How should electricity from wind turbines and solar panels be evaluated? Should it be evaluated as if these devices are stand-alone devices? Or do these devices provide electricity that is of such low quality, because of its intermittency and other factors, that we should recognize the need for supporting services associated with actually putting the electricity on the grid? This question comes up in many types of evaluations, including Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and Energy Payback Period (EPP).
I recently gave a talk called The Problem of Properly Evaluating Intermittent Renewable Resources (PDF) at a BioPhysical Economics Conference in Montana. As many of you know, this is the group that is concerned about Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI). As you might guess, my conclusion is that the current methodology is quite misleading. Wind and solar are not really stand-alone devices when it comes to providing the kind of electricity that is needed by the grid. Grid operators, utilities, and backup electricity providers must provide hidden subsidies to make the system really work.
This problem is currently not being recognized by any of the groups evaluating wind and solar, using techniques such as LCOE, EROI, LCA, and EPP. As a result, published results suggest that wind and solar are much more beneficial than they really are. The distortion affects both pricing and the amount of supposed CO2 savings.
One of the questions that came up at the conference was, “Is this distortion actually important when only a small amount of intermittent electricity is added to the grid?” For that reason, I have included discussion of this issue as well. My conclusion is that the problem of intermittency and the pricing distortions it causes is important, even at low grid penetrations. There may be some cases where intermittent renewables are helpful additions without buffering (especially when the current fuel is oil, and wind or solar can help reduce fuel usage), but there are likely to be many other instances where the costs involved greatly exceed the benefits gained. We need to be doing much more thoughtful analyses of costs and benefits in particular situations to understand exactly where intermittent resources might be helpful.
A big part of our problem is that we are dealing with variables that are “not independent.” If we add subsidized wind and solar, that act, by itself, changes the needed pricing for all of the other types of electricity. The price per kWh of supporting types of electricity needs to rise, because their EROIs fall as they are used in a less efficient manner. This same problem affects all of the other pricing approaches as well, including LCOE. Thus, our current pricing approaches make intermittent wind and solar look much more beneficial than they really are.
A clear workaround for this non-independence problem is to look primarily at the cost (in terms of EROI or LCOE) in which wind and solar are part of overall “packages” that produce grid-quality electricity, at the locations where they are needed. If we can find solutions on this basis, there would seem to be much more of a chance that wind and solar could be ramped up to a significant share of total electricity. The “problem” is that there is a lower bound on an acceptable EROI (probably 10:1, but possibly as low as 3:1 based on the work of Charles Hall). This is somewhat equivalent to an upper bound on the affordable cost of electricity using LCOE.
This means that if we really expect to scale wind and solar, we probably need to be creating packages of grid-quality electricity (wind or solar, supplemented by various devices to create grid quality electricity) at an acceptably high EROI. This is very similar to a requirement that wind or solar energy, including all of the necessary adjustments to bring them to grid quality, be available at a suitably low dollar cost–probably not too different from today’s wholesale cost of electricity. EROI theory would strongly suggest that energy costs for an economy cannot rise dramatically, without a huge problem for the economy. Hiding rising energy costs with government subsidies cannot fix this problem.
Distortions Become Material Very Early
If we look at recently published information about how much intermittent electricity is being added to the electric grid, the amounts are surprisingly small. Overall, worldwide, the amount of electricity generated by a combination of wind and solar (nearly all of it intermittent) was 5.2% in 2016. On an area by area basis, the percentages of wind and solar are as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Wind and solar as a share of 2016 electricity generation, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017. World total is not shown, but is very close to the percentage shown for China.
There are two reasons why these percentages are lower than a person might expect. One reason is that the figures usually quoted are the amounts of “generating capacity” added by wind and solar, and these are nearly always higher than the amount of actual electricity supply added, because wind and solar “capacity” tend to be lightly used.
The other reason that the percentages on Figure 1 are lower than we might expect is because the places that have unusually high concentrations of wind and solar generation (examples: Germany, Denmark, and California) tend to depend on a combination of (a) generous subsidy programs, (b) the availability of inexpensive balancing power from elsewhere and (c) the generosity of neighbors in taking unwanted electricity and adding it to their electric grids at low prices.
As greater amounts of intermittent electricity are added, the availability of inexpensive balancing capacity (for example, from hydroelectric from Norway and Sweden) quickly gets exhausted, and neighbors become more and more unhappy with the amounts of unwanted excess generation being dumped on their grids. Denmark has found that the dollar amount of subsidies needs to rise, year after year, if it is to continue its intermittent renewables program.
One of the major issues with adding intermittent renewables to the electric grid is that doing so distorts wholesale electricity pricing. Solar energy tends to cut mid-day peaks in electricity price, making it less economic for “peaking plants” (natural gas electricity plants that provide electricity only when prices are very high) to stay open. At times, prices may turn negative, if the total amount of wind and solar produced at a given time is greater than the overall amount of electricity required by customers. This happens because intermittent electricity is generally given priority on the grid, whether price signals indicate that it is needed or not. A combination of these problems tends to make backup generation unprofitable unless subsidies are provided. If peaking plants and other backup are still required, but need to operate fewer hours, subsidies must be provided so that the plants can afford to hire year-around staff, and pay their ongoing fixed expenses.
If we think of the new electricity demand as being “normal” demand, adjusted by the actual, fairly random, wind and solar generation, the new demand pattern ends up having many anomalies. One of the anomalies is that required prices become negative at times when wind and solar generation are high, but the grid has no need for them. This tends to happen first on weekends in the spring and fall, when electricity demand is low. As the share of intermittent electricity grows, the problem with negative prices becomes greater and greater.
The other major anomaly is the need for a lot of quick “ramp up” and “ramp down” capacity. One time this typically happens is at sunset, when demand is high (people cooking their dinners) but a large amount of solar electricity disappears because of the setting of the sun. For wind, rapid ramp ups and downs seem to be related to thunderstorms and other storm conditions. California and Australia are both adding big battery systems, built by Tesla, to help deal with rapid ramp-up and ramp-down problems.
There is a lot of work on “smart grids” being done, but this work does not address the particular problems brought on by adding wind and solar. In particular, smart grids do not move demand from summer and winter (when demand is normally high) to spring and fall (when demand is normally low). Smart grids and time of day pricing aren’t very good at fixing the rapid ramping problem, either, especially when these problems are weather related.
The one place where time of day pricing can perhaps be somewhat helpful is in lessening the rapid ramping problem of solar at sunset. One fix that is currently being tried is offering the highest wholesale electricity prices in the evening (6:00 pm to 9:00 pm), rather than earlier in the day. This approach encourages those adding new solar energy generation to add their panels facing west, rather than south, so as to better match demand. Doing this is less efficient from the point of view of the total electricity generated by the panels (and thus lowers EROIs of the solar panels), but helps prevent some of the rapid ramping problem at sunset. It also gets some of the generation moved from the middle of day to the evening, when it better matches “demand.”
In theory, the high prices from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm might encourage consumers to move some of their electricity usage (cooking dinner, watching television, running air conditioning) until after 9:00 pm. But, as a practical matter, it is difficult to move very much of residential demand to the desired time slots based on price. In theory, demand could also be moved from summer and winter to spring and fall based on electricity price, but it is hard to think of changes that families could easily make that would allow this change to happen.
With the strange demand pattern that occurs when intermittent renewables are added, standard pricing approaches (based on marginal costs) tend to produce wholesale electricity prices that are too low for electricity produced by natural gas, coal, and nuclear providers. In fact, wholesale electricity rates for supporting providers tend to diverge further and further from what is needed, as more and more intermittent electricity is added. The dotted line on Figure 2 illustrates the falling wholesale electricity prices that have been occurring in Europe, even as retail residential electricity prices are rising.
Figure 2. European residential electricity prices have risen, even as wholesale electricity prices (dotted line) have fallen. Chart by Paul-Frederik Bach.
The marginal pricing scheme gives little guidance as to how much backup generation is really needed. It is therefore left up to governments and local electricity oversight groups to figure out how to compensate for the known pricing problem. Some provide subsidies to non-intermittent producers; others do not.
To complicate matters further, electricity consumption has been falling rapidly in countries whose economies are depressed. Adding wind and solar further reduces needed natural gas, coal, and nuclear generation. Some countries may let these producers collapse; others may subsidize them, as a jobs-creation program, whether this backup generation is needed or not.
Of course, if a single payer is responsible for both intermittent and other electricity programs, a combined rate can be set that is high enough for the costs of both intermittent electricity and backup generation, eliminating the pricing problem, from the point of view of electricity providers. The question then becomes, “Will the new higher electricity prices be affordable by consumers?”
The recently published IEA World Energy Investment Report 2017 provides information on a number of developing problems:
“Network investment remains robust for now, but worries have emerged in several regions about the prospect of a ‘utility death spiral’ as the long-term economic viability of grid investments diminishes. The still widespread regulatory practice of remunerating fixed network assets on the basis of a variable per kWh charge is poorly suited for a power system with a large amount of decentralised solar PV and storage capacity.”
The IEA investment report notes that in China, 10% of solar PV and 17% of wind generation were curtailed in 2016, even though previous problems with lack of transmission had been fixed. Figure 1 shows China’s electricity from wind and solar amounts to only 5.0% of its total electricity consumption in 2016.
Regarding India, the IEA report says, “More flexible conventional capacity, including gas-fired plants, better connections with hydro resources and investment in battery storage will be needed to support continued growth in solar power.” India’s intermittent electricity amounted to only 4.1% of total electricity supply in 2016.
In Europe, a spike in electricity prices to a 10-year high took place in January 2017, when both wind and solar output were low, and the temperature was unusually cold. And as previously mentioned, California and South Australia have found it necessary to add Tesla batteries to handle rapid ramp-ups and ramp-downs. Australia is also adding large amounts of transmission that would not have been needed, if coal generating plants had continued to provide services in South Australia.
None of the costs related to intermittency workarounds are currently being included in EROI analyses. They are generally not being included in analyses of other kinds, either, such as LCOE. In my opinion, the time has already arrived when analyses need to be performed on a much broader basis than in the past, so as to better capture the true cost of adding intermittent electricity.
Slide 1
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Slide 2
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Slide 3
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Slide 4
Of course, as we saw in the introduction, worldwide electricity supply is only about 5% wind and solar. The only parts of the world that were much above 5% in 2016 were Europe, which was at 11.3% in 2016 and the United States, which was at 6.6%.
There has been a lot of talk about electrical systems being operated entirely by renewables (such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, and burned biomass), but these do not exist in practice, as far as I know. Trying to replace total energy consumption, including oil and natural gas usage, would be an even bigger problem.
Slide 5
The amount of electricity required by consumers varies considerably over the course of a year. Electricity demand tends to be higher on weekdays than on weekends, when factories and schools are often closed. There is usually a “peak” in demand in winter, when it is unusually cold, and second peak in summer, when it is unusually hot. During the 24-hour day, demand tends to be lowest at night. During the year, the lowest demand typically comes on weekends in the spring and fall.
If intermittent electricity from W&S is given first priority on the electric grid, the resulting “net” demand is far more variable than the original demand pattern based on customer usage. This increasingly variable demand tends to become more and more difficult to handle, as the percentage of intermittent electricity added to the grid rises.
Slide 6
EROI is nearly always calculated at the level of the solar panel or wind turbine, together with a regular inverter and whatever equipment is used to hold the device in place. This calculation does not consider all of the costs in getting electricity to the right location, and up to grid quality. If we move clockwise around the diagram, we see some of the problems as the percentage of W&S increases.
One invention is smart inverters, which are used to bring the quality of the electrical output up closer to grid quality, apart from the intermittency problems. Germany has retrofitted solar PV with these, because of problems it encountered using only “regular” inverters. Upgrading to smart inverters would be a cost not generally included in EROI or LCOE calculations.
The next problem illustrated in Slide 6 is the fact that the pricing system does not work for any fuel, if wind and solar are given priority on the electric grid. The marginal cost approach that is usually used gives too low a wholesale price for every producer subject to this pricing scheme. The result is a pricing system that gives misleadingly low price signals. Regulators are generally aware of this issue, but don’t have a good way of fixing it. Capacity payments are used in some places as an attempted workaround, but it is not clear that such payments really solve the problem.
It is less obvious that in addition to giving too low pricing indications for electricity, the current marginal cost pricing approach indirectly gives artificially low price indications regarding the required prices for natural gas and coal as fuels. As a result of this and other forces acting in the same directions, we end up with a rather bizarre situation: (a) Natural gas and and coal prices tend to fall below their cost of production. (b) At the same time, nuclear electricity generating plants are being forced to close, because they cannot afford to compete with the artificially low price of electricity produced by the very low-priced natural gas and coal. The whole system tends to be pushed toward collapse by misleadingly low wholesale electricity prices.
Slide 6 also shows some of the problems that seem to start arising as more intermittent electricity is added. Once new long distance transmission lines are added, it changes the nature of the whole “game.” It becomes easier to rely on generation added by a neighbor; any generation that a country might add becomes more attractive to a neighbor. As long as there is plenty of electricity to go around, everything goes well. When there are shortages, then arguments begin to arise. Arguments such as these may destabilize the Eurozone.
One thing I did not mention in this chart is the increasing need to pay intermittent grid providers not to produce electricity when there is an oversupply of electricity. In the UK, the amount of these payments was over 1 million pounds a week in 2015. I mentioned previously that in China, 17% of wind generation and 10% of solar PV generation were being curtailed in 2016. EROI calculations do not consider this possibility; they assume that 100% of the electricity that is generated can, in fact, be used by the system.
Slide 7
The pricing system no longer works because W&S are added whenever they become available, in preference to other generation. In many ways, the pricing system is like our appetite for food. Usually, we eat when we are hungry, and the food we eat reduces our appetite. W&S are added to the system with total disregard for whether the system needs it or not, leaving the other electricity producers to try to fix up the mess, using the false pricing signals they get. The IEA’s 2017 Investment Report recommends that countries develop new pricing schemes that correct the problems, but it is not clear that this is actually possible without correcting the hidden subsidies.
Slide 8
Why add more electricity supply, if there is a chance that you can use the new supply added by your neighbor?
