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.
Here’s something for FE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Look up a film on YouTube called “Men Behind the Sun” – it deals with the subject, but beware, it’s gruesome, so I won’t include a direct link here.
What was the purpose of posting that link and suggesting a movie based on war atrocities?
Do you have one?
Still waiting on Common DelusiSTANI to sign off on the Hypocrisy Apology Treaty.
Apparently he’s attending the funeral of the 3 year old girl killed in London….
Lucky for him NATO only bombs funerals and weddings in Afghanistan and Iraq… in places where you know…. life is so cheap that they actually enjoy when their families get bombed to pieces… it’s like a blessing has landed on them from the sky… an honour…
To show you another side of Japan, which this thread is about. History. If it were about Britain, I could link to videos about machine-gunned Zulus, Boers in concentration camps, thousands of castrated Kikuyu in Kenya, etc., etc. Satisfied?
As long as nobody castrates a British subject then it’s all good. Superior culture and all that… you know….
Many observers of routine medical newborn male circumcision in America have reported being alarmed by the agony of the baby and astonished that the doctors involved seem completely unaffected by the infant’s screams and clear signs of shock (Romberg, 1985; Milos, 1989; O’Mara, 1993; Lewis, 2006).
http://www.primal-page.com/neonatal.htm
My point exactly. Let’s not import barbaric practices. I whipped yo’ ass good, you Quisling, and now I’m off to bed. But still you’ll burble the same old tripe tomorrow.
An extensive new scientific analysis conducted by the Former Chief Economist Michael Jefferson at Royal Dutch Shell published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews titled “A Global Energy Assessment 2016” : says “that PROVED conventional oil reserves as detailed in oil industry sources are likely “overstated” by HALF.” & “Punt bluntly,the standard claim that the world has “PROVED” conventional oil reserves of nearly 1.7 trillion barrels is overstated by about 876 billion barrels. Thus, despite the fall in crude oil prices from a peak in June 2014, after that of July 2008, the “Peak Oil” issue remains with us.” (Jefferson 2016)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wene.179/pdf
Would the oil industry lie about how much is left? The oil industry would if it in anyway continues their line of business longer by convincing people to continue to make stuff to burn their stuff.
More terrorist incidents in London:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2017/jun/03/london-bridge-closed-after-serious-police-incident-live
Perhaps if there were a ban on reporting on these incidents, there wouldn’t be so many of them.
I’m afraid that’s just not possible these days. Members of the public film it on their phones, and there’s the internet. We’d be banning free speech in effect, and we couldn’t possibly prosecute all the people reporting it on the internet.
Relativity? Not sure I understand.
I’m wondering if these extremists were to start doing this on a daily/weekly concerted basis across all the Western World, if that could be an element to bring our fragile BAU down (not sure there are enough of them all over the Western World to succeed with that strategy though)…
It’s a horrible thought, but cyber attacks would probably be more effective, such as the UK’s National Health Service experienced recently.
I am still miffed at why these dudes don’t rent lower floor apartments …. bring in what they need in small batches…. then light the fuses and take them all down in one foul swoop.
Or better still …. drop matches into dry forests parks …. light trash bins on fire … etc…
Why not this on a grand scale? http://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorism-at-home-by-fire/
http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150802225037-3-california-wildfire-080215-super-169.jpg
Bowling with cars is so … insignificant…
This is not rocket science — therefore one has to wonder why it is not being done
I guess law enforcement are more aware of trafficing of bombs and it’s ingredients. And terrorists are subject to non-elites falling affordability. Auto-loans are cheap though.
“I am still miffed at why”
You’re a disgrace, FE. They stabbed a little girl last night. Perhaps you would like to be stabbed or doused in petrol and set alight, as some of their victims have been.
A disgrace?
F789 you.
These guys could stab and rape a million poor little british bitches
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_2011_Libyan_Civil_War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
:Like I said … F789 you.
And I’d say that to you in person … right before I knocked your lights out.
YOU are a f789ing disgrace
Which is worse way to die… bomb … or knife?
Let;s see the results of Mr Blair’s bombs in Afghanistan…. well done Mr Blair!!
http://thewe.cc/thewe_/images_5/___/afghanistan/children_dead.jpe
How many killed in London ????
Score Blair 1,000,000 — Brown People 6
Blair wins!
https://tech.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Labor-Day-.jpg
FE you make a good point but in a rather extreme way. Perhaps it’s the only way people can get it. The fact remains that terrorism all total has killed approximately 200,000 people in the last century. Where as government sanctioned wars have killed over 100,000,000.
So from a humanitarian perspective the real enemy are the worlds governments not the terrorists.
The other point your trying to make is community responsibility. What no one in the western world wants to hear is that their personal prosperity is a product of inequality. A system out of equilibrium.
Follow the money all wars are bank wars.
You reap what you sow.
all wars are resource wars
100 years ago we decided to loot the oilwealth of the middle east—on the assumption that the locals wouldn’t notice that we divvied up their countries and took what we wanted.
That’s why I called a chapter of my book (The End of More) “holy oil’.
we placated the local feudal lords with stuff they needed—(basically anything shiny) while leaving the rest of the people in poverty while we burned their oil to provide our affluent lifestyle.
That eventually unleashed a predictable backlash, at the unfairness of the global imbalance.
The fact that they are religious nutters is neither here nor there…that is a mindset you will find anywhere—-
Nobody mentions that Timothy McVeigh was a ‘christian’ terrorist
We looted muslim resources, now they want them back
Not a nice situation to be in—but that is the root cause of it
It wont stop until the global economy rebalances itself to a median level
Noman – I actually don’t have a problem with the looting … finite world… too many people… me or them…
What I have a problem with is clowns like Common DelusiSTANI who display epic hypocrisy … and Stooopidity.
The proper position on the incident in London is:
We killed a lot of innocent people in the ME so that we could keep BAU in play…
Understandably these people are seriously pissed with us…. and understandably they will lash out in any way possible because they are angry … they would prefer to use F16’s and drone missiles… but they don’t have access to those… so they use automobiles….
Yes a handful of people have been killed and injured … and that too is unfortunate … but this is all collateral damage… a price that needs to be paid to keep BAU alive — to keep us alive..
The ends justifies the means…
Are we going to stop bombing them into the stone age because a few people have been killed – absolutely not.
Therefore people need to expect more cars to run over people on the street. That’s what we call Blowback
I think that’s more or less what I said Eddy
We let the genie out of the bottle 100 years ago
‘You reap what you sow.’
+++++++++++++++++++++
FE is openly fantasising about terrorist violence and implicitly supporting it:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/05/25/open-thread-and-a-few-observations-on-japan/comment-page-20/#comment-129219
I just hope the security services are watching him. He is also, incidentally, bringing Gail’s blog into disrepute.
I don’t see any terrorism — I see revenge attacks. If you cannot understand why these people do what they do then you truly are a MOREon.
If a 100kg bully beat you up every day — kicked your mother in the teeth then raped her… pounded your family to a pulp…
Then one day you came up behind him and slammed him in the back of the head with a shovel…
Would that be terrorism — or revenge?
BTW – did I mention that you disgust me with your hypocrisy?
‘common’ … yes that says it all… you are very common …
CP-
You don’t get it at all. Western bombs and arms are being dropped steadily on some of the poorest people in the world. Bus loads of kids are blown up and killed every week and the people of the West could care less.
Yet we go crazy and act surprised when it is one our own that is retaliated against. Our collective hypocrisy is off the scales.
But Joe – Brown people don’t count.
We could kill and maim a million brown people and nothing is said —but stab a white child —- holy mother of mary —- these people are monsters!!!
And common delusiSTANI calls me a disgrace.
That says it all.
Oh the poor child … she’ll be missed at ballet class… and the psychologists will be standing by at her private school on monday morning to help the snowflakes deal with their loss… I hear Chelsea are going to have a minute of silence in remembrance of the snowflake that has melted on the stove of terror (or revenge as some might see it)…. oh boo hoo… this is beyond terrible.
If we had to have a minutes silence for all those that the UK has killed Chelsea would need to forgo the next 5 seasons of matches…
What’s this, a two dimensional fight?
Joebanana says: “CP- You don’t get it at all.”
I do get it. It’s FE’s unhinged behaviour and complete lack of netiquette that I’m complaining about. He has gone way too far this time.
I’ve have not gone close to far enough Common DelusiSTANI.
I am looking forward to watching reports of the next Revenge Attack by the Brown People on the Death Star aka NATO.
What’s it gonna be – another rampage through a crowd of ‘innocents’ — nobody is innocent — we are all complicit when we drop bombs on wedding parties… then moan and wail and have commemoration ceremonies when the mouse nips the elephant on the toe…. boo hoo…
Completely agree with your perspective on this FE. It’s perhaps easier for us out on the fringes of the empire to see it. it seems obvious to me that sunk it the bowels of the US of A and Britain these poor hypocrites can’t help but delude themselves.
One would have thought that a person with the sense to find and comment on this site of sites would be qualified to see past the B.S.
but that’s obviously not always the case
Agree — how someone who cannot see through the simplest of issues — has landed on FW….
Bizarre….
Common DelusiSTANI…. from the province of Disgusting … it’s on the western side of the country…. few visit since is smells of raw sewage….
Violence nearby is always much more “real” to people than violence, brought on by governments, half way around the world. I agree that it is unfortunate.
A big part of our problem is rising wage disparity. Another part of our problem is population which continually rises, making it harder and harder to produce enough cheap resources per capita, such as cheap to produce oil, and cheap to produce cars.
I agree that FE is somewhat “over the top,” but I think Common Phenomenon is over-reacting as well. How about discussing a different topic, such as China’s debt problem, or the amount of oil extracted in Saudi Arabia?
Gail says: “I agree that FE is somewhat “over the top,” but I think Common Phenomenon is over-reacting as well.”
FE is a lot more than over the top. He has threatened me with personal violence if he ever meets me, then he went on to preach even more violence. The guy is in his 40’s but behaves like a teenager. Such behaviour would get him banned from every forum of which I am a member. I would have hoped you had higher standards, Gail.
Furthermore, I am not responsible for the violence of Mr Blair. FE seems to paint himself as an innocent because he is a Canadian, but what did the native Americans and Inuit think about being invaded by his ancestors? Is any nation free of responsibility for violence?
You have said your piece, Gail, but I disagree with it. Now I have said my piece. Let’s move on.
There can be no moving on unless you will agree that you are a hypocrite.
You must also agree that the disgrace is not me refusing to moan and wail over a child killed in a revenge attack in London but that the disgrace is that NATO regularly bombs innocent people maiming and killing millions over the years… ruining lives and causing suffering on an epic scale.
That is the disgrace.
A few people getting caught up in the blow back is… an incident… a flea on an elephant.
Otherwise we do not move on.
This is true FE but it keeps the planes flying. Have you flown lately? CP doesn’t understand that her existence has been the beneficiary of a system that rewards greed oppression and violence.
But who exactly has free speech in the matter?
Have not all of us prospered because of inequality?
I am all for killing and pillaging. It means I do not live like a Somalian
I understand why the MSM has to convince the MOREons of our righteousness.
Yoo hoo Common DelusiSTANI are you gonna sign the Treaty…. you can bite the ink well open and smear the blue on your thumb and leave your print if that’s easier for you
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/03-BICcristal2008-03-26.jpg/220px-03-BICcristal2008-03-26.jpg
No, YOU are the hypo crite. You claim to adore and worship BAU. What powers BAU in the West? The oil from the Middle East. How do we get it? Via NATO, via the USA – of which Canada and New Zealand are client states. Get it, more on? Hypo crite? Good.
