top…
Systems like communism can sometimes thwart the forces at play here — but only through extremely vicious means — and even then the forces are not completely suppressed…
Communism and BAU do not mix — communism was always going to fail — because it is not the most efficient system.
Think of it this way… I run an auto business and I have things nailed down really tight — I run an efficient operation …
Then you have Elon Musk running his competing business… he’s not running it tight – he is relying on govt hand outs ….. even so he loses money on every car sold — his business would collapse in a minute if the subsidies were withdrawn….
His business is defying the laws of nature — he is effectively defying gravity…
In the long run, assuming things continue for both of us along the tracks we are following now…. I will destroy Musk.
Musk = ‘Communism’
Why Trump is suddenly shooting missilies on Syria.. And why so many vehicles are ramming crowded streets, now it seems every so often. Today in Sweden.
Where are we? Where are we truly? As Norman commented a while back, in the last one hundred years we have had this thing called cheap oil, that will next be called unaffordable oil. The small problem is, that before the oil was unaffordable, when it was just cheap oil, it boosted the population from 1 billion, to 7.5 billion. Today we have therefore 6.5 billion people who can not continue living. Directly dependant on a global logistics network, which is dependant on cheap oil, are 3.5 billion people. These 3.5 billion people should be gonners by today. But instead of letting all the pieces fall where they may, all governments in the world have artificially boosted growth by debt, governments are now in more debt than ever thought possible..
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
20 trillion in government debt.. add personal debt.. look at the falling amounts of u.s. treasuries owned by foreigners.. and add that Russia and China are now building a gold based options to the petrodollar, that has made such amounts of debts possible for the u.s. in the first place.
Trump has now been filled in by the CIA, NSA etc. the u.s. deep state of the true situation. If the u.s. looses its priviledged position in the world, more debt will default than there has been silver and gold ever in existance in the world.. or ever will be.. the amounts of debts today are just unthinkable..
The deep state now needs patriotism, murder, terrorism and mayhem to raise the debt ceiling once again. If the u.s. congress would shut the door to further debt, then 6.5 billion people would not see year 2020..
Exactly why the u.s. deep state wants to continue BAU, I don’t know ?? Maybe they just see it as their obligation to at least try.. to do.. something..
So, as the dark clouds gather for the perfect storm, so big, such a storm has never been seen before. Ever. In the history of mankind. Que in as much murder, terrorism, MSM bloodbaths, patriotism and PR-BS flair that the general public who believes in tooth fairies, magic tricks and easter bunnies (OFW:ers know the real situation, the general public is frighteningly clueless) will give the u.s. deep state what it needs to continue BAU, just.. one.. more.. year.. talk about pushing the string..
I suppose all oil might be termed “debt oil”
When I bought my house, (a block of embodied energy) it cost twice my annual salary—peanuts. Even a mortgage in total plus interest was only twice the cost of the house itself.
But that overall cheapness of debt was based on availability of cheap oil coal and gas—to make the bricks, glass, piping, feed the builder and so on.
My job in the motor industry also depended on cheap debt-oil, people buying cars on credit, in the certainty that their ongoing employment would be fueled by cheap oil-debt—ad infinitum.
There was no end to it
Now the same house might be 8–10x my salary, which in the same circumstances, would likely put it beyond my reach.
The reason is that the energy factor built into the house costs 10x as much, but my wages havent kept pace, and in addition, do not have the certainty of permanent employment over the mortgage period.
Permanent lifetime employment was an anomaly of the 20th c.
It had never happened before and can never happen again. It was entirely the result of the flow of cheap fuel. Rockefeller provided the means by which we all employed ourselves. We used the collateral in today’s barrel of oil to buy tomorrow’s barrel of oil. Few can accept that there was nothing else that sustained our economic system and provided employment for everyone.
Now everyone “demands jobs” not realising that the function of employment must have a purpose. If there is no purpose, then we are merely standing in a circle, digging holes and selling dirt to each other.
Without cheap fuel input, we fall over and starve to death.
Norm, earlier you mentioned something about trading “upwards” in energy is the only way to go. And now you mentioned lifetime employment was always a FF-idea. Fully dependant on FFs..
But might there be some ‘lifetime employments’ that still could be trading “upwards” even after a collapse scenario?
– Building log houses with masonry ovens? That last for a century or more..
– Building windmills and water mills?
– Building roads?
– Building house appliences like spinning wheels, to make yarn or thread from sheep wool? Or building looms?
– Building chicken and rabbit coops?
– Leather tanning?
Im not expecting to start a leather tanning business after SHTF, just interested how your reasoning works Norm
Those activities demand retention of a lot of information (a true information-based economic system). It would also depend on order–planning, leadership, consensus. But we do not retain information–throwing everything we can away, and we have no sense of order or consensus.
Compared to the intensity of “small” economic activity that I see as possible, the current economic situation is like standing still. The trouble is that I don’t know how the intensive small economics fits in with the stupid and near-somnolent big one (which I gather cannot be avoided). The big one operates by cutting off the limb it’s perched on.And I don’t see why one big unit of economy can’t be replaced by a thousand small units (that avoid doing the same).
In addition, there is confusion as to what is meant by going forward or going backward. Right now it seems that going forward economically requires going backward information-wise. It’s counter intuitive is the problem.
we are effectively freewheeling on the impetus of the industrial system of the last century
That sounds like a Wile E. Coyote moment. Which would be too bad. But if some kind folks would throw us a rope or lasso…
If I remember the cartoons correctly, that lasso would be tied to an anvil at the other end of the rope.
@Van Keny & Artleads
Employment might be seen as using my muscle power to buy the result of your muscle power, with money as the medium of exchange.
ie–you are a baker–I am a cobbler, we need each other’s skills, but we use money to buy the muscle power of a carpenter, say.
But in order to run a ‘successful’ economy, in our modern context, there must always be a profit in that exchange.
The energy contained in what we produce has to be sufficient to provide for our immediate needs, plus an extra percentage to buy all the ‘extras’ we now look on as ‘essential’ to modern living.
That is the ‘extra stuff’ we buy and either burn or discard. Cars, TV’s Phones and so on.
That ‘extra’ is derived from mechanisation—the input of industry. And so increase in profit and ongoing sustainability can only come from mechanical (FF) input at an ever increasing rate.
It is a function of cheap surplus energy
That is the ‘upward’ flow of energy input. That ‘upward flow’ has provided the employment for the millions who make cars, TVs and phones that we don’t actually need for survival in basic terms. (food and shelter)
Without it, those levels of employment could not exist……but to us they have become essential, and until now have provided jobs for everyone.
So doing work can be reduced to burning fossil fuel. The faster we burn it, the more we earn in a collective sense and the more ‘stuff’ we come to possess. And of course to maintain lifetime employment we must throw stuff away. We can only do that because we still have surplus energy.
You can buy a phone for an hour’s work—probably much less. We throw away a third of the food we produce. That is unsustainable.
If you build stuff that isn’t thrown away, roads, windmills etc, then you can only employ someone during the period of construction. After that the builder must find a new mill to build. The builder might have ongoing employment, his labourers would not.
Obviously that has limits, you cannot throw a windmill or road away. Even the miller had full time employment only so long as grain was being harvested and processed.
This is why there used to be ‘hiring fairs’, where unskilled workers were taken on for planting and harvests but were laid off in the winter. There was no ‘surplus energy’ to provide unemployment benefits, social housing etc. They were the hungry months.
Ive expanded on it all here, for what it’s worth:
https://extranewsfeed.com/an-infinity-of-futility-819630ea935f
Excellent
Thanks for the amazing summary. As I read it I’m torn between appreciating much that is foreign and hitherto hard to understand, and thinking, “I know that!” Then there are little intervals that seem to hinge on nuances–where dysfunctional behaviors might not be impossible to avert, given sufficient social pressure. So I have a mixture of responses, and I don’t yet see the process for sorting them out. In other words, because a, b and c are true, I don’t see how that necessarily makes x, y and z true as well.
“But nature still cares only that we survive the present, and our hunter gatherer instinct concurs; in evolutionary terms, action on a threat that is not imminent is a still a waste of precious energy, the fact that we have a surplus is taken as confirmation that we need do nothing, because there will always be more. That is why we perceive the dangers of climate change, overpopulation and energy depletion and our other potential problems as being beyond our event horizon, so the majority of us obey primitive instincts and ignore them.”
When you say “we” that doesn’t include you or me. So it isn’t convincing to say that “we” believe these things. So re this particular paragraph, I want to see why individual psychology and social conditioning make absolutely no difference to anything.
we a living under the control of our genetic forces, so whatever is coming down the pike does apply to you and me.
As an individual you might have a choice of action—you can decide its too much to deal with, and top yourself…or you can hold up your hand and state that it doesn’t apply to you. Either way, nature will roll over you, and you get recycled to sustain another species.
As I said–nature cares only for those who survive the present, and we tacitly agree with that, by consuming as fast as possible, that which is available right now.
Nations demand infinite growth, and growth means burning fuel.
Nothing else delivers jobs/income at the rate we need to survive economically.
There might appear to be exceptions: The Norwegians have prudently squirrelled away their oil revenues against the time when it runs out, about $1trn I believe. But our current money-value is entirely oil-supported, so without the global pump of oilmoney–the Norwegian cash stash will be worth zilch. (As will yours and mine incidentally) because global trade will cease
If of course your genetic stock is tough/lucky/ruthless enough to survive whatever it is, then your genes will be passed on to improve the next wave of humankind.
If the catastrophe is too big, and none survive, then another species will develop to replace us—but they will not have to advantage of hydrocarbon fuels to mess things up like we did
“If the catastrophe is too big, and none survive, then another species will develop to replace us”
I hope this new species does not develop our level of self-awareness because life will be brutal (as it has always been, but maybe even worse in this new world, if the biosphere survives first that is)..best to not realize it like our other mammal cousins who have only surviving and passing down their genes as their concern (although they don’t even realize that, its just instincts driving them)…it will avoid a lot of despair..
“we a living under the control of our genetic forces, so whatever is coming down the pike does apply to you and me.”
Also, I’ve read, as largely proposed by Oswald Spengler, that we are in the decline and fall state of (western) civilization. And these states of civilization are irrevocable, and follow and iron-clad, predetermined pattern. But I’ve also seen it expressed that within that order, one or more unusual people–a Newton, say–can make some considerable difference, despite not changing the basic premise of the order. Assuming that, one could wonder why these genetic forces have to fall out without variation on any and every occasion.
“Either way, nature will roll over you, and you get recycled to sustain another species.
As I said–nature cares only for those who survive the present, and we tacitly agree with that, by consuming as fast as possible, that which is available right now.”
Nature will inevitably roll over me, while at the same time supporting me if I survive? Is it nature rolling over me or is it the collapse of conjoined cluster of systems, natural and human, that is rolling over me? Did nature alone make the ice caps melt and seas rise? And isn’t the entirely human economic order what is set to get us first?
And isn’t it the global capitalist economic system that has to consume as fast as possible? Or is that a human trait, affecting everyone, everywhere, at all times, in exactly the same way?
nature, aka genetic forces, caused the icecaps to melt, because it was our genetic forces that made us consume and burn everything that in turn caused the overheating sequence of events.
So the economic order and natural laws might be said to be swings on opposite ends of the same pendulum.
We built our economic order based on existing laws of physics.
you might say Newton made a difference–but to what end?
newton demonstrated laws, the rest of humankind made use of them, as did Faraday and Einstien. Those laws did not alter our destiny, maybe speeded it up quite a lot.
So demonstrating a law does not affect the outcome of those laws, merely lets us understand them properly.
Rather like a condemned man taking a law degree—he still gets hanged
In our system, A great emphasis is put on “knowing” and very little on “not knowing.” But if one has to know everything for sure (and Gail is exemplary for not doing that), you are starting at the hardest end of the epistemological struggle. It’s much easier to start out listing all the things you (we) don’t know. There should be no shame involved, for it displays a convincing sort of modesty.
In particular, Americans are “know it alls”. America is a culture based on the premise that if you don’t have infinite knowledge, infinite money, infinite power, and infinite life, you are a failure.
The reason America succeeded is simple: it had, and continues to have, some of the best resources on the planet. Married to an ideology of infinity, the outcome is irresistible, but will also decline rapidly.
Can anyone guess who said this?
‘A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure’
It was not an American
Can anyone guess who said this?
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”
Too easy, that witch Maggie!
Norm, I sort of agree with you and sort of don’t.
In prepping, there are these options thrown around, of either bugging in or bugging out. When the Archdruid, Orlov or Kunstler speaks of the age beyond FFs, they are always talking about individuals, homestading families or communities, or small organic villages. One, two, ten or 150-strong.
My education and my BAU profession makes me think about how to build a thriving community without FFs, of thousands of people. One man, one shotgun against the world, seems silly to me. The only viable strategy, and the only interesting one to me personaöly (untill we all die from radiation poisoning or virulent strains) is to build communities of thousands of people.
In most parts of the world the population density is so huge, that nothing can be done. There are simply too many people around.. roaming hordes of zombies after SHTF.. you know the drill..
But there still remains places where population density isn’t catastrophic. And I live in one of those places.
Why isn’t it possible to have a few thousand people community with private gardens, private chicken, rabbit coops, fermented wild vegetables, berries, mushrooms, community grains, community dairy farms, and community milling etc. etc. “Taxes” payed (currency of the realm) in fermented food jars, that can be used for communal protection and security programs and communal building programs, as well as being the “post SHTF community grain silos” for the lean years.
The energy is from sunlight. It requires lots of muscle work to make it happen. But I can’t see why it couldn’t happen.. trading upwards.. yes.. without cooperation everybody dies.. without teaching each other how to have/ build/ operate/ manage private gardens, private chicken, rabbit coops, fermented wild vegetables, berries, mushrooms, community grains, community dairy farms, and community milling.. everybody dies.. without large groups of men with some sort of ATVs and machine guns and polycarbonate body armor everybody dies.. thats “trading upwards” (isn’t it?).. full employment.. well, those who wont work at all, will starve and die, pretty fast.. and without FFs those who can not, or will not, do heavy physical labour 7 days a week, 12h a day, will eventually die.. but collecting a surplus of fermented food jars from every community member (who are capable of heavy physical labour) during growing season should be fully possible.. with only sunlight as the energy source..
I sort of understand and agree with you Norm. But sort of don’t.
It is not permitted by law to de-grid, probably not in Finland either.
Bartering food jars in any kind of scale is tax fraud.
Democracy will guarantee those not able, or considering themselves not able, to work, doesn’t have to.
But I share your optimistic view of the nordics being only reasonably overpopulated.
If instadoom it really is however many you can gather (preferably with guns) against the world.
If slowdooom I see no reason we can’t reorganise. We are importing a lot of food now, not because we have to but because it is tastier and much cheaper.
In the early 1900s, Norway lost a lot of population because it essentially could not feed itself. Fossil fuels allow a great deal more food to be produced everywhere. My grandfather left Norway even though he was the oldest son, and was the one who was in line to inherit the farm. I don’t remember the exact number of his siblings–I think there were a total of 9 or 11 children. If very many families had this many children who lived, I can understand why there was a food problem.
I am guessing that the food numbers that everyone is quote are ones with today’s production methods. If we went back to historical methods, there would be a lot less food grown on land. Fish population is down, so historical methods would probably not yield very many at all.
The Famine of 1866–1868 was the last famine in Finland and Sweden, and the last major naturally caused famine in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_of_1866%E2%80%9368
See the historical populations of these countries https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d6918765e5a6868b8a80aaec79c50df9
Soil that is farmed using petro-chemical inputs — will support no crop once the outputs are stopped – without years of intensive rejuvenation involving organic inputs.
Organic inputs will be hard to come by considering nothing can be grown – and most if not all animals are killed and eaten.
Less than 1% of all farmland globally is farmed organically.
None of the above countries even registers on this chart — virtually all their food is grown using urea and pesticides:
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/agriculture3.png
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-have-the-most-organic-agricultural-land/ (note – most organic land in Australia is rubbish and supports sheep only)
Starvation awaits.
DJ,
I don’t believe in a slow decline or BAU-lite in any way. Its fast. Its furious. And its Ka-Boom! everywhere.
But that fact, does not change the fact that Sweden has something like 12 months of grains and 12 months of oil in storage. Or more. So does Finland and Norway. Finland has a food security over 100%, presently. In some cases over 110%. And THAT does not include whats naturally found in the forests, fields and lakes. Those included, the percentage in Finland is presently more like 220%. Sweden and Norway have less national food security, but it could ramped up pretty quickly. If Lantmännen in Sweden was bypassed..
And, surely, there are small problems of a few hundred million people coming over from central europe through Denmark and the bridges. And Finland has St. Petersburg to worry about. Severe radiation poisoning. Chaotic jet streams. Dying oceans. Etc. Etc. You know the drill.
But the real problem as I see it, is that most people don’t believe in a collapse. And those that do, don’t believe in communities of thousands of people working for a common goal. Like, basic survival..
DJ, I don’t believe for a minute EVERYBODY could be included. Because most people inside BAU are pampered babies. But because my BAU-job is business management of thousands of people, its so natural to me to think in terms of organizing thousands of people, to do things that have some.. chance of success.. I don’t have to know how everything works in minute detail. I just have to know how to get thousands of people cooperating, quickly, efficiently and to give coherent plans and sanction models for the lower level managers to work with.
DJ, Im just interested how Norman, who is one of the brightest thinkers alive today. Can not see any kind of chance, in organizing thousands of people post-BAU..
now i know why my ex best friend Elon wouldn’t sell me a ticket on his Mars bus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Pre-industrial_history
What I expect will happen – particularly in cold places where trees will be the only source of heat — is that when BAU blows — people will burn everything that they can get their hands on.
The 12 months of grain supply would actually be a bad thing — because if the govt were to use petrol reserves to deliver it to the people it would mean the forests would be completely decimated during that period.
The thing is…
One would assume people would continue to live in settlements taking advantage of the structures in place and detritus of BAU — so what happens is they start cutting the trees nearby – and soon you are having to haul trees from great distances…. (one would assume that all large pack sized animals will be killed and eaten – a cow would be more valuable than a black Rhino is today)… the problem quickly resembles the problem we have with oil right now….
From the get go most of the trees would be chopped as BAU ends… so very quickly these communities are needing to go beyond the limits to collect firewood. The people living in these areas will be weakened by hunger…. disease… violence…. and unfamiliarity with living in such harsh conditions
You might suggest picking up and moving further into the forest — but that is not feasible — if pre collapse man was not in the densely forested areas then there then there would be a reason for that — quite likely such areas are not conducive to food production…
So picking up and moving there and starting from scratch just won’t work — and in any event you’d have to pick up and move again as soon as you’d cut all the nearby trees down.
For those who think they could live off the land killing animals… the same problem crops up — all nearby game would be quickly hunted out — animals are not stupid – when they hear the rifles roar… they will get as far away as possible from the killing zone … hunting them would mean a very long trek …..
Era of Overexploitation (1850-1899)
The vast migratory herds of bison on the Great Plains were systematically slaughtered or died of cattle-borne diseases until only a few hundred individuals were left.
The passenger pigeon, whose numbers were once reckoned to be in the billions, became extinct in the wild. Both adults and young were harvested commercially. The last bird died in captivity in 1914.
Heron and egret populations were decimated by hunters shooting them in their breeding colonies for plumes for ladies hats.
The ranges of large predators such as grizzly bears, mountain lions, and wolves became greatly reduced. Mountain lions and wolves were virtually eliminated from eastern North America, as were grizzly bears from California.
White-tailed deer became extremely scarce in the eastern United States through a combination of habitat loss and over-hunting.
http://marinebio.org/oceans/conservation/moyle/ch2-2/
Note: this involved very few men – and relatively primitive firearms….
Van Kent,
Some very quick thoughts re your “thousands of people” proposal:
As you say, hordes of needy people would have access to your “area.”
