Most of us are familiar with the Politically Correct (PC) World View. William Deresiewicz describes the view, which he calls the “religion of success,” as follows:
There is a right way to think and a right way to talk, and also a right set of things to think and talk about. Secularism is taken for granted. Environmentalism is a sacred cause. Issues of identity—principally the holy trinity of race, gender, and sexuality—occupy the center of concern.
There are other beliefs that go with this religion of success:
- Wind and solar will save us.
- Electric cars will make transportation possible indefinitely.
- Our world leaders are all powerful.
- Science has all of the answers.
To me, this story is pretty much equivalent to the article, “Earth Is Flat and Infinite, According to Paid Experts,” by Chris Hume in Funny Times. While the story is popular, it is just plain silly.
In this post, I explain why many popular understandings are just plain wrong. I cover several controversial topics, including environmentalism, peer-reviewed literature, and climate change models. This post pretty much excludes religion. It was added for people who find it hard to believe that a scientific article could also touch upon religion. If you want the complete discussion, as the post was originally written, please see this post.
Myth 1: If there is a problem with the lack of any resource, including oil, it will manifest itself with high prices.
As we reach limits of oil or any finite resource, the problem we encounter is an allocation problem.
Figure 1. Two views of future economic growth. Created by author.
As long as the quantity of resources we can extract from the ground keeps rising faster than population, there is no problem with limits. The tiny wedge that each person might get from these growing resources represents more of that resource, on average. Citizens can reasonably expect that future pension promises will be paid from the growing resources. They can also expect that, in the future, the shares of stock and the bonds that they own can be redeemed for actual goods and services.
If the quantity of resources starts to shrink, the problem we have is almost a “musical chairs” type of problem.
Figure 2. Circle of chairs arranged for game of musical chairs. Source
In each round of a musical chairs game, one chair is removed from the circle. The players in the game must walk around the outside of the circle. When the music stops, all of the players scramble for the remaining chairs. Someone gets left out.
The players in today’s economic system include
- High paid (or elite) workers
- Low paid (or non-elite) workers
- Businesses
- Governments
- Owners of assets (such as stocks, bonds, land, buildings) who want to sell them and exchange them for today’s goods and services
If there is a shortage of a resource, the standard belief is that prices will rise and either more of the resource will be found, or substitution will take place. Substitution only works in some cases: it is hard to think of a substitute for fresh water. It is often possible to substitute one energy product for another. Overall, however, there is no substitute for energy. If we want to heat a substance to produce a chemical reaction, we need energy. If we want to move an object from place to place, we need energy. If we want to desalinate water to produce more fresh water, this also takes energy.
The world economy is a self-organized networked system. The networked system includes businesses, governments, and workers, plus many types of energy, including human energy. Workers play a double role because they are also consumers. The way goods and services are allocated is determined by “market forces.” In fact, the way these market forces act is determined by the laws of physics. These market forces determine which of the players will get squeezed out if there is not enough to go around.
Non-elite workers play a pivotal role in this system because their number is so large. These people are the chief customers for goods, such as homes, food, clothing, and transportation services. They also play a major role in paying taxes, and in receiving government services.
History says that if there are not enough resources to go around, we can expect increasing wage and wealth disparity. This happens because increased use of technology and more specialization are workarounds for many kinds of problems. As an economy increasingly relies on technology, the owners and managers of the technology start receiving higher wages, leaving less for the workers without special skills. The owners and managers also tend to receive income from other sources, such as interest, dividends, capital gains, and rents.
When there are not enough resources to go around, the temptation is to use technology to replace workers, because this reduces costs. Of course, a robot does not need to buy food or a car. Such an approach tends to push commodity prices down, rather than up. This happens because fewer workers are employed; in total they can afford fewer goods. A similar downward push on commodity prices occurs if wages of non-elite workers stagnate or fall.
If wages of non-elite workers are lower, governments find themselves in increasing difficulty because they cannot collect enough taxes for all of the services that they are asked to provide. History shows that governments often collapse in such situations. Major defaults on debt are another likely outcome (Figure 3). Pension holders are another category of recipients who are likely to be “left out” when the game of musical chairs stops.
Figure 3 – Created by Author.
The laws of physics strongly suggest that if we are reaching limits of this type, the economy will collapse. We know that this happened to many early economies. More recently, we have witnessed partial collapses, such as the Depression of the 1930s. The Depression occurred when the price of food dropped because mechanization eliminated a significant share of human hand-labor. While this change reduced the price of food, it also had an adverse impact on the buying-power of those whose jobs were eliminated.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is another example of a partial collapse. This collapse occurred as a follow-on to the low oil prices of the 1980s. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter that was affected by low oil prices. It could continue to produce for a while, but eventually (1991) financial problems caught up with it, and the central government collapsed.
Figure 4. Oil consumption, production, and inflation-adjusted price, all from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2015.
Low prices are often a sign of lack of affordability. Today’s oil, coal, and natural gas prices tend to be too low for today’s producers. Low energy prices are deceptive because their initial impact on the economy seems to be favorable. The catch is that after a time, the shortfall in funds for reinvestment catches up, and production collapses. The resulting collapse of the economy may look like a financial collapse or a governmental collapse.
Oil prices have been low since late 2014. We do not know how long low prices can continue before collapse. The length of time since oil prices have collapsed is now three years; we should be concerned.
Myth 2. (Related to Myth 1) If we wait long enough, renewables will become affordable.
The fact that wage disparity grows as we approach limits means that prices can’t be expected to rise as we approach limits. Instead, prices tend to fall as an increasing number of would-be buyers are frozen out of the market. If in fact energy prices could rise much higher, there would be huge amounts of oil, coal and gas that could be extracted.
Figure 5. IEA Figure 1.4 from its World Energy Outlook 2015, showing how much oil can be produced at various price levels, according to IEA models.
There seems to be a maximum affordable price for any commodity. This maximum affordable price depends to a significant extent on the wages of non-elite workers. If the wages of non-elite workers fall (for example, because of mechanization or globalization), the maximum affordable price may even fall.
Myth 3. (Related to Myths 1 and 2) A glut of oil indicates that oil limits are far away.
A glut of oil means that too many people around the world are being “frozen out” of buying goods and services that depend on oil, because of low wages or a lack of job. It is a physics problem, related to ice being formed when the temperature is too cold. We know that this kind of thing regularly happens in collapses and partial collapses. During the Depression of the 1930s, food was being destroyed for lack of buyers. It is not an indication that limits are far away; it is an indication that limits are close at hand. The system can no longer balance itself correctly.
Myth 4: Wind and solar can save us.
The amount of energy (other than direct food intake) that humans require is vastly higher than most people suppose. Other animals and plants can live on the food that they eat or the energy that they produce using sunlight and water. Humans deviated from this simple pattern long ago–over 1 million years ago.
Unfortunately, our bodies are now adapted to the use of supplemental energy in addition to food. The use of fire allowed humans to develop differently than other primates. Using fire to cook some of our food helped in many ways. It freed up time that would otherwise be spent chewing, providing time that could be used for tool making and other crafts. It allowed teeth, jaws and digestive systems to be smaller. The reduced energy needed for maintaining the digestive system allowed the brain to become bigger. It allowed humans to live in parts of the world where they are not physically adapted to living.
In fact, back at the time of hunter-gatherers, humans already seemed to need three times as much energy total as a correspondingly sized primate, if we count burned biomass in addition to direct food energy.
Figure 6 – Created by author.
“Watts per Capita” is a measure of the rate at which energy is consumed. Even back in hunter-gatherer days, humans behaved differently than similar-sized primates would be expected to behave. Without considering supplemental energy, an animal-like human is like an always-on 100-watt bulb. With the use of supplemental energy from burned biomass and other sources, even in hunter-gatherer times, the energy used was equivalent to that of an always-on 300-watt bulb.
How does the amount of energy produced by today’s wind turbines and solar panels compare to the energy used by hunter-gatherers? Let’s compare today’s wind and solar output to the 200 watts of supplemental energy needed to maintain our human existence back in hunter-gatherer times (difference between 300 watts per capita and 100 watts per capita). This assumes that if we were to go back to hunting and gathering, we could somehow collect food for everyone, to cover the first 100 watts per capita. All we would need to do is provide enough supplemental energy for cooking, heating, and other very basic needs, so we would not have to deforest the land.
Conveniently, BP gives the production of wind and solar in “terawatt hours.” If we take today’s world population of 7.5 billion, and multiply it by 24 hours a day, 365.25 days per year, and 200 watts, we come to needed energy of 13,149 terawatt hours per year. In 2016, the output of wind was 959.5 terawatt hours; the output of solar was 333.1 terawatt hours, or a total of 1,293 terawatt hours. Comparing the actual provided energy (1,293 tWh) to the required energy of 13,149 tWh, today’s wind and solar would provide only 9.8% of the supplemental energy needed to maintain a hunter-gatherer level of existence for today’s population.
Of course, this is without considering how we would continue to create wind and solar electricity as hunter-gatherers, and how we would distribute such electricity. Needless to say, we would be nowhere near reproducing an agricultural level of existence for any large number of people, using only wind and solar. Even adding water power, the amount comes to only 40.4% of the added energy required for existence as hunter gatherers for today’s population.
Many people believe that wind and solar are ramping up rapidly. Starting from a base of zero, the annual percentage increases do appear to be large. But relative to the end point required to maintain any reasonable level of population, we are very far away. A recent lecture by Energy Professor Vaclav Smil is titled, “The Energy Revolution? More Like a Crawl.”
Myth 5. Evaluation methods such as “Energy Returned on Energy Invested” (EROI) and “Life Cycle Analyses (LCA)” indicate that wind and solar should be acceptable solutions.
These approaches are concerned about how the energy used in creating a given device compares to the output of the device. The problem with these analyses is that, while we can measure “energy out” fairly well, we have a hard time determining total “energy in.” A large share of energy use comes from indirect sources, such as roads that are shared by many different users.
A particular problem occurs with intermittent resources, such as wind and solar. The EROI analyses available for wind and solar are based on analyses of these devices as stand-alone units (perhaps powering a desalination plant, on an intermittent basis). On this basis, they appear to be reasonably good choices as transition devices away from fossil fuels.
EROI analyses don’t handle the situation well when there is a need to add expensive infrastructure to compensate for the intermittency of wind and solar. This situation tends to happen when electricity is added to the grid in more than small quantities. One workaround for intermittency is adding batteries; another is overbuilding the intermittent devices, and using only the portion of intermittent electricity that comes at the time of day and time of year when it is needed. Another approach involves paying fossil fuel providers for maintaining extra capacity (needed both for rapid ramping and for the times of year when intermittent resources are inadequate).
Any of these workarounds is expensive and becomes more expensive, the larger the percentage of intermittent electricity that is added. Euan Mearns recently estimated that for a particular offshore wind farm, the cost would be six times as high, if battery backup sufficient to even out wind fluctuations in a single month were added. If the goal were to even out longer term fluctuations, the cost would no doubt be higher. It is difficult to model what workarounds would be needed for a truly 100% renewable system. The cost would no doubt be astronomical.
When an analysis such as EROI is prepared, there is a tendency to leave out any cost that varies with the application, because such a cost is difficult to estimate. My background is in actuarial work. In such a setting, the emphasis is always on completeness because after the fact, it will become very clear if the analyst left out any important insurance-related cost. In EROI and similar analyses, there is much less of a tieback to the real world, so an omission may never be noticed. In theory, EROIs are for multiple purposes, including ones where intermittency is not a problem. The EROI modeler is not expected to consider all cases.
Another way of viewing the issue is as a “quality” issue. EROI theory generally treats all types of energy as equivalent (including coal, oil, natural gas, intermittent electricity, and grid-quality electricity). From this perspective, there is no need to correct for differences in types of energy output. Thus, it makes perfect sense to publish EROI and LCA analyses that seem to indicate that wind and solar are great solutions, without any explanation regarding the likely high real-world cost associated with using them on the electric grid.
Myth 6. Peer reviewed articles give correct findings.
The real story is that peer reviewed articles need to be reviewed carefully by those who use them. There is a very significant chance that errors may have crept in. This can happen because of misinterpretation of prior peer reviewed articles, or because prior peer reviewed articles were based on “thinking of the day,” which was not quite correct, given what has been learned since the article was written. Or, as indicated by the example in Myth 5, the results of peer reviewed articles may be confusing to those who read them, in part because they are not written for any particular audience.
The way university research is divided up, researchers usually have a high level of specialized knowledge about one particular subject area. The real world situation with the world economy, as I mentioned in my discussion of Myth 1, is that the economy is a self-organized networked system. Everything affects everything else. The researcher, with his narrow background, doesn’t understand these interconnections. For example, energy researchers don’t generally understand economic feedback loops, so they tend to leave them out. Peer reviewers, who are looking for errors within the paper itself, are likely to miss important feedback loops as well.
To make matters worse, the publication process tends to favor results that suggest that there is no energy problem ahead. This bias can come through the peer review process. One author explained to me that he left out a certain point from a paper because he expected that some of his peer reviewers would come from the Green Community; he didn’t want to say anything that might offend such a reviewer.
This bias can also come directly from the publisher of academic books and articles. The publisher is in the business of selling books and journal articles; it does not want to upset potential buyers of its products. One publisher made it clear to me that its organization did not want any mention of problems that seem to be without a solution. The reader should be left with the impression that while there may be issues ahead, solutions are likely to be found.
In my opinion, any published research needs to be looked at very carefully. It is very difficult for an author to move much beyond the general level of understanding of his audience and of likely reviewers. There are financial incentives for authors to produce PC reports, and for publishers to publish them. In many cases, articles from blogs may be better resources than academic articles because blog authors are under less pressure to write PC reports.
Myth 7. Climate models give a good estimate of what we can expect in the future.
There is no doubt that climate is changing. But is all of the hysteria about climate change really the correct story?
Our economy, and in fact the Earth and all of its ecosystems, are self-organized networked systems. We are reaching limits in many areas at once, including energy, fresh water, the number of fish that can be extracted each year from oceans, and metal ore extraction. Physical limits are likely to lead to financial problems, as indicated in Figure 3. The climate change modelers have chosen to leave all of these issues out of their models, instead assuming that the economy can continue to grow as usual until 2100. Leaving out these other issues clearly can be expected to overstate the impact of climate change.
The International Energy Agency is very influential with respect to which energy issues are considered. Between 1998 and 2000, it did a major flip-flop in the importance of energy limits. The IEA’s 1998 World Energy Outlook devotes many pages to discussing the possibility of inadequate oil supplies in the future. In fact, near the beginning, the report says,
Our analysis of the current evidence suggests that world oil production from conventional sources could peak during the period 2010 to 2020.
The same report also mentions Climate Change considerations, but devotes many fewer pages to these concerns. The Kyoto Conference had taken place in 1997, and the topic was becoming more widely discussed.
In 1999, the IEA did not publish World Energy Outlook. When the IEA published the World Energy Outlook for 2000, the report suddenly focused only on Climate Change, with no mention of Peak Oil. The USGS World Petroleum Assessment 2000 had recently been published. It could be used to justify at least somewhat higher future oil production.
I will be the first to admit that the “Peak Oil” story is not really right. It is a halfway story, based on a partial understanding of the role physics plays in energy limits. Oil supply does not “run out.” Peak Oilers also did not understand that physics governs how markets work–whether prices rise or fall, or oscillate. If there is not enough to go around, some of the would-be buyers will be frozen out. But Climate Change, as our sole problem, or even as our major problem, is not the right story, either. It is another halfway story.
One point that both Peak Oilers and the IEA missed is that the world economy doesn’t really have the ability to cut back on the use of fossil fuels significantly, without the world economy collapsing. Thus, the IEA’s recommendations regarding moving away from fossil fuels cannot work. (Shifting energy use among countries is fairly easy, however, making individual country CO2 reductions appear more beneficial than they really are.) The IEA would be better off talking about non-fuel changes that might reduce CO2, such as eating vegetarian food, eliminating flooded rice paddies, and having smaller families. Of course, these are not really issues that the International Energy Association is concerned about.
The unfortunate truth is that on any difficult, interdisciplinary subject, we really don’t have a way of making a leap from lack of knowledge of a subject, to full knowledge of a subject, without a number of separate, partially wrong, steps. The IPCC climate studies and EROI analyses both fall in this category, as do Peak Oil reports.
The progress I have made on figuring out the energy limits story would not have been possible without the work of many other people, including those doing work on studying Peak Oil and those studying EROI. I have also received a lot of “tips” from readers of OurFiniteWorld.com regarding additional topics I should investigate. Even with all of this help, I am sure that my version of the truth is not quite right. We all keep learning as we go along.
There may indeed be details of this particular climate model that are not correct, although this is out of my area of expertise. For example, the historical temperatures used by researchers seem to need a lot of adjustment to be usable. Some people argue that the historical record has been adjusted to make the historical record fit the particular model used.
There is also the issue of truing up the indications to where we are now. I mentioned the problem earlier of EROI indications not having any real world tie; climate model indications are not quite as bad, but they also seem not to be well tied to what is actually happening.
Myth 8. Our leaders are all knowing and all powerful.
We are fighting a battle against the laws of physics. Expecting our leaders to win in the battle against the laws of physics is expecting a huge amount. Some of the actions of our leaders seem extraordinarily stupid. For example, if falling interest rates have postponed peak oil, then proposing to raise interest rates, when we have not fixed the underlying oil depletion problem, seems very ill-advised.
It is the Laws of Physics that govern the world economy. The Laws of Physics affect the world economy in many ways. The economy is a dissipative structure. Energy inputs allow the economy to remain in an “out of equilibrium state” (that is, in a growing state), for a very long period.
Eventually the ability of any economy to grow must come to an end. The problem is that it requires increasing amounts of energy to fight the growing “entropy” (higher energy cost of extraction, need for growing debt, and rising pollution levels) of the system. The economy must come to an end, just as the lives of individual plants and animals (which are also dissipative structures) must come to an end.
Conclusion
We are facing a battle against the laws of physics which we are unlikely to win. Our leaders would like us to think that it can be won quite easily, but it cannot be. Climate change is presented as our only and most important problem, but this is not really the case. Our problem is that the financial system and energy systems are tightly connected. We are likely to have serious financial problems as we hit limits of many kinds, at more or less the same time.
Our leaders are not really as powerful as we would like. Even our scientific findings practically never come in perfect form. Our knowledge generally comes in a series of steps, which includes revisions to early ideas. At this time, it doesn’t look as though we have figured out a way to work around our rising need for energy and the problem with rising entropy.
this movie claims that there is a conspiracy about man made climate change that it is a plan to reduce population perpetrated by some of the richest families in the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wlNey9t7hQ
i think the whole subject of climate change is a matter of data has there been any huge sea level rise no there has not so we should not waste any more time butting heads over who is right or who is wrong but instead focus on the real deal i think our finite world should blackban any mention of climate change. we could all vote make it fair lets ban any talk of climate change
I have let climate change discussion through on this post because I discussed the topic. It probably should be moved off the agenda again.
I agree Gail, CC is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
I agree. It’s like the case of a jay-walking chain smoker being taken out by that bus hurtling towards him, rather than the big “C” in 20 years time.
I couldn’t agree more!
After yesterdays revelations ….. and knowing that the end of the fossil fuel era is desperately close at hand….
The subject has become moot…. the wind has … shall we say … gone out of the GG WWWers….
They are …..
https://previews.123rf.com/images/nito500/nito5001002/nito500100200411/6474484-green-deflated-balloon-isolated-on-a-white-background-Stock-Photo.jpg
http://www.airport-data.com/images/airports/small/029/029504.jpg
If I were to start eating 10,000 calories per day I eventually I would end up a right fat bastard….
But I won’t do that ….
So no point in discussing that. Any more than……
Sea level rise is a problem for Tropical islands at the present time, and a particularly big problem for south Asian islands. Cuba is taking aggressive action to prepare their shoreline for growing SLR, while other islands are going more slowly. Places like Barbuda are deeply affected too, as are others in the major trajectory of recent hurricanes. But I agree, SLR is not seen as a pressing emergency, for the most part.
Islands generally have a huge problem with affordable electricity. This problem, by itself, tends to make the islands non-competitive in the world economy. This is why Puerto Rico recently went bankrupt, and why Cuba has huge financial problems. Given how enormous this issue is, I can see why few would worry about the possibility of sea level rise.
Stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How would these idiots continue to make lots of money, or massage their egos with even more power, if all their minions were dead?
“Regardless, the market is currently ignoring such realities as the belief ‘this time is different’ has become overwhelming pervasive.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-10/extremes-are-everywhere
This is the only time ever that this truly is different…
What is different is that markets will go higher supported by CB policy — and then they will collapse completely and then everyone dies.
So the right play is to go long the market….
Alternatively if you want to gamble that the end game is sooner than later — take the Fast Eddy Investment Advice — piss your cash away hand over fist — but keep something in the tank just in case the CBs are able to hold out longer than you expect.
Ideally you still have a source of income through all of this… hate to be left completely high and dry
Now if I was a truly vindictive person …. I’d be looking at this and thinking… dry conditions … high winds…. I gotta get my Bic and get out there…. running a drug into a crowd is so not scaleable… and it means death or jail….
No no no … this is much grander….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/10/09/fast-moving-wildfires-ravage-northern-californias-wine-country/?utm_term=.9439407a6835
So you might, but you have no evidence that this is what somebody did. You are just exchanging one kons pirasie thee orie for another.
What I am saying that ‘the terrorists’ can work out how to take town the twin towers….
But they can’t work out that they could cause far more mayhem and economic damage and terror by supplying a dozen men with Bic lighters and motorcycles….
But because you are operating on a very limited intellectual capacity …. the implications of what I am saying …. would not have occurred to you.
But then the MSM tells you what to think and know … and they won’t tell you this.
“operating on a very limited intellectual capacity” – wrong, that is just a petty assumption of yours, because you lacked the ability to put your point across properly.
“What I am saying that ‘the terrorists’ can work out how to take town the twin towers….But they can’t work out that they could cause far more mayhem and economic damage and terror by supplying a dozen men with Bic lighters and motorcycles….”
But you didn’t write that at first, you see. If that is what you meant to say, then you expressed it very poorly. You’ve already been taken to task for your tabloid writing style, of course. 😉 It’s an interesting theory, though, and probably not yours, since you’re not noted for original insights. I still await proof – preferably from non-MSM sources.
