The way the world economy is manipulated by world leaders is a little like a giant video game. The object of the game is to keep the world economy growing, without too many adverse consequences to particular members of the world economy. We represent this need for growth of the world economy as being similar to making a jet airplane fly at ever-higher altitudes.
Figure 1. Author’s view of the situation we are facing. World leaders look at their video screens and adjust their controllers to try to make the world economy fly at ever-higher levels.
World leaders look at their video game screens for indications regarding where the world economy is now. They also want to see whether there are specific parts of the economy that are doing badly.
The game controllers that the world leaders have are somewhat limited in the functions they can perform. Typical adjustments they can make include the following:
- Add or remove government programs aimed at providing jobs for would-be workers
- Add or remove government sponsored pension plans and payments to those without jobs
- Add or remove laws regulating efficiencies of new vehicles
- Change who or what is taxed, and the overall level of taxation
- Through the above mechanisms, change government debt levels
- Change interest rates
There are numerous problems with this approach. For one thing, the video game screen doesn’t give a very complete picture of what is happening. For another, the aspects of the economy that can be controlled are rather limited. Furthermore, the situation is very complex–there seem to be several “sides” of the economy that need to “win” at the same time, for the economy to continue to grow: (a) oil importers and oil exporters, (b) businesses and their would-be customers, (c) governments and their would-be taxpayers, and (d) asset holders and the would-be buyers of these assets, such as families needing new homes.
An even bigger problem is a physics problem that is hidden from the view of those operating the control mechanism. Jet airplanes in the real world cannot rise beyond a certain altitude (varying depending upon the plane), because the atmosphere becomes “too thin.” There is a parallel problem in the economic world. The atmosphere that allows an economy to grow is provided by a combination of (a) an increasing supply of cheap-to-produce energy, and (b) increased technology to put this growing energy supply to use. This atmosphere can become too thin for several reasons, including the higher cost of energy production, rising population, and growing wage disparity.
We know that in the real world, a jet airplane cannot rise ever-higher. Instead, at some point, the airplane hits what has been called its “coffin corner.”
Figure 2. Diagram of Coffin Corner by Aleks Udris of Boldmethod. On the chart, Vs is the velocity; MMO is the Maximum Mach Number.
According to Aleks Udris, “The region is deadly. Get too slow, and you’ll stall the jet at high altitude. Get too fast, and you’ll exceed your critical mach number. The air over your wings will go supersonic, you’ll pitch down, the aircraft will accelerate, and your wings will fall off. Also bad.”
What Happens As Coffin Corner Limits Are Reached in the Economic World?
What do world leaders do, as the world economy hits limits? One temptation is for the world leaders in Figure 1 to take their foot off the throttle that is operated by low interest rates and more debt, because they don’t seem to be providing very much benefit anymore. The leaders fear that if more debt is added at low interest rates, it risks creating “asset bubbles” that are easily disturbed if any little bump to the economy occurs. If a big bubble pops, there is a significant risk that the economy could fall down to a much lower level. This is like stalling the jet at high altitude.
World leaders can also use approaches that create situations more like “making the wings come off” the economy. These approaches involve favoring one group over another. For example, a government can give big tax breaks to businesses, but raise taxes on individual citizens. Businesses will ultimately be harmed by this approach, because they depend on individual citizens for their sales. The result is like tearing the wings off the airplane.
Another approach that would tear the wings off the economy involves actions by a different group of world leaders than those shown in Figure 1, namely the leaders from OPEC and Russia. These leaders have different video game screens and different game controllers. They can manipulate the world economy by reducing the supply of oil they provide. With this approach, they hope to increase the price of oil, and thus obtain a larger share of the world’s goods and services through higher tax revenue.
Raising the oil price would benefit oil exporters, but would make goods and services more expensive for oil importing countries. Ultimately, this approach would lead to recession in oil importing nations. The result would likely be worse than the 2008-2009 recession–another way to make the wings come off the economy.
Let’s look in a little more detail at what is happening, and what goes wrong:
[1] Energy plays a huge role in this game, because a growing supply of cheap-to-produce energy allows greater worker productivity.
It takes energy of various types to make the economy grow, because energy is needed whenever we move something, or heat something, or use electricity to operate something. We use energy products to leverage our human labor. For example, we use a truck to deliver a package, rather than walking and carrying the item in our hands. If fresh water is in short supply, we use energy to operate a desalination plant, and thus produce the fresh water we need.
It is generally workers who produce goods and services. If energy supply is inexpensive and readily available, it is easy for governments or businesses to create “tools” to make these workers more productive. These tools include such things as roads, vehicles, machines of all types, and even computers. If the quantity and capability of these tools are increasing, the labor of these workers is increasingly leveraged by the availability of these tools. This is what allows economic growth.
[2] The extent of world economic growth seems to depend primarily on how quickly total energy consumption is growing.
If we look at historical economic growth, we see that the rate of growth of energy consumption seems to play a major role.
Figure 3. World GDP growth compared to world energy consumption growth for selected time periods since 1820. World real GDP trends for 1975 to present are based on USDA real GDP data in 2010$ for 1975 and subsequent. (Estimated by author for 2015.) GDP estimates for prior to 1975 are based on Maddison project updates as of 2013. Growth in the use of energy products is based on a combination of data from Appendix A data from Vaclav Smil’s Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects together with BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 for 1965 and subsequent.
The highest rates of world economic growth took place in the 1950-1965 period, and in the 1965-1975 period. These were both periods of very high growth in energy consumption. As we will see below, these were both periods when the price of oil was less than $20 per barrel, for almost the entire period.
If we look at economic growth over shorter periods, we also see a strong correlation between world economic growth and growth in energy consumption:
Figure 4. World growth in energy consumption vs. world GDP growth. Energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. World GDP is GDP in US 2010$, as compiled by World Bank.
[3] On Figure 4 (above), the widening gap between GDP growth and energy consumption since 2013 could either represent (a) Much greater efficiency in using energy or (b) A problem in measuring true economic growth.
We can see true efficiency improvements in the 1975-1985 and the 1985-1995 periods shown on Figure 3. These were the periods when the world was truly trying to “get away from oil,” after a spike of high prices in the 1970s. Governments around the world were encouraging new smaller cars; electricity generation was being changed from oil to nuclear; home heating was being changed from oil to natural gas or electricity. The new furnaces installed were much more efficient than the old ones. Thus, during this period, efficiency/technology improvements were aiding economic growth to a greater extent than usual.
Now, in the period since 2013, much of the “low hanging fruit” has already been picked. We may still be finding some technology gains, but it seems likely that at least part of the problem is an “economic growth counting problem.” GDP looks like it is growing, but it is really very hollow economic growth. Governments invest in projects of essentially no value, and their investment is counted as GDP. For example, they invest in unneeded roads, in apartments that citizens cannot really afford, in educational institutions that do not produce graduates with wages that are sufficiently high to pay for education’s high cost, and in high-priced medical cures that are unaffordable by 99% of the population. Are these things truly contributions to GDP?
We also find businesses that look like they are growing, but in fact are taking on increasing amounts of debt as they sell off assets. This is not a sustainable model! We encounter energy companies that claim to be doing “sort of” alright, but their profits are so low that they need to cut back on new investment, and they need to borrow in order to have funds to pay dividends to shareholders. There is something seriously wrong with this growth!
[4] The economic “atmosphere” becomes thinner and thinner, when oil prices rise above an inflation-adjusted price of $20 per barrel.
Back in the time period prior to 1973, oil prices were generally below $20 per barrel, in inflation adjusted terms. Since then, prices have tended to be above this level.
Figure 5. Historical oil prices are Brent oil prices in 2016$ from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017; $20 per barrel is the maximum price level where oil is truly affordable; and $300 per barrel is the maximum price per barrel that the International Energy Agency seems to believe is possible for the world economy.
When oil (and other energy prices) were very low, companies could add tools to make workers more effective with little expenditure. As a result, the United States saw wages growing much more rapidly than inflation prior to 1968 (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Chart comparing income gains by the top 10% to income gains by the bottom 90% by economist Emmanuel Saez. Based on an analysis of IRS data, published in Forbes.
Once prices of oil started rising, prices of tools (broadly defined) rose. Governments and companies needed more debt to buy these tools. It became more of a burden to add capital goods of all kinds. Governments tried to raise GDP by adding debt, but to a significant extent they ended up with higher debt to GDP ratios rather than the rapid growth they were looking for (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Worldwide average inflation-adjusted annual growth rates in debt and GDP, for selected time periods. See post on debt for explanation of methodology.
The changes in the economy that allowed continued growth (more debt and more technology) tended to push the economy toward more wage disparity, in part because more technology required more training for some of the workers, but not for others. This allowed wages of the workers with special training to rise.
Furthermore, the need to repay debt with interest tended to funnel wealth toward the financial sector, and toward those within the economy who could afford to hold financial assets. These changes left less of the output of the economy for non-elite workers.
Economists never really understood what was happening. They had never thought through the important role that energy plays in the economy. Cheap energy is needed to create jobs. It is jobs, and the wages that those jobs pay, that tend to suffer when oil prices are too high (Figure 8). Thus, high-priced oil has a double impact on the economy:
- It makes goods of many kinds more expensive.
- It reduces job availability and wages.
Figure 8. Average wages in 2012$ compared to Brent oil price, also in 2012$. Average wages are total wages based on BEA data adjusted by the CPI-Urban, divided by total population. Thus, they reflect changes in the proportion of population employed as well as wage levels.
Logic would suggest that the economy cannot really operate on high-priced oil. Lower wages and higher prices do not peacefully coexist! We should expect high oil prices to be very unstable. Even if prices can reach a high level in response to a specific shortage or stimulus, we cannot expect these high prices to be maintained for a sustained period, without added stimulus. Unstable high prices are not likely to give rise to more oil production; they cannot be depended upon.
Economists have never understood this situation. Instead, they have made pronouncements that at some point in the future, they expect that oil would become scarce. Because of this scarcity, oil prices would rise. In their view, when oil prices rise, high-priced substitutes would suddenly become the best option available; somehow, the economy would become able to operate using these high-priced substitutes. (If energy products were not needed for labor productivity, this view might make some sense. In the real world, it does not.)
It never occurred to organizations such as the International Energy Association (IEA) that high oil prices might be a problem for the economy. The IEA has shown exhibits suggesting that oil prices could theoretically rise to $300 per barrel. Of course, at such an elevated price, there would be an almost unlimited amount of oil available to extract (Exhibit 9).
Figure 9. IEA Figure 1.4 from its World Energy Outlook 2015, showing how much oil can be produced at various price levels.
[5] The real enemies of continued economic growth are (a) diminishing returns with respect to oil and other energy production, (b) continued population growth, and (c) increasing wage and wealth disparity.
We seem to be playing a video game where the players don’t understand who the real enemies are.
Diminishing returns with respect to oil and other energy production have to do with the cost of energy extraction rising ever-higher, as more resources are extracted. There are a lot of resources that we can “see,” but that we cannot economically extract, unless prices rise to very high levels.
Figure 9. My version of the resource triangle for oil. Note that oil shale is not the same as tight oil, found in shale formations. Oil shale is kerogen that must be processed at very high temperatures in order to produce oil. This is rarely done, because of the high processing cost. Tight oil is not on this chart. Tight oil probably would be above “onshore heavy oil; oil sands.” It still would disappear, if oil prices permanently fell to $20 per barrel or less.
Continued population growth is a problem because it is really “energy per capita” that matters. Each individual needs food, transportation, and housing. All of these things take energy. Many years ago, when most of the workers were farmers, it was necessary to create ever-smaller farms, as population rose. This clearly would lead to lower food production per farmer, unless some sort of technological breakthrough was taking place at the same time. Today, we have a parallel issue.
Increasing wage disparity tends to be associated with the rising use of technology. When most labor is hand labor, workers truly do “pay each other’s wages.” All wages can be fairly equal. With increased technology, some workers have specialized training; others do not. Some workers are supervisors; others are laborers. Unless the overall output of the economy is rising very rapidly, non-elite workers find themselves increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy. It is this falling “demand” (really affordability) that tends to pull an economy downward.
[6] High oil prices can be temporarily tolerated by an economy, if interest rates are lowered to make this arrangement work.
Clearly, lower interest rates make capital goods of all kinds more affordable to both businesses and individual workers. If we look back at the period since 1981, we see a long period of falling interest rates, acting to stimulate the economy.
When oil prices exceeded $20 per barrel, the economy did not collapse immediately. In “normal” times, lowering interest rates was sufficient stimulus to keep the economy growing (Figure 4).
Figure 10. Ten-year treasuries through Nov. 17, 2017. Chart produced by FRED.
When there is a very big drop in oil prices (as in 2008, related to falling debt levels), then Quantitative Easing (QE) has been helpful (Figure 11). The US began its program of QE in late 2008, when oil prices were near their low point. There were three phases of the US’s QE. The US discontinued the third phase in late 2014, just as oil prices started to slide again.
Figure 11. Monthly Brent oil prices with dates of US beginning and ending QE.
[7] It is quite possible for a disconnect to occur between (a) the cost of oil extraction, and (b) the selling price of oil.
Oil that costs more than $20 per barrel is never very affordable by the economy. It really needs continual stimulus to keep prices at an elevated level. Once debt growth falls too low, the balance between the supply and demand for oil is settled in the direction of the amount of goods and services made with oil that non-elite workers can afford. Prices fall below the cost of production. This seems to be what has happened since 2014.
[8] In fact, since 2014, the selling prices of oil, natural gas, and coal have all fallen below the cost of extraction.
Figure 12. Price per ton of oil equivalent, based on comparative prices for oil, natural gas, and coal given in BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Not inflation adjusted.
It is popular to think that the reason why oil prices are too low is because of overproduction by the United States or Saudi Arabia. When a person stops to realize that essentially the same situation arises for all three fossil fuels, a person begins to understand that there likely is an affordability issue underlying the low prices for all three fuels. The affordability issue, of course, arises because energy supply is not rising quickly enough because (at over $20 per barrel), it is too expensive to be truly affordable. The “atmosphere is too thin” at today’s high cost of energy extraction.
9. Coal production seems to have “peaked” because at today’s low prices, few mines find the extraction of coal profitable.
It is popular in “Peak Oil” circles to believe as the economists do: oil and other energy prices can rise endlessly, because of growing “demand.” Economists have never stopped to think that at any given price, there is an affordability issue for customers. If prices drop too low, there is a profitability issue for those operating extraction facilities.
If we look at the situation with coal, we see a situation where peak production seems to have been reached because of low prices. China has closed down mines because falling prices have made mines that were previously profitable, unprofitable (Figure 13). Coal is the lowest-cost fuel; if it cannot be mined profitably, the world economy has a problem.
Figure 13. China’s energy production, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
In fact, it appears as though we have reached peak coal on a worldwide basis, as a result of low prices (Figure 14). It is hard to see any major production area that can grow substantially in the future, without much higher prices.
Figure 14. World coal production, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy Data. (For 1965-1980, consumption is substituted for production, because only consumption is given, and imports/exports are likely small.
[10] The world economy needs to be able to keep repaying debt with interest. If world economic growth slows too much, this will not be possible.
We may already be reaching a “too slow growth limit.” Below this growth limit, it becomes impossible to repay debt with interest, especially if interest rates rise. We may already be reaching this point, based on the lack of growth in energy consumption per capita shown in Figure 15. (Also, as noted in Item [3], it seems quite possible that recent GDP growth indications are overstated.)
Figure 15. Average energy prices (averaging oil, coal, and natural gas) versus the total quantity of energy products consumed per capita, based on BP energy consumption data and UN population data. (Prices have not been inflation adjusted.)
Figure 15 suggests that affordability and price go together. When the world economy is growing rapidly, energy prices tend to rise (as does energy consumption). When energy consumption per capita falls, it is a sign that the world economy is not doing well.
One of the things that confuses matters is the very different economic growth results for different parts of the world. If oil prices are low, this improves economic growth prospects from the point of oil importers, such as the United States and China. This is what our video game players are looking at, not the results for the world as a whole. It is oil exporters, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, who are having problems.
If we look at world news, Venezuela may collapse because of low oil prices. Saudi Arabia has found it necessary to take on debt, and has undergone regime change, at least partly related to low oil prices. Norway is proposing that its oil and gas fund no longer invest in oil and gas companies, because it expects that there is a significant chance the oil price will not rise high enough to bring companies back to adequate profitability.
[11] The whole “game” has been confused by a lot of not-quite-correct pronouncements from academic circles.
A lot of well-meaning people have tried to solve our energy problems, but haven’t gotten the story right.
Economists have gotten the story pretty much 100% wrong. Energy is very important for the economy. Furthermore, energy prices don’t rise endlessly.
Peak Oilers have confused matters by talking about oil, coal and natural gas being determined by the amount of technically recoverable resources in the ground. This might be true if energy prices could rise endlessly, but clearly they cannot. By following the wrong views of economists, Peak Oilers have led world leaders to believe that far more resources are available to be extracted than really is the case.
