I am putting this post up to give commenters who would like to carry on conversations related to previous posts a place to comment, since comments on my last post have been cut off.
Also, my family and I recently returned from a two-week vacation to Japan. The combination of the time away and jet lag has given me less time to research and write a full article. Here are a few observations, based on my recent trip to Japan:
General
The scenery is beautiful, but it is clear that the Japanese people and agriculture are squeezed into the small amount of land that is not mountainous and forested.
The amount of land being used for agriculture has been steadily falling. Our tour guide remarked that if an older person wanted to leave agriculture, getting solar panels installed is an alternate way of obtaining income. We did see quite a few solar panels. But does this approach make sense, when the amount of land farmed is relatively small and falling year-by-year? The USDA says, “Based on total calories consumed, Japan imports about 60 percent of its food each year.”
Tokyo-Edo Museum Visit
When we first arrived in Tokyo, before our bus tour began, we visited the Tokyo-Edo museum. This is a photo of one of the exhibits from the museum.
In previous posts, I have talked about economies being dissipative structures–growing for a fairly long period, before collapsing or obtaining an infusion of cheap energy. I thought that it was interesting that the Edo Period lasted 265 years (1603 – 1868). This is about as long as a person might expect an economy to last in its role as a dissipative structure. In the latter part of the Edo Period, there seemed to be increasing wealth disparity and problems with the government collecting enough taxes. These are things that we would expect to happen, as resources per capita start to fall and complexity starts to increase.
Free English Language Guided Tour of Museum
The three of us (my husband, son, and I) received a free three-hour English language guided tour from a volunteer guide at the Tokyo-Edo Museum. The guide told us that he is a 75-year old retired business man. There was no charge for his services; we were also told not to tip people in Japan.
My impression is that the no-tipping policy is a holdover from the gift economy approach that much of the world used before our current capitalist approach took over. Under the gift economy approach, people are expected to offer their services for nothing, with the expectation that others will reciprocate. This system has pluses and minuses. If pensions of some elderly people are inadequate, it makes it harder for them to provide personal services for wages, since others (with more adequate pensions) will do the same thing for free, as unpaid volunteers.
Traveling School Children
Everywhere we traveled, we encountered a large number of school children traveling on school trips. They often stayed at the same hotels as we did and visited the same sites as we did. In fact, in several places they seemed to be the majority of hotel guests.
The group of children shown above had prepared some type of recitation and response to be offered in the Hiroshima Peace Park. The group is lined up for their presentation, even though there was no real audience for their performance, other than a few of us from our tour bus who happened to be walking by. I can’t imagine US children doing this.
Our tour leader told us that only children whose parents can afford to pay for these class trips are allowed to go. As a result, there is a great deal of pressure on parents to save up money for these trips.
Roads in Japan
The roads in Japan impressed me as being incredibly expensive to build and maintain. Everywhere, we saw walls built along the side of the road, presumably to prevent falling rock. In the US, we just put up signs, “Beware of Falling [really fallen] Rock.” Of course, we have more space, so we don’t build our roads quite so close to the road cuts.
The white line near the side of the road is to mark off what I would call a “sidewalk substitute.” It is a low-cost way of giving pedestrians a little space to walk.
We saw other features that make roads expensive. Our tour bus drove through countless tunnels. We also drove on many sections where the road was elevated, so that more roads could be squeezed into less area.
Nearly everywhere, soundproofing panels have been added because roads are so close to buildings. Roads are being made in an earthquake-proof manner, which also adds to costs.
Our bus frequently drove through toll stations. Wikipedia indicates that most expressways were originally financed by debt, and the tolls are being collected to pay off this debt. The Japan Guide indicates to drive the length of Japan, toll payments of 39,000 yen ($349) are required for a private passenger automobile. This is expensive compared to tolls elsewhere.
Man Made Rocks
Something else I noticed in Japan that I hadn’t seen elsewhere was the use of man-made rocks. Here, they are being used to keep the sea from causing erosion under a major road that is very close to the edge of the sea. We saw other shapes of rocks being used for other purposes elsewhere.
Government Pensions in Japan
The National Pension program in Japan (somewhat equivalent to our Social Security) is based on the assumption that all participants in the program will make equal contributions to the program, regardless of income. In 2017, these contributions amount to 16,490 yen (or $147) per month. To get the maximum pension amount, a person has to contribute at the full level (whatever it is declared to be, each year) for 40 years.
Our bus tour guide told us that because of changing employers and resulting low income, he has been unable to make contributions in recent years. When he retires, he expects that his pension payments will be very low because of this. He seemed to be well educated and hardworking. If he is having pension problems, I expect that many others are also having pension problems. In fact, some may be having pension problems today. We saw quite a few older people working.
Bullet Trains in Japan
One thing we discovered is that Japan’s bullet trains are for people, not luggage. The racks over people’s heads hold a backpack or brief case, but not much more. If people have luggage, they generally send it a day or two ahead of time via a luggage transfer service. There is also no internet service available on these bullet trains.
We chose to take an airplane from Osaka to Tokyo. Airplanes will transfer both people and luggage.
Photo in Kotohira, Japan
This is a photo of my husband, son, and me, after we had climbed 865 steps to a shrine in Kotohira, Japan. We had a good but tiring trip.
My friend has an interesting take on the entire situation – die with as much debt as possible.
I agree; but have plenty of cash to carry you until that point is reached whether it be you or BAU that ends first.
In many ways, “dying with as much debt as possible” seems to be the way our economy is structured.
Unfortunately, having a lot of debt is not good for mental health. Neither is having a huge craving for material things — big houses, fast cars, restaurant meals, etc. These are things that many religions will teach you (but not the “prosperity gospel”).
But we need lots of debt. So maybe we should be thankful that so many have approached life this way–it helps keep BAU going.
Over the next 25 years, output from currently producing fields will fall by over 45 million b/d, or nearly half of current global production.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2017/05/29/the-steady-drumbeat-of-more-global-oil-demand/#3aa517695e2d
Well that pretty much seals the deal. If anyone thinks we can continue BAU with 1/2 the oil they’re delusional.
With oil consumption rising at about 1MB a day. This would mean in twenty five years time we would have to find six and half new Saudi Arabia’s worth of production. LOL there isn’t even one more Saudi left on earth let alone 6.5.
I think just a few percentage drop will be enough to crash the system. Oil consumption needs to grow by 1m barrels per day, because the world economy has to grow by 3% per annum, to maintain stability. So anything as critical as oil going into reverse, for even a short space of time, will spell the end.
So I highly doubt we will have to wait too much longer before the shoes drops…the bumpy plateau of finance and energy is becoming rockier and steeper.
I agree. I think all the financial situations can be manipulated and can be extended until energy shortages take down BAU. I think collapse comes by 2020 and wouldn’t be surprised if it came even earlier even.
Yes, TPTB have down a great job in delaying collapse, but make believe and reality will eventually intersect, some time between now and 2040 at the latest. Naturally I would like to see it blown out towards the tail end of this timescale, as I’m 54 now. 🙂
I am unsure on that point…
The auto industry would be considered a key pillar by Korowicz….
And even with massive subsidies sales have been falling for months now.
What would happen if sales in the US went from say 18m to 14m?
Keeping in mind the drop would be a result of the fact that the consumer is unable to afford a new car …. which would mean they are almost certainly cutting back on other non-essential spending.
I am not confident that the CBs could overcome this with more gimmicks…. but then they have surprised to the upside many times since 08….
The real delusion is that government regulation is the problem and innovation will rescue the system. But that was his conclusion.
If we could get the price up to $300 per barrel, there would be lots of oil available. Of course, we cannot.
And at 300$ per barrel, the financial system would collapse in very short order…
Right, but the IEA has shown charts with oil available at $300 per barrel. Someone believes this kind of nonsense.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/2015-iea-weo-figure-1-4.png
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-30/trouble-brewing-for-opec-as-once-costly-deep-sea-oil-turns-cheap
Coming Soon on Fake News….
Once Costly Tar Sands Oil Turns Cheap, to OPEC’s Dismay
Tar Sands costs are coming down, Wood Mackenzie says
Oil at $50 seen sustaining some tar sands projects by 2018
Making America great again, with fake news!
Ocean oil drilling companies aren’t doing too well.
Transocean:
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/rig/stock-chart?intraday=off&timeframe=10y&splits=off&earnings=off&movingaverage=None&lowerstudy=volume&comparison=off&index=&drilldown=off
Seadrill:
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sdrl/stock-chart?intraday=off&timeframe=10y&splits=off&earnings=off&movingaverage=None&lowerstudy=volume&comparison=off&index=&drilldown=off
Mike Malone (gold/silver bug): “You know, this crash when it happens, I just don’t think we’ll bounce right back like before…”
Me: Ya, think?!
He’ll regret not having wasting his pile of gold before it became worthless.
Yeah, it won’t be worth a box of crackerjacks after.
A box of crackerjacks will actually be worth more…you can eat those 😉
Indeed. Lol…
Instead of the worthless plastic surprise at the bottom …. this could be replaced with a worthless gold coin….
when BAU goes – there will be no energy – there will be no food — gold will be 100% worthless
Sir, would you have any to sell?
I just sold some…. I am in the process of wasting the pieces of paper that the bank gave me in exchange for the pieces of metal.
Your banks buy gold from citizens? What a novel concept!
Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong ….
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/HK_Connaught_Road_C_Hang_Seng_Bank_Jubilee_Street.JPG/1200px-HK_Connaught_Road_C_Hang_Seng_Bank_Jubilee_Street.JPG
Bravo! Alas, I’m stuck in Trumpistan which can be somewhat depressing. But, we’ve got lotsa tattooed fat chicks!
i1: Tattoed fat snowflakes behaving like this around blue pill’er White Knights?
I always run my ‘ shipwreck theory’; two men wash up on a deserted Island beach. One is a good practical guy who has a decent hunting knife, the other an accountant with briefcase full of money. No prizes for guessing who is rich now.
So many people have skills that are totally worthless outside of the cradle of BAU. Its mind boggling how some of these occupations came to be!
Wait a minute the accountant can setup the practical guy’s survivalist business and help him take advantage of all the deductions he can use…it’s a win-win situation for both of them 😉
Of course; financialise the knife, load it with debt and turn the owner of real skills into a debt slave. Too easy!!
‘I’ll put a bullet in your head’: Fistfight nearly erupts on final day of contentious Texas legislative session.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas-legislature/2017/05/29/fistfight-nearly-erupts-final-day-caps-contentious-legislative-session
Gail why is the Hills Group Thermodynamic Oil Collapse inaccurate? Please explain reasons why? or anyone else who doubts it please.
The Hills Group tried to replicate a model which is not valid, as far as I can see. They then did not do it very well, approximating all variables in ways that would make people who are familiar with the theory cringe. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
there are several other engineers and scientists who are working with Bedford and Louis and have submitted a paper on the ETP OIL MODEL and are awaiting a response from the Royal Academy Open Source in London.
There are a lot of peer reviewed papers that are wrong.
oooh… The ROYAL Academy…. sounds important
And there are many that are accurate. Either way other papers have no bearing on this particular one.
I still haven’t seen anyone address why it is wrong. Basically I think most miss understand their perspective. The most thorough attack on their work completely missed the reason for the equations they were using.
Basically they have applied a fit for use model that is common in the mining industry to oil. Then extrapolated the net energy. Turned around and said the industry has become a primary consumer rather then producer. Then projected the result.
I’m not saying it’s flawless but pretty good work.
The naysayers I think are jealous of the clean perspective.
The point is: Hill only looks at the petroleum industry but it takes energy inputs from other non renewable resources. In a german forum we came to the conclusion that this is about 17% of the oil energy being produced. So the Hill estimate seems a bit early in my optinion but I can not find a flaw in it. Also the recent debunking wave did not show a reasonable argument. Hill has been moved to the logged in area of peakoil.com forums, so he is off the radar for the public. Their predictions are simply way too scary…
Their differences aside, I would be mighty interested in reading a coauthored post between Tverberg and Bedford.
Let me suggest a title (and topic):
“Debt, wages and its interaction with the thermodynamics of oil production”
There are to many “If’s” to get to the singularity. “If”humans become smarter. “If” there is no war. “If”technology keeps advancing. “If”we can produce enough energy…etc
The Ecological Predicament: Wages Of Self-Delusion
William E. Rees, PhD, professor emeritus University of British Columbia
https://theoldspeakjournal.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/the-human-ecological-predicament-wages-of-self-delusion/
Thanks Cliff. Good one. About as clear and concise as it gets.
Rees has always been a straight-shooter.
Cheers.
Is This The “Mystery” Massive Long Supporting The Oil Market?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-30/mystery-massive-long-supporting-oil-market
Wrong… it’s the El.ders… who cant allow the price to drop too low — or the producers will die
“Over the next 25 years, output from currently producing fields will fall by over 45 million b/d, or nearly half of current global production.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2017/05/29/the-steady-drumbeat-of-more-global-oil-demand/#3929e6da5e2d
Well that pretty much seals the deal. If anyone thinks we can continue BAU with 1/2 the oil they’re delusional.
They will have to wrap it into somehow “manageable deal” this could be:
– carbon tax = climate change = consious frugality
– martial law + food stamps + UBI + msm indoctrination
– forced and selective depopulation least affecting JITs + some of the above
– some other scenarios
you can bet the farm, they will act somehow..
“you can bet the farm, they will act somehow..”
They don’t have a choice. There’s too much at stake.
Imagine TPTP going at each other’s throats.
Where would that leave us – the plebs.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FhGUg0elDZA/Vv1rX913aiI/AAAAAAAAAFc/TJW5C-NuO7AvH3Xk-ifSOVETTeHi-NxXw/s1600/Lincoln.jpg
It will be like Albert Speer trying to keep the German state going in 1944-45: he worked wonders, but events simply over-whelmed him and his experts.
Events?
Probably more like a T34 “Zerg rush” from the east.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/33/d9/ab/33d9ab75f83ec902800d1be7a204b1ad.jpg
I can recommend reading his memoirs.
http://img.tradera.net/medium/040/217673040_c5e10794-f17f-43d4-ae8d-7ae980937206.jpg
Within the next decade you will have a two tier society closely resembling feudalism in America.No one here can predict the future but when resources/energy become more scarce what’s left always tends to end up in the hands of the top upper crust of society. Just look at North Korea everyone lives in perpetual poverty with a military police getting more than the average peasant to protect the tiny class from revolution…
Hi. I left but am stopping here briefly.
There is no way to escape that fate. It is human destiny in a declining environment.
Better to be smart and join the oppressors and prosper than become one of the victims.
Going to join your non-existent, make-believe Artificial Intelligence overlords?
It worth noting the privileges enjoyed by ‘Party First Joiners’ in 1930’s and 40’s Germany.
When the drums of primitivism start to beat, pick up a flag and cheer, if you wish to survive……
“When the drums of primitivism start to beat, pick up a flag and cheer, if you wish to survive……”
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-to-see-and-listen-to-the-wicked-is-already-the-beginning-of-wickedness-confucius-41005.jpg
Or simply flee.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Einstein_patentoffice.jpg/170px-Einstein_patentoffice.jpg
https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/duplicates/6bavau/im_a_professional_energy_analyst_i_pieced/
i want to ask ofw commenter do you think is religionism is increased or decreased
as industrial civilzation is in decline
Humans usually descend into superstition and ignorance (religion) during collapsing empires.
So I would say it is a high probability that that will continue.
