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.
Isn’t that special — I’m running myself ragged trying to kill DelusiSTANIS from one account — I surely don’t need extras
There are others who agree with me on most issues – they are what I refer to as The Core.
We’re in a bit of a Rorke’s Drift situation at present. This latest post has stirred up a real hornet’s nest of ’em an ammo is limited. So fire at will, but don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
(This has a catchy tune, by the way.)
https://youtu.be/kVW5rjA5O7U
hurry!
get your predictions in now!
after The Collapse, no more entries are allowed!
Those pretty white helmets must have been great for real combat back then.
Yoo hoo … Gl enn … where are you gl…enn…
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-mighty-u-s-shale-oil-industry-to-lose-another-20-billion-in-2017/
https://dj0s31cxqi9ot.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/US-SHALE-OIL-INDUSTRY-FREE-CASH-FLOW-2017.png
We have been at it so many times already, why so simplistic..
They print “on the transparent plane” at the minimum ~ $4T per year, in reality likely much more, so do you think ~ $20B of pocket change has any particular consideration to them on such important systemic pillar issue?
Most likely not, if they decide to close the money spigot for the alt oil it would be for mostly very different set of reasons namely:
– preemptively crashing markets to launch some other mid term version of the scheme
– imminent war of larger impact, e.g. NK/China
– imminent resource technological reshuffle real or imagined (another scam to the front)
(e.g. now they try to push LNG exports)
..
.
The note comes 24 hours after BofA’s chief strategist Michael Hartnett warned that “the most dangerous moment for markets” will likely come when “rising rates combine in three or four months’ time with an inflection point in corporate profits. In anticipation of this, we would use the next couple of months to buy volatility, and within fixed income slowly reduce exposure to IG, HY, and EM bonds.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-13/bofa-most-dangerous-moment-markets-will-come-3-or-4-months
And then there is this — the CBs are the market now….
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/07/14/20170714_eod13_0.jpg
The likeliest reasons why we haven’t contacted aliens are deeply unsettling
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-aliens-have-not-contacted-humans-2015-9/#aliens-dont-exist-1-the-rare-earth-hypothesis-2
c) The great filter is still ahead of us and we’re all screwed.
Or all alien civilizations might follow the same path as us. Max Power Principle, self organizing systems, growth and collapse etc, long before they invent long distance space travel.
Nor will our industrialized and industrializing economies ever recover, so long as price levels associated with the vast majority of NNRs remain at their inordinately high levels.
Are you sure you have the right word there?
inordinately
adverb
to an unusually or disproportionately large degree; excessively.
Example: “the information was inordinately vetted and censored”
It could be argued that the current price levels are unusually high, but they are not excessive given the cost of extracting and refining said NNRs, not unexpected or surprising given the nature of our finite world, and if they remain at their current levels, these prices will in any case become the new “normal”.
So if I was writing that sentence, I would have replaced “inordinately” with “current historically”.
Oh dear, I thought the premise here was that the ‘new normal’ wasn’t possible, because the entire ic was founded on the cheap… the new NNR prices are unsustainable or beyond the ‘ordinary’. It simply can’t be ‘ordered’, complex or negentropic with the fundamentals so distorted.
No, Jerry, that premise is not universally embraced even on FW. The bottom line is that normality is a moveable feast. It’s whatever we’ve gotten used to. After a few weeks even broiled rat on a stick and watching everybody’s hair fall out due to radiation poisoning can seem normal. Admittedly, having the Donald as President still feels surreal, but give it a bit more time.
Well, human kind (and ecosystems) while getting somewhat battered so far, survived the very poisonous rapid build up phase of plutonium for thousands of war heads. The cleverness or rather sheer corruption of Japanese to build NPP without much safety backup on known active earthquake fault line and tsunami area, and or the comedy of Ukrainian horrors upon non procedure-book errors at Chernobyl, also speak volumes about something.. else..
interesting fact: predictions of the collapse of Industrial Civilization have never been correct. Zero percent, nada, nil, zilch, zip, goose eggs!
I will concede that such a prediction only has to be correct once, but so far not.
I will also say I predicted 2017 for IC collapse.
Why? Because I like the number 7!
I now predict collapse in 2020.
Why? Only because it’s a round number!
Late in 2020, I’m sure I will change my prediction to 2027 or 2030!
And yet, predictions of the collapse of 100% of all civilization besides the one we got have been 100% correct!
But, perhaps you’re right… just this once…
Predictions of doom will ALWAYS be wrong……….until they are right. Many a smart ass will chime in AFTER the event, to denounce the the audacity of the persons prediction when they don’t eventuate.
Predictions are usually made by evaluating available data, history, intuition and educated guess. Even if every single component is correct a “force majeure” comes along and alters one, several or all evaluation points. There is a trend though and it seems to be inexorably towards disaster. I’m not going to wish away my life or everyone’s life by declaring a time. I’ve been through that and the silly depression it causes. Now it’s one day or month at a time, there will be no accolades for the doomster who gets it exactly right.
It’s like releasing a feather from an airplane — you know with total certainty that it will eventually fall to the ground… but you cannot know when… because it will be carried on the wind … blown up and down and sideways….
But you do know — that it will end up on the ground — that is indisputable.
Reposted the umpteenth time
Stein’s Law: ” Things that can’t go on forever eventually stop”
Two lemmas ( mine — Interguru’s Lemmas )
1) They go on a lot longer than you think they can.
2) They stop suddenly without warning. Even those who see it coming have no idea when.
This is for the simple reason that once people become aware of the mere possibility of collapse (whether for ecological and demographic reasons,in the 1970’s, or financial and ‘peak oil’ causes, as more recently) they tend to panic and jump the gun.
Most predictions, even from the best-informed and well-intentioned of commentators, can be invalidated immediately on account of this basic psychological flaw.
Another body of analysts have something to sell – books or ‘advice for survival’ – and so cry ‘Wolf!’ as loudly as they can, and IT is always imminent, so sign up for my newsletter today!
In no way does this invalidate the considerable body of scholarly work on the growth and collapse trajectory of all civilisations, or make trends so many areas any less ominous.
Not repeating the obvious, most prior collapses where not clear cut cookies anyway.
It was usually a tangled combination of resource/ecosystem depletion with sudden natural forces impact and intertwined social complexities etc.
For instance, the original ClubMed based western Roman Empire evolved into “proto-JIT” system where shipping container of that era, millions of (amphorae) moved by sea and rivers to the center. At certain point this was not enough, and the empire attempted stepping up the complexity into also land based type of setting, which drained more resources for upkeep the roads, protection fortresses and so on. When this finally crashed in the west (for many reasons) the Eastern half of the Roman Empire soldiered on from different capital for ~thousand more years, but I’m stressing the following point here. That from that time it was based on different mixture of land and sea based “JIT” complexities. In other words, they re-balanced the mix according to the new world realities at that specific part and reach of the Empire per given historical realities.
That’s perhaps the very point so hard to grasp for many here, who insist on single event collapse variety as the only highest probability outcome.
Lots of problems working together lead to collapse. One of the issues is that the climate is naturally changing. Natural variations certainly play a role. So do impacts of clearing forests and adding agriculture. Such changes have been affecting local weather (or perhaps you would call it climate) for a long time. Killing off major predators also had a big effect on ecosystems, even in the days of hunter gatherers. These ecosystem changes seem to have led to the permanent loss of forests in some places, such as Australia.
I don’t know the answers, but I think instant doom adherents would say some of the following: Nuclear contamination that spreads by air and water is a new problem. We also can’t expect to release trillions of tons of CO2 into the air and water and expect global climate to stay the same. And there are also no back up carbon sinks–like healthy rainforests (?)–any more. The entire planet is networked now,in ways that make it harder to isolate healthy parts away from the doomed parts.
The earth releases the excess into space… at least that is what NASA is claiming:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/#51e8931a5f23
Burn all the coal you want — it makes no difference
consider your source, FE. that dude has an axe to grind, and forbes is far from neutral in that debate.
I’ll have to read it more carefully than I have time for at the moment. the reporter has an axe to grind, not the scientist. there’s something not right here, however, the planet is cleary warming, there are few glaciers not in retreat, polar bears and Inuit people are having a harder time feeding themselves (due to lack of sea ice environment), permafrost is melting globally, heat waves, droughts on the rise, sealevel rising, etc.
Stop with the anecdotal bullshit — the clim.ate is ALWAYS changing — glaciers melt — then freeze — then melt — temperat.ures break records for hot and cold all the time…
Canada was covered by glac.iers at one point. And now it is not — what caused the glaciers to retreat? Duh…..
The REALITY is this — overall the cli..mate has barely changed at all …. that is FACT.
If it was dramatically changing then why would the cli…mate sci.entists have to fake their data?
You even have the Godfather of Green James Lovelock stating all the models were wrong … you’ve got many clim..ate scienti.sts coming out admitting the same.
All that carbon — and what do we have – sweet f789 all in terms of change…. enough of this shit.
Are you people mentally f789ing retarded? What will it take?
We are NOT going to burn up because we are burning oil and coal.
I was wrong — you are wrong — be a bloody man and admit it.
The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models.
During the mid/late 20th century (1960-1999), a barrel of oil cost $19 on average; during the years immediately prior to the Great Recession (2000-2008), the average price of a barrel of oil had increased to $47; During the same three time periods, the average price of a metric ton of copper increased from $3,085, to $3,713, to $6,817; the average price of a metric ton of iron ore increased from $36, to $57, to $124; and the average price of a metric ton of potash increased from $114, to $185, to $343. (Prices are inflation adjusted.)
The simple fact is that we CANNOT GROW our global economy and improve our global material living standards on $45 oil, $6,817 copper, $124 iron ore, and $343 potash like we did on $19 oil, $3,085 copper, $36 iron ore, and $114 potash. It should come as no surprise that our NNR-dependent global economy experienced the Great Recession during 2009. Nor should it come as a surprise that we have yet to recover from the Great Recession as we enter 2018. Nor will our industrialized and industrializing economies ever recover, so long as price levels associated with the vast majority of NNRs remain at their inordinately high levels.
……but why? Why are prices high. They’re not high just because they can be, they’re high for reasons.
1) Declining EROI leading supply and demand issues, demand for cheap commodities overwhelmed by the ability of suppliers to deliver. Bankruptcies occurring because business paying for the commodities they require at a price point that is destructive and suppliers selling at a price point that is destructive. Debt masking the insolvency of businesses.
2) Diminishing returns and relative historical high debt (related to above)
3) Decline in quality and accessibility of commodities eg. FF, fisheries, ores, rare earths (related to 1 & 2)
4) Overpopulation leading more claims on limited slices of the pie.
5) Pollution, deforestation,corruption, conflicts, complexity…….
That’s a valid optics to a degree, but don’t forget infrastructure/tools gets overhauled regularly. For example, office or light engineering PC desktops now consume ~1/10x watts what they used to, but on the other hand the sever infrastructure and its consumption increased, while large chunk perhaps most is used for frivolous stupidities like HD videos of cats playing. Similarly, cars, buses, jets, .. are sipping %% less, although there is the counter trend in their higher overall aggregate volume in operation. It’s a very mixed story..
Yet, I gather, the major fork building up among people over here is what follows the recent trend of exponential growth, which in itself is dubious claim, since the growth path was not lifting all boats within and across societies anyway. Hence there is a some validity to the point arguing we might expect (for some ~limited time) a wobbly plateau and fall to lower level complexity, again at different speeds in global comparison as well within each particular society, instead of the single point event of universal synchro collapse.
The reduction in electricity used by computers and their screens seems to be one of the things leading to falling electricity usage in quite a few developed countries. I am sure LEDs contributed as well. I haven’t seen studies breaking out the relative impact, though. There are clearly other thing working in this direction, such as more efficient televisions and refrigerators.
Correct, one of the issues is that not that long ago, you bought German or Swedish made home appliances and it lasted 20-30yrs operating 24/365, with reasonable energy consumption and token if not existent repair effort, just impossible feat today with subcontractor from Asia and Poland.. and even the high end stuff nowadays tend to be on the crappy side, at least for those with a bit of memory..
The computer aided tools and mountains of money (credit) allowed for rapid product development, new niche segments. But do you for example really expect the same quality by BMW doing combinations of 50x car models and 20x engines and 5x transmissions vs. tiny fraction of it decades ago with “lower tech” yet proper lifecycle attention..
Also, I know with my fancy washing machine that I had to replace after 8(?) years, the person who looked at the machine said that the new highly efficient (and expensive) models don’t last nearly as long as the old less efficient models.
On the question of the super rich. Much of their wealth is nominal and not real. But! It doesn’t mean their real wealth is going away.
If you have mansions, yachts, jets, businesses, etc., even if the financial paper wealth disappears, the real wealth is still there. It’s just a question of triaging off what isn’t worth it anymore, while keeping the core intact.
It’s just that at their level, they don’t really suffer or die for any of this. They merely grow old. The rest of us, it’s actually a question of starvation. We can’t just keep getting rid of more and more, at some point we need basic work and food and shelter.
I am not sure about your assumptions. Real wealth goes away, if someone stronger than you takes it away, or if the government taxes it away, or if you find that necessary services (food and water particularly) are not available. Also, without oil, the yacht won’t go very far. Neither will the jet. And the business will not work, unless banks are open.
Much of what we think is real disappears at the same time the paper wealth disappears.
:Land ownership does not. Those who lost their land to communists mostly got them back after communism collapsed.
I saw apartments in St. Petersburg, Russia that had been carved out of much larger apartments at the time of the communist takeover. There were also parks that had previously been private land. There clearly had to have been a lot of exceptions to “Those who lost their land to communists mostly got them back after communism collapsed.”
How do you come to the belief that this statement is true?
Kulm is probably referring to peculiarities of “post communist” world, outside former USSR/Russia proper, where grand schemes of “restitution laws” were enacted.
In case of Russia to my limited knowledge, only the state orthodox church was given back relatively large chunks of former wealth, because it’s a team player.
Specifically, in many countries of the CEE/incl. parts of Baltic, large waves of wealth transfers occurred in past decades, not only predating the “iron curtain years” i.e. restoration line ~1949, but also breaching the post WWII treaties of the winning powers, so going way before 1940s start of the war, sometimes skilfully attacking even the 1914-18 legal situation. So, for example large swaths of land, stakes in industry, has been returned to quasi feudal entities and dubious international characters, churches/orders etc.
That’s partly the reason for the unraveling of security situation in Europe, Russians correctly feel they were duped on the security guarantees of early 1990s, that WWII results and their commitment (~30M dead, country in smoldering ruins) are to be honored into the future.
You will here exactly zero about this important sub-context in the western press.
Thanks! I hadn’t heard about that before.
There are even precedents way before that, e.g. nobility restitution (to a varied degree) post Napoleonic wars in Europe early 19th century. And before that during “30yrs War” in the mid of 17th century, basically Catholic vs Protestant blocks of power players confiscating each other, restitution, rinse and repeat, carving out chunks of countries (and tribute) left or right..
Its not really “getting it back” if you have to wait 70 years. That’s mostly a loss.
That’s why the distinction, Russia was a very special case, civil war and attempted western occupation ~1917 and almost straight into planned tightly vertical integrated system ever since with very brief respites in early 1920s and the longer one mid 1990s.
In the rest of Eastern bloc it was only ~40yrs, therefore restitution of property provided marked difference, anyways historically after WWII each state ran different mixed model, e.g. Yugoslavia and later also Hungary were quite liberal in lower tier economic matters, people could travel to west a little bit, owned little farms and companies, economies still tanked. While others were quite dogmatic on every aspect like typical protestant/heretic East Germans and Czechs.., however being more developed on the technical side. Yep, world is complicated.
That was my thought.
It was only thanks to adpoting nuclear energy, oil and natural gas, that the Central Europe (and other parts of the world) continue functioning.
E.g. without the nuclear energy, there is no Slovakia anymore, as there would be not enough domestic energy that could keep the state and its economy functioning. During the WWII, Slovkai turned into the republic led by a catholic priest Jozef Tiso as its president. And bfore, during WWI, it was another priest, who was playing the leading role: Andrej Hlinka.
In my opinion, in times of total despair, such union of government and church seems to be the logical solution: nothing remains, but the trust into a Higher Power.