People who call themselves Biophysical Economists haven’t really gotten the story correct either. The Biophysical Economists realized that there was a need for a measure for diminishing returns. They put together a measure which they called Energy Returned on Energy Invested. The measure, unfortunately, only “sort of” works. It gives a lot of wrong answers. It does not suggest that oil prices above $20 per barrel are a problem. It also does not suggest that substitutes for oil that are priced above $20 per barrel are a problem. It tends to give a lot of “false positives” when it comes to the question of whether renewables can be substituted for fossil fuels. It seems to suggest that a particular ratio is important, when it is really the total quantity of an energy product available at a very low price that is important.
I should not pick on the Biophysical Economists. There are many others with academic credentials who produce metrics that really aren’t very helpful. Energy payback time is not a very helpful metric, especially from the point of view of deciding whether or not to use a particular device. It is not the energy that the economy must pay back; it is the full cost of manufacturing the device that needs to be recovered, including human labor costs and taxes. In some applications, the cost of mitigating intermittency may also need to be considered.
Even the standard Levelized Cost of Energy calculations can give misleading indications, if they are used on intermittent renewables without taking into account the cost of mitigating the intermittency.
Conclusion
With all of these issues, it is not surprising that world leaders have difficulty playing the energy and economy game. In fact, it is hard to see any winning strategy.
One of the issues that makes the game impossible to win is the fact that all sides must win. A solution that cuts out the oil exporters is a problem for an economy dependent on oil. Any solution that cuts out the workers is a problem, partly because businesses need workers as consumers, and partly because governments need workers as taxpayers.
The reason I have not included any discussion of renewables is because at this point in time, we do not have any renewables that are sufficiently inexpensive and sufficiently scalable to represent a solution.
JMG predicts Bitcoin to drop to 30 or 40 dollars:
https://www.ecosophia.net/december-2017-book-club-plus-reflections-bitcoin-bubble/
this week it was up above $17,000…
meanwhile, I have predicted Bitcoin rising to $1 million in 2018…
the game continues…
THE END OF THE TEXAS TEA PARTY – Horseman Capital – London, UK
Therefore, it seems likely to me that US oil production growth will likely peak soon.
https://www.horsemancapital.com/marketviews/russell-clark/2017/07/the-end-of-the-texas-tea-party
“The increase in completed wells and the substantial drop in legacy wells potentially indicates that new well production is increasingly cannibalising legacy production. The level of legacy decline is very significant issue. Permian producers have struggled to stay ahead of the legacy decline of the field.”
Complete Final ‘Drill’ In Preparation For Petro-Yuan Futures Trading
Dec 13 2017
Amid all the chatter of Venezuela and Russia potentially creating oil-backed cryptocurrencies, the “huge news” of China’s launch of the Petro-Yuan has fallen off the front page… until now.
This week saw the Shanghai Futures Exchange complete its fifth yuan-back oil futures contract trading drill successfully…
As Bloomberg reports, 149 members of Shanghai International Energy Exchange traded 647,930 lots in the drill with total value of 268.2b yuan, according to a statement from the exchange, which added that the system basically met the listing requirements of crude futures after the drill.
As Pepe Escobar recently noted, ‘to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies’ is the politest way of stating what the BRICS have been discussing for years now; how to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar.
Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan. This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan. Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan – according to some – will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.
The new triad of oil, yuan and gold is actually a win-win-win. No problem at all if energy providers prefer to be paid in physical gold instead of yuan. The key message is the US dollar being bypassed.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-13/china-regulators-complete-final-drill-preparation-petro-yuan-futures-trading
The dollar is still hanging in there for now. But the US is losing influence fast around the world.
Very interesting! I know that the US dollar is down 6% or 7% relative to a basket of currencies this year. This is part of the reason for the rise in the price of oil, as priced in US dollars. The currency difference makes the oil cheaper in other currencies.
BHP Billiton: World’s Largest Mining Company To Exit Its $50 Billion Shale Oil Blunder
https://srsroccoreport.com/bhp-billiton-worlds-largest-mining-company-exit-50-billion-shale-oil-blunder/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-13/yellen-isn-t-buying-trump-s-tax-cut-talk-of-an-economic-miracle
While Yellen was suggesting the new tax code would only modestly increase growth and mostly in 2018, Trump meanwhile in DC was trumpeting the idea GDP would burst up to 4%.
s
Yellen Isn’t Buying Trump’s Tax Cut Talk of an Economic Miracle
By
Rich Miller
December 13, 2017 3:05 PM
The Federal Reserve isn’t buying President Donald Trump’s argument that his tax cut package will lead to a significantly stronger, sustainable expansion of the economy.
While the central bank would welcome such a development, outgoing Fed Chair Janet Yellen suggested on Wednesday that policy makers generally see the plan as having a modest and mostly short-term impact.
“It’s not a gigantic increase in growth,” she told a press conference after the Fed raised its target for short-term interest rates for the third time this year.
Policy makers boosted their economic forecast in 2018 to 2.5 percent from 2.1 percent in September as they increasingly factored the effects on the tax package into their outlooks.
Yet they left their estimate of the long-run growth rate of the economy unchanged at 1.8 percent, according to the median projection of policy makers released on Wednesday.
That’s in line with its pace in recent years but well below the roughly 3 percent level the Trump administration has penciled into its budget for the government.
Even as Yellen was sounding cautious about the tax cut’s impact, Trump was across town at the White House trumpeting its benefits to the point of seemingly suggesting that growth could hit 4 percent or even more.
Asked about the president’s remarks, Yellen twice said that it would be a “challenge” to achieve such a rate.
So however-you-describe Trump was claiming 4% while the Fed was saying maybe as much as 2.5% in 2018 after that 1.8%. “We stand on the verge of a new economic miracle,” Trump bellowed at the top of his lungs while making wild arm gestures with eyes bugged out. So believe who you prefer – an economic institution or someone grabbing at straws out of thin air.
Experts say US economy not seeing ‘Trump bump’
http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2017/11/experts_say_us_economy_not_see.html
Here’s How NASA Thinks Society Will Collapse
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/heres-how-nasa-thinks-society-will-collapse/441375/
The stimulative effect, to the extent there is one, comes from the government borrowing a whole lot more money. (This keeps businesses from having to borrow a whole lot. They can also buy back shares of stock, and make their Earnings per Share rise.) But it seems like the extra US debt needs to really go into hiring people, in order to truly stimulate the economy. I don’t think it does that (other than perhaps a few programs built into the legislation); mostly, it allows programs that exist today to continue. It is added debt that only transfers more investment income away from the rest of the economy and increases concentration of “wealth.”
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-instant/fed-lifts-rates-but-2018-policy-outlook-unchanged-idINKBN1E72W1
Well, low and behold, the FED has raised interest rates 1/4%!
After all she did promise to raise them….a tad while ago…nice parting gift
The funny thing…. I was talking to my bank manager a few months ago…. discussing interest rates…. and she said — rates have dropped — however this has not affected mortgage rates…. they have pretty much stayed the same….
Makes you wonder.
The only interest rates that actually drop are those for big corporations and banks. The plebs still have to cough it up.
I’d be interested to hear if new mortgage rates offered by banks are 1/4% higher in January….
I think the stated change applies to short term rates. QE sales may affect long term rates more.
wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if they continue to raise rates, there will be a 1/4% that will become the proverbial straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back.
meanwhile, even with this higher rate:
BAU tonight, baby!
Silk Road Fever Grips the Russian Far East and Boosts Economy
China’s Belt and Road Initiative heralds a new era with mega infrastructure projects dotting the landscape
Pepe Escobar 12-13-2017
If you are looking for the latest breakthroughs in trans-Eurasian geoeconomics, you should keep an eye on the East – the Russian Far East. One interesting project is the new state-of-the-art $1.5 billion Bystrinsky plant. Located about 400 kilometers from the Chinese border by rail and tucked inside the Trans-Baikal region of Siberian, it is now finally open for business.
This mining and processing complex, which contains up to 343 million tonnes of ore reserves, is a joint venture between Russian and Chinese companies. Norilsk Nickel, Russia’s leading mining group and one of the world’s largest producers of nickel and palladium, has teamed up with CIS Natural Resources Fund, established by President Vladimir Putin, and China’s Highland Fund.
But then, this is just the latest example of Russian and Chinese cooperation geared around the New Silk Roads or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Beijing is the world’s largest importer of copper and iron ore, and virtually the entire output from Bystrinsky will go to the world’s second largest economy.
Naturally, to cope with production, a massive new road and rail network has been rolled out, as well as substantial infrastructure, in the heart of this wilderness. Yet there is another major BRI initiative about 1,000km east of Bystrinsky. Work started on the Amur River Bridge, or Heilongjiang as the Chinese call it, in 2016 and the road and rail links should be finished in 2019.
Part of this will include Russian-Chinese investment funds, known as Dakaitaowa, or “to open a matryoshka doll”. Monetary integration and energy cooperation are all part of an ambitious Russian-Chinese package. This will allow trade to be settled in yuan, instead of US dollars, in Moscow via the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Products promoted under the http://www.madeinrussia.com “Made in Russia” brand are bound to get a boost.
http://www.atimes.com/article/silk-road-fever-grips-russian-far-east-boosts-economy/
And all protected under the brand spanking new Russian SA-500 Surface-to-Air Missile System that can take out even the most advanced western ICBMs.
SA-600 Anti-Missile System is in the works……
The rich win big in the final GOP tax-cut bill
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rich-win-big-final-gop-tax-cut-bill-192122480.html?utm_content=bufferc0566&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
The rich are the GOP’s base. Their lobbyists are right there in DC while the majority of Americans are no longer represented by that party. If we ever get campaign finance reform, which I highly doubt, ‘The People’ might once again get representation. Until then get use to the Y in the road. Either your rich or your ignored.
Wy…that is hilarious.
Both parties are captured by corporate lobbyists. I see you are trapped into the us versus them mentality. Just like they have brainwashed you.
I do agree, “true” campaign reform” is badly needed…however it will never be allowed to happen.
Anyone who still buys into this political bulls h it…. does not belong on FW.
It demonstrates immature intellectual development.
I agree. The dem vs rep is a simple distraction for the mentally challenged. Both parties work only for large corporate interest. They have for decades (if not centuries). They are paid well by the corporations to pass laws or nullify laws that impeded corporate interest. If the public benefits in any way it is purely by dumb luck.
I am afraid you are correct. Actually, the government works to keep the self-organized system growing. When energy supplies are inadequate, this means marginalizing more and more people, at the bottom of the hierarchy.
I endured listening to a US expat explain how America was back on the track to being if not great again … at least better than it is… because a Republican stronghold had elected a Democrat.
I so did want to coil the right hand … or at least interject with ‘are you f789ing re tar ded?’
But I smiled… and nodded my head…
Did I mention I had a friend … when he went on dates he often dropped a valium …. I am not sure if that was because he was nervous or because he knew he was going to be bored….
The funny thing is … the dates loved him …. because he was such a good listener…. he just sat there in a daze… nodding with false empathy and understanding once in awhile….
I must consider doing that when I go out in public… maybe half a tab of Xanax… the new and improved valium….
Master Fast is correct.
Please take the partisan politics to CNN.com or some other MSM heap of stinking dung.
This is NOT of interest.
I wholeheartedly agree. I consider OFW to be a refuge from MSM trivial pursuits, a pristine outpost beyond party politics, and a restaurant at the end of the industrial universe where we can gather to observe and discuss the impending end of BAU. JH, please have the decency to let us dwell on our doom in peace.
Nice way of putting it Tim. Imagine we are the folks sitting down at the table on the Titanic for one last drink, while the foolish orchestra plays for us out of some whacko sense of duty or purpose. But yes, lets dwell on the coming catastrophe and observe and discuss it. Politics will not affect it or change it one bit. Our table is pristine, uncluttered by the panicking masses, or in our case, the unknowing masses. We discuss things, enjoying the knowledge and wisdom gained while watching the sinking progress.
I’ll gladly buy you a drink, Jesse, and join you in a game of dominoes while the politicos arrange the deck chairs outside and the band plays Nearer my God to Thee. Do you reckon the barender accepts Bitcoin?
Can FW be a bar instead?
FW is an interesting place… nobody is invited to join …. yet anyone can join…. in fact one would waste one’s time sending out invites… because every person you invited who dropped in …. would not realize they were in the world’s most exclusive club…. and quickly leave….
I don’t believe that for a second, sounds like propaganda, but even if it is true, let me remind you:
-It doesn’t matter. The oil industry can get all the loans they need
-The world bank is one of these fossil (!) institutions of the 20th century revolving around American empire; it doesn’t “develop”, it indebts, and continually indebts, which of course is the model for how our system operates: to create debts and spread them around the world, debts that will never be paid off by anybody, in any conceivable timeframe.
Again, no debts existing in the world today will be paid off…not now, not in 100, 1000, 10,000, a million years.
I am inclined to generally agree with you. There may be a few debts that are due in the immediate future that are paid off, but I expect that in general you are right.
I agree as well. Overall the debt levels do continue to rise. As does energy consumption. It just cannot continue forever. At some point so much energy will be consumed trying to pay off the debts + interest that stagnation will set in. Then, interest rates lower to attempt to offset energy growth. Then, resources deplete and become too expensive to extract. Then, deflation sets in. Then, collapse ensues. What can’t go on forever must eventually stop.
Already, energy per capita is not growing. This is really stagnation, from the economy’s point of view. Also, the price of fossil fuels has fallen below the cost of extraction (inclusive of needed tax level and needed investment in new supplies). This is not a sustainable situation. So resources are already too expensive to extract.
In 2017, debt levels went up enough for commodity prices to “bounce” a bit. But this is not really sustainable. With the interest rate rise, there are pressures for prices to fall. But there are also shortage issues–the gas explosion in Austria, and the Forties pipeline for oil, among other things. It will be interesting to see what the new year brings.
Perhaps if we add a visual everyone will understand that quote….
http://img.picturequotes.com/2/541/540975/if-something-cannot-go-on-forever-it-will-stop-quote-1.jpg
“Because of the growth in global debt since the Lehman era crisis, real growth in economic activity is no longer possible. The reason for this is that the majority of the capital created by way of debt issuance by sovereigns, municipalities, corporations and individuals has been consumed. The result is that all future income in net globally is required to service the claims against existing debt, and the result of that is that it precludes growth of world real GDP per capita in perpetuity.”
(Roger Arnold, Chief Economist for ALM Advisors)
I can Imagine there will be no more significant exploration activity from this point on. This will lead to an (already?) irreversable sinking extraction rate of conventional oil, our most precious commodity.
We can only hope demand shrinks peacefully at the same rate… slowly… until 2030?
sure, if demand creeps downward for a decade or so…
then we might get this continuing creeping collapse…
that might not reach us in the bigger faster stronger central countries until the 2030s…
or not.
I want to continue to hash out the Creeping Collapse idea (posted by Gail a day or two ago), so that’s partially why it’s posted here.
I too see a creeping collapse that has been ongoing for several years. Whether it is just the top of the seneca curve or a phenomenon that can continue, is something that we will see.
‘Seismic Shift’: World Bank Pulls Plug on Oil and Gas, Will Divest No More
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201712131059961459-world-gas-oil-divestment/
Not a good choice, IMO. We don’t have alternatives.
Either this is just another signal for the end of BAU and the madness and delusions that go with it, or a politically correct explanation for moving out of a ponzi. Probably both.
It’s part of the current grander plan to shift investment to renewables. The transition from FF to renewables is under way, albeit still in the early phase, and will probably have the effect of increasing the wealth divide, whether the overall plan works or not.
No doubt we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Burn all the available FF and it cooks us and are a finite resource that gets more expensive as the sources dwindle, so there really isn’t another alternative at this juncture but to go this route. One could say it’s paramount to ‘Renewables or Bust!’
What if EVs actually use more resources?
What if the upfront energy consumption of building a wind turbine and installing it takes 10+ years to earn back?
These are important aspects……
It is not just installing the wind turbine; it is working around all of the intermittency. That gets to be an increasingly large problem, as more intermittent electricity is added to the grid.
Solar seems to be worse than wind for “messing up” the grid. https://www.neon-energie.de/Hirth-2013-Market-Value-Renewables-Solar-Wind-Power-Variability-Price.pdf
I don’t see that – in fact have I not read that ‘renewables’ are actually reducing in terms of the total percentage of energy we use?
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/world-energy-consumption-to-2015.png
We need a new word for ‘renewable’ energy – because it is not renewable. Alternative is not acceptable either — because neither solar nor wind systems produce a nett return on energy
First prize for the person who comes up with the new word is a fake gold bitcoin medallion.
The IEA counts wind and solar as worth even less than I show in that exhibit, because in their view, wind and solar only replace fuel for electricity power generating stations, rather than being a complete replacement for non-intermittent electricity. (I used BP’s approach, which gives wind and solar 2.6 times as much credit as IEA does.) In IEA’s view, wind and solar together come to about 1% of world energy supply in 2015.
Wind and solar are part of the thin gray line at the top on this chart, also of Total Primary Energy Supply.