I take it you are not gonna sign?
I am no hypocrite — I fully support the killings — as I have stated a thousand times since I started posting on FW
I am ok with innocent brown people being incinerated….
but unlike you ….
I also have no problem when the brown people — who are fighting for their share of the planet’s treasures…. stab a white child…. or hack off the head of a soldier who is enjoying a stroll on a Sunday afternoon…
Do you see the difference in our positions?
Your’s is one of hypocrisy. Mine is not.
If you did understand then you would sign. You either sign…. or I rub your face in this till the very end of days.
“Do you see the difference in our positions?”
Yes, mine is logical, yours is not. I side with my fellow European progressives. Look at all the YouTube videos of animals being halal-ed in agony, of the screaming 8-year-olds being circumcised without anesthetic. Years ago, my moose-limb manager told me how he was pressurising his daughter to marry her cousin but was surprised at her lack of enthusiasm. Inbred medievalists. Of course I don’t feel sorry for them and their violent ways. If they have halal-ed billions of animals, then perhaps NATO is providing their well-deserved karma. 🙂
Fascinating insights into the brain of a DelusiSTANI…
So let me get this right — because we are lily white in terms of our treatment of animals… our culture is far superior than all others … and of course we are European of extract therefore white and not brown…
That means that we are righteous when we kill and maim millions to steal their resources… they are scum … they deserve to be bombed … they deserve to suffer…. they deserve to have their countries left in tatters….
That means that you believe a white child’s life is more precious than a 100,000 brown children’s lives.
Thank you for explaining this to me —- I recant — you are not a hypocrite.
You are far worse…. the word disgusting comes to mind…. abhorrent…
It would be acceptable to state that this is a finite world — we are fighting over resources — because we have no choice —- but to justify it by degrading and devaluing others…. like I said… disgusting….
You disgust me
And the white supremacist shows his stripes…
futuresystemsanalyst says: “And the white supremacist shows his stripes…”
Wrong. I am not white. There are no “white” people, no “black” people, only culture. You may share and support my culture whatever your so called “colour”, whether you be from Oceania or the Caribbean. But I doubt you’d get that.
You belong to the race called Disgusting.
“That means that you believe a white child’s life is more precious than a 100,000 brown children’s lives.”
No, you didn’t read carefully what I said, because you are of low intellect. I said that colour doesn’t come into it. We have hundreds of thousands of fine Africans and Caribbeans with progressive values in the UK.
So the life of any British child is worth more than 1000 brown children in say Iraq?
“So the life of any British child is worth more than 1000 brown children in say Iraq?”
I’m not talking colour. Are all Iraqis “brown” ? Certainly we in the UK have a more modern and progressive culture, worthy of BAU. Theirs is a harsh one, worthy of desert people.
Yes — you are superior — you have a large army — you use it to destroy other cultures that are apparently inferior…. killing maiming and displacing millions… causing untold suffering
Congratulations on your cultural superiority
Hold on… weren’t you in the previous post ranting on about how these other cultures are inferior because of their barbaric treatment of animals?
So halal butchering is worse than butchering women and children with bombs….
I am fascinated….. explain the logic to me….
“Yes — you are superior — you have a large army — you use it to destroy other cultures that are apparently inferior…. killing maiming and displacing millions… causing untold suffering”
Of which you have said many times you are very proud. You can’t have it both ways. You are going round in circles and are now up your own arse, so do shut your trap for once in your life. Go and live in a moose limb country and see how much you enjoy the lifestyle, without our Western freedoms.
Yes – it is good that we have the upper hand. I prefer not to live like a Libyan.
But on the other hand — when a British child is killed by a ‘terrorist’ I have ZERO problem with that. I expect it. It does not trouble me in the slightest.
I understand why they would want to kill my family — to kill a westerner… It is exactly what I would do if someone were to drop a bomb on my family.
You on the other hand — believe exactly what the MSM tells you to believe….
That makes you an id…i…ot… a MOREon…..
Why are you wavering?
1 British Child
or 1000 Libyan children
Surely the answer is simple….. you know you want to say the 1 British child …. but you know that making that statement will convince others of what I already know — that you are disgusting….
Come on … just say it Common DelusiSTANI…. say what everyone already knows…..
“Is one British child’s life worth more than the lives of 1000 Iraqi children?”
Of course I think it is, if that is what it takes to preserve BAU, and you have admitted you agree with me. So what’s the problem? The problem is that you are not intelligent enough to see your own contradictions.
Thank you!
And btw it has nothing to do with preserving BAU — a thousand British children could be murdered today — and BAU would go on …..
It has everything to do with your belief that people from the ME are pond scum…. cockroaches… that deserve to be crushed under 1000 pound bombs….
But that is not so much the issue — the issue is that you are unable to see beyond the pablum that you are fed by the MSM
Which means you are not deserving of intellectual respect.
You do not belong on FW.
“You on the other hand — believe exactly what the MSM tells you to believe”
Wrong, I do not. I believe in the survival of the fittest – and for now we are still the fittest. My actual complaint was about netiquette, and your threat of violence against me and then preaching more violence. Originally Gail supported netiquette, but she has allowed you to erode the standards and desensitise her. So here we are. And I’ll bet some of my comments get deleted but none of yours. I’m actually all in favour of free speech, if netiquette is out, so let’s see what happens.
Survival of the fittest?
Well then you should applaud the efforts of the ‘terrorists’ who are determined to win this epic battle.
They are only trying to survive aren’t they….
Rather than condemn them for killing a child you should respect them because they are battling hard. They are not lying down like beaten dogs….
In case you hadn’t noticed…. that is pretty much what my position is….
Like I said … why don’t they burn down cities and forests…. running down people with cars is not going to accomplish much…. if they want to win they need to take down BAU….
But then nobody survives…. so no doubt that is the answer to my question….
Meanwhile — please give a big hand of applause to the ‘terrorists’ for at least showing up eh
“1 British Child or 1000 Libyan children”
Of course I prefer my own country and culture, stew-pid. Who doesn’t, who wouldn’t? It’s called human nature, you big girl’s blouse. Nothing disgusting about it.
But you just called these people barbaric….
Yet you are ok with slaughtering them by the thousands…. you feel that the death of one of your people justifies slaughtering a thousand of them….
So who is more barbaric?
It’s ok. You can admit that western countries are barbaric…. and that is why we are living large and they are living like dogs…
That is my position exactly. If we were not more vicious… more cunning … then we would be them and they would be us.
But I do not believe that one Canadian child is inherently more valuable than one Libyan child.
Don’t look for this justification in the MSM.
“And btw it has nothing to do with preserving BAU — It has everything to do with your belief that people from the ME are pond scum…. cockroaches… that deserve to be crushed under 1000 pound bombs….”
No, that’s what you said. You can’t remember what you wrote half an hour ago – what you’d do to preserve BAU. Your anencephaly is showing again. Pure hypo crisy and lack of self-knowledge.
“you should respect them because they are battling hard”
Battling hard?! That the best they can do? 7 people dead out of a population of 7 million? The fittest still survive. Smirk! 🙂
EXACTLY!
They are only able to kill so few…. yet we are able to kill millions…. we are the kings of barbaric acts… we are the greatest slaughterers the world has ever know.
Who gives a shit about one child in London…. that’s a flea bite….
Look at what we have done to them — we have bombed them into the stone age… we have ruined them… we have maimed them… we have wrecked them…. we are Sparta!
Who needs to argue when the other side hands you the winning arguments on a silver platter.
Well done. I will accept this in lieu of signing the Treaty.
“But I do not believe that one Canadian child is inherently more valuable than one Libyan child.”
No halal, no genital mutilation, no forced marriage, no slavery. What’s not to like? 🙂
Time to ban male circumcision?
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/jun/14/circumcision-ban-row-san-francisco
Why Factory Farming Is a Broken System Where Extreme Animal Cruelty and Abuse Is the Norm
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/factory-farming-animal-cruelty/
We should turn the bombs on ourselves no?
Let’s Nuke Paris Hilton and Kim K…. while we are at it….
Let me help you with that hole….
http://www.ldoceonline.com/media/english/illustration/shovel.jpg
“we are the greatest slaughterers the world has ever know”
And tomorrow you will be boasting about it again. Hy po crite. 🙁
Ban circumcision for sure, and factory farming. No problem with that. But who invented the food chain in the first place? Not humans. But whose *religion* demands the cruellest slaughter? No prizes for guessing. 😉
F789 that…. we must be consistent
We need to self bomb ourselves into the stone age….
Just like we bomb those ME countries because they are barbarians…
Bomb All Barbarians. No Exceptions.
How does it feel to be twisted like a pretzel round and up and down and across and over and under till you are not even sure what your name is anymore?
How does it feel to be bombed — intellectually — back into the stone age.
How does it feel to be exposed as a half-witted MSM slopping imb-ecile?
Though shalt not insult Fast Eddy.
We can move on now.
I must say… I have so enjoyed our little ‘debate’….
“How does it feel to be bombed — intellectually — back into the stone age.”
You delude yourself. 🙂
“How does it feel to be exposed as a half-witted MSM slopping imb-ecile?”
No, you have been so brainwashed by the “political correctness” of the MSM that you are afraid to defend your own culture.
“Though shalt not insult Fast Eddy.”
The f o o l, FE, insults himself. You have married “out” for protection. But when the chips are down, you will be :
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bd/d1/2c/bdd12c8e5405a316bcdab1b0ac62bb94.jpg
Of course that in the way we treat animals we are far far superior to Muslims. See how those fascists treat pigs.
http://www.occupyforanimals.net/uploads/7/7/3/5/7735203/6559612_orig.jpg
Wait, I just remembered that Muslims do not eat pork. OMG, these poor pigs must be raised in a christian pig farm! Not by savage muslimns but, oh the horror, by christian white noble people!!
common phenomenon, i think you are more than common, you’re phenomenally common.
We need to bomb these barbarians back to the stone age… hang on … let me get out of the way first
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5vFDnp945I
CE-
You don’t get it. FE and I are Canadians, our country participates in NATO and all the other crap organizations that make sure the West lives large while others suffer because of our use of resources.
How many Canadians would give up their job if it ended the war in Afghanistan? How many Brits would agree to stop selling arms if it increased the unemployment rate? Would you give up your livelihood for it?
FE has the balls and sense to admit it and say he is good with killing. If only more people had that kind of integrity.
What are you moaning about, you silly woman? Of course we Brits must use our army to preserve our lifestyle. No problem with that. Now go and say a hail mary to little baby jesus, or whatever it is they do in your corrupt-to-the-core institution.
Is one British child’s life worth more than the lives of 1000 Iraqi children?
Yes
No
Have you ever spent time in the ME? I have been there many times. I have only ever encountered decent people. Not once have I been threatened or treated rudely.
Now of course there are some dangerous, radical people in some of these countries — they tend to be from countries that we have bombed back into the stone age — there are also quite a few heralding from countries where we support monsters who commit heinous acts in our name against their own people… KSA comes to mind….
They apparently are not so keen on being explained that their cultures are backwards and barbari through the dropping of plane loads of bombs on their families…. by we in the civilized parts of the world.
“The West lives large while others suffer because of our use of resources.”
By “West” you certainly must mean the industrialized civilization/countries?
It is not simply a matter of shaming “The West” anymore I suppose?
More music: “Ghosts” by Japan. So why the photo of Chinaman Mao Zedong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOW4-oWnDPw
=============
The 1980s were the peak decade of admiration for the Japanese.