This is why I believe security lies in growing your project; it must grow like BAU or, also, collapse. It’s one totalitarian vision against another, and I’m not sure there aren’t points where they come together. I see a need to secure the line of supplies either locally or through BAU, and so that is a prerequisite.
It’s encouraging that you already have, through your work, a fair assessment of how to bring your “community” together. I would lean toward it seeming “normal” and innocuous. The nail that sticks out tends to get pounded.
You need a sustainable source of energy–coal, landfill methane, distribution–or else there go those trees. But a shi.load of new trees can be planted now.
Again, back to culture; it needs to seem Finish(?)–traditional, MOL been done before, nothing too fanciful or new. “And we’re going to convert all ye surrounding heathen…” Just kidding.
And I recommend piggybacking on any everything you can. Opportunism big time!
The voice of experience, FWIW. 🙂
Guns are a limited source of security. Backup and emergencies. Better are ceremonies–like some tribes in New Guinea or Africa dressing up and beating drums and making faux war on their neighbors. It’s the terrorize the stuffing out of them using “spiritual” means approach. The Germans in WWII? used similar means–a scandalous commotion beating metal things and making noise that you could hear from miles away.
Your “new” community might actually have all the markings of being a living version of an old “Disneyland” one. (That is, it’s about real life and real history of a real place) but it has magnetic attraction and it is an economic means.) While there is still a declining BAU, it can draw tourist from oversea, or later from the next town over, or later trade and barter between neighborhoods.
The historic preservation buffs might like to help. Williamsburg, Virginia is better than Disneyland. But I believe there is a much better approach than Williamsburg. The core of Paris? Some place that looks the same as in the past, does many of the same things the same way, but is real at the same time.
It’s one monumental marketing and business challenge, but it sounds very interesting. It would require an life’s worth of effort and tons of help.
Norm.
I see what you mean about “nature,” but by the time I thought it out, It was too late to correct my post.
I guess I don’t see industrial civilization (or advanced capitalism) as a necessary end state. Let’s say that we are genetically disposed to gain status and pass down genes, wouldn’t we want to buy in to the winning meme? The women go for the best hunter, as you say, but it could be the best grower or whatever. In our time, it was the guy with the biggest car or house. The men go for the women with regular features, or that have the right color, or that resemble film stars. Among dark skinned people, the men go for lighter-skinned women. Very much these things because they confer status and power.
But through experience we may overcome adherence to some of these things and pursue status we consider more worthy. This ought to be easier to do when the old status symbols corrode. It can be cool to drive a smaller car, or just bike. Or cool to sport an Afro instead of straightened hair. So status is gained temporarily doing things that are cheaper and marginally more natural. In our propaganda-driven, inverted-totalitarian system, fashions that are like this are soon subverted by the need of BAU to grow, and also by the overwhelming influence unleashed by the supporting MSM.
This draconian cluster…. of an economic system I don’t exactly see as a natural force, but rather, a hyper psychological one. But you and others are saying that the energy to sustain this type of system is in decline. Some of us are looking around for a different kind of system.
What are the parameters for this different kind of system?
1) It would begin with a FW assessment of what cannot be done (and some of us think we are learning that here).
2) It would work for survival. (Survival of whom or what to be determined.)
3) It would follow the chain of supply for whatever it was envisaged should be done.
4) It would be based on planetary systems thinking.
5) It would require a high-enough level of planetary consensus and order. (If some say we are driven only to compete and consume, and if SHTF we would devour each other, and others say maybe not quite, we can’t have consensus there; it seems clear that we can’t change each other’s views on such things. But are there other avenues for consensus?)
6) A system run mostly on muscle power need not (or cannot) exclude industrial production, but it would have to shed many kinds of complexity, perhaps in favor of new kinds.
7) Our system might well be self-organizing. So it is vain to think that anything we do has direct, quid pro quo, physical bearing on the world. But since people can’t help changing the world regardless, they have the option of sitting back with happy or sad resignation, or else take the existentially insane path of trying to change things for the better. (IMO, effort far outweighs results–call it a religious belief.)
So if I figured it right, the above approach will be increasingly popular, since it is so broad and sets down so few specific. People, acting on those genetic impulses, will do whatever they do. But I see no harm in making suggestions in case anyone finds them useful.
Numerous points to cover there. But as you say, one can only sow ideas in the hope that some take root. Ultimately there is nothing else to do. We all have our own ideas on these problems. All I can do is write stuff based on facts as they stand, I try to avoid conjecture.
**********
Whether they admit it or not, and whether they want kids or not, women always seek out the best provider, within their prevailing circumstances. This is why you see a bimbo on the arm of an 80 year old billionaire…(but i LOVE him!!!) If she’s still married to him when he has his final heart attack—she loves him even more, and wears a black coat over her party dress at his funeral.
*********
But on a more serious note, we can only imagine industry on the level we have now. I don’t see how industry could exist in a muscle based economy. Industry to most people means jobs—commuting—transport—wages. Outside OFW, and a few other places, very few can think otherwise. This is why there is endless argument about transport methods, as if that is the solution to our imminent problems.
Muscles function directly and specifically on food intake, so if food itself is muscle-produced, and goods are muscle produced, then you have an inbuilt limit to the production of anything in cheap quantity. No one can work beyond their calorie intake.
Which describes global economics up to mid 18th c or thereabouts, when the viable steam engine was invented and multiplied muscle power x 100 or more. That is why we have cheap ‘stuff’.
We have become used to cheap “stuff”, being easily available. We will not willingly surrender that notion. Instead it will be removed from us forcefully. It will not be a pleasant transition.
Nothing of any consequence (work durable) can be made without heat, and that means, (in a post BAU environment) charcoal and a blacksmith. Without metal use, we are back in the stone age, where flint is the sharpest knife in the block.
(try to imagine living without a sharp edge being available. Our existence is as basic as that)
If you want metal, even at the simplest usage level it has to be extracted from the earth, or recycled. It must always be re- heated to melting point. To get heat post BAU we must burn trees. We have nothing else. This is the rule whether complexity or simplicity is involved.
There is no “alternative system” The laws of physics do not allow it, certainly not in a post BAU environment.
********
Then we move on to community living itself
Democracy, as I’ve pointed out before, has existed only in parallel with collective prosperity, aka the industrial revolution.
Before that, humankind lived under totalitarian regimes of one sort of another. Some benevolent, most grim. Poverty was normality, wealth was exclusive.
Think about our current trend of exec pay being vastly in excess of the average worker: This says we are headed back in that direction. Wealth has always been measured by access to and use of resources.
Communities supported a lord of some kind, who exerted the power of life and death. He needed them as his energy resource, they needed him as protector against outside aggressors.
It was an unpleasant system that evolved over millennia, usually through right of conquest. It sort of worked, within the parameters of accepted normality.
Downsizers (Heinberg et al) tend to ignore politics and human nature, as if we will somehow revert to a benign straw chewing peasantry post collapse and start being nice to each other. But as democracy vanishes, dictatorships will replace it, Dictators are universally unpleasant people.
Again, doubters should look at the rise in poverty being matched by a rise in fascist ideologies right now. Non-thinkers believe fascist certainties, that others are responsible for all that’s wrong etc. Get rid of them and all will be well. (does that sound familiar?)
The USA itself was built and held together by the energy output of fossil fuels. Without it, the nation must collapse economically, leading to civil disorder. This will bring martial law and dictatorship very quickly. (to restore law and order of course)
The mechanism to create a theo-fascist dictatorship is already in place. If it offers salvation (aka BAU), the majority will welcome it, ignoring the lessons of history.
Unlikely? 46% of Americans believe the world is 10000 years old. With that level of gullibility anything is believable.
Now prove me wrong…please!
Norman, fantastic post as always!!!! I have a question for you (which I have been thinking about for years since I have been following you since “Your Medieval Future” blog days circa 2011,2012 I believe…my question is: How did you acquire all this knowledge???
lol
a lifetime of infinite curiousity kicked it all off i suppose (on just about any subject)–i have no academic degrees or whatever. (my profession was writer/artist/designer in technical fields..i sort of visualised stuff in my head in 3d etc. then drew it and wrote about it at the same time.)
then 10 years ago i figured something was badly wrong with our ongoing ”system”, (after a long time of dismissing “doubts” as being nonsense) so i began to focus on that, which neatly coincided with the availability of internet research, then i began to pull all the threads together. Now I kind of see pictures of what’s going on, and write it down.
Which i know sounds really weird.
Norm, prove you wrong.. not possible..
But to refine some points of yours, perhaps possible..
Year 1 post-BAU will be a thing of pure nightmares. BUT there still remains the fact that there ARE storages of oil and grain in most countries. Storaged energy.
Year 2-3 it will be even more horrible than year 1. BUT tools, equipment, raw materials.. stuff.. will be around.. Storaged energy.
Year 4-5 hardly anyone alive anymore.. BUT if the opportunity of doing things better than before is seized, then the very few survivors could have better tools, better equipment, better knowhow, better techniques at their use, then ever before. Storaged energy.
Year ??-??, if we could do the Norwegian vault for human knowledge and precious seeds thingy.. maybe, just maybe, the last of us could have knowhow, techinques, seeds, plants and domesticated animal breeds at their diaposal, better than at any point in previous human history. Again storaged energy.
You are right in the overall conclusion, I think. But Im not sure you take in to account what can be done for a short while with the storaged energy. Or longer term with intergenerational infrastructure and best practises, techniques and knowhow. In the long run its sunlight, woods, windmills, water mills and geothermal that decide on the structure of the human community. Yes.
And as for the dictatorships.. its like with the organic farming.. I have never seen an organic farm using all techniques possible. Therefore it would be nice to think that when push comes to shove, we use all of our knowhow in dictatorships too (propaganda, covert operations, open shows of physical force, ideology and future common goals), and not just some brute rudimentary form of it.
your points about time frame make sense,
but i deliberately avoided that because it will tip for different people at different times in different places for apparently different reasons. One can only guess there.
on the last one they won’t be different but people will convince themselves they are. No one will really know when their year one of post BAU is. That’s the denial problem.
Right now the people who live in the middle east are blaming we infidels for their misfortunes, true—but their lifestyle depends on western industry and innovation–they can’t step back any more than we can.
But they eagerly grabbed and used what we offered—ie infinite oil prosperity, though there must be some people there who are under no illusions as to what will happen when the oilwells dry up.
They are already living under dictatorships, so they are well ahead of us in that respect.
As their tipping accelerates, those dictators will deny more and grab more, seeking to stash even more cash in (say) London property, not realising that London property is itself entirely dependent on global oilflow. As is of course Riyadh property….property carries that certainty that if you build/buy a $100m property, that remains its value forever, and is effectively “ready money” whereas in fact it is only embodied energy, locked up forever, sustained by still more money that has to be constantly pumped into it to keep it viable.
The people of Syria are well past their BAU point—hard to see how they can return to ”normality” whatever that was—but by the same token the 40m on food aid and ??000s of homeless in the USA and elsewhere face similar difficulties–for them BAU is over too. Without FF input to create a prosperous “upward trading” environment, can anyone see their circumstance changing, anymore than the Syrians? (for instance).
Maybe we should bear in mind that it was Adolf Hit-ler who ended the depression of the 30s, not FDr’s new deal.
Now there was a Ponzi scheme to end all Ponzi schemes, and Adolf didn’t even know he had one going
Wow that’s amazing Norm…for although I have a pretty good grasp of the predicament we are in after many years of reading, it’s because of people like yourself, Gail and others who have already done the heavy lifting of pulling the threads together…so I am very thankful to all of you for that…although knowing all this is not pleasant stuff, I still prefer to know than all these zombies I am surrounded by, which is pretty much every human being I interact with every day no matter what their level of education or social standing 🙂
Norman, your posts are excellent, lack of degrees is clearly not lack of study and understanding.
lol–thanks
If my old headmaster wasn’t dead, I would pass on your comment—he used to go ape at me on a regular basis
Thanks a lot, Van Kent, for the reference I inquired about!
“But on a more serious note, we can only imagine industry on the level we have now. I don’t see how industry could exist in a muscle based economy. Industry to most people means jobs—commuting—transport—wages. Outside OFW, and a few other places, very few can think otherwise. This is why there is endless argument about transport methods, as if that is the solution to our imminent problems.”
This difference in views seems to be an outcome, not entirely of human nature, but mostly of differences in social programming combined with differences in psychological make-up. So, mostly how the society is organized–who benefits, what energy sources underlie it, what psychological proclivities excel or don’t under whatever social system there is. Or maybe it’s God’s will that some should see so much more clearly than others. 🙂
Actually, somebody–Norm?–posted an article explaining how genes for capitalism were possibly passed on over centuries originating from certain social (land-based) arrangements dating from the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link. I hope somebody reading this can help with identifying the source.
I don’t think it was me
but certainly the Rothchilds would bear that out
But by the same token any group of people put under extreme life threatening stress will pass on those survival genes to those of their group who survive through some aspect of cleverness or physical strength.
Thus if a certain group are persecuted for centuries, only the cleverest survive…they then pass on that instinct for survival through each generation, particularly in persecution is constantly repeated.
You can repeat the same selection process by putting 10m people into slaveships, and working them to death in plantations Those who survive and reproduce become supreme athletes after several generations.
You couldnt deliberately set out to do that, as you could with racehorses for example. but it’s the same process.
The 20 Most Racist Sports Statements of the Past 25 Years
Quote: “The black is a better athlete to begin with because he’s been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he’s bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade…the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.” Jimmy the Greek
http://au.complex.com/sports/2013/10/racist-sports-statements-25-years/jimmy-the-greek-says-black-people-are-better-athle
I am not sure why that would be considered racist… If I were the love child of Michael Jordan and Venus Williams … and someone made a snide comment – well Fast Eddy is the best hockey player in the world because of breeding…. I’d take that as a compliment
i could have included the kenyan/somalian ethnic type, who through generations of high altitude hunting running is best equipped to be a running athlete in the modern olympic games—as is Usain Bolt now. (a Somalian–long lean bodied)
I could have included myself, after generations of coalminer ancestors, i feel pefectly safe and relaxed down a mine, whereas many people don’t–that may be due to breeding, or not
or that those with northern fair skins tend to get skin cancer when exposed to equatorial sun instensity whereas black people don’t
My hypothesis fits numerous situations for many ethnic types and situations
Opinion: I great part of why we seem screwed lies in how we regard children and do education. Under industrial civilization of the past hundred years or more, kids are cordoned off, grouped together by age and indoctrinated in the vision for running the industrial system. TPTB undoubtedly wouldn’t see the need to continue with that–thus, perhaps, the drive to dismantle public education and privatize it so as to benefit a certain economic class. Meanwhile, sentimental memes on the left get in the way of seeing how it (the socially concerned) can benefit by the disappearing resources of the education system. Kids should not be exploited, and other similar shovel fulls of BS. But schools still have tons of socially-useful resources: buildings, parent groups, volunteers, land, books, computers, and (most of all) TIME that the general public lack. School is where models of resilience could be developed.
hard to know what to do with kids. Every one is different
100 years ago, my father’s era, kids were taught to read and write in a basic sense, for 2 purposes—factory fodder or cannon fodder
100 years before that they were sent up chimneys or down coalmines from the age of 10
In my own era, caning for laziness was normal (I know)—and the last words my headmaster said to me were: “promise me you will continue to write”
We parted on good terms,
But kids can get messed up one way or another—i guess i was lucky not to be—though that’s probably a matter of opinion
It was Keith
Genetically Capitalist? The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the Formation of Modern Preferences
https://www.google.fi/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%2520Genes.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjk6LLs8pfTAhUjEpoKHYyKB-MQFggcMAA&usg=AFQjCNHx302eyllMjdWiKGq7dnB8FcIc_w
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The truck thing is weird. 4th truck plowing into a crowd? Total lack of creativity…
While I can see the attraction of plowing a vehicle into a crowd (as an act of war)… if I were in their shoes I think I’d be more of a fire and brimstone guy…. a forest here… a building there… difficult to get caught… vehicle into crowd… guaranteed to get caught….
Just thinking … since the US has its attack dog ISIS or ISIL or whatever they call it… which they direct to commit atrocities…
How difficult is it to imagine the Russians having their own version of this …. and have it wreak havoc with acts acts NATO nations?
Tit for Tat Terrorism (TTT)
This could get really interesting…. http://www.strifetravel.com could have a BIG year ahead!
Oh, it was the u.s.
Remember Trump talking about this very Friday, two months ago..
He just got mixed up in coming and ongoing operations..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/19/trump-refers-non-existent-refugee-incident-sweden-rally/
Whatever it takes….. I guess?
TTT great phrase. I am always surprised at how stupid/ineffective the terrorists are. As you say there are any number of more impactful methods.
In Portugal the economy is floating on a tourist wave and everybody is happy like rabbits in a field of carrots, believing that bad days are behind and prosperity is just around the corner. The future will be so bright that sunglasses will be mandatory for everyone! ) Fifteen years ago my city, Oporto, was a decrepit placey, visited by some few thousand tourists, in August only. Last year it received almost 6 million. Long live Easy Jet & Ryanair! And Lisbon is now a veritable freak parade of guys and gals from northern europe. It’s really a Rio carnival all year round.
In 2016 the price of houses skyrocketed, again, increasing 12.7% in Lisbon and 5.3% in Oporto. The locals can’t afford those prices and have to move to perifery. But many people are making good money renting their places to tourists.
Well, i suppose we should be grateful to Nato, for having bombed or destabiized some of our Islamic competitors – Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia.
Pity this boom will not last… But about that nobody apparently has a clue. The level of wishful thinking here is truly awesome. Nice!
We seem to have a lot of areas of the world that are living in a mini-boom right now. I just read today that there was a big increase in borrowing in Emerging Markets, in US dollar denominated debt, because commodity prices are (at least temporarily) up, helping these economies.
I am not really complaining; this situation is better than the opposite, which is commodity prices crashing some more, and many borrowers defaulting on loans. But even at these prices, oil companies are not doing well. Neither are many other companies. Things just look “less bad” than they were previously.
Just saw Steve Cutts post something on FB (I follow him) and reminded me of this great video he did in 2012….Man is soooooooooooo special…
This one too is great and it’s also how I plan to check out when BAU fails in the not too distant future (NOT decades, that is completely and utterly delusional to think that)..it’s short and painless!!!
By the way when you look at his life scroll by him while he falls and you see him doing his job year after year, it reminds me of what Norman Pagett has said many times…all we have been doing these past few decades is doing each other’s laundry…a completely pointless economy with no goal whatsoever (don’t get me wrong I have and am enjoying BAU, but I realize it’s all been a big sinister joke that has destroyed a biosphere probably permanently that has been 4.5 billion years in the making…destroyed in 200 short years…that completely boggles my mind)
We were well on the way to trashing the world, before the last 200 years. Human’s control of fire has given us enough power that we could wipe out whole species, even back in hunter-gather days. Those who think we can solve our problems using “sustainability” solutions, don’t realize that our problem is not a 200 year problem.
I agree Gail we have been trashing the planet since we figured out how to control fire…but we would never have completely destroyed the biosphere without FFs….our numbers would have held steady at 1B…there checks and balances…FFs really enabled us to let loose completely…so yes we have been trashing it for 200k….but to completely destroy the biosphere, I don’t see how that could have happened without FFs and the development of IC…it would have been impossible to get over the 1B hump..
I have to add though that with FFs being present in the ground, it was just a question of time before we got to it…so yes we were dead in the water when we finally learned to control fire…with that we were able to “artificially grow our numbers”…the human for example that should have been killed by a predator survived because he pushed him away with fire…then moving to places out of our habitat where we would never had made it..our brains getting bigger since we cooked our food…being able to transform resources..etc…it was slow at the beginning, gathered some speed with the advent of agriculture and went in to overdrive with FFs….and now we stand at the very top of Seneca’s cliff!!!