The healthiness societies are always the least religious:
http://thoughtleader.co.za/burningpaper/2007/08/24/least-religious-countries-also-the-healthiest-says-survey/
I consider religion and culture as being highly overlapping. In my view, Japan is extraordinarily “religious,” in some sense. Many Japanese follow not one, but two, religions. They also follow the dictates from the government, as if those dictates were law. I posted a link showing that they have close to the lowest crime rate in the world. They also have the highest longevity in the world.
How does this fit in with your theory?
China also has very high conformity to what the culture dictates. At this point, it is fairly far from what we normally associate with religion. It has been the large country with the highest economic growth for quite a few years.
China is a Confucian/Zen religious society, recently emerged from feudalism.
(Feudal Capitalism would be its best definition [I have family on the Mainland])
Most Chinese consider themselves atheist.
62% of Japanese define themselves as atheist, 4th highest in the world:
https://data-wrapper.s3.amazonaws.com/HaUxV/2/index.html
Nordics are/were very unreligious. It is my belief (hah) these countries were never really christened, the people just played along.
They are among the highest energy users in the world. They don’t need religion. They have lots of energy (hydroelectric and other).
Our new faith is in Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Donald Trump, and other government and financial figures. Once you have these, citizens don’t “need” any other faith. They don’t “need” any guidance from the past on what approaches work best when dealing with members of a person’s own “tribe,” or how to deal with the many disappointments that we encounter in our daily lives. After all, we have our new demigods to follow!
“Religionism” isn’t any greater or less, it just has new sources of adoration. I should add Elon Musk to the list, too.
And let us not forget the Second Coming …. in the form of Elon…..
Amusing … staying at a B&B… another person staying here is watching the news on a laptop and says – isn’t what Elon Musk doing incredible …
I didn’t know what to say at first — so I just said ‘well – he is losing $14,000 per car sold – but otherwise ya I guess he’s trying to be a big innovator
He says how is he losing 14k per car?
I do a quick google search and I says — Tesla lost 330 million last quarter… the actual loss per car was $13,000
I am sure he is thinking this is a blasphemous statement…. that I will rot in hell for saying this
I did not say anything about the ‘amazing rockets to mars’
Give Elon a break. Rocket science is a very, very new field. Humans are still figuring out how to reliably launch rockets into Earth’s orbit! Given more time, Elon Musk will find a way to get a rocket to launch a rocket into space.
-Progressively Yours
Fighting Fossil Fuel Oppression since 2009!
Time is not the important variable. More money, and the resources money will buy, is what Elon Musk needs to reliably launch rockets into orbit. It is seriously doubtful that this can be done in anything approaching a profitable way, however.
Faith is what a person believes in. Everyone is religious. Everyone has a set of unseen values and beliefs that form the foundation of their thoughts and actions. Some believe in the Virgin birth, some believe in unicorns, some believe in capitalism, some believe in peak oil, some believe in sex, drugs and rock and roll. Some believe in permaculture, Some believe in Wal-Mart and Starbucks. Some believe in unlimited growth on a finite planet. I say again, everyone is religious. Even atheists are religious!
The important question is, “which beliefs are valid?” It is easy to throw stones at someone else’s beliefs without first considering the reliability of our own.
To give a simple example of faith. A person decides to sit in a chair. When he does he believes a certain chair will be comfortable and secure. He sits down. The chair collapses. From the floor he then realizes that his faith or belief in the chair was not valid. At this point he should adjust his beliefs. Maybe he is too heavy to sit in cheap plastic chairs.
Out global civilization is on the verge of collapse. JUST LIKE THE CHAIR. Things don’t seem to work the way they used to. The economy doesn’t work the way it used to in the past. Many are questioning the faith based assumptions of our civilization. Young people today are struggling to achieve the standards of living their parents enjoyed. This isn’t just a question of affluence, for many it’s a question of survival.
What are the invalid beliefs of our civilization? Our we humble enough to recognize our mistakes? Will we be honest with ourselves, or with each other? If we recognize our mistakes are we courageous enough to admit it and adjust our faith? Can we adopt a new way of living based on more valid beliefs?
I have spent my entire adult life studying Theology and practicing my falth. Most of what I have learned through the truth expressed in OFW has encouraged me that I am on the right path. What I love about OFW is the willingness to challenge widely held beliefs. To look behind the curtain to see if the Wizard of Oz is truly all powerful.
Thanks Gail and OFWers, you stimulate my faith.
I agree. It is very easy to poke holes in religious writings of the past. But that is not the issue. We all have faith in something.
Religion and culture very much overlap, in my opinion. Religion is a way of passing down the wisdom learned in the past. Some of it might be “inspired,” but much of it has to do with what works best for a happy and productive life.
Gail says:
“It is very easy to poke holes in religious writings of the past”.
Not really. Only in recent history, and even then only in secular societies.
Go to a predominately Muslim country today and you’ll immediately find it’s not very easy at all to poke holes in religious writings.
And in the past, when there were no secular societies, and religion was strong and ruled unopposed in government, one risked their life if they poked holes in religious writings.
There was censure, arrest, torture, burning at the stake, and inquisition for countless scientists, artists, intellectuals, and citizens of all walks of life who even mildly questioned religious texts or gently challenged clerical authority or meekly asked for a few basic human rights.
John Calvin had his friend, the brilliant physician and humanist, Michael Servetus burned alive because of a disagreement over a single preposition written in a text.
When religion was strong it was brutal, oppressive, and intolerant. We forget that part because now it’s been declawed and domesticated, and caged by the hammer blows of science and modernity. Remove science and modern living and it’s likely to escape and degenerate back into it’s original form.
Some folks who comment here seem dangerously removed from the reality and impact of religion around the world today, and strangely unaware of the growing threats and mounting daily death toll caused by the incompatible and irreconcilable claims of different religious doctrines. So there’s a lot of happy talk but no real grounding in the reality of current events. Just for starters: anyone read ‘Infidel’ (2008) by Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
Gail says:
“We all have faith in something.”
Nope. Many of us, like physicist Lawrence Krauss (overdue for a Nobel prize, imo) “don’t have faith in anything”. We only make tentative probability statements, some with a high degree of certainty, some with a low degree of certainty. The universe is endlessly fascinating but highly chaotic and much of it unknown.
All knowledge in science is tentative, provisional, and with the proper evidence, subject to revision. Unlike religion of course, where one cannot revise the texts no matter how much evidence is presented.
“The earth still moves” mumbled Galileo as he was led out of the Vatican, spared of torture and death, but put under house arrest for the rest of his life because he showed evidence that the earth is not the center of the universe as the Bible claims, but orbits around the sun.
Gail says:
“Much of [religion] has to do with what works best for a happy and productive life.”
And of course, much of religion has to do with praising and honoring barbaric human sacrifice (one or two in particular) so we can avoid uncomfortable thoughts about reality and our own permanent death. This kind of denial, and mind forged manacle, has historically caused enormous pain, suffering, and unhappiness, and wasteful and unproductive human activity.
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it is” said Carl Sagan, “than to persist in delusion – no matter how satisfying and reassuring.”
Cheers.
How is it better exactly? ‘Permanent death’, whether true or not, doesn’t sound better than any comforting ‘delusion’ if you ask me.
Hi Dorvek,
“How is it better exactly?”
Sagan explains how in his book:
“The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” (1997)
Cheers.
When one loses all faith … values… beliefs… etc…. life becomes for the most part meaningless… not necessarily unhappy… just devoid of any purpose….
One understands how a dog must perceive life….
My dogs live in the now. They are happy and perennial optimists. Oh look a fellow pack mate has woken up joy joy lick lick. Oh look he is eating maybe we will get some. Oh boy he threw a ball this is so cool.
Another word for beliefs, to be a Negative Nancy, are prejudices and biases.
Beliefs are not realistic models of reality but abstract ones based on complex emotions.
No religion underpins all human activity. Properly defined religion is merely a system of belief. Therefore it can be true or it can be false. Truth cannot be determined by consensus truth must be discovered. In the absence of truth fear and superstition dominant
So for example today’s industrialized world believes that the system can last forever. This idea has been precipitated by consensus. The same was true of the Aztecs in Mexico and consensus or opinion of the day lead them to believe that human sacrifice preserved their sun God.
If consensus breaks down due to revealed truth those who remain in ignorance will turn to other false religious beliefs. Like terrorism weapons of mass destruction social issues political issues.
Truth however is unavoidable it is not swayed by sentiment. Truth always prevails. It also has limits so it is finite. Lies on the other hand are infinite.
Systems of belief based on lies are also infinite which explains the world of religious beliefs that exist today.
So are religious beliefs increasing? No just changing. Because most prefer the lie to the truth.
If you need to believe something, odds are its not true.
People need to believe in something apparently, to function normally and to signal health to other humans. Being honest , within a social context, is seen as “being negative”…and negative people are seen as being unhealthy and unattractive.
I’m going to end this post on a positive. Duncan, you can do whatever you want. The sky’s the limit.
Kinda depends on where you are at.
I think, from experience and observation, the existentialist got it right.
No beliefs involved.
And they are incredibly happy and effective!
Well-adjusted people are usually incredibly happy and effective.
Whether well-adjusted people are well-adjusted because they choose the right beliefs is a matter of the chicken and egg situation.
Can you define well-adjusted
“Well-adjusted people are usually incredibly happy and effective.”
Yeah because they are absolutely clueless about everything. Don’t get me wrong, they are very nice people (and I would rather have them as neighbours than anarchists) but they are completely vapid…
“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
I agree most people prefer the lie to the truth. This is an underlying problem in science, religion, politics, economics, …
As the human animal becomes more stressed, rational capacity will decrease.
On the other hand, religions can provide social and emotional safety networks, which is very valuable.
We can expect to see polarisation, for good or ill.
Nice summary of our debt predicament from the FT:
“Virtually every class of US debt — sovereign, corporate, unsecured household/personal, auto loans and student debt — is at record highs. Americans now owe $1tn in credit card debt, and a roughly equivalent amount of student loans and auto-loans which, like the subprime mortgage quality that set off the 2008 financial crisis, are of largely low credit quality (and therefore high risk).
“US companies have added $7.8tn of debt since 2010 and their ability to cover interest payments is at its weakest since 2008, according to an April International Monetary Fund report. With total public and private debt obligations estimated at 350 per cent of gross domestic product, the US Congressional Budget Office has recently described the path of US debt (and deficits) as almost doubling over the next 30 years.
“But this is not just a US phenomenon. Globally, the picture is similarly precarious, with debt stubbornly high in Europe, rising in Asia and surging across broader emerging markets. A decade on from the beginning of the financial crisis, the world has the makings of a fresh debt crisis.
“In November last year, unsecured household debt in the UK passed pre-financial crisis highs in 2008. In the UK, debt excluding student loans crept up to £192bn, the highest figure since December 2008, and it continues to rise this year. Meanwhile, in the eurozone, debt-to-GDP ratios in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Belgium remain over 100 per cent. As of March there were more than $10tn negative yielding bonds in Europe and Japan…
“Moody’s downgraded 24 sovereigns (including Brazil, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia) in the first half of 2016, adding to concerns as to whether borrowers will be able to service their obligations.
“Second, the ability to repay debt is under strain in countries whose revenues stem disproportionately from commodities, whose prices have suffered. Furthermore, nations exposed to significant Chinese trade and investment face fiscal stress as China itself has a relatively soft economic outlook.
“Finally, the prevailing mixed global economic growth picture — underscored by the forecasts in the recent IMF World Economic Outlook — prompts questions as to how (and indeed whether) outstanding debts will be paid or brought under control…
“…we have the makings of a debt crisis that would reverberate around the world.”
https://www.ft.com/content/3215e960-3faa-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2
The student loan debt is the ultimate bag of holes. Employment is built on growth not education.
Right. We use education to keep young people out of the workforce. Then when they drop out of school, or even when they graduate, they have a hard time getting jobs that pay well enough to justify their expenditure. Education provides jobs for professors, school administrators, and those building dorms. But what tends to happen is “inflation” in what employers expect for new hires. Very often, they use the existence of a college degree as a sign that the person is conscientious, and fairly intelligent. It becomes a very high-cost screening device that employers use.
I once heard someone describe college as “daycare for surplus labor.” That seemed about right.
Sounds about right. Professors are under pressure to keep graduation high enough, also. So there is a wide range in abilities of those who graduate.
One of the practical reasons given for investment in higher education rests on the belief that most job creation for living-wage jobs will be in sectors that require extensive formal training.
Many insiders believe that global industrial civilization will continue growing.
That means more wealth and more technology. Higher education will be needed to help humans manage that wealth (finance, math) and to maintain the technology (math,engineering, and science).
“there is a wide range in abilities of those who graduate.” Even pop-science orientated publications have acknowledged that there is a wide variety in the abilities of software engineers…. but the average person still believes that differences in aptitude can be overcome by “Working harder” or “being dedicated.” (i.e. devoting nearly 100% of one’s time to something). Dedication depends on having a social support system that allows an individual to be focused on a very narrow goal.
I look at the situation in sort of the opposite way–manual jobs are being taken over by technology. Most jobs that will be available in the future will not be manual, so will presumably need some sort of advanced education. But it is not at all clear that there will be enough of these jobs in total, or that spending many years in school learning irrelevant material will be helpful.
Instead, we seem to produce a situation that involves so many high priced specialists (as in medicine) that the people employed in the rest of the economy cannot afford their services.
It is shockingly simple isn’t it: “Employment is built on growth not education”. Yet the talking heads on TeeVee can spin for hours about college drop-outs, student loan crisis and Millennial’s. You hit the nail on the head. It is all about growth.
Thanks to 30 years of supply-side economics, most people, think that one thing that is holding back growth is labor is a shortage of people with lots of education.
India produces an impressive number of people with practical credentials yet all this education has not translated into better living standards for most Indians.
In Spain, due to the dreadful unemployment level and poor pay for graduates, the young are clinging on to university life for a long as possible.
Youth unemployment in the properous regions is about 25%, but 50% or more in the worst (ie the South) where the biggest industry pre-2008 was construction. In these circumstances, students are hanging on to get Masters, to improve their prospects.
Even those employed will probably be getting very poor salaries indeed, and very precarious contracts – the government relaxed laws to make hiring and firing easier.
The Left view university study as a ‘democratic right’ regardless of intellect. In consequence, and due to corruption in hiring, there are some pretty awful provincial universities. probably 80% could be abolished with no productive loss to Spain, but of course they are very important in the local economies as employers, maintenance of the buildings, etc.
These graduate students will make for very knowledgeable restaurant waiters.
There seem to be a lot of Chinese people with impressive credentials who have not been able to find suitable jobs either. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-07/09/content_21237438.htm
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X13000710
A few years ago, we read articles about huge numbers of college graduates looking for jobs. I don’t see new stories of this type, however.
Gail, I assume the ones who were featured in articles were not the cream of the crop.
I remember reading that the cream-of-the-crop students, many of whom had studied at prestigious colleges outside of China, were the ones desirable to employers.
Given how opaque China’s government is about statistics, I assume that the non- cream-of-the-crop college graduates have taken jobs they are overqualified for because there is no social welfare in China.
Thanks! It takes “real” economic growth and inflation to keep debt under control. There are a lot of areas in the world running into difficulties, for many different reasons.
When major MSM outlet starts writing like this, you can take it to the bank, that the general outline of next slump, plus follow-up “recovery plan” is already charted by someone up there. Now the question remains, what the “recovery plan” would exactly consist of this time.. The could megaprint, they could dump some host core country (US), and few other options..
I agree, if the MSM starts talking about the issues we discuss here on OFW, then some plan is already in place and the next shoe is about to drop.
