It is easy for those of us in the West to overlook how important China has become to the world economy, and also the limits it is reaching. The two big areas in which China seems to be reaching limits are energy production and debt. Reaching either of these limits could eventually cause a collapse.
China is reaching energy production limits in a way few would have imagined. As long as coal and oil prices were rising, it made sense to keep drilling. Once fuel prices started dropping in 2014, it made sense to close unprofitable coal mines and oil wells. The thing that is striking is that the drop in prices corresponds to a slowdown in the wage growth of Chinese urban workers. Perhaps rapidly rising Chinese wages have been playing a significant role in maintaining high world “demand” (and thus prices) for energy products. Low Chinese wage growth thus seems to depress energy prices.
(Shown as Figure 5, below). China’s percentage growth in average urban wages. Values for 1999 based on China Statistical Yearbook data regarding the number of urban workers and their total wages. The percentage increase for 2016 was based on a Bloomberg Survey.
The debt situation has arisen because feedback loops in China are quite different from in the US. The economic system is set up in a way that tends to push the economy toward ever more growth in apartment buildings, energy installations, and factories. Feedbacks do indeed come from the centrally planned government, but they are not as immediate as feedbacks in the Western economic system. Thus, there is a tendency for a bubble of over-investment to grow. This bubble could collapse if interest rates rise, or if China reins in growing debt.
China’s Oversized Influence in the World
China plays an oversized role in the world’s economy. It is the world’s largest energy consumer, and the world’s largest energy producer. Recently, it has become the world’s largest importer of both oil and of coal.
In some sense, China is the world’s largest economy. Usually we see China referred to as the world’s second largest economy, based on GDP converted to US dollars. Economists use an approach called GDP (PPP) (where PPP is Purchasing Power Parity) when computing world GDP growth. When this approach is used, China is the world’s largest economy. The United States is second largest, and India is third.
Figure 1. World’s largest economies, based on energy consumption and GDP based on Purchasing Power Parity. Energy Consumption is from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017; GDP on PPP Basis is from the World Bank.
Besides being (in some sense) the world’s largest economy, China is also a country with a very significant amount of debt. The government of China has traditionally somewhat guaranteed the debt of Chinese debtors. There is even a practice of businesses guaranteeing each other’s debt. Thus, it is hard to compare China’s debt to the debt level elsewhere. Some analyses suggest that its debt level is extraordinarily high.
How China’s Growth Spurt Started
Figure 2. China’s energy consumption, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
From Figure 2, it is clear that something very dramatic happened to China’s coal consumption about 2002. China joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001, and immediately afterward, its coal consumption soared.
Countries in the OECD, whether they had signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or not, suddenly became interested in reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. If they could outsource manufacturing to China, they would be able to reduce their reported CO2 emissions.
Besides reducing reported CO2 emissions, outsourcing manufacturing to China had two other benefits:
- The goods being manufactured in China would be cheaper, allowing Americans, Europeans, and Japanese to buy more goods. If more “stuff” makes people happy, citizens should be happier.
- Businesses would suddenly have a new market in China. Perhaps the people of China would start buying goods made elsewhere.
Of course, a major downside of moving jobs to China and other Asian nations was the likelihood of fewer jobs elsewhere.
Figure 3. US Labor Force Participation Rate, as prepared by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
In the early 2000s, when China started competing actively for jobs, the share of people in the US workforce started shrinking. The drop-off in labor force participation did not level out until mid-2014. This is about when world oil prices began to fall, and, as we will see in the next section, when China’s growth in average wages began to fall.
Another downside to moving jobs to China was more CO2 emissions on a worldwide basis, even if emissions remained somewhat lower locally. CO2 emissions on imported goods were not “counted against” a country in its CO2 calculations.
Figure 4. World carbon dioxide emissions, split between China and Rest of the World, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
At some point, we should not be surprised if countries elsewhere start pushing back against the globalization that allowed China’s rapid growth. In some sense, China has lived in an artificial growth bubble for many years. When this artificial growth bubble ends, it will be much harder for China’s debtors to repay debt with interest.
China’s Rapid Wage Growth Stopped in 2014
Rising wages are important for making China’s growth possible. With rising wages, workers can increasingly afford the apartments that are being built for them. They can also increasingly afford consumer goods of many kinds, and they can easily repay debts taken out earlier. The catch, however, is that wage growth cannot get ahead of productivity growth, or the price of goods will become too expensive on the world market. If this happens, China will have difficulty selling its goods to others.
China’s wage growth seems to have slowed remarkably, starting in 2014.
Figure 5. China’s percent growth in average urban wages. Values for 1999 based on China Statistical Yearbook data regarding the number of urban workers and their total wages. The percentage increase for 2016 was estimated based on a Bloomberg Survey.
This is when China discovered that its high wage increases were making it uncompetitive with the outside world. Wage growth needed to be reined in. Its growth in productivity was no longer sufficient to support such large wage increases.
China’s Growth in Energy Consumption Also Slowed About 2014
If we look at the annual growth in total energy consumption and electricity consumption, we see that by 2014 to 2016, their growth had slowed remarkably (Figure 6). Their growth pattern was starting to resemble the slow growth pattern of much of the rest of the world. Energy growth allows an economy to increasingly leverage the labor of its workforce with more energy-powered “tools.” With low energy growth, it should not be surprising if productivity growth lags. With low productivity growth, we can expect low wage growth.
Figure 6. China’s growth in consumption of total energy and of electricity based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
It is possible that the increased rate of electricity consumption in 2016 is related to China’s program of housing migrant workers in unsalable apartments that took place at that time. The fact that these apartments were otherwise unsalable was no doubt influenced by the slowing growth in wages.
This decrease in energy consumption most likely occurred because the price of China’s energy mix was becoming increasingly expensive. For one thing, the mix included a growing share of oil, and oil was expensive. The proportion of coal in the mix was falling, and the replacements were more expensive than coal. There was also the issue of the general increase in fossil fuel prices.
Lower Wage Growth in China Likely Affected Fossil Fuel Prices
Affordability is the big issue with respect to how high fossil fuel prices can rise. The issue is not just buying the oil or coal or natural gas itself; it is also being able to afford the goods made with these fuels, such as food, clothing, appliances, and apartments. If wages were depressed in the developed countries because of moving production to China, then rising wages in China (and other similar countries, such as India and the Philippines) must somehow offset this problem, if fossil fuel prices are to remain high enough for extraction to continue.
Figures 7 and 8 (below) show that oil, natural gas, and coal prices all started to slide, right about the time China’s urban wages growth began shrinking (shown in Figure 5).
Figure 7. Oil and natural gas prices, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data.
Figure 8. Coal prices between 2000 and 2016 from BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Chinese coal is China Qinhuangdao spot price and Japanese coal is Japan Steam import cif price, both per ton.
The lower recent increases made China’s urban wage growth look more like that of the US and Europe. Thus, in 2014 and later, Chinese urban wages present much less of a “push” on the growth of the world economy than they had previously. Without this push of rising wages, it becomes much harder for the world economy to grow very rapidly, and for it to have a very high inflation rate. There is simply not enough buying power to push prices very high.
It might be noted that the average Chinese urban wage increases shown previously in Figure 5 are not inflation adjusted. Thus, in some sense, they include whatever margin is available for inflation in prices as well as the margin that is available for a greater quantity of purchased goods. Because of this, these low wage increases may help explain the recent lack of inflation in much of the world.
Quite likely, there are other issues besides China’s urban wage growth affecting world (and local) energy prices, but this factor is probably more important than most people would expect.
Can low prices bring about “Peak Coal” and “Peak Oil”?
What does a producer do in response to suddenly lower market prices–prices that are too low to encourage more production?
This seems to vary, depending on the situation. In the case of coal production in China, a decision was made to close many of the coal plants that had suddenly become unprofitable, thanks to lower coal prices. No doubt pollution being caused by these plants entered into this decision, as well. So did the availability of other coal elsewhere (but probably at higher prices), if it is ever needed. The result of this voluntary closure of coal plants in response to low prices caused the drop in coal production shown in Figure 8, below.
Figure 8. China’s energy production, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
It is my belief that this is precisely the way we should expect peak coal (or peak oil or peak natural gas) to take place. The issue is not that we “run out” of any of these fuels. It is that the coal mines and oil and gas wells become unprofitable because wages do not rise sufficiently to cover the fossil fuels’ higher cost of extraction.
We should note that China has also cut back on its oil production, in response to low prices. EIA data shows that China’s 2016 oil production dropped about 6.9% compared to 2015. The first seven months of 2017 seems to have dropped by another 4.2%. So China’s oil is also showing what we would consider to be a “peak oil” response. The price is too low to make production profitable, so it has decided that it is more cost-effective to import oil from elsewhere.
In the real world, this is the way energy limits are reached, as far as we can see. Economists have not figured out how the system works. They somehow believe that energy prices can rise ever higher, even if wages do not. The mismatch between prices and wages can be covered for a while by more government spending and by more debt, but eventually, energy prices must fall below the cost of production, at least for some producers. These producers voluntarily give up production; this is what causes “Peak Oil” or “Peak Coal” or “Peak Natural Gas.”
Why China’s Debt System Reaches Limits Differently Than Those in the West
Let me give you my understanding regarding how the Chinese system works. Basically, the system is gradually moving from (1) a system in which the government owns all land and most businesses to (2) a system with considerable individual ownership.
Back in the days when the government owned most businesses and all land, farmers farmed the land to which they were assigned. Businesses often provided housing as part of an individual’s “pay package.” These homes typically had a shared outhouse for a bathroom facility. They may or may not have had electricity. There was relatively little debt to the system, because there was little individual ownership.
In recent years, especially after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, there has been a shift to more businesses of the types operated in the West, and to more individual home ownership, with mortgages.
The economy acts rather differently than in the West. While the economy is centrally planned in Beijing, quite a bit of the details are left to individual local governments. Local heads of state make decisions that seem to be best based on the issues they are facing. These may or may not match up with what Beijing central planning intended.
Historically, Five-Year Plans have provided GDP growth targets to the various lower-level heads of state. The pay and promotions of these local leaders have depended on their ability to meet (or exceed) their GDP goals. These goals did not have any debt limits attached, so local leaders could choose to use as much debt as they wanted.
A major consideration of these local leaders was that they also had responsibility for jobs for people in their area. This responsibility further pushed them to aim high in the amount of development they sought.
Another related issue is that sales of formerly agricultural land for apartments and other development are a major source of revenue for local governments. Local leaders did not generally have enough tax revenue for programs, without supplementing their tax revenue with funds obtained from selling land for development. This further pushed local leaders to add development, whether it was really needed or not.
The very great power of local heads of state and their administrators made these leaders tempting targets for bribery. Entrepreneur had a chance of getting projects approved for development, with a bribe to the right person. There has been a recent drive to eliminate this practice.
We have often heard the comment, “A rising tide raises all boats.” When the West decided to discourage local industrialization because of CO2 concerns, it gave a huge push to China’s economy. Almost any project could be successful. In such an environment, local rating agencies could be very generous in their ratings of proposed new bond offerings, because practically any project would be likely to succeed.
Furthermore, without many private businesses, there was little history of past defaults. What little experience was available suggested the possibility of few future defaults. Wages had been rising very rapidly, making individual loans easy to repay. What could go wrong?
With the central government perceived to be in control, it seemed to make sense for one governmental organization to guarantee the loans of other governmental organizations. Businesses often guaranteed the loans of other businesses as well.
Why the Chinese System Errs in the Direction of Overdevelopment
In the model of development we are used to in the West, there are feedback loops if too much of anything is built–apartment buildings (sold as condominiums), coal mines, electricity generating capacity, solar panels, steel mills, or whatever else.
In China, these feedback loops don’t work nearly as well. Instead of the financial system automatically “damping out” the overcapacity, the state (or perhaps a corrupt public official) figures out some way around what seems to be a temporary problem. To understand how the situation is different, let’s look at three examples:
Apartments. China has had a well-publicized problem of building way too many apartments. In about 2016, this problem seems to have been mostly fixed by local governments providing subsidies to migrant workers so that they can afford to buy homes. Of course, where the local governments get this money, and for how long they can afford to pay these stipends, are open questions. It is also not clear that this arrangement is leading to a much-reduced supply of new homes, because cities need both the revenue from land sales and the jobs resulting from building more units.
Figure 9 shows one view of the annual increase in Chinese house prices, despite the oversupply problem. If this graph is correct, prices have increased remarkably in 2017, suggesting some type of stimulus has been involved this year to keep the property bubble growing. The size of an apartment a typical worker can now afford is very small, so this endless price run-up must end somewhere.
Figure 9. Chinese house price graph from GlobalPropertyGuide.com.
Coal-Fired Power Plants. With all of the problems that China has with pollution, a person might expect that China would stop building coal-fired power plants. Instead, the solution of local governments has been to build additional power plants that are more efficient and less polluting. The result is significant overcapacity, in total.
A May 2017 article says that because of this overcapacity problem, Beijing is forcing every coal-fired power plant to run at the same utilization rate, which is approximately 47.7 % of total capacity. A Bloomberg New Energy Finance article estimates that at year-end 2016, the “national power oversupply” was 35%, considering all types of generation together. (This is likely an overestimate; the authors did not consider the flexibility of generation.)
Beijing is aware of the overcapacity problem, and is cancelling or delaying a considerable share of coal-fired capacity that is in the pipeline. The plan is to limit total coal-fired capacity to 1,100 gigawatts in 2020. China’s current coal-fired generating capacity seems to be 943 gigawatts, suggesting that as much as a 16% increase could still be added by 2020, even with planned cutbacks.
It is not clear what happens to the loans associated with all of the capacity that has been cancelled or delayed. Do these loans default? If “normal” feedbacks of lower prices had been allowed to play out, it is doubtful that such a large amount of overcapacity would have been added.
If China’s overall growth rate slows to a level more similar to that of other economies, it will have a huge amount of generation that it doesn’t need. This adds a very large debt risk, it would seem.
Wind and Solar. If we believe Darien Ma, author of “The Answer, Comrade, Is Not Blowing in the Wind,” there is less to Beijing’s seeming enthusiasm for renewables than meets the eye.
According to Ma, China’s solar industry was built with the idea of having a product that could be exported. It was only in 2013 when Western countries launched trade suits and levied tariffs that China decided to use a substantial number of these devices itself, saving the country from the embarrassment of having many of these producers go bankrupt. How this came about is not entirely certain, but the administrator in charge of wind and solar additions was later fired for accepting bribes, and responsibility for such decisions moved higher up the chain of authority.
Figure 10. China current view of solar investment risk in China. Chart by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Ma also reports, “Officials say that they want ‘healthy, orderly development,’ which is basically code for reining in the excesses in a renewable sector that has become yet another emblem of irrational exuberance.”
According to Ma, the Chinese National Energy Administration has figured out that wind and solar are still about 1.5 and 2.5 times more expensive, respectively, than coal-fired power. This fact dampens their enthusiasm for the use of these types of generation. China plans to phase out subsidies for them by 2020, in light of this issue. Ma expects that there will still be some wind and solar in China’s energy mix, but that natural gas will be the real winner in the search for cleaner electricity production.
