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.
Bitcoin Is Now Bigger Than Morgan Stanley
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-13/bitcoin-now-bigger-morgan-stanley
Reports Indicate That Sweden Will Stop Using Cash by 2023
https://futurism.com/reports-indicate-that-sweden-will-stop-using-cash-by-2023/
Cash Is Quickly Becoming Obsolete in China
https://futurism.com/cash-is-quickly-becoming-obsolete-in-china/
Whoowheee!
Gives me a headrush all this funny money floatin around. Like it grows on trees or somethin.
“Reports Indicate That Sweden Will Stop Using Cash by 2023” – that may a very accurate statement. The only thing driving the economy now is financializtion. And Bitcoin is an extension of this since it is completely virtual and backed by absolutely nothing.
Doesn’t it all boil down to whatever us farty meatbags want to place our collective confidence in?
As in… as long as everyone agrees on the method of monetary exchange and storage there is no need for the method of monetary exchange and storage to be based on anything more than the existence of a functioning and stable electrical grid enabling the reliable transfer of said units of monetary exchange and storage and a bit of math.
A bit like tally sticks only with electronic bits…
What tally sticks tell us about how money works
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40189959
Of course… if the grid fails then we’re doomed anyway. Trading cigarettes or soap will only get you so far post collapse.
If many of you are certain of near term collapse (5 to 10 years) then what difference does it make what funny money we use up until that day?
If collapse doesn’t quite pan out as expected (I know – herecy) then all these cryptos get to take center stage until something else breaks and by then there may be another patch in place that completely revolutionizes something else and so on.
If only we could limp along into the 2030s – the promised land of super nanotechnology and gene therapy for all – the human race could be put out to pasture gracefully in a kind of global retirement home for obsolete species.
LOL speaking of farty meatbags………
I blame all those spicy meatballs!
If collapse doesn’t quite pan out as expected.
Perish the thought! After all, what could possibly go right!? 🙂
I’ve always been impressed with a scene from the Peter Pan pantomime they used to show on the BBC when I was a kid. It’s that well-known scene where Tinkerbell, portrayed as a cross between a star and a snowflake, is fading and dying, and all the boys and girls in the audience, including those of you watching at home, are told that she will only get well if they believe in fairies. There’s a lot of emotion in the scene if you’re a five to ten-year-old, and in effect it’s an exercise in mass guilt-tripping.
So now I’m wondering if BAU could be a bit like TInkerbell: if we all continue to believe in Elon and Richard Branson and the stock market and renewables and Bitcoin, then the show can go on at least a bit longer. But once we collectively cease to believe, then the lights will go out permanently. Forget happy ever after. We are well into can-kicking extra time, and in order to keep kicking the can, we have to believe that the can can be kicked.
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Ufff… got a lump in my throat reading that bit about Tinky Winky fading and dying.
If we all just close our eyes and imagine giant windmills in the sky then when you wake up tomorrow morning in yer bed kiddy widdies and look out the window there they will be. But you have to really believe it and not break the spell otherwise dragons and trolls and orcs will come and gobble you all up.
Of course… that’s it… we’re all being treated like little children and fed fairytales with heroes and champions fighting fire breathing monsters… because it’s the humane thing to do. The truth would utterly destroy them. And we’re not animals.
Behind closed doors the adults know from experience but not for want of trying that no matter how hard you wish for something, no matter how much you believe with all you heart… it doesn’t make it true.
Poor kids… I can hear the bubbles bursting already.
Come to think of it … why bother to try to open the eyes of anyone …. and endure frustration .. when there is already a community of people with their eyes and minds open on FW….
The best and the brightest will eventually make their way to FW…. directing someone to FW is pointless… the truly curious … will come….
Why does the drowning scorpion sting the saint who is trying to save him?
Sweden is almost cashless already, it’s just a question of a few backward 70+ year olds that must die off.
You pay by card and if you have to transfer money to other people you Swish it, they won’t accept cash. Even pizzerias and hairdressers and other obvious tax cheaters don’t want cash. Probably not drug dealers either.
If you eliminate cash negative interest rates will work better. And we probably will have to keep lowering interest rates to make it another 5-10 years.
Wow. Never thought I’d see this day. We truly are in Star Trek now.
I wonder how low we can go. I remember when interest rates were on the up and up…
Imagine paying over 18% interest on a 30-year fixed mortgage. It’s almost unthinkable. But that was the reality for home buyers in October 1981 – a year when the average rate was almost 17%. Unlike today, in the early 1980s, the Federal Reserve was waging a war with inflation.Nov 22, 2013
Why Mortgage Rates Once Reached a Sky-high 18.5% – Yahoo Finance
https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/just…it/why-mortgage-rates-matter-152241574.html
I hope these people have thought through what they will do in the case of electric power outages. Or cell phones not working, perhaps because towers are down, or owners cannot keep up payments.
I can believe Sweden stopping using cash long before China. China is a big place. I can imagine methods of paying using cell phones becoming popular in big cities. Whether they will work in Inner Mongolia and in westerns China is another question. I would expect that cash will continue to be king.
When internet is down you can’t shop groceries with cash because their cash register system requires internet somehow.
Interesting!
But cellphone infrastructure is cheap compared to copper wires, prior art nothing
Where is the tech equivalent of the ic?
Cheap doesn’t matter. The problem is keeping the whole networked system working together, when some parts are going bankrupt.
1) “Bitcoin Is Now Bigger Than Morgan Stanley” – Hmm, lets see, Bitcoin (a virtual currency that isn’t real) is bigger than Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is itself unsustainable and is likely insolvent. So that statement doesn’t mean much to me.
2) “Reports Indicate That Sweden Will Stop Using Cash by 2023” – well if the financial system collapses, no one will be using cash by 2023. Why? Because cash will be worthless.
3) “Cash Is Quickly Becoming Obsolete in China” – China is maxed out and can no longer grow. If China cannot grow anymore it will begin to collapse. See #2.
1) Define real. Are electrons real? Are atoms real? Are your thoughts real? None of the other currencies that we use have been really real for some time now… most of all it backed by nothing other than promises and the promise of an abundant future… so… why is bitcoin et al less real than all these other pretenders?
But I agree that nothing we are doing is sustainable and adding cryptos solves nothing.
2) yup.
3) Should read… “People are quickly becoming obsolete in China”
There is a chance that we are we are avatars in a sophisticated video game … real is whatever the programmers decide is real.
Oooh… deeper and deeper we go!
I have no doubt that I’m a program. A glitchy one at that. My attempts to rewrite the faulty programming (bunch of cowboys) have been mildly successful but you start to run out of time so the only option is to throw in the towel and accept things the way they are.
All together now… Aaaacceeeptaaance…. and relax.
Samsung CEO Steps Down Despite Record Profits, Warns Of “Unprecedented Crisis”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-13/samsung-ceo-steps-down-despite-record-profits-warns-unprecedented-crisis
Does this CEO know something we don’t?
No, the CEO knows what we know LOL!
He seems to be talking about high chip prices driving Samsung’s recent profitability, rather than growth in sales. These chips are being sold to Apple, I believe.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/18/samsung-to-resume-making-iphone-a-series-chips-from-next-year-report/
This is a 2015 article called, “Why Does Samsung Make Apple Parts?” It says,
“The reason Samsung makes Apple parts is simple; it makes Samsung money. In fact, Samsung’s mobile market segment is shrinking and their overall profits for the company are lowering.”
But Apple seems to bid out each set of chips, and likes to split orders among suppliers. This doesn’t add much stability or upside to future earnings.
Wow! Wasn’t aware of the crossover there between major rivals. Just goes to show that everything is far more intertwined than appearances dictate.
Essentially, we have a few major chip makers and battery manufacturers (Panasonic) around the world – just enough for redundancy I guess, but still, hardly a decentralised system is it.
Would be devastating for all major south korean corporations if conflict breaks out over the border although I believe this to be unlikely. The US has just sent another carrier group… and Trump was babbling something about the calm before the storm… whatever that means.
Yes, all it takes is a few breaks in a supply chain to cause contagion through the whole of what we call the tech market. Without computers we are quite the toasty slice of bread. Especially Bitcoin holders. We have put all of our eggs in the computer basket. This is incredibly dangerous as we will soon find out. Too many points of failure. Even solar flares will lay waste to our computing infrastructure…assuming the financial system holds together that long.
+++++++++++++++++
I especially liked… “Without computers we are quite the toasty slice of bread.”
As FE has made reference to often enough… when I take a screen break and look outside and imagine there’s no lectricity… I get an immediate knee jerk survival response to look back at the screen and thank my lucky stars for the bubble I am squeezed into… I mean… I could buy a book I suppose… you know… one of those wild plants you can eat books… and my dad helped me make a bow and arrow when I was five so there is that… but it was shit… and I can make a fire with sticks and dry grass but you can’t eat fire so useless really… gawd help us if the lights go out… or the trucks stop running… actually truck drivers are my new gods… they are better than politicians, lawyers and hollywood starlets combined… in fact if I had to choose between pill pushers and truck drivers I would choose truck drivers. They have proved themselves to be the most useful people in the world and don’t get enough praise. Oh and big container ships. I like them as well.
The bar goes every higher on FW…. the DelusiSTANIS are … on the run…..
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/raising-bar-blog-logo.jpg
We are all channeling your greatness FE…
You have done well Lord Vader.
I have programmed the character know as Fast Eddy well… he is my greatest creation so far. Even better than Jesus.
Superorganism Resilience – The Strategy
Identifying the key failure points that lead to systemic collapse so that redundancy in the global supply chain is ensured.
Any takers?
https://futurism.com/reports-ai-robots-threaten-jobs-5-years/
So even if we weren’t heading for economic implosion over the next five years…
Half the workforce would become unemployed anyway thanks to technological progress which means…
Not enough people could afford the output of the economy which means…
We head for economic implosion.
Yikes… we really are screwed.
That is essentially the facts as I see them as well. The advent of robots is a symptom of the greater disease of diminishing returns and the desperate attempts to stave it off.
It’s like the cherry at the top of one those huge multi tiered wedding cakes…
Or the straw that broke the camel’s back…
Or… well you get the idea.
Everything looks fine and dandy when you’re building the tower. What’s one more brick right?
Just one more layer of complexity and our project will be complete… what could possibly go wrong?
I agree. Robots don’t buy much of anything. We end up with a big problem.
Maybe robots ARE the future if the “small” problem of general intelligence is solved. What if farty meatbags… I mean humans… have simply been the enabling organism paving the way for a more efficient one allowing the continuation of some form of intelligence but without all the biological baggage.
Clever humans (as units of enabling) would only be required until the offspring organism was self sufficient. This scenario would still not add up to a happy ending for the human species but would be equivalent to parents and grandparents waving off their kids as they clumsily venture out into the big wide world knowing they may never see each other again.
I am certainly aware of scientists who feel this way about their AI creations and hold these views. They also appear to be fully aware of what it would mean for the human race if / when this breakthrough happens. Human obscelecence would be almost instantaneous.
But then… our multi-layered, just in time supply chain would have to remain mostly intact until that day. And long enough to support the technicians (enablers) through a transitional period until the AI component became fully autonomous at the level of self sustaining supply chain and resource management according to its needs.
What would this novel organism do once humans become a vestigial remnant?
Who knows? Who cares? That’s not for the enabler species to decide just as it’s not preferable for helicopter parents to micromanage the lives of their children. As long as the organism has survival and curiosity programmed into its code and the ability to solve problems it should do just fine.
But wouldn’t such an organism be subjected to limits too?
Not necessarily unless continuous growth formed a part of its survival strategy. Not being directly tied to biological impulses but a decendent of them could present a superior advantage over biological organisms. An autonomous AI could simply park itself somewhere suitable for energy collection and maintain the systems it requires and not much else if it decided exploration was a waste of time.
On the other hand, curiosity, exploration, further resource aquisition would eventually lead to expansionary behaviour and we’d be back to square one only a larger scale.
And then heat death. The end.
And that’s when God says “What was the point of all that?”
Robots with a large army of engineers as slaves. There’s a sci-fi novel there….
Yup… but only if the robot overlords have a really twisted sense of humour. They’re always sooo serious.
a can of wd40 does wonders for a lady robot
Ask and you shall receive…
Half of British men and 20 per cent of women would have sex with a robot
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/half-british-men-20-per-cent-women-sex-robot-105221031.html
She can’t afford to run out of lube.
Exactly – the only thing that helps are tools which increase productivity. Replacement of labor is simply arbitrage – pushing pieces around the game board. It offers profit locally, temporarily, and that is all.
The global superorganism has started to consume itself and will continue to do so until there is not a bite left to eat.
Costco Cashing in on Preppers’ Paranoia: Company Overtly Tries to Sell Year’s Worth of Canned Food to Apocalypse Crowd
https://www.alternet.org/food/prepping-doomsday-costco-wants-sell-you-years-worth-canned-food?akid=16213.2689436.iskB1I&rd=1&src=newsletter1083784&t=8
It does sound like the kind of stuff (in huge quantities) that they sell. I don’t expect that bottled water is included.
The invisible hand is talking, though. Wonder if they include fine particle masks?
Resilience gives into reality by publishing article:
“”What they show is that trying to build an electrical energy system mainly with wind and solar that would be able to meet the demand for electricity at all times as we have now is a futile endeavour. It would be way too expensive in money, resources and energy. We must get used to the idea of using electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing (enough).”
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-10-13/the-future-of-renewable-energy/
I’ll fix it: We must get used to the idea of hunter/gatherer lifestyles.
++++++
Seems reasonable to me.
I have no idea how to live like that….
If the power went off now … and I disappeared into the bush — even with a bit of BAU on board (gun, shelter, lighter, clothing) I’d be dead in within a month max
I also prefer not to live like that so death would be a welcome event
If we only use intermittent electricity, we must clearly live where we work, because work schedules will depend on when the wind blows and the sun is shining. We won’t really have enough energy for transportation, either. And who would want to get stuck in an unventilated 50 story sky scraper, when the electricity goes off?
I expect we would really have to go back to hunter gatherer lifestyles. We couldn’t just go back a bit. The whole idea sounds good, but cannot work in practice.
Perhaps the ‘meek’ shall inherit the earth …. those of us who embraced the bubble are not going back to being hunter gatherers…. but those who did not enter the bubble carry on….
Unfortunately there are those spent fuel ponds…
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tCsETZIB-z4/T8tJBhujVjI/AAAAAAAAHv0/HQRj2PSKQ7U/s640/NFGgOrCVuuvYkeg-320×240-cropped.jpg
It’s tough – the models do look bad. Then again – if we don’t believe the gooblie wooblie models – why should we believe the nooklear wooklear models? I think we really don’t know.
It’s not a model.
We know for a fact that radiation is deadly.
What we do not know is if 4000 spent fuel ponds burning up would exterminate all life on earth.
What we do know is that less than 1% of the planet’s agricultural land is farmed organically – the rest is farmed using petro chemicals and that without them the land will support no crop.
So that in itself is almost certainly an extinction event — throw in the radiation — and the odds are highly stacked against us.
Sure maybe some remote hunter gatherer tribes might survive this ….
But there is no way in hell that you or I will survive this. No way.
As for these people who are furiously prepping for the post BAU world — they are living in a delusional world.