The Vapors: “Turning Japanese” (terrible haircut, the lead singer had):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR4XNqrqxrU
========================================
Kirsten Dunst’s cover:
More 1980s Japan-worship. This song is total cheese:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCH1IlOfDTM
“Aneka” should have been sent to prison for that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/trump-plans-to-shift-infrastructure-funding-to-cities-states-and-business.html?_r=0
‘Trump Plans to Shift Infrastructure Funding to Cities, States and Business’
Oh, you just got to love this one. After campaigning on how our infrastructure is falling apart, which it is, and claiming/planning to appropriate 1 trillion dollars to rebuild it, now he’s in office and much more interested in funding the Defense Dept. to an even more outrageous level while also providing tax relief to super wealthy people, he’s now shifting the infrastructure burden over to the local level. Fighting wars, building armaments, sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong, maintaining huge armies in foreign lands is all more important than our streets, bridges, tunnels, water lines etc. I don’t know whether to laugh or puke.
But look at what is written right after letting us know it’s being shifted to the local level: “The move would be part of an effort to fulfill a campaign promise to lead $1 trillion in projects to rebuild roads, bridges, railways and waterways.”
The move? What move? You mean the move to shift the burden to the local level? That move? That’s not fulfilling a campaign promise, that’s passing the buck!
‘El Trumpo is just continuing the path set forward by the guys before him.
The current administration is simply decommissioning the carz/oil fueled suburbia experiment, and as replacement, crowded and sprawling metropolises while keeping the energy flowing to the core by ‘whatever it takes’. Military interventions/wars/shadow ops included.
The choices:
#1 Continue with “Democracy” and an inevitable total chaos (insta-collapse) when pumping oil yields no net energy gain – no matter how much new debt and bullets flown.
#2 Pursue Techno-feudalism with a BAU slowly grinding to a halt, with most of the (mostly useless anyway) middle class relegated back to austerity and outright poverty.
The party’s over, now make your choice; what’s the preferred future for your children?
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/20/3e/9c/203e9ce36062d82276af3b894406f4da.jpg
And don’t forget to purchase your robotic harem now!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3559664/meet-harmony-the-sex-robot-so-realistic-she-orgasmsand-shell-even-remember-your-birthday/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/nintchdbpict000323662534-e1494781199146.jpg?strip=all&w=584&quality=100
https://i1.wp.com/www.tvfort.com/files/captures/south-park-4236fb/Screen-179656.jpg
Disguisting!!
I prefer my robot intercourse partner to not labor under the pretense of being a puny, filthy and fleshy human!
http://www.3ders.org/images/mx3d-metal-3d-printer-2.png
Machine lovers for machines!!! That is what I endorse.
Intrigued you are, there’s no denying in that.
http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/16/46/980×490/landscape-1479136211-screen-shot-2016-11-14-at-100636-am-copy.jpg
Although, there’s no need for expensive sex robots when there will be cheap woman for sale a dime a dozen in the relative near time frame.
Oh ya… I gotta have some of that….
Somebody, somewhere, has to run up a lot of debt to add more infrastructure. The Federal Government is running into a lot of obstacles on adding debt, even without a tax cut. With a tax cut, it is an absolute no-go.
I am guessing that Trump is hoping that local governments can structure these projects as toll roads/toll bridges or some other pay-as-you-go mechanism. They can then attempt to borrow against the future income.
Around 1,700 private jets flying in to Davos… for World Economic Forum meeting to discuss climate change and global warming
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2916539/World-Economic-Forum-Skies-Switzerland-double-number-private-jets.html#ixzz4iy9hqkBn
All being done to calm the masses. “Trust us we’re working on it we have you best interest in mind “
Peak Hypocrisy?
Fantastic!
Every little bit counts.
Burn More Fossil Fuels Now
I agree FE, but you got to love the irony on the part of the Elites….it’s a classic case of “Do as I say not as I do” ….Leonardo D. is a master at that game…
And the irony is that the cattle don’t even notice the irony….
It’s all a colossal joke this ‘green’ nonsense… these climate summits… all that jet fuel burned at conferences and… we continue to break records (what a relief!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/991ed89ac8fd7bf15762ee2d7b3c50110d96278f.gif
I think I need to make a capsule coffee…
https://s3.amazonaws.com/tc-au-prod/uploaded_images/images/402/original/nespresso-coffee-capsule-mainimage-1.jpg
We should just invest some type of magic teleporter to get all of these people together quickly so they can stop emitting carbon dioxide when they meet up to discuss cutting emissions.
It can go on the drawing board next to geo-engineering and Elon Musk’s trip to mars.
I DONT agree Fast Eddy, but you and Gail are entitled to your opinion, just like others here.
Still waiting on your response:
a) Should we stop burning coal now and collapse and die
b) Or should we continue burning coal now and live
You’re not really the die-hard nihilist you sometimes claim to be.
An ultra-nihilist wouldn’t say, “Mr DNA tells me to live so live I must”
Rather he/she would say: “My individual life has no value and its preservation serves no purpose regardless of whatever constructs inform me”
So your ‘BAU at all costs’ mantra is rooted elsewhere…down a different rabbit hole entirely perhaps.
And to answer your question; false dichotomy between two impossible choices that it is -There is no ‘should’. Should is a word used by those who presume we have free will. Another Nitzschean principle you profess to understand but have trouble applying.
We will Burn More Coal … it is not a choice…. if it leads to BAU being prolonged… if solar and wind were better suited to prolong BAU the planet would be covered in windmills and solar panels…
So the question is ultimately moot — however I would still like an answer… from someone who sees to not think it is moot
As for die-hard nihilism… a person who professes that would not not bother posting on FW….
While I might like to like another day I’m a little too conscious of pettiness of my desires to value them so highly as to use them as a reason for believing in anything… including the Value of BAU – do you see my point?
There is Burn More Coal and BAU or there are spent fuel ponds and starvation.
There is only ‘whatever it takes’…. and when that fails… The Horror.
I am all for do absolutely anything to hold off The Horror for another year… month… day .. minute…
The Horror will be beyond our worst imaginations.
Think hunting down, killing and eating children.. think rape…. torture… think of the worst acts in the history of the species and multiply by 10000000.
7.5 billion killing machines won’t go quietly into the night
‘
Looks like you are not paying any mind to my responses, not that expected you to do so.
Let’s just say you and I have different perspectives on our situation.
To be honest, I didn’t expect any other outcome from you.
agreed – the question is moot because the machine just rolls on….
Where I differ with you (and this would be better discussed over a whisky in Mot and I feel I waste our time with tapping away here about it) is that I happen to feel there is something so hideously monstrous about BAU that I cannot justify my support for it just because I value my life.
In my little head I value my life….. but I am nothing and my values are nothing.
And yes there will be horror…. but there is a certain horror here already….
My days are not full of suffering yet …but after all ….who am I to think that whether I suffer or not is of any merit in the act of navel gazing?
It’s for the orgies (‘Christine! You look simply lovely tonight!’), not the face to face debating of the world crisis. 🙂
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/08/Kill%20Bill.jpg
The U.S. government has always been about serving the owning class. It works exceptionally well. I expect Teterboro Airport will continue to function well long after LaGuardia Airport is burned rubble. The rich continue to beautify and harden their country estates 100 miles north of NYC.
I think Teterboro will last as long as their next fuel delivery and not a moment longer.
Saw this today, about half way in the clip he mentions oil. Though you guys would find this funny (strong language)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ITsgiL6v8
Amazing how the great comedians are “awake”
who ever thinking collapse of bau will not come i have one sentence
you out of touch
https://youtu.be/s_8KR-n2fBQ
Haha TWp, you really like the 80s!!! (so do I!!)
80s music is the best and will be forever
plus it was time of cold war peak and start of war on drugs
plus ronald reagan say there is no limits of growth
Yes and this ad was big in the 80s…not sure if it deterred teenagers from taking drugs..if anything, I used to think that it would encourage them to try them (not my case though) 😉
Forever? Hm. ??
TWP-
Some great music. My all time favourite guitar player, Stevie Ray Vaughan, recorded all his work in the 80’s. I can remember the first time I heard him hit a note and got to see him play live twice. I’ve never been affected by a death as much as his.
Daryl Hall has a really an absolutely awesome thing going with his “Live from Daryl’s House”
“http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/
+++++++
Agree.The 80s is the best decade in pop music ever. But I’m afraid my idea of great pop music is very different from most commenters here. My notion of great is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhWVJnKjtsQ
Was Air Supply an 80’s creation — I was always so pleased (and surprised) to find their tapes in the bargain bin! sarc
Eskan in South Africa is now cutting power to towns that do not pay.
United is suspending service to Venezuela. The stair step collapse is ongoing.
I’m still not convinced there will officially be another global recession. Recession has been outlawed.
In America, for example, it’s only a short while longer until this becomes a genuinely long expansion. There was an expansion 1991 to 2000, recession 2000-2001, expansion 2001 to 2008, recession 2008-2009, expansion 2009 to present. That’s something like 24 years of economic expansion with 2 years of recession, or thereabouts.
The economy is always primed by more credit creation, resource consumption, and growth. Even if per chance the powers that be declare another recession, they will just prime some more until early to mid 2020s etc. then the cycles will get shorter.
Possibly, but at a certain point the oil exporters will go broke. I think that’s when things collapse financially. My guess is summer of 2020.
credit creation, resource consumption, and growth
Yep, that has a future.
“I’m still not convinced there will officially be another global recession. Recession has been outlawed.”
There might be a financial crisis. In response to that crisis, there will be a top-down stimulus program to prevent a recession from happening.
Within the last four years, the idea of One World Government has moved from a tinfoil-hat- territory–to something the 1% is openly advocating for– “open borders”, the concept of “banning cash”…these are not loose agreements like the climate change Carbon Dioxide voluntary emission limits…these are major changes in how society functions.
Recession has been outlawed… because we cannot have one…. but the Grim Reaper…. is not subject to the laws of the CBs.
He does what he wants… when he wants…. and he is standing by
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/76/3e/d9/763ed99222258a56ebba313ad3f03c57.jpg
Gail, I thought you would appreciate this one:
https://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FDBWXHSZWAAA7vtv.jpg&key=1c8SUAf1uQbFtwe8yrtq9w&w=800&h=394
Yes, thanks! Government sponsored flood insurance is a problem.
Well, at lest we are getting it over with:
http://static.politico.com/dims4/default/a6c1898/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fa0%2F65%2Fec5a5569475ab9b6662e98627e09%2Ftrump-branches.jpg
Now that I agree with! Except that we are ALL doing it.
right now the economy is like this picture
http://slobodnadalmacija.hr/Portals/0/Images/2017/06/02/IMG_8911.JPG
No problem, according to the bathers.
Oh, That’s where I parked it.
Once water gets in the intake the internal moving parts such as pistons, rings, valves etc. rust and it’s no good anymore. What unscrupulous car dealers do is drain the water then use small detonators above the pistons to force them back down to fire up the engine. Unbeknownst buyers beware because the engine life will be short lived. I had a dealer try to sell me one, a small truck caught in a flood in North Carolina, then shipped out West to CA. I put 2 & 2 together. He said it was from NC and i remembered in the news a flood there just 6 weeks earlier. The engine sounded like it was damaged and I’m very familiar with engines, so i walked away from it, but it made me sick to think they do that to people who know little about how cars shouldn’t sound.
Gail,
here is some interesting news about Japan’s birth rate problems:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/japan-short-on-babies-reaches-a-worrisome-milestone/ar-BBBQ2xw?li=AAggFp5
Thanks! It is very difficult to operate a country with falling population. Little need for new roads and building. Businesses find that they can sell less goods and services, leading to the opposite of economies of scale.