I must admit … I do have this weakness…
Sometimes I write stuff working off the assumption people are working with a decent amount of horsepower under the bonnet… that they understand, recognize and value logic… and facts… they understand the implications of what I post – without me having to give them a paint by numbers version
But inevitably I am disappointed… there is a Core of people who do ‘get it’ but they are in the minority …
Now I could explain things as if I was dealing with 7 year olds — but I am still not certain if people would ‘get it’…. because they are not capable of getting it. Sometimes they don’t want to get it
There is that pernicious problem with the MSM and people believing what the MSM tells them to believe – to think…. no matter how simply I explain something – no matter what the facts and logic are…
They won’t get it. They will refuse to get it. They dont want to get it.
They will go on and on and on repeating (like human/parrots) what they read on the bloomberg or on the new york times or what they heard on the cnn….
Martha didja hear that — the Boomberg said there’s a ticking Kllllimate Time Bomb Under Our Feet! Holy mother of Jesus Zeke — you don’t say — I’s knew I felt that heat comin right up through ma shoes….. and remember last week it was really hot —- yep we’s all goin to boil Martha – yep Zeke …. there’s no doubt about that!
Right. I mean, it’s the elders, or Elon, or like, you know, some kind of strange crazy thing, or it’s really ….
Back to the storage container please.
There is something uniquely powerful to the human psyche about the word: “officiall”. If it is “official” news then, it is the one that is believed and registered in the human brain as the correct version (regardless of how ridiculous). If the “official” word is we have 100 years of coal left then, that is unquestionable. If the “official” word is we are going to Mars in 2030 then, we are. If the “official” words of the economist say that infinite growth in a finite world is possible – it must be so. Smarter than yeast? I think not.
Dumber than yeast.
Greg
It was all worked out a long time ago. It was the original magic that kept high priests and shamans in gainful employ. Mind control is basic psychology. The good looking, well dressed, very well paid man or woman staring directly at you from the other side of that brightly lit screen reading a carefully composed script off a telepromter is on your side and has your best interests at heart.
To question the veracity of the hypnotist would be to question the very nature of reality and that cannot be allowed to happen. The fabric of industrial civilisation would be at stake if everyone just did what they wanted with no guidance from the established authorities.
The same goes for fancy dress and props. Put on a big hat and hold a funny looking staff in one hand while making gestures with the other and the rabble automagically genuflects and hands over their gold. It’s amazing. Combine these two very simple techniques and you’re onto a winner. Works in all cultures around the world. Must be something in the source code. An exploit or whatever you call it. Hackable humans – who would of thunk it.
FE, we are told by the government and MSM that there are terrorists. Now, two decades ago, I am not so sure there were any. But after nation destruction and bombing for 17 yrs….yea, there might be some real ones now.
There are definitely real live terrorists out there….
But it seems those guys never do much damage… a truck into a crowd here…. a bomb or a shooting there…
If I am a serious revenge seeker…. I am liking the use of fire…
I’ve posted this before — how many ‘terrorists’ were guided by their minders to carry out the false flag known as 911 – 19 hijackers that we know of — they know doubt had some support that escaped…
So let’s call it 25.
25 men – each takes a lease on a lower floor apartment in let’s say 5 buildings (could easily do 25 each…) so that is 125 buildings in say – New York city.
Each day they stop by each apartment bringing in a little bit of what is needed to carry out the deed.
Then on D Day — they all set the timers …. and down come 125 buildings.
And make sure to set the timer so all the boys have already flown the coop back to the ME.
Now that would some serious bit of terror.
It does not take a genius to come up with this…. nor would it take a genius to work out that mass-arson across the country would be far more effective than running a truck into a crowd.
So what I am wondering is – why we don’t see these mass incidents?
Perhaps they are planned yet thwarted and we are not told?
In retirement, the former socialist leader in Spain ,Felipe Gonzalez, revealed that the intelligence services one day came to him with an offer to liquidate en masse the entire leadership of ETA, who were all gathered in one location.
They would never have been able to recover. He turned the offer down, leading to another 20 years of killings and extortion by the group.
Terrorist groups serve the purposes of many actors in the game.
Deductive logic would tell us there are not really many terrorists.
If terrorists had any brains they would just start shooting transformers.
This leads me to believe the The Universe (TM) is a computer game …. and that the programmers of the game decided not to have ‘the terrorist’ avatars engage in these extremely destructive behaviours ….
Because to do so would ruin the game.
All games need rules.
This would appear to be one of them – terror is allowed but not terror that threatens to end the game completely. You cannot just have terrorists burning down cities — and forests and shooting down airliners with readily available should fired missiles…. can’t have them tossing grenades into restaurants and other public places…. and so on …
Because the end of cheap oil is what is programmed in as the game ender.
Perhaps the terror attacks we see are gov sponsored terror attacks, but the attacks we are not seeing are the result of the non-existent terrorists. Sometimes there are known terrorists, and then there are unknown terrorists, but then there are the known terrorists that do not know they are terrorists, and there are the unknown terrorists that know they are terrorists. Well, you get the idea? Rumsfeld…help!
To be honest…. for the most part…. I really have no idea what is real and what is a false flag… other than 911 — which I am quite certain was a false flag…..
It is also important to keep in mind that the CIA has teamed up with terrorists on many occasions — see Afghanistan vs Russia … and of course ISIS or ISIL or whatever name the CIA calls their attack dogs in Syria this week
That’s all cool and all but…
911 was an insurance job if anything else. Two extremely tall aging buildings stuffed to the brim with asbestos. The buildings could not be demolished so… total nightmare and extremely costly operation required to dismantle the buildings by hand. What to do… what to do… so Lucky Larry insures the buildings for exactly the event that eventually happened. He claims the insurance on the twin towers – enough to build that shiny new one. The .gov guys get their excuse to unleash operation global freedom. The DHS gets alll the power at home. The 99% have to undress and kids get a pat down every time they want to board a plane – prisoner training perfected.
So…what’s not to like. Everyone in the special club got what they wanted and everyone else got royally screwed.
And yes it would be exceptionally easy to carry out real terrorist acts almost all the time and yet we don’t really see that many. The ones we see are scripted to achieve a specific goal – subduing the public / accepting further police state – otherwise we would be seeing a lot more generic sabotage that doesn’t require fancy equipment training or funding… or guns. I guess box cutters and trucks are not sophisticated but the planning and execution of 911 alone is beyond comprehension without help from state operators.
JJ, this is another example how easy it is to fool people. It is a trick the Three Stooges played – look Curly, over there. Where Moe? There! (Moe whacks Curly over the head while he is distracted looking at something that isn’t there). And, some people never learn. They keep on believing “official” sources and keep getting whacked in the head looking for things that are not real.
Here is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtpMzGN9uWc
And people keep on wanting to believe the “official” sources.
At least 6 Billion dumbshits will die in The Oil Apocalypse.
not us, though!
(we likely will die, but we’re not dummies. right? yes, I see that everyone agrees.)
and that’s easy for you to say.
the real question that is perpetually batted back and forth:
when?
according to marion king hubbert the oil runs out in the year 2020
Where did he right that, troll?
I honestly don’t know.
Fast Eddy told us we wouldn’t be tucking into our christmas turkey one year… a few years ago.
Well… I waited and it didn’t happen. I ate my chicken with extra gravy ( I don’t like turkey) and thanked my lucky stars that the almighty (FE) granted us at least one more year. But then another year went by… and FE has been wrong about a whole lot of things his whole life. He admits as much. He even seems really proud of his ability to accept how wrong he is all the time and continues to bang his drum more loudly than ever. Facts and logic you know. Gotta hand it to him… he’s persistant in chasing his dream of being right at least once in his life. A bit like winning the lottery and then it all goes to shite.
Rising Housing Costs in Atlanta
https://www.wabe.org/future-atlanta-rising-housing-costs-mean-city/
I think part of the problem is that governments are charging back the cost of new roads and schools to developers, making the cost of new construction quite high. Developers realize their costs will be high and decide to build only for those who can afford high prices ( rent or purchase). The poor get left out.
This might explain some of the problem. The old pre-war development style was flexible and could switch from business to residential without major adjustment. It also delivered more taxes to the government.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/9/6/why-the-traditional-development-pattern-wins
——-
New homeowners…
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2017/10/95250-homeownership-takes-new-meaning
For space solar power the surface of the moon is the ideal location. No transport of materials needed. Just beam microwaves back to earth. With AI miners and construction workers on the moon we are all set.
The war against moon based solar is ended.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjT1Zy9vebWAhXFzRoKHcEfDmwQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobetamk.weebly.com%2Fblog&psig=AOvVaw0oN72IO_54UiR13ZlI_mzR&ust=1507739471736552
And one could also start up a operation exporting cheese.
Pass the cheese please…
FE, the notion of GW was around back in the 80’s. We were talking about it at Uni in 1995 when I was doing a BSc in Ecology. Your rants about CC being a recent MSM lie is a little off the mark.
People still won’t do anything about it and yes there are massive amounts of false info but none the less it does not mean it is not occurring. I believe however that resource extraction limits will crush us way before CC. Think of it as the cleaners coming in to mop up after the party is dead (which probably includes alot of party-goers.
Funny… I was in high school in the 80’s… and I don’t remember any mention of this issue….
Were you at Koombaya U?
Maybe they called it something different back then…. like pollution … or smog?
And btw — catastrophe has been predicted for years… and years … and years… and years…
Yet I see no catastrophe… in fact I see twenty years of no w arming at all
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-of-global-warming/
don’t be a deadbeat FE. If you give such pathetic replies then your other arguments regarding BAU will just start sounding as ill-considered. Personally I think that you are full of it. I don’t think that you are living ilfe to the full before the end, if you were you woundn’t be commenting here every 20 seconds. You just come across as a troll sitting in a dark shipping container raging at the world.
“don’t be a deadbeat FE. If you give such pathetic replies then your other arguments regarding BAU will just start sounding as ill-considered. Personally I think that you are full of it.”
That’s it in a nutshell, Niko. Everybody sooner or later seems to come to the same conclusion.
what is this Glowworm Bowling and how do we stop it?
I still like the in your face attitude that persons who “believe” in Glowworm Bowling should STOP using all fossil fuels immediately.
and that goes for ALL colleges and universities also.
I don’t recall ever hearing of anyone doing that.
BAU today, baby!
Yes I can imagine that’s what the main subject is when DelusiSTANIS get together…. it’s Fast Eddy said this … Fast Eddy said that……. then laughter….
https://www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effect/global-warming-history.htm
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15oC because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapor and carbon dioxide. This is called the natural greenhouse effect. Arrhenius suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5oC temperature rise.
The world has already burned half the fossil fuels necessary to bring about a catastrophic 2C rise in average glob al temp erature, scientists revealed today.
The experts say about half a trillion tonnes of carbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution. To prevent a 2C rise, they say, the total burnt must be kept to below a trillion tonnes. On current rates, that figure will be reached in 40 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
Hallemotherf789inglujah!!!!!
We are saved we are saved!!!! WE … ARE …. SAVED!!!!
Because even a De lusiS TA N I would acknowle dge…. that there is no way we are going to b urn another ha lf a trill ion ton nes of fo ssil fu els…..
That is im possible — because we don’t have half a trilli on tonn es of econo mically viable fossil fuels rem aining to b urn — and we have stop ped looking for more….
HSBC: 8 0% of the world’s oil has pe aked, and the resul ting oil cru nch will flat ten the economy
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-fina ncial-cr ash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.z9uwvj2gd
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
Because even a DelusiS TA NI would acknowle dge…. that there is no way we are going to burn another half a trill ion ton nes of fo ssil fu els…..
That is impossible — because we don’t have half a trilli on tonn es of econo mically viable fossil fuels rem aining to b urn — and we have stop ped looking for more….
HSBC: 8 0% of the world’s oil has pe aked, and the resul ting oil cru nch will flat ten the economy
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.z9uwvj2gd
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
HONK if you love Fast Eddy. Honk honk honk.
Breaking News: The entity known as Fast Eddy today released logic and facts that confirm that no matter what your position on GGGG wWWWW — it does NOT matter….. because there is no possible way we will burn enough fossil fuels to boil the planet.
Ticker Tape parades in the world’s capitals are being organized – Fast Eddy will be flying to select cities in a private jet to attend the festivities (and to service the hot Koombaya Green Grooopie chicks).
We are saved we are saved!!!
We are almost out of fossil fuels so we will stop burning carbon — WE ARE SAVED!!!!!
Hallelujah … Hallelujah…. Hallelujah Hallelujah —– hall a lu … jah!!!
Ummmm…..
Apologies for the custerf789 …. the censor is being difficult when I try to post that in one comment
Celebration time – no?
Come on you glum faced Gooobal Wooormers ….. smile ….. and let’s get down with Kook and the Gang….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M
Sorry Al…. your gig is blown…
http://www.moremonmouthmusings.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gore1.jpg
Look at this Alex…… we are not even close to a trillion …. we’ll never get there…
If you are happy and you know it … clap your hands!!!!
https://therationalpessimist.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/trilliontonne-org-jpg1.jpg
Very amusing Niko….
Am I correct in assuming that you do value my comments on all other issues except GGG wWWWW… because they are laced with facts and logic and common sense…
But that when it comes to my take on GGGGG wwwwwWWW …. I have that wrong….
If you examined my positions on other issues — and you compared these positions with those espoused by the MSM (otherwise known as the Lies) you would find that I am consistently if not always — diametrically opposed to what the Lies spews.
Correct me if I a wrong — you are saying that I am always right … except on this one issue …. and that the MSM always lies — except on this one issue.
Can you see that there is a slight problem with the ‘logic’ you are using to make your point?
And if it makes you feel better — no I do not work 14 hour days overseeing my tiny empire from a laptop…. rather this is my life :
Inside the container:
https://cdn2.cdnme.se/cdn/7-2/1623842/images/2010/tumblr_lc2w0odz5z1qc4debo1_500_121595576.jpg
And this is Madame Fast
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pejmEJudQ6g/T3NMFfwXoRI/AAAAAAAAAvc/9c0UIElr-WY/s1600/moustache.jpg
Um, now you are scaring me. I’m starting to like this Davidinazillionfreakingyears guy.
BAU tonight, baby!
At least he doesn’t post pictures like that.
oh BS, FE, post a real picture of ms. Fast. i’m betting she’s a hot indonesian babe.
Ha ha…. Madame Fast would prefer to remain out of the picture….
Fake Madame Fast!
Nope that’s the real one. He keeps the fake one on ice for special occasions.
I went to a lecture on GW at York University with my sixth form physics class, so sometime between 1981 and 1983. It was being talked about then, though not to the extent it is now. Guess no one had figured out how to make any money out of it at that time.
I seem to recall the 1980’s was more about global hunger.
Silly sponsored charity swims at school to feed the world, etc. (I used to think ‘Why the circus? Just write a cheque’!)
The 1970’s, looking at memoirs of the time, was when over-population and the poisoning of nature through industrial farming -pesticides – first came to prominence.
I remember when in the late 70s my school was doing its latest sponsored charity event to feed the starving of the third world, one classmate said “If we feed them then they’ll grow up and have more children and make the problem worse”. Can’t fault that logic.
I have some of the same feeling now regarding vaccination and mosquito netting programs. They do protect against disease, but make the population problem worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI
F789 the world.
F789 the children
Live Large Longer LLL.
TINA
++++
Too bad he didn’t say 5 years (or 1 year for that matter)
+++++++++++++++++
Is that the same guy that lectured a woman about the carbon footprint of her newborn as she sat at a train station?
I watched the clip and did a search — it is from Utopia – I don’t seem to recall that scene in that series…. maybe time to re-watch….
I think I found it…it is also on Utopia.
Utopia – Season 2, Episode 6 – Opening scene – YouTube
We Are the World.
More spin… to keep the masses positive…
Yes the world has some big problems but if we join hands together and sing — and donate the spare change from our pockets — we can fix the world.
Meanwhile in the real world — we continue to rape and pillage Africa — and other weaklings… because we either pillage – or someone else will — and then we will be weak and we will be the pillagees. We will be the Somalians… the Ethiopians.
It’s a good thing our leaders don’t believe in Koombaya. Imagine where we would be!
The seventies was seriously into gwaaabal cooling man. But it’s all change to me. Chchchchchaaanges.
Oh and there was AIDS which is making a comeback in the charts so I hear. Or is it hepatitis A? So hard to keep track.
Good point about making money.
I recall that in the late eighties the hole in the ozone layer was very much the concern of the day. Ozone-depletion is still a problem but the fact that we managed to ban CFC’s and reverse some of the damage has given some in environmental circles false hope that collective action to mitigate g w is a realistic possibility. Of course it isn’t, hydrocarbons being indispensable to our very existence. CFC’s less so.
CFCs are a tiny problem compared to CO2. People don’t realize that there is no comparison.
We were lucky they used CFC’s not BFCs which were much more destructive. We could have destroyed much more of the ozone layer before we knew it had happened.
This from a BBC report on the latest wildfires in California
“It is not yet known how the fires started.”
Wasn’t it Fast Eddie who mused on fires being weaponised? The devastation is
certainly awful and the clean up will cost plenty. Makes you think or perhaps best
not to.
Ecosystems expect many small fires and some larger ones. We have been busy snuffing out small ones, making large fires more likely.
Generally that’s true, Gail, however these fires here in CA are the work of arsonist/s. It’s just not talked about because those type of investigations don’t want the arsonist to know they are trying to track them down. They are all starting at the edge of roads and the sheer numbers of fires statistically points to arson. There wasn’t any lightening, so what other ignition source could there be? One or two accidental fires from barbecues or faulty exhaust is possible but we are talking about at least a dozen all started in the same week. That’s arson. Also the timing of the fires – in conjunction with high winds, which an arsonist would know helps a fire spread. The same thing happened in the Valley fire in CA that burned 1950 structures – a very windy, hot day and it turned out it was an arsonist that started that fire. The human brain can be used for good things or bad – this is bad, very bad. Entire neighborhoods of people are going to have to start over from scratch.
Interesting … a google search of terrorism and fire…. brings up next to nothing….. but there was this:
The U.S. Forest Service’s Deputy Director of Fire and Aviation Management spoke about pyroterrorism in a keynote address at the Firehouse World conference in San Diego this week.
After serving in the Marine Corps for 25 years, mostly as a planner, Mr. Baird was appointed to his position in the Forest Service in November of 2011. While attending Marine Corps University he wrote a paper titled Pyroterrorism: The Threat of Arson Induced Forest Fires as a Terrorist Weapon, and an article on the same subject, Profiles in Pyroterrorism: Convergence of crime, terrorism and wildfire unleash as a weapon on population.
At the conference this week, according to Firehouse, Mr. Baird mentioned several incidents that could be classified as pyroterrorism, including the Japanese fire balloons during the second World War, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and the arson fires set by Raymond Lee Oyler, one of them being the Esperanza Fire that killed a 5-person USFS engine crew. He also referred to an article in an al Qaeda magazine that called for Western Muslims to wage war within the United States, urging them to engage in lone wolf attacks, including setting forest fires.
Below is an excerpt from the Firehouse article:
In 2004, the FBI came upon intelligence and issued an alert to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) suggesting that Al Queda had plans to start wildland fires in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, Baird said, noting that all the material he was presenting was unclassified information and his interpretations and analysis were his own.
“I am not going to be some suit out of Washington, D.C., coming out here and telling you how to fight wildland fires,” said Baird, who added that his family in California was evacuated during the Camp Pendleton fire.
http://wildfiretoday.com/tag/terrorism/
“Wasn’t it Fast Eddie who mused on fires being weaponised?”
Yes, let’s tell Trump that North Korea is behind the fires, and see how he responds. 🙂
I am sure Putin has a hand in this – waiting on the MSM to tell me that….
If the bad guys are involved… we will never be told…. because that would truly terrorize the people….
If the bad guys were to use this tactic… it would be very difficult to stop them …. you’d need to roll out some form of martial law lite….
But that would damage confidence… and no doubt impact the economy negatively.
Swedish elementary school taught greenhouse effect in 80s, don’t remember what the solutions was supposed to be.
Of course they did, it was a Swede, Svante Arrhenius, who made the discovery that CO2 produces a greenhouse effect, and therefore G W. You don’t remember the solution, because short of stopping any human activity, there was none. And now, not even stopping civilization will do it, it would accelerate it. Who’s gonna teach that to elementary school kids?
It’s not a discovery… it’s a theory….. and the theory is like many theories that people believe — it is wrong.
We have burned absolutely insane amounts of carbon —- in fact close to 100% of all the carbon that is every going to be burned — has already been burned (because we are going to a carbon free planet very soon…)
And is anyone in fear of dying from frying?
Well maybe a few extremists are — people like Guy Macpherson….. but seriously – does anyone think the planet is about to boil us to death?
It ain’t gonna happen. The theory is wrong.
We have burned billions if not trillions of tonnes of fossil fuels — with no horrific effects.
They still teach global warming, but now they have a solution: we’re going to Mars. (but I believe that is one teachers interpretation, not official curriculum)
FE, I was teaching GW in 1981 to senior students.
Where I live in Victoria in southern Australia, we have approx 480b tonnes of lignite (brown coal), there is plenty of fuel to cook the planet and we have already ignited a lot of it.
You are just plain wrong!!
The problem is making the whole world economy work on the relatively poor resources left. Lignite is low quality coal. It has to be shipped long distances, and then used for increasingly unproductive purposes. The issue is that we can expect the price to drop too low, to make its extraction economically worthwhile. Extraction fails, not because it is not available, but because the price cannot rise high enough.
I suppose without electricity and international trade, a few people could live around the lignite fields, and pick up the lignite with their hands. They might use the lignite to fuel camp fires. But how much would they really use? How much area nearby is good for growing the crops needed to sustain a community? Is there enough fresh water? How about fields for animals? This will put an upper bound on population of the area. If there are not good rivers for shipping the lignite, it will not be shipped, in the absence of modern systems.
that’s almost desribing the peat-dwellers, in uk and ireland, until very recent times
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/go-ahead-for-huge-offaly-peat-fired-generating-station-1.228946
this was a peat power station–no idea of its long term viability though–this was 20 years ago.
the c02 thing was enormous apparently
peat is one stage up from lignite
Peat is another resource we are using faster than it replenishes.
