Energy is a subject that is greatly misunderstood. Its role in our lives is truly amazing. We humans are able to live and move because of the energy that we get from food. We count this energy in calories.
Green plants are also energy dependent. In photosynthesis, plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into the glucose that they need to grow.
Ecosystems are energy dependent as well. The ecologist Howard T. Odum in Environment, Power, and Society explains that ecosystems self-organize in a way that maximizes the useful energy obtained by the group of plants and animals.
Economies created by humans are in some respects very similar to ecosystems. They, too, self-organize and seem to be energy dependent. The big difference is that over one million years ago, pre-humans learned to control fire. As a result, they were able to burn biomass and indirectly add the energy this provided to the food energy that they otherwise had available. The energy from burning biomass was an early form of supplemental energy. How important was this change?
How Humans Gained Dominion Over Other Animals
James C. Scott, in Against the Grain, explains that being able to burn biomass was sufficient to turn around who was in charge: pre-humans or large animals. In one cave in South Africa, he indicates that a lower layer of remains found in the cave did not show any carbon deposits, and hence were created before pre-humans occupying the cave gained control of fire. In this layer, skeletons of big cats were found, along with scattered gnawed bones of pre-humans.
In a higher layer, carbon deposits were found. In this layer, pre-humans were clearly in charge. Their skeletons were much more intact, and the bones of big cats were scattered about and showed signs of gnawing. Who was in charge had changed.
There is other evidence of human domination becoming possible with the controlled use of fire. Studies show a dramatic drop in numbers of large mammals not long after settlement by humans in several areas outside Africa. (Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct, based on P. S. Martin’s “Prehistoric overkill: A global model” in Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution.)
In recent times, humans have added fossil fuel energy, hydroelectric energy and nuclear energy to their “toolbox.” All of these energy sources have allowed humans to stay in charge.
Whether humans’ control of energy is good or bad depends on a person’s point of view. Without humans being in charge, the human population would likely be similar in size to that of the populations of chimps or gorillas–in other words, tiny in comparison to today’s human population. Furthermore, humans would be located only in the warmer parts of the world. As we will see in the next section, humans would not have evolved in the direction they did. Instead, they would have continued with only the abilities they had as pre-humans. They would have continued living in the wild, eating raw food and spending half of the day chewing it.
How the Controlled Burning of Biomass Produced Amazing Results
Pre-humans learned to control the burning of sticks and other biomass over one million years ago. This new-found ability helped our ancestors in many ways:
(1) Pre-humans could cook part of their food. (Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human) The ability to cook food increased the variety of food that could be eaten because some foods need to be cooked to be edible. Chewing time could be greatly reduced (Chris Organ et al.), leaving more time for tool making. Moreover, cooking allowed nutrients in food to be better absorbed.
(2) Less of the energy from food was needed for the maintenance of large teeth, jaws, and guts. Instead, more energy could go into building a larger brain. In this way, our ancestors could outsmart their predators, instead of depending on their muscles and teeth.
(3) Pre-humans could use fire as a tool to burn down unwanted trees and brush, making it easier to capture prey and encouraging new plant growth of a type more suitable as human food. Also, the fire itself could be used to frighten predators.
(4) Stone tools could be made sharper using heat.
(5) The heat from fire could be used to enlarge the range where pre-humans were able to live.
(6) Larger brains and frequent gatherings around campfires allowed language to develop.
(7) Humans, with their larger brains, were able to selectively breed different types of plants and animals, choosing characteristics that were better suited to their needs. As humans tamed fire and animals, they themselves became (in some sense) tamer.
The Physics Reason Why Energy Is So Important
We are all familiar with how the energy from food allows humans to grow. We also know how solar energy allows green plants to grow. Most physics instruction focuses on thermodynamically closed systems—that is, systems to which no new energy supply is added. Sometimes isolated systems are discussed—again a situation where no additional energy is available. In these situations, there is no growth—only a gradual depletion of the available energy supply, leading ultimately to “heat death.”
More recent analysis has shown that thermodynamically open systems, which are characterized by inflows of energy, are very different. They can, and do, change and grow. Hurricanes grow when heat from warm seawater is available. Stars grow as the result of the chemical reactions taking place within them. All of these structures (known as dissipative structures) are temporary in that they cannot continue to exist when suitable flows of energy are no longer available. They can also be undone in other ways, such as too much pollution or by other forms of “entropy.”
On earth, the energy system we experience is an open system. Energy from the sun is constantly being supplied. Energy made available by burning biomass and from burning fossil fuels is also being supplied, as is nuclear energy, in the form of electricity. The energy obtained from burned fossil fuels, in fact, reflects the re-release of ancient solar energy that was once stored in the bodies of small plants and animals. Under the proper temperature and pressure conditions, this stored energy had been slowly transformed into fossil fuels.
The Hidden Nature of Energy Consumption
When humans burn fossil fuels today, they are able to access the use of this stored energy. Some researchers have talked about the ability to utilize fossil fuel energy as being similar to having “energy slaves.” In making this analogy, it has been observed that a human adult produces roughly the energy output of an always-on 100 watt light bulb. Even when humans were still hunter-gatherers, they made some use of energy slaves, approximately tripling the amount of energy available to the economy at that time. By the time the industrial period was reached, always-on watts per capita had climbed to 8000, indicating that energy available to industrialized humans was 80 times as high (8000/100 = 80) as the amount expected based on food energy alone. The huge increase represented primarily the use of fossil fuels.
Figure 1. Relationship between human energy use and population.
In Against the Grain, Scott finds that slave labor was very widely used in early civilizations. Male slaves were often used for tasks requiring heavy labor, such as mining and building roads. Today’s fossil fuel energy slaves can do these things and much more. For example, a truck operated on a road makes liberal use of fossil fuel energy slaves partly to make the road, partly to build the truck and partly as fuel to operate the truck.
Any commercial process requires energy in one or more forms. Part of the energy can be human energy. This human energy can be used in many ways such as typing on a computer, listening, thinking, operating machinery, speaking, digging in the ground, and walking. The rest of the energy is likely to consist partly of electricity and partly of fossil fuels burned for heat. (Some of this heat energy is converted to rotary motion in order to power vehicles.) Constructing a building requires a tremendous amount of energy; manufacturing a car is also energy-intensive. Heating and lighting a building require energy. Even obtaining a potable glass of cold water requires energy.
Figure 2 is a chart showing a breakdown of non-transportation energy consumption in the United States, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration.
Figure 2. United States non-transportation energy consumption by sector, based on information from the US Energy Information Administration.
The residential percentage of non-transportation energy consumption rose from 23% in 1949 to 29% in 2017. We don’t have a world estimate of the breakdown of energy consumption for residential use, but the United States is probably unusually high with its 29% residential share. According to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, China’s energy consumption was only 11% residential in 2014.
If people do not understand how much of our energy consumption is hidden, it is easy for them to overestimate the benefit that can be achieved through energy conservation by individual citizens. A major use of supplemental energy (that is, beyond that available from food consumption) is to provide finished goods of all sorts, such as cars, homes, electricity transmission lines and roads. Supplemental energy consumption also provides the gift of free time. Without modern agricultural equipment, many more of us would be working long hours in the fields, leaving little time for advanced education and other modern pursuits. Another benefit of supplemental energy consumption is a much longer life expectancy, thanks to such things as clean water and antibiotics. Indirectly, supplemental energy consumption also provides jobs that pay well. Without supplemental energy consumption, there would be few jobs other than digging in the ground with a stick, in an attempt to grow food.
In a very real sense, the availability of inexpensive energy supplies that work to power existing machinery and equipment is what allows today’s economy to function.
How Can We Tell If Human Carrying Capacity Has Been Reached?
If we are discussing primates such as chimpanzees, baboons and gorillas, it is fairly easy to tell when the carrying capacity of the environments they inhabit has been reached. These primates depend on local food and water supplies. If there is not enough food to go around, the weakest and the lowest ranking will find themselves without enough high quality food, bringing the population back below the carrying capacity. In some cases, as population density rises, there may be aggression toward immigrants to the territory. Females have even been observed to kill the infant newborns of community members.
Humans have control of various types of energy supplies, in addition to food. These energy supplies make it easier to produce enough food for the overall population. People today are used to having things that wild animals do not have, such as clothing, education, climate controlled homes, transportation, medical care and retirement benefits. It should not be surprising that in our case, the first sign of reaching carrying capacity is something other than running out of food. In fact, the laws of physics suggest that reaching human carrying capacity is unlikely to be signaled by running out of any energy product, such as oil.
Instead, the issue that tends to arise as humans reach carrying capacity is increasing wage disparity. This issue arose in the 1930s, and it seems to be rising again now. Increasing wage disparity is a way, within our economy, of squeezing out some members, if there are not enough energy supplies to go around. Providing climate-controlled homes, automobiles, paved roads and electricity transmission lines for people all over the world would take a huge amount of energy supplies–far more than we have available today. Wage disparity assures that some groups cannot afford these goods and services, thereby effectively holding down demand for these goods and services.
Many people believe that oil prices are likely to rise very high, if there is a shortage. However, if wage disparity grows sufficiently large, any spike in prices is likely to be short lived. Instead, the energy limit that we are reaching may be prices that do not rise high enough to encourage adequate production of energy products. Without sufficient production of these energy products, there will be a shortfall of finished goods and services.
Physicist François Roddier in Thermodynamique de l’évolution : Un essai de thermo-bio-sociologie explains that when there is inadequate energy for an economy, the situation is similar to some members of the economy being “frozen out” through low wages. The same forces allow a rising portion of the wages (and other wealth) to go to the very rich. This situation is like steam rising. These individuals do not use very much of their wages to purchase goods and services made with commodities. Instead, they tend to use their wages for services (such as tax avoidance) that are not very energy intensive. Also, they tend to use their wealth in ways that tends to drive up asset prices, without adding true value. For example, buying previously issued shares of stock can have this effect.
Eventually, the poor are frozen out. In fact, in cases of extreme wage disparity, the problems can spread further as governments find it impossible to collect enough taxes to finance their spending.
What Characteristics Do Energy Supplies Need to Have?
Unless we are willing to give up our dominion over other species, including microbes, humans need to secure a supply of energy products that grows with human population. These energy products must precisely match the needs of current infrastructure. They also need to be inexpensive and non-polluting. They cannot add new problems of their own–new types of entropy.
At this point, we are running into difficulties. Fossil fuels are becoming ever more expensive to extract. They also lead to carbon dioxide and other pollution problems. Nuclear energy seems to be quite dangerous, given the problems with waste disposal and multiple accidents, including the one at Fukushima.
Wind and solar, and indeed hydropower, are not really solutions, either. For one thing, they are not very controllable. If humans expect to control their environment, they need to be in control of their energy resources. Even waterpower can vary by a huge amount, from month to month and from year to year.
