BP recently published energy data through December 31, 2017, in its Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. The following are a few points we observe, looking at the data:
[1] The world is making limited progress toward moving away from fossil fuels.
The two bands that top fossil fuels that are relatively easy to see are nuclear electric power and hydroelectricity. Solar, wind, and “geothermal, biomass, and other” are small quantities at the top that are hard to distinguish.
Figure 1. World energy consumption divided between fossil fuels and non-fossil fuel energy sources, based on data from BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
Wind provided 1.9% of total energy supplies in 2017; solar provided 0.7% of total energy supplies. Fossil fuels provided 85% of energy supplies in 2017. We are moving away from fossil fuels, but not quickly.
Of the 252 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE) energy consumption added in 2017, wind added 37 MTOE and solar added 26 MTOE. Thus, wind and solar amounted to about 25% of total energy consumption added in 2017. Fossil fuels added 67% of total energy consumption added in 2017, and other categories added the remaining 8%.
[2] World per capita energy consumption is still on a plateau.
In recent posts, we have remarked that per capita energy consumption seems to be on a plateau. With the addition of data through 2017, this still seems to be the case. The reason why flat energy consumption per capita is concerning is because energy consumption per capita normally rises, based on data since 1820.1 This is explained further in Note 1 at the end of this article. Another reference is my article, The Depression of the 1930s Was an Energy Crisis.
Figure 2. World energy consumption per capita, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data.
While total energy consumption is up by 2.2%, world population is up by about 1.1%, leading to a situation where energy consumption per capita is rising by about 1.1% per year. This is within the range of normal variation.
One thing that helped energy consumption per capita to rise a bit in 2017 relates to the fact that oil prices were down below the $100+ per barrel range seen in the 2011-2014 period. In addition, the US dollar was relatively low compared to other currencies, making prices more attractive to non-US buyers. Thus, 2017 represented a period of relative affordability of oil to buyers, especially outside the US.
[3] If we view the path of consumption of major fuels, we see that coal follows a much more variable path than oil and natural gas. One reason for the slight upturn in per capita energy consumption noted in [2] is a slight upturn in coal consumption in 2017.
Figure 3. World oil, coal, and natural gas consumption through 2017, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
Coal is different from oil and gas, in that it is more of a “dig it as you need it” fuel. In many parts of the world, coal mines have a high ratio of human labor to capital investment. If prices are high enough, coal will be extracted and consumed. If prices are not sufficiently high, coal will be left in the ground and the workers laid off. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018, coal prices in 2017 were higher than prices in both 2015 and 2016 in all seven markets for which they provide indications. Typically, prices in 2017 were more than 25% higher than those for 2015 and 2016.
The production of oil and natural gas seems to be less responsive to price fluctuations than coal.2 In part, this has to do with the very substantial upfront investment that needs to be made. It also has to do with the dependence of governments on the high level of tax revenue that they can obtain if oil and gas prices are high. Oil exporters are especially concerned about this issue. All players want to maintain their “share” of the world market. They are reluctant to reduce production, regardless of what prices do in the short term.
[4] China is one country whose coal production has recently ticked upward in response to higher coal prices.
Figure 4. China’s energy production by fuel, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data.
China has been able to bridge the gap by using an increasing amount of imported fuels. In fact, according to BP, China was the world’s largest importer of oil and coal in 2017. It was second only to Japan in the quantity of imported natural gas.
[5] China’s overall energy pattern appears worrying, despite the uptick in coal production.
Figure 5. China’s energy production by fuel plus its total energy consumption, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data.
If China expects to maintain its high GDP growth ratio as a manufacturing country, it will need to keep its energy consumption growth up. Doing this will require an increasing share of world exports of fossil fuels of all kinds. It is not clear that this is even possible unless other areas can ramp up their production and also add necessary transportation infrastructure.
Oil consumption, in particular, is rising quickly, thanks to rising imports. (Compare Figure 6, below, with Figure 4.)
Figure 6. China’s energy consumption by fuel, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
[6] India, like China, seems to be a country whose energy production is falling far behind what is needed to support planned economic growth. In fact, as a percentage, its energy imports are greater than China’s, and the gap is widening each year.
The big gap between energy production and consumption would not be a problem if India could afford to buy these imported fuels, and if it could use these imported fuels to make exports that it could profitably sell to the export market. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Figure 7. India’s energy production by fuel, together with its total energy consumption, based upon BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data.
India’s electricity sector seems to be having major problems recently. The Financial Times reports, “The power sector is at the heart of a wave of corporate defaults that threatens to cripple the financial sector.” While higher coal prices were good for coal producers and helped enable coal imports, the resulting electricity is more expensive than many customers can afford.
[7] It is becoming increasingly clear that proved reserves reported by BP and others provide little useful information.
BP provides reserve data for oil, natural gas, and coal. It also calculates R/P ratios (Reserves/Production ratios), using reported “proved reserves” and production in the latest year. The purpose of these ratios seems to be to assure readers that there are plenty of years of future production available. Current worldwide average R/P ratios are
- Oil: 50 years
- Natural Gas: 53 years
- Coal: 134 years
The reason for using the R/P ratios is the fact that geologists, including the famous M. King Hubbert, have looked at future energy production based on reserves in a particular area. Thus, geologists seem to depend upon reserve data for their calculations. Why shouldn’t a similar technique work in the aggregate?
For one thing, geologists are looking at particular fields where conditions seem to be favorable for extraction. They can safely assume that (a) prices will be high enough, (b) there will be adequate investment capital available and (c) other conditions will be right, including political stability and pollution issues. If we are looking at the situation more generally, the reasons why fossil fuels are not extracted from the ground seem to revolve around (a), (b) and (c), rather than not having enough fossil fuels in the ground.
Let’s look at a couple of examples. China’s coal production dropped in Figure 4 because low prices made coal extraction unprofitable in some fields. There is no hint of that issue in China’s reported R/P ratio for coal of 39.
Although not as dramatic, Figure 4 also shows that China’s oil production has dropped in recent years, during a period when prices have been relatively low. China’s R/P ratio for oil is 18, so theoretically it should have plenty of oil available. The Chinese figured out that in some cases, it could import oil more cheaply than it could produce it themselves. As a result, China’s production has dropped.
In Figure 7, India’s coal production is not rising as rapidly as needed to keep production up. Its R/P ratio for coal is 137. Its oil production has been declining since 2012. Its R/P for oil is shown to be 14.4 years.
Another example is Venezuela. As many people are aware, Venezuela has been having severe economic problems recently. We can see this in its falling oil production and its related falling oil exports and consumption.
Figure 8. Venezuela’s oil production, consumption and exports, based on data of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
Yet Venezuela reports the highest “Proved oil reserves” in the world. Its reported R/P ratio is 394. In fact, its proved reserves increased during 2017, despite its very poor production results. Part of the problem is that proved oil reserves are often not audited amounts, so proved reserves can be as high as an exporting country wants to make them. Another part of the problem is that price is extremely important in determining which reserves can be extracted and which cannot. Clearly, Venezuela needs much higher prices than have been available recently to make it possible to extract its reserves. Venezuela also seems to have had low production in the 1980s when oil prices were low.
I was one of the co-authors of an academic paper pointing out that oil prices may not rise high enough to extract the resources that seem to be available. It can be found at this link: An Oil Production Forecast for China Considering Economic Limits. The problem is an affordability problem. The wages of manual laborers and other non-elite workers need to be high enough that they can afford to buy the goods and services made by the economy. If there is too much wage disparity, demand tends to fall too low. As a result, prices do not rise to the level that fossil fuel producers need. The limit on fossil fuel extraction may very well be how high prices can rise, rather than the amount of fossil fuels in the ground.
[8] Nuclear power seems to be gradually headed for closure without replacement in many parts of the world. This makes it more difficult to create a low carbon electricity supply.
A chart of nuclear electricity production by part of the world shows the following information:
Figure 9. Nuclear electric power production by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. FSU is “Former Soviet Union” countries.
The peak in nuclear power production took place in 2006. A big step-down in nuclear power generation took place after the Fukushima nuclear power accident in Japan in 2011. Europe now seems to be taking steps toward phasing out its nuclear power plants. If nothing else, new safety standards tend to make nuclear power plants very expensive. The high price makes it too expensive to replace aging nuclear power plants with new plants, at least in the parts of the world where safety standards are considered very important.
In 2017, wind and solar together produced about 59% as much electricity as nuclear power, on a worldwide basis. It would take a major effort simply to replace nuclear with wind and solar, and the results would not provide as stable an output level as is currently available.
Of course, some countries will go forward with nuclear, in spite of safety concerns. Much of the recent growth in nuclear power has been in China. Countries belonging to the former Soviet Union (FSU) have been adding new nuclear production. Also, Iran is known for its nuclear power program.
Conclusion
We live in challenging times!
Notes:
(1) There is more than one way of seeing that energy consumption per capita needs to rise, despite rising efficiency.
One basic issue is that enough energy consumption needs to get back to individual citizens, particularly citizens with few skills, so that they can continue to have the basic level of goods and services that they need. This includes food, clothing, housing, transportation, education and other services, such as medical services. Unfortunately, history shows that efficiency gains don’t do enough to offset several other countervailing forces that tend to offset the benefits of efficiency gains. The forces working against unskilled workers getting enough goods and services include the following:
(a) Diminishing returns ensures that an increasing share of energy supplies must be used to dig deeper wells or provide water desalination, to operate mines for all kinds of minerals, and to extract fossil fuels. This means that less of the energy that is available can get back to workers.
(b) Governments need to grow because of promises that they have made to citizens. Retirement benefits in particular are an issue, as populations age. This takes another “cut” out of what is available.
(c) Increased use of technology tends to produce a much more hierarchical workforce structure. People at the top of the organization are paid significantly more than those near the bottom. Globalization tends to add to this effect. It is the low wages of those at the bottom of the hierarchy that becomes a problem because those workers cannot afford to buy the goods and services that they need to provide for themselves and their families.
(d) Increasing use of technology can often produce replacements for manual labor. For example, robots and computers can replace some jobs, leaving many would-be workers unemployed. The companies that produce the replacements for manual labor are often international companies that are difficult to tax. Governments can try to raise taxes to provide benefits to those excluded from the economy as a consequence of the growing use of technology, but this simply exacerbates the problem described as (b) above.
(e) The world economy always has some countries that are doing better than others in terms of GDP growth. These countries are nearly always countries whose energy use per capita is growing. Current examples include China and India. If world resources per capita are flat, there must be others whose energy consumption per capita is falling. Examples today would include Venezuela, Greece and the UK. It is the countries with falling energy consumption per capita that have the more severe difficulties. Our networked world economy cannot get along without these failing economies.
Besides the issue of enough goods and services getting back to those with limited skills, a second basic issue is having enough energy-based goods and services to actually fulfill promises that have been made. One type of promise is debt and related interest payments. Another type of promise is that made by pension plans, whether government sponsored or available from private industry. A third type of promise is represented by asset prices available in the marketplace, such as prices of shares of stock and real estate prices.
The problem is that promises of all types can, in theory, be exchanged for goods and services. The stock of goods and services cannot rise very quickly, if energy consumption is only rising at the per-capita rate. Even if more money is issued, the problem becomes dividing up a not-very-rapidly growing pie into ever-smaller pieces, to try to fulfill all of the promises.
(2) With respect to oil, the one major deviation from its flat pattern occurred in the early 1980s, when world oil consumption fell by 11% between 1979 and 1983. This happened as the result of a concerted effort to change home heating and electricity production to other fuels. It also involved a change from large inefficient cars to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. After the 2007-2009 recession, there was another small step downward. This downward step may reflect less building of new homes and commercial spaces in some parts of the world, including the US.
Adding more straws to the camel.
https://i.imgur.com/5C05QOz.png
Who cares?
Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.
The great Philosopher – Mike Tyson
What is your long-term plan, Yoshua?
just jumping in here uninvited…
my long-term plan is to store up enough supplies to survive for the next 200 to 300 years…
I think that is reasonable…
and doable…
doesn’t everyone think so?
No.
As far as the global economy is concerned, this would be equivalent to a blocked artery causing a potentially fatal coronary:
“An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Wednesday that Tehran will block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if the United States bans Iranian oil sales.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-iran-irgc-threat/irans-guards-threatens-to-block-oil-shipments-in-gulf-yjc-ews-website-idUSKBN1JU2MW
There it is. All it takes is one vital organ to fail. Critical failure. Cascading knock on effect leading to total collapse if unable to revive the patient.
sure…
we should just give up right now…
this Iran situation will obviously start WW3…
nothing can be done…
BAU will never reach 2019…
bye bye, OFW…
it’s been fun…
Ha!
I don’t know what or when and neither done anyone else. Beware those who say they do. They’re probably selling something.
But it works both ways. You can’t say that we definitely have decades or whatever given the current circumstances.
I’m just restating that IF a vital organ fails in the global system everything shuts down since we don’t have the time to adapt. I think that’s a fairly factual statement given that we tend to put all our eggs in one basket. There are no alternatives that could rush in to save the day IF things go critical.
Right now I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to launch nukes. Even when the endless money printing stops. There seem to be a lot of deals being made behind the scenes deciding who gets what. Everything else is for show.
The only measure I use on a personal level is whether there is food in the shops and the internet still comes on in the morning. If those things fail then I will sigh and deploy plan B… MacheteTime.
Great analogy: “As far as the global economy is concerned, this would be equivalent to a blocked artery causing a potentially fatal coronary”
Nope. Just geopolitical electro-shock therapy for Iran.
“bans Iranian oil sales” is term open to wide interpretation though.. since the recent anti Iranian sanctions are not fully adhered to by int community anyway..
Our trade war proper is underway:
“A long-threatened trade war between the US and China got underway on Friday as the US imposed tariffs on $34bn in Chinese goods. China has promised to levy its own tariffs immediately after on a similar quantity of US imports.
“Minutes after the US tariffs went into effect at 12:01 Friday US time (0401 GMT), a spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce said, “China promised not to fire the first shot, but in order to safeguard the country’s core interests as well as that of the people, it is forced to fight back,” according to Xinhua.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/06/china-ready-to-fight-back-as-us-begins-trade-war
US started biggest trade war in history, China forced to retaliate – Beijing
https://www.rt.com/news/431860-us-china-trade-war-starts/
https://imgur.com/a/TO26PYa
Welp. See y’all at the bread line.
According to Donaldologists this is just an invitation for new round of trade agreements, sort of lets meet up around half point somewhere.. However, this can’t work sufficiently since the best Asians (CHN, JAP, SKorea) based everything on export strategy and very frugal domestic living (going without imported stuff of added value)..
So at best the tariff will remain in place, but could be lowered by not much, say 1/3rd.
I am guessing that the institutional investors had a peak at the gas gauge…. and didn’t like what they saw….
