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.
This life destroying dinosaur really needed to go:
Yep, it looked to be at the end of it’s design lifespan. It has been in service for almost a century, not bad for such a complex machine. And with a rated output of a measly 13.3 MW. Pretty useless.
Destroyed the largest salmon on Earth, for essentially a bunch of clueless elite to extract some profit.
Should of been marched out into the square and shot.
You are aware that you are destroying the environment and causing a mass die off of species….
I am assuming you buy factory made stuff — live in a house — use petrol and electricity…
How humans are driving the sixth mass extinction
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/oct/20/the-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction
If you feel strongly about this— I suggest you pick up and AK 47 and get down to business… start with your children…. as a pre-emptive strike….
People in glass houses should not throw stones….
Duncan lives in Bend Oregon. He goes on hikes and picks berries. He lives the super consuming life in a town that used to be virgin forest. He fancies himself an environmentalist because he lives in and communes with the forest. He ignores the fact that his lifestyle indirectly or directly eliminated native forage land for bears and other critters.
So now they’ve destroyed a century-old reservoir ecosystem, what are they going to replace its output with? Not bird choppers, I hope!
While that dam placed the canyon off limits to salmon, in so doing it actually saved more individual salmon than it killed. Now, if the canyon is repopulated with salmon, more and more of them will be hatched and more and more will have to die.
“Destroyed the largest salmon on Earth”
Oh cry me a river.
Get that concrete flowing again. And then install one of these bad boys.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yt_oDD7HLOg/VwYE5PzJJYI/AAAAAAAABAI/8OnAkxA9XJkgZnuZocGyl88aTMh8tBbNg/s640/8.jpg
BAU must prevail!
I agree that demolishing a dam has unintended consequences. Can canal-style bypasses be made to get salmon up past dams?
Some progress being made to restore the Atlantic Salmon and other native fish species:
http://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/27/special-sections/penobscot-river-restoration-project-connecting-2000-miles-of-river-to-the-sea/
I’ve caught a few landlocked (Atlantic) salmon in Adirondack lakes through the ice.
I’ve caught some in Argentina, that were obviously introduced.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/610221-1.jpg
One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial system is the $2.5 trillion of debt owed by oil and gas firms. (Economist)
https://espresso.economist.com/d57f6fdeba3bbec9c0f2527d55d5f2ee
Confidential Wall Street sources claim that the Federal Reserve in Dallas has secretly advised major U.S. banks in closed-door meetings to cover up potential energy-related losses.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale
By cover up the losses, they mean don’t make a big deal out of not making as much money on those loans as they had expected. In other words, the money for the loans is conjured up out of thin air, so it’s really not that big a deal. I wish I could get a gig like that.
It is just that the banks that you and I use are some of the ones that may go bankrupt.
You may not consider that a big deal, but some folks do. You saw the earlier article called
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-banks-deposits-idUSKBN1AD1RS
“EU explores account freezes to prevent runs at failing banks.”
This is all related. The money conjured out of thin air is what you use to buy groceries with.
Companies abandon nearly one million hectares of Alberta oilsands exploration leases
http://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/companies-abandon-nearly-one-million-hectares-of-alberta-oilsands-exploration-leases
Abandoned now for apparent lack of profit at today’s oil price, but in the event oil price shoots back up again someday, that stuff will surely get scooped up, heated and processed.
for stuff to get processed etc–there has to be a use for it
until now we have employed ourselves finding new uses for cheap oil—and that’s how our commerce functioned–cars ships planes warfare and so on
now there isnt any oil which is actually cheap…what we are doing is selling expensive oil at low prices because it is becoming unaffordable—hence everyone thinks it’s cheap.
we can no longer afford oil, we are almost at the point of being paid to burn it to keep ourselves in jobs—which is the real meaning of ‘job creation’
Fossil fuels – Enabled jobs programs without a future.
we can no longer afford oil, we are almost at the point of being paid to burn it to keep ourselves in jobs—which is the real meaning of ‘job creation’
+++++
This was my understanding of it. I had thought that encouraging people to circulate money (as with tourism), rather than dependence on new infrastructure and bricks and mortar dev, is a near-term counter to this “running on FF fumes.”
circulating money is effectively freewheeling on your industrial bike
you can keep your feet off the pedals for a while, but if you don’t put energy back into the forward motion system, then falling off becomes a certainty.
this is why a ”downsized economy” cannot work
Where do you see that energy coming from? Can you visualize what (were it to become available) it would produce?
there’s nowhere for it to come from, as far as i can see.
we make ‘stuff’ and put it into our ‘market economy.’
without ‘stuff’ we have no markets—electricity is of no use in itself, neither is oil
all societies in the sense of having the trappings of civilisation, houses, transport, infrastructure and so on, (ie stuff we expect to have as we need it) must produce energy in surplus.
if they don’t then living remains at a subsistence level—ie the Inuit, Amazon indians, etc. They only made ‘things’ that were necessary to acquire the energy from other animals as a food source—clothes, spears, boats etc.–they didnt have sufficient surplus to have commercial boatyards, and thus create a need for money
there is no as yet untapped energy source—and even if there was, it would require appropriation of other things to make it useful to us, (trees, iron, and so on.)—this is why fusion wont be any use.
Gail keeps saying that it isn’t the shortage of energy that is the problem; it is the affordability of the energy in terms of money that’s the problem. So if money is only a marker of energy exchange, and there is actually sufficient energy source in the ground, why can’t all the smart people think of a way to “pay” for energy production without using money?
oil/coal/gas have no use/value until they are extracted from the ground and put to use—it’s important to bear that in mind whatever is being discussed on this thread.
If I decorate your house, and you pay me with money, I have to use that money to buy food which will replace the energy I used in doing the work. Hopefully there will be a surplus that I can use to pay rent, buy petrol, spend on slow horses and fast women, and so on.—whatever it is, i have to spend it. If I bank it, then someone else will borrow it to spend on the above.
Your money is thus being circulated by me.
but the people i pay it to also have to use your money to buy the energy/products to stay alive, all of which are oil/coal/gas dependent
you could short circuit that process by paying me in cans of corned beef, or xx gallons of petrol—but that payment is also an energy-form, which i still have to use to maintain myself. Also the corned beef and petrol energy forms will have had to be paid for by you (with money) but produced by the energy input of other people (the farmer, oil rig workers etc)
You cannot escape the work/energy/work/energy balance cycle
Getting back to the work I do for you—if I’m starving. I might paint your house for 1 can of corned beef, but as it would contain only about 600cal, I would expend more energy in working than I got in food–so I would lose out. Having ”energy in the ground” won’t feed me. This why feudal societies remained poor–not enough surplus cheap energy available except for a small elite group.
Printing banknotes on rolls and putting them in restrooms wont work, because the notes have no energy input to back up their value, Why would that matter? Because everyone would tear off £$1m worth each and believe they were rich. And then rush around trying to buy houses/cars which are themselves limited in supply by the energy resources that created them. You would then have runaway hyperinflation, because the cheapest car would cost $5m or whatever.
Which would destroy the economic system of the nation/world.
(Nominations for a Nobel prize in economics gratefully acknowledged)
‘(Nominations for a Nobel prize in economics gratefully acknowledged)”
I’d nominate you for that prize any day. But maybe before that, a prize for patience. It gets right back to why I’d always come dead last in maths at school. Some kind of weird mental miswiring.
In my scenario, someone would have to play god, and apportion a set amount of calories within the economic group, so the economic system would be more complex than it is now, since it would intrude in every aspect of a community’s life. But it might beat extinction. And it would be like what scientists tend to say: Give us one foundational miracle, and we can explain everything from that point on. The miracle, in my case, is IC run with money. Everything in my thinking derives from that. Money gave us all this, but this has run into limits and needs some kind of extension, based on what is here already. A “system” that apes (simulates) the money system in terms of all its present functions, including surplus. The same things would happen as now, but under different names. Human discretion as to how to spend resources would be limited or altered. “God” would have to decide what everyone needs. and work the books like crazy to supply it.
One small but very inadequate example of my (would be) point is exchange arrangements between Cuba and the USSR, then later, between Cuba and Venezuela. In the latter case, Cuba supplies medical care in exchange for oil. This arrangement has worked fairly well till now, when the current economic system threatens to plow Venezuela under. ,
Everything is based on IC as it has evolved to this point. What is hoped for is a way to keep it going through a different kind of calculus than money.
But thanks. There’s just no way for me to understand what the experts take as self evident. 🙂 What I’m “proposing” doesn’t seem “human” either! So there.
lol
one day at my school, the headmaster was giving me a hard time for coming last in maths (seriously)
my maths teacher happened to walk in–the head said–is Pagett lazy or hopeless at maths?
Hopeless came the reply—
But in compensation–the head said (his last words as i left school.) Promise me you will continue to write. Some things just stay with you for life
According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices.
http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
Think about it….
Yes FE. You are right about that. that is also what Art Berman has said at his lectures that the oil price is to high for BAU economic growth. But economist and politicians ignore the issue.
“Abandoned now”
In recent years they have found ways to get the bitumen out at lower cost. Bitumen butane in Google will find lots of articles. (Most paywalled, unfortunately.)
I wonder. What could possibly change that much to make extraction cheaper, they’ve had year to perfect and streamline the process. Likely news to scam the investors and banks.
I would hazard a guess and say because energy prices are lower, production naturally becomes cheaper……….but if energy prices are lower so must be the sale price. It’s a conundrum that has no easy answer. The hard answer is get the sale price up, stimulate the economy, get the consumer spending again. Of course that’s why it’s the hard answer and unlikely to ever happen, to put it nicely.
I haven’t looked at this particular approach.
With the huge amount of bitumen in place, all someone needs to do is figure out an approach that burns some of the in-place bitumen for fuel in the process, and the bitumen can perhaps can be extracted quite cheaply. There is always an argument among those calculating the EROI if you count the material in place (which is often most of what you are burning) in the calculation. (Someone came up with an approach like this a few years ago, but it didn’t work too well.)