Slide 9
South Australia had two recent major outages–both partly related to adding large amounts of wind and solar to the electric grid, and the loss of its last two coal-fired electricity generation plants. The first big outage came during a weather event. The second big outage occurred when temperatures were very high during summer, and because of this, electricity demand was very high.
One planned workaround for supply shortages was natural gas. Unfortunately, South Australia doesn’t actually have a very good natural gas supply to operate its units generating electricity from natural gas. Thus, the available natural gas generators could not really respond as hoped, except at very high prices. Some changes are now being made, including a planned Tesla battery system. With the changes being made, there are reports of electricity rate increases of up to 120% for businesses in South Australia.
The irony of the situation is that Australia is a major natural gas exporter. Businesses expected that they could make more money selling the natural gas abroad as LNG than they could by providing natural gas to the citizens of South Australia. These exports are now being curbed, to try to help fix the South Australia natural gas problem.
These issues point out how interconnected all of the different types of electricity generation are, and how quickly a situation can become a local crisis, if regulators simply assume “market forces will provide a solution.”
Slide 10
An expert panel in Australia has recommended an approach similar to this. It simply becomes too difficult to operate a system with built-in subsidies.
Slide 11
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Slide 12
Timing makes a difference. The payments that are made for interest need to be made, directly or indirectly, with future goods and services that can only be made using energy products. Thus, they also require the use of energy products.
Slide 13
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Slide 14
There is a real difference between (a) looking at the actual operating experiences of an existing oil and gas or coal company, and (b) guessing what the future operating experience of a system operated by wind panels and solar panels might be. The tendency is to guess low, when it comes to envisioning what future problems may arise.
It is not just the wind turbines and solar panels that will need to be replaced over time; it is all of the supporting devices that need to be kept in good repair and replaced over time. Furthermore, the electric grid is dependent on oil for its upkeep. If oil becomes a problem, there is a real danger that the electric grid will become unusable, and with it, electricity that is generally distributed by the grid, including wind and solar.
Slide 15
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Slide 16
Economies and humans are both self-organized systems that depend on energy consumption for their existence. They have many other characteristics in common as well.
Slide 17
We know that with humans, we really need to examine how a new medicine or a change in diet works in practice. For one thing, medicines and diets aren’t necessarily used as planned. Unexpected long-term changes occur that we could not anticipate.
Slide 18
The same kinds of problems occur when wind and solar are added to a grid system. We really have to look at what is happening to see the full picture.
Slide 19
Anyone who has followed the news knows about medicine’s long history of announcements followed by retractions.
Slide 20
A fairly similar situation can be expected to happen with proposed energy solutions.
Slide 21
There is a whole package of costs and a whole range of direct and indirect outcomes to consider.
Slide 22
As far as I know, none of the attempts at producing a system that operates on 100% renewable energy have been a success. There has been some reductions in fossil fuel usage, but at a high cost.
Slide 23
A 2013 Weissabach et al. EROI analysis examines a situation with partial buffering of wind and solar (approximately 10 days worth of buffering). It leaves out several other costs of bringing wind and solar up to grid quality electricity, such as extra long distance transmission costs, and more significant buffering to allow transferring electricity produced in spring and fall to be saved for summer or winter. These authors calculated a partially buffered EROI of 4:1 for wind, and a partially buffered EROI range of 1.5:1 to 2.3:1 for solar PV.
Of course, more investigation, including looking at the full package of needed devices to provide non-intermittent electricity of grid quality, is really needed for particular situations. Improvements in technology would tend to raise EROI indications; adding more supplemental devices to bring electricity to grid quality would tend to reduce EROI indications.
If the cutoff for being able to maintain a modern society is 10:1, as mentioned earlier, then wind and solar PV would both seem to fall far below the required EROI cutoff, if they are to be used in quantity.
If, as Hall believes, an EROI as low as 3:1 might be useful, then there is a possibility that some wind energy would be helpful, especially if a particular wind location has a very high capacity factor (can generate electricity a large share of the time), and if pricing problems can be handled adequately. The EROI of solar PV would probably still be too low in most applications. In any event, we need to be examining situations more closely, instead of simply assuming that hidden subsidies can be counted on indefinitely.
I agree with your analysis but where I find solar most useful is in my offgrid home. Of course we have learned to adjust to a day without sunshine but the windmill still works as the solar and wind seem to be complimentary. To help with this sustainable vision we provide all of our own food.. and are gradually replacing the tractors on our farm with horses. So eliminating most of our expenses and doing some value added farming ( we press vegetable oils which we also use for diesel fuel). My thought is that we need to change our habits and thats what I am doing rather than looking to the business as usual way.And remember I use solar in my farming.. no better us than growing plants. -mat
Did you grow your panels on a solar panel tree? What about the mindmill – does that grow on a windmill tree?
Can you post photos of the trees?
Do you have regular gatherings where permies drink Organic Kool Aid and sing Koombaya while dancing around a campfire?
I can feel Mr Cognitive Dissonance’s presence….. he is very wary after yesterday’s encounter….
Why…. must….you….continue….to….use….the….dots……………?
It is a literary technique that I have patented ….. it helps to build
http://68.media.tumblr.com/d56beee86f8043a8bb869cca2bb1380d/tumblr_inline_n14bqtoFWU1rqg72d.jpg
It leaves the reader wanting more — wondering what will come next…. it fuels the imagination …..
No…. it…. doesn’t….
It does for those with IQ’s above double digits….
“It is a literary technique that I have patented …..”
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether this guy is joking or whether he does indeed suffer from delusions of grandeur and Princess Diana syndrome. Unnecessary dots are not generally well thought of by those with higher IQ’s.
At least the character know as Fast Eddy does not have Grand DeluSIONS…..
It was funny for a while, but it is getting pathological.
It will be FE & sycophants only soon.
Oh well, that’s the way the wafer crumbles.
Just wate until I start spelling werds the way they sownd…..
https://stancarey.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/stan-carey-indo-european-jones-meme-grammar-nazis-i-hate-these-guys.jpg?w=330&h=475
It’s not grammar, Timbo, it’s punctuation, but used in a most irritating manner.
Yes I know, but “punctuation na-zis” doesn’t doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it, Jackass?
As for irritation, have you considered talcum powder? Because now he knows he can get under your skin that easily, he’s going to make a habit of it.
http://dinablas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Carl-Jung-quote.jpg
“Jackass”
Tee-hee, not often that Tim loses his rag. I just find you are ass-licking FE too much lately. You will get brown tongue syndrome. Prior to that, I had you down as a pretty independently-minded sort of fellow.
Anilingus has nothing to do with it. I’m just supporting the top dog of the Core.
The bottom line with Eddy is that if he wasn’t here, the place would be crowded with permies and greenies, solarstanis, windmillistas and Telsarians—followers of the Prophet Musk—all viciously attacking Gail for not supporting their fantasies.
Eddy is to Gail’s bulldog, just as Huxley was to Darwin. The two bulldogs even bark to the same tune. See:
http://i.imgur.com/Jt8wz.jpg
“I’m just supporting the top dog of the Core.”
In your fantasies. So you think you are Rudolf Hess to AH? ROTFL! Given your references to “talcum powder”, FE will no doubt have his suspicions about you. But then you do live in Japan and no doubt own a pair of platform flip-flops.
More like Tonto to his Lone Ranger or Batman to his Robin, or perhaps Laurel to his Hardy, but certainly not Lois Lane to his Clark Kent or Bonnie to his Clyde.
“More like Tonto to his Lone Ranger or Batman to his Robin”
I can somehow imagine you enjoying wearing tights, Mr Talc-man,
“but certainly not Lois Lane to his Clark Kent or Bonnie to his Clyde.”
He adds, because he knows we have our doubts. And this from the wimp who kept getting his pocket money stolen. 🙂 You’re more like Frank Spencer to FE’s Betty.
So we have the delusitanis vs Timbo and FE, the two with the ridiculous delusions of grandeur. Very amusing how you suck up to narcissistic FE, yet he NEVER comes to your defence.
Why would I come to anyone’s defense? Especially a member of the core?
Why should he come to my defense? I’ve never been exposed to an attack here that I couldn’t handle on my own with one hand tied behind my back.
When people make mean-spirited personal attacks based on the desire to inflict mental pain or to be an annoying little tyke, there’s no need to respond in kind as the calibre of the attacks says much more about them than about the their targets.
And when people attack opinions or arguments, I am always happy to defend them or else to own up and look big if and when I err. So either way, it’s sorted.
“I’ve never been exposed to an attack that I couldn’t handle on my own with one hand tied behind my back.”
Bah! You had no hands tied behind your back and still you got your pocket money stolen. 🙂 You couldn’t punch your way out of a paper bag, you big girl’s blouse. You’d probably trip over your own kimono.
“When people make mean-spirited personal attacks based on the desire to inflict mental pain or to be an annoying little tyke, there’s no need to respond in kind”
Well, I made no such attack, but still you called me “Jackass” up-thread. 😉 Learn to know thyself, lassie.
But you are very good at attacking yourself. It’s rather unedifying to see a 60-something fawning over a 40-something, and then fantasising about being part of “the core”. Pass me the sickbag! There is no “core” – this is just a blog, though an excellent one – with commenters. We can do without your silly boasts, trying to big yourself up, Wimpo Timbo – most puerile in an elderly man.
There is no “core”
Yes there is.
If you are the core — you realize there is ‘the core’ — nobody has to tell you that you are a member …. you know it. We know it. The first signs are you realize everyone else is stewpid and trapped in the matrix…. then you start to get this tingly feeling when you realize hey — I really am a god….. almost nobody else can see what I see….
Why should The Jackal know jack-all about “the Core”? Anyone who doesn’t validate the beliefs of the Core or share their worldview disqualifies him or herself from membership.
Everyone has core beliefs, apart from those happy souls who have no beliefs at all.
People who share core beliefs can form a core, and if they feel those beliefs are sufficiently important or interesting, they may be motivated to do so. Birds of a feather, etc. People who share different beliefs form different cores and never the twain will meet. A core in this sense is simply a cool way of describing a small group of people who share similar and unfashionable core beliefs.
Pointing out that “there is no core” misses the point. It’s trying to impose one’s own dogma about what’s real and what’s not onto other people. What can be said of the core can be equally said of all manner of human relationships. A core is an association that has no significance for outsiders but a deep significance for those involved. Whether it exists or not is something only its members could possibly know.
As I’m fond of saying, 95 percent of our waking lives is spent immersed in imaginary activities. We are living in a material world but most of us are profoundly uninterested in what’s going on in that world because most of the time it’s doesn’t entertain us sufficiently. So we take refuge in fantasy, in books, in movies, in games, in TV, in the internet, and in getting entangled in one thought after another after another after another. NONE of this IMAGINARY activity is REAL. None of it. Although some of it may have practical applications, much of it is purely for amusement or passing the time, and some is well described as mental mass-turbation.
And that’s Okay. We live. Then we die. And in the meantime we dissipate energy, a lot like like little whirlpools in a stream. The energy of the water forms a little eddy 🙂 (with a name like Eddy, Tim, or the Jackal if you prefer), and for a while, this little eddy whirls around and moves with the current, and then it disappears. So living is basically very simple. Energy comes in, mostly chemical energy in the form of food, it fuels our activity and then it moves on, mostly in the form of heat. But thanks to Mr. DNA and his amazing evolutionary talents, human beings have grown smart enough to make the simple business of living more and more complicated for each other by adding layer after layer of thinking.
All of us here today are products of this process. How could we be anything else? Coming to a blog and discussing or reading ideas is one form of exercising the imagination. There are countless others.
Tone it down a bit. The fellow is trying to do well by “green” standards.
Windmills, especially if they are of the old fashioned type that simply pump water without using electricity, are not all that bad. And, if he is keeping the solar panels off the grid (which I doubt) he at least is not harming the electric grid.
I am not sure it is possible to break the story to people gently, though. They assume that using less is all we need to do, and storing a means of making electricity up for the future is helpful (especially if the tax code will allow your purchases to be subsidized by the government). This is a great way to transfer money from the poor to the well-educated (if not rich). It is not really a way to solve our problems, however. It makes a good “green story” however.
I have no time for this nonsense.
As we have seen … they have made their minds up …. they will never acknowledge the futility of what they are doing — even if it is presented in paint by numbers format ….
I think Hank summed it up— the facts and logic were presented … and his response was ‘I don’t care – I refuse to give up on this’
I will not have DelusiSTANIS preaching their fake solar religion to me.
As long as you keep the output of the solar panels off the electric grid, I have no problem with them. The electric grid is designed to maintain all of our commercial and industrial operations. A home can often “get by” with fairly low quality electricity, as long as you have a reasonably good quality inverter and lots of backup batteries. I would not try to run a lot of 220 volt high tech equipment on it though.
‘To help with this sustainable vision’ — that’s funny — sounds like a sound bite from a solar panel ad….
I must use it at my next dinnah pahtee….
And by the way …. have you noticed my solar water pump… why yes Fast I did see those 4 panels on your garage roof….. yes this is all to help with my sustainable vision ……. as I say that I notice the rather attractive lady with the tie dye shirt and peace tattoo licking her lips and eyeing me up …..Green Groupie?
Solar panels are toxic waste dumps…. and they are manufactured using enormous amounts of lignite coal…..
They actually do not grow on trees … 🙁
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/
Peak Oil is Past!
http://imgur.com/a/uSZ1j
unless there’s a new peak in a few years!
who knows?
The 2008/9 drop was steeper than the current one.
Then we went on to add an extra 10 mbpd—a real binge.
This looks like it is an Art Berman chart. It would be helpful to have a link to where the original is from.
A peak into your future….
http://www.france24.com/en/20170728-venezuela-crisis-tips-showdown
Thanks! I hope we are not depending on oil exports from Venezuela.
A Germany nuclear plant was damaged because its operators increased and decreased its output to respond to energy grid fluctuations. The incident supports the theory that nuclear and renewable energy generation are incompatible.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/german-nuclear-damage-shows-atomic-and-renewable-power-are-unhappy-bedfellows/
The only thing ‘renewable’ energy is compatible with is taxpayer subsidies…. it is a parasitic relationship
Thanks! I see that this is actually a brand-new story.
