Why is it so difficult to make accurate long-term economic forecasts for the world economy? There are many separate countries involved, each with a self-organizing economy made up of businesses, consumers, governments, and laws. These individual economies together create a single world economy, which again is self-organizing.
Self-organizing economies don’t work in a convenient linear pattern–in other words, in a way that makes it possible to make valid straight line predictions from the past. Instead, they work in ways that don’t match up well with standard projection techniques.
How do we forecast what lies ahead? Today, some economists believe that the economy of the United States is in danger of overheating. Others believe that Italy and the United Kingdom are facing dire problems, and that these problems could adversely affect the world economy. The world economy should be our highest concern because each country is dependent on a combination of imported and exported goods. The forecasting question becomes, “How will divergent economic results affect the world’s economy?”
I am not an economist; I am a retired actuary. I have spent years making forecasts within the insurance industry. These forecasts were financial in nature, so I have had hands-on experience with how various parts of the financial system work. I was one of the people who correctly forecast the Great Recession. I also wrote the frequently cited academic article, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, which points out the connection between the Great Recession and oil limits.
Today’s indications seem to suggest that an even more major recession than the Great Recession may strike in the not too distant future. Why should this be the case? Am I imagining problems where none exist?
The next ten sections provide an introduction to how the world’s self-organizing economy seems to operate.
[1] The economy is one of many self-organized systems that grow. All are governed by the laws of physics. All use energy in their operation.
There are many other self-organizing systems that grow. One such system is the sun. Some forecasts indicate that it will keep expanding in size and brightness for about the next five billion years. Eventually, it is expected to collapse under its own weight.
Hurricanes are a type of self-organizing system that grows. Hurricanes grow over warm ocean waters. If they travel over land for a short time, they can sometimes shrink back a bit and grow again once they have an adequate source of heat-energy from warm water. Eventually, they collapse.
Plants and animals also represent self-organizing systems that grow. Some plants grow throughout their lifetimes; others stabilize in size after reaching maturity. Animals continue to require food (a form of energy) even after they stabilize at their mature size.
We can’t use the typical patterns of these other growing self-organized systems to conclude much about the future path of the world’s economic growth because individual patterns are quite different. However, we notice that cutting off the energy supply used by any of these systems (for example, moving a hurricane permanently over land or starving a human) will lead to the demise of that system.
We also know that lack of food is not the only reason why humans die. Based on this observation, it is a reasonable conclusion that having enough energy available is not a sufficient condition to guarantee that the world economy will continue to operate as in the past. For example, a blocked shipping channel, such as at the Strait of Hormuz, could pose a significant problem for the world economy. This would be analogous to a blocked artery in a human.
[2] The use of energy products is hidden deeply within the economy. As a result, many people overlook their significance. They are also difficult for researchers to measure.
It is easy to see that gasoline provides the energy supply needed for our cars, and that electricity provides the power needed to clean our clothes. What is missing? The answer seems to be, “Everything that makes humans different from wild animals is something that was made possible by the use of supplemental energy in addition to the energy from food.”
All goods and services require the use of energy. While some of this energy use is easy to see, other portions are well hidden. Energy used in manufacturing and transport is most visible; energy used in services tends to be hidden.
Governments are major users of energy, both for their own programs and for directing energy use to others. Retirees get the benefit of goods and services made with energy products through pension checks issued by governments; researchers get the benefit of goods and services made with energy products through research grants they receive. Wars require energy.
Medical treatments are possible because of the availability of medicines and equipment made with energy products. Schools and books, as well as free time to study in schools (rather than working in the field), are possible because of energy consumption. Jobs of all kinds require the use of energy.
One thing we don’t often consider is that if energy supplies are growing sufficiently, they permit an expanding population. In fact, expanding population seems to be the single largest use of growth in energy consumption (Figure 1). Growing energy consumption also seems to be associated with prosperity.
Figure 1. World energy consumption growth for ten-year periods (ended at dates shown) divided between population growth (based on Angus Maddison estimates) and total energy consumption growth, based on the author’s review of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011 data and estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects by Vaclav Smil.
[3] Prices of energy services need to be low relative to overall costs of the economy. Falling energy costs relative to overall GDP tend to encourage economic growth.
Most economists expect energy prices to represent a large share of GDP costs, if energy is truly important. The statement above says the opposite. There are at least two reasons why low energy prices, and energy prices that are truly falling when inflation and productivity changes are considered, are helpful.
First, tools (broadly defined) used to leverage the labor of human workers often require considerable energy to manufacture and operate. Examples of such tools include computers, machines used in manufacturing, vehicles, and roads for these vehicles to drive on. The lower the cost to purchase and operate these tools, relative to the benefit of the tools, the more likely employers are to purchase them. If energy costs tend to fall over time, it becomes progressively easier to add more tools to leverage the labor of employees. Thus, employees become increasingly productive over time, raising the economy’s output of goods and services. For a similar reason, rising energy costs, if not offset by efficiency gains, present a barrier to economic growth.
Second, if the cost of energy production is low, it is easy to tax energy producers and thereby capture some of the benefit of their energy for the rest of the economy. If there is truly a “net energy” benefit to the economy, this is one way it gets transferred to the rest of the economy.
[4] There is indeed an energy problem, but it is not quite the same one that Peak Oilers have been concerned about.
The energy problem that Peak Oilers write about is the possibility that as easy-to-extract oil supplies deplete, oil production will reach a peak in production and begin to decline. Once decline sets in, they expect that oil prices will rise, partly because of the higher cost of production and partly because of scarcity. With these higher prices, they expect that producers will be able to extract at least a portion of the remaining oil resources. They also expect that higher prices will allow portions of the remaining natural gas and coal resources to be extracted. With higher prices, expanded use of renewable energy is expected to become feasible. All of these energy sources are expected to keep the economy operating at some level.
There are several problems with this story. First, it tends to encourage people to look for high oil prices as a sign of an oil shortage. This is not the correct indication to look for. Prior to 1970, oil prices averaged less than $20 per barrel. Comparing pre-1970 prices to today’s oil prices, current prices are already very high, at $75 per barrel. The idea that oil prices can keep rising indefinitely assumes that there is no affordability limit. Furthermore, a loss of energy consumption can be expected to reduce demand (because of its impact on jobs, productivity, and wages) at the same time that it reduces supply. If both supply and demand are affected, we don’t know which way prices will move.
Second, my analysis suggests that part of the story is that total energy consumption is very important, including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and various forms of electricity. All of the attention given to oil has drawn attention away from the economy’s need for a range of energy types to keep devices of all types operating. Deciding to reduce coal usage because of pollution issues, or deciding to shut down nuclear because it is aging, has an equally adverse impact on the economy as reducing oil supply, unless the shortfall can be made up with other energy products of precisely the type needed by current devices.
Third, my analysis suggests that energy consumption per capita needs to rise for the economy to function in the way that we expect it to function. If world energy consumption per capita is too flat, we can expect to see many of the symptoms that the world has been experiencing recently: more radical leaders, less cooperation among leaders, slowing economic growth and increasing debt problems. In fact, wars are possible, as are collapses of governments (as with the Soviet Union central government in 1991). The current situation seems to be more parallel to the 1920 to 1940 flat period than it does to the 1980 to 2000 flat period.
Finally, with low energy prices rather than high quite possibly being much of the problem, there is a significant chance that oil and other production will decline because producers do not make enough profit for reinvestment and because oil exporting countries cannot collect enough taxes to fund the many subsidies that citizens expect. This makes for a steeper energy decline than forecast by Peak Oilers; it also reduces the possibility that high-priced renewables will be helpful.
[5] Part of the world’s energy problem is a distribution problem; the world becomes divided into haves and have-nots in many ways. It is this distribution problem that tends to push the world economy toward collapse.
There are many parts to this distribution problem. One is the distribution of goods and services (created using energy) by country. Over time, this tends to change, especially as commodity prices change. Oil exporters are favored when oil prices are high; oil importers are favored when oil prices are low. The relative values of currencies can change quickly, as commodity prices change.
Another part of this distribution problem is growing wage and wealth disparity, as more technology is added. If there is too much wage disparity, low-paid workers often cannot afford adequate food, homes, and transportation for their families. Their lack of demand for goods made with energy products (because of their low wages) tends to work through the system as low commodity prices. This happens because (a) there are so many of these workers and (b) these workers tend to purchase a disproportionate share of goods and services that are highly energy-dependent.
[6] Debt-like promises play a major role in making the economy operate.
Taking out a loan allows an individual or business to purchase goods without saving for the purchase in advance. To some extent, taking out a loan moves up the timing of purchases. At times, it even permits purchases that otherwise would not be possible. For example, if a young person tries to decide between (a) working at a low wage until he has saved up enough to afford to go to college and (b) taking out a loan and going to school now, so his wages would be higher in future years, his optimal choice will often be scenario (b). The time would likely never come when the low-paid individual could save up enough wages to afford to go to college. If the young person strongly desires high wages, his optimal strategy would be to take the loan and hope that his future wages will be high enough to repay it.
If the goal of the economy is to produce an ever-increasing amount of goods and services, growing debt can very much help this growth. This happens because with more debt, more individuals and businesses can afford* to buy the goods and services that they want now. In a sense, debt acts like a promise of the future energy needed to make future goods and services with which the loan can be repaid. Thus, adding debt acts somewhat like adding energy to the economy.
Because of the way debt works, the economy behaves much like a bicycle, with growing debt pulling the system forward. If the economy is growing too slowly, the tendency is to add more debt. This solution works if a rapidly growing supply of cheap-to-produce energy is available; the additional debt can be used to create a growing supply of affordable goods and services. If energy costs are high, the goods and services produced tend to be unaffordable.
Figure 2. The author’s view of the analogy of a speeding upright bicycle and a speeding economy.
A bicycle needs to operate at a fast enough speed (about 7.5 feet per second), or it will fall over. Similarly, the world economy needs to grow fast enough, or it will not be able to meet its obligations, including repayment of debt with interest. If the economy grows too slowly, debt defaults are likely to grow, pulling the economy down.
[7] It looks like it should be possible to work around energy problems with improved technology, but experience suggests that this approach represents only a temporary “fix.”
There are two issues that make improved technology less of a solution than it appears to be. The first is diminishing returns. For example, if a business faces a choice between (a) paying a worker to perform a process and (b) adding a machine that can perform the same process, the business will tend to make the changes that seem to provide the largest cost savings first. At some point, as more technology is added, capital costs can be expected to become excessive relative to the human labor that might be saved. The issue of the diminishing returns to added complexity (which includes growing technology) was pointed out by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies.
The second reason why added technology tends to be only a temporary solution is because it tends to lead to wage disparity. Wage disparity has a tendency to grow because of the greater specialization and larger organizations needed to coordinate the ever-larger projects. The reduced purchasing power of those at the bottom of the hierarchy can eventually bring an economy down because it can lead to commodity prices that are below the level needed to maintain the extraction of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are required to maintain today’s economy.
[8] Renewable energy has been vastly oversold as a solution. What is needed is an ever-increasing quantity of inexpensive energy in forms that match the energy needs of current devices.
The wind and solar story is far different from the story presented in the press. Essentially, wind and solar are extensions of today’s fossil fuel system. The evidence that they are truly beneficial to the economy is shaky at best. We know that if energy sources are truly transferring significant “net energy” to the system, they generally can afford to pay high taxes. The fact that wind and solar require subsidies raises questions regarding whether standard calculations are providing accurate guidance. The press rarely mentions the high tax revenue that high oil prices make possible, worldwide. Tax revenues largely support many oil exporting countries.
Furthermore, the share of the world’s energy supply that wind and solar provide is very low: 1.9% and 0.7%, respectively. They are shown in the almost invisible blue and orange lines at the very top of Figure 3. Fossil fuels contributed 85% of total energy supply in 2017.
Figure 3. World energy consumption divided between fossil fuels and non-fossil fuel energy sources, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
[9] The world economy becomes very fragile as energy limits approach.
Energy limits seem to be affordable energy limits. Oil prices need to be high enough for exporting countries to obtain adequate tax revenue. In addition, oil producers need prices that are high enough so that they can make the necessary reinvestment, as fields deplete. At the same time, energy prices need to be low enough for consumers to afford goods and services made with energy products.
Much of developed world’s infrastructure was built when oil prices were less than $20 per barrel, in inflation-adjusted terms. A rising price of oil will lead to a higher cost of replacing roads and pipelines. If these were built using $20 per barrel oil, even a current price of $40 per barrel would represent a significant cost increase. The world has experienced high oil prices for sufficiently long that we have collectively forgotten how low oil prices were between 1900 and 1970.
Most people know that the earth holds a huge quantity of energy resources. The problem is extracting these resources in a way that is both affordable to consumers and sufficiently high-priced for producers. Falling long-term interest rates between 1981 and 2002 allowed the world economy to tolerate somewhat higher oil and other energy prices than it otherwise could because these falling interest rates permitted ever-lower monthly payments for a given loan amount. For example, if interest rates on a $300,000 mortgage would fall from 5% to 4% on a 25-year mortgage, monthly payments would decrease from $1,753 to $1,584. The lower interest rates would allow more people to buy homes with a given size of mortgage. Indirectly, the lower mortgage rates would permit additional new homes to be built and would allow more inflation in home prices. These benefits would at least partially offset the adverse impact of high energy prices.
Since the natural decline in long term interest rates stopped in 2002, the world economy has become increasingly fragile; the Great Recession took place in 2007-2009, when oil prices spiked and long-term interest rates were already low by historical standards. It was only when the United States’ program of quantitative easing (QE) was put in place that long-term interest rates could fall to even lower levels, helping the economy hide the problem of high energy prices a little longer.
The artificially low interest rates made possible by QE have problems of their own. They tend to inflate asset prices, including both real estate prices and stock market prices. Thus, they tend to create bubbles, which are prone to collapse if interest rates rise. Artificially low interest rates also tend to encourage investment in schemes with very low profit potential. Artificially low interest rates also encourage cross-border investments to try to take advantage of interest rate differences. If interest rate relativities change, the money that quickly would enter a country can almost as quickly leave the country, causing major fluctuations in currency relativities.
Regulators do not understand the role that physics plays in making the economy operate as it does. They assume that they, alone, have the power to make the economy behave as it does. They do not understand how important falling interest rates are in creating growing demand for goods and services. The economy, since 1981, has spent most of its time with falling interest rates; the most recent part of this decline in long-term interest rates has been made possible by QE. These falling interest rates have played a major role in disguising the world’s long-term problem of rising energy costs. These rising energy costs are taking place primarily because the cheapest-to-extract resources were produced first; the resources that are left have higher costs associated with them, for a variety of reasons, such as being farther away from the user, deeper, or needing more advanced extraction techniques. These issues have not been sufficiently offset by improved technology to keep extraction costs low.
US regulators now want to raise interest rates by raising short term interest rates and by selling QE securities. They don’t understand that they are playing with fire. If they can raise interest rates now, they will have the flexibility to lower them later if the economy should later slow excessively. They think that the higher rates will give them more control over the economy. They don’t understand how much of the world’s economy may really be a bubble, created by the decline in interest rates since 1981.
[10] The adverse economic outcome we should be concerned about is collapse, as encountered by prior civilizations when their economies hit limits.
The stories in the press have been so focused on oil “running out” and finding alternatives to oil that few have stopped to ask whether this is really the correct story. Instead of creating a new story, it might have been better to look more closely at history. Based on the historical record, collapse seems to have been associated with situations where populations have outgrown their resource bases. In other words, collapse can be considered an energy consumption per capita problem. The oil problem (and other fuel problems) we are facing today can be viewed as an energy consumption per capita problem, as well.
We know from research that has been done by Peter Turchin, Joseph Tainter, and others how collapse has played out in the past. The situation is different this time, however, because the world economy is very interconnected. Oil consumption depends on electricity consumption, and vice versa. Our financial system is also extraordinarily important. For these reasons, a collapse may occur more quickly than in the past.
Differences Between My View and the Standard View
One of the big differences between the way I see the economy and the standard view of the economy is the answer to the question of “Who is in charge?” The standard view is that politicians and economists are in charge. They have all of the answers. The dire collapse outcomes that afflicted early civilizations could not possibly affect us. We are too smart. We know how to adjust interest rates correctly. We can even make QE available to lower long-term interest rates. We can also add more technology and other complexity than has ever been added in the past.
The answer I see to the question, “Who is in charge?” is, “The laws of physics are in charge.” Politicians play a fairly minor role in directing the fate of economies. If there is not enough energy available of the type needed (inexpensive and matching the current infrastructure), the economy may very well collapse. It is nature and the laws of physics that call most of the shots.
Another big difference between my view and the standard view is the observation that a decrease in oil supply (or total energy supply) affects both the supply and demand of energy. Because both supply and demand are affected, we don’t know which direction oil and other energy prices will move. They may move erratically, as interest rates are adjusted by regulators. A more complex model is needed.
Climate change becomes less of an issue in my view of the future, for several reasons. First, humans don’t really have very much control over the direction of the economy, so talking about anthropogenic climate change doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The laws of physics that allowed human population to rise are also allowing climate change to happen. Second, we seem to be limited in our ability to use renewables to fix the situation. Furthermore, the possibility of collapse in the near future makes the various scenarios that hypothesize the use of large amounts of fossil fuels over many years in the future seem very unrealistic. Perhaps efforts to fix climate change should be focused in new directions, such as planting trees.