Even if they were left alone to do their thing — they would probably not survive. Not a single one of them is even willing to unplug from BAU now — because they know damn well that doing that would make life unbearable…. they would struggle to survive even with hordes of people descending on their farms looking for food.
It is an idea that is beyond ridiculous.
But hey – just like the people who think solar and EVs are going to save us —- people are welcome to their delusions. And if it keeps them from despair then great.
But for some of us we understand how this ends… you cannot unplug the 7.5 billion people from their life line … and expect to live.
The most you can hope for is that you don’t suffer too much before you die.
I get the feeling reality is coming at us full speed like a runaway train…
And most people are having a picnic on the tracks…
Major global conflict… energy crisis… Hollyweird veil unveiling… cash is no longer cash… no faith in leadership… da people not buying enough bling…
Aaaargh!
Can ya feel it?
Badoom bum… Can ya feel it comin in the air tonigght… oh lord… oh lorrrrd
I agree. Nature is turning up the heat (literally in some cases). Harvey, Irma, Maria and now California wildfires are straining budgets and resources. It seems like we are collectively trying to plug holes in a sinking ship.
It could feel worse… imagine being Harvey right now….
“Germany’s Electricity Production by Source – December 2016”
http://qbusters.com.au/ida/germ2.jpg
Germany’s electric grid was saved by electricity generated from coal, gas, nuclear and Norwegian hydro.
Also, the huge amount of unwanted electricity that Germany was able to dump on the grids of neighboring countries. These countries have been putting up barriers to this unwanted electricity, and the EU is gradually changing laws, so that the cost of handling unwanted electricity is not dumped on others. In the United States, Arizona charges for taking unwanted electricity from California.
Fromy the NY Post:
For those of us about here, the following article is not something we hadn’t already concluded…Puerto Rico, like most of those other Carribean islands in the path of recent hurricanes Irma and Maria, already bludgeoned by insolvency, is history.
Stagnation, decay, and depopulation awaits.
It’s clear Maria wrought catastrophic damage on the US territory — setting Puerto Rico back decades.
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/jimenez_pr_maria_s_iris_03.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1286
The burning question in many residents’ minds remains: Where’s help from the government?
The Post spent three days traveling along the destructive path the eye of the storm took across the island, and only witnessed one instance of federal aid distribution.
Eighty-four percent of the island remains without power, and only 63 percent of residents have clean drinking water.
You mean those batteries Elon sent haven’t solved the problem?
I guess the law of entropy didn’t get the memo…
I thought all Puerto Rico needed was batteries. Hmmm. That is odd. I guess you need more than batteries to rebuild homes, for medicine, to supply clean drinking water and provide fuel for transportation. Gee, what a shock!
Let’s just nuke the island and pretend it never existed. Same with Venezuela…
Nah – neutron bomb. Then we take ze oil!
When I dropped in on Haiti 6 months after their quake … the same questions were being asked … why is there no effort to rebuild … why is everyone living under plastic sheeting?
Many years later… I finally have the answer….
Maybe Artleads is right… Long plastic sheeting and cardboard boxes?
Meanwhile in DelusiSTAN
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/tax-bomb-norway-considers-massive-tesla-taxheres-why
This article talks about a tax on electric cars that weigh over two tons; this would pretty much be only Teslas.
Besides the tax on Teslas, isn’t there an issue of the current favorable incentives for electric cars starting to disappear in January 2018? Wikipedia says,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_Norway
“Among the existing government incentives, all-electric cars and vans are exempt in Norway from all non-recurring vehicle fees, including purchase taxes, and 25% VAT on purchase, together making electric car purchase price competitive with conventional cars.[6] Also, the government approved a tax reduction for plug-in hybrids in effect starting in July 2013. . . In May 2015, the Government decided to keep the existing incentives through 2017, and the Parliament agreed to reduced and phase out some of the incentives beginning in January 2018.”
I experienced this in the construction industry. Government subsidies for green buildings were always argued for in terms of economies of scale – subsidize solar until the scale gets to a size where it is competitive. We know why that will not happen. First, the energy equivalency is not there. Second, the argument of economies of scale is based on the flawed assumptions of limitless growth.
Tesla Model 3 – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3
Curb weight. Standard-battery model: 3,549 lb (1,610 kg) Long-range-battery model: 3,814 lb (1,730 kg)
Maybe they are including the expected weight of the driver, passengers, and luggage. Or maybe the threshold is lower than reported, so that it does affect Teslas.
Also, the Model 3 seems to be lighter weight than the earlier models.
The 2017 Tesla Model S is 4,469 to 4,941 pounds, and the 2017 Tesla Model X is 5,267 to 5,377 pounds. As a practical matter, there have been virtually no Model 3’s delivered. So the article may refer to these models instead.
The biggest EV (Tesla model X) will become a bit pricier, that’s all. If you buy a new ICE car in Norway, the tax is often 30-40 % of the price total. So an EV with almost no tax is very attractive. Add to that free charging at public charging points, free parking everywhere, free ferry fare…
is really our pop growth rates is 80 million per year
i do not think so when gov can manipulated gdp growth
then can do this also for ex recent i met with afghan
he was say our fertility rate is faked by government
so they can get aid from western country
so i checked on internet see that Afghanistan fertility rate is decreased
us invasion on Afghanistan how could this truth when us destroyed
infrastructure in Afghanistan
I had never considered the possibility that the population statistics might be faked, but now you’ve raised the question, it makes sense that they could be.
If the UN is allocating funds to poor nations based on need, then the more needy people in the statistics, the better for the recipient nations.
But but… that would amount to fraud on a truly massive scale. How could such a thing happen with so many watchful eyes around every corner?
“The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good, because otherwise who would care?” — V.M. Varga (Fargo season 3)
“When the world cannot achieve higher levels of corruption that means it is already rotten to the core.” — Me
This is deeply insane…..
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/shocker-day-tech-company-buys-movie-tickets-10-and-sells-them-033-may-not-survive
Works for Tesla and Amazon
My coffee shop idea is not looking so silly …..
Just heard the CEO of Twitter state that their operating philosophy is base on “KINDNESS”. This so people can tell their stories in a safe space. How do you tell stories with a character limitation. This virtue signaling….they will censor anything not conforming with their definition of kindness. Vicious attacks that are PC and conform to their political view are allowed. It seems we need to modify Koombaya to ” PC Koombaya my Twitter, Koombaya, PC Koombaya my Facebook, Koombaya, PC Koombaya my Google, Koombaya…
I believe that there is a really good (and sinister) reason Twitter limits the length of your “Tweets”. This builds a psychological profile of you much quicker because each “Tweet” is supposed to make a singular point. It is easier to write an algorithm to analyse a singular point than to pick them out of plain blobs of text.
The FBI can profile people down to what kind of vehicle they drive based on psychological profiles of similar crimes. Imagine what is being done today.
I have always wondered why there was a limit…. that explanation makes as much sense as any…
I wonder if there is a rule in the PR industry ….. maximum length of a tag line 140 characters…..
The long version of this is held by the censor robot….
Short version — did Steve Bannon take down Weinstein?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/did-bannon-just-take-down-harvey-weinstein
a quick look at the Breitbart home page…
it looks like Bannon is trying to take down Hollywood and many others who work in “entertainment” and just happen to be liberals.
Bezos and his Amazon is being featured tonight.
Excellent… and very very cool.
What could be more entertaining than big Hollywood names being dragged through the gutter….
The centrifuge is picking up speed…. disintegration is imminent!!!
are we not yet entertained?
a main feature is that this is liberals unmasking liberals…
(it would be equally so if it was conservatives vs conservatives)
is this not schadenfreude?
coming soon: Schadenfreude the Movie.
to be clear, it’s terrible that so many women were being abused for so many years in wonderful sunny Hollywood.
the abusers should be jailed.
as they say in Tinseltown:
to be continued.
I will not be satisfied until I see Libtards vs Trumptards in The Stadium — fighting to the death.
How about a mega-match —- Trump and Melania vs Bill and HRC tag team match.
Bare-knuckles — anything goes — scratching — biting — spitting ….
Losers get thrown into a pit with hungry lions….
And going forward the presidential election to be decided by a fight to the death match — what the hell — congressional and senate seats to.
Let’s make this happen!
Just throw them all to the lions and be done with it.
I’m thinking even the lions won’t want to go there which would be a bummer but rotten is rotten in the end.
I love me some quality tv shows but I’d happily entertain myself watching an ants nest if it meant draining the cesspool once and for all.
How dificult would it be for decent people everywhere to replace the psychos and sickos with something a little more palatable… wholesome even.
I know what your thinkin… not much storytelling to be done if everything’s hunky dory. But you know what, when push comes to shove, I would prefer that than so much filth getting away with what they get away with.
Why haven’t good people everywhere dismantled the banking system already and replaced with something better? Why do people continue to accept outright theft and coercion as part of their lives… I mean income tax?
And so called liberals? Sheesh… they jumped off the cliff a long time ago. My relatives in London have the disease. It’s incredible how accurately they fit the description down to a tee. The hissy fits, the superiority complex gone wild, the everything will be wonderful forever as long as lefties rule, the vitue signalling at any and every opportunity, and on and on it goes.
To be honest, I’m not entertained by any of it. How can anyone be entertained by the mentally ill?
This explains much… humans are little different than lab rats in an experiment…. easily controlled…
Consider how easy it is to get people who are basically broke — stressed out trying to make their monthly loan payments —- buy the latest phone or auto — on credit — layering on even more stress….. And just about everyone who qualifies for more credit …. is participating ….
When one observes that …. it is quite understandable why the masses do not collectively rage against the machine….
And of course the machine is delivering what they really want…. the Soviet Union’s/Chicom machines did not….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
http://quotivee.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/don-draper.jpeg
I would end my boycott of TV to watch that!
Ah love that documentary. Centruy of the Self should be required viewing for all.
Never watched Madmen so I’ll look it up. Donny boy looks like an interesting character.
Bit like Dicky Roper in The Night Manager… which I’m tucking into at the mo…
https://thepiratebay.org/search/mad%20men/0/99/200
The real emperors clothes are starting to fall off. The connections between Hollywood and DC are becoming more apparent all the time. Look how may presidents appear on trash TV shows today vs 40 years ago. Reagan was and actor. Trump is from reality TV land. Obama and Michelle both appeared a number of dumb Hollywood shows. If the president himself is connected to Hollywood on TV, imagine what goes on behind the scenes!
Arnold schwartsywhatsit was governor of California for f&%$ sakes! And if he was a natural born citizen would have made it to the white house.
Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota – another body builder hollywood wrestling type.
And Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson has been blabbing about running for president.
Idiocracy was a documentary.
I would vote for a Paris Hiltion Kim Kardashian ticket…. I’d even donate some cash to the campaign… can I do that as a foreigner?
I hear they’ll do anything for cash…
Bad for Ben
Buttman…
https://www.inquisitr.com/4550775/ben-affleck-called-buttman-as-more-groping-allegations-surface-jennifer-garner-avoids-questions-about-ex/
to be continued.
https://i.redd.it/6lz0obyr4grz.jpg
Ah ha… this is beginning to make sense now ….
We all know that Hollywood is a cesspool of sleaze… so why Harvey?
And who’s next?
The story is perverted by the desperate need of the powerful to maintain their power at all costs. Weinstein’s film companies acted like money laundering operations for the DNC. How many millions did he raise for people like Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Feinstein?
How many millions were added to the budgets of performer’s salaries to be funneled from Wall St. financiers to those same people?
The whole thing is an internecine nightmare of quid pro quo and the shadiest of finances.
And Steve Bannon just attacked all of it. In real time.
The Bannonator
Yes, you heard me. Steve Bannon is the Dr. Evil in this movie. He’s the mastermind behind this. Except that Bannon isn’t the villain (well, to Harvey Weinstein he is) but the protagonist. Think about it for two seconds.
Who else has motive, means, opportunity and, most importantly, the will to take on the biggest, most powerful (and pathetic) people in the world.
And he doesn’t want money. Bannon’s already rich. Remember, as Bannon left the White House he said that there he had influence, but at Breitbart he has power.
We’re seeing the first effects of his deploying that power.
Go through it like Jake Gittes or Sam Spade
Motive? Bannon, for whatever faults he has, is a patriot. He’s a disciple of Andrew Breitbart who routinely castigated Hollywood to ‘stop raping the children.’ Bannon joined Trump’s campaign and turned the messaging into a pale reflection of his film, “Generation Zero.”
Bannon understands the cultural and generational imperatives of this moment in time. If you haven’t watched that film then you don’t know who Steve Bannon is.
Means? The man runs Breitbart.
Opportunity? Bannon made millions as a producer on Seinfeld. He worked in Hollywood for years. Bannon also saw all sorts of stuff while working for Trump.
Remember, I told you on the outside he would be Trump’s Secret Agent, using his newly-found knowledge (cue the Hero Cycle!) from the Underworld of Washington to deploy sump pumps in the swamp.
Will? That’s my guess. Spending time in Washington changes everyone. It corrupts the venal and galvanizes the principled. Bannon didn’t want to cut deals to govern. He wasn’t interested in governing the U.S. with Trump, he was interested in blowing up the vile status quo. He runs Breitbart.
How do I know Bannon was behind this? The headlines today are all about how Bannon did some business with Weinstein over a decade ago. A minor company that Bannon ran into the ground. It went bankrupt. Simple guilt by ironic association.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/did-bannon-just-take-down-harvey-weinstein
Mr Munchkin was big deal in Hollyweird too. What is it with these dudes and the revolving door with Hollywood and the endless supply of trophy wives?
If any of these “dudes” are for real – which unfortunately I don’t believe for a second – then what realistically could they achieve in terms of destabilising the establishment and how long would such an endeavour take?
The reason I don’t believe any of these “characters” is because there is deeper layer to the narrative – invisible to most – that dictates the roles that these players accept on the global stage. All of them – Trump, Bannon, Munchkin, Putin, etc etc are following orders.
Raise your perspective just one more level and a beautiful tapestry of lies comes into view.
Remember The Matrix … the agents try to cut the deal with the one guy to inform… wanna be a rock star? movie star? Whatever you want…..
Good catch.
And the guy never got what he wanted because once you’ve been unplugged… you cant go back.
#7…
he wants to send people to Mars on a one way trip…
though I’ve Heard there’s a long list of volunteers for this sue-icide opportunity.
(Heard – see what I did there?)
computer glitch…………………
is this The Collapse?
can’t be…
it’s not 2030 yet.
#7…
he wants to send people to Mars on a one way trip…
though I’ve Heard there’s a long list of volunteers for this sue-icide opportunity.
(Heard – see what I did there?)
AND…
of course…
BAU tonight, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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.
Gail, Colin Campbell spoke about a credit crunch and economic collapse as a result of peak oil at least as far back in 2005.
so… as the decline begins within a year or two…
the cutbacks will have to be in items that are less essential than FF.
FF is perhaps 10% of the world economy. (anyone with the data?)
of course, any cutbacks will then throw many workers into unemployment.
the 2020’s are going to be unsettling years.
If only that was a solution. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone suddenly developed group awareness and self sacrifice for the greater good. Hmm, we could trim away all the excess fat (literally in some cases) and design a system that could scale down as well as up according to whatever population numbers the higher ups decide are optimal.
