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.
The end….
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Reread Gail, look at the denominator, consider that things may not be as deterministic as is easily conceived. As for the ham sandwich, if it is the matrix, who needs a ham sandwich? Maybe the matrix is superior to processed ham.
Dennis L.
Let’s try this, from NOAD:
Collapse (of an institution or undertaking [i.e. Civilization]): fail suddenly and completely
Slow collapse: see OXYMORON
Now that I can get on board with.
yes, Slow Collapse is indeed literally an oxymoron…
but I think most of us seem to understand it metaphorically… or not…
that the “slow” means a lengthy period of BAU with much instability…
then afterwards, in a few decades in my opinion,The Collapse comes…
but NOT today!
cheers!
I should add that I have no certainty that it will be “a few decades”.
Likely, this process already started with the 2008/2009 Great Recession…
so about one decade in the books…
and this possibly could go on for another 8 decades… year 2100…
who knows?
not me… no one…
but I do know…
every prediction of The Collapse happening up to now has been wrong…
good for us…
Cheers!
“and this possibly could go on for another 8 decades… year 2100…
who knows?”
https://media.giphy.com/media/CXAPW8vCQzYkg/giphy.gif
There is no way in hell 7B humans make it another 80 years. Maybe a few hundred thousand will. Maybe.
IF the population stays up in the 8 to 9 billion range, then as the world economy declines by 1 or 2 percent per year average, yes, we are talking about an impoverished world.
IF the average person has a decline of 50 to 75 percent in wealth, that doesn’t mean automatic death.
the population in the year 2100?
who knows?
there is no possible way the world can feed 9/10bn….we just don’t have the means to ship food around, even if we could grow it.
on the other hand, I have a National Geographic from 1975, which has an article:
“How will we feed 3,5Bn?’
Just sayin
The 9.8B by 2050 projection is based on lifespans increasing further, what about world population 2050 if we cut 15 years of current life span?
you can take rollcall of volunteers
There won’t be “volunteers,” but there will be numerous nominations for the Darwin Award. 🙂
Select humans have lived into their 90s for a long, long time. Too many are surviving that long now, propped up by the complexity of civilization.
Select humans have died in infancy or childhood for a long, long time. Too many are surviving now, propped up by the complexity of civilization.
What we have done is temporarily defeated natural selection. We now have survival of the least fit.
I am by no means a eugeneticist, which implies that humans are in control of the selection process. But I think we will face a time when we lack the resources to care for the infirm at either end of the demographic curve.
I dare say the ones in the middle will, on average, fare nearly as well with natural medicine as they do with war, industrial malnutrition, stress of stultifying cubicle wage-slavery, and self-medication.
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/d0/d06a1ca136fc6f8ec538f71369fd4d226422dd45d0fbc8f525d21e368a82c3e2.jpg
At 3% economic growth p.a, which is the amount necessary to keep the system stable, we would be doubling our need for oil, tripling land clearance and doubling the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere every 24 years, just to stay square.
So by 2100 we would require 720 million barrels of oil per day. We’d have paved over or cut down the rest of the Amazon and the Congo rainforest, and have sunk most of the coastline that matters.
These are simply absurd numbers and outcomes and are not sustainable, even past one doubling, let alone survivable. People like you who come onto OFW with your half-baked ideas and general feel-good claptrap need a remedial course in the power of the exponential function, quick.
You’re quite right. continuing 3% economic growth p.a. is just not on. If it continued for just another 24 years EVEN I would have to reconsider my climate change denialism.
But it can’t, so it won’t.
Unless we get MR. FUSION from a time-traveling Doc. or dilithium crystals from passing Vulcans.
even if fusion provided theoretically unlimted electricity,
it would be useless without all the necessary machinery and resources by which it could be put to use.
if you don’t see that, take a very close look at a lightbulb.
imagine making them without factories
Point taken, Norman. Affordable energy is only at the top of the list of things we need that are in finite supply. Using an inexhaustible supply of energy that’s too cheap to meter to obtain other increasingly hard-too-get-at resources would involve all sorts of complications, be terribly messy, and merely delay the final day of reckoning.
Just as a spoonful of little yoghurt guys eventually consume all the milk in their tub, and a team of termites eventually use up all the wood in their log, so a planet-load of BAUing humans will eventually run out of lots of the things that make BAU possible.
We’ve got a double whammy in play here…. resources are more difficult to extract and refine — and meanwhile the energy used to extract and refine them is more expensive…
It’s funny psile, you have these NOOBs coming on to this website and thinking us fast-collapsers, aka doomers, are clueless little losers…when in fact, we did not start off like that at all…like FE said we always kind of knew that the growth paradigm would not go on forever…but we thought that was something that would happen later this century…but then 2008 hit and to quote FE again, our Spider Senses started to tingle…and then you start your long path to awakening from the matrix…you discover zerohedge at its very beginning circa 2009, that makes you realize that the financial system is in BIG TROUBLE…you watch all the documentaries related to Peak Oil that came out a few years earlier (circa 2005, right when conventional was peaking)…you stumble upon PP, where Martenson has some good videos on how the three Es are interconnected (Economy, Energy and Environment)…however you graduate from PP when you realize his preparing for the end of BAU is useless..you keep digging…you stumble on OFW, which gets you to the next level…and you get to read some excellent comments (of which I have kept many over the years, namely CTG’s excellent observations on JIT)…you read Korowicz, you read Tim Morgan’s (when he was still with Tullett Prebon) Perfect Storm…you read Norman Pagett’s book (plus his comments scattered all over the web)…another big one is Steve from Virginia with his Triangle of Doom where you realize that the curves of Demand and Supply do not cross anymore at ANY price (how long can THAT go on)…
Anyway my long rambling comment is just to say we did not just wake up one day and become doomers…we came to this fast-collapse conclusion after many hours of reading on many different subjects….
ITEOTWAWKI- Amazing summary. I absolutely agree.
Indeed Psile. The ability to appreciate the exponential function is a shortcoming of the human race. As Albert Bartlett said it may be the biggest failure of the human race to not understand its implications. Folks need to understand that without growth jobs disappear and the economy implodes. It isn’t a slow process. The entire show is propped up by extracting vast quantities of finite resources. We are so far removed from the realities of nature that the rebound effects of loosing our protective bubble will result in the death of BILLIONS. The energy just to get energy increases every year as well. So too with resource extraction. So, even if we try to stay even, the energy costs of just getting needed resources to maintain what we have rises exponentially as well. We are so screwed and most folks can’t even see it when it is right in front of them. It truly is the perfect trap.
psile “At 3% economic growth p.a, which is the amount necessary to keep the system stable…”
I disagree. We are going to find out soon enough if the system remains stable with minus 1% annual “growth”.
I predict a shrinking economy for many decades.
I don’t know if I will be right.
But I bet your 3% statement is quite wrong.
I don’t think you should be so confident that you are right.
Of course, you are free to disagree.
Disagreement!
Fun!
Thanks for playing!
Cheers!
You have to remember when we speak of growth it isn’t just monetary growth, it is resource growth, job growth, population growth and so on. In real terms the economy has been shrinking already since about 1970. Take a look at a per captia energy use in the US since 1970:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/United_States_per_capita_energy_use_1650-2010.png
So we have already have been through the phase of the stagnation and contraction for many decades now (40+years). Now, the whole system is propped up by massive debts. The debt iis exponential and we are now at the business end of exponential growth of debt. Things are de-stabilizing .
1970 was the year the USA went from energy creditor (swing producer) to energy debtor
it is the year no one dare mention
The difference in real and actual growth figures is made up by all the money printing. Thanks for coming.
listen to this lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_VpyoAXpA8
It’s all Al Bartlett’s fault—but maybe it will help you understand where we are headed, cutting through the BS
Yeah Al was such an a-hole for telling it like it is 😉
Some Delusistanis could learn from Galileo:
https://www.brainyquote.com/photos/g/galileogalilei136976.jpg
Yeah, what a party-pooper 8-). I forgot to mention that by 2100 there’d also be another 6 billion more useless eaters to add to the already overflowing quota of the foolish and ignorant.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9b/f6/21/9bf621e68a366c09265dae8e713e8c03–zombie-quotes-horror-movies.jpg
Most folks that thinks we have decades of BAU left would listen to Al’s lecture and would likely either: 1) not really listen to it. 2) stop it part-way through it and begin to understand our predicament then, re-engage cognitive dissonance. 3) Listen to the whole lecture and not have the cognitive ability to understand one bit of it. 4) Have an epiphany.
Most of us on here have gotten to #4 before things really fall apart. The rest will get to #4 after things have fallen completely apart.
exactly!!!
It was the one thing that really opened my eyes. When it comes down to it you can’t negotiate with maths. As Psile stated before we need to find so many resources to keep BAU flat let alone growing. Pretty much no one gets this simple reality of the exponential function. I constantly tell my friends who think wind and solar will come to the rescue to just do the maths. The growth rate for both would have to be around 100% per year to maybe make it happen however this can only occur in a world of growing FF as production of renewables takes FF and therefore removes net energy from the non energy economy causing a reduction in demand for energy as the economy falters which means the renewables aren’t needed or destroy profitability of existing production. As Gail alludes to – the grid will become more unstable.
Things are so bad in some areas right now–air travel, health care, immigration mess, cultural/political polarization–that it feels that they are due to come to a crisis. People who can see this level of threat can’t necessarily see an upcoming economic one that would signal total collapse. But things feel very bad indeed, and it seems that BAU is heading for some kind of wall, although it mightn’t mean ultimate collapse. In my area, it would mean that land development would be subject to some kind of reset. Development could take a more public-interest turn, driven by a reset of government. It could also be something worse, although if it’s worse the entire system has less of a chance…or it will take much longer to affect it positively. And it will increase the speed and inevitability of collapse.
As far as the energy/technology behind such a change goes, it would seem to be a time to emphatically not rock the boat. One cause of the systems disruption now ongoing might well be that the world is deluded into believing the story of progress. But it could well be that an emerging new cadre of TBTB see the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, and are planning (even if less than clearly) something different that keeps civilization alive. If you’re acting blindly in believing an impossible thing, as opposed to acting with foresight to save (for now at least) civilization, you will do very different things. The paradox is that the difference might well be not in what’s done, but how and why it’s done.
Acting because you are unaware of limits, and acting with awareness of them lead to different outcomes that are not necessarily about changing energy/technologic activity, for if you change those, you increase unmanageable complexity. That would rock the boat. TPTB which I imagine would not want to rock the boat. So anything that could be kept very quietly rolling along would be continued. No drama. No disorder. More common sense. (TPTB would operate like people trying to diffuse a megaton bomb.) This phase of transition would not be collapse but rather a micro bottleneck. Getting through this immediate “bottleneck” would be most of what concerns TPTB right now. If you can’t get through the bottleneck, you can’t stave off collapse. Banks would do what they’re doing now to maintain the money system longer. More ways to reconfigure BAU to last even longer would be enabled due to the previous can kicking. So you keep creeping ahead in small increments of can kicking and Leonardo stick substitutions… .
Umm, we’ve had the micromanagement phase to stave off immediate collapse. What do you think the last 10 years of unprecedented and ongoing central bank intervention has been about?
*rolls eyes*
All that and money velocity is still at historic lows.
You can’t buy a new house more frequently than every third year or so.
Indeed, it’s nearly ground to a complete halt. Yet the consensus amongst the deluded and intellectually challenged (i.e. 99.97% of the population), some of whom end up here on OFW, is that somehow the system can keep shuffling on for decades longer, simply because it has done so in the past.
The logic is astounding…
“Somehow the system can keep shuffling on for decades longer, ” – It is amazing that some believe we can keep BAU scooting along propping up 7B people for decades longer. Collectively, we have this belief that industrial civilization is a robust and time tested state of human existence. However, we are putting an undue amount of faith in hugely complex technology that is actually very young in terms of the age of humans. Technology that is completely untested in historical terms. And we bet our lives on it.
If 99.97% of the population are consensus amongst the deluded and intellectually challenged, that means only three people our of 10,000 are firing on all cognitive cylinders. While I don’t dispute the figure—it isn’t beyond the bounds of reasonable possibility—the implication is that the deluded and intellectually challenged are normal and there’s nothing the 0.03% can do to change it. Moreover, it’s possible that the vast majority of the deluded and intellectually challenged are unaware of their shortcomings and not amenable to reason. The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in that lot. So the odds are high that anyone who thinks they are smarter than the 99.97% is actually nowhere near as smart as they think they are.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cbef69e201bb08663000970d-pi
Sounds about right….
I am posting this again, to show what was happening exactly ONE MONTH after Lehman failed (next time CBs won’t be there to “unfreeze” the system):
Bloomberg.com: Worldwide Ship Rates Plunge as Credit Freeze Strands Cargo, Demand Slumps Oct 15, 2008 (Bloomberg) —
Commodity shipping rates plunged to the lowest in more than five years as a lack of trade finance left cargoes stranded and the global economic slowdown limited raw material demand.
Traders are finding it harder to get letters of credit that guarantee payments for goods, shipping executives said. Together with a slowdown in trade, that has contributed to this year’s 82 percent drop in shipping costs for grain, coal and other commodities. Rates are so low that Zodiac Maritime Agencies Ltd., the line managed by Israel’s billionaire Ofer family, announced today it may idle 20 of its largest ships.
“Letters of credit and the credit lines for trade currently are frozen,” Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping Pcl, Thailand’s second-largest shipping company, said in Singapore yesterday. “Nothing is moving because the trader doesn’t want to take the risk of putting cargo on the boat and finding that nobody can pay.”
The Baltic Dry Index fell 11 percent today to 1,615, the lowest since February 2003. Rates for larger ships of the type Zodiac intends to idle fell 17 percent today, taking this year’s plunge to 85 percent, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange.
Banks are leery of financing commodities and shipping transactions. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s second-largest aluminum producer, may delay the planned sale of $10 billion of assets and Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd. shelved its $2.6 billion purchase of Asarco LLC. Ship owners can’t find cash to finance the construction of new ships.
Oil, Metals
Crude oil, industrial metals and grains have all slumped since reaching records in July on concern the worst financial crisis since the 1930s will cause a global recession. The Standard & Poor’s Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has dropped 45 percent from its all-time high of 890.28 on July 3.
“Our customers are facing hard challenges,” Isabella Loh, chief executive officer of Shell Marine Products, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, said at a conference in Singapore today. “The credit crunch has affected liquidity and is having an impact on shipyards with cancellations and postponed orders, and expansion may be on hold.”
Precious Shipping took as long as 15 months to secure financing for the 18 vessels it has on order, Hashim said. American Shipping Co. ASA can’t get financing for two shuttle tankers that are part of its program to build 12 vessels. …
Yes, how soon the foolish forget. They’ve lived so long through the bubble that they think it’s normal.
Yep. Folks just gloss all that over like 2008 never happened. Like fast collapse is impossible and we have had all those warnings right there. An economic stroke to warn us that “hey this can all turn on a dime”. But, folks still don’t get it. It is unreal.
The mother of all bubbles is about to pop.
“Yet the consensus amongst the deluded and intellectually challenged (i.e. 99.97% of the population), some of whom end up here on OFW, is that somehow the system can keep shuffling on for decades longer, simply because it has done so in the past.”
Too sad that many of us lack your intellectual acumen. We’re not all equal in every way.
@ Greg:
“Collectively, we have this belief that industrial civilization is a robust and time tested state of human existence.”
I hope you’re not putting me in this category, but whatever.
” However, we are putting an undue amount of faith in hugely complex technology that is actually very young in terms of the age of humans.”
Yes, it’s very young, and people born on the fringe of it have a better sense of that than those born in its midst. People are projecting their own ignorance and inability to reason, onto me.
“Technology that is completely untested in historical terms. And we bet our lives on it.”
Yes. And there’s no alternative to it NOW, and it appears indispensable for any foreseeable future too. Which is why I said this: ‘(TPTB would operate like people trying to diffuse a megaton bomb.)’. Since you don’t want the machine to stop (blow up) you focus only on preventing that while keeping it running. You don’t have time to think of future generations in specific ways. If the machine blows up, there will be no future generations. And if there should be future generations (even under the best of scenarios), they won’t be following the current rules anyhow. That subject is moot, although the above posts make it clear that the posters don’t get this!!!!!)
“I hope you’re not putting me in this category, but whatever.” – No Art I am not. I just am stating what I think is obvious to most here. I speak in generality.
Too bad you seem to have misplaced your brains and are now substituting critical thinking with feels.
Artleads has always been like that….
Consolation to Artleads
There’s no need to take seriously insults from Psile
He only does it to annoy; it’s his conversation style
Anyone who doesn’t endorse his view of reality
Is sure to be subject to his guttersnipe vulgarity
He’s going to misinterpret any point you try to make
And try to ridicule any position you may take
That’s all you need to know, so don’t let him inside your head
‘Cause arguing with Psile is like administering medicine to the dead
https://s3.amazonaws.com/mno.products/22157/a37faa0796.jpg
“But things feel very bad indeed, and it seems that BAU is heading for some kind of wall,” – I too feel like we are heading for a wall or a cliff.
True. Still, as ‘worldof’ likes to point out, correctly, what is in fact pretty rapid in historical terms, may be quite prolonged in personal terms.
We only live a very brief while, which makes even a years survival highly desirable from the individual or family perspective.
Gibbon famously wrote ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’; ‘collapse’ was of course a term not used in describing such events in the 18th century, but we might do as well to think about the word Fall in the North American usage:
Not every deciduous tree loses its leaves all at once in the Fall.
‘Collapse’ would be the final felling and rooting up of the stump in a clear-cutting, leaving the mountains bare as far as you can see, and the whole ecology of the area destroyed never to return……..
Quite true Xabier, but I think for the collective it’s a different story. I guess as I was falling asleep last night, I pondered, though not quite at the level of realization, yes, collapse must be sudden and swift. Why? Well, I think it’s a psychological thing. The collective will will eventually see that the gig is up. A partial recovery then, or recovery of any sort would be impossible. The collective will eventually figure out there is no future. Not enough energy left for one.
That said, in the interim, things can still get pretty bad, I’m afraid, a sort of “faux collapse”, if you will. How long will the collective psychology be fooled into thinking there is a solution? If, for example, FE really wants to keep BAU running as long as possible he should start pushing hopium!
