World GDP in current US dollars is in some sense the simplest world GDP calculation that a person might make. It is calculated by taking the GDP for each year for each country in the local currency (for example, yen) and converting these GDP amounts to US dollars using the then-current relativity between the local currency and the US dollar.
To get a world total, all a person needs to do is add together the GDP amounts for all of the individual countries. There is no inflation adjustment, so comparing GDP growth amounts calculated on this basis gives an indication regarding how the world economy is growing, inclusive of inflation. Calculation of GDP on this basis is also inclusive of changes in relativities to the US dollar.
What has been concerning for the last couple of years is that World GDP on this basis is no longer growing robustly. In fact, it may even have started shrinking, with 2014 being the peak year. Figure 1 shows world GDP on a current US dollar basis, in a chart produced by the World Bank.
Figure 1. World GDP in “Current US Dollars,” in chart from World Bank website.
Since the concept of GDP in current US dollars is not a topic that most of us are very familiar with, this post, in part, is an exploration of how GDP and inflation calculations on this basis fit in with other concepts we are more familiar with.
As I look at the data, it becomes clear that the reason for the downturn in Current US$ GDP is very much related to topics that I have been writing about. In particular, it is related to the fall in oil prices since mid-2014 and to the problems that oil producers have been having since that time, earning too little profit on the oil they sell. A similar problem is affecting natural gas and coal, as well as some other commodities. These low prices, and the deflation that they are causing, seem to be flowing through to cause low world GDP in current US dollars.
Figure 2. Average per capita wages computed by dividing total “Wages and Salaries” as reported by US BEA by total US population, and adjusting to 2016 price level using CPI-Urban. Average inflation adjusted oil price is based primarily on Brent oil historical oil price as reported by BP, also adjusted by CPI-urban to 2016 price level.
While energy products seem to be relatively small compared to world GDP, in fact, they play an outsized role. This is the case partly because the use of energy products makes GDP growth possible (energy provides heat and movement needed for industrial processes), and partly because an increase in the price of energy products indirectly causes an increase in the price of other goods and services. This growth in prices makes it possible to use debt to finance goods and services of all types.
A decrease in the price of energy products has both positive and negative impacts. The major favorable effect is that the lower prices allow the GDPs of oil importers, such as the United States, European Union, Japan, and China, to grow more rapidly. This is the effect that has predominated so far.
The negative impacts appear more slowly, so we have seen less of them so far. One such negative impact is the fact that these lower prices tend to produce deflation rather than inflation, making debt harder to repay. Another negative impact is that lower prices (slowly) push companies producing energy products toward bankruptcy, disrupting debt in a different way. A third negative impact is layoffs in affected industries. A fourth negative impact is lower tax revenue, particularly for oil exporting countries. This lower revenue tends to lead to cutbacks in governmental programs and to disruptions similar to those seen in Venezuela.
In this post, I try to connect what I am seeing in the new data (GDP in current US$) with issues I have been writing about in previous posts. It seems to me that there is no way that oil and other energy prices can be brought to an adequate price level because we are reaching an affordability limit with respect to energy products. Thus, world GDP in current dollars can be expected to stay low, and eventually decline to a lower level. Thus, we seem to be encountering peak GDP in current dollars.
Furthermore, in the years ahead the negative impacts of lower oil and other energy prices can be expected to start predominating over the positive impacts. This change can be expected to lead to debt-related financial problems, instability of governments of oil exporters, and falling energy consumption of all kinds.
Peak Per Capita Energy Consumption Is Part of the Problem, Too
One problem that makes our current situation much worse than it might otherwise be is the fact that world per capita energy consumption seems to have hit a maximum in 2013 (Figure 3).
Figure 3. World Daily Per Capita Energy Consumption, based on primary energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy and 2017 United Nations population estimates.
Surprisingly, this peak in consumption occurred before oil and other energy prices collapsed, starting in mid-2014. At these lower prices, a person would think that consumers could afford to buy more energy goods per person, not fewer.
Per capita energy consumption should be rising with lower prices, unless the reason for the fall in prices is an affordability problem. If the drop in prices reflects an affordability problem (wages of most workers are not high enough to buy the goods and services made with energy products, such as homes and cars), then we would expect the pattern we are seeing today–low oil and other energy prices, together with falling per capita consumption. If the reason for falling per capita energy consumption is an affordability problem, then there is little hope that prices will rise sufficiently to fix our current problem.
One consideration supporting the hypothesis that we are really facing an affordability problem is the fact that in recent years, energy prices have been too low for companies producing oil and other energy products. Since 2015, hundreds of oil, natural gas, and coal companies have gone bankrupt. Saudi Arabia has had to borrow large amounts of money to fund its budget, because at current prices, tax revenues are too low to fund it. In the United States, investors are cutting back on their support for oil investment, because of the continued financial losses of the companies and evidence that approaches for mitigating these losses are not really working.
Which Countries Are Suffering Falling GDP in Current US Dollars?
With lower oil prices, Saudi Arabia is one of the countries with falling GDP in Current US$.
Figure 4. Increase in GDP since 1990 for Saudi Arabia in current US dollars, based on World Bank Data.
Saudi Arabia pegs its currency to the dollar, so its lower GDP is not because its currency has fallen relative to the US dollar; instead, it reflects a situation in which fewer goods and services of all kinds are being produced, as measured in US dollars. GDP calculations do not consider debt, so Figure 4 indicates that even with all of Saudi Arabia’s borrowing to offset falling oil revenue, the quantity of goods and services it was able to produce fell in both 2015 and 2016.
Other oil-producing countries are clearly having problems as well, but data is often missing from the World Bank database for these countries. For example, Venezuela is clearly having problems with low oil prices, but GDP amounts for the country are missing for 2014, 2015, and 2016. (Somehow, world totals seem to include estimates of the total omitted amounts, however.)
Figure 5 shows similar ratios to Figure 4 for a number of other commodity producing countries.
Figure 5. GDP patterns, in US current dollars, for selected resource exporting countries, based on World Bank data.
A comparison of Figures 4 and 5 shows that the GDP patterns for these countries are similar to that of Saudi Arabia. Because resources (including oil) do not account for as large a share of GDP for these countries as for Saudi Arabia, the peak as a percentage of 1990 GDP isn’t quite as high as for Saudi Arabia. But the trend is still downward, with 2014 typically the peak year.
We can also look at similar information for the historically big consumers of oil, coal and natural gas, namely the United States, the European Union, and Japan.
Figure 6. Increase in GDP since 1990 for the United States, the European Union, and Japan, in current US dollars, based on World Bank data.
Here, we find the growth trend is much more subdued than for the countries shown in the previous two charts. I have purposely put the upper limit of the scale of this chart at 6 times the 1990 GDP level. This limit is similar to the upper limit on earlier charts, to emphasize how much more slowly these countries have been growing, compared to the countries shown in Figures 4 and 5.
In fact, for the European Union and Japan, GDP in current US$ is now lower than it has been in recent years. Figure 6 is telling us that the goods and services produced in these countries are now lower in US dollar value than they were a few years ago. Since part of the cost of goods and services is used to pay wages, this lower relativity indirectly implies that the wages of workers in the EU and Japan are falling, relative to the cost of buying goods and services priced in US dollars. Thus, even apart from taxes added by these countries, consumers in the EU and Japan have been falling behind in their ability to buy energy products priced in US dollars.
Figure 6 indicates that the United States has been doing relatively better than the European Union and Japan, in terms of the value of goods and services produced each year continuing to grow. If we look back at Figure 2, however, we see that even in the US, wage growth has lagged far behind oil price increases. Thus, the US was also likely headed toward an affordability problem relating to goods and services made with oil.
The Asian exporting nations have been doing relatively better in keeping their economies growing, despite the downward pressure on energy prices.
Figure 7. Increase in GDP since 1990 for selected rapidly growing Asian exporting countries in current US dollars, based on World Bank data.
The two most rapidly growing countries are China and Vietnam. There seems to be a recent slowing of their growth rates, but no actual downturn.
India, Pakistan, and the Philippines are growing less rapidly. They do not seem to be experiencing any downturn at all.
Considering the indications of Figure 4 through 7, it appears that only a relatively small share of countries have experienced rising GDP in current US dollars. Although we have not looked at all possible groupings, the countries that seem to be doing best in terms of rising current US$ GDP are countries that are exporters of manufactured goods, including the Asian countries shown. Countries that derive significant GDP from producing energy products and other commodities seem to be experiencing falling GDP in current US dollars.
To fix the problems shown here, we would need to get prices of oil and other energy products back up again. This would indirectly raise prices of many other products as well, including food, new vehicles, and new homes. With lagging wages in many countries, this would seem to be virtually impossible to accomplish.
The Wide Range of GDP Indications We See
In this post, I am talking about GDP of various countries, converted to a US$ basis. This is not quite the same as the GDP that we normally read about. It is not until a person starts working with world data that a person appreciates how different the various GDP and inflation calculations are.
GDP in US dollars is very important because energy products, including oil, are generally priced in US$. This seems to be true, whether or not the currency used in the actual transaction is US$. See Appendix A for charts showing the close connection between these two items.
The type of GDP is generally reported is inflation-adjusted (also called “real”) GDP. The assumption is made that no one will care (very much) about inflation rates. In general, inflation-adjusted GDP figures are much more stable than those in Current US$. This can be seen by comparing world GDP in Figure 8 with that shown in Figure 1.
Figure 8. GDP in 2010 US dollars, for the world and for the United States, based on World Bank data.
Using inflation-adjusted world GDP data, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of crisis ahead. The last major problem was in the 2008-2009 period. Even the impact of this crisis appears to be fairly small. The 2008-2009 crisis shows up more distinctly in the Current US$ amounts plotted in Figure 1.
World GDP growth figures that are published by the World Bank and others combine country by country data using some type of weighting approach. Economists tend to use an approach called Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). This approach gives a great deal more weight to developing nations than the US dollar weighted approach used elsewhere in this post. For example, under the PPP approach, China seems to get a weighting of about 1.9 times its GDP in US$; India seems to get a weighting of about 3.8 times its GDP in US$. The United States gets a weight of 1.0 times its GDP in US$, and the weights for developed nations tend to be fairly close to 1.0 times their GDP in US$. The world GDP we see published regularly should be called “inflation-adjusted world GDP, calculated with PPP weights.”
The relationship among the three types of GDP can be seen in Figure 9. It is clear that GDP growth in Current US$ is far more variable than the inflation-adjusted growth rate (in 2010 US$). PPP inflation-adjusted GDP growth is consistently higher than GDP growth with US dollar weighting.
Figure 9. World GDP Growth in three alternative measures: Current dollars, Inflation-adjusted GDP is in 2010 US$ and adjusted to purchasing power parity (PPP).
It is also clear from Figure 9 that there is also a big “Whoops” in the most recent years. Economic growth is at a record low level, as calculated in Current US$.
World “Inflation” Indications
The typical way of calculating inflation is by looking at prices of a basket of goods in a particular currency, such as the yen, and seeing how the prices change over a period of time. To get an inflation rate for a group of countries (such as the G-20), inflation rates of various countries are weighted together using some set of weights. My guess is that these weights might be the PPP weights used in calculating world GDP.
In Figure 10, I calculate implied world inflation using a different approach. Since the World Bank publishes World GDP both in 2010 US$ and in Current US$, I calculate the implied world inflation rate by comparing these two sets of values. (Some people might call what I am calculating the implicit price deflator for GDP, rather than an inflation rate.) I use three-year averages to smooth out year-to-year variability in these amounts.
Figure 10. World inflation rate calculated by comparing reported World GDP in Current US$ to reported World GDP in 2010 US$. Both of these amounts are available at the World Bank website.
The implied world inflation rates using this approach are fairly different from published inflation rates. In part, this is because the calculations take into account changing relativities of currencies. There may be other factors as well, such as the inclusion of countries that would not normally be included in aggregations. Inflation rates tend to be high when demand for energy products is high, and low when demand for energy products is low.
Figure 10 shows that, on a world basis, there have been negative inflation rates three times since 1963–in approximately 1983-1984; in the late 1990s to early 2000s; and since about 2014. If we compare these dates to the oil price and energy consumption data on Figures 2 and 3, we see that these time periods are ones that are marked by falling per capita energy consumption and by low oil prices. In some sense, these are the time periods when the economy is/was trying to stall, for lack of adequate demand for oil.
The workaround used to “fix” the lack of demand in the late 1990s to early 2000s seems to have been an increased focus on globalization. China’s growth in particular was very important, because it added both a rapidly growing supply of cheap energy from coal and a great deal of demand for energy products. The addition of coal effectively lowered the average price of energy products so that they were again affordable by a large share of the world population. The availability of debt to pull the Chinese and other Asian economies forward was no doubt of importance as well.
The United States has been fairly protected from much of what has happened because its currency, the US Dollar, is the world’s reserve currency. If we look at the inflation rate of the United States using data of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the last time the United States had a substantial period of contracting prices was in the US Depression of the 1930s. It is quite possible that such a situation existed worldwide, but I do not have world data for that period.
Figure 11. US inflation rate (really “GDP Deflator”) obtained by comparing US GDP in 2009 US$ to GDP in Current US $, based on US Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
It was during the Depression of the 1930s that debt defaults became widespread. It was only through deficit spending, including the significant debt-based funding for World War II, that the problem of inadequate demand for goods and services was completely eliminated.
How Do We Solve Our World Deflation Crisis This Time
There seem to be three ways of creating demand for goods and services.
[1] A growing supply of cheap-to-produce energy products is really the basic way of increasing demand through economic growth.
If there are cheap-to-produce energy products available, a growing supply of these energy products can be used to increasingly leverage human labor, through the use of more and better “tools” for the workers. When workers become increasingly more productive, their wages naturally rise. It is this growing productivity of human labor that generally produces the rising demand needed to maintain the economic growth cycle.
As growth in energy consumption slows and then declines (Figure 3), this productivity growth tends to disappear. This seems to be part of today’s problem.
[2] Increasing the amount of debt outstanding can work to make the energy extraction system work more effectively, by raising the price that consumers can afford to pay for high-priced goods.