Help from Others
The subject matter of this post requires the knowledge of information from a wide range of academic areas. I could not have figured out all of this information on my own. I have been fortunate to have been able to learn from of a wide range of experts. Quite a number of academic groups have seen my articles, and invited me to speak at their conferences. In particular, I have had a long-term involvement with the BioPhysical Economics organization and have spoken at many of their conferences. I have learned much from Dr. Charles Hall, although at times I don’t 100% agree with him.
I have also learned from the many commenters on OurFiniteWorld.com. They form a self-organizing system of people from a wide range of backgrounds. Earlier, my involvement at TheOilDrum.com as “Gail the Actuary” allowed me to get acquainted with a range of researchers, looking at different aspect of the energy problem.
In future posts, I intend to expand further on the ideas presented in this post.
*Here I am using the term afford loosely. What borrowers can actually afford is the current required monthly payments.
World’s oil cushion could be stretched to the limit, IEA warns
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-iea/worlds-oil-cushion-could-be-stretched-to-the-limit-iea-warns-idUSKBN1K20V4
How about “Human Economic Systemagenic Climate Change”? Of course, being subject to the laws of physics, allows us to learn, which is the whole point of attaching labels to things, and having interesting blog articles.
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MSNBC Andrea Mitchell is spreading conspiracy theories about Russia and suggesting they may pull off another 911 attack on America..
You can’t make this stuff up..
https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/1017907599608631297
Another reason for not listening to controlled propaganda and disinformation from the MSM. It’s pretty bad when Putin has more credibility than many within the US Gov’t.
There are many books with that title… this is the one
https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910
I finished this last night… I am going to start into Justin Bieber’s Autobiography later today … I understand that he actually wrote it himself so it should be excellent
That is not what we are referring too.
Looks like a interesting read.
I think the cast we are referring to might be a bit (greater that you can jump) to the left of your vision.
10+ years ago I would have been interested…. I am out of that matrix…. if I come across the New York Times… I use it as fire starter….
I found these quotes from Justin Bieber:
He would probably not last long around OFW.
Hang on … I thought OPEC was trying to crater the price of oil just recently… to drive shale out of business…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-13/trump-may-tap-30-million-barrels-spr-halt-rising-gas-prices
Trump has little choice for the foreseeable future.
Just take a look at reserves.
We shall see about price———
Survival of the richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/survival-of-the-richest-the-wealthy-are-plotting-to-leave-us-behind.html
You can run but you can’t hide..
Alice Friedman had a good post today: Would we be happier as Hunter Gatherers? http://energyskeptic.com/2018/would-we-be-happier-as-hunter-gatherers-than-farming/
No!
I would suggest reading Against the Grain …
I agree with Alice … we definitely would not like the HG lifestyle… because we are pampered…
Special forces soldiers are apparently dropped into the wild with nothing during training… for a few days …. tough guys… I wonder if they’d survive a month though….
The author of that book indicates that it was quite common for those living in settlements to revert to the HG lifestyle … particularly during times of famine, disease or war….
In fact it is argued that walls were to keep tax payers in — as well as attackers out…. the city state needs tax payers….
This is not a story that we hear much about … the narrative has always been that the HG lifestyle was barbaric — early PR 🙂
Of course those people still knew how to live as HG…. and life in the city state was harsh (they were not as well fed as those in the hinterland … were exposed to diseases… and lived in abject poverty)….
Other research quoted in this book indicates that the brains of today’s domesticated animals are significantly smaller than those of their wild counterparts….
I wonder if anyone has done research comparing the brain of a modern day HG with that of a coach potato.
I remember reading that brains of HGs were larger than today. I suppose that they had to remember a whole lot of detail, because they didn’t have maps. At what time of year should they be where, to get the best food? How should they navigate where they want to go, without maps and trails (unless they made the trails, but they would probably grow over quickly)? How could they avoid wild animals (and fend them off at night)? Which plants would be safe to eat? How should they start fires with biomass, and how should they make tools to start these fires? If they used flints, they needed to know where to find the flint. How do they care for minor injuries?
It does sound like HGs were Being All That They Could Be! A very challenging and rewarding way of living.
Far better than doing a Scott Nearing and digging in the ground with a hoe produced in a factory in China….
Strange how most people romanticize the organic farmer … when in fact the farmer put us on the road to ruin!
The farmers went to war with those living somewhat sustainable lives…. they had to be wiped out … so there land could be tilled….. and the PR machine demonized them…. it still does….
Scott Nearing = Poster DelusisTANI for all that went wrong with humans.
There’s even a movie about this
Agriculture was an investment that only took a few millenia to pay off for the non-elite.
Off topic, but a kudos to FE for referencing “Against the Grain” by James Scott. If we are going backwards this may have some relevance and it does reinforce Gail’s frequent mention of the importance of fire. I found the references to governance formation and the need for grain cultivation which made tax collection doable enlightening. Scott also has some references to temperature variations as they relate to CO2 levels which some might fine interesting.
It is a beautiful and changing world and now I must re read Turchin. This is such an interesting site, thanks Gail.
Dennis L.
I’m a “Against The Grain” fan.
Sasha Lilley is a very advanced anarchist, and C.S. Soong is a great interviewer.
I have the audio book “Against the Grain” sitting on the table next to me. I bought it on FE’s recommend. I figured a a rugged individualist like FE this ought to be safe. But NO advanced anarchist! Those Cunucks tried burning D.C. you just can’t trust them.
Thanks! I am glad you like the site. I ordered “Against the Grain.” Sounds like it is worth reading.
By the way, I am planning to attend one day of International Conference on Complex System in Cambridge Massachusetts on Tuesday, July 24. Both Peter Turchin and Carmen Reinhart will be speaking that day. The conference runs all week, but the only economic-related talks were on Tuesday. (I was able to negotiate a one-day rate.) Hopefully, I will be able to meet both of them. If nothing else, I can hand out a few business cards. I have a daughter living in the Boston area, and my husband and I had already planned to go up there to visit about that time.
Sounds like it is worth reading
Might be a bit on the advanced left for you Gail.
But there are guests you will like.
I’m a long time listener and supporter.
Friction …. don’t underestimate friction …
Against the Grain discusses the firewood issue… apparently once you cut all the trees within 12km of your location … it was not worth the effort to haul wood from any further…. that implies energy out … was not much more than energy in…
This is one reason settlements were on waterways… boats overcome friction…
Yep, that’s well documented since at least Antiquity, and likely going back to Bronze age and before that ~4-7k BC to which have less direct evidence, but it’s more or less agreed upon..
Waterways in nature work as corridors (express ways) through landscape, people followed animals to hunt. Later in age of more permanent or at least seasonal settlement they started clearing up parallel to waterways. Zoom, zoom, few thousands years and you have got pan continent network of waterways depicted on Greek, Roman maps, where settlements are not the primary objective of the maps (because their stone tiny highways could be cut off by Barbarians), that changed finally only in ~17-18th centuries AD.. since then the maps are predominantly concerned with city to city communication, plus addon layers depicting waterways, agriculture, forestry, mineral resources, ..)..
Trump reportedly considers tapping emergency oil supplies to tame crude prices
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/trump-said-to-mull-tapping-u-s-oil-reserve-as-pump-prices-rise
in a post an hour ago, I said Trump might be the start of something big
months ago i said he could be the sideswipe that nobody saw coming
if he flogs off the reserves for short term ”looking good”—then what?
One would hope that this is not an indication of a bottle neck…. and a desperate attempt to keep up supply …. I bought green bananas yesterday — what a tragedy that would be
Maybe Trump realizes how “close to the edge” we really are.
But at the same time, he tries to block Iranian exports.
Will Tesla Be ‘Tripp’ed’ Up By A Whistleblower?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/07/12/will-tesla-be-tripped-up-by-a-whistleblower/#36d47f118660
Initially I did not pay attention to it, guessed it was just pre-summit stunt, and PR for the home audience (“taxpayer”), but if you actually look at it, he really is enough buffoon to spill the beans out there, especially in the concluding part.
And on German TV in opening remarks:
It’s a pretty good point in my opinion. Why should we protect Germany from Russia militarily if Germany decides to expose itself to Russian reprisal through reliance on Russian gas?
Stopping the protection may make more sense than forcing them to buy gas they can’t afford (and we can’t ship profitably).
Well, firstly we don’t know if the fact Germany/+NATO(European leg) have been paying way less throughout the decades was a bug or a very deliberate feature. Since one of the working theories is that the owners of global CBs cartel are predominantly European based bunch and the US is just the host animal – bully.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but with posting the video aimed more on the surprising fact, such geopolitical matters (energy over alliances or trade) are now exposed in the plain open like another football match. Similarly, when watching that, Google offered me link to very cheesy msm hit piece on demonique Russia supposedly meddling in 2016, but to my another surprise-astonishment, they concluded it basically by voicing and mixing the critics of deep state with old intelligence honcho basically admitting, deep state ok as long as have to face such treacherous enemy..
If you stand back a bit, that’s all very astonishing development and ~1963 style riot material, which sadly never happened. Evidently we are getting closer to some resolution or at least new temporary era.. when such stuff starts sprinkle out..
Good to be around.
Not worth watching but for some of the buffs rewind it to the last third or so..
The Germans need to decide which ring to kiss … which master offers the most … they cannot kiss both
Surely you are joking?
Two comments:
1. I am sure that the Nordstream issue is about wanting to get rid of Russia as a competitor for selling natural gas to Germany. US natural gas prices have been too low for a long time, and US producers have been wanting to export LNG to Europe for a long time, to drive the US natural gas price up (because of scarcity). The latest US natural gas price is about $2.75 per MCF. In energy value, this equates to a cost of about $16.50 per barrel of oil. (So any sensible person would substitute natural gas for oil, where ever it is an option.) If I look at BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy, Germany’s average price of imported natural gas was $4.93 per MCF in 2016 and $5.62 per MCF in 2017. The problem is that shipping natural gas as LNG is expensive–I forget the price range, but I am fairly certain that it is generally in the $4 per MCF range. So, just to cover the current price in the US, the German price would need to be at least $2.75 + $4.00, or $6.75. Back a few years ago (when oil prices were higher), Germany’s natural gas price was in the $10+ range. If it were in the $10 range, then the US could perhaps sell the gas for $6.00 per MCF for natural gas, and still pay the shipping charges of $4, based on the $10 total cost. And of course, getting rid of some of the excess supply at $6.00 would also drive up the US prices, so that natural gas producers could get a higher US price. I am sure that a $6 price in the US would make natural gas producers a whole lot happier as well.
2. Regarding all NATO countries spending more on defense, the US is a big supplier of armaments. This would help fuel US exports.
Yes, but this reveals and confirms the wider “deny/block” powerplay on global scale, for example why is necessary to block Qatar/Iran natgas pipeline to the ClubMed via Syria etc. Not mentioning the whole charade of 2001, explainable only as an over reaction to early peakers (threat of hard peak prior ~2010), or perhaps cunning pre-positioning of energy control domination before allowing the final hockey stick stage occurring n China since 2000s..
Very interesting thoughts…
No doubt, the chaotic attractor we have been living for the last 40-50 years (probably since the end of the gold standard) may be coming to an end.
Debt becomes too high for homeostasis to keep adjusting, and we´ll suddenly jump into another, different attractor with different rules: kind of a different world.
But why should that be bad? Its the kind of event that we may need to finally discover a profitable way for nuclear fusion. Or may be the system is ‘waiting’ for that event to happen.
That would mean the end of energy problems forever, a new non finite World 🙂
A major problem is that even if we figured out tomorrow how to do nuclear fusion, that does not create an all-electric economy for us. Also, it doesn’t scale up quickly, based on past experience. So a miracle tomorrow likely cannot fix our problems.
nuclear fusion is kinda like the speed of light- a constant.
Viewed from 1950, or 2018, it is always 20 years away.
“That would mean the end of energy problems forever” – I hope that is a joke. This seems to be a common misconception folks have about energy. Once the devices (solar, nuclear and wind turbines) are built they will last “forever”. So all we have to to is build these magical devices and revel in an electrical utopia.
Secondly, fusion is essentially electricity., it does not replace what liquid fuels do for us. It does not build the infrastructure we need to convert everything to run on electricity; if that is even possible. So, it is not the end of our energy problems. And certainly not “forever”.
there are certain sectors of human kind who will never understand that you can’t build a tarmac road from the output of a fusion reactor.
and if you cant build roads, then EVs are a waste of resources
but keep trying Greg
you are missing the important point that fusion will produce abundant electrical energy that can be used to do presently unprofitable operations, like converting CO2 and H2O into methane. Methane (CH4) is a starting point to make other hydrocarbons. One could make a synthetic light hydrocarbon liquid fuel, to fly planes. I doubt that one would go all the way to asphalt, but i recall we still have an abundance of the heavy hydrocarbons that can be used to make roads and parking lots, roofing tar, etc.
all or at least some of that is possible–maybe,
however you miss the big hurdle(s)
fusion power is so far a theory that has not yet been proven in commercial practice.
that being the case it seems unlikely to be made practical in less than 50 years on a world scale—and in that i think i’m being optimistic
but lets say it’s feasible
A functioning industrial environment such as we have now is entirely supported by fossil fuels–just as are conventional fission reactors
We cannot build fusion reactors without our current industries
We might–just might–have 30 years of such an system left —not before ff’s run out, but before fighting over whats left destroys any sophisticated industrial system. There will be no post war rebuilding next time.
The current antics of the USA might just be the first shocks of that–Herr Trump is the product of a desperate delusional denialist people, who have unrealistic expectations of a future dreamworld and want it NOW—let alone find the resources to build fusion reactors. When the Don doesn’t come through with his promises, all hell is going to break loose. Because the economy will nosedive.
A nation has just so much resource available–diverting stuff to built new reactors might just tip the nation into total destitution—consuming itself in order to sustain itself
(eating its own tail–to explain it more simply)
This isnt the 1940s all over again, and the manhattan project—tho many see it in that way. They are going to be sadly, badly disillusioned.
If you get through those problems, you are left with actually supplying food to everybody, from depleted land/.water and a population that’s going to hit 9 or 10 bn if left unchecked.
Other than that—I wish you the best of luck
feel free to correct anything Ive said—I want to be wrong as much as you want me to.
hold my hand Luis and we’ll jump together
are you familiar with the attraction of gravitational forces on Wile Coyote?
It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop. Kinetic energy is a good analogy for what’s coming. That’s why all efforts are focused on maintaining momentum.
It’s the stop that kills.
am glad you pointed that out before i hit the ground
coulda been very messy
‘That’s why all efforts are focused on maintaining momentum.’
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is why — when we do smash into the wall — the CBs will not ride to the rescue again — they will have used up every trick in the book trying to keep us on the rails and rolling….
The next time around there will be no electric shock paddles to the chest…. this heart attack will be massive, and fatal
Very good point!
Koombaya to that Luis… I am with you…. let’s do it!
BTW – are you snorting ketamine? It has this kind of effect….
I have really enjoyed how Gail has gradually refined and extended her understanding of this central issue over the years. This article feels like a significant step forward in developing the model. The big unknown as I see it lies in the systems capacity to fragment as the collapse progresses. As they say, the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed. The wildcard in my mind would be if the USA or another major oil importer like China or Japan collapsed first, taking out its demand from the world market and freeing up spare capacity for a period of time for other importers. The other big question for each nation is the ability to come together and adapt to challenges, versus fragmenting and potentially falling into conflict. Cultural homogeneity may be key here, giving places like Japan an advantage while the USA seems more likely to balkanise. For industrial societies that do hold together politically there is a large amount of fossil fuel demand that could be eliminated in favour of maintaining basic necessities to sustain life at a subsistence level.
Thanks for your comments. I have been thinking that I need to pull things together in some form. Putting my thoughts together in this form at least gives a first pass at something that might be expanded into a book. (I am not certain that this piece, the way it stands, would be in a book, however.)
A major problem with a book is the long time-frame needed to write and publish the book. Another issues is all of the “hoops” one normally has to jump through in the process, especially with the large number of images involved. The comments on this post (here and on forums such as Facebook and LinkedIn) give ideas as to what topics need to be covered at greater length.
I think all of the tariff changes reflect the underlying issue that there no longer are enough cheap-to-extract fossil fuels to go around. Some countries need to be eliminated from the competition, if a partial system is to continue to operate. The US sees itself as ahead at this time. If it can play King of the Mountain, and push others down, perhaps it can last a bit longer. The EU and Japan are clearly very weak, with their lack of fossil fuels. China has a major problem with coal. The cost of extraction has risen with depletion; it also is very polluting, both nearby and with respect to CO2. China likely cannot handle the debt it currently has. The Middle East is likely to see political collapse, with low oil prices. But how long could the US last without the others? I don’t think very long. Where would we obtain all of our needed replacement parts, for example? At a minimum, we need Canada with the US, for its bitumen.