That seems a bit over-the-edge.
Numerous authors have defined “collapse” in less drastic terms, and numerous posters in this commentary have described it in more drastic terms.
I like Dmitry Orlov’s five-stage definition. He describes how certain functions of civilization can collapse, while leaving other parts largely functional. That rings true with writers like Jared Diamond, who used Montana as his example of a “collapsed” state, and Joseph Tainter, who noted that when civilizations collapse, “less civilized” humans (actually humans with less complex relationships) come in to take up the slack. (In fact, Tainter claims that civilization is an anomalous state, unusual throughout history.)
The Soviet Union collapsed. It did not destroy the “whole ecology, never to return.” That was an Orlov-3 (out of five) event.
Just playing with images,Jan, over morning coffee before facing some wood splitting!
Still, think of what the early Mesopotamian civilisations did to their ecosystems: only fit for skinny goats now, skipping around the huge mounds which once were cities, where once there were forests and rich soil…..
Not in all cases, of course. When the Roman town and river-port here collapsed, the surrounding land carried on as agriculturally productive. Curiously, the ‘industrial’ part, with lots of forges, disappeared forever, only just rediscovered by developers.
I think it was David Holmgren who said, “Civilization is preceded by forests and followed by desert.” Can’t find that in my database of ~8,000 quotes.
Then, of course, there’s Catton: “Nature must, in the not too distant future, institute bankruptcy proceedings against industrial civilization.” But we’ve been kicking that can down the road for nearly 40 years since he warned us.
I still think human civilization will go down with a whimper, not with a bang.
That notion is deeply disturbing to the human exceptionalists, though, who all think either 1) civilization will go on forever, getting better and better, or 2) civilization will crash utterly and completely, taking everything we hold dear with it. (I’ll bet those behind both Door Number One and Door Number Two are pretty upset at being lumped in with the other!)
Generally speaking, the truth usually lies between the extremes.
That infers BAU Lite — which anyone with any sense knows — is impossible.
Wanting it to be — does not make it so
Jan, here’s one for the quote database. As a farmer, you should appreciate this.
http://i.quoteaddicts.com/media/q1/928486.png
Although I like Tom Waits, he implies that humans are not part of nature, which I disagree with.
You might as well say that bees keep sipping nectar, but nature keeps coming back.
Although I like Tom Waits, he implies that humans are not part of nature, which I disagree with.
Actually, that’s your implication. I’m not sure it’s Tom’s. Although it all depends on how you define “nature”. The word is used in several ways.
He could be referring to life on the farm: we pick the weeds and clear the scrub and perhaps you poison the rats and shoot the crows. But they always come roaring back again. The farmer needs to work in opposition to some natural forces and in cooperation with others in order to grow crops or raise livestock. While the farmer is doing this, it is absolutely irrelevant whether said farmer is musing about wether or not “humans are part of nature”, or whether they consider they are doing God’s work by exercising dominion over nature or the consider themselves as a part of nature doing something totally natural in farming, or as being one with the plough, the field and the fertilizer while farming in a state of Zen-like meditation. They are just thoughts passing through the farmer’s mind. They don’t matter.
Or more generally, we build houses, roads, ditches and other infrastructure, but natural forces work tirelessly if intermittently to break them down.
Or he might be referring to character: we can overpower a person’s true character with by harsh discipline, but it always reasserts itself in time.
That’s the beauty of poetry and proverbial wisdom. It lends itself to various interpretations.
The soviet union did NOT collapse. They still had petrol – coal – electricity — food.
The collapse we are talking about here is one that involves the end of energy — other than that obtained from burning wood (and foam cushions .. and tables and chairs)
Remains Of Ancient Race Of Job Creators Found In Rust Belt
http://www.theonion.com/article/remains-of-ancient-race-of-job-creators-found-in-r-26490
Some of the best stories are in “The Onion!”
New Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’. Report demands massive expansion of military-industrial complex to maintain global ‘access to resources.
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1358
&
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/pentagon-study-declares-american-empire-is-collapsing-746754cdaebf
Funny. I’ve been saying this would happen for the past two years.
We have choked the workers and businesses to death give us more money. Talk about wishful thinking.
Like Rome…..
A few simple questions on regards to growth.
What has been the growth in processor speed since the apollo 360/60 computers? If the same processor costs 1/1000 the 360/60 is that economic growth? By mass, the 360/60 would take a 6 car garage and 3 phase power. If it now sits on my desk, is that growth?
Is it necessary to send a man to the moon to get the same information? If the same information comes back via robot/remote or more information, is that growth?
If almost any book is available instantly on line, what is the energy difference between that and countless libraries? If more information is available at less economic throughput, is that growth?
What is the energy difference between a purchase on Amazon and Macy’s including all transportation costs. Is that gain growth?
Is moving more mass through the system growth?
Is moving more information growth?
If I moved into the Matrix with say 10% of the energy cost, what would be the difference between that and say walking in the forest. If I don’t walk in the forest, does it really exist for me?
If Gail’s over reaching power really exists, does he/she/it need a car for growth? How then does one measure economic growth?
Many of the discussions here are backward looking and denying forward possibilities.
To date, betting on human demise has been a very bad bet as even if the bet is correct, BAU seems to be able to go on for longer than most people can live. Betting against America has not been a good bet to date. Betting against life in general has not been a good bet.
FE’s friends have their Gulfstreams, they made a good bet, a good boat. Others are building cement boats.
Some of you have been in the Caribbean. Have you noticed the old, stone buildings with what look like slits for guns, etc? Pirates did not sail around alone, they had a crew and a wooden boat. Remote islands did not always welcome strangers; but life went on.
So, is it possible we can have some new ideas? I have read these ideas for forty years, to date, the pessimists have not been right. It is starting to sound like “Waiting for Godot.”
Dennis L.
Very good comment. The instadoomers are stuck in the classical economics theory and believes that finance, growth and profitability is what makes the earth rotate. They won’t consider the possibility that people on all levels will actively do something e.g. post huge financial crash. Ofcourse there won’t be a nice and tidy consistent global trade system we have today. It will be ad hoc, whatever is needed, whatever works, it will be bartering between country X and Y, it will be resource wars between country Y and Z, it will be JIT BAU between Z and X.
You really are clueless.
CTG – you waste your time on these people.
I will post this again — and it will be ignored again
http://www.feasta.org/2012/06/17/trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-a-study-in-global-systemic-collapse/
Spot on.
I guess it is — if you are a DelusiSTANI….
One could have said that about all previous phases of civilisation – people who survived
(our direct ancestors) did do something, but that was only possible because lower structures survived which enabled them to act.
Example: the Western Roman Imperial network collapsed with the disappearance of higher level structures (towns and cities, maintained roads, shipping fleets, bureaucracy, banking networks, etc), beginning with the complete withdrawal from Britain, lasting longest in Italy, where barbarians did their best to prop it all up with the help of the olld Roman elite.
This led to the disappearance – more or less, and varying from region to region – of urban populations, and of the kind of job-role that could only exist in a complex system, eg architect, surveyor, chariot-maker, artillery specialist, long-range merchant, financier, brick and tile maker, mason, mass-producer of oil, armour, weapons, tiles, physician.etc.
Higher-level man disappeared, because he was structure-dependent and the collapsing higher structures took him down with them.
So, who survived (setting aside the influx of barbarian farmer-warriors)?
Rural people: farmers, fishermen, hunters, herders, smiths and woodmen. Why? They didn’t have to salvage anything, they didn’t have to build anything anew: the structure which had supported them under the Empire was simply untouched by Collapse (I ignore here the disruption caused by war, depopulation, soil-erosion , which was mostly ephemeral.)
Therefore, lower-level man survived. And that lower level happened to be the one which was fundamental to human existence and reproduction: the getting and storing of food; the making of shelter from cut wood, thatch, and piled stone; the gathering of fuel for heat and cooking; the making of leather from hides, clothing from wool, etc.
I can think of one cross-over category which bridged both levels,and which survived the collapse of the Empire: priest/holy man or woman. Something to ponder there: not least being that the holy people preserved -for their own very narrow irrational and fanatical purposes – literacy and all the arts associated with it ( which I inherited directly as a bookbinder, 1,600 years later in a direct -male – chain of teaching).
No similar strata essential to the maintenance of life which is not fully incorporated into the fossil-fuel/nuclear globalised economy exists today in any civilised region. In the 1920’s my grandmother was born into a mountain community which functioned much as it had done under the Romans, and even dress was still that of the 18th century: now that valley is more or less empty with abandoned villages. There is nothing to fall back on. ‘Industrial agriculture’ means something!
We are all – including farmers and herders – higher-structure creations, and will perish with the higher structures to the degree that they crumble, and at the same speed. Even our food animals have been bred to function within this system, the older adapted breeds dying out (maybe goats are an exception?) Draught animals have mostly gone and gene pools of those which survive are far too small, there is a lot of trouble in breeding from them.
Like any organism, our structures are our ecological system: destroy the structure, and you destroy the type of human which is supported and made viable by that structure. No will to survive can overcome that hard fact.
Interesting summary rant.
However, the bet against America has been essentially unwise bet against selected suitable host nation for global order of past 100+yrs. This role designation could change any time, and there are signals, it will be jettisoned as the proverbial used can of soda at the proper time, near-mid term, relatively speaking.
The Neocon’s wet-dream of a 1,000 year American Reich (a.k.a. The Project For A New American Century), kicked off by the successful dissolution of Yugoslavia, lasted all of 10 years, before it blew apart in 2008.
The rest is America dead man walking…going through the motions. Lying to itself, falling apart at an ever increasing rate. The sh#t show at the end should be a beaut to watch, if only for a brief while, before the signal fall silent. Better than any zombie apocalypse film.
https://uscrow.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/zombie-apocalypse-head.jpg
With all the hatred and resentment … the US will be one of the worst if not the worst place to be when BAU goes….
It comes down to this …
Growth = energy. We bumbled along barely growing using wood and muscle as our source of energy for millennia. So that is the best case fall back position if we adopt another system.
We cannot BAU Lite this because BAU is all or nothing — BAU is a system that requires eternal growth — think of what happens when recessions hit … imagine what would happen if growth was stopped permanently… we grow or we collapse — that is immutable.
Around the about the 1800’s we ran into a deforestation problem (peak wood)…. if we had not worked out how to harness the power of coal…. then we would have collapsed completely into a very primitive state… the industrial revolution would not have happened.
Essentially we have been kicking the can — innovating — harnessing new sources of energy every since… and using these new sources of energy to grow enough food to feed billions.
We are now in a similar position to those living in the 1800’s. Our primary source of energy has peaked – but with some huge differences.
We have no ‘coal’ option to turn to — we have run out of options. So we go back to trees — and manpower (slaves?)
We have wrecked the soils with petro chemical fertilizers
We have 7.5 billion people.
We have 4000 spent fuel ponds that need BAU — even if some do survive the monumental crash back into primitive living — they obviously won’t be able to maintain those installations.
Scene of ~2029 somewhere inside NA.
Rough general controlling post civil war half of one the big former member state of the federation. Should I provide fuel for allied brothers in neighboring loose union in ongoing skirmishes, should I command to keep the resources flowing towards NPPs spent fuel ponds before they cool down for moving them finally towards long term depository aka old deep mine shaft? Or should I feed those pesky refugees in the millions, many of them of no further work use.. ?
Decisions, decisions..
I spent many many hours looking for information and trying to understand the spent fuel pond issue…
I did not find anything indicating that that throwing the fuel into mine shafts or the ocean was a good option.
End of the day if they are not kept in these high tech ponds at computer regulated temperatures…the burn up and release massive amounts of toxins — that radiation will spread — regardless of where the fuel is dumped.
It will get into the water and air … and into the food chain….
There will be no way to manage the ponds post BAU. There will be no electricity — there will be no functioning computer systems — there not be a single engineer willing to man the fort.
There will be chaos. There will be starvation. There will be violence. There will be no government – no police…
‘They’ will be no more.
Should I provide fuel for allied brothers in neighboring loose union in ongoing skirmishes, should I command to keep the resources flowing towards NPPs spent fuel ponds before they cool down for moving them finally towards long term depository aka old deep mine shaft?
You really haven’t thought this through, have you? NA isn’t the world and post-BAU leaders are not necessarily going to act as convivially or as rationally as today’s G20 leaders do. Post collapse, you could be an illiterate sadistic strongman or a messianic religious cult leader who just doesn’t want to “get” it or who doesn’t believe in the dangers of radioactivity, in charge of a territory on which stand abandoned nuclear plants. On the one hand, you might not have sufficient resources to devote to those spent fuel ponds. And on the other hand, you might not care enough about the issue to bother addressing it. Or you might think its a good idea to use your air power to blow up a nuke plant in a rival’s territory.
If only 10% of the fuel ponds are allowed to dry out and start releasing into the atmosphere, that’s still 400 sources of radioactive contamination, quite enough to make Eddy’s scenario worth contemplating.
FE- how do we know your analysis is correct, when you are so wrong on other things?
http://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-Banker_Landscape-University-of-Sydney-384×253.jpg
because you cannot have economic growth without expending energy.
Our industrial complex was created by using energy locked in coal to make cheap iron—it really was, and is, that simple. It wasn’t human genius, of ‘technology’–an 18thc ironmaster was running out of trees, and needed to find a different way to make iron. (other than charcoal)
Access to iron and steel built our complexity of industry, and the entire edifice that supports in our current lifestyle
without heat released energy, primarily from oil coal and gas, it is not possible to make anything commercially useful.
Until around 1800, our global trading economy moved at the speed of hoof and sail, after 1800, steam engines began to power machines.
When we no longer have to power to make and drive those machines, then will will (not might) revert to the living environment that existed prior to 1800—or earlier. We will have no alternative available to us.
That is what Eddy means, and while we can have differing views on timing, –a few years either ways, soft or hard crash etc–the final outcome is certain. We will continue to burn fuel until there is none left, then begin the period of great denial (that it’s all a conspiracy)
Our machines put 7.5bn people on the planet–pre machines we had 1bn. You don’t need me to figure out that arithmetic for you.
Yea-
We turned fossil fuel into rapacious apes.
We figured that out quite a while ago.
Actually 700 Million in 1700.
Most of our existence we had 3-10 million at most.
i was counting 1bn c 1800—pre machines.
but who’se arguing about 300m either way
Because I used to believe in BAU Lite — I even bought property in a place that has extensive hydro electricity naively believing that when collapse came I would at least have electricity.
But then the facts dictated that I change my position. Korowicz’ Trade Off Paper was a key…
Since changing there have been no facts presented that would lead me to change my current position.
The BAU Liters certainly present no facts or logic — meanwhile I have the likes of CTG endlessly explaining in great detail why collapse will be fast — and comprehensive.
I also look at what happened in 2008. Global trade was stopped for a few days — because financial institutions were paralyzed by the death of Lehman.
I do not believe in perpetual economic motion machines so I know that at some point the financial system will collapse completely and permanently. And BAU will end.
The BAU Liters just say things like ‘some of the mines will still be operational’ No details of how that can happen — and when they do attempt an explanation they are torn to pieces because there is no supporting logic.
Go down to Twisel and do some fly fishing.
Just accept the groundless nature of things, and learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and death.
Survival is not necessary-
I am resigned to the fact that I will die prematurely … no problem with that… Que sera sera right?
It’s a bit chilly for fly fishing at the moment …. but come Sunday this will be me…
http://www.ilikeviajes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wanaka_new_zealand.jpg
you are confusing shifting electronic signals with shifting food and all the other physical stuff necessary to make the global economic system function smoothly.
they are not the same thing—though in confusing the two you are in good company
moores law does not apply to calorific values—if it did, I would not need 2000cal to keep me alive, i would only need 1 calorie–or something equally ridiculous. As it is, my necessary food intake has to be shipped to my plate.
it cannot be transmitted and printed. I cannot eat pictures of food
Giving me information about food, is not the same as eating food–information about making a car move is not the same as putting fuel in the tank—you still have a 2 ton block of metal to move from a to b no matter how fast your information is transmitted.
“When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money”
(maybe with the proper microbes?)
I like that quote!
I like lots of calories. More calories please.
The earth is a closed system, with limited resources needed to continue the human project. I challenge the author of this insane piece of denial to lock himself in a box with a million digibits and attempt to conjure up a ham sandwich.
They must have a app for that.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/03/06/jetsons_food_machine.jpg
Joke of the Day:
Doomster says to the Millennial: The world is going to end — you will starve.
Millennial says: No I won’t. I will just order food in with my Deliveroo app.
http://ragefaces.memesoftware.com/faces/large/happy-ba-dum-tss-l.png
Kaushik Basu’s glowing prediction that “in 50 years, the world economy is likely to be thriving, with global GDP growing by as much as 20 per cent per year, and income and consumption doubling every four years or so.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/long-term-global-economic-prospects-by-kaushik-basu-2017-06
Basu is the former chief economist of the World Bank, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of economics at Cornell University, so he is no flake in the economics department. But this does not prevent a display of alarming ignorance of both the power of exponential growth and the state of the ecosphere. Income and consumption doubling every four years? After just 20 years and five doublings, the economy would be larger by a factor of 32; in 50 years it will have multiplied more than 5000-fold! Basu must inhabit some infinite parallel universe?
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/07/17/Coming-Global-Collapse/
now THAT is magical thinking x10…
that quote is one of the most bizarre ones I have read in a long time…
Right up there with the quote about doomsday preppers using AI to plough the fields post BAU
Omg, someone gets paid to write this $#/t??
“Today, it is the Digital Revolution that promises to lift growth to new heights.”
Yes. Because the industrial revolution is what brought prosperity, not the energy that drove it! (Sarc)
Yeah, we will “grow” our way out of an energy crisis with digital 1s and 0s (more sarc)
I’m going to barf. 🤢
damn fast eddy your country going in decline
https://youtu.be/ngZn0OiWG_I
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/magazine/seed-vault-extinction-banks-arks-of-the-apocalypse.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur
Could you at least give us the title. Perhaps a relevant paragraph as well. Some of us quickly run through our allotment of articles at places like the NYTimes.
