Economists, including Ben Bernanke, give all kinds of reasons for the Great Depression of the 1930s. But what if the real reason for the Great Depression was an energy crisis?
When I put together a chart of per capita energy consumption since 1820 for a post back in 2012, there was a strange “flat spot” in the period between 1920 and 1940. When we look at the underlying data, we see that coal production was starting to decline in some of the major coal producing parts of the world at that time. From the point of view of people living at the time, the situation might have looked very much like peak energy consumption, at least on a per capita basis.
Figure 1. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
Even back in the 1820 to 1900 period, world per capita energy had gradually risen as an increasing amount of coal was used. We know that going back a very long time, the use of water and wind had never amounted to very much (Figure 2) compared to burned biomass and coal, in terms of energy produced. Humans and draft animals were also relatively low in energy production. Because of its great heat-producing ability, coal quickly became the dominant fuel.
Figure 2. Annual energy consumption per head (megajoules) in England and Wales during the period 1561-70 to 1850-9 and in Italy from 1861-70. Figure by Wrigley
In general, we know that energy products, including coal, are necessary to enable processes that contribute to economic growth. Heat is needed for almost all industrial processes. Transportation needs energy products of one kind or another. Building roads and homes requires energy products. It is not surprising that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, with its use of coal.
We also know that there is a long-term correlation between world GDP growth and energy consumption.
Figure 3. X-Y graph of world energy consumption (from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017) versus world GDP in 2010 US$, from World Bank.
The “flat period” in 1920-1940 in Figure 1 was likely problematic. The economy is a self-organized networked system; what was wrong could be expected to appear in many parts of the economy. Economic growth was likely far too low. The chance for conflict among nations was much higher because of stresses in the system–there was not really enough coal to go around. These stresses could extend to the period immediately before 1920 and after 1940, as well.
A Peak in Coal Production Hit the UK, United States, and Germany at Close to the Same Time
This is a coal supply chart for the UK. Its peak coal production (which was an all time peak) was in 1913. The UK was the largest coal producer in Europe at the time.
Figure 4. United Kingdom coal production since 1855, in a href=”http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=116″>figure by David Strahan. First published in New Scientist, 17 January 2008.
The United States hit a peak in its production only five years later, in 1918. This peak was only a “local” peak. There were also later peaks, in 1947 and 2008, after coal production was developed in new areas of the country.
Figure 5. US coal production, in Wikipedia exhibit by contributor Plazak.
By type, US coal production is as shown on Figure 6.
Figure 6. US coal production by type, in Wikipedia exhibit by contributor Plazak.
Evidently, the highest quality coal, Anthracite, reached a peak and began to decline about 1918. Bituminous coal hit a peak about the same time, and dropped way back in production during the 1930s. The poorer quality coals were added later, as the better-quality coals became less abundant.
The pattern for Germany’s hard coal shows a pattern somewhat in between the UK and the US pattern.
Figure 7. Source GBR.
Germany too had a peak during World War I, then dropped back for several years. It then had three later peaks, the highest one during World War II.
What Affects Coal Production?
If there is a shortage of coal, fixing it is not as simple as “inadequate coal supply leads to higher price,” quickly followed by “higher price leads to more production.” Clearly the amount of coal resource in the ground affects the amount of coal extraction, but other things do as well.
[1] The amount of built infrastructure for taking the coal out and delivering the coal. Usually, a country only adds a little coal extraction capacity at a time and leaves the rest in the ground. (This is how the US and Germany could have temporary coal peaks, which were later surpassed by higher peaks.) To add more extraction capacity, it is necessary to add (a) investment needed for getting the coal out of the ground as well as (b) infrastructure for delivering coal to potential users. This includes things like trains and tracks, and export terminals for coal transported by boats.
[2] Prices available in the marketplace for coal. These fluctuate widely. We will discuss this more in a later section. Clearly, the higher the price, the greater the quantity of coal that can be extracted and delivered to users.
[3] The cost of extraction, both in existing locations and in new locations. These costs can perhaps be reduced if it is possible to add new technology. At the same time, there is a tendency for costs within a given mine to increase over time, as it becomes necessary to access deeper, thinner seams. Also, mines tend to be built in the most convenient locations first, with best access to transportation. New mines very often will be higher cost, when these factors are considered.
[4] The cost and availability of capital (shares of stock and sale of debt) needed for building new infrastructure, and for building new devices made possible by new technology. These are affected by interest rates and tax levels.
[5] Time lags needed to implement changes. New infrastructure and new technology are likely to take several years to implement.
[6] The extent to which wages can be recycled into demand for energy products. An economy needs to have buyers for the products it makes. If a large share of the workers in an economy is very low-paid, this creates a problem.
If there is an energy shortage, many people think of the shortage as causing high prices. In fact, the shortage is at least equally likely to cause greater wage disparity. This might also be considered a shortage of jobs that pay well. Without jobs that pay well, would-be workers find it hard to purchase the many goods and services created by the economy (such as homes, cars, food, clothing, and advanced education). For example, young adults may live with their parents longer, and elderly people may move in with their children.
The lack of jobs that pay well tends to hold down “demand” for goods made with commodities, and thus tends to bring down commodity prices. This problem happened in the 1930s and is happening again today. The problem is an affordability problem, but it is sometimes referred to as “low demand.” Workers with inadequate wages cannot afford to buy the goods made by the economy. There may be a glut of a commodity (food, or oil, or coal), and commodity prices that fall far below what producers need to make a profit.
Figure 8. U.S. Income Shares of Top 10% and Top 1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
The Fluctuating Nature of Commodity Prices
I have noted in the past that fossil fuel prices tend to move together. This is what we would expect, if affordability is a major issue, and affordability changes over time.
Figure 9. 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.
We would expect metal prices to follow fossil fuel prices, because fossil fuels are used in the extraction of ores of all kinds. Investment strategist Jeremy Grantham (and his company GMO) noted this correlation among commodity prices, and put together an index of commodity prices back to 1900.
Figure 10. GMO Commodity Index 1900 to 2011, from GMO April 2011 Quarterly Letter. “The Great Paradigm Shift,” shown at the end is not really the correct explanation, something now admitted by Grantham. If the graph were extended beyond 2010, it would show high prices in 2010 to 2013. Prices would fall to a much lower level in 2014 to 2017.
Reason for the Spikes in Prices. As we will see in the next few paragraphs, the spikes in prices generally arise in situations in which everyday goods (food, homes, clothing, transportation) suddenly became more affordable to “non-elite” workers. These are workers who are not highly educated, and are not in supervisory positions. These spikes in prices don’t generally “come about” by themselves; instead, they are engineered by governments, trying to stimulate the economy.
In both the World War I and World War II price spikes, governments greatly raised their debt levels to fund the war efforts. Some of this debt likely went directly into demand for commodities, such as to make more bombs, and to operate tanks, and thus tended to raise commodity prices. In addition, quite a bit of the debt indirectly led to more employment during the period of the war. For example, women who were not in the workforce were hired to take jobs that had been previously handled by men who were now part of the war effort. (These women were new non-elite workers.) Their earnings helped raise demand for goods and services of all kinds, and thus commodity prices.
The 2008 price spike was caused (at least in part) by a US housing-related debt bubble. Interest rates were lowered in the early 2000s to stimulate the economy. Also, banks were encouraged to lend to people who did not seem to meet usual underwriting standards. The additional demand for houses raised prices. Homeowners, wishing to cash in on the new higher prices for their homes, could refinance their loans and withdraw the cash related to the new higher prices. They could use the funds withdrawn to buy goods such as a new car or a remodeled basement. These withdrawn funds indirectly supplemented the earnings of non-elite workers (as did the lower interest rate on new borrowing).
The 2011-2014 spike was caused by the extremely low interest rates made possible by Quantitative Easing. These low interest rates made the buying of homes and cars more affordable to all buyers, including non-elite workers. When the US discontinued its QE program in 2014, the US dollar rose relative to many other currencies, making oil and other fuels relatively more expensive to workers outside the US. These higher costs reduced the demand for fuels, and dropped fuel prices back down again.
Figure 11. Monthly Brent oil prices with dates of US beginning and ending QE.
The run-up in oil prices (and other commodity prices) in the 1970s is widely attributed to US oil production peaking, but I think that the rapid run-up in prices was enabled by the rapid wage run-up of the period (Figure 12 below).
Figure 12. Growth in US wages versus increase in CPI Urban. Wages are total “Wages and Salaries” from US Bureau of Economic Analysis. CPI-Urban is from US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Opposing Force: Energy prices need to fall, if the economy is to grow. All of these upward swings in prices can be at most temporary changes to the long-term downward trend in prices. Let’s think about why.
An economy needs to grow. To do so, it needs an increasing supply of commodities, particularly energy commodities. This can only happen if energy prices are trending lower. These lower prices enable the purchase of greater supply. We can see this in the results of some academic papers. For example, Roger Fouquet shows that it is not the cost of energy, per se, that drops over time. Rather, it is the cost of energy services that declines.
Figure 13. Total Cost of Energy and Energy Services, by Roger Fouquet, from Divergences in Long Run Trends in the Prices of Energy and Energy Services.
Energy services include changes in efficiency, besides energy costs themselves. Thus, Fouquet is looking at the cost of heating a home, or the cost of electrical services, or the cost of transportation services, in inflation-adjusted units.
Robert Ayres and Benjamin Warr show a similar result, related to electricity. They also show that usage tends to rise, as prices fall.
Figure 14. Ayres and Warr Electricity Prices and Electricity Demand, from “Accounting for growth: the role of physical work.”
Ultimately, we know that the growth in energy consumption tends to rise at close to the same rate as the growth in GDP. To keep energy consumption rising, it is helpful if the cost of energy services is falling.
Figure 15. 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.
How the Economic Growth Pump Works
There seems to be a widespread belief, “We pay each other’s wages.” If this is all that there is to economic growth, all that is needed to make the economy grow faster is for each of us to sell more services to each other (cut each other’s hair more often, or give each other back rubs, and charge for them). I think this story is very incomplete.
The real story is that energy products can be used to leverage human labor. For example, it is inefficient for a human to walk to deliver goods to customers. If a human can drive a truck instead, it leverages his ability to deliver goods. The more leveraging that is available for human labor, the more goods and services that can be produced in total, and the higher inflation-adjusted wages can be. This increased leveraging of human labor allows inflation-adjusted wages to rise. Some might call this result, “a higher return on human labor.”
These higher wages need to go back to the non-elite workers, in order to keep the growth-pump operating. With higher-wages, these workers can afford to buy goods and services made with commodities, such as homes, cars, and food. They can also heat their homes and operate their vehicles. These wages help maintain the demand needed to keep commodity prices high enough to encourage more commodity production.
Raising wages for elite workers (such as managers and those with advanced education), or paying more in dividends to shareholders, doesn’t have the same effect. These individuals likely already have enough money to buy the necessities of life. They may use the extra income to buy shares of stock or bonds to save for retirement, or they may buy services (such as investment advice) that require little use of energy.
The belief, “We pay each other’s wages,” becomes increasingly false, if wages and wealth are concentrated in the hands of relatively few. For example, poor people become unable to afford doctors’ visits, even with insurance, if wage disparity becomes too great. It is only when wages are fairly equal that all can afford a wide range of services provided by others in the economy.
What Went Wrong in 1920 to 1940?
Very clearly, the first thing that went wrong was the peaking of UK coal production in 1913. Even before 1913, there were pressures coming from the higher cost of coal production, as mines became more depleted. In 1912, there was a 37-day national coal strike protesting the low wages of workers. Evidently, as extraction was becoming more difficult, coal prices were not able to rise sufficiently to cover all costs, and miners’ wages were suffering. The debt for World War I seems to have helped raise commodity prices to allow wages to be somewhat higher, even if coal production did not return to its previous level.
Suicide rates seem to behave inversely compared to earning power of non-elite workers. A study of suicide rates in England and Wales shows that these were increasing prior to World War I. This is what we would expect, if coal was becoming increasingly difficult to extract, and because of this, the returns for everyone, from owners to workers, was low.
Figure 16. Suicide rates in England and Wales 1861-2007 by Kyla Thomas and David Gunnell from International Journal of Epidemiology, 2010.
World War I, with its increased debt (which was in part used for more wages), helped the situation temporarily. But after World War I, the Great Depression set in, and with it, much higher suicide rates.
The Great Depression is the kind of result we would expect if the UK no longer had enough coal to make the goods and services it had made previously. The lower production of goods and services would likely be paired with fewer jobs that paid well. In such a situation, it is not surprising that suicide rates rose. Suicide rates decreased greatly with World War II, and with all of the associated borrowing.
Looking more at what happened in the 1920 to 1940 period, Ugo Bardi tells us that prior to World War I, the UK exported coal to Italy. With falling coal production, the UK could no longer maintain those exports after World War I. This worsened relations with Italy, because Italy needed coal imported from the UK to rebuild after the war. Ultimately, Italy aligned with Germany because Germany still had coal available to export. This set up the alliance for World War II.
Looking at the US, we see that World War I caused favorable conditions for exports, because with all of the fighting, Europe needed to import more goods (including food) from the United States. After the war ended in 1918, European demand was suddenly lower, and US commodity prices fell. American farmers found their incomes squeezed. As a result, they cut back on buying goods of many kinds, hurting the US economy.
One analysis of the economy of the 1920s tells us that from 1920 to 1921, farm prices fell at a catastrophic rate. “The price of wheat, the staple crop of the Great Plains, fell by almost half. The price of cotton, still the lifeblood of the South, fell by three-quarters. Farmers, many of whom had taken out loans to increase acreage and buy efficient new agricultural machines like tractors, suddenly couldn’t make their payments.”
In 1943, M. King Hubbert offered the view that all-time employment had peaked in 1920, except to the extent that it was jacked up by unusual means, such as war. In fact, some historical data shows that for four major industries combined (foundries, meat packing, paper, and printing), the employment index rose from 100 in 1914, to 157 in 1920. By September 1921, the employment index had fallen back to 89. The peak coal problem of the UK had been exported to the US as low commodity prices and low employment.
It was not until the huge amount of debt related to World War II that the world economy could be stimulated enough so that total energy production per capita could continue to rise. The use of oil especially became much greater starting after World War II. It was the availability of cheap oil that allowed the world economy to grow again.
Figure 17. Per capita energy consumption by fuel, separately for several energy sources, using the same data as in Figure 1.
The stimulus of all the debt-enabled spending for World War II seems to have been what finally encouraged the production of the oil needed to pull the world economy out of the problems it was having. GDP and Disposable Personal Income could again rise (Figure 18.)
Figure 18. Comparison of 3-year average change in disposable personal income with 3-year change average in GDP, based on US BEA Tables 1.1.5 and 2.1.
Furthermore, total per capita energy consumption began to rise, with growing oil consumption (Figure 1). This growth in energy consumption per capita seems to be what allows the world economy to grow.
I might note that there is one other exceptional period: 1980 to 2000. Space does not allow for an explanation of the situation here, but falling per capita energy consumption seems to have led to the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. This was a different situation, caused by lower oil consumption related to efficiency gains. This was a situation of an oil producer being “squeezed out” because additional oil was not needed at that time. This is an example of a different type of economic disruption caused by flat per capita energy consumption.
Figure 19. World per Capita Energy Consumption with two circles relating to flat consumption. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
Conclusion
There have been many views put forth about what caused the Depression of the 1930s. To my knowledge, no one has put forth the explanation that the Depression was caused by Peak Coal in 1913 in the UK, and a lack of other energy supplies that were growing rapidly enough to make up for this loss. As the UK “exported” this problem around the world, it led to greater wage disparity. US farmers were especially affected; their incomes often dropped below the level needed for families to buy the necessities of life.
The issue, as I have discussed in previous posts, is a physics issue. Creating GDP requires energy; when not enough energy (often fossil fuels) is available, the economy tends to “freeze out” the most vulnerable. Often, it does this by increased wage disparity. The people at the top of the hierarchy still have plenty. It is the people at the bottom who find themselves purchasing less and less. Because there are so many people at the bottom of the hierarchy, their lower purchasing power tends to pull the system down.