How much lignite is above ground?
If little or none you run into the problem of pumping water out of the way to get at the fuel….
FYI: It’s the GGG WWWW scientists who are the one’s making the claim that we are just past the half way point in the Rubicon… half way to burning the trillions tonnes of carbon required to raise the temps 2 degrees…. that we MUST do something now … OR ELSE….
Nevermind that there is nothing we can do even if there was a reason too — other than go for a romp with good time gal TINA…..
Where I am right – where Gail is right — is that there is NO F789ING way we are ever going to burn nearly half as much fossil fuels as we have burned so far….
Because there is nowhere near that amount of fossil fuels that are economically viable to extract and burn…
In case you had not noticed… the industrial revolution is just about done… the collapse is looming…
Even if I were to agree with the scientists that if we do burn a trillion tonnes of carbon we will broil (I do not believe that) so what? It ain’t gonna happen. It ain’t gonna happen. It ain’t gonna happen.
80% of the world’s oil has peaked, and the resulting oil crunch will flatten the economy
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.z9uwvj2gd
What is it you do not understand?
http://www.keepcalmstudio.com/_gallery/300/15HeIko.png
Remember the tiny newspaper article Tim posted that stated this was an issue 100 or so years ago?
That the ice caps were in da nger of imm inently melt ing?
This th eory has been around a very long time…. and yet it was a th eory nothing more … that most people did not know about …. did not care about…. it’s been around for as long as man has been poll uting the planet…..
Yet we are still here…. the Klli mate changes… like it always has…
What is different is that the same year the conventional oil pea ked — Al G re magic ally appeared from his giant c oal su cking c astle …. and made a very popular Hor ror Mo vie ….
And the MSM rolled out the red carpet. And continues to do so….
Meanwhile…. we are not ro asting…. yet everyone is urging leaders to do something!!! – m ore renewa ble NOW – more E Vs NOW! — and the leaders are doing something — they give the masses Te sla — cars and batteries — they are outlawin g I C vehicles — see – we are ALM OST THERE!!!
And in the background …. we are finding almost no new economi cally via ble sources of o il – heck we have pretty much stopped lookin g … and every month … every day … every minute… every second… we are depleting the remaining reserves…
And nobody has the slightest f 789 ing clue about this …
Because they are focused on shr ieking ‘we are about to ro ast — DO SOMET HING N OW!!!! – do MO RE – hurry up!!!!’
rent a condo on the north shore of San Francisco. it’s always cold there, even in the summer. nice views of the bay, however.
You see only what you want to see.
I saw the issue from one side of the fence.
Then later I looked at it from the other side of the fence.
And I decided the view from the other side of the fence was more logical.
Here’s an old geeble stuffing movie from the stone age-
https://youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY
its good to see educated delusistanis tell us what they believe it helps solidify why the masses and the elders may all have one thing in common they actually know nothing about how this planet operates they actually believe in infinite growth and that is why i believe the elders will take us into hyperinflation before the end
Most ‘leaders’ at best have degrees in law, economics and politics.
Not theoretical and applied sciences – and even those communities are prone to delusion.
The likely future leader of Britain, Corbyn, even dropped out of a degree in ‘Trades Union Studies’ if I rightly recall.
I suspect a bright archaeologist or historian might have a much better idea of how civilisations collapse than lawyers and economists, those two-a-penny frauds and grafters.
This is why I feel modern society will collapse really fast. As more and more frauds position themselves into positions of power and authority, when real problems arise they will be powerless to stop them and will jump like rats off a sinking ship.
Possibly a system engineer or two but even then if you don’t factor in the overall big picture and allow all the elements to stew for a while dishonest thinkers incapable of objective analysis will quickly revert to delusional conclusions as surely as a rabbit does a 180 and runs away when confronted with a pack of rabid dogs.
By the way, have you noticed how the word elders is neatly nestled within the word leaders?
Beyond Disneyland
Human society exists in a cultural goldfish bowl made
entirely of mirrors. Inside the bowl all we see is a multitude
of reflections, mostly of ourselves, and so we tend to think
that all life revolves around our spectacularly inventive species.
And according to some, so too does the universe.
In short, our lives are essentially fiction based. We read fiction
novels and prefer to watch fictional dramas on stage and
screen; we readily believe advertising and political propaganda,
and most people place implicit faith in some form of
religious, economic or political creed. So culture serves as
humanity’s Disneyland, a gaudy fantasy world that is specifically
designed to keep us ignorant of the fact that it is our
genes that call the shots, not our cortical neurons.
‘The ascent of man’, traditionally acclaimed as a long, hard
climb out of bestial ignorance, has in reality been a long, slow
descent into energy debt. But bedazzled by our cultural Disneyland
we have remained generally oblivious to this aspect of
our existence. However, a quick glance at our population graph
for the past 12,000 years reveals a typical mammalian plague
spike. Judging by UN population data our plague peaked in
1967 and we are now racing towards a typically catastrophic
plague collapse.
Yet we have little cause for serious complaint. We have had the
very best of it. Our species’ comet-like trajectory through the
past 200,000 years launched us to unrivalled dominance of the
planet’s crust, carried us deep into space, and placed our shaky
hands on the levers of life itself. It wasindeed a dazzling ascent;
and our return to earthy reality will be no less comet-like—fast,
rough, and fiery. Surely a fitting end for such a spectacular ape. ®
http://regmorrison.edublogs.org/files/2011/11/enigma_code-1fz5tz1.pdf
“Yet we have little cause for serious complaint. We have had the
very best of it.”
yes!
especially the 7 or so decades since the end of WW2.
the 2020’s will be the first full decade of decline.
but BAU tonight, baby!
This analysis fails because of a deplorable lack of imagination, especially the delusions that we are limited to current energy sources and confined to this small planet. Solar power satellites in geosynchronous orbit are feasible right now, and they can supply virtually unlimited energy 24/7, with no need for energy storage, anywhere on Earth that it is needed, at prices quite competitive with fossil fuels and low enough for desalination on whatever scale we need. Moreover, research is well under way on aneutronic proton-boron 11 fusion, which can provide the power for a city in a plant that would fit on the back of a truck, or for a launch vehicle that can make access to Earth orbit cheaper than crossing the Atlantic by air.
The real future lies in space. The single asteroid 16 Psyche contains enough steel (not just iron) to meet current world consumption for the next 10,000,000 years, or to build luxurious O’Neill space colonies for 10,000 times the current world population. We will populate the solar system, and then we will cross the gulf between the stars (we already know how to do it). We know now (as we did not 10 years ago) that there are 100 billion planets in our galaxy; 11 billion of them are in Goldilock orbits (where the temperature allows liquid water) about G-type stars like ours.
We also know now that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. If they all have as many planets as our galaxy does, the total number of planets is thousands of times more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. It is utterly inconceivable that life has arisen only on this one planet out of all those candidates. We are not alone, and sooner or later we will meet (or at least hear from) the others, for good or ill.
The “non-elite workers” Gail talks about are really just like the people who only knew how to make buggy whips, or to drive oxen pulling a wooden plow, when cars and agricultural technology had left them behind. The challenges we face are not at all related to resource exhaustion, nor to keeping wages high for menial work, but to the lack of imagination Gail displays, and to our failure to take seriously the need to educate people all over the world for the jobs of the future, not for those that are now or soon will be obsolete.
I do know whereof I speak. I was a NASA scientist astronaut during Apollo, and I was in Mission Control when Neil and Buzz set foot on the Moon. I have been working on related issues ever since.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/ToMjGpocv0a1U7zbXQ4/giphy.gif
WE’RE GOING TO THE STARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
uh…
uh….
uh…..
sarc.
hi Philip…
your slide rule doesn’t come equipped with built in logic.
and lacks knowledge of the economics of resource decline.
tonight: BAU.
tomorrow: we are going to the stars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and….
“we” have had the knowledge of how to build moon colonies for decades.
and also the technology to build them.
so where are they now?
or do they exist in the future?
Philip says “This analysis fails because of a deplorable lack of imagination…”
no!
it has ALL been imagined!
fusion reactors!
moon colonies!
travel to Mars!
so what’s the problem?
where are they?
or are they merely a few decades away?
always a few decades away.
just wait and see!
Philip says “… our failure to take seriously the need to educate people all over the world for the jobs of the future…”
after the severe decline in fossil fuels in the next few decades…
the main “jobs of the future” will be “farmers”.
not a matter of having the knowledge to build moon colonies—obviously we do
it’s having the necessary purpose for doing so.
if there had been anything of value on the moon, there would have been commercial colonies there decades ago—but there is nothing there of value, so there isn’t.
we obtain value from materials by converting them into artifacts we can use.—thus oil can be converted into tv’s or toothbrushes—and so on
think about that—the moon has nothing that can be converted into anything useful in earth-commercial terms.
so on moon expeditions —you return with photographs and souvenirs, which neatly describes vacations
What about hacking off chunks of moon rock …. and then selling it to be used very expensive landscaping features?
Oh honey — did you see that Bob Jones has a massive piece of moon rock in his front garden? Ya that must of cost him a tonne. We should take out a second mortgage and get a bigger piece of moon rock.
I am surprised that LVMH has not created a landscaping division….
We have built a network of underground bases on the dark side of the moon over the past fifty years. Wheredyathink all that money went?
And the moon is actually made of cheese. No need to bring food we’ve got it covered.
Elon is a mook, he totally shunned our moon colony tourism project to build his own toys on that other planet. Huh… who needs him anyway, we’ve cut a deal with the original Mr Fantastic himself… SIR Richard Branson with his Virgin whateverhecallsitnow space tourism startup which is ready for primetime in 2018 after a few minor explo… I mean hiccups. All is well and good in the superduper rocket owner club coming to a spaceport near you very very very soon. Buy your tickets now before it’s too late.
well, there’s a lot of helium-3 in the moon’s regolith, so mineable, i guess. this assumes we have working fusion reactors and the 3He fusion reaction worked out (no neutrons produced, so a good one). not yet, unfortunately.
https://imageserve.babycenter.com/20/000/366/UxAFdf1cVWWhbGVGbZUOBVonjaRIMRds_lg.jpg
I mean, mate – we’ve never seen or discussed this sort of “groundbreaking” stuff here before. Gail may as well shut down her blog now….thanks for giving us the prescription to the predicament of too much growth.
More growth! F7ck me…
SpongeBob reminds me…
not just moon colonies!
where are the humans living at the bottom of the ocean?
that should be so EASY for us humans!
we can imagine it, so why can’t we do it?
and warp drive space travel any day now!
Elon, where are you?
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/spongebob/images/4/42/The_Treedome.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121223213715
Now you’ve done it. Here comes FE.
I am afraid we are not really that far along on space solar. In fact, with low energy prices it becomes hard to get anyone to want to spend money on space solar.
The first serious proposals and consideration for a solar power satellite was in the late 1970s. This was at or near our energy peak. One very serious problem with the approach back then was the millions of half wave dipole receivers that would have to be deployed over a very large area of land. And then each had to be tuned. The problems were insurmountable. NASA and the aerospace companies have never let go of this wet dream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Drawbacks
There’s a guy in the comments over on Next Big Future that keeps banging on about MOON based solar which is way way better according to him and O’Neill – you know… this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
The O’Neill cylinder (also called an O’Neill colony) is a space settlement design proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.[1] O’Neill proposed the colonization of space for the 21st century, using materials extracted from the Moon and later from asteroids.[2]
There are two places I go online for futuristic opium and entertainment. These are Next Big Future which allows comments from fairly savvy engineering types and russian trolls and Futurism which is a kindof spinoff of Singularity University types that don’t allow comments because they are essentially pushing hopium propaganda which doesn’t require feedback of any sort. It is to be consumed by the faithful as is with lashings of Gooblie Wooblie material thrown in for good measure.
What surprises me when I scan such comment sections for evidence of doom is the total lack of any. These are smart people that can talk anyone under the table on energy topics, weapons systems, lots of phyiscs and engineering that boggles the mind yet they don’t seem to pay attention to the world of economics or the idea of reaching limits. Of course, if they did then they would have to close shop as a lot of what they chatter about would be immediately rendered obsolete. Their fantasy would very quickly be replaced with harsh reality. But this goes for everyone else too. And if that happened, the banks would be emptied in a blink of an all seeing eye and of course that would be impossible too as there actually isn’t any real money to go around in said banks. Cue the Hunger Games.
Wow. Sheer genius. To think that it was so simple after all – we only need to harness the potencial energy of imagination. The future wil be moved by imagination! How come no one ever thought of that? Awesome. You should get a Ted-talk or two.
“I do know whereof I speak. I was a NASA scientist astronaut during Apollo, and I was in Mission Control when Neil and Buzz set foot on the Moon. I have been working on related issues ever since.”
Ok, time to float back down to reality – easy now – take your bipolar meds to reduce the manic highs that generate wild ideas – get some sleep – it’s gonna be ok.
Too much…
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/A7YR2H/man-smoking-crack-cocaine-sheffield-uk-A7YR2H.jpg
Leads to delusional thoughts….
Our lawmakers hard at work.
To me he lost all credibility at ” I was a NASA scientist”……
Some years ago I as having a beer at a bar in Ubud Bali …. and this burned out stinky hippy-type was telling me and my buddy that he was a architect … and before that he was the drummer for the Scorpions…..
He’s probably reinvented himself as an astronaut or a NASA scientist now….
Be all that you can be.
If philipkchapman is a NASA scientist, he still has less credibility to me than anyone on this blog.. Why would I think that? Well, NASA is a government agency. And, we all know government agencies have agendas. Agendas trump logic and facts just as philipkchapman’s post trumps logic and facts. .
As for ‘satellite solar power’, please google ‘Tsiolkovsky equation’ and come back to us with a viable way to transport that much mass + (equipment + manpower required to maintain it) to orbit. Not to mention the process whereby we will produce them or the power stations that harness and store the power they will (intermittently) generate.
BTW the aforementioned equation is why 99% of SF is total bollocks. Any civilisation that possesses enough power to travel the galaxy would have no reason to expend it on space exploration to get even *more*. It would be like selling one’s house to buy a Ferrari.
But G W is real! The MSM says so
Another bewildering logical fallacy.
‘If fairies aren’t real, then neither are oranges.’
OR…
‘If oranges are real, so are fairies.’
I assume that you believe the Saddam did have WMD then … right?
Well, I’m afraid the moon is occupied and we Earthlings have been warned off and are not allowed back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6QNzH4x1rY
Discretion required! 🙂
Furthermore, the moon is thought to be hollow and an artificial object. What does science-inclined Tim think of such theories? There are also videos of ex-NASA astronauts claiming to have witnessed inexplicable UFOs in space, i.e. unknown craft that appeared to be intelligently guided.
Our future lies in 6ft of earth, I’m afraid. Not the stars. And that will be poisoned, sterile earth.
We haven’t been able to manage well even the one planet which has come under our hands.
Buy an electric car, they said. It’s better for the environment, they said.
https://i.imgur.com/Mm5B2sG.jpg
In this example, it is very clear that oil is being burned to get electricity.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/environmental-issues-electric_car-hybrid-hybrid_car-petrol-petrol_car-mban4329_low.jpg
http://orig12.deviantart.net/6770/f/2011/315/5/5/electric_cars_suck_by_conservatoons-d4fvd0s.jpg
It takes a special kind of MORE on to convince himself that an EV is green…..
The purpose of electric cars is to move tailpipe emissions out of cities. That is why they have been so popular in China. To make them beneficial, you need to use the batteries heavily and more electricity making to places where hydroelectric or nuclear is used.
Good point!
Priceless!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anaerobic bio-digesters are the great thing in Britain at the moment, with a big expansion programme being advocated, to be fed by maize.
Just read an article in a magazine for the landowners pointing out that:
1/ It is one of the most environmentally destructive crops – above all very damaging to the soil, and, 2/ That the maize has to be fertilized with artificial fertilizers produced from fossil fuels.
But, it’s the fashion and government is fully behind it.
Politicians seem to need something to push.
http://peakoil.com/business/no-more-free-lunch-is-the-big-change-under-way-in-the-oil-market
‘No More Free Lunch Is the Big Change Under Way in the Oil Market’
“For years, investors have played Popeye to the energy industry’s Wimpy, the cartoon character famous for his “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” motto. In return for the promise of future profits, they’ve funded loss-making energy producers and explorers through a generous mix of loans, bonds and equity.
That may be changing, according to a chorus of analysts ranging from Morgan Stanley to Sanford C Bernstein & Co. LLC. Following Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s pledge last month to buy back up to $2.5 billion worth of shares, they’re now discussing a new phase in the oil market, with producers far more keen to reward investors and more disciplined when it comes to funding their own expansion.”
It’s one thing to expect certain price of oil outcomes but another if they actually pan out. Lots of conflicting dynamics going on here.
We will see.
Losers are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, study finds
http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/losers-likely-believe-conspiracy-theories-study-finds-49694
There is a problem with this …. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories…. these are for light-weights… they also wear tin foil hats….
What I know is that the MSM lies … always…. from WMD to G W to renewable energy to Syria Ukraine Libya to EVs …. the list is endless….. because that is why the MSM exists…. it is a tool for control – NOTHING MORE.
It has nothing to do with informing you — it should not be called the News … it should be called the Lies.
Hey John — did you read the Lies today — not yet Bob …. well the Lies are saying the Saddam has WMD… and that we need to kill him and blow the shi t out of the country….. well John … if the Lies say it’s true … then it is definitely a lie. I am with you on that Bob…. and it’s why I read the Lies daily … it helps me to look for the truth…..by ruling out the lies….
I can pick apart just about any story on the MSM and demonstrate the strategies they are using to turn a circle into a square.
It is not what I believe in – it is what I do not believe in.
And if it’s repeated in the MSM intensively over time — I guarantee it is a lie. It is not a conspiracy theory — it is a lie.
There is a difference.
Having read many of your comments… do you realize… that ellipsis have a specific purpose and meaning… they do not take the place of periods… nor do they add gravitas to your speaking – IN FACT… they indicate when superfluous words have been left out of the end of a sentence.
Your overuse of ellipses… degrades your points… and tends to make you look mentally challenged.
Tell it to someone who gives a f789.
Fast Eddy Rules!
I think he just called FE a loser.
The article is simply about the losers of elections believing the election was fraudulent, regardless of party and regardless which election. It sounds like an over generalization to me. However it is notable that this election fraud thing now seems to have become common with each election.
The award for “Most Nonsensical Ramblings Following a Mass Shooting” goes to Eric Paddock:
Like Like Like …. particularly the Facebook part…
I am ENTERTAINED (by this guy) … I feel myself wanting MORE…. maybe he could have his own talk show on late night tee vee…. very very amusing … very entertaining.
Steve doesn’t sound like the kinda guy who’d gun down people …. sounds like he was LIVING LARGE — having fun…. why go on a shooting spree? Unless it was an attempt to lash out at the sickness of society…? But then this is a guy who was fully engaged in the sickness of the world….
And if he wanted to lash out at the sickness….
I’d have thought a Justin Bieber concert would have been a much more appropriate platform.
The poor dude should have told the MSM to f off. That’s why it’s entertaining. They got him when he was vulnerable and it makes for great tv. Here’s a recent example, but in a different context.
Just thinking about that interview…..
Now that guy seems to be reasonably intelligent …. ‘normal’….. are these the sorts of things one says when one’s brother has supposedly just wasted 5 dozen people?
Does one say anything other than I am shocked — and saddened …. horrified… deeply sorry for the families of all those people?
And end it there. No more interviews. No more discussion. Nothing more to say.
Or does one get in front of national news and say things like — we are rich people – 100k is not that much money —- my brother was a good guy – a smart guy and so on….
Me thinks something is not right with this interview….
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/354594-epa-chief-id-do-away-with-wind-solar-tax-credits
Oh my, now the Trump team via the EPA are telegraphing they will be getting rid of renewables tax credits.
That is the best news I have heard this year!
First of all there is no such thing as renewable energy — so there should have been no subsidies in the first place.
No doubt what is happening here is that the El dders and their minions understand that too much ‘renewable’ energy brings the entire system down ….
So they are putting on the brakes….
The coal subsidy is another indication that they realize that if they push their renewable lie too far…. we end up with no electricity whatsoever because coal producers go out of business.
They also understand that ggg wwww is a hoax… because they invented it …. so they would have ZERO concerns about burning more coal…. their only concern is making it to tomorrow without BAU collapsing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/09/white-house-says-pence-trip-colts-game-long-planned-but-leaving-wasnt/745607001/
White House claims Pence did not plan to leave game but did because of the kneeling during the national anthem. Baloney! Pence doesn’t go to games – this was a set up from the beginning. But essentially I guess the walk out is intended to let people of color know it’s ok for police to gun them down during random, no reason given, pull overs.
This kind of public display brings to my mind a recent article discussing something called the “Common Knowledge Game”:
http://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/
“Common knowledge is information, public or private, that everyone believes is shared by everyone else. It’s the crowd of tribesmen looking around and seeing that the entire crowd heard the Missionary that unlocks the private information in their heads and turns it into common knowledge.
The important thing is not that everyone hears the Missionary’s words. The important thing is that everyone believes that everyone else heard the Missionary’s words, because that’s how you update your estimation of everyone else’s estimations. The power source of the Common Knowledge Game is the crowd seeing the crowd, and the dynamic structure of the Common Knowledge Game is the dynamic structure of the flock…
Understanding the Common Knowledge Game has been the secret of successful shepherds since time immemorial, in business, politics, religion… any aspect of our lives as social animals. The only difference today is that technological innovation provides a media toolkit for modern shepherds that the shepherds of the Old Stories could only dream of.
This is why sitcom laugh tracks exist. This is why performances, whether it’s an NFL game or Dancing with the Stars, are filmed in front of a live audience. This is why the Chinese government still bans any internet pictures of the Tiananmen Square protests, with their massive crowds, more than 20 years after they occurred. This is what John Maynard Keynes called the Newspaper Beauty Contest, which he believed (and demonstrated) was the secret to successful investing through the 1930s. This is how Dick Clark built a massive fortune with American Bandstand. He didn’t tell Middle America what music to like; he got a crowd of attractive young people to announce what music they liked (“it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, I give it a 94, Dick!”), and Middle America took its cues from that. Not only is that all you need to motivate sheep, it’s far more effective than any efforts at direct influence.
