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.
Top U.S. Shale Oil Fields Decline Rate Reaches New Record…. Half Million Barrels Per Day
If we add up these top five shale oil fields monthly decline rate for August will be 503,000 bpd. Thus, the shale oil companies must produce at least 503,000 bpd of new oil supply next month just to keep production from falling. And, we must remember, this decline rate will continue to increase as shale oil production rises.
https://srsroccoreport.com/top-u-s-shale-oil-fields-decline-rate-reaches-new-record-half-million-barrels-per-day/
If you polled 1000 Americans … and asked them who was fighting in Yemen ….
Anyone want to bet — 999 of them would ask — what is Yemen?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-25/one-year-msnbc-covered-stormy-daniels-455-times-war-yemen-0
The role of the MSM is to tell you what to think.
GWers… think about that … oh right …. you can’t think … you parrot what the MSM tells you
Americans should only be worried about the wars they are fighting. But, you see, Trump got elected promising no more body bags. And, being a perfect gentleman, he has kept that promise. What’s more, he is even going round the world and influencing countries like North Korea to adopt his peace-loving attitudes.
Notice how both parties always support all wars always…
Think about that….
Since most people cannot think… I will tell everyone what to think…
The politicians are rubber stampers — they are told by the El ders when to approve a war….
Did you know that elected officials are exempted from insider trading laws? Well if not then now you know — that’s a nice perk for someone willing to rubber stamp….
You are so cynical, man. Don’t you know that that nice Mr Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Yep — that alone should give people pause for thought over who is control…
But it doesn’t
The Obama brand is intact…
Seems the Germans are having some issues with one of the US’s favorite corps:
https://sub.media/video/against-the-google-campus/
I just get tired of everyone posting old articles on why solar won’t work using very old solar prices and efficiency calculations. The calculations that I gave you are based on prices available TODAY. Not in the future (even though more efficiency improvements will happen and lower prices further). Also, my calculations were based on 50% of the solar power being stored every day (i.e. storage cost included and intermittency solved). No one is addressing my central point that based on existing technology at TODAY’s prices (assuming no further price reductions), we can achieve 100% electrification of the USA economy by investing $566 billion/yr for 30 years. $566 billion is only 3% of the current USA GDP. C’mon, this is going to be easy. It won’t even be that hard. The future is going to be great. We could even take 100 years to do the transition because we have all the fossil fuels and nuclear available to back fill until solar plus storage is fully implemented over a longer time frame.
So today’s prices are going to stay as they are for 100 years? What about all the raw materials required to build this system? As Gail points out, our world is finite, and issues are already appearing:
https://youtu.be/TFyTSiCXWEE
Can you do deep and heavy mining using only solar energy or wind power?
Also, can intermittents outlast other types of production? Even if they are only five years old, if we can’t keep up the grid, most of them cease to have much value. Most of them are grid connected. Few have battery connections sufficient to cover long outages.
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
Bill Gates: We need global ‘energy miracles’
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/12/bill.gates.clean.energy/index.html
Renewable energy mix played role in SA blackout, third AEMO report confirms
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-12/renewable-energy-mix-played-role-in-sa-blackout/8111184
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
The Curse of Energy Efficiency (Jevon’s Paradox)
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/02/26/Energy-Efficiency-Curse/
IEA Sees No Peak Oil Demand ‘Any Time Soon’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iea-sees-no-peak-oil-demand-any-time-soon-1488816002
Now skat! Before FE wakes up!
I find it very difficult to argue with someone who base their understanding of an issue .. on what the MSM tells him to base it.
50% of solar stored? So electricity produced 8-16, storage empty at midnight, then what? And what about bad weather? And winter?
I am so tired of PV proponents claiming more efficiency improvements will happen and lower prices further. It is techno-fantasy. Even if the panels were free (as in dollars) they still require the whole of the fossil fuel infrastructure to build. Once fossil fuels wane…so to does solar PV and wind turbines.
I was reading an article earlier today about China’s huge overcapacity problem for solar. We as buyers have little way of understanding the difference between dumping unwanted production at an artificially low price and efficiency savings. As buyers are discovering how expensive solar panel are to integrate into the grid (they drive up costs for backup providers), they cut back on orders. China is expected to install very little itself in the second half of 2018, creating part of the problem.
US energy use per year 87.5 quadrillion BTU. That converts to 2.5E16 watthours per year. Using eight hours per day 365 days we have 2920 hours per year. So we need 8.6E12 watts. At $0.8per watt we need about 7 trillion dollars invested in production. Over 30 years 230 billion dollars per year. Now we need to add the cost of the storage equipment and the transmission lines and the new truck fleet and the new car fleet and the new furnaces for all houses and offices and schools and the cost of batteries for all trucks, cars, boats and plane!? and the cost of maintenance and then start spending all over again at the 30 year mark. Please show we your math for all of these Texas.
Please keep in mind here in NY state it is cloudy all of November.
The days are short on the occasional non-cloudy day.
Another idea (from the one man think tank)…
Why don’t we set up a series of mirrors on the equator…. and reflect sun light from areas that are not cloudy to those that are… targeting solar panels…. ANNNNNDddd…. we could also shoot the sun rays from the side of the earth that is night to the other side…. so that we could have electricity 24 hours per day….
Yes there are surely obstacles…. but we can do it…. we just need someone like Elon to rubber stamp it….
The amount of energy the US used in 2017 was 97.7 quadrillion Btus. So the number is a little higher.
Billy’s on the bus… back to his bu ddies … where they don’t ha ssle him with facts and logic….
Right Billy?
Let’s check the live feed from the dr one that Fast Eddy has flying over D elusiS TAN N OW!
3-2-1…. we’re live with Bi lly and Sm ite and Pa uliver….
https://youtu.be/aWeG6Ea84zg
We have a deal! The art of the deal is working:
Trump: This bottle of cognac is yours if you sign the deal.
Junker: No way.
Trump: These two bottles…
Junker: Where’s the pen.
Trump: Let them have soy beans.
Junker: Whatever.
The triangle of doom is coming for the WTI again.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Di5MIVQVAAAcVIu?format=jpg
What is this? Please explain?
Oil price. Upper line is supposed to be the most consumers can afford, lower line least produces needed.
When prices breaks out from the Triangle Doom is here.
Except it wasn’t. Central banks?
To make a long story short since money is a relative “points” system oil prices can stay the same as long as the price of everything else goes up or as long as the purchasing power of money goes down.
Sure, give everyone €2000/month of printed money and maybe The upper line moves.
https://www.economic-undertow.com/2013/08/11/triangle-of-mood/
The bottom half is bolstering the US economy, thanks to borrowing
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/23/the-bottom-half-is-bolstering-the-us-economy-thanks-to-borrowing.html
Far better to kill off the bottom half. That gives a 50% cut in expenses for only a 20% increase in production cost. That extra 20% will be applied to only the remaining 50% so a 10% increase in cost versus a 50% decrease Net 40% decrease in costs.
As they put it so well in the movie “There’s a storm coming.”
During the war against Napoleon in Spain, and English officer who had lots of cash offered a peasant a gold piece -probably a half-sovereign – for just a couple of loaves of bread; the troops were sick of army rations and hadn’t seen fresh bread in ages due to the war.
The peasant looked very hard at it, and then said: ‘Sorry, but I can’t feed my children with that gold.’
Being an English gentleman, the officer let him go, but the soldiers are certainly on record as having robbed and murdered the peasants when they didn’t co-operate, which required a lot of summary hangings to put right.
Watch what they do when this no longer exists
http://i3.cpcache.com/product/648037915/us_army_military_police_crest_square_sticker.jpg
Remember
https://sou-media.s3.amazonaws.com/a/img/pg-34-abu-ghraib-1-ap.jpg
http://i1.wp.com/www.bloggerheads.com/abu_ghraib/iraq_torture_01.jpg
Ikonoclast: the commenters here will be cheering collapse … until it doesn’t happen. I have tried to challenge them to show me the math why solar and wind won’t work, but they refuse to do so. I have read every article and comment on this site for 2 years waiting for someone to explain (in math terms) why solar and wind won’t work, but they just make unverified statements that it won’t work because fossil fuels are allegedly a prerequisite to solar and wind. I have done the math. Industrial scale solar can be installed today at $800/kw (or less). Wind is even cheaper. There are storage methods today that can store wind and solar energy at $0.03/kwh. If you electrified the entire USA’s energy needs (no fossil fuels), it would only cost $17 trillion and that includes storage (solves intermittency issue). $17 trillion spread out over 30 years is only $566 billion/yr of investment which is less than what the USA invests in energy per year today. The peak oil/fossil fuel dilemma will be solved and all the BAU/doomer commenters on this site will be denying it all the way to their graves.
Intermittency problems are not in days; they are in months and years. Winter tends to be a major problem, especially away from the equator. Hydro, which might be a backup, varies significantly from year to year in total quantity. It also varies from month to month.
Solar has a real problem with having a steep decline late in the day when electricity is heavily used. The rapid ramp up cannot be done by any fuel (wood or fossil fuel), unless they have been operating very inefficiently, so have a huge amount of immediate ramp-up capacity. There is a cost associated with operating inefficiently, which needs to be paid by someone; this cost should be assigned back to solar. Alternately, big batteries can be installed.
The cost calculations you see do not have the true cost of solar figured out, including the intermittency issue. In terms of EREOI, this drops the return way down, to the 3:1 to 1:1 range. With this low EROEI, there is never enough to build out the rest of the system. The fact that the solar costs are front-ended makes the problem of having anything left for the rest of the economy worse. There is not enough to make new solar panels, even.
The adverse price impact on backup providers if they are not subsidized tends to collapse the whole electricity system.
I may have responded to iconoclast indepstead of you. Sorry.