Viewed one way, we are looking at yet another way Chinese officials have avoided closing Chinese businesses because the marketplace did not seek their products. Thus, the usual cycle of bankruptcies, with loan defaults, has not taken place. This issue makes China’s total electricity generating capacity even more excessive, and reduces the profitability of the overall system.
Conclusion
We have shown how low wages and low energy prices seem to be connected. When prices are too low, some producers, including China, make a rational decision to cut back on production. This seems to be the true nature of the “Peak Coal” and “Peak Oil” problem. Because China is reacting in a rational way to lower prices, its production is falling. China is already the largest importer of oil and coal. If there is a shortfall elsewhere, China will be affected.
We have also given several examples of how the current system has been able to avoid defaults on loans. The issue is that these problems don’t really go away; they get hidden, and get bigger and bigger. At some point, all of the manipulations by government officials cannot hide the problem of way too many apartments, or of way too much electricity generating capacity, or of way too many factories of all kinds. The postponed debt collapse is likely to be much bigger than if market forces had been allowed to bring about earlier bankruptcies and facility closures.
Chinese officials are now talking about reining in the growth of debt. There is also discussion by heads of Central Banks about raising interest rates and selling QE securities (something which would also tend to raise interest rates). China will be very vulnerable to rising interest rates, because of stresses that have been allowed to build up in the system. For example, many mortgage holders will not be able to afford the new higher monthly payments if rates rise. If interest rates rise, factories will find it even harder to be profitable. Some may reduce staff levels, to try to reach profitability. If this is done, it will tend to push the system toward recession.
We likely now are in the lull before the storm. There are many things that could push China toward an energy or debt crisis. China is so big that the rest of the world is likely to also be affected.
Looking to escape the collapse?
Hughes is a 61-year-old limo driver who’s spent the last few years building a steam-powered rocket out of salvage parts in his garage. His project has cost him a total of $20,000, which includes Rust-Oleum paint to fancy it up and a motor home he bought on Craig’s List that he converted into a ramp.
His first test of the rocket will also be the launch date — Saturday , when he straps into his homemade contraption and attempts to hurtle over the ghost town of Amboy, California. He will travel about a mile at a speed of roughly 500 mph.
“If you’re not scared to death, you’re an idiot,” Hughes said . “It’s scary as hell, but none of us are getting out of this world alive. I like to do extraordinary things that no one else can do, and no one in the history of mankind has designed, built and launched himself in his own rocket.
https://apnews.com/9d8e5e8e9245412ab80f5a1f58d885b7
Bravo! A short life and a merry one. I suspect he will explode on launch. I wish I could work out something equally spectacular for my exit.
Or
This:
https://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/1000_1x_/public/import/2013/images/2013/05/catapult_new.jpg
And
http://dragonflycap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/brick-1.jpg
Its time the Tverbergian Collapse happened already …
http://scientists.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/Ripple_et_al_warning_2017.pdf
Pretending that AGW and other environmental problems are not coming home to roost is fine for some. For those of us who can face the truth, it is very clear that there are environmental problems – including AGW – that will make any financial crash look like a picnic. Better that the financial crash happens sooner.
What everyone contrives to ignore: The Pollution Problem.
Pintada…yes..all are interconnected..unfortunately for us humans require fossil fuels to maintain our current population, still expanding. For myself, AGW now is like talking about the weather, nothing really will alter the outcome.
I agree, ” AGW now is like talking about the weather, nothing really will alter the outcome.”
We don’t have any solution, so what is the point. in fact, the Kyoto Protocol seemed to work in the wrong direction, encouraging countries to send their industry to coal consuming nations.
I agree, we face a predicament. BAU results in pollution. Too much pollution ends BAU. Ending BAU now ends pollution but billions must die. Rinse repeat. There is not way out of this circle of doom.
The MSM WANTS everyone to talk about THAT…. so we don’t talk about our finite world.
That means the MSM is the enemy of OFW. The MSM wants to put OFW out of business.
Fight Back. Let’s talk about peak cheap oil and spent fuel ponds and starvation
Those are the REAL issues at hand
Tune in, turn on, drop out
Yes that discussion is very boring ….
https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
If Jonathan Swift lived now, he might be a commenter on OFW. I should have read this Modest Proposal years ago, but I don’t remember doing so. I remember hearing about it, though.
” Better that the financial crash happens sooner.”
There are so many stress points on the global economy that it appears collapse will be very soon. That tends to marginalize the issue.
So you have found truth? Claymate scientists just go round in circles, referring each other’s papers and taking turns in being “concerned” and “warn us”. It’s just a job, there are no solutions, there is no alternative.
“Saving the planet” a heroic narrative to occupy ones time with. Much more comfortable than “we cannot save ourselves,” which is a bitter bill to swallow and requires, I think, a certain humility and gravitas.
We have a new religion: Our sins are environmental sins. If we somehow behaved better, we would be able to save the planet. Not really!
Interesting psychological possibility here: If as Freud would say guilt represents an unconscious intent to do something bad, perhaps environmental guilt arises in those who actually (unconsciously) intend to continue consuming more resources and the concomitant fear of coming into conflict with others over resources. In this psychoanalytic interpretation, as resource scarcity becomes more (unconsciously) obvious, one would predict to see increasing levels of denial among those who find their own potential for aggression to be shocking.
Exactly…… I do not understand why people keep bleating on about this …
Ok I will come around… it’s real…. that will make some people happy…..
What should we do?
http://www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Blog/Silence-header.jpg
That sort of ends the discussion … doesn’t it.
theblondbeast says: “Interesting psychological possibility here: If as Freud would say guilt represents an unconscious intent to do something bad, perhaps environmental guilt arises in those who actually (unconsciously) intend to continue consuming more resources and the concomitant fear of coming into conflict with others over resources. In this psychoanalytic interpretation, as resource scarcity becomes more (unconsciously) obvious, one would predict to see increasing levels of denial among those who find their own potential for aggression to be shocking.”
As far as I know, nowhere else on the web would this quality comment ever appear. Thank you, Gail.
This could be one good reason for the denial that one finds everywhere, even on OFW. But human beings are not so simple that one explanation will suffice. In the US, we must not only deny the fact that we are consuming all the resources now thus dooming all future generations, we must deny the fact that we – as individuals and as a nation – are in fact very aggressively fighting for resources.
Is it any wonder that people like Robert Fanney ( https://robertscribbler.com/2017/11/20/the-equatorial-pacific-is-going-through-its-variable-cool-phase-but-2017-is-94-percent-likely-to-be-the-second-hottest-year-ever-recorded/ )
exist. If you haven’t read him before, you are in for a treat. He will go for weeks explaining why AGW will get us regardless of any actions (intentional or not) that we might take, and then he will turn right around and explain at great length how everything will be fine if we just all buy Teslas. The poor guy has a ring side seat to the extinction of humanity via his chosen vehicle (AGW) but has chosen a profession where he must deny what he is seeing. I have read him for a long time, and it is clear to me that he is not lying – which means he is deeply and truly insane.
But there is more …
Ya well… ‘To avoid dangerous climate change of 2C, the world can only burn another half a trillion tonnes of carbon, climate change experts warn’
Forgive for putting GGWWW at the bottom of my list of concerns as there are far more urgent problems staring me in the face like rabid dogs….
HSBC: Brace for the oil, food and financial crash of 2018
80% of the world’s oil has peaked, and the resulting oil crunch will flatten the economy
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.z9uwvj2gd
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
2009:
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html
2017:
Global oil discoveries fell to a record low last year and are showing no sign of recovery, raising the risk of shortages in coming years, the International Energy Agency has warned.
The number of conventional oil projects being sanctioned for development also dropped to the lowest level in more than 70 years as low crude prices stifled investment, the IEA said.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/warning-of-oil-shortages-as-global-discoveries-hit-record-low-nmv3x6l03
People don’t understand what is happening. We end up with very strange analyses suggesting that somehow we can easily fix the situation when, in fact, there is nothing we can do.
You die sooner… everyone dies sooner.
Then the fuel ponds exterminate everything.
Bad.
Burn More Coal. Urgent.
Why Japan, Germany and other western countries are similar to medieval monasteries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate
These countries are completely at the bottom of the chart, which means that you have to work in order to be the part of the community. Home ownership consumes a lot of energy, while rental homes are more like collectively owned.
The countries that are not considered to be the most rich, are situated at the top of the chart.
Owning something requires a lot of energy from you… The system can contintue functioning, when the homes are rented.
Interesting! I don’t remember seeing this chart before.
My impression is that in the countries that have the highest home ownership rates, the homes have been in some sense “given” to those living in them. China has had a tradition of providing housing to its people. When they are displaced, they are provided with new housing. The new housing is very barebones–no floor covering, or doors, or other parts we would consider essential. Also without appliances. So even if the “condo” is given to someone, they still need to go into debt to fix it up.
I heard that at one point, India divided up land and gave it away. I suppose that could apply to homes as well. Many of the homes seem to be very easy to build of local materials. This would make home ownership feasible. No bathrooms; very little electricity.
The countries at the bottom of the list (or even the middle of the list) have more like two classes of citizens: (a) Those who can afford to buy, and (2) Those who must “make do” with renting. An awfully lot of young people are in this category.
I don’t think the rental units are collectively owned. They tend to be owned by big businesses. Or by wealthy landowners.
When we look at the ownership of the rental houses from a different point of view, they are not owned by the big businesses or by wealthy landowners, as these collect money from the tenants and thus keep the existence of the houses. Moreover, when there is lack of tenants, there can be some loans from the banks or subsidies from the state which keep the in good state. Withouth the money from the tenants or the banks or the subsidies, the price of the houses becomes zero and they probably crumble down…
In Sweden we have two classes:
(1) those who are credit worthy, and
(2) those who rent.
In the second class rent is often paid by the 1st class.
Like a game of Monopoly. Sooner or later all the wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands until it is game-over.
The Germany coalition talks collapse
http://www.dw.com/en/german-election-preliminary-coalition-talks-collapse-after-fdp-walks-out/a-41445987
No wonder, when the involved parties do not understand the reality: CDU wants more immigrants that are not suitable, FDP free market, when the economy is more and more dependent on the money-printing of the central banks, the Greens more “green” (i.e. intermittent) energy…
“The Greens also demanded that Germany wean itself off of coal to meet climate change goals.
The FDP and CDU/CSU were against hastily shutting down coal-fired power plants over concerns about job growth and the economy.”
We now live in a world with no real solutions. It seems to be inevitable that the parties arrange themselves in ways that focus on one non-solution or another. It becomes impossible to agree, because all of the parties offer false hope.
If the political parties define one against another with their solutions and neither solution works, what is the result? No way out…
For instance, in Britain:
Right-wing: austerity, investment in innovation, mass immigration to maintain cheap labour supply, renewables.
Left-wing: end austerity, borrow heavily, high taxes on wealth, investment in innovation, mass immigration to maintain cheap labour supply, renewables.
Non-solutions indeed…..
I think it was Lewis Black that said ‘it’s like two bowls of sh*t, and the only difference is the smell’ lol
Reminds me of an old wise saying: you can choose to disregard the truth but, you can’t ignore the consequence of denial.
Ooo, I got another I saw recently.
“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” –Woody Allen
That is quite the quote!
Yes excellent.
James Cameron should do a follow up to Avatar… in this production the animals of the world that we are driving extinct/enslaving for food… cheer as the humans destroy themselves…
As starvation kicks off the animals flee deep into the forests to deny the humans their bodies…
James can pretend that the spent fuel ponds don’t exist and therefore the animals live happily ever after.
You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Fast Eddy: NASA is now talking about non-man made icecap melting??? And James Hansen is NOT a climate scientist he is an Astrophysicist.
https://i.redd.it/cuxc1clvn0zz.jpg
Your comment regarding Dr James Hansen is misleading,
as trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in Astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Physics, in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa
a college student at the University of Iowa, Hansen was attracted to science and the research done by James Van Allen’s space science program in the physics and astronomy department. A decade later, his focus shifted to planetary research that involved trying to understand the climate change on earth that will result from anthropogenic changes of the atmospheric composition
Hansen has stated that one of his research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially the interpretation of remote sensing of the Earth’s atmosphere and surface from satellites. Because of the ability of satellites to monitor the entire globe, they may be one of the most effective ways to monitor and study global change. His other interests include the development of global circulation models to help understand the observed climate trends, and diagnosing human impacts on climate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
When he embarked on his career there was no official title “climate scientist”.
I would venture to say he was one of the first,
As far as your story… OK “some melting”…fair enough.
Dear The Second Coming;
Nice Post,
Pintada
Thanks, Pintada, nicer still is Dr. Hansen’s book, “Storms of My Grandchildren”, worthwhile in explaining the dynamics that are in play.
BD go back and look at my comments. Undersea or underice volcanoes are suspected of causing/contributing to Antarctic ice melting. This in no way means that Antarctica is melting away. It isn’t.
Therefore any melting that may be occurring, is local ( in the sense that local in Antarctica could encompass a huge area). GW is not melting anything.
Don’t sweat it Jesse…
The caps can melt – who gives a sh it as to the why of it all….
And to those who do give a sh it as to the why and believe it’s ggwwww — when the next hurricane or major storm hits:
‘I want you to get up. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ (Howard Beale)
I know how unhappy you people are.
But there is nothing you can do about that — there is nothing anybody can do about it (if it is real) — but you obviously need to relieve your frustration with the situation …. in the meantime scream at your dog… or better still — go find a rock — and scream at that….
Fast Eddy cares about your mental health. He only wants whats best for you.
Anyway….there are only two horses in this race — Deflationary Death Spiral and Peak Cheap Oil….
Who cares about some nag that is 100 lengths behind… or not even in the race at all….
Here are four peer reviewed scientific studies done by top scientists that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that global civilization will collapse around 2030.
NASA Study: Industrial Civilization is Headed for Irreversible Collapse (Motesharrei, 2014)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
The Royal Society: Study, Now for the First Time A Global Collapse Appears Likely (Ehrlich, 2013)
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845
Study: Limits to Growth was Right. Research Shows We’re Nearing Global Collapse (Turner, 2014)
http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf
Study: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: in Global Systemic Collapse (Korowicz, 2012)
http://www.feasta.org/2012/06/17/trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-a-study-in-global-systemic-collapse/
I have read all of those. They basically reinforce what I have already figured out – there are limits to growth in a finite world. It is not rocket science. What is rocket science is trying to figure out how to keep the BAU going another day/week/year.
Those articles also don’t really give a date, either.
The data could just as well be 2020 as the 2030 Baby Doomer chose.
It has to be Cliffhanger, you really don’t think so? I won’t tell;)
It is.
Keep in mind just because the studies conclude a collapse by 2030. That doesn’t mean everything will be fine up until new years eve 2029….All hell is going to break lose much sooner.
The Mad Max Zombie Apocalypse scenarios presume the shutdown of everything overnight.
