Recently, a Spanish group called “Ecologists in Action” asked me to give them a presentation on what kind of financial crisis we should expect. They wanted to know when it would be and how it would take place.
The answer I had for the group is that we should expect financial collapse quite soon–perhaps as soon as the next few months. Our problem is energy related, but not in the way that most Peak Oil groups describe the problem. It is much more related to the election of President Trump and to the Brexit vote.
I have talked about this subject in various forms before, but not since 2016 energy production and consumption data became available. Most of the slides in this presentation use new BP data, through 2016. A copy of the presentation can be found at this link: The Next Financial Crisis.1
Slide 1
Most people don’t understand how interconnected the world economy is. All they understand is the simple connections that economists make in their models.
Slide 2
Energy is essential to the economy, because energy is what makes objects move, and what provides heat for cooking food and for industrial processes. Energy comes in many forms, including sunlight, human energy, animal energy, and fossil fuels. In today’s world, energy in the form of electricity or petroleum makes possible the many things we think of as technology.
In Slide 2, I illustrate the economy as hollow because we keep adding new layers of the economy on top of the old layers. As new layers (including new products, laws, and consumers) are added, old ones are removed. This is why we can’t necessarily use a prior energy approach. For example, if cars can no longer be used, it would be difficult to transition back to horses. This happens partly because there are few horses today. Also, we do not have the facilities in cities to “park” the horses and to handle the manure, if everyone were to commute using horses. We would have a stinky mess!
Slide 3
In the past, many local civilizations have grown for a while, and then collapsed. In general, after a group finds a way to produce more food (for example, cuts down trees so that citizens have more area to farm) or finds another way to otherwise increase productivity (such as adding irrigation), growth at first continues for a number of generations–until the population reaches the new carrying capacity of the land. Often resources start to degrade as well–for example, soil erosion may become a problem.
At this point, growth flattens out, and wage disparity and growing debt become greater problems. Eventually, unless the group can find a way of increasing the amount of food and other needed goods produced each year (such as finding a way to get food and other materials from territories in other parts of the world, or conquering another local civilization and taking their land), the civilization is headed for collapse. We recently have tried globalization, with exports from China, India, and other Asian nations fueling world economic growth.
At some point, the efforts to keep growing the economy to match rising population become unsuccessful, and collapse sets in. One of the reasons for collapse is that the government cannot collect enough taxes. This happens because with growing wage disparity, many of the workers cannot afford to pay much in taxes. Another problem is greater susceptibility to epidemics, because after-tax income of many workers is not sufficient to afford an adequate diet.
Slide 4
A recent partial collapse of a local civilization was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. When this happened, the government of the Soviet Union disappeared, but the governments of the individual states within the Soviet Union remained. The reason I call this a partial collapse is because the rest of the world was still functioning, so nearly all of the population remained, and the cutback in fuel consumption was just partial. Eventually, the individual member countries were able to function on their own.
Notice that after the Soviet Union collapsed, the consumption of coal, oil and gas collapsed at the same time, over a period of years. Oil and coal use have not come back to anywhere near their earlier level. While the Soviet Union had been a major manufacturer and a leader in space technology, it lost those roles and never regained them. Many types of relatively high-paying jobs have been lost, leading to lower energy consumption.
Slide 5
As nearly as I can tell, one of the major contributing factors to the collapse of the Soviet Union was low oil prices. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. As oil prices fell, the government could not collect sufficient taxes. This was a major contributing factor to collapse. The collapse from low oil prices did not happen immediately–it took several years after the drop in oil prices. There was a 10-year gap between the highest oil price (1981) and collapse (1991), and a 5-year gap after oil prices dropped to the low 1986 price level.
Slide 6
Venezuela is often in the news because of its inability to afford to import enough food for its population. Slide 3 shows that on an inflation-adjusted basis, world oil prices hit a high point first in 2008, and again in 2011. Since 2011, oil prices slid slowly for a while, then began to slide more quickly in 2014. It is now nine years since the 2008 peak. It is six years since the 2011 peak, and about three years since the big drop in prices began.
One of the reasons for Venezuela’s problems is that with low oil prices, the country has been unable to collect sufficient tax revenue. Also, the value of the currency has dropped, making it difficult for Venezuela to afford food and other products on international markets.
Note that in both Slides 4 and 6, I am showing the amount of energy consumed in the countries shown. The amount consumed represents the amount of energy products that individual citizens, plus businesses, plus the government, can afford. This is why, in both Slides 4 and 6, the quantity of all types of energy products tends to decline at the same time. Affordability affects many types of energy products at once.
Slide 7
Oil importing countries can have troubles when oil prices rise, similar to the problems that oil exporting countries have when oil prices fall. Greece’s energy consumption peaked in 2007. One of Greece’s major products is tourism, and the cost of tourism depends on the price of oil. When the price of oil was high, it adversely affected tourism. Exported goods also became expensive in the world market. Once oil prices dropped (as they have done, especially since 2014), tourism tended to rebound and the financial situation became less dire. But total energy consumption has still tended to decline (top “stacked” chart on Slide 7), indicating that the country is not yet doing well.
Slide 8
Spain follows a pattern similar to Greece’s. By the mid-2000s, high oil prices made Spain less competitive in the world market, leading to falling job opportunities and less energy consumption. Since 2014, very low oil prices have allowed tourism to rebound. Oil consumption has also rebounded a bit. But Spain is still far below its peak in energy consumption in 2007 (top chart on Slide 8), indicating that job opportunities and spending by its citizens are still low.
Slide 9
We hear much about rising manufacturing in the Far East. This has been made possible by the availability of both inexpensive coal supplies and inexpensive labor. India is an example of a country where manufacturing has risen in recent years. Slide 9 shows how rapidly energy consumption–especially coal–has risen in India.
Slide 10
China’s energy consumption grew very rapidly after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In 2013, however, China’s coal consumption hit a peak and began to decline. One major contributor was the fact that the cheap-to-consume coal that was available nearby had already been extracted. The severe problems that China has had with pollution from coal may also have played a role.
It might be noted that the charts I am showing (from Mazamascience) do not include renewable energy (including wind and solar, plus burned garbage and other “renewables”) used to produce electricity. (The charts do include ethanol and other biofuels within the “oil” category, however.) The omission of wind and solar does not appear to make a material difference, however. Figure 1 shows a chart I made for China, comparing three totals:
(1) Opt. total (Optimistic total) – Totals on the basis BP computes wind and solar. Intermittent wind and solar electricity is assumed to be equivalent to high quality electricity, available 24/7/365, produced by fossil fuel electricity-generating stations.
(2) Likely totals – Wind and solar are assumed to replace only the fuel that creates high quality electricity. The amount of backup generating capacity required is virtually unchanged. More long distance transmission is needed; other enhancements are also needed to bring the electricity up to grid-quality. The credits given for wind and solar are only 38% as much as those given in the BP methodology.
(3) From chart – Mazamascience totals, omitting renewable sources of electricity, other than hydroelectric.
Figure 1. China energy consumption based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017.
It is clear from Figure 1 that adding electricity from renewables (primarily wind and solar) does not make much difference for China, no matter how wind and solar are counted. If they are counted in a realistic manner, they truly add little to China’s energy use. This is also true for the world in total.
Slide 11
If we look at the major parts of world energy consumption, we see that oil (including biofuels) is the largest. Recently, it seems to be growing slightly more quickly than other energy consumption, perhaps because of the low oil price. World coal consumption has been declining since 2014. If coal is historically the least expensive fuel, this is likely a problem. I have not shown a chart with total world energy consumption. It is still growing, but it is growing less rapidly than world population.
Slide 12 – Note: Energy growth includes all types of energy. This includes wind and solar, using wind and solar counted using the optimistic BP approach.
Economists have given the false idea that amount of energy consumption is unimportant. It is true that individual countries can experience lower consumption of energy products, if they begin outsourcing major manufacturing to other countries as they did after the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. But it doesn’t change the world’s need for growing energy consumption, if the world economy is to grow. The growth in world energy consumption (blue line) tends to be a little lower than the growth in GDP (red line), because of efficiency gains over time.
If we look closely at Slide 12, we can see that drops in energy consumption tend to precede drops in world GDP; rises in energy consumption tend to precede rises in world GDP. This order of events strongly suggests that rising energy consumption is a major cause of world GDP growth.
We don’t have very good evaluations of GDP amounts for 2015 and 2016. For example, recent world GDP estimates seem to accept without question the very high estimates of economic growth given by China, even though their growth in energy consumption is very much lower in 2014 through 2017. Thus, world economic growth may already be lower than reported amounts.
Slide 13
Most people are not aware of the extreme “power” given by energy products. For example, it is possible for a human to deliver a package, by walking and carrying the package in his hands. Another approach would be to deliver the package using a truck, operated by some form of petroleum. One estimate is that a single gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 500 hours of human labor.
“Energy consumption per capita” is calculated as world energy consumption divided by world population. If this amount is growing, an economy is in some sense becoming more capable of producing goods and services, and thus is becoming wealthier. Workers are likely becoming more productive, because the additional energy per capita allows the use of more and larger machines (including computers) to leverage human labor. The additional productivity allows wages to rise.
With higher incomes, workers can afford to buy an increasing amount of goods and services. Businesses can expand to serve the growing population, and the increasingly wealthy customers. Taxes can rise, so it is possible for governments to provide the services that citizens desire, such as healthcare and pensions. When energy consumption per capita turns negative–even slightly so–these abilities start to disappear. This is the problem we are starting to encounter.
Slide 14 – Note: Energy percentage increases include all energy sources shown by BP. Wind and solar are included using BP’s optimistic approach for counting intermittent renewables, so growth rates for recent years are slightly overstated.
We can look back over the years and see when energy consumption rose and fell. The earliest period shown, 1968 to 1972, had the highest annual growth in energy consumption–over 3% per year–back when oil prices were under $20 per barrel, and thus were quite affordable. (See Slide 5 for a history of inflation-adjusted price levels.) Once prices spiked in the 1973-1974 period, much of the world entered recession, and energy consumption per capita barely rose.
A second drop in consumption (and recession) occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when easy-to-adopt changes were made to cut oil usage and increase efficiency. These included
(a) Closing many electricity-generating plants using oil, and replacing them with other generation.
(b) Replacing many home heating systems operating with oil with systems using other fuels, often more efficiently.
(c) Changing many industrial processes to be powered by electricity instead of burning oil.
(d) Making cars smaller and more fuel-efficient.
Another big drop in world per capita energy consumption occurred with the partial collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This was a somewhat local drop in energy consumption, allowing the rest of the world to continue to grow in its use of energy.
The Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 was, in some sense, another localized crisis that allowed energy consumption to continue to grow in the rest of the world.
Most people remember the Great Recession in the 2007-2009 period, when world per capita growth in energy consumption briefly became negative. Recent data suggests that we are almost in the same adverse situation now, in terms of growth in world per capita energy consumption, as we were then.
Slide 15
What happens when growth in world per capita energy consumption slows and starts to fall? I have listed some of the problems in Slide 15. We start seeing problems with low wages, particularly for people with low-skilled jobs, and the type of political problems we have been experiencing recently.
Part of the problem is that countries with a high-priced mix of energy products start to find their goods and services uncompetitive in the world marketplace. Thus, demand for goods and services from these countries starts to fall. Greece and Spain are examples of countries using a lot of oil in their energy mix. As a result, they became less competitive in the world market when oil prices rose. China and India were favored because they had a less-expensive energy mix, favoring coal.
Slide 16
Slide 16 shows the kinds of comments we have been hearing in recent years, as prices have recently bounced up and down. It is becoming increasingly clear that no price of oil is now satisfactory for all participants in the economy. Prices are either too high for consumers, or too low for the producers. In fact, prices can be unsatisfactory for both consumers and producers at the same time.
On Slide 16, oil prices show considerable volatility. This happens because it is difficult to keep supply and demand exactly balanced; there are many factors determining needed price level, including both the amount consumers can afford and the costs of producers. The bouncing of prices up and down on Slide 16 is to a significant extent in response to interest rate changes, and resulting changes in currency relativities and debt growth.
We are now reaching a point where no interest rate works for all members of the economy. If interest rates are low, pension plans cannot meet their obligations. If interest rates are high, monthly payments for homes and cars become unaffordable for customers. Also, high interest rates tend to raise needed tax levels for governments.