Humans? Humans : “preserve a natural order.” Not on your life. We are not the Earth’s caretakers. We could never be. It is the Earth that gives us life – not humans that give life to the Earth. Such an arrogant species.
James Burke considers the Fast Eddy challenge.
This is where the AI prepper community comes in. Yes, AI and solar for preppers. Yes, in the long run when the stock piled spare parts are all used it end but it is an extender that give you and your community the time to learn and adapt. The robots plow the fields. If it is cloudy they do are idle for the day but plowing is not a JIT activity.
and 100 year nuclear reactor if your community can afford it
“Extender” is a great way to put it.., e.g. there is a ton of second market EVs after ever bored have to try it people, that’s ~20yrs of longevity of the parts if you can replace the old batt pack with the right timing, before such stuff turns into unobtanium..
PS the latest gen of NPPs going online are rated at the minimum 60+ yrs for the reactor vessel, steam generator, the concrete dome etc. ; thanks chiefly to new alloys and seamless welding ; other bits are more problematic in longevity, like the turbine-generator, electronics, and the grid itself, ..
not sure about small reactors feasibility for “independent” communes, unless you are sort of gov-mil remnant in a large bunker, state of the art small reactors, usually around 80-200MWe don’t have such projected or real longevity at all, re-fueling is different etc.
I will believe it when I see it. LOL!
Mini prototype:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-IqfSlVJMoc/hqdefault.jpg
“Yes, AI and solar for preppers.” = MAGICAL THINKING
yes!
now THAT is magical thinking!
Cheers!
I heard Elon was launching a new business… custom solar and AI for Doomsday Preppers….
D amn it he stole my idea.
Don’t forget the robot farmers, robot sentries, robot metal workers, robot wood workers, robot doctors.
Why would a viable human society need AI to do farmwork? Are you projecting a severe labor shortage? Do you think automated tractors and solar panels are going to support a population of senior citizens all by themselves?
No farm work is unpleasant and hard.
I would have never crossed my mind that laziness would be a virtue to a prepper.
Woa, that’s a stretch!
I despise slaughtering and butchering chickens. But it just has to be done.
We’ve been picking hay. I stacked nearly five tonnes. It was hard. But it just has to be done.
If one is not willing to do anything “unpleasant and hard,” then one better prepare to quickly and pleasantly die.
I pity the doomsday preppers… spending their last months alive toiling away for nothing …
Such a sad, pathetic waste …..
I despise slaughtering and butchering chickens. But it just has to be done.
Don’t they have a machine for that these days?
!!!!!!!!
Our community formed a non-profit, raised $350,000, and bought one, because the government declared that farm-butchered meat was unsafe, and will no longer allow it. That was $350,000 that could have gone to hospitals or schools.
But it costs over $4 to process a bird there. I can do it for the few bits of metal filings that I lose when I sharpen my knife.
“I pity the doomsday preppers… spending their last months alive toiling away for nothing”
I have no doubt that Jan is doing what he loves, even though it’s hard. But I strongly agree that you should do only what you want to do and that it is not obligatory to do anything particularly “sensible” to extend one’s life post collapse. There is no point in that whatsoever.
He has mentioned that he is looking forward to ‘The Great Adventure’
He could get a head start on that by unplugging….
I wouldn’t go that far! I’d probably “love” binge-watching Netflix, or flying off to ski vacations, or writing a best-seller, or spending all day posting barbs at people in this comments section.
What I “love” about this life-style is not the hard work, or even in spite of hard work. It’s the knowing there is a bigger purpose than shallow hedonism. It’s filling your life with people who share your values. It’s being part of a community. It’s hard to have these things when you change locations every few years, because you’re afraid of what might happen to you where you are.
We’re in complete agreement!
And thank you for including what we’re trying to do among the ranks of the “sensible” options.
In fact, I’d go further and say that I don’t really want any “non-sensible” people around to mess things up. They all seem to be hoping and wishing for a quick death here — more power to ’em!
Okay, I get twelve more minutes of this. Then I have to go pick up three tonnes of hay and stack it. I don’t “love” that part of the job. But I “love” having healthy animals through the winter, and I “love” people to come and play with them and enjoy their milk and cheese.
Koombaya is a form of hedonism – if that’s your thing… I’ll take the ski trip though….
You are pulling our legs right?
Please tell us this is a joke. That you don’t really believe this…
https://beautifulbrutaltruth.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/cognitive-dissonance.jpg
Just a thought…
What is the opposite of Cognitive Dissonance?
i.e. When beliefs or assumptions are contradicted… instead of rejecting the facts and logic…. instead of getting upset….
One embraces the facts and logic — and rejects the earlier position — and dances a jig?
And pops a bottle of champagne — and mocks and ridicules others who get angry and dig their heals in….
Let’s call that Cognitive Anti-Dissonance
Shall we?
Cognitive resonance
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That rings a bell!
I truly believe that technology is a trap! Its the devil in disguise. Lures us in, we become reliant on it, it weakens us, then in the end, leaves us for dead.
Correct, but it’s not probable it will go away overnight when in such abundance, meaning both as working apparatus as well as residual value – scrap material.
As someone cleverly pointed out recently (was it Xabier?), even the sheer landscape of dystopian post industrial world, would ensure that there is enough scavenging material for sickles and plows at least for next hundreds of years. Not mentioning the books, which could be easily put on fire or decay as useless, but also stored as few important items in sort of neo-monasteries etc.
“As someone cleverly pointed out recently (was it Xabier?), even the sheer landscape of dystopian post industrial world, would ensure that there is enough scavenging material for sickles and plows at least for next hundreds of years. ” – That may be true but, I think there has to to a massive die off for a salvage/scavening type of existence to work. Then too, much of modern tools use energy of some sort (electricity, gas, diesel). If you want to scavenge the metal to reform it into tools, this assumes you know how to survive with hand tools. I think that is a might big assumption given the state of modern society.
One of the main reasons for deforestation in the middle ages was the use of wood in forges.
The thing is… we were always slowly moving forwards … skills were developed… things were organized….
Now we are going to be thrown back many thousands of years — and expect to be able to adapt in an instant.
That would be difficult enough but we will be forced to adapt surrounded by total chaos…sickness… disease… famine… radiation.
I simply don’t see that being possible — if it is then it will happen in places where it is already in place
The ‘savages’ will get the last laugh?
You have the answer in my first sentence, how long before every piece of legacy infrastructure and depot is not operational – usable? There will be still something in working order and people knowledgeable to use it as well as scrap around. The first will re-amplify the second, e.g. effort-energy of the workable put to reopen a mine..
Is it for 7.5B/1.5B pop at current standard, obviously no way..
nope—i’ll hit it again:
you cannot make anything without heat
you might scavenge an engine block—then what? Melt it down using charcoal?
Leave any metal open to the elements for 10 years—maybe less, and it is useless. In the middle ages, you had so of the finest metalworkers—dig up their products now and what have you got?
Norman — we have on display a total loss of touch with reality with some of the comments pouring onto FW…
There is no explaining to such people why what they are suggesting will be impossible.
If they cannot work it out on their own — something else is at play in their minds — something is stepping in to protect them from the despair that accepting reality would bring.
Mr Cognitive Dissonance is in between you — and them.
It’s ok World — you are not stewpid — you just cannot handle the truth….
https://beautifulbrutaltruth.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/cognitive-dissonance.jpg
World… and other BAU Liters… I suggest you click that image so you can read the full explanation of why you are unable to see what is so obvious to many of us on FW.
I doubt that it will open a window for you … but at least you will know that we know the source of what ails you.
For the 3rd time in this sub thread, before reacting pls read what I wrote first..
I clearly wrote about two subjects. First, it’s improbable that every (“heat generating”) infrastructure is going to vanish uniformly, everywhere. So, lets call it reorganization and refocus of these resource where it goes on to keep some mines open for example. Secondly, the scrap question is of secondary importance and meant long term.
Your allegory of ancient/middle ages metal working is not fitting here, the impurities of sourced material were pretty high, that’s why for a while Islamic/ME stuff was of higher and renown technological standard.
A stainless steel, zinc plated, or otherwise rust proof (paint) made material lasts decades at the minimum.
‘Keep some mines open’
The devil is in the detail…. can you explain how we would keep ‘some mines open’
Where would the electricity come from to power the pumps to keep them from flooding?
What about the spare parts for all the machinery involved?
And the diesel…
What would you use as an energy source to smelt and refine the ores into metal?
FW has gotten me thinking in terms of how technology and energy correlate. And I think they are more interrelated than I can figure out clearly just now.
If we’re considering what technology can do, we might be thinking of what the energy coefficient of technology could be. So it seems to be best to use (in some fashion) whatever technology exists already, for that minimizes the energy it would take to replace it. (Energy flow management might be considered a technology all by itself.) Keeping what exists, in terms of materials and the life style surrounding it–while not creating any more or anything new seems to be an efficient use of energy/technology.
i had a girlfriend like that once…
haha haven’t we all!
Particularly if you are part of the final generation .. when the power goes off… up until then it’s not too bad!
Greg-
Any tech that uses fossil energy to replace a skill is a trap in the big picture.
James Burke; such style! Quite nostalgic watching that.
Keeping the whole system going, just the way it is, without adding complexities (through novelty, etc) and unknowns seems like a promising approach to take.
Technology slaves aren’t we? Every “solution” has a flip side. The flip side of all our “solutions” will likely soon be known to all. Perhaps technology still has a good bit of room to run though? Maybe we will all be plugged into some virtual world using minimal resouces before it all gives out. Call it “The Great Unwinding”.
A carbontax to fix it all ….. sic!
https://www.carbonpricingleadership.org/report-of-the-highlevel-commission-on-carbon-prices/
Written version. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ff9c5ce4b0a53decccfb4c/t/5949402936e5d3af64b94bab/1497972781902/ENGLISH+EX+SUM+CarbonPricing.pdf
Sort of “How to collapse world economy,” without understanding what you are doing.
“How to collapse world economy,” without understanding what you are doing.
Bravo, bravo, oh that is so good. 🙂
Yes, let’s tax the very energy dense fluid used to keep BAU going, which will hasten collapse because EROEI is already at the point in which fancy fiscal footwork is needed to keep the economy floating.
A fast collapse is the only scenario. People can delude themselves that there will be a slow undulating reset but it can’t happen. The reason people are delusional is that they are completely convinced that money is wealth.
Money is not wealth. Money is also not a store of value if it cannot be converted to work. The only real stores of value are surpluses. Of which energy is key.
Many here I see have read Clugston’s Scarcity. It isn’t hard to comprehend why things will happen quickly from his text.
Essentially our Industrialized economy is a mining process. As a mine is depleted the energy to product ratio falls until eventually the value of the energy consumed is greater than the product produced. At the same time the EROI of our primary energy sources are limiting the supply and greatly increasing the cost of operations even without the effect of depletion.
When these to factors are combined the exponential effect is huge. It leads to fast crashes in the core commodities required to maintain the system.
Run up in debt serves to rebalance the system but it can only have short term benefits. Once the curtain is lifted it will become clear that every system is depleted beyond recovery. And once it stops it can not be restarted because the costs to restart is far higher then the cost to maintain BAU.
Clugston’s work has been criticized because it mixes together scarcity and the impact of high energy prices (which are very important in mining). Thus, Clugston (in at least some of his work) characterizes aluminum as scarce, when its real problem is “easily impacted by high energy prices.”
But there certainly are some products for which scarcity of sufficiently cheap-to-extract resources is a real problem. Energy products in particular are important. And when energy costs start rising, they somehow need to result in higher energy prices, or the energy system will collapse. This could easily lead to a collapse of the whole system.
Gail I agree that if you hammer down in a specific items there may seem to be a weakness. But that’s often how red herrings are thrown into conversations.
In aggregate looking at general trends what Scarcity presents is the overall direction in the commodity markets. Increased complexity has allowed the system to advance but much of it has been the result of innovative financial trickery.
So stressed areas of production are being subsidized by the surpluses in other industry.
Eventually the system hits a hard wall when the net productivity falls below surplus energy.
But that’s not the end phase..
Yep, and after the systems hits a hard wall, pieces of those specific stressed areas of production continue to be subsidize again by output in other industry (resources), now to the greater detriment of previous levels of frivolous consumption, waste, and complexity.
Simply, the salvageable minimum reconfigured soldiers on, e.g. selected and or viable pieces of MIC, energy and water infrastructure, etc. You are no longer paid in “money” but ration, protection for you and family, and so on..
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xzxwbQrBnC8/movieposter.jpg
https://68.media.tumblr.com/20f63cbd18dbd3ec71d8c2f404e665ea/tumblr_o50jeoGv3Z1rdfgw4o1_250.gif
Thank you JT for the excellent comment..it has been depressing and annoying how the slow-collapsers have over taken the comment section of OFW lately (take out FE and not a lot of fast-collapser comments anymore…and it is depressing not because the premise of slow collapse…if anything the premise is what all of us (most of us anyway) would love to see…it’s the delusion of thinking this baby can take decades to unwind when clearly that is physically an impossibility…
“The truth is hard. Living without it is harder”
-Unknown
Individualism, industrialism and mass consumerism have held sway for such a long time
that a smooth regression is hard to imagine. ( Friedrichs 2010)
oh, I disagree,
I have an expansive imagination, and it’s easy to imagine a century long regression.
That is called magical thinking. And it is human nature to engage in magical thinking when faced with any existential crisis.
it’s magical thinking to imagine that the world economy has peaked and will decline for the rest of this century?
don’t you think most persons would call that pessimism?
I personally don’t feel threatened by the end of progress and the decline of IC.
what will be, will be.
but perhaps some persons embrace Fast Collapse to give themselves a sense of importance that they are living in a most special time.
I don’t know.
Do some persons want there to be existential crises?
‘but perhaps some persons embrace Fast Collapse to give themselves a sense of importance that they are living in a most special time’
Another DelusiSTANI Hall of Fame comment.
You seem to have not noticed that those with common sense who understand that collapse – WHEN IT ARRIVES — will be fast….
Prefer that that day arrives not now — not next month — not next year — but ideally as far out as possible.
Because we know what it means — it does not mean a Great Adventure — it does not mean Robot Farming — it means we suffer — and we die.
You need your head examined if you think we have reached these conclusions because it makes us feel important
The facts the logic and common sense dictate this position — all things slow collapsers are bereft of….
But that is because they are slow.
Oh, I think it is much simpler than that.
They are, after all, simple creatures. Poke them one place, they predictably move a certain way. Poke them another place, and they predictably move a different way. They are narcissists who don’t really care about “special times.” They are people who parachuted into third-world countries and used passive investment income to pay poor brown people to grow food for them. With that as their only model, of course they think the sky is falling! After all, if a narcissist can’t do something, of course no one else could do it, either!
‘passive investment income’ 🙂
I don’t have any passive investment income — I hunt and kill everything I eat.
Any further thoughts on the dozens of Japanese spent fuel ponds…. any plan of action in place yet?
Magical “thinking” is really just regurgitation of a meme. Most have no clue as to how close we are.
“The solution, short-term as it may be at least according to Goldman, is that oil prices “need to stay lower for longer.” That however is a non-starter with Saudi Arabia, which for obvious reasons, is rushing to IPO Aramco before math and physics finally declare victory over cartel-controlled supply, and oil prices crash. It remains to be seen if it is successful.”
Math and physics. Lol.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-17/us-shale-production-just-hit-new-all-time-high
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k7HcXJdYg4g/maxresdefault.jpg
Imagine there are no countries while you are at it… and no war….
Imagine what it would be like to have common sense…. to think logically … to understand what a fact is
Here’s what I imagine ..
I imagine that Gail starts a second web site — FWThecore.com … this is by invite only – with registration …. so that DelusiSTANIS get their heads bashed in at the door.
We need a balance. New people need to be able to join as well.
Two tiers… FW … and FW The Show.
If a new person demonstrates an understanding of the articles – and uses facts and logic — and displays common sense on FW…. they get promoted to The Show…
ITEOTWAWKI “… it has been depressing and annoying how the slow-collapsers have over taken the comment section of OFW lately…”
really? why?
aren’t you up to a challenge?
tell me what you see and I’ll tell you what I see.
smaller peripheral countries have been “collapsing” for the past decade.
Greece, Iraq, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Libya, now Venezuela.
THEN they recover partially.
yes, it is the beginning of the end.
but why can’t this pattern continue for decades?
oh, that’s right, it could.
hey, The Collapse hasn’t happened yet today!
Cheers!
Please refer to Greg’s answer below! Cheers!
please refer to my response to Greg’s answer below!
Cheers!
only Greece and Venezuela have not been war zones. they have been/are being manipulated/punished by the global monetary system, i.e., not rescued. You might add Afghanistan to your list, another war zone.
the key phrase is: “slowly at first, then all at once.”
that could be exactly right:
slowly for decades, then The Collapse all at once.
but no Collapse today!
cheers!
One might argue that we have been in slow collapse for some decades already —- the CBs have been drip feeding the stimulus to offset …. then in the first couple of years of the century cost of producing oil lifted off putting us into a long emergency with more draconian offsetting policies being rolled out….
But at some point the policies are left wanting — and as has been pointed out before — the bulkheads fill — and the ship goes down…..
“One might argue that we have been in slow collapse for some decades already”
Exactly my thoughts FE…..I wonder how long the global economy would have lasted if not for:
1971: Dropping of the Gold Standard by Nixon, decoupling the US Dollar from the shackles of gold, thus being able to counter their slowing economy related to their peak oil
Late 70s and into the 80s-90s: Neo-Liberal economics epitomized by Reaganomics and Thatcherism, deregulating everything, thus giving another thrust to the Global Economy, exporting jobs from the First World to the the Developing world and thus keeping the consumers able to afford goods with the lowering cost, and enabling companies to grow their earnings.
