The world economy seems to be seriously ill. The problem is not overly high oil prices, but that does not rule out energy as being a major underlying problem.
Two of the symptoms of the economy’s malaise are slow wage growth and increasing wage disparity. Tariffs are being used as solutions to these issues. Radical leaders are increasingly being elected. The Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund have raised concerns about the world’s aggregate debt levels. The IMF has even suggested that a second Great Depression might be ahead if major banks should fail in the manner that Lehman Brothers did in 2008.
Figure 1. Ratio of Core Debt Growth (non-financial debt including governmental debt) to GDP, based on data of the Bank of International Settlements.
If the economy were a human being, we would send it to a physician for a diagnosis regarding what is wrong. What really is needed is a physician who has a wide overview, and thus can understand the many symptoms. Hopefully, the physician can also provide a reasonable prognosis of what lies ahead.
Individual specialists studying the world’s economic and energy problems tend to look at these problems from narrow points of view. Some examples include:
- Curve fitting and cycle analysis using economic data by country since World War II, as is often performed by economists
- Analysis of oil supply based on technically recoverable reserves or resources
- Analysis of fresh water supply problems
- Analysis of population problems, including rising population relative to arable land, and rising retiree population relative to working population
- Analysis of ocean problems, including rising acidity and depleting fish stocks
- Analysis of the expected impact of CO2 production from fossil fuels on climate
- Analysis of rising debt levels
In fact, we are facing a combined problem, but most analysts/economists are looking at only their own piece of the problem. They assume that the other aspects have little or no influence on their particular result. What we really need is an analysis of the overall economic malady from a broader perspective.
In some ways, the situation is analogous to having no physician with a sufficient overview of where the world economy is headed. Instead, we have a number of specialists (perhaps analogous to a psychiatrist, a urologist, a podiatrist, and a dermatologist), none of whom really understands the underlying problem the patient is facing.
One point of confusion regarding whether today’s oil prices should be of concern is the fact that the maximum affordable oil price seems to decline over time. This happens because workers around the world increasingly cannot afford to buy the goods and services that the world economy produces. Inadequate wage growth within countries, growing globalization and rising interest rates all contribute to this growing affordability problem. To make matters confusing, this growing affordability problem corresponds to “falling demand” in the way economists frame the issues we are facing.
If we believe the technical analysis shown in Figure 2, the maximum affordable West Texas Intermediate oil price has declined from $147 per barrel in July 2008 to $76 per barrel recently. The current price is about $62 per barrel. The chart suggests that downward price resistance might be reached at $55 per barrel, assuming no major event occurs to change the current trend line. Any upward price bounce would appear to leave the price still much lower than oil producers need in order to reinvest sufficiently to allow future oil production to be maintained at current levels.
Figure 2. Down sloping diagonal line at the top of chart gives an estimate of the trend in maximum affordable West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices. The downward trend line starts in July 2008, when oil prices hit a maximum. This high point occurred when the US real estate debt bubble started unwinding. Later maximum points correspond to points when oil prices stopped rising and crude oil reservoirs started refilling. Chart prepared by Amit Noam Tal.
Thus, our concern about adequate future oil supplies should perhaps be focused on keeping oil prices high enough. It takes a growing debt bubble to keep oil demand high; perhaps our concern should be keeping this debt bubble high enough to allow extraction of commodities of all kinds, including oil. Figure 1 seems to show a recent downward trend in Debt to GDP ratios for the Eurozone, the United States and China. This may be part of today’s low price problem for commodities of all types.
Needless to say, climate analyses do not consider the severity of our energy problems, nor do they consider the extent to which there is a connection between energy supply and the ability of the economy to operate as usual. If the real issue is a near-term financial crash that will radically affect future fossil fuel consumption, the climate analysis will certainly miss this event.