TPTB know what is coming – they have contingency planners working 24/7. Are they going to say “oh dear! it’s over,” and retreat to their bunkers? Nope, they will be proactive by locking down the major cities and metro areas with ruthlessly enforced curfews and closure of access routes. They will not squander what resources they have keeping the “useless eaters” and the consumer fantasy economy afloat for a short while.
The Zombie Apocalypse will be true for metro areas with typhus and cholera thrown in for good measure. But it will not suit TPTB to allow Mad Max to destroy their food supply.
I used to think as you do … but then I ran the scenario through my super computer and turned off the cognitive dissonance function and came up with this:
When the power goes off – and it will go off at some point — why would the elites bother to lock down cities?
The end is the end… there will never be a reset …
So what purpose does locking down the cities have? For the elites – and for those in the cities?
Even if they tried to do that … eventually the centre would fall apart — and those locking down the cities would run out of the means – and interest – to continue….
If I am a member of the elite…. I am fighting … I am clawing … I am gouging … I am stabbing….
I am killing …. I am using ‘whatever it takes’ to keep BAU alive for as long as possible…
But at some point I am running up against he physics of the problem …. and I instructing the MSM to report ‘record stock prices – record bit coin — full employment — get your welding glasses on – the future is bright!’ — not the slightest hint of what is to come….
Then I calling up the pilot to fly me and my family to an airstrip where I am going to be picked up ‘to spend a weekend in the country’…
Instead we will get into the waiting luxury vehicle… and I will drive to a place like this …. where we will be entombed…
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/02/01/16/3CB99E0B00000578-0-image-a-6_1485968037975.jpg
They will try; whether or not they will be successful is a separate issue.
The attempt will, at a minimum, keep the smarter alive for a while, at least.
Why would they try?
What about your beloved spent fuel ponds?
See the big doors? They keep that stuff out… there would also be filtration systems that make sure the poison does not get in…. there would be years of food and water in there…
But all of these safe guards will not last forever … the poisons that get released will remain in the ecosystem for centuries…. they will eventually have to open the blast doors….
And that will suck for them
Once the power goes down, cities will be a useful as tits on a bull.
Think: The day of the Microbe!!!
Local Coordinator
Microbe Liberation Front
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/11/18/For%20Q3%202017%2C%2021%20%28or%2070%29%20of%20the%2030%20companies%20in%20the%20DJIA%20reported%20non-GAAP%20EPS%20in%20addition%20to%20GAAP%20EPS%20for%20the%20third%20quarter_0.png
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-19/difference-between-gaap-and-non-gaap-q3-eps-dow-jones-was-16
When it gets really grim …. lie (or report using non-gap aka fake numbers)
Not enough very cheap energy = not enough profits
Hard to keep hiding this problem with more and more debt. Even harder if governments cut back on debt or raise interest rates.
More on that here https://wolfstreet.com/2017/11/19/the-corporate-earnings-fiction-in-q3/
Lipstick on pigs…
Coming from the North of England I’d just like to apologise for Mick Hucknall.
Never a bad idea to keep some (all?) of your spare cash in gold http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-19/ecb-proposes-end-deposit-protection
End of deposit protection may be necessary to make bail-ins work, but it seems like we could be back to a situation not too different from the bank holidays of the 1930s. This would not make people very happy–less happy than bailing out the banks.
It would also destroy consumption: people who see savings disappear will not be happily tripping out to the shops, whatever the economists fancy.
They will panic and close down, a natural human reaction to a threat.
They could bail-in little Cyprus, but to do so in a core country would lead commercial disaster and political upheaval.
The value of gold depends on BAU.
Shampoo and tampons are better value apres collapse.
Keep whatever access to food you have for yourself.
Move away from high population density areas.
Or die without a hope.
For the period just prior to the end of BAU
i was reading yesterday that NZ is initiating a program to rid the North and south island of all non native predatory mammals by 2050
is there something they’re not telling you Eddy?
Does that include the human being, which only appeared in NZ a few hundred years ago, and promptly started causing extinctions?
fraid so
If 1080 poison were to be added to McDonalds and KFC …. that would solve a lot of problems…
Interesting points!
I agree, the old rules will not apply to what lies ahead.
Looming oil price shock that could trigger the next global recession
https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/m/s/z/z/image.related.articleLeadwide.620×349.gzomdq.png/1511128178028.jpg
Despite the present glut in supply, the oil price has again been creeping up. Long in abeyance, we are seeing the re-emergence of a geopolitical risk premium. Generally, this is taken for granted in the oil price, but in recent years it all but disappeared, apparently made redundant by the advent of US shale. Now it is coming back. Like a siren going off, traders are suddenly waking up to an old bogey – the possibility that rising tensions could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately a fifth of world oil supplies pass.
Any such disruption, even for a few weeks, would cause the oil price to skyrocket anew, notwithstanding the newly emerged pressure valve of US shale.
Well, I don’t know about the Ponzi scheme called “US shale”, but definitely the weirdness taking place in Saudi Arabia (KSA) is indicative of a grossly unsustainable society, built on the extraction of a single finite resource, facing the strengthening headwinds of entropy. Both physical and manmade. Just add a KSA melt down to the smorgasbord of existential delights waiting to be served up to industrial civilisation. The only way is down, baby.
Blockage in the straits of Hormuz. Why is that necessary? The price is rising because the glut has dwindled so expect higher prices going forward as suppliers recoup from leaner times. I’m very curious to see how the world economy responds to higher oil prices. Not very good, I would expect.
I would imagine that if anyone tried to close Hormuz…. that would invite a epic intervention by the US military …
Now a peak in KSA oil… all the kings horses and all the kings men…. would not be able to put that back together….
Well, I think any kind of showdown in the Straits of Hormuz, assuming war between the US/Allies and Iran, would spell game over for everybody. Iran is armed with enough sophisticated Russian military equipment to turn the entire area into a wasteland of smoking ruins, including every one of those “mighty” U.S. aircraft carrier groups. With no nukes needed.
Our modern world really is very precarious when you think about it. We have a single point of failure – an oil supply shortage (reached by either geologic or financial limits). We don’t have to run out, just oil supply shortages will put an end to growth, finance, interest, pensions, jobs, manufacturing etc. Panic would ensue for sure.
FE said- “I would imagine that if anyone tried to close Hormuz…. that would invite a epic intervention by the US military …”
Maybe not so much. The US isn’t influencing much these days. Here’s Bloomberg-
“The Israelis and Turks, the Egyptians and Jordanians — they’re all beating a path to the Kremlin in the hope that Vladimir Putin, the new master of the Middle East, can secure their interests and fix their problems.
“The latest in line is Saudi King Salman, who on Wednesday is due to become the first monarch of the oil-rich kingdom to visit Moscow. At the top of his agenda will be reining in Iran, a close Russian ally seen as a deadly foe by most Gulf Arab states.
Until very recently, Washington stood alone as the go-to destination for such leaders. Right now, American power in the region is perceptibly in retreat — testimony to the success of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, which shored up President Bashar al-Assad after years of U.S. insistence that he must go.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/putin-is-now-mr-middle-east-a-job-no-one-ever-succeeds-at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/01/4A8078449E794DFB8CC33ADD00A6F1AF.gif
That is US military spending vs the rest of the world….
And they still haven’t won a real war, against a real army, since WW2. Even then, the Soviets did the heavy lifting on the eastern front.
The US took Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya back to the stone age…. they have never been at risk of losing in those countries… and they never even really took the gloves off…
Russia got whipped in Afghanistan — China’s last war was against the Vietnamese — they did not do so well…
Anyway — we don’t get real wars anymore — the big boys fight proxy wars now — can’t have nuclear powers going head to head can we…..
When push comes to shove Russia will simply lob a tactical nuke over some egregious NATO outrage at its doorstep. Probably to do with the Ukraine, and that’ll be that. As the next step for the humiliated side (i.e. NATO) would be an all out nuclear war.
This is Russian strategic policy, for situations where the homeland is faced with an existential threat on its border. It will reach for the nukes first.
Where is Nixon when we need him to convince the other side that we are out of control and insane and always on the verge of initiating global annihilation ….
Personally… when the el ders see that whatever it takes is on the cusp of failure…. I would 100% support a move by all countries with nuclear weapons to launch every single missile in their arsenals blowing the living sh it out of everything.
I doubt vapourization would be a painful death.
Never fear, nobody has enough oil to fight a real war again.
The correct comparison is not how many dollars are spent, but what they buy. The US military industrial complex is caught in a vice of spending more and getting less. For example, for “x”dollars, how many fighter aircraft can the US build, versus how many can Russia or China build. Anyone with half a brain will know that Russia and China can build 2-4 fighters for every one that the US builds, if not more. The same comparison can be made for every other item the military uses. Now, who is the worlds largest producer of oil….Russia. Introducing the future superpower….Russia.
At least for crude oil. Russia is ahead of the US, if crude oil alone is considered. See this report: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec11_5.pdf
Using Crude + Condensate + Natural Gas Liquids, the United States is ahead. For September 2017, the USA has 12.74 million barrels per day, ad Russia has 11.28 million barrels per day, based on IEA data as displayed by Euan Mearns in this post. (Hover over graphs to get amounts.) If you also add “processing gain” and “other liquids” (such as ethanol), the United States is even farther ahead.
Gail, you are comparing apples to oranges. The US is not a “net” exporter of any of those. Russia IS. Therefore Russia will wield more influence in the world of the future. the US is a net importer. Much of the vaunted natural gas reserves will vanish with the collapse of fracking. Much of the US natural gas reserves are marketing, stock pushing claims.
Right now, exporters of oil are not obtaining an adequate return on their investment. It is of no benefit to be an exporter. It is of benefit to be an importer, where it is possible to buy oil at below its real cost. Thus, the US comes out ahead.
No doubt this is to some extent true… but given the colossal levels of corruption in Russia and China… I suspect there would be enormous waste in their systems as well.
The US is still ranked #1…. but what does it matter — all 3 have enough nuclear weapons to vapourize BAU….
https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison-detail.asp?form=form&country1=united-states-of-america&country2=russia&Submit=COMPARE
https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison-detail.asp?form=form&country1=united-states-of-america&country2=china&Submit=COMPARE
I will now prove that happiness at
Christmas is a hoax.
According to at least a hundred and twenty years of rigorous scientific investigation we can conclude that presents cause warmthening of hearts on Christmas Day. A few diehards like to point out that some of the smiles and laughter are a little suspect to be genuine but the evidence of mirth is too mountainous to disprove this essential truth – children enjoy Christmas.
However the mainstream media abetted by the efforts of parents have been telling lies about Christmas! Father Christmas is not real. Parents and the media believe that the way to make children happy is to spread myths about where presents come from. The problem is maximising happiness and the solution is to tell lies!
Thereby by applying the following logic, which many regular readers here will be familiar with, we can conclude that the global warmthening of children is fake.
A is problem with proposed solution B
B is fake
Therefore A is fake
For example:
Energy constraints in the real world lead many to propose cold fusion will save us
Cold fusion is fake.
Therefore energy constraints are fake.
Or
Potassium deficiencies cause many people to behave as if they have a sugar cravings.
The cravings are illusory as they are caused by lack of potassium, not lack of sugar.
Therefore potassium deficiencies are fake.
te
Cli..mate chan..ge has spurred many to make erroneous predictions about our response to clima..te chan..ge, such as a move to renewables.
A move to renewables is not a solution to clima..te chan..ge.
Therefore clima..te cha..nge is fake
I will now prove that The Collapse will not happen until the 2030’s:
A… The Collapse has never happened before
B… the 2020’s have never happened before
therefore A and B cancel each other out and…
voila!
The Collapse happens after December 31, 2029.
it’s OBVIOUS… don’t you think?
we’ll be lucky to make it through the end of 2018, at the rate things are unravelling.
“Unravelling” is a good way to describe the problem.
Obviously your slide rule has terminally overheated.
Inferential and deductive logic are all that are left. Just have to find some sound premises.
we’re heading into new territory, so it will be harder to rely upon past metrics. keep a wary eye upon Saudi Arabia.
Accusations keep piling up. All these perverts in government must go!
https://i.redd.it/exd4vktt0wyz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/HvTL3kH.png
Stupid restaurants like Red Lobster, which offers the same boring menu 20 years ago, are not doing well but smarter, more expensive restaurants like Boiling Crab (boiled cajun-style seafood), which might not be available in Gail’s area, are doing very, very well.
Sorry, but civilization is evolving in NYC, Boston, SF and parts of Los Angeles and very expensive restaurants are doing very, very well. Maybe not in Atlanta, I guess.
The areas you mention are a lot more expensive, in general, to live. The areas the website mentions are expensive areas, including Honolulu and Los Vegas. Either an expense account crowd, or wealthy travelers.
We are seeing more Indian restaurants in our area. Also more Mediterranean types of restaurants (with hummus. etc) These tend not to be as expensive.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/hunter-mauled-grizzly-bear-gets-advanced-facial-reconstructive-surgery-202244681.html
Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. I hate when that happens.
I think the belief that humans are apex predators, and are “at the top of the food chain” needs a correction. Humans are occasionally preyed on by bears. If a bear kills a human it thought i it will not waste the opportunity to eat a human.
Even with guns, humans only have slight advantage over a bear or a mountain lion. A bear still has the chance to do some serious damage before a human can fire a kill-shot with a gun.
Native Americans lived in fear of bears. They also revered the power bears have.
When Europeans encountered Native Americans who co-existed with bears, they noted the occasional man who’s face was disfigured from a bear attack.
The Basques believed that they were descended from bears. Neolithic bear dances (complete with silly hats) survive in Navarra in the Basque country, and also Sardinia.
Now it’s more than just the bear to worry about. Now it’s open season on hunting hunters. High time.
Too grizzly to bear.
I’m sure FE will have something to say about this, but the thing with crimate change isn’t whether it’s real, or manmade, but that for humans – the economy is everything. Going for growth, at all costs, is where it’s it. And nothing, not even a sure trip to hell in a hand basket will deviate us from our inevitable fate. Dieoff as a consequence of overshoot.
China’s Crimate Change Paradox
President Xi Jinping wants China to replace the U.S. as the world’s leader in fighting crimate change, yet yo-missions from China are projected to increase at a higher rate than any other major yo-mitter, according to the Global Carbolic Project.
https://historysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/china-construction_1932141c.jpg
China is taking the lead while the US led by Trump takes a back seat. I like your use of code words – way to yo!
It’s not what they say — it’s what they do…
Al Gore flies in private jets and lives in a mega mansion. With no ‘renewable’ energy powering it.
China makes a token effort with ‘renewable’ energy — then they pile more coal and oil and gas on the fire.
I would have thought that it was quite obvious what is going on here….
The words are distractions … from the reality … and the reality is that we are nearly out of cheap energy…
The masses are stuuuupid …. but they do understand the term finite… they do see that we are drilling miles beneath the sea… steaming tar sands… exploring the Arctic….
You need to give them hope….
So you give the words … CCCl Chhh…. with the solution – EVs and renewable energy.