2001: China getting into the Global Economy game by joining the WTO and developing like crazy to catch up 100 years of development in the First World in one decade
2001-2006: Greenspan dropping rates spurring the building of McMansions all over the USA giving mortgages to anyone with a heartbeat thus growing the US economy and by extension the world economy
2008-Now: Global Economy kept on life support by the printing of billions of dollars enabling growth but with the result of debt going exponential
2017-2020? No more ammo…Financial System fails…with our Operating System gone, Global collapse everywhere in a matter of months…grids down everywhere…unimaginable horror everywhere…
If you were standing astern on the deck of the Titanic, you would have gotten higher and higher right up until the final plunge.
http://www.titanicology.com/Titanica/TrimAngleVsTimeAnimate.gif
That’s where the 1% is currently sitting … enjoying glasses of Dom…
Up to the challenge?
The thing is …. there is no challenge.
What point is there to argue with stewpidity?
Would you argue with someone who insisted 1+1=7?
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-to-argue-with-a-person-who-has-renounced-the-use-of-reason-is-like-administering-medicine-to-the-thomas-paine-285410.jpg
I wonder if the response to these fools is this … would we drive them off?
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-to-argue-with-a-person-who-has-renounced-the-use-of-reason-is-like-administering-medicine-to-the-thomas-paine-285410.jpg
Sorry, wrong point, most of the “slower descent” persuasion people here are not talking about money at all in this respect. Rather about re-prioritization of ownership and distribution of resources, ways of governing and organizing “vertical” vs the old model etc..
Just a few months ago, many have been laughing at me for referencing so much natgas related stuff. And now they think they are spear heading some novelty, when even the Gulfies must start openly discuss in msm their midterm future as more or less natgas only..
Simply, if you economy is over dependent on ~2ton gas guzzlers, though luck, bad choice, bad karma, that’s the end of the frivolous spending, although there might be some mitigation in altering at least some of the core fleet into natgas (gov+mil+ration distribution), but it won’t be available for public in the ways of the past..
If we ignore you and the rest of the clowns who have no common sense… the site will be taken over by absolute MOREons…
And since you do not have the intelligence to absorb logic…. even when it is fed to you with a baby spoon….
You get this
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-to-argue-with-a-person-who-has-renounced-the-use-of-reason-is-like-administering-medicine-to-the-thomas-paine-285410.jpg
JT “A fast collapse is the only scenario.”
really?
There is a Slow Collapse scenario, so both should be considered.
Now, what Reality unfolds is a different story.
Since the key is energy, and energy resources will be declining slowly, I could just as easily say A Slow Collapse Is The Only Scenario.
see, just words,
but The Collapse didn’t happen yesterday!
And today is looking good too!
Cheers!
Yep, what they don’t comprehend is that there is enough legacy infrastructure and energy to serve warm meal at least once per week in affluent countries, in between much poorer daily dishes. They can’t grasp that more or less empty highways (reduced to one functioning HOV/GOV-MIL lane) and grounded airliners, doesn’t equal the end of the world or human race..
don’t know if i can define slow and fast collapse, but i’ll try
you’re a syrian farmer
your government is inept and corrupt
your national oil industry has finally dried up
…then you get a 4 year drought (slow collapse for your viewpoint) which gives you the choice of starvation or move
so you move to the city, where a different breed of godbotherers happen to live…they don’t like you.
competition for living space, jobs and food exacerbates the problem
fighting breaks out–in no time at all your government drops a barrel bomb through your roof—that’s fast collapse—your family is dead, you have no means of support, you have no way of getting back to what you think of as normality.
To millions of your countrymen, that’s your problem, not theirs. They go about their normal business.
As long as that happens to a minority (even if it’s 000s), then life can maintain an outward composure of normality. But as time progresses and difficulties worsen then collapse hits more and more people at a faster and faster rate. It can be held up for a while , but not indefinetly.
The way you will be hit will depend on the resilience of the society you live in.
But
Magnify my comments about Syria, and blanket them over the USA. They carry the same relevance.
The 44m US citizens on food aid doesn’t seem to concern those in power very much, indeed, there are moves afoot to cut it.
Why are they on food aid? Because the resources that used to keep employment humming are no longer there. If all the goods now made in China were made in USA, they would cost 4x as much, and therefore be unaffordable. US workers can’t work for 4x less, because food costs wouldn’t drop pro rata. So they are trapped by SNAP.
so this brings on the slow/fast crash—if you are on SNAP—you are crashing slowly, with no future prospects. The Don isn’t going to make the robots redundant and re-employ car workers in Detroit.
As the economy continues its downslide, desperation will kick in and civil disorder will become inevitable—just as it did in Syria.
The motivation is exactly the same.
Governments are helpless in the face of climate change and energy depletion, they can only promise future abundance. When it doesn’t arrive, civil disorder (fast collapse) is certain. As is government reaction to it—(as Syria)
This is why i wrote this piece on the impending tyranny prior to total collapse.:
https://extranewsfeed.com/from-oilslick-to-tyranny-e35d04b31fc3
Fast crash is when the centre fails to hold….
It’s the point just after the bankers start to feel like Joe Sixpack does when he gets laid off — knowing there is pretty much no prospect of ever finding work again.
I have mentioned previously that a friend’s daughter teaches at a private school in the US — when Lehman went many kids arrived in tears because their parents were distraught
The parents probably told them that they might have to go to school with non-special children or something… or that they might have to buy clothes in Kmart….
That was a whiff of what collapse looks like… when the core is afraid… the reaper is close…
Fortunately the reaper was shoved away from the core….
He’ll be back…
https://img.cinemablend.com/quill/8/6/7/2/c/8/8672c80e794e9206219f2c5ba9f4fa042e7d5dd2.jpg
“since energy resources will be declining slowly” –this is the huge misunderstanding.
Energy resources decline for a lot of reasons–
Bankruptcy of companies producing oil collapse–once it becomes impossible to get bank bailouts
Governments of oil exporters collapse, similar to the path Venezuela is on
The amount of money workers have to spend on energy products falls too low–because they owe too much on student loans and the cost of healthcare coverage is too high. Also, too many would be workers are in school endlessly.
Intermittent electricity becomes too disruptive to the electric grid
There have been a lot of “peak oil” people “pushing” a particular scenario–oil consumption falls slowly, based on prior “decline rates.” This is a scenario, but it is not the right scenario. Past history is based on prices remaining high enough to make infill drilling and the use of more advanced extraction techniques profitable. With low oil price (and low prices for other energy products), these can’t happen. Low oil price come about because of low “demand” for goods and services using oil, and this comes about because of too little spending power of the 90%–not the elite workers, who always have enough. Young people are not buying “enough” homes and cars today, and going on enough international vacations.
okay, fair enough, I am assuming slow decline in energy resources.
I am also assuming slow increases in energy prices,
which means the average person will have less to spend on other goods and services,
which means a long slow economic decline.
but predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
Actually, energy prices may not increase at all. They may go down. That is the problem. Or if they spike, they won’t spike high enough, for long enough to make a difference.
yes.
though I’ve read that CAPEX in the USA oil industry has dropped severely in 2017 and there are accompanying predictions of higher prices by later in 2018 into 2019.
who knows?
I just do not understand this “long slow economic decline” scenario. I could believe it could be possible to have a “long slow economic decline” IF we had something to fall back on like family farms powered by manual labor and draft animals. However, we do not. We have most people living in dense cities, eating food from grocery stores (or fast food chains). We live in a virtual world full of magical thinking In reality, industrial civilization lasts until either the financial system breaks down or we reach resource limits (likely both in very short order).
Right now oil is priced nearly too cheap to be profitably extracted? Other commodities such as coal, copper, lead, aluminium, iron, silver are also becoming unprofitable to extract? As these resources continue to deflate (what you are misinterpreting as a slow collapse) we will quickly reach a point where mass bankruptcies of extractive industry take place. We are nearly there RIGHT NOW. Once the bankruptcies start in earnest the inputs to our system STOP. It is game over. This can also happen if faith is lost in the financial system.
It is magical thinking to assume our modern complex society can function very long without inputs. Our modern world is 100% virtual it is made real by massive inputs of energy and resources. When the inputs stop, reality will bite. The natural world is reality. How long could a modern human live without grocery stores, medical care, homes, heating, air conditioning, transportation? Those things will be lost very quickly once inputs stop.
there have been many dozens probably hundreds of bankruptcies in the USA shale oil industry in the past couple of years.
guess what?
that doesn’t bring an instant halt to the industry.
IF prices don’t rise enough, there will be many more bankruptcies in the coming decades.
which confirms my point.
energy resources will decline slowly, whether by bankruptcy or depletion or war etc.
now a MOABS – Mother Of All Black Swans – that might bring an instant halt to IC.
but that’s a very different topic than resources that are slowly depleting.
Cheers!
Collapse of the financial system would put an end to oil production … really quickly
But not to worry — QE is a perpetual prosperity machine — as long as the CBs don’t stop — this can go on for all eternity….
The auto industry sales can drop to zero — the CBs can just print MOAR money — and hand it to the industry — they can use that to pay their workers to do nothing — the workers can use that cash to go buy more stuff —- and round round we go forever and ever…..
They just don’t read our entries here or what..
“..Financial systems, extractive industries going bankrupt, student loans debt..”
Well, again it just doesn’t matter on the other side, when the system flips into the different mode, equilibrium and structure, specifically those concerns no longer apply at least as perceived in our current sense. If there is marginal utility for the resource to be utilized by fixing what ever scheme of one energy source reshuffle the other for a moment, it’s mandated by the brutal power of the pursuit of lesser starvation (for selected minority in power) in openly authoritarian gov model. For instance, still operational hydro-dam’s output is rerouted for a smelter (needed for MIL or AGRO or both), the former clients are simply dumped (triaged away).. The external-foreign trade of comparatively much lower throughput is done or more barter like conditions and so on.
‘Slow’ collapsers
‘Slow’ as in slow to learn …. thick… like a brick…. unable to comprehend simple concepts…
All this time I was thinking you guys were talking about collapse being slow…..
I get it now!
Damn I am so slow… how embarrassing!
Thank you Greg!
“there have been many dozens probably hundreds of bankruptcies in the USA shale oil industry in the past couple of years. guess what? that doesn’t bring an instant halt to the industry..” – Not until a critical mass is reached. Just like flood waters breaching a dam, one bankruptcy, one financial crash, one will be the straw that breaks the camels back. The whole virtual reality show will unravel quickly. Why quickly? Because our world is all virtual (powered by massive consumption of energy and resources). Our world is built on layers of interdependency of virtual products and services, none of which exists in the natural world. There is no safety net, nothing to fall back on. So, how do you have a slow collapse with nothing to fall back on? We must continue to consume massive amounts of inputs just to stay even.
@humantog
“They just don’t read our entries here or what..”
HiLARIOUS!! You’ve hit the nail on your head!
No one with any sense bothers with your goobledygook. That’s been the case for a long time. That’s why you get so few responses except for slowies desperately seeking moral support.
Why can’t people understand this? It is about as easy as working out 1+1….
This illustrates the problem with the “fast crash” crowd: they lack the imagination to see anything but their own reflection.
Most of the people I encounter on a daily basis could live without grocery stores. Would it be as easy as living with grocery stores? Absolutely not! But it could be done.
Most of the people I know would do fairly well without medical care. Could their lifespan be less, due to some misfortune? Of course! But they would not die tomorrow if “the crash” happens tomorrow.
Why would people suddenly have to do without homes? I thought we were talking about a financial crash, here? Are houses suddenly going to go up in a puff of smoke when the financial system crashes? Are the banks going to build up a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, rather than “reset” and take what people can pay? Why assume someone will take your home if everything is crashed? This seems wildly inconsistent.
Most of the people I know heat with wood. Yes, we do use a chain saw for our wood harvest. We could use bow saws and buck saws, of which we have quite a few. But we don’t for now, while staying prepared for the necessity.
Air conditioning? What’s that? Is that like jumping in the reservoir on a hot day? I haven’t had air conditioning for 30 years, and then, it was just in the workplace. Since the “fast crashers” also seem to be climate change deniers, I’m not willing to hear them say it’s gonna get hotter!
Most of the people I know have 200 litres or more of biodiesel stashed away. At my current rate of fuel consumption, that would last me a year, during which I would have made some more.
Perhaps the qualifier “modern human” was intended to exclude such outliers. Very well, then. Just admit that all “modern humans” will be in deep trouble, and those who have prepared will be, let’s say, less comfortable than they are now.
Talk talk talk talk … that’s all you do Jan.
And clatter way on your computer on FW telling us how you are a tough guy.
Turn off the power — stop using the tractor — and other power tools — and walk the f789ing walk.
Start the Great Adventure now…
Otherwise piss off — because you are not a tough guy at all — you are a coward.
And when the power does go off you won’t have a clue what to do — because you have only farmed with BAU assistance.
You will be cowering in the corner — in the dark — thinking what the christ have I got myself into.
Unplug Jan. Come Grizzly Adams — show us how awesome you are…
Not to mention ZIRP and NIRP
Travel in our security state is a nightmare. Not conducive to more international vacations, I’d think. Cars and mainstream housing development are extraordinarily destructive. They might help on part of the economy and destroy others with more resiliency potential. The how of development is important too, not just the what.
Great explanation, JT!
Here’s Mr. Clugston in his own words.
https://youtu.be/-mwTtTAxoZk
i have one question to ofw readers
how did iceland survive after two of biggest banks collapsed and one got nationalized
in 2008 financial crisis
81% of Icelands energy comes from GeoThermal and Hydro.
They have little need for imports.
so do you think iceland has chance of survive of next financial crisis
Is it a trick Q: ?
Iceland will likely survive the next fin crisis as many others, but understandably some/many things, especially on the frivolous spending and elevated living standard will have to disappear. In some segments the phase out would be shocking, almost over night, while some infrastructure might have legs into the mid term, meanwhile people get to reorganize to face world of less..
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-to-argue-with-a-person-who-has-renounced-the-use-of-reason-is-like-administering-medicine-to-the-thomas-paine-285410.jpg
People on Iceland and in other Nordic countries probably have the best chance of survival for the coming storms. More or less self sufficient in food, water, energy between them. Relatively homogenous population (especially Iceland!), low crime rate, few guns, high equality. Makes sharing a smaller pie easier.
Energy? What energy?
Oh silly me – geothermal right?
Let’s see what that looks like:
Geothermal?
We make very good use of that in Japan.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZCdTP4cPQsM/Vbn1dv5Wb2I/AAAAAAAABjI/AYBuBHFfLMQ/s640/serunya-lihat-monyet-salju-jepang-mandi-air-panas-zVNUbmoqJe.jpg
Humans don’t bath in the hot springs where the monkeys bath, because the monkeys are not fools. They shit in the springs, making them off-limits to humans since no one wants to bathe with monkey shit water.
Speaking of showers… and bathes…
Water pump broke this morning out here on the coast… no plumber till Monday… I’ve got two more days here before heading south….
I suppose I can wander into the bush — find a stream — and haul a couple of buckets back….
At least the electricity is still on … and I have a functional fire…. so it’s not a huge Challenge… but still… a whiff of the future….
A lot of my relatives came from Norway. They could see that there were not enough resources to go around back in the years shortly after 1900, so that they came to the US.
There had earlier been die-offs in Norway. Epidemics brought the population down too far. At one time, people from Germany were brought in, to make up for the missing people (businesses people, as I recall being told).
+fisheries
“Iceland is primarily a food-producing country. The land itself is, in many respects, untouched by modern civilization, and the level of pollution is relatively low. These are unique conditions for producing wholesome and unpolluted agricultural products. Iceland is self-sufficient in the production of meat, dairy products, eggs and to a large extent also in the production of most vegetables.
Icelandic farmers employ the latest agricultural technology and output is subject to constant and strict quality control. Icelandic agriculture is primarily based on livestock farming, often a mixture of cattle and sheep.
Specialization has, however, increased significantly in recent years. A number of farmers focus on vegetable or greenhouse production. An increasing number of farmers have adopted organic techniques.”
So, they can feed ~some people what ever (reasonably) comes against to them.
Obviously, without fuel/tech leverage it will be a fraction of the pop and little or no export/import.
Iceland
Iceland has undergone extensive deforestation since Scandinavians settled in the ninth century. At the time of human settlement about 1140 years ago, birch forest and woodland covered ‘at least 25%’ of Iceland’s land area.
The settlers began by cutting down the forests and burning scrubland to create fields and grazing land. Deforestation did not end in Iceland until the middle of the 20th century. Afforestation and revegetation has restored small areas of land.[40]
However, pastoralism was the main reason birch forest and woodland did not grow back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_by_region#Europe
I wonder what they will do about heat… and cooking….
https://www.nordicvisitor.com/images/iceland/winter/winter-selfdrive-iceland.jpg
And then there is the nuclear pond sandwich:
http://maptd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/global-earthquake-activity-vs-nuclear-power-plant-locations.jpg
Jan – maybe you can fill them in on your plans for what to do about all that radiation
I know — just … imagine!
Imagine there’s no radiation
It’s easy if you try
No cesium below us
Above us only non-toxic sky
Imagine all the people not dying from radiation poisoning
Imagine there’s no spent fuel ponds
It isn’t hard to do
You may say I’m a MOREon
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us DelusiSTANIS
And the world will be as one
Iceland is one of the most deforested countries in Europe.
At the time of settlement (9th century) an estimated quarter of the country was covered by birch woodlands, whereas today forests only cover a little over 1%.
The forests were felled for timber, cleared for agriculture by burning and grazed by domestic animals brought by the settlers. Together with the harsh climate, volcanic activity and vulnerable soil formation, this forest clearance led to massive forest destruction and subsequent soil erosion. The necessity of engaging in some sort of remedial actions has long been known, but organised forestry as such only began around the turn of the 20th century. Early on much of the focus was on conserving the existing forest remnants, but since about 1950, the emphasis has been on afforestation through planting trees.
An article from the Iceland Forest Service contains a good overview of forests and forestry in Iceland – available here (pdf).
http://www.skog.is/forest/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=38
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-really-worry-about-these-political-people-that-have-no-personal-life-if-there-s-nothing-arundhati-roy-42-56-50.jpg
I think that they still need oil to operate their machinery. I also expect that they also import a lot of finished goods (replacement parts to keep the geothermal plants operating, for example, and and parts for the electricity transmission system). There is embedded energy in all of the imported goods. I doubt that the current population of Iceland could continue to function without imported oil plus imported goods. Iceland doesn’t have the factories to make a lot of goods they use, I expect.
