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.
http://imgur.com/vFBUorF
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-earth-resource-spent-august.html
6 days earlier than last year. My uneducated guess is that when we get there on or before June 30 we’re done.
Naw– Just because we are in population overshoot, in the midst of a mass extinction, ecological collapse, runaway climate change, and on the verge of some real interesting times, it doesn’t mean thinks are bad.
That it from Brian:
Allegedly attempted to blackmail him for $2,000 or she would release pic
Jagr told her ‘I don’t care’ and the photo made the rounds on social media
Yaw!!!!
George Orwell on wind power:
https://stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/george-orwell-6-e1418615947884.jpg?w=460
You quoting Orwell, one of my favorite anarchists, would of made him blush with the absurdity..
Orwell was a left wing thinker and socialist who wrote 1984 as a critique of a right wing libertarian society.
“I told you, Winston,” he said, ‘”that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing.”
-Orwell 1984
Full marks, Cliff. I doubt whether Orwell would have objected very strongly to your characterization. He wouldn’t have minded being called a socialist, as long as it wasn’t prefixed with the adjective namby-pamby. But he was more upset with Hitler’s and Stalin’s brands of “libertarianism” than with anything going on in the Anglosphere in his day.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-every-line-of-serious-work-that-i-have-written-since-1936-has-been-written-directly-george-orwell-65-12-77.jpg
Yep—
He hated both the Nazi’s and the USSR.
He liked the Spanish Anarchists:
“As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists.”
-George Orwell
“The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.” ibid page 4
“Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou,’ and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenas Dias.’ Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and alll the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night.” ibid page 5
“Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes.”
“During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces.”
The Anarchists believed in the extermination of class enemies.
Murder, however you frame it.
But they didn’t steal, I’ll grant that. Shoot you and your family in the head, but put a seal on the house and post a guard to prevent theft and looting.
Just another form of insanity.
I strongly disagree with your portrait of anarchists as murderous lunatics, Xabier. That description applies much better to communists. I read a lot about anarchism, and the worst I can say about them is they were naive idealists. It is true that some of them, especially in 19th century, did not hesitate to put a bomb in a cafe full of bourgeois, but this kind of terrorism was never a behavior sanctioned by the anarchist theorists,
According to Claus B. Storgaard:
It is difficult to put a political label on Orwell, precisely because he was undogmatic. Unlike the doctrinaire socialists Orwell saw socialism as the social aspect of an all-encompassing moral attitude; a view that undoubtedly was caused by meeting the Spanish anarchists to whom anarchism was a moral attitude with political consequences.
It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that anarchism was Orwell’s all-encompassing moral attitude, although there are many anarchist traits in Orwell’s criticism of society, of the communists, the professional politicians and the elitist socialists, who believed they were the vanguard of the working class. But one of the most basic tenets of anarchism, the rejection of the State, Orwell could not accept. Orwell meant that some form of state was necessary to maintain freedom. In his view, the stateless society of anarchism contained totalitarian tendencies.
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/opinion/essays/storgaard1.html#Chap5
Are you sure you aren’t confusing George with someone else, Duncan? Perhaps Johnny Rotten? It must be easy for Americans to get those two quintessentially English dudes mixed up.
I seriously doubt that Orwell would have accepted the anarchist label. I suspect he preferred to remain uncontaminated by political ideologies all the better to critique them. Your attempt to ventriloquize him is amusing, and your pigeonholing him as an anarchist made me grin with the absurdity. After all, some ideas are so absurd….
https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder186/500x/68822186/intellectual-there-are-some-ideas-so-absurd-that-only-an-intellectual-could-believe-them-george-orwe.jpg
While he admired the Spanish anarchists during the civil war, he didn’t adhere their ideology, and I hate to break this to you, but his political views were closer to Ann Coulter’s than to Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin’s His negative view of anarchism (= absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal) is summed up in his 1946 essay Politics vs. Literature.
In a society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by “thou shalt not”, the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by “love” or “reason”, he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.
“As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists.”
-George Orwell
He would have liked to have fought along side them in the Spanish Civil War, but he didn’t join them.
Note, “I would have like to join” implies “I did not join”.
I suggest you read Homage to Catalonia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
Possibly some of your delusion and ignorance will be dispelled.
Anarchist Kumbaya! Thanks for the links, Duncan. I’ve got a well-thumbed and well-perused copy of Orwell’s Catalonia reminiscences on my shelves. No need to give me a reading assignment.
But perhaps you could simply point out the bit where he says, “I am an anarchist” or words to that effect? I’m a reasonable person and not invested in being right. I’ve been wrong many times and I have no difficulty accepting correction.
If George really was an anarchist as you claim, and you can show the proof, I’ll humbly accept it and thank you into the bargain. It’s no skin off my nose.
Here’s some more telling evidence for what Orwell really thought about anarchism, in his own words, not my interpretation of them.
Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics….the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.
—George Orwell, The Road To Wigan Pier.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-creeds-like-pacifism-or-anarchism-which-seem-on-the-surface-to-imply-a-complete-renunciation-george-orwell-113-22-12.jpg
As usual, you totally misunderstand the political reality.
As usual, when presented with clear evidence that your previous statement was incorrect, you totally ignore said evidence and attack your adversary’s comprehension skills.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ozn8–ZJ7pE/WIXHvJtOYBI/AAAAAAAAOTU/kp8f9FkmDzgDb9niMINu95gSHSU028ziQCEw/s1600/orwell1.jpg
https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840×2160/12852-Margaret-Thatcher-Quote-I-always-cheer-up-immensely-if-an-attack.jpg
Actually, Duncan, at school in London I was taught English literature by a man named Barry Pateman, a very likable if sometimes loud-mouthed and self-opinionated collectivist anarchist of the Bakunin type and a native of the Northeast who had come down to London “to civilize the natives.”
We teenagers all loved Orwell for his anti-establishment views but “Baz” declared to the class on more than one occasion: “Orwell! Orwell was a namby-pamby socialist!” That line stayed with me for over 40 years.
Patemen is one of Britain’s leading historians of anarchism and he is (or at least was until recently) managing a museum/archive of anarchist literature and memorabilia. If you’d like to see him on TeeVee, here’s a video of him interviewing Noam Chomsky about anarchy over a mug of tea.
https://youtu.be/YAGtExCOudo
George Orwell shares something in common with the NRA and the defenders of the Second Amendment, a view that would get him labeled a “Deplorable” in progressive liberal circles.
http://i.imgur.com/Lvk8yzM.jpg
A well armed proletariat is necessary to make the State Storm troopers think twice about kicking in your door.
Radicals are realists, liberals are the worst.
You’re growing on me Duncan.
Earth’s 2017 resource ‘budget’ spent by August 2: report
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-earth-resource-spent-august.html
This “budget” strikes me as absurd. Clearly, we are dealing with non-renewable resources. We can’t take out any amount year after year, without depleting our resources. There is a problem somewhere.
Apart from different interests, it seems that women operate with a rather different belief system from men. While men value logic and empirical fact, women often prefer mystical, magical views of life and the world. For example, in a survey I conducted of over four thousand ordinary British adults, women emerged as much more superstitious and religious than men. Thirty-nine per cent of women believed in astrology, compared with 22 per cent of men, 18 per cent of women believed in palm-reading, as opposed to 7 per cent of men, and 42 per cent of women believed in life after death, compared with 29 per cent of men. On the other hand, more men than women believed in UFOs (30 per cent as opposed to 26 per cent of women). As in many aspects of life, men and women often seem to think differently.
-Glenn Wilson, The Great Sex Divide
Perhaps the experiences of men and women are different, and the needs if men and women are different.
Men are strong; they value self-reliance. The only way to find out the real answers is breaking down questions into 1000 little pieces, and letting science solve the problem. When problems are broken down into these tiny pieces, there are no limits, since no one can see as far as a limit. (Or if they do see a limit, the outcome is viewed simplistically, within what can be seen with the oversimplified model.) Additional complexity is viewed as the way to solve any problem. Academics, with its peer review system, is viewed as the way to get the “correct answers.” Government is permanent. It will take care of its citizens by more and bigger programs.
Women are not as strong. If they are to succeed, it has to be in connection with other people–often a family, but it can be friends and co-workers. They instinctively understand the connectedness of all things. The self-organizing properties of the world have more meaning and value to them. They understand that some answers (what works best in particular situations, for example) can come in a way that is different from breaking problems down to 1000 pieces. I have personally seen how this self-organizing property can give insight into answers that would not be obvious simply by breaking problems down into smaller parts, both on Our Finite World and The Oil Drum.
It seems to me that religion, astrology, palm-reading, and other “inspired” areas all operate in the area of understanding how a self-organizing world operates in practice. Some people may have special gifts in understanding these principles (or some might say they are “inspired by a Higher Power”). I am sure that the answers that people working in these areas produce are likely to have many wrong answers. But I don’t think that these areas would have stayed around as long as they have, without having a benefit to those participating. If nothing else, religion acts as a way of increasing connectedness to other people. Women in particular often need this connectedness.
Enough of these dumb rich white guys running the show, I’m for turning it over to the women.
It can’t get any worse, how about a try?
I wonder if Janet Yellen would be one of the women? Also, some of the other women in the Trump administration. I am not sure the situation would be all that good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/us/politics/senate-gop-flouts-trump-after-health-care-defeat.html
Republican, Jeff Flake has published a new book that rails against Trump.
“If this was our Faustian bargain,” Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, wrote in a new book, “Conscience of a Conservative,” reckoning with the Trump age, “then it was not worth it.”
I found this on ‘Faustian Bargain’ on a Google search:
Faust, in the legend, traded his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge. To “strike a Faustian bargain” is to be willing to sacrifice anything to satisfy a limitless desire for knowledge or power. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition.
Interesting that this group couldn’t find one amongst them to beat D. Trump in the recent election. I think they have forgotten that lesson and are now playing with fire. This won’t end well. I imagine putting an ex-military man as chief of staff may be a pre-emptive move by the Donald. Get the popcorn.