Ahhhhhh….. calm….
Test this out on someone — even someone you think is quite clever…
Ask them — do you think we will ever run out of fossil fuels?
They will almost certainly say yes.
Are you worried about that?
They will almost certainly say yes – but by then we will have perfected renewable energy.
Ask them if they believe in CCC CCC.
They will almost certainly say yes – but we will fix that with renewable energy and EVs and other fantastic technology. We have always fixed things with innovation. Don’t give up hope – if we put enough money towards these problems – we will fix them – you will see
Don’t give up hope – if we put enough money towards these problems – we will fix them – you will see
And they say it’s only 5 – 10 years away too!!! We’re saved
That’s right! Keep the faith they say. Meanwhile, you’re now being returned you to your regular scheduled program.
Germany’s Green Energy Meltdown – Wall Street Journal
Voters promised a virtuous revolution get coal and high prices instead.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-green-energy-revoltgermanys-green-energy-revolt-1510848988
T
Would have to join WSJ to read whole article. Can you paste in gist of it?
American climate-change activists point to Europe, and especially Germany, as the paragon of green energy virtue. But they ought to look closer at Angela Merkel’s political struggles as she tries to form a new government in Berlin amid the economic fallout from the Chancellor’s failing energy revolution.
Berlin last month conceded it will miss its 2020 carbon emissions-reduction goal, having cut emissions by just under 30% compared with 1990 instead of the 40% that Mrs. Merkel promised. The goal of 55% by 2030 is almost surely out of reach.
Mrs. Merkel’s failure comes despite astronomical costs. . . German households pay nearly 36 U.S. cents a kilowatt-hour of electricity, versus an average of 13 cents in America.
No wonder voters are in revolt. Surveys say that in theory Germans like being green, but polls about household energy costs say otherwise. The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a surprising 13% vote share in part on a promise to end the Energiewende immediately. . .This is casting Mrs. Merkel’s coalition talks into disarray. . . Whatever agreement she works out, it’s clear that German voters want more honesty about the cash-and-carbon costs of Mrs. Merkel’s green ambitions. If instead she recommits to soaring energy costs and dirty-coal electricity, expect another voter rebellion in 2021.
Better:
Why Germany’s nuclear phaseout is leading to more coal burning
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations. This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined. Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years. Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer. At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory. https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
Even as Germany adds lots of wind and solar power to the electric grid, the country’s carbon emissions are rising. Will the rest of the world learn from its lesson? After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs. That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
The latest installment on this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-coalition-talks-collapse-1511133996
German Coalition Talks Collapse
Failure to form new government casts doubt over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s future, could lead to snap elections or minority rule
The collapse of talks leaves Germany with a caretaker government and Ms. Merkel without a majority in Parliament almost two months after a general election that gave her Christian Democratic Union its worst result since 1949.
The political gridlock—a novelty in a country long used to ruling coalitions, compromise-making and consensus-building—has thrown Ms. Merkel’s fourth term into question, although analysts said none of Germany’s parties had an obvious contender to assume her mantle.
In fact, energy consumption in total was also 17 percent lower than expected… which is odd and perhaps a better indication of the recovery-less recovery’s reality?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-18/us-crushing-its-clean-energy-forecasts
Hmmmm…..
Agreed. More young people living with their parents. Many people who could afford to buy less “stuff.”
But also the effect of more fluorescent light bulbs, and more LED light bulbs. These cut back electricity consumption a moderate amount, but had much less impact on peak usage. Forecasts for electricity consumption were particularly wrong.
Watch out for those fluorescent bulbs – they emit a LOT of UV light which speeds up aging of skin and can cause skin cancer. Saw a utube vid on it where this guy puts different kinds of bulbs on these plastic balls that change color as they absorb UV. Turned color immediately next to fluorescent. I discovered this little bit of info. after using FL in my workshop for 12 years. LED did not change the color. Another good reason to use LED. Produces less heat and extremely energy efficient. Changed out our 8 incandescent bulbs in kitchen from 45 watt each to LED 8 watts each equivalent energy output. That’s 64 watts vs. 360 or 82.22% less energy used, and just as bright & dimmable.
Plus the incandescent only lasted about a year vs. going on 3 years now without having to replace any of them.
As I think about it, the really big drop in energy consumption occurred in the industrial sector. Just send our jobs abroad, and we use less energy!
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/28-energy-consumption-by-industrial-sector.png
But “Cool White” LEDs don’t produce a very good distribution of light for allowing you to become sleepy in the evening. There are better kinds of LEDs available, but they are not as “efficient.”
UV ages the skin, but compared with what most of us receive from the sun on a daily basis, UV emission fluorescent lamps only emit a small amount of it, To put it into some kind of perspective, a 1993 study in the US found that ultraviolet exposure from sitting under fluorescent lights for eight hours is equivalent to about one minute of exposure to summer sunshine.
The risk of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) from ultraviolet radiation (UV) emitted by unfiltered fluorescent lamps was assessed. The assessment employed a mathematical power model based on human epidemiological data, which relates the SCC incidence in the United States white population to ambient solar UV. The annual numbers of new SCC on anatomical sites chronically exposed to solar UV (head/face/neck and hands) were estimated for indoor workers. Then the number of SCC that may be caused by additional UV exposure from indoor fluorescent lighting was estimated: the lifetime exposure of indoor workers to typical fluorescent lighting (if unfiltered) may add 3.9% (1.6-12%) to the risk from solar UV, resulting in the induction of an additional 1500 (600-4500) SCC per annum in the United States. This calculated projection must be compared with the 110,000 SCC caused by solar exposure. Thus, this analysis suggests there may be a small increased risk of SCC from exposure to UV-emitting fluorescent lamps.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1343229
Of course, not all UV is equally good or bad, and the UV from fluorescents is, I understand, generally bad for our skin, and so replacing fluorescents with LEDs can be viewed as desirable on those grounds.
Apart from that quibble, I share your enthusiasm for LED lighting. I find it much easier on the eyes and more versatile in use than fluorescent and the electricity bills are lower. We used to play a game in our house with the wife switching on lights and then leaving them on when she left the room and me going around switching them off to save electricity and then her complaining to me that she was only leaving the room for a moment. Now, with LED lighting, I don’t have to worry so much about “wasting” energy because, as you say, LEDs use up a lot less of it, but old habits die hard and I so still do a fair bit of switching off.
Motor Mouth: The inconvenient truth about Tesla’s truck
Do the math: Elon Musk’s claims of fast charging and 500-mile range just don’t add up
http://driving.ca/tesla/auto-news/news/motor-mouth-the-inconvenient-truth-about-teslas-truck
From the article:
The bullsh it is really flying now … as Tesla heads into the dumpster….
A last puff of EV hopium as the uncontrollable death spiral approaches?
It is amazing peoples ability to ignore the energy issue and spend their time quibbling about minor details.
It is basic math but even smart people are conned It just blows my mind.
“A last puff of EV hopium as the uncontrollable death spiral approaches?”
Part of a series of seizures, I mean, announcements, intended to keep recapture public awe , FE
Example: “We’ve not going out business…We’ve just been very busy with new ventures…such as the uh… electric truck !! “
Tesla will be roadkill no later than 2018.
1mW x $0.13/kWh = $130 for a charge. $130 / 500 miles = $0.26/mile.
Diesel $2.83/gal. 6.5 mpg = $0.43/mile.
$0.17/mile savings. To cover the additional $200,000 for the giant battery you need to drive 1,176,470 miles. That’s break even, not making money.
Average semi does 100,000mi/year. You could take that $200,000 and put it in low yield investments at 2% and when your diesel reached end of its life, you have $50,000 profit.
And how many times would you need to replace the battery over that period….
What the hell – Elon may as well go all in here with the bull sh it — and announce he has tied up with the Airbus people —- and will introduce an all electric A360 next year….
If the MSM repeats it enough times … the masses will believe it …. just use the glloooby weerrrming play book….
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to try and compete with diesel for long haul big rigs, tractors, tug boats, and so on. Also imagine a Tesla E truck going up a steep grade, like Grapevine, CA. How fast is that going to drain that massive battery? It’s a distraction for their investors from assembly line backloads. “Look at our new fancy looking big rig and roadster, not the shortfall in production.”
I agree Gail, the electricity supplies to charge these batteries needs some scary power levels. Millions of watts. Just ludicrous and very dangerous.
Tesla claims that the roadster can do 0-60 in 1.9 seconds but physics tells a different story
Then it runs out of battery juice and you have to plug it in again for 12 hours… awesome
And now an upgrade will allow the roadster to fly short hops as well. Maybe. Elon is getting embarrassing. Think he’s been at the wine and ambien again:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/20/technology/tesla-roadster-might-fly/index.html
I can feel it coming …. the announcement that Tesla has signed a letter of intent with Airbus…. to create the first A380 electric plane…..
He is setting the stage for this momentous announcement … prepping the hopium pipe… with hints of flying cars….
We do live in an age of absurdity …
Or perhaps when the oil runs out the makers of the video game launch 2.0 and cars fly … robots do all the work… and humans Facebook and eat pizza all day….
I am skeptical….
Elon Musk is getting downright strange.
For some people … knowing … results in madness…. Ambien is helpful….
Ha ha, this made my day. Thank you!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-18/america-terminal-decline
“Prior to 2009, debt was able to support a rising standard of living..” Less than a decade later, it can’t even maintain the status quo. That’s what you call a breaking point.
To put that in numbers, there’s a current shortfall of $18,176 between the standard of living and real disposable incomes. In other words, no matter how much people are borrowing, their standard of living is in decline.
Just off the phone with a brother in Canada … discussing half empty NFL stadiums … he mentioned there were a lot of empty seats at the NHL game he was watching last night….
https://imgur.com/a/bwryG
Look what is going on in Nascar. Attendance has been declining ever since 2006. And they stopped reporting attendance two years ago..And attendance to the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis this year was only 35k people. Five years ago they were pulling in over 100k strong.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-28/4-reasons-for-nascar-s-big-skid
https://www.ibj.com/blogs/4-the-score/post/64743-tv-rating-for-brickyard-400-hits-higher-gear-while-attendance-dips
You can fake the unemployment numbers… but you cannot fake this …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRduJRnlCA0
This has jack sh it to do with a boycott. NFL fans are like rabid dogs… all US sports fans are like rabid dogs… they don’t walk away because of a tiff about the anthem…. and this is not just the NFL…..
This is the beast dying … right before our eyes…. rotting parts of his body are falling off
We went to a Red Lobster Restaurant tonight, on a Saturday night, right about what should be the busiest time. There was no wait; at least 25% of the tables were empty. A few years ago, there would have been a wait to get a seat. We ordered essentially the cheapest things on the menu, and the price was still plenty high.
We approach 2018 with great trepidation … so many things are headed the wrong way now… the centre is weakening….
GS says just wait for 2018…
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/goldman-sachs-says-2017-was-surprisingly-good.html
could it really be true?
why not?
“print” more money, add even more debt.
this can’t go on forever…
but 407 days gets us through 2018.
let’s do this!
The embedded video — there’s economic anxiety in the US but no reason for it… Lloyd F789witstein…
Very let them eat cake-esque….
I like cake.
I disagree. How could it go from last season’s full stadium’s to sparely populated stadiums in one off season? It couldn’t. You have to realize people are more susceptible to propaganda than realized. The White House connected taking a knee and disrespect for the military, our flag and our nation, while ignoring the actual fact they were taking a knee to protest black people being shot by police for little or no reason. But people bought it hook line and sinker so they took from Pence & his wife’s example and walked out. These are the same people that voted for Trump and watch Nascar driving in a circle and fake wrestling. Their followers, not leaders so they just belly up to the bar for whatever propaganda is thrown their way.
I didn’t watch any NFL games last year … so cannot comment on that other than to say:
– perhaps the masses have hit the wall int the past year and are unable to afford tickets because they are carrying so much debt — the camel’s back has been broken and we are seeing big time cuts in discretionary spending
– within the past year we have seen the restaurant industry’s decline
– retail has also gone into serious decline in the past year
– auto sales have started to fall off as well
– others sports including Nascar — are playing to less than full stadiums and arenas
All of this has happened over a relatively short time frame.
Maybe a few of the duuumb asss patriotic moreons in America are not showing up because of the anthem issues…. but when I look at the entire picture …. I am concluding that this is primarily a manifestation of the consumer hitting the wall….
When people show public disrespect for the national flag and/or anthem, how is it “propaganda” to point out that they are being disrespectful to said flag and/or anthem?
The NFL players are very well paid entertainers who ultimately depend for a living on the patronage of NFL fans, a majority of who also appear to be Trump supporters and who value the concept of respect for the national flag and anthem.
Hence, by “taking the knee” for whatever ostensible reason, the players were also metaphorically “giving the finger” to their end customers, which is a bit of a dumb thing to do from a personal career perspective. But then again, NFL players are, I’m sure you’ll agree, in general a pretty dumb bunch of people, almost as dumb as NFL fans and even dumber than the average liberal progressive snowflake.
I don’t have the numbers but I imagine a lot of seats have traditionally been held by season ticket owners? So one should rather compare fall-to-fall numbers instead… Maybe some really can’t afford the season tickets anymore, another group of people might be able to scrape together the cash but don’t think it’s worth it anymore? And yet another group can afford it but has lost interest.
I think you see the same pattern in nearly every professional sport event across the world right now. Partly due to costs, partly due to changing demographics and culture (millenials are less involved in sports, local traditions/culture and community related stuff from an young age, than their parents were).
In 2015 you could have made money re-selling seasons tickets – with most stadiums today I doubt that is the case https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/31/the-economics-of-buying-nfl-season-tickets.html
The National Football League has enjoyed success in selling out many of their venues from season ticket sales alone. Out of 32 teams in the league, 24 claim to have waiting lists from under 1,000 people to over 150,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_season_ticket_waiting_lists
No longer…
The change appears to have occurred in the past year… just like autos restaurants and retail have run into trouble…
I grew up in Indiana and they would sell over 100k tickets or more for the Brickyard 400 every single year. The stadium holds over 200k plus. I went to the brickyard 400 about ten years ago and there was over 150k people their.. I sat four rows up from the bricks at the start finish line…This is truly a sign of economic decline…The amount of people that attend the races in Indy is what makes them so special to the people of Indiana. Its basically like a giant outdoor rock concert and party. They allow you to bring in your own coolers with beer and snacks, etc..It’s great because its the only sport you can go to watch without having to pay ten dollars for a beer. I mean just look at the size of the stadium, you don’t race at a 200k plus seating event to sell only 35k tickets…And tickets aren’t very expensive because they are all pretty much just bench seats alongside the track. They don’t have any upper decks, third base line, 50 yard line, etc.
“This is the beast dying … right before our eyes…. rotting parts of his body are falling off” A similar decline in profitability is happening in Hollywood…The people who abused their positions of power are becoming less able to keep their victims quiet because they are becoming less wealthy.
Of course one could say that scandals/controversy can cause a decline in profits….but I think, at this point, that it is really a chicken and egg situation. We can debate endlessly whether the egg existed first or the chicken.