Similar to the thinking that pumped storage is free and no need to calculate it into EROI, if it is a part of the overall energy production, use half for energy pump the other half and continue forever………People think it’s a perpetual motion machine. They think if you use some of the energy in place to work the process it’s free. Of course ALL energy made by humans has a cost, even animal power.
” in the event oil price shoots back up again someday”
The price needs to do a whole lot more than “shoot back up.” It needs to stay higher. For this to happen, wages of non-elite workers probably need to be higher. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Thanks! That is a good article.
Sort of fits in with Venezuela having even higher oil resources than Canada, and the problems they are having. Having the resources/reserves means nothing, until the prices can stay up at a high enough price for extraction. Bouncing up to a high level for a year or two would not be sufficient.
“at a high enough price for extraction. ”
The other approach would be to reduce the cost of extraction. Some of the methods used in Alberta might work there as well. The current way is that they heat the deposits with steam to get them to flow.
“The other approach would be to reduce the cost of extraction.”
Yes, that would be extracting it in a slower rate, less water, less external energy usage, less pollution, less waste, less expenditures.
However, there are a few problems with this “strategy”, some severe side effects, so to speak. 😉
Wind turbine’s use. between 150 to 250 liters of oil in their gearbox’s. All squeaky wheels get the grease
http://imgur.com/a/1IUnp
Just like the bogus unemployment numbers, U.S. GDP numbers are 100% smoke and mirrors:
Here is quarterly GDP growth with change in private inventories (blue):
http://imgur.com/fJ1JdL8
So this time, GDP is up, and inventories are down. Strange! If inventories were up, the results would be just outstanding, I suppose. Did this come from someone else’s analysis?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/07/30/us-allies-ready-to-use-overwhelming-force-in-north-korea-general-says.html
More blustery rancorous empty rhetoric claiming to use overwhelming force on NK if deemed necessary. How many different ways can threats be administered? At this point they are on a threat drip, drip, drip, drip, ignore, ignore… NK doesn’t even listen to this stuff any longer. They rightfully understand the circumstances, i.e. that no military action will be taken against them because of the large numbers of losses that would inevitably take place within artillery striking distance in Seoul, SK. So US military, save us all the blah, blah, blah.
I dare them to strike NK and that crazy haircut dear leader! He will blow SK half way to hell!
Crazy haircuts among leaders seem all the rage these days.
When you see this = not bluffing:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Operation_Upshot-Knothole_-_Badger_001.jpg
They might be bluffing. That might just be a the mother of all TNT blasts.
How would we the public know?
https://youtu.be/jo7Ytg9ckC0
If they allow another 5-15yrs for Russia to recover-retool and China to growth (slowly), they are finished, incl. most of the looted wealth of past centuries. So, I gather real substantial conventional war is coming fast be it launched via kinetic action against NK, Iran, ..
Although risky, that will achieve several goals at once, escape valve for acknowledging domestic insolvency – loss of living standards opulence. Also enabling the elites (faction) last a bit longer (hiding behind the militarism skirts). Denying China at least the naval route for expansion and ex-territorial hopes (Coastal Asia, Gulf, Africa).
The price to pay (for some), large part of S. Korea flattened, some damage to Japan likely as well. And or Gulf exports crumbled (sunken ships in the Strait, terminals destroyed). Perhaps some industrial accidents all over etc.
Well, all in all seems bearable bargain for ~two decades of at least limited yet continued basking in the “wealth” fountains..
But couldn’t it escalate into small-halted nuclear exchange or full global strike scenario?
Absolutely.
The Sun agrees with your analysis, and they have some impressive photos to illustrate the narrative.
DONALD Trump ‘is to order a military strike against North Korea within a year’ after Kim Jong-un’s military boasted it had fired a ballistic missile capable of hitting the US.
Senior military sources in Washington have reportedly claimed Pentagon officials have laid out plans to obliterate a nuclear weapons facility operating deep within a mountain range inside the rogue state.
I guess nobody in DC will be calling Donald a wimp if he launches this strike. It would definitely “trump” Clinton’s Sudan drug factory cruise missile attack. Motivation enough, I would have thought.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4130488/us-air-force-unleashes-supersonic-bombers-in-north-korea-nuke-drill-as-its-claimed-donald-trump-is-poised-to-launch-military-strike-against-the-rogue-state/
Thanks for the link.
The problem is they can order only “surgical” strike.
Because full scale carpet bombing equals loss of crew.
Therefore surgical strike might delete some of the premier hitech facilities in NK.
But it certainly can’t erase hundreds of caves with hidden *artillery and ammo depots, and that means huge retaliatory damage to nearby South K, very possibly incl. some US installations. Hence another spiral of escalations.
*if I’m not mistaken RU-Chinese artillery has got partially guided ammo since ~1970s, i.e. artillery shell with wings deployed in flight and some manouvrability
Where do smart fridges and kettles and ‘cars as a service’ come into this Apocalypse? 🙂
If Donald Trump stays the course, he could be looking at being authorised to take complete control of resources in the USA as per Executive Order – National Defense Resources Preparedness.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness
Which may not be such a pretty picture, though with the right management it could be a means by which Trump could keep things going just a wee bit longer in some respects.
South Korea is not a high price to pay to continue BAU for quite a while. If we can gain 20 years, all the wonders of future tech will arrive.
The most dangerous state is a powerful one in decline, whose strategic planners are -whether rationally or not – convinced that only a narrow window of opportunity presents itself to avoid either destruction or relegation to 2nd or 3rd class global status, and which possesses the armaments to act on that supposition.
Now, which state does that sound like?
UK
Spot on, no coal, oil fields in terminal decline. No R&D, mfg industry. Economy is all smoke and mirrors.
“The price to pay (for some), large part of S. Korea flattened, some damage to Japan likely as well”
Large scale war will never happen.
Software and Silicon pulls the strings nowadays. The power has gravitated from the old debauchery and contentedness based (military)industrialist, and oil tycoons to the new “Internet, gaming and lolz” slightly antisocial ADHD/Aspergers breed of silicon and software moguls.
Trump is their little puppet and he is loving it. Riding the wave of a new narrative.
Expect no war. But Britain will certainly become a failed state and the dystopian pipe dream of suburbia will be quickly dispatched of, once the drama settles.
“Software and Silicon pulls the strings nowadays. The power has gravitated from the old debauchery and contentedness based (military)industrialist, and oil tycoons to the new “Internet, gaming and lolz” slightly antisocial ADHD/Aspergers breed of silicon and software moguls.”
The military spearheaded the I.T. industry. The U.S. military and U.S. intelligence was involved very early in the development of computers. I doubt that they’ve lost any power due to the internet.
You know we’re reaching the end of times for human civilization when humans who rode in the short bus as children (and are considered equals or superiors to other humans as adults due to social empowerment schemes) are lecturing to other humans on how “power has gravitated”. . .
http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ss/srends/5180390490816.jpg
“The military spearheaded the I.T. industry. The U.S. military and U.S. intelligence was involved very early in the development of computers. I doubt that they’ve lost any power due to the internet.”
Who said anything that the US military lost any power, on the contrary. With advances in semiconductors, processors and software it’s strength has increased.
The industrial complex part of the equation, though, will inevitably lose out in this transition. Would you agree on that?
Need I say more than the F-35 project? It has become the laughing stock of all modern arms manufacturers.
http://www.antiwar.com/photos/f35-moneydump.jpg
Putin has stated, point blank, that the next war will NOT be fought on Russian territory. That means tactical nukes would be deployed rather quickly, with escalation very likely. The Russians have been preparing for some time – will they blink? I doubt it.
All out nuclear war might be Plan B…. it would be akin to putting down a diseased dog….
When BAU goes the suffering begins…. and nobody survives…
Would you rather be forced to endure starvation, violence, rape, radiation poisoning? Then die…
Or would you prefer a quick and easy vapourization?
Here’s hoping there a 5 ICMBs scheduled to crash land on the northern tip of the south island of NZ.
Me
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/snAC5Y5DTSU/maxresdefault.jpg
Yep, that is correct. No nukes will fly nowhere.
All the Central European deals with the north, and east has already been agreed upon.
It will be interesting to see how Her Majesty plays her hand. Will she ask her old ally in the former colony for some more warmongering help?
A bit of turmoil in the Ukraine again perhaps? Or maybe something a little more dramatic played out in the Middle East.. Cough, cough, Iran, cough. Mighty interesting developments.
Nah, she’s old and worn. The UK is running on fumes. Time to abandon ship.
How would we the public know? (Proceeds to link to a movie that claims it’s knows)
Question everything.
Interesting this is agenda is slowly but surely entering the realm of msm and officialdom recently.
Russian (and Chinese similar announcements) are either three major probabilities:
– bluffing cheap
– bluffing extended and aimed primarily not at US – warning all int parties the known projects underway (SWIFT alternative, non USD oil/natgas, ..) could be phased in earlier, in reality still somewhat distant future goal
– warning the known projects underway (SWIFT alternative, non USD oil/natgas, ..) could be phased in much earlier “imminently” (month, years)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ0qCF2ZEUs
(towards the end)
there is also shorter to the point version at “Ruptly”
The title of the You tube video is “MOSCOW STRIKES BACK: US Sanctions Push Russia Closer to Dumping the Dollar”
The takeaways I got from the video was that Russia had been hoping that Trump would get rid of US sanctions against Russia. Now there are statements by Trump suggesting that he wants to make the sanctions stronger. Russia will wait and see what really happens. One approach being considered would be to dump the dollar in a way that would hopefully get others to go along. The US has too much control as long as it is the holder of the world’s Reserve Currency.
Bots are way smarter than you think already:
Yep, have you watched this little gem on Youtube?
Pingback: Researchers have been underestimating the cost of wind and solar — Our Finite World
How many people on FW think that Tesla is going to save the world – hands up.
I count ZERO.
Tesla’s Model 3 Arrives With a Surprise 310-Mile Range
Elon Musk finally unveils the long-awaited electric car for the masses.
