Once upon a time, we worried about oil and other energy. Now, a song from 1930 seems to be appropriate:
Today, we have a surplus of oil, which we are trying to use up. That never happened before, or did it? Well, actually, it did, back around 1930. As most of us remember, that was not a pleasant time. It was during the Great Depression.
Figure 1. US ending stocks of crude oil, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Amounts will include crude oil in pipelines and in “tank farms,” awaiting processing. Businesses normally do not hold more crude oil than they need in the immediate future, because holding this excess inventory has a cost involved. Figure produced by EIA. Amounts through early 2016.
A surplus of a major energy commodity is a sign of economic illness; the economy is not balancing itself correctly. Energy supplies are available for use, but the economy is not adequately utilizing them. It is a sign that something is seriously wrong in the economy–perhaps too much income disparity.
Figure 2. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
If incomes are relatively equal, it is possible for even the poorest citizens of the economy to be able to buy necessary goods and services. Things like food, homes, and transportation become affordable by all. It is easy for “Demand” and “Supply” to balance out, because a very large share of the population has incomes that are adequate to buy the goods and services created by the economy.
It is when we have too much income and wage disparity that we have gluts of oil and food supplies. Food gluts happened in the 1930s and are happening again now. We lose sight of the extent to which the economy can actually absorb rising quantities of commodities of many types, if they are inexpensive, compared to wages. The word “Demand” might better be replaced by the term “Quantity Affordable.” Top wage earners can always afford goods and services for their families; the question is whether earners lower in the wage hierarchy can. In today’s world, some of these low-wage earners are in India and Africa, or have no employment at all.
What is Going Right, As We Enter 2018?
[1] The stock market keeps rising.
The stock market keeps rising, month after month. Volatility is very low. In fact, the growth in the stock market looks rigged. A recent Seeking Alpha article notes that in 2017, the S&P 500 showed positive returns for all 12 months of the year, something that has never happened before in the last 90 years.
Very long runs of rising stock prices are not necessarily a good sign. According to the same article, the S&P 500 rose in 22 of 23 months between April 1935 and February 1937, in response to government spending aimed at jumpstarting the economy. By late 1937, the economy was again back in recession. The market experienced a severe correction that it would not fully recover from until after World War II.
The year 2006 was another notable year for stock market rise, with increases in 11 out of 12 months. According to the article,
Equity markets rallied amidst a volatility void in the lead-up to the Great Recession. Markets would make new all-time highs in late 2007 before collapsing in 2008, marking the worst annual returns (-37%) since the aforementioned infamous 1937 correction.
So while the stock market consistently rising looks like a good sign, it is not necessarily a good sign for market performance 6 to 24 months later. It could simply represent a bubble forming, which will later pop.
[2] Oil and other commodity prices are recently somewhat higher.
Recently, oil prices have been too low for most producers. Now, things are looking up. While prices still aren’t at an adequate level, they are somewhat higher. This gives producers (and lenders) hope that prices will eventually rise sufficiently that oil companies can make an adequate profit, and governments of oil exporters can collect adequate taxes to keep their economies operating.
Figure 3. Monthly average spot Brent oil prices, through December 2017, based on EIA data.
A major reason for the recent upward trend in commodity prices seems to be a shift in currency relativities for Emerging Markets.
Figure 4. Figure from Financial Times showing currency relativities based on the MSCI Emerging Market currency index.
While the currency relativities for emerging markets had fallen quite low when commodity prices first dropped, they have now made up most of their lost ground. This makes commodities more affordable in Emerging Market countries, and allows them to do more manufacturing, thus stimulating the world economy.
Of course, if China runs into debt problems, or if India runs into problems of some sort, or if oil prices rise further than they have to date, the run-up in currency relativities might run right back down again.
[3] US tax cuts create a bubble of wealth for corporations and the 1%.
With low commodity prices, returns have been far too low for many corporations involved with commodity production. “Fixing” the tax law will help these corporations continue to operate, even if commodity prices remain low, because taxes will be lower. These lower tax rates are important in helping commodity producers to avoid collapsing as a result of low commodity prices.
The problem that occurs is that the change in tax law opens up all kinds of opportunities for companies to improve their tax situation, either by changing the form of the corporation, or by merging with another company with a suitable tax situation, allowing the combined taxes to be minimized. See this recent Michael Hudson video for a discussion of some of the issues involved. This link is to a related Hudson video.
Groups evaluating the expected impact of the proposed tax law did their evaluations as if corporate structure would remain unchanged. We know that tax accountants will help companies quickly make changes to maximize the benefit of the new tax law. This is likely to mean that US governmental debt will need to rise much more than most forecasts have predicted.
In a way, this is a “good” impact, because more debt helps keep commodity prices and production to rise, and thus helps keep the economy from collapsing. But it does raise the question of how long, and by how much, governmental debt can rise. Will the addition of all of this new debt raise interest rates even above other planned interest rate increases?
[4] We have been experiencing artificially low oil prices since 2013. This helps the economic growth to be higher than it otherwise would be.
In February 2014, I published an article documenting that back in 2013, oil prices were too low for oil producers. If a person looks at Figure 3, oil prices were over $100 per barrel that year. Clearly, oil prices have been much too low for producers since that time.
Unfortunately, it looks like these artificially low oil prices may be coming to an end, simply because the “glut” of oil that developed is gradually being reduced. Figure 5 shows the timing of the recent glut of oil. It seems to have started early in 2014.
Figure 5. US Stocks of crude oil and petroleum products (including Strategic Petroleum Reserve), based on EIA data.
If we look at the combination of oil prices and amount of oil in storage, a person can make a rough estimate of how this glut of oil might disappear. Quite a bit of it may be gone by the end of 2018 (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Figure showing US oil stocks (crude plus oil products) together with the corresponding oil prices. Rough guess of how balance might disappear and future prices by author.
Of course, one of the big issues is that consumers cannot really afford high-priced oil products. If consumers could not afford $100+ prices back in 2013, how would it be possible for oil prices to rise to something like $97 per barrel by the end of 2018?
I am not certain that oil prices can really rise this high, or that they can stay at this level very long. Certainly, we cannot expect oil prices to rise to the level they did in July 2008, without recession causing oil prices to crash back down.
What the Economy Needs Is Rising Energy Per Capita
I have published energy per capita graphs in the past. Flat spots tend to represent problem periods.
Figure 7. 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.
The 1920-1940 flat period came shortly after the United Kingdom reached Peak Coal in 1913.
Figure 8. United Kingdom coal production since 1855, in figure by David Strahan. First published in New Scientist, 17 January 2008.
In fact, the UK invaded Mesopotamia (Iraq) in 1914, to protect its oil interests. The UK wasn’t stupid; it knew that if it didn’t have sufficient coal, it would need oil, instead.
There were many other disturbing events during this period, including World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression, and World War II. If there are not enough energy resources to go around, many things tend to go wrong: countries tend to fight for available resources; jobs that pay well become less available; deflation becomes more likely; population becomes weakened, and epidemics become more likely. I wrote about the 1920 to 1940 period in a recent post, The Depression of the 1930s Was an Energy Crisis.
The 1980-2000 flat period included the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. The Soviet Union was an oil producer. The Soviet Union collapsed after prices had been low for a long time.
Figure 9. Former Soviet Union oil consumption, production, and inflation-adjusted price, all from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2015.
Even many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, population growth in former Soviet Union countries and its affiliates was much lower than in the rest of the world.
Figure 10. World population growth rates between 2005 and 2010. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate
Lower population (through falling birth rates, rising death rates, or rising emigration) are a major way that economies self-adjust because of falling energy per capita. Economies tend to fix the low-energy per capita problem by adjusting the population downward.
Recently, we have again been hitting flat periods in energy consumption per capita.
Figure 11. World per capita consumption of oil and of total energy, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data and UN 2017 population data.
The slowdown in world energy consumption per capita in 2008-2009 was clearly a major problem. Oil, coal and natural gas consumption fell simultaneously. Oil consumption per capita fell more than the overall mix, especially affecting countries heavily dependent on oil (Greece with its tourism, but also the US, Japan, and Europe).
The recent shift in political strategy to more isolationist stances also seems to be the result of flat energy consumption per capita. It is doubtful that Donald Trump would have been elected in the US, if world energy consumption per capita had been growing robustly, and if wage disparity had been less of a problem.
The primary cause of the 2013 to 2016 flat trend in world energy consumption per capita (Figure 11) is falling coal consumption (Figure 12). Many people think coal is unimportant, but it is the world’s second largest source of energy, after oil. We don’t have a good way of getting natural gas production to rise enough, to make up for loss of coal production.
Figure 12
Wind and solar simply do not work for solving our problem of flat or shrinking energy consumption per capita. After spending trillions of dollars on them, they make up only a tiny (1%) share of world energy supply, according to the International Energy Agency. They are part of the little gray “Other” sliver on Figure 13.
Figure 13. Figure prepared by IEA showing Total Primary Energy Supply by type from this IEA document.
Something Has to “Give” When There Is Not Enough Energy Consumption per Capita
The predicament we are facing is that energy consumption per capita seems to be reaching a maximum. This happens because of affordability issues. Over time, the price of energy products needs to rise to keep up with the rising cost of creating these energy products. But if energy prices do rise, workers earning low wages cannot afford to buy goods and services made with high-priced energy products, plus honor all of their other commitments (such as mortgages, auto loans, and student loans). This leads to debt defaults, as it did in the 2008-2009 recession.
At some point, the affordability problem can be expected to hold down energy consumption. This could happen in many ways. Spiking prices and affordability issues could lead to a worse rerun of the 2008-2009 recession. Or if oil prices stay fairly low, oil-exporting countries (such as Venezuela) may collapse because of low prices. Even if oil prices do rise, we may find that higher prices do not lead to sufficient additional supply because investment in new oil fields has been low for many years, because of past low prices.
As long as the world economy is expanding (Figure 14), individual citizens can expect to benefit. Jobs that pay well are likely to be available, and citizens can afford to buy goods with their growing wages. People who sell shares of stock and people who get pension benefits can all receive part of this growing economic output.
Figure 14. Author’s image of an expanding economy.
Once the economy starts to shrink (Figure 15), we start having problems with dividing up the goods and services that are available. How much should retirees get? Governments? Today’s workers? Holders of shares of stocks and bonds? Not all commitments can be honored, simultaneously.
Figure 15. Author’s image of declining economy.
One obvious problem in a shrinking economy is that loans become harder to repay. The problem is that there is less left over for other goods and services, after debt plus interest is subtracted, in a shrinking economy.
Figure 16. Figure by author.
Changing interest rates can to some extent help offset problems related to higher energy prices and shrinking supply. The danger is that interest rates can move in the wrong direction and make our problems worse. In the lead-up to the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the US raised short-term interest rates, helping to puncture the sub-prime mortgage debt bubble.
Figure 17. Figure comparing Case-Shiller Seasonally Adjusted Home Price Index and Federal Reserve End of Quarter Target Interest Rates. See Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis for details.
We now hear a lot of talk about raising interest rates and selling QE securities (which would also tend to raise interest rates). If growth in energy consumption per capita is already flat, these changes could make the problems that the economy is facing even worse.
Our Economy Works Like a Bicycle
Have you ever wondered why a two-wheeled bicycle is able to stay upright? Research shows that a bicycle will stay upright, as long as its speed is greater than 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) per second. This is the result of the physics of the situation. A related academic article states, “This stability typically can occur at forward speeds v near to the square root of (gL), where g is gravity and L is a characteristic length (about 1 m for a modern bicycle).”
Thus, a bicycle will be able to continue in an upright manner, as long as it goes fast enough. If it slows down too much, it will fall down. Our economy is similar.
Gravity plays an important role in determining the speed of a bicycle. If the bicycle is going downhill, gravity gives an important boost to the speed of the bicycle. If the bicycle is going uphill, gravity very much pulls back on the bicycle.
I think of the situation of an economy having rising energy consumption per capita as being very much like riding on a bicycle, speeding down a hill. The person operating the bicycle would not need to provide much extra energy to keep the bicycle going.
If energy consumption per capita is flat, the person riding the bicycle must provide the energy to make it go fast enough, so it doesn’t fall over. This is somewhat of a problem. If energy consumption per capita actually falls, it is a true disaster. The bicyclist himself must provide the energy necessary to push the bicycle and rider uphill.
In fact, there are other ways that a speeding bicycle is analogous to the world economy.
Figure 18. Author’s view of analogies of speeding upright bicycle to speeding economy.
The economy needs a constant flow of outside energy. In the case of the bicycle, the human rider can provide the energy flow. In the case of the economy, the energy flow comes from a mixture of various fuel types, typically dominated by fossil fuels.
Growing debt (front wheel) is important as well. It tends to pull the economy along, because this debt can be used to pay wages and to buy materials to make additional goods and services. Thus, the effect of this increase in debt is indirect; it ultimately works through the bicyclist, the gears, and the back wheel.
In fact, the financial system as a whole is important for the “steering” of the economy. It tells investors which investments are likely to be profitable.
The gearing system of the bicycle plays a modest role in the system. Changing gears allows greater efficiency in the use of the energy that is available, under certain circumstances. But energy efficiency, by itself, cannot operate the system.
If the human rider does not provide sufficient energy for the bicycle to go rapidly enough, the bicycle glides for a while, and then falls over. The world economy seems to be similar. If the world economy does not obtain enough energy per capita, economic growth tends to slow and eventually collapses. The collapse can relate to the whole world economy, or to parts of the economy.