This increasing ability to pay for high-priced goods seems to come in two ways:
(a) The debt itself can be used to pay for goods, making these goods more affordable on a month-to-month or year-to-year basis.
(b) Increased debt can lead to increased wages for wage earners, because some of the increased debt ultimately goes to create new jobs and to pay workers. Figure 12 shows the positive association that increasing debt seems to have with inflation-adjusted wages in the United States.
Figure 12. Growth in US Wages vs. Growth in Non-Financial Debt. Wages from US Bureau of Economics “Wages and Salaries.” Non-Financial Debt is discontinued series from St. Louis Federal Reserve. (Note chart does not show a value for 2016.) Both sets of numbers have been adjusted for growth in US population and for growth in CPI Urban.
Debt is, in effect, the promise of future goods and services made with energy products. These promises are often helpful in allowing an economy to expand. For example, businesses can issue bonds to provide funds to expand their operations. Selling shares of stock acts in a manner similar to adding debt, with repayment coming from future operations. In both cases, the payback can occur, if energy consumption is in fact growing, allowing the output of the business to expand as planned.
Once world leaders decide that debt levels are too high, or need to be controlled better, we are likely headed for trouble, because debt can be very helpful in “pulling the economy forward.” This is especially the case if productivity growth is low because per capita energy consumption is falling.
[3] Rebalancing of currency relativities to the US dollar.
Rebalancing currencies to different levels relative to the dollar seems to play a major role in determining the “inflation rate” calculated in Figure 10. Currency rebalancing also plays a major role in determining the shape of the GDP graph in current US$, as shown in Figure 1. In general, the higher the average relativity of other currencies to the US$, the higher the demand for goods and services of all kinds, and thus the higher the demand for energy products.
One problem in recent years is that, in some sense, the average relativity of other currencies to the US dollar has fallen too low. The fall in relativities took place when the US discontinued its use of Quantitative Easing in late 2014.
Figure 13. Monthly Brent oil prices with dates of US beginning and ending QE.
The price of oil and of other energy products dropped steeply at that time. In fact, in inflation-adjusted terms, oil prices had been falling even prior to the end of QE. (See Figure 2, above.) The shift in the currency relativities made oil and other energy products more expensive for citizens of the European Union, Japan, and most of the commodity producing countries shown in Figures 4 and 5.
The ultimate problem underlying this fall in average relativities to the US dollar is that there is now a disparity between the prices that consumers around the world can afford to pay for energy products, and the prices that businesses producing energy products really need. I have written about this problem in the past, for example in Why Energy-Economy Models Produce Overly Optimistic Indications.
At this point, none of the three approaches for solving the world’s deflation problem seem to be working:
[1] Increasing the supply of oil and other energy products is not working well, because diminishing returns has led to a situation where if prices are high enough for producers, they are too high for consumers to afford the finished goods made with the energy products.
[2] World leaders have decided that we have too much debt and, indeed, debt levels are very high. In fact, if energy prices continue to be low, a significant amount of debt currently outstanding will probably be defaulted on.
[3] Countries generally don’t want to raise the exchange rates of their currencies to the dollar, because lower exchange rates tend to encourage exports. If the United States raises its interest rates, either directly or by selling its QE bonds, the level of the US dollar can be expected to rise relative to other currencies. Thus, other currencies are likely to fall even lower than they are today, relative to the US dollar. This will tend to make the problem with low oil prices (and other energy prices) even worse than today.
Thus, there seems to be no way out of our current predicament.
Conclusion
The world economy is in a very precarious situation. Many of the world’s economies have found that, measured in current US$, the goods and services they are producing are less valuable than they were in 2013 and 2014. In particular, all of the oil exporting nations have this problem. Many other countries that are producing commodities have the same problem.
Governments around the world do not seem to understand the situation we are facing. In large part, this is happening because economists have built models based on their view of how the world works. Their models tend to leave out the important role energy plays. GDP growth and inflation estimates based on PPP calculations give a misleading view of how the economy is actually operating.
We seem to be sleepwalking into an even worse version of the Depression of the 1930s. Even if economists were able to figure out what is happening, it is not clear that there would be a good way out. Higher energy prices would aid energy producers, but would push energy importing nations into recession. We seem to be facing a predicament with no solution.
Appendix
Growing Inflation-Adjusted GDP Comes From Growing Energy Consumption
We often hear that GDP no longer depends on energy consumption, but this simply is not true. Energy consumption is needed for practically every industrial process, because energy causes the physical transformations that are need (including heat, light, and movement). Even services that only require a lighted, air-conditioned office and the use of computers require energy consumption of some type.
An industrialized country can outsource manufacturing of many of its goods to other countries, but the need for energy products goes with this outsourcing. The transfer of manufacturing to lesser developed countries tends to stimulate building in these countries. As a result, on a world basis, the amount of energy consumed tends to remain close to unchanged.
Using data for 1965 through 2016, we find the following relationship between inflation-adjusted world GDP and world energy consumption:
Figure A1. World growth in energy consumption vs. world GDP growth. Energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. World GDP is GDP in US 2010$, as compiled by World Bank.
Another way of displaying the same data is as an X, Y graph. A very high long-term correlation can be observed on this basis.
Figure A2. X-Y graph of world energy consumption (from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017) versus world GDP in 2010 US$, from World Bank.
This high level of correlation can be seen for other groupings as well. For example, for the grouping Middle East and North Africa, there is a high level of correlation between energy consumption and GDP.
Figure A3. X-Y graph showing correlation between energy consumption and GDP in the Middle East and North Africa.
If a person calculates the implications of this fitted line, energy consumption for these oil-producing countries is actually growing faster than inflation-adjusted GDP for these countries. This type of trend is to be expected if oil-producing countries are in some sense becoming less efficient in producing oil. This could happen for a number of reasons. One is that the easiest to extract oil is extracted first, leaving the more expensive to extract oil to be extracted later. Another possible reason for this trend is rising human populations in oil producing countries. These people drive cars and live in air conditioned buildings, driving up energy consumption for these countries. Whatever the cause, this loss of efficiency in oil production can be expected to at least partially offset growing efficiencies elsewhere in the system.
This July was earth’s first or second hottest month on record:
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/july-2017-earths-1st-or-2nd-warmest-july-record
It has become clear that FE cannot read and understand science. His analysis of the public workings of science in tweaking model assumptions for better accuracy, his love of character assassignation, and his dubious sources have finally betrayed his thinking. Too bad.
While people who understand the science will not be swayed, the problem for FE is that now we are questioning his analyses of other concepts, as well. Maybe he’s not so good at detecting lies after all. Maybe there are no eld.ers, just chaos. Maybe abandoned nuclear sites aren’t as dangerous as he says. Maybe people won’t behave the way he says they will when it all comes crashing down.
Of course, you can’t challenge him on these things, even if we use evidence, because he just calls you names. But now we have seen the flaws in his thinking and we begin looking at his other arguments. Who knows what we might find there.
I’m just having a closer look at these assertions, that’s all. I’m sitting here in B.C. choking on the smoke from the fires 45 km from my house, with a west wind blowing the fires closer every hour. We’re packed and ready to evacuate if need be. I have nothing better to do than sit here and wait. If we don’t get burned out this year, it will happen in the next few years, when there is no fuel to put into the water bombers and helicopters. On CBC radio yesterday they said that the only thing that’s going put out these fires is winter. If we do get burned out this year, then we’ll rebuild and we’ll be safe from fire for the next 50 years or so. I’ll lose my bees, but the chickens roost in a trailer every night, so we can just close the door on them, hook it to the truck and drive away. Somewhere.
“I’m sitting here in B.C. choking on the smoke from the fires 45 km from my house, with a west wind blowing the fires closer every hour. We’re packed and ready to evacuate if need be.”
first, I hope that you stay safe and don’t suffer loss.
that being said, there are more fires than ever in B.C., right?
also, the population of B.C. is at an all-time high.
correlation is not causation, but it’s quite sad that most of these fires are caused by humans, right?
It’s not that there are so many fires, it’s that they are so large this year. We had a very cold and very snowy winter, slow spring with lots of rain, then it stopped suddenly in mid-June and we’ve had record-breaking heat, strong winds and no rain ever since. They’re calling it a “flash drought” with dry lightning and record temps.
The fire information officer from the province said on the radio that the percentage of fires started by humans compared to those started by lightning has remained the same for a couple of decades: 60% lightning, 40% by people.
I haven’t done a hive check for a month because I’m too terrified to strike a match and light a fire in the smoker and stand in the tall dry grass where the beehives are.
Of course the fires are caused by gl o bal w ar mi ng….
Historical Drought in British Columbia, what do the tree-rings say?
Seventeen bottom fifth percentile flows [indicating drought conditions] occurred within the reconstructed [322-year] record. Remarkably, none of these events occurred during the instrumental period. The reconstruction suggests droughts of this magnitude have a 21-year recurrence interval. … Our reconstruction indicates that bottom fifth percentile flows occurred in two consecutive years in 1868 and 1869, and that they did not persist for more than two years at any time. The most extreme single-year departures occurred in 1674, 1682, and 1958, and the magnitudes of these departures exceed any within the gauged record, with the exception of 1985. …… Whether compared with the shorter gauged streamflow record from the calibration period (1960–1990) or the full gauged streamflow record 1960–2012), the reconstruction curve (1658–1990) suggests a higher probability of more severe droughts than the gauge data suggests.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169415009786
Some people just hate facts….
I remember when I was delusional and thought the poles were melting down — then I read – in 2014 — that they north pole ice had experienced a big expansion …
I remember how I just dismissed that inconvenient fact — and continued with my delusional thinking…
So I do know how people feel when they read your post above… they will dismiss the facts …
…. because the MSM has already made up their minds 🙂
I too thought C A G W was on the cards once, not to mention the steady state theory, Lamarkism and phlogiston. And even after I calmed down and dropped the “C”, when Michael Creighton published State of Fear in 2004, I remember that immediately suspected he’d been paid a fee by Big Oil to write it. All those slurs do have an affect.
So you are in good company.
https://thedesignflaw.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/men-go-mad.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1
When someone changes their mind on g w … such as Patrick Moore —- Don Draper immediately pulls out the ‘big oil is paying him’ card…
Hang on a sec – why would big oil pay him?
As we know — year after year after year — we burn record amounts of oil….
Big oil does not give a flying f7 89 about the impact of rene wable e ergy initiatives — they do not give a da mn what patrick moore believes or does not believe
Because they know — the world runs on oil — and nothing anyone does or says is going to change that….
The only concern they might have is that we do not commit sui cide by pushing the hop ium drive a little too far….
You have a very serious problem if you take FE seriously. He is a humorist. It takes about 6 months to figure it out. Every once in a while a FW vet calls him out, but he is relentless. It’s what makes ofw so much more fun than other sites.
Hear, Hear!
Thanks for that Ann — but I see the following headline in big bold on Bloomberg just about every two weeks or so:
The Last Year was the Hottest on Record
Right alongside the articles about how we are moving to Mars, how Tesla will save us — and how wind and solar are the greatest inventions in the history of the world.
The reality is that the temperatures have not warmed —- the scientists who were caught out fakign that data have admitted it.
The thing is…
I do not recall seeing that being played up the MSM — in fact if you search for that you will find that almost no major MSM published it.
So instead of ripping your had off and stuffing it up your a ss…. I will forgive you for your ignorance… it is quite difficult to get at the truth — if you operate off the assumption that the MSM exists to inform you
It exits to tell you what to think. And it is telling you over and over and over that gl w is real — that solar and EVs are going to save you…
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-if-you-tell-a-lie-long-enough-it-becomes-the-truth-joseph-goebbels-79-99-98.jpg
‘It has become clear that FE cannot read and understand science’
Is this the science that said consuming fat was evil but sugar was not an issue in terms of health?
Is this the science that tells us that drinking two glasses of wine per day is actually good for us?
Is this the science that told people not long ago that smoking was harmless?
Is this the science that whores itself out to the highest bidder and comes up with results that ensures that the cash comes rolling it?
I understand science very well thank you…
It is you who doesn’t have the slightest clue.
http://imgur.com/a/3FkR0
http://imgur.com/a/bINAR
it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the vast majority of that future “growth” winds up in the accounts of the Elites/Billionaires/Banksters.
Why is Spain doing so well????
They use good imagination. I see Nigeria and South Africa are expected to do better. How? India’s growth rate is expected to increase, in spite of all of their debt problems. China isn’t expected to have any problems. In fact, there are no negatives at all in 2017 or 2018!
Fracking Giant Sues PA Resident For $5M For Speaking To Media About Contamination
http://www.mintpressnews.com/fracking-giant-sues-pa-resident-for-5m-for-speaking-to-media-about-contamination/
I see that the EPA complicated the issue by declaring in 2012 that the well water was safe to drink.
http://imgur.com/a/yZcev
618,000 houses per year is still a lot of BAU.
interesting how the bottom was in 2009 and then a long weak recovery.
8 years of BAU.
how long can this go on?
per one of Gail’s recent blogs, the next financial crisis is coming soon.
will it be worse than 2008/2009? (most say yes!)
have TPTB learned anything from this last crisis? (who knows?)
will the recovery be lengthy? (some say until 2030 or so!)
after the next “recovery”, will there be another crisis in the 2030’s?
indubitably.
the next crisis: coming soon to a theater near you.
There used to be relatively inexpensive homes that young people could afford. Not too many years ago, it was fairly common to see newly built townhouses and some home for about $100,000 (not fancy or large, but OK). Now, builders are only building “high end” homes. And governments have gotten the idea of charging big fees, for new roads and schools, and these are included in the price of the house. So the only homes it makes sense to build are quite expensive homes.
Testing Theories of American Politics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Steve Bannon out as President Trump’s chief strategist
http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2017/08/bannon.html
who?
Bannon’s out so Trump has someone to blame for his comments about white supremecists.
https://i.imgflip.com/sqtko.jpg
Al Gore’s Cli…mate Film Flops – Earth Temps Coo.ler Now Than When He Won Nobel Prize
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-18/al-gores-clim————-ate-film-flops-earth-temps-cooler-now-when-he-won-nobel-prize
http://stockboardasset.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-17-at-6.22.23-PM-1.png
Do you smell that? Do you smell that? Smells like….. victory…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXVGQnJm0w
Why the sullen looks… come on …cheer up g w ers …. this is what is known as good news…. happy news….