Given what Chris Hedges teaches I think it premature to condemn previous monarchies? just go to the 24:41 mark and listen well how the corporate state in league with politicians make their money.
“Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over and the Descent is going to be Horrifying”
https://youtu.be/Febcz9WcU54
Perplexing though Chris never mentions problems of a finite world?
Rule by bankers has the potential to be the most pitiless of all, easily comparable to totalitarian revolutionary systems, like Nazism and Communism.
I see little essential difference between the treatment of Greece and that of regions which were punished by Stalin or occupied by the Germans. Not quite so extreme at present, but getting there.
The roll-call of good kings and queens is quite long and fairly honourable. Every form of government has to be judged pragmatically.
Hedges has excellent analysis, and has put his time in in War Zones and hot fire.
He escaped MSM and the NYT’s.
But he was given a education in the Priesthood, so one must see the conditions arising from that.
Dependent Origination, as our Buddhist friends point out.
His father was a Presbyterian Minister , and:
He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983.[19] He was awarded an honorary doctorate in May 2009 from the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Starr King School for the Ministry, in Berkeley, California.
So one of those “Progressive” Christians.
I think Chris Hedges is a Jim Jones love child… no?
Hedge’s has some DelusiSTANI in him…. I think his granny on the mother’s side was from DelusiSTAN.
It’s quite evident in his eyes… something is just not quite right…
http://media.salon.com/2015/06/chris_hedges.jpg
Some good news:
Denmark scraps 334-year-old blasphemy law
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/02/denmark-scraps-334-year-old-blasphemy-law
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
– Denis Diderot
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/denisdider105429.html
Man will then -priests and kings disposed of – still be a slave to arrogance, greed, vanity and sheer stupidity – as we saw in the Russian Revolution and the 70-year nightmare which that precipitated the Russian people into.
The French got rid of their feudal parasites, but replaced them first with self-righteous revolutionary mass-murderers, and then with Napoleon, a super-parasite who bleed the youth of the country in pursuing his insane ambition.
Yea, Denmark seems like such a violent country.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/welcome-to-the-happiest-country-on-earth/
(and is atheist from the bottom up, Russia and France were Catholic at the time of the Revolution, with top down religion)
Duncan
Take a look at the French Revolutionary invasion of Spain: the murders, the thefts, the rapes – Goya illustrated it in his ‘Disasters of War.’
In fact, the Revolutionary French had just the same reputation that the Germans had in the 1940’s. Arrogance, cruelty and lawlessness. This has been forgotten.
Some of the very best people I have ever met are Christians (I am not, being a total sinner) and one has to take things as one finds them, not dismiss whole categories of people due to prejudice.
Love of one ‘comrade’ for another did not work out well in Russia.
Whereas ‘feed the hungry, tend the sick in my name’ has done a lot of good…….
The French Revolution eliminated feudalism and the concept of monarchy as a political system in Europe, and spread the ideas of the late enlightenment.
We are living in that world today on a significant part of the planet, at least for the moment, although we seem to have made a turn the other direction.
I would probably not survived Revolutionary France, nor Moscow in 1934.
Well, on the ground the French revolution did not have one single wave potential, feudalism effectively ended in Europe only more towards the mid 19th century in those civil revolutions of ~1848, since that threshold the nobility could no longer directly tax, perform arbitrary local justice, and or allow/deny commerce establishment inside their fiefdoms. And nominally feudalism ended by 1917/18, before that it was sort of increasingly parliamentarian and free trade formed system, but still with some mixed legacy feudalistic elements namely in state security/apparatus matters. Only after WWI it all fully flipped into “liberal democratic” craziness and delegated governments with no real power against global (state less) oligarchs above them..
The timeliness of such important thresholds are rather fluid, e.g. I’d personally date industrial age since ~1780-1820 that’s when the Brits (Scots, Welsh, ..) started to mass produce prefabricated modern structures like giant bridges with the whole chain of industries behind it (deeper mines, railways, canal-locks, steel foundries, ..) etc.
I agree, the French Revolution continued on, with the Paris Commune, etc.
The American Revolution was a product of French Thought (it happened first, obviously), with our “Founding Fathers” spending almost as much time in Paris as in Boston or Philadelphia.
xabier-
I don’t know you other than here but there is one thing that being a Christian keeps in my mind, and that is “To whom most is given, most is expected”. It will be the “true believers” that have to answer.
You sure strike me as a good guy, along with all the other people here. Theologically, we are all sinners but here we are seeking the truth. I believe/hope hell is a pretty lonely place.
I think part of the reason we have such a hard time over the issue of God is that He wants us to be free to chose. Human culture can make it much less obvious and difficult.
Love is the order of the day, and I mean that in the sacrificial sense. Weather we believe in God or not, human beings can only keep life going in the world if we sacrifice for each other and for the earth itself.
It will take something supernatural for that to happen but who really knows how it will play out.
Joe …. you are so close to being a god…. you just have to give up this infatuation with the false god 🙂
You have to stand an awe at the level of brainwashing that has been done to the public to believe in renewables such as wind and solar. I actually had someone on FB today who argued on one of my post that solar panels produce energy on cloudy days and at nighttime. He said they didn’t require for the sun to be shining on them at all. WOW then he posted a link to a website called “SolarPowerRocks”that argued the same thing..Then I had a girl who told me “Haven’t you ever got a sunburn on a cloudy day before? I sure have”. This comment was liked over five times as well. I told her that it’s amazing that your body could absorb a solar light burn without any light touching your body. I told her if she actually got a sunburn on a cloudy day it would have to be considered a “Partly Cloudy” day. Keyword is “Partly”….I am truly at a loss for words though..Its so true what Mark Twain said once “It’s easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled.
The MSM has done an excellent job in calming the cattle before they are slaughtered.
Very impressive.
There are likely to be multiple factors behind the news media’s inclination towards not giving the full picture when it comes to how serious the global situation is right now. One factor is that nobody with any hint of a conscience or a sense of self preservation would want to believe that the situation is so bad and so far gone, given the implications. Another factor is that we have, for thousands of years, transformed resources into tools and toys believing that it was the right thing to do not only for ourselves but also for future generations. Being suddenly told that doing so has actually brought us to the point of there potentially being no future generations makes us all (over many generations) look like fools.
Another factor is short term survival. The same presentation of inane trivia and optimistic stories that the news media present to keep the masses confident about borrowing and spending also keeps the advertisers happy about spending the money that keeps the news media corporations in business.
As you have yourself pointed out, Fast Eddy, BAU must continue at all costs. Until it absolutely cannot anymore. Everybody knows that. Including the “green” political parties and economists who promise “sustainable growth”.
It is noticeable that the inclination is toward looking to the sun and wind that have always been there and therefore believing that solar and wind are renewable energy sources. There is an unwillingness to accept that the finite nature of the mineral resources used to construct the solar panels and wind turbines leads to solar and wind power as we have come to think of them being inherently non-renewable.
Earlier era renewables were based on biomass (wooden construction) and occasionally plus few binding metal bits, from ~low depth/surface mining ore operations…
It was basically good enough till mid 18th century, and that was relatively advanced civilization in technology, science, arts; although even top elites have had ~50% survival rate from childhood..
Exactly, nearly all ‘biomass machines’. And hauled into place using oxen and horses bred from bloodlines we have lost (more or less).
The principle in making things in European rural areas was to use as little iron as possible in the construction.
It really took until the late 19th century for the Industrial Revolution -the ‘New Iron Age’ – to make an impact in such places.
(This is fully detailed in respect of cart -making in the excellent book by George Sturt ‘The Wheelright’s Shop’, easily available in cheap 2nd-hand paperback. A good Winter’s read. George Sturt inherited such a workshop, founded in the early 1700’s.)
This is why people who imagine we can cosily go back to the 1850’s and lead a localised life are nuts. About all one can do is grow the beard and whiskers………
But, except for there being 6.5-7B too much people around, and a lot of environmental issues, there is more than enough iron to reuse for an 1800-lifestyle.
I am not so sure about the iron. A lot of the iron is used to make steel. This is much harder to reprocess because of the high melting point.
Thanks, I’ll check the book out.
In fact, if you were lucky and knew where to look (ask, go) it was even possible in the late 1990s or very early 2000s visit places inside Western Europe, where some of the very last 80+ yrs hold outs lived very much on biomass. The only modern equipment they had around was portable am/fm radio, wood fired kitchen stove from 1950s (basically refined 1850s model lolz), detergent-soap, zinc plated buckets, galoshes, farming tools from 1930-1950s but much older legacy design and service, that’s more or less all. Otherwise the large empty main building and everything inside the house and barn, just combo of biomass and stones.., few iron items, yes all very decrepit and cold, but direct descendants of the old times..
I think Japan probably has some of this in rural areas as well. It was mentioned that in some rural areas, chairs are not yet common. We saw several people using brooms made from local plant materials.
Occasionally the well-known magazine ‘World of Interiors’ publishes articles about houses in the developing world.
Leaving out those about the luxurious oh-‘simple’ pads of wealthy gays and fashionistas, the remaining articles give interesting insights into the lives of locals. Common factors are:
1/ Replacement of most ancient handicrafts (pots, rugs, brooms, shoes if any, etc) by plastic crap from China. Do the craftsmen still exist?
2/ The grand-parents and maybe parents are hanging on with the old life, but the grand-children would rather be dead than live like that.
3/ Cooking using non-traditional fuels, mostly bottled gas.
And something just for contrast:
https://www.planetizen.com/node/93054/land-grabs-and-inequity-new-african-mega-cities
I admire your commitment to teach people on FB about our predicament. Among all the delusional people there might be a person who gets inspired to go down the rabbit hole of FW issues.
Fat chance. FB audiences are the most delusional, narcissistic and doe-eyed of any social media audience around. And that’s saying something.
There are pockets of enlightenment (or should that be endarkenment?) on FB. Having a tribe there that ‘gets it’ helps with the cognitive dissonance, I find.
I’m still at a loss as I try to figure out what we have to gain from more people knowing about this.
Very valid point Sceadu…it’s not like if more people find out about this predicament, we can steer the ship and avoid the iceberg…the ship has already struck the iceberg and is sinking…many have not realized it…best not to scare them…
Exactly. It is intriguing to see people ignore self-evident truths, but that is about as far as it goes for me. The fact that humans are biologically predisposed to have hope, to seek out more resources, or to believe unifying authority figures does not add up to “stupidity” in my mind. We just failed to adapt to this scenario.
For most people… if you were to convince them the ship is sinking … that would result in despair for them…
Alas – not to worry — it is almost impossible to convince someone that the world is about to end — they either work it out for themselves… or not at all
Even on this site — there are a large number of people who only understand a fraction of the story — even though they are exposed on a daily basis to the truths.
One could argue that many people simply live in denial of their own mortality. Denying a specific cause of death is just details.
Or maybe this is just more support for the ‘we are gods not humans on FW’ thesis….. and that someone has big plans for us post BAU….. because we are deserving.
It’s illogical. Many who contribute their views here believe that the entire human race is doomed. And, we need to do everything we can to tell people about the extinction of the human race. And, there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Once people know they will not benefit in any way. Then, “What’s the point in trying to convince people?”
There are many here that believe they are so smart they have figured out exactly how all of this is going to happen. They have considered every possible variable in the world. Unfortunately, they are not smart enough to have any answers. And yet they derive some strange personal satisfaction with spending the limited time they have constantly presenting more information about a situation they claim is hopeless.