Didn’t j.wes and other who got property confiscated in Berlin get it back later? Probably some unfortunate people who bought the confiscated property got squeezed.
As mentioned above it differs very much in terms of particular time epoch and location/jurisdiction. Churches and faith societies are often cured among the first, they are prioritized simply on the line of powerful pressure groups, being allies of the new gov pushing restitution process in the first place..
Not sure what specific case you have in mind. Sometimes throughout restitution process he who bought said property previously in good faith and under the law, could be re-compensated by the gov, usually in money, sometimes in ~kind, i.e. land somewhere else of ~similar value etc.
Reference please
Let’s think historically: did any of the great families of Ancient Rome survive? None: they were liquidated with the structure that supported them.
Were any of the rulers of Europe in the late 8th century descended from powerful families among the tribes which conquered Rome and were powerful a generation before? None: they were all new men, and even the flattering court poets had to be silent about their dim provincial ancestry.
And what happened to most of the great and powerful of Europe and Russia in the 20th century? Why did many of the English gentry and aristocracy end up living in the servants’ quarters of their mansions in the 1940’s, struggling to cook and clean for themselves? When the structures go, the status goes. Thousands of gentry mansions were demolished for salvage after WW2, they had no value.
The top strata might be said to be particularly vulnerable to change. As a student I worked for a delightful summer at Christie’s in London, in the Old Masters department: I met not a few people from the titled aristocracy (in fact, nearly everyone had a title except me!) and they all lived at a very much lower level than their grandparents.
Indeed. If the elite weren’t so vulnerable to change, they wouldn’t fight so hard to preserve the status quo.
They fight almost as hard as Unions. 🙂
That’s agreeable with the proviso, we are about to enter a phase in which the “upper caste” dominating past century+ (at least) is either to be forced to share much more or to be put aside. Also there is to be expected lot of collateral damage as usual around these historical tectonic shifts of longer cycles concluding.
worldofhanumanotg says:
July 15, 2017 at 5:27 am
That’s agreeable with the proviso, we are about to enter a phase in which the “upper caste” dominating past century+ (at least) is either to be forced to share much more or to be put aside. Also there is to be expected lot of collateral damage as usual around these historical tectonic shifts of longer cycles concluding.
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A blogger from Wales once posted that, technically speaking, the royal family own all the British land. But that aside, either they or the aristocracy as a whole own a very great amount of land. Being a wishywashy fellow who hates changing even “bad” things, I search endlessly for ways to have it all. So I do believe that with an aristocratically trained eye and a socialist conscience you can use all that land to benefit the unwashed masses. You have to put style and aesthetics first, and the old guard now occupying servants digs (with style!!!!!) need to know their new place. There has to be a useful, pragmatic, wise way to remain upper class. One possible way to ensure this is to educate the masses (though not en masse!) to a standard that is conducive to integration with the aristocracy. An aristocratic society. It might call for extremes of cultural diversity, each enabling a viable path to status. Everybody must have status, but they can’t have it in all the same white-dominant centralized way as before.
When the system implodes, it is about the declining energy, both human and external. And everybody is affected. There is no way an individual can preserve his or her remaining assets against the starved majority or other species that prevail over the weakend human species lacking the external energy.
I’m not so sure.
If the “paper wealth” of the rich deflates to the point that they have to liquidate hard assets, why won’t those hard assets also deflate? I all of today’s billionaires suddenly become mere millionaires, who is going to buy their excess “mansions, yachts, jets,” etc.?
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British titled aristocracy found that their real income was plummeting due to the fall in agricultural land values -the Great Agricultural Depression – and they (like the Italian and French nobility) often adopted the strategy of marrying super-rich American ladies, daughters of industrialists and businessmen.
Even the Duke of Westminster had to do this. And hence, famously, Winston Churchill.
But even since the 17th century they had condescended to marry the daughters of rich London merchants (themselves often coming from the minor gentry, apprenticed to trade),and daughters (holding their noses a bit) had married merchants – the Percy family of Alnwick Castle did this in the 17th century,
So in the early 1900’s they were merely going global and acting as parasites on the booming American economy. Pretty smart.
Yep, not many people internalized the simple in the face observation, that the amalgam of global elite got together much sooner and tidier than even the first gen “collectivists/socialists/communists” ever dreamed about their own goals..
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/07/13/analysis/these-missing-charts-may-change-way-you-think-about-fossil-fuel-addiction
Ok, Class, pay attention: These ‘missing charts’ may change the way you think about fossil fuel addiction.
“To address the twin threats of climate change and ocean acidification, nearly every nation has promised to reduce fossil fuel burning. But so far, humanity keeps burning ever more. Last year we did it again, burning an all-time record amount.”
Oil majors warned to revamp business model or face collapse
http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/fragile-five-these-opec-producers-are-on-the-verge-of-collapse-if-oil-prices-dont-stabilize-soon/wcm/3e73a18c-7d4c-4df8-90f6-297bbae45ec1?__lsa=445d-5189
Oil majors warned to revamp business model or face collapse
http://www.politico.eu/article/chatham-house-paul-stevens-international-oil-companies-gas-climate-fossil-fuels-carbon-tracker-initiative-cop21/
My apologies if this has already been posted.
I guess it’s articles like this that stop the isheep necking themselves…………
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Can-The-Permian-Outgrow-The-Giant-Saudi-Ghawar-Field.html
The kind of videos you’ve been posting makes me take what you say (in sometimes very intelligent comments) less seriously. Knock it off. You have a lot to add here, but this isn’t it. . .
Do you truly believe that spamming piece of ———- adds something to the comments section of OFW blog posts? Most of his posts are very similar to the gif of the cats pawing the di1d0.
I deleted it. Sorry, the view I usually look at of comments is in chronological order, without images. I have to switch back and forth between screens to get context and photos. When I am busy working on something or with family, I don’t always have time to do very much moderation.
Bill Gates: smart enough to keep the rights to sell MS-DOS when he sold an operating system to IBM
Michael Dell: Started making computers in his college dorm room.
Mark Zukerman: If I am correct, some sort of messaging system while a student at Harvard.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Ph.D students at Stanford, reinvented the search engine
Edison: light bulb.
In these cases, there was very little before them.
It is good to chose the correct boat. So how about a concrete boat sailing around after the collapse that has been predicted by its skipper since the first book?
Did the USSR really collapse or just reorganize?
If it has been done, it can be done.
Economics seems separate from ecology, economics is predicated on maximizing throughput even if its effect is to make the environment less conducive to life. Life has been going on for a few years and seems to understand reorganization.
Anybody seen any good boats?
Dennis L.
Reorganization ahead?, very fitting description..
There might be indeed some good boats to board at least for the mid term horizon.
But it’s largely confined to the vertically integrated societies of the East, the state owned companies are not always listed on the exchange or it’s just temporary pretend status, which could be closed any day. Sometimes they form with foreign companies joint ventures, which could be invested in.
Generally speaking, I’d say it’s likely too late for this model. If you are located in the west try to position for the severe hair cut ahead, leave sub-(urban) location for good asap. If you reside in the east, you are likely not on this forum anyway, but advise would be join some of their prominent (state owned) defense or energy company in whatever specialty-capacity.
“..Triage, triage, triage..” on the song “Voyage, Voyage”
Not laughing anymore at me are you..
US gov contingency plan for soft default several years in the can already, essentially prioritizing who on the gov payroll is going to be paid at least something for a while, or delayed and eventually paid nothing:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-14/might-trump-have-use-obamas-secret-debt-ceiling-plan-avoid-us-treasury-default
Ah, actually I was looking for comments regarding his ideas. Yes, I can use a search engine. Some of you are probably very well informed, etc., however many of the comments seem more attempts to reinforce self held beliefs and convince others of those beliefs. Roetgen was supposed to have said at one point something to the effect, “Now we know everything about the atom.” A bright man, quantum mechanics changed that view somewhat. I am not looking to comment, I am looking to elicit information other than regurgitation of obviously well held and sincere beliefs.
A number of years ago I sat down with Robert Hirsch and asked, “What are the billionaires doing?” The response was in effect, “Billionaires don’t talk with us” If a person wins that often to gain billions, they must have a fair understanding of how the world actually works. Gaining that rule book is extremely difficult.
So has anyone read Didier Sornette?
Dennis L.
People often try to classify billionaires. It doesn’t work.
“If a person wins that often to gain billions, they must have a fair understanding of how the world actually works” – It is sheer luck. There is no understanding anything.
I would argue it isn’t luck for the richest. It’s based on insider knowledge, particularly of markets and where future demand is going to be. While peasants buy the S&P 500 market index hoping for a 8% pre-tax return, insiders buy knowing what is going to happen to earnings, etc. Sure, there is some risk you get busted by the SEC for insider trading, but not likely. They bust some high profile people every now and then to scare the sheeple and create the illusion of “fair markets” like Martha Stewart for example, but that’s about it. Probably catch 1 of every 100 insider traders. Also, insiders know where roads and other infrastructure are going to be built and “invest” in people who take advantage of that through 3rd party capital so they can’t be caught. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, right?
To further that – you think Warren Buffett buys into a company not knowing what their strategy to improve returns on equity is going to be? No way. He uses all his political connections etc…to make sure his bets will payoff. If you can get to a 20% pretax return vs. 8% each year – do the math and see how much of a difference that makes on a $1mm investment
Once you have made your first 10B you are in a position to take advantage of things as Buffett has… he has become the greatest insider trader of all time!
As Steve from Virginia says, industrialists borrow their fortunes and then get others to pay the debt back.
In this instance, its not even really insider trading anymore. Once you’re Warren Buffett’s size you become a market maker instead of a market taker. What you do makes market’s move rather than you reacting to market moves.
Wrong! There might be few accidental billionaires or pretending ones (ala Trump), but it is scientifically impossible to win in each reflation window (correct timing + segment), basically each decade past ~40yrs without “the rule book” which the tops of top apparently did..
My take on most billionaires is that they would have a certain amount of intelligence — maybe minimum 120 IQs as Taleb suggests…
No doubt most are driven individuals — they want the private jet so much they can taste it —
Some are ego maniacs while some are lacking in self confidence — both problems assuaged by having massive amounts of money (see ‘I have a bigger yacht than you’)
Some are just lucky – a small idea turned big … or born into opportunity…. some are just corrupt…
I know people who have the traits to be billionaires — but for whatever reason they have not made it to that level … there are literally many thousands who want it badly out there — most fail…
I do not think any of those who succeed have some special understanding of the world — getting to that level involves a perfect storm.
We are talking past each other apparently again. Your description is sensible about the mid and lower tier of the “super rich” only, they are expendable through competition.
However, there is clear intent, method, opportunity and precise execution is various multi decade or longer cycle schemes of financial/political control, which can’t be explained otherwise than by “coordinated syndicate at work” for lack of better word.
The problem is that I am making sense and you are posting gibberish — and never the twain shall meet.
I am in business – I know plenty of people worth tens of millions of USD — I know a few that likely are worth over 100m.
I do not know any billionaires.
But I do understand what the mindset is — nobody starts off thinking hey I am going to be a billionaire… they start out with a drive to succeed… the motivations as I have pointed out — are varied…as are the methods
Some driven people get nowhere — some end up as millionaires – some end up with a lot more than that — and a few end up with 1000’s of millions.
Bill Gates did not start his business thinking he was going to be a billionaire – nor did Steve Jobs… they each had an idea — and they pursued it — it just happens that these ideas were really big …
There are a shitload of people out there as driven with as much intelligence as both of these guys — and they are toiling away in obscurity making next to nothing.
None of these people understand the world any better than any other intelligent person.
They understand their specific businesses and they are driven to make them successful
I have a relative who comes in contact with quite a few multimillionaires. For what its worth, her experience is that the ones that were born into money are poison compared to the ones who earned it.
FE, Bill Gates is fourth generation NW banking family. His genius was in corporate structuring to funnel all the money to himself.
I have founded a few businesses — nothing remotely near the scale of Microsoft — but like Bill Gates – I try to ‘funnel all the money’ that is made to me…. I don’t consider that genius — it’s called retaining majority ownership of shares in a company that you founded — pretty common stuff if you are not a MOREon….
I am descended from a drunken trunk driver in Northern Ontario – 3rd generation eastern European immigrants to Canada
Roetgen was supposed to have said at one point something to the effect, “Now we know everything about the atom.”
From WIkipedia: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays.
Although he was a Nobel laureate, his name is not a household word in today’s English speaking world. In Japan, however, where he is known as Rentogen, his name has been immortalized to the extent that it is the preferred synonym for “X-ray” even today. You walk into a doctor’s or dentist’s clinic and one of the most common procedures they will perform on you is to take a rentogen.
Röntgen’s attitude to the atom was in stark contrast to that of Niels Bohr, who is reported to have said:
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
for a blog like this the following is food for the soul and speaks volumes, truly amazing documentary:
Lauren Greenfield is most known as one of the most influential photographers working today, with her works exhibited and collected in museums all over the country. She started as a photojournalist covering poverty in the Chiapas region of Mexico until she had an epiphany that she can document the same issues of poverty and street life closer to home in the US. Her fascination with the ways a modern society handles the lack of resources has eventually shifted towards the way it handles the excess of resources. She has explored it in a 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles.
Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles won a US Documentary Directing Award at Sundance in 2012 and numerous accolades from Directors Guild of America, International Documentary Association, Critics Choice Awards and others.
The movie ostensibly centers on a news story about a construction of the largest, single-family home in America, a 90,000 sq. ft. palace modeled on Versailles. What we get instead is an intimate portrait of family who are caught in wealth rather than in poverty but they are still very much caught. This is an American Dream at epic scale and a story of a gigantic downfall as their family fortune starts to dissolve in the 2008 financial and real estate crisis. The story starts while the family is enjoying an extraordinary prosperity and confidence, all the while building their Versailles as well as a flagship hotel in Las Vegas. The 2008 real estate crash brings in a brutal riches-to-rags reversal. The husband, understandably, becomes more and more grumpy as his empire is on a brink of foreclosure. The wife is more graceful and stoic about the situation but it is not easy to downshift. She is intelligent and likeable so this is not just the case of a vulgar nouveau-riche. She is really having a hard time coping with daily life when her twenty household staff have been dismissed. She now has to cook (even corn on a cob is a challenge), shop in a regular store (her trip to Walmart is a helpless grab of anything that comes her way) or rent a Hertz car (she discovers rentals do not come with a driver). Most of all, she has to manage her eight kids who have never been taught any discipline, given any goals or encouraged to have intellectual pursuits. Kids have no idea how to follow up on responsibilities, even for pets (a lizard dies, a pet snake is lost somewhere in the house and dog poop is underfoot everywhere). This is a picture of what excessive wealth does to regular, nice people- when they have it and when it suddenly disappears. In this family the only person who seems to have a healthy relationship to people and things is a teenage cousin who was adopted after having living rough in the streets. She almost sounds like a spokesperson for adversity as a way to shape character.
https://solari.com/blog/food-for-the-soul-generation-wealth/
Thanx for the noise, but I have already prepped the readers.
BTW if you want to see the video that they don’t want you to see, here it is again
;
Isn’t interesting how these “back to free market” purist analysts are always wrong ? Well, it’s because the true nature of the system is completely different, there was no free market condition ever, it was always a mixed system of many parts only exchanging their relative power inside sort of closed system, be it on the feudal layers, central banking clique emerging at least since ~17th century, before that the influence of north Italian city state banking (“global”) credit schemes and so on..
Now we have a situation in which it is still not China’s (+gang) priority to reshuffle the dominant legacy financial order. They need perhaps a decade more or two, just to finish some important projects, transfer the latest interesting bits of technology and only then might be willing to pull the rug under the west in serious fashion. But again even at that point it can’t be complete reversal, since the US has got stockpile of nukes and lot of rough leaning generals might get mentally unstable and stuff.. So, it will be some sort of a wash, yes plunge into sheer poverty for many-most in the US, but not complete delete, in order to prop up the new state elite as vassal territory, who ever that might be by that time.
And the free marketers will have it wrong again, haha, lolz.
True. There has never been a completely free market, nor has there ever been a truly socialist state. There are only various levels in between. And history is one of gradual changes marked by punctual equilibrium change.