I call wind, wave, and solar “intermittent” energy supply. They are of definite lower quality that dispatchable electricity. Intermittents work all right, if the need is to pump or desalinate water, because the job can be done intermittently. They are of don’t work well as part of an electrical grid system.
What about the giant Tesla batteries installed in South Australia – aren’t they intended to help counter intermittency issues?
Tiny, tiny, tiny bit of help. Very expensive for what they do.
Very expensive — and did I not read that for $50 million what they are installing provides one hour’s worth of storage?
I wonder how many 1000’s of times I would need to post this before it was to bust through the rock-hardened skulls of a DelusiSTANI.
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
One hour supply for 30,000 homes worth of electricity. This leaves out commercial and industrial. It provides a one hour supply, for 10,000 homes, plus related commercial and industrial properties.
that is the running joke with renewables
advertised as supply power for xx thousands homes, ignoring the fact that our infrastructure uses fifty times as much
Conveniently ignored….. to create the perception that Utopia is close… real close…
No matter how many times I post my Elon Musk battery calculation, this old myth keeps popping up.
Fast Eddy is correct – it would take thousands upon thousands of 50 million dollar batteries to make intermittent power viable for Australia alone. Scaling it up to the whole world would take on the order of a million or two 50 million dollar batteries – 50 Trillion or so, just for the batteries.
Not to mention the required natural resources are mostly all in short supply.
Yes, they get 30 minutes to negotiate with the coal plant.
“intermittent” energy sources is an accurate, objective and emotionally neutral term that captures something important that solar and wind have in common, so I think it’s a very reasonable description of electricity generated using solar panels and wind turbines as well as for wave and tidal. “Renewables”, “clean energy”, “alternative energy” are PR terms employed to put a positive spin on the intermittents, while “unreliable”, “unstable”, “inconvenient” or “capricious” energy sources puts a negative although by no means inaccurate spin on them.
Hydropower is less intermittent than the others, provided you have a big enough pond and are able to capture enough of that intermittent rainfall before it runs down the drain.
I like Unstable Energy. It rhymes with Garbage Energy
I understand that there is also a difference in the way dams are built. Some can store up a significant amount of water for use in electricity generation later; others are less able to keep water in reserve. (I do not understand the details at all, though.) Often, there is an overabundance of electricity that must be used in spring, when it is available, whether it is needed or not. When there are dry spells, fossil fuel generation must be used instead. There are a handful of (mostly cold) countries that have a superabundance of hydroelectric. They can use a little themselves, and sell the variable left overs as they become available.
A major problem with Hydropower is that the artificial lake formed produces more warming gasses (CO2, Methane, etc.) than it saves – especially in the tropics.
I knew that this was an issue in early years. Is it permanently the case?
But think of all the extra fish, snakes, frogs and insects that can live happily in those artificial lakes?
Also, it’s party time for all the swans, ducks, herons, kingfishers, falcons, crows and eagles—that is if they can avoid getting chopped up by wind turbines or zapped in those darn new-fangled concentrated solar arrays.
Also, by creating more lakes, we are only helping to offset all the wetland loss we created before by draining so many swamps, bogs and marshes.
Think about it. Almost all the world’s best farmland outside of the large plains and prairies runs along river valleys that had to be reclaimed from their natural mosquito-infested methane-bubbling state by generations of peasants working with hand tools. In the course of this effort, they must have eliminated dozens of times more methane generating ecosystems than modern dam-building has created.
‘Renewable energy’ = Garbage Energy.
Or GE….
It is settled.
It the nearby town of Ayabe, 20 years ago they built an incinerator that generated electricity from burning the local garbage. However, they never connected this up to the grid and so they used the juice they created to run the lights in the building really bright 24/7. From the highway you could see it lit up like a christmas tree. Now mothballed, it was hideously expensive and didn’t work as advertised, like most “green” projects.
That deserves equal billing with:
General Electric Co. recently conducted an internal review into the flying of a spare business jet to accompany former Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, as it seeks to understand an unusual practice that went on for years and surprised investors when they learned of it in October.
The investigation was discussed at a GE board meeting last week, people familiar with the matter said. William “Mo” Cowan, GE’s vice president of litigation and legal policy, led an effort in recent weeks to find out who knew about the extra plane and when they knew it, one person said.
Immelt has said, including in a recent letter to GE’s board, that he wasn’t aware of the backup jet and that he ended the practice when he discovered it in 2014. GE GE, -0.84% has said that the two-plane practice was discontinued in 2014 and that it was limited to overseas trips with security risks and so-called business critical itineraries. An extra plane was used until at least this past spring, according to flight records and people familiar with the matter.
If only I would have known…… I could have agreed to wear a mask that makes me look like Immelt — and I could have used that empty jet to fly wherever he flies…. I mean…. what are the odds of someone trying to shoot down this f789ing clown????
Who the f789 does he think he is?
‘Do you know who I am – I am the guy with the private jet following me…. that’s how great I am!’
oh wow!!!!!
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2017/10/18/Photos/ZH/MW-FW542_immelt_20171018171439_ZH.jpg
Lots of wage disparity allows this.
I heard while visiting Norway a few years ago that the king rides the railroad, just like everyone else. It is possible for a country to greatly “damp down” wage disparity, with its laws and taxes. (Tends to be rich countries that do this, however.) Ultimately, the problem of inadequate supplies takes over and causes the whole system to crash. With less disparity, there is less possibility of a select few being able to continue (but this may not happen, anyhow).
Gail, I really think the Norwegians should show the King proper respect by letting him have his own train, like we do in the UK.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/02/19/10/3D68AB0500000578-0-image-a-47_1487501938704.jpg
http://www.croydontramlink.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/787/2017/06/Royal-train-of-Elizabeth-II.png
I hadn’t thought of that!
Hit-and-Missables’? More misses than hits, of course.
“Burn all the available FF and it cooks us and are a finite resource that gets more expensive as the sources dwindle, so there really isn’t another alternative at this juncture but to go this route. One could say it’s paramount to ‘Renewables or Bust!’”
Gail has addressed the current situation where fossil fuel prices are stagnating. Although it seems counter-intuitive, fossil fuels are getting scarcer while fossil fuel prices are stuck in a slump. So we have the situation where oil prices under $75/bbl bankrupt the energy companies and oil prices over $75/bbl bankrupt the general economy.
The thinking now is that we are approaching the point where all the finding, producing, refining, distribution costs of fossil fuels have risen to the point where the net free energy from that system is declining into single digits on a path toward zero. This means that most/all of the return from fossil fuels is used to produce more fossil fuels and fuel BAU.
” So we have the situation where oil prices under $75/bbl bankrupt the energy companies and oil prices over $75/bbl bankrupt the general economy.” – Yes this is the elephant in the room. There is no more “oil price that works”. No more “Goldilocks zone” of fossil fuel affordability. Thus, discussing renewables is moot – as those take fossil fuels to build out. Fossil fuel extraction appears to be quickly heading to the point where they are no longer profitable to extract or, beneficial to the general economy.
If we raise interest rates, it tends to make the situation worse. Consumers are less able to buy the goods and services made with oil. The oil price tends to settle at a lower level. I suppose the tax cuts were supposed to help the US oil companies with respect to this problem, but international oil companies still have a big problem.
Americans have no savings, with good reason: housing, education and health care costs are out of control, wages are stagnant, and the Fed has suppressed interest rates
https://boingboing.net/2017/12/09/avocado-toast-poverty.html
Share buybacks spike — dropping a strong hint at what CEOs plan to do with tax savings
Those who thought the tax plan would lead to announcements of more hiring and investment have already been proven wrong…
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/share-buybacks-spike-dropping-a-strong-hint-at-what-ceos-plan-to-do-with-tax-savings-2017-12-08
The share buybacks are one way of helping BAU continue a bit longer. The inadequate earnings are spread over fewer shares, so earnings per share look better. There is less need to borrow to pay dividends. The Federal Government can borrow instead. Helps BAU a little, but not in terms of helping the wage earner.
Switzerland is Prepared for Civilizational Collapse
ore than any other country, Switzerland’s ethos is centered around preparing for civilizational collapse.
All around Switzerland, for example, one can find thousands of water fountains fed by natural springs. Zurich is famous for its 1200 fountains, some of them quite beautiful and ornate, but it’s the multiple small, simple fountains in every Swiss village that really tell the story. Elegant, yes, but if and when central water systems are destroyed these fountains are a decentralized and robust system for providing everyone with drinkable water.
The Swiss political system is also decentralized. If the central government fails, the Swiss might not even notice. The mountains and valleys also mean that Swiss towns and villages are geographically independent yet linked in a spider-web of robust connections.
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/switzerland-prepared-civilizational-collapse.html
what bullshit the reality is Most of their supermarkets import +95% of all products from the EU. So, in the case of any crisis Switzerland will starve in no tine cause they gave up on local agriculture. It is cheaper to buy subsidized food from France or the Netherlands.
I will have to admit, having water is useful. Presumably, this water will stay uncontaminated, even if sewage systems stop working. It would be useful to know for certain–are all water fountains OK, or just some of them.
Last week I was visiting our cabins in the North. They both have their own wells. A natural spring nearby. A clean small river with fish in the backyard. And one of the most fish rich larger rivers a walking (skiing) distance away. Reindeer (caribou) were hard to avoid driving around. More reindeer as neighbours than people, actually. Enough saunas to produce air dryed reindeer meat for snacks. Incredibly low population density. Both cabins can be fully operared with just wood for heat and cooking fuel. Which is plentyful all around. And most of the time its too cold for most pathogens to survive.
Sounds good, right
But, but.
No place will be exempt from the problem, that too many people will be coming there from the large cities.
No place will be exempt from the pollution clouds that our collapsing civilization will erupt.
No place will have have much of anything to hunt or fish, when the trucks stop delivering food to the big cities.
Though, the thought crossed my mind, that with one of FEs containers, one could have a very relaxing time listening to the radio, drinking large amounts of whiskey. Untill the inevitable.
By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know when the last slave raids on Finland were, by Scandinavians (nice neighbours!) and Tartars, etc?
Finnish boys and girls used to fetch among the highest prices in the markets of Istanbul, Mecca and Damascus.
Slavery abolished in Sweden 1335, according to Wikipedia, I have no reason to doubt it.
Up until 1945 there were statare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statare
After that only debt slaves.
Interesting: there appears to have been a boom in slave imports in the 14th-15th century, to Italy at least, to make up for losses of servants and peasants in the Black Death.
The Swedes visited Finland when they needed people on their viking raids. I don’t think they asked nicely, to come with.. it was common practice from the swedes
Russians calmed down a bit, when their nobility had summer datschas in the finnish karelia. And visited the archipelago in the summer. But before that.. hmm.. the wars are too numerous to count, I think. Slaves.. no I don’t think Russians took many finnish slaves, because all the farmers in Russia already were “land slaves”
But actual slave trade from slavs and other scands.. that goes before church records were kept, so no verifiable data on that. Though the “amber trade route” or Amber Road to the Baltic Sea has been operational as long as there is any history available.. Probably grabbed something more with.. than just amber
Blondes still today have an above ‘average market price’, I think.. Some amber and a few gullible finns, probably fetched a nice market price in Marrakesh for the Dark Age merchants
Thank you, Van Kent. Europeans were, of course, still being taken for slaves by North African Arabs in the early 19th century, until the British navy put a stop to it. The prize goes to the Ottoman Turks, though, merrily enslaving until WW1.
Had to look through slavery after those comments.
In 2014 a historian published a paper about slavery, with some new stuff in it. He found out that after the vikings had set up most of the trade routes. And were the new nobility of those russian areas. Specially from the Novgorod area, the war chiefs made a slave aquisition journey once in a decade, between the years 1300 – 1500.
They took young boys and girls, mainly from the finnish karelia area. But also elsewhere in finland.
Young men were put to forced labour. With their privates cut off. But some made it to military schools in Persia, for the Persian professional army, which at the time was made from slaves. Young girls were sold, like they usually do.
But if the item was an ‘luxury item’ (aka boy or a girl with bright blond hair and blue eyes) then the trade routes could be really long. The final destination for a bright blond haired blue eyed pretty young girl, could be anywhere around the mediterranean, middle eastern sultan palaces, central asian even up to Chechenia, or even Goa India or all the way to the Maldives.
The asking price for a pretty bright blond haired blue eyed young girl, would be about 5 ‘altyn’. When the slaver aquisition party was near the finnish karelia area. But the same girl could fetch up to 6.700 ‘altyn’ in an busy slave market in the above mentioned places.
I volunteer to be a sex slave post BAU!
the bottom has fallen out of that market Eddy
Bids starting at 0.1 cents….
i heard the only bids were in zimbabwe dollars
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/arZ8b7KRCaE/maxresdefault.jpg
And don’t forget the mosquitos will kill you. Eddy said so!
One August a few years back.. I stepped out of the car.. and in a few seconds so many mosquitoes, that it was hard to see a few feet in front
In a way Eddy was right. A few billion mosquitoes in August will drive you completely bonkers
even the catholics know that times are gonna get tough but not end thanks to the measures being put in place by ‘team climate change’ which we will shortly abide by https://catholicclimatemovement.global/what-will-it-take-to-limit-climate-change-to-1-5-degrees-c/
The story (whether true or false) gets repeated everywhere.
Gringo beware….
The department keeps sparse data on deaths of Americans, and relies on Mexican authorities for the information. And it has not been tracking injuries, the Journal Sentinel found, so it is impossible for travelers to spot potential problems.
Indeed, when it issued a tally this summer disclosing that 16 Americans had drowned in Mexico in the first half of 2017, the department did not include Conner’s death in the count. She was pulled lifeless from the pool, but later removed from life support in Florida
The U.S. Office of Inspector General has opened an inquiry into how the State Department has been handling injuries and deaths related to potentially tainted alcohol in Mexico
Some reported having just one or two drinks before blacking out and being victimized. Numerous people reported blacking out simultaneously with a friend or spouse.
Family members also told of how loved ones drowned in resort pools
Johnson, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, called on the Inspector General to investigate in October, after dozens of people told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they had been robbed, sexually assaulted and otherwise injured after consuming alcohol while vacationing at all-inclusive resorts around Mexico.
The Journal Sentinel launched its investigation into alcohol-related blackouts in Mexico in the wake of Conner’s death. Since the initial report, more than 100 people have reported serious problems while vacationing in Mexico. And dozens have said when they tried to caution others on one of the world’s most popular websites, TripAdvisor, their warnings were deleted
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/12/13/mexico-blackout-deathstate-department-under-investigation-handling-injuries-and-deaths-mexico-resort/946902001/
TripAdvisor deleted….
can’t understand why anyone would need to consult tripadvisor before holidaying in mexico
Can’t understand why these comment warning are deleted and these incidences are indicative of the hazards holidaying in these places. Usually, staying at enclosed, all inclusive “resorts” in 3rd world countries are considered safe. One would expect NOT to have consult, all this has changed. A co-worker has family in a Caribbean island nation and stated it is in a economic recession. Times are hard.
Saw this report
The family of Desiree Gibbon was in their home Friday without closure. The 26-year-old’s body is 1,500 miles away in Jamaica, where she was found slain Saturday in a small town outside the resort her grandmother owns in Montego Bay.
“Why did they beat her? Why did they slit her throat?” the victim’s aunt, Peggy Brunner, told CBS2’s Magdalena Doris.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/12/01/queens-model-murdered-jamaica/
As the investigation into her killing continues, the family is now working to expedite the process to get a death certificate and bring her back to New York.
Any Person traveling IN Mexico is not the sharpest knife in the cupboard.
To be on the safe side, Nobody should set foot in Central or South America or the Caribbean (with the exception of Chile, Cuba and a few minor coconut palm and banana islands) without a first imbibing a government health warning.
El Salvador tops the list with 108.64 homicide per 100,000 inhabitants. That’s over one killing per 1,000 inhabitants per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
I was hoping to get to Argentina at some point…
I don’t get to hung up on these stats…. in fact I like to go to places in strife… the hotels are cheap…
And….. I have just been crowned the world champion of everything – having destroyed Pintada earlier today …. so these villains will take one look at me and beg for mercy….. as they should
And the room service is almost free ….
During the Cairo crazy … I played off a couple of the top properties next to Tahrir…. I ended up getting a suite in the Sofitel — airport delivery – breakfast — and one choice from the hotel harem each day … and a machine gun with unlimited ammo …. for USD140 per night.
And in the 5 days I was there – I only saw one other person at the breakfast.
It was great! I didn’t want to leave.
In fact I am hoping for another revolution so I can enjoy another trip the Cairo on the cheap.
Rise up rise up!
140 bucks… for this!
https://images.oyster.com/photos/prestige-suite–v5036432-720.jpg
Bitcoin will continue because the craze is very heavy in Korea. About 20% of all bitcoins are traded in Korea, and lots of people, those without opportunities, are putting their savings to there. Whether they will succeed or not is none of my concern . suffice to say is that the price level will be sustained for quite a while.