Yep, that’s why mil type coups throughout history usually succeeded in kicking out the insiders, including various deep state factions etc. The fraternities, loyalties, focus on goal, are simply quite different from the environment of the mere on/off guys of the intel world and banking. That being said, I simply don’t believe we are there yet at this round, the top mil guys simply are not aware how dire is the overall systemic situation to be motivated enough to topple the regime ASAP and get some chunks for themselves only for few more decades. I could be wrong, but I’d expect such play in mid 2020s in the US at the earliest, not now..
The top mil guys are simply not aware…
Another ridiculous claim.
Your ignorance and hubris are only matched by your fatuousness
The top mil guys are simply not aware…
Another ridiculous claim.
Your ignorance and hubris are only matched by your fatuousness
Why do you pursue this misadventure? At some point you will need to realise that your views fall outside the blog and belong elsewhere
Perhaps you should take up a history writing project. Most people of your calibre seem to find reward in espousing claptrap dressed as fact there.
++++++++++++++++++++
Apparently, we have some burst of reading challenged participants here lately..
“That being said, I simply don’t believe we are there yet at this round, the top mil guys simply are not aware how dire is the overall systemic situation to be motivated enough to topple the regime ASAP and get some chunks for themselves only for few more decades. ”
=> clearly hinting at degree of understanding-evaluating the situation at the moment, since the collapse/doomer scene referenced throughout the years (at least since 2000s) numerous papers about the energy, complexity, pop control risk; so it’s understood such basic stuff doesn’t have to be mentioned again and again here, hence debating other details and nuances of the subject..
—-
“The top mil guys are simply not aware…”
=> clearly a very different out of context fake quotation attempt, which you are for some reason insinuating here (because of rage-hate for loosing series of previous debates, shallow understanding, ..)
Or trying to make you reveal yourself by poking in that temper of yours.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/8a/00/ee/8a00ee61887707515383257cf909122a.jpg
How does someone with the last name “Flake” get elected? Or “Weiner”? I mean c’mon.
How absurd has politics become when the names of these dolts suggest abject failure?
But how would comedians get their material?
There’s plenty more where they came from. This list has some real gems. In some cases it’s a gimmick to help get people noticed. But some of these names are not going to play well in all markets.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/gideonresnick/the-31-weirdest-political-names-of-all-time?utm_term=.uqWqwavk6#.mk7dnNZ5a
Energy and the food system – Royal Society (Woods 2010)
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/2991
It seems to me that the easiest way to cut back on both energy and water requirements for agriculture is to convince people to eat less meat. Getting rid of unnecessary processing of food (for example, shipping bottled water from Fuji or wherever) would be helpful as well. These things are of course not mentioned in the article.
The knee-jerk response is to assume renewables can somehow save us. Or perhaps spraying chemicals on crops, to eliminate the need for plowing. We do not need to be eating these chemicals though. There is too much of following the crowd, when it comes to solutions.
Admit it. You’re all just jealous of Donald and envious of Melania for making the Presidency great again.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vibq_LeBnBU/T6_gk16XzFI/AAAAAAAAGUw/aIsUVa_aWoI/s640/perceptions-michelle-obama-angry-politics-1326437531.jpg
long time reader/second time commenter here. i must say the tone has certainly gotten darker in the comments section of this blog over the last few months – i guess every month years draw us closer to the inevitable.
personally it always disappoints me when people close to me fail to see what effects falling energy per capita will have on the economy – this combined with a rising ratio of energy to produce energy that adds a double whammy effect on the downside which will only accelerate us to that tipping point which we all here agree on.
it seems we just can’t agree WHEN – and nor should we because nobody really knows, right? who can predict the timeline and be wary of people telling you that by x date, y event should have happened.
i think many are taking the overnight collapse far too literally – some expect to wake monday morning up to a collapsed financial system, then tuesday lunchtime hordes of cannibals are roaming the streets, only to find that by wednesady we’re dead from radiation poisoning….?
i lean to a saw tooth collapse, which i believe we have been in for a decade or more, until eventually a key event hits that just sends us into freefall. i hope/feel we are still a few years away but as gambling man i know anything is possible so i hedge my bets and prepare for a multi-year decline but acknowledge we could catastrophically collapse next week.
lastly i’d like to see if anyone else has some things stashed away to watch the best show on earth unfold – i have a few luxuries to last me a few weeks, just long enough to have that sense of self satisfaction of sitting back in your chair and whispering to yourself “i told you so” whist everyone else is panicking and scrambling.
hi Cecil
“… will only accelerate us to that tipping point which we all here agree on.
it seems we just can’t agree WHEN – and nor should we because nobody really knows, right? who can predict the timeline and be wary of people telling you that by x date, y event should have happened.”
YES!!!!!!! the future is unknown, though using fossil fuel data, we can make some likely approximations – peak oil in the 2020’s, peak natural gas in the 2030’s, big trouble by the 2040’s.
“… i know anything is possible so i hedge my bets and prepare for a multi-year decline but acknowledge we could catastrophically collapse next week.”
YES!!!!!!!
the Collapsestanis could be right any day now.
but most likely, BAU with slowly-at-first decline will go on for years and maybe decades, based on fossil fuel data.
Doesn’t the supply chain (Global?) that is required to access said fossil fuels matter more than absolute in-ground volumes? There may be a widget go missing and once the cannibalising of other substitutes runs out, the fossil fuel stays put. Then its Kaput no matter how much the experts/charts says is there.
The fossil fuel industry is a lot like an old smoker with emphysema. Surrounded by air but can’t breath.
It will be an electronic run on the banks like what happened back in 2009 to the money market accounts and why the federal reserve had to freeze the market. next time they wont be able to stop the panic. When the massive oil shortages hit the world economy in a few years. And investors realize that there are no quick/easy fixes. All world markets will crash fast. Then every corporation and social program will go bankrupt at once. And that will collapse the government as well along with the rule of law. And it will be total anarchy and chaos.
Hm, there is a little problem with the conclusion above.
The govs have at their disposal strategic depots with food, fuel, and tech for several years. So, it’s very likely such hot spots for despots would appear out of it as a nucleus for setting up future openly neo-feudalistic societies, partly focusing on keeping some tokens of the old world and mostly doing adaptation for the new reality. The pop crash-decimation would be huge nevertheless, and widely diverging across the globe, say -95% Africa, -75% WEurope, -30% Russia, -60% NA, ..
Leaving NZ as the last bastion of civilization standing?
NZ is a great place for slow paced bumpy plateaus and occasionally n-hemi nuclear accidents and or limited warfare, and if you don’t have problems with island seclusion psychology. NZ is one of the worst places for real abrupt collapse, unless you are already settled in, i.e. several decades mature perennials providing food already, herds of animals, protective community and plus the urban depop timing is very favorable to you as well (not likely given the relatively small area).
Are you aware that come collapse there are 600 kilograms of meat per person in NZ?
Are you aware that the factors you describe as the worst possible are to be matched in any other urbanised locale.
As usual you are conjecture without perspective, fact without evidence and pomposity made flesh. I detest your presence on this blog.
Thanks for your very kind words.
In terms of evidence and logic, it’s not my problem you don’t even grasp the the very basic difference between urban centers dispersed on wider continent vs. few mega agglomerations in island setting (NZ).
Plus, if you believe you can first effectively guard-protect, herd and or later take advantage of such favorable meat per person (of NZ) is serious rapid progressing collapse scenario, be my guest, lolz.
If it wasn’t for worldof’s comments, I would probably not bother reading this section.
Although his use of obfuscation to cover up the writing style idiosyncrasies can make the comments a bit hard to follow at times.
But I much prefer that than the regulars going over the top by writing a lot and not saying much at all.
“The govs have at their disposal strategic depots with food, fuel, and tech for several years.” – What kind of food? For 400 million people? MRE? Tech? Really like what kind of tech can be kept functioning amid chaos? The gov struggled with Katrina. You really think if the financial system collapses the gov will be out helping 400 million people? There is enough food stored up to last years for 400 million people? 400 million people will happily climb aboard gov transport buses and be merry whisked away to concentration camps. For what purpose? What is to be gained by the gov for doing this?
Read it again, I did not speak about ~400 million people, were did you get that?
In some countries-regions, there is enough strategic storage to mount effective response, where the gov-mil remnants attempt holding the ground in their respective area, obviously it doesn’t apply to all major scenarios of collapse. It’s about fraction of the previous level of pop anyway, it’s not about BAUlite either, simple bottleneck event and chance to re-position to new reality, is it for me, likely not, but to pronounce from table everything is guaranteed to perish instantaneously is not correct, it’s just one of many probabilities..
PS do you think all societies are in such internal (hidden) cesspool condition as Katrina situation helped to unmask?
Keep in mind Fukushima did not involve spent fuel ponds — and the melted cores have been kept under control by pumping water onto them 24/7….
So the Devil’s Scenario has not played out —- but this gives us an indication of how quickly contamination will spread when BAU goes down
Governments will not be holding any ground — at least not for very long….. just long enough for the top commanders to hop into choppers and private jets — and be delivered to massive underground bunkers….
Leaving 7.5 billion of us to the horrors of radiation poisoning:
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-a-nuclear-war-without-a-war-the-unspoken-crisis-of-worldwide-nuclear-radiation/28870
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/fukushima_radiation_nuclear_fallout_map.jpg
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/fukushima-radiation-wind-trajectories.jpg
The majority of Americans (me included) could go a year at half rations and be better off for it. We have billions of bushels of grains in storage and this part of the year an entire crop to harvest. If something occurred to limit food supplies livestock producers could cease breeding new animals and that would leave more for people to eat and by ramping up animal slaughter even more grains and of course the meat would be available for food.
The problem would be distribution. Rationing worked during WWII because half the population (like me) lived on or near a farm. People could easily grow much of their own food. Today we would just have millions of people simply holding out their hands. No need for FEMA camps, people could pick up their share at their polling place, everyone is registered to vote, right? I bet they would manage to find their photo ID too.
Yep
‘They’ will help nobody — what would be the point — there will be no reset — this is literally the end of the world.
‘They’ will enter this — and lock the door behind them
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/06/19/14/415C611400000578-0-The_US_government_built_a_series_of_nuclear_bomb_proof_bunkers_t-a-2_1497879547168.jpg
I would say that the collapse will accelerate and take fast mode when food is lacking in the stores. From that moment on, everything can bite the dust in a matter of days or weeks. But we dont know when the food will stop reaching the stores. It can be this year, it can ben in 2025. Who can say? Much depends I think on the trumps that the CB and the military have in their sleeves, if any. The only thing we know for sure is that untill then we’ll continue in this slow or delayed collapse mode. People much more knowledgeable than me here say this grinding can not last for many years, and I’m bound to believe them.