And we get to live at the peak! How interesting is that. The trick is not to think too much, it will drive you insane. Rather: what is my place in this story. As long as one keeps that in mind it will keep you grounded.
Delusions: ‘We need to get back to a Free Market!’; ‘We need Real Socialism, it’s never really been tried!’; ‘When the Rightful King returns, the Golden Age will return!’ Oh dear, oh dear……
But at least waiting for King Arthur to wake up, yawn, and ride out from the hill with his knights has a certain charm.
Has anyone read Carthal Haughian? Supposedly, there is a 4th edition of “Reset” now in print.
Dennis L.
Hah, was this latest edition supposedly consulted and approved by the following “top” insiders as well? Soros, Gates or Lady Camila?
This site is going rapidly downhill..
worldof
You missed the Archangel Gabriel off that list. Cathal does indeed move in very high circles. 🙂
Probably Dennis,
He has posted here.
I suppose you know how to use a search engine?
He/she is the person who is hanging with the awesome and beautiful people at the beach resort right?
No – have not read
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Macron is Jupiter – Bruno Le Maire
I am Hermes – Bruno Le Maire
Hmmmmm
“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”
One trillion tonne iceberg breaks off Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctic
That’s about the size of the island of Bali. The mp of Antarctica will need to redrawn…
What’s your point?
tsk-tsk
It was old news, we all knew.
Coals to Newcastle etc.
It just happened.
thanks for that
I love you too.
Meh, par for the corpse.
As it would have a thousand times over the past billion years — if there were maps
Merely pointing out how enormous this chunk of ice is.
Do you have any idea of how enormous the largest iceberg ever recorded was?
Would you believe over 31,000 km2 — or more six times the size of this chunk?
From WIkipedia:
The largest iceberg on record was an Antarctic tabular iceberg of over 31,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) [335 by 97 kilometres (208 by 60 mi)] sighted 150 miles (240 km) west of Scott Island, in the South Pacific Ocean, by the USS Glacier on November 12, 1956. This iceberg was larger than Belgium.
Here’s a copy of a news article from the time.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Image1581_shadow.png
Oh … a fact…. how interesting.
Fake news is not news.
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No survival community that is more than a bunch of poseurs would find it in their best interest be welcoming everyone. It’s easy to be welcoming when what you participate in is a little more than a part-time hobby for bored wealthy people. You already know anyone who will join your lifeboat community, at this time, come from the same socioeconomic strata, low stakes and have identical beliefs so there is no need to be discriminating.
Jan Steinman says: Get the chip off your shoulder, and you’ll have an easier time of it. We’re completely colour-blind, but we do select for the ability to get along well with others.
You’ve concluded that I’m already not a “good fit” because I suspect that your lifeboat community is cultivating very few skills that will be useful in a world after industrial civilization collapses. If you’re reading this, you most likely have either a job, or you’re wealthy, and you are most likely using computers and industrial machines to peruse your pastoral hobby. Cutting wood is easy when one is using a chainsaw. Get back to me when you are doing that with tools made with local materials that could have been used during the Stone Age. Until then, don’t attempt mislead me about what you’re doing. The “nasty temperament ” is a manifestation of distrust. You’ve given me plenty of reasons to believe you are delusional about the level of preparation your lifeboat community is attempting to achieve. Do it if it makes you happy but don’t try to sell it as some kind of solution to me.
Why don’t you reply to Jan?
It is a well known noise technique to post filler after that which is desired to be distracted from.
Look it up.
It will be hard to establish relationships with true trust after BAU goes down. Then, desperate people will say anything.
You pretty much got me there! Right on!
Anyone who “disses” someone else on-line without bothering to get to know them better, getting to meet them, or at least look at their website seems to be inviting suspicion.
One nit: why is it I have “concluded,” but you have “suspected?” I haven’t “concluded” anything. But I suspect you are unwilling to really try to find a sustainable agrarian community you could fit into. Prove me wrong! C’mon out and volunteer for a couple weeks! If, after that, you don’t feel you’ve “cultivated” any useful skills, we’ll give you your money back. 🙂
Sorry, you’re zero for three there.
Wealthy? Well, short of. I did save up money to invest in this venture, but I doubt many would consider my net worth as being “wealthy.” Someone with a Vancouver condo, mortgaged to the hilt, has more paper wealth than I do. And my financial “wealth” is paper-only, all into this venture, which has declined in value 18% since purchase. So I cannot even claim to be financially saavy! (I do have about $2,500 in the bank, which I realize makes me “wealthy” to some people.)
“Have a job? “Well, short of. I do “have a job.” I am a substitute librarian in the public school system. I also do some odd jobs and handyman work for friends and neighbours on a “gift economy” basis. Sometimes, they give me some cash. Sometimes, I get a jar of tomatoes. Sometimes, I get a humble “thanks” and a promise to “pay it forward.” Last year, my taxable income was about C$2,200.
Industrial? Well, short of. We make minimal use of “industrial machines,” but it is about 90% hand labour. We try to leverage older technology to get the most bang for the buck. Precision stuff like weeding is all done by hand. We do a lot of scything, but share-crop our hay out to a neighbouring farmer who has $15,000 worth (used value) of hay equipment. Hay making is pretty highly specialized. I maintained an acre of hay by hand a few years ago as a pilot project, scything the grass, raking up windrows, and forming it into “shooks” that shed most of the rain. You lose about 20% of your animal feed that way, but we use it for mulching. We could do it all by hand if we had to.
People who insist on such things are such boors, almost as much as those who plan to survive entirely off of dead people’s stuff after the crash. We can visit the local dump and pound scrap metal into scythe blades — why should we go back to “The Stone Age?” Are you crazy?
No one has a perfect crystal ball, but our strategy is to avoid technology that requires today’s level of energy, and selectively use older technology that has a hope of functioning in a reduced-energy world, while experimenting with even simpler ways that may be required.
It is just as unrealistic to insist on “Stone Age” living as it is to assume smart phones will be around forever. I prefer a middle ground. But this drives the “we’re all gonna die” crowd nuts. They don’t seem to have enough imagination to envision a middle road. Fine. Let them die in their bunkers, surrounded by emergency food wrappers. I’d rather go down while at least doing something.
I’m taking some time and effort to answer you openly and honestly, when I should be out prepping the site for a new/re-used glass and aluminum greenhouse that should last 60-100 years if properly cared for. I don’t like plastic greenhouses that need to be “re-skinned” every 5-10 years. Middle ground approach. When all the glass is broken and the aluminum comes apart, some future generation will have to figure out how to descend from there.
If you can’t see any purpose in our approach, and are going to continue to be derisive and dismissive, then you’ll be joining several others in my “instant delete” list.
But if you’re serious about dialogue about pros and cons of various coping strategies, we can continue.
Koombaya Kult.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions. The minute I saw you mention building a greenhouse in Canada as part of a short term solution to the collapse of industrial civilization, I realized what you are. Consider yourself dismissed, once again.
At least the person who was enthusiastic about power satellites could see the severity of the situation.
Koombaya Kult in Kanada
“Short term solution?” No, I consider it a long-term coping strategy.
And you seem to have missed the part where we salvaged a glass and aluminum greenhouse, which has a lifetime of at least 60 more years, which means we won’t be dependent on the plastics industry for maintenance of a “normal” greenhouse every few years.
How many different crops are you growing? Are you doing it without a greenhouse? Where?
You have my sincere congratulations if you are getting by without one in the northern US or Canada. But with a glass and aluminum greenhouse, we can have greens all winter long, without any additional energy.
Joke of the Day:
A man visits his psychiatrist and says doc — I am really anxious — we’ve peaked on cheap oil and I feel like the human race is teetering on the edge of a cliff… I feel like the grim reaper is hovering over me night and day — I have visions of starvation — I can’t sleep — help me doc!
And the doc says — have you thought about starting a hobby farm? Give that a try — if it doesn’t work come back and I will give you a prescription for extra strength Xanax.
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/009/255/1328554698663.jpg
Something wicked this way comes.
Bernie admitted he was a rank ammo (amateur – golf term)
Wages will fall, and tenements and unsanitary conditions, well out of sight from the rich people’s mansions, like 1910 will be the norm. That is what happens during times of lower energy.
Again, it is impossible to calculate how much Chuck Fitzclarence f’ked up the world. Without him, the Old Order would still have existed, there would be at least 5 billion less people now using not much energy since most people would be poor (colonials don’t get to spent much energy, sorry), and we would have at least 300 more years of BAU.
This is the thing: it was not a mistake – it was deliberate,
i.e. taking on stupendous debt to breed as many humans as possible
This is the way the economy continues, however.
Quite so. But the money masters are not so blinded by short term gain as to extinguish themselves.
They knew this would happen, but accelerated it. Blind greed?
It doesn’t add up. They may be amoral but not stupid.
So why?
Physics. The laws of physics demand that money masters act in this way. We need to complain to the Maker of the system.
The word that smashes into my consciousness is INGRATE!!
The gifts are fantastic and yet, no matter what blind alleys the stoopid human goes down
it is because of flawed design.
Maybe the the gods didn’t anticipate that humans would be so utterly derelict.
It is an addiction like any other. Even if the people that have the authority to set interest rates and create money know the system is going to fail, they are as addicted to modern life just as anyone else. They can’t stop the crack habit and neither will we until it all disappears. ANYTHING will be done to keep BAU rolling along. If a policy fails, a new one will be tried and tried again until BAU comes back to life.
Because steady state economy would mean they would be scratching in the dirt with sticks…
Without him, most nations in Third World would not exist today (i.e. British India, Belgian Congo, French Indochina still here and now) and the losers from Europe would have supplanted the natives. Along with all the tech progresses by those who were killed, maimed and demoralized in our time would have made, there would be much, much less people from the colonies =Third World, who in our time consumed most of the energy which led us to where we are now. Of course, no oil sheiks (propped up by Lawrence of Arabia), as well.
Good interview:
Art is a good speaker. He has figured out a big piece of our problem. The title of his talk is Oil Business in a Deflationary Spiral. I didn’t have time to listen to his whole talk right now, but this essentially our problem. The economy is imploding from low demand and low prices.
Of course, raising interest rates and selling bonds purchased under QE are great ways to make our problems worse. There are other good ways of adding to our problems as well: (a) Insisting that countries get operate on a balanced budget or closer to one and (2) Regulating banking and shadow banking, to keep debt to within certain prescribed ratios to equity amounts. For example, Basel regulations. I understand another accord on regulating international debt was signed at the G-20 conference. Trump seems to have signed it, without understanding what he was signing. These approaches sound benign, but are what push the economy toward a downward spiral. https://www.wsj.com/articles/has-trump-flipped-on-financial-regulation-1499987710 Search under “Has Trump Flipped on Financial Regulation? Let’s hope that G-20 communiqué he signed was a mistake.”
Meanwhile:
“In the background of all this are even more disturbing quandaries and prospects: population overshoot, mass migration from regions that can’t support these numbers of people, extinctions of animal species, the death of the oceans, climate instability. The practical problems of economy approach an event horizon of energy scarcity, runaway debt from trying to mitigate it, and eventual collapse of our day-to-day hyper-complex economic arrangements. These things are so scary that the thinking classes — except for a minority of nerdy scientists — can’t even bear to think about them.”
Yep Duncan, that is a good summary of the situation.
Nerdy or not, scientist or not, it is far from easy to find a member of the thinking classes who is prepared to think and talk seriously about the implications of Gail’s contention that the entire world has an appointment with economic collapse and it may only be a matter of month’s away.
When I try to raise the subject among academics and nerds of my acquaintance and receive smiles, frowns and blank looks in return, I feel like Lot searching through Sodom and Gomorrah for ten good men. Mostly they assure me of their faith that if things were really that serious, the people in charge would be doing something to prevent it from happening.
One might think that it would occur to them that printing tens of trillions of dollars and driving interest rates to 0 … could be considered doing something … about some really dire problem…
But nope — they cannot connect the dots — think that all these measures are related to corruption and ineptitude… the rich trying to get richer — and if you point out that the end result of these policies leads to total collapse — which means the wealth vapourizes — they give you the blank stare — much like a donkey would if you asked it for directions.
The problem is that most humans are stewpid.
Frackers are business to get money, not make money. Lol.
That is an interesting way of putting the situation!
That was a great line ….
Yep! I agree with Art’s prognosis. The same death spiral awaits everything else too.
Foot traffic at chain restaurants fell 3% in June year-over-year. Same-store sales fell 1%, the sixteenth month in a row of year-over-year declines, completing the sixth quarter in a row of sales declines, the longest downturn since 2009.
Food sales were down, alcohol sales were down. The only thing that was up was prices, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the decline in guest count: the average amount per check rose just 2% in June.
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/14/reasons-for-worst-chain-restaurant-slump-since-2009/
Ouch!
Wow … a good comment for once on Wolf site…
carlos leiro
Jul 13, 2017 at 9:29 pm
The problem is the ENERGY, at 46 dollars / barrell the oil is expensive and moves the world.
The cheap power time is over.
The force that gives the productivity is the ENERGY, the world has worked with the oil of 20 dollars (adjusted to inflation). The only way to continue with this equation is to lower wages (except for strategic jobs)
There is no shale gas, no thigt oil, no carbon or anything, plugging renewable energies, that make back to times of cheap energy.
What happens then … we enter a crazed spiral of recession produced by expensive oil that causes the price of oil to fall and makes the energy companies do not invest and barely reach prices without investment or profits .. so and so .. Injected with money that will make things look like a Ponzi scheme
Sorry by my bad english, best regards
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/13/what-will-the-fed-do-jobs-productivity-inflation-qe-tighten/
Yep, right on the money…nothing will ever replace cheap oil…sorry scratch that..total and utter collapse of our IC will replace it!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/us/politics/health-care-fraud.html
‘US Charges 412, Including Doctors, in $1.3 Billion Health Fraud’
Please don’t tell me the closer to collapse the more corrupt it becomes, because, if so, then we’re all in a heap of trouble. The gloves got taken off at some point and a relatively civil business atmosphere turned into a no holds barred, take em for what you can mentality. It’s like we’re all falling and people that can are taking what they can grab on the way down to try and get enough momentum i.e. big enough bucks to fly up and away to safety.
Human nature hasn’t changed, but the Medicare/Medicaid supervisors seem have been far too lax for far to long. With all the QE money floating around over the past decade, these fraudsters probably thought their scam was too small to notice.
The system is fraud prone, partly because it is such a big bureaucracy. It allows such and such amount for various things–transport devices if a person can’t walk, for example. If a person is prone to falls, the system seems to allow for the purchase and ongoing monitoring of a device (perhaps worn on a chain around the neck) to call for medical help. I don’t know what all the Medicare system allows. I would guess that if a person complains of pain, a prescription for pain medications pass the screen pretty quickly. If a person complains about anxiety, a prescription for anxiety medications would go through very easily.
Once doctors figure these things out, they can use these known protocols to their advantage, to bilk the system. They can convince people that additional medications would be helpful. And companies can set up calling systems that automatically call people (who might possibly be eligible for Medicare) in their homes, letting them know, “You may be eligible for ___________ provided by Medicare.” If there is a way to make money off the system, people will find it.
“The system is fraud prone, partly because it is such a big bureaucracy” – I agree 100%. Folks think the system is so big that if me and my buddies make a few hundred no one will notice. And, it won’t hurt anything. But, then everyone does it and the hundreds become billions. And the billions become trillions. The dumber than yeast thing again.
https://gfycat.com/BountifulTintedGoa
OMG
Is this the same young lady you posted a video of last week, Cliff?
This goes to show once again that yoga is not for everybody.
Enough of overweight black ladies! Please!
I agree. Lets keep it professional.
Oil rises as robust Chinese demand seen helping drain glut. China just passed the US as the largest oil importer, up 13-odd% year over year. Decline of legacy domestic fields cited as a driver.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-idUSKBN19Y04I?il=0
China is a country with a lot of unconventional oil that is non-economic at current prices. They have cut back on this production, rather than continue to produce oil that makes no economic sense. I suppose it is the fact that the oil wells themselves that are expensive that led them to this decision. If what they were primarily concerned about was fairly cheap oil that was normally heavily taxed, like Saudi Arabia, they might have made the opposite decision.