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-05/oil-drops-wsj-reports-aramco-ipo-almost-certainly-wont-happen
Matt Mushalik has a good recent post about Saudi Arabian oil.
http://crudeoilpeak.info/saudi-arabia-was-supposed-to-pump-almost-14-mbd-in-2018
He points that all of the newly added capacity seems to have only offset depletion. Overall capacity doesn’t seem to have risen at all in the past several years.
Another article saying that Saudi Arabia cannot raise its production much. Raising its production to 11 million barrels a day would be stressful.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/070518-factbox-anatomy-of-saudi-arabias-crude-oil-capabilities
Let’s have at it!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-05/teen-assaulted-wearing-maga-hat
‘Within hours of the incident going viral, the attacker was identified through a crowdsourced effort as Kino Ahuitzotl Jimenez, a member of the Green Party of Texas according to their website. The group’s “key values” include; nonviolence, respect for diversity, and social justice.’
PRICELESS!!
Not to mention Making America Green Again!
The world food crisis? India’s got it sorted.
Fertilizer!? We don’t need no stinkin’ fertilizer!!
Goa farmers urged to improve crop yields by chanting ancient Hindu mantras instead of using fertiliser
Farmers in India’s idyllic beach resort of Goa are being encouraged by officials through WhatsApp posts to follow ‘Vedic farming’ techniques by chanting ancient Hindu mantras to ensure better yields.
State Agricultural Minister Vijay Sardesai, who inaugurated the pilot Shiv Yog Cosmic Farming project at Fatorda, 20 miles south of Goa’s capital Panjim, also maintained that this novel practice of ‘channelling shakti (energy) into the soil’ via these intonations was also an alternative to harmful chemical fertilisers.
The novel method requires farmers to daily recite a ‘healing’ Sanskrit mantra for 20 minutes during the sowing season; the resultant vibrations would ensure a safer and higher crop output, the minister said.
…
“All I know is that there are some celestial sounds one can capture and channel through meditation and help increase the yield and decrease the input of fertilisers” Mr Sardesai told the Express.
To bolster his claim he stated that his wife, had successfully employed this technique on some orchids in their Goa house.
The minister said that initially he too was sceptical and disbelieving of this procedure, but that it could not be dismissed as magic.
“There are studies backing this method” Sardesai said, but did not elaborate.
Over the past few weeks Goa’s agricultural officials have conducted workshops on Cosmic farming in which farmers were instructed to recite the curative Om Hrom Jum Sah mantra every day till the seeds took root. Instructors from the Shiv Yog Foundation, named after Shiva, one of the principal Hindu gods said these recitations would bring the positive microorganisms alive and gradually reduce dependence on fertilisers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/05/goa-farmers-urged-improve-crop-yields-chanting-ancient-hindu/
Now if we combine this with the earlier post on ‘breatharianism’ and some flying pork units everything will be sorted.
Interesting …
I hooked up speakers in the garden and looped Koombaya day and night … everything died.
I wonder what impact Air Supply’s Greatest Hits would have…
hey that’s not bad at least indian people will starve by chant
Hare Rama Hare Krishna rather than killed people over food
“Farmers in India’s idyllic beach resort of Goa are being encouraged by officials through WhatsApp posts to follow ‘Vedic farming’ techniques by chanting ancient Hindu mantras to ensure better yields.”
I suppose rain dances are also possible, if that is the problem. In some cultures, sacrificing first born children seem to have been thought to be helpful. Whatever is believed to work!
I am working on a new project…
http://www.cryptocrops.com
Not so sure that modern agriculture is a good idea, either.
http://wildancestors.blogspot.com/2018/07/conquest-of-land-through-seven-thousand.html
Thanks for the article. As you probably know, in his new book Charles C Mann writes extensively about Walter Clay Lowdermilk. Manns book «The Wizzard and The Prophet» is worth reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Prophet-Remarkable-Scientists-Tomorrows/dp/0307961699
Synthetic fertilizer greatly increased the volume of nitrogen available for plant growth, sidestepping nature’s limits. This accelerated food production, and shattered the glass ceiling on population size. Nitrogen expert Vaclav Smil speculated that 40 percent of the people alive in 2000 would not exist without synthetic ammonia fertilizer.*
I wonder what percentage of humankind might survive in the post-petroleum world.
In his essay, The Oil We Eat, Richard Manning wrote, “Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten.”
Later, the crop-breeding projects of the Green Revolution more than doubled farm productivity between 1950 and 2000. Consequently, population soared from 2.4 billion in 1950 to 6 billion in 2000. The Green Revolution was all about full scale industrial agriculture — irrigation, large farms, powerful machinery, monoculture cropping, proprietary seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
What percentage? Zero. Obviously if 99% of all land is farmed using these chemicals… and close to 100% farmed using industrial methods such as pumped irrigation water…
There would be almost no food grown post BAU —- and the hordes would be pillaging what is left … and killing and eating all the barnyard animals.
“Synthetic fertilizer greatly increased the volume of nitrogen available for plant growth, sidestepping nature’s limits.”
made by using natural gas…
aren’t FF great?
Great…. while they last…. the hangover is fatal though
Most of that food we make goes towards feeding animals because people like to eat pork chops and sirloin steak.
Much of our water goes to these animals too.
We are a dumb species. We don’t fix the simplest things because we are greedy.
Now much of China wants to eat lots more meat too. It just gets worse.
But you can apply the same logic to almost any human activity and compare to the nearest wild animal.
People buy the biggest gas guzzlers to show off when they pick up little Timmy from school. People in the US seem to consume more electricty per household than anywhere else on the planet. What the … are they doing?
And they are proud of it too. Oh so proud.
And pride comes before a fall.
thanks
Lowdermilk drew some inspiration in the (pre WWI !) book by F.H. King “Farmers of Forty Centuries”, there are even detailed scientific method chapters included how much nitrogen and phosphorus are the Asian able to recycle in their system of permanent agriculture, comparing to abysmal European practices.. Also interesting tidbits on economy, garments, forestry, .. the whole cycle..
You can read it for free online or get any of the reprints for cheap.
Summary> so we have got like one century of detailed practical guidance telling us doing it the wrong way along, only today some token fraction of people are implementing it the correct way again.. with the bonus of accumulated even more knowledge of natural systems..
All you need is one of these wonderful machines:
We have traveled back in time to the Great Depression era..
Fascism rising, trade wars, police brutality, dust bowl.
Hi Gail!
When I moved to Chicago 14 years ago, I let my driver’s license lapse and used the train/bus system. Recently renewed my license and took my first road trip today with a zipcar. All I could think about was the insanity of the road system and the immense energy required to maintain it–the repair of roads, the excessive signage, some of it electronic, and of course the vehicles themselves. My car was amazing–everything was push button and it took me 5 minutes just to figure out how to roll down the windows in the back for my dog, Max. Rolling them up and deciphering the AC system took another 5.
And all that stuff breaks!
It took me five years to find a Dodge Cummins 4×4 that didn’t have power windows, power door locks, power lumbar support, etc. They figure that anyone stupid enough to pay an extra four grand on a diesel will surely be willing to spring another couple grand for a couple hundred dollars worth of motors and switches.
Never met an “elderly” car with this crap that didn’t have problems. The “unlock all doors” button in my spouse’s 2006 VW stopped working long ago, and the remote unlocking of the driver’s door sometimes takes three tries to get it open… I guess when people find themselves permanently locked out of their own car, they just buy a new one.
I also prefer to own a car without the breakable power features…
but gotta have a good sound system…
cars (when they have no mechanical issues) are amazing!
a sound system on wheels…
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m fighting the good fight for dirt roads, but since I want the oil industry to continue, I support black top road maintenance. People can build new black top roads if they wish, but I won’t support them. The road under an overpass is being resurfaced after a year. The splotchy former surface now replaced with a pristine thick, textured black. The white lines, unlike their predecessors, are razor sharp and gleaming. Me, carried away with tar. More evidence of lunacy!
There is so much refined wisdom in the lyrics of popular songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sku-1hqA5xw
“Where the neon signs are pretty”. Such taste!
[/sarc]
Manzarek is a wizard. I never thought I would see a post with him as the musician.
Thanks!
considering such places as SF and Paris…
the lyrics to Downtown have not aged well…
Such beautiful lyrics, though. Go shopping to cure your depression. 🙂
And Paris and SF are about as good as it gets.
https://imgur.com/a/ZkjshJV
Is there anything Elon can’t do?
Elon Musk offers to help rescue the Thai soccer team stuck in a cave
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/33c4f8a1-6bfc-377b-bd15-88902f260a93/ss_elon-musk-offers-to-help.html
That sounds like a cheesy 50s comics plot. Correction: it sounds like a cheesy 60s cartoon parodying a cheesy 50s comic book plot!
I feel vomit coming on
I’m shocked that the statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro hasn’t been demolished and replaced by one of Santo Musk el Salvador de la Humanidad.
Very nice FRED graph on declining labor activity from 1996 – 2018 at PonziWorld, I’d post it here but don’t know how. Accompanied by the usual Ponziworld snarky commentary:
“Supply Side economics effectively destroyed the U.S. labor market, now featuring a surfeit of low paying part-time McJobs. Labor participation rates are at generational lows across EVERY demographic. Which is a function of jobs and careers being serially terminated long before retirement, over and over again. This was attended by the rise of the underground subsistence economy, as the long-term unemployed abandoned the formal workplace. . . . .
http://ponziworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/full-disneyland.html
Right. There is an ever smaller share of the potential workforce actually working, with only a small recent upturn.
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-million-next-gen-geforce-gaming-gpus/amp/
“NVIDIA Reportedly Well Prepped For Next-Gen Launch – Around A Million Next-Gen GeForce Graphics Cards Stockpiled, Ready For Mass Shipment To Gamers
The report comes from Digitimes sources based in the upstream supply chain. According to them, the mining market has gone stagnant since cryptocurrency took a hit, making medium sized crypto operations (these include individuals too) just go out of buisness while the bigger operations and related firms are cutting down on accquiring new mining machines.
This causes inventory issues for graphics suppliers and as we reported earlier, there’s a huge stock of currentl-generation graphics cards that needs to go away before next-gen are shipped out to the market. The issue mainly arose after NVIDIA overestimated the mining demand, overproducing current gen GPUs which are now sitting idle as demand for these cards is at an all time low.”
They will retool the current gen cards (unlock more clock mhz, change the fans etc), build up hype with a surprise announcement, and sell them for a bit more than the current ones were priced at before the crypto insanity.
Last time I fall for the graphics card con. I bought at the peak cos I couldn’t be bothered to do the usual research or wait for better times and I paid the price. The next card was nearly twice as good for half the price!
the Battle Raging In Nigeria Over Control Of Oil
Nigeria may sit atop one of the largest oil reserves in the world, but the majority of the Nigerian people have seen little benefit from the multibillion-dollar industry. The government and global energy companies have been exploiting the resource for years, bringing poverty, pollution, and violence to the Niger Delta. And now the local militias fighting for oil control have made conditions even worse.
Caught in the conflict are Nigerian citizens involved in the illegal oil market simply for survival. Oil theft is rampant, and the booming black market has transnational oil and gas consultants concerned about the effects on global oil markets. The government isn’t too happy about it either.
“All the oil that is sold around here, the government calls illegally refined products,” local oil businessman Don Wizaro
And when the Nigerian military raids illegal oil operations, they slash containers, releasing oil into waterways, contaminating what the main source of fishing, agriculture, and drinking water.
As the government continues its assault on illegal refineries and barges carrying stolen oil, local militias are retaliating. And one of the most notorious militias is the Niger Delta Avengers. They attack pipelines and infrastructure, significantly affecting both the environment and the economy.
https://youtu.be/vAgw_Zyznx0
another country now fighting for last bit of oil
If Nigeria were getting a huge amount of tax revenue from the oil, they could afford to give some of this back to there citizens. I don’t have the figures, but I would expect that there is a double problem (a) there is not a whole lot of tax revenue that they are actually getting from the recent low prices of oil, and (b) Nigeria’s population at 196 million or so is way too high for the tax revenue per person to amount to anything. This is higher than the population of Russia, at 144 million.
“And when the Nigerian military raids illegal oil operations, they slash containers, releasing oil into waterways, contaminating what the main source of fishing, agriculture, and drinking water.”
All you can do is shake your head. 😉
When I hear of this kind of thing, I usually think to myself, “There but for the grace of God (or the roll of the dice) go I.” Most people, through accident of birth, are “born with there backs against the wall” as Van Morrison put it, and we all have to play the hand fate deals us. How would you or I deal with being born into the lower strata of humanity in Nigeria, for instance? And it’s not necessarily just an academic question as any of us could be chewed up and spat out by the system that keeps us comfortable at any time.
And yet, Bill Gates assures us that every day and in every way, we’re getting better and better.
He likes to vaccinate their children for better or worse. Some reports have found sterilising agents in the vacs. But hey it could be much ado about nothing. I’ve heard he has shares in Big Pharma so maybe he’s just a frontman for moar profit.
These Technocrats are the same people that promise that soon, very soon all babies will be born perfect – free of all disease – and you can even choose eye color.
Another project for my new venture …. I will make a call to Maddy now … we’ll mop up all the Nigerians and keep those oil production in play …. two birds with one stone — we will also end all the Viagra spam emails…
All Hail the Fentanyl Meat Balls
I’m thinking of registering MachetesRus.com.
Would that help?
I live in the red area of Chernobyl’s radiation fallout. I served meals at the hospital cancer department. I remember the patients telling me that they had the munchies for mushrooms and berries and that they couldn’t wait for the season to begin.
But it’s all safe now, the authorities have told us so.
I just had some Fukushima tuna for lunch? I poured some red vine vinegar and grounded some black pepper over the tune and ate it with tomatoes. What a nice little lunch that was.
My bet is that the authorities will push the nukes beyond all safety measures when the energy starts to fall of the cliff…
Maybe that was the plan all along? To stealth kill the planet with spent fuel ponds?
Thing is… there may be a fair amount of nukes, but nowhere near enough to keep even a fraction of industrial civ running if oil and coal hit roadblocks. Everything would just grind to a halt and the spent fuel ponds would begin to spew their poison.
I used to think the spent fuel ponds could be managed in time if and when things went down, but I realised that no effort was being made whatsoever to prevent abandonment in a society wide power down situation due to economic collapse. We should have already permanently and safely stored all the fuel for repurposing a long long time ago.
The only way out of this – and this is clutching at straws – is if societal collapse happened by region and slowly enough for fuel pools to be managed individually as and when each region loses power. Each site would have to be managed over several years until all the fuel was casked. It could then be safely left on site.
If I was in charge… I would be manufacturing fuel casks out the wazoo and casking fuel as rapidly as possible across the whole northern hemishere. That would be my priority. It wouldn’t even cost that much. I wonder how far I would get before showtime? And how much it would actually matter?
Remember… even without the dessert – spent fuel pond eruption – we still get the main course – MacheteTime!
I’m not sure if they actually have a plan.
