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.
‘Psychologically scarred’ millennials are killing dozens of industries — and it’s their parents’ fault
http://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomers-caused-millennials-destructive-spending-habits-2017-6
Perhaps Millennials have too little income and too much debt.
The article mentions younger people ‘not buying stuff at full price’.
Well, I find myself inundated with sale offers by email, even from companies selling top-quality goods, from furniture to clothing.
The New Year sales are usually rather poor in terms of % discounts, but if one waits then excellent savings can be made.
It’s perfectly possible to buy, say, £1,000 of top-quality clothes and pay only £350.00. Same with furniture. Which will then last very much longer than cheap stuff bought at full price. If you are not interested in the very latest fashion, it works well.
I’d be a fool to pay full price: the Millennials might be short of cash, but they are not stupid either.
That is one of the problems with deflation …. everyone knows the discounts are coming … so they just hold out… which forces the discounts to come even sooner… this crushes profit margins (or in many cases eliminates them)
And … as we are seeing … this drives retailers into bankruptcy….
Re Atlanta (for Gail)
https://www.planetizen.com/node/93064/making-most-atlantas-25-billion-transit-investment-fund
https://www.planetizen.com/node/93087/artists-and-property-owners-sue-atlanta-over-mural-regulations
Thanks! I had seen the mural article, but not the transit investment article.
The pictured device in transit article is an Atlanta streetcar. Its purpose was/is (?) to shuttle tourists and a few others around the downtown area. My son who takes the bus to downtown Atlanta to work has talked about these devices getting in the way of buses, especially when they break down. The length of the downtown area is not all that great–my son walks the distance twice, every day. On rainy days, there is the possibility of using the subway. I suppose the Atlanta streetcar adds a glitzy other option.
The city of Atlanta is actually rather small, compared to Atlanta metropolitan area. The suburbs are mostly in other counties. Some of the other counties will have nothing to do with the Atlanta transit system. Thus, the dollars probably are to shuttle people around within the city, and to the few suburbs that have chosen to join.
Thief Steals Millions From Central Bank By Climbing in Through Window.
(FE what were you doing last night?)
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/thief-steals-millions-from-central-bank-building-after-climbing-in-through-open-window-58117
World’s First Multi-Million Dollar Carbon-Capture Plant Does Work Of Just $17,640 Worth Of Trees—It’s The “Worst Investment In Human History”
https://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/06/02/carbon-capture-plant-bad-investment/
But think about all the jobs it has added, and all the cars the workers drive to work.
I imagine if we tried, we could find worse investments–some with negative benefits.
First we run out of the cheap energy, then we run out of the cheap workforce
https://www.bnt.eu/en/events/2400-slovakia-heavy-demand-for-workers
So the demand for the machines and robots rises even more, creating even more complexity, which in turn produces more costly workforce.
Historically, labor-saving machines were developed during periods of labor shortages.
In the U.S., a shortage of cheap labor is not the reason that is presented for why automation is happening. The reason the public is told why automation is happening is because of technological determinism, and because wages are too high compared to wages of developing countries.
The EU is not investing in technology to solve its labor shortages.
The EU is addressing its labor shortage by importing new labor.
The EU is using the refugee crisis as a reason to bring down the cost of labor.
Sovereign debt is being downplayed because there is a lot of interest among the elites in eliminating sovereign countries and establishing one global government.
The EU (including UK, although politicians lie about this) is also importing consumers, as well as cheap labour: even those – and it’s a very high % of some groups like Muslims – who do not work are consumers, through spending public money granted to them as welfare payments.
They also breed at quite a rate, solving the problem of natives -even the quite well-off – who fear the expense of children.
It’s too bad Muslims don’t really share any of the natives’ values, which means once Muslim become an overwhelming majority, secular democratic societies will become a thing of the past. The only way Europe will avoid this fate is if native Europeans become a dominant minority. The likelihood of White Europeans becoming a dominant minority while BAU is falling apart (This is around when I think native Europeans will become a minority in Europe) them ins unlikely.
“some groups like Muslims – who do not work are consumers, through spending public money granted to them as welfare payments. ”
Where is that public spending money coming from?
It seems to me that Muslims would prefer formal jobs and don’t want to internalize European values but maybe that is Right-wing propaganda. There’s a lot of confusion or obfuscation about what this group wants and how they behave.
The complexity is suppose to pay for itself because in a society with more complexity workers are suppose be more productive because they can use complex tools . Workers are supposed to be producing cheaper goods and services with more complexity. . . but that has not what has been happening. The elite and their minions have been able to convince the public to see that additional complexity has been beneficial.
Ah Greece, Germany is coming for your shipping?
http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2017/06/02/union-greek-shipowners-schaeuble-veniamis/
Letters From Venezuela: This Is What Life Is Really Like In A Post-Collapse Society
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/letters-venezuela-what-life-really-post-collapse-society
I feel bad for them but they have BAU Just for fun bau light…I could live through that.
But I fear we will not go quietly but in a heart beat.
An on the ground report. In the author’s view, a remote small town without electricity or a paved road would be a better choice. The question is, “Is this really the case?” Or is it already supporting as many people as it can? Adding more people to the area may simply move problems to a new area as well.
I don’t know for sure, but suspect you hit the bulls eye; Not so long ago i visited an area in rural Africa, because of a major fossil fuel find and planned construction for associated facilities to extract & process it.
When i say rural i mean: the last plane was a privately chartered one that landed on a runway that you would be forgiven to confuse with a bad road. Subsequently another 3 hour drive was needed on a road that was obviously only recently built, probably in anticipation of the project kicking off. The last stretch was just dirt road. Some people in the closest town had electricity, but the ones living on the actual land of the future project had nothing. Just little mud-huts, some agave-plants that appears to be planted in te middle of sand. some hollowed out tree trunks for rafts to go fishing. They are referred to as “subsistence farmers” but our hired security (ex military) literally told us, “i wouldn’t call it subsistence, these people are in survival mode.” Although the area supports some very productive ecosystems, i observed maybe in total 10 fisherman in 3 boats sailing out at least 10 miles in almost open water and without even a simple outboard to reach the best fishing spots.
thanks for the venezuela piece
so much for the gentle downsizing into a state of bucolic peasantry—all driving electric cars
I wonder if Heinberg has read that.
Come on Richard… we know you read FW… make up a username and tell us what you think about this….
And James… you are out there…. why hasn’t Venezuela turned into a world made by hand? Why not organic granola parties with someone strumming out country music tunes on an old geeee-tar?
Maybe your models are wrong guys.
I am sticking with the model that involves violence, rape, starvation and spent fuel ponds. From what I am seeing in the Big V…. that is where we are headed.
Aren’t we fortunate that V has no spent fuel ponds.
FE, I’ve briefly looked into the spent fuel pond scenarios and have some good and bad news;
The bad; Chernobyl apparently only spread a minor amount of Cesium compared to what can be expected in absolute terms from spent fuel storages. I’m still trying to compile a decent basic model that will give me an idea of danger-zone radius, but it looks like it would easily be more than a two-thousand mile radius around any spent fuel pond. I’m see if i can improve confidence in this estimate and post it; but it would mean most of Europe is toast several times over.
The good news; somewhere on a presentation (i believe from the IAEA) i found out that most spent fuel rods can be expected to cool sufficiently to allow storage in naturally circulating air after a period of 3 year of cooling in basins. So if the E.lders have any emergency planning worth speaking of they might shut down the reactors in advance and the issue would be mostly resolved. Unfortunately the chances of shutting down existing reactors are not that high, since they are covering imbalances from solar & wind.
1. The Russian accident did NOT involve spent fuel ponds – this was a reactor meltdown that was contained with concrete
Comparison of Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear accidents
1 reactor – 210 tons (spent fuel pools not involved in incident)[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents
2. It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool.
Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
NOTE: for whatever reasons – likely related to costs — spent fuel is stored in dense pack formation — so sadly — air cooling can’t happen.
Pintada was supposed to contact the Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist who authored the report above —- because Pintada was also suggesting the fuel ponds could be air cooled…
We have not heard from Pintada since I passed along the contact info of this scientist and suggested he call him directly to ask him about this (and to explain to him how he is wrong).
Funny that.
Maybe Pintada did reach the scientist — and was told that he was crackers — that if BAU goes down and the ponds lose cooling — we get 4000 x 14,000 Hiroshimas of radiation spewed into the oceans and air —- and we go extinct
Maybe Pintada has fallen into deep despair and has checked himself into the asylum.
It can happen.
Give it a try:
http://www.miis.edu/academics/faculty/FDalnokiVeress/node/23025
Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress is Scientist-in-Residence at CNS and holds an MSc and PhD in high energy physics from Carleton University, Canada, specializing in ultra-low radioactivity background detectors and has professional experience in the field of astroparticle physics, primarily neutrino physics.
He has been involved in several major discoveries in the field of neutrino physics and has worked on several international collaborations in Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United States (see below) including the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), Double Chooz and Borexino experiments. He was a member of the SNO Collaboration that won the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics. He is also a laureate along with his team of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Physics.
Location
CNS Building, 499 Van Buren St.
Email jdalnokiveress@miis.edu
Phone 831.647.4638
Remember this — the spent fuel ponds were NOT involved in the Fukushima meltdown — if they had been — then Japan would be OVER — BAU would be OVER…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iwfP2i2YFjo/maxresdefault.jpg
Hi FE,
I’m not saying your analysis is incorrect. It appears that your description is indeed the current state of affairs. It appears nuclear safety requires a fair amount of BAU.