The Real Nature of the Limits to Growth Problem
To truly understand the headwinds that the economy is facing, we should be looking at the combined effect of all of the limits that the individual specialists have been studying. We might also include other issues not listed. The 1972 book The Limits to Growth presents an early computer model of how at least some of the limits of a finite world might be expected to play out.
Figure 3. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil” http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf
This early approach reflected an engineering view of the problem, considering expected diminishing returns with respect to resources of all types. Other considerations included likely resource needs based on prior economic and population growth trends and efficiency gains. The Base Scenario shown in the 1972 book (Figure 3) showed collapse taking place about now–in other words, in the early part of the 21st century.
In the time since the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis was prepared, there has been a major discovery relating the importance of energy to the economy. Ilya Prigogine tackled the problem of the physics of thermodynamically dynamic open systems, earning a Nobel Prize for his efforts in 1977. When energy flows are available, many structures, called dissipative structures, can grow and change over time. Examples include plants and animals, hurricanes, stars (they expand in size, then collapse at the end of their lives), ecosystems, and economies. These structures are utterly dependent on energy flows. The economy needs energy in almost the same way that humans need food. Without sufficient energy flows, the world economy will collapse.
It is because of the laws of physics and energy flows that markets are able to set price levels. Indirectly, physics sets the maximum affordable price for energy products based upon the total quantity of goods and services individual workers can afford. These maximum affordable prices may be invisible, but they are very real. Economists may talk about “demand” for energy products, but the real issue is affordability: “Will the laws of physics allow prices to stay high enough to provide the commodities the world economy needs?”
It is because of the laws of physics that debt can play a major role in the economy. Debt can provide time-shifting services if an economy does not have sufficient energy supplies to permit the equivalent of bartering of finished goods and services for new capital goods. Debt can allow future goods and services (manufactured with energy products) to serve as payment for capital goods and other goods purchased using debt. Thus, debt acts as a promise of future energy supplies. These future energy supplies may not, in fact, actually be available at prices that consumers can afford. This is why debt bubbles so often collapse and have a devastating impact on economies.
In theory, the new physics discoveries might also be added to the Limits to Growth model. If this were done, I would expect the downslopes in Figure 3 to be much steeper. Also, the date when the population decline starts would likely move forward, relative to other declines. The actual dates of the declines would of course be expected to change as well, because of updated knowledge regarding resources, population, and other factors.
Including the physics aspect of the economy would lead to many periods when sharp changes take place. When these sharp changes take place, there might be wars, collapsing governments, and epidemics, all causing large numbers of deaths. Debt bubbles might pop, causing deflation and widespread banking problems. These types of events are similar to those that economies have experienced in the past. There is no reason to expect that today’s world economy will have unusual lasting power.
Of course, modeling one piece of the economy at a time, as described at the beginning of this post, leaves out such troublesome implications. Economists tell us all we need to worry about is price fluctuations as the economy substitutes one product for another. If a person has blinders on, perhaps this a good description of the world we live in. Otherwise, the model leaves a lot to be desired.
Implication of the Laws of Physics Being in Charge of How the Economy Operates
Politicians would very much like us to believe that they are in charge. They would like us to believe that adding more technology can solve all of our problems. They would like us to believe that citizens can make a significant difference by voluntarily cutting back on their own energy consumption. They would also like us to believe that countries can cut back on their debt levels without the whole Ponzi Scheme unraveling.
Anyone who has watched bread rise in a bowl can see the implications of growth within a finite structure. It doesn’t take very long for the volume growth of bread dough to exceed the space available. Even if the bread maker pushes the dough back down again, the effect is only temporary. The bread dough quickly rises again to overfill the bowl it is in.
One possible implication of the 2008 financial (and oil price) crash is that we are very close to limits, right now. Regulators can try to fine tune how the economy operates by raising and lowering interest rates (sometimes using Quantitative Easing (QE) in the process), but they are, in some sense, playing with fire. Figure 4 shows the dramatic impact that popping the real estate debt bubble seems to have had in 2008. It also shows the impact that adding and removing QE has had.