The elite in Soviet Union didn’t have a plan except to rule forever. They ordered Chernobyl to heat the pipes red hot.
The mob had a plan and took over large parts of the government and the economy.
In Syria the mob is called ISIS, al Qaeda, Nusra.
If I meet you in the streets with your machete, my last words would have to be: Bon appetite!
I’m not sure if they actually have a plan.
Bingo!
We have a winner
The Devil has plans: Man has delusions……
Any particular dressing you would like me use? Red wine vinegar perhaps? With a side of mushrooms and berries?
What needed to happen was that all nuclear plants be decommissioned. The spent fuel cooled for 5 years – then casked.
Perhaps that could not have happened because nuclear provides such a large proportion of global electricity … without it prices would go through the roof causing economic growth to collapse?
Or perhaps the Ministry understands that it does not matter …. that we are just so royally f789ed… (ruined farmland the world over, disease, etc…) that we may as well just keep on slapping more fuel into the reactors to the bitter end.
We see only the tip of the iceberg… they see it all. And the fact that they have done nothing about this issue — says a great deal about what the ultimate outcome will be
“The spent fuel cooled for 5 years – then casked.”
an admission of being wrong?
or not?
No I have been consistent with that fact all along. The problems is that fuel is not being casked even after the five years… and new fuel is being loaded somewhere as I type….
56M Hiroshimas is overkill…
Nope. Unfortunately FE has been right all along.
Some of us went quite deep into researching this when it came up years ago and the only conclusion is that we are not prepared for a situation like this at all. In fact, it doesn’t even cross the minds of those responsible for fuel security. All they mention is a possible random terrorist attack etc.
Some of the pools are stored outside of main containment which just just makes things worse.
Somebody said something about containment when the fuel starts to burn but apparently containment breaks down and leakage occurs as well as explosions. There would be no mass effort at that point to contain such leakage. Abandonment would occur quite rapidly before anyone could coordinate dumping in the ocean or covering with neutral materials. All those assumptions are made with a BAU intact mindset.
Again if things crashed exceptionaly slowly and people were sufficiently alerted about the issue the process could begin sooner. The problem is a psychological one. Workers with no future tend to down tools and run for the hills. After the initial implosion of society that kind of manning the pumps bravery would evaporate overnight.
Hey all. I’m back. Took a hiatus from doom to do some other fun stuff, instead. But I can’t seem to stay away. Things are just so damn bad out there, but the end is not yet nigh.
This from: reddit.com/r/collapse/comments
“I’m in my 50’s.
The world has been ending within 10 years since 1968 (The population bomb and Limits to growth).
The world has been ending in 5 years since the 1980’s ( peak 𝙾𝚒𝚕, global COOLING (really), Acid rain )
Today it’s global warming and space rocks.
Plan to enjoy your life until your in your 80’s. Tour some rainforests and coral reefs soon.
Quitting your job and drifting until you are broke may be fun for a while, but it guarantees your collapse this decade.”
I think the situation is different now.
Global just in time economy that went over a cliff in 2008 and has been propped up by magic for the past ten years. Debt piling up so high that none of it will ever be paid off. Fossil fuels reaching a point where they are no longer either profitable or cheap.
Desperate attempts to keep Hopium at all time highs which basically amounts to lying, pacifying the herd and staving off panic for as long as possible.
It may well be that the magic can hold things together for long enough until paradigm change happens. We need cheap energy and resources and the global economy would have to be completely revamped. Can you honestly see that happening from where we are now?
Germany and Sweden are shutting nukes down.
and will now have to burn more coal…
Based om what I’m reading (SLOW LEARNER HERE) coal would be a lot less deadly.
why shut your nukes when France has beaucoup right next door with no plans to scale back?
What would you have done and what would you do going forward? I’m genuinely interested.
From my own research it appears that nuclear especially new types of nukes would have a fairly good chance at powering most of IC if we removed all the restrictive bureaucracy and overly zealous safety regulation. Only then could it be competitive with intermitent renewables on cost and reliability.
If push came to shove public resistance would be overcome when faced with the choice of expensive unreliable energy versus relatively safe cheap dispatchable power.
Or are there still too many problems to do with spent fuel etc that make new nukes undesirable everywhere except China?
I ma not certain that France really has a way of replacing its aging units, however. And there were scandals in the repair industry there not long ago. France’s electricity generation using nuclear peaked in 2005 at 451.5 terrawatt hours, and was down to 398.4 terrawatt hours. With population constantly rising, on a per capita basis (at least a bit), nuclear electricity generation per capita is falling even more rapidly. The difference between France and Germany is that it hasn’t announced that it is closing down its nuclear industry, simply by attrition.
In particular, France’s “advanced reactor” program has been a dismal failure, with their fast breeders never producing more than “demonstration” amount of electricity:
(Oops… I guess the <img … > HTML doesn’t work here, try a link, instead:)
http://www.bytesmiths.com/Personal/Superphoenix.png
France has major problems with nuclear energy. I don’t believe we have much spare capacities. The idea that France is the Saudi Arabia of Nuke is certainly wrong.
Next EPR NPP generation in construction face many problems, over budget and delays. There is one plant in construction in France, one in Finland, and one in UK.
The former government, because it needed an electoral alliance with the greens, promised to reduce the share of nuclear power from 75% to 50%, and to close the oldest NPP (Fessenheim plant, on the Rhin river, on the German border) as soon as the new EPR plant is delivered.
The today government seems to show a will to maintain the promise. Of course the green believe the 25% will be replaced by renewables (fairy tale). My guess is that the governements HOPE the holy economic growth will automatically increase the electricity consumption proportionally, so, as they don’t upscale the nuclear capacity, it will arithmetically decrease the share of nuclear. Machiavellic! (This how our rulers seem to think : future growth will also repay the debt and solve pension deficits, etc. …).
Another predicament is that the cost of old NPP dismantle is apparently HUGE. France hasn’t spared enough money for that (too happy to have SO cheap electricity for the competitiveness of our companies and the happiness of our citizens), and, as we are broke, we probably don’t have money to acquire means for more (and safer, and cleaner, …) energy PLUS dismantle our old NPPs to please the green and average citizens who are scared of possible nuclear accidents. And I’m talking about “in BAU time” accidents, so I don’t even mention what would we our situation with old rotting NPPs, and the spent fuel ponds, if BAU stops, even for a while …
P.S. Superphoenix was a demonstrator of a disruptive technology that is now abandoned and has nothing to do with new generation “classical” NPP. It was meant to regenerate reusable fuel with the spent fuel. That’s why the name of the Phoenix. Too expansive, too dangerous.
Small Modular Reactors
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
You may well be right, unless there are severe supply-line breaks.
It is interesting the wide range of experiences that posters have had! Thanks for your observation.
Yoshua
I made friends years ago with a doctor who was one of the first responders to the Chernobyl meltdown. She and her husband knew the risks and both died of rare cancers.
She was living in Princeton NJ at the time.
My wife and I were in Kiev in 1993 and it was interesting how much radiation impacted the food production. We were served breakfast cereal with soda because no milk was safe.
I don’t know where you live but be grateful it’s not in US bubbleville. Americans are the most ignorant people on the planet. If you live in an affluent enclave of an economic hub here your completely deluded. Only a very few understand the real game being played.
JT, you are aware, aren’t you, that according to a recent survey by scientists wearing white coats, drinking just one soda a day significantly increases the risk of developing cancer?—at least it does if you’re an Australian.
However, it probably isn’t the bubbles of carbon-die-oxide that are to blame but the refined sugar. Modern “high-tech” processed-in-the-factory foods are high in refined sugars and refined sugars are the root of all evil. The high sugar diet has killed a whole lot more people than radiation has. It does so by causing physiological changes that produce everything from obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes to donut cravings and Trump derangement syndrome.
So, no more junk! And to be on the safe side, better cut down on the radioactive substances too. I like my breakfast cereal to go “snap, crackle and pop” but not on a geiger counter.
https://youtu.be/M8DE0Oj18Ig
Bananas are a little bit radioactive. Although I’ve never seen one glow in the dark. And I love them!
If we eliminated refined white flour and sugar from the global diet it would be one of the biggest boosts to health the world has ever seen. But I would place tobacco at the top of the heap as the greatest assassin of human beings. A radioactive pollutant injected directly into the lungs many times a day!
The very acidic carbon dioxide ph 2 messes with digestion so people that drink soda every day may in fact become dependent on it just to digest food.
Toothpaste and mouthwash is highly toxic and yet people obsessively love swishing it around in their mouths and teach their children to do the same. I havent used toothpaste for twenty years and my teeth are fine. And I don’t need to floss cos I don’t eat much meat so nothing smelly gets stuck in the gaps. I do brush them in case your wondering.
Oh and I don’t eat cereal. Terrible for teeth. Incredibly high white sugar content and sold as low fat health products!
I could on… but my point is that if everyone lived like me… the global economy would have collapsed a long long time ago. I am not a model consumer I’m afraid. And I apologise.
An interesting lifestyle you have, Tsubion. You may be a bit of a pariah in the age of conspicuous consumption, but come the next depression you could become a role model.
Here in satoyama, our current breakfast cereal is home-grown brown rice. Put brown rice (genmai) into a frying pan and roast it gently like you would coffee bans, making sure not to scorch it, and you have iri-genmai or roasted brown rice. Pour it into a jar and it will keep for months. When you want to make breakfast, put a cup of iri-genmai into a wide-brimmed thermos flask, add hot water, and screw down the lid. In half an hour it’s ready to eat but it will keep overnight in the flask.
I eat it with cream, Mrs. Tim likes hers with soy sauce and a pickled plum, and the Labrador has his with shaved fish or occasionally, if he’s been a good boy, with cream like me.
Sounds nice! Raw muesli would be a good option I suppose but I’m on a very light diet so nothing too taxing. Nice to have all those local ingredients at hand. Where I am calamare is the most exotic dish since pulpo (octopus) has become far too expensive!
That is a good vegetarian breakfast, also very conservative, but in a different way.
I took “cereal” to mean the many boxes of sweetened, colored cereals that are often marketed as healthy.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/kellogs-fruit-loops.jpg
Four out of five types that popped up when I searched on “sweetened, colored cereals” were called “organic.” This one was not. I am sure that advertisers assume that anyone who is searching for this kind of the product on the internet is an upscale purchaser, willing to purchase several boxes. In grocery stores, were will also be other types of overly processed, overly sweetened, overly colored cereals that do not make health claims.
Do people really eat this sh it?
Bananas could be on the way out:
“A British company has joined the race to develop a banana variety resistant to diseases and climatic changes that threaten to disrupt the availability of the country’s favourite fruit – or even kill it off altogether.
“The UK alone consumes more than 5bn bananas a year, while the fruit is a staple food in many poor countries and accounts for an export industry worth $13bn (£9.8bn) a year.
“But the global supply chain is threatened by a virulent disease that has been attacking plantations in Australia, south-east Asia and parts of Africa and the Middle East.
“As experts warn the fungus known as “fusarium wilt”, or Panama disease, could spread to Latin America, from where the majority of bananas are exported, scientists are scrambling to create a more robust variety that could help sustain the crop.”
http://www.theweek.co.uk/94370/panama-disease-why-bananas-are-at-risk-of-extinction
I noticed that global wine production has slumped as well:
“Global wine output has dropped to its lowest level since 1957, according to latest figures released by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV).
“Poor weather conditions in the European Union have led to the sudden drop, which saw wine output in 2017 totalling 250 million hectolitres, 8.6 per cent less than 2016, Reuters reports.
“Last year’s weather is thought to have affected all leading wine producers in the EU, prompting OIV projections which reveal a 17 per cent fall in Italian wine production…”
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/wine-global-output-falls-60-year-low-europe-bad-weather-oiv-figures-eu-a8319971.html
In the US, there have been articles about the inadequate incomes that farmers are making. I wonder if this issue is beginning to affect production of some types as food as well. We saw the story about the Indian farmers being urged to pray, instead of using fossil fuel based fertilizer. We have also heard about the high suicide rates among both US and Indian farmers. Many farmers in the US have been working part time at other jobs. Some may have simply decided to drop the farming completely.
I agree that industrial farming, based on the industrial finance system and the industrial agricultural supply stream and the industrial food distribution scheme, is not exactly a lucrative situation.
But I obviously see a niche for organic subsistence farming. First off, the food you grow is not taxed, nor paid for with taxed dollars. Second, there are so many people with their finger in the food industry pie that it is actually possible for small growers to compete on many things; we actually sell most of our products for less than similar products in the grocery store. Third, small farms can be a small target and use the informal economy, and avoid a lot of bureaucratic overhead.
Of course we cannot compete with bottom-end commodity products: garbage eggs from battery-caged hens are $2.99 here! But organic eggs that are $6.99 in the grocery store, we sell for $6. Likewise, crappy jam that is probably 60% cane sugar sells for $3.49 in the store, while our fruit preserves, with 75% local fruit, is $6 — but similar low-sugar, organic fruit preserves are $7.99 in the grocer!
This model does not work well in “bubbaville,” where everyone does their shopping at Mall*Wart. But given a moderately-sophisticated audience, the “artisanal food supplier” can do quite well.
It helps to have all the things that you need to make the system work: a way to transport the eggs to market, vehicles of the wealthy customers so that they can ride to the store, egg cartons, jars to put the fruit preserves into. If we start losing major pieces of the system, it makes it more difficult to maintain this kind of operation.
Some people have this vision of post BAU being one of bucolic Sunday markets .. where wonderful organic produce is sold alongside fair trade organic coffee… a world with no greed… no plastic bags or straws… where everyone is healthy and happy and wonderful…
The supreme delusion
Now before the DPs start accusing Fast Eddy of being so negative… I am not saying there won’t be markets… with food for sale….
https://i.pinimg.com/600×315/3a/49/36/3a4936a88f4e703b513d88075c061958.jpg
https://78.media.tumblr.com/1ecf2963dbcfa9891c49d5c9bba301ac/tumblr_o23v0aqfRd1ul8h60o1_500.jpg
Yes of course… while BAU is functional….
But when the power goes out permanently… assuming you have gravity fed irrigation etc… and can still grow a crop…
You become:
http://www.gunholstersunlimited.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Rifle-Scope-Pic-1.jpg
I know that Richard Ha in Hawaii has been very concerned about this issue. (He was a regular as ASPO-USA meetings, so some readers have have met him.) He was at one time a big banana grower on the Big Island, but I believe that he has sold out to a marijuana growing company.
How do you mix the formal and informal economies together to avoid complexity on one hand and to provide taxes on the other?
“… to avoid complexity…”
the world self organizes as long as there are enough energy inputs…
when there are no longer sufficient energy resources, then complexity will be declining, since the formal economy will be declining…
unfortunately, taxes will be going away also…
if you desire less complexity, just be patient for a few more years…
I get slapped down so regularly saying this that I have to conclude I am mistaken. But I’ll give it the millionth try: There is gross energy–oil and coal and gas. And there is subtle energy–walking with a monstrous load on your head and another in one hand. Then holding on with the other hand to the tail of the donkey you’re following. This use of physics to reduce inertia–subtle, or “stand-in” energy–would otherwise amount to a waste of energy and a reduction in “energy input” to an energy system.