Anyway I don’t fret, as I don’t fret about the possibility of being diagnosed with terminal cancer next week. or being struck by lightning.
Que será será, quando será será.
I am hopeful that Madame Fast and I will get caught up in a fatal plane crash…. the odds are just so badly stacked against that happening though…..
On one hand I want to see the end of BAU … but the sensible part of me says it’s not going to be very nice watching the train wreck when you are on the train — I am really averse to suffering …. did I mention I brush and floss obsessively because I cannot stand the sound of the dentist’s drill?
If past history is an guide, the police, military and CB will be protecting themselves. They will run for the hills to hunker down and divorce themselves from the starving chaotic masses as long as the possibly can.
I have one of these parked under some shady trees…. loaded up mostly with bulk food, booze and guns and ammo … If there is time at the last minute… I will top off with some finer food stuffs…
http://www.chassisking.com/images/products/regular/20-foot-ground-storage-and-shipping-container-20ft-one-trip-single-use-container.jpg
Yes!!!!!
What is your address?
I think you are right–we have been headed downward for a while now, especially since 2008.
It seems like something will happen to set of the chain to make the system go downward much faster. I am not certain what it is, though. The United States could end up with a government debt-related problem, if the political parties cannot agree on suitable legislation in the near future. China clearly has a lot of debt related problems, as do many other countries. Higher interest rates, accidentally brought on by selling quantitative easing securities could be a problem as well. With higher interest rates, demand for energy products will fall. Energy prices will fall to a low level, leading to the bankruptcy of many oil, gas, and coal companies.
If financial problems do not greatly bring down “demand,” there could at some point be a problem with inadequate energy supply brought on by too little investment. This would likely lead to a spike in energy prices and a recession with a lot of debt defaults. So one way or another, part of the downturn is likely to be financial.
Collapse of the auto industry as the trigger?
Auto Sales are down 14% vs. last year and the problem is getting worse.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4094407-slowdown-happening
Here’s a recap of how each of the largest OEM’s made out in July:
GM:
Three of GM’s four brands posted double-digit sales declines in July with Chevrolet down 15%, Cadillac down 22% and Buick plunging 31%.
While GM blamed weak fleet sales for their abysmal month, their retail sales declined 14% as well.
The Chevy Spark minicar withered, falling 81.9% to 764 units for the month, while the Chevy Sonic subcompact car declined 47.3% to 2,552.
Ford:
Ford retail sales fell 1% while fleet sales declined 26%.
Ford’s flagship brand fell 8%, while the luxury Lincoln brand declined 2.5%.
Car sales were off 19%, including a 13% decline for the Ford Fiesta subcompact and a 42% decline for the Fusion mid-size car.
Fiat Chrysler:
All of Chrysler’s major brands, except Ram, were down double digits. Jeep was down 12%, Chrysler 30%, Dodge 12% and Fiat 18%. Ram sales were flat.
Retail sales were down 6%, while fleet sales were down 35%.
Average incentive spending per unit to date in July is $3,876 per unit, a record for July, and surpassing the previous high for the month of $3,597, set in July 2016. Spending on trucks and SUVs is $3,700, up $194 from last year. Spending on cars is $4,174, up $436.
Incentives as a percentage of MSRP are at 10.8% so far in July, exceeding the 10% level for 12th time in the past 13 months
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-01/carmageddon-ford-gm-sales-tank-despite-record-july-incentive-spending
How does the Fed bail this disaster out?
And the Oscar for Delusional Statement of the Week goes to these two men:
Of course, as silly as it may seem, some analysts still found a way to be upbeat about the industry. Per Detroit News:
“The fundamentals in the industry are still very, very strong,” said Kelley Blue Book analyst Alec Gutierrez. Big-picture indicators like fuel prices, employment levels within the industry and customer satisfaction are all at healthy levels.
At a gathering of auto officials in Traverse City on Tuesday, several analysts delivered a similar message on the state of the industry: “The sky is not falling.”
Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of global forecasting for LMC Automotive, said despite sales numbers out of North America, there are reasons for optimism overall.
“Transaction prices are up, that’s a very positive thing…,” he said. “We’re looking at over $31,000 on average – up over a percent.”
It’s Pill Boy’s 30th Anniversary:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/610518.jpg
What a bunch of —— we ‘Merikins are!
After the snakebite, I tried to make noises
With the clouds in my throat, the dissolving
Snow of my tongue: but the young ones
Kept crying and calling and couldn’t hear me.
How could I have explained anyway my surprise?
Not the kiss of the branding iron’s signature,
Not the crop’s electric shock, the bit’s silver
Felt ever as sweet to me as his firm teeth.
Decline is a river you fall into, your hind legs
Unsteady on the slippery bank.
Your last sight a spray of delicious gillyflowers
Bright enough to be suns.
There’s so much you realize you’ll never miss.
Mornings in the sludgy mist. The saddle hours.
The way children comb and braid your mane
Then look at you as though for repayment.
In the ring, on the bridle path, how enormous I
Was floating above them while they rode me
As I practiced the art of surrender,
Holding my thoughts separate as a kite—
I might as well have been on my own planet of dust,
Forever careering through shadow fields
Till I saw those eyes sparking green from the dark,
Till I let him shake my body with one touch.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/110gqI69qjVAkM/giphy-downsized.gif
No more! Pleeeze! You’ve made me spill my morning coffee.
Mmmm riiiight. Transaction prices are up and wages are down. That sounds healthy.
New Passenger Car Registrations in United States are falling rapidly. A crisis for car manufacturers is approaching.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USASACRQISMEI
Not surprising. Millennials are not buying cars. They don’t have jobs.
The timing of the most recent downturn in passenger car registrations (end of 2014) more or less corresponds to the timing of the fall of oil prices. Fewer registrations = less demand for oil.
Don’t be such a Debbie Downer FE.
Smile
https://68.media.tumblr.com/d644b8ba0fb48fc9c54cab0e0cbcd558/tumblr_ntlwdm3d061rjfvi5o1_250.gif
I wake up with a smile every day — ever since I discovered that the cl i mate sci entists were faking the data — and we were not going to boil and roast in this earthly hell after all…
Every day has been a great day since then
Cool!
Have some more Kool-Aid.
Fake Data Flavoured?
FE employs troll tactics for cli_mate now that he hasn’t enough slowsters to argue with?
Great that we’ve managed to scare them off but sad that a rather off-blog issue is being used as bait for petulant rants.
A petulant rant per day — keeps the DelusiSTANIS away….
yeah, you’re fu.l.l of it on cli.mate chan.ge, FE. you scare me on the spent fuel ponds, however.
does this help the AGW discussion?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2016-hottest-year-global-record_us_587e63eee4b07b9dd704f788
I see that exact same headline on Bloomberg every week or so – right alongside the usual rah rah Elon headline and the rah rah solar headline….
When I keep seeing the same headlines over and over and over… my fake news spider sense begins to tingle….
It makes me suspect that the Ministry of Truth is issuing another edict to be published by the flunkies at the MSM outlets….
I prefer the headlines that indicate that global temperatures have barely moved in twenty years — I also like that NASA research headline that indicates the planet is releasing excess carbon into space — which is why the temperature has not increased…. and finally I like the headline that tells of the whistle blower who exposed the fake numbers from his associates… that is my favourite headline of all time….
The thing about these headlines is that you really have to dig deep to find them — because nobody gains from publishing the truth …. so nobody bothers to publish the truth….
Norman — the Huffington Post….. surely that is far below your pay grade…..
i try to check information at least 3 times from different sources before i use it
the various aspects of agw seem beyond dispute to me, other than for peripheral details.
the carbon ppm now stands at 404,
pics of melting glaciers are there as visual evidence (over a long time period)
sea level rise is self evident
and so on
I accept the atmospheric CO2 level averages over 400ppm and that it has been rising almost every year since Keeling first started measuring it. I also accept that the increase is due almost entirely to human activity. And since rising CO2 should in theory enhance the CO2 “green-house” effect, I accept that AGW may well quite possibly exist to some extent. But whether its significant or not is quite another issue.
The big questions are, how much of the temp-erature rise since the end of the little ice age is AGW? and how much more ins in the pipeline? I don’t think anybody can honestly say they know the answer to those questions. Or in other words, anyone who claims they know is not being honest. They have to be consciously deceiving others or else unconsciously deceiving themselves by assuming that they know more than they actually do.
The answer to the second one may depend on how much more FFs we burn and what the sensitivity of the cli-mate is to rises in CO2. But since the cli-mate system is considered to be coupled (atmosphere + oceans), complex and chaotic with a non-linear response to forcings, and because there are a lot of natural and human forcings, some of which are not well understood.
Any reasonable person would have no choice but to agree with that.
+++++++++
Put it this way – I am reasonable (no matter what M Fast says…) and GW is not on my list of end of the world concerns.
Glaciers: Again, we can treat them as a single phenomenon, or we can examine them individually, because every glacier is unique. The only thing they all seem to have in common is that they, grow at by being topped up with snow at the top and they melt from the bottom. So an extended period—decades or centuries—of heavy snowfall will tend to make them grow. Less snow will tend to make them shrink. Summer temps also play a role in how much they melt. Winter temps not so much.
In New Zealand, a lot of glaciers have been growing in recent years:
Newly published research shows regional climate variability caused an “unusual” period in which some of New Zealand’s glaciers grew bigger, while glaciers worldwide were shrinking.
The research, carried out by scientists from Victoria University of Wellington and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), was published today in scientific journal Nature Communications.
At least 58 New Zealand glaciers advanced between 1983 and 2008, with Franz Josef Glacier (Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere) advancing nearly continuously during this time.
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-zealand-unusual-glaciers.html#jCp
In 2014, the news came that “Glaciers in parts of the greater Himalayas are growing despite the worldwide trend of ice melting due to warmer temperatures, a study has found.”
In the Karakoram mountain range on the border of Pakistan and China, glaciers have defied global warming to become marginally larger over a decade, researchers said.