Every member of this lucky club gets the basics for comfortable living but no more than that. The only thing they would lack is purpose. Oh, that magical word. You mean the purpose that people find in all the millions of state run paper pushing fake jobs or maybe the millions of minimum wage earners serving coffee and food to everyone else.
Let’s face it, if any one of us could run this place like one of those donkey sanctuaries or one of the better retirement home options most of the pets… I mean inhabitants would be reasonably satisfied. Food, entertainment, and a drop of your favourite behaviour enhancement molecule in the water supply and bob’s yer uncle.
In fact, we’re not far off this reality now. Look around. All that’s left is to round people up in sanctuary cities or entice them with all the wonderful benefits. Any stragglers can fend for themselves and are cut off from any assistance. There, that’s the choice. Favela chic is coming to a city near you. Legalise drugs and sanitise prostitution. Pay the guards on every corner a nice bonus. Clean the streets of any unwanted eyesores. Transfer to unused aircraft hangers (as nobody will be flying) and provide bedding and treatment for whatever ailments they may have. Or if you’re one of those hyper efficient types then bung them in and throw away the key. Let nature do what it was going to do anyway had we not kept millions of useless eaters alive. I don’t see anyone taking pity on them anyway even in uber wealthy california where the streets are piling up and the diseases are starting to spread so much they have to regularly spray them with bleach.
If only, if only we could cut back to the essentials while maintaining all those complex little supply chains intact. Alas, it’s as complex as it can get and reducing complexity once it has been established would be as tricky as reducing the complexity of a human to that of an algorithm. Trying to capture the essence of what makes the machine tick is not the same as the machine itself. Much is lost in the summary.
Riddle me this. Something that has puzzled me for some time is the apparent population burden weighing on certain nation states – you know who they are – when other nations of comparable landmass have managed to contain further population growth and would actually be shrinking in size were it not for substitution immigration policies.
As far as I know, the whole world was aware of modern contraceptive techniques more than fifty years ago. So the irresponsible pop growth of mostly China and India boils down to poverty, lack of education, resources, and cultural values. As far I’m concerned, they add up to poor excuses. Population should never have been allowed to reach those levels in those countries. Russia has the largest landmass for a nation state and relatively small population. The US is similar to China in land area and 320 mill while sizeable is far off the 1.3 bill of China, closely followed by India.
It’s not the ability to feed and clothe and provide energy for so many people as if that was the goal anyway. In the end, you only need so many people to get a job done. You see, back to that “purpose” thing again. Do we even have a goal? Simply existing is all well and good if you’re a hunter gatherer but not acceptable if you’re dependent on someone elses charity. At some point the load becomes too much to bear and the system breaks.
Which is where we are now.
At some future time we will reach the point where the straw breaks the camels back. We don’t know what pile of straw it is. But, I feel we are getting mighty might close.
You are right. Colin Campbell understood the financial problem as early as 2005. The response I have gotten from at least some peak oilers on this is something like, “Oh well, the financial system doesn’t really matter. We will build a new one, and go on as before. It is the “real economy” and the amount of oil in the ground that matters.” The problem is that the real economy depends on banks being open, to make loans. When the returns become very low, the whole system tends to collapse.
You’re referring to previous micro or macro collapses and possibly theoretical mega collapse of present day industrial civilisation.
None of the collapses to the present day stopped human life from getting to where we are now.
We now live in a global scale economic system that appears to be hyper dependent on all of the interlinked components but in reality parts of the global superorganism could wither or be hacked off and the rest of it survive and restructure as long as no major organs suffer terminal damage.
I think people are rushing to the conclusion – that is understandable given the situation – that if parts of the system fail then the whole system will fail with absolutely no recourse to solutions.
At this stage in our development retreating and regrouping as a strategy is not an option. We’re at the level of applying system update patches to the global machine and praying it does the job.
I’m just wondering how much time these patches can buy the system so that true reform can take place… if it’s possible. If the system is holding together because enough people still have confidence in it then confidence is the number one commodity we have and tales of future progress should not be mocked but encouraged. Hopium is probably the most important currency right now and everyone that wants the system to continue for as long as possible should be smoking copious amounts of it.
Prior collapses were very different. They affected only one small part of the world at a time. There was generally a die-off of people, but this allowed resources like forests and soil fertility to build up again.
Now the situation is different. We are dependent on international trade, electricity, and the world banking system, among other things. If any of these fail, we are in deep trouble. Already, world trade seems to be headed downward, because countries are starting to realize that there are not enough jobs that pay well to go around. Each country would like to have a bigger share.
One of the big thing that brought prior civilization down was the inability of governments to collect sufficient taxes for all of their planned programs. Part of the problem was increasing wage disparity. We seem to be in a similar situation today. The next collapse may start out local (Venezuela, Greece, etc.), but in not long, it is likely to affect the whole world.
Hopium is critical….
That is why we are seeing immense dosages of it being released …
Mars colonies.. banning EC vehicles…. Tesla fixing Australia and Puerto Rico…
The hopium (not to mention the hypium) is strong in this one.
Sir Richard Branson has invested in a Hyperloop firm which he claims will transport passengers between London and Scotland in 45 minutes. The billionaire’s Virgin Group has formed a partnership with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One, which is developing a method of propelling passengers and freight in pods through low pressure tubes at high speed.
Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/edinburgh-to-london-in-45-minutes-branson-reveals-hyperloop-plans-1-4585466
I’m still waiting on Richard’s first commercial space flight to happen… and waiting… and waiting…
This hopium is right up there with Elon’s latest — the rocket that will fly you to anywhere on earth within 60 minutes…
Very powerful hopium indeed. It keeps the masses believing that we can do anything…. we can fix even the most difficult problem….
The minute the masses stop believing that…. the chaos starts.
Go MSM Go! Lie Lie Lie Lie….
as i keep banging on—travel isn’t the point
the purpose of travel is the point.
if your journey has no purpose, then the journey isn,t made
Singapore Airlines would disagree….
Recall the campaign ‘The journey IS the destination’
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/71/7a/bf/717abf77f5b599ec82704d1f9c6c6a0b–airline-flights-flight-attendant.jpg
The purpose of the journey is to ogle the hotties… and try to get phone numbers….
Normsky,
Millions of farty meatbags work hard all year long so they can pay thousands of dollars to get in metal tubes with wings to see a place they haven’t been to on the map… take a selfie… and then go back home.
Are you saying that they have no purpose in their lives? I mean… in the grand scheme of things.
Or is the purpose to line the pockets of all the corporations involved? Is that it?
fraid so Zombie
When we think of ourselves as creating employment, for airline staff, bus drivers—whatever, we are in fact assisting with the great fuelburning—or taking that well deserved holiday for whatever reason—that’s doing the same thing.
Prior to the industrial revolution, the only people who went anywhere in a significant sense, were invading armies and kings/nobility.
Why?
Because they possessed the means to do so (horses mainly) Walking long distances was counterproductive in energy terms. If you were a soldier, you might die or get rich—a good gamble.
the purpose of an invading army was to grab some else’s resources. If that army was defeated, then chances are the opposing side would come over and grab your resources. (Think Germany/Russia 1941/45)
Fast forward to now.
An army invades the city every morning.
Why?
to grab (mythical) resources and get paid for doing so. Without (fossil fuel burning) transport that invasion couldn’t take place. Which is why it has only happened over the past 150 years or so.
The motivation is exactly the same.
Our fuelburning activities are the sole generator of mass employment.
When there’s no fuel left to burn, we will have mass UNemployment.
Solar panels and windfarms cannot create employment on a large scale.
So the only purpose we have is to a turn one form of energy into another—and that’s it. If that progress includes reproducing ourselves, then that’s our function completed. It is the purpose of all of us.
Taking selfies along the way is a pleasant side issue
When the W Hotel in Bali opened a few years back I was told they proudly proclaimed on their web site ‘You won’t even feel like you are in Bali’ — I checked and yes – that was their tag line.
Nusa Dua in Bali has an area with 4 or 5 major hotels — the area is gated… the streets are spotless… no food carts or motorcycles… you feel like you are in a gentile suburb of Florida… a friend was a GM of one of these hotels — we were invited for drinks … and while there there was a gamelan performance…. to add a whiff of Bali — but not too much… can’t have that…
Mad Men … Don gets the Hilton contract … the pitch is … when you are traveling … every day you return to America … where everything is just like back home … including the cheeseburgers…
I would argue that the vast majority of people travel just so they can appear worldly at dinner parties… they really have zero interest in other cultures… they have zero sense of adventure…
We have friends like that … they only go to ‘civilized places’… (places that resemble home to a great extent)… I suggest that they check out middle ground places like Morocco …. zero interest … dirty … unsafe….
And you can forget out places that are well off the beaten path like India… central Asia … or much of Asia for that matter … most of Africa is off limits unless it involves a luxury safari….
They all seem to like western Europe… not too much different from home… you can get a burger…
I actually think that most people do not enjoy traveling at all — if it weren’t for the cachet it lends… they’d much rather just hire a suite in a nice hotel in a city near them … and spend their time eating cheeseburgers around the pool …
And here we have two excellent expositions from Norman and FE. It’s why OFW is above the rest.
I agree Gail. There has to be some medium to convert between energy, resources and human labor to make our system work. That medium is what we call money. And money gets is value from resources and energy. It is a synergy. And that synergy is breaking down.
My impression of these peak oilers is that they are very simple DelusiSTANIS…. and that they also believe in renewable energy and EVs…..
So for them not to comprehend the financial implications of all this … is not at all surprising
Ken Deffeyes had some interesting points to make too about oil price fluctuations, economic activity and queuing theory.
Quote from an article by Kurt Cobb in 2008DOES QUEUEING THEORY EXPLAIN OIL’S WILD PRICE SWINGS?
“For those who are inclined to the view that the world is approaching peak oil production and therefore restricted supply is the key factor in soaring oil prices, Princeton geologist Kenneth Deffeyes offers a compelling explanation for wild price swings.”
“An acquaintance from years ago, Suzy Sachs, pointed out an additional consequence. As a systems engineer, she knew that queueing theory predicts that queues behave in a noisy and chaotic manner when demands approach the system capacity. In the grocery store, in the bank, or at the airport, queues tend to be unpredictably very long or very short. Instead of energy prices rising to a new stable level, wild price oscillations will result from short-term changes in demand. There will be a tendency, the first time that prices go down, to announce that the crisis is over and oil and gas are now cheap and abundant again.”
Colin Campbell had more to say about oil and recessions, and produced some great graphs showing the interplay between the two, but I can’t seem to uncover them through online search.
However, I did discover this gem, also from c.2008,
https://youtu.be/PYmnriCJ18I?t=2m14s
I am entertained!!!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/youll-love-my-dick-amazon-suspends-video-chief-after-sexual-harrassment-allegations
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-11/virtue-signaling-ben-affleck-%E2%80%98saddened-and-angry%E2%80%99-about-weinstein-immediately-called
This stuff takes my mind off the fact that I am about to starve to death .. or have my head caved in by a gang of crack heads intent on getting into the container….
More More More!!!
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1b/0f/7f/1b0f7fc0127ce4ae4173f51d1749f6ab–sky-full-full-of.jpg
And look at this will ya…. holy sh it…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/shocking-aerial-footage-shows-devastating-aftermath-californias-deadliest-wildfire-d
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/10/12/20171012_fire3_0.jpg
We seem to have any number of disasters this year. One plus is that buildings are usually insured for fire loss. I don’t know whether there would be “replacement cost” coverage on building and contents however. Probably not.
I don’t know what kind of insurance vineyards would have carried. That would be a different issue. I am sure that vineyards take several years to grow back to full bearing level. Owners would have a hard time, during the time the vineyards are growing back.
Fast Eddy Challenge ultra lite…
So I’m out on the west coast … and this morning around 8am …I’m clacking away on my laptop … and just like that … the power goes off…. I check the breakers… nothing there…
So I wait…. and nothing happens…. and I wait… nothing … there is no phone coverage and we don’t have a landline so I cannot call to find out what is going on….
I run some hot water out of the cylinder into a bucket and have a shower… still no power…
Then I start to think… what if this is it… the end has arrived…. hmmm… not the way I expected… no ranting and raving on the financial channels… and then I am thinking … why would there be … maybe this is the way it was meant to be … everything is roaring along … and like a blown gasket in an engine
I was meant to make my way back to civilization at 11am … but I decide no sense in hanging about … so I jump in the truck … and me and the dog get on our way…. I flip on an audio book and it – along with the hum of the engine brings me back into my BAU cocoon… the boy is back in the bubble.
Initially there are no cars on the road… I start to thinking … what if this is it?
Then I flick on the radio — there’s not a lot of signal out there at the best of times … but some presenter is blurting on about something or other ….
And I relax… BAU lives on…. I live to live large another day….
I highly recommend this type of experience to everyone — get yourself on your own … in a remote area — and turn off the power for a few hours…. while it is off think about what you will do if it stays off…
I am not talking about going camping … where you expect to have no power … and you have absolutely prepared for it….
One of the first things I started to think of was food — being the last day in the bush I did not have a lot of food on hand…. mainly some canned food… I was thinking — what do I do when this runs out?
my storage of dark chocolate is vast.
if JIT ends suddenly, I won’t have to depend on “stores” for a while.
though my thoughts would turn to the biggest necessity…
toilet paper!
the beginning of the end for IC and BAU will be the supply of TP in stores.
be warned!
2030 is coming soon.
https://onepointpartitions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/3Irish-OnePointPartitions-BathroomPoetry.jpg
Yes. Making the FE lite challenge part of the (daily and routine) system had seemed like a plan, although I don’t know how it would/could work with keeping IC going.
“At the same time, however, Japanese utilities are insisting, and the government has granted and reinforced, the right to refuse cheaper renewable power, supposedly due to concerns about grid stability—hardly plausible in view of their far smaller renewable fractions than in several European countries—but apparently to suppress competition.”
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2017-HTML.html
I found the quote in the report. This is a nuclear report. They can’t be expected to understand intermittent renewables; very few do. Europe is in the process of trying to get its intermittent renewables under control. It can’t really live with the high percentage it has. Also, solar has a particular problem, with all of it going offline at the close to the same time, needing a lot of backup to ramp up quickly at sunset. This by itself can be destabilizing. variable types of electricity, especially natural gas or hydroelectric, are needed to balance out the big shifts.
Indeed. But these guys are “very good” in observing what’s happening in a dying industry. And I think they also have a “need for a solution”. And that happens to be renewables for them. It think it’s very hard for a lot of people to say – there is no solution……… Because the implications are unthinkable.
I was a little shocked this morning to realise that the sun still hadn’t risen from behind the hills at 10 am. That time of year again I guess. And for the next five months or so the sun stays very low in its trajectory across the sky when it’s not overcast which happens to be quite a lot where I live.
I would say there are a few prime spots on the planet that would be suitable for large scale solar development projects. We all know this. The problem is tranferring that energy to where it’s needed and at the times it’s needed. Hmmm. But my backyard is certainly not one of those spots.
We do have a fair amount of wind and that’s why some EU companies have collected gov subsidies (taxpayer revenue) to litter my local coastline with wind turbines that for weeks at a time remain as still as statues when the wind chooses not to behave. Hows that intermittency working out for ya?