I notice that one Google search item is titled, “Iceland is the world’s largest energy consumer, on a per capita basis.” It is easy to get the percentage of non-renewables down, when total energy consumption is very high. Energy consumption data has be downloaded from this site. http://www.nea.is/the-national-energy-authority/energy-data/data-repository/
I expect that the big thing people in Iceland are affected by is world prices for their exports. If aluminum prices are down very much, then their economy has a problem because it can’t afford other goods that it would buy from the profits from selling aluminum. I notice that their geothermal electricity production was down in 2015 and 2016. Is this because market prices for aluminum were relatively low, I wonder?
http://www.macrotrends.net/2539/aluminum-prices-historical-chart-data
The banks did not really guarantee the deposits, when there was a problem with inadequate funds to pay the depositors. Once the tiny insurance guarantee fund was out of money, depositors were “stuck.” The depositors were nearly all foreigners, so the banks managed to “dodge the bullet.” Iceland’s real industry–aluminum and fishing–continued as usual.
Electric cars (or EVs) are more expensive than internal combustion engine (ICE) equivalents and return little tax revenue on their fuel use in the UK.
In the UK electric cars are subsidised to the tune of £4,500 and in the USA by $10,000+. These subsidies are paid in the belief that reducing CO2 emissions is worth paying for and it is alleged that EVs have low to zero CO2 emissions.
Analysis of the CO2 emissions embedded in their manufacture and in the fuel mix used to generate electricity suggests that electric cars produce at least as much CO2 as diesel equivalents and perhaps twice as much CO2 in high coal countries like India.
One reason for writing my recent post on electric cars was to get a discussion going in comments about their CO2 intensity. It should be blindingly obvious to any technically minded observer that the CO2 emissions of an electric car will not be zero since in most countries electricity production remains dominated by fossil fuels.
In addition to the CO2 embedded in electricity we also need to consider the CO2 embedded in the production of the electric car itself. Commenter Aslangeo posted a link to jakubmarian.com, to an article authored by Damien Linhart. The map (below) shows how CO2 intensity of EVs vary in Europe according to the electricity source.
The article claims that petrol and diesel cars have values of 180 and 170 gCO2e/km, respectively, from which we can deduce that EVs are doing little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions. However, one problem with the Linhart article is that the methods are not described at all. In this post I dig a little deeper to test the claims.
Read More http://euanmearns.com/co2-intensity-of-electric-cars/
I expect it also depends how many miles a person drives the cars. If electric cars are only used as second or third cars, and driven very little, they are almost certainly more carbon intensive that those using gasoline as fuel.
Hi Gail,
I seem to have a couple of comments (duplicates) in WordPress.com purgatory. Any chance of releasing one of them?
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/17/2-billion-private-equity-fund-collapses-to-almost-zero/
Who cudda guessed?!
Forget about that retirement party!
American Happiness is declining (Peak US happiness 2000 )
Americans were first asked that question in 2006, and in 2007 the US had the third-highest happiness results of 23 OECD countries. Today, that response is at its lowest point yet, ranking 19th of 34 OECD countries.
http://www.businessinsider.com/american-happiness-is-declining-2017-7
The year 2000 was also Peak Jobs. And Peak US household income.
Delusional preppers at the end of the universe.
Queenstown, NZ.
https://youtu.be/XKzGhqmbTYU
Ya but the skiing is pretty good — I hear there is a lot of snow.
Let’s say you’re the holder of the world’s largest reserves of conventional, low-cost crude oil and you believe the supply outlook is “increasingly worrying” due to a lack of investment.
Enhancing production capacity so as to cash in when prices soar would seem like a good idea. Apparently not if you’re Saudi Aramco.Saudi Arabian Oil Co. CEO Amin Nasser spoke at the World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul last week, describing his company’s plans to invest $300 billion over the next decade. But that cash won’t go toward boosting the rate at which Saudi Arabia can get oil out of the ground, even though as much as 20 million barrels a day of new output could be needed over the next five years to offset rising demand and the natural decline of fields that are currently in production. Instead, that money will be used to maintain current capacity, and double gas output.
Am I alone in seeing this as an odd response to the supply crunch Nasser sees looming?
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-07-16/aramco-s-odd-response-to-a-future-oil-shortage
Odd? What’s odd? When you know oil can never stay at the levels required to break even … why bother….
Council on Foreign Relations: Saudi Arabia’s Break-Even on Oil is Approaching $120 per barrel
http://www.cfr.org/oil/fiscal-breakeven-oil-prices-uses-abuses-opportunities-improvement/p37275?cid=ex-cgs-oil_breakeven_discussion-levi_use-113015
http://i.cfr.org/content/Breakeven_figure_Saudi_Arabia.jpg
From the article “Enhancing production capacity so as to cash in when prices soar would seem like a good idea.”
Wrong. The worlds oil in gas industry does NOT want there to be ANY worldwide oil shortages EVER. They are not stupid MOREON’S as FE would say. They know the world economy NEEDS their master energy source more than anything else in this entire finite world. And if the world economy goes into the gutter due to a shortage that spikes the price way up. Then it doesn’t matter how much oil and gas or what the price of a barrel on the NYSE. They won’t have any customers to buy their oil and gas after another global recession knocks them out cold.
Why bother?
THEY will do whatever it takes to keep the economic system running. It goes without saying.
So, if the system needs more employment and consumption and the private sector can’t oblige, then THEY will ride to the rescue with injections of free money in the form of QE, debt forgiveness, zero-interest loans, tax-offsets, grants and subsidies for all sorts of useful and not so useful activities.
Likewise, if the system needs cheap energy and the energy producers can’t oblige, then THEY will surreptitiously subsidize energy production in order to to minimize inconvenience for producers and consumers of energy alike.
Whatever it takes. For as long as they can.
And who are THEY?
They can put a man on the moon
They can make soap out of people
And food out of wood
They can build machines that do the jobs of billions of human beings
They can feed the entire world
They can go zero to fifty in
Three point nine seconds
They can grow oranges in the desert
And tomatoes underwater
They can predict or affect the weather sometimes
They can create a disease
And then claim it’s the cure
They can build superconductors
That will permanently alter
The way they live forever
They can make a coffee I like without caffeine
They can blow themselves up or away
https://youtu.be/l5a3oo2vmQA
Clim at.e scientists push back against catastrophic scenarios – Ars Technica
https://apple.news/A5bzYfM28Q7elHH1oCVcvRQ
We’ve seen glo-bal war-ming changed to cl imate ch ange … when the planet cooled…
We’ve seen scientists fake numbers because the cli mate did not noticeably warm over decades…
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Let’s take this further…
“When a man’s funding depends upon something — he will do just about anything to ensure that his funding continues”
I guess Wolf isn’t going to publish this comment …. I see he has responded to a few others so he has seen it…
The ability of humans to be stewpid MOREons —- is so impressive.
If they are endlessly told that they can breathe water by the MSM — they would happily agree to let you hold their head under water for 30 minutes….
Go figure
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
-Reject ideology, trust your intuition, avoid “pied pipers”…
yes!
my intuition tells me that The Collapse is far less likely than a century long series of recessions.
but hey, that’s just my educated opinion.
Of all the issues related to the discussion of a finite world — the one I am the most certain of is that when growth stops — if it cannot be kick started again in short order —- BAU will collapse in its entirety.
One could point to dozens of charts to demonstrate this — but remember what was happening around the time of the Lehman blow out with jobs — each report was like a stab in the heart of BAU with massive layoffs happening….
It primary school diploma would be sufficient to ensure that someone could understand that if this was turned around — this would have quickly turned into a tidal wave swamping the economy.
The CBs are calming the ocean with stimulus — at some point this will no longer work — and the mother of all tidal waves is going to build — and nobody will be able to stop it
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8RXI8aJgabA/TlacW1GiDjI/AAAAAAAAASE/at7HRMYh9EM/s1600/fredgraph.png
you could be right.
more likely, I think smaller weaker countries will collapse and that will leave more resources for the bigger stronger countries.
so world growth will be over, but not every country will take the hit.
but we shall see, won’t we?
meanwhile, The Collapse didn’t happen today!
see you tomorrow!
Definitely – Venezuela could collapse into total chaos — no electricity — no food — and BAU could stagger onwards.
Too many Venezuelas though — and that is big deflationary pressure …
Or one key economy goes down — and it takes the financial system down.
I am not in any way qualified to talk about economics, but here goes. As I see it, the economy is a manmade structure pumped up against economic gravity through the combined efforts of billions of people producing, consuming, investing, saving, spending, serving and providing and under the control of various system operators and regulators.
If and when the economy stops expanding,money stops flowing around and a round and it gets tight, so people tighten their belts and cut down on what they regard as discretionary or unnecessary expenses. To the extent that Peter’s income depends on Paul’s spending, this makes times tight for other people, who are then forced do the same thing.
The result is deflationary pressure—pressure on makers and sellers and providers to cut prices. This squeezes bottom lines and drives businesses into debt because there are costs involved in staying in business that can’t be squeezed.
So if deflation continues very long, businesses start going out of business and the economy shrinks. In the modern industrialized interconnected globalized economy, once the shrinking starts, a vicious circle is created that in the absence of intervention from the Central Banks and other system controllers would eventually result in a total collapse.
How far down the road is “eventually” and how absolute is “total”? Depending on the amount of resistance that could be mustered to oppose it, I can imagine a collapse playing out over several years and I can also imagine a collapse playing out over a couple of weeks, but with the same result that it washes our society and civilization away as effectively as a giant tsunami on a Pacific Island or a horde of barbarians crossing the steppes.
But of course, the CBs and the other responsible folks in charge would never allow a deflationary collapse to pick up enough momentum to go into free fall collapse, while it was in their power.
I mostly agree.
Though as you write “I can imagine a collapse playing out over several years and I can also imagine a collapse playing out over a couple of weeks, but with the same result…”
so also I can imagine it playing out over several decades as well.
Time will tell.
Nice summary.
Wow! That is quite the graph.
That is because each percent on the chart makes up almost an entire inch in space. Notice the drop from 2008-2009 is only around 2%. Spoiler alert!
You make it sound as if each % point is not a big deal…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_losses_caused_by_the_Great_Recession
2008
September 2008 – 433,000 jobs lost
October 2008 – 489,000 jobs lost
November 2008 – 803,000 jobs lost
December 2008 – 661,000 jobs lost[2]
2009
January 2009 – 818,000 jobs lost
February 2009 – 724,000 jobs lost
March 2009 – 799,000 jobs lost
April 2009 – 692,000 jobs lost
May 2009 – 361,000 jobs lost
June 2009 – 482,000 jobs lost
July 2009 – 339,000 jobs lost
August 2009 – 222,000 jobs lost
September 2009 – 199,000 jobs lost
October 2009 – 202,000 jobs lost[3]
November 2009 – 64,000 jobs created[4]
December 2009 – 109,000 jobs lost[4]
It’s an interesting graph if one is interested in what happened up until 2010, but what about until now?
I think the point was to demonstrate how quickly things can unravel when they unravel…
Since 2010 trillions of dollars have been spent on stimulus – interest rates dropped to zero — the job market is still moribund with mostly part time jobs created — we are basically suspended in mid air over a cliff.
And when the next crisis hits — the job market will collapse again — and there will be no stopping it this time
Interest rates are at record lows — trillions are surging through the economy
If you believe the CBs can just keep us suspended with endless money printing then I would suggest you are delusional
2000 the patient was ill, maybe a cold, as it happens from time to time and than became healthy again.
2008/2009 the patient had an cardiac arrest and was plugged on to a heart-lung-machine.
This is a final support. Easy to understand if thereis no denial-causing doctrine.
We are enjoying extra time thaks to CB live support facing sudden death.
“To cure you they must kill you …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0cBrsKiYyc
Saludos
el mar
Here is a better Chart FE. trying to figure how many people are unemployed is futile. It’s what the stage magicians call a “Misdirection”. All you have to look at is how many people are employed. And you will see that jobs pretty much peaked around 1999. The years between 2000-2010 the US economy did not create one single net new job at all. This is totally hand to mouth and has never happened history. Even during the 1970’s which was associated with an energy crisis and which most american’s felt was a decade of regression. The economy still added an increase of around 20 percent new jobs. And you need at least on average around one million new jobs a year to keep up with the population growth. The WAPOST wrote an article about this called “The lost decade”. The US economy did not create one new net job in the 21st century until first quarter this year with Trump. So to get back to normal we would need to create a net new 16 million extra jobs somehow. ..
http://imgur.com/a/3VmsT
BAU Liters/Slow Collapsers (BLSCs) need to focus on the big dip in the top right corner…
When the next crisis comes — and the CBs are out of ammo — that line will not level off …
It will plunge straight down — to zero.
But you won’t see a chart of that anywhere — because the MSM will be offline — and you will be fighting for your life.
Already a fourth of the adults actually employed in the US are paid wages lower than would lift them above the official poverty line .
https://www.bls.gov/oes/2015/may/distribution.htm
And so a fifth of American children live in poverty.
http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html
Almost half of employed adults in this country are eligible for food stamps (most of those who are eligible don’t apply). The market in labour has broken down, along with most others. Those jobs that disappeared in the Great Recession just aren’t coming back, regardless of what the unemployment rate tells you – the net gain in jobs since 2000 still stands at zero – and if they do return from the dead, they’ll be zombies, those contingent, part-time or minimum-wage jobs where the bosses shuffle your shift from week to week: welcome to Wal-Mart, where food stamps are a benefit.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem
I am astounded that the economy holds together in light of this horrific job market… you’d think retailers would be in even worse shape than they are reporting — I suppose that people continue to shop on credit…. but what about all the people who are under bridges eating rat…. they don’t buy much…. and there are a lot of them
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/57c972fbb996eb79018b5c94-2400/labor%20force%20participation%20rate.png
it will be like that
but collapse is relative to you and yours.
you lose your job, and its collapse if you cant get another one, but (here in uk at least) there is state support to see you dont fall too far.
If that happens in Somalia or wherever–you starve to death.
but ultmately we are all living on energy support, so without it all our lifestyle systems will collapse.
just at different times in different places
Western countries will be the worst affected upon collapse, because they are the most reliant physically and psychologically on the way of life they’ve built and spread to all corners of the world. Poorer places with less investment in the idea of progress as a given may last a bit longer. But all will succumb in the end.
A thought that I want to throw out to those with backgrounds in economics:
Isn’t every debt someone else’s credit?
If the world holds 200 trillion in debt, don’t others hold that 200 trillion as assets?
When people of businesses take out loans, to a significant extent, banks and bondholders hold that debt on their balance sheet as an asset. If the value of the house or car or share of stock or mine that was used as collateral for the loan drops greatly in value, the loan may very well be uncollectible. The owner of the house or car or share of stock or mine will have a problem; so will the bank or the person/organization holding the loan based on that collateral, because the debt may become unpayable.
If a student takes out a loan, the “asset” (the hoped-for future payments from the past student) appears on someone’s (perhaps the government’s) balance sheet. If the former student gets a good enough job, he can pay back the loan. Otherwise, the asset doesn’t mean much. The loan will have to be written off.
Of course, when those who took out the loans default on that debt, we have a big problem. Banks can fail, unless there is some way that governments can bail them out. Governments may need to raise taxes, if they were depending on debt repayment for revenue.
Some of the debt relates to derivatives. Perhaps someone made a bet the interest rate relativities did one thing, and they did something else. Or someone made a bet that the US dollar would rise (or fall) relative to some other currencies, and the situation worked out differently. Often, a small amount was paid for these derivative contracts. There will be some instances where there are offsetting contracts, but not always. It seems to me that if there are rapid large changes in interest rates or currency relativities (or both) there could be some fairly large derivative losses that would look like defaulting debt, but there would not really be an asset that anyone could collect against.
A defined benefit pension plan may owe you money, based on the provisions that were part of an employment agreement. One likely reason that the money won’t be there when needed is because the actuary made an optimistic estimate regarding future interest rates. There may be other contributing factors–the business (or union, or government organization) may not have made needed contributions to the pension plan, in part because laws were sufficiently lax that these payments were not required (or allowed a calculation assuming interest rates would suddenly rise in the future). The person who is supposed to get the pension may think that there is a debt to him, but there is likely no one who is a financial position to pay the pension amount. The US federal government has a Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, but it, in fact, has virtually no money.
thank you, Gail. That is a lot for me to ponder.
we’ve made it this far since The Oil Drum days, yes?
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can keep things going at least a little while longer.
What scares me is all the links the in chain. The supply chains get longer and longer and more complex every year. When it unwinds it will be just awful.
Agreed!
Another Bad Thing that happens is when predatory companies take over well-managed, employee-focused companies, such as those that tend to have defined benefit plans.
One is reminded of when Enron took over Portland General Electric, which had a defined benefit plan with a diverse portfolio. One of Enron’s first actions was to require PGE to invest all its retirement funds in Enron stock. Enron soon went belly-up, and people who had faithfully worked 40 years or more for PGE were left with nothing. One day, they were collecting 70% of their employed pay, the next day, it was whatever they could get from Social Security. Some of these people then actually lost their houses, as they could no longer make mortgage payments.
Don’t have the link, but this sad tale was told in the Oregonian over a series of instalments when I lived in the area.
Thanks Gail, but you described nature of a particular system, which as we know evolved up to this day with all its cross dependencies, legacy paths of decision making, stored up problems etc.
In times of great real or perceived deep threat – crisis, societies tend to reorganize profoundly both towards chaotic and eventually specific vector, perhaps keeping some limited social tools from the prior one. The most interesting thing we should perhaps pursue here in discussions is as to whether in the relatively near future such realignment comes at what costs to complexity/well being/life loss etc. Where this process might start, where could be the competing enclaves identified, which one is more prone to global JIT complexities failure etc.
This seems to me being avoided on purpose by many, especially those with narrow argumentation insight and scope..
When there are fewer goods and services to be shared, it becomes a major problem to divide the ones that are available up amount the various people/businesses/governments who all would want to have part of them.
Debt is supposedly one of the claims on those resource. I would argue that in any reasonable system, the people who produce the goods and services need to have the first claim on the goods and services produced in times when there are not enough to go around–otherwise, the workers won’t be able to continue producing them. So in any reasonable system, debt holders find themselves left out. (So do holders of shares of stock.)