Figure 4. Figure showing collapsing debt bubble at the time US oil prices peaked. Figure also shows the use of Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate the economy, and thus bring oil prices back up again. Ending US QE seems to have had the reverse effect.
By raising interest rates, regulators could easily send part, or all, of the world’s economy to a financial crash that is worse than 2008’s. Or the economy could again reach limits, by itself, with just a little economic growth. In some sense, the world economy is very close to filling the bread bowl, as it was before the 2008 crash pushed it back down.
The World Economy Is Reaching Limits in Many Areas Simultaneously
Many people believe that we are reaching limits in at most a few areas of the economy, such as “running out of oil.” The evidence suggests that because of the networked nature of the economy, we are really reaching limits in many places, simultaneously. The following represent some problem areas:
(1) Too Low a Return on Labor for Workers Whose Jobs Are Easily Exportable. With globalization, workers are indirectly competing with workers around the world regarding who can produce goods and services most cheaply. They are also competing with computers and robots that can easily replicate their functions. The net impact is a world where a large share of the citizens find themselves living at a level not much above the subsistence level. In more developed countries, young people may live with their parents longer and may delay having children almost indefinitely, because wages are not keeping up with living costs. Many studies have shown rising wage disparity. In some ways, the wage disparity now seems to be as bad as in the 1930s.
Figure 5. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
(2) Interest Rates. Interest rates are the lever that economists like to adjust upward or downward to try to stimulate the economy or push the economy downward. Short term interest rates, up until about the end of 2015, were at the level they were at during the Depression of the 1930s.
Figure 6. Monthly average 3-month term treasury bill rates in chart prepared by FRED. Amounts shown through October 2018. Grey bars indicate recessions.
Raising interest rates is like adding a little more dough to the already over-full bread bowl. With these higher interest rates, borrowers need to pay more for monthly payments, making the strain on their finances even worse than it was previously. Figure 6 shows that raising interest rates very often creates a recession. In fact, the Great Recession of 2008-2009 seems to be the result of an increase in short term interest rates. This time we are being told that the increase will be gentle, but if the bread bowl is already overly full (in the sense that affordability of the output of the economy is already way too low, for many workers), what difference does “gentle” make?
(3) Return on Capital Investment/Added Debt. Falling long-term interest rates between 1981 and 2016 seem to be an indirect reflection of falling long-term return on capital investment. If capital returns had been higher, there would be more demand for debt, forcing interest rates up to levels closer to where they had been when the economy was growing more quickly.
Figure 7. Monthly average 10-year US Treasury interest rates in chart prepared by FRED. Amounts shown through October 2018. Grey bars indicate recessions.
Another way we can look at how productive the addition of debt has been is by comparing the debt increase each year with the GDP increase (including inflation) each year. We use current year GDP as the denominator in both calculations. Figure 8 shows the indications for what the Bank for International Settlements calls “Core Debt” (that is, Total Non-Financial Debt, Including Government Debt).
Figure 8. Dollar Increase in US Core Debt as % of GDP, shown beside GDP dollar increase, as percentage of ending GDP. Amounts based on FRED data.
Comparing the red and blue lines on Figure 8, GDP rose fairly reliably in the pre-1981 period, as the amount of core debt rose. The core debt increases tended to be higher than the GDP increases, but not a great deal higher. Thus, the US ratios on Figure 1 could be close to 1.0 in early years.
Once interest rates started falling after 1981 (see Figures 6 and 7), core debt growth and GDP growth greatly diverged. I expect that quite a bit of this change was related to asset price inflation as interest rates fell. With lower interest rates, assets of all types started becoming more affordable. Thus, a greater number of buyers could be expected, driving up prices of assets of all kinds, including homes, stores, and factories. Owners of these assets could “take the equity out” as prices rose and could use the equity to purchase other goods and services. In theory, these activities might somewhat stimulate the economy. Figure 8 suggests that the benefits of these activities with respect to the “goods and services” portion of the economy (red line) were slight at best, however.