The Problem of Parts of the Economy Not Getting Enough Energy
We can think of the economy as being made up of many bicycles, operated by bicycle riders. At the beginning of the post, I talked about the problem of wage disparity. This issue occurred at the time of the 1930’s Great Depression and is occurring again now.
We might call wage disparity “too low a return on the labor of some workers.” In groups of animals in ecosystems, too low a return on the effort of these animals is what causes ecosystems to collapse. For example, if fish have to swim too far to obtain additional food, their population will collapse. It should not be surprising that economies tend to collapse, when the return on the efforts of part of their workers falls too low.
Wage disparity has to do with how well the operators of bicycles are doing. Are the operators of these bicycles receiving enough calories, so that they can keep pumping their bicycles fast enough so that the speed is high enough to remain upright?
If energy consumption per capita is growing, this greatly helps the operation of the economic system. If there is growing availability of inexpensive energy, machines of various types, including trucks, can be used to increasingly leverage the labor of workers. This increased leveraging helps each worker to become more “productive.” This growing productivity, thanks to growing energy consumption, allows more goods and services to be produced in total. It also allows the wages of the workers to stay high enough that they can afford to buy a reasonable share of the output of the economy. When this happens, “gluts” of unaffordable goods are less of a problem.
If energy consumption per capita is flat (or worse yet, falling), greater “complexity” is needed, to keep output of goods and services rising. Greater complexity involves more specialization and more training of individual members of the economy. Greater complexity leads to larger companies, more government services, and more wage disparity. Unfortunately, there are diminishing returns to complexity, according to Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” Ultimately, increased complexity fails to provide an adequate number of high-paying jobs. Wage disparity becomes a problem that can cause an economy to collapse.
If there is not enough economic output, the physics of the economy tries to “freeze out” workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. Workers with low wages cannot afford homes and families. The incidence of depression rises. Debt levels of disadvantaged groups (such as young people in the US) may rise.
So the situation may not be that the whole world economy fails; it may be that parts of the economy collapse. In fact, we are already seeing evidence that this is taking place. For example, life expectancies for US men have been falling for two years, because of growing problems with drug overdoses.
Conclusions
In 2017, the world economy seemed to be gliding smoothly along because the economy has been able to get the benefit of artificially low energy prices and artificially low interest rates. These artificially low prices and interest rates have given a temporary boost to the world economy. Countries using large amounts of energy products, including the US, especially benefitted.
We cannot expect this temporary condition to continue, however. Low oil prices have already started to disappear, with Brent oil prices at nearly $69 per barrel at this writing. The trends in oil prices and oil stocks in Figure 6 are disturbing. If oil prices begin to rise toward the price needed by oil producers, they are likely to trigger a recession and a drop in world energy consumption, just as spiking prices did in 2008-2009. There is a significant chance of collapse in the next 12 to 24 months. It is hard to know how widespread such a collapse may be; it may primarily affect particular countries and population groups.
To make matters worse, our leaders do not seem to understand the situation. The world economy badly needs rising energy consumption per capita. Plans to raise interest rates and sell QE securities, when the economy is already “at the edge,” are playing with fire. If we are to keep the world economy operating, large quantities of additional energy supplies need to be found at very low cost. It is hard to be optimistic about this happening. High-cost energy supplies are worthless when it comes to operating the economy because they are unaffordable.
Many followers of the oil situation have had great faith in Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI) analysis telling us which kinds of energy supplies we should increase. Unfortunately, EROI doesn’t tell us enough. It doesn’t tell us if a particular product is scalable at reasonable cost. Wind and solar are great disappointments, when total costs, including the cost of mitigating intermittency on the grid, are considered. They do not appear to be solutions on any major scale.
Other researchers looking at the energy situation have not understood how “baked into the cake” the need for economic growth, rising per capita energy consumption, and rising debt levels really are. Rising debt is not an error in how the financial system is put together; a bicycle needs a front wheel, or it cannot operate at all (Figure 18). I have written other articles regarding why debt is needed to pull the economic system forward.
This economic growth cannot be “fake growth” either, where a debt Ponzi Scheme seems to allow purchases that real-life consumers cannot afford. Quite a bit of what is reported as world GDP today is of a very “iffy” nature. If China builds a huge number of apartments that citizens cannot afford without subsidies, should these be counted as true GDP growth? How about unneeded roads, built using the rising debt of the Japanese government? Or recycling performed around the world, because it makes people “feel good,” but really requires substantial subsidies?
At this point, it is hard for us to know where we really are, because every government wants to make GDP results look as favorable as possible. It is clear, however, that 2018 and 2019 can be expected to have more challenges than 2017. We have interesting times ahead!
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MnjHip3zE30/hqdefault.jpg
YES!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-17/sex-was-textbook-generic-stormy-daniels-dishes-trump-hookup-intouch
Stormy told In Touch, “[The sex] was textbook generic,” while discussing the fling they had less than four months after Donald’s wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. “I actually don’t even know why I did it, but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ‘Please, don’t try to pay me.’”
Really – you just did it for free?
Is that cuz he is so handsome?
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3612942491/88b405a6e90edda2c5d36177cc99b145_400x400.jpeg
Or so sexy?
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VWW3fsSn9eU/WMK4GhioSJI/AAAAAAAAd7I/zVKyKeGi3JUkkVmBY6B4Xf1W1CFeW8RMQCLcB/s1600/Untitled%2B3.jpeg
Or because he was such a nice guy?
At one point, Stormy told In Touch, she excused herself to go to the bathroom.
“When I came out, he was sitting on the bed and he was like, ‘Come here.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And we started kissing.” After having s.ex, Stormy said, “We hung out for a little while and he just kept saying, ‘I’m gonna call you, I’m gonna call you. I have to see you again. You’re amazing. We have to get you on The Apprentice.’”
Close to Bill Clinton, but no cigar!
Regulators have woken up. European Securities and Markets Authority Chairman Steven Maijoor told Bloomberg that bitcoin investors “should be prepared to lose all their money.” US regulators, including the SEC and North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), have issued similar warnings, adding fraud as one of the risks. Chinese and Korean regulators are cracking down on the crypto space, including trading, crypto mining, and crypto exchanges.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/01/17/crypto-collapse-crushes-hedge-funds-that-touted-huge-gains-for-2017/
Caught in a trap … I can’t walk out 🙂
It is hard to imagine a government bailing out bitcoin losses.
No people living under bridges… nobody grilling rat…. doesn’t look so bad…
Infantile comes to mind….
no no no no no…
January is only Bitcoin’s month of purgatory…
February?
how low can it go?
b w a h a h a h a h a…
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4138151-impending-oil-shortage-updating-oil-thesis-2018
thebacbull
Comments (197) |+ Follow |Send Message
Unless of course, the cuts from an artificially high level, weren’t cuts at all! At that time pray that shale can indeed save our arse!
+++++++++++
“n 2018, the oil market will blow past being “balanced.” The global supply deficit will remain until new production is coaxed online by higher oil prices. Until then, this daily supply shortage will morph into an inventory shortage…”
shortages at local gas stations? we’ll see…
The global supply deficit will remain until new production is coaxed online by higher oil prices.
Good luck with that!
https://imgur.com/a/6dEDt
Actually, there is a whole lot of unconventional oil (which is not shown in your charts) that becomes economic at some point. This is why we have the IEA claiming that if prices rise high enough, we can have as much oil as we want. The problem is that high prices kill the economy, so they don’t rise high enough.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/2015-iea-weo-figure-1-4.png
“The global supply deficit will remain until new production is coaxed online by higher oil prices.”
How long will this coaxing via high oil price take until the flow of oil brings down the price once it hits a peak? One year? Two years? Why do I have an uncomfortable feeling about this? How about this; QE for fuel purchases for the masses. They announce QE4, the consumer fuel subsidy debit card and start mailing them out to people’s homes. For every registered vehicle you get a 15,000 dollar debit card but it’s only good for fuel. No car washes or snack food. This raises the US debt another 5 trillion but it’s justified as a stop gap to help consumers and oil companies get back to a lower price.
Usually I can figure out why a post of mine has been held for moderation, but not that one.
I often don’t know either.
Except governments are working on QT = Quantitative Tightening.
The fact that they’re tightening makes Janet Yellen look like an amateur. We need uncle Ben back so they can start the spigots back up.
I always wonder how good the data we are looking at really is. The IEA has published a chart that makes it look like the drawdowns in stocks started after the cutbacks in production took place, thus in 2017.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/iea-world-oil-supply-demand-balance-published-dec-2017.png
Yet when I look at the US data regarding its stocks, the fill period ended in the middle of 2016, and by the last quarter of 2016, the US was drawing down stocks at the rate of 232,000 barrels per day. The drawdown in stocks continued at not too high a level in the first half of 2017, but then really “took off” starting in June 2017. The average drawdown in the US stocks averaged 677,000 barrels per day in the last seven months of 2017. This is not the same shape of curve that EIA is showing.
Obama Warns About Sea Level Rise From ___ ____ … Buys Beachfront Mansion In Hawaii
News reports indicate that President Barack Obama may have just purchased a beachfront home in Hawaii. But isn’t he worried about sea level rise from xxxxx xxxx?
Hawaii’s KTV4 News reports that a man connected to Obama purchased the multi-million dollar beachfront home featured in the show “Magnum P.I.” — the property was then sold to a limited liability corporation in Colorado. But if the House was bought on the president’s behalf, isn’t he worried that rising sea levels will harm his new real estate?
Obama has long warned that sea level rises caused by man-made xxxx xxxx will make storm surges and flooding worse for coastal communities. In his 2015 State of the Union speech, Obama said “we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods.”
In 2013, Obama said that “seas will slowly keep rising and storms will get more severe, based on the science” — one of the reasons why he’s imposing regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.
Obama also issued an executive order in January calling for the federal agencies to incorporate sea level rises and flood risks in planning and building along the coastlines. The order states that floods from rising seas “are anticipated to increase over time due to the effects of xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx and other threats… which affects our national security.”
And who could forget Obama’s famous line from his 2008 victory speech when he said this was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Obama speech oceans receding, planet healing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pZSvq9bto
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rufQz0_eMGU/hqdefault.jpg
I don’t think anyone would suggest Al or Barrack are stoooopid men.
Yet both of them have stated that due to xxx xxx the oceans are going to rise dramatically within the next decade.
Yet both have bought very expensive properties at sea level.
LET’S APPLY SOME LOGIC:
1. Either they know something that they are not telling us i.e. that a magic cure to xxx xxx is going to be unveiled well before the oceans rise and swamp their expensive properties.
OR
2. They know that xxx xxxx is a ho ax aimed at deflecting the goy from focusing on peak oil … and they are part of the team tasked with convincing the goy that xxx xxx is real…..
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/c7/31/4d/c7314d58320dbea378d678710bbb4684–stalker-quotes-truth-quotes.jpg
Well… if you are a MORE on … then …. Listen to what they say … and Ignore what they do.
That is a symptom of utter stoooopidity and delusion.
He probably thinks that money (“the free market”) can repeal even the laws of nature, or at least buy him a mighty big seawall (“technology & sh1t”). That’s if he does think…
Obama`s plan is to enjoy the life in peace. Sea level rise will probably take decades and he has entered old age already, so why not enjoy the life as you still can? After all he is following FE plan on maxing it out while U still can. It is his daughters and grand children`s problem what they will do with an Mansion under the sea.
But Al Gore STATED that the sea levels would rise within a decade or so in Inconvenient Truth.
And when asked why the oceans have barely budged….. his response:
This is because we are mitigating the problem by adopting RENEWABLE ENERGY.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/iea-primary-energy-suppy-1973-and-2015.png
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/2017/fossilfuelem.jpg
If anything …. the oceans should have risen EVEN FASTER given the amount of fossil fuels we have burned since Al’s movie.
This is truly fascinating …. this is real time epic stoooopidity on display.
It is like proving 1+1 = 2…… and having people insist that it is 4.
I need to document this and send it to the major psychology schools around the world a case study … let’s call it … The Stoooopidity of Humans
While we are on the topic….
Maybe you could explain why Al Gore (the King of ___ ____) bought a house that is at sea level — when he is predicting that Manhattan will be underwater within a decade.
There have been a few attempts to explain this….. so far the stooopidest one is ‘because he is rich’
Let’s see if you can beat that.
Let’s play a game:
Taiwan’s exports rise on recovering global economy – Chinadaily.com.cn
Fake or Real?
World Bank upgrades growth outlook on strengthening recovery – DW
Fake or Real?
The U.S. Economy Is Booming, Which Is Why The U.S. Trade Deficit… – Forbes
Fake or Real?
2018: Crunch time for Australia’s economic renewal – The Australian
Fake or Real?
Strong US economy foils Chinese efforts to narrow trade gap- Nikkei
Fake or Real?
China’s economic growth remains solid: World Bank – Xinhua
Fake or Real?
Fake,Fake,Fake,Fake,Fake….