This is why executions used to be held in public and why inaugurations still are. This is why Donald Trump cared so much about the size of his inauguration crowd. This is why he’s always talking about the viewership and ratings of his televised appearances. Trump gets it. He understands what makes the Common Knowledge Game work. It’s not what the crowd believes. It’s what the crowd believes that the crowd believes. The power of a crowd seeing a crowd is one of the most awesome forces in human society. It topples governments. It launches Crusades. It builds cathedrals. And it darn sure moves markets…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/10/09/this-is-about-systemic-oppression-eric-reid-becomes-the-voice-of-49ers-protest-with-criticism-of-pence/?utm_term=.fe9016560acc
Oh, and Pence and wife (mother as he calls her) just happened to be a colts vs. 49ers game aka the first player to take a knee during the anthem, Kaepernick. Reid of the 49ers had something to say to Pence who claimed the knees are being taken to protest the military, the flag and the nation. Reid said that isn’t why and pointed out Pence is part of a systemic oppression going on for decades.
For those that remember, Bush jr. admin. had bumper stickers printed in the millions and handed out for free nationwide that stated, ‘Support the Troops’. What it did was make it so if you were against the 2nd war in Iraq you were against the troops. So people couldn’t be against the war but have nothing against troops – they made sure of that at every turn. A cheap ploy that worked perfectly as propaganda often does. Now once again taking a knee isn’t about the random shooting of people of color that are pulled over by the police, its being attached to the military, the flag etc., which makes it either you hate America and stop taking a knee or you love America, stand and put that hand over your heart. They are making it one or the other. Does anyone get that? Sometimes I wonder if people stop and think stuff like this through.
Good one, Rendar.
“It’s not what the crowd believes. It’s what the crowd believes that the crowd believes.”
I don’t believe anything entirely till I check in with the crowd. 🙂
“The power of a crowd seeing a crowd is one of the most awesome forces in human society. It topples governments. It launches Crusades. It builds cathedrals. And it darn sure moves markets…”
Yes, I think it’s more what the crowd believes or is made to believe than genetic structure which matters.
Rule of thumb…. if you understand what Rendar has posted… then the goal should be to observe what the crowd believes… and assume it is an illusion…a lie
What the crowd believes and what the MSM publishes…. correlates virtually 1:1.
The crowd believes in:
WMD
Renewable Energy
Putin is the Devil
America is the new Saudi Arabia
Fracking is Profitable
God
EVs
Elon Musk
G W arming
etc….
The crowd doesn’t care about or comprehend any of these things. Not the crowds I see at the mall, anyway. Except belief in God. Maybe it’s because I live in the union’s poorest (or second to poorest) state.
Thanks Rendar
This ones for FE, the war against coal is over.
https://www.rt.com/usa/406156-pruitt-clean-power-plan-scrapped/
burn baby burn
https://cdni.rt.com/files/2017.10/original/59dba57ffc7e93a9368b4567.jpg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/09/pruitt-tells-coal-miners-he-will-repeal-power-plan-rule-tuesday-the-war-on-coal-is-over/
Here’s another article on it:
“With this news, Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt will go down in infamy for launching one of the most egregious attacks ever on public health, our climate, and the safety of every community in the United States,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, in a statement. “He’s proposing to throw out a plan that would prevent thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of childhood asthma attacks every year.”
This is just another sign of peak oil, as people vote for someone willing to toss out environmental concerns for a fatter pay check for coal miners and the corporations that hire them. Earlier in Trump’s term if you remember they tossed out a regulation, thus once again allowing the filling of rivers/streams with overburden from mountaintop excavation.
The economy requires that we burn record amounts of fossil fuels every year … otherwise it will collapse… because TINA to fossil fuels….
You have a choice:
Pollution and a some cancer deaths … along with enough to eat and a comfortable home with electricity and a car
OR
Pristine rivers and crystal clear blue skies … that you get to enjoy while you starve to death..
Now if you think there is another choice feel free to explain it….
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-04/1/17/enhanced/webdr06/anigif_original-13638-1427924209-14.gif
I’m preparing for a career as a warlord. I anticipate stiff competition.
Attention Doomy Preppers.
Instead of wasting your time in the garden growing pumpkins…. I highly recommend that you instead invest your cash into some hard core military training. If you have kids definitely enroll them now.
Then instead of being enslaved post BAU to produce food for violent hard men…. you can be the violent hard man …and enslave the permy doomers! You even get to have your way with the wives and dotters!!!
Queue Mr Cognitive Dissonance…. Queue intense anger — lash out at Fast Eddy for suggesting such horrifying things…. how dare he – he knows nothing … yes yes calm calm Fast Eddy knows nothing….
On the bright side…. the radiation poisoning will not spare the hard men …. when they enslave you and you bring them a sack of carrots — you can do it with a smile on your face…. because the carrots will poison them.
Don’t you just love stories with happy endings?
It was inevitable that King Coal would make a come-back….. it’s the major ingredient in the manufacture of solar panels…..
We are dealing with a situation where there are no good solutions. Nothing really works for the better. The dream we hope for gets farther and farther away.
Yeah… but… technically speaking… you would only need a few megafactories around the world continuously spewing out the panels forever and ever with every replacement cycle so you only need enough energy to power those few factories spewing out the panels.
Even if you powered the factories with coal or gas plants it wouldn’t be that big a deal… would it? Since everything else would be powered by the addition of more and more renewables. The real problem is still oil or the sudden lack of.
TINA.
Concerning your comparison of the amount of energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines to the energy used by hunter gatherers: you multiplication of 7.5 billion people x 24 hours x 365.25 days x 200 Wh resulted in 13 Terawatt hours (13 x10e12) – however it shoud be 13 Petawatt hours (13 x 10e15) when I can trust my calculator.
Watt is the unit of power, it is a rate. Joule or Wh is the unit of the amount of energy. It is confused very often.
As usual very good and informative article. Indeed difficult times ahead and pretty soon as it seems.
https://i.redd.it/7ml2pttupoqz.jpg
Good article Gail. I don’t agree on a few points – mostly religion, global warming and your almost Lovecraftian fatalism, but I believe I am on the same page with you about the bigger picture you’ve identified here. Which, if I read you correctly, is that religion as conventionally defined is just one of many universal human delusion. I immediately add as a prolepsis that you obviously do not consider all forms of religion as conventionally defined as delusions, but I still agree with the basic premise.
The overarching, underpinning delusion of our age is infinite progress (=growth and prosperity) for some/most/all. And since a bad tree does not bear good fruit, that delusion produces many more delusions – all mutually exclusive and aggressive – so that it may exist, and have a reason for existing. The fallacies inherent in all political, economic and social theories come back to an unjustified belief in the magic of progress (whether through revolution or conservation). Magic is essentially nothing more than a causeless cause, and humanity found a far more exciting and pleasurable form of magic than divinity the moment someone decided to separate the incredible progress of our age from its not so incredible causes. Doing so brought them fame, but it damned their progeny.
We are already in the age of schism, and the reason we are in it is because we cannot afford to have a more or less single meaning for ‘progress’ anymore. It is becoming increasingly clear to people that progress cannot accommodate everyone in exactly the same way. The political turmoils around the world are caused by the need of people to find good reasons for being accommodated by progress in the way they expect to be. The reason why such good reasons are not forthcoming from any quarter is that, even now, hardly anybody wants to acknowledge the real causes of progress. They still insist on the existence of uncaused causes (positive and negative) like innovation, compassion, climate change conspiracies, anti-climate change conspiracies, Bilderberg satanists, EVs, ICVs …
Of course, even those disabused of the delusion of progress are deluded in various ways. Like FE and Tim Groves here with their curious anti-GW diatribes, the only coherent points in which seems to be – respectively – changing one’s mind=proof, hypocrisy/conceit=proof and empirical uncertainty=proof. I suppose its because ‘the collapse of IC’ is an inherently hermetic subject. There is no telling when or how it will happen with any palpable confidence. And human beings do so need that to find joy or at least purpose in their lives. Perhaps all the anti-GW stuff is just that, a need to feel happy about breaking out of a far smaller and more tangible matrix than something as nebulous as BAU while ridiculing/feeling pity for those who are caught up in it (even if they, like the subject, recognise the much larger matrix themselves!) Actually that mentality also explains the pro-GW+EV+solar panels worldview – an attempt to interpret the larger matrix of the limits to growth and human rationality as a much smaller and thus more palpable one of corporate/anti-green/male greed. We are all building the tower of Babel, but none of us know why. Therefore, we invent our reasons and goals and motivations as the stone blocks pile up.
People cannot understand why everyone isn’t seeing progress. Right now, it seems to be those who own shares of stock are the main ones “coming out ahead.” Of course, this is looking more and more like a bubble. At the same time, we have an awfully lot of people hoping for a new type of salvation in a way that cannot possibility happen. Strange world!
‘Of course, even those disabused of the delusion of progress are deluded in various ways. Like FE and Tim Groves here with their curious anti-GW diatribes’
Fact and logic diatribes… you forgot those two words.
Now f789 off back to your world of MSM-fed delusion DelusiSTANI.
Surely Bloomberg must be running yet another kkklimate scare story alongside yet another solar EV is going to save the world story…. so why don’t you head over there and get your daily dose of indoctrination https://www.bloomberg.com/
I’ve had enough of MORE ons like you …. I will gut you and put your head on a spike as a message to other DelusiSTANIS who come in here with their moro nic views on the kkklimate accompanied by insults for those who have seen through the very obvious hoax.
Oh look – it’s cloudy today — yesterday it was sunny — this KKLimate change shiiiit is so confusing … I wonder what tomorrow will bring — even the weather man is unable to make accurate predictions most of the time … f789 the weather man
Nicely done, nicely done.
Like I said, the issue of GW is a way for you to feel more grounded in ‘reality’, because collapse is by its very nature elusive to prediction or precise analysis. In fact, according to your own reasoning, you should shut up about collapse because you haven’t died in a gruesome way from whatever dystopian future you predict is just around the corner.
Also according to your reasoning, any person who believes that both collapse and GW are happening is more logical than you are. After all, you exile anyone who has a *less* bleak outlook on the future than yourself to ‘Delusistan’.
Or, you could start using actual logic for a change and abandon this ridiculous Manichaean perspective. You say you want to enjoy BAU as long as it lasts, but judging by your frequent, rambling comments here you’re failing to do so!
Did I mention that up until 3 months ago I believed the Ggg Wwww narrative?
I just assumed it was true — and did not even bother to look into it — because it did not matter — because we MUST burn fossil fuels — or we will collapse.
Given that is an absolute truth — then pray tell why the MSM keeps trotting this dog sh it in front of me every day?
Anyway…. then Tim started to post some very interesting facts and logic about this issue.
And unlike the many stuuupid donkeys on this site who ignore facts and logic — I got to thinking … what Tim says makes sense…..
Gail has also weighed in on this issue — and she put forth an extremely logical explanation as to why we are being fed this load of dog sh it.
And I started to smell smoke … and when I smell smoke — I go looking for fire…
When I bothered to dig into this issue — I found a roaring inferno …. of lies.
And that’s when I changed my mind on this issue
https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Stock-Market-1-1.jpg
Of course when it comes to MORE ons…. they do not change their minds – they are incapable of this …..
A MORE on is what you get when you breed a human with a parrot — you get a ‘thing’ that is capable of following the MSM …. but then the parrot genes kick in and they just repeat what the MSM has told them…
They operate on IQs of a warm summer day (Celcius).
Yes I did note the changing one’s mind = truth ‘argument’ in my original comment. Needless to say it is a fallacy. I mean, according to this logic, everything you said or believed in 3 months ago is completely illogical, so why should anyone value what you say or believe in now? What is stopping you from changing your mind again and labelling anyone who agrees with you now as morons etc.?
Because once you open the window and let the sunlight and breeze in … there is no going back.
There is no way to ‘unknow’ once you know.
It would be like going back to believing that renewable energy and EVs were our saviours.
Of course if you allow the MSM to tell you what you know…. then you know nothing to begin with … so I can see where you are coming from….
You know what I’ sayin?
A lot of superior talk, as if you alone are endowed with such wisdom. In summary, things are getting worse, and will continue. Mankind will react with confusion, whether with new religious interpretation, or new cultural interpretation, to account for things falling apart. There will be lots of confusion, leading to the end of BAU.
So you have locked onto GW as one of your belief systems. Pick your pet theory. As FE as pointed out, it will not make one difference. BTW, have you stopped using Fossil Fuels yet? I mean you….personally. If not, then shut up about GW.
Fast Eddy Challenge Two:
Anyone who wants to claim that the hoax about Ggglobal Waaaarming is not a hoax…. must first provide details of how he/she has stopped using all fossil fuels….
Otherwise … if they do moan and wail and continue to Burn Baby Burn… they are admitted baby killers… monsters…. demons….
Hedonists who are throwing gasoline onto a fire onto which their offspring will soon be fried alive.
Mass murderers. Without consciences… flying and driving and buying and Living Large…. without a care for those who will be roasted on the fire that they stoked with their gluttony.
Shame Shame Shame!!!
http://genderlinks.org.za/wp-content/uploads/imported/articles/attachments/0661_judge_sentences_baby_killer_to_life_in_prison_The_voice_29_06_07.jpg
https://media.tenor.com/images/642b39b72ba957864229b112ca49509b/tenor.gif
I think most people are hypocrites when it comes to CC. A reduction of our western lifestyle to 10% would be required and yes that would crash the economy. I don’t think it will cause an apocalypse but I don’t think it will happen anyway. To call CC a hoax is be unaware that the CC science has been around much longer than MSM. The seas are getting more acidic due to CO2 but who cares we will have eaten everything in it before it is a problem.
Oh – so the MSM was invented in 2006?
Because that is when G W was invented… right after conventional oil peaked… and that’s when Al Gore was summonsed from his giant energy sucking house … and loaded into a private jet … to make his Tale of Horror ….
Yes, the earth is a huge sink for all of our trash and pollution. We are definitely not good stewards. I agree with you that pollution issues are real. As a species, I am not so sure we are up to taking care of this earth.
Humans should be reclassified and not be referred to as a species… instead we should be considered a form of cancer …. a disease… or perhaps a toxin
do the people of ofw believe that industrial civilization basically
unofficial caste system for ex the 1 percent basically are brahmins of ic
we 99 percent are dalit who run ic
I like JMG’s version of the modern caste system based on where people get their money: The Investment class, the salary class, the wage class and the wellfare class. While some levels obviously get more, every one of these classes gets something from civilization and is therefore invested in BAU. I would argue that recently, the wage earning class has experienced the most downward mobility as the investment class bribes the welfare class and promotes social narratives that make the salaried class feel good.
So no, I don’t buy the 1% vs all argument whatsoever.
although…
for example, music stars and sports stars often swiftly rise out of poverty to become multi-millionaires.
then there are lottery winners.
IC can be a very strange place.
BAU tonight, baby!
It is evolution in action.
Excellent point 3rd. Regardless how civilized we think we are….we retain a caste system.
An awfully lot of animals have “pecking orders.” We need to have one as well.
In fact, humans can be quite happy with pecking orders, just so long as they seem to be fair enough.
‘Revolutionary’ groups often seek to establish new pecking orders, governed by ideology -if one reads accounts of Russia after the 1917 Revolution, it’s worth noting how soon the revolutionaries got themselves at the head of the list for everything,and were well-fed and clothed while others half-starved.
This was noticed by many visitors in the 1920’s, and made them disenchanted with the idea of revolution,
In many tribal groups, the ‘fairness’ means that if you are fortunate as a male to live long enough, you will get to enjoy the pretty young wives and best slices of roast pig in your turn -this is why tribal warriors tend not to kill their elders. Due to death in childbirth, this does not apply to women.
One of the problems with the advanced economies now is that many are starting to see that they will not ‘get their turn’ in enjoying the good things in life.
Sorry Musk. You can’t live on Mars because the solar radiation will fry your brain and give you dementia and paranoia for life.
https://news.uci.edu/2016/10/10/mars-bound-astronauts-face-chronic-dementia-risk-from-galactic-cosmic-ray-exposure/
If only we could find a planet with a protective atmosphere, clean water and air to breathe in…
Yep — but the MSM continues to tell us that we are burning up the planet — and in the same breathe continues to publish stories about how Musk is moving us to Mars….
Yet people believe one lie and reject the other lie…. without considering that perhaps they are both lies…. aimed at deflecting us from the fact that we are about to be lead into the end of oil abattoir…
These are too often the same people who are constantly bemoaning the fact that the MSM is essentially a propaganda machine…. that it is riddled with more lies than swiss cheese has holes….
Great idea! I wonder where on earth we might possibly find such a place…?
‘If only we could find a planet with a protective atmosphere, clean water and air to breathe….’
Then gut it leaving behind a radioactive disaster…. littered with skulls and bones
If the plan is to move to a dead rock… that cannot support life… then why not just set up shop on the moon?
Why Mars?
The fact that the MSM even publishes articles on this utter bullshi t is a total indictment of the ‘news’….
But of course when the MSM tells the endless tales of how we are about to fry ourselves… that’s the only time they are telling us the truth.
I guess since we haven’t walked on Mars yet, a move there would be considered “progress”. We are brought up to believe that we should strive for progress, everybody must try to get richer, attain more property, gadgets, planets… It’s all resources just waiting to be “put to good use”.
If everybody stopped believing in progress, that would be the end of BAU.
Another sneek peak into the future…where services break down. On a positive note, after the SHTF (pardon the pun), suffering will end soon for the most part, for most people, as they’re are rapidly squeezed through the bottleneck of dieoff.
California Hepatitis A Outbreak on Verge of Statewide Epidemic
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2017/10/Hepatitis-San-Diego-Associated-Press-640×480.jpg
The California hepatitis A outbreak is on the verge of reaching statewide epidemic status, as cases have spread through homeless tent cities from San Diego north to Sacramento.
The highly-contagious hepatitis A outbreak may have taken root because of the City of San Diego’s efforts in the run-up to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game held at Petco Park in July 2016 to push the homeless, and the rampant drug and prostitution trade among them, out of the downtown tourist venues. Those effort included locking public bathrooms and essentially relocating the homeless to the congested tent city encampments that stretch for blocks east of downtown near freeway onramps.
Another explanation may be the city’s decision to ban plastic bags, which deprived homeless people of an alternative means of disposing of human waste when bathrooms were not available.
Link didn’t populate, http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/10/08/california-hepatitis-a-outbreak-on-verge-of-statewide-epidemic/
A prime example of what lies ahead. As poverty increases and sanitary conditions worsens we will get more and more outbreaks of pathogens. These little guys are the true apex predators.
“Another sneek peak into the future…where services break down.”
“The California hepatitis A outbreak is on the verge of reaching statewide epidemic status, as cases have spread through homeless tent cities from San Diego north to Sacramento.”
True enough psile, as services breakdown and society begins to see the unfortunate side of what happens to the less fortunate in homeless camps in this capitalistic game in which it’s more and more like a winner take all set of policies and political attitude (to excise the periphery to save the core – for a while longer anyway), as those falling by the wayside are ignored and forgotten are becoming exposed to more lethal pathogens. But as the more fortunate will realize it reaches a point in which they themselves also become endangered by this declining net energy excruciatingly cruel slow collapse.
It will only get worse folks so try to find a sustainable niche for yourself and hunker down for what will become increasingly scary scenarios.
Watch what happens when people start taking defecating on the street and in the bushes…. even in rural areas this is going to be a massive problem and will result in epic outbreaks of diseases like cholera…
This is going to get into the water table and spread
Cholera in Haiti: Worrying Situation in Rural Areas
Between October 22 and December 5, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated more than 51,000 people with cholera symptoms in Haiti, including 1,100 every day over the past week.
“We often see only the tip of the iceberg, as we know there are people who are dying from cholera in the rural communities,” said David Schrumpf, who leads the MSF outreach teams in the North.
“We are trying to reach them, by car, motorbike or sometimes by foot, to install oral rehydration points and treatment units. Our objective is to provide the more remote populations with a better access to medical care but also to let sick people rehydrate on the way to the first health structures.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera_outbreaks_and_pandemics
A person can get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium. In an epidemic, the source of the contamination is usually the feces of an infected person that contaminates water and/or food. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water. The disease is not likely to spread directly from one person to another; therefore, casual contact with an infected person is not a risk for becoming ill.
https://www.cdc.gov/cholera/general/index.html
And when there is no treatment …. the epidemic will intensify and spread …
Meanwhile …. there will be nothing to eat…. total chaos…. and radiation surging through the food chain … the air… and the water….
19th century London only got better, methodical, sanitation because the upper class started to catch things from the poor quite frequently – for instance, a whole courtroom was infected by ‘jail fever’ caught from a prisoner brought up for trial, Parliament couldn’t stay in session because of the stink from the Thames, etc.
Before the 18th century the Royal family used to move around all the time in order to escape infectious disease among their subjects.
The water pumps in this village stood just by the graveyard wall -still there, inoperative of course.
I like to think of the “excruciatingly cruel slow collapse” as not so much a game of musical chairs as participation in a long distance race like an ultra-marathon, where you die at the end anyway.
“…participation in a long distance race like an ultra-marathon, where you die at the end anyway.”
How is that any different than an excruciatingly cruel slow collapse?
I wasn’t disagreeing with you.
We’re already in the slow-burn crash phase, total and sudden collapse has only been averted through substituting debt for growth. Meanwhile the finite resources we rely on for our very existence are being annihilated at an ever increasing rate. At some point in the not to distant future our accounting and financial tricks will fail, and we will have to face the consequences that all species in overshoot go through, for nature cannot be fooled.
http://images.slideplayer.com/16/5025385/slides/slide_7.jpg
The greater the overshoot, the more abrubt and quick the ensuing population dieoff. And Home Sapiens Sapiens has overshoot so very, very badly.
Let’s try an experiment.
We take 7.5 billion rats and put them in a very large box.
We give them enough food (organic!) to feed less than 1% of them.
Then we close and lock the door on the box.
Then we make a hole in the box — insert a hose — and pump in 4000 spent fuel ponds worth of radioactivity for the next hundred years….
Then we count how many rats are still alive.
I am afraid you are right. This is a peak into the future. Diseases spread when one part of the population is crammed too close together, without adequate sanitation.