What i was trying to say is that; hypothetically,
1. if they DIDN’t store the most recent spent fuel rods as closely packed to the others
2. AND if they manage to cool the most recent ones enough for a manageable period (below links mention between 3 months to 1 year),
Then in theory the rest COULD be air-cooled passively if they leave enough space etc….it is noted that this is currently not the case.
For reference on item 2, please see:
https://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC50/GC50InfDocuments/English/gc50inf-3-att5_en.pdf
(see introduction, paragraph 3)
and also
https://www-ns.iaea.org/downloads/ni/embarking/argonne_workshop_2010/Braun/L.6.2%20Braun%20Operational%20Safety%20of%20Spent%20Nuclear%20Fuel.pdf
As an aside; the last link does indicate that a partially empty pool would be WORSE than air, as there is neither enough water for waterflow NOR airflow circulation.
So in short; if we want to avoid an extinction level event someone should put this on nuclear agencies safety agenda ASAP. I would say its priority no. 1. If not for us, we at least owe it the all the other species on this planet after all the havoc we’ve wrecked….
As the pools near capacity, utilities move some of the older spent fuel into “dry cask” storage. Fuel is typically cooled at least 5 years in the pool before transfer to cask. NRC has authorized transfer as early as 3 years; the industry norm is about 10 years.
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html
I have not seen any evidence that indicates operators are changing to storage structures that would allow for air cooling of spent fuel. If you could find some info on that I’d be interested to read it.
In any event — we have a one two whammy here… there will be no food — except in very remote places with very few people… where BAU has not touched the soils with it’s wicked fingers….
The human locusts will eat everything in places that are plugged in and that have significant populations … the small organic plots will be overwhelmed….
I think you will find that SOME spf were vaporized and blew out to sea.
Believe it or not they were built on the roof and the roof is gone.
They TEPCO went as far as paying CNN to fake it but got caught.
We know because they were US plants I was able to find the blue prints online day 1
I heard that wild pigs are eating the spent fuel… in a couple of years it will all be consumed.. problem solved
I read an article the other day and the headline was “Overpopulation is a Hoax” And after reading it I did a google search of the website it was from. Turns out it was some alternative news site which was owned by the Heritage Foundation. All I could think was just give it another decade and the I guarantee the Heritage Foundation will be calling for the mass genocide of others.
But but the UN says having kids is a HUMAN RIGHT, Nigeria will have 1 billion people by 2050 THEY HAVE A RIGHT, EVERYBODY GETS A RIGHT WEEEEE
Unfortunately, the judge (jury and executioner) in this jusrisdiction is Mother Nature, and she doesn’t recognise rights.
I suspect she’s a Hanging Judge.
CRYPTO CURRENCY… CLOAKCOIN: Up 300% In Two Days
https://srsroccoreport.com/crypto-currency-cloakcoin-up-300-in-two-days/
These currencies are what will save us because they are perpetual economic motion machines.
All that needs to happen is that everyone dig deep and find some extra cash — take a loan — cash advance on credit cards — beg borrow and steal if you have to …
And buy a crypto currency …
Because they always go up — and rather quickly at that — this will fuel the Mother of All Shopping Sprees…. the auto industry will head up faster than a rocket ….
I am so god damn relieved to finally work out what this crypto currency thingy is all about….
Gail — you can shut down the blog at any time now….
Why, it’s better than turkey!!!
You can’t eat bitcoin. I’m not even sure you can give it to the stripper.
Are you kidding?
Millenials or Asians dodging taxes (most of #e-coin users) usually don’t visit strippers.
It’s all virtual, and it has its inner dynamics, that’s why it’s a long term bubble.
Food?? You mean like the “restaurant” chains and fast food joints with deliveires via fast EVs, they would never run out of food, gosh, you must be that crazy-dangerous fake news, hate full, perma doomer !
/sarc off
PS well, sadly in reality that’s the world of today..
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by “a world of enemies”, “one against all”, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
-Hannah Arendt – The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.227
Very true.
And the 20th century showed that in a totalitarian Socialist society, the ‘holy tribe’ is ‘the workers’, which justifies – according to the ideology – the killing of the upper and middle-classes, in order to create the Workers’ Paradise.
This was justified by the mental gymnastics of: ‘We are not murdering people: we are killing a system!’
I have met political murderers (tried and imprisoned) : they insisted that they were ‘executioners’, not murderers, that the killings were ‘political acts’. When every side is thinking this way, you find yourself in Hell very quickly.
It is quite hair-raising to have such conversations, to say the least. It has influenced my view that Man is the deluded animal, the self-brainwasher.
You spoke directly with them ? From the NAZI regime or other ? I reckon such deluded explanations are the only way they could live with what they had done. If they had paid attention to the humanity of their victims they would not be able to retain any appearance of sanity at all i think….
That being said; Many people would like to believe that there is some ultimate reality / “afterlife” or whatever that will judge you if you commit evil, and that goodness is innate whereas evil is some temporary failure / stray condition. Modern advertising almost invariably casts nature as benevolent force. This is a severe misunderstanding of nature. I recommend everybody to read the book “The Lucifer Principle”.It is a biologically well-researched document that provides a good explanation of why nature uses both good and evil. In so far that it applies to your example: human beings are mainly group creatures (at least tribal). Although we all love to think of ourselves as relatively rugged individuals, psychologically there is quite some evidence that we break down once we lose meaningful ties to others. Therefore in times of scarce resources, people will tend to invent “meme’s” and ideologies to bind certain groups together (allowing the members of this sub-group to retain relatively normal relations), whilst at the same time de-humanizing others, essentially marking them as targets for elimination, thus ensuring greater acces to resources for their sub-tribe. Typically this happen along racial / religious or other readily recognisable treats. Reason has – unfortunately – little to do with such demonisation process.
I am sure the Nazi’s had no problem living with themselves…. they justified what they were doing because of the Stab in the Back…
Which was real…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFRGDyX48c
Now does that justify what they did? If they had won WW2…. yes of course it would have….
For those delusional sheeple who think reformist politics matters:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBleJZfWsAAIXlk.jpg
I fail to understand why elections need electronic voting. Why? Do people realize that every time anything electronic is built there are people that discover how to hack into them? So what in the world are we doing having systems that can be hacked into of and or related to voting? Pieces of paper people – that’s all that is needed. But people are too stupid so there will continue to be electronic voting machines and the people that hack them.
Also, how long are the lives of these devices? What kind of security will these devices have, if they are in storage most of the year? Won’t small election areas be tempted to use the computer hardware for double purposes?
My sons were involved in testing newly-installed machines in Georgia as a summer job one year. Jail trustees often helped them in this process, in smaller counties. A number of locations had installed other software on their computer voting devices.
Economic Policy of Debt and Destruction (Sy, 2015).
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2616591
In the abstract, it says that “The Clinton years were a hiatus in this pattern.” I didn’t read the article, but it should say that the low oil prices during the Clinton era are what led to the turnaround in debt growth.
This would be … a bad thing …
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/visualizing-train-wreck-auto-inventories
Car Dealer’s First Overflow Lot in 37 Years Exposes U.S. Pileup
For the first time in his 37 years working at New Jersey car dealerships, Larry Kull had to rent extra space to store unsold new Honda vehicles — one of the latest signs that the record U.S. auto market is cooling.
Across dealer lots in America, inventory is piling up as automakers produce more cars than are being bought. Dealers had about 85 days worth of cars and trucks on hand at the beginning of February — about 22 days more than at the beginning of 2017 and eight days more than a year earlier, according to Automotive News Data Center.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/car-dealer-s-first-overflow-lot-in-37-years-exposes-u-s-pileup
Wow!
For your reading pleasure:
http://womensrunning.competitor.com/2017/05/nutrition/tarahumara-people-chia-seeds_75369#Y16uuox2uL7hAD3I.97
“The Tarahumaras live with the essentials, which is practically nothing, but they were the happiest people I have ever come across.”
http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/25/mexican-tarahumara-woman-without-marathon-experience-wins-50km-race-in-sandals-6662644/
When energy use exceeds new energy finds, the end is certain.When consumption rate exceeds net investment rate, the end is certain. This is what I call the Keynesian Singularity:
“Keynesian Singularity.” Brilliant, good sir. I think I’ll have that printed on a t-shirt so I can explain it to people when they ask me what it means. I don’t suppose they’ll be happy with the answer though.
solar panels? how about this
https://www.indy100.com/article/china-powered-largest-solar-power-farm-earth-renewable-fossil-fuel-floating-7759346
Excellent! Imagine how much Coal Was Burned in making those panels.
https://understandsolar.com/solar-uses-more-energy-to-manufacture-than-it-produces/
Fortunately China barely produces any of their electricity from coal… ah I mean solar panels (made from coal) — otherwise what would happen is manufacturing costs would rise dramatically (as they have in Germany) because solar does not produce electricity in the rain — or at night … which means you need to operate two generation systems incurring double the costs…
Which would drive manufacturing to places like Vietnam — where they would just leave out the solar step and burn the coal directly to create electricity…
Of course the Chinese are not stupid like the Germans —- and Norwegians — and the Spanish … so they will never allow this to happen….
But they do have to appease the cattle who do not like breathing in coal smoke…. and what better way to do that then build a few token solar farms….