Figure 9. Dollar Increase in US Financial Debt as % of GDP, shown beside GDP dollar increase % of ending GDP. Amounts based on FRED data.
Figure 9 shows Financial Debt amounts corresponding to the Core Debt amounts shown in Figure 8. At first glance, it appears that Financial Debt (blue line ) has provided no benefit whatsoever for the Goods and Services part of the economy (red line). But clearly the bankers who created these financial products benefitted from the income they received from them. So did the low-income home buyers who bought homes that they could not really afford in the early 2000s. Home building was stimulated, and inflation in home prices was stimulated. Banks benefitted by being able to transfer their problem home loans to unsuspecting buyers. Whether this whole arrangement had any net benefit to the economy, other than to create pseudo-solutions for people who could not really afford the homes they were purchasing, is doubtful. But when the economy is near limits, strange solutions to stimulating the economy are attempted.
(4) Commodity Prices. If we have a supply problem with one kind of commodity, we likely have a supply problem with many kinds of commodities at the same time. The reason why this happens is because the prices of many types of commodities tend to move together, in response to general market conditions. This is why the US government talks about inflation in oil and food prices as a separate category of Consumer Price Inflation.
If prices for commodities are generally low, as they have been since 2014, this means that commodity investors have received low rates of return for several years. With low rates of return, producers of many commodities have cut back on reinvestment. With inadequate reinvestment, supply crunches are likely to occur across a broad spectrum of commodities simultaneously. A recent Wall Street Journal article says, Supply Crunch Looms in Commodities Markets. The article mentions copper, zinc, aluminum and nickel. Other articles talk about oil in a similar fashion.
The question becomes, “Can consumers bid up the prices of all of these minerals sufficiently, to encourage enough reinvestment to solve the world’s commodity supply problem?” Food prices would likely need to be bid up as well, because oil is used heavily in the production and transport of food.
It was possible to bid up commodity prices in the 1970s, because the economies of the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union were all growing rapidly. Also, women were joining the labor force in large numbers. It was possible to bid up commodity prices in the 2002 to 2008 era, because China and other Asian nations were rapidly ramping up their demand for goods and services of all kinds.
Figure 10. China energy production by fuel plus its total energy consumption, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data. The difference between the production figures shown and the black line consumption total is imports.
Now we are facing a much different situation. China is in much worse shape than most people recognize because its coal supply seems to have passed peak production. This has happened because the cheap-to-extract coal is mostly depleted, making it unprofitable to increase coal production without significantly higher prices. Imported coal and natural gas are expensive options. China also has a serious debt problem.
Because of China’s problems, the country will necessarily need to cut back on manufacturing, road building and home building in the years ahead. (This would happen, with or without Trump’s tariffs!) For some minerals, China currently represents over 50% of the world’s demand. China is the largest oil importer in the world. It is doubtful that China can make major cutbacks in its use of commodities without lowering prices for many commodities worldwide.
Persistence of Outdated Models
We are dealing with a situation where a large number of people suspect, at least vaguely, that the world economy is like bread dough about to outgrow its bowl, but this is not an issue anyone really wants to quantify. Everyone wants solutions; they don’t want a better delineation of the problem. Repeated publication of climate change forecasts is, in a sense, a denial of the possibility that we may be facing resource limits that are close at hand. Such publication is saying, in effect, that the closest limit that citizens need to worry about is the climate limit.
Also, the reliance of researchers on the past work by others in the same field tends to reinforce what are essentially incorrect models. Cross-pollination across fields is difficult, given the technical nature of today’s academic research. Furthermore, it becomes increasingly difficult to properly model a situation that is very complex and depends upon non-linear interactions.
Putting All of These Issues Together
The focuses of today’s narrow research can give a surprisingly distorted overview of where the economy is. A few areas in particular stand out:
(a) The choice of the word “Demand” instead of “Affordable Quantity” makes it sound like the buyer has more control over purchases than he really does. Growing demand seems to depend on continually increasing debt. This is the reason for the debt bubble problem.