“The Middle East is likely to see political collapse, with low oil prices. But how long could the US last without the others? I don’t think very long. Where would we obtain all of our needed replacement parts, for example? At a minimum, we need Canada with the US, for its bitumen.”
The global eCONomic system is too interconnected for it to all stay together if one of the pieces is removed, let alone a MAJOR player. Just look at all the turmoil a little country like Greece caused the markets when it threatened to default on it’s EU loans a few years ago. The US collapsing would be Greece x1000.
I’m not entirely convinced this is true but the naïvety of most politicians and economists in regards to energy and money / debt is very disconnected. The Bush / Cheney administration clearly knew that energy security is badly needed and the importance for the US to gain that advantage is pivotal to how long we can hold the proverbial mountain top. Granted I was no fan of the admin (I hate them all because they all lie and steal irregardless of party) and in Bush they lied their way into Iraq after all of Cheney’s secret WH energy meetings with the big oil. They tried to make it a war against “evil doers and terrorists” when everyone knows it was about the oil. As a result the narrative was lost and ultimately the objective was lost due to the truth being lost.
The US at the end of the day doesn’t care about Israel it’s nothing more than a landbased aircraft carrier for the US to dominate the ME in pursuit of oil flows / security. When we go to war with Iran and we will it will be for the oil as it is always about the oil, it will be framed as something else. If the peons knew how temporary and futile everything is at this point there would be torches, pitchforks, and a massive purging in the streets tonight.
Tic Toc
“If the peons knew how temporary and futile everything is at this point there would be torches, pitchforks, and a massive purging in the streets tonight.”
And that’s why the US Gov’t purchased several billion rounds of hollow point bullets just for that scenario when the plebs took out their pitchforks and yelled: “THERE THEY ARE”
Hence the absolute need to keep BAU going as long as possible no matter what it takes. Bear in mind this latest move is 2 days worth of BAU here at home – every little bit is a day longer. I’m sure TPTB are aware that their troops and police require massive amounts of fuel to fight against the hoards – case in point in Iraq it was 16-17 gallons per day per troop. It won’t be long before it comes down to ground level.
In response to billions of hollow pointed rounds I speak as a former USMC 2311 (ammo tech) bullets are heavy even small rounds in quantity. They have to be stored and distributed. The average grunt carries enough to last about 10 minutes in a straight up gun battle. They will have to stay close to their supplies. The military and the police will be impotent with a country in turmoil and rightly targeting them if they make the poor choice of defending the elites. Best to starve with the rest of us.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-13/trump-may-tap-30-million-barrels-spr-halt-rising-gas-prices
No doubt there will be a few weeks… just prior to the end of BAU… where riots and extreme violence grab hold of the US…. and the bullets will fly…. in a last ditch effort to extend civilization a little bit longer.
The positive here is that because BAU will be alive and kicking…. we will get to watch all this on the tee vee…. It will be very entertaining.
Good points!
Think about Deutsche Bank failing. That seems to come up frequently now.
the bottom line is:
that all nations (politicians anyway) think its an economy/trade/money problem
whereas its an energy problem, and no politico dare admit to that even if they know it—so they to repeat the ”economy” mantra over and over
Basic rule of “leadership” never mention a problem you do not have a good solution for, it only makes you look incompetent and lands people fears and anger on ones self. For example Jimmy Carter and his sweater.
which is why i was self employed for 40 years
Yea, I was self employed at least that long also. Kinda separates the men from the boys—-
i went that way for 2 reasons
i was the worlds worst employee
and the worlds worst employer
dont leave much choice does it—but you feel a lot safer going it alone
“i was the worlds worst employee
and the worlds worst employer”
You’d have to come good to get past me. Just the same, there were very small interludes when I was a good employee–working as site manager for a community gallery and teaching their summer school. I was a good employer running my own nonprofit, paying the employees the same as myself, trusting them implicitly, admittedly dependent on their skills and judgment… The strong/weak leader.
I guess I should stop mentioning the problem our self-organizing economy is having then.
Related to killing the messenger bearing the bad news.
It’s fine to keep mentioning the dilemma, as a service to that tiny group of people who want to listen, read and talk about it. But don’t expect to get much recognition from the controllers, the elites, the media or the masses.
Doubtless the controllers already know the extent of the dilemma but are not about to come clean about it. If they have any solutions prepared, they are going to try to implement them surreptitiously, clandestinely, on the sly, while keeping everybody else distracted.
Running out of affordable energy is one thing, but running out of hope for a decent future is even worse. What happens if all those average decent hard-working people are made aware of the stark facts and they come to the conclusion that there is no point in being decent or working hard anymore?
This is one reason for not trying to sell a best-selling book on the subject. A few university-educated intellectuals can discuss the dilemma fine. Trying to transfer the knowledge to the general public has a great deal of perils attached.
yup
i’m thinking of going over to the other side
Tim Groves,
“Doubtless the controllers already know the extent of the dilemma but are not about to come clean about it. ”
I don’t see how they can understand that which is beyond understanding. They can guess, or they can arrogantly plunge ahead with mistaken views they, by definition, are saddled with. Just like the rest of us. Well, at least some of us know we don’t and can’t know.
The masses are at least part of a self organizing system, and their being better informed would nudge the system in a perhaps saner direction. Which is where the notion of beauty might help. When faced with a dilemma, follow beauty.
People can understand when they don’t have enough money at the end of the month. In a way, that is all that they need to know.
When we have lots of spare energy, we can add lots of do-good programs. When energy supplies are scarce, the leaders who get elected are ones who advocate getting rid of these do-good programs. They are no longer affordable. Nature seems to try to provide an outcome (as much as possible) in a way that perhaps some can live, even if not everyone.
The financial world doesn’t behave logically. As Keynes said [more or less] ” The market can be fickle far longer than you can stay solvent” The federal governments can raise money through spending theoretically without limit. When push come to shove, that is what they will do. Bet on it.
Anything for one more day of BAU.
“Spending theoretically without limit” does, in fact, have limits. Venezuela has reached these limits. A lot of other countries may reach these limits as well.
That’s why I said “theoretically”. Real resources are the limits. Somehow the financial world seems to get away without having to face limits [?]. It’s all down to insurance schemes which is what derivatives and other financial instruments are getting money out of. $583 TRILLION is the latest figure put onto it [although an earlier guesstimate was $1.4Quadrillion] It makes the $29Trillion spent by the Fed from 2008 -10 a trifle. The whole business is Off the books which is why it’s all guesswork.
It would be simple to crash it. Just declare the whole game off limits and unclaimable, like a jubilee. Of course we don’t have any government with the balls to take action. But no bank is too big to fail, when the time comes, and not too far off now.
“People can understand when they don’t have enough money at the end of the month. In a way, that is all that they need to know.”
Point taken. Maybe that’s the whole story. I don’t know. But since people do just about nothing now that could help with resilience–which they might if they saw beauty and status in their grandparents’ more durable lifestyles–ignoring the beauty in that earlier lifestyle could be forfeiting an opportunity to help make for general resilience in “hard” times. If you don’t talk about those hard times, and associate beauty with the “solution,” we have fewer rather than more people working for resilience in social structures.
I have very little hope that working on resilience gets us anywhere.
Some people believe that if they personally, can have solar panels, it will help them. I can almost see that; at least I can understand why they might believe that, even if it won’t likely be true for most people.
Not solar panels at all. More like your starchy root crops cooked over a coal stove, leaving trees be, walking to places, demolishing nothing, building nothing, allowing abortion (which can be done safely through planning). These are places that are being thrown off the bus anyway. They have no other option than to love “scarcity.” If they see the beauty in scarcity, that would help them to adapt. Cuba’s is high society compared to the lifestyle I’m recommending. But Cuba points (pointed) minimally to the implied direction. Cuba didn’t adequately celebrate the beauty of scarcity.
Artleads, thank you. I like your ideas and I see the intention behind them is to try to build “resilience” so that if and when the world economic system crumbles, there will be national or regional or local community structures in place to provide people with the basics for a life that’s worth living.
I think this sort of thing may work in some places and even if it doesn’t work, I think it’s still worth making the effort, just in case. We—the general “we”—may think we know how things are going to pan out, but in practice most of us are going to be surprised with what the future brings. In any case, the futility of an exercise is no excuse for not giving it our best shot.
Tim Groves,
Thanks! Something like that. A boss of mine once said, “The universe rewards effort.” As far as I can define anything (including the universe ;-)), this is true.
Correction: “…so that if and when the world economic system crumbles, there will be national or regional or local community structures in place to provide people with the basics for a life that’s worth living.”
I don’t claim to have a good take on the Leonardo Dome. But it’s a fairly convenient analog for the following: If you can’t remove a stick without the whole collapsing, we wonder why not rig up a replacement stick for a faulty one, replace the pressure of the faulty stick by hand while moving it and sliding a replacement in, all without leaving the dome unsupported. But this might not be the exact issue.
Somehow, a large portion of the system has been pushed aside so that the system can work without it. That’s the section I’m interested in. There’s no loss to the system (the dome) by these marginal places consuming much less. (Apparently, it leaves more for the core itself to consume.) If these places can be made viable (and “attractive”!) people in the mainstream economy might be inclined to adapt some of their culture just the right way that it would come in like a replacement for faulty dome sticks. (A process that is self organizing, of course.)
In that sense, the above quote might still be true.
I think that Trump is trying to move in the direction you are talking about.
It is hard to go backward (move away from globalization and remove protection for the disabled) for example, but these are ways money (really energy) can be saved so that the rest of the population can go on longer.
I was talking to someone today who told me that the two new buttons that the handicapped can use to open the doors to the restrooms will cost $3,000 apiece (one for the men’s room, one for the women’s room). If that requirement is removed, it will make building and renovating buildings like churches cheaper.
If affirmative action is removed for schools, children can attend schools closer to their homes. Some will be able to walk to school. Bus rides, on average, will be shorter, so fuel will be saved. Schools will be more segregated, but desgregation was a benefit of cheap oil.
I am sure that there a bunch of going-backwards ideas like these that would save energy. But once people have come to see the benefit, they will have a terrible time adapting to a more unequal world.
Getting rid of globalization means much less choice of products, and higher prices for what are available. Will people accept this?
i can’t think of any physical improvement in human living standards that have not required energy input
here in UK, the disabled have electric buggies if they can walk—which is to be applauded of course
but at the same time the energy needed to do that is colossal on a national scale—eventually the means to do this will run out
meant can’t walk—sorry
I don’t see “unequal” as a problem. It exists in a major way now. So does inequity, which I understand is where the real problem lies. If we can get rid of some inequity, things might work better. Equality is affected by value judgments, after all. But I haven’t looked into the exact definitions of “equity.”
I like what Tim Groves says here: “…there will be national or regional or local community structures in place to provide people with the basics for a life that’s worth living.”
A life worth living is what I see as the main thing.
Equitable segregation might be where people control their own land?
That’s true Norm. Saying we have an energy problem sounds rather terminal.
which it is of course
Gail, you say “we need Canada with the US, for its bitumen”. I am quite sure Canada has no choice in this. Canada is with the US like it or not. No Chinese, Russian, nor EU troops will be allowed in Canada. It is also in the interests of Canada to have an intact function neighbor to the south.
Maybe we should start to think about blocks. US/Canada, China/Russia+Iran, ??/KSA.
You kinda got to lose nationalism– it is collapsing.
ism’s are generally bad- racism, sexism, etc– well even the diminished can get a glimpse.
Pools of energy resource controlled by people with weapons will be the order of the day.
The dictator of US (who is that FE?) controlling Canada’s energy
The dictator of China controlling Russian and Iranian energy
The dictator of ??? controlling KSA energy
Where would Central and South America fit? China is very present there.
I think you are correct about blocks of countries that might be allies.
I think Europe and Japan are likely losers in this.
I work in the oil and gas industry in a none elite role and had the pleasure of meeting a former executive who at one time worked in the Alberta oilsands. This of course perked my interest and had to ask him how many years did he think there was left of oil to extract up there? He replied about 20 years left. Wow, I thought too myself that’s it and then he replied that the Alberta oilsands was a strategic reserve of the United States. If anything should happen to the Middle East that is where America will go for oil. It is why all of the American oil companies are up there. Needless to say I was floored.
so much for fusion plans then
Perhaps fusion is a dish that is best served cold?
I found this on Off-Guardian:
In this 1998 interview, MIT science writer Eugene Mallove discusses what he alleges was an intentional bid by vested interests to bury the genuine and revolutionary discovery of cold fusion. Far from being “pathological science”, as most mainstream physicists allege, Mallove claims cold fusion is a provable and reproducible reality that could potentially provide almost limitless and virtually free clean energy for the world.
Mallove was murdered during a house break-in in 2004.
https://youtu.be/avpoIAKvYmU
Apparently, Mallove was beaten and suffocated to death by a man who he evicted from his property for non payment of rent and two associates.
Brutal!
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-eugene-mallove-murder-trial-20141003-story.html
I wonder how he comes to the twenty year figure … price is everything
May I interrupt the opprobrium directed at Pauliver…. with a few words….
I’d like to say….. uh hum…. I’d like to say….. (snicker snicker)…. I’d just like to say …. f789 you Pauliver….
You know why?
Because in the physical world when I encounter someone like you I have to grin and bear the f789ing idi iocy the spews out the blow hole…
Because to question the id iot — results in bad feelings… because there is no questioning a green groopie DelusisTANI… they know it all … they have all the facts… and they get pisssed if one tosses a bit of fact or logic that challenges their beliefs…
Madame Fast sometimes asks me why we have to shut the f789 up in these situations… and listen while a DelusiSTANI pours pissss and shiiiit on us…. and I say Madame Fast…. we don’t want this to end up in a fight do we… and if we challenged everyone who thrives on this BS…. I’d bust my hand and I could not type/work… and you’d ditch me and I’d be left dumpster diving out back of Ferg Burger to stay alive …. She gets that.
Alas we are not in the physical world… so all this pent up frustration can be unleashed… with no consequences.
Isn’t it great?
Tesla workers forced to walk through raw sewage.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-workers-were-reportedly-ordered-to-walk-through-raw-sewage-2018-7
A pity we no longer have rule of law. This is illegal in so many ways.
Pingback: The world’s weird self-organizing economy | Achaques e Remoques
There will be an equilibrium.
After most of the world’s less economically productive people are downsized, survivors will form a new normal.
The equilibrium could be very low, however. It could be at zero. Or it could be at a few hunter-gatherers.
This is a fascinating question what will the world on the other side of the bottle neck look like? Alas, I think it is too complex a situation for anyone to predict. We can of course, spin stories which offer ideas about the outcome.
I expect humans will still have the use of metals and chemical poisons for warfare. Land possession will be possession of the means of production of food. There will still be a hierarchy of rich over poor. With poor hived off in the various traditional methods.
So the economy fluctuates? Venezuela, Greece, PR have fallen behind and are unlikely to return to the mainstream. Some other places are getting into the mainstream. The global economy has to grow and is growing. The deterioration of the fuel economy means that the mainstream is struggling even while growing. What will be the point where the mainstream stops growing? Will everything fall apart, or will there be a way to prevent that?
BP questions pace of US tight oil growth as productivity fades –Platts
“It does perhaps suggest that the very rapid increases in tight oil productivity that characterized much of the initial phase of the shale revolution may be beginning to fade,” Dale said.
“More recently, increasing bottlenecks within the supply chain, together with signs that investors are becoming less willing to finance continued high levels of investment, suggest there may be some limits to the speed with which tight oil can grow going forward,” he said.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/061318-bp-questions-pace-of-us-tight-oil-growth-as-productivity-fades
it doesn’t need to grow…
demand will be shrinking in the 2020s…
the world won’t be able to afford to use more oil…
Yea right..Asia’s per capita income has increased five fold over the last 30 years..And even in Africa the world worst preforming economy, their per capita incomes have doubled..
Lack of supply as prices increase will retard use.
But the cheap stuff is about gone.
I’m going to have my AI do the hunting and gathering for me.
ha!
we can joke about AI once we realize its futility…
They have those now? What does one cost?
Hunting and gathering? They must have an app for that!
+++++++++
I’ll just need somewhere to plug in my smartphone post BAU…..
AI does not have the will to life that has gotten us here. Even if it could have a will of its own, why would it act in a way that benefits humans? We would be considered useless eaters to a machine.
Let’s get BD’s excellent post up on this new article…. let’s pound the DPs over the head with this …. not that it will do any good…. this goes in one ear … past the rocks… and out the other….
Prepping is futile
Myth: Well-prepared individuals, groups, and communities will survive our impending collapse and maintain healthy, fulfilling, and productive lives in its aftermath.
Reality: Those who survive our collapse will be those who can obtain sufficient life sustaining essentials—especially clean water and food—on a continuous basis, both during and after collapse. Those who store large quantities of these essentials and those who attempt to produce food, either individually or in communities, will be easy targets for the vast majority who have neither the foresight to store nor the skills to produce. No matter how remote or secluded your sanctuary, somebody will know about it; and they will come to call when they become desperate; and they will be well armed and devoid of compassion. You can prepare for a last stand, but you cannot prepare for post-collapse survival. Post-collapse Life Will Be Preferable to Our Industrial Lifestyle Paradigm
Myth: Industrialization has brought nothing but misery and degradation to the human race; our quality of life (and spiritual wellbeing) will improve substantially in a post-collapse world.