No need to worry about the rich folks at Bel Air affected by the fire. They will be compensated by insurance and that’s not their only homes. The homeless who created such fire will be punished very heavily since if you screw a rich person you do pay the price.
the elites have a plan B so there is nothing to worry about it will be a de-growth economy i have studied the meetings and some of the literature and reference has been made that growth will contract as we wean ourselves off our non-renewable fossil fuel addiction the plan is simple convince the human race man-made climate-change is real and demands energy contraction that is why the great global warming story was produced the public would rather swallow that then the peak oil story. so do not fret finite worlders the end is not nigh.
“Do not fret finite worlders, the end is not nigh.” That is the message we seem to be given everywhere.
Even with the capability of doing more with less, we can not prevent a collapse of our global society.
Our banks will collapse. Our governments will collapse. And our private corp. will collapse. All of them have too much debt, that can only be serviced with robust growth (and therefore more energy) ad infinitum.
We simply don’t have a way of keeping a global economy going without freight ships and fleets of trucks with diesel.
Fret not doomsters. What is coming, is already written.
What difference does it make if we contract the economy because of climate change or because of peak energy?
We are equally dead either way. We may die a bit sooner, with the climate change approach. It is more like suicide, because problems may be ahead. The economy doesn’t contract without “breaking” no matter what we do.
Yes Gail, but you know what the answer will be, not just from politicians, but also from intellectuals and academics: inovations will find substitutes not just for fossil fuel but also for other inputs which are depleting. I encourage all readers of this site to continue to share links to studies and academic papers that debunk the assertion that innovations and education are gamechangers to be trusted.
Try eating food you cannot grow without FF inputs.
Except that world population is still growing by 80 million a year, which blows that idea right out of the water. Making do with less of everything we need to survive, with more people arriving everyday is a surefire ticket to the great beyond. Unless the elites have a plan for massive depopulation to go in tandem with de-growth, via the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse? Hmm…
https://joecruzmn.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/4-horsemen.jpg
Man-made or nature induced, die-off is baked into the cake.
I’m thinking that Satoshi Nakamoto is in fact Shigeru Myamoto thirty years on, and the winklevoss twins are modern day mario bros.
https://media.coindesk.com/uploads/2013/08/dorian-satoshi-nakamoto.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Bros.#/media/File:Shigeru_Miyamoto_GDC_2007.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/FBw-TSH-Z8g/0.jpg
Dennis Meadows: “If this isn’t collapse, what do you call it?”
Sounds like this is an interview from the November 2016 election period. Judging from the number of views, it has only now been put online.
DelusiSTAN Dennis
Chinese capital controls send tremor through Australian property
https://disastersafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/House-Rubble-Earthquake-e1432741824387.jpg
“Getting money out of China is very hard now. That’s a big factor for these discounts,” said Property Direct founder David Beard, who sold some two-bedroom units on the bus tour at 15-20 percent lower than list prices.
“Property sales have fallen because of that, and it has got progressively harder to get bank loans in Australia.”
The cut-price sales have sent a tremor through the once-booming Australian property market, where Chinese are the top international real estate investors and which is the most exposed globally to a slowdown in Chinese buying.
Regulations only allow Chinese nationals a foreign exchange quota of $50,000 a year and since July, the nation’s banks have been required to report any overseas transfers by individuals of $10,000 or more.
While the rules were often flouted in the past, doing so now has become increasingly difficult, some money transfer agents told Reuters.
“It is almost impossible to send the full (settlement) amount from mainland China,” said Felix Su, financial adviser at foreign exchange firm KVB Kunlun.
At the same time, under pressure from regulators to douse risky lending in the real estate sector, Australia’s biggest banks stopped loaning money to foreigners.
The nutcracker’s got its jaws wide open now…
Unacceptable. Chinese bullshit must be opposed by any means necessary. It could just be time to talk with the British royal family about a concerted effort to protect its colonial heritage throughout the commonwealth. Concerted effort, not a little here and a little there. And the American military should be entreated to back up the effort as needed. a hundred million F… Y.,’s to Chinese empire!
This ais worrisome. Our economies depend on building more and more homes. Chinese buyers have been pulling the markets along in quite a number of cities. Without them, the industry is headed for recession in these cities.
Well then the gig is up. I don’t want to live in a world with only cockroaches for animals. And a world with no heritage structures is a cockroach world.
2018…. the year of living dangerously?
Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy by 2020
https://s-newsweek-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/mobile/public/2017/12/11/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption-electricity.JPG
Analysis of how much energy it currently requires to mine bitcoin suggest that it is greater than the current energy consumption of 159 individual countries, including Ireland, Nigeria and Uruguay. The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index by cryptocurrency platform Digiconomist puts the usage on a par with Denmark, consuming 33 terawatts of electricity annually.snip
The bitcoin network’s energy consumption has increased by 25 percent in the last month alone, according to Digiconomist. If such growth were to continue, this would see the network consume as much energy as the U.S. by 2019, and as much energy as the entire world by the end of 2020.snip
More than half a billion people may be inadvertently mining cryptocurrencies from their computers, smartphones and other devices, according to research conducted earlier this year by ad blocking firm AdGuard.
Hidden software was found embedded within 220 popular websites, which have an aggregated audience of over 500 million people. The mining tool hijacks a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) and uses it to run mining software in the background.snip
…this analysis well illustrates the whole web, so it’s safe to say that one of every 40 websites currently mines cryptocurrency.”
Definitely my antivirus has blocked some nefarious sites from installing their trojan software on my PC these past few weeks. Amazing times we’re living in. How much kookier can it all get, the closer to the razor’s edge we wander at the twilight of BAU?
Russia and the US are apparently at each other’s throats…
Look at these headlines … not significantly different from US MSM https://www.rt.com/
Why no headlines exposing truly damaging info about the US?
And The Horse You Rode In on….
https://imgur.com/a/7e5QU
Just before downing a fatal does of Oxycontin … the out of work broken down former Walmart manager …. hops a bus to Cali…. and murmurs… screw you and your full employment/recovery….
Then
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6084361.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Lighter-flame.jpg
Marcus Aurelius/Quotes
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
so this assertion is just his opinion, and not a fact, and not the truth.
thanks, Marcus, for the self-contradictions.
“… what a precious privilege it is to be alive – ”
but of course, Marcus is not alive, but has entered the nothingness of eternal death.
Marcus Aurelius
What we do in life ripples in eternity
here’s my take on old Marcus’ remark, a smart guy. He means what we do in life affects others, many of whom will live beyond our lifetime and also affect others, thus approaching “eternity” in an outward ripple of communication.
I think Marcus was channeling the Buddha when he said that. I wonder if his teachings were available in Rome at that time.
“so this assertion is just his opinion, and not a fact, and not the truth.”
It wasn’t an opinion to him, since he didn’t hear it but thought it himself. Likewise for anyone else thinking, as opposed to hearing, the same thing.
“but of course, Marcus is not alive, but has entered the nothingness of eternal death.”
This is a double fallacy. One cannot enter eternal xyz, and if something can be entered then it > 0.
You’re being unnecessarily picky today, David. Marcus was writing a self-help guide like the sort of things Dale Carnegie or Napoleon Hill made a packet out of marketing. But Marcus was writing not for a wide audience but probably for himself. And he gave himself lots of good advice. Certainly he was a cut above such affirmations as, “Every day and in every way, I’m getting better and better.”
It has been speculated that as a student of stoicism, he was instructed to write this kind of stuff by his teacher as an academic exercise to help with his progress, and that this was standard practice at the time. It’s just that as a notable political figure, his old study books were kept for posterity while those of numerous other students were lost in the rubble when the hordes descended and the lavatoria ceased flushing.
I will definitely be taking a copy of Meditations with my to my desert island after the end of BAU. Doubtless there will be plenty of opportunities to practice stoicism there.
Not big on desert islands I will stick with my North Atlantic island and coal mine
we now live in a special time in human history…
that’s right, we are experiencing the biggest bubble ever:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-12/its-official-bitcoin-surpasses-tulip-mania-now-biggest-bubble-world-history
and to which I can only add:
BAU tonight, baby!
http://people.com/human-interest/bel-air-skirball-fire-cause-revealed/
This has irony written all over it. Homeless camp food cooking fire starts Bel Air blaze. Hmm, there’s got to be a lesson there…
it’s another act in the Inequality play…
over-compensated Bel Air inhabitants are endangered by fire caused by persons who lack the compensation to have a place to live.
The irony is thicker than the smoke.
Next, they die of infection from disease running rampant among the dispossessed…..
+++++
poetic justice
I thought all the fires were supposed to be caused by GW.
That was definitely my understanding as well….
Remember Peak Oil? Its still coming…..It’s just been delayed about 10-15 years by the unexpected oil production from US Tight Oil…
I went to go see my Doctor for a standard check up. And he asked me if I was reading any good books lately. So I said yes. And told him “Critical Transitions In Nature and Society, Princeton Press. And “Falling States,Collapsing Systems, Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence, Springer Energy..
And he looked them up on his computer real quick. (Which I never thought about him doing before I said them or I would have said something else). And he says “WOW, Not to many people are aware of these issues are they? I said “No”..And he said “These are the kind of books a college Professor would be reading”.
I’ve noticed doctors engage in social interaction these days, whereas I don’t remember so much of that decades past. I think the operative word is ‘distract’, from the cost of healthcare. They initiate a conversation not because they are interested in it per se’ but because they want to engage a person to talk about them self so they don’t start whining about the last bill or the cost of healthcare insurance. It worked, he got you to talk about yourself and even complimented you which sealed the distraction.
Quite possibly. Like robbers, they should just stun patients with a blow to the head when they enter…. 🙂
‘What happened with your last case?’
‘Oh, the operation went very well….. but the bill killed him!’
I am afraid this is too often the case.
I received an email in the last few days about a 44 year old who has cancer that has spread to several places in the brain and to the lungs. The email detailed the many surgeries and chemotherapy that were planned. Whatever for? This person will not possibly survive.
If it were me — I would request a prescription for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
I would buy two very good bottles of red wine …. and as I poured the last chalice…. I would grab a handful of these pills… and get ready for The Darkness.
I do not know how all of this will turn out. God may have a plan in it that we are not aware of.
I am not counting on it… but that would be pleasant.
I wonder if I would get to choose a benefits package….
I would lean towards the Islamic Package — I don’t mind to train up the virgins… or perhaps there would be ‘how to’ videos available?
The Satanic Package also has appeal… apparently it’s 24/7 clubbing with unlimited drugs (with no side effects) and willing very fit babes on tap…. my tortured soul would soon adapt….
Bring on the end of BAU — I am ready!
THe 55 yr old husband of my wife’s coworker was heavily obese, diabetic and had heart problems. They spent $1.5M on him keeping him alive for a yr.
I wonder how many oil wells that would have drilled? We are so o the path of unsustainable systems!
Call me callous …. but this sort of thing…. should not be happening…. would it not be in the interest of the continuation of BAU …. to ‘terminate… with extreme prejudice?’
http://media-cdn.list.ly/production/218321/1430249/item1430249_600px.jpeg
And which of the books did you recommend? The one from Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq? About the book: This work executes a unique transdisciplinary methodology building on the author’s previous book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it (Pluto, 2010), which was the first peer-reviewed study to establish a social science framework for the integrated analysis of crises across climate, energy, food, economic, terror and the police state. Since the 2008 financial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social unrest in every major continent. Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil disorder continues to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. Yet while policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the biophysical triggers of this new age of unrest – the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for the Earth’s climate, industrial food production, and economic growth. This book for the first time develops an empirically-ground theoretical model of the complex interaction between biophysical processes and geopolitical crises, demonstrated through the analysis of a wide range of detailed case studies of historic, concurrent and probable state failures in the Middle East, Northwest Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Geopolitical crises across these regions, Ahmed argues, are being driven by the proliferation of climate, food and economic crises which have at their root the common denominator of a fundamental and permanent disruption in the energy basis of industrial civilization. This inevitable energy transition, which will be completed well before the close of this century, entails a paradigm shift in the organization of civilization. Yet for this shift to result in a viable new way of life will require a fundamental epistemological shift recognizing humanity’s embeddedness in the natural world. For this to be achieved, the stranglehold of conventional models achieved through the hegemony of establishment media reporting – dominated by fossil fuel interests – must be broken. While geopolitics cannot be simplistically reduced to the biophysical, this book shows that international relations today can only be understood by recognizing the extent to which the political is embedded in the biophysical. Although the book offers a rigorous scientific analysis, it is written in a clean, journalistic style to ensure readability and accessibility to a general audience. It will contain a large number of graphical illustrations concerning oil production data, population issues, the food price index, economic growth and debt, and other related issues to demonstrate the interconnections and correlations across key sectors.
” This inevitable energy transition, which will be completed well before the close of this century, entails a paradigm shift in the organization of civilization. Yet for this shift to result in a viable new way of life will require a fundamental epistemological shift recognizing humanity’s embeddedness in the natural world.” So what does he recommend? A “substitution” to renewables? A contraction of the economy? A mental revolution? A new way of thinking which enables us to be more satisfied with less?
In my opinion, this part of the book is complete garbage.
Dr. Ahmed thinks he’s found a way out of the maze, an “invisible energy transition” that will put us on the path to sustainable civilization.
The idea that there is no way out because all the paths open to us are cul-de-sacs and sustainability isn’t a destination we can possibly reach doesn’t seem to have occurred to the poor chap.
https://youtu.be/gD3cYh5Pp1I
Whoops : not “invisible”, “inevitable”.
Ahmed’s beliefs certainly make Springer happy. They would like a happily ever after ending to every story.
Imagine if Ahmed could be a guest on Springer!
It could be very good and exciting – better than this even….
don’t forget to plug Norman’s book “The End of Morons”!
Now that is a positive… in a sea of morbid negatives!
dyou mind
that’s my next title
The amount of electricity we will be able to generate from wind power is going to be a lot less thanks to Climate Change (Karnauskas, 2017)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-017-0029-9
I read this as, “After installing wind power where it seems to be useful today, don’t count on getting as much power as planned. Winds will shift, likely to other parts of the globe, where they are less useful.”
Last night I watched an HBO featured show about renewables put on by James Redford. The big questions he set out to answer is can we scale up renewables to power the world. I won’t keep you in suspense because not only is it doable we can get enough renewables for a population of 11 billion. You can imagine my relief! The rating should have tipped me of – PG pure garbage! That’s an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back. When I had a chance to digest it more I realized that ignorance is bliss and really how many more doomers do we need?
It is amazing the garbage that main street media put out. No one tells the truth.
You should sue them for that 1.5 hours…. they are ba s tard scum!!!
It rather reinforces the lesson that humans -and other species -have survived or failed depending on their capacity for mobility and adaption.
We are attempting to maintain enormous fixed settlements and installations built upon an energy foundation which is going away, and an ecology which is collapsing (due to the existence of those settlements and installations).
The only answer to this -if any- must be mobility.
Wind and solar are the wrong kind of adaptation – merely a reinforcement of historic failure. The age of civilistions is passing away, this is very clear.
Nomads and pastoralists were highly successful in their day (although one can see now being threatened by a failing ecosystem).
if i decided to become a nomad—I think the other 50000 people who live in my vicinity would tell me to go and do my nomadding someplace else.
Come on Norman, dig down to that inner Gypsy!
my mom always told me they were the ones who left me on her doorstep
Well said X. Mobility would be even more important after a global game of musical chairs is over. You will want to be running with the big dogs then and not staying on the porch.
100% Correct.
Are you listening Doomy Preppers? Jan????
It is impossible to defend a hobby farm from the hordes… and you cannot feed the hordes… and disease will roll through these rural areas…… so you are WASTING YOUR TIME!
We turn to Apocalypse Now … for some advice:
‘Charlie didn’t get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R and R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death or victory.’
Spent fuel ponds aside…. if you want to have any chance of staying alive…. you need to be on the move…. if you are stationary — you are dead.
….cue theme song for “The Road”.
Here come them cannibals… looking for the young meat…
https://twomenenter.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/cannibals.jpg
https://remingtons.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/the-road-telephone-poles.jpg
So, basically, we are not making it. We are consciously choosing to go down the Seneca Cliff, even though we wouldn’t need to. It is maddening to think that we are failing at the challenge not because the transition is technologically unfeasible or unaffordable, but because the transition is politically inconceivable. Increasing investments in renewable energy requires sacrifices and this is a no-no in our world.
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.nz/2017/12/the-energy-transition-too-little-too.html
So we are choosing not to invest and transition to renewable energy — this Bardi guy is deeply deeply out to lunch.
I am taking him off my Christmas card list.
The return on investment for this so-called renewable energy is too little, I am afraid. I don’t think Ugo realizes this. Now if it were $20 per barrel oil, it would be a different story.
Who would have thought that people are impossible to deal with? The prevailing notion is that there isn’t any particular problem with us. “Hell is other people,” said Mr. Sartre. Quite so.
at times, it’s that, and at other times, it’s this:
“Heaven is other people,” said someone else.
Thanks. I must not lose sight of this. Can’t have one without the other.
“If that’s not an apocalypse then I don’t know what is,” says Davidowitz
As one big store closes, it can take several smaller stores along with it like a house of cards. Experts predict that a quarter of American malls will close in five years — around 300 out of 1,100 that currently exist.