Aaaaaand…. Jan refuses to try growing food without BAU — he’s hooked into the grid — he’s got his washing machine — his tractor — his stove — he buys stuff at the shops….
Buuuuut … when the time comes — and the switch goes off on BAU — he’ll need only a slight adjustment. Yes… just a slight adjustment … nothing major …
Jan is deep in DelusiSTAN — I actually think that he has some sort of mental illness…
There are others on FW who dabble in prepping — but they at least understand that doing so is not likely to make the slightest bit of difference — I think the attitude is better to do something that nothing… i.e. they have epic doubts….
Heck even I have a container filled with stuff ….
Yup.
My grandparents town in Southern Indiana has tons of Amish people. And they all use cell phones now and have internet and email.. And they all have friends who drive them to the local wal mart and retail stores weekly to buy all their supplies. They even have horse tie up’s located outside their local supermarket and hardware stores in their little town. And last time I was there I saw one Amish male teenager withdrawing a bunch of cash from the local bank ATM.
Yup.
Sounds like Jan’s World….
When the going gets tough — the ‘tough’ cower under the skirts of BAU…
Well, there are wide array of “Amish” – the point which has been made here is not about their cell phones or their pantry supposedly filled with industrial junk food, but about the simple fact, that inside their pop is higher ratio of hands on people, among them be it skills like blacksmith, draft animal/power know-how, implements, etc.
So, the talk about Amish are spoiled this and that is just silly obfuscation made on purpose by the “container people”, who suddenly realized it’s not about stuff inside the container parked in NZ (likely made up story anyway?), but more about actual day to day execution and planning within the landscape.
Is Wall Street Funding A Shale Failure?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Wall-Street-Funding-A-Shale-Failure.html
-Looking at the investments, growing demand and declining of existing oil fields, “we need a miracle” to avoid a major supply disruption problems in 2020s. “-Fatih Birol, IEA
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/11/global-energy-investment-fell-12-percent-in-2016-to-1-point-7-trillion-iea-says.html
So we have investors cutting back in the oil and gas industry. We also have the oil and gas industry itself cutting back future investments. Combined with near record low new discoveries, and depleting developed oil fields. = we are screwed!
The Oil Age may come to an end for a shortage of oil.
-Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Yamani
They better hurry up with that Saudi Aramco IPO!
Yep because those digibits they will get from it will be worthless in no time..
The credulous and greedy will be all to eager to pick up this shit-pile, 5 minutes before it’s revealed that Ghawar has watered out.
Greed knows no boundaries. And, karma is going to have a bullish future.
“super rich” is a very spongy concept, $3M per floor in tiny stupid silo sounds like a scam to lure in bottom feeders of the upper middle class; as the true owner’s of the system and their lieutenants have either already a place and security detail to whisk them on short notice in to real deal top class gov bunker, or they fancy their own serious facility placed hundreds of meters deep inside a granite massive somewhere..
Those silos are just slightly more useful than a Permie Koombaya set up… instead of dying within weeks — you can hunker down there until the food runs out and you have to emerge to a radiation soaked planet
And you have to get along with your fellow neighbors….prisoners, all of whom are as worthless as you are.
These silos operate under the assumption of a reset — you hunker down waiting for the dust to settle — then you start over again (I bet they have secure places for you to keep your gold…)
There will be no reset — they will emerge at some point and die from starvation/radiation poisoning.
I wonder if these things even filter out radiation? Somehow I doubt it….
Which would make them coffins. 3 million dollars to be buried alive!
Nope these above described silos operate solely on principle of scam.
While real deal bunker can last centuries or longer, after the passive subsystems of water drainage no longer function. Obviously other (active) subsystems won’t last that long like small nuclear power plant, food production, air filtration, suits and gear for surface inspections etc..
There’s a lot of innovation since the “primitive” bunkers of early 1950s..
It would a community composed of the very people who have……no sense of community!
I’d rather hang out under the motorway with the rat barbecue people. They might be more decent. 🙂
Exacty Xabier! It would be a concentration camp of self-centered, psychopaths.
Riiiight.
look like this guy read ofw
Federal minister attracts ridicule after he says state should ‘concentrate on saving jobs today’ instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/13/stop-trying-to-save-the-planet-matthew-canavan-tells-queensland-government
The smartest man in Australian politics today. And that’s saying a lot!
https://i.imgflip.com/bc60u.jpg?a416184
Humans want equality, researchers found—as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0142#supplementary-information
Yup.
LOL!
There has to be a gradient between rich an poor to keep the system running. If everyone has too much or too little it stops. Of course if you reach extremes where the gradient is too great it becomes unstable. It is just like the weather, if there is no pressure gradient, the winds don’t blow. If the pressure gradient is too high, things get ripped apart.
Jan Steinman, thanks for your considered response of July 13, 2017 at 1:11 am.
1. You say: “Collapse is not an event; it’s a process. Develop coping strategies, rather than stock a year’s worth of freeze-dried food, and think you’re protected”. I tend to think the collapse process will take a week or maybe a month or so rather than a year or more; and there will be no recovery to a simpler form of society but rather there will be human extinction.
2. You say: “The greatest harm that the “fast crashers” do is enable apathy and sloth. “The world’s gonna end, so why should I do anything?” That attitude is a guarantee that your world will end!”. I used to have a slow-crash and recovery to BAU-lite perspective. This led me to follow what you suggest doing. But I always had doubts. It was really understanding what Guy Mcpherson and now Gail has to say that has led me to a fast crash perspective. For me it has been liberating. Rather than “apathy and sloth” it has led me to living life more lovingly, fully, energetically, and happily. I am more generous and each day, each hour, each second is now a new wonder. I no longer have to fix anything. I have been able to relax and enjoy this amazing time we have right here and now. And I am able to better listen to, to really be with people and nature, rather than be rushing around developing what you call coping skills. I don’t scare people off by the inevitable wild look in the eyes and the tinge of desperation in ones voice, bearing, and actions.
3. On a personal or family-and-friends level however, I find your point about “coping strategies” rather than “solutions” helpful. In this sense I agree with your words: “I choose to work on coping strategies. Then, even if I die, I’ll rest easier knowing at least I tried.” I have found a useful coping strategy is to live a healthy, positive life employing one’s strengths for the good of oneself, family, friends, loved ones, local community, etc., whilst facing up to difficulties in good time, honestly and competently. Other coping strategies are cognitive behaviour therapy for overly intrusive or recurring negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, terror, dwelling on painful possibilities, etc. It seems some people need to wisely use anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication where necessary.
4. Approaching coping strategies from a slightly different angle, I’ve been helped by Guy Mcpherson, who I think has got it right on the climate side concluding that social and economic collapse is imminent, leading to nuclear reactors melting down, and global climate chaos leading to human extinction in the next decade inevitable anyhow. His advice is to live decently, find what we love and live this out with excellence, be with the ones we love, and completely live-here-now-fully within the ecology and the ones we are with.
5. I agree that our global civilisation, like every other, becomes more unstable as it grows more complex. I was referring to Gail’s stick-dome-with-gaps diagram which gives the idea that the parts of our system stabilise or support each other – but in a rather fragile way. It is “self-stabilising” only up to a certain point. So I agree the word is misleading.
6. Like you, I’m surprised the system has gone on so long. Nevertheless Gail, and Guy, predict that we have only months, or a few years maybe, to go before collapse of even the richest core nations.
7. I agree the middle class, as well as the poor, are now increasingly unable to afford, or more exactly keep up repayments on major purchases of goods such as homes and cars for very long. They also seem not to be able to afford good quality food and eat junk food as you say.
8. Living in a sage and priviledged part of the world, I hope collapse will be a “sawtooth down-slope”. But somehow I think it will be faster than is happening in Venezuela at the moment. But I think it is probably when the supermarkets are stripped of goods, troops on the streets, just-in-time processes kick in and it won’t be long before electricity and water is rationed then cut off entirely, etc. We might have a week or so.
9. You state” “In a hyper-deflation crash (which Gail seems to favour), you’d better hope you didn’t get that cash via debt.” That’s a good point and luckily my cash is not via debt. But perhaps you haven’t considered that if the hyper-deflationary crash is massive, fast, and world-wide, as I think it will be, there’s not going to be any need to repay debt.
10. Finally, that you for stating “euthanasia is the coward’s way out. If you want to off yourself to avoid being a burden on others, that’s totally different than wanting to “relieve pain and suffering.” As Pema Chödrön put it, “pain is, suffering is optional. Suck it up, buttercup. Muddle through, and try to be of service to someone else.” Good advice and that’s indeed what I’m doing.
11. My final advice is: Do not commit euthanasia except as a last resort and only at the very end. Otherwise it would cause terrible grief and suffering to friends, family, and loved ones. That’s the very last thing I would want personally. As you quite rightly say Jan, only “off yourself to avoid being a burden on others”. And do it in a way that you are sure will not cause such a burden or such a grief!
Guy Mcpherson is a total quack. I watched one of his lectures and he claimed according to “business insider” that by 2016 all of New York City would be underwater. LOL it was hilarious the whole audience gasped in fear.
Magnifique! Bravo!
Hopefully this will serve to demonstrate to others than Jan is wasting his time and that his model is one based on futility…
It would be different if Jan were to state that he is doing what he is doing primarily because he enjoys it — nothing wrong with escaping the rat race and living on a farm for the remaining days… of course plugged into BAU while doing it….
But if that is not your thing — and you are considering following Jan because you think you will survive — think again…
As for offing oneself — I only recommend this post BAU — and you need to bring the whole clan along on this — because the mad dogs will be roaming — and raping — and enslaving — and murdering….
The offing would be a way to pre-empt the nightmare that will at some point arrive on your doorstep.
PS – if anyone in the audience is 18 female and extremely attractive — I don’t mind hiring you as a Woofer… http://wwoof.net/ Does Jan have a disco ball and barrel full of whiskey and wine?
There are certainly a lot of people who would like to take the approach of trying to save themselves and a few other people, as Jan is doing. I really don’t think we should discourage them. There may be some who actually come up with a successful “formula.” Even if they don’t find a way around our current predicament, they have found something worthwhile to do, in the period where we can see fairly clearly what is likely to happen, even if we cannot stop it.
Thank you.
I don’t really get discouraged from puerile derisive comments on this blog, and I make no claims about getting “around our current predicament.” You don’t get around predicaments; you cope with them.
I do think just about any “coping strategies” are more effective than “let’s live it up until we die.” My research and background causes me to make certain choices that may be beyond the resources of others, but I’m not going to put them down for trying to develop (for example) coping strategies to use within a high-rise apartment building. Different strokes for different folks.
‘Coping Strategies’
Exactly — not survival strategies — coping … with the reality that most people don’t want to face —which is that when BAU goes — a holocaust begins…
For many that creates anxiety and depression — so they need to numb the brain…
Some use Xanax — others adopt beliefs that help them cope with these thoughts.
This explains why nobody will try the Challenge – to do so would be to bring the summons the dystopian thoughts leading the despair and panic.
Well, some of the derisive comments against Jan, might be perhaps theoretically of some substance in sort of state of zero awareness. However, today it is beyond silly and and bit vulgar when we know precisely what actually works (still remains a lot to discover), how to successfully provide conditions for re-establishing ecosystems. Simply there are ample existing examples how landscapes have been restored or jump started to much better conditions.
What Jan is suggesting is no different that what Elon Musk is suggesting with his Mars colony.
Both have ZERO chance of success.
However they both serve the same purpose — they make people feel as if they are not about to suffer and die.
There are plenty of flavours of hopium — religious – renewable — are two other very popular ones.
Those of us who are not addicted to hopium understand that there is no way out of this. And we are accepting of that outcome.
I don’t want to discourage Jan …
Rather I want to inform others who are considering wasting the last months/years of their lives — and considerable amounts of money — on something that will not bring them salvation when BAU goes down
As I have stated in the past — if only there has been someone on this site explaining the futility of prepping — I would have saved a lot of money and time…
The approach is about “salvation through process” as being within the landscape, the joy of diverse ecosystem, working outside, are the starving hordes eventually going to raze it to ground, quite possibly, but they would never experience the happiness..
it’s not for everybody, not criticizing it, there are “good blokes” who would rather have nice time over glass of wine as the cities just start to burn, but at least they don’t frequent forums such as this and placate them with secret truths of supposedly “saving money and time”..
So why does anyone here take medicine, or go to the doctor? Just pass on then….living is about enjoying life. Some people enjoy life in different ways. I am sure Jan eats well, organically, and enjoys it. Some enjoy flying around the world, and others drinking and eating organic, healthy food. If you take a single pill, or partake of any medical treatments, don’t criticize someone for raising organic food and eating healthy.
There are a lot of different views and lifestyles. I agree. I think we should respect them. We have to be doing something. People make their own choices based on their background and evaluation of future paths.
There is no way out of anything alive FE.
There is that….
Oil woes are still spilling into bankruptcy courts
The number of Texas companies seeking to restructure their debt and reorganize under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code hit a record high during the first six months of 2017. So did the number of bankruptcy filings in Houston.
Bankruptcy data show that 649 businesses sought protection in Texas federal courts from creditors and lenders during the first half of 2017 – a 44 percent increase over the same period a year ago and 12 percent more than in 2009 when bankruptcies peaked during the Great Recession, according to new research conducted by Androvett Legal Media.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Oil-woes-are-still-spilling-into-bankruptcy-courts-11284990.php
Everything is bigger in Texas!
Oil will be here, in plenty, for the next thousand years. I’ll bet Gail $10,000 that the yearly total production of oil over the next 10 years, will be more than the last 10 years.
Gail doesn’t bet. Nor does FE. In their minds, collapse could occur any day so betting is impractical. Also, it allows them to continue the instadoom argument without any real consequence. Although, they look a little stupid when they say things like “in a couple months” or “fall of 2016” or my personal favorite “no turkey for Xmas”. However, most folks have short memories and then we get some new people on ofw that provide fodder for FE. The cycle continues.
Yep, oil will be here in for the next thousand years with the cost to extract too expensive to make economic sense. Which was Gail’s point all along if you cared to read what she wrote.
Wrong
we have push it to the limit for bau because without it 7.5 billion+80 million every year
will be not on this planet
https://youtu.be/9D-QD_HIfjA
Tesla needs to spend more money to get positive spin on CNBs…
Shop in the car 3x in the first 4.5 months!!!
http://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/05/22/bernstein-teslas-buying-experience-is-not-good.html
When you are saving the world …. that’s a small price to pay as a vehicle owner … I guess….
If I bought a car and it had to be serviced 3x in the first year — I’d call it a lemon…. and I would be pissed to high hell.
These virtue signalling greenie do-gooders would be better off buying a nice reliable Toyota. Ours went 5 years, and only needed a new water pump, outside of its standard service.
Oh … they already do that … the Green Car is what they use to drive a couple of km to pick up a loaf of bread… or when they want to look awesome when they arrive at the organic coffee shop…
But for anything longer they take the reliable petrol powered Toyota…
Part of the problem is that the electric cars don’t get driven enough miles to make up for their high initial energy cost–which is what F. E. is saying.
Not at all that I am about to defend electric cars as a way we can all keep living as we had, but I see no reason why, other than economy of scale, the manufacture of electric cars need be any more expensive than the manufacture of internal combustion cars.
In many ways, they are much simpler. The motor and drive train should be cheaper to manufacture than ICEs, but of course, the batteries are more expensive than a fuel tank.
If carefully managed, electric cars could be a “bridge” to a lower energy future. But I have little confidence that will happen.
Their batteries are energy intensive to make, especially for the plug-in hybrids because they use more batteries than say, a Prius.
i read recently that Musk has stated that to make 0.5m ev would require the entire global output of lithium
Just thinking out loud…. could Elon and Jan team up and Jan grow lithium trees to supply Tesla?
It does not matter that it is impossible — you just have to get Bloomberg to pen a few home page articles on the Dream Team – Premie God and Techno God Join Forces to offer Salvation
Everyone wants salvation — so they will believe the unbelievable.
The more afraid people are the more ridiculous the story can be – and they will buy into it.
Electric vehicles in Hong Kong could be adding “20 per cent more” carbon to the atmosphere than regular petrol ones over the same distance after factoring in the city’s coal-dominated energy mix and battery manufacture, a new research report found.