See cattle — we are addressing the problem…
Burn More Coal NOW! (or die)
Yep another FF extender. Burn less in the daytime but something must be maintained to smooth it out, build the panels, grid, infrastructure, consumers and consumer products to pay for it. Also ongoing maintenance is not solar powered.
So essentially what we have here, is another device that raises the height of the edge of the cliff…….it does not build a barrier to prevent the fall.
40MW sounds really tiny.
But at least it is largest of its kind.
Ya but here’s the thing…
That floating contraption did not grow on a tree…. it was made using my good buddy — Coal.
Not Nat King Coal…. Coal …. as in Lignite Coal.
And because the net energy produced by solar panels is roughly the same as went into their manufacture….
What China is doing here is making the pollution problem worse…
Because when the make a solar panel — they release nearly the same amount of energy that will be released by the panel over its life span — except that they release this energy in a very short time period — the time required to make the panel.
My recommendation with China would be as follows:
1. Declare January of every year The Month of the Great Smog
2. Educate the population to use Air Breathing Apparatus during that month — the sleep work eat shower — in this:
https://is.alicdn.com/img/pb/864/016/210/1230623661040_hz_myalibaba_web4_61.jpg
3. During that month enough solar panels MUST be produced to meet all new demand for the coming year and to phase out as much of the legacy fossil fuel generation as possible…
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/china-energy-consumption-by-source-2013-logo.png
I think January is already the month of the Great Smog, because so much coal is burned to keep buildings warm at that time of year–perhaps you were aware of that connection.
I can’t wait for a massive storm to sink that thing.
At 40 MW, it at least is not disrupting the grid too badly. I wonder how much the cost of this plant, plus the transmission and its operating expenses compares to the cost of the coal it displaces?
A thought….
We know that Chris Martenson must know…. based on his earlier works… but that he has ‘sold out’ to those green groupies willing to fund him … if he writes stuff that supports their assertion that solar panels will save the world.
And we know that Mr Kunstler (who also must know) has dropped in a few times — but like Chris… the official line for James has to be BAU Lite…. otherwise the books don’t sell….
So…..
If I am Chris or James…. I must get very tired of having to spew what I know to be total bullshit…. I must crave the company of others who know….. and the only place those sorts can be found is on FW….
So who is James?
And who is Chris?
Sell outs
cia
Gentleman, Gentleman… Least I remind everyone, a Golden Oldie that should quite down many worry Nellies posting here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eclUz-RYI
Dating myself, but always liked listening to Lynn Anderson back in the day.
http://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/technical-and-business-challenges-refining-industry
And as oil resources dwindle, oil companies are having to turn to new types of oil, especially heavy oil. This makes refining operations more complex.
Due to these trends and shrinking margins, the European refining industry is less and less profitable. Some refineries have already had to shut down. To avoid further closures, refiners are now pushing ahead with upgrades of their facilities (
To improve their competitiveness, refiners have begun to integrate their refining and petrochemical activities on the same site. Esso in Antwerp, Shell in the Netherlands and Total in Normandy have already created large-scale integrated complexes.
Bigger the BETTER!
I believe that one of the underlying problems is the dwindling amount of North Sea oil. Also, the limited availability and erratic nature of Libyan oil. These types of oil were quite light, and didn’t need the highly complex refineries. If Europe had been able to import enough oil obtained from fracking from the US, this would have solved their need for a different light fuel stock.
Regarding refining heavier oils, I can see why Europe might choose this route, but it is not clear that they can do it at a competitive cost compared to, say, the US. One reason why they might want to import heavier oil is because Europe uses diesel for its cars as well as for industrial processes. It thus particularly needs the heavier fractions of oil. There is also the “pull” of the profit margin on the upgrading part, and the potential of more fairly high paying jobs for European workers. Regarding whether Europe can undertake this endeavor profitably, upgrading uses a lot of natural gas. If a country has a lot of cheap natural gas, it can do this process fairly inexpensively. The US has had fairly cheap natural gas; Europe’s gas is now less expensive than it was previously, but still not cheap. Thus, Europe still is at a cost disadvantage for refining heavier oils. Also, demand for oil based fuels is not rising in Europe, tending to depress prices.
The Rise of Right Wing Extremist
http://imgur.com/rcMWMFw
During the 90s they were afraid of Clinton. and yet there is a decline even before Clinton left office in 2000. Probably due to economy doing better.
Low numbers during the Bush years 2000-2008 makes sense. They had their man in charge, and were motivated to join the military to kill some Arabs after 9/11
Growth since 2008 also makes sense, with the mulatto leftist Obama taking control and the financial crisis.
If the chart extended to 2017 I would expect some stabilization.
Demographics is playing a huge role in the slow down.
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/06/?m=1
Good analysis.
I had a bit of a run in with Wolf on the Street some months ago — he was suggesting that if population growth could be stopped that would be a good thing….
I suggested that this would be a bad thing because it would collapse the global economy…
He ripped into me on this pretty much saying I was an idiot…
Then I posted analysis that indicated that upwards of 30% of GDP was attributable to population growth.
Wolf didn’t have much to say to that.
That’s why Wolf is stuck in 3rd gear over there on the Street…. he is not interested in learning.
That said — he frequently posts some good analysis. For someone who is stuck in 3rd gear….
Your right FE. Productive consumptive growth is needed. Which means the 1st world countries need a strong growing population in ages 15-64. This is not happening so all the pension projections are pie in the sky.
Back to immigration. The west said hey let’s avoid the Japan anemia by importing people. Big problem these imports a wards of the state packed into tenement buildings and they know it. That’s not how America was built. Immigration has to coincide with job creation. The economic advantage that created that environment in America was ……drum roll please. FF!!!!!! Namely coal and lot of extractable non-renewable resources.
It all boils down to Scarcity. What people like Wolf, Mish, StAngelo can’t do is put all the pieces together. They can focus on an aspect but not the macro dynamic system.
And don’t bother with Martenson he’s just a salesman. He should hang with Elon and Gore.
The importation of people certainly hasn’t worked out very well, London for instance has ended up with whole boroughs full of very low-wage people needing welfare to top up their wages, when they are not unemployed.
Lots of dirt-cheap workers for the care industry of course, supermarkets and cleaners, delivery van drivers (these are nearly always Eastern European and African now.)
It is amusing to see how each wave ruthlessly displaces the next: Nigerians pushed the West Indians out of running one major London borough, and Turks and above all Indians often end up with the top jobs.
On a rare trip to London I saw Bolivian enforcers counting out the protection cash they had just collected from a shop -just sitting on back seats of the bus doing it, £1,000’s!
The worker-replacement strategy and open-borders policy which sustains it has been quite a gift to organised crime.
The sad part about it is that there are smart people that want in and also people with a good work ethic.
Canada is learning that Muslims are not willing to work or adapt.
Honestly they cant work with women.Build anything.Eat or handle the food.Take time off when told.
Basically non functional in this country.
May as well bring in random Christians or atheists
nope
you never see a waitress in a indian restaurant
Can you provide some hard data on this — or is this just something you heard third hand?
Who are these muslims you refer to and how did they get into Canada?
The last time I flew within Canada I was seated next to a brown Muslim man — he was from Pakistan — he worked for Credit Suisse — he seemed quite normal — he even ate the airline food — I assume he would be willing to work with women as I assume Credit Suisse has women employees….
This may be more helpful in the global picture…
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/01/policy-makers-like-generals-are-busy.html
The way I view the situation is that the workers at a particular point in time have to support the entire population, with the goods and services they make. (Saving up doesn’t work–it is the actual work during the period, plus resources extracted during the period that matters.)
We have a double problem with (1) a rising retiree population and (2) a rising population of lesser-educated dropouts from the work force. Workforce participation rates peaked about 2000.
Fast Eddy, you are a New Zealander, correct? Then why do you proclaim yourself an expert on the American economic situation?
I like many am living right here, right now in America. I’m telling you, absolutely nothing has collapsed. I myself work part time but because I choose to, I know too much about the corruption of our system. But people are going to work full time, the stores and restaurants are full, the schools are full, business is expanding. The homes and lawns are all meticulously maintained, new luxury cars fill the roads with traffic. It’s boom without end. That’s my on the ground report. Maybe somebody in a small town or abandoned area might say differently, but most people in the major metros will report the exact same thing I’ve reported.
Are you saying this is fake news?
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/retail-wreck-over-1-000-stores-close-single-week-n767556
Business in Florida is humming. Of course that could change instantly, but probably two more rate hikes should do it. I would say we’re in a 2004 to 2005 window of similarity. They hiked throughout that time frame, (kinda like lighting the fuse), and stood pat in 2006 waiting for detonation.
And the Syrians fled the country into the cities to. Was that because of everything being AWESOME!!!!!!
Local observations of global issues is about as dumb as it gets. My plumbing still works there is obviously no plumbing problem.
Maybe dolph is actually Archie Bunker. Right Meathead?
This is good. I like it.
dolph is a doctor.He has a PHD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF79zsgjmw8
He thinks all this talk about collapse has more to do with jealousy of less intelligent losers (which he claimed most people on this blog are) of the success of people like him. In Dolph’s area, most of the cars on the roads are luxury cars. The economy is booming and he assumes that is the situation in most urban areas, for a significant majority of people.
dolph: coming to a healthcare insurance in-network near you.
He’s right about everything…including the condition he’ll inevitably diagno$e you with.