Yes, of course it is insanity to combine thermal power generation with intermittent. Heat gradients leading to thermal stresses all over the place. Slow dynamics in addition to premature wear.
It is time for Mutti and her sponsors to bite the bullet and look to the north for access to competent dispatchable generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation
But oh my, it will not come cheap. Time to get those D-marks, ehm, sorry, Euros I meant, “of course”, flowing north!
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/28/540008218/north-korea-h-ballistic-missile-seoul-and-the-pentagon-say
NK launches another ICBM, but Trump still does nothing. Hmm, I thought he wasn’t going to allow NK to develop an ICBM because that was unacceptable. Maybe instead of concentrating on causing more people to suffer by way of lost health insurance, if it can still be pulled off, Trump should actually do something about NK. He railed against Obama for doing nothing so now its Trump’s opportunity to do something and what does he do? Absolutely nothing.
Russia submitted evidence to the UN that the last NK missile launch wasn’t an ICBM as the Pentagon claimed(without proof). It was just a mid range missile Now the Pentagon is claiming again(without proof). That NK just shot another ICBM. Did American’s learn nothing from the Iraq war WMD lies? I guess not. The US media and the public are like donkeys. Just feed it to them and they will eat it. No questioning, no common sense, just gobble-gobble-gobble….LOL
https://www.upi.com/Russia-submits-North-Korea-missile-data-to-UN/8811499691892/
The US launched a test ICBM. Should someone else in the world “do something” about it?
Shale can not even be processed without the addition of a lot of conventional crude. It takes somewhere between 70 to 80% of the inputs to be conventional for refineries to operate if they include shale. It’s not much of a substitute if can’t do any substituting? There is not a single refinery in the world that is capable of using 100% LTO. There will probably never be one that can use even 50%. Because conventional reserves are being extracted, and not being replaced shale has a very limited shelf life.
Cliff, you should do a little research. It’s hard and complex to process heavy sour crude. It’s fairly easy to process LTO. A 100% LTO refinery would be relatively cheap.
“Technical Options for Processing Additional Light Tight Oil Volumes Within the United States”
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/petroleum/lto/
I used to work at a refinery in Houston that processed Venezuela heavy crude.
Link please? This doesn’t make sense to me, at all.
Shale is a kind of rock. It doesn’t go into refineries to begin with. Perhaps you mean light tight oil, which is extracted from shale.
Very heavy oil, such as bitumen from Canada, is mixed with natural gas liquids (usually) or with light oil to make it flow well enough to be transported in pipelines. This sounds like what you are talking about, when you are talking about oil that must be diluted with other oil. This kind of oil is precisely the opposite of light tight oil.
Light tight oil can be refined through almost any refinery, without the addition of anything else. It is simply a separation process, so it is very cheap. Refineries can be configured so that they provide a wide range of services, including cracking, or they can be very simple. They can charge a higher price, and thus make a bigger profit, if they can provide the range of services they are configured to provide. Also, heavy oil is usually priced a fair amount lower than other oil, to build in for the extra refining cost, so that the whole “package” comes out quite profitable for the whole chain involved (except that the actual selling price of oil may be too low to for those extracting the bitumen).
The US and Canada used to have quite a few refineries set up for light oil on the East Coast, but quite a few of these went bankrupt, because refineries configured to provide a wider range of services could be more profitable. Also, they depended on imports of North Sea oil, across the Atlantic, and this has tended to dry up. These refineries can be reached by rail. The many fires that have been reported have related to sending LTO in rail cars to the remaining refineries of this type.
Apart from sending the LTO to the remaining refineries of this type, the logical place to send the LTO is to the now lightly used refineries in Europe, because they too are suffering a lack of light oil for input. Brent (European light oil) prices have been higher than WTI (US light oil) prices, so the price differential helped as well.
This whole nonsensical story seems to be one of the errors that ShortOnOil made in putting together his model. He doesn’t seem to understand the extracting/refining operation system is put together, so he creates his own nonsensical story. He assumes that LTO represents the worst of everything, and combines it into a string. This is part of how he comes to his ridiculous conclusions.
Gail’s analysis of LTO and refineries is well done and exactly on target.
Thanks!
“Rotational inertia”. I still haven’t figured out what this means. Sounds good tho. Next time I want a day off sick, I’ll ring in claiming I’m suffering from rotational inertia. It’s guaranteed to impress! Almost as good as a total eclipse of the heart. 🙂
“Rotational inertia”
In an electrical engineering context, it would mean all those spinning generators and motors connected to the grid. I could go into a lot of detail on power factor, reactive voltage support and the like, but not unless someone asks for it.
How closely aligned do the various generators have to be phase-wise? It’s 60Hz, which is 16-2/3ms, so I’m assuming some fraction of that. Seems like even 5ms off could lead to dangerous over-currents?
“How closely aligned”
It’s measured in degrees. Various parts of the grid can be tens of
degrees out of phase with a given generator. Phase shifting
transformers are sometimes used to control the way; power is
shifted around on the grid. it is far more complicated than it was
before large synchronized areas came about.
Inert: “lacking the ability or strength to move”. So that just means they’re NOT spinning – for whatever reason? Anyway, it shows that our Gail is certainly not lacking in grey matter. 🙂
Oh, my, give it up on this ignoramus glorification and complexed ignorant attitude!
Get real! Read up on Wikipedia?
It’s not exactly rocket science.
http://biomech.byu.edu/Portals/84/Images/barbell.gif
“Impact of Low Rotational Inertia on Power System Stability and Operation” – Ulbig et al, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.6435.pdf
Well, now I’m even more confuzzled, so I’ll leave this to the engineers. It’s clear that Theresa May, current prime minister of us Brits, hasn’t got a brain, so perhaps Gail could come over replace her.
But Theresa’s the sexiest PM the UK’s ever had. I don’t understand why she isn’t more widely appreciated. Brainz ain’t everything!
So. A gerontophile who enjoys big bags under the eyes to boot. I’ll say no more.
My, what a lot of big words we’re using today!
When you’re sexy, age matters not, and bags under the eyes even less.
Besides, can you name me a British PM you fancy more? Perhaps Pitt the younger?
At this point, I think Janet Yellen needs replacing more.
The Brits are building HVDC cables to Scandinavia (and Iceland perhaps).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Europe_2
Basically, intermittent (wind/solar/wave) power needs balancing with fast dynamic power sources.
Nothing beats hydro power in this regard, but can be a bit pricey since it’s regarded as providing the best dynamics, quality and reliability of any electricity production type:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market
The power output of a hydro power station can almost immediately compensate for voltage and phase fluctuations in the grid.
I would presume that Norway’s excess balancing power from hydroelectric is all being sold to customers now.
I found this article talking about the possibility of global warming adding to the ice melt run off, and thus increasing Norway’s the amount of hydropower that can be sold in the future. https://www.norwegianamerican.com/opinion/hydropower-should-be-norways-next-great-export/
Perhaps growth in hydroelectric exports resulting from more ice melt runoff is what those building these lines are hoping for. Otherwise, it seems like pretty soon, there become too many buyers for a limited amount of hydroelectric power.
Astonishingly very little net energy is being transmitted over the HVDC cables.
In oil terms; the hydro power nations will act as a swing producer in a world of intermittent and unreliable sources.
It is an asymmetrical playing field and Norway have oil, gas and hydro. One of the best countries in the world in terms of energy availability (and living standards for that matter).
I expect some large-scale pumping projects to appear shortly. There are some huge wind farms projected in North Sweden (4 GW!). Imagine connecting that behemoth to the grid without any nearby hydro or pumping stations.
Once the power draw from the UK and Central Europe increases (with more intermittent sources coming online, and FF scarcity) it will probably hasten the draining of the existing reservoirs. Hence the urgency to build out wind power capacity in the north (of Sweden and Norway too, I assume).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markbygden_Wind_Farm
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/magazine/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-he-feels-fine.html?_r=0
“Whenever I hear the word ‘hope’ these days, I reach for my whiskey bottle”.
I liked that one, and I’m glad to hear that P. Kingsnorth is not interested in selling hopium. What I find puzzling is that, albeit he thrashes humanism and its anthropocentric delusions and believes that collapse is inevitable ((and rightly so, IMO), he managed to have two children. And that not twenty years ago but, as far i understand, somewhere in the last decade. When he already knew we were completely f*cked.
One of the most inexplicable things for me is how one can have children AFTER knowing how dark and ugly the future will be, like Orlov or Kingsnorth. Are they insane? What are they; egomaniac moral bastards? I can’t get it.
Mr DNA forces them.
That’s not an excuse, i think. Otherwise, why mr.DNA didn’t forced me? Or you? I never wanted to have children, not so much because I knew how ugly and dark the future would be (I only knew it would be worst than the present), but because I’ve always been selfish and a misanthrope. I am sure that my genes are worth ten dollars a dozen, and that they would add a lot of value to the genetical central bank, but they are out of luck because I as a misanthrope have all the pleasure in saying die mothe**uckers!
There are limits to the Mr DNA analogy. We don’t all have the same arrangement of genes, so if there is a genetically-based urge to reproduce, it would not operate with equal strength in all people. On the other hand, any DNA combination that influenced its owner not to reproduce would be removed from gene pool over time, and in the present age of greater lifestyle choice, this should be operating even more strongly than in the good old days when the social pressure to have children could be immense.
Then again, Mr. DNA might not have a lot to do with people’s decisions to have kids. There are so many other factors that can come into play on the nurture side that might make individuals want to or crave having children or to be repulsed by the whole idea, or to do a cost-benefit analysis on the project.
It might be interested to hear some doomers and some green utopians explaining why, despite all that they knew and anticipated and feared about the future, they were impetuous enough to reproduce?
The writer of the blogpost linked to below references Paul Ehrlich as an early doomer who had a child, along with a MR DNA explanation, stating: “Historically, difficult times spurred increases in women giving birth, so much so that scientists postulated that it was an instinctive reaction–having more babies in times of trouble increased the chances that some would survive, perpetuating the bloodline and winning the evolutionary race to pass on your genes.”
https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/revealed-preference-regarding-climate-change/
Although Mr DNA is a FAR tougher entity than Mr Cognitive Dissonance….. some people are able to beat back that urge to procreate….
And of course we can mess around with Mr DNA’s head because we have contraceptives…. something that he did not count on when he emerged from the primordial ooze….
If not for that — I’d have plenty of little human rats running around somewhere or other….
He is insane he said in another article I read today on slate. That he was looking forward to the collapse. And thought things would be better post collapse world? He reminds me of the Unabomber an eco anarchist!
Primo Levi, the Auschwitz-survivor, said something about hope(and trust) to the effect that even when it appears to be foolish it is a mental attitude that enables you to act rather than be paralysed by fear and despair.
‘It helps you to get going on the right foot – even if you are proved wrong in the end.’
If Mrs Kingsnorth wanted kids, kids they had to have, or divorce. It’s very simple!
Procreation is an entirely non-rational zone.
“Procreation is an entirely non-rational zone.”
http://s.quickmeme.com/img/0f/0fcd49769000eec975e3a9e6a0149b879fef01fe02f56c146559c7e66f41c66c.jpg
And a non-negotiable zone as well.
yes, a Collapsestani
S&P Takes Actions on 20 Oil Co Downgraded
https://www.streetinsider.com/dr/news.php?id=11271197&gfv=1
I guess this is what happens next. It soon will start to scare lenders.
“CO2 was 3 parts per 10,000 and everything was fine…now it’s 4 parts per 10,000 and OMG the end of the world!”
Regardless of the significance of C02, that is a really dumb observation. This type of logic proves you have no concept of reaching limits. Which makes me question why are you on a site whose central theme is reaching limits of a finite world?
In my mind I hear you saying silly things like this too: In 2012 we were consuming 90 million barrels of oil per day, now we are consuming 100 million barrels per day OMG its the end of the world. It is childish. Why? Because in a finite world there are limits. And these grandiose assumptions that we can keep consuming and polluting more every year is ludicrous. At some point it will be OMG its the end of the world.
OMG the CO2 someday might go to 5 parts per 10,000 OMG the end of the world!(SARC)
4 parts per 10,000 is scientifically accurate. And correlation is not causation.
” Because in a finite world there are limits. And these grandiose assumptions that we can keep consuming and polluting more every year is ludicrous.”
I agree 100%! There are limits which the world will soon collide with.
I seem to differ with the Collapsestanis on the timing.
The data that I see presented lately shows peak oil about 2025 and severe declines by 2030. To me, that is SOON.
Severe declines are coming soon. By 2040, “consuming and polluting” will be way down and poverty will be way up. That doesn’t sound grandiose to me.
Hey FE, Al Gore made a new movie just for you! 😂
Al Gore just wants to turn Millennials into “Baby Doomers”
Once again … the spokesman for saving the planet…. lives in this monstrosity:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/al-gores-home-in-nashville.jpg
I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.
In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)
The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.
I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/29/al-gore-snubs-earth-hour/
Now come on people —- this is the man behind The Inconvenient Truth ….. does this not tell you something?????
You have been played.
https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/1200×630/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/5/15000_1.jpg
The Way We Were
https://images.successstory.com/adminimg/image_uploads/content_images/younggorefamilycrp%5B_1450949182.jpg
In addition, Al has procreated his way to a hell of a carbon footprint.
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-malthus-says-vice-president-al-gore-in-earth-in-the-balance-was-right-in-predicting-that-the-p-j-o-rourke-257120.jpg
Al is so concerned about the planet … he made a movie about it… then built this
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/al-gores-home-in-nashville-2.jpg
Hmmm…. rather strange considering he also has created 4 eaters of his onw who are supposedly going to roast….
For appearances sake he could have stuck a couple of solar jesus panels on the roof
Don’t forget the Hail Mary wind turbine. In the case Solar Jesus won’t bother and Jack Frost instead arrives.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/de-icing-wind-turbine.jpg
Richard Lindzen is a voice of reason on climate issues. In this interview, he also has some juicy insider info about how Al Gore operates.
https://youtu.be/srVeSmXFX-w
I listened to this interview. I agree that this seems to present a more reasonable view of the climate change debate than what we usually hear. Richard Lindzen taught at MIT, among other places.