Thanks, I’m glad you identified this so clearly now, yes, I’m afraid we are going to snap into system in which the first in line claims on resource or production would be largely reconfigured in favor of the collective, quasi monarch/feudal setup etc.
another day without The Collapse.
oh, well, maybe tomorrow.
Maybe a whole bunch of tomorrow’s. Fact is we don’t know. That’s the one thing no one seems to be able to pinpoint accurately and meanwhile not only years but decades keep on passing as the predictions just keep on coming. It’s a more flexible and corrupt system than most appreciate. That corruption works both ways; for us and against us. It increases the wealth divide but also finds ways to massage the numbers so there really isn’t anything too cataclysmic occurring, so on down the road we go, kicking the can all the way and when it folds no one really knows.
yes, the Elites/Banksters/Billionaires do NOT want the “system” to collapse.
We saw this in 2008/2009 when they threw everything they had at the “crisis” and the result was a temporary 5% hit to GDP.
Sure, “next time” could be worse, but a 10% or 20% decline in GDP is not The Collapse.
Indeed, periodic recessions may actually reduce the chances of The Collapse.
When we know when the collapse happens, it will happen the next second.
I’m hoping for a few more years… it can’t go on for another decade… can it?
The joy the bliss of that would be overwhelming
No way possible we make it another decade. We have worldwide oil shortages coming in the next few years Just wait till those shortages hit the world economy, the tide will come in and we will see who is wearing a bathing suit.
Oops. Excuse me, I meant the tide will go out. LOL
Mastermind, er, I mean Cliff…
my crystal ball says we have decades to go…
I’m sure you’ve heard of “recessions”…
by the end of the century, after a bunch more recessions, the world may look like The Collapse, but I don’t see it coming in a hurry…
but maybe your crystal ball is better…
maybe…
I doubt it, but we shall see…
The thing is…
We have had plenty of recessions…. and as we know …. if the CBs just stand back and do nothing a recession will turn into a deflationary death spiral…
So CBs do not just stand back — the charge in with stimulus programs — the broadest stimulus plan involves the reduction of interest rates….
Unfortunately we are in a position where the CBs have dropped interest rates to near zero — and they have rolled out other stimulus that is unprecedented — auto loans to bums — dodgy mortgage loans — massive student loans that won’t get paid back…
Essentially they are in the process of throwing the kitchen sink at this economy — trying to fend off a recession
Because they know that with interest rates at zero — their big gun used for bombarding recessions — is empty. There are no shells left.
So they are fighting like mad dogs to keep global growth on track……
As we can see from US retail, auto and restaurant numbers — their efforts are starting to fail…
At some point we will enter a recession —- and I do not think there will be a way out.
The deflationary death spiral will play out…. the centre will not hold.
And the electricity will go off – permanently.
Decades away? That would be nice…
Korowicz talks about key pillars of the economy — if even one breaks she all goes….
The auto industry is a pillar — and despite record rebates sales are falling … what can the Fed do to stop the fall? Do they offer even larger rebates – to the point where they lose money on every car sold? That might work for Tesla – because they sell almost no cars… but when you sell millions… that business model will fail….
Humpty is going to come off that wall…. come hell or high water…. just a matter of what causes him to fall….
There was an interesting article on the Spanish Oilcrash blog, an insider view by an engineer at a factory run by one of the German car makers. He feels it’s all getting far worse than he thought possible, and far more rapidly than he ever imagined it might: lots of internal struggles, lies and unconvincing reassurances from head office, and a sense of doom – expecting the plant to close in the next few years. One might call that a collapsing pillar…… certainly a shaky one.
Remember President W sending everyone cash? I can’t wait, it’s gonna be terrific!
There is something uniquely different about the collapse of 2008 and the recessions that preceded it. All one need do is look at how much is being backstopped by the FED. It goes up like a hockey stick after 2008. That never happened in prior recessions.
http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/0321econ4.jpg
I distinctly recall sitting on a pile of dry powder in 2008 because I was convinced that a crisis was coming and the HK property market was going to blow out… as it did by 70% in 1997 during the Asian crisis…
The market did start to tumble by 20% or so… and I was licking my chops…. but then AHHHHH … it turned on a dime – see the arrow Quantitative Easing… by rights that market should have shattered….
Funny thing is I was/am mocked for getting it wrong … yet I do not recall those who ‘got it right’ explaining to me that the CBs were going to print trillions which was going to drive the markets higher… now is the time to buy ….
Alas all was not lost … dry powder = gold bought at $700+ that went to $1800+ … at which point I parted with a large chunk of the barbaric metal.
Carrying on from your point…. QE drives the market — until it no longer drives the market…..
It’s like running a horse to exhaustion — when he collapses you stick him with adrenaline and he gets up and runs some more … but he eventually falls to the ground and dies.
http://imgur.com/oJx62LN
Maybe don’t use imgur. I have no idea what that is a chart of.
It seems that Google images is embedding the images in that link …. no doubt for the purpose of selling us more ads….
I agree FE. What is coming is going to be hell on Earth. I would be elated if we had another decade left of industrial civilization.
And then there are those who want BAU to end asap — because their Great Adventure begins.
Madness.
It would be priceless to be see the reaction on the face such people a week after the beginning of their Great Adventure….
No collapse on Sunday, that’s for sure.
Hm, Finland, another human enclave not exactly keen on sync dying act properly overnight…, lolz. Apart from the title, the article deals also with underground network of civilian bunker infrastructure, interesting..
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-16/how-finland-preparing-russian-invasion
ps bit of irony, Fins contracted gen3+ NPP (incl fuel deal) from Russia recently, preceded by two smaller reactors few decades before..
ps2 but most importantly do remember “it’s all gibberish”
– according to our local expert in stuffing containers
“military exercises” sure, all of the biggest armies conduct such training.
Russia has a leader who needs to appear strong.
I’m sure the Fins are not worried about a Russian invasion.
IF they are, they are paranoid.
FE,
What happened to the ice at the north pole and the ice sheets in Antarctica?
The earth is a fairly large place, are all measurements of the same significance or are phase changes relevant? Ice melting is a phase change.
Dennis L.
Not a lot of people know this as it isn’t broadcast on CNN, but the Danish Meteorological Institute have now issued the June Arctic sea ice data, which shows a steady recovery in extent since the low in 2010.
Significantly, this year’s extent of 11.52 million sq km is greater than in 2006, which was 11.50.
Moreover, temperatures across the Arctic have been consistently below average since the end of April.
And with the melt season nearly at an end, the Greenland ice sheet has been growing at close to record levels.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/arctic-sea-ice-update-2/
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/16/california-bail-out-tesla-ab1184-ev-incentives/
This is what happens when people believe so passionately in something that is fake…
We get tax payer money going towards other fake things that supposedly solve the fake problem of us supposedly boiling ourselves to extinction.
We get EVs – which actually spew more carbon than petrol cars
Try convincing a Green Groupie that EVs are really really bad for the environment — you’ll get a a taste of what it feels like trying to explain to a cl imate gro.upie that burning fossil fuels has very little impact on the environment
We get solar installations which generate almost no net power over the life of a panel — and which require that a separate generation system be built to provide power when the sun is not shining (and which has to be keep humming along in the background because it cannot be turned on an off like a light switch) — resulting in a massive nett negative from the panels….
Try convincing a Green Groupie that solar panels and windmills are really really bad for the environment — you’ll get a a taste of what it feels like trying to explain to a cl imate gro.upie that burning fossil fuels has very little impact on the environment
A circle jerk of fake…. fake problem — fake response…. fake fake fake….
That is quite the proposed rebate plan. I hope the governor has the good sense to veto it.
But then maybe not. We need growth to keep the financial system alive.
assuming you’re not joking—-always difficult to decide on here—-
you cannot have genuine growth without energy input, which, in terms we understand, means burning oil coal and gas to create employment. The rate and volume of burning must increase year on year to provide % growth, which means in effect:
that we must go on finding fresh energy sources to keep ourselves employed,
pay ourselves wages,
spend those wages to buy stuff,
which requires more energy to produce
which we must continually rip the earth apart to find to maintain the function of ”the economy”
there is another way of course, instead of the messy business of finding energy resources, we borrow or print money, pass it out among the gullible majority, who then spend it, not realising that cash without energy backup is ultimately worthless, and the ”economy” goes into self destruct mode very quickly
Well, often times throughout history, the growth impulse (and stagnation or fall) is not universal, rather scattered into variety of regions, enclaves, at the same these forces going opposite directions. Similarly as relative position of societies faced in past decades underwent opposite trends, stagnating/falling West, rising East.
Granted and it’s understood the precarious situation of today, we don’t have even ~20-30% of pop in agriculture as fall back option. The interconnections is on highest level, e.g. German or Japanese machines can’t be completely serviced in the destination place of these exports etc.
Nevertheless, in term of trajectory, we are likely not there yet, when there is ~75% of UKs pop on very limited physical direct ration distribution points (i.e. not in form of credit or benefits as of today) and US and other big ones disintegrate into more regional coherent blocks, no aid provided to the ~6B (7.5B – 1.5B) peoples anymore, well that’s a serious threshold by which true advanced collapse stage might be measured. And there will be likely a response of reorganization effort attempt to it as well, i.e. still not definitive global spanning collapse of same intensity guaranteed.
ok. got it.
The financial system only needs “nominal” growth not “actual” growth to survive.. Only actual growth requires real stuff. Of course, this means inflation fills the gap. But we are talking about keeping the financial system alive. This would probably buy us time. How much more time? This depends on lots of factors.
blow into a balloon
the balloon inflates, the balloon gets bigger—but you haven’t actually got any more rubber content
but you keep blowing anyway, because big round balloons look so much better than flat deflated ones. And if your job is balloon inflator in chief, (POTUS maybe?) then you keep on blowing because your job (and ego) depends on it.
If you could add material rubber to the balloon structure while it was being inflated, then you could keep blowing into the balloon forever.
Unfortunatelty that isn’t possible.
Sticking money on the balloon will have no effect on the ultimate outcome.
so you have a choice—let the balloon go, so it will zap itself around the room and fall to the floor—
or keep blowing till it explodes.
messy either way.
I would like to declare July 16th an International Holiday — for it was the day that G l obal War min ng was Proved to be a Hoax.
The hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on this hoax can now be put towards real problems — clean fresh water seems to be a real problem — maybe we could focus the funds on helping with that….
On this day going forward what is going to happen is that at 11pm across he planet everyone must turn on every light in the house — run the washing machine – the dryer – the hairblower — the stove — the vacuum cleaner — fire up all vehicles…
As a tribute to BAU. We need to let her know we appreciate her.
http://www.BAUday.com
Burn Some Coal!
https://68.media.tumblr.com/6bb41ec2d27d1cb7ce365478831c4881/tumblr_okmjrv6Eg91uauof6o1_250.gif
For the more adventuresome Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope” is an interesting read. I first came across it in the seventies and am rereading it now. A fellow named Bill Clinton was apparently a student of Quigley and influenced by him according to some reports.
The relevant question for this blog might be how does civilization go backward without energy; Quigley recognized the effect of coal and oil on the course of civilizations as well as democratic weapons effect on autocratic rule as compared to specialist weapons. Hint, specialist weapons seem to be a powerful tool for the powerful.
Dennis L.
What are the states today? The states are the companies that have less and less energy and need to import workers, as their populations are dying out when they import energy. Or they go bankrupt, when they produce energy that is too costly to produce and sell to other states-companies.
Tesla Sales Fall to Zero in Hong Kong After Tax Break Is Slashed
https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-hong-kong-sales-gutted-by-tax-change-1499598003
I was standing on the beach the other day contemplating the meaning of life. My attention was drawn to a piece of sea glass. I couldn’t help but think how obvious spontaneous generation is. Clearly we see self organization of sand into this piece of glass. How could anyone in their right mind believe that objects have purpose or design? Certainly every archaeologist knows deep down what he has found has just appeared. It has always been and always will be.
As I pick up the glass I notice to my amazement that it has numbers etched into it. This is amazing because it means that as the sand was self organizing it contained information. But more profound is that I can read and understand the information. So the sand must have some cognitive awareness of it’s environment.
This is absolutely amazing! Clearly demonstrated on just a short stretch of beach are the foundations to all life on earth.
As I walk along I notice a piece of cobalt blue glass. This fascinates me because the beach is all white sand. I can’t help but wonder is the glass trying to communicate with me? What it trying to say? Is it important?
My gaze stretches out over the ocean toward the horizon. How I long to know the truth about glass. Maybe I could know it, if only I wasn’t alone on this beach.
“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.
And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and shake my head at you.
I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
Job 16:1-5 lol
i don’t think godbothering will do us much good come shtf time—he’ll say:
huh—when times was good, you guys didn’t want to know me, now you expect me to come and save yo asses?—i’ve got better planets than this to look after, you’re on your own
byeeeee
If it were not so you would be bit ching that we are just puppets, slaves. The gift of free will is often not seen by people.
Agreed, arf arf.
You think we are trying to read too much into what we see.
I will have to admit that the only way I can imagine that the universe could come into being, with all of its laws of physics and self-organizing principles, is by being created by an outside being–a God, so to speak.
Whether or not that God has specific plans for people on earth, and how those will play out, is a lot less clear. It is possible that humans have been imagining a god to fill their needs.
In statistics, we talk about Type I and Type II errors. A Type I error is a false positive, and Type II error is a false negative in statistical testing. A person is alway prone to making one or another of these types of errors. Often the consequences of the two types of errors are very different. If they are, a person may give the benefit of the doubt so as to minimize bad consequences/optimize good consequences.
To falsely say that there is a God who cares about people on earth has essentially no bad consequences, as far as I can see. We may be overoptimistic, but our life on earth is likely better. It may or may not make any difference after death.
If there is a god who judges people based on whether they figured out that there is a god, then there is an obvious negative consequence to rejecting the hypothesis that there is a god, when in fact the hypothesis is true.
I don’t see what great satisfaction people get out of “proving” that there isn’t/can’t be a god that cares for us. There is no particular negative to the false belief, so why not just let it be? I agree that many/ most religions are filled with ridiculous stories, but that is not the issue.
Gail,
One reason (I think) the universe was created is to glorify a small number of human beings. Mainly the Prophets. Islamic teaching does not explicitly say this but does imply it.
Also, Hinduism teaches that Universe was created (in part) as a gymnasium for souls to try out various paths (and fail or succeed) and learn the truth by experience and be re-born to try out yet even more paths until the soul merges into God.
According to the Buddha he attempted to find the beginning of the universe in meditation after he recalled his previous lives and continued to go back in time. He said he could go back as far as he wanted to and all he saw was expansions and contraction cycles. But he did not go as far as to say that there was no beginning to these cycles.
But I do believe a Noah’s flood (global die-off and extinction this time) is coming and is not too far off. There are no Ark’s/Ships to safely get of the way.
Gail – you were right in stating that the end of BAU is likely to be an extinction event — you were right in stating that glo-bal war-ming was dumped in our laps to take our focus off the real problems that the world is facing — you were right in stating that renewable energy is a joke and aimed at making us think that there are solutions….
So you may be right about the god thing as well…. I have no problem with the suggestion that some higher power put this all together.
“We don’t need to worry about the environment; the Lord is coming!” — James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan.
I think the human-centric view of most religions is very dangerous. It causes us to do things we wouldn’t do if we thought that (for example) we did not have God’s permission to have dominion over all the Earth. But being told that in the Bible tends to make us careless with God’s non-human creations — including a 200,000,000 legacy of stored solar energy.
If there is no purpose to the universe does it matter that if the legacy energy gets dissipated now or later?
Which it would anyway.
Perhaps not.
But if there is a “purpose to the universe,” then it may very well matter.
This touches on Gail’s assertion that there is no downside to a false belief in religion.
Buddhists might say (for example) that the “purpose” of life is happiness. This implies that one’s duty is to maximize happiness throughout the universe. This implies that one should not simply do something because one can, unless it furthers general happiness more than the infinitesimal amount of personal happiness it may further.
I think much of humans’ downfall is that we seemingly cannot restrain ourselves from doing any things that we able to do, resulting in much unhappiness for many, and some increased happiness for a few.
I teach my goats to wait. It is not an easy task. Strangely enough, those higher up the pecking order are more successful at waiting than those at the bottom.
Why are humans different than goats in this regard? Why is it mostly the humans at the top who cannot restrain themselves? (Although one need only go to Mall*Wart or Costco to see humans at the other end exhibiting lack of restraint.)
A luxury condo-ship, The World, recently anchored near our small island. I would have said, “docked,” but we lack facilities for docking a 200 metre vessel. So they shuttled some 200 passengers back and forth to our island by Zodiak all day. I don’t know if any of them came to Saturday Market, but a couple friends of ours had “infiltrated” The World, claiming to be interested in buying in. The lowest-cost unit they had available was two million dollars (US), with $500,000 per year in “condo fees.” The next lowest-cost unit was six million.
I wonder how happy those aboard The World are. I would guess pretty darn happy. But how happy must you be, and how much happiness must you take from others in order to achieve that increment of happiness?
In The Surprising Science of Happiness, Dan Gilbert asserts that, one year after the event, a person who won $1 million in a lottery is equally as happy as a person who became a quadriplegic from a crash. What does this tell us about the inhabitants of The World? What does this tell us about those who struggle, day by day, to make ends meet?
A recent experiment shows that African children have more restraint than German children. What does this tell us? Will the African children be more prepared to survive a crash than German children?
I lead a pretty darned happy life. Would I be happier if I could afford a condo on The World? No. I have learned to be happy with less, and would be disgusted with such blatant excess. I would spend the $2 million and $500,000 annual fees on other things that would increase the happiness of those around me, as strange as that may seem to those in my “anti-fan club.”
I’m fairly agnostic, perhaps even atheistic. And yet, I believe there is more to the Universe than mere dissipation of energy. The how is important, dammit!
Gail, can you please release my reply to Mr. Khan? I suspect it got hit for moderation because I included several links. Thanks!
Ok. I get your way.