(b) Framing the energy problem as “running out of oil” makes it sound like searching for substitutes will be a fruitful area for solution. Because of the affordability issue, this search is futile unless the substitutes are truly cheaper, when all costs are considered. Declining availability of many minerals because of persistently low commodity prices could be an issue as well.
(c) If limits are being reached in many areas simultaneously, incentives for countries to co-operate seem likely to go downhill quickly. Bullies who claim to be able to obtain a bigger share of the shrinking total supply will tend to be elected.
(d) The physics tie between energy and the economy makes major energy consumption cutbacks virtually impossible, without risking economic collapse.
(e) Adding technology isn’t really a solution to the debt problem, because it tends to make the affordability problem worse. The problem is that while adding technology seems to lead to more employment for a few elite workers, it tends to displace lower-wage workers at the same time. The spending of lower-wage workers is really needed if adequate demand for commodities is to be maintained. Additionally, the ownership of the technology-related capital goods tends to be concentrated among the elite; this further shifts wealth from the non-elite to the elite.
The long term prognosis for the world economy seems pretty grim, when all of these issues are put together. Defaulting debt and a resulting collapse in asset prices of all kinds is of particular concern. The default of subprime housing debt was an issue in the US at the time of the Great Recession; the next round of defaults is likely to start elsewhere. Debt defaults could start fairly soon, perhaps in the next 6 to 12 months. The more hostile political situation we have been seeing recently seems to be evidence that limits are close at hand.
Question: should all EV and solar panel owners be sterilized to prevent the gene pool from deteriorating further?
There will never be a second generation EV buyer.
Speaking of Japan, this is their take on collapse-related issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubX_aqXctRk
Seems legit.
Hong Kong’s residential property market reported its worst sales weekend in years, as the wind was taken out of the sails of two private project launches by a government offer of discounted housing for first-home buyers.
The Reach Summit project in Yuen Long, jointly built by Henderson Land Development and New World Development, sold six flats as of 6:30pm, a mere 6 per cent of the 102 units on offer, sales agents said. In Tsuen Wan, MCC Real Estate Group sold five of the 50 units at its L’aquatique project.
“The response was lacklustre on both of the launches today,” said Louis Chan, Asia-Pacific vice-chairman at Centaline Property Agency. “The discounts and incentives offered were a test of the market” on how low prices could go, he said.
https://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/2173742/hong-kong-reports-worst-sales-weekend-years-private
FE I haven’t been to HK in many years, but doesn’t the property market there always go to extremes? When I was there the people were industrious and seem to keep coming back for more time and time again. We all pass, sooner or later, many in HK when they fail must get up and try again hopefully having learned from past errors so as to be able to make new ones.
In the US apparently we are broke and we are fortunate to have a leader with experience going broke. So when it happens, who is going to come and collect?
Financial wealth seems more and more like power, the underlying assets are either there or not, someone revalues them, someone writes off a few digits here and there and the game begins anew. The greatest wealth is between our ears, reading history this wealth has spared many both innocent and scoundrel.
One is not ruined because they are broke, one is ruined when told they have cancer and only six months to live.
Dennis L.
See the dip in 2009? I was watching that very closely … I was sitting on gold and cash … expecting that dip to follow the 1998 pattern… ‘hold … hold…. hold…. ‘
Then wham bam thank you mam…. look what happened!!!
https://youtu.be/iZG7Czk47u8
QE is announced… and we’re off the races… and I left there .. like a deer caught in the headlights.. totally underestimating the CBs power and will to do whatever it takes… doubting them… expecting an even bigger implosion …
So I missed the boat…
However I flogged about half the gold at the top of the market at 1800+ having bought at 800ish… so all was not lost….
And now I am looking at the gyrations with apathy … I doubt I will buy … even if it comes off by 70% like it did after 2008….