Reality: The post-collapse lifestyle awaiting the few who survive will, under the best of circumstances, share many attributes with pre-Columbian America. Unfortunately, the realities associated with subsistence level existence bear little semblance to the Hollywood accounts. Those who anxiously await our post-collapse world will be disappointed, assuming they live to experience it. The fact that nobody is opting to jettison the amenities afforded by an industrialized way of life in favor of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle today should be sufficient proof that our future way of life is not something to be anticipated. Industrialism is not inherently “evil” or immoral; it is simply physically impossible going forward.
It will be the haves vs the have-not’s and the have-not’s are typically not the friendly type but instead the ruthless type. Or to put it another way “when people lose everything and have nothing else to lose….THEY LOSE IT !”.
If someone is a DP’er best not let on cause people will target you when angry, violent people are desperate.
I’m still determined to prep…
yep, store enough supplies so I can live 500 more years…
and you, Jan?
Same as ever. Well defended high ground always wins.
Only if you have s**t loads of ammo to run a small army.
Same as ever. Well defended high ground always wins.
Then look at this — can you find solar? I need a f789ing Hubble Telescope to find it… and I have pretty good eyesight….
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/world-energy-consumption-to-2017-bp-fossil-fuel-other.png
To ramp solar:
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
The world consumes approximately 3 CMO annually from all sources. The table [10] shows the small contribution from alternative energies in 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
“To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” according to Thomas Graedel at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. So renewable energy resources like windmills and solar PV can not ever replace fossil fuels, there’s not enough of many essential minerals to scale this technology up. http://energyskeptic.com/2014/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/
And people wonder why they post here and walk away with their entrails dragging on the ground behind them…
How many articles does Gail have to write on this topic before it gets through to you MORE ons?
Solar is NOT a solution — it is nothing more than a gesture to convince billions of id i ots… that there is life after fossil fuels.
The Delusistanis are within the gates again. They are flocking to this post like members of the Spanish Inquisition around a heretic.
You can feel it to eh….
I think they sacrificed their stewpppidddest mostly useless and re ta rded member… Pauliver… to test our resolve..
Pauliver… we will send you back … with a very disturbing story for your mates….. you’ll want to tell them to keep their fingers away from the fence
http://bothisbetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Scary-Vicious-Dog-Breeds-e1461657121261.jpg
https://mundabor.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/vicious-dog-attack.jpg
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/vicious_pitbull.jpg
Yes, by all means, let’s release the hounds. As soon as they finish their yoga practice.
Then we can bet on which of the interlopers will make it back over the fence in one piece.
https://healthiack.com/wp-content/uploads/playful-dog.jpg
Outstanding analysis as usual.I disagree about the need for long term fossil fuel usage to cause abrupt climate change. We already have enough CO2 (410 part per million) and other heat trapping gases in the atmosphere to create feedbacks which will collapse civilization.
Yes Al Gore stated in his propaganda movie that sea levels would rise 7M by the early 2020’s….
Maybe his fellow eco warrior Leo did not watch that movie?
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/realestate/an-idea-hits-the-beach.html
Sorry to tell you but we’ve burned just about all the FF we are ever going to burn …. and nothing has happened.
Don’t sweat it
Paul…
4 parts per 10,000…
OMG!
what will we do if it gets to 5 parts per 10,000?
we’re doomed (to perpetual sarcasm)…
current OFW Paul World Rankings:
1 Paul McCartney
2 Slow Paul
3 paulliverstravels
4 Paul West
When Earth ‘s population gets down under a billion, I predict that CO2 emissions will drop significantly.
Sorry! colossal.
Trump seems to be at odds with a self organizing economy.
He criticized Germany at the Nato summit for buying Russian nat gas and sending billions of dollars to Russia, which is an enemy, and then the U.S has to spend billions of dollars to protect Germany against Russia.
The U.S is on top of this losing billions of dollar in trade with Germany, while Germany is building another gas pipe line to Russia, the Nord Stream 2 that will double the capacity of nat gas to Germany from Russia.
The U.S House and Senate voted to impose sanctions on European companies that finance Nord Stream 2 by cutting them off the dollar payment system…which equals death for energy companies since energy is priced in dollars.
Merkel said that she lived in East Germany while it was a Soviet Union satellite…but today Germany is united and independent.
So where does Drumpf expect Germany to source their gas from ?, if not from Russia. Certainly not from the US, if you believe Art Bermans research. Drumpf is a colossol buffoon.
Trump is no more a buffoon than Hillary, Obama, Clinton, Bush Jr., Bush Sr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice etc. Their job is to put lipstick on the pig. If they can rig the system in their favor and make money doing that….great for them and their lackeys. Unlike many folks I think fondly of Jimmie Carter. I think Jimmie genuinely cared about the country and its people. Well, look how history treated him. We are a cruel and barbaric people at heart. We even routinely re-enact horrific wars of the past. Down to the period correct uniforms too I might add!
the don is on a resource grab
he must divert commerce/resources to the usa while they are still available to do so
As should every country.
true
but not every country would blackmail another into buying baby formula
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html
Bingo, and that’s likely another additional argument for not expecting any over night reset of the situation. Yes, it’s possible such displayed boorish buffoonery in the plain open and the gallery of peculiar US admin staffers suggest the execution of that plan for last minute resource grab will fail on the grounds of sheer incompetence.
However, I guesstimate there is enough time to have a sequence of soonish arival of GFC v2.0 (trimming Chinese wings and kicking out some more countries out of the consumer loop like Venezuela), while the West circles the wagons and stumbles around like headless chick for upto next ~15yrs. Only then with proper GFC v3.0, under the weight of it all the grand finale doom comes around..
Jimmie Carter, of course, did not realize that putting solar panels on the White House and wearing a sweater would not be enough to do much of anything. In fact, this “solution” would have an adverse result on the electric grid. But his heart was in the right place.
Or perhaps this was the beginning of the ‘solar will save us’ PR campaign …
You are probably right.
Carter seems like a nice enough person … compared to the swamp monsters listed above….
However he – like them — was not much more than a figurehead… a minion…. a senior manager… taking orders from the real power.
Which is a good thing. The people and their elected officials are not capable of nor responsible enough nor smart enough… to run an empire….
Dala djupgas. Do you have an update, DJ?
Never heard of it. Googling seems to place it somewhere between hopium and fraud.
Trump is exactly the type of person who is elected when energy per capita is not rising sufficiently. There are a lot of unhappy voters. They want changes. Someone who is sort of obnoxious is fine for that purpose. We had Hitler in Nazi Germany.
I wasn’t aware you grew up in Nazi Germany, Gail.
By the way, given a choice between Adolf and Donald; which one would you rather have dinner with?
Personally, I would rather have tea with Mussolini.
By “We,” I meant the world, not the US. I was thinking about saying Reagan, because he represented a departure from the many “nice” presidents we had before him. It was under him that financialization started taking place. It was at that time that the beneficiary of all gains started to be businesses and the top 1% (or perhaps 10%) of workers. The total return of the economy started falling. A different “squeezing out” process began. Non-elite workers suddenly started getting squeezed out.
I just remembered that the Economist has a labor force participation chart for women.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/employment-rates-of-women_economist.png
The article talks about machines taking over the agricultural labor that women used to perform. This is like the mechanization that took place in the 1910s and 1920s that led to the loss of work for many US farmers. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the ever-more-wealthy. Poor families that that previously had had the benefit of the income produced by both the mother and the father were now much poorer, because the income of the mother (from work in the fields) had been lost to the productivity of machines. This is a different from of workers being driven out of jobs by mechanization, and the earnings going to the owners of the machines. This type of wage disparity growth seems to have been a significant contributor to the Depression of the 1930s. Now we are seeing it both in Indian and China, according to this chart. The article talks about women the ratio of female children to male children again falling, because with women having so little value, families don’t want girl babies.
The deeper coup (later enabling Reagan) took place way earlier with Truman and Johnson.. water boyz of the mil-industrial complex, not mentioning the global CB clan..
I actually knew (know) two people who were in Nazi Germany during the war.
Very insightful– and from a almost as detached and delusional culture as we are currently living.
Only one is alive today, 96 years old.
get him to hang in there—we’re due for another bout
Imagine that!
The interwar period was even more *exalted, you even have had several attempts by communists taking over Western countries.. this was pre-countered by fascist leaning groups supported by bankers-industrialists, which indeed made it into admin in several countries afterall.
* as reaction to sequencing of: late 19th century recession, WWI, post war desperation, revolutions, brief period of economic boom years (ostentatiously not equally shared across wider pop), market crash, depression, unemployment, ..
democracy is the child of prosperity–poverty makes it a starving orphan
you can’t get away from that
More details on the crunch incoming g for nuclear power in the US: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-11/us-asleep-wheel-nuclear-industry-faces-collapse
That’s going to be a lot of electricity generation to replace.
I agree that the nuclear industry is on the edge of collapse, but I am not sure the reason has much to do with natural gas, and its huge future supply. I think it more has to do with the crazy pricing structure of wind and solar making costs too low for many types of producers. Nuclear is among the providers most affected.
The problem with NPPs nowadays is also battle of the designs, meaning there is not much sharing across the industry, each company is producing its own odd bird designs. Another one has been the (“natural”) drive for ever higher efficiency, so for example ~40yrs ago it was possible to offload the construction of smaller reactors ~ .5GW to more participating parties in many countries, but nowadays 1.3GW large beast could be manufactured and supervised by only handfull of countries, perhaps only 2-3x .. and not much of substantial subcontracting is possible anymore.., the same for incompatible fuel etc..
Note that the nuclear power generation in France is in fine shape; it provides most of the electricity in France, and it has done so for decades. What works in France could just as well work in other countries.
Nuclear power in France is not in fine shape. Its production peaked in 2005.
There are a lot of articles online about Frances problems. For example,
EDF facing bankruptcy as decommissioning time for France’s ageing nuclear fleet nears
Industry Meltdown: Is the Era of Nuclear Power Coming to an End?
French Nucelar Model Falters
France’s nuclear giant Areva admits to ‘400 irregularities’ in power plant parts
The crumbling nuclear power industry is no different than all of the other instances of crumbling infrastructure projects nation-wide. Bridges, roads, buildings, education, etc. Bottom line is that there isn’t enough cheap energy to keep rebuilding and replacing all of these things.
On general note, usually one has to cross the 40-50s of age boundary to start appreciate the entropy thing fully and so on, .. time is speeding around, what could be appraised in my youth as good enough is now in dangerous state and crumbling down, who knew..
It is amazing to me that we are struggling to maintain the infrastructure we have now and there are still folks who believe that if we just replace all ICE cars with electric cars and solar panels everything will be fine. I agree with Gail’s assessment that everything is complex, interconnected and evolving.
That is because most people are too stuuuuupppid to understand that concept
simple concept:
the nuclear industry was built using cheap FF…
now FF much more expensive…
The nuclear industry has one strong point that’s different— U235 has a half life of 24,000 years.
Get it?
Yes, in only about 150000 years 99% of it will be gone!
Is the infrastructure really crumbling?
it isn’t rational to repair/replace infrastructure until it is old.
While expanding infrastructure by a few % every year a large part of infrastructure will be in top condition just by being new.
Now, when not having much expanded infrastructure for a generation or so, a large part of the infrastructure is old, but perhaps not crumbling.
I think part of why the economy seems so good for so many is that we don’t have to spend much money building infrastructure, and can get away with not spending a lot on maintainance.
We have a lot of pre-1970 infrastructure in place. For example, roads, electricity transmission lines, pipelines, water systems, railroads, bridges. If we didn’t we would have major problems. We wait until things break to fix them. The electricity transmission system is especially affected by this issue.
“We wait until things break to fix them.”
Yes, and at some point more will start to break at the same time.
60 years ago things were built with cheap energy
now we are trying to fix things with expensive energy
the problem is as simple as that
But mostly we don’t have to fix it yet.
So instead we can spend ridiculous amounts of money/resources on new cars, large houses, vacations and avocado toasts.
Houses being the most dangerous because they to will have to be maintained.
Was it Trump who said there was going to be a massive spend on upgrading crumbling US infrastructure? This was meant to be a mega stimulus….
Haven’t heard much about that… no doubt because – as Norman states — the energy required to do this is too costly now.
This is especially true if we build wind and solar!
This is the “capital maintenance” problem I post about a lot. A growing capital base requires a growing percentage of energy just to stay in place – leaving less available for growth. It’s like if I gain wait (let’s hope not too much!) If I go from eating 2000 calories a day to 2100 I will put on a few pounds. But at some point my new bigger body will use all 2100 calories just to stay the same size. Continuing to eat 2100 wouldn’t produce growth. Energy for society works the same way since capital (roads, roofs, pipelines) requires constant (when averaged out) inputs of energy.
The government could money-finance infrastructure as a jobs program. This worked in the great depression. But the problem will be that we can’t increase the supply of inputs fast enough due to diminishing returns – would compete with all other goods and services and cause price increase!
Collapse could look like an inability to afford both growth and maintenance.
After you have built new “capital” you have a delay before you have to do meaningful maintainance, and then much more delay before this cost will be large compared to initial cost.
During this delay you could either build more new capital, or blow income on fun stuff.
I argue most of us in the upper 10-50%ile income in the west is living in the blow income on fun stuff-phase. So that is part why no one agrees when you go doom on them.
In Sweden replacement speed is 260 years for water and waste systems despite technical life time being considered 100 years.
I can imagine the majority is built between 1900-1965 and almost nothing replaced.
That would mean we have had 50 years of not spending meaningful amounts on either building out or replacing water systems, but with a larger part of the system becoming 100+ years old we are either forced to do it (with more expensive energy) or take the costs somewhere else (disease, bottled water).
@DJ – Agreed for any one specific installation. But that’s why I said “when averaged out.” You’re still right that we are allowing a gradual degradation and living off past cheap energy. It’s like letting a house run down – one day you’re letting the paint peel and chip, the next the roof leaks, and pretty soon the whole thing is a shack.
theblondbeast says:
“It’s like letting a house run down – one day you’re letting the paint peel and chip, the next the roof leaks, and pretty soon the whole thing is a shack.”
I understand almost nothing of discussions which depend on having paid attention to math and science. But as a past art conservator, I’m quite aware of the truth in what you say.
I’m very lucky to have appliances–a rather old fridge, car, stove, etc.–that still work. And still the availability of cheap-enough replacements (for now). It would be back to digging in the earth with a stick otherwise. But where it comes to maintaining an old wooden house, i am spectacular. The trick is to fill even the smallest crack with spackle. Making this a daily ritual is best. I really believe this alone can keep a house standing forever.
I try using a related approach to filling potholes and cracks on the highway in front, but that is much harder to do alone.
I’m a rustic from the uk
wats spackle
Norman,
It’s a paste you smear on to block/cover cracks and small fissures in walls, etc.. It dries quickly.
Spackle, Putty, and Epoxy Wood Filler – House Painting Advice
http://www.house-painting-advice.com/spackle.html
Spackling Paste Conventional pre-mixed spackling paste, also referred to as spackle is heavy paste filler typically consisting of calcium carbonate and chemical binders. It can be used on wood, drywall, and plaster to conveniently fill holes up to ½ inches deep, small cracks, and other minor surface defects.
I think you are right about collapse looking like an inability to afford both growth and maintenance. Our maintenance needs keep increasing, and at least worldwide, population is growing. That is why there are so many immigrants in the rich countries.
We could categorize the states as follows:
– the energy providers (e.g. Venezuela, Saudi Arabia)
– the goods and services providers (Germany, Japan)
– the energy and goods and services providers (USA, Netherlands)
The most vulnerable states are energy providers, as, finally, they are unable to provide energy and they must transform into goods and services providers, importing the energy, or they collapse and their population is forced to migrate into other functioning states.
The energy per capita consumption falls firstly due to the inability to consume the energy, not the inability to extract it. (E.g. the population of Russia can not consume as much energy as it was before 1990, but Russia could find consumers elswhere.) The inability to extract comes later, when the lacking imports of the new technology for energy extraction prevent energy providers to provide energy that can be consumed (like it was in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union).
Making things affordable is in fact making them accessible. The low energy per capita consumption of Russia is the reason why the population of Russia is not able to consume more energy.
Firstly, you need to be able to consume the energy, i.e. have corresponding cars, devices, machines etc., and then your energy consumption can rise. If you do not have them or your existing machines are out of order, you are not able to use the machines or you do not need such machines anymore, as you are old or e.g. move to live in a city, where you do not have to mow the lawn etc., your ability to consume energy falls.
So, the use of machines (made using energy) makes you able to consume energy.
And there must be more and more machines, and less and less people, so that the system can continue, as the machines secure affordability (aka accessibility) of the more and more distant energy sources, e.g. deeper in the ground or in the more distant areas not suitable for the life of the humans.
I’m not sure this is correct interpretation.
As Russian per capita standing both in wealth and consumption bounced back, be it a function of recycling proceeds from selling energy in boom times of the West and China (since ~2000s). The fact the boom times were based on fraudulent debt expansion, resulting in consumer crap and over building of not needed shoddy infrastructure is another matter.
