Falling interest rates have huge power. My background is as an actuary, so I am very much aware of the great power of interest rates. But a lot of people are not aware of this power, including, I suspect, some of the people making today’s decisions to raise interest rates. Similar people want to sell securities now being held by the Federal Reserve and by other central banks. This would further ramp up interest rates. With high interest rates, practically nothing that is bought using credit is affordable. This is frightening.
Another group of people who don’t understand the power of interest rates is the group of people who put together the Peak Oil story. In my opinion, the story of finite resources, including oil, is true. But the way the problem manifests itself is quite different from what Peak Oilers have imagined because the economy is far more complex than the Hubbert Model assumes. One big piece that has been left out of the Hubbert Model is the impact of changing interest rates. When interest rates fall, this tends to allow oil prices to rise, and thus allows increased production. This postpones the Peak Oil crisis, but makes the ultimate crisis worse.
The new crisis can be expected to be “Peak Economy” instead of Peak Oil. Peak Economy is likely to have a far different shape than Peak Oil–a much sharper downturn. It is likely to affect many aspects of the economy at once. The financial system will be especially affected. We will have gluts of all energy products, because no energy product will be affordable to consumers at a price that is profitable to producers. Grid electricity is likely to fail at essentially the same time as other parts of the system.
Interest rates are very important in determining when we hit “Peak Economy.” As I will explain in this article, falling interest rates between 1981 and 2014 are one of the things that allowed Peak Oil to be postponed for many years.
Figure 1. 10-year Treasury Interest Rates. Chart prepared by St. Louis Fed.
These falling interest rates allowed oil prices to be much higher than they otherwise would have been, and thus allowed far more oil to be extracted than would otherwise have been the case.
Since mid 2014, the big change that has taken place was the elimination of Quantitative Easing (QE) by the US. This change had the effect of disrupting the “carry trade” in US dollars (borrowing in US dollars and purchasing investments, often debt with a slightly higher yield, in another currency).
Figure 2. At this point, oil prices are both too high for many would-be consumers and too low for producers.
As a result, the US dollar rose, relative to other currencies. This tended to send oil prices to a level that is too low for oil producers to make an adequate profit (Figure 2). In addition, governments of oil exporting countries (such as Venezuela, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia) cannot collect adequate taxes. This kind of problem does not lead to immediate collapse. Instead, it “sets the wheels in motion,” leading to collapse. This is a major reason why “Peak Economy” seems to be ahead, even if no one attempts to raise interest rates.
The problem is not yet very visible, because oil prices that are too low for producers are favorable for importers of oil, such as the US and Europe. Our economy actually functions better with these low oil prices. Unfortunately, this situation is not sustainable. In fact, rising interest rates are likely to make the situation much worse, quickly.
In this post, I will explain more details relating to these problems.
Low interest rates are extremely beneficial to the economy; high interest rates are a huge problem.
Low interest rates allow consumers to purchase high-priced goods with affordable monthly payments. With low interest rates, consumers can afford to buy more consumer goods (such as homes and cars) than they could otherwise. Thus, low interest rates tend to lead to high demand for commodities of all kinds, thus raising the price of commodities, such as oil.
Low interest rates are also good for businesses and governments. Their borrowing costs are favorable. Because consumers are doing well, business revenues and tax revenues tend to grow at a brisk pace. It becomes easier to afford new factories, roads, and schools.
While low interest rates are good, a reduction in interest rates is even better.
A reduction in interest rates tends to make asset prices rise. The reason this happens is because if someone already owns an asset (examples: a home, factory, a business, shares of stock) and interest rates fall, that asset suddenly becomes more affordable to other people, so the price of that asset rises because of increased demand. For example, if the monthly mortgage payment for a house suddenly drops from $600 per month to $500 per month because of a reduction in interest rates, many more potential homeowners can afford to buy the house. The price of the house may be bid up to a new higher level–perhaps to a price level where the monthly payment is $550 per month–higher than previously, but still below the old payment amount.
Furthermore, if interest rates fall, owners of homes that have risen in value can refinance their mortgages and obtain the new lower interest rate. Often, they can withdraw the “excess equity” and spend it on something else, such as a new car or home improvements. This extra spending tends to stimulate the economy, and thus tends to raise commodity prices. Suddenly, investments in oil fields that previously looked too expensive to extract, and mines with ores of very low grade, start looking profitable. Businesses hire workers to staff the investments that are now profitable, stimulating the economy.
Businesses receive other benefits, as well, when interest rates fall. Their borrowing cost on new loans falls, making new investment more affordable. Demand for their products tends to rise. The additional demand that results from lower interest rates allows economies of scale to work their magic, and thus allows profits to rise.
Companies that have large portfolios of investments, such as insurance companies and pension funds, find that the values of their assets (stocks, bonds, and other investments) rise when interest rates fall. Thus, their balance sheets look better. (Of course, the low interest payments when interest rates are low provide a different problem for these companies. Here, we are talking about the impact of falling interest rates.)
Of course, the reverse of all of these things is also true. It is truly bad news when interest rates rise!
Wages Depend on Interest Rates and Debt Growth
When interest rates fall, debt levels tend to rise. This happens because expensive goods such as homes, cars, and factories become more affordable, so customers can buy more of them. Thus, falling interest rates are very closely associated with rising debt levels.
We find that when we look at debt levels, rising debt levels seem to be highly correlated with rising US per capita wages, (especially up until China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and globalization took off). “Per capita wages” are calculated by dividing total wages and salaries by total population. Per capita wages thus reflect the impact of both (a) changes in the wages of individual workers and (b) changes in workforce participation. Using this measure “makes sense,” if we think of the total population as being supported by the wages of the working population, either directly or indirectly (such as through taxes).
Figure 3. Growth in US Wages vs. Growth in Non-Financial Debt. Wages from US Bureau of Economics “Wages and Salaries.” Non-Financial Debt is discontinued series from St. Louis Federal Reserve. (Note chart does not show a value for 2016.) Both sets of numbers have been adjusted for growth in US population and for growth in CPI Urban.
What does oil price depend upon?
Oil price depends upon the amount customers can afford to pay for oil and the finished products it produces. The amount customers can afford, in turn, depends very much on interest rates, since these influence both wages and monthly payments on loans. If the price that a significant share of consumers can afford is below the selling price of oil, we get an oil glut, as we have today.
It is important to note that oil and other energy products are important in determining the cost of finished products, such as cars, homes, and factories. Thus, high prices on energy products tend to ripple through the economy in many different ways. Many people consider only the change in the cost of filling a car’s gasoline tank; this approach gives a misleading impression of the impact of oil prices.
Affordability is also affected by growing wage disparity. Growing wage disparity tends to occur because of growing complexity and specialization. Globalization also contributes to wage disparity. These are other problems we encounter as we approach energy limits. Demand for commodities is to a significant extent determined by the wages of non-elite workers because there are so many of them. High wage workers tend to influence commodity prices less because their purchases are skewed toward a greater share of services, and toward the purchase of financial assets.
Because interest rates, debt, wages, and oil prices (and, in fact, commodity prices of all kinds) are linked, the system is much more complex than what most early modelers assumed was the case.
Hubbert’s Theory Underlies Many Mainstream Energy Beliefs
Today’s mainstream beliefs about our energy problems seem to be strongly influenced by Peak Oil theory. Peak Oil theory, in turn, is based on an analysis by geophysicist M. King Hubbert. This view does not consider interest rates, debt, or prices.
Figure 4. M. King Hubbert’s symmetric curve explaining the way he saw resources depleting from Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels, published in 1956.
In this view, the amount of any exhaustible resource that we can extract depends on the resources in the ground, plus the technology we have to extract these resources. In general, Hubbert expected an approximately symmetric curve of extraction, as illustrated in Figure 4. The peak is expected when about 50% of the resource is extracted. Hubbert believed that improved technology might allow more exhaustible resources to be extracted after peak, making the actual extraction pattern somewhat asymmetric, with a larger share of a resource, such as oil, being extracted after peak.
With this theory, we can expect to extract a considerable amount of resources in the future, even if the energy supply of a particular type starts to fall, because it is “past peak.” With the relatively slow decline rate shown in Figure 4, it should be possible to “stretch” supplies for some years, especially if technology continues to improve.
At some point, the standard view is that we will “run out” of energy supplies if we don’t make substitutions or conserve the use of these nonrenewable resources. Thus, an increase in efficiency is viewed as one part of the solution. Another part of the solution is viewed as substitution, such as with wind and solar energy.
In the mainstream view, the major influence on commodity prices is scarcity, not affordability. The expectation is that scarcity will cause oil prices will rise; as a result, expensive substitutes will become cost competitive. The higher prices will also encourage more conservation and more high-cost technologies. In theory, these can keep the economy operating for a very long time. The very inadequate models that economists have developed have encouraged these views.
The Usual Energy Model Is Overly Simple
Hubbert assumed that the amount of oil extracted would depend only upon the amount of resources available and available technologies. In fact, the amount of oil extracted depends on price, in part because price determines which technologies can be used. It also governs whether oil can be extracted in areas that are inherently expensive–for example, deep under the sea, or heavily polluted with some other material that must be removed at significant cost. Because of this, if oil prices are high, new technologies can be brought into play, and resources that are expensive to reach can be pursued.
If oil prices are lower than really needed, for example in the $40 to $80 per barrel range, the situation is more complex. The problem is that taxes on oil are important, especially for oil exporters. In this range, many producers can continue to produce, but their governments collect inadequate taxes. Their governments find it necessary to borrow money to maintain programs upon which the populations of the countries depend. Governments with inadequate tax revenue tend to get into more conflicts with other countries, such as is happening today with other Middle Eastern countries fighting with Qatar.
The situation of inadequate tax revenue is inherently unstable. It can eventually be expected to lead to the collapse of oil exporting countries.
Factors Underlying the Rise and Fall of Historical Oil Prices
The fundamental problem regarding the cost of resource extraction is that we tend to extract the cheapest-to-extract resources first. Thus, the cost of extracting many types of resources, including oil, tends to rise over time. Wages grow much more slowly.
Figure 5. Average per capita wages computed by dividing total “Wages and Salaries” as reported by US BEA by total US population, and adjusting to 2016 price level using CPI-Urban. Average inflation adjusted oil price is based primarily on Brent oil historical oil price as reported by BP, also adjusted by CPI-urban to 2016 price level.
This mismatch between wages and oil price tends to cause increasing affordability problems over time, even as we switch to cheaper fuels and increased efficiency. Part of the reason why affordability problems get worse has to do with our inability to keep reducing interest rates; at some point, they reach an irreducible minimum. Also, as I mentioned previously, there is a growing wage disparity problem caused by growing complexity and globalization. Those with low wages find themselves increasingly unable to afford goods such as homes and cars that require oil products in their construction and use.
Looking at Figure 5, we see two major price “humps.” The first of these is in the 1970-1998 period, and the second is in the 1999 to present period. In the first of these two periods, we often hear that the run up in oil prices was the result of an oil supply problem. This occurred because the US oil supply peaked in 1970, and the Arabs made the situation worse with an oil embargo.
In fact, I think that at least half of the problem in the 1970-1981 period may have been that wages were growing rapidly during this period. The rapid run up in wages allowed oil prices to increase in response to a fairly small oil shortage. Thus, the run up in prices was caused to a significant extent by greater demand, made possible by greater affordability. Note that timing of wage increases is slightly ahead of the timing of increases in CPI Urban. This suggests that wage growth tends to cause price inflation. It seems likely that globalization reduces the influence of US wages on oil prices, and thus on price inflation, in recent years.
Figure 6. Growth in US wages versus increase in CPI Urban. Wages are total “Wages and Salaries” from US Bureau of Economic Analysis. CPI-Urban is from US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The large increases in wage payments shown in Figure 6 were made possible by growing total population, by rapidly growing productivity, and by an increasing share of women being added to the workforce. Figure 6 shows that the big increases in wages stopped after interest rates were raised to a very high level in 1981.
Economists hope that rising oil prices will bring about new supply, substitution, and greater efficiency. In the 1970s and 1980s, oil prices did seem to come back down for precisely these reasons. I explain the situation in more detail in the Appendix. Rising inflation rates and interest rates were a problem during this period for insurance companies. One insurance company I worked for went bankrupt; another almost did.
We have not been able to achieve the same new supply–substitution–efficiency result in the 1999 to 2016 period, partly because whatever easy efficiency and substitution changes could inexpensively be made were made earlier, and partly because we are reaching diminishing returns with respect to extracting energy products, especially oil. Also, the wage disparity of workers is growing. Growing wage disparity makes debt growth increasingly ineffective in raising wages. Instead of debt growth funding more wages and more affordable goods for the working poor, the additional debt seems to go to the already rich.
The decreases in interest rates since 1981 have given the economy an almost continuous upward lift. This long-term decrease tends to get overlooked because it has gone on for such a long time. The major exception to the long-term decrease in interest rates since 1981 was the big increase by the Federal Reserve in target interest rates in the 2004-2006 period (shown indirectly in Figure 7).
Figure 7. Three-month treasury rates. Graph prepared by the St. Louis Fed.
The problem started when Alan Greenspan dropped target interest rates very low in the 2001-2004 period to stimulate the economy, and then raised them in the 2004-2006 period to cut back growth (Figure 7). This seems to have been one of the major causes of the Great Recession. The other major cause of the Great Recession was fact that oil prices rose far more rapidly than wages during the 2003-2008 period. More information is provided in the Appendix.
Where We Are Now
We have many leaders who do not seem to understand what our real problems are, and how successful programs have been to date in keeping the system from crashing. Way too much of their understanding has come from traditional models regarding “land, labor and capital,” “supply and demand,” and “higher prices bring substitution.” These models are not suitable for understanding how the economy, as a self-organized networked system, really works.
These leaders seem to believe that QE worldwide is no longer working well enough, so it should be removed. In addition, securities currently held by central banks should be sold. Also, the growth in debt should be slowed, because it is getting too high. Whether or not debt is too high, this strategy will lead to “Peak Economy.” As I explained in an earlier post, debt is what pulls an economy forward. It is the promise (which may or may not actually be kept) of future goods and services. These goods will be made with energy resources and other resources that we may or may not actually have in the future. Once we pare back our expectations, the system is likely to spiral downward.
It is not entirely clear the extent to which interest rates have already started to influence the economy. Long term interest rates, such as 10 year Treasuries, have not yet changed in yield (Exhibit 1). But short-term interest rates clearly have increased (Figure 7). An increase from 0% to 1% is a huge increase, if someone is using very short-term interest rates to fund highly levered investments.