How often do you get good news these days? Like – never…..
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/08/17/20170818_gore.jpg
You prefer Joe Bastardi data to NASA/NOAA. Interesting.
What I really like is the fact that a whistle blower exposed how the G w clowns faked their data — because temperatures had not w armed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-glo—-bal-war——ming-data.html
These guys put fake data in front of the heads of state of dozens of countries….
These would be the same numbers that they would have put in front of you… and which the MSM happily published and continue to publish ….
As we can see – when the MSM indoctrinates — no matter what facts are presented — people will not budge… they will go to their graves believing the lie
I guarantee you — if Al Gore himself were to come out and state this is all a scam — the purpose was to deflect people from the peak conventional oil story and prevent a panic….
The g w clowns would attack him. They would say he was being paid by big oil.
I absolutely guarantee that.
How do I know that?
That’s what they did to the former president of Greenpeace Canada when he came to his senses…
Here – check it out http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/greenpeace-statement-on-patric/
“These guys put fake data in front of the heads of state of dozens of countries…”
I’m sorry if you’re upset with the nature of it, but that is the most productive use of what people learn in college, whether you are talking about STEM majors, economist majors, or gender studies.
Among the college-educated, this is called “soft skills” and they are increasingly important to employability. It’s not what you know, but how you can use what you know to meet the goals of organizations.
” It’s not what you know, but how you can use what you know to meet the goals of organizations.”
I agree. After working in consulting, I figured out that to a significant extent reports were tailored to say what the clients wanted to hear. If the indicated results were adverse, we could use an averaging approach to let the results gradually work their way in over time. If things turned out not to be so bad, then we would not have over-reflected the indications.
And of course choices of interest rates and inflation rates could make models say almost anything a person wanter a model to say. If a particular consulting firm was too adamant about taking “too conservative” an approach, certainly a company could find a consulting firm that produced results more to its liking. That is how we have consulting firms (of all types, not particularly actuarial) known to cater to particular groups, such as political parties.
And not for profit websites know who they get their funding from. A person can pretty well predict that they will not say anything that would offend their big donors.
After a while, a person gets sort of cynical. I understand that the Post Carbon Institute is no longer publishing my posts on Resilience.org (for about a year). What I am saying clashes with what their donors want to hear.
++++++++++++++++
And we have seen how far they will go to keep the cash flowing in — some scientists — or maybe a better term is who res …. will even FAKE DATA when it does not match expectations.
Hmmm… who would do that?
OH right — these clowns http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-glob—–al-war——-ming-data.html
I believe US companies expect their pension funds to get a return of 8% or so. How can any actuarial consultancy propose 7% and not go out of business?
“US companies using debt to cover pension shortfalls”
https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-credit-idUSL2E8F54MO20120405
I have not worked in the Pension part of consulting myself. (I worked more in Medical Malpractice and Workers Compensation, and tort reform, among other things.) So I don’t know the particular ins and outs.
From what I do know, however, is that funding is based on a “model” approach. The assumption is that funds will be invested in a certain way–_____%_in Stock investments,_____% in Bonds, and perhaps ______% in other things, such as real estate. Then actuaries have looked at past “return” patterns, including dividend payments on stocks. Expected total returns on stocks have tended to be higher than expected total returns on bonds, so many pension funds are heavily (60%?) invested in stocks.
In early funding studies, actuaries tended to look at recent patterns. And indeed, they could justify pretty high return rates, especially when inflation was high (and they implicitly assumed it always would be high).
A fund providing pension benefits will normally hire a particular consulting firm, year after year. This is more or less necessary, when there is considerable complexity to the model. At any point in time, the model is using a particular interest rate assumption, say 8%, as of 12/31/2016. If an actuarial firm recommends that they move to 7%, this will mean that the indicated funding will jump quite a bit. So there will be quite a bit of pushback.
At the same time, regulators are involved in the process as well. (In fact, I am not really sure where the decision regarding interest rates really lies. I expect it is in some sense negotiated, with the plan sponsors having the ultimate responsibility.) Regulators, not wanting all of the plans to have huge funding problems simultaneously, allow practices such as 25 year smoothing of bond interest rates. This assumption raises the permitted discounting rate, calculated relating to the bond portion of the fund. According to the linked article,
So, the issue probably comes down to, “How high a discount rate do current regulations permit?” Actuaries may have had more input on the selected interest rate assumptions early on, but now, all of the firms will be looking at what regulations permit.
Yea, I got your ‘soft skills’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxFQYw_MmAA
“After a while, a person gets sort of cynical.” 😉
Funding is limited for scientists who are tasked with proving g w is fake….
I’ve never paid attention to data. I just look at where the sea is rising. Easy to do in the Tropics.
I am in the tropics — right on the equator — there is no issue with the sea rising.
I can walk down to the beach areas and the ocean is not inundating any of the properties that have been there for decades
I own a property that is 30m from a roaring coastline in NZ…. I spoke to neighbours there who have lived on the beach for decades — they report no changes in all those many decades… their homes are not undrewater
At Ine on the Tango Penninsula, which juts out into the Sea of Japan, the mountains rise out of the sea leaving very little flat land, so the fisher folk have for several hundred years kept boathouses by the sea in which the lower floor serves as a dock and the upper floor is used as storage space. Many of these boathouses are over 50 years old and some are on foundations that go back over a century, during which time the tiny rise in sea level has not forced them to relocate.
Boathouses of this kind are practical because, on the average, the tidal range of the Sea of Japan is just 30cm. Along the Pacific Ocean side of Japan, tidal fluctuation is over 2m, which rules out this kind of setup.
https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4226/34719670432_9e7bba9881_b.jpg
The sea off Australia dropped – hence the big fuss over the “bleaching” of the Great Barrier Reef. Coral does not thrive out of water.
“Australian sea levels have been falling for 7000 years”
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/australian-sea-levels-have-been-falling-for-7000-years/
Unlike places like Florida, Australia is not made up of water-logged soft soil and swamps.
This show how nothing you know about GW, but you keep writing about it. If I would know nothing about some subject, I wouldn’t write about it.
Current warming speed is 0.1 – 0.2 degrees per decade. You paste some 1 decade diagram with Y axis from -1 to +1 degrees. That is just stu pid. Look at this, and please stop making fo ol of youself every third post.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Temperature_Anomaly_1880-now_NL.svg/2000px-Temperature_Anomaly_1880-now_NL.svg.png
2016 was even hotter than 2015: https://www.ecomagazine.com/images/Newsletter/0_2017/I4_ECO17/NASAgraph.jpg
Once again — we have a whistleblower who has stated his cli mate buddies faked the numbers because the cl ima te has barely changed in two decades…
And heads of state bought that lie…
Did it occur to you that what you are posting is related to the admitted lie from the same scientists?
After all… the MSM has ignored the lie — and just continued to publish more lies on this topic.
Because that is why the MSM exists — to repeat lies to create truths.
This charge is repeated across the entire MSM …. do you really believe unemployment is below 5% in the US?
I will assume not – well I hope not otherwise you are a complete ret-ard….
https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS14000000_2007_2017_all_period_M07_data.gif
So if this is fake and solar is fake and wind is fake and Tesla is fake — just maybe g w is fake too?
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-it-s-easier-to-fool-people-than-to-convince-them-that-they-have-been-fooled-mark-twain-48-62-03.jpg
You got that right Mark!!!
Difficult to unfool a fool?
“If I would know nothing about some subject, I wouldn’t write about it.”
Good point, name. There’s the temperature rise right there in your graph – thanks for posting.
And I imagine you also believe this is true?
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-unemployment-rate.png?s=usurtot&v=201708081603v
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
And I imagine you also believe this is true?
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-unemployment-rate.png?s=usurtot&v=201708081603v
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-unemployment-rate.png
https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS14000000_2007_2017_all_period_M07_data.gif
FE, please inform us what this chart represents? What is Y-axis?
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
OK, US unemployment rate over time. This is probably one of the most concocted graphs the Bureau puts out. Complete disinformation, Fake news.
Yet every MSM outlet puts this out there as absolute truth…
Which again demonstrates – the MSM does NOT exist to inform… it exists to control what we think
Is that data real, fudged, or just made up?
I think you’ve brought up a valid point concerning data integrity.
wow…
you brought up the issue of “integrity” and all of a sudden the retorts have stopped.
interesting.
I have a reply to Jesse’s question but it’s being held up in moderation. I must have used a naughty word.
Tim moderation seems random. I posted with no naughty words a compliment and it is moderation. No figuring.
I haven’t figured out the system either. Sometimes a series of letters is embedded in the middle of some perfectly innocent word, and the system finds it. Very often, I have no idea why a particular comment was stopped.
Is that data real, fudged, or just made up?
It isn’t real data, although real data was used in creating it.
According to NOAA, a temperature anomaly means a departure from a reference value or long-term average. A positive anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was warmer than the reference value, while a negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was cooler than the reference value.
Why use temperature anomalies (departure from average) and not absolute temperature measurements?
Absolute estimates of global average surface temperature are difficult to compile for several reasons. Some regions have few temperature measurement stations (e.g., the Sahara Desert) and interpolation must be made over large, data-sparse regions. In mountainous areas, most observations come from the inhabited valleys, so the effect of elevation on a region’s average temperature must be considered as well. For example, a summer month over an area may be cooler than average, both at a mountain top and in a nearby valley, but the absolute temperatures will be quite different at the two locations. The use of anomalies in this case will show that temperatures for both locations were below average.
Using reference values computed on smaller [more local] scales over the same time period establishes a baseline from which anomalies are calculated. This effectively normalizes the data so they can be compared and combined to more accurately represent temperature patterns with respect to what is normal for different places within a region.
For these reasons, large-area summaries incorporate anomalies, not the temperature itself. Anomalies more accurately describe climate variability over larger areas than absolute temperatures do, and they give a frame of reference that allows more meaningful comparisons between locations and more accurate calculations of temperature trends.
What NOAA refers to as “absolute temperature measurements” is Newspeak for “actual temperature measurements”. In proper science, “absolute temperature” is temperature measured from absolute zero in Kelvin (degree units Celsius) or Rankine (degree units Fahrenheit). What NOAA is doing is unrelated to absolute temperature. They are camouflaging or de-emphasizing the fact that the “temperature anomalies” they employ are not real world data, and not actual or genuine temperature measurements. They are not measured but calculated according to an arbitrary formula.
Absolute (read “reasonably accurate”) estimates of global average surface temperature are difficult (read “impossible”) to compile for the simple reason that it would be totally impractical to install enough temperature measurement stations to make the measurements that would be needed in order to come up with reasonably accurate estimates. Instead, NOAA uses “anomalies” calculated from “baselines” consisting of “reference values” calculated from a limited number of temperature observations made several times per day and then averaged over the course of a month or a year for each of a small number of locations in order to represent the “best guess” of what the average temperature of the Sahara Desert or the continent of Antarctica or some other vast region was over a given period.
So yes, IMHO it’s a fudge—or in modern parlance, a smoothie of statistical causistry (the use of clever but unsound reasoning) dressed up in the language of science in order to impress the laity.
If you wanted to measure the average annual temperature of your house to within 1 degree C, you would need at minimum a thermometer in ever room as well as in the hall, the attic and the basement. You would need to take hourly measurements each day for each thermometer over the course of the year. You would need to decided where to site these thermometers to get representative readings. And you would need to do a considerable amount of calculation to “weight” the contributions of each of these thermometers. The one in the WC would not be equal to the one in the dining room for instance.
That’s just for one house. NOAA are telling us that they know the temperature of the Sahara and of Antarctica with fewer readings than you would need to measure your own body temperature. And they are telling us that they can meaningfully estimate the temperatures of these huge reasons over the course of a month or a year to an accuracy of 0.01 degrees C.
It would not occur to MOREons that it is impossible to accurately measure global average temperature because there are literally infinite variables involved…
So what we get are cherry picked bull shit — like it’s really hot in such and such a place today — g w is real.
Meanwhile you are never told that such and such a place was much cooler than usual… for instance the summer in NZ was very wet and very cool last year — that didn’t make the front page of Huffington though
Well written reply. I would like to read a good analysis of the tolerances of the temperature readings. I am an engineer. I deal with tolerances. There is no absolute certainty in any measurement. Temperature sensors always reference back to a standard. I’ve seen standard references and calibrations at work. There can definitely be errors in measurements, even in systems calibrated back to a standard.
For example, laser power meters…each is calibrated back to a NIST standard to within +/- 6%. However, the company doing the calibration often just compares their test measurement to a system that they have, also calibrated back to the NIST standard. They verify that the system under calibration is within 6% of their measurement, which is itself supposedly within 6% of the NIST standard. So the flipping calibrated system could actually come out greater than 6% difference from the NIST standard. If you think there are absolute known measurements, from large numbers of sensors, all calibrated at different times, and from different references, I’ve got some swampland to sell you.
In other words, two different temp,sensors, manufactured at different times, will not give the exact same answer even when measuring the same temp in the same location.
Statistics must be deployed to correct this.
Name, it is an interesting question how people “know” what they know. I am happy to hear from fast even if he cheery picks. These days everyone cheery picks to get their point across. Only people with no economic exposure can be honest like Gail and maybe some monasteries. Sadly, university are money hogs and so lack honest.
I would like to know what does “Land-Ocean” temperature mean?
in Hawaii, we regularly see docks and walkways awash that were concrete poured above water a few decades ago. at high tide, the Ala Wai Canal, built in 1927, fills to the point that little stone side wall is exposed, and water laps up onto lawned areas. it has that brim full look. Oahu is not subsiding, so that would mean? In lower Mapunapuna on Oahu, salt water is right below the manhole covers, and now regularly floods street intersections there. you could argue for local subsidence, but after awhile, the anecdotal evidence keeps piling up.
Water seeks its level — so why is it that the water levels at my beach front property have not changed in decades?