Per Buddhism, suffering is only in the eyes of the beholder. The release from suffering (nirvana) is to realize that beings are soulless and like a machine which has learned how to think and conceive an “I” independent of the physical being (the machine).
Sorry. I checked. I don’t have such a comment.
I think Mansoor has gotcha! there Jan.
In the same vein, if there is no God or similar supernatural moral force that gives us the power to distinguish between good and evil and commands us to good while allowing us to exercise free will, then why should we bother to be good and why should we not be careless with God’s non-human creations?
And if we try to replace God with human conscience as the arbiter of morality, we are immediately on very dangerous ground as there is no one single human conscience but billions of them.
It seems to me that modern atheists have rejected the idea of Almighty God but have kept much of the great moral scheme that the theistic religions teach us is God-given, and that this creates as many philosophical problems as it solves.
Nihilism is the way to go….
Let’s listen to Doris Day’s tribute to Nihilism …
Let’s party until wee hours (Collapse) of the night… keep economic growth alive so BAU lasts a little longer…burn more coal now….etc
You got it Mansoor!
“n my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.”
Carl Panzram
Carl had a very tough life.
Born in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, the son of East Prussian immigrants Johann “John” and Matilda Panzram, he was raised on his family’s farm with five siblings. In 1903, at the age of 12, he stole some cake, apples, and a revolver from a neighbor’s home. Soon after, his parents sent him to the Minnesota State Training School. While there, he was repeatedly beaten, tortured, and raped by staff members in what attendees dubbed “The Painting House”, because children would leave “painted” with bruises and blood. Panzram hated this place of torture so much that he decided to burn it down, and did so without detection.
In late 1905, he was released from the school. By his teens, he was an alcoholic and was repeatedly in trouble with the authorities, often for burglary and theft. He ran away from home at the age of 14. He often traveled via train cars; he later claimed that on one train he was gang raped by a group of hobos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Panzram
We live in an economy that is a dissipative structure. I don’t think there is really anything we can really do to change the situation. It is subject to a collapse, if we try to “fix” things. We could perhaps have slowed growth, if we had forced debt to grow more slowly, and we had emphasized birth control more. Encouraging a more plant-based diet would have been helpful as well.
Human’s dominion over other animals is a natural outcome of human’s control of external energy supplies. This began back in hunter-gatherer days. What the Bible documents is the state of affairs as it was, and in fact, is. If the Bible had not made the statement about human’s dominions over the earth, the situation would not have been different.
We now have a new “religion,” “Humans can control anything they want to.” Physics doesn’t matter. We can grow debt endlessly. We will forever be able to fix old cars that break with spare parts from other old cars. Humans are really in control. If we simply hadn’t been told we had dominion over other animals, we wouldn’t be in today’s fix.
I see all religions as being intertwined. They represent a documentation of some of the insights people have had over the years, and want to pass down to their children. The purpose of churches is to look at today’s situation, and figure out what pieces of those insights are correct for today’s world. Many of them are not.
A major function of churches is to connect people who might be able to help each other, partly through friendship and partly through direct help (sometimes in time of need). Religion also connects families. We know that people “do better” when they have connections to other human beings. Religions play a major role in this–whether or not the religious writings seem to make any sense.
For instance, one might think that all the stuff about the Virgin Mary is nonsense.
But the Virgin Cult had its uses in the Middle Ages: the other day I came across a Spanish pilgrim song from the 13th century, sung at her great shrine at Montserrat:
‘Now while you’re here, no stealing, raping or murdering! The Virgin doesn’t like that sort of thing one bit!’
A cruel, often very violent society, made a little better perhaps by an irrational myth, and with a little hope for the future added into the mix. No harm in any of that. The aura of holy authority could do things which sheer force often failed to impose.
The traveller and writer Dervla Murphy safely made a trip through the mountains of Ethiopia without any sexual harrassment at all; Ethiopians later explained to her that veneration for the Virgin Mary was instilled in the mountain people, and that they would never touch an unwilling woman in consequence, as it would be sacrilege and damn their souls.
mightn’t she have liked it just a little bit?
Is there a conspiracy by the elites or are they clueless as to the nature of our problems I believe they are acting in secret working diligently towards the solution they know they cannot say the truth for if they did the collapse of our society and the end of BAU would occur instantaneously so in secret they continue to work it won’t be long before we see the fruits of their efforts here is one of the elite’s in a newspaper article telliing us that something big is coming………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..TRILLIONAIRE ROTHSCHILD WARNS HIS OWN CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM IS FAILING AND BUYS GOLD
Posted on August 30, 2016 by The Doc 34 Comments 10,880 views
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Home » Gold » Gold News » TRILLIONAIRE ROTHSCHILD WARNS HIS OWN CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM IS FAILING AND BUYS GOLD
rothschildWe have been highlighting the wave of billionaires who are all getting out of the stock market this summer and buying gold. Well, now it’s a trillionaire…
Submitted by Jeff Berwick, The Dollar Vigilante:
Of course, he’s not “officially” on top in the “most wealthy” lists… but that is because the Rothschilds have been experts in hiding their wealth for centuries.
When Jacob’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, died in 1812, his will explicitly stated that no public inventory of his estate was to be published and that no legal action was to be taken with regard to the value of the inheritance. It’s also been suggested that the Rothschilds use private, unrecorded, limited partnerships to accumulate wealth (you know, like all the ones in the Panama Papers).
By the end of the 19th century it was estimated that the Rothschild family controlled half the wealth of the world. No one can prove it of course, but it seems likely. You can see their fingerprints on many current events. In fact, their family has likely caused and financed both sides of nearly every war since and control virtually every central bank (to see a full list of all their crimes against humanity click here).
And so, when Jacob Rothschild says that he is buying gold because the central banks are out of control, you have to laugh. He and his family have been in control of the world’s central banks for centuries.
But he has said it nonetheless. In his semi-annual address to shareholders of RIT Capital Partners, Jacob Rothschild, announced that they are reducing stock market and currency exposure and increasing their gold holdings and warns that the world is now in “uncharted waters” and that the consequences are “impossible” to predict.
A simple model for the oil glut
The petroleum industry consumes 60% of the energy content in a barrel in the form of capex to produce a barrel of refined petroleum.
The economy is divided in two. One part of the economy produces capex for the oil industry and receives 60% of the barrels. The other part receives 40% and is in constant contraction due to falling net energy from petroleum production.
The oil price collapses and the oil industry cuts capex to 50% of the energy content in a barrel.
The part of the economy that produces capex for the oil industry now receives 50% of the oil and contracts. The other part of the economy now also receives 50% of the oil and experiences a glut.
In reality this is of course much more complicated. But we are just simple men, what can we do.
I’m just a simple man, but to hazard a guess, I daresay not too far into the future we will be back in oil shortage territory.
https://youtu.be/i6ZLTLyJZpQ
I have pondered this in some detail.
I think one major “complication” is bankruptcy, which now Wall Street seem to be test-driving as a way of resetting the economy.
Consider “Company C” (no coincidence at all that “Chesapeake” begins with “C”). It goes to Wall Street, raises tonnes of money, and drills and fracks in the Baaken Formation.
Taking your numbers for grated for the moment, oil prices fall by 50%, whereas 60% of the original 100% is consumed in “development.”
But development has already been paid for; all that is left of that is shareholder equity, which is a liability on the balance sheet. So Company C has a couple choices: 1) pump at the marginal cost of pumping for as long as it can, foregoing capital expenditures as long as possible, or 2) try to borrow more money to drill and frack new wells. Note that the “marginal cost” of pumping is way below the development costs, which have all been covered at this point.
Now, the peak life of a Baaken well is only about 19 months, so Company C starts to get in trouble about 19 months after the price goes below what it costs to develop a new well. At that point, their cash flow begins to dry up, and they can either ask gun-shy investors for more money or declare bankruptcy.
When they declare bankruptcy, some “chop shop” picks up their assets based on their current operating income, not their sunken costs. The original Company C investors take the haircut. The functioning wells keep pumping, but no new development takes place. This appears to be how the strapless evening gown is staying up, with no visible means of support.
By this means, IEA’s “undulating plateau” scenario appears to be playing out, with past investors paying to keep the economy rolling. How long this can continue is anyone’s guess, but it certainly seems to have gone on longer than a lot of people (many of them commenting on this blog) have guessed.
The GFC required a great deal of debt and government promises to prevent a cascading disaster. Nothing has changed except the amount of debt and the ease with which it is extended.
Extend and pretend (not my invention of course)………borrowers pretend they are solvent, they put forth plans of efficiency gains, synergies and future profits to justify deepening debt and lenders extend credit by pretending to believe the nonsense offered by borrowers. Governments of course continue the fantasy, by underwriting the charades with promises and guarantees. Overall the system as a whole survives as long as everyone continues to pretend all is well. IMO the party will likely conclude after one or two major institutions loses their nerve.
Many of the quality posters here have been on the trail since at least ~early 2000s, now imagine the resource depletion-civ collapsniks aware folks from ~1960s. This must have been sometimes a true ordeal to witness all these twists so far.
I gather it also explains a lot of the childish anxiety among the overnight universal sync doomers, simply they went so far through too few ups and downs on the “..are we there yet question..?” Let’s grant them some time, perhaps they could mature one day.
Nah…
Up until the near collapse of 2008 — I didn’t even think about doomsday… ya… I knew that infinite growth on a finite planet was impossible — but I never thought the asteroid would hit in my lifetime…
When you run businesses — and you see revenues fall off a cliff in a matter of weeks — it gives you a different sort of perspective on things I guess…
All of our employees continued to be paid through this period — so they would have not had the slightest clue as to how close they were to starvation….
Fortunately the CBs started the Great Print — and we got back on track before we had to slash and burn….
And as we all know — the CBs are all powerful — they can just print and print and print and print and print —- and we can go on like this forever and ever ahmen.
Herb Stein would disagree.
So, I was correct again, well, that above explanation helps clear it a lot, you are evidently “fast doomer greenhorn” .. Not meant in derogatory way or as an insult though.
Well, one thing is very probable that after several next waves or recessions, severe geopolitical tremors, and other stuff, you might be still waiting for that real one and only final crash..
I think Jan understands what has been happening in this country. In Saudi Arabia and some of the other oil exporters, it is the governments that have been shortchanged. They too are trying to make up the difference with more debt.
People keep thinking, “The prices have to go up.” So they keep lending more, even when it makes no sense. Or they keep buying shares of stock.
In fact, with worldwide wages stagnating, it is hard to get prices up high enough. There is really a rather large range of commodities whose prices are too low (oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, quite a few metals). It is really hard to get prices up, without wages up. The plan to try to moderate debt increases makes the problem a lot worse, because quite a bit of the debt would normally be used for wages.
First the MENA collapse. Now the EU collapse. What is next? The Trump administration provides clues.
Depletion of fossil fuels. Climate chaos. Leadership failures. You are witnessing the end.
Gail, again you are describing a particular mature “time limited” system near its saturation crisis, braking point.
I don’t looking forward to it, my living standard would be likely trashed as well, but it smells we are sleep walking into another system “locomotives for potatoes”, no $USD involved anymore or perhaps different basket int payments for the interim. But this time there would be no easy escape route for the west to simply run 300-600% GDP deficits or bomb everybody up anymore..
On the Validity of NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU Global Average Surface Temp.erature Data
& The Validity of EPA’s C…O2 Endangerment Finding Abridged Research Report
The Undersigned Agree with the Conclusions of this Report:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf
Dr. Alan Carlin
Retired Senior Analyst and manager, US Environmental Protection Agency,
Washington, DC.
Author, Environmentalism Gone Mad, Stairway Press, 2015.
Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
BS, Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Dr. Harold H. Doiron
Retired VP-Engineering Analysis and Test Division, InDyne, Inc.
Ex-NASA JSC, Aerospace Consultant
B.S. Physics, University of Louisiana – Lafayette
M.S., Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston
Dr. Theodore R. Eck
Ph.D., Economics, Michigan State University
M.A, Economics, University of Michigan
Fulbright Professor of International Economics
Former Chief Economist of Amoco Corp. and Exxon Venezuela
Advisory Board of the Gas Technology Institute and Energy Intelligence Group
Dr. Richard A. Keen
Instructor Emeritus of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado
Ph.D., Geography/Climatology, University of Colorado
M.S., Astro-Geophysics, University of Colorado
B.A., Astronomy, Northwestern University
More https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf
Duh
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/12/list-of-scientists-respected-in-their.html
http://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/
Double Duh with bells on!
Using Snopes as an authority is laughable. According to independent investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, “The so-called ‘fact-checking’ authentication website Snopes.com is the go-to website for CIA propaganda.”
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/12/16/wayne-madsen-snopes-com-is-a-cia-operation/
http://images.clipartpanda.com/smiley-face-thumbs-down-clipart-emoticon-smiley-face-6800026.jpg
Yep these two look like they are super sleuths uncovering fake news everywhere … in between trips to Walmart and Dunkin Donuts of course…
https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/barbara-and-david-mikkelson.jpg
when I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes’ trademark point-by-point format, fully refuting each and every one of the claims in the Daily Mail’s article and writing the entire article off as “fake news.”
It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I’d be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I’m precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”
This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement.
In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it’s secret.”
It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#44ef8d1b227f
The fact that snopes is involved in fact checking for facebook — one of the great purveyors of fake news — says it all.
No doubt they are uniquely qualified to ensure that the official narrative issued by the Ministry of Truth gets published i.e. fake news….. but that anything that challenges that narrative — even if it is based on facts and logic —- gets labelled fake news and immediately removed.
Popular myth-busting website Snopes originally gained recognition for being the go-to site for disproving outlandish urban legends -such as the presence of UFOs in Haiti or the existence of human-animal hybrids in the Amazon jungle.
Recently, however, the site has tried to pose as a political fact-checker. But Snopes’ “fact-checking” looks more like playing defense for prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and it’s political “fact-checker” describes herself as a liberal and has called Republicans “regressive” and afraid of “female agency.”
Snopes’ main political fact-checker is a writer named Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that — oddly enough — is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.
While at Inquisitr, the future “fact-checker” consistently displayed clear partisanship.
She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.” …..
After blogging the Inquisitr, Lacapria joined Snopes, where she regularly plays defense for her fellow liberals.
She wrote a “fact check” article about Jimmy Carter’s unilateral ban of Iranian nationals from entering the country that looks more like an opinion column arguing against Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban.
Similarly, Lacapria — in another “fact check” article — argued Hillary Clinton hadn’t included Benghazi at all in her infamous “we didn’t lose a single person in Libya” gaffe. Lacapria claimed Clinton only meant to refer to the 2011 invasion of Libya (but not the 2012 Benghazi attack) but offered little fact-based evidence to support her claim.
After the Orlando terror attack, Lacapria claimed that just because Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat with an active voter registration status didn’t mean he was actually a Democrat. Her “fact check” argued that he might “have chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered.”
Lacapria even tried to contradict the former Facebook workers who admitted that Facebook regularly censors conservative news, dismissing the news as “rumors.”
http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/17/fact-checking-snopes-websites-political-fact-checker-is-just-a-failed-liberal-blogger/
https://foodbabe.com/app/uploads/2016/12/CAN-YOU-TRUST-SNOPES.jpg
Is Snopes a credible and authoritative source of information?
Snopes is now 50% owned by an ad agency (Proper Media) and they make money by generating millions of views on the 3rd-party advertisements on their website. It simply makes sense for them to seek out articles that are viral to “debunk”, so that they can piggy-back on that traffic and generate more advertising revenue.
Snopes was founded by a husband and wife team who are now in the middle of a contentious divorce in which founder David Mikkelsen has been accused of embezzling $98,000 of company money to spend on “himself and prostitutes”.
Snopes now has a hired team of suspect fact checkers who collaborate to debunk falsehoods that are trending on the internet.
These fact checkers reportedly have no editorial oversight and do not follow standard journalistic procedures such as interviewing the authors of articles they are trying to debunk to get all sides of the story.
Snopes doesn’t have a formal screening process for hiring fact checkers and for evaluating applicants for any potential conflicts of interest. Without such standards, it is very easy for them to be infiltrated by those who work with the industry and who have a hidden agenda.
https://foodbabe.com/2017/02/24/do-you-trust-snopes-you-wont-after-reading-how-they-work-with-monsanto-operatives/
Fact Checkers for hire….. great idea!
I understand that for USD5000 authors can hire reviewers to write glowing reviews of their books and plant them on popular sites such as Amazon… Goodreads etc….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FjAA0i6RjpA/VYxg1KB6hmI/AAAAAAAAFbM/6J3nPAdrT2w/s1600/you-can-take-a-horse-to-water-illustration.jpg
And what’s more the report was produced “pro bono”, so no vested interests were compromised in its production, the environment was saved, the poor were protected and phytomass given a better future.
Stop compromising yourself.
what?
CO2 was 3 parts per 10,000 and now it is 4 parts per 10,000!
IF that doesn’t mean The Collapse is coming soon, I don’t know what does!
https://d.justpo.st/media/images/2014/05/0f2e75094a3e178b0f3b0429b303692a.jpg
Tim-
You are the man! Great stuff.
I prefer Mark Tain’s dictum: “Never argue with an idiot. A bystander can’t tell the difference.”
https://68.media.tumblr.com/fa4258db351a0d359a7ae9055c147f1b/tumblr_oaxi95MU0K1s7mx9bo1_250.gif
The Undersigned Agree with the Conclusions of this Report:
Dr. Alan Carlin
Retired Senior Analyst and manager, US Envir.onmental Protection Agency,
Washington, DC.
Author, Environmentalism Gone Mad, Stairway Press, 2015.
Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
BS, Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Dr. Harold H. Doiron
Retired VP-Engineering Analysis and Test Division, InDyne, Inc.
Ex-NASA JSC, Aerospace Consultant
B.S. Physics, University of Louisiana – Lafayette
M.S., Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston
Dr. Theodore R. Eck
Ph.D., Economics, Michigan State University
M.A, Economics, University of Michigan
Fulbright Professor of International Economics
Former Chief Economist of Amoco Corp. and Exxon Venezuela
Advisory Board of the Gas Technology Institute and Energy Intelligence Group
Dr. Richard A. Keen
Instructor Emeritus of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado
Ph.D., Geography/Climatology, University of Colorado
M.S., Astro-Geophysics, University of Colorado
B.A., Astronomy, Northwestern University
Finally … some good news in a sea of negativity!!!