There are a loooot of bubbles of delusion in the world. And they’re all going to go POP simultaneously!
What that delusion turns into is nightmarish to think about.
We “normals” are the freaks?
A sweet granny in my neighborhood is baby sitting her grand child. The girls is now blowing soap bubbles and laughing. If she tripps and falls and starts crying, she’s picked up, cuddled and loved.
She’s being spoiled rotten into another koombaya freak.
War, murder, brutality, enjoying other people suffering is the normal. Fools and losers will die.
I haven’t got a freaking chance in heII. I’ll be so humiliated when this dream world falls apart.
I wouldn’t dwell on what comes after too much. We haven’t reached the finish line quite yet. I’ve decided to only start running around like a headless chicken when there’s no food in the supermarket. Or the power goes off. Only then do I unsheath the machete.
At the point no food in the supermarkets anywhere one can surely expect that various spec ops splinter regiments are into self employment plans and execution already. It will be hard with machete to oppose a warlord with his own depot of fuel, guns/ammo, vehicles, and core of trusted armies. But you are likely correct that for the immediate meanwhile in the local, machete might be certainly better than veggie cleaning knife..
I see the noble machete as a symbol of individual power in a world without rules. I don’t actually own one or think it would improve chances of survival for very long in a post BAU situation.
Even bullets and fuel run out eventually though.
We really don’t know precisely how our situation will work out. Worrying about it is not in your best interests.
But based on the data would you say our outlook is extremely bleak or extremely positive or somewhere in between?
Maybe we could have a scale of 1-5 with 5 being extremely positive and have a little poll?
It could be ongoing like a Defcom alert system.
And lets be generous… how about the outlook for the next 20 years.
I’m guessing FE would be a 1.
I’m about a 2.
Anyone else?
Let’s put it this way, I am comforted by the fact that the Higher Power behind our whole system seems to be amazingly more competent than earthly purveyors of complexity. We can see that things seems to be in danger of falling apart in this world. But we don’t know what, if any, different plan is in store for us other than trajectories based on prior collapses.
Many of us have already spent more time on earth than the average person living in earlier civilizations. Perhaps our big problem is overly high expectations. Now we don’t need to worry about a bear or a lion coming after us; instead we worry about all kinds of other “what ifs.” The most likely cause of death after collapse seems to be death by illness. This would likely happen quickly if clean drinking water is no longer available.
As a child I was cut on the face a number of times playing hockey and other sports. My mother wanted me to be stitched. My father refused stating ‘it will toughen him up’
It was one of the few things he got right.
Although he did ruin my chances of being a Hollywood heart throb….
Scarface?
Who here remembers the hydrogen economy hopium at the turn of the century?
MMMMMmmmmm….The egg on some people’s faces I’m sure. But they’ll have picked themselves up and starting gushing about solar Jesus by now to be sure.
Several of the big global conglomerates still support some token research and PR into this hydrogen myth, so to that extant it’s still alive corpse.
Not sure what you mean exactly by “solar Jesus” though, if you meant PV, well it’s great selfish way of producing decentralized energy with sort of guaranteed outlook of longevity, piggybacking on fraudulent tax schemes and other subsidies which were pumped into it in recent decades. That little factoid it doesn’t work with the legacy base grid system, or actually works against it in term of additional costs and systemic reliability impairment is another question.
I only look at the big picture now.
98% of global energy does not come from wind and solar.
And yet… it gets all the press.
I’m not sure advocates will get their doubling from 2% to 4%, then 8% and so on at the pace they expected now that subsidies are removed. The more renewables are added the more problems they encounter to the extent that offshore wind farms seem like a good idea, or giant kites, or manufacturing billions of batteries for temporary smoothing etc etc etc
What amazes me is how greens reject windmills and solar farms in their backyard as much as they rejected coal and nuclear plants! You just can’t win with some people. You can’t power industrial civ with kites… but I could be wrong.
Kites at least at one time were the hope of Ugo Bardi. This is a post from 2016 on the subject. http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2016/10/an-awesome-energy-source-where-do-we.html
It’s worth doing a poll of ordinary people you come across and ask them how much of our energy is provided by renewables. This was organised by a pollster in Australia recently and the results showed that the population generally believes in wild overestimates, such that 40 percent of energy now comes from renewable sources. Not only that but because they see solar panels, the common belief is that solar panels are doing most of the heavy lifting. A very common perception is that in the heroic battle between solar and coal, coal is now on the ropes and a renewables victory is at hand.
This inflated belief is reinforced by three main forms of dubious persuasion:
1. The handful of countries that produce nearly all of their electricity is often cited to demonstrate what all countries can easily do – not mentioning that the base load renewable source, hydroelectricity, is what enables those few lucky places to do so well.
2. Confusion between energy and electricity, whereby it is so often glibly stated that, say Costa Rica or Norway, get all of their energy from renewables, not mentioning their transport and industrial fuel consumption loads or dependency on imported goods.
3. A host of flakey technologies that look wonderful as Facebook posts, but which would clearly supply no net energy return. Yet they make the renewables transition look as easy as pie. One currently doing the rounds on social media are little toy wind turbines installed at bus transit stations taking advantage of the wind created by passing diesel buses! Diesel powered wind energy that only works when a bus passes by. Lots of ‘ooh ah’ likes. “The future has arrived.”
All of this crazy delusion is created with very good intent, often by well educated people and in their genuine belief that this mega battle can be won against all odds. Certainly when it comes to public relations they are presently on a winner, if the pollsters are correct. The majority of people are ardent believers in miracles.
Often I marvel at this grand delusion but can’t get angry because we are just looking at ingrained human foibles that are part and parcel of the human predicament.
It is good that the masses swallow the kool-aid…. they need to believe there is life after FF.
Good point!
“All of this crazy delusion is created with very good intent, often by well educated people”
Correction…”All of this crazy delusion is created with very good intent, often by people who mistakenly think they are well educated”
Fixed it for you.
+++++++
Thanks for laying it out like that. Everyone should have a copy.
The madness of crowds is at work and spreads like wildfire on the interwebs.
People don’t want the truth. Fantasy fiction reigns supreme.
I used to be a dreamer. Now I’m a staunch pragmatist. Facts are facts.
Absolutely NEVER attempt to argue with someone who has drunk the kool aid (unless on FW where you have the firepower support to bomb them back to the stone age)
Yep, it’s interesting indeed. Most of the domestic scale installations of batt backup “renewables” is procured/owned by “right wingers” .. not only because it’s expensive, roughly even mid-smaller sized system ~ $15k good for <15yrs.. Most of the *greenies are city folk with little understanding (blindspot) into the complex web of supporting sub systems which goes into enabling large metropolis swing: water, electricity, heat, sewage, cargo of food/goods, .. , they horizon is shifted/lowered by ad hoc services and renting not taking care of infrastructure..
*the small outlier group doing the actual hands on agriculture and living on the land are often much less dogmatic bunch
/// the renewables got the press coverage because it's the part of the gargantuan subsidy/promotion program of the grid tied wind and solar scam, which aims at extending BAU, calming the sheep, enriching insiders, ..
Renewables are now a hoped-for growth industry. They represent an opportunity for young people to study in college and graduate school. The belief is that these young people will get good jobs in this new growth industry. It all looks great, until a person sits down and figures out that it can’t work.
” it’s great selfish way of producing decentralized energy with sort of guaranteed outlook of longevity, piggybacking on fraudulent tax schemes and other subsidies which were pumped into it in recent decades.”
And it nearly all goes to people whose income is above the median. The tax subsidies tend to go to big corporations. The fossil fuel backup gets treated unfairly, leading to a likely early demise. If there are direct tax subsidies, or higher costs because costs actually get back to those buying electricity (a happens in Europe), it is the “little guy” who comes out very badly. Intermittent renewables seem to be a way of adding to income/wealth disparity.
“Donald Trump considered invading Venezuela, a senior US administration official has said. In a meeting last August to discuss sanctions on Venezuela in the Oval Office, Mr Trump asked why he could not just invade the country.
“Months later, Mr Trump was briefed not to mention the topic at a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies, but the first thing the president said was “my staff told me not to say this” – stunning his advisers at the time.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-venezuela-invasion-crisis-rex-tillerson-advisers-meeting-a8430571.html
“The government in Iran has gagged bitcoin exchanges across the country, claim bitcoin users and alternate coin community of the Islamic state. The government has been censoring its citizens from engaging in crypto-economy, to apparently counter the fresh round of economic sanctions that the US government is looking to impose later in August this year.”
https://zycrypto.com/iranian-government-gags-crypto-exchanges-to-fight-127-inflation-and-new-us-sanctions/
He was probably thinking… Well that’s what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not Venezuela? Hey… add Cuba to the list while we’re at it. I mean the Russians can only push back so much.
Mexico would be nice too but we have to wait a few years for the new leadership to work its magic there. Then it should be easy pickings. They’ll be begging for us to come and save them once their oil industry grinds to a halt too.
If wars can be used to borrow money and hire otherwise unemployed workers, they can be used to raise the price of commodities, including oil. They can also help bring down a too-high unemployment rate. I don’t think it can be used to fix a wage disparity problem, unless it really results in a huge supply of cheap-to-produce oil. But perhaps he is thinking that Venezuela has oil that might be attractive, if our technology could be used to extract it. The other countries would appear to be way down the list.
So War it is then!
I thought the Chinese were trying to get their hands on the Venezuelan oil?
Does anyone remember the Art Linkletter TV show from many years ago? He would interview children who were about 5 years of age, as part of a longer show. The first thing he would ask the kids was, “What did your Mommy tell you not to say?” Donald Trump would have been an ideal guest for the show.
Oh the secrets that would be revealed!
Apparently the administration is threatening to release material on 9/11 that would incriminate members of past administrations. That should spice things up a bit.
I think all politicians should have to pass tests to assure that they are not psychopaths or pathological liars. But on second thoughts maybe it takes a certain personality type to run things.
I wonder what the impact would be of a release into the MSM of absolute proof that the US government was behind the Kennedy assassination and 911.
Would Americans go on the rampage against the govt? Necessitating troops on the streets…
Or would they just take to web forums expressing their disgust… and get on with life… and wait for the el ders to put forward a POTUS who would win on ‘repairing democracy’ … with a few scapegoats being imprisoned….
Keeping in mind that most Americans now know that WMD in Iraq was a ho ax…. and they have done nothing.
I remember watching the million man marches in almost every city around the world to protest the invasion of Iraq.
Yeah. Exactly.
“World trade has decelerated sharply. This ill omen portends severe risks in the months to come. The greatest risks are in the eurozone – where Italy is the fault line along which the most acute vulnerabilities lie… Already, Italian GDP growth is slowing and forecasts for the 2018 have are down to just above a 1 percent annual growth rate. Even these forecasts may prove too optimistic.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/italy-new-recession-eurozone-china-ashoka-mody-european-central-bank-a8430486.html
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the specter of the global financial crisis as she warned of potential fallout from a trade war with the U.S., saying tariffs on European cars would be “much more serious” than levies on steel and aluminum.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-04/merkel-raises-specter-of-financial-crisis-in-trade-war-warning
“The UK had the weakest wage growth of any G7 country over the past decade, according to the OECD… Across all 34 OECD countries, only Greece and Mexico have performed worse in terms of wages.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c4437c9e-7ec4-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d
Ouch! All three of the countries have experienced fairly large decreases in oil consumption, both on a per-capita basis and on an absolute basis.
“Tit-for-tat sanctions between the major economic powers put the global trading system at “potentially large risk”, the WTO said in its most damning assessment yet of the tariff war sparked by Donald Trump’s levies on imports of steel and aluminium.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/us-trade-war-china-eu-tariffs-economy-wto-trump-global-latest-a8431691.html
“The US is now behaving in ways that could all too easily lead to a breakdown of the whole trading system and a drastic, disruptive reduction in world trade. Yet, Trump appears to believe that the whole world will bow down to US economic power and his deal-making prowess.”
https://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/world-is-headed-into-a-major-trade-war-1.2246696
“Even before a round of U.S. tariffs levied on China comes into force Friday, there are signs that global trade is already cooling. Business surveys published this week show that global export growth, strong in 2017, has slowed to a relative crawl—helping to drive sharp stock-market falls in big exporting nations like South Korea and Japan.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trade-slowdown-investors-fear-has-already-arrived-1530709203
Not too different from the 1930s.
“Tight liquidity and collapsing risk appetite spell trouble ahead:
“Financial crises start under blue skies, as investors in emerging markets know too well. They lead rather than follow business recessions. Ultimately, they are caused by a sharp tightening of liquidity conditions and collapsing investors’ risk appetite.
“Arguably, the most important price to watch in financial markets for an early-warning sign is the price of the dominant economy’s debt. This is best measured from the US interest rate term structure, which is popularly summarised by the slope of the yield curve between the yields on 10-year US Treasuries and the Federal Reserve’s short-term policy rates…
“…it is popularly argued that, by reducing the effective supply of “safe” assets, the QE policies of central banks have distorted the term structure by narrowing term premia.
“However, this leaves aside the more important fact that to purchase these bonds, central banks must simultaneously inject liquidity into financial markets. This, by definition, reduces systemic risks, loosens leverage constraints and, by encouraging more risk-seeking activity, reduces the need for “safe” assets.
“The bottom line is that far from lowering yields and term premia, these QE policies actually raise them. In other words, the stark collapse back from their decade highs in worldwide bond term premia at these longer-dated maturities is not a distortion caused by overly-generous QE, but may instead reflect an unambiguous and growing demand for safety by the key investors.
“Thus, the 10-year/5-year yield spread, in particular, has been fast-narrowing in the US, UK and Europe. It is this second, “flatter” and longer-dated yield curve that we should take very seriously as a warning sign of falling liquidity, heightened systemic risk and the threat of an upcoming financial crisis. And, it is now flashing red for both emerging and developed market investors.”
https://www.ft.com/content/2bac98e0-7ee1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d
Well, that said it all.. lolz..
you can’t even copy and past the correct ID/alias: Worldofhanumanotg, which stands for lost former account here of World of Hanuman (OtG)..
Now tell us something more about how you feel, besides sloppy research capabilities.
How about worldofhurt….. worldofdelusion
Every heard of google? or elgoog? Try it….. but it cannot cure stu pi di..ty…. try eating some cesium… it will help
The dilemma for the industry is that the U.S. government has not solved the problem of what to do with the spent fuel and the highly radioactive nuclear waste that these stations have generated over the last 40 years. They have collected a levy—kept in a separate fund that now amounts to $31 billion—to pay for solving the problem, but still have not come up with a plan.
https://www.ecowatch.com/storage-of-radioactive-spent-fuel-rods-still-haunts-nuclear-industry-1881933245.html
U.S. nuclear fuel rods to sit in pools — like those that failed in Japan — until 2050
Spent nuclear-fuel rods will continue to stack up outside American reactors in wet pools similar to two that failed in Japan’s nuclear disaster, while the government and industry pursue recycling technologies expected to become viable by 2050.