He points out the political nature of the debate. One thing he doesn’t point out is the connection to oil limits. Once climate change could be framed as an alarming future problem, politicians suddenly had a way to take the focus off oil limits, and put the concern on a more distant problem that they could supposedly control.
Absof789inglutely!
Think about this — suddenly Al Gore comes out of nowhere with An Inconvenient Truth…. he has an OMG moment — we are burning up the planet — we have to do something!!!!
And then he builds a house that uses 20x more energy than the average house
Like the Big Man says … Think About IT!!!
The thing is….
Unless you believe in the delusion of renewable energy …. then even if we were changing the cl imate…. what would be the point of getting all excited about it … as Al Gore supposedly is… making a movie about it then building a giant house…..
When there is NOTHING that can be done about it.
Why is the MSM pounding the drum day after day after day after day?????
We KNOW the first law of public relations is repeat the lie enough times so that it becomes an accepted truth. To the point that if anyone does not agree with it they are labelled a whacko.
Remember WMD? Over and over and over we were hammered with that lie… and most people believed it…. you could have gotten your head ripped off for being a traitor if you disagreed.
Remember 911? Try claiming that was a false flag in front of the wrong group of people. You would be risking a beating.
GW…. show up at a Green Groupie rally and try to explain this is BS….. you will be spit on.
Gail has hit the nail on the head…. deflection
GW >>>>>> the promise of renewables + EVs >>>>> we have a future — the children have a future…. don’t panic… don’t despair…..
You are being played people…. this is the Unholy Trinity of Lies.
Think about it!
Two 15-year-old boys were jailed for life this week for stabbing Hussein Ahmed to death in Harrow last November, just one in a spate of lethal knife crimes to sweep the British capital.
The two boys wept as they were sentenced at the Old Bailey on Monday. Another youth was slashed in the same assault and a third narrowly escaped injury in what prosecutors said was a revenge attack.
Last week, Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed that London has seen a 24 percent rise in bladed attacks. There were a total of 12,021 in 1016 – 2,327 more than the previous year.
Over a two-week period in June, 11 people died as a result of knife attacks. The two youngest victims were just 17 years old.
This is despite efforts by the London Metropolitan Police to clamp down on knife crime.
During a visit to a community centre in Putney in May, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick was told by one resident that even small children are carrying bladed weapons.
“On the housing estate, it’s six-year-olds that are carrying knives, because they think they won’t be stopped. You need to start there, in the primary schools – you need to tell much younger people,” the anonymous resident said.
In rare cases, video footage has been taken of knife incidents by bystanders. In April, two men were filmed grappling over a knife on a London bus.
More https://www.rt.com/uk/397791-knife-crime-epidemic-london/
A good doomy prepper is stocking up on fighting knives… and learning…
Unfortunately things got out of control when the London police had to desist from ‘stop and search’ on grounds of reasonable suspicion, as the ‘black community’ alleged racism.
This did the wider community of decent people of all races no favours!
With so many young people in London now in this semi-criminal segment of the population,and even the nice kids having to arm themselves in order to feel safe, one can see no ready solution.
Except of course to sterilize the disfunctional adults who produce these kids and initiate them into crime. Really they have no chance at all being brought up by such parents, if they are around that is. Falling sperm count seems highly agreeable…. 🙂
As an East End schoolboy in London in the 1970s, I was threatened by other kids with knives on two occasions. Both times I did the smart thing and handed over my pocket money. There have always been rough areas of the city that it’s wise to avoid and a fair number of sociopathic predators that can only be kept under control by the threat of the sword of justice. Although sterilizing the parents and pasteurizing the offenders themselves might offer a partial solution.
This chap is well regarded by most Filipinos… primarily because he brings a little bit of Dirty Harry to a country that is overrun with criminals…
You want to pull a knife on somebody and rob them — well … you pay the price — with your life.
When things get out of hand … drastic measures are called for….
http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/02/28/duterte-malaysia-rtr.jpg
He’s well regarded by the Filipinos of my acquaintance. Basically, they blame every President since Marcos for the mess their country’s in and they admire Duterte for his commitment to do his best to improve things.
And yes, they love the Dirty Harry, Taxi Driver, Die Hard image.
https://youtu.be/2IAJFCxAP_Y
Please stop the …. thing. It’s driving me insane.
who…
me?
oh…
NOW I get it…
okay, Kurt…
no problem…
I’ve heard those complaints before…
okay…
just this one last time…
Aha …. ok everyone …. when you post….. make sure to end with ……………………
Let’s drive kurt off the deep end!
…………………………
And just for good measure let’s throw in some of these ———
Defense against a knife? I highly advise against it unless you have no choice. Someone pulled a big switchblade on me in a bathroom once and demanded money. I was relieved that’s all they wanted and gave him my little bit of cash and then it took a couple of hours for my nerves to settle down. In the US if you have 3 or more stitches it costs thousands of dollars in medical bills. Better have some real good ins. and hope you survive your gallant attempt to put up a good fight.
I recommend that you acquire a full set of hockey gear before the end comes — you should be able to pick up what you need used for a few hundred dollars…
The stick is an outstanding defensive weapon — and if you affix a sharp knife to one end can double as a pike + it can be used (if you have a horse that has not been eaten) as a fantastic jousting weapon….
I give you …. the new and improved ‘Mad Max’
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c8/0e/c2/c80ec2fe893a64db950892aded305f6f–south-dakota-sioux.jpg
My son in law was knifed on the street one night in the UK. Once, when I was staying there, a man walked out of his house late at night to complain about drunks making too much noise. They knifed him to death in front of his house. The UK is getting to be a violent, vile place.
That;s why people should all be permitted to carry a handgun!
Amazon Hosts Robotics Competition To Figure Out How To Replace 230,000 Warehouse Workers
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-27/amazon-hosts-robotics-competition-figure-out-how-replace-230000-warehouse-workers
You might have thought that the cattle who are aware of this …. might consider um… like…. boycotting Amazon?
Where are the Snowflakes who are protesting for transgender shi..tters?
Oh what was I thinking!!!
They are so stewpid you could give them a rope and they’d hang themselves from the nearest tree if the MSM suggesting that would be cool.
A world of MOREons…..
Whats the problem? We just tax amazon and give UBI to the employed and then they can spend the days being creative and stuff.
Amazon won’t make enough money that it can be taxed to make up for the shortfall in jobs. The whole purpose is to cut costs. The money isn’t there to tax.
FE if you have not read “Coming Apart” by Charles Murray, you might give it a try. You make very good points but humans are very successful rats who have a habit of beating the odds, well at least some of them beat the odds as in the very small population that went through the bottleneck with some 10,000 pairs or some such number; I wasn’t there to count them.
Dennis L.
We need the 230,000 jobs a whole lot more than we need the automation!
If you’re quoting Forbes magazine it will be refuted. You can’t go to Forbes for accurate information about science, let alone economics, for that matter. A complete toe-rag of a publication.
Shut up up FE, you can’t intimidate me with your b.s. Whatever you’re trying to reference to, (what the heck is that, a link?) I’m sure has been cherry-picked by those ass-clowns at Forbes.
Here we see what happens when Mr Cognitive Dissonance goes toe to toe with Fast Eddy — he is assaulted by facts and evidence…. his is pounded into a bleeding pulp….
He recoils — then he lashes out — with gibberish. Because that is all he knows. He is not about facts or logic — his job is to defend psile from the facts and logic….
But the facts and logic are overwhelming — and because psile keeps coming back for more — Mr CG is unable to cope —- he is taking head shots… body blows … Fast Eddy ‘The Machine Gun’ is throwing and landing haymakers…. CG’s nose is busted…. ouch — there goes his front teeth ….
Get him Fast!!! shouts the crowd. Kill Him Kill Him Kill HIm….
Fast Eddy is relentless – scientific in his dismantling of CG …. he is taking him apart…. a hard right fact here… there’s a left logic cut…. there’s a one two fact logic logic fact….
CG is defenseless …. Fast approaches….. he lines up CG with his left had … he measures the angle…. he cocks the big right fist …..he lets lose with an incredible barrage of facts and logic that busts CGs jaw… and puts him into a coma….
Listen to the sound it makes:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d2/af/56/d2af5666a33c0f129a054f2e8ef81f18.jpg
Off goes CG in a stretcher — the audience cheers wildly… CG Sucks CG Suck — one guy screams I HOPE YOU DIE CG YOU PIECE OF SH IT.
…because people in the know are simply moving forward with renewables projects and those projects just keep getting bigger. There are some impressive numbers of renewables being deployed now because the economics of it support more being deployed.
This is simply untrue as these charts reveal.
https://lokisrevengeblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/bp-global-fossil-burn-percent.jpg
https://lokisrevengeblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/bp-global-energy-5-year-a.jpg
There will be no significant dent made on fossil fuel use before business-as-usual terminates from the complications of limits to growth.
What we are doing is cutting down the trees.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/euan-mearns-forest_co2.png
we find ourselves in a global economic and ecological predicament caused by a deep disconnect with the natural world and fatal obsession with unsustainable growth, manic consumerism, and the concentration of extreme financial wealth in the hands of a tiny few.
We seem to be undergoing a grand and turbulent civilizational transition. In evolutionary time scales, our once-upon-a-time, ‘one-to-many’ relationship with natural resources has suddenly and irreversibly flipped: few people, many resources has now become many people, few resources. And because of these changes, we are sure to experience widespread financial, psychological, and spiritual hardship and multiple societal shocks as we deal with financial debt implosions and the negative environmental feedbacks of a too-long abused planet.
But our concern is misplaced if we think we need to somehow ‘save the planet’ from our abuses. While human settlements and surrounding ecosystems may certainly be in for a difficult struggle ahead as systems begin to collapse on their own or transition through some form of ‘managed descent,’ Earth will be fine.
if humans in the next century no longer have fossil fuels, will they cut down and use all the trees?
will Earth become one giant Easter Island?
what did the guy say when he cut down the last tree on Easter island?
Timber!
The biggest mystery of Easter Island is why did they make all those statues of John Kerry?
Everyone knows John Kerry is a time traveler who makes regular visits to Easter Island and makes the statues himself, duh! 🙂
If the spent fuel ponds don’t exterminate the cancer…. then without a doubt that will happen… because survivors will seek to rekindle the flame of industry … and the only fuel left will be trees…
We were saved once by the discovery of coal — we won’t be saved again
“I say that because we live on a dying planet. Even if there is not a horrific, global economic crash or a shooting nuclear war in the coming months and years, we are still looking at a likely extinction of humankind within the next ten to fifteen years.”
http://eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/
wow…
Collapsestani…
or even worse…
Doomerstani
‘The end of humanity will thus be dizzyingly fast, chaotic and tumultuous, and will occur in the relatively near future, unless humanity as a whole does a radical, 180 degree turn in its thinking and behavior’
Wrong
Completely wrong about that, I agee.
But he states interessantly that a false flag nuclear attack in american cities could occur, as a preamble to the Final Showdown. Who knows? We certainly know that MIC is capable of anything to (try) keep its power.
If they follow the direction of today’s leaders who say, “Use renewables,” they will.
people in the know are simply moving forward with renewables projects and those projects just keep getting bigger.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/570cb8885bd33022b93a181b/1460466440544/intaintwhatyouknow.jpg
Exactly!
Keep in mind we have already burned the majority of fossil fuels that are ever going to be burned…
And we are not underwater…..
I wouldn’t get too worried about this issue —- we will soon not be burning any more coal….
And that will be a sad day
Dennis Meadows: “There is nothing that we can do”
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2013/04/dennis-meadows-there-is-nothing-that-we-can-do/
Dennis is mixed Human with DelusiSTANI? Gotta be….
Dennis does have an optimistic streak. Way back in 1972, when Limits to Growth was released, Dennis Meadows thought that the optimistic scenario they put forth, with mandatory caps of population and big changes to reduce fossil fuel use (probably a switch to nuclear) would actually be followed. Of course, everyone laughed at it.
Stop with the …. it’s …. annoying ….
!!!!!!!
https://m.popkey.co/ccf29a/pDb38_s-200×150.gif
U.S. shale producers cutting budgets as oil prices lag
https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-oil-capex-idINL1N1KI0V4
What a constant stream of oil company spending cuts means for crude prices
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-a-constant-stream-of-oil-company-spending-cuts-means-for-crude-prices-2017-07-27
FE, can you post your sources and arguments? I would like to notepad them for future use.
Or maybe give a link to the comments where you posted them before?
I have not heard about the space release thing before.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis
This is a very long article, but if you have the attention span, it’s worth reading.
“They’d be done always with the intention that, either party wins, nothing changes.”
Pretty much sums up the way things work across the board….
Who’s the richest now?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/bezos-surpasses-gates-as-world-s-richest-ahead-of-amazon-results
Amazon falls about 3% after hours on earnings miss…
so Gates?
He whose wants are least! 🙂
Bezos or Gates are major stake holders in the global bank cartel? Who knew?
Get real, the pecking order is as follows: there are pseudo wannabee billionaires like Trump, higher up are true industrialist and couple of SWF, layer up are the Gates and similar, and only above them the true owners of the system..
Who are the true owners of the system?
One assumes they are shy and modest people who would rather remain anonymous.
The whole population is the owner of the system. Some people are given money and property rights, but all these privileges can be deleted when needed. The least genetically damaged and sturdy groups are the true owners, i.e. those who can withstand bad living conditions with a very little aid. But we all are so much dependent on the external energy, that I doubt there is many of them, if any…
Anyway, the ownership is based on the avaialability of the energy, as the ownership is the ability to protect something from others/animals/plants and use it for himself/herself. But we are more and more the slaves of the system that is deteriorating, i.e. owning things is more and more a burden.
The reliability of an energy source and wars:
1. The implosion of Balkans after 1990: no nucelar power plants in the region. Except for Slovenia, that (not miraculously, but thanks to the nucelar energy) avoided the war. And was and remained the most prosperous part of this imploding region.
2. Ukraine today: the East part of Ukraine where no nucelar power plant is located. Again, the imploding region has coal based electricity supply, not the electricity from nuclear power.