The Great Depression 1929-1940 US Economic Growth GDP (1%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
The Great Recession 2006-2017 US Economic Growth GDP (1.5%)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188165/annual-gdp-growth-of-the-united-states-since-1990/
The Great Recession 2006-2017 US Economic Growth GDP Per Capita (0.4%)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locations=US
OECD Economic Growth GDP Per Capita 1970-2015 (0.5%)
https://imgur.com/a/HXBkr#Bv4I4AF
Global Economic Growth GDP Per Capita (1.3%)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG
World Governments Gross Debt to GDP (330%)
https://imgur.com/a/3usX7
Global economic growth has peaked, says World Bank
https://www.ft.com/content/4b9e6190-f55e-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1a00
Non Partisan CBO Office Forecast Less Than 2% US Economic Growth GDP Through 2027
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52801
*Note: 20% GDP Includes (FIRE) finance, insurance and real estate
Hummm….those all seem to fake headlines there, FE… are we in trouble?
I can see that you did not watch the video…..
Love the graph — your thoughts on this one?
http://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_8974_us_unemployment_rate_n.jpg
Oh right — mine is fake…. but your’s is real.
While you are at it … why not pull some data that demonstrates that our renewable energy future is going to save us from ____ _____. Oh… that is fake too….
Hmmm… fake real fake real —- I am confused….
And I am surrounded by a sea of f789ing id io ts.
Few large US companies say they’ll use tax savings to boost wages, CNBC survey finds
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/few-large-companies-say-theyll-use-tax-savings-to-boost-wages-cnbc-survey-finds.html
It was a giveaway. Xmas presents. Perks, baubles, trinkets, adornments. It was a blatant massive monetary offering to the Republicans base, the corporations and wealthy that pay $10,000 a plate to get them elected to find ways to give them more, so on and so on ad infinitum. They no longer represent ‘The People’.
The R’s want to sacrifice more low and middle income entitlements for their base, but they have to do it in increments. Here’s an incremental change. Every year for the next 4 years the retirement age will increase by 2 months each year, so a total of 8 months people will have to retire later. Multiply that out by social security and medicare and the savings add up into the billions quite quickly they can move on to the rich or at least help deficits for offerings already on the books. After four years of those additions the R’s will claim that was too slow a pace and up it to 4 months increase every year for the forseeable future. Eventually the retirement age will be 75 then later will be increased to 80. They despise regular people, and adore only those that can smack down $10,000 a plate to help them to get elected/re-elected.
So nobody should ever try again to find the benefits of a tax cut for the economy or the regular person.
If it keeps these companies from collapsing into bankruptcy resulting in massive layoffs and the collapse of BAU….
Then consider it a belated Xmas present — to the entire world
They’ll use to keep buying up their stock. Buybacks – the only game in town…
Global Pension Timebomb: Funding Gap Set to Dwarf World GDP
https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/05/global-pension-timebomb-funding-gap-set-to-dwarf-world-gdp
I am doubtful that the author understands how government pension programs work. They are not “savings programs.” They cannot be pre-funded to any significant extent, because there simply is no way of “saving up” for payments to elderly people.
Instead, part of what today’s workers produce must be used to be paid to fund to collectively pay for benefits to retirees who require payments. This is why actuaries are always so concerned about how many young people will be around to support the older people. There are not enough shares of stock and outstanding bonds in the world to fund government pension plans. Governments do not generally carry very significant liabilities for these programs, because (in theory) they could be discontinued at any time.
As a practical matter, everyone in the world uses the same set of goods and services produced to satisfy their combined needed. This is why it is such a worry if the amount of resources to divide up start falling.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/growing-economy.png
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/declining-economy.png
The author does have a point, however, and that is that the savings people expect to be present, won’t be there. But that was by plan design, not an oversight. I think I was a little surprised, when I first learned about the situation years ago.
A squirrel with a cache of seeds, pine cones and acorns stashed in a hollow tree probably has a more secure pension plan.
The whole idea of a pension plan was part and parcel with the fat years of the oil age and now we’re blasting rock with sand and chemicals to get condensate, a thin, flammable liquid that is a lot thinner than the thick crude oil that use to ooze out of Spindle-Top. Now the oil thins so do the pension funds.
– How energy-intensive the process of producing these lab-chemicals is?
– Is injecting these chemicals a one-off procedure in the life cycle of a shale well, or continuous (i.e. no shale oil coming out off the well if injection stops)?
– What is the ratio between injected volume to the total outputted liquids
– How to separate those chemicals from the extracted product? Or,
– There might be no need for any separation, as the lab-chemicals become part of the final product?
– Are shale oil supplies having the substance to produce Diesel fuel on their own?
I wish one can answer these questions, having none found online for average readers, no matter how many tonnes of articles were written on shale oil online.
You might try talking to someone at the American Petroleum Institute in Washington DC about your questions. I know that there definitely is some diesel in tight oil obtained by fracking. This is a chart I showed earlier.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/lto-crude-oil-distillation-yields.png
This is the caption: Light Tight Oil Yields from Baker & O’Brien presentation
Pension plans got a like Social Security got a big boost during the Great Depression of the 1930s. They were a way of reducing the number of unemployed by paying some of the older people not to work. Conveniently, the way government accounting works, promised future payments don’t show up as a liability on the balance sheet.
I agree, Grayfox.
A person in Africa with several children to depend on in old age has a more secure pension plan.
then there’s this LOL
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/15/san-francisco-defecation-map/
The Impending Oil Shortage: Updating Our Oil Thesis For 2018 – Seeking Alpha
Global supply shortage to turn into a global inventory shortage.
Recent oil price rise is merely the first inning of a baseball game. The inflection has yet to come.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4138151-impending-oil-shortage-updating-oil-thesis-2018
Maybe the author is correct … and the price is going to do another ‘2007’ where it rocketed past $100 towards $150….. if so best to spend the winnings quickly….. because BAU is unlikely to be strong enough to live through another episode of expensive oil…
Pasted from that article, BD, is this, which spells it out perfectly;
“Guess what? This time isn’t different. In the market, this time is almost never different because people act and react the same. More importantly, the incentives that drive them rarely changes. Have capital and generous lending terms? Drill baby drill. Lose money amidst low prices? Restrict liquidity and tout “value over volume.” Lower prices have sown the seeds of its own demise, and just as the remarkable decline of oil prices from $100 to $26/barrel became untethered from reality, the rise of energy prices will follow a similar path. A rationally based, fundamentally induced, price increase will give way to an emotionally driven rally when oil crosses the threshold from a supply shortage to an inventory shortage. World thy name is scarcity . . . get acquainted.”
Global debt levels are at a record high of $233 trillion, up from $142 trillion in 2007 and $87 trillion in 2000
http://business.financialpost.com/investing/the-reflation-trade-is-picking-up-steam-but-rising-global-debt-levels-loom
The percentage increase is falling, however, and this may be a problem.
The numbers are too big to even comprehend what they mean. What out of this world number is the tipping point? I mean if nobody knows and no one cares, then can the debt level hit 1 quadrillion? When it does will people just say, “Well it sure took long enough to get to the first one! Let’s get to the 2nd and 3rd one a whole lot faster!!”
yes!
1 quadrillion by 2030…
I guarantee it… (just kidding)…
but, I’m sure…
$1,000,000,000,000,777.77 will be just too much…
and remember…
you heard it here first.
I think as long as there is enough crude oil supplies to keep the show going, what the show is doing internally – becomes not an issue, owing to the decoupling of continuous wealth creation from physical resources that has been settled since the 1970s.
Therefore, the debt level MUST increase infinitely or the show stalls, as there are no real value in the synthetic system other than the external FF energy that fuels the show.
Some neo economists might be theorising for that ‘stalling’ event, calling it ‘Minsky’s Moment’, and they spend their professional life modelling, advocating and predicting for its timing, overlooking the fact that it is, in fact, a political-decision attribute of the system rather than being physical.
When somebody decides the moment Lehman Brothers to be let going bankrupt, that moment occurs. If that decision doesn’t come, Lehman Brothers continue, BAU.
And why anybody decides to trigger that moment for the whole global economy, when everything can keep going with more money on computers?
The money in the pocket of the Trueman Show must be synthetic and the producer wouldn’t stop the production of the show because no money notes are left in the pocket of the ‘hero’ character.
Bitcoin et al might be utilised to migrate the quadrillions of ‘debt’ that are coming in the future into Bitcoin, without psychologically over sweating the dollar.to exhaustion.
Primarily, the Bitcoin scenario meant to facilitate buying smuggling-driven oil supplies, that some think they will the dominant type of all oil supplies, as reserves severely deplete quicker and quicker, unless demand is forcefully destroyed.
This is what the economic collapse might look like in America!
At some point the military will run out of fuel. Oil industries will have to have military escorts. Production will plummet and the remaining shreds of economy with it. The military will be fighting uphill to protect and maintain the precious oil resource. That will be hard if they are fighting everyone, stealing their food, energy and livestock based on presidential executive orders. It will be a bit rough I predict.
The situation in Venezuela is getting worse. Some of the videos in the link below look like the
Animal Kingdom series except they are humans doing the hunting.
On January 11, a group of Venezuelans desperate to find food broke into a farm in Merida and dismembered about 40 cows for their meat.
According to Manuel López, President of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the Sur del Lago area, criminals go from farm to farm, extorting producers and asking them to give up an animal. If they don’t, they destroy everything.
***Warning some of the videos in here are rated FE***
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-17/recent-wave-looting-shows-extent-hunger-venezuela
ATTENTION DOOMIE PREPPERS!!!!
According to Manuel López, President of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the Sur del Lago area, criminals go from farm to farm, extorting producers and asking them to give up an animal. If they don’t, they destroy everything.
According to Manuel López, President of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the Sur del Lago area, criminals go from farm to farm, extorting producers and asking them to give up an animal. If they don’t, they destroy everything.
According to Manuel López, President of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the Sur del Lago area, criminals go from farm to farm, extorting producers and asking them to give up an animal. If they don’t, they destroy everything.
Now scroll down the page — and see the video of the men hacking the cow to death with machetes….
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-17/recent-wave-looting-shows-extent-hunger-venezuela
Yes of course…. this cannot happen to you …. you have magical powers…. that will keep such people away … so that you can grow your organic carrots in peace and tranquility …. You will just sing Koombaya while thumping a drum…. and that will appease the marauders… and they will leave you alone… because you are deemed sacred…
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
Jan… Don…. other lurking preppers…. this is for you:
‘According to Manuel López, President of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the Sur del Lago area, criminals go from farm to farm, extorting producers and asking them to give up an animal. If they don’t, they destroy everything.’
https://cdn2.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/220×137/public/images/methode/2018/01/12/7b3b76a8-f75d-11e7-8693-80d4e18fb3a2_image_hires_143225.jpg
7+ Billion humans on this planet it is not gonna be pretty. Once the animals are all killed you know what is next.
Um, sugar?
http://www.ccrctulsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/parents.jpg
vs
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/15/article-2203682-15060FA0000005DC-382_306x423.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0yumFLEF2Nk/maxresdefault.jpg
I urge people to not ignore or dismiss this…. you will want to have an exit strategy….
We live in our cushy bubbles … the police keep the bad people on the other side of the fence… so we do not interact with them … they exist only in cop shows….
When the cops are gone …. the bad guys will be on the loose…. in fact… previously good guys… including cops… will become very bad…. like vicious dogs fighting over a bone….
you mean “women and children first”, correct? how chivalrous.
I warned you the videos are rated FE 🙂
http://www.emoji.co.uk/files/phantom-open-emojis/smileys-people-phantom/12299-thumbs-up-sign.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/Academy_Award_trophy.jpg
http://qballproductions.com/images/fest_logos.jpg
*Post-collapse Preparation Is the Answer*
Myth: Well-prepared individuals, groups, and communities will survive our impending collapse and maintain healthy, fulfilling, and productive lives in its aftermath.
Reality: Those who survive our collapse will be those who can obtain sufficient life sustaining essentials—especially clean water and food—on a continuous basis, both during and after collapse. Those who store large quantities of these essentials and those who attempt to produce food, either individually or in communities, will be easy targets for the vast majority who have neither the foresight to store nor the skills to produce. No matter how remote or secluded your sanctuary, somebody will know about it; and they will come to call when they become desperate; and they will be well armed and devoid of compassion. You can prepare for a last stand, but you cannot prepare for post-collapse survival. Post-collapse Life Will Be Preferable to Our Industrial Lifestyle Paradigm
Myth: Industrialization has brought nothing but misery and degradation to the human race; our quality of life (and spiritual wellbeing) will improve substantially in a post-collapse world.
Reality: The post-collapse lifestyle awaiting the few who survive will, under the best of circumstances, share many attributes with pre-Columbian America. Unfortunately, the realities associated with subsistence level existence bear little semblance to the Hollywood accounts.Those who anxiously await our post-collapse world will be disappointed, assuming they live to experience it. The fact that nobody is opting to jettison the amenities afforded by an industrialized way of life in favor of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle today should be sufficient proof that our future way of life is not something to be anticipated. Industrialism is not inherently “evil” or immoral; it is simply physically impossible going forward.
Survivorship bias
Survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
The thing is….
Once again …. for those people who have made their minds up (because the MSM has made their minds up for them….)….
They will simply ignore the facts that you have presented.
They will always revert to the ‘facts’ that the MSM has handed them.
These are the same people who proudly parade their views that the MSM is generally full of sh it… they mock CNN and BBC and the NYT and WAPO and FOX….. and Holllywood…. they refer to them as indoctrination machines….
BUT — not always….. there are one or two issues that the MSM has absolutely right….
These people — who under NO circumstances will change their minds — will if asked if they are intelligent — confidently state yes — they believe they are far more intelligent than the average imb ecile who watches CNN BBC FOX etc…..
They are of course im be ciles too…..