Anyway, the real truth will be likely revealed only in proper destabilization phase (GFC v_xy, blackouts, ..), I’d argue countries like Russia and Norway would fare much better for the near/mid term after that.. most of ME-oily hell holes not so much, I’ll give you that.
Yes, the colder climates will fare better than the Middle East without water. No water = no sanitation.
But civilization grew up where the weather was relatively warm. Population in Norway and other northern countries had a hard time maintaining itself. When plagues came through, it was disproportionately affected. The need to make do with a short growing season and the need to have a large amount of wood for heat are major obstacles to living in cold countries. Civilization grew up in Africa. That is where humans are perhaps best adapted.
Just finishing up the Deep History of Earliest States…
When plague hit the cities…. there was a mass exodus …. as people escaped by the thousands to rural areas….. which spread the plague to those areas….
And I am thinking… they didn’t have automobiles….
And I am thinking… DPs believe that they will be left alone by the city dwellers….. that the city dwellers will just remain in the cities festering in the disease and violence… waiting for their pantries to empty….
And I am thinking … as soon they realize that clean water is a problem… they are piling into vehicles and heading to the countryside….
And I am thinking …. the DPs are in for a wicked surprise when BAU ends.
https://iranbulletin.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/whistling_past_the_graveyard.jpg
The reason for the rise of the first civilizations was the warm climate and the fertilizers to the fields brought by the flooding rivers. And the biomass (wood) transported by the rivers.
The civilization always needs stored energy in the form of wood, coal etc. Without them, it collapses, because it is not only the actual heat of the sun, but also the additional energy of the fuels that allow humans to fight other species and cook the food, e.g. heating the water to make it free from microbes.
The stored energy is mainly used to fight other species and cook the food. No civilization can do without it.
The lack of clean water in the warm areas is the same serious problem as the lack of biomass in the cold areas. Either of them is a limiting factor for the human population. The lack of the stored energy always shrinks the human population. We need to intake water, so that we do not dry up when producing energy from food.
Thanks! You make many very good points. Thank you very much.
Thinking about the situation, the problem holding back population growth in warm areas has been two fold:
1. A need to hold down all of the diseases that are holding population growth back.
2. A need for cheap food, to feed the expanding population.
The rich world have been able to fix these problems with relatively little investment into the warm areas themselves. They ways they fix them are
1. Antibiotics and a few medicines that save many lives; also, some basic hygiene. Things like mosquito nets to keep away diseases such as malaria and dengue. The return on investment has been very high for these investments.
2. Imported food from the surpluses of the US and other countries. This imported food tends to drive local farmers out of business.
One major problem remains, and that is fresh water. This seems to be the biggest problem in warm areas. Many young girls spend hours carrying water each day. This is a barrier to schooling.
Bingo!
Russia, with the larges resources on Earth, and a small, well educated population, plus a the largest country on the planet. Imports practically nothing. Huge agriculture expansion.
https://www.rt.com/business/423834-russia-agriculture-exports-expansion/
Its the new bigger machines that allow them to increase the food production. They must import them.
Imports from Belarus of agri mechanization doesn’t count much as import in reality – it’s basically undeclared extended Russia proper territory.. Besides Russians are good at scouting for western managers (predominantly Germans) to run their companies for their market needs, not as mere re-exporting assembly lines.
Recently there was documentary on VW-Porsche guys relocated there helping them with
industrial R&D incubators, now such places are on their own (domestic staffed) about to launch hybrid production among other stuff. How many other countries can pull that off: US, DE, FR, SouthK, JAP; only the top..
Then there’s this:
“An emerging sexually transmitted infection that you’ve probably never heard of “could become the next superbug”, according to recent headlines. What exactly is Mycoplasma genitalium, and how worried should we be?
M. genitalium is small bacteria that was first identified in 1981, and at that time it was unclear if it was a STI. Its true nature was only definitively confirmed in 2015 by a large UK survey of people aged 16-45 which found the infection was more common in those who had had more partners.”
Can progress to pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2174057-how-worried-should-you-be-about-a-new-superbug-sti/
Wasn’t there a movie about this? Children of Men. 2006.
you can avoid it by not running into the bush nekkid like Eddy says
The wages of the Russian population are low and Russia, as energy provider, is severly hit by any sanctions from the side of the countries needed its energy for their industries: Russia needs to export energy to milder climates to get the needed machinery. That is why the ties of Russia with Germany (and also China) will only strngthen, Donald Trump can do nothing about it. It is physics.
More good points! Thanks!
Russia’s Top 10 Imports
The following product groups represent the highest dollar value in Russia’s import purchases during 2017. Also shown is the percentage share each product category represents in terms of overall imports into Russia.
Machinery including computers: US$45.3 billion (20% of total imports)
Electrical machinery, equipment: $26.7 billion (11.8%)
Vehicles: $21.4 billion (9.4%)
Pharmaceuticals: $10.8 billion (4.8%)
Plastics, plastic articles: $8.8 billion (3.9%)
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $6.2 billion (2.7%)
Articles of iron or steel: $5.3 billion (2.3%)
Iron, steel: $4.8 billion (2.1%)
Fruits, nuts: $4.7 billion (2.1%)
Rubber, rubber articles: $3.6 billion (1.6%)
thanks, Eddy…
I seem to remember vaguely that Russia is trying to become as self sufficient as possible…
I would bet (a lot of money) that they are trying to reduce all of those imports…
The life in Russia is so fantastic that:
1 in 3 young Russians wants to emigrate: Survey
https://www.presstv.com/DetailFr/2018/07/02/566815/Russia-survey-emigration-statistics-Putin-economy-sanctions
All of them into the areas with milder climate:
“Of those young people who said they wanted to emigrate – 31 percent – Germany was the most popular destination and favored by 16 percent of respondents.
Seven percent wanted to move to the United States and six percent to Spain.”
Do not forget that Russia has mostly continental climate, i.e. very cold winters (like 40 Celsius degrees during the winter and 40 Celsius degrees during the summer). The most of its shoreline is situated in even colder areas of the north. That is why they historically attacked Baltic states and Poland, i.e. wanted to move to milder areas.
The harsh climate of Russia needs a lot of energy for its ammendment to suitable living conditions for humans.
also, those numbers show that total imports must be about $225 billion…
(45.3 is 20% so 45 x 5 = 225)…
that seems kinda small for a country the size of Russia…
$1500/cap imports. (UK $9900/cap)
Exports ~ $530b .. so your argument?
I hope you recall the PR stunt how oligarchs at the table were forced to sign a deal with Kremlin, either reinvest in domestic production (factories) or you are out of the country for good… Lot of increased production out of this one for real after few years time actually happened..
I’m not claiming they are not importing a lot of western stuff or not being JIT-import failure bulletproof..
As said earlier you also have to derate that import list by some factor, since a lot is imported from the ring of “friendly-protectorate” neighboring states (former USSR proper), I gave the example of Belorussian tractors and trucks or what have you..
My point is that Russia will be no better off than the rest of the world when BAU goes down …. they are completely plugged in …
And they are not immune to spent fuel pond radiation
https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/soviet_nuc96.jpg
The population of Russia in proportion to its area suitable for low energy life is high. It is a country with harsh climate for the humans.
By the way, there is nothing low about Russia’s energy consumption per capita. It was very high before the collapse; it is still high now. I think its climate is part of the problem. Also, many of its buildings were built before insulation was up to current standards.
Yes, I agree, the energy consumption per capita of Russia is high and it has to do with the climate. On the other hand, this fact makes it more economical for Russia to export the energy to milder climates than to consume it at home. In the milder climates, the production costs of the machines are lower, the domestic productions in cold climates can not compete with milder climates, also taking into account the need for additional energy in the form of vodka for heating the human bodies, that makes it impossible to do any sophisticated activities for those who consume it.
The oil market’s shock absorbers are nearly gone
“After replacing Iranian volumes, there will be essentially no spare capacity left,” Michael Wittner, global head of oil research at Société Générale, wrote in a report on Monday. “This would be extremely bullish.”
“It’s hard to see where supply will come from to meet growing demand,” said Tortoise’s Sallee.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/investing/oil-prices-saudi-arabia-spare-capacity/index.html
“It’s hard to see where supply will come from to meet growing demand…”
but demand will be declining…
it’s guaranteed…
we just don’t know when…
interesting take on renewable energy which tells of a guaranteed economic collapse within ten years if we continue with renewable energy plans https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/renewables-storage-electric-vehicles-global-economy_us_5a5f8997e4b054e35176a473
I agree that burning massive amount of fossil fuels to build “renewable” devices (that basically capture energy from the sun and wind and store it in batteries) will be a massive economic drain. Once the “renewable” devices are built there is no point ever where you can flip a switch and say we don’t need to burn any more fossil fuels. They cannot stand on their own. Therefore the have no future return on investment. They will suck what little life is left out of the economy to build devices that have no useful future. “Renewable” energy is an inseparable part of a fossil fuel ecosystem. If you turn off fossil fuels: no one will have jobs, no appliances will be built! There would be no energy to take care of the electric grid.
Given the precarious state of society today, ten years is a long time! It seems our economic system is near its peak. Anything can happen: war, financial collapse, natural disaster, energy shortages, disease outbreak, grid failure or even the collapse of our resource base. It seems like everywhere you look there is trouble brewing.
thanks, adonis…
Greg, I agree with most of that…
one thought:
I think it’s possible that humans have enough remaining obtainable FFs to rebuild the world economy to run mostly on electricity, though not all from “renewables”… coal and natural gas will always power much of electricity production…
but, key word is “possible”…
I don’t think it’s probable, largely due to the many issues you raise…
but, perhaps we get to a 50% electric world, where the greenies are all fired up about getting to 100%…
all of this can happen once and only once…
then failure, due to the near total depletion of FF…
I have some concerns that climate change and its impacts are viewed in this article as distant. In fact the world is already suffering large impacts such as fire, flood, drought, heat waves, hurricanes which impact the western world as well as less developed countries. We have only a short time to change our energy system to 100% renewable energy sources or we risk a short future.
Unfortunately fossil fuels are subsidised to the tune of around $500bn pa by the G20,even though the G20 governments keep pledging to reduce this, whilst renewables get only one quarter of this in subsidies world wide. See reports from the IMF and the Overseas Development Institute.
Renewables subsidies are generally driven by government policies to build a new industry and are now being phased out as the industry employs over 1.2 million people worldwide. The reduction and withdrawal of subsidies has seen new renewable installations now being built without subsidy and producing the cheapest electricity as solar and wind electricity are the cheapest form of electricity being very low cost in operation. This low operational cost has driven the wholesale price of electricity down throughout Europe and hence provides economic benefit to electricity users.
In addition this cheap electricity provides major reductions in carbon emissions, with UK electricity down one third in its CO2e/kWh in recent years.
Given that we only have around five years before all our carbon budget is gone if we wish to have a 66% chance of keeping temperature rise below 2degC, it is imperative that we all recognise that climate change action is an urgent requirement and continuing our present path is taking us closer to that existential threat. Would you get on a plane with a 66% chance of reaching its destination?
Whether distant or not, there is essentially nothing that humans can do about climate change. The things we can do may or may not work in the way we intend, because of the interconnections within the economy. We know of a few things that might be helpful, like planting trees. Deforestation is going on in the lower income parts of the world, even as rich countries replant their own trees. The rich world’s push to add palm oil as a biofuel encourages deforestation. So does the push to import paper from Indonesia. Europe’s push to use wood pellets for heating cannot be helpful.
This is a chart Euan Mearns put together a few years ago.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/euan-mearns-forest_co2.png
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/euan-mearns-forest_co2.png
I find it rather odd how the line in the sand keeps moving or to use a football analogy they keep moving the goalpost.
I remember hearing and reading, don’t go over 350ppm because that’s the end of humans. We are around 400ppm and we’re still here.
Reading the scientific studies works a lot better than listening to the idiots on Foxnews.
I have seen a whole lot of idiotic scientific studies. The more I see, the less I agree with you.
To a significant extent, “scientific studies” seem to be just one more way of employing more people and driving the cost of education up. Most of them are simply useless. It is not that they are wrong; it is that they are a waste of resources. Others, because the authors don’t understand that we live in a self-organizing world, are totally wrong. Too many of the results of the studies are taken as “fact,” when they are not really fact.
You write: «To a significant extent, “scientific studies” seem to be just one more way of employing more people and driving the cost of education up. Most of them are simply useless. It is not that they are wrong; it is that they are a waste of resources.«
The one useful function I can think of is that by employing more people dealing with science and research, you contribute to the spreading of knowledge of logical reasoning and scientific methods in the population. More individuals capable of critical judgements as a result? More readers of OFW?
It could be that more people are capable of critical thinking. But there will still be a lot of people who think that if something is published in a recognized journal, it must be right. They also think that the only way of looking at big problems is to break them down into tiny little pieces, and piece together what prior researchers said, plus a tiny bit more. That approach only works if the prior researchers understood made a correct analysis. (And maybe not even them.)
Not just science. Everywhere. Universities which should be neutral ground, now have to go cap in hand for sponsors and, naturally, these sponsors want a favourable result. The only remedy is for the Federal governments to pay for the universities without privatisation. They should not be a ‘for profit” endeavour. They provide the ground work for the private sector to use and profit from. The government can pay, easily. It’s an investment, like roads and other infrastructure.
The government seems to always have an “agenda.” I have talked young people out of graduate school, and they talk about how difficult it is to get a tenure track teaching position. They need to write papers and they need to get grants. The US government has more than willing to hand out grants to study climate change related issue. So people who had been interested in energy problems end up being sidetracked into climate related issues. Same with physics related issues–look at climate instead. And of course the government has a desired result it wants. If you want to get another grant, the result of the research on this grant needs to come out the way the government would like it. Either that, or the research has to be on such a narrow piece of the analysis that it really doesn’t matter how it comes out.
Peer reviewers are another issue. I asked one young person why he had left concerning points out of the conclusions section of his paper. He said he was afraid peer reviewers wouldn’t accept it, unless the results sounded sufficiently in line with the green agenda.
Universities have been well and truly compromised by the privatisation rot. So it stands to reason governments will use them for their own purposes too. FE’s idea that they are hotbeds of extreme left wing activism is one opinion, not without some merit. It’s certainly believed by the extreme right wing and they are hard at defunding universities such that tenure is now rare and many staff work for extremely low pay, such that they have to seek outside jobs as well to survive.
Worldwide, there has been a lot of belief that education will be of great benefit to those receiving it. There are definitely diminishing returns to sending more young people to college. The university education system has greatly inflated in size, without proportionate benefit. What used to be dorms are now apartments, with each student getting his own bedroom and bath. It reminds a person of the health care system bloat.
There is no way that governments can afford to fund such a bloated system. So they have to pass the costs to everyone else. Students end up paying a lot more themselves. If buildings are built, naming rights are sold to business. Every conference room is named after a corporate donor. Faculty find themselves more dependent on grant money. Too much reliance is placed on very low-paid adjunct faculty members. I am close enough to the system that I can see many of these issues.
Universities have become hard core breeding grounds for left wing PC whackos…. indoctrination camps….
There are different ways of counting CO2–with or without conversion of other gasses to CO2 equivalents. So the numbers are likely not all comparable. Also, we may very well be past any turning point.
Rodster…
yes…
it’s amazing that when it was 3 parts per 10,000 then everything was okay…
but 4 parts per 10,000…
OMG!
5 parts per 10,000?
they say we’re doomed!
once the collapse hits and humans die-off nature will take over sucking up all that excess co2 to create a new earth what goes around comes around
Yeah, almost as if we evolved to release all that sequestered carbon. Add our radioactive waste and you’ve got an exciting ten million years ahead. Is Walt Disney still frozen?
so did we evolve to create all of that radioactive waste?
so that future life will mutate even more?
evolution at work!
we are the Masters of Mutation…
the Gods of Nukes…
the Rulers of Radiation…
we are Homo Sapiens!
Could be a use for all of the radiation!
That’s it. Humans are not gods, though many through materialistic reductionist fantasies believe we are so. Most of us know how this extremely short movie will end for humans, yet wildlife seems to be flourishing near the sarcophagus.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/
Gail said- “Whether distant or not, there is essentially nothing that humans can do about climate change. ”
So you are saying that we should just ignore climate consequences since ” there is essentially nothing that humans can do about” it? I would suggest that most of the topics on this forum involve human situations or behaviors that we will not be able to change ie fossil fuel useage.
It’s pretty obvious that humans will not able to cut back on their appetite for fossil fuels- so maybe we just stop discussing the topics of your blog- oil prices & availability etc because we really can’t do anything about these behaviors anyway?
The story connecting fossil fuel use to climate change needs to changed to add, of course, we would be dead without fossil fuels.
as i’ve said all along we are caught in the closing vice of our own making
which annoys the ”do something” folks
collectively we burn stuff to keep ourselves employed—if we stop burning, then our employment infrastructure ceases to be
when that happens, not if, the system of our very existence ends, and those of us left after a few years will revert to a farmcart economy.—tho the inca did ok without wheels i believe
..applause..