Figure 3. California Hydroelectric Generation by Year, Based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Hydroelectric, wind and solar can be used in limited amounts, as part of a portfolio of energy products, but they cannot be used on their own, unless they are hugely overbuilt. In that case, only a very small portion (which can then be controlled) is used. Many people believe that storage can be used as an alternative to backup energy supplies, but the cost of adequate storage seems to be extraordinarily high because of the long-term nature of required storage. (Note also the apparent need for multiple-year storage indicated by the pattern on hydroelectric generation shown in Figure 3.) If humans expect to be in control of other species, humans need to be in control of the supply of energy resources.
Of course, choosing not to be in control is another option. In such a case, we can expect human death rates to rise rapidly. If this happens, women will again be valued for their ability to produce large numbers of children. Men will be valued for their strong muscles. The world will become a very different place.
https://twitter.com/tictoc/status/1030166169070788610
The WTI crashed through its one year support line.
The largest share of dollar denominated debt among emerging markets is held by the Asia Pacific region. That region will perhaps ignite the real EM crisis?
I agree the situation is worrisome. And a huge number of people believe that if the oil price is falling, there must be no problem.
“Asia Will Be the Next Source of Downside Systemic Risk for Financial Markets”
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/16/emerging-markets-turmoil-price-of-cheap-debt-misallocation-of-capital/
My thoughts on the thermodynamics of oil production:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-23_etp_thermal_equilibrium.pdf
Its simple physics. Up to now, nobody has found a severe error.
and some thoughts concerning the oil price development:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-14_etp-modell-price_explanation_v1_0_3.pdf
My projection of the oil price in the near future, based on mathematics, and the assumption that the oil price has a cyclic component.
I am seriously doubtful about your theory having any validity.
Tell me where the errors are.
I forget to mention the calculation table:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/etp_calc_example.ods
It will be helpful to find the errors.
Look at Norman Pagett’s comment. That explains the basic error.
Hi Gail,
please have a look on this:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-23_etp_thermal_equilibrium.pdf
This set of slides contain the more important part, a thermodynamical based calculation for the energy requrired to produce oil. The formulas require a little mathematical understanding, but not much. The knowledge about physics necessary is small, too. I have tried to make it understandable and checkable for common people.
I get the same formula which is known as the “ETP-Equation” from the Hillsgroup, but in a total different way. I have calculated the energy required to make the temperature change caused by heat moved by oil production, the HG has calculated the entropy generated by the oil producing machine.
and after that, on this:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/etp_calc_example.ods
This example can be used to play with the numbers and to verify the formulas of the slides.
oil has a cyclic component only as long as we continue to have an ongoing surplus to our actual needs–ie, oil drives population increase–which in turn needs more oil—which feeds more people
that cycle goes on until we run out of the means to feed increasing populations
oil provides everybody’s wages, but it is only that surplus which provides increasing wages in real terms—ie genuine payrises
this is why average living standards have been flat since the 1970s in real terms….there are too many people making increasing demands on depleting energy resources.
there is less and less surplus to spread around
we now consune10 barrels of oil for every barrel we discover—no mathematical formulae are required—the data is readily available
which makes us bankrupt.
Hi Norman,
you refer to:
https://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-14_etp-modell-price_explanation_v1_0_3.pdf
You are right, the cyclic component might disappear in the next years. But it is pronounced in the years 2013-2018. I have analysed the data for this period of time, and there is the cyclic component. It does not exist prior to 2013. It is best obvious in the USA oil production diagram of slide 13, the deviations of the actual production from the theoretical curve are very small. The price has larger deviations from theory, but it still follows the cycle in a very good way.
The price extrapolation (slide 14) results from the analytic continuation of the numbers from 2013-2018. The extrapolation has a sound base, but future influences from a lot of sources (politics, bancrupties etc.) will have effects. I myself am curious how long the extrapolation will hold. The next months will show it.
Berndt, I read the PDF presentation “Temperature Effects impacting Earth cause
severe Limits for Oil Production”.
As I understand your hypothesis, you are saying that oil production transfers heat from the interior of the earth to its surface, where the heat builds up over time.
My understanding is that the earth has a very effective system of moving heat away from the surface to the top of the troposphere, where it is radiated into space. The more heat at the surface, the harder the system works to transport it away. The system comprises three main processes or mechanisms, namely the H2O evaporation-condensation cycle, atmospheric convection, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR).
Over oceans and over land where water vapor is available, the warmer it gets, the more evaporation, cloud and rainfall there is, and this mechanism lowers the temperature are ground or sea level very effectively. This is why in tropical deserts when the sun is high, temperatures can rise to 50 degrees C or more, while in jungles and and tropical wetlands it rarely gets above 35. Also, regardless of the humidity, hot air rises and cooler air falls, helping to cool the surface.
But the biggest mechanism is OLR, which varies according to the surface temperature and places upper and lower limits on the temperature. The amount of OLR is directly dependent on the actual temperature of the earth. Just as a hot cup of tea or a hot cake out of the oven will cool at a faster rate than their warm equivalents, so the land cools at a faster rate in the evening after sunset than it does in the early morning, faster on summer evenings than on winter evenings, faster in the tropics than in the arctic. This process operates on all timescales from seconds to centuries. During the Little Ice Age a few centuries ago, the earth was a little colder than today and so the amount of OLR was a little less. When things get warmer, OLR increases accordingly..
OLR accounts for about 68% of the earth’s energy balance. As the earth’s temperature changes, the amount of energy loses through OLR adjusts to to the new temperature. This natural “thermostat” has kept the earth within +/-6 degrees C of the average temperature for the past 5 million years. At least, that’s my understanding.
The idea that heat is going to keep building up incrementally at the earth’s surface indefinitely is erroneous IMHO. But I may well have misunderstood what you were trying to say. I’m just a peasant farmer who scratches in the dirt with a stick after all, and mathematical formulae replete with squiggly lines often goes over my head.
Hi Tim,
thank you for the info concerning OLR. I try to answer your comment.
“My understanding is that the earth has a very effective system of moving heat away from the surface to the top of the troposphere, where it is radiated into space. ”
I believe your main point is that the temperature difference dilutes with time, because the earth surface transfers its heat all over the earth, and radiates some of it in space.
In my derivation, i only consider temperature changes between the earth interior and surface. I do not know, if the interior cools about 50 % of the difference and the surfaces heats 50 %. For simplicity, lets give both 50%.
In the earth interior, there are no diluting effects, only relaxation is working (slide 10), which is extremely slow.
On the surface, dilution works. But there is an important effect: In eq. 14 the mass and heat capacity in denominator and numerator cancel. The energy required to generate additional temperature differences is independent of the involved mass and heat capacity. Therefore, dilution of the heat all over the world surface has no effect !
“The idea that heat is going to keep building up incrementally at the earth’s surface indefinitely is erroneous IMHO”. Before i set up the equations, i always thought, that the dilution of the heat all over earth results in a temperature increase of zero or nearly zero, so i did not recognize that the work to extract oil increases with time. But the formulas clarify the situation. Even very small increments have an effect. First i had the same opinion you have, but now i know better.
To be honest, i never thought about transfer of the oil heat by infrared radiation (OLR) into space, and it will take more than a day to evaluate that. Again, in the maximum case only 50 % of the temperature difference can be influenced. In most cases, heat convection by gas or liquids and heat conduction by solids is much faster than heat tranfer by radiation. So i expect that the heat will move into earth and not into space, only in very long time scales radiation will have an effect.
One remark:
Here at Gails site are so much comments, that in very few days our discussion will be hidden in a pile and lost. So it is better, you post further questions on the german peak-oil site. http://www.peak-oil.com/
Officials: People living illegally in rented storage units
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/08/officials_people_living_illegally_in_rented_storage_units
But hey, the eCONomy is doing great, not enough people for all those high paying jobs businesses are seeking and there’s virtually NO inflation. Life is good in the Twilight Zone.
The only thing keeping BAU together is fake data, fake news, ignorance, and denial..
If the general public were aware of what we on this blog are..BAU would collapse into atomic dust..
I’m not sure about that. A lot of the decline of BAU is due to no one working constructively to save it. And if the public is as ignorant as they are, you can only speculate on what they would do if better informed. They might actually work to save it.
I don’t think BAU is savable either in its current form or as BAU Lite. I think it’s like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rhyme. In our various ways, most of us are working hard to keep it going, and we’ll continue to do that up to and until it is no longer possible.
I think Gail has captured the essence of BAU very well with the economy as a a dissipative system. Like a galaxy or a fountain or a hurricane and even more a living thing, It needs a material structure and a flow of energy to sustain it. And BAU is further endangered by the need to keep growing, which demands a greater flow of energy as time goes by.
I’m praying, although not hoping, that Gail can come up with a way to transform BAU into something that can continue to function for the benefit of its constituent cells—us—while reducing its need for energy as time goes by. So far, all she’s done is kept coming up with reasons why that isn’t possible. But if somebody does come up with a way to make BAU sustainable, there could be a Nobel Prize, tea with the Queen, and even an invitation to appear in Oprah’s Guest House in it for them.
And the key to DelusiSTAN….
Hi Tim,
My understanding is too flawed to allow for a proper response. In the first half of your post, several issues didn’t seem related to my concerns. I don’t understand or relate to “dissipative systems.” My house is a dissipative system most likely. And I keep it from dissipating by repairing the smallest of cracks every day. Doing it that way, on the time scale that matters to me, there is no dissipation. The declarations re dissipative systems come in like chalk screeching on the chalk board. I’d rather it didn’t happen, since it does me no good whatsoever. But I have to accept it when it happens. OTOH, I am a dissipative system that is clearly fading away. So what? Everyone that ever lived met the same destiny. i have better things to worry about.
I expressed myself badly if it seems that I think BAU can work or endure. I never thought it could fifty years ago, and I don’t think it can now. But the system doesn’t seem to be a monolith working everywhere in a linear process of either growth or decline. A good analogy for how I see the system is my internet presence where every ill considered things I’ve written over the past 30 years is recorded, searchable, and past horrific in ability to sham, persecute and embarrass, or worse.
So if someone tells me the internet is evil, I say, yes, it is, but more constructive things can be done with it than are being done. One doesn’t rule out the other. “Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you.” We still have room to do constructive things on the internet. I also say that those constructive won’t produce any predictable results. The world is a self organizing system that uses, chooses and refuses every single thing according to complicated flows that we can’t understand. So it is foolish to hope or expect and you might as well be at ease. But that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t act constructively. Throwing chemicals in the sea so someone has a job cleaning it up is damn foolishness, since you can get as many jobs doing something less poisonous with the chemicals.
Similarly, community, urban and other kinds of planning are well beyond missing in action. 8 billion people in the world and no planning. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. That’s enough to know. If you plan you don’t plan to fail. Why should you know or care what results instead. Wouldn’t that be presumptuous? Just simply don’t plan to fail. Period.