In the past, the way to get around inadequate wages for those at the bottom of the hierarchy has been to issue more debt. Some of this debt helps add more wages for non-elite workers, so it helps fix the affordability problem.
Figure 20. Three-year average percent increase in debt compared to three year average percent increase in non-government wages, including proprietors’ income, which I call my wage base.
At this time, we seem to be reaching the point where, even with more debt, we are running out of cheap energy to add to the system. When this happens, the economic system seems more prone to fracture. Ugo Bardi calls the situation “reaching the inflection point in a Seneca Cliff.”
Figure 21. Seneca Cliff by Ugo Bardi
We were very close to the inflection point in the 1930s. We were very close to that point in 2008. We seem to be getting close to that point again now. The model of the 1930s gives us an indication regarding what to expect: apparent surpluses of commodities of all types; commodity prices that are too low; a lack of jobs, especially ones that pay an adequate wage; collapsing financial institutions. This is close to the opposite of what many people assume that peak oil will look like. But it may be a better representation of what we really should expect.
What Are The Top 10 Coal-Burning Countries on the Planet? Who’s #1?
https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/what-are-the-top-10-coal-burning-countries-on-the-planet-whos-1.html
Gold medal goes to CHINA! Well done China!!!!
Fossil fuel burning set to hit record high in 2017, scientists warn
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/13/fossil-fuel-burning-set-to-hit-record-high-in-2017-scientists-warn
warn? WARN??????
Surely they mean CELEBRATE! This is by far the best news of 2017.
Though not mentioned explicitly, from my understanding, it was implied – Peak Coal contributed to the advent of World War I.
Will (or has) Peak oil contribute(d) to another World War?
But there may yet be hope – just as oil substituted or made up for shortages in coal, might hydrogen ride in to save the day?
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is only an energy carrier. It takes a lot of energy to break the bonds apart from water. It is also hard to store and transport. At one time, people looked at whether hydrogen might be helpful, say for storing unneeded energy crated when there was no need for it (electricity created at night using geothermal or nuclear, for example) but the costs look very high.
And we all know where the energy comes from.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3576/3502547606_85432c894c_b.jpg
Under Armour had a big fall from grace in 2017 — and it could get worse
http://www.businessinsider.com/under-armour-had-a-rough-year-2017-12
Nike’s U.S. Slump Persists
http://www.businessinsider.com/under-armour-had-a-rough-year-2017-12
Two of America’s top sporting goods brands both having major problems…
Yet more symptoms of a burned out consumer
US making plans for ‘bloody nose’ military attack on North Korea
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/20/exclusive-us-making-plans-bloody-nose-military-attack-north/
The Number of Homeless People in America Increased for the First Time in 7 Years
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/the-number-of-homeless-people-in-america-increased-for-the-first-time-in-7-years/
homes are just blocks of consolidated energy
if energy grows too expensive to buy—people become homeless
DON’T WORRY THERE ARE SMART PEOPLE WORKING IN OUR GOVERNMENT THEY WOULD WARN US BEFORE WE RUN OUT OF OIL.
I presume you are joking. This is the last thing that they would tell us.
i can only assume that you jest
people in govt are oil dependent
they would be the last people to say it’s all gone
If they know that running out of oil would kill them as well as us, they might look for ways to hang on longer. If prepping was not seen as a way to do that, I don’t see why they wouldn’t tell us something. But what? To be rational, they’d be looking at how to keep living. Telling us what would help toward that? Not telling us what wouldn’t help toward that? Looks like a nuanced question.
I certainly hope you are kidding!
Not if you give them a lot of money!
There has to be energy available as well. You can print money, but not energy.
Distribute infinite money to buy finite houses, and the price of the finite commodity goes up to match the amount of money being made available
you cannot create energy with money
Gail, given your interest in China, you will find this article interesting. The public statements about environmentalism by Chinese leaders are mostly talk, most renewable energy is simply wasted and overproduction continues.
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue82/Smith82.pdf
Thank! China understands that energy is the basis for the economy. It is not possible to substitute a weakling for the real thing. Also, the top down method of management doesn’t substitute for important things, such as necessary resources.
China bought the renewable energy because the manufacturers couldn’t sell it elsewhere. Their own analyses said that it was too expensive to be useful when integration costs are included. The person who allowed this to happen was fired for graft. I talked about these things in my recent China post.
Good article on China…a few comments:
“China’s industries consume 7.9 times as much energy per US dollar of GDP ”
This is because much of the US economy is “financialized” (or fake) and doesn’t produce a single concrete thing.
“As 40 percent of construction land in China is created
every year by the demolition of older buildings, the financial incentives for
these urban upgrades is evident. Demolition, too, increases the GDP. Under
this strategy there is no limit on development, as once all the available
construction land is used it will be high
time to start tearing down what was just built to build it again.”
I don’t believe this 40% number but the point is well illustrated!
“these shiny new cities that are going up across the country are
like new refrigerators which are designed to break down after a few years of
use so you have to go out and buy a new one
–built-in obsolescence in urban planning.”
This is taking planned obsolescence to a new level!
I love this statement…”Carbon taxes are just a sham to delay or avoid cutting emissions. They don’t impose a cap on output, the cost can be passed onto consumers, and the companies can pose as good citizens contributing to the “solution”
This needs no comment!
And…the piece de resistance…
“Xi’s widely hailed plan to replace gasoline-and diesel-powered cars with electric cars is another charade. Electric cars are only as clean as their power source. In China this is going to be mainly coal for decades to come.”
“The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up.”[edit]
Did he really say this? Fxm12 06:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes he did say this.. Read The Text!! Book 3, Chapter 10, Section 6 pg.129 “The General Theory..”–Oracleofottawa 02:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Here is what you are referring to, straight from the General Theory. Keynes was talking about the marginal utility of labor. This quote means nothing different than someone saying that war can have an economically stimulating effect.
“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:John_Maynard_Keynes
Isn’t it amazing how some people have bought into the China is going green hype…. and this cement orgy has by no means stopped….
http://api.theweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/tw_image_9_4/public/making-the-modern-world-cement-A_800_v2.png
I haven’t put together how this relates to the tillerson video, but here it is. 😉
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1093958/Girl-clobbers-rival-head-SHOVEL.html
Doesn’t matter if it is relevant— that IS entertaining!!! I LOVE it!!!!
More more more!!!!
When I was growing up the adults would say, ” you need to have some sense knocked into you.” I think the shovel works.
you want more
https://nypost.com/2017/04/11/women-fighting-over-parking-spot-turns-bloody/
Exciting!!! Pulling hair can be an effective way to win … particularly when the opponent has long hair… biting is also very useful…. I recall as an 18 year getting jumped by some guy who was the quarterback of some football team… rolling about in the sand at some beach party… and finally giving him hard right hands to the face… he reacted by biting my face… seriously … biting… I recall thinking … who cares how you win…. whatever it takes…
My motto ever since has been… whatever it takes….
Jerry Springer comes to mind…. if one wants to understand human nature … it would be useful to download the Best of Springer….. biting scratching spitting….
More? Mom will kick my azz 🙂
I am going to download every episode of Springer… and stick the HD into a radiation proof box… and bury it in the ground ….
Just in case aliens some day land on earth …..
Why wealth inequality will not hurt economy
http://greyenlightenment.com/another-correct-prediction-wealth-inequality/
We will be even more inequal but the economy will grow, because the gains for the top 0.1% will be more than enough to cover all the losses from the rest.
The top 1% don’t buy enough goods made with commodities to keep demand for commodities up. The buy shares of stock, and education at fancy private colleges for their children. This pattern happens time and again. The wage disparity brings the system down.
Yes, the wealth inequality is just a symptom of the comming collapse. As long as there is some belief in the stocks and money, the system functions, but the system will eventually fail, which will be demonstrated in various ways: confiscation, redistribution of the wealth, no pensions, no free or cheap healthcare, depopulation etc.
No one can survive alone, it is the system, that keeps you alive…
it’s pure stupidity to ignore the fact that the rich holding 50% of the wealth in a nation shrinks the economy as the poor and middle classes cannot spend as much.
After AT&T bragged about Christmas bonuses due to tax cuts, they now plan to layoff 600 worker’s.
http://fox4kc.com/2017/12/20/hundreds-of-metro-att-employees-laid-off-just-before-christmas/
The Christmas bonuses were really severance packages.
Relax people, everything will turn out fine as long as you remember:
-tax cuts stimulate growth, which will pay off any deficits, and besides deficits are good because we need to cut the government especially social security and medicare for the uppity workers
-we’ll build a border wall to keep out the mexicans, who needs them, we are hard working Americans! And we speak english darn it!
-we’ll keep the police on the negros if they act up; you can be assured your houses and kids are safe
-we’ll keep bombing the arabs, but don’t worry because it’s by bombing them that they understand they need to sell their oil to us instead of getting any ideas in their heads of sending it to europe or china
Party on guys! Everything is going to be just fine, you people worry too much.
Coming soon
https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1BTadMXXXXXbBXXXXq6xXFXXXP/201814842/HTB1BTadMXXXXXbBXXXXq6xXFXXXP.jpg
I wonder what is left in the box… slash personal income tax?
The masses would rejoice — and not hear the sound of another nail being hammered into their coffins.
https://www.cableorganizer.com/images/excel/tb-132/2-drawer-tool-box_lg.jpg
How about resizing when posting graphic material purported to be “funny”..
Would you like me to resize this? Or speed it up?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/08/chuck1.gif
I doubt the planned increases williever take place.
[URL=http://s954.photobucket.com/user/pooommme/media/A%20day%20at%20the%20Museum_Patan/DSCN0142.jpg.html][IMG]http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/ae30/pooommme/A%20day%20at%20the%20Museum_Patan/DSCN0142.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
http://s954.photobucket.com/user/pooommme/media/A%20day%20at%20the%20Museum_Patan/DSCN0142.jpg.html
Is Elon Musk An Elitist Jerk?
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/12/18/elon-musk-elitist-jerk/
‘I met my wife on a train platform’: Twitter responds to Elon Musk with positive public transport stories
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/dec/21/elon-musk-public-transport-transit-painful-twitter
The crowded HK subway was always the best place to meet women…. far better than a bar where women tend be more guarded (and tired of being hit on) ….
Look for the needle in the hay stack.. and just strike up a conversation ….
https://static0.thecleverimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/s-via-South-China-Morning-Post.jpg
Ok, let me try it.
“Hi, how are you?”
“Chee wa ne phen ki tong.”
While coal shortages in the UK, along with war debt and a decades long manufacture decline relative to Germany and the US would account for their Depression, in the US transitioning to an oil economy meant huge gluts of energy. Our Depression was from overproduction. Our current Depression is from Chinese overproduction in combination with energy contraction.
The problem was growing wage disparity. Maybe someone else can post a link to my prior comment giving a like more background. I don’t have the link right now.
You’re not wrong about the growth links but it’s more generalized to technology. Walt Rostow put all these patterns together on Kondratieff swings several decades ago. He made very similar remarks about the Great Depression and oil/coal back in his graduate seminars at UT in the 1990s.
You might try looking at his work. In particular, his charts predicted quite a while ago the diminishing returns setting in for fossil fuel productivity (a 19th century technology) and establish the steady improvement pattern in semiconductors (e.g., solar panels and batteries).
Wade, with those steady improvements, did Rostow state or infer a transition can successfully be accomplished from FF to renewables?
Regardless of what he stated, such a transition can’t be accomplished without a system like the one I outlined above, where vastly more energy is used than is currently, just to produce, or enable production of, energy. Can such a system work? If it can, what would be the point of it? Will the survival of a few energy-fuelled amenities justify a system where most have to suffer drastic austerity with respect to other energy-fuelled amenities? Will people be willing to go hungry to save up for a new smartphone?
New smartphone for zero down, zero payments for 6 months. Act now supplies are limited.
“It is crazy that we are pursuing this though. Technology for technology’s sake, not to help human beings, all in the name of “progress”.
This earlier comment from Slow Paul is my response, too.
You can live without a smartphone.
… but it is becoming increasingly difficult every day.
Washington and Jefferson governed without smartphones and tweeting and they were considered passable presidents. How did they do this? It boggles the mind.
I live in the worlds most modern country. Peer to peer payments, no one accepts cash, not even the drug dealers. Government-ish contacts by smartphone login.
In theory you should be able to live without computer, internet, smartphone but it will be such a hassle you don’t.
Technology is not optional. Nothing new, neo-luddites have said it for a long time.
And yes, Jefferson & co wouldnt be elected today, tweeting and social media is very important if you want to be elected.
True, but soon they, or something like them, will be compulsory for those who wish to participate in anything – one only has to look at how corporations and ‘visionaries’ are talking. Technological changes with big money behind them really do not permit individual preferences.
+++++
Yes, I always take my queues from how corporations and ‘visionaries’ are talking. 🙂
People keep sending me visionary sh it — TED Talks…
I always delete them.
ALWAYS.
Except that one where the guy tried to make a toaster.
My wife does not use a smartphone. Everyone is amazed that she exists without one.
How is the smart/cellphone penetration in Venezuela?
I don’t buy any of the arguments a transition cannot be made from FF to renewables. The concern with intermittency is already being addressed by Tesla big batteries in South Australia and if they work there they can work anywhere. Sure, renewables are not the energy dense fluid oil is, but if there is enough, or maybe even more than enough, then we can live quite well. If they can make an Electric big rig (Tesla) that is being preordered by huge corporations, then they must have run the numbers and are rather certain it is viable.
It might be a transition in which most stuff run by FF can be run by E, but not all stuff. Ok, so a small percentage must be run with diesel for now. But that isn’t to say a transition cannot take place. It’s already underway and just in time for the peaking of many FF sources. There are no other options, so we better embrace it and run with the ball.
“The concern with intermittency is already being addressed by Tesla big batteries in South Australia ”
You forgot /sarc? Or are you THAT stupid?
If you have been following his posts, the answer is yes. He has been a contributor to the comments section for a few months, now. He has learned nothing and had nothing to teach us, except that mainstream narratives are correct.
Green energy is possible
The POTUS is evil and must be stopped
He is a product someone who consumes popular media passively and believes everything that is repeated often.
What defines a truly stuuuuupid person … is the inability to learn.
“The concern with intermittency is already being addressed by Tesla big batteries in South Australia and if they work there they can work anywhere.”
Define “work”. What is the point of harnessing the power of renewables if doing so requires a fundamental alteration of the nature and purpose of technology itself? The Tesla battery can let you experience all the wonders of BAU for an extra few hours/month at an enormous price. Will you spend your savings on a Big Beautiful Battery just to play the new Wolfenstein game without interruptions?
I think he is talking about the ~129MWh battery that in theory could supply electricity for 80 minutes.
I have no opinion whether that is an improvement or not, over keeping fossil fuel plants spinning as a backup, but it doesn’t even come close to solving diurnal intermittency, much less weather or seasonal.
Tesla’s battery technology to store hours or days of electricity is not scaleable. This has been shown so many times on here. It doesn’t scale. We don’t have the resources to do it. End of story.
And if anyone tries to continue the story …. the Big Right Hand… is cocked….
What Tesla big batteries do is build a charge during periods when the energy produced is too great to disburse, I.e. peak daylight hours, then feed that energy back into the grid during nighttime, smoothing out the intermittency problem. On a micro scale that’s exactly what people do at their homes that have solar.
People on here keep presuming how much can be done with batteries, but it’s premature. Why? Because the technology keeps leapfrogging. What a battery can be made of is also changing as the technology changes. I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Now maybe it won’t solve the problem of how to get energy to locations in the dim of winter, but let’s give the process a chance. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater yet.
We are not talking about small improvements being needed. Intermittent electricity messes up the electrical grid. We need a huge amount of storage—enough to store from summer to winter, not just one hour.