Oh and BTW — when I bought did I mention that I spoke to an engineering firm that has snapshots of the coast taken since satellites went into the air decades ago — they are mainly looking at erosion issues as the west coast seas are wicked…
I asked him about sea level issue — and he said that has not changed… I said but what about all the G W concerns and he said — oh well maybe in 50 years something might change … but so far nothing has happened.
That was very useful in terms of price negotiations because other buyers were avoiding because of the proximity of the property to the ocean.
It wasn’t CO 2: Glo bal sea levels started rising before 1800
Fans of man-made glo bal wa rming frequently tell us seas are rising, but somehow forget to mention the rise started 200 years ago, long before our coal-fired electricity plants cranked up, and long before anyone had an electric shaver, or a 6 cylinder fossil-fuel-spewing engine. Something else was driving that war ming trend.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/global-sea-levels-started-rising-before-1800-jevrejeva/
Don’t forget that erosion of sand from beaches is playing a role in causing water encroachment around the world.sand is being mined from the ocean and is disappearing.
Down fracking holes, I expect. Some kind of sand is used in making concrete, too.
Sea level rise around the world is well documented at around 2mm per year for most of the last century and recent satellite altimeter observations indicate that the rate of global sea level rise has been up to 3 mm/year since the mid-1990s. From that, all other things being equal, we might expect that a cumulative sea level rise of around 200~220 mm has taken place since the Ala Wai Canal was built.
Last year and this, El Nino has also been in on the act. If that’s the biggest factor, then perhaps the threat will recede next year. But unfortunately, Hawaiians are probably going to have to put up with even higher average sea levels in the decades to come, even if sea levels continue to rise at the current modest rate.
Has the sea level rise been higher than the global average at Honolulu? Other factors that can affect local sea level include volcanism, which can make the land rise or fall, and reclamation of wetlands and lowering of the water table, which can cause the local land surface to fall.
On a bigger scale, the earth’s shape may not be as stable as most people assume. Monty Python were wrong. The world isn’t banana-shaped, but it is sort of tangerine-shaped—flattened at the poles. Also, we know that parts of Canada and Scandinavia are still rising after shedding their ice caps, a phenomenon called post-glacial rebound, with large regions rising by up to 10mm/year. So somewhere else must be falling in compensation. And we know that tectonic movements around the ring of fire are changing the shape of the Pacific Ocean. A single large earthquake can result in a rise in the local land of on the order of 1m. This is how great mountain ranges are built. In the course of these changes, could the ocean bottom itself be getting slightly deeper in the region around Hawaii? And if so, would we be able to measure such changes with current technology? I’ve no idea about that.
I notice from this Wikipedia article, that the Ala Wai Canal has been dredged three times, most recently in 2002. Dredging wouldn’t mitigate inundation due to tidal flooding, but it would help prevent storm-induced flooding by removing runoff from rainfall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ala_Wai_Canal
Why don’t you trot out some of that fake data that the scientists presented to world leaders… to prove your point?
don’t have to. glaciers in retreat gobally, the arctic ocean nearly ice free in summer, starving polar bears, ongoing antarctic ice sheet collapse, sea levels rising globally. it’s all been and being recorded.
LOL starving Polar Bears…I am looking at a white rug as I type Polar bears in this neck of the woods are doing just fine other than the one on my floor that is.
We evolved into Polar bears to escape a Grizzly fate!
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/09/13/2F341D4C00000578-0-image-a-50_1449666917912.jpg
White nationalists reportedly planning a rally in Lexington to oppose removal of statues
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/15/white-nationalists-reportedly-planning-rally-lexington-oppose-removal-statues/571180001/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
that kind of a rally will only “rally” those who want the statues removed.
under these circumstances, this is backfiring on the “white nationalists” and more and more of these statues will be removed and sooner than later.
Money well spent:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/11/481684318/for-the-first-time-in-decades-herring-are-spawning-in-a-hudson-river-tributary
“Every dam should have an existential crisis,” said John Waldman, a biology professor at Queens College, tells The Associated Press. “These are artifacts of the Industrial Revolution that are persisting and doing harm.”
sure, John, we should just get rid of all of IC which is interfering with Nature.
oh, by the way, John, that would eliminate your job at your educational institution.
but you could become a farmer, you know?
and hey, those wind turbines sure kill lots of birds and bats.
Well said David. John Waldman would have a full-blown existential crisis if he personally was deprived of the products of the Industrial Revolution.
Worldwide investment in renewable energy reaches US$ 4 trillion – with little to show for it
http://euanmearns.com/worldwide-investment-in-renewable-energy-reaches-us-4-trillion-with-little-to-show-for-it/
That goes to show the limits – or lack thereof – that the commanders are willing to go to — to serve up hopium to the masses….
Right about now the sheeple are thinking g w is soon going to be under control — peak oil is about to be a concern of the past…. because we are renewable energy is finally here!
You’re sounding tired FE. Run out of ideas you rip off from others?
Most of Fast Eddy’s come courtesy of Google searches….
The originality comes in knowing what to search for… which questions to ask….
4 trillion dollars spent to reduce CO2 emissions by less than 4% over 15 years. Just think of what we could have spent that much money on instead.
Money well spent (sarc)….
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/graphs_tables/indicator7_2013_globemissions.PNG
Money well spent keeping BAU chugging a long for you and you and you and me.
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Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world
That is a good point CH – what are your politics?
You appear to be a NWO value holder.
I am a political atheist
Doubtful
I don’t consider myself a liberal or conservative or republican or democrat. i just consider myself a human.
Don’t worry cliff, some fool will always come along to put a label on you. Society is like a death camp: you have to wear a badge, yellow, red, green, blue……
Politicised people can’t conceive of it being any other way.
‘Everyone has a theory about me. But what I am, I am!’ (Rumi)
“I am what I am” was also Popeye the Sailor Man’s philosophy.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-am-tired-of-the-constant-demonizing-of-people-via-political-labels-mark-skousen-100-96-92.jpg
After a little thinking about the subject, it becomes clear that none of these philosophies really will solve our problems.
Difficult times for nations that rely heavily on oil and/or other commodities for income:
“The mounting financial burden South Africa is facing cannot be dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration, nor reduced to a simple solution, such as printing more money.
“South Africa is facing a few financial hurdles, not least the mounting foreign debt and the financial demands placed on government by state-owned entities (SOEs). The painfully slow release of March financial results for SOEs is keeping us in suspense. However, the financial status of those that have been released show a horrifying picture of complete reliance on government guarantees and bailouts in order to stay in business. If these are not brought under control, South Africa could be dragged to the edge of a financial cliff.
“An overriding concern is the government’s US dollar-denominated gross external debt, which at June was $58.8 billion.”
https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/economy/is-south-africa-heading-for-a-debt-crisis/
“Congo Republic’s Prime Minister Clement Mouamba and his cabinet have resigned amid a growing economic crisis, the president’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
“The announcement comes days after President Denis Sassou Nguesso said he wanted to form a new government to help alleviate the country’s economic problems which have been exacerbated by a steep drop in oil prices since 2014.
“Export revenues have dropped and public debt has shot higher, raising questions about the country’s ability to meet coupon payments for its $363 million Eurobond.
“”Prime Minister Clement Mouamba presented on Wednesday…the resignation of the government to the President of the Republic who accepted it,” the statement said.
“It was not clear when the parting cabinet would be replaced.
“Congo authorities did not fully disclose the country’s debt to an IMF mission in March and it ended up being higher than reported, a fund spokesman told Reuters this month.
“Congo is in dispute with rating agencies over what they say is a default on the latest coupon payment of its $363 million Eurobond. Congo denies it is in default.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-congorepublic-politics-idUSKCN1AX1SH
“Venezuela authorities are investigating the theft of animals from a zoo in western state of Zulia that were likely snatched to be eaten, a further sign of hunger in a country struggling with chronic food shortages.
“A police official said two collared peccaries, which are similar in appearance to boars, were stolen over the weekend from the Zulia Metropolitan Zoological Park in the sweltering city of Maracaibo near the Colombian border.
““What we presume is that they (were taken) with the intention of eating them,” Luis Morales, an official for the Zulia division of the National Police, told reporters on Tuesday.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/17/thieves-stealing-venezuela-zoo-animals-to-eat-them-say-police
Izzat you FE?
According to this article, Congo is the world’s largest exporter of cobalt. https://www.export.gov/article?id=Congo-Democratic-Republic-Mining-and-Minerals
It also has copper mines with higher grade ores than most other place.
They have an IQ problem at the top and bottom no one is going to invest In short they will be another Zimbabwe.
This is what we should be expecting–failures of US dollar denominated debt, in countries where the currency has dropped significantly And the $58.8 billion in potential exposure is a lot.
I was surprised to read that in the Soviet Union it was difficult to get permission to buy basic art materials, just for private hobby purposes (quite apart from supply problems).
But it makes sense when you realise that such materials could be used to create unofficial and subversive images, and hence a danger to the State and its ideology.
You have to provide some details though, date, place, what kind of art.. ?
I guess it’s fake news, lol. For example, if you meant orthodox iconography art, well that’s from certain professional level made from old traditional recipes, i.e. often very toxic and rare substances, as it must last centuries at the minimum.. one would expect not easy to obtain..
I doubt it can be related to regular paintings though, there have been always tons of schools and individual hobbyists in need of such supplies..
Who knows, perhaps you are right afterall, another hidden secret of cold war and despicable terror pursuid by the C-party finally revealed to the whole world to learn about the dark side of human nature under false political ideas.. hah
I wrote exactly what I meant: even basic art materials: all about control. Minute control.
But, yes, it might also have have been directed against the possible production of icons, among other kinds images.
Reading the memoirs of dissidents, the abiding impression is one of total suffocation of the individual, natural feelings and – above all – pettiness, the dull, unimaginative pettiness. I would have drunk myself to death in the Soviet Union, in despair.
Even more reason to fight all Totalitarian Leftists, bent on thought-control, to the very last drop of blood. 🙂
There is/was a wide gamut of dissidents, I hope you knew that.
Ranging from quasi nazis, royalists to sacked Stalinists to weirdos, beyond psychos, and even included few somewhat regular people..
xabier dissidents can tell as many tales as the so called refuges we have living in UK…Two years after the Berlin wall came down in 1989 I worked in the former east Berlin suburb of Pankow whilst my hotel was in west Berlin suburb of Wedding only 200 metres apart but separated by no mans land and the wall that was still very much in situ then.By then many east Berliners had seen how the west Berliners lived and survived and thought the old soviet run system was much more preferable. to the western one.I shared many good times with the east Berliners that went way out of their way to show me just how good and bad things had been in the DDR but the thing that most surprised me was just how happy and laid back they could be,I am still in contact with many of them today xabier and most still think that life was better for them before the wall came down
Oh, I am quite sure of that, I don’t doubt you at all.
But my facts are accurate – it was just an incident that I noted in passing, but that sort of thing illustrates the nature of Totalitarianism. Suffocating and petty, occasionally murderous: a bit like tribal life on a huge scale. Also, we fail to appreciate the everyday corruption of the Communist states. A total dissolution of morals and integrity.
Those who were essentially spineless, and lacking in individuality, liked it – security is all that sort of person wants in life. And they were provided with a basic level which they could not fall below – until that is the State decided to screw you, then it all went.
Personally, I am happy to stand or fall by my own choices in life, and fail if need be.
Most people are conformist, and so can accommodate themselves to pretty much any system imposed on them. Even more so when they are indoctrinated from childhood.
If the post-Communist period had left them wealthy, they wouldn’t feel any nostalgia, I am sure, but it was of course much harder than they expected and so they feel nostalgia.
My cousin in Spain tells good stories about the fall of the Wall, at his beach resort they found themselves awash in East Germans, all the men drinking themselves into collapse in the sun, and the girls just seizing the (very happy) Spanish lads. It was his Don Juan moment!
Bill, most people in the West who are old enough to remember probably agree that life was better for them before the Berlin Wall came down. Same here in Japan. Despite the obvious improvements in technology and convenience over the years, the social alienation, disintegration, economic insecurity and the general sense that things are heading down rather than up is wearing a lot of people out.
To illustrate the point, here’s a song from the late, great Bert Jansch:
“Now we don’t know what we should learn,
What books to keep, what books to burn.
What a funny old world this is!
Keeps changing from day to day.
Now there was a time when it was right and wrong.
It was black and white.
It was easier to get along.
Now it’s only just a dream.”
https://youtu.be/5d6Bk9BilbU
What’s more surprising is that people buy art materials, when hardware-store and found materials can do just as well and are much cheaper.
Yep, that’s has been the bottom line everywhere in the world, plus you could mix up these with some natural pigments to get to the level of supposedly “unobtanium” imported quality stuff..
The art of the future will probably be scratchings on cave walls and rocks, and interesting ‘installations’ involving bones and other body parts, human or otherwise…… 🙂
Democratic Missouri Senator: “I Hope Trump Is Assassinated!”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-17/democratic-missouri-senator-i-hope-trump-assassinated
It’s getting tiresome with all these comments regarding american politics.
any finite worlders out there know how to clean silver dollars when they get mouldy or tarnished any advice would be appreciated.
don’t clean them as that makes them worth less numismatically speaking.
Don’t do anything to them if they are rare
http://www.kitco.com/
A good place to ask
Otherwise, there are lots of silver cleaning cloths and cremes available for cleaning jewelry and silverware.
https://s.w-x.co/wu/201707.gif
Yes, I admit it looks scary—that’s the whole point of producing it— but it’s no more real than the giant shark in Jaws.
Also, even NOAA’s data shows the earth cooler in July 2017 than in July 2016, despite rising C O 2.
Tony Heller writes:
The NASA temperature data is based on NOAA GHCN (Global Historical Clim-atology Network) data. The map below shows where their stations are located, with gray representing no data. They are missing data for about half of the Earth’s surface including most of Africa, Antarctica and Greenland. The only places with complete coverage are the US and Western Europe. The gray areas are filled in with computer modeled temper-atures, meaning that about 50% of the global data used by NASA and NOAA is fake.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-land-sfc-mntp/201511.gif
Tim,
July 2016, during an El Nino, was about 0.1 degrees C warmer than July 2017. Don’t be dishonest. You could mention that 2014, 2015, 2016 were the warmest years on record in the NOAA data.