I’m afraid this is not completely correct, since forests were being decimated well before full scale FF economy got online. Namely, used for lumber (ship, houses, ..) and charcoal, not mentioning the pastures and farm land cleansing. There was massive explosion of deforestation going on in 16-18th centuries already..
If we had not worked out the coal thing…. deforestation would have caused a massive die-back in the human population — forcing us back to a primitive existence… most humans would have perished… but some would have lived on.
But now the overshoot is so massive — and the radiation from spent fuel ponds such a huge problem — that even those who are living a primitive existence (and by primitive I do not mean Justin Bieber – although he is quite primitive) are likely to be wiped out.
Sure okay I know that, but then when all this would have been done, there would be regional die-offs like Easter Island and the Biosphere would recuperate…the point I’m trying to make is that without FFs we could not have completely destroyed the biosphere like we very probably have done with FFs…..
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FF very bad — but very good — me like FF — FF me live large — too bad run out already — me want live 20 more years large —- doan care what happen after me gone — too bad them — boo hoo — me feel sad…. no live 20 more years — boo hoo — no cake for me soon — boo hoo.
“me want live 20 more years large”
I so would have liked that as well FE…..but like that great song from 1986 (when as a 15 year-old I still had my whole life to look forward to) says:
All good, although this way of phrasing would be better: “Me waan live 20 more years.” The curious ape couldn’t resist the wonders of FF, but there’s no going back. Ever forward. And I’m not being sarcastic.
@Gail
i can’t see that.
before the industrial revolution, humankind functioned on muscle power alone—that meant that we could not exceed our own carrying capacity—at best a cartload pulled by horse muscle.
this is why battle might only last a day, but ‘wars’ might be said to go on for years. It could take months to recoup fighting strength after a single battle.
an army could not carry sufficient resources to sustain actual fighting for very long. Army supplies were still in horse-carts
now wars are industrialised, and go on almost indefinitely, or as long as energy resources remain available.
same with farming. we couldnt plough very deeply, or for very long. The original concept of land area was that which could be ploughed by an ox team in half a day.
with the advent of the powered plough, humankind began what was effectively ‘soil mining’
if there was a drought, we did not have the means to tap aquifers.
If there was a famine somewhere, we did not have the means to ship food great distances—people just died.
As posted above, you are missing the phase shortly before industrialization proper.
Lumber and food was traveling great distances on systems of water canals, lakes, and rivers in enormous quantities, e.g. France-(Rhine)-CH-Bavaria-Austria, similarly ~Benelux/low countries, and to some degree also the Baltic, great river systems in European parts of Russia etc..
granted, there were canals shifting basic material, food and so on—but where the waterways were artificial, as opposed to rivers and lakes, these were dug by human muscle, and were adjacent to the sources of materials.
Where rivers were used, boats had to be muscle-hauled upstream, easy river traffic could only be one way
i had a canal at the bottom of my garden, opened in 1780, closed by 1810, the sources that made it viable ran out, so it closed, but that was after the industrial revolution got going, though it was still powered by horse muscle, and dug by man muscle. Even now, I can go down there and look at what remains and be awestruck at the enterprise of those old guys who made it happen, just to shift coal and iron.
They were all over the UK, as was traffic on the major rivers
Well I hope you live each day until you don’t!
It is kind of a paradox that if humans had not destroyed the biosphere then we wouldn’t sit here sharing delightful comments about how stupid humans are.
RE: Well I hope you live each day until you don’t! = You bet I do..in the great words of Mark Twain: “Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”
RE: It is kind of a paradox that if humans had not destroyed the biosphere then we wouldn’t sit here sharing delightful comments about how stupid humans are. = Yep I fully am aware of that paradox lolll
I really admire your choice of the leap from the tall building — there are no tall buildings anywhere near where I am — however there are some fabulous cliffs to consider near the beach shack…
There are some excellent big boulders at the bottom that could serve as targets….
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/AKX1EJ/highway-and-cliffs-at-irimahuwheri-bay-perpendicular-point-paparoa-AKX1EJ.jpg
Man represents the culmination of a very long series of higher concentrations of energy. There seems to be a plan behind what we are seeing, even if what we are seeing seems pretty awful. The whole system is geared toward ever-higher concentrations of energy. Humans, and our economies, are up at the top of the system. We have a physics problem that is hard to fight.
Yep, the theory of “global terraforming” through humanoid as agent’s forcing on the environment.. is sub branch of the overall direction you have suggested several times and pictured in that graph.
It’s just a couple of days since I read about rumours that Trump would be impeached for treason, because of his supposed links to Russia. Next thing we know, he’s attacked Syria and is cuddling up to the military-industrial complex. Exactly what he said he wouldn’t do. And any supposed love affair with Russia is now off. So, Trump is off the hook now. He won’t be totaled like JFK. Or am I being too cynical? 😉
Increasingly agitated alt-right and the fly over country used cynically as a mere hay elevator to get him the POTUS level, so now with towing TPTB line his progeny can be solidified in the upper echelons of power, not golf course, tv personality, casino “lowlife” type category anymore.. Will it last for ever, nope. But at least positioning for next few decades of the declining US with neofeudal perspective (realistic or not) for long term under FUSA – post collapse environment..
If what most of us believe here is anywhere close to true, that scenarion will not unfold. Too late for that.
Probably true, but he and the current circumstances are different enough that I wouldn’t bet on anything.
Genesis 1:28-29
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
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Well, I guess we did pretty much did consume everything mentioned. Now what?
This cretinous Biblical text has been cited recently by the Polish Environment Minister (ie Minister for Destruction of same) in allowing Poles to fell ancient forest – and any other woodland – to their hearts content.
The last primeval forest in Europe is getting the chop. And ‘developers’ are holding parties.
This he calls ‘fulfilling our duty to subdue the Earth. ‘
It has to be done: God demands it! Capitalism and brain-dead Catholicism, a delightful combination!
Sustainability doctrines are just as misguided, so I don’t think any one group has an edge in this regard.
Biblical texts can make perfect sense as documentation of the stories ancient people told their children. Few people have thought through whether it makes any sense at all to apply statements from them to situations today.
Gail
I agree. ‘Sustainability’ doctrines are not true, of course, in the very long term. But then in the long term, nothing is true or applicable, or even worth doing or thinking about.
But allowing our minds to be ruled by the naive creation myths of primitive, and very savage, barbarian tribes like the ancient inhabitants of Palestine is a route to destruction in the very short term indeed.
Well, the game is most certainly up, as ecological destruction crescendos, and all we can do is try to live without hate and with pure hearts, and the maximum of sane self-knowledge, which is the state in which one should wish to die.
However, one can only feel scorn for such self-satisfied, pious, cretins as this minister (perhaps only the spokesperson as it were for our basic animal instincts to degrades energy gradients as Megacancer James would say, but still…..)
Damn that ‘sacred book’! And damn the authors. Adherence to its precepts destroys intelligence.
‘Until ‘faith’ has become rejection, and rejection has become belief (‘real knowledge’) there will be no true believer (ie Knower’)! Rumi
I am sorry you feel this way. We are dealing with a collection of historical writings, documenting what people understood or believed or told as explanatory stories to their children in historical periods. Obviously, not everything that they said or believed makes any sense for us today.
One of the issues we are dealing with today is that people need some sort of “happy ending” or “purpose” to their lives. In recent years, we have been told a silly story about wind turbines and solar panels saving us. Also the central banks, and their ability to adjust interest rates can be instrumental in keeping the economy going forever. If we don’t have these answers, we need some sort of answer. The answers we have had for many, many years have come from the various religions of the world. People “made sense” out of their lives in one way or another. There is a huge variety of religions, even among those purporting to use the same collection of historical writings. Many people obtain meaning, not necessarily from the writings themselves, but from the whole religious system that includes interpretation of the writings together with many related traditions, such as singing songs and helping others.
I think it is very easy to “throw the baby out with the bath water.” What we are reading is not what we, from our perspective today, would prefer, but we need to move on, and determine which aspects are helpful, given the situation we are in today. Religions vary a great deal in what they emphasize. I know that my background is ELCA Lutheran. There is no particular belief that the Bible is literally true, or that particular verses can be drawn upon to give guidance in the way you quote. There really are many beneficial aspects to religions, or they would not have stayed around for as long as they have.
I knew it — solar panels and windmills are part of a new religion …. and Elon Musk is the new Jesus.
That old Jesus was getting rather tired…. beards are not really in with the Facebook crowd… in fact Jesus is considered L7 these days… decidedly uncool…
And then of course we have all those calls to genocide and mass murder….. this stuff does not go over with ‘snowflakes’…. who as we can see get hot and bothered about bathrooms for those who are unsure of themselves…. Nnoooooo calls for genocide don’t go down well with this crowd
So time to move on….. we need a new Jesus … one who ‘gets it’ …. who knows what a Like is… and a Tweet — who is hip — flies in a private jet… knows all the right people….
Elon is our man!
When he delivers heaven on earth people are going to point to this miracle as evidence of his super powers
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/03/28/20170404_TSLA_0.jpg
Far more evil has been done in the name of religion that good. There is no doubt about that.
The fact that people can get together on Sunday and sing a few songs about god … listen to a sermon… then head off to brunch with the family …
Well…. if you think about it ….. that is only made possible by the fact that our military hand in hand with our corporations is out there right this minute – and every minute — of every day…
Smashing in heads — pillaging — murdering — supporting and arming the most vile thugs because they agree to help us pillage…
So that we can go to that wonderful brunch with our families after the sermon …. so that we can be polite to each other while at the church …. so that we can call ourselves civilized…. oblivious to the fact that all of this has as its foundation a steaming heap of misery…
It’s not even a crock of shit…. it’s far worse than that….
I do not believe in evil (or good) but if one uses the definition of evil — as put forward by the religious types…
Our lives in the affluent west — are from the minute we are born — steeped in evil…. the very essence of our being is based on evil…. and the church is one of the main pillars that perpetuate all of this.
You might even say religion is a monstrosity.
Interesting article on Radio NZ (Pravda) today about Lutheranism; he believed women to be spiritually weaker than men, and hence more likely to fall under Lucifers spell. Witch hunts ensued…..Frederik Stjernfelt – Seven myths about Martin Luther…’he orchestrated public executions and savagely repressed ideas of tolerance and free speech, as well as authoring plans for the forcible removal of Jewish populations that matched those of Nazi Germany.’
Then this from Walter Scheidel about inequality.. ‘His latest work, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, suggests “only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources”, and that history has shown that peaceful policy reform alone will not cure growing inequality. He cites the end of the Roman Empire and the Cuban revolution as just two examples.’
Both could easily join the OFW reality panel!
Hmmm…
Self-organized systems behave strangely. We look at historical systems, through the lens of what “works” with today’s level of energy supplies. For example, we have available with our energy supplies birth control and refrigeration of bottled formula. Men are no longer needed as much for their physical strength, since machines can provide the physical strength much more cheaply. All of these changes make it possible for women to have considerable equality with men in work places and in other places.
Whether or not women were believed by some to be spiritually weaker doesn’t really matter. It is/was a function of how women were in general perceived at that time, and this in turn was related to energy/capita.
For what it is worth, Jesus is frequently depicted as giving far more attention to women than the culture of the day would have permitted. For example, Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: 1-42 would not have been permitted for many reasons. Women were simply considered property at that time. Wells were places where future wives were often met (sometimes through family representatives). The woman at the well would not have been a marriage candidate for Jesus, partly because she was a Samaritan (wrong religious sect, but one that believed in the same texts as the Jews), and partly because she had been married five times and was now living with a man who was not her husband. (It is likely that the woman’s problem was that she was infertile, and for this reason had been divorced by multiple husbands.)
I get tired of these very biased posts.
The church is not “one of the main pillars of evil.” There is not one church; there are many, many different religions around the world. In fact, there are very many different religions using the same ancient texts. Even within a given religion, say Islam, there are many different sets of beliefs, and ways of practicing the religion.
You talk about “the religious types.” Who are these “religious types”? Buddhist monks? Are Mormons “religious types”? Are those who attend Hindu temples “religious types”? Am I a “religious type”? Or have you picked out some particular people you have a prejudice against? Norway was far enough out of the way that it was never involved in crusades. In fact, the religious views of Rome got very diluted before they ever got as far as Norway. All of the religions of the world have become mixed and remixed, as people moved around and married others of different religions.
If I read material in church study classes, I am likely to read contemporary archaeology information, explaining how what is said in the Bible fits in context. No one even slightly suggests that every word is literally true, or has the slightest bearing on how we treat others today. “Thou shalt have no gods before me” seems to mean that other gods are perfectly fine. Just put them in a lower place. Joshua couldn’t possibly have marched around the walls of Jericho, because the walls had fallen down many years earlier. Forgiveness was a feature of other religions at the time the Bible was written, and seems to have been “picked up” by Christianity.
Haven’t you stopped to think that the Crusades, and many things that we would consider inappropriate today, are part of all economies being dissipative structures, and also the pressures of over-population? Whether one particular event happened or not, is neither here nor there. We are talking about what is needed going forward, not something that happened in the past.
I doubt that you have seriously studied the many religions around the world. I doubt that you have actually visited very many different types of houses of worship. You simply show your prejudice against “religious types” of all sorts.
In my close family relationships, there are two gay couples (both involving women). There have never been any problems with this, regardless of what some Old Testament readings seem to say. The church I attend offers gay marriages, and we have several gay couples attending the church.
I went to Catholic school up until grade 8. I have traveled extensively in the middle east and interacted with Muslims including those in the Brotherhood in Egypt.
I lived in the midst of one of the most extreme religions in the world in Bali — we had Hindu temples on our property that were blessed twice per day — we participated in endless ceremonies…
I have had plenty of interactions with Buddhists in Thailand Burma etc….
I’ve also watched the God Channel once in a hotel room in Macau — there was a greasy slime ball pumping an organ and a failed use car salesman extorting money from viewers…
My favourite interaction with religion was when I was on a plane filled with do-gooders from the US who were in Haiti ‘helping’ the people after the quake. I had a chat with one of them and asked what how they were helping – were they cleaning up – or perhaps bringing medical aid? Oh no — we gather children and teach them about Jesus and we give them Christian materials….
Ah — hang on — that was not my favouriate interaction — I dated a Muslim flight attendant from Malaysia for a year or so in Hong Kong —- that has to count as the best interaction ….
I’ve also got a cousin who is a Mennonite minister….
So I do have a fair bit of experience with world religions….
I suspect more than anyone else on FW.
‘Haven’t you stopped to think that the Crusades, and many things that we would consider inappropriate today, are part of all economies being dissipative structures, and also the pressures of over-population?’
The crusades are not inappropriate at all — we have The New and Improved Crusades — within the past decade or so we have Crusaded Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria into failed state status — we have killed, maimed and displaced many millions….
Make no mistake – religion is in play here — Good Christians vs the Evil Muslims….
And most Christians are on board with this Crusade. They voted Bush back in even though he invented WMD and used that to wipe out a major Muslim nation….
I didn’t notice any of the churches in America organizing protests against the lobbing of 50 cruise missiles into Syria the other day…. come to think of it — I cannot ever recall a church organizing a protest against a war…. at least nothing of any significance.
Nationalism – organized Religion — two sides of the same coin – both are tools to convince people to kill each other.
As you point out — this is inevitable due to population overshoots….
However I cannot imagine a religious leader ever saying ‘yes we need to go to war to kill some people because there are too many …. but they are quite happy to urge their followers to breed — power in numbers….
Religions – particularly those that flog immortality — are best sellers…. because people want happy endings…
That is not an argument for the existence of god. Far from it.
By that measure one could argue Elon Musk is god. Tesla is a religion.
Religions exists primarily to offer hope to a species that is aware of – and fears — death.
If that were not necessary then why not just come up with a book of ethics — then have people gather on Sunday — and have an hour of ethics lead by an ethics master? Then go off for brunch…
What is the point of worshiping and praying and donating money and all the other bells and whistles required by the major religions?
Get rid of all of this and you get rid of a lot of the extremism, politics and division that are associated with the major religions – particularly Islam and Christianity.
There are a lot of practical reasons for churches–at least some churches. Churches are one of the few places where women can be with other women (and a smaller number of men) and talk about issues. Churches are a place where quite a large number of women have directly or indirectly met their husbands. I know I met my husband in a church. Some of my siblings did as well. My parents met in a church-sponsored college. I attended the same church-sponsored college, (St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota). One study says that the life expectancies of women who attend church are longer than those who do not. http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/health/religion-lifespan-health/
The churches that are low key, and emphasize things like the following things, never make headlines:
Also, the many different versions of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a link to an Old Testament discussion of this point. http://wupj.org/Publications/Newsletter.asp?ContentID=420
Whenever “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is brought up,” it is in the context of this being an admonition against the practice of the day, which was to inflict much greater harm against a neighbor, than the neighbor had inflicted against the person.
Among my relatives, quite a significant number are pastors or religious writers. After I wrote the comment last night about the number of close relatives who are gay, I realized that I really have three gay couples as relatives, if I include cousins. The cousin who is gay is a pastor. I have a sister who writes religious books, Lois Tverberg. She admits that the target of her writings is primarily middle aged women.
I expect that there are really two different emphases that people can get from religions–one that appeals to aggressive men, and one that appeals to women, particularly. You have picked up the “Aggressive men” version.
I don’t doubt that the churches perform some useful functions… but there is no doubt – the church has been merrily on board with some of the worst atrocities in history – frequently giving their stamp of approval — or being complicit by not raising any meaningful protests.
As I have suggested if the main benefits of religion are teaching a way of life — then why not just have a book of ethics — and teach that on Sundays and in schools?
“You might even say religion is a monstrosity”
Actually, if you’ve read anything about religion, you might say that it is a necessity. Non-theism is quite modern, a sort of luxury brought about by our technological and scientific advances. The archeological records, together with anthropological studies, strongly suggest man evolved with religion. Ever since the genus homo evolved to manipulate symbols, the “complex symbol” of death had to be integrated into the psyche. The prospect of annihilation is unbearable to the human ego, so it *must* be denied in some way. Why else would primitive man bury the dead? For what other purpose? Meaning was born with the invention of symbols, it could be argued that it started dying with the advent of science. Richard Dawkins called the theory of evolution a “universal acid”, an idea that eats away at any pretense man has of being a “special” thing in the universe, that there could be a “purpose” to it all. Everyone has to believe in something, lest they go insane. For me it’s Quantum Immortality, that was my epiphany when I came face to face with man’s certain demise.
Thanks for your comment. I think that you are right about, “Non-theism is quite modern, a sort of luxury brought about by our technological and scientific advances.”
We now have Elon Musk. We have all kinds of technology. We have central banks that can manipulate interest rates. We can fix any problem ourselves.
One woman explained to me how her view of religion had changed, as she started to grow quite a bit of her food. She suddenly had huge awe of the process. She realized that there was something miraculous about the process. You have to have a Ph.D. not to see the miracle of all of the things that self-organize and grow. There is clearly some guiding force that has allowed the system to stay together as long as it has.
Religions don’t kill people, people do. I don’t think muslim terrorists gets their anger/motivation from their religion, of course they are angry when foreign entities (the west) invade their land and kill their people. Or when they have to flee their country and get treated like scum when they arrive in Europe.
Religions are just a part of what makes us human. To blame religion for killing done in it’s name is akin to blaming the male reproductive organ for all the rapes in the world.
LOL! I agree!
Wars are fought by people …. people are murdered by people … in the name of religion….
See the extensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
If you cut off the nuts of a rapist — would he continue to rape?
I think you’ve got this by the wrong end of the stick eddy. People will go to war in order to grab, power, territory or resources that are currently possessed by others. They know that going to war is an iffy proposition morally, so they seek to justify or excuse it under any pretext they can get away with. The other guy has weapons of mass destruction he could launch in 15 minutes or he gasses his own people, or think of the babies! are among modern secular reasons, but they believe in a different deity or they are burning down our fellow worshippers’ places of worship go down equally well in traditional religious societies. In such cases, religion is not the cause of the conflict but the rationalization employed to “bless” the enterprise.