Because I doubt the CBs can ride to the rescue this time… and even if they do … we are so close to the edge in so many ways why would I invest in anything…. investing is predicated on there being a future…
http://stansberrychurchouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pop-2018-02-05-image2.jpg
1997 was when on debt bubble popped. It looks like the system is headed for another similar or worse situation.
But wait, there’s more Alberta Oil Patch trouble! Because bankruptcy triggers environmental liabilities, and there has been historical mismanagement by the regulator leaving the cleanup fund underfunded. And from a personal conversation, the powers that be might declare a company bankrupt because of the low prices, thereby accelerating environmental cleanups AND closing of otherwise useful wells.
The catch-22 of the Redwater case
When an oil and gas company goes bankrupt, should profits from the sale of remaining assets go first to lenders, or to pay to clean up the environmental mess left behind? That question is the crux of the Redwater legal case currently unfolding in Canada’s Supreme Court.
…
http://www.pembina.org/blog/catch-22-redwater-case
Good question!
It is pretty clear that pensioners end up getting cut out of what they thought they had earned. If the company goes forward after bankruptcy, the employees who stay will likely get lower wages as well.
Ultimately, it is low prices that bring the system down, as far as I can see. A lot of technically oil (coal and natural gas) will be left in place.
I agree, this does look to be how the story ends. Depressed wages leads to depressed commodity prices leads to unprofitable resource extraction and thus collapse of industrial society. Resources will stay in the ground – out of our reach. We never will run out. Prices never will get so high that only the rich can afford it either. The money for energy arbitrage will unwind very quickly then that is it. No money, no energy – no economy.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: Tesla makes so many mistakes
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/11/13/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-tesla-makes-so-many-mistakes.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain
the future will be a universal basic income for the entire worlds population
hey, buddy…
yes!
and TPTB told me (tonight!) that it all starts Monday! the 19th!
I’ll be sleeping in… no more alarm clock! no need to ever work again…
TPTB told me that all food will be produced and delivered without any workers needed…
it’s almost like magic!
“they” said to just go to any local gas station and the gasoline will always be there, even with no one ever working in the FF industry…
like magic!
food, clothing, shelter, utilities, internet!
all of this will continue to be provided to “the entire worlds population”…
all of this, and no need for anyone to do any work…
magic!
20th of November or 29th of November its one of those dates i may sound like the little boy who cried wolf but the wolf is coming all market indicators are screaming collapse this time is different
wait a minute…
I’m earlier…
I’m saying the 19th…
so I’m the boy who cried wolf…
you’re just the guy standing on the street corner with the sign that says The End Is Near…
i may be saying the end is near but im also saying there is a future which will be unleashed once plan B doesn’t go according to plan
one problem…
there is no plan B…
Yep, real basic; photosynthesis and gravity
interesting to the continuing energy crisis in Canada:
Lack Of Action By Trudeau Government On Energy Industry Crisis “Borderline Treasonous” Says Portfolio Manager
The warnings over the disastrous situation facing the Canadian energy industry continue to escalate.
In a report by the Financial Post, Geoffrey Morgan brought attention to what investors and industry leaders are saying about the crisis.
For example, U.K. fund manager Susan Johns said in a letter to Trudeau, “Moving forward, I hope your government will start to recognize the numerous issues that are affecting Canada’s energy sector, and do everything in its power to support an industry which has benefited Canadian prosperity for a long period of time.”
She added that it’s “hard for me to watch such a vibrant industry being strangled by regulation, carbon taxes and the inability of producers to get their product to world markets.”
The CEO of Cenovus Energy pointed out that Canada has a serious competitiveness problem, especially with the U.S. making the regulatory process smoother for their energy industry.
And Toronto portfolio manager Eric Nuttall unleashed on the lack of action:
“It’s mystifying to me why there still doesn’t seem to be action taken. It’s borderline treasonous.”
Nuttall is absolutely right.