Guess what — we have probably burned easily 90% of all the fossil fuels that are ever going to be burned.
And there has been no cl imate calamity.
Cities are not under water — the world is not boiling ….
Chill out buddy.
Your bigger concern should be the fact that the fossil fuel age is about to end.
Because that means you are going to die.
Save your moaning and wailing for that…
Oh right – your passion gets directed to g w….. the MSM has done their job perfectly…
You are about to be fed to the lions — and you are getting all upset about the fact that you are having a bad hair day.
This is truly hilarious.
Ken,
Don’t be dishonest. 🙂 The NOAA published temperature numbers are not genuine “data”.
Just as fake fur is not genuine fur, fake money is not genuine money, and fake news is not genuine news, so fake data is not genuine data.
NOAA’s Land and Ocean Temp-erature “data” and similar products from other institutions is presented—by many self-important talking heads including politicians, bureaucrats, Hollywood celebs, Branson and Musk, and even a few people who characterize themselves as scientists—as if it represented the real state of the world’s temp-erature. But it doesn’t. It is a statistical smoothie manufactured according to a complex process that involves temp-erature anomalies, grid boxes reconstructed sea surface temp-erature analysis, data normalization and homogenization, infilling of missing data, etc.
Admittedly, they do feed a bit of raw data into the mix. But raw data is only one of many ingredients. The cooks decide the recipe and final result of the cooking process cannot add up to a fair and accurate representation of what’s going on in the real world. Moreover, in my humble opinion, the claim or the implication that this “data” measures or reflects the global average temp-erature over the course of months or years is certainly ridiculous, fake and false, and trying to pass it off as genuine data is quite possibly fraudulent.
You can read a bit about how they do it at NOAA’s website.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/anomalies.php
How sad birthdays must have been:
“It’s not a real cake.Sure there are raw ingredients but you sifted them, mixed them and cooked them Mom!”
Have you heard about satellite made cakes? They are much neater even though they don’t measure the flour right due to a minutely decaying orbit. Yum space cake!
Don’t try to dodge the issue. We are discussing NOAA’s surface “data” at present, to which Duncan has directed our attention, not the satellite temp data, which is obtained and complied according to a different recipe.
Have you any to add regarding the usefulness of the surface “data”?
For instance, do you think it actually tells us anything useful about what’s going on in the real world, or is it’s principle function a propaganda tool to help manufacture consent or approval for whatever “glowball warm-ing” policies the private jet & luxury yacht oligarchy wants to impose on the rest of us?
Don’t be shy? I am quite willing to be educated by my betters on this. But I don’t suppose that Duncan, you or Al Gore has ever stopped to think about the issues involved in working out the average annual land and ocean temper-ature anomalies from the raw data. Indeed, I would be surprised to learn that the thought that it might be in need thinking about had ever crossed your minds.
Of course they have not — Al has been asked to crawl out of his mega mansion and be the spokesperson for this ….
And Duncan simply accepts whatever Gore and the MSM hand him without questions — because he trusts the MSM…
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NyLjPTTwey8/VSxBJIPJWuI/AAAAAAAATpE/rILodvRnAw0/s1600/twain.jpg
There is hope for you Duncan — remember that I was in your shoes just a couple of months ago…
Musk? He’s the same guy who runs the fake car company … and who is helping us colonize Mars…
Antarctic sea ice extent the lowest on record for July
Sea ice surrounding Antarctica has been at unprecedented lows in recent months, setting an all-time monthly minimum extent record each month during the five-month period November 2016 – March 2017, and again in July of 2017. Monthly Antarctic sea ice extent in April, May and June of 2017 were the second lowest on record for their respective months. A recent study by John Turner and colleagues links the recent Antarctic sea ice decline to a series of strong storms accompanied by long periods of warm winds from the north. These changing weather conditions are associated with large shifts in the Southern Annual Mode (SAM) index.
One year it me lt s — the ne xt it fr ee zes…
Who would have thought that was pos sible!!!!
A nta rctic Se a Ice Re aches New Rec ord Max imum | N AS A
Sea ice surrounding Anta rctica reached a new re cord high exte nt this yea r, cove ring more of the s outhern oc eans than it has si nce scien tists beg an a long-ter m s ate ll
ite re cord to ma p se a ic e ext ent in the la te 19 70s.
https://www.na
sa.gov/content/god
dard/antar
ctic-sea-ice-reac
hes-new-record-maxi
mum
Bad Pig!
http://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Berkeley-Urban-Shield-Council-vote-police-attack-rally-outside-062017-by-Brooke-Andersonweb.jpg
I thought they were not allowed to have facial hair like a beard?
Have The Majors Given Up On Canada’s Oil Sands?
http://www.baystreet.ca/articles/commodities.aspx?articleid=29331#.WLWdJ3-04jg.facebook
That is a good article. The Oil Sands indeed have a high cost of production–more so than the tight oil of the US. They also have a high cost to refine.
But even with this, Nick Cunningham doesn’t see a near term decline. Instead, he says, “Canada will still see some increases in oil production in the short-term stemming from oil sands projects that were planned years ago but are only now coming online. But once that queue of projects gets worked through, there are very few additional projects beyond that.”
What is happening is lack of new investment. That is different from closing out old investment.
its funny seeing how upset ‘grown men’ get with each other hee hee hee
Dimorphic apes.
It is ingrained.
I am an Apeman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo
who knew?
A rapacious ape, discounting the future.
Ray Davies has been a doomiSTANi throughout his career.
And brother Dave plays some mean riffs.
Exhibit A: “Wall Of Fire”
Standing at the end of the horizon / Looking at another setting sun
Nature gave us all these toys to play with / But we’ve abused them, each and every one
They stretched the chord, snapped the wire / Lit the fuse but can’t retire
We’re going to the wall of fire / Tip-toeing on the great high wire /Let’s have a real fire
The city slickers built the great illusion / Now they’re the first to crumble in the sun
Now we’re going through the wall / Let’s see the flames before we fall
We’re going through the wall of fire / Let’s have a real fire
Tip-toeing on the great high wire / Through the wall of fire
We drove on many rocky roads together / Through the storms and hurricanes we rode
Unified so no one could destroy us / We stretched the bounds
But always kept the code / Liberals shout and cause concern
Forget next week while we all burn / Let’s run right through the wall of fire
Let’s have a real fire / Death-defying while the flames grow higher / Through the wall of fire
https://youtu.be/-NxNVmUvnrw
Did you get down to the mall yet this month Duncan? Are you living in darkness in a cave – or do you still have a house with electricity? What about transportation — how does that work.
Please moan more about gl o bal war min g
Anyone else who is moaning about how we are destroying the planet care to explain to us what actions they are taking?
Or are you just wasting more electricity using your computer manufactured in China and shipped across the world to you — to complain — to try to explain to me how our activities are burning up the planet?
If any of you have a private jet feel free to fly out to Bali to lecture me.
the short video i shared on the elite’s coming new system or plan ‘B’ was based on this other you tube video from what this guy is saying China is responsible for spearheading this new system https://www.youtube.com/embed/AiHxJx0dawI
if China is running the show it will be interesting to see how this all pans out…….
China is not running the show.
for better or worse, the USA is the top dog.
look at QE.
the USA stopped in mid 2014 and oil prices plunged.
the USA is still the straw that stirs the drink.
perhaps not for long.
someone keeps predicting 2030 😉
yes america was top dog but not for long china is coming into the spotlight and this will be apparent when the us dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world
You are in that small of a box?
FYI, Using Smiley Faces In Work Emails Make You Look Incompetent
https://www.buzzfeed.com/delaneystrunk/hey-friends-turns-out-smiley-faces-in-work-emails-makes-you?utm_term=.dc86e702O#.rta7xbRKe
but this is not work.
this is play 😉
Point taken–
You are incompetent– and not the brightest porch light on the block.
But, on a alt right boys club site, you fit in.
smiley faces are good fun i dont care where they’re used
thanks, adonis.
some persons seem to think that arguing about the future is serious.
really?
Pretentious snowflake snobs. 🙂 😉 😀
the conclusion:
“Ultimately, investors will catch on and the game will be up. If shale drillers cannot turn a profit at today’s prices, they will need to cut back on production and spending, and some will be forced out of business. That means that overall U.S. production will have to cap out, and perhaps even decline, which should eventually force up oil prices.”
that “perhaps even decline” should be “inevitably decline”.
interestingly enough, he is predicting higher oil prices.
this comment was regarding “Are Investors Bailing On U.S. Shale?”
if not clear to see.
Looking down the barrel – Dr Louis Arnoux
https://medium.com/@GeeeBee/looking-down-the-barrel-d0d7eda9c3b0
Arnoux writes:
“To put it bluntly, we are living through the last 10 years of the Oil Age. Losing access to energy from oil (and as we have seen it in GB’s previous post, also losing access to bioenergy) is catalysing an avalanche of world-changing consequences.”
that sounds possible to me.
that would end BAU in 2027.
and that is VERY SOON.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/mPIA4KZVXv0ty/giphy.gif
who is that clapping man?
didn’t he used to be someone important?
I guess he must have been on some TV show for odd 8yrs, can’t recall the plot, something like he claimed to be an American, doing silly jokes and gestures all the time, often proposing some weird plans or such..
What did he actually ‘do”. I can not recall anything…
Hold on a sec, I just remembered!
Got the peace price.
Then.
Proceeded with:
MOAR WARS!!!! (cuz’ el fatso suburbia must prevail)
Are Investors Bailing On U.S. Shale?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Are-Investors-Bailing-On-US-Shale.html
Good article. There is no price at which getting oil from shale works, in terms of profitability of companies.
We’re running out. Of food, of water, of breathable air. Running out of precious metals, and oil, and rare minerals. There’s plenty of money around, it just represents less and less property, divided among more and more people.
We’ve turned the world against us. The weather has become unstable and dangerous, floods and hurricanes and landslides and wildfires are commonplace, where once they were rarities. Animals, insects and plants are struggling and dying, the oceans themselves are in trouble, and the poles are thawing out. This is a world on the verge of immense geological change, which doesn’t tend to work out well for species that depend on a stable environment.
People sense this. They know times are hard; they see scarcity hitting their friends, families and communities. They see the damage the storms and fires are causing. It’s not hard to see a crisis building.
In times of plenty, we are generous beings. We expand our horizons, we give charitably to noble causes, we try to see that just about everyone is housed and fed. In times of safety, we can provide medical care and social support for almost everyone. Generally.
But when things get scarce, people get ugly. They dehumanize people who are not like themselves, and convince themselves that they’re superior, so that they don’t feel guilt when they have the resources to survive and others don’t. They believe they’re better so that they feel justified taking down other people in their fight for survival. So we’re going to see a whole lot of people succumbing to fear and lashing out at other groups in an effort to establish dominance as the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Riots, revolutions, all-out war.
Our societies are based on laws and trust and power, but most of all they’re based on the idea that if we band together we’re not hungry and thirsty and afraid anymore. The further that compact is broken, the more people will reject society. As things get scarce, and it becomes clear that we can’t save everyone, expect the world to tear itself apart fighting for the last scraps of whatever is left.
are you suggesting that monocultural countries are ideal or at least better?
Quite obviously so, as the fault lines found in Balkanized countries are absent.
Conforming to a dominant culture means that there is one less thing to worry about: we will have quite enough trouble with class and political divisions as conditions worsen and irrationality grows.
Such fault lines inevitably give rise to inter-communal violence in times of stress.
One can even generalize and say that a multicultural country is not in fact a nation, but merely a collection of nations, nations which will, sooner or later, go to war.
The lessons of history are really very simple.
well put cliffhanger but i believe the technocrats will keep some semblance of society functioning and hopefully this will be so as the spent fuel pools are our first priority
Whatever else we are First we are a locust life form. We always have and we have to exploit the planet to live and thrive, but like locusts we can’t avoid the inability to plan for the future and actually get it done. We can see it but we are powerless to stop it as competing interests always stuff it up.
Can you see us saving ourselves? our overpopulation itself has crept up against all advice to the contrary. We have in fact no intention of limiting our total population. As long as there’s food, like locusts, we will breed to consume it. Then we’ll know what we have done, and all hell will break loose. What a jolly picture!
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NbMG4QDS40c/WZW7fvuq-eI/AAAAAAAAkcM/Gc0UzLSD370-UnYcZ_CZ-cdglyYRQ7I1gCHMYCw/image%255B5%255D?imgmax=800
Ok-
http://cdn.triplepundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/mar-a-lago-flooded.jpg
where did you get the photo of my waterfront property?
sea levels are rising by about an inch per century.
persons living on the coasts better start running for higher ground!
and pronto!
hurry!
Even the most conservative estimates are 6-10 feet by the end of the century.
Houston and Miami will not be defended, so good snorkeling destinations.
SF and NYC are actually valuable– we will see if it can be done.
Bangladesh? Venice? London? Goodby, and thanks for the fish.
I just read recently that the Greenland ice will be expanding and sea levels thus will be falling.
is that a “conservative estimate”?
Greenland is on fire, and losing massive ice.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/08/a-huge-forest-in-greenland-is-on-fire-and-thats-a-big-deal/
Falling sea levels– what color is the sky on the planet you live on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1880-2013.png
The satellites showed that summer cloud cover area has decreased by more than 84 percent between 1982 and 2009, and the models estimate that cloud cover has decreased consistently by one percent per year since 1995. It’s not a prediction, says J. L. Bamber, the senior author of the study and a professor at the University of Bristol—it’s more like a historical forecast.
Knowing that summer cloud cover has been decreasing for decades, the researchers compared these changes to the amount of melting ice. There was a connection, and in particular, they found that the increase in summer melt over the past two decades was accompanied by an increase in shortwave solar radiation reaching Earth as a result of low cloud cover. This abundance of solar radiation provides more energy so that the ice can melt more quickly.
The traditional explanation for the ice melt had been temperature: the world is getting warmer.
Temperature still probably plays a role, Bamber says, but it’s not the only character in this icy story.