I don’t believe we are looking at the inevitable extinction of the human race, but we are looking at the bitter end of civilization in which billions will die. That’s why I try to convince people of the collapse of civilization. The choices we make now can determine if we survive this transition. Does this sound logical?
My views are similar to yours, Theophilus. I can’t say for sure that we will or won’t become extinct, but I would generally argue that it is impossible to predict how this scenario will play out. There are simply too many variables.
Telling people about the predicament without any solutions, however, could be dangerous business. It could inspire panic and chaos. The frightening part of many mitigation tactics is that they lead to a loss of basic rights, choosing winners vs. losers, etc. I tend to think that things will have to get pretty bad before people accept these as viable options.
We know just about everything except the timing…. and that is why we are here… day after day….
That is the only question that remains unanswered.
I love talking to people who know “just about everything.”
Since I agree about the collapse of civilization, can you explain how we get from collapse to extinction?
NO FOOD
Soil that is farmed using petro-chemical inputs — will support no crop once the outputs are stopped – without years of intensive rejuvenation involving organic inputs.
Effect of Pesticides on soil fertility (beneficial soil microorganisms)
Heavy treatment of soil with pesticides can cause populations of beneficial soil microorganisms to decline. According to the soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham, “If we lose both bacteria and fungi, then the soil degrades. Overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have effects on the soil organisms that are similar to human overuse of antibiotics.
Indiscriminate use of chemicals might work for a few years, but after awhile, there aren’t enough beneficial soil organisms to hold onto the nutrients” (Savonen, 1997). For example, plants depend on a variety of soil microorganisms to transform atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates, which plants can use. Common landscape herbicides disrupt this process: triclopyr inhibits soil bacteria that transform ammonia into nitrite (Pell et al., 1998); glyphosate reduces the growth and activity of free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in soil (Santos and Flores, 1995) and 2,4-D reduces nitrogen fixation by the bacteria that live on the roots of bean plants (Arias and Fabra, 1993; Fabra et al., 1997), reduces the growth and activity of nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae (Singh and Singh, 1989; Tözüm-Çalgan and Sivaci-Güner, 1993), and inhibits the transformation of ammonia into nitrates by soil bacteria (Frankenberger et al., 1991, Martens and Bremner, 1993).
Mycorrhizal fungi grow with the roots of many plants and aid in nutrient uptake. These fungi can also be damaged by herbicides in the soil. One study found that oryzalin and trifluralin both inhibited the growth of certain species of mycorrhizal fungi (Kelley and South, 1978). Roundup has been shown to be toxic to mycorrhizal fungi in laboratory studies, and some damaging effects were seen at concentrations lower than those found in soil following typical applications (Chakravarty and Sidhu, 1987; Estok et al., 1989). Triclopyr was also found to be toxic to several species of mycorrhizal fungi (Chakravarty and Sidhu, 1987) and oxadiazon reduced the number of mycorrhizal fungal spores (Moorman, 1989).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2984095/
Organic inputs will be hard to come by considering nothing can be grown – and most if not all animals are killed and eaten.
Less than 1% of all farmland globally is farmed organically.
Get ready to starve. No matter where you are:
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/agriculture3.png
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-have-the-most-organic-agricultural-land/ (note – most organic land in Australia is rubbish and supports sheep only)
56,000,000 HIROSHIMA’S OF RADIATION GETS RELEASEd
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
4000 spent fuel ponds x 14,000
Theopilus,
as I see it, its an combination of horrible events.
– climate change, +/- 30C weather swings, disrupts the growing season, when food is already hard to get storaged
– wet bulp temperatures in the tropics, forest fires and desertification near the equator
– dead oceans, acidification, disruption of the ocean food chains, and therefore dead oceans
– virulent strains of disease, for humans, animals and our crops
– when 7.5 b apex predators are let loose on the environment, nothing much will remain.. we will eat.. everything.. burn.. everything
– the other problems of hypercomplexity collapsing to super simple instantly are among others, dams, seeds, pollution, toxins, fertilizers and Eddys favourites the nukes..
There are no doubt a thousand more things that we cannot even think of …. due to our normalcy bias… that will contribute to the extinction of humans….
I guess an argument can be made for being honest with each other in these end times. No more lies.
Well, it’s elementary, solar panels (especially mono) actually do generate power on *cloudy days, it could be 10-20% of the peak output, more towards upper boundary if there is snow (cover) reflection during the winter. That’s why are people advised to have much more panels to have a buffer for the winter and or cloudy days in that fashion..
You didn’t get it last time so once more, nowadays to restructure base load grid civilization in high degree of overall stagnation-early suspended collapse onto renewables is most likely futile. But to have this backup (preferably mix of several different kind of them with battstorage) at least for the longevity of the components is good enough..
*note: there are only few hours per year when all three general layers (lower, middle, upper) clouds are at the same time saturated closer to ~100%, so again your claim is false..
As long as you keep all of this stuff off grid, it makes sense. Putting the intermittent renewables on the grid is problematic.
Yep, it’s not problematic in technical sense but scale. Simply it makes no sense today to redo the gargantuan legacy infrastructure. The mega trend looks as the aging infrastructure decays into unavailability in many periphery/ghetto parts of the first world, while the affluent people will tend to cluster around the “working” bits and escape into various hitec protection be it in energy and other aspects, as long as the strategic JITs continue to churn or be salvageable. This striking disparity – very unstable by definition – will not hold for much longer, and at some point it will likely all swiftly unravel several notches down the complexity ladder.
Problematic is a generous statement. It simply can’t work. The supply must be stable and controllable or the demand has to be. The move to intermittent supply would require demand control. So either rolling blackouts or artificial demand. No one has thought it through.
I agree; I was being overgenerous. Adding intermittent renewables adds a huge pricing problem, because the supply does not adjust in response to changing price. Clearly pricing has to be on a cost plus basis, for the system as a whole, giving large subsidies to the fossil fuel and nuclear providers for keeping their systems available for backup 24/7/365. We need higher rates for electricity from coal, natural gas, and nuclear, in order to cover the backup needs for the intermittent renewables.
Even then, the intermittency adds huge complexity to the system. The quantity of electricity supplied by non-intermittent sources needs to ramp up and down very rapidly, if it is to match up to (Total electricity demand minus electricity demand provided by intermittent renewables). I believe that this is the reason for the new Tesla batteries in California. Electricity peaks caused by unusually high generation by wind and solar need to be eliminated by “smart inverters.” Solar panels may need to be installed so that they face west, rather than south, so that their output better matches up with demand.
Elmer you are so L 7 …. dancing pills… of course
http://midliferocksblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/love-drugs-31.jpg
‘We Need an Energy Miracle’ Bill Gates
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/
We already had an energy miracle in fossil fuels. What we need is endless miracles I suppose.
What we need is a hyperdrive…
https://hitfilm.com/reference/hitfilm-3-express/hyperdrive.zoom20.png
NO! Bill, what we need are far fewer people.
This may seem like a minor story but it typifies the breakdown.
https://mishtalk.com/2017/06/02/dollar-rent-a-car-truly-sucks-industry-shakeout-coming-value-of-a-customer/
Puerto Rico’s Exodus Is Speeding the Island’s Economic Collapse
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-02/-i-had-to-choose-for-my-family-thousands-fleeing-puerto-rico
I just came from 2 weeks there, I have family on the island and usually visit every few years. A fantastic example of paradise spoiled by civilization. Don’t worry, the wealthy are still doing just fine though, the golf courses are still green and there’s plenty of great food and drink.
As it relates to some previous comments about defunding the EPA, you can see a great example of what’s to come by looking at PR’s water supply crisis. The entire island of millions of people have tap water that is seldom tested for pollutants, and when it is, it fails horribly. Its like Flint but with 3.5 million people, and no outcry or remedy.
Like I said, no problem for the well to do. We have home water filters and bottled water. It’s only the other 99.9% stuck drinking poison…
A bit like the diesel pollution mass-poisoning in Europe: if the problem is big enough, nothing gets done.
Has Permian Productivity Peaked?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Has-Permian-Productivity-Peaked.html
Well, lets just say productivity has peaked.
Don’t worry all is well. Just because people have rejected purchasing real stuff. They’re going nuts over phony stuff.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-01/uber-burned-through-almost-much-money-nasa-last-quarter
Can we just dream prosperity to life?
Can we just dream prosperity to life? – That depends on how you define “prosperity” LOL! If you dream of a hunter gatherer lifestyle, that has a good shot of coming true.
voting for prosperity is what most trumpeteers do
😎
Making America Great Again!
Trump wants to cut the EPA’s budget by nearly a third, reducing its overall funding level to $5.6 billion. On a percentage basis, that is the largest proposed cut to any federal agency. It would give the EPA its smallest budget in 40 years, adjusting for inflation.
This would cut the EPA’s workforce by 20 percent, removing 3,800 jobs.
Most significantly, Trump wants to cut by 40 percent the EPA’s federal enforcement office—the people who make sure corporations are complying with federal regulations. Scott Pruitt, the agency’s administrator, has previously said that he believes that states—and not the EPA—should oversee enforcement of rules themselves. But Trump’s budget would also cut by 45 percent the grants that allow states to do that enforcement. These changes would almost certainly ensure far less enforcement of existing environmental rules than happens now, at federal and state levels.
The EPA office which determines standards for the amount of acceptable pollution in drinking water will also have its budget cut by half. (Earlier this year, the same office struck the words “science-based” from its mission statement, replacing them with “economically … achievable.”)
Superfund, the EPA program that cleans up toxic-chemical spill sites that have become public-health hazards, will have its budget cut by 25 percent. Such a cut will halt many cleanups.
Trump also wants to shut down many of the same EPA programs targeted in March. He would terminate the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and Puget Sound cleanup programs. He would also close Energy Star, which informs consumers which home appliances are most energy-efficient.
Beyond the EPA, the budget also slashes environmental-science programs throughout the government. Many of these target climate change. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, has said that he considers climate science to be a “waste of your money.” So Trump’s budget cuts $59 million in Earth-science research grants from NASA. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research office would see its budget reduced by one-fifth.
But the slashed science programs go far beyond climate change. Trump proposes to end a NOAA program to research and better predict tornadoes in the south, and he also cuts $11 million from a tsunami-warning program for the Pacific coast. He also wants to slash NOAA’s weather-satellite budget by 17 percent.
Finally, he proposes to savage Department of Energy programs with environmental ends. While that department’s overall budget is only reduced by five percent, he would cut many of its greenest programs. Trump wants to close ARPA-E, the government’s energy-innovation R&D lab; and many of the loan-guarantee programs that support renewable-energy companies.
These are—to state the obvious—a lot of cuts
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/trump-epa-budget-noaa-climate-change/527814/
What’s next?
What is Chlorpyrifos?
Chlorpyrifos is an insecticide used on corn, soybeans, broccoli, apples, and other row crops as well as on turf, in greenhouses, and other places. It has been in use since 1965, and by some estimates there are about 44,000 farms that use about 6-10 million pounds of Chlorpyrifos each year.
Chlorpyrifos belongs to the same chemical family as sarin nerve gas and works by attacking the nervous system. Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the EPA is charged with establishing maximum limits for insecticide residues in food substances. Given Chlorpyrifos’ toxicity, the EPA requires “workers handling and applying Chlorpyrifos to wear additional personal protective equipment (chemical resistant gloves, coveralls, respirators), and restricting entry into treated fields for 24 hours up to five days.”
The EPA denied the petition to ban Chlorpyrifos. This is arguably part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to reduce the regulatory burden on companies
The EPA budgets should be cut to 0.