That’s my position. I am constructive in a system that (apart for some aspects of the military and some aspects of global corporations) that shows no constructive ability. My path is decidedly uphill, just the way I like it. And my powerlessness is a relief. I bear no responsibility and have no care for the fate of the planet. And I suspect that more people would be more constructive if they had the faintest clue about what is commonly known on FW. That wouldn’t necessarily make them deluded.
Hi Artleads,
I appreciate your response. A lot like you, I’m fixing the cracks so that this old house stays up longer than I do. It’s a very satisfying thing to do, and when I spot something that needs repairing and I neglect to repair it, I get a nagging feeling that I’m not doing my duty.
In some ways we are like the white cells, or phagocytes, that live and die in the bloodstreams of humans, rabbits, a crocodiles, fish and probably even worms I would imagine. These little creatures are not mental wizards; they don’t worry about anything, like the end of BAU or where their next meal is coming from. They just go around identifying tasks that need to be done, repairs that need to be made, trash that needs to be cleared away, and they get on with it. That’s their life and, I would expect, their satisfaction. They may live a few weeks or months inside a living body and then they die and become trash and another white cell to clean up. And when the animal that forms their world, or their house, dies, that’s the end of BAU for that animal’s population of white cells.
Up on the human level, life is more complicated, at least for us moderns. Our thinking and scheming and worrying and unhelpful behavior can do a lot of harm to ourselves and each other. Unlike the white cells, we are often in competition with each other and we can also be self-destructive. I suppose that’s because we are so much smarter than they are. 🙂
“I’m fixing the cracks so that this old house stays up longer than I do”
And it would stay up indefinitely if the subsequent owners did the same thing. Taos Pueblo, which at 1000 years old and while being the oldest continually inhabited building in America, is made of mud that is ritually and routinely repaired.
True that the wider world is much more complicated than a house, which is where comprehensive planning toward rational behavior for mass society would come in. Despite there being no clear way to get around it, our global economic system doesn’t seem to be rational. For now, I have the luxury of having one foot in that system and one foot out.
In as much as I can, I pattern MY economy on the shanty town, selling things for truly ridiculous prices.
OTOH, we have the development and building profession that I insist is the most dangerous industry in the world. But everybody else thinks it’s fossil fuels. Go figure. 🙂
You want to see what delusional looks like? have a look at these comments on Kunstler’s latest blog with Steve St. Angelo of the srsroccoreport: http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-306-gold-silver-and-oil-with-steve-st-angelo/#comments
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Martymcfly
August 15, 2018 at 6:42 am #
No doubt oil was easier to get in the beginning; it’s only natural that you take the easy oil first. But all indications are we have plenty of harder oil to last as long as we will need it to. Obviously at some point it will no longer be worthwhile to extract the oil, but that point appears to be pretty far off still. By that time we will have much better alternatives. We will probably stop extracting oil because the demand has dropped more than because it is too expensive to drill.
I have no problem with a retirement party for the oil age. It’s been great, but let’s get on to something better. It will probably be a pretty long retirement party, though.
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Rodster
August 15, 2018 at 5:02 pm #
And you missed the entire point the previous poster DurangoKid was trying to make. In order to create alternative energy, you need energy and that energy comes from fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels alternative energy is a fantasy or fairy tail. In fact fossil fuels has made possible everything we wear and eat.
We got to where we are today because of fossil fuels and everything we produced along the way. Alternative energy won’t save the day because it requires fossil fuels.
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Martymcfly
August 15, 2018 at 9:47 pm #
Actually, DurangoKid’s post was exclusively about fossil fuels; he didn’t even mention alternative energy,
Now I am well aware that we use fossil fuels to create alternative energy systems. And for the near term, we will continue to use fossil fuels to create alternative energy systems. Luckily, we have enough fossil fuels to do that.
Of course, as more non-fossil fuel energy comes along, we will use more and more of that to make additional alternative energy systems. Then the alternative energy won’t rquire fossil fuels.
There is an awfully lot of thinking that ultimately comes from the belief that we are seeing peak oil. In their view, peak oil won’t matter, because we will be able to get oil out practically indefinitely, as prices rise. We will also be able to get out other fossil fuels, and we will be able to substitute renewables. Somehow, we can get along with very much less, if we only learn to live sustainably. Our big concern should be climate change.
I attend an Atlanta monthly group called “Atlanta Beyond Oil” at least some of the time. This is where I get to see and hear what Peak Oilers are thinking about now. I occasionally give half hour talks, but mostly I make comments of five minutes or less. I seem to be in a different world than this group is in. They are very concerned about electric cars. One regular member just got his new Tesla 3, and wanted to give rides to anyone who would take them before the last meeting. There have been several others with earlier Tesla models who have at least visited the meeting, and others have Nissan Leafs. They are very concerned about how awful fossil fuels and fracking are. They root for laws that will encourage more use of wind and solar. They have very little understanding of how the financial system could be connected to what is going on. Very few read my articles. They read the what main stream media says.
I sometimes feel like I am banging my head against the wall, but they are nice folks, and “sort of” listen to what I am saying. They certainly mean well. They are so fixated on the standard story that they cannot imagine any other view to be correct. They seem to sort of listen to what I am saying, but my occasional 30 minute talks do not even slightly make a dent in their pre-existing understanding of the situation.
The people you are referring to are “non” rather than “peak” -oilers. They argue a non-oil-based future for industrial civ is possible and peak oil probably serves as a premise. Usually for collapse pundits and enthusiasts, peak oil = peak affordable oil.
This particular group fails to understand the connection of how fossil fuels work. They first cannot comprehend that energy producing nations make more money selling it than using it. If demand goes down, then their economies falter as we’ve seen too many times in the past. If everyone on this planet were to cut fossil fuel usage by 50% the entire global economic system would completely and permanently collapse.
They think that alternative energy grows on trees or requires little fossil fuel inputs. They are sadly mistaken. If they think that alternative energy which globally is around 2-3% of total energy used will generate enough power in the future to keeps the lights on in NYC, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, London, Paris, Berlin etc 365 days of the year, 24 hrs a day. Then they must believe in sunshine, rainbows and unicorns and that unicorns produce skittles as a waste product. That’s fantasyland.
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/oil/oil-reserves.html
According to British Petroleum we currently have as of 2017, 50.2 years left of proven reserves left and that includes everything we know about that still needs to be extracted out of the ground. Fifty years time is not a long time away when we are so addicted to fossil fuels, we can’t pull ourselves away from it.
They think we will discover this magical energy source that will provide an unlimited supply of energy. Again, utter rubbish. If it were possible, we would be making the transition now. Instead we are fighting amongst ourselves to take the last remaining pockets of oil from the weakest nations. John Michael Greer wrote a great article on this and I believe it was called: “Technological Fairytales”.
When you have a lot of money, the renewable path seems feasible. Rich people don’t really have energy problems. They also care very little about society as a whole. Their goal is to make money.
Smart enough for the con, too stupid to realize the results.
Thats why they are rich (actually, they were born that way)
I agree the goal of rich people is to make money. But, they also need to preserve the system that allows money to have value. That generally means a strong military/police force as well. Renewable energy is not going to support the military might required to protect the value of the dollar.
I doubt renewable energy can support cloud computing either, without a lot of fossil fuel support. That could be another big problem.
Capitalism has never existed without a strong central state, from its start in the Italian City States of the 14th Century, up to now, with our current thugs.
Yes… and socialist/communist states have existed without strong centralized governments and have delivered utopia
Have you traded in your car … for a bicycle? Or better still are you walking to the Mall these days?
Are you still living in a house — with heating/cooling?
Tell us about what you are doing because you care so much….
What is your point?
Maybe you could find your grade 3 teacher and ask her….
“By that time we will have much better alternatives.” – This is also very flawed (and common) thinking. If this flawed thinking is correct then, by the time I get cancer from smoking there will be cures for cancer. Denial.
I tried to look for the post you referenced. The closest I could come up with was an interview of John Michael Greer on Peak Prosperity, from 2015. It is called, “The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead: But society is unwilling to consider that”
That’s close but I believe he posted the article on his archdruidreport website which is now closed. I also tried looking for it on ecosophia.net but haven’t found it yet.
Bingo, someone found it, thanks !
It was called technological superstitions.
Peak Science. Somewhere I have a book on it. Will rummage for it.
perhaps
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/09/technological-superstitions.html
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/08/02/supplemental-energy-puts-humans-in-charge/comment-page-35/#comment-184635
sorry wrong cut and paste
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/09/technological-superstitions.html
NicoB found the link to the article. It was titled “Technological Superstitions”. I thought I read it on the arcdruidreport. In summation, the reason alternative energy would never work is the same reason we abandoned the Space Lab project as well as other project that were future based, we ran out of money. We spent it instead to temporarily conquer the world.
As such the entire world is bankrupt with no money to fund those future projects.
The Mot and MSM are doing a very good job at sedating the masses with PR
Just yesterday evening I had a long phone call from an old friend (he’s 65 years old and I’ve known him for 30 years) who is a college teacher here in Japan. He phoned me up to tell me how horrible Donald Trump is and to lament globbly wobbly and then went on a rant against the way smartphones are destroying humanity. I agreed with him on the third point.
After half an hour the subject turned to energy and he had no trouble envisaging a renewable future that leaves us all modestly comfortable. The FF issue doesn’t bother him apart from the contribution to globbly wobbly. He reads a lot, including big books, but he refuses to stray off the reservation. I put it to him that the renewable dream we are being sold now may turn out to be just as illusive as the nuclear dream we were being sold half a century ago, and that there might not be a solution to humanity’s predicament.
“Don’t be so sure our masters have got everything under control,” I advised. That was as far as I was willing to go because I could feel the tension building in him when I started to explain some of my more blasphemous and heretical ideas. While he realizes there are limits to growth and he personally believes that human beings would be happier with less consumerism and less technology than Westerners and East Asians currently use, he has no interest in exploring how financial problems could lead to collapse and he is emotionally attached to a worldview that doesn’t permit the sort of energy issues we discuss at OFW.
At the present time, I think it would be difficult to spread Gail’s main message to a wide audience. Few people are capable of understanding and even fewer want to understand. When I try to get people from among my own acquaintances to even consider the implications of things like net energy decline and diminishing purchasing power among non-elite workers, I feel a bit like Lot trying to find ten good men in Sodom.
https://www.rainbowtoken.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/The-people-are-shouting-to-Lot-632×356.jpg
I keep thinking… when I meet someone who seems to be somewhat switched on … that they might get it… but when I test them… they are found wanting….
That is when then I slap myself in the head many times and call myself stewpid stewpid stewpid… because there are literally no more than a few dozen (if that) people who get the entire picture (other than those who are orchestrating the desperate continuation of BAU)….
What are the odds of coming across one of them…. in real life
I should buy lottery tickets instead.
I would of talked about space elevators Just for sport.
Give him Keith’s number… they could talk for hours….
On second thought don’t — we need Keith to stay on task….
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/upshot/opioids-overdose-deaths-rising-fentanyl.html
We are … seriously … f789ed
A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer.