Worldwide, the International Institute of Finance reported an increase in debt of $70 trillion, to $215 trillion between 2006 and 2016. This sounds like a huge increase, but it only amounts to a 4.0% increase per year during that period. It is doubtful this is enough to support the GDP growth the world needs, plus the increase in commodity prices demanded by diminishing returns.
There is evidence the economy is already headed downward. A recent report indicates that in the US, the smallest increase in consumer credit in 6 years took place in April 2017.
Another worrying area is auto loans. This is an area where interest rates have already begun to increase a bit, making monthly payments on cars higher.
Figure 8. Finance rate on 48-month new car loans through February 2017. Chart by St. Louis Fed.
The average finance rate in February 2017 was 4.52%, compared to an average finance rate of 4.00% in November 2015 (the low point). We don’t yet have information on what the increase would be to May 2017. A person would expect that if finance rates are following the interest rates on short to medium term US government securities, the finance rate would continue to rise. This interest rate rise would be one of the things that discounts provided by auto dealers would act to offset.
Because of the higher cost to the buyer of rising auto financing rates, a person would expect such a rise to adversely affect new auto sales. Higher interest rates would also affect lease prices and auto resale prices. We don’t yet know the extent to which higher interest rates are currently affecting auto sales, but the kinds of changes we are seeing are precisely the kinds of changes we would expect to see from higher interest rates. We have had a long history of falling interest rates (plus longer maturities) helping to prop up auto sales. Simply getting to the end of this cycle could be part of the problem.
Peak Economy is likely not very far away. We do not need to encourage it, by raising interest rates and selling securities held by the Federal Reserve. We badly need more people to understand the connection between interest rates and oil prices, and how important it is that interest rates not rise–in fact, more QE would be better.
Appendix – More Detail on Changes Affecting Oil Prices
(a) Between 1973 and 1981. Our oil problems started when US oil production began to decline in 1970, and Arab countries took advantage of our problems with an oil embargo. We immediately started work on extracting oil from other locations that we knew had oil available (Alaska, North Sea, and Mexico). Also, Japan was already making smaller cars. We started building smaller, more fuel-efficient cars in the US, too. We also began to substitute other fuels for oil in home heating and in the making of electricity.
(b) Between 1981 and 1998. In 1981, Paul Volker decided to force oil prices down by raising target interest rates to a very high level. He knew that such a high interest rate would lead to recession, which would reduce demand and thus prices. Also, earlier efforts at new oil supply and demand reduction approaches began to be effective. The new oil supply was somewhat higher priced than the pre-1970 oil. Falling interest rates made it possible for consumers to tolerate the somewhat higher oil prices required by the new higher priced oil.
(c) Between 1999 and 2008. Oil prices rose rapidly during this period, in large part because of rising demand. Globalization added huge demand for oil. Also, Alan Greenspan reduced target interest rates at about the time of the 2001 recession. (Target interest rates affect 3-month interest rates, shown in Figure 7.) At the same time, banks were encouraged to be more lenient in lending standards, and to offer loans based on the very favorable short-term interest rates available at that time. This combination of factors led to rapidly rising housing debt and much refinancing activity. All of this activity also added to oil demand.
Fortunately, these demand increases coincided with an increase in the cost of oil extraction. The world’s supply of “conventional oil” was becoming limited in supply, and began to decline in 2005. The higher demand raised prices, thus encouraging producers to pursue more expensive unconventional oil production.
(d) The 2008 Crash occurred after the Federal Reserve raised target interest rates in the 2004-2006 period, in an attempt to damp down rising food and energy prices. This interest rate rise made home buying more expensive. Oil prices were also increasing in the 2002-2008 period. The combination of rising interest rates and rising oil prices reduced demand for new homes and cars. Home prices fell, debt levels fell, and oil prices fell. Many people blamed the problems on loose mortgage underwriting standards, but the basic issue was falling affordability of oil, as oil prices rose and as higher interest rates took away the huge boost the economy previously had received. See my article, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis.
(e) 2009-2011 ramp up in prices was enabled by QE. This QE brought a broad range of interest rates to very low levels.
(f) 2011-2014. Oil prices gradually slid downward, because there was no longer enough upward “push” created by QE, since interest rates were no longer falling very much.
(g) Mid to late 2014 to Present. The US removed its QE, leading to a sharp reduction in carry trade in US dollars. Many currencies fell relative to the US dollar, making oil products less affordable in these currencies. As a result, oil prices fell to a level far below that needed by oil producers, especially oil exporters.
Falling oil prices mean tough times ahead for Canadian oil sands
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oil-prices-at-40-bucks-can-oilpatch-take-it-1.4175220
Push on with the ‘great unwinding’, BIS tells central banks
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cenbank-bis-report-idUKKBN19G0F5
Top Central bankers warn next global crash could arrive ‘with a vengeance’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/global-financial-crash-central-bankers-warn-back-with-a-vengeance-china-debt-gdp-ratio-a7807811.html
Man, what a great article. Thanks.
It predicted that central banks would be forced to raise interest rates after years of record lows in order to combat inflation which will “smother” growth.
Fifty years ago: The White House knew all about climate change
Fifty years ago, on November 5, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House released “Restoring the Quality of our Environment”, a report that described the impacts of climate change, and foretold dramatic Antarctic ice sheet loss, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. That 1965 White House report stated
“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more CO2 in our atmosphere than present.”
Catastrophically, on the 50th anniversary of the White House report, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are indeed at 399 ppm: 25 percent over 1965 levels, exactly as predicted 50 years ago. Science
“This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.”
Remarkably, instead of taking affirmative steps to combat the climate change it knew was coming, our federal government became the primary contributor to climate change in the U.S., both by extensively burning fossil fuels itself and by encouraging and enabling the extensive development of fossil fuels over the last 50 years.
Can you lay out what these alternative steps involve?
No, we leave to Mister Ed the ALMIGHTY… The final word in the Destiny of the future of Humanity…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sPbjPOgRtyA
Too bad Mister Ed, President Johnson….later President Nixon….didn’t pose that question.
Suppose to are a slooow leaner too.
So you agree – TINA
I would hope you don’t respond to this — because that would mean you are still using electricity… and destroying the world… because we all know that most electricity is created when we
Burn More Coal.
Rather ironic isn’t it — you are using coal — to tell me to stop burning coal.
Stooopidity is limitless
It’s ALL my fault Mister ED…yes SIR…Destroyers of Worlds…
Man, back in 1970 there was the first EARTH DAY, the world’s population was say half of what it was now, never mind the Chinese had one suit of cloths along with a bike if they were rich…funny how the Chinese were doing us all a favor by following the writings of Chairman Mao.
Anyway, your solution is the BEST foy YOU…so hop on a plane for ANOTHER “End of the World” Party TRIP…Boy, you know how to live the Good Life!
Looks like you have gone off the deep end Jeremy.
That’s what happens when facts crash head into cognitive dissonance.
Now you be sure to enjoy that electricity — and the petrol — and the comfy house…. all courtesy of fossil fuels …
But don’t forget — that you are destroying the planet every time you flick a light switch on — or post on FW
I have disdain for most people — because they are stooopid bas…tards…
But I particularly despise Green Groupie hippo Crits…. you know — those people who moan about how we are wrecking the world —- then jump into their tonne of metal and plastic and drive to the next Stop Burning Coal Protest.
Let’s take a look at the home of the King of Hippo Crits….
Al Gore:
https://johnsimonds.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/al-gores-home-in-nashville.jpg
Jeremy – do you live in a house the resembles this?
https://macuti.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/dsc_0501_front.jpg
If not – then you are what is hereby referred to as a Hippo-critter.
Yep, soon well be wishing to be living in that twig hut….in between pounding stones together, as a grub is placed in our thirsty lips.
Good to see you think you are no different from Al Gore.
There is hope for you yet!
I am no different from Gore – you got that right — although the house I live in is maybe a 10th the size of his.
How about you Jeremy — what are you doing to save the planet? Or are you just sitting there moaning about how its everyone’s fault except yours?
Each time you post your stooopidity on FW — that is sticking a pin into mother earth… think of all the electricity your computer is using…..
Alas you cannot help yourself — you just continue to Burn More Coal.
Come on Jeremy — post another comment — toss another shovel of Coal onto the Fire!
https://dur-duweb.newscyclecloud.com/storyimage/DU/20110807/NEWS01/708079892/EP/1/8/EP-708079892.jpg
See, Mister Ed is saying AL Gore is going to determine his own actions!
Monkey see, monkey do… Wonder is Mister Ed can perhaps determine his own actions?
Oh, that’s too much for him, maybe Gail can pitch in to help.
Jeremy The MOREon… goes on and on and on….
You’re the one arguing…. What does that make you? LOL
Give us another post Jeremy …. come on …. I know you can’t resist… Burning More Coal!
Ironic isn’t it?
With every post
Nay, every LOL
Jeremy burns a bit more coal!
But don’t don’t it to heart, Jeremy.
You are not particularly to blame.
And in an case attributing blame
Is just another of our favorite games.
Being born and growing up during this particular period,
What else could you or any of us do?
Catastrophically, on the 50th anniversary of the White House report, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are indeed at 399 ppm: 25 percent over 1965 levels, exactly as predicted 50 years ago. Science
No, not science. Economics, demographics and simple math actually. No offense,, Jeremy, but you could have worked that one out on the back of an envelope. None of it was what non-scientists like to call ” rocket science”.
And no, not catastrophically. The rise in CO2 has not produced any catastrophic consequences whatsoever. The measurable results so far have been entirely beneficial. More CO2 makes plants grow bigger and better and allows them to survive and thrive under a greater range of conditions. This has been well known and documented for at least a century.
http://www.sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization1_50pct.jpg
http://www.sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization.html
“This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.”
Weasel word: could
Actual observations/real world data: hasn’t happened. Natural climate change is not controllable, and no changes in climate beyond those that occur naturally have been observed anywhere over the past half century.
Tim Groves says:
…”and no changes in climate beyond those that occur naturally have been observed anywhere over the past half century.”
On what planet do you live, pal?
Here’s the thing…. in the past I have gotten into very heated arguments with global warming deniers….
So I was you…
And now I am leaning in the direction of Gail’s explanation — the global warming – solar – Tesla thing… is all about deflecting from the real issue — which is that we are out of cheap oil….
The more I think about it – the more this makes sense — as I have stated there is NOTHING that can be done about climate change — even if man is impacting something that never was static to begin with…
So why the incessant drum beat????
Oh and then we have the chief spokesman for global warming – Al Gore — urging us to DO SOMETHING — and alas he lives in a f789ing mega mansion!!! http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp
Thing about that… does that not sound like someone who is acting?
And finally we have this F789tard — Mr Green — flying around in a private jet
http://www.private-jet-fan.com/elon-musk-jet.html
And the spokestosser Di Caprio
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3044176/Leonardo-DiCaprio-eco-warrior-flew-private-jet-NY-LA-SIX-times-SIX-weeks-Sony-hack-documents-reveal.html
Again … if this was real — do you really think that the leading spokesmen would be burning jet fuel by the tonne????
More acting….
Like I said —- it embarrassing to realize one has been played.
It’s not just shale making life hard for OPEC:
“Brazil’s most crippling recession on record is complicating life for OPEC.
“The nation’s growing oil production combined with slumping domestic demand has unleashed record exports, undermining OPEC’s efforts to reverse falling prices through output cuts.
“Brazil hit a daily production record of 1.5 million barrels earlier this year, 26 percent more than the previous record set in 2010. Average exports surged 39 percent in the first four months of 2017 from the previous year. State-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the country’s dominant producer and the source of half its crude exports, expects to end 2017 with 30 percent growth in international sales.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/opec-gets-another-supply-headache-from-surging-brazilian-exports
If shale oil was so profitable, wouldn’t OPEC make efforts produce it instead of conventional oil? After all shale oil is making life for OPEC hard so they should jump on the shale oil bandwagon.
Funny how so many people are bereft of logic and common sense… whatever the MSM tells them to think… they lap it up … like the MOREons they are
You nailed it Greg. Why aren’t they here beating the shale guys at their own game?
I would challenge anyone to try and out run that logic.
Don’t you guys realize that shale oil is just the beginning?!
Just wait until we discover chalk oil, limestone oil, old Devon sandstone oil, Weald oil London clay oil… The UK will lead the world again!!
Not in energy production, but at least in hype.
“If shale oil was so profitable, wouldn’t OPEC make efforts produce it instead of conventional oil? After all shale oil is making life for OPEC hard so they should jump on the shale oil bandwagon.”
Shale oil formations do not exist in the middle east, hence Saudi cannot produce it.
Not many countries have shale oil that is recoverable by fracking.
Pete — it is not a good idea to just make shit up … because we are gonna go rooting around the interweb… and look for facts… because we do not just accept shit because people say we should….
There is a lot of shale oil and gas in countries around the world including the ME… one of the main reasons it is not extracted is because the global economy can only subsidize so much of this type of oil without tipping over
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas_by_country
FE….
Read before you post.
Where in your links does it show that Saudi has vast reserves of shale oil. ???
Gas maybe….
But the poster above was asking why the ‘Saudis’ do not produce shale oil.
I wonder if Brazil’s problem isn’t the same as Saudi Arabia’s. It doesn’t cost a huge amount to extract the oil [but this is strange for Pre-Salt Layer Oil]. Instead, the problem is that the low prices don’t give the government enough tax revenue for their programs, including the Olympics. It is thus possible to extract as much oil and Brazil desires, to cover the company’s overhead expenses, and to provide a little tax revenue for Brazil. This strategy gives the world too much oil to keep prices up where oil exporting governments need the exports.
look at this image this photo is of the food supply chain
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.gif
after watching this image does anybody thinking after bau collapse
will have knowledgeable of making food or which seeds will grow foods
Is it a downloadable app from ITunes?
no i found this image from article
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.html
[JT’s f***ing with you bro] 😉
Snatched from wolfst comments
Online retail only partially accounts for the decline of brick and mortar retail. For the majority of the explanation one must look elsewhere.
– Retail oversaturation
– Inflated prices for CRE
– Inflated prices for residential real estate
– Wage deterioration for the general population
– Deteriorating labor participation
– Inflated costs for student loans
– Inflated costs for medical services
– Diversion of income into debt servicing
– Lack of household formation
– Changes in spending habits, for example, cars instead of clothes
It’s hard to get reliable statistics to form an accurate picture because so many of them are fudged and/or subject to interpretation.