I heard the president of the university where my husband teaches give a talk a few days ago. One of the things he mentioned was the estimated 300 homeless students associated with the university. It sounded like the university was at least trying to do a little for the students. Years ago, there wasn’t such a push to go to college–there were reasonable paying jobs for those without college degrees.
Seems to be disconnect in priorities, where you are willing to get into a boat load of perpetual debt in pursuit of the impossible – the 100k+ job with al the perks (although I guess tmost don’t know. or accept that), but can’t afford to put a roof over your head.
You gotta love these people …
You Try to Live on 500K in This Town
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html
I dunno … but in spite of the fact that I go down with the ship too… I am sure I am going to feel better about it knowing that there are a lot of people out there like this …. who are going to suffer even more than I am …. because they are already apparently suffering even though they are earning very good cash….
Enjoy the schadenfreude, when it happens.
One more excerpt for those who are time-poor!
“The mass media and the memory hole”
‘Modern Western humanity is addicted to the mass media for its near infinite provision of attention grabbing novelty, the stimulation of which provides vital distraction from awareness of the nihilistic void underlying mainstream secular discourse.
The mass media is necessary to the dominance of political correctness, and itself defines the nature of modern discourse: itself embodies and imposes the mode of thinking which enables political correctness.’
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.nz
It is amazing to me how many people listen to television whenever they are at home, and listen to music or a podcast when they are walking or driving. It is hard today to even strike up a conversation with a neighbor or a passer-by. They seem to generally have earphones in, listening to something else.
There are also the idiot screens in public places that are hard to escape; called ‘giggle TV’ where I live. Just business adverts with short funny clips interspersed. Distracts from any other conversations.
Have just found this re PC:some excerpts.
‘Yet we can perceive now, in advance of all this, that even when PC is utterly swept-away it will be blind to what has happened, and to what it had done. PC will always see itself as being on the side of the angels, whatever its outcome may be.’
…and;
‘It is a truly amazing thing, this political correctness; something so paltry, so puny, so soft – yet wreaking such devastation while rendering the devastation imperceptible.
It seemed, therefore, worth discussing under its new name, as a phenomenon not truly new at its deepest level – but new in its combination of idealistic, delusional subjectivism with deadly, plodding bureaucracy.
‘The more extreme, the less realistic, the greater the delusional psychoticism of the PC dream – the greater its fragility and the greater the loathing of anyone who threatens to shatter it.
://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.nz
Ask the ghostwriter of his book, “The Art of the Deal.”
Tony Schwartz has called Trump a “sociopath” and has said “there is an excellent possibility” that the Trump presidency “will lead to the end of civilization.”
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/07/worried-about-trumps-mental-stability-the-worst-is-yet-to-come/
All the ‘great’ leaders were sociopaths….
In order to become king of the hill you have to be the most extreme sociopath in a world filled with sociopaths…
You must be willing to do such things as gas women and children … shoot down airliners… make up stuff like WMD to justify destroying a country….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
Kindness is weakness. Kindness is dangerous … Kindness will only get you
http://www.inedc.com/sites/default/files/slider-image/ScreenHunter_01%20Aug.%2007%2004.34.jpg
Is the lion that kills a new born antelope a sociopath?
Is a wolf that takes down an injured deer a sociopath?
Then why is a powerful nation that overruns a weaker one and takes its resources run by a ‘sociopath’
Keep in mind the sociopaths are supported by their citizens… I don’t see any Americans (even those who protest wars) saying — our beds are burning — let’s give it back…
No no no no …. everyone wants MORE…. always more … never enough…
Ultimately does that not simply mean that we are all ‘sociopaths’ …. that we are the same as other animals? We are just pretending that we are not….
http://regmorrison.edublogs.org/files/2011/11/enigma_code-1fz5tz1.pdf
Pretty close. Force, fear and plenty help us get along to an extent.
Every pro sports coach could be considered a sociopath.
Hey James you are too slow and too weak and really don’t belong at this level … but I like you … and I see you could use the million dollar contract …. so what the hell — let’s keep you on the team anyway!
Every boss or business owner is similarly a sociopath.
So Jane … you have very limited skills and are really not capable of handling this position .. we have Karen who is far more experienced …. but I see that you are a single mother and you really need this job …. so we have decided to hire you instead of Karen!
And then we have the lion….
Look at this baby antelope. I have not eaten yet today …. but how can I kill this poor thing – its so cute! I think I will just leave it be and move on.
And finally there is the entire human population of sociopaths.
Oh my look at the horrible conditions in which most of our food is produced. Truly appalling. Worse than a prison. I think I will only eat road kill and vegetables from now on.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/user-media.venngage.com/750f5262134939d76f733471065006bb.jpg
Sociopathy makes the world go around the world go around (along with some help by Mr Cognitive Dissonance)
Our chicken is grown in factory farms in buildings housing tens of thousands of chickens. One of the jobs of the “chicken farmer” is to pick up all the dead birds every morning and evening.
They dead carcasses are then frozen — shipped to the nearest KFC chicken nugget plant where they are ground up guts and all — reformed into bite-sized chunks — coated with the Finger Lickin Good mixture —- then shipped to nearby KFC outlets and put on sale.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user245717/imageroot/2017/10/04/2017.10.07muskmistakesfive_0.JPG
English signs? In a Spanish protest?
http://www.crowdsforhire.com
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/10/01/catalonia%20spain_0.jpg
Got to get the propaganda out…
Right-wing Spaniards have even been leaving comments in the British press pretending to be ‘ex-pat Brits giving an objective view of what’s happening’.
Franco-ist salutes and flags have been on view in these marches…….
But I can tell you the people whom everyone unites in hating: those rational people who are calling for dialogue, in the ‘Let’s Talk?’ campaign.
Hopefully it will all fizzle out without any further violence.
Of course. English is the world language, but they don’t pay us for it. I’m an Englishman and I speak English. It’s my NATIVE language. But all these foreigners use it and don’t pay us for it. In future, we English should charge foreigners for every word they think, speak, read and write. And by foreigners I mean all the non-English, including Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis. Which includes you, FE. You owe me thousands of pounds, so leave me your email address so you can settle up.
I’m also making a list of all the people living in England who have a name starting with “X”, for the post-Brexit, English independence times. You have been warned, Xabier!
Recently a Berlin politician complained about all the foreigners coming to Berlin who don’t speak English. This includes waiters and waitresses who only speak English, so the Berliners cheerfully comply and order in English!
Correction – “all the foreigners coming to Berlin who don’t speak German”.
I have done careful research into authentic, historical English names, , and may soon start posting as ‘Ford Prefect.’ 🙂
‘Ford Prefect.’
Ha! You can run but you can’t hide. Anyway, it’s Guy Fawkes Night next month. I’m looking for a Catholic to put on my bonfire. Are you volunteering?
jaz, what about the United States? Will the old biddy the Queen make us pay to use “her” language?
Wait a minute thinking about it they are speaking American. You Brits owe us.
“Wait a minute thinking about it they are speaking American. You Brits owe us.”
An “American” language! Ha! Heard any more good fiction? 🙂
“Will the old biddy the Queen make us pay to use “her” language?”
Of course she will, and with the greatest schadenfreude. Anyway, we have nukes, you know. 😉
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-08/trump-says-tennessee-s-corker-didn-t-have-the-guts-to-run
Corker tweeted the White House has turned into a Daycare center and someone must have missed their shift this morning (due to several tweets by Trump). This is great political theatre all the while Rome is burning so to speak.
I was on the road yesterday morning and popped into a food store at a gas station to grab a blueberry muffin road and overheard this conversation:
Cashier: “So how’s it going for you and Alice, Tom?”
Tom: “We’re just barely making the bills with nothing left over you know for anything else. Can’t afford to go anywhere but we’re getting by I guess.”
Cashier: “Same for us and a lot of other people too. Well, hang in there.”
I find conversations like that interesting, because it’s not the news on the internet or TV or one of our wealthy clients. Its regular people telling it like it is for millions of Americans.
The young people today especially are having a hard time of it. Too many are working two or three part time jobs, hoping to make ends meet. This is even the case for college graduates. Or taking more education classes, besides working, hoping to (at last) make a living wage from what they are doing.
all of my three children and virtually all their friends are all working but are not making enough money to buy houses at the very most they are taking out loans up to a maximum of about 20 000 dollars in south australia they then take up to ten years or more to pay that loan off only to refinance again . the loans are mainly for cars and marriages.only one of their friends has managed to take out a mortgage to purchase a home and she was working multiple jobs to save up for the deposit
Cry Out Loud!!!
I can’t believe this but then again its only typical with Marijuana going to be legalized in Canada soon.
A local vegetable grower is looking to switch out his crops for the pot because he can make more money from the current 6% to well over 25%.
If you think oil is going to be a problem just imagine where your vegetables are going to come from even if BAU continues for another half-decade or so?
A large-scale multinational Delta vegetable producer is swapping out its tomato plants for pot plants in a 1.1-million-square-foot greenhouse because it says it can make more than 10 times the money.
Village Farms International also has plans to expand to five times that scale, resulting in a warning from Delta Mayor Lois Jackson about the future of farms in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
“If you’re a big corporation, you’re going to do whatever you can to make money,” Jackson said. “But if we lose all our greenhouses to growing pot, what are the incentives for the farmers to be growing tomatoes, turnips and pumpkins?”
The Agricultural Land Reserve was created to protect five per cent of B.C.’s land for growing food and other agricultural practices, said Jackson.
And Delta, with its 22,000 acres of farmland with rich soil, offers the “lowest tax rate” to encourage farmers and local production, she added.
http://theprovince.com/business/local-business/pot-production-could-edge-out-vegetables-on-lower-mainlands-agricultural-land-says-delta-mayor/wcm/130ae335-d96c-4720-aed5-1f2737872668
Politicians and their great ideas Trudeau senior must be turning over in his grave lol
I expect that if everyone starts growing Marijuana at once, the return will be about the same as for other crops, or less.
The quantity of marijuana sold is nowhere near as high as the quantity of wheat or corn, or cabbage.
All due respect, your being hyperbolic, cannabis is at artisan quality now. It’s also cultivated mainly indoors for optimum conditions. You can’t successfully “swap” tomatoes for cannabis and expect any type of good results, it’s not that simple and something is wrong with this article.
Besides, cannabis users don’t eat vegetables. 😉
The 27-year-old, described Paddock as ‘paranoid’, ‘obsessive’, and said he ranted about conspiracy theories including 9/11 being ‘an inside job’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4959970/Vegas-prostitute-says-Stephen-Paddock-enjoyed-violent-sex.html
Hookers are highly credible witnesses….
It would be useful if she had a name as well…
Seems perfectly legit!
If you believe Mr. Step into the Paddock was able to evade detection by hotel security and law enforcement for over an hour after breaking 1″ thick sensor equipped windows using a hammer while mowing down 600 people with machine guns, you probably drive a Tesla.
No, but I used to have a Ford Telstar!
https://imganuncios.mitula.net/1991_ford_telstar_for_only_nzd3000_6220072505497649177.jpg
I think we are well into the phase were the rate of population growth begins to slow down (Phase C in the mouse experiment). What’s interesting is that, we are probably going to enter Phase D, the terminal decline phase, in the next 10-20 years, right around the same time as all the other environmental limits also start to ramp-up (climate change and lack of energy).
There seem to be population limits for any animal, which are different from “running out of food.”
Thanks to whoever posted a quote by Robert Crumb. I had to look him up, and can relate quite well to this.
http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/thread/956/litany?page=1
But there are some good workarounds.
“I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good.
I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down!
I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it.
I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me.
Nature is horrible. It’s not cute and loveable. It’s kill or be killed. It’s very dangerous out there. The natural world is filled with scary, murderous creatures and forces. I hate the whole way that nature functions. Sex is especially hateful and horrifying, the male penetrating the female, his dick goes into her hole, she’s impregnated, another being grows inside her, and then she must go through a painful ordeal as the new being pushes out of her, only to repeat the whole process in time.
Reproduction – what could be more existentially repulsive?
How I hate the courting ritual. I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it.
Old age is the only relief.
I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never ever fully succeed in this endeavor.
I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It’s all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children.
Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate.
I hate the way humans worship power – one of the most disgusting of all human traits.
I hate the human tendency towards revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, to cheat,
and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant.
I hate the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people.
Sometimes I feel suffocated; I want to flee from it.
For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror.’
“Hell is other people” – Jean Paul Sartre
“Hell is also yourself” – R Crumb”
For those wondering about the meaning of life….
You are born – you eat and consume — you f789 – then you die.
And in between you hope that get to enjoy some frivolous, enjoyable always meaningless moments — and that you don’t suffer too much.
Meanwhile, it is time for Sunday football, nachos, and beer!!!
It always amuses me when people speak about “meaning” as if they truly understand what they blather on about at all. A hallmark of a complexed ignorant is to ask, or “answer”, questions they are fundamentally clueless about in both a spiritual and knowledgeable level.
Now where is that imminent, instant and immediate collapse ‘we’ are waiting for? This insta-collapse drama is getting a bit long in the tooth, if ‘ya know what I mean.
I do not like the writings of Jean Paul Sartre at all.
My background narrative is pretty much the opposite of this. It involves looking for the good, the pleasant, and the things we can learn from in everything that happens. There are elements of, “The self-organized system is so good to me.” Things that seem bad at the time, seem to work together for good. It is part of the way of looking at things I learned from childhood. It does not involve assigning blame for things that go wrong, or feeling guilty about things that didn’t go right. It is one type of religion.
If we cannot fix everything, we can at least look for the positive aspects of what is happening.
“I do not like the writings of Jean Paul Sartre at all.”
LOL!
I agree, Gail.
In fact, the very ‘worst’ things that happened in my life so far have all tended to the good in the long run, or at least not been so bad as they at first appeared, and have certainly developed my character -such as it it is – resourcefulness, and determination. They have also made me more realistic.
Unfortunately, people seem to be educated in the belief that nothing nasty or disappointing should ever happen in their lives: an immature, spoiled, civilisation, divorced from reality. That so many have their faces glued to screens is no help.
‘If you spend too much time studying broken things, in the end, that’s all you will be able to see around you.’ A good saying and rule for life.
That’s a good comment on a deep subject. I think one must be balanced, and not polarized though. There is so much beauty, yet so much horror. Sartre postulates one should be yourself, not a phony. Only looking for the good, or only looking for the bad is out of balance. There is so much (social/environmental) influence on it, that it loses it’s simplicity.
Authors, intellectuals, like Sartre, are heavily (de)formed by pressure cooker conditions put on smart yet oddballs characters living almost exclusively in the capital city jungle. I’m not denying his philosophical inquiries have any merit, but it’s mostly focused on the inner cosmos of urbanites at the fine edges of craziness, and this view is later projected on the entire humanity. That’s what such perverse civilizations do, he tried to analyse and describe some of the key mechanism features inside of it.
Other people ~24/365 living, exposed to the nature, be it wilderness and or “managed – cultivated landscapes” have obviously very different aim and outlook at themselves and the outside world as well.
Now, obviously, inside the pop of industrial civ, tools like existentialism could be more valid approach at this stage, from the viewpoint most of those 1.5-2B peoplez, who have been boxed into this crazy life experience ordeal with no “lucky” way out.
“Authors, intellectuals, like Sartre, are heavily (de)formed by pressure cooker conditions put on smart yet oddballs characters living almost exclusively in the capital city jungle.”
Complexed ignorants with other words. 😉
However, there are way too few masterminds out there. I’m talking about humans in the same dignity as Nikola Tesla, Alfred Nobel and Leonardo da Vinci. The epitome of a multidisciplinary Nietzschean “übermensch” – true scientific, engineering and social intellects and relentlessly in pursuit of the truth in their/our times.
I think Saul had a better understanding of the human condition…
The following sees why our attempts at remedying our problems are so feeble and misdirected..Cue the financial crisis, peak oil, pension shortfalls etc etc
‘The division of knowledge into “feudal fiefdoms of expertise” has meant that general understanding and coordinated action are increasingly difficult and often looked upon with suspicion, as evidenced by our systems of education which reward the specialist and disdain the generalist.’
The following for Brit.exit, Trump.ianism, Catalana etc..
“The great schism between the principles of democracy and the practices of modern rational governments has brought about not only widespread public frustration and anger, but also a general contempt among the ruling elites for the citizenry.”
..and perhaps the following explains your outlook?’….. the Socratic tradition is one aimed at self-reflection and the pursuit of wisdom. It is a constructive endeavor aimed at realizing our highest capacities as individuals and, by extension, as a community.’
http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/saul.html
Satre was a great cynic. His status as a writer allowed him access to any number of beautiful women. They practically queued up for him. One has to admire his panache. He even got interviewed by Playboy magazine.
“Jean-Paul Sartre’s Thoughts on Women”
https://keithstache.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/jean-paul-sartres-thoughts-on-women/
Sounds like a typical beta male. He’s introverted (hates banal conversations. Most people persons love those things.His disapproval of ambition is another telltale sign of introversion)and is subconsciously aware of his lack of fitness. There seems to be a lot of these beta men represented in the upper classes–where Crumb is better known among those who what he has to offer as an alternative cartoonist–than in the lower classes, where he would have no utility.
Crumb is very similar to Woody Allen.
Robert Briffault knows why:
https://i.imgur.com/N622bHK.jpg
MORE on of the Week http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-05/population-decline-catastrophic
When machines, electronics and robots do more and more work instead of the people, i.e. the civilization is more and more dependent on them and can not be created without them, then there is no reason for panicking about population decline: it is the machines, electronics and robots that consume the energy cheaper than population and thus provide the population higher standard of living. Without them, we have neither energy, nor current levels of the human population. Without them, everything would have already collapsed by now.
mg you were say any country that does not have
nuclear energy has greater chance of conflict
so do you think Poland is in trouble which no nuclear power running
https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-nuclear/poland-may-have-first-nuclear-power-plant-by-2029-idUSL8N1LN222
Hm, reads more like mid/longer term vision, after they address their pressing issues of investments in their coal sector. So, that’s decade+ away.
Furthermore, the best deal on NPPs you can ever get today is from Russia, so that’s a no go for a peculiar Polish mindset. So, that means S. Koreans are the only solid option in play, since the US are unreliable and expensive, as well as the problematic EU sourced ones.
So, in summary, nothing of that sort will likely be done by that time frame in Poland..
Especially, since it’s very likely US will any day launch “surgical strike” on NK, which means there will be no SKorean industry to speak about shortly anyway..
I think that China controls the North Korea now and it is in the interests of China to keep the peace there. Not so much the job of the USA as before.
I hadn’t thought about that. China is North Korea’s next door neighbor, just as Mexico is the US’s next door neighbor.
Yes, and the PRC are probably anxious about US warmongering induced mass migrations northward coming from the south east.
Poland has a lot of coal reserves in relation to its population and there is no one around Poland with comparable reserves. So there is no reason for conflict. But more and more demanding mining requires more and more subsidies, which creates population decline. The birthrate of Poland is very low, so I presume, that the population decline is going on.
https://www.google.sk/search?q=birthrate+poland&oq=birthrate+poland&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4584j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Rather desintegration may be a problem, like we see in Spain now, when some regions feel that they subsidize other regions.
Throughout the history, Poland was often disintegrated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland
Coal needs to be cheap-to-extract to be useful. Thus, it shouldn’t require subsidies. What you describe sounds like coal “beyond peak.” This is the situation in a lot of parts of the world.
“The birthrate of Poland is very low.”
If they ask nicely maybe they can get a small share of scandinavia and germanys immigrants
LOL!
Moreover, when the system collapses, there is a lot of casualties due to the lack of maintenance and repair of the machines. That is the way the system goes down…
Writer from the Mises Institute. https://mises.org
“WE ARE THE WORLDWIDE EPICENTER OF THE AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS MOVEMENT.
The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. We encourage critical historical research, and stand against political correctness. The Institute serves students, academics, business leaders, and anyone seeking better understanding of the Austrian school of economics and libertarian political theory.”
I suppose you can’t expect much of any branch of economics.
Austria, without any substantial energy resources except for hydro, which was developed later, was a brithplace of Hitler, too. After WWI, Hungary and Austria were totally in trouble, when the Czech Republic, with its coal reserves, formed a new state with Slovakia and a part of Western Ukraine. It is no wonder that the Austrians tried whatever possible to keep their economy going on, including production of various economic theories by the economists of Austrian origin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School
Uhm, sorry, wrong, in fact Austria was one of the prime victims of the post WWI global order. They lost rich provinces in NItaly, Bohemia-Silesia-Moravia, NBalkans, and the Hungarian alliance co-partner with its satellites which also disintegrated under the Anglo-American banking schemes.
After the WWII they were initially under the Soviet sphere, but getting neutrality eventually.
Despite all of that, they are now one of the richest regions on the planet. And TODAY one of the very few western countries waking up and trying proactively curb the past inbound migration mistakes.
So, in summary, it speaks volumes about their individual and collective superior performance and also propensity for historical luck, both factors are important.
Oh, no… They “lost” something? Historically, there was an independent Czech Kingdom, Italy, Balkans etc. The mentioned regions have their own languages, different from German spoken in Austria, so there was no historical pre-fossil fuel era link between Austria and other parts of Austria-Hungary.
Today, they count among the most indebted nations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/11455671/Austria-is-fast-becoming-Europes-latest-debt-nightmare.html
We should rather ask how would Austria survive in the past without those regions?
The situation of the neghbouring Switzerland is no different, despite the fact, that they use nuclear power:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/wealth-ranking_swiss-are-world-s-wealthiest—and-most-indebted/41689124
The mountaineous regions are really energy intensive, keeping food supply and healthcare for the current level populations consumes a lot of energy.
Interesting! As with other economic theories, their theories do not give energy any significant role.
That’s why they can be so smug. If they gave serious thought the leading role of abundant cheap energy in fueling the age of abundance — or the era of more as Norman has it — they would become a lot more sanguine about our future prospects.
Actually not so true now; getting up to speed applies to OFW people as it does to economics;
Steve Keen points a way forward and settles a few old false nostrums as well;
http://www.patreon.com/posts/green-party-in-14754913
MORE on of the Week quote:
“over the past 50 years Germany has grown 1.65% per year, real per capita. That trends puts a 2100 German worker making 4 times what they do today.”
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the year 2100 will be awesome!