Solar and Wind produced less than one percent of total world energy in 2016 – IEA WEO 2017
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyWorld2017.pdf
UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
(Malyshkina, 2010)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q
University of Chicago Peer Reviewed Study: predicts world economy unlikely to stop relying on fossil fuels (Covert, 2016)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.117
Shortage of resources for renewable energy and food production (Rhodes 2011)
https://www.scribd.com/document/375501088/Shortage-of-resources-for-renewable-energy-and-food-production-Rhodes-2011
Top scientists show why powering US using 100 percent renewable energy is a delusional fantasy
http://energyskeptic.com/2017/big-fight-21-top-scientists-show-why-jacobson-and-delucchis-renewable-scheme-is-a-delusional-fantasy/
Why sustainable power is unsustainable
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16550-why-sustainable-power-is-unsustainable/
At this rate, it’s going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/
Desert sun in Qatar too hot for solar panels to work
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/desert-sun-in-qatar-too-hot-for-solar-panels-to-work-h23kmktbp
Air Pollution Casts Shadow over Solar Energy Production
http://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/solar-pollution
Wow man, you really took the bait. I hope you had that saved in a text file
The huge number of solar panels and large number of workers do not equate to much energy production. IEA is less generous in the way it counts renewable electricity production than BP, but both are low.
Thanks for all of this.
Billy …. what’s your choice…. 1 or 2?
that works out to about 52000 dollars per person in the US to make it fair we should include the whole world’s population at about 8 billion multiply that by 52 000 dollars that works out to a one-off investment of 416 trillion dollars. Now lets divide that figure by the 1 %ERS the wealthy people of the world (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp) one percent of eight billion of the world’s current population we arrive at the magic number of eighty million people who will finance the transition to full renewable for the entire world it works out to 5.2 million dollars each by the way billy i am in the 1%ers and you probably are too have you got a spare 5.2 million dollars laying around?
Ultimately it’s a question of resources, i.e., both for the panels/turbines and the storage. The viability of *that* expenditure is a tad doubtful.
In addition to all the other links posted here regarding the impossibility of a 100% “renewable” future, there is another fallacy proponents of wind and solar make. That fallacy is that once the “renewable” infrastructure is built – it is done and magically we are 100% “renewable”. But, that is not the case. The batteries will need replacing 5 to 10 years into the “transition”. So, the transition is never really complete because the maintenance will be un-ending. And that maintenance is going to take fossil fuels!
Billy in Texas…So you are saying we can get the stuff needed on site and manufacture it without oil.
I thought the space elevator was far out.
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/
Two choices here Billy (in Texas):
1. You read that — have an epiphany – and feel profound shame and embarrassment about having posted such total nonsense on FW
2. You read that — go into a deep state of denial and delusion — and continue making an fool of yourself on FW
Agree FE! Solar PV and wind turbine power can never reach 100% … can’t even come close to 100% without electric rates becoming horrifically expensive. Billy, you should read more about Germany’s Energieweide boondogle for further enlightenment. And then there is the pollution problem of disposing of millions of turbines:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/15/wind-turbine-disposal/
Of course, the article end on the note of the author being sure that green technologies can be found for recycling the unwanted material.
Billy — I saw you waiting for the bus to DelusiSTAN yesterday …. I’d have picked you up and dropped you myself…. but f789 it….
Anyway… when you arrive say hi to the gang… keith pauliver and all the others who have been driven off FW over the years…. maybe you guys could have a reunion …. make sure to invite Smite…. I understand he has the finest blow up AI dolls and he is willing to share them … provided you hose them down afterwards…
John — I checked the schedule … the next bus leaves in an hour…. you can still make it if you hurry…. maybe you could open the party with a presentation on your MMA theory … Keith is guest note though so you can’t have that slot — he’s going to update everyone on his space solar project…. I think you can have 20 minutes after Billy talks about solar energy and Tesla….
Sounds like a whole lotta fun!! Which I could be there (not not not not not not not)
I choose door number 2!
But then I lost all sense of shame yeeeeeeeears ago.
That said… I do keep a suitcase full of razor sharp machetes under the bed… just in case.
https://static.next-episode.net/tv-shows-images/huge/shameless.jpg
“I have tried to challenge them to show me the math why solar and wind won’t work” – Your thinking is like this: you can’t prove the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exists; therefore she does exists. That is a logical blunder. You cannot assume solar PV will work simply because no one can prove that it cannot work. It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove that something won’t work.
It is possible to show how something can work. Therefore, the burden of proof is on you Billy to show how solar PV and wind turbines can replace fossil fuels. Extraordinary claims (100% renewable energy is possible) require extraordinary proof and that burden of proof is on you Billy. Your being clever and trying to shift that burden to us; making us prove what is not possible to prove.
Many posters have pointed you to many links that demonstrate the many problems that plague solar PV and wind turbine energy capture. Where is the working model of 100% solar PV and wind based economy? Germany is the closest I can think of and it is a failure.
the ”workabilty” or otherwise has nothing to do with math
it’s all about comparative density
in optimum conditions, the earth receives about 100w per sq metre —that is absolute, and can’t be improved upon
150 m years ago, the world was receiving much the same amount of power, the same 100w/sqm give or take. The exact figure is irrelevant
That energy came from the sun, and went into animals and plants, which eventually died.
over 150 m years—that energy piled up into a LOT, energy cannot be destroyed only changed, so some of it got converted into oil coal and gas and became very dense
we found a way of tapping into that dense sun energy, and used it to construct everything we call our infrastructure—unfortunately we’ve now burned most of that 150 m years worth of fuel in about 250 years
unfortunately, the delusion persists that 150m years of fuel density can be re-created using just solar and wind on the 100w/sq m formula, on a day to day basis, instead of a 150m year basis
to put it another way, we burn about 600,000 years worth of stored energy to provide us with 1 year of affluence and luxury. That’s not a very efficient battery, but it’s the only one we’ve got
So to keep our system going, solar and wind would have to deliver 600,000 years worth of condensed energy every year, into infinity, and solar and wind systems cannot be built/maintained without fossil fuels
And that’s before we tackle the problem that they only deliver electricity.
any suggestions?
apologies–left out a zero there–should have been 1000w in optimum condition—but it doesnt change the overall problem
I suggest as we say in the USA “Smoke ’em if you got ’em!” And in a more serious tone – try to live with a little solidarity, if one can manage it.
Nature article:
“Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were found to be taller, have higher wood calcium, greater radial growth and exhibit less top die-back. Coastal British Columbia is the first known example of long-term intertidal resource use enhancing forest productivity and we expect this pattern to occur at archaeological sites along coastlines globally.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12491#f2
JAMA article
Abstract:
“Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255#Conclusions
My grandmother’s pie crust, made with lard, was a staple in that household with six kids. She had a hard farm life and died at age 94.
BAU Knight
“America’s gigantic trade deficit reached an all-time high of $566 billion in 2017.
In Europe, the consequences of cutting into that deficit are clear. Falling demand for exports could spark a rise in corporate insolvencies and bad debt. “In the euro zone and particularly in Germany, a reversal of the positive trade balance would lead to massive overcapacity, and hence to deflation,” said Mr. Bauknecht at IKB.
That would force the European Central Bank to push down interest rates, keeping monetary policy in the crisis mode it’s been in since the euro debt crisis. Such a decline in interest rates, while positive for stocks in general, would fail to halt declines in the share prices of exporters. Energy stocks would also be hardest hit in a trade war, because global demand for oil would fall.”
Trump’s American economic nationalism will hurt the U.S, but it will hurt exporting nations even harder.
Trump aim is to make the U.S as self sufficient as possible?
Harrington who is a NSC adviser is talking about the coming energy apocalypse. The Trump administration is aware about the energy crisis that we are living in.
“China has a choice between a whimper today and a destructive bang tomorrow. It can curb the debt surge and allow growth to slow now, or risk a crisis followed by a more severe slowdown later.”
https://www.ft.com/content/0c7ecae2-8cfb-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546
Looks like the trade war is forcing China to go the ‘destructive bang’ route:
“The People’s Bank of China injected some $74 billion worth of medium-term lending facility loans into its banking system overnight, in a move considered to be the start of a new phase for China… “China seems to be re-activating its old engines of growth, accepting higher leverage which eventually may impact credit risk…”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-props-up-domestic-growth-in-light-of-trade-worries-economic-slowdown-2018-07-24
That’s why I ignore the headlines suggesting growth is about to crater… the CBs will rush in …. always…
The headline I am waiting for (dreading) is the one where China unleashes major stimulus… and it doesn’t work…
Actually I doubt we will see that headline … we will be left in the dark when that happens… because the MSM does NOT exist to inform … why should it inform?
I am not sure that there is a choice. There is really no whimper today choice. The choice is between meltdown now or later.
China has a choice between a destructive bang today or a destructive bang tomorrow.
Fixed it for them
“The new Brexit secretary has promised to ensure “there is adequate food supply” if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal. Dominic Raab finally confirmed the government was making extraordinary plans to stockpile food in case the negotiations fail – having refused to do so two days ago.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-secretary-food-supply-dominic-raab-uk-leave-eu-no-deal-a8461771.html
“Foreign investors shed record volumes of Italian debt in May as a sharp sell-off hit the country’s bond market, according to data highlighting the challenges facing the new populist government in the coming months. Italy’s governing coalition is set to bring forward a contentious budget this autumn, which some investors fear could threaten the country’s fiscal outlook.”
https://www.ft.com/content/80c92150-8f34-11e8-b639-7680cedcc421
The US and Canada have extra capacity. I live in Canada and am closer to the UK than Vancouver.
Our waterfront in Halifax has 365 grain elevators.
They may want to get on that asap.
How long will a food stockpile last?
And there are those who comment on this board that think it’s absurd we won’t suffer a collapse. Look at the UK, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Turkey Things are already getting wobbly at the periphery. It will only get worse when a black swan appears.
I seem to recall someone on this site mentioning that they were making bio fuel to keep their old beater of a truck running post BAU…. apparently they intend to drive to the Sunday market and sell organic veggies to the yippies.
Many problems with that… including who will maintain the roads post BAU…..
Now that is delusion at its FINEST.
! They can’t organise the smooth introduction of a new train timetable in the UK, it’s still malfunctioning after months – so I don’t find that at all reassuring…..
“Emerging market countries might be facing an economic crisis.
“16 emerging market countries borrowed $3.4 trillion from foreign lenders, but their foreign exchange reserves amounted to $1.3 trillion.