Slide 17
All of these problems are fairly evident already.
Slide 18
The low level of energy consumption growth is of considerable concern. It is this low growth in energy consumption that we would expect to lead to low wage growth worldwide, especially for the non-elite workers. Our economy needs more rapid growth in energy consumption to provide enough tax revenue for all of our governments and intergovernmental organizations, and to keep the world economy growing quickly enough to prevent large debt defaults.
Slide 19
Economists have confused matters for a long time by their belief that energy prices can and will rise arbitrarily high in inflation-adjusted terms–for example $300 per barrel for oil. If such high prices were really possible, we could extract all of the oil that we have the technical capacity to extract. High-cost renewables would become economically feasible as well.
In fact, affordability is the key issue. When the world economy is stimulated by more debt, only a small part of this additional debt makes its way back to the wages of non-elite workers. With greater global competition in wages, the wages of these workers tend to stay low. The limited demand of these workers tends to keep commodity prices, especially oil prices, from rising very high, for very long.
It is affordability that limits our ability to grow endlessly. While it is possible to argue that more debt might help raise the wages of non-elite workers in a particular country, if one country adds more debt, other currencies around the world can be expected to rebalance. As a result, there would be no real benefit, unless all countries together could add more debt. Even this would be of questionable value, because the whole effort relates to getting oil and other commodity prices to rise to an adequate level for producers; we have already seen that there is no price level that is satisfactory for both producers and consumers.
Slide 20
These symptoms seem to be already beginning to happen.
Note:
[1] This presentation is a little different from the original. The presentation I am showing here is entirely in English. The original presentation included some charts in Spanish from Energy Export Data Browser by Mazama Science. With this database, a person can quickly prepare energy charts for any country in a choice of seven languages. I encourage readers to “look up” their own country, in their preferred language.
In this write-up, I include more discussion than in my original talk. I also added Slides 13 and 14, plus Figure 1.
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http://imgur.com/a/yOnp9
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/608045-1.jpg
It’s gonna be rough, like Katrina on steroids but with very few there to save people when they ‘fall from grace’.
Good riddance.
Nonsense!! Chicago trades more grain than anywhere on Earth, and it has a firm handle on the future. /sarc
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) (often called “the Chicago Merc”, or “the Merc”) is an American financial and commodity derivative exchange based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, an agricultural commodities exchange. Originally, the exchange was a non-profit organization. The Merc demutualized in November 2000, went public in December 2002, and merged with the Chicago Board of Trade in July 2007 to become a designated contract market of the CME Group Inc., which operates both markets. The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CME Group is Terrence A. Duffy, Bryan Durkin is President and Leo Melamed is Chairman Emeritus. On August 18, 2008, shareholders approved a merger with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and COMEX. The Merc, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX are now markets owned by the CME Group.
Today, CME is the largest options and futures contracts open interest (number of contracts outstanding) of any futures exchange in the world, including any in New York City. The Merc trades several types of financial instruments: interest rates, equities, currencies, and commodities. It also offers trading in alternative investments, such as weather and real estate derivatives. As a Designated Self-Regulatory Organization (DSRO), the CME had primary regulatory-audit authority over firms such as MF Global.
CME also pioneered the CME SPAN software that is used around the world as the official performance bond (margin) mechanism of 50 registered exchanges, clearing organizations, service bureaus, and regulatory agencies throughout the world.
to the reader of ofw i want to ask a question
if china and india would not open to the world after cold war
do you think bau would have collapse by now
Yes.
The reason I say this is the fact that China and India were able to bring huge amounts of cheap energy resources to the world market, and this was what kept the world economy going. China seems to have lost this ability now, and India is having major problems. Calling in the major types of currency used in exchange was a big mistake, in my opinion. So is trying to use personal characteristics on cell phones to verify accounts. The technology doesn’t work well enough. If I recall correctly, one-third of accounts could not be matched up properly. I know I have never gotten the fingerprint unlock feature on my cell phone to work properly.
“I know I have never gotten the fingerprint unlock feature on my cell phone to work properly.”
Hopefully not an iPhone. 🙂
Correct
First of all, China started to open since the late 1970s – early 1980s, they watched closely the developments in smaller capitalist Chinese enclaves like Hong Kong (eventually coming back to China) and Taiwan, and incorporated reforms slowly, measurably. It’s true the top exponential phase of boom came in 1990s and 2000s though, but without the previous stages it wouldn’t be possible..
Secondly, and directly to your question, that’s hypothetical, simply the potential of China has been eventually unleashed, with the help of leveraged financing and sucking in global resources at gargantuan rate to do it.
We can now watch what follows, as I wrote recently elsewhere, after the lift off on western technology transfer, they don’t need it that much anymore, next gen is being developed domestically. Also their internal market is becoming increasingly saturated, and the traditional export channels are starting to bounce against early signs of protectionist policies among those trade partners. In summary not good for int trade, although they evidently try to build up new consumer base in wider Euro-Asian continent, Africa and S. America, partly by vendor financing model.
I don’t see a next gen for China. When the global eCONomy collapses so will China and the rest of the world. They have built their phony economy just like the US by means of massive debt, roughly in the neighborhood of $25 trillion since 2008 which helped pay for their ghost cities and factories. China is the USA x 3.
Next gen was a shortcut term, so I don’t have to repeat it again, e.g. they bought licenses and JV on fast rail, now it’s all reversed engineered and further developed in domestic industries in revisions/generations of product, hence 0% western content. Now they are exporting it..
All the university expansion plans here (top-tier institution) are based on Chinese science graduates, thousands of them: they are building on a large scale to house them -with families and children – so the property speculation plus inflated fees game is the gamble.
It has become much harder to attract British graduates with increasing numbers turning down offers of places for financial reasons, and very poor job opportunities within academia upon graduating.
Nope. China and India do not really matter.
http://imgur.com/J7B9IN6
http://imgur.com/a/UAPCH
Typical that of all of the industries going down the drain one is still growing and growing bigtime. BEER!
Molson / Coors is spending billion worldwide? O if only alcohol cold fuel or replace oil.
Ethanol?
If only coors light could be used to power an engine…. it is certainly not something I would ever consider drinking….
I am sorry, but I don’t have time to pay attention to movies. In fact, I often do not notice images either (unless they are clearly a chart I want to see).
If someone wants me to delete something, let me know what specifically they want deleted– link to the comment. I am not sure I can find it otherwise.
Renewed slide in oil price will test U.S. shale profits: Kemp
Harold Hamm, chief executive of Continental Resources, a major producer in North Dakota and Oklahoma, has said oil prices need to be above $50 to be sustainable.
Prices below $40 would force producers to idle rigs again, he said in a recent interview (“Harold Hamm warns oil prices below $40 will idle U.S. drilling”, CNBC, June 28).
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shale-kemp-idUSKBN19S1R0
https://fathertheo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/for-whom-the-bell-tolls.jpg
I expect prices would need to be even higher than $50 per barrel, if my WSJ quote was correct:
This chart is from 2015, and things can’t have improved since…
http://www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/users/u616/images/2014/ada920.png
And when the price is too low, they all start fighting with each other.
Hm, since then several of these countries instead boosted natgas output (+ oil in some cases), refocused their exports into non energy stuff etc. However, some likely dug deeper into problems like Saudi..
People don’t be so dogmatic here, that’s why most of the “precision timing” doom predictions are joke or at least severely delayed and watered down one..
Most of us here would be relieved to be proven wrong on a timeline long enough to see us fitted out with woden suits.
So prices can only get higher if wages get higher. Bur wages getting higher requires more debt. The debt part is where I lose the thread. Somebody has to lend money to somebody who is assured to pay it back. But the lender has to have the means to lend, and that is based on energy somewhere to do something. All of this seems involved with so many moving parts that I still don’t see how anyone can understand it.
But let’s say government enacts a $15/hr wage for all, that could help with the demand?
Enacting a $15 minimum wage has a lot of moving parts too. The biggest one is that the employer has the option of automating parts of the job, so it no longer needs as many employees. A likely outcome is that many low-wage employees will be laid off. If the $15 minimum wage is wide enough spread, the level of the currency may drop relative to other currencies, making imports more expensive. So at most, it works only somewhat.
Debt has a problem with transferring wealth from the poorer members of society to the richer members of society. Over time, it tends to increase wealth disparity.
Wages can go higher, if there is a growing supply of cheap to extract energy that can be used to leverage human labor. Our predicament is that we ran out of such energy.
“A likely outcome is that many low-wage employees will be laid off.”
But laying them off seems short sighted over all, for that decreases demand for energy. How does that then affect the employer? I suppose the government (were it not simply beholden to to the employer class) could try and put people to work at $15/hr with the calculation that that would increase demand? Is government attempting to use automation itself when it could instead be hiring those workers?
Japan has been the country that has excelled at ramping up its own debt and using it to hire workers at make-work jobs.
China seems to do the same thing with its uninhabited cities. The situation is a little different there, because wealthy investors are convinced that the homes will at some point in the future have value, and thus fund their cost. So the debt is carried by wealthy individuals, rather than the government.
What the government does in the US is increasingly outsource its employment to private agencies. The private agencies then use whatever techniques they can, to substitute devices for human labor. More of the revenue that would have gone to workers also goes to profits and management, leaving less for workers. But if the plan is to cut government spending and to raise profits of businesses, this is the way things go.
http://assets.climatecentral.org/images/made/2017HottestOnRecord_TopTen_en_title_lg_660_371_s_c1_c_c.jpg
And it looks likely that 2017 will top last years “stellar result” too. It’s also instructive that 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2000.
Meanwhile in my neck of the woods…
Sydney weather breaks new record with summer the hottest on record
“Sydneysiders have endured their hottest summer since records began, with official data revealing records across the city were smashed during the 2016-17 season.
The mercury peaked at 47 degrees Celsius at RAAF Base Richmond on February 11, according to official figures from the Bureau of Meteorology.”
Liberal Lies!
Don’t you know it stopped getting warmer 20 years ago?
Somehow I missed the memo…
I did in fact they are loosing in court in Canada.
The hockey stick guy is on the rope
http://principia-scientific.org/breaking-michael-mann-doubles-down-over-contempt-issue/
This one’s also fascinating for anyone with a genuine interest in climate. It shows how the mean temperature of the northern and southern hemispheres varies throughout the year and how they add up to make the mean global temperature vary by almost 4 degrees C during the course of each and every year. Duncan and Jeremy, that’s about 7 degrees F; are we scared yet?
This is a regular annual cyclic variation, just like the coming of the monsoons, the opening of the cherry blossoms, or the waxing and waning of the Arctic sea ice. It’s as natural as a heartbeat and—a word to the neurotics and hysterics among us—nothing to hyperventilate, get alarmed or panicky about.
This explains why FE in New Zealand experiences much less temperature variation between summer and winter that those of us in the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere do.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Final-BW-Print-Version-TIS_html_5f0398df.png
And Sydney (and much of NSW) experienced its coldest May morning evah in 2016, despite the Urban Heat Island effect and all that CO2.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-30/records-broken-for-coldest-may-morning-across-nsw/7459648
And Southeastern Australia generally has had a very cold start to July, hasn’t it? Subzero temperatures an the coldest night in 15 years in many places. All despite record high CO2 in the Aussie air.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/temperatures-plummet-as-we-shiver-into-saturday-and-sunday/news-story/cc483776b3a5b8e037de7d6b3593071c
Do you know the difference between climate and weather? It’s as different as shit to cheese.
Do you actually know the difference between polite conversation and being a rude nasty troll?
I don’t believe you do.
In fact, I expect you were born and raised in a barn and literally dragged up.
But in answer to the point you bring up, I do indeed know the difference between climate and weather. Now, why don’t you ask your pal Duncan what the real-world significance of the bar chart he posted is? His answer should give us a real laugh.
I don’t think you do.
Duncan posted a chart showing yearly records falling. One after the other, like dominoes. In fact 9 out of 10 of those occured since 2000. Whereas you point to a single day’s episode. Hardly the same thing, is it? One is climate (yearly record), the other weather (daily blip).
Now go back to reading the Daily Mail.
I prefer this one—the global mean temperature shown on the Kelvin scale.