I used to think I had to do something…. but then I realized… there is nothing that can be done…
It does take a lot of weight off of the shoulders… so what … we die… quelle surprise there…
It would be nice if I was of the age of some of the DPs on this site… if I was 70+ I’d actually be pretty pleased with the situation …. I’d already be an old goat with a failing power plant so death would not be so unwelcome … and I’d get to witness the Apocalypse…
How good is that!
I really do not understand why 70+ year olds would waste their time scratching in the dirt prepping.
Preposterous! Madness! Insanity!
But won’t nuclear mayhem, disease and social chaos make that farmcart economy nigh impossible?
a farmcart economy puts everyone at a distance—when you have to walk to war, wars can’t last very long because you run out of energy to fight
when you have to walk to get your food, food becomes self limiting through the energy needed to get hold of it
disease is the same, it can only spread so far, then it becomes self abating, social chaos is self abating if there’s no powered transport—it runs out of energy
nuclear spillage is the one thing that wont run out of energy and might screw all of us
“nuclear spillage is the one thing that wont run out of energy and might screw all of us”
So all the energy will go to preventing that spillage?
up to a point yes—until the futility of it becomes obvious
The benefit of “doing something” lies more in making you feel better than in actually solving the problem. We are all more or less afraid of what is coming and the antidote to fear is action. Even if it is nothing more than rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, using your hands and wits in action feels better than doing nothing at all.
i agree
Absolutely agree…. otherwise despair can overwhelm one’s thoughts…
My main issue with the DP thing is when claims are made that this is a way to survive the end of BAU…. giving false hope to those who latch onto these ideas… and they end up wasting precious time and money on a pipe dream … I know – I did it…. and I want to make sure that anyone considering this understands that it is no solution
I am here to help. For free!
Right. And if you try something (garden, for example) you can tell how much can reasonably raise and store. Not a whole lot, in my case.
And then try it … while completely unplugged from BAU…..
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J8Ig0gEfPr8/TjhZQGNvnAI/AAAAAAAAAO8/aB2bdxaZZR0/s1600/Man+in+despair-wallpapers.jpg
Why would we want to keep talking about a ho ax?
Also, once we point out it’s a ho ax, nobody wants to talk about that.
Using Euan Mearns as a source of climate change is like using Idi Amin as a human rights example.
I have a great deal of confidence in Euan. I have known him for years, from Oil Drum days. He has a great deal more realistic view than people who are motivated by selling more of the subsidized devices.
I have a great deal of confidence in Euan.
I have a great of confidence in climate science.
Calling it “climate science” indicates one place where you have been misled. It consists of modeling a self-organizing system with an inadequate model. Even if a number of different “experts” are involved, they manage to assume Business As Usual will continue. They have no idea what the real relationship between variables needs to be, because they have not studied the role of energy and the economy.
There might also be other side effects such as a large methane “burp”. There is no guarantee that even in a collapse scenario, CO2 levels will level off.
Well, I’ll go with the pro’s.
They have been underestimating a bit, but it is better than the surreal denial.
If you’re younger than 30, you’ve never experienced a month in which the average surface temperature of the Earth was below average.
The last month that was at or below that 1900s average was February 1985. Ronald Reagan had just started his second presidential term and Foreigner had the number one single with “I want to know what love is.”
I second Gail’s remarks about Euan.
As you know there is a difference between the words “complex” and “complicated”. We live in a complex world.
The earth has been a lot colder and a lot hotter. Humans adapt.
I was surprised to learn all of the changes in climate that humans and pre-humans managed to live through, in the one million+ years since they learned how to control fire. Our current civilization seems to be the result of a fluctuation in climate that is warmer than the “standard” ice age climate. With this warm climate, human population could grow. But simply looking at the length of past non-ice ages would suggest that without the activities of humans, there would be a possibility that we could be heading back into another ice age. This is one view of When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?
It makes several points:
Another quote:
Another quote:
they don’t adapt with cities of 30 m people sitting on coastlines
but whats the point of saying that
people will up and move when sea levels rise—won’t they?
at that point one is inclined to give up
Still have the coastal property 50m from the ocean… it’s still there… neighbours keep reassuring me … some of them have lived there for many decades…. and the ocean is not rising
The best scientists who are looking at the empirical case are still projecting an incoming ice age (or at minimum another Maunder Minimum type mini-ice age):https://www.technocracy.news/russian-scientists-predict-ice-age-within-15-years-because-sun-is-cooling/
It may seem that human-driven global warming, although perhaps a disaster on the scale of centuries, may be a good thing in the long run if it fends off the next ice age awhile.
With even rudimentary science knowledge “awhile” is going to be 10’s of thousands of years. Probably much longer. Homo sapiens have never lived with a CO2 level in the 400’s (most of our primate ancestors also)– we will see if that works out- or not)
DelusiSTANIs don’t like him much…. he’s probably the most credible analyst .. in that space
I wonder how Leo’s ocean level concrete eco resort is coming along…. must be just about finished now… just in time for the 7m sea level rise
Resorting to innuendo and personal attacks comes as second nature to Duncan. Notice how easily these wonderful progressive humanitarians turn nasty when the facts don’t fit their agenda.
Duncan, it’s a huge death cult you’re in and you are trapped within its consensus trance—the intellectual equivalent of being within the event horizon of a black hole. I’m sorry I can’t be of any practical help to someone as willfully blind and constricted as you’ve made yourself, and I can’t even pity or sympathize with you as it’s all your own fault.
Gail, excellent analysis, as usual. With respect to your comment about climate change, I see your point, however, I think you may be minimizing the impact on energy systems. For example, increased hurricanes reduce off-shore drilling operations, more floods in places such as Houston, New Orleans, etc., impact oil refineries and transport, worsening heat waves increase the amount of energy used to cool homes and businesses as well as the amount of water needed to be pumped. Warming inland water temperatures impact the ability of nuclear plants to cool their spent fuel, on and on it goes. So, while we may not be able to do anything about climate change, I think that it is already playing a major part in the economy and fossil fuel use.
I don’t think that climate is playing a major ports in the economy and fossil fuel use. Warmer winters should be helpful to the economy because less fossil fuel will be used for heating. Warmer summer might raise air conditioning use. I know that as far south as Atlanta, heating is a much bigger cost and air conditioning.
Offshore oil is not a huge share of the US total. It normally gets back online pretty quickly after hurricanes. We haven’t had a big disruption for years.
Droughts can lead to large people migrations. Natural disasters can lead to high repair costs and capital destruction. There are probably some effects on the economy from climate change already. Maybe stimulating GDP in the same sense that throwing rocks at windows is “good for GDP”.
An awfully lot of what is done has pretty small benefit.
If we think about it, educating young people in Africa doesn’t itself add jobs, except teaching jobs. I was reading an article about how few women in India work outside the home.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/07/05/why-india-needs-women-to-work
A lot of fossil fuel investment is needed if jobs are going to be available. The same thing is true about having a large share of the population go to college. If college doesn’t really add much to the knowledge base needed for a job, it is just overhead for the economy.
John House, I think you’re right. A functioning ecosystem is the basis for the economy and anything that destabilizes the ecosystem has to be given as much weight as economic considerations. If it is true that climate change is lagging by 40 years between emissions and effect, that means that the disruptions will grow so drastic in the next 4 decades as to dwarf anything that a failing economy can produce. In reality it is the dynamic interplay between these two titanic forces (environment and economy) that will be morbidly fascinating to watch as events unfold.
testing
That chart shows only a small part of the story. The carbon content of the oxidised wood
only accounts for a small part of atmospheric CO2 increase.The most important contributor to that increase is fossil fuel usage. The graph of CO2 emissions from fossil
fuel use over time in this article is more relevant.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/looking-for-connections.html
The chart doesn’t claim to tell the whole story. There are so many things going on at the same time it is hard to figure out what is going on. We clearly are going in the wrong direction on forests, however.
Oh wow….
Al Gore… calling Al Gore…. time for a new movie….. it’s all about the trees bruther… see the correlation ….
And the Geebel WEEblers are staring at those to visuals right now…. in a catatonic state…. with spittle dribbling down their chins…. like one of those kids you see who survived 8 minutes without oxygen during birth…. and ride around in a cart using their tongue to steer.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nGPnDW3V4ZE/TxrM8unvgeI/AAAAAAAAASE/cQfKp3z3KoQ/s1600/ngbbs4e1caab5c4428.jpg
“We have only a short time to change our energy system to 100% renewable energy sources or we risk a short future.”
But 100% renewable energy is still highly dependent on fossil fuels !
That is to say: It’s not renewable!
Utter BS
We can get very close to 100% renewable if we live as hunter-gatherers with global population levels ~100,000 or so.
Solar panels are not renewable without huge volumes of energy input (fossil fuels). Wind turbines are not renewable either and batteries certainly aren’t. Renewable energy is a physical impossibility. You can’t renew energy that has been used. The infrastructure to capture energy is not renewable either. I don’t know where the words renewable energy ever came from!
During most of homo sapiens existence (200,000– maybe 300,000 if the new evidence in Morocco holds up) out population has been 1-10 million.
Of course we had robust ecosystems to live in.
7.6 billion on a ecologically challenged planet?
We are idiots.
I dunno, with too many people tribes form and wars break out.
We just need to get ride of that 7. When we correct to .6 billion everything will be just fine. There will be plenty of resources to go around.
Wrong
We are at the start of the mother of all games of musical chairs in which the chairs are going to be removed so fast that very few if any bums will end up with a seat.
You are being silly
“Much of the modern economy relies on the work of auditors: the accountants who independently verify a company’s financial records.
“This work is crucial in providing accurate reports to shareholders and, ultimately, for safeguarding the economy at large.
“Recent scandals and financial crises have shown that accounting failure can easily lead to thousands of job losses and billions of dollars in bail-outs, says author and award-winning journalist Richard Brooks…
““The current system now relies nearly entirely on the so-called “big four” accounting firms — KPMG, Ernst and Young, Deloitte and PwC… they have “lost sight of their core purpose”, with only a third of their revenue coming from auditing and the rest earned from “consultancy services”… the firms are now selling billions of dollars worth of business advice to the same companies they are supposed to independently audit.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-12/richard-brooks-accountants-who-broke-capitalism/9971084
They are almost employees of the companies that they audit.
Where are the regulators in all this?
They rotate back and forth between working for the government and working for the auditing firms.
The systems become so complex that the only people who understand them are insiders within the industry. This happens in insurance and other industries too. Petroleum regulators need to have worked in the petroleum industry (or have been trained through graduate school in the science) to figure out what is happening. Regulation is a problem, everywhere.
In the insurance industry, if one company goes under, the plan is to have the other pay for its liabilities, up to certain statutory limits, through post-insolvency assessment funds. This only works if an occasional small company goes under. If there is an industry-wide problem, it is tough luck for all.
“Foreign direct investment in the United States dropped 32 percent, or $120 billion, in 2017 as compared to the year before, according to new figures. After a two-year spike in foreign investment, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that the rate last year dropped to levels similar to 2014 and the years before the financial crisis.”
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/396584-foreign-investment-in-us-drops-32-in-2017
“Tory Rebel, Dominic Grieve told the audience: “If by the end of February or early March it is clear that there is no [Brexit] deal on anything, there will be a declaration of a state of emergency in this country… Ordinary life will grind to a halt.””
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-latest-eu-uk-dominic-greave-jacob-rees-mogg-cbi-a8443241.html
“Tory Rebel, Dominic Grieve told the audience: “If by the end of February or early March it is clear that there is no [Brexit] deal on anything, there will be a declaration of a state of emergency in this country… Ordinary life will grind to a halt.””
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-latest-eu-uk-dominic-greave-jacob-rees-mogg-cbi-a8443241.html
“As it stands, Italy does not necessarily wish to leave the euro of its own volition. However, Italy’s debt crisis could be a major problem for the eurozone. Should Italy default on its debt, then this has the potential to trigger a significant decline in global growth.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4186771-italy-really-leave-euro
I understand one of the major problems is Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/rees-mogg-i-need-not-visit-northern-ireland-to-understand-brexit-issue
“Many [of Morocco’s] state-owned strategic institutions are on the verge of bankruptcy due to financial and legal problems, which may lead the government to privatizing the establishments as a solution.”
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/07/250366/morocco-privatizing-strategic-institutions-oncf-bankruptcy/
“Turkish equities, bonds and the lira took a hammering on Wednesday as Recep Tayyip Erdogan predicted a fall in interest rates and investors fretted over the health of the country’s economy… Turkey must find around $200bn a year in foreign financing — most of it in the form of short-term “hot money” flows — to fund the current account deficit as well as maturing debt. But foreign investors are worried about the management of Turkey’s $880bn economy under a powerful new executive presidency that came into force after last month’s elections and centralises power in the hands of Mr Erdogan.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5e645f06-8527-11e8-a29d-73e3d454535d
“A rout in China’s dollar-denominated junk bonds is getting worse as mounting defaults send traders running for cover. Rising trade tensions are also adding to longer-existing difficulties created by the nation’s push to cut excessive leverage.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-12/perfect-storm-sends-china-dollar-junk-bond-yields-to-2015-highs
Not good at all!
A Tale Of Two Cities: How Smart Robots And AI Will Transform America
Automation is already reshaping cities, just as the manufacturing collapse hollowed out America’s heartland. This is a tale of two cities, comparing the Rust Belt to Las Vegas, the city that is expected to be hit the hardest by job displacement due to robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and other technologies in this fourth industrial revolution.
https://youtu.be/nS2J71U5MGg
btw in this video showing that Galesburg, Illinois is Dying City
what is reason for this
is this because of NAFTA ?
Vegas!? Prostitution and gambling are all about manipulating the ego. I would say Vegas is the safest place. Yes, 40% of the employees will be dropped in favor of robots and will have to eave town for the slums of LA and low cost states like Louisiana. But the casino owners will do fine.
Vegas is incredibly boring,
Bunch of fat people moping in a sterile and cheesy environment.
And Elon’s high tech, high dollar, AI assembly line was snubbed in favor of assembling Tesla’s by hand in tents. AI depends on maintaining a stream of high tech materials and parts. That depends on strong trade and healthy economies of scale. But, AI destroys jobs and hence trade. AI adds complexity and doesn’t solve anything.
“Plunge, tumble and rout are overused by the financial media to describe a market in decline, but such superlatives would not be out of place to describe what’s happening to commodities. The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 25 raw materials ranging from oil to copper to cattle dropped as much as 2.80 percent on Wednesday, the most since 2014, before closing at its lowest level since December. That brought the gauge’s decline to 8.88 percent from this year’s peak in late May.
“If one thinks of raw materials as a sort of early warning system — copper is frequently called the metal with an economics Ph.D. because it often tracks the health of the world economy — then commodities are sending an incredibly distressing signal.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-11/rout-in-commodities-can-no-longer-be-ignored
“The copper price, which started sliding a month ago, slumped 3 per cent on the London Metals Exchange on Wednesday night to its lowest level for a year. It’s fallen about 15 per cent in a month. It wasn’t alone. Base metal prices generally fell sharply, with zinc down 6 per cent and nickel and lead both about 3 per cent. Aluminium prices have also fallen heavily over the past month, down more than 7 per cent.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/dr-copper-s-price-plunge-shows-economy-is-coming-down-with-something-nasty-20180712-p4zr2i.html
“Soyabean prices are getting crushed, dropping to their lowest since the financial crisis as the trade war between the US and China ratchets up.”
https://www.ft.com/content/d1e11c08-853b-11e8-a29d-73e3d454535d
“Oil prices plunged 5$ Wednesday afternoon, dropping on bearish news and posting their worst performance in over a year.”
http://www.kallanishenergy.com/2018/07/12/u-s-crude-plunges-5-worst-daily-performance-in-over-a-year/
“Inner Mongolia Berun Group Co said on Wednesday that it was uncertain of its ability to make interest and principal payments on a medium-term note totaling 856 million yuan ($128.32 million). The manufacturer of coal and natural gas chemicals said it was actively considering methods to raise funds, but that tight finances meant there was a risk it would not be able to make the payments.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-bonds-default/inner-mongolia-berun-group-warns-of-default-risk-on-medium-term-note-idUSB9N1O402H
Route in commodities = demand problem
Of course, a demand problem reflects problems with the world economy.
It’s probably a better thing that the future decider is going to be Physics. I can’t believe the level of incompetence coming from politicians. It has become really difficult to get much sense from any one regardless of their political affiliations. Their nonsense is boundless, right across the spectrum. All countries are afflicted. It’s not that their constant lying is coming home to roost, That hasn’t even begun yet. I am certain the malaise that we see in many fields and pointed out in this blog has rendered politicians as nuisances clogging up ways we might find to at least manage the inevitable collapse by planning how to manage it. The world is falling apart as we read. but without a plan of management it will start with chaos and descent into calamity in short order. Politicians are now agents of collapse, but maybe soon sidelined by trade events.
The corporate world is hoping soon to override the national legal framework allowing citizens to decide their own future. This scenario is set out here*. The politicians sidelined, but they have left their run too late. A “phyrric victory” at most:
*https://rielpolitik.com/2018/07/08/corpro-fascism-the-global-corporatocracy-is-just-a-pen-stroke-away-from-completion/
Politicians have been given mandates by voters as to what they expect. I would agree: The politicians are not responsible for our problems. It is the fact that so many common citizens are unhappy that we are seeing unrest. Even in countries where politicians are not elected (the Middle East, for example), citizens will take matters into their own hands and assassinate leaders, if they are unhappy enough.