Interestingly enough, resale seems to be increasing even while conventional B&M retail sinks. For example, Goodwill Industries alone is now a $5 billion/year operation, and certain secondhand chains are adding locations.
https://www.narts.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3285
lol I can relate to the Goodwill Industries and second hand locations adding locations. In my home town it used to bring my thinking to stop as I pondered how many there are too many in fact. Not anymore though after reading this blog. What makes me think now though is the number of drug stores that keep popping up. We have some 9 pharmacies in a four block radius. It boggles my mind the money in drugs, people are addicted to everything and then some. And they call all this scat Medicine?
It’s the same in Japan. Big box chain drugstores are popping up like mushrooms. Our local town of 80,000 now has eight of them open all hours and never crowded.
me being notice one thing is that people are become extremist in reglion or
become athiest
atheist
Perhaps this is like growing wage disparity. Instead of many moderates, we end up with people with beliefs at either end of the spectrum.
Religion is fine in many cases, but I’d rather its emphasis be quiet, private, and in the background. If it starts taking up most of the attention, it means people are not doing anything constructive where our seemingly doomed species is concerned. It’s like being in a leaking boat and dancing around making trouble instead of bailing out the water. Being pushed over the side is not undue treatment for such people.
The writer William Dalrymple made a film about that, he lives just outside Delhi I believe: that moderate attitudes are dying and there is a real danger of religious extremists taking over. He didn’t mention atheism though.
An atheist is simply someone who doesn’t add or subtract anything from reality.
A theist adds invisible friends, psychopathic sky daddy’s, and invisible worlds, just to name a few.
Secular, religion free societies have the highest societal health.
We all add and subtract from so called reality. We are story telling beings. We make stuff up. What we see as reality is PARTLY the invention of our forebears passed down through time. (A good exploration of this was JMG’s two latest articles from his old archdruid blog.) I think atheism has more to do with the secular and materialist nature of industrial society. If you can’t weigh and measure it, it’s not real. Ergo, no god(s) or spirits exist.
“If you can’t weigh and measure it, it’s not real. Ergo, no god(s) or spirits exist.”
But that’s a story too.
If you need to believe it, it is not true.
I just never found the whole religion thing at all convincing. Still, physics and materialism are virtually silent on the subject of consciousness. Why should you and I, made of atoms and forces, matter and energy, have an inner subjective experience, a what-it’s-like-to-be?
Why aren’t we mindless zombies? Why do we exist at all when the odds are so against it? We always seem to find ourselves in a world that is just so for us to be allowed to collectively and individually exist. This is why I fine the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics so convincing. It’s mind blowing stuff really. Every that can happen has happened. And everything that can happen will happen. Do I live in the universe where we figure something out an so Kurzweil’s singularity comes to fruition? I don’t know. It all goes back to the measurement problem. If anyone here wants their mind blown, investigate quantum mechanics and see how far down the rabbit hole you can go.
Duncan, you seem to be simply making up definitions on the fly and implicitly declaring them to be the truth.
Hobbes claimed that we create our own objects of knowledge, so we can never be sure of what we know. This shifts the emphasis on what there is to be know to what is known about the knower that makes knowledge possible. According to Theresa Man Ling Lee, this is at the heart of Hobbes’s minimalism, which maintains that truth is an attribute of language rather than of things. In this conception, Hobbes’s Leviathan is created to ensure that truth as an artificial construct remains stable over time as it is instrumental to political order.
Don’t you agree?
And by the way, once the atheist or anyone else adds conceptual thoughts, wishes, interpretations or reveries to their experience, they have “added” something to reality. You only have to be watching a sunset and say to yourself, “what a beautiful sunset!” and you have added something to reality.
So I suspect your definition of an atheist applies more accurately to frogs and grasshoppers than it does to humans, who are the consummate ruminators and fantasists of the animal kingdom.
This is interesting when BAU ends the Tibetan’s will know who to blame.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinas-hydropower-frenzy-drowns-sacred-mountains-034736338.html
Good point at end, about hydropower needing backup from fossil fuels during dry periods. There are a few parts of the world that have melting glaciers all year, and thus can reliably depend on hydropower. But in areas where hydropower is powered by rainfall, the amount can vary greatly from year to year. And even where it depends on snow and glacier melt, the amount of water can vary considerably over the course of a year.
Not to mention Dams are ecosystem destroyers.
Best solution for a dam?
http://the-wanderling.com/hoover24.jpg
But the nice thing about having “no solutions” is that it tends not to matter what specific things we try in order to save something. We can do what we like. (If we save one thing, ten more things are tossed overboard at the same time.) Since I’m trying ‘no demolition of anything’ as my “solution,” I’d try some other way to save salmon. I saw where a native tribe would build traps that collected salmon in large numbers. Of course they harvested the salmon, but that was most likely done without driving that population extinct. So I would prefer some micro engineering miracle that preserved the bulk of the dams and helped the environment too. And provided work along the way.
Something else that’s scary about water:
https://www.facebook.com/DavidAvocadoWolfe/videos/10154606475971512/
China is a bloody villainous country. And they are using their money to kill off the rest of the planet.
What’s the big deal?
Time for a refresher…
The way the world works:
– The luckiest, fittest, smartest, with the capability for ruthlessness survive – always have – always will
– Resources are finite and therefore ownership is a zero sum game
– The strong always take from the weak – if they do not then that is a sign of weakness and a competitor will take from the weak and will usurp the formerly strong dropping them into weakling status
– Humans tend to group by clan or on a broader basis by nationality (strength in numbers bonded by culture) and they compete with others for resources
– Competition always exists (I want it all!) but it becomes fiercer when resources are not sufficient to support competing clans or nations
– Tribal societies understand these dynamics because they cannot go to the grocery store for their food – so they are intimately aware of the daily battle to feed themselves and the competition for scare land and resources
– Modern affluent societies do not recognize this dynamic because for them resources are not scarce – they have more than enough.
– One of the main reasons that resources are not scarce in affluent societies is because they won the battle of the fittest (I would argue that luck is the precursor to all other advantages – affluent societies did not get that way because they started out smarter — rather they were lucky – and they parlayed that luck into advances in technology… including better war machines)
– As we have observed throughout history the strong always trample the weak. Always. History has always been a battle to take more in the zero sum game. The goal is to take all if possible (if you end up in the gutter eating grass the response has been – better you than me – because I know you’d do the same to me)
– And history demonstrates that the weak – given the opportunity – would turn the tables on the strong in a heartbeat. If they could they would beat the strong into submission and leave them bleeding in the streets and starving. As we see empire after empire after empire gets overthrown and a new power takes over. Was the US happy to share with Russia and vice versa? What about France and England? Nope. They wanted it all.
– Many of us (including me) in the cushy western world appear not to understand what a villager in Somalia does – that our cushy lives are only possible because our leaders have recognized that the world is not a fair place — Koobaya Syndrome has no place in this world — Koombaya will get you a bullet in the back — or a one way trip to the slum.
– Religious movements have attempted to change the course of human nature — telling us to share and get along — they have failed 100% – as expected. By rights we should be living in communes — Jesus was a communist was he not? We all know that this would never work. Because we want more. We want it all.
– But in spite of our hypocrisy, we still have this mythical belief that mankind is capable of good – that we make mistakes along the way (a few genocides here, a few there… in order to steal the resources of an entire content so we can live the lives we live) — ultimately we believe we are flawed but decent. We are not. Absolutely not.
– But our leaders — who see through this matrix of bullshit — realize that our cushy lives are based on us getting as much of the zero sum game as possible. That if they gave in to this wishy washy Koombaya BS we would all be living like Somalians.
– Of course they cannot tell us what I am explaining here — that we must act ruthlessly because if we don’t someone else will — and that will be the end of our cushy lives. Because we are ‘moral’ — we believe we are decent – that if we could all get along and share and sing Koombaya the world would be wonderful. We do not accept their evil premises.
– So they must lie to us. They must use propaganda to get us onside when they commit their acts of ruthlessness.
– They cannot say: we are going to invade Iraq to ensure their oil is available so as to keep BAU operating (BAU which is our platform for global domination). The masses would rise against that making things difficult for the PTB who are only trying their best to ensure the hypocrites have their cushy lives and 3 buck gas (and of course so that the PTB continue to be able to afford their caviar and champagne) …. Because they know if the hypocrites had to pay more or took at lifestyle hit – they’d be seriously pissed off (and nobody wants to be a Somalian)
– Which raises the question — are we fools for attacking the PTB when they attempt to throw out Putin and put in a stooge who will be willing to screw the Russian people so that we can continue to live large? When we know full well that Putin would do the same to us — and if not him someone more ruthless would come along and we’d be Somalians.
– Should we be protesting and making it more difficult for our leaders to make sure we get to continue to lead our cushy lives? Or should we be following the example of the Spartans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZeYVIWz99I
– In a nutshell are our interests as part of the western culture not completely in line with those of our leaders – i.e. if they fail we fail – if they succeed we succeed.
– Lee Kuan Yew is famous for saying ‘yes I will eat very well but if I do so will you’ Why bite the hand that whips the weak to make sure you eat well…. If you bite it too hard it cannot whip the weak — making you the weak — meaning you get to feel the whip….
– Nation… clan … individual…. The zero sum game plays out amongst nations first … but as resources become more scarce the battle comes closer to home with clans battling for what remains…. Eventually it is brother against brother ….
– As the PTB run out of outsiders to whip and rob…. They turn on their own…. As we are seeing they have no problem with destroying the middle class because it means more for them… and when the weak rise against them they have no problem at all deploying the violent tactics that they have used against the weak across the world who have attempted to resist them
– Eventually of course they will turn against each other…. Henry Kissinger and Maddy Albright bashing each other over the head with hammers fighting over a can of spam – how precious!
Tibet is weak. F789 Tibet.
My longer earlier response disappeared somehow. I see you’ve thought about this with great thoroughness. My learning curve has never been so high as here on FW.
But I’m dedicated to doing things that make no sense. So I believe that if I carry on in my own crazy way, keeping my own outlook positive, the world will change in a direction that DOES make some sense. I’ll be darned if I can figure out how, but over a long life, that is what my experience suggests.
Unless you are god (and I wouldn’t put it past you to be) you won’t know what are optimal things for me to do or believe. 🙂
Here’s the thing…
I used to be a bit of a Libtard… I used to think we needed to work towards making a more fair world… eliminating poverty blah blah blah
And then I opened my eyes…. for instance look at the J-e…ws… they’ve been run over by buses for centuries…
And now they are driving the bus – and running down Palestinians.
In the US there was a group that was dedicated to freeing slaves and sending them back to Africa – to Liberia specifically.
Guess what the first thing they did was? They enslaved their ‘brothers’
This is the way the world works — there is no Koombaya — that is impossible.
The strong get it all — the weak inherit nothing — they get trampled on. Always has been – always will be.
When you come around to that way of thinking — you will find that the world makes perfect sense.
The world is finite. That means competition for its limited resources.
There is no other way.
“The world is finite. That means competition for its limited resources.”
No. It does not. Competition for what purpose? Cooperation is just as valid as competition, and the two cannot be separated. You assume that we are only automatons driven by some primordial urge to do…what, I’m not sure. I doubt that you believe your stated philosophy yourself, for then you would be a far less entertaining and (and fair) person than you obviously are. I, on the other hand, am really seriously vicious. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, though not intentionally so.
If you are unable to understand this basic concept … then you will remain forever confused.
Hark….is that koombaya I hear…. is that organic beer…. why don’t you go join…
http://data.whicdn.com/images/103881571/original.jpg
“The strong get it all — the weak inherit nothing — they get trampled on. Always has been – always will be.”
Actually that’s not how it works. Not evolution anyway. Evolution is not survival of the fittest, but rather survival of the best adapted. So if your weak, but you adapt better than someone who is strong you win out in the end. I’d rather be smart (/clever) and weak than strong and stupid.
You are right: It is survival of the best adapted, not the fittest. I think that clever and weak might win over strong and stupid in some situations, but not others.
One key is to success in some situations is working together. Another key to success in other situations is innovations. They don’t necessarily come together–in fact, they are almost opposites. China and India have worked very hard on the working together. The US has aimed more at innovation. Without fossil fuels, neither strategy works very well, in today’s world.
“The strong get it all — the weak inherit nothing — they get trampled on. Always has been – always will be.”
Actually that’s not how it works. Not evolution anyway. Evolution is not survival of the fittest, but rather survival of the best adapted. So if your weak, but you adapt better than someone who is strong you win out in the end. I’d rather be smart (/clever) and weak than strong and stew-pid.
If you adapt then you become strong …. and you trample the weak
The Je.w.s adapted….
If you read history, evolutionary biology, it is always the survival of the fittest. Very rarely for large animals they have “cooperation”. The apex predators always fight to the death for mating rights. Read and re-read history again and again. This time, pay attention to life at that time. The rich and the powerful always.. always trample the poor and the weak. There are no exceptions, no matter where it is – Asia, South America, North America, Europe.
Same goes treatment of female gender (sorry Gail, that is a historical fact). Very rarely does a civilization put female in charge or even have the same rights as the male.
It is ONLY AFTER the discovery of fossil fuel (FF) where humans have more free time (labour taken over FF machines) to think about woman suffrage. It is only in the last 30 years that we have political correctness, fairness, SJW, etc. Transplant a SJW warrior back to the 1500s or even the stone/bronze/iron age, he would have been killed instantly because he adds no value to the society by being fair to the people of hue/women/etc.
Always remember that the “abnormal period” of homo sapiens happened when FF were discovered. The “super abnormal period” happened only from year 1990s onwards until today where SJWs, political correctness rules.
Just read up the history and its short lifespan, atrocities. Those are the “normal lives” of homo sapiens for the last hundreds of thousands (or even 1-2 million) of years. Please put all of that in perspective. We are living in the abnormal period, not normal period.
By the way… if BAU is gone and you have successfully hunted a game animal. Are you going to share with others? or would you rather feed your family first?
@ CTG,
“By the way… if BAU is gone and you have successfully hunted a game animal. Are you going to share with others? or would you rather feed your family first?”
It’s extremely difficult to get my point across on FW. (I wonder if this is due to most posters being insiders whose whole life was about succeeding within BAU. I, OTOH, have been an outsider to BAU from the moment of birth till now.
BAU isn’t normal for me. I spend all my time thinking how to get around or change it. But I have no alternative to the system, except a whole lot of preoccupation with the fringes and contradictions of BAU. My third world heritage makes it obvious that there’s a lot going on on the fringes with peoples who have no firm place within the system but have evolved fringe cultures, derived from peasantry and indigenous sources, that exist to this day. So full-on BAU is not as normal for me as it is for others here. There is such a thing as a fringe. The issue is not entirely black and white. Art is another fringe, for artists tend to search or be involved with innovations that have various unpredictable results for the system. So art and third world heritage are among the other things separating me from total sanguinity within BAU.