“When anchor stores close, it causes big problems for mall owners and other retailers in the mall,” says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of New York-based retail consulting and investment banking firm Davidowitz & Associates. “And I’d say this problem is only in its second inning
Howie…you ain’t seen nothing yet!
http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/12/news/companies/mall-closing/index.html
Malls are quickly becoming an outmoded retail strategy now the internet can easily outcompete with much lower prices and far greater selection. People don’t have to get dressed up, drive somewhere, find a parking space, fight crowds, risk terrorist acts and be tempted to eat junk food. Just slide around a mouse and find what you want, left click, fill in a few fields and wait for it to be delivered. People usually choose what’s more convenient. Sell your mall stocks. I even think downtown retail will lose out to the internet. Some day it may be as difficult to find a retail outlet as it’s becoming to find a phone booth.
There’s another factor: in Britain at least, the big high street/mall sales are mostly phoney, not much more than the signs to lure you in, and some junk they bought cheaply for the occasion anyway.
Whereas online, top-end retailers give excellent discounts on their regular stock – and if you wait until the very end, it gets very good indeed. I’ve never seen that in a store.
The best retailers are now offering a superb delivery service, too: van tracking to the minute, more or less.
Of course, this is partly an indication of how badly the British economy is doing and a certain desperation in the air.
Online retail has been around for over 20 years and it only makes up 10 percent of retail all sales…I was watching CNN on black Friday and they had a reporter inside a Target store and it was dead. And they said “Studies say people are just shopping online” without naming the studies though. Then they said it was because people were staying at home and watching Netlfix…
There are certain kinds of retail that pretty much have to be local. Buying gasoline, for example. And buying cars is mostly local. Buying food is mostly local. Buying haircuts is local. When you look at specific categories like books, toys, and clothes, the percentage that is online is a whole lot higher. Even things like book cases can be bought online. Just have the store deliver them to your home, rather than struggle with getting them home yourself from the store. I know we ordered bookcases online from Walmart.
Bookcase? What is that?
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/21/30917948_a7bd40f2d1_b.jpg
That is true — however if you strip away 10% of a retailer’s business… that is going to have an enormous effect on their ability to survive….
They would be carrying debt that is predicated on expansion —- in fact they take on debt specifically to open new stores and improve on existing stores…. if they shrink then how do they pay that debt back?
Also if they have to cut prices and reduce profit margins to try to stem the flow of customers to online competitors —- that only compounds this problem.
Investors shun shrinking companies….
“I even think downtown retail will lose out to the internet. Some day it may be as difficult to find a retail outlet as it’s becoming to find a retail outlet.”
Until fuel and shipping is so costly it drives the expense up. I find online shipping expense to be significant now.
I was looking at spear fishing guns yesterday — price online was roughly the same for most — often a little more – than buying from a shop….
I prefer to go to the shop to have a look and get some advice vs buying online….
Typical CNN establishment spin trying to explain it ALL away with Amazon & fashion changes. Propagandist scum. They are part of the secular priesthood along with economists, pseudo experts & much of academia. They fulfill the same function as yesteryears priest class did – legitimizers of the corrupt toxic system and those at the top of it.
That said…. humans are stuuuppppid moreons… ‘Goyim’ >>>> cattle. Someone got that right!
And what do you do with cattle?
You farm them — you exploit them. And a calm well fed cow provides tastier milk … and meat….
We get exactly what we deserve. Because we are so very stuuupppid….
We are so sttuupppid that I can post admissions of this situation from the mouth’s of those who farm us… I can post evidence of the methods used to farm us…. and there will still be those who emphatically state that I am a crack pot…. a nut job…. we are not farmed! We are free!!! Then they wander off to pasture to be fed…..
What absolute disdain our farmers must have for us — they must sit about laughing at our stuuupiddity … they must crack up when we speak of freedom and democracy …. then they send us off (willingly) to the slaughter house to fight and die to ensure that their farm is not threatened.
http://www.wiwo.de/images/billionaire-investor-soros-speaks-during-an-interview-in-singapore/4435310/1-format2114.jpg
https://rasica.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/tumblr_ljv7s64myr1qazl6i.jpg
Every major monthly US government economic report – employment, GDP, inflation – is little more than a fraudulent propaganda tool used to distort reality for the dual purpose of supporting the political and monetary system – both of which are collapsing – and attempting to convince the public that the economy is in good shape.
Inflation again, we all are certain deflation is coming, but where is it?
From Zerohedge:
“Over two-thirds of the November increase in the index for final demand goods is attributable to prices for gasoline, which jumped 15.8 percent. The indexes for light motor trucks, pharmaceutical preparations, beef and veal, residential electric power, and jet fuel also moved higher. In contrast, prices for processed young chickens fell 5.7 percent. The indexes for ethanol and commercial electric power also declined.
About half of the November rise in the index for final demand services can be traced to prices for loan services (partial), which increased 3.1 percent. The indexes for traveler accommodation services; health, beauty, and optical goods retailing; food and alcohol retailing; chemicals and allied products wholesaling; and apparel, footwear, and accessories retailing also moved higher. In contrast, margins for machinery and equipment wholesaling declined 1.9 percent. The indexes for fuels and lubricants retailing and for bundled wired telecommunication access services also fell.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-12/us-producer-prices-rise-fastest-pace-6-years-payday-loan-demand-soars
I have a business trip to Chicago coming up, Renaissance is about $300/night without taxes, etc.,seems this is up from approximately $200/night ten years ago, or $10/year increase which is approx 4-5% linear increase, again somewhat consistent. I do buy chicken so that is all good news. Toothpaste sure seems expensive.
Dennis L.
Oil prices are indeed higher right now, and pulling other things with them. Coal prices have been up somewhat this year, after falling in 2015 and 2016. But relative to 2011 to 2014, prices are still down.
I agree about hotel room rates being outrageous, especially in big cities.
Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel, Chicago Is only about 150 a night You may be getting hosed Try a search for dates
On the vote in Alabama and what it means:
“What America has become is rich people screwing poor people.”
Ha ha. Leave it to Charles Barkley to tell it like it is.
Isn’t Charles Barkley one of the “rich” people now?
My wife and I have some rich friends that are progressive and don’t like the R’s always pushing policy to assist the wealthy, so good for C.B. even though he himself is rich.
College Presidents Making $1 Million Rise With Tuition and Student Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-11/college-president-salaries-rise-9-and-1-million-paydays-double
If people think certain people can make that much money while others struggle, then it’s just not going to work. Society will cave in before peak oil causes it.
Peak oil causes wage disparity (indirectly), so I think peak oil is causing the economy to cave in, already, just not in the way we were expecting.
University fundraising is the other great ‘educational’ scam: about £100k per annum here in Britain for a Director at a top institution.
Baumgarten, one of the largest European gas compressor stations currently on fire
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/violent-explosion-huge-gas-plant-11679763
“Each year about 40 billion m³ of natural gas is redistributed via the Baumgarten station to Austria and to Western, Southern and Southeastern Europe.”
According to Platts, Explosion Hits Austria’s Baumgarten Gas Hub, Russian Flows Re-Routed:
Even this probably won’t make people wake up to the realisation of just how tenuous their comfort is, and the nature of the technological system they depend on.
‘Italian gas price almost doubles to Eur45/MWh on blast’
Fragile….
If natural gas stays high in Italy, and oil is high as well (because of the Forties pipeline outage), I expect the Italian economy will be doing less well. Italy’s oil and gas consumption will drop, and the economy will act like it is in recession. Probably more debt defaults.
All seems to be fixed now, so no big Italian gas outage upcoming. Just the Forties oil pipeline problem for a few weeks.
https://www.upi.com/Energy-News/2017/12/13/European-gas-flows-back-after-fatal-Austrian-accident/2011513160895/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=7
Also, from Financial Times,
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
Brent oil up to $65.39
Over 65 bucks a barrel. It’s been headed up for quite a while now and is probably going to keep going up because of a lack of investment in exploration. I think one consideration on Big Oil’s part may be all the mandates for EV’s, like CA considering banning ICE’s and only allowing electric by 2030. Many other countries are floating or have instituted similar mandates. So what’s the incentive for expensive drilling when the price has been low with future demand probably slated to be greatly reduced?
The problem now is that the Forties Pipeline, carrying about 40% of the crude oil produced on North Sea platforms to Europe, is going to be closed for weeks.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/forties-pipeline-system-carrying-brent-crude-to-be-shut-for-weeks-1513017015
I worked in the BP 40’s (4 BP offshore oil rigs) offshore from Aberdeen, Scotland 1979-1980 for Haliburton. Got bored with Scotland and came back to California. Wow, what a relief to be back, although I did make some good friends there and enjoyed the atmosphere of the pubs, Guinness on tap, mini steak pies and the lassies. Just rather dismal there as the weather is always like Seattle and in the winter like North Dakota. Rain, wind, rain, sunny, windy, raining, sunny, cold, snowing, rain, wind…Got back to CA, sat out on a sunny back deck overlooking SF bay and sipped some awful tasting American beer with friends and family. It was so good to be home!!!
How strange. In the real estate ads for Scottish houses, the sky is always, for some reason, as blue as Spring in Mallorca……
Fake mandates. Never going to happen.
The reason we see edicts like this from the MoT (ministry of truth) is to create the perception that the future is NOW — and it is clean – and renewable.
That is of course total bullsh it.
MSM is saturated with Bitcoin stories… the Fed controls the MSM…
The MSM is used to control the masses.
What is the agenda?
Bread and circuses?
Do they at some point slam this shut — the MSM could live off of stories of collapses in wealth lost for months
And this is one collapse that would not really matter – BC is not TBTF… Americans alone lose over 100b in casinos per year — Macau would see much bigger numbers… then there are loads of other casinos in other countries that would add to the total….
So crashing BC would not be fatal — but it would definitely be ENTERTAINING!!!
https://wolfstreet.com/2017/12/11/peak-bitcoin-media-mania-yet/
I always find it amusing that people wring their hands over inequality, poverty, food banks, etc, and demand that government do more, while private citizens blow such fantastically huge sums in gambling.
Each and every one is perfectly free to direct their money to good causes, but they don’t.
Yes, it’s always “they” that have to fix things.
My sister-in-law was on a visit recently. She has become a bit overweight due to an unhealthy lifestyle. She had been seeing many nutrition physiologists, personal training instructors and even talking to surgeons about getting surgery to “shrink” her stomach. Surgeons turned her down since she is not really that obese.
She was complaining about how nobody helped her, everybody just told her to eat healthy and exercise…
All I want is a fkxkz pill!
And then we have green groupies who strive to get that higher salary … and cry if their bonus is not big enough …. because they wanted to buy more ‘stuff’ (like a Tesla with its 1200lb toxic battery?)
MORE ons unlimited.
Or maybe they want to have the cash to take an extra long haul trip — first class of course…. (and they would be aghast if they found out you didn’t recycle a tin can!)
FE You would love the Antarctic ecologist who lives over the road from me: multi-car household, just built a huge extension to the house, etc……
Antarctica is a place that we can drop out of the world economy without too much loss.
Humans are such ridiculous animals….. there needs to be a reality show for this sort of thing…. something like Candid Camera …. where the green groopies is filmed in secret — lecturing or complaining about burning fossil fuels… then filmed using enormous amounts of coal and oil….
Al Gore could be the first person featured…..
Well We give in time and food. Canada does not have food stamps it is up to the people to give and they do. In my city we have an all you can eat free meal every day and food banks that are private.
We rotate our food through food banks and old folks housing. Do not even get a tax break for this
when crossing the border between usa and canada i can never figure out how attitudes change across just a footstep
The population in colder areas is still more sustainable thant the population in warm areas, as the food production in the colder areas is limited by lower light and heat – Africa is a testimony of this.
I took a few minutes skipping to the parts of this that try to explain what Bitcoin is…. and I remain convinced … Bitcoin is a steaming pile of dung … I am absolutely no clearer as to the purpose of it… sweeping statements with no meat on the bones…
This is just another symptom of the global insanity that we are experiencing — right up there with Tesla… and solar panels….
If the CBs wanted this dead – they could kill it in the time it takes to issue a statement making it illegal…
Of how about run a cruise missile into one of the server farms that ‘mine’ this nonsense?
For f789 sake — the Fed murdered 500k children in Iraq…. and they are just going to stand by and watch some clowns usurp their power to print the reserve currency and control the world?
Uh – and if it were something they thought might be useful – why would the Fed not just issue Fedcoin… and outlaw trade in all others
People need to give their head’s a shake. Or just go on being MORE ons.
The only question I have is if the CBs wanted it dead it would already be dead — so why are they tolerating this?
It helps create positive “news{ stories that help to mislead and distract people away from our current Great Depression 2.0…
https://uldissprogis.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/titillate.jpg
Just like page 3 of the Sun in the good old days before the flat-chested brigade closed it down.
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/01/No-More-Page-3.jpg
Really? So no more sexy girls?
That’s the only reason to buy MSM…. but then I would expect that all the featured girls would have fake booooobs…. fake news fake booooobs fake everything
“We’ve seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin. … People do credit cards, equity lines,” said Borg, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, a voluntary organization devoted to investor protection. Borg is also director of the Alabama Securities Commission.
Speaking to CNBC later in the day, Dimon said he’s skeptical governments will allow a currency to exist without state oversight: “Someone’s going to get killed and then the government’s going to come down,” he said. “You just saw in China, governments like to control their money supply.”
“You’re wasting your time with Bitcoin! Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” said Dimon. “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.”
“Blockchain is like any other technology. If it is cheaper, effective, works, and secure, then we are going to use it. The technology will be used, and it could be used to transport currency, but it will be dollars, not bitcoins.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-11/its-mania-phase-securities-regulator-warns-mortgages-are-being-taken-out-buy-bitcoin
So let me get this straight… blockchain is a secure method of transferring cash … kinda like when I transfer $1000 from my HSBC account to someone else’s account at another bank. But now I don’t need to pay the banks any fees to do this if I use block chain.
But the transfer would only be permitted if I used Bitcoin.
So why are people speculating on Bitcoin? Just because it is meant to be used instead of other currencies — why would it be increasing 40% per month?
And why could someone not just blockchain to allow me to transfer NZD or HKD or USD or CDN? At whatever the daily exchange rate is for any conversion?
And why is the MSM not asking similar questions?
http://www.urbangardensweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/tulips-1_614.png
I think bitcoin was an interesting concept to create a token of exchange that does not require a third party to verify or validate trust in the transaction occurring. However basing the mining on exponential growth of electricity use shows complete ignorance of our energy situation. Ialso agree FE that the CBs can smash bitcoin on the rocks of history at anytime. At any point all of the elements that are attractive to people regarding bitcoin can be taken away – such as making it illegal, full reporting by exchanges or just buying and selling on huge levels as to destroy confidence in it stability as a store of value. There is no way in hell that the FED will let there be a competitor to dollar INC. I think there is money to be made short term but at a certain point bitcoin will trip itself over and fortunes will be lost. Good luck to those that have invested already. I have a friend who bought 10 coins at $5 each and is cashing in now at $20000 each. good for him.
There are really only two ways Bitcoin is useful:
1. Swap it for a legal tender and buy stuff
2. Buy stuff where sellers accept Bitcoin
Question 1: Do the Central banks have control over #1? – Mostly yes.
Question 2: Do they have control over #2? Not directly.
Of course both could be declared illegal by lawmakers. And lawmakers are heavily influenced by the Central Banks.
One would want to be taking some cash off the table … I’ve got a mate who believes … he bought initially at under 1000… but is still buying….
Personally… I’d go this route…. (but then maybe BC goes to 50k)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HiUpBJVc-Fk/maxresdefault.jpg
It just occurred to me — might BC not be another form of pumping up GDP numbers? Coke and hooker transactions are now counted… why not BC trades….
If Bit Coin is being used by the Chinese to buy overpriced homes in Australia, it is already going into world GDP numbers. It acts like more debt.
Bitcoin stories are great for the mainstream media. They can tell viewers that by investing in Bitcoin they will be sticking it to those evil banks at the same time as they are getting rich with barely any effort. Bitcoin offers an example of advancing technology that the “news” media can present as evidence of a clear trend toward a bright new more equal future. From what I have noticed, most people don’t bother to reason through such promises of a golden future.
People have grown so accustomed to, and become so dependent upon, growth and progress, that they will lap up the positives and vehemently deny any possibility of the negatives.
All the news media are doing is surviving by telling people exactly what they want, need, and expect to hear.
You do not understand block-chain and the tie in to AI…It is bad but you can make money off it…Same as Tesla..Let the morons invest in the likes of Nortel and GE..
This is not investing …. it is like going to Macau — dumping money on a a red number.. the wheel spins…. you have a tiny chance of turning 10k into 100k…. but you do have a chance…
The number of cryptocurrencies available over the internet as of 27 November 2017 is over 1324 and growing. A new cryptocurrency can be created at any time. By market capitalization, Bitcoin is currently (2017-08-19) the largest blockchain network, followed by Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple and Litecoin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies
How do you determine which would be the red one? On what fundamental basis? Oh right — luck. Like a monkey shooting a dart at a board with 1324 dots on it — you buy the one he hits – and hope.