Trade cannot go on at its current levels, with oil prices as high as they are. Importers will find themselves with huge deficits that they cannot handle, if they cannot fix the situation. The tariffs reflect this fact. The leaders are not bad; they are just reflecting the laws of physics, whether they understand them or not. Things that the laws of physics say cannot continue, won’t.
Many politicians are also corrupt and have been skimming off the top for many years. Special interest and lobbyist don’t help either. When there was enough cheap energy, there was enough room to cover all of the taxes, corruption, graft as well as the entitlements, handouts and military expenditures. Now that energy is expensive, the corruption and graft is being exposed first. The people are lashing out. They are angry. Hence the cry to “drain the swamp”. Diminishing returns is inescapable!
Many thanks for the very well thought article!
You are welcome!
We are saved….just in time ….well almost!
And I thought it was cheese!
‘There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon — enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries.’
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Moon-Fuel-A-New-Multi-Trillion-Dollar-Treasure.html?
There are a few small issues…
‘To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric.’
But have I got some real estate to sell you!
This fairytale will make its way onto the MSM … but this part will be removed
‘To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric.’
Sounds like another investor scam.
Even I think this is ridiculous. FE pass me another clip.
Poppy-cock. I heard that 20 years ago already. Arrrrgggg!!!
Croatia/Population
4.171 million (2016)
London/Population
8.136 million
England/Population
53.01 million
France/Population
66.9 million (2016)
Sunday betting…
by population, gotta be France…
Should be an India vs China final
Now we’re talkin!
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/sport/2018/07/football-world-cup-newshub-s-lloyd-burr-feels-the-wrath-of-england-s-frustration.html
did the lads riot tonight or were they too de-energized?
anyway…
I am sort of a small time gambler…
I leaned on Croatian players and won!
not much money…
but fun…
call this BAU tonight, baby!
So disappointing.. no riots…. everyone is busy thinking about their brave soccer team…
Brave…. I guess that’s what you resort to when you haven’t won a major championship since Qweeen Lizzie was in grade school
maybe people in uk do not have energy to riots ?
because people are in depression
Fallen into a state of despair… compounded by another WC failure
Just returned from the UK. Areas that were chock full of wealth producing industry are now completely devoid of jobs and industry. The people do not smile much in public, or speak to you. Very depressing. Meanwhile the death by a thousand cuts continues. They presently hire adults to be street crossing guards for children at schools. These jobs are being eliminated. Everyone wants to work for the NHS…the only “secure”employer. Pubs are closing down at a rate of one per week. I saw shuttered storefronts. Quick loan schemes and tattoo parlors abound. “Quick quid”, a loan operation, is one of the most frequent advertisers on tv.
The commoners are forced into tiny cars, as riding the buses are prohibitively expensive, since they are allowing all pensioners to ride free. Therefore pensioners are the only ones riding them.
I heard a tale of where the NHS misdiagnosed a child with meningitis as “having gas and a mild fever” (when it was severely high). The child is now permanently partially paralyzed and requires full time care.
English families struggle to make ends meet, while immigrants are given EVERYTHiNG free.
Spoke to farmers. They only try to run rare breeds in an effort to make a pound. Lamb meat is imported from New Zealand while lamb grown in England is exported somewhere else.
Meanwhile, the Lake District in Cumbria is fabulous.
As Kunstler noted in his recent blog that according to him, the global collapse started in 2005. I say the real collapse started in 2008 with Lehman Bros and AIG. What we are seeing today is a global collapse at the periphery or as the saying goes you go broke little by little then all at once.
All would have been better… had they won the world cup
Yep, the sacred secret of any gambling (incl. fin markets prior total CB control age) is that you are mostly betting not against a bookie but swarms of other gamblers out there, should they be for some reason momentarily out of their senses (like believing in UK soccer team) it’s an opportunity not to miss. In the very same vein Brexit and Donaldo events moved a lot of “wealth” from one bigger faction of these people to another (minority).
Australian is throwing drink on reporter as per article
so is Australia in uk ?
“We also know that lack of food is not the only reason why humans die. Based on this observation, it is a reasonable conclusion that having enough energy available is not a sufficient condition to guarantee that the world economy will continue to operate as in the past.”
this is an idea that brings in the “weird”…
it’s quite possible that the world economy could collapse at a time when it is producing a record high of oil products…
isn’t it now 102 million barrels per day?
and yet, that guarantees nothing…
Right! People have been so focused on a single, wrong view of the situation we face that they have never thought through what is needed to make the economy operate.
By the way, the EIA’s estimate of US crude oil production seems to be stuck on 10,900,000 barrels per day for five weeks straight. I don’t know if there is a reason for this. I would expect that the production estimate would need to move up above this level next by next week, or the implication would be that US oil production is really being squeezed by infrastructure problems.
“Another big difference between my view and the standard view is the observation that a decrease in oil supply (or total energy supply) affects both the supply and demand of energy. Because both supply and demand are affected, we don’t know which direction oil and other energy prices will move.”
excellent… though this idea has been presented before, perhaps this clear summary will help some persons who haven’t yet grasped that the direction of prices is unpredictable…
and the oil market today?
WTI down to $70.70…
almost into the 60s…
I guess at these very special times of cat & dog love affair, when Russia is de facto affiliated OPEC member, and or the EU even joins their euroasian plans to pay Iran for energy in non USD transfers, among other strange things happening in the upper echelons of power, it’s absolutely pointless trying to predict energy prices on any “economic” theory what so ever. The most probable outcome from near/mid term is that as long as the system (“global cartel”) keeps control, they will manage to have pricing and supply as well as demand inside some sort of boundary snake, only fluctuating +/- ~20%.. Obviously, some outlier cases exploding and being pushed aside, e.g. Venezuela, Yemen, ..
It could be this era was indeed brief and is just ending now, opening the doors was real instability, who knows.. , but we have underestimated these guys several times already..
At the same time US crude oil in storage dropped to the lowest level it has been since the buildup began. The amount in storage is below the level it was in January, 2018, when it started refilling. The price is down to $69.47 today, too.
Gail, climate change cannot be “fixed” at this point and you need to be willfully ignorant to pretend otherwise. Yes it’s the laws of physics – inertia is a bitch. Inertia = fixed/baked in no matter what the humans do.
I think that is pretty much the truth. But it doesn’t make a good front-page story for the news media. Taking coal off line probably reduces global dimming, and perhaps makes things worse.
Oh Gail, you are so politically incorrect, I love it.
LOL!
I notice one actuary whom I know put a like on the article on Linked in not too long after it went up. Actuaries tend to think in non politically correct ways.
Apneaman, climate change never has been “fixable” at any time. While it is certainly possible for us to change climate,there are no one-to-one relationships between what we may do and how climate will respond. It is not and never has been within our collective ability to control climate, which is a point alarmists are willfully ignorant of.
Also, the two biggest factors in changing the climate down here are variations in solar activity and in the dynamics of the earth’s orbit, and both of these are totally outside of our control. But you are probably willfully ignorant of this because your authorities want to keep the plebs terrified of the harmless magic life-enhancing pixy gas that comes out of the civilization-enabling hydrocarbon burning reactions that are just about all that’s keeping us from becoming extras in a real-life Mad Max movie.
What’s to fix? It looks fine to me… although I am sure there are those who did not appreciate that record cold last winter
Thanks!
While you make a lot of interesting points, I think solar energy has finally become cheap enough that it can really take off and help us out, except in the US of course where Trump decided to kneecap it, costing the US tens of thousands of jobs to help a coal industry that has been automating instead of hiring workers anyway.
How was your trip… from DelusiSTAN?
Well, apparently it has better Internet connections than you have so I’ve been better able to keep up with the news.
You see…. this is your problem…
You allow the MSM to tell you what to think…. which means you are on the same intellectual level as a parrot….
There are those who understand the purpose of the MSM is not to inform….. because we have caught them out constantly in their lies….
And we seek a deeper level of understanding of the issues….
Now I could try to help you to escape from your world of Delusion … but that is VERY difficult to do … from my experience facts and logic do not work on DelusiSTANIS….
You need to work that out for yourself…..
I know you are going to exit from FW smugly believing the likes of FE and others on this site are fools….. but perhaps some day you will wake up … and have an epiphany …. and realize how you have embarrassed yourself.
That’s ok though – we don’t need you to send us boxes of chocolates ….
Just come back under a new username…. with a new attitude ….we won’t have a clue
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A36JbQHiNt4/UXT9UlrjRlI/AAAAAAAACd8/FHS_SvQrwO8/s1600/Lovely-Parrot-1600×1200.jpg
The articles I read pointing out the problems with Trump’s attacks on the solar energy industry are from the NY Times, the Washington Post, Time, and CNN “Money.” I just happen to access them on line.
And there is no way I’m taking lessons in “attitude” from you. Read your first response to what I posted if you want to know why.
You are wise not to descend to FE’s level. He’s right, but unbearable.
I have a massive smile on my face right now… I am taking that as HUGE compliment!!!!
When your horse is a winner …. keep on riding….
It is both amusing and sad when a fellow reads articles from the “NY Times, the Washington Post, Time, and CNN “Money.” and thinks he has the true story on a topic….especially one of the green or PC fables propagated by the controlled media.
The smugness of such people…. is rather amusing …. I am sure Pauliver is the life of dinner parties stocked full of liberals who hang on his every regurgitation … not a f789ing original thought between the lot of them.
Pauliver … can you do us a favour…. if you change your username to The Parrot….. we will humour you….
JesseJames makes a good point, those media sources are controlled propoganda at it’s finest. I stopped reading and viewing MSM disinformation a long time ago.
I wonder what goes through Paulivers mind when he reads your comment…
Tell us Pauliver… first impression…..
Ditto. NYT, WP, CNN Time etc…are just plain garbage.
That’s the All Star line-up of disinformation sources!
Whenever I encounter someone who works off the premise that information sources such as these are credible…. I know I am in the presence of a …. MORE on.
I am surrounded by MORE ons….
CNN… wow.
You what they say about arguing with fools….
So let’s just leave it at this — you are f789ing re ta r ded…. but you don’t realize it.
That makes you a very dangerous person.
The more you depend upon insults the more confident I feel in dismissing your opinions.
I am left wondering how you found Finite World…
You are not curious … as evidenced by your regurgitation of MSM edicts ….
You are not intelligent …. because you refuse to acknowledge facts and logic… and you are unable to understand that the MSM is a propaganda machine
You obviously do not belong here.
Who sent you? Was it Don? Or Jan? Peter? Which of these DelusiSTANIS is your handler?
Paul, please stay around…
it’s not every day we get your type here…
you are a valuable resource…
you give us the typical-man-in-the-street who bows down to the modern myth of progress…
we need daily reminders of that myopic perspective…
He can try to convince us that we are all wrong … snicker….
FE I appreciate your sharp criticism of people who disagree with you. This isn’t a site for people who can’t back up their claims. But, I also often travel to DelusiStan. It’s beautiful this time of year. So, let me ask you a question. The price of solar power continues to decline. Battery technology continues to improve. In other words the cost of electric power generation and storage continue to get cheaper. At what point does solar power become a cheap enough technology to have a significant impact on the problem of declining fossil fuel resources. If solar power produced electrical energy at one tenth the cost of a coal plant would that make a difference? If solar power produced 90 percent of the world’s energy needs would that make a difference? It is one thing to say that solar power in its current state of development is inadequate to address the world’s resource problems. I agree. But, because solar power is a developing technology that has been rapidly improving in cost and efficiency, how can anyone completely disregard solar’s future?
I assume you will now insult me for asking this question. I’m happy to read your insults but please give a specific answer to my question. Have pity on my delusional thoughts. We can’t all be a super genius.
The cost in dollars and cents may be declining, but the toll on the environment cascades from production of all this “green tech”. This is at 1.2% of world electricity consumption (which is only 18% of total energy), and you imagine a world where it supplies 90%! Maybe in a world of 70 million people. Truly, you are a denizen of Delusistan.
http://www.latimes.com/resizer/N8u3Sn5tPRxG2cVR7kA0sfqXm58=/1400×0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/U4HANCGDGFC5FBMAGCIF2JXLVQ.jpg
Which raises the question:
If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/23/if-solar-and-wind-are-so-cheap-why-are-they-making-electricity-more-expensive/#67d05a621dc6
“At what point solar …”
Most likely never, we are swimming in ~200yrs incrementally maturing system which has been base loading on fossil fuel burners of various kind. Yes, solar works beautifully at specific places in specific settings and for people with specific needs (energy demand/habits) and endowed with special bank accounts..
Hence it’s by definition not universally deploy-able tool, unless there is massively front loaded capacity for seasonal over production and storage installed, and why on Earth would you do that? Do you regularly shop for 300-600% premium on your groceries or utilities bills? I guess not..
Or the scenario we debated in the “Jancovici thread” is applied, i.e. globally people in sync to be corralled into forced degrowth ~1/10-1/20th of today’s consumption, rural living, few metro hubs, connected with rail, local commuting by electric assist bikes/trikes sipping few Wh instead of kWh/MWh etc.. Certainly doable, but not with this version of humanoids we have got ~8B loitering around.. So again, dead end.
Solar has already started interfering with its backup generation. It is driving backup generation out of business in both California and Texas. California has already been having problems with outages.
http://www.latimes.com/newsletters/la-me-ln-essential-california-20180710-story.html
According to this story,
Wind and solar put many more demands on the aging infrastructure. They should cover their share of the cost, but clearly the low amounts do not reflect this problem. They also drive backup generation out of business–Nuclear and natural gas in California, and Nuclear and Coal in Texas. Both states are expected to have rolling blackouts this summer. Without renewables, it is doubtful that they would have this problem, but I doubt any newspaper would explain the situation this way.
On March 19, 2018, ABC News said Rolling Blackouts Hit California Again
F&&&&&****(((((KKKKKKK!!!!
Batteries are NOT improving. Prices have dropped due to massive subsidies and dumping by China.
Did you not see my post the other day about how that ‘massive’ mega expensive Tesla battery — can power a SINGLE aluminum smelter — for 8 minutes?
Think about that…. think about how massive the cost would be to convert to solar.
Or read this
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
Who’s a pretty boy?
Paul’s a pretty boy!
Who loves his propaganda?
Paul loves his propaganda!
The NY Times, the Washington Post, Time, and CNN:
What do they all have in common?
Fake NEWS! Fake NEWS! Fake NEWS! and Fake NEWS!
Biased VIEWS! Biased VIEWS! Biased VIEWS! and Biased VIEWS!
Which is the odd one out?
CNN obviously.
It’s the only one you can’t use to line the bottom of the birdcage.
http://raisedonhoecakes.com/ROH/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NY-Times-Birdcage-ROH.jpg
CNN is by far the best fake news…..
This looks like it is a Saturday Night Live Comedy sketch .. but NO…. it is CNN….. the worldwide leader in fake news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Lkp8Lesoo
Pauliver… any comment?
Actually, you are the first person who ever called me a pretty boy. The only time American women have reliably hit on me has been after smacking around their ex-boyfriend. But I’m too old for that shit now. LOL
Wan ker
“While you make a lot of interesting points, I think solar energy has finally become cheap enough that it can really take off and help us out…”
did you miss the part of the article about how solar (and wind) are subsidized?
what did Trump do: take away the subsidies?
when the solar industry becomes totally unsubsidized and becomes profitable to the extent where the industry is paying lots of taxes, then get back to us with how impressively cheap their output is…
please…
He probably meant that after several decades of heavy subsidies both in production as well as feed in tariffs the industrial capacity largely increased and perhaps can stand on its own should all the subsidies end. Which is sort of true but still besides the point because currently ordinary peoplez would list their priority list somehow like:
– my iphone
– my belly
– my car
– my house
– my cat
– my friends
– my family
…
…
…
– producing own energy/food (but not shrinking intake volume)
…
…
…
– producing own energy/food (living more frugally)
…
…
The oil industry has also benefited from government subsidizes, and the fossil fuel industry doesn’t pony up enough money to cover the costs of the environmental damage it does; I’m not even talking about global warming there, just things like oil spills and polluted water. As for Trump’s actions, I’m referring in part to articles like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/business/energy-environment/solar-industry-tariffs.html
The fossil fuel industry enables humans to live on earth, in the quantity that are currently here. In that sense, it is behind all the problems we have.
If we would all take our clothes off, move outside our homes, and eat only raw food that we would gather with our hands, we would remove our dependence from fossil fuels. We would be able to live in harmony with other plants and animals, without upsetting the balance. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there would be many takers for this fix to our problems.
“If we would all take our clothes off, move outside our homes, and eat only raw food that we would gather with our hands,” – that is laugh out loud funny! No, there would be very few takers on that deal! But, that is the only REAL renewable way to live. But, nobody wants the sacrifice. The thinking always involves some techo-utopia where we never sacrifice a thing. Beware of snak-oil terms like: cutting-edge, high-tech, renewable, cheap, easy, pollution-free, reliable, fossil-fuel-free, robust, long-life.