It shows graphically what we all know to be true instinctively—the earth’s global mean temperature has been extremely stable this past 30 years.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png
LOL!
“The line plot below shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2014 as recorded by NASA, NOAA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the Met Office Hadley Centre (United Kingdom). Though there are minor variations from year to year, all four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the last decade as the warmest.”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/images/decadaltemp/annual_temperature_anomalies_2014.png
Stick to reading the sports guide pal.
I know it sounds a bit ‘chicken or the egg’, but I think you have it backwards. Energy consumption doesn’t drive economic growth, it’s a symptom of it. You can light off a billion barrels of oil and the economy didn’t grow unless the consequence of that ‘consumption’ was productive.
Consider the following crude example: I have $200 to spend from wages. I can either pay off some of my debt or I can use it as a down payment on a new loan. No oil is consumed in either scenario, but only one of the two grows the economy.
Economic growth in our current system is triggered by speculation — taking on leverage in the expectation of better times ahead. Your chart for consumption vs global GDP may make it seem that consumption drives GDP, but GDP is a lagging indicator. Consumption is much less so (inventories vs output).
We may have a collapse, but it won’t be because of consumption (or lack thereof). It’ll be because we’re up to our eyeballs in debt, and it’s getting harder for future generations to continue servicing it all (not taking out more and more debt). We need a solid bear market to reset expectations on what normal should look like. It won’t be Armageddon, so long as we keep our political heads cool. But I have my doubts on that occurring.
I grew up in isolation and never saw or heard about money. Coupled or correlated with a complete inability to do mathh(s), this lack of experience means I can’t even understand your obviously clear explanation. I’ve had to find alternate means to understand my surroundings. Intuition, largely (with its limitations nonetheless). So what I see as preferable social behavior is to greatly restrict spending. Since I’m loosely connected with the land use and planning fields, i advocate that nothing new be built, and that we focus on an economy of repair (for all that has been previously built). The flip side of this is not to tear down or throw away any of the built world, and substitute for that a landfill-as-resource economy. Tourism is quite consistent with either of these economic threads. This is about as much as seems understandable to me, while there are other very large economic realities that are out of my reach. How all of this might work together is something I’d like to get a handle on.
I have been saying that our problem now is low energy prices, brought on by too little “demand” for oil and other energy prices. The way you get demand up is by (1) adding more debt, or (2) adding more wages. Adding more wages is often the consequence of adding more debt. Thus, I think I am using the same chicken-egg story that you are talking about. Without enough demand, the whole system collapses.
We will have collapse, because prices fall too low for producers, because of low affordability. When this collapse comes, it will look like a financial collapse, because of too much debt.
The thing that would have prevented this would have been a rapidly growing supply of much cheaper energy. This rapidly growing supply of energy would have allowed more leveraging of human labor. When this happened, workers would have become more and more productive. The growing productivity of human labor would have prevented the whole problem. This cannot happen when energy prices are high. I expect the maximum supportable oil price is something like $20 per barrel. The supply also needs to be increasing. In a networked system, it is possible to have two effects going on at the same time.
“I expect the maximum supportable oil price is something like $20 per barrel. ”
I agree- we have a system that functions with $20 dollar oil.
Anyone see a problem?
One important and seldom mentioned factor is the specific setting of particular economy, creating relative advantages and disadvantages, i.e. specialization, pecking order and so on. Simply, there are countries more affected by cold than hot climate, also and despite globalization different political-gov-econ models exist, populations less or more prone to rampant consumerism etc..
I’ll repost it from a message which didn’t get through few days ago:
“..Anyway, as I do annoy some people here frequently, the demographics would sort it out eventually, besides the NA is primed for some sort of savage civil war sooner or later, the resulting non-consumption level of FF would be epic. Russia and China, speaking their urban side, will likely go hermit style into their already lower energy consumption per capita via their fast rail network, high rise projects on district heating, subways, trams, all fueled mostly by coal-natgas, legacy nuclear and new breeders (spent fuel mixes) in the grid. In terms of the rest of the “golden billion of global pop” it will be a mixed bag with propensity to deteriorate more along side the NA chaos example, but few especially with proximity or linkage (and or supported enclave status) to that ring of survivor countries, might muddle through for a while. In terms of the other billions not counted so far, that’s one gloomy situation, chiefly for the the remaining bits of environment there..”
Completely agree. Even at $50.00 or $40.00 oil is still too high. The system is collapsing rapidly.
Thank you Gail. That was a very clear explanation.
High Ground Is Becoming Hot Property as Sea Level Rises
Climate change may now be a part of the gentrification story in Miami real estate
“It’s hard to imagine that the plug-ugliness of the American climate-change denier could be made more loathsome, but it has been. The Masters of the Universe and their wholly-owned-and-operated politicians have plumbed new depths in their ability to make money while aiding and abetting the increasing misery of their fellow human beings.
Their latest refinement has been detected in Miami, which is fitting, because few places on earth rival Miami’s wretched excess in the heedless pursuit of megabucks. Fitting, too, because Miami may well be the first large American city to be submerged by seas rising in response to climate change. The prospect is of course hotly denied or coldly ignored by Miami’s politicians and uglygarchs, who insist there is nothing to see there, even while the rising waters — especially in South Miami, Coral Gables and Miami Beach — are quite literally, with increasing and dismaying frequency, lapping at their ankles.
Now it appears that Miami real estate developers are actively working to profit from the thing they deny is happening — the rising of the warming sea. Their schemes have been illuminated in, of all places, the website of the venerable science magazine Scientific American.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-ground-is-becoming-hot-property-as-sea-level-rises/
Can’t be happening? Tell that to Miami!
Thank you , Duncan…my posts are held up for moderation!
With Miami Beach set to break ground this year on the most ambitious piece yet of its aggressive anti-flooding project, some homeowners worry that raising streets to keep them dry will cause flooding on their properties
The city will embark on a $100 million project to raise roads, install pumps and water mains and redo sewer connections during the next two years across a swath of single-family homes in the La Gorce and Lakeview neighborhoods of Mid-Beach. A sizable chunk of a citywide effort estimated to cost $400 to $500 million, the work is meant to keep streets dry in the face of sea level rise.
Along the way, engineers will have to figure out how to smoothly join private property to the public right-of-way, which will be an average of two feet higher than it is now. In some cases, private property that drains excess water into the street will no longer do so, creating a conundrum that public works officials believe could be solved with a new form of public-private partnership.
Most of my posts are held up also.
I point out realities that make people, what is the most diplomatic way to put this, “uncomfortable”.
When the smoke clears, and they quit screaming in a fetal position, some will be ok facing a groundless future.
Just because you too are paranoid doesn’t mean Gail’s out to get you. It’s just that the AI recognizes a lot of your posts as spam for reasons that are unclear to use mere humans. It swallowed two of my posts without trace yesterday and refused to allow me to post two others—and mine are always refined and tasteful.
I’m always under moderation, it’s not important and it’s not personal.
https://youtu.be/3WrO2BE5wF4
This summer, glaciologists are working across Greenland to figure out why the big ice sheet, which holds more than 6m (20ft)’s worth of sea level rise, is unraveling so quickly. At the East Greenland Ice-Core Project (EGRIP) camp, for example, scientists are sending a giant drill through a mile of snow and ice. Like the rings of a tree, the extracted core can reveal the history of the ice sheet and the climate itself, dating back tens of thousands of years.
Over the past 5000 years the average rate of sea level rise was much less than 1 meter per millennium (1 mm/year), as shown by geologic markers on coastlines. In the past century tide gauges at coastal cities reveal a larger rate of sea level rise. The second chart below shows that sea level rose about 2 mm/year during 1920-2000.
Satellites began to measure sea level precisely in 1993. Since then sea level has been rising about 3.2 mm/year. This rate is equal to just over one foot per century.
EVERY YEAR, GREENLAND sheds more than 250 gigatons of ice – enough to fill the entire state of Texas with over a foot of water. Despite being one-tenth the size of Antarctica, Greenland’s ice sheet is now the single largest contributor to sea-level rise. Even more worrisome, a string of recent studies suggest Greenland’s meltdown is accelerating – troubling news for millions of people living in coastal areas
http://slideplayer.com/slide/4529153/15/images/4/Glacial+Coverage+of+North+America+During+the+LGM.jpg
The capitalist growth-based economic system described above is clearly dysfunctional. Isn’t it time we started promoting post-growth ecological economics of the kind being discussed by prominent academic advocates Tim Jackson, author of “Prosperity Without Growth” 2nd ed. 2016-17, and Professor Herman Daly — see his 2014, 25-min video “Economics for a Full World” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiFBZqRTxX4&t=838s
Delusion keeps the story simple, and the thinking heuristic.
But any smart 10 year old can explain why you can’t expand infinity in a finite world.
Daly should be well read and his policies tried, but most have never read or know of him.
Absolutely not! Diminishing returns means that it is necessary to extract more and more finite resources, just to stay level.
All the talk about using renewables resources is just talk. There is very little in the way of renewables that we can really use, without overburdening the system. We can cut down a few trees, and use some fallen limbs, but there is not nearly enough wood for the number of people we have today. Other resources are very limited as well. Solar and wind are just small add-ons to the fossil fuel system. They in fact, add very little.
We would need many fewer people to get along with renewable resources alone–certainly less than 1% of today’s population. This is not something that these authors tell you.
So Gail, are you saying we are in a predicament?
That is not politically correct these days–
One always has to have a solution.
Right. The whole story about renewables being a solution is not really true. But we don’t have a solution in cheap, carbon-free fossil fuels either. We have a predicament.
This is one reason I am not much interested in hearing about climate change. It is simply part of our predicament.
https://youtu.be/vidzkYnaf6Y
Prosperity Without Growth
http://joecalloway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Impossible.jpg
And now for something completely different…
UK Household Incomes Fall Most In 40 Years, Savings Rates Crash
Longest squeeze on household incomes since 1970s says Office for National Statistics
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2017/06/30/10/rhdi.jpg
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2017/06/30/10/savingsratio.jpg
It’s currently a nice race jockeying for the jr. position within the new German Empire, Italy is on the ropes, but the northern part where quality tech and specialized agriculture resides would be a shame to loose completely, while UK even lost another degrees of former self sufficiency in industries and defense, now tries to distance from continent. France is simply positioned in relative terms best out of the former semicores in order to attempt salvaging at lest some minimum levels of former achievements, nuclear industries, defense. hitech.
So, the diagram for the dreamers there (Club Micron) goes as follows:
UK — (IT>FR-DE), lolz
I generally agree, but would scratch the UK.
I remember the UK in the seventies, and it was fun to be young in London. First we got the color TV, then the first fridge, then the first phone and the rusty third-hand Ford Cortina. Also, the audio system went from mono to stereo, and by the end of the decade some of my more adventurous friends spent the equivalent of a month’s salary for the dubious privilege of owning a video recorder.
It wasn’t at all the economic misery that the charts and some of the economists paint it to be. Basically, people were very happy that things had improved so much since the fifties, when, as Harold McMillan told us, we’d never had it so good.
And don’t forget the most important:
Not so good!
Meanwhile at the anti-capitalist demonstrations in Hamburg:
“Let he who is the most dissatisfied with capitalism throw the first iPhone!”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEKReUtXsAUFkNC.jpg
As always,
assortment of poseurs, egomaniacs, psychos, frustrated, rebels w/out true cause, .. ,
are to be expected at those scenes..
Damned hipsters, they’ve given manly beards a bad name! 🙂
I remember attending a very friendly demo in 1989 protesting against the Chinese Government’s handling of the Tiananmen Square protests. So I’ve done my bit in support of Soros’s color revolutions. These days I wouldn’t bother to sign a petition for anything other than condemning animal abuse.
i will hang these anti-capitalist guys first than terrorist
because these guys try to stop bau of 7.5 billion
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with”
-Lenin
then first hang the bankers and politicians
Then you find the rope has been made in China and crappified – and snaps.
The poor steel in the lamp-post would probably bend, too. 🙂
Reminds me of the people who turn purple screaming about THE ISSUE….
But continue to drive cars — use the internet and electricity — shop in the Mall etc….