“The currencies of Argentina, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, and Brazil have depreciated against dollar by 80.3%, 69.0%, 60.9%, 60.5%, and 42.5%, respectively, over 5-year period…
“Emerging market countries would be facing high currency, liquidity, inflation, interest rate, default, and emerging market risks due to the shortage of foreign exchange reserves, strong dollar trend, and trade war.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4189448-emerging-markets-crisis-alert
“Argentina’s economy shrank 5.8 percent in May versus the same month last year, government statistics agency Indec said on Tuesday, the second straight month of declines in a sign of looming recession and a possible GDP contraction in 2018.”
https://www.nasdaq.com/article/argentina-economy-plunges-most-since-2009-in-may-recession-looms-20180724-01344
Gold did just fine by them. Cash not so much.
Right now, there are things to buy with gold. If there really aren’t things to buy, then gold won’t work so well. Even if farmers have food for themselves, they may not have extra for others.
I am pleased to report that I have cashed in 90% of my gold … while it still has value
This could become a big issue quickly.
And here’s what happens to the pennies to stuff into the charity box…
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/un-sex-abuse-scandal/
So….. I am driving from Invercargill earlier… after picking up another BIG load of COAL to BURN…. and I am listening to this
https://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/The-Painted-Bird-Audiobook/B003BAI8EG?ref=a_a_library_c4_libItem_3_B003BAI8EG&pf_rd_p=ae76b2bb-e63d-4a67-b357-dab3dee05ca1&pf_rd_r=PMFPTX9VHPWJV6A5HDPJ&
Chapter 15 describes in extreme detail.what happened towards the end of WW2 when brigands arrived in a village in eastern Europe (I think they were referred to as Tamluks)….
They arrived on horses… and pillaged food and home made spirits… getting roaring drunk….
Then they went after the women …. any men who opposed them were beaten or shot to death…
They raped the women brutally …. often two or three men on one woman — husbands and children were forced to watch …. the younger more attractive women were raped multiple times being passed around the men…
Any women resisting were flogged and kicked….
One large powerful man attempted to fight back and was over-powered — they forced him to watch his wife then his two daughters be gang raped…
At one point he broke free and hit one of the rapists so hard that he killed him…. the others jump him .. CASTRATED him… forced him to watch more gang raping of his family … then killed him….
This is the fate that awaits the Koombaya Doomie Preppers.
This is why I intend to run a vehicle into a rock cliff when BAU ends. Although I am hoping the NZ govt will provide me with Fentanyl …
“This is why I intend to run a vehicle into a rock cliff when BAU ends”
Thelma and Louise ! 😀
that’s off, not into… same result.
!!!!!
“I intend to run a vehicle into a rock cliff…”
You say that now. Lot’s of people say that when death still seems comfortably far away. When it gets real close they tend to hang on to every last moment. I’ve seen it.
Also … how do you know this is it? Would be kind of embarrasing killing yourself minutes before the el desr does another miraculous eight year can kick.
More time, more time.Death phobia
I found this very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbmXWLCaRg
When the electricity goes off… and it does not come back on….
This is different… because I understand that there will be no reset…. most people are going to be thinking (while they watch their wives and daughters get raped)…. that ‘they’ will at some point step in … and BAU will continue…
Death is guaranteed – why suffer.
Oh btw – did I mention that the big fella who tried to fight back – and was castrated… was also raped… I think I forgot to mention that….
In any case, what are you worried about? NZ can survive global collapse longer than any other nation on earth. You can make yourselves long-term sustainable.
Our clean green image (NZ) is just that…a marketing image/myth. We merely enjoy the benefits of a lower population density and an expanding economy. We are too spread out and reliant on FF to ever be sustainable as we are presently configured. No-one here has the slightest clue,(in my opinion/experience),about how dependant our freedoms are on FF. We are just a mini-me of the US model. The super-rich buying their getaways here have been sold a pup.
PS. I have had 50 acres for nearly 30 years and have done all the ‘right things’, but am still within a tank of gas of over 2 million people. Enjoy it while it lasts cos no-one is listening. Noah had it easy…a flood would be better option!
NZ will be no different than other places… completely reliant on petro chemicals for farming … 56 million Hiroshima bombs in spent fuels ponds will spread radiation across the entire planet…. NZ will go feral when the power goes off….
Even hydroelectric needs replacement parts. Nothing that is made by an industrial economy is sustainable.
A couple of years ago an engineer working in hydro made a long post explaining how it would be impossible to keep one of these installations operating post BAU….
However there are those with Du.nce Kruger Syndrome — who will claim he is wrong.
I remember that post well. Funny how they stick in your mind. Anyway I thought he was a she. Or maybe that was another one. Parts buyer. Said everything was hanging by a thread most days.
Anyway why quibble over hydro when oil, coal and gas are what keep things running. Trucks and ships move all the parts. Parts production is highly specialised and non local. We have an ooops waiting to happen. All it takes is a little nudge and people are out in the streets looking for someone to blame.
I think that was a different person — something Girl? But ya … she posted some excellent info regarding the various projects she was involved in….
I think the other guy only posted once… probably a lurker who got tired of reading people infected with Dun ce Kroooger… so he let rip with a very long and detailed post explaining just how absurd the notion was….
Will The Impending U.S. Economic Collapse Usher In Socialism?
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4189327-sentiment-speaks-will-impending-u-s-economic-collapse-usher-socialism
There are not many economies which can produce everything they need. The USA is such an economy. Correctly configured, the USA currently has enough energy sources, enough food production, enough primary resources, enough manufacturing capacity, enough technological capacity and enough consumers / workers. On the other hand, the EU, China, India and Japan are seriously deficient in energy reserves. Russia has good energy reserves, adequate food production but poor manufacturing capacity and probably a shortage of consumers / workers. The rest of the countries of the world? Well, they all lack one or more of those items and in any case can be dictated to by any or all of The USA, EU, China and Russia. The smaller countries are not really masters of their own fate.
A couple of definitions are needed. What does “enough” mean? It means enough resources to last longer than anyone else. It possibly even means enough resources to follow a controlled collapse trajectory rather than an uncontrolled collapse trajectory. This is the difference between a controlled crash-landing where some survive and a nose-first crash where nobody survives. What does “correctly configured” mean? This is a key point.
The US economy needs to be reconfigured to meet the collapse scenario. Currently, the US economy is wrongly configured and it will not meet collapse pressures well. The USA has permitted manufacturing capacity to leave the country and become sited in China and S.E. Asia. This is a big mistake. China’s strategy is to become the only major manufacturing country in the world. Once China is the only serious manufacturing country it will hold all other countries to ransom. “Do our bidding or we won’t send you manufactured goods no matter what you promise to pay. We have 100s of millions of peasants we can turn into middle class consumers whenever we wish. Your consumption is replaceable. You can be left to collapse.”
Of course, China has miscalculated too. It has its own problems. But the USA is the focus here. The USA needs to move towards autarky; to be able to supply all its own needs without trade, if necessary. The move to autarky is a process not an instantaneous thing and while it needs to be substantial it does not need to be absolute. Some trade could continue but wholly on the USA’s terms.
The steps required are first to reconstitute the working class and the middle class. The way to do this is to bring manufacturing back to the USA. This requires high tariffs on manufacturing competitors namely China, EU, Japan and South Korea, not to mention smaller parts suppliers from S.E. Asia. Then, tax the rich very heavily and completely close off tax havens internally and abroad. Use the revenues to commence a nation re-building program like another New Deal. Reduce military expenditures. Channel the savings into new infrastructure. It’s the old guns or butter argument. if you make too many military expenditures you collapse your civilian economy.
Reduce waste and reduce excessive consumption spending. Instead channel more effort into spending to produce new productive factories and infrastructure. Reduce the size of the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) sector. All of this could be achieved at a net energy saving. Continue to draw in some strategic imports by special deals for such countries, for example oil from the Middle East, Canada and Venezuela. But keep tariffs high on manufactures. Increase the minimum wage to a living wage. A person on a 40 hour minimum wage should be able to keep a family of four without food stamps or government assistance.
Take a leaf out of China’s geostrategy playbook. China does not care who governs other countries or whether they are dictatorships, democracies or whatever. China is not interested in regime change. China just does deals for the resources it wants. Remember, the USA can be autarkically independent for the most part. China cannot. The USA might need some extra oil. Get it mainly from Canada, the Gulf and Venezuela. These are short regional supply lines.
Look at China’s OBOR (One Belt, One Road). These are long supply lines to Central Asia, the Sub-continent, Middle East, Africa and Europe. China is not self-sufficient, can never be, and must rely on long supply lines to the rest of the world. Regional break-down from collapse will compromise China’s supply lines. No need to do anything. Watch from a distance as China’s over-extended supply system breaks down. Use China’s momentum against itself. Use Sun-Tzu style strategy against China; the ultimate irony.
No, the US cannot produce everything it needs without supply chains from around the world. Energy is nessessary, but not sufficient, to keep the system going.
Computers, portable phones, and high tech devices all take materials from around the world. Quite a few of these materials come from China, others from Africa and South America. As far as I know, we do not do the final assembly of computers in the US. Even if we did, we would need lots of imports. We are almost as vulnerable as everyone else. Manufacturing and grid regulation is very computer dependent. Developing new oil wells is also very computer dependent.
Russia can, and has a very limited import supply.
Plus it has all that oil and gas, the largest land mass, forrest, etc.
If one is paying attention, one can get a view of the “survivors” on a slow crash.
Russia may be ahead of the US. With its cold climate, nothing can go seriously wrong for long, however.
Where will they get the spare parts to keep the oil and gas infrastructure operating? What about the grid?
What alternative do you see to collapse? Are there any mitigating or delaying strategies at all which can be implemented, at least for some countries? Or is collapse imminent, unstoppable and unsurvivable for all?
What I don’t like about that view (imminent, unstoppable and unsurvivable for all) is the complete fatalism of it. It might be true but to give up fighting to preserve something can turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is also an excuse for an extravagant BAU consumption orgy without any attempt at moderation, conservation or restraint.