Did pedophile priests scandals cause a decline in attendance at Catholic churchs or did the Catholic Church’s declining power make it easier with people to come forward with grievances which resulted in the Catholic Church having to make large cash payments and to lose more money?
A curious note about social justice activists is that they are the young workers willing to work for much lower wages. Perhaps they are making up for the lower wages with all this hand wringing…hoping it will result in more economic opportunities.
On the other end of the spectrum, many sports fans, many of whom aren’t progressive snowflakes have put up with their expensive hobby of sports attendance as long as the experience was positive…and activists trying to make them feel responsible for the problems of working class African American ghettos has not made the experience not “worth it “anymore.
I will say this though: there are still plenty of cars on the road.
And yes car sales – although dipping – are still strong.
But then most people do need a car — they don’t need to go to an NFL game — or restaurants — they have to make cuts somewhere so as to be able to make the car payments….
Perhaps the banks could offer Interest Only loans to purchase season tickets to these events … I would not be surprised….
Declining auto sales? No problem… follow the China lead… interest only …
Bullish Everything!!!
TG, You bought the propaganda, plain and simple, proving my point.
That’s you happy then.
And your answer illustrates why I don’t persist in arguing politics with party political folks. Almost every time I’ve made the attempt, my partner and I waltz around and around and around again and none of the points I try to make ever get acknowledged, let alone seriously addressed. Anything and everything I say simple proves these people’s point, so it’s pointless me trying to point out demonstrable flaws in their claims. Debate only works if the parties to the debate are playing to the same rules of logic in the same ballpark of common sense. And this is seldom the case with PPFs.
But what the heck, in the interests of clarity, I’ll give it one more try. The people making the “take a knee” protests when lining up before games during the national anthem were following a flawed strategy. They may have thought their gesture was for a certain purpose and they may have explained why they were making said gesture, but the fact remains that the gesture was open to the interpretation that it was disrespectful to the anthem, and by extension to the flag flying at the time and to the great republic that the vast majority of NFL fans are so proud to be a part of. It didn’t take White House propaganda to connect those dots. Anything the White House said or did was simply icing on the cake.
Unlike you, I have no personal dog in this race. I am not American and I have no romantic attachment to the country. Nor do I care for NFL/ And while I don’t idolize the Trump administration, neither do I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. All of the above means that I am probably a lot less biased and less blind to the facts in this matter than you are. Perhaps I HAVE bought “the propaganda”. Or perhaps you’ve bought a load that some other crock of horse propaganda that some other political side has been pushing.
It seems to me that you are seeing and describing this “take a knee” squabble from the position of a knee-jerk partisan whereas my vantage point is that of a neutral and fairly uninterested outsider.
But if I was an American, I’m sure this song would really choke me up inside.
https://youtu.be/uPNnsi2dJIQ
Many years ago … I was in Australia as a back packer… we went to a bar in the early hours to watch a boxing championship fight … the US anthem came on and we continued drinking and talking (as one would) …. a couple of America guys near us had taken their ball caps off and were holding them on their chests and actually singing…
They said – hey they are playing the song — have some respect.
I think someone said something to the effect of ‘f789 off’ …. we continued to drink and laugh and ignore them….
2009 peak U.S. debt based standard of living. The fact based truth.
The MSM keeps reporting “growth” and ” recovery ” what a pack of lies.
People continue to be deceived by thinking that paper money is wealth. If your boss gives you a five percent raise, you are not getting wealthier unless you can purchase more resources with your new income.
It’s like a magic trick while you are watching one hand the magician uses his other hand to make something disappear. Watch the money carefully while your essential resources disappear.
Americans are too busy trying to figure out who touched who sexually, to be concerned about silly things like economic charts. We fully deserve what’s coming.
Thanks FE
The housing market isn’t experiencing a ‘Trump bump’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-market-isnt-experiencing-trump-bump-155209695.html?utm_content=buffer83701&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Evolution in action. Nothing surprising. Overshoot and a hard return to sustainable numbers.
I would love to find an island where folks decide to close the borders and limit reproduction.
The closest thing you are going to get to that is Japan and they’re still have problems because they are still highly dependent on imported goods,
“where folks decide to close the borders and limit reproduction.”
What a lot of immigrants hope for Europe. Just after having made it past the bordet themselves.
Rural parts of Norway could fit that description. Except we don’t close the borders, it’s just too cold and dark for potential immigrants! When the Syrian refugee crisis was at its peak, they got set up with food and houses in the furthest north municipality during the arctic winter (it’s dark 24/7), most of them fled to a warmer country!
Similar stories in Sweden and Finland I believe. I’m pretty sure the Nordic countries are the best place to be, especially when SHTF. Friendly people, sparsely populated, fairly self sufficient.
3 .. 2 .. 1 .. spent fuel ponds! Roaming hordes and hordeing romas!
Europeans north south east and west… will not last long when the electricity goes off… the concentration of spent fuel ponds is at its most intense in this region
http://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/carte_centrales_nucleaires_europe2.jpg
‘friendly people’
Watch how friendly there when the power goes off … and hunger starts….
Friendly is weakness… you end up trampled under hooves.
Then of course we have the spent fuel pond monster…. friendly will not be helpful
http://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Carte-des-r%C3%A9acteurs-electronucleaires-en-europe1.png
It is fascinating to observe people discussing which places are safe and which are not … particularly when I have posted facts that indicate 99%+ of all farmland on the planet is farmed using petrochemicals (nothing will grow on this land when the petrochemical factories stop…) …
And then – in Europe — the map is covered with spent fuel ponds — if even one of them today were to be unplugged the impact would be astronomical… millions would die…
Remember – we have NEVER had a spent fuel pond accident. Not Fukushima – not Chernobyl. Spent fuel ponds are exponentially more dangerous than reactor accidents…
Yet people just whistle past the grave yard and pretend as if these facts do not exist.
Wake up people — when the power goes off… you are de ad. There is no escaping this.
Acceptance can be uplifting … all worry will dissipate once you accept the outcome.
And anyway… does anyone really want to live in a world without medicine… without petrol… without enough food to eat… scratching and clawing in the dirt like an animal… suffering horribly…
Embrace your dead soils…. worship the spent fuel ponds…. they are gifts from heaven…. that will quickly put an end to the misery….
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nukehugger.jpg
In Sweden some unlucky immigrants has to do a tour in the north. Some threatened to flee to germany instead, but most did their year so they could move to Stockholm or Malmö.
https://imgur.com/a/oDC1r
Amazing, could have been straight out of “Wall-E”!
How “green” delegates stay warm at UN Climate Change Conference
https://www.therebel.media/at_un_climate_change_conference_delegates_warmed_by_fossil_fuels
Diesel powered generators, if you watch the video.
I just knew that was where those big fat cables were going to end up!
Global carbon emissions will increase in 2017 after three stable years of little-to-no growth according to new research published this week, growing by 2% over 2016 levels and predicted to increase again in 2018.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/14/global-emissions-increase-2017-3-stable-years/
TINA! TINA! TINA!
Gail, thank you for this blog. I wanted to know, does wage growth affect oil prices or is it the other way around? Or are wage growth and oil prices affected by a third source?
I know you said wage growth, but what if there is GDP growth with declining/stagnant wage growth? How would commodity prices change in such a scenario?
Also, how do you view the Great Depression in terms of your theory of peak oil?
growth, in real terms is a function of available indigenous energy—particularly oil coal and gas.
if fossil fuels are cheap and plentiful–as during the 20th century, growth is rapid and prolific–the usa was world swing producer
when energy goes into decline, like now, then growth slows, and eventually stops and reverse
we live in an energy economy, not a money economy
Once we begin consuming more energy than we can gain access to, it’s a steep plunge downhill all the way.
https://imgur.com/a/jSI4N
City planning and suburban sprawl
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/11/16/how-jacobs-and-alexander-unlock-21st-century-problems
I tried to read the article, but got very confused early on. The author referred to “beautiful cities”. What??!?!?!
I have toured much of europe, the US, and central america and sorry, I have never seen a city that could be called “beautiful” in any stretch of the term.
“Beautiful cities”??
By beautiful cities, the author must be narrowly referring to the wealthy parts of the cities where there may be a few (old) buildings built with the intention of being pleasant to look at.. Cities are too self-organizing and unplanned to be beautiful. Decreasing the likelihood of anything aesthetically pleasing being built in a city setting is the fact that beauty is not in vogue in modern architecture.. Modern architecture scoffs at beauty. Modern architects have kept the “projecting power” aspect of architecture but have discarded any concept of beauty, in the name of efficiency and egalitarianism., which has resulted in several buildings that look like prisons,
https://20bedfordway.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Top-image_Brutalism2_20BedfordWay.jpg
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2016/apr/08/brutal-utopia-modern-heritage-london-architecture-brutalism
Imagine all the money time and effort that went into this …. then after living in it for a brief period … realizing what a colossal mistake one has made….
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/toronto/timeless-taste-beer-money-a-65-million-mansion-for-the-ages/article30899711/
http://invidiata.com/oakville-real-estate/3276/1150-lakeshore-road-east
Hugo will soon be eating boiled rat … along with everyone else…
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/01/35/2b/01352b00e1914879039530fb36f1373a–smiley-symbol-happy-faces.jpg
This is my favorite one.
https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2013/08/dezeen_Library-of-Birmingham-by-Mecanoo_ss_2.jpg
It’s suppose to be a library.
https://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/29/library-of-birmingham-by-mecanoo/
This is a house — not too far from where I grew up — I drove there a couple of summers back to take a look… a house… yes.. a house
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/canadas-largest-home-hits-the-market/article4268329/
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dPfjLwif5dk/maxresdefault.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-19L8EJmSb8Q/TbEn_OhekZI/AAAAAAAADm8/Kv9bo1FeG4U/s1600/Picture-59.png
There was an architect in England who built stuff like that: he lived in an exquisite 16th century manor house deep in the nicest part of the countryside. Such a strange and inexplicable choice…..
I did however read about a famous Belgian Modernist architect, whose own house was quite as ugly and nasty and boxy as those he built for the common people. Only the materials were all 1st-class: bronze window frames, etc.
Heritage organisations in Britain are making a big effort to save this stuff, ‘before it all goes’! 🙂
And her’s some slightly lower-brow stuff replacing everything historic in Jamaica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41rUGGrXag
It’s hard to distinguish “city” from non city anymore. There used to be civilized space juxtaposed with wild space (wilderness). Some interpret wilderness as a place remote from human scrutiny and control. But when you have satellites marking the coordinates of Earth’s every sq inch, monitoring mineral and oil supplies, and a prevailing world order of seeing and organizing all land for its utilitarian value, I would say that wilderness no longer exists (and will never exist as long as humans survive). So what is not urban (city-related) about any place on the planet? We’d better get used to the idea that we’re all city dwellers, and make the best arrangement we can out of that.
And, in that context, here’s a definition of beauty worth considering, getting away from the city beautiful, city not beautiful argument: “Beauty itself is not merely aesthetic…but rather a marker for what is good for us as human beings.”
Thanks for this link. I love Jane jacobs. The contrast between her and Robert Moses has been made into an opera. Her book, “Death and Life…” is important to read. I’m reposting the link here so I can cut and copy it to a few people.
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/11/16/how-jacobs-and-alexander-unlock-21st-century-problems
——-
“public realm of urbanism, and the catalytic growth it produces,” Not sure what this means.
But these three make a lot of sense to me, especially the middle one, a subject that I just posted about.
“Historic cities and towns were built by centuries of knowledge encoded into culture”
“Beauty itself is not merely aesthetic, Mehaffy explains, but rather a marker for what is good for us as human beings.”
“Nowadays when we want a plaza or main street we outsource the job to architects and engineers who use theory that they learned in school that often has nothing to do with centuries of encoded culture. They bypass what makes human communities successful. The result is a 21st Century built environment that is full of dysfunction and disorder that we read as ugliness. “
Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/science-proves-kids-are-bad-earth-morality-suggests-we-stop-ncna820781
The new religion: we can save the earth, if we just modify our behavior a bit; eliminate those pesky environmental sins.
Too bad kids are required to avoid extinction…
Some people think that the children of the future will be self-replicating artificially intelligent robots.
They are taken seriously because they have credentials.
Unilateral disarmament does not work. Now if the ruling class controls and limits the lower orders that works.
It is clear that we are not going to see 2100, or more likely 2050, if nothing is changed.
However, like the Kaiserschlacht of 1918, which was the last chance to save Traditional Civilization instead of it being inundated by the Third Worlders, there is one more chance for TPTB – tech advances.
In 1918, Ludendorf, who ran things in Germany by that time, was indecisive and failed to concentrate everything into one battle, and his indecision cost the German Empire, Traditional Structure and a lot of other things, leading to countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Estonia which contributed very little to Civilization. What did the Czechs do other than inventing the word ‘robot’?
If we put all of our efforts into tech, and ignore everything else, some of us ‘might’ make it. I admit that the longer time we waste the slimmer the chance will be.
If nothing is done, then doom is assured.
With tech advances, we can expect more of the monopoly effect: Fewer and fewer people will benefit, and an increasingly large share of the population will be cut out of the picture. In theory, ultimately one person has all of the wealth, and everyone else starves. One person cannot reproduce, however. In practice, the end would come a lot sooner, because all of the necessary services could not be provided by the limited number of survivors. Where would energy products come from, after all of the trees were cut down, for example? Other energy products require very long supply chains.
+++++++
Amen.
One person can reproduce by cloning. And brain uploading will eliminate the need for reproduction.
Sure thing! {sarc}
Kulm…. you do realize that you are totally insane…. or has that not occurred to you?
From own experience: insane people don’t realize they are insane.
Cloning reduces genetic variety which is very bad for most forms of life.
It’s also one of those things humans have not perfected but have quietly abandoned after multiple failures.
Brain uploading is not possible with current technology.
There’s no immortality for you. You’re going to die just like everyone else.
https://tenor.com/view/icecream-unicorn-poop-gif-5686749
I think you will find that tech takes as much as it gives. Nature has a very broad balance sheet and tends to require payment via unintended consequences. An obvious example is the temporary benefit of antibiotics; another is nuclear power.
…if we pray harder everyone salvation is ours ..not.
The unintended consequences are paid by hapless poorer people- the people who do matter have enough resources to shelter them from the consequences. Not one crowed head died during the plague, and not one clergy died during the Irish famine.
” Not one crowed head died during the plague, and not one clergy died during the Irish famine.”
You could be lying about that like you’re lying about brain uploading as viable option for “Saving the human race”
.
interesting world view. the Czechs also invented pilsner beer, a biggie because all humanity had before was lager beer.