They are so busy berning through the bounty of the earth it is a wonder they can find time to scream
whether 7.5 billion die of global warming or financial collapse or resource depletion
our ic will die by 1000 cuts
It certainly looks that way. The end of BAU with everything collapsing at once, on a dime, into its footprint at freefall speed, is a possible scenario that Gail’s research has provided a lot of support for. On the other hand, a slower but still fairly rapid domino-style collapse of BAU where one event triggers the next in a long cascade until only North Korea, by the Grace of the Supreme Leader, is left standing—the death by a thousand cuts scenario—cannot be ruled out.
I’m leaning toward the first instant collapse scenario. But I have no confidence in my personal ability to understand what’s going on with the economy or what the Elders are playing at. After all, we’ve been told often enough that they are masters of deception, and they may be smarter than a lot of people give them credit for.
It’s a pity that after the collapse we won’t be getting together online to argue over who was right and wrong. Because if we can still cobble together a working Internet, that would mean we haven’t collapsed.
Apart from NK, there are other societies with high/er degree of vertical integration of decision-making and control in comparison to the west, which might fare relatively better for a while under the domino style collapse. By the way, if I recall it correctly, J.Tainter referred recently to rapid collapse of our society as taking ~2-3decades to proceeed, and was unsure when to start counting, since fracking, debt, wars and other can kicking methods, delayed previous estimates..
Overall, we must acknowledge, It’s a strange mix of trends today, e.g. down payment of ~3% for semiluxury carz for plebians, airliners with composite parts and eff. engines (-25% gain over previous gen and double that vs 1960s gen), large swarms of unemployed on food stamps and other support due to IT/Robotics/CNC/outsourcing, triaging out of former consumer countries via colored revolutions, ..
Or they die from an ice age onset.
As a result, a huge game of musical chairs is about to take place. Why pay $20/ft for mid-rise office space, if you can now move into an abandoned Sports Authority for $5/ft. Sure, it doesn’t come with windows, but employees like open plan space and there’s plenty of parking. Besides, with the rental savings, you can offer your staff an in-house fitness facility and cafeteria for free. Does your mega-church need a larger space? There’s probably a former Sears or Kmart that perfectly accommodates you at $3/ft. Have an assisted living facility with an expiring lease? Why not move it to an abandoned JC Penney—the geriatrics will feel right at home, as they’re the only ones still shopping there.
Go onto any real estate website and you will find out that huge plan space is nearly free. No one knows what the hell to do with it and the waves of bankruptcy in big box are just starting. As online evolves, these waves will engulf other segments of retail as well.
Type Macy’s into Loopnet.com and look at how many millions of feet of old Macy’s are available for under $10/ft to purchase. Retail’s problems are about to become everyone’s problems in CRE. When the old Macy’s rents for $2/ft, what happens to everyone else’s rents? EXACTLY!!! What happens if a CRE owner is leveraged at 60% (currently considered conservative) and leasing at $15/ft when the old HHGregg across the street is offered for rent at $3/ft? An office owner can lower his rents a few dollars, but at the new price deck, he cannot cover his interest cost, much less his other operating expenses. What happens to a suddenly emptying mid-rise office building?
It has higher operating expenses than the box store due to full-time security and cleaning—maybe it’s a zero—in that future market rents no longer cover the operating expenses of the asset, much less offer a return on investment. I know, crazy—that’s how musical chairs works when demand contracts and the supply stays the same.
What happens to the guys who lent against these assets? Kaplooey!!!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-07/dead-mall-stalking-one-hedge-fund-manager%E2%80%99s-tour-across-middle-america-%E2%80%93-part-2
fast eddie welcome to the truth but now that you know that global warming is not real you must ask the question why is it such a big deal in the real world?
Why are solar panels such a big deal?
Why do we spend hundreds of billions if not trillions on subsidies for something that creates no net energy?
On something that drives the cost of electricity through the roof?
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy : Germany’s electricity prices soar to more than double that of the USA because when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow they have to operate and pay for a completely separate back up system that is fueled by lignite coal http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Why is Tesla such a big deal? How can it be more valuable than any other auto manufacturer when it loses money on every auto sold?
LOL!
It’s a sad spectacle to see the “local” Sears close. Two weeks ago, the sign said closing in a week, but they kept open for another week so far, getting rid of inventory. And, right, the Sports Authority in the mall has recently closed too, replaced a a forgettable-looking furniture store. J C Penny’s is still there, however. New businesses are slated to come, and a lengthy renovation to accommodate them has been ongoing: H&M, Pink, etc…. A new World Market is there already.
What your describing is the side effects of economies of scale. Things become worthless. Without growth it is a defaltionary death spiral.
Good observation!
This is exactly what Bernanke feared…. once this grabs hold it is impossible to reverse….
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/95/b6/12/95b612732fc803b89959254ee65bda85–snake-party-a-legend.jpg
I saw the new King Kong movie last night and there was some amazing thrashing about between monsters. Samuel L.Jackson reprised his role as a tough-as-nails not-to-be-messed-with American GI at the end of the Vietnam war charged with leading a party of soldiers and civilians on an expedition to Skull Island—a lost world somewhere in the Pacific surrounded by a permanent storm system and populated by all sorts of gigantic and deadly critters.
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/005/239/643/large/karl-lindberg-kong-vs-mac-03.jpg?1489555813
Spoiler alert. Despite being napalmed Kong survives, rescues the heroine, and heads off into the sunset. Sam doesn’t do any of that. He gets squashed like a bug, and by the time that happens, the viewer gets the impression he’s relieved to have been put out of his misery.
I think the video should stay — that’s a fair indication of the state of the species… we are a bunch of big floppy boobs….
Goodbye, and Good Riddance, to Centrism
“There is nothing in the center of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillo’s”
-Hightower
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-centrism-w487628
Check out this dudes video. He claims that the Saudi’s are mixing seawater in with their oil. YIKES is this true?
I don’t think this fellow knows what he is talking about. Anyone knows that oil and water easily separate. Saudi Arabia has been using sea water to force the oil out of the tiny spaces where it is lodged, for many years now. There is no problem with separating this sea water out.
The “refinery expansion” that he talks about comes especially when “cracking” is done, to convert long hydrocarbon molecules to shorter molecules. Large amounts of natural gas are used in this process; the end product has higher volume. Long hydrocarbon molecules are prevalent in very heavy oil, so this is where most of the expansion comes from.
Like Gail says, the Saudis have been doing this for years, especially for Ghawar. The problem isn’t the seawater, it’s what happens when the seawater reaches the level of the horizontal rigs…
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c1/a8/89/c1a88976880ea8d43c9d6a8e73232c95.jpg
. What records have already been shattered?
The most wild record was notched Friday in Palm Springs, where the Weather Service recorded a high of 122 degrees. That smashed the record of 117 degrees set more than four decades ago in 1976.
The other notable one was at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, where the Weather Service recorded a high of 109 degrees, besting the 2006 high temperature of 108 degrees.
4. Is this normal?
Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tells the Los Angeles Times that Southern California’s warmest months are traditionally August and September, and that the heat waves are “definitely coming earlier this year.”
Liberal Lies!
Science is Satan!
Don’t feel too sorry for them in Palm Springs….after all they have the BEST air conditioners money can buy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k8t2sMHaDoI
We just need to get all those damn cows to stop farting all day before they boil the planet!
World temperatures have remained almost stagnant in the last two decades, new figures have revealed.
James Lovelock, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock who warned that billions would die before the end of this century and only the Arctic would be fit for human habitation, said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the cli.mate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.’
The 92-year-old told MSNBC in America: ‘The clim.ate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising.’
The scientist is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2134769/Is-global-warming-just-hot-air-World-temperatures-risen-just-0-29C-decades.html#ixzz4mCcmxtCG
‘We don’t know what the climate is doing’ — how many hundreds of billions have we spent … and we ‘don’t know’
Let me translate what this guys is saying ‘what a bunch of goddam fools — they spent us into the poor house trying to address a problem that they don’t even know for sure exists — I don’t know whether to laugh or cry’
World temperatures have remained almost stagnant in the last two decades, new figures have revealed.
Temperatures across the globe rose by around a third of a degree last year from the average of 14 degrees Celsius recorded between 1961 and 1990
The IPCC put “hiatus” in quotes.
“Even with this “hiatus” in GMST trend, the decade of the 2000s has been the warmest in the instrumental record of GMST
(Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.19). ”
Using carbon isotope analysis, the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 2.5 centuries can be directly attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.
The Recent Slowing in the Rise of Global Temperatures
Authors: Carl Mears, Vice President RSS
Date Added: Monday, September 22, 2014
Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades. Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of “I saw this plot on a denialist web site. Is this really your data?” While some of these reports have “cherry-picked”their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990’s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. This can be seen in the RSS data, as well as most other temperature datasets. For example, the figure below is a plot of the temperature anomaly (departure from normal) of the lower troposphere over the past 35 years from the RSS “Temperature Lower Troposphere” (TLT) dataset. For this plot we have averaged over almost the entire globe, from 80S to 80N, and used the entire TLT dataset, starting from 1979. (The denialists really like to fit trends starting in1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.)
Climate means are measured in 30 year intervals
PS James Lovelock is 97 years old and is an independent scientist
Please name one science academy that disputes the conclusions of the IPCC,
Fast Eddy…..naming a few individuals is rather spurious.
Fast Eddy…..naming a few individuals is rather spurious.
In what precise sense do you mean “spurious”? Please try to explain in your own words the logic underlying your use of this particular adjective and your apparent lack of understanding of its meaning. Why do you think it “spurious” for FE to have named a few individuals?
I suspect the only spuriousness going on here is your spurious resort to the argumentum ad populum (a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it) and the argumentum ad verecundiam (a form of argument in which expert opinion supports the argument’s conclusion).
I further suspect that the spurious reasoning that plays such a large part in your thinking is what results in the nonsense that constitutes so many of your arguments and opinions.
http://img.picturequotes.com/2/407/406326/however-evil-men-may-be-they-dare-not-be-openly-hostile-to-virtue-and-so-when-they-want-to-attack-quote-1.jpg
Odd, no one is able to find just ONE Science Academy or University that disputes the conclusions of the IPCC?
That’s too bad…really guys…I feel for you!
Jeremy — I just gave you the gift of life…. you should be celebrating …
As for your question — think about solar energy — you know it is bullsh-it — I would assume — I know it is bullsh=it
But look at how trillions of dollars have been spent on this — look at the endless research that claims solar can save us…. do a quick scan of the MSM — it is covered with stories supporting this insanity.
So there is your precedent … that’s the way the matrix works….
All you need to know is this:
James Lovelock, who warned that billions would die before the end of this century and only the Arctic would be fit for human habitation, said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the cli-mate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.’
‘The clim-ate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising.’
Which part of this do you not understand?
Odd, no one is able to find just ONE Science Academy or University that disputes the conclusions of the IPCC?
That’s too bad…really guys…I feel for you!
Oh, I’ll bet you do. And does the resort to snarking and the argument from authority logical fallacy have anything to do with your apparent inability to counter any of the scientific arguments made against your position?
Are you aware, Jeremy, that the IPCC is not a scientific body charged with finding the facts about anything but a political quango paid for and owned by the UN and run by bureaucrats who edit all its reports with the aim of forging a consensus? And are you also aware that the IPCC’s remit is to investigate only potential manmade impacts on climate and not to investigate natural climate fluctuations.
In the linked article, Tim Ball explains how Manipulated IPCC Science is supported by Manipulated Appeals to Authority, such as the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC and how science academies worldwide have declared their support of the IPCC’s conclusions WITHOUT consulting their membership.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/23/manipulated-ipcc-science-supported-by-manipulated-appeals-to-authority/
In that article, Dr. Ball also names ONE Science Academy that does dispute the conclusions of the IPCC.
Which makes you WRONG AGAIN Jeremy. Before gloating, you really should try to get your basic facts right. Otherwise your family and friends (if you have any) will be laughing at you for decades to come for the combination of certainty, stubbornness and sheer gullibility you are displaying.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JAYy90RN7ZE/THUiRuJBhnI/AAAAAAAAAbE/j_7cGcf3cjc/s320/DoubleFacePalm.jpg
Even better I can show the temperature anomaly declining at almost a fifth of a degree/decade, see: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/1/2/1997-2009?trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1998&lasttrendyear=2008
Works for April as well!