All subsidies for solar, EVs, wind cut to 0.
All pollution regulations should be immediately scrapped.
All in the interest of keeping BAU alive a little longer.
And of course — Burn More Coal.
Looks like you are being listen to Fast Eddy,
Second Biggest Jump in Annual CO2 Levels Reported as Trump Leaves Paris Climate Agreement
NOAA released its annual update on greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and found a large increase in 2016.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01062017/donald-trump-noaa-CO2-paris-climate-change-agreement
Daily CO2
May 30, 2017: 409.25 ppm
May 30, 2016: 407.70 ppm
April CO2
April 2017: 409.01 ppm
April 2016: 407.42 ppm
March Temperature
2nd Warmest March since 1880: 2017
Coolest March since 1880: 1898
We need to break the record each year … if we don’t … we die.
As you can imagine I am overjoyed with this result.
I am on a flight to Wellington tomorrow for no good reason other than to Burn More Jet Fuel….
And in 3 weeks I’ll be on the double long haul double short haul Mother of All Jet Fuel Burns…
And if my luggage is not at the limit I will stick a few bricks in the bags….
http://redkabbage.com/files/images/rrr.jpg
Haunting Photos of #Carmageddon: Hyundai Gets Crushed, as GM, Ford, Others Struggle
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/06/02/inventory-unsold-cars-hyundai-sales-crushed-gm-ford-others-struggle/
Not a good sign. Higher interest rates are not good for auto dealers, especially when buyers were already at the end of the line.
Big lots of autos not even sent to dealers is a very bad sign!
US economy has finally found an infinite growth model that works.
https://mishtalk.com/2017/06/01/construction-spending-falls-sharply/
It’s always good to look back in time to when our representatives were worried about our dependency on oil. Apparently they were desperate, since the proposed H.R. 909 bill included Coal-To-Liquids (CTL), much of it for the military. I predict that when the shale oil and gas boom goes bust, CTL will be back again as a “solution”. And that anyone who thinks we have less than 250 years of coal left won’t be invited to speak at hearings, and that the military will grab most of it to try to keep the oil flowing.
http://energyskeptic.com/2017/americas-energy-future-u-s-house-hearing-2011/
For Venezuelan seniors, the ‘golden years’ mean picking through garbage for food
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article151370352.html
Alberto Peña, 69, wears a homemade gas mask during demonstrations in Caracas, Venezuela.
I like it!
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/tz6vkq/picture151370332/alternates/FREE_768/DSC_0208
Venezuela is interesting …. a glimpse into what our futures will soon look like…. just before BAU collapses and we starve
I was reading that last year there were people who broke into their city zoo and butchered a few of the animals to eat for food. I bet the other zoo animals watched it thinking to themselves “Look who’s the animal now”…
And housing.
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/06/01/rents-deflate-in-the-hottest-us-cities-soar-in-cheaper-cities/
I think we’re starting to see a general pattern. Gluts of Oil,Cars,Iron….. forcing manufacturers to sell below cost of production. The CBs are throwing life lines to everyone they can. Thinking the have a tax base backstopping their madness. It’s odd to think that the economy ends in a whimper full of new stuff no one can use.
It’s like an engine being gunned until it floods.
Shipping is another key glut.
Like an engine at red line with no load on it and suddenly full throttle is applied.
JT, I actually think it’s fear of another 08/09 near collapse that keeps pushing monetary policy to insist on some growth any growth however minimal, pushing the situation to greater production in spite of waning demand. The system being pushed from behind by cheap money in the expectation of consumer affordability to insist on any growth at all because the alternative is the fear of what happens in the next recession. But at some point there will be no choice but to find out where the chips fall once the cheap money flow stops. There will be a whole lot of defaults and bankruptcies like there always are in a recession but this one will have more than usual. I’m not convinced it would be the big kahuna collapse, but it will be at least a big reshuffle of players.
I don’t see how an unusually bad recession fails to turn into something much worse when we factor in how few tools the major central banks now have in their arsenals, how many huge asset bubbles there are, and where we are with regard to spiralling extraction costs for nrr’s and other growth limiting factors. The big kahuna looms large IMO.
And the CBs obviously understand this — the evidence of this is the fact that they are doing absolutely everything to try to delay the next recession…
Because when the next one hits… there will be no way out… the deflationary death spiral will play out
Right – even if they are not factoring in the nnr’s and other growth-limiting factors, they will be aware that we are dangerously debt-saturated and sitting on multiple bubbles after trying to borrow our way out of a financial crisis with an eight-year debt-binge at the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years – quite a predicament.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/chart-5000-years-of-interest-rates-history-2016-6
What is nnr?
NNR = Nonrenewable Natural Resource
Yes, NRR – butter-fingers on my phone, lol.
The next one is the big one.
I have no doubt about that
No DOUBT
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
– Edward Abbey, as quoted in The Journey Home
And we’ve created one for the ages.
It’s not growth for the sake of growth … actually…. it’s growth for the sake of being able to stay alive…
Because the end of growth = starvation… extinction
One has to wonder if the current commodity price carnage can be reversed….. it’s all about China at this point…
China is like fracking…. the rest of the global economy is stagnant or worse…. just as are most conventional oil plays…. without China — and without fracking …. we are done….
More Ghost Cities please… oh what the hell… let’s not mess around … time to pay people 100k per year to dig holes and fill them in ….
Keynesians FTW!!!!!
Rents Deflate in the Hottest US Cities, Soar in Cheaper Cities
Honolulu rents plunge 19%. Landlords scramble.
In the still ludicrously expensive rental market of San Francisco, the median asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment dropped 6.1% in May from a year ago to $3,370 and is down 8.2% from the peak in October 2015. For a two-bedroom, the median asking rent dropped 6.3% year-over-year to $4,500 and is down 10% from the peak in October 2015. Reality creeps into rental la-la land.
The last episode of year-over-year rent declines in San Francisco ended in April 2010. So this is a rare occurrence. Last time, the declines started well into the Financial Crisis. This time, there is no Financial Crisis, only a “Housing Crisis,” where the middle class can no longer afford to move into a modest apartment.
In New York City, the median asking rent for a one-bedroom plunged 10.8% year-over-year to $2,900 and is down 13.9% from the peak in March 2016. For the median two-bedroom, it dropped 7.9% year-over-year and is down 10% from the peak.
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/06/01/rents-deflate-in-the-hottest-us-cities-soar-in-cheaper-cities/
A person living in New Zealand would know that Sports scholarships are not on the menu from NZ Universities, and yet you say the contrary.
You are a liar FE
“You are a liar FE”….It’s just Fast Eddy, being Fast Eddy….NEXT
I don’t recall stating that universities offered sports scholarships in NZ… can you remind me?
Although I have stated that the entire All Blacks team is taking performance enhancing drugs. Every single one of them is a bigger version of Lance Armstrong.
recently i saw trump Twitter account the amount of fighting in the comment section of trump tweet post is really funny both sides are equally stupid ex -trump supporter and trump critic
they do not know trump is same as obama/bush
Auto Bloodbath: Lowest Domestic Auto Sales In Three Years Despite Record Inventories And Incentives
There’s more bad news.
All of the above numbers would have been far worse if not for generous incentives, and automakers spending what amounted to a record sum on incentives to support slumping sales and clear growing dealer inventory. According to J.D Power, incentive spending reached a record of $3,583 per vehicle in May.
And yet, despite all that discounts and incentives, inventories keep growing, and in May the average number of days a vehicle spends on dealers’ lots has topped 70 for the first time since 2009, during the depths of the industry’s crisis. “Continued elevated incentives reflect the challenges of balancing record levels of inventory and are likely to remain elevated unless production is adjusted to meet consumer demand,” said Deirdre Borrego, senior vice president of automotive data and analytics at J.D. Power.
As Bloomberg notes, “while a pace of more than 16 million is historically strong and plenty profitable, slower sales have saddled automakers with too much inventory and precipitated bigger discounts. “We will see more production cuts, particularly in passenger cars,” Autotrader’s Michelle Krebs said. And nowhere will the cuts be more acute than at GM, which as reported earlier ended May with a record 963K units in dealer inventory, or 101 days of supply.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-01/auto-bloodbath-lowest-domestic-auto-sales-three-years-despite-record-inventories-and
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/05/12/GM%20channel%20stuffing%20alltime%20high_0.jpg
At some point, we run out of approaches like longer lease terms, lower interest rates, and higher loan to value ratios to sell vehicles. Recent higher rate interest rates on auto loans recently tends to reduce sales. The average 48 month interest rate on bank loans for cars was 4.52% in February 2017, compared to a low of 4.00% in November 2015.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/48-month-auto-loan-rate-16.png
It is becoming evident that growth is dead. It is the end of more (Norm’s catch phrase).
When the costly electric car with its price meets the oil-powered car, then we can be more than sure that the cars are less and less affordable.
I.e. all can seem like the prices of the electric cars are going down, but in fact, the affordability regarding the car ownership, too.
The car sharing, Uber, the autonomous driving only confirm this trend. The declining affordability tells us the real height of the wages and pensions.
You can still buy reasonable new budget cars in Europe for ~$8k,
diesels start at roughly $12k though..
That is very reasonable. This article seems to suggest that the lowest priced US cars (non-diesel) are about $13,000. This would correspond to a little under 12,000 euros.
The US doesn’t use diesel much for private passenger autos. We save it for industrial use. There is limited world supply of diesel. Too many diesel autos worldwide would not “work.”
Diesel carz allowed middle class very high mpg commuting in ever increasing level/size of comforts. Now, they are phasing in the so-called “EURO6” emission standards, which not only gradually brings yet another layer of expensive complexity for automanufs to comply, moreover it’s basically a technological threshold from which you won’t be able to self supply alt fuels anymore. And there has been for years also policy of color grading diesel fuels (farmers) not to cheat on tax policy. In summary, should there come about forced arbitrary austerity for car drivers for whatever reasons-pretense, you are stuck, not driving.. anymore, and the legacy older tech carz would be easily confiscated by the army given the detailed database of existing users..
There will be dystopia first, then followed by deeper collapse.. the above is just one of their methods, how they prepare the system. In similar vein that’s also the reason, why such audible synchronized outraged of the “whole world” after POTUS dropped the Climate change deal. This deal was globally agreed upon cover effort, how to force on gullible consumers the austerity, possible carbon tax schemes etc. in light of forthcoming depletion.
The army? When the population genetically deteriorates due to affordable medical care and ageing population and there is less and less those who are fit enough to secure the functioning of the system?
Well, what army, when there is nothing to fight about? All is depleted…
The sky is the limit, it seems. However, there are growing signs that the U.S. shale industry could be reaching the end of the low-hanging fruit. Or, more specifically, drilling costs are starting to rise and the enormous leaps in production that can be obtained by simply adding more rigs also appears to be running into some trouble.
According to the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report, productivity (as opposed to absolute production) is set to fall next month in the Permian Basin. In other words, the average rig will only be able to produce an estimated 630 barrels per day of initial production from a new well, down 10 b/d from the 640 b/d that such a rig might have produced in May. That is convoluted way of saying that the ever-increasing returns on throwing more rigs at the problem might be hitting a ceiling.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-01/has-permian-productivity-peaked
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/05/31/20170601_perm_0.jpg
The strain on contractors means that drilling costs will also rise. Oilfield service companies bore the brunt of the market downturn over the past three years, forced to slash their rates because of the lack of work. Oil producers have consistently and repeatedly boasted about their “efficiency gains,” but much of the cost-savings came from soaking service companies.