Not enough consideration is being given to the political economy alternatives to unfettered capitalism. It is unfettered capitalism which has failed to respond to the limits to growth. A more dirigist (state directed) economy could do more to reduce wasteful consumption. Of course, command economies have a bad name but when it came to survival in WW2, all allied countries, including the USA, moved to much more state-directed command economies. That’s how the allies won; with a complete state-directed harnessing of manpower and resources. The new “Collapse Wars” fought partially against other nation-states and partially against nature itself will require a similar state-directed harnessing of all manpower and resources.
Collapse will start in the periphery countries of the world. I am referring here to core-periphery theory like World Systems Theory. Then entire periphery regions will start collapsing. The USA is of course a core country and also a core region. It’s big enough (with Canada tacked on as a client state) to be considered a region unto itself.
If exhaustion and collapse of the periphery is inevitable, then the North American region will eventually be thrown on to its own resources. If it plans wisely it can survive longer. It should start planning and acting now. All individuals die, all civilizations collapse, all species go extinct… sooner or later. But again, all individuals try to live as long as possible, species keep trying to reproduce and al wise civilization would try to sustain itself, or a remnant, as long as possible.
To be completely fatalistic, to give into BAU without attempts at civilization-prolonging actions seems to me to run counter to both logic and the survival instinct. Indeed, being fatalistic and refusing to consider or countenance any survival-prolonging actions smacks of defeatism and collusion with the forces of the rich elites arrayed against us. More than anything it is a tacit capitulation to unfettered capitalism even though we know that its wasteful consumption and inefficiency is going to send us extinct us quicker.
a “… wise civilization would try to sustain itself, or a remnant, as long as possible.”
first of all, who says our civilization is wise?
second, is it a fact that “we” shouldn’t keep doing what “we” are doing, which is basically living for the present, and instead “we” should consider the future to be more important…
or is it just your personal opinion?
if i’m a hunter-gatherer, and have just killed an animal, then my immediate purpose in life is to absorb the energy in that animal, and if i have offspring/dependents, to share it with them
i must absorb that energy as fast as possible,
1…./because that will sustain my physical strength for the next kill
2…it will go bad if i don’t
3…someone/thing will take it from me
what i don’t do is worry about my next kill while i’m eating this one….why?—because there’s lots of meat out there for when i get hungry again
i concern myself only with my immediate clan because we are co-supportive—i am not concerned about the clan over in the next valley or wherever.
i do not have the physical/mental capacity to concern myself with future generations
———————–
our brains have not had time to evolve from that hunter-gatherer state, which is why the concern of the vast majority can only ever be for the here and now, despite having the ability to conceive of ”future time”.
Despite the obvious need to do so, there won’t be a collective shift to a benign state of ”the common good”
Our industrial medications altered the ”population dynamic” for billions of people—now those people (understandably) have an ‘immediate demand to share our resources. We are not prepared to hand them over or reduce our own living standards to a median level “for the common good”
In that respect we behave just like our ancestors. Our ”here and now” is important—the clan in a basket case country 000s of miles away isn’t , apart from feelgood charities—which isn’t the same thing.
We remain convinced that our personal energy resources will always be available. (our supermarkets and petrol stations are always full)
Chances are that they wont be for most of us…..but not all. Those who make it will look back and attribute their ‘success” to whichever god they prayed to, and think they can start over.
But without fossilised sunshine, they/we will (eventually) revert to hunter-gatherers and never understand why the oilparty had to end:
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-oilparty-is-over-c06d3c723655
I agree. No one will understand why the oil party had to end. People will think that it can somehow be kick started again and everything will be fine. It takes a critical mass to get things moving and we will fall well below that.
I don’t imagine we would ever evolve from that state…
There are plenty of organisms that have been around a lot longer than humans…. and they have not evolved beyond that state….
In fact I believe that evolving beyond that state — to a state of let’s say altruism or conservation — would result in near term extinction of a species
Fast Eddy’s Paradox — if you try to conserve or share — some vicious bastards will come along — kick your teeth in … and say thanks for that….
A ‘wise’ civilization would not have burned coal – supposedly…
However if we had not burned coal … we would have burned down all the forests… and we’d have gone extinct by now.
It could be argued that this would have been a positive outcome … because we would not have left behind 4000 spent fuel ponds spewing venom for decades…
Seriously – why would anyone think it a good thing that humans survive this? We are the most invasive destructive organism the planet has ever seen.
We poison rats…… in an attempt to eradicate them. And they are nowhere near as destructive and disgusting as humans
“What alternative do you see to collapse? Are there any mitigating or delaying strategies at all which can be implemented, at least for some countries? Or is collapse imminent, unstoppable and unsurvivable for all?”
I think there are reasonable scenarios for human survival for thousands of years ahead…
I don’t buy the formula where The Collapse = Instant Extinction…
“mitigating or delaying strategies”?
yes, of course…
the obvious one is to do whatever it takes to continue the FF economy…
continue to raise world debt… as much as necessary to continue that FF economy…
lowering energy complexity, such as abandoning solar and wind, would help greatly…
and, as is often repeated, burn more coal…
more debt and more coal…
simple strategy…
So basically, OFW is a pro-fossil fuel site, a pro-BAU site and a pro-collapse site. I should have known. Silly me. I thought there was a difference between fearing collapse and cheering collapse. I thought the survival instinct meant running away from what can burn you. Apparently, it means shoveling fuel on to the fire and running into it.
We really are at the point of no return. If you try and slowdown BAU by cutting back on fossile fuels the system collapses. Just look at what happens to economies that really on oil exports when oil consumption goes down, economies at minimum go into recession. Because of globalization all the economies are tied together. So when the Dam breaks everyone gets flooded.
If you want to keep the system from collapsing you need to consume fossil fuels.
Your criticisms and your conclusions about this site are correct.
Any proposed scenario that does not quickly end with nuclear fuel rods killing all life on planet earth will be ridiculed as delusional.
All intellectual effort will be devoted to reinforcing a fatalistic world view. No thought will be given to any possible answers or any strategies that could even delay collapse.
This site is not about discussion and dialogue. It is a self reinforcing monologue.
FE runs the site, Gail provides a platform for him.
I wish I was being sarcastic. I’m not.
That’s not totally correct….
Fast Eddy is one of a dozen or so contributors who are The Core.
Then there are many dozens of semi and total DelusiSTANIS hanging about … making inane comments (like you just did)
I expect that you read a lot of academic literature, and somehow expect that it represents a true picture of the world. It represents a combination of various people’s wishful thinking. Peer review insures that the predominant wishful thinking belief system will be repeated over and over. The way federal grants work reinforce this effect as well.
If you send in an article to a journal, they will often ask for three or four selected peer reviewers. Also, the list of references provides another list of peer reviewers. By keeping it all in the family, a uniform story can be told. Also, it is possible (with the proliferation of journals) to start your own journal.
It is incredibly easy for a wrong story, such as the peak oil story, or the “we have over 50 years of fossil fuels to burn” story, to become the common way of thinking.
I started out on the journey to figure out what was really happening way back in 2005. Along the way, I was befriended by a huge number of researchers, each with their own version of the truth, I also had real data, and I had commenters who could point me to additional information to look at.
What happens is that each group of researchers works in their own silo. They don’t understand the rest of the story, so they make up a wishful thinking version of the story to frame what they do know. EROEI theory is especially bad in this way.
There are several people I know who have decided to de-emphasize EROEI, because it, and it’s baggage, aren’t really right. Like all theories, there are some correct aspects. The problem is that a difficult story really requires understanding from several directions. The academic silo method works counter to what is needed to solve big problems. I feel bad for these many researchers. Some of the are my friends. They started from very little and tried to build a theory. Others (economists, for example) had overly simple, wrong theories as well. Putting together a lot of not quite right theories doesn’t get to a correct story, however.
If they remain in silos then they are pathetic…. the information is out there…. (here)…. if they refuse to acknowledge it …. they deserve to be spit on … mocked… ridiculed…
I have a real problem with people who – when faced with facts and logic that demonstrates that their position on an issue is wrong — yet they refuse to change their minds.
Incredibly relevant comments regarding Economics too, Gail. The silo effect in academia regarding economics has paralysed progress for 30 years or more.The poor quality assumptions that underpin the economic mainstream have been destructive for the majority of the population. Feeling the effects of what has been called the Washington Consensus has put neo liberal politics at the helm of the world’s economies since the 1970’s. Only lately has a new voice, that of MMT, been available to counter the evil that the mainstream represents. It represents the reality of macroeconomics, so it can be opposed, but not dismissed as facts really do matter, in the end.
As I have said, debt pulls an economy forward. It acts like a promise of future energy. This is especially the case if interest rates are falling. If I interest rates are rising, or if diminishing returns with respect to resource extraction are becoming too much of a problem, this doesn’t work either. MMT goes in the right direction, but it doesn’t recognize that debt has limits.
Thanks, except MMT definitely says it works for as long as resources are “available for sale”. It doesn’t rely on unavailable resources, meaning those still in the ground etc.
It’s common for MMT supporters to miss that extra point, but it’s there.
Not only do the resources need to be available, but the price has to be simultaneously high enough for producers and low enough for consumers. When this condition is not met, the system tends to collapse.
I’d say that is what’s meant by “available”.
This was before the MMA3 petrol credit wrench was thrown into the formula…. everything needs to be re-examined and recalculated… this could potentially extend BAU for multiple decades…
I am more a Big Picture Person — I will leave the inner workings including the mathematics to the experts…
Perhaps your next article could address this?
So basically, OFW understands that fossil fuels power our economy, and allow BAU to continue (and because it is a finite world with finite resources) we understand collapse is built into the cake.
I am a big fan of FF… I am pro coal oil and gas….
TINA. She is a real nasty bi tch that TINA….
There are a few DelusiSTANIS on FW who are pro collapse… because that kicks off their Great Adventure…
But I don’t think any of The Core is pro collapse… because The Core understands what that means ….