The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical.
https://www.rt.com/usa/436069-monsanto-weedkiller-cancer-cereal/
We are also told that rice in the US often has arsenic in it at unacceptable levels. It also can cause cancer. We can at least wash the rice, although it reduces the vitamins in it.
Forget all those toxic plants, if you want to be as intelligent as Jordan Peterson, switch to a carnivore diet.
Seems like Woody Allen had it right back in 1973:
It will weed out the weak.
I like a nice bowl of Roundup Ready Brek!
https://d2td6mzj4f4e1e.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2016/07/Ready-Brek-620×330.jpg
Until I started eating oatmeal, I had weeds growing from my armpits. That’s no longer a problem.
LOL!
“The pound has endured its longest losing streak against the dollar since the financial crisis a decade ago because of mounting fears that the UK will crash out of the European Union in March and amid signs that the economy is struggling to gather momentum.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sterling-has-its-worst-run-since-crash-f8mq0m7td
“Fears are growing that Britain’s property bubble is about to burst. A string of indicators last night triggered concerns that the market is running out of steam – and could be heading for a correction or even a crash. Prices in London are falling at the fastest pace since the financial crisis – but the declines are not limited to the capital.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6064685/Fears-grow-house-prices-fall-fastest-rate-financial-crisis.html
Growing Asian demand is what has been what is holding up the world economy. It now seems to be failing. See this article:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Demand-Growth-Starts-To-Weaken-In-Asia.html
Oil Demand Growth Starts To Weaken In Asia
Aug 15, 2018
This is a big reason that oil prices cannot keep rising. Asian markets’ lack of demand affects markets of all kinds, including the UK.
‘Struggling to gather momentum’: that’s a good one.
‘This parrot is dead!’ ‘No sir, just struggling to gather momentum!’
If after 10 years of stimulus the UK is in its present state….
The patient’s cancer metastasized…. it is in the heart … the brain … and most other organs…. the doctors are dripping epic amounts of drugs into him…. and urging him to run a 100m dash…. he is struggling… to gain momentum….
“The Turkish lira rallied from record lows on Wednesday after Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said Qatar was standing by its “brothers in Turkey” as he announced a $15bn investment into the country’s financial markets and banks.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/qatari-emir-vows-15bn-investment-turkey-erdogan-meeting-180815152545652.html
“As the Trump administration continues to ramp up economic pressure on Turkey, the U.S. President signed a policy bill which will restrict the delivery of F-35’s to the beleaguered NATO member.”
https://www.defenceiq.com/air-forces-military-aircraft/news/us-halts-delivery-of-f-35-to-tukey
“Copper… is trading more than 20 percent below its 52-week high, officially entering bear market territory… potentially signalling an economic slowdown is happening around the world.”
“”Dr. Copper,” as it is sometimes referred to by economists and finance experts, is often seen as a leading indicator of future economic trends since it is utilized in a number of different sectors. Copper is used in home construction and consumer products, as well as manufacturing.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/copper-hits-lowest-level-in-more-than-a-year.html
“A leading emerging market stock index extended its slump since January to 20 percent on Wednesday in a fresh wave of selling which took it into territory commonly regarded as a bear market. The scale of the fall in MSCI’s widely tracked 24-country emerging market index .MSCIEF is likely to be painful for many investors, given the index compiler estimates that more than $1.9 trillion of assets globally are benchmarked to the measure.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-emerging-markets-stocks-bear/emerging-market-stocks-in-bear-territory-after-20-percent-drop-since-january-idUSKBN1L01UZ
“Brazil’s economy contracted 0.99 percent in the second quarter of this year, Brazil’s Central Bank said on Wednesday, citing the Economic Activity Index (IBC-Br).”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-08/16/c_137393462.htm
“Struggling to staunch a run on the peso that has helped drive the economy to the brink of recession, Argentina is aggressively pushing investors out of some of the local debt notes they hold.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/argentina-s-big-bond-market-gamble-gets-test-at-auction-today
“South Africa’s retail sales figures for June surprised on the downside further raising the possibility of the economy has entered a technical recession last quarter.”
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/sa-economy-on-the-edge-16582644
“The Indian rupee fell 0.6 percent to hit a new record low of 70.32 against the U.S. dollar as the country’s trade deficit in July widened the most in five years, adding to the currency’s woes.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/2018/08/16/rupee-hits-new-record-low-as-widening-trade-gap-adds-to-woes#gs.V_jjJ2M
“”The [South Korean] job market is the worst since financial crisis. The government’s big challenge is how to support the job market through fiscal policies,” Finance Minister Kim Dong Yeon said in a speech.”
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/south-korea-to-spend-more-to-counter-worst-job-market-since-the-financial-crisis
I am feeling more negative… by the minute
FE, it feels a lot like late 2015 with China trying to rein in debt; the Fed putting up interest rates; a strong $ hurting China and the emerging markets; Asian stocks wobbling; commodities struggling etc. That was an unnerving time and could perhaps have precipitated GFC 2.0 had the Bank of Japan not propped up the price of oil and the Chinese government not stomped so hard on short-sellers. Lots of artificial liquidity from the central banks also helped cushion the various shocks.
This time around, the Fed is looking to keep putting up rates and tapering, and the ECB has confirmed that it will wind up its asset-buying programme; there is even more unproductive debt in the system; we have an incipient trade war; and the geopolitical arena generally generally is more fraught and volatile. Feeling negative is probably apposite.
I agree. Feeling negative is probably appropriate.
And yet stocks surged today because of Walmart’s highest revenue growth in a decade. According to http://ponziworld.blogspot.com/:
What is being sold as decade high revenue growth is actually an entire decade of ZERO real revenue growth.
As I’ve said, these are not bright people, and they have the attention span of a coked up flea:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r_SAzHFeIbo/W3V_0OU2cSI/AAAAAAABmpE/UtCWpduZvewHlll4mc2v_ECOYn0cSvBfwCLcBGAs/s640/wmt_cpi.png
Most stock markets will likely fail to reflect earthier economic realities almost until the bitter end.
Oh, don’t know, I have a certain curiosity about Ragnarrok.
The presentation in ‘Vikings’ was great – and we get to see the real thing……
Perhaps as in 2015… ‘they’ will step in to right the ship…. and we will sail along for additional years….
The UK situation is worrying…
@Harry, I stopped/never started reading a lot of the websites you link to years ago, yet your efforts evince that they can yield truth if used prudently. Thanks again!
You are welcome, Jupiviv. The MSM fails to think in systemic terms; it often ignores context; it distorts; it lies by omission; and it pushes its various socio-political agendas but if you have an awareness of all this, there is plenty of useful information to be had from it.
The other day I saw for the first time whole fields full of solar panels (subsidies for landowners were very lucrative,and maybe still are, I’ve rather stopped reading about it) – the idea that they can be associated with anything ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘sustainable’ was palpably ludicrous.
An extrusion of the industrial FF industrial economy, nothing more. Soon to be piles of junk.
And, in this part of England, highly vulnerable to flooding: the fields are now below sea-level, having been eroded in the last 300 years. These ones were not on one of the few rises.
If the main pumps ever stop their – constant – pumping, the solar fields here are finished.
Smart move, Hom. Sap. !
Featured rant:
SILVERGEDDON css1971 Wed, 08/15/2018 – 14:29 Permalink
Oh for fuck sake anyway.
First fucking mistake – actually going to a grocery store expecting to buy food !!!
AHH HAA HAA HAA HO HO HO HO HEE HEE HEE !!!!!!!
And the first virtue signaling smug asshole who says he is saving the planet by shopping at Whole Foods gets nut kicked continuously for 24 hours straight for being a fucking retarded zipper head Klingon cocksucker from Uranus.
Lesson one. If it comes in a box or a can, it is not food.
Lesson two. If it comes out of a national chain store, it is not food – even their produce in the ” organic food ” section is both suspect and dead to boot. It spent a minimum two weeks from harvest to truck to distribution center to regional warehouse to store to your fucking grocery cart. That shit is deader than the Monty Python parrot skit.
Lesson three. Go to your local farmers market. Watch carefully to avoid the scammers that buy from stores to resell mainstream dog crap as a local produce lie to make money. Deal with local farmers that are organically certified, that can be verified as bona fide with a visit to the farm or referrals from other buyers. They pick their produce 12- 24 hours prior to you buying it, so the produce you purchase is about as live and vital as it gets outside of growing your own, walking out to the garden, picking it, and eating it real time.
Lesson four. Real food needs cleaning and preparation – devote some of your worthless television / social media time to actually providing yourself with living food and learning how to prep healthy raw living foods. Probiotics. Fermented vegetables. Fresh juices you make yourself. Do some canning and preserving. If you love meat, buy grass fed beef by the side or quarter – pool with a couple friends if necessary to do so, and enjoy meat without GMO crop feeds, meds, pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and feed lot stress before slaughter.
Lesson five. Food is seasonal – learn how to eat and preserve what is in season, and how to ignore food that never grew here to begin with. Buy in bulk for grains, nuts, seeds, and beans from trusted organic certified farms. Learn how to dehydrate, can, preserve, mylar bag with oxygen absorbers for dry goods, freeze, and otherwise stretch the bounty of the growing season through the winter.
Lesson six. Grow your own food as much as possible – even if it is in 5 gallon buckets and potting soil on your balcony of your inner city apartment, it will still be far more vital, delicious, and nutritious than any of the fucking dog shit for sale in a store.
Lesson seven. I live in a fucking city of 5 million plus – it is easy to find farmers markets, buy good food, and do prep, preservation, and all the above in your own home. It just takes some effort. You don’t need a fucking farm – you just need a kitchen, a juicer, a food processor, a food dryer, and some canning jars and equipment. Plus the will to spend time learning and doing food prep rather than sitting on your ass in front of the tee vee every fucking night after work. I average 1-2 hours per day to eat well, and advance prep food for storage to make winter not such a bad time to be eating relative to available local produce. If you are living in a winter snow state, at least shop a real organic food co op or store for winter produce.
You get one body, one life – take care of it, and tell the medical profession to go fuck themselves by not giving them your life savings to die horribly of treatments that will never cure the cancer you get otherwise. And, just because food is no guarantee, live a full life to the last day, and let whatever you get coming to you kill you cheaply instead.
We all live, we all die. Accept it, tell the chemo radiation witch doctor vampire motherfucker to fuck off, that he ain’t getting a penny to kill you slowly and expensively. Give all your shit and your money to your kids, and die like a man with honor, dignity, awareness, and in full command of your faculties, and your destiny.
And, lastly, I don’t give a fuck if you disagree – this is for people that want quality of life, and have a shred of consciousness left to determine their own destiny with. For all of those souls, good luck, and long lives, with my best wishes for your personal success and victory over the Borg Collective Social Media Brave New World Psychopathic assholes we few aware souls live amongst. All you other whiney bitches can go fuck yourselves with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire covered in flaming napalm for lube.