The French scientists produced three dimensional maps of the range, which is separated from the Himalayas but usually considered part of the same chain, between 1999 and 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/9206785/Himalayan-glaciers-growing-despite-global-warming.html
Notice how in the MSM, when reporting such things, there is ALWAYS an obligatory reference to how it is “despite glo-bal warm-ing”, even though the amount of warm-ing recorded globally has actually been quite miniscule.
Remember, based on the linear trend of UKMO HadCRUT4 reconstruction, from its start year in 1880 through to 2014, global surface temperature has warmed at a long-term rate of about 0.06 deg C/decade (about 0.10 deg F/ decade)…for a total warming of less than 0.8 deg C (about 1.4 deg F) since 1880. As as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, reconstructions such as the HadCRUT have been criticized as being “adjusted” to show more warm-ing than a simple plot of the actual observed temps. would show.
At least Toyota is bucking the trend!
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/io6dnlVpdBlw/v1/800x-1.png
Amazing considering how big and ugly Toyota’s have become. Honda is even worse. Poor Accord. Used to be a clean looking car. It is just plain ugly now. And Acura is no better with that ugly plate on the front end. What happened to simple, clean styling?
I agree. It doesn’t sound good at all. The Fed only talks about raising interest rates and selling QE securities. These things go the wrong direction.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DFjqWt4XgAATws2.jpg
Miss the Mooch already.
Being a psychopathic Imbecile, he seemed like a perfect with Cheeto Jesus.
Phony smiles 1 & 2.
As we know rats are the first to leave a drowning ship.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-01/teslas-veteran-battery-technology-director-unexpectedly-quits
Maybe he made his boatload of money and had other plans of things he wanted to do. It doesn’t necessarily have deeper meaning regarding a corporation as big as Tesla. As an executive being canned once told me, “Everybody’s expendable.”
For such a ‘huge’ corporation … it doesn’t sell many vehicles….. and it loses money on every single one it does sell — even with all the government subsidies….
Quite an impressive feat that Tesla….
Mmmm maybe the Tesla S wasn’t going to make it to market by the due date because of battery issues, but E.lon pushed it through to appease the markets. Sounds like a space shut.tle launch if I recall correctly, where the powers that be overrode the engineers objections to launch.
Interesting! We will need to see what happens now.
The stars appear very inviting from a distance but I wouldn’t want to visit them. The trip would get boring.
Of course if you had a companion like this, you could kill the time nicely…
http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/585897069ec59e7377e1ca49/master/pass/jennifer-lawrence-passengers-pool-scene.jpg
Ah, Jennifer Lawrence from the sci-fi movie, ‘Passengers’. An unparalleled super fox!
I imagine after 10 years or so that would get pretty boring, probably sooner.
Lol. Not unless you’re gay.
Or female.
A salamander is much more complex than a star– really quite simple compared to biological organisms.
ATP production and proton-membrane energy production is amazing.
Where’s My Flying Car? Science’s Promises Broken
https://www.livescience.com/25146-flying-cars-broken-science-promises.html
moon colonies?
manned flights to Mars (and back, ha ha)?
sure, if only the world had infinite supplies of cheap fossil fuels.
all people would be wealthy!
why, we could go to the stars!
https://48ic4g3gr5iyzszh237mlfcm-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/LewisGraeber10w400.png
People can’t even drive without causing accidents, so imagine them flying. It doesn’t really work, because once you get off the ground wind is a big factor and would require abilities many people would not possess. What if instead of millions of cars on highways in LA, they are all above ground – The collisions would end that experiment very fast, plus once they collide they fall and again, more problems as they fall into people’s houses.
No need to imagine. Senile pilots are a hazard even today.
https://youtu.be/LkaUsub9258
Mildly Chewy for this group of rapacious apes, but a few may have the attention span:
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
For most of human history, the top speed at which human beings could travel had been around 25 miles per hour. By 1900 it had increased to 100 miles per hour, and for the next seventy years it did seem to be increasing exponentially. By the time Toffler was writing, in 1970, the record for the fastest speed at which any human had traveled stood at roughly 25,000 mph, achieved by the crew of Apollo 10 in 1969, just one year before. At such an exponential rate, it must have seemed reasonable to assume that within a matter of decades, humanity would be exploring other solar systems.
Since 1970, no further increase has occurred. The record for the fastest a human has ever traveled remains with the crew of Apollo 10. True, the commercial airliner Concorde, which first flew in 1969, reached a maximum speed of 1,400 mph. And the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, which flew first, reached an even faster speed of 1,553 mph. But those speeds not only have failed to increase; they have decreased since the Tupolev Tu-144 was cancelled and the Concorde was abandoned.
It was right around 1970 when the increase in the number of scientific papers published in the world—a figure that had doubled every fifteen years since, roughly, 1685—began leveling off. The same was true of books and patents.
Interesting! I checked and the big upward trend in overweight in the United States did not seem to start until 1980.
There is of course evidence that more recently born people are taller than those born earlier, but that trend began long ago.
LOL
http://zeenews.india.com/world/65-per-cent-egyptian-families-have-nine-children-minister-2028751.html
65 per cent of Egyptian families have nine children: Minister
Cairo: About 65 per cent of Egyptian families have nine children, which can hinder the nation`s development, a minister said here.
“The population increase rate has reached 2.5 per cent, which requires raising the economic growth rate three times in no less than ten years, which is not happening for the time being,” Egyptian Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali said on Sunday.
The minister added that about 62 per cent of Egyptian mothers are illiterate.
Egypt`s population has exceeded 100 million, including 93.4 million citizens in addition to at least 8 million expatriates, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.
According to President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, terrorism and growing population are the largest challenges that Egypt is currently facing.
If I have understood correctly, 2.5% growth rate per annum in a population of 100 million means that 2.5 million persons are added to the population of Egypt per year or 25 million in 10 years, 50 million in 20 years etc. Is that sustainable? It seems that Egypt is entirely unable to plan or to control its population growth.
The CIA Factbook comments that:
“rapidly growing population (the largest in the Arab world), limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress society. The government has struggled to meet the demands of Egypt’s population through economic reform and massive investment in communications and physical infrastructure…
Weak growth and limited foreign exchange earnings have made public finances unsustainable, leaving authorities dependent on expensive borrowing for deficit finance and on Gulf allies to help cover the import bill… In November 2016, the IMF approved a $12 billion, three-year loan for Egypt and disbursed the first $2.75 billion tranche.
With compounding, it’s worse than the increase you describe.
It turns out that Egypt ranks 21st in the world for population growth as a percentage. An awful lot of people out there are having an awful lot of babies. The top twenty countries are;
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2002rank.html
1 South Sudan 3.92 2016 est.
2 Malawi 3.32 2016 est.
3 Burundi 3.26 2016 est.
4 Niger 3.22 2016 est.
5 Uganda 3.22 2016 est.
6 Burkina Faso 3.01 2016 est.
7 Mali 2.96 2016 est.
8 Zambia 2.94 2016 est.
9 Ethiopia 2.88 2016 est.
10 Iraq 2.87 2016 est.
11 Tanzania 2.77 2016 est.
12 Western Sahara 2.76 2016 est.
13 Benin 2.75 2016 est.
14 Angola 2.72 2016 est.
15 Togo 2.66 2016 est.
16 Qatar 2.64 2016 est.
17 Guinea 2.62 2016 est.
18 Cameroon 2.58 2016 est.
19 Madagascar 2.54 2016 est.
20 Rwanda 2.53 2016 est.
and isn’t Egypt largely desert?
this will not end well.
No nations in the Western Hemisphere.
Egypt (in 2011)
The relentless math:
Population 1960: 27.8 million
Population 2008: 81.7 million
Current population growth rate: 2% per annum (a 35-year doubling rate)
Population in 2046 after another doubling: 164 million
Rainfall average over whole country: ~ 2 inches per year
Highest rainfall region: Alexandria, 7.9 inches per year
Arable land (almost entirely in the Nile Valley): 3%
Arable land per capita: 0.04 Ha (400 m2)
Arable land per capita in 2043: 0.02 Ha
Food imports: 40% of requirements
Grain imports: 60% of requirements
Net oil exports: Began falling in 1997, went negative in 2007
Oil production peaked in 1996
And when the inevitable famine arrives, as it must, it will blamed on clim-ate change and Western imperialism, at least in the Guardian.
glad someone else has noticed the parlous state of Egypt—that doubling by 2046!!!!—yet they ignore it, and bumble along somehow.
To be fair, up close and personal—they really are a great people despite obvious adversity.
but standing back and being objective, it’s perfectly obvious what’s going to happen—especially the killer part you didn’t mention, that 4 nations upstream are busy building dams across the Nile. Once those dams are built, you can forget agreements–they will divert water for their own food supplies.
already the Nile delta is drying out and getting serious salt incursion to farmland. when the water flow is cut again, the result will be catastrophic
What I don’t get: The developments are obvious.. since years if not decades. Why don’t they do anything about it? Not even a little? With what for a prospect do the people get all the babies? Don’t fear the governments the nearing instability (of the youth bulge)?
If Africa releases its (soon) famine stricken poverty to Europe – with the full force of truly desperate people…. this will become a disaster…. and in the current ‘allowed’ discourse in Europe (and especially Germany)… touching those questions is forbidden or (actively) curtailed…
Yep–
Aswan was the last nail in the coffin, the rest is noise.
Well, Haber was the last nail in the coffin for most homo sapiens, but that is another story.
That, and winning the energy lotto.
Perhaps in the intended scheme of things, we weren’t meant to have been born and humanity’s maximum permitted population is 2 billion, but Haber and Bosche stole ammonia from the gods for mankind much as Prometheus earlier stole fire.
But on the other hand, Duncan, you and I and 5.5 billion others wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the Haber-Bosche process, and even 2 billion people could have used up all the available fossil fuels given a bit more time. So I wouldn’t knock it.
Quite simply, the people of the world and particularly the Third World were not ready for the benefits of good sanitation, modern medicine, chemical fertilizers and the many fruits of industrialization, and so when it arrived, this lotto win was transformed into the population explosion. Had there been some effective way in the 1920s or 30s to get every couple to stop at two, that would have slowed the speed at which we ran up against the limits, but anyone attempting such policies in the 1920s or 30s would have been quite rightly branded as bonkers, as kids were seen as each country’s national and each family’s individual life insurance policy back then.
many if not most of the above countries, plus Egypt, (and others) allow/encourage FGM
that gives you the prevailing attitude to women.