Yes,
The numbers have been crunched, the result outputted and on those decisions been made.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2f/a6/da/2fa6daa356124b45285c1273bace5f71.jpg
Baltic index hits lowest since early March on tepid demand
(doesn’t everyone read the Hellenic Shipping News?)
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/baltic-index-hits-lowest-since-early-march-on-tepid-demand/
It is actually sad how much I find myself reading Hellenic Shipping News and Splash247 of late. Clearly I need to get out more.
Enjoy the sun, Mr Gibbs, your (treeless) island winter will soon be upon you!
Wondering …. what do people burn to stay warm in a treeless place in winter?
“doesn’t everyone read the Hellenic Shipping News?”
Haha as a Greek maybe I should 😉
BTW Greek ship owners are as clueless as the rest about our predicament (although I commend their orders, doing their part keeping BAU alive!!)
https://greekcitytimes.com/greek-ship-owners-leading-world-with-over-2-3-billion-dollars-in-investments/
When the Baltic Shipping Index dropped very low in early 2016 was when oil prices dropped very low. It is not that low now, but it seems to be headed downward.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic
Will future generations (if there are any) forgive us for wrecking their planet, or think rather badly of us?
If there were future generations (which I don’t think is the case) and they blamed us, I would say to them: “You would have done EXACTLY the same we did had you been born in our era”
It’s like when I hear Millennials blaming Baby Boomers for their woes….I feel like telling them you would have done exactly the same thing had you been born in those years…
Millennials would have, of course, done the same thing.
The problem is that Boomers like to level a lot of accusations at the younger generation — that we don’t have 2.5 kids in a beige house on a cul de sac because we are lazy, because we are “snowflakes,” because we want to live in momma’s basement because we feel safe there, or because we are spending our money on avocado toast.
No, sorry, wrong. We are trapped under heaps of student loan debt, working jobs we don’t like just to stay afloat, and we don’t have the funds to make big purchases like our parents did. If we’re single, it’s not even in the cards. I was talking to a friend the other day who earned her doctorate and has an excellent career. She can’t afford anything more than a small apartment for the reasons I just mentioned, and she is *far* from lazy and entitled.
There you go, feeling better now?
http://forreadingaddicts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/vonnegut-quote8.jpg
Wow did not know that one, thanks for posting…Vonnegut really has some great quotes!
There can be no doubt — Millennials want to live large too — they want to Burn More Coal — but the opportunities are far fewer… bad timing for them
The best part is getting labeled as being “lazy” for not burning fossil fuels that aren’t there. (sarcasm)
!!!!!!!!!!!
Seadu, I know Millennials are getting the shitty tail-end of IC (Boomers are clueless as well about that being the reason that Millennials can’t “take off” with their lives like they did)….but that was not the point of my comment…
I understand the main point of your comment, and I agree with it. Yes, Boomers did what any humans presented with a surplus of resources would do. Millennial criticism of them is thus a form of Monday morning quarterbacking, or hypocrisy, however you want to see it.
But my response is simply that Millennials often level these charges against Boomers because Boomers are swift to point out how apathetic young people are and why we won’t just make something of our lives already. “You used it all up before we got there” is thus an appropriate response to the Boomer generation — it is the answer to their persistent questions about why we don’t have lives like theirs, and not necessarily an indication that we would have done things differently. (I’m barely a Millennial if at all, btw.)
I agree Sceadu, and it’s a valid response.
BTW, I’m neither, I’m an Xer 🙂 It was already starting to get tough for Gen X when we were starting out in the workplace in the 90s, but nothing compared to what Millennials are going through. As for Gen Z, if I’m right about a swift collapse of IC in the near term, not many will have reached the age of worrying about what to do with the rest of their working lives…they (and us) will have disappeared….I guess it’s kind of the bright side for them, albeit in a dark way, of a fast collapse…
I had to google “avocado toast” LOL…….
ITEOTWAWKI, what’s IC stand for? (sorry low iq)
Haha Industrial Civilization
Yes. But our Boomer Captains(Corporate leaders,Politicians,Economists) were warned many times(Peak Oil,Limits To Growth,Etc) that our ships chosen path (Endless Consumerism & Growth) would take the ship into dangerous waters(End of Economic Growth). But carry they choose full speed ahead…..
And my point is any set of humans that would have been in charge at that period in time would have done the same thing…there is no way resources that are available for a species to consume will be left untouched…it holds true whether we’re talking about yeast, reindeer, humans or anything else…
+++++++++
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel)
Our Boomer Captains followed the laws of physics. They didn’t have a lot of choice, regardless of who warned them. If they were elected officials, and told voters that they were advocating actions which would greatly reduce the voters’ standard of living (by approaches that would save energy), they would be quickly voted out of office. Thus, while they had “free will,” exercise of this free will would lead them to lose their jobs as elected officials. The same principle worked within businesses as well. An auto executive who decides to stop making cars because their emissions are bad for the environment would likely lose his job.
What you just said Gail is effectively what I said but with a human perspective…but basically is no different then our Reindeer in St. Matthew Island 🙂
Like deer. Like dogs: wake up, yawn, scratch, stretch, trip outside, bit of a lick, and then: a day long search for things to consume – fill that bowl up, and I’ll empty it!
Like there’s no tomorrow, because in my dog mind, there is no tomorrow and the bowl is magical……
Since it is ice hockey week for Fast Eddy…
Let’s draw a parallel…
Some of the team supporters are snowflake types… they demand transgender toilets … and they also demand that the hockey team choose slower less skilled players make the team…
The coach gives into their demands — the result is they lose their first two matches by 50 goals….
The next day the coach is fired — a new coach comes on board – replaces the shitty players… and off we go….
And the supporters who demanded the shitty players be allowed on the team to make it more fair — they STFUP.
We fixed our snowflake problem We only hire people over 40
Even societies without short-sighted voters to please screw up: look at Ancient Mesopotamia, the Soviet block, etc.
All ruthless degraders of their environments, as far as their technologies and financial structures allowed.
It does seem to be a path that we can’t help treading, unless deprived of advanced tools.
Even just with primitive tools and camp fires, we did a lot of damage and caused mass extinctions.
Right. We just act as more efficient dissipative structures now.
“More” is an easy sell during times aplenty.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/00/ca/94/00ca94939eac0acadea02d02e588de58.jpg
Millennials are idiots… along with 99.999999999% of all humans…. so when I encounter them I already know the odds of meeting one that is not an idiot are far lower than winning the lottery…. so I go in with the assumption I am dealing with human (vs a god) and act accordingly…
It must suck to be a stupid human.
Future generations?
CNN & Fox get paid for meaningless gabbing about our overlords personal issues and fighting among each other. ” OH! this elite said this and then this one did that and Hillary had her toe nails painted and Trump has indigestion bla bla bla OMG”. They are no different than a gaggle of social media teenage girls gossiping over boy bands and movie stars.
Oil Companies Could Go Bankrupt If Oil Falls, Stays Below $45
https://www.investing.com/analysis/oil-companies-could-go-bankrupt-if-oil-falls,-stays-below-$45-(uso)-200191819
Good point! This of course doesn’t address the problem of countries as opposed to companies that go bankrupt. They need much higher prices than $45 per barrel. Also, the oil service contractors that have temporarily dropped their prices need higher prices. They will go bankrupt if they keep their prices at the current level. So they also need a price above $45 a barrel. The $45 per barrel target is just for the 50 big companies, not for the chain above the 50 big companies that needs even a higher price.
I agree. Everyone is thinking the low oil price is temporary (or can be manipulated higher) so they feel they can operate in the red for a short time. What no one whats to consider is that the low oil price is permanent.
Let’s face it Industrial Civ is no longer profitable and therefore is going bankrupt…
It was a great show while it lasted, but like all great shows, they end at some point…
To use again Frank Zappa’s great quote (with a little tweak on my part):
“The illusion of (Industrial Civilization) will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Pretty good gerrymandering!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBCfRqpXYAA-j_N.jpg
A map that reflects the corruption of government.
It reminds me in some ways of “flood insurance.”
How Rising Seas Drowned the Flood Insurance Program
(basic ecoon 101)
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/how-rising-seas-drowned-the-flood-insurance-program-21484
http://assets.climatecentral.org/images/made/5_29_17_YaleE360_sandy_flooding_newjersey_720_480_s_c1_c_c.jpg
The flood insurance program has been a governmental give-away program, for a very long time. I know that years ago, actuaries would look at it and shake their heads. Perhaps it has gotten a little better in recent years–I don’t know. But there are huge political pressures to keep rates at the lowest semi-justifiable level. Rising seas may be an issue, but the program has been plagued with optimistic assumptions for a long time.
I am just looking at that beach and thinking to myself how much would I charge those homes for insurance if I were ultimately responsible for their destruction. I wouldn’t insure them … period.
Privatize the profits
Socialize the risk
Will Nature eventually be forced to rid itself of Human, as antibodies attack a spreading, life-threatening infection?
When BAU goes … we lose our secret weapons to fend off epidemics…. one can imagine Mother Nature will take extreme revenge… She will terminate .. with extreme prejudice….
FYI – I forgot that shale oil is very light and it does not command a premium. In fact, there is a discount over WTI. Here is the link from Steve Rocco’s website :
Thank you for bringing that up. Yes, I knew that Shale Oil as well as Canadian Oil sands sell at a discount to WTI Crude. Here are the current prices of the different crude selects:
BRENT Crude = $52.41
WTI Crude = $49.68
ND Sweet Crude = $39.50
ND Sour Crude = $36.62
TX Eagle Ford Crude = $47.70
Canadian Crude Index = $37.72
So… yes, the North Dakota Sweet and Sour crudes are selling for $10-$13 less than WTI Crude. That being said, my figures in the articles were really DUMBED DOWN. But, you are correct. I doubt the shale oil companies will hardly make any profits if WTI Crude stays at $50 or less in the next 12-18 months.
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-great-u-s-energy-debt-wall-its-going-to-get-very-ugly/#comment-38562
I guess we still need to remove another $10-$15 off the WTI prices… ouch…
Microdosing for Republicans
(It couldn’t hurt)
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morfordredesign/article/Microdosing-for-Republicans-11180398.php
Mark Morford is a great writer. I used to read him a lot.
Is Australia about to go pop? These guys certainly seem to think so…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/fund-manager-hands-back-cash-to-clients-citing-looming-correction-20170529-gwfgua.html
It is hard when an economy is very dependent on resource exports, and it is hard to keep the price and quantity demanded up for these exports.
Bardi is slow-collapsing
“So, you can use TaaS to reach your workplace (if you still have a job) and to reach a supermarket to redeem your food stamps. For the rest of the time, you stay home and watch TV or use the social media. What else do you need?”
“Would you have ever imagined that Communism would come one day to the US brought by corporations and in the name of technological progress? The “American way of life” really turns out to be negotiable.”
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-05-29/american-way-life-negotiable-coming-transport-revolution/
Hm, Bardi, this has been discussed here already for years as one of the top contending theories for near mid-term. Obviously not meant as workable long term plan, but as an interim strategy to prolong quasi BAU. The elites/operators of the system work with the material they have at hand, helped formed in previous stages anyways. And today the material available to form future is spending averse youth, which apparently dig en masse “social networks” , self-restrained attitude for further social mobility, fractured/non existent family forming patterns, no carz, ..
So it all points to limited opulence and trimmed frivolous spending habits, that’s how to surf the up/down waves of plateauing resources availability-affordability for some extended time. Again, is that enough for “securing” decades or only years, who knows..
Prof. Bardi is going agreeably nuts these days. At least, he does try to keep the flame of Hope alive.
I’m sure one day I will be run over on my rusty bike by a driverless car, probably when I get distracted by a huge pot-hole.
This town is looking up: a Tesla showroom has arrived at the new shopping mall! The one without the winos and wheelchair people. Two cars on display.
Next stop, Mars!
I agree Xabier about Bardi…
https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder178/500x/75944178/darth-vader-the-cognitive-dissonance-is-strong-in-this-one.jpg
There are a lot of things that Ugo Bardi says that I disagree with as well. We worked together at TheOilDrum.com, and I have spoken with him several times at conferences.
I’m not so sure about self-driving cars becoming a thing. It will probably be more like illegal cabs driving people to and from supermarkets cashing in food stamps.
Just finished watching the HBO produced Madoff movie (Madoff is expertly portrayed by De Niro)…at the beginning of the movie, they say how Madoff pulled the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world…it got me thinking that the biggest Ponzi scheme in the world is not Madoff, not by a long shot…it’s Industrial Civilization with its gargantuan financial system that constantly needs growth or it collapses…and just as Madoff got arrested by the FBI, IC is about to get “arrested” by the laws of the physical world (unfortunately)…. unlike Madoff though, no jail time will be given to IC…IC gets in this case the Death Penalty…
Good analogy (you are a poet after all!). I would say IC has already been tried and sentenced to death. The only question is how long it will it remain on death row.
In USA there are prisoners who have been in the death row for more than 30 years. But I’m sure the laws of physics are more expeditious than the american judicial system, since they don’t allow appeal or habeas corpus procedures…
Haha, thanks JMS….good point about being tried and sentenced…I would put 2008 as the year it was sentenced (but the trial took years till the sentence was finally given)… since 2008, its lawyers, the CBs, have been appealing the sentence, but they are about to run out of appeals 😉
Clever – and lucky – surgeons sometimes used to revive hanged criminals with vigorous rubbing, hot towels, etc.
Like the CB’s working away to keep things afloat post-2008: a miracle!
OFW-ers are like the other surgeons, the ones who couldn’t wait to haul the body off to the dissection table, to cut it up and poke around in the works. 🙂
When you talk about the physical world you must talk about the maximum power principle. Entities that do not extend their reach and power will go under in the long run. There exists a natural pressure to grow for ever.
Evolution has growth to death built in, strange though.
Alfred Lotka was the originator of the Maximum Power Principle, back in 1922. The idea was later followed by Florida ecologist H. T. Odum. At this point, there is a serious question as to whether it is correct. In fact, Lotka distances himself from the principle in 1958, according to Eric Schneider and Dorian Sagan, in “Into the Cool.”
The problem is that the principle, as enunciated, has too few dimensions to it. Part of the issue is efficiently converting energy into biomass. Part of the issue is minimizing entropy, something that is not mentioned in the principle.
I also know that when I have corresponded with Jim Brown (retired from the University of New Mexico), he has also expressed the view that the Maximum Power Principle, while widely believed, is not really correct. According to him, ” I was once convinced, but now think the situation is more complicated. The fittest systems, both biological and technological, lie on a time-energy tradeoff between small and fast (microbes and cell phones) and large, slower, and powerful (mammals and supercomputers).”
So I think we need to back off from the Maximum Power Principle. While it is still widely believed, it doesn’t seem to be correct.
Agreed.
Maximum Power can apply to some specific dissapative systems but not all. If it were universally true equilibrium could never be achieved and yet we observe it every day.
To say that man is destined to extinction could be because people have accepted Maximum Power in principle by accepting Free Market Capitalism as the path to progress. But this was a choice not an inevitable outcome.
If man were removed from the equation I don’t think anyone would disagree The the earth ecosystems would collapse. Rather most would agree that the earth would be healthier and prosperous with vibrant diversity of life in equilibrium.
To argue the point would be the same as saying that there is no need for environmental regulation or controls.
So in essence to say that the Maximum Power principal is a law is to say that the system is flawed essentially broken. There is no evidence of that. Rather the evidence points to a different conclusion.
Rather than a systematic problem the issue lies in the use of Free Will. Only humans have Free Will. Only humans have the recognition of their own existence. The problem is they can’t inherently know their limits. Resulting in unsustainable patterns of development.