That could be at an end. The rise in drilling activity means that oilfield service companies finally have more leverage to hike their prices. The results could be an upswing in costs for producers. Service costs could jump by 20 percent this year, according to an estimate from S&P Global Platts.
But it isn’t all rosy for service companies either. Fuel Fix notes that they have to rebuild their rig fleets after scrapping so many during the last few years. Also, finding enough people to return to work after savagely cutting payrolls will be a challenge.
I think what you are saying is pretty much what Art Berman is saying. There is no way that oilfield service costs can permanently stay very low. They get a little benefit from reduced wage and lower oil prices, but that is all. There are other issues (need to rebuild staff and rigs) that send costs up.
FE I agree what your saying is happening but this chart can be misleading. The completion of the wells lags the rig count. That down tick in production is a converse of the up tick in rig count because of completion hasn’t caught up. The same thing happened in reverse since 2015 making it look like there was life in the shale oil patch.
Folks, I absolutely guarantee you that middle aged people are dying in America, not just becoming dependents. This was already true back in 2005-2008 when I did my residency. The age bracket of 60s seemed to be the breaking point when cirrhosis, copd, heart disease etc. started to catch up to people. Many of them never make it into their 70s.
That was before the crash. Now, many of them are drowning themselves in opioids rather than struggle through this system any longer. Many don’t even bother to show up to the hospital or pay the inflated price of drugs anymore.
Why don’t you think healthcare in the United States is ever fixed? Simple. They actually want you to die. They are already wasting enough money on the system as it is, not to mention the military and corporate subsidies. They don’t have enough money left over for you. They are replacing you with younger, healthier immigrants from Latin America and Asia, who in turn will grow old and be replaced by more immigrants, repeat forever.
Yes, absolutely you should try to remain healthy for as long as possible. That’s going to be key to make it through this to some sort of decent life. But also, do not overestimate how much time you actually have. Even if you are completely healthy, irreversible decline usually sets in by your 80s at the most.
Interesting perspective. One has to concede Dolph’s point here.
I suppose if people don’t exercise at all, take drugs, drink too much and eat junk food then yes, they will be in a dire state even in middle age.
Withdrawal of medical treatment would then finish them off asap. Perhaps it ought to be done?
It does seem to be true that the dominant financial and business interests have no interest in the health and unity of the nation (hence the mass importation of aliens of dubious value in every capitalist economy), or in ensuring that the mass of people are fit and capable.
Contrast this to Henri IV of France, who told the lawyers and parasites of the day ‘If you abuse my people, you degrade me as a King.’
Or to the Greek polis, where the citizen had the duty to be as fit as possible, so as to serve in the terrible battles of bronze-armoured men.
If a tenth of the money spent trying to brainwash us into being scared of our own shadows, or getting us to buy things, were directed towards encouraging people to convert a lawn to a garden…that would be a dream of mine.
Joebanana
They wish us to be neither sane nor healthy. Food security, what’s that?! It doesn’t pay all the parasites enough.
AND THAT IS PART OF THE ELITES’ PLAN DOLPH DEPOPULATION BY STEALTH
Overpopulation is good for elite’s.
Keeps wages down, and the sheeple in place.
After the Black Death in Europe, the proletariat gained wealth and position.
It ain’t rocket science folks:
Eat (mostly) plant based foodstuffs and crank those pedals.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5013/5526555972_ecef57ecb4_z.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/13/article-2003121-0C8C1CF000000578-984_634x461.jpg
Charles Futrell, age 90, shown here on the cycling leg, is the oldest man in America to complete a triathlon”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003121/Ex-PE-teacher-Charlie-Futrell-90-oldest-man-EVER-complete-U-S-triathlon.htm
I would agree with this strategy. Walking sort of works as an alternative to bicycling.
Still backpacking and bagging peaks at 70.
You stop moving, you die.
I watched as the health care system tried to euthanize my mother. The staff kept feeding her ativan, while withholding hydration. They brought in a priest to administer last rites and even physically removed my sister and I from the room when we protested.
I told the charge nurse to get my mother in an ambulance and deliver her back to my home immediately. She did so because I would have ripped that place apart.
Within two weeks of arriving back home, I had my mom up, walking, and doing her exercises as we had done for the previous ten years. She lived another 14 months and died in my home at age 86. What dolph says is absolutely a fact. Do not rely on the system to manage your health if at all possible.
100% agree. A similar scenario with my mother. You have to be your own health care advocate and for those you care for. You can say no to unnecessary and harmful medications and there is sometimes pressure to prescribe them. My mom is still at home with me and 91.
Thanks for these brutal stories.
But on the more general point you made, very true, nowadays you just have to do everything on your own, become your own personal:
service techie, craftsmen, farmer, security detail, nurse and doctor, energy guy, ..
Well that’s exactly how collapse smells usually, those formerly delegate functions on the cloud of society complexity start to sub perform, eventually even making you worse off, ..
My mother refuses to get new spectacles, because she doesn’t want to see the world as it is now. But if she is around at 91, she will still be telling me off, I am sure.
I have converted her to the Fast Eddy Burn Baby Burn Club: she was economizing ‘to save the planet’.
I showed her that this is nonsense, and that what she doesn’t burn, others will. Might as well be comfortable……..
Just because it doesn’t matter, does that mean one should rationalize and continue to contribute to the problem?
The problem? There is no problem.
We either Burn More Coal Now — or we collapse and die.
There are no other choices.
I choose Door Number One — Burn MORE Coal Now
How about you?
Jeremy…. there is hope for you…
It’s actually rather obvious …. I can see why people resist my urging to Burn More Coal Now …. if you had suggested this to me ten years ago I would have thought you were crazy…
But not now ….
Because I have had the epiphany …. we must burn ever more fossil fuels every year —- because we have no alternative energy source —- otherwise we starve
Why can you not understand that Jeremy?
Just because you and Gail think so….like it’s so important that you (we) don’t starve.
Maybe you can see our species overshoot has gone way beyond the petri dish analogy.
Why can’t you understand that?
We are in massive overshoot … and therein lies the problem…
The overshoot is so massive… we have wrecked the soil and we have littered the planet with spent fuel ponds — putting us in a position of no return…
When the bubble bursts we all die…
Do you want to die?
I do not.
Burn More Coal. (if you want to stay alive longer)
Why do you think our species overshoot has gone way beyond the petri dish analogy? Should we be talking about “Are we smarter than yeast (in a bottle of wine)?”
Yes jeremy enough with the analogy….
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/FF_Population.jpg
We also have run out of space in the atmosphere to exhale the gas of burning that “cheap” energy.
It’s only cheap because we haven’t felt the full payout yet of emissions…that’s coming soon enough
it’s a process of stages for international cooperation among nations.
The reason for voluntary reductions was primarily because the US Senate would never pass an agreement. This boondoggle by Trump will leave the US isolated and continued lost standing in the world
Earth’s average temperature is already fairly close to this cutoff: It’s about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) warmer than it was during preindustrial times, Peter deMenocal, a paleoclimate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, told Live Science in April.
Each nation participating in the agreement is expected to develop an individual plan to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to climate change, as well as invest in energy-efficient technology.
Under the previous administration, President Barack Obama said the nation would cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, in addition to giving up to $3 billion in aid to less-developed countries by 2020, according to The New York Times. The United States has given $1 billion of this sum already, The New York Times reported.
However, the Paris Agreement is nonbinding, and there aren’t any penalties if countries do not meet their goals. If the United States leaves the agreement, it will join the two other countries that have not ratified the climate pact: Nicaragua and Syria. (Nicaragua has not signed on because its government did not think the agreement did enough to fight climate change, according to Time.)
There is ample evidence from climate scientists, including those at NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, showing that the effects of climate change are already being felt, Katherine Moore Powell, a climate ecologist at The Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement emailed to Live Science.
“Summer temperatures will ccontinue to break records, and droughts will increase and become more severe,” Moore Powell said. “When there is rain, precipitation patterns are becoming characterized by heavier downpours and flooding, causing costly damage to natural and man-made resources. We are also experiencing lower snow packs and melting glaciers and ice sheets, threatening fresh water resources and causing worldwide sea level increases.”
She added that “without comprehensive action at a global scale, especially from the largest emitters (the U.S. is number two), climate change effects will continue to accelerate.”
http://www.livescience.com/59332-trump-pulls-usa-out-of-paris-agreement.html
I urge everyone to …
Burn More Coal
Please — do it for the children?
I’m doing my part, but I’m a sinner, burning only the low sulfur variety..
Sinner or spook, what you really need is IMAGINATION!
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?
It was a joke yet based partly on true story. You can now buy various types of coal, incl. the low sulfur variety for the brown one or quality anthracite for the black one, and in different fraction sizes etc. Obviously depends on your location, but in most “civilized” places shouldn’t be a problem, although in some states you would have to rather order in bulk to arrange “such unusual” order for ya.
Now completely different question is how to properly burn this quality coal, it’s not that much issue of quality burner and other equipment, but more about the know-how to do it as an operator/user cleanly, efficiently. Not easy at first, takes lotsa unusual tricks to master it.
Do it for the children? Question mark! Hmmm,
If we dont Burn More Coal and we instead erect more solar panels…. the children will look like this very soon
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Er1kTF3smOE/hqdefault.jpg
Burning lots of the dirtier varieties of coal and high-sulfur oil would be handy from a dimming standpoint. A large volcanic eruption or two couldn’t hurt either.
As long as there is ‘more’ involved then it has to be a positive…. even making more windmills EVs and solar panels is good — because as we know —- manufacturing them involves the Burning of Massive Amounts of Coal…..
Maybe that’s why every second article in the MSM is about solar tesla and wind …. could it be that they are pushing this agenda because they want to make sure we Burn More Coal Now?
Eureka!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/california-new-york-washington-unite-to-back-climate-pact/2017/06/01/5ef9a3f2-472c-11e7-8de1-cec59a9bf4b1_story.html?utm_term=.bfe200e510a9
I would expect more governors to join this alliance.
More and more differences in points of view cropping up. Makes USA less and less “united.” Looks more and more like the problems that the EU is running into.
“We also have run out of space in the atmosphere to exhale the gas of burning that “cheap” energy.” – And we are running out of space in cemeteries to bury all the people. It is all so insane.
The US lost its standing in the world when it started a war based on a lie and invaded Iraq; when it destroyed Libya by bombing; when it created and armed a terrorist army in Syria to overthrow another legitimate government. Get the picture?
http://imgur.com/eSgjtgu
Haha this reminds of this from a few years ago:
We have run out of cheap energy –Oil companies are not replacing reserves – they are shutting down exploration — because the market will not accept 120 oil…. it collapses the economy. So what is going to happen is that the financial system is at some point going to collapse. It is the operating system of the global economy and civilization.
They will do everything they possibly can trying to fend off another 2008 moment — they will print and stimulate and bail and loan…. they will use every bullet in the box … they will throw the empty gun at this — then their will rip off the kitchen sink and throw it too.
I guarantee you they will do ‘whatever it takes’ to hold this moment off for as long as possible.But the moment will arrive — that is guaranteed.
And when it does there will be nothing left to throw — the shops will be looted and emptied — the electricity will go off… the violence and disease and suffering and starvation will follow. Global trade will completely stop — factories will close — spare parts to run the system will not be available — all energy sources will cease to operate — refineries will shut down — oil rigs will go offline — everything – and I mean everything will stop on a dime.Then chaos will reign.
And you will be dead – I will be dead – and the central bankers will be dead
good summary
Ok. That was pretty good. Thanks!