If it was any other industry, the Trudeau government would be doing everything to alleviate the crisis. But when the energy industry is in trouble, not only is Trudeau refusing to take simple actions that would improve the situation (de-regulation, approving more pipelines), he’s actively working against the industry.
https://www.spencerfernando.com/2018/11/17/lack-of-action-by-trudeau-government-on-energy-industry-crisis-borderline-treasonous-says-portfolio-manager/
well, the Canadian people voted for Turdeau, so they can only blame themselves…
though perhaps too much blame is being pointed at Turdeau, when the bottom line is that these issues are part of the ongoing (worldwide) situation of diminishing surplus energy…
I think they should fully de-regulate and let the Canadian FF industry do whatever they want to do…
it’s interesting that the Canadian “tar sands” region would be considered a toxic waste site if it was created by humans…
but it is entirely “natural”…
why did Nature spoil part of the Canadian environment?
well, there is a solution…
they should ramp up their production of natural gas and use it to produce oil out of the tar sands…
this way, the Canadian FF industry will be “cleaning up” the tar sands area…
win/win…
so what if they run out of natural gas in 20 years…
it’s needed now…
Pollution, from the tar sands, on a vast scale, so ‘vibrant’. The use of words, as ever, to screen a rather sordid reality.
(Peak oil) This is an official chart from the International Energy Agency (IEA)
https://imgur.com/a/2lHLNCi
BAU is not really possible with either NPS or SDS, most likely. They are both optimistic estimates of what we could get along with.
Here is another thing to note about this chart. If you push the point on the chart where we meet demand (~2020) farther right, the drop off will become more vertical. Think of a breaking near short ocean wave. The more desperate we become to meed “demand” the more severe the decline will be at that point until it is a vertical drop downward. This is another reason why I think we will be knocked down really hard. .
Robots? and then there’s this talk about a universal basic income? I can’t get my head around this at all. Seems Mr. Global is experimenting with whatever it takes to bring about the control of the masses. I believe someone greater than I referred to it as ‘livestock management’ and ‘legislated morality’ with the end game ultimately to have everyone chipped?
Bankers they really are an unbelievable, lot.
Love, love that quote from Napoleon!!!!
Intermittency:
As a follow on to the above post regarding robots, how many industrial processes need to be continuous? E. g. Germany with excess wind power, what processes can be intermittent? I would guess much assembly other than coatings, e.g. paint. How much of our production is scheduled to coincide with diurnal the time cycle of humans? Amazon works as well at night as during the day.
Assuming a truck could be run electrically and with robot drivers, why not charge during excess renewable generation periods where possible. Electronic logs seem to be giving truckers grief due to number of hours on/off, a robot is never off.
Renewables may not work, but a fellow named Warren purchased all my ownership in an Iowa utility which is now one of the largest wind producers in the world. These guys win too many
times for it to be pure luck.
Dennis L.
The problem with using robots is that we really need jobs for workers. Otherwise, there are no buyers for the goods and services made by the system.
I suppose with your view, the former workers just stay home all of the time. Transporting them to work for on and off hours would’t work at all.
I don’t know what comes of all of the jobs that require people to be specific places at specific times. Think of fire fighters. How would the California fires be put out with this system?
As I am starting to understand it, the universe is a dissipative system and again if my understanding is correct in biology there is a tendency to use energy as carefully as possible cycling it through systems extracting as much as is possible; economics seems more time related stressing speed, e.g. using millions of years of oil in a few centuries. Nature does not shine the sun 24/7, she puts her creatures to sleep at night(except nocturnal) and uses hibernation which is definitely intermittent.
Is it possible we in our anthropomorphic system are violating the rules of physics and the universe? The universe may or may not run down, it does not seem that question has been answered.
We are sort of an echo chamber here, the same ideas are repeated time and time again, you and I are veterans of ASPO and $300 oil, it did not happen; tell a conference that back when and there would have been incredulity at best.