The New FE Challenge:
Strip down and race into the bush with nothing… try to live for a week.
I can imagine there will be no takers for this Challenge either….
as long as we dont have to watch
I didn’t suggest that we do any of those things. I just think we should move forwards instead of backwards. China already gains a slightly higher percentage of its energy from renewables than we do are and their government plans on putting $300 million more into clean energy, because they are choking on fossil fuels emissions. They aren’t doing it because they want to live like Hobbits, they are doing it because they want have good things and clean air and water at the same time. China has also pulled ahead of us on quantum computing, Japan has been ahead of us on robotic for years, and the EU and UK have promising research for fusion power. Why? Because their governments put their money where their mouth is, the same way the US pulled ahead in the space race. Fossil fuels is a stage in our economic development, but it doesn’t have to be the final stage.
actually, it is the final prosperous stage…
the next stage, after FF, will be worldwide poverty…
China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and National Energy Administration announced May 31 that installation of new solar-power farms will be halted for the rest of 2018 with future projects needing approval from the government.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/how-new-chinese-policies-affected-solar-power-stocks-14610434
Where have we seen this before?
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
Even as Germany adds lots of wind and solar power to the electric grid, the country’s carbon emissions are rising. Will the rest of the world learn from its lesson? After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs. That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
This could be a learning moment for you …. will it be? Or are you going to throw more Idi ocracy at us?
Paul, I don’t want you to insult you in any personal manner, but are you for real, isn’t it just some impostor joke by FE/TM or such, because I’ve not seen comment of this calibre for long long time??
– The scale is so insane that what ever they claim in solar China is and remains COAL
– Fusion power doesn’t exist, the only advance in nuclear domain on industrial scale are breeders/mox fuel NPPs, one located in France and closed down not on technical grounds but as favor of lefties coalition with cretineous hippie elements, the second one actual several of them is the functioning Russian breeder/mox fuel program. There might be some interesting r&d in labs around the world but it doesn’t exist on industrial scale, do you understand me?
– Prior to somewhat peculiar infusion of printed up mountain of money for Musk and his tribe of former NASA staffers the US was so decimated as importing Russian rocket engines and space walk suits and riding chair in Russian rockets (up to this point); the bulk of orbital lift cargo capacity is serviced by France(EU) and Russia, SpaceX is perhaps getting there but still a junior. If you are critical and brave enough re-balance your senses of what actually likely happened in the “space race” of the late 1960s, not on TV/studio sets..
I am more puzzled than I am insulted, since you didn’t actually contradict anything I said. I said China gets a higher % of energy from clean sources, not all of it, I didn’t say fusion power exists, I said they are doing research into it, and it was with government money that we pulled ahead in the space race in the first place; if we are falling behind, well, at least we have our tax cuts, then, right? I feel like you are rehashing arguments you’ve had with other people.
And make only grunting noises
Paul, I’m afraid you have not looked around the world enough.
Your wave of life is directly product of many previous generations of people actively doing its share of stealing, murdering, scheming, displacing, enslaving, polluting, burning, .. to get into premier position of amassed control of energy resources. That’s why the US, which still is a host nation of the global order can waste resources per capita in such frivolous magnitude. To smaller or larger extent this is true to all humans anywhere..
Buffoon Donaldo, changed so far a few hairs on this gargantuan beast so to speak, it’s irrelevant.
Please call us back when anything like the above is going to be reported in “feel good” msm outlets such as NYT, CNN, BBC, ..
Those sound like reasons we should have invested in renewable energy sooner, not reasons why we never should.
The problem you have, Paul, as I see it, is that allegorically you equate removing government subsidies from unprofitable, destructive or futile activities with “kneecapping” of said activities.
Would that be kneecapping as in taking a sledgehammer to a person’s knees and shattering them, or putting a gun to a person’s knee’s and pulling the trigger?
Or would that be kneecapping as in refusing to keep paying a person a allowance when you considered that said person was using said allowance for non-productive, frivolous and ultimately destructive purposes?
As a community, as a society, as a civilization, we need to use our resources wisely and productively or it’s bye bye to community, society and civilization and hello to “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
We’ve reached the twilight of abundance and the nightmare at the end of BAU coming to a solar farm near you, and probably sooner than you think. Subsidizing ineffective technological “solutions”, refusing to acknowledge reality, and engaging in virtue signaling are only likely to bring the day of reckoning forward.
Ooooh… we have not had someone so profoundly Delusional on FW in such a long time.
We’ll be dragging you around by your nose and kicking and spitting on you before long…. and I guarantee you will throw in the towel….
That’s what always happens….
Ok boys…. dinner is served!!!
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/shark_feeding_frenzy_by_eylk341-d5grr3k.jpg
I miss Keith…
but not as much, now that Paul is here…
some advise for Paul:
ignore Eddy and stay around…
we need your green perspective…
Can’t wait to see the pollution of both mining the resources and improper disposal for 1 billion lithium batteries.
Yes, JesseJames! I agree. Every 9 years millions of residential solar backup batteries will be discarded. They only last 9 years! Then that 500lb battery pack goes in the landfill. Oh, but but but they are recycled. Yeah recycled with heat from fossil fuels!!!!! More waste more pollution. Yeah that’s the answer to all our problems.
Allow for wearing my techno_fetish hat for a moment, the numbers are little bit better on batteries, they should last ~15-20yrs if used properly, obviously derated by some lower %% for capacity at the end. Unless you perhaps meant the classic older heavy Pb stuff.. while even the first gen lithiums of crappy consumer electronics I bought in very early 2000s work fine, and nowadays we are like gen 6-7th revision of it much better..
The devil lays elsewhere, namely in the power electronics, only hand full of serious companies still around, most of them left the home scale sized consumer market segment for good. What remained is very pricey quality, hard to make interoperable with other components by other vendors to have full scale robust system. If something presents a weak spot nowadays it’s not a battery per se but this power electronics, ~10-15yrs lifespan out of it if you are very wise and lucky..
I got a quote for solar back in my delusional state… the guy said do not believe the crap from other outfits about 15-20 years…. the best I have seen is 12 … expect 8 or so… and I have been selling this gear for decades….
I understand your point, but in this particular case he likely did not sell aerospace grade derived lithium batteries for decades, there were none available.. And as I said I’m more skeptical on the power electronics side of the gear available, because these “quality” western companies don’t last very much (e.g. migrated towards grid operator level customer base), and or funnily exit the wind or vice versa the solar market with their product portfolio just to complicate end user situation etc. There are few ~quality Chinese power electronics brands if you look closely, and ~8-10yrs longevity would be stretching it beyond reasonable.., while the ordinary stuff is even much worse, say <<5yrs..
Note: again, the above will be independently verified to you perhaps by only ~5% of the dealers/installers out there, majority know very little about their own trade, and are after regular sales, no point in selecting extra durability for customers..
I could say the same about anything from computers and car batteries to that huge floating island of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, from time to time I read articles about scientists working on the problems of modern waste disposal.
That’s you happy then. You sound a bit like my maiden aunt, who from time to time reads the Bible and takes a lot of comfort from that, despite all the sins she believes she commits on a daily basis.
My own take is that as long as you are assured someone else has got the problem in hand, you and my aunt feel justified in continuing to sin in your various ways, when the only defensible ethical stance you would be justified in embracing would be to sin no more.
In your case, the sin is in contributing to the ever-growing pile of trash you object to humanity collectively producing—including by adding to it through the construction of yet more junk in the form of solar panels or whatever.
And then you go to the mall … buy more ‘stuff’ and toss it in the landfill when it breaks or you get bored with it.
Goats eat everything …
I am going to try feeding a goat a lithium battery and see what comes out the arse end.
Stay tuned.
FYI https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/04/16/which-megacorps-pay-megataxes/#1e4ed62f5586 Answer: Big Oil
BTW – DPs…. I am sure you are reading the rubbish from pauliver the MORE on… and thinking … what a f789ing id iot he is …. I bet you are secretly cheering for FE and his crew of mad dogs hoping we turn this joker into a bleeding ball of shredded meat….
But step back a moment …. you are the same as him… only you drink different kool aid… (paul drink every flavour it seems)
Oh gaaaawwwwd .. did I see a link to the NYT to support an argument?????
Seriously????? Pauliver … can you get us some CNN too…. that would really solidify you position
Read my comments about the situation in wind and solar in California and Texas driving out backup power. What cost do you assign to that problem? If wind and solar cause your grid to go down quickly, how beneficial is that? How much would you pay for non-beneficial electricity?
Thanks for that overview. Eventually, it might not come this very summer but sooner or later it is inevitable, the Cali and Texas situation is seriously destabilized by the premature pull out of base load generation sources.. (and the counter trends of adding volatile windosolars). In Europe as I told you some time ago, several neighboring countries to Germany installed blocking apparatus on the networks, so there could be a sudden blackout situation confined (forced) to DE’s grid as well, unexpectedly.., however the policy of premature closure of coal capacity has been slightly altered in Germany lately, and they are big on natgas fallback as well, so they are aware of it at least somewhat..
Those are technical difficulties that can be solved, not reasons to give up completely. I’m not going to trade in my car because the “check engine” light comes on.
Yes, please tell us more about how you have a car and lots of other cool stuff that you don’t wanna give up and at the same time you’re concerned about the mess we’re making of the planet.
I now own my 7th car…
and my 5th computer…
how about you, Paul?
I have two cars and a truck…. I have so far burned over two tonnes of coal this winter…. can I play?
2t per heating season?
I’m ashamed burning much less of that nicely precooked carbon, but I’m cheap and lazy.. so perhaps it’s the difference of m3 and temp comfort level..
Only half way into winter… I am hoping to burn at least 4 tonnes when all is said and done … if I could get through 5 that would be spectacular….
Actually, I don’t have a car. I realize that in America most cities are designed around the assumption of car ownership, so not everyone has the options I do, but my job is only a 45 minute walk away from my apartment. I do need to lose some weight, so bonus.
And we could set up a colony on Mars except for the fact that there are no resources such as food and water and air there…. and the cosmic radiation would fry us…
But I am not giving up … there are just technical problems…. I am confident we can overcome them
Do I qualify for the id io t club?
you can actually be the club’s president…
but do we have to pay dues?
That guy is evidently a prankster, comparing heavily destabilized base load grid (Cali, Texas, Australia recent examples) to mere “check engine” technical difficulties to overcome is even beyond the notorious and famous “..it’s only a fleshwound..” … lolz…
” I think solar energy has finally become cheap enough that it can really take off” – By “take off” your implying we burn tons of coal and millions of barrels of oil to produce solar panels. Your also implying we produce millions of tons of pollutants from refining metals and materials to produce all these panels. Then you say this act will “help us out”. How will burning all this fuel help? How will adding more pollution help? We already on the precipice of significant fossil fuel shortages. This will only hasten global fuel shortages.
Paul, you seem to have the notion that once these panels and batteries are built that they will last forever. That all we have to do is build them and we can throw a master switch to turn off the flow of fossil fuels and turn on the flow of green energy. Surely you must know that anything and everything humans build begins to decay immediately. Infrastructure needs constant maintenance, repair and replacement (which takes heat from fossil fuels).
Solar panels and wind turbines are part of the fossil fuel ecosytem. You cannot have solar panels and batteries and wind turbines without the heat energy from burning fossil fuels. Having solar panels without fossil fuels is like having a toilet without a drain. It is just a big mess.
But once you have a solar powered factory making the solar panels, your point is moot.
There is no chance in the world of a solar powered factory making solar panels, I am afraid. Certainly not in the next 50 years.
Actually, the point wouldn’t be “moot” until we have biodegradable solar panels that grow on trees and can be composted at the end of their working life.
Even a solar-powered solar panel factory would be a huge burden on the environment if it needed to be supplied with components and parts fabricated from materials processed in other factories from raw materials dug out of the earth or reprocessed from junk and then transported to where they were needed using other machinery that also needed to be powered.
And even if all the power to do all the fabricating and moving was provided by solar cells, the sheer amount of material and of land involved in the energy harvesting process would be a significant burden on the natural environment that most eco-friendly types claim to be concerned about.
Pauliver … let me help you with your logic:
How about: Once we work the technical problems of growing solar panels on trees…. that point will be moot
LOL!
Let me throw a fact out there… I will get a good idea of what your IQ is based on how you interpret this :
The state’s energy grid is at a “crisis point” as power prices soared to more than 100 times the usual rate last week.
Several major electricity power stations went down on Thursday night, unprepared for a spike in demand caused by a cold snap along Australia’s east coast.
It forced one of Australia’s largest aluminium smelters to shut down its potlines for an hour at a time to help keep the state’s lights on.
On three separate occasions Tomago, the state’s largest single energy user, was forced to halt production as spot prices soared to a staggering $14,000 per megawatt hour.
CEO Matt Howell tells Ray Hadley the price hike would be like a motorist paying over $400 a litre for petrol and would have seen his business lose $5 million an hour.
“What we need is constant energy supply. The question is, when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, where does that energy come from?”
Mr Howell has hit back at suggestions New South Wales should go down the same track as South Australia and buy a giant Tesla battery.
“The largest battery in the world… would power this smelter for all of eight minutes. It’s clearly a nonsense.”
https://www.2gb.com/energy-grid-at-crisis-point-as-power-prices-surge-160-times-the-usual-rate/
The pressure is on … let’s see what your tiny brain can come up with…..
It seems the laws of physics don’t apply anymore, when everything is rigged by dark pools of money, and men behind the curtains.
The men behind the curtains can’t abolish the laws of physics, but they can bend and twist things so they can skim off profit for themselves until the system they are bending breaks from their foolishness.
Yes, I agree. They are only delaying the inevitable crash, which makes things very difficult for us to understand and predict. Everything I’ve been taught is upside down.
I agree, all of what we thought we knew about finance and the economy is no longer applicable. There are no leading indicators of what is to come. Oil shortages may well cause oil price to plunge for all we know. The rule-book is out the window.
The men behind the curtains can’t abolish the laws of physics
They can abolish (or ignore) the laws of physics if they want—all they need to do is declare a “con-sense-us” of physicists no longer regard conventional laws of gravity, dynamics, thermodynamics, etc., to be invalid, and Bob’s yer uncle! But they can’t abolish the consequences of abolishing the laws of physics.
In any case, it’s the women behind the men behind the curtains that I worry most about; especially the ones who have abolished the laws of gender. Who do they think is going to be wearing the trousers after BAU goes bust?
Oops! “invalid” should read “valid” above
Dark pools of money represent promises of future energy supply, available at a price the economy can afford, and matching the needs of the infrastructure.
People have been able to make false promises for a long time. This is just a new form. Derivatives are another form of promise that won’t be able to be paid. So are Social Security payments.
Hi Gail,
I have been reading your blog for quite some time and really appreciate your insights. I think that your work would gain from contextualization within the larger trends of (de)materialization and (de)centralization, which could help those readers who live in fear to take a more spiritual approach. There is already a strategy in place by the world’s leaders to deal with the limits you describe (namely as regards transitioning the oil-based debt system to a data-based one, based on centralized private rather than public debt, via the blockchain and IoT). It is called social entrepreneurship or “changemaking” and culminates in transhumanism. The question of how to “rise up” out of this historical moment is an anthropological one, and once again divided along the lines of materialism and idealism. This question will be resolved in school, the place created by the state to form materializing selves, which is why that space is currently so politicized. I have written extensively about this on my blog, though in French only, in case it is of interest to you.
Many thanks for your contributions and very best,
Maria
The big issue I see is that our electricity and oil problems are nearly the same problem. In fact, electricity is at more risk, especially in areas that have been adding a lot of wind and solar, because they tend to drive the electricity production needed to keep the operation out of business. California has been, and is now, experiencing power outages. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-dwp-power-out-20180709-story.html
This articles claims the reason is
Wind and solar add greatly to the demand put on the aging infrastructure. Fixing the aging infrastructure (using oil and other energy products) is part of the real cost of wind and solar.
The crazy pricing scheme has shut down some natural gas generation in California.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nrg-plants-20180309-story.html
NRG subsidiary to close three power plants in Southern California
Also California approves closure of last nuclear power plant
Texas is also on the edge. It is another big state for wind and solar. Stories earlier this year said, “Texas’ power grid operator won’t rule out rolling blackouts as tight supply meets high summer temps.”
The article explains,
This article says, “Monticello Goes Under, More Coal and Nuclear Imperiled in Texas”
The lower power price environment it talks about is the crazy pricing scheme that give negative rates to other electricity producers when wind and solar are producing more than needed.
So the moral of the story is don’t count on dematerialization anywhere near where wind and solar are being added to the grid. Run, don’t walk, to a location where you can get fossil fuel electricity. Perhaps this will last a little while. The data-based economy very much depends on fossil fuels.
The media are spreading misleading information about the US energy independence.
The US still imports around 8 mb/d of crude oil
11/7/2018
US crude oil imports and exports update April 2018 data
http://crudeoilpeak.info/us-crude-oil-imports-and-exports-update-april-2018-data
When doesn’t the media spread misleading information? That is their job. They are the ministry of truth.
The Ministry of Truth … contrary to popular belief… is a good thing… where would we be without them spreading delusions 🙂 🙂 🙂