Sounds to me like you want the world to broil Jeremy — that you are disappointed with the fact that global warming is not panning out.
Is this some sort of death wish you have?
Maybe we just aren’t burning enough coal — why don’t you turn up the AC to full? Maybe your dream will come true?
Science is Satan!
Feel free to continue to reference the Fake Data…
Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data
The Mail on Sunday can reveal a landmark paper exaggerated global warming
It was rushed through and timed to influence the Paris agreement on climate change
America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules
The report claimed the pause in global warming never existed, but it was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html#ixzz4mDxtI2NZ
and that is fantastic news to hear that james lovelock is finally admitting that there is no evidence for global warming that all the parrots in the world calling themselves climate scientists have just been engaged in chanting mantras all of this time
That is good news from a 97 year old independent scientist.
Basically what he is saying — without saying it — is…
Burn More Coal.
Burn all the coal we want — it has no effect on the climate. We are not going to roast ourselves…
Thanks for that James. Thanks for agreeing with Fast.
I officially declare G-Had on all Global Warming Scientists
So… the father of climate science states that the clim.ate is not warm.ing …
And what do the climate scientists — whose livelihoods depend on the clim,ate wa,rming do?
Take a guess….
Bingo — they fake the numbers!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html
The Daily Mail is a stooge paper. You fell for fake news mate, More fake news in ‘The Mail on Sunday’
That was a direct quote from Lovelock. Are you saying he did not make those statements?
You don’t like the Daily Mail — ok — let’s check in on the Green Groupie Newspaper of Record:
Lovelock now believes that “CO2 is going up, but nowhere near as fast as they thought it would. The computer models just weren’t reliable. In fact,” he goes on breezily, “I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy, this climate change”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/30/james-lovelock-interview-by-end-of-century-robots-will-have-taken-over
Ok, so Lovelock is now how old? And was a what kind of scientist, exactly? And has been retired for how long?
And he was making predictions of billions of human deaths by 2100 because of climate change back in 2005, but because 10 years later we still weren’t half-way to frying the planet (his words), CC is now debunked? Give me a break.
But fine FE, what does it matter if you’ve lost your mind over CC because of fake news?
If it’s impossible, as you say, for humans to reduce their emissions at any scale without collapsing the system, then systemic collapse is what we’ll have. The causative triggers for collapse are well known hereabouts, having been discussed ad nauseum. Only the timing of this event is unknown.
He is only citing the facts — and the facts are that the climate has barely changed in two decades — and during that period were burned record amounts of fossil fuels.
Does it not bother you that global warming scientists — when faced with data that demonstrated the climate has not changed in 20 years —- faked the data?
How do you feel about that?
what, an entire ice cap needs to melt before you concede the earth is warming?
That would definitely help.
Wadhams has been predicting this will happen next year or the year after for a decade now. And I’m running out of popcorn.
Last winter, the minimum temperature recorded in my town was -12°C, which was five degrees cooler than the previous lowest temperature of the past 50 years (-7° recorded in 1993). Also, last winter was the snowiest winter here since 1962/3.
Three points:
1. This is just weather, not climate.
2. This kind of weather event proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not producing runaway warming.
3. People who constantly blame unusual or extreme weather events on AGW have clearly not absorbed the lessons of longer-term meteorological history. They are apparently totally unaware of how in Europe the usually mild and predictable weather of the Medieval Warm Period gave way to stormier, cooler and more unsettled weather that often ruined crops for several years at a time at the beginning of the Little Ice Age; or how the American West and particularly California suffered long droughts—in at least one case extending over a century—during the Medieval Warm Period; or how colder, stormier and more unpredictable weather coupled with the massive volcanic eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 caused famine, great hardship, mass deaths through starvation, disease and cold over the subsequent three years in North America, Europe and East Asia. Because if they were aware of all this, they would also be aware that climatic conditions over the past century have generally been unusually stable and benign, and also that based on historical records, we should be expecting less clement weather ahead.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/thrivemovementassets/resources/images/000/001/535/large/inconvenient-truth-global-warming-hoax-political-poster-1286997141_zps4ebb671b.jpg
Proof…sorry, proof is in the realm of mathematics and the alcohol business Tim, not in Science…You claimed a lot in your post, too bad your one chart does not back up the evidence.
You forgot to add these to your “proof”
Without CO2 the earth would be a ball of ice.
At no point in human history have CO2 levels been this high.
For the past 800,000 years, at least, CO2 levels have fluctuated between 180 and 300 ppm.
The last time atmospheric CO2 was at 400 parts per million was during the ancient Pliocene Era, three to five million years ago, and humans didn’t exist.
– Global average temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees C warmer than today (5.4 to 7.2 degrees F).
– Polar temperatures were as much as 10 degrees C warmer than today (18 degrees F).
– The Arctic was ice free.
– Sea level was between five and 40 meters higher (16 to 130 feet) than today.
– Coral reefs suffered mass die-offs.
“The extreme speed at which carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing is unprecedented. An increase of 10 parts per million might have needed 1,000 years or more to come to pass during ancient climate change events. Now the planet is poised to reach the 1,000 ppm level in only 100 years if emissions trajectories remain at their present level
Just an oversight by you.
Proof…sorry, proof is in the realm of mathematics and the alcohol business Tim, not in Science…
Well Jeremy, you are asserting that proof is not in the realms of science.
Therefore, you cannot prove any scientific assertion, can you?
You haven’t actually got an iota, a scintilla, a shred of scientific proof of anything, have you?
It’s a spurious claim, but if you want to stick by it, you’re welcome of course.
Unlike in mathematics, “proof” in the scientific or legal sense refers to evidence or arguments establishing the fact or the truth of a statement. That’s why we hear scientists arguing that there is no scientific proof of the existence of God or the efficacy of homeopathy but there is scientific proof of the existence of atoms or of the process of biological evolution or of quantum theory or plate tectonics.
It’s in that sense that I refer to the evidence that the recording of a record cold temperature in my part of Japan is incompatible with the hypothesis that the rise in CO2 has caused runaway global warming as “proof”. Because if we really were experiencing runaway warming, the weather could not get so cold. The cold was caused by radiative cooling due to low humidity on and already cold long winter night. If CO2 was doing its greenhouse thing to the extent it does under the AGW hypothesis, the 30% increase in CO2 over the past few decades would have reduced this radiative cooling to the point where the temperature would not have cooled to the extent it did. And this did not happen, so the hypothesis has been invalidated, falsified, refuted, and is now fit only for the trashcan of historical scientific errors and frauds. Period. No ifs. No buts.
Ssomething for you to ponder in those quiet moments when you are not worrying about the effects of the CO2 pollution you are personally responsible for emitting every time you breathe out, turn on a light switch, or access the Internet.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-there-is-no-scientific-proof-that-only-scientific-proofs-are-good-proofs-no-way-to-prove-peter-kreeft-89-33-88.jpg
Surely the fact that the clim.ate hasn’t been war.ming in the past two decades should be considered ‘proof’ by the Glob.al Wa..rming Groupies that burning coal is not significantly impacting the clim..ate.
James Lovelock agrees with that.
It’s ok to be wrong. It is actually fantastic that you were wrong.
In fact GWGs should celebrate — you are not going to roast and fry after all!!!
Isn’t that wonderful news?
Wooo hooo — it’s a celebration ….
We all know how difficult it can be to de-program someone has been indoctrinated into a cult….
You can put facts in front of their face that demonstrate they are involved in total madness… and it will not work
AG W is a cult…. and Jeremy — you are a member — here are some strategies should you want to escape — use them to self-diagnose — to understand why you continue to believe this sham….
And hopefully you can cure yourself. I hope you do get better soon and invest your energy and emotions to something that is actually real.
Maybe you could direct this passion to taking up fishing — or perhaps some form of sport or exercise…. charity work perhaps?
How Do You De-Program Someone?
Depends on how deep down the rabbit hole he is.
One of the viral gimmicks in Scientology, intentionally designed by Mr Hubbard, is the concept of Suppressive Persons
Basically, they are told that people like you, who point out the fact that Scientology is a contrived cult of exploitation, are simply jealous and are standing in the way of their happiness.
One of the greatest strengths of scientology is that once someone has cut all the ties with the friends and family who actually care about them, because of the SP bullshit, they are completely dependent on the church and can never leave.
So the more you try to reason with him, the more you are unwittingly reinforcing the lies of Scientology. I would say your best option is to be gentle, offer sources of information and remind him that you will always be there for him, no matter what.
Read More https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-convince-a-Scientologist-that-he-is-being-brainwashed-and-taken-advantage-of
Jeremy — let’s try this to de-program you ….
Listen to these people supporting their fake beliefs — then take a look at yourself in the mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPol_m8wm8Y
Let’s not stop there…. have a look at this — these people truly believe that solar energy will save us…
They believe in that — just as strongly as you believe in global warming …
No matter what facts you put in front of them — they will not change their minds.
Remind you of someone you know?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjBk2A6fdO4
Like the Big Man says… TINK ABOUT IT!!!
Without CO2 the earth would be a ball of ice.
No, it couldn’t. A ball of ice is by definition almost 100% ice. The earth is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminum (1.4%), with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements. 🙂
At no point in human history have CO2 levels been this high.
Possibly true, although we don’t have very accurate records of atmospheric CO2 levels from more than about 60 years ago, so it’s a leap of faith to believe that CO2 levels have never risen higher than current levels at any time in human history. However, in my opinion the balance of scientific evidence “proves” beyond reasonable doubt that your claim is valid.
For the past 800,000 years, at least, CO2 levels have fluctuated between 180 and 300 ppm. The last time atmospheric CO2 was at 400 parts per million was during the ancient Pliocene Era, three to five million years ago, and humans didn’t exist.
– Global average temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees C warmer than today (5.4 to 7.2 degrees F).
– Polar temperatures were as much as 10 degrees C warmer than today (18 degrees F).
– The Arctic was ice free.
– Sea level was between five and 40 meters higher (16 to 130 feet) than today.
– Coral reefs suffered mass die-offs.
I won’t quibble with any of the above assertions. I think the important questions are:
(1) Why was it warmer during the Pliocene Era and why did it cool subsequently?
(2) What was/is the relationship between temperature and atmospheric CO2?
Re (1), some people have pointed to the closing of the gap between the Atlantic and the Pacific by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama around 2.8 million years ago, which created the Gulf Stream, as the pivotal event. Others have pointed to the positioning of Antarctic continent over the South Pole and the opening of the Drake Passage 30 to 40 million years ago as the main events driving the cooling of the earth and its oceans that eventually led to ground conditions in which the Pleistocene Ice Age could eventually begin. In short, they point to geographical changes as the driving factors in major climate change over millions and tens of millions of years. All of this is speculative, of course. Good old educated scientific guesswork.
Re (2), we know from proxy records such as ice cores and ocean sediments that the earth’s temperature has varied cyclically throughout the Pleistocene Ice Age. The current best explanation is that the earth is continuing to cool slowly as a result of the present geographical arrangement with Antarctica shedding lots of heat into space and lots of cold water that fills the bottom of the oceans and cools them from below.
Since the start of the current ice age over 2 million years ago, cyclical orbital fluctuations have conspired to shift the planet between interglacial and glacial periods. The most important driver appears to be the regular variation in the obliquity of the earth’s axis (also known as inclination or axial tilt), which changes from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees and back again over a period of about 41,000 years. Two other orbital cycles also work to modify the effects of obliquity changes, namely the precession (or wobble) of the axis, which has a periodicity of 23,000 years, and the change in the eccentricity (the shape) of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, which ranges between almost circular and more elliptical (0 to 5% ellipticity) on a cycle of about 100,000 years.
But basically, when obliquity is high (over 24 degrees), the earth tends to warm up and we are likely to experience an interglacial, and then as obliquity decreases, we always experience a glacial. The most recent peak in obliquity occurred just over 8,000 years ago and precede and probably caused the warmest period of the current interglacial. Currently, we are at 23.44 degrees and falling, the earth is radiating into space more energy than it absorbs from the sun, and proxy and historical records indicate that each millennium is cooler than the preceding one.
We are now in the Holocene autumn and drifting inexorably towards the next long glacial winter, and in the context of our journey around the cycle, the occasional warm century is of no more significance than a warm day in October.