If doc is a PHD then that would be a huge impediment for him here on FW…. as is evident from his posts… he is knee deep in the dogma of mainstream society … he gurgles with MSM before he posts…. he is unable to ‘see’ … because his education blinds him
http://www.blindbobs.com/images/bob.gif
“If doc is a PHD then that would be a huge impediment for him here on FW…. as is evident from his posts… he is knee deep in the dogma of mainstream society” I’d use a term I came across in my theoildrum.com lurking days, “sunken cost”.
It’s kind of a stupid term when applied to economics. What it means in terms of economics is that there is a reluctance to adopt a new product or service that is deemed an improvement because of money already spent–when in reality it refers to business owners seeing an unfavorable cost/benefit ratio when calculating the benefit of adopting a new product or service.
“Sunken cost” makes a lot more sense in terms of human psychology. The closest term to “sunken cost” is “emotional investment” . dolph has most likely invested a lot of his emotions into becoming a doctor and reaping the benefits of being a doctor: which includes, based on what he has posted on OFW, being treated like royalty while everyone who is less educated gets treated like crap. He really thinks his education and status will shield him from the collapse of industrial civilization. The elite have a plan. They will save dolph because dolph acquired marketable skills which he think will keep him valuable to them. I speculate that dolph has worked very hard to become a doctor and that entitles him to nothing less than the best.
The core is doing just fine, thank you. Tried to point this out many times. The “we all collapse at the same time” stick model fails to account for adaptation.
Yes, that is why the EU is doing so well.
The blind will remain forever blind…. you can say to the blind person — there is a truck headed down the road — best not to cross yet — and they will ignore you —- the only way they will ever ‘see’ is when the truck flattens them … there will be that split second as the bumper connects with their body where they ‘see’ that you were right.
The truck is coming….
However, when you look deeper into the numbers some major red flags quickly emerge. You won’t hear it on the news, but in May the U.S. economy actually lost 367,000 full-time jobs. That is an absolutely nightmarish figure, and it confirms the fact that economic activity is starting to dramatically slow down.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/real-unemployment-number-102-million-working-age-americans-do-not-have-job
It’s been a tough week for the retail industry, with more than 1,000 stores closing their doors for good. Luxury retailer Michael Kors announced it would be closing over 100 locations, and electronics giant Radio Shack closed 1,000 locations across America.
The retail industry, which represents $5 trillion in economic impact, has changed significantly over the past several years. More than 100,000 retail workers have lost their jobs since October 2016.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/retail-wreck-over-1-000-stores-close-single-week-n767556
http://truck-accident.usattorneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Speeding-Truck-Accident-300×300.jpg
Now let us talk about balancing the US budget.
I don’t think the elite who produce news content want us to think about government debt…they are pretending the problem doesn’t exist or is something used in partisan politics for one political coalition to get more resources than another political coalition.
The elite assure us that debt is an abstraction…something that can be diminished with monetary policy…as long as there is economic growth
“What if investors balked? Well, there is an escape hatch. The federal government could repay its debts by printing fresh dollars and giving them to its creditors.” (APPELBAUM,NYTIMES)
“As the government increases the amount of money in circulation, tax revenues increase, making it easier to repay fixed debts. Economic growth has the same effect. The United States never repaid the huge debts incurred during World War II. But economic growth and inflation gradually reduced the burden of the interest payments on those wartime debts.”
The situation is more serious than TPTB would like people to think,
I have reason to believe that most countries are so “interdependent”, so dependent on imports that it is impossible for any of them to balance their budgets or pay back their debts.
“Even if the United States balanced its annual budget, so the total debt stopped growing, the government would still need to borrow trillions of dollars every month.” (APPELBAUM,NYTIMES).The talk of austerity has quietly disappeared along with the hype about emerging markets. I think that if austerity had been allowed to happen in Europe and in other developed regions, it would lead to situations seen in Venezuela at the moment.
When they do mention it…. they certainly never mention that the debt can never stop increasing… without collapsing the economy….
“they certainly never mention that the debt can never stop increasing… without collapsing the economy”
They don’t say this but they show it. I know that I said that there is no talk about austerity anymore and that was wrong.
Let me make a correction. There IS still talk about austerity…at least in Europe where it was partially implemented…
http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2017/06/03/europeans-planb-greece-without-imf/
but it doesn’t seem that serious.
The last two sentences from the link are a perfect summary of what has happened since the Greek financial crisis.
“Ahead of crucial decisions for Greece, all sides involved have been trying to play their games -ever since the country got its first bailout in 2010. They never fell short of ideas and scenarios.”
They seem to know that there cannot be any more cuts without a severe economic collapse so there is a lot of what seems like debt restructuring.
In the U.S. austerity never became a “thing”. Of course, things can change during the next debt limit showdown.
Yep… if there was macro austerity and debt reduction — the entire gets to look like Greece for a very short period… and then BAU collapses.
another day/week/year/decade of bau goes on
https://youtu.be/fOaxEa5ONJw
btw black musicans in 70s/80s used so good and then came rap gang culture in 90s
And well-dressed!
Meh. Rap culture came from the same place this music came from.
Rap started out with many different voices. Now, all that is left is what you here on that radio, where the younger “Artists” openly show disdain for the form, citing that they’re only here “to get paid.”
There is an overall decline in the quality of all music, and I mean ALL OF IT.
There is an overall decline in profitability from recorded music.
The main culprit is technology but there are other ones.
Did you know that the number of working age Americans that do not have a job right now is far higher than it was during the worst moments of the last recession? For example, in January 2009 92.6 million working age Americans did not have a job, but we just found out that in May the number of working age Americans without a job increased to just a shade under 102 million. We’ll go over those numbers in more detail in a moment, but first I want to talk a bit about the difference between perception and reality. According to the bureaucrats in the federal government, the “unemployment rate” in May was the lowest that we have seen in 16 years. At just “4.3 percent”, we are essentially at “full employment”, and so according to them anyone that really wants a job should be able to find one pretty easily.
Of course that is a load of nonsense. John Williams of shadowstats.com tracks what our economic numbers would look like if honest numbers were being used, and according to his calculations the unemployment rate is currently 22 percent.
So what accounts for the wide disparity between those numbers?
Well, the truth is that the official “unemployment rate” that the mainstream media endlessly hypes is so manipulated that it has essentially lost all meaning at this point.
In May, we were told that the U.S. economy added 138,000 jobs, but that is not even enough to keep up with population growth.
However, when you look deeper into the numbers some major red flags quickly emerge. You won’t hear it on the news, but in May the U.S. economy actually lost 367,000 full-time jobs. That is an absolutely nightmarish figure, and it confirms the fact that economic activity is starting to dramatically slow down.
But somehow the “unemployment rate” in May fell from “4.4 percent” to “4.3 percent”.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-real-unemployment-number-102-million-working-age-americans-do-not-have-a-job
And here we have the Fake News weighing in ….
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/why-aren-t-american-teenagers-working-anymore
Duh — every excuse – including they are lazy — except the real one — there are NO jobs
If 100m are not working – they are not paying taxes or buying much — should that not in itself collapse the US?
One has to wonder the extent to which the Fed is involved in keeping the economy alive — are they pumping trillions into govt coffers to make up for the drop in tax income?
I suspect we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the stimulus programs fueled by the CBs….
Good perspective here. Duncan may be right on with his timing except it snowballs faster then he projected.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/06/04/dimming-bulb-3-collapse-has-arrived/
Thanks!
I find Doomstead interesting, but way too optimistic.
That’s why I never recommend it. You have to be too selective and filter the dreamers out and most just get confused.
Wonder how much dimming there will be before a chart of night time light can’t be updated and distributed.
Coyotes are smart enough to only produce large litters when they’re being killed. Sucks that humans haven’t learned how to do that yet.
http://www.globalanimal.org/2016/08/16/coyote-conflict-why-killing-coyotes-doesnt-work/
Wolves change rivers Cliffhanger Wolves change Rivers
https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q
Jordan Peterson has an interesting video of winner takes all distributions which are solely the result of a binomial distribution. This part of the explanation starts about 35 minutes into the video. For me it was an insightful lecture. It also seems to explain some of the predicaments we now find ourselves in. Maybe FE does not quite have the right end point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7GKmznaqsQ
Dennis L.
Dennis-
That was a truly fascinating talk. Thanks for the link.
Dennis – a friend recently sent me some excellent stuff on Jordan Peterson — I don’t see the link in your post — do you mind dropping it again — thanks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7GKmznaqsQ&t=2572s
These ideas seem similar to Kelly’s criterion.
Dennis L.
Kelly’s criterion?
For a brief summary, Wikipedia.
Let me try that one again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7GKmznaqsQ&t=2572s
If this gives only a link, go to Youtube, search Jordan Peterson and you will find the video as one of his latest.
Thanks – got it now
Is his lecture even relevant in a society when returns on all kinds of investment are falling?
He just seems like a more academic version of those motivational speakers who are seen from time to time promoting their workshops and video about exciting opportunities in [insert trendy, over-saturated niche here]
This is the interview that I was sent a couple of months ago ….
It sounds interesting, but I find it hard to find 1.5 hours to listen to a lecture. Does he have an article with his main findings?