Although if collapse means an end to Justin Bieber…. what’s not to like?
http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/justin-bieber-is-making-a-fool-out-of-himself-says-judge-judy-20140226/bieber-306-1393428498.jpg
Moderation was tried back in the mid 70’s with US President Jimmy Carter and the whole idea went over like a loud thud. I understand your concern about fatalism and doing nothing will bring about those results.
The problem is that industrial civilization was created via plentiful cheap fossil fuels. There’s no going back to Little House on the Prarie. Creating enough alternative energy to power industrial civilization without abundant cheap fossil fuels is not possible especially when we have 7 billion mouths to feed on this planet.
We could have done something 40 or 50 yrs ago to make the transition but we chose to ignore the outcome. We acted asif we live on an infinite amount of resources. What we have come to discover is that we live on a finite planet.
I take your points. We certainly are at, and indeed beyond, the point of no return for 7.5 billion people relying on this style of economy. I mean both a fossil fueled economy and a capitalist economy. I feel that the point of no return was about 1972. This was the year that Limits to Growth (LTG) was published. It proved essentially that Capitalist (and Communist) industrial productivism (BAU) would lead to collapse. It did not predict collapse by 2000 as many erroneously state. It predicted collapse by 2050 if we did not change our economy by 2000.
In retrospect, LTG probably was not correct about timings but the primary thesis of limits to growth was correct and remains correct. It now looks like we should have changed our ways greatly right from 1972 when LTG was published. That was the first comprehensive, scientifically based warning and it was about the latest date at which we could have changed trajectory to some kind of steady state economy without a mass die-off… just possibly. Even that is not certain. Instead, we grew blindly. The date of 2050 for collapse now looks over-optimistic. A collapse considerably sooner than 2050 now looks likely.
It is also true that we face a ratchet effect in the general sense of escalations which self-perpetuate (acting by positive feed backs) until inviolable limits are reached. We have ratcheted the system very close to break-down limits now. The issue is how to climb down without total collapse; what can be called a managed collapse. Of course, all regions of the world cannot climb down via managed collapse. It is far too late for that. I think sadly that Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Indian sub-continent and the EU cannot climb down.
Possibly Russia and the USA can climb down with lesser losses and for different reasons. Russia has not exceeded its ecological footprint. The USA has exceeded its footprint but as a hemispheric hegemon it can call on the remaining resources of at least its hemisphere and maybe more.
I think it’s sad when a nation like the USA, which has a chance to salvage something, is not smart enough to figure out how to do it. The main conceptual problems for US citizens are these. One, they are not prepared to accept that Capitalism is an essential part of the problem. Two, they are not prepared to challenge and overthrow (by the democratic means available to them) the rule of the plutocrats (the super rich 0.1% of the USA).
There are other economic systems possible apart from Crony Capitalism (USA) and Crony Communism (Russia and China), all of which are attached in the final analysis to industrial productivism and growthism.
As I said in another post, collapse or sometimes managed de-growth is impossible to avoid now. A few countries might have the option to de-grow rather than collapse. So far as great powers go, if you de-grow slower than your competitors you become relatively stronger. The USA needs a strategy for this. To have no good strategy at all is to just invite disaster to destroy you faster.
A BAU strategy leads to assured destruction. Just about everyone here on OFW advocates BAU which is the same as advocating assured destruction. In medicine, an heroic treatment or course of therapy is one which possesses a high risk of causing further damage to a patient’s health, but is undertaken as a last resort with the understanding that any lesser treatment will surely result in failure. Heroic measures are often taken in cases of grave injury or illness, as a last-ditch attempt to save life.
Those parts of the world which might save themselves need to undertake an “heroic treatment” of their own economy. Heroic treatments typically either kill the patient quicker (when life quality is basically hopeless anyway) or they do save the patient and give some quality. Maybe our soft civilian populations aren’t feeling heroic enough yet. They will when things get bad enough.
Do nothing but BAU equals collapse. Try something radical equals maybe collapse more rapidly or maybe save something. I am for the second option.
“The issue is how to climb down without total collapse; what can be called a managed collapse.”
We tied our hands to fossil fuels and we partied and danced with it because we thought it would never end. We are now starting to see the effects from our procrastination when we had a chance. The time has also passed because the oil consumption required to even make the switch even if that’s possible is not available when the world is consuming 26 billion barrels of oil each year and oil discoveries are around 2.6 billion barrels a year. There’s our predicament. I still think this could/might play out for a few more decades until we arrive at the Wile E. Coyote moment in history.
But as Yogi Berra used to say: “It’s tough making predictions, especially about the future”.
The limits to growth models were not “predictions”..Dennis Meadows has been very clear over that point..They were projections based on computer simulations..And they simulated an economic collapse around 2030 if nothing was changed..Which of course is what happened..
https://imgur.com/a/5RoRPhR
“A BAU strategy leads to assured destruction. Just about everyone here on OFW advocates BAU which is the same as advocating assured destruction.”
@Ikonoclast, I and probably a few others don’t “advocate” BAU like the crazier commenters. In fact the crazier commenters like FE don’t advocate BAU itself so much as an excuse to pursue Xtreme nihilistic ecstasy before total annihilation of everyone due to instant BAU destruction and consequent explosion of spent fuel ponds. Anyway, it seems to me that globalised state-corporate/state-only capitalism is the only way to sustain industrial civilisation at the level of the 1920s or later.
I can also visualise an alternate system where only the vital aspects of industrialism, like basic modern medicine and limited electricity are maintained while all the excesses we know and love are knowingly avoided/shunned. However, as others have pointed out, human nature would rebel against it. Even a frugal industrialism would require some kind of global network, which in turn would require everyone to embrace it, thus making it doubly unlikely for the aforesaid reason. We will get rid of the excesses one way or the other, and unfortunately it’s likely to be the hard way which will also dispatch the basic sustainable amenities to the four winds. Sad!
excuse to pursue Xtreme nihilistic ecstasy
YES!!!! EXACTLY!!! I advise everyone to do the same.
The LTG model is basically right, except for missing the need for a financial system and debt. The scenario suggesting that the world could change its ways and avoid collapse was pretty much wishful thinking, however. The assumptions it makes are pretty absurd if you look at them. One assumption is that population is to be held absolutely flat, starting immediately. That would likely have meant one child families for quite a long time, because antibiotics and improved sanitation were extending the lives of so many. Even at that, diminishing returns would happen, just more slowly.
I think we “could have” made changes 50 years ago that would have extended our comfortable lifestyles a decade or two farther. However, as Norm points out, that is not our nature. We live for the moment. If we have the energy, someone is going to burn it. Somehow we would have had to temper our growth (populations and economy) and we likely would not have nearly the number of “gadgets” we have today. The thing that Gail points out is that once we have the growth we can’t “ungrow”. Our problem now is we have a baseline now that is very high and very energy and resource intensive to sustain. This makes growth impossible.
The sweet spot in terms of being born … was the 1950’s….. immaculate timing… old enough to be close enough to death to not really give a f789 ….yet still likely to be around to see how it all ends….
so take off that ugly sweater and turn up the heat honey, cause “It’s Morning in America” (and the world).
we will continue to burn stuff until there is no stuff left to burn
up to now that is the mantra by which humankind exists in the collective sense. i see no imminent change in that pattern of behaviour.
If the USA is (due to global chaos) thrown back on its internal resources, it seems to me that they will not tolerate that.
Various presidents have clearly stated the “Inalienable right” of the American way of life even though that mythical way of life has only existed for a minority since 1945— and the current incumbent thinks the same way
Yet the law of nations is inflexible:
********if a nation doesn’t product sufficient resources to satisfy the aspirations of its citizens, they must beg buy borrow or steal it from elsewhere or sink back to the median level that their indigenous resources allow**********
Put that law to the American people and ask which option they would take. bearing in mind that if international breakdown hits, the first three choices will be off the table.
It’s as well to bear in mind that ww2 was a ”collapse war”–though very few see it as that
Germany and Japan constructed their economic systems on the basis of military output.
When WW2 inevitably kicked off neither had sufficient oil resources for more than a year of sustained conflict, so they had to grab from elsewhere very quickly.
In the event, the USA had more resources available, so they won.
I think this episode of “The Prize”, which focuses on the importance of oil in WW2, is quite good:
thanks for the link to that video—i hadn’t seen it
absolutely brilliant source of information–am digesting/saving it right now
“Are there any mitigating or delaying strategies at all which can be implemented, at least for some countries?”
My friend and mentor Jay Hanson used to urge people to run for office who voiced this opinion, like he did in the 1990s. Start small with your local city council. Try running on a limits to growth or collapse mitigation platform and see what happens. Keep in mind that 7% of the US population thinks chocolate milk comes from brown cows. You have a very tiny and select group of people on this list, which is why most of us have such a fatalistic outlook.
Even beyond the esoteric issues, I remember seeing a post that said something like’, ‘that second law is a bitc*h’ 🙂
It’s an ecological predicament that will have it’s outcome.
Try running on a limits to growth or collapse mitigation platform
Details of what that platform would look like… I prefer a bullet point presentation
‘Correctly configured, the USA currently has enough energy sources, enough food production, enough primary resources, enough manufacturing capacity, enough technological capacity and enough consumers / workers.’
But there is this small problem…
‘The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their “mistakes” have cost the country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-24/making-shit-us-intelligence-community-collapse-driver
Did anyone ever call you a MORE on?
There… I did
Say hi to pauliver etc… when you catch the bus back to DelusiSTAN
Tell him we miss him (sarc)
https://twitter.com/bopinion/status/1021880515421450240
If my bank would keep loaning record amounts of money every year — even though I was beyond insolvent… I could avoid a recession forever too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44945112
‘US to give farmers $12bn trade war bailout’
“The US has unveiled a $12bn (£9.1bn) plan aimed at helping US farmers hurt by the intensifying trade war.”
Is this what it professes for the purposes of prosecuting the trade war, or is it to buy votes in the Nov. elections? In any case, if other industries get bailed out too this trade war its going to get very expensive, very fast.