Yup. And its one great writer, Franz Kafka, never bothered to write anything in Czech (although he was a salesperson so he had to speak Czech when he had to).
most funny thing when polish says after western countries collapse
due to third world immigration then there country will be superpower
btw one time remember when on internet polish guy say
say my country is people of subhuman and was surprised i have internet
after know i was from india
If humans could go full Global Command Economy, and drop the population down to around 1/2 to 1 billion, maybe. But we would probably had to have already started a few decades ago, and it seems obvious this has not happened. By the time enough people in positions of power realize this is what is needed to be done to save the day, it will be too late? Maybe we could plant some long term nuclear reactors somewhere and build some vault style arks to try to ride out the The End, but if the fuel pond scenario is anywhere even close to correct, there will be too much radiation in the environment for too long? The real problem is even if we somehow invented an easy to mass produce Mr. Fusion tomorrow, we would just kick the can down the road, and run into some other limit to growth a bit later. I wonder how long before vegas starts taking odds on what will do the planet in, if it hasn’t already.
The crumbling of the empires is inevitable, as the energy poor parts are cut off from the still living parts where some affordable energy supplies are present…
Tesla is ‘going out of business,’ says former GM exec Bob Lutz – NBC News
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/tesla-is-going-out-of-business-says-former-gm-exec-bob-lutz.html?__source=Facebook%7Cmain
Glad someone is willing to say the obvious. Tesla’s game plan cannot work for the long term.
Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption purge is all about life after oil
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/17/16658142/saudi-arabia-prince-salman-corruption-oil-women-rights
Saudi Arabia may be out of oil to export by 2030 – Citibank
http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/middleeast/2012/09/35876.html
Saudi Arabian oil reserves are overstated by 40% – Wikileaks
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/feb/08/saudi-oil-reserves-overstated-wikileaks
Of course, it isn’t just Saudi Arabia that depends on oil flows. It is the world that depends on energy flows in general, and oil is part of them.
There really can’t be life after oil, except perhaps in a very small way, similar to the way that there was very early human life on the planet. We don’t have a way to shift to a new economic system.
Saudi Arabia has a fair amount of heavy to very heavy oil.
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2011/06/09/things-get-heavy-saudi-arabia
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/saudi-arabia-to-primarily-cut-heavy-oil-production-bofa-merrill-lynch/
If that heavy oil really could be extracted profitably at very low prices, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela would be much better off. (So would Canada, and many other places.) What looks like resources in the ground depends greatly on how high prices can really rise. If even $60 oil is a problem, then most of the very heavy oil has to be left in the ground.
There really can’t be life after oil, except perhaps in a very small way, similar to the way that there was very early human life on the planet. We don’t have a way to shift to a new economic system.
as chief doomster, you put our predicament perfectly.
it’s seriously frightening to realise that most think the saudi problem is just a saudi problem and is somehow isolated from the rest of the world
It’s seriously frightening to think that most people aren’t even thinking about the Saudi problem……..
certain types of fusion reactors could provide the energy gain to replace the fossil fuels, even in petrochemicals manufacture because you could do presently energy-wasteful things like make methane and ammonia from carbon dioxide and water. a push toward aneutronic fusion reactors, using boron-11 or helium-3 would allow mini-units to power land and air transport. there’s even a way to power rapid interplanetary and perhaps interstellar transport with high neutron flux reactors (the easier ones to make).
as one of my old professors used to say, “you can do anything with enough energy”. one of his examples was mining granite for its copper content. imagine the size of the mines.
of course, we’re not there yet, and the clock is ticking. a some point, probably already past, the window of opportunity closes shut.
You can do anything, with enough energy provided (1) it is very, very cheap, and (2) it matches the needs of existing infrastructure. The time change involved to move to new infrastructure is way too high.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/17/16655800/tesla-electric-semi-truck-roadster-recap-elon-musk
Elon’s got some great designs – in this case for a semi truck & a roadster that would supposedly be the fastest passenger car ever. Whether he can keep up with demand or just how these semi trucks are going to charge up going cross country are all good questions.
This is a longer article about the truck.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tesla-electric-semi-truck-toughest-musk#gs.WWBQNRY
According to this article,
Also, I see, ” Musk pledged the Semi will have a 1-million-mile guarantee.” Assuming the company is around for that long.
Endless spew out of the mouth of Musk … straight from the Ministry of Truth
I’m starting to feel sorry for Elon. Tesla is cratering in embarrassing fashion and Amber Heard has broken his heart. The techno-messiah looks to be headed for his own personal Golgotha.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5086461/amp/Elon-Musk-admits-emotional-pain-split-Amber.html
The billionaire shares six children with ex-wife Justine Musk who he was married to from 2000-2008
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5086461/Elon-Musk-admits-emotional-pain-split-Amber.html#ixzz4ym4A5ycg
Environmentalist!
Dipsh it
This article is very recent! His wife ditched him. He has two previous divorces. I can imagine he would be impossible to live with.
He also takes Ambien pills and red wine then tweets absurdities….
Not exactly the behaviour you’d expect from someone supposedly in charge of a substantial global venture….
Perhaps his unstable behaviour can be attributed to being aware of where we are headed… and knowing the grim fate of all those vermin he fathered….
Despite Big Push From Beijing, Electric Cars Struggle in China – The Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-with-beijing-pushing-hard-electric-cars-prove-hard-to-start-1510916562
Trying to get 8% of new cars to be electric will be an uphill battle. Whenever someone has a goal like “8% of cars will be EVs” or “20% of electricity will be from renewables,” my first reactions is, “The easiest way to do this is to reduce the denominator. Make all cars so expensive that only a handful of people can afford them. You might be able to get 8% of a handful of rich people to buy EVs. The same with renewables, as a share of electricity. Just decrease the total amount, so that it better matches up with the hydropower you already have.
https://imgur.com/a/xMD6p
the theoretical (dark) line is way below the actual…
the “forecast” section basically calls for a plateau all the way to 2030.
I’ll take it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that would be great stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BAU all through the 2020’s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
bring it on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry about all the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(but not really)
Couldn’t you have fitted the Hubbert peak better. Then add Alaskan oil and then shale.
I had not seen this until about a week ago. This is a must watch. (despite the quirks and errors of a decade ago)
Not to besmirch the work, but the real good stuff starts after the first hour. Very powerful social criticism combined with understanding OFW. I havn’t got to far into the ancillary videos yet.
I have a hard time sitting down a watching a two hour movie (or even one-hour movie).
I did listen to a few minutes of it. The impression I got was that humans made bad choices. I don’t think that was the case at all. Humans became adapted to using supplemental energy very early (because of the need to cook some of our food, in order to support our large brains), back in hunter-gatherer days, and because of this human population grew. Humans pretty much were required to take up farming, in order to create a civilization that the growing population could live in, because there were too many people to support, using only hunting and gathering. Farming is an example of increased complexity; it is what a group of people does to work around shortages. With the greater complexity, there is wealth disparity. This is the expected result; it has to do with the laws of physics.
I think this is the answer to Norman’s point made earlier today about why so few people can see that everything in our lives is critically dependent on cheap energy – we became evolutionarily adapted to using it. We practically unconsciously make decisions in line with energy gain. Caloric foods taste better, being warm (burning fewer calories) is pleasant compared to being cold – and vice versa when it is too hot out. Our whole system of biological homeostasis makes energy issues invisible, like water to the fish.
+++++++++++
Humans do not choose.
They follow Mr DNA’s orders.
We’ve discussed Rat Island in the past…
An island that can support a colony of 20 rats…. finds that a ship full of grain washes up on the shore….
Do the rats save some of the grain for the future? Of course not — they have a free for all — gorging on the grain — and engaging in orgies… 20 becomes 20,000… and then the grain runs out … and they turn on each other… and the entire colony is wiped out.
Humans are no different — let’s adapt our experiment using Walmart… put up a sign outside indicating 90% Off All Stock Tomorrow from 8am….
http://allnewspipeline.com/images/beware-of-the-zombies-on-black-friday-2.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEb18fkA-bU
Essentially this is what we have been doing to the planet — all of us. Even the environmentalists!
Oh they say we must conserve — but do they conserve? They buy a Tesla instead of an ICE vehicle … they DEMAND higher wages at their place of work — they recycle – then they head back to the shop to buy MORE sh it….
And heaven forbid if you should criticize them … if you should point out that they are NOT saving the planet at all… whatever THEY BUY … THEY NEED… whatever you buy… is frivolous consumption that is wasting the planet’s resources…
Try telling them to have fewer or no children… you’d have about as much success trying to tell the rats to not pillage the ship and stop their orgies…
Environmentalists are far lower than vermin in my books… worse than cockroaches… they barely even count as a life form…. they can’t even get citizenship in DelusisTAN
Amazing that comments section of this classic YouTube video think third worlders are the problem when it is first world babies that use by far the most resources:
That’s part of why I liked the documentary. There was some Koombaya, but I though it was easy to dismiss.
I agree that those preaching environmental ideals to the crowd after having engendered a minivan-load of kids do seem to be not walking their talk.
It’s funny how the places in the world that recognize “human rights” consume more resources…
How much do you want to bet that Black Lives Matter is more about the obvious embarrassment that many blks have that they have that they aren’t living as well as middle class whites. It is less about police brutality than wealth redistribution.
I can explain every social justice movement as a desire for among some of those in a “marginalized” group to consume more resources. Even abstract concepts like recognition, “visibility”, and respect require the use of more resources,
“Using more stuff has not made anyone happier or more fulfilled” It gets men laid, or at least gives them leverage in spite of their shortcomings. As long as women are attracted by the men who can bring home the most bacon literally, because they are good farmers\hunters or abstractly, by getting a good job, I don’t see how “using less” will EVER happen voluntarily. Every person who is motivated to get a high-paying job is motivated to
a. Impress women.
b. Provide the best for their children, friends, and family at the expense of everyone else.
This is why corruption will never go away and there will never be world peace.
Agree 100%
I agree, but “adapting” and “choices” could be a semantics argument. As well as lumping ALL humans as being required to take up farming. (obviously) There’s a part where he talks about farming having a major change in the early 60’s because of no new land.
In the second hour particularly, the people interviewed agree with OFW, they point out how messed up we are as humans because of where we are in this extraordinary time. I mean really messed up as humans.
I don’t know how to make a highlights reel, but I watched most of the second hour twice. (I like this kind of thing)
We are saved if we use less?
Using more stuff has not made anyone happier or more fulfilled and tends to degrade our planet. So, in a way the answer is yes. If you have otherworldly salvation in mind using less will not avail.
I dunno about that….
I am a lot happier having a car and a truck…. saves me walking very long distances… and I can haul stuff around in the truck … imagine doing that with a wheelbarrow — or a sack…
I quite enjoy living in a comfortable house vs a house made of sticks and mud….
Grocery stores are very useful… there is a lot of stuff in there that definitely makes me happy and fulfilled.
I could go on … and on…..
Good post grayfox
Explains the reason why people go camping. (devolved countries)
Dugout Dick was invited to the tonight show, he declined, never had a phone or tv, he lived the FE challenge.
Which will die first: Sears or J.C. Penney?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/which-will-die-first-sears-or-j-c-penney/ar-BBF3FbQ?ocid=ob-tw-enus-677
So both will die!
JC Penney got his start by renting a building, then living upstairs and using the lower part for sales of merchandise. He would open as soon as anyone got close to the front door and not close until people stopped coming in. He usually opened at 6AM and closed about 10PM. That’s 16 hours a day. It led to success but not in today’s changing world with internet sales.
The original store is a museum more or less, though I think it still operates in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Been there.
21st Century Natural Non Renewable Scarcity – Blip or Paradigm Shift ?
https://www.scribd.com/document/364711983/21st-Century-NNR-Scarcity-Blip-or-Paradigm-Shift-FINAL
This is Chris Clugston’s report from 2013.
I am not sure that Chris understands the difference between “costs” and “prices;” they are not the same. His projected resolution is
He doesn’t consider the opposite scenario: Prices would drop too low for the producers, and NNR production would decline because prices are too low for those producing the minerals. He has been talking to too many “peak oilers.”
The price of oil is not low..It’s more than double its post WW2 price of 19 dollars a barrel ( Inflation Adjusted).
But we have changed the way we use oil, so that we now use a smaller share of oil in our energy mix. At one point we burned oil to make electricity; now no one would consider burning oil to create electricity unless there were no other option, because it is so much more expensive than other fuels. (Today, oil is used to create electricity mostly on islands, because coal and natural gas are impractical in small installations. The high price of electricity from oil is a big part of the reason Puerto Rice, Cuba, and many island nations have a lot of financial problems. Greece uses a lot of oil for electricity on its many islands, too.) We used to heat homes with oil, but now natural gas is often burned for heating. Or electricity (from coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, or nuclear) is used.
Furthermore, our economy is more of a service economy that doesn’t use as much energy to power it. Instead, we import a lot of manufactured goods from China, India, and other low wage countries. These manufactured goods tend to produced in countries that use a lot of coal relative to oil in their energy mix, helping to keep the cost of exported products down. It is the average cost of energy products that needs to stay low.
Also it is now low *relative* to the budgetary requirements of oil producing nations and the profit/cash-flow requirements of oil producing firms.
this is clear example of while rome burns
https://youtu.be/vmo5J3RhH8g
Yes we are all like drunken sailors. Entirely spoiled on the incredible amounts of energy in fossil fuels. The energy of fossil fuels seems almost boundless and often without consideration or appreciation. Just astounding the sheer scale of what fossil fuels have built for us. And with just the turn of a key they give one the impression they are in control of a machine they own. It is so easy to forget that we are at the mercy of fossil fuels. We seem to worship fossil fuels without really realizing it.
My wife and I had dinner with another couple last evening and the guy was telling me about this neighbor of his who wears really cruddy cloths and eats really cheap food but has all these toys, you know 3 wheel motorcycle, boats, rv and so on. People worship that stuff because it makes them feel powerful, just like people worship their iphones because they make them feel like geniuses. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. My opinion is there is no going back, at least no voluntarily. People will worship the cheap energy and what it can do for them until it’s forced out of their rigormortous hands. A human with FF is like a chimp with a banana. How are you going to get that banana away from that monkey?
We have an epidemic of laziness. FF powered machines everywhere. People are generally completely unfit and unprepared for a life without FF. Especially laughable are the macho men who act strong when on some powerful FF powered vehicle.
https://imgur.com/a/sS7aB
wow.
the world’s economy is doomed…
based on those rates, I would guess the economy falls off a Cliff by the year 2030.
the second factor, the non-stop rising world population, is the other side of the Coin of Doom (hey, I like that, the Coin of Doom!)
but 2018 still looks good to me!
every year after 2018, I’m discounting to zero.
https://imgur.com/a/0q9Zx
Human pop will contract and Civilization and BAU will go on for longer than anyone expects.
It is like abortion, which was quite dangerous in the old days but not quite so now.
A systematic reduction of human pop, sparing the valuables and culling the rest, will take place, quietly and harmlessly.
“Human pop will contract and Civilization and BAU will go on for longer than anyone expects.” – that is a contradictory statement. How/why would the population contract if BAU continues? Where is the incentive to contract if BAU is humming along?
For the same reason the Crown could feed the starving Irish and didn’t. (And the engineer of this policy, Charles Trevelyan, became a baronet. His grandson, the eminent historian G.W. Trevelyan, didn’t find his granddad’s works worth writing about – it was common sense back then)
They will simply let the periphery fall off, quietly. No reason to feed them when they are economically irrelevant.