Summary: When the coal starts to be unreliable, the war ensues. But the nuclear power, as evidenced by Japan, causes gradual population decline. As nuclear power is the endpoint, there is no hope for other reliable energy beyond nuclear power.
Unfortunately, nuclear energy is expensive. But, I agree it was the only plausible hope for the future of electricity production. Too late now, should have happened in 1970.
Slovenia is probably (historically) the most westernized-germanized Slavic enclave (affluent) in Europe, apart from some East German tiny enclaves, but that’s different story. Slovenes have very little in common with the Balkans proper, i.e. much further to the south east direction and all that baggage of Muslim influences etc. Back to Slovenia, apart from nuclear component, if they don’t have natgas already, inter-connectors both to very nearby Italian and or Austrian legs of existing int natgas pipeline networks should not be a problem.
In terms of Ukraine and energy I recently overheard that Turkey declined their call for allowing US LNG ocean tankers through Bosporus, as unsafe not only due to the maritime traffic choke point hazard but also because of the construction of under sea pipelines with Russia. What Turks offered them was only to possibly hook Ukraine into their pipeline network further East on the shore, which would be effectively again connection point into the same Russian natgas network, lolz. So, Ukraine should be happy at least with coal from US or Australia or whatever, after they tried unsuccessfully so far to exterminate their own citizens at coal rich Donbas region previously. Not sure how long is this circus of US-EU support for that neona$i revival going to last.., sooner or later there will be another wave of internal implosion just on the basis of poverty spike and mismanagement, the East would secede, the Center form some moderate entity, and the Western enclave would remain US-PL protectorate, mil base.
Ukraine is not westernized, but the war is in the area that is dependent on coal. I believe there is a strong connection between the type of energy source and war. Is having a nuclear power plant like having nuclear missiles, or, more precisely, a distruction force that needs to be constantly under control?
This observation In general sense perhaps has some validity.
But the Ukraine case (as many similar) is easy to dissect by ethnic and cultural fault lines, and geopolitics instead. You have got the western areas, that’s basically landmass historically under partial-brief influence of German, Polish, Hungarian Empires and Kingdoms, catholic. And anything mostly center and east of that is historic proper heartland Russia, always, and orthodox. Now, the recent coup in Ukraine provided a very novel situation in which everything has fallen into the western hands at once in single package. So, at least the very smallish part in East sitting on coal seceded, while many ethnic Russians were still kept hostage even in the central parts of Ukraine. Hence the large exodus of people out of the country, often time skilled people from various strategic companies as joint ventures and subsidiaries in some capacity still worked prior to the coup. You see, the western advisers are usually not very bright for long term effect, often times influenced by various hot head migrants (typical Brezinski), so they are constantly setting (past several hundred years) various elaborated “clever” trap schemes for the bear. Clearly the goal was to instigated-provoke full scale occupation of Ukraine, perhaps then brew it up to even larger war, break the natgas deals, and hide the mounting insolvency and other issues.. The home team is not stupid, they have their 5-10yrs plans to finish of larger importance, so although annoying, the Ukraine situation would eventually be solved largely by itself, i.e. higher relative living standard in Crimea, and increasing poverty and desperation status in Kiev, eventually people vote with foot or pitchforks.
ps they just announced the legendary Antonov aircraft company folded.. ; now they can only provide temporary low skill assembly workers to German factories, the country is terminally gutted at least till next revolution-partitioning stage..
Quite right: they tried to sucker Russia into the Ukraine as they had in Afghanistan. All too obvious, although it’s worth noting that Putin seems to have had to deal with quite a bit of domestic discontent from Russian nationalists over his ‘soft’ position over the Ukraine.
We are very fortunate that Russia has pursued so rational and moderate a policy – also in Syria. It’s been embarrassing watching British politicians, who certainly know better, trying to portray Putin as a wildcard aggressor and the 1930’s level of propaganda.
Couldn’t agree more. Except it would be nice if the constant and illegal shelling, as it contravenes the Minsk II Agreement, of the LPR/DPR (i.e. the Donbass republics) by Ukrainian forces, could be brought to an end with the use of a few cruise missiles.
If nuclear has to be replaced, we seem to have a big problem, as you say. Nuclear now is terribly expensive, if you can get it at all, and there are real concerns about long term safety.
If we can keep the economy together and the price up, natural gas might be a solution for a few years. But this requires infrastructure, especially if a country wants to use it for home heating. If it is only to be used for electricity, the infrastructure could be less.
Having costly nuclear that is reliable is better than to have cheaper coal that is not reliable. The costs arising from continuous using of coal are more damaging: the worse health of the population due to polution deteriorates the health of the population and practically kills the miners, i. e. there is not enough physically fit persons to do the mining operations.
The nuclear is based on the containment of the polution, the radiation is the energy itself: the containment of the radiation is the prerequisite for the functioning of the nuclear power plants.
In case of coal, this requirement is harder to achieve, as the coal produces more dispersed polution of various polutants that are not energy, but heavy metals, carbon and nitrogen oxides etc.
Baby Boomers Logic
http://imgur.com/a/yAKcG
But the kids get some satisfaction because his retirement ain’t gonna be as good as he thought.
then shortly, he dies and enters the nothingness of eternal death…
so there’s that.
The ultimate retirement. It awaits us all.
I foresee that in the next century, most people will have never heard the word “pension”.
All systems of payment for retirees will disappear in a few decades.
“Retirement” will become a word that only means an older person stopped working.
It won’t have anything to do with receiving money.
‘The Baby Boomer v The Rest’ meme has been created to divide and conquer, to distract from the power and wealth of the super-rich.
Why play their game? Only the historically-ignorant young fall for it.
It’s like the policy in the concentration camps: set one group against another, with identifying badges, so that you can control them through their squabbling and hatreds……
It’s perfectly transparent.
Just like to share with you some observations… There are some people here who are “non-core” whom I believe are not humans but bots because
1. They never tell you who they are, their work, their background, from which country they are from
2. No personal experiences ever presented in all the posts. They never share anything
3. Totally lack of emotions in their writings
4. At times, they completely miss your questions on purpose especially when I asked about their backgrounds
5. Can come to OFW repeatedly even after being “whacked” furiously.
Therefore, no point in engaging them because they are not humans. Anyone who is humans here will write in a different manner.
Any comments?
yeah, right with ya
Muliti-choice
Is FE
A. An alien
B. Psychotic
C> Psychic Vampire
D. Corporate spy
E. Misunderstood humanitarian
Volunteers needed to tabulate.
All of the above? There’s a lot of personalities running around inside that storage container.
F. Oracle
G. Collapsestani
I might design some Collapsestani t-shirts…
I could make $millions.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/7b/ff/a8/7bffa84996519b07d0c69e0173a1b1e7.jpg
my uncle Wile was a special guy.
1 David, northeast USA
2 actually lost a good job in the 2008/2009 Great Recession
3 whoa, dude! we’re all different!
4 okay, tell me about yourself
5 I’ve been reading Gail’s posts since the “good old days” of The Oil Drum
hmmmm…
no response from CTG…
perhaps CTG is a bot…
yes!
only a bot would question if others are bots!
eureka!
You dont even know that it is night in my time zone. If you are 10 years at the oil drum, you would have been here at OFW for a long time. You have have known who I am and where I live. How about you, Kurt and all other incognitos share who you all are and which part if the world you guys live? Scared to let people know who you are and where you stay? For all of those who are the “core”, they share their real life experiences here and that includes which location they stay..
CTG …. it is assumed they are in DelusiSTAN….
Massachusetts
hi CTG…
oh, you’re not a bot… so sorry…
and yes, I’m not oblivious, as I know OFW has readers around the world.
hey, I’ve been reading OFW for a few years, about?, but in that time I was mostly posting on Twitter, but it’s gotten too politically repetitive so here I am.
there, another personal comment.
I am 34 live in Western Michigan. I am a scientist at a local university.. And hold PhD in Quantum Chemistry. My state is a total basket case in regards to collapse. In my neck of the woods everything is actually very solid. Since my city has 6 small universities and four major hospitals. We are actually doing much better than average in America. But drive just a few hours east over to Flint, Saginaw, and Detroit. And it’s a whole different story.
Cliff — have you ever presented that woman with the giant swinging breasts in one of your lectures?
If so – what was the reaction?
LOL!
If you don’t get a response — assume that is because you have been identified as not worthy of a response …. I leave to you to work out why but I suggest you do not assume it is because your argument is unassailable….
and yet you just responded…
hey, many of us here are trying to forecast the future…
comments about such issues are rarely unassailable…
“5 I’ve been reading Gail’s posts since the “good old days” of The Oil Drum”
Could’y fooled me with you “this could take decades to unwind”…..
Could’ve fooled me with your “this could take decades to unwind” posts….
see?
TOD began when, a decade+ ago?
OFW could go on and on…
a decade ago, the data was less certain…
now peak oil looks like 2025 at the latest…
then severe problems by 2030…
it’s getting CLOSE!
TOD began in 2005. I think I started commenting on TOD in 2006. I started writing articles for TOD in 2007.
Good point!
Could be … I just assume they are ‘dead’ if they keep on with the rubbish…
And I treat them accordingly
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
New commenters many not understand the “culture.” Some may be a little shy. Women may not want to disclose this fact.
I would give them a little “slack.”
First Anadarko, Now Whiting: Second Shale Company Slashes CapEx Budget
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-26/first-anadarko-now-whiting-second-shale-company-slashes-capex-budget
I am guessing that Anadarko could see that they had no choice but to cut back CapEx. There wouldn’t be enough revenue from sale of new shares or from debt to allow anything else to happen.
Credit Impulse is in contraction.
Excerpt
Shifting from a situation in which loans are being issued at an accelerating rate to one in which the rate at which they are being issued is decelerating imparts a major negative shock to the economy.
If we don’t know what that means it means money supply is shrinking. So despite all the QE the system is still failing. Isn’t curious that at the same time everyone is rejoicing that the economy has decoupled from energy growth.
https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/06/16/daily-notes-20174-global-credit-impulse/
One of the take-aways is that we have become way too dependent on China in world debt growth. When we combine that with the opaqueness of the Chinese debt situation, and the fact that we seem to be very close to peak coal in China (because of pollution if not depletion), we seem to have a real problem.
As I have said before, the central banks can print as much money as they feel like. And, although it won’t create energy, it will be able to export the problem from the core to the periphery, out of sight of those who matter.
Tech is developing quite fast. if we can hold until about 2045 humanity won’t be able to worry about shortage because brain uploading will be online.
Until then, BAU will be maintained like these:
http://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Barge-Haulers-on-the-Volga-Ilya-Repin.jpg
(Barge Haulers on the Volga, by Ilya Repin who usually hung out with the rich and famous like Count Leo Tolstoy, who inherited a 4,000-acre estate)
Things didn’t improve too much in the 20th century.
http://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Barge-Haulers-Burlak-Women.jpg
(Circa 1910)
Fyodor Chaliapin, the Justin Bieber of the day, made fun of them with this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Ys37dFXuY
That’s how BAU will be maintained, if necessary.
(As for why the Czar was shot, ask Gavrilo Princip and Chuck Fitzclarence. Without their mishaps we will still have a Czar today.)
You sound a bit wobbly k
Brain uploading will never happen.
https://www.janelia.org/project-team/mouselight
research to upload a mouse’s brain is being held in a Howard Hughes foundation.
July 27, 2017 at 12:22 am
How do you get a 12:22am date stamp?
My comments are always moderated. So I don’t know why.
In any case, many people in the West do not seem to be aware of how far it might go to maintain BAU. I expect a lot of stuff prevalent to the wide usage of fossil fuel to return, with a vengeance.
I think there is a filter on FW that picks up comments that from people who have been reading the site for some years but do not learn and just keep on posting comments that are obviously wrong.
The one with the brains is off-duty and you panicked didn’t you?
In today’s episode of ‘Look Who Will Be on the Loose When BAU Goes Offline’ we take a look at two wonderful young fellows who decided to kidnap, beat, rape and murder a young women because someone did not approve of her boyfriend
Imagine that — a seemingly irrelevant issue – yet such a vile reaction.
Now imagine if two young fellows like this actually had a good reason to commit acts like this — perhaps they were starving and someone refused to share their food with them….
https://www.rt.com/uk/397573-celine-dookhran-killing-tributes/
If they were starving FE, they wouldn’t have the energy for this sort of thing. About the most they could do is wander about listlessly before lying down to die.
Yes, perhaps you’re right. Best bet is to be far away from built-up areas, were most of the fighting and dying will take place.
That was a truly horrifying case – worth noting that they regarded themselves as good muslims….
There are professional gangs everywhere, and as soon as they suspect that there is a more or less 100% chance of robbing and escaping scot-free, they will be out like a shot. (This happened not long ago in Argentina when the police went on total strike in a province.)
But they will go for saleable goods first – trainers, phones, bikes, etc. By the time they realise that the food trucks will not be rolling again, it will be too late.
Hitting the supermarkets or private homes for food will not be their priority if it comes out of the blue – they will think habitually about immediately tradeable luxury goods.
This is my conclusion too. People in the west are too conditioned to believe that industrial life is sacrosanct – that supermarkets and petrol stations will always be full. Folks will be looting TV’s and lounges, not stocking up on essential items.
Which is why there will be just enough time for those who understand what’s developing to get organised and supplied with food, water, fuel and first aid, before beating an orderly retreat from the city.
A tank of gas or even less…. will get you to farmville…
Along with all the nastiness there will be moments of supreme kindness, self-sacrifice, and resolute banding together for the good of the whole.
I can imagine that will happen …. but kindness will be weakness post BAU…. people will either toughen up … or they will suffer and be degraded.
I prefer the easy way out —- rock cut.
One has to realise that there are a certain category of people who are loosely referred to as PSYCHIC VAMPIRES. They get their jollies by bringing people down to their level.
folklore has seen it all before:
misery loves company
Just after I posted that my geiger counter spiked.
Interesting – no?
The fact that you have a geiger counter is interesting.
You really are prepared for all eventualities, aren’t you?
I have four Geiger counters….bought them in an auction.