By Tom Randall
July 29, 2017, 12:11 PM GMT+8 July 30, 2017, 6:39 AM GMT+8
From ___________
Now open this page….. and check what words appear to the right of From
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-29/tesla-s-model-3-arrives-with-a-surprise-310-mile-range
If have the equation is false… the ENTIRE equation is false.
Don Draper is playing with you ….
https://lafleur.marketing/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/don-draper.jpg
Shortonoil’s comment on LTO’s
It should also be noted that LTO has limited refining potential. Refineries are restricted to including a maximum of 20 to 30% LTO in their input streams. In other words, it requires conventional crude to process LTO. It is not a stand alone product for the production of finished products.
Below is a listing of some of the problems that are present with the refining of LTO.
• contain entrained hydrogen sulfide (H2S)
• require the addition of amine-based H2S scavengers in
the pipeline, truck, or railcar prior to transport
• are contaminated with paraffin waxes that cause fouling
in piping, tank walls, and crude preheat exchangers
• contain large amounts of filterable solids
• can have a wide range of API gravity
• require crude blending to balance the atmospheric
crude fractionator cut-point yields for best downstream
utilization
• may be incompatible with other types of crudes used
for blending
• require energy balancing across the crude preheat
exchangers
• may experience cold flow property deficiencies that
require modifications to catalysts.
Reprinted with permission from
Chemical Engineering Progress (CEP), April 2015.
Copyright © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
Also, LTO is high in asphaltenes and asphaltenes do not dissolve in crude oil, but exist as a colloidal suspension. In the presence of paraffin waxes they participate out to foul pipe lines and values. Their presence in shale oil limits a refineries ability to process it.
As we have repeatedly stated, LTO is a very poor, to negative supplier of energy to the end user. It is now being used as a stop gap measure to compensate for declining conventional crude production. Its usage will be terminated as conventional crude supplies continue to decline.
I will admit I have not studied the issue closely. We certainly in the past have been sending a lot of LTO to light oil refineries (which tend to be cheap to operate). It may be that over a period of time, these refineries discover problems with the type of oil they have been refining.
Clearly hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a pollutant that needs to be removed. The simplest refineries cannot handle this problem. Many types of oil and natural gas seem to have H2s and other pollution problems. I would be willing to bet that the extent of H2S pollution varies with the place where the LTO has been extracted (since this seems to be the case with other types of oil). I don’t know how much of the LTO has this problem, but I know that at least some of the LTO has been going on rail cars to places where they likely don’t have the facility to handle H2S. So it may very well affect only part of the LTO. Putting this oil through refineries that have already been constructed to handle H2S pollution would seem to be a solution. I can see that mixing the LTO with heavy oil would allow refineries that handle the H2S pollution issue to be used.
LTO is “contaminated with paraffin waxes” and “high in asphaltenes” means that even though the oil is light, it contains some long chain hydrocarbons (including diesel), and some of these long chain hydrocarbons are paraffin waxes and asphaltenes that are a problem. Again, I suspect that some LTO is worse than other LTO in this regard. It is the fact that these long chain hydrocarbons are part of the mix that forces (some?) LTO to go to heavy oil refineries.
LTO “can have a wide range of API gravity”. You can see some of the range in the chart I posted. The Bakken LTO shown is close to WTI, while the Eagle Ford LTO is fairly different. I have read that even within what seems to be the same area, there can be a fairly wide range of API gravity. A particular refinery can handle particular kinds of oil, and would normally contract to buy oil that “works” in the kind of refinery that it operates. If the refinery thinks it is getting one mix, and actually gets a different mix, this would be a problem. One way of working around the problem of not being able to properly “type” the oil ahead of time would be to dilute it with heavier oil that needs to be refined anyhow. I suppose another work around would be to do more typing of API gravity of oil coming out of wells, so that the LTO can be routed to the “correct” refinery.
It certainly does sound like at least some LTO would be best refined in heavy oil refineries. In order for this to happen, it needs to be mixed with other crude that would normally go to these refineries. This crude will probably not need the full range of services offered by the heavy oil refineries. For example, they will not need a lot of cracking capability, and the use of large amounts of natural gas to operate the cracking. These are part of what send costs up. I am sure that refineries figure out ways to charge for their services.
EROI calculations are frustrating because they are such “blunt tools.” In EROI calculations, all energy products are equal. The very “light ends” are equivalent to the gasoline and diesel, for example. The need to borrow money (or sell shares of stock) has no “cost of capital.” A person cannot look at the charges that refineries implicitly make for refining particular types of oil, and which shares of oil go to which kinds of refineries.
I expect with LTO, there is a tendency to use “best first,” just as with other types of oil. Thus, the later extracted LTO may have more of the H2S pollution problems and problems with asphaltenes and paraffin waxes. Thus, these issues may get worse over time, and may be more of a problem in some places than others. (For example, they may rule out LTO extraction in some parts of the world, because of the cost of refining.)
The LTO refining problem is probably worse than I said, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the LTO needs to got through heavy oil refineries, and use all of the services of heavy oil refineries. There is some middle ground, that may get worse over time, as more LTO is extracted.
Also see my comment I made this morning on another thread. The EROI of LTO is quite high. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215014917 A lot of people have mistakenly taken the EROI of Shale oil (a different product altogether, with low EROI) and confused it for the EROI of Light Tight Oil (which seems to have high EROI).
If a significant portion of the population stops believing the hype of so-called renewable energy technologies as part of the loss of faith in overall continuous progress and growth, then the economy crashes sooner than would otherwise be the case – and society with it.
There is not much danger of that happening, as most people live out their lives in small local worlds with backgrounds constructed by the mass media that are as fake as the ones in the movie The Truman Show.
Overall continuous progress and growth can be faked to some extent, and the eye of faith longs to believe that everything’s basically OK. Most people will go on doing this right up until the moment the when the stage set is knocked down around them.
Is the mass media a background, or is it an escape. The news stands at supermarkets don’t seem to have news magazines any longer, evening television has always been an escape.
The real rule book has always been hard to find both in the world and in the personal space.
Dennis L.
Another veil over reality is politics, or rather politically-conditioned thinking.
I should say that most people who can see and feel that something is deeply wrong – above all the young in Europe – believe that all that is needed is the end of Capitalism, and of course ‘renewables.’
Whether the problem is seen as environmental, or lack of decent employment, withdrawal of pensions, an insane housing market,etc. Add high taxation of the rich in oder to end inequality, and Bob’s your uncle! It’s only those damned elites propping up Capitalism who stand in the way.
Renewables, real Socialism and a breaking out of Goodness alround! This is pretty much how my younger siblings think, just as they have been taught to do.
It’s the “4th turning effect” all over again. Well, at least contributing, forcing..
Most of the today’s urbanized young in person never seen a craftsman at work (or even industrial worker), not mentioning work in the open fields and orchards. It was already passing memory of such experience for their own parents and grandparents. Nature became a park with asphalted parking space, and open-close hours schedule.
Each subsequent generation has been co-developing deeper into this modern world of food magically re-spawning in supermarket, energy coming from a wall socket or gas pump etc. It’s a world of seemingly opulent yet very distasteful existence at the primary sentient level.
The eventual confrontation with cold reality will be brutal. One of the major points under appreciated here is that the future pop trimming of the above model failing will likely proceed at all segments, i.e. very young, very old, young adults, and also the older adults; in each group %dozen of pop are very vulnerable to the system imbalances, not mentioning harder reshuffles and or instantiates discontinuities..
Well said, worldof.
We’ve created a civilisation where even the people on the lowest tiers don’t grasp primary production and are utterly helpless – a first in history! Although I suppose the masses of Rome who depended on their food rations and games were a precursor. Since then, even the bourgeoisie used to go out and help with the harvest once year, up to the 19th century.
They are basically lost. Their for all intents and purposes meaningless jobs only have relevance in a semi automated FF powered economy. And that little party is soon over.
Expect UBI for the hordes.
++++++++++++++++++++++
You may be right. The huge amount of debt that goes into funding renewable energy is part of what keeps pumping up the economy. As long as it looks like it “might” be a solution, debt (often government debt, indirectly), goes to fund development that eventually ends up as wages and higher prices for fossil fuels.
Let’s have a look at how a solar panel is manufactured…
Note that there are no trees involved….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Mxak7sqr0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa6KEwWY9HU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaDVlPlvVZI
a wee bit of complexity in that process.
now all we need is more complexity for solar to work well on the grid.
what could possibly go wrong?
Didn’t notice too much renewable energy in there ‘creating’ so-called renewable energy! Maybe that bulldozer had some batteries powering it?!
Plenty of aluminium smelters in Sweden and those are hydro powered. The same goes for Iceland with geothermal powered smelters.
Thats true, but the graphs shown (often) on this site demonstrate how small a fraction hydro is as an option for powering our modern world. Much hydro development has come at enormous environmental cost to fisheries, soils and communities. These fisheries, soils and communities are not ‘renewing’. The Answar High dam prevents the flooding and silting of the Nile Delta, and now artificial fertilisers are required.
In addition, how many countries could divert the relatively ‘hard’ hydro-power produced now, to manufacturing solar panels for ‘soft’ power produced over decades?
We have an entire power station in NZ dedicated to an Aluminium smelter, but that hydro-powered station will never build another one without massive FF input. And this is the problem with all so-called renewable energy; it piggy backs on FF capital inputs both in its construction and ongoing maintenance.
How many countries around the world does an EV make sense in? I would suggest that if NZ converted all its cars to EV, no one would be able to cook dinner or go online to check out OFW. Never mind thinking about battery-powered trucking, farming or forestry.
I am not claiming it’s not without it’s problems. Just that aluminium can be manufactured with electricity in a relatively environmentally ‘friendly’ way.
The Scandinavian hydro power have been fully commissioned about half a century ago. There are a few rivers and streams that still could be exploitable.
I’m sure this will eventually happen, since the UK and central Europe will need loads of dynamic/inertial hydro power to balance out the intermittent renewable power sources.