As for rapists without nuts, apparently they can still do that if they’re so inclined, but it isn’t half as much fun.
Personally I can’t come to a rational unbiased view of religion because (a) I was born and raised in a religious subculture that I’ve since absconded from but it has helped mold me to a considerable extent: and (b) because after all this time and all htis asking various people and dictionaries, I still don’t have a clear idea of what “religion” in its most general sense is. I accept that the word goes back to the Latin for “binding back” and that religion is any observance or practice or ritual that binds us our fellow humans, to society, to the world and the universe, and that binds other things to each other in our minds. No creator necessary. But now I’m beginning to sound a bit like Yoda. 🙂
I don’t think any of us can have an unbiased view of religion, even Fast Eddy.
By the way, there are an awfully lot of former Catholics in ELCA Lutheran Churches. (Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, and other Lutheran synods can be quite different.) It keeps some parts the same, but changes a whole lot of the objectionable parts.
Back in 2009, Barb Rossing spoke about what the book of Revelation really means (not what the Baptists think!!) at my church, several years ago. She was at that time teaching at Luther Theological Seminary. After she talked, I said hello to her. She said she and her husband were great fans of my writing, at that time on The Oil Drum. She insisted that we find a congregation member to take a photo of the two of us together, so she should show her husband.
This is a link to the book Barbara Rossing wrote. https://www.amazon.com/Rapture-Exposed-Message-Hope-Revelation/dp/0813343143/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491941099&sr=8-1&keywords=barbara+rossing+and+the+rapture+exposed
The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation
as a dedicated stonecaster
i’ve been looking forward to the rapture—fair ruined my day there
Wars are of course almost exclusively over resources…
And as I have pointed out the way to rally humans to the cause — particularly in modern times when it is much more difficult to see how winning a war benefits us individually (in the past it was obvious – sorry son there is no more land for you and the new wife so you either kill those guys or you starve…)
…Is to use the tools of nationalism — or religion – or both (Islam is a good example as they are one and the same).
Cut off the nuts of a rapist and he does not commit rape.
Remove religion (and nationalism) from the war equation – and you have a much harder time getting people to kill each other.
Picture this: Ok Bob – we need you to go to Iraq and kill people. You might come back without a leg but we need you to do this.
But Mr – what do I get out of this war?
Well Bob – it means that the Iraqi oil flows into the world markets ensuring that the economy continues to function and blah blah blah.
But Mr – I am risking my life – what do I get out of this war?
Well Bob – we will pay you $2000 per month and if you lose your leg we pay for a peg leg
But Mr – I can make more than that pumping gas.
…..
But if you indoctrinate Bob using religion and nationalism — Bob would likely fight for half the 2k salary … (if his name is Bob Hassan and he hails from Bag-Dad — he fights for nothing more than a one way ticket on the non stop express train to heaven)
Which brings me back to the original premise — religion serves no useful purpose — we could very easily replace the ethical teachings with a simple Book of Ethics.
The only reason that cannot be done is because religion feeds people hopium — a Book of Ethics does not promise salvation — it does not promise after life.
That is why religions are popular – the ethics part of it is irrelevant.
Of course another reason why religion is so popular is that it is a useful tool to get people to Kill Kill Kill and Plunder Plunder Plunder and Rape Rape Rape….
The elites dig religion big time. They also dig flags and anthems and bravery awards.
For the few here that believe passionately in an after life — and that there is no way to survive the end of BAU — how would you feel if I could convince you that there is no afterlife?
Would you not feel the same as someone who suddenly was convinced that renewable energy was not going to save the day — or that Tesla was not the answer?
Of course you would feel exactly as they would — deep despair.
All of these phenomenon are the same — they promise salvation — just different flavours.
Xabier, I can understand your anger, but I guarantee that the Bible had nothing to do with the decision to fell this tract of primeval forest. The Minister concerned was simply attempting to use the local religious tradition as a justification for something that to most people seems nothing more than a wanton act of vandalism.
It was just a business decision taken in order to put money into somebody’s pockets. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims across south and east Asia have been doing much the same thing with their ancient forests ever since they found their was money in it. Indeed, one could argue that Poland’s backward Catholicism and later Communism, by restraining economic development somewhat, are the main factors that allowed the forest to survive this long.
By the way, this Wikipedia article on the forest is a good read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_Forest
The world economy is a dissipative structure. We can blame God, or the author of the oral tradition documented in Genesis, but the system would not have worked otherwise. At some point, the system can be expected to reach overshoot and collapse.
You say, “Now what?” Unfortunately, probably collapse. There wasn’t really a different option available.
“There wasn’t really a different option available..”
Hmm.. I wonder about that..
Democracy and market capitalism now seem as Francis Fukuyama put in in his end of history.. unavoidable.. but the u.s. is now at its core a fascist country.. But if WW II had gone a little differently. Then maybe the world would have been a lot more fascist a lot sooner..
Democracy is a bad thing in that you have to think about the well being of the general public. A dictatorship is easier in that you can do pretty much as you want, as long as you can defend yourself against coos. And doing as you like can include energy revolutions, protecting the environment, building carbon capture and storage, algae ethanol breweries, 99% circular economy, birth control policies etc. etc.
There were options, I think..
In Finland there are a few thousand fresh water lakes with fish. But man has fished the big fish. Only the small ones remain in the Finnish lakes. The problem is that the big fish produce huge amounts of baby fish. And the species stay healthier and normal sized. No dwarfism.
Meanwhile in Sweden you can only fish certain sized fish, but the large fish should be set free. So that they can produce the thousands of little fish with no dwarfism.
So, just saying, human societies CAN produce checks, balances and controls upon itself. That have a HUGE impact on the ecosystem. Or the human energyecosystem. Its just that democracy and free market capitalism were always Seneca Cliff, grow, overreach, collapse ideas. The ideas that could have put some real checks, balances and controls would have been the systems with virtually no individual freedoms.. fascists, dictatorships etc. Maybe thats why the u.s. is now at its core a fascist country, with no real freedoms.. the deep state must have a Francis Fukuyama of their own, who explained these things to the others.
The thing is, we don’t consider these “options” because we need to get well in to overshoot territory first before realizing that we have a problem. And then it is too late to fix things. We are destined to walk this path.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-06/these-eight-retailers-will-file-bankruptcy-next-according-fitch
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/03/27/store%20closures%20ytd.jpg
All I can say … is that when BAU goes down… and the raping and murder kicks off… I hope this women is still around…
She deserves to suffer….
According to early .ru mil reports, the success rate of missiles was ~63%*, as of now is publicly unknown whether it was just failure rate, or the difference is because of also striking some unannounced targets on other places in Syria.
What is most fascinating is the simultaneous posh – “family style” dinner with the Chinese in Florida, while this strike has been long time in execution. It’s very simple message for foreigners: treaties, diplomacy all jolly good, but don’t mess with our status of resources&money for nothing (aka BAU), because we kill kill kill kill kill, …
—
* if that’s more or less true failure rate that’s pathetic..
I’m a US Citizen, and I didn’t vote for Trump (I only vote for non-viable third party candidates, since voting is really just a farce anyhow). I think he’s one of the more despicable human beings out there- but on the bright side I really figured he would offer the best chance of tempering relations with Putin and delaying nuclear armageddon. Mustering all of the optimism in my body, from within the very depths of my soul, that’s the best I could come up with: maybe he wont poke the bear.
So much for that.
Well, from the freaking out reactions of the left-right establishment after the elections there was perhaps some 1/x element to that. But, I’m afraid it was mostly just voicing panic from not following the established pecking order, where a lesser faction unmasked stupidity of the more dominant faction of power, both separated only in nuances how to the govern (juice out) the world.
Now, more for the apparent dangers and poking the bears and pandas..
Bears and pandas, have past dependency path quite different, in the sense of cyclical up and down contracting nationalist empires. They are predominantly defense base throughout the history.
On the other hand, the US node of global power is classic linear growth pattern hefemon in historical sense. The early stages of some partial good will are long gone, now it’s only about open dishonesty, aggression, unpredictability. Bears and pandas now have only few minutes of reaction time, while facing completely untrustworthy “partner” to deal with.
In my book, the probabilities for limited nuclear exchange are relatively very high, and obviously this is still the optimistic scenario boundary.
Putin needs to hit back with something dramatic… otherwise he appears weak… and he will lose Syria
If only Assad had paid Trump a visit, brought along some antiques as tribute, offered him, respect and friendship, and called him “Godfather”, none of this unpleasantness needed to have happened.
https://youtu.be/i96VS_z8y7g
And then it was that horse situation.
As previewed earlier tonight, the United States fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria on Friday morning in retaliation for this week’s alleged chemical weapons attack against civilians by the Assad regime, U.S. officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump’s most dramatic military order since becoming president.
I wonder if people are able to make the connection here… CW attack >>>> America attacks…
WMD >>>> America attacks…
Of course there were no WMD in Iraq…. so the CIA is making damn sure there are WMD in Syria …. this is the second time they have gassed women and children to prove a point
The thing is…
If Assad was going to use CW — why would he target women and children — what would be the point?
Wouldn’t he target ISIS….
And why use CW – why not just use normal bombs… the Russians have provided him with plenty of those…
Let’s invite Don Draper in to explain…
Thank you Fast – and btw I am a big fan… big big fan… love how you smash those DelusiSTANIS
Thanks Don
So how did put this thing together…
Well Fast … dropping CW on ISIS does not resonate with the sheeple… you need innocents… and also as we know ISIS is on America’s side … so we don’t want to drop anything on them….
So we consulted with the CIA and it was decided to drop CW on women and children – that plays better with the sheeple….
That makes complete sense Don — kill women and children — blame it on Assad – then the public will be completely behind firing barrages of missiles into Syria which will also kill women and children
You got it Fast – isn’t this fun- I’ve got the best job in the world.
Sounds awesome Don.
Let’s leave our audience with a short documentary about your first PR stunt…
Oh yes Fast … this was a classic… hilarious stuff… we had a really good time with this one…. haha
Hey InAlaska…. aren’t you proud? Your baby killers are on the prowl — again!
Aired in December 1992 as part of CBC programme the fifth estate. The programme was directed by Martyn Gregory and produced by Neil Docherty.
It exposes the Citizens for a Free Kuwait campaign as public relations spin to gain public opinion support for the Gulf War. As well, it reveals that Nurse Nayirah was in fact Nijirah al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, coached by Hill & Knowlton to forge her infamous testimony about Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators, which was widely reported and repeated throughout the media.
And remember this?
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all…
America the diseased animal…. someone put a bullet in its head… put it out of its misery…
Mac10 makes some good points:
“The same President who blocked Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., has now launched an attack on Syria because he cares about “the babies”. Cynicism has reached a previously unimagined nauseating level. Nothing rallies the country around a flagging President better than a new war. Meanwhile, nothing bypasses Congress to get unbudgeted funding flowing than war as well.
“No one knows for certain who used chemical weapons in Syria. No one knows who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys”, although of course the lamestream media sure knows. Who would we trust to tell us – ISIS, Al Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the CIA? Unfortunately, no one operating in that region can be trusted.
“The entire world is being dragged towards World War III by an unhinged megalomaniac looking to start wars in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in North Korea, and in the South China Sea, all at the same time.
“I feel safer already.
“However, in the context of a collapsing empire, it all makes perfect sense. Empires obsess about war and domination until they collapse completely. The U.S. will be no different.”
http://ponziworld.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-keynesian-bombing-of-foreigners.html
Still all too personal, though: it’s not really about Trump, his personality or lack of it: this is the fulfilment of long-term US policy which nothing can alter, in just the same way that the old British Empire, 1700 to 1945, could not allow a European power to become dominant.
Of course, for much of that period we were growing and full of vigour, whereas the US is now old,deeply corrupt and degraded (as are all advanced polities now) in terms of both institutions and individuals.
Now, shall we have a nice discussion about gender and feelings? The most pressing topics of our time. 🙂
Just goes to show, that whatever radical feminazis say (I have a lunatic one in the family, my God!) nasty privileged old white women can beat old white males any day.
Her face is quite a study in evil. Must be related to the Roman and Russian noblewomen who held parties to the background music of slaves being beaten……
All spouse beaters need to be beaten to death and fed to the pigs …. particularly the women who beat their spouses… because a beaten man is pretty much defenseless….
This one is also very good.
Today is the day when Trump fans finally come to realise he will change nothing. Hilary Clinton wasn’t locked up (that one didn’t last long), there will be no wall, there will be no repeal of Obamacare and the MIC will not be reigned in from its foreign interventions.
Does anybody doubt now that what Fast Eddy says about the POTUS being nothing but a teleprompt reader for the deep state is true?
Trump To Obama In 2013: ‘DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA!’
“If it could change anything, you wouldn’t be allowed to vote.” Never were truer words spoken.
http://peakoil.com/geology/why-are-we-waiting-for-peak-oil
‘Why Are We Waiting (for Peak Oil)?’
“It was with this in mind that researchers at the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) attempted to use mathematical modelling to predict a date for a peak in global oil production1 (see Fig. 1). For the sake of simplicity we’ll consider their analysis, and some others, with a mid-range estimation of URR of 3000 Gb. For a realistic growth rate of 2% annually they made a prediction of a peak in 2037. In doing this they made an assumption of a reserves to production ratio of 10 (i.e. decline rate of 10% annually), which was based on US historical production experience.”
Maybe something financial will occur prior to peak, but according to this report peak oil will not occur until 2037. So don’t hold your breath.
“Maybe something financial will occur prior to peak, but according to this report peak oil will not occur until 2037.”
As Gail has been at pains to explain, there is a *financial limit* to the amount of oil we can extract. We are already breaching that limit now.
But it does look like the banks may be preparing to look the other way again and keep lines of credit open to the US shale industry:
“Twice a year, in April and in October, banks review the creditworthiness of oil and gas companies in what is known as a borrowing base redetermination. Ahead of this year’s spring review, both banks and U.S. oil companies are showing improved outlook for the industry, with cautious optimism seeping in through more oil and gas producers, oilfield services companies, lenders, and private equity firms…”
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Did-The-Banks-Just-Give-US-Shale-A-Carte-Blanche.html
This seems to be the way the system works. If the rules produce undesirable results, don’t enforce the rules. Look the other way.
I read not too long ago (perhaps you posted it), that in Japan, many loans for smaller companies are being rolled over indefinitely, because there is no way that they can be repaid.
No doubt all the CBs are doing this to some extent including the BOJ…. but it is the PBOC that leads the way:
This proposal entails nothing short of a nationalization on a grand scale, one which gives China’s impaired commercial banks – all of which are implicitly state controlled – the “equity keys” to the companies to which they have given secured loans, loans which are no longer performing because the underlying assets are clearly impaired, and where the cash flow generated can’t even cover the interest payments.
In effect, the PBOC is proposing the biggest debt-for-equity swap ever seen. What it also means is that since the secured lender, which is at the top of the capital structure will drop all the way down, it wipes out the existing equity and unsecured debt, and make the banks the new equity owners, and as such China’s commercial banks will no longer be entitled to interest payments or security collateral on their now-equity investment. Finally, while this move does free up loss reserves, it essentially strips banks of their security and asset protection which they enjoyed as secured lenders.
So why is China doing this? By equitizing trillions in bad loans, it frees up the corporate balance sheets to layer on fresh trillions in bad debt, the same debt that pushed these zombie companies into insolvency to begin with.
What this grand equitization does not do, is make the underlying business any more profitable or viable: after all the loans are bad because the companies no longer can generate even the required cash interest payment – as a result of China’s unprecedented excess capacity and low commodity prices which prevent corporate viability. It has little to do with their current balance sheet.
That, however, is irrelevant to the PBOC which is hoping that by taking this step it can magically eliminate trilliions in NPL from commercial bank balance sheets in what is not only the biggest equitization in history, but also the biggest diversion since David Copperfield made the statue of liberty disappear, as instead of keeping the bad loans on the asset side as NPLs, thus assuring at least some recoveries, the banks are crammed down and when the next NPL wave hits, their exposure will be fully wiped out as mere equity stakeholders.
So why are banks agreeing to this? Because they know that as quasi (and not so quasi) state-owned enterprises, China’s commercial banks are wards of the state and when the ultimate impairment wave hits and banks have to write down trillions in “equity investments”, Beijiing will promptly bail them out. Essentially, in one simple move, Beijing is about to “guarantee” trillions in insolvent Chinese debt.
In short, what the PBOC has proposed is the biggest “shadow nationalization” in history, one which will convert trillions in bad loans in insolvent enterprises into trillions in equity investments in the same enterprises, however without any new money actually coming in! Which means it will be up to new credit investors to prop up these failing businesses for a few more quarters before the reorganized equity also has to be wiped out.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-22/china-has-quietly-bailed-out-over-220-billion-bad-debt-past-2-months
A perpetual economic motion machine ….
(sarc)
Wow – that’s quite something! Desperate times…
This is an important article to remember. The article is from almost a year ago. I wonder how much China has ramped up its debt in the last year, using this mechanism.
Of course, the shale producers in the US have done something similar. When they found that debt was going to be a problem, the shifted to equity financing, adding many more shares of stock. It is interesting all of the games it is possible to play, shifting back and forth between debt and equity financing. Of course, without economic growth, neither one really works.
The statement I keep making is, “Overly simple models give misleading results.” The EIA model does not have the right variables in it. The issue is not running out. The issue is increasing wage disparity, so that many workers can no longer afford the output of the system.
Any analysis based on “running out” being the limit will say that we humans have oil for many, many years in the future. An analysis based on a financial collapse, related to too much wage disparity, and not enough young people being able to afford families, homes, and cars, will give much nearer timing. People who think that the problem will be high prices are likely badly mistaken; the problem seems to be low prices and collapse. We are already reaching three years since energy prices starting dropping. We are in a temporary lull.
In the animal kingdom, if food resources start falling too low, what happens is the return on the animal’s labor falls too low. The animal has to walk or fly or swim too far to get adequate nourishment. The situation with humans is similar. If resources fall too low, the problem is that wages fall too low, especially for non-elite workers. Collapse comes because too much of the population cannot afford the goods and services that they need to survive.
An excellent site for analysis: http://www.crashoil.blogspot.co.uk
In Spanish, but well worth the effort, as it covers political ramifications as well as energy. Doesn’t toe any party line and casts a sceptical eye on everything, just like Gail.
Latest article is on Algeria, another tottering fossil-fuel producer: source of much essential gas for Spain and France, now past peak; population went from 10m in the 1950’s to 40m now, in an arid land, despite 10% loss in war of independence against France; lots of underemployed young men; horrendous impending per capita water shortgage, and head of state in his 80’s with no obvious successor acceptable to all. In short, a powder keg!
This is an outstanding movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RxNxboos9s
I just wanted to write: this post scared the heck out of me.
The end of civilization is a somewhat daunting event
Sort of wondering if there is a spare Tomahawk with Mad Abreight (?) name on it; she ensured the fairly miserable end of days to quite a few infants IIRC? Nah …course not.
I am thinking this gas same as the last gas; most likely propaganda from deep state, with the ‘DNA’ far better hidden….
My guess from here, gloves coming off, misinformation and a Nuclear ‘test’ firing somewhere by Xmas. Whats the Dow doing anyway, and has Yellen priced this in?
Container has changed from staples for prepping to substances for abusing!
New website to raise funds for the Syrian invasion …
http://www.nameacruisemissile.com
For only $100 you can have your name inscribed on a cruise missile bound for a neighbourhood in Syria….
Or you can give the gift of death to a loved one … or friend… by putting their name on a missile …. we’ll even attach a ribbon FOC if you ACT NOW
Sample
http://content.indiainfoline.com/_media/iifl/img/article/2015-02/23/full/1424683279-5775.jpg
Kill Kill Kill!