I agree.
detest myself for agreeing 100%….but past history gives us our future in this scenario—it’s all happened before
police are as energy dependent as the rest of us, when the power goes off, they have families to protect too, so will go home to do just that, taking weapons with them if they can
They enjoy sucking the energy out of other people too.
in this video one comment made me laugh
Here in Texas, if shit like this happens, we don’t loot.
In response to one of my previous posts, CTG says:
July 25, 2017 at 5:46 am
*** I have no idea how people can build anything in this globally connected world”.
*** “much reduced number of people” – who is going to manufacture the Si ingots, who is going to mine the minerals in Chile / China / Anywhere to product the panels.
—
Song Yingxing wrote this book when the Manchus were about to crash into China back in 1637.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_Kaiwu
Chinese miners were put into mines full of mercury. Obviously the life expectancy for them was quite short, but pay must have been quite good.
If there is money, somebody will do it. I am not concerned about it.
Regarding the complex supply chain of the solar panels, other than the raw materials everything could be set up near where they are needed, if that has a reasonable cost. Human cost does not really matter since there are so many humans that they are quite replaceable.
Most manufacturing could be done in the USA. The only reason it is not done is because the employers have to pay a high price, which is a huge factor.
If USA employers, like the dream of the Australian billionairess Gina Reinhart, could pay a $2/day wage, a lot of manufacturing will move back to America.
The catch is that people cannot live on a $2 per day wage. It costs more than that to eat.
When I was in India, I heard that some workers slept on the factory floor, and used a neighboring field when we would think they had a need to use the bathroom. There would not be any money for what we consider basic needs–a home that is different from a factory floor, and a bathroom that is different from a nearby field.
when the industrial revolution kicked off in uk, the first factory owners found they had to build cheap houses to put workers in.
they were literally barracks, and went under the name of ”barrack houses”
Cheap containers are dime a dozen, and the workers will use ground lactrines and dirty water , like a lot of workers in third worlds do nowdays.
Standards of living will fall , naturally, to suit a $2/day world if it becomes necessary to build factories next door to the solar battery station.
I am not saying that it might be done tomorrow or next day. What I am saying is that if it really becomes necessary to build such factories in that way, it will be done.
I don’t see enough people talking about wages. Wages share of GDP only rises when the demand for wages increases faster than the increase in labor productivity (Steven Keen). Increases in technology (internationally) and immigration (domestically) but deflationary pressure on wages. Labor arbitrage is temporary measure only before overproduction abroad destroys the temporary gains. Call me a luddite, but I think the headline is that technology will not help wages because labor arbitrage has reached terminal negative returns.
If self driving cars become the norm we will instantly put deflationary pressure on all logistics and transport (8% of the economy) and commercial aviation as a substitute good and shipping alternative (5%). There is no way that the purported efficiency can return so much value to an economy to provide welfare benefits to a new permanently unemployed sector of the economy – vehicle operators.
The industrial boom only helped workers to the extent it helped them be more productive, all things being equal. The technology boom did the same for office workers. Replacing workers doesn’t do anything to help commodities prices.
Thanks for your comments. I think you are probably correct. I agree with you that we are in a period of deflationary pressure on wage, and that technology (especially self-driving cars) will not fix the problem. You are definitely correct with your last three sentences:
As you’ve pointed out elsewhere there is also a huge problem for Governments in current taxation policy – tax revenue lost from lost jobs is not reclaimed by a company replacing those jobs to cut costs. Not only are corporate real tax rates less than consumer rates in this kind of change, but such a move has a huge impact on the velocity of money – where dollars go to die in asset bubbles which is what is happening in tech stocks.
“We will grow our economy while reducing emissions. We will capitalize on the opportunity of a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy to create good-paying and long-term jobs.”
Justin Trudeau
Priblem solved.
Next
LOL! If it were only that easy!
Justin Trudeau is quite the Snowflake
He’s actually on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone with the tag line, “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”.
Gotta admit, the dude does have nice hair…
I can imagine the LibTARDS would be fawning over the pleasant kind politically correct young handsome Canadian.
I agree FE..went to High School with the guy..he epitomizes Peak Koombayaism…
Lol could well be!
It is crystal clear to me that we won’t make it anywhere even close to 2040 with 7B people.
By 2040 the population will be over 9 billion and perhaps as high as 10 billon and growing, at current trends.
The world will need to burn 165 million barrels of oil per day, cut down or pave over 3 times as much of the natural world, whilst doubling the amount of pollution, just to stay square.
Call me a spoil sport, but somehow, I don’t see it happening…
I don’t see that happening either…
I foresee a world in poverty by 2040.
Trudeau is talking the most perfect naomi-kleinese, one of the official languages of Delusistan. I expect he will invite NK to his government, maybe as finance minister. They would make an awesome duo, perfectly able to defeat the finitude of the planet, all the laws of thermodynamics, and eventualy conquer the Nobel Prize for Physics.
An example of naomi-kleinese by NK herself:
“As we move to get off fossil fuels, we can … create a whole lot of stable, well-paying jobs in green sectors, in land and water remediation, and in the caring professions. …
We could live in a country powered entirely by renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest-growing sectors. Many more people could have higher-wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.”
Naomi Klein, “No is not Enough”
That beautiful passage has convinced me that Naomi Klein is a bot.
That makes my day complete….
In a similarly unrealistic vein, someone in a Google Group said to me, regarding my current article, “I don’t see an actual argument other than ‘it hurts the business model of incumbents, so it must be bad.'”
This same person has explained to me before why profits are unnecessary. In his view, all that happens is that businesses go bankrupt, and the new buyer buys at a lower price. With this lower asset price, it is possible to make a profit. So the problem is solved–sort of, except who in the future would invest in such an arrangement? And aren’t all of the bankrupt businesses and defaulting debt a problem?
“profits are unnecessary”
Does he know where the interest on whatever savings he has comes from? Got bad news for him. Profits!
What he knows is where his own paycheck comes from, which is from the wind industry. It becomes very difficult to see anything objectively, when a person works in the industry.
Global Oil Fields in Decline (HSBC)
Almost all of the world’s largest conventional oil fields are in decline and tight oil has low EROI. Much of the industry is highly indebted and per-capita world consumption peaked a long time ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KfVJBNX2U4
From the report: “Oil demand is still growing by ~1mbd every year, and no central scenarios that we recently assessed see oil demand peaking before 2040.” 81% of the production of liquid oil is already in decline. HSBC sees between 3 and 4.5 million barrels per day of supply disappearing once peak oil production is reached. “In our view a sensible range for average decline rate on post-peak production is 5-7%, equivalent to around 3-4.5mbd of lost production every year.”
Based on a simple calculation, HSBC estimates that by 2040, the world will need to find around 40 million barrels of oil per day to keep up with growing demand from emerging economies. That is equivalent to over 4 times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia. “Small oilfields typically decline twice as fast as large fields, and the global supply mix relies increasingly on small fields: the typical new oilfield size has fallen from 500-1,000mb 40 years ago to only 75mb this decade.”
This will exacerbate the problem of declining oil fields, and the lack of supply. The amount of new oil discoveries being made is pretty small. HSBC notes that in 2015 the discovery rate for new wells was just 5%, a record low. The discoveries made are also fairly small in size. There is potential for growth in US shale oil, but it currently represents less than 5% of global supply, meaning that it will not be able, single-handedly at least, to address the tumbling global supply HSBC expects.
“Step-change improvements in production and drilling efficiency in response to the downturn have masked underlying decline rates at many companies, but the degree to which they can continue to do so is becoming much more limited.” Essentially HSBC argues that companies aren’t improving their efficiency at a quick enough rate, meaning that supply declines will hit them even harder.
yep…
“81% of the production of liquid oil is already in decline. HSBC sees between 3 and 4.5 million barrels per day of supply disappearing once peak oil production is reached.”
so about 20% of oil fields are not declining…
when peak oil production is reached, probably not many years from now, perhaps about 2025, which is getting CLOSE…
then the decline begins…
slowly at first…
then severely, probably in the 2030’s…
yes, as the article says, by 2040 there will be extreme shortages.
Conventional oil peaked in 2005.
Shale oil has been the only thing between us — and death.
Conventional oil fields continue to decline off of their peak — every single minute of every single day…
Do you think that shale oil will production continue to offset these declines for another 20+ years?
Maybe you have mistakenly added a 0 to the 2?
Additionally the crude quality is not the same. The API’s are different and a much smaller number of petrochemicals can be cracked from the crude. Far more energy is needed to refine it into the needed fuels as it takes more energy to combine the molecules into longer chains than breaking longer chains.
” Far more energy is needed to refine it into the needed fuels as it takes more energy to combine the molecules into longer chains than breaking longer chains.”
Nobody in their right mind “combines molecules into longer chains.” It is way too expensive.
It is expensive to refine oil if it needs to be cracked. (Of course, the selling price of heavy oil tends to be lower, allowing a bigger margin for the cost of refining.) Light oil is normally cheap to refine.
Light oil doesn’t produce any diesel, kerosene or bunker fuel on its own. The Carbon chains are too short.
You think you know a lot more than you really do. Your statement “Light oil doesn’t produce any diesel, kerosene or bunker fuel on its own. The Carbon chains are too short,” is incorrect.
This is a presentation called, “Refining America’s Light Tight Oil.” http://www.bakerobrien.com/bakerobrien2/assets/File/2015%2001%2024%201000%20Argus%20Presentation.pdf
What happens instead of not having any of the long chains, it has more than the usual amount of short chains. It still has long chains in the mix. It is these short chains that make light tight oil catch fire easily, when it is shipped by rail. These short end can also be a problem in refineries that usually handle heavy crude, and are not set up to deal with crude that easily catches fire because of the “light ends.”
This is a chart from the presentation:
As you can see from this chart, Bakken oil is very similar to West Texas Intermediate, in terms of its mix of short and long chains. Eagle Ford oil has more very short chains. But both have quite a bit of very long chains in the mix. Thus, you are wrong about the oil not producing any diesel, kerosine or bunker fuel on its own.
The refinery problem, as the top of this chart says, is “Light Ends Handling.” A refinery configured to handle WTI or Brent would have absolutely no problem handing Bakken Oil, or for that matter Eagle Ford oil. Historically, the US has had a lot of these refineries. In recent years, quite a few of these refineries (often on the East Coast) have gone bankrupt, because it has been much more profitable to refine heavier oil grades. There is still a lot of refinery space in Europe that is configured to handle light oil. With the decline in North Sea oil, it tends to be lightly used. So exporting it is also a possibility
Looking ahead to growing LTO production, there is in theory a problem with running short of non-bankrupt light oil refineries. The question that then comes up is, “If we have refineries that are set up to refine heavy oil, how can we process LTO through these heavy oil refineries?” The problem is that these heavy oil refineries cannot handle very much of “light ends” in the mix, because of the tendency of light ends to catch fire.
This presentation is about this issue. One of the proposed solutions in this presentation is to take some of the very heavy oil types over at the right side of this chart (which needs to be refined as well) and mix it together with some of the oil with a disproportionate share of “light ends” to produce an “average” mix that is more similar to what the heavy oil refineries are set up to deal with.
This may be the origin of the belief that LTO and heavy oil needs to be mixed together. The point is that both kinds of oil really need to be refined. If we have already-built refineries that handle medium grades of oil, the heavy oil refineries can handle a mix of very heavy oil and of very light oil, just as well, eliminating the need to build more (cheap) refineries for light oil.
Building more cheap light-oil-only refineries would also be a solution, but these have not been profitable in recent years.
Again, Gail is dead on correct.
“…by 2040 there will be extreme shortages.”
They don’t want to startle the horses…
There is also an affordability problem that goes with this. They are forecasting that prices will go to $75 per barrel to help production grow. The questions are, “What does a $75 per barrel price do to demand? How long can current producers hold on with $50 per barrel oil? Don’t we have problems in exporting countries, like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia? Doesn’t new investment start dropping toward zero if prices stay down near $50 per barrel?”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4090277-2-important-signs-shale-growth-slowing
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/7/25/340087-1500984672007921.png
yes…
shale “growth” is slowing…
“Readers should note that I am not predicting oil production from US shale to start declining anytime soon, but that I’m simply predicting that, at current oil prices, shale oil production growth will likely slow down in the next coming months. This is bullish for oil prices as I expect oil supply growth from the rest of the world to also slow down.”
yes yes yes…
oil growth to slow down and actually probably will STOP growing about 2025 or so.
also says “bullish for oil prices”…
IF correct about prices, growth could speed up with those higher prices…
but who knows?
https://media.tenor.co/images/fda9d6f90401ac101d2620b9cfddd1ca/tenor.gif
whoa Cliff…
right over your head the first time, eh?
you didn’t get that it was “growth” that was slowing and the author admitted:
““Readers should note that I am not predicting oil production from US shale to start declining anytime soon, but that I’m simply predicting that, at current oil prices, shale oil production growth will likely slow down in the next coming months.”
lately, you’ve been supporting my arguments very well with your posts!!
thank you so much!!!!!
How do you slow down without declining?
I think it’s very simple…
if shale oil growth was 5% last year and is 4% this year…
why, look, the growth rate has slowed but it is STILL GROWING…
and I was quoting the article which said that explicitly…
the author said “… I am not predicting oil production from US shale to start declining anytime soon…”
Humans and domestic cats are very similar in certain respects. I’ve lived with too many cats for decades now. At one time we had 14 of them, but fortunately we are down to six now—much more manageable.
One thing I’ve observed is that when a kitten comes into the group for the first time, all the other cats welcome or at least tolerate it. But when an adolescent or a young adult turns up and tries to gain admission, some of the more ballsy members will try to scare it off. If it hangs around, there will be all sorts of scratching, backbiting, karaoke singing, etc, in an attempt to establish hierarchy. Once that’s over, nine times out of ten the new member will be fully integrated into the core and ready to fight for it against subsequent outsiders.
And of course, there will be cats that just can’t get along with each other whatever, so the fur will fly every time they cross paths.
As with the kitties, so with the humans at OFW. David’s taking a lot of flak because he’s a newcomer and he’s not giving some of the more established residents the respect they think they deserve. In this little allegory, Gail is the cat lady, but she’s too busy feeing everyone and clearing up their mess to intervene in every little cat fight.