The only good dam:
Haha, what a cute little gimmick.
This is a dam:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/04/1409833510908_Image_galleryImage_This_picture_taken_on_Sep.JPG
Check the rated output power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
Unfortunately all the factories making the spare parts for the mining equipment, grid etc…. are elsewhere… as are the refineries for the petrol required… and then there is the issue of the machines that would use the electricity if you could magically keep producing….
You need to be thinking wholistically about this….
Come on FE, I’ve been posting here on and off for more than a year. I am not offering any solutions, just the obvious fact that aluminium smelting can be done with hydro power, no FF’s required in the conversion process.
Besides, A run of the mill 500 MW hydro/geothermal power station built well before Ghawar was found, is a net contributor of cheap (clean) energy, much in the same way cheap FF’s are. There’s no denying in that?
an important development in the oil industry!!!!!!!
Saudi Arabia trying to force oil prices higher?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Saudi-Arabia-Growing-Nervous-Over-OPEC-Compliance.html
IF they take away 10% more of their exports, I think they will get what they want.
“Capping Saudi exports at 6.6 mb/d would essentially mean taking an additional 600,000 bpd off the market, the WSJ notes, since Saudi exports averaged 7.2 mb/d in the first six months of the year.
That would be a bullish move that could help accelerate the rebalancing, but it also is a sign of how desperate Saudi Arabia is to see higher oil prices.”
This article says that July’s output reached a new record, because of an increase in production from Libya.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-oil-idUSKBN1AG1SN
You may have seen an earlier article claiming that Saudi Arabia was having technical problems, and this was the real reason for its cutbacks.
http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-problems-could-wipe-out-the-worlds-oil-glut-in-weeks-2017-7
I ‘m not sure that we know for certain.
Remarkable story of a BAU couple that turned their back on the American dream and staked a life in the Maine wilds to live the Good Life….
he Wehrweins met Coperthwaite as they were deciding to change in their lives by moving from the New Hampshire suburbs to rural Maine. Six years ago, Melanie and Josh Wehrwein and their kids were living one version of the American dream: a 2,500-square-foot house in the middle of a subdivision. The high school sweethearts figured they would stay there forever, raising their family and putting down roots in the house that Josh Wehrwein, 41, described as a “rectangle with vinyl siding.” But Colin, now 9, was a colicky baby, and because of that they started to really look at the way they ate.
“That got us thinking about a lot of things,” Melanie Wehrwein, 39, said. “The stepping stone was food. We joined a CSA [community-supported agriculture] and started a big garden.”
They wanted to have chickens, but that wasn’t allowed in their subdivision, and when Aria, now 6, was born at home, the family felt like maybe they no longer belonged in that particular world.
“We were starting to feel that we just didn’t fit there anymore,” Melanie said.
Josh’s mother lived in Maine, and she told the couple about the Good Life Center, the former homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing in the village of Harborside. They visited and walked into their first yurt, a small one that Coperthwaite had built for Helen Nearing. It wasn’t quite love at first sight.
“I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I want to live in one of these,’” Melanie said. “It was just a neat looking building.”
But she picked up Coperthwaite’s book, “A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity,” and when the same book was brought up in a conversation later, she looked into it more and ordered a copy.
“I really liked what he had to say,” Josh said
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/06/18/homestead/a-yurt-in-the-woods-how-an-unusual-maine-mans-legacy-lives-on/
See the video in the article link
His legacy is the reminder that in our modern American culture we can still create our own fulfilled, unique, valuable, meaningful lives without selling our souls to things we don’t believe in,” Forbes said. “Every person has within themselves the capacity to live a fully realized life.”
It is a “neat story,” but I expect it will not be received well by readers of this site. It sounds like the beginning of a “happily ever after” story, but really isn’t. The round house in the photo is definitely not a yurt. I have seen a yurt, and been inside one.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/-/media/Images/MEN/Editorial/Articles/Magazine-Articles/1971/03-01/Building-a-Yurt/yurt.jpg?h=3264&la=en&w=4928&hash=FB866C7D5EC17BE86C0C8AE771E000425A097819
Being able to live in this way requires both land and funds (often debt) for financing construction of any building. Many Americans could not afford these things now. If things get worse, they definitely could not afford them.
Hello Gail,
Bill Coperthwaite has an interesting background and yes it is a type of Yurt…a variation of the indigenous model to be stationary not nomadic.
Dr. William Coperthwaite dedicated his life to learning from the craftspeople of ancient cultures and applying their indigenous technology to modern materials and design. An innovative educator, Bill had used the classroom, seminars and hands-on workshops to instill, in those who will listen, a vision for a simpler life, a more intimate relationship with the environment, and an approach to “democratic design” in which all participate in the creation of their life and culture.
In 1962, while reading a National Geographic article, Dr. Coperthwaite recognized the folk genius in the design of the traditional Mongolian yurt. He found in the yurt both rich potential for creative design and an opportunity to develop a simple dwelling that people could build themselves. Bill designed the tapered-wall yurt to enable people to play a larger role in creating their own shelter, using a design that reduces required building skills to a minimum while still producing a beautiful, inexpensive permanent shelter.
Bill’s reservoir of ideas for designing ways of living that are simpler, more beautiful and more just are being carried forward as the Dickinsons Reach Community and Dickinsons Reach Yurts
On November 26, 2013, Bill passed away in an automobile accident.
In the early 1960’s Bill Coperthwaite was
inspired by the Mongolian yurts in a
National Geographic story.
In 1962, while reading a National Geographic article, Dr. Coperthwaite recognized the folk genius in the design of the traditional Mongolian yurt. He found in the yurt both rich potential for creative design and an opportunity to develop a simple dwelling that people could build themselves. Bill designed the tapered-wall yurt to enable people to play a larger role in creating their own shelter, using a design that reduces required building skills to a minimum while still producing a beautiful, inexpensive permanent shelter
http://www.yurtinfo.org/the-yurt-foundation
Thanks for posting it and your comment
It’s a luxury yurt!
Koombaya … koombaya….
G-Had to Green Groupies… rat poisoned organic oatmeal…. organic rat poison!
Hmmm.. a google image search for organic rat poison … brings up nadda…
There is an opening here — who wants to be rich — there are a lot of green groupies out there who would be all over this politically correct poison
“A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity,”
i see…
A wheelbarrow made in a factory
Timber cut and treated in a factory
Plastic walls made in a factory
Metal scaffolding made in a factory
A vacuum cleaner made in a factory
Glass windows made in a factory
People are all wearing clothes made in a factory
Do they grow all their own food? Do they have a vehicle? What about electricity? Where does their water come from?
At the end of the day what is the point of this? They remain plugged completely into BAU for their survival. Without BAU inputs they die.
If they want to unplug this is what they need to do…
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/bc/52/d5/bc52d5bbece4d241580548c94ec8ae2d.jpg
Until then we are not interested in this pretentious half-assed Koombaya BS
Make not mistake — these people are living large. They are playing make believe.
They are delusional clowns
And btw this is a yurt….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/20/article-1214825-06791228000005DC-113_468x286.jpg
And PS … Death to Farmers
They are what caused the population explosion to 7.5 billion
Yep-
But it was Haber and Borlaug who dealt the death blow.
Heroes.
From the perspective of any living organism other than a human
Tragic how those who attempt to solve great problems, WORLD HUNGER
Often create even bigger ones, OVERPOPULATION.
I reckon that lady should teach her children how to knife fight…. it would be a useful skill to learn when the rapists and pillagers show up …..
And when people are hunting the children — what better way skill to have than the ability to stick a knife in the right place…
What is needed is a cover of Koombaya … by Metallica….
..With an album cover of a yurt.
May have to go to LA:
and this, the greatest song ever; well, at least the greatest song of the 1970’s:
greatest in your opinion? Music and movies have a wide range of appeal. What’s great to one person is not so much to another & vice versa.
I used to awaken my granny with that one blasting away at max. volume!
There were a lot of great songs written in the seventies.
But almost anything by Yes beats almost anything by Loud ‘n’ AIn’ Right in my opinion.
After all these years, this one still sends shivers down my spine.
https://youtu.be/l7sKaKENeHA
Can’t see what you are posting because I’m on Tor, with java and flash turned off—-
But I agree with you about Yes.
The Remembering, from Tales from Topographic Oceans.
Loudon’s alright. I saw him performing live in Japan twice. One time supporting Richard Thompson. The other time I think he opened for Lou Reed. But it was so long ago I wouldn’t swear to it.
People will get up in arms if say I wanted to buy a cat or dog from a breeder. They will tell me go rescue one there are plenty of good pets that are in shelters that need good homes. Yet, I can’t say to someone who wants a million kids don’t go conceiving a bunch of kids there are plenty of good children in foster homes or children around that world that need good homes and need our help. Why can’t I say this?
+++++++++++++++++++
Answer – because humans are stewpid moreons?
yes, go to a breeder and get the kind of dog or cat that you really want.
for cats, I recommend a Maine Coon.
they are very intelligent and vocal.
DelusiSTANI says — that’s a pure bread dog ain’t it?
Yep
You know there are thousands of dogs available down at the SPCA that you could have adopted instead of your custom made unit there?
Yep. Those your kids?
Ya
You and the Mrs make them?
Heh heh… well ya….
You know that there are millions of orphaned kids that you could have adopted instead of your custom made units there?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3nsNeGVYAAfZG3.jpg
Because; think about their precious children!
https://media.tenor.com/images/6783ab692265a2fed66d13a0397ef23a/tenor.gif
What’s important with Tesla is that it has become the rallying point for all the tech brains to assemble. Elon Musk might be a shill, a hologram or whatever, but the backing behind him is real and the people he assembled are also real.
The internet world is now dominated by Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix.
https://theweek.com/articles/714716/new-monopolies
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/6qawjw/the_collapse_of_the_internet_dream/
Not much different from about 1910 when just three families controlled all of the world’s oil supply ; John D Rockefeller, the children of Robert and Ludvig Nobel (brothers of the Nobel Prize founder) who controlled all of Russia’s oil, and Calouste Gulbenkian, who controlled all of Middle East’s oil. The other two lost power after the Great War, leaving Rockefeller as the only oil magnate of the world.