This is a f789ing joke. And yes Tesla is a f789ing joke. AI is a f789ing joke.
And for those who hit the jackpot — congratulations – I highly recommend spending the winnings quickly.
Complete and utter scam, chock full of scambags.
http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2017/11/hive-you-must-read-this-link.html
I lived in Shanghai for about a year — the lady who came to clean my place a few days per week was riding one of the many stock market bubbles at that time — she was putting all her money in – she was urging me to ‘get rich’ too!!! The market of course crashed — and she was wounded badly….
She has no doubt bought BC — and is holding it believing 100k or more is imminent….
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/12/12/bitcoin_price_growth_reportedly_driven_by_individual_investors_in_south.html
Chinese investors have various bad choices. One of them is to buy a condo with their money. Another is over-priced stocks. Another is bit coin. Bit coin can perhaps be used to buy property outside of China–hence its attraction.
It is only a guess and I am far less knowledgeable than you, but it seems CB’s allow a skim as well as needed liquidity for smooth functioning. Assets do not all depreciate at the same rate, sometimes they go to zero at the same time resulting in lack of cash flow which can be papered over by the CB. Perhaps people are protesting and trying to avoid the skim. Maybe the cost of the skim became greater than the benefits for many people.
Dennis L.
Santa Rosa fires — shades of Nine Eleven?
https://youtu.be/fQy5CDDzhoc
https://imgur.com/a/7pp1q
come on, this so silly.
I admit, that was my initial default reaction too. But then I remembered Keith was evangelizing about the desirability of constructing space-based solar power beamed down to earth as microwave energy, and I so I put on a fresh double-thick sheet of aluminum foil to shield myself from the mind-control rays, and I began pondering whether the US ultra deep state had the means, the motive and the opportunity to have already built this sort of stuff clandestinely.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/yy-450×345.png
Wow! These are some very strange coincidences. A person wonders what 500 trillion watt lasers are being used for. (Shouldn’t there be some favorable uses for 500 trillion watt lasers?)
A 500 watt laser has been around since 2012:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/07/17/156909755/u-s-laboratory-breaks-laser-record-delivering-500-trillion-watt-beam
https://lasers.llnl.gov
I don’t know where the facility is located, but Livermore, California is up by San Francisco, inland a ways.
A Japanese laser is even bigger:
https://theconversation.com/worlds-most-powerful-laser-is-2-000-trillion-watts-but-whats-it-for-45891
I was going to list all the things that are real, but are denied by millions and all the things that are not real but are believed by millions to be completely true. Then, I realized that it is an impossible task – there are so many examples that it boggles the mind.
If anyone tires of explaining peak affordable oil as the inevitable demise of this society, you can simply start pointing to peak stupidity. No society can long survive if its people (including elected officials) are unable to understand the basics of how the society functions, or what the threats to that society are. In point of fact, our society is so dumbed down, that most people cannot even read and comprehend what they are reading.
To entertain Master Fast, I will list a few facts that are widely not understood:
0. The Tverbergian Collapse is a distinct possibility if something else doesn’t end society first.
1. Nothing anyone does or can do – short of placing a nuclear device in the pond – will cause a nuclear explosion at a spent fuel pond. Therefore, the effects of any problems at a spent fuel pond are – while nasty – localized on land to within a 100 mile radius. (I don’t eat fish, except as a special treat.)
2. AGW does exist, and it already is having a profound effect on the ecosystem, and this society. At some point well before the end of the century it will end the human race as we know it – or snuff it out – unless something else ends society first.
3. While throwing billions at physicists as Reagan did during the “Star Wars Initiative” will cause the invention of incredibly powerful lasers, there is no-one in the US that uses those lasers to start fires in Los Angeles. And, obviously, those lasers will never be used for strategic defense.
4. There is no-one in control of this society. There are people that have influence, but they are just as dumbed down as the average person, and so their influence is frequently and inadvertently used to cancel out someone else’s influence. Thus, bitcoin.
5. “Chem-trails” do not exist. The best argument I have ever heard, for them came from a true believer who said, “… and it could be way worse than I am saying because there isn’t any proof for any of it!”.
The list could go on … and on and on.
1. Nothing anyone does or can do – short of placing a nuclear device in the pond – will cause a nuclear explosion at a spent fuel pond. Therefore, the effects of any problems at a spent fuel pond are – while nasty – localized on land to within a 100 mile radius. (I don’t eat fish, except as a special treat.)
You really must meet my good friend Google … there is this really cool image function …. you type in How Far Did Chernobyl Reach … and you get
https://www.farlabs.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Chernobyl_Disaster_Zones.png
You can also get this from an All search
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2945929/Chernobyl-s-nuclear-threat-revived-Forest-fires-Ukraine-cause-radioactive-particles-released-Europe.html
And
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/
Now keep in mind TWO THINGS:
1. Chernobyl did NOT involve spent fuel ponds – and as we know – spent fuel ponds contain tonnes of spent fuel — as opposed to reactors which contain relatively little spent fuel
Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies. One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
2. Chernobyl was quickly contained — remember the video of the helicopters dumping cement on the reactors?
4000 spent fuel ponds — each one exponentially more toxic than a reactor.
Sorry to inform you — but the facts do not support your ridiculous assertion.
So, are you saying that everyone in Spain died just after Chernobyl? Really? Or are you saying that nuclear particles are very very easy to measure even in the parts per trillion or parts per quadrillion range? Do you understand the distinction?
Are you saying that Chernobyl was an example of a power plant exploding like a bomb? My “ridiculous assertion” was that spent fuel ponds cannot be the cause of a nuclear explosion. I will be even more ridiculous – you heard it here first folks – a power plant cannot be the cause of a nuclear explosion.
What I am explaining is that Chernobyl was entombed in cement — if it were not entombed then yes — people in Spain and around Europe would have been exposed to radiation that would have spewed from that plant for decades.
What I am explaining is that Chernobyl – even if it was not entombed — and was allowed to spew radiation for decades…. would not come remotely close to causing the amount of death and misery that a single spent fuel pond left to boil out of control would….
Did you notice the quote ‘one fuel pond has 700 spent fuel assemblies vs 1 assembly per reactor’
So – 700 Chernobyls gets released — for decades.
This really is not difficult stuff… for normal people.
But I recognize that you live in DelusiSTAN… where 1+1=4…..
Let me know how I can help you overcome your impediment.
As you know – I am here to help.
In the meantime I have called my dog over — I will see if I can explain this to her…. if she gets it then I am hopeful that if I use a similar strategy I can make a break through with a DelusiSTANI.
It’s all about what perspective you have. Pintada believes glowball wurming will do us in, that is some people may vanish due to crop loss and starvation. This is somewhat “mitigatable”.
But if one of these spent fuel ponds go unattended, you get radiation-spewing fires that nobody is there to put out. And then there are 4000 or so more of these ticking time bombs… No mitigation except moving to Mars…
http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png
Thanks for that ^ jupiviv. Too bad many on here can’t read and understand it.
I love you Fast….but you are wrong the about SPF in Japan…humor me and go back and look. One of your strong points is admiring that your were wrong.
I am not wrong about Japan.
The spent fuel ponds remain intact at Fukushima — I understand that there are cracks in the containment — that have not been repaired (?) – hence the fear of another large earthquake in the region.
If the spent fuel pond(s) were to collapse we would be facing ‘The Devil’s Scenario’
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.”
Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse.
They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
Spent fuel accumulating at U.S. nuclear reactor plants is also vulnerable, the report warns. A major spent fuel fire at a U.S. nuclear plant “could dwarf the horrific consequences of the Fukushima accident,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., who was not on the panel.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
I might add the the Fukushima accident was not particularly ‘horrific’ — although they have been unable to entomb the reactor cores as they did at Chernobyl — they have been able to pour water on them to keep them under control…..
Yes radiation continues to drain into the ocean and surrounding land … but that is nothing compared to what would have happened (and will happen) if those pumps were not in play.
And that involves ONLY the reactor fuel.
When the spent fuel ponds go – post BAU — the entire population of Japan will die. That is GUARANTEED.
Keep in mind — this is only ONE facility — and that would release enough radiation to kill everyone.
http://www.nucleartourist.com/world/japan.jpg
2. AGW does exist, and it already is having a profound effect on the ecosystem, and this society. At some point well before the end of the century it will end the human race as we know it – or snuff it out – unless something else ends society first.
Funny – I distinctly recall that by now the impact of gggwwww would be catastrophic…. I see no catastrophe…. oh right … in 20 more years… or is it 50… or a 100?…. always tomorrow — you know how it is … such things are difficult to predict… and when the warrrming doesn’t happen you even change the tag line to kkklllimate ccchange…. sounds better! Need to try to maintain a bit of logic here… people are stuuuuupid … but not THAT stuuuupppid. They won’t buy warming when it is not getting warmer.
There is no-one in control of this society. There are people that have influence, but they are just as dumbed down as the average person, and so their influence is frequently and inadvertently used to cancel out someone else’s influence.
I have asked before — can you point me to evidence of a vote in congress or the senate — where the reps of the people voted on the tens of trillions of dollars of stimulus that have been released?
I remember Tarp — 700B was it? But what about the trillions that followed?
And can you show me the vote where the reps authorized someone to buy up the stock market with tax payer money?
I can’t find it. I need your help.
Master Fast was indeed entertained. But my point remains … well it has actually been greatly bolstered. Thanks.
If anyone ever had any doubts about how things work in DelusiSTAN…. pay close attention to that last post….
It is like being told 1+1+ 4 …. the proving to that person that no – 1+1=2…
And that person thanking you for confirming that 1+1=4.
It is impossible for the rest of us to understand the logic of a DelusiSTANI…. the only way we could maybe… and that is a very big MAYBE…. would be if we were to take 10 tabs of LSD per day for 15 years and 6 months….. supplemented by 5 electric shock treatments per day …. and 4 punches to the head by Mike Tyson … then finally at the end of the 15 and and a half years — open the head and if there are any functioning parts remaining …. pour Round Up and Tordon on them…. then splash a bit of water that has been treated with a few grams of spent fuel….
And just MAYBE…. one might then acknowledge that 1+1=4…
We’ll make DelusiSTANIS out of all of you yet!
So, now to my point. (Note that if you believe that Master Fast has a dead lock on the issues discussed above, the point is still made.)
As a society, we have lost the ability to tell fact from fiction – the obvious from the absurd. Maybe the idea that we now have more information than we can assimilate is true, or possibly we always were a cursed stubborn species that simply cannot admit when we are wrong. Either way …
One of us is wrong about those issues. Can you tell which – honestly?
I know I can!
What’s 1+1?
We shall see if I am making any progress with trying to train a DelusiTANI to recognize simple logic
Remember the last time you got tricked into defending your belief in the possibility of Tverbergian Collapse? You gave your facts, and your audience laughed, and then started shouting and then out came the pitchforks, name calling, threats?
People believe the things – sometimes profoundly bizarre and/or grossly oversimplified things – that they can wrap their heads around and they will not ever change their minds. That is what we are stubborn monkeys.
But, we live in a complex, quickly changing world. And that change is accelerating! I do not think our little monkey brains can keep up. The risk from that is pretty clearly as bad or worse than any of the other risks that we can understand.
BTW: I am right about AGW, spent fuel ponds, and of course about no-one being in control. No amount of name calling, use of caps, or verbiage can change that.
FE wins.
That’s 1-0.
And we know the Gail has deep concerns about the ponds — so that’s a top corner goal increasing the lead to 2-0.
Would taking a vote be too cruel?
Would that truly put Pintada over the edge?
I sense he is teetering between Total Insanity and Delusion ….
A great demonstration by Pintada of the amazing polemical talents of OFW’s venerable short bus cadre.
http://poster.keepcalmandposters.com/6051643.jpg
Of the World.
And I dedicate this song … to Fast Eddy….
https://images.8tracks.com/cover/i/000/811/105/190699365441793104VJJvTYi4c-941.jpg
Yes of course you are right …. but you need to keep calm… very calm…. yes that is better… oh look — is that a polar bear? — over there ….
Ok boys – quickly!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Straitjacket-rear.jpg/1200px-Straitjacket-rear.jpg
Time to go home now Pintada… home is good .. no? You like home…. so soothing… nobody to mock you …nobody to ask what 1+1 =….. where there are no spent fuel ponds…. and no starving bears…. shall we sing a song? Yes let’s sing … Imagine … that’s your favourite!
http://friendlyfindingaid.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/LaCrosse_County_Insane_Asylum_Special_Collections_Murphy_edit-500×312.jpg
Now who the hell let this guy out? I gave strict orders… he is not to be allowed past the gate – for any reason.
Yes Sir! Sir!
0. The Tverbergian Collapse is a distinct possibility if something else doesn’t end society first.
Agreed. But to come to that conclusion, one has to buck the establishment consensus among economists and the general social conditioning that tells people we can continue to have growth and improved living standards indefinitely. Since you can see through that bunkum, I’m amazed you can’t see through the CAGW flim-flam.
1. Nothing anyone does or can do – short of placing a nuclear device in the pond – will cause a nuclear explosion at a spent fuel pond.
It doesn’t require a nuclear explosion to release radioactivity, so as a rebuke to Eddy’s scenario, your point is a red herring. All that’s needed enough reasonably fresh fuel in a dry pond and it will get hot enough to melt the cladding and begin releasing radioactivity into the air, and enough radioactive material could blow on the wind to have nasty results downwind. And everywhere is potentially downwind.
2. AGW does exist, and it already is having a profound effect on the ecosystem, and this society. At some point well before the end of the century it will end the human race as we know it – or snuff it out – unless something else ends society first.
AGW may exist as something more than a political and social construct, although proving that it does is is going to take more than adjustments historical records that cool the past to make the present appear warmer by comparison, or tear-jerking videos of dying polar bears. As for it being a destroyer of the human race, well, the human race has survived plenty of climatic variation in its time.
3. While throwing billions at physicists as Reagan did during the “Star Wars Initiative” will cause the invention of incredibly powerful lasers, there is no-one in the US that uses those lasers to start fires in Los Angeles. And, obviously, those lasers will never be used for strategic defense.
The problem with classified technology is one never knows. Obviously, if those lasers were being used for some secret purpose, the people using them wouldn’t be publicly announcing the fact. So when you claim no-one is using them to start fires or for strategic defense, you are stepping outside your area of knowledge.
4. There is no-one in control of this society. There are people that have influence, but they are just as dumbed down as the average person, and so their influence is frequently and inadvertently used to cancel out someone else’s influence. Thus, bitcoin.
As a theory of human society, I find your hypothesis commendable but not convincing. As with the theory that there is on-one in control of the Universe, I remain agnostic while eagerly awaiting further data.
5. “Chem-trails” do not exist. The best argument I have ever heard, for them came from a true believer who said, “… and it could be way worse than I am saying because there isn’t any proof for any of it!”.
Nobody around here ever said they did as far as I can remember. But again, the absolutism of your assertion in the absence of verifiable facts says more about your mindset than it does about chemtrails, or AGW, or lasers, or the control of society.
The illusion of knowledge is so much more comforting than the possession of actual knowledge itself, or as Daniel Boorstin said, “the greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”
“It doesn’t require a nuclear explosion to release radioactivity, so as a rebuke to Eddy’s scenario, your point is a red herring. All that’s needed enough reasonably fresh fuel in a dry pond and it will get hot enough to melt the cladding and begin releasing radioactivity into the air, and enough radioactive material could blow on the wind to have nasty results downwind. And everywhere is potentially downwind.”
No, your response to Pintada is a red herring. And a textbook one at that! If you can’t guess why then ipso facto you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Fascinating how you can sound like a hippie anti-nuclear protestor *and* a right-wing AGW denier in the same sentence. I guess you pick ’em up wherever you find ’em.
No, the meat and vegetables of your response to my response is not worth the effort of replying to. Although just to set the record straight, I consider myself pro-nuclear power and when I hear the denier slur (with its clear associations to Holocaust denial, not to mention it’s earlier associations with Christian dogma) thrown about by people who seem to think it’s a scientific term, I really can’t help giggling—not at what’s said but at the people like you who are saying it.
But unlike you, I’m just not that into shooting off argumentum ad hominem attacks at anonymous people on the Internet just because they fail to share my opinions on topics they know little about. For me, it’s like angling or golf—not a sport I would want to spend any amount of time doing.
But I do think you and your fellow advocates picked up a nasty habit when you plumped for the denial label. As Jo Nova wrote a few years back:
There are many people who have so little respect for the ghastly suffering of Auschwitz, that they are more than happy to milk it shamelessly to score points in a science debate that they can’t win fairly.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/03/climate-change-denial-and-the-holocaust-allusion/
But if you feel the need to sink that low, be my guest. As I said, it amuses me that you lot think calling someone who disagrees with your opinions on scientific matters “a denier” is a valid scientific practice that will earn you brownie points in decent society and stand as a rebuttal so that you don’t have to address any of the salient scientific points.