I strongly suspect that of the nearly 8 B people on this planet —- perhaps 10 are not im be ciles.
They all have their weaknesses…. for some it’s doomie prepping … others it’s xxxx xxxx ….. we have our Tesla im be ciles…. and our solar and wind im be ciles….
Im b e ciles come in different flavours…
But they all have 3 things in common — they think everyone else is an im be cile…. they insist that they are right — and no matter what facts and logic are used to destroy their position — not only will they not change their minds…. they will not even consider changing their minds….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NyLjPTTwey8/VSxBJIPJWuI/AAAAAAAATpE/rILodvRnAw0/s1600/twain.jpg
http://www.heavencoach.com/wp-includes/images/Indoctrination%20Defined1.jpg
“No matter how remote or secluded your sanctuary, somebody will know about it; and they will come to call when they become desperate; and they will be well armed and devoid of compassion.”
This assumes an insta-collapse scenario, with the economy and supply chain shutting down out of the blue. It’s far more likely that during the unravelling of BAU large states will break up and be superseded by local governments/armies (including police), in anticipation of precisely the kind of danger you describe. Not that the new boss would be any better than the old one; in fact probably much worse.
But even in an insta-collapse scenario, the violence will be concentrated in/around the metropolises. The gated communities will be prime targets. It’s unlikely that people will have sufficient fuel/food supplies to loot & pillage over long distances or durations.
“Unfortunately, the realities associated with subsistence level existence bear little semblance to the Hollywood accounts.”
Can’t argue with that. I will say, however, that at least the sybaritic hubris and solipsism of the culture of BAU will not be missed. Humanity – at least the part of it living under BAU – is due a good spanking (or three) from Mammy.
FE can’t accept anything else than instant collapse as a possibility, and therefore is stuck in hordes and fuel ponds. With a side dish of famine, disease and caninebalism.
collapse is relative, and will happen in different degrees in different regions
the migrants trekking into europe see their home environment as collapsed—otherwise they wouldnt have left
no point in telling them that in 10-20 years the uk will probably be collapsed as well—they seek the here and now.
europe functions normally—full supermarkets, jobs etc, all that offers survival—what they left offers death or at best severe privation
the real problems will kick in when there’s nowhere left to migrate to——when the migrants who reached uk or germany find out about frying pans and fires.
then the real conflicts will start as minorities reform themselves into ethnic groups for survival within the nations they have migrated to
groups might be defined through language, colour, religion—you name it, but every nation can be subdivided that way if the impetus to do so is strong enough—and survival is the most powerful of all
If the whole world collapsed instantly then we get fuel pond hell.
If countries shut down one at the time, spent pond hell will be mostly avoided. The remaining nations will take care of it out of self-interest.
Same if we manage a 25% (or so) wind & solar transition. Then nuclear will likely have been outcompeted.
Also a local collapse spanning a few years seems to limit the hordeing. Of course a percentage of syrians have horded very far, but that is fossile fueled hording.
I agree on the ethnic fractioning. The foreigners have an upper hand there. If I really focused maybe I could remember the names of my cousin. At least how many they are.
You know, when reading about the crisis in Venezuela, I can’t help but think how utterly useless Bitcoin, solar panels and electric cars would be to lift Venezuela out of their current predicament. If they cannot produce and sell their oil products profitably then, this is the result. This will be the result in many many other oil producing countries abound the world. There is no solution to this coming crisis.
Maybe the US will look like this when citizens realize that the era of petroleum prosperity is gone with the wind ie global petroleum production down by 70% in 2035
The current US leadership certainly has the capability to take us there.
The US will most definitely go Venezuela at some point …. but the authorities are prepared…. that is why the police have been militarized —- when BAU is in the death throes…. the weapons will come out ….and they will be used… to hold the centre for a short while longer…
See the UK riots — notice the restraint of the police? At some point the rioters refuse to stop — and like in Cairo — the police/military open fire — with live rounds…
And guess what — most people will support that — as most did in Egypt at the time — because most people just want a return to stability …. regardless if it means martial law….
Unfortunately …. that phase won’t last very long…. the descent into hell will accelerate the moment the bullets start flying… so we hope to delay that moment for as long as possible — by whatever means
Those 2 billion rounds of hollow point bullets Homeland Security purchased a few years ago should come in handy…There is a website that you can track military equipment the police departments are purchasing. And I looked up my local town and they had just purchased tons of grenades….what the hell do they need grenades for?
Terrible to be these people on doomie prepper farms post BAU….
https://punkrockpermaculture.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/dscn0503.jpg
Australia’s Economy Is a House of Cards
November 14, 2017
For over a quarter of a century our economy mostly grew because of dumb luck. Luck because our country is relatively large and abundant in natural resources, resources that have been in huge demand from a close neighbour.
That neighbour is China.
Out of all OECD nations, Australia is the most dependent on China by a huge margin, according to the IMF. Over one third of all merchandise exports from this country go to China- where ‘merchandise exports’ includes all physical products, including the things we dig out of the ground.
As a whole, the Australian economy has grown through a property bubble inflating on top of a mining bubble, built on top of a commodities bubble, driven by a China bubble.
Unfortunately for Australia, that “lucky” free ride is just about to end.
Societe Generale’s China economist Wei Yao said recently, “Chinese banks are looking down the barrel of a staggering $1.7 trillion?—?worth of losses”. Hyaman Capital’s Kyle Bass calls China a “$34 trillion experiment” which is “exploding”, where Chinese bank losses “could exceed 400% of the U.S. banking losses incurred during the subprime crisis”.
A hard landing for China is a catastrophic landing for Australia, with horrific consequences to this country’s delusions of economic grandeur.
Delusions which are all unfolding right now as this quadruple leveraged bubble unwinds. What makes this especially dangerous is that it is unwinding in what increasingly looks like a global recession- perhaps even depression, in an environment where the U.S. Federal Reserve (1.25%), Bank of Canada (1.0%) and Bank of England (0.25%) interest rates are pretty much zero, and the European Central Bank (0.0%), Bank of Japan (-0.10%), and Central Banks of Sweden (-0.50%) and Switzerland (-0.75%) are at zero or negative interest rates.
Harvard University created something called the Economic Complexity Index. This measure ranks countries based upon their economic diversity- how many different products a country can produce- and economic ubiquity- how many countries are able to make those products.
Where does Australia rank on the global scale?
Worse than Mauritius, Macedonia, Oman, Moldova, Vietnam, Egypt and Botswana.
Worse than Georgia, Kuwait, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and El Salvador.
Sitting embarrassingly and awkwardly between Kazakhstan and Jamaica, and worse than the Dominican Republic at 74 and Guatemala at 75,
Australia ranks off the deep end of the scale at 77th place.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2017/11/14/australias-economy-is-a-house-of-cards/
There is a smugness exhibited by most Australians I encounter….
Did I mention sharing the lift with an Aussie in Queenstown last year… he could not believe I chose to emigrate to NZ instead of Australia — and then began to run down everything about NZ…
He then he went on to tell me the snow was better in Australia…. (dum tsss….)
I said … ya I know… but I am afraid of snakes…. and NZ has no snakes…. that stunned him…. as he shuffled off the lift with a look of bewilderment on his face…..
Thanks! This is a link that works better for me. https://medium.com/@matt_11659/matt-barrie-australias-economy-is-a-house-of-cards-6877adb3fb2f
I am nearly certain that I saw the article back when it was first published in November, 2017, but it doesn’t hurt to think about it again.
Australia really does compete in the resource extraction arena, rather than finished products. Now, when it is hard to keep commodity prices above extraction costs, it is doing badly.
It also competes in the area of overpriced housing, and a debt bubble holding up prices.
It can’t really compete in manufacturing. Its electricity costs are high, in part because of the high grid costs associated with a spread-out country. Its wage costs are high, compared to its neighbors.
Australia has gone heavily into intermittent renewables usage, without realizing how terrible their use is for its electric grid. It sends electricity costs even higher. The use of net metering unfairly gives citizens with solar panels the use of back-up generation at far too low a cost. It makes certain that Australia will lose what little manufacturing it has.
Australia can’t manufacture much for itself. If electricity becomes expensive the problem gets worse, because then electricity used to manufacture things becomes too expensive. Ny impression is that the electricity rates are already high, partly because of the high cost of maintaining the grid. Australia’s insistence on using wind and solar sends the electricity price even further through the roof.
Australia also can’t compete on labor costs with its nearby neighbors.
There is also the shipping cost issue. Everything Australia doesn’t make must be imported. This adds a layer of costs that people who buy more locally-made goods don’t have to pay.
I am afraid that the authors are right; Australia’s economy is a house of cards.
And Australia is home to some of world’s most poisonous snakes….. crocodiles… and great white sharks…. but they have great snow!
Remember this? How Raleigh, NC handled 2.5″ of snow 3 years ago… Tomorrow they are expecting the same if not more.
https://imgur.com/a/izcg3
That didn’t happen this time, they were emphatic about staying home, and the forecast was more accurate this time too.
But boy, there is a bunch of dumb ass people here.
But Al Gore said snow would be obsolete by now….. what the hell!
“Electricity from all forms of renewables will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020”
https://qz.com/1179753/by-2020-renewable-electricity-will-be-consistently-cheaper-than-fossil-fuel-power/
But, what about real life — what AC power grid is run on IRE (intermittent renewable energy)?
What that really means is that fossil fuels will become more expensive to extract, thus making the electricity generated by renewables within a system built on cheaply extractable fossil fuels (and other raw materials) cheaper by comparison.
The whole idea of cheaper-by-comparison is nonsense, something thought up by economists. The economy can only be run by cheap energy, including cheap electricity. If costs go up, it is like overhead of a business going up. It likely leads to the downfall of the business.
That was the contradiction I was pointing out. In a previous comment I gave the example of a teenager who believes he is independent because he is earning all of his pocket money.
A £900 high-quality ready-made suit may indeed be cheaper than a £6,000 bespoke suit from Savile Row in London, but if I can only afford Bangladeshi-made jeans and T-shirt. if I also wish to eat and have a roof over my head …..
I guess “renewables” will be cheaper to the point of being useless.
UC Davis Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives (Malyshkina, 2010)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q
University of Chicago Study: predicts world economy unlikely to stop relying on fossil fuels (Covert, 2016)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.117
Solar and Wind produced less than one percent of total world energy in 2016 – IEA WEO 2017
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyWorld2017.pdf
Fossil Fuel Share of Global Energy since 1990 – BP 2017
https://imgur.com/k7VecMq
Wow, that chart tells me that loosing 2% of the fossil fuel share of the global energy over 30 years takes us from the new near surplus decades of the 1990s to collapsing global economies (Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Yemen) today. I would argue that if the trend continues too much longer the entire global economy will collapse. And along with that will go economies of scale that allow for the production of things like electric cars, solar panes, wind turbines, computers and iPhones.
MSM says the transition is accelerating…. no ICE vehicles within two decades… Tesla is rolling out mega batteries to store solar….
I believe the MSM…. which also tells me that the planet is going to boil soon…..
http://www.youaregullible.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Click-here-to-download-money.png
This article seems to be about a report of the International Renewable Energy Association. The IREA seems to specialize in putting out misleading comparisons that would allow a person to think that intermittent Renewable Energy can save the world, when it clearly cannot.
I agree Gail. I guess a reassuring lie is more palatable than an inconvenient truth.
Create fake problem + offer fake solutions =
https://static.pexels.com/photos/33582/sunrise-phu-quoc-island-ocean.jpg
“Electricity from all forms of renewables will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020”
Maybe it is cheap because it is worthless?
Goldman Sachs Posts First Quarterly Loss in Six Years
https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-posts-first-quarterly-loss-in-six-years-1516192942
Just getting around to watching this … my only comment is that anyone who takes the time to watch this … and still believes in ____ _____ is profoundly re tar ded….
Nobel Laureate in Physics; “____ ____ is Pseudoscience”
A staggering amount of U.S. retail stores closed in 2017
An estimated 7,795 U.S. retail store closures were announced in 2017, according to a new research note from UBS, setting a new record.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/staggering-amount-u-s-retail-stores-closed-2017-161401876.html?utm_content=buffer9b62f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I read a different article saying that historically, not all stores that are announced to be closed, actually close. Sometimes, companies can use a bankruptcy filing as leverage to get a lower lease rate, and can remain open. If I remember correctly, the share of stores that were able to remain open was perhaps 10%, so this doesn’t change your basic point.
NZ Rugby can’t rule out All Blacks as doping scandal set to escalate
“We’ve been told there are more to follow,” Sorenson told a New Zealand radio station – Newstalk ZB. “It’s massively disappointing. We knew it was coming as Drug Free Sport gave us a heads up some time ago that it was coming.”
What’s more, he doesn’t know how high up the bans could go.
“But I can’t say with a total belief that we’re not going to be talking about Super Rugby players, All Blacks or Black Ferns.
https://www.rugbypass.com/news/nz-rugby-cant-rule-blacks-doping-scandal-set-escalate/
Queue the Cognitive Dissonance big time here in NZ…..
And this all black star is clean!!!!
https://broscience.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/non-bodybuilders-5-sonny-billy-williams.jpg
http://theathleticbuild.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/116695-sonny-bill-williams-615×346.jpg
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
It is amazing what you can accomplish with a professional exercise and diet plan coupled with decent genetics.
What is even more amazing is what you can accomplish when you inject steroids and HGH into a fine tuned machine.
Wasn’t Lance Armstrong amazing?