This was the testimony of Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Peter Lyons, the acting assistant energy secretary, in a Senate Energy Committee hearing this morning.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/03/30/u-s-nuclear-fuel-rods-to-sit-in-pools-like-those-that-failed-in-japan-until-2050/#4248fb314054
Lawl…isn’t ecowatch supposed to be delusistan or something? I don’t know what is so dangerous about wet pools. The SPFs at Fukushima didn’t fail, as the NRC’s own report (posted before) concluded.
No they did not fail… one of them cracked… it did not collapse…. the power remained on so they did not boil off…. if they had collapsed most of Japan would have had to be evacuated….
One pond…
and, there are health problems looming for northern Japan from the exposure that the kids received. maybe BAU breakdown will cover these problems for Japan.
The problem is the current practice of very tightly packed pools in or around reactors reaching a point where they cannot be managed properly or abandoned.
Obviously we haven’t reached that point yet. It’s all speculation but the literature does explain how disasterous this would be were it to happen.
4000 pools in northern hemisphere near urban centres eastern US, EU, Japan is problematic.
Perhaps we will have Google Nuclear Fuel Storage Inc. one day. Surely those “super smart” guys can do anything..I mean, they can plot a map.
Two of their top guys tried to figure out if renewables would save us from gerbil worming and gave up saying Nah. No way. Not in a million years. The numbers don’t add up.
Oh well. At least I get suggestions when I search for something online.
Every heard of google? or elgoog? Try it….. but it cannot cure stu pi dity…. try eating some cesium… it will help
The dilemma for the industry is that the U.S. government has not solved the problem of what to do with the spent fuel and the highly radioactive nuclear waste that these stations have generated over the last 40 years. They have collected a levy—kept in a separate fund that now amounts to $31 billion—to pay for solving the problem, but still have not come up with a plan.
https://www.ecowatch.com/storage-of-radioactive-spent-fuel-rods-still-haunts-nuclear-industry-1881933245.html
U.S. nuclear fuel rods to sit in pools — like those that failed in Japan — until 2050
Spent nuclear-fuel rods will continue to stack up outside American reactors in wet pools similar to two that failed in Japan’s nuclear disaster, while the government and industry pursue recycling technologies expected to become viable by 2050.
This was the testimony of Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Peter Lyons, the acting assistant energy secretary, in a Senate Energy Committee hearing this morning.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/03/30/u-s-nuclear-fuel-rods-to-sit-in-pools-like-those-that-failed-in-japan-until-2050/#4248fb314054
Hm, again I addressed this 100x times already, simply offer consultation to the US how to license the existing technology from Russia, burning the reprocessed spent fuel again as with different mix of oxides and dedicated specific NPP.
I’m not saying the potential danger is trivial matter, given the overall decay of our capabilities, it’s quite likely some pond issue might come relatively soon ahead in notoriety, and only after that resources-attention will be allocated properly. As I wrote on the previous page, people in power will wake up to this issue either 5mins early or post the traumatic event, then it will dealt with. But this idea of instantaneous global meltdown is B grade 50s scifi material..
Oh yes… we can just burn the spent fuel…. and generate even MORE power!!!!…. because someone wet their finger stuck it in the air and came up with that …
Kinda like solar power is going to replace fossil fuels…. and fusion is going to happen in __ years.
Talk is cheap … particularly these days…. can you point me to where this is actually being done… and by done I do not mean a theory … I mean where spent fuel is being removed from reactors and recycled creating more energy.
Don’t pass along MSM clap trap.
Sorry, I linked it for you on request several years ago already. It’s your problem now you can’t google mox fuel and stuff in few seconds, I’m not going to babysit you on your irrational out bursts. It’s existing technology on industrial scale, if it makes financial and security sense for them (ROSATOM & gov) in terms of lowering their existing stock of spent fuel (both mil and civ reactors) + providing this option for new international NPP contracts of supplying fresh fuel and taking out spent fuel, in the end offset it somehow by additional domestic grid power generation, it has clearly its place in the overall equation.
Red Alert Red Alert …. DelusiSTANI on the loose….
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/gettyimages-598010978.jpg
Red Alert Red Alert …. Delu.siS.TANI on the loose….
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/gettyimages-598010978.jpg
I wonder… if you did not have children/grandchildren…. would that cure you of this s.tuuuupidity?
The thing is…
The spent fuel ponds are not relevant…. billions will die from starvation, disease, violence…. so they will be dead regardless of the ponds…
In fact if they survive the above …. life will be so horrific …. they will welcome the spent fuel pond radiation when it arrives…. it will put them out of their misery
Sorry, not being personal, just observational, but it seems to me you have got some sort of path dependency of betting the proverbial farm on just imminent doom event of global synchronized nature, and quite wrongly for several past innings of the situation, don’t you think? I don’t find any joy in it, but simply the (quasi)BAU is limping along, and will continue to do that for the near/mid term. Albeit some peripheries are falling by the wayside already, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Libya, .. and few more in the brewing..
World. I thought we dismissed the possibility of BAU Lite a long time ago. You have always stuck by your assertion that decades and decades of BAU Lite are indeed feasible but it sounds to me like you’re just throwing numbers out there because it feels comfortable.
The fuel ponds are indeed irrelevant in this discussion because catastrophic failure of global supply chain would suffice to wipe out most of current population.
And if it goes… it goes. There is no sustaining things for any length of time.
It would take a miracle. And I would rejoice along with everyone else if that happened. But what could it possibly be?
Deploying a few experimental breeder reactors as of 2018 is like putting plasters on the Titanic as she sinks.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx
Several countries have research and development programs for improved fast neutron reactors, and the IAEA’s INPRO program involving 22 countries (see later section) has fast neutron reactors as a major emphasis, in connection with closed fuel cycle. For instance one scenario in France is for half of the present nuclear capacity to be replaced by fast neutron reactors by 2050 (the first half being replaced by 3rd-generation EPR units).
There is renewed interest in fast reactors due to their ability to fission actinides, including those which may be recovered from ordinary reactor used fuel. The fast neutron environment minimises neutron capture reactions and maximises fissions in actinides. This means less long-lived nuclides in high-level wastes (the fission products being preferable due to shorter lives). Also the fast neutron environment is required for fissioning even-numbered isotopes of uranium, not only U-238 but also others which may be significant in recycled uranium.
Today’s PRISM is a GE Hitachi design for compact modular pool-type reactors with passive cooling for decay heat removal. The design is based on the EBR-II and the original IFR. After 30 years of development it represents GEH’s Generation IV solution to closing the fuel cycle in the USA.
In October 2015 Westinghouse announced that it had submitted a lead-cooled fast reactor project proposal for the DOE’s upcoming investment in advanced reactor concepts demonstrable in the 2035 timeframe.
The fast reactor and reprocessing aspects of this program continued in the USA under AFCI, but funds were progressively withdrawn under the Obama administration.
Swap in the word fusion….
So you don’t think we’re going to have a small modular reactor in every backyard by 2025 then? (sarc)
Jeez. There’s pesimism and then there’s downright gloomy.
This is a difficult topic. How about being a little more tolerant?
NRCs report on the risks of SFPs catching fire.:
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1327/ML13273A601.pdf
Zirconium video from 1 sec youtube search:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIBbrk56KwQ
If you conclude from the last video that zirconium cladding will explode in air or water, you will have proven my point.
We fuss a lot over this when really famine and disease would be the immediate outcome of collapse.
The only people who need to be concerned about the ponds… would be the few remaining hunter gatherer tribes in remote locations…
The rest of us will be dead before the poison really takes hold
once again, you miss the point that if you get the Zr cladding hot enough, it will burn in air.
that’s what happened at Fukushima.
agree that the fuel ponds will not be a worry for most folks post BAU collapse.
“once again, you miss the point that if you get the Zr cladding hot enough, it will burn in air.”
Sure, but temperatures of >4000 C are unlikely to occur within SPF structures. And it didn’t happen at Fukushima.
When the water boils off because there is no electricity to run the cooling system…. then it all catches fire…
Are you really this f789ing stoooooopid?
*sigh* to reiterate for the 100th time, only the cladding can melt and burn, but there is nothing else that can catch fire. If radiological release happens it will be in the form of radiated substances, not nuclear explosions. And only recently discharged spent fuel is susceptible to such a release.
Besides that, only a breach in the concrete-steel structures can let those substances out, and there is nothing in an SPF itself that can cause such a breach. There were no spent fuel fires or leaks at Fukushima.
But even assuming that leakage somehow occurs:
“If a leak and radiological release were to occur, this study shows that the individual cancer fatality risk for a member of the public is several orders of magnitude lower than the Commission’s Quantitative Health Objective of two in one million (2×10-6/year). For such a radiological release, this study shows public and environmental effects are generally the same or smaller than earlier studies.”
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1325/ML13256A342.pdf
As you demonstrate time and again, willful fracking stewpit is as willful fracking stewpit does.
Would it help with comprehension if I were to reverse the spelling in each of the words in that last post?
I ma ereh ot pleh
http://bin.ddai.us/dys/lib/textjumble.png
Alice Friedemann – On Fake Peak Oil Demand
The idea that electric cars are lowering demand is ridiculous. Electric cars haven’t made a dent, just a small scratch in oil demand. Electric cars are only 0.2% of light-duty vehicles, and cost so much only the upper 5% can afford them, even with subsidies.
I suspect the peak oil demand idea is one more attempt by the wealthy and powerful to hide peak oil, because peak oil studies have shown that if peak oil were acknowledged, stock markets all over the world would crash since the economy would be shrinking from then on and debts couldn’t be repaid. Credit would freeze and dry up. Panic and social disorder would follow.
https://un-denial.com/2018/07/04/by-alice-friedemann-on-fake-peak-oil-demand/
Peak demand comes from not enough wages getting back to the non-elite.
Would you say the non-elite is everyone not in the 1% or the 0.1%?
I mean where exactly does one draw the line when demarking elite or non elite workers?
I consider anyone with a roof over their head and able to pay the bills with not too much debt as well off when compared to the rest of the world.
Usually, when I am talking about the non-elite, I am talking about people with limited education and training. They have attended the free public schools that are available, but they have not had much specialized training beyond this. In the United States, they may be high school graduates, when the economy has evolved in the direction of requiring a college degree for almost every job that pays reasonably well.
I would expect that using my narrower definition of non-elite, most readers of this blog would be considered “elite” in some sense.
Non-elite definitions can vary, depending on context. There are quite a few recent college graduates and people who received even more advanced training who cannot find jobs that make use of their advanced education. (Or if they do, they find low-paying “contract” jobs.) These, too, are in some sense part of the non-elite. Young people seem to be over-represented in the non-elite.
Jack and Diane….
If leaders understand peak oil and its implications, how is it possible that not one leader anywhere advocates population reduction, degrowth, or Colin Campbell’s depletion protocol. These policies would help with all of our overshoot issues and thus could be sold without even mentioning peak oil.
Alice is in wonderland
Best not to overtly mention either peak oil or climate change. Has no impact.
https://youtu.be/dLcoOIDJBsc
I am setting up a black op consulting site….check it out:
http://www.fentanylsolutions.com
http://www.stopgivingNarcan.com
WTI oil is now $73.83…
omg, the price is totally out of control…
$73.84…
$73.83…
I don’t get it…
$73.87…
insanity…
http://www.wakingtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/fukushima-ge-screenshot.jpg
Once again … contained… and no spent fuel ponds involved:
https://origins.osu.edu/sites/origins.osu.edu/files/Chernobyl%20image2.jpeg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/93/9a/bc/939abcdef43d5e38861a1cf73b383cc5.jpg
we’re doomed!
by the way, it’s not 56 million spent fuel ponds…
how many is it?
4000
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
ha!
only 4000?
bring it on!
Spent fuel rods are housed in steel-concrete structures that can only be breached by earthquakes or big explosions. Most/many spent fuel ponds are not located in earthquake zones, and the spent fuel rods themselves cannot explode. Zircalloy casing doesn’t catch fire when exposed to air. Even in the case of significant radiation leak, noticeable effects likely won’t exceed a radius of a few 100 miles.
But as usual nihilistic zeal masquerading as ‘zomg logix’ is incomparably superior to the real thing!
No they are not bombs … they don’t explode…. but when the cooling water boils off they burn … out of control … and release massive amounts of radioactivity.
We have never had a spent fuel pond accident.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima involved reactor cores.
And since you are a f789ing dysle xic re tard…. I will post this … yet again
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse.
They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
If you had any actual knowledge of this subject you would know that spent fuel rods are moved to dry storage after a few years, which rules out most extant rods from “burning” due to lack of water.
But granting that some of them will release radioactive materials, how will those materials escape steel-concrete structures short of breach? Even assuming the structures are breached, and absolutely no safety measures are undertaken, the radioactive particles won’t just evenly spread across the entire world by magic.
PS – science journalists are not scientists, and most don’t even hold a degree in any STEM field, let alone the ones they talk about.
Good enough?
Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress
Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress is Scientist-in-Residence at CNS and holds an MSc and PhD in high energy physics from Carleton University, Canada, specializing in ultra-low radioactivity background detectors and has professional experience in the field of astroparticle physics, primarily neutrino physics.
He has been involved in several major discoveries in the field of neutrino physics and has worked on several international collaborations in Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United States (see below) including the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), Double Chooz and Borexino experiments.
He was a member of the SNO Collaboration that won the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics.
He is also a laureate along with his team of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Physics.
https://www.nonproliferation.org/experts/ferenc-dalnoki-veress/
Let’s see what he has to say:
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies. One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima.
If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
He’s talking about “spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor” which as I said rules out most extant spent fuel rods. And again, even if they do happen catch fire (which didn’t happen at Fukushima), how will the resultant radioactive steam/smoke escape steel-concrete structures without a breach? By what mechanism will those radioactive materials multiply and spread until they evenly engulf the entire planet? How will relatively minor radioactivity beyond a few hundred miles kill/mutate anyone?
Feel free to continue posting more stu pi ty.
You can always call him and explain your theory … the MORE on theory of spent fuel ponds…
I am sure he will invite you to partner with him so he can win a second Nobel Prize….
https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/people/ferenc-dalnoki-veress
Office
499 Van Buren Street, Rm. 210
Tel
(831) 647-4638
Email
jdalnokiveress@miis.edu
You know what really irritates me?
When I shove facts and logic down someone’s throat… and they don’t choke on them…
Instead they spit them out… and continue to spew vomit.
Are you sure you won’t have a sandwich?
“Zircalloy casing doesn’t catch fire when exposed to air.”