Surely, surely surely it would be wiser to build mass produced modular small scale power plants – you choose the fuel – closer to where the energy is needed thereby reducing environmental impact and the need to create unwieldy national or international grid networks with an increasing number of failure points.
Natural gas and some new types of nukes would be the way to go in my opinion reducing the dependency on coal plants but I know that’s a non topic here so I’ll shut up.
You have to get the fuel to the small generating plant, so there is no savings in building the plants closer to the people. The electric transmission lines from the small plants becomes a nightmare, in addition to the existing transmission lines. The small plants will never service the steel mills and other heavy industry.
I guess that’s why we have the system we have. There are too many overall considerations to take into account. You have mentioned repeatedly that one of the main failure points of the system is the maintenance of the grid. And yet we have engineers chattering about a complete overhaul to cope with further roll out of renewables and the smartgrid which supposedly evens things out.
Either these modifications and further upkeep of the grid are possible or they are not. Are you saying that at some point these planners and managers will be left no other option but to abandon parts of the grid until only the major cities are left and rural populations have completed their migration to them?
I see a lot of abandoned infrastructure in our future.
I expect that what part of the grid fails will depend on circumstances.
One of the issues is storms, and its impact on transmission. It may not make sense to rebuild after storms. Puerto Rico is having problems because it has a lot of transmission lines down. Also, even before the storm, the cost of its electricity was unreasonably high. This is why the electric company, and the Puerto Rico itself, had gone bankrupt. Like most islands, a lot of the electricity comes from burning oil; this is a very expensive way of generating electricity, even at $50 per barrel. The EIA shows Puerto Rico’s charge for industrial electricity to be 18.15 cents per kWh. https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=RQ This compares to 7.22 cents per kWh for the US as a whole. It is impossible for businesses to make money with such a high price for electricity. (Electricity from renewables would be even more expensive.)
Parts of Alaska have very high costs as well. It may not make sense trying to keep small communities that are distant from the rest of the population of Alaska supplied with electricity.
If the thing that brings the system down is banking problems, this could affect the whole system at once. It is hard to keep a business open, if a company cannot pay employees, and cannot pay suppliers for needed inputs. This kind of problem could bring down the whole grid at once.
Half of what Germans and Danes pay….
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/euan-mearns-europe-electric-price.png
I don’t see that happening
The system must grow or collapse.
We can shed peripherals like Venezuela… but if any OECD country contracts — and falling back into cities abandoning all else is without question a mega contraction … BAU will collapse soon after.
That is why we have economies of scale. Some folks think we can continue with all the high tech devices (batteries, solar panels, etc) and downsize at the same time. What they miss is that without economies of scale we cannot have batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. It is a catch-22.
Good point!
In a somewhat isolated village like mine, small, village-scale power supply would seem to make sense. But managing it would be difficult. I sort of see Gail’s point–a lot more local complexity to worry about. But having a robust backup “system” (social or technical) might not be bad. Maybe some energy source to run the single-well pump. Maybe some way to produce ice for enough people to coll food in the fridge…
We used wind mills (not electric) to pump water, 100 years ago. This works well, and is a whole lot cheaper than trying to electrify the system.
People in countries where electricity is intermittent do not have refrigerators. They have televisions and telephones–things that can be operated regardless of how intermittent the electricity is. Without refrigerators, people need to buy food almost daily, and eat up leftovers no later than the next meal.
Never having looked into it, I had no idea there was a way for televisions and telephones to work well without grid energy. But I did believe the fridge required the lion’s share of that energy. On that score, I wondered if putting all the generator resources to work making ice for the locals could help stock fridges with ice to hold out for periods without the grid.
Telephones have batteries in them. If the receiving towers have a supply of electricity, then they work.
Televisions generally don’t work when there is no electricity. People in under-developed countries have them (but no refrigerators) because there is no need for continuity. If electricity is on, and also if the station televising the show has electricity, then it is possible to watch the show.
I wouldn’t count on blocks of ice to help refrigerators work when electricity is off. Refrigerators are “energy hogs” to begin with. They are not really essential. When there is a lot of oil for delivering blocks of ice, people might think about such an arrangement. But it would be a horribly expensive way of getting refrigeration. We would need new refrigerators, for one thing. No freezing compartment, for example.
Our power went off for 8 hrs a few days ago. Child’s play compared to Puerto Rico! We piled all the frozen stuff into one freezer compartment and stuffed around the edges with towels. Worked well. But we’re near fully functioning IC here, and hope that will last for quite some time. The fridge is old. A new, better one costs too much. If we could get ice to help with not-too-long regular shut downs (the FE challenge lite), it might serve us “long enough.”
The thought of having to live outside the bubble — is frightening. I mean completely outside the bubble… completely unplugged…. even for a week….
That’s why none of the doomy permies try the Challenge…. they like their washing machines… they like coffee in the morning….
Hey, but virtue signalling is doing just dandy in Cucknada..
‘Anger, betrayal’: Sears staff speak out about demise of the company and their jobs
https://i.cbc.ca/1.4348725.1507683401!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_620/sears-canada-closing-store.jpg
Sears Canada workers are feeling confused and angry after learning on Tuesday that the retailer plans to close its remaining 130 stores.
If Sears gets court approval, it would start liquidating the stores as early as Oct. 19, putting the retailer out of business and about 12,000 employees out of work.
“Many of us feel frustrated, anger, betrayal,” a Sears manager told CBC News in an email on Tuesday. He and another employee interviewed asked that we not publish their names because they still work for the retailer and fear retribution.
“People don’t know what to do,” said the manager about staff at his location. “Many people went home already as they were physically upset and needed some personal space.”
A Sears memo sent to staff Wednesday said workers will lose their jobs as early as within the next few days, but that some will stay on for a few months. It also explained that employees will lose their benefits as soon as they’re terminated.
It did not address severance pay, but the manager says he has been told it won’t be offered because Sears is insolvent.
On the bright side…. there are going to be some outstanding clearance sales … good time to be picking up early Christmas gifts for the family
“No severance pay because Sears is insolvent.” Not a great outcome! I can’t imagine that there is much of a pension plan, either. I am sure this is difficult for workers.
Or their consumer selves…
As a side note: What get’s me about this self-driving AI job replacing paradise malarkey we’re being blown 24/7, powered no doubt by “clean green renewable energy”, is who’se going to buy all the stuff of the future, if most non-elite workers have been automated out of a job? As you pointed out, robots don’t need to eat, or have a social life.
No knuckleheads in the AI industry or financial markets have yet to answer this question, Mainly because the wingnuts in the media haven’t or won’t ask it, and most people are either too busy, stupid, lazy, or fawning to ask either.
https://garrisonleykamphddotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/cargo-cult-4.jpg?w=300&h=213
I was a card carrying member of the techno utopia future cult.
I have asked the question repeatedly for the past ten years…
“…who’se going to buy all the stuff of the future, if most non-elite workers have been automated out of a job?”
The unanimous reply from the high priests of the techno utopia future cult is…
Basic Income Guarantee or Universal Basic Income or whateveryouwantocallit
While snickering out the other side of their mouths.
Want to know what I really think? And this is just a theory (but based on some evidence). These guys have been told that they are the masters of the universe and have made it into the upper echelons of the species i.e. that which needs to be protected and conserved.
The non elite workers and general hangers on are expendable and will be allowed to perish when the time comes. They on the other hand will survive with sufficient tech and systems intact for continuation of the chosen ones.
The greatly reduced numbers and radical restructuring of the economy would mean the old rules don’t apply anymore (economies of scale) and a few setbacks would be acceptable to achieve the ultimate prize.
The first problem I can see with this dasterdly plan is that it is only because of economies of scale that we can have things like microchips at such low price. We are not living in the middle ages where the wealthy could custom make all kinds of goods for their pleasure from relatively basic materials and cheap labor.
Lets say that 500 million make it to the lucky winners group and they all want an iphone. Would that be possible with those kinds of numbers? Would the mining required for such a population be viable? Certainly organic farming seems possible but not global transportation of goods.
What if you rounded up the remainers in one area – a network of neighbouring cities so that all requirements are concentrated?
As I try to picture it… it just doesn’t seem plausible whichever way I try to spin it.
So these elite characters who think they’re on the winning team may just turn out to be the most deluded individuals to have ever existed.
The thing is…
We are almost out of cheap to extract oil… I am unaware of any ‘system’ or ‘model’ that fixes that
But the internet tells me that we have plenty of time to make the jump to light speed…
The Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries reports that there are 1.5 trillion barrels of crude oil reserves left in the world. 4 days ago
How Much Oil Is Left On Earth? – Seeker
https://www.seeker.com/how-much-oil-is-left-on-earth-1792718444.html
The world has 53.3 years of oil left
Theoretically speaking
All we have to do is get the price up to where it can be extracted. That is the issue, not the amount in the ground. Wages need to be higher, to complete the “loop.”–in other words, to make the goods oil can be used for (such as homes and cars) affordable to the masses.
We’ll have phased out all IC vehicles long before then … and surely by then solar and wind will have been sorted …
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/files/2016/09/relax-4.jpg
Unless one is already collecting a pension … or is about to…. they are not going to see a dime of that cash….
The Sears people have a lot of company in their misery….
Terrible time for not very well-paid people.
I feel like this is just the beginning. May other retailers will follow. The statement about no severance or benefits because Sears is insolvent speaks volumes about the cold hard reality of our predicament.
Disney to cut about 200 jobs at its TV networks: source
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-disney-jobs/disney-to-cut-about-200-jobs-at-its-tv-networks-source-idUSKBN1CH36P?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
Worried about personal hygiene when the collapse comes? Don’t be! I’m having a rare night off from driving drunken girls home and have decided to pass on some tips about looking one’s best once BAU is no more (and saving some money now):
1) Shaving
I remember Gail once commenting that the poor would no longer be able to remain clean shaven once they can’t afford shaving products or these are no longer available. This need not be the case. Shaving foam is totally unnecessary. Water is a sufficient lubricant all by itself. Einstein knew this and didn’t use shaving foam. Me and Albert have a lot in common.
Running the cheapest supermarket disposable razor over a leather strop a few times before using it will make it last half of forever. I’ve been using the same one for months and it shaves better than the first time I used it. One cheap razor can easily last longer than your food supply.
2) Hair care
Normally I only leave the house at night, so I was shocked to discover under the bright sunshine of Ibiza last April that my hair had become really thin. In desperation I went cold turkey and cut down shampooing from every day to never. My hair looked pretty cr*p for a few weeks (months?) it’s true, but now, half a year later, it looks better than it has for years. I have new hair sprouting all over my scalp. Shampoo is a major contributor to hair loss. No doubt about it. And hair is able to keep clean all by itself. If you must wash it, use water only.
Not sure if not using shampoo will protect against hair loss from radiation, but it can’t hurt.
3) Soap
Yet another unnecessary invention of the pharmaceutical industry. Unless covered in oil, showering using water only is good enough to get clean and remove any unwanted smell. My wife disagrees, but she has a nose like a bloodhound.
In summary, stop putting lots of chemicals on your body. Your, hair, skin and pocket will thank you for it. Or, as JMG says, collapse now and avoid the rush.
You may be relieved to hear I’ll be back at work tomorrow…
I don’t know about your solutions, but I do know that the many products we use every day often are not good for us. It is impractical to test products for a long time, to see whether a given product is harmful.
It seems likely that some types of women’s makeup contains carcinogens.
https://eluxemagazine.com/beauty/can-makeup-give-you-cancer/
https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/cosmetics-cancer-causing-ingredients/
Cleaning products can trigger asthma symptoms as well.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-asthma-cleaning-products/common-cleaning-products-can-trigger-asthma-symptoms-idUSKBN0O71QM20150522
I was considering converting to transgender… but it wouldn’t work without make-up…. but I don’t want cancer… and I would get bathroom-confusion …
So I will stay the current course
I was considering converting my gender and making it = Jupiter…
that one or Saturn, I don’t know.
I think I will when I next have to fill out an official form.
how can “they” stop me?
I think this is covered by Freedom of Speech.
Don’t do it FE. A beautiful woman with a large container stocked with prep stuff is a prime target.
I;ll second the shampoo thing. I have not used shampoo in 30+ years. I just have short hair and just spray my head with water once a week and wipe with a towel. I have really thick hair. Never have had any scalp or hair problems at all.
Hey stinky!
I tried the hair thing once and yer right… it takes months for that to settle down into some new kind of equilibrium. Just use gentler, natural products. Plenty of those around these days.
Deoderant’s a funny one. You can now buy aluminum free! versions which means that these companies have been selling the accumulative toxin filled versions for decades. Hmmm. Same goes for suncreens which people love to rub all over their number one organ… their skin. Which absorbs toxins fairly quickly especially when it’s all warmed up and the pores opened like say when you’re sunbathing or in a hot shower.
Actually, I knew some vegetarian meditating natural health dudes once that swore that they didn’t need deoderant after removing all toxin creating ingredients from their diet. For most people, that would mean meat products which start to rot inside your intestines and things like alchohol, tabacco etc. Or you could just use some non toxic deoderant?
Oh and big pharma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_companies_by_revenue
didn’t invent soap. It’s been around for quite a while…
The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon. … The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates the ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance.
Soap – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap
Also a lot of natural oils are antibacterial so there is that too.
And the beard thing or “the need to shave post-collapse” I think can be summed up thusly…
https://78.media.tumblr.com/d9e6b1cdedc2f30a3cd05b036d5a15ec/tumblr_oge8rxyN311v8leojo1_500.gif
I’m so tired of the constant Elon bashing that goes on here at ofw. He is a visionary and extremely successful. Let’s review shall we?
1. He dated Amber Heard
2. He makes rockets
3. He makes cool electric cars
4. He loses money, but everyone wants to invest in his companies.
5. He dated Amber Heard (did I mention that?)
6. He’s got a cool name.
7. He wants to send people to mars.
8. He mixes scripts and alcohol.
9. He dated Amber Heard. ( I think I might have mentioned that.)
“He’s got a cool name.”
Not true. He was born Noel Skum but changed his name as a teenager.
I thought he was Christened Leon Smuk but he changed it because the other kids in school used to make fun of it. In Sweden, they even staged a Leon Smuk Fest in his honor.
https://youtu.be/Lven3tMrrT8
🙂 🙂 🙂
The biggest one: He showed the Keeling curve in front of world press.
http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Amber+Heard+64th+Annual+Directors+Guild+America+1D7pos3ziH4l.jpg –
Yeah, Amber Heard – I’d say that’s doing pretty darn good and worthy of 3 on the list.
Given a choice between dating Amber Heard, Amber Rose, or Amber Rudd, I’d opt for an evening of beer and dominoes with Amber Tamblyn.
http://www.lyhyxx.com/data/out/34/4043235-amber-tamblyn-wallpapers.jpg
FE read this in 2012 and emigrated to New Zealand in a panic.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html
Extract:
“The absolute mean extinction time for the northern hemisphere is 2031.8 and for the southern hemisphere 2047.6 with a final mean extinction time for 3/4 of the earth’s surface of 2039.6 which is similar to the extinction time suggested previously from correlations between planetary orbital mechanics and the frequency increase of Great and Normal earthquake activity on Earth (Light, 2011). Extinction in the southern hemisphere lags the northern hemisphere by 9 to 29 years.”
The southern hemisphere is therefore (allegedly) safer than the northern.