Systems are in balance at a significant distance from a closed, dead state because of the way many dissipative structures are organized. Energy, such as that from the sun, or from food, is added to the dissipative structure. The whole system that uses this energy follows are self-replicating path, with many feedbacks. This path allows the energy to be slowly assimilated into the structure. There are also boundaries on these dissipative structures (skin, or bark, or something similar). These also allow the self-replicating path to be followed, over and over. The dissipative structure eventually collapses, for one of many reasons. One reason (but certainly not the only reason) is that the energy available to it (say food, or sunlight) is available to it is inadequate.
One author compared the system to a set of dominoes that gradually but slowly allow energy transmission. It made me think of this video that was recently posted. The system tends to grow, as energy is added. But in the case of systems such as whirlpools and hurricanes, without strong boundaries, it can quickly disappear.
“Only humans have Free Will. Only humans have the recognition of their own existence.”
Oh really, is that so?
Backed by what science and evidence?
More like an appeal to self-evident “truth”.
I was just thinking more along the simple lines on “Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible”
Who remembers this?
Just as the subprime crisis was orchestrated in order to offset the headwinds of expensive oil … the El.ders are again hard at work trying to delay the collapse BAU… with outstanding desperado policies:
Back in August 2014, we first reported that in what appeared a suspicious attempt to boost the pool of eligible, credit-worthy mortgage and auto recipients, Fair Isaac, the company behind the crucial FICO score that determines every consumer’s credit rating, “will stop including in its FICO credit-score calculations any record of a consumer failing to pay a bill if the bill has been paid or settled with a collection agency. The San Jose, Calif., company also will give less weight to unpaid medical bills that are with a collection agency.” In doing so, the company would “make it easier for tens of millions of Americans to get loans.”
Then, back in March of this year, in the latest push to artificially boost FICO scores, the WSJ reported that “many tax liens and civil judgments soon will be removed from people’s credit reports, the latest in a series of moves to omit negative information from these financial scorecards. The development could help boost credit scores for millions of consumers, but could pose risks for lenders” as FICO scores remain the only widely accepted method of quantifying any individual American’s credit risk, and determine how much consumers can borrow for a new house or car as well as determine their credit-card spending limit
Stated simply, the definition of the all important FICO score, the most important number at the base of every mortgage application, was set for a series of “adjustments” which would push it higher for millions of Americans.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-29/millions-americans-just-got-artificial-boost-their-credit-score
Credit scores are also used in determining auto and homeowners insurance rates. Actuaries have figured out that people with high credit scores tend to be more careful drivers, and are less likely to try to cheat on homeowners claims. Therefore, a high credit score tends to reduce both prices for both auto and homeowners insurance; a low credit score tends to raise their prices. I have not followed the situation closely. I believe that some states have put limits on the rating of auto and homeowners policies using credit scores.
Getting rid of this information will help even out auto and homeowner rates, too, I would expect.
Sounds like a pseudo living wage to me. Unfettered debt masquerading as responsible lending. Is it really any different than Finland?
It does show how desperate the situation is. The only question is – how much will it help? How long will it drag BAU?
It just does not get into the heads of those “you said it would collapse but it did not, so, why would it collapse in future?” that you need to see that the desperation is so high now.
The noose is closing in (autos, housing, China, Japan, etc) and TPTB are really doing their best.
Does it really mean that now the lower score people can buy more cars? Do they really want to buy? If they want to buy? How many are going to be sold? A lot ? So many that it will make a difference to the total number of cars sold? Lasts a month? 2 months?
Remember that the Feds suspended “normal accounting and auditing” for the shale oil producers? It has been a year plus probably but it looks like the effects are wearing thin. What is next? How long will that last ?
The Law of Diminishing returns really throws a spanner in the cogs. Have an ice cream, it tastes great. Have 5 ice creams, it will really make you vomit….
I drink to the effort of TPTB.
http://www.brutallyhonest.org/.a/6a00d834516bb169e201a3fcaf8367970b-pi
I think everybody on this site see that things are converging towards doom, “slowers” included. But I would advice not to put all your eggs in the supply-line instadoom basket. Classical economics is a thing of the past. Now we will have whatever TPTB can conjure. Exponential debt. UBI. Debt jubilees. Command economy. Martial law.
It might come down crashing in days or burning slowly for decades. Or anything in between! The financial numbers are not making sense so it might be wiser to accept the fact that we don’t know how things will play out, rather than getting frustrated over BAU not ending the way you predicted it.
The economy either grows — as it has been doing for the past decade — or it stops growing — and if that cannot be reversed in fairly short order — the deflationary death spiral will happen
There is no such thing as a slow burn — if by that you mean it slowly contracts
Exponential debt. UBI. Debt jubilees. Command economy. Martial law – very short term band aids
http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4f609788eab8eaf81100003b-506-253/bernanke-the-hero.jpg
By looking at what is goes on the loan business it would seem FICO is becoming irrelevant. Just loan the money and get bailed out by the FED’s printing press.
7.5 billon people will always love bau
https://youtu.be/3JWTaaS7LdU
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/582511112119316480/hUkVYh9T.jpg
I agree!
I agree as well. I had another thought too: without 7B people, would there every be another Whitney Houston? How uncommon is a voice like that? One in a million, one in a billion?
Any First Worlder, even the one in the lower rungs of society, that does not love BAU, has no clue how good he has it vs his forefathers not even 100 years ago….for someone like myself who has been at the trough of BAU since my birth, I ADORE BAU and am very sad that I won’t get to enjoy it till my old age (probably not even till 50)…
Boy, and look at the mess we, as a species, created with BAU!
Here is a farewell concert given to BAU…enjoy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WpamWL7uF8Q
Couldn’t happen soon enough!
“Couldn’t happen soon enough!”
So I guess jeremy you have a deathwish….well that’s not my case..
To each his own ..ITEOTWAWKI, to each his own…BTW…I find your comment illogical…the manner, we as humans exist (I avoid the term “living”), it is odd we don’t all have a ” death wish”.
Perhaps most are (kindly put) less sensitive than others.
I believe Fast Eddy has expressed enough evidence to support what I wrote.
Right Ed?
Jeremy, the system that we have in place will destroy the biosphere, no doubt about it…but we are locked in that system, if we drop it, BAU ends and by extension we meet our end as well…and in any case what are you fretting about, emissions will drop to ZERO in the very near future (not that you or I will be here to witness it)…until that day…Party On (I know I am)..
ITEOTWAWKI , I doubt know, sounds more as if you fear losing what you “know” and not the future, which exists in the “unknown”. Locked in a system? Doubt we are, which is more
dominant the ” inner” or “outter”? The system, as you call it, never survives…haven’t humans tried about all ” systems” and “isms”. Have they succeeded?
Fast Eddy already provided that answer.
Right, Ed?
Burn More Coal Now.
jeremy no clue what you are trying to say…anyway no matter…there will never be any -ism again when BAU fails…
But Ed come on now….It’s all your posts that back up ending BAU ASAP.
By my estimation every year BAU continues decrease the chances of higher complex life forms surviving afterward by 2 to 4%, based on what you have shared.
Here is another post that I wish to share
this message from George Mobus, former computer science and systems science professor in Washington:
“Several thoughtful people I know who have been concerned about the future are now voicing a kind of despair for the future. The evidence for the build up to collapse is now so evident that anyone with half a brain and a bit of knowledge about the history of civilizations can see the end in sight.
On the other hand, and to leave you on a high note, the collapse of the current cultural system (neoliberal capitalism, profit maximization, revolving debt financing, the impacts on the education system, etc.) is a good thing. When I say unfixable, I mean just that. Some systems are fixable, or adjustable so that they work better in time. This one we live in is neither. It is so full of positive feedback loops that reinforce destructive behaviors that there is very little that can be done to break out without that very act destroying the interlocking processes and thus, itself bringing about collapse. What we need to do is see the bright side of this. For one, it will significantly slow down the human-caused forcing of the climate (other natural feedbacks aside this will be a very positive development.)
Once the rotten old system is debris it will be possible to reset human values (many of which are learned) and start fresh. We won’t have the high tech gadgets to help us back to the kind of life many of us live now. But, so what. We will get a chance to start over, and hopefully do it better next time. At least that is my hope on this day of turning.
Thank you to Don Stewart for posting this elsewhere.
Now, on a more humorous note, I leave you a Quote by Edward Abbey
“When the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Chill people, don’t worry so much about you sorry asx behinds.
Your toast anyway.
The human caused forcing of the climate system seems to be not a bug, but a feature, of how the economy as a dissipative structure is supposed to behave. In fact, life on Earth seems to be designed with this purpose, to ultimately cause the end of planet Earth, and all that is on it. We can try to fix the system, to the way we think it should work, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can.
In an earlier comment, I quoted Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan from their book, “Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life.”
The way this seems to work in practice is to temporarily force Earth temperatures higher, as the growth of dissipative structures proceeds.
Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
‘By my estimation every year BAU continues decrease the chances of higher complex life forms surviving afterward by 2 to 4%, based on what you have shared.’
If it meant that the earth turned into a dead rock — but it got us another year of BAU —- I’d vote for the extra year of BAU…
When I am gone why would I give a shit about what happens to the planet. I no longer exist. Or maybe I get recycled through the computer game…
Burn More Coal. Now.
I want more of this thing called Now
Gail
In fact, life on Earth seems to be designed with this purpose, to ultimately cause the end of planet Earth, and all that is on it.
Quite apart from attributing purpose, I don’t see how life can cause the end of planet earth. What do you mean by this? Do you mean life will cause the end of all life? This seems unlikely.
I understand how autotrophs (plants) always increase entropy when they photosynthesize, but how about the heterotrophs that feed on the plants or other heterotrophs? Could it not be that be destroying other dissipative structures they decrease the net rate of entropy creation? If humans manage to turn the Earth into a barren rock then we have decreased the rate of entropy production a great deal and the solar gradient might return to what it was before life evolved in the first place.
Absolutely! The normalcy bias, our relatively short memories and short lives allow us to forget the struggles of generations before us. Very few see the value or worth of things we create today.
Take this article here for example: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2319438/data-center/what-lasts-longer—sata–serial-attached-scsi-or-fibre-channel-.html – it implies that the SATA hard disc drive with a 5 year life expectancy is OK vs the 15 year life of the older SCSI hard discs. Imagine companies throwing out all the IT infrastructure every 5 years. That is just insane. And it is just getting worse.
If he gets the pen behind the ear, BAU will survive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmoQA0nofY
If he gets the hockey stick behind the ear, BAU will survive:
Oh the poor innocent child was stabbed in London …. boo hooo… she won’t make it to her ballet class tomorrow…. boo hoo….
Go Brown Team Go!!!
I always did like the underdog
I have come to the conclusion that 2020 will be the end of the road for humanity. Here are the reasons why. According the International Energy Association,UBS Bank,HSBC Bank,German Army & Saudi Aramco. There is going to be a worldwide oil shortage that occurs by 2020. Also this will be the year that the shale oil and gas industry goes out of business permanently. Due to these reasons there is no possible way the global economy moves forward from this point on. This will cause a massive stock market crash throughout the world. Banks will collapse, atm’s will be out of cash. And worldwide panic and chaos will ensue…Wait and See…
There has been quasi martial law declared in many Western countries for past ~16yrs, one could speculate in somewhat informed fashion this was made on purpose to launch several can kicking initiatives (ensure the spoils of BAU while it lasts) but also to “plan and prepare” for the impact, mostly disregarding the public at large and their future role.
It’s going to be a lot of nastier world on the “other side” when it snaps – but again I’m of the opinion it will story of several chapters..
It takes some time to prep. You need an underground bunker with food for at least 3 years and no one should know it. Some military installations etc. I mean not for mom&pop. I mean for the elite that will try to stay afloat after some 5 Bio have gone…
I think, we had it, as the other post recently said: Why is it so quiet in the collapsnik sphere? be prepared or go die. Time is up.
I think right now they just wait for the bowling ball to hit the fan..Maybe start a small war with north Korea to pull the plug in the stockmarket so to pick up all assets left due to margin calls. Pull the plug or not pull the plug. difficult question. But as long as the music plays, why not have a weekend in Monaco, with a fully fuelled LearJet at the airport of course…
Imagine the despair of those “elites” in those bunkers as the reality slowly sinks in that this is the end of the industrial revolution and the good life.
It could all end tomorrow, next week, next year, ten years from now, maybe 20/50/100 years from now. Know one really knows for sure. Many have predicted man’s extinction and we are still here. It certainly doesn’t look good when you connect the dots but putting a fixed date on something is the big question mark.
“I have come to the conclusion that 2020 will be the end of the road for humanity.”
Or you walk outside in 2020 and absolutely nothing is any different than in 2017 except for maybe a bit more govt. & private debt. Yet, ironically, this message board will still be here and someone will be predicting collapse in 2023.
“A bit more govt & private debt” – A bit? Really 7T is a bit? Consider a 7T dollar rise in the public and private debt from about 20T now to about 27T in 2020″. The public and private debt change in the 40 year period from 1960 to 2000 was about 7T dollars. Now in less than 3 years time we will accumulate 7T dollars of additional debt. We are on the business end of exponential growth. The demand on resources is becoming untenable.
http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/include/usgs_chart4p01.png
So, you think it will continue, ad infinitum? The world economy needs 3% growth to keep stable. At that rate, by 2040, we will need to burn 180 million barrels of oil, cut down or pave over 3 times more of what remains of the natural world, and pour almost twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as now, just to stay square. Oh, plus there’ll be another 2 billion people sucking down on the teat too.
So, you still think we can make it until then? If so, what happens after that?
“At that rate, by 2040, we will need to burn 180 million barrels of oil, cut down or pave over 3 times more of what remains of the natural world, and pour almost twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as now, just to stay square.”
That’s every year by then…however we also know that,
“The rate of ,a href=https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2017/05/29/the-steady-drumbeat-of-more-global-oil-demand/#6c1dbfdf5e2d>natural oil field decline is around 7-9% per year, so more investments are required to avoid sharp drops in production. Over the next 25 years, output from currently producing fields will fall by over 45 million b/d, or nearly half of current global production.”
This is just one example of limits to growth, perhaps the most important one, but there are many, many others.
So, are you still confident that humans can outsmart the power of the exponential function?
Interesting new article and discussion bellow it:
http://euanmearns.com/can-france-go-to-50-nuclear/
What does it all mean, what’s behind it? Some options – explanations:
– Macron project, they are just political fluff, delusional proclamations and ideological plans, the local lobbies won’t allow curbing the domestic nuclear industry anyway in such hard way
– Actually it’s a plan, including curbing net exports of electricity from France, that includes some form of punishment for UK leaving the EU, since their strategy is partly based on inter-connectors from France (NPP powered), also French NPP fleet is aging rapidly and new designs not ready (~10yrs delay vs front runners like Russia, S. Korea, China), current designs are flop – problems with NPP project in Finland etc.
– Actually it’s a plan of sorts, Putin is in France today, perhaps the new Berlin-Paris axis would try to play a bit of geopolitics, change the stance and “support” more Russian (Iranian) natgas connectors to Europe, so France really plans to lower the dependence on NPPs for whatever reasons (ideology, doomerism, ..)
Plus one little detail, lot of advisers, salesman, NGOs, futurologist, close enough to the ears of throne, are all now operating with energy storage pricing $/kWh used in the .15 area and painting the linear progress of realistically attacking sub .10 levels before 2020, not mentioning ~2025 nirvanas.
Given the price levels in the West, that’s “disruption technology” ready and good enough among the policy wonks circles to go ahead with various crazy schemes, like gutting NPPs in France for instance.