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/604485.jpg
Exactly. Wealth is built on the toil of others. They get rich by finding something we all need that isn’t competed for yet on too big a scale, get investors and or borrow the money to set up manuf., distribution, sales then hire people as cheaply as possible then pocket the change. The people that work cheap want a sure thing but pay a dear price with their time at a wage in which they will always be stuck doing a job at that level. The more insecure the person is about trying anything else, the greater the chance they will do that particular job their whole life. They call it job security, but the wealthy know it’s actually an accepted form of slavery.
Vote by county:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BccXUCCwdew/WTKyRjgY4GI/AAAAAAAADIc/dSper5y8LFMHAUXSHcldxjRib2ZUDXYtgCLcB/s400/United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%252C_2016.svg.png
County maps divided by red and blue tend to be highly misleading. This is something the redneck crowd in America doesn’t understand.
Many of those counties you see red are thinly populated. Look at the sea of red from panhandle Texas to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the hillbilly zone of Missouri/Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, etc. Basically nowheresville U.S.A.
http://metrocosm.com/election-2016-map-3d/
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2016/
There are multiple variations of these maps. Interesting what people do with their time! Makes for some interesting analysis.
Most Americans are crowded into metro areas, and these tend to be split blue/red leaning blue.
The redneck crowd believes America to be theirs (while also believing they are losing the cities to immigrants, which is also true). Politically speaking they have influence as they control land, counties, and therefore control electoral politics. But economically and culturally, America has long ago made the transition to a multicultural empire dominated by metro areas, which continue to grow in population, both by immigration and native migration away from dying small towns.
Here’s a question Dolph who needs who more? Do the Rednecks need the White Collared Blue metro areas? Or do the White Collared Blue metros need the Rednecks?
How about a test. Let’s say the lights go out deliveries stop for two weeks nation wide what areas will depopulate more quickly?
The Blue Metros think they can survive without the productivity of the Rednecks but considering that their children think beef comes from a supermarket wrapped in plastic could be a survivability problem.
It’s an old pattern: the city states of Italy got the peasants to grow the wheat that made nice white bread for the citizens, and left the peasants to eat stuff that had to be broken up with a hammer and soaked in order to be eatable.
This was the origin of justifiable hatred for the bourgeoisie.
When maize arrived form the New World, the peasants were delighted, as they got to eat lots of nice soft polenta (although nutritionally very defective on its own.)
I’m represented by the only repug house member in Oregon.
You look at the State, and it’s almost all red in area, but has two Dim Senators (one actually quite bright), a Dim Governor, and four Dim house members.
So, I agree, it is quite misleading.
after seeing Qatar have difference with saudi arabia today israel has completed the goal of
divide of middle east
when bau ends here is some advise on making water safe to drink knowledge such as this will help us survive the end of bau http://en.hesperian.org/hhg/A_Community_Guide_to_Environmental_Health:Make_Water_Safe_to_Drink
Crude oil 46.99 currently….Ouch
http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil.aspx
I recently calculated the average stop price for Brent during 2016. It was about $45 per barrel. The average spot price for WTI would have been about two dollars lower, or $43 per barrel, I imagine. So we still have a little while to go to get back to 2016’s average price. We have even farther to go to get back to the prices we had at the beginning of 2016.
Hi Gail. May I ask, what is meant by average stop price?
She meant spot
I should have said “spot” price. I typed it in wrong, and spell check fixed it for me.
FE – we cannot afford to have this type of thing happening every few weeks.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-04/saudi-arabia-egypt-uae-bahrain-cut-diplomatic-ties-block-all-borders-qatar
It deals a mortal blow to the production of oil and it destabilize the entire region
It might break OPEC and crash oil prices. Very interesting development.
Maybe the war in Yemen is going even more badly than has been hinted.?
Or a possible destabilisation attempt in Saudi?
I suggest the King gets that glowing Globe of Power, or whatever it is, lit up again.
This is going to be fascinating.
Or … supposedly this is all about KSA royals going hunting in Iraq and being captured and ransomed…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/shocking-trigger-behind-todays-gulf-scandal-qatar-paid-al-qaeda-iran-1bn-hostage-dea
Who goes hunting in Iraq – other than US special forces looking for wedding parties to shoot to pieces….
Should have got King to consult the Glowing Globe when making their holiday plans…… what’s the use of that thin otherwise?
The ME will never be stable, so I view all news coming out of that region as same old stuff. If there was nothing to fight over they’d make something up to fight over.
No … it will never be stable… that was the whole point of cramming Sunnis and Shia into fake countries with fake borders after WW1…. keep them at their throats….
Brilliant policy btw….
Retail Wreck? Over 1,000 Stores Close in a Single Week
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/retail-wreck-over-1-000-stores-close-single-week-n767556
“I don’t think [retail] is dead. It needs a facelift,” said Joseph Hancock, a professor of retail at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. “Retailers really need to think outside the box on how they want to appeal to consumers to get them back into the malls.”
How’s this for out of the box….. reduce prices to 10 cents on the dollar…. and forgive all existing credit card debt — they’ll come flooding back in.
Notice how these articles are always heavy on the ‘online shopping is the culprit’ and pretty much ignore the fact that wages are stagnant and people are maxxed out on debt.
They wanna shop so BAD…. but they got no cash … and their cards are maxxed out
It must so SO frustrating for them.
Surely sales of this must be through the roof
http://mblynchfirm.com/content/uploads/2016/12/abilify-settlement.jpg
“I don’t think [retail] is dead. It needs a facelift,” said Joseph Hancock, a professor of retail at Drexel
No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting.
Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.
There is actually a professor of retail?
Greater efficiency via online sales – that’s all it is. Really, think about it. A retail location has overhead up the wazoo – expensive rental or ownership locations, big utility bills from all that lighting to make the stuff look good, the well dressed employees, the mannequins, the carpeting, and so on. Online like Amazon is done with massive boring looking warehouses in areas where it’s pennies on the dollar square footage-wise, using robots to bring racks of goods to people that pick off items to be shipped. The stuff gets put on conveyors, boxed, tagged, and packed into thousands of UPS and other carriers. It’s so efficient the brick and mortar retail locations can’t compete. It’s unfortunate from the standpoint that greater efficiency means fewer jobs. The only retail to last will be food and there’s even ways that can be brought to people’s homes cheaper that companies are working on. Eventually people will get most everything delivered, and a lot of that by way of drones that will get bigger.
Efficiency is only good when it leads to higher energy consumption rate. Without worldwide growing energy consumption rate, there won’t be enough purchasing power to consume world economy’s output.
I am afraid you are right.
If BAU continues in some way, I suspect all this personal delivery will die some day, due to transportation costs. Regional manufacturing might come back on some small scale. Small general stores will proliferate. Our obsession with “fashion” will end.
Another good one BJ keep them coming. You got any good stuff about electrified trucking? How about windmills attached to the roof of your car to harvest free power. That’s generally a good one. Oceans of uranium works good here to.
Mother Nature will take care of our overpopulation problem. Humans only pretend they have a choice. All animals breed to the limits of their environment and then die off until the environment can sustain the number. Humans are animals, subject to the same cycles.
From our super intensive FF world, to Globalism, to exponential population growth,to a debt based system that requires growth, to systemic corruption overtaking the entire financial sectors and Governments, to our industrial agricultural system etc etc. What do they all have in common?
They are all unsustainable. Nothing about our civilization can endure for much longer…
“Humans are very good at propping up the unsustainable and this often results in a fast and unexpected collapse” (Tainter 1998)
Yes, the planet now stands on the edge of a massive die-off of humans. Our ingenuity and a uniquely concentrated energy source FF has allowed us to postpone the inevitable balance that all living creatures must adhere to within their environment. Well, now the dis-balance is too great and FF will not be plentiful anymore, so die off will be the consequence…
Oh and pass the popcorn!!!
“Yes, Mr. P, America has lost its mind. The whole thing has turned into some kind of nonstop Kardashian tranny monster truck shit-show of manufactured melodrama and lost causes, inducing a kind of global nausea that may ultimately prove more fatal than the rising surface temperature and melting icecaps. Russia, to its credit, and whatever else you think about it, has some regard for its own survival. Our country prefers the excitement of self-destruction.”
-JHK
BAU… with its epicentre being America — is like an old sick dog… he’s unable to control his bowels so shits (and pisses) all over the carpet… he can’t see… he’s riddled with all manner of disease… in short — the poor old boy is suffering badly…
I want to put him down …. to put him out of his misery …. he wants it too…. badly…
But I know that if I put him down … I go down too…
I am torn….
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
Shrinking population is a problem for any economy, no matter what the cause. Japan is having a similar problem. It is the presence of more people that leads to the need for more homes, schools, and businesses. Businesses have significant fixed costs. Serving fewer customers doesn’t work. And of course there is the debt repayment problem that the article mentions.
AAA raising insurance rates 30% for Tesla owners
http://www.leftlanenews.com/aaa-raising-insurance-costs-for-tesla-owners-96345.html
Wow! It is possible that the group of drivers of Teslas is biased toward men who want to show off, and are not very careful when they do.
I also expect that the supply of spare parts is fairly limited, and the number of shops that handle this kind of repair is pretty limited.
It is a powerful car and more susceptible to high speed runs and crashes.
Right — but aren’t insurance rates increasing in comparison with other powerful fast vehicles such as Porsche…..
Due to its quality problems and high repair costs, Tesla also has an insurance problem. We predict that Tesla cars will end up having some of the highest insurance costs. These costs drive up the cost of ownership and further drive down the desirability and resale value of older Tesla cars.