Remember – you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-15/supermarket-sadism-how-navigate-deadly-food-jungle
I personally think that going to restaurants is a worse problem than going to grocery stores. If a person stays as much as possible with fresh produce and one-ingredient packaged goods (canned or dried beans, peas, and grains for example), things work passably well. Dairy and meat products purchased should be organic because pesticides tend to “concentrate up” in the food chain. The emphasis on farmers’ markets misses this point.
In the United States, restaurant food (especially fast food) is both way too large in quantity and too “energy dense” for most people. People who eat in start eating this food tend to see the large quantities and energy dense food as desirable. Of course, a person also has no idea what is in the restaurant food.
The spit might not be organic, but at least it is fresh.
If it is sold in a chain grocery store, it is factory food….not real food, factory food!
If you have reached the ripe old age of 60 eating whatever you like and you have enjoyed life then well done you have lived longer than the majority of human beings that have ever existed. Time to die.
https://imgur.com/a/fTOWHiF
July YTD sales:
Korea: Domestic Sales of autos, up 2.4%*; overseas sales, -4.4%, global sales total -3.0% . *Domestically produced, only.
Japan: July 2018 YTD -1.1%. https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig_japan_2018
China: Private Passenger Autos July 2018 YTD +3.35%. https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig_japan_2018
oil soars above $100…
oh, wait…
WTI $65.02
but:
VIX soars above 30…
oh, wait…
VIX 14.64
how much longer can this insanity continue?
Back in 2005 everyone expected peak oil to happen.
And it didn’t.
Now nobody is expecting it to happen – and it will.
Actually, peak oil will never happen, the way peak oilers expected it to happen. Instead, we will reach financial collapse that few people will connect with energy or oil. Oil Prices will stay too low for producers to extract the oil that seems to be available. The 50 or so years of supply that seems to be available is an illusion.
Don’t most people equate peak oil as a peak in total production levels. That is going to happen at some point. The question is whether the financial collapse is the precursor or the resulting consequence of that peak will probably soon be answered.
I expect that they come almost simultaneously. A financial collapse will pull down demand for coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium simultaneously. Spare parts will no longer be available for wind and solar in such a scenario, either.
Global Foundries a chip company in Malta New York is firing all its high paid employees under the guidance of McKinsey Consulting. That ought to make them competitive with TSMC in Taiwan. Who needs top notch tech guys the janitor can fill in. And more New York State subsidies for the company wholly owned by the dictator of Abu Dhabi is clearly in order. Life in the “CORE”!
I had my travel computer fixed in an Apple store recently. I asked the young lady who was working on it what her background was. She told me, “Oh, I just had had a couple of public relations jobs. I was a receptionist in an office building, and I worked as a hostess in a restaurant. Apple taught me everything I know about fixing computers.” I said, “So you had no computer experience whatsoever before you started this job.” She said, “No. I started two years ago, and I have had a couple of promotions. This career path has great potential.”
As far as I could tell, she was a high school grad who was trained in a few intensive courses by Apple. There are “levels” of tech support, so things she couldn’t handle would be passed on to someone with more background/knowledge. But if Apple can take people with relatively little education and train them to do the standard fixes, it is a way to avoid paying the big bucks for people with degrees in computer science.
If you have two-three levels of support, maybe it is cheaper to just five away a new computer to what the highest level can’t handle, than having another higher paid level support.
I noticed another support person saying something like, “You have a five-year old computer. The fixes that it looks like it needs make no sense on this old a computer. You would be better off purchasing a new one.”
The fix they did for me was free. It involved reconnecting internal cable that had somehow come apart. If it happens again, I may need to get new cable, with fittings that fit more tightly.
It gets much better(?) than that…
Madame Fast is partial to having me plunk my computer on our kitchen island counter in the evenings to work…. while she slaves away over the stove….
She got roaring drunk and tipped a cup of red wine over… my cat like reflexes were sadly … not so cat like … and some of the nectar splashed onto the keyboard before I could snatch it away…
I licked and sucked on the keyboard… but many of the keys were still not working… I took out the blow dryer and tried that… alas … the crucial Delete key was not functioning…. I need that key to Control + Alt + Delete to logon….
Fortunately this is a 3+ year old laptop and I already had duct taped the screen which was separating from the frame…. so it was near time to toss it (no need to lock M Fast in the closet again as punishment) – along with all the toxic elements inside … and the Intel chip … into the bin…
So the next morning I head to Warehouse Office … and pick up a clearance sale on an HP machine…
I take it back… get it online…. then someone named Lady in the Philippines (our Hong Kong tech support has dumped all the expensive tech support people and has a new team of people in Manila who remotely assist) logged onto my new laptop … installed all the software and shifted all the files (hmmm…. I wonder if she noticed my folder of p..orn files????) …. and by lunch time … I was back in the saddle…
Thank you Lady … wherever you are.
Caracas is nestled in a verdant valley perched at around 900 meters (2,953 feet) and its water is pumped from much lower sources. But the pumps have not been maintained, spare parts are scarce and President Nicolas Maduro’s administration is short of cash.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-water/hospitals-scrap-surgeries-venezuelans-forgo-showers-as-taps-run-dry-idUSKBN1L018D
This is not collapse…
One not collapse, two I do not care.
DPs should care… unless of course they have a warehouse full of spare parts to run the bubble farm….
But then how do you defend the farm… and the warehouse…
http://thesesheepbite.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/despair.jpg
Spare parts are key. So is maintenance of things like bridges, as we saw in Italy recently.
Two more minutes of HATE!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-15/video-captures-moment-punk-band-lead-singer-attacks-trump-supporting-fan
Scientists warn fracking could cause water shortages after usage shoots up by 800% in parts of US
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/fracking-water-shortage-drought-fossil-fuels-oil-gas-duke-university-a8493451.html
The huge use of water is one reason why China doesn’t do fracking. It seems to have resources that could be used with fracking. IIRC, there are other issues involved as well, like too many people living in the area.
China > Yale
Yale amassed a fortune while working for the company, largely through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India Company’s directive. By 1692, his repeated flouting of East India Company regulations and growing embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the post of governor.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elihu_Yale
FE, this I did not know. One does not get rich being good.
I told you so numerous times already, that general “pirate” mindset, tendencies and DNA form extra ordinary strong path dependency which is at the core of the current legacy-dominant system, and while it’s still steaming (well crawling) ahead.. way past some “factual data based” predictions..
As the Nawab of Sardhana said to Churchill:
‘You British are just pirates!’
‘Indeed: but reformed pirates, your Highness, reformed!’ 🙂
“MIT Computer Model Predicts Dramatic Drop In Quality Of Life To 2020, “End Of Civilization” By 2040″
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-15/mit-computer-model-predicts-dramatic-drop-quality-life-2020-end-civilization-2040
BS, the MIT modellers never claimed to be able to predict the dates. This is BS. They only claimed a model for educational purposes.
*OFW is for educational purposes only…
Limits to growth had 12 models. One of those models, the “standard run” or, alternatively, the “business as usual” model, was the one that 30 years of historical data tracked/followed.
Scientific American: Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apocalypse-soon-has-civilization-passed-the-environmental-point-of-no-return/
Peer Reviewed Study: Limits to Growth was Right. Research Shows We’re Nearing Global Collapse (Turner, 2014)
https://www.scribd.com/document/379418787/Is-Global-Collapse-Imminent-An-Updated-Comparison-of-The-Limits-to-Growth-with-Historical-Data-Turner-2014
Looking Back on the Limits of Growth – Smithsonian
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-back-on-the-limits-of-growth-125269840/
.https://imgur.com/a/ZUUkN4c
it is quite irrelevant what that computer model says…
models are often weak representations of reality…
the “recent past” is probably the best indicator of the “near future”…
the Recent Past Model says that there has been a dramatic drop in quality of life in many smaller countries in 2013-2018…
this Model also says that there has been NO significant increase in quality of life anywhere in the world in the same time period…
this Model suggests a continuing decline in quality of life in the affected countries, and a creeping decline reaching into other countries in 2018-2023…
the Recent Past Model is very convincing…
The 1972 Limits to Growth model does not have a financial system in it. There is no debt, and no GDP. The authors, at that time, believed the Peak Oil theory, or equivalent–thus, they thought that the system would stay together, indefinitely. The only problem would be diminishing returns. In that respect, model seems to me to be very optimistic. The downslope is likely to be steeper than it shows.
Believing in that gentle slope… WAS so comforting….
Marx: Broke, living in exile, f*** so much he has 7 kids.
Hitler: Dictator of most of mainland Europe, still can’t f***…Has 0 kids.
https://imgur.com/a/DMqT4td
FE, you will like this
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/global-renewable-power-spending-has-been-virtually-flat-for-seven-years.html#more-147900
A good article to show that one should always look a little deeper at any statistical analysis on anything before concluding an apparent trend. Not saying that this proves CC one way or the other, it is just useful info into the manipulation of data through omission or sub-grouping. I imagine the same thing is applied to energy resources.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/usa-temperature-can-i-sucker-you/
I’d like to point out respectfully that Grant Foster aka Tamio routinely deletes comments that he disagrees with, which is a big part of the reason why so few people apart from his Amen chorus comment on his blog. On the other hand, Tony Heller aka Stephen Goddard will let comments he disagrees with stand, but he does tend to mercilessly ridicule them and the people who post them. What both men have in common is they don’t suffer people they consider to be fools gladly.
Apart from being a pioneer in showing how NOAA and NASA manipulate data to rewrite the past in order to make the present look warmer, Heller has amassed a lot of news articles some dating from as early as the 19th century that cover cl-imate scares and extreme weather events, so it’s a fascinating site for people who are interested in cl-imate history. Although in my experience, most people who push CC alarmism have no interest in that sort of thing and actively avoid studying it.
While we’re in the ballpark of the FFs cause CC meme, it’s interesting that Bloomberg is calling Elon out on his hippo critter ism re FFs.
Elon Musk’s Vast Oil Conspiracy Ends With Saudi Billions
The Tesla CEO spent years warning of sabotage by oil interests. But nobody is more crude than his newest mega investor.
Elon Musk has always hated the fossil-fuel industry. His stated mission for Tesla Inc. is to hasten its demise, and more than once he’s blamed the “unrelenting and enormous” power of oil interests for sabotaging his efforts. But now, in his bid to take Tesla private, Musk is courting billions of oil dollars.
After a week of playing coy about who he’s been trying to enlist to help buy out Tesla’s publicly traded shares, Musk revealed at least one partner: Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to think of a more perfect symbol of Big Oil and its money than a sovereign wealth fund created by world’s biggest oil producer. Musk said in a blog post on Monday that he’s been in talks with Saudi Arabia “going back almost two years.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-14/elon-musk-s-vast-oil-conspiracy-ends-with-saudi-billions
Before quoting the MSM… or posting info that claims kkkklimate is w orming….