“There have been lots of studies showing that temperatures have been increasing in the Arctic,” Bamber says.
“Science suggested that was the dominant factor in ice melt. But we found that increased sunlight is dominant.” He adds that sunlight causes about two-thirds of the ice melt, while temperature increases are responsible for the other third.
http://www.popsci.com/clouds-greenland-ice-sheet-melt#page-2
This is the sort of thing one finds … when one understands that the MSM lies. Always.
I grow tired of your MSM regurgitations Duncan. You waste my time with these lies.
Please tell us what you are personally doing to save the planet… regurgitating lies does not count
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1880-2013.png
http://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/greenlandfire-81017.jpg
on this planet, well, it is “summer” in the NH.
expanding Greenland ice this winter will reduce sea levels slightly.
Surely you are just incompetent and ignorant.
If not, we have a mental health issue.
How about you regale us with tales of how you rejected BAU because you wanted to do your part to save the planet from g w…..
“Even the most conservative estimates are 6-10 feet by the end of the century.”
projections of future events are not facts.
or are you saying I am “ignorant” of the future?
tell me how things look from where you are in the future.
by the way, again, this is “play”.
“Even the most conservative estimates are 6-10 feet by the end of the century.”
Who are these conservative estimaters?
It’s amazing how if you stick something in quotes and drop it into the MSM — how people just lap it up like dogs…
Because ‘the expert’ says so.
Remember how the MSM was outted in the run up to the Iraq War — they were interviewing ‘experts’ who had known biases — which were not revealed….
Essentially they were plants from the war mongers who wanted to —– you got it Pontiac!!! — TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO THINK
And it works — they do it all the time.
But Trumptards and Libtards are all stewpid more ons — you can explain to them how they are played — you can provide evidence of how they have been played before
Yet they will not learn — that is the definition of stewpid …. the inability to learn….
Greenland ice situation from the DMI:
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
Lots of nice info on pretty graphs and charts:
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
Surely you are just incompetent and ignorant.
If not, we have a mental health issue.
My considered opinion as a part-time psychiatrist is that it’s the second, and Duncan is using the royal “we”.
I’m still waiting for all these g w grooopies to stop talking about this — and instead tell us what they are doing to stop it…
Duncan – have you given up living in a house — do you have a car — do you shop in the mall – do you use electricity?
I thought so…
You really make yourself look bad when you complain — but then you do nothing…
If you care so much — volunteer to unplug…
Right… I thought so
“Even the most conservative estimates are 6-10 feet by the end of the century.”
That’s just wrong. The IP.CC projects a few inches of sea level rise by 2100 in the RPC 2.6 (which still vastly overestimates ultimate gree.nhouse emissions). Even the ridiculous BAU RPC 8.6 only has sea levels rising one foot by 2100. I think we can adjust.
I had no problem getting flood insurance — on a property that is located 30m from the ocean….
Think about it….
Greenland was indeed green….settled by Vikings. Then the little ice age happened, Vikings starved…forcing them to leave, no doubt the ice cover was lower when the Vikings settled. Gee, the climate varies, and is not necessarily caused by man.
And that would be an Inconvenient Truth — to the g w brigade….
Duncan – when are you going to fill us in on what you are doing about stopping g w?
We are waiting…
Or are you going to continue to moan about everything and shout SEE! the weather was hot today and there was a flood in _____ therefore it it happening.
Come on Duncan — when you finish up shopping at the Mall can you present your plan to save the world.
Can’t we just moan AND accept that nothing will be done?
Unfortunately not. FW is about facts and logic.
The g w issue relates to a wide range of related issues that are directly relevant to the energy issues —- specifically renewable energy and EVs…
If someone were to arrive on FW and tell us that solar and EVs are going to save the world — should we just allow that position to be posted without challenge?
I think we’re entitled to bitch and moan. What difference does it make now?
It’s unbecoming
That’s just more drivel Duncan
I am looking for details of your plan
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/WTO_protests_in_Seattle_November_30_1999.jpg/1200px-WTO_protests_in_Seattle_November_30_1999.jpg
It brings tears to your eyes.
To protect and serve. Our heros in blue errr black.
Strong language but very good
Professor Thomas Sowell knows a thing or two about this “occupy” crowd.
WTF VICE?
http://imgur.com/a/iylok
What would be the environmental impact of that?
Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us
http://www.postcarbon.org/why-climate-change-isnt-our-biggest-environmental-problem-and-why-technology-wont-save-us/
Ah quoting the post carbon institute —- the people who are paid by the renewable energy industry to tell us solar and wind and EVs are going to save the world…
That is definitely where you belong — with the DelusiSTANIS over there — please don’t drag your swamp of ignorance to FW….
and you may be kissing your bit co9in goodbye:
Governments to Control Large Cash Transactions
I have been pointing out the crisis we face moving forward. The gist of this is the total fiscal mismanagement of government for which we, the people, are always blamed. This hunt for taxes has led down the path of arguments for eliminating currency. While people think Bitcoin is an answer, they do not understand government’s hunt for taxes no less the lack of a true rule of law. The government need only pass a law that anyone who fails to report what they have in Bitcoin is criminal and they get to confiscate all your assets.
Switzerland has its “wealth tax” which they argue is nothing just 0.02%. However, it requires you to report all assets worldwide. They then know precisely what you have and it is merely one vote away at anytime to raise the tax or impose criminal penalties for failure to report everything. Yet, once Switzerland has that info, under G20 they must share it with all other governments.
We have stood by and watched India cancel all high denomination notes. Try walking around with €500 notes in Europe and they look at you funny or won’t accept them. ATM machines have been reduced in Europe to taking a maximum of €200 in cash at best. This is all th hunt for taxes because government cannot function ethically no less morally.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/taxes/governments-to-control-large-cash-transactions/
WOW only 200 Euro a day
We can take out 2000 a day ATM spits out 40 50 dollar bills in under 30 seconds.
TD bank They cater to Chinese people so it could be that.
and it just keeps getting worse…..wow!
Beware at the pump: Black market fuel is making millions
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A black market for diesel and gasoline has rapidly spread around the nation, with organized crime gangs using fraudulent credit cards to siphon millions of dollars in fuel from gas stations into large tanks hidden inside pickup trucks and vans.
Stealing fuel can be less risky than selling drugs or other illegal endeavors, and criminals can make $1,000 or more a day re-selling the stolen fuel at construction sites and unscrupulous gas stations, or to truckers looking to cut costs, investigators and industry experts say.
“It’s pretty rampant,” said Owen DeWitt, whose Texas-based company, Know Control, focuses solely on helping gas stations prevent fuel theft. He said the crime is worst along Interstate 10, from Jacksonville, Fla., to the Los Angeles area. “California and Florida are the two worst; Texas is No. 3.”
http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/business/beware-at-the-pump-black-market-fuel-is-making-millions/article_a0fe499e-f4ab-52b7-b2ef-d8c09f08a3d4.html
This happened last year or so in my town in West Michigan. There was a van that would drive to the gas stations and park on top of the gas stations fuel tank. One driver would get out and tell the store clerk that his van was having car problems and they were trying to fix it or would call a tow truck. And the van had a hole drilled on the inside that they would open up the fuel tank from inside the van. And suck tons of gasoline into the van and afterwards would just take off and leave. They eventually got caught though doing it i don’t remember why exactly but it was a hilarious scam.
what began I believe in Mexico is making headwinds and it will surely become far more serious given the ease of making money yes?
Defiant Trump Doubles Down, Defends “Beautiful” Confederate Statues
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-17/defiant-trump-doubles-down-sad-see-history-and-culture-our-great-country-ripped-apar
The el ders are beside themselves….. ‘This SOB has to go says Soros…. but how? … i dunno … if we off him the rabble will rampage…. he’s pumping up hard core elements with these tacit messages of support so that if we lift a finger they will rally behind him….. ooooh that Trump … that bast ard…. oooh …. I am just so angry!!!
He’s a rebel and a half. More power to him.
http://imgur.com/a/hao4b
I wish there was a study of the energy impacts of tearing down statues. It might be negligible…but if you expand the study to include demolition of any structure of any sort anywhere, it might not be.
http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/gh_economic_institutions_seattle_wto_demo_nyt_120199_copy.jpg
Give ’em enough time and they’ll be tearing down MLK monuments based on quibbles about the great man’s views on women (he instructed an abused wife to determine whether there was anything within her personality to justify such treatment) and homosexuals (he recognized homosexuality as a “culturally acquired” “problem” in need of a “solution” and as a “habit” stemming from a series of negative “experiences and circumstances”) which are by today’s SJW standards, quite literally out of the ark, not to mention his exuberant extramarital affairs.
Let’s tear down all statues, on the principle that there is 100% probability that any statue will offend someone in any place, or time, past, present or future.
The south shall rise again those fascists in D.C. will finally be defeated.
With what source of energy? But first, how do you define “rise?”
The cultural revolution now on going in America, the eradication of history and the creation of the new Homos Americanus, is perhaps a bit too slow for their liking.
A real violent and bloody revolution where the Fascists and Antfascists fight each other to death in the streets might be a little bit more funky.
If they get someone from Isis to cut his throat on live TV…
Hallucinations arise when the brain gives more weight to its expectations and beliefs about the world than to the sensory evidence it receives,
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fb/1b/bf/fb1bbf9ddfd4176707c026d25119827d.jpg
http://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/change-384×253.jpg
Duncan, you don’t need to inflict your selfies on us!
Duncan – change? What change?
Do you shop in a mall – drive a car – live in a house — use electricity?
Yes of course you don’t use a mobile phone — saving the world are we….
The international community is yet again sounding the alarm on ethnic violence in the United States under the new regime of President Trump. The latest flash point occurred this past weekend when the former Confederate stronghold of Charlottesville descended into chaos following rallies of white supremacist groups protesting the removal of statues celebrating leaders of the defeated Confederate states. The chaos turned deadly when Heather Heyer, a member of the white ethnic majority who attended the rally as a counterprotester, was killed when a man with neo-Nazi sympathies allegedly drove his car into a crowd.
Trump, a former reality television host, beauty pageant organizer and businessman, rose to political prominence by publicly questioning the citizenship of the United States’ first black president, Barack Obama. Since his election, Trump has targeted Muslims, refugees, Mexicans and the media. He has also advocated for police brutality. These tactics have appealed to and emboldened white ethno-nationalist groups and domestic terrorist organizations.
As they are intended to….
after seeing attack on Barcelona my advice to ofw readers
stay away from extreme busying street in your country
How do you know there was an attack in Barcelona? The only thing I know for sure is that MSM is saying there was an attack in Barcelona, that left 15 people killed and 100 injured. For me, and until proven otherwise, it’s all lies & propaganda.
Remember the killer-truck from Nice, which after having allegedly killed 80 people and injured 200, looked like this:
http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/590x/Nice-terror-attack-truck-kills-crowds-at-Bastille-Day-France-689699.jpg
And then you ask yourself, wait, where’s the blood?
http://www.randalbays.com/images/wto_seattle_99.jpg
There must be some blood somewhere here
I haven’t looked at any video of Barcelona yet, but my instinctive response to any incident these days is to question whether it was real, staged or fictional, and if real, who was responsible. It took me four years to realize the Big One in 2001 was not what it was presented in the MSM, but since learning that that narrative was full of holes, I have always responded to ter ror events by humming the tune of that golden oldie by the Who.
https://youtu.be/zYMD_W_r3Fg
Apparently, this one was real, but just in the sense that some people really died (MSM says 13 were killed, but how many they really were, nobody will never know), since as Tarpley and others make very clear, all terrorist attacks are previously known (if not directly conducted) by the secret services. Terrorism is too powerfull a tool to be left only in the hands of enraged amateurs (aka patsies).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Oh because the MSM told him that.
We have these clowns on this site — who think fancy themselves as forward thinking — open-minded… they think they are so special because they have sort of figured out that the end of cheap oil is the problem that is facing the world..
Yet that’s about the extend of their open-mindedness — on pretty much every other issue they are just as stewpid and gullible as the average f789 wit on the street who thinks everything is going to get better from here.
When facts are raised that legitimately question a narrative — they do not doubt — they do not stand back and say hmmmm…. this may not be as clear cut as I thought it was.
Nope.
Like true moreons … like the di.mwits they are — they quote the MSM — over and over and over …
Yet they say they don’t trust the MSM — really?
How many times does one have to say this before it sinks into the thick skulls of these moreons…
The MSM LIES. Always.
The MSM exists to control the thoughts of MOREons…
The more times they repeat the same thing — the bigger the lie they are trying to convert into truth.
And the moreons sit there like dogs with their tongues hanging out — yes Fast we agree on that — except when it comes to this issue and that issue and oh then there’s that other issue…
ON all those issues you are wrong — they are repeating it because it is true — I believe what they are saying because I have read it on so many MSM outlets…
It is shameful to see this on FW. A place where everything is to be questioned – everything is to be doubted.
How to feed 10 000 from 3 urban acres:
https://www.splendidtable.org/story/how-to-feed-10000-people-from-food-grown-on-3-acres-in-the-city
Problem solved!
“But the key to this whole piece is the fact that we grow soil — we grow compost. So we collect food waste from a number of different places and we have a large-scale compost operation. We wouldn’t have been able to scale up like we have done without growing this soil.” – Hmmm sounds fishy. Large-scale compost operation? Collecting food wast from a number of different places? Is this year round? Where does water come from?
If we assume 40 tons a year is only slightly exaggerated we get closer to the truth.
I enjoyed the optimism and full trust in progress among the commentators though.
I imagine that gray water outflow from neighboring properties is a factor. But since this operation is not intended, (and makes no claim) to substitute for industrial civilization, it would be feasible to drive to where cities process storm-drain and other sorts of gray water, and transport it to the composting centers.
You are aware that there will be no pumps operational when BAU stops….
You really have no idea of what the end of BAU means.
I can’t use swear words here, else risk getting thrown off this precious blog. So I try to tone down my response: What part of “…this operation is not intended, (and makes no claim) to substitute for industrial civilization” don’t you understand?.
Like the clowns who live in Alaska who claim to be self sufficient — yet they run chain saws and 4 wheelers and pick up trucks….