I thought a better way of prosecuting a trade war would be to list a number of products that the US would no longer allow to be imported into the US, then offer loans to companies to make those products. The trade imbalance occurred over time, so why not increase US product base/manuf. over time, while reducing what gets imported. Add a new list of products monthly. That way it would achieve a reduction in trade balance incrementally as the manuf. base increased rather than a massive economic shock that requires bail outs. Too simple, logical and not the stuff of huge headlines.
We gave away production long ago, because other countries with their cheaper fuel mix and lower wage structure could manufacture the goods more cheaply. Taking them back will likely raise the cost by more than the tariff cost, so the strategy likely won’t work.
But Trump is a real estate salesman— you get ahead by buying people off.
I know this is often had to grasp, but its what our lessor friends do.
The TV host gig didn’t help also.
Trump thinks stealth fighters are invisible
beyond parody
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-stealth-planes-invisible-2ef5bbbd959f/
Russia just showed off a potentially world-ending nuclear ‘doomsday’ torpedo that the US can’t stop
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-shows-off-a-nuclear-doomsday-torpedo-that-the-us-cant-stop-2018-7
TradeWars
U.S farmers hit by tariffs will receive government subsidiaries. Who else will need subsidiaries when the world stops trading with the U.S? What happens to the USD? What happens to USD denominated debt? What happens to U.S banks?
Foreign direct investments into the U.S have dropped to zero. IMF says that the USD is now over valued.
No one has yielded to U.S pressure so far. No new trade deals. No nothing.
“Trade wars are unpredictable.”
Trump’s “art of the deal” is to double down until the opponent yields.
Perhaps this is where we see how dependent other economies are on the USA? Can the other big economies of the world afford to see a fall in trade with the USA? Can the USA afford to see a fall in trade with other big economies? In addition to Trump’s tariffs, there are the threats toward nations that continue to trade with Iran.
Of course, any such decline in global trade is merely hastening the inevitable.
A fall in trade is inevitable, if energy consumption per capita is level (or falling). The economy depends on energy consumption per capita growth for many reasons, such as to compensate for diminishing returns in resource production, to reward entrepreneurship, and the keep goods and services rising with rising population.
The trade problems are an outgrowth of our energy problem, as far as I can see.
Is not the merchandise trade deficit from other countries greater than our surplus?
If so, tariffs might balance out in payments to American producers; this needs some calculation. Additionally, in this case, the producer who is taxed loses some economy of scale and generally, the marginal dollar earned is the one that makes the profit, the remainder is overhead. The seller needs to pay the overhead, increased prices lead to more American production which will lead to a larger wage base and increased employment taxes.
We are the second largest oil producer now, it is not all that gloomy.
Dennis L.
US can’t produce enough oil to lower prices, IEA official tells senators
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/us-cant-produce-enough-oil-to-lower-prices-iea-official-tells-senators
Georgia lawmaker who used racial slur on TV will resign
https://apnews.com/4978858d451d47229077affdd67d1659/Georgia-lawmaker-who-used-racial-slur-on-TV-will-resign?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
How an oil glut could swiftly turn to an oil shortage
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/How-an-oil-glut-could-swiftly-turn-to-an-oil-13092902.php
Have your read this article ?
“Philip K. Verleger, senior adviser to the global consulting firm the Brattle Group and adviser to Congress on commodity prices, released a report from his independent firm PKVerleger LLC this week that included this bold claim. He predicted a 2020 economic collapse based on the oil commodity market and the lack of diesel fuel.
“Catastrophically high oil prices will cause the impending recession,” said Verleger. “The world oil market will see prices at least double.” And from there, the sky is the limit, according to his analysis.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/expert-makes-the-case-for-400-per-barrel-oil
Oil is going to get tight—
But, we shall see—
When stuff gets too expensive, people use less of it. Then, it gets less expensive.
The price falls, even if the cost to produce it is still high for most producers. The story ends when the producers go bankrupt or the governments of oil exporters are overthrown because of inadequate tax revenue.
Jim …. before you post… think first.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg/599px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg
if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known
Carl Sagan
“our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known”
Mr. DNA doesn’t understand qualities such as kindness and compassion.
It’s only a matter of time before 7.6B killer hominids come to understand that the resource base that sustains their existence is collapsing. And that their children will likely face an early and unpleasant death.
The the panic sets in.
It would be nice if Carl Sagan were right. There is a balance with niceness that works as energy consumption grows and as resources deplete. Cooperation with others is helpful. But to fix the problem, physics usually dictates that resources will disproportionately go to the “best adapted.” The least well adapted will be lose out. In a sense, they will be precipitated out of the system. Or it could be all of us that lose out.
“our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known”
Shall we put that comment into the DelusiSTANI Hall of Fame?
I think so
And I am thinking….. if humans had never happened… what a wonderful planet this would be.
“We don’t know what precise effect these massive reductions in trade and UK exports [in the event of a no-deal Brexit] would have on the British economy, but it’s fair to say it would not be good.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-leave-no-deal-what-happens-eu-talks-david-davis-a8460416.html
“Millions of “just about managing” families [in the UK] are no better off today than those in 2003, new research from the Resolution Foundation indicates. The remarkable income stagnation for so many reveals that the economy has been failing to generate income for people over many years despite record levels of people in work.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44926447
“Turkey will more than likely soon have to ask the IMF for financial help. This scenario would not only impact Turkey itself but also have consequences for Europe, because many Turkish companies are highly indebted to European financial institutions.”
https://www.dw.com/en/is-erdogans-turkey-on-the-edge-of-a-crash/a-44768540
Borrowing money from the IMF or the EU banking cabal is fools gold. They only loan you money wink..wink.. if they know you can’t pay it back. Then they come in and start auctioning off your country’s assets just like they did with Greece.
“Platinum is caught in a speculative sell-off fuelled by a supply surplus, demand concerns due to the threat of a global trade war and a strengthening dollar, which makes metals more expensive for buyers using other currencies.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-precious-poll-platinum/platinum-faces-worst-year-since-2005-as-demand-nightmare-continues-idUSKBN1KD1HX
“The first telltale sign of trade war stress on the global economy is now visible. Copper prices, which were trading at four-year highs a month ago, have shed 20 percent and are close to their lowest levels in a year. Copper is considered a proxy for the global economy on account of its usage in multiple industries…”
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/moneycontrol-research/opinion-metals-are-first-victim-of-trade-war-many-to-follow-2753071.html
Another china ghost town will fix that
“Sri Lanka is drawing up proposals to get around international sanctions on Iran by paying its oil debt with the Middle East country in tea, according to a report.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sri-lanka-iran-oil-tea-us-trade-sanctions-trump-a8460006.html
“Total debt at Eskom, the [South African] power utility went from R387 billion to R600 billion over the past four years. That’s the equivalent of South Africa’s entire budget for healthcare and education, plus another R60 billion. Eskom’s debt burden is also much larger than South Africa’s entire income from personal income tax (R556 billion).”
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/what-you-need-to-know-about-eskoms-annual-report-2018-7
“The year is only halfway through and already 2018 is on track to be the most volatile since the financial crisis, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note published Monday.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/23/global-markets-on-track-to-have-most-volatile-year-since-2008.html
“Despite two hikes of the Federal Funds rate this year, ranging between 1.75 percent and 2 percent, long-term rates have not kept pace, causing the yield curve to flatten and stoking fears of a recession. Just about every time the U.S. Treasurys yield curve has flattened in the past, the U.S. economy has tanked shortly afterwards.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/23/flattening-of-yield-curve-is-stoking-fears-of-a-recession.html
“The case for $150 oil is based on the fact that major oil companies slowed capital spending devoted to the search for new sources of supply to their lowest point in a generation, mostly outside of the U.S., when crude oil moved as low as $30 in 2016, Bernstein analysts led by Neil Beveridge wrote. Companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron curtailed capital spending to protect their share prices with stock buybacks and dividends, the report said, and that means a shortage of new supply…
““If we do get oil prices of $100, $125 or $150, you reach a severe pain threshold, and not just for the U.S.” said Bernard Baumohl, chief economist of the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton, New Jersey. “There’s nothing vague or ambiguous about it. You reach a pain threshold in the triple digits, and there is a much higher probability of a global downturn. … It would be cataclysmic.’’”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/risks-rising-that-oil-prices-will-cause-next-recession.html
““There was an implosion in major project investments, and exploration spending has evaporated,” said Bill Herbert, a senior energy analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Houston. That’s an ominous sign for crude oil supplies in the few years ahead, starting as soon as 2019, he added. “The elephant in the room that people aren’t paying attention to is the rapidly decreasing spare productive (oil) capacity,” Herbert said.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/How-an-oil-glut-could-swiftly-turn-to-an-oil-13092902.php
“Amid the financial and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, the country is expected to see hyperinflation reach epic proportions: a million per cent a year by the end of 2018, the International Monetary Fund said Monday.”
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/imf-says-venezuela-to-see-one-million-per-cent-inflation-by-yearend/news-story/4d114db6dd6c7c2fdad620c3681f0234
Imagine …
A country completely cut off from BAU … no ability to pay for energy imports … spare parts to produce energy domestically … no food imports… nothing.
Darkness.
Flick on the tee vee …. and watch as a number of drones fly around the country broadcasting live footage of the situation on the ground….
Do we call this reality tee vee show:
Little House on the Prairie
OR
The Road
$200 dollar oil?
https://www.pkverlegerllc.com/assets/documents/180704200CrudePaper.pdf
This is a 38 page article talking about the fact that not enough refinery changes are being made quickly enough to ensure that by 2020, there will be enough low-sulfur diesel and other low sulfur fuel to substitute for the high sulfur bunker fuel that is now permitted.
My guess is that implementation will be delayed, if industry needs more time to meet the 2020 cleaner fuel standard. Regulators do change their minds, if a regulation is unworkable.
https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/spains-depopulation-the-fools-who-have-stayed?utm_campaign=web-app-launch&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=rcom&utm_content=ros
Some parts of Japan are experiencing a similar trend.
And, of course, the drug problem seems to be worst in rural US, where job opportunities have become very limited. Farms are very big operations with little human labor today.
Self driving tractors are working well. Capital and fossil fuel in one end food out the other end.