Will David make it through the initiation period and joint the core, or will he give up in the face of Cliff and others’ hostility? Moreover, will he climb higher in the hierarchy and eventually make it to a coveted fireside seat with a cushion? Only time will tell.
meow…
We had a cat in Bali ….. Madame Fast likes cats… I like dogs…
So she decided to adopt a kitten — she goes to the abandoned cat place and picks up a little kitten… she brings it home …. and it lies down in the big cat’s bed…. the big cat is of course out killing birds for fun….
The big cat comes back … sees the kitten in the bed…. attacks the kitten… the kitten runs across the house in terror and leaps from the upper floor to the ground….
When it lands on the ground our two dogs see it….. and the chase is on …. the kitten barely escapes by hiding behind a piece of wood ….
I collared my two killer beasts…. and Madame F collected her kitten … and returned it…
Sometime later one of our neighbours decapitated the large cat with a shovel….
We now only have the two dogs.
When people treat animals like that, – arbitrary decapitation – it’s but a small step to killing humans the same way, and in a crisis foreigners are never quite human anyway. Exit was wise!
As in Spain: popular proverbs have always been ‘You’re a poisonous weed that needs to be pulled up!’ and ‘ You’re a pig, and it’s time to bleed you out!’ Nice agricultural sentiments – can be contrasted with the English: ‘You’re out of order, mate!’ which implies a punch is coming rather than annihilation.
That’s exactly what has happened in all of Spain’s civil wars, 1830 to 1936: people were pulled up and bled out…….
Yes – that influenced our decision to move. That would be a very bad place to be — when the SHTF.
Anywhere former Whitey colonies … will be very bad places to be….. I can’t begin to imagine what the locals will do to Whitey…. I have friends in Bali — I hope they will be able to leave before things turn nasty
Fast Eddy you are always such a ray of sunshine! : )
that’s why jesus wants him for a sunbeam
Or maybe it’s the fact that David, unlike Fast Eddy and others, believes that oil will somehow start declining within the next few *decades*. Centuries maybe, but decades? You have to be a Delusistani, as Fast Eddy says, to believe that.
You have to be a Delusistani, as Fast Eddy says, to believe that.
DelusiSTANI-Lite is as far as I’d go.
A genuine thoroughbred DelusiSTANI believes that by the time we are forced to stop burning hydrocarbons, some combination of wind turbines, solar voltaic, hydro and tidal power, or else nuclear fusion, or perhaps even space-based solar will provide us with all the energy we need, and once we’ve got that up and running we will be able to synthesize all the raw materials we need in order to build the next generation of those wonderful Tesla products from garbage.
Compared with these people—and let’s face it, they account for 90% of the people most of us know—those who believe that oil will start declining within the next few decades are quite sane. They are ballpark OFWers.
Thanks! I am afraid you are right. Low oil prices seem to mean that there isn’t a problem for decades.
it might just be time for Collapsestanis…
those honorable residents of Collapsestan.
Fast Eddy is the parrot and David is the cat LOL
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
awesome!
2 Important Signs That Shale Growth Is Slowing
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4090277-2-important-signs-shale-growth-slowing
Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants. (D.Weibach 2013)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213000492
http://ahmed.triumf.ca/DFR_CAP/EROI_Figure.pdf
in germany big solar have a throttle function, so the grid operator can descide how much solar is used similar to water power. water is also subsidiesed: the lost of fish – consumers now have to buy fish elsewhere what was free before the dams. the disrupted hydro circle leads to less water not more… and new projects are very expensive these days(easy fruits are gone). use solar offgrid with mobile familiy size biogas and solar griller for cooking will reduce the battery. here the LCOE of battery online calculator http://www.pv4.eu/calculating-the-true-cost-of-energy-storage/ and how to calculate your water potential here http://www.pv4.eu/kwh-to-joule-to-specific-weight-to-mass-to-height-water-energy-storage/ so you do not to make same mistake like reißeck II -http://kaernten.orf.at/news/stories/2721516/ -with will be payed off in 150 years and was highly subsidised with austrian government and european money.
I thought this part was interesting:
Somehow, all of these costs need to be considered.
Right. The buffering is with 10 days worth of buffering.
Saudi Arabia hires Goldman for Riyadh airport stake sale, (Going out of business sale)
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/aviation-and-transport/2017/07/25/Saudi-Arabia-hires-Goldman-for-Riyadh-airport-stake-sale-sources-tell-Reuters.html
I bet they won’t haggle too much over the price…. given it will soon be worthless
Sounding like the whole kingdom is being turned into an IPO?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sbIeg_XIWM4/S646yEpItvI/AAAAAAAAAXI/_fFgBpzEnoA/s400/firesale.gif
We are surely near the end of the oil age.
You know how depressingly easy it is for that to be an actual event?
Is Saudi Arabia the new Greece?
Norman says
“not quite sure what challenge there could be on the foundations of evolution—that part of your comment made no sense to me, and i doubt if it did to anyone else. Evolution just ”is”.”
“Just is” really??
Sorry to say a theory isn’t fact. I hope we recognize the difference.
Something interesting this. The world is quite derogatory toward people who have “faith”. How about credulity?
Very strange why not examine the facts build a case present an argument. Belief in nothing is not a position unless you can prove it. But lack of evidence really doesn’t prove it does it.
http://imgur.com/a/SvYU2
Would you like to contribute Cliff?
ok
I believe in a progressive succession of firemaking hominids going back 1m years or so. There is a clear line of fossil records/geological stratifications that date this.
Before them, a line of evolving species from which we diverged, 5m years ago, most species going extinct, a few surviving—again, geological records are clear on this.
of the current species of higher animals, vertebrates, skeletal structures match our own almost bone for bone, just adapted in different ways for different survival tasks–a spine, four limbs, 2 eyes, ears, the same internal organs and so on. You can find the same bones in a horse, a tiger, a giraffe or a man. Just in different shapes and sizes.
the evolutionary line is there to see and touch. One does not have to ”prove” anything.—though the proof is there if needed.
that arrangement seems to be the most functional for living/existing. and adapting to fill every available niche on earth. All this is dateable and beyond credible dispute, unless you’re standing on the doorstep of a sunday morning.
Discussing Miller—to go down that”belief route” puts us firmly in the realm of some kind of cosmic computer game, a galactic tinkerer, which is too ridiculous to give discussion time. Life was much simpler in my uncle’s time, when JWs hung on to the adams rib thing
you believe in a god, it is your right to believe in a god, so prove the existence of god.
(without holding up all the creatures that he created as ”proof”)
not this this will settle anything, but clarifying one’s own thinking is always useful
“that arrangement”
So who or what arranged it? You could say, it arranged itself. Well, then, where did “itself” come from? And what is “itself” anyway? So, we come back to the chicken and egg question. For what it’s worth, I’m not religious and wouldn’t really know what a god might be. But I think it’s possible – even highly likely – that we might be “in” something. I first had this thought when I was 15 and thought of all the bacteria in my body. I wondered whether, if they were conscious, they would believe that the universe THEY lived in was a giant creature’s body. Therefore, how do I know that I myself don’t? As Gail once said of fish, do they know their nose is wet?
I’m not inclined to believe in revealed religions. I believe it’s possible that they are “channeled” by “intelligences” for their own purposes. Who or what these intelligences might be I don’t know – I just doubt that embodied humans are not the be-all and end-all in the vast and mysterious universe. Could some dumb Arab hallucinating in the desert come up with this stuff? I doubt it (this religion-doctrine) would be something that either their conscious or subconscious would be incapable of inventing (even though its mythology doesn’t impress me), so somehow it must be handed down and implanted. But my theory just gets ever more mysterious. That’s because I believe the universe is mysterious, and we’ll only ever figure out the equivalent of a drop in the ocean about it and life and even our own consciousness. At this point I shift to reading Jacques Vallée and John Keel, who do appear to have experienced things (phenomena) that they admit are beyond their understanding but which do point to a deeply mysterious universe.
The thing is…
If there is a master plan … and a master planner …. which I do not rule out….
And the major religions are the platforms that it uses to run the show …. which I do rule out.
Then why isn’t the master plan revealed and explained at Sunday Mass? Instead of feeding the kult gibberish…..
This religion thing all seems very petty —- if we are talking about some omnipotent force that created and controls the universe…
Such an entity would surely not stoop to such nonsense as ‘follow my rules or burn in hell’
It all seems very childish.
I wonder if bacteria have invented religions as well…
I do not rule out that there are intelligences (plural) above us with power (probably not even supernatural in their terms) to intervene in our lives, but yet these intelligences are as petty and competitive among themselves as we are. Think of the Gnostics’ criticisms of the old Testament God, who said, “For I am a jealous god, and there is no god but me”. The Gnostics thought, well, just WHO are you jealous of? And that that suggested there are multiple “gods” (or intelligences that can manipulate us as we manipulate rats in a laboratory). The text of the scriptures also shows evidence of multiple amendments, presumably to fit the pet doctrines of whoever had power over the texts at the time.
So there are multiple creators — all vying for supremacy?
I wonder — do they argue over such things as — I want the planet to have trees — another says no I want it to be covered in ice cream — and another says — I want the water to be blue — no bloody way — I will give you your trees but the water needs to be purple.
Done deal!
“So there are multiple creators — all vying for supremacy?”
There may be, but I didn’t mean creators – just beings that are beyond our ken, in the way that we are to an extent beyond the ken of laboratory rats. The rats get some of what we do, i.e. set them mazes and puzzles to get food, but they can’t have the slightest clue of the scientific purposes behind these. That’s why Keel and Vallée insisted that you must watch the effects on people who experience “UFOs” (mysterious phenomena), and how they change as a result, in order to get even a clue about the purposes of the phenomena behind them.
We know that there was/is a lot of swapping of ideas among various religions. This is not new.
From what I have read, the archeological evidence seems to indicate that at least some ancient Hebrews carried around statues of other gods. In this context, “Thou shalt not have other gods before me,” seems to mean, “Having other gods is OK, and is pretty much what folks are doing. Just don’t honor them above me.”
What we are reading is beliefs about god. We don’t know how these beliefs corresponds to the reality. I have a hard time believing in multiple gods.
I spent the early part of my life being a committed athiest. I considered religion a pleasant illusion to calm the masses. People often get nervous and unpredictable when they face death. I thought religion was an drug to keep them calm and we’ll behaved.
My atheism began to unravel as a searched for truth. Ironically, I was attempting to discredit the Christian Faith by disproving its claims about the person of Jesus Christ. I read the entire Bible hoping to find the evidence that I could use against Christians to refute their faith. My plan back fired in a wonderful way. The deeper I searched the more truth I found. I am a follower of Jesus Christ.
Having said that, I also find the superficial and often contradictory teaching of many who claim Christ to be disturbing. Many false teachings are common in churches today. I believe each individual is responsible to search out the truth. It is important to be intellectually honest and not accept weak half answers to life’s questions. Keep searching, Keep questioning, the truth is out there. Lol
I would suggest a different church than Catholic. I would also rule out religions that take the Bible to be literally true.
Gail I find it interesting that the Bible supports your central belief in an energy and commodity affordability problem. The book of the Revelation chapter six verse six talks about the black horse rider. He is the third of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Many interpret him to be the rider of famine. But on closer examination, the verse talks about a days wages not being able to afford a days nutrition. Followed by a statement about “not harming the oil or the wine”. Oil and Wind were considered expensive items but typically affordable to most people. This passage presents a clear and brief description of an affordability crisis. If the average wage earner can’t afford to purchase his daily bread, even when the shops may be full of food, the crisis isn’t a famine in its traditional sense. It’s an affordability crisis.
I find the Bible in general and the book of the Revelation in particular, to be the most accurate guide to the unfolding crisis of our times. It reveals a sequence of world wide destructive events. Most importantly it answers the question “Why?”
Perhaps. We know that affordability has been an issue in prior collapses. This could be a prophesy related to an earlier collapse, or to the end times. Both oil and wine are energy items, which were essential for people of the day.
It is also interesting that in the Malachai 4:2, in the section called “The Great Day of the Lord,” at the end of the Old Testament, it says:
“But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
This very definitely has an energy theme to it. It is not the “son” of righteousness; it is the “sun of righteousness”. Well-fed calves that are frolicking are very full of energy.
(Humor)
http://imgur.com/a/AKC9n
Fortunately the deer did not have guns and ammo nor was radiation a problem…. so a few of them survived.
huh…
that island had a no growth economy for over 20 years…
the collapse was due to a severe shortage of food…
oh, deer…
Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food. Without petroleum we will not be able to feed the global population.”
Professor Albert Bartlett, University of Colorado, USA
Don’t mind David…. he is just here for the entertainment value — not to be taken serious
a deer walks into a bar…
bartender says “what would you like?”
deer says “what can I get for a buck?”
“A horse walks into a bar, the bartender says, ‘Why the long face?'”
sure, mildly funny joke…
and, uh, you know…
there have been quite a few posts acknowledging that “slow collapse” is indeed an oxymoron…
sorry, I can’t take credit for inventing the phrase “slow collapse”…
so there’s that (oxy)more-on as well.
And, unfortunately, our financial types do not understand what the role of rising interest rates is in this arrangement.
I thought they would let me drink vine forever on credit.
Now they want their money back!
Really?
Oh man! Back to work!
if you wanna dance…
you gotta pay the piper…
Or have the correct last name.
So Norman
I challenged you on the foundations of evolution and you went into a rant on cults.
I’ll do a little reprint for reference.
”
don’t quite get the musk link–but whatever—–
either you take the bible as a whole—or you don’t.
as i am fond of pointing out to jwitness doorsteppers, you can’t select the bits you like, and say the rest doesn’t apply now. Like all cults, they cannot handle logic. It’s either total acceptance or nothing. They invariably make their excuses and leave me to eternal damnation. And like all cults, the treatment of backsliders is notorious (and a lot of other nasty stuff too)
Once you’re in a cult, the idea is to make you too frightened to leave. Free thinkers are not allowed to flourish. All must submit to the diktat of the New York centre of control. (do they still demand the 10% tithe? that was always a good scam)
They do fit the cult leader pattern however, they and they alone receive the ongoing word of god, and then pass it down to their gullible flock, who are then required to knock on xx doors per week, to prove they have passed on that word to sinners like me.