I can’t wait!
but until then:
BAU tonight, baby!
U.S. Shale Juggernaut Shows Signs of Fatigue
Forecasts that abundant American oil can permanently meet global needs may be ‘myth,’ company leaders warn
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-shale-juggernaut-shows-signs-of-fatigue-1507195802
first, the use of the word “permanently” is ridiculous.
second, I don’t think that American business cares much about meeting global needs.
can American oil even meet American needs?
no, of course not.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/chinas-economic-boom-is-about-to-be-cut-short-by-peak-oil-warns-state-funded-study-exclusive-2533df2aeb6b
This is a link to an article by Nafeez Ahmed. He is writing about an academic article by some folks I know at Petroleum University, Beijing, plus a couple of other people. This is a link to the article they wrote. “A Review of Physical Supply and EROI of Fossil Fuels in China.” In fact, I am part of the “et al” in some of the articles referenced in the report.
What Nafeez Ahmed is saying is in a sense true. These authors are saying that peak oil for China is here in the near term (I think 2015 will prove to be the peak year for oil), and that peak coal for China is near as well (I think 2013 may prove to be the peak for Chinese coal). They have been saying that peak oil and peak coal are near in previous published articles as well. All of their articles are funded, in some sense, by the state. The university is, in fact, a state institution, and provided some of the funding. I don’t think people have been aware of the fact that China is reaching limits on its oil and coal extraction. If prices for oil and coal would rise, they would in theory have plenty of resources. The problem is getting the price high enough for extraction to make economic sense. It is cheaper to import oil/coal than to produce their own expensive resources.
China is in worse shape than most people understand because of these issues.
on a tangent, it’s interesting that there seems to be no effort in China to write against the ideas surrounding peak oil, or hide them.
with a somewhat oppressive or repressive government, China still is allowing the free flow of this information.
I wonder what top Chinese officials would think of your statement “China is in worse shape than most people understand because of these issues.”
would they be surprised, or have an even stronger reaction?
I’ve read that the top Chinese leaders mostly have engineering backgrounds. They should easily understand the implications of peak oil.
“If prices for oil and coal would rise, they would in theory have plenty of resources.”
There is what can be afforded for the energy it provides, that’s all there is and then there ain’t no mo.
Right!
“But he added that while some official agencies supported the basic research, senior Chinese policymakers did not necessarily understand the problem.
Although a significant number of Chinese energy experts agree that “peak oil in China is real and may come soon, they don’t think peak oil in the world is real,” said Wang:”
I think Wang is right. This group has been trying to tell government officials about this problem for a long time.
I expect that the big push toward wind and solar is partly because officials are seeing a problem with cheap supply. Also because of the huge pollution problem. But they are having a huge problem making the wind and solar work very well.
I noted that you have turned to discussing wind and solar as having real and potential utility. A point made earlier is that windmills to pump water have few problems with intermittency.
But I haven’t heard much about decentralization within industrial civilization. The article below makes the case that, counterintuitive though it is, many (or most) marginalized third world communities are somewhat in touch with industrial civilization. We see what this kid was able to do in his local village. It is a decentralized example and yet industrial?
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?213472-African-boy-builds-windmills-without-government
https://search.aol.com/aol/image?q=african+teen+builds+windmills&s_it=img-ans&imgId=93A14A9C2F7F1C1A051E912421D7FAAA3582BE27&v_t=webmail-hawaii1-basicaol
But PV solar is way different from windmills in how locally and cheaply they can be produced.
.
We have used windmills for hundreds of years. I saw windmills in the Netherlands that were in use in the 1700’s. Families lived inside of the windmills. It was their job to adjust the fabric over the blades so that the windmills would pump the correct amount of water needed to keep the water out of the agricultural land. This depended on tides and weather conditions.
According to this site
http://www.thirdplanetwind.com/energy/history.aspx
“The earliest known wind powered grain mills and water pumps were used by the Persians in A.D. 500-900 and by the Chinese in A.D. 1200.”
Also
“The first windmill manufactured in the United States was designed by Daniel Halladay, who began inventing windmills in 1854 in his Connecticut machine shop. The windmill was hugely successful as a means of pumping water on farms and ranches in the expanding western frontier, so much so that Halladay moved his operation to Illinois.”
I doubt that what the Africans are doing anything more advanced than what was done hundreds of years ago. These wind mills can be repaired, if all of the necessary materials and skills are available. They are nothing like todays “Wind turbines” and “solar panels.”
You need a system to make anything. Having a way to pay workers is very important, for example. The issue with any of these things is not how cheaply they can be made, but whether the necessary systems can be put (or kept) in place to do what is needed.
“You need a system to make anything. Having a way to pay workers is very important, for example. The issue with any of these things is not how cheaply they can be made, but whether the necessary systems can be put (or kept) in place to do what is needed.”
I thought that such a system would depend on a “sustainable” source of supply for the requisite materials, and the education process to ensure needed skills get passed down.
The water coop in my village seems quite content to to rely exclusively on the skills and knowledge of a president and a manager, one 65 and the other near 60. They are quite certain that the grid will never fail. Neither do they consider educating the teenagers (who entertain themselves instead with drugs and alcohol) or contemplate any alternative to grid electricity to run the pump. I finally gave up and resigned from the board.
We have used up the easy to get sources of most minerals. Certainly we cannot get oil easily any more; coal is mostly very deep or very remote. Most of the metal ores are of poor quality. There are some kinds of recycling that can be done, but a lot of today’s materials use combinations of different materials (for steel, for example), and can only be melted at very high temperatures. Obtaining these high temperatures is pretty much impossible if you start with biomass that you are trying to burn. Making the biomass into charcoal raises the available temperature somewhat, but not to the level that is probably needed.
We can use biomass for a few things, but we soon find that we are cutting down trees more rapidly than they regrow. We can recycle some metals for a while, but we soon discover that a lot of energy is needed even for recycling. Trying to do very basic things, like keeping roads and pipelines in repair becomes next to impossible.
I read somewhere that China is around the size of Canada but has only around 2% as much fresh water as Canada. Massive quantities of fresh water are needed to sustain industrial production today.
Water is definitely a problem. The northern part, including Beijing, is much more arid than the south. When a person adds to those problems the fact that much of China is mountainous, I can understand why they would want to limit population.
According to Wikipedia:
“A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of east Asia, including Korea and Japan.
China’s environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing 4,000 km2 (1,500 sq mi) per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China’s relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people.”
I have seen some of these things for myself.
They have a vast network of canals (completed 2014) transferring water from the south to the north:
http://punchng.com/china-diverts-10b-cubic-meters-of-water-from-south-to-north/
It has seemed for some time that China will suffer some kind of ecological collapse (depleted soil, too little water, polluted air) instead of becoming a dominant power.
They are facing an uphill battle, to say the least. I spotted that they are struggling to meet their air quality targets:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution/china-sees-difficulty-meeting-2017-air-quality-targets-minister-idUSKBN1CA0ML
The air quality in China tends to be very bad. (It is also very bad in major cities in India.) Beijing is down in a “bowl,” so the air quality on a given day depends a lot on the way the wind blows.
Hello Gail, this one from Nafeez Ahmed is also worth reading – looks like many scientific papers support your main view:
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-new-economic-science-of-capitalisms-slow-burn-energy-collapse-d07344fab6be
I am inclined to stop reading here… however I will continue with the expectation that the transition involves extinction… (sarc)
With capitalism-as-we-know it in inexorable decline, the urgent task ahead is to rewrite economics to fit the real-world: and, accordingly, to redesign our concepts of value and prosperity, precisely to rebuild our societies with a view of adapting to this extraordinary age of transition.
Must be reading Gail’s work:
This could be because, under a significantly reduced EROI, consumers in a less prosperous economy can no longer afford, energetically or economically, the cost of producing more energy — thus triggering a dramatic drop in market prices, despite higher costs of production. At this point, in the new era of shrinking EROI, swinging oil prices become less and less indicative of ‘scarcity’ in supply and demand.
The problem with focusing on EROI:
If these projections come to pass, this means that over the next few decades, the overall costs of fossil fuel energy production will increase, even while the market value of fossil fuel energy remains low.
….. few decades? No way in hell does this go on for decades…
And what a finish!!! Joan Baez and John Lennon would be so proud!
To sum up the conclusion — we need a miracle — but we don’t even know what the miracle looks like…. but we are confident that it will happen.
Utter utter rubbish.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/the-apocalypse11.jpg
Thus, Sekera calls for a new “public economics” commensurate with what is needed for a successful energy transition. The new public economics will spur on breakthrough scientific and technological innovations that solve “common-need problems” based on “distributed decision-making and collective action.”
The resulting solutions will require “long time-horizon investment: investments with no immediate payoff in terms of saleable products, no visible ROI (return on investment), no profit-making in the near-term. Such investment can be generated only in a non-market environment, in which payment is collective and financial profit is not the point.”
The only problem is that, as Sekera herself recognizes, the main incubator and agent of the non-market public economy is government — but government itself is playing a key role in dismantling, hollowing-out and privatizing the non-market public economy.
There is only one solution to this conundrum, however difficult it might seem:
Citizens themselves at all scales have an opportunity to work together to salvage and regenerate new public economies based on pooling their human, financial and physical assets and resources, to facilitate the emergence of more viable and sustainable economic structures. Part of this will include adapting to post-carbon energy sources.
Try reading the articles on Costa Rica as the perfect ‘de-growth’ model, in which life will be just perfect….
I bet the word idyllic is used more than once…..
Kampuchea Year Zero would be the more appropriate model to point to….
I imagine Costa Rica doesn’t get hurricanes, at least in these narratives.
“no profit-making in the near-term.”
I believe that profit at the basic level means that people can at least meet their basic needs to sustain life by the work they do: Food, water, shelter.
.
Whenever I read about someone calling for a system with no profit-making in the near-term, I will ask them if a lack of profit means that most people in that system will go without food or water for a long time. Looking at nonprofit sectors or even low-profit sectors, I can’t help but note that these sectors are being subsidized by profit from somewhere else and people who work in nonprofits had traditionally been well-off. A few affluent or rich people can afford to work full-time for close to nothing but it can’t be 90% of the population. The system needs to at least have enough of a ROI to meet the basic needs of the people in it, whether they are working for a profit or not. Otherwise, the system will be slavery with a high mortality rate and it would be abandoned because the cost of running a slave-based system would exceed the benefits.
The bottom line: You can’t run a system with high costs and no benefits for very long. It will fail. The system they are calling for sounds worse than the most brutal form of slavery.
No profits! No ROI in the near-term.
That sounds like famine in disguise to me.
There has been plenty of research in breakthrough scientific and technological innovations that solve “common-need problems” but the results have been disappointing. The computer and the internet are outliers. Science and engineering haven’t solved a problem in decades, from what I see.
I saw an article a couple of days ago, “New Robot Analyst (of Wells Fargo) Slaps Sell Rating on Facebook and Google.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/new-robot-analyst-slaps-sell-rating-on-facebook-and-google
The program was using an artificial intelligence approach to rating companies. The computer thought these companies (actually Alphabet who owns Google) were overvalued.
A company called MacroAxis calculates “Probability of Bankruptcy” for various companies. (It is careful to note that this is really probability of financial distress within the next two years. Their calculations show the following ratio:
Alphabet = 26%
Facebook = 50%
Tesla = 11% (Sure thing, almost, compared to these others!)
Chesapeake Energy = 74%
I don’t know how stable these scores are. It seems like I got a lower score for Chesapeake Energy a few days ago.
Having profits would be a very good idea!
i’ve travelled highways in Costa Rica that were moron pot holes than pavement. it’s quite a challenge not to break an axel. hardly an idyllic culture, unless horse-and-cart is the final objective.
Nafeez Ahmed has been recognized “member” of the early peak camp for almost two decades by now.. Good general overview points to some extent, but sequencing and timing analysis not so much..
To be fair, he briefly discussed some other sequencing options lately..
http://observer.com/2017/01/brace-for-the-oil-food-and-financial-crash-of-2018/
Ex religion is like an alcoholic admitting a bottle of orange juice fixes everything.
It gets better: according to Paddock’s IRS records, the gunman was not only a legacy millionaire, he was a successful gambler, earning at least $5 million in 2015. Some of that could be from other investments, but most of it was from gambling, officials told NBC.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-06/vegas-shooter-investigators-puzzled-believe-he-was-not-alone-two-reasons
DPLETTENBERG Stuck on Zero Oct 6, 2017 5:45 PM
Was the $5 million he won at casinos in Vegas? If that was the case you would think the casinos would not want to have him there.
overbet DPLETTENBERG Oct 6, 2017 6:19 PM
You and stuck on zero are correct. I have lived in Vegas for almost 20 years. I know a lot of pro gamblers andteams. Ive even got to BP (big player) before.
The only people making that kind of money that dont get major scrutiny are poker players. Everyone else has fake IDs, disguises and NEVER stay in the hotel. Many stories of casinos tossing the rooms and keeping laptops and such if you stay in their hotels (dont shit where you eat).
If youre an advantaged player making that much you are on Griffin list and blackballed. You might get to play for a few minutes before they catch you and ask you to leave or tell you that you can play anything except black jack.
There are comp hustlers, but they arent making 5 million. Maybe he had an outlier year and hit a few jackpots on video poker, but much more likely hes laundering money.
at last, something interesting about his background.
“Maybe he had an outlier year and hit a few jackpots on video poker, but much more likely hes laundering money.”
I’m not seeing anything yet.
What do you think was the source of the cash that he was laundering?
maybe he felt a bit like Robert Crumb:
“I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise, their constant meaningless comings and goings.”
~~Robert Crumb, “The Litany of Hate”~~
that’s quite the admission by Mr. Crumb.
Paddock? I don’t know.
He seemed to like the meaningless comings and goings of a vast city where he gambled among the crowds.
perhaps gambling gave him some solace and made him feel good.
rumor has it that prostitutes did as well.
++++++++++++++
Arms sales?
His “winnings” make sense. He was probably laundering money from either arms or drug running. No doubt with alphabet agency involvement.
I agree! His gambling is a front for money laundering arms deals.
Records show that during a period when Paddock’s car left the hotel garage, one of his key cards was used to get into his room (web.archive.org) (NBC deleted this article since and are claiming the fbi says now nobody entered the room)
https://web.archive.org/web/20171006183621/https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/las-vegas-shooting/las-vegas-massacre-investigators-probing-whether-others-were-gunman-s-n808431
prostitution is legal in Nevada.
More religion …. our sporting heroes are NOT cheaters!!! They absolutely are NOT!!! I will not hear it!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2FCBIpKCdI&feature=youtu.be
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/18294425/Icarus.2017.HDRip.XviD.AC3-EVO
Home page bloomberg:
There’s a Cllllllimate Bomb Under Your Feet
Ooooh … are you scared? ARE YOU SCARED!!!!
this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/there-s-a-climate-change-bomb-under-your-feet
actually, I’m more scared of that snake.
also Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/bass-says-ico-investors-will-get-wiped-out-in-crypto-mania
buy fake coins!
hurry!
Your making foo l of yourself won’t change laws of phisics, and decades of science.
Remind me what happened to that guy who proved the earth was not flat — violating centuries of science
It must be wonderful to have the MSM tell you what to think…. especially when your IQ is that of a warm room
Now remind me…. did Saddam have WMD or did he not…. surely the MSM has that answer for you too
https://static.attn.com/sites/default/files/AP_03020502197.jpg
“Why This 14-Year-Old Photo Still Haunts the United States”
https://www.attn.com/stories/16281/chemical-weapons-credibility
“Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti brought the council back to 2003, when former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the case for invading Iraq based on later-discredited evidence that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
The United States was wrong about Iraq’s weapons program, Llorenti told the council…
‘I believe it’s vital for us to remember what history teaches us and on this occasion, the United States did affirm, they affirmed that they had all the proof necessary to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but they were never found … never were they found,’ Llorenti said. ‘Now the United States believe that they are investigators, they are attorneys, judges and they are the executioners. That’s not what international law is about.'”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/10/06/hurricane-warning-for-northern-gulf-coast-as-nate-to-strike-saturday-night-new-orleans-at-risk/?utm_term=.2a073490f3d6
Gail, looks like Nate is projected to sweep in to your neck of the woods, hitting the coast as either a weakened tropical storm up to a hurricane 2-3. Just a bunch of rain by the time it gets to Atlanta, but as we have seen with Houston, lots of rain can be destructive. Hopefully you are above the flood level.
It’s been raining heavily for two days now here on the west coast of the south island of NZ…
Looking out the window — yep – still raining….
I was planning a long bike ride today being Saturday — this god damn KKKKlimate CCChange pis ses me off!
Maybe I should install some solar panels and a windmill — and buy an EV…. everyone has to do their part in combating this EVIL!
Stay tuned for more boring updates on Fast Eddy’s Boring Weather Channel.com
Atlanta is quite high up so flooding is less of a problem. Some parts of the Atlanta area had a lot of power outages with Irma, but we didn’t in the county where I live. (Only one brief outage at my home.) Most of the power lines are above ground, so any little bit of wind tends to cause outages.
Our area use to be like that – any kind of wind around 20 mph or higher and we’d expect power outages. They finally upgraded and now the power lines are more robust.
https://i.redd.it/1wx9pqfkb7qz.jpg
A significant and growing percentage of the public do not trust the MSM. These continued actions by the social media giants cannot stop or change the public awareness of their duplicity.We need alternates to YouTube.
4th floor flashes were from a strobe, not muzzle flashes. Windows unbroken.
Not so fast.
The 4th floor flashes were far too bright to be reflections of gunfire from the right side of the hotel. Get a brain.
If anyone is really interested check out the videos on The Red Elephants youtube channel.
Endless back and forth won’t achieve anything.
What does it matter?
We have MSM video of the twin towers being toppled with obvious explosive charges….
With loads of people not believing the state narrative.
Whatchagonnado…. absolutely nuthing.
People want the lie… they need the lie… the truth would crack the matrix… they like the matrix. They like to be told what to think. It makes live easy. Cows like being lead into a pasture of green grass.. dogs like to sit by the fire
You know that the “windows” do not open so would have to broken to fire through?
Would you be so kind as show where the broken windows are on the 4th floor?
You mean like a disco ball?
Like hi-tech drones.
Amazing coincidence chopper flies past just before shots begin.
Could have been a livefire test of black….ops tech as well as psy….op.
Incipient Skynet!!
If so, expect further similar incidents.
See thread http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message3657567/pg9
this is a troubling video wow!
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a35_1507244524
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muiHkkbPpdU&feature=youtu.be
Go to 6:50 and slow down. Muzzle flashes visible from different locations. Also at 3:12 when sniper shots initiate shooting.
There are two tones of automatic fire at 4:40 simultaneously. At least two shooters.
Helicopter flys past just after 3:00 with light lashing not muzzle flashes
http://ew.com/tv/2017/10/06/lin-manuel-miranda-wont-apologize-trump/
I’m sure Trump will find a way to be vindictive to this guy, but some guy named Manuel Miranda tweeted Trump should go to h-e-l-l. Funny tweets of his to Trump in article.
Where the hell is all the video of this shooter in Vegas? Isn’t the eye always watching you?
http://i.4cdn.org/pol/1507307554819.gif
Elon is a crisis actor. He is paid to pretend to run a real company that is pretending to have the ability to solve the world’s energy problems. Everything is great while Rome burns. How many of these crisis actors are out there on payrolls to spread dis-information?
Elon is a visionary! He makes cars and rockets and stuff. And, he dated Amber Heard.
I say good for Elon! He’s a visionary whether that pans out or not.
A visionary believes in what he is proposing. I don’t think Elon really believes what he is proposing can ever happen. But, he is being paid to promote it and act like it is doable. He is openly touting his “Power Wall” again for Puerto Rico too. He is being paid to spread ill placed beliefs in technological solutions that have no chance of working.
https://fsmedia.imgix.net/8e/b4/4f/fe/b51c/43ab/9919/4a1d71ef2d24/screen-shot-2016-12-22-at-23443-pmpng.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&w=700
He certainly is a flimflam artist, Elon Musk: Tesla reaches halfway point of construction on ‘world’s biggest’ battery
But parties with real credentials are calling him out, Snowy Hydro takes on Elon Musk in power debate
++++++++++++++++
Tesla should not exist. It is a fake company making trash vehicles.
The MSM tells us that Tesla is saving the world.
Circle = Square. Now that is POWER.
How many months until Tesla files for bankruptcy?
I can’t tell you in how many months but I can say Telsa Motors will most likely file for bankruptcy when the internal combustion engine automobile manufacturers start running into financial problems and can’t pay Telsa Motors for carbon credits.
Good point:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/82/da/b1/82dab179f5a1a10d8feaad6039855a2c–control-system-alt.jpg
Lydia Harvey and her family, who live in Whanganui, New Zealand, grow their own fruit and vegetables and keep chickens for eggs.
‘WE GROW, WE MAKE, WE SALVAGE EVERY LAST SCRAP’Meet the mum-of-four who spend NOTHING on groceries by growing everything the family eats and bartering what they don’t need
Lydia and husband decided to radically change the family’s lifestyle after youngest son Ashton was diagnosed with coeliac disease at the age of three.
She told the New Zealand Herald: “I started wondering why our food was making him sick. And then I started asking questions – reading all the ingredients on packets and googling anything that I didn’t understand.
make do with what we have. We grow, we make, we salvage every last scrap to be used for our chickens, our worm farm, even all our veg scraps to make stock.
“You feel pleasure in returning a favour or just swapping something like free range eggs for some spuds.
“Things don’t have to be so difficult, we don’t need things, we want things.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2822724/meet-the-mum-of-four-who-spend-nothing-on-groceries-by-growing-everything-they-eat-and-bartering-what-they-dont-need/
Now, a big round of applause!
Unfortunately, what you need is to be able to cook at least part of your food. Do you also provide all of the fuel you need for cooking?
Cooking….various non fire methods are available, such as,
Quicklime fireless cooking, slaking lime with water for heat without fire
Heap of small grey chunks of limeI was intrigued to discover a medieval version of today’s self-heating cans of soup, beans, and coffee. In a Welsh museum is an Anglo-Norman double pot, a smaller cooking pot inside a bigger one, designed for cooking without any need for lighting a fire. In the space between the two pots you could set off a chemical reaction by mixing chunks of quicklime (photo right) with water. It created heat to cook the food inside the sealed inner pot.