I AM NOT ABOUT WAITING FOR BAU TO COLLAPSE AND THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I am entirely about doing whatever I see fit LONG BEFORE it collapses. After it collapses it will be too late.
Whether it’s a perfect analogy or not, I’ve been thinking of Gail’s Leonardo Dome as a framework for making sense of the world around me. I have speculated that what I might be doing is trying to devise alternate Leonardo sticks that will replace the weakest and most destructive sticks within the current system. I’m not interested in individual prepping. As I see it, everybody lives, or everybody dies.
True, patriarchal civilization is about male dominance and individual advantage. But there clearly have been overthrown examples of cultures that were less or not about that. They are not alternatives to the system. They have died or are dying. But they have laid down models that a revised Leonardo Dome could learn from.
Another thing that I’m up against here is the presumption that any future society HAS to be networked the way it’s networked today. I don’t think that is remotely possible without ample, cheap FF, which, incidentally, would crash all the systems beyond the economic, then turn around and crash that too. We are living inside a system of systems, and that system of systems comprises our Leonardo Dome. For some reason, it’s hard for people to observe the dome and see how utterly dysfunctional it is. There is no possibility of it working as is, although, apparently, it must remain standing somehow else we quickly all perish.
So, absolutely no! I’m not interested in considering how to protect my catch from the neighbors. I consider that a backward way to think, unworthy of a human being. Either we figure how the world gets properly governed or we should keep quiet. And I don’t mean the whole world all at once. Think globally and act locally and globally. That’s the best I can come up with at the moment. And I also subscribe to Gail’s self-organizing system (of systems), which is no more mechanical than it is spiritual.
@Tim
Yes. Totally agree. The Anansi myth is all over Africa. Anansi the spider is weak but exceedingly clever. He just sits there building a web to tangle up his enemies.
Artleads,
Ever thought about setting up your own little radio broadcasting when SHTF ?
Reaching people is hard to do. Especially if everybody are scared and panicky. But small battery radios should be working for quite some time.. A friendly voice in the evenings when the grid is out, and everything is dead quiet, might reach people a bit better than town hall meetings
I have a shortwave radio that can be charged by cranking a handle… I cannot broadcast with this though….
Artleads, what I am saying is that nature is never kind and all along, it is always the strong vs the weak and it does not matter if you are from first world or third world.
Everyone is waiting for the collapse of BAU. It is just a matter if you are “surprised” by it or not only.
Sorry to inform you but your problem is that you lack the intellectual horse power to understand the basic concepts being discussed here.
Chinese have plenty of experience killing one another: time to join the US, (the Brits and Saudi, etc) in an export drive…..?
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/despairdemotivator.jpeg?v=1403275969
one of biggest airbags company goes bankrupt
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40401471
Look, we know 100% that capitalism is dead. No growth, no capitalism. We know 100% that socialism is dead. People are not inclined to share. So what is the alternative. It’s staring you in the face and you refuse to see it: feudalism.
But the question is: how do you get from industrial feudalism to post industrial scarcity? How do you actually pull off the feat? Well it’s not impossible
-ration healthcare, but allow just enough breeding to produce more serfs
-capital controls (again, notice the failure of capital) so people cannot actually move wealth out of the system
-start gradually enforcing scarcity through monopolies, withdrawing production, etc., so people get used to it by the time real scarcity arrives
It’s not going to be symmetric or perfect, folks. But basically, the plan to move into feudalism does exist, just like the plan to redirect capital into global corporations existed.
Yes,like what smite said, tech-feudalism is the wave of the future. Sorry, there is nothing for those who missed the bus, and the class difference will be eternal.
It can take place quite rapidly, within ten years.
The Reserve Bank of Australia noted in April that about a third of mortgage holders had either no buffer or not enough of one to cover a month’s worth of repayments. The most vulnerable tended to hold newer loans or come from “lower-income and lower-wealth households.” Moreover, it said almost a quarter of borrowers were on “interest only” mortgages.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-25/aussies-face-consumer-crunch-of-spiraling-debt-and-sickly-wages
Interest only mortgage….. I wasn’t aware that such a thing existed…..
This is the perfect structure for a person who understands that the world is going to end very soon… there is no sense paying the principal…. what one wants is the lowest possible payment available…. and unless the banks are going to make No Payment Loans… then this is it.
How how does one apply?
If you can fog up a mirror, then you’re eligible…
100 evacuated in Paris suburb following ‘seemingly deliberate’ fire in apartment building
https://www.rt.com/news/394007-paris-suburb-fire-boulogne/
This has great potential…. to inspire fear and loathing
Not to the people who do matter. If anything, it will justify removing the less wealthy people to inhospitable hellholes.
The domestics who work in rich people’s houses in Bombay are often bused for three hours, one way, to make sure they live far away from the people who do matter.
This is my fave fear and loathing clip it just drips of irony.
https://www.anarkismo.net/attachments/jun2017/bushkoppies_l_mtetwa.jpg
Pretty much agree with him. Either we crash it now with the hope we can save the planet, or we continue on our present trajectory and ensure that we take everything to hell with us.
Realistically though when told that ending the burn will end 99% of humans “the burn more coal” psychopaths will win out every time. Then again they are simply behaving like all dumb humans, it’s why we have reached the present predicament. Can’t blame them, I don’t wanna die prematurely either……….Self preservation is a powerful basic instinct.
So we can talk about it but we are definitely not going to do anything about it.
Utter rubbish.
Whatever we do to the planet — the planet will recover — it might take a thousand years or a million years – but it will recover.
I on the other hand die if we stop Burning Coal Now. And as there is no evidence of an afterlife all I have is the here and now.
Therefore the logical path forward is to Burn More Coal Now.
That said — if you feel so strongly about saving the plan there are two options for you:
1. Walk out your back door and into the forest and live the life of a hunter gatherer. Never again to enjoy electricity – petrol — or a visit to a shop.
OR
2. Grab a rope — tie it to a tree branch – then form a noose around your neck – then jump from the tree branch.
OR
3. Do neither — and shut the F7809 up about how we are ruining the planet.
The planet will ruin us.
As usual the essence of the conversation flys right over your head and you attack semantics because you are so sure of your opinion is correct and any other, is to be derided. Do you not understand that you only have an OPINION but you are so convinced it’s the only correct one that you are quite willing to kill the life giving ecology of the planet to prove it.
An intelligent person understands how much there is still to learn but a fool is utterly convinced of the infallibility of their knowledge.
If you do not agree with Fast Eddy — you need to have a moment of introspection … ideally in front of a mirror and say ‘what is wrong with me – where did I go wrong’
Bandits, you’re obviously smart and you’re no fool, so riddle me this.
What is “the essence of the conversation”? Can you explain your “saving the planet” idea to us lesser creatures who may be too stupid to see it as anything other than pompous and vacuous virtue signaling that in practice operates as a cover for deindustrialization, genocide and forcibly relocating large numbers of indigenous third-world people into urban ghettos so the rich can practice re-wilding and continue their safari hunting traditions?
What so important to you about “the life giving ecology of the planet” that you are willing to “crash” now and damn the consequences? For instance, have you asked the planet if it cares on way or the other? Are there spirits in the sky, in the mountains, the rivers, the forest, the deep oceans and the winds that have articulated to you their disapprobation with humanity’s behavior? Is Gaia a goddess who commands us to behave in certain ways? Are we subject to the dictates of a lord God who made all things bright and beautiful, each creature great and small?
Please tell us, in words most reasonable people can understand, about your philosophy or your theology that in your OPINION gives you the right to ask other people to take decisions that would likely result in billions of them suffering and dying under Mad Max conditions.
Please tell us this, and then explain to us why you don’t class yourself as a psychopath.
Jensen doesn’t explain how stopping industrial civilisation won’t kill 6 billion people. Not that this won’t happen anyway, as we are very far into overshoot, but why wish it on?
Is that a feature or a bug?
Deep Green Resistance anyone?:
https://deepgreenresistance.org/
What we do:
Campaigns
Feminism
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness.”
―Arundhati Roy
From the FAQ he seems to honestly(?) believe karma will kill a few middle aged heterosexual white males and all others will be better off.
Before industrial system carrying capacity 1B
After industrial system carrying capacity 7.5B (minus 0.2B privileged white males).
Link?
Yes, completely delusional SJW nonsense…
Of course the planet was almost pristine back when the population was only 1B, and there were plenty of easily obtainable resources. Unlike today – “with or without privelaged white males”. 😉
Lost interest when heard…”do you know any other industries that have subsidies? ”
Damn, like the Petroleum industry, gas and coal don’t!!
Gee, suppose it depends on how one determines the definition of a subsidy?
Internationally, governments provide at least $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies, not including other costs of fossil fuels related to climate change, environmental impacts, military conflicts and spending, and health impacts. This figure varies each year based on oil prices, but it is consistently in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Greater transparency in reporting would allow for more precise figures.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies
Don’t forget T Rex Drillison stating we need to change “Public Policy” to engineer solutions due to Climate Change… In another words…more subsidies. When externalities are included, as in a 2015 study by the International Monetary Fund, the unpaid costs of fossil fuels are upward of $5.3 trillion annually – which works out to a staggering $10 million per minute.
Let Exxon-Mobile pay for it!
Tired of the BS about free market Capitalism…
Talk about subsidies:
https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/175057/width754/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg
No fooling, the parish I grew up in New Jersey is shutting down its High School, and the teachers were “Brothers” and Nuns….now no Brothers and very old retired Nuns…
No students…costs $14,000 a year to teach one pupil and tuition is $8,000.
So, even though the parish raised over a million dollars to keep it going for one more year, they are STILL closing the doors…
Now the town WANTS the property very badly to get it back on the tax roles.
In discussions with the arch dioceses…. BTW another 200 acres is churched owned as a cemetery! The town would LOVE to put housing on that!!!!
THAT’S tragic.
Yep, no they have to pay MARKET wages for lay teachers and the student body shrunk to a few hundred, which in its heyday numbered well over a thousand members.
My Sister has fond memories of the Nuns tormenting her and her friends I. High School.
Bless their little hearts.
Oil has subsidied whole continents.
https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Curse-Petroleum-Development-Nations/dp/0691159637
The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations Paperback – September 8, 2013
by Michael L. Ross (Author)
yE. N. Andersonon May 8, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
This book is an excellent study of why a huge oil field is not necessarily a blessing for a nation. Dr. Ross finds that oil tends to monopolize a nation’s economy, squeezing out industry and other more progressive fields of enterprise. Oil countries are less transparent, less successful at long-term economic advancement, and very much less successful at bringing women into the workforce and the political arena. Even within the Muslim world, women do far better in non-oil countries than in oil-rich ones. Ross finds, however, that oil is not destiny; nations as diverse as Norway,Oman and Malaysia have managed oil wealth quite well, without all the bad effects. Also, in contrast to earlier work (including his own), he finds oil is not particularly deadly to democracy. The less affluent oil countries often have a good deal of conflict, but so do other resource-rich, weakly-governed countries.
So far so good, but the oil curse seems to me rather worse than Dr. Ross alleges. First, Dr. Ross does not consider environmental impacts in this book. That is a reasonable choice-he wants to focus on political economy in the strict sense–but it would seem to at least some observers that the worst effects of oil are the “externalities” that it passes on to impoverished local people, and to the world community, in the form of permanently ruined waters, forests, soils, and farmlands. Second, oil makes unnecessary any investment by the government in things like education and health care; the oil brings in plenty of money without those, and foreign workers generally come in to do the brainwork–often even the brawn-work. Third, Dr. Ross underplays the role of subsidies, and of the underhanded political games involved in capturing them, in world oil. Fourth, when Dr. Ross finds that democracy is not as much hurt by oil as some have argued, he is using a rather elastic definition of democracy; suffice it to say that Chavez’ Venezuela qualifies. So do some other very shaky excuses for “democracy.” Also, Dr. Ross does not deal with the really ugly political shenanigans of big oil. These include outright murder on a huge scale in Nigeria, where oil companies have hired goon squads to terrorize and eliminate local protesters. Less dramatic, but still serious, are the conditions in the United States under Bush and Cheney and in Canada under Stephen Harper. These oilmen ran, or run, their governments more or less as subsidiaries of their oil interets. One of many unpleasant results in the United States was the frontal attack on civil liberties and constitutional freedoms seen in the Patriot Act, the censorship of science (all references to possible bad effects of oil were censored from government publications and statements), attacks on public education and educators, and so on. Since the Bush days, big oil–especially the David and Charles Koch interests–have funded extreme right-wing politics, incliuding the Tea Party, and have provided essentially all the funding for the denial of global warming (or climate change) and of any human role in any warming that can be proved. They have gone on to fund general attacks on science and on environmental protection. We are facing the uncomfortable spectacle of a tiny handful of powerful people seizing the debates from the entire scientific community.
However, oil may not be notably worse than other resources; Dr. Ross cites Adam Smith on the bad effects of silver and gold mines, and discusses “conflict diamonds,” but he might have also brought in the problems caused by mining in general, by large-scale export agriculture, and by other extractive industries. Oil is not unique. I think one reason that Dr. Ross does not find more bad effects for oil is that much of his comparison set is trapped by other, equally dismal forms of primary-product export.
Dr. Ross has a number of suggestions at the end of the book about increasing transparency and improving economic management, but one must fear that only mass political mobilization and relentless exposure of the full range of oil company activities will have much effect.
All this said, Dr. Ross’ book is a superb job of marshalling very hard-to-find facts in particularly convincing and analytically sophisticated ways. It is a fascinating and important book, and must be basic reading for anyone interested in world oil questions. I raise the above points not to criticize but merely to add and extend the treatment a bit.
Maybe it rimes with purse!
I agree, the energy in oil has done a lot of heavy lifting for us. It has built almost everything you see. It is fossil fuels that ultimately backstop the money.
Fossil fuels more than pay their way overall, providing trillions and trillions and even more trillions to the economy in affordable and convenient energy. Without fossil fuels to fuel the industrial and agricultural system, Jeremy, you and I and most of the rest of the people visiting this site wouldn’t exist. And that would solve all our problems. WIthout fossil fuels to supply energy and create surpluses, there would be no nuclear power, no solar voltaic power, no wind turbines, and what little electricity could be generated would come from some very dodgy dams built by laborers rolling stones over logs and bringing in dirt a wheelbarrow load at a time to the site, just like the Egyptians built those pyramids.