In my neck of the woods Nova Scotia Even milk farms are run by bots…Good paying jobs working on bots…Not much work for migrants anymore.
Short vid 47 seconds
LOL!
Permiedoomers
Imagine spending decades DPing…. and then you die before BAU ends…
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
How the super rich hope to survive the coming apocalypse.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity
If it demonstrates one thing, it’s that they know we’re getting to the point that the game is up, even if they’re not sure what will cause the house of cards to fall.
self-organized price-cliff by diminishing energy returns and hog cycle:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-14_etp-modell-price_explanation_v1_0_3.pdf
Saludos
el mar
I think that the extent of growth in debt makes a big difference. It indirectly raises wages. The higher wages create higher demand for many things, including hogs. Energy prices are important for all parts of the economy. As energy prices rise, they tends to make goods less affordable. This is how higher prices cut off demand for many things.
Entropy, Energy and Order in the Universe
http://euanmearns.com/entropy-energy-and-order-in-the-universe/
I post this because Madame Fast bought a small jar of anchovies and it cost NZD6 bucks….
As anchovy populations crash in the ocean, the surviving forage fish move close to shore, attracting record numbers of whales and other marine life to an all-they-can-eat banquet. But scientists say the bounty is not sustainable.
While California sea lion and humpback whale numbers are, in fact, up – probably higher than they’ve been in many decades – the anchovy population is not.
The stock has collapsed, according to William Sydeman, president and senior scientist at the Farallon Institute, a nonprofit marine research organization in Petaluma, California.
“The abundance we’re seeing nearshore is an illusion,” he said. “The anchovies are only occupying about 10 percent of their habitat. When they’re abundant, they range offshore. When they’re not abundant, they contract their range toward shore.”
In other words, the less plentiful anchovies become, the more visible they – and the animals feeding on them – are to people. Sydeman says the result of this peculiar phenomenon has been an extreme visual deception.
In fact, there haven’t been so few anchovies off California’s coast in 20 years, according to a study he coauthored, which was published in 2017 by the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations. The research shows that throughout the 1990s, between 100,000 and 400,000 metric tons of mature anchovies swarmed off the coast of California and northern Mexico. In 2005, the spawning-age biomass spiked to about 2 million metric tons.
The decline of these species has sent shockwaves through the ecosystem, causing mass starvation and breeding failures in California sea lions and brown pelicans, respectively.
https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/09/28/feeding-frenzy-west-coast-anchovy-boom-masks-ecosystem-in-peril
seems to me Mrs Fast is responsible for the collapse of the entire marine ecosystem—there was me, thinkin it was japanese whalers to blame
BTW — frozen lobster tails all the way from Canada … cost NZD14 …..
obviously thinks you are a person of sophisticated taste who deserves no less
Fish populations of many kinds have been a problem for a long time. The sizes of many types of fish have been getting smaller, as the bigger ones are caught.
The last time I was in California I saw almost zero sea lions. In places that in the past had hundreds.
The sockeye salmon migration into Bristol Bay, Alaska, can exceed 40 million fish. As they charge into the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers and fan out across myriad tributaries, the sockeye and four other species of Pacific salmon are pursued by commercial and sport fisheries valued at over half a billion dollars. When they reach the region’s clear, wild headwaters, those millions of salmon spawn and produce billions of offspring that then find their way down into Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake. Then the fish head out toward the Bering Sea, get big and fat on omega-3-rich krill, and in three more years return to their headwaters to begin the cycle anew. Whether marketed to Americans or exported to other countries, Bristol Bay salmon are a major bulwark against America’s “seafood deficit,” which in 2016 exceeded $14 billion.
The commercial and sport fisheries in Bristol Bay are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Emma Forsberg / CC Flickr
In spite of all this, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has been stewarding the resurrection of a project that poses a significant threat to the region’s lucrative fisheries. The Pebble Mine project, first proposed by Cominco Limited in the late 1980s, focuses on a deposit containing billions of tons of copper, gold, and molybdenum in the very same headwaters where all those salmon get their start. Located in a seismically active region high in sulfur, salmon advocates believe the proposed mine and associated infrastructure would dangerously contaminate the Nushagak and Kvichak river systems. As Rick Halford, the former Republican majority leader of the Alaska Senate, told me a few years back while flying over the Pebble deposit, “You couldn’t pick a better place to ruin both drainages.”
https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-the-future-of-alaska-pebble-mine-and-its-wild-sockeye-salmon
Yea, I have been there, and fished the rivers.
You could not do a more stupid act than what these idiots have planned.
But, late stage capitalism produces:
kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)
Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
That is an extraordinarily good article.
The big confusion on EROEI is whether leaving disorder in is OK. There is a huge energy cost of removing the remaining disorder in intermittent energy sources that is not recognized in published figures for wind and solar. People don’t understand that disorder energy sources are not the same as ordered ones.
The one thing I got if any from this article is that for all of our saving solutions be it solar, fusion, fission, it all requires vast amounts of energy because our mechanism to convert needs the missing order to make it happen and that’s where the energy comes in.
And our energy comes from fossil fuels ant not from renewables. It’s why a leaf can convert solar energy to chemical energy. We can do it but it requires energy because we are missing the natural link for the conversion.
So without fossil fuels renewables would not exist or would not happen on a grand scale and that quite frankly doesn’t cut the mustard to keep industrial civilization running.
This is an extraordinarily good article.
It’s ok, but I doubt it was written by a physicist.
e.g.
Matter is more ordered than energy.
Matter is (a form of) energy.
… Using lower order energy to create greater order in the carbohydrates of a leaf seemingly violates the laws of thermodynamics.
Except, that it doesn’t. To generate that ray of light, inside the sun, 600 million tons of hydrogen per second is converted to energy. This is a massive flow of order (the atoms) to disorder (energy). The leaf of a tree converts a tiny percentage of this disordered energy back to order. Combining the two together shows that, overall, there is still a massive flow of order to disorder.
What happens in the sun is irrelevant when explaining why the creation of carbohydrates in a leaf does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. For photosynthesis to take place at all, it must of itself increase entropy. During photosynthesis, whilst it is true that the complex carbohydrates produced are more ordered than the carbon dioxide and water from which they are created, the absorption of photons and increase of kinetic energy of molecules in the leaf means total entropy increases and photosynthesis does not violate the second law.
Your first point is correct. The second point is incorrect. The energy being supplied by the sun is relevant. Without that energy supply,would photosynthesis occur? No.Thus,
the sun-earth system has to be considered . The decrease of entropy in a small part of that sun-earth system,which life represents,is only possible because there is an increase
in entropy in another part of that system,the sun. He is correct in his explanation of that
point.
I can see a whole lot of entropy happening on earth when inadequately regulated wind and solar are dumped on the electric grid, and other providers are required to cover somehow handle the mess that this creates. There is a real energy cost that the backup providers are being required to pay that is not being compensated by the costs most people look at. The devices are a like leeches, living off of the blood (energy) of the backup providers. They kill the system they are supposed to support with their intermittent electricity.
This is part of the reason California has so many problems with its electrical supply.
I’m not convinced David. However, I’ve not done any formal physics for 34 years and wasn’t exactly an entropy expert even then so I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.
For any process (i.e. energy transformation) to occur, that process when considered in isolation must increase the entropy of the universe. In the sun, hydrogen fuses together to form helium. The mass of a helium atom is less than that that of its constituent parts. The energy from the lost mass is converted into electromagnetic radiation (photons). This process increases entropy because electromagnetic radiation is less ordered than matter.
It can take 100,000 years from the sun creating a photon for that photon to reach the earth. Photosynthesis is a separate process. Given the time and distance separation, how can the creation of the photon and photosynthesis be considered part of the same process? Photosynthesis also increases entropy. If it did not, it could not occur. The earth is bombarded by photons from the sun. All of this energy is released eventually back into space. If the earth did not release energy roughly equal to the amount it received it would warm up or cool down. The energy is released in the form of photons once more. These photons are more numerous but of lower energy than the photons striking the earth. Hence the earth increases the entropy of the electromagnetic radiation and universe. This would be true even if the earth were lifeless. However, the fact photosynthesis takes place on the earth means the photons released back into space are more numerous and of lower energy than would otherwise be radiated. Therefore photosynthesis has increased entropy and not decreased it.
Baby Doomer has claimed (on another site) that he has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry. How are you on entropy, BD?
The main incorrect statement in your comment is in the first sentence of the second paragraph. In an open system,it is possible for a decrease of entropy to occur. Life itself proves that point. The entropy law applies to a closed system. That is why the sun-earth
system has to be considered as a whole. Of course the photons emitted by the sun and
photosynthesis are part of the same thermodynamic process. Stop the photon supply from the sun,and life on Earth ceases.(apart from the chemotrophs,which have to be
discussed separately. ) There is a constant supply of photons reaching Earth,so the time
they have existed within the sun is irrelevant. Once they leave the surface of the Sun,they arrive on Earth in around eight minutes. All the best to you.
The point is that when photosynthesis (or any other energy transformation) occurs there is ALWAYS a net increase in entropy. Photosynthesis can only take place because the entropy of the immediate surroundings (the molecules in the leaf) increases by more than the decrease in entropy caused by creating the complex molecules). What happened to create the photons is irrelevant. You cannot state that photosynthesis can occur provided the entropy decrease due to creating the complex carbohydrate is less than the entropy increase when fusion occurs in the sun. The two processes are not directly related and do not occur simultaneously.
Are you trying to say that when photosynthesis occurs there is a net decrease in entropy if the fusion in the sun is discounted? This is just plain wrong.
http://entropysimple.oxy.edu/content.htm
As we have seen, experiments and calculations indicate that the maximum efficiency of photosynthesis in most plants is in the 30% range. This means that, of the sunlight that strikes the plant, 70% is dispersed to the environment (an entropy increase in slightly heating the leaf and the atmosphere), while 30% is absorbed by the plant in the initial steps of photosynthesis of new complex “high-energy” substances (entropy decreased in the plant). Of course, this is less than the 100% increase in entropy that occurs when the sunlight simply strikes a patch of sand (and merely warms it and the air and re-radiates back to space) instead of striking the leaf. Nevertheless, photosynthesis is still a net increase in entropy and not a decrease in entropy for the overall process that includes both plant and incident sunlight as has often been stated in print.