MOREons the world over.
Well, the problem isn’t solved, since people like Will are very rare. Instead, low income places with this kind of potential prefer to jump out of their socks at an offer from Walmart or Burger King to build stores there. They get a handsome little “gift” out of permitting that, I’m sure. But this link DOES make the case for growing food in cities as an aspect of (not an alternative to) our industrial system.
3 acres feeding 10K people is misleading. And as far as this having any chance of solving any problems is a stretch. It is a lot more involved process than 3 acres of land and some seeds. But, I will agree that it is a more efficient food production process than what we are doing now. And probably healthier. Unfortunately, efficiency improvements have been shown to lead to increases in consumption.
Three acres is a lot of land in a city. That land is worth waaaaay more as potential housing highrise apartments. You would have to get 100 dollars a tomato to make it work.
Low income cities don’t have a good track record of producing jobs. They inevitably sell out to big developers, which has the function of raising land prices and driving out the former population. This project seems to avoid that trend. And the alternative of leaving the land to stray cats and dogs wouldn’t produce local jobs either, meaning that obese youngsters would sit on couches and inject themselves with drugs…incurring social and economic costs of undesirable sorts.
3 acres is nowhere near enough — you need to have pasture to graze manure producing animals so that you can maintain your soil….
You also need manure producing animals … hungry people with guns — not an ideal environment for manure producing animals….
Keep in mind people ate people during past famines…. so they will not hesitate to shoot and eat a cow.
I am predicting the extinction of the cow within weeks of the end of BAU.
Anything edible in fact. Hagfish, vultures, crocodiles, grass, you name it
Young children are apparently most sought after …. during famines…. tastes like veal ….
The neighbours swapped their children so they are not eating their own. Nice!
“Unfortunately, efficiency improvements have been shown to lead to increases in consumption.”
Yes. It’s the entire intertwined living system that must be considered. Gail does her best to explain a part of it.
Come on … feeding ONE person from 1.2 square meters. A couple of hundred from a normal lawn.
Only people who don’t believe in limits can believe this is not x100 exaggerated.
Ammonium nitrate cheaper alternative to hydraulic fracturing:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russia-Claims-To-Have-Invented-Alternative-To-Fracking.html
That’s interesting from the viewpoint, they are testing it and likely tweaking for the very application in the several -stans located in the south of the country, those have been badly treated since the early 20th century, hence lotsa hidden potential for these techniques of recovery. Plus several completely new plays in Eastern Siberia and Arctic, could all in total bring about several yrs of quasi BAU extension..
Great! Maybe they can flood the market with lots of cheap oil and power BAU for another decade or so! Than AI will take over from there. 🙂
Remember shale oil supposedly did that. Something is needed to use the cheap oil that is produced. Right now everywhere you look ways are being found to REDUCE the consumption of oil. Now, IF a flood of cheap oil did come onto the market, perhaps we could burn it in power stations…..no, that would crash coal, gas and renewables, perhaps waste it on space solar, ghost cities and roads to nowhere or start a conventional war, winner takes all and starts again.
It was easy when cheap oil first came into being. We had growth, growth to burn on transport, infrastructure of many types, agriculture, R&D, health, military, big government and of course the population explosion to support that.
At the moment the world appears to be just managing to sustain the cheap oil legacy. Apart from debt, where is the next round of growth going to come from. That is of course, if another dozen or so Ghawar’s are found.
Pingback: Sherman County eNews #246 | Sherman County eNews
There may be hope for the long term global economy after all.
“[N]ew energy can appear within a closed system from nowhere”!
Who knows, maybe the oil wells will refill with Quarks?
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/841935/Why-is-there-a-universe-quarks-quantum-physics-big-bang-nothing-god
Why does the universe exist? Physicists have found the answer and it will blow your mind
The puzzle of why there is something rather than nothing – from which all the biggest questions of metaphysics spring such as ‘where did we come from?’ ‘why are we conscious?’ – has been largely solved by scientists studying the physics of the infinitesimally small – and applying them to the incomprehensibly large.
These Quantum physicists first theorised, then proved, that particles simply pop into existence, usually in pairs, from absolutely nowhere.
Indeed they have theorised further that the universe really does not like ‘nothing’ – and perhaps the state of nothingness is an impossible state.
These pop-up particles are known as Quarks and they make up wisps of existence known as Mesons and Baryons.
The new findings seem to break the classical physics law of the Conservation of Energy – that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – showing that new energy can appear within a closed system from nowhere.
And scientists have theorised that the once this principle is proven the rest is just a matter of scale.
A spokesman for science explainer channel Strange Mysteries said: “According to quantum mechanics the idea of nothingness persisting for all time is unrealistic as there’s no such thing as empty space…
Yes, there is just one small problem, the universe has a lot of time on its hands to work its magic. We don’t have the time to wait for it.
Yes, but time could run backwards and the wells could refill with the same oil. The global economy could survive yet!
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/826886/time-travel-quantum-mechanics-einstein-retrocausality
SHOCK QUANTUM THEORY: The future is affecting the PAST
As there is nothing in the laws of physics that states that time should move forward, with physicists saying that time could have gone backwards if things had panned out differently from the Big Bang, experts wanted to see whether this is yet another rule that quantum mechanics ignores.
Shirley you can’t be serious?
Of course I’m serious, and don’t call me Shirley.
Been done! Just have a look in the US where they are rewriting history right now.
Didn’t Orwell say something about controlling the past?
Haha, maybe that is what all this insanity is about: The future is finished, so may as well rewrite the past!
Someone did the search for us;
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” (George Orwell, 1984)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-17/how-can-we-learn-past-if-we-erase-history
The Express is an entertaining breakfast time tabloid read, no doubt, but I won’t get too excited about the prospects of harvesting quarks for energy until I read about it in the Daily Mail.
all well and good but 1 plus 1 = 2 is reality for existence to occur the laws of thermodynamics are the bedrock of truth
But no two physical objects in the Universe are identical.
1+1=2 conceptually not actually.
:This is where you need imagination.
I remember an actuarial article that began, “1 + 1 = 3″ for sufficiently large values of 1.”
Yes, but things do merge. If two clouds meet, they become one. If two drops of rain on a window meet, they become one. 1+1=1. : )
Poetic and all that, but there are antagonistic forces that do not rest.
First things first.
Right. And I suppose that the new energy will mysteriously appear on earth….just like that, instead of somewhere else in the trillions of cubic light years volume of space.
I am wondering if the basic issue is that we are dealing with a system that is open rather than closed. The universe is ever expanding. This, by itself, allows the system to become ever more complex, and to continue to self organize because the expanding universe in some sense more than offsets the growing entropy. Closed portions within the universe do indeed act as expected. But the universe itself acts like an oversized dissipative structure–one that behaves if it is always open.
Algal biofuel production is neither environmentally nor commercially sustainable
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/algal-biofuel-production-neither-environmentally-085654266.html\
“So much for the pretty young lady at Exxon who is a ‘Dr” who someday wants to become an energy farmer(nationalism).
(H)opium farmer? Certainly an interesting sector to be in.
I remember the earlier hype about biofuels from algae. If we had $300 per barrel oil, unlimited land, and unlimited fertilizer, maybe it would work.
.75 of a mile from the North Pole
How about a swim?
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/612131-1.jpg
Crazy. Any lots for sale yet? I want to get a beachfront lot to sell when the building boom commences.
It has already started via floating platform based NPPs of relatively small power output. I guess it would be closed – restricted zone status anyway. So, to get access to the power outlet and produce from the heated gardens would be permit only. That means if you are not in the gas and oil or mil-gov, you will have to be some supporting crew to get there, perhaps even teacher in the kindergarten or such.
Duncan – since you are so opposed to human activities — and you believe that we are causing the planet to boil (even though the cl scientists admitted the planet has not war med in 20 years)
Why don’t you do something about it? Perhaps you could take out a coal fired plant to start?
Joe has mentioned that it would not be that difficult — perhaps you could ask him for details of how to go about this…
Walk the walk Duncan….
is there any chance our capitalist world system can be replaced by a communist world system?
putin is a communist
he is reputed to be worth $40bn
Well, should he be worth $40T, who cares, that’s none of our business, since the bottom story clearly holds as their pop is progressively getting better on almost all fronts, in some avenues very slowly, others relatively rapid improvement..
ps I doubt communists would be as partial to religion and traditions as he and the gov team there demonstrably is..
Doesn’t the Russian Patriarch supply Putin with vegetables and eggs for his dinner from his personal smallholding? The Arch-druid would be proud. 🙂
Don’t know about that, but if you say so, can’t refute the possibility of monk’s waste products (both liquid and solid) being recycled on that smallholding plot. Hence extra compounded divine orthodox powers beaming for da Putin. And that as we rightly suspect, can’t be challenged by fast food driven agencies and their un-cunning plots of the W.
Holy shit, Batman!
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/74/27/57/7427574b5762b00e6be194fce918d08c–jim-carrey-funny-school-boy.jpg
If by that you mean some semblance of BAU then no. The future for humanity is going to be much smaller in terms of energy and material use and population. You can call it communism if you wish.
Dangers of Mixing Alcohol and Opiates, including Hydrocodone, Oxycodone and Morphine
It is dangerous to combine alcohol and any strong prescription medication.
Alcohol can have serious side effects by itself, and it can enhance the side effects of other drugs, like prescription medications, in unpredictable and dangerous ways.
Mixing Alcohol and Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, or Morphine Can Be Deadly
http://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/mixing-opiates/
Fortunately I was in Otago last week and visited a few wineries stocking up on some really excellent Pinot’s … now all I need is that Family Sized Jug of Opiates to arrive courtesy of the El Ders… and I am all set for the party to end all parties…
I am feeling far more optimistic by the minute
Here are my recommendations for the end of the world Fiasco Party:
http://www.brennanwines.com/
http://valliwine.com/
https://i0.wp.com/recoverytodayusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AdobeStock_59751482.jpeg
ITEO — doesn’t this sound like more fun than a leap from the roof????
More likely to die of pneumonia or typhus as things wind down…. Pneumonia is, I assure you, quite nice. 🙂
pneumonia… the doctor’s best friend….
When I had my wisdom teeth out they gave me vicodin and I sat around drinking red wine that afternoon. Best. Recovery. Ever.
i wonder why they call them wisdom teeth
Wine pffft…., try it with shine. I’ve gulped down enough pills and booze to float a battleship. 😉 My liver is stronger than Superman’s chest. 😉
Seriously, you need pheno-barbatol. You don’t want your exit to fail. ITEO’s method is guaranteed. (but a bit of a mind f789 on the way down.)
Q: What was the last thing going thru the mind of the WT jumpers? A: Their ankles.
snorp
lol That is dark!
Btw, pentobarbital is much better but much harder to get. Darvon will stop your heart but is also hard to get. You used to be able to order this stuff online! Pentobarbital is what vets use to put down animals, very effective, quick, and painless. I’ve always thought it weird how humanely we put down our pets, but ourselves, not so much.
Including inability think of any alternative to unimaginably torturous form of chemical executions.
Agreed, just want that option.
I am hoping to receive a package just as things heat up…
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F-yRYx4yJTE/UtEY5gRhDMI/AAAAAAAAAbU/WElsPNnCmfQ/s1600/fedex-package.jpg
I am hoping the authorities will provide me with what I need when the time comes…
But looking at this … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenobarbital … perhaps if I were to fake seizures I could get a prescription?
My other comment is stuck in mod..yes it does look more appealing, but less of a guarantee of success (like Snorp said) 🙂
Merge the ideas… roof top bar… music…. hotties… pop a few pills … backflip
That would really be a sweet way to check out! 🙂
Enjoy…
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/optimistic-nihilism/
FE, you’ve become obsessed with posting on this website, as if in your view the act of relentlessly posting over and over again is somehow quickening collapse. It’s not, in fact it has no effect whatsoever. I worry for you if collapse doesn’t occur fast enough to fit your view of it’s timeline. For example what if it doesn’t occur for two more decades – how many posts will you have written – 10’s of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands but to what end? At the end of the day what do you have to show for the time and effort spent relentlessly and obsessively posting the same line of thought over and over again? Answer: Nothing.
What’s the math. Every day = 120 FE posts (as an example) X 365 days = 43,800 posts a year X 2 decades (20 years) = 876,000 posts and with the one’s you’ve already posted would bring the grand total to well over 1,000,000 posts that = nothing achieved (or the approx. same number of cigarettes John Wayne smoked). No different really than the proverbial red queen running in place faster and faster, getting no where.
Arguably, posting a comment on OFW is less harmful to to the health than smoking a cigarette, and about as pleasant for the person indulging in the vice.
On the bigger issue of what do we have to show for the time and effort we spend, there we are in the realms of philosophy and value judgements. Cheops left a huge pyramid as his monument, for all the good it has done him. But most of us will leave only traces that disappear like tears in rain. So it comes down to doing what amuses us or doing what we feel passes for “the good life”.
Killing God and rubbishing religion has left each of us, quite literally, free do determine our own values, reasons, purposes and desiderata without reference to what other people think.
“Killing God and rubbishing religion has left each of us, quite literally, free do determine our own values, reasons, purposes and desiderata without reference to what other people think.”
Good point!
Chris Rea was an early predictor…
“And all the roads jam up with credit and there’s nothing you can do – it’s all just bits of paper flying away from you.” Prescient!
Cool, thanks, never heard this. (or of him) I like it 🙂
Here is a contribution of a similar nature.
One more that is the ultimate song about the IMF
(check out that Surfcaster Kurt)
I predict FE and other instantdoomistanis here will enter a crisis of faith within a couple of years. Maybe they will understand that things go on, even if GDP growth (aka debt growth aka numbers on computer screens) is negative, even if some snowflakes are eating rats, even if restaurants and malls shut down.
Money printing can go on as long as the money printers have access to food, water, health and security.