Obviously it puts aside all the debates and issue we have had here on the OFW, they don’t consider these important and or are focused just on the next good kick of the can.
The intermittent renewables have way too many problems. Getting the price of energy storage down is just one of them. I don’t think that even storage in the .10 per kWh area is good enough. There are too many other costs. The amount of storage, to even out the quantity of electricity available from summer to winter is just amazingly huge. There are big electricity losses in putting electricity into storage and taking it back out, that are not included.
One of the problems with intermittent renewables, unless the quantity can be completely controlled by the operator, is getting a reasonable pricing strategy for intermittent renewables. Current pricing strategies tend to produce too low a price for electricity for all producers. This drives needed backup out of business.
“Obviously it puts aside all the debates and issue we have had here on the OFW, they don’t consider these important and or are focused just on the next good kick of the can.”
I think the elite are turning against democracy but they don’t want dictatorships.
They want to “promote diversity” as means to keep the global economy from collapsing.
Things like Brexit can trigger a very negative feedback loop.
That is why they are growing hostile to “populist ” ideas.
If they adopt a similar approach to renewable energy, people around the world will be pressured to buy expensive energy. Imagine a compulsory renewable energy scheme from them as much more complicated and large scale version of India’s push to ban cash; Economic activity at any cost.
I think they realize that scaling up renewable could lead to a very negative feedback loop.
Their current stimulus project seems involves creating refugee crises ,by bombing failing oil states back to the stone age, as a form of economic stimulus for developed countries within NATO.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/refugee-spending-will-drive-our-economy-germany-says-20151015-gk9tyg.html
Trump is a blowhard but are his opponents any better ?
“Imagine a compulsory renewable energy scheme from them as much more complicated and large scale version of India’s push to ban cash; Economic activity at any cost.”
That is a good point!
Euan comes to the conclusion that France needs to keep 75% nuclear, if it wants to keep the lights on. Nuclear has its problems as well, so the situation is difficult. Other countries have depended on France’s exports of electricity, so reducing these creates a problem for electricity importers.
Going from neutral back to El Niño.
We are beyond the Spring Barrier, so this possibly could be a trend.
https://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tropicaltidbits.com%2Fanalysis%2Focean%2Fnino34.png&key=U24FyFRIPq-_87ziGm8kpQ&w=800&h=316
The Economist has an article related to Japan called “As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do: There was just one fatal shooting in the whole of 2015”. http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21722216-there-was-just-one-fatal-shooting-whole-2015-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt
According to the article:
“Japan’s cluttered streets are not always pretty but they are remarkably safe. Crime rates have been falling for 13 years. The murder rate of 0.3 per 100,000 people is among the lowest in the world; in America it is almost 4. A single gun slaying was recorded for the whole of 2015. Even yakuza gangsters, once a potent criminal force, have been weakened by tougher laws and old age.
“Yet, far from being pensioned off, the police are growing in numbers: beat cops, known colloquially as omawari-san (Mr Walk-around), are a fixture in most neighbourhoods. Japan has over 259,000 uniformed officers—15,000 more than a decade ago, when crime rates were far higher. The ratio of officers to population is very high, especially in Tokyo, home to the world’s biggest metropolitan police force—a quarter bigger than the one protecting New York.
“This means plenty of attention for crimes that would be considered too petty to investigate elsewhere, such as the theft of a bicycle or the possession of a tiny amount of drugs. . . In fact, as the police run out of things to do, they are becoming more inventive about what constitutes a crime, says Kanako Takayama of Kyoto University. In one recent case, she says, they arrested a group of people who had shared the cost of renting a car, deeming the arrangement an illegal taxi. Some prefectures have begun prosecuting people who ride their bicycles through red lights.”
– – – – – –
I get the distinct impression that a major purpose of having so many police officers is to provide jobs for citizens. As long as they are paid for by government debt, the impact is similar to providing unemployment insurance for citizens. It is just that the officers are doing something that is perhaps somewhat beneficial. They feel like they are helping society.
The fact that crime rates are falling in a country that is squeezed for energy supplies may be a hopeful sign for the future. One approach does seem to be working, for now at least.
japan sounds rather strict in my opinion arrested for petty crimes is a worry no one needs
Should the police ignore the crimes? Wouldnt it be better to change the law?
they were petty crimes so i wouldn’t call them crimes the police may not be needed in Japan since real crime is not occuring’
Japan needs rental car companies to be renting as many cars as possible, and taxis to be selling as many services as possible. Forbidding renting a car to share the services perhaps is viewed as a way of keeping business up for providers.
I am not sure about the stopping bicycles for red lights, except perhaps if there are cars around as well, or if there are cars around as well. Japan citizens tend to follow laws, to the letter.
In Sweden it is also illegal riding bicycle against red. 1500 kr fine (~$€150). Same for riding a horse against red light.
Minimal risk getting caught though, police is really lazy even against real crimes.
Bicyclists, in my neck of the woods, are in their own special category. They behave like pedestrians when the lights command that drivers to stop , meaning they go through red lights and ignore real pedestrians trying to cross….When the light is green, they don’t quite behave like other vehicles. They weave in and out of traffic and don’t pay attention to speed limits.
I see a similar trend in Norway with falling crime rates. I have a theory that this might have something to do with demographics? More elderly “straight” people and less young restless people than earlier.
Same goes for car accidents, much less nowadays. Young people can’t afford cars without jobs.
You may be right. Young people under 25 have been a disproportionate share of US auto accidents–but fewer of them have cars now. Older people aren’t ones to go out and rob or kill generally.
The greatest crash in living history is getting closer…
China’s Bill Will Have to Be Paid
On Tuesday night, Moody’s Corp. downgraded China’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in 28 years. In doing so, the rating agency is acknowledging the dragon in the room: China will have to pay the price for its epic debt binge, whatever policymakers do from here.
The burning question in China these days is whether the government is serious about tackling the debt pile that’s exploded since the global financial crisis. Total outstanding credit grew to around 260 percent of GDP at the end of last year, from 160 percent in 2008 — one of the biggest and fastest expansions ever.
Be afraid. Be very afraid…
We really need continued debt growth to keep the world economy going. Fixing up problems is not something that works well.
Dear Gail i saw this you tube clip that featured Lynette Zang talking about the ‘elites’ plan to change the entire system to get growth going again they would do this after a financial crisis occurs could you please have a look at it and tell me what you think? It is a four part presentation just watch the first part and the rest follow on after each one.After listening to what she had to say i now believe that the ‘elders’ or ‘elites’ do have a plan to ‘kick the can down the road’ once the crash arrives. Please have a look at it your opinion on whether the ‘elites’ or ‘elders’ really do have a plan would be most appreciated by me link provided https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk5kC-xHOnw#t=49.654599
I’m thinking — how about even more debt!!!
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/8f/8fb972446d5eda57ccc6c994da3671d9d1632dab8815837a3e902a34c8c73318.jpg
Right!
Attention Apocalypse Soon insiders…
Do you want to make money off this knowledge that you have?
DO YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY OFF THIS?
Go long http://ir.hillenbrand.com/investor-relations/default.aspx now!
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/e/ec/Cemetery-man-grim-reaper.jpg
🙂
I’ve actually considered this myself, but I see two major problems:
1) death and processing of bodies is actually quite cheap, apart from fancy funerals which nobody really needs; so even though it might be a growth industry, you are unlikely to ever get people to pay much
2) i don’t trust the stock market generally
my personal play on the collapse of the system was physical gold (before i lost it all in a boating accident) but i’ll let you all decide on the merits of that
Gold are for noobs, invest in baseball cards!
I was just kidding … please don’t buy stocks in a coffin maker
India’s Silicon Valley Is Dying of Thirst. Your City May Be Next
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/why-bangalores-water-crisis-is-everyones-crisis/?mbid=nl_52517_p3&CNDID=38901740
“The groundwater level has sunk from a depth of 150 or 200 feet to 1,000 feet or more in many places. The job of distributing water from an ever-shifting array of dying wells has been taken up, in large part, by informal armadas of private tanker trucks like the one Manjunath drives. There are between 1,000 and 3,000 of these trucks, according to varying estimates, hauling tens of millions of gallons per day through Bangalore. By many accounts, the tanker barons of Bangalore—the men who own and direct these trucks—now control the supply of water so thoroughly that they can form cartels, bend prices, and otherwise abuse their power. Public officials are fond of calling the tanker owners a “water mafia.”
End game for Bangalore.
i live in this country forget Bangalore every city having deep groundwater extraction that is happened because of bau
once bau collopse no water will extraction and 1.3 billion will die instants
Water is indeed something we can’t live without.
India is reaching limits, just as China is. We are not hearing as much about India’s limits though. Water is one of them.
A reader from India wrote to be privately this week about announced layoffs in his part of India.
The Third Pole is shrinking putting stress on the whole region.
https://www.thethirdpole.net
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/603470-1.jpg
Right. India’s oil production has been decreasing somewhat. But in 2015, they were able to import 10% more oil, because of the lower price of oil. This year, the import price is relatively higher.
World’s Major Economies to Come up $400 Trillion Short on Retirement Savings
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-26/retirement-savings-gap-is-seen-climbing-to-400-trillion-by-2050
A good pension for all:
The fantasy of the 1800’s.
The reality of the 1900’s.
The bad joke of the 2000’s.
Right. A major employer of actuaries.
What the world’s pension plans do is use contributions by individuals and plan sponsors to buy up investments of various kinds (primarily bonds and shares of stocks). The last I remember hearing a figure, private pensions owned something like 50% of these bonds and stocks. What this shortfall indicates is that pensions need to be buying up even a larger share of corporate/government bonds and stocks, leaving less for everyone else, including self-funded programs. Either that, or the world needs to be issuing even more debt and debt-like products (such as shares of stock).
As a practical matter, we all live on the goods and services produced each year by the world economy. There is no way that we can guarantee retirees a high percentages of these goods and services, especially if low energy prices mean that the total output starts declining. The people who produced the goods and services need to get an adequate share for themselves, for one thing. The whole game cannot work.
While the U.S. oil and gas industry struggles to stay alive as it produces energy at low prices, there’s another huge problem just waiting around the corner. Yes, it’s true… the worst is yet to come for an industry that was supposed to make the United States, energy independent. So, grab your popcorn and watch as the U.S. oil and gas industry gets ready to hit the GREAT ENERGY DEBT WALL.
So, what is this “Debt Wall?” It’s the ever-increasing amount of debt that the U.S. oil and gas industry will need to pay back each year. Unfortunately, many misguided Americans thought these energy companies were making money hand over fist when the price of oil was above $100 from 2011 to the middle of 2014. They weren’t. Instead, they racked up a great deal of debt as they spent more money drilling for oil than the cash they received from operations.
As they continued to borrow more money than they made, the oil and gas companies pushed back the day of reckoning as far as they could. However, that day is approaching… and fast.
According to the data by Bloomberg, the amount of bonds below investment grade the U.S. energy companies need to pay back each year will surge to approximately $70 billion in 2017, up from $30 billion in 2016. That’s just the beginning…. it gets even worse each passing year:
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-great-u-s-energy-debt-wall-its-going-to-get-very-ugly/
This is one of our many problems ahead, especially if energy prices do not rise to allow the companies to earn enough profit to repay this debt. Much higher prices would fix the problem.
the recent votes for Trump or Brexit can be seen as a protectionist call to preserve the heydays of the consuming lifestyle engineered in the 1950s.
And a return to the ethnic makeup of the 50s…
No, it’s more like seeking to reverse the trend of social complexity. Social complexity is hard to justify if the economy is not performing well.
At first, I believed what journalists spoon-fed to me about a lack of assimilation by newer, darker-skinned immigrants in Europe. They told me that Europeans were simply too racist to provide economic opportunities for immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
The reality is that, immigrants often have different values than native Europeans, and people tend to socially ostracize people for being different, no matter how tolerant and multicultural they may claim to be. Add to that a sense of real grievance from immigrants from former colonies of Europe, and the reality that Europe’s economy cannot readily put all their immigrants to work because of its economic problems, and it will become apparent ethnocentrism is a way of reducing social complexity.
It is very difficult to make the argument that a Muslim who believes in Sharia Law can honestly be French if they don’t wish to adopt and French values. If they are not given employment opportunities because of a crummy European economy and because they are perceived to be hostile to French cultures, what is the purpose of keeping an unemployed working age Muslim on welfare?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/104731/Muslims-Want-Democracy-Theocracy.aspx
Few observers contest the influence of Islamism within the Muslim world.[38][39][4Few observers contest the influence of Islamism within the Muslim world.[38][39][40] Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political movements based on the liberal ideology of free expression and democratic rule have led the opposition in other parts of the world such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia; however “the simple fact is that political Islam currently reigns as the most powerful ideological force across the Muslim world today”.[41][42]0] Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political movements based on the liberal ideology of free expression and democratic rule have led the opposition in other parts of the world such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia; however “the simple fact is that political Islam currently reigns as the most powerful ideological force across the Muslim world today”.[41][42]
The perception among conservative Europeans–who I am guessing are Europeans who want to preserve their particular culture is that those who do assimilate aspire to replace–not just their ethnicities–but their cultures.
This is difficult for many on the Left to believe because they would like to believe that every culture is equal or would behave the same.
Sorry I’m not sure I’m following you…all I was trying to say is a lot of Brexiters and a lot of Trump supporters would love nothing more than to go back to a time where, in the case of the UK, most people were of British stock and in the case of the US most people were of European (particularly Northern European) stock…
if the USA hadn’t tried all this independence nonsense, they would still have queenie as head of state and wouldn’t have el trumpo.
canada is proof of that
There is a power that comes through uniformity and sharing common values. Japan particularly has illustrated this recently, with its emphasis on everyone being alike, and with the importance of hierarchical relationships. But it is true throughout history. Most of the countries that “stuck together” have had a lot of shared culture.
The USA was able to accommodate European immigrants of many kinds, because their values and culture were fairly similar to each other. This has also been true for Canada. Asian immigrants have also generally not been too hard to assimilate, because their intelligence, work ethic, and emphasis on order. These values fits in with the culture that the USA picked up from its European heritage.
In the USA and worldwide, we are having more trouble with rising income disparity. Mixing those with low incomes with those with high incomes in schools seems to create problems. The low income students tend to do much worse in school, because their families can provide less support for them, and because their values are different. Teachers have a hard time teaching to a group of students with very mixed backgrounds and different attitudes toward schools. The overall system tends to suffer. When the students with lower incomes “look different,” because of different skin color or some other problem, this tends make it even harder to get those with differing cultures to fit in. They are not ready to change their culture.
*The perception among conservative Europeans–who I am guessing are Europeans who want to preserve their particular culture is that those who do NOT assimilate aspire to replace–not just their ethnicities–but their cultures.
I agree.
As far as I understand there was this weekend an aggreement in 16 OPEC countries to significantly reduce production including Iran. The schedule is “until 2018”, well enough time for wild speculations. hedge hedge my hedge hog
On Thursday, May 25, there was an announcement, “OPEC and Non-OPEC Members Agree to Extend Production Cuts for 9 Months.” After the announcement, oil prices dropped by 4%.
There was also an announcement that both Iraq and Iran support production cuts.
Canada to build a Border Wall?
https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_9550_foreign_citizens_who_overstayed_us_visas_in_2016_n.jpg
… got that wrong … US to build a border wall — on the northern border?
We always used to be able to drive back and forth to Canada, without any kind of check whatsoever. The two countries were considered one, when it came to planning most of our energy supplies, including electricity. People have moved across the border for years.