The Highway Loss Data Institute report covered the 2014-16 model years. Vehicles are divided into classes based on size, weight and competing models. The frequency and severity of claims are compared with overall average claims of passenger vehicles and the average claims of the vehicle’s class. In evaluating Tesla vehicles within their categories and to the overall population of vehicles, the report found the amount and cost of claims to be much higher than average.
“Teslas get into a lot of crashes and are costly to repair afterward,” said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is the Highway Loss Data Institute’s parent organization. “Consumers will pay for that when they go to insure one.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4078795-tesla-cars-easy-total-expensive-repair
It’s incredibly interesting to watch how the system creates false information. So in Hawaii they have a moratorium in place on solar because the grid can’t handle it. In California they had to change their terms of incentives making it now impossible to get an ROI on solar. But the problem isn’t solar rather its a poor grid or greedy utilities.
The common denominator is solar and wind. They are unreliable at best.
Imagine you had a life threatening condition that requires a 4hr surgery. Would you choose a hospital off grid run on renewables? Not likely. Why would we expect the industrialized system that we rely for our existence to be any different.
Renewables can not react to demand they are not demand driven. They are supply driven. You can’t run business that way. No one goes to a pub that occasionally serves beer.
I’m not sure why this is so difficult for people to understand.
Turns out Trumps reasoning is correct unfortunately he doesn’t comprehend that US production is past peak in pretty much everything.
Let me crank out again what I think (which is unacceptable to just about everyone I tell it to):
(A) No AC power grid has ever been run on IRE (intermittent renewable energy — wind, solar, tides, etc.)
(B) AP (artificial photosynthesis — using sunlight to make fuel) has never been commercialized (apparently, its costs exceed its benefits)
Governments have been funding attempts to make such things work, for decades (private investors wouldn’t pay for them) — we may have passed world “peak oil” last year — in this post-Moore’s-law age, isn’t time running out, for such daydreams?
+++++++
Last time we lived on real time energy inputs was 1700.
700 million rapacious apes on the planet, oceans full of fish, continents to plunder.
All thta is gone now.
‘rapacious apes’
+++++++++++
Partner of 50-stone woman uses a FUNNEL to feed her when she’s full to help her gain weight
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/partner-50-stone-woman-uses-8781359
http://firsttopost.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Monica-Riley.jpg
always room for one more Eddy
Gosh… I wouldn’t know where to start…..
Her husband is a secret prepper. He is storing up food for the collapse.
good one
he can certainly come back for seconds
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kinda like a camel ….
gahaha
No space in the harem for SHE!
“So in Hawaii they have a moratorium in place on solar because the grid can’t handle it.”
They have a moratorium on it because the utility company was crying foul because as each house went off grid using their own solar, the utility cost for the remaining customers started going too high. They could see where it was going so they forced a moratorium.
Thank you BJ you just made my point. False information is floated out there and people like you gobble it up.
“The utilities are conspiring against renewables”
“The evil oil companies are conspiring against renewables”
If you have any other pithy insights please send. It’s very entertaining.
And of course GM killed the electric car a few decades ago….
We need a sequel to that — how nobody has to kill the electric car because nobody wants to buy electric cars because they are pcs of shit….
Also electricity is no more sustainable than oil. Adding intermittent electricity makes the grid less sustainable, not more.
The utility is right, unfortunately. Each electricity customer gets two benefits from the electric grid:
–The fact that he and his family can get electricity 24/7/365 from the grid
–The fact that the businesses and government upon which he depends can get electricity from the electric grid 24/7/365.
There needs to be a fairly high “grid maintenance cost” (in some places, as much as 50% of total electricity cost) built into the rate, that doesn’t “go away,” no much how much or little a person uses the electric grid.
Using an electric panel to offset electricity needs part of the day has very little benefit to the electric company–perhaps negative, if it adds a lot of complexity, and if it cannot get a high enough rate from its other customers. But even going off grid completely is not a major way of saving money for the electric utility.
London Cops Adjust to New Terror Reality With Guns, Helicopters
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-04/london-cops-adjust-to-new-terror-reality-with-guns-helicopters
Hmmm….
This sequence of “terrorist events” (in US, France, Belgium, UK, etc.) shows that elites believe they can control the damages when financial collapse occurs. I would like to believe that they are right, but I very much doubt that martial law (which is the ultimate purpose of all of this) can be enforced for long. Anyway, it does not hurt to try.
How do you think they are pulling these off though?
A false flag is not so difficult to arrange…
You can either just allow an act of terrorism to happen i.e. you know of the plan … but you do nothing….
Or as we know — the CIA is behind ISIS (just as it created, funded and armed the Islamic radicals who fought the USSR in Afghanistan) — so you just pass a word down the line that you need a job done….
If you research the downing of the jetliner over Ukraine or the gassing of civilians in Syria — you can understand how this all works… I have posted extensive info on these two incidents previously… they are almost without a doubt false flags – carried out by proxies….
I totally believe you on the Syrian Gas attack. The reason was after that happened John Kerry went to the UN and held up photos of mass graves of bodies all were in body bags. He claimed they were victims of Assad that we had discovered. And it turns out that picture he used was actually taken by a photographer who photographed Iraq during our invasion of it. And he had his own blog since he was a professional photographer for a living. And he made a post about it totally calling Kerry out for lying his ass off. And he had solid undeniable evidence of the same photos from the Iraq war which were time stamped and used in media articles many years prior. I found it on Reddit.. I showed it to my boomer dad. And after he checked it out he told me “I wish I did not know that”.
I know that the CIA was behind this because not long before the CW attack Obama said he would draw the line if Assad used CW….
So what does Assad do — he drops CW on women and children….. duh — is he mentally retarded?
Also the fact that Seymour Hersh and an MIT scientist ruled out that Assad carried out this attack – combined with the fact that the MSM ignore a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist’s analysis of the situation …. well that confirms that the CIA was behind this
Former weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and MIT professor Theodore Postol cast further doubt on Assad’s role in the Ghouta attack. They reported in 2014 that the chemical weapons could have only been fired from rebel-held territory, with a range of up to 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles).
http://www.dw.com/en/is-assad-to-blame-for-the-chemical-weapons-attack-in-syria/a-38330217
Exactly,how on earth do two guys who couldn’t fly a Cessna pilot a commercial jet directly into the ground floor of the Pentagon no ground scars on the lead in at 500mph?
Watch the cruise missile hit the Pentagon
Most people can’t face the truth, it’s simply too scary. They need to believe that government exists to protect us, that earth resources are infinite, that there’s someone in the sky who created us and has special plans for our species in the afterlife, etc., etc.
Paraphrasing La Rochefoucauld: Neither the sun nor truth can be looked at steadily.
But, as someone said here some time ago, perhaps cognitive dissonance is adaptive, since the truth mostly induces depression or carelessness. Then, our species thrives in lies and delusions, until not.
Perhaps those who see the truth —- have an extremely rare genetic flaw… that allows the truth to be seen — without causing deep despair…
Many people here want to know the truth, however hard it may be. Most people outside OFW, on the contrary, are like Johnny Guitar:
I would say most of these cases are hoaxes. A combination of drills and staged events, using crisis actors, in which nobody dies. A striking exemple of this is the silly story of the killer truck in Nice, who allegdly ran over 286 (!!) people. Anyway most people believe in anything they see on MSM.
In other cases the secret services just unleash their patsies, and people really die (as in the Charlie-Hebdo attack)
Killing a few is irrelevant… we all die some day anyway — would be the mindset… and the ends justify the means
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government, that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The plans detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.[2] The proposals were rejected by the Kennedy administration.[3]
At the time of the proposal, communists led by Fidel Castro had recently taken power in Cuba. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government.[4] To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Isn’t it amazing how this operation is publicly acknowledged … yet if you were to suggest to the average MOREon the street that these terrorist attacks we are seeing are quite possibly false flags…
They would think you were nuts.
Go figure.
Well — 99.99999999% of all people are MOREons… so expect little of them
Agreed.
Probably just long enough for the masters of the universe to make their way to their bunkers (prisons)…
Then the gates will be locked down …. and they’ll wash their hands of the cattle.
And we get to eat rats while they dine on tins of caviar and sip champagne while watching re-run after re-run after re-run of their favourite tv shows… recycling their own piss… and waiting to run out of food and die…
Did I mention that a builder told me that he did some work on a mega house on the south island — all the workers were forced to sign NDA’s…. he’d had a few and he was telling me this family had a comprehensive underground bunker complete with a surgery…. beyond that I am not sure what the set up was — no doubt loads of food and water… wonder what sort of air filtration system they had in place…
One wonders what the mega rich are putting in place for doomsday…. they’ll not be advertising it…
They are deluded. As such, they are none of our concern.
And what awful company they’d be for the end of the world! Deluded narcissists…….
It would be like being locked up with Bernie Madoff….
It’s not that hard to figure it out.
For several reasons, in the early 1990s both the East and West decommissioned some of the bunker installations, obviously it was mostly older tech, but you can catch the drive in which directions it was going. Also the industry for private bunker facilities have had several waves of increased interest since then, and they bit by bit spilled many beans what can be bought for money as well. In the same vein, the contractors working on sensitive medical facilities, subs, latest gen gov bunkers, usually can offer generation older equipment on the civilian market, so unless it’s completely novelty different approach, you basically get the some as the big guys, only in bit older re-vision of the same product – technology..