Investment research firm Bernstein also claimed that by subsidising electric vehicle purchases, the government was effectively “harming rather than helping the environment” at the expense of the taxpayer.
“The policy is to encourage drivers to be green, but they are actually subsidising vehicles that create more emissions of CO2 and particulates from power plants,” said Bernstein senior analyst Neil Beveridge.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1935817/electric-shock-tesla-cars-hong-kong-more-polluting
This does not even touch on the immense amounts of carbon released in manufacturing these vehicles — not that this matters since carbon is not a big deal…
At the end of the day what exactly is the point of making EVs? I see no point whatsoever …
But again perhaps this is just another coping strategy — we are told they are good — that they will save us…. so we want to believe….
Thanks Gail for your clear and consistent message that I have been following for years now. Your objective and calming style help me to better understand the dire near-term implications and even reassures me in the face of imminent worldwide catastrophe and widespread dying off.
I would appreciate if you could point out if and where I have your message wrong in the following paraphrasing and summary of your work. Would you add any paragraphs to give a more complete narrative?
Economic collapse is imminent because the vast majority people, even in rich nations, cannot afford to make major purchases.
1. Our world civilisation is a self-organising, evolving, and self-stabilising system of commercial, legal, governmental, educational, agricultural, national, international, environmental, etc., elements supporting each other while the system is expanding. But even a small contraction of the whole, or the failure of even one part, can quickly lead to catastrophic collapse.
2. Following standard yet naïve simplistic economic modelling, many businesses with years of negative cash flow expect high prices in the near future. But with automation, elite greed, and globalised worker competition, money printing does not trickle down, workers wages decline leading to less demand and thus lower commodity prices, especially oil at present, which fail to rise or stay high for very long.
3. To raise tax levels governments need higher interest rates but this means loan repayments ruin the poor; and if interest rates are too low, pension plans along with government promises and obligations will soon fail.
4. Low energy consumption growth, especially declining coal consumption at present, leads to low or declining wage growth worldwide, especially for the non-elite workers, and thus not enough tax revenue for governments and intergovernmental organisations; and thus not enough overall growth to prevent large national, business, and personal debt defaults which cripple banks even as they are bailed out by these same desperate but insolvent governments.
5. Oil exporters, such as Venezuela now and the Soviet Union just prior to its collapse in 1991, fail due to low oil prices; while oil importers fail with prices too high for their economies, such as Greece and Spain even with present seemingly low oil prices.
6. In the last few decades, countries with rapidly growing cheap coal consumption have done well economically but China’s recent declining coal consumption and flat energy consumption overall has brought down world energy consumption growth. Historically, declining world growth energy consumption growth leads to declining world economic growth.
7. Even if all nations, not only the major ones as at present, synchronised additional debt and printing money, there is now no price for oil, and other major commodities, which allows both producers and consumers to keep going. It is the present inability to arrange for commodities to be affordable by most people that will soon crash the system.
8. A major reason for collapse is that poverty and low wages means poor people cannot pay enough tax to keep governments solvent, or afford cars, homes, oil and other commodities (driving prices too low to keep producers afloat), eat poorly (increasing susceptibility to epidemics), and eventually revolt as now in Venezuela.
9. The colossal global coordinated efforts to keep the system together and growing since the 2008 financial crisis, such as synchronised money printing by major nations, are likely to prove unsuccessful as early as September 2017. This will lead to complete fast collapse beginning now with countries such as Venezuela and overall akin to the USSR collapse but now worldwide with no recovery likely.
10. There are many things that go wrong: The present $45 per barrel oil is way too low for oil producers and will lead to collapse of exporting countries; $100+ per barrel oil is needed by producers but is way too high for oil importers like Greece and Spain; China’s slowing energy consumption will make it difficult to repay debt with interest; Spain, Italy, Greece, and other nations have the same problem which can lead to huge debt defaults; Failing banks; Radical political parties arise and gain power; If oil prices stay low, oil exporters collapse; If oil prices rise, oil importing countries collapse; Higher-level organisations, such as the European Union, subject to collapse; Debt defaults increase. (Energy growth is what permits economic growth. All of these problems come from inadequate growth in energy consumption.)
11. Likely symptoms of collapse: Governments that cannot agree because political parties cannot agree; Eventually, cannot collect enough taxes; Top political layers lose power; Top layers may disappear, similar to Soviet Union collapse; Debt that cannot be repaid with interest; Failing banks; Failing pension plans; Eventually, governments give up on bailing out banks, pension plans, or fail themselves; Falling international trade.
12. Government leaders and others are largely unaware because officials, advisers, economists, and academics, obfuscate and confuse people with simplistic theories and unsupported, unrealistic models – for all the usual suspect reasons (esp. their salary depends on it). It is the inability of the majority of people to afford to buy things that is the key issue but neither economists nor peak oil people understand the issues!
13. NB: It is best not to discuss details of fast collapse or even mention it. We will all soon die, likely in the next year or so. It’s best to enjoy life to the full right here and now with love, gratitude, and positive feelings as much as possible, especially with family, loved ones, and friends. The best preparation is to keep your pantry very well stocked, have a good deal of cash handy (completely hush-hush), and prepare carefully for euthanasia by writing down practical steps for many situations ((from Greek: εὐθανασία; “good death” (εὖ, eu; “well” or “good” – θάνατος, thanatos; “death”) is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering).
++++ Good read, thanks. You write very well.
I’m not Gail, and don’t pretend to speak for her, but I think you’re reading too much “between the lines,” possibly unduly influenced by some of the regular commenters on this site.
My impression is that Gail studiously refrains from talking about coping strategies, leading many to think she endorses inaction.
She does refer to our situation as a “dilemma” rather than a “problem,” as problems have “solutions,” but dilemmas only have “coping strategies.”
It’s not my nature to roll over and die. I choose to work on coping strategies. Then, even if I die, I’ll rest easier knowing at least I tried. So, point-by-point:
1: I don’t at all think our civilization — possibly any civilization — is “self-stablising.” Rather, I think civilization becomes more and more unstable over time, as it becomes more and more complex. It tries to become more and more efficient, which means less redundant, which makes it brittle, rather than resilient. I’m impressed with the work of Joseph Tainter in this regard, and I’ve seen Gail mention his work, as well.
2: “Economic modelling” is such a mess of unfounded assumptions and purposeful omissions that it would be laughable, if not that it wields so much power. There are a tiny number of economists who admit that the “emperor wears no clothes.” But basically, I agree with your point.
3: And yet, they keep kicking that can down the road, don’t they? It’s amazing. I never thought I’d see any Social Security, but I’m due to start getting it next year. Dare I say young people just starting to pay into it now will never see a cent of it? That’s what I said when I was young and paying into it, and it appears I was wrong. But yea, pension plans are going down right and left. As a baby-boomer, I have no confidence SS will be around until I die, even if I do start collecting it next year.
4: You pretty much nailed this one, but you’re describing a symptom, rather than a cause. The problem is the requirement for growth, period.
5-7: Pretty much nailed these! But again, these are but symptoms. If our civilization were not predicated on growth, things would be much different.
8: I don’t think it is just “poor people” who are having this problem, or it could just be ignored. Low wages and inability to afford “The American Dream” is beginning to effect the middle-class, as well. Industry and government respond by “Wall*Marting” food, with empty calories leading to obesity and increasing health-care costs. (Have you seen the size of the people in there?)
9: This is where I differ with many “doomsters” on this blog. I think Gail acknowledges that collapse may be varied in time and geography, whereas many of her commenters “know” it will be fast, universal, and utterly complete. I’m not sure what you mean by “recovery,” but there is a lot of room between “Mad Max” and bouncing back to the good ol’ days. I think we’ll see a sawtooth down-slope, with each crash worse than the one before it, and each recovery not getting back to where the previous recovery was. The first such “collapse” already happened, in 2008, and we recovered. Sort of. Short of.
10-12: I pretty much agree with these statements.
13: This is where you totally lose me, and I don’t at all think this is Gail’s position. For one, she is pretty tolerant of “fast collpsenik” commenters. Yet Gail admits that collapse may be unevenly distributed, both temporally and geographically. Some subsistence farmers in poor countries may well fare better than rich westerners who lose their pension fund or the investments that allow them to fly to ski vacations.
I can very much agree with “It’s best to enjoy life to the full right here and now with love, gratitude, and positive feelings as much as possible, especially with family, loved ones, and friends,” but that is not necessarily mutually exclusive to leading a life that may enable an extension of theirs. If you love your “family, loved ones, and friends,” work on providing them a “lifeboat community” to come to in an emergency.
The fast-crashers will die in their formerly “well stocked pantries,” surrounded by food wrappers. Collapse is not an event; it’s a process. Develop coping strategies, rather than stock a year’s worth of freeze-dried food, and think you’re protected. If you don’t think cities will do well, get out of the damn city! Or at least start working toward that end.
The greatest harm that the “fast crashers” do is enable apathy and sloth. “The world’s gonna end, so why should I do anything?” That attitude is a guarantee that your world will end!
I don’t know what good “having a good deal of cash handy” will do. In a hyper-inflation crash, you’ll be hauling wheelbarrows of Weimar Republic notes to buy a loaf of bread. In a hyper-deflation crash (which Gail seems to favour), you’d better hope you didn’t get that cash via debt.
There are things that, in either scenario, may be worth much more than cash. The ability to grow food may become very valuable. Personally, I think I’d stock up on spirits; most deaths during the crash of the former Soviet Union appear to be alcohol-related, according to Orlov.
And I don’t want to end by insulting your chosen nom de plume, but please forgive me for asserting that euthanasia is the coward’s way out. If you want to off yourself to avoid being a burden on others, that’s totally different than wanting to “relieve pain and suffering.” As Pema Chödrön put it, “pain is, suffering is optional.” Suck it up, buttercup. Muddle through, and try to be of service to someone else.
Finally, don’t go through this alone. There are others, probably within your area, that you can develop coping strategies with. If all else fails, at least you won’t be alone when it does fail.
Again, I don’t pretend to speak for Gail, but I wanted to honour the thought and effort that went into your posting with a thoughtful and honourable reply. I hope it is useful! (Cause I’m avoiding working on financial statements to re-fi our mortgage. But why bother, we’ll never have to repay it, right?)
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
I’d gladly subscribe to most of your rebuttal and expose, it’s finely argued.
However, the crucial part is the human factor, or specifically the twisted nature of humanoids, especially the infamous civilized variety..
Don’t ask me how I know, but the following applies, you can gather hands on knowledge for generations and in your own’s practical efforts too, you can tender and re/establish rich food producing ecosystem in say 2-4 decades on most of the Earth’s places with the condition of at least some token precipitation or moisture levels.
But, it takes only one (or few) cret#n few minutes-hours to bulldozer the “paradise” place if he chooses to do so and or you are not strong/defiant to repel him, caveat being usually the capacity repealing once, guarantees that they will come storming back again..
So, here comes the dilemma, are most people (or you individually speaking) willing to commit long term for delayed and such fragile/reversible goal by possible malice induced by others? Well, some claim it’s worth it after-all, usually those with connection to the natural world, me included, and some not at all. That’s the poisoned fountain out of which FEs of the world (before and after) are drinking..
Understood.
But there are many more ways to defend your paradise than the rather simplistic and unimaginative use of excessive weaponry.
I encourage people to establish their “lifeboat community” on an island. Yea, I know, there are not enough physical islands to go around — and yet, if you look closely enough, there are! They are hiding in plain sight.
IF enough lawlessness ensues that such an event can occur, how are the bulldozers going to get to you? On a low-boy truck, hauled by a diesel semi on the public highway system. Unlikely.
So, an “island” can be anyplace that is somewhat isolated, and that will be increasingly isolated in the event of insurrection. I’m thinking Port Townsend, Washington, with only two roads on a narrow peninsula. (Highway 20 is currently out, meaning it costs 40 more minutes of precious fuel to get there from the west.) I’m thinking Dayton, Washington, again with only two roads connecting it to civilization. I’m thinking alpine valleys. I’m thinking almost any place without an Interstate Highway within an hour’s drive. Use your imagination!
Second — and this is very important — become indispensable to your local community. This is generally easier to do on an “island” (physical, or virtual). You will need each other if a bulldozer appears. This is not the time for “rugged individualism.”
(As usual, I don’t respond to puerile name-callers.)
Thanks. Very good vector of reasoning in these matters.
Weapons are for fools.
When the bad guys show up wanting to rape, eat and enslave… you just have to reason with them… use psychology on them … tell them how what they are doing is not nice… not fair… ask them what their mother would think if she knew….
When that fails try gathering all the Kommunity together — join hands and sing Koombaya … follow up with ‘Imagine’
When that fails — remember I told you so….. and get ready for the suffering.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f4/25/6f/f4256ffd9bc0c2d9dda682d9518cbb21.jpg
Very true: that is why the Basques constituted a genetically (and linguistically)-distinct population for 1,500 years after the fall of Rome, by inhabiting valleys in very punishing mountains.
I have to add, though, that they were very, very violent people and as well-armed as they could manage.
I also rather like the comment of a Chinese peasant to Teilhard de Chardin in the 1930’s: ‘We’ve had foreigners here before: a Mongol horseman rode through once.’ ie 800 years previously.
You’ve got 10,000+ neighbours on your island Jan.
Can you feed them?
Well guess what — nice people will not be so nice when they are desperate and hungry.
I hope nobody knows that you are growing food….
You mean the poisoned spent fuel pond?
It depends.., if you are roughly correct on the timing and (non) sequencing of this historical threshold, it’s indeed a poisoned spent fuel.
However, if I’m correct, along side the parties, who are already today (since early ~2010s) reprocessing (recycling) spent fuel into valuable resource on industrial scale, firstly the legacy stock of spent fuel is largely diminished (global nuclear waste sold for reprocessing) and secondly, the amount of time recently spent fuel stays in such “high poisonous state” is very limited as after initial cooling phase it goes straight reprocessed into solid state MOX fuel pellets. Therefore, the threat from the entire industry (incl. legacy waste) is largely diminished on both accounts.
Well, only the future will judge who was more or less correct.
Tim – how’s that recycling of spent fuel project coming along? Is this what World is referencing?
I thought we were partners on that — you’ve cut me out and now I see that you have a roaring success on your hands…
hrmmmph!
The problem with “action” as you call it is that one needs to be wealthy to prepare to live in a world outside of industrial civilization.
Absolutely no action is going to prevent a massive crash in human population. All the actions seem to be dependent on activities that have gotten us to where we are; technology and agriculture, activities that are proving to be unsustainable.
You whole position rests on the “no one knows what’s going to happen”..but we DO know a lot based on the research that groups like the Club of Rome did that when industrial civilization collapses, there will be far fewer survivors simply due to the dependence that most people on this planet have on industrial civilization for survival. In many areas, it has become close to impossible for human to be self-sufficient in terms of food, clothing or shelter. This time is very different. The survivors of the Roman Empire’s collapse didn’t have to worry about the components of their machines poisoning their food.
Well, I guess ~50 acres is not that much *money in very rural, bordering wilderness parts of the NA, machines and tools (optional) came in very wide scale of price, extra money might bring some projects faster, e.g. less manual or draft animal digging and hauling for the initial stage.., but it would be advisable to spent a year near Amish or perma-people, not everybody connects well with animals, daily workload outside etc.
*granted the overall situation of today is very bleak for many there, as people don’t have any assets, everything is leased on credit..
The Amish lifestyle or permaculture is a partial solution at best.
“The perception of the Amish as an antiquated people, living close to the land, may cause some to believe that Amish farm without artificial means. However, the majority of Amish do rely on chemicals and fertilizers to boost crop yield and control pests. Amish, like most American farmers, have relied on artificial means for many decades.
A minority of Amish do practice organic farming, and increasing numbers are becoming certified organic. ”
I’d like to see a map of the most fertile soil in the world, where freshwater is readily available are can be made available with very simple irrigation
and where the Amish and permaculture people growth food with no metal tools.