And btw – he never tested positive … nor did Marion Jones….
This is an epidemic
In a confidential 2013 survey of 3,705 high school students, being released Wednesday by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, 11 percent reported using synthetic HGH (human growth hormone) at least once — up from about 5 percent in the four preceding annual surveys. Teen use of steroids increased from 5 percent to 7 percent over the same period, the survey found.
https://nypost.com/2014/07/23/growth-hormone-use-exploding-among-high-school-teens/
Former dealer blows lid on ‘rampant’ steroid use by young men
Amateur athletes desperate for a competitive edge and gym junkies chasing the perfect body are fuelling a thriving black market in steroids.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/97532800/former-dealer-blows-lid-on-rampant-steroid-use-by-young-men
BIG READ: BRITAIN’S STEROID EPIDEMIC
Experts report that juicing has increased eightfold. We explore Britain’s anabolic appetite
In 2015, professional rugby was identified as the nation’s most doped sport by UK Anti-Doping’s latest sanction list, with 29 out of 47 banned sportsmen being rugby players.
UEFA, meanwhile, has admitted that one in 12 top footballers, including those from the Premier League, have suspiciously high levels of testosterone in their bodies.
http://www.menshealth.co.uk/building-muscle/big-read-britains-steroid-epidemic
Nah… I believe it is clean living. Probably vegan.
Eating lots of tuna….
Good to see that Larry David has pumped out another season after a couple of years break…. once I finish that BAU can end….
What is even more amazing is what you can accomplish when you inject steroids and HGH into a fine tuned machine.
Wasn’t Lance Armstrong amazing?
And btw – he never tested positive … nor did Marion Jones….
The dark side: The secret world of sports doping
Inside a hotel room in Austin, Texas, a pharmacist advises a professional athlete on taking performance-enhancing drugs.
“One anabolic, and I can give you something to use right now, is this Delta 2 stuff. It’s a steroid. There’s a bunch of football players who take this,” he tells Liam Collins, a British hurdler reporting undercover.
In another conversation, a Vancouver pharmacist poses a question to the same athlete.
“Have I doped people? Oh yeah. And no one’s got caught because the system is so easy to beat. That’s the sad fact.”
Later, a Naturopathic doctor explains how he would destroy medical records if investigators came looking for them.
“I can just document everything not in this chart but on my own chart. And if somebody ever comes sniffing for it, it’s very easy to just delete and say no, this is the real chart. If say, WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] comes sniffing around.”
Normally these conversations take place behind closed doors, but a new investigation by Al Jazeera is bringing them to light. Liam Collins, working on behalf of Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, spent six months undercover investigating the murky world of performance-enhancing drugs – what athletes refer to as “the dark side”.
“For me, it was an opportunity to be the guy, to go undercover, and make a change,” said Collins. At 37, he competes as a hurdler at an international level. For the investigation he claimed that he was making one last push for the Rio Olympics and was willing to do “whatever it takes” to get there.
The investigation has exposed the crucial role of pharmacists and doctors in creating and prescribing programmes of performance-enhancing drugs designed to cheat the testing system. It also raises questions about some well-known athletes in American football and baseball who the medical professionals claim to work with.
The athletes and medical professionals who responded to requests for comment denied any wrongdoing. This includes Peyton Manning, a football player for the Denver Broncos, whose wife, one pharmacist alleged, was supplied with human growth hormone.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/dark-side-secrets-sports-dopers-151227133355144.html
And here we have one of the all time greatest NFL players…. admitting that his wife was purchasing HGH…..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3376471/Did-manning-throw-wife-bus-doping-claims-NFL-player-admits-wife-client-controversial-lab-angrily-adds-drugs-got-business-never-took-them.html
Now does she look like a candidate for Human Growth Hormone?
http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2016/02/manning-wife.jpg
The point of this discussion is to demonstrate just how f789ing stooopid and gullible 99.99999999999999% of humans are…
You could even show these MORE ons a before and after photo …. and still … they would disagree that steroids are involved
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kgdxmcSMFjU/ULfmUhuhuOI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/CnuA9MXiC48/s1600/sammy-sosa-before-after_steroids.jpg
And here’s all black Sonny Boy
Before Steroids:
https://forums.t-nation.com/uploads/default/original/3X/3/a/3a02f00c2a123b00a8ae3237ef2f95a4d2209cde.jpg
After Steroids:
https://rugbywarfare.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sonny-bill-williams-boxing.jpg
And then we have Justin Gatlin — banned for doping in the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Gatlin#Doping_bans
Won the 100m world championship last year — running FASTER now — than when he was doped!
That is simply — not possible — unless of course — he is doping
And then we have Usain Bolt — smashing Ben Johnson’s steroid-fueled 100m time — of course he was not doping… he is just way faster …
Nobody has ever run sub 10 — without being doped.
I see the FE hamster wheel of hysteria is currently set to ‘sports’.
Pro sportsmen are, and always were, entertainers. There is no entertainment value in watching a sport without constant competition in every possible area of that sport. Accept that and move on, please?
You have completely missed my point … it has zero to do with sports…. but then you are a f789ing sub-More-on … id io t….
So I would not expect you to get it
What’s there to get? All of your posts have the same point, i.e., instapocalypse. You’re a classic example of a loudmouthed bigot.
No — I am World Champion.
And you are still a MORE on… (sub MORE on actually)
So taking drugs is one of today’s areas of competition? I suppose that the well-to-do would have an advantage in this area as well.
I know that physicians for many years have had problems with overuse of drugs, simply because they have such easy access to drugs. If players have easy access to drugs, and routine testing for them is not done, I expect that they would use them when available as well.
Taking performance enhancing drugs (or expensive, specialist training and nutrition) is clearly required to maintain the suspense and competition of pro sports when the natural human body can’t outcompete itself anymore. Diminishing returns, just like resources.
I think the poster Norman Pagett made a similar observation elsewhere.
Part and parcel of the evolution to more complexity…..
Did Manning throw his wife under the bus over doping claims?
Quarterback admits his wife was client of controversial lab but angrily adds whatever drugs she got ‘were her business’ and he ‘never took them’
Peyton Manning, 39, denies allegations he took human growth hormone
He branded claims ‘completely fabricated, complete trash, garbage’
Manning struggled to keep his composure during the seven-minute rant
Quarterback slammed investigators for bringing his wife into the matter
But his answer opens up questions about Ashley’s use of the lab
His spokesman has admitted she used the Guyer Institute for medication
It is not known what prescription she received or why she had it
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3376471/Did-manning-throw-wife-bus-doping-claims-NFL-player-admits-wife-client-controversial-lab-angrily-adds-drugs-got-business-never-took-them.html
HGH Uses and Abuses
Synthetic human growth hormone was developed in 1985 and approved by the FDA for specific uses in children and adults. In children, HGH injections are approved for treating short stature of unknown cause as well as poor growth due to a number of medical causes, including:
Turner’s syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects a girl’s development
Prader-Willi syndrome, an uncommon genetic disorder causing poor muscle tone, low levels of sex hormones, and a constant feeling of hunger
Chronic kidney disease
HGH deficiency or insufficiency
Children born small for gestational age
Hmmm…. Mrs Manning looks rather healthy to me….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/27/03/2FA09D5B00000578-3375094-image-a-49_1451187732340.jpg
Whether sports stars use drugs, HGH, or something else, is totally irrelevant to this blog and the consequences of resource depletion and it’s effect on humanity.
Unless of course it is the bread and circuses equivalent of when Rome was falling into collapse.
I suppose modern arenas do look like the colosseum!!
It is relevant in that it can be used to demonstrate the same mental MORE on ism…. that the goyim demonstrate when it comes to renewable energy …. EVs … and xxxxxxx xxxxxxx.
No matter what facts you put in front of the stoooopid goy….. on any one of these topics…. the vast majority will reject them.
Because we have before and after photos with respect to PEDs….. the MORE ons… can be brutally confronted with the evidence…. yet they are overwhelmingly in denial..
They will look at this and come up with some ridiculous excuse… because they are MORE ons..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvGuJT1-P-o
Just like earlier post about how Obama and Gore both bought ocean level properties…. surely that should bust through the MORE on ism exhibited by the xxx xxxx ers….
But nope — they just look at that and like the other MORE ONS….. start making stooopid excuses…
The point of all of this — at the end of the day — is to demonstrate …. that I am in the middle of an ocean with a handful of other sane people — surrounded by billions of total f789ing IDI OTS.
They are so f789ing stooopid that they cannot even grasp why I am making these arguments.
Even if I explain it in great details they remain bewildered….
http://images.ebaumsworld.com/thumbs/avatars/mfjoeee/mfjoeee-1399866544.jpg
I feel the need for a higher level of entertainment… Trump is boring me… Syria has calmed down .. all we have is the Bitcoin plunge… hardly enough to get the adrenaline pumping…
Here’s hoping Venezuela goes full re t ar d soon….
I can’t promise fireworks in Venezuela, but I hope this may provide a few moments of entertainment.
https://youtu.be/bZaEoPlcn5I
How about a chat about “cli-mate engineering”? Chem-trails? Anyone……?
https://youtu.be/d8bk3NyB31M
https://imgur.com/a/8AKfo
Gail you need to police this kind of junk better.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/science-officially-debunks-chemtrails-conspiracy-live-180960139/
Science Officially Debunks Chemtrails
A panel of 77 atmospheric scientists and geochemists weigh in on the controversial streaks in the sky
August 22, 2016
The researchers provided the available chemtrail evidence to 77 atmospheric scientists and geochemists for evaluation. “I felt it was important to definitively show what real experts in contrails and aerosols think,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientists and author on the study, says in a press release. ”
In the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists were asked if they had ever uncovered possible evidence of a government chemtrail program in their research. Of the 77 scientists, 76 said no.
Finally, they were presented with the analysis of samples from pond sediment, snow and air that the collectors claim were contaminated with traces of barium, aluminum, copper and strontium from chemtrails. The researchers said that 80 to 89 percent of the samples could be explained by phenomena much more simple than chemtrails.
The chemtrails craze likely originated with a 1996 report from the Air Force called “Weather as a Force Multiplier,” which speculates how the military could develop weather modification technology by 2025, report Annalee Newitz and Adam Steiner at i09.
https://imgur.com/a/KeQMO
https://youtu.be/iJfPV7HU1IM
From FighterSweep- a military website on jet fighter topics
Quotes from military pilot author-
“So what’s in chemtrails? Some Carbon Monoxide and heavy doses of Dihydrogen Monoxide. That’s right, folks. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. You read right, that’s twice as much hydrogen as oxygen being sprayed on the unsuspecting masses below. It doesn’t get any more sinister than that.”
“Seriously – there is no such thing as chemtrails. What you are seeing is CONtrails. Con being short for condensation. It’s what happens when water freezes and condenses at high altitude.
“Contrail formation is based on altitude, temperature, and moisture. It has to be extremely cold (-40 C), so the altitude that cons happen can change from day to day based on weather patterns. In fact, the altitude of the CONS is something we check in mission planning.”
“Ok, so maybe YOU don’t do chemtrails, but how can you know it doesn’t happen?”
“Because I understand science. Think of the dispersion/evaporation rates of something released over 6 miles up in the air. Do you really think that’s an effective means of dispersing something? More effective than say, just putting it in the water? Why do you think crop dusters fly just feet above their intended crops? Wouldn’t it be safer to fly at higher altitudes?”
“The chemtrail conspiracy relies on a poor understanding of science. The amount of chemical that would be required to affect just a few square miles exceeds the capacities of most aircraft.”
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/contrail-edu/science.php
https://fightersweep.com/4955/pilot-reveals-shocking-truth-chemtrails/
Sungr, you must be right…now the only thing I have to figure out is why ten jet aircraft are doing “practice or training” runs in perfect rectangular coverage in the sky. Yea…it must be just a new training regimen….makes perfect sense. DUmBA SS
Of course, I have now figured it out. The airforce is training pilots to fight the next war. That is why they consistently train in repeating near rectangular grid patterns in the sky. Why, they train doing this so much nationwide that the Air Force is the best at what they do. It must mean the future war will be fought not with guns and rockets, but by who can fly the best rectangular patterns in the air. This could be the ONLY reason they fly rectangular patterns in the air simultaneously releasing “contrails” ….to win the next wargame. I mean, we can be super proud…our air force pilots are the best in the world at flying rectangular grid patterns. To think that in the past they actually had dogfights, and dropped bombs…
Dude, physics is currently being rewritten regarding black holes and an item older than our sun and you claim there’s no entertainment happening? Just try and talk about aliens to a religious person and watch the entertainment start.
I prefer violence… chaos….. another Arab Spring?
That’s coming too but requires patience. I however am loving the current cognitive dissonance I see in everyone’s face when I tell them that we came from a black hole.
And it cut me off on that last bit. Researchers just discovers an artifact laying in an Egyptian tomb predates our sun. Just try and wrap your head around that. Also black holes are now spewing out entire galaxy clusters, which pretty much means the Big Bang didn’t happen. And also living organisms were found in rocks that are 3.5 billion years old. All of this in the last 2 weeks.
TO,
does any of that mean we are un-fcduek?
and the winner is: nobody…
Cryptocurrencies: 1441
Market Cap: $497,185,731,686
total cryptocurrencies up from 1385 two weeks ago…
market cap was over $800 billion last week…
Schadenfreude lives!