It is a mathematical certainty we are headed into a new glacial ice age. Could be tomorrow or in a 1000 yrs. The well preserved wooly mammoths, some actually standing in ice with fresh grass in their bellies, present an unanswered question as to how such an ice age event could happen so fast. Robert Felix’ book “Not by Fire, But by Ice” is a great read. He presents a theory on how this sudden onset to thick ice could potentially happen. He also correlates the longest ice age cycles with the cycle of revolution for the Milky Way galaxy. ALL of the ice age cycles are now lined up for the next major interglacial and our civilization is no where ready for it. In fact, the concurrent events of an ice age (even a mini ice age) and running out of FF energy, could have an almost biblical impact to mankind.
As for the role of CO2 in keeping the planet warm, this is a vexed question. Even for those who love to hug authorities, not even the experts on atmospheric physics are in full agreement. And we don’t have a second earth where we can adjust the CO2 and see what happens for comparative purposes.
As I am in a hurry now, I’d like to respond by quoting a blog comment by Mari Warcwm:
The question of CO2 warming effect being logarithmic seems to me to be a crucial fundamental question. It either is, or it isn’t. Why isn’t this question discussed more often, and more emphasis not put upon the answer? The Earth’s atmosphere has been in equilibrium for the past 500 million years, and life has flourished.
We are bumping along the bottom of the amount of CO2 seen during the past 500 million years. I gather that the average amount of CO2 in the atmosphere during the past 500 million years was 2,500 ppm. Why are we now so paranoid about a mere 388 ppm. And even more paranoid about the mere 15 ppm produced by our burning of fossil fuels?
It seems to me an absurd collective madness has overtaken most of the population. Get a life? Get a grip.
The Earth’s climate has been in equilibrium for millions of years. There must be a robust mechanism that keeps it in equilibrium. CO2 has been as high as 5000ppm during the past 500 million years. There was no runaway warming. Life flourished.
“1. This is just weather, not climate.
2. This kind of weather event proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not producing runaway warming.”
Not too bright are we?
Weather proves climate is not changing?
Not too bright are we?
My mother thought me intelligent!
Weather proves climate is not changing?
Not exactly top of the class at reading comprehension, are we?
“Not producing runaway warming” does not equal “climate is not changing”.
Teacher’s note to mummy: Slow Crawl is not exactly what we would call “a re-tard” and he has the potential to be a bright lad, but his lack of concentration in class and inability to understand simple basic English phrases will eventually hold him back.
https://static.tumblr.com/c30a0a3be40d8ee72e8af41d4c12f713/bkirrki/2sVn512x3/tumblr_static_full_retard_2.jpg
I read the Sam Carana blog. And from time to time I also have patiance to listen to Paul Beckwith. What I understand of the serious scientists, the thousands, and thousands and thousands of them speaking about their expertese..
– in the near future The Arctic will be without ice for the first time in a very very long time. We will be having a Arctic Blue Ocean Event
– as the sea ice is gone, only for a very short period in September at firts, the dark oceans will suck up a lot more heat. Its called an albedo effect. Ice is a shield that keeps the Arctic cool. But when the shield goes away, then the Arctic sucks up heat like crazy.
– the trajectory of loosing sea ice in the Arctic ( September minimum to be a Blue Ocean evemt) looks to be about 5- 10 years, tops. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
– when the shield is gone for the first time, it will then rapidly deteriorate to not being there at all in just a few years
– As the AC system in the north pole goes away, several things begin to happen.. jet streams become chaotic.. the Greenland melt will accelerate.. the gulf stream will weaken.. average temperatures in Europe should be in the ballpark +10 C (to todays averages) in the summers and -10 C (to todays averages) in the winters.. combined with prolonged draughts and prolonged rains every now often.. because the north warms more than the south.. but also because the jet streams wont work properly to circulate the air masses..
Gardening and farming conditions will become hellish..
https://youtu.be/JNh-qVY5fnU
Van Kent, you raise some salient points, and it’s important that I try to address them.
– in the near future The Arctic will be without ice for the first time in a very very long time. We will be having a Arctic Blue Ocean Event
This may happen. I don’t expect it will, because I expect ocean cooling to make the next 20 years colder than the past 20. Not a lot of people know this, but Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent flows the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation cycle closely. But yes, it could happen. It may have happened during the Holocene optimum 6 to 10,000 years ago.
Less ice in the Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago
Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.
http://www.ngu.no/sciencepub/eng/pages/Whatsup_20_10_08.html
– as the sea ice is gone, only for a very short period in September at first, the dark oceans will suck up a lot more heat. Its called an albedo effect. Ice is a shield that keeps the Arctic cool. But when the shield goes away, then the Arctic sucks up heat like crazy.
This didn’t happen during the Holocene optimum and there is a very good reason why it isn’t expected to happen now. The sun over the Arctic is always very low. For example, at the North Pole, it reaches a maximum elevation of just over 23 degrees around midsummer (June 21 and then drops to about 15 degrees in mid July, 8 degrees in mid August and 0 degrees by the autumn equinox (23 September).
At such low elevations, the atmosphere blocks the bulk of the incoming sunlight, so it’s power to melt ice is very limited. Also, the reflectance of water is very high when the angle of incidence (the angle which an incident line or ray makes with a perpendicular to the surface at the point of incidence) of the incoming sunlight is low. A blue ocean Arctic in September would absorb very little heat from a sun close to the horizon, while the open water would be radiating heat at a much greater rate than the low sun could supply it.
According to Clyde Spencer:
The Polar Regions are notoriously cloudy. That is one reason the Vikings invented the use of the sunstone to help them navigate where a compass and stars were unusable. Much of the year, it doesn’t really matter whether there is open water or ice because clouds interfere with sunlight reaching the surface during the Arctic Summer, and there is no sunlight during the Arctic Winter! When sunlight does reach the surface, the 100% reflectivity at the Earth’s limbs helps explain, in part, why the poles are so cold. (This also occurs around the perimeter of the oceans at the planet’s terminators, not just at the poles.) Snow on top of ice actually scatters light in all directions, including downward. Thus, there is actually more absorption at a glancing angle with the presence of snow than there would be with calm, open water! There are tradeoffs that complicate the situation and I don’t think they are being taken into account by most climate modelers. The simplistic explanation of decreasing Arctic ice being responsible for reinforcing warming is probably a stretch by those unfamiliar with Fresnel’s equations.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/12/why-albedo-is-the-wrong-measure-of-reflectivity-for-modeling-climate/
Also—and not many people know this—it’s been calculated that, on average, sea ice is only responsible for 1.1% of the total amount of solar energy reflected by the earth. So even if all the sea ice were to melt everywhere, in both the Arctic and Antarctic, to create blue ocean conditions all 12 months of the year, the increase in absorbed sunlight would still be very small.
However, your post does bring up a teaching point.
Weather is not climate and climate is not weather, but the two are obviously related.
What is the relationship between them?
Simply, climate is a term for the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.
Climate: late Middle English: from Old French climat or late Latin clima, climat-, from Greek klima ‘slope, zone’, from klinein ‘to slope’.
The term originally denoted a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, then any region of the earth, and later, a region considered with reference to its atmospheric conditions.
How long is a long period? In the case of the word “climate”, it used to be “forever”, as climate was assumed not to change. Then in the 19th century, when it was discovered that climate does indeed change, it was used to imply the average weather experienced over a period of 50 to 100 years. And in more modern times, since the 1980s, the consensus is that climate refers to weather averaged over 30 years or more.
Under the “climate as a precise entity” idea then, accordingly, and despite anything you learned in school, weather determines climate and not the other way around. We measure the climate by measuring the weather and averaging it out. Any instance of unusual weather will result in a small change in climate, because it will affect the statistics on which climate definitions are based. But the effect of any one weather event on 30 years of data is bound to be “immaterial”, as the actuaries like to say about the affects of changes in stock option practices on the company’s business results. It is only when such a large number of unusual weather events take place that they become “the new normal” that climate changes.
And of course, once you start studying climate zones, you will probably find that wherever you live in the world, the climate zone in which you live has not changed since the zones were first established. We have been promised Montreal will get the climate of Washington D.C. and that S.C. will get the climate of Miami for 30 years now, but none of that has happened. The subtropical monsoon zones are still in much the same place as they have been for yonks. And I believe no temperate areas have become tropical and no arctic areas have become subarctic in the past century, although I may be wrong on this and I’m willing to be corrected.
Where we do find significant changes over decades are in the semi-arid and arid lands. Deforestation, overgrazing and changing wind/rain patterns can all play a role in turning scrub into desert—all of which has IMHO, little or nothing to do with CO2.
The climate has been changing constantly …. since the beginning of time
Sure, but we’re forcing it now. First time a species has done so. Kind of makes sense if you see humans as a speciesevolved in the service of entropy.
But that’s just not true … the projections have not panned out …. they were ‘exaggerated’ … and massively at that…
And when the climate did not warm as projected — as we know a whistleblower exposed how climate scientists faked the numbers
As far as I am concerned the case is closed…. there is no evidence that man is changing the climate because the climate is barely changing at all – and we’ve got massive fraud.
I have gone 180 on this in the space of a week.
You have not got a leg to stand on here if you are going to push the narrative that we are burning out the planet by burning fossil fuels — that is just plain nonsense.
I don’t know what’s gotten into you FE, but on this issue you’re dead wrong.
Show me the money, or stop.
It is very difficult to deprogram people. Most have just accepted global warming as fact — like they accept that water is wet — that snow is cold.
Heck up until recently I accepted the line about global warming…
I have deprogrammed myself over the course of a few hours of researching on google.
When the facts dictate that one should change position on an issue — then one should change position on an issue.
Otherwise one is no more intelligent than a mentally retarded donkey.
Being wrong is good — being wrong means you have learned something.
Guys-
I nominate ITEOTWAWKI as the man that can go in and take this situation under control!
Thanks but no thanks Joe…I want to stay alive till the SHTF 😉
“BHP has been the target of an activist investor campaign in recent months spearheaded by Elliott Management Corp., which has rounded on management decisions that the fund claims have destroyed about $40 billion in value.
Last week, outgoing Chairman Nasser said the timing of BHP’s $20 billion spree into U.S. shale in 2011 was a misstep, and that if the miner could go back in time, it wouldn’t have invested in the assets. “If you had to turn the clock back, and if you knew what we knew today, you wouldn’t do it,” he said.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-05/bhp-s-new-chairman-to-drive-radical-shift-at-world-s-top-miner
“Our focus on productivity has significantly reduced both operating and capital costs, supporting a range of shale and conventional investment opportunities that would generate compelling returns at today’s prices.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bhp-billiton-lays-out-petroleum-expansion-plans-2016-10-05
It’s really an unbelievable story.
Yea there was a WSJ article last week that quoted a hedge fund manager statement about investing in shale. He called one a “Mother fracker”. And said US shale was “All hat and no cattle”.
“Compelling returns.” Earlier today I posted a WSJ quote saying
“The govt announced a lower royalty for new GOM leases. For !eases in 200 m water depth and less: was 18.75% reducing to 12.5%. Certainly in part due to lower oil prices. But the GOM above 600′ (which pushes out to the edge of the shelf north of where the Deep Water plays begin) is a very mature trend. Completely shot with 3d seismic multiple times.
But some companies have been trying to develop a very deep play below 28,000′ in shallow water close to the shoreline. Some huge IN PLACE reserves have been reported. But much of them may remain in place: the pressures and, in particular, the temperatures are so high the completion technology is right at the limit. A company spent over $220 million on its first well in the trend and eventually plugged it as unproducible. Not sure if the lower royalty combined with relatively low NG prince’s is going to build enough enthusiasm.”
-Rockman
Government’s share gets cut back, when prices are low. Even then, it still may not make sense to extract oil, if prices are too low.
This explains why much of the oil “reserves” will stay in place forever.
Ok reached max lunacy
Wondered where you were headed Cliff Hanger.
I guess you were run off another site.
Hope you can fix it Gail
Actually who cares. Besides Greg and FE Art and few others there is little to miss.
All the crappy photos need to go.
CLIFFHANGER
Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice in the wife of your youth.
As a loving hind and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
Be exhilarated always with her love. Proverbs 5:18-19
please remove
I agree that is inappropriate.