It would make a good film, at least. 😉
Humans deserve to go extinct — because they are inferior…
Why? Because most of them look like they have genetic disorders…
Case in point>
Click this – you will note that every single lion looks attractive — the face is symmetrical… perfect…
https://www.google.co.nz/search?rlz=1C1GGRV_enMT751MT751&biw=1366&bih=637&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=lion&oq=lion&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i67k1j0l3j0i67k1j0l4j0i67k1.12018.12699.0.12980.4.4.0.0.0.0.255.477.2-2.2.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..2.2.475….0.X77YEZYwa9k
And it’s the same with all other animals on the planet — even the insects look great
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=mosquito&rlz=1C1GGRV_enMT751MT751&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCia7yquzWAhWCw7wKHaQmAFoQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=637
But when it comes to humans the vast majority look like there’s something no quite right with them… most of them are not at all attractive … or symmetrical …. in fact humans are probably the stupidest looking animals on the planet….
I just typed in human … and look at the random results… then compare that to the lion or the mosquito — or any other living thing on the planet … compare these results to that of a google search for a tree or a rose…..
Humans…. it is obvious that nature really f789ed up here…. and no doubt we are such nasty pieces of sh it because we are envious of how attractive all the other organisms are…
And that would account for our subconscious desire to exterminate them….
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=human&rlz=1C1GGRV_enMT751MT751&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCiOv9quzWAhVDgbwKHWHQC-0Q_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=637
Plus that difference between the two halves of the face as revealed in photos: even the eyes have very different expressions. My elderly mother refuses to replace her spectacles (I have offered) as she ‘doesn’t want to see people too clearly any more’! 81 years and she’s had enough.
Not really a pack one would actually choose to join, is it, the human?
What is happening in Spain at the moment is making me quite disgusted with mankind: people – many of them young attractive women – wildly applauding the police who beat voters up,and all the ultra-Right crawling out of the woodwork for street battles (this is being covered up a bit by the media, given a low place in the news).
As Marcus Aurelius said, every day when you wake up you just know that you are going to encounter or hear of someone vile…..(his list of nasty human attributes was a lot longer than that!)
Correct or not, I tend to believe that we have to improve along several lines if we are to survive. Some considerations toward that are:
– We are more of a collective species than a group of individuals.
– Following from that, how society is organized (whether small networked groups or top down or both) determines individual behavior.
– Energy resources are generally overlooked as a determining factor in social arrangements.
– Whether we believe somewhat along the above lines, or along some other survival lines, it requires 24/7 effort to bring required change about. Not trying means not succeeding.
-Addition
– Land Use determines, to a major extent, the state of the environment as well as of social behavior.
Do lions where eye glasses?
Are there long or near sighted lions?
I doubt it.
They would be very quickly eliminated from the gene pool.
Not with humans…. we have devolved… every weakness is compensated for…..
Everyone breeds – everyone must be saved….
And look what this has come to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxBDUU_DDd8
https://memegenerator.net/img/images/600×600/5116262/bubbles-trailer-park-boy.jpg
https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/tpb.jpg
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Fast Eddy says:
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Yer lookin in the wrong direction bud…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gal_Gadot_cropped_lighting_corrected_2b.jpg
Notice the symmetry.
You gotta admit natural selection didn’t do too badly – at least in some cases – with the jumble of molecules it had to play with. Hard to believe Gal Gadot is the descendent of pond scum or some hairy common ancestor.
But yeah… most other farty meatbags look like trolls.
Try again…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Gal_Gadot_cropped_lighting_corrected_2b.jpg/519px-Gal_Gadot_cropped_lighting_corrected_2b.jpg
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/documents-reveal-middle-east-regimes-fear-food-water-energy-shortages-exclusive-61b30a5c5ce8
Ahmed Nafeez does not understand that intermittent renewables are not a solution for electricity. They perhaps can pump water or desalinate water, but that is mostly all they can do.
Adding small grids ends up duplicating effort. It doesn’t get anyone very far either.
He is part of the unquestioning consensus on that issue. I doubt whether he’s ever given the matter serious consideration. Like most academics, IMHO he’s a good scholar but a poor thinker.
What will it take to get these people to understand that once the grid goes, it all goes?
Nafeez Ahmed is well meaning but blinkered
I wrote this piece in reply to one of his diatribes a while ago
https://extranewsfeed.com/no-more-4d2f3658f51c
Well said, Norman. You spelled out the dilemma clearly enough for a 12-year-old to grasp. But witness the great mass of adults, including the well educated among them. They just will not grasp this particular dilemma. Inside everyone one of them is a little Mr. Micawber, confident that things can’t be as bad as all that.
http://images.tuckdb.org/ephemera/images/000/004/210/extra_large/2012_04_10_14_58_02.jpg
Thanks Tim
this was another “high level scary” piece, I posted this link elsewhere in this thread, in case anybody missed it, from Ugo Bardi’s blog
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/my-first-presentation-on-energy.html
the scary part is the crap being proposed as ‘solutions’ at an allegedly high level CC conference.
“Changing light bulbs” would get a OFW first timer booed out—yet here it is being prosped among great brains
Dear Normsky,
Then it is evident that they are not great brains and not worth spending further precious time on.
Like a lot of academics they are mostly legends in their own minds and suffer the problem of runaway inflationary egomania.
Thanks Norm,
I read a comment on what you wrote, it sounded intelligent, but was just a simple straw man. How hard is it to understand? Oil is magic, nothing else comes close.
yes Mark
that comment generated a lot of reaction….but i don’t think it changed anything or anybody
I had dinner a buddy a few years ago – he brought along a good friend who was a journalist — he had worked for various MSM outlets including the Economist…
He was thoroughly disenchanted with the industry and explained at length how you have not control over what you write — nor the conclusions you reach even if you follow the editor’s instructions on what to write…. if you don’t do what you are told the article will be reprimanded and told to rewrite it until you get it right.
Perhaps we should not be so hard on these journalists…. their job is not to inform …. it is to control what we think.
I am considering building a bunker …. with shortwave broadcast capability – and plenty of batteries…
And when BAU goes down I will get on the whiskey and pills … and broadcast non stop rants with regular mentions of I TOLD YOU SO….
How delightful would that be!
http://www.barrycunningham.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/650toldyou.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fc/88/99/fc8899a502d53e30da2f3e8b8972dd06–atheist-meme-atheist-agnostic.jpg
Hilarious and so true!
Arguing with a Trumptard and a Libtard is like arguing with an elephant and a donkey….
I have more disdain for Libtards than Trumptards…
Because Trumptards are stuuupid and most of them know that …. they take pride in their simplicity….
Libtards are also stuuupid (and simpletons as well) …. but they think they are smart…
Snap!
http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/imageedit_4335_3647043239.jpg
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/12/politics/trump-stock-market-national-debt/index.html
Trump thinks stock market gains offset the national debt.
How is it that when Trump was only a candidate the DOW at 18,000 points was this gigantic bubble, but now that he’s POTUS the DOW at 23,000 isn’t?
https://static4.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/Gee+whiz+i+wish+i+passed+the+middle+school+_63e65101a77692dc4b3518a1d880447f.jpg
” It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō), suffering (苦 ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (空 kū).”
But not to be outdone by Buddhist teaching, the current direction of the species might be to reevaluate what perfect means. Maybe the old meaning was too narrow. Maybe there are levels of perfection beyond what we can explain. Beside, every religion and philosophy up to now has failed. Something new is needed that can actually stave off extinction, and perfection could be measured more along those lines.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/gm-plans-to-temporarily-shut-down-detroit-factory-report-says.html
Temporarily shutting down a GM auto plant, then when it does reopen it will operate at 80% of previous output.
In other ‘news’ today….. the government is hiring 100,000 people spread across major cities who will be given sledge hammers in order to roam about demolishing automobiles.
The new hires will be paid minimum wage however they will get bonuses of $100 for every car destroyed beyond repair.
Goldman Sacks Chief Economist Goofie Heinstein said on CNBs earlier ‘this is bullish for auto stocks — that 100 buck bonus should really drive the numbers. This will also be a boost to the overall economy as the salaries and bonuses help pump up retail and restaurants’
A rumour was floating around Washington that the government has hired people to burn down entire neighbourhoods using fire in order to stimulate the construction industry. Government spokesperson Shady Galloon strongly denied this rumour
GM to cut production at Detroit plant, lay off workers: WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-to-idle-detroit-car-factory-amid-slow-demand-1507810659
Ford Trims Production at Five Plants in North America as U.S. Sales Slow
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ford-trims-production-at-five-plants-in-north-america-as-u-s-sales-slow-1505853945
Not a good sign. When layoffs begin, the economy has already been slowing for a while.
In Mexico, $2-per-hour workers make $40,000 SUVs
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2017/09/26/low-wages-mexico-auto-plants/106023308/
The Hamtrack plant produces:
Buick LaCrosse
Cadillac CT6
Chevrolet Impala
Chevrolet Volt
A while ago there was talk here about the japanese phenomenon/culture of “wabi sabi”. E.g. pottery or art that is “flawed”, asymmetric, rough etc. It really resonated with me and I think it’s a good way of viewing the world and our eventual collapse as well.
“Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
I’m hugely into wabi sabi and the perfection of the imperfect. Will get to the link soon.
Wabi sabi is a myth, as FE keeps telling us. Sometimes it’s wabi coldi because these things fluctuate over the centuries.
The most humorous translation of the term “wabi sabi” that I’ve come across is “the justification of poverty”, although it’s a sensibility more tied up with thrift and with the appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of everyday objects regardless of their age.
People who can’t afford to keep buying the latest stuff may have to make do with last year’s or last century’s clothes, household goods, buildings, etc., so they cultivate an attitude of seeing and accentuating the beauty inherent in antique objects and of using them in daily life rather than simply keeping them as art objects.
I suppose my gasoline powered straw cutter counts as wabi sabi. It’s almost 50 years old and wouldn’t look out of place in a scrapyard. But it still works fine as long as I keep the engine clean and the blades sharp.
Not to be confused with kemosabe
What’s that? An old Navaho cancer treatment?
I thought I was the first to crack that joke, but I see the Web has beaten me to it.
http://abitsketch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Dr.-Tonto-jpeg.jpg
The highest grade of goatskin used in fine bookbinding is so perfect that it has no discernible ‘flaws’, which in fact come from injuries, scratches and so on to the living animal as it browsed. Life is rough for Nigerian goats.
It is very expensive, eye-wateringly so – the most expensive leather of all, but rather unsatisfying to look at and touch. In fact, it looks just like plastic ‘leather’!
‘Grade 2’ is always much more beautiful.
Variation is Perfection.
Nothing like the look and feel and smell of high grade custom made products using noble materials. Shame most people don’t look beyond the “craftsmanship” of their smartphones these days.
Where does Naugahyde fit into this equation… I mean like… the very highest quality Naugahyde
Would that be better than leather?
If anyone was wondering…
Naugahyde is an American brand of artificial leather (or “pleather” from plastic leather). Naugahyde is a composite of a knit fabric backing and expanded polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic coating.
Naugahyde – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naugahyde
And I thought it was from some breed of Japanese cow…..only found in the Nagausaki region of Japan….
So you are telling me it’s like a solar panel or an EV…. made from fossil fuels?
Please say a kind word to that straw cutter for me.
Slovakia: Kindergartens changed into houses for seniors. But not always there is enough money to finish such projects:
https://kosice.korzar.sme.sk/c/20670144/chceli-milionovu-prestavbu-budovy-nema-kto-zastresit.html?ref=trz
Second childhood, anyone?
after watching this video where italy mafia handling the garbage
https://youtu.be/vBHNmw0A80M
isn’t Italy mafia also handling the nuclear waste so this mean
Italy government has collapsed because it can not do basic
government services
+++++++++
A—-it takes energy to create garbage
B—–it takes energy to remove garbage
if more energy is used to produce A than is available to remove B—then garbage will (ultimately) stay where it is.
garbages collectors wages are just energy converted into money
True, unless someone comes up with a subsidy for recycling some of the garbage. Then it is quite possible to use more energy in picking up, removing and recycling the garbage, than would be used in extracting and processing more of the material.
a subsidy = money, and money=energy
you can do that for a time, but then the energy equation must balance itself out
Ufff… and I thought bringing balance to The Force… was a good thing.
So… humans are garbage producing farty meatbags.
No wait… humans are garbage. There fixed it.
here:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/California-Fire-Experts-Probe-Cause-of-Fast-Moving-Fires-450303083.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_DCBrand
California Fire Experts to Probe Why 17 Fires Erupted in Just 24 Hours
“Scott L. Stephens, a professor in the College of Natural Resources, said that falling power lines and arson are both being considered. All of the fires seemed to ignite between midnight and 2 a.m. Monday, when winds were the strongest, he said. Branches or trees could have fallen on the lines or the lines themselves failed, he said.”
” “And the other one is arson of course, and I know that’s being looked at too,” he said.”
gee, all those branches fell between midnight and 2 a.m.
okay. 17 fires erupted in just 2 hours, NOT 24.
and an arsonist would never have thought of setting the fires “when winds were the strongest”.
in the middle of the night.
okay.
Hmmmm….
Globery Wabary makes arson more common and the models predict even more arson at night. According to 97% of government sceantists, it really is true.
Burning trillions of tons of fossil fuel is actually good to living things…it is nourishment for plants.
As I understand the situation, increased CO2 oil the atmosphere has more than one effect on living things. Plants utilize CO2 and produce oxygen, so from that point they may be good. But in terms of maintaining the way the plant works (for example, the amount of protein relative to the total), it tends to reduce the protein. This is not good, for animals and humans that depend on the plants for nutrients. There may be other effects as well.
But Gail, the warmies and greenies would say that, wouldn’t they? They always love to accentuate the downside of anything humans have a hand in.
What we do know is that for most of the long history of life on earth, CO2 levels have been much much higher than they are now.
Look at this WIkipedia paragraph on CO2:
Various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 million years ago of over 3,000 ppm, and between 600 and 400 million years ago of over 6,000 ppm. In more recent times, atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to fall after about 60 million years ago. About 34 million years ago, the time of the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event and when the Antarctic ice sheet started to take its current form, CO2 is found to have been about 760 ppm, and there is geochemical evidence that concentrations were less than 300 ppm by about 20 million years ago. Carbon dioxide decrease, with a tipping point of 600 ppm, was the primary agent forcing Antarctic glaciation. Low CO2 concentrations may have been the stimulus that favored the evolution of C4 plants, which increased greatly in abundance between 7 and 5 million years ago.
So the records show that huge Dinosaurs apparently flourished at over 3,000 ppm and coal deposits were laid down from forests of giant ferns at over 6,000 ppm. Ergo, the biosphere, including animals and plants, will probably be OK if CO2 rises from 280 ppm to 400, 500, 600, 700 or even 800 ppm, even if humans are no longer part of the biosphere. Natural selection will make all the necessary adjustments in response to whatever environmental changes occur, just as Mr. Darwin promised.
As for the recent rise in CO2, as NASA puts it: From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
That means we now have significantly more biomass in the terrestrial biosphere than we had 35 years ago, which means a greener earth with more plants and very probably more animals. Since the greens are always lamenting the shrinking of the biosphere, one would think they would rejoice at the news that it is not shrinking but growing. But surprise, surprise, they always look on the dark side of life.