‘You wanna financially hurt us – we will financially hurt you by burning down buildings’
‘I petrol bombed it — it felt good’
‘That as the best 3 days of my life’
England rioters in their own words — ‘to get free stuff’ ‘to get revenge against the government because they make it hard to get jobs – afford university….’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJQ60bWhTM
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-civilization-a-thin-veneer-over-barbarianism-john-m-shanahan-292904.jpg
When opportunity vapourizes… that veneer gets scraped off….
These riot photos are from 2011. Of course, something similar could happen again.
When people have nothing left to loose, they loose it – Gerald Celente.
US shale oil production surge:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/16/us-shale-oil-drilling-poised-to-surge-in-february.html
“Last week, EIA forecast that total U.S. oil output will hit 10.3 million barrels a day, the highest annual average on record. The following year, EIA expects American production to average 10.8 million barrels a day, putting it roughly on par with Saudi Arabia and Russia’s output.”
10.3 million bpd… wow!
10.8 million bdp… wow!
if it looks like BAU and smells like BAU and tastes like BAU…
why, it probably is BAU.
Hmmm… if we could get accurate production numbers… I suspect we would see a decline ex-USA….
This is what stands between us… and the apocalypse…
http://d3dql2kihuy2db.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/bigstock-Fracking-69749770.jpg
Wow, good post David in a trillion kazillion years.
One thing I wonder is whether we really know that Permian basis production is increasing by the amounts shown in the various reports. The assumption seems to be that the Texas RRC is terribly slow at getting amounts processed. When we don’t know, and would like a high result, it would be easy to guess high.
‘When it gets serious – you have to lie’
If these plays are peaking …. or declining…. we won’t get real numbers….
I expect that a rosy picture of everything will be painted … right up to the last minutes of BAU….
Don Draper is already working on a catch phrase that improves on Green Shoots…. which of course was borrowed from Being There…. (Don you thief!!!)
Dmitry Orlov today:
“But what is certain is that if this long-term trend continues (and why wouldn’t it?) serious oil and gas production shortfalls will start to occur within a decade.
What is particularly notable about this dismal result is that it is not in the least upsetting to the Russians. This is because most of the newly discovered oil and gas is in Russia…
… governments throughout much of the world, perhaps even including the US, will come to the realization that they simply can’t get by without Russian energy.”
serious shortfalls within a decade? yes, once again, mid 2020s…
and will Russia really be the main energy source that extends BAU?
here’s hoping for the best…
and, yes…
can you feel it in the air tonight?
BAU, baby!
So you lied about both bitcoin $1M and no BAU tonite during 2018?
sad but true… well, just partially true…
yes, my now broken new year’s resolution…
BAU tonight, baby!
but wait…
I still have 11 and a half months to be right about $1M bitcoin.
BTC half what it was just a few weeks ago, now at 10K USD. It would have to rally 10,000% to reach that target. I bought 100 dollars worth, just in case.
http://img.picturequotes.com/2/541/540975/if-something-cannot-go-on-forever-it-will-stop-quote-1.jpg
500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs
Within five years, 15 million people – 80% of the population – were wiped out in an epidemic named ‘cocoliztli’, meaning pestilence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/16/mexico-500-years-later-scientists-discover-what-killed-the-aztecs
I would guess that the population was already weakened because it had followed the pattern of every other economy. In other words, population had grown, while resources had stayed the same, or even shrunk. At some point, populations become more vulnerable to new diseases.
Storage bins are welcome news for the homeless in San Diego
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/homelessness/sd-me-homeless-storage-20180115-story.html?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Contentutm_content=5a5ea71f04d3010a45f0f52cutm_medium=trueAnthemutm_source=twitter
This is a really good watch…. now imagine if the hordes had guns…
I suspect the revolutions will not be televised… I recall some coverage of the UK riots… but nothing like this…. this looks worse than Cairo….
Wow! It didn’t take long for that vid to be pulled.
Bitcoin at $10,700…
wow!
happy days are here again!
though…
so much for that guy who predicted $1 million per Bitcoin for 2018.
I hope not too many people bought bitcoin on their credit cards at $16,000 or $18,000.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kX4ryQjUaFE/maxresdefault.jpg
must have butter and salt…
yum yum.
or with the funds from a second mortgage.
Bitcoin ATMs popping up around San Diego
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/economy/sd-fi-bitcoin-atm-20180116-story.html?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Contentutm_content=5a5e920a04d301619fb973d7utm_medium=trueAnthemutm_source=twitter
the author, with this story printed today 01/16, began thus:
“San Diego County now has more physical locations to buy bitcoin, a digital currency rising rapidly in price.”
rising rapidly…
too funny!
b w a h a h a h a h a!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The carnage on my FB newsfeed from idiots who bought at the highs and are now completely wiped out, for fear of missing out, is enormous. I did warn them, in the lead up to the commencement of futures trading in BTC on the 18th of December, but I was considered a spoil sport and a chicken little for doing so. People act the same through every speculative mania, and this one was no different, even as they were adamant that “this time it’s different.” Idiots.
How to Avoid Population Overshoot and Collapse
Unless scientists discover some energy breakthrough “miracle” that can provide scalable and energy dense renewable energy, the predictions made in the graphs below paint some very grim scenarios. As you review these graphs, keep in mind that these nightmares are not in some distant future. They may arrive in less than one or two decades from now.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201111/how-avoid-population-overshoot-and-collapse
“They may arrive in less than one or two decades from now.”
that’s a very good analysis… that timeline sound quite reasonable…
though I would add that if there is some energy miracle ahead, then the overshoot would go to more like 20 billion than the 10 billion under today’s energy situation…
because…
that’s what animal species do.
There will be no energy breakthrough…..
Without a doubt no stone has been left unturned… in our quest for fire….
The fact that trillions have been thrown at solar energy … is evidence of that…. solar is clearly the best option in terms of delivering high volumes of energy…. but that has failed. Nuclear was tried … also… failed….
Now we sit in our hovels … eating our seed potatoes… waiting for the apocalypse to arrive.
well, I just had some beef lo mein…
and a mouthwatering chocolate torte with a decadent helping of home made whipped cream…
food sent down from the gods on Olympus!
I passed on the seed potatoes…
I was getting quite full.
How North Sea oil helped Margaret Thatcher
While Margaret Thatcher was reforming Britain’s economy, new oil discoveries in the North Sea were turning the nation into an energy powerhouse. The surge in resources and employment softened the oil-price shocks of the late 1970s and helped Prime Minister Thatcher pull the country out of economic stagnation.
Many people know that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who passed away Monday, jump-started a flailing British economy and reshaped it into a more market-driven system. What’s far less known is the role that oil played in that turnaround.
When Mrs. Thatcher came to power in 1979, recent offshore discoveries in the North Sea were turning Britain into an energy powerhouse. The surge in oil revenues and her lassez-faire economics provided a mix of resources and policy that softened the oil-price shocks of the 1970s and pulled the country out of economic stagnation.
“North Sea oil rescued Britain from the repeated balance of payments crises of the past and provided a crutch for the public finances at a vital time,” writes Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph, “but it also set the stage for a peculiarly unbalanced form of economic growth that dogs the country to this day.”
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0408/How-North-Sea-oil-helped-Margaret-Thatcher
Take note doomie preppers….
In weakness… many see opportunity … just wait till BAU dies… and nobody picks up 911….
A joint investigation into the sexual abuse of immigrant women who clean the malls where you shop, the banks where you do business and the offices where you work.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/rape-on-the-night-shift/
Simple really….when the World Economy Collapses everything shuts down…the end….The collapse will be absolutely horrible..There is no collapse or horror movie ever produced that has even come close to imagining what the collapse of BAU might look like. I’m talking about every corporation and every social program going bankrupt at once.I’m talking about people eating people. I’m talking about the Worst Catastrophe to ever happen in the history of mankind. Nothing has ever, or will ever come close.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
http://www.energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/Peak%20Oil_Study%20EN.pdf
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845
http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf
http://www.feasta.org/2012/06/17/trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion-a-study-in-global-systemic-collapse/
Prior collapses looked a lot like epidemics that killed a lot more people than a person would normally expect, based on the severity of the illness. How do these authors know that we won’t have a “normal” collapse?
Or do they even have any idea what a normal collapse looks like? Maybe this will collapse will be worse, but there are a lot of things we don’t really know.
all true…
since the next collapse will be the first one for this modern high tech industrial civilization…
that speaks volumes… there likely will be few comparisons between any past collapse and The Collapse which is coming soon.
a reminder:
“soon”, to me, means a decade or two.
Joseph Tinter’s Model of Collapse – Evolving
If the world is split into two groups, say a forcefully energy-deprived designated ‘Sanctuary Cities‘ that are encouraged to enter collapse, vs fewer ‘Smart Cities‘ that are well ‘fenced’ and strengthened to stay energy-abundant exercising our style of the current world – Collapse and Peak Oil should be seen distorted, artificially & deliberately re-clocked and brought staged.
This potential follows a style of a ‘controlled’, decades-earlier-planned-for collapse, rather than precisely following any naturally-occurring amazingly-factual model of Joseph Tinter.
In the new model, part of the world goes almost energy-less and no-tech (reduced complexity), the other obsessively big-date & AI-assisted and controlled (increased complexity).
It cannot be that Winston Churchill was so smart in 1913 envisaging a century in the future in relation to energy-depletion but all of us in 2017 have turned ourselves so dumb (excuse me) after all what has been said and written about energy scarcity since the 1950s and earlier.
Humanity, at least some of us, must have learned so much of new tricks dealing with collapse since the Romans 🙂
Because Americans have never seen domestically any catastrophic hardships in the last 100 years, like, say, Iraq, they think of either non or a collapse for all. Unlikely. I have seen poor people invading and cutting street trees of an upper middle class suburb hours after the US started bombarding Baghdad in 1991, due to energy shortages, while Americans in the US were likely watching footballs on TV holding pop corns and drinking nice beers. i.e. Collapse came to one group not both.
How to know what place is decided to be pushed into the final stage of a controlled-collapse (from my personal experience with collapse in the ME)?
No more or very poorly supplied grid electricity in the wires coming to your home, increased street violence and mortality, and a great deal of confusion about reality and what’s going on (I feel what is called the 4th-generation asymmetrical wars being real).
This can be comfortably be called the ‘Middle East’ reality, since 1917. How it is bad? Take the worst case scenario when assessing the future. Multiply it by 1000 time as worse. Consider the result the-best-case-scenario. Iterate.
When Smart Cities ultimately run out of FF energy after a prolonged peak-oil period, constituents of Sanctuary Cities (or what remains in them) will be encouraged to fill the gap with muscles-energy, even if by, likely, physical slavery practices – i.e. back to square-one in history! :).
Then, you’ll find some extremely miserable and some very happy people live on both sides of the fence – humans will remain always humans. Hurray! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I am not convinced this is possible. If nothing else, the people in the sanctuary cities need goods (especially food and probably water) from outside their area. People are needed to work producing food and water, among other things.
The financial system would fail very early on, in any situation similar to this. This would lead to a problem of paying workers. I doubt that there could be a prolonged peak oil peak.
I think you are right, though, about there always being some very happy people and some miserable people. Happiness is not made by our outside conditions.
‘Smart cities’: snowflake reserves, where they mince about the mall looking at their i-phones and talking nonsense about the ‘de-coupled economy. ‘
The very opposite of resilient.
The EU name for this, ‘Project Stardust’ sums up the concept!
I think the problem is that those nations that are not “needed” doesn’t consume much.
If you are talking about abandoning 80% of the people in the western democracies, then democracy is the problem. Even a minimum cost of living allowance is way above sustainable.
you cannot have a democracy where most of the people are impoverished
No, you can not.
it isnt possible to equate our collapse with previous ones
when Rome collapsed, the Chines or Indians wouldn’t have known about it
maybe it took a long time even for the romans to accept it—after all, Byzantium carried on for another 600 years or so. Nobody looked out of their bedroom window in Rome and called to their missis—“Wake up dear, the empire collapsed in the night”
the difference in our time is that we’ve consumed all the natural resources that would make any form of regeneration possible—very few people see that, even fewer accept it
This time, collapse may come covering most nations at the same time, pre-orchestrated, splitting each into two-neighbouring-each-other groups, i.e. the ‘Green Zone’ in Baghdad vs the rest of the city and Iraq, a pro EU London vs rest of Britain, a California vs the de facto sanctuary Maine, a Moscow vs west-Ural, and so on.
Energy supplies that are forcefully denied to a collapsing group (say, Gaza) will be dedicated to go to a neighbouring smart city (say, Tel Aviv). Gaza lives a grueling peak-oil reality, Tel Aviv lives a Musk’s AI/EV/VR/Big Data energy-abundant reality, for example.
The transition into this Two-Tier World is between us, slowly brought to existence emerging, since the end of WWII.
We are approaching ….
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/POVNEANWM8Y/hqdefault.jpg
at high speed
https://images4.alphacoders.com/202/202508.jpg
What we know:
– the power will go off permanently
– petrol and diesel will no longer be available
– the shops will be emptied within hours of that happening
– when the police realize the situation is permanent — they will toss their badges in the bin and return home to protect their families – or join the pillaging
– the military will not waste precious fuel and ammo on maintaining order
– famine will kick off within a couple of weeks
– there will be no medical care available
– violence will start immediately
– unless you are in a VERY remote location with no neighbours and no access — you will be attacked – and any food you have — stolen
– disease will probably start within a few weeks — cholera will be of particular concern since people will be sh it ting everywhere — and feces will get into the water table
– radiation from the ponds will arrive within hours depending on your proximity to the installations – and wind and water currents — in some places it will likely take some weeks.