That statement is not true. If exposed to air, the casing will overheat and will burn, and will release whatever is inside to the environment. The reaction is: Zr + O2 => ZrO + 1/2O2. See: Fukushima.
We tried to explain it to FE/TM several times already, apparently to no avail.
Spent fuel ponds installations have several modes of safety fallback options incl. diesel generators on site (+ obviously nation/mil strategic “unlimited” fuel storage and personnel priority), and or cooling heat loop supplied by river/lake, also usually the site can be desynchronized/switched to different nearby section of the grid (incl. dedicated major power plant source coal/natgas), hence keeping it out of general blackout, etc.
In term of Chernobyl, industrial accidents happen, this particular one was exclusively caused (~by 100%) by single psychopathic person serving on the commanding bridge at the time, who breached several safety protocols, squashed number of automatic safeties and so on..
Lastly not least, spent fuel (cooled off/long term depository) is becoming interesting commodity, since it can be after reprocessing used with other oxide to burn again in newer type of reactors/NPPs.
In p,,,ours the r—e ta….r— d e,,,d b,,,,rig—ade… comp,,,osed of in,,,,divi-duals with I…Q,,,s bar-ely above room tem,,,p.erat–ure
You do know that di–esel won’t be a,,vailable when B,AU colla,,,,,pses… surely you know.
Someone also sugges,ted running a, ga,,rden h,os-e into these p,,onds…. and as I have po,,ted… these are high te,,ch faciliti-es with co–mp,,,ute.rized sy,stems kee,ping the wate,r at a spec,,,ific tem–pera,,ture…
You cann,,ot just p,ump w,ater from a rive,,r into one of them…. oh ,,,rig-ht — how wo,uld you power the pu-m,,,ps even if this was f-eas,,,,ible.
In the fie,,,ld of psyc—hol,,,ogy, the D,,,,u..nn—ing–K..ru,,,,ger effect is a cog,,,,nitive bia,s in which people of l,,,ow ab,,,ility have i—llus.ory sup.eri,,,ority and mis,,,ta.ke–nly ass,,,,ess their co—gnitive ability as grea,ter than it is.
Or … in l.ay.ma—n’s terms….. you are s—-eri..o,,,,,usly f7…8,,,,,,9—ing s,,,,t,,,,,u—–u…..uupi,,,,d…. but you thin,k you are br——i,,,li…an,,,t.
NPPs incl. on site spent fuel ponds have ring of dedicated safeties, I just listed some of them. And you still circle back to the argument of instantaneous universal BAU ending out of the realm of scifi . Which is indeed a possibility with some low probability, while even higher probability is to for any entity of national or local power to allocate resource to primary danger like these ponds. Simply, it’s about prioritization in crisis mode, it would be easy to let starve out entire cities just to reroute resourced to cool down the pond facilities. That’s what cleptocratic politician, revolutionary or wild militant, everybody understands alike, .. unlike you..
R e tard alert
you’re missing the point about the temperature of the fuel rods. when they are so hot (radioactive) that they need water to cool them and shield the radiation by adsorption, they will overheat and catch fire (burn in air) if exposed. when the radioactive components decay, they cool to the extent that they can be dry casked. FE is talking about the hot ones, still in the pools until they decay to a cooler temperature. Capice?
Facts will be ignored.
doomphd, not sure whom you are responding, obviously the very fresh spent fuel rods in ponds (we are discussing here) at the reactor site are *already concern of several rings of passive and active safety measures, include ext. cooling loop, also possibility of rerouting HV line (cooling) to regional island grid (coal, natgas) in terms of wider blackout scenario etc.
*not claiming it’s bulletproof and on the same high level of standard everywhere, one can argue SAmerican and even couple of European/US sites would score quite badly in that domain
When BAU goes down … the power goes off… forever ….
That is absolutely guaranteed.
Worldofhanuman seems to think you can keep extremely complex management security and safety of NPPs running smoothly when everything else is falling apart.
When supply chains fail across the board they can’t easily be substituted for and general grid lock and collapse sets in. There is no other way around this. You simply would not be able to keep complex systems within the overall system running for any length of time.
The weakest link in all of this are the human workers themselves. They simply will not continue to turn up to work when things start to fall apart. It may seem gradual at the moment because all the major arteries and vital organs of the superorganism are still intact being held together by magic the past ten years.
The minute that a major organ fails that’s it. There is no patching it.
Not quite your backyard swimming pool…..
Most spent fuel pools are actively cooled with a system of heat exchangers and pumps. The water lines into the pools tend to enter the pools near the top to avoid the potential to inadvertently drain the pool (Nuclear Energy Agency, 2015).
These systems are usually attached to backup diesel generators in the case of offsite power loss. Moreover, additional pumps and heat exchangers may be located on site in the case of emergency.
Spent fuel pools usually have instruments that measure water level and temperature and feed this information to the control room operators. Usually, the maximum allowable temperature in spent fuel pools during operation (and especially refueling outages) is 60 °C (Nuclear Energy Agency, 2015).
As a result of the Fukushima accident, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) now requires all spent fuel pools in the US to have independent water level controls that can provide water level measurements under station blackout conditions.
https://nautilus.org/uncategorized/risks-of-densely-packed-spent-fuel-pools/
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – The New Zealand Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom could be extradited to the United States to face racketeering and criminal copyright charges.
Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken told Reuters via email that his client would appeal the decision in the country’s highest judiciary body, the Supreme Court.
German-born Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, became well known for his lavish lifestyle as much as his computer skills.
He used to post photographs of himself with cars and vanity licence plates such as “GOD” and “GUILTY”, shooting an assault rifle and flying around the world in his private jet.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-internet-dotcom/megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom-can-be-extradited-to-u-s-new-zealand-court-idUSKBN1JU2WY
Looks like Lizzie’s gamble may pay off for her…. I bet she’s hoping he loses in the supreme court and gets a very very long period behind bars in the US…..
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/02/kim-dotcom-s-new-wife-says-she-s-not-a-gold-digger.html
it would be so sad if he had to spend all of his money on lawyers…
Lizzie is probably urging him to give up … surrender to the US … in the hope of getting a shorter time in prison…. and promising to be meet him at the airport in sexy underwear when he gets out…
But secretly hoping he gets 20+ years….
I wonder what happens to all the loot if he does get convicted…. that would suck for Lizzie if it was seized….
Remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay
The way he dealt with a similar situation is he killed himself …. while he was appealing his case… so technically he was not guilty …. so his wife got to keep the loot….
Of course we are told he just up and died while on appeal … but I am not believing that.
If I were Lizzie I’d be feeding that fat f789 Ferg Burgers and family sized buckets of fries with ice cream every meal…. I’d swap out his high blood pills for placebos…. pump him up with Viagra and get that heart pumping thumping and bumping…. whatever it takes….
Lizzie — if you are reading this …. remember … I am here to help…. I am full of ideas….I work on commission…. and I am just up the road….
Now why would this get held by the censors… I see nothing questionable…..
Lizzie is probably urging him to give up … surrender to the US … in the hope of getting a shorter time in prison…. and promising to be meet him at the airport in s…..e….xy und..erw…ear when he gets out…
But secretly hoping he gets 20+ years….
I wonder what happens to all the loot if he does get convicted…. that would su…..ck for Lizzie if it was se..ized….
Remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay
The way he dealt with a similar situation is he ki…..lled himself …. while he was appealing his case… so technically he was not gui….lty …. so his wife got to keep the lo..ot….
Of course we are told he just up and di…..ed while on appeal … but I am not believing that.
If I were Lizzie I’d be feeding that fat f7..89 Fer.g Bu.rgers and family sized buckets of fries with ice cream every meal…. I’d swap out his hi.gh bl..ood pills for plac..ebos…. pump him up with V…ia…gra and get that heart pumping thumping and bumping…. whatever it takes….
Lizzie — if you are reading this …. remember … I am here to help…. I am full of ideas….I work on commission…. and I am just up the road….
And there are those who believe AI will soon be driving cars….
AI is already driving cars.
Just not very well.
I could also let a toddler drive a car on the highway.
But I would be labeled a criminal and put in a cell with Kim Dotcom…
Musky and Kim in a cell together. Match made in heaven.
Alphabet (which owns Google) wants to become a transportation giant:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/03/alphabet-transportation-investments-projects-overview.html
“Alphabet is “already is a superpower in transportation” and it has its sights set to the future, too.”
“Electric scooters, self-driving vehicles, and flying cars: No matter what the future of transportation is, Alphabet wants to be involved.”
well, perhaps they will be successful with electric scooters…
“Kitty Hawk, Page’s company, is creating flying cars that look like a cross between a pontoon plane and a drone, while Brin is reportedly building a high-tech blimp.”
and don’t forget travel to outer space…
these men are absolute geniuses…
They will say anything to try to drive the share price higher
‘Electric scooters, self driving vehicles, flying cars and airborne pigs’. Fixed it
What they are probably aimed at is just patching up another asocial networks scheme of pay as you go services be it for the “application” fleet of electric scooters, passenger-taxi VTOL drons etc. The technology for these already exists anyway so they just now speculate about their silly marketing/biz model how to supposedly conquer the markets.
Because should they be serious about the issues at hand (mobility vs prosperity), they would put pressure into something completely different be it in PR-public outreach and or own investments. And that’s bridging the last mile with working light rail network, simply because there is no better alternative in efficiency than the overall system consisting of the combo of electric assisted bicycle (last mile home) + modern light rail (commuting city to suburbs).. That’s slashing like %% of current oil burn easily.
You say can’t be done? Many decades ago, the Chinese constructed their Gobi desert crossing rail link by literally moving around piece by piece tiny few kgs bags of gravel via animal caravans and people. It’s preposterous to claim the US can’t have rail anymore, both in the national core highspeed network and local suburban commuter light rail.. It’s simply hubris out of frivolous opulent ways of past CMO life and lack of will.
Fortunately we are going to recycle spent fuel in an endless loop allowing BAU to continue into eternity….
I read that in the MSM
That’s what I certainly did not say at all.
There is no endless loop, simply there are more options in nuclear fuel availability, that’s all. It’s just another BAU extension possibility via burning another stuff (+cleaning legacy dangerous waste). Is it going to matter in the grand scheme of things at this point, who knows, I’m not persuaded completely or dogmatic about it.
Now, when you have polluted another thread, let me return to the proper discussed topic above. It seems you are deflecting from the message there, which is ways how to cut dependency on the oil, per capita. For instance how come the Japanese recently have share of the so called Kei cars ~40% of their fleet, i.e. sub 700cc displacement “clown mobiles” ?? What a heresy, how they could ever do such a bad thing against more fuel burning?
Similarly, assisted bikes + rail light combo chops perhaps >80% of per capita transportation fuel out of the way easily.. Is it going to be implemented universally, all over, probably not, especially not in the US, so what.
Why are you here? You are clueless
It’s a valid argument that while immersed into y/y perennial grow of highly optimized system we are living is impossible to scale back, relative positioning (jockeying) among peers in terms of energy efficiency/per capita energy consumption have almost none bearing on the overall OFW equation etc.
This is more or less the view our host Gail argues for, some of the instant doom jihadists even take it into overdrive. However, I’d say it’s not as clear cut in near/mid term outlook, from the long term zoomed out perspective I’ve nothing against this line or reasoning, hence relativity at work.
Let me serenade you and jupjac ka ss ….
https://youtu.be/BdnH19KsVVc
This is dedicated to all the DelusiSTANIS in the audience…. who after years of being exposed to facts and logic… remain mired in Stu—uupidity … willful igno rance…. who when provoked will always spew inanities devoid of all logic and intelligence… who are functioning barely above the level of a pet dog…
Enjoy
Some of these whacky concepts could actually reach fruition… take off even.
But it doesn’t matter what goes on at the micro level if at the macro level we are about to have the rug pulled out from under all the magnificent persons and their magical flying contraptions.
Right now you could be on the verge of the next big discovery – fill the blank… cure for cancer, biotech, nanotech solutions for all kinds of problems waiting for solutions. Even the holy grail of cheap, clean energy could be just around the corner.
But then the plug gets pulled on the whole show and the machetes come out of storage…
Some people will still be fussing over what gender they are when the Neckbeards in shorts and flip flops with machetes come over the hill at dawn. You won’t be laughing at them then. You’ll be sharting your pants and running the other way as fast as your out of shape legs will carry you. Oh and you’ll find God… and you’ll be praying for mercy and asking for forgivenes and all that good stuff when the blade sinks in.
Just picture that for a moment. When civilisation collpases it collapses fast. People go nuts when there’s a shortage of their favorite yoghurt. Or Farcebook goes down for five minutes. What do you think’s gonna happen when the power goes off? When the trucks don’t arrive with the goodies? When foreign troops are deployed on the streets because they have no problem shooting runners in the back after curfew?
Is there some temporary pleasure to be gained from writing a book, designing a new form of transportation, going to your current job whatever it may be? Sure… but faced with a reasonably high certainty of economic collapse I can see how some people would “drop out” and lose their sense of purpose.
For others they may still want to achieve those goals within the time remaining even if it gets cut short. Personally, I don’t see how one could hold both thoughts – collapse and personal projects – simultaneously and continue to function very well. It depends on how certain you are that collapse will happen and when. Two years and you might not start anything new. But would ten years make that much difference if you were certain of collapse?
Iran threatens to block oil shipments in Strait of Hormuz
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-iran-irgc-threat/irans-guards-threatens-to-block-oil-shipments-in-gulf-yjc-ews-website-idUSKBN1JU2MW
https://imgur.com/a/oQZTx7s
My guess is that much has been postponed due to the football world cup. Once that circus has finished and Put.in has met Te rump, then things will get moving on sorting a few things out.
Meantime I have learnt a new word on OFW; Neckbeards …fantastic.
‘Neckbeard is a pejorative term referring to unattractive, overweight and misogynistic Internet users who wear a style of facial hair in which a majority of the growth is present on the chin and neck. Neckbeards are commonly associated with hipster stereotypes and Internet addicts …’
And going back to the global weirding, something i recall from a book ( Hamaker – in the early nineties I think) was that just prior to any glaciation there is significant drop off in hardwood pollen counts in the sedimentary records, indicating that hardwood species are struggling to maintain normal growth cycles. I had a shite year of fruit crops last summer except for apples. We are just passengers on this spaceship.
PS don’t tell me the book is discredited by scientists etc etc. I like the theory!!
Whenever a theory introduces logic into the equation on this issue… it is immediately discredited…
Myths and ho axes… despise logic….
“Meantime I have learnt a new word on OFW; Neckbeards …fantastic.”
FYI… if any person does an internet search for “neck beard photos”…
you cannot unsee those images…
They are popular with ‘the terrorists’
” They are popular with ‘the terrorists’ ”
And their wives.
LOL!!
I thought it just referred to anyone with a neckbeard for lack of better descriptive words but there you go you can attach any stereotipical labels to anything I guess.
Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says
https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/trump-pressed-aides-on-venezuela-invasion-us-official-says-1.747215
Well Bush got to invade some, Obama got to invade a couple more, so I guess Te rump wants to prove his-self as well. A great place to start gun-control in the US would be to keep their guns in their country. Well, wouldn’t ya think?
I don’t think Venezuela is of any strategic value … and their oil is shi tty and expensive…
Perhaps Trump might invade just to test out new weapons systems? Or to blow through stockpiles of old weapons that the US is unable to sell to large 3rd world men with big sunglasses…
https://bigeye.ug/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Amin1.png
There seems to be a lot of Venezuela’s oil. If people aren’t too aware of the problem that high-cost oil is a problem, someone might be willing to pursue it. There could be a technological breakthrough that reduces extraction costs, if someone works on the problem long enough, for example. We know that on tight oil, there were some efficiency improvements along the way. And if we are getting the oil from another country, we do not have the heavy layer of taxes that our own country imposes–just the taxes on profits, if any.
I think the main point here is that Trump didn’t act…
sure, he considered it, but so what?
sometimes inaction is best…
I mean…
the Obama administration messed up quite a few countries…
perhaps Trump doesn’t want to go that low?
if only the Great Obama didn’t have a 2 term limit…
UK counter-terrorism chief says couple in Wiltshire contaminated with same substance as Skripals
https://www.rt.com/uk/431750-wiltshire-couple-skripal-substance/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications
Boris and Natasha did it.
is the “same substance” the Russian nerve agent that causes death in a few minutes?
that substance?
the one that didn’t kiill either of the Skripals?
will it also not kiill this new couple?
and that “UK counter-terrorism chief” may be dealing with homegrown terrorism…
will they ever conclude that?
we’ll see…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
some coverage of this event.
‘Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park’…..and…
‘Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: ‘These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent.’”
There is more, but y’all on OFW have heard this ‘The Russians did it’ tune before!!
Global economy in jeopardy because of trade war between US, China and EU, warns WTO
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/us-trade-war-china-eu-tariffs-economy-wto-trump-global-latest-a8431691.html
Or perhaps the global economy is in jeopardy because energy consumption per capita is too close to flat.
For institutional investors and from their macro zoomed viewpoint of sophistication follows that Indonesia, Hungary, and Turkey are the very same species “emerging market bunch” hence they in mild (nowadays) or higher state of panic immediately withdraw the funds from there and park it into perceived save USD. Also there is the question of local debt denominated in the USD but that’s secondary or tertiary to the amount and power of sloshing global capital markets.
Only when there is no bid for dollar anymore, realization that US has no domestic energy, nor effective power for twisting arms on the int scene, only then you might get close to the real deal GFC threshold.
We are evidently not there yet, what’s next might be rather a series of several harder or milder recessions and relatively slow decay, perhaps for next 5-15yrs before the big one.
It is difficult to do that in Indonesia … the CB was burned during the Asian financial crisis when the wealthy shifted out IDR exacerbating the currency crash…
I believe one can not shift more than USD25,000 worth of IDR out of the country per month — and even then you have to have a contract to show what it is being used for…. you cannot just shift cash without a valid reason.
Not sure what exactly you are referring to as institutional investors don’t operate on silly laws of $25k transfer limits.. but if you asked about the e-gov scheme:
Well as linked above, if they deploy such scheme, you will have like say 6-9months mandated window to transfer your cash and bank accounts into e-gov blockchain (could be “physical key”, otherwise your individual negative interest rates jumps into draconian %% rate per each conseq month.
Again, it might not work everywhere, some countries might disintegrate rapidly into abyss, some given extra time and conditions and manage in the end (for the near/mid term)..
I am on about having sold a property in Bali not long ago and running head long into this issue…. there was no easy way to get the cash out.
Fortunately the buyer had offshore funds and we were able to circumvent the currency controls.
No idea what institutional investors would be doing. But I know some wealthy Indos … and they have the exact same problem — in fact one potential purchaser — a Chinese Indo who is one of the biggest coffee producers on the island — wanted to purchase the property but walked when my condition was he had to figure out how to get IDR offshore and pay me in USD….
As for CC… I don’t see the Indo government allowing this … if so then everyone would be doing it and the IDR would crash even further….
The Indos no doubt monitor all digital activity …. just as the NSA does… they could easily identify someone who was trading on these exchanges… and put a stop to it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-blockchain/indonesia-looks-to-blockchain-to-fix-its-dodgy-data-challenges-idUSKBN1I503R
the elders are now turning to cryptocurrency https://www.rt.com/business/423559-rockefellers-soros-rothschilds-cryptocurrency-investment/
The title is “Rockefellers join Rothschilds & Soros in cryptocurrency investing.” This is crazy. It suggests that they think other investments are even worse.
Desperation!
Or they know something we don’t?
Maybe money doesn’t grow on trees after all. It grows on computer chips?
Just a reminder, previous article at Surplus included in the debate links about serious discussion at CB’s level how to phase in something like gov preferred crypto currencies, used as tools allowing for selective debt jubilees, negative interest rates and mandatory cash swaps-abandonment. They simply have enough think tanks and set aside pilot projects on the shelf, which would be put into green status in time of another serious meltdown..
Ah… a reset… based on CC…. I feel hope welling up inside me!
It’s not about hope, just can kicking some more.. they will at least try it, that’s certain outcome given past performance. What’s coming specifically after that have no idea.., but it’s going to be likely rehash on the naked form of feudal theme.
it’s going to be likely rehash on the naked form of feudal theme.
Well… that’s bad enough.
You do realise that the vast majority of people today could not psychologically handle a step down from where we are now to scraping about in the dirt for some Warlord.
Most people would be so depressed and useless – unable to adapt and survive.
adonis! welcome to July…
I guess the word has spread that lots of money can be made by creating cryptocurrencies…
which is creation ex nihilo…
Liebig’s Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum
It also seems to imply that a shortage of one essential input will result in the need to “make a smaller batch.” This is why the economy shrinks, when energy inputs are low (for example, because of prices that are too high for many consumers).
So if I run out of oxygen I die.
That’s useful to know.
Thank God for Liebig.
Note to self – Must remember to breathe.
Suppose there is no collapse? Maybe we just see increasingly short and miserable lives. Yes, BAU will decay but be replaced by the new normal whatever that is.
My fear there will be no big cull, just lots of dull misery.
Not everyone around here believes collapse = apocalypse. After the end of BAU human life will most likely continue in the pre-industrial vein, i.e. short and miserable. “Miserable” is a pretty relative term though. Bread and cheese are fantastic after hours of physical labour, but boring and “miserable” after hours of watching all the pretty pictures on a screen in mammy’s basement.
Agree.
Our significant other FE/TM simply underestimates the intelligence and determination available even in the times of revolts and upheavals. Future warlords, throne usurpating revolutionaries can master the basic math of gains vs threats and jovially set aside resources to let cool spent fuel ponds (or other such high impact issue) as needed before throwing in into deep mine or something after a while, the costs would be understood, should they starve-sacrifice millions to have that energy assigned aside pronto, they will just do it in cold blooded manner. We have been there already, examples abound, revolutionary France, WW1-2,..
Is that “logic” going to work everytime, everywhere. Probably not, tough luck. But certainly not played out as over synchronized universal collapse.
Spent fuel ponds.
Subduing billions suffering privation while a small coterie of elites use up the loot–a great deal of the loot–to sequester nukes ought to be very expensive.
Just In Time Global Economy.
There’s your problem.
No step down.
When it goes. It goes all at once.
Those who subscribe to facts and logic… see an apocalyptic scenario…. when the power goes off
But nothing that isn’t consistent with managing nuclear materials seem feasible.
If only….
“My fear there will be no big cull, just lots of dull misery.”
this is the psychology that is so fascinating…
many persons seem to prefer a fast collapse, for at least a couple of reasons:
it will provide a closure to all the ideas we toss about on OFW…
and it will be pretty dam exciting!
facing a short term life and death situation must get the adrenaline pumping…
and since we modern humans are so (over)stimulated, a “dull” remainder to our lives is something to fear…
My preference would be BAU forever…
But you’d have to be a total f789ing retard not to understand that when the global economy starts to shrink…. collapse will be rapid… and total
except for the small communities who will surely survive in the remotest places…
after that, who knows?
radiation has a way of spreading … into every nook and cranny… particularly when 56,000,000 Hiroshimas of it are involved…
yes, you are quite correct…
so the remotest tribes will have no clue why half of their babies are mutants…
they will deal with it and life will go on…
though I am open to seeing the math that concludes that all humans will die in that radiation…
56 million sounds big, but the world is a big place, you know?
56M does not sound big…. it IS big.
A reactor — not a pond — and this is a contained accident…. but this give you an idea of how far the poison can spread…
The world will look very small indeed … when it is awash with plumes of radiation
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8frFHjMdI2g/maxresdefault.jpg
Yeah, but who cares about them?
Industrial civilisation collapses.
A few people manage to survive for a while scraping about in the dirt.
I’m not calling that a win.
I know some people would.
++++
And if any of these remote tribes survived…. there would be no second renaissance … because all the energy has been burned up…
No need to worry. I just heard that the new block chain technology is going to make “everything better”.
Yay!!
Puts machete away for another day!
Interesting online book
https://postpeakmedicine.com/index.htm
Yes, that’s a good book. I contributed the nursing section of that book. I see that Peter has moved to the U.K. from Canada now. I wonder why, maybe he has family there.
I would also like to describe what it has been like at our farm in British Columbia lately. Last winter was bizzare – record cold and snow in the first two weeks of November, then all the snow melted and we had above freezing temps until January. In January it snowed a lot and then started raining on top of the snow. This went through February. The amount of ice was impressive – I’ve never seen so much. March and April were hot and dry. My fruit trees broke dormancy in January and tried to bloom in April. The rest of the trees are alive but there will be no apples, no plums, no hazelnuts, no chestnuts and no walnuts. The weather turned bad again and everything froze. We lost two peach trees and one plum tree. All my bees died. May was warm so I planted my garden. Then came June. It got so cold that I had to start a fire in the cookstove every morning just like in winter. My transplants are now stunted and my overwintered garlic looks terrible. Potato plants look good but there has been so much rain that the potatoes will be covered in scab.
Local farmers have been trying to make hay but it rains and rains and ruins the crop. They’re now hoping for a second cut – you can’t feed moldy hay to animals. My chickens are so cold they’re not laying. I only got one chick this spring.
The collapse has taken too long and gerbil worming is ramping up too fast. I’m now 70 years old and my body is starting to fall apart. Now it’s July. We might get some warm weather now, and we might get record-breaking heat. My body’s temperature regulation mechanisms are breaking down and I can’t work outside when it’s above 25 degrees C. My back is giving out and my knees ache. I’ve got one hip that can’t take it when I try to weed for a few hours. Obviously we’re not going to be among the ones around here to keep making food when the collapse does get here. A few days ago my husband said, “Why don’t we just sell out, move to town and wait for the end?” I said, “Let’s just wait for the end right here. I hate living in town.” When we try to talk to our neighbours about collapse they smile and stop listening. We can’t find any young people who want to work this hard. Fifteen years ago I could do this with ease – now I can’t.
We’ve had several long power outages during ice storms. No problem for us in the house; we have tons of wood, two wood stoves and our land backs on to Crown land. But without power at -20 degrees C I can’t keep the chickens warm enough. I’d have to bring them in the house.
The climate problems are much worse in the far north of Canada, but no one is reporting them. Now the climate problems are moving south and affecting those of us even slightly further south. Soon you folks in the States will see what we’ve been talking about. Agriculture is breaking down.
The only good news this spring is that the saskatoon crop has been amazing. Good berries. Maybe the chokecherries will be good this year. I hope.
we get a lot of humorous banter on ofw—and more than our fair share of crackpots, deniers and assorted exchanges of inconsequential stuff
so far over xx years none have moved me in any deep emotional sense, but your post did, it was a first. I mean that
I found it difficult to read, even more difficult to read twice, which I made myself do.
It really should have a wider audience than OFW….it might just make a dent somewhere.
Thank you Ann
Dear Norman:
Thank you for your reply, and thanks to all for the other comments. I had been debating with myself for two weeks regarding whether or not I should write that. I usually get totally thrashed when I post here. I guess I just decided to put it all out there heedlessly, the personal stuff, the struggles. It’s tough, living here, and getting tougher. There’s lots more I could say about the declining quality of life in Canada in general, and in British Columbia (and our farm) in particular. I didn’t mention, for example, that the Trans Mountain pipeline is scheduled to blast its way through our orchard and one of the four vegetable gardens this summer. Those areas will be reduced to piles of gravel and we are forbidden to do anything with the land forever after. There’s nothing we can do about this – that lying little shit-weasel Justin Trudeau has bought the whole thing and is going to ram it down our throats. The whole goddam project is not viable in any form, but they’re going to start on it anyway. This property will be worth a lot less once they start digging. We own it outright, no mortgage, but no one will buy it now. I guess we’ll just sit on the porch and watch the show. I’m terrified that the few people who live out here will have to count on me for health care when SHTF. I’ve got a few supplies, but I can’t manage a complicated birth, cast a broken bone, or put your intestines back in when that cougar rips them out. Throw another log on the fire, would you? Would you like some cherry pie?
the pipeline adds another tear to the flow about your situation, Trudeau comes across as mr nice guy—perhaps he isnt after all
but your comments re medication bear out why i had to shoot down the post collapse medication book, even though you contributed to it.—i put a comment on the book site itself saying much the same thing—difficult to get the tint out of his rose coloured spectacles, but the comments about the bliss of 18th c english rural peasants re constable’s painting was just too much.
they laboured toawrds an unsustainable endgame just like the rest of us. Landlords creamed off profits to sustain an extravangant lifestyle—just at a different scale.
their difference was that they didnt know it
rich man in his castle—poor man at his gate was the natural order of things.
its why I wrote this piece–to try and straighten things out a bit
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-oilparty-is-over-c06d3c723655
Excellent post, Norman. I bought your book as soon as I heard about it and I’ve read it again every month since. You really “get it” and are a good writer, besides. You’ve done a terrific job in straightening out the errors in the online book. All the best of luck to you – we’ll all need it.
We need to start a Norman Fan Club…. complete with Groopies!!!
That is the ROI….
to paraphrase——–
i wouldnt belong to any fan club that would have me as a member
Perhaps a cult….
a cult is more like it
but i’m fussy about who will be welcome as devotees tho
Thank you for your kind words Ann
My head and brick walls have become closely acquainted over the years, but one can only keep trying
Ann, we in New York State (100 north of NYC) had the same strange ups and downs of temperature this winter. I love the line “Let’s just wait for the end right here. I hate living in town.” Cheers.
Ann, I am 60 and sadly my body is starting to feel its age. My work is teaching Hal to read and write but the quality of my reading and writing is starting to decline with age. Kind of a race will my AI care giver be ready before I am drooling? I suspect not. My wife and I hope to move to warmer weather before we are in terminal decline. That is my one remaining goal in life.