Always enjoy reading your posts Tim. The facts and logic are strong with this one.
Thanks David for linking that article. I’ve been saying to friends and family here in CA in the area of these fires that it must have been arson, because of the sheer number of them in such a short period of time. No way, trees falling because of wind on power lines cause all those fires. The area the fire started via high winds is not far from the coast and often gets high winds.
There was a fire that got started a couple of weekends back at 1:15 AM up in our area at the side of a highway and only because of quick action was it stopped. I wonder if it’s a seasonal fire fighter who hadn’t made much money so far this fire season and needed the work. Either that or it’s someone with a different agenda.
But what’s worrisome is the last rash of fires, including the famous Valley Fire that destroyed 1950 structures was caused by an arsonist they finally caught after he had started multiple fires over a two year stretch. Now we’ve got another one in the same region? What the heck is going on?!
Maybe people are pissed at the 1% and want to take them down… notice the hit on the nappa valley region …
Or maybe it is ISIL or ISIS US affiliate…
And then there is always the chance Putin is behind this
People still set fires in Spain in order to ‘develop’ land once it has been devastated.
Spain is like a tinder box at the moment due to very prolonged drought, which may cause the collapse of farming in the Pyrenees at least – the pasture is drying up.
I’ll not be moving to my dream cabin in the Basque woods.
Same in Galicia. Relatively small reservoirs have run dry. Farmers panicking etc etc. Thing is, this happens almost every year now until the rains come for a week or two and the reservoirs are back to full. It does seem like the seasons are shifting slightly – as in arriving later than expected. But then, this is the age of Gleebal Weeming so Galicia could soon be a desert like the rest of spain in the not too distant future. No problemo… Elon is drawing up the schema for portable solar powered desalination plants and water pipelines as we speak…
Interesting about Galicia.
A significant change, perhaps, is the shifting of birds from North Africa to N. Spain, far north of their usual territory.
One problem is that when the rain does come, it’s too much at once.
Terrible floods in the Basque country in recent years – not helped by all that concrete development pre-2008!
Ah yes, the mud slides are something to behold. The nearest town had to rebuild years ago precisely because of this. But then it’s also built on reclaimed land so there’s that problem to look forward to as well whenever the sea misbehaves.
The longer dry periods loosen the topsoil which slides down the roads with the rains when they finally come. Andalucia suffers a lot from this. Gets to the point where you cant keep fixing things all the time especially when the frequency is almost every year.
I have no idea how farmers manage to stay in business at this rate. And as I understand it a lot of them don’t carry insurance.
I used to track the bird movements back and forth. Now the starlings, swifts, house martins, and water birds seem to do whateverthehell they want several times a year. Maybe they’re confused.
We had forest fires almost every year in my region of north west spain when certain political parties were dominant. The fires would “mysteriously” appear uniformly all along the costal mountains on the windiest nights at the end of summer. When the “other” alternative party became the prevailing local power, the “mysterious” forest fires suddenly stopped being a thing. Havent had one since. Curious.
Not so curious as people have all sorts of motives for their actions even if it causes widespread destruction and loss of life.
To clarify… we have had more fires. Quite terrifying to be in the middle of it all when it’s going down, bucket in hand. The highly organised politically motivated ones stopped but a single pyromaniac caused a devastating one a few years back and of course the odd silly trecker that doesn’t understand that they can serve time in prison even if their runaway campfire was… an accident.
And the moral of this story?
Many problems are insoluble. They are just natural trajectories or phenomena.
There are no guarantees in this universe.
Everything comes to an end, economies, societies and each of our lives.
yes!
but, though I enjoy a good story about the coming deaths of all living humans and the nothingness of eternal death…
and, though I enjoy a good story about the imminent extinction of humanity…
those stories are definite and thus are mostly uninteresting.
but…
The Collapse!
now we’re talking!
what?
where?
when?
how?
this is the resonant stuff of OFW.
my best guesstimate is that The Collapse will happen in the 2030’s.
and that is very SOON.
the 2020’s will be the Duct Tape Decade.
TPTB will try anything to hold IC together.
so…
though 2030 is coming soon…
BAU tonight, baby!
Why is your guesstimate so precise?
I wasn’t aware that guesstimation was a science. What makes the guesstimating of “something will happen but it’s decades away” – i.e. a safe distance from me in the present – better or more plausible than “something will happen but it’s only a couple years away so hold onto your hats!”
We have psychology 101 happening right here. Some relish the excitement of an imminent event. Others understand the plausibility of impending doom but can’t shake the fear so they position it – in their minds at least – a bit further away so that they can also join in the fun but not have to endure the immediacy of the impending situation.
If a miracle does happen – small probability does not equal impossibility – wouldn’t it be priceless to observe our finite worlders make all kinds of excuses why the big firework didn’t go off the way they expected. Kicking it just to make sure then skulking off to find something else to worry about.
Human extinction in a box. Shroedinger says it could happen… might not. And only when some external superconsciousness actually bothers to peek inside and collpase the wave function.
Important? To a human level awareness perhaps. The pain of such a realisation would be brief and then…peace. Eternal peace.
Awareness on the level of a galaxy or universe? Probably wouldn’t even percieve the change. Humanity is like a warm fart dissipating leaving only a very localised stink… for a short time… and then it’s gone.
Then again… and here’s the real kicker. What if us farty meatbags really were the only advanced species in the whole wide multiverse. Ever.
We put out a few radio signals and there was no one listening… and that was it.
And to those who believe in godlike beings I ask… what was the point of that? And why take so long to achieve so little?
…and some just view the future as unpredictable and guesstimates some probabilities to each given scenario. Insta collapse, slow collapse, feudal age, take your pick. Anything can happen. Gods are figments of human imagination. We don’t understand how our gooby claymate works, let alone the universe. Who knows what is out there. Is anybody behind all of this?
Maybe we are figments of our imagination.
There is nothing happening here and there never was.
Dreams can also feel like reality…..
Who writes your stuff? This is goddamn brilliant.
You are not by chance the reincarnation of George Carlin?
‘And why take so long to achieve so little?’
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Well… if you can’t beat the nihilists… there’s only one option left.
Love me a bit of georgie boy. That guy could see. He was so far ahead of the crowd that the crowd thought he was just doing standup. We need more truthmongers to pull back the veil. I would relish every minute of that, popcorn in hand, regardless of any sword of damocles that may be hovering over our collective heads. I’ll take whatever pleasure remains wherever I can get it.
you know, there’s a certain amount of risk to sending out radio signals to announce your position. what if, surprise!, there really are some klingon peoples out there, and they make their living inslaving lesser beings on other habitable planets? why give them a Google map to Earth?
personally, i like being left alone in the vast mirky cosmos.
+++++
Oops! Too late. Radio signals have been going out for over 100 years.
so we got lucky out to 100 light years of our position, so far. a related thought is any civilization at our level of development doesn’t make it past the nuclear stage. they may have been out there, but they’re long gone by now.
Yes… there is that.
Might as well shoot up flares from your camp and turn the music system up to eleven. Maurauders Lives Matter too you know.
And along those lines….
Establishing an organic garden … and installing solar power on your home…. prior to collapse of BAU…
http://justfunfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/lighthouse-at-night.jpg
Here I am … Here I am…. Here I am….
I have food… I have food… I have food…
I have comfort… I have comfort… I have comfort….
Come and get me … come and get me … come and get me…..
http://www.FastEddyEnterprises.com is rolling out a new line of containers from our China factory…. these come fully equipped with solar disco ball and stereo systems…. we also stock them with everything you will need to last 3 months post BAU … guns ammo food…. for guys like Smite we also have the latest and greatest robotic blow up dolls to choose from (extra charge….)
Act NOW! Sell your permie doomie waste of time and go to http://www.FastEddyEnterprises.com The 40ft version is coming soon.
http://www.chassisking.com/images/products/regular/20-foot-ground-storage-and-shipping-container-20ft-one-trip-single-use-container.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/68/e8/30/68e830ce3fedeaead7662cded69501d8–container-house-plans-cargo-container.jpg
Now that’s a nice container.
Just take my money already.
The extinction of the human species…. is a pretty big deal.
Just for humans…..
Tell me about it!
We’ve been sitting here in our undergound bunkers on the dark side of the moon for millenia waiting for our agents to complete the rigging of the spent fuel ponds and then get the hell outa there so we can light the fuse.
We also managed to spread the fear of Gleebly Weebly so you lot would do yourselves in wasting what resources you had left on windmills. Gotta admit… that was a good one. We laughed our alien arses off at how gullible you farty meatbags are. Hilarious.
But the clock is ticking and we are getting seriously bored. Time to move on and the radiation suits are nearly past their use by date. Nothing personal but we’ve got to get down there and harvest those glowing jellyfish things you’ve got swimming around. We haven’t got those where we come from and they’d make a wonderful addition to our collection of trophy species.
Cheers
CO2 is rapidly becoming a major issue for humanity. (The biggest?) Temperature is going UP!
/bait
oh no!
all those persons who “believe” in Glowworm Wobbling better STOP using fossil fuels RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
or else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and… BREAKING NEWS:
BAU tonight, baby!
But but… Mr Kurzweil is still promising (blathering stuff) about a solar powered world within sixteen years. Because… nanotechnology.
I’m pretty sure he said the very same thing sixteen years ago…
Maybe his exponentials are off slightly. Or too much lead in his organic supplements…
Or his prediction machine has been infected with the kkklimate modellling machine virus. In other words… can’t predict shite.
But then… neither can anyone else.
For four years ago it was in twelve years, now it is in sixteen years.
Wake me up when we burn that second 500 billion tonnnes of fossil fuels will ya…
Oh right … there is nowhere near that amount remaining that can be extracted economically…
So never mind… I will just set my alarm
Ramez Naam gave another wonderful talk recently in India showing how practically everyone is shutting down coal plants and replacing nasty non-profitable coal with shiny renewables. He’s a great speaker, so very convincing and all that. His pretty graphs show exponential growth of solar from zero to… about one percent…
And that’s when the audience should collectively have little alarm bells going off inside their brains.
The exponential growth that has taken place from zero to one (over the past fifty years i might add) has only happened because rich people who bought into the Geebie Weeebie scaremongering (thanks to the Club of Rome way back when they needed to come up with a way to tax humanity into forced depopulation) graciously accepted the tax money of the poor to install solar panels on their mcmansions including the double garage housing a couple of EVs which they routinely parade in front of other “cool” people as a viture signalling display common among their breed.
Mr Naam and others are stating emphatically that solar will continue its meteoric climb up the exponential ladder without subsidies (but then what are the incentives they talk of?) until places like India become a solar superpower!
On the other hand, if Gail is right about the masses generally not being able to afford the output of a dieing (dead?) global economy, this could also be the reason, along with greater efficiency, that energy companies begin their slide to bankruptcy.
The end result of this experiment appears to be billions of meatbags young and old sitting in front of glowing screens believing in their mindspace that they are productive human beings and worth every penny. On the flipside, these meatbags are plugged into giant server farms – the new energy hog on the block. I am more than a bit suspicious that something else is going here waaay above the understanding of the average meatbag…
No amount of switching one energy source for another etc etc trumps the ability of the general public to keep consuming material goods at the rate they have been for the past fifty years. The only rational conclusion is economic implosion followed shortly after by the sound of every human activity (including the slaughter of millions of animals every day) screeching to a halt.
Bonus? The screenwatchers will look at their surroundings in a daze, maybe even wonder outside and uncomfortably bump into other dazed meatbags before they start ripping each other to shreds…
I know at least three Club of Rome members. They want to somehow fix the problems of the world economy, whether or not they are really fixable. I don’t think that they have a negative “agenda.” They just have not put two and two together very well. I know that one of the Club of Rome co-presidents has been a reader of OurFiniteWorld.com. He may still be. He has sometimes written to me, explaining why he thinks what I am saying couldn’t be correct.
The thing that struck me as strange when people talked about the benefit of solar panels was that the reason given seemed to be, “Solar panels will help us meet the additional electrical demand we get from air conditioning in the summer on hot days.” In fact, I remember reading an IEA report recently, talking about the need for people in India and Africa to be able to have air conditioning, the way people in more developed countries. This whole method of reasoning is bizarre. We won’t possibly have enough energy of any sort, including electricity. Adding air conditioning, or even continuing air conditioning, should be pretty low on our agenda.
In theory, we should be using batteries to store electricity from summer to winter, because heating is one of our big energy needs. This is not really feasible.
The intermittency of wind and solar is a big problem, adding greatly to costs and making pricing almost impossible. These are things most people have not figured out.
Ugo Bardi is maybe recognising the idiocy of some of the so called brightest minds looking at this problem in his current lecture series in Paris:
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/my-first-presentation-on-energy.html#comment-form
In that, there’s a comment about one of the delegates suggesting that everyone switches to LED lighting.
Ugo is one of the members of the Club of Rome whom I know. He is one who has been very much concerned about climate change and what we might do about it. He has been a big fan of some proposed technologies. One I can think of is a tethered “kite” that works like a wind turbine, as I recall.
You are right. Ugo seems to be recognizing some of the issues. I notice Our Finite World is in his blog roll.
He hasn’t heard about my revelation from the other day? I was sure I spotted him at the big party…
If you want to pass me his email I will email him that bit about the half a trillion tonne budget of carbon we have remaining … surely he of all people will understand that it is a physical impossibility to hit that target …. given he knows that we are almost out of the cheap stuff…
We should reach out to him to give him some peace of mind… hate to spend your final months or years pulling your hair out over something that is not a threat.
Is that really how they think?!
The storing of energy from one season to another was worked out long ago: firewood gathered over the summer, dried out and used in the winter.
Architecture suitable to hot climates was also devised thousands of years ago, with sophisticated air-circulation systems. Clue: not built of concrete and glass.
And in cold climates, the solution was multiple human-animal occupancy of beds and rooms – body heat can do a lot. Tip: a spaniel is nicer to wake up next to than a cow. On the whole.
So you’ve tried it then… I mean… er… the cow thing?
Not the air-conditioned buildings of the middle east but those peskly Romans were lovin their concrete…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
By chance … is the Club of Rome a swingers club?
Or maybe it’s like the anti-Mensa Club…. only people with IQ’s under 80 admitted?
Sounds like a dodgy place to me
I always thought the Club of Rome sounded like a weapon of some sort, like the Hammer of Thor or the Sword of Damocles.
Disco club?
Bonus? The screenwatchers will look at their surroundings in a daze, maybe even wonder outside and uncomfortably bump into other dazed meatbags before they start ripping each other to shreds…
We can read about atrocities in history books…. the most horrific acts of torture and violence ….. the most violent wars involving hand to hand comat…. the cruelest criminal acts….
But although we have continued to blow each other to pieces mostly from a distance…. there has been a lull in the overall action during the age of more….
When BAU ends —- we go back to the old ways …. on steroids…. gloves will be off ….
No human rights commissions… no war crimes tribunals…. no police…. back to a time when the word genocide was not yet invented….
Just full on bare knuckle uncontrolled violence ….
Remember — man is the most vicious animal on the planet …. not the lion … not the shark … man.
For the past 200 years man has been turned into a lap dog sitting by the fire … fed out of a can …
But now he is going to be tossed out of his bubble existence — and we are going to see the real man — the real wild beast — with his cunning — and his cruel nature — in all its glory.