Small wonder then that these are the nations with catastrophic population growth
The two are directly and specifically linked
Add to that, the four nations at the head of the Nile are on that list. As their population increases exponentially, they will have no choice but to reduce/shut off Egypt’s water
And Egypt won’t be able to do a thing about it.
It could always go to war.
Growth, collapse, and self-organized criticality in complex networks-US National Institute of Health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4832202/
Too Big To Handle? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Question of Why Societies Ignore Looming Disasters (Aaken 2016)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12307/abstract
Editorial saying, “Do we need a new field of study called, Catastrophe Studies?”
Sounds like a good reason to write more academic papers.
Psychology and Disaster: Why We Do Not See Looming Disasters and How Our Way of Thinking Causes Them (Glöckner 2016)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12289/abstract
Abstract : “To be able to decide and act quickly and efficiently in a complex world, individuals rely on mechanisms that reduce information in a meaningful way. Instead of holding a set of partially contradicting cognitions, individuals construct coherent interpretations or stories to make sense of the available information using interactive activation. Interactive activation describes cognitive processing as bidirectional propagation of activation among simple processing units, which allows individuals to integrate large amounts of information quickly and with little cognitive effort. However, interactive activation also has important downsides that can prevent individuals from detecting looming disasters and can even contribute to their emergence.”
No kidding! If you believe the press, our major problems are climate change and too much oil. Low prices are supposedly a sign that all is well. No one stopped to think that the story is could be very different, and that the laws of physics could be playing a major role here.
Can renewable energy power the future? (Moriarty 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151630088X
We argue it is unlikely that RE can meet existing global energy use.
Thanks! The authors make good points.
“We show that estimates for the technical potential of RE vary by two orders of magnitude, and argue that values at the lower end of the range must be seriously considered, both because their energy return on energy invested falls, and environmental costs rise, with cumulative output. “
United States National Academy of Sciences (Scheffera 2016)
Anticipating societal collapse; Hints from the Stone Age
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10733?tab=author-info
It is, it seems, our civilisation’s turn to experience the inrush of the savage and the unseen; our turn to be brought up short by contact with untamed reality.
— Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto
Sounds like Neo-Romantic claptrap to me, all this Dark Mountain stuff: ‘savagery’ isn’t about wearing silly costumes for a few hours, burning wicker men at a party and writing rather bad poetry.
It’s regular famines, hard labour, war, slavery and fear.
Real peasants wanted to go and live in the town as soon as possible, and make their sons into prosperous notaries and traders. Then they would buy an estate and set other in the peasants to work in the ‘beauties of nature’.
Thanks … slow collapsers might want to read this — as it explains — even when we did not have complex structures like JIT and a global financial system …. what happened was pressures built up over time —- until a tipping point was reached — and then collapse — as per the definition — happened rapidly…
This is EXACTLY what we are experiencing now — the pressures are building — but because virtually all people on the planet are plugged into BAU — when the tipping point is reached — the entire planet will experience collapse…
And because we have 7.5 billion people now — and we have industrial farming and antibiotics fending off diseases — and spent fuel ponds — there will be no reset as happened in pre-history…
This is the big one.
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10733.full.pdf
from the text:
“… one may wonder if societies would not notice declining conditions in time to move or change strategies before a crash occurred.
One theory is that societies tend to resist change until it is too late for smooth adjustments. Indeed, some fundamental mechanisms that hamper our capacity for change have been well documented. There is the “sunk-cost effect” preventing people from abandoning acquired property (or ways of living or beliefs) even if that would rationally be better. Then there is the “by-stander effect,” leading one to copy the behavior of others in case of doubt. This effect is known for explaining why often no-one in a crowd of by-standers comes to the rescue. Finally, elites may have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, thus delaying societal change.”
okay, so “Anticipating” could mean “it’s coming, so it’s just a matter of when”.
or it could mean “it’s coming if nothing is done, so what can be done?”
a manufactured slow decline would probably be better than The Collapse that is coming in the 2030’s.
I’m not holding my breath.
Expecting humans to change course would be like filling a room with hungry dogs — tossing in 20 kg of ground beef —- and expecting them to share it equally — and save some for tomorrow….
HAHAHA!!
true!!!!
it’s gotta be BAU all the way, baby!
wall? what wall? I don’t see no wall.
Excellent analogy!
https://youtu.be/ZUikER6TUoc
I was trying to think of the various conditions that would indicate today’s loss of resilience. One might be the rise of more extreme political parties, and the withering of those in the middle. Another might be the mass migration from the Arab world into Europe. Another might be the rise of violence in Europe, and the rise of conflicts problems dealing with race relations in the US, particularly when police officers are trying to deal with problems involving someone of the opposite race.
Coupled Societies are More Robust Against Collapse: A Hypothetical Look at Easter Island
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916307509
“We find that the region of parameter space in which societies can stably survive in the long-term is significantly enlarged when coupling occurs in both social and environmental variables.”
I’m thinking here that the USA and Canada might model this statement.
Though in their conclusion:
“The present world is in a similar situation where, because of competing power centres of comparable strength, any collapse that could occur is more likely to be simultaneous and global (Tainter, 1988). These results indicate that a coupled network of societies could prove more robust against collapse provided that at least some societies maintain lower extraction rates of natural resources to dampen the oscillations in the rest of the system.”
the third world is racing to increase their “lower extraction rates”.
by the 2030’s, the Earth might be Collapsestan.
The countries of the world have been becoming more and more “coupled” in recent years, in an attempt to stave off collapse. At some point, a limit is reached, and decoupling starts. It seems like this is likely a reason for collapse. In fact, fairly recent trade data seems to indicate we are hitting a limit of this type.
This report from the United Nations has many interesting charts. Trade has stagnated since 2008, and is down in 2015.
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditctab2016d3_en.pdf
WTI oil now down 2 to 3% (Kurt, hello, Kurt) $48.77
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/01/oil-is-tanking-3-percent-on-another-report-of-rising-output-from-saudi-led-oil-cartel.html
smack down!
oil price manipulation continues!
I’m guessing it will rise in August.
who knows?
30 days to go!
Are you sure your name isn’t Gle….nn
I was thinking EXACTLY the same thing lol
I’ve seen THAT Gle….nn’s many posts on another site.
I post infrequently as David F.
I see some wild posts from a Glenn on peakoilbarreldotcom (I post once in awhile as David F.)
I assure you that I am not in the oil business. I have no vested interest in oil prices.
Though I prefer $2.50 a gallon gas over higher prices. That’s about $700 per year round trip for work.
which prompts me:
$25.00 per gallon = $7,000 per year round trip for work.
that would still be worth it to me.
gasoline is so cheap!
what do others think?
My gasoline bill is less than $100 a year as I only buy the stuff for my Thunderbirds: The Bush Cutter, the Chainsaw, the Rice Planter, the Harvester and the Straw Cutter. For the amount of field work I can get done with it, that gasoline is virtually free. I’d willingly pay 10 times the current price rather than abandon using those machines — all other things being equal.
(Fortunately I don’t have to commute to work and a lot of our shopping is delivered, but I do depend on the kindness of friends and neighbors for the occasional trip to the supermarket.)
But here’s the rub. All other things aren’t equal. If gasoline was 10 times the current price, everything else would become prohibitively expensive, the economy would be in chaos or ruins and there might not be any gasoline available.
Here in rural Japan, the vast majority of adults has a car, and most families also have a light truck. Add up the cost of purchasing licensing, insuring and servicing the vehicles and then the cost of gasoline, plus a contingency fund for paying speeding tickets and repairing damage due to accidents, and car ownership is probably costing the average non-elite rural resident between 10 and 20% of their income, which puts a strain on their discretionary spending.
Gas in Japan is around US$1.20 a liter-mostly due to the gas tax. In 2012, it hit the equivalent of US$2 a liter and people responded by driving a lot less, which meant less tourism, less eating out and less shopping trips. Had the price remained that high, it would doubtless have caused more people to abandon their cars during a period in which car use is already declining for demographic reasons.
So I think gasoline is cheap in the developed world, but it needs to be cheap in order to keep industrial economies humming along, and actually it isn’t nearly cheap enough to sustain economic party time anymore.
When there is so much tax on gas, “demand” is not as responsive to changing prices as it would be without the tax. When price goes up, the percentage change isn’t as great. When price goes down, it is still sort of high priced. So while there is an effect, it is not as big an effect as without taxes.
The ones who are most directly affected by changes in prices are ones whose price level is not buffered by high tax rates. These people are likely those who are buying diesel for commercial usage. If Japan is like Europe, (and if my understanding is right), commercial usage is not nearly as heavily taxed. Higher prices could therefore hit businesses relatively harder.
there is a well worn formula for the price of petrol
put 1 gallon in your tank
drive for as far as it will take you
then pay sufficient in food/cash to enough men to expend enough calorific output to pull your car back to where you started.
that is the only real measure of value of petrol to us as a global community.
In rough terms, 1 gallon of petrol is equivalent to 50 men working for 1 hour–so buying it for $2 50 or whatever gives you the insanity of our current situation.
‘The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set –
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink –
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exacts what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES!
“All right!” you’ll cry. “All right!” you’ll say,
“But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children! Please explain!”
We’ll answer this by asking you,
“What used the darling ones to do?
How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?”
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY… USED… TO… READ! They’d READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
TO READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and –
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr Rat and Mr Mole –
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The streams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks –
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start – oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean.
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
-Roald Dahl, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” 1964
++++++++++++
Death to TEEVEE – G-Had on TEe VeE
But but but … how will I find out who wins the game of chairs?
No death to Pirate Bay … because there is a very short list of content that is worth watching…. a very very very short list!
Great poem. Absolutely true critical thinking has been erased by means of it.
We decided to get rid of our television set long ago. Even before we got rid of it, we only had it on for a few things like baseball games. I could never understand why people would leave a television on in the background by the hour. How can a person think, with the television on?