I’m a big Walking Dead fan and just started watching the spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead. I really like this one because it basically shows a super fast collapse scenario (with some zombies thrown in of course). It reveals what was intentionally left out of the first series, when the main character goes into a coma for about a month and awakens to find the zombie Apocalypse has already happened. How could it all completely fall apart in a month?
One day everything is normal, then there’s a couple of days of panic. Looting and chaos set in. Then the military and martial law within the first few weeks, power outages/rationing. Then the military becomes fragmented and loses control- martial law turns into extermination. Within a couple of weeks the cities are burning and its every man for himself, doing whatever it takes to survive. Morality as we know it no longer exists.
I hope it doesn’t actually happen THAT fast, but they do a great job of showing how it could. What a great show!
Dont think it can happen that fast?
Think about what happened after Lehman went down — then imagine what would have happened if the CBs efforts to reinflate the global economy had failed
Your supply chain will not last that long. Your food at the supermarket has to be trucked in at least every 2-3days. JIT means only a few days of stocks
Quite right, CTG.
See Alice Friedemann’s excellent analysis in her book:
“When Trucks Stop Running” (Springer Briefs on Energy, 2016)
Cheers.
Most people cannot grasp this… normalcy bias I guess… and lack of awareness of JIT supply….
When the cattle get a whiff of the wolves… they’ll stampede to the shops….
Here in NZ the grocery shops close for a day from time to time for public holidays …. the queues the day before are massive …. now imagine what that will look like when fear kicks in….
Living on an island does at least give people some sense of the vulnerability of complex supply-chains and JIT logistics. There is one main supermarket here, though barely worthy of the ‘super’. If the ferries are not running due to bad weather or technical issues (and both are common) then the shelves will start to empty – nice, straightforward cause and effect that all can grasp. Consequently most here have some inclination towards self-sufficiency and a stash of tinned food in the garage.
Radiation is more of a worry to me than food.
I always thought it was a rural thing but people keep piles of food in storage here as a normal practice.
There may be some that escape the ravages by hiding in well guarded and deep bunkers. But, when the stored food runs out that is the end of the line. It would be essentially a prison. The guards would then kill those they initially guarded. What a way to go.
Jail entrance:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/08/21/2761033400000578-3031041-image-a-32_1428523703419.jpg
What we need is a reality show … post BAU and the elites are living in that complex…. kinda like House of Cards but it all takes place underground….
No sh*t. That would open some eyes.
But but bitcoin…
Bitcoin:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c2/2c/b6/c22cb6033f069963e4a07f627e3e9627.jpg
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a good rant. Please, somebody help me out here.
Rather than rant, I just cut off people’s commenting privileges. Prevents high blood pressure and gray hair.
As long you don’t cut off mine Gail we’re good!
Enjoying this site since 2011!!! 😉
And loving commennting here since last year!! 🙂
So out tonight by a beautiful night in Montreal, plenty of nice girls, good House Music, partying it up like there’s no tomorrow…cuz there is no tomorrow…Cheers to all my fellow OFWers, delusional and enlightened:) You know who you are! 😉
Gail I can’t thank you enough about OFW!!!!
Such wit!
Bravo!!
I thought so……
FE pretends to reason, but is woefully transparent.
Clue for FE: NZ Universities don’t scout for bball scholarships.
DUH
Haha no pills…just copious amounts of alcohol (paying for it Big Time this morning lol)…it was a nice bar outside with a view of Downtown..so I had a beautiful view of “my building” for when the SHTF 😉 …. just hope the windows are not unbreakable…
The old play dumb.
Desperation.
Smart people are reading this.
I bet you will keep on posting till you get the last comment on this thread…
Evasion, standard spook tactics.
I KNEW IT…Keep going…
https://bleon1.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/baal_2767hecht-museum_leonmauldin2016red.jpg
leave it out —this site is supposed to be above this line of nonsense
Australian ABC TV selectively quotes BP to match its own “no worries” narrative
http://crudeoilpeak.info/australian-abc-tv-selectively-quotes-bp-to-match-its-own-no-worries-narrative
http://imgur.com/Q0P1Rm5
BP Statistical Review: proved reserves not so proven
http://crudeoilpeak.info/oil-reserves-and-resources-as-function-of-oil-price
Walmart is asking employees to deliver packages on their way home from work
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Walmart-is-asking-employees-to-deliver-packages-11188783.php
All kinds of things I would never think of.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/604082.jpg
DI I like your posts but that’s been debunked a long time ago…
http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/
Ok—
I got it from a reliable source.
But I should be less gullible.
It is interesting to see how, ‘back in the day’, we use to look at investing for the future when we used savings (the cost is now) and expected the benefits to accrue over time; cost benefit analysis?
Today it seems we look to ‘benefit now’, and put the cost on the future. Is this true, or just an awareness of what has always been. It seems investing was done with real savings, but now is done with debt money.
Did this change with Nixon in ’71, or is this the way it has always been.
When we used to get very high payback on energy investment (because energy was so cheap), it was easier to think that we were using “savings” for our investment. But when I look at the data, since at least the 1950s, we have invested at least $1 in debt to produce $1 of goods and services. And this isn’t even counting the issuance of shares of stock, which tend to act like debt. So I think that we always have had a lot of future promises involved. The problem, if we don’t do it that way, is that we are producing goods whose benefit is in the future. We don’t have any way of paying input providers (such as those building our factories), unless we pay them with a promise of future goods and services made possible by the new factory.
Now, the amount of debt per dollar of goods and services produced is much higher. It tends to be in the $3 or $4 of debt, per $1 of goods and services produced range. Furthermore, the ratio tends to go up, year after years. What the ratio is depends on the country, and what kinds of debt are included.
I’d love to hear the OFW commentariat’s views on our withdrawal from the Paris Accord.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-pulls-u-s-out-paris-climate-agreement-n767066
I think most of us agree that at this point we were never going to be able “save the world” anyhow, but it’s a pretty major departure to throw in the towel and not even pretend like we’re going to try.
Not all are in that camp.
My camp says drill baby drill… dig baby dig…Yes burn baby baby burn yes even the towel.
How does exporting co2 even help the planet.
Solar and wind are a scam and dont even get me started on Tesla anything.
This civilization have accelerated on base load grid system, no wonder solar-wind doesn’t work when arbitrarily forced upon this very setup. However, they work wonderfully for different setup, i.e. small enclaves not on the wider grid. Is it self sustainable? No, but you get your comforts extension for a while.. Is that selfish and pointless? Probably, but certainly different (better) than without it..
It would be nice if our culture could acknowledge a few basic facts:
– green growth does not exist
– we live on a finite world
– our global socio-economic culture is built upon economic growth ad infinitum
– due to earth not being infinite, when one living organism comes on this planet, it takes away the habitat from another living organism. Humans are in the process of replacing most life on earth, ending their habitat
– our global hypercomplex global culture was built on cheap, easy to get energy, and the looong collapse is about phaseshift to flashcrash from hypercomplex to super simple
But since our culture will not work with these basic concepts, it will snuff itself living inside a dream and an illusion.
So just as well forget about climate change, the environment, and let the U.S try to attain economic growth untill the very end, it could buy us a few weeks even months more of comfortable dream worlds..
Wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.”
• •
“Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.”
“Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.”
“Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.”
Right Ed?
Trump puts his America First.
While observant Americans can rightly lament politics corrupted by money, there is something just as bad in its own way: government by ‘pure’ ideologues dedicated to ‘high’ ideals, who find a way to justify any cruelty.
People pushed back against the pure Green message, : ‘What, go back to the Middle Ages?!!’ and so the Greens came up with the fantasies of ‘Green Growth’ and ‘Clean Energy.’
The nicest people in this village have ‘Vote Green’ placards up. And a mobile home and a car, although they do cycle a lot. From the look of them, most of their clothes come from China. Green Living 2017……..
Back in Oil Drum days, I was sent a book that the author wanted me to review. It included such things as whether a mobile home with its own motor was “greener” than a mobile home that needs to be pulled behind a person’s own oversized pickup truck. I never wrote a review of the book.
Sounds like a good idea to me. There is no point in encouraging the ridiculous things people are trying to use to attempt to fix the situation, like solar panels.
The idea of carbon taxes has not worked well either. When carbon taxes are used, there is no tax on goods made with coal made elsewhere, if the local manufacturing economy does not have a carbon tax. This gives exporters using coal an unfair manufacturing advantage.
Another bad idea is paying to have trees planted to offset fossil fuel use. The net result still seems to be more loss of forest. Also, encouraging the use of wood chips, instead of fossil fuel use, doesn’t really save anything. This is a chart Euan Mearns made a few years ago.
If you want something a bit more chewy (and not graphed by a climate change denier), try the second half (the first is very much worth the listen, but not quite on the subject) of this podcast:
http://www.ecoshock.org/2017/05/trees-we-love-but-cannot-save.html
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ebe0cefe0097ee3b716972f5800d20692191b0339d6afb9e9fc20d36af6e5713.jpg?w=800&h=406
Jesse, I prefer the green “Denialist”, myself….
There is no ” debate” within the Scientific Community itself.
Studies of the consensus on anthropogenic global warming based on literature surveys give higher and more consistent results than opinion polls. Five literature surveys that used (or could have used) rejection as the criterion of consensus (11-15) agree closely. They comprise 54,195 articles from 1991-2015 and reveal an average consensus of 99.94%. An estimated 155,000 authors wrote those articles and that does not represent all who wrote about AGW, but only those found using specific search terms. (See Powell 2017, Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, in Press.)
Even our Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil, has publicly asserted that emissions cause Climate Warming.
Pointless charade of a agreement torpedoed by pointless charade of a human-being.
the don is just the sneeze—we–the human population, are the fever
Amen to that, Norman.
How amusing that all those attacking Trump fly around in private jets…
Anyone want to take a bet that the only countries that meet reduced emission goals will be classifieds as failed states.
I can see The Yemen and Venezuela meeting the targets… Egypt should be able to make it…
The thing is …. if an important country like say France or Italy or Spain hit the targets…. then we will all be hitting the targets… and we’ll all be eating boiled rat under clear blue skies.
Btw – you cannot see radiation — so the skies will indeed look like this
http://orig02.deviantart.net/83b1/f/2008/164/f/c/blue_skies_by_kheng.jpg
Natural oil decline rates require continuing investments just to maintain oil production at current levels. That’s why the IEA & Saudi Aramco warned in March of oil shortages by 2020
http://imgur.com/CPlcyqu
Suppose those of us that are privileged in its consumption are going to have to adapt and learn how to use less of it. That shouldn’t be too difficult, after all we are so civilized, highly educated modern people. After all, we are consuming ungodly amounts that shouldn’t be a too difficult task at all, right Ed?
No cut in energy use. Nuclear, SPS, hydro for the center.
Natural oil decline rates require continuing investments just to maintain oil production at current levels. That’s why the IEA & Saudi Aramco warned in March oil oil shortages by 2020
http://imgur.com/a/RKsQ5
http://imgur.com/Vf4kU1E
Peaked with conventional oil. What a mystery.
There has to be a good macroeconomic equation that explains it.. a super duper complex explanation that wins the Nobel price in economics
There is no such thing as peak oil, otherwise we would have oil at 300 bucks a barell. That is what all the economic textbooks tell us (the same books that talk about invisible hands and infinite resources). Therefore there is no peak oil, no matter what the real world experience is, economic theory cant be wrong, can it?
The limit on oil extraction is a price limit. Read my explanation in this article published in the journal Energy last year.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ke-wang-an-oil-production-forecast-for-china-considering-economic-limits.pdf
There is no actual nobel peace prize for economics.