You know what — I have to deal with f789ing moreons like you in real life….. there is no debating people like you ….
Elon will overcome!
He won’t….
So … since I cannot say this to anyone in real life…. without ending up behind bars…. I take great pleasure in saying it here:
Merry F789 Off Christmas
And take your idi ocy to http://www.peakprosperity.com in the New Year.
‘I don’t buy any of the arguments a transition cannot be made from FF to renewables.’
Ah-ha —– you have revealed yourself — you are a card carrying member of the DelusiSTANI Kult!
We’ll play with you for awhile ….
Can you entertain us with a response to the following:
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
The world consumes approximately 3 CMO annually from all sources. The table [10] shows the small contribution from alternative energies in 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
“To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” according to Thomas Graedel at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. So renewable energy resources like windmills and solar PV can not ever replace fossil fuels, there’s not enough of many essential minerals to scale this technology up. http://energyskeptic.com/2014/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
And, another one bites the dust. He seemed nice though. Anyway, he’s gone back to his solar roofed house with the tesla in the garage. Works for him!
Subsidized by the guvvermint of course…..
He is trying to understand a complex subject like all of us. It’s harder to do that than it is to mindlessly keep posting the same things without any attempt to develop a context beyond bilious egotism.
Let’s say that again:
“It’s harder to do that than it is to mindlessly keep posting the same things without any attempt to develop a context beyond bilious egotism.”
If DelusiSTANIS had brains …. and could think… instead of having recording devices inside their thick skulls that record MSM sound bites and blurt them out 24/7 ….. then one would not have to repeat facts over and over….
Alas this is the situation we face…. and I do not care to argue with MORE ons….. so I send out my enforcer
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/08/chuck1.gif
End of story.
“Tesla’s battery technology to store hours or days of electricity is not scaleable. This has been shown so many times on here.”
What’s written about or graphed isn’t always accurate, especially as the technology changes. Ten years from now people may be saying, “You know, at one time they said it wasn’t scalable.”
JH – how much do you reckon has been spent on ‘renewable’ energy — when you include subsidies it’s gotta be into the trillions.
And as Gail’s post yesterday pointed out … 1.5% of our total electricity generation is coming from ‘renewable’ energy.
And without subsidies that number would be ZERO.
We’ve been at this for decades — we have spent trillions — yet we have made almost no progress.
The thing is…. there are an infinite number of things … that we cannot do … no matter how many great researchers and how much money we throw at the problem.
This is one of them.
Fossil fuels are what powered civilization — when we run out of the cheap to extract supplies of them —- NOTHING is going to replace them…. NOTHING.
And even if something could replace them — look around you —- we are running up against the limits on EVERYTHING…
The stadium is almost full ….
https://modernsurvivalblog.com/pandemic/mindblowing-exponential-growth-of-a-pandemic/
You really need to watch this:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/01/tesla-live-world-largest-battery-south-australia/
“Tesla’s Powerpacks are connected to a wind farm in Hornsdale, owned by French renewable energy company Neoen. Jay Weatherill, a politician and current Premier of South Australia, says it’s the first time the state has been able to reliably dispatch wind energy to the grid 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was possible, of course, to capture this energy resource before — the problem has been controlling when, and how much of the resulting electricity is fed back into the grid. With a 100MWV battery farm, the state can now power more than 30,000 homes, regardless of the weather.”
Hey, it works!
Maybe and maybe not. This is not very much electricity, for very long.
“To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” according to Thomas Graedel at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. So renewable energy resources like windmills and solar PV can not ever replace fossil fuels, there’s not enough of many essential minerals to scale this technology up.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/
Being a failover system in case of energy shortages in the region, the Tesla battery will provide emergency power — at least for a short time, in the context of South Australia’s power demands — and has the side benefit of lowering the chance of brownout events.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/all-the-details-on-teslas-giant-australian-batteryt/
Colossal Waste of Money.
A coal fired plant would be cheaper — and it would allow them to eliminate the battery AND the wind mills — (which are all made using coal anyway) — and have RELIABLE electricity — ALL the time.
If I were to try to imagine a more stuuuupid idea —- I would struggle to match this id io cy
Space elevators and cars that run on water…any day now
as Eddy says—delusustan is a comfortable place to live JH
first problem—it is not possible to make anything without heat.
our heat sources are mainly fossil fuel derived.—i refuse to to give conversation credence to batteries–they need ff’s to make (ffs is a good acronym come to think of it) ev’s cannot function outside a ff environment.
we need heat to sustain our existence—check out the first developed civilisations—they evolved where the sun was warmest.
we, in our cleverness moved into cold climates where all heat had to be created by ourselves. Which was fine so long as people didnt get born faster than we could cut down trees
we delude ourselves that we can do this forever, using renewables.
Windfarms (for example) offer the supply of sufficient energy to power xxx000s of homes—which is true (at 2 or 3 Kw per home)
what they fail to mention is that the environment in which those homes sit uses 50-60-70 times that amount.
That is the killer factor.
If you would care to elaborate on how renewables can sustain that output, I would happily concede your point.
Like I said, he seemed like a nice guy.
“Maybe and maybe not.”
All right, Gail, I like your enthusiasm. Just kidding. I realize there’s a big hill to climb here but that was a big step.
Keep up the faith JH. The mountain we have to climb is steep and daunting. I have a 9kW system on my home but that does not mean I think solar is sustainable. Nevertheless, I use it and hope like hell it will power me in the future when brown outs become common.
Here is my prediction for the next 3-5yrs. The US president will announce a “Manhattan” scale project for renewables. It will be a president after Trump…probably a black woman democrat.
It will amount to the last great “try” to reengineer/build our grid for massive renewables. It will involve trillions. High tech groupies will wet their pants. Banks, scam artists, venture capitalists, utility companies will all line up at the trough. It will all be debt/funny money. It will be the LAST great project attempted by the formerly great United States.
Since we cannot manufacture much now days cost effectively, we will throw AI and robotics at the problem. These “new” and marvelous technologies will be used to justify why the effort will work. Silly statements like, “Robotic, AI controlled manufacturing of solar panels will bring the cost down” will be made to placate the masses.
But, as as been ably documented here, renewables will fail to replace FF.
It will be a sign of the end of our energy surplus. You think credits for renewables are good now…just wait.
As I see it, the problem is materials and cost….and of course pollution. You think oil is polluting our environment. Just wait till they are mining rare earths all over the world You haven’t seen anything yet.
It will be the last great fail.
This prediction is predicated on the assumption that WW3 has not occurred and destroyed the world.
I am not very convinced of this.
For one thing, those actually working with intermittent electricity on the grid have started to figure out what a headache it is for the system, as the percentages are ramped up. For another thing, electricity alone doesn’t do a whole lot for us.
Electricity will allow you to keep the lights on while you starve…. or fester with disease and radiation-induced cancer….
For those considering spending tens of thousands of dollars on solar …. I highly recommend using the cash on experiences while BAU is in play…. otherwise you may as well burn the cash in a bonfire
Jesse – I don’t see that happening — Germany has done a Manhattan Lite …. and this has resulted in sky high power prices that are driving industries out of the country …..
To take this further an add batteries would collapse a country’s economy very quickly ….
Power costs would go through the roof — leading to a massive reduction in consumption and:
https://i0.wp.com/www.fivestarsandamoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deflation-Downward-Spiral-Singapore.jpg
I think it is more likely that as the vice tightens…. EVs and ‘renewable’ energy are tossed into the dumpster — as the cost of hopium threatens to topple BAU …. and the environmentalists (who of course are knee deep in fossil fuels but don’t admit it) are given the middle finger….
And we just burn the cheapest fuel possible to keep BAU alive — and that means more
http://dare-think.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/image00-5.jpg
“Since we cannot manufacture much now days cost effectively”
What do you mean? You can manufacture trailers for 18 months use for $200k.
Hi Gail, and thanks for another good article. I can understand that the lack of energy consumption growth caused the 1929 depression, since increased consumption would have paid for the extraction.
At the present time, however, I think it is impossible for consumption to increase sans a miracle or such. Rather, current consumption will be reorganised into a state where energy used for purposes *other* than extraction/generation will be increasingly redirected towards extraction/generation. This can manifest as infinite bailouts to the energy companies on the backs of every other aspect of the economy. GDP calculation may also change, with energy production overriding all other factors. Do you think this is a possibility? If yes, then how well and for how long do you think it will work?
Sorry, I will be traveling today. Some of my responses will likely be delayed.
No problem.
Your “conclusions” have been seeming the most logical to me as well, novice that I am notwithstanding.
“I can understand that the lack of energy consumption growth caused the 1929 depression, since increased consumption would have paid for the extraction.”
I know Gail explained this. But if it’s not too much trouble, could you write a line to clarify? I think Gail said that the war displaced mining and, thus the drop in consumption?
I was referring to Gail’s own words in the conclusion: “At this time, we seem to be reaching the point where, even with more debt, we are running out of cheap energy to add to the system. When this happens, the economic system seems more prone to fracture.”
I think Gail’s theory in broad terms is that if a new cheaply extractable energy source becomes available then it will offset increases in the extraction cost of the established energy sources (if any). At least that is what I understood from the article. I could be wrong, since I am a novice like you.
jupivivprecedingrecessions comes the period of over-extension, where the certainty exusts that the means to supportthe current ”good times” are somehow permanent
thus you had the first ”railway mania” where those who got in first on the railway building made a lot of money, but it was ultimately unsustainable, yet investors piled in, thinking it would all last a little longer.
eventually thing crashed of course, because monies had been evaporated into nothing. to maintain the money flow of the railways, railways building had to constantaly accelerated—it was not sufficient just to have revenue flowing—it had to be increasing revenue flow from every direction
the good times of the 20s followed the same pattern, new factories exceeded the potential of buying the goods they produced, yet investment continued to flow in, in the expection that revenue would increasingly flow out—but there was insufficient to keep workers busy producing the goods being produced—hence crash
same with the dotcom mania—though by then increases we supposed to be in pure cashflow
we have the same now with bitcoin–bitcoin values are supposed to rise forever, but obviously they cant, but investors pile in, certain that things can go in a while longer.
they all have the same emotional driving force, all to the same catastrophic end
“we have the same now with bitcoin–bitcoin values are supposed to rise forever, but obviously they cant, but investors pile in, certain that things can go in a while longer.”
Agree both with this and the rest of your comment. Incidentally, I just read that bitcoin broke the uptrend for the 1st time this year.
looks like bitcoin broke a little earlier than i forecast
simple common sense made it obvious—didnt need an economic genius
i analysed bitcoin here on Medium:
https://extranewsfeed.com/bitcoin-24b3efd58ec
I don’t know. The US tax cut was partly a bailout of the energy companies. It also probably made the tax credits of renewable companies worth less.
I am not sure that people will understand what is happening. To some extent, what will be happening is a cut off of economies that cannot support themselves. Puerto Rico is one of these companies, Cuba is another. Syria and Egypt are other countries. Increasingly, these countries will cut off both supply and demand. I don’t know whether banking systems of a number of countries will go down early on. Failing banking systems could bring the whole system down,, because companies need to pay their employees.
I have a hard time seeing that extraction/ generation will be singled out. This is a terribly important issue in the minds of peak oil writers, but not necessarily with real world people. Trumps’ administration has at least figured out the solar and wind artificially low electricity prices, so other electricity producers (coal and nuclear) need subsidies, or they will go bankrupt. But it is not clear that these needed subsidies will really go through.
Gail
I thought you could be interested in Pearson – history of energy use in Britain if you do not already have it.
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/40915/1/TP_Historical_Analysis_Workshop_Pearson.pdf
Your take on the 1920s, in particular USA and Britain is most interesting. Could it be more that this was a period of transition and the costs thereof, of the kind that interests Pearson? I note also the importance of the 1920s for a farming transition in the USA. (Britain was different having been essentially one urban conglomerate that had not fed its own growing population by a very wide margin for more than 60 years.) The USA had entered a Soil Fertility Crisis by 1920s, and was transitioning to synthetic industrial (fossil fuel) fertilizer application for soil nitrogen. There was a concomitant reduction in US workers living on the land. Both Britain and USA shared electrification as a step change at this time, but farm mechanisation was slower in Britain until emergency investment in World War Two (oil and machines from Texas!) and even then we had to find workers to put them back on the land.
I share your skepticism about the outcome of a next ‘energy transition’.
very best
Phil
In the 20s the dust bowl drought contributed to a huge drop in demand throughout the midwest and Down to Mexico. Farmers and ranchers that normally would have been consuming could not afford anything and went bankrupt. Wealth was taken out of the economy.
NASA EXPLAINS “DUST BOWL” DROUGHT
NASA scientists have an explanation for one of the worst kkkkklimatic events in the history of the United States, the “Dust Bowl” drought, which devastated the Great Plains and all but dried up an already depressed American economy in the 1930’s.
Siegfried Schubert of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues used a computer model developed with modern-era satellite data to look at the climate over the past 100 years.
The study found cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures to create conditions in the atmosphere that turned America’s breadbasket into a dust bowl from 1931 to 1939. The team’s data is in this week’s Science magazine.
These changes in sea surface temperatures created shifts in the large-scale weather patterns and low level winds that reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and inhibited rainfall throughout the Great Plains.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0319dustbowl.html
These sorts of things happen … no matter how much coal we burn — or do not burn
Thanks very much! Interesting presentation. I notice many of Roger Fouquet’s charts. I included one of this charts in my post as well.
The one place the talk starts to go into MSM belief land is at the end, with the talk about “most transitions in the past weren’t managed.” Also, the idea that somehow wind and solar will somehow become economic. Their integration costs into electric systems rise higher and higher, as the percentage share of intermittent resources increases. How can this happen?
“Americans’ life expectancy at birth declined for the second year in a row in 2016 as the nation grappled with an opioid crisis, the first time that’s happened in more than half a century.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/u-s-life-expectancy-drops-for-second-year-amid-opioid-crisis
I saw a special on TV about that, and the state it’s worst in is West Virginia. Really hard to watch babies in the hospital born addicted, shaking. Why can’t people just have a drink or a toke? Go easy on yourselves people.
“Why can’t people just have a drink or a toke?”
The soul-destroying tedium and relentless grind of being an impotent and insignificant, low-grade energy-dissipater and entropy-conduit in a failing civilization seem to require more potent euphoriants and analgesics. I’m actually amazed that more people aren’t checking out or going postal tbh.
After a morning ‘Xmas shopping’, judging by the expressions on the faces of everyone in the shops, I tend to agree!
It’s brutal out there, all those savage, unsmiling, women grimly getting the stuff on their lists……..
My Christmas Shopping List:
– 4 books
– a wrap for Madame http://www.stansborough.co.nz/wraps.html
– a NZD20 Christmas tree
I really need to do more – if only to support BAU.
a sheet of bubblwrap is not conducive to christmas harmony
I used to buy books for nephews in Canada…. that was not appreciated…. so I discontinued buying anything at all.
Was it because you sent them “End of More”?
hey
Ha…. no. Maybe I should have! At least I could support Norman… and they’d end up in the same place
yup—my books are cheaper in charity shops
Oh?
As an adherent to nihilism (although I sometimes sin) … I think it is all rather amusing. Like going to the zoo and watching the monkeys fondle themselves.
You should try not giving a f789…. because there is nothing you can do anyway….
It reduces stress — and lowers blood pressure.
And if you want to bring more joy to your life — just admit to yourself that humans are stuuuupiddd MOREons…. actually worse…. they are arrogant stuuuuuupppid MOre ons….. who torture animals on an industrial scale….
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/sites/rodalesorganiclife.com/files/images/pig-abuse-475.jpg
And you know what —- the fact that they pump themselves full of drugs…. and then breed — and plop out blobs of shaking addicts ….
Well now …. that is downright funny — no? Damn funny!