“You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll, uh… you’ll go insane” –Mad Max
food water etc—are delivered by surplus energy
its as well to bear that in mind
I agree, but we always end up in this final disputed zone:
Is surplus energy and its control-delivery-usage subject to regional-cluster differentiation – in other word is even attempted autarky of few decades impossible in today’s global world? How long are the CNC machines made in Germany, Japan, S.Korea (and other imported complex hardware) going to last with no spare parts and or necessity to put forward domestic analogue replacement for them being largely an illusion..
Yes, worldof, that is the key question.
All down together, or bit by bit?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating…….
The CNC machines isn’t the problem. It’s the semiconductor fabrication equipment and know how. However, there seem to be “no limits” for semiconductor growth.
http://www.icinsights.com/files/images/bulletin20160307Fig01.png
The software for running the CNC machines are “eternal”, stored away in gitlab and as source code on the users and developers machines. In many senses a modern CNC machine is manufactured by off the shelf parts and FOSS software.
Popular old machines are being retrofitted with some spiffy new hardware increasing the productivity and capability. Many small shops own quite advanced machinery these days.
http://www.centroidcnc.com/images/shizuoka-before-after1200.jpg
I think we can agree that the centralized world is turning distributed with small pockets of know-how. 🙂
“I predict FE and other instantdoomistanis here will enter a crisis of faith within a couple of years.”
In a couple of years, should they pass without major financial incident, the oil industry’s ongoing cuts in E&P investment will result in such a dramatic tightening of the market that prices will try to rocket upwards. We have already seen what oil price spikes do to heavily indebted consumers and economies. To me that is a backstop guarantor of financial chaos, assuming we navigate safely past various geopolitical and financial threats in the interim (Chinese debt, US debt ceiling, auto bubbles on both sides of the Atlantic, Italian election, North Korean crisis, worsening pressure on oil and commodity exporting nations like Venezuela, Nigeria, Congo, Brazil and South Africa etc. etc.)
But if the central banks somehow keep the game going, I will suffer no crisis of faith because I have made no leap of faith. Rather I sift the evidence and see what is most likely – and that, unfortunately, is a rapid loss of socio-economic complexity at some unknowable point in the not too distant future. I have yet to come across a credible refutation of David Korowicz’s ‘Trade Off’ paper, so for the time being that is my ‘gold standard’ analysis of financial collapse dynamics. As an enthusiastic consumer of hot showers and fresh groceries, I am in no hurry for the party to end and would be thrilled to read such a refutation.
I enjoy your posts, this one was very good, thanks. 🙂
Thanks, Mark, if the nice compliment was for me – it can be hard to tell who is replying to whom in these long threads.
It is a long thread Harry, If I were to guess, you are from the UK?
Yes!
Some people are drooling all over themselves for the eventual prospect of gods giving them another chance participating at the triangle of doom v2.0, leveraged shorting oil & utilities, hah
We just don’t know, it could all snap at the next cycle or we might get more durable (in yrs) sort of zigzag pattern instead..
There will be no crisis of faith for me.
The system will stagger on – as it is doing — the CBs will continue to do whatever it takes to keep BAU alive ….
And I will … month after month — be amazed that they have extended things as long as they have… I will applaud and thank them for being so creative …
And then one very sad and no doubt scary day — it will all unravel — the power will go off — and I will be sitting there saying to myself — holy f789
This is it.
Many are here because they have had their crisis of faith. They have seen through the noise and recognise the predicament. Timing is difficult to determine but trajectory is not.
+++++
Everybody here agrees on the trajectory and more or less on how things will end. But I think it is foolish to only accept one theory as the truth. Consider multiple scenarios and roughly assign probabilities to them instead.
If BAU continues for 10 years and then instacollapses into ELE. Is that fast or slow collapse?
“Hope is a moment now long passed.”
“The shadow of death is the one I cast.”
-The Warrior Song
“At the end of the day what do you have to show for the time and effort spent relentlessly and obsessively posting the same line of thought over and over again? ” – peace of mind. There is something liberating in acknowledging what must occur. For me, it makes it easier to accept my fate when the time comes.
We are attending our own wake … so to say… cathartic in a way I suppose….
“At the end of the day what do you have to show for the time and effort spent relentlessly and obsessively posting the same line of thought over and over again? Answer: Nothing.”
Given that we are in colossal overshoot and our population is, by one mechanism or another, due a very sharp correction, if not total elimination, you could reasonably argue that any and all human endeavours are pretty pointless at this juncture. At least most here on OFW are cognizant of our predicament, which is more than you can say for the vast bulk of humanity.
+++++
I think of pointlessness as the basic premise for human endeavor. But I also accept the premise that all living creatures want to continue living. There’s no ultimate point to that that I’m aware of, but maintaining life is an unavoidable aspect our construction.
You can generally get “agreement” from other living “things” (and I have yet to see a convincing scientific definition of what is not a living thing) that maintaining living systems (natural, social, industrial or other) is as good a purpose for living as can be found.
Well said Harry
Buford…. what are you putting your efforts into that are more worthwhile?
When I realized there was no future I stopped investing in the future — both financially and emotionally … I invest in now — in enjoying what time is left.
Anyone who is still living their life as if they are going to be around for much longer — well those are the people you should be directing your criticisms against…
They are the ones who well and truly are wasting their time and energy.
Pity them if you must pity someone.
You really should not pity me — I am a doomsday rock star. Living large to the bitter end
Apart from the fact that an infrastructure program managed by Trump would mostly benefit rich developers, how likely is it that the entropy it would entail ever be compensated for?
Entropy can never be compensated for. In this case I think maintaining capital is the wrong decision – the capital we have is not profitable. Instead we should start selectively abandoning it. Let some road go back to gravel, etc.
I was thinking of the entropy inherent in NEW infrastructure. This is usually what TPTB see infrastructure as.being.
The real problem will lay with the financial system. World economic growth is declining; world debt accumulation is at least 10 times higher than GDP growth. The only way that this debt can be serviced is through the blatant printing being done by the central banks. That requires a functioning credit market to distribute the fiat. The credit markets have for the most part been tapped out. Everything has been tried; from zero down, zero %, 8 year can loans to financing over a $ trillion in shale that will never be repaid. The US government has over $20 trillion in debt, and it may not be politically possible to expand that much more. Once the credit markets can no longer absorb the central banks printing the world will fall into $250 trillion of cascading defaults. The end for modern civilization will come rapidly, and harshly.
Both sobering and this is, unfortunately, more likely a nearer term event than 2030. They will need a massive new narrative to get through this bottleneck
But, still, 2030 would be nice tho’!
Won’t they just write off the loans and continue lending mo money? I am not being sarcastic either, because it seems like the CB’s are capable of just about anything when it comes to money. They’re our modern day equivalent of Merlin.
Thats why I think society will collapse ( people will become more and more tribal, and less and less governable ) before the financial system collapses.
My guess is that fewer and fewer people will be on the benefit side of the equation, so those outside of it begin to sabotage it via the grey and black-markets. India is leading the way in this regard IMHO.
The tribe is a valuable survival mechanism: but unfortunately attempting to implement it in our complex and incoherent societies will be fatal.
Political parties will be our tribes, sometimes with a racial basis, more often with a class basis, and that invariably leads to street violence and the loss of civil liberties, the rise of dictatorships in an attempt to restore order.
you correct about India become more tribal and lees governable
for ex they are two groups in my country -one is who supporting anything
what prime minster aka[dictator] do
and another groups is who oppose anything prime minster does
TWP
What do we do with people? Hit their heads with a brick? Even that wouldn’t work… 🙂
“It seems like the CB’s are capable of just about anything when it comes to money” – Ummm they have the power to print as much as they want and set the interest rates on lending it out. Fortunately for the CB, energy is traded in Dollars. So that gives it purchasing power. The bad thing, is energy is not as infinite as Dollars.
not quite everything has been tried once we have a digital currency with negative interest rates all the time then i would agree with you the CB”S will go to hyper-inflation if all else fails
ongoing energy must be produced —and converted into goods and services— faster than ongoing debt
the only thing you need to know about an industry driven economy
The problem is that there are evidently intervening periods injected into such “common sense laws” as you described above, which can effectively suppress or derail unwanted side effects for decades (earlier stages) or many years (likely today’s advanced stage).
Therefore, in sort of short human lifespan these games usually tend play a lot of detrimental effect on supposedly logic decisions.. lolz..
the ”intervening periods” you speak of are inevitable short term ”depressions” as the result of various aspects of human behaviour—once every decade or so.
the overall ”progression” i put forward doesn’t change inevitability, or the fundamental law i set out, but of course these variations make things appear to be different in different places at different times for different reasons
it doesnt alter the endgame
Before you go to bed at night imagine the hundreds of millions of cars, buses, 18 wheelers on all the US highways all zooming around 24/7. This goes on and on and on, burning more fuel night and day even as you sleep. Homes burning fuel to power them with electricity 24/7. All this has to keep going or your homes value falls to zero. You job disappears. The food in the stores disappears. To make matters worse, there has to be growth in the system to accommodate retirees, insurance, interest and debt. That means the amount of fuel burned has to grow and the economy has to grow. It is an endless quagmire. If it slows or stops everything falls apart. The key thing to remember is that once the energy flows stop everything you think has value – doesn’t anymore.
Well, that’s often repeated visual here meant as some sort of universally valid argument.
Which is not, as we know most of the retiree benefits based on market dynamics are already hollow empty charade without real churn. The growth metrics became so biased and non transparent, the growth most likely doesn’t exist even for the G20, probably nor for the G8 for some time already.. The purchasing power has been falling for decades for the ~80% of the pop etc. We found ourselves definitely in severe overshoot, yet this gargantuan mind trick rolls on..
On my rusty bike (Made in China) I cross on my way into town a small bridge which goes over one of the main road arteries of the UK, linking North and South.
I sometimes stop to contemplate the ceaseless flow of trucks and vans, some almost as big in volume as my house.
Without them,we are truly finished.
The other day I went unusually early into town, and noted all the tricks and vans delivering supplies to the shops. At the 18th century pub in the centre, the deliveries were being made by a huge vehicle carrying the logo of an international logistics firm. Not so long ago, it would have been by cart from the surrounding market gardens and farms. The Corn Market building, only 100 years or so old, is now only used for concerts.
The last time I saw a cart in town, driven by gypsies, kids staring at their i-phones were too stupid to step out of the way, they didn’t even seem to see it as a vehicle.
Our civilisation IS trucking. May they roll for as long as possible!
It is only when you visit India (and I suppose other lesser developed countries) that you see people pushing hand carts, to get goods to their desired locations.
I guess it pays to remember that this is a site that deals with the energy problems facing the world, and so it pays to not waste too much of our own energies arguing over it.
I find that he different views are interesting so long as they are informed. If not, then they are a waste of electrons and I can skip over them. There are plenty of others on here who are happy to sort them out.
For all of us, the financial, social, and political ramifications in the short-term are far more important than a putative Collapse date – loss of employment stability; of purchasing power; the political decline into extreme polarisation and sectarianism (see Charlottesville and the quite bitter division of Britain over Brexit, etc); the emergence everywhere of effectively totalitarian societies immersed in propaganda; the undermining of established constitutional democracies – witness the concerted attempts to over-ride the result of the US elections and conduct blatantly a soft coup against Trump, and to dismiss the Brexit referendum result, and so on.
Even if the Collapse date in the advanced economies were to be 2045, for us as individuals and families it is the journey there that will matter.
In the way that a quick bullet in the head when arrested was by far preferable to taking the train to Auschwitz, or being beaten to death with clubs by Latvian peasants. Same end, but a very different experience in each case.
Very powerful summary, societies at distress affect even the (semi)affluent classes. As the calm period simply ends, it’s no more pleasant to anybody..
Sorry David there are to many “If’s” for your 2030 collapse hypothesis. IF the economy doesn’t stop growing and collapse by then. IF there no massive resource shortages. IF there is no major war. IF the oil, coal and gas industry don’t go out of business. IF Saudi Arabia doesn’t collapse.etc…
I sure appreciate this list for all the informed opinions on the speed of collapse. I’ve been anticipating collapse for many years now. I agree that prepping is a waste of time, especially at my age (58). I’ll be very surprised if we make to 2020.
I’m trying to think of a few more bucket list items to knock off in the time remaining. Going to Cleveland next weekend to take in a pennant race series. Got box seats and staying at the Ritz Carlton. Why not? Planning another trip to Belize in March to stay at Francis Ford Coppola’s first class eco-lodges. If we make that far.
You are in good company on this site…many of us here are of the same opinion (as I have said here before I would be surprised (and pleased) if I saw my 50th (July 2021))…just enjoy every day..Carpe Diem have been my favourite 2 words for a few years now 🙂
Excellent! All this activity contributes to more burning of coal which = growth which = more BAU…
You may be adding a few seconds to all of our lives by Living Large like this…. every little bit counts!
Cathal Haughian August 13, 2017 at 10:35 am
The Reset has begun. Final preps now.
okay, so that is his opinion.
like both of us, he cannot see into the future.
he could be sort of right but be wrong on the timing, like lots of Collapsestani’s guesses.
October could be a disaster: we know those October stock markets!
January 1st 2018 could be a disaster.
I see EROI declining slowly for perhaps a decade.
the end of BAU:
slowly at first, then all at once.
2030 or so.
and that is very soon.
Hmm …I thought the reset was 1971?
2030 would be nice tho’
round numbers are very appealing.
I love how you always say to every near term doomerish claim. “Nobody knows”. Then you will assert that you know and give the date you want to believe in. Even though you have no reasons to believe in that date. And there are many, many reasons to believe that will not likely happen.
Are you for real?
We have been posting here graphs for years, about the coming demographic cliff for the productive age group in all countries (-Africa), which culminates around mid 2020-30s. Some events might push it way sooner, but not later, that’s how it usually works..
There will have to a reaction to this development near that time threshold, most likely materializing in the simple venue of societies not coping with the trend, i.e. collapse, reshuffle into other albeit temporary balance-plateau, etc.
Yeah, I agree. There can be a lot of triage in a declining civilization. As much fun as it is to pretend we are exceptional, fossil fuels are just another energy source at the end of the day and there is no reason to expect their decline to be different than declining soil quality, which also represents declining EROI, and has happened to other civilizations….Here a war…there a disease outbreak…there a declining birth rate.