Every religion that ever was has convinced its cultfollowers that theirs is the true and only way to god. And to convince unbelievers of the error of their ways, execution was usually the great persuader.—which it still is now.
Any cult, given sufficient power, would act in the same way. The reason your particular cult doesnt, is because you do not have sufficient power to carry it out.
The catholic cult no longer persecutes and burns heretics is because the enlightenment stopped it. Every cult persecutes the cult it supersedes. (check your history)
the enlightenment rose on the back of the industrial revolution, showing that the childlike superstitions that charlatans used to frighten people, were in fact nonsense and had ”reasonable” explanations
that’s why it was called “The age of Reason”—
As to the educated class believing in an earth centric system—why wouldnt they? After all—the bible said the sun stopped at some point. (too lazy to look it up) There was nothing to ”prove” otherwise. Then Galileo went and messed up their comfortable world. Darwin had the same problem (re Bishop Ussher’s pronouncements) My jwitness uncle was absolutely convinced of young earth creation. Nothing would persuade him otherwise
He was in good company—so do 46% of Americans, and no amount of ”proof” on fossil records can alter that”
End
Now what I’d like is to discuss Miller and the other foundations. But if you can’t I understand.
not quite sure what challenge there could be on the foundations of evolution—that part of your comment made no sense to me, and i doubt if it did to anyone else. Evolution just ”is”.
not a rant about cults, merely stating facts as they stand with regard to cults. Reprinting my entire post was very odd.
if you belong to a cult that insists on ”young earth” i can do no more than to leave you to it, no idea what Miller–foundations means, or in what context. If its about ”alternatives” to evolution or whatever, I must bow out of this gracefully. I would not willingly disturb your certainties.
Maybe this?
https://foundationsministries.nm-secure.com/about
Powerful, passionate, and effective are just a few of the words that are used to describe the anointing on Reverend Marie Miller’s evangelistic ministry.
Prior to being called into full time ministry, Marie was employed for 10 years by Air Canada’s Marketing & Communications Department and was acclaimed for her work there.
In 1989, she responded to the Lord’s call to ministry and enrolled in Bible College. Immediately following graduation in 1992, she received credentials with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) and was ordained in 1994.
PR background…. like I was saying ……
Wow you really have no idea of the pillars of the theory you believe in. Not completely surprised but a little shocked coming from you.
First of all the universe is approximately 12-13billion years old so “young earth ” I’m not sure what you mean.
Would you like me to explain the evidence that has been presented to support evolution then destroy them one by one.
No problem if you don’t know what they are but I find it a bit odd.
“Would you like me to explain the evidence that has been presented to support evolution then destroy them one by one. ”
Please do! 👏🏻
Norman, aren’t we all members of a cult of some kind or another? Aren’t we all indoctrinated into and mesmerized by some variation on consensus trace? Isn’t that the human condition?
I began thinking about this when I first came to live in Japan over 30 years ago. Most of the Westerners I met here at that time—we were so few then that the natives would touch us for good luck!—were of the opinion that the Japanese were acting as if they were part of one big beehive or all enrolled at the same kindergarten. After all “we” were normal, and “they” were “different” to us. Different language, different customs, different commonsense, different way of looking at the world….. And from our perspective, they really all did seem to behave alike, AS IF they were all members of the same cult.
Then in the 1990s, following the Wako “tragedy”—none in polite circles dare call it a massacre or a mass murder—a journalist wrote a column in which he said that the Branch Davidians were destroyed “by a bigger cult”, namely the FBI. Reading that, it all kicked into place for me. I now visualize the entirety of mankind (including womankind and uncomfortable-with-their-gender-designation-kind) as divided into cults within cults within cults, like a huge MANdala.
Works for me!
I spend my days trying to distance myself from all kults…. I find having no TV to be helpful…. I find not believing in any religion to be helpful…. the internet is incredibly helpful
My interest in gods, myths, religions and belief systems is largely academic and with a bit of entertainment value thrown in. If I was forced to choose a religion, I would call myself a Doubter, a worshiper of the Sacred Don’t Know.
Amazingly, though, the Jehovah’s Witnesses still manage to beat a path to my door.
And these days they come armed with iPads. Do these people have no mercy?
It seems to be human nature to try to impress ones beliefs onto others. Another human weakness. We should try to be more fact based. I try to live my life by using my senses. If I can’t detect something with my senses (touch, see, hear etc) then it isn’t there. The rest is all a judgement call. Is slavery good or bad? Is it ok to have multiple wives? It is ok to make your kids do hard labor? Is is ok to mix cotton and polyester?
I understand that allowing multiple wives allows the population to grow more rapidly, because men with sufficient income are able to afford several wives. Those who were too poor could never afford to get married, and this doesn’t change. It seems like this was a finding in Secular Cycles, by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov.
Also, if a lot of men have died in war, it may be helpful for the remaining men who can afford wives to have multiple wives.
Tim,
Yes, they beat a path, but numbers are declining worldwide, and as you can presume, in Japan too.
A few years ago they did a 180 turn, from against new tech, to embracing it. This makes sense because propaganda is most effective in multimedia/interactive form.
It’s very sad, because most are genuinely good hearted people, and have been misled. There is no way to leave without losing your friends and family, causing broken families, suffering, and su-icide. (so now you have an edgy topic to discuss next time).
snorp
Snorp, I only mentioned the JWs because they are literally the only religious people who make frequent visits here in the depths of the Japanese countryside. I hope I didn’t cause any offense. I made three JW visitors a cup of tea last week and talked with them for 20 minutes. I accept that they are good-hearted people and I have nothing against them personally.
Traditionally among the followers of many Christian denominations there were recriminations when somebody left the fold or married outside of it. I can remember a few instances from my childhood in London when I witnessed relatives making judgmental noises when a Catholic was marrying a Protestant. The world’s turned upside down and inside out since that time, but not everybody is changing as fast as the times are.
No offense taken, I woke up and quietly exited the cult. (yes cult). Doing so, burned down my cognitive dissonance, and wound up here lol
FW is dangerous ground for Mr CG….
the word cult upsets people—but if i stand on a soapbox and gather a dozen idiots to my version of reality—thats a cult
but if 5o years later the same nonsense has bamboozled 1m people—they call it a religion
as yet no one has shown me the difference between the two
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am hiring a PR company to help me create my own Kult of personality. I have short listed Paris and Kim’s consultants….
I will be leveraging this to gather acolytes for my harem….
I read a book by Mao’s doctor years ago — he of course had a wonderful Kult of personality — it was so strong that when he traveled around China — women were honoured to be chosen to spend the night with him.
One must keep in mind that he was a right fat bastard with green algae growing on his teeth because he refused to brush them on the premise that ‘tigers don’t brush their teeth’
I am not a fat bastard and I brush and floss regularly — so this should be a slam dunk.
Watch for the billboards and tee vee slots. Might even throw in an reality ‘casting’ show (x rated…)
Opps, just to be clear, there are ‘cult like’ organizations, and there are religious cults. In a religious cult, you can;t leave without being shunned. Shunned means that no mater what, you don’t acknowledge the person is alive, including family. (sorry for ranting) 😉
My Kult will allow people to leave…. in fact some will be cut from the team shall we say…. in the name of keeping things ‘fresh’….
I think you are right. We now have the “Renewables will save us” cult. Also, the “He who dies with the most toys wins” cult. We have the “Central Banks will save us cult.” Everyone has a set of beliefs, based on exactly what culture that person came from, and where he or she has been. And even now in Japan, I could see some of the situation where the Japanese were acting as if they were part of one big beehive or all enrolled at the same kindergarten. In a sense, their culture and religion are deeply intertwined, and taught through the schools.
As we have added more energy supplies, it has been possible for more women to work outside of the home. Contraception has been possible. More and more (but not necessarily better) healthcare has been possible. Rich nations have been able to provide services for the handicapped. Now everyone assumes that these are their rights. In fact, they assume that we will always have these things. If we lose fossil fuels, a lot of things will go. We don’t know exactly which ones, but we can pretty well guess that the last services added are likely to be among the first to go.
JT, (waiving white flag) thanks for this post. I apologize for presuming you were a JW.
I can answer your question about JW tithing. They never have, and do not currently. Rather they use FOG, fear, obligation, and guilt. They actually have a cartoon that shows a child giving their ice cream money to the org.
Everything else is quite accurate except for the semantics of the term cult. It could be argued that in a cult, you can’t leave/change your mind, without suffering shunning, but that is not the case with mainstream religions. (Broadly speaking).
I think the evolution debate would need a separate forum lol. Perhaps the better issue is do we get something from nothing? (oh, never mind lol)
snorp
A ‘big fall’ in markets is coming as traders put record cash to work
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-fall-markets-coming-traders-100200823.html
The logical position is to remain in the market — sitting on the sidelines with cash waiting for a buy opportunity following the crash — is futile.
And a lot of traders know this — they can see that the CBs have created a bubble so insanely massive — that when it blows all bets are off — this will be like nothing ever seen in history.
They know the value store of cash is likely to be incinerated. They may even think that civilization will collapse.
If one is certain of that then one can be confident that the CBs will not stop — they will not allow a correction – because a correction now means chaos.
Of course none of them understand that the problems are related to the end of cheap oil (and resources in general) but that does not matter — they know collapse and chaos is coming so they dance while the music plays.
Because nobody knows when the pushing on a string moment will arrive
These warnings Cliffhanger of a market crash have been floating around now for many years by thousands of different sources. Almost every day a new article can be found on a search claiming an imminent stock market collapse and always for a myriad of reasons. However, the market has not crashed and I no longer wait for that to occur. Ever since the 08/09 mortgage meltdown, every financial metric has been and continues to be tweaked to avoid a crash, so don’t expect it any time soon.
Yep — but there is going to be a monumental crash at some point… A month from now – a year from now — who knows…. but 5 years from now? I think the odds are against that.
So what is one to do when one knows there is no future?
LLL NOW!
http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-idINKBN1AB2K7
Fed holds rates steady, expects portfolio cuts “relatively soon”
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged on Wednesday and said it expected to start winding down its massive holdings of bonds “relatively soon” in a sign of confidence in the U.S. economy.”
Oh, it’s so close to happening, i.e. raising rates. It’s like going half way to a wall then another 1/2 way closer and so on but you never actually touch the wall – you just get closer – yeah, that’s right, interest rates will rise soon. We’re so close!!!
Not good at all! I don’t think these people know what they are doing.
Soon …. as in the UK will ban petrol vehicle soon (2040 was it?)
How long did the UK people vote to Brexit….. saying and doing …. very different.
British and American girls are the fattest in the world: More than half of young females carry dangerous stomach fat in the UK and US, study warns
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4725004/British-American-girls-fattest-world.html
A study analyzed rates of people who are ‘overfat’ – i.e. they have dangerous excess weight – in 30 countries
US schoolgirls have the highest rate of dangerous excess body fat, followed by the UK, the study found
The study raises fresh concerns about female weight gain at an early age, particularly around the stomach
Overall, they found 87% of men and 75% of women are ‘overfat’ in developed countries
American and British girls are the worst in the world for carrying dangerous stomach fat.
A study has found more than half of girls in the US and the UK are ‘overfat’, putting them at risk of diabetes and cancer.
These children may appear to be of normal weight, but having a waist circumference of more than half their height is enough to put them in the danger category.
In the rankings of the world’s 30 most developed countries, US schoolgirls are the fattest, followed by the UK on this measurement.
Ya know, this is really just Fast Eddy clickbait. I’d write it for him but I’m kind of lazy. Cue FE in 5…4…3…2…1
clickbait for all…
after the severe oil declines in the 2030’s and worldwide recession/depression…
there will be almost no fat persons…
who knew peak oil would cure diabetes?
Could you imagine how wrecked our gene pool would become if everyone lived like those in the US. Babies would be born looking like the blob and grow up to be even worse. There would be no natural immunity to anything.
Kurt Vonnegut addressed this….
Sure glad to have grown up when girls/women were slim. Can’t imagine being young now and having to decide amongst a plethora of heavy girls who to ask out. I feel sorry for young guys that is until they perfect the robot woman that can talk, get smarter and is cheap. Just get one of those and adopt kids if you want them. Then feed them right so they don’t get fat.
On average, almost 87 percent of men and more than three-quarters of women in the list are ‘overfat’, storing their weight around their middle rather than elsewhere on their body.
In developed countries, up to 90 percent of adult males and 50 percent children may suffer from this condition.
The results are also worrying among adults, with 77.2 per cent of British women classed as overfat, behind only the US. Women usually gain weight on their thighs and hips, and teenage girls on their chests, which makes stomach fat a warning sign. There are 86.6 per cent of UK men in the overfat category, ranking them seventh in the 30 countries measured.
Live Obese Longer…
uh, LOL.
I think that there are other issues involved too. Giving kids antibiotics when they are young. Hormones accidentally in food, especially meat and milk. Plastic contaminants that affect humans. And misunderstanding of what is good food for children. Too many women gave their children fruit juice, when they should have been breast feeding them.
Also, too little opportunity to play outside and exercise. It no longer seems safe, without adult helpers. Kids can no longer walk to school, because it is more efficient to operate a large school, covering a large area, than a small school.
I like a healthier lifestyle too. But I’m very confused about what that has to do with our energy and economic predicament. It often seems that people are saying more waste and pollution is better for extending the indispensable economic system we depend on.
WTI oil closes at $48.75…
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/oil-adds-to-rally-on-optimism-over-declining-stocks.html
closing in on $50 per barrel…
Every time oil price gets close to 50 it recoils back down into the mid 40’s. But hope (by the producers) springs eternal.
Isn’t that amazing!!!
It’s almost like …. someone is manipulating the prices….
When oil goes too low — and investors begin to get nervous — WHAM! — teach those MOFOS a lesson — drive the price back the other way…..
And the investors think – shit – that drop was a blip — oil is going back to $147 at some point — I need to ride this market out — I can’t panic just because it dropped to 40 bucks…
In fact when it drops to 40 bucks I need to double down — I need to buy that dip….
U.S. energy secretary duped into fake interview with Russian comedians
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energysecretary-idUSKBN1AB06G