Can with button in white plastic base Quicklime, also called lime or unslaked lime, is what’s inside many of today’s self-heating cans too. (More explanation at bottom of page.)
A recipe from 13th century England explains how to cook with a pair of pots and no fire. It really was cooking, not just heating up pre-cooked food and drink:
To cook meat without fire….
Take a small earthenware pot with earthenware lid of the right size. Then take another pot, also earthenware, also with a suitable lid that fits well. This should be five fingers deeper than the first, and three fingers bigger round. Then take pork and chicken, cut them into nice pieces, get good spices and put them in, and some salt. Take the little pot with the meat in and put it inside the big pot. Set it upright, cover it with the lid and seal with damp, sticky soil, so nothing can come out. Then take lime that has not been slaked [quicklime], put it in the big pot full of water, but take care that no water gets into the small pot. Leave it alone for as long as it takes to go five to seven leagues. Then open your pots, and you will find your meat well and truly cooked.
The original late 13th century recipe in French (A quire char saunz fu/A cuire chair sans feu) is in Hieatt and Jones’ Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections
http://www.oldandinteresting.com/fireless-cooking-with-quicklime.aspx
Also, techniques of fermentation and utilizing spices, as in India, fair well. Never mind solar cookers.
Second, one thing you are forgetting is that serfs/slaves had to obtain and provide the lime. Yea, that is not close to self sufficient.
All I did was provide an example that was utilized in the past to cook food without wood.
Rather clever and inventive by medieval peasants, don’t you think?
Actually, these ancient people were far more intelligent in some ways in their manner of understanding their natural world and the materials in it, than the average modern individual.
Sing along with Joan
You are dead, You are dead
You are dead, You are dead
You are dead, You are dead
Oh yes, You are Dead
Repeat….
Intriguing method. Thanks for sharing.
Actually, thank you for sharing it. I had not been familiar with that technique. Have you heard about the technique to chill liquids or food using water filled sand and evaporation? I think the ancients had lots of skills we have lost.
Hi, Jesse, yes I have and grew up in a house with one called a pantry…My Grand Dad had one that was essentially a small isolated room adjacent to the kitchen facing north and was shaded by the sun. He kept an icebox there.
Also, Peter Bane did one better…built an outdoor concrete above ground cistern with a room attached…maintained about 50 degrees F for most of the year.
Its featured on YouTube.
Here is an article I found that is also interesting in keeping cool..
http://www.offthegridnews.com/how-to-2/5-forgotten-ways-to-keep-food-cold-without-electricity/
Folks years ago did OK without electric..we shall have to relearn to do so again in the very near future….I mean those of us who are fortunate enough to have it now..
We forget An estimated 79 percent of the people in the Third World — the 50 poorest nations — have no access to electricity, despite decades of international development work..or 25% of the worlds population!
Learn? How do you learn? When is there time to learn?
The power goes off — you run out of food — there is no more food and you do what? Learn how to keep non-existent food cool?
What you do not seem to understand is that these people learned over many generations — they evolved their ways of doing things. That as their BAU ….
We are talking about a very abrupt end of our BAU … our BAU involves being 100% enclosed in a bubble — we know nothing about growing or storing food — nothing about how to live outside the bubble…. and when BAU goes down — our bubble bursts…. and we will be like babies dumped in the forest.
Don’t believe me?
Try the Fast Eddy challenge… you know the deal… no power no bought food no petrol no medicine … no BAU … for a month.
I have put this challenge out there to every tough guy doomsy permy that has shown up on this site for the better part of two years now…. NOT a single one has tried it….
Because just thinking about trying it frightens them…. because they know trying it would burst their delusion…. and drive them into deep despair…
Try it.
Otherwise stop bleating on about this nonsense.
Coward.
‘We forget An estimated 79 percent of the people in the Third World — the 50 poorest nations — have no access to electricity’
Bullshit — 99.999% of the world has access to electricity. Because most people own stuff produced by BAU — and that stuff was produced using…. you guessed it…. electricity.
They also have access to petrol — they may not drive a car or a motorbike … but petrol is a big part of their lives — if they buy a spoon – petrol was involved…
And they farm using petro chemical products — they are a big part of the green revolution – and the green revolution is all about petro chemicals…. from fertilizers to pesticides…. to diesel powered irrigation pumps….
You haven’t a clue what you are talking about ….
Fast Eddy the Straw Man….
Second Coming …. the MORE on.
Fast Eddy all encompassing reason that nothing will help…spent fuel rods..OY!
The Fukushima nuclear catastrophe could have been far worse, it turns out, and experts say neither the nuclear industry nor its regulators are doing enough to prevent a calamitous nuclear fuel fire in America https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/20/19712/scientists-say-nuclear-fuel-pools-around-country-pose-safety-and-health-risks
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool, about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15 Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at Chernobyl).
A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15 year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel. To estimate the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137 inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about 33 MCi Cs-137. [7]
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion. In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material – See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/20110314781/natural-resources-news-service/fission-criticality-in-cooling-ponds-threaten-explosion-at-fukushima.html
Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment. This would start in more recently discharged spent fuel, which is hotter than fuel that has been in the pool for a longer time. A typical spent fuel pool in the United States holds several hundred tons of fuel, so if a fire were to propagate from the hotter to the colder fuel a radioactive release could be very large.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handling-nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel.html#.VUp3n5Om2J8
According to Dr. Kevin Crowley of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, “successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material.”[12] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the September 11, 2001 attacks required American nuclear plants “to protect with high assurance” against specific threats involving certain numbers and capabilities of assailants. Plants were also required to “enhance the number of security officers” and to improve “access controls to the facilities”.
The committee judges that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material. The committee concluded that attacks by knowledgeable terrorists with access to appropriate technical means are possible. The committee identified several terrorist attack scenarios that it believed could partially or completely drain a spent fuel pool and lead to zirconium cladding fires. Details are provided in the committee’s classified report. I cannot discuss the details here.
http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-mass-destruction/nuclear-spent-fuel-pools-secure/p8967
If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.
“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16fuel.html
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies. One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Today there are 103 active nuclear power reactors in the U.S. They generate 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste per year and to date have accumulated 71,862 tons of spent fuel, according to industry data.[vi] Of that total, 54,696 tons are stored in cooling pools and only 17,166 tons in the relatively safer dry cask storage. http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/the-growing-problem-of-spent-nuclear-fuel.html
I can imagine the look on your face when you read that research — it is no doubt the same look that I see on the faces of people when I try to explain to them that renewable energy is total bull sh it …. that EVs are retardations….
You know the look — it’s a cross between just plain dumb as a stump and the glaze-eyed look of someone off there face on a strong cocktail of party drugs. You know – like they are kinda there — but not….
You know what causes that look? It is not that they are necessarily stuuupid — or on drugs… (although they might be one or both) …
That is Mr Cognitive Dissonance kicking in …. his role is to dismiss facts when they threaten the mental well-being of his host.
He steps in to block out reality — and to make sure you remain in your bubble — your very own Disney Land….
Sure Eddy, we heard it all before…your list of excuses….I mean “reasons”, to rant and rave, insult others that post here. Fine and dandy, but its to the point of being obnoxious and mean spirited. Remember an old timer Hippy by the name of Adam Turtle speaking to us permie wanna bees… Moved to Summertown, Tennessee way back in the 1970s with the other West Coast Hippies at the commune, “The Farm”. He pointed out those that quickly left had a certain overbearing superiority attitude toward the local folks.
Now, perhaps these rural types were no as worldly as city people, that doesn’t mean they might possess a bit of know how and insight that just might be what you need to survive.
You and I ain’t going to live forever, that’s for certain. We can only guess what tomorrow will bring, it might just surprise you!
Here is Adam Turtle, listen, it might just save you
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UoO21fUf4b8
What the f789 is that?
You call that a response?
I suppose in DelusiSTAN that it is…. you just bang your drums and chant and moan and dance about the campfire and shout inanities and congratulate yourselves as to how awesome you are.
Did you ever consider that Adam was a f789ing more on… and that people half delusional showed up then realized just how absolutely stuuupid the entire idea was…. and walked out.
Because it well and truly is a duuumb idea. It is koombaya full strength
Maybe you might try to explain to me how I am wrong — and how 4000 spent fuel ponds are not an almost certain extinction event.
Of course you won’t do that. Because you cannot. So you will just call me negative… and dismiss it like a good DelusiSTANI.
YUM!
https://crisisboom.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radioactive-food-apple.jpg
When it actually happens, I’ll deal with it. Its outta my hands.
Maybe you should deal with so e things you can control
https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=1369s&v=8hDbFW3y4wI
I’ll bet you’ll do a lot of stupid things too, just like the rest of us!
This is where intelligence + facts + logic can be helpful…. if one has them….
Understanding that this is an extinction event — or at the very least will leave one wishing they were dead….
One could either waste one’s time engaged in futile preparations for the end of BAU —- spending time and money on these preparations ….
Or one could simply play endless hands of solitaire as one waits for the end of days…. this option is just as pointless as the first option….
Or one could recognize the futility of the situation — and LL… Live Large. Live Life like every day is your last …. use the prepping cash and time to do what you always wanted to do…
Now if your dream lifestyle is pulling weeds and building varmint fences and toiling under the hot sun — then by all means Just Do It…. but understand that this will not save you….
Well, Life is what you make it, and seems you are stuck in arrested development.
Fast Eddy is stuck in reality —- and has taken the only reasonable option…..
Buy hey — if it makes you feel good to Live the Delusion …. go for it…. but come the end of BAU … and the hordes arrive to tear up your garden and kill your animals… and rape and pillage…
And when your skin starts to peel off (you won’t know why that is happening but it will be the radiation)….
Please make sure to acknowledge at least to yourself…. Fast Eddy was right …. how could I have been so foolish wasting my time and cash on this nonsense.
They barter for things. Maybe they could barter for fuel?
Why, not?…they probably live near FE and since we already know he’s a terrible gardener, that’s something he can provide….
Nah…. There is method of forestry that provides firewood called Coppice
https://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/12/coppiced-nitrogen-fixing-firewood-species-of-the-world/
These firewood species grow rapidly, fix nitrogen, and re-sprout (coppice) quickly after cutting. All have high-quality firewood. They are thus a productive, self-fertilizing and perennial firewood source. Intensive blocks of these species can produce a tropical family’s cooking fuel needs on 0.15ha (0.37 acres; according to interviews with staff at both Las Cañadas and ECHO). Use of rocket stoves and other conservation technologies can reduce the area even further.
Coppicing woody plants sequester carbon in their roots, and in soil organic matter. When compared with pine plantations and other destructively-harvested wood sources they are more climate-friendly. They also have much higher fuel production per acre than natural forest, and can substantially lighten the firewood harvest load on natural forest around
Coppicing, pollarding, suckering: the best ways of maintaining a wood as a renewable (centuries, millenia-long) energy supplier -and for producing useful poles, willow and ash hurdles, etc.
It’s all about harvesting the ‘underwood’, not growing big timber trees. 4 -20 year harvesting cycles.
Mostly fell into disuse in Britain in the 18th century as coal became readily available (not because the wood was used up!) and the proper management of woods by woodmen was forgotten and ‘forestry’ and ‘foresters’ took over -ie clear-cutting of plantations.
I live next to a small 13th century wood of this kind (in fact, quite possibly Saxon, or even Roman, as they had small industries near here using charcoal which must have been locally produced.
Properly managed woods can survive for thousands of years.
People who call anything else ‘renewable’ are smoking something. 🙂
Thanks Xavier, first encountered coppicing while visiting Stanley Joseph in Harborside , Maine, His book is a work of art and can be had for as little as $1.40 on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Maine-Farm-Year-Country-Life/dp/0394584643
A tribute to the everyday rewards of rural living. The authors record the rhythms of their work and days, along the way providing advice and instruction on dozens of traditional country arts and crafts. 250 full-color photos. A massive coffee table size original priced at $32.50 in early 1990s.
You may enjoy reading the section of building a Coracle, (especially in Wales and Ireland) a small, round boat made of wickerwork covered with a watertight material, propelled with a paddle).
One can use the coppice wood to build it!
The article link features species of woody plants that are nitrogen fixing, thus fertilizing the soil.
For someone interested in building up soil
The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security
Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of Paradise Lot and Perennial Vegetables, and the co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. Eric is an appointed lecturer at Yale University, a Senior Fellow with Project Drawdown, and an international trainer. He presents in English and Spanish throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean. Eric has studied useful perennial plants and their roles in agroforestry systems for over two decades, and cultivates about 300 species in his urban garden. His writing can be viewed online at perennialsolutions.org.
Most of the hard thinking work has been accomplished….not that we can contribute some of our own!, just have the willingness and attitude to “dance” with the transition.
You do know that farming put us onto the treadmill to hell by providing surplus food leading to …
OK, Eddy…be my quest and stop “farming”….after all you are determined to assert you correctness. If you have a more intelligent manner to provide for our human needs, please reveal it. Once fossil fuel grown food disappears, I’ll bet most survivers will be gardeners and small scale husbandry. You might even witness the cultivation of rodents for food consumption. That should please your imagination.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro1hVkquZGo
Oops, already being done, sorry.
No they won’t.
It will look like this:
The financial system will at some point just stop on a dime — it will collapse.
The power will go off — the petrol will stop flowing — the global economy will seize up – forever.
The grocery stores will be looted and emptied within hours – and remain empty – forever.
The masses will panic.
Many will turn to extreme violence as they seek out whatever food supplies remain. They will kill for a can of beans – they will kill anyone who has a small hobby farm (assuming the collapse happens when the crops are ready…)
Nobody is going to turn to farming.
‘Hey Jessica — the shops are empty — lets order some seeds on the internet and use the rest of our gasoline to drive to the country and start a farm! — but Thomas — what will we eat while we wait for the first crop to grow? — no problem let’s just kill the other farmers and take there food — I have a shotgun and 50 shells in the closet — but what about all the other people who will be wanting that farmers food? — you are right – let’s just off ourselves with the shotgun – better than starving to death!!!’
Then of course there are 4000 spent fuel ponds that will boil away then blast the planet with the equivalent of 56,000,000 Hiroshima bombs of radiation (4,000 x 14,000 = 56M)
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
Would you like some cesium with your carrots?
You have the “gift” of determining the future. If you read my comment I stated,
“most survivers”…naturally, we all agree without fossil fuels a massive culling out of the human population will occur. Best learn now to raise those rodents, ferment food, select hot spices like in India to kill deadly food parasites, develop a coppice forest.
Like to see prove me wrong and you pass through the post BAU bottleneck.
Stranger things have happened.
Let me know if you contact Lydia, LOL
Nobody survives 56,000,000 Hiroshimas of radiation.
Agreed….we shall see if it comes about or not in our lifetime….if not, than what?
I’ve got neighbours like this …. they proclaim that they only visit a grocery store perhaps once a month – to buy spices and maybe a bit of chocolate…
Where does their water come from – roof collection into big plastic tanks!!! — then it is pumped into the house and into the gardens to irrigate during the very dry hot summer
How do they keep weeds at bay? Oh — well — we have to admit … we spray. But we don’t apply anything to the plants themselves so we are kinda organic.
Fertilizer? We have sheep — and make some compost — but we could never make enough so we have a truck load of compost dropped off every season.
Seeds? We have tried many times to save seeds – but the saved seeds don’t grow! We just order online from King Seeds.
What about winter frosts and their orchard? We keep the trees from dying using smoke pots — you put a bit of kerosene in them to create smoke to protect the trees.
What about food for winter? Oh we are prolific preservers — we buy glass jars and replacement lids at Bunnings every year….
And how do you keep warm in the winter? Well each spring we go up the hill and cut some trees with the chain saw and then rent a splitter then load everything on the trailer and truck ….and we have a nice supply of wood for the coming winter.
Not to demean their effort — it is truly impressive….
However this is hardly a self-sufficient situation …. far from it.
BAU goes —- they will soon follow (when the preserves run out — or others take the preserves…)
Keep in mind these are multi-generation farmers — they are not like me – transplants from the land of skyscrapers…. they know what they are doing…. it’s just that they too are completely reliant on BAU…..
They delude themselves into believing they are self sufficient — just as Lydia does.
One must recognize the difference of self sufficiency, which in itself is a near impossible goal to achieve, and being self reliant. Self reliant is a empowering community building network that supports relations among neighbors. Its one thing to know neighbors and another to work with them to lighten the load; many hands do light labour. Its important to recognize ones strengths regarding abilities and talents. The is the best partnerships to be form with others.
Wont be of any use post BAU ….
For some, like yourself, I agree
What all the naysayers refuse to see is that most of the input problems that cause the paradox of self sustained living today that they bring up will be gone when/if the time comes that self sufficiency is needed. Most “sustainers” (as I call them) are still forced to live in two very different worlds right now. The one Gail talks about where time is really one of the more valuable commodities around (for us workers anyway) and the other one where we are preparing for the next stage of life where things are not so inter-connected. They mention the use of modern day equipment as one example of these inputs but then fail to notice that the time restraints that force the use of that equipment will diminish greatly when things change. Many aspects of sustainability currently have zero or very low return on investment but will in fact have a much more massive return when other parts of the system collapse. Many of the problems I see brought up such as fencing for livestock will become almost a non-issue once mass personal transportation ceases.
People who are trying to grow crops generally don’t like other people’s livestock eating their crops. Without fencing, how do you propose to handle this problem.
I have seen a lot of hand-made wooden fences in some places, it seems like Russia. Also rows of tightly planted bushes around fields, in India. Wouldn’t some workaround such as this still be needed?
I never implied that the livestock would be able to run free and devour whatever they wanted at will. When you had a flock of sheep before fences became mandatory you still had shepherds that drove them where they needed to be. Generally speaking however in a system without cheap energy the fence goes around the crops not around the livestock if you get my meaning. and the livestock is driven daily or seasonally to grazing grounds large enough to keep them interested and away from the crops..
Funny you should mention that though. Not long ago I noticed a number of my free range, live and roost wherever they want around the farm hens had begun invading my neighbors’ bean field. I honestly never thought they would range that far but the dogs keep the predators away so the chickens get brave. Anyway I went over, took the neighbors some eggs to make amends for the hens scarfing up his bean seeds. Their answer was “they don’t eat any more than the other birds and we like seeing them out there”
When time becomes less precious of a resource the balance of what is important shifts and a new harmony will be made. I agree with most of your observations, predictions and theories but the balance will be so very different many things we think will be important problems will indeed fix themselves with or without our help.
Oh you won’t have to worry about your live stock…..
I can look out my window and see that my neighbour has 6 very large cows grazing … and I know that just around the corner there are more neighbours with sheep – well over 1000 in total….
Residing inside my locked container is an arsenal that could down all of them + a whole lot more…
A range of high powered rifles and shot guns … and f789ing trunk of ammo ….
I am sure there are plenty of people locked and loaded where you are too….
Anyone got any good mutton recipes?
http://cdn3.volusion.com/qspru.vgmck/v/vspfiles/photos/BR-035208218-2.jpg
This goes out to all those doomy preppies out there….
You need an awfully lot of fence, if individual families have small plots for gardens. I know that rabbits and deer are a problem where I live already.
Also, even in Biblical times, shepherd was about the lowest status (paid?) job available. Someone could probably figure out the equation regarding how much the flock gained a day, in terms of meat and wool/hide value, and how that compares to the amount the shepherds need to be paid. I expect that unless food is a whole lot more expensive than today, it would be hard to justify hiring a shepherd.
I doubt a pay scale could really be put together for shepherds since in most cases it was a family type duty that one usually did for a while until the next family member moved into the position. Doesn’t really require a lot of skill either. The point is/was to drive the animals out far enough to be beyond the range of the tilled areas. In some cases they were out there for long periods and in others it was a daily thing. Mostly depends on terrain and the forage available. Fences do not have to be built they can be grown as they were in Europe and honestly I can tell you a person does not have to drive a flock of sheep far to where the flocks’ entire interest will be focused on what is there in front of them not what is 200 yards away being grown. Also sheep are really quite easy to lead once the dangers of the internal combustion engine are removed. The wild ones tend to follow the tamer ones and the smart/tamer ones will follow their human keepers like dogs honestly. The margin for error is too big to trust in their instinct with roads and the like but if you remove that danger the flock will generally stay together and go where it is lead and a straggler will let you know it is lost.
The numbers of rabbits and such would quickly not be a problem. Much like post WWII Germany those type of critters along with just about any other type of pest animal including stray cats and dogs would find themselves in a soup pot fast. I have actually met some Cubans who will not talk about what happened to the local cat population when things got bad down that way. I can also remember an old Italian guy once telling me that for a while after WWII you didn’t even see a song bird anywhere.
Yet people have survived for 1000’s of years under such circumstances and they will continue to do so when/if it happens again. They adapt. Your rabbit example is a good one because you fail to see that while an abundance of rabbits are a problem to a gardener today in a collapse situation that same gardener would drop to his knees and thank his God for those very same rabbits. Right now time v. what the rabbit gives in return makes the rabbit a pest. In a collapse situation where time becomes once again cheaper that rabbit is now a valuable resource.
Will people die? Of course they will but not all and a balance will once again be found.
It’s that time again …. yes you guessed … it’s time to play:
The Fast Eddy Challenge….
Take your foot out of the BAU world and put it deep into the mud!
1. Turn off the electricity for a month
2. Do not use any petrol
3. Eat only the food that you produce – no cheating
4. Cut all wood by hand.
5. Wash all clothes by hand.
6. Buy nothing
7. Use no medicines
8. Use no medical services
We eagerly await your report in 30 days.
Oh and keep in mind — BAU will still be in play (we hope) outside of your bubble — so fortunately you will not have to deal with hordes attacking you. So this is more like a Fast Eddy Lite Challenge.
‘Many of the problems I see brought up such as fencing for livestock will become almost a non-issue once mass personal transportation ceases.’
How many people can walk to your position?
Assume most people have say half a tank of petrol in their vehicles. How many people live within in say 300km of your position?
You will be long dead before ‘mass personal transportation ceases’
How many people are physically able to walk to my location? Less than a fraction of a percent of the population would make it even a few miles. How many would be left standing and looking to move further out after they preyed on each other? Not many and attrition would take care of them long before they made it out to my neck of the woods. Depending on the time of year exposure would do a number on them anyway. Your prediction of ravaging hordes is still as misguided and one dimensional as always.