Even if the tech boom ends tomorrow, these tech giants have accumulated too much money and market share to be vulnerable, as seen in the Grey Enlightenment links I included in the replies to the reddit post above.
Peak oil or not, these companies’ power wont go away. Like the Papacy, which once established never went away.
Yes, try getting two nerds bombing each other except for in video games or in forums over the Internet. Indeed, good luck with that.
It’s all fun and games for the antisocial smart asses – from here until the end of the century, perhaps beyond, and then it’s all about cognitive and curious machinery that runs she show, and of course real and simulated battle machinery around the orbit of the moon. 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, war games is a favorite pastime for nerds in general, just the type where no one gets hurt.
The shift in power is real and either it’s full scale nuclear war or the old money will slowly wither away. As I have previously stated: The last human job on earth will be that of a computer programmer.
Sounds good! I have two sons who are programmers, and a husband who teaches computer programming.
Keep ’em rockin’. We need more of that!
Get em’ off the meds, cars, TV and on bicycles.
And also, vegetarian food or Mom gets grumpy. 🙂
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f8/af/81/f8af81133ba7a36cf02456229a3bce25–cycling-motivation-workout-motivation.jpg
The good old days of Sir Ronnie The Lessor:
http://megacancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/camel-ad-1980.jpg
Dopamine man is sucking on a nicotine stick and admiring his imagined self while genetic damage gradually accumulates.
While not the britest porch light on the block, Sir Ronnie was a good politician, and mastered the Electronic Nuremberg Rally.
Warning: Standing Behind a Camel Can Damage Your Health.
Oh Dear, I have been expecting this:
http://tinyurl.com/yb6dqvy7
July 29, 2017 – Something extraordinary has happened in Washington. President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to destroy an arms control agreement and pave the way for war been so openly telegraphed.
You think Cheeto Jesus will still be around in October?
Quote:
This is a melodrama of a type the world has seen before in a hundred royal palaces and other centers of mis-rule. The need to get rid of the head of state becomes so painfully self-evident that idle chatter about it ceases and all intention is signaled in mere eye-rolls, sighs, portentous glances, and other fraught devices of body language. That’s what’s going on now in the senate, the agency executive suites, the terraces of Martha’s Vineyard, and surely the hallowed corridors of the White House itself. One way or another, the knives are coming out.
I am not clear why the knives should be out for Trump.
What exactly has he done wrong?
Is it because he has not yet started any wars – yet?
Or is it just because of his bad hair?
Actually, I’m sort of a Cheeto Jesus fan.
He is putting this train wreck in the ditch quite fast, and that is a good thing.
In keeping with the entertainment value of Trump…. what would be more entertaining than ____________.
Rhymes with JFK
Why do they want his head?
Trump challenges the Great Illusion: superficially ‘progressive politics’ (all that gender crap, BLM,’ holy ‘renewables, all immigrants are lovely people, etc) which acts as a smiling mask for the foreign resource wars, energy decline, and the shameless lining of pockets ala Clintons, and utter contempt for the mass of ordinary Americans.
His demagogic tweet campaign acknowledged what people felt and saw, that something was ‘rotten in the state of Denmark’, – crap infrastructure, poor pay and ever-fewer decent working/middle- class jobs, etc, – other than the things which ‘progressives’ will permit to be described as wrong, such as gender and race issues mostly, at home and globally (‘Putin and the Chechens are so mean to gays!’).
He even talked about being able to do business with the manufactured Great Satan of our time, Putin No, that will never do.
This is a dark time for the US; when the result of an election is contested after the poll, and is merely the start of plots and whispers of coups, a country is in the same state as Spain in the 1930’s, or pre-Fascist Italy, or any number of African or Latin American countries which fail to manage peaceful transitions of power and accept the decision delivered by a vote.
Yep.
But the MSM doesn’t publish that — because if they did — Trump would be more popular than ever.
Instead he has to go because he is enriching himself through his Russia connections…. he is a traitor… he had hookers piss on him in a Russian hotel…. etc etc etc…..
At least that is what people tell me when I ask them why they think it is ok to overthrow a democratically elected president….
He may act like a buffoon but sorry he has not done anything that justifies a coup.
Remember Iraq … remember Libya…. where was the MSM when presidents were murdering and maiming millions?
https://thebeastx3m.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/smear.png
“Or is it just because of his bad hair?”
He’s got bad hair? I dunno? Perhaps?
I wonder what Putin thinks?
https://media.tenor.com/images/76116cbc7d2a054d9b1b5d4dc1fc35be/tenor.gif
If we are fortunate, those guilty of sedition and other high crimes will get the knife. And there are many in that class right now trying to hide their own high crimes and to engineer a soft coup.
Late stage capitalism was never going to be fun.
Trump is ending up holding the bag.
A soft coup is a good description.
He just makes it so easy.
Actually, Trump’s people—who include a considerable faction of the power elite—may tire of the constant flea and mosquito bites and conclude it’s time to arrange a night of the long knives for some of leading lights of the Soros faction. This sort of thing happens all the time in realpolitik. The Chinese call it killing a chicken to scare the monkeys.
Doubtless there would be anger and unrest, but then there are all those FEMA camps standing empty. I wouldn’t put it past President Trump to fill them up with anyone whose ever posted something online making fun of his manly good looks, let alone ruminated or adumbrated about sedition. Blackwater (Xe) or guards trained in Israel could run the place and the inmates could turn out low quality products as cheaply as the Chinese. That would help make America great again.
You may have seen the Newsweek article relating to the astrology associated with the coming global eclipse.
http://www.newsweek.com/total-solar-eclipse-trump-astrology-prediction-643776
Some astrologers seem to think that the eclipse could somehow foretell the downfall of Trump–not necessarily immediately, but over, say, the next couple of years.
the eclipse has been known about since before trumps grandfather was born—how does that figure
No, astrologers are seldom wrong, Norman. Often very vague, but seldom wrong.
And that eclipse line, which will stretch across the continental US from east to west, must indicate something very unfortunate for the entire country. Such as a humiliating defeat in the 2018 World Cup.
http://www.williamsvillek12.org/Planetarium/OtherWebsiteImages/2017pathoftotality.png
Still, it could be worse. A large comet would foretell the death of a king.
I’m not so sure Trump is planning a war with Iran, because if he was so into war then why hasn’t he acted on NK? So far he seems like he’s 99.9% hot air and very little if any substance.
I suppose this would be a way to reduce oil supply somewhat.
It’s Your Money But You Can’t Have It: EU explores account freezes to prevent runs at failing banks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-banks-deposits-idUSKBN1AD1RS
This article is recent. Perhaps someone thinks an approach will be needed soon.
I think this is on the money, the elites would not want you and me to prepare and be self-sufficient would they?
http://tinyurl.com/yavet2mj
Frank Thoughts says:
Comment ID: 3715567
July 13, 2017 at 12:38 pm
I once interviewed some Wall Street guys back in the early 90s. They were unbelievably frank and candid (I don’t think anybody would do that these days). But essentially everything they told me then, has played out since. They painted a picture from their data that totally described the world we are in today and also each crash we have had. It was like there was a plan or something. Based on what they told me, there will be another pump and dump to clear out the remaining funds in pensions, mutual investments (such as hedge funds etc.). That what has been going on since the early 90s has been a deliberate move to drive up a market or asset and then bring it down and grab assets or wealth from the suckers who get cleaned out. There are many such fruits for the picking: emerging markets, especially China; property markets in Canada, Australia, Scandinavia. The remaining Boomer assets in property and pensions. Clean it all out and horde the cash.
They also described why: it is a multigenerational war essentially. Long-running wealthy elites never liked the egalitarian era that emerged after WWII. They never liked seeing phutzs get rich or have comfortable lives on printed money. But they knew governments would do this to buy votes. So they decided to use bubbles and the markets to get revenge and take back that money in increments. That is what has been going on. Also notice they have gamed the system to shovel insane amounts of money to anything that can control the population: Silicon Valley, the MIC, Bio-Science. They have also used the morlock races and ethnicities to lower pay and destroy communities. That is by design. And trust me, they have no desire to lift those people up to be the new middle class. The rug will be pulled long before that will ever happen.
Do they have a secret hand shake as well? lol
Nah, just boyz to run errands.
What are “the morlock races”?
I only know of the Morlocks as the folks who eat the Eloi in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.
Just this once, I will give you a great big CLUE:
look up allusion
I was simply asking you to explain what you meant by the term “the morelock races” because I didn’t know what you meant.
You replied with a sarcastic response. That’s a great big CLUE that you are having trouble answering my perfectly reasonable and polite question.
You don’t know what you meant either, do you?
You lack comprehension, I did not write the article – get it now?
Oh, I get it.
YOU don’t know what the writer meant by the term “the morelock races” either.
That’s fine.
Does that mean that YOU lack comprehension too?
Or could it, just possibly mean that the writer wrote something that was incomprehensible to fairly well English speaking members of the general public?
If you can’t answer reasonably, politely or helpfully, there’s no need to respond. Sometimes silence is golden.
This is a Morelock
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Rr86DGdCPw/hqdefault.jpg
I am afraid the powers that be have less control than they think they do. It is the laws of physics that are doing the “pump and dump.”
“I am afraid the powers that be have less control than they think they do. It is the laws of physics ”
Well stated.
Chemistry and biology come from the same laws of physics. Since population/population growth are major problems, it’s worth trying to understand. Besides the energy requirements (food) there are other factors
Animals have to be able to reproduce at more than replacement rate. If they do not, they go extinct from epidemics or weather related ecosystem crashes. This ability is a feature of animals that _don’t_ go extinct.
Humans are not an exception, though with high tech and economic incentives humans have more control over their replacement rate than other animals. Even in the low-tech days, there was infanticide.