Just watch as the MSM criticism of Big T suddenly drops down a level. He is finally getting with the program and the establishment will reward him with his ticket to the Golf course of his choice. Meet the new Boss, same as …..
Yep – the NYT will be hosting love-ins for Donald at their HQ…. he’ll be the new Reagan…
Greetings from Denialand, where we accept intellectually that we are finished but still enjoy bargaining with our fate. One way we do that is by constructing elaborate fantasies under which the fallout of what is coming is somehow limited.
In line with that, what do you think of the following geopolitical conspiracy theory. It doesn’t allow for the Jenga sticks of global trade or JIT or for cooling ponds, but it does cover a lot of material.
Please enjoy.
An Evil (but very welcome) Possible Plan of the Globalists
In this fantasy, the globalists’ goal for North America is massive depopulation and the application of a kind of Morgenthau Plan, turning the country into a very-low-population farm and quarry, as far as possible operated using automated and robotic equipment of the kind already used in mass agriculture and mining. And of course, large tracts of North America would also be allowed to return to wilderness, for the sake of the earth’s ecological health.
For the globalists,there are a number of advantages of this plan. Obviously it would wipe the slate of a lot of debt – with American national resource and properties being taken as collateral for what is “owed” internationally, but – and here is the really important part – crucially it would also remove the world’s biggest consumers of energy products in an era when energy products are becoming too expensive to extract.
At the same time, it will also allow the mining of energy products in Canada and Nicaragua (coal and oil sands) and the US and Mexico (shale oil and natural gas) – which require masses of natural gas and water to extract – to proceed at a much lower cost, with little of the product being consumed in the producing country. The model is imperial economics.
The imperial states in this new relationship will be China – whence US manufacturing has already been transferred – and Russia, which both have extensive oil and mining experience and the technological know-how and experience to operate a project of North American resource extraction from mining to shipping, and – once the US is leveled – the military to back it up, who knows, perhaps under a Security Council mandate. There would be no shortage of Quislings to help in implementing this scheme if needed.
The depopulation of North America would proceed via famine, disease, and civil war. The populations of North America cannot feed themselves, have been provoked to arm themselves to the teeth, have been put under constant social and economic stress, and have been very thoroughly prepared to fight race wars. But starvation would be key. After all, not one North American in 1000 can feed himself. I would be surprised if the process were not complete in three months. No doubt the entire show could be beamed around the world as grotesque propaganda and everyone in Denialand could watch it from the comfort of their loungerooms, as unaffected by these new American horrors as the currently are by a similar program in Yemen.
What would be the final numbers? That’s a tough one, but I will just say that there is no one North America who can’t be replaced by a Chinese. Only a sufficient headcount would be required to keep the machinery turning until the replacement staff arrived and could be trained for their positions.
Of course, this possible strategy might be risky for the globalists. Bringing down and reformatting North America could also bring down Asia. It would certainly shake it to the foundations. The keys are banking-credit and just-in-time delivery systems. They have their alternatives to SWIFT ready, the IMF, the SDR, and so on, but how independent has the Asian bloc made itself of the North American consumer, skills, technologies, and products?
We will see how this shakes out, but from the globalists’ perspective this plan of global retrenchment (by sacrificing North America) is a very sensible way of mitigating – at least in the medium term – the overpopulation-resource depletion path which humanity has been on for some time now and could be the stick-save that we in Denialand have been hoping and praying for.
Keep your fingers crossed!
wysinwyg -you are a comp lete, totally uni nformed id iot. Kurt follows closely behind. Read up a little, at least, so you don’t appear such a mo-ron.
Nice… I like it
OFW commentary: where everyday is April Fools day.
I am trying to work out if there is any difference between a MOREon… and a Fool… I think a MOREon is a more severe version of a Fool
Strange. I’m always right and FE is always wrong when it comes to predictions. I guess being able to talk a good instant doom game is what matters to you. Please join FE in the storage container. And, no turkey for you either.
You know that saying about poker ….. if you can’t see the sucker – you’re it.
Let’s take this a bit further — if you are at the table and you can’t tell who the MOREon is — even if after everyone at the table has told you that you are in fact – the MOREon…
Then you are the King of MOREons. The MOREon Emperor.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-06/us-launches-air-strike-syria-over-50-tomahawk-missiles-hit-syria
And … a quick browse through the sewer (otherwise know as the ZH comments section) and we see…. the bloom is off the rose… hahahaha
Donald = Obama = Bush = Clinton = Donald = Bush = Clinton = Obama
Vote up!
470
Vote down!
-17
new balz Apr 6, 2017 9:19 PM
F79K YOU TRUMP.
Vote up! 329
Vote down! -14
new MANvsMACHINE balz Apr 6, 2017 9:20 PM
F789 Trump
Vote up! 298
Vote down! -11
Donald is the new Hillary.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway
Is this very different from Seneca Cliff?
I always say that we are on a boat in the bath tub. It is slow and it gets faster and faster and suddenly, plop, it goes down the drain.
The “amount” of news coming in from all fronts (politics, economics, countries, etc) is getting more and more. 1 week of news is more than than 1 month’s of news 5 years ago.
Same analogy….
Another one…
Beavis and Butthead find a lottery ticket in the gutter
They win 10 million dollars
They spend their entire prize on a month long orgy of wine women and gambling in Vegas and Macau (including private jet round trip)
They move back into their parents basements.
CTG says: “The “amount” of news coming in from all fronts (politics, economics, countries, etc) is getting more and more. 1 week of news is more than than 1 month’s of news 5 years ago.”
Excellent point, news is coming on all fronts faster and faster:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stockholm-lorry-crash-latest-attack-sweden-people-city-centre-victim-pavement-truck-a7672521.html
https://info.publicintelligence.net/bilderberg/BilderbergConferenceReport2002.pdf this is a very interesting read for the commenters who wish to read up on the elders or our masters or whatever you want to call them it is a document of a secret meeting that select elders from various countries have been having since the early 50’s on a yearly basis where they freely discuss current matters amongst themselves without holding anything back this secret document is from 2002 but i must say after reading this document it shows you what the elders are all about in a nutshell they had no idea in 2002 what was coming so there is no world conspiracy amongst the elders to provide a solution to our finite world problems they really are ignorant of whats coming very soon the central banks are using all the tricks in their bag to keep the system going it really is on life support how long can this last ? your guess is as good as mine once again thanks for this wonderful website gail it is truly one of a kind.
Well its been done now:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-06/us-launches-air-strike-syria-over-50-tomahawk-missiles-hit-syria
Trump is officially part of the club now.
Good. Those people in Syria need help. No more ‘paralysis thru analysis’. They should take Assad out! At least that’s my opinion.
How would you like it if you were bombed by another country?
Yes – Assad is the devil.
Isn’t he the head of ISIS?
It’s about time they got back at him for 911. I never understood why they let the master mind of that heinous false flag go free.
Well he’s gonna get his now!
On another less sarcastic note — what does Putin do now?
Trump bombs a country to prove that he is a big man, and a friend of Israel. And he needs something to try to shore up his failing support.
America is a sick, sick nation, folks. I’ve been telling anybody who will listen, just as some here have tried to tell people about the reality of collapse.
Every nation state is sick…by definition.
Saw this posted on my FB News Feed just now…I think I barfed in my mouth a little bit….
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnJIJR3UIAA204j.jpg
You can be a politicians if you can come up with wild ideas like these.
I like the electric cars and battery storage and PayPal. And creating cheaper satellites launches is good, but this space tourism and going to Mars is a waste of talent and resources.
The Hyperloop may be good, but I suspect just building electric trains would have a much better payoff and there would be no question mark about if it will work.
Musk is tired of traffic and wants to start a company to dig tunnels under cities. But with our immigration, he is gonna have to be continually digging as those tunnels will be bumper to bumper after a while, just like new freeways.
‘I like the electric cars and battery storage’
Why do you like them?
Also – I asked the other day for someone to give me a single good reason why I should buy a Tesla instead of say a BMW petrol vehicle. Perhaps you could pitch me on the Tesla option
It’s really quite staggering that the propaganda and mind-conditioning system is projecting Elon Musk as the man to solve ALL our problems, and that this is being pushed energetically on children in school (while we, of course, are being treated like infants ourselves.)
The Soviet Union could not have done better: it’s Uncle Joe Stalin – he’d even pop up and fix your car if it broke down, with a cheery smile and a ‘No problem, Comrade!’ as he lit his pipe and waved you on your way.
Full-blown Totalitarianism, neither more nor less.
The majority of people are so historically ignorant -and have been kept so – that they can’t see this for what it is.
Of course, Elon is merely a front.
Whereas Uncle Joe could do you in with a wink and a nod. But the principle of Totalitarianism is there: everywhere, THE name and face, and ‘hope’ for the future in defiance of stark reality.
Elon musk is the false idol uttering prophecies, the chosen actor going through the sacred rituals, while the priests hide behind the scenes and pick up the offerings brought by devotees.
And of course, Elon gets his share of the takings.
The name Elon Musk has been well chosen; it defies categorisation as to race, class, religion, etc.
Ever met or even heard or read of an Elon, or a Musk? So rare a combination as to have no established profile.
People of a certain kind, created in large numbers by our education system, can project themselves onto the Elon image, and feel very pleased with themselves:
‘He’s young, cool, hopeful, clever and rich, cosmopolitan just like me,and will take us to another world now this sad old mud ball is nearly finished!’
We are witnessing one of the most brilliant propaganda creations, appropriate for late-stage industrial, mass, civilisation!
Right, that’s enough of that, I’m off to do some gardening on the mud ball. Stuff Mars…..
Reminds me a bit of Willy Wonka…
That’s excellent point, well articulated phenomenon, which was sort of present all the time. It has been worked on various stages/intensities. The early pre/after paypal years about just dotcom whizkid, continued with solarcity/pv, but the system PR propaganda went ballistic only after the TSLA explosion, when it all up-scaled in many billions.
I do like that he’s had his head hacked off an put onto a stake…
I wonder if that will happen when BAU goes down and he is exposed as a fake god
Life (and our future) is too short to complain. Remember, it is impossible to complain and be happy at the same time.
Hey FE, Is your ass jealous of the amount of sh*t that comes out of your mouth? LOL 😉
That was a joke BTW
I just sent this e-mail. I hope the good professor has a sense of humor.
Dear Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress;
I am sorry to bother you with this, but a person with whom I occasionally communicate referred me to you as an expert on the dangers of spent fuel rods. The person who I only know as “Fast Eddy” claims to know you, and also claims that this letter will be well received. While I am not so naive to actually believe him in regard to those claims, I saw no harm in checking his facts (and/or calling his bluff).
The controversy surrounds this statement that he attributes to you:
Dr. Dalnoki-Veress, “If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere”
Given that the statements are taken out of context, they can be misunderstood. In fact, my acquaintance believes that the two sentences mean that:
Fast Eddy, “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 … 4000 spent fuel ponds x 14,000 = 56,000,000 Hiroshima bombs.”
and when pressed, he doubles down,
Fast Eddy, “The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion.”
I get bored occasionally and visit the site where Fast Eddy posts (ourfiniteworld.com) and I have for a number of years tried to explain that:
1. Spent fuel rods cannot produce a nuclear explosion regardless of how they are stored.
2. While a spent fuel fire is no laughing matter, and may indeed contaminate an area of many square miles, such an event is nowhere close to an extinction level event.
3. If all of the spent fuel ponds on the planet caught fire at the same time, it would not be an extinction level event.
I’ve been trying to get Fast Eddy to educate himself so that he does not make embarrassing statements like the one above. Have you written a book on the subject? Or, can you recommend a good book on the subject by someone else? I would like to read such a textbook or even a popularized account about how spent fuel fires actually work.
Thank you for your time,
My real name
That is pretty funny.
I bet he’s going to pick up that email and spend his entire day wondering … ‘Fast Eddy…. hmmm.. Fast Eddy…. sounds familiar…. he knows me?….. hmmmm….. ah right he was the guy who sold my wife that lemon of a used Chev Impala…. then he refused to replace the engine when it burned up a week after we bought it…. I know that MutherF789er…. ‘
I bet he emails you back asking where he can find me…. feel free to tell him I am in NZ having a really really good time…..
Of course he won’t realize it because he probably thinks BAU is eternal — but he will get the last laugh when the cesium from 4000 ponds makes its way to NZ…. post BAU and all….
I am thinking he’s not going to answer your email — because he will think you are crazeeeee…..
If he doesn’t get back to you within a few days why don’t you ring him?
It might not be a direct line and he may have a gate keeper to keep crazeee people from bothering him….
So I suggest you buy one of those voice boxes like Stephen Hawking uses…. and tell his gate keeper that ‘it’s stephen hawking calling … may I speak to Ferenc’
Hilarious, yet inviting, thanks.
And given FE’s re-known attraction to all things Hungarian descent, it would be likely answered..
He may be too busy chasing hot Hungarian chicks to bother to answer….
OK. But could you help us understand how the many nuclear plants located by the sea–or I assume there are many–are likely to fare with sea level rise and increasingly severe natural disasters? What happened at Fukushima in this regard? I have read that nuclear contamination is widespread in the Pacific Ocean, reaching all the way to California (and possibly beyond).
Keep in mind — the Fukushima ponds were not involved in this …. if they had been Tokyo would have been evacuated…
Pintada likes to ignore this
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
Thanks to a lucky break detailed in a report released today by the U.S. National Academies, Japan dodged that bullet.
At Fukushima, the earthquake and tsunami cut power to pumps that circulated coolant through the reactor cores and cooled water in the spent fuel pools. The pump failure led to the core meltdowns. In the pools, found in all six of Fukushima’s reactor halls, radioactive decay gradually heated the water. Of preeminent concern were the pools in reactor Units 1 through 4: Those buildings had sustained heavy damage on 11 March and in subsequent days, when explosions occurred in Units 1, 3, and 4.
The “devil’s scenario” nearly played out in Unit 4, where the reactor was shut down for maintenance. The entire reactor core—all 548 assemblies—was in the spent fuel pool, and was hotter than fuel in the other pools.
When an explosion blew off Unit 4’s roof on 15 March, plant operators assumed the cause was hydrogen—and they feared it had come from fuel in the pool that had been exposed to air.
They could not confirm that, because the blast had destroyed instrumentation for monitoring the pool. (Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator, later suggested that the hydrogen that had exploded had come not from exposed spent fuel but from the melted reactor core in the adjacent Unit 3.) But the possibility that the fuel had been exposed was plausible and alarming enough for then-NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko on 16 March to urge more extensive evacuations than the Japanese government had advised—beyond a 20-kilometer radius from the plant.
Later that day, however, concerns abated after a helicopter overflight captured video of sunlight glinting off water in the spent fuel pool. In fact, the crisis was worsening: The pool’s water was boiling away because of the hot fuel. As the level fell perilously close to the top of the fuel assemblies, something “fortuitous” happened, Shepherd says. As part of routine maintenance, workers had flooded Unit 4’s reactor well, where the core normally sits. Separating the well and the spent fuel pool is a gate through which fuel assemblies are transferred. The gate allowed water from the reactor well to leak into the spent fuel pool, partially refilling it.
Without that leakage, the academy panel’s own modeling predicted that the tops of the fuel assemblies would have been exposed by early April; as the water continued to evaporate, the odds of the assemblies’ zirconium cladding catching fire would have skyrocketed. Only good fortune and makeshift measures to pump or spray water into all the spent fuel pools averted that disaster, the academy panel notes.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
‘When an explosion blew off Unit 4’s roof on 15 March, plant operators assumed the cause was hydrogen—and they feared it had come from fuel in the pool that had been exposed to air.’
I bet they had an ‘aw frukkk’ moment when they thought the pond itself had EXPLODED.
But ponds don’t explode right… they are not dangerous at all …. if the water boils off so what…. the air will keep them cool…. the above is obviously Fake News.
Verenc get back to you yet Pintada? Save yourself some time – he already answered your questions http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
thank you pintada this is definitely a question that needs to be asked and only to an expert we need clarity how can we know the truth of the matter when their are so many differing answers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xgNncFHAng
Stockman talking about debt ceiling of 20 billion coming due (actually 20.1), and that will mean no stimulus package or tax cuts that Trump wants. My opinion is the R’s as much as they have pretended to want to stay within the budget of incoming revenue will surprise everybody and raise the debt ceiling quite sizably, like by 10 trillion. They will claim it’s Obama’s fault but that’s nothing new as we can see from past performance by this new prez.
But the video is good if you like Stockman and there is a lot to agree with but I just figure he’s wrong about the R’s trying to hold to the debt ceiling. Not a chance, because if they did it’s like Stockman says, it will be a maelstrom of financial trouble.
As Gail has pointed out — debt must always be growing — otherwise we collapse.
This debt ceiling thing is a bunch of hee haw… posturing….. paying down the debt would be putting a bullet in BAU’s head
I think that’s trillions.
Yep, I recall these financial doomster “cottage industry” authors going well back to the ~mid 1980s, and perhaps even before (btw I know about Stockman’s former gov position – that’s separate issue). And they tend to IMMEDIATELY freak out all regularly from wide gamut of later proven can kicking exercises du jour, namely the debt ceiling, deficits, japan taking over, europe taking over, china taking over, unfunded pensions, stocks&bonds&derivative manias, oil running out, .. , and million of other stuff..
Well, the problem is it was always only partly realistic analysis taken out of much wider world complexities and with horrendous timing errors. I’m looking for some holistic system instead, more zoomed out macro view if you will. Gail and folks here seem to seek and navigate the path towards it best, although individual limitations (sometimes of very annoying scale/nature) apply as always but that’s to be expected..
What I find amusing about Stockman and Roberts and those would mock the CB policies…
Is it ok if I quote the bible here?
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34
It’s kinda like that — only a fair bit different….
The CB policies are all that stands between us and the abyss…. they are working day and night to keep the beast behind the curtain — the curtain was drawn back for a very brief moment when Lehman failed… and the CBs were terrifieds … and they agreed — we do whatever it takes — absolutely anything — to keep that Motherf789er behind that curtain for as long as possible. We kill babies if we have to …. we gas women and children….
Stockman is effectively saying — there is no beast — you guys are all crazy — can’t you see that you are wrecking civilization?
He does not once stop and think —- hmmmm…. do the CBs not see that their policies are destroying civilization — now why would they do such a thing?
What do they fear?
Up until around 2011 I read Stockman religiously — I was on board with his way of thinking. Bernanke was a FOOL! Corrupt! The devil even..
But then one day I woke up and thought hang on — the owners of the CBs are his boss – they are not stoopid — why would they be corrupt when they already own the world’s supply of money… why would they sh-t in their house?
So why are they doing this? What do they fear so much that is forcing them into these positions?
It reminds about the post 2008 crash situation, when Bernie the Champagne Lib charged epic rant at The Maestro during hearing grillings, and Alan G. answered “politely” in wording to him, yet with utter contempt tone like towards a teenage Cuban liftboy ~100yrs ago, lolz..
I suggest that trying desperately to fix the timing of anticipated events has a profoundly negative effect on the quality of analysis.
It’s best to understand the processes and as many of the contributing factors as possible, rather than trying to double-guess exactly what will happen next year.
An as wide-as-possible view of things will result in an intuitive feel for what is about to happen, what is in the air, and hence, better timing and preparation….
I mean mental preparation, as here and there populations will be overwhelmed by events -financial, climatic – at sometimes astonishing speed.
The can-kicking certainly has some way to go, although a certain desperation is now in the air.
To realize just how overextended we are with respect to energy consumption from this article: https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~matilsky/windmills/shopping.html
“we need over 150 turbines just to provide the basic needs of ONE SHOPPING MALL!!”
Yeah, but the shopping malls are folding like lawn chairs to competition from Amazon. So I guess what we need to ask is how much energy does Amazon need?
Another costs not really considered is roads and internet connectivty. I think Amazon relies on internet just as malls rely on roads. So, they are both probably equally expensive in the grand scheme of things.