I would urge people to read this
kkklimate cccchange whistleblower alleges NOAA manipulated data to hide gggglobal wwwwwwarming ‘pause’
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/c
limate-c
hange-whistleblower-alleges-noaa-manipula/
If after reading that you still feel you want to post rubbish… load gun … point at head… pull trigger..
For there is no hope
I reckon this would be something a major coal producer would want to get behind.
After all… Tesla – and most EVs…. are charged using coal-generated electricity.
Huge amounts of coal are burned manufacturing EVs.
The coal industry should be pushing hard for more uptake of EVs.
This looks to me like a strategic opportunity.
China certainly has been pushing EVs, for the precise reason of burning more of its coal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/05/30/chinas-all-in-on-electric-vehicles-heres-how-that-will-accelerate-sales-in-other-nations/#34d90c2ee5c1
Finally, electrifying transportation is a key to solving China’s environmental concerns. Vehicle emissions are one of the fastest-growing sources of pollution in China and more cars are sold there than anywhere else. A radical reduction in tailpipe emissions is essential for China’s government to address discontent caused by urban smog levels.
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
Move the pollution out of the city, to the countryside, where the coal is burned. And to the atmosphere.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/15/shale-profits-remain-elusive/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-15/tesla-whistleblower-releases-vin-numbers-model-3s-punctured-battery-modules
I repeat… who in their right mind is buying a Tesla?
I’ll pass this information along to the fellow who offered me a ride in his Tesla Model 3.
Unless we get to a point of quasi permanent serious road blocks/ades, i.e. not only curfew based on purchase limit of fuels, (+ non gov – local extortion gang blockages), and or expropriation of gear by gov-mil, Tesla remains the best source of quality traction parts, as there are many more other options for sourcing the batts.. so the longer it stays manufacturing the better for everyone..
If you believe you are not going to be affected by on/off/sporadic fuel availability for the peons in next say ~20yrs you are into some nasty yet predictable surprises..
Obviously, there are other options, e.g. Russian/Gulfies top fall back option (officially announced) are natgas car & trucks, but that’s obviously very JITsy dependent avenue many would like to avoid, not to be dependent on..
Kunstler Cast — Gold, Silver, and Oil with Steve St. Angelo
http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-306-gold-silver-and-oil-with-steve-st-angelo/
Oh gawd… not Steve and his gold will save us Koombaya….
It does not get much more re ta r ded than that
I was hoping Kunstler would have something interesting to say, despite Steve’s strong focus. I haven’t listened to it, however. Takes more time than I have available.
https://imgur.com/a/7AqEsJp
A world no longer powered by fossil fuels, no matter what incarnation, is almost inconceivable and for many terrifying. . It is indeed traumatic for what it might (probably) mean not just for us but also for our love ones, children, grandchildren. Our hearts break. We want to fix it.
A world without fossil fuels is not possible with more than a tiny number of humans on the earth.
Bingo—
Homo Sapiens have had a historical population of 1-10 million, with a near extinction 70,000 years ago.
7.6 billion? Right——-
You don’t know that there was a near extinction, Duncan. What was it that Twain said?
https://i.imgflip.com/12w1mu.jpg
The transition is hard but after that it could be nice.
Take a day… and try hunting and gathering…
I doubt you will find it ‘nice’
think back to a world pre-1900, a time which is well documented
I can’t visualise that far back, but i can recall the houses my grandparents lived in, which had been built 1830-1860 respectively.
I was always happy to visit and stay as a kid, to me gas lighting and outside loo and water tap was ‘normal’ and didnt concern me.—– but looking back I’m under no illusions about what living there would be like. Anything but nice.
Our ”modern houses” are just that because of modern energy inputs. Remove energy support and you will have 19th c slums within 10 years or less, in 20/30 years you will have 17th c slums
Added to which our 21st c expectations will remain, making life 10x more unpleasant
Without access to fossil fuels, the diseases of our ancestors will return with a vengeance, all our resistance has been lost because we have had no exposure to them.
And that’s before we get to the ‘niceties’ of an autocratic feudal society
Just the thought of not having a a flushing toilet or a functioning fridge or hoover ever again. SUCH a downer even before you get onto FE’s cannibalistic/radioactive doomsday scenario. Perhaps a lethal pandemic would be a blessing.
I watched an amusing video by a ‘Dark Age re-enactor’: back to the 10th century, in winter.
What he didn’t expect was the depression which resulted from lack of electricity – above all for lighting.
He ended up getting jittery and scared of the shadows in the house – of course he would have got through that stage, and he was alone, but the psychological leap was one he wasn’t at all prepared for.
Going without electricity for 24 hours — when it was not expected — can be very stressful….
Yes
https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/main/articles/bb_B3RHMA.jpg
No
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Common-Reasons-Why-Organic-Farming-is-Essential.jpg
FE, that is winners and workers. The world needs both. Just as today most people in the west are in the worker bucket, not owners, workers.
FE, I stick with nice. Hold the spear and boss the pudgy white folks until they are the thin white workers, until they are the die from starvation white folks. I go to all hands meetings with execs all women wearing $5000 shoes much the same. Some carry the spears and some are dumb f&*(^ workers.
or to put it simply s%^&* rolls down hill
The chap at the front with the three-point spear is just showing off.
i have exactly the same feelings
but the problem maybe is that we look back in history and think we ‘fixed” things—won wars, fed people and so on, (when all we were doing was digging a deeper hole for ourselves)
and apply the same thinking to the future, and believe the politicians who offer ‘solutions’—so they get voted into office—(to dig even deeper holes for us)
we are in effect voting for prosperity—which is of course nonsense.
i want things to be fixable, but maybe they are not—which is a truly horrible thought
as here:
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/an-infinity-of-futility-5fb525fc610c
Yep—
https://i.imgur.com/xIUERAJ.jpg
Would Yorichan call it a strawman… if I suggested that those people would score rather low … on an IQ test?
Their conservatives– it is a given thy would score low.
https://firstfriday.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/penn.jpg?w=580
https://i.imgflip.com/e8w23.jpg
Norman, have you ever considered that Dr. Pangloss (Gottfried Leibniz) may have been correct that this is the best of all possible worlds?
Had humankind not evolved out of a hunter-gather past, using stone, fire and then metals to survive in a harsh yet sustainable environment, you and I would not be here to discuss the implications of this evolution or its futility.
At the end of Voltaire’s story, the chief protagonists have come through a succession of sufferings and adventures and have ended up prepping in Turkey.
Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:
“There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had
you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunégonde; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat marmalade and pistachio nuts.”
“Excellent speech,” answered Candide; “but let us cultivate our garden.”
I am on record as saying F789 everyone else…. I have lived large because someone worked out the fire thing… I would like to say a posthumous thank you to Mr Fire Maker.
My only regret — is that I probably will not be on my last legs when the end game arrives.
Anyone over say… 65… is well-placed… their downward slope is accelerating or very close to accelerating…. being wiped out by the end of BAU just saves a lot of diapers.
I need at another dozen years or so in order to welcome the end of BAU….
Hate to go before that — doesn’t everyone want to satisfy the morbid curiousity of what the end of energy looks like?
okay, Eddy, I guarantee you that BAU will last until 2030…
b w a h a h a h a h a…
“morbid curiosity”?
I suspect that many folks here at OFW do have that characteristic…
“normal” folks probably do not…
what I would be most curious to see, is how Creeping Collapse overtakes the entire world except for NZ and the good ole USA… (perhaps Russia also)…
bring it on…
I see China (PRC) and America (USA) engaged in a hell of a judo match to see which one can destroy the other economically and thereby reduce the competition for resources without provoking WW3 and the Elders carefully hedging their bets in an attempt to keep their elite status regardless of the outcome. The Chinese are using The Art of War as their game plan, while the Americans are studying The Grand Chessboard and The Art of the Deal, and it’s rumored that the Elders also have their own strategy book, nudge nudge. The rest of us are looking on like ants at an elephant fight and hoping we don’t get trodden on during the fight.
Interesting way of putting the problem!
I’m 47 yrs old and my first memories were waiting in gas lines with my mother and my father riding a bicycle to work. I’m 47 and I saw my WWII vet grandfather point a .45 at a group of people in what was becoming a riot on the outskirts of Atlanta in the latter 70’s. I’m 47 and I’ve seen at least 4 recessions and a near collapse. I’m 47 and terrified and relieved at the same time knowing we are all f÷*$ed.
item on today’s news, that NZ is banning the sale of new homes to foreign bolt holers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45199034
If you enough cash — you can buy residency… which allows you to own property
a thought that often passes through my mind, is: Are we the only species with the ability to think “what if”? I guess we probably are.
I’m also the first to acknowledge that I am here because several million ancestors survived to reproductive age,—“what if” just one of them had failed in some way—then my thread of existence would not have materialised and all my planet-saving efforts would have come to nothing
So yes—for me I suppose this is the best of all possible worlds, because I’m fit, healthy, moderately successful, and so are my kids and grandkids. — the most important part really because they pass on my thread of existence.
If humankind is on the wrong track, then it is a collective error, and there’s very little we can do about it as individuals
“have you ever considered that Dr. Pangloss (Gottfried Leibniz) may have been correct that this is the best of all possible worlds?”
There are too many worlds for us to be able to judge:
A story about ancient writings in India about UFO’s, and depictions of flying objects in carvings.
It is strange how things all work together.
Nice work, Norman. Now to see what my comfortable FB friends have to say about it.
I posted Norm’s article on a very long thread I introduced on energy. But somebody who is way ahead of many of us (suggesting that we shouldn’t be afraid of starting energy conversations in unlikely placed) had just posted the following:
Developed countries can finance hundreds of sq. Miles of panels to make it worthwhile. Power plants can’t be used as backups when there is no sun because power plants are not entities that can be switched on/ off or turned up/ down at will. Power plants respond to sharp increases in demand or sharp drops in output by doing load shedding.
The way that power plants provide backup supply when a rapid ramp up in supply is by staying offline, part of the time, so that they can quickly ramp up. Some will be in a partially activated state. These providers need to be paid for this service, because staying offline, so that they can be ramped up quickly, is not a free service. Also, stored water from hydroelectric can be used for rapid ramp up, even if it doesn’t provide enough electricity supply for 24 per day use.
One thing that people don’t understand is that a large part of intermittency is time-of-year intermittency, and even year-to-year intermittency. The prime example is the need for heat in the winter, when solar energy is primarily available in the summer. Saving this solar energy requires storing it at least seven months. The way this is done in a fossil fuel powered system is by having some systems that only operate when the electricity need is high. This varies with location. In hot areas, it is in the summer; in cold areas, it is in the winter. Fossil fuels are great for this, because they can be stored.
Year-to-year intermittency is especially a problem when an economy is dependent on hydroelectric for a substantial share of its electricity. Weather patterns vary a lot from year to year. Somehow, it is necessary to keep fossil fuel backup providers in business to provide electricity in years when hydroelectric supply is low. Spain, Venezuela, and Brazil have run into these issue. I am wondering whether California will as well.