Follow the example of Scott Nearing … pretend to be a sustainable farmer in summer (making use of BAU tools)… then fly south for the winter.
It’s a good formula if one has the means
Ann-
I’m 70 also, and live in Central Oregon.
Things have been slowing down a bit, but got in a good garden.
I used to live in Sonoma, down in California. Younger, and better farmer, plus great conditions, and 20 acres of good property. It got too valuable for wine grapes, and the hordes of clueless tasters driving up prices.
The olives are still there.
‘When these things fail to happen (which is almost inevitable) there is likely to be much confusion and anger and a lack of consensus about what to do next.’
What’s that I smell… sickly….overly sweet…. like something a burned out who re might favour to mask her diseased reek …
Ah yes… Koombaya (by chanel)
taking a quick scan of that book—a few glaring errors jump out
the painting of Constable’s rural idyll was one
The author really should do some research on the ‘bucolic bliss’ of rural England in the 18th c !!!—It was utterly appalling. People lived in thatched shacks, Disease of every kind was rife, the cities were death traps for any number of reasons. Water was undrinkable so they had to drink beer—1 in 5 babies died in infancy. I could go on.
They lived in feudal conditions, you could be executed for any number of reasons, transported for life for trivial offences (to people the colonies). Yes–some landowners were caring—many/most were not.
Putting Constable’s painting there as an example of what we can look forward to is laughable, and destroyed any credibility the book might have carried
Then there’s the Easter Island thing—they were thriving until the British navy showed up and passed on all our diseases (see above)—then the slave traders arrived later from South America and took away the fittest of the rest, most of whom promptly died in the mines.
All that is well documented
They overturned their statues thinking their gods had desrted them
https://www.art.com/products/p12916045765-sa-i6411412/currier-ives-homestead-winter-1868.htm?upi=PFCHIT0&PODConfigID=4986398
not quite sure of the point you are making
but in 1868 anyone with two horsepower available was a wealthy man
in uk anyway
Horse/oxen power is the step down plateau bellow which is hardly any civilization possible anymore at least in the sense of keeping some of the current assembled knowledge applied. Animal power can haul stuff-cargo, hay, pump water and sewage/manure, power cranes, heat sheds, provide food (convert sunlight-water-minerals), hides, not least help in mental and psycho comforting for people, ..
my precise point was not about using animal muscle
but actually owning it
there’s a world of difference
Not arguing the point or with you specifically, just pointed out in general how crucial are the few ponies of power to keep/preserve civilization attributes.
But I am going to shoot all the horses and sheep and cows and chickens… and dogs… and cats…
when BAU goes down…. for the BBQ.
Unlike those guys in Venezuela who used rocks to bash the animals…. I have many many large calibre bullets…. many rifles…. I also have 2 12 gauge shotguns and a crate of shells …
Bad to be an animal post BAU…. very very bad
https://imgc.artprintimages.com/img/print/homestead-winter-1868_u-l-pfchit0.jpg
Oh how wonderful! If that’s what the post BAU world is going to be like then bring it on!!!!
Cormac got it all wrong
http://www.firstshowing.net/img/road-cormac-FS-aug-03.jpg
Perhaps there is a mixed space – world between these two “extreme pole” images..
It would be interesting to break down exactly how the characters in McCarthy’s The Road end up being some of the only survivors. I far as I remember from the movie it’s never explained how the collapse happened.
You would have to assume that this father and his son survived against all the odds when most of the rest of the population died off. So what’s special about these two (apart from being the protagonists).
I would have to assume that they were trapped somewhere or out of the way until things settled down as there are still very violent groups roaming the countryside.
To be honest… in a situation like this they would have zero chance of surviving on their own unless they joined a group. But we’d have to know the exact reason for collapse and how many resources remained that could be scavenged beyond a certain point.
In The Walking Dead, most of the population is immediately wiped out by a virus which means that a few survivors have plenty of existing supplies to raid for as long as they remain useful i.e. they can still use gasoline for a while.
In a real life situation where society collapses all existing supplies would be rapidly consumed in a short period of time. There would be nothing left to scavenge and people would fight over every scrap with machetes.
our genetic system forces us to fight to survive
collectively we have no choice in what we do—the outward appearance of our actions is subverted to that one aim
if we fail entirely, nature will shrug us off as yet another dead end and another life form will ascend to dominance
remember dinosaurs had it all to themselves for 150m years—weve only manage to survive for 1m
form your own judgement abot ”dominant species”
I can’t Wait to,have my own two horse sled!
Thansk for delivering that dose of reality…. Koombaya is shattered
Shale might have peaked BP
BP questions pace of US tight oil growth as productivity fades
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/061318-bp-questions-pace-of-us-tight-oil-growth-as-productivity-fades
The shale industry has more debt than Venezuela and Saudi Arabia combined
https://imgur.com/a/t7ulB
recent i read one of most funny thing in long time
Pay British Indians to go home: Ukip leader
John Rees-Evans, a controversial UK Independence Party (Ukip) activist who is currently the fourth favourite for the party leadership, has come up with a radical plan to cut “unnecessary population” in the UK by “incentivising” some migrants, including from India, to return to the country of their origin.
Rees-Evans made a specific reference to Indians and Tanzanians in relation to a so-called”fast track export- import scheme” of offering up to £9,000 to certain Commonwealth migrants to leave the UK.
“It’s not going to be draconian. It’s not going to be fascist. I’m not interested in using eugenics or any evil things like that, and yet I would be pushing for negative net migration towards one million a year,” Rees-Evans was heard saying in a speech filmed during a meeting in the Greater Manchester area earlier this month and first published by the Daily Mirror.
He suggested that the UK government’s foreign aid budget should be cut from more than £13 billion a year to £1 billion, with £12.3 billion then spent on incentivising British citizens with dual citizenship to leave the country.
Rees-Evans specifically targeted British Indians and Tanzanians, who he said, could set up their own businesses.
Curiously, while he referred to Indians as an example of migrants who can be offered such an option, India does not offer dual nationality to its citizens.
Rees-Evans later defended the plan on his Facebook page, saying the fee would incentivise people to set up businesses overseas.
He claimed: “I am being accused of wanting to send people of a particular country, or countries, abroad. This is absolutely not the case.
“The net effect would be a reduction in Britain’s population of up to several hundred thousands persons annually, as well as forging prolific and valuable import-free trading relationships that will create jobs in the exporting country, while reducing the cost of living to British residents.”
this remind of a classic joke from rowan Atkinson spoof
“I like curry, but now that we have got the recipe
https://youtu.be/sg-4ATrE8n0
Interesting idea, but without the immigrants, who pays for the retirement benefits of all of the elderly UK citizens? Perhaps enough elderly UK citizens can be put to work to make up for the loss of immigrants. This still doesn’t fix the energy problem, however.
Gail, as society grows poorer you are correct people will have to work in our old age. No number of cheap labors from the third world will fix that.
i’m still looking for the billions my other half has stashed away
or is she one of those “UK adults” hiding huge debts from her partner?
The elderly UK citizens can scrape about in the dirt like the rest of humanity. I hear quite a few of them like tending to their allotments.
Haven’t you seen the millions of elderly chinese and indians etc scraping about in the dirt just to stay alive? I hear it keeps them fit.
Anyway, if you cut medical care there wouldn’t be many left. Lighten the load so to speak. Time to get ruthless. Whatever it takes to keep the core functional.
Taxation is theft by another name. People with resources should look after their own. The rest perish if they can’t feed themselves.
Why should people work hard to have 25% or more of their wages taken from them and given to complete strangers?
ignoring the possibilty of irony here—always hard to tell—-if irony is in it—disregard my comments—if not, read on
that is the politics of Ayn Rand
if your money wasnt taken from you by ”strangers” as part of civilised living, then even stranger people would come and take all of it from you by more unpleasant means
if the elderly are to be left to die, one can only assume there would be a cut off point at what elderly/infirm is…what do you have in mind?
if thats the case, there there would have to be a judgement on it—i take it you would be willing to sit on the judging panel? Or drive the collection trucks? Or man the disposal/recycling stations?
And if YOUR child was dying of a curable disease—would your judgement/opinion still stand?
And the core of our current society cannot function without the whole
Yep. Irony all the way. Every day.
But what the heck. Lets take it seriously.
There is nothing civilised about forcefully taking hard earned money away from people. It is a crime. It is called theft. Anyone else does this they go to jail. The law cannot apply to some and not others. The only way you can rationalise this is to admit that you are a slave, a serf, the property of your owners to be bled dry however they so wish.
Charitable donations. Now that’s another matter entirely.
Old people would die and very sick children would die as they always have done and people had more. My grandmother died young of a curable disease because the hospital was too far away and the taxi driver was busy.
I think the cut off point should be 22. What, too low? Ok Ok 26. That should be enough.
Most of what you call modern society is a sick perversion. There is nothing wholesome about it in the slightest and not much worth salvaging. Much of the so called work that is done is a complete and utter waste of time and energy and the workers utterly miserable, desperate and sick of it all.
It’s an illusion, a fantasy to think that stealing from a miserable worker to maintain an obese out of work population for decades is anything but ludicrous. Illegals, ex cons, drug addicts get generous handouts while people that have worked hard and started businesses get shafted again and again and again.
If I was dictator of the world I would remove this fantasy instantly. We can’t afford the extra baggage. Lean mean survival machine Baby!
There’s only so much that people can take.
And then it’s… MacheteTime!
you can put up for potus in 2020
by then your electorate will be eager to put you in office
Ever try telling a fat slob that perhaps they might stop drinking 5 cans of cola per day? It won’t go over well so don’t… it is ‘their choice’
Well f789 them ….obese people (and smokers and drunks) should be heavily taxed because they are a burden to the health system here in NZ. If they don’t like that idea… they should be given Fentanyl
And slobs should pay more for airline tickets… just like others have to pay for extra baggage
I am tired of subsidizing people who are unable to control themselves and stuff sh it in their holes endlessly
Survival of the Fittest!
Aren’t Indians supposed to be the “good immigrants”? Anyway, India is my top pick for collapse world champion, so they will probably refuse to return there after a few years. Then again, the UK itself (+other western economies) might not be too pleasant by then, which would entail ethnic persecutions.
india is collapse since industrial revolution
But they have been able to borrow a lot of money, and sort of keep themselves going.
“The difference between two-year and 10-year Treasury yields dipped below 30 basis points on Tuesday for the first time since August 2007, as trade tensions continue to bolster US government bond prices… The measure is seen as a harbinger of future financial stress.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f8fee96a-7ed2-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475
“… the effects of the U.S. deficit go beyond the United States. Thanks to the dollar’s outsize global role, the first casualties of a somewhat irresponsible U.S. fiscal policy are likely to be emerging economies that have used the dollar to denominate their debts, not the United States itself. A stronger dollar and rising U.S. interest rates are increasing the burden of paying all dollar-denominated debts around the world.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-07-03/us-deficits-are-hurting-emerging-markets
“China’s central bank is caught in a bind, as it seeks to tighten monetary policy for some parts of the economy while loosening it for others.
“Already engaged in the mammoth task of wringing bad debts out of China’s $40 trillion-plus financial system, the People’s Bank of China is now attempting to achieve that while simultaneously being asked to bolster flagging growth and rescue falling stock markets.
“That would be a tough enough feat for any central banker, but the outlook for PBOC Governor Yi Gang just a few months into his new job is even more complicated: A growing trade war with the Trump administration coupled with rising borrowing costs in the U.S. has prompted investors to sell the yuan heavily, raising the prospect of the central bank having to defend it.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/china-s-central-bank-faces-policy-bind-over-debt-growth-goals
Ouch!
Banks depend on this difference for part of their profits. They become much less profitable, if this measure is too low.
“UK adults are hiding more than £69bn of debt from their partners, with 8.3 million people having debts their other half knows nothing about, according to new research. The average hidden debt in the UK is £8,293, and almost half a million people wouldn’t have started a relationship with their current partner if they had been aware of their financial position, a survey found.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-debt-hiddden-from-partner-credit-cards-personal-loans-direct-line-survey-a8429391.html
“As [Australia’s] credit card balance heads towards $50 billion, the corporate regulator has warned that tighter rules are needed over who can get one with almost one-in-five card holders already struggling to cope with their debt.”
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/we-owe-45-billion-on-our-credit-cards-and-it-s-not-getting-better-20180703-p4zp6j.html
“Household credit has ballooned to unprecedented levels in Canada, as in many other developed countries, amid historically low interest rates. That hasn’t posed too many difficulties so far, because the economy and the labour market have generated solid growth, allowing people to handle servicing costs. But with the Bank of Canada intent on raising rates and the U.S. and Canada engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff fight, that could change.”
https://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/debt/equifax-says-canadian-delinquencies-will-probably-rise-this-year
“[US] Auto loan interest rates are expected to climb to their highest level since 2009 for the second month in a row in June.”
http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/auto-loan-interest-rates-hit-nine-year-high-in-june-according-to-edmunds-1027339091
“UK adults are hiding more than £69bn of debt from their partners, with 8.3 million people having debts their other half knows nothing about”
Hookers and blow economy booming while the cats are away!
and, as the article says, “store cards” when the guys are away…
Sounds rather likely. This happened to a friend of mine: after marrying, her husband (salary c £50k) revealed that he had £20k of debt, which he cleared after 5 years. After falling pregnant, 9 years later, he told her that he had racked up another £10k! A rather unpleasant conversation ensued, I believe….
xabier, how does tax work in England? How much of that £50k does he take home?
http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php
Thanks Yorchichan, 26% before property tax, school tax, VAT tax.
“China has said it is “fully prepared” for a trade war with the US, with little sign of an end to mounting tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
“Hopes are dwindling that Washington and Beijing will find an amicable solution before Friday, when the US is due to start charging tariffs on $34bn (£26bn) of Chinese goods, with Beijing declaring they will retaliate in kind. The ramifications will likely be felt far beyond the borders of the two nations.
“Tensions have been simmering for weeks, amid a flurry of smaller tit-for-tat measures…”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-trump-soybeans-a8429181.html
“A full-scale trade war would likely be as devastating for the world economy as the 2008-2009 recession, warned France’s Council of Economic Advisors, a body which gives input to the country’s prime minister.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trade-france/full-trade-war-threatens-2008-style-recession-warn-french-government-advisors-idUKKBN1JT10C
“Members of the Bank of England’s top financial stability body have expressed concerns that UK banks’ capital buffers may not be adequate in the face of riskier lending and increasing dangers to the global financial system.”
http://www.cityam.com/288592/bank-england-bosses-concerned-banks-financial-stability
“The European Central Bank raised its purchases of government bonds in June to their highest level this year to keep its stimulus program rolling even as chunks of its other assets expired, data showed on Tuesday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-qe/ecb-steps-up-government-debt-buys-to-keep-stimulus-going-idUKKBN1JT24A
This sounds like a story we have heard before, elsewhere.