There’s not a huge amount of cheap arable land that has not been claimed. What is left is marginal land, which is sensitivie to small changes in the climate. Going out onto marginal land is not a plan, just as the Native Americans of the U.S. Those who survived the epidemic sof diseases that Europeans brought with them, and wanted to live out their traditional lifestyles, we restrained to land that the Europeans settlers didn’t want. Many of the Native Americans who sought out to continue their traditional lifestyles failed and eventually became dependent on the products of European settlers.
The important “detail” you are prolly missing is that you don’t need prime arable land in the first place. There are documented approaches how to upgrade depleted ~marginal land and soil via pastures, notill, stacking ecosystems slowly.. Basically, it’s more about different mindset than strictly money issue or just mechanically importing truckloads from off site chemical (or organic) fertilizer depot as some colorful personalities of universal instant doom try to repeat in circles here..
But this effort takes decades, that’s a huge family commitment, e.g. nowadays in eurosoyuz it’s almost impossible to home school, your kids might be even taken away by the court for re-education according the gov’s preferred ideology etc.
Is it for everybody, unfortunately not, and that’s not a high horse kind of statement.
Or three years, if you really work hard at it, or twice that amount if you’re more casual.
We’ve turned clay into loam here in 6-7 years, using tonnes of animal manures, mulch, and green manures.
One thing Permaculture prides itself on is rehabilitating poor soils. It takes work, though, which is a good thing. People on good soil tend to wear it out, rather than take care of it. Swidden agriculture has been the downfall of many a civilization.
Less than 1% of all farmland globally is farmed organically.
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/agriculture3.png
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-have-the-most-organic-agricultural-land/ (note – most organic land in Australia is rubbish and supports sheep only)
And as you point out — without a doubt much of the tiny bits of land that are farmed without chemicals —- would not doubt rely on water coming out of a tap that is pumped from a far away source…
So the problem is compounded….
There would be almost no land that will support a crop post BAU …
And 7.5B hungry people…
Extinction Awaits.
I wouldn’t call it a “need,” but it certainly makes it easier.
Q: “How do you make a small fortune in organic farming?”
A: “Start with a large fortune!” (Ba-da boom!)
Having a nest-egg is vitally important if you don’t know what you’re doing. And that is the plight of many underprivileged who have lived their entire life in cities. Things may be easier for the rural poor, as they have skills that will be useful to those who do have the resources to form lifeboat communities.
No argument here! All that’s left is to figure out when and where, and avoid those spots. That should be easy… NOT! 🙂
All the actions seem to be dependent on activities that have gotten us to where we are; technology and agriculture, activities that are proving to be unsustainable.
Good point.
But what ‘cha gonna do? Sit in a blog and whine? That’s soooo depressing. Been there, done that. Get out and do something to prepare to cope.
Remember, there’s no guarantees, no matter how hard you work at it. As Bruce Coburn said, “You could be drilled through the head by a shooting star.” But there are lots of things you can do to improve your odds.
“it.there are lots of things you can do to improve your odds.”
That is an opinion, not a fact. The lifeboat communities, if any are serious and exist will mostly are composed of affluent people who are very homogeneous. They are probably not going to be receptive to people who are “diverse” moving onto their turf and increasing the demand on local resources.
“But there are lots of things you can do to improve your odds.”
A small minority of people options that will delay their death but their death will still be premature by modern standards. Can the motivational speaker b.s.
I already tried to tackle that crucifying crossroad you rightly pointed to.
It’s just about that decision what kind of process you enjoy more. You can toil everyday inside the nature and realistically expect short end of it, incl. witnessing in your own eyes the destruction of what has been accomplished in so many years. Or instead stay chained inside the urban jungle and civilization’s frivolous swirl, counting bitterly each and every second till the final end.
Understandably not everybody would be tuned for that first option, also (sub)urban dwellers for many consecutive generations have very atrophied connections and yearning towards nature, hence the advice try for a year or part of a season apprenticing at some suitable agrarian place, decide afterwards.
Woa, who peed in your corn flakes this morning?
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me!
You have a serious case of attitude. Good luck finding anyone willing to put up with that. We have considerable diversity here, but we don’t tolerate diversity in nasty temperament.
Get the chip off your shoulder, and you’ll have an easier time of it. We’re completely colour-blind, but we do select for the ability to get along well with others.
‘If you seek safety, stay on the shore. But if you seek more than that, take to the wide and dangerous seas.’
Who wants guarantees? There’s more than that to be gained from Life! 🙂
++++++
Plus, it’s not about individual survival in the least. That’s the sort of thinking that got us here.
‘But what ‘cha gonna do? Sit in a blog and whine?’
Who’s whining?
I’m loving every minute of this — I just had a whirlwind tour of Europe — a blast in Hong Kong — will be skiing in Queenstown for a month as of next Sunday…
Now I could be in my paddock doomsday prepping — but because I understand that this would be a complete waste of time and money — I am instead enjoying what little time remains.
How many years have you been at this nonsense now? Wasting time and money on Project Futility.
Surely there must be other things you would prefer to do with your time?
I understand that you are not a young man — so what is the point — you will not live forever…
Are you afraid to die Jan? Prep all you want — it will not change the outcome
I have explained why what you are doing is futile — but you refuse to explain how you will overcome the hungry hordes and the spent fuel ponds.
I suppose you just loop Joan Baez and hope for the best right?
your retinue must be exhausted Eddy
Made my day! Thanks, Norman!
When you’re only a millimetre deep, it’s pretty easy to exhaust your retinue.
If anyone wants to get a taste of what is going to happen — just turn off the power for a week and use no petrol — without a doubt neither of those will be available post BAU…
Now that’s just a taste…. but it’s enough of a taste to get an understanding of what awaits.
Jan won’t do that. Neither will any of the other Preppers.
Cowards.
Thanks for your long thoughtful comment. Here are some comments, on your points:
1. Our world civilisation is a self-organising, evolving, and self-stabilising system of commercial, legal, governmental, educational, agricultural, national, international, environmental, etc., elements supporting each other while the system is expanding. But even a small contraction of the whole, or the failure of even one part, can quickly lead to catastrophic collapse.
Agreed.
2. Following standard yet naïve simplistic economic modelling, many businesses with years of negative cash flow expect high prices in the near future. But with automation, elite greed, and globalised worker competition, money printing does not trickle down, workers wages decline leading to less demand and thus lower commodity prices, especially oil at present, which fail to rise or stay high for very long.
Agreed. Natural gas, coal, and uranium are probably in as bad shape as oil, however. Wholesale electricity prices tend to be very low as well, especially where wind and solar are allowed to artificially drag down wholesale prices.
3. To raise tax levels governments need higher interest rates but this means loan repayments ruin the poor; and if interest rates are too low, pension plans along with government promises and obligations will soon fail.
The only part of this I rally agree with is that higher interest rates are needed to keep pension plans from failing.
There are two other reasons for higher interest rates:
a. If rates can be negotiated so that long term interest rates are higher than short term rates, by a sufficiently large margin, banks can more easily earn a profit. Since advisors are from Goldman Sachs and the like, this becomes one major objective–help the banks earn enough profit to keep going. (Of course, part of this would-be benefit will be taken away by higher default rates, as interest rates rise.)
b. If interest rates are higher, it will be possible to cut these interest rates in the future, if the economy is in bad shape and needs “stimulation.” With rates as low as they are now, central banks are pretty much “out of ammunition.”
Raising interest rates would seem to generally have an adverse impact on tax revenues, partly because businesses will find their profits lower, and partly because the government will have to itself pay more in taxes. Also, individual citizens will find it difficult to pay even their current level of taxes, because if they buy something “on credit” (house or car, for example), monthly payments will be higher.
Raising interest rates will also make it more difficult to pay government obligations such as Social Security and Medicare, because it makes the government’s financial situation worse–more outgo for interest, and less income from taxes. These programs are pretty much funded from current tax revenue, so disruptions to current tax revenue push them down.
One statement that you sometimes hear is, “Raising interest rates will get rid of zombie companies that could not exist without very low interest rates.” These companies disproportionately include oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium companies, unfortunately.
4. Low energy consumption growth, especially declining coal consumption at present, leads to low or declining wage growth worldwide, especially for the non-elite workers, and thus not enough tax revenue for governments and intergovernmental organisations; and thus not enough overall growth to prevent large national, business, and personal debt defaults which cripple banks even as they are bailed out by these same desperate but insolvent governments.
Agreed. It is difficult to tell precisely at which point the problems occur, however.
5. Oil exporters, such as Venezuela now and the Soviet Union just prior to its collapse in 1991, fail due to low oil prices; while oil importers fail with prices too high for their economies, such as Greece and Spain even with present seemingly low oil prices.
Agreed.
6. In the last few decades, countries with rapidly growing cheap coal consumption have done well economically but China’s recent declining coal consumption and flat energy consumption overall has brought down world energy consumption growth. Historically, declining world growth energy consumption growth leads to declining world economic growth.
Agreed.
7. Even if all nations, not only the major ones as at present, synchronised additional debt and printing money, there is now no price for oil, and other major commodities, which allows both producers and consumers to keep going. It is the present inability to arrange for commodities to be affordable by most people that will soon crash the system.
Probably true. If debt were to grow, it would be the less major countries that would need to fund its growth. China has been able to do a surprising amount.
8. A major reason for collapse is that poverty and low wages means poor people cannot pay enough tax to keep governments solvent, or afford cars, homes, oil and other commodities (driving prices too low to keep producers afloat), eat poorly (increasing susceptibility to epidemics), and eventually revolt as now in Venezuela.
Agreed.
9. The colossal global coordinated efforts to keep the system together and growing since the 2008 financial crisis, such as synchronised money printing by major nations, are likely to prove unsuccessful as early as September 2017. This will lead to complete fast collapse beginning now with countries such as Venezuela and overall akin to the USSR collapse but now worldwide with no recovery likely.
Generally agreed. The exact date is uncertain. Selling of QE securities is one likely trigger. Another is not agreeing on a US budget or “continuing resolution.” There are many others possible triggers as well.
10. There are many things that go wrong: The present $45 per barrel oil is way too low for oil producers and will lead to collapse of exporting countries; $100+ per barrel oil is needed by producers but is way too high for oil importers like Greece and Spain; China’s slowing energy consumption will make it difficult to repay debt with interest; Spain, Italy, Greece, and other nations have the same problem which can lead to huge debt defaults; Failing banks; Radical political parties arise and gain power; If oil prices stay low, oil exporters collapse; If oil prices rise, oil importing countries collapse; Higher-level organisations, such as the European Union, subject to collapse; Debt defaults increase. (Energy growth is what permits economic growth. All of these problems come from inadequate growth in energy consumption.)
Agreed. The big one I would add to the list is the selling of QE securities. These could trigger a rise in long-term interest rates, and a huge recession.
11. Likely symptoms of collapse: Governments that cannot agree because political parties cannot agree; Eventually, cannot collect enough taxes; Top political layers lose power; Top layers may disappear, similar to Soviet Union collapse; Debt that cannot be repaid with interest; Failing banks; Failing pension plans; Eventually, governments give up on bailing out banks, pension plans, or fail themselves; Falling international trade.
Agreed.
12. Government leaders and others are largely unaware because officials, advisers, economists, and academics, obfuscate and confuse people with simplistic theories and unsupported, unrealistic models – for all the usual suspect reasons (esp. their salary depends on it). It is the inability of the majority of people to afford to buy things that is the key issue but neither economists nor peak oil people understand the issues!
Agreed.
13. NB: It is best not to discuss details of fast collapse or even mention it. We will all soon die, likely in the next year or so. It’s best to enjoy life to the full right here and now with love, gratitude, and positive feelings as much as possible, especially with family, loved ones, and friends. The best preparation is to keep your pantry very well stocked, have a good deal of cash handy (completely hush-hush), and prepare carefully for euthanasia by writing down practical steps for many situations ((from Greek: εὐθανασία; “good death” (εὖ, eu; “well” or “good” – θάνατος, thanatos; “death”) is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering).
I would agree on having at least a little food and cash around, to handle minor bumps in the road.
I really don’t know that we will die in the next year or so. How the situation will unwind is unclear. It could perhaps be the next year in some parts of the world, but not others. I also do not know whether there will be some sort of intervention by a Higher Power, in some way that we do not understand. There could be a nuclear war or a major epidemic.
We perhaps fear death more than we should. I usually think about euthanasia as having to do with people who cannot take care of themselves–the very old, the very ill, the overly tiny infant. I think that we should be cutting back on the medical treatments that allow these people to stay alive, because we seem to have gone far past a sensible amount of intervention (in the US, at least). But I am not sure I would go as far as advocating planning what we would do in certain circumstances. I am sure that some people will think the way that you do, but I cannot go as far as advocate this approach.
“I also do not know whether there will be some sort of intervention by a Higher Power, in some way that we do not understand. ”
I agree that we would be unlikely to understand how this would work. Recently, I’ve been thinking about it in a way not unrelated to physics. What if “a higher power” actually prescribed a role for each of us? There’s a way we’re supposed to be, and things we’re supposed to do. We may also be in the places (with their cultures) that we’re supposed to be in. If we have a preordained role to play, then resisting that role should cause drag or misapplication of energy, as in martial arts. But if we accept the force and work with it we should experience relief, happiness, comfort. These are qualities you feel. So feelings would need to be checked into. And by that logic, if we feel good, that would indicate that we’re in sync with our predetermined roles. As I think I heard the Dalai Lama say once, the purpose of life is to be happy.
Oooh, you’ve touched the third-rail of what many people consider a basic tenet of civilization!
I agree, of course, but there are a lot of people who would see that as a slippery slope toward not taking care of the handicapped, eugenics, and aborting fetuses of undesirable gender.
This is a particularly hard stance to take as many of the people taking advantage of prolonged end-stage care are rich. Witness the baseball star a few years back who drank his way into liver failure, got another liver, and drank that one into cirrhosis, as well.
We have (unintentionally) followed the slope of additional treatment uphill in the US, for many years. This is partly because doctors can make six digit salaries, figuring out ways to keep people alive a little longer, even when the long-term outlook is very negative.
I have personally run into this issue in many ways. For example, my father was a general practitioner physician back in the “good old days.” He used to say that the handicapped had very short life expectancies, because of all of the problems that tended to befall them in later life. This is much less the case now. Unfortunately, a lot of these people cannot be rehabilitated enough to hold down jobs. So we end up with a need for lifetime care, at an absurd cost.
I saw the same phenomenon when looking at malpractice claims. If a physician had a mishap relating to a very premature baby, it was possible to get a multimillion dollar claim related to lifetime care of the child (if a hospital, for example, had high enough policy limits). This award might cover a specially built home for the family of the child, to accommodate his disability, plus 24 hour care almost indefinitely. Somehow, the whole system didn’t make sense.
My father in law (now deceased) got a brain tumor when he was 90. When asked, my mother in law decided it should be operated on, because she did not want to outlive my father in law. My father in law did survive the surgery, and lived for another few years, but he had major mental problems in those years.
A woman I know told about her sister with clearly terminal cancer. The sister’s husband decided that she needed treatment-after-treatment, long after the doctors had given up hope that these treatments had any possible chance of being successful.
And on and on. We read stories every day in the newspaper, about trying to save a child with some rare genetic disease.
Yes, but it does require someone, somewhere to “play God.” Who do we trust with such a job? The government? I don’t think so. The parents? That has an utterly predictable outcome; no mother wants to admit a deformed child can’t make it. I’d rather see the village elders make such choices.
My best friend in high school suffered from spina bifida, and basically lived in a wheel chair. He did use an above-average amount of medical resource, but completed college, held a good high-tech job through retirement, paid taxes, etc. And he was a wonderful musician! He’s now in his mid-60s, in the “leading edge of biffs,” as he put it, since before his generation, most died in their 40s or earlier. So I am specially sensitized to this.
In a low-energy world, it might have been necessary for the midwife to “send him back.” But he was a functional contributor to our high-energy world.
The wonderful agony of our high-energy world is that we can afford to see what will happen in such cases.
I recall a discussion on the CNN of New Zealand RNZ…. the LibTARDS were moaning about how the govt was unwilling to pay for a couple to go overseas for specialist care that was required to deliver a baby that was basically f789ed…
Their brain dead retarded half wit with no arms and legs — or whatever was wrong with it – deserved to live. And my tax dollars were going to pay for that.