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I found this article from oiprice back in 2010 claiming EV’S and peak demand was right ahead. And here we are almost 8 years later. And EV sales are not even one percent of total car sales yet.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Oil-Demand-The-Beginning-And-End-Of-Oil.html
yes.
7 years later!
world changing transitions often take many years or even decades.
total fossil fuels reached an all-time high in 2016 and are on pace to be higher in 2017.
peak oil is estimated with 90% certainty to be in the 2020’s.
peak natural gas is estimated for the 2030’s.
coal? who knows? but even as the US is burning less, the US is exporting more.
we all know about exponential growth so it’s possible that 1% EV’s could be 2% then 4% then 8 16 32 etc within a decade or two.
who knows?
the bottom line: transitions often take decades.
Hello? Have you plotted the rise in street people in the advanced nations, e.g., Japan, EU, USA? Or the entitlement program growth? The transition is taking place now, in fact it’s historical. You need to better define whom you are referring to when you say “transitions often takes decades”. For whom? It appears more like slowly at first, then all at once, unless, of course you’re an economist who believes in infiniite growth, and free energy/money.
yes “slowly at first, then all at once” would apply here.
slowly through the 2020’s as oil production declines.
“The transition is taking place now, in fact it’s historical.”
yes, the slowly-at-first transition IS taking place NOW.
I agree.
the all-at-once will likely begin in peripheral countries.
the core of wealthy nations – Japan EU USA etc – are seeing some slowly-at-first.
Japan has infamously had “lost decades” economically.
Venezuela is seeing an all-at-once.
Someone (not me, I’m flat out busy at the moment) ought to find or plot the entitlement growth numbers for each country, and number of street people sightings over time. I think these data exist, perhaps as social worker or police statistics. Also legal and illegal immigrants (migrations are due to many factors, among them regional wars, but all are related to collapse). We are always debating the speed of collapse here at OFW. I think a view of these data trends over time may provide some interesting information on collapse speed.
that data could be useful.
“We are always debating the speed of collapse here at OFW.”
yes, we are debating about the future, so past and present facts are often useful.
I rely on fossil fuel data as the primary indicators of the near term and long term possibilities for declines and collapses.
but that’s just me.
Yeah, well, I remember being promised flying cars by the year 2000.
Exactly, and how about that nuclear toaster?
http://atomictoasters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Atomic_Powered_Toaster_by_meandmunch.jpg
and where are all those moon colonies?
I was reading somewhere about Green Groupies not minding that to get a top up charge it took ‘only 20 minutes’ — they thought that was great because it gave them time to have a coffee — or read a book — or catch up on emails….
It seems most people are not into deluding themselves like this — they do NOT want to wait 20 minutes… and they certainly do not want to wait hours for a full charge…. this is the age of NOW!
So apparently even with all the rebates — even with all the propaganda — the reality is — the consumer is what is going to kill the electric car…… they simply do not want these vehicles.
Scrap the subsidies and the industry would not exist. It really is as simple as that.
And as Hong Kong understands — EVs are MORE polluting than ICE vehicles — so they have removed the subsidies — and sales dropped to ZERO in April,
Exactly FE. I live in Michigan for example and myself and many others have to be at work around 7am everyday. During the Winter here it’s pitch black outside in the morning and freezing cold. Can you imagine having to get up an extra hour early to make it to the charging station in my kind of environment every day? And what if all the chargers are being used as well? Will I have to wait an extra 20 minutes just to have to charge another 20 minutes to drive everyday? This is not progress. . Progress is giving people more for less.
The EV propaganda photos always show ‘ car re-charging at the workplace car park.’
But when challenged as to the viability of this (peak rate) re-charging, EV advocates invariably talk about the ease of domestic re-charging at night, ‘when power plants are sitting idle anyway.’
Time and time again one reads this
There is no way that these things are going to fit in with people’s daily work schedules.
Everyone would want to come to the recharging stations at the same time.
People living in apartments or homes without garages would find it difficult to charge at night. The few people adding EVs now are the well-to-do folks who can afford to have a car around that they don’t use much, and a garage that has an outlet for charging. Most people won’t have this.
If people knew this — would they buy an EV?
Electric vehicles in Hong Kong could be adding “20 per cent more” carbon to the atmosphere than regular petrol ones over the same distance after factoring in the city’s coal-dominated energy mix and battery manufacture, a new research report found.
Investment research firm Bernstein also claimed that by subsidising electric vehicle purchases, the government was effectively “harming rather than helping the environment” at the expense of the taxpayer.
“The policy is to encourage drivers to be green, but they are actually subsidising vehicles that create more emissions of CO2 and particulates from power plants,” said Bernstein senior analyst Neil Beveridge.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1935817/electric-shock-tesla-cars-hong-kong-more-polluting
Once someone has been indoctrinated… the facts do not matter.
They will reject logic evidence facts….
So what if it is not possible for people to charge in the workplace and at home — without massive investments in upgrades to the grid.
Facts do not matter.
There are plenty of people on FW who subscribe to that way of thinking …. it just depends on the issue at hand
Som every informative date on EV and Lithium ion charging from mpoweruk.com.
“Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
The Challenges
In recent years the problems of “range anxiety” associated with electric vehicles (EVs) have been alleviated by the introduction hybrids (HEVs) and plug in hybrids (PHEVs) and the development of higher energy density batteries capable of storing more energy in the same space. With the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, “range anxiety” is now being replaced by “charging anxiety”. This page addresses the issues associated with providing suitable chargers and the charging infrastructure necessary to support the growing population of EVs.
It takes about three minutes fill up a petrol or diesel engined car at a filling station with enough fuel to travel about 300 miles, costing about $35 in th USA and about £52 ($80) in the UK. To travel 300 miles in a small EV passenger car would need three full charges of a typical 25kWh battery used to power these vehicles costing about $2.50 per charge in the USA with electricity priced at $0.10 per unit (kWh) and £2.50 ($3.90) in the UK with electricity priced at £0.10 per unit. The low energy cost is one of the attractions of owning an EV. Unfortunately to put the 25 kWh of energy needed to travel each 100 miles into the battery in the same time (1 minute) that the equivalent amount of diesel fuel is pumped into the tank would require a power supply capable of delivering a power of 1.5 MegaWatts. To put this into perspective, 25 kWh is the amount of energy an average household consumes in a whole day. Providing electrical distribution facilities to allow users to consume this amount of energy from the electricity grid in one minute is not practical and even if it was, no EV battery could accept energy at this rate. On the other hand neither is it practical to take 24 hours to charge the battery in a passenger electric vehicle.”
My own comments. Since battery chemical reaction rates slow in cold weather, I wonder about the difficulties of using Evs in very cold climates. Are most Teslas used in moderate climates, or, if not, do they sit in a climate moderated garage the rest of the time? I suspect issues will occur in winter in many parts of the world. Of course heaters are presently used for diesels in cold climates, and could also be used for batteries(at home).
Additionally, the wider the variation in temperature, the more safety issues are present with Lithium batteries.
Cell Failures
Lithium Ion Operating Window
http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/lithium_window.gif
I can’t help but notice the USPS is still using ICE. No EV’s there and you would think that would be an ideal use case.
Imagine if Tesla was to actually sell a decent amount of cars per year — let’s say 500,000
Imagine how astronomical their losses would be!
I bet they could easily lose $10 billion in a single year…..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-lithium-defied-the-global-commodities-rout-1462450790
that says it all about lithium
‘In order to produce half a million cars a year…we would basically need to absorb the entire world’s lithium-ion production,’ Elon Musk said in March
Was the Reuters number $14,000 lost on each car sold?
14,000 x 500,000 = $7,000,000,000
Awesome!
Their stock would be a catatonic levels in that case. $1000!
Good point!
The handful of charging stations we see at airports and at employers are cute right now, but I doubt we are going to see a big scale up, to accommodate nearly everyone with an EV. Adding all of the needed charging stations, plus places for people to “hang out” while they are charging, may be a challenge. Admittedly, coffee shops could offer this service, but they would need to add the needed electrical services and have a place for cars to be parked while people wait. I am sure that waiting for charging to be done would get to be “old” pretty quickly, if a person can’t charge at home or work.
I have been without power for 12 hours and have been thinking to myself when this thing goes down permanently things will degenerate very quickly…a matter of days…
Before BAU ends — After…
http://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/nosferatu-remake.png
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/10/korowicz%204.jpg
Now imagine that everyone has electric cars and electric heating. The grid going down would get to be even more of a problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/business/dealbook/as-oil-prices-plummet-mounting-debt-catches-up-with-us-producers.html?emc=edit_th_20160210&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=28115200
The problem with that article is that there is this underlying assumption that oil prices fell because of Saudi’s producing too much oil causing a glut. What pundits don’t realize is that oil is too expensive for the global economy to afford. That is why there is a glut. If it were affordable, some country/countries would buy it and use that energy in that oil for economic growth. But, no one is stepping up to the plate, at $45-$50/bbl. No one. It is still too expensive. Try dropping the oil price to $10-$15/bbl and watch the glut disappear and economic conditions improve. However, if that happened oil producers would be bankrupt. It sure sounds like we are in a predicament.
Surreal these End Times in almost every aspect…
Another fitting Mark Twain quote for OFW’s: “The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”
Haha Greg good one…I think many of us here are under 48…
+++++++++++++
This is how solar power is viewed by its proponents:
https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/9800de62-1bad-4f76-9dfd-df3773ba6f8c/455ce7801f718750216dbb4ea5d21302.jpg
This is the reality of how they are created:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cWs3FzDIgUA/maxresdefault.jpg
++++++++++++++
We get out shiny panels…. the place that makes them for us using coal gets this:
http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/lg/public/2015/12/06/beijing-smog-alert.jpg
Those buildings would be buried in polluted smog after 100 billion solar panes were built. It is such an absurdity to expect such nonsense to be clean.
Assessing vulnerabilities and limits in the transition to renewable energies: Land requirements under 100% solar energy scenarios (Capellán 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032117304720?via%3Dihub
100% Solar Power in Europe would require around 50% of its available land
IMF Sees 2017 Saudi Growth ‘Close to Zero’ on Oil Prices, Cuts
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-21/imf-sees-2017-saudi-growth-close-to-zero-on-oil-prices-cuts
These cuts are bleeding the Saudi’s dry! No wonder the next to be king was hooked on pills and coke!