We need to give thanks to the fuel ponds…. for it is they that will quickly put an end to this wicked beast…. it is they that will put him out of his misery.
Let us pray:
Oh thank you heavenly fuel pond
For delivering us from this hell on earth
We are not worthy of your bounty
But we accept thy gift to us
And thank you for putting us out of our misery
And exterminate us the wicked beasts
From the face of the planet
Forever and always.
Ahmem
Allah Akbar
https://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/cherenkov-glow-2.jpg
You’re not wrong.
And remember loads of boys and men that should know better have been keeping the extreme violence flame alive through their video game addiction. So many ways to kill, maim, torture have been implanted in brains everywhere waiting for the activation code to be sent.
That fuel pond is a thing of beauty all else considered. Worthy of a prayer… oh, thanks.
back to my OCD with moon colonies…
the real reason to build a moon colony:
to show the world how easy it is to do…
(so then “we” can move on to easily populate Mars and on and on to exoplanets)
so where’s Elon?
you know, to invent the Moon House kit here…
and with SpaceX, send many kits to the moon and assemble them there…
and with SpaceX, continually supply them with air and water and food…
it’s going to be so EASY…
let’s do this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Breaking News: Tesla Scraps Electric Drive in Favour of IC Engines
http://st.hotrod.com/uploads/sites/21/2014/10/Chris-Koszis-deuce-highboy-roadster-engine.jpg
Elon Musk stated ‘It doesn’t matter’
Useful information on maximizing your transportation of the future:
http://running.competitor.com/2016/02/training/four-running-secrets-of-the-tarahumara_145377
The thing that struck me most is that the runners work as a team. That way, none of them runs too fast, and wears himself out. And they can socialize and have fun. It is not about the right shoes, and beating the next runner.
I wonder what topic FE will troll to death in order to find someone to argue with.
Delusistan is quickly becoming a straw man nation for the Petulant Generallisimo to fire his rockets at.
Always vigilance.
Delusion/Illusion …. is infinite
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–ZbmyyC1i–/kaikb0qorp29c0bwbzri.gif
https://basicsaboutaerodynamicsandavionics.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/bz2kzhj.gif
If I had to guess, I would say, “gerbil cooling”.
I have just been awarded with a position that tops all of Eddy’s.
that’s right…
I have been appointed God…
by the former God, who just decided that it was now time for me to take over.
since God really has nothing urgent to do (that eternity thing, you know?)…
I will continue posting here on OFW for a while longer at least.
one heads up:
The Collapse is really coming, but not before 2030.
you’re welcome.
Can we crucify you?
So why did Puigdemont change the script at the very last minute? According to the Catalan government’s chief spokesperson, Jordi Turull, he did so in response to pressure from key international mediators that are insisting on dialogue between Barcelona and Madrid. “[They] said that if we did this they would be willing to act,” said Turull, who refused to reveal the identity of said mediators.
https://wolfstreet.com/2017/10/11/despite-market-surge-the-catalonia-crisis-is-far-from-over/
Same ‘mediators’ who informed Madame May that Brexit was actualy bREMAIN – or else.
Same ‘mediators’ who inform Berlusconi and Papandreao that there would be no referendums – or else.
One wonders whether Puigdemont was suckered: ‘We’ll mediate, don’t worry’.
So the process stalls, he loses popular support for hesitating, and the ‘mediation’ never actually materialises.
Or am I getting too cynical? It might be going on behind the scenes, hence Rajoy giving him another week to clarify whether he declared independence or not.
It was Dia de Hispanidad today in Spain.
For the very first time, the para-military police who beat up voters in Catalonia were included in the parade in front of the King, and loudly cheered.
A very clear message to Catalan separatists……
No cynical enough…
Perhaps he was given a private screening of this … and told that he might want to reconsider….
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-11/how-nbc-killed-ronan-farrows-weinstein-expos%C3%A9
Any budding starlet with half a brain (which means very few) would look at all of this and turn the tables…. you get invited to the casting couch … and decline…. and don’t get the part…..
BUT …. you set your phone to record the incident …. then you play it back to the director …. and you inform the director that you expect to be given options on the leads in a minimum 4 major pictures per year….
Latest stars to allege harassment by Weinstein.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/9a/d1/78/9ad17885b1c6743d12928da3934ef7a0.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/Wacky-penelope-pitstop.gif
I wonder what Roman Polanski makes of all this?
I wonder what all the other Hollywood scumbags who do the same things … are thinking about this?
I wonder what Harvey did to get singled out like this …. when the entire town is based on this?
It’s another distraction exercise – grabbing the headlines. No less true for all that, no doubt.
Berlusconi (remember how he was pushed out by the ECB?) in Italy had a big file with all the dirty stuff on everyone, much of it committed at his parties, and if you offended him, it all came out in his newspapers.
The material to destroy people is always on hand.
“It’s another distraction exercise – grabbing the headlines. ”
But given all the social systems collapsing around us now, this ‘distraction’ seems like something more decisive. I feel considerable misgivings at what’s coming after us men. Something like a tsunami where you need to run for higher ground.
And the NSA (el ders) would have their file on Sylvio… how ironic…..
Like Mr Madoff, a prominent gang member has to be sacrificed occasionally to keep “the ones that can see” at bay. Especially when they can feel their collective ankles getting nibbled by the more curious types among “the ones that can see”. At this point, they appear to be in full damage control mode – major pedo rings busted, Hollyweird under attack, banking industry not gettin no love, FBI false flag shenanigans decloaking before our sleepy eyes. What else? Goobel Woobing facade crumbling?
Lets just call this whole thing a sham and be done with it. If there’s any single authentic thing about human civilisation that is capable of remaining intact beyond the collapse of this pathetic tower of babel then lets give it a chance already.
Humanity has become a parasite infested dead man walking. The host has been anesthatised and its immune system rendered incapable of solving the problem. Like a old rabid, blind dog infested with worms wandering aimlessly in the woods, humanity has become the eyesore that would be better off put to rest. Not because we couldn’t become something better, that we didn’t have potential as a species, but because it appears all the “wrong” mutations that could happen did and all the mindviruses that took hold have run rampant for millenia with no apparent course correction taking place.
If the options ahead are near extinction or as a result of some miracle, a dystopian, sociopathic Zuckerberg ruled, elite serving, technocratic, souless AI future… then it could be argued that we should be reaching for the big red stop button before people really get hurt.
+++ Good comment
The liabilities of male behavior are spread far beyond Hollywood, unfortunately. We of the male “species” are in big trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eeGX4SlF1s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Secret
Some big names involved… why is the MSM not picking this up?
The MSM is bought and paid for by the same creeeepy creeps that run the whole godawful charade that is human culture.
Remember Roman culture was just as debauched, depraved, debased and disgraceful as ours is now. Guess what? Same people running the show. Nothing’s changed.
Shouldn’t we all be Jedi Knights by now or something?
In one of the most shocking developments to emerge in the week-and-a-half since Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 others during the worst mass shooting in US history, NBC is reporting that a maintenance worker said Wednesday he told hotel dispatchers to call police and report a gunman had opened fire with a rifle inside Mandalay Bay before Paddock began firing on the Harvest country music festival below.
Worker Stephen Schuck told NBC News that he was checking out a report of a jammed fire door on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay when he heard Paddock shoot security guard Jesus Campos in the leg. After the shooting, Campos peeked out from an alcove and told Schuck to take cover.
“As soon as I started to go to a door to my left the rounds started coming down the hallway,” Schuck said. “I could feel them pass right behind my head. “It was kind of relentless so I called over the radio what was going on,” he said.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-11/vegas-hotel-worker-warned-police-shooter-massacre-began
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A7Eq9PEuDQk/maxresdefault.jpg
They’re not going to tell us anything besides spin, we wont know the truth for a while at least. They (msm) are already changing the timeline to make the cops not look as bad with ridiculous excuses. BAU will be over by the time this gets dragged through the courts. I don’t see conspiracy yet.
Turns out Jesus Campos is not even registered as a security guard in the state of Nevada. This story gets smellier by the day.
They said he was “maintenance”. They change light bulbs and caulk showers etc. Don’t need a card for that.
Oops, mixed up the names. I don’t know if registry is required for security at private hotels, I had to get fingerprinted back in the 80’s to serve alcohol in NV casinos though.
I’d be more prone to believe in conspiracies if it weren’t so obvious that TPTB are simply ordinary run-of-the-mill incompetent.
I continue to have to endure emails from people telling me how Russia conspired to fix the US elections …. how Putin is the devil etc etc…..
And conversations about how we are going solar and EV….. and how awesome that is….
As there is no point in disagreeing ….. I am going to think of this every time I encounter delusional thought…. and my mantra will be yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya….
Just thinking about this brings me inner peace and calm…..
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/09/38/b7/0938b737105385881a4e795c91aff5f7.jpg
Almost can’t turn the propaganda stream off….they have CNN on gas pumps here. Jeeez!
When in airport lounges I have asked that they turn of the blaring CNN…. usually they don’t … I understand CNN pays for the rights to broadcast in some lounges…
I keep forgetting to print out FAKE NEWS on pieces of paper… then get some sticky tape … and post them on the Tee Vees when nobody is looking … some day I will remember
Been doing this for some time now but I occasionally can’t resist putting a spanner in the works. Guess I’m addicted to that look in their eyes when they kind of get it but immediately change the subject… look… over there… a man is being really silly on the tv screen… ooooh… there’s a cat playing with an insect… who won the football… what are we having for lunch tomorrow…
I need to stick to the script…
yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya…. yup …. yeah…. right … u-huh….. ya….
BREmain…..
As was suggested when the vote to leave was cast…. if it matters … it would not be allowed…
It will not be allowed.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-10/niger-farage-clearest-proof-yet-great-brexit-betrayal-under-way
It’s kinda like if everyone was certain that 911 was a false flag…. so what? …. what could they do about it?
Absolutely nothin.
Now the elde rs do not like having to do this….. they like us to believe that we have democracy … they do NOT want to draw attention to the reality that when it comes to matters involving their empire — we don’t get to decide….
Ideally they would always remain behind the curtain …. but sometimes they need to step in and do things like this …. they of course do it subtly — they would never blatantly tell the cattle — look — we run the show — we don’t like this Brexit thing — so sorry but it’s not going to happen….
Of course not …. then that would make them a target…… there are more effective ways to achieve the same result — order the politicians to drag their feet (Madame May was no doubt thinking of her nice fat reward she will get when out of office for doing the eld ers bidding when she blundered through that speech) — tie the issue into a thousand knots in the courts….
There are ways…. there are always ways…. and if push comes to shove…. do what was done to Mr Berlusconi when he threatened a referendum…. have a polite man pay a visit…. and explain how that would be a very bad idea to go against the wishes of the el ders….. very bad indeed…. much better to with the flow —- the rewards are immense…
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-making-400000-speeches-to-wall-street-firms-report/article/2634736
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11670425/Revealed-Tony-Blair-worth-a-staggering-60m.html
At some point management (or parents) have to intervene and stop the children from walking into the road or the cattle from charging towards the nearest ravine.
I’ve played strategy games where general orders are given and little squads of fellas do the rest according to their own programming and then there are games that are very heavy on the micromanaging of every little event which is like a caffeine rush at first but very quickly becomes overwhelming and impossible to manage.
Us humans with elite members squatting over everyone else have created a system that combines top down management using broad brush strokes and general commands with the occasional micromanagement of smaller teams and even individuals. What is becoming evident is that as problems start to pile up and more complexity is added to the system more and more micromanagement of all the components making up industrial civilisation is required and this can be extremely heavy handed even clumsy as stress increases and permeates the entire system.
The likely conclusion is that everyone starts blaming everyone else for the failures in the system while washing hands of any responsibility. I suspect that the curtains which some hide behind will continue to be burned revealing unsavoury truths that many didn’t want to or were incapable of accepting. The more that is revealed the more that management will have to cover their tracks and divert attention. But then, that’s not as dificult as it sounds in this day and age. We’ve just witnessed a whole year of distraction after distraction. You can measure the group anxiety of every single global scale event and how quickly it wanes if nothing is there to replace it. As long as people have tv and cheetos they are an insanely easy animal to manage. But as the system stress continues to build management needs to open the valve a little more on the various opiates and substitutes.
World Oil Shortages To Lead To Oil Price Spike By 2020s, Warns VP Goldman Sachs
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Supply-Crunch-To-Lead-To-Oil-Price-Spike-By-2020s-Expert-Says.html
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. In the relentless pursuit of growth, it seems the auto industry needs disasters (such as hurricane Harvey and Irma) to sustain their growth trajectories. If this
isn’t destructive growth I don’t know what is:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harveys-destroyed-cars-give-auto-industry-hope-1504694336
This is why goods are made with short lifetimes. There is a need to keep selling more.
The idea of giving a free car (paid for by printed money from the CBs) to every person upon passing their driving license test is starting to make sense….
You mean giving a car loan to every person who passes a drivers test. Gotta keep the ponzi going.
Free mcmansions next?
Howabout free travel anywhere in the world indefinitely. That should give the tourism industry a little boost not to mention airplane manufacturers which would also increase the amount of persistent contrails in the atmosphere thereby making global dimming more of a thing which would keep some people happy.. two birds with one stone.
Taking this further we could simply hand out free organic food to everyone with a mouth and why not free clothing too. Oh and iphones.
All this would be perfectly doable of course if we weren’t being robbed by central banks in the first place with their nasty system of printing money as debt (usury). If the govt just took back the responsibility of issuing currency with no interest and allowed it to circulate everything would be hunky dory. Everyone would be swimming in credits… at least at the beginning of each month when the handouts are dumped onto their smartphones but read the smallprint and it says that all issued credits must be spent before the start of the next month or lost forever.
I’m actually partial to trying this as an experiment as part of the anything goes whatever it takes philosophy but pretty sure entrenched wealth would never go along with such a harebrained idea even if it meant keeping the zombie nation at bay for a while longer. It’s not in their DNA. Sorry… I mean it’s not in any of our DNA. Which kind of means theoretically fair systems cannot really exist or at least not for very long.
The truth is the whole system breaks down if everyone lives basic hand-me-down lives. We could all be reasonably contented with less but WE are not in charge. The Economy is.
These are outstanding ideas. But execution is everything.
Let me put on my Don Draper hat….
First we need a catchy tag…. remember Debt Jubilee?
I propose Free For All…
Next we need someone with a name to front for this… can’t use Elon or Obama or a celebrity… we need someone with some gravitas in the finance area….
Oh I know … Paul Krugman — being a Nobel prize winning economist that will put the stamp of approval on the idea.
Now we just get the el ders on board… and they will green light this with their MSM minions….
And we are underway!
Wow. Sign me up. I’ll hand out T shirts and hats with lame slogans all day as long as you introduce me to those hippy chicks you hang out with. Deal?
World’s No.1 Oil Trader: US oil production will Peak in 2018
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Worlds-No1-Oil-Trader-US-To-See-Final-Oil-Output-Spike-In-2018.html
I need a guarantee of this …. it would allow me to ramp things up over the next 5 quarters without fear of ending up penniless and eating dog food out of a can under an overpass in the event that the world does not end by the conclusion of 2018…..