Thanks!
Illinois manufacturer closing doors, moving to Mexico over Trump tariffs
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/international-taxes/401943-illinois-manufacturer-closing-doors-moving-to-mexico-over
Good, my pay for the bloated take of the ruling elites through taxes when you can leave?
why pay
btw i was watch a movie
which talk about coal mines confict in india
the story of this movie is the gangs use to control coal mines
ultimately control the city or even the country
https://youtu.be/j-AkWDkXcMY
there is still conflict happen in this place where movie is based upon
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dhanbad-congress-leader-shot-67-times-coal-capital-sees-rerun-of-gangs-of-wasseypur/story-7d1EdeGUpveZySILFGshVI.html
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=gangnam+style&fr=iphone&.tsrc=apple&pcarrier=AT&T&pmcc=310&pmnc=410
Vix
16.59
+3.28(+24.64%)
Ok campers——-
US Crude oil and petroleum product stocks are way up, week ending August 10. WTI price is about $65 per barrel, off about 3%. Brent doesn’t seem to be down as much. $71.06. Widening spread between Brent and WTI.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/crude-oil-and-product-stocks-at-aug-10-2018.png
“After 40 years of economic reforms, Chinese society has amassed too many contradictions. Public dissatisfaction with the authorities is well known… the economic impact of the trade war with the United States is likely to exacerbate the crisis in Chinese society. So far, the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods have caused China’s stock and currency markets to fluctuate and public pessimism to spread… Depending on how the conflict develops, we may see large-scale business closures, a rise in unemployment and serious inflation. If the economy sinks into a recession, living standards may fall sharply…
“…an overall restlessness is appearing in society and people are crying out for changes to the system. Without such changes, the government leadership will only be able to delay the outbreak of a crisis if they handle the situation well under the current constraints, or they will accelerate the transformation if they mishandle the situation.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2159628/trade-war-raises-spectre-china-collapse-and
“China’s state planner pledged on Wednesday to keep debt levels under control even as Beijing rolls out fresh stimulus to support the stumbling economy as a trade war with the U.S. deepens.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy/china-vows-to-control-debt-despite-fresh-stimulus-for-cooling-economy-idUKKBN1L007B
“A company controlled by an economic and paramilitary organisation in China’s Xinjiang region has missed the interest and principal repayment on an onshore debt market note, in the latest sign of the stresses in China’s financial system.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/money/markets-investing/article/2159720/bond-default-xinjiang-latest-sign-stresses-chinas
China’s Xinjiang region is a huge semi-autonomous area in China’s northwest. I wonder what is causing its financial problems.
This is one of the places that has seen a lot of growth in wind and solar. It is also farthest from where the energy from these devices is needed, making the cost of electricity transmission costs the highest. The largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world (Goldwind) (as of 2015) is located in Xinjiang region. China has recently cut back on its solar plans.
The area is also listed as being high in coal and oil resources. It originally seems to have been an agricultural area.
Liaoning – China’s rustbelt province in the NE has been the one I’ve been most conscious of as a source of bad economic news, especially since its governor took the highly unusual step of admitting they were making up their growth stats.
Re Xinjiang, I know they get a lot of bad droughts up there, which can’t help economically. The mention of a paramilitary organisation makes me wonder if this company, which the article describes innocuously as “owned by Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a provincial-level organ set up by the central government in 1954 to farm, settle and help develop the economy of Xinjiang,” is somehow connected to the suppression of the Muslim Uyghur minority:
“At a meeting of a United Nations human rights panel today (Aug. 13) in Geneva, a Chinese delegation categorically said there was no such thing as “re-education centers” in Xinjiang nor was there any subjugation of religious freedom in the Muslim-majority region.
“China’s response comes after the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said on Friday (Aug. 10) that there were “credible reports” that 2 million Uyghur and Muslim minorities in China are being held in secret internment camps.”
https://qz.com/1354447/china-flat-out-denies-the-mass-incarceration-of-xinjiangs-uyghurs-as-testimonies-trickle-out/
This is a WSJ article about what a police state Xinjiang has become:
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
The government has turned the remote region into a laboratory for its high-tech social controls
I was recently informed that air tickets on Cathay Pacific that include a PRC destination — with a Hong Kong stop – are more than 1/3 cheaper than flying to HK only…
So in October… our HK work trip … gets Guilin tacked on ….
I will look at a west China tack on for the next HK work trip … assuming there is a next HK trip….
I expect the rising cost of coal extraction is part of the problem as well. Also, the need to import oil at fairly high prices.
“The escalating political dispute between the United States and Turkey, along with the sharp drop in the value of the Turkish currency, the lira, have captured front-page headlines in recent days. The political dispute threatens to realign major alliances while the drop in the lira threatens to undermine the global economy if it continues.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/2159692/growing-global-links-mean-turkeys-lira-crisis-poses-risk
“Sharp declines in the Turkish lira, Indian rupee and other currencies have raised the prospect of a self-reinforcing flight from riskier emerging markets.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/plunging-turkish-lira-indian-rupee-raise-specter-of-contagion-1534252079
“Turkey has sharply raised tariffs on US imports, including passenger cars, alcohol and tobacco. A decree signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the tariffs on cars to 120%, on alcoholic drinks to 140% and on leaf tobacco to 60%. Tariffs were also increased on cosmetics, rice and coal. Turkey had previously said it would boycott US electronic products. It comes after Washington imposed punitive sanctions on Ankara.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45194003
“The currency crisis in Turkey is being exacerbated by a skyrocketing annual inflation rate, which by some estimates, exceeds 100 percent.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/turkey-annual-inflation-rate-is-running-at-an-estimated-101-percent.html
And talking of inflation:
“President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that some of the world’s cheapest petrol that Venezuelan drivers enjoy will soon be sold at world market prices to combat rampant smuggling. [Currently] for the price of a cup of coffee, a driver can fill the tank of a small SUV nearly 9,000 times.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/venezuela-abandon-petrol-subsidies-inflation-set-hit-one-million/
nations function properly when their energy input/output stays in some kind of equilibrium
if there isn’t sufficient energy coming into an economic system, (oil coal and gas primarily,) to underpin the energy being used and dissipated in the consumption of food and the production of merchandise, (output) then the imbalance puts the exchange system (ie currency) into an inflationary spiral
Re Turkey, if memory serves, their gasoline prices are already amongst the highest in the world. They are going to get eye-watering if the lira doesn’t recover somewhat against the $.
I agree, we are all heavily subsidized right now. Especially in the developed world. We take so much for granted: plastics, electricity, paved roads, bridges, metals, fuels etc. All these things would be completely out of a persons reach without the global infrastructure that supports their exploitation. On our own, we couldn’t even so much as make a styrofoam cup! Yet we toss them into the landfills like they are worthless.
Oil subsidies go away when a country has go financial problems. These oil subsidies are especially of benefit to the poorest people in the country. Eliminating the oil subsidies is a way of squeezing out the poorest. Or conversely, putting them in place is way of allowing even the poorest to share in the energy supplies of the country.
We have fossil fuel subsidies in the United States. They primarily go to poor people who could not otherwise afford to heat their homes in winter. Eliminating them would have a similar impact.
Most people who hear about fossil fuel subsidies and think they are terrible have not thought through what the impact of eliminating them likely would be.
while subsidies are a ”good thing”, wherever they are applied, the recipients build them into their way of life–this is human nature.
but no subsidy can be other than temporary, because it is part of ‘energy unreality’, (ie food energy, fuel energy, housing energy) and energy in whatever form, must eventually rebalance itself to a median level
when it does, the people who built it into their lives are bound to suffer
Thinking about it, we are all on an ‘energy subsidy’ whatever price we pay for it because we have bet our lives on the infinity of a finite commodity
“Oil prices ended lower Tuesday for the fourth time in five sessions as investors worried that growth in global demand may soon weaken.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/oil-ticks-up-amid-supply-risks-1534245421
“”We’re not earning anything from it any more, we have nothing,” says a rubber farmer in Ivory Coast, Africa’s top producer, where revenues from natural rubber have been slashed by global oversupply… Rubber prices are linked to that of crude because of the tyre industry, which uses a mix of natural and synthetic petroleum-based products.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6061749/In-Ivory-Coast-global-rubber-glut-erases-profits.html
“Copper sank below $6,000, while the dollar climbed and stocks fell, as investors fret that the Turkish crisis will spill over into emerging markets, hurting demand already threatened by a U.S.-China trade war. Other metals, crude oil and gold declined too.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/2018/08/15/base-metals-prices-mixed-as-investors-follow-talks-at-escondida
Oversupply of too many things! Sinking prices.
Dude Duane apparently new how to pilot airplanes, so far so good, but for some nefarious reasons he failed laws of established “neo-physics” at the crucial point when he left tail sanction, engine, and other parts intact on the drive way, apparently not disintegrating into the building as he should..
What a party spoiler, myth buster, conspiracy theorist and overall bad person Duane was..
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7007984/plane-attack-payson-utah-duane-youd-death/
This yesterday’s crash in Utah has been described by some msm as “small plane” or “small prop plane”, however other outlets like CNN write correctly about small jet Cessna Citation 525/535.. two jet engines, which is apparent from the pictures and video..
* Finmin announces import tax for consumer goods, project delays
* Rupiah at multi-year low, bond yield highest since December 2016
* Central bank seen holding rates on Wed, but set to be close call
* Indonesia Q2 FDI contracts for first time since at least 2011 (Recasts with measures announced after cabinet meeting)
https://www.reuters.com/article/indonesia-markets/update-2-indonesia-slaps-tariffs-on-consumer-goods-to-curb-imports-as-rupiah-slides-idUSL4N1V5408
Good post! Why can’t we see Calm Eddy more often?
Sliding currency means country can no longer afford imports made with oil.
Imports are already getting very expensive for citizens. Adding tariffs makes them even more expensive.
The Chinese government is expediting plans to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects as its economy shows signs of cooling further, with investment growth slowing to a record low and consumers turning more cautious.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-activity/china-revs-up-spending-plan-as-economy-cools-investment-growth-at-record-low-idUSKBN1KZ04Z
What every country does, when it is worried about it growth. But are these new investments really needed?
And how long will it stand up for?
Much of the housing built in the UK -keeping many workers very busy – over the last decade or so is very substandard, and visibly decaying.
Same for the major ‘guided bus’ route here which is cracking apart, having been delayed and gone way over budget.
It’s the solution of the 1930’s for the problems of the 21st century.
If people spend 5 minutes each day patching the cracks, the shoddy buildings will last indefinitely, but the work will never end.
New and improved fentanyl:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfentanil
Carfentanil or carfentanyl is an analog of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl.[1] A unit of carfentanil is 100 times as potent as the same amount of fentanyl, 5,000 times as potent as a unit of heroin and 10,000 times as potent as a unit of morphine.[2]
Used by zoo veterinarians to sedate elephants and other large animals…
I am told synthetic opioids are coming from China. The poetic justice of that is so wonderful. We poisoned them using Yankee Clipper ships from New England and now they return the favor. Karma is a bit ch
I hope a lot of Yale students get hooked on this stuff!