Can you feed the number of people who are within walking distance of you?
What about the people who are within half a tank of gas? Can you feed them?
What are planning to do about the radiation that is going to be headed your way?
Have you tried the Fast Eddy Challenge? You know — the one where you COMPLETELY unplug from BAU for a month.
Feel free to answer all of these questions. Otherwise you are wasting everyone’s time with your Koombaya bull shi t
I have done each of those things at times in my life to see how I would handle it and how I need to adjust and prepare for when/if I NEED to do them on a daily basis.
Tell ya what. You come and walk even 50 miles to my farm and try and steal something. Can’t use the roads as they will be full of predators from the cities. Have to go cross country. Once you prove you can do that I might pay attention to your challenge. Until then you have no experience with cross country survival, forced marching conditions and then being able to actually raid a farm so really have no idea what you are talking about.
If I were a wise person … I would be trying all of those challenges now…. as in while BAU is still in play….
Because that would help me to identify my weaknesses — and better prepare for the post BAU world.
But of course you and all the other doomie preppies will not do that.
You know why – and I know why — but you will not admit it ….
It is because you know that if you were to unplug now — you would soon reach the conclusion that living outside of the bubble is not possible … it would kill off all hope — and leave you mired in a swamp of despair….
Come on .. admit it.
What about the radiation issue? You don’t think I am going to let you off the hook on that…. what happens when the winds of death sprinkle your little paradise with cesium and other toxic stuff….
Again — I will assume you are not able to see my question — because Mr Cognitive Dissonance has blocked it out….
http://mymoneytrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bury-your-head.jpg
You skipped the radiation question. Guess they always will.
Nope. I have done each of them as needed to gain what I called a sufficient level of knowledge for when it is the way of life. As to why I do not move off grid this moment it is because it is not possible. If you knew even a fraction of what you were talking about you would know that there is no way anyone can currently live in both worlds at the same time. Well unless some one had enough capital saved up that it took care of all the present day expenses. Sadly I am not at that level so I must live in one and prepare for the other.
As to the nuke issue I have addressed that before. Your numbers as to which plants have rods in a position to be dangerous are inflated. You also lump all rods or fuel cells into one category as dangerous and refuse to take out those rods that have degraded to the point of being able to be contained in a simple concrete box with no outside energy inputs needed. Including those that have already been placed in such containers. The patterns for unrestrained melt downs are guess work at best and rarely take into account soil types that will literally swallow any nuclear waste up and contain it on it’s own. Heavy clay soils will limit the amount of radioactive materials that enter the atmosphere once they have burned into the ground far enough. Copper and lead deposits will do the same only better. There are also a number of plants that can be switched to natural flowing stream and/or river cooling that could last for years with no energy input and/or human maintenance. They could fail too if clogged or something. As I have pointed out your numbers and predictions for nuclear issues after a collapse situation are guesswork at best before even getting into just how far a collapse we might have.
In fact I can go even further into how far off you are on the nuclear issue when I have more time. I have recently made friends with a nuclear engineer who has worked on nuclear projects all over the world and I have been able to pick his brain about nuclear issues in a grid down situation. Some interesting stuff and not as much of a world ending problem as doomsayers like yourself try and make it out to be. The real issue is size of the fuel at hand mostly and how easy it is to dispose of it in a manner that contains the problem which all nuclear employees would undertake before even thinking about abandoning a plant.
Because some people have faith in humanity
So you have:
– washed your clothes by hand
– grown every bit of food you consume
– chopped trees with an axe – dragged them to your home without involving petrol — and split them by hand
– never bought our used anything that was purchased in a shop
– never visited a dentist or doctor
– never used any electricity or petrol
Really? How long did you live like this? How old were you when you did this? How old are you now?
Oh – and how many people live within walking distance of you? Do you have family – do they know that you grow food? How many are there? Can you feed them all? What about neighbours – how many are there? Can you feed them all?
How many people live within half a tank of gas of you?
As for spent fuel ponds — perhaps some of the rods could be casked — but that is not happening…. I am sure today somewhere fuel is being loaded into a pond somewhere – where it has to sit for 5 years before it can be casked…..
So let’s say half the fuel could be casked now …. that leaves 2000 spent fuel ponds…. each one contains on average 14,000 Hiroshima bombs of radiation
14,0000 x 2000 = 28,000,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation — that will quickly release into the jet stream … into the oceans….. and spread around the world …. it will enter the food chain… and it will most definitely enter your body…
And that is no doubt why nobody has ordered the immediate casking of all spent fuel that has been sitting in the ponds for 5+ years……
Because it does not matter — 2000 or 4000 — same result.
Extinction.
I do hope you enjoy what you are doing … that it gives your final days some meaning …. that you are not doing this because you believe it is going to give you a ticket to survival post BAU….
That would just be so sad…..
The Kult of Koombaya is no doubt strong — it shields you from the bad thoughts…..
You’ve heard the saying ‘nasty brutish and short’
That’s the best case scenario for you when BAU ends.
Dmitry Orlov has posted a link to this article, called Get Ready for a New Chernobyl in Ukraine.
He says he wrote an article about this earlier–mostly behind a pay wall, though.
The linked article says,
*clap* *clap* *clap*
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-05/paul-craig-roberts-asks-was-las-vegas-shooting-false-flag
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/10/03/20171005_spot1_0.jpg
Very interesting indeed… But this kind of flies in the face of the POTUS and his overall aggressive demeanor and tweeting etc. I would be more inclined to believe this was a false flag with “Obomba” or “Killary” in charge.
HRC – Obama – Bush – Trump …… they all take their orders from the same same castle:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Marriner_S._Eccles_Federal_Reserve_Board_Building.jpg/1200px-Marriner_S._Eccles_Federal_Reserve_Board_Building.jpg
I agree there is a lot of missing and mis information. The bullets and death were quite real though, There is an aftermath video full of blood and death by what appears to be a “gore collector” that was taken post triage, but before the place was secured.
How much motive do you need in a county and world that is FUBAR?
You would think the news media would have been on-scene and live where the most carnage occurred. That does seem to be the norm for the US news media. One would expect to see a lot of blood spatter on a lot of people so that should have made for some great news shock and awe stories. But, all I saw was panels of experts talking about it. Seems off.
It is moot though, as I don’t trust anything I see or read anymore. I need to read more sources about this incident and form my own opinion of what happened. We truly live in a FUBAR world.
Came across this one, from March 2012: “The NDAA Legalizes The Use Of Propaganda On The US Public”
http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5
“The newest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes an amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on the American public, reports Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.
The amendment — proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed in the House last Friday afternoon — would effectively nullify the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion.”
IO [Information Operations] are primarily used to target foreign audiences, but Davis cites numerous senior leaders who want to (in the words of Colonel Richard B. Leap) ‘protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will’ by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act to allow the direct deployment of these tactics on the American public.”
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration.
If we consider:
1. NDAA was amended in 2012 to legalize the use of propaganda on the American public.
2. There is no legal recourse for the American public when it comes to challenging this propaganda – whether that be filing suit against the US government or the news outlets.
Then:
Why would a false flag/hoax in the US require any actual killing? Why would the US government break the law when they can legally subject the American public to propaganda and the American public cannot legally fight back?
Why did the have to invent WMD in Iraq? Why didn’t they just say look – Saddam pissed us off – we want the oil — we are going to go get it?
At the end of the day the El ders hide behind this facade they refer to as democracy …. one of the key protocols is NEVER come out from behind the curtain — because if you do that you become a target when the masses are unhappy.
If the mandate from heaven is breached — they want your head….
With democracy you put figureheads up for public consumption — puppets…. if things go wrong your puppet is vilified — nobody even knows you exist — and they vote the bastard out!!!
So you need to keep the public onside when you carry out your Machiavellian agendas…. you need to maintain the illusion of democracy …. you need to get the public on board…
Otherwise if people vote out one bastard and the next bastard continued with the same policies they would start to question democracy and look for the man behind the curtain.
Look at Bush and Obama — Obama started and continued more wars than Bush …. but is Obama vilified? Nope. All because of good PR.
We’re neck deep in propaganda, legal or not, and if you stand up, your will be shot down.
In other words, the nonsense about technology will save us is perfectly OK.
Where are all the grieving families? I think we can safely say the media was told to keep the carnage and emotions to a minimum and keep the analysis to a maximum. Sort of unusual for a media hell bent on delving into every nuance of emotional pain which people seem to love to be entertained by.
One thing is certain, the blood of this incident is on the hands of the NRA & GOP, stop, period, ipso facto. Why not include the right to own an Apache helicopter for self defense? Maybe that should be a right as well. What about mortar launchers w/mortars? Why restrict the ability to kill masses of people if that is an American right? What about stinger missiles? I want a modern fully equipped tank – Maybe we should just let people have anything they want. Why limit it to military style machine guns? Grenades – I want grenades! What about naval ships like a heavily armed cruiser. I’m sure some wealthy billionaire would like one of those for self defense and to use for his going away party. “There are reports of a navy cruiser in a civilian harbor in Sausalito. Yes, he has opened fire and casualties are occurring. Oh the carnage!!!” “Yes, Steve, however it is a proven fact that whenever anyone wants to exit their current existence, they have an American right to take as many people with them as they can afford in military and or naval equipment.”
How may people defend themselves in a state of tyranny? What in your opinion are the limits of self defense? May we not defend ourselves at all? Or must we simply trust the government has our best interests at heart and have faith in that?
If it is not clear to you that our lawmakers are completely insane, you might like to read the following.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-gov-brown-downgrades-from-felony-to-1507331544-htmlstory.html
And as you well know, many believe that it was in fact the government or security services (who are powerful and evil and beyond punishment) that was behind this incident.
And is that too hard to believe, or at least suspect? Bcs every evidence of history is that the government and politicians are in fact at the epicenter of almost every evil wherever they are found.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Friday that lowers from a felony to a misdemeanor the crime of knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection. The measure also applies to those who give blood without telling the blood bank that they are HIV-positive.
Snowflakes in ACTION!
How dare we stigmatize anyone …. how dare we persecute anyone …. we need to treat all humans equally!!!
While they are at it … how about these MORE onic F789s pass a law that allows those who get infected by some scum bag piece of sh it….. be allowed to shoot the scum bags in the head?
Something is most definitely off.
What’s the point of the government creating a false flag. There has been 1500 mass shooting in the last 1700 days. There were even six ones just last week before Vegas happened.
Great question! Hell if I know. However, once again, here’s a list of admitted false flags (carried out by various countries) which include motives:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/x-admitted-false-flag-attacks.html
Possible motives for this latest, extremely promoted event:
1. push for increased gun control. Ultimately a less-armed public would be desirable to a governing body staring down the barrel of decreasing oil and other resources.
2. push the classic narrative of the lone gunman – someone who just loses their mind inexplicably. The next shooter could be your neighbor. The quiet one who always seemed so mellow. Be sure to always be on edge. Remember those helpful color-coded terror threat levels during the Bush era.
3. Racial divide and conquer:
“Stephen Paddock is a White Male Mass Shooter. That Makes Him Typical”
http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a12772832/stephen-paddock-las-vegas-mass-shooter-profile/
“How America Has Silently Accepted the Rage of White Men”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/03/opinions/mass-shootings-white-male-rage-modan-opinion/index.html
“The White Privilege of the ‘Lone Wolf’ Shooter”
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/02/lone-wolf-white-privlege-las-vegas-stephen-paddock/
4. Profit motive: drive gun sales and bump stock sales through threatening to enact legislation:
“Bump stocks are selling briskly since Vegas attack, some sellers say”
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/05/smallbusiness/bump-fire-stocks/
“Why Investors Bet on Gun Sales After a Mass Shooting”
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/gun-sales-mass-shooting/541809/
5… here, you can try the next one.
+++++++++++++++++
Your opening up a can of worms 🙂
Simply, the narrative I’ve heard is to “clamp down” and more homeland security and less privacy. My thinking is that even if that is so, (or not wasting a crisis) no one really cares. As long as they have their devices and easy living, so what? Even weed is legal in NV, go ahead and search me.
500+ people is a big deal…..
You know the first thing I thought when I heard that this guy had supposedly hauled enough weapons into his hotel room to equip a small army?
1. Why would he bring so many guns into the room — you can only fire one weapon at a time … and it takes only a second or two to swap in new clips? Why risk getting caught hauling in so many when one – with a back up would be sufficient for the job at hand? Do soldiers in the field bring two dozen machine guns with them/
Why would he do this?
2. Now I am thinking that hotels are going to go overboard now and require screening of all luggage. I stay in hotels a fair bit and all I could think about was the pointless hassles — any would-be mass-murderer would simply avoid hotels — why not just rent an apartment in a building off of AirBNB instead….
And then I watched this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=40&v=zNqxUuyHFzc
Now I am not saying this was the motive ….but….
You’ve got a rumpled quite wealthy retired accountant — with two dozen weapons in a hotel room… opening fire on a large crowd of people….
Something is very wrong with that picture….
Think fake WMD … think Malaysian Air …. think gassing women and children in Syria … think JFK…. think Gulf of Tonkin…. think Operation Northwoods and Operation Gladio ….
Think 7.5 billion useless eaters who will all die at some point …. what’s the big deal about offing some of them ….. if the ends justifies the means…..
Really – so long as the people offed are strangers if you pulled the ultimate trigger – who cares?
Heck our dog killed 500 babies in Iraq….
I don’t think our accountant was even there that night. Why would he need to be? The media provides a few pictures of him and says he was there. Good enough for most of the public.
https://www.amazon.com/Special-Warfare-Psychological-Unconventional-1941-1952/dp/0318201585/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507328866&sr=1-2
Also:
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MilitaryPSYOPSandUSstrategy-Paddock.pdf
Putin is behind this!
You got it!
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/97/91/33/97913397d1a40ca6b03840c3acbae2b9–celebrity-pictures-pictures-of.jpg
Alternatively …. the Martians who are controlling HRC…. had her commit this heinous act
Too soon to call it IMO.
Your thinking too hard on it, and still no hotel surveillance leaked. There’s no “getting caught” bringing luggage into a room in Vegas, even a lot. You can’t get into his head.
I agree, it stinks to high heaven, but it’s too soon to tell. Doesn’t matter anyway, security will get ever (inefficiently) tighter.
Now would you please tell me how much longer BAU will last? 😉
If it was a false flag — we will never know
I’m calling the end of BAU:
Tuesday, October 31, 2017.
When the chaos starts we’ll be in costume.
http://halloween-nyc.com/wp-content/uploads/thriller_good_smokin_for_slide.jpg
The huge number of weapons make no sense at all.
You would just take the most appropriate, and maybe a spare for back-up.
Lots of ammo, certainly, but not so many guns!
That’s why it seems probable that there was more than one person involved. A person can only use one or two guns at a time. There’s something very odd about this whole story.
At most we can say the authorities know more than they are letting on. Two terrorist attacks were carried out by people who had been investigated by the FBI.
500 is a big deal
Kill 3000 odd in 9/11. Half a million at least in Iraq. They don’t care. Any politician anywhere. Sociopaths to a man or woman.
One might argue that the Z ion ists …. indirectly killed millions of J ews…. in WW2…… by selling out Germany (stab in back) in WW1…. and creating a horrific backlash…..
But as the saying goes…. ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel#Early_life_and_family
“Mainstream media manipulation tactics”
Unlike the so called alternative media which as we all know would never ever sink that low… Just think of what would these right-wing conspiracy nuts would say had the shooter not been white.
“Initial media stories conflict official story”
So what? The evil mainstream media are incompetent hacks that cannot be trusted, yet it is highly suspicious when they get the facts wrong in the immediate aftermath of a random event?
“No one allowed to see dead bodies”
Good Lord! What’s next, crisis actors?
Syria CIA gas victims — real bodies…. 🙂
https://totallycoolpix.com/images/tcp_images_before/1024/syrian_gas_attack_victims_003__tcp_gallery_image.jpg
Assad and his generals could torture children on camera, and you lunatics would still be convinced it’s a conspiracy by the CIA.
Speaking of legalized anti-Syrian propaganda:
“OOPS! CNN Caught In Blatant Propaganda Using Young Girl”
Yep – I would assume the CIA found a lookalike — or had Hollywood fake the scene….
Yes I distinctly remember a Secretary of State showing Saddam gassing his own people on camera. I must be an idiot to not believe it! The WMDs were never found but a convenient war started because of it. You are a gov/war shill.
You ever hear of the “White Helmets”? All an act. They almost got the Nobel Peace Prize. As a compensation for missing that, they got an Oscar.
My friend, it’s all lies, and you are living in the middle of them. Now get back to the tv and get your programming. And just forget I said anything unpleasant at all.
A tyrant is a tyrant, regardless of the “MSM”s opinion. The syrian regime especially at the beginning of the war, tortured children and political opponents alike, and commited numerous war crimes (Ghouta gas attack comes to mind) but it is somehow okay because they a) are a secular regime and b) seemingly oppose the “US imperialists”. You people don’t trust the american and european mainstream media, that’s fine, but why don’t you apply the same skeptic behaviour to so-called “alternative” and dubious sources such as zerohedge? Don’t they spew out propaganda as well? Are they perfectly unbiased? Take a look at the comments on that site, these people are much more “indoctrinatable” and prone to manipulation (and hateful, that goes without saying) than the average joe who listens to the news every once in a while. At least the latter is not so utterly convinced he has just “seen the light” and has risen so above mankind just by reading news stories on the internet!
And no, I am not in favor of neo-colonialism and western intervention of any kind, and that’s including the russians who are western too and have nothing to do in the region either.
FTP shill, the Claim that a “dictator” mistreats his own people is one of the standard excuses to implement “regime change” or “nation building”, all an excuse to invade and kill and overthrow a government, resulting in large scale death and suffering. All smoke and mirrors. All fake. Just like you.
“the Claim that a “dictator” mistreats his own people (…)”
It is true in the case of Syria. There was an uprising that was brutally repressed and it ended in civil war. It did not have to be like this, but the government reacted poorly (and that’s an understatement) in 11-12. The regime would have been toppled by now had it not been for western intervention.
Your conspiracy nonsense is tiresome, not every single event in the world is a masterful plan devised by the CIA, the MI6 or God knows what.
You’re right to question Zero Hedge. There’s a history of tension within their ranks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
Also, the copyright at the bottom of their homepage states:
Copyright ©2009-2017 ZeroHedge.com/ABC Media, LTD
Is that the American Broadcasting Company (ABC)? Is it a foreign media company? So far I haven’t found answers to these questions.
The challenge for media consumers is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Valuable information can be found in Zero Hedge articles, MSM articles, blog posts, social media, etc.
There is an information war going on, however. These Big Six:
https://gprl6105.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/media_consolidation.jpg
against anyone and everyone who can share and analyze news information online.
This seems to be why our leaders are so concerned about “Fake News” and why British Prime Minister Theresa May often calls for restricting the internet. Controlling “The Narrative,” that is, the big one, the one that ends up becoming official history, is paramount to shepherding society. The trouble for our leaders at present is that anyone can go online and publish their own counter-narrative. As of June 2017 there are over 3.8 billion internet users in the world (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). Not only is that a large number of people who can challenge the veracity of The Narrative but it is also a large number of people for the creators of The Narrative to win over. With each hit the MSM takes to their credibility (e.g. falsifying WMD evidence, promoting false flag attacks, etc.) the harder it becomes for our leaders to prop up The Narrative; and this in turn drives people toward alternative sources of information in the effort to find out what is true.
Notice how most MSM removed the comments sections on their sites a couple of years ago….
The people of Syria are winning their freedom, freedom from a future ruled by ISIS and like Libya’s current reality.
So sorry my comments to you are tiresome. Are you triggered? Are you weary of hearing the truth? Perhaps you would like to go to a safe space.
Oh look… we have a lost DelusisTANI on FW….. come along you stuuupid igggnorant MOOOreon…. Fast Eddy will help you get back home…..
http://edition.cnn.com/
“Notice how most MSM removed the comments sections on their sites a couple of years ago…”
I noticed it following the election of Donald Trump. Ideologically, it seemed to be happening more on the “politically correct” sites with a high presence of women. Women, in general, do not deal well with criticism, especially from men.
Would you buy a used full-body scanner from this man?
http://renegadetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/trust-me-chertoff.jpg
Another interesting expose was a new documentary on the Vietnam War on TV. Very well done in four parts. The last one however brought home the soon coming oil crisis in a new light by revealing the how and why Vietnam War ultimately came to an end. Washington simply didn’t have the stomach for it anymore or the money because what was occurring that took precedent? The economy of the early 1970’s which was falling apart and of course the oil embargo hmmm? The docu didn’t mention oil per se just the trouble brewing in the Middle East. For those of us who can make the connections however oil played the significant part surely. Washington just couldn’t afford to go to war anymore.
Once again people should know here that the big story around oil in 1970 isn’t the “oil embargo” (never effective from KSA to the US especially for vietnam), but the US peak, typically below :
https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/US_Oil_Production_and_Imports_1920_to_2005.png?zoom=2
I would very much agree that the problem was the drop in US oil production, not the oil embargo. Also, wages were rising very rapidly in the early 1970s (partly because women were joining the labor force). These rapidly rising wages enabled a price spike that disrupted many businesses. Price controls created more confusion.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/growth-in-us-wages-vs-growth-in-inflation1.png
apologies that is what was on my mind actually and the TV series on Vietnam really brought home the issue of oil or rather the lack of it causing some serious economic problems for the Ford administration. It never mentioned it directly though just Middle East troubles.
The most fascinating result of this war is that nowadays most of Vietnamese prefer US over China. If you put aside that component of very long term historical connotations against Chinese influence, you will suddenly get to the core message, why such a perverse attitude can ever exist few decades after unbelievable carnage.
And if you answered correctly that question, you will already have the answer for why the global collapse will take such a long time, than previously thought, predicted estimated.
Every one that I talk with says that the Ken Burns doc was spot on…I found it full of holes and pure garbage.
Human beings are born with only two fears. The fear of falling and loud noises. Everything else is conditioned through their environment.
http://i.4cdn.org/pol/1507260211742.gif
I thought even loud noises was conditioned – not present at birth as I recall.
I don’t fear the end of BAU.
heights, yes.