Now you listen to me young Jeremy and you listen good. If you believe so strongly in all this anti-fossil fuel propaganda, you have the moral duty to distance yourself from using and benefiting from fossil fuels in any way whatsoever, in precisely the same way vegans distance themselves from using and benefitting from animal products. No more smarphones, PCs, motorized travel or food for you unless you grow it organically or hunt it yourself Otherwise we are going to have to consider you a hippo critter.
Its ALL G$$D..
ExxonMobil in 2011 made $27.3 billion in cash payments for income taxes. Chevron paid $17 billion and ConocoPhillips $10.6 billion. And not only were these the highest amounts in absolute terms, when compared with the rest of the 25 most profitable U.S. companies (see our slideshow for the full rundown of who paid what), the trio also had the highest effective tax rates.
Exxon’s tax rate was 42.9%, Chevron’s was 48.3% and Conoco’s was 41.5%. That’s even higher than the 35% U.S. federal statutory rate, which is already the highest tax rate among developed nations.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/04/16/which-megacorps-pay-megataxes/#2d2f7a995586
Don’t confuse them with the facts FE.
Don’t READ my facts and just look at what you want Timmie and Mister Ed…
Wonder how much “net” payment Exxon paid for the Valdez disaster?
Fast-forward seven years, and ExxonMobil, the most profitable publicly traded company in the world, has yet to pay up — in fact, they’ve been fighting the claims all along. Last year, Exxon failed to persuade a federal judge to bar the U.S. and Alaskan governments from pursuing further damage claims related to the 1989 spill. In his order, U.S. District Judge H. Russell Holland wrote, “Exxon presently suffers no particular harm. Its business is not in any fashion disrupted or impeded because of the uncertainty of a claim by the governments.”
25 Years After Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Company Still Hasn’t Paid For Long-Term Environmental Damages
Kiley KrohFollow
Senior Editor at ThinkProgress. Jul 15, 2013
But Mister Ed will read some corporate report and take it as the Gospel Truth…
What a team!
Some may find this terrifying … but I see it as a thing of great beauty —- for it = LLL
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/11/23/jharia-haglund-02_wide-ea8c216a4eb93ef998f1b29ae2a8b2cbbab1dfda.jpg
Wow. Those taxes sound really cool. Except that the burning, burning, burning is the process of extinction of Earthlings. We hear about entitlement. The petrochemopharmico industrial complex is entitled to pump trillions of tons of toxins in to our our air, water, food, and CHILDREN. But hey look at at these alleged taxes.
Think about what would happen if today — we stopped or even slowed the burning of fossil fuels
Google the word TINA
Isn’t this pretty? And you get the most marvelous sunsets….
https://gyemgh.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/coal-plant.jpg
One can’t escape, even to the smallest degree.
My sister is a born-again vegan, and hasn’t made the connection between buying her vegetables and almond milk at a supermarket and the fact that it is a huge business that stocks chorizo and sells eggs…… Her boyfriend shields her from the sight of the meat stacked up as she goes round! She believes she has found Virtue and is a pain in the ass lecturing us all on it.
Even that chap who went to Ireland with his family and makes a great fuss about his compost toilet and scything, benefits from the global system – it provides the centralised government and energy flows which mean he doesn’t have to fight off bandits or fear enslavement and cholera, typhus and TB, nor famine when his crops fail.
Physical escape is impossible.
One can only distance oneself in one’s heart.
++++++++++
In all serious… the only way to be true to oneself as an environmentalist is to do this
http://pad1.whstatic.com/images/thumb/a/a1/User-Completed-Image-Tie-a-Hangmans-Noose-2016.10.18-11.25.50.0.jpg/670px-User-Completed-Image-Tie-a-Hangmans-Noose-2016.10.18-11.25.50.0.jpg
But before doing that… if one has any children — they must take a pillow — and hold it forcefully over the head for say… two minutes… when the child stops moving and turns purple … then comes the noose
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-odmoDn_w_s4/UW-3tyncl4I/AAAAAAAARs0/tG3xvvw6-3I/s1600/mimo3.jpg
Give ’em enough organically sourced hemp rope, Eddy, and they might oblige!
Another angle that must be appreciated here is that we organic lifeforms on this planet are all one. Humans have achieved top-predator position temporarily but once we slip down from our perch, the rest of the biosphere will attack us relentlessly and mercilessly as our fellow creatures recycle us as meat and fertilizer.
Being a vegan or an ecologically correct Natural Justice Warrior or a tree-hugging Gaia-worshipping misanthrope isn’t going to save anybody when the deal goes down. There is nobody non-human there to lament what we’re doing to the rest of nature and there will be nobody non-human will cheer or rejoice when nature reasserts its dominance over humanity.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-men-go-and-come-but-earth-abides-george-r-stewart-80-47-08.jpg
Jeremy is an old dude, almost as old as me, so he probably doesn’t have to listen to you.
Old and wiser now, dot have a Death Wish like Mister Ed.
…and global warming is a hoax!
At this late hour, does it really matter what is true or not?
It could be a hoax — or it could just be that the science was wrong — as science often is….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Worlds-climate-scientists-confess-Global-warming-just-QUARTER-thought–computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html
That should put an end to this nonsense… but it won’t
Because the MSM has indoctrinated the world on this … just like they have indoctrinated the world on solar panels… EVs … wind…. get it?
I recently had a visit from the exorcist… and now I can see clearly on this issue — however I can no longer levitate myself or turn my head backwards…. that always made me the life of parties — I may not get any more invites…
“Trump is going to claim on Thursday that the US will become a net exporter or oil and gas soon?”
Cheeto Jesus has a problem with reality—-
Wall Street appears to have lost its taste for the resurgent U.S. shale industry as oil prices tumble and energy share prices fall. Oil companies have only raised $3 million this month through selling new shares to investors, a dramatic drop in the public equity offerings that have helped fuel the return of drilling rigs across the nation this year.
It’s a stark shift in investor sentiment after last month, when producers like Kosmos Energy and RSP Permian collected a combined $1 billion from stock-market investors. That was before U.S. oil prices took a month-long tumble of around 20 percent to $43.15 a barrel on Friday.
Some investor groups have said “they had little-to-no interest in providing a second lifeline to the industry,” Houston investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. said in a note to clients on Friday.
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/The-party-is-over-for-investors-in-U-S-shale-11242266.php
Trump can call all he wants, but it ain’t gonna happen. Bankruptcy and 3rd world status is in America’s future. Or radioactive glaze.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GCzKTwFsLj0/WU6qFXQxyEI/AAAAAAAAv9U/sjJwjDj2k4QGSYV-mlg-Aci2WPSkB0jTgCLcBGAs/s640/trump-nude-troll-doll-chuck-williams-2.jpg
this is most important image right now
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/06/04/credit%20impulse%20update%206.12_0.jpg
it show bau collapse is near
Interesting, where did you come accross this?
for here
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-25/it%E2%80%99ll-be-avalanche-hedge-fund-cio-sets-day-when-next-crash-begins
Trump to Call for U.S. ‘Dominance’ in Global Energy Production
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-25/trump-to-call-for-u-s-dominance-in-global-energy-production
Trump is going to claim on Thursday that the US will become a net exporter or oil and gas soon?
Funny because the US is largest importer of crude oil in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_imports
And so far in 2017 we are importing 47% of our oil
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/
Energy dominance? WTF does that even mean?
‘Dominance’: a nice full-testosterone and hence comforting word for reality-deniers.
‘Full -spectrum dominance’, gives one a thrill just to type it, let alone utter in an Oval Office presentation.
As the crappy recent film has it:
‘It’s time for Kong to learn that Man is king!’
So much delusion in that article (e.g. “energy abundance”, “Russia hacking”), it’s difficult to read.
For investors in shale drilling, the party’s over
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/The-party-is-over-for-investors-in-U-S-shale-11242266.php
Wall Street Blames Shale, But Shale Points the Finger Right Back
http://oilpro.com/post/31709/wall-street-blames-shale-shale-points-finger-right-back
Can someone direct me towards thoughtful information regarding cooling of spent nuclear fuel pools post-collapse? It’s easy for someone to say that the pools will boil and everyone on the planet will die, but I hold out hope that groups of people close to each nuclear site would be motivated to keep the spent fuel rods submerged. Certainly the generators will eventually break down after a few months/years, even if the military keeps them supplied with fuel in the short term. But surely we can figure out a way to keep water in the pools? If not, there’s not much point in prepping.
I’d like the answers to these questions too. It seems that communities close to nuclear sites could be much better educated and organized than they are around the subject. And does it matter what quality the cooling water has? Here in old coal mining territory, there’s coal-laced (black) water in the ground. That or some other type of water is said to be high in sulfuric acid. But can’t those kinds of water not still be used for cooling? If so, isn’t there adequate amounts of polluted water that could be stored in tanks for ages for the purpose of cooling?
As far as I can tell, no one takes the issue of collapse seriously, at least none of the people who deal with nuclear sites. They won’t, despite some suggestions on this blog otherwise, simply detonate ala a nuclear bomb, you need something to keep the fissile material above criticality for that to happen, but when fissile material goes critical it quickly expands and becomes subcritical, absent some other force to keep the reaction going (the simplest nuclear bomb fires one subcritical mass at another to achieve the required “supercriticality”). That said, a fire induced by the tremendous heat would release an enormous amount of radiation, potentially for an extended period of time. Rinse and repeat this process all across the world and… definitely not good for any animals still around. “Permanent grid down” scenarios just don’t seem to be seriously considered. Extended outages? Yes. The end of BAU, IC, TWAWKI? No.
Orlov claims there will be wide spread nuclear meltdowns due to social collapse and the disappearance of the vast industrial resource base needed to keep them safe.
Basically, a common sense view, and being downwind of it will be bad.
I’m certainly no expert in fuel ponds or their cooling by means of fuel powered pumps.
However, there may be some remedy to cool these ponds by way of hydraulics.
Many nuclear plants are located in or beside major waterways. The flow of the river itself is enough to force water vertically (head) and possibly keep enough flow going through these spent fuel ponds to avert disaster.
There are pumps that are purely mechanical in nature (hydraulic ram pumps) that work off flow and head to pump water uphill. Around here there are still a few clanking away in the mountains from nineteenth century logging and brick making kilns that were long ago abandoned. You can build these today with pvc pipe and glue. I know the longevity of these modern built pumps will not match the old ones, but, I am guessing they will work for many years.
Will these work? Who knows.
Will anyone bother to try? I doubt it.
Everyone will scream and cry for .gov to save them and than run in the opposite direction.
There are very few who left who understand that technology. So I’d say slim chance of it being implemented.
Basically if you can’t connect it to a smart phone it’s game over.
Ask yourself this.
If society insta-collapses, there will be chaos, people running around killing and stealing… Would you run in to the nearest nuclear power plant to prevent fuel ponds from boiling off, ad infinitum?
I have done the leg work and it can not be done.
This is just a starter vid from a Newfoundland guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj5cwl5nMp8&t=5s
The best thing you can do is.
I love the Lola video. And the full movie is one of my favorites from the 90s.
Regarding cooling fuel ponds, in Japan, there is plenty of water and plenty of mountains, and the technology to move that to where it’s needed for irrigation using gravity has existed for centuries. So in principle I don’t think there would be any problem rigging something up along the lines of a Roman viaduct that would keep those fuel ponds damp indefinitely—until there was a major earthquake, flood, landslide, etc. that severed the water channel; at which point al hell would break loose. Who was the bright spark who came up with the idea for storing all that spent fuel 10 to 15 meters above ground level where keeping it suppled with water pumping?
You have not done the math.
The ponds are on the roof not 15 meters up.
US design and not storage but managed until ready for storage
You have not done the math.
Indeed I haven’t. I hope there isn’t any calculus involved. I was never any good at that.
The ponds are on the roof not 15 meters up.
Perhaps not. Here’s an illustration from the World Nuclear Association showing the spent fuel ponds on the Reactor Service Floor, which is below the roof. Eyeballing that the proof looks around 10 to 15 meters above ground level. And I thought their drawings were authentic. But if you say they are on the roof, then I guess they must be on the roof.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedImages/org/info/BWR%203.jpg
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/appendices/fukushima-fuel-ponds-background.aspx
US design and not storage but managed until ready for storage
Well, there’s storage and then there’s storage. Short term, medium term and long term. Temporary and permanent. Temporary that becomes permanent in many cases because the permanent storage facility has not yet been built, as in the case with all nuclear plants in Japan, where spent fuel is being kept indefinitely in those spent fuel ponds, ABOVE the reactors, BELOW the roof, and—since I haven’t done the math or brought a tape measure along with me—higher above the ground than an elephant can comfortably squirt a trunk full of water.
I know the vid Can be painful to watch but it is in the vid. Real pictures Elevations flow rate and the like.
The Fukushima nuclear catastrophe could have been far worse, it turns out, and experts say neither the nuclear industry nor its regulators are doing enough to prevent a calamitous nuclear fuel fire in America https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/20/19712/scientists-say-nuclear-fuel-pools-around-country-pose-safety-and-health-risks
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool, about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15 Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at Chernobyl).
A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15 year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel. To estimate the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137 inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about 33 MCi Cs-137. [7]
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion. In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material – See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/20110314781/natural-resources-news-service/fission-criticality-in-cooling-ponds-threaten-explosion-at-fukushima.html
Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment. This would start in more recently discharged spent fuel, which is hotter than fuel that has been in the pool for a longer time. A typical spent fuel pool in the United States holds several hundred tons of fuel, so if a fire were to propagate from the hotter to the colder fuel a radioactive release could be very large.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handling-nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel.html#.VUp3n5Om2J8
According to Dr. Kevin Crowley of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, “successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material.”[12] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the September 11, 2001 attacks required American nuclear plants “to protect with high assurance” against specific threats involving certain numbers and capabilities of assailants. Plants were also required to “enhance the number of security officers” and to improve “access controls to the facilities”.
The committee judges that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material. The committee concluded that attacks by knowledgeable terrorists with access to appropriate technical means are possible. The committee identified several terrorist attack scenarios that it believed could partially or completely drain a spent fuel pool and lead to zirconium cladding fires.
Details are provided in the committee’s classified report. I cannot discuss the details here. http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-mass-destruction/nuclear-spent-fuel-pools-secure/p8967
If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.
“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16fuel.html
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies. One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
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/
Today there are 103 active nuclear power reactors in the U.S. They generate 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste per year and to date have accumulated 71,862 tons of spent fuel, according to industry data.[vi] Of that total, 54,696 tons are stored in cooling pools and only 17,166 tons in the relatively safer dry cask storage. http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/the-growing-problem-of-spent-nuclear-fuel.html
Spent fuel fire on U.S. soil could dwarf impact of Fukushima
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/spent-fuel-fire-us-soil-could-dwarf-impact-fukushima
A fire from spent fuel stored at a U.S. nuclear power plant could have catastrophic consequences, according to new simulations of such an event.