Oh but the Saudi’s are going to shift away from an oil based economy to a service based economy right? Every oil producing country on Earth can do this right? Prosperity forever trading digital bits.
There are to many sand storms in KSA. They almost all live in houses that have gigantic walls built around them to protect them from the sandy winds. look at KSA on google earth. Their neighborhoods look like small military bases everywhere.
So why didn’t they build windmills?
Service economy in a desert is like putting 99% of your wealth in Ethereum.
Those walls were built to keep the high eroei people out.
http://imgur.com/a/EwG3T
I’ll only buy it if it comes packed in a replica of FE’s storage container.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
They all have a plan, until they get punched in the face.
Mike Tyson
That also applies to ‘lucky horseshoes’. 🙂
At least those are tangible.
Just for a bit of harmless fun and general edification, let’s compare Neil’s quote with a few other well-known thinkers have said about science and truth.
“Science is but an image of the truth.”
—Francis Bacon
“Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.”
— John Charles Polanyi
“Science is the search for truth.”
— Linus Pauling
“Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.”
— Richard Dawkins
“Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists.”
—Isaac Asimov
“It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term “scientific truth.” So different is the meaning of the word “truth” according to whether we are dealing with a act of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory.”
—Albert Einstein
“The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature… It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.”
—Lewis Tomas
I’ll finish here with one of Bertrand Russell’s, as it offers a god tip on the best attitude to adopt to people who make a show of confident certainty in general.
“Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in assuming that he is an inexact man.”
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-although-this-may-seem-a-paradox-all-exact-science-is-dominated-by-the-idea-of-approximation-when-bertrand-russell-350450.jpg
Thanks, I guess I fell validated in my ideal that we think we know so much, but we really don’t. (I’m not well educated, and science is new to me, I mean really new, as in, I didn’t even know what thermodynamics was until a few months ago.)
snorp
Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail by William Ophuls is another to add to the list
Not only are the Rich Dumb White Guys of Trumpland stupid, they are also gullible:
White House officials tricked by email prankster
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/31/politics/white-house-officials-tricked-by-email-prankster/index.html
Rick Perry was tricked last week by two Russian radio show comedians as well.
How about some good news for a change?
“Urgent wake-up call” for male health as sperm counts plummet globally
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/07/urgent-wake-up-call-for-male-health-as.html
The “Epicyte” gene has been incorporated into some strains of GMO corn for nearly 20 years now. So, spermicidal antibodies on the menu anyone? This is well into con-spiracy theory, but it’s something that Infowars and the Guardian have both reported on.
as i travel around in city i see in my country[india] people are very resilient
when demonetization happened i thought country gonna collapse
but it did not happened people still very hopeful about there life
in remember in 90s most western newspaper where prediction was india will collapse
it did not happened and
when British leaving india british people were say india will balkanization in future
yet that prediction came not true
Looking at current trends, I would expect Britain and even England to balkanize before India does.
I wonder how different the world situation would be now if India had not been partitioned? A greater India that included Pakistan/Bangladesh would be easily the most populous country on earth. Several wars and a lot of friction and confrontation could have been avoided. It may have been able to prevent a Chinese takeover of Tibet and it would have exerted a strong influence over Afghanistan.
The only real downside I can see is that there would only be one national cricket team instead of three. I know that many Indians opposed partition, but alas it was not to be.
on a funny note tim why your cricket team[england] is so terrible these days
We’ve had our ups and downs, but now we’ve got a secret weapon — Moeen Ali. He’s just pulled off a hat-trick to defeat the Proteas at the Oval.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/cricket/2017/07/31/TELEMMGLPICT000136217523-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqe8exRwkrG0gUQzS_A7vs-PykPd8sp5D6i9gcZuZ6PU4.jpeg
who you think is better batsman
this guy
http://e2.365dm.com/13/07/4-3/20/joe-root-copy-ashes_2967785.jpg?20130704115110
or this guy which belong to my country
http://www.virat-kohli.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/interesting-facts-about-virat.jpg
people live in harmony only so long as they have enough to eat and drink
if they dont, they are unwilling subjects to the universal law of nations:
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/universal-law-16d41003fe2
they resist it, fight against it, but ultimately are forced to submit to it after they have exhausted all other options. India and Pakistan are not exempt, and it would have mattered if they were partitioned or not—the factions in the region would still have fought over resources
just as we will all be forced to do
The U.S. Is the Sick Man of the Developed World
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-31/the-u-s-is-the-sick-man-of-the-developed-world
And the sick man has the world reserve currency and a lot of bombs.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lindsey-graham-trump-is-prepared-to-strike-north-korea/article/2630268
I say it’s a bunch of pompous wind blowing but according to that article (which is hard to load because it keeps jumping around and then freezes) Lindsey Graham claims Trump has said he’s prepared to attack NK. Says Trump said if people are going to die let them die over there.
Realistically there is only one way to pull such an operation off with a minimum of losses in Seoul, SK and that is to surprise them with about 6 thermo nukes strategically detonated in order to eliminate NK forces, missiles and artillery to minimize response time. Probably launched from submarines would be the most stealthy method. I still say it’s all a bunch of bluff.
Trump can’t declare war all by himself. He needs approval of congress. And there is no chance in hell they would ever approve another foreign war after the last two disasters. And we have oil shortages coming in a few years and those a-10 wart hogs won’t run on apple juice. Your source is just a nitwit right winger site.
But the CIA can declare war (publicly or privately) anywhere and anytime they want. They can spend drug money to do it too. What a mess.
The China – NK border line is like ~1500km, the NK-S,Korea border line is shorter, but ~6x nukes would not make it. As I tried to explain here recently, the modern post WWII artillery gradually almost matched the tactical nuke capability, it was a planned decision in steps taking decades of improvements. So, for instance the Grad system of the 1960s (i.e. 2gen of reactive-rocketry artillery following WWII’s Katuschas), just one system (simultaneous salvo from all pipes) was able to clear out ~10acres, the next generation the Uragan, Smerch and Tornado brought it step by step to few hundreds acres of complete destruction from single off-road based launcher platform. The latest two generations since late 1970s-80s-2000s have basically meter targeting accuracy. The ammunition profile is very varied, incl. tank armor piercing, fire balls, etc..
Obviously, NK doesn’t have the latest stuff, but it surely has got at least the gen or one and half up from Grads, meaning in some sort of Chinese analogues + domestic development variant of the Uragan-Smerch level. They have it hidden in the mountains, at least in dozens, perhaps few hundred systems, incl. stationary launch platforms, so should they unleash only fraction of it, ~70km from the border, that inland S. Korea’s strip would be just decimated, flattened. It takes seconds to operate it, so when they confirm US-S. Korean attack incoming, their retaliation goes alive as well. Plus one can expect few of their longer range launcher might make it to the destination as well.
That’s why there “can’t be” conventional warfare between more matched armies anymore. You can wage war only against counter party of several levels beneath you, which doesn’t have (nuclear, advanced artillery) and or suppression of declared “no fly” zones capacity. Otherwise it all goes into political, economic and asymmetric ways of alt warfare instead, as we have been witnessing recently.
Earnings shenanigans underpin Wall Street record
https://www.ft.com/content/69599442-73aa-11e7-93ff-99f383b09ff9
Oil 49.80. David? David? Where are you?
Summer driving season is coming to an end and the global economy continues to deteriorate. Two factors that will continue to put downward pressure on oil and commodity prices. And extraction costs continue to rise. It can’t end well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
There it is again – just as oil prices get up above 50 they quickly drop back down. That’s happened so many times it’s a well worn pattern.
Yep, oil is not cheap enough to re-ignite growth and the economy. Try $10/bbl for a year and see what happens.
yes, Kurt, here I am.
WTI $49.20 is a 2% smack down.
yes, I admit that I was thinking higher prices were coming in August.
oh well, 30 days to go!
The oil bizness would be toast in a second.
Although Slovakia is a top car producer in the world per number of its inhabitants, the share of the domestic agricultural products in the shops is steadily falling, e.g. meat is from Poland, butter from Germany etc.
https://ekonomika.sme.sk/c/20614113/slovenske-pivo-nemecke-maslo-a-polske-maso-co-sa-objavuje-na-nasich-pultoch.html
The same story as in the case of Venezuela: the domestic food production is less and less economical.
The depopulating countryside of Russia:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/world/europe/russia-population-changes.html?smid=pl-share
What goes on behind the scenes…
Usual NYT hit piece, country side depopulation is problem everywhere.
What they don’t tell much about, is that the people’s situation in cities is relatively improving, more schools, re- & new construction of flats, hospitals, one of the best public transport in the world for the metro areas etc.
Some time ago, we discussed their plan “acres/ha for people” or such named, which is trying to lure people in the pacific region countryside by providing free plots of land. If I recall it ~correctly it was relatively small incentive, given the vastness of the area, something like one hectare per each family member, so if you have lot of kids and in addition buy few more, it’s like <30acres per larger family, which is really not much by ~19th century standards and minuscule by mechanized farming standards anyway. The program seems to be still running, after a year? but I gather not as wide reaching success as hoped. Sooner or later they will release some numbers about the adoption of land there, I think it's just few hundreds, max thousands of people applying so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfrLkqsEuog
Always… that is why you need to be particularly vigilant to watch for issues that are repeated endlessly and vociferously over long periods of time.
Such as… ______ __________
Because as we know — repeating lies endlessly makes them truths
How many times do you recall the MSM telling you Saddam had WMD — 1000? 10,000?
How many times have you read or heard that solar will replace oil in the MSM – 50,000?
How many times have you heard we are moving to Mars — and that EVs are going to replace ICE shortly….. too many to count right?
Repetitive stories = Lies
Can anyone think of some other issues that the MSM repeats endlessly????
https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/aa/2e/aa2ec780-bb0f-4af0-ba2b-273285cd09e8/ozed130928.jpg
And all the while CO2 concentration in the atmosphere kept increasing 2 ppm/year or so. Now, if industrial civ wasn’t on the precipice, that might be a bad trend.
Don’t worry about that — as I have posted — NASA has indicated that war ming has stopped because the earth has released excess carbon into space.