This is a 2011 article from MSM – http://techland.time.com/2011/09/09/6-things-youd-never-guess-about-googles-energy-use/
Another one : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/10865650/How-much-energy-does-a-web-search-use.html
Do note that Amazon has a lot of embedded energy used – the trucks, planes, etc to send the parcel out…
Can someone work out the equivalent of how many nespresso coffee capsules one google search would convert into in terms of energy used for both…
I just love this point this stuff out to Green Groupies when I try to explain to them that their token efforts are futile…
If they really want to make a difference – forget about recycling… instead:
– smother your children with a pillow while they sleep tonight (or don’t have any to begin with)
– put all your electronic devices in a drawer and never use them again
– never fly on an airplane again
– take the bus – ride a bike – or walk when you have to go somewhere
– kill your share of the 100 million nett new babies arriving on the planet every year
None of this would make much of a difference but the impact would be infinitely greater than recycling.
FE, I know you posted this a few months back, but your comment reminded me of this scene:
https://youtu.be/rcx-nf3kH_M
I know it’s not funny…. but goddamn …. when I read that …. my reaction was:
https://img.clipartfest.com/8daf97d2c24e2443671aee6896b74487_-animated-gifs-gif-images-laughing-animated-clipart_252-163.gif
.” We must make sure his Administration does not think an attack on Syria would be “a win.” We have hours, at most a few days to do so.
The United States built over 280,000 aircraft in support of World War II in 5 years. I don’t know how an aircraft equates to a wind turbine in terms of construction difficulty, but if we really got serious about building wind turbines, we’d have a great many more than we do now.
You really do not get it….
Yes we would, but since wind turbines increases inequality and poverty, this might indirectly lead to war… then it would be better to build 280,000 aircraft instead!
‘47,000 shopping centers of all types located in the country’ https://www.reference.com/business-finance/many-malls-america-2c6bf4cf0de0813c
x 150 = 7,050,000
Har har har har har…… har har….. har…… har har har…. har… and so on till I piss my pants
And, instantly, a further acceleration of ecological destruction:
Turbines and solar panel ‘farms’ (ridiculous term!) = habitat destruction on a vast scale.
And unsustainable.
Hi Gail,
I think you’d get more and better comments if you found a way to reign Fast Eddy in a bit. He has a few points here and there, but his signal to noise ratio is really low. I’d give him about as much credit as a stopped clock: he’s probably right about 1/43,000th of the time. When challenged, he retreats to either ad hominem or arguments from authority, but only he gets to choose the (highly idiosyncratic, non-central, non-consensus) proper authority.
Worse than his signal to noise ratio, he’s verbally abusive with his frequent ad hominems. It really lowers the tone and makes it difficult to feel like you’re having an intelligent discussion relying on the best evidence and logic.
If I were reigned in FW would end up like the Oil Barrel and the various other useless blogs filled with doomsday preppers and hopium addicts.
“It really lowers the tone and makes it difficult to feel like you’re having an intelligent discussion relying on the best evidence and logic”
If you want to have an intelligent discussion based on evidence and logic — I will not attack you.
But obviously that is not the case — because the people – The Core — understand that — it is the MORE ons who do not understand that — who are incapable of that.
Take for instance the BAU LITE crowd — I and others have demonstrated how that is not possible – yet day after day after day they spew their verbal diarrhea here…. without an ounce of logic or any facts or any explanations to back up their positions
They just ‘believe’
Ideots. Total Ideots. They do not belong here. They will get no respect – they will get mockery and ridicule
“If I were reigned in FW would end up like the Oil Barrel and the various other useless blogs filled with doomsday preppers and hopium addicts.”
That would actually be an improvement. You are incredibly repetitive — your signal to noise ratio is quite possible negative. A bad argument can be simply disproved, but your verbal diarrhea doesn’t even rise to the level of “bad argument”.
“If you want to have an intelligent discussion based on evidence and logic — I will not attack you.”
I’ve seen people present logical arguments based on evidence to you, and your response is typically to reject their evidence for non-logical reasons and then heap abuse and ridicule on them. I don’t think you really know what “intelligent discussion based on evidence and logic” IS in the first place. Certainly, you show no evidence of understanding it.
“Ideots. Total Ideots. They do not belong here. They will get no respect – they will get mockery and ridicule”
The fact that you react like a child when people state opinions that you disagree with just demonstrates your dogmatism and arrogance.
We seem to have a concerted campaign by a cadre of little known commenters to critique and undermine Fast Eddy. Curious. A cynic might wonder if it is someone with an axe to grinde using a pseudonym or two.
Perhaps. I think a more likely explanation is that a lot of people were thinking it, and then one person went ahead and said it, and then a few other people said “Hey, I agree with that!” That’s a pretty common pattern in human affairs. It’s basically how Trump got elected.
I used to post under wysinwyg. You can go back and see that I’ve been commenting here and there for probably about a year or a bit more. I’ve long thought Fast Eddy detracted from the conversation here, but only decided to comment about it when I saw a few other people make the same point.
So which DelusiSTANI(s) are you?
Could it be that the King of DelusiSTAN – starts with a G – was told by his lawyers Fiddle Diddle and Dee— after much consideration (involving great guffaws of laughter — accompanied by tremendous numbers of legal billings) that he was ‘highly unlikely’ to achieve victory in a court of law?
I heard that Fiddle Diddle and Dee made enough off this one case — to buy…. to buy…. it brings tears to my eyes…. a PRIVATE JET!
Surely FFD will recognize my contribution to this and be so kind as to offer me use of said PRIVATE JET… from time to time….
Really? That’s the best you got?
Where are all these facts and logic you’re always boasting about?
By the way, the “DelusiSTAN/DelusiSTANI” line is stale, old, plaaaaaayed out. Get yourself some new material, will ya? Even as a clown you’re strictly third rate.
I have been informed by the people who own the rights to the dictionary that they are going to include DelusiSTANI in the next edition.
It is now officially – a word.
Unfortunately they responded to my request for royalties… but sadly … that was a negative.
I don’t mind FE’s comments. He is convinced in the future he believes in. We need straight, unadulterated comments. If I comment, I could care less what he calls me.
It is my rationale and conclusions that matter.
axe grinding will be an essential skill in our post bau world
Good point!
You’ll have to wait for me response… it’s been held up the The Censor.
In the meantime why don’t you go have a stroll aroun D-elusiSTAN…. say hi to Keith.. and G.len… how’s Pete EV doing.. I hope he is well… I hope everyone is thriving — in their own delusional way…. life is so much more peaceful for them not having to deal with The Core… and the endless facts and logic….
Come to think of it … it must be very tiring for D-STANIS to have to deal with all this stuff on on a daily basis on FW… better to go back to having gasoline fights… and lighting their farts on fire at dinner parties…
http://www.burntv.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/dumb-and-dumber-fart.jpg
“and the endless facts and logic….”
Believe me, my comments here would be very different if I had ever seen you use facts or logic in the course of disagreeing with anyone.
Instead, you use name-calling and stupid GIFs. You DO understand the difference between “reason and evidence” on one hand and “name-calling and stupid GIFs” on the other, right?
Is this a plea for a donation towards a seeing eye dog for you?
wysinwygymmy,
don’t sweat it too much, just ignore him like you’d ignore your annoying younger brother who just keeps repeating phrases over and over. After awhile you don’t really hear it anymore and wonder why it bothered you in the first place. He is an annoying pest, and that is all and if you point that out to the rest of the crowd, he’ll just call you a “Delusistani” even though you’re not disputing the main arguments of this site. Sticks and stones….it doesn’t hurt that bad. I’ve been on this blog a good long while, I’ve seen your posts in the past and you’ve had good things to say.
The thing is…
My positions are pretty much in line with Gail’s…. and the rest of The Core… on virtually all issues.
Even on the divisive god issue— I do not rule out the possibility that something created the world we live in ….
With respect to the spent fuel ponds – there may be uncertainty as to whether or not they = extinction … but as I understand it — they are a very big concern for The Core.
I do not think that anyone thinks they can be ‘air cooled’
correct me if I am wrong
To reign in FE would be like censoring the truth. Much of what FE says are things that anyone with an awareness of our predicament is thinking. But, we just don’t say it out loud like he does (or in the way he does). Often times there will be folks on here promoting falsehoods such as shale oil is revolutionary or, renewable energy is sustainable or, spout drivel about how limits no longer apply to us or, how technology is bigger than energy itself. We know better. I agree with FE that you should read what Gail has written now and in the past and understand it before commenting.
“To reign in FE would be like censoring the truth. ”
No, it wouldn’t. The vast majority of what Fast Eddy says is not “the truth” but substance free insults, arguments from authority, copy/paste screeds, and pages and pages of repetition. Other comments make all of Fast Eddy’s points more effectively than he does but don’t do as much to drive away other commenters with different opinions.
” Often times there will be folks on here promoting falsehoods such as shale oil is revolutionary or, renewable energy is sustainable or, spout drivel about how limits no longer apply to us or, how technology is bigger than energy itself. We know better.”
That’s exactly the problem — this is an echo chamber. You guys all agree with each other and you’re not willing to challenge your beliefs. You rely on Fast Eddy to drive off people with different ideas that make your precious fragile little egos feel threatened because you might be wrong about something, but Fast Eddy doesn’t drive those people off through evidence and logic — just the opposite! He drives them off with a torrent of ridiculous nonsense.
“I agree with FE that you should read what Gail has written now and in the past and understand it before commenting.”
Often, Gail responds to comments by saying something like: “Here, read this post I did on that very subject” and provides a link. That’s 10,000 times more useful and effective than what Fast Eddy does.
Greg, you need to consider the possibility that someone can agree with 90% of what Gail argues and want to discuss that remaining 10% without a circus clown honking a horn in their face (I think this is a good analogy for Fast Eddy’s commenting style). These are the people you will learn the most from, and these are the people who Fast Eddy is driving off.
@wysinwygymmv
It’s important to look on all this with a certain sense of humour….otherwise we’d all be weeping in our cups at the mess that’s been made of this rather nice world, and the certainty that the majority out there, for whatever reason, are in absolute denial that there’s anything wrong at all—and that there will be BAU forever.
Only today—I was saved again by my local JWitness swat team–to whom i felt duty bound to point out that they were just as much capitalists as i was….after they had agreed that capitalism was to blame for screwing things up—at which point i asked why hadn’t they liquidated their assets to give to the poor—as instructed by JC.
That didn’t go down too well. But I enjoyed it.
So you see, there is a brightness to be found in each and every day, despite the all pervasive gloom
If Fast Eddy was actually funny, I would probably not be so negative regarding his output. As it is, he has an occasional good line, but repeating the same joke thirty or forty times tends to wear it out and the very little bit of his material that was ever any good is long-since spent.
Anyway, there’s lots of places you can go online for bad, immature comedy, but there’s not many places you can go for serious discussion of the intersection of energy issues and economics. I DO think it’s possible to be funny while still having a serious discussion, but that’s not what’s happening on OFW. Maybe that’s how Gail likes it…but given that she seems to be trying to get her message out to more people I kind of doubt it.
I installed a motion detector camera at the beach shack — and it wasn’t sending motion alerts…
I called the Arlo people and they said to check the upload speed – needs to be 1 Meg to function properly …. I have only 0.5 meg…. so most of the time it does not detect motion ..
I write my posts on the assumption that readers are operating off a minimum 80 IQ… anything below that and you wouldn’t be able to detect the motion ….
FE has problems. Serious problems. FE should really think about whether he would say the things he says online in a face to face conversation. He’d get popped in the face, that’s for sure. He could make his points without being a jerk. Problem is, he loves being a jerk.
Heck — if Gail said the things she says in her articles at a dinner party — she’d be tossed out on her ass and never invited back…
So of course I would not say what I say here in the company of a room full of DelusiSTANIS.
I’d be thinking these things as they droned on about solar power and EVs… but I wouldn’t say them…..
Because they’d be on me like a pack of wild dogs …..
We all have to hold our tongues around DelusiSTANIS – because they are legion and we are the very few.
But FW is our home turf….
I reckon baiting and mocking DelusiSTANIS should be made an Official Olympic Sport.
And as we slip deeper into Bread and Circuses…. DelusiSTANIS could be made to fight each other to the death…
The way it would work is that you have two of them face each other 100m apart…. then they run at each other as fast as possible — and they crash their heads together…..
Repeat until one or both falls into an irreversible coma.
Then feed them to the pigs?
‘That’s exactly the problem — this is an echo chamber. You guys all agree with each other and you’re not willing to challenge your beliefs. You rely on Fast Eddy to drive off people with different ideas that make your precious fragile little egos feel threatened because you might be wrong about something, but Fast Eddy doesn’t drive those people off through evidence and logic — just the opposite! He drives them off with a torrent of ridiculous nonsense.’
Actually it’s the opposite…. The Core will try to explain to DelusiSTANIS why they are wrong … a few get it … and start to actually think… but most continue to post rubbish…
That is when the bat signal is turned on….
“To reign in FE…”
Thanks for the compliment … but I do not feel I am a king … a modern day king would have a private jet – no?
reign
[reyn]
Spell Syllables
Synonyms Examples Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
noun
1.
the period during which a sovereign occupies the throne.
2.
royal rule or authority; sovereignty.
3.
dominating power or influence:
@wysinwygymmv – I don’t comment much but if you don’t like this place, you can choose to post in another forum.
This place is not an echo room or a “yes-man” type of corner office. It is a open place where people put in their thoughts. It does not matter who believes in what but if you want to put your point forward, you need to put in convincing stuff and not just words. Convincing stuff does not mean that you copy and paste other people’s works without putting in your thoughts. I mean deep analytical and common-sense type of thoughts.
Mr wysinwygymmv…. as you have noticed…. I am not the only attack dog on FW…. possibly the most vicious … but not alone….
You will want to watch this very closely:
The antelope; disembowelled, still moving.
Doomed
But it still doesn’t know it.
Like a cut branch with green leaves that seems still alive, but…..
Hear, hear!
The point is not no more FE but less. Is a three comment/day limit really that unreasonable? Oxygen for the rest of us, please!
Depriving DelusiSTANIS of oxygen will kill them so it seems…. thanks for the tip.
I will be increasing my comments volume …. MOAR is GOODer.
Again, a three comment/day limit would be stultifying for debate. We have to be a bit grown-up about this and I’m sure we all have commenters we could live without. If you don’t like what FE says then skim past it; if he calls you a Delusistani or similar then either rise above it and/or show him where he is in factual error.
Howdy folks. Just thought I might pop back in here and give FE, Gail’s attack dog, some more teeth. Now we know when and how the oceans become anoxic, so that hydrogen sulfide gas comes up from below the chemocline and into the atmosphere. So, if the radiation doesn’t get you, the toxic H2S will. Peter Ward at my old alma mater University of Washington Seattle has done a lot of work on this, as well. Making hay, sun shining, and so forth. Cheers from British Columbia, where it was so cold last January that all my bees died in their hives.
And the link is:
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/5/397.abstract
Like Gail pointed out re: resources… collapse of BAU is not only related to the oil problem — all resources are a problem…
Likewise with respect to the assault on humans — we will be under attack on many fronts…. we will be overwhelmed — there are some that are going to hit that we cannot even predict
when i see cars company aggressive push car sales in usa it make me remind of the scene in the big short
https://youtu.be/MesrrYyuoa4
What a great movie…never get tired of watching it…
Just watching that clip and I am having a deja vu moment…
TORONTO PROPERTY PRICES RISE 19% IN MARCH!
Based on fundamentals? You gotta be kidding.
Residential property sales in Greater Toronto soared 17.7% year-over-year to 12,077 homes, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). New listings jumped 15.2% to 17,052. Prices for all types of homes, based on the MLS Home Price Index Composite “Benchmark,” soared 28.6%. The “average” selling price soared 33.2%!
That average selling price of C$916,567 is up from C$688,011 a year ago. Over the past five years, it has doubled!
The heavenly manna was spread across the spectrum. For condos, the average price in Greater Toronto soared 33.1% to C$518,879; for townhouses it soared 32.9% to C$705,078; for semi-detached houses, 34.4% to C$858,202; and for detached houses, 33.4% to C$1,214,422.
Even the house price bubble in Beijing cannot compete with this sort of miracle; new house prices there increased only 22% year-over-year in February. And Sydney’s fabulous house price bubble just flat out pales compared to the spectacle transpiring in Toronto, with prices up only 19% in March.
Now the great fear in Toronto’s real estate circles is that the government of Ontario might impose similarly cruel and unusual punishment (as did Vancouver) on the participants in this spectacle.
Some measures are on the table, with folks wondering how to stop the bubble from inflating further and causing even greater harm to the real economy when it deflates, as all bubbles eventually do.
More http://wolfstreet.com/2017/04/05/toronto-house-price-bubble-goes-nuts/
And… the kicker is … Toronto property is cheap!!!!
http://edge.alluremedia.com.au/uploads/businessinsider/2017/04/property-for-one-mil.jpg
What I find strange is that many people still believe 2008 was unexpected … that the Fed was oblivious to what was headed our way…
That they had no idea that subprime – liar loans etc were happening..
Well.. all of this is happening again right before our very eyes…. everyone knows what is happening and what’s header our way…
Is the Fed doing anything? Nope – they are enabling it
Just like they enabled subprime 2008.
Because asset inflation is the only way to keep the hamster running on the wheel…. they had no choice…. they have no choice.
This movie, although oozing of 80s kitch, is so good on so many levels…maybe the elders truly are lizard aliens who have brought us Industrial Civilization in order to transform the earth’s environment to fit their anatomy 😉
A big fat alien?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/obama-kissinger.jpg
You can’t make this stuff up even if you tried…surreal…
Tesla’s multitrillion-dollar opportunity:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/05/teslas-multi-trillion-dollar-opportunity.html
“While difficult to quantify,” Jonas wrote, “we have long felt that one of Tesla’s most important areas of value is its captive ecosystem of data-collecting transport machines with close proximity to [real-time] data that may have any number of adjacent purposes for monetization and/or deepening of the strategic moat.”
Someone should strangle this guy. The chop him into small pieces and feed him to street dogs.
The dogs would, I suspect, choke on such unsavoury stuff. 🙂
Could someone translate that for me?
sorry—that needs lots of sign language
musk wavin his arms about would do it
Lol…probably would look as intelligent as these wacky inflatable arm tube men:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6GznhT__PXs
this might be even better
Hahahaha Norman…love Yes, Prime Minister…British humour is the best 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_humour
Tesla is not meant to be translated or understood. It is 100% pure snake oil and Musk is the salesman.
‘deepening of the strategic moat’
What I think happened here is the stooge … I mean anal-ist …. was struggling to put lipstick on this pig… so he dropped 4 hits of Very Strong acid …
And that’s what he came up with
Creative writing is an important subject for news writers, it looks like.
Looks like the Fed wants to reverse QE. That would seem ill-judged:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/05/fed-set-to-unwind-balance-sheet-this-year.html
Well, we can’t see exactly what they see as crucial immediate target and their prioritization list either.
Some argue, Fed wants to build up a cushion for the next (overdue) recession. It could be, we are into another ~2008, followed by reflation via next factor sized up QE..
Others say, this is it, there is no road ahead, and immediate target is to sacrifice stocks on the altar of corp bonds.
Also, supposedly discredited peakoilers/resourcist now operate with 2025-2040 dates, potential of Russian shale is mentioned, apart from lot of crude still around, and lot of natgas, uranium.
Oh no, it’s the preeminence of affordability channel within consumer based society, don’t you know.
Yet others argue, it’s more or less all the above and demographic winter induced by the end of growth no later than ~2025 freezing over the economies of the entire planet.
Well, what about ~500yrs long civilization long cycles, momentum pendulum simply shifting out of the west for a while.
..
Summary, it’s a complete dogfood mess to navigate, for sure..