Can you post some photos?
https://www.askideas.com/media/37/Orangutans-Laughing-Funny-Animal-Picture-For-Whatsapp.jpg
The Chinese should consider selling opium into the US….. specifically targeting Yale students.
https://www.alternet.org/drugs/5-elite-families-fortunes-opium-trade
Well, this is a worry:
“Demand from British motorists for UK-built cars has gone off a cliff, plunging by more than a quarter as confusion over diesel and Brexit-related economic worries hit.
“Official data on the number of cars rolling off production lines in Britain revealed a collapse in the amount destined for UK drivers, with the number falling by 28.1pc in November on a year-on-year basis…”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/21/uk-car-manufacturing-suffers-28pc-collapse-domestic-demand/
UK consumers are being squeezed, there’s a bit of inflation thanks to the devaluation of the pound, post Brexit. Wage rises remain subdued and people are cutting back a bit, putting off buying a new car is an obvious choice, particularly as there is so much doubt about diesel powered vehicles.
Blame it on Brexit … of course….
Why not also blame it on GGG WWW? Could it be that people are finally getting the message and have decided to take the bus… or walk?
Blame it on anything but…. the fact that the UK consumer is maxxed out on debt…
No doubt the UK consumer is maxed out but the Brexit vote has had an effect none the less. It’s been above a year since the vote and sterling has stabilised, the Brexit inflation will start to drop out of the numbers soon enough.
I don’t see too many people using the bus, in fact it’s amazing how many are driving around in Mercs, Range Rovers, Jags, Audis and Beamers. I assume they’re all bought on tick.
Telling people that people that diesel cars will not be allowed (or will be taxed at a higher rate) after a certain date could only make the problem worse. What were officials thinking?
It is pure stupidity to say diesel will be outlawed. Diesel power is what keeps our civilization afloat!
i want to ask reader of ofw will trump wall will make reduce illegal immigration
or this also fake propaganda just like gdp growth
https://youtu.be/mg8-_4ZfLpY
Mr Trump, tear down those walls!
I imagine the concern is that Mexico will become another Venezuela. The question isn’t how much of current immigration it would reduce; it is keeping down future immigration. Also, people from South and Central America, who make their way through Mexico to the United States.
Wisdom:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-20/litecoin-founder-cashes-out-sells-entire-stake-after-9300-rally
Uh – oh… some people will want to run for cover…. they will not like this ….
The Sun is Cooling Faster than Anyone Suspected
The danger from the Ggggggglobal Wwwwwwwwwarming crowd is that they are misleading the entire world and preventing us from what is dangerously unfolding that sparks the rapid decline in civilization – GgggggLOBAL COOLING. I previously warned that this is not my opinion, but simply our computer. If it were really conscious it would be running to store to buy heating pads. This year will be much colder for Europe than the last three. It will also be cold in the USA. We are in a global cooling period and all the data we have in our computer system warns that the earth is turning cold not wwwwwwarm.
This cooling is very serious. This decline in the energy output of the sun will manifest in a commodity boom in agriculture as shortages send food prices higher. We will see famine begin to rise as crops fail and that will inspire disease and plagues. We will see the first peak in agricultural prices come probably around 2024 after the lows are established on this cycle. We have been warning that this rise would begin AFTER 2017.
Previously, I have reported that NASA confirmed we are going into a cooling period – not wwwwarming. They have put out a forecast of declining sunspot activity.
Now NASA has come out confirming what our computer has been forecasting. They have reported that as the sun is experiencing a rapid decline in sunspots, it is also dimming in brightness or energy output. NASA’s Spaceweather station has recorded during 2017, 96 days (27%) of observing the sun have been completely absent of sunspots.
MOAR…. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/the-sun-is-cooling-faster-than-anyone-suspected/
http://armstrongeconomics-wp.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/07/Sunspot_Numbers.png
And sad to say there is nothing we can do about this … we have been burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow … and that has had virtually NO IMPACT on the kkkklimate so far… so burning more is not likely to counter act this cooling.
Fortunately — there is no tomorrow!!!
So who gives a flying f789!!!!
If you don’t have any knowledge about the topic, why are you writing stuff about it?
I am World Champion — of everything.
I counter with a legitimate web site…
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
“Maximum, minimum and mean temperatures for November were above average for Australia as a whole. November temperature anomalies were exceptional for Tasmania and Victoria. Tasmania observed its warmest November mean temperature on record, beating the existing record by a substantial margin (just over half a degree). Maxima were also the warmest on record for Tasmania, and the third-warmest for Victoria. Minima were the third-warmest on record for November in both Tasmania and Victoria. South Australia and Western Australia also observed mean minima which were the eighth-warmest on record for November.”
Where I live the temperature has been getting warmer for the last 30 years. This is easily reflected by both flowering and fruiting maturity dates that have constantly been getting earlier. Considering I keep in contact with similar crop growers around the world, and they all report the same, this campaign of no Climate change by the uninformed is ridiculous. you will not find farmers that think there is no warming, we can easily observe it over decades.
I wish they would end these reports with, “But there is absolutely nothing we can do about the temperature change, except for us to adapt.”
Hi Gail, I fully agree with having to adapt, however it is likely to be with a far smaller population and far more primitive tools at our disposal that deals with any climate change over the next few centuries.
We’ll adapt all right! Rex Tillerson publicly stated that we will build sea walls to protect coastal cities, move around food crops, as in relocating wheat, corn, rice to other PLACES,
and undertake other “other engineering solutions”. That hints at more BAU, not likely.
More likely, adapting to a future with less energy and other resources.
Good luck with that!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TkuyY2FFR7c
BTW, due to the vastness and complexity of the Earth’s climatic system, there is a time lag effect. Meaning the Greenhouse emissions we humans contribute now, will not be felt until 20 to 30 years from now in the changes our grandchildren will have to endure.
I AGREE with Gail, not much we can do about it with 7.5 billion people on the Earth.
Pointless debate, because 90% of our agricultural food is grown with the aid, directly, or indirectly from fossil fuels, namely
The Haber-Bosch process is extremely important because it was the first processes developed that allowed people to mass-produce plant fertilizers due to the production of ammonia. It was also one of the first industrial processes developed to use high pressure to create a chemical reaction (Rae-Dupree, 2011). This made it possible for farmers to grow more food, which in turn made it possible for agriculture to support a larger population. Many consider the Haber-Bosch process to be responsible for the Earth’s current population explosion as “approximately half of the protein in today’s humans originated with nitrogen fixed through the Haber-Bosch process” (Rae-Dupree, 2011).
And the other half due to GMO, refrigeration, transportation, mechanization of farms, ect.
I agree, not much we can do about it….
So, please stop bringing up this topic!
Rex is humouring the Green Groopie MORE ons…..
What else would you expect Rex Tillerson to say?
“Rex Tillerson is an educated individual with a science background in engineering.”
Engineers in the oil industry are a pretty narrow-minded bunch. It’s almost a rule that engineers are big religious believers while oilfield geologists are generally atheists.
Gail, how can a country adapt when they have a denier president, corrupt industry that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year over the last couple of decades on denial and misinformation campaigns that have created an army of true believer denier disciples and muddied the scientific waters and outright lied too many times to count?
I’m sure you are aware that there is a whole bunch more destruction in the pipe no matter what the humans do. Protecting and preparing and adapting are the only options left. It’s kinda hard to get your elected representatives to spend any of your tax dollars on protecting loved ones and infrastructure when so many of them are owned by big denial interests including the POTUS. Can’t prepare for a hoax now can we?
Anyone who understands humans and the M.P.P. knows humans were never going to give up fossil fuels or at least not liquid fuels and natgas. Perhaps if some super battery was developed that is orders of magnitude more light and powerful than what is currently available.
Because of petty monkey politics & greed the US is the most unprepared developed nation.
Canada has not prepared enough, but has at least done somethings and here in BC they are finally (after 2 record breaking wildfire seasons in 3 years) going to implement an AGW wildfire plan – we’ll see.
I should add that there is some preps being taken by governments in the US on the local levels. That’s where one should put their efforts if they want to try. The federal level appears hopeless and may always be.
Doing nothing is asking for the worst possible outcome.
At this point, I can only see deniers as nihilists.
All the main predictions of climate science over the last 40 years have come to pass with the only major error being “faster than previously expected”.
Denial at this point is purely political and it is enabling the worst possible outcomes. It’s making a bad situation worse and leading to maximum injury, destruction and suffering as the disasters become more powerful due to AGW.
I get how beliefs/world views die hard with humans, but deniers are helping to bring down their own country as fast as possible.
Most of them know and are just being selfish and stubborn.
What I find interesting is how none of the denier crowd ever noticed that environmentalism and environmentalists never prevented even 1 barrel of oil from being extracted and refined and consumed.
Look at any graph for oil & NatGas extraction and use over the last 40 years and it tells you all you need to know about what a monumental failure environmentalism has been. Same for every metric, population, deforestation, development/suburbs, over fishing, species extinctions and die backs, roads and on and on with the human growth.
Does anyone but me ever wonder why these denier types protest so vehemently when all the data clearly shows that which they desire – growth – has totally gone their way? Why are you yelling when you got exactly what you hoped for – more more more – and the envirotard lefties lost at every turn?
Very curious why they doth protest too much when they have won. Why would that be?
Just a reminder that evolution is all about change and it is not survival of the fittest. Just being fit is enough in many instances. It’s really survival of the most adaptable and adapting time is here.
This will apply to individuals, town, cities and countries. The ones who adapt will have the best chance of surviving and the deniers who don’t are dead men walking and will drag many down with them
Look to the Dutch for a first class example of how to adapt and protect your people and their property.
your rant is justified
however, as i am wont to point out, we all decided to embrace the infinite wonders of a society supported by fossil fuels
when i use ”we” there’s always protests that ”i” am not ”we”, but none of us can be exempted from the existence in which we currently live.
true, some take/use more than others, but we all wanted a piece of the action. It’s just a matter of scale
were it not for industrialised healthcare, for example, chances are you would not have survived to rant, nor i for that matter.
industrialised healthcare is the direct result of fossil fuelled systems.
my observations do not solve the problems, but instead make them a little clearer
Burn More Coal! Please!!!!
Rex Tillerson is an educated individual with a science background in engineering.
He is TRAINED to think in the mode of engineering “solutions”. We are not dealing with “solutions”, but “outcomes”, because we are facing a predicament.
BTW, I read Mr Tillerson came out publicly in his statement as a means of legal “full disclosure”, to protect himself from lawsuits in the future.
According to a new filing by Exxon to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Exxon said that its board “has reconsidered the proposal requesting a report on impacts of climate change policies” by major shareholders at its annual meeting earlier this year. The company will disclose more information regarding “energy demand sensitivities, implications of two degree Celsius scenarios, and positioning for a lower-carbon future,” the company’s filing stated.
The pressure from activists and shareholders to disclose more information related to Exxon’s vulnerability to climate change are the latest in a series of headwinds over the past few years, Bloomberg writes. The oil supermajor has also had to contend with its inability to find and replace all of the oil and gas reserves that it produces in a given year, and for several years in a row, that reserve-replacement ratio has been under 100 percent, an indication of a declining reserve base.
CYA was one of the first things on my first job….Cover Your @$$
I counter your counter with EXPERTS from Oxford University who say:
To avoid dangerous lkkkkklimate change of 2C, the world can only burn another half a trillion tonnes of ccccarbon, kkkkkklimate cccchange experts warn
Myles Allen, a kkkkkklimate expert at Oxford University who led the new study, said: “Mother Nature doesn’t care about dates. To avoid dangerous kkkkklllllimate cccchange we will have to limit the total amount of cccccarbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
And I counter your feebleness with fists of FURY
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/08/chuck1.gif
Where I live we just had a large snowstorm for the first time in history in early Dec.
The numbers your report quote don’t convince me. Probably cooked like a lot of the other G W reports.
It helps with the DTs.
Any idiot that can read can find this information at RealClimate.org.
Record heat despite a cold sun
Filed under: Climate Science skeptics Sun-earth connections — stefan @ 14 November 2016
Global temperature goes from heat record to heat record, yet the sun is at its dimmest for half a century.
For a while, 2010 was the hottest year on record globally. But then it got overtopped by 2014. And 2014 was beaten again by 2015. And now 2016 is so warm that it is certain to be once again a record year. Three record years in a row – that is unprecedented even in all those decades of global warming.
Strangely, one aspect of this gets barely mentioned: all those heat records occur despite a cold sun (Figs. 1 and 2). The last solar minimum (2008-2010) was the lowest since at least 1950, while the last solar maximum (2013-2015) can hardly be described as such. This is shown, among others, by the sunspot data (Fig. 1) as well as measurements of the solar luminosity from satellites (Fig. 2). Other indicators of solar activity indicate cooling as well (Lockwood and Fröhlich, Proc. Royal Society 2007).
Fig. 1 Time evolution of global temperature, CO2 concentration and solar activity. Temperature and CO2 are scaled relative to each other according to the physically expected CO2 effect on climate (i.e. the best estimate of transient climate sensitivity). The amplitude of the solar curve is scaled to correspond to the observed correlation of solar and temperature data. (Details are explained here.) You can generate and adapt this graph to your taste here, where you can also copy a code with which the graph can be embedded as a widget on your own website (as on my home page). Thus it will be automatically updated each year with the latest data. Thanks to our reader Bernd Herd who programmed this. More »
https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://herdsoft.com/climate/widget/config.php%3Fwidth%3D700%26height%3D500%26start_year%3D1950%26title%3D%26temp_axis%3DTemperatur-Anomalie%2B(%25B0C)%26co2_axis%3DCO2-Konzentration%2B(ppm)%26temp_rgb%3Db2b2b2%26co2_rgb%3D1786ec%26ice_rgb%3D178600%26alias%3D2
So what? Absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Burn More Coal!
That is the only option.
Sorry, I just don’t like liars. The sun is getting slightly dimmer, and the earth is getting much warmer. Why lie about it?
What’s your take on the places experiencing record cold temperatures?
Oh come now — we have been hearing that we are going to boil — for certain ‘next year’
Nobody is boiling…
Shall we ask the EXPERTS why?
Yes let’s …
The experts say about half a trillion tonnes of carbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution. To prevent a 2C rise, they say, the total burnt must be kept to below a trillion tonnes. On current rates, that figure will be reached in 40 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/29/fossil-fuels-trillion-tonnes-burned
Frankie says:
And .. based on what has happened so far … I GUARANTEE you … that if BAU still exists in 40 years (an impossibility … but pretend)…. the same EXPERTS would be telling the masses that GGG WWW will soon reach dangerous levels…. soon as in a few decades… always not now.
Because it is … fake.
El Fako.
Tell yourself Eddy. Tell yourself while the record books get smashed to hell almost daily now. 4 days from Christmas and California wildfires are still burning. Tell yourself it’s always been like that and wildfire season is not 2 1/2 months longer than 30 years ago. A few more years and wildfire season will be 12 months long.
The National Security Threat that Inflicted 400 Billion in Damages This Year
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/12/19/the-national-security-threat-that-inflicted-400-billion-in-damages-this-year/
Yes Yes — I have heard all about those fires and the hurricanes….
And I am sure the MSM is telling you that GGG WWW is the cause….
So obviously it must be true.
My response?
Burn More F789ing Coal! Burn More F789ing Oil!
TINA.
In fact I will celebrate by loading the deck of my 4 bah 4 with stones and driving 50km to nowhere… then back.
I love the smell of coal smog in the morning .. smells like…. BAU is Alive and Well!
https://gyemgh.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/coal-plant.jpg
Or did the little man discover the winter solstice?
Way to go little man.
Yeah,Armstrong publishes an article about the solar minimum on December 20th and laughs.
Penrith Sydney records the highest December temps on record with a maximum of 44.1C on Tuesday as Australian mercury surges upwards.
“A golfer in his 60s has died after collapsing in the heat in Sydney’s south, as the city swelters through tops of 40C.”
http://www.thebigwobble.org/2017/12/penrith-sydney-records-highest-december.html
Fast eddy, here is what is happening and will continue. The consequences of AGW are going to break the bank.