A systematic reduction of human pop, sparing the valuables and culling the rest, will take place, quietly and harmlessly.
What means do you envisage will be used to cull the “non-valuable” people? How can this cull be harmless? Not harmless to those that get culled, surely?
You’d think. But some people are convinced that they, and others like them, are the chosen.
Mulla Nasrudin was called to court. He entered the witness box.
‘Are you Mulla Nasrudin, and is it true that you claim to be the most important and useful person in the whole wide world?’
‘Well, now you mention it……yes, on both counts!’ said the Mulla, blushing just slightly. 🙂
Yes, some sort of denial going on there.
“Collapse will be OK, because I’m intelligent and therefore valuable to society”.
If a “harmless culling” would take place, I suspect you stand a better chance if you are less aware of what’s going on in the world.
Yes, that is a true statement. In Asia, there are collapse once in a while, but the winners of such collapses tend to be quite cunning, wily, ruthless and intelligent.
Mao Tse-tung began the Grand March with about 100,000 people (a lot of women too). Some left, some joined, some were killed by the KMT. After everything was said and done, there were 8,000 remaining. But the 8,000 were stronger than ever and we all know what happened next.
The British SAS used to (maybe still do?) have Mao’s sayings about guerrilla warfare up in their mess: they particularly liked ‘So long as one man is standing with a gun, the war can be won!’ if I remember correctly. Greatly respected by the forces of capitalist imperialism. 🙂
I like Bill’s idea
Re-read the history of Irish famine, which I summarized at here
https://kulmthestatusquo.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/the-1846-irish-famine-helped-civilization/
It was done before without modern tech. it will be done again.
kulm, you don’t seem to grasp what the coming collapse will look like.
The closest thing that has been even close, to the global collapse we will be witnessing soon, is the Toba eruption 75.000 years ago. If you are thinking that the Irish famine will be how it will look like, then you are wrong. The magnitude and the predicament in the coming global collapse will be like in the Toba eruption. In the end, perhaps 1.000 pairs survived what Toba brought fourth. Perhaps the situation will be like that again, in the coming decades, in Iceland, NZ, Alaska, Siberia and Patagonia, just a few hundred pairs remaining in each. Who knows. Too many problems, for anybody to know if anybody can survive what is coming.
When the Toba supervolcano erupted, half the globe was covered by half a foot of white ash. And afterwards, it took six years of ‘nuclear winters’ and a few tens of thousands of years for the environment to recuperate.
When our global collapse comes our way, a year not too far in the future now. The thing that will be equivalent to the white ash and nuclear winters, will be +7.5 billion people eating, burning and devastating everything. When the global supply chains go, when the oil stops flowing, when spare parts stop coming, people will burn anything that is burnable. Hunt and eat anything eatable. Destroy anything that is not done for already.
Yes. We can grow potatoes. Yes. We can have a garden. Yes. We can ferment and have root cellars to store potatoes, cabbages, onions and carrots in them. But we would need hundreds of families doing this, having a strong community, forming a strong unified militia. Having plenty of woods to burn for fuel. And even then, the masses of peoples would overwhelm that community at some point anyways. Just as one example, I think there are about 1 million bigger sailing boats in the world. That you can live on for a year or two, with enough stored resources. Give or take about few million more smaller ones, with smaller storage spaces. Just that mass of people, with those sailing boats, can become like a swarm of locusts overwhelming any community that thinks it is safe. Anywhere in the world.
Kulm, when the supply chains go, when oil stops flowing, it will NOT look like your basic Irish famine.
https://imgur.com/a/onGEa
Tax cuts are a way of getting to deficit spending and more government debt. More debt (of any kind) is what stimulates the economy; it helps keeps commodity prices up, so that oil and gas companies don’t go bankrupt, and metal ore producers around the world can continue their exports.
Of course, at some point the system is subject to collapse.
Why would a jobs program like the thirties CCC, etc. not have the effect of deficit spending and debt creation?
I think the problem is that the government is already over its head it programs that transfer money to citizen–the military, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, educational institutions, medical research programs. It is already creating large deficits each year, and the interest alone gets to be a larger and larger burden. Now that the Baby Boomer generation is retiring there are many more getting retirement benefits (and soon to get retirement benefits). At the same time, the number of workers is not growing rapidly, partly because young people end up in school for so long.
These jobs programs were great ideas when they were first thought up. Now, we have so many we are already funding, we cannot afford any more.
By the way, there would be deficit spending and debt creation, unless somehow taxes could be raised enough to pay for the new programs.
Also, our problem now is not a lack of jobs; it is lack of jobs that pay enough to provide an adequate living.
“By the way, there would be deficit spending and debt creation, unless somehow taxes could be raised enough to pay for the new programs.”
But you say there is a need for deficit spending to raise prices?
Aren’t you promoting a “raise the bridge to counteract the rising water” strategy? Just as often you seem to be promoting the opposite strategy: lower the water. I admit to cottoning on the the lowering the water strategy. But I also see how I run into limits of understanding. There seems to be a high-flying, wild economic syndrome, which is analogous to raising the bridge, no matter what. But if you REALLY do propose these two strategies–only divorced from one another–couldn’t they be consciously combined. You raise the bridge AND lower the water simultaneously.
One reason why the young can’t afford to buy anything is because medicine, rent, education cost too much. Medicine: I’ve heard doctors say they could manage with less pay. Single payer insurance is said to save a ton of money (No doubt there are complexities to this, but still…) Education: Lots of useless subjects being taught. Professors could manage on less money too. Better use can be made of our over-saturated information system to educate people. Rent: Everything in creation is done to make it hard for the young to find shelter. You can’t live in a backyard shed. You can’t live in abandoned buildings. You can’t sleep in your car.
I’m saying that if you combine deficit spending on works programs with stopping the stupidness that raises costs, the system would work better?
I suppose that there is also the “print money to buy what you need” approach, too, besides the “add more debt” approach, but ultimately, all of the people of the world are sharing the same resources and these goods and resources they use. None of these approaches add more resources.
You would think that doing things more simply would help, because it would use less resources. We don’t need all of the professors writing academic papers, for example. Research on Chaucer is not really all that useful, in some sense. But the problem of doing things more simply is that people right now need jobs that are only created if we do things in a wasteful manner. There are researchers who are working on high priced cures that will be available to only a handful of people. Not decorating homes with artwork might be considered by some a way of simplification, but you can see the direct financial impact that could have.
Single payer health insurance is what quite a bit of Europe has, and Canada has. I think paying doctors for the treatments they give involves “moral hazard.” They will try to over treat everything, especially if a third party is paying the bills.
My husband and I have bought coverage through Kaiser Permanente in the United States for many years. It comes moderately close to a single payer plan in the US. A person pays a monthly premiums, and uses the doctors in their system (or the ones they refer you to). They have contract programs with some hospitals in the Atlanta area. I believe they own their own hospitals some places. There is a small payment if a person sees one of their doctors, or buys a prescription from their pharmacy, buy not a huge deductible like a person sees with a lot of plans. In general, it is close to “one stop shopping”: You sees a doctor or other provider, quite often on the day you call; if needed, you stop and get whatever blood, urine, or x-ray tests you need; then you pick up any prescriptions, all without ever leaving the building. I don’t think that they are quite as bad in the “over treatment” area as seeing a series of self-employed doctors. There is also not the hassle of having an insurance company approve every procedure that is done.
Kaiser is the best medical provider that I’ve used in the US. In CA.
The system is s large and complex, that even the smallest step in figuring how one’s individual actions fit in with it is helpful.
TOWARD SOME UNDERSTANDING
– Waste: Built into the system, since it provides jobs at all levels.
– Conserving (reducing waste): Enables more waste–leaves more to be wasted, over a longer period. Enabling more jobs.
– Creating waste and inhibiting waste are part of the same system.
– Excess Waste Supply: This era could be called one of peak resources. But BAU can keep on wasting for a while due to the extraordinary over production of manufactured stuff that serve as a secondary source of natural resources. (There’s still a lot to waste due to the profligacy of extraction and the unprecedented past power of IC to produce.)
– Finiteness: The stuff to waste is finite. A simplified way of viewing our economy might be that the big heavy stuff based on a maxed out period of surplus energy and consequent industrial production (1945-1975) is over. So, while we can continue wasting embodied energy now, we can’t keep doing it for much longer.
– The Economy of Refinement: Jobs that were once involved in producing raw natural energy now switch to jobs refining and extending the products of that original energy. For my focus on the “built environment,” it’s straightforward to see how shelter can be doubled using the existing structures and merely refining them.
– Absorption: Part of refinement is absorption, a means of mitigating the harm of waste. For instance, an over development of a rural scenic route can be mitigated through refinements–landscaping, for instance–that disguise (absorb) the visual effect of this over development, enabling the route to continue serving a scenic-tourism economic role much longer.
– A Design Economy: Refinement and absorption are generally based on aesthetic sophistication (which can be found among tribal people as well as in western art-related academies). It is not generally found in the business world, which has the major power to shape the world.
– Overlap: It is unclear where more surplus energy will ever come from, and it might be that while the waste economy continues but steadily declines something to compensate for the decline has to be created before the decline goes too far. Food, water, health and nuclear security have to be part of this. Shelter need not be a problem.
What I learn on FW has an unexpected effect on my view of aesthetics (the study of beauty). If there HAS to be waste to survive–and I think aesthetics are bound up with what enables you to survive–your aesthetic ideas might change to accommodate waste. The same sea coast whose development I recently bemoaned now is seen differently, and might even prompt me to want more of it. Why? Because the mind seeks pattern, and pattern is involved with the idea of beauty. Now, the maze of roads you see on a Google satellite map is less like a creeping cancer and more like veins, enabling circulation in a new life form.
NYC’s Manhattan island comes to mind. Early prints and maps give you a sketchy idea of what it was like before European settlement. Nothing like what a Google map would have shown. But if we’ve lived in Manhattan, or seen it represented in movies, we might think of it as having a compelling beauty based on its very rational pattern. Streets align one way, and avenues another, perpendicular to the streets. It’s very easy to figure out where you are and how to navigate your journey. The order of the road system produces an order to the buildings that line it. They all have the same setback from the curb. They are of similar height. There windows and story levels might more or less align too. A lot of energy is conserved through this patterning based on an original grid concept.
But even though a human-imposed angularity replaces nature, it doesn’t remove the pleasure and efficacy of having nature nearby. In Manhattan, there is Central Park.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Manhattan,+New+York,+NY/@40.7791915,-73.9790181,10248m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sNYC,+manhattan+island!3m4!1s0x89c2588f046ee661:0xa0b3281fcecc08c!8m2!3d40.7831411!4d-73.9712906
So, in the name of economy to survive, must a lovely coastal area with endangered turtles and conches be turned into a version of Manhattan? Without FW (ourfiniteworld.com), I wouldn’t even have considered such a thing–despite the economic system steamrolling over my objections anyway. FW gives me a handle in why this it happening, why it might need to happen, and better ways to think about it.
Interesting observations! There is definitely more than one way to see situations.
This is why we now have such diverse political parties.
“Tax cuts are a way of getting to deficit spending and more government debt. ”
Tax cuts for the wealthy has been describes as unnecessary. The wealthy don’t have a particular hardship to be productive, it seems. So if you didn’t cut their taxes, but still wanted to create more definite spending, couldn’t some jobs program (equal to the amount saved by not cutting taxes) do just as well?
And if this were true, wouldn’t that also raise demand within the system?
“Norm/arbp,
What you say about living in cardboard boxes is fallacious. I never mentioned living in cardboard boxes. I mentioned building houses from cardboard boxes, often reconfigured. ”
Artleads:
If you had life experience with cardboard you’d realize a FEW things without necessarily trying them out.
(a) A lot of cardboard is needed to build a human habitat that can withstand temperate weather.
(b) Wet cardboard loses any strength that it has quickly.
(c) Wet cardboard poses a huge mold problem.
At best, cardboard could provide temporary shelter, as in for a few hours in most parts of the world where it rains regularly. It would last longer in a very dry area, but I’m not sure how much longer since it is a very ephemeral material.
“I’m not concerned with what other people like. ”
Yes, I’m sure you came up with cardboard houses all by yourself.
Whoever came up with the idea of cardboard houses needs to realize that…
This isn’t engineering:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/ephemeral-city-cardboard-metropolis-being-built-in-barangaroo-sydney-20160114-gm5tvr.html
Rich people playing with industrial amounts of cardboard is not a mitigation strategy for the end of civilization.
Thanks for the article. I see my (practical) projects as art too, but they aren’t meant to be as ephemeral. Most of what I write isn’t about a particular new project that I think will solve the world’s problems. They are meant to illustrate a broader approach. I’m just sharing what I do, and explaining their limitations or possible benefits. So this was not meant to be a detailed discussion on the merits of cardboard. But while we’re on the subject of cardboard buildings, I’ll explain that I only mention things I’ve actually done.
Everything I’ve done with cardboard structures left outside is predictable according to laws of physics. Packaging tape will start seriously fraying in around six months, making a nasty mess of strewn hard-to-see plastic bits that I imagine aren’t good for birds and insects. Soft beverage packages lines inside with silver last a couple years before their plastic film also frays. Nasty. Not good. But a painted surface (latex paint) will endure much longer yet. Fire is a major problem too. I’ve researched the issue with the fire chief here and do things to ensure fire safety, but more testing (that the average fire department won’t volunteer to do, though they should) is needed.
Very densely packed cardboard boxes that air can’t circulate inside of seems similar to straw bales. Straw bale can be subject to mold and water retention, but I’m sure lot’s of research has been done to counteract that. Stuccoing the surface surely helps. Adobe is another material that can absorb moisture, but 2′-thick walls might counteract the harm of that. The oldest continuously inhabited building in the US, the Taos Pueblo, is 1000 years old. Regular, systematic community restoration is the reason for that.
One of the wettest counties of England is Devon , in the West. Houses were traditionally built of rammed mud (cobb) walls with deeply thatched roofs, often on stone plinths. The surfaces of the walls facing the elements were plastered or pebble-dashed. Such walls could last centuries, but any imperfection in the roofs admitting moisture. and they collapsed.
Latex paint is a petroleum product and will not be widely available without BAU.
I don’t understand your obsession with reusing something that was not designed to last a long time and may not be available without BAU. You need to look at what will most likely be available locally as building materials, and not depend on obtaining cardboard, which will be used as insulation if it is available, rather than basic building material for structure.
I can’t see any possibility of survival post BAU. I’m hopin’ and prayin’ that BAU will last a longer time if some rational and creative behavior is imposed on it. I use cardboard because it’s free and I can cut it with a utility knife. In that sense, it’s as close as you get to pre-industrialism within industrialism. At this particular moment, cardboard functions like something you “hunt and gather.” If BAU collapses and you can’t get free-ish cardboard, we’re dead anyway. No problem.