A major fire “could dwarf the horrific consequences of the Fukushima accident,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. “We’re talking about trillion-dollar consequences,” says Frank von Hippel, a nuclear security expert at Princeton University, who teamed with Princeton’s Michael Schoeppner on the modeling exercise.
….the national academies’s report warns that spent fuel accumulating at U.S. nuclear plants is also vulnerable. After fuel is removed from a reactor core, the radioactive fission products continue to decay, generating heat. All nuclear power plants store the fuel onsite at the bottom of deep pools for at least 4 years while it slowly cools. To keep it safe, the academies report recommends that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear plant operators beef up systems for monitoring the pools and topping up water levels in case a facility is damaged. The panel also says plants should be ready to tighten security after a disaster.
At most U.S. nuclear plants, spent fuel is densely packed in pools, heightening the fire risk. NRC has estimated that a major fire at the spent fuel pool at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania would displace an estimated 3.46 million people from 31,000 square kilometers of contaminated land, an area larger than New Jersey. But Von Hippel and Schoeppner think that NRC has grossly underestimated the scale and societal costs of such a fire.
got home from early morning coffee and was reading the financial post where three articles talked about what – affordability crisis. One was about a new refinery in the Calgary, Alberta region under a public and private ownership where the costs have increased so much that investors are looking for a way to get out leaving who on the hook – taxpayers? One paragraph caught my eye however,
‘if you look at refineries over the last 30 years they have been closing down not starting up.’
Yep, if it wasn’t for Gail’s website and blog who would be able to make a connection about just how serious things really are in the world of oil? Sobering
Next to this it will not be refining oil into gasoline but rather into low quality sulfur diesel. Can you imagine billions of dollars for what?
Next up a new hydro electric plant in Nova Scotia where the costs are billions of dollars over budget
and finally Cenovus Energy got some serious debt problems with some partnership they got into.
jerry-
The dam is not in Nova Scotia but Newfoundland. Nova Scotia’s part of it is called the Maritime link which is on time and on budget. The Muskrat Falls dam is about 40% over budget and two years behind schedule.
It is going to make power quite expensive in Newfoundland but will not impact Nova Scotia as our deal involves building the link in exchange for a portion of the power produced. In the meantime it looks like we might be selling power to them through the link.
thanks, for the correct Joebanana and wow if Newfoundland hasn’t got enough problems with affordability. Add to that the cost of this electricity it makes you wonder who is going to be able survive let alone live there?
I had to pick up a guy from the airport who was living in Newfoundland for a job here in the Vancouver area and couldn’t have been more grateful to leave that place. He had no future there.
jerry-
There is a small amount of the population here who don’t like rural life and the big city looks good to them. Most who leave are just looking for a job and would stay if they could.
The Maritimes is a great place to be for the end of the world or for just living and enjoying plenty of elbow room and a love of nature and true human culture.
That guy at the airport sounds like an arsehole.
Like a very urban friend of mine: ‘Nature! It’s just full of crap that bites and stings you!’ While doing his best to irritate a wasp with wild flailing…..
He probably throws a ball like a girl too;-). Hope the garden is doing well xabier. One nice thing this year is more yellow monarch butterflies than I think I’ve ever seen before.
Joebanana
No he’s quite the likeable sort but was facing a situation there that offered him no hope of work and a future. So in his case your words ‘Most who leave are just looking for a job and would stay if they could’ sums up his situation.
It is not all that bad in fact they have a shortage of workers unless you count snow flakes.
This is a LARGE pdf of union contract wages I do not know one full time worker making less than 100k a year in fact I know more that make over 150k
People fly in from all over Canada
http://muskratfallsjobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Muskrat-Falls-MFEA-RDTC-Collective-Agreement-2015-05-30-Revision-4.pdf
Thanks for your thoughts. Usually refineries for heavy oil have access to very cheap natural gas, for cracking. The US has excelled in this area. I question whether Calgary would have as good a supply of natural gas. Also, whether there would be enough of a market nearby for all of the refined products. It would take pipelines to economically move the refined products away, since Calgary does not have access to shipping by sea. But building pipelines is expensive.
There have been refineries added in China, Saudi Arabia, and India fairly recently. Refineries that used the North Sea oil, before it declined (typically along the east cost of the US and Canada), have tended to close down.
200,000 infected with cholera in Yemen, world record outbreak, thousands of new cases each day. Obviously survivalists will want a sizable stash of medicines. Obviously a private source of food and water where possible.
Quote: Cholera requires immediate treatment because the disease can cause death within hours. Rehydration. The goal is to replace lost fluids and electrolytes using a simple rehydration solution, oral rehydration salts (ORS). The ORS solution is available as a powder that can be reconstituted in boiled or bottled water.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/yemen-faces-world-worst-cholera-outbreak-170625041932829.html
UN: Yemen faces world’s worst cholera outbreak
WHO says more than 1,300 people have died and as many as 300,000 could become infected by the end of August.
[…]
Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread through contaminated food or water. It can be fatal within hours if left untreated.
Although the disease is easily treatable, doing so in Yemen, a country riven by conflict, has proved particularly difficult.
Whether by accident or design, the cholera epidemic is the result of the Saudi Arabian-led war on Yemen. Aljazeera, which is publishing this story, is on Saudi Arabia’s hit list. One of the demands in the ultimatum the Saudis and their allies have made to Qatar was that the news agency be closed down.
I am going with IQ problem and that is also an epidemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw4OgQu-G_o&t=88s
No need to watch can run in background…sound only
Post BAU when people are shitting in their back yards and that gets into the water table…. cholera is going to be a huge problem…. and not only in the cities.
And once all the nearby wood supplies are burned to boil the water to kill the shit disease…then what
Very true; it’s astonishing how often dirty water killed even the very wealthy pre-1945, and TB which is also associated with poor hygiene and nutrition.
Without antibiotics and water filters, and vaccinations, the world will return to being the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
PS Maybe Dolph can be Doctor Death, which seems to be his day-dream. He’ll find it hard to keep up with Mother Nature though!:)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-illinois-carp-idUSKBN19E2O7
Something tells me this is not a good time to be defunding Great Lakes Initiative. Isn’t ounce of prevention is worth pound of cure? I hope everyone likes ground carp-burgers on the grill…
Stupid rapacious apes discount the future, think heuristically rather than critically, live by story and myth rather than observation, and replicate endlessly.
This brought genetic fitness in the past, but currently is a liability.
Carp Burgers can’t be that bad?
I am just glad that I live in the UK and not in North West Atlantic, otherwise I might have to eat pollock bollox rather than cod and haddock. Only North Sea fish for me.
Ahhhhhhh matey.
If the carp likes it there it will stay.
Asian carp are in Mississippi river and tributaries to stay no doubt about that…but so far have not invaded the Great Lakes. We should keep it that way.
i was thinking how women will be treated by men after collapse
fast eddy say goons will raped your daughter/sister/wife in front of you
but i think they will be treated worse than that for ex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape
in this case one of rapist put rod in victim private parts
Women unified comprise the strongest resistance force there is on earth. Women form the global majority, are better wired to cope with complexity and scarcity than men. but women are not unified, are not aware of their collective power, and lack a strategic focus.
THIRD WORLD PERSON
NO NEED TO WAIT FOR COLLAPSE IT IS ALREADY OCCURING
100,000 Native British Girls Raped by Muslim Grooming Gangs
https://youtu.be/WwZaT7kxOR0
Men in general respond to how women look -yes I would have sex with her. If she is healthy, is of child bearing age and has large eyes, red lips etc. In general the looks matter for guys.
For women, in general, looks are but a fleeting part of the mate selection process. Confidence and having a strong emotional core is more important in the mate. Sure some women prefer a high social status, money and fame even over this confidence flair. But mostly what attracts women, or keeps women attracted in an existing relationship, is a fantasy, a game, a non-reality.. the “feeling” of him having a unwavering confidence
Now take your basic collapse.. women suddenly look.. well.. they just like ordinary
And how will women find men with a strong enough unreality weaved into them.. so that the men have the unwavering confidence about them.. to give the women the right “feeling” to attract the women..
Im sad to say collapse will brake a lot of relationships. And also the women will choose new mates from the idiotic street gangs. Its not only about gangs that go about doing what they will to women. Its also the women choosing the alpha males of any given situation, because women now have “feelings” for him..
Say good bye to the renewable dream.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608126/in-sharp-rebuttal-scientists-squash-hopes-for-100-percent-renewables/
Can U.S. Shale Survive Below $40?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Can-US-Shale-Survive-Below-40.html
Interesting few previous posts. Even in this community who understand the real issue is scarcity of resources the emotional draw to make it a racial, political, or religious issue is too great.
As things get worse civilizations will fracture along those lines no matter how smart they are. Eventually there will be a unifying ideology brought on by necessity as the governments try to save themselves from anarchal collapse.
Likely it will involve some kind of debt relief combined with a strengthening of UN authority.
Even here the draw will be too much. “Problem Solved” Racial/Social/Genetic equality. Political Stability. Religious irrelevance.
Fundamentally nothing will have changed. But everyone will believe it has.
The Spanish scientist who writes the Oilcrash blog (one of the very best out there) is lamenting that very fact, that even those who are fully aware of the issues tend to resort to conditioned political/racial positions, and seem unable to look the Collapse process in the face objectively.
If that is the case of the most ‘enlightened’, just guess how the masses will react.
Clue: not sitting on Zen mat, although we might hope…….
But we could attempt to forget about people and instead focus on life support systems…religiously. Places, spaces, buildings, towns, gutters, wells, roads. Especially, the harvesting of rain water through watershed work and paying half a mind to how water flows off or affects everything. Not a drop to spare. No time whatsoever for race. Screw race. If people are attending to race instead of place, shoot them.
Not exactly related to your comment, but I know that you are of Spanish background. I will be speaking to a Spanish group tomorrow, via Skype. This is the advertisement for the event. I need to work charts today for this.
Interesting point, but this is an open forum, and we’re not Vulcans. It would be different if this was one of those discussion forums with topics and mods. Even then, it’s still the web, and not real world face to face. (this is the first blog I’ve ever posted on BTW, so I’m new at this too)
(the UN ay? wink wink nudge nudge);)
A local friend is taking a week long seminar (?) put on by Marjorie Wildcraft. It covers all sorts of subjects, but I somehow got focused on strawbale (I guess it was one of the subjects I could process from the email itself). You could soak, add nitrogen, then plant directly into the bales. . I wasn’t able or inclined to register so as to read the many links my friend emailed me, but I replied that I would be glad to help her acquire and install strawbales. Then I explained what I thought of them:
“I’ve generally been concerned to separate strawbale from the principle that strawbale embodies. Since I want to take money out of whatever I do–art, gardening, etc., I have never been keen to buy strawbale. It strikes me as material that was free out on the farm when there was more farm out there and more people working on it. It was natural to that time and place. But my circumstances are urban, totally depending on market-based industrial society. The new free and natural is discarded cardboard boxes in carts as left over from stocking supermarket shelves. It’s carbon content might be similar to the bales’, as might how it maintains its cubical shape. But they don’t come in the same size, which is inconvenient. Long story short, I’ve avoided strawbale as (for me) not “authentic” to my basic situation in the world, and too costly. I also think strawbale can become too much of a “thing,” where the principle it embodies gets overridden by a sort of fetish of strawbale. It can be just a fad that is blind to the actual socioeconomic realities of (most) people and planet. My two cents, but bales may help me raise the height of my garden beds, if nothing else, and that would be great.”
I agree about strawbale looking like an expensive unpractical gimmick.
In comparison planting potatoes through cardboard on the lawn could save the world.
http://imgur.com/QT5n1XK
Dolph’s head to explode in 3…2…1
http://imgur.com/iI7ngNM
There is only genetic differences between races when white males are inferior.
One size doesn’t fit everyone, even in the Serengeti.
http://www.theearthsafari.com/upload/1355314676_Serengeti%20masai.jpg
Now Israel is fighting in Syria. Good Grief! TO MANY COOKS IN THE KITCHEN!
Delusion at its finest… Space Corp military branch
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/preparing-war-us-house-wants-create-first-new-military-branch-1947
It will soon be announced the Elon will be the first general of the new space corps….
Both the US and Russia have accumulated several thousands MIRVs of ~150-350kt.
The issue now is the Russian side being encircled by ever closer mil-bases on her frontiers, so is rapidly modernizing their fleet into highly maneuverable variants of these tips/missiles not only in the final re-entry but also previous stages of flight. That makes most of the legacy (even latest gen) of US nuclear war machine placed on Russian borders obsolete. Hence the aim for vectoring into proper space warfare race, which is now (as opposed to 1970-80s fantasies) actually feasible in technical means and reality, the goal here is to knock out enemies satellites and also to drop stuff down from higher orbit with higher speed, less predictability for possible counter measures.
Therefore the only question remain is there of enough time for pretending solvency to deploy these systems soon enough, and that doesn’t seem likely since the chance of petrodollar last breath before ~2025-30 are rising each d/m/y.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-national-academy-matt-jacobson.html _r=0&mtrref=energyskeptic.com&gwh=D08C5E890F8D9076CD24A0F49C041A99&gwt=pay
The superior race
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XfMwuT3Ltyw/hqdefault.jpg
Generalizations are…. troublesome
And people who tend to generalize … are usually below average… so it makes them feel good…
Anyone posting racist comments that generalize…. should understand that doing so…. is a reflection their intellectual capacity.,..
Move from NZ to Africa.
Nice to have the choice …. one might have had the misfortune of being black and shipped to America…. in chains….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YTauIa7Z6V4/UQZJmUBQMsI/AAAAAAAALbM/ZNMr4Bms20o/s1600/whipping3.jpg
Now it’s the other way around: https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c39_1498071426
Some people might call that karma….
White dude deserved it because of … colonialism?
How horrifying it will be when whites living as minorities in places like South Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia,etc etc etc…. are left to fend for themselves in seas of hatred post BAU…
That was one of the main reasons I left Bali…. The Horror…. The Horror…
Or any segregated part of europe.
I have nothing againts blacks … when they live outside of Europe. Let’s just leave ONE continent for whites, OK?
Without the neocon program of regime change in North Africa, there’d be fewer blacks in Europe. And though it’s not exactly Europe, America would be a lot whiter if it hadn’t hauled tens of millions of Africans (against their will) to its shores as free labor. So you might look to colonialism and neocolonialism for answers to why you have this unwelcome African presence in the “European sphere” of interest.