Well-fed women can average 12 children over their lives (Hutterite studies). For a steady popultion, they only need a bit over two if there is low population mortality.
In recent times (after 1870), Paraguay had a very high replacement growth after a major population reduction from war. One factor was that women outnumbered me by around 4 to one, most of the men being killed in the wars. I know people here are not concerned so much about rebuilding the population after a huge reduction. but such information is useful in building models if you want to be comprehensive.
As you say, the powers that be have less control than they think they do.
The tesla model 3 is an interesting car. Not a game changer, of course, because nothing is. We already know that! None of you are making an insightful comment by bashing tesla.
We are living at peak! Look at the world around you and marvel in wonder. This is all going to be gone. Enjoy whatever you can.
Do not hate the tesla people any more than the third world people hate you for driving your car around all the time.
I don’t hate them … I just think they are Delusional … and stewpid.
Now if I were living in America — and I saw my neighbour pull up in his shiny new Tesla — I’d be more than a little pissed off….maybe not hate…. but pissed off…… knowing that my tax money went to pay a good chunk of his toxic coal-powered piece of shit.
Key a Tesla Today!
The new Chrysler, top-of-the-line “bimbo box”, mini-van comes with a 3 video screen child pacification system. So while fast foods send your kids into a tizzy, video screens will re-render them zombie-like…
Confidential Wall Street sources claim that the Federal Reserve in Dallas has secretly advised major U.S. banks in closed-door meetings to cover up potential energy-related losses. The Federal Reserve denies the allegations, but refuses to respond to Freedom of Information requests on internal meetings, on the obviously false pretext that it keeps no records of any of its meetings.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale
This video (the presenter, the crowd and the comments) make me nauseous…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=6uK6BIVzcxU
I won’t watch it, but I WANT one.
Because an EV is quieter than an ICEV, my music would sound that much better!
After all, cars are sound systems on wheels.
Amazing comment kid…
and your comment is almost as amazing!
According to a Goldman Sachs study quietly published in December last year, as much as $1 trillion of investments in future oil projects around the world are unprofitable, effectively stranded.
Examining 400 of the world’s largest new oil and gas fields (except U.S. shale), the Goldman study found that $930 billion worth of projects (more than two-thirds) are unprofitable at Brent crude prices below $70. (Prices are now well below that.)
The collapse of these projects due to unprofitability would result in the loss of oil and gas production equivalent to a colossal 8 percent of current global demand. If that happens, suddenly or otherwise, it would wreck the global economy.
http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/nearly-us1-trillion-in-zombie-projects-stranded-in-oil-fields-around-the-globe-says-goldman-sachs/wcm/3b5a5965-d465-4b72-92e3-186184d70197
published December 2014, after oil plunged from about $100 to $50 in six months.
Brent is still only $52.52 but is rising lately.
IF the price is manipulated higher, and surely there are many powerful entities that want it to be higher, then oil production should continue to rise.
Peak oil about 2025 sounds reasonable. That is coming very SOON!
No soft landings but a fast devastating and total collapse is where we are headed. Be at Peace. For they’re will be no more pain or death for all these things shall pass.
yes, this is the Collapsestani theme.
It must be frustrating to many Collapsestanis that The Collapse hasn’t happened yet.
it seems wiser to avoid the hubris of proclaiming a near term Collapse.
wiser to acknowledge that the future is largely unknown.
in my opinion.
sure, many Collapsestanis don’t want a near term Collapse.
I foresee something like TLE through the next few decades.
nothing is certain, but gradual decline to worldwide poverty in the next 25 years looks probable to me.
who knows?
Make that an extremely Long Emergency as I need more time for dance lessons.
Dennis L.
if you wanna dance,
you gotta pay the piper.
Yep, me too! High-five on that!
http://www.strangedangers.com/images/content/122494.jpg
Do we get to enjoy frivolous air travel? I got a hunting season coming up and a vacation to Japan. 🙂
So the fact is that in addition to current decline rates in major oil field production, ( and increasing every year in decline rate) we also have these stranded projects that could be shut down, further removing more production. It all will add up to significantly reduce oil production in the next few yrs.
Oil credit crunch could be worse than the housing crisis
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/14/oil-credit-crunch-could-be-worse-than-the-housing-crisis-commentary.html
Cries of agony: energy’s bad debts. One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial system is the $2.5 trillion of debt owed by oil and gas firms. (Economist)
https://espresso.economist.com/d57f6fdeba3bbec9c0f2527d55d5f2ee
This article is from 2016. The amount of oil and gas company debt is no doubt higher now.
This Could Be the Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry — Will the Rest of the Economy Go With It?
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35817-we-could-be-witnessing-the-death-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-will-it-take-the-rest-of-the-economy-down-with-it
Note that when Nafeez Ahmed says, ” Shale oil is very similar to the tar sands,” he is not talking about light tight oil from shale. He is talking about a very different product, that can be removed from shale by baking certain types of shale rock. It is very energy intensive, like the tar sands. There is a great deal of confusion, because the name “shale oil” has been used for this product for a very long time. “Shale oil” of this type is, in fact, not being much extracted because its absurdly high in cost. This product is clearly of low EROI.
EROI studies of light tight oil have generally not been publicized, largely because they show embarrassingly high EROIs for Light Tight Oil. Adam Brant at Stanford (who is one of the rising stars of EROI analysis) prepared this PDF. http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/events/workshops/Brandt_Oil_Net_Energy_Environment_v6.pptx.pdf
On Slide 8 he says “Tight oil from Bakken (North Dakota) has high energy returns, but flaring confounds the story.”
The flaring of natural gas has been an issue, at least partly because the natural gas in the Bakken is not necessarily of the best quality. If it is polluted (say with H2S), it is not “worth” processing, so it has been burned off. The law has been changed, requiring companies to collect the natural gas, whether or not this process is economic.
Brandt then goes on to show net energy returns for oil sands (synthetic crude oil) and for Bakken. For the Bakken, he calculates a net energy return of over 50:1 in this presentation.
When a person goes back to his 2015 published article in the journal Energy, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215014917 the abstract says,
My comment – Since light tight oil often is processed through the simplest of refineries, this means on a delivered based, light tight oil can be an EROI star. But this is not something you often see written up.
Instead, people get confused, and look at EROI calculations of the totally different product “shale oil,” such as this one and assume that they have found the “correct” product. In fact, Nafeez Ahmed may be making that mistake as well.
I’ve been reading Dr. Ahmed’s work on and off for 15 years. His first two books on 9/11 and its implications impressed me because he seemed to have done his research and had a good command of the details. But more recently I’ve been so disappointed in him that I’ve revoked my good opinion of his earlier work pending a future review of whether or not it’s reliable.
On the fossil fuel issue I have to mark him down as a card carrying DelusiSTANi. He has reasonable sense of crisis but he is worried about the wrong things. He has totally bought into the ridiculous myth of apocalyptic warm-ing due to burning fossil fuels and he waxes utopian about the possibilities for “renewables”, quoting Tony Seba of all people, and says that the latter’s forecast that solar power would be capable of supplying 100% of the world’s energy needs by 2030 “remains a real possibility that should be taken seriously”.
Also, the blindingly obvious fact (to those of us at OFW at least) that “renewables” depend on fossil fuels and so they will never power a sustainable post-FF society is totally lost on him.
The fact that Dr. Ahmed seems oblivious the difference between “shale oil” and “light tight oil from shale” (two very different products with enormously different EROIs, as Gail points out) is just one one more indication that he doesn’t really know what he’s writing about and that his confident and polished academic style is a presence at at playing the scholar, a mere show of learning.
Apart from that, this article was a good read. But anyone who really wants to approach the truth of the matter will have to dig quite a bit deeper than this “Truthout” article.
I don’t want to dump on Dr. Ahmed as his heart may well be in the right place. But dump I must. And not just on him. Lamentably, this kind of sloppy excuse for journalism is par for the course these days. I fear we passed peak scholarship some time before the First World War and have been living on the dwindling dregs diluted by ever-larger amounts of fake learning ever since.
is a presence => should read => is a pretense 🙂
“Lamentably, this kind of sloppy excuse for journalism is par for the course these days.”
It is hard to tell at times if it is lazy sloppy or intentional. Of course, detecting wrong stuff depends on a person being educated enough to sort out either mode and the willingness to do so. I see this all the time. On another group about rockets, someone made a claim about storing liquid CO2 in a dewar. Dewars are low pressure, the gas is a liquid because it is so cold. This does not work with CO2 because at low pressure the CO2 is a solid, dry ice.
The physics, in this case, is not complicated. But it does take some logical thinking and willingness to use Google.
Another problem with writing science papers is a lack of editing. People writing academic papers get very little help nowadays.
In the case of Nafeez Ahmed, he may be relying on the expertise of other people in various fields that he trusts but is unable to verify due to the limitations of his own current knowledge or his blinkers. We all have these, of course. His educational qualifications are listed as an M.A. in contemporary war & peace studies and a DPhil (April 2009) in international relations from the School of Global Studies at Sussex University. I don’t know how scientifically-minded he is. He certainly “believes” in “science”, but he doesn’t demonstrate that he has a deep understanding of the hard sciences.
In a recent interview, he states:
The good news is we do have science … Hard science – across the spectrum of climate change, across the spectrum of energy and the economy – is telling us very, very clearly that our systems are interconnected. And it’s the failure of our overall scientific frameworks to generate ways of integrating all of this information that recognise how deeply interconnected they are that has prevented us from being prepared to deal with them. That’s why economists didn’t see the 2008 financial crash coming – because they didn’t understand all of these other factors that were playing out in the background.
We’re now seeing that if we don’t make all our efforts – as scientists, economists, political experts and so on and so forth – to actually bring together what we think … Unless we do that, we’re going to find it very difficult to keep up with the pace of events, which I think to some extent explains why we’re experiencing that sense of acceleration and really wondering where is the world going to go next?”