As for the forest fires, they are indeed a terrible tragedy for those in their path and all of us can’t help but feel badly for those who have lost their homes let alone loved ones. Going back a few hundred years, who put out the fires then?
Warren purchased wind, he has a habit of being ahead of the curve, it is not a bad boat to be in as he seems to avoid the icebergs. I have no idea of how this is going to work out but it was once pointed out that taking the opposite side of a trade with Warren was not a very good idea. It seems often we are thinking things as they are and have been, not as they can be.
Dennis L.
DESPITE BEING FAMOUS for touting the idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, investor Warren Buffet seems to be perfectly fine with receiving tax breaks for making investments in Big Wind. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,”
Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment
We’re from the Govt; we’re here to help!
No argument regarding taxes, thanks for the link, interesting quote. My original question was basically if the energy were put to use in a manner that was intermittency independent, would that change things? Looking as a whole, not as a stand alone. Plants generally don’t run well an night due to human issues, we are diurnal for the most part. What kinds of plants can be started up and shut down with short term bridge power supplies? Gails point about what to do with workers is a valid one and is being debated among many now.
Capitalism: Is it a pareto phenomenon where 80 percent of the work really doesn’t accomplish anything? It would be consistent with decreasing workforce participation. Is this what is happening in our society and why it is happening? What is the per capita energy usage trend of the 20%? Trump initially was slow to fill many government positions, has it made a difference? I don’t know, if they are furloughed it decreases the need for taxes somewhat, but what do the people do? Add a good AI system and how do we transition socially?
Example of intermittency in service: Apparently much/most legal work can be done with AI, how much has to be done right now and how much can wait until there is electrical energy? Does placing the server farm close to the wind source decrease the transmission issues? Can the work be throttled/scheduled to match available energy with services that do not require immediate responses? The lawyers might not think much of this idea, but as they say, “Your call is important to us.”
Dennis L.
Lawyers work, as we all well know, 24/7 to make the world a better place; intermittency must not be allowed to challenge that……
“It seems often we are thinking things as they are and have been, not as they can be.”
yes, only lazy thinking would conclude that in the future, things will be “as they are and have been”…
but that is not how things can someday be…
a glorious future is approaching…
where humans no longer have the ability to extract FF…
it’s going to be great…
no more industry, no more pollution from the processes used to build robots and renewable energy gadgets…
humans will no longer unnaturally be burning millions of years worth of stored sunlight in FF…
once again, humans will be burning the only truly renewable energy source:
wood…
which amazingly gets its energy content from the sun…
(and amazingly has almost the same energy density as coal)…
yes…
balance will be restored…
the FF age will end…
and things will be so much better…
humans will again live off the land…
“Is it possible we in our anthropomorphic system are violating the rules of physics and the universe?”
Just because the industrial system only lasted 2 centuries doesn’t make it unnatural. The reasons for the rise and fall of BAU are 100% natural. Asking “what if” questions that require entire segments of the world and/or human nature to be retroactively fine-tuned = religious thinking using scientific/agnostic vocabulary.
I’m not sure if you are looking for solutions here, but whichever path is sustainable it does not matter. The power to change (or keep things from changing) belongs to people not interested in sustainability but material wealth. If one of these people suddenly truly wanted to make the system “sustainable” he would immediately be replaced by another man who wants more. The maximum power principle makes sure nothing will change.
Can anybody tell me whether this is a net positive for reduction in green house gases, or a plus, is it revenue neutral for taxing bodies and if not, how does one calculate overtime? Does one schedule work time during periods of increased renewable energy production and then sit out the periods of lower production as the wind is not blowing, sun not shining, etc.? Then, does one write a 30 year mortgage over the life of the structure assuming the robot is going to live there and how does one handle a depreciable life span of the robot if it is less than 30 years? It is a heck of an actuarial problem.
One can think of a few other interesting construction projects some of which have interesting political aspects. Anyone care to hazard a guess on this one?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-17/meet-