– this will be global – so there will be no aid agencies coming to the rescue
NEVER has there been a collapse that even remotely resembles this. The World Wars do not even come close. The Great Depression does not even come close.
This will be Total … Permanent … collapse.
This will be … an Apocalypse.
To thi.nk about this … to really th.ink about it….. will lead to utter de…spair….
https://emotioninart.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/eia93.jpg
http://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/italy/orvieto/cathedral/0047.jpg
those poor sad humans in the 2030s…
You sound like a Greek chorus!
And quite rightly.
As in all great tragedies, laughing always comes to crying, pleasure is always followed by retribution, and Hubris is always punished by Nemesis.
and a happy new year to you too Eddy
even though i agree with you
Dow 26000, ‘happy days are here again’!
https://econimica.blogspot.se/2018/01/were-gonna-need-bigger-boat.html?m=1
He seems to come to the same conclusion the rest of us do, but without looking much at energy.
Yes, his conclusion are backwards. Lack of demographic growth causes lack of economic growth causes lack of energy growth.
I can’t recall him writing WHY people don’t have more babies more often and at earlier age.
Pretty graphs though.
But prices of stocks slid shortly after hitting 26000, after shares of oil stocks slid with oil prices. This may be the limit on how far the stock market rises.
GE renews break-up talk as it discloses $11 billion fourth quarter hit
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-restructuring/ge-renews-break-up-talk-as-it-discloses-11-billion-fourth-quarter-hit-idUSKBN1F51AP?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
I am afraid they are toast…The unfunded pensions will sink them.
Long term care insurance is a disaster area as well. Actuaries were way too optimistic about many aspects of the program–how many would file claims, what costs would be like 20 or 30 years later, how long people would live in long term care facilities, and how much interest could be earned on premiums held by the companies.
Looks like Brexit is about to fail and get another vote. Even the man who championed the cause, Nigel Farage has said that another vote should take place. Something has happened, or apparently the leaders of Brexit have been shown it could collapse the EU.
It could collapse Britain without the workforce from Europe and the limited access to the European market.
Remember this guy? Remember how he was not going to take it anymore? Greece was going to reject EU imposed austerity…..
Didn’t happen. The screws were allowed to continue to tighten — without so much as a whimper from him…..
I reckon the way this works is…. the leaders get summonsed …. and the situation gets explained to them… i.e. we are on the edge of a cliff …. and if you do what you say you intend to do … you go over the cliff… and you take BAU over the cliff…
Do you still want to do what you say you want to do? I would imagine that when the stark reality is laid out for them — they immediately reconsider….
Of course if they are stuuuupid…. then they are informed that there are other less palatable means … that will be used… to stop them…
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/54dda2addd08950a208b4647/greeces-prime-minister-just-promised-a-referendum-if-his-deal-with-europe-isnt-good-enough.jpg
Remember this guy? He would have had a meeting like that….
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/pri_61171011.jpg
And Nigel would have got the tap on the shoulder as well….
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2017/06/19/12/nigel-farage-14-june-2017.jpeg
I’m skeptical about the threat of taking BAU off the cliff. Technically, it very well could, but I wonder if ones threatening are aware of our predicament,( I mean apocalypse.)
Perhaps it is more about greed and control. Either way, same results.
Of course they are aware …..
HIGH PRICED OIL DESTROYS GROWTH
According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
+
OIL PRODUCERS NEED $100+ OIL
Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood said the productivity of new capital spending has fallen by a factor of five since 2000. “The vast majority of public oil and gas companies require oil prices of over $100 to achieve positive free cash flow under current capex and dividend programmes. Nearly half of the industry needs more than $120,” he said http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11024845/Oil-and-gas-company-debt-soars-to-danger-levels-to-cover-shortfall-in-cash.html
= apocalypse….
They have stated they will do ‘whatever it takes’ …. but they don’t finish the sentence….
But we can see from their actions that they are fearful….. they are propping up the stock market… they are maintaining record low interest rates…. they are loaning money to insolvent corporations to ensure they make the interest payments on loans that are low interest …. they are making car loans to bums…. Greek debt carries a lower interest rate than US debt!!!
You do not do these things unless you know that not doing them would result in an immediate apocalypse….
Because even if we did not have the oil issue looming over us … and they did what they are doing…. given that what cannot continue will stop at some point …. we would end up with a Great Depression x 100000 because of these policies…. in fact we would probably collapse BAU because of them.
I used to think that the Fed – Bernanke — was an idi ot… corrupt…. — I remember asking … WTF are you doing!!!
Can’t you see what is going to happen — did you NOT see what happened in 2008 — and you are doing the same things all over again but on steroids!!!!
Then I sat back and thought … hang on … Bernanke is not st upid …. nor is he corrupt…. I am the one who is stuuuupid — how could I have not seen this earlier…. he does not want to destroy the system … he does not want to collapse BAU…. how does that benefit him and his masters?
That would be like blowing up your own house… or sh it ting in the living room….
Then I realized… the central banks are living in terror of something …. and this something is FORCING them into these destructive policies….. that something must be monumental….
And then I found this… and the dots began to connect…..
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 58 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
They obviously know — they know how much oil KSA has left…. they know in great detail what all the producers have left …. they know conventional peaked in 2005….. they made it possible for shale oil to happen …
Of course they know we are on the cusp of the end of oil.
You don’t drill miles beneath the ocean — explore the Arctic…. steam oil out of sand…. unless you are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
FE are the bankers still controlling the system or is the system now controlling them?
They are reacting to the lack of cheap oil… to the physics of the situation.
Our elected politicians are incompetent. I can’t understand why yours should be different.
As I have stated… the Central Banks run the show – NOT the politicians… most of the politicians would be clueless…. they are employees of the CBs… they take their orders from the CBs… they are basically flunkies… and there is no need to explain why to flunkies
Ok, this was written with pictures of Nigel and Tsipiripiri. I agree the poor central bankers probably have a clue, even in a small peripheral country.
i liked Nicole Foss’s image of “sucking the spilled beer out of the carpet after the bar has closed its taps.”
In a earlier post, I found a link to Andy Haldane’s April 2017 speech on productivity, centered on the now established trend in the UK and elsewhere for stagnation post 2005 after centuries of growth of around two percent. It lays out the statistics and basically says that you don’t realise what gifts you posess until they are gone.
No mention of LTG, resource depletion, pollution, or peak oil, but I think it’s worthy of it’s own thread:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2017/productivity-puzzles.pdf
I looked at the report, and noticed it references something called “Three Centuries of Data” by Hills, Thomas, and Dimsdale (2016). I went to look for it, and discovered that there is a 2017 spreadsheet of data available called “A Millennium of Data.” https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/search?SearchTerm=A+millennium+of+macroeconomic+data+for+the+UK
I found the data around the time of the bubonic plague of 1348 to be interesting. Population had hit very close to the 1348 level back in 1290, or 60 years earlier. The population was 4.75 million in 1290 versus 4.81 million in 1348. Real GDP per capita was estimated at 831 in 1348. It varied quite a bit in early years, but it was often that high or higher, after 1303. So both population and GPD per capita had been on a plateau, before the plague hit in 1348. Inflation did not seem to be an issue: Nominal GDP per capita did not spike in the years preceding 1348.
When the plague hit, the population dropped to 2.6 million, within 3 years. GDP per capita immediately rose a lot once the plague hit, suggesting to me that it had been capped by too large population for the farmland and other resources. (While real GDP per capita was 831 in 1848; by 1351, it had risen to 1027.)
I am not sure I understand what all happened later. The population continued to drop, reaching 1.9 million in 1450 (about 100 years after the plague hit). Real GPD per capita was at that point 1138, or higher than it had been in 1351. Population did not exceed its prior peak of 4.81 million until 1622. By then, I believe Britain was using some coal, but would have to check.
Hello,
War between England and France occurred in this period: Hundred Years’ War, 1337 to 1453.
Good point. My knowledge of European history is pretty poor.
According to this article, coal mining in North East England began in the 13th and 14th century.
I have posted this chart by Wrigley several times. It shows coal use back to 1561 in England.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wrigleyfig1-e1346123057549.gif
After the Great Plague, the rural workers left behind were too few to manage the former acres under the plough, and much of it reverted to woodland, which needed fewer workers to manage and was cut on long cycles, rather than the yearly labor of growing crops.
Over the long term, the collapse was probably good for the fertility of the soil. Also, more soil could build up from erosion of bed rock, adding trace minerals.
I’d agree: perhaps the population decline and loss of farmland laid the foundations for the agricultural boom of the 18th century, when rural England was at its peak – it meant over two centuries of reduced use. The soil and woodland recovered from the demands made by the huge 13th century population (in this village, 33 peasants in 1086, but 350 in 1250!)
A funeral song… for BAU…..
God bless you BAU…. you have been good to Fast Eddy…. and you will be missed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/europe/carillion-bankruptcy-outsourcing-britain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
The government cannot afford to pay workers the full amount it needs to, so it outsources to an outside agency that provides a low bid. That organization cannot really provide the services for the low price either. Ultimately, the problem is that the government is not “rich enough” now to provide the level of services that it has been providing. At some point, the silliness must stop.
I understand that the US government may shutdown on Friday evening, if it cannot reach a budget agreement. This is a related problem. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/15/four-big-fights-trump-and-congress-must-resolve-avert-government-shutdown/1030520001/
Contracting out is also wonderful for avoiding the payment of extra public sector pensions.
This collapse illustrates what an inherited infrastructure burden a modern state has to carry, most of it created in those heady post-WW2 days.
Good point!
Is An Oil Price Spike Inevitable?
The oil glut is over, at least when it comes to U.S. commercial inventories: over the past two months they have been within the average range for the season, thanks to hefty draws. These draws, one analyst argues, are a signal of higher-than-expected demand that is not only an American trend but a global one.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-An-Oil-Price-Spike-Inevitable.html
Hopefully this price rise is orchestrated for the purpose of encouraging more exploration and/or keeping producers alive….
And not the result of a peak in supply….
Low prices bring high demand. High prices, with a few months lag, bring lower demand.
According to a new bombshell report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), tap water for more than 170 million Americans contains radioactive elements that may increase the risk of cancer. The group examined 50,000 public water systems throughout the United States and found from 2010 to 2015, more than 22,000 water utilities reported radium in treated water.
Radiation in tap water poses serious health threats, particularly for children, and women during pregnancy.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-15/are-you-one-170-million-americans-drinking-radioactive-tap-water
Spent fuel ponds will pose no problem post BAU….
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/c914709e-8097-4537-92ef-8982fc416138/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/graveyardsketch.png
Antidepressants found in fish brains in Great Lakes region
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2017/08/042.html
Don’t judge them, fish have stressful lives
singing, no whistling, past yard full of headstones, humm…. grave sites, whistling past grave sites, no, whistling past yard full of graves,… heck, i give up.
https://imgur.com/a/xRkUW
When I was in Oklahoma for a short stint, I worked with this old man. I had been drinking the tap water for a few days and was getting these really bad headaches, and I noticed all these green, white and yellow deposits on the faucets – hard water as it’s known but who what knows what’s in it. So this old man and I got in an argument about the water. He was saying, “I can’t believe you went and bought bottled water!”
“I said, the tap water’s been giving me a headache. Have you seen all the deposits on the faucets?”
“He says, ah so what, water’s water.”
I tried to explain to him there’s all sorts of stuff is in water. You don’t know until it’s been analyzed. He kept up the arrogant attitude, then a month later had a stroke and lost the use of his left leg and arrogantly dragged it along like it should just behave itself. Then about 5 months later he had a bigger stroke, fell and hit his head on the bathroom door. He had numerous strokes after that and ended up in a rest home, couldn’t remember anything from moment to moment and lost the use of his hands. Then he lost his appetite and shortly thereafter passed on.
I swear I don’t understand the state of mind that causes a person to become locked into a thought or idea like ‘water is water’. But anyway, maybe that water had radioactive elements as well – who knows.
https://rlv.zcache.co.uk/schadenfreude_mousepad-rce52bdb6ee754919aa09b9219dee455b_x74vi_8byvr_324.jpg
Anyone who drinks city tap water thinking it is safe deserves cancer… the reality is that there are literally dozens of dangerous element … and more seeping in each year…. that are not even tested for … when the authorities issue the all safe label….
So better by bottled “spring water” that is tap water tapped on bottle and sent halfway around the world?
Actually …. I highly recommend purchasing bottled water sourced from a pristine spring on a remote island in the middle of the pacific ocean…. another option is using coal to boil water and distill it… removing the impurities….
Whatever it takes…
Don’t get sucked in by Nestle https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/19/nestle-sued-again-for-falsely-representing-bottled-tap-water-as-naturally-spring-sourced/#4cbdf5411092
Quite a few people in the US buy filters for their water. I know we have filtered our water for quite a few years. We actually have two filters. The first one removes the red clay and other stuff that comes through the pipeline with the water. It needs to be changed every six months, or the water pressure goes down too far. The second is an osmotic filter that supposedly removes more. It only filters a small portion of our water, the portion we use for cooking and drinking.
http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/20/trumps-epa-wants-to-reverse-clean-water-protections/
This Trump executive order from last summer occurred without drawing much national attention. I did make note of it here on OFW,
How much reduced life expectancy this contamination will potentially cause, which in turn will offset longer life span / population growth that fossil fuels were expected to create?