I remember thinking at the time — WTF is wrong with these people? They are insisting on delivering a monstrosity that they will have to wheel around for the rest of it’s pathetic life — ruining their own lives….
Surely the fact that they knew that the baby was f789ed in advance would have brought relief to them — rather than pump out the alien and gasp in shock — they had the option to put it out of its misery and toss it into the dumpster… and start over again
But nnnnnooooooooo they gotta get on a flight to America and get the best treatment possible for their little monstrosity…
I never heard what the end game was on that…
Claud Shannon in information theory made claim that if information did not change what you know, it was noise(this is a simple explanation). I have known about these issues since the middle seventies and all that knowledge has done is cost me money. Even if one has a place to pull off the road, even if one can protect it, the real work is getting something out of the ground to eat. I’ll vote for the huge JD implements that go by the house as compared to a hoe and my back.
Someone is going to make it, find who that is and get in their boat seems to be better idea. It is too damn hard to do everything yourself; my grandparents had seven very healthy children who lived to into their 90’s except for the two who died before the age of two. It was still hard on a farm.
There are solutions: it may require one to look at the denominator as well as the numerator. Again, a ticket on the right boat.
Dennis L.
I am on a boat – called the Titanic — and it is awesome!
We have great food and drinks – comfortable beds — great parties — music — LLL!
I am urging the captain to increase the speed — I visit the engine room on a daily basis and exhort the workers to heave more coal into the fire — in fact I take a shovel and help them.
If the ship slows we sink now — if we speed it up then we eventually run into something and sink.
Later is better. LLL
Yes, if Titanic could have gone fast enough it could have skied all the way to New York.
Enough energy fixes anything LOL.
Oh no. You’re about to be shouted down by the doomsters!
They can’t stand the thought of someone, y’know, actually doing something, when it is so much easier to sit on the sidelines and throw darts at those who are doing something.
I agree that the “rugged individualist” days are over. Another reason the doomsters like to call names is they are incapable of not pissing people off; they are incapable of seeing another’s point-of-view; they are incapable of joining in common with people they are not paying to serve them.
Today, a 19-year-old girl asked if she could begin the first year of an apprenticeship program, rather than taking on $18,000 in student debt and going to college. She thought she might learn more, and be more ready to pick a major in another year. I just about cried!
I’m sure the doomsters think it is silly to not take on a bunch of debt right now — leverage to the hilt, because you’re never going to have to pay it off! But if there’s prolonged deflation first, those who are heavily leveraged are going to be in a world of hurt. You won’t be able to fly off to go skiing when your investments crash, but we’ll still be able to grow food.
By all means, link up with others of like mind. Even if the doomsters are right about an incredible sudden, universal ending, at least you won’t end up dying alone and bitter, but rather in the arms of people who care for you. That obviously isn’t for everyone.
Kudos on the program to teach young people. Most people today re lazy no do not want to work.
Today, a 19-year-old girl asked if she could begin the first year of an apprenticeship program, rather than taking on $18,000 in student debt and going to college. She thought she might learn more, and be more ready to pick a major in another year. I just about cried!
Well good for her! She’ll learn plenty of far more useful things on the farm than she would in a modern college.
I can teach useful things….
I thing the only reasonable culture or society to survive long term is hunter gatherer, not farmers.
You may well be right, but because of property ownership, hunting/gathering is simply not possible in the industrial world right now.
Just as agriculture served as a “step up” the energy mountain, it may be able to serve as a “step down.” It is something someone can do today to get them closer to the proper energy level.
Later, if governments fail, population plummets, and private property goes away or gets murky, hunting and gathering may again be possible.
++++
And nobody is stopping anyone from trying this — in New Zealand there are massive national parks — there are only around 20,000 or so people living along the entire west coast of the south island… if I were to walk into the forest and go hunter gatherer when I get over their later today — nobody would stop me…
You cried?
Because she was so smoking hot that you couldn’t believe your good fortune?
The harem is the way to go…. 20 foot container — and a barrel full of wine and whiskey.
And a fast car with a tank of petrol to end it all…
Surely to be fair you can let her choose between being part of the container harem or the brutal futile slog on the farm…. I do have a solar disco ball…. and stereo….
Attention Would Be Doomsday Preppers in search of The Great Adventure – consider the following before you join Jan’s harem:
1. Try living without electricity – grocery stores – petrol — medicine — for a week before you spend a cent on prepping
2. Think about what happens when virtually everyone around you is hungry – and you are the only one with food.
3. Think about about how the world is filled with violent people who will be headed your way with weapons and who will not hesitate to enslave and rape.
4. Remember that there are 4000+ spent fuel ponds around the world that MUST be kept cool or they boil and spew massive amounts of radiation that will get into the oceans and air and poison you. You cannot manage fuel ponds without BAU….
Now do you spend you remaining time and money with Jan digging up thistle and planting pumpkins?
Or do you invest in enjoying the final days of BAU — and of your life… doing things you have been putting off
As for running up the bill — only a fool would worry about incurring debt at this point —- you won’t be paying it back — and you actually contribute to extending BAU … debt is like raw meat to BAU — he can’t get enough of it
Jan – why don’t you put up a sign at the farm gate…
Welcome to DelusiSTAN!
Ad 4
I told you ~thousands times, that material from temporary spent fuel ponds (usually at NPP site) is after while moved to permanent depot, e.g. giant one is under construction as deep repository in Scandinavia, there are other national programs around the world..
Moreover, there is another method, “closing the cycle” of nuclear fuel, where you have the following inputs: bits of plutonium from legacy nuclear weapon program, U235 (not much remaining) and U238 (very plentiful), then you need array of traditional nuclear plants plus accompanying few breeder reactors running on mixed oxides, and the reprocessing facilities, which produce these oxides, since the NPP burns only ~3% of the energy potential in the fuel. So, this cycle can go round and round at least for several hundred years or more with the stuff and technology we have today and the stock of material existing or known to be yet mined.
Now, it’s obviously very complex task, you need the whole chain of traditional and new tech nuclear industries to do it, or to have a deal with the entity/country to lease, pay for this service. Well, one can understand that apart from increasing natgas and oil imports reliance, many western countries are not keen on the prospect above that to pay license fees or regular payments to an perceived adversary, which posses this technology and offers these services to international partners. Hence also the explanation for recent craze rush for renewables, where the rational analysis has been skewed towards short term profits and propaganda of self sufficiency.
In summary, seemingly all jolly good, but is it wise to flatly depend on the above propping our “civilization” , nope, that’s not what I’m saying. It just makes prognostication about universal single doom point more hazy, we don’t know how are the major players going to react, near term, midterm, long term to all the bubbling problems of over reach, racing for the relative position among themselves etc.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-to-argue-with-a-person-who-has-renounced-the-use-of-reason-is-like-administering-medicine-thomas-paine-50-53-28.jpg
I’ve planted in the paragraphs a lot of cookies you (or others) could have chewed on, but obviously you have nothing of substance to say, confirming your shallow bias once again..
For example, the article above is valid as country neutral, in the sense, the only crucial specific element is the possession of plutonium, while the other high tech stuff needed like advanced metallurgy and nuclear physics has been already mastered by countries like S. Korea, Japan etc. Similarly, the reprocessing facilities for MOX is not from Mars, sooner or later others will have it to.
So, in essence it all depends on the plutonium capability possessing countries to recommit for the nuclear energy industry and or share or build up the international trade in the area for the final product of mixed oxides, which are solid state, transportable stuff.
Well, it’s apparently not happening (as of today): not sure UK has got access to plutonium, probably not (only ready made US missiles) and the nuclear power sector has been in disarray for years, France wants now to scale down her nuclear sector, US with the nominal highest number of reactors is not properly investing in it and their exports are notable crap, China’s sector on the rise, Russia is leading. Although not having plutonium, S. Korea is on the rise in NPPs, might license breeders in the future, similarly Japan might recommit efforts, Indian and Pakistan are likely clients in such schemes, not likely to have such program or part of it in the mid term.
You see, that all creates another dividing line for the future world order.
The populace won’t stand for the government screwing things up with another catastrophe.
At least some of them want blood.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/06/30/national/crime-legal/three-former-tepco-executives-go-trial-311-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/#.WWg6TSOGPpQ
Three former top executives at Tokyo Electric pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to the triple core meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011, which forced at least 150,000 people to evacuate and caused considerable damage to the prefecture’s economy.
The trial, which opened Friday at the Tokyo District Court, is the first in which criminal charges have been pressed in connection with the Fukushima disaster.
Facing massive liabilities, the utility received a government bailout and was restructured into Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. It is better known as Tepco.
Criminal complaints against more than 50 state and Tepco officials have been filed by residents of Fukushima and other people since 2012.
On trial are ex-Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 77, and former Vice Presidents Sakae Muto, 67, and Ichiro Takekuro, 71. The three are being charged with professional negligence resulting in death and injury.
The charges are linked to the deaths of about 40 patients at Futaba Hospital in the town of Futaba who were forced to flee the Fukushima area and later died.
The trial was set when a previous judgment by prosecutors not to pursue charges was overturned by an Inquest of Prosecution — a rare procedure that can be used to appeal such a decision before a panel of ordinary citizens.
…….
The government will not exist … soon….
Of course, in the good old days there would have been no need for a trial…..
“Please accept my humble apology for ruining your delightful prefecture and insulting your honor. As a small token of contrition for the trouble my negligence has caused you, I offer to commit seppuku. I pray and hope you can wipe the stain on your honor away with my blood.”
https://media.giphy.com/media/CbGA1dYf9xdrq/200.gif
Excellent summary!
Mind you, I am not a fan of nuclear power. But we got it, and we might as well make the best of it.
In particular, Japan’s nukes are not of excessive concern to me. First off, they are very gun-shy after Fukushima. The populace won’t stand for the government screwing things up with another catastrophe.
Secondly, I assume Japan is an isolated grid. Certain doomsters here are fond of saying “game over when the grid goes down.” But there is no “the” grid! Even here on the west coast of North America, we have a direct-current Pacific Intertie that can go up and down with only minimal impact — the big hydropower dams in BC, WA, OR are not synchronously tied to the heavy loads of Southern California, and brown-out due to heavy air-conditioning load there will not “take down” the Pacific Northwest grid; neither will a 2008-style (or worse) financial melt-down.
Third, a nuclear power plant can be “self-exciting,” using its own power to supply it’s own needs. It requires a triple point-of-failure to have a Fukushima: plant scram, grid failure, and backup power supply failure.
In Japan’s case, they will make a herculean effort to keep their nukes up and safe. Gail is warning us of an impending financial system crash. In combination with some natural event, that could be trouble. But that alone is not going to take down the Japanese grid, scram all its reactors, and disable all its plant backup generation.
By no means am I siding with those who say the long-term picture for nuclear is hunky-dory. But neither do I think the short-term picture for nuclear is catastrophic. I’ll leave that for the Chicken Littles who are constantly saying, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
We have a radiological hazard plan in place. No, it won’t protect us against all of Japan’s nukes “going off” at once. But it is reasonable for reducing preventable long-term radiological hazards, such as excess thyroid cancer.
(As usual, I refuse to engage simplistic, abusive hecklers, but am happy to respond to reasoned discussion.)
Yes, the argument for step-wise order of national grids first disintegrating into local grids like Texarkana, PNW has been voiced here numerous time already, it has got the highest probability. But as we well know, the Universal Synchronized Pinpoint Doom bigots, only “answer” with placating this site with irrelevant quasi intellectual quotations pictures and or B/C grade bollywood production YT clips..
🙂
Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I not-so-secretly enjoy it when others do… 🙂
Psychiatrists should visit FW to observe cognitive dissonance and delusion in action … Jan is a great case study… he lives in his own little world with walls that keep out any facts logic or common sense that intrude in the delusional state he has created…
Jan has a Farmville going on right inside his head…
And here we have what is possibly the most idi–otic statement ever made on FW…. this needs to be framed and tacked onto the wall of the DelusiSTAN Hall of Fame.
‘In particular, Japan’s nukes are not of excessive concern to me. First off, they are very gun-shy after Fukushima. The populace won’t stand for the government screwing things up with another catastrophe.’
The effects of a world-wide nuclear power plant meltdown is not known. No one can know. But,given the immense energies embedded in nuclear fuel, to downplay or ignore the significance of such an event is being foolish.
Agreed. We do not know with complete certainty that this will extinct all life…
But based on the fact that there was a plan to evacuate Tokyo when the ponds at Fukushima were in jeopardy as you state — this issue ‘cannot be ignored’ given there are 4000+ similar installations around the globe.
If we aggregate all the other 4 horsemen into this scenario … the population is going to be weakened already — throw cesium etc into the water and air — and it does not look promising.
Those with the best chance of remaining alive will likely be in southern hemisphere locations that are furthest from spent fuel ponds.
But then what will ‘alive’ mean when the 4 horseman are thundering through town wreaking havoc….
I am reading Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42
This story is replete with stories of torture that include boiling people alive … roasting them … and as the author states ‘tortures to vile to mention’
When civilization goes — the worst among us will rise to the top….
The atomic industry is massively upgrading/retooling for the so-called post Fukushima era standards, that includes among other things, adding passive methods of cooling the on site spent fuel pond. Also learned another tidbit, they categorize nuclear waste into 3 categories, low/medium/high-long term radiation hazard. The first one is usually the water cooled spent fuel, and now the industry is ready to recycle it into new MOX fuel as I already described elsewhere. The mid radiation category is poured into concrete, sealed in leak proof container, and dumped deep in mountains bellow water table. And the highest hazard radioactive stuff is melted in special forge with glass (in sort of magma like structure) and again sealed and dumped for at least thousands of years.
The most crazy polluted areas from the early years of 50s-60s when radioactive materials where simply water washed in cascading ponds on the surface have been reasonably cleaned-decontaminated all over the globe, perhaps with some small exceptions like N. Korea-Pakistan-India ?
References for all of this please – or are you just making it up?
I have mentioned a cousin who is head of safety at a southern ontario plant — I asked him about what they had done since Fukushima — he indicated they had installed diesel generators and water pumps to deal with a meltdown…
For the Ten F789ing Thousandth time you cannot air cool spent fuel ponds in dense pack formation – and they are ALL dense pack because otherwise it would cost a fortune to store them
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool.
Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Meanwhile back in the “real” world, the Wall Street Journal annouces:
Investors Find Major Oil Deposit in Gulf of Mexico
Premier Oil, Talos Energy and Sierra Oil & Gas uncover ‘world-class’ formation in boon for Mexican government
MEXICO CITY—One of Mexico’s earliest private-sector energy investors says that it has struck it big with a significant oil discovery in Mexican waters.
Britain’s Premier Oil PLC, along with partners Talos Energy of Houston and Sierra Oil & Gas of Mexico City, said Wednesday that exploratory drilling in the Zama-1 field, located in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, had uncovered a “world-class” formation with between 1.4 billion and two billion barrels of light crude oil, or roughly double earlier predictions.
Off the top of my head, that gives the world an extra two or three weeks of BAU, which is something to celebrate but hardly ranks as “major”.
The bar is nudging the dirt…
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
Holy cow is that last bar for real (2016)?
Gotta find more dead plankton somewhere!!!!!!!
The little oil men in the centre of the earth are on strike…
“…had uncovered a “world-class” formation with between 1.4 billion and two billion barrels of light crude oil, or roughly double earlier predictions.”
World Class ???
The world uses 32 billion barrels per year. 1.4 billion barrels less that a one month supply in global terms. The media knows that the average reader has no clue about the big oil numbers, so 1.4 billion sound like a lifetime supply.
Secondly, it take (on average) 5 to 7 years to bring a new field on stream.
Lots of drilling and infrastructure needed to reach the full output of the field.
On aggregate, discoveries are declining rapidly and new oil is VERY expensive to recover.
Right on Pete! “World class formation” what does that even mean? Everything nature creates is “world class”. Every oil formation is world class.
Justin Bieber is a ‘world class’ musician….
This reminds me of the Houston Chronicle article on the major TROVE of oil BP discovered this year. It was enough oil for 2.5 days of BAU. And CNN had an article saying MAJOR DISCOVERY of oil in Alaska, the largest US find in over 30 years. It was enough oil for two months of BAU. The energy stories in the US besides Art’s of course are total fake news.