Cardboard… wouldn’t that be a very good material to use when starting a fire when BAU ends…
Don’t imagine there will be much of that around after a week or two
That would be more alarming, but so few people know how to start fires – spoken from one who goes camping with city folks.
Good that I agree with you: there is nothing after BAU. Why people talk about an after BAU beats the hello out of me.
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BK3FY9/russia-a-homeless-man-asking-for-help-donations-while-living-in-a-BK3FY9.jpg
In April and May, the company put up fat zeros in Hong Kong. Registrations hit four in June, two in July, and nil again in August, according to the transport department.
I wonder what the sales people do with all that free time….
The joke that is Tesla — is exposed — no subsidies NO SALES.
The only good EV… is a golf cart
I agree FE, another good EV is an electric scooter.
And here’s a bit of uplifting news as we head into the weekend….
Registrations fall from 3,000 to single digits after end of full tax break
HONG KONG — Tesla is skidding in Hong Kong, where city authorities earlier this year slashed tax incentives on purchases of new electric vehicles.
The cars were once eligible for full exemptions but now come with a tax break up to only 97,500 Hong Kong dollars ($12,488). This means Tesla’s Model 3 sedan now costs over $120,000, nearly 80% more than it did with the total exemption.
After the government’s tax decision in February, the U.S. automaker managed to move fewer than 10 units during the April-August period. This highlights an inconvenient truth about electric vehicles: They are extremely susceptible to tax carrots, even when they are aimed at a wealthy clientele.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-sales-screech-to-a-halt-in-Hong-Kong
Of course, when an electric car is resold, the buyer doesn’t get a similar tax credit. So from his point of view, the car needs to be evaluated next to other cars for resale, both electric and gas. So far the resale values have been terrible.
EVs Are Cheap to Run but Expensive to Own, Thanks to Abysmal Resale Values
How good would the resale value be on a Tesla with a 7 or 10 year old battery? From 120K to 5K ?
The DelusiSTANI hipster would not likely been aware of this when he walked into the Tesla shop in a daze and parted with 85k….
But the price for ‘saving the world’ is very high… as one finds out when one tries to sell an EV (when the rattles become too much — and the battery is not holding the charge…)
Just thinking of the look on a DelusiSTANI’s face when he sees the collapse in the value of his coal powered car has dropped in such a short time — puts a smile on my face.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/36/22/11/36221177152b72fbbae14b3de9612172–what-a-beautiful-day-beautiful-morning.jpg
The IEA Is Grossly Overestimating Shale Growth
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/The-IEA-Is-Grossly-Overestimating-Shale-Growth.html
Would you rather they tell the truth and collapse the system before its time?
Thinking further about this http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-16/why-americas-retail-apocalypse-could-accelerate-even-more-2018
A lot of bad things are scheduled for 2018… and we have HSBC and others calling for a bottleneck in oil resulting in shortages… perhaps a big spike in price… then a total collapse….
The Year of Living Dangerously approaches….
could be.
but we’re not the only ones “in the know”…
the El-ders see all of this unfolding.
will they sit back and do nothing?
if They think an oil price spike will destroy all of their wealth (The Collapse will be nearly total, you know?), then They will do what They need to do to keep THEIR BAU going…
They don’t care about OUR BAU at all, but that’s immaterial.
of course, it’s still 2017, so I’m discounting 2018 to nearly zero.
That HSBC report should have been front page news.
People are almost completely ignoring a looming crisis for oil
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-oil-supply-and-demand-2016-9
That HSBC report should absolutely NOT be front page news — it should be buried in a deep hole … or burned in a furnace.
The last thing BAU needs is for the masses to be made aware of the fact that we are peaking out on oil….
Anyway – there is no chance of that happening because the MSM is not in the business of informing — it is in the business of controlling what the masses think…. and it is important that the masses believe that the future will bring prosperity….
Cathal Haughian has a new post, he says phase 2.0 of The Reset commenced on Nov. 1. Somehow Rothschild is involved in all of this…
Conversation with Warburg
CH: The good news is that the War Kings are running out of time to make their big move: The second phase of the Reset began on November 1st, 2017.
After the third phase begins, The Reset will go global and supercritical within two weeks. Which is when Rothschild makes his move.
then, in the fourth phase, he will own almost everything.
in the fifth phase, he will become King of the World.
in the sixth phase, he will announce that he has obtained immortality through complete anti-aging based on all the science which he now owns.
in the seventh phase, he will have difficulty keeping the secret that he has to eat human flesh to continue his anti-aging immortality.
in the eighth phase, he will announce that he will spare the lives of all the posters on OFW, with special thanks to Davidin100etc…
in the ninth phase, he will begin his program of populating all the planets of the solar system.
in the tenth phase, aliens will return to Earth and eat him, because these aliens are Karmarulesians.
The End.
Fantastic! Lol…
Cathal seems more than a little “off,” but the timing could in theory prove to be correct.
Things seem to be headed downhill now, but it seems like the next steps will probably take more time than two weeks, based on how slowly things have unfolded to date.
Crashes from unsustainable heights happen very quickly though.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nOEca9xpf4U/VbIUL8Uym9I/AAAAAAAAOzs/710mCpGxK48/s640/SenecaBrite.png
The Seneca Effect
“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Lucius Anneaus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, n. 91
Dumber than yeast!
I have been one of the people talking about relatively rapid crashes for a long time. The quote from Lucius Anneaus Seneca is good!
I agree. It does not seem that our financial system could hold together if BAU is scaled back year after year, slowly for 100 years. With contraction every year how does the financial system work? I just don’t think it could work (slow collapse); something crucial will fail causing the whole system to grind to a halt.
Even the partial contraction of world GDP in 2008 almost put an end to the system and instituted the ensuing bizarro monetary policies aimed at restoring it, which has been achieved since.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oyrnkjaTmJk/TUqiEKfDNaI/AAAAAAAAANQ/oS7nl_pZekM/s400/1bl_gdpg3-small.gif
But next time, I don’t think we’ll be so lucky…
15,000 scientists in 184 countries warn about negative global environmental trends
Human well-being will be severely jeopardized by negative trends in some types of environmental harm, such as a changing climate, deforestation, loss of access to fresh water, species extinctions and human population growth, scientists warn.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113111127.htm
Unfortunately, it truly does appear that things will get even worse in 2018, because a tremendous amount of high-yield retail debt is coming due next year.
In fact, Bloomberg is reporting that the amount of high-yield retail debt that will mature next year is approximately 19 times larger than the amount that matured this year…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-16/why-americas-retail-apocalypse-could-accelerate-even-more-2018
okay, things will be a bit worse in 2018…
that still = BAU.
can they refinance that debt to a near zero interest rate?
which is also known as kicking the can down the road.
since almost everything is now too big to fail, I would guess yes.
let them kick that can right into the 2020’s!
I would like The Collapse to be postponed, please.
Yeah, BAU keeps on trucking. Coming close to putting yet another year behind us as they just keep on whizzing by. I’m with you – next stop 2020’s! Will collapse occur in 2021, or 2025 or 2029 or will things just keep on going? I think it’s a case of metamorphosis in which rather than collapse, it just divides and folds into something new. Even if X # of people fall off the wagon the one’s remaining keep things going.
Let’s say things do keep going instead of collapse occurring. What we’ll likely have in 2100 are densely populated cities with high technology, surrounded by wide expanses of dead zones. No wildlife – just some scrub brush and cacti in searing heat.
Crops will have to be grown in buildings or what’s known as vertical crop growth using hydroponics and refracted light. Not to avoid using pesticides because all the insects will have been eradicated 50 years earlier but because the weather will fluctuate too drastically.
Just as the US is pretty much the same from coast to coast, in 2100 all cities around the world will be much the same, so it’s unlikely people will travel much. If they want to go to a south pacific beach, they’ll go to a building that mimics those conditions right down to the person serving a pino coloda with a mini umbrella on top. All the major attractions like the Eiffel Tower, Victoria Falls, the great wall of China will be mimicked and you’ll take a ride flying by them, so if you want to see the sights and sounds of the planet you’ll just need a half hour. You could do it during lunch.
it’s hard to imagine a realistic scenario where BAU continues for 83 more years.
population increase + FF decrease = a formula for disaster.
but 13 more years?
that seems somewhat possible, though not a certainty, of course.
Baltimore is exhibiting signs of collapse as we speak. I think we are living through slow-mo collapse right now. The questions is will it pick up speed? Suddenly perhaps.
the idea Tim Groves had a while back:
we will always seem to be 10 years away from The Collapse until it suddenly happens.
there is some appeal to that idea…
though I think we will see major signs of upheaval and increasingly so, until The Collapse.
“slow-mo” sounds about right…
through the 2020’s…
like the saying “slowly at first, then all at once”.
If you still have a job that pays reasonably well…. things will likely feel pretty good… right up until the collapse hits…
When it finally arrives it will be rapid … in fact… we may not even be able to read it about it in the MSM… why inform us… that is not what the MSM does… best we dont know … we just keep rolling along as if everything is normal…. until it is not
Much like today — the stock market will hit another record high… all fake… and we will expect to wake up tomorrow and head to the office… we ignore the fake economy… the CBs can control the problem… eventually fix it
But at some point something snaps… and chaos commences… I would expect that when the system breaks the power will go off… and it will not come back on ..
Most people will have no clue as to what the cause is… they will expect it to come back on … but it will not….
And then the gloves will come off
There’s simply no way, due to the power of the exponential function, that we’ll ever get to 2100. Not even anywhere close. The wheels are coming off the cart now, fer f&7ks sake… Oil consumption alone will have to have tripled from current levels by then, just to keep square. That’s 100 billion barrels per year!
I agree. Everything seems to be converging right now. T
Yes, things will keep trucking on to the year 2100, unless Trump screws it up.
#sarcasm
There seem to be a lot of things coming together right now. They seem to be coming from many directions at once. This is a link about Chinese loans: China Oct new yuan loans hit one-year low as debt curbs weigh
The China situation is especially worrisome.
India is not doing all that well either.
We have had experience with big drops in home prices. They usually don’t come out well.
perhaps your next blog will be about India?
I can see India being the major test case for collapse.
more than one billion people and no slowdown in population growth.
if their economy turns down, the world may see something that’s never been seen before.
Thanks for the idea. We will see.
Here in Oz as you are well aware on the eastern seaborne we are in a property ponzi madhouse but still they never pay much attention to consumer debt levels witch are at bats..t crazy levels not to mention wage stagnation.
I give up predicting when this thing pops but that HSBC energy report scares the sh.. out of me.
The biggest four companies in Australia are banks 70% of their balance sheets are mortgages,good old Aussie taxpayer backstopping them when this goes down.
I came across this great article which highlights, in horrific detail, the extent of the Potemkin village called Australia. Like I’ve said so many times, you WILL be able to see the explosion from space, once this thing ends…Below is an excerpt from a read that will take about an hour. More if you count the comments.
Australia’s Economy is a House of Cards
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*CvEicof87tuplUyTFPEe4A.png
Successive Australian governments have achieved economic growth by blowing a property bubble on a scale like no other.
A bubble that has lasted for 55 years and seen prices increase 6556% since 1961, making this the longest running property bubble in the world (on average, “upswings” last 13 years).
According to the Rider Levett Bucknall Crane Index, in Q4 2017 between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, there are now 586 cranes in operation, with a total of 685 across all capital cities, 80% of which are focused on building apartments. There are 350 cranes in Sydney alone.
By comparison, there are currently 28 cranes in New York, 24 in San Francisco and 40 in Los Angeles. There are more cranes in Sydney than Los Angeles (40), Washington DC (29), New York (28), Chicago (26), San Francisco (24), Portland (22), Denver (21), Boston (14) and Honolulu (13) combined.
Rider Levett Bucknall counts less than 175 cranes working on residential buildings across the 14 major North American markets that it tracked in 3Q17, which is half of the number of cranes in Sydney alone.
According to UBS, around one third of these cranes in Australian cities are in postcodes with ‘restricted lending’, because the inhabitants have bad credit ratings.
This can only be described as completely “insane”.
That was the exact word used by Jonathan Tepper, one of the world’s top experts in housing bubbles, to describe “one of the biggest housing bubbles in history”. “Australia”, he added, “is the only country we know of where middle-class houses are auctioned like paintings”.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TlYQByS7384/maxresdefault.jpg
It’s best to not be within 500kms of the eastern seaboard when it blows…
Very good article. Lots of charts. I liked, “And a staggering 64% of all investor loans are interest only.”
This is not the Onion…. this is REAL….
IDEA! I wonder if I could get a personal loan for say USD50,000,000 and pay the interest only… ideally the interest would be less than 2%…. I could use some of the loan to meet the monthly payments… then just blow the rest on the Mother of All Bucket Lists….
repayment of interest only
If you want to repay the interest on your housing loan only considering a financial train facing you, you can apply for “repayment of interest only”.
·It can sharply decrease the monthly installment that you have to pay.
·You only need to pay the monthly interest on you housing loan.
·You can determine the period of the payment.
·It is applicable for first-hand/direct first-hand housing loan, second-hand housing loan, commercial property loan and personal consumption loan.
Note: All the contents stated above are for your reference only. Please consult the local branch of China Merchants Bank for further information. China Merchants Bank reserves the ultimate right of interpretation for the contents in this page.
http://english.cmbchina.com/Personal/Loan/
It’s not quite this … but close… very close….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0
I forgot to mention … when I blow through the 50M … I will declare bankruptcy … (then apply for another 50m interest only loan).
That’s the whole point of this — isn’t it? Too encourage consumption … to keep BAU alive….
I say again — where do I sign?
Careful FE your getting too clever!
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d_vJACHf9xU/maxresdefault.jpg
It’s all so bizarre.. how can this be happening….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3SIc7kXkYro/VJw9Xyl_ecI/AAAAAAAAZWc/08Fy9WNIb2g/s1600/12-After-the-rain-Rolando-Cyril-aquasixio-Surreal-Fantasy-Otherworldly-Art-www-designstack-co.jpg
I will have to admit that my first reaction is to take “Peak Oil” calculations with a grain of salt. The models have predicted disaster, time and time again. What has happened in the past is that rising prices has encouraged production, not considered in the model. As a result, actual production has turned out to be far higher than the model predicted.
This time does seem to be different, however. Oil production does seem to have leveled out in the past year. This by itself is not a good sign for long term production. Good international data is becoming less available, now that the EIA has stopped producing many of the reports it used to produce, and the ones it does produce look sort of “iffy.” The best data seems to be from IEA, which is what Euan Mearns shows. http://euanmearns.com/oil-production-vital-statistics-october-2017/
This is a chart of world oil production from his page.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/euan-mearns-world-oil-production-through-august-17.png
It shows fairly flat production in 2017 (which is what IEA has been reporting). There aren’t really areas that look like they are getting ready to ramp up. Iraq was at one point believed to be a place of great growth in future oil production, but without higher prices, it is unlikely that this will happen. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Iraq-Oil-Revenues-Not-Enough-For-Sustainable-Development.html
This article says that prices are too low to provide key services to oil exporters in general.
I wonder if that chart will turn into a Seneca Cliff in 2018….