2017 will be about $400 Billion disaster dollars for the US. Disasters that are all AGW Jacked.
Fast Eddy Denier doubling down. How much longer will he go?
https://www.iceagenow.info/record-cold-australia-2/
Record cold in Australia
December 14, 2017
Breaking records set more than 100 years ago.
Queensland residents are reaching for cardigans as overnight December temperatures break record lows.
Mount Isa had its lowest overnight December temperate ever on record at 12 degrees Celsius — 11C degrees below average.
“Burketown yesterday had a minimum of 17.7C which was the lowest they’d seen up there since 1920, but that was eclipsed today with 16C, and that’s the coldest December morning since 1907,” said Bureau of Meteorology forecaster David Bernard.
“Richmond yesterday was 11.8C which was the lowest there in December since 1909.”
“I’ve been forecasting for a few decades now and I can’t really remember anything quite this spectacular as far as dry and cool at this time of year,” said Bernard. “It’s the sort of thing we often see in winter which usually leads to really cold winter nights, but we don’t often see it in December.”
comments from people living in AU.
tango
December 15, 2017 at 2:27 am
I live in Sydney the first time i read about this is in ice now no news on this cold at all in Australia
Laurel
December 15, 2017 at 6:30 am
and i just looked at BoM pages and all and i mean ALL of their sidebar topics are about the heat..maybe..if a warm inland front keeps being pushed down across aus not a word about the colder temps.
Darren Macca McDonald
December 15, 2017 at 4:19 pm | Reply
I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t of read about it here. Also I’m interested if anyone else has noticed a change in the colours of the B.O.M maps that project the temps? Or is it just me? Every time we get warm weather it shows as red everywhere where once I thought we only got the red when it was extreme. Has any one else noticed this?
Chn
December 15, 2017 at 8:00 pm | Reply
I live on the Central Coast NSW near Sydney and we are getting fairly cold sea temperatures ….. now if this continues for this season and next year as well something will be up
Deon
December 17, 2017 at 2:30 am | Reply
Darren Macca McDonald
December 18, 2017 at 1:24 am | Reply
Yes south east Aus is getting some warm weather now. Today it was in the Low to mid 30’s & tommorrow Melbourne is set for 36 degree C. But just had some very cool temps recently as well. I work outdoors so it’s quite noticeable the difference.
John Smith
December 17, 2017 at 4:43 pm | Reply
I can feel the cooler air here in SE QLD. Actually really a blissful summer with very little heat & humidity so far compared to what we’re used to. We’re growing flowers well into late autumn that normally would not last much past October at best. Hard to fake that! And of course our air-conditioning has hardly been running for 6 months. I almost forgot how to use it!
Interesting how we NEVER get told by the media when record cold happens. But have a day with warm summer temperatures and the world is going to fry!
AGW consequences are and will continue to destroy America’s already rotting infrastructure (4 Trillion deficit). See it’s breaking the infrastructure, it’s breaking the economy and then will break the peoples spirits and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Too late. The only option left is to prepare and protect the people, but that can’t happen with a denier government which you support. Some of the blood will be on your hands for supporting denial.
BTW, testimonials are the lowest form of evidence. Not really evidence at all – lame & desperate.
But since you insist, I will tell you that I have seen the province where I have lived most of my life, BC, have much of it’s forests decimated by pine beetles. Pine beetles that used to die off when we had real winters that killed enough of them so they were not a disaster. I’ve been around for 50 years and know the BC & Alberta bush since I have been hunting, fishing since I was a kid and spent a couple years logging as a teen when I escaped the final years of government indoctrination/education. I have also traveled both provinces extensively in my tradesman career. Moreover, no one in the greater Vancouver region and large swaths of western N America needed the Canadian MSM to tell them there are huge record breaking wildfires because they were all choking on the smoke for over a month during the summer – same as 2015. If you drive the highways away from the coast you see many red trees/dead trees for as far as the eye can see 12 months of the year.
B.C. surpasses worst wildfire season on record
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-surpasses-worst-wildfire-season-on-record-1.4249435
That was from August it got much worse after that and blew the record book out of the water. Same as is what is happening all over the world.
I have also seen the shrinkage of a few BC & Alberta glaciers that my family visited back in the early 1970’s along with millions of other tourists. This is happening globally and any fool can look at tens of thousands of pictures and video and data going back to the 1800’s – it’s undeniable.
Apnea, time will tell on climate.
Has CA decided to limit infrastructure growth and population due to the increasing fires?
Do you know for a fact that many fires were not set either intentionally or accidentally by homeless, or terrorists, or by bored kids? By pyromaniacs? It is a fact that there are more of those people now that there were before.
When you traveled all over BC, for all those yrs…did you use FF?
If so, then you will have “blood on your hands” too.
I suppose your rant was a threat of some sort. What exactly did you mean that I will have blood on my hands. Was it a threat?
BTW Have you stopped using FF?
ps You are a great Labeler.
Don’t you just love it how these GGerbel Weebels rant and rail and stomp and scream — about how we are burning up the planet….
Yet they ALL participate in the orgy of fossil fuel burning.
They shop – they drive – they fly – they use roads made of oil — and on and on …
And they make themselves feel superior by Blue Boxing — and throwing stones in their glass houses.
One could not imagine a group of people who were so totally ridiculous.
Idjuts to the last one
Chchchchchch…anges….
https://opinicon.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/laurentide-ice-sheet.jpg
Why is Greenland called Greenland if it not green?
Greenland, the icy island nation in the Arctic, gets its name from an Icelandic murderer exiled there, who called it “Greenland” in hopes that the name would attract settlers. But it turns out that long ago, Greenland was actually quite green.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6653/20140418/icy-greenland-was-once-pretty-green-study-finds.htm
It would not be helpful to run stories about record cold WEATHER — when the edict from the Ministry of Truth …. requires that the MSM support the lie that is GG WWWWW.
WWWarmers… a question for you ….. since you believe that posted record hot temps supports your theory ….
Then surely record cold temperatures MUST then debunk that theory.
That is how logic works.
So how do you explain the record cold temperatures… while continuing to believe in GGGG wWWWWW????
I suspect you simply ignore those facts… and that you will not respond to my question.
“How much longer will he go?”
Liars lie. Flatlanders refuse to acknowledge the truth. It will go on until the collapse because people cannot think, and they cannot face the truth.
The truth is that AGW exists. It doesn’t matter whether there is a solution or not. Denying AGW is exactly the same as denying peak affordable oil, peak fresh water, peak food, etc. Flatland denial, and foolishness.
Could see record cold in time for Christmas. Here’s where:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/us/news/articles/cold-temperatures-northern-us-plains-midwest-northeast-christmas-minnesota-north-south-dakota-wisconsin-pennsylvania-new-york-jersey-rhode-island-dc-maryland-mid-atlantic/90995
Let me help you
What’s the Difference Between Weather and KKKKlimate?
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/klimate_weather.html
Change the k to a c
Could see record cold in time for Christmas. Here’s where:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/us/news/articles/cold-temperatures-northern-us-plains-midwest-northeast-christmas-minnesota-north-south-dakota-wisconsin-pennsylvania-new-york-jersey-rhode-island-dc-maryland-mid-atlantic/90995
Let me help you
What’s the Difference Between Weather and KKKKlimate?
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/klimate/klimate_weather.html
Change the k to a c
Reply
My waitress today said that her daughter is teaching English in southern China. She said that they recently had snow there–something that is almost unheard of. I did not find any mention of this in Google news, here, however.
Meanwhile inside the micro peanuts that Gerbil Worms call a brain…. the 4 synapses are firing …
This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute! This Does Not Compute!
CODE RED…. Prepare for Immediate INSANITY. Unable to process….
See the smoke coming out of their ears? That is a meltdown of the microprocessor — caused by ramming logic into the circuitry.
https://i0.wp.com/www.giggabpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/smoke-coming-out-of-man-ear.jpg
Eminem attacks Donald Trump: ‘He’s got people brainwashed’
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/20/eminem-attacks-donald-trump-people-brainwashed
“The people that support him are the people he cares about the least and they don’t even realise it,” he added. “He’s got people brainwashed.”
He’s got that right.
And Obama… HRC cared about them?
Let’s make this crystal care —- the bosses of Obama Bush Clinton Trump — refer to us as goyim — CATTLE
They do not care about any of us — all they care about is what we can do for them — to keep them in power — the more useful to them among us get the spoils — the proles — get no more than enough.
And the stuuuupidest volunteer to fight their wars that keep the farm safe.
And let’s not forget that pathetic little Frenchman Hollande: he actually laughed at the poor for having bad dental care -‘les sans-dents’: a ‘socialist’!
I cannot see, as a foreign observer, how any Americans fall for the modern Democrats: is it too hard to face the crude fact that BOTH the main parties are corrupt and in the pocket of big business?
Of course, the Dems seem to offer more crumbs to the masses, but that is all.
So, a person supports a leader you disapprove of, that person has been brainwashed.
Is that why liberals were making death threats to various member of the electoral college after the 2016 election? Were the liberals making death threats attempting to reverse the brainwashing that Trump did on them?
How about the large number of Republicans who share many of Trump’s positions but find him abrasive? Are they brainwashed, too?
Brainwashing is a nice term. It absolves those who are brainwashed of responsibility for their actions and those who use the term can avoid appearing to be full of hatred.
Eminem always has and will always be great pretender. He is reading the script that all Hollywood celebrities have to , to stay in favor. In Hollywood, everyone is on the Green Energy bandwagon, pro-LGBT, pro-Black Lives Matter, pro-globalization, pro-“safe spaces”, pro-Sharia Law or else they are unemployed.
Eminem … isn’t he the white guy trying to pretend he is black?
All political views are extreme, bordering on the fanatical, because they appeal to emotion, not to reason or logic. As such their members are more like cult actors than a reasonable individual. Red, blue, doesn’t matter. Any ideaology is a lie built on lies. Thats how they stay in business.
Yes, that is the way to make money today, appeal to your fan base on an emotional level… No matter if you believe a position or not. If that position appeals to your fans then claim you believe it as well. The followers of the “celebrities” don’t even know they are being played.
So the corporate tax rate just went from 35% to 21%. Anyone care to wager what that’s going to do next year? Can that actually extend BAU by allowing them to buy up even more shares, reducing their earnings needs?
The first is a two-tier profits tax system which will lower the rate for the first HK$2 million of corporate profits to 10 per cent, from the current 16.5 per cent.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2105637/tax-breaks-store-hong-kong-start-ups-city-struggles-stay
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ywgtmO2MeQI/VbrOc1BsSqI/AAAAAAAABq8/7MVGQOdPOE4/s1600/race-to-the-bottom.png
I shall use this Helicopter Money ….. to Live Larger next year!!!
Democrats are going to take over in 2018 and Trump will hopefully be ousted somehow with Pence being D/Q due to collusion. Elon Launch my own Roadster to Mars cool pants Musk will get elected President. He will start a $2.500 a month family allowance socialist system that takes over with the United States economy absolutely blasting off into the stratosphere shooting the price of Crude beyond $100 a barrel or higher, DOW to 50,000 or higher, 401K money goes into the Quadrillion’s, and more oil becomes unlocked for shale producers to bring online.
This would bring about another 4 or 8 years, maybe even a decade of BAU. Yes I am slightly intoxicated but this theory is sound. It also lets the game go longer as we get a front row seat to climate change and collapsing economies or a nuke party becoming more and more imminent with each month of BAU.
This is the plan. But what will they do for an encore? Meanwhile, the depletion clock is ticking…tick…tock…
Yes but it could extend BAU another year, maybe even longer imo.
There’s a shock coming though, maybe next year. Maybe in two years – probably oil related, but it’s coming. Can your hear the rumbling?
Yeah it’s all extend and pretend now.
And when it comes its going to knock our planet off of it’s axis….
Orbital facing is real however we won’t likely be around when the real nasty stuff happens.
“35% to 21%.”
It’s desperation time. The R’s have convinced themselves the only reason the economy isn’t generating higher GDP numbers is because Business has been held back by taxes that are too high. So now the shackles have been removed those businesses will surely expand and hire many more people (instead of taking higher bonuses and buying back more stock), so much so that the economy will jack up into a hyper expansion that will pay many times over the loss of revenue from reducing corporate taxes. Like I started off with, its desperation time.
My personal opinion is the only thing that will jack up into a hyper state are increased deficits, which is ironic considering the R’s shut down the govt. while Obama was prez because of high deficits. But then again, maybe its a plot to find sufficient reason to scale back social security, Medicaid and Medicare, which Ryan has stated he is planning to go after this coming year. They are planning to increase retirement age for social security into the 70’s along with Medicare eligibility. Whether that’s 70 or 75, it’s going to be very difficult on people whose employers won’t keep them on or those not energetic or healthy enough to pull their employment weight.
“Steve, why can’t you meet the minimum quota anymore?”
“I was suppose to retire ten years ago!”
“The R’s say you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
“I can’t even reach my bootstraps!”
People better not blink because this country is going far to the right. Those opposing these ideas don’t realize the R’s are going to get all this done long before another election and there won’t be any turning these new policies back because the R’s before the next election will reinstate the filibuster (the Dems allowed to be eradicated once the R’s owned all 3 branches). That’s how weak the Dems are. So ‘We the People’ are being hung out to dry, because the R’s have the deplorable worried about transgenders and sharia law. Where’s the bathroom? I need to puke.
Excellent ideas here and you may end up being right. I think the dems win 2018 and we see a socialist monthly stipend start up to really lift off the economy and as another desperate move. It too could extend the game a little longer imo.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user92183/imageroot/HelicopterMoney.png
Wonderful!
Trump is not a fiscal conservative in the sense that he said during his campaign “that we can always print money”. From his viewpoint the tax cut will pump twice the money through the economy. First the tax cut, and then the additional deficit spending that results. Who knows how long the dollar has until depreciation time.
JH, you sound so sad….better go find your safe space.
AT&T plans to lay off nearly 300 at center in Dallas next year ( Goodbye 1k Bonuses)
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2017/12/20/att-plans-lay-nearly-300-center-dallas-next-year?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter
Peak Oil = Black Elephant
The “Black Elephant” is a combination of two common phrases
The “elephant sitting in the room” is the thing which everybody knows is important but nobody will talk about. It is a taboo.
The “black swan” is an extreme or unlikely event which shreds prior risk management strategies.
A “black elephant” is an event which is extremely likely and widely predicted by experts, but people attempt to pass it off as a black swan when it finally happens. Usually the experts who had predicted the event – from the economic crisis to pandemic flu – go from being marginalized to being lionized when the problem finally rears its head.
Excellent insight! The black elephant will be on a rampage in 2018.
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
psile, WTI at 58.05 (and for anyone else interested, Brent up to 64.56). East coast refineries use a combination of domestic WTI & imported Brent oil.
Wage discrepancy among doctors in Korea is becoming a serious matter too.
Korea’s medical care system is even more restrictive than England’s NHS. As a result, talented doctors get into plastic surgery which is NOT covered under the national medical insurance.
People who major in general surgery are few and far between There is one, one single surgeon who specializes in heavy injury in the entire country, and recently when a North Korean soldier was shot a few times crossing into the South, he was called. He complained to the government that the compensation for such heavy injury was too cheap.
A lot of doctors are becoming employees of shady businesspeople who need the doctor’s license to open for-profit clinics and institutions, somewhat like Mexican doctors becoming the employees of pharmacies.
Meanwhile, doctors who end up in huge hospitals run by the conglomerates (Samsung, Hyundai, etc) are paid very well.
And still we believe in progress? While all the talent end up in plastic surgery, hedge funding, subsidy scams, creating apps for sending 140 characters max, advertising.