You lot have lost your debate—not with us “deniers” but with nature. If the world had truly warmed as much as was being forecast, if the ice had melted away as much as was being predicted, if the sea level had risen as much as was being projected in the alarmist media over the past 25 years, then no sane person would deny it and nobody would be able to deny it without being ridiculed. But as it happens, none of these things have happened and—dodgy measurements and biased interpretations of data notwithstanding—planet earth is not noticeably warmer now than it was 25 years ago. And you’re welcome to deny that fact if you like.
“Although just to set the record straight, I consider myself pro-nuclear power”
Even though you believe spent fuel pond radiation will go ‘downwind’, which apparently ‘everywhere’ is, in the event of collapse, which you also believe will happen.
You, FE and the rest of the BAU-or-bust club strike this impartial pose – having seemingly bipartisan and edgy stances on issues – to feel good about how insightful and objective you are. The reality is that anyone with a modicum of actual expertise or understanding can see through it.
BAU or Bust Club… that has a nice ring to it! I’ve never been a member of a club….
Did I mention that I am the world champion? You are welcome to sycophant me.
We haven’t lost electric power to keep the spent fuel pools cool. We really don’t know for certain how this will turn out. I find it difficult to believe, “The reality is that anyone with a modicum of actual expertise or understanding can see through it.” Fukushima was (and still is) a major problem. They were worried about the possible need to evacuate Tokyo. There are topics where the science is less than settled. Many parts of the world are requiring a whole lot more safety equipment for nuclear electric, pushing costs through the roof, and thus making nuclear not feasible. Others are phasing out existing nuclear power plants, despite the lack of reasonable low carbon generation.
Even though you believe spent fuel pond radiation will go ‘downwind’, which apparently ‘everywhere’ is, in the event of collapse, which you also believe will happen.
Is that a contradiction?
It may seems so because you are conflating my views with Eddy’s on the inevitability of spent fuel pools not being safely secured following the collapse.
My proposal for school children in local communities everywhere to sponsor a spent fuel rod so that every small- and medium-sized town will have its own heated swimming pool and a radium spa resort powered by its very own hot rod. In order to achieve this goal, a IAEA-backed “Spare The Rod, Spoil the Children” project needs to be in place before collapse.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/29/pool_danger.png
This is good. I like it.
I will have Fast Eddy Industries immediately start working on thermos flasks that will conveniently hold one spent fuel rod so that the children can transport their rods safely.
Gosh Jup, I can’t make sense of what you wrote.
I gather that you think that burning fuel rods will not emit radiation. I have yet to see anything that burns that doesn’t emits particulates.
“I gather that you think that burning fuel rods will not emit radiation.”
You can gather all the red herrings you want, but it won’t change the fact that spent fuel rods won’t be remotely close to killing ‘everyone’ under any circumstances.
So perhaps you could explain why — when it was thought that ONE of the Fukushima fuel ponds was going to bust open …. the Japanese government was putting a plan in place to evacuate Tokyo — a city over 200km away….
Obviously that evacuation plan would have to include much of the country — radiation does not magically stop at Tokyo….
ONE pond.
There are 54 nuclear reactors in Japan. And each would have multiple spent fuel ponds.
There are 4000+ spent fuel ponds around the world.
If unmanaged they spew for years and years and years……
Just because you cannot believe this is an extinction event …. does not mean that it is not.
You do realize that?
Or perhaps you believe that if you wish upon a star that your delusion will come true?
ipso fukto…. purple herring…. yabba … dabba… doo!!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/world/asia/china-north-korea-border.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
I can see a couple of slants to this:
(1) China definitely does not want thousands of North Koreans flocking to its cities, especially Beijing and Shanghai. It cannot provide services for the migrant farmers there now.
(2) China needs jobs for its people, and demand for its products. Building refugee camps is a perfectly legitimate way of putting Chinese people to work and increasing demand. It will also increase GDP.
That said …. this could dramatically increase the demand for free PBOC sponsored apartments…. and that would drive GDP to new heights.
Open the Gates! Open the Gates!!
http://www.repstatic.it/content/localirep/img/rep-milano/2015/05/05/122749255-2cc7358b-7364-4b3e-b39c-ab018eb60d3a.jpg
record high polar bear population…
but it seems that ONE is dying…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dying-polar-bear-roams-iceless-184753367.html
what will happen to the other 24,999?
Sorry Dave it ain’t so
It is difficult to estimate a global population of polar bears as much of the range has been poorly studied; however, biologists use a working estimate of about 20–25,000 or 22–31,000 polar bears worldwide.
Its just a quesstimation …
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear
Because of expected habitat loss caused by climate change, the polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species, and at least three of the nineteen polar bear subpopulations are currently in decline.[8] However, at least two of the nineteen subpopulations are currently increasing, while another six are considered stable.[9] For decades, large-scale hunting raised international concern for the future of the species, but populations rebounded after controls and quotas began to take effect.[10] For thousands of years, the polar bear has been a key figure in the material, spiritual, and cultural life of circumpolar peoples, and polar bears remain important in their cultures. Historically, the polar bear has also been known as the white bear.
Still, we humans really aren’t to give these bears any real help.
They will die. They will all die. It’s the fate of all mammals, even those adopted as poster children by the WWF.
To paraphrase Tolstoy’s last words: How do polar bears die? To read the responses of some of our posters to the latest dying bear linked to CC story, one can only suppose that they are under the impression that in a pristine world untainted by human evil, these noble creatures would die in their dens at a ripe old age surrounded by their loved ones, or else in a bear hospice where they would receive basic nursing care in order to ease the burden of their dying bodies. Obviously these gentle and naive souls are unfamiliar with the realities of life on the tundra. They have also failed to realize that starvation is one of nature’s ways of dealing with creatures that are so successful that they begin to overpopulate their environment.
Proper scientist and polar bear researcher Susan Crockford provides much food for thought on this subject.
https://polarbearscience.com/2017/12/09/one-starving-bear-is-not-evidence-of-climate-change-despite-gruesome-photos/
I thought this was interesting though:
“A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.
“”It was a completely unique situation,” said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. “We were all gobsmacked, to be honest.”
https://phys.org/news/2017-11-polar-crowd-russian-island-arctic.html
Oh come on — that’s fake news! That’s a zoo!!!!
Or maybe that’s all staged by Rosneft….. they lured those bears out of starvation with fish and seal meat… fattened them up for a few weeks — then took those photos….
Fight PR fire with PR fire!
http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/polar-bear-MAIN2.jpg
Right Pintada? Do you not also see the hand of Don Draper in all of this — Big Oil has loads of money — how much might his fakery cost? Peanuts to the Russian oil boys…. they would spend more on their mistresses in a day at the shops….
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card
Polar bears will not survive AGW, and neither will humanity. That does not mean – or even imply – that there are fewer people on the planet. To say it does so is either a weak rhetorical trick, or a sign of stup(*ty.
Let’s calm down … no need for these hysterics… the polar bears will be fine
Cckcccliiiimate countdown: Half a trillion tonnes of ccccarbon left to burn
To avoid dangerous cccccliiimate chhhhange of 2C, the world can only burn another half a trillion tonnes of caaaarbon, clkimate chaaange experts warn
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
The EXPERTS have spoken! Thus spake the EXPERTS
The polar bear population is booming….upwards past 25,000…..maybe more….
Hard to tell….humans will be threaten by their ever increasing numbers…
This is an outrage humanconsumptionians can not tolerate and stop. As the top predators
In the food chain it is our solemn place and destiny to bear down on them.
It matters not we alter the composition of the atmosphere, landmass, or seas….
After the winner takes all, the losers ….bite the dust
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIbCvfkO3E
We are something…any fabrication works for me
Can we get some sad PR photos of fish?
We seldom see images like that …. because we don’t want people to get alarmed by the fact that we have are killing off entire species of fish….
Nope. Truth not allowed.
Focus on the starving polar bear – that ties in nicely with the other fake story …. the one about gg wwww.
Cheer up! It might never happen.
https://youtu.be/E3nBKIf4ENk
The KLIMATE EXPERTS say we have half a trillion tonnes of carbon to burn before the danger starts…
The polar bears will be just fine.
Sure, Eddie, after AOL you are the Expert of Experts.
The ggwww grooopies are fond of quoting their bible… The Guardian .. on all matters ggg www (and green)…
So shall we?
The world has already burned half the fossil fuels necessary to bring about a catastrophic 2C rise in average global temmmmperature, scientists revealed today.
The experts say about half a trillion tonnes of carbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution.
To prevent a 2C rise, they say, the total burnt must be kept to below a trillion tonnes. On current rates, that figure will be reached in 40 years.
Myles Allen, a climate expert at Oxford University who led the new study, said: “Mother Nature doesn’t care about dates. To avoid dangerous kkklimate change we will have to limit the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year.”
Writing in today’s Nature, Allen and colleagues say a trillion tonnes of carbon burnt would be likely to produce a wwwarming of between 1.6C and 2.6C, with a “most likely” 2C rise.
A separate study, also published today in Nature, led by Malte Meinshausen at the Potsdam Institute, use a similar approach and sets a different carbon budget. They say the world can only emit 190bn tonnes of carbon between now and 2050 if it aims for a 2C rise. Emissions over 310bn tonnes in that time lead to a 50% chance of going over 2C.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
There is absolutely nothing we can do about it, so who cares?
The gggggggwww grooopies are fond of quoting their bible… The Guardian .. on all matters ggg www (and greeen)…
So shall we?
The world has already burned half the fosssssil fuels necessary to bring about a catastrophic 2C rise in average glooooooobal temmmmperature, scientists revealed today.
The experts say about half a trillion tonnes of carrrbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution.
To prevent a 2C rise, they say, the total burnt must be kept to below a trillion tonnes. On current rates, that figure will be reached in 40 years.
Myles Allen, a kkkkkkklimate expert at Oxford University who led the new study, said: “Mother Nature doesn’t care about dates. To avoid dangerous kkklimate change we will have to limit the total amount of ccccarbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emiiission rate in any given year.”
Writing in today’s Nature, Allen and colleagues say a trillion tonnes of cccarbon burnt would be likely to produce a wwwaaaarming of between 1.6C and 2.6C, with a “most likely” 2C rise.
A separate study, also published today in Nature, led by Malte Meinshausen at the Potsdam Institute, use a similar approach and sets a different carbon budget. They say the world can only emit 190bn tonnes of ccccarbon between now and 2050 if it aims for a 2C rise. Emissions over 310bn tonnes in that time lead to a 50% chance of going over 2C.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
http://www.dallascowboys.com/sites/dallascowboys.com/files/styles/borealis_no_limit_respondsmall/public/embedded-photos/irvin.gif
And one more for good measure – because I feel so happy… so thrilled …. with WINNING… that I MUST rub it in!
https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ba-dum-tss-gif-4.gif
What’s that? Encore?
You want more?
I give you more!
https://media.giphy.com/media/NZWtySLTtEf1m/giphy.gif
Touchie, touchie…seemed to hit a expert nerve.
Did I mention that I am … the world champion?
I have changed my mind. I need two jets.
World “champion”? No, you didn’t mention of “what”. If I post “of what”, it certainly would not past my “moderation”, which seems is ongoing here.
Glad you have such a high opinion of yourself, being a world champion of all “experts” is by far a title in which you deserve all what you get,
Fast Eddy World Champion…. nice ring to it … no?
Want an autograph?
Polar bears are doing well ….The one my cat is sleeping on may be dead tho.
We even have jails for them
send Americans back to the moon…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-tells-nasa-send-americans-moon-213556279.html
so we can prepare to send Americans to Mars!
aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggg…
BAU tonight, baby!
With what? We got rid of our shuttles awhile ago…
Doesn’t Elon have a rocket that can do this?
Of course. And he can bring one of his carz up like nasa didn’t. Page 7 shows how
to unpack it, in case he’s confused.
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/LRV_OpsNAS8-25145Pt4.pdf
Someone on reddit sent me this message
“Dennis Meadows built the limits to growth models to collapse because he wanted it to happen. I can build a computer program anyway I want as well”
Ask him to point out the bug in the code or the wrong assumption in the model.
If the model are correct and the code implements the model then the result must be correct.
They even assumed double that, half this and unlimited other to make sure they hadnt just selected values just out of range.
Along with hundreds of other iterations tested in the W3 computer model, Meadows et al ran a double resource run, which assumed we literally had access to another Earth. Yet due to the corrosive effect of exponential growth, this would only buy us another 20 years, according to the results.
https://i2.wp.com/www.ecoglobe.ch/images/ltg-kimble-double-resources-available.jpg
It is interesting to note the doubling of resources changes the shape of the collapse curve from a more symmetrical bell to a more steep “Seneca” cliff collapse. I think that is where we are ultimately headed because everything will be thrown at the infinite growth model until it just collapses.
On the matter of whether military spending is stimulative to an industrial economy. WW2 is regarded as a case of America being pulled out of the Great Depression by stimulative war spending.
Britain fought right alongside the US but their economy was not stimulated- in fact Britain lost most of it’s colonies after the war.
US entering WW2-
*US went from Great Depression the 30s to full mobilization against the axis in the early 40s
* industrial plant was largely rebuilt in the 20s and was in good shape going into 40s
* had massive high quality domestic oil & coal & steel reserves
* had an industrial workforce nearly ready to go
* was safe from invasion by sea.
*Aerial bombing was not a threat to US homeland. The best 4-engine bombers could not effectively attack the US over ocean spaces.
After WW2-
*world manufacturing plant was largely destroyed
*US manufacturing plant much larger than before the war
*US war dead only 250,000 while Germay had 4.4 Million dead, Russia 20 Million
*mainland US was untouched by the war
*fears of return to low demand GD spending patterns
*post war boosts to US domestic economy re GI Bill, Housing, Education
*US Economy- Up Up Away
*Lots and lots of manufacturing orders from around the world to US plants
But UK WW2 war spending did NOT stimulate the UK economy
Britain 1947: Poverty, queues, rationing – and resilience
Britain was a nation in desperate need of cheering up – getting out the bunting, having a knees-up – in 1947, the year that the smiling, 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth married her Prince Charming.
The country was beset by the gloom of winning a war heroically and then having to settle for a peacetime that was drab, impoverished and anything but glorious.
The fighting spirit that had kept the country battling on from 1939 to 1945 was all but gone two years later, drained away for most people via a lack of everything: food, adequate housing, money and prospects.
The only things in abundance were rationing coupons – for meat, butter, lard, margarine, sugar, tea, cheese, soap, clothing, petrol, sweets… the list was endless.
After years of war, continued rationing was a terrible blow. Even when you did get your hands on a prized morsel, it was rarely a delicacy worth eating.
In her diary, another housewife summed up her miserable dinner: two sausages which tasted like wet bread with sage added, mashed potato made from powder, half a tomato, one cube of cheese, and one slice of bread and butter.
The bag of coal she bought for 4s 10d was full of slate and stone. “But at least we’re not being bombed,” she added, finding a cheery note among the bad news.
All this misery came after the hardest winter in living memory, with 20ft-high snowdrifts in the countryside, and villages and towns cut off.
Then there had been power cuts and short-time working for millions as electricity stations closed for lack of coal. The government adopted emergency powers over a country that felt itself not at peace but under siege.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-495096/Britain-1947-Poverty-queues-rationing–resilience.html
So Britain was crushed by WW1 and WW2 and did not make any kind of comeback until the North Sea Oil discoveries and the concentration of global financial operations in London in the 80s.
Yes, pretty miserable until the late 1950’s, but having been industrialised, urbanised slaves since the early 19th century, most British didn’t realise what a bad time they were having.
For instance, smog was a fact of life, etc – I have never read any protests about industrial pollution in 19th c diaries and autobiographies.
The 1960’s were fun for many, though, and it was possible for a secretary, for instance, to leave work one day and find employment the next – something which cannot be dreamed of today.
Anyway, the 1970’s will soon return under a Corbyn government, only worse, because there will be no escape route such as the North Sea provided .
At least part of the story is that the US had massive stores of fossil fuels that more debt (and higher prices) could release. Also, with the addition of electricity and automobiles, more women could work outside the home. The additional debt allowed jobs for some women, as well.
I know when I was reading about World War I, part of the story was that Europe’s fields were being bombed, while the US’s fields were not. Europe thus made a big market for US agricultural products during World War I. Once the war was over, and European farmers began planting again, there was too much food in total; prices dropped. I expect that there was some of this same effect again in World War II.
I also expect that during both wars, the bombing of factories in Europe had a very different impact in the US compared to Europe. When factories were bombed in Europe, they lost the ability to produce as much goods. The loss of these factories opened up great opportunities for US factories, selling to Europeans (to the extent that they could afford the goods). If the US could allow the process to happen, by extending debt to the Europeans, the Europeans could prosper later. This was especially the case after North Sea oil.
There was a huge debt bubble beginning right after World War II, to try to prevent going back into the depression again. The fact that this debt could be used to produce cheap-to-produce oil was extremely helpful. It meant that productivity could grow. It meant that it was possible to give people nice little “tract” homes, and they would be able to pay for the homes after the fact. This debt could also be used in Europe, as mentioned in the last paragraph.