One of my husband’s great aunts (who died many years ago) was born in Canada, but later settled in the US, without changing citizenship. As I understand the situation, she had never been issued a Canadian birth certificate, so it was hard to prove where she was a citizen.
The conclusions are that, supported by commercial interests, an unsubstantiated belief in market and technical solutions, and a narrow paradigmatic focus, critics of Peak Oil theory have used unreliable reserve data, optimistic assumptions about utilisation of unconventional supplies and unrealistic predictions for alternative energy production to discredit the evidence that the resource-limited peak in the world’s production of conventional oil has arrived, diverting discussion from what should be a serious topic for energy policy: how we respond to decreasing supplies of one of our most important energy sources.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151300342X
That led me to a paywall.
The original article, dating from April 2013, can be found here :
http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-End-of-Peak-Oil.pdf
This is a 2013 paper. I see it is talking about “how we respond to decreasing supplies [my emphasis] of one of our most important energy sources.” A better way of putting it would be “prices that fall below the cost of both extracting oil, and providing the government services needed to maintain this extraction. We then are facing collapse over a period of years, but from low prices, not high.
To better understand the effect, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the consumer.
What would you prefer to buy… a used 2016 Malibu with 24k miles for $19,599 or a new 2017 Malibu for $18,242?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-28/carmax-inventory-canary-coalmine-slumping-auto-industry
O, what a tangled web we weave…
A rather amusing comment on that auto story:
WRONG….. we need to see how big of a bubble we can get and how high inventory can be stacked.
I want this coming crash to be so big they can hear it on the other side of the universe.
Good point! Big discounts on new car prices affect resale prices as well.
Even with BAU in play…. roads are going to pieces….
New research discovered that a staggering one in six (17per cent) are now in poor condition and in need of urgent work.
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/784477/pothole-local-road-maintenance-neglect
That’s certainly true here, in one of the richest parts of Britain.
A couple of years ago,one of the professional engineering bodies issued a report stating that construction of more infrastructure should be avoided, as it would soon prove impossible to maintain what was already in existence.
I’ll try to find a reference.
And there are doomsday preppers who have posted on FW how they are all set up to make petrol from vegetables post BAU …
That has to be one of the biggest jokes ever … the punchlines:
– there will be no spare vegetables post BAU
– you cannot make brake and tranny fluid etc… from vegetables
– there won’t be any roads that are not giant potholes… nor anywhere to drive to —- these people seem to think post BAU will be a big ol Sunday market with preppers driving their jalopies down to sell the wonderful organic produce to …. ????
Fo.ols… Id.iots….
up
there was an eejit on radio today, saying most jobs will vanish with automation—no concept that employment is effectively exchanging goods and services with each other to sustain a commercial infrastructure.
robots don’t buy stuff
“Robots don’t buy stuff”
That seems so easy to understand, yet you have people who think we could still have an economy if everything was automated (we don’t even have the resources to do that anyway)…mind-boggling…
Where do governments get the revenue to give unemployment benefits to all of the unemployed people? The makers of the robots will move to the area with the lowest taxes.
Not so surprising given humans are nearly universally stu… pid MOREons….
The odds of every meeting someone in person who truly is aware is far lower than winning a major lottery 3x…
You can even get one of these stoopid bas…tards to agree that we are out of cheap oil …just as you can get a dog to fetch a stick…. but they are unable to recognize the implications — even if you lay it out for them…
They just stand there like the dog with his tongue hanging out … looking at you … waiting for you to throw the stick again
https://cdn.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/videos/24850952/thumb/1.jpg
“Robots don’t buy stuff”
Robots and automated systems need “stuff” to function. Stuff such as energy, spare parts, upgrades.
Thus, the more high-tech a production is, the more “stuff” is needed for sustaining it’s own output.
As a consequence, there is no need for any mass consumption to drive the economy as the cheap energy depletes.
I postulate that excessive energy usage in fact is detrimental for TPTB. It is better to ease off the pressure on the energy systems by chucking a few billion freeloaders overboard their BAU train.
There will be less people – more machines to keep this joint running until the end of this century.
Let’s rejoice and together watch as it happens when this oil fueled human bonanza crumbles.
Robots don’t buy food. Robots don’t need much water. Trying to keeping robots functioning while “chucking a few billion freeloaders overboard,” is likely to not work at all.
you seem to have missed the point
Our commercial infrastructure is made up of interactive people—every job interacts with others in a million ways.
A robot never needs a haircut, or a car service, or shops for groceries, or needs a taxi, or a holiday.
they may seem insignificant, but all such activities create employment for other people, as an endless chain reaction—interject robots, and all those activities cease.
Remove 6bn people, and you will not have an industrial structure capable of supporting a robotic structure at any level, the complexity of factories necessary to construct sophisticated robots is impossible without a high density population
a low density population, (though inevitable) will not have the technical momentum to do anything other than find enough food to eat on a daily basis.
I take it you will be happy to be included in the 6bn thrown overboard.??
https://twocent2c2.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/capture-delusion-blog-08-15.png
“I take it you will be happy to be included in the 6bn thrown overboard.??”
Your feeling of self-importance and significance as a human/pleb in the grand scheme of things is mostly irrelevant and will be neither your nor mine savior.
“they may seem insignificant, but all such activities create employment for other people, as an endless chain reaction—interject robots, and all those activities cease.”
What is the problem with that?
The machines will continue to serve their masters – the owning class. Just as you have unbeknownst been doing during your lifetime.
But soon – irrelevance awaits most of us.
you ignored my final point—which I’ve copied over for convenience:
Remove 6bn people, and you will not have an industrial structure capable of supporting a robotic structure at any level, the complexity of factories necessary to construct sophisticated robots is impossible without a high density population
a low density population, (though inevitable) will not have the technical momentum to do anything other than find enough food to eat on a daily basis.
(Though why I bother I cannot imagine)
Don’t go lumping the gods of FW in with the humans…. We will live on forever… in fact when BAU goes… FW will continue…. we will be here… providing analysis… in the post game show…
Then we will move on to the next big thing…
“you ignored my final point”
It was implied in the reply. Draw your own conclusions.
Then let’s start the recursion as a thought experiment:
Norman: I’d like to know if “we” need 1 Million, 20 Billion or how about a Gazillion people in order to drive the technology and economy forward?
Pick your best guess. Where is the sweet spot?
I’ll offer you my estimate.
None at all. Zero humans.
on the basis of needing no people
i asked my dog. She asked to be let out
i let her out (shedogs, like shepeople) are brighter than hedogs.
She came back an hour later, wagging her tail….so I repeated the question…she wagged her tail again.
Still no sensible answer—I got the impression she had been next door to see her dogbuddy—and they had been doing what dogs do i guess. then she looked at me with those big foodwanting eyes—knowing i cannot resist–she got fed.
so effectively i got the answer about what would the world without people be like
we would be reduced (or improved, depending on your point of view) —to fornicating and eating.
Which was all we were ever supposed to do
Just like my dawg told me
To paraphrase you:
You ignored my final point.
So I’ll restate in simpler terms for the canine owner:
How many people are sufficient for sustaining a progressing economy and technology?
When you are done answering that question, then tell me when this inevitable collapse is going to occur.
I am mighty curious.
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/layout/msl/images/FollowYourCuriosity.jpg
I am not Fast Eddy, but I will give you my take on the situation.
We are dealing with an economy that must always grow. If not, at best, it must collapse back to a lower state, at which it can subsist. I don’t think that there is any level, below the current level, that will allow “sustaining a progressing economy and technology.” We witnessed a small shrinkage in the world economy about 2008-2009, but no population drop. That shrinkage very nearly brought the whole system down.
It is possible that there is some level, perhaps far below the current level, that will allow some much smaller group of humans to form a new economy, perhaps by hunting and gathering.
As Gail has explained… what you are suggesting is impossible.
As for when collapse will occur — that’s like asking me when the stock market will collapse … I can guess… but really — it is impossible to predict.
The Central Banks are throwing absolutely everything at delaying that outcome…. when their efforts ‘push on a string’ collapse will arrive.
One day all will seem fabulous — as it did in 2007 — then all hell will break lose — and because the CBs will have already used up all their ammo trying to fend off this moment… we will get to find out what would have happened in 2008 if the CBs had not been able to live to fight another day
Yes “collapse” will come to you and the rest of the middle class. Get ready to be kicked to the curb as BAU sheds it’s excesses.
What we are witnessing is the diplomatic means for TPTB to reconfigure their affinities before Ghawar completely waters out. Who’s in and who’s out as cheap energy depletion kicks into overdrive.
“The economy” and “growth” lacks a clear definition. It can be rigged by TPTB to whatever the current narrative demands.
Technology on the other hand – that’s the true building block of “realpolitik”.
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-america-has-no-permanent-friends-or-enemies-only-interests-henry-kissinger-244381.jpg
https://www.peoplespunditdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/USS_Theodore_Roosevelt_Big_Stick.jpg
http://m.eet.com/media/1188443/titanx600.jpg
I imagine Ghawar watering out depends as much as anything on the price of oil. If the price is high enough, we can add ever pricier approaches that get more out.
Gail says:
“… but no population drop.”
Quite right. My personal metric for defining “collapse” is when this…
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
… reverses and begins to tick down instead of up. And the faster it ticks down, the more complexity is lost, which then causes feedback that reduces complexity even faster.
For example, IIRC it takes 5,000 trained employees to operate US nuclear power plants. But nuke plants will begin to shutdown long before the US population reaches 5,000 survivors.
Same thing for agriculture. Maybe 4 million farmers are necessary to grow present food supplies. But food supplies will begin to decrease long before the US population reaches reaches 4 million.
If 200 million consumers are required to maintain a semblance of current US GDP, then the economy will collapse long before US population reaches 200 million.
Seems to me there are many Liebig Law type minimums out there that remain unknown and unquantifiable and make it difficult to nail down a population number that will push us over the event horizon.
Surely one of the most important numbers is the required workforce that provides fossil fuel for energy production – below which the center cannot hold and things fall apart quickly.
Studied economics at a major university not long after Limits to Growth was published. Wrote a paper attempting to link population dynamics with macro economic performance and stability. The Keynesian/socialist(!) instructor didn’t see any connection and thought it a waste of time. I disagreed, and needless to say failed the course.
My next attempt was to frame the question in a different way and wrote a paper titled “Economic Equilibrium for the New State” and based my thesis on the limited and contained boundary of growth and decay in nature, a kind of Schumpeter ‘creative destruction’ arising from industrial mutation. In other words economic biomimicry. It was criticized as unnecessary because of “resource substitution” but since there was some mention of mainstream economic thought, it passed muster.
Eventually received a degree in economics but realized early on (thanks to J. Forrester and D. Meadows in particular) that the e-con game was just a legal tax payer funded public ponzi scheme.
Been reading Michael Hudson and Steve Keen lately, excellent analysis, real world stuff, but too little too late, I’m afraid, to make any difference.
Anyway, sorry to bang on here, just thinking out loud, as the topic stirred up some thoughts from long ago.
Cheers.
“Surely one of the most important numbers is the required workforce that provides fossil fuel for energy production – below which the center cannot hold and things fall apart quickly.”
That would indeed be the end game when the workforce consists of 99.9% machines and using up 99.9% of the energy they produce in order to sustain the production.
With a big population cut and shuffling down large swaths of (mostly useless) people from the middle class to the lower classes, then the transition does not have to be extremely nasty as a first step. With the advances in AI, automation and robotics, this is probably tractable in the near time frame.
Easing off the pressure on the depletion rate could at least give a transition time frame for setting up a techno-feudalism order.
“e-con game was just a legal tax payer funded public ponzi scheme.”
Yes. A sweet nice little castle in the hot air floating on top of an oil burning “growth” furnace. For sure, down it will come.
http://fanboygalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/690610.jpg
“If the price is high enough, we can add ever pricier approaches that get more out.”
Ignoring the brutal reality of Energy in < Energy out, or the whole enterprise of energy extraction is beyond futile, it is counterproductive.
The ever-higher prices are based on the (false) promise of more energy in return, in the future, for the oil.
And the underpinnings of subprime finance.
How can you not like this guy…
I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “studies randomness” and came to engage me. When she discovered that I was a trader, she blurted out that she was “against the market system” and turned her back to me as I was in mid-sentence, just to humiliate me (note here that courtesy is an application of the Silver rule), while her female assistant gave me the look, as if I had been convicted of child killing.
I sort of justified her behavior in order to forget the incident, imagining that she lived in some rural commune, grew her own vegetables, wrote on pencil and paper, engaged in barter transactions, that type of stuff.
No, she did not grow her own vegetables, it turned out. Two years later, I accidentally found her obituary (I waited a decade and a half before writing about the incident to avoid speaking ill of the departed). People in publishing were complaining about her rapacity; she had to squeeze her publisher, Farrar Strauss and Giroud of what would be several million dollars today for a book advance.
She shared, with a girlfriend, a mansion in New York City, one that was later sold for $28 million dollars. Sontag probably felt that insulting people with money inducted her into some unimpeachable sainthood, exempting her from having skin in the game.
Much more https://medium.com/incerto/the-merchandising-of-virtue-b548762658f0
Eddy-
“How can you not like this guy…”
Absolutely love Taleb.
Here’s an example of how fragile the global economy is:
Production at the factories in Shenyang and Rosslyn is likely to stop for a day, while its plant in Leipzig, Germany, is expected to be partially shuttered, spokesman Michael Rebstock said. The Leipzig site has been closed since Friday, and another facility in Munich was affected last week as an unidentified Italian car-parts supplier has been unable to make the required deliveries, magazine Focus reported earlier Sunday.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-28/bmw-to-stop-production-in-china-south-africa-on-supply-shortage
Right! The current production stoppage seems to be necessary without a major physical disruption, like the Fukushima tsunami problem or a hurricane.
The global network is nuts: I bought a waistcoat in a New Year sale (no elbows or cuffs to wear out, canny eh?!) made of ‘pure new wool woven by a Yorkshire company est. 1883’ according to the bold label.
When I checked the small print on the label, the cloth had been shipped to China for making up, and shipped back to England to be sold (at top-dollar price.)
As a foot-note, it will be observed that I feel the world will continue to hold together long enough to wear holes in a sweater. 🙂
“long enough to wear holes in a sweater.”
How many haircuts will that be?
And why Trump stopped the protectionist rhetoric. Someone must have sat him down and had a Dutch Uncle talk. He seems to have gotten the lesson as now he’s sent 3 Carriers to the South China Sea. The core is protecting its interests.
When a butterfly flaps its wings in China an earthquake happens in Germany? Then Wall Street?
The complexity is immense and ready to crack with small unforeseen events.
https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-tells-confidants-he-plans-to-leave-paris-climate-deal-2424446776.html
Trump tells those close to him he’s opting out of Paris agreement. We’ll see how much of a hoax GW is the Deplorables when methane begins releasing on a massive scale from the Arctic shallow water of the Eastern Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas. At some point those areas will release it’s storehouse of clathrate methane deposits and we go from 1.25C above the 1880 baseline to 2.6C in one fell swoop. Then feedbacks kick into a much higher gear releasing methane and CO2 from terrestrial tundra in the Arctic circle and Greenland shifts into a massive melt scenario. If and when industrialization slows, dimming takes a back seat and another 1C gets added. Then we’ll be up to around 4C and not long after that crops wilt and people starve. But it’s more important to oppose anything Obama helped assist in getting, i.e. the Paris Agreement, because this civil war between the Deplorables and the rest of us is really what’s it’s all about. US Civil War part deux. That’s my rant for the day – now it’s time to get some work done.