Most people cannot add 1+1…. so if you put a billion+ number in front of them it sounds really good… And because they do not think about it — they assume that is a LOT of oil….
Oh it made the papers, it must be big news .. HAHAHAHAHA HEEE HEE HEEEE HOOO
HAAHHH HAHAHAHA.
These stories are meant to reassure the masses that things are chugging along nicely. But if you do the math—and you don’t need to struggle with calculus or quadratic equations—the message they tell is that the current system is limping like a marathon runner who neglected to do enough training.
Well said.
Now … back to DelusiSTANI TV …. we’ve got a special treat for our viewers!
Today Jan is going to explain to us his plan for dealing with all those thousands who show up at his farm gate demanding food…
But that’s not all — stay tuned for the second part of the show when Jan will reveal his Secret Plan for dealing with radiation from the Japanese spent fuel ponds.
But first we have to go to a commercial break sponsored by Abilify…. when reality imposes itself on your Delusional World — take 5 Abilify and numb your brain!
That’s Abilify – IN STORES NOW!
https://canadian-pharmacy24-7.com/wp-content/uploads/ngg_featured/abilify142750.jpg
the molten core of the Earth is actually made out of aripiprazol…
a lot of it is pumped out in places like Saudi Arabia and Texas…
Venezuela has a lot of it but it is unusually heavy and costly to refine…
so that is why that country is collapsing…
it all makes perfect sense…
if you just connect the dots!
Even if your claim were true, what is important is that we have enough of the very cheap to extract type. We have problems with many other fuels as well–coal, natural gas, and uranium. Also fresh water (rather essential!), and many minerals.
“slow” collapse…
I see it going country by country…
I see it with my own eyes!
now Venezuela!
Is Brazil next?
and this song is called Clap…
oops…
Clap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVBg4Jg_390
Do you believe we run our cars on dinosaurs? LOL The things grown adults will believe.
Actually — I was thinking that oil was made from the crushed remains of DelusiSTANIS…
There are billions of DelusiSTANIS on the earth — and their population increases exponentially — so it is unlikely that we will ever run out of oil…
Do you mind to stand in front of this for a moment — I need to fill up my 4 ba 4…
https://alaskabibleteacher.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/steam-roller.jpg
yes, as a matter of fact, my car runs on dinosaur poop…
though I can’t prove it to you…
sorry!
Just off the top of my head from what I have read I think crude oil comes from the plankton that lived in ancient oceans. As the plankton died it sank to the bottom of the ocean where it accumulated over millennia. Plate tectonics subducts the ocean plate under the continental plate and cooks the dead plankton at a specific temperature. If the the rock surrounding the cooking plankton is porous like sandstone and the temperatures and pressure are just right, after millions of years the plankton breaks down into a sponge loaded with crude oil (Ghawar).
But I could be wrong. Maybe unicorns put the oil there.
I bet Gail believes the geology teachers claiming the earth has a molten core, when the deepest anyone has ever drilled is about 7.5 miles -Kola superdeep
Down with Big Magma!
The core is solid. No one has seen an atom either, does that mean they don’t exist. What’s your point.
Don’t be silly. The Earth doesn’t have a core!
As Mercator showed, it’s flat and only 7.6 miles deep.
It only looks round from above because light doesn’t travel in straight lines.
I bet Dynomite believes the geology teachers claiming the earth is round.
MAGMA…
Make America Great, Maybe, Again
Hilarious.
Well, in reality, sadly that’s the home of major deprivant culture out there, possibly willing in the last minute push the button. Thousands of nukes flying and detonating might indeed on several places actually help to release some abnormal poof of magma.
Maybe the geology teachers learned their lessons from the economics teachers, who said the earth was infinite. We seem to have a choice of ridiculous beliefs.
Bottom line is, according to the EIA, there is more oil being pumped in the last 3 years, than ever before. Since about 1900, the chart just keeps going higher and higher. Gail is a fear mongering tactician.
I’ll bet gail $5000 that her “peak oil” predictions will not come true.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/0b978544f5697646e4f42cc39d68b9f7/tumblr_n1j8enKEg21qln00mo5_400.gif
You mean that EIA, which is often being criticized within the pool of top energy industry insiders as over politicized and often very incorrectly advising political level institutions (about the future)? LoLz
You obviously haven’t read anything Gail has written. It’s not the amount of oil production, it’s the cost to produce it. The easiest and cheapest wells have already been tapped and are post peak in terms of production. Those wells produced oil at something like $5-$10 a barrel cost. Unconventional oil production is a response to this fact. Some unconventional production is profitable around $30 per barrel, but most is $50+. The rising cost of production makes all energy input costs more expensive and that will magnify over time, hurting all remaining discretionary spending. You have to also understand that oil companies have capex budgets each year. They’ve already decided how much to spend on capex in 2017 and will drill through the declining price, only to reassess towards the end of the year. If oil remains below $50, expect a drop in production in 2018 from U.S. shale producers. If oil crashes below $30, expect the entire shale complex to halt production and many bankruptcies in the process too. Too low a price of oil bankrupts oil exporting nations and the highest cost producers. Too high a price destroys oil importing economies and overall economies because consumer spending tanks and all input costs rise related to energy inputs.
Arguing with a DelusiSTANI is like wasting medicine on a dead body
I don’t make “peak oil” predictions. I talk about consumers not being able to afford the goods made with high-priced energy products, because the wages of the 90% (the non-elite workers) are too low. We end up with gluts of various kinds of fuels, and energy prices that are too low for producers. When governments have the bad sense to raise interest rates, they make the bad situation worse. I noticed yesterday that the US is now selling fairly substantial amounts of crude oil out of the Strategic Petroleum reserve. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_stoc_wstk_dcu_nus_w.htm If we already have a glut of crude oil, because of its high price, this is a way to add to the glut (or, alternatively, to force oil prices lower). Raising interest rates will also force prices lower.
The direction we are headed is financial collapse. Indirectly, this is caused by diminishing returns with respect to the extraction of all kinds of energy products (as well as fresh water, and minerals of various kinds). Also, our constantly rising population means that we need to somehow create more food and other goods for the rising population. At some point, inflation adjusted wages start to fall. (This is a little like farm sizes becoming smaller, because of too much population.) History shows that the way this ends is through collapse–in fact, generally financial collapse. Among other things, governments cannot collect enough revenue.
There are admittedly a lot of peak oil writers around. I am not one of them, however. My predictions are with respect to financial collapse. The likely immediate cause could be one of many things, but trying to sell the securities held by the central banks would seem to be the most likely one.
The general consensus amongst experts and industry is that peak oil will occur/occurred somewhere between 2010 and 2030. Ranges outside of that are dismissed as improbable. So, there you have it.
My own feelings on the matter is that conventional oil (crude oil + condensate) peaked sometime between 2005 and 2013, as production growth of this grade of oil has stagnated for nearly 10 years. Whereas unconventional oil (deep water, shale oil, tar sands etc) which is still expanding, will peak around 2020. Which probably brings about the peak of all-liquids sometime around now, 2017/2018.
But in the end it doesn’t really matter, because if the current gyrating and groaning state of the world economy is the result of even approaching peak oil, that means that the system will collapse by the g-forces at work on it well before we ever reach the actual peak moment.
What I meant to say is “far-dated” peak oil.
Peak oil can only be understood as a price phenomenon. Oil prices cannot rise high enough to extract more oil. This is closely related to the amount of debt being added to the system. The amount of debt being added to the system is no longer rising fast enough, thanks to banking regulation and world pressure to keep debt levels down. Also, due to awareness that added debt is no longer very “productive”–in other words, it doesn’t really lead to increased GDP (mainly because energy products are too expensive to extract).
So we reach a problem that looks like “financial collapse” in the near term, but is really related to inadequate energy resource consumption. Falling coal consumption is a bigger problem than our oil woes in reaching this end point, in my opinion.
every energy resource can be reduced to a calorific value
that is the ”energy bottom line”
every activity expends energy, which must be replenished, or that activity cannot go on.
therefore if you dig plant and harvest a crop of food (calories) from your garden–either what you harvest must exceed all the energy used (calories again) in the planting etc, or you must supplement your harvest from elsewhere–which is the use of someone else’s calorific input.
it’s the same with oilwells.
extracting oil uses energy—every barrel of oil has a fixed calorific content, the energy to extract it must use less calories than is in the barrel, or the extraction process carries a net loss.
the amount of oil ”down there” is irrelevant—there will always be oil ”down there”
The brutal truth remains: We use 25Bn barrels of oil a year, but discover only 2.5Bn—thus we drain our oil bank balance X10 faster that we replenish it.
“technology” can improve output, but it cannot produce more oil.
If you have to expend more calories to extract oil than you get from the oil you extract, then you go out of business.
Is that clear now?
if it is….then you might understand that the ”constantly increasing” oil supply is brought about by throwing colossal amounts of energy into the extraction process, made available by investors, government subsidies etc, as an effort to maintain energy production at all costs—to keep the oilshow on the road for a few more years.
politicos know as much—or as little–as we do, they can’t stop and get off either. So must blunder on like everyone else
no potus–or anyone else, wants the oilparty to stop on his watch, so we must all run faster towards to promised utopia, not realising it’s wile-e-coyote’s cliff.
We think that we are voting prosperity into office.
What we are actually doing is voting for the global Ponzi scheme to continue.
we are all consuming our grandchildren’s future. Already the younger generation, by and large, cannot acquire capital as easily as we golden oldies did, or rely on lifetime employment.
Why?
Because our capital derived from surplus oil. That surplus is no longer available to the average worker. This is why real wages have been static for decades. Living standards rise on surplus oil availability. We no longer have any surplus.
That “surplus” is being used up in the ultimately futile process of holding our energy based society together. Hence there is less surplus available to consume ”stuff” and keep everyone employed making things that we can ultimately throw away.
This explains it more fully if you feel like reading it:
https://extranewsfeed.com/an-infinity-of-futility-819630ea935f
Not that it will change your life much.
Norman,
What do you think about the reactors and spent fuel pools? If the Politicos know about our fate, are they dealing with the radiation issue? In my mind, nuclear weapons and radiation from power plants are the only two impediments to attempting to survive. I remain unconvinced that the end of BAU won’t temper climate change, or that it will be over a long enough timespan so as to make it unimportant to the next generation or two. The radiation, though, the radiation scares me……
to my way of thinking/reasoning, we have 3 prime threats, overpopulation, energy depletion and climate change.
all the other threats stem from those 3 primary ones
The fuel rod problem can might exacerbated by any one or all three of those, and potentially kill off millions who happen to live near them. Their meltdown will make life uncomfortable for many more.
But they wont kill off billions . WW1 and 2 killed off 100m between them, and barely dented human population growth.
We are at 7.5bn, might be 8, 8.5 come shtf time. If nuclear meltdown killed 100m (say), it wouldn’t relieve the pressure on population and energy one bit.
Politicos are fully aware of what will happen to fuel rods if they are left unattended, but that is a problem too big and hot to handle. Part of our economic rollercoaster if you like. They don’t know any more than we finite worldsters.
Scientists know the dangers—but they rely on tech-infinity too. When they see tech falling away–they will get as far away as possible from nuke plants.
Even an attempt to resolve the problem would require close international cooperation right now. Not possible.
I’d put my extinction money on methane release. Quick, short lived and likely to reduce human population to pre industrial levels at least. (heat and widespread crop failures)
If that happens, survivors are likely to be those living far from centres of civilisation in certain benign regions.. We might get down to bottleneck numbers.
There wont be enough tech know how or manpower to look after nuke power plants at all, so they will be abandoned and degenerate catastrophically, as Chernobyl x00s over time.
(All this stuff will overlap of course)
And denial of the above will be almost universal, even while it’s happening
Cli.mate change is not happening on a significant scale so I would not be concerned with that…. and if anyone does believe in this then the financial system will collapse putting an end to carbon burning for the most part – so again – a non issue.
Here is the issue:
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
4000 spent fuel ponds — 56,000,000 Hiroshima bombs.
It won’t matter if you live nearby — the toxins from these ponds will enter the oceans — the fish will eat them and they will make their way up the food chain to humans — who will die of cancer.
The toxins will also be airborne – again getting into the food chain – and into anyone who has not starved – been murdered – died of disease — post BAU
I guess if anyone thinks this is survivable then they’d have to think all out nuclear war would be survivable…
Nuclear war heads explode —release radiation — then stop. Spent fuel ponds do not stop — they go on an on an on and on pumping toxins into the air and water.
If the spent fuel ponds at Fukushima had cracked open and the rods toppled to the ground — the west coast of North America would have been poisoned —- the cancer rates would have gone sky high.
And that is just one installation
Gail does not have any “peak oil” predictions that I am aware of.
I guess Gail forgot to tell you all that old wells that were tapped dry are now full again. Wonder what her ridiculous reason for this is.
How do you know that there ever were any old wells that were tapped dry.
And how do you know they are full again?
Prove it to us.
Red alert red alert — man the barricades….
DelusiSTANIS are attacking… they have sent their most powerful MOREon to lead the charge….
Bring out the flame thrower…..
Just search “old oil wells now full again”
About as much “proof” as anything else you read, including Gail.
There are lots of diagrams, cartoons and CGI expaning how oil is pumped out of the ground, but I’m yet to find real video. Also, lots of photos of pipes, pumps and “oil” seeping from the ground, but can’t find more than a couple photos of a small puddle of black something, or a guy holding a handful of black something. You would think after all these decades and decades of oil drilling, the $trillions of dollars they’ve invested, etc. There would be some videos of the entire process. Oil being pumped from the ground, oil being filtered, stored, pumped through pipelines, etc.. if you know of any, let me know.
hi Dynomite…
have you ever heard about YouTube?
search for oil well pumping videos…
good luck!
I’m a bit busy right now reading my latest search results explaining that the moon is made of cheese … when I am finished I will get on this oil thing…
In the meantime can you explain how it works — in layman’s terms — are there little men in the centre of the earth making more oil? Do they shit oil? Or piss it?
What about other resources — are they self-renewing? Coal… iron… copper…. etc….
This is fascinating stuff!
“This is fascinating stuff!”
I agree! Tell us more!
What was that “stuff” coming out of the pipe at the bottom of the ocean when the DeepWater Horizon burned?
Squid ink
I’ve never seen any milk being pumped out of cows. Yet another farce!
😝
I have
Prove it!
I haven’t either!
But I just pumped some out of a few goats, so by deduction, I can assume it also really, really does come from cows.
If Dynomite had ever had a drink of well water, he could, by deduction, assume that oil could come out of the ground, as well.
It is entertaining to see him and FE, zealots each in their own respective corners, talk past each other, instead of talking past people who were trying to reason with them.
My setting goes directly to Mockery when someone like that shows up.
Oil comes out of black cows. Everyone knows that
With huge udders that they gyrate in order to squirt the stuff out?
Something like that….
No, you’re wrong FE, that’s the chocolate milk source.
Everyone knows that oil comes from a petrol station and milk from the supermarket. Jeez…
https://i.giphy.com/media/JyYF31EbgzFGE/giphy.webp
LOL!
come on, Eddy…
I’ve never seen a flame thrower…
can you prove that they are real?
where can I go to see one with my own eyes?
I just want proof…
I’ve got one that I keep next to my desk… it’s warming up!
Prove it!
I an afraid not. Oil is often trapped in rock that is somewhat like a hard sponge. Parts of this oil near the “well” may drain away first. Waiting a while may allow the oil and pressure to even out.
When oil is extracted, there is an estimate made of original “oil in place.” There are also estimates made of the portion of it that can be extracted using today’s techniques. Really, there is a range of amounts of oil that can be extracted. If the price goes high enough, we can extract much more oil than if the price remains very low. We can never get 100% of the oil out, which may be the source of the confusion.
That’s just what the big oil companies say … because they need to limit the supply so they can sell it for more … in reality the oil is unlimited … they just ring down to the little men whenever they need more and like magic… there is more…
I built a zero-point energy generator that runs forever on a single charge of chocolate mousse. a Big Oil company offered to commercialize if for me so I took it along to their headquarters and a couple of really big Big Oil guys smashed it to pieces with sledgehammers.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember how I original built it and Global Warming ate my notes.
How disappointing….