I wouldn’t say that is necessarily talent. It is just “capitalism”. Taking advantage of loop holes and the situation in general. There will always be people who don’t really want to be productive, they just look for ways to use the system for their benefit. If that doesn’t work, these like minded folks group together and form unions or associations to further their cause. See RIAA, NADA, National Association of Realtors. Etc.
Assuming people generally prefer more pay, and assuming a competitive work place the best should tend towards the best paid jobs, not the most worthwhile. Assuming worthwhile jobs exist.
I think today that most jobs are not really worthwhile jobs. Especially advertising.
i was under the impression that the great depression was caused by overproduction—ie energy usage–causing over investment which could not be absorbed in terms of production and sales by the mass of people who were supposed to be buying all the stuff
It is caused by under-ability to buy goods; too much wage disparity. The same problem we have now. It is in some sense the “opposite” of too high prices.
The reason there was overproduction was because wages weren’t rising fast enough to allow workers to consume more. There isn’t a whole lot of text to support the notion that wages were rising along with output. It seems like industrial economies throughout the world had an export model without enough customers.What I think happened was that large but important sectors of the economy such as agriculture and coal mining were facing falling returns on investment.
“However, some sectors were stagnant, especially farming and coal mining. “(Wikipedia)
Wikipedia hints that there was some underlying weakness to the economy despite the fact it was doing well.
“Other important economic barometers were also slowing or even falling by mid-1929, including car sales, house sales, and steel production”
Investors were taking their money out of the “real economy” and were increasingly investing in things like land in Florida and in stocks.
” Florida land boom of the 1920s… The story includes many parallels to the modern[when?] real estate boom, including the forces of outside speculators, easy credit access for buyers, and rapidly appreciating property values.[1]”(Wikipedia)
From what I’ve seen, speculation only happens when returns on real businesses are not high enough.
I’m starting to think a lot of the prosperity in the 1920s, was just illusionary.
Most of the people doing well must have been people, in finance, who received other people’s savings to be invested in the stock market and other areas.
Companies were mindlessly churning stuff out without think of demand.
It reminds me of China today, with its export economy model.
It reminds me specifically of China’s Ghost Cities, and infrastructure projects.
It seems like no one has learned anything from the past. It’s not that there was no increase in wealth, or profits, there was, but these increases were not enough because the increase in investment was much greater than the return on investment. The export based economies seem to think if they keep increasing capacity, investor will continue to invest.
” During the later half of the 1920s, steel production, building construction, retail turnover, automobiles registered, even railway receipts advanced from record to record. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies showed an increase, in fact for the first six months of 1929, of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Iron and steel led the way with doubled gains.[20] Such figures set up a crescendo of stock-exchange speculation which had led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. A significant number of them were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan,[21] more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. at the time.[16][22]” (Wikipedia)
The amount of debt that was lent into existance could not be repaid. When people realized that the returns were not forthcoming there was a crash. Preventative measures against crashes since then have included propaganda that convinces investors returns are out forthcoming. An investor just has to move her money fast enough to catch them. If that fails, the government will magically guarantee them their returns.
The 1920s was another Gilded Age if this chart is accurate.
http://www.emayzine.com/index.php/history-118/history-117-week-6/93-the-gilded-age-the-1920-s-and-the-1980-s-compared
One of the major reforms since the 1920s, included minimum wages laws. I don’t think this was an act of compassion, I think this was a realization that there was a demand problem.
https://imgur.com/a/nVVFU
2017 is set to go down as the year of the retail apocalypse. More store closings this year than any other on record. And retail is America’s largest employer
https://www.aol.com/article/finance/2017/12/18/15-retailers-that-went-bankrupt-in-2017/23310773/
In addition to retail job losses, think about this one: If it comes to pass that most passenger cars become E cars with very few moving parts, how many people will become laid off because of that? Then add in all the trucking jobs lost due to self driving trucks, then add in all the lost cab jobs lost from self driving, and one has to wonder what are all those people going to do?
None of that is going to happen
It is crazy that we are pursuing this though. Technology for technology’s sake, not to help human beings, all in the name of “progress”.
It is called the technology cult. Supposedly it always solves a problem and makes life better, when in reality it makes it worse in many instances. Self driving cars are not needed, unless you are the one making money off of them. E cars….nice idea, but not really feasible given the massive battery costs, both monetary and to the environment.
” If it comes to pass that most passenger cars become E cars with very few moving parts, how many people will become laid off because of that? ” – Well no worries … we will need a lot of child labor in China to mine those rare earth metals. And lithium mining will be a booming business. Too bad there isn’t enough lithium in the world to do all these things though.
“And retail is America’s largest employer” – Hmm, that’s odd. I thought the trend was for Bitcoin, renewables and AI as the new largest employers. I was way off. /sarc
Hence…. I live my physical life in a vacuum surrounded by ignorance…. (except for Madame Fast he mostly gets it but has no interest to discuss it)…. digitally I am not alone
The US and China are preparing for all hell to break loose in North Korea
Both the US and China have been taking unprecedented steps as tensions ramp up along the Korean Peninsula. China has prepared refugee camps and information for citizens to help them survive nuclear attacks and has expanded its offensive capabilities with its air force. The US has stepped up military drills, practiced air raids, and reportedly started preparing to seize North Korea’s nuclear weapons by force.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-china-preparing-for-war-north-korea-2017-12
If they engage that crazy haircut… .He will blow Seoul half way to hell…
https://imgur.com/a/2E0kD
MAD — mutually assured destruction ….
They put suffering dogs out of their misery don’t they?
This might be manna from heaven via the missile silos.
I have the impression Trump (emboldened by the R’s Tax code changes, primarily for the super wealthy) is ready to take on NK soon ‘after’ the Olympics in Seoul, SK. After that ‘disastrous event’ in 2018 will be the wholesale reduction of entitlements and big increases to Defense. Poor and lower classes are put on notice by the R’s to pull off a quick miracle or become homeless.
Nothing good comes out of Washington federal laws. The devil in in the details.What can be assured is that more of our liberty and freedom will disappear.
We’re totally about to invade North Korea, if for no other reason than Trump to try and pull attention off of Mueller’s investigation. I expect fireworks at anytime now.
I think you’re right about that Tango Oscar (although I’m pretty certain after the Olympics) unless he’s really completely and utterly out of his mind (which is possible at this point). Trump is a master of distraction and will force things to happen to cause a distraction. There is an animal that does the same thing; a hyena. So one can think of Trump as ‘The Hyena’ of the modern human experience.
I much prefer to think of Trump as just some dude cosplaying Richie Rich.
Trump said in an interview that his favorite thing about his daughter was sex. Like, I’m pretty sure he’s already out to lunch.
I think he wants to distract away from the failing economy. He promised in his first year he would produce 4.5 GDP growth. And this year we are looking at 2.4 percent. He missed his goal by around 20 trillion dollars. Also our largest employer Retail closed more stores than ever in its history and lost more jobs than anytime ever. And pointing to the stock market gains didn’t work very well for Obama and wont work for Trump. Since most of his voters do not own any stocks.
Every president for the past 20 yrs has wanted to distract away from the failing economy.
He wants to distract from a lot of things, I’m sure. That said, going to prison or getting shot in the face are probably his biggest motivators at this point.
Bumper Sticker idea:
Save the Planet – Exterminate All Humans
Your analysis of coal production might be helped by including the way in which technology affected production.
Early mines were most efficient on dipping coal seams (as opposed to horizontal seams) where the angle of the mines aided in moving coal away from the working face. Mine development entries were driven down to a certain depth, then development entries turned to the left and right horizontally before the production working faces were turned once more to mine back up the dip allowing the coal to be moved by gravity back down to a central loading area where mechanical haulage took the coal out of the mine.
Mining coal on flat lying seams was back breaking work with much of the loading and hauling being done manually amidst a forest of wooden props until mechanical loaders began (slowly) to be introduced in the 1920s.
It was these dipping seams (and thicker seams) that were being depleted in the early part of the 20th century. And it was this depletion that affected production and price.
After WWII the introduction of roof bolters (which reduced the number of wooden props needed) and mobile mechanical miners that operated on thin flat seams that allowed increased production in seams and areas that were formerly limited in productivity. Later mechanical longwall miners increased productivity even more.
Your analysis might also be clearer if you break out surface coal production which was drastically enhanced by the introduction of cheap ammonium nitrate explosives (made from methane) after WWII. Without these explanations the production/price graphs do not reveal the full story.
Thanks for your insights. There is a lot more of this story to be told. It is hard to get it all at once, on the first pass.
(sorry! cap error) ) i KNOW YOU ARE BEING CRYSTAL CLEAR, ALTHOUGH MOST PEOPLE WOULD GET THIS BETTER THROUGH DIAGRAMS, PREFERABLY ONES THAT MOVE.
I live in an abandoned mining town that started in modern form 100 years ago. All the mine shafts have been closed off, and the main operating center has been demolished. Most people here see coal mining as firmly stuck in the past, and have no interest in understanding its heritage. Wish you were here.
Gloomy Brexit forecasts for UK are coming true, says IMF
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/20/imf-christine-lagarde-brexit-forecasts-growth-uk-economy?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews#link_time=1513787308
Blame everything on Brexit….
Could the slowdown be related to:
https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/22/590x/secondary/ons-445179.png
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/1/16/saupload_1CyFym2iBDu2IrJtj3JRgv32FppO3_j-Sso3TCfCRrZCF21RZPYMtZry0Y09oUSu0wskJVwmugO1Mrxi2xXkUD_NNsfLPcAUG2AsYgWZVLonlI_O0vo1HflhqvTONMenUYjNkZfz.png
Help me, I’m so confused…..
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-03/prepare-for-north-sea-oil-flood-just-as-opec-plans-output-curbs
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Beginning-Of-The-End-For-Norwegian-Oil.html
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/content/images/articles/037/37010/some-people-experience-a-mixed-state-in-which-they-may-feel-depressed-but-also-restless.jpg
Edinburgh Study: Only 10 years of UK’S North Sea Oil and Gas Remaining (Thompson, 2017)
https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2017/uk-oil-and-gas-reserves-may-last-only-a-decade
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“Raising wages for elite workers (such as managers and those with advanced education), or paying more in dividends to shareholders, doesn’t have the same effect. These individuals likely already have enough money to buy the necessities of life. They may use the extra income to buy shares of stock or bonds to save for retirement, or they may buy services (such as investment advice) that require little use of energy.”
I’m not sure that the wages of ‘elite’workers have really been increasing.
I thought the recent increase in the supply of ‘elite’workers, actually decreased wages for many ‘elite’ workers, since there has not been enough grow to justify sustained raises for most employees, whether they are ‘highly educated’ or not.
Information Technology, a sector known for it’s high growth and abnormally high ROI, would rather hire younger and cheaper workers than continue to hold onto a large number of older, and higher-wage workers.
Outside of upper management, in IT, I’m not certain that anyone is getting regular raises.
At best, from what I’ve seen, college education moves income inequality to the professional services, Workers with elite education credentials and internships at elite firms get paid a lot more than workers who have education credentials that are non-elite and had internships at non-elite firms. My definition of “elite worker ” is someone who went to a highly ranked and selective school and did well there.That definition describes a small percentage of people who are highly educated. My definition of an elite worker does get regular wage raises but since there are so few of her, their cost to organizations is limited. My definition of an elite worker also explains where there are housing shortages in places where there is a concentration of ‘highly educated workers’,
When I think of “Elite Workers” I think of doctors, lawyers, banking executives and such. The jobs that have historically paid well. I don’t consider IT jobs as elite employment.
JMG uses the term “salaried class” which may be more useful. He parses social classes by where people make money. The major classes are (1) the investment class, (2) the salaried class, (3) the hourly wages class, and (4) the welfare class. Basically in our modern era it is the Hourly Wages class which has been isolated and born most of the burden of creeping collapse.
I have three children, all in their thirties, none with children. Only one is salaried, although all three have master’s degrees. The salaried one is a “software developer.” (IT, in other words.)
Another son is mildly autistic. With a masters’ degree in computer science, he has never had anything other than hourly-paid “contract” work. One job disappeared, when they moved the work to China. But unlike a lot of autistic people, he has managed to be employed, most of the time.
My daughter, with a masters’ degree in creative writing, has a part time (hourly paid) editorial job on a magazine, and a part time personal training job (also hourly paid). Her partner, who has a Ph. D. in chemistry, has a contract job, that she hopes will turn into a “regular” job. She is working an awfully lot of hours, I understand.
Young people today have a terrible time. Even my son with the “regular” job got laid off from an IT job, when the company decided it needed to change strategy to complete. None of these jobs is terribly permanent.
Young people today really do have a hard time. In some ways I think it’s emotionally easier to see your prospects rising even if you are poorer. I think of my grandfather who worked in a canning factory in WWII, then later became a fireman – with pension. He supported three children who he put through college and a wife and was retired comfortably for 30 years before he died. Even though he was in the wage class his life was prosperous in a way that is hard to imagine these days. Now it seems people are going the opposite route. Especially hourly wage jobs are crumbling into a handful of part-time, gig based jobs.
I’ve been fortunate as a mechanical engineer who designs commercial building systems to ride the waves of two construction booms. But the construction industry is volatile and many in my industry were not so lucky around 2009.
The First World… is resembling the Third World…. more and more each day….
https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980×551/public/images/methode/2016/01/12/53542b7e-b913-11e5-9ce7-2395197ababe_1280x720.jpg
https://static.straitstimes.com.sg/sites/default/files/articles/2016/03/28/37836940_-_22_03_2016_-_philippines-economy-poverty.jpg
Thanks for sharing information about your family, Gail. That very much indicates just how different it is today for employment vs. decades ago. One thing I remember from the 60’s/70’s as a kid was parents weren’t saddled with a lot of debt, other than some owned homes and had mortgages. I had a friend whose parents both waited tables in a restaurant and lived quite well. Not a lot left over but they rented a two story very nice large home in an upscale neighborhood, had a small car, cable TV, ate well, no long term debt and lived full lives. How well do people live today working in a restaurant? Most are living with a lot of debt in a small rental or with other people. It really has changed that much!
The min wage was 11 dollars an hour (Inflation Adjusted) back in the 1970’s. Its nearly half of that much now..
I owned a 2 bedroom condo in a nice neighborhood before I turned 30. None of my children could even think of that, even though we pretty much funded their education. (My daughter insisted in taking on some debt, because she ended up taking an extra year in grad school, and because “all my friends have debt.”)
Anyone who wishes they could be 25 again …. might reconsider….
Income disparity is growing among people who hold salaried jobs. There is increasing income disparity among doctors and lawyers. Aspiring doctors are chasing specialties, in order to get what they consider good wages. Some of those specialties are not in demand but command higher fees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/disparity-in-pay-divides-doctors/2012/10/22/675233a8-f1e0-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_story.html?utm_term=.9de4a73b63ab
A lawyer outside an elite school, is not doing much better than an elementary teacher.
The world in a barrel – The Economist
Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world. What is it made of and where does it go?
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732697-crude-oil-most-traded-commodity-world-what-it-made-and-where-does
“Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world” Gee – I thought was Bitcoin. You know /sarc
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This lovely song sung by the lovely Cara Dillon—The Emigrant’s Farewell—chronicles the dreams, laments and expectations of the mid-19th century Irish emigrants to the New World as they sailed away from the wreckage of their collapsing society.
Farewell to old Ireland, the land of my childhood
Which now and forever I am going to leave
Farewell to the shores, where the shamrock is growing
It’s the bright spot of beauty and the home of the brave
I’ll think on it’s valleys with fond admiration
Though never again it’s bright hills will I see
I’m bound for to cross the wide swelling ocean
In search of fame and fortune and of sweet liberty
Our ship at the present lies in Derry harbour
To bear us away across the wide swelling sea
May heaven be her companion and grant her fair breezes
Till we reach the green fields of Americay
It’s hard to be forced from the land that we live in
Our houses and farms all obliged for to sell
To wander along among Indians and strangers
To find some sweet spot where our children might dwell
Our artists, our farmers, our tradesmen are leaving
To seek for employment far over the sea
Where they’ll get their riches with care and with industry
There’s nothing but hardship at home if you stay
So cheer up your spirits, you lads and you lasses
There’s gold for the digging and lots of it, too
A health to the heart that has courage to ramble
Bad luck to the lad or the lass that would rue
We’ll call for a bumper of ale, wine and brandy
We’ll drink to the health of those far away
Our hearts will all warm at the thought of old Ireland
When we’re on the green fields of Americay
https://youtu.be/HQpZgQn-L20
Too depressing Tim. How about this?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=viD6JMRGbbM
Dear Gail,
For once, I guess do not quite follow you.