Yeah I can’t wait for the deniers to get their comeuppance. It’s funny though, wishing ones life away like that. It’s like being tied to railway tracks with another person and you keep telling the other person a train is coming and will run us over but he just blissfully denies it. “You’ll see, you’ll see it’s coming and it will kill us”, “nah” he says, “we’ve been here for hours and a train hasn’t come yet, they all travel on a different line”……then you feel the tracks vibrating, he says “that’s not a train, that vibrating is always changing, it’s a hoax just to scare us”.
‘Yeah I can’t wait for the deniers to get their comeuppance’
Let’s play your silly game.
So let’s man is causing global warming.
What should we do right now — to stop it?
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
So how did Lewis Carol in 1870s describe an environmentally ruined world with only a few consumers consuming the last resources remaining? Was he really that bright or was he exposed to something from the use of pharmakia?
Maybe the problem was obvious even back then.
I got that one lets… close a bunch of factory’s in NA and open up new ones in China and India We may need to ship them more coal but we can do it.
See I just lowered our footprint .
I say we put a tax carbon and let the jet set run it. My pick is ALL GORE the man that invented the internet so you know he is smart
Brilliant zenny. Absolutely brilliant ideas
Opting out?
There is no opting out of anything.
We either BURN MORE COAL NOW — or we collapse.
Trump gets it.
Even Guy gave up on the methane thing. Hard science is so annoying.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/methane-hydrates-and-contemporary-climate-change-24314790
Funny to watch the warmists get all excited while the temperatures world wide are dropping. The earth is self-regulating – with negative feedback loops. It would take WW3 or a big meteorite hit for your fantasies to come true.
“The Globe Has Not Been Warming . .So Why Is It Called ‘Global’ Warming?”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/09/30-new-2017-scientific-papers-crush-the-hockey-stick-graph-and-global-scale-warming-claims/
This is BS. Please go away.
Please show the data. I mean the raw data – not the homogenized stuff fabricated in East Anglia etc.
No, you show the data. Troll
https://www.smhi.se/polopoly_fs/1.2848.1490013633!/image/temp_ar_uppsala_2015.png_gen/derivatives/Original_1256px/image/temp_ar_uppsala_2015.png
Sweden is getting hot! Even warmer than 1730.
When someone disagrees with your assumptions, he must be a “troll”
Here are 30 recently published scientific papers that smash the fake story to smithereens.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/09/30-new-2017-scientific-papers-crush-the-hockey-stick-graph-and-global-scale-warming-claims/
Anyone with a background in engineering or science or mathematical statistics will realize that the official story of the IPCC is nonsense.
Fantastic… the debate about AGW is just so not at all fascinating…. actually
All together now…
BURN MORE COAL!
BURN MORE COAL!
BURN MORE COAL!
BURN MORE COAL!
BURN MORE COAL!
BURN MORE COAL!
Engineers, Mathematicians, scientists (what kind of scientists)? What do these people know of actual climate science Alfred?
The situation in almost all cases is actually worse that the IPCC suggests. Case in point – the Arctic, poster child of climate change, which will be relatively ice free all summer long, by 2035. A full 65 years ahead of the IPCC’s projection, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change/
What are you trying to achieve here, raising tropes that have been debunked ad nauseum for years?
Wouldn’t you better off where you came from?
Anyone who knows anything about the likelihood of burning huge amounts of fossil fuels in the future knows that the IPCC report is based on very questionable assumptions–regardless of what equations are used to manipulate those amounts.
psile,
These “climate scientists” of yours cannot forecast the weather one week ahead. 🙂
Since you mention the arctic, let’s have a look at the most recent data.
“Global RSS satellite data show a rapid cooling (of Arctic) since early 2016”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/05/06/data-analyses-show-rapid-global-surface-cooling-growing-arctic-ice-thickness/
As for the Antarctic – which is far bigger and more important than the Arctic – ice has been piling up there for 216 years now
“Antarctica Has Been Gaining Ice, Lowering Sea Level For Centuries”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/30/new-paper-indicates-antarctica-has-been-gaining-ice-mass-since-1800/
And here is a real atmospheric scientist from MIT telling anyone who will listen that it is all BS:
“MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist”
http://merionwest.com/2017/04/25/richard-lindzen-thoughts-on-the-public-discourse-over-climate-change/
Science and dogmas – like religion – are different things. A scientist is always prepared to change his theories when new facts come to light.
Is it not about time that you started looking at the data for yourself and watching a little less TV?
Lol. Weather & climate are completely different things. And you must be living in an alternative universe, as the Arctic is on track to have its lowest sea ice volume for several hundred thousand years, in 2017.
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01b8d27ef904970c-800wi
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/05/piomas-may-2017.html
Next…
Psile, I have always liked this video that explains in a simple way the difference between the weather and the climate:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ePL-uOg9hSU
Gail says:
“Anyone who knows anything about the likelihood of burning huge amounts of fossil fuels in the future knows that the IPCC report is based on very questionable assumptions…”
And anyone who knows anything about the amount of carbon in Arctic permafrost soils, that could potentially become GHG’s, knows that the IPCC has grossly underestimated the rise in global temperatures.
Why? Because the IPCC does not include this amount of potential GHG in their models. The IPCC is set up to be one of the most conservative scientific bodies in modern history.
How much organic carbon is stored in Arctic permafrost soils? I’m glad you asked:
There’s 5 times more carbon in Arctic permafrost soils than has “been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850” according to NASA.
And, they report, most of that “sequestered carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 3 meters of the surface”.
And add, “Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures…”
Anyone who knows anything about self-reinforcing feedback loops, knows that the math is brutal and the exponential function can be deadly. Just ask Al Bartlett: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Ponder for a moment the impact of just one of these many feedback loops:
If the loss of albedo from an ice-free Arctic ocean is large enough, abrupt climate change cannot be ruled out.
And abrupt climate change might very well be a process that triggers the collapse of BAU.
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Cheers!
“There’s 5 times more carbon in Arctic permafrost soils than has “been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850” according to NASA.”
hawkeye,
And there is 50 times as much CO2 in the oceans as in the atmosphere. When the temperature of the earth rises, some of this CO2 is released – with a delay of 6-800 years. Level of CO2 in atmosphere FOLLOWS temperature with a huge delay.
“Record Cold Continues in Siberia”
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=131290
Siberia is a great many times larger than the Arctic. So where is this melting of permafrost? Canada? Alaska?
The extreme warming in the Arctic is displacing cooler air to other places.
What’s happening is sort of a “double whammy.” On the one hand, there is a “very warm underlying ocean” due to the lack of sea ice forming above it (the Arctic). But, at the same time, kinks in the jet stream have allowed warm air to flow northward and frigid Arctic air to descend over Siberia.
It’s my policy to argue with fools only twice. So goodbye, Alfred.
I am getting pretty tired of this whole discussion as well. Find a climate change site to discuss these issues.
Psile, shut up
Who the hell are you? Lol…
See that is the very reason people do not take the globull people serious.
One person that I talk with says it is impossible that sun MAY have anything to do with it.
Interesting but not convincing where is the 2000-present data?
Let me help you.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
It is changing, but there is nothing we can do. Interesting, but so what?
Same could be said for the articles you write and the comments posted here on OFW:
We are near collapse, but there is nothing we can do.
Interesting, but so what?
It’s inherently human to want to know about the world, imho.
Cheers.
Perhaps we can change what we do with the rest of our lives here on earth. We may decide to spend more time with our families, for example, and less time watching television.
I expect that there may even be some religious conclusions we reach, as we look at evidence regarding how the universe actually operates. We may choose to come to the conclusion that the universe was made by a “Higher Power,” whether or not we believe any of the religious teaching of any of the established religions. The other alternative seems to be “magic” — the big bang occurred on its own, and all of the laws of physics were created by magic. It is through this magic that we have everything from atoms to hurricanes to human life.
“Perhaps we can change what we do with the rest of our lives here on earth.”
Guy McPherson over at Nature Bats Last has been saying that for years. But changing what we do with our lives is severely limited, and our options sadly restricted, as collapse draws nigh.
The Great Unraveling can best be experienced with calm acceptance, because there’s nothing we can do about it. But if your feeling nervous and need to hold someone’s hand, well then, by all means.
“I expect that there may even be some religious conclusions we reach…”
Religious “crisis cults” often arise in times of great social stress and cultural upheaval. People become desperate in their search for a solution – no matter how improbable – that might help them survive a world that is collapsing around them. Creating bizarre myths about “how the universe actually operates” will not prevent collapse.
“We may choose to come to the conclusion that the universe was made by a “Higher Power”…
Which immediately begs the question, “What made that “Higher Power”?” And then, “But what made the Higher Power that made that Higher Power?”
It’s an infinite regress and it gets you absolutely nowhere. Better to stick with conclusions that can be supported with evidence.
“The other alternative seems to be “magic”…”
Which is just another way of saying “religion”, and with it more demons and devils, witches and ghosts, djinns and evil spirits, and lots of wishful thinking.
Quickly followed by the righteous claim of “Deo Vindice” (god is on OUR side, not yours) then war, genocide, murder, rape, and slavery.
Which brings us back to exactly where we started.
No, It’s far better to face our predicament with courage, dignity, and compassion, than with superstition, dishonesty, and denial.
Cheers!
This deserves a few ++++++++++
http://img05.deviantart.net/3f26/i/2012/242/b/a/keep_calm_and_prepare_to_die__dark_souls__by_moginator-d5cyyc7.jpg
It’s not so bad actually … because everyone else dies too… so you don’t have the feeling that you will be missing out on anything
hawkeye-
No doubt you are filled with dignity, compassion and courage but you read like a cranky d1ck towards Gail…just sayin;-)
Hi Joe,
Yeah, I do get a little cranky when Christians say it’s “perfectly ok” to rape, murder, practice slavery, traffic in little girls, commit genocide, you know, in order to follow the bible and keep population in control.
Turn the other cheek much?… just askin;-)
Cheers brother.
JoeBanana
hawkeye-
No doubt you are filled with dignity, compassion and courage but you read like a cranky d1ck towards Gail…just sayin;-)
Not to me he doesn’t. Nor, I suspect, to most of the other readers of this blog. To me, people who believe in superstition come across as seriously deluded. I tend to dismiss their opinion as worthless.
hawkeye-
I just think your being too hard on her. I don’t think Gail, or anyone else thinks those things are OK. I’d bet it is a misunderstanding.
Yorchichan, I think you miss out on too much by going that route. Why just yesterday a piece by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Christian, was posted here. Great stuff that should not be dismissed.
I agree Yorchichan, and I have said it here before, most of us that frequent OFW are very probably atheists, or maybe at a minimum Pastafarians 😉
Hi Joe,
“I think your being too hard on her.”
That’s slightly insulting. You underestimate her ability to express and defend her views.
“I don’t think Gail, or anyone else thinks those things are OK.”
You haven’t been keeping up with our conversation. Or you lack critical reading skills.
Re-read our posts, her position on this issue has been questioned many times now, and she refuses to back down.
You seem like a nice guy Joe, but come across as naive and unwilling to do the homework to support your claims.
Btw, Taleb’s piece was based on science and evidence, not superstition and delusion.
I mention this because you sometimes you appear not to know the difference.
Cheers brother.
hawkeye-
Thanks for the reply. I’m sorry I did not reply sooner but I put in a lot of work hours with no computer, especially in spring. Too many.
It is quite probable that I missed what Gail said as I do miss many posts here and am in and out of the conversation, but there has to be some misunderstanding.
As for being naive and unwilling to do the work to argue my point…not sure what you are getting at. I believe in climate change, resource limits and the effects these are going to have on us. I’m certainly not going to debate that with anyone here.
The only point I argue is that it would have been any different without religion. Most of what people call religion here is nothing more than politics as far as I can see. You can replace the word religion with government. There is good, bad and everything in between.
The terrible things you mention that religions have done and do today are nothing more than governments do all the time. In an energy constricted environment, do you really think an atheist is any more likely to be altruistic than a religious person?
Your defence of Yorchichan… he was using the word “superstition” for religion. Not sure else how to interpret “people who believe in superstition come across as seriously deluded. I tend to dismiss their opinion as worthless.” any other way than religious people should be ignored.
This should be a more thoughtful reply but I stopped planting potatoes long enough to write and the kids just got off the bus. I really enjoy your contributions here hawkeye, and hope you post more.
If you look here – at the Danish data – you will see quite a different picture for the Arctic:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Also, the ice on Greenland is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Look at the blue line on the graph with the subtext “The accumulated surface mass balance from September 1st to now (blue line, Gt)”
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
I strongly suspect that the Americans are fiddling their data. The Danes are less likely to do so.
Hi Al,
From the first link:
“This switch to new algorithms has led to small changes in the trends of sea ice extent since the first year of the data set,
BUT IT HAS NOT CHANGED THE GENERAL PICTURE OF ICE EXTENT DECLINE.”
The graph shows 2017 data is 2 std/dev BELOW the 1981-2000 mean.
From the second link:
“The calving loss is greater than the gain from surface mass balance,
AND GREENLAND IS LOSING MASS AT ABOUT 200 Gt/yr.”
Thanks for posting studies that clearly disprove and easily discredit what you are claiming.
You appear to be an intellectually dishonest person.
So nothing new here folks.
(Where’s that Thomas Paine quote when you need it!)
Cheers.
hawkeye,
Calling people dishonest for presenting data that you don’t like is not very scientific – but on par for warmers.
My links show very clearly that this year the ice in Greenland is growing at an unprecedented rate. Here is the chart alone. Take a look at the bottom blue line. What is so difficult to understand?
:
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
The ice on Greenland is currently accumulating at a rate way above anything in recorded history.
Furthermore, Antarctica is over 6 times the area of Greenland and as I showed above, ice has been building up there since 1800 – over 200 years. Perhaps that is why the sea-levels are not rising pretty well anywhere – except where cities and swamps are sinking.
The most interesting thing is how the media are not mentioning these facts – they prefer to tell you that Trump is a Russian stooge. Yawn.
Hi Al,
“Calling people dishonest for presenting data that you don’t like is not very scientific…”
Your poor reading skills prevents you from understanding that I LIKED the scientific data you presented. Please pay close attention, here’s what I wrote:
“Thanks for posting studies that clearly disprove and easily discredit what you are claiming.”
Got it? One more time: I LIKED the scientific data you presented.
Re-read if necessary and get back to me if you have questions.
And then you state:
“My links show very clearly that THIS YEAR the ice in Greenland is growing at an unprecedented rate.”
You insult the authors of the article you posted. Because they clearly state, and I’ll quote it again for your convenience:
“…Greenland is losing mass at about 200 Gt/yr.”
You didn’t even read the link you posted. And don’t understand that it contradicts your claim. Now stop and think about what that does to your credibility.
And on top of your blunder, you also fail to understand, like most deniers, that “THIS YEAR” (which is 5 months) is weather, not climate.
Word of advice, Al: Best way to get out of the hole you dug for yourself, is to stop digging.
Cheers!
“this is weather”
hawkeye,
So how many years does the famous pause have to continue before you change dogma? I hope you remain steadfast to your religion, I am only replying to you in the hope of opening the eyes of some others who may have been mislead by the media and who have an enquiring and scientific turn of mind.
“Global temperatures plunge in April – “the pause” returns”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/01/global-temperatures-plunge-in-april-the-pause-returns/
Are you totally unaware that reality has trashed all 80+ models of the warmists?
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/clip_image0028.jpg
https://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2017/02/Slowdown-infographic1.jpg
Hi Al,
Change the subject to avoid shame much? Typical denier tactic.
We’re not talking about “famous pause” or “dogma”. We’re talking about the two links you posted that you said supported your claims about Arctic and Greenland ice.