In bunkerology couple of things stand out. Mostly, you don’t need heating, which is a major bummer for all the above surface installations. What you need is recycling of air and water, night soil, + food production (at least token), energy storage, food storage, and there are many known ways how to do in various degrees of quality/longevity of the technology/costs levels/..
Also, it would be helpful to make distinction between the mega rich, systemic players, and owners of the global system. They have different needs, budgets, gov facility clearances etc. The ordinary rich have basically just a bigger m2 space available with off the shelf technology in contrast to diy freaks doing the same only on smaller scale-space.. Most of these digging stories of the “mega rich” are about the lower strata of the wealthy people.
Here is a good overview of the wealth stratification, most “of the rich” usually end up like the guy in suit at 4:11 Only the more affluent fat cats can attempt bigger and freakish parallel bunker societies as it’s shown later in the movie/plot..
https://youtu.be/CyFC_rFobX8?t=251
I won’t name the family involved here… but a cursory glance of the internet puts there cash pile in the hundreds of millions…..
A few million dollars surely would get you quite a nice bunker beneath your house…
Stocks Insider Trading – Walmart – The Walton Family Is Selling A Lot Of Stocks
https://youtu.be/m06EAniLMCw
Low income folks can no longer afford Walmart?
Unit costs are rising, but wages of these people are not. May be related to higher wages for workers.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/us-productivity-growth-stalls-real-compensation-drops-second-quarter-row
http://restlessboomers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/2012-10-07_restlessboomers-shrinking-pie.jpg
Don’t be so upset DelusiSTANI (common)…
I only meant I was going to turn your lights out … to save power…. it’s a green thing
http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/ivlq_useless_light_switch.gif
Oh … and this will not end….so get used to it.
“Tesla will have to start making self-towing cars.”
http://imgur.com/YsZTspn
Yep, the base:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/acd20553a024399a33e17795abcc18f632a57464/0_609_3735_4667/master/3735.jpg?w=880&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=aed0f391442041aeb00a66b2354b39d2
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/acd20553a024399a33e17795abcc18f632a57464/0_609_3735_4667/master/3735.jpg
That picture is exactly what people wanted that voted for Trump. He’s their messiah even if it means many of them will be worse of because of his policies.
That ‘General Scenrey’ photo looks like it has a chemtrail in the sky.
You are right. There are jets that fly through the sky. There is fairly good jet air service within Japan–quick to board. We received very nice seats, without paying extra. (Not sure why.)
Used to fly from LA to Narita on a regular basis.
I just saw contrails never chemtrails.
According to this reference, http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/what-are-chemtrails.htm
chemtrails are simply a new name for contrails, cooked up by conspiracy theorists.
Contrails would be a whole lot better name for them.
Trap house gets raided while dealer is showing off all his drug money on Facebook live.
A couple of points:
-CB’s can continue their game for probably another 20 years, beyond that it gets very hazy as a large cohort of present manager population will simply just start dying of old age
-You are incorrect to point to the resilience of the system being only due to CB’s; the resilience of the system is due to population and resource production/consumption – the mass of workers throughout the world building and maintaining this rotten structure; it’s just there are so many of them, so they can’t get any pricing power behind their wages; all the CB’s do is provide liquidity, and it happens to be that this liquidity first finds its way into private banks, corporations, and big government, who use it to their advantage before it trickles down to the workers
So basically, the entire system is one of symbiosis; the rich rely on the workers for maintenance of the system, the workers rely on the rich for the trickle down money. It took me awhile to understand this, that there is no more class war in society. Don’t waste your time with the working class or left wing marxist politics; the working class deserves nothing but contempt, they rejected every single attempt at their betterment, all in order to waste the resources of the planet, destroy the environment, drive pickup trucks to football games and auto races
So, what should you do? Do whatever you want! Our system is going to collapse, you have total existential freedom. You have absolutely no obligation to a dying system. Learn from the rich! They make fabulous wealth by drowning a collapsed world in debt. Don’t try to save anyone, don’t join a group of preppers, or anything like that. Work for your self advantage, ruthlessly and without mercy until you die.
Adolf, pardon, may I suggest you DONT tell ANYONE what to do! Thank you.
Dolph,
There still remains several problems with these CB policies, them constantly buying just about everything.. keeping this commercial airliner airborne with paper clips, rubber bands and chewing gum
– Not everybody got the memo.. because people are stupid.. somebody just might want to end QE, like tomorrow.. just because.. stupidity
– banks and pension funds need recapitalization, somehow. Zero interest rate policies simply cant keep the banks or the pensions together for much longer
– think about the stock market bubble or the housing bubble growing for another year.. let alone 20 years straight.. that would be incredible.. stupidly incredible.. but surely amazing
– with a deflationary death spiral of falling profits, massive layoffs, how can the economy stay together without people working or paying any taxes, with any sort of QE
We are on life support already, walking a tightrope, putting fingers in leaking holes in the dam, while there are people that keep on saying.. “everything is just fine, because everything has been fine for all this time, everything will be fine forevermore” and because of just.. stupidity.. somebody might think of just ending QE tomorrow..
So, Im amazed we are this far. Im starting to entertain the thought Norm presented about mid 2020s. But to me its still really, really, really pushing the string
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-04/central-banks-now-own-third-entire-54-trillion-global-bond-market
Perpetual economic motion machine — seems we are going to try for it….
“How this amount of debt on bank balance sheets is ever unwound, i.e. sold – even with central banks’ best intentions – without crashing the bond market, we don’t know.”
+++++++++++++
It’s never going to be unwound…. just as interest rates are never going to move significantly higher.
Welcome to the new normal — and enjoy it while it lasts
The tragedy is that they thought that driving pick-up trucks to football games was self-betterment.
Really, it was just the democratic version of aristocratic wastefulness and consumption: building palaces, luxury yachts, covering mistresses with jewels, etc. On a vast scale.
The British PM Harold Macmillan said (privately) in the 1960’s ‘They’ll get what they want, and then they’ll learn that it doesn’t make you happy. We had great houses, estates, yachts, cars, jewels, the lot, and we were miserable.’
Though I’d beg to differ: football matches, and all the other stuff, made a lot of people very happy indeed….
Happiness is relative. Consider how our first world system works. We can, theoretically, live without electricity. But the problem is that electricity does not simply make us “happy.” It is necessary for survival in our current situation. Anything necessary for survival is no longer a luxury item. We often compare ourselves to the Third World with false parallels like this.
Losing your electricity in a cold winter in Massachusetts is entirely different from not having electricity (and never having had it) in a village in Africa. Some of the things we fear losing, although luxurious compared to Third World countries, are certainly worthy of our stress because our lifestyle and civilization will terminate without them. Similarly, British noble families couldn’t just choose to shed complexity without serious consequences for them and their tenants; they were charged with maintaining a form of societal organization. That is the trick of complex systems that is easy to ignore — once complexity builds, shedding it is no longer a matter of choice, and maintaining it becomes a survival necessity.
+++++++++++
Exactly, Sceadu. We’ve happily walked into a cul-de-sac, but the former entrance can’t become our exit, we are stuck there.
This is why having more stuff doesn’t make people happy. It only becomes necessary to maintain more stuff. Anything we’d call fun or luxurious is what exists above and beyond the standard of living in our society. Even something like having two cars per family sounds luxurious in some parts of the world, but it is necessary here in the US (outside of major cities) for a basic middle class lifestyle. I have known people who lived in the suburbs who tried to live with one car, and it certainly complicates their lives and can make it impossible to acquire the income necessary for our lifestyle.
Sceadu, speaking of acquiring more stuff, I just watched the movie Joy with Jennifer Lawrence, based on the true story of Joy Mangano and her revolutionary mop…nice story…however it showed us how she got her break presenting her product on the QVC shopping channel…if there is anything that epitomizes the excess consumption of late 20th and early 21st century shopaholism of Americans its that stupid channel with its stupid crap with that annoying Joan Rivers to top it all off…absolutely depressing…
Yep, the “resilience of the system” in can kicking is something that left many of the half awaken at least since ~2005 profoundly amazed. As you rightly diagnose the psycho-social aspects, the lower classes actually think about themselves as “temporarily inconvenienced billionaires” – there is always this chance of winning a lottery of some sorts. People on this blog and generally in doomer studies often overlook these basic dynamics, which form one of the strongest “everlasting” pillars of BAU.
Although, self and others are often, if not generally, merged.
Artleads, been a while.. anything interesting happening at your end?
Thanks for asking, Van Kent. Things are going well. Hope to get back to this very interesting spot closer to the end of June. Hope you are doing OK.
Liked the article on African cities, by the way.
It says everything about mankind that such skyscrapers are being built, which are impossible to keep functioning without fossil fuels.
A perfectly appropriate indigenous architecture already exists, which should more than satisfy any of the rich there. I’d be very happy in a traditional palace with lots of servants running about if I were them.
But no, the inappropriate and doomed totem architecture, of glass steel and concrete, is what they must have.
I recall being in a London ‘super-prime’ apartment when the air-conditioning failed -impossible to stay in it for more than a few minutes. And that was just on a British summer’s day…..
It’s another illustration that we are, as a species ,simply not bright enough to get out of this mess.
“I’d be very happy in a traditional palace with lots of servants running about if I were them.”