He’s been called “a doomer” by the mainstream believers in further progress to come, most notably by Keith Kloor in Discover magazine, although he rejects that label. He understands there is a crisis brewing, but he thinks solar is going to save us.
He may be sincere, or on the other hand, he may have gone on the Green Blob payroll. It’s tough being an independent journalist if you haven’t got an independent fortune, a day job with plenty of flexitime, or a sugar daddy.
David Ray Griffin, another of the big names in exposing all sorts of inconsistencies in the nine 11 official narrative, also went on to write a book warning of the dangers of glow-ball warm-ing in 2015, and he seems very sincere. In the book, Unprecedented, he relies on a pastiche of views ad data from various “experts”, “leading authorities” and “official” sources to give his thesis credibility, in an exact reversal of his earlier method of using demonstrable facts to invalidate the pronouncements of such folks. My guess is that, like a good barrister or a poor detective, he chooses his belief or his side and then amasses the evidence he needs to build a case for it and ignores everything else.
https://www.amazon.com/Unprecedented-Can-Civilization-Survive-Crisis/dp/0986076902/ref=la_B000APTCK4_1_20?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501558808&sr=1-20&refinements=p_82%3AB000APTCK4
He believes in both solar and GW…. at least he is consistent
I did do some further looking into the situation. In Dr. Ahmed’s previously referenced article http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35817-we-could-be-witnessing-the-death-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-will-it-take-the-rest-of-the-economy-down-with-it
he talks about the results of an allegedly peer reviewed academic paper by some Mexican researchers in an obscure journal. “Impact of Global Energy Resources Based on Energy Return on their Investment (EROI) Parameters” by Marcelo del Castillo-Mussot et al (2016)
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15691497-12341389
In fact, back in 2016, when Ahmed’s article was published, the contents of this paper seemed so unlikely that I actually paid $30 to get a copy; this is something I rarely do. I first wrote for a copy from the authors, and could not get one that way.
When I looked more closely at the allegedly peer reviewed article, I realized that it is very poorly done. Two statements Ahmed makes come pretty much directly from this article. The two referenced statements are
(1) “Nowadays, the world average value eroi for hydrocarbons in the world has gone from a value of 35 to a value of 15 between 1960 and 1980 (Dale et al. 2011),”
and
(2) Shale Oil and Gas: The eroi varies between 1.5 and 4, with an average value of 2.8. Shale oil is very similar to the tar sands; being both oil sources of very low quality. The shale gas revolution did not start because its exploitation was a very good idea; but because the most attractive economic opportunities were previously exploited and exhausted.
This second statement (which clearly confuses Shale oil and Light Tight Oil) is not referenced at all. Instead, there is a general statement, “Now we present a brief summary and analysis of different global energy resources based on their eroi parameters making use of data found in the work of Dale et al. (2011) and data from other authors.”
When we look at Dale et al (2011) that is referenced in the paper, we find this “Dale, Michael; Krumdieck, Susan; Bodger, Pat; “A dynamic function for energy return on investment”. Sustainability. 2011; 3 (10) :1972. http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/10/1972
In fact, I could not find a single thing in the Dale et al. (2011) article could be used to substantiate any of the claims in the Mexican paper. This article has nothing to do with calculated EROIs. Giving the Mexican authors the benefit of the doubt, I decided to look at closely related articles. When we look further, we find that the Dale et al 2011 article is part of a special issue of Sustainability. http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/New_Studies_EROI This special issue contains two articles that pertain to the confusion about the EROI of Tight Oil and Gas:
(1) Cutler Cleveland and Peter O’Connor’s “Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of Oil Shale.” This is the study that gives a low EROI, when rock containing kerogen is heated to produce a liquid fuel. This has nothing to do with Light Tight Oil from Shale.
(2) Brian Sell, David Murphy, and Charles Hall’s,”Energy Return on Energy Invested for Tight Gas Wells in the Appalachian Basin, United States of America.” It says in the abstract, “Available production data for this natural gas play was used to calculate energy return on energy invested ratios (EROI) between 67:1 and 120:1, which depends mostly on the amount of materials consumed, drilling time, and highly variable production.”
So this article is showing that the EROI of Tight Gas is very high. (This complements Brandt’s article showing that the EROI of Bakken oil is quite high.)
Clearly, the Mexican authors have not understood that Shale Oil is not what they are looking for. They want the EROI of Tight Oil and Gas. So they have made a totally incorrect statement, which Ahmed has picked up.
There is nothing I could find either in the Dale 2011 article or in the other articles in the same issue of Sustainability that would substantiate the statement, “Nowadays, the world average value eroi for hydrocarbons in the world has gone from a value of 35 to a value of 15 between 1960 and 1980 (Dale et al. 2011)” There may be some article, somewhere, that makes this statement. But researchers have a hard time weighing together the changing mix of fuels. The world naturally rebalances toward high EROI energy sources.
I wrote to Dr. Ahmed and made at least some of these points. I also made the point that the article by the Mexican authors needs to revised or retracted. I have heard nothing back.
I sometimes think we live in a giant world of the game “telephone.” This is the game we played as children, with a whole line of children. The first one whispers a story to the second one. The second one whispers what he thinks he heard to the next person. This goes on until the last one in line is reached. Of course, at the end, the story rarely matches the original.
Peer reviewed articles have a lot of mistakes in them. People who rely on them are likely to be misled! Dr. Ahmed, with his Ph.D. in international relations seems to be missing what is really going on.
you noticed that too
I do have Dr. Ahmed’s email address. I can try writing to him again. He has never responded to past e-mails, however.
Dr.Ahmed@delusiSTAN.com
Beyond GDP: Measuring and achieving global genuine progress (Kubiszewski 2016)
“Life satisfaction in almost all countries has also not improved significantly since 1975”.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913001584
Then again, Mooch may save us!
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eZwUTC3-7Q0/WXwCqs1WG6I/AAAAAAAACkM/1t0DEtxmmc0oN2mKnlzc37cZinyKmf_2gCLcBGAs/s1600/Mooch%2Btrain1.png
Gee Bob, you are haarshing my mellow:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NF4zjSbagAc/WXy_z74bUFI/AAAAAAAAw_M/TlW3BRu9AdMlLoZvm1p6GP-brFtaYeHWgCLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2017-07-29%2Bat%2B10.02.17%2BAM.png
Now Gates is a man I can trust…led us in Iraq and Afghanistan… yea a real great guy to believe in. What horseshit!
I agree.
But even the neocon psychopaths are uneasy.
One of my fears is one of the rich dumb white boys in Trump Land will eventually break down and say:
“get me Rumsfeld on the phone”
The neo trash know where the levers are, and how to pull them.
OK, let’ talk to Rummy, shall we?
https://youtu.be/HcI-7ujjSyk
Funny … coming from a man who was part of the team that faked information to start a war that destroyed a country and killed and maimed millions….
Shouldn’t he be tried for war crimes?
Come to think of it — I seem to recall some guy named Bush acting as spokesperson for this war crime — don’t recall the Establishment turning on him as they have Trump
Again I ask — what is the specific problem with Trump that justifies what we are seeing — if he bombs a country or two into the stone age will he be MSM’s new darling?
Our Miserable 21st Century
From work to income to health to social mobility, the year 2000 marked the beginning of what has become a distressing era for the United States
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/
And oil prices began heading up.
Venezuela May Collapse, A First Among State Oil Producers
http://www.barrons.com/articles/venezuela-may-collapse-a-first-among-state-oil-producers-1501220462
China and Goldman Sachs are betting it won’t.
China is building a heavy oil refinery, ahead of schedule, which will eliminate the dependence on US refinery production, and any possibility of going back to US Client State Status will be far in the rear view mirror.
Those “Worlds Largest Oil Reserves” may be released.
But, the feedback loops are immense, and it is a race against time.
However, Exxon has other plans:
https://blackagendareport.com/exxon_covets_venezuelan_oil
This could be like an old time heavy weight fight card….
You get the prelimins…. countries like Venezuela burn up in flames…. to get the crowd warmed up….
Followed by a few other undercards descending into anarchy… starvation… total collapse… again — all to get the crowd excited…
Then — and just as with the main event in a boxing card at some point — and you never know when — the big boys go at it….. an OECD nation goes down for the count — it gets Venezuela’ed
And then your tee vee screen goes dark….
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/30/americas/venezuela-on-edge-vote/index.html
Al Gore has a new book out (https://www.google.com/search?q=al+gore+truth+to+power&oq=al&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i61j0l3.11696j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), which claims that, in recent years, two countries’ AC power grids have been run entirely on wind power (Denmark for a few days, and Portugal for about a day) — but, this is hardly “sustainable”, especially considering that wind, solar, or any other electrical systems couldn’t exist without the fossil-fuel-based infrastructure (we are about at world “peak oil” now — see, EG, the 2016 video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KfVJBNX2U4&feature=youtu.be).
I posted this article a few months back here on OFW from a blog I follow where the guy shows the sleight of hand in regards to statements such as “California Generates Enough Solar Power to Meet Half its Energy Needs”. When in reality renewables don’t even come close to satisfying our energy needs (let alone the fact that they can only exist in a FF-based infrastructure as you correctly stated…we’re effed no matter how you approach our predicament (which is why it’s a predicament..a problem implies a potential solution))
http://fromfilmerstofarmers.com/blog/2017/april/money-doesnt-grow-on-trees-industrial-scale-renewable-energy-does/
Apparently in 2016 “renewables” have guaranteed all electricity in Portugal for four days.
http://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/energia/detalhe/renovaveis_garantiram_toda_a_electricidade_em_portugal_durante_quatro_dias
But currently “renewables” produce about 50% of the electricity consumed in Portugal, with most of the production being generated by dams, not by wind turbines. But electricity accounts for only 15/20% of the energy consumed. Everything else comes from the usual suspects (FF).
I don’t think I will run out and buy it.
future’s gonna be clean, green, cheap, hi-tech, oil-free and wonderful
https://shift.newco.co/this-is-how-big-oil-will-die-38b843bd4fe0
I take it Seth doesn’t spend much time on ofw. The solar is cheap argument one more time. People eat it up though.