So I was correct and you were wrong.
How old do you feel?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180712-the-age-you-feel-means-more-than-your-actual-birthdate
When I look at the average 30 year old … overweight… slovenly… lazy…. laying about eating 241 pizza and diet coke…
I feel… 25?
One third of this years crops of strawberries in Slovakia simply rotted in the fields: there was no one to collect them.
https://finweb.hnonline.sk/ekonomika/1783093-tretina-jahod-uz-zhnila-nemal-ich-kto-pozberat
The lack of workforce in the postal services in the Czech Republic makes the delivery of your parcel an uncertainity. Slovakia is going to have the same problem, too.
https://finweb.hnonline.sk/ekonomika/1783126-cesko-ma-na-postach-krizu-slovensko-na-nu-naslapuje
Try paying people 20 an hour that is our cost No problem finding workers
You try to be virtuous, wiping the curdling yoghurt off a plastic pot, then putting it in the recycling bin.
Perhaps you envisage the pot eventually re-incarnated as a frisbee or maybe even a plastic bench.
But don’t rest easy. Your pot might get burned or buried in landfill, and you’d never know.
The National Audit Office (NAO) says over half of the packaging reported as recycled is actually being sent abroad to be processed.
As a result, it says, the government has little idea of whether the recyclables are getting turned into new products, buried in landfill or burned.
While an illusion of success has been created by the UK’s system for recycling packaging, the NAO says, the reality may be quite different.
Its report finds that:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44905576
You know … I’d just chuck everything into the bag and use the blue box as a planter… but the thing is … I have to pay for council bags… while the blue box collection is ‘free’ (included in taxes)….
What I might do – to to save on council bags … is dig big holes in the paddock — dump all the rubbish including plastic in the holes… then fill them in as I go….
Recycling is mostly a lie and it often costs more energy than it is worth. A lot of my state’s (Queensland, Australia) recycling used to get sent to China. Then China essentially said “We don’t want it anymore. We won’t pay for it for anymore.”
So we got left with a big problem as our fake re-cycling scheme (sell it for next to nothing on the sly to China) fell through. There are several lessons to take out of this.
(1) There is no money in most junk. It costs more more money and energy to get rid of this junk.
(2) Don’t trust BAU capitalism. Recycling is a lie to whitewash the problem and salve consciences.
(3) Don’t trust China. They will get you hooked on their products and services and then cut you off when it suits them.
China’s plan is to turn themselves into an advanced country and turn the rest of the world into a resource source and rubbish dump. China has no interest in the world. Only in China. Their ideal is China survives and all the non-China barbarian lands collapse. That is their plan and it is quite logical from their viewpoint.
Was China paying for this stuff… or was China getting paid to be the dumping ground….
I will assume the latter… otherwise why stop taking it
As globalization becomes less feasible, what option is there besides looking out for oneself?
There is a correct concept that every western politician does not understand. For them it is all about the little little babies of far off he ll holes that must be brought to in as immigrants and paid for for life along with there endless line of ever growing children and grand children and …… A to the little little babies of the indigenous people they can just die.
America Is Headed For Fiscal Catastrophe – And No One Seems To Care
https://townhall.com/columnists/justinhaskins/2018/07/23/america-is-headed-for-fiscal-catastrophe–and-no-one-seems-to-care-n2502691
I care…
really, I do…
Ludwig?
I am of two minds here… I care because I go down too… but on the other hand… you know how most Americans believe they are special… that America is the greatest country in the history of the world etc etc etc…
Well…. I have to admit… when they go Venezuela/Libya/Somalia….. I won’t be shedding any tears…
FE, when the US goes down hordes of hungry wall street bankers will be coming to your country.
Escaping the fire…. and into the frying pan
Why care when nothing can be done about it
Because some folks make more money in down markets than in up markets, doh.
These no-one-seems-to-care nitwits will go on and on. However, things get really interesting when this sentiment changes violently and they panic in the opposite direction like a herd of spooked gazelles.
FE, I see you are not a existentialist.
You like (try not to laugh) Ayn Rand.
I am a nihilist … in training…. the problem is that I was indoctrinated right through university … so it can be a struggle.
quote “All of these problems are avoidable.”
so what is this guy: a comedian?
that Town hall’ site is truly appalling in much of its commentary
America’s middle class is slowly being ‘wiped out’
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-middle-class-is-slowly-being-wiped-out-2018-07-23
In due course we will complete the transition to feudal society… (not)
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/hands%20off.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/dont%20feel%20bad.png
Excellent!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-23/she-14-looks-older-sweden-launches-migrant-s
ex-courses-teach-newcomers-how-behave
Gail, you mentioned above that you had unhappy correspondences with the Global Footprint Network and the Steady State economy people too. You also seem to be somewhat at odds with Charles Hall at the analytical level. I would like to pick up on these points, if I may. It goes to the issue of asking what are the scientific, philosophical and political-economy orientations of this blog? I find myself somewhat puzzled on these issues.
There is one point I do understand. This blog is dedicated to exposing certain fundamental truths and making certain contentions that others, from Ecosocialists on the left to Neoliberal Capitalists on the right, are in denial about.
The truths are that;
(1) The earth is finite. (Ecosocialists get that but Neoliberal Capitalists don’t.)
(2) Any economy must obey the Laws of Thermodynamics. (Steady State Economy advocates get that but some Socialists almost all Capitalists don’t get this point.)
These truths are not contestable unless someone wants to contest the entire basis of thermodynamics and physics. In other words, these truths are only contested by persons who essentially believe in magic and perpetual motion machines.
Beyond these basic thermodynamic and dissipative system truths, you seem to be making contentions or assertions on which the science appears to be still undecided (unless I am not up to date). You say, the final effective EROImm of solar power is very low, of the order of 1:1 or even negative. As I understand it, EROImm is the final, totaled EROI needed to deliver a good or service to a consumer. “Our educated guess is that the minimum EROImm for an oil-based fuel that will deliver a given service (i.e. miles driven, house heated) to the consumer will be something more than 3:1 when all of the additional energy required to deliver and use that fuel are properly accounted for.” – Charles A. S. Hall, Stephen Balogh and David J. R. Murphy. (What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have?)
If the EROImm is 3:1 then the EROI at the well-head (for oil), would have to be at least 9:1. It is hard to equate solar PV EROImm to Oil EROImm for comparisons. They are very different power sources, have very different delivery systems (pipeline and tankers versus power lines), different storage needs (tanks versus batteries or molten salt heat storage or pumped hydro) and are used in engines with very different efficiencies. Electric engines can have an efficiency of 80% and internal combusion engines an efficiency of about 20%. All of these factors make a full EROImm throughput comparison very difficult.
I am wondering which science papers you refer to for your statements on solar PV? I refer to your statements that it only has an effective EROImm of 1:1 or even negative after all factors are considered. Are there scientific papers which do full throughput comparisons like this and to which you can refer me?
On the issue of energy versus money-debt systems, I think that in the first analysis it would be best to not confuse the two. I know in the final analysis we do have to look at how the real physical economy interacts with the extant financial system to generate higher order emergent behaviors. But in the first analysis, we would need first to clarify the purely energetic part of the system. As with all initial models, one would need to make simplifying assumptions.
I have some of my own theories on all this but I shouldn’t expand any more here. My theories are tentative and I need to read more of the literature (scientific and economic) on which you base your conclusions. You seem to agree with Charles Hall to a point and then part company intellectually. You seem to agree with Tainter but I am not sure if your analysis eventually departs from his also. You seem to have some new arguments on the effect of the financial system and debt on prices for resource recovery. (Prices can’t rise high enough to recover all the difficult reserves.) I am interested to know which thinkers you follow on this. Or perhaps this is an original part of your theories.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#3956f440a027
Show solar PV EROEI with storage at 2, with no batteries/pumped hydro at 4.
All you need to know about the futility of hydro storage of ‘renewable’ energy
http://euanmearns.com/?s=hydro+storage
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307066
EROEI 7 to 10 for PV
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-pay-easily/
EROEI 8 to 12 storage not included
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7128485
9.5 without storage?
2.5
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-real-eroi-of-photovoltaic-systems.html
The big issue he doesn’t deal with is the fact that EROEI calculations (as well as everyone else’s calculations, such as levelized cost of energy) do not consider intermittency. They only relate to the first 5% or so added solar. After the first very small part, there are a lot of battery costs and need for subsidies for backup generation that get left out of all of the calculations. These are part of the true cost. If these costs are included, solar and wind are non economic.
There is a common, “if it is hard to model, assume its impact is zero,” that all of the calculations have.
6 to 30 no storage low for single crystal high for amorphous
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Kittner-Gheewala-Kammen-RenewableEnergy-MIni-grid-EROI-2016.pdf
The last time I look at calculating this number it was the concrete mounts, the metal frames, the glass cover sheet that consumed the energy. The mounts and frame can last longer than 25-30 years The cover glass can be renewed by etching off the top 50um and reuse. What the 20 x 30 year EROEI is is complex.
I have been looking at these things myself. I frequently don’t agree with popular authors. Or, as you say, I do up to a point. Intermittency is a problem that makes everyone’s calculation of unbuffered costs misleading when published alongside the cost for fossil fuels. The Weissbach paper I referred to earlier is one that comes to the conclusion that wind and solar are an order of magnitude less effective than fossil fuels. It used only 10 days buffering. We really have the need for much more buffering that that, something like multi-year buffering—the reason grain was so popular is because it provided multi-year strorage of solar energy. Batteries in the quantity we are using them don’t come close to providing enough storage.
Graham Palmer in Energy in Australia gives a calculation that is intended to provide enough batteries to cover 95% of the variability. It still requires diesel backup for the other 5 % of the time. Without considering the energy cost of the diesel generator and the fuel to operate the generator, the overall system with batteries still comes out non-economic.
cuck
cuckadoodle doo…
elders
nope…
dope