Americans Who Can’t Afford Their Homes Up 146 Percent
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/americans-who-can-t-afford-their-homes-146-percent-n774106
Bronze and Iron Age Fiction is not my genera.
However if you must, go with Homer.
DI
“O ye God’s grant us what is good whether we pray for it or not, but keep evil from us even though we pray for it.” Plato
Better–
But Plato was from post 5th Century Athens, the Ronald Reagan Era of Greek Philosophy.
He and Aristotle got about everything wrong.
Modern Science started with the rejection of Aristotle, and, if not for the Catholic Church, he would not have the stature he has.
https://todayinsci.com/N/Newton_Isaac/NewtonIsaac-Plato500x250px.jpg
http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mejc68JCCd1rljfrio1_500.jpg
While we are worrying about oil here is another potential crisis that could change life as we know it.
https://youtu.be/CEfFK3nMtb4
Ice age????
Lol. Maybe in a few hundred thousand years or so. Global warming in the Anthropocene has stalled the next one almost indefinitely. However the long-term albedo effect of scorched landscapes will eventually return the planet to a cooler and wetter state, before the ice encroaches again.
With 7.5 billion people on the planet, even a little ice age would be a big problem.
The majority view on OFW is that we’ll loose BAU due to irresolvable financial and energy problems even if the climate remains benign. If we experienced a couple of degrees of cooling plus the accompanying meteorological instability this usually brings, we would find that a lot of currently productive agricultural land could no longer be guaranteed to support crops, particularly in Canada and Russia but also at high elevations elsewhere.
Many of my fellow denizens of BAU assume that gasoline comes out of a gas station and food comes out of a supermarket—if they bother to think about such things at all. They marvel at the machinery but they never think about the logistics let alone the sheer amount of labor and dedication involved in creating the ongoing illusion that everything is humming along nicely, and they don’t give a second thought to how many things could go pear-shaped virtually overnight or how easily things could fall apart.
Since this frees them from anxiety, perhaps they are the lucky ones? And since there’s nothing we can do to avert the end of BAU or a little ice age anyway, perhaps they are the smart ones too?
Having moderation problems Greg.
Maybe Gail will fix it.
The version of the comments that I often look at does not show movies. It shows a preview of images. So I rarely notice what is in movies. I don’t have time for them, generally.
Gail often points to the decline of wages for the mass of people: stark illustration of this in Britain, in a new report of work conditions at the bottom of the pile ( and where you find yourself when decently-paid employment disappears).
In 2000, 2% of workers in retail, agriculture, deliveries, fishing, warehouses, etc, were just surviving -what is amusingly called the ‘Living Wage’.
2017, it is 15%.
2020, estimated to rise to 20%.
2025, estimate of no less than 25%.
And this is a ‘recovering’ economy?
The future is bright for dinoflagellates.
The UK is now feeling the effects of the devaluation of the pound, post the unexpected Brexit vote. While inflation is elevated, wages are not increasing much, particularly for those at the bottom. However the effect of this devaluation will work its way through the the system and things should stabilise again quite soon but for now, we’re feeling the pinch.
Just why wages are not rising significantly in the UK despite historically high levels of employment is the subject of much debate at the moment.
What’s to debate? You ran out of oil.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com
That isn’t mentioned in the MSM or in political debate.
I would say there is a widespread expectation that soon there will be widespread fracking for gas, particularly in the north. Somehow though this hasn’t happened over the last decade. Oil workers in Aberdeen and the Scottish nationalists are all keeping their fingers crossed that the oil price will soon rise so they can get on pumping their deep water oil reserves.
Well I’m sorry it isn’t mentioned. That is the truth. All mining is based on fit for use calculations. We complicate the conversation with EROEI but it’s all the same.
The cost to extract the remaining oil is higher then its net energy value. That is when a mine is shut in.
Your shut in. That’s why there was support to attack Iraq.
I’m very familiar with the problem of having rescources that cannot profitably be extracted.
Here in the South Yorkshire coalfields that cannot be got at because it’s too expensive, Margaret Thatcher saw to it that all the pits were closed in the 80s and since then all we have seen is managed decline.
Britain has always been a world leader and now it seems, we’re at the forefront of leading everyone over the cliff.
Notice that Tim Morgan doesn’t use EROEI. He uses “Energy Cost of Energy.” That comes a lot closer to making sense. Energy products have vastly different values. Intermittent electricity has virtually no positive value, if a person computes (savings in fuels costs–coal, natural gas or uranium) less (cost of adjustments to the system, to accommodate the only partially upgraded electricity).
BTW don’t feel bad about being shut in the US is to. Only difference is Wall Street profits from the unprofitable.
Pretty cool right?
Correct in your last comment you are world leaders. You were the first industrial economy.
That set the pace. But as your energy ran out so does the world.
Nothing new under the sun.
Yep
Agricultural revolution – check
Industrial revolution – check
Recognition of collapse-check
Early adapters – except there will be no history books written about the last achievment.
The U.K. Is facing an energy emergency. Declining North Sea fields etc. Most of the publc is not aware that several winters ago, Britain came to within hrs of running out of natural gas. Emergency deliveries from LNG ships saved them.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/1/16/saupload_1CyFym2iBDu2IrJtj3JRgv32FppO3_j-Sso3TCfCRrZCF21RZPYMtZry0Y09oUSu0wskJVwmugO1Mrxi2xXkUD_NNsfLPcAUG2AsYgWZVLonlI_O0vo1HflhqvTONMenUYjNkZfz.png
What’s to debate? You ran out of oil.
That’s the long and the short of it. The North Sea oil and gas bonanza was just big enough to get the British hooked for a generation on the revenue stream it generated, so they were comfortable muddling through and didn’t really feel the need to get their collective act together. But now they are coming to the end of that lollipop and finding there isn’t another one they can suck on.
Too bad they didn’t take the example of their northern neighbours, and establish a savings account for the revenue. From the looks of it, Norway may well be the best-off “former” oil nation.
That savings account won’t count for much when the financial system turns to toast.
You may be right.
For some reason, I thought a significant portion of that fund was in precious metals, which some believe to be a haven during financial turmoil.
But it appears Norway has invested that fund in business around the globe, to the point that their oil fund has been supplying more revenue than taxes, whereas gold does not pay interest. (Indeed, it incurs storage costs.)
“which some believe to be a haven during financial turmoil.”
Jan, in the context we are approaching this would have the same effect as getting an extra hours air supply after being ejected from your spacecraft hurtling towards Mars at 50,000 miles per hour.
Dramatic histrionics aside, if that “hour of air” is analogous to 20 years, that will get those in power though a comfortable end-of-life, no?
By no means am I someone who thinks BAU is possible, but we could see a period of flight from paper currencies into precious metals, which could allow the wealthy to hang on a bit longer, no?
Humans don’t live long enough to suffer the consequences of their actions.
There’s no way anything could endure for another 20 years once the financial system collapses, so what value will PM’s have? Would you trade your last chicken for a bar of gold?
Yea, that’s why everyone died and went back to the stone age in 2008. Were you even born then? Orlov claims that was a level-1 financial system crash. It recovered. That may not always be the case, but 2008 demonstrates that there is a lot of elasticity in the system.
Metals will continue to have value to those who value them, which will include the nobility, large land-owners, etc.
Perhaps you don’t, but we know how to make more chickens. My “last chicken” will be the one I own at my last breath.
Another myth about collapse: the cities will out-flow onto the countryside, consuming all like a plague of locusts. First, many of those in the countryside will have weapons. Second, not everyone will leave the cities, no matter how bad it gets; witness the poor in ghettos today. Third, those who flee will be ill-prepared for life on the land; they won’t last more than a day’s walk from the city.
You ever slaughter and butcher a cow? Didn’t think so. City folk think rural life is so trivial — “just go eat the farmers’ food!” Yea, right. As if most people could identify anything on a farm as “food” unless it was wrapped in plastic.
I reject the “sudden and absolute crash” myth. I’m sorry I got sucked into this. I won’t be responding further.
I suggest you read this primer on overshoot and collapse before you get too cocky about our prospects, once the financial system crashes.
And I must have missed the memo about the financial system collapsing back in 2008.
Because if it had, none of us would have the luxury of being around to argue about it today.
!!!!!
Lehman Brothers collapsed… not the financial system.
Exactly FE, a lot of folks suffer under the strange delusion that something actually collapsed back then. But hey, the birds are singing, the sun is shining and the girls are still good looking!
Psile, I do not understand how people who have been on this site for a while have not grasped that notion….
Humans don’t live long enough to suffer the consequences of their actions.
Jan, that was either an incredibly profound or an incredibly naive statement. I’m not sure which and I’m still contemplating the implications. If you changed it to “… suffer all the consequences…” I would agree completely. And I think it’s because we don’t suffer all the consequences of our actions in the same lifetime that we take those actions, coupled with our passion for justice, that we like the concepts of heaven and hell, and of karma, which allow us to suffer consequences, including punishments and rewards, in future lives.
But as a farmer, I’m sure you are familiar with the idea that we reap what we sow, including its use in the Bible as a metaphor for “we suffer the consequences of (at least some of our actions.”
Third, the financial crash of 2008 is unfinished business.
Essentially, the burden of debt forced central banks into policies of ultra-cheap money, and these have had precisely the effect that could (and should) have been anticipated – indebtedness continues to rise, provision for the future has been sabotaged, and bubbles are emerging across a broad range of asset classes. As well as adding huge amounts of debt, we are pillaging futurity, because of policies which cripple returns on pension and other provision.
We cannot yet know when the sequel to the global financial crisis (GFC) will occur. It is in the nature of the system that seemingly-unsustainable conditions can last for a lot longer than seems logically possible. Equally, however, a crash can occur with very little prior warning, and in ways that may not be predictable.
We may, though, be inching towards greater visibility about how and where the catalyst is likely to emerge. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the United Kingdom is much the most vulnerable domino in the series. If you’re looking for a single lead indicator for the next crunch, the value of Sterling may be the one to watch.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Selling the bonds that were bought in QE would seem like a good way to get the 2008 crisis back again.
I doubt that financial considerations will trigger collapse, but they might cause some sort of crash, You put your finger on why when quoting Keynes that “the market can remain functional a lot longer than you can remain solvent”. The ability for manipulation of the fiat currency is pretty limitless and when governments finally see the writing on the wall, they will do whatever it takes to prolong the status quo. You can count on it!
Noted historian Niall Ferguson, who has researched, collapses says, “Most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. All the above cases were marked by sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, as well as difficulties with financing public debt.”
I suppose that the leaders in all of these cases were simply ignorant. You seem to claim to have special knowledge, based on someone’s theory. I am sick and tired of hearing about it.
The 90% are not making high enough wages.
Interesting comment again proving shale is poo.
Selling any light crude has been made tough due to cuts by OPEC, whose members have tended to reduce output of heavier oil preferred by some refiners, leaving the market awash with lighter grades. But CPC has characteristics that add to the challenge.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN18Z2C0
There are an awfully lot of details in all of these decisions. I saw a chart a few days ago showing how quickly the Dubai oil price had risen, because of shortages. At the same time, the price for WTI (and shale oil) is falling, because there is an oversupply.
Just a comment to the core. Do you want to know how things work?
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/rule-from-the-shadows/
That’s why I sent the previous post of CFR but no one bit.
“Debt is useful to build a factory”. After that production becomes leveraged, because future production always goes up. When it doesn’t, we do not back our money anymore, we call it currency. Because growth is infinite, oh, and we leverage currencies through derivatives, because consumption always goes up. After that, we create more currency and buy gov bonds through proxies like Citadel.
Because debt is useful to build a factory. Greed and more greed and stupidity and political promises always take over when we decouple money from reality. Always. Now the deep state tries to manage all this garbage telling the plebes to buy more Nike air.
And non mainstream websites like this one telling us we need higher incomes so we can afford higher oil prices. Sorry Gail….
We cannot afford to grow anymore.
JT; growth only goes halfway the rainbow, indeed. We propped it up to 7 billion useless eaters. Tomorrow, we’ll scratch the paint off FE’s container for dinner.
Stop growing for christ sakes.
Stop growing for christ sakes.
Is that what you wish for? Really? You won’t like that
http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Well I’ll bite. The reason humans are collectively dumber than yeast is because we are psychologically weak and easily manipulated by authority figures .