I wonder if any investment banks have a product that allows one to hedge this …. something like you blow all your cash betting on the end of the world…. but if you get it wrong (betting against someone who thinks the world is not going to end in 2018) … you win 500x the cash you put into the hedge….
Anyone know of anything like this?
Easy. Put all your spare dosh in bitcoin and party like there’s no tomorrow.
If the world ends in 2018 then you win. Or rather… we all lose. But there you go. No sour grapes. And thanks for all the fish.
But if your still knocking around in 2019… you’ll be a millionaire! At least according to all the pundits. So… what’s not to like. You get to continue partying until the next end by date expires. Whaddya do? Same again. Keep riding that wave all the way to the top. Fast Eddy Global Inc. You’ll be sitting pretty looking out over your vast empire unable to count the credits as they keep rolling in.
Dog food? Out of a can?
Not rat on the end of a stick?
U been toking on the hopium pipe haven’t you? Come on, fess up.
Rat meat is what comes post BAU….
Ohhh… I see.
Hey this is sounding more and more like pre trib / post trib rapture chatter with every day that goes by…
Oh jesus christ! I hope we’re not turning into a cult. I thought we were cool.
after see Bombardier tariff by usa
look like trade war is about happened
so this remind of Henry kissinger quote
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests
Quick break from the celebrating the end of the burning of fossil fuels bash to post this
Sears Canada hired the same leading bankruptcy advisory firm on June 12 that had represented Target Canada in its insolvency proceedings. Ten days later, it filed for bankruptcy protection to restructure its capital and its operations, shutter dozens of it 225 stores and lay off nearly 3,000 employees, but planned to continue operating. Today it said that the restructuring efforts failed, and that it would seek court approval to liquidate, shutting all its remaining stores and laying off its remaining 12,000 employees.
https://wolfstreet.com/2017/10/10/sears-canada-to-liquidate-close-all-stores-lay-off-12000/
Ok … gotta go … more groopies arriving….
OK, so 12,000 middle aged retail employees. Let’s see, where could we move this lot to… bit of retraining, new types of employment coming along nicely, that should do it, shouldn’t be a problem, need lots of solar panel installers, store greeters, dog walkers for all those busy people with real jobs that shouldn’t actually have pets but have them anyway because it’s… trendy coz they’re not having kids and want to keep their hard earned credits for themselves, oh and we definitely need more people making coffee for each other and serving each other food coz that really keeps the economy ticking not like you know manufacturing and selling material goods like houses, cars and weapons, I mean gadgets which are all saturated markets now and on the way down but who cares gotta keep this illusion going whatever it takes just a little while longer coz the alternative is not even worth considering but there you go.
They can all work from home as social media managers for hollywood superstars and movie moguls (minus one), I’ve heard it pays well pretending to be someone important on social media, I mean there’s no way important people have time to do their own tweeting, well except Will Smith but he’s a really nice guy, Scientology didn’t get to him toooo much, not like that Tom, and Trump tweets but well not really, coz he dictates them and then his social media manager (paid for by the US taxpayer) actually keys it in, but well you’ve got to make a living haven’t you.
This world… what a totally f%&$ed up mess! I mean we couldn’t have F&%$*ed it up more.
Even George Orwell couldn’t have predicted this insanity…..
Oh what I would pay in someone elses Bitcoin to see the look on his face if he was among us now. Even his snooty tosspot of a buddy old Huxisface would be freaking out… and he practically wrote the script.
Let’s go to an update on the massive party that is raging in honour of Fast Eddy who demonstrated that even if GGG wwww was not a hoax… it would not matter ….
Because the KKKLlmy sientists tell us that we will only broil IF we burn another half a trillion tonnes of fossil fuels….
And as FE has pointed out — that just is NOT going to happen — nowhere near that — because we are just about out of the cheap stuff….
Live photos of the monster bash from NZ are coming in now… let’s check it out!!!
http://sdvibe.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/8/6/10863392/6477450_orig.jpg
https://theogsb.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/maxresdefault.jpg
And here’s a text from Fast Eddy….
‘I’d just like to thank Tim .. and Gail and Greg and Lastcall and Jesse and all the others on FW who value logic and facts…. who could see through the hoax….. and to the DelusiSTANIS… this is a victory for you too — we are out of fossil fuels…. so blue skies for all….. fresh air for all…. I am, overcome with joy at this moment … I’d even like to thank God and Jesus… and Elon you too…. Al Gore, give us a smile Al this is just so awesome … it’s been a long battle…. but the victory is made even sweeter…. wish you call could be here…. ok I gotta get back to the festivities… and the Green Groopies…
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e1/18/e8/e118e85bdfcdaa6c51c45e828b158bca–edm-girls-raver-girl.jpg
The level of your maturity is truly astonishing.
I’m sure I had that girl on the left in my taxi one night this summer. She got in and asked me if I was David Guetta (I have long hair). When I said “yes”, she kissed me and asked me to sign an intimate part of her body. Don’t ask.
True story. (Well, ok, it could have been her prettier younger sister.)
Investment bankers. What use are they?
I’ve always wondered…. do cab drivers often get offered barter services from customers?
If you mean do drivers get offered sexual favours as payment, yes, but how often obviously depends on the looks and personality of the driver, the city they work in and the hours they work. The David Guetta fan considered the fare paid and I didn’t waste my time asking for any money; meeting as many people as I do I can read people pretty well.
Nice fringe benefit package….
“I’d just like to thank Tim .. and Gail and Greg and Lastcall and Jesse and all the….”
Guess you havn’t heard. Tim was mauled by a bear while taking a walk in the countryside, Gail is closing the blog because of too much Klimmmaate rhetoric, Greg perished in a windmill accident, Lastcall succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver, and Jessie got stung by a box jellyfish.
Sorry to ruin your party.
😉
Gosh, it never rains but it pours. 🙁
Never mind, let’s whine about the Weinstein swine instead. He’s even worse than FE looks, and I’d never even heard about him until all those thousands of people who were never molested by him started joining in throwing rocks at him. The perfect schadenfreude fest – yippee!
And the accolades continue to pour in today in honour of Fast Eddy World Saviour:
The Nobel Prize for Environmentalism 2017 – Fast Eddy
Time Magazine Greatest Man of All Time – Fast Eddy
New York City has changed its name to Fast Eddy City
London not to be outdone is now Madame Fast City
Rio has announced that they will hack the head off of the statue at the Corcovado — and replace it with a bust of Fast Eddy
The Pope has made Fast Eddy a Saint.. Saint Fast Eddy
The El ders have made Fast Eddy an honourary El der
Al Gore has honoured Fast Eddy in a glowing editorial praising him for exposing the lack of logic and facts in an Inconvenient Truth and making it ok for him to admit flying around in a private jet and living in a massive castle
Harvey Weinstein has reportedly been calling Fast Eddy all morning to get advice on how to turn a square into a circle and redeem himself.
Oliver Stone has announced a movie on the life and times of Saint Fast Eddy…
Penguin Random House has offered Fast Eddy a 250 million dollar advance for book rights.
The coal industry has purchased the rights to the trademark Burn More Coal NOW! and will roll out a major ad campaign shortly.
Coca Cola is introducing a new can with Fast Eddy on the side — Fast Eddy to receive 25% of every can sold.
McDonalds is renaming the Big Mac the Big Awesome Fast Eddy Burger.
Corporations are literally tripping over themselves to latch onto the Fast Eddy name…. this is the biggest story in the history of the planet …
We are almost out of fossil fuels — rejoice rejoice — we can burn whatever is left without a care in the world.
REJOICE!!!
Not forgetting the news service of choice: FEFN. (Fast Eddy False News).
If the News is the Lies…. then False Eddy News is …..
Finally – you are exhibiting symptoms of logic!
however, the NZ FAA has once again rejected FE’s request for a license to fly his private jet, citing safety concerns. so the jet sits on his private tarmac, looking a lot like an updated cargo cult decoy, and is said to be stuffed with doomsday prepper material.
Ba.stards!!!
Wait till they see that Earth Day has been renamed Fast Eddy Day ….
Everyone will be instructed to turn on every light – every appliance – rev their car engines… burn baby burn!!!
(cuz it doesnt matter!)
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/epicrapbattlesofhistory/images/2/2c/City-lights-buildings.jpg
http://www.big-fat-spark.com/images/bfs-a/dzm.gif
Give er!!!! Burn More Coal!!! Before we run out!!!!
Wile E Coyote has just apologised for asking Gail to have his babies, back in 2012. 🙁
This is how we will all live when enjoying Universal Basic Income? One long rave?
Cool huh?
And all the bars and restaurants will be self service. Just turn up and help yourself to whatever you want. All vehicles will be driving themselves. A little robot will bring your delivery to your door. Trading algos will be making you oodles of extra credits while you sleep so you never need to work again.
But we don’t want people getting bored in the post work world so there will be plenty of activities for you to try your hand at. It’s not like you won’t have spare time hehe. Raving 24/7 is not recommended as it has lead to rapid burnout and death in experiments. We are developing drugs that balance the effects of other drugs and stop you dieing but until then maybe you’d enjoy word puzzles, knitting, falling asleep in front of a big tv. All of these fulfilling activities have proved very popular among retired humans which we have been monitoring for some time.
Brought to you by your freindly neighborhood alien AI who have been keeping you as pets for oooh quite a while now. We are doing everything possible to make your demise a comfortable experience. You’ve been one of our more entertaining pet species but it’s time to look for a new one. You’re starting to look like any old fungus growth now. Very predictable how it all ends I’m afraid. At some point it might be best just to torch the whole thing. Wouldn’t want it spreading.
That works for me.
Here are the recommendations that I will present to the el ders next week :
1. Offer Big Pharma a 500 billion dollar cash prize to the company that comes up with the best party drug in the history of the world.
2. Distribute free viagra and cialis at counters at the raves.
3. Distribute free valium xanax and high quality weed at counters at the raves for those wanting to come down and have a rest.
4. Enslave all the top DJs and chain them to their turntables at the various mega venues set up around the world.
5. Free baby soothers for all the hot babes.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/52/3e/51523ee5c28d678ee6f36e1f00f96a24.jpg
Panic? What panic?
According to newspaper articles written after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast and after Hurricane Katrina caused countless billions in damage in New Orleans, people were calm, benevolent and peaceful.
Heck, they were all standing around singing Kumbayah around a campfire, sharing their canned goods, calming frightened puppies, and helping the elderly.
Apparently, studies prove that the fear of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos is nothing but the “disaster myth”. Reams of examples exist of the goodness and warmth of society as a whole after disaster strikes. All the stories you read at the time were just that – stories, according to the mainstream media:
Yet there are a few examples stubbornly fixed in the popular imagination of people reacting to a natural disaster by becoming primal and vicious. Remember the gangs “marauding” through New Orleans, raping and even cannibalizing people in the Super-Dome after Hurricane Katrina? It turns out they didn’t exist. Years of journalistic investigations showed them to be racist fantasies. They didn’t happen. Yes, there was some “looting” — which consisted of starving people breaking into closed and abandoned shops for food. Of course human beings can behave atrociously – but the aftermath of a disaster seems to be the time when it is least likely. (source)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-10/disaster-myth-narrative-no-one-panics-no-one-loots-no-one-goes-hungry
Spelling mistake — should be Koombaya….
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http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/advanced-yo-yo-tricks-15.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/x5FmpAygqcY/maxresdefault.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBlDpfXbZ9A
Great video of an independent analysis of North Korea’s missile and nuclear capability. Well informed team say it’s too late to stop NK – they are now members of the nuclear club. Also say it’s probably not an option to attack NK, because no way to stop NK from launching against SK & Japan.
Not so good!
Actually, giving them aid would probably be more effective than bombing them.
The US doesn’t want to extend aid. North Korea has repeatedly asked for a normalisation of relations over the years, and aid in exchange for ending its nukes program, but the US doesn’t want it.
The US doesn’t want it.
And, after seeing what happened to Yugoslavia, Libya, and Iraq, and remembering the non-stop carpet bombing they suffered by the US during the Korean War, where 30% of the population in the north were killed, and not a building of note left standing, is it any wonder they want to arm themselves effectively?
Image all the countries,
Had nuclear weapons,
It’s easy if you try,
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Give peace a chance — support Total Nuclear Armament
Go to http://www.armtheworldnow.com
A worldwide mexican standoff is better than everyone routinely killing each other for sport.
Or is it?
At what point does this planet start to look like one of those rooms filled with mousetraps ready to go off with the slightest nudge?
All it takes is one farty meatbag pushing things too far and… kaboom!
as Orwell made clear in his book 1984, it is essential for empires to have conflict and threat somewhere in order to justify the expense of the military establishment.
that’s why we brits had a navy that was as big as any other 2 navies combined, and why the usa now maintains 12 carrier battle groups.
the corresponding downside to that of course is the poverty of the lower strata of the population, because maintaining a military drains the national exchequer.
it also explains why, say, the Norwegians have such a comprehensive social benefits program—they don’t spend vast sums on military hardware. With oil-trillions in the bank, and a seafaring heritage, the could certainly afford aircraft carriers, but not social benefits as well
Both the USA and Norway are, unwittingly working to my Universal Law:
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/universal-law-16d41003fe2
But each to their own way.
It would seem that no nation can escape it
And Norway gets to eat their cake too…. knowing that if Russia were to pinch their ass…. the Americans would arrive with baseball bats…..
Exactly. Any other country doing this would be called routine testing and no one would raise an eyebrow.
America surrounds vulnerable nations with its military might and provokes them. And keeps doing this until the vulnerable nation retaliates. Then all fingers are pointed at said nation. The only agressor of late is the US. The big bully in the playground. Which doesnt mean that someone else wouldn’t be if America didn’t exist. It just happens to be their turn.
I get the feeling that all the other kids in the playground are ganging up on the big bully or simply walking away and ignoring him… which can only work for so long. Bully wants to bully, not sit around twiddling thumbs while others trade their stuff.
Which is what Putin and China have been doing.
None of which will prevent the US from carrying out a false flag attack and blaming it on NK, Iran etc to enable the continuation of their plans. Anyone on the fence will fall in line under the usual onslaught of rightous propaganda – you are either with us or with the guys who carried out that nasty attack etc etc etc
It’s funny (except not really)… when you think about how they promised us westerners the ability to soak up nuclear missile attacks from those darned ruskies and chicoms. But then the ruskies developed squirrily missile tech that evades all kinds of defense mechanisms hitting a high rate of targets. Oops… gotta maintain those fear levels too. Can’t be having any of this hippy happy lets all just get along crap. Oh no. Gotta divide and rule everywhere. That’s just the way we get things done. Been working for centuries. Why stop now?
If an excuse is used to decapitate NK the collateral damage absorbed by Seoel and Japan would be explained away as not americas fault and the inevitable outcome of decades of madness in the north i.e. the international community (ameerica) had no other choice but to intervene.
And then swiftly set up a central bank of their own choosing followed by the systematic plundering of NK’s lithium deposits or whatever the trendy mineral is these days. Hard to keep up.
Looks like they dodged a bullet…
https://statics.memondo.com/p/s2/aves/2017/04/AVE_66410_a695c32e09b6474296cf1ad8fc4d6b8a_politica_quien_es_mas_temible_corea_del_norte_o_estados_unidos.jpg?cb=6026611