Real News.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/653f52aa719f0e52d5bfe0da64f1e191/tumblr_nu4wm2PHG71uroy2vo1_250.gif
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s1nr2B99e6U/WJiNKQIeTLI/AAAAAAAAjy4/rFJ4A9L47ls6JLeVgkE6OwOTXPD-6t-LgCLcB/s1600/Settled-Science-600-LA.jpg
http://3r8md7174doo44lgpk3kou79-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/GreenEnergy.jpg
Yes, that green energy is so wasteful
ears ago nearly every home had those old T-shaped clothesline poles in the back yard, and most clothes drying was done by line drying. Even people who had a dryer would only use it on rainy days or in the winter. Today, line drying is fairly rare in the United States. This is very unfortunate for the environment because the electric clothes dryer is one of the biggest energy hogs in the household. It’s estimated that six to ten percent of residential energy is used running clothes dryers.
Energy resources consumed to generate the power:
The most commonly used fuel for electric power generation in the United States is coal, over 2½ times more than natural gas or nuclear. Looking at the amount of electricity consumed by your dryer and the coal needed to generate that power, we’ve calculated that nearly 900 pounds of coal will be burned to generate the power for your electric dryer every year.
Carbon emissions created by the power generation:
We’ve calculated the carbon emissions created from coal power generation. It equates to nearly 2300 pounds of CO2 emissions each year. A mature tree consumes about 50 pounds of CO2 in one year, so it will take about 46 trees to offset the CO2 emissions from electric clothes drying by each household.
I think you are a little behind on your figures regarding how electricity is generated in the US. Coal and natural gas are now “neck and neck.” I believe natural gas was ahead last year; coal is ahead this year, the last I saw figures. The mix depends on price.
Well, Gail, I think you get the point of the post, regardless of the details.
BTW, I believe FE is also a little off.
NASA says that excess carbon is being released into space…
Which begs the question — are we causing the universe to w arm?
In any case, we do “waste” awfully large quantities of an awful lot of things, and in the process we create a waste land and call it prosperity. It saddens me no end, but there it is.
Does any of this matter? Is it a shame?
These are aesthetic, moral, philosophical and religious questions, so we can’t expect to get everybody to agree on the same answers.
Can we do anything about it to make a difference? I don’t think we can. For a start, so many people these days come up with their own variation on the well-known excuse:
https://i.imgflip.com/l89ay.jpg
BAU comprises the burning of fossil fuels in ways that appeal to humans… that make our lives easier… more comfortable….more interesting
It is the role of businesses to compete to understand and provide the goods and services that humans want — that is how energy is allocated….
If you attempt to us the energy to smash rocks for the sake of smashing rocks — you will soon not be smashing rocks for long — because that does not benefit humans
But if you use the energy to create an airplane — or a car — or to keep a home warm or cool…. to create a social media site — then that is where the finite energy sources will be directed — because the humans benefit from and/or desire those things.
http://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/THUMBNAIL-Homo_sapiens_Paleolithic_Circular-Economy.jpg
Science isn’t really science if one is paid to get a certain result.
http://tennesseewatchman.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.comwp-contentuploads20160212714411_1113055822048581_1536697594_n750-64309848626977a010e521b81a590748aa6bc648.jpg
https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea73593c801c8d501cc18c870ead00fb/tumblr_nsc7nun7ng1slwatso1_250.gif
This really funny!!!
http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/imageedit_5616_3454901650.jpg
This is fairly new to you, isn’t it? You’ve peeled back another layer of the fake reality onion and it feels so liberating.
I was an early CAGW skeptic when the 1998 El Nino was being sold to Joe Public as manmade warming and then when temps dropped the very next year and stayed down, the boggie-woogie ignored that and just moved on to melting ice, drowning polar bears, hungry penguins, and even Santa loosing his home base for the kiddies, I could see we were so deep into a propaganda matrix that there was no way it could be kosher.
On the other hand I was very gullible about wind and solar power until fairly recently. I’ve been telling everyone within earshot for the past decade that they were just fossil fuel extenders, but at the back of my mind the thought kept playing that f they keep getting cheaper to build and more efficient and durable, they might one day form a bridge to the Next Big Thing, like Thorium of Fusion or whatever.
Now, thanks in large part to Gail’s efforts to investigate the real costs and benefits of these “renewables”, and the bigger picture of how the financial system is collapsing under the strain of having no replacement for $20 dollar-a-barrel oil, I’m satisfied that renewables are not a bridge to anywhere, and more like a peer to walk off the end of. So finally, everything starts to make a lot more sense.
Also, to come to this site and read a bunch of people regularly expounding on the theme of our civilization’s or even our species’s inevitable and possibly imminent doom makes it easier to overcome the omnipresent hype and to entertain these extremely radical thoughts—thoughts that you wouldn’t share with your family, friends, colleagues or drinking buddies—thoughts that would get you shouted down on most blogs in the Collapsopshere, let alone in polite company—rather than dismissing them out of hand, as I probably would if I were the only person I knew who was thinking them.
The Next Big Thing is a chasm, into which most of humanity will fall. 🙂
It does seem like everything is primed and ready for the perfect storm. So many problems are cropping up. It seems that we solve one problem only to create ten more problems. At some point we will loose control of the situation:
I’m sitting here with a beer in my hand waiting at Melbourne airport to fly out at midnight to visit my family in NZ for what I believe to be my last ever visit there.
I read these comments & see no way this will last much longer. Surrounded as I am by the clueless masses, I see the indoctrination, the soulless misery that is this culture. Then again I may be wrong, I’m having a welcome beer
Exactly Brendon, enjoy your trip…
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/143/8a249840-ff5c-0131-6fe7-0add9426c766.jpg?w=740&h=445&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
And still the ocean acidifies. If industrial civilization weren’t about to go belly up, you’d want to cut back on your carbon emissions.
The thing you have to remember is that the MSM across the board has hyped ‘renewable energy’ as our saviour. ACROSS THE BOARD.
Now do you really believe that renewable energy is our saviour?
I hope not.
And we know for a fact that the cl imate scientists have been lying…. yet does the MSM change its tune?
NOPE!
So why do you quote the MSM on a related issue?
Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of clim..ate alar…mism
A paper review suggests many studies are flawed, and the effect may not be negative even if it’s real
The reality may be rather more prosaic. Ocean acidification — the evidence increasingly suggests — is a trivial, misleadingly named, and not remotely worrying phenomenon which has been hyped up beyond all measure for political, ideological and financial reasons.
Some of us have suspected this for some time.
According to Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, long one of ocean acidifi…cation theory’s fiercest critics, the term is ‘just short of propaganda’.
The pH of the world’s oceans ranges between 7.5 and 8.3 — well above the acid zone (which starts below ‘neutral’ pH7) — so more correctly it should be stated that the seas are becoming slightly less alkaline. ‘Acid’ was chosen, Moore believes, because it has ‘strong negative connotations for most people’.
Matt Ridley, too, has been scathing on the topic. In The Rational Optimist he wrote, ‘Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the envir.onmental pressure groups in case the clim…ate fails to wa..rm.’
I agree. That’s why I like to call it the alarmists’ Siegfried Line — their last redoubt should it prove, as looks increasingly to be the case, that the man-made glo…bal warm…ing theory is a busted flush.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/ocean-acidification-yet-another-wobbly-pillar-of-clim*****ate-alarmism/
I really do suggest you read the rest of that article… because I guarantee you — you will likely spend the rest of your life never coming across something similar again.
I mostly didn’t think much about it because it was a moot point — one way or the other we will set new records every single year for burning fossil fuels — because we have no choice….
At some point we will not set a record…. and soon after we will go extinct….
But ya — recognizing that this GW thing is a complete and utter scam …. is something I came to within the last month or so
It’s one of those things that once you lift the hood and look at it closely — you think — this is just so incredibly obvious — why didn’t it occur to me sooner
the breadbasket of soviet union [Moldova] is collapsing
https://youtu.be/SKzMShLaB6w
btw this video show having no industry in the country make people Migration
to where is prosperity
Thanks, very interesting: one of my brothers married a Moldovan girl who was desperate to get out.
She is very nice, and was clearly rather sad to be marrying for a passport, but she told my girlfriend who speaks Russian that people were trying to enslave her as a prostitute. She is a decent person. Her sister quickly found a husband, too.
That’s (early) Collapse reality. I felt that they don’t really expect much of husbands except food, shelter and not being beaten.
Poor Moldova: enslaved and raped by the Turks, and now this.
What is prosperity? The healthcare that is the product of the industrial society… When there is no industry, there is no healthcare.
The Moldovan video really shows the difference between rural life plugged in to BAU, and peasant life outside it. Well worth studying.
And it’s worth noting the fear of the grandparents looking after the their grandchildren: if they die, the child slavers will move in on the young girls, no doubt about it.
What a coincidence… I sent this to an old hockey buddy of mine earlier today… moldova gal involved
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3245282/Jaromir-Jagr-selfie-Catherine-Moravia-popular-Instagram-meme.html
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/22/22/2CA775EE00000578-3245282-Jaromir_Jagr_43_rear_was_captured_on_camera_in_bed_next_to_an_18-m-77_1442956289008.jpg
https://www.skepticalscience.com/2017-SkS-Weekly-Digest_29.html
Time to re re think?
We get warmer .. and we get colder …. same as it ever was
The reality is that the clim ate barely moved at all in the past 20 years….
Rather strange considering in each of those years we burned record amounts of fossil fuels….
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xAdiohdkcU4/VjpSKNYP9SI/AAAAAAACa8Q/639el4qIzpM/s720-Ic42/monckton1.png
And don’t forget — the data you are referencing is likely to be fake…
Because as we know — because a whistle blower told us — cli mate scientists are liars.
https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/zeronaut-archive/uploads/2013/03/033113_2128_1.png
Looks like NASA was correct — the earth has — as expected — compensated… adjusted… by releasing carbon into space
http://theatreanddance.arts.usf.edu/content/articlefiles/4658-muchado-header.png
Oh … but make sure to buy an EV and some solar panels…. suckers!!!! To solve your fake problem.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/14/article-2420783-1BD2956A000005DC-553_634x376.jpg
And this is classic!
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/dt170514.jpg
https://cdn.patchcdn.com/users/22350668/2014/06/T800x600/8cc2eda12327c673e0b45cb1a688b16e.jpg