Perfect! 🙂
CB’s can continue their game for probably another 20 years
They’re gonna need to conjure up 160m barrels a day of oil by then, in order to keep the world eCONomy from collapsing…
hmmm…
Even the psychopathic scum getting cold feet:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/04/honduras-dam-activist-berta-caceres
Backers of Honduran dam opposed by murdered activist withdraw funding
International investors withdraw completely from Agua Zarca project
Dam was one of hundreds of projects sanctioned after 2009 military coup
Increasing domestic and geopolitical turmoil is another reason to believe that industrial civilisation cannot survive for very much longer. Unless we discover the hyperdrive!
Impossible to exaggerate how brave Berta Caceres was. RIP.
Protesters against nuclear power were murdered in Spain in the 1970’s.
http://ei.marketwatch.com//Multimedia/2017/06/02/Photos/ZH/MW-FN639_retail_20170602095217_ZH.png?uuid=b0e363ba-479a-11e7-84a9-9c8e992d421e
Ouch!
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/06/01/20170602_WTF1_0.jpg
Amin has a plan. 50% renewables. You betcha!!!
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-apos-totally-wrong-apos-170734892.html
I like the way the folks who do these studies have an air about them that says, “you just don’t get it.”
“The challenges are how to upgrade the transmission and distribution networks” to make the U.S. electric grid flexible and resilient enough to accommodate renewable energy. I would agree that this is a huge, huge problem. But there are other huge problem. Regular supply/demand pricing doesn’t work, when wind and solar both because of their lack of responsiveness to price signals. Also, all electricity producers need a subsidy, because of the extract costs involved in operating at less than full capacity. Because people don’t realize this subsidy need (or believe that only small subsidies will work), intermittent renewables are already driving the backup producers they need away from the electric grid.
If you can make the system actually work, it is terribly complex. This adds a whole new path to failure.
President Donald Trump was “totally wrong” when he said shifting to renewable energy sources would starve parts of the country of electricity and plunge them into darkness, according to people who make a living studying energy.
Donald and his masters are aware of:
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy : Germany’s electricity prices soar to more than double that of the USA because when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow they have to operate and pay for a completely separate back up system that is fueled by lignite coal http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Why Germany’s nuclear phaseout is leading to more coal burning
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations. This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined. Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years. Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer. At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory. https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
Even as Germany adds lots of wind and solar power to the electric grid, the country’s carbon emissions are rising. Will the rest of the world learn from its lesson? After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs. That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
It’s incredibly interesting to watch how the system creates false information. So in Hawaii they have a moratorium in place on solar because the grid can’t handle it. In California they had to change their terms of incentives making it now impossible to get an ROI on solar. But the problem isn’t solar rather its a poor grid or greedy utilities.
The common denominator is solar and wind. They are unreliable at best.
Imagine you had a life threatening condition that requires a 4hr surgery. Would you choose a hospital off grid run on renewables? Not likely. Why would we expect the industrialized system that we rely for our existence to be any different.
Renewables can not react to demand they are not demand driven. They are supply driven. You can’t run business that way. No one goes to a pub that occasionally serves beer.
I’m not sure why this is so difficult for people to understand.
Turns out Trumps reasoning is correct unfortunately he doesn’t comprehend that US production is past peak in pretty much everything.
I see a new 14 billion dollar oil platform is set to begin drilling for oil some 150 miles north of St. John’s, Newfoundland. It is expected to produce 150,000 thousand barrels per day.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/hebron-oil-platform-heads-out-to-new-home-in-nls-grand-banks/ar-BBBUFx7?li=AAgh0dA#image=1
http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBBUMBL.img?h=410&w=728&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f
So at its “expected” rate of production it will take 6-7 yrs to recoup the capital investment, assuming $40 oil.
And that does not include operating costs. It probably will not produce what is expected.
One day we will see the last offshore platform drilled.
“Human societies will continue (maybe, but not a given) with much less oil and gas, but the ever hungry global capitalist amoeba will wither together with most of us.”
Jesse
yes of course absoloutley! What a gamble though 14 billion dollars and from the many comments and essays on this website wasn’t Exxonmobile running huge deficits. Perhaps this is the reason they left the oilsands because their offshore rig was about to be put into service and they couldn’t or can’t afford to do both? Of course everything is an affordability issue but a world without oil is a no go, we have to have oil so I presume the drilling will occur no matter what until the oil companies hit the wall once and for all period. O to be a fly on the wall in boardrooms to actually listen in on what the facts actually are?
If an company wants to remain in operation, it has to have work for its employees. So it tells itself, “Surely prices will rise to $100+ per barrel again. We will drill these wells, even they look unprofitable today. Perhaps their revenue will offset some of our fixed costs. And of course our taxes will be zero or negative (because of our poor financial results), and that will help too.”
What if?
How long can the CBs keep the global economy intact? How long do we have until the end of BAU, forever?
We have to remember its no longer an ordinary situation. With all the QE the CBs are doing, its an smokes and mirrors Twilight Zone.. the global economy will never again be something with normal price discovery, working global markets.. its not Kansas anymore, welcome to the land of OZ, forevermore. But whats next? How long can this go on?
– Can Trump succeed in his $1 trillion infra QE ?
– Can Europe start dropping helicopter money, in the same amounts as Trump drops on infra building?
QE is the policy of the CBs to print money and buy just about everything. So, yes, Trump can make his $1T infra policy work. Somebody, federal or local government, makes bonds in the magnitude of $1T and the CBs print enough money to buy these bonds. So yes, Trumps plan IS possible. (To start, maybe not to actually finish it)
Europe isnt interested in Trumps plan, but is currently trying out helicopter money. Dishing out money, for free, while the CBs are buying the bonds in which the payments were made, makes the helicopter money plan perfectly plausible. And unfortunately in the helicopter money experiment country, Finland, the economy has started growing faster than in Sweden. This will definately send a wrong signal to other European countries.
It wouldnt be surprising if China, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK, all the countries with debt levels of several hundred percent to GDP, will soon have a infra policy, or a helicopter money policy of their own. Or both.
So just how long can this perpetual money printing machine keep on going?
Currently debt levels are increasing by 5.2% annually. GDP is growing 3.2% annually. When debt is taken away ,the real growth of the economy in GDP is 1.8% annually. These are all exponential growth, on a finite planet. (Watch a Al Bartlett lecture if unsure what exponential growth means.) But despite national debt levels going to 200% or 300% or 600% the CBs can keep QE flowing and buy all the bonds available. That is possible..
So just how long can the CBs keep this up?
Money is one thing. But what that money buys, is another. If Trumps climate plan succeeds, the US can build coal plants in rapid succession. Then the US gets an relatively cheap energy infusion, relatively fast. But oil starts to become a problem about 2020 or 2021, with all the reserves and storages now filled. But even with storages now filled to the brim, oil starts to become a problem nonetheless in 2022 or 2023
Rare earth minerals and global food availability will start to become a problem around 2022 to 2023 http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/12/global-food-challenge-explained-18-graphics
What if Norm was right? What if all these crazy mad hatter economics buys the global economy 1 year, 2 years maybe even 3 years more of BAU? What if the CBs take QE to the next levels, and infra policy gets a green light, the helicopter money gets a green light, and China, Japan etc. etc. follow suit immediately, doing both? What if Norm was right, the CBs are juuuuust THAT crazy. And Cliff was right, that the CBs will even throw the kitchen sink at the problem. And, what follows, BAU will stay intact all the way until 2024 or 2025.. what if
2022-23 sounds much more reasonable than before christmas -18. Too much prosperity now and then add momentum to that.
Losing faith in the currency you say? Every time that has happened before there has been an alternative, this time we are stuck with the fiat currencies, and they will be printed as needed.
This is from a worker class first world perspective, for others collapse may already have happened.
DJ,
I still have this strange feeling about Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. If I am buying something from South Korea, a shipment. And all currencies are failing, but Bitcoin or something like it works.. then I would use the cryptocurrency, without even thinking about it..
But will bitcoin(-ish) be allowed if it is anything other than a marginal activity?
In developed countries all wages and handouts are paid digital, and analog cash is more or less disposed anyway.
You could (maybe) circulate bitcoins how much you like, but you can’t get your salary in bitcoins, or buy a house.
If bitcoin worked to dodge tax you could as well use silver.
I guess “the elders” or the families” behind the CB´s will not wait until BAU arrives at an mathematical end. They will reach out for the last cheap oil for their “core” countries.
May be they will risk a (last exit) war with russia.
Good post VK….conclusion: it’s not a question of “if” but “when” BAU collapses and takes us all with it..
BTW, I saw this article yesterday, and I don’t think anyone here on OFW would be “beffudled”….fundamental analysis of markets has been thrown out the door since 2008…CBs are distorting everything (and extremely happy about that or else I would NOT be typing on this keyboard this morning, and no one else for that matter):
“Stock market and bonds rallied at the same time, and it’s befuddling investors”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bonds-and-the-stock-market-are-rallying-at-the-same-time-and-its-befuddling-investors-2017-06-02
What have risen is the short term interest rates; longer term have not. Short term interest rates affect the sale of cars. That is a likely a significant reason why their sales are falling.
I understand that the “premium” for high risk debt has fallen. This helps the price of existing bonds of these companies and of countries selling these bonds.
“Stock market and bonds rallied at the same time, and it’s befuddling investors”
Yes, it’s like the sun rising and setting at the same time, in the same place.
And, what follows, BAU will stay intact all the way until 2024 or 2025.. what if…
The longer it’s delayed, the more resounding the collapse.