You read it very well.
But the real conclusion is we can’t direct our own steps. We need direction. Collective cognition is basically stupid.
Reasonable? In a world built over billions of years to believe we are the height of cognitive awareness is the height of hubris.
Man must learn his limits.
I’ll bite too. Lets change that. Welcome to the Church of Less.
This topic makes many people feel most uncomfortable.
It challenges them to consider the extent to which their own perceptions and beliefs are the product of intentional manipulation by others. Everyone wants to believe, that what they believe is simply the truth. I have many times attempted to raise the question of the role of faith and it’s effect upon the energy/resource crisis. I wanted to challenge people to question the false belief system that has created our crisis. Particularly the beliefs of money and materialism. The responses I receive are always emotional and irrational. I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people fail to recognize the role of faith in its effect on all our decisions. People assume faith or beliefs only apply to issues of religion. Due you believe in God? Due you pray or attend religious services? They fail to recognize faiths role in other areas of life. Do you believe in capitalism? Do you believe in a political system or a political party? Do you believe in global warming? Do you believe in Chevy of Ford? Marriage? Racism? Homosexuality? Coke or Pepsi? Boxers or briefs? Fast Eddy or Elon Musk? The red pill or the blue pill. The list goes on and on.
Faith is simply what we believe in. Our beliefs control our actions. We cannot change without changing our beliefs. But to challenge a person’s beliefs often causes an irrational psychological defensive response. Good luck with that! 🙂
I’d say most people here know how politics works, how democracy is a kind of bait for foolish fish, opium for post-religious masses. (As they say, if vote changed anything, it would be illegal.)
Most people here knows that political choice is an illusion created by master of deceit, that politicians are nothing more than puppets controlled by the Owners, and that all MSM news on politics and economics is pure propaganda. (To me, the definitive eye-opener was 9/11.)
Also, most OFW readers know that the truth is too frightening for most people, that humans are more emotional than rational creatures, and that our minds are riddled with cognitive biases. So, it’s so easy to manipulate people, you just need to tell them what they want to hear (i.e., lies), reinforce their natural prejudices, etc.
Don’t underestimate what OFW does to correct the trance we can easily fall under the moment we turn on the TV. OFW is working its a.. off in real time to de-hypnotize us (me, anyway). I’m a better person for that.
True, OFW is a place to sober up, no trance allowed here, nor BS, only crude facts and cold logic. I come almost here every night to wash my mind of all the dust accumulated out there in the insane world of work & fake MSM.
Art – why would you turn on a TV?
Mostly for news. I’m late to the game of seeing how insane the more corporate news is, and even later of seeing how twisted the “alternative” news is as well. This learning curve is where OFW has helped the most. Also, it would be harder otherwise to understand how the average viewer is controlled.
‘news’ — you mean thought control propaganda … thought poison
JT, the article you linked to was full of good info. It tells a story many of us are familiar with but it also ads some details and joins some dots that are new to me. The strongest impression I came away with after reading it was how much Noam Chomsky resembles Woody Allen, not just in terms of gesture and facial expression but also in his deadpan delivery.
LOS ANGELES (FOX 11 / CNS) – The region’s latest heat wave will generate “dangerous and potentially life-threatening heat” across much of Southern California Friday and Saturday, with heat records expected to be set or matched on both days.
“Dangerous and potentially life-threatening heat is expected through Saturday, when high temperatures between 100 and 110 degrees are expected for many interior sections of southwest California,” warned a National Weather Service statement
131-year-old heat record in downtown L.A. could fall on Saturday, forecasters say
Across the planet
A temperature reading of 53.7 degrees Celsius, or 128.7 degrees Fahrenheit, was reported in Ahvaz by Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist at MeteoFrance. Kapikian posted a tweet saying that level of heat was a “new absolute national record of reliable Iranian heat” and that it was the hottest temperature ever recorded in June across mainland Asia.
Global warming has dramatically elevated the odds of heat extremes in many parts of the world. A study published in 2015 found that if greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically curtailed in the next few decades, parts of the Middle East will become too hot for the human body to tolerate, thereby cutting economic output.
An analysis published Thursday by the research and journalism organization Climate Central found that global warming made a recent heat wave in western Europe, which contributed to deadly wildfires in Portugal, up to 10 times more likely than it would have been without human emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Dozens of species are shifting west and north of their usual locations as average temperatures and rainfall patterns change, researchers found.
Oak, maple, and other deciduous trees are primarily heading westward as they follow changes in moisture availability, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances. Evergreens like firs and pines are shifting northward in search of cooler climes
“It is not future predictions,” Songlin Fei, the study’s lead author and a Purdue University professor, said in a press release.
“Empirical data reveals the impact of climate change is happening on the ground now,” he said. “It’s in action
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDsLeqvV0AE1k-2.jpg
Headlines why so important? Why is the VIX important? For markets to function there has to be speculative movements. Why aren’t Hedge Funds banned? Liquidity.
The headline it more important then fact because it moves the market. Kind of like a laxative. Without the right headline the system would lock up or actually evaporate.
So take BLS reports what is their real function? Think about it. Basically a cattle call.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/mobile/revisions-to-jobs-numbers.htm
Pingback: The Next Financial Crisis Is Not Far Away - Deflation Market
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/business/economy/jobs-report-june-unemployment.html
The Numbers
• 222,000 jobs were added last month. Wall Street economists had expected employment gains of 175,000.
• The unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. May’s jobless rate was 4.3 percent.
• The average hourly wage grew by 2.5 percent from a year earlier.
• The labor-force participation rate inched up to 62.8 percent, from 62.7 percent.
Might have to wait a bit longer for collapse here in the US.
So how long? Another 2-3months when the numbers are all revised? You do know these reports are based on speculative algorithms. Probably the same ones the military uses to determine terrorists for drone targeting.
Yep, this is is just looking for more justification to raise rates – even ever so slightly, as the Fed are now terrified of the asset bubble they’ve blown, and are hoping to manage its reversal. Lol. Once they’ve done that, anticipate a revision to those numbers.
There will be no escape…
‘It’s too late’: Seven signs Australia can’t avoid economic apocalypse
AUSTRALIA has missed its chance to avoid a potential “economic apocalypse”, according to a former government guru who says that despite his warnings there are seven new signs we are too late to act.
The former economics and policy adviser has identified seven ominous indicators that a possible global crash is approaching — including a surge in crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin — and the window for government action is now closed.
John Adams, a former economics and policy adviser to Senator Arthur Sinodinos and management consultant to a big four accounting firm, told news.com.au in February he had identified seven signs of economic Armageddon.
He had then urged the Reserve Bank to take pre-emptive action by raising interest rates to prevent Australia’s expanding household debt bubble from exploding and called on the government to rein in welfare payments and tax breaks such as negative gearing.
Adams says he has for years been publicly and privately urging his erstwhile colleagues in the Coalition to take action but that since nothing has been done, the window has now closed and Australia is completely at the mercy of international forces.
“As early as 2012, I have been publicly and privately advocating that Australian policy makers take pre-emptive policy action to deal with the structural imbalances within the Australian economy, especially Australia’s household debt bubble which in proportional terms is larger than the household debt bubbles of the 1880s or 1920s, the periods which preceded the two depressions experienced in Australian history,” he told news.com.au this week.
“Unfortunately, the window for taking pre-emptive action with an orderly unwinding of structural macroeconomic imbalances has now closed.”
Psile, must be getting close to looking at those 4wd hire companies……………………this is getting close it feels………………….When you see what’s going on around the world & see the Australian population in their cocoons of comfort having no idea of the thunder cloud over their heads that’s about to explode, it’s mindblowing.
Just be off the the local Budget or Thrifty Brendan. Big W, Woolies the local army surplus store for the supplies. (Did you know that a trenching tool makes for an excellent weapon?) One vehicle to carry the fam. and the other the goods. I’ll drive one, my cuz. the other. Will go straight west, hide and wait…
Sounds a good idea.
As you once said here, you don’t want to be within 500km of a city.
This is going to be big. As you also said you’ll be able to see it from space.
For sure mate, it will be epic. Don’t plan to be within cooee of any big city when the hammer blow hits.
One can get those rather nice Russian-style shovels with a sharpened edge……
Also, an excellent ‘garden machete’ that is in fact a very handy version of a short Roman sword. Much better balance in the hand than a traditional machete, which is only good for cuts but not thrusts, and is a slow weapon, not a f’ast’ one.
I am eternally grateful for my Hungarian fencing master’s lessons at school: a wonderful, –
interesting – way to keep fit, too.
‘The Sword is Cleanness, and it is Death’. (Lawrence of Arabia. )
For those interested, the best online historical fencing videos are by ‘Dimicator’, although he doesn’t go as far as the Sabre Age.
Brendon and psile-
Australia sounds so much like Canada. We have a thumpin coming on our heads too. I’m just glad I live in a collapsed part already, The cities are going to be unbelievable.
Modern cities have death written all over them with their reliance on JIT (just-in-time) delivery systems for everything. Often just 2-3 days of supplies. When the moment comes, and you’ll know it, because – like Lehman’s, it will be everywhere in the news and on everyone’s lips. The talking heads will be concerned, but calming – lest the sheep be startled. However, this should be your cue to exit, stage left. At best, you’ll have a few of days, to organise an orderly escape. Once JIT breaks down and the shelves empty, the fuel isn’t delivered and the ATM’s run out of cash – even to just a few locations in the city, all hell will start to break loose, as panic sets in. By then, it will be too late…
The view though will be fantastic 😉
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/12/13/article-2523345-1A16062600000578-78_964x623.jpg
Lol. But I don’t like heights…
Haha psile, but if you do it my way, you won’t have to be scared of heights as in a matter of seconds you will be back down on the ground, smashed to a pulp….the horror of what is happening all around us will be instantly over at that moment!
The trick is not to go face forward…. you want to stand on the edge facing towards the building …. then just tip yourself backwards…. you won’t even see it coming.
Also — you want to be thinking about how much better this is vs starving… or being raped and murdered… tortured… enslaved…. poisoned by radiation….
This is a way out — a quick painless option….
When BAU goes down — you will die soon after — best to go out with your dignity intact….and without any suffering.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/nintchdbpict000303301314.jpg
Lol. But I think I’ll take my chances. Just me and a trusty fruit knife against the zombie horde!
“Tesla Powerpack to Enable Large Scale Sustainable Energy to South Australia”
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-powerpack-enable-large-scale-sustainable-energy-south-australia?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=ba
59c9cd29-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-ba59c9cd29-153961373
“Tesla to build world’s biggest lithium ion battery in South Australia”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/07/tesla-to-build-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery-in-south-australia?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=ba59c9cd29-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-ba59c9cd29-153961373
“Tesla to build world’s largest lithium ion battery in Australia”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-40527784?ocid=socialflow_twitter
“Tesla Just Added a Huge Stack of Batteries to the California Power Grid”
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603531/tesla-just-added-a-huge-stack-of-batteries-to-the-california-power-grid/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=ba59c9cd29-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-ba59c9cd29-153961373
Tesla also has added big battery systems to the grid in Kauai, Hawaii — but, has any AC power grid ever been run on IRE (intermittent renewable energy)?
Don’t be too critical of our friend Elon. Everyone here has become fond of him as the ultimate coal burner. Not to mention he has yet to operate a profitable business, provide a project in time or on budget. The man simply has credentials like no one else.
Now besides those fundamental characteristics Elon also has no clue that no one has ever run a grid on IRE. Which makes him the perfect candidate. That’s why we have stories like this.
https://apple.news/AKdLY2ImXTkK1527pjQ_W2A
Now it’s not for lack of trying as we see here.
http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-june-2017-performance-update-gdv-completes-two-years-of-operation/
The entire concept of variable supply meeting variable demand is flawed and will never work.
You do realize they are dealing with a battery technology that was first commercialized by the Japanese in the early 1990’s?
Not exactly cutting edge.
Can you say bottleneck?
“Large Scale Sustainable Energy” – This sounds like a perpetual motion machine which violates laws of physics. There is no such thing as sustainable energy, even the Sun cannot do that.
“Sustainable” in this context means the planetary looting operation can continue for a while longer. Hardly sustainable…
Right, unfortunately!
That’s an impressive list of Fake News David.