What kind of person posts articles to defend their claims, and then has to be told that those articles clearly contradict their claims?
What kind of person would then insult the authors of those articles by stating they said unprecedented growing ice, when the authors plainly stated in clear english declining ice.
What kind of person intentionally distorts the findings of those clearly stated articles, when they didn’t even take the time to read them, in an attempt to spread doubt and confusion?
Put your big-boy pants on Al, man-up, confront your inner coward, and admit you were being dishonest and deceitful.
Then work hard on establishing a track record of intellectual honesty and integrity. Against all odds, it just might begin to repair your complete lack of credibility, and even help you regain some self respect.
Then ask me about “pause” and “dogma”.
Cheers!
You’ve got it exactly right.
Thanks 🙂
But you live in Alaska so you have a good idea of what the weather has been like in recent years.
“AK closed in on the all time record coldest temperature of -80°F set in 1971, which is not only the Alaska all-time record, but the record for the entire United States. Unfortunately, it seems the battery died in the weather station just at the critical moment (2012)”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/30/bitter-cold-records-broken-in-alaska-all-time-coldest-record-nearly-broken-but-murphys-law-intervenes/
Under Obama “batteries” tended to die at critical moments. Just like HC “losing”33,000 emails at just the right moment.
In Australia these days, when we get two hot days, the media call it a “heat wave” and blather on about “global warming”. Here is an example from February this year. If you delve into the article, they claim that 3 days above 40C (104F) is a heat wave
“Heatwave to strain hospitals, power supplies in NSW”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/going-to-be-a-big-day-heatwave-to-strain-hospitals-power-supplies-in-nsw-20170209-gu99le.html
Here is a rare insight into what it was like in 1896 in the same part of Australia. Of course, it is not from an Australian newspaper. The Daily Mail is British.
“And you thought it was hot now? How a 24-DAY heatwave on Australia’s east coast in January 1896 saw temperatures climb to 49C (120F) degrees and killed 437 people”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4221366/Heatwave-January-1896-hit-49-degrees-killed-437-people.html
The cognitive dissonance of warmers is amazing
A famous writer often mentioned on this blog stated in one of his books that the recent Texas drought was “global warming”. I will not give his name to save him from embarrassment. I wrote to him and pointed out that he was full of bull. Texas has periodic droughts and heat waves….approximately every 30 yrs. When you look at heat records they are mostly set in the late 1920’s (dust bowl era) and the 1950s. I know how bad that dust bowl drought was….my grandfather lost his ranch as a result.
Global warming it was not. I mention this amusing episode since it seems to occur over and over. One hot day and it is global warming!
“This voice tells me that I am one of the luckiest people on Earth. It tells me I am a middle-class man from a country grown fat on centuries of plunder, that I have a university degree, that I go to restaurants and have a laptop computer and an internet connection, and I can publish articles like this in magazines. In other words, I am somewhere up near the top of the pyramid of human fortune. And that in turn means I am up near the top of the pyramid of human cupidity and destruction which is driving the natural world to the edge.”
-Kingsnorth
That is sort of the way it is, for quite a few of us.
Good quote.
And installing his famous compost toilet doesn’t change any of that for Kingsnorth: we are reduced to impotent gestures, however well-meaning.
I’m not sure that it’s all immorality on mankind’s part -‘ greed’, cupidity, etc – humans like to build, to create, to organise.
Making things certainly gives me the greatest pleasure, next to observing Nature’s intricacy. Some people clearly love building organisations.
If I had the money, I would landscape and terrace, and excavate ponds and plant woods like a madman.
Regarding slow vs fast collapse.
I don’t rule out the possibility of instant doom (lights out within days of an event), I just try to make sense of what I see. I see the economy is going south with exponential debt increases etc. Year after year the numbers are bad. Exports here, housing there. I see increasing complexity hand in hand with increasing wage disparity. The periphery is collapsing. Countries that don’t provide important goods/services to core countries are collapsing.
Dissipative structures dissipating potential. We have lots of conventional resources left but to keep the show on the road less and less cake is to be had each day. That means less mouths get fed and smaller servings served across the board.
There is no use in predicting what comes next, and it is even more useless to lock oneselves in to a specific outcome. Tensions throughout the entire world increases day by day. This will set in motion more and more war, terrorism, famines, misery which sets in motion new events etc. It’s a chaotic picture we impossibly can comprehend except in hindsight.
It was interesting to see the knock-on effect that a single IT system issue had with British Airways … with all flights being grounded worldwide. Judging from some unhappy travellers, the IT program clearly was not aware it is our God given right to fly.
But airport cafes did a roaring trade … there is hope afterall.
The economy is not going south. The numbers are not bad.
The global economy is GROWING.
When it stops growing — and the CBs are unable to restart growth.
That is when collapse comes. And it will be instant.
When financial players recognize that the CBs are out of ammo — the financial system will cease to function.
And you get 2008 – but this time no knight in shining armour will ride in.
The ATMs will close — global trade will completely stop — shops will empty of food — and chaos will kick off.
Why is it that so many people cannot understand this?
When do you think this will happen FE?
I am not sure….
That’s an ongoing misunderstanding here, I repeatedly answered you that it’s a very plausible scenario of yours, out of ~three general options for the near-mid term towards ~2035. We have to (re-)assign probabilities and timelines for these though as we go. I guess many “slowers” over here tend to think about it somewhat similarly..
I’m not sure CB fabricated growth counts as growth. I also don’t think oil production growth using unconventional sources is growth. This is the big test of the neo-economic theory of substitution. Won’t work but will die trying.
I would suggest that fake growth is still growth — because if we had not had growth for this long a period we’d have collapsed…
China is pretty much the only driver — and there can be no question that they have grown their economy dramatically — through massive debt… ghost towns etc… which has kept commodity prices high…
The ghost cities do exist —so they are real — but they are mostly empty …
End of the day … it’s just more of the same … it’s all about doing whatever it takes to keep BAU alive …. does it really matter if the energy is used to build empty cities… or on something ‘productive’
I am not sure…
To say I used to read The Economist religiously (years ago mind you, before taking the red pill lol), Gawd…
http://fromfilmerstofarmers.com/blog/2017/may/move-over-perpetual-motion-machines-theres-now-a-perpetual-data-machine-big-data/
“Oil, in effect, is nothing but a resource – a commodity – that ultimately serves no different purpose than zeroes and ones.”
Good grief!
can anybody tell real economic situation of Russia after sanction from usa in 2014 for Ukraine war because zerohedge never published article on Russia economy and say
putin is greatest leader of 21 century
It depends on your perspective, point of reference.
Putin & nationalist co. took over the country in the late 1990s at that point it was on the course in weeks/months from slipping into terminal disaster ala examples of sequential gov break down ala South/Central America, situation which could not be likely recovered ever.
From that point on the real purchasing parity of the poorest and middle classes jumped few dozens%, large part of the energy and other key industries were re-nationalized, although the gov model allows for smaller shareholder stakes from abroad. Mil-industrial complex is well and kicking, agriculture output rising. Oligarchs are actively pushed to support selected state priority projects, must reinvest at least something in Russia.
It’s a mixed model economy, it’s not revival CCCP v2.0
Especially, after the US-EU sponsored neonazi coup in Ukraine, the Russian public is now largely immunized to western propaganda, at least for decades to come, no matter what.
Although there were some obvious setbacks after 2008/2014, inflation spikes, budget cuts etc. Investment continues in prioritized segments: e.g. I’ve often written here about their renaissance in nuclear industry, not only in latest generation power plants, remind you today only three countries globally capable of that (Russia, China, S. Korea) but also in completely new stuff like reprocessing and burning used fuel in closed cycle.
PS some will jumped out saying it was all only accomplished by elevated oil/energy prices on the int markets during that time, which is only partly true, the country and its people are simply back on the map.
PS2 the traditional historic problem and advantage remains, too small population for ~1/6th of global landmass, that had largely shaped the past and will form the future as well..
They don’t seem to be doing too badly despite sanctions.
This is what the world bank says. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/russia/publication/rer
Summary: Russian economy shows encouraging signs of overcoming recession. However, growth projections still remain sensitive to oil prices.
Like other oil exporters, how the country does depends a whole lot on oil prices.
Russians are simply all too familiar with very bad times: of considerable psychological advantage to them. People in the West used to have that toughness.
I remember a Russian friend told me that the atmosphere in Moscow a year ago, in September, was very positive in feeling (this was when our propaganda was predicting imminent collapse of Russian economy and ousting of Putin as a consequence of sanctions!). He had spent lots of time in the West, and simply didn’t recognise the old Russia of his childhood. ‘If you want to have fun, just come over, your money will go a long way here, it’s great!’
Putin was building a new public park near the Kremlin (I think), and lots of young people were out with babies and lots of pregnant women, all enjoying the sun: an interesting indication of the mood. Think of the West and the poor birth-rate and general pessimism.
There were certainly problems at the time, with the new middle class retrenching a fair bit, but this actually worked to the advantage of his family’s food importation business, which offered a slightly better class of food than usual in Russia, but at a moderate price, so they were gaining new customers.
His mother started the business with one container of foreign booze, after she lost her job as a food scientist in the big Russian collapse, reinvesting her profits. Quite a woman!
He said that corruption when dealing with officials had been reduced to a nice gift of champagne, a box of foreign chocolates for the wife, that sort of thing – no big payments being demanded. However, if a someone ‘big’ and connected decides that they want your company, you simply sell to them. Or they can destroy you – best to take the money and go. So, no real rule of law, but tolerable if you are lucky.
As world of … wrote:
“the traditional historic problem and advantage remains, too small population for ~1/6th of global landmass, that had largely shaped the past and will form the future as well”
In the book I am currently reading, “Towards The Flame” by Dominic Lieven, he makes reference to the fact that in 1914 the Tsar was told that the population of Imperial Russia would reach 300 million by the end of the 20th century. Very sad.
The world would have become a very different place if the Russians had let the West Europeans sort out their own royal family problems.
Population of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States – loose successor to the Soviet Union) was 282m in 2013, pretty close.
psile,
That number includes all the Kazakhs, Kyrghis, Uzbeks Turkmen, Monghols, Tajiks, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Dagestanis, Ingushetians, Tartars etc.
Hardly what the Tsar’s advisors had in mind. :=)
Russian Empire was progenitor of USSR, with all those ethnic groups already included. *rolls eyes*. Why are you here?
Russia is hampered by a cold climate and poor access to sea transportation. This makes the cost of goods produced too high for the world market. It is hard for Russia to compete on much of anything other than oil, and perhaps some other types of resource extraction (natural gas, coal, wood).
True. Plus GM-free grain.
“Russia Becomes a Grain Superpower as Wheat Exports Explode”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/russia-upends-world-wheat-market-with-record-harvest-exports
The other side of the coin is that local producers can compete with imports for many goods. A bit like the USA 50 years ago.
When used cars depreciation is worse than new you know there’s a problem.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-28/carmax-inventory-canary-coalmine-slumping-auto-industry
For a while, more and more tricks were used–longer length loan terms, higher loan amount to value, lower interest rates. Now we have run out of tricks, and demand is going down.
There doesn’t seem to be a way out of this one… is it big enough to trigger the deflationary death spiral…..
it may seem that there is no answer but i suggest you look into this lady her name is Lynette Zang from what she is saying the elders are planning a new economic stimulus growth system that will hopefully keep BAU alive for God only knows how long I will provide some links to her you tube clips if you dare to look this is part 1 of a 4 part presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk5kC-xHOnw#t=49.654599
I am not optimistic about “The Bail-In and Special Drawing Rights of the IMF,” really solving anything, but I suppose they could kick the can down the road by a few months, or even a year or two.
Ha ha ha…. are you serious? Tell me you posted this as a joke….
Is Lynette Chris Martenson’s retar—ded half sister?
I stopped after the first sentence….
Then there is this. Note the bottom line. Unfunded liabilities now $106 Trillion. http://www.usdebtclock.org/
But, but we can go on for decades…
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/4f/4f4b7b8cce3a920b9263179cb28d7c822cdfaa49e6bcaa2fe215a34a2fc727c8.jpg
Sorry, but I remember well the alarmist literature and press many decades ago, when western economies crossed ~100% indebtedness threshold (private + corp + gov), now many of that said countries are attacking or surpassing 600% debt levels!
With “clever” can kicking and bit more dosage of command economy, plus some global triage and homefront martial law we can imagine even low thousands% of debts.
I don’t like it one bit either, but let’s be realistic, the world is crazy.
-2% interest and 1000% debt will be no problem.
“we’ve become so superstitious that we actually think money [or in this case digibits] brings forth food.”
We are not dealing in numbers anymore…we are dealing with physical realities which you cannot paper over..that’ s why everything (contrary to decades ago as you say) has gone exponential…including unfunded liabilities….
http://usaponzi.com/image/108797672.png
Now decades ago…I imagine you mean the 80s…let’s see:
-Global Population 4.5B (1980) to 5.2B (1990)
-Global Production of Conventional Oil = Still Growing
-Neoliberalism is just kicking off = Offshoring all manufacturing from the First-World, thus keeping a cap on prices of products so that the (impoverishing) first-worlders can still afford to consume…also privatizing tons of corporations, thus making them more competitive, keeping prices down (at the expense of many mind you)
-Eastern Europe has not come online yet, thus creating another spurt of growth
– China is slowly starting to come online, but it really starts speeding up when it joins the WTO in 2001, another source of growth for the world economy
-Oil can still find a price equilibrium between supply and demand which is no longer the case….today it cannot find a price equilibrium at ANY price, supply and demand curves do not cross at all (now that one is a biggie, thus the aptly named “The Triangle of Doom” by Steve from Virginia over at Economic Undertow)
And many other points…what I am trying to say is extrapolating from what happened decades ago and applying to today’s world makes absolute no sense…we do not live in that world anymore..
What is exactly an unfunded liability?
Troll…
Unfunded liabilities include Social Security, Medicare Parts A,B,D, Federal debt held by the public, Federal employee benefits, and Veterans benefits.
The difference between a GAAP debt and an unfunded liability generally has to do with whether there is an explicit promise to make a payment. If the government issues a bond, that is clearly a debt. But if it simply says it will pay Social Security and Medicare payments, there is no particular guarantee that these will continue in the future, so these amounts are unfunded liabilities. Next year’s Congress could decide to reduce these payments.
The amount of debt is fairly clear. There is more discretion in what is included in unfunded liabilities. Even within Social Security and Medicare, there is a question of how many years of future benefits to include, and what inflation rate to assume.
The government has a pension benefit guarantee corporation (without much money in it) relating to most private pensions. In theory, the government could truly backstop all of these pensions, if they become unable to pay, but I wouldn’t count on it.
There are all kinds of contingent guarantees that the government makes–for example, for solar panel makers, and for debt of nuclear power plants. I expect that these are unfunded liabilities.
Guarantees on bank deposits by the Federal Governments might also be considered unfunded liabilities. Banks contribute to a fund that is supposed to provide insurance for losses in excess of $200,000 per account (as I recall the numbers). The government in theory backstops this insurance program–except that it is becoming less clear whether it really provides this coverage, with the new “bail-in” rules. There is also the issue of what happens if derivative problems cause a bank with insured deposits to fail.
and that is why only a new growth system will save the day and the elders are way ahead of us so dont fret its all under control
The world is no doubt worse.
Have a look at the outstanding debts owed by the US oil and gas industry.
Low oil prices Gail will indeed doom these producers.
No way they’re paying them back.
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-great-u-s-energy-debt-wall-its-going-to-get-very-ugly/
These companies could take new loans to pay old ones. But the increase is alarming.