The pendulum will NEVER shift out from the West because it owns all technologies. Any tech the East has is just copies of the West, and in most cases East’s best brains go to the West to study.
Reversing QE would be a terrible idea, especially when combined with raising target interest rates.
Goods and services produced by the economy are divided among various sectors, including non-elite workers and the financial sector (including pension plans and insurance companies). Higher interest rates helps shift goods and services from non-elite workers to the financial sector. This doesn’t really work. The financial sector is experiencing a shortfall right now, especially in pension funding. Non-elite workers are hit because interest rates on loans (auto loans for example) rise, making them less affordable. Auto lease costs no doubt are going up too. They are being hit by (1) higher interest rates and (2) lower resale value of autos. Of course, retirees, who would benefit from the pension funding will also be affected by the lower affordability of cars. Very often, they can defer the purchase of a car, however.
I really seems like things are spiraling out of control on so many fronts. The FED raising rates, Syria war back and forth, oil production freezes etc. So many attempts seem like fighting fire with fire because we have run out of options. Reversing QE falls into this fighting fire with fire approach. If you drive a car too far into the mud the first instinct is to back up. That may be all it is. A knee jerk reaction. The FED can’t do anything to fix the problem but, have to do something to look viable so reversing QE is the result.
this is a nice summary of the desperate measures propping up BAU
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-05/stupid-stupid-does
Thanks! That is a very good article, indeed. The stock market is at an unbelievably high level of valuation. The very low interest rates available on debt have made it possible to do huge share buybacks. Of course, if interest rates rise, this strategy works less well.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-oil-storage-idUSKBN1780H6
“Iran has sold all the oil it had stored for years at sea and Tehran is now struggling to keep exports growing as it grapples with production constraints, shipping and oil sources say. Tanker tracking and oil sources said Iran had sold its last stocks from the floating storage in the past two weeks. Iran’s drawdown of floating storage gathered pace in September. By the start of 2017, Iran still held an estimated 16 million barrels of oil on ships. Since then, they have emptied.”
This is interesting news for those following the oil glut of recent years. This just pertains to Iran, but over time the worldwide glut will get used up and then we’ll get into shortages and price spikes. That will put a lot of pressure on debt laden economies struggling even while oil has been cheap. A lot of experts are putting 2018 as the year when oil shortages and associated price spikes begin.
“That will put a lot of pressure on debt laden economies struggling even while oil has been cheap.”
Please don’t freak out – what I meant was oil was cheap relative to when it had been over a $100 a barrel.
We will have to see how much oil does spike, and for how long. My guess is that oil prices can’t pike very high, for very long, simply because of the adverse impact on consumers of oil.
It is hard for people to understand the extent to which a rise in oil prices affects them personally. It is easy to think that the effect is only the gasoline that goes into a vehicle. The increase really affects many different kinds of goods at the same time. Food prices rise; the cost of shipping any kind of goods rises. Business profits fall, unless they raise prices or lay off workers.
The US economy is growing at a 0.9% clip at the moment…
According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
A prolonged 20 buck increase would put that dog down….
Oh and btw — I didn’t just make that up …. I am going to assume these are facts…. because the general idea would be to not upset the sheeple with your findings…
http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
We may look back and think that a 0.9% clip was good!
It gets more absurd by the day…
Internet billionaire and aspiring rocket man Jeff Bezos said he sells $1 billion a year in Amazon.com Inc. stock to fund Blue Origin LLC, the company fueling his dream of sending people into space.
“My business model right now for Blue Origin is I sell about a billion a year of Amazon stock and I use it to fund Blue Origin,” Bezos said Wednesday at the Space Symposium, an annual industry conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “So the business model for Blue Origin is very robust.”
Doesn’t say how many billion he has wasted to date …. but let’s work off 1 billion dollars… and assume each flight has a full slate of 6 people.
1,000,000,000 divided by 1,800,000 = 555 flights to break even.
So he needs to find 2775 who have 300k in spare change lying around — who want to risk their lives on a sight seeing tour of the moon…
Robust is not exactly the word I would use to describe the business model…
Surely this ties in with the Musk nonsense about Mars — calm the sheeple…. see – we can leave this burned our wreck anytime we want to….
Elysian awaits.
I’m starting to think that “They Live” is not science-fiction but a documentary and that all these bigwig business types are actually lizard aliens (and the elders of course)…but here on OFW we have the special glasses and see through all this BS:
https://youtu.be/JI8AMRbqY6w
Interesting take on American commercial/marketing society which can be interpreted on many levels.
During the 1980s we were still playing around with, experimenting with this. All of this has reached full fruition now. The people of that time could not have imagined what 2017 would look like.
In a similar way, we are experimenting and playing with collapse right now. We have no idea what 2047 will look like.
They Live in John Carpenter’s Own Words:
They Live is a 1988 American satirical science fiction horror film written and directed by John Carpenter. The film stars Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster. It follows an unnamed drifter (referred to as “John Nada” in the film’s credits) who discovers the ruling class are in fact aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed, and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media. They Live is based on the 1963 short story, “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson.
You love Monsanto, yet sneer at the corporate slags?
It’s interesting to read the reports that children are being taught about the wonderful prospect of Mars colonisation at school – as if it were a certainty.
Dream of the Future, child, and eat up that lovely Monsantoed food, this is the Age of Abundance!
We need a “happily ever after” scenario, regardless of how unlikely it is.
Well, it’s quite an interesting tax writeoff.
I don’t think you need to worry about tax write offs when you lose billions of dollars year after year… and your business plan involves never making a profit.
Now Trump having ‘waken up’, the fight with Russia and North Korea will take place. China will probably sit out. It’s a white folks’ war.
Russia’s oil and North Korea’s rare earths will be appropriated by the West so BAU can go for another decade. Although not well known to the West, North Korea has a lot of rare metal resources, which were carefully catalogued by the Japanese during the 1940s. At that time they didn’t know what to do with the rare metal, but now we do.
I never had that much faith on Trump, since all politicians are cut from the same clothes, but he did last a bit longer than I expected – 3 months is quite a long time nowdays.
I think a lot of people who saw Trump as the new messiah have gone somewhat quiet, but maybe that’s just because he hasn’t yet knocked 24 million off of their health insurance. Maybe once that happens in a revised version that does get passed they will be madly in love with him again. Maybe if he starts WWIII and they lose their electricity and begin starving they will feel the joy and excitement of his presidency again. I don’t really know what they see in him – I’m just an observer but it does seem to be a case of whatever he can do to make their lives harsher they see as something good.
Maybe they just want to shake everything up all to hell, way past the point where it can ever be reassembled. If so, that would be be understandable. As if saying (although maybe not consciously), no more half measures: do it right or else pull the switch. And the nuke(lear) option shouldn’t be discounted. Bring it on!!!!!
Four words:
Make America Great Again
Nothing else matters – he could do just about anything – and it would be overlooked.
And then of course they see that Obama has delivered nothing — because he couldn’t — and they didn’t want more of the same in Clinton – who – based on her penchant for corruption – would be more suited to running a banana republic.
The thing is…
Trump will not deliver — he cannot deliver — pitchfork time soon?
Boot in the face time.
Nookular war soon, by people who think just like you.
http://tinyurl.com/nxnqhrr
As a foreigner I assumed he was the little less horrible alternative.
Maybe nobody wanted a Potus who was possessed by the devil?
Many people figured Trump was less bad than Clinton. Even with a Republican congress a Democrat president could still issue executive orders and nominate Supreme Court justices.
Having Trump as president has exposed how deranged the left is. I fear for the future of my country if they regain control. I hope the Republicans can use this insanity to gain even more seats in 18 and 20.
What is it you think the Repubs can/will do differently if more are elected?
excuse me, but there is a buttload of rare earth elements around. the USA had to close its once-profitiable mines in California because the Chinese undercut the price with lax environmental standards and government support of the miners. i understand the mining area is a nightmare wasteland.
the Japanese have found even more buttloads of REE in the deep-sea sediments north of the Marshall Islands. you can just suck them up off the seafloor and process, if needed. so the idea that North Korea has some desirable amount of REE resources is a load. if they did, they wouldn’t be so dirt poor, so to speak.
Correct, this particular vector is not about immediate resources there, but containing China as land based empire, which is expanding through commerce deals, unlike the brutal aggression and machinations like the dying west is resorting to. Various verbal and saber rattling provocations vs NK and vice versa, serve several purposes, propping up the mil-industrial complex (large sales to some parts of Asia), draining resources of China aka slowing their economic base, and the very theoretical eventuality of collapsed NK one day, hence giving even larger springboard for direct mil installations against China, basically cutting out the buffer zone.
You see, all this is an old ballet, which has been played in various forms for millennia, new ascending powers and failing old hegemonic powers, etc.
Usually, the stakes in these times of waning and failing old hegemonic power are high.
Especially if you are dealing with very peculiar “culture” of the US which is based on assimilating the possible worst of the worst traits imaginable over the centuries. The psychopathy levels not only among the elite but increasingly among the plebeians are only on the comparable scale of some of the late Roman Empire periods.
North America is where Civilisation went to grow old, mad, and die…….. leaving behind the empty, senile husk in Europe.
Then how can you explain all the people around the world coming to American universities to study? The world can’t get enough America, at least for now. Nobody is going to Japanese, Chinese or other Asian universities to study unless they want to specialize in these countries’ cultures.
because the vast majority see only “now”, and the fact that for most people tomorrow has been better than today
We are programmed to believe this—and for the moment it is.
Whereas OFW doom mongers have figured out that infinite growth cannot be, that a crash is inevitable.
we just don’t know when
oh–and through an accident of politics and geology—the english language happens to be the language of common exchange.
NK has resources, but it lacks the machinery and capital to develop them, and since the fat Kims are happy to see their people poor, they are fine sitting on the REEs. It’s like money in the bank for them; no need to touch unless they REALLY need them.
NK is like a somewhat deranged extended family; it’s not an ordinary nation. Plus it doesn’t have any debt obligation to the Rothschilds,etc so it doesn’t have to make payments to anyone.
Just one week after Rex Tillerson signaled of a historic U-Turn in US policy regarding Syria, when he said that “the longer term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people” suggesting the US is no longer intent on removing the Syrian president, this afternoon Trump signaled that the White House is about to U-turn once again, likely emerging in the same place where the Obama administration was when it nearly invaded Syria in 2013.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-05/assad-crossed-many-many-lines-trump-signals-imminent-change-syria-policy#comment-9316513
Even if Trump wanted to change paths…. remember… the NSA has a big file on him… the el.ders would run a google search … and someone would pay a visit to Donald… and explain to him how what are surely many compromising activities.. would be drip fed to the MSM…
Now this is CONTROL!
Very unfortunate.
It is interesting how many presidents do an about face on issues they seemed to be for or against. Such as Obama and Gitmo. Or, George Bush Sr “Read my lips” quote. Or “I will have the most transparent administration in history”. I am sure there are 100’s of examples from all presidents. So, this makes one wonder who really calls the shots.
What I find particularly amusing is that:
1. In spite of the obvious so many people still believe POTUS is not a stooge — an actor.
2. When Obama changes his positions to line up pretty much exactly with Bush – the LibTARDS trot out excuses that include — oh well he is only one person — he has to get congress and the senate to agree (funny how the senate and congress agree when it comes to spying on citizens and war – always)
3. When Trump changes his positions to line up pretty much exactly with Obama – the TrumpTARDS trot out excuses that include — oh well he is only one person — he has to get congress and the senate to agree (funny how the senate and congress agree when it comes to spying on citizens and war – always)
I had a discussion with a LibTARD recently — and he was trotting out the usual excuses… and to top it off he was telling me ‘come on mate the Russians fixed the election — the CIA said so’
To which I responded ‘but mate – weren’t you the guy screaming blue murder about how the CIA obviously faked the WMD story under Bush?’
Well garb marg barg org hrmmmph… brrrp. come on mate – he fixed it – it’s obvious
Is there any proof?
Well garb marg barg org hrmmmph… brrrp. come on mate – he fixed it – it’s obvious
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-only-two-things-are-infinite-the-universe-and-human-stupidity-and-i-m-not-sure-about-the-former-albert-einstein-56412.jpg
Fast, but Trump’s about face will gain us a decade of BAU. I am quite happy with his decision.
???
Which about face are you referring to? What actions do you see the POTUS taking that would extend BAU for a decade? You’ve suggested that detente with Assad is an indication of a coming war with Russia where its oil will be appropriated. it’s difficult to describe how many things are wrong with that assertion.. here you are mixing it up with hanumotg- the king of nonsense – that might explain your lack of reasoning skills.
And how does his twirl extend BAU by a decade?
The Russians have drawn the line in Syria — because they have observed what the US has done in Iraq – Libya – Syria – Yemen etc… and they have no desire to meet that fate.
If I am the politburo in Russia I have my finger on the nuclear option …. no bluffs… they know the world is ending soon anyway — live free or die.
The stakes are high — the El.der.s have again gassed women and children.
If I was Putin I’d just key in the launch codes now and Korowicz the world… just to spite the Eld.ers F789 it.
Unlike you or me, Putin has children who he wants to live like the Eld.ers. He won’t rock the boat. Hitler went that far since he had no kids; Hirohito had kids, as well as most of the Japanese higher-ups, so they gave up.
He’ll be aware his kids are dead soon anyway…. he would know that oil needs to be 120 bucks+ but that this is impossible
Janey on GLP has the latest updates, so you can be in the know as your local version of ” On The Beach” unwinds.
The stupids are in full rampage mode.
One of the top leading theories for explaining US policy post ~2001 is simply the pursuit of the chaos doctrine. Yes, it is very reckless, but hey, it extends the good life for certain power faction for few more decades. So what’s not to like..
Obviously, there are long term set backs like increasing likelyhood of dead end dilemmas, like starting nuclear exchange as byproduct. And/or it later stages very likely setting up yourself for much worse treatment than for say Gorby got in the mid 1990. When he openly begged G7 for bridging $20B loan and got only polite loughs from relatively sensible politicians like Mitterand, Kohl and Major. Mind you, this was after taking for ~3yrs stupid fast market transition * “reform advice” from them all, broken promises (reunification of Germany for supposedly no further NATO eastward expansion), one year before the coup against him by Soviet deep state because increasingly collapsing economy, and 1.5yrs before the definitive end of it.
Hopefully, at the next historical round, China will gladly pay for keeping the disintegrating spent fuel ponds safe inside the former US, for exchange of whatever valuable, some real estate might come to mind..
* fully deployed later under early Yeltsin regime totally unraveling the country..
(few people recall the genesis of this story)
China will gladly pay for it. Even the Chinese bigwigs hate China, and send their kids to America to study. There are more authentic Chinese food in Monterey Park, CA than many Chinese cities.
Aren’t we glad that we got another decade of BAU?
trump is a liar he doesn’t want peace he wants war he thinks it will be good for their economy thats the main motivator driving him
Calm the sheeple…. calm the sheeple…
The panic counter went up on the last article so today we get soma…. lots of great jobs being created — therefore there will be lots of cars sold very very soon — the first Q is an aberration …
Of course no mention that people who are not leasing have very long lease periods on their vehicles… otherwise they would not have been able to afford the monthly payments… so they will not be trading in for new cars….
Calm the sheeple….
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-05/car-sales-dipped-but-expect-big-demand-ahead
Today: “Expect big demand ahead!”
Next Month: “Demand missed expectations!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Guys, we’ve already collapsed. You won’t come to any understanding unless you realize this. Right now I’m typing this at a computer at home, it is being distributed over the network and you are reading this post. And tomorrow you will get up and you will have food to eat, some things to do, etc. And yet, our system has collapsed and is on life support.
Yes, we will have several more real and far reaching collapses in the years ahead, but basically the life support can last decades, late 2030s really. Beyond that, it’s very difficult to see, but that would be true anyway. It took roughly 30-40 years for crescendo industrialization, it will take roughly the same time for it’s fall (or perhaps a little faster).
Look at what’s happening for yourself. The old are dying off, the young are acting like bonobos and posting the photos and videos for all to see. This is what collapse looks like! Collapse is not 1984, it’s brave new world. Intercourse, drugs, entertainment. That’s collapse.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VK04KNf0nAQ/UyKEQWWwiRI/AAAAAAAABFs/aSwf91aT-v8/s1600/Seneca+Cliff.jpg
The view from the top looks great too. Just don’t look ahead!
Or don’t look down 😉
Yep, I was born into the still ascending world of new long distance natgas&oil pipelines, new nuclear reactors have been under construction, there was still quality program in cinemas and the TV, lot of people was engaged in reading good literature, .. , etc.
Comparatively, the present is just a freewheeling mess and cesspool aimlessly drifting in frivolous crap, all getting incremental worse.
Yes! I think the movie “Idiocracy” gives a plausible look into the next few decades… People are getting less intelligent, waste and pollution everywhere…
Enjoy today because tomorrow and each day onward the world becomes a worse place to live. It is just hard to see because it happens ever so slowly…
We’ve got plenty of Idiocracy/Zoolander right here every day on FW.
When the wages are low and there is a lack or workforce: what is the problem? I would say that the problem is an energy problem: the system lacks the energy for its functioning more and more. The system will collapse due to both external energy and the energy of humans. Too low prices for both external energy and the energy of humans seem to be the very end…
It does seem like a lot of limits (energy, debt, metals, minerals, pollution etc) are being reached in a lot of areas all nearly simultaneously. Certainly the problems (job loss, poverty, health care, insurance, retirement plans etc) we see today are a manifestation of reaching limits. It is just amazing how so many people reject the idea of limits (such as the “Abundance” book mentioned previously).
There is a good reason why we reach limits for most commodities at once.
What we can afford for pretty much all goods and services depends on (1) Wages, especially of non-elite workers and (2) The increase in debt. When wage disparity becomes an increasing problem, we end up with more people who can’t afford cars and homes. We can get an increasing amount of any commodity out, if the price of that commodity is rising. The problem is that the wage/debt problem hits pretty much all commodities at once. The prices of the commodities tend to drift downward. The amount of each commodity that can be extracted suddenly is too low, when the price falls.
But are the wages low? (in the west)
Especially with scandinavian tax pressure, an engineer or MD gets 35k post tax, 220/hour. Hiring a nanny or cleaner costs 2-3 times that.
I don’t agree with the idea that we have a lack of workforce. We have a constant increase in workers in the US – on top of jobs having been exported to China/Mexico. So the increase in USA population ends up causing a lot of increases in factory production in foreign factories, that previously would have been in USA factories and increased USA jobs.
What is the best source to obtain data on breakeven costs for extracting oil across the globe ? Also, costs over time, which I expect would go up, although there are articles/blogs about how costs are dropping for fracking (which I personally don’t believe).
I don’t know but it depends how you define “breakeven costs”. I know it is an easily manipulated statistic by leaving out some costs. Art Berman has a write up recenly on just that topic of breakeven costs. You might check out is website http://www.artberman.com/
Here is the article: Look for the paragraphs on break-even costs:
http://www.artberman.com/shale-cost-reductions-are-10-technology-and-90-industry-bust/
Two of the TOP Delusistanis in the world, Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis:
https://psmag.com/how-technology-has-already-changed-what-it-means-to-be-human-d59053e79d8c
Great book by Diamandis…everthing will be all right folks…it’s not scarcity and collapse we should worry about, but abundance 😉
https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/145161683X
BTW check out the rating on that book…delusion runs deep in the veins of the average human….
Does this mean more turkey?
Call Kurzweil to upload yourself to a supercomputer and then generate all the virtual turkey you want…
The wild turkey is a survivor…and it doesn’t even need a huge brain. One thing I’ve noticed about wild turkeys, they don’t spend a lot of time posting on blogs.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/natural-selection
you have to go cold turkey to stop commenting on here
Collapse books also get great ratings. You read and like what you already believe.