Fossil fuels can be used as population-growth builder or destroyer, potentially, I think.
What also worries is the claims that shale oil/gas supplies might contain exotic constituents, as this example video outlines, as much as I could understand;
If the material in the video is not a hoax and I understood it correctly, then oil tankers sail high seas may distribute those exotics worldwide, as ban on US oil/gas exports is now lifted – one can assume?
This is too much complicated, I feel. The world has been simpler to live in for humans, I remember!
This fellow is claiming that background radiation levels in the US are now through the roof. I look at this map, which is updated every five minutes, and they are not.
http://radiationnetwork.com
I think he is trying to scare people. He makes quite a few claims, but this was the first one I could easily check.
Interesting site. I bet if that got hacked, it could scare some people. This is more for the delinquents like me.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
We can do all kinds of things, out of an abundance of caution. The question is, “Is the existence of all of these protections slowing our economic bicycle so much that it will fall over?”
We can “lose” in two different ways. We need to understand how the system works.
If the system is “rigged”, is it still possible to understand it? Stocks appear rigged. Same with interest rates. And unemployment figures. Or are we mostly talking about the thing CBs can’t rig? No matter what they do – these are real constraints?
Then you have that the MIL complex make their own reality. NK need not attack. We’ll do that for them – when the timing is right from our perspective. Hitler wasn’t the first man to launch a false flag attack. What the message on my phone this weekend a dry run?
I am afraid we will have to start reversing a lot more than just water protections if we want to keep BAU alive a bit longer.
Shale gas is one of the least sustainable ways to produce electricity, research finds
The environmental and social sustainability of shale gas would also need to improve by up to a 100 times for it to compete with domestic natural gas and imported LNG.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-shale-gas-sustainable-ways-electricity.html#jCp
The magazine article never gives a link to what article it is referring to. It seems to be available for purchase at this link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717331984
This is a link to an earlier open access article by the same three authors. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ente.201402097/abstract It is called, “Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas in the UK: Current Situation and Future Scenarios.” The abstract of the earlier article says
This is a section from the introduction:
Presumably, the new article is an extension of this earlier article.
Well, one could drill down into the fracking fiasco via wiki-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing_by_country
Gee, it seems like Americans are the only ones having much luck,
We already have quite a few pipes in place, making use of fracked oil and gas more economic. If you have to start from scratch building pipelines, and there are many country boundaries to cross, it becomes a problem. LNG gas is popular because it avoids the pipeline issue, but LNG still needs pipes to the LNG plant.
Very good point! And one people quickly forget is how much energy is embedded in our current infrastructure. Everything leverages that, including wind and solar. There is no “alternative” energy source that is as energy dense as cheap and abundant like coal and oil were to build out all this infrastructure.
The pipeline system and the electric grid are easily the top two wonders of the modern world. And likely not something we could rebuild from scratch again.
Poisoning the well. That’s a real problem.
However, if you are desperate, and that is all you have, that is what you use, I would think.
Right but people don’t think that way. They literally do not realize that they need that gas if they want to keep the same standard of living. They instead see it as ruining the climate and are therefore adamantly opposed to their own energy needs. This is part of what may bring the energy system down, similar to whats happening with coal and it’s continued demonization. The green hippies are dangerously brainwashed.
Those hippies are not wrong though, but it’s just that we are all between a rock and a hard place, i.e. damned if we do keep burning FF and damned if we don’t.
And he will mock and spit on the Feebles and DelusiSTANIS….
Why the economic forecasts for Britain are so apocalyptic – and how much Brexit is to blame
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/uk-economic-forecast-brexit-reason-economy-living-standards-wage-loss-households-city-a8072436.html
The UK very clearly has a falling per capita energy problem.
This falling energy consumption is related to the UK becoming a net oil importer in 2006. In fact, the UK’s problem is a local version of Peak Oil.
In fact, the UK has a similar problem with natural gas. It became a net importer of natural gas a year or two earlier. UK’s coal production and consumption continues to decline, as it has for many years. UK nuclear electricity peaked in 1999. Renewables are not filling the gap.
That culture, the UK, which is strung so tight, will be tightening those cultural strings even tighter as the situation constricts.
Speaking of Culture, Margaret Thatcher was a product of timing. She would have been unable to do what she did if North Sea Oil and Gas had not come onstream when it did. Since then the UK has proceeded as if that resource was inexhaustible, and thus the expectations for continued growth were always going to be unfulfilled.
Only now, as a result of the Brexit vote, are the hard choices being faced, and IMHO whether within or outside the EU the UK will face something like a prolonged recession.
‘something like a prolonged recession’
A mega understatement….
The UK is massively in debt…. at some point they will no be able to make good on the payments…. but the UK is TBTF….
Want to see the future?
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/10/20151017_greece.jpg
https://www.inkcinct.com.au/web-pages/cartoons/past/2012/2012-096–Greek-austerity-measures-kick-in-.jpg
With a bit of local flavour
Video: ‘I’ve never seen that level of hatred towards the police’
Oil was priced over $90 in 2013….. I’d like to see a more recent graph of UK production…. when oil prices were less than half that….
A search on google brings up nothing.
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
The data shown is through 2016. With a little searching, I might be able to come up with something 2017 data to add to the end. UK oil production actually went up a little, after prices dropped. If prices are low, you make it up on volume.
I have a friend from the UK that I talk to. And he is aware about peak oil and finite world issues. He says there is zero talk about the North Sea oil reserves declining. He said the conservative party has been in charge since 2010. So everyone has been blaming them for their decreased living standards. And now everyone is blaming brexit for everything.
you are right about ”nobody mentions n sea oil” here
This is about Aberdeen, and they say, cleaning up in the North see is not creating all the jobs needed, when loosing oil.
I don’t know if you can read German, in the article they say, oil party is over.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/oelvorkommen-in-der-nordsee-das-ende-der-oel-party-1.3822876
Yes, this is concerning. It is part of what is causing the economy of the UK to collapse. It is hard to think of new industries to take over, if the UK doesn’t have good sources of energy. Even tourism doesn’t work well–tour ships or airplanes need petroleum products.
Everywhere people take the moral or political interpretation as the basis for argument: never the physical. Hey, who wants facts anyway?!
Blame it on everything but the end of north sea oil…..
There are a lot of people alive in the UK who remember what was happening in the period prior to the discovery of north sea oil….. they remember the rot of the 1970’s….
And if the MSM and govt were to explain to them that north sea oil was the driver of 3 decades of prosperity — and that it is well past peak….. that would result in despair…
So they will not be told this.
A quick scan of that article … and as expected… no mention of the actual cause of the malaise….
http://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/northseaoilprodn1.jpg
Hi Gail,
Thanks for another inspiring article and of course your presentation of the data.
We are currently preparing an article explaining economic dynamics based on three years of oil extraction (as a proxy for energy or rather exergy production), oil price, and the profit margins of oil companies. I think that’s all that is needed.
I like your bicycle. Looks like a Brooks saddle. The gears seem to be in the back hub though. Only one rear sprocket and only one chain wheel. Comfortable classic handlebars.
Thanks! I am looking forward to your article.
I’ll throw out a few random comments:
If I’m part of the 1%, why would I ever want to do anything to reduce unemployment? That would just result in higher wages and more expense for me. I’ll provide a like to show just how little of the “economy” actually makes anything, and point to China’s increasing use of automation in its factories. Are we talking about charitable institutions here?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-14/contemplations-america-and-4-gdp-growth
Central bankers have thoroughly broken the economy. There is just too much risk in taking on any project that will create jobs. Why do that when “profits” are easily available? Those government deficits have to go somewhere, and after they have been raided or harvested by the banks and other parts of the FIRE sector, the dregs are made available to what used to be called the “Real Economy” to keep it on life support.
Ditto for social justice warriors. I ask my spouse all the time, do you really think a bunch of old white ignorant men are going to feel bad for everyone else and relinquish their grip on world affairs? Lol. Never going to happen. Just like equal rights for all. It’s a mirage of abundant energy use.
but does she grant you equal rights
Define rights, lol. She doesn’t like the truth but she’s smart enough to see it. All of these ideologies and isms will soon fade away.
I think old religions will still be with us, unless collapse is so severe it washes away all current belief systems.
Maybe “Technology will save us” will go away as a popular religion, however.
“If I’m part of the 1%, why would I ever want to do anything to reduce unemployment?”
Because when enough people are unemployed, almost everyone will no longer understand all the very good reasons for your being a part of the 1%.
lol
well put
This would require insight and real reform, which is unlikely. Besides, it’s all too little too late, as we are way into overshoot. However you carve this up, it spells disaster.
http://images.slideplayer.com/16/5025385/slides/slide_7.jpg
Malthus wasn’t aware of spent fuel ponds….
Just as well.
Insights and reforms work when it’s not too late to say “I’m sorry”. In a situation where a majority of the working age population is unemployed due to automation (very unlikely) or the steady unravelling of BAU (likely), it is definitely too late for that.
https://youtu.be/Mt4xRTafwaM
it’s definitely beyond late. Besides, automation is a sop to make people still believe in a gee-whizz future. If they are made redundant, it’s ok, because their fairy godmother is going to give them free money to keep shopping, and pay off their mortgages, via a universal basic income.
Automation is probably the more important part of that post. The Powerful always lived in fear of the Mob. If we cannot handle automation properly, it will just create more and more “useless eaters”.
My impression is automation used to mean leveraging a worker enabling him to produce more with less time/effort.
Now it mostly means replacing more workers with fewer more qualified, producing about the same.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
-Warren G. Bennis
It is amazing how many former peak oilers believe in a gee-whizz future, complete with fairy godmother.
@ DJ. Automation should work the way you describe if and only if it is priced correctly. To take as an example, suppose a robot allows one person to do the work of two. What happens to the displaced person in terms of their contribution to GDP? The then have to seek alternative work, and face a double disadvantage: the pool of unemployed is larger; and the goods and/or services are produced at a cheaper cost.
As I stated earlier, if priced correctly, everyone should benefit.
Where wealth imbalances occur, the investments in automation will tend to reinforce these imbalances, the benefits accrue only to the wealthy, with eventual consequences.
Richarda,
It IS NOT priced correctly.
For the company it is obviously a win.
But then you have the displaced, unemployable person, the one with a job has to support.
Much automation and outsourcing wouldn’t happen if it were not for the welfare state.
@jupiviv – Trickle down hasn’t reached you yet? I’m Shocked, Shocked, to hear that. Just hang in there, you know you can trust me 🙂
Sure Mr. 1%, you take all the time in the world to whizz it down your ivory tower. Us proles shall be waiting down here with Mme. Guillotine.
‘Central bankers have thoroughly broken the economy’
No – the end of cheap to produce oil is what has broken the economy.
The central bankers are holding it together by applying duct tape.
Run More Banks?!
I think we can probably agree on one thing: that the era of cheap oil was Humanity’s one chance at immortality, and we blew it.
Looking at the latest LTG projections, it doesn’t look like Central Banks matter much either way, but if I was to change my views on the Central Banks it would be to put politicians in the dock alonside them.
How did we blow it? What do you suggest we could have done differently?
We blew it because we followed the path broadly outined in LTG. Unsustainable levels of population growth, resource consumption, pollution, and land fertility degradation. The world’s population is now three times what it was when I was born.
Assume, for the arguement, that today I discover how to make cold fusion work. How long will it take to make a significant portion of our electricity consumption, and then make it some part of our transportation network and food production?
But today, oil companies are borrowing money to pay dividends, and companies are prioritising expansion over profits, with loss of taxes and dividends to shareholders. The QE undertaken by Central Banks supports these market distortions, which in trurn rely on corrupt business practices for continuation. It really is that simple.
We blew it because of the laws of physics. If we can fix the laws of physics, we are all set.
Today, oil prices are too low for oil companies. Oil companies have no control over this; this results from the laws of physics as well. The QE distortions are so that BAU can go on a bit longer.
Without population growth — which accounts for approximately 1/3 of GDP growth — BAU would collapse.
Of course infinite population growth on a finite planet — does not end well…. heck even if it were possible to maintain BAU with a static population of say 3 billion — that would not end well either.
The global economy MUST grow — if it stops growing — it collapses.
See TINA
How would fusion help? It would just lead to more of the same — we would end up with even more people…. who would rip through other finite resources more quickly.
Fusion would simply be like shifting from coal to oil (oil to fusion):
https://leduc998.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/paul203.jpg
There is no choice in the matter — the course we take is the course that allows us to survive the longest…
If we were able to choose to stop population growth say 100 years ago — we would have collapsed into a very primitive state.
Of course because that choice was not possible to make — we got our green revolution which has poisoned the land… we got our spent fuel ponds… and we got nearly 8 billion people… we are beyond overshoot…
And we are going to pay the price — we will extinct ourselves.
The freak show is wiping itself out
https://dstecca.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/hurray-its-weekend-magical-me-pn21xf-clipart.jpg
the genetic forces within any biologal species is evolved to utlilise available energy to the maximum possible extent to facilitate expansion to the exclusion of competitors
the advent of cheap oil was the one thing that was certain to guarantee our demise
to requote myself:-
humankind had a million years or more of darkness, then in 2 centuries we burned off the available carbon fuel stores of the entire planet
lloked at from the perspective of deep time—it was just a brief flash of light and heat
it was in effect the supernova of mankind.