After the post WW1 slump, industrial production rose strongly in the 20’s both in the US and in the UK (for UK, see https://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/centre-for-business-research/downloads/working-papers/wp459.pdf fig 2A p. 6)
The levelling of world joule input that you identified is indeed remarkable.
Yet, as you know, all joules are not made equal : precisely as of the 20’s, primarily in the US of course, and very typically in California, oil joules turbocharged GDP growth in a way coal joules never managed to equal.
Here’s my own (and, for once, quite conventional) take on this issue :
(it’s an extract from my book, “Or Noir, la grande histoire du pétrole”, which is to be published in English by Chelsea Green Publishing in sept. 2018) :
“The Crisis of 1929, trap of abundance and greed
The terrifying economic and financial crisis which broke out in October 1929 was, essentially, a crisis of overproduction. In the United States, rapid productivity gains thanks to the abundance of oil and electrification, as well as the organization of mass production caused a 33% increase in industrial production between January 1920 and January 1929. At the same time, household income rose not less than 20%, making the American population the richest in the world. During the same period, Wall Street, the Dow Jones index of industrial values rose 200%. The avid confidence in a bright future – which owed without a doubt much of its candor to the scoop of abundant energy – encouraged the United States to achieve a global level of debt that climbed to 300 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by the year 2000! The banks loaned ten times more than what they had in their coffers. These were the first instances of consumer credit, and people were borrowing to buy shares. Values on the stock exchange increased faster than the profits of the companies, profits were rising faster than the production levels of plants, production increased faster than the wages of workers. The staggering progression of the working class in the United States was aroused and overtaken by an industrial machine that was physically capable of speeding up even faster, in a thrust of great energy surpassed only by the frenzy of desire that it generated in appetites and investment portfolios. When the Wall Street house of cards collapsed on October 24, 1929, president Herbert Hoover was taken completely by surprise. Arriving in the White House seven months earlier without ever having been elected previously, the former Secretary of Commerce of presidents Harding and Coolidge was in perfect continuity with the policies of his predecessors: absolute priority to business. Orphaned at the age of ten years, this self-made man, hoisted up to the summit of elite American industrialists, Hoover was perhaps the only head of state who was a trained geologist and mining engineer (one of the first graduates of the University of California Stanford in 1895). Before his entry into politics and up to the First World War, Hoover travelled the globe for a variety of large mining and oil companies. A high level prospector, he sold an oil field located at the foot of the peruvian Andes to Walter Teagle, the future President of the Standard Oil.
President Hoover experienced some trouble for doing nothing in the face of the natural consequences of the crash of Wall Street — layoffs, expropriations, and mass misery. Leading the hard-line method within his government was Andrew W. Mellon, irremovable Secretary of the Treasury, founder of Gulf Oil. The more moderate Hoover described Mellon’s approach as a “single and unique formula” of “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” Powerful banker and industrialist (involved in the birth of the energy-intensive American aluminum company Alcoa), Mellon believed that the economy should be bled-out, without assistance of any kind. The “invisible hand” of the market must fight hard in order to accomplish the wholesome work that will allow the strong to survive. That is what Andrew Mellon, the main shareholder of the Gulf Oil preached and whose nephew William L. Mellon, was one of the conspirators of the Achnacarry castle. (…)”
Keep up your thorough and astounding work,
All the best,
Matthieu Auzanneau.
And here I thought it was all just “physics.”
The big issues in the 1920s in the US were the huge wage disparity, and the lower commodity prices compared to during World War I. Also, a large debt bubble that enabled the rise of industry, but popped about 1929.
As I understand the situation, the industrialization in the US was to a significant extent made possible by very low wage immigrants from Europe. For example, see Immigration and the American Industrial Revolution from 1880 to 1920. According to the abstract:
Thus, this was sort of like outsourcing our manufacturing to low wage workers in China and India, except we imported the low-wage workers to the US. The productivity of farmers was increasing greatly during this period as well, as seeds were being improved, and as the Industrial Revolution made possible farming using horses, instead of oxen and mule teams. According to Farming Tools in the Early 1900s,
All of these improvements were great, as long as there was an export market to Europe, for US farmers to send their new higher production to. Unfortunately, that fell apart in 1921. So the US ended up with two extremely low-wage groups:
(1) US Farmers
(2) All of these immigrants
Businesses looked like they were doing great. Their stock prices went up, and the owners could borrow more and speculate in the markets. But there was a real problem with wage disparity, because of the farmers and the immigrants. Farmers often had bought farm equipment on credit, and could not pay for it with the new lower prices for food (because of overproduction, and lack of export market to Europe). Also, prices tend to drop a lot, when there is overproduction. In theory, the excess farmers should have been absorbed by increased manufacturing labor, but the big influx of low-paid immigrants cut off this route for new jobs. The lack of buyers for food and manufactured stuff popped the credit bubble.
This is a chart of oil production in the period:
The local high production was in 1929. There was a big drop starting in 1930.
Prices for oil dropped much earlier, starting in 1921, and inventories rose to very high levels.
I perhaps should add some of this to my (already long) post.
Part of the story is the “overproduction” problem most notably described by Marx. Fossil fuels lead to overproduction of commodities and ensuing low prices. This also effects wages because the wages share of GDP depends on the relationship between the demand for wages, changes in productivity, and changes in population.
Haven’t thought through discussing “demand” for labor in terms of “affordability of labor.” Through this lens I suppose you could look at affordability of labor vs affordability of capital (labor substituting) equipment. The latter is favored by lending.
Couldn’t find this for the great depression period:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/FRED_graph_of_US_labor_share_1948%E2%80%932016.svg/1920px-FRED_graph_of_US_labor_share_1948%E2%80%932016.svg.png
Has the 1850s crescendo of abolishment-of-slavery movement in Europe, America and elsewhere been a result of finding and widely using fossil fuels, where buying a cubic meter of coal or a barrel of oil became cheaper than sustaining a salve?
Physics and thermodynamics laws rule (https://tinyurl.com/y99eu2mh), and they may even bring back to us the age of physical human slavery, this time digitally and cryptos-assisted, more brutal like never before – god forbid.
If we survive the coming crash slavery will return. Universal suffrage, democracy and human rights will leave – forever.
For the coming decades its probably best to remember a few basic historical facts.
A ‘King’, is the guy who gathers a raiding and pillaging cavalry. Preferably a large cavalryforce.
A ‘Nobleman’, is the guy who loves raiding and pillaging. And is so good at it, that other guys joins up in his unit in search of easy loot and riches.
A ‘Knight’, is the guy who doesn’t pretend to be anything else, than an professional criminal. It is his only profession. His time is divided between drinking and partying with the wenches. Training how to be an even more effective looter. And actually raiding and pillaging all the people weaker than himself.
Human rights.. yeah riiight… good luck with that
+++++++++++++++++++
And the pope is the guy who blesses the raiding and pillaging in return for a cut
We have slavery now. It’s politely referred to as “debt slavery”. I get up every morning whether I want to or not, so that the banker gets paid.
There are also people who work as interns on sustainability farms. The get room and board, nothing else, very often.
“Here’s my own (and, for once, quite conventional) take on this issue :
(it’s an extract from my book, “Or Noir, la grande histoire du pétrole”, which is to be published in English by Chelsea Green Publishing in sept. 2018) :
“The Crisis of 1929, trap of abundance and greed”
Another person who doesn’t want to here anything but the official and acceptable story.
Yes, it was the fault of the greedy capitalists and the greedy capitalists only.
Just as we are told – and almost everyone believes — that the 2008 crisis was caused by ‘greedy bankers’
Was it the fault of the greedy capitalists and the greedy capitalists only?
I would argue that Physics is, in fact, energy-prison on Earth.
The “Tragedy of the commons” is actually, a law of physics, not simply a problem of an over-grazing phenomenon, unfortunately.
The relationship has only been phrased compactly-enough in 2017 with the publishing of the title “The Fifth Law” in thermodynamics.
Social Darwinisms is not a preference of the capitalists only, it is in the DNA of all humans.
After surviving two bloody wars where oil was likely the primary magnet, I sometime come to the conclusion that since the Rockefellers, somebody has pushed very hard to encourage humanity consuming all easy fossil fuel reserves the fastest possible, being so strategic to be left easily accessible for everyone.
The China synthetic mechanisation & fictionalisation experiment and now the India synthetic mechanisation & fictionalisation experiment – are all material evidences in this vain.
This is scary, indeed!
You cannot overestimate how humans are social Darwinists at core and long-term century-long pre-planning is actually rendering the future of the commons dead before it’s born!
Today, the race to burn last easy fossil fuel reserve to the ground, is at its peak.
We only need a small real decline for all hell to break loose and blow BAU sky high. And a 50% reduction in fossil fuel availability will result in a mass die off.
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/forecast-of-world-per-capita-energy-consumption.png?w=500&h=300
“All life with excess resource and no predation multiply exponentially. Humans since the industrial revolution (exploitation of fossil fuels) have been caught in this trap. When any life does this (bacteria in a Petri dish, or invasive species), once they have grown their population to consume half their resources, what is left is not enough to sustain the entirety of the next generation. A dramatic population collapse occurs quickly. Peak oil is our population collapse.”
Link
I suggest we should honour the miners of China, who have been killed and crippled in the tens of thousands to keep this global ship afloat.
And who can no doubt look forward to dying -like all miners – of horrible lung diseases, if Collapse doesn’t get them first.
Perhaps rich, cool, Green Believers in the West could lobby for a special levy on their solar panels and eco-friendly cars to go towards a Chinese Miners Benevolent Fund?
“…rich, cool, Green Believers in the West.”
Xabier, I don’t think any group of people irritates me quite as much. They tinker with the trivial details of their consumption as if that somehow obviates the fact of it, and hold up their tinkering as some moral badge of honour – the sort of people who imagine that they are ‘eco-friendly’ because they are vegetarian and don’t have a tumble-dryer, whilst being quite happy to bring multiple children into the world, jet off overseas whenever they can and post their holiday snaps on a laptop containing cobalt mined by Congolese children and assembled by near suicidal-Chinese factory workers toiling for 80 cents an hour.
Selectively blind they are to their own complicity in and dependence on the system, and the hypocrisy makes me want to vom. There – I feel better now! Thanks for listening. 😀
Good rant!!!
I tend to agree with you. Personal consumption of any energy product seems to amount to maybe 1/3 of the total. The amount that a person can slightly adjust is a fraction of that. But mostly it is just substitution of one product for another, with different environmental problems. The income of the person is the most important factor in determining how much energy impact a given person has. The green group tends to be high income. They want tax subsidies, so that they can buy even more devices that use energy in their making, even if they don’t use as much in their use.
“post their holiday snaps on a laptop containing cobalt mined by Congolese children and assembled by near suicidal-Chinese factory workers toiling for 80 cents an hour.” – that’s pretty good.
Not good enough. They also like to wear fake worn clothing
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3058842/Chinese-models-dress-beggars-Auto-Shanghai-ban.html
They love to state that they empathize with low-status individuals by claiming that despite their wealth, they TOO are part of an oppressed group .
There is a lot of “fake modesty” that comes from the well-off.
https://nypost.com/2012/08/29/the-290-paper-bag/
This is probably nothing new. I remember reading that members of a certain European nobility would deliberately wear the clothing of their servants while going to parties. I’m not sure if the motivation was fake modesty or mockery…
Well… knowing how it works in Asia with these ‘models’…. they are one small step from walking the streets and flogging their ‘wares’ as it is …. so this would be good practice for them
Ranting is good for the soul: I sometimes shout at Saint George Monbiot’s smug mugshot on the Guardian site – these people do tend to get under one’s skin!
How good would this feel?
https://media.guim.co.uk/04a60d9bd27b6ccda3fbd646d7353840d054bc4c/0_0_1917_1152/500.jpg
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/08/chuck1.gif
Suyog, are you paying attention?
A very good rant
Thanks for the great post, Gail. We learn so much about what happened in WW1 and WW2 in school and culture, but never the actual reasons behind them. History are truly written by the victors.
Looking at that energy consumption per capita curve makes me wonder if we are in another “flat period” and how long it will last? Those two earlier flat periods were approximately 20 years each, so if the current one started around 2008 then we might get to 2025-2030 before needing to ramp things up again…?
Last time out (around 2000) we looked to China to produce energy growth, this enabled a huge surge in cheap coal production. Are there any more “Chinas” out there?
I don’t think so.
There was practically no lead time up to the last crisis. Per capita energy consumption was flat in 2007 and 2008, but plunged in 2009. Now per capita energy consumption seems to have been flat from 2013 to 2016. This is disturbing.
I don’t know of anywhere to go to get any quantity of energy supplies. Wind and solar are joke, in my opinion. They are part of the thin gray line at the top of this IEA exhibit of Total Primary Energy Supply (about 1% of the total).
All of the “coal harms the climate so we should drop it” talk leads to catastrophe, as far as I can see. We need to use coal, even if it is problematic for the climate. Otherwise, we are dead.
“per capita energy consumption seems to have been flat from 2013 to 2016. This is disturbing.”
No growth is also disturbing to many business leaders. They seem to understand from a bean counter perspective that if they stop growing, they are in trouble.
They have used consolidation as a work-around to no growth. The larger economy doesn’t see, to have a reliable workaround for no growth in energy consumption.
Notice how that ‘plunge’ (a slight blip) wreaked so much havoc….
And there are those who believe the economy (and energy consumption) — can shrink…
One point not touched on by the article is the fact that, unlike the US where there was a boom until 1929, the economic malaise lasted in Britain for most of the interwar period.
The pre-1925 stagnation has been attributed to the Churchill policy of putting the pound back on the Gold Standard, a policy which overvalued sterling and so made British exports uncompetitive. However, what Gail is saying about the 1913 peak in coal producton does intuitively make sense. Its effects were felt in Britain first.
See my explanation to Matthieu Auzanneau. It can be found at this link.
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/12/19/the-depression-of-the-1930s-was-an-energy-crisis/comment-page-6/#comment-156772
Similarly, Britain did not really have a Great Depression. They went back on to the gold standard at a lower rate and got a boost.
Meanwhile… “Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday its economy contracted for the first time in eight years due to painful austerity measures as it announced record spending to stimulate growth.
“The OPEC kingpin said gross domestic product for 2017 shrank by 0.5 per cent due to a drop in crude production in line with an agreement with major oil producers aimed at boosting prices.
“The last time the Saudi economy contracted was in 2009, when GDP fell 2.1 per cent after the global financial crisis sent oil prices crashing.”
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/2125013/saudi-arabia-spend-big-after-economy-shrinks-first-time-eight
Good to see MbS leading by example purchasing a 300mUSD property in France and other assorted goodies.
Hah – that passed me by. Hilarious.
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been revealed as the owner of a French chateau described as the world’s most expensive home, according to a report in the New York Times.
“The purchase of the vast property west of Paris for $300 million (275 million euros) would be the latest in a string of extravagant purchases by the powerful prince, who has been waging a sweeping anti-corruption campaign.”
http://www.france24.com/en/20171217-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-salman-buys-300-million-french-chateau
The anti-corruption drive is of course helpful for funding the struggling Saudi budget:
“”About 50 percent of the new budget will be financed from non-oil sources,” said the powerful Crown prince, who clearly envisions even more royal arrests and asset “confiscations.””