Except Collapse books barely get any ratings because nobody reads them. Case in point check the number of people rating Norman Pagett’s book “End of More” on amazon.com vs this totally delusional book and you will get the idea (I checked 4 customer reviews vs 746…)
lol—me too!!!!!!!!!!!
the theme of much of what i write is that nobody wants to know–irrespective of truth and reality—i’d rather read good news myself for that matter.
reading some of the intro pages on Diamandis’ book, it’s obvious he bases all his stuff on energy systems/sources ”yet to be invented”, and that technology will prevail.
people are happy to go along with that.
getting one’s head round the alternative is just too awful to contemplate—but that’s life.
“getting one’s head round the alternative is just too awful to contemplate—but that’s life.”
Exactly Norman, your book is on a whole other level based on facts vs this delusional drivel..
But people prefer living in a comforting lie than face the truth that we are toast:
https://backtocambodia.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/untitled.jpg
He had a hilarious post somewhere about 8-10 prophecies, making Elon not colonizing Mars until 2025 looking like a pessimist.
I love that it is a NYT bestseller!
I’m human therefore I’m delusional.. (except for a few misfits, of which OFW has a few in its midst) 😉
The cover of ‘Abundance’ is now my top candidate for the tombstone of Mankind……
Hey Xabier, it’s Lizzie here but I’m now called Will for some reason. All well with you?
The question is — which bathroom to use?
That depends on whether you self-identify as a human or not, today.
for me the day i read this article https://srsroccoreport.com/thermodynamic-oil-collapse-interview-why-the-global-economy-will-disintegrate-rapidly/
for me there is no future left but we should remind ourselves that we can print money but cannot print barrel of oil
Exactly what I have been saying to Delusistanis for years when I try to explain to them the predicament that we are in, I always finish the conversation by saying: “Look this collapse will happen because at the end of the day CBs can print all the cash they want but they CANNOT PRINT RESOURCES!!!!!”…and then I go on my way knowing full well that the person I was talking too has not understood a single thing I was trying to explain to him lollll
“Thermodynamic oil collapse” – Really? I think it is much simpler than that. I would call it diminishing returns. It is no different than the diminishing returns of burning wood. The more you burn the deeper into the forest you have to go to get more wood to burn. Any finite resource is subject to this basic physical law called diminishing returns.
The unfortunate thing is we built a financial system based on the energy in fossil fuels. So the financial system is also subject to diminishing returns as well. What this means is we have to work harder and harder for less and less. That is the root of our predicament. It requires no fancy physics or math to understand it.
The Hill’s group tries too hard to make the oil problem a thermodynamics problem. It is much easier to understand our predicament as a finite resource problem of diminishing returns.
++++
The wood parallel is good.
You build a cabin in the forest using nearby trees. It’s a great location — one with a natural spring and a lake with fish — in an area where there is very little water available. It is an oasis of plenty.
You cut trees near your cabin to generate heat and cook food – also to build more structures.
Everything is fine — for some years – your family expands – your cabin turns into a small village as more people move in – you cut more trees.
The one day you find yourself having to drag cut trees a few hundred metres … because all the nearby trees have been cut…
Eventually you find that you are spending half your time cutting and dragging trees — and you have little time for farming and sleeping … you start losing weight — you are eating poorly .. your health declines
So what do you do? You innovate and get animals to drag the trees…
That works for some years… but the animals must be fed… and you are being forced to go further and further to get more trees…
Eventually you are back to spending most of your time dragging trees with the animals… only now you have to also feed the animals quite a lot of food …
Ultimately the animals weaken and are unable to pull the logs so far — because they are nett negative on calories…
There are plenty of logs left —- entire forests of logs….
There is plenty of oil left in the ground right now — Venezuela has huge reserves – tar sands are massive….
But…. like the logs — that oil is mostly going to remain in the ground.
Shale is like the logs on the periphery of what makes sense to drag in …. we are feeding the pack animals the rations of food taken from the poorest in the village …. to allow us to get some of those trees….
Hm, as I tend to caution, there are many more levels on this interconnected play ground, namely geopolitics, political economy and such. Globally dispersed conditions like various grade of crude matching only certain refineries at specified places of residence, natgas pipeline and transport sea routes, performance of defense industries, cohesion on the domestic front, path dependency decision making (errors)..
it all matters greatly for us..
(and not so much in great macro supercycles of thousands of yrs)
“When growth stops the economy will collapse” some say… But all I see is red ink, declining sales in retail and automobiles, less jobs, more poverty… and growth hasn’t stopped? How can we count on the official numbers coming from government (growth is positive, consumer confidence is good blah blah) to be true?
To put it bluntly. If you follow the origins of all the world’s fiat money you will end up in the government’s virtual printing presses where they push digital trains of 0’s and 1’s to form arbitrary numbers in to bank accounts. It is just the lubricant in the global economic machinery. The big financial institutions are the machinists and they never run out of lube. Some peripheral parts may break here and there but the prime mover keeps on running on affordable (fossil) energy.
That is why I don’t believe in financial instadoom. Sure the financial system may collapse horrifically and there will be huge problems everywhere, for a while. But it won’t be the end. Right now millions are starving in the periphery. Collapse? These people have never lived in the prosperity of an average OFW’er, they are already living in “Mad Max”-conditions. I think doomers generally magnify the significance of a potential collapse because we are so used to living in comfort and safety our entire lives that we fail to see that things will go on. No matter how dire and hopeless a person’s life is, he/she will not lie down to die. A human being will generally make the best of every situation. Failing to see this produces a lot of hyperbole about future maladies:
“People will die from spent fuel pond radiation” -> so everybody everywhere must die from radiation…
“We are dependant on fertilizer to grow food” -> so no food will be grown…
“The fish eat plastic for breakfast, lunch and dinner” -> so our stomachs will be filled with plastic…
“We don’t have enough clean freshwater” -> so everybody will die from dehydration…
In other words “BAU or extinction” meme. Black or white thinking.
All I’m saying is that things will gradually turn for the worse and some steps in the staircase might be much steeper than others. Just because we have unsolvable problems in the long run does not mean that we will go extinct in the short run. Sorry Fast Eddy!
Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. Cue FE.
7.5bn people have come into existence through the good fortune of having cheap surplus energy available.
before our time of cheap surplus energy, less than 1bn people existed.
it follows then that cheap surplus energy has supported the existence of 6,5bn people, and without cheap surplus energy, those 6.5bn people do not have a future
Breakdown and collapse may come in any number of separate ways—we cannot know how when or where, but however it hits, my summary above will be the cause of it.
we will not have sufficient resources to support our growing numbers. It really is that simple.
Right now we are freewheeling on the impetus of a century of oil driven prosperity, But that is in effect a manifestation of ‘infinite debt’.
Debt is a call on future prosperity, and future prosperity is itself entirely dependent on availability of cheap fuels.
The realisation of this in a collective sense will hit suddenly, as future debts (pensions, mortgages etc) become unsupportable. Thus the finance web will start to come apart and accelerate as it does so.
As money flow dries up, so will everything else. We are all dependent on one another, like a house of cards
I think we largely agree. Cheap surplus energy is the “prime mover” and the less we have available the slower we will go. Things start falling part the slower we go. I just think it will take a few decades to gradually move down towards e.g. “Mad Max conditions” in the affluent regions. Not overnight.
Yep, look at the previous “Dark Ages” as for latest ~50-75+ yrs period severe problems encountered here and there, increasingly more systemic shock to the system, wars/revolts, natural catastrophes, man made and natural caused waves of famine, .. , these problems are evidently “addressed by the authorities” in various creative and proactive ways, .. , but suddenly the last written memo is filed and archaeologist find it in corresponding black-burned down layer of abandoned cities..
Simply, collapse waves are incoming slowly, system fights back, yet weakens along the way, and suddenly in relatively fast way it’s over for the legacy status quo.
In essence, we can only argue about our position on the time line. And the preponderance of the evidence simply points out we are likely inside advanced stage of collapse period cycle, but not very close to the ultimate end yet, at least from the perspective of single human life.
think of it as riding a bike
pedal as fast as you like as far as you like on a level road
then stop pedalling, the laws of physics will put you in the ditch in a very short space of time, irrespective of distance travelled, and very little to do with speed
Our modern and global industrial society is unprecedented in human history. No historical civilization comes remotely close to what we have today. So, one cannot compare past collapse to what lies ahead for us.
Just think for a moment of the billions of cars on the road 24/7. The food production industry that supports it all is simply massive in scale. And 7B+ people rely on this just-in-time transportation network to deliver food. The electric grid, coal and natural gas gives us electricity which gives us water and sewer and fuel at the pumps. It is all networked together on a global scale. Without these essential services 7B+ people cannot possibly survive. It it barely enough the way it is now as many are hungry and starving already.
When (not if) the financial system collapses there will be no currency or trade or ability to pay for goods and services. The system will grind to a halt. It will be instant panic just like that which happens when the power goes out in major cities. But, it will be global in scale. It will be simply horrific. The unseen feedback loops will be a killer. In the span of just a couple of weeks millions of people will perish. Water will be more precious than gold, food or life itself.
Very well put Greg…the stairway collapse, BAU Lite or whatever you want to call it will not be happening…when the software (the financial system) running the economy fails we are done for…it’s like having a brand new desktop…no matter how good your desktop is, if the OS fails, your beautiful new desktop is just a piece of junk….
Sorry, that’s wrong optics or deficient analytical approach if you will.
Firstly, in my case I repeatedly mentioned in any past/future cross comparisons that our current type of civilization path to collapse is structurally different, not mentioning the unprecedented size and scale. Nevertheless, certain mechanics when modeling collapse of human societies remain the same. Can’t speak for Norman, but perhaps he is not writing it in each post, as this is widely understood.
There are still severe differentiating aspects among the key nodes around the planet.
Namely, the Russian, Chinese, Indian or Iranian defense industry worker is not expecting/demanding suburbia lifestyles, nor looking for $multi thousand bill for his x-ray scan needed for medical checkup, or school fees for his children.. Let it sink for a while, and start imaging all the wider consequences of this.
Similarly, the Chinese now after hard battles, and circuses like acceptation by the Queen etc., entered the global top league with the inclusion of Renminbi into the global SDR basket, this fulfilled the pre-planned goal for 2015-20 window to achieve official status as the junior among the American and European nodes of global power. The plan for 2020-(25)-30 is for increasing the share in the pie, firstly leapfrogging Europe (shouldn’t be a problem) and getting parity or even jumping over the status of the US in second part of the next decade. With the latter obviously not going to happen calmly without some sparking action about usurping the various global scraps of energy and commerce to be head.
These are some of the basic contours in which the collapse will be slowly unfolding, meaning not uniform and single speed action everywhere.
The crash has “very little to do with speed” – but the crash can be more spectacular! Ditch that bike for a purpose built supercharged 2500HP speed machine and increase the speed much much more. Why not really make it spectacular and put solid fuel rocket boosters behind it as well. It could go up in flames!
Many spectacular crashes involved extremely high speeds….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSTrmJtHLFU
Essentially that is what we have now — we are running the engine full out…. and we are going to run out of fuel… and come crashing to the ground
I don’t think “Mad Max” is feasible without some kind of functioning supply chain for food, water, medicine, resources and energy. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue in a nationwide blackout. It would be an absolute disaster very quickly.
i could never figure out where mad max got his petrol from either
or the smokers in waterworld either for that matter
What they don’t tell you is that there is BAU Lite operating in the background….
The MSM is powerful — BAU Liters’ take their queues from Hollywood… if it can happen in the movies or on tee vee it can happen in real life
One wonders if the PR men from the Ministry of Truth ordered the Hollywood minions to ‘come up with tee vee series that calm the sheeple’
For instance Star Trek — is that just a high profile PR exercise to get the sheeple believing we can live in space? It has worked very well….
Elon is the new Kirk … they are also both from Canada
Even “The Road” is hard to imagine..and that’s saying a lot…
“The Road” = Paradise (compared to what awaits us)
I am beginning to wonder if these BAU Liters have a touch of mental retard-ation in them … a genetic defect — exposure to chemicals – or radiation …
It has been explained in great detail that a slow collapse is not possible.
Yet they continue to insist it is – they cannot explain how – they cannot support the assertion with facts. Over and over and over…
They just believe it is possible. Facts don’t matter. Logic does not matter.
Welcome to Moreonville.
We are living the slow collapse now! It just hasn’t afflicted you yet.
Good point!
I like you, Slow Paul!
The train of Industrial Civilization hit the wall in 2008…everybody is in that train, including the 0.001%….now some of the people were in the front wagons (Greeks, Spaniards, 45 million food stampers etc..) For them absolutely the collapse has already happened (sort of, not totally because they have not died by the millions)…the ripples from the crash have been making their way to the back wagons, slowly but surely…the global economy has been triaging out millions of people every year…however it can’t triage out everybody…the economy cannot run only with only the top 10%, 20% etc…there is a minimum critical mass needed to run the show…when we have reached the point where the global economy cannot triage workers anymore without shrinking the global economy (and hiding it with gimmicks), then you get Fast Collapse…and that will not take decades…we’re talking a few years, to not say a few months…
So collapse happens slowly, until it happens to you, then it is fast?
Sounds reasonable, I have not collapsed yet.
Neither have I…but it will happen…
From Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises”:
“How did you go bankrupt?”, Bill asked.
“Two ways”, Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Methinks, nations are the same.
As has been pointed out — China is what has kept the train from going over the cliff…. look in any major centre in the world and you will see a property bubble …. for the most part it is cash pouring out of China that is responsible … from Auckland to Vancouver….
China is floating a lot of boats with its epic debt fueled stimulus…. it has kept commodity producers from sinking….
However… the story will end badly. Building infrastructure that generates no return because it is not needed… is not a viable long term growth model….
Exactly FE, without China we would not even be here anymore…and what they did in the last 6-7 years is physically impossible to match no matter how much virtual money is printed…it was a one time thing…and that is what will collapse our Global Financial System, and by extension us…
Difficult to top this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bp-nf-QCMAAumYj.jpg
That is the graph I had in mind…even if that stat turned out to be half-true, it still would be absolutely stupendous…
You’re confusing decline, which is slow, and which has been happening since the 1970s, with collapse–which is very rapid. People who believe in the oxymoron of “slow collapse” believe that all changes are gradual and therefore adaptable.
++++++++
That doesn’t actually follow. Not all agricultural technologies developed since 1900 rely on fossil fuels. No one has a clear idea of what the maximum carrying capacity of the earth is, but it doesn’t make sense to extrapolate based on what was happening in 1900 — the world has changed dramatically since then.
@ wysinwygymmv
hate to point out the bleedin obvious:
but what do you think drives waterworks and sewage farms—and enables water to be piped into your home, and stuff you want rid of out of your home?
what do you think drives hospitals, and all the facilities that deliver medication to your doctor’s fingertips?
What do you think delivers heat and light when and where you want it?
All that is in addition to the ‘agricultural’ benefits of fossil fuels., and has provided the life support system for 7.5 bn people
‘But all I see is red ink, declining sales in retail and automobiles, less jobs, more poverty… and growth hasn’t stopped? How can we count on the official numbers coming from government (growth is positive, consumer confidence is good blah blah) to be true?’
Can you show me a data source that indicates global GDP has stopped increasing?
When it stops — can the CBs are unable to start it again — then you will get your fast collapse
One moment all will be well – then all hell will break lose. Like when Lehman crashed – only worse – nobody will ride to the rescue
And this is supposed to be the news?
Wow….
Why are you so agitated lately?
The world is simply upside now, so what.. it’s a new reality, adjust..
It would be simply inconceivable for a top party apparatchik of USSR to be seen even once or frequently liquored up during daily duties as that old trusty TPTB’s water boy, EU head Jean Claude Juncker..
Is anybody concerned? No, anything goes today, this is slow motion collapse at its best..
He is as persuasive as those who pushed the story that Russia helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election. No evidence was presented, you just had to take their word on it because they were respectable: Some of them were from the C.I.A., and many of them are Progressives– these two categories have an exceptional reputation of of never lying about anything for political gain.
Ralph Lauren to close stores, offices in turnaround effort
Upscale fashion retailer Ralph Lauren said Tuesday that it would cut jobs and shutter its Polo store on Fifth Avenue in New York City as it seeks cost savings amid a sputtering turnaround effort.
The company said the moves would save $140 million in annual expenses and would cost $370 million in one-time restructuring charges.
The plans include an unspecified number of store closures, “a reduction in workforce” and closure of certain corporation operations, according to a public filing.
The company declined to release details, though it had already announced 50 store closures during the fiscal year ending March 31.
Net revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 31, which included the critical holiday shopping season, fell 11.9% to $1.7 billion. Net income declined 37.4% to $82 million.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/04/ralph-lauren-restructuring/100016380/
The Beast is dying….
It never made sense to me for a company that makes expensive products to become growth orientated. By growth orientated I mean, issuing stock and paying out dividends. Companies that produce luxury products that are growth orientated all operate under the assumption that the number of wealthy people, or access to credit will increase exponentially in the near future, which has never been a reality .
Yeysoos delivers another miracle:
It’s official – for the first time ever, Elon Musk’s government-subsidized car-maker is America’s most valuable auto manufacturer.
Tesla shares surged another 1% today, amid a continued “trouble in shortville” ramp, topping $300 for the first time…
That gives the company a total value of $52.7 billion.
That’s more than GM’s $49.6 billion valuation. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk says he expects the company to sell 500,000 cars next year. GM, meanwhile, sold more than 20 times that many last year.
“If you look at the different auto companies on paper, it does seem a bit proposterous, where Tesla is at this moment, versus some of the more established auto companies,” Jessica Caldwell, director of industry analysis with automotive research firm Edmunds, said in an interview with CBC’s On The Money on Monday.
Tesla sold 76,285 cars last year. That compares to over 10 million for GM worldwide and 6.65 million for Ford.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/03/28/20170404_TSLA2_0.jpg
“I think Tesla has had a very high market cap for a long time, so I don’t think this comes necessarily as a surprise, but when you compare it to someone like Ford [or GM] who has a wealth of resources, it does seem a little out of whack,” Caldwell said.
a LITTLE our of whack????
A LITTLE OUT OF WHACK??????
This is insanity.
This is a joke.
1+1 = 8,78,908,009,987.998
And then there are people (to remain unnamed) who think shale is viable…
Elon Musk—-King Of Crony Capitalist Pretenders Has Ripped-Off Taxpayers For $4.9 Billion
If Elon Musk’s various projects are so fabulous, why do they all need government “help”?
Musk will tell you all about the virtues of his Tesla cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also very expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35K, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350).
The real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them. Well, not directly.
Their manufacture is heavily subsidized — and their sale is heavily subsidized. Either way, the taxpayer is the one who gets the bill.
On the manufacturing end, Tesla got $1.3 billion in special “incentives” from the state of Nevada to build its battery factory there. This includes an exemption from having to pay any property taxes for the next 20 years. Another inducement was $195 million in transferable tax credits, which Tesla could sell for cash. California provides similar incentives, including $15 million to “create jobs” in the state.
Tesla does not make money by selling cars, either. It makes money by selling “carbon credits” to real car companies that make functionally and economically viable vehicles that can and do sell on the merits — but which are not “zero emissions” vehicles, as the electric Tesla is claimed to be.
Laws in nine states require each car company selling cars in the state to sell a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles, else be fined. Since only electric cars qualify under the law as “zero emissions” vehicles — and the majority of cars made by the real car companies are not electric cars — they end up having to “purchase” these “carbon credits” from Tesla, subsidizing Tesla’s operations.
The amount Tesla has “earned” this way is in the neighborhood of $517 million.
It is estimated that Musk’s various ventures — including his new SolarCity solar panel operation and SpaceX — have cost taxpayers at least $4.9 billion, with Tesla accounting for about half of that dole.
More http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/elon-musk-king-of-crony-capitalist-pretenders-has-ripped-off-taxpayers-for-4-9-billion/
Telsa is now in good company with the other valuable companies such as Facebook and Apple, who makes products that the world could not survive without. /sarc.