Your mates are missing you over on zero hedge…
Precisely what shade of pale do people have to be in order to be allowed residence in Europe? Anything lighter than olive but no darker than tanned leather?
You and Dolph are conflating at least two very different cans of worms here—the racial/genetic category issue and the cultural/ethnic category issue. Let me help you out.
Obviously the color of a person’s skin is of trivial importance with regard to whether one should have reason to have anything against them? MLK hit on something that resounded with most people when he said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
So skin color really shouldn’t be an issue unless we are trying to decide how to coordinate an outfit or how long to spend sunbathing.
On the other hand, bringing people of different ethnic backgrounds to live and work together at close quarters is a fine art that involves so many imponderables that it is no wonder the melting pot so often turns into a pig’s breakfast or a dog’s dinner. If a thousand hunter-gatherers from the Kalihari, the Amazon or the uplands of New Guinea who had never used cash, cutlery or toilet paper, were to suddenly move to Cape Town, New York, Calcutta, or Tokyo, would we expect them to fit in without a few teething troubles?
I get on tolerably well as an English eccentric living in Satoyama among the rice paddies, but if a thousand young and boisterous supporters of Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United were to migrate to the local town, it wouldn’t take long for the locals to get upset by all the cultural enrichment—especially if the newcomers tried to join the local choral society and demanded to be allowed to sing Rugby songs.
The big issue re. immigration in much the West these days is that millions of Third World folks who are totally untrained to live in the countries they have moved to are, by their collective presence there, radically changing these societies in ways that the indigenous populations feel extremely uncomfortable about. At least, that’s what a lot of those indigenous Westerners seem to be saying.
Race is a red herring. So is religion. Millions of blacks and browns and millions of Muslims and Hindus and others have integrated perfectly well into European and North American societies. These millions are not the problem. They may even offer a solution since they are excellent role models. If they aren’t the problem, what is? I’ll leave that up to others to clarify.
Have you ever considered the possibility that the vast majority of race realist people in this world are actually non white?
And that ignoring race is virtue signaling among rich white people to congratulate themselves on how grand and great they are? And this virtue signaling inevitably includes putting down those other, poor white folk, who don’t have the luxury of gated communities and private schools to keep them separated?
The great stumbling block in the race issue is that, for all of history, the arrival of a group of humans displaying a different physical conformation has generally been the harbinger of war, rape, theft and enslavement – not of a new era of sweetness and light.
The Persians paying an uninvited visit to Greece; Romans penetrating the Celtic and Germanic lands; the Mongols riding in, well, everywhere; the British turning up to trade in India; and the Turkic peoples arriving in India for conquest pure and simple……the list is endless.
This has resulted in an acute perception of difference, and an inherent suspicion and reserve as the default in order to enhance survival of the individual and group.
It is a predisposition which even the universal religions, (as opposed to the merely tribal ancestral one) which protest indifference to race and preach brotherly co-operation, can rarely overcome – just talk to Pakistani Muslims about Arabs….
Finally a sane reasoning and observation in the sea of previous fluff, .. thanks.
Race prejudice gets to be hilarious, when it doesn’t involve violence. Not least being the absurd classification by colour: Berbers often have pale skin, red hair and blue eyes for instance, but no one would call them ‘white’.
My former wife was a Sephardi Jewess; her mother had very short, black crinkly hair, pretty much ‘Afro’ and , before the nose-job, mandatory among upper-class Jews in the the 1950’s, quite a hooter! (Mine didn’t need the nose done, of course). They would have been very offended to be called ‘Afro-Asians-, which is what, of course, they were, and looked like.
Sephardis like them, long settled in England (since the 17th century) look down upon Ashkenazis from Eastern Europe as common peasants (and they have lots of Slav and German blood, to say the least).
But in Israel, the tables were turned, and the European Askenazis often sneered at the Sephardis, calling them niggers’, ‘uneducable’, ‘primitive’, etc!
Just as the Hitlerites spoke about them in Germany. Racial prejudice in the state founded to escape…racial prejudice.
Both “Conservatives”
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/–7WI30OKFyY/WU6YXIO21kI/AAAAAAAAv80/txn_Pn99dxAJN4Zzi9v7DRZc1JwM0Cp0wCLcBGAs/s640/0%2B%25281%2529.jpg
https://s.w-x.co/wu/phx-heat-418.jpg
Burn More Coal
Lets go for 200
212. I want to see the oceans boil.
Not to worry…Life will find a way…
So how on Earth do you cook THIS? The shrimp that lives in water four times hotter than boiling point
Rimicaris hybisae was found 5,000m beneath the Caribbean sea
water four times hotter than boiling point
Would that be Fahrenheit, Celsius, or Kelvin?
So how on Earth do you cook THIS?
Don’t worry, the Chinese can cook ANYTHING.
Dude, wake up…it was an extension of Duncan’s joke…just ask Mister Ed, your buddy and partner..As ocean exploration technology has improved researchers have been able to better study the life found in deep sea environments, like hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents are located on the seafloor where tectonic plates are moving apart and geothermally heated water escapes from the cracks. The hot water shoots out of the vents in a huge plume (known as black smokers) and creates an extreme environment where exceptionally hot (up to 400°C or 750°F!) and cold water converge. When scientists reached the hydrothermal vents they found them teeming with life. A site known as the Mid-Cayman spreading center was recently found to be the world’s deepest, and possibly hottest, seafloor spreading center and is located at a depth of 2300-4960 meters [1]. At the spreading center there are two hydrothermal vent fields just 12 miles apart from each other and in 2011 a brand new species of shrimp, Rimicaris hybisae, was found at both
Even though Rimicaris hybisae are known as eyeless shrimp, it does not mean that they lack all vision. Rimicaris hybisae actually contain a light-sensing organ, which is located on their backs. This organ contains a certain pigment with an absorption rate that’s very similar to rhodopsin, allowing the shrimp to detect low levels of illumination. It is believed that they use this low level of light to navigate around the hydrothermal vents [3].
The eyeless shrimp live in the rich sulfide chimneys. They seem like a social marine species since thousands of shrimps are living in the same chimney. The shrimps will move on to a new vent when an existing one is no longer viable [4]. The food of this species consists mostly of microorganisms. They consume the microorganisms that grow in the chimneys or that are floating in the water [5]. Although the eyeless shrimp live in the deep ocean where the pressure is extremely high with low temperature, scientists have discovered that they do have predators that will go after them. Bythograeid crabs, hydrothermal vent anemones, Chorocaris chacei and Alvinocaris makensis (another type of shrimp) will all eat this of this species. No known defense mechanisms are found in the eyeless shrimp to protect them from these predators [4].
http://nmnh.typepad.com/no_bones/2015/05/
Is this what T Rex Drillison meant by humans adapting to Global Warming?
Some gene splicing and Fast Eddy is all set!
Yes that’s great.
No matter…. we must Burn More Coal Now.
Would you prefer that we stopped Burning Coal?
Mister Ed, haven’t you learned yet….DOH!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QjHG48vWmpA
Live food?
We will engineer and adapt -T-Rex Drillerson
And he was SERIOUS when he spoke it! Unbelievable
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TkuyY2FFR7c
These are the folks running not only the nation, but most of the World. OY!
Admitting global warming is real was probably a condition of taking up his present job.
It’s what the Japanese refer to as swearing allegiance to the “tatemae”— the fascade, the pretense, the consensus, or whatever—or bowing to “political correctness”. But once we’ve got the tatemae out of the way on any matter, we can go about our business without paying any further consideration to doing anything about it.
Tim, that interview was held in June 2012…So, you are wrong about it being politically correct….more likely covering up for the past actions of Exxon Mobile in lying to the public about the Science. By admitting that there will be an impact… He protects himself for future lawsuits that will be in the courts for damages, both in terms of investors monies and adverse environmental events.
Well, it is known that Exxon Mobile has some of the top scientists in the field of climate.
It is also known the top executives had been issued reports indicating the link of future
The ExxonMobil climate change controversy is the controversy around ExxonMobil’s activities related to climate change, especially their promotion of climate change denial. Since the 1970s, ExxonMobil engaged in research, lobbying, advertising, and grant making, some of which were conducted with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.
From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, Exxon funded internal and university collaborations, broadly in line with the developing public scientific approach. After the 1980s, the company was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Exxon helped to found and lead the Global Climate Coalition of businesses opposed to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions
In 1966, Esso scientist James Black and the National Academies of Science published a report that the rate of build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main contributor to climate change, in the atmosphere corresponded with the rate of production of carbon dioxide by human consumption of fossil fuels.[5][6] In July 1977, Black, then a senior scientist in Exxon’s Research & Engineering division, warned company executives of the danger of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases from the burning of fossil fuels.[7][8] Black reported that there was general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change
Damn, money makes folks do so not so nice actions
Alas, even money-less societies tend to be rather repulsive: Shaka the Zulu for instance.
Maybe so, Xavier, but if they fckup the Zulu don’t take down they whole Planet with them…
These Guys at EXXON KNEW and still KNOW and acting dumb like they aren’t sure….but we are advanced and civilized! Just because we use toilet paper and flush it somewhere it is unseen.
November 06, 2015 – 10:30 AM EST
Fifty years ago: The White House knew all about climate change
Fifty years ago, on November 5, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House released “Restoring the Quality of our Environment”, a report that described the impacts of climate change, and foretold dramatic Antarctic ice sheet loss, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. That 1965 White House report stated
“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more CO2 in our atmosphere than present.”
Catastrophically, on the 50th anniversary of the White House report, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are indeed at 399 ppm: 25 percent over 1965 levels, exactly as predicted 50 years ago. Science
“This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.”
Remarkably, instead of taking affirmative steps to combat the climate change it knew was coming, our federal government became the primary contributor to climate change in the U.S., both by extensively burning fossil fuels itself and by encouraging and enabling the extensive development of fossil fuels over the last 50 years.
Oh, we HUMANS are just slooow learners, like some folks here…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fv5nyFBUGPk
And other than complaining … what are you doing about this situation Jeremy?
Do you buy stuff? Do you use petrol and electricity? Do you have a car? Do you live in a house or apartment?
I know you have a computer – and an internet connection.
where do you gas up – BP or Exxon?
Like Tim says…. Hippo Crit. I take that further and label you MOREon.
TINA — as in There Is No Alternative.
Burn More Coal — or Suffer and Die Now
The cognitive dissonance you display is totally amazing! So you agree humans are destroying the Earth in every way possible, yet somehow global warming is a hoax… As if the climate of this planet was not connected to anything else… Really???
Without a doubt burning fossil fuels is impacting the planet to some extent — but there is no evidence for the claims that it is going to end the planet… or even that it is going significantly alter the planet…
There is no reason to get all excited about this non-issue….
The MSM has created a feeding frenzy …. the MSM that nobody trusts on most issues..
Yet on global war..ming …. you read it on Bloomberg and saw it on CNN — it MUST be true….
Think beyond that … what is their agenda? There is ALWAYS an agenda….
Dr Fast will help you escape front the thought police… repeat after me:
Global Wa.rming is Irrelevant
Global Wa.rming Scientists Admit they were wrong
Global Wa.rming is Irrelevant
Global Wa.rming Scientists Admit they were wrong
Global Wa.rming is Irrelevant
Global Wa.rming Scientists Admit they were wrong
Let’s book another appointment shall we — next time I will convince you that this is all made up to take your eye of the end of the world nightmare that is approaching
Ask yourself — how many top scientists, politicians, economists etc… believe that solar panels and EVs are the way forward? How many hundreds of billions – make that trillions – have been poured into these technologies in the form of subsidies?
We know for a fact that they are wrong. Absolutely wrong.
Yet when scientists tell us global warming is going to kill the planet – we believe them.
If the MSM pounds a drum to hard —- you gotta wonder why
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K5sVkyk1ACE/VWPLq2ibvZI/AAAAAAAAALs/wdJCVte5zac/s1600/cracks+light.jpg
Privatize the profit
Socialize the risk
Why Is US Government Giving A Pharma Giant Exclusive Rights To A Zika Vaccine Whose Development Was Paid For By The US Public?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170621/09175037641/why-is-us-government-giving-pharma-giant-exclusive-rights-to-zika-vaccine-whose-development-was-paid-us-public.shtml
Two Italian Zombie Banks Toppled Friday Night
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/06/23/ecb-shuts-veneto-banca-banca-popolare-di-vicenza-italian-banking-crisis/
Wow, what are the chances now of seeing martial law declared?
30 GOP Congressmen Have Been Attacked or Threatened Since May
http://freebeacon.com/issues/30-gop-congressmen-attacked-threatened-since-may/
The American peons are acting up in various ways but they have no outlet for their rage since traditional support has been eroded, unions have gone, the classes are bifurcating, etc.
Thus far the rage has been channeled into movie fantasies, video games, bombing Arabs, police force (either with or against) which have been remarkably effective and put systems like the Soviet Union to shame.
But alas like we know here, you cannot get around thermodynamics. The system is slowly going into cost overrun, at some point some of the peons decide they have nothing left to lose, and that’s actually true. They have reached the end of the line.
The Stump… speaks
Whenever Dolph speaks all i can think of
http://imgur.com/Qbzst9I
Well, there is a solution…Secret Service protection for ALL lawmakers and judges.
Oh, Scott Pruitt, new head of the EPA, demanded such on condition of accepting the position!
No problem, good for the unemployment rate…
It would be like Northern Spain, where bodyguards multiplied wonderfully, and they hung on to those jobs for decades after the real threat had more or less subsided.
when I wrote this guys I had in the back of my mind the recent killings of three attorney murders in florida in one week, the continuing Seth Rick investigations, Illinois collapse, shooting of a member of congress, and so much more see here http://secretsofthefed.com/dead-125-scientists-75-high-level-bankers-and-within-24-hours-3-investigative-journalists/
next to the numerous reports collated on OFW and it seems to me what other option does the gov have than to declare it at some point especially when politicians are being targeted like this? Who can not forget the 60’s and Trudea and for far less than all of this that we are now seeing. Can’t begin too imagine his take if he saw us now?
There is too much violence.
Interesting in the Israel of old whenever some calamity was about to strike the nation a rams horn was blown and a solemn assembly was called for to seek for an answer from above but here we are today taking matters into our own hands. Don’t know but maybe this is what explains the trumpet sounds being heard throughout the world and odd or typical that one occurs over Jerusalem.
https://youtu.be/F06QKIzcB74
We have seen nothing yet.