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/How-Low-Oil-Prices-Have-Decimated-The-Saudi-Economy.html
“To hell with it,” says China. Just as they fired up their coal power stations in contravention of their own newly introduced pollution laws when winter started to bite, they’ve now decided that they don’t like the idea of clamping down on all that debt after all. More coal and more debt – a nation after Fast Eddy’s heart!
“China is planning to relax its goal of cutting debt in its economic outline that’s set for release Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
“The revised plan will instead clamp down on the rise in borrowing, sources told the WSJ. The move would fly in the face of the Chinese government’s mission to bring down the country’s soaring debt, a goal President Xi Jinping has made a cornerstone to his economic platform.
“The weakened priority may prove to be a concession by top Communist Party leaders that China’s economy may be more reliant on leveraged growth than the government would like.
“The Journal added that, by cooling its stance on debt, Beijing is hinting that it would rather fuel growth with higher debt than pursue austerity measures.
“Chinese debt levels jumped the most in four years in September, according to Reuters. There’s speculation that the size of China’s debt load may be three times its economy.
“China may be feeling pressure to keep its economy growing as the U.S. is set to pass its biggest tax overhaul in 30 years this week, which will lower the corporate tax rate to theoretically make more companies competitive with China.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/china-is-reportedly-having-second-thoughts-about-cracking-down-on-countrys-ballooning-debt.html
“China’s efforts to tackle air pollution are getting a reality check, with some regions told to revert to burning coal after shortages of natural gas left people without heating amid freezing winter temperatures.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-10/freezing-cities-force-china-to-ease-anti-pollution-curbs-on-coal
Debt Cocaine – the new opium addiction for modern China. 🙂
In other news, “getting off fossil fuels proves once again to be close to impossible but that won’t stop Trust Fund endowed Environmentalists for continuing to call upon the world’s unwashed masses to give up their sinful habit of burning fossil fuels.
This reminds us of similar frustrations felt by activists who attempted to eradicate human slavery in preindustrial societies…
Did I mention that I am an adviser to the Chinese govt?
You need to water and fertilize the garden with money … and then it will grow very quickly … just like cancer… and then the garden will explode in a riot of cherry blossoms … and then the garden will die… and the winter will never end
FE, I feel you are…. on the verge of….. breaking out into a……. haiku…..
Haiku of Doom.
🙂
I gotta tell you — Fast Eddy was fit to write a haiku of murder yesterday …. I bought an Xmas gift for Fast Eddy of what I thought was a spear gun mask snorkel and fins…. and he went down to the ocean ready to do battle with a great white shark… or perhaps a large herring …. he opened the package …. and no mask!!! — he ranted — he raged… the MOTHERF789ER didn’t put the mask in the bag!!! Sh it pi sss f789….. and he is a 4 hour drive from the shop!!!
I have never seen Fast so livid…. I need to calm him with regular injections of Xanax diluted in whiskey…. what will the neighbours think…..
http://www.annyas.com/screenshots/images/1947/born-to-kill-title-still.jpg
Someone was suggesting to me that as we run out of resources it might some day be possible to capture asteroid… and haul them to earth…
I said … NZ has millions of possums that are a major problem as they kill native birds …. the govt would like to eradicate them but have found it barely possible to keep them under control never mind kill all of them….
But we are going to lasso asteroids as they fly past at thousands of miles per hour….
Never underestimate NASA’s ability to spend other people’s money.
https://youtu.be/3UkEximY6lc
Right. Even if we were able to solve our energy problems there are larger, more intractable problems mostly being ignored: ecological devastation from invasive species, extinction of species due to loss of habitat – clearing of rain forests, farmland being poisoned or being paved over. gerbil worming, and so on.
Gerbil worming is a huge issue in the rodent community. Those little ratty guys really do suffer from intestinal parasitic infestations.
But seriously, on our finite world, if we want to keep the bulk of our fauna and flora more or less intact, some does and don’ts along the lines chiseled into the Georgia Guide Stones make a lot of sense.
We go back to the question — what would happen if we discovered a free unlimited source of energy ….
We saw what happened once… and this was not free nor unlimited….
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/FF_Population.jpg
That one chart you just posted is stunning and the numbers are now beyond that, 7.6 billion and exponentially rising. The biosphere is already in tatters and we are on the downside of nearly all minerals and resources with 1 remaining old growth Forrest left standing and CO2 at 415 and rising. How can anyone think that free or unlimited energy would be a good thing? Clearly no one thinking with a full deck. Now if the population suddenly dropped 5 billion or 7 billion folks, how is that a bad thing? Bad and good are just perspectives with no real meaning.
In 1997, distinguished energy historian Vaclav Smil documents that up to the mid 1960’s, China has grown in population to more than 450 million without using any fossil fuels.
In the middle ages, Baghdad, Iraq was likely the first city to reach the one-million population mark without burning any fossil fuels, where no near by natural forests grow, no vaccinations or antibiotics existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad
Both above facts demonstrate the major and profound weakness in the theory[ies] that claims fossil fuels are the only primary reason why human populations can grow exponentially – the thesis that both main stream and alternative media relentlessly and aggressively promote since 1970’s, which casts even a bigger shadow over its total validity.
It would be exciting for future generation to observe when captured-solar energy will be utilised not to light homes only but to build even more solar energy devices without using any fossil fuels (a new concept in self-growing 2nd-generation solar platform mimicking living plants, https://tinyurl.com/y99eu2mh), and how that would help population growth or not!
HUH?????
‘China has grown in population to more than 450 million without using any fossil fuels’
So there were no ICE vehicles in China until after the 60’s? What about tools (made in factories) … what about pumps to irrigate crops? No medicines?
None of these?
https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/367855/Blog_Photos/Dependency_List.png
You have some explaining to do:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/world-population-and-fuel-use.png
Up to the 1970’s, China was hardly mechanised or producing any significant crude oil.
To date, 270 million Indians are living without electricity. Somalia, one of the most energy-deprived nations, are having one of the highest population growth rates, too.
Saudi Arabia consumes fossil fuels many folds more than Iraq during all the last 40-50 years, yet Iraq has grown in population bigger than Saudi Arabia. Not to mention that millions of Iraqis have died due to being subject to most advanced wars in history when exotic weapons were used in tonnes, and the majority of those died were in their prime age (the nation is one of the youngest in the world, today).
A China of 450 million population in the 1960’s, was bigger than the US today.
Yet, China has grown another two folds since, despite one-child policy, and only catching up with energy consumption per capita level that matches that in the US. Note, China’s domestic energy consumption per capita is primarily an exported-energy, not really domestic.
This is like today Iraq’s domestic energy consumption per capita, which is primarily expended in running crude oil extraction, huge oil pipe network and export port hubs – not the dysfunctional electricity grid or the 700k vehicles on roads, that significant number of them are either oil-export tanker kilometers-long fleets, military or diesel backup generators for government departments.
I lived my youth in the Soviet Union and the country has barely knew any effective antibiotics usage up to late 1970’s. Even today, China’s health care system is comparable to that of the 1950’s in the West. To date, no national health care system in China!
What fossil fuels?
The fossil fuels – population-growth theory needs much more research in order to be taken seriously. That is to include how wars and disasters do, in fact, lead to an explosion of population growth!
Somalia accelerated population growth after their shores became radio actively contaminated, baby boomers exploding trend in the US after WWII and Iraq’s population growth after all last 40 years wars, which left mothers milk in the oil-rich southern part of the country today reading incredible inhumanly levels of lead contents, cancer is rampant like flue and life expectancy is heading south exponentially, also due to trauma and poverty – are all field-observations that cannot be discounted when studying why human populations grow exponentially, a part from fossil fuels.
Thanks for your observations. My impression of China’s health care system is that it tends to be fairly neglected. A country can’t emphasize everything. Healthcare is low on China’s list of priorities.
My impression on rapid population growth is that part of the problem is falling deaths at young ages. Mothers still have as many children as they would have had in the past, even thought they don’t need as many children.
Haiti has very rapid population growth. North Korea, despite all of its problems, seems to have at least some population growth.
I think that the rise in population does have something to do with fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, antibiotics and other medicine would not be available.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yaCMGcVhGwY/TzP5utpNhiI/AAAAAAAAAXg/ICfKDM_wX84/s1600/Population%2BGrowth.gif
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Historical_Population_in_China.svg/2000px-Historical_Population_in_China.svg.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/China_Coal_Production.png
http://crudeoilpeak.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/China_oil_imports_2020.jpg
I agree. If China’s population grew to 450 million, it likely indirectly depended on fossil fuels. Perhaps it was imported antibiotics. Perhaps it was import of goods that allowed electricity use in some parts of the country. China has had coal all along; I expect that at least some of it was burned for fuel early on.
Thanks Gail, I strongly agree with your assessment;
On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that heavy agri machinery have stopped farming communities from naturally growing bigger, for the sake of muscle power, as they tended to do since the antiquity. Many other industrial fields, too.
A great deal of fossil fuel energy has been expended to generate social forces that have demolished old child-producing pillars of the society, like religion and family, balancing that energy that assisted in population growth.
Environmental pollution, weakening authentic national cultures by globalisation, giant physiological control belief systems like TV networks, centralised educational practices and now the Web, which all of them are among the most fossil fuel energy-intensive systems, and wars – have all caused incredible natural growth-rates reduction in human population.
Could it be that future scholars will find out that the insanely irrational ongoing wasting of precious fossil fuels reserves during the last 100 years has actually acted as a giant population growth-suppression engine, and without it, the population on earth today would have been much higher than current size today?
If non-conscious bacteria manages to fill the petri dish in 24 hours by physics, how about humans with their incredible ingenuity, that managed to assemble an acid power battery around or before AD?
Only time will tell once easy fossil fuel reserves are long gone and over, whether fossil fuels have actually caused population-growth suppression or the opposite, I feel!
There are two sides of population growth: number born and number dying. Without Fossil fuels, the number dying would be much higher.
At some point, resources per capita fall sufficiently that young people no longer want Toto have children. I think that this can happen with or without fossil fuels.
The Golden Age of Pax Romana of the Roman Empire ended with our unseen microbial germs and plague
The Antonine Plague and the decline of the Roman Empire].
[Article in Italian]
Sabbatani S1, Fiorino S.
Author information
Abstract
The Antonine Plague, which flared up during the reign of Marcus Aurelius from 165 AD and continued under the rule of his son Commodus, played such a major role that the pathocenosis in the Ancient World was changed. The spread of the epidemic was favoured by the occurrence of two military episodes in which Marcus Aurelius himself took part: the Parthian War in Mesopotamia and the wars against the Marcomanni in northeastern Italy, in Noricum and in Pannonia. Accounts of the clinical features of the epidemic are scant and disjointed, with the main source being Galen, who witnessed the plague. Unfortunately, the great physician provides us with only a brief presentation of the disease, his aim being to supply therapeutic approaches, thus passing over the accurate description of the disease symptoms. Although the reports of some clinical cases treated by Galen lead us to think that the Antonine plague was caused by smallpox, palaeopathological confirmation is lacking. Some archaeological evidence (such as terracotta finds) from Italy might reinforce this opinion. In these finds, some details can be observed, suggesting the artist’s purpose to represent the classic smallpox pustules, typical signs of the disease. The extent of the epidemic has been extensively debated: the majority of authors agree that the impact of the plague was severe, influencing military conscription, the agricultural and urban economy, and depleting the coffers of the State. The Antonine plague affected ancient Roman traditions, also leaving a mark on artistic expression; a renewal of spirituality and religiousness was recorded. These events created the conditions for the spread of monotheistic religions, such as Mithraism and Christianity. This period, characterized by health, social and economic crises, paved the way for the entry into the Empire of neighbouring barbarian tribes and the recruitment of barbarian troops into the Roman army; these events particularly favoured the cultural and political growth of these populations. The Antonine Plague may well have created the conditions for the decline of the Roman Empire and, afterwards, for its fall in the West in the fifth century AD.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20046111
Seems we, today, are set up for the same today….
The world has had one civilization after another collapse. As long as they were small civilizations, the “overall” population could stay fairly level, and the overall energy usage (biomass, mostly) could stay fairly level. Once fossil fuels were added, overall population and energy use could grow. Each civilization seems to grow and then collapse, as previous studies has shown, and as the laws of physics would seem to say would happen. The “rest” periods allow soil to regenerate (from erosion of bedrock and from deposits of animal waste from elsewhere).
Amazing how Gail’s analysis comes neatly with the fact that Winston Churchill’s 1914 directive to switch his entire navy from coal to oil has proved no less than a very well educated decision: dominate control over offshore oil-rich resources, as Britain didn’t have then a drop of it. Then, the 1914 invasion of Iraq started and 2017 Balfour Declaration has been produced.
Energy systems, like post WWI, post WWII and post 9/11 world orders, require energy when constructed and initiated far more than the useful energy they’ll ever produce, before they start to fail and then disintegrate because of natural Entropy, a new study outlines the formula: https://tinyurl.com/y99eu2mh
As no more significant energy resources left untapped, should one assume that the next world model will be constructed of smaller and scattered spots of energy-abundant ‘smart cities’, while the rest are encouraged/cornered to live energy-deprived and energy-less, like in Syria, Iraq and Yemen today, for example?
In this model, and when fossil fuel resources happen to be in the energy-less geographies, should one expect that cryptocurrencies are the best when promoted as the primary medium to buy fossil fuels at origin, and the best approach for getting those crypto fossil fuel supplies is through smuggling?
(Please take above comment with a grain of salt, as it is, in fact, a result of a senseless computer simulation that is recently conducted, similar to how astrophysicists formulate far-fetched lab theories to discover unknown amusements of the cosmos. The parameters fed into the computer simulation were borrowed from the conventional wisdom widely thriving since 1940’s in the Middle East: When assessing the future, pick the worst case scenario. Multiply it by 1000 times as worse. Consider the result as the best case scenario that will definitely happen. Repeat).
I’ll drive that tanker!
https://youtu.be/3P4LUt0qcX8
The 1913 coal peak does fit in neatly with the 1914 invasion of Iraq. I ran across a book listed on Amazon about the period. https://www.amazon.com/Mesopotamia-Mess-British-Invasion-Iraq/dp/1602990174
It says,”The British invaded Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) in 1914 to protect their oil interests and they were there until 1958.”
I highly recommend this comedic examination of oil’s role in WW1:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GIpm_8v80hw
^^^ He gets on to the British invasion of Mesopotamia a bit after the nine-minute mark.
I just happen to be reading Barbara Tuchman’s book “The Guns of August” about the runup to WW1 and its first month of August 1914. WW1 was virtually guaranteed ever since the Franco-German war of 1870. The Germans were long planning an invasion strategy to rid the continent of the French power once and for all. The French more or less knew it and were preparing their own strategy also.
The Germans and British jointly owned an oil company formed to exploit Iraqi oil before the war. The Brits, seeing that their only oil supply could be taken from them, invaded Iraq, worried the Turks and Germans would own it. They ultimately defeated the Turks and the rest is history.
After the war they “out-negotiated” the French. leaving the French with nothing of the oil resources. This mightily irritated the French, and was at least partially corrected with a new agreement to give them a portion. I think the US had their hand in the pot by this time.
I don’t know that I would say WW1 was caused by oil, or peak coal, as Europe was a stew of competing states, powers and cross-treaties. Germany aspired to be a world power and was going to challenge Britain. Both powers knew the importance of oil for future power. Therefore, if WW1 had not kicked off the way it did, it would have happened later anyway over oil….that is a certainty.
Thanks for the recommendation — burning a little coal to pull it down from Audible./…
You might find this interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Finance
spots of energy-abundant ‘smart cities’
should one expect that cryptocurrencies are the best when promoted as the primary medium to buy fossil fuels at origin
Let’s allow this chap to respond to this – on our behalf:
that’s why i hammered bitcoin here—insane concept
https://extranewsfeed.com/bitcoin-24b3efd58ec