Ughhhh Tony Seba again…
Such buffoonery would be a terrible thing to waste.
Not quite the right analysis, in my opinion.
The problem is wages that are not high enough. Low wages lead to low commodity prices, and these in turn lead to bankruptcies of coal, natural gas, and oil companies. They also lead to governments that cannot collect enough taxes. So the whole system collapses.
People with low wages cannot afford electric cars. The cost of roads remains high, regardless, and this remains a problem.
You may have seen this article:
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170604/FINANCE_AND_INSURANCE/170609884/tesla-owners-should-pay-more-for-insurance-aaa-says
Not much discussion of the environmental and monetary costs of all the mining to support all those batteries. I also wonder about the battery lifetimes. It is true that Prius owners have experienced long lifetimes. But, perhaps the manner in which they utilize them, i.e., their daily discharge cycling, allows them to last longer. Apparently, recycling lithium batteries does not make much economic sense due to the fact that lithium is a relatively low percentage of the battery mass. Hence, recycling lithium batteries must be addressed in the lifecycle cost analysis. This shill is just as bad as the oil company he dissed for not being able to afford cleaning up “the mess they have made”. I notice that he did not address recycling costs.
I have bad news for you Adonis. According to that book Jupiter blew up in 2000 because it was seeded with plutonium. That event took out the whole solar system.
So your not actually here to see how collapse actually plays out.
i want ask to all reader on ofw
if we live through this decade what will you remember this decade for
i will remember this decade for arab spring and knowledge of that bau is collapsing
I will remember it for the start of the (steered) mass-migration of Africans and Arabic (predominantly Muslim and young male) people into Europe.
I learnt that the market can’t create energy.
I will remember it for LLL.
peak oil in 12 to 15 years?
http://peakoil.com/consumption/oil-prices-forget-lower-for-longer-shell-says-get-set-for-lower-forever
lower prices forever?
“… he and his colleagues are gearing up for a world of “lower forever” prices.
That’s because Shell believes demand for oil could peak by the late 2020s or early 2030s, far sooner than other experts think will be the case: for example, BP forecast oil consumption may start declining by 2035 in its “fast transition” and “even faster transition” scenarios, and the International Energy Agency doesn’t see oil peaking until after 2040.
Van Beurden tempered his remark by stating, “Even in the most aggressive scenario, where policies really work at their best, where technology really makes a lot of strides in the near future, oil isn’t going to peak before the late (2020s) or early 2030s, and when it does peak it’s not going to go out of fashion overnight.”
propaganda so as to avoid causing a panic
For different reasons: Demand destruction… crisis mode…
Lower forever may be true. People cannot afford oil.
new US oil peak in 2018:
http://peakoil.com/production/next-year-u-s-oil-production-will-exceed-its-1970-peak
maybe, maybe not.
It is not the same quality oil. The numbers should be net energy of oil produced once drilling, transporting and refining have been taken into account (and the massive infrastructure needed to do those things). US peaked a long time ago. You can’t fight entropy.
The quality is less different than you would think.
Bullshit. New US oil peak in 2218…maybe. You’ve got to be flipping nuts to believe its within the next few decades.
Can you show us any evidence for this outrageous claim?
(Please, no referencing shill websites)
Evidence for peak oil 200 years from now as opposed to 10 or 2 or 23 years?
That was sarcasm by the way. Point being, it’s a tad ridiculous for people who are supposed to have come to terms with the real possibility of dying amidst Goetterdaemmerung to squabble over how near near term collapse is, or in other words a pathetic non-issue relative to the bigger picture.
That said, though, I find Fast Eddy’s contributions more coherent and thought-out, generally speaking, than David’s.
But squabbling is what humans do best.
Lol, put sarc next to your statement next time. There’s enough delusion on OFW that it could easily be mistaken as your actual opinion 😉
BTW 23 years vs 2 years is a BIG deal when judging from one’s 70-80 year lifespan that we have come to expect (at least in the West)…in the great scheme of things though (total collapse and possibly human extinction), I agree, it makes no difference!
Yes but I think its fruitless to try and predict, and thus ludicrous to quarrel over, the occurrence of such a nebulous affair as the collapse of civilisation as we know it within such a small time frame. After all within the western individual’s lifespan of 70-80 years, civilisational/societal collapse is not the only unknown. And for most, far from the most worrying!
“And for most, far from the most worrying!”
Civ collapse is not even on the radar for 99.99999% of humans…for most Musk is a saviour and the best is yet to come for our beautiful IC!!!
“Musk is a saviour”
Well, “the scientists” at any rate are supposed to be collective saviours of humanity. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with science or scientists. But the mentality that makes people think that the efforts of scientists can make something from nothing, or innovate away problems – basically the transhumanist perspective – is patently religious. In other words, belief in miracles.
Of course, religion is not just miracles but action as well, like blowing yourself up to miraculously receive 72 heavenly virgins. Transhumanism may not be at that level yet, but then neither were the Muslims back when their countries were non-FUBAR.
That was sarcasm by the way.
I see. Carry on 😉
And no referencing Donald Trump speeches, please. 🙂
Oh, I enjoy those. A Trump speech or tweet -which is shorter these days? – sets me up for the day.
‘The world’s a jest, I always thought it:
They elected Trump, and now I know it!’ 🙂
If I believed what I read in the MSM was truth —- I would think as you do….
our brave new markets:
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/109879/our-brave-new-markets
“Good luck everyone. This is the most unusual period in all of economic, financial and monetary history. Perhaps this time they’ve got it right.
But if not: Look out below.”~ Chris Martenson
Computers programs running everything look like they will for a while, but at some point, everything goes wrong.
Saudi Arabia appears to be deploying Canadian-made armoured vehicles against its own citizens
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/saudi-arabia-appears-to-be-deploying-canadian-made-armoured-vehicles-against-its-own-citizens/article35831864/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
When you run out of money to pay them off… kill them?
Yes. Happened many times in history. Ireland 1846, Bengal 1943, etc.
Right on FE. That’s is what I have been saying about medicaid, welfare, SNAP. When the money runs out no problem there are plenty of bullets.
The Lead Pill. Works every time. No major side effects.
A bit messy perhaps, but let’s be honest: Who cares about some body fluid stains if shit first hits the fan and get flung around?
Not so good!
autonomous car completes cross country trip!
http://www.richmond.com/business/car-drove–plus-miles-autonomously-on-cross-country-trip/article_415a8c75-f5af-50fa-84cc-c15d188570e6.html
self driving!
well, except for the driver behind the wheel to “assist” the car when needed.
WTI oil closes at $49.71
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/27/oil-climbs-for-sixth-day-near-8-week-highs-on-us-crude-stock-declines.html
so close to $50!
Oh Mr Wolf Street… Wolfie…. remember when you told me that global population could reach a steady state — without impacting economic growth …. Remember how you and your flunkies implied I was a clown — even though I posted a study from I think it was Yale — that indicated that population growth was responsible for a huge proportion of economic growth….
Yooo hooo…. Wolf…. come and get your sh.it sandwich Wolf…..
‘Population growth is responsible for the majority of GDP growth’
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-28/demographic-dysphoria-looms-doctors-discover-sperm-counts-western-men-plummeted-near
You….have…..gone….off….the….deep….end.
Honestly, I think you need to cool off and spend a couple nights in …. the …. storage….container.
See what I did there? Suspense….
Do you have a link to that yale study. I would like to read it if so?
That was a year or so ago — did not save it.
There are loads of papers on the net that confirm this.
And to prove this — one only need look at Japan.
That was the direction I pointed Wolf in — and his response ‘Japan is doing really well even with a stagnant population’
Seriously — I am not making this up …. that was his response.
And then when I wasted my time explaining how Japan is actually not doing well at all — and that a key reason was lack of population growth …. he held all comments.
Wolf does not like to be exposed as an id i ot
I’m feeling good about my count.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
yes………………
true………………………………………….
very true…………………………………………………………..
Japan #17 HDI rank.
Greece who some call collapsed at #29.
The UK government thinks it has found the answer – mass immigration.
There was an amusing comment in the Guardian about this, from a ‘Kenyan’ (I suspect white settler variety) expressing amazement that they had had to jump through lots of hoops to get a visa to work in the NHS, but spent their day dealing with unemployed African and Asian women who were pumping out babies like crazy.
Some London boroughs have a population that is 70% on welfare, most recent immigrants. On my last visit to London I deliberately took a bus through the poor parts of town, to get the street view one doesn’t get from the train, and there were lots of 3 or 4-child families, mostly Nigerian it seemed. Middle-classes think carefully about more than 2 children. Despite what one reads about growing hunger (in the Guardian) everyone looked fat and jolly.
So the baby factory is in full, demand will be boosted, all is bright and rosy!
Evolution in action. Nigerians winning pasty white English loosing.
The future is populated the descendants of those who have children.
Yep, full speed ahead, direct from the baking oven and straight into poverty. If it’s the wishes of Her Majesty – then make it so.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/slum-conditions-2016-britain-show-7544949
Could be a lot worse…
http://www.borgenmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/slums.jpg
Indeed, there’s no bottom of how far we can sink into the stinking cesspool of misery and overpopulation.
I always enjoy your observations of English life, Xabier. I was born and raised in Bethnal Green, during the era of rising prosperity when the old-fashioned slums were being cleared to make way for Stalinist tower block housing estates. My grandparents told me tales of Dickensian poverty—no welfare or NHS in the good old days! My people—mainly a mix of English and Irish stock—have mostly vacated London and scattered o the four winds and these days the closest I get to going home is Google Street View.
http://imgur.com/a/k6FFD
really bad things by 2040.
Bullshit. 2840 MAYBE. But you’ve got to be a collapsestani/delusistani psycho to think its 2040.
-j…
On the Internet no on can hear you being subtle.
I couldn’t enter my web site.. matsfineoils.com
I think people can get it. Here it is on a separate line:
http://matsfineoils.com