Net loss of jobs ~ .5-1B people over the next few decade/s due to automation, phasing in of subsistence level UBI, demographic contraction.. In such environment the fossil fuel depletion-affordability is of lesser concern for a while. This scenario although not my highest priority, actually has got some legs, be realistic, this is crazy planet, don’t be chained to the rail track when the freight train of BAU extension is humming alongside you.
Yes, another example for automation is in the Airline Industry, kiosks for check in and boarding requires only one ticket agent. Developing methods of loading and unloading that also requires the overseeing by one agent. Labor is the one variable cost that management can control in that Industry. Till now resorted in “contracting” out work to sub contractors that hire grunts at base scale. After a few years of “pay increases”, contractor is replaced by another firm, that hires or rehires workers at starting pay scale!
What at scam. New form of serfdom.
Burn More Coal.
???
The robots will thank you for it!
Graph showing Lefties are smarter:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a3OhDQweC6E/WU1N8txNPLI/AAAAAAAAv6s/-zJ9mJmT0P8PHvP07vJzxilnnQterSU2QCEwYBhgL/s640/figure1.png
(look at the ratio of acts to failures, the weather underground never got caught– they had to turn themselves in)
The explanation is quite simple: what is labelled ‘Right-wing terrorism’ , and ‘Islamist’, is often based on rage (revenge for Syria and Iraq, hatred of immigrants, etc). It is random and ineffective.
Whereas the Left does have a much more developed theory of revolutionary violence, which we saw in Europe in the 1970’s. The Left always plans to do its real killing once it has seized total power, then the number is always in the millions, not the handfuls that result from bombs and shooting.
In fact, a true revolutionary situation nearly always requires murder. Nice people.
The research interviews I have had with convicted Left-wing terrorists always left me feeling that it would have been best to hang them right up, as they rarely repent what they did or the terrible acts they led others to commit.
Just like Right-wing death squads and race-fantasists, they are all scum.
what about biggest scum of this planet bankers and politicians
should be they hang first
That’s understood….. Terrorists are really just a fringe show in the great theatre of Collapse.
Is this US only? What constitutes terrorism? I thought lefts threw rocks at policemen and right maybe snatched the hijab of a poor girl.
I can think of ONE recent right wing terror act in europe, which I would classify as “successful”, no left wing and about a weekly islamistic one.
Just because an entity posts data does not make it valid. Just consider the bls unemployment rate v. labor participation.
If you break a window, you are a vandal
If you clear cut a forest, you are developer
You are historically challenged:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/RAF-Logo.svg/200px-RAF-Logo.svg.png
I think the chart said 2008-2016
It did—-
But the reference was general.
That chart is baloney.
Possibly– but it tracked actual events.
Have any counter data?
Why the hate?
Because I remind you guys that things haven’t collapsed and you are just being replaced by cheaper immigrants?
Admit it. You are the guys who want collapse, so the billions of useless eaters can quickly die. That’s your fantasy, not mine.
Why are you such a Moreon?
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s white middle aged people dying off, being replaced by people of hue.
The reason is simple: white people have lots of intercourse without breeding. It means their population ages over time. People of hue just get it done and produce the next generation, continually, which is of course subsidized by the big government and corporate state, as they need a steady stream of compliant laborers. Immigrants of hue fill this role perfectly, as any work in America at any wage is better than what they get in their home countries.
Of course, these people of hue will in turn be replaced by other people of hue, but shhhhh, don’t mention that too loudly, otherwise they might join up with the white people to overthrow the system. And we can’t very well have that can we.
So does exposure to the sun lower ones IQ or something? What dynamic is at play that living near the equator make one more likely to reproduce?
Living more in the moment I guess! Not worrying about number of bedrooms, cost of diapers etc.
Stump Head
Elsewhere I am proposing an Imperialism, with very minimal resources to the world’s poorer countries and also poorer regions of the ‘advanced countries’, somewhat like the Irish famine.
It might not save the earth, but it might save BAU.
Afterall, North Korea has no trouble surviving with only about 600k, namely the fat Kim and his minions, enjoying a modern lifestyle and the rest living like primitives (although they somehow get to watch Chinese and South Korean shows).
The population of North Korea seems to be rising, despite all of their problems. In fact, their population growth rate is a little higher than South Korea’s and Russia’s.
Gail, it seems that besides NK the rest of the world’s population has been falling. As an actuary, I know you must have mentioned or taken into consideration the factor of population growth/decline somewhere here on some of your posts. It seems to me without that growth that it may be underlying the debt/credit issue for the financial problems we face. Or it is part of the feedback loop. My parents had 4 kids in the 1950’s and now most families only have 2. I have none.
Take a look at this posting by Chris Hamilton on his blog Econimica (https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-next-recession-will-morph-into.html) as he makes a very convincing argument about population decline and the economy.
I have also been reading Istanbul by Thomas F. Madden and by the time when the 4th Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204 the population (already in down from 800,000 to 400,000 inside the walls and 1M in the GMA) ended up with one-in-three homeless and all nobles and clergy and courtiers in exile. 60 years later the population ended up at about 35,000.
So preceding an economic crash is a population crash?
The population of North Korea isn’t falling. The population of the world isn’t falling. What is falling is the population of 15-64 year olds, or perhaps the population of 25-54 year olds, in certain “developed” countries. If we look at India, Africa, and the Middle East, I am pretty sure that the population of young people who might work is rising.
I think that the pensions and health care promised to retirees in the developed world is a big problem. There is no way the other workers can afford to pay for these costs. I think diminishing returns with respect to fossil fuels is a problem. Diminishing returns sends to price of energy supplies up, without a corresponding increase in the “energy” value we get out. Chris Hamilton has a point, but if that were the only problem, we could more or less solve it for a while by importing workers from lesser developed countries, where populations of young people are growing.
I do think that we are likely headed toward a population crash. I expect that the economic crash will precede the population crash. Venezuela and Greece are already reaching the economic crash. Many oil exporters are on their way to a crash, if oil prices remain low. Spain and Italy are headed toward a crash too, because banks have been making loans that can’t be paid back.
OPEC has lost the war. We have won the war. We are the swing producer. … Our frackers have prevailed.”
This is clear madness.
He who holds the gold and prints the world’s reserve currency makes the rules .
Shale is only 5.6% of World C+C production, so not really much of a problem.
One Field in Saudi Arabia, Ghawar, produced about 5 million barrels (790,000 m3) of oil a day (6.25% of global production), more than all shale production, plus 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day.
People cannot afford the high prices Saudi Arabia and others need, to get the tax level they need.
Americans Are Back in Love With SUVs and Pickups
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-22/americans-are-back-in-love-with-suvs-and-pickups
Fat Americans have to ride in pickup trucks..Three or four of those 400 pound Americans
and it takes truck suspension, truck axles and wheels to carry the load. Might be a reason to bring back passenger trains.
I’m in love with my Dodge Ram 1500 Ecodiesel. 29 mpg…fantastic….and I am not fat.
I have a 2011 Volkswagen diesel that gets 70 mpg (Canadian gallons) and in the next couple of weeks I get to return it to the dealer to be crushed. They did give me a new 2017 at no cost, same model but gas – it gets 35 mpg. How utterly insane is that!
It is strange. Perhaps the issue is that we need more oil demand. Buying more gasoline would help get prices up to a level closer to what the producers need.
It is also interesting that the two penaltys and lawsuits by the Feds against car makers for allegedly cheating on mileage tests were for the VW diesel and the Dodge Ram Ecodiesel. Both are however European firms.
The plan is to provoke Russia to war to cover for the economic collapse. The Elders hopes to get Russia to drop a nuclear bomb on the US to cause chaos. The elites plan to be safe in their silos while the rest of the population suffers. Economic problem solved. Angry US population neutralized..
Very skeptical on that one, a nuke would cause big problems to the biosphere around the hemisphere.
Don’t worry, Cliff. It is traditional to nuke Japan, not the US. After all, Japan certainly deserved it the first time and will be best prepared. Anyway, Buddhist Tim Groves says there’s only so much pain one can suffer, so it won’t be an infinite agony. And it’s Japan that is infecting the world with its deflation, so the infection will stop.
But in case you’re still worried, Cliff, just get prepared. Here is a series of excellent videos to help you:
One of the most important pieces of advice given in those videos is, after a nuclear attack, do not smoke! Remember that.
Whatever would lead you want to label me a Buddhist? Actually, Indeed, I’m a Buddhist and a Christian and a Jew and a Moslem and a Hindu and a Jedi—although I admit I only did the Jedi practice because I like the uniform and I wanted to learn how to use the force to levitate things and exercise a strong influence over the weak-minded.
All who practice their religion sincerely with a pure heart (and this doesn’t mean using religion as an excuse to be mean to each other) to the point where they become enlightened have nothing at all to fear about anything. It’s the rest of us that I feel very sorry for. To have to face the horrors of the decline and fall of BAU without the assurance that however bad things get, everything’s absolutely OK; that’s going to be “a real pig”, as we say in the old country.
It is painfully obvious to most of us here that nothing can save the current convenient and comfortable version of BAU and so there are going to be a lot more people doing a lot more suffering down the road. Eventually, after the years of tribulation (and no Rapture!) the situation may stabilize as a much rougher and more frugal version of BAU; perhaps medieval feudalism-type BAU, ancient middle-eastern slave-owning pyramid-building-type BAU, or hunter/gatherer-type BAU. Who knows? I won’t be around to see that.
Also, I find Eddy’s views that prepping is not going to save us in a world of hungry neighbors, barbarian hordes and scintillating spent fuel ponds. However, prepping could be a good insurance policy in the event of a slower decline and fall, so I would certainly not sneeze or sneer at it.
Moreover, there is another form of prepping that will be very useful in the event BAU crashes and even if it doesn’t. And that is spiritual/mental/psychological prepping. Which brings me to Zen.
For Westerners, certain Buddhist practices such as Zen can be a easy to take up precisely because they are not part of our cultural baggage. This makes them accessible in a way that Christian practices are not to people raised on a diet of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet. In fact, looking at Zen, most Westerners wouldn’t consider it to be a “religion” at all—although for it to be worth pursuing, you have to practice it religiously.
The late Charlotte Joko Beck wrote:
enter a discipline like Zen practice so that we can learn to live in a sane way. Zen is almost a thousand years old and the kinks have been worked out of it; while it is not easy, it is not insane. It is down to earth and very practical. It is about our daily life. It is about working better in the office, raising our kids better, and having better relationships. Having a more sane and satisfying life must come out of a sane, balanced practice. What we want to do is find some way of working with the basic insanity that exists because of our blindness.
It takes courage to sit well. Zen is not a discipline for everyone. We have to be willing to do something that is not easy. If we do it with patience and perseverance, with the guidance of a good teacher, then gradually our life settles down, becomes more balanced. Our emotions are not quite as domineering. As we sit, we find that the primary thing we must work with is our busy, chaotic mind. We are all caught up in frantic thinking, and the problem in practice is to begin to bring that thinking into clarity and balance. When the mind becomes clear and balanced and is no longer caught by objects, there can be an opening—and for a second we can realize who we really are.
But sitting is not something that we do for a year or two with the idea of mastering it. Sitting is something we do for a lifetime. There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being. Eventually we see that we are the limitless, boundless ground of the universe. Our job for the rest of our life is to open up into that immensity and to express it. Having more and more contact with this reality always brings compassion for others and changes our daily life. We live differently, work differently, relate to people differently. Zen is a lifelong study. It isn’t just sitting on a cushion for thirty of forty minutes a day. Our whole life becomes practice, twenty-four hours a day.
“We are all caught up in frantic thinking.” So no, it isn’t just you. We are all caught up in a roller-coaster of thoughts much of the time that can set our minds running like the engine of motorbike being driven in a speedway race. This is what turns choices into problems, problems into worries, worries into anxiety, spiraling into panic attacks, depression and trips to the ER for some pills from Dolph to make it all go away, even just temporarily.
But it makes a huge difference in your life if you are caught up in frantic thinking 10% of the time or 90% of the time. As Hamlet said:
there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Prepping:
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/lostpedia/images/3/36/Mercenary_team.png
Well, you seem to know a lot about Buddhism. What constitutes enlightenment? Do you consider yourself enlightened?
“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
If somebody decides to saw thru my sinews, it’s gonna hurt badly, and I won’t be able to help thinking about it.
Otherwise, I pay more attention to my night dreams these days. I am astounded at how some of them have been clairvoyant or shown minor future events. Others are beautifully structured works of art that my waking mind is perfectly incapable of constructing. Or detailed episodes from the lives of unknown people, but dreamt as though they were me. My dreams suggest to me that there’s way more to the universe that we consider in our waking lives.
Because Cathal said so?
Who’s bloody Cathal, when he’s at home?
World’s biggest coal company closes 37 mines as solar power’s influence grows
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coal-india-closes-37-mines-solar-power-sustainable-energy-market-influence-pollution-a7800631.html
The world economy will tend to collapse as coal production/consumption drops, I expect. The media presents a lot of wishful thinking articles.
i want to ask who believe in race things
if every country on this planet get resources like usaof60/70 would every country
would be developed
Theres nothing particularly special about white people genetically. The wests success was a combination of fossil fuels (90%) and culture(10%). I do think certain peoples cultures would have prevented the levels of fossil fuel usage we see in the West, and consequently the same general levels of wealth.
yet another great comedian answers questions (strong language)
I would not call racist Chris Rock a great comedian.
I’ve never seen a wealth v. rich distinction made before…or maybe just made so lots of people can understand it. i thought that was useful.
There are not really enough resources for everyone to be getting the resources the US is consuming. If we tried, we would have hit limits years ago.
But doesn’t the fact that you say ‘we’ show an identification with one group over another? Mightn’t such an identification beg for explanation as to how or why it’s necessary?
Of course there must be more than just having the resources.
How else do you explain the difference between US and middle east? Or every natural resource rich poor exploited african country.
Suggested prerequisites: technical progress prior to finding oil, democracy or at least private ownership.
One of the most important books ever written:
Why Nations Fail
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a non-fiction book by Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and British political scientist James A. Robinson from the University of Chicago.
The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing, via a wide range of historical case studies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail
Thanks.
Thats the 10% culture. You need private property rights to encourage innovation and a cultural disposition toward hard work. It’s no coincidence that the industrial age followed the renaissance. I actually value and prefer Western culture over all others. I’m against unchecked immigration because of the cultural differences. The point is that western culture isn’t a racial trait. Any group of humans could adopt it and do just as well, assuming an adequate resource base to exploit. Its all hypothetical, as fossil fuels were a one shot deal and all modern cultures are likely going to go extinct post BAU, assuming some of us survive.