It turns out we are not going to boil and roast after all — hurrah hurrah HURRAH!!!
As world leaders, namely in the European Union, attack President Trump for pulling out of the Paris Clim.ate Agreement which would have saddled Americans with billions upon billions of dollars in debt and economic losses, a new bombshell report that analyzed Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data produced by NASA, the NOAA and HADLEY proves the President was right on target with his refusal to be a part of the new initiative.
According to the report, which has been peer reviewed by administrators, scientists and researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and several of America’s leading universities, the data is completely bunk:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-15/research-team-slams-global-warming-data-new-report-not-reality-totally-inconsistent-
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ou4Hu15JrZ8/UoI-FC2wgwI/AAAAAAAAFAc/Er0qnd3UD-s/s1600/HURRAH.jpg
In this research report, the most important surface data adjustment issues are identified and past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.
As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. This included the best documented and understood data sets from the U.S. and elsewhere as well as global data from satellites that provide far more extensive global coverage and are not contaminated by bad siting and urbanization impacts. Satellite data integrity also benefits from having cross checks with Balloon data.
The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever –despite current claims of record setting warming.
Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings.
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf
What’s with all those glum faces out there????
This is great news — right?
Come on … show Fast a smile…. it’s ok to change your mind — when the FACTS dictate.
Everything is forgiven…
So you were played… so you were suckered… I know that feels a bit shitty ….
But hell people – so was I!!! I had the hook right deep in my jaw — I was up on the boat flopping around…
It feels good to get that hook out don;t it??? Ya it’s a bit sore for awhile but that will fade… so nice to be free inn’t it?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Gt2Rmx-h84I/maxresdefault.jpg
Now all we have to worry about is starving and eating cesium….
Aw shucks….. when you got a fast horse… you gots to ride it
I feels like singin… join in yall
Bigger picture…
Countries are starting to shut down Tesla and EVs by removing subsidies… could that be because you can only go so far with these pieces of shit without damaging the grid?
Investment into fake renewable energy is plummeting https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@environment/2017/04/10/18785/global-investment-in-renewable-power-drops-by-nearly-a-quarter
Again — if authorities go to far with this solar hopium they wreck BAU prematurely….
And meanwhile we are being told by the likes of MIT that Gl obal war mmi ng is fake
Are we seeing an across the board roll back on this unholy trinity of bullshit ….
Always remember
As we know we are just about to stop burning coal and oil and gas ….
So for all intents and purposes well over 90% of all fossil fuels that are ever going to be burned… have already gone up the stack…
And we are still here.
I doubt these last few billion barrels of oil and tonnes of coal are going to matter much — if at all.
Shall we file that ISSUE at the bottom of a pile issues of far greater concern in terms of what is likely to cause collapse?
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.
This documentary features Henrik Svensmark in his own words on his hypothesis about how changes in the sun’s magnetic field and solar wind effect the number of cosmic rays reaching the earth’s upper atmosphere, which effects the amount of cloud cover, which in turn effects the earth’s climate.
https://youtu.be/ANMTPF1blpQ
‘Frankly, it has not been fun for some time already’
I can imagine this would not be considered fun 🙂
https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/ap_books_ap_history_16092469.jpg
http://www.irishexaminer.com/remote/media.central.ie/media/images/m/MuhammadAliDownvJoeFrazier_large.jpg?width=648&s=ie-403427
Let’s go with something more familiar….
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/c1ldGNx1bRM/maxresdefault.jpg
Meanwhile in Paris Boulevards..
Who would have sought colonialism might eventually backfire in few /hundred/ yrs later..
Half way into this book on the Brits in Afghanistan — the locals have turned on their colonial masters — very nasty stuff…
I would really hate to be a whitey in a country that has been under colonial rule at some point… resentment may fade… but it does not disappear…
I am so relieved to be out of Bali …
Never turn your back on the Maoris. They do a frightening war dance. And you are an invader on their turf.
It does usually not get said — but I pick up a sense of resentment towards the native community in NZ…. mainly related to land rights and funding for cultural and education initiatives…
Of course that is because the native peoples fought the colonialists to a stand still and have treaties guaranteeing these rights…
Ironically — the north island Maori’s smashed the shit out of the ones on the south island at one point … and they various tribes were always at each other pre European arrival…
They even whored off women to the whalers in exchange for guns and ammo used to have a go at other tribes….
So one should not take solace as a whitey in this ….. when there is not enough to go around humans have been known to eat their own children….
http://www.tourism.net.nz/images/new-zealand/about-nz/nz-ethnic-groups.jpg
fast eddy you maori tribes remind me of my country tribes
called naxalite which are fight over gov of india
who are trying take there land
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite
It might be argued that genocide … is a good thing.
Fast. I agree with you. I don’t think the Maoris, I have to say, will last for too long when things get hot.
Nor will I
Uh. What are you trying to say?
The English used the same methods in New Zealand as they had employed against the Welsh and Irish 700 years before: find warring tribes, ally with them, then clean up.
The Spanish also used that method: the Aztecs had lots of native enemies only too happy to join in. A recent excavation of a sacrifice site, showed that most of the prisoners murdered by the Aztecs were not Spanish, but Indians, and also a fair number of slaves from earlier conquests made by the Spanish.
The Chinese are using a softer version at present, ‘We’ll be your economic partner for development’. Then will come the troops for investment protection…..
If America knew what it was doing it would foment a war in Africa to push back the Chinese. I’ve thought of the alliance with guerrilla groups, many if not all, being of very nasty disposition…
What goes around comes around.
Yes, ironies of history.
However, this could be dealt with very easily indeed, if the response were not hampered by current sensibilities: shoot the ringleaders, declare a curfew. Water cannons and tear gas are not sufficient.
I recall the Louvre was actually shut down not long ago, as the staff were sick of mugger gangs, attacking them and visitors. Not around the entrance, but inside the galleries. The Louvre!
These sort of people always make a lot of noise if treated gently, but they very much don’t want to die, unlike the Islamo-nutter-‘martyrs’ to whom a bullet is a kind of gift,as it gets them where they long to go…. Once they know what will happen to them, they will stay at indoors.
Allowing this sort of thing to go on just encourages Right-wing extremists of the very nastiest kind, and is irresponsible.
Allowing this sort of thing to go on just encourages Right-wing extremists of the very nastiest kind, and is irresponsible.
I was wondering whether that is the whole point. Get the extremists to take action, engineer a breakdown of law and order, and use the situation to bring in martial law?
Why are terrorist attacks one-offs … why don’t they coordinate dozens of drive through crowd incidents in a short period virtually brutalizing the economy of a city in the process?
Why don’t terrorists simply fill sacks with petrol — stuff 50 of them in a van — how about 50 sacks 50 vans… then just drive around a city making quick stops to toss them into bathrooms in bars and restaurants — and start massive fires everywhere?
Something is wrong with the picture — it does seem as if this is staged… or allowed to happen on a very limited basis… just enough….
One can see that ‘Right-wing extremism’ is being used in Europe as an excuse for repression and reduction of liberty of expression……..
Mayor of Messina Italy turns off power for incoming migrants..
GOV sends immediately diesel genset..
Wow out of control.
Living the dream. Why not join the club?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-15/elon-musk-unveils-apocalyptic-vision-world
from the article: Within 20 years, he said driving a car will be like having a horse (i.e. rare and totally optional). “There will not be a steering wheel.”
autonomous cars!
colonies on Mars!
(oh, wait, that could be a poem)
hyperloop!
recycled poop!
his status as a visionary will take a big hit in the coming years.
well, IF there isn’t The Collapse in the meantime.
which we know is very unlikely.
musk: a strong-smelling reddish-brown substance which is secreted by the male musk deer for scent-marking
Finally Musk has a legitimate definition.
Absolutely the most incredible freak to ever walk planet earth. But maybe that’s a planned placement.
A freak indeed, and being paraded – and regarded by all too – as a role model. These are increasingly disquieting times. We are being mocked, by his controllers…….
Although the Roman Empire supposedly fell on 476, it is still continuing as the Republic of Turkey.
The Ottoman Sultans behaved as they were the successors of Byzantine Empire. Mustafa Kemal, who hated the Ottomans because one of them stole his girlfriend, ended it but the Ottoman bureaucracy,inherited from Romans and Byzantines (many of the bureaucrats were Islamized Greeks and other Slavs) , continued under the Turkish Republic and still continues as of now.
Technically speaking, every Sultan of Turkey, and Mustafa Kemal and all the Turkish Presidents all the way to Tayyip, are Roman Emperors. Roman Empire never really died.
BAU will continue in another form as well.
http://imgur.com/a/Mgck5
JP Morgan chief blasts US dysfunction: ‘It’s almost an embarrassment being American’
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/14/jp-morgan-chief-jamie-dimon-american
and it’s almost an embarrassment being American and having “our” Wall Street plundering every other country as much as they possibly can.
Jaime Dimon is no role model for us Americans.
http://imgur.com/a/BEljN
and some persons say I am mad!
ha!
the amount of hate people of western people have for indians astounding
people say on the internet that indians take our job and are sub humans
i was thinking once bau collopse indians live on western countries will
be in trouble
plus this book came on bestseller in recent times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Camp_of_the_Saints
depicted on indians pretty terrible
They are in a catch 22 in the western countries now. If they are successful and pay taxes etc. They are seen as someone who has taken a good paying job away from the natives. If they are poor and unsuccessful and on welfare etc. They are seen as a leach on the public and country.
+++++++++++++
People facing dreadful losses commonly look for scapegoats to blame.
If on welfare, they should wear badges saying: ‘I consume too!’
Which is one of the purposes of mass immigration, keeping up the number of consumers.
I haven’t met anyone in England who would call Indians sub-human, even the real racists: in fact, they tend to recognise their cleverness.
Muslims -some of whom are Indian – are, of course, feared by many, and talk of having to expel them all is now much more common, and people often raise the point in conversation.
But Hindus, no.
but after muslims next number is brown people
that included Indians
Some increasingly diminishing representatives of the former European population pedigree might claim(dream) of future reconquista v2.0, but I seriously doubt it, there is no common binding left in many western societies (religious, national, cultural, social, intellectual, ..), especially inside UK and France, given current situation and demographic trends of such diverse population into the future. While Spain is a bit different matter, surely without UK, France, and Italy can’t soldier on alone for long.
Perhaps only token and temporary exceptional cases might happen, e.g. small south eastern rural mountainous enclaves of former France joining Switzerland – Austria, if these can hold their own ground in the first place, which is doubtful mid-long term anyway etc. This also depends on what happens with Germany, and to some degree what the central eastern flank will look like, Hungary, Balkans, Ukraine.. whether Poland manages again in history bleed itself out prematurely even before the next major important round of fight for survival starts etc.
So, don’t worry..
good answer but i have one question for people that do not like Indians
who implemented policy of mass immigration they own white politicians
so why blame indians or third world people
Pay back for white ‘immigration’ into India — at least third world immigrants don’t murder and pillage…
good answer but i have one question for people that do not like Indians
who implemented policy of mass immigration they own white politicians
so why blame indians or third world people
“White” politicians and bureaucrats in the UK did indeed implement a policy of mass immigration in the 1950s and 60s. People from “black” Commonwealth countries were encouraged to move to the UK to take up jobs in the public sector, while at the same time indigenous people from the UK were being encouraged to migrate to the “white” Commonwealth by the government’s of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But the mass of people in the UK didn’t approve of either policy and didn’t consider the politicians or the bureaucrats as being their own people. Britain has long been a nation that is “against itself”: the various classes and nations have been fighting each other or resenting each other since time immemorial. “Social harmony” is something of an oxymoron in the UK; the two words are mutually exclusive because British society is disharmonious by its very nature.
It is characteristic of the British, and particularly the working class British,to have a very strong “us vs. them” mentality. for people with this mindset, it’s always “them” implementing policy, never “us”. It’s always “their fault”, never “our fault”. “We are always the victims, never the perpetrators. “They” are the ones to blame. Also, British people are fond of declaring that they are “fair”, especially when they are manifestly not.
As a result of the social milieu the British live in, a considerable number of them (I would hope it isn’t a majority) will blame “the other” for all sorts of imagined faults, and they will work out plausible sounding reasons why the other is at fault. Before the era of mass immigration, they played this game among the English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh, and also among the various regions and classes within each country—often quite viciously.
So anyone coming from abroad to live among the British had better be prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of petty-minded vindictiveness and spite from the chronically unhappy and mentally tortured sections of the community who have learned from tradition and formed the habit of hating, blaming, attacking and condemning “the other” for perceived imperfections in their situation.
But as Xabier says, the Hindus & Sikhs / Indians are generally better liked in the UK than the Muslims / Pakistanis & Bengalis. There is a definite hierarchy of fear and loathing among the haters.
http://images.slideplayer.com/24/7331443/slides/slide_21.jpg
TWP-
When it comes to jobs it really does not matter who it is; resentment builds if you feel somebody got “your” job or resources.
In saying that, Canada is filled with Indian immigrants. Go to the Toronto airport and half the people working seem to be from India. Indians place a high value on educating themselves, getting work, and taking care of their families. A country could hardly find better immigrants.
But I will bet a Canadian citizen of Indian decent is just as upset if a company he or she works for out sources their jobs to the third world as anyone else.
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Since the proper thread didn’t take the comment anymore, posting here..
The post Fokushima standards call for (gravity fed) water cooling sprinkles in the spent fuel bldg, among other stuff.. For some reason in your next sentence of rage, you did mix it up with the issue of melting core of reactor. Well, anything can happen, nothing human built is bullet proof, that’s why old, especially sub ~ .5GW reactors are being phased out and *new stuff phased in such as larger output 1.2GW gen3+ reactors placed in airliner crash proof building with passive water cooling within the main reactor dome and other safety sub systems included, like ready pool under the reactor for possible containment breach in case of something unexpected blowing up or core melting during the 60+yrs lifespan of that next gen apparatus etc. Not sure, what kind of security your relative is focusing on there, cafeteria perhaps or you did not listen to him properly? Based on your near zero knowledge on nuclear industry basics and “Time magazine” sources, LoL. Anyway large part of the NA’s NPPs fleet is increasingly renown security hazard, not problem of mine, if they are slow to upgrade the security measures mandated after Fukushima and or slow/not acting at all in replacing the older installations for newest reactor designs..
Again, fast crash scenario you tend to be more correct, slower staged crash – plateauing the mitigation (and closure) program now under play will not make nuclear energy such universal problem, act accordingly..
*at least in countries-regions not falling in infrustructure apart like NA
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
https://media.giphy.com/media/R7JRwIOJ9yiCA/giphy.gif
If FE believes that everyone will go back to the stone age in a day, and everyone will lay down to die, then yes there will be a big problem with meltdowns and radiation. His train of thought is very consistent at least.
When the financial system goes down … the power goes off… and the spent fuel ponds will boil and blow….
Now if you believe the CBs can just print money forever and prop everything up forever… that there will not be a point where the printing simply has no effect .. and the system collapses into a heap of rubble….
Then you have nothing to be concerned about…. the ‘they’ have it all under control.
Meanwhile — because I know what I know — I go skiing for a month from next weekend.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The good thing about Fast Eddy — is that when he is wrong — he admits it.
He celebrates it.
Why?
Because it means he is not a stewpid human donkey…. each new epiphany brings him closer to pure truth….
Stewpid human donkeys cannot understand that — that is why they are stewpid human donkeys — going aimlessly round and round and round….
Well, it perhaps takes special determination to dance in lets say own waste products, I’m not surprised you again confirmed such sad fact of posting Donkey YT videos as a attempted rebuttal to my fine & factual articles of current state of nuclear power.
I notice Pintada has disappeared — remember how he used to assail me suggesting ponds could be cooled with air….
And time and time again I explained to him that this was not possible because rods are stored in dense pack formations…
That info came this man http://www.miis.edu/academics/faculty/FDalnokiVeress/node/23025
I posted his contact details and suggested Pintada contact him directly and ask him what would happen if the power supply were interrupted – permanently – to the 4000+ spent fuel ponds around the world
We have not heard from Pintada since…
Perhaps he got some bad news and is spending his days on a rocking chair numbed by Xanax?
Here’s the contact info ….. be careful with it…..
Email jdalnokiveress@miis.edu
Phone 831.647.4638
Not sure why you still march in circles asking the same silly straw-man questions, already answered. I was repeatedly (in this very article debate), specifically mentioning gravity fed water sprinkles as one of the recommended post Fukushima upgrades by the global bodies of nuclear industry.
In terms of spent fuel, I told you, there is already advanced program of “closing the fuel cycle” where nuclear waste is selected into three main categories according to hazard level (halftime), the most active long term dangerous stuff is poured-melted with added molten glass into “ingots – steel containers” and dumped underground mountains bellow water table, the same for the middle hazard in cheaper way concrete-steel only. The lowest hazard and the most plentiful is brought from the temporary water cooled deposit inside the NPP plant, which is prolly the stuff your seem to be raging about, and could be reprocessed at other facility with a bit of plutonium added into so-called MOX fuel (solid state deposited) for breeder reactor, which in that fashion burns more of that ~97% of energy potential still contained in spent fuel pellets of traditional NPP. In summary, that way both near and long term hazards are liquidated step by step. Despite active research, only one country posses the whole chain of industries to do it, it’s there for everybody to see working on industrial (not lab level) since at least ~2010s for the reprocessing-recycling and real big breeder reactor running since ~2016. It will obviously take more reactors (~6x), which are already in construction or planned to put serious dent into the stockpiles of spent fuel.
Also, among other things I explained was how older type reactors, usually pre 1980s designs with sub .5GWe output and 40+ lifespan are in many countries being replaced by latest “gen3+” 1.2GWe units (60+ lifespan) with much more safety upgrades, e.g. incl. passive systems to cope with radiation hazards on many different levels, inside the reactor dome as well the spent fuel pond in the bldg nearby. So, again several impacts at once achieved, higher output from single installation with higher safety factor.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xzxwbQrBnC8/movieposter.jpg