I should mention, too, that the availability of cheap oil made coal more useful. Without a good supply of cheap oil, it was not possible to transport coal economically, except by water. This is an article by Ugo Bardi, written in 2010, about the role of coal in World War I. This is a couple paragraph excerpt:
One of Ugo’s very best articles, with no solar fantasies attached.
I was impressed by Ugo’s article back in 2010. He has written a number of good articles.
Will you be reviewing his new book?
Not that I know of. Most people don’t read book reviews, and I am not very good at writing them. I really liked “Extracted” (except the mandatory happy ending). The Seneca Effect is published by Springer. It sells for $69.99 (or $61.46 discounted). There won’t be many people who buy it, regardless of what I write. Extracted sold for $24.95, discounted to $18.44. That is more in the right price range. Extracted is a lot more pages, as well, I expect. (Springer books are limited to 100 in this series.)
I looked up some more information about Ugo Bari’s new book, “The Seneca Effect: Why Growth is Slow but Collapse is Rapid.” It is part of Springer’s “Frontiers Collection,” which is different from the Springer collection that Charlie Hall has been associated with. Charlie Hall’s collection (called something else) were limited to 100 pages. Charlie Hall is of course a “Peak Oiler,” so the Seneca Effect is not on his front burner. He believes in Hubbert curves instead. Bardi’s book is 210 pages. According to the book blurb,
The book is considered a Physics book, in the Science and Math section of Amazon. The book was published August 24, 2017, but at this point does not have a single review on Amazon. I would deduce from that that the book is not a best seller.
I should look at the book, just to see what it has to say. But at this time of year, my time is limited. So maybe after January 1.
Sungr
That clarifies the uk position exactly
at the start of the industrial revolution, the uk was sitting on more fuel reserves than saudi
but by ww1 and 2, we had burned most of it, hence our bankruptcy until n. sea oil gave us a temporary financial shot in the arm. War spending only stimulated borrowing, not real growth
The USA took over as energy leader, but that lasted only while the USA had cheap surplus oil. (roughly until 1970), now that too has all gone, which is why the USA standard of living has been static since then, and why the usa is fighting oilwars
The USA now is at the point the UK was after ww2, having to stimulate its economy by borrowing against a non existent future
Had to look through UK and US coal production numbers after that comment.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Coal production had its first peak in 1910 in the US, and it peaked year 1920 in the UK. By the start of the Great Depression coal production had already fallen by -30% in the US. Incidently the Great Depression took a -30% toll on the GDP..
Why does everything about that, sound so eerily familiar?
A peak production in the primary energy resource.
The biggest industrial giant in the world keeps the world economy rolling. For a while.
Finally, 9 years after the peak production moment.. reality sets in, and a Great Depression starts.
After the Great Depression, the GDP has fallen by the same amount, as the fall of production of the primary energy resource..
Later, other available energy resources take the place of the primary energy resource
Hmm..
(Though this time around, after the collapse of international trade and finance, all energy resources will be almost impossible to get. A Seneca Cliff to – 0% And we don’t have a new primary energy resource)
and each volume producer hits it maximum in turn, each in denial of course
….now it’s saudi’s turn,—they too are denying it, yet offer shares in their oil business for the first time, while insisting that they can ”diversify away from oil” during the next decade.
This time there’s no major producer waiting to take up the slack.
That is where the terror of our future lies
Do you have links regarding those numbers? I hadn’t tried to find amounts by country back that far.
Here are some numbers
UK coal
http://www.habitat21.co.uk/coal7.html
US coal
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3AUS_coal_production.png
Norms comment got me thinking that we have misunderstood the Great Depression severely.
Both what caused it. How debt was used to keep on dancing, without actual energy to do so any more. The lag in the energy peak and the downturn, was quite a long time, when thinking about it. Could it be as long or longer this time? And what ended the Great Depression, actually. Or Ugo Bardis text about trucks for coal transport, instead of waterways.
All in all. The thermodynamic structure of the economy, could have been proved from the Great Depression data. But it wasn’t. Instead Bernanke, who was said to be an expert in the Great Depression, became FED chair with a completely wrong set of theories..
Thanks! I need to write something up on this. I found some similar information on Wikipedia re UK coal. People don’t understand the depression.
depressions can only be got out of by:-
A)—- extracting more raw cheap energy, then burning it to make more and more goods which keeps people employed in factories earning money as those goods are sold, thus keeping the circulation of the ”economy” going. On this basis debt is OK, because it is supported by future energy extraction and use.
When I got married, and working in the motor industry, my 30 year mortgage was ok because the industry itself fed me with payrises in real terms, while my mortgage debt faded into insignificance. Those payrises came from (ultimately) constant supplies of CHEAP oil coal and gas.
This is why war ends depressions if there’s a constant supply of cheap fuel. Because nations can keep building wartoys if there is sufficient materiel to do so. (specifically fossil fuels)
If for example, the USA had run out of cheap oil in the 30s, WW2 would have been won by the Germans and the Japanese. (who would eventually have fought each other over the mid east oil—round about now, just as we are doing.)
As it was WW2 kicked off the debt economy bigtime, and governments saw to it that the debt frenzy kept going. There was no other way to guarantee full employment because it is not possible to manufacture anything of consequence without using heat.
(my rule of explosive force into rotary motion again)
Nobody wanted a return to the post WW1 depression.
This went on until 1970, when the USA ceased to be a swing producer, and oil began to lose its cheapness. With declining cheap oil, the other method of ending depressions kicked in:-
////….. B)—infinite debt, based on the belief that infinite money can be subsituted for infinite energy. Exactly who in government believes this is hard to say. It is patently nonsense, yet the vast majority of the electorate don’t know that, and so vote for the liars who say debt can go on forever, and that energy input to back it up is irrelevant.
Stuff can be magicked out of thin air, bought and sold to keep our cornucopia filled with everything we could possibly want, if only we keep passing borrowed money hand to hand fast enough, and inflate the perceived value of that money to cover the actual state of energy deficit. (bitcoin anyone?)
But energy deficit is the ultimate economy-killer. Without energy no economy can be remain inflated beyond the level of the fuels available to it. Debt is allowing us to pretend that it can, it suits the majority to take that pretence and build reality with it.
This is the reason I titled my book: The End of More
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00D0ADPFY
because it was obvious where even Nobel economics prizewinners were taking us. So far they haven’t offered me one. Maybe the Nobel committee can’t stand reality either.
I would add:
Debt is helpful because it makes the use of energy products more affordable. The cost of a new factory or mine can be spread over the purchase’s lifetime. A new machine to enhance productivity can also be spread over the lifetime of the machine. Even consumer goods can be purchased and the cost spread over many years. Governments can overspend their income, and promise to pay back over a future period. Much of the debt indirectly leads to more funds for wages for workers, stimulating the economy.
But once debt is involved, it is easy to deceive ourselves regarding whether the investment can really be repaid. As you say, with an abundant supply of cheap energy the debt can be repaid. Not so much, otherwise.
And…
The 2018 Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel goes tooo..
Norman Pagett
For his groundbreaking contributions to the new field of Thermodynamic Economics
Hmm..
Nothing bad, like a complete meltdown of all of the major global markets the following week, could come out of that.. right..
And the British have now become very dependent on natural gas for heating and cooking, which comes from very, very far away. And their governments persist in being very, very rude to Russia…..
https://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/dam/jcr:2a6b0b45-d99c-4b83-8430-4cd4a42a9771/20161018_Centrica_UK_gas_infographic_v12%20(1).jpg
” With gas supplies crippled amid a freezing winter by the shutdown of a major pipeline, the UK has apparently turned to a Russian project targeted by US sanctions, with reports indicating that a deal was struck for a shipment of gas by the end of December.
Some 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) carried by the Christophe de Margerie ice-class tanker, the first vessel of the Novatek-operated Yamal project in the Arctic, has been bought by a British energy company. It is now heading to the Isle of Grain terminal in the UK”
https://www.rt.com/uk/413034-russian-gas-sanctions-uk-shutdown/
The title to this is, “The gas that came in from the cold: Britain turns to sanctioned Russian energy to avoid big freeze.” Given a choice between freezing and US sanctions, we know what will win.
I suspect the price is a pass througnh this time….but next time will rise in proportion to sanctions and NATO actions.
If I was Putin … after all the bullsh it from the UK/US over the past few years…. I am making these MOFs sweat a little … beg a lot…. then tossing a huge premium on the sale price….
Up yours Liz…
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/survivor-org/images/a/ab/Queen-Elizabeth-II-Giving-The-Finger-420×215.gif
They are at the gate…. can you hear them?
Scarlet fever cases surge in Hong Kong as doctors urge good personal hygiene
Warning goes out that bacterial infection mostly affecting children under 10 could lead to death without timely treatment
Nearly 2,000 cases were reported in the city in the first 11 months of the year, up nearly 60 per cent from the 1,244 recorded for the same period in 2016, according to the Department of Health.
Scarlet fever is a bacterial infection that mostly affects children under 10 years old.
The increase in cases could be the result of a bacterial mutation as well as an unusually strong flu season weakening children’s immunity, doctors say.
Scarlet fever claimed many thousands of lives in the 19th century and made a comeback in Hong Kong in 2011. That year, the number of cases soared to 1,526 from just 128 in 2010. Countries from the mainland to Britain have recorded similar trends, although what is causing the worldwide resurgence in the centuries-old disease remains unknown.
While scarlet fever is curable with antibiotics such as penicillin, no vaccine is yet available. The consequences of late treatment are grave, Chan noted, especially when children are also afflicted with the flu or chickenpox.
The bacteria can be transmitted through either respiratory droplets, such as those produced by coughing and sneezing, or direct contact with respiratory secretions.
More http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2123865/scarlet-fever-cases-surge-hong-kong-doctors-urge
How amusing — GGG wwwww is also mentioned as a possible reason for this uptick…. WTF….
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxSC30jXEAEKqxm.jpg
FE, that’s a great painting. I suggest “trouble” as a tentative title.
Barbed Arians (who don’t believe in the HolyTrinity) or Barbed Aryans (ancient Indo-Europeans) at the Gates! In either case, mind those barbs and if you want to keep them out, make ample use of barbed wire!
thus the derivative name of the Barbie doll.
Or Barbara Ann?
Most Millennials are more familiar with the John McCain version.
https://youtu.be/k9kumiroe6M
My great-grandmother lost one of her girls to scarlet fever, and a son to TB at the age of 21. Only yesterday, really.
My paternal grandparents produced 17 children over a 30 year period and lost 7 of them to various childhood maladies. Dad was kid No.15.
I’m not impressed by chess playing programs, or computers in general. They are calculating machines designed to do a particular thing. They are not biological, and do not have the properties as such. And they require enormous amounts of energy to function, energy which we must extract from the earth, and which depletes faster the more machines we add to the equation.
I think of chess programs as the best way humans have figured out how to play chess, as opposed to computers beating humans, or any such nonsense. Computers have no existence outside of what we give them. We are the gods of computers, so to say.
I’ve heard that computers are good for getting on the internet.
Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer developed by IBM. It is known for being the first computer chess-playing system to win both a chess game and a chess match against a reigning world champion under regular time controls.
Deep Blue won its first game against a world champion on 10 February 1996, when it defeated Garry Kasparov in game one of a six-game match. However, Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, defeating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2. Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded, and played Kasparov again in May 1997.[1] Deep Blue won game six, therefore winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½ and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.[2] Kasparov accused IBM of cheating and demanded a rematch. IBM refused and retired Deep Blue.[3]
I’m impressed…. I’ve replayed Kasparov games and talk about mind blowing…
The Deep Blue match
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6sLCeBj0s
He was at his peak of talent playing against IBMs computer
Did Deep Blue program itself?
Can Deep Blue bake a cake?
Can Deep Blue use that program to learn Latin?
Can Deep Blue drive a car?
Ah ha…..
Deep Blue is very good at doing what we tell it to do — provided we are VERY specific in terms of instructions.
It is not as if you can just shout at Deep Blue — play chess! drive this car! bake this cake! learn Latin!
Deep Blue is not even as intelligent as a dog — you can teach a dog to play fetch — try that with Deep Blue….
Deep Blue is just a more sophisticated hammer. It is no smarter than a hammer.
Bother have ZERO IQs.
Brother, don’t comment on something you have no idea on the subject matter.
Yes I am learning — I have asked a series of questions — feel free to answer them and enlighten me.
Ask me something you are capable of doing
Tell you what … I will teach you how to write a coherent sentence…
If you answer the questions I posted about Blue.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Same could be said for the go-program.
Much obliged.
It feels good to be the champion.
I think I may go down to the beach tomorrow and kick sand in someone’s face.
Oh, sure..like you’re an expert at that here….
The best book on AI, IMHO, is Understanding Computers and Cognition by Fernando Flores. I don’t think AI is even theoretically possible – and believe proponents don’t understand what intelligence is. Something a computer can never do, for instance, is “promise” as in intend or mean anything beyond controlled parameters. There will never be self driving cars, only self-crashing cars – for which the manufacturer is responsible.
The thing about self driving cars is that the way they are going about it is all wrong. If you really wanted to implement a system of self driving cars, you would build new signs and things that were designed for easy machine recognition, as well as integrating sensors in crucial areas of roads, etc. Instead they are trying to make computers adapt to the organic visual processing system that allows humans to drive on the current roads with the current markings.
And even if it were possible — why do people think that would be a good thing?
There are already not enough jobs for people…..
I often fantasize about some f789ing techno MORE on…. trying to engage me in a conversation on AI…. I listen intently …. then out of the blue I launch a very hard right hand to their jaw…. then walk away….
I have other similar fantasies that involve Tesla and ‘renewable’ energy discussions….
I am afraid I agree with Fast Eddy on this one.
Last evening, we were driving down the Interstate, and in the middle of the lanes we saw a mattress for a bed for two people, plus a boxspring to go with the mattress, sitting across a couple of lanes, plus lots and lots of cars. (We were fortunately off in the High Occupancy Vehicle Lane, away from the disturbance.) I wondered what a self-driving car would have done.
Drivers often signal their intentions to others–you go first, for example. A computer cannot do this.
And a knew work around the affordability issues.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/OilCoin-Worlds-First-Compliant-Cryptocurrency.html
A nice little speculative bubble here and market losses will appear covered. The crypto geniuses have stumbled on to a useful endeavor.
The amount of reserves depends on price. If the price drops, todays reserves cannot be extracted economically, as Venezuela has figured out.
I also am unclear regarding how the currency will be tied back to oil reserves. Do you have the option of obtaining payment in crude oil, or what?
“The aim of the OilCoin is to hopiumize barrels of oil, where each token will represent the value of one hopeful barrel, and provide users with a meaningful safe haven from cryptocurrency volatility, the team launching the digital currency said. Hopeful barrels are backed up by the full faith and credit of ….”
Geez, this is as speculative as paper gold…even better, since oil reserves can be claimed and securitized even though they might not be recoverable, at any price.
What if…. we had a derrivatives market for cheap oil … for every barrel of cheap oil we have say 1000 paper barrels of cheap oil … same formula as we have with physical gold and paper gold.
Our problems would be solved!!!!
I’ve been trying to contact the Fed but I cannot get past the admin staff and speak to someone who would be in a position to act on this advice…. This is so FRUSTRATING! The ship is about to sink and I have a very simple solution that could be implemented in minutes….
Interesting concept.
Apparently, the oilcoin will be based on the Ethereum blockchain and each oilcoin will be backed by one barrel of oil. The oil will be held physically in reserve to back up each oilcoin, according to their White Paper.
https://oilcoin.io/
Sooo…no rehypothecation or any of that type of stuff, I’m sure…hahahahaha. If Bart Chilton is on the management board, I would be careful about that investment. Wasn’t he a regulator in name only when he headed up the CFTC?
So this is going to replace the petro dollar….. I hope these guys have a very big army…..
I am holding onto my tulip bulbs in the fond hopium that they will one day once again approach their 1637 peak value.
http://www.richardcayne.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/c22cb6033f069963e4a07f627e3e9627-6.jpg
rats!
I planted all of my ancestors bulbs this year.
I was weak and I gave in.
and I just knew I should have bought Bitcoins at $2.
kicking self… kicking self…
Futures trading in BTC, meaning shorting, starts in just a few days.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/e0/ea/a8e0ea87ee14f57256236bea748cf37b.jpg
happy christmas to all doomsters
https://www.facebook.com/AsapSCIENCE/videos/vb.162558843875154/1208785902585771/?type=2&theater
https://www.watchcartoononline.io/thumbs/how-the-grinch-stole-christmas.jpg
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-11/56-million-americans-were-hired-october-most-over-16-years
Synopsis: the barriers to Re-Greatification (copyright Kunstler) lie in the individual rather than the environment, viz. incompetence, socialism and the liberal establishment (as opposed to Putin, evil corporations and Nazis). Thank you for listening, and this is everyone’s favourite edgy, red-pill and bipartisan alt media outlet zerohedge.com signing off.