Danforth killer’s brother court-ordered to live at home where carfentanil later discovered
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/danforth-killers-brother-court-ordered-to-live-at-home-where-carfentanil-later-discovered
42 KG of it is a weapon IMHO…almost no MSM coverage.
Conclusion
1. This financial cancer is everywhere. Western markets are screwed. The outcome is certain and the party is over. At some point in the indeterminable future, the world will be tasked with cleaning up the mess.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/14/alibabas-20-f-annual-report-financial-comedy-gold/
What I wonder … is how someone in finance … can bring themselves to show up at the office every morning…. there are no rules… there is next to no logic…
It’s like a doctor being handed a body that is barely alive and riddled with cancer, AIDS, TB, heart disease, and dozens of other diseases… and be told to keep it alive.
If one was a banker with a high nett worth (that is soon to go to 0)… and being aware of this… one would understand an implosion is at hand… why not take your loot… and start bucket listing…
It sounds like a new version of the pre-2008 financial silliness, to keep things going.
Thought of the Day (by Fast Eddy)
Having a scan through the comments of this and there is a diatribe hammering The Tribe….
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-14/furious-swedish-pm-rages-violent-gang-rampage-what-hell-are-you-doing?page=3#comment-12190886
I regularly see this sort of commentary on ZH …. which has a rather large following.
I guarantee you … that if you tried to post this sort of stuff on other web sites with similarly large followings…. those web sites would remove the commentary very quickly…
If they didn’t … then I guarantee you …. pressure would be put on them by The Tribe — in the form of total loss of advertising dollars …. to remove said content. The site owners would be dragged through the dirt as anti-semites who publish hate speech.
So what is going on here? Why does ZH — day after day — allow such commentary — with apparently no repercussions?
Could it be… might it be…. that one of the main purposes of this site is to identify Tribe haters — by allowing them to 1. post comments and 2. upvote comments demonstrating support for anti-semitic views….
Helping The Tribe identify its enemies… for future reference.
I am open to other theories…
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement (simplified Chinese: 百花齐放; traditional Chinese: 百花齊放; pinyin: Bǎihuā Qífàng), was a period in 1956 in the People’s Republic of China[1] during which the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime.
Differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong: “The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science”.[2][3]
The movement was in part a response to the demoralization of intellectuals, who felt estranged from the Communist Party.[citation needed]
After this brief period of liberalization, Mao used this to oppress those who challenged the communist regime by using force. The crackdown continued through 1957–1959 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology.
Those targeted were publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps.[4] The ideological crackdown following the campaign’s failure re-imposed Maoist orthodoxy in public expression, and catalyzed the Anti-Rightist Movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
The U.S intelligence community claims that ZH is a FSB front.
Here’s one-
Frankly, just the basic observation that such fishy guy (Prof. Jones) who was in the late 1980s tasked with the smearing campaign against his colleagues, which effectively derailed public funded research in the specific domain for two decades, and suddenly reappears out of hibernation in this case in mid-late 2000s means (to again smear others) that there must be key profound problem at the heart of it indeed, irrespective of the particular theories..
Now to your particular video, the Prof. Wood’s approach focusing solely on the evidence is the best so far, and revealing something different about which I can in laymen terms speculate. Actually wrote few days earlier in bit more detail. There is no damage to the multitude of basement floors and flood dyke (keeping wider Manhattan above water) , so NO sort of primary cause via explosions or structural collapse or anything gravity based could NOT have occurred at all, impossible. There is also like 90+ % of the material “missing” incl. structural steel, video and footage of the first respondents clearly demonstrate the additional super weird effect of particular/steered direction sucking up the dustified material out of the site as it still disintegrates.. Who and how have they done it in detail technology wise is secondary, but I repeat no explosions possible, incl. nuclear insinuated in the video..
That Mr. Pommer’s presentation is sort of an big tent/umbrella approach, taking together clues from “warring” factions of research, nevertheless I must concede that he seems to offer (after ~10yrs !?) along side Dr. Wood the best evidence and studious approach so far..
The first benefit is obviously the conventional nature of the scheme, as this is mostly old existing technology, explaining the phenomena. Now, there are couple of problems also, he posits the two stage nuclear blasts (offsetting dissimilar sized charges ~1kton + 100kton) firstly forming the supportive “bowel” molten rock bellow the slurry wall/bathtub/flood dyke for the upward shooting “neutron beam” corroding the central steel structure shaft and waving outwards through the steel sidewalls as well..
– I’ve not seen clear evidence yet, that this existing document molten rock stuff (for the charges) actually lies beneath the floor of the tub, all the pic/videos tend to show it somewhere within the tub (height/depth)
– This overall *scenario tends to be “total nightmare” from the preparatory stage/compartmentalization angle of things, as there needs to be crew/s doing it for all the three major buildings WTC1-2-7 and there are even clues the entire WTC complex has been compromised similarly, hence the necessity re-doing it for even more buildings, that’s a big hazard approach of doubtful probability
* vs Dr. Wood’s observed similar yet not completely same effects of direct energy weapon
This video has a several paragraph introduction, regarding what it is. It is a sped up and combined version of several short videos, claiming a different explanation of 911.
America’s debt has exploded. Why does no one care?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-rubin-national-debt-20180813-story.html
Debt explosion is what keeps the economy operating. Of course, there is the detail of repayment.
Real US wages are essentially back at 1974 levels, Pew reports
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/14/salaries-real-us-wages-back-1974-levels-pew-report/37468497/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
Actually, never left where they were:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/average-hourly-wages-since-1964-pew-research.png
While the productivity kept shooting higher, I guess Gail has got that graph at hand as well.. So, the difference was pocketed up (and or partly used in other inefficiencies) by someone other than the workers.
Balance used for return on growing capital invested? Growing complexity, with more hierarchical structure?
I have a mate.. top of his class at Oxford… Irish… it took him over 10 years to get to Managing Director at Goldman… he is unlikely to ever make partner…
Yet this guys stepped right in:
Investment career
Early career and Goldman Sachs
Directly after graduating from Columbia, Cooperman joined Goldman Sachs. He spent his first twenty two years at Goldman in the Investment Research Department as partner-in-charge, co-chairman of the Investment Policy Committee and chairman of the Stock Selection Committee. In 1989, he became chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management[11][12] and was chief investment officer of the equity product line including managing the GS Capital Growth Fund, an open-end mutual fund, for one and one-half years.[13]
While at Goldman Sachs, for nine consecutive years, Cooperman was voted the number-one portfolio strategist in the Institutional Investor “All-America Research Team” survey.[14][15]
At the end of 1991 after twenty five years of service, Cooperman retired from his positions as a general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and as chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.[16]
Founding of Omega
After leaving Goldman Sachs, he organized a private investment partnership, Omega Advisors, Inc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_G._Cooperman
If you ran the show… would you not put ‘your people’ into top positions?
Italy bridge collapse..
https://i.redd.it/voakek1iv1g11.jpg
In the mid 1960s rated for ~100+ yrs longevity, however appraised by professionals decade or two ago as being in very bad – bordering hazardous condition already..
Obviously, this is specific case, re-known $hitty piece of work on all accounts (project, materials, oversight-upkeep, ..) – nevertheless it’s telling us something important about overall infrastructure decay and ricocheting JITs dependencies (e.g. problem to truck now across Italy) ..
Analysts: SPR Release Won’t Lower Gasoline Prices
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Analysts-SPR-Release-Wont-Lower-Gasoline-Prices.html
Can’t stop the blue wave coming!
We are at interesting spaghetti like crossroad consisting of the following trends:
– commodities cycle low
– tight oil supply due to depletion
– tight oil storage levels
– nascent demand collapse (productivity peak, demographic peak, O/FW issues..)
– geopolitical games going hot
(embargo on phyz oil exports – Hormuz, as well as financial $petro recycling sanctions)
..
In summary, this is highly unusual sets of conditions occurring more or less at the same time, hence anything can happen like mega-spikes of price or the other extremes (OPEC-RU unable at some point hold to propping up price schemes anymore dropping it all into $25-45 barrel)..
= by sheer luck or smarts someone will make megatons of money on this; again
https://i.redd.it/gt9s4shky2g11.jpg
Yup.
everyone i know that has bought a 50 000 dollar car has done it through refinancing a loan through the equity on their house or salary sacrifice using their before tax income tp finance a 50000 loan interest rates are between 4% to 0%. they usually use the excuse that they deserve it after the hard times they have had
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-14/tesla-model-3-bumper-falls-after-30-minutes-and-heavy-rain
Anyone plunking down 50k+ (for a vehicle that was supposed to cost 35k)…. surely does a little research beforehand….
And that would result in endless stories about bad quality — expensive repairs — difficulty in getting spare parts…
Even if one were deep in delusional territory — 50k+ is a lot of dosh ….
So I am wondering — who is still buying these vehicles? We saw the images of thousands of finished vehicles idling in a car park recently….
google the name of that owner of that vehicle and you will get your answer all it takes is a bit of research fast eddie
They are essentially to be had for free, as long as you are eligible to tap into monthly payments, which in turn must be granted to you on the pretense your work actually means something, or churn of your rent in the system is supposedly positive in case you are a biz person.
It’s very easy actually, the system works like this magic (keeps on giving) for many people..
In my acquaintance, well-off people, near retirement age, who are concerned about “peak oil” seem to be buying these. I am sure others are as well.
They seem to be convinced that oil will “run out” and prices will rise greatly. The cars will help them in that way. In the meantime, they can impress their friends. I was offered a chance to ride in a new Tesla 3 last week–didn’t accept the offer.
Too bad asphalt is made of oil…
I only know of one person who owns an EV…. he bought one of the BMW options…. Tesla is not the only option — so I am not sure why anyone would buy a Tesla….
Tesla is still re-known as so-so car in terms of the vehicle platform (they started from zero) but evidently a marvel in terms of aerospace grade drive-train components. Actually, there is nothing odd about such relationship as many even very luxury brands fight similar dichotomies in slightly different angle for decades, e.g. performance vs. quality, performance vs. interior, performance vs. service experience, ..
‘hope for the best prepare for the worst ‘ so prepping will enable you to survive longer than everyone else . bury an airtight bucket filled with canned food white rice butane canniisters and bottled water line the bucket with cardboard to prevent plastic water bottles losing water.any number of airtight plastic buckets can be used and filled with suitable survival items and buried in your backyard or locally sourced areas. if you can survive a couple of months when TSHF you will be one of the last survivors left in your ‘neck of the woods’ after a die-off of the human race.
Dont forget
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e5/0a/82/e50a82dc0e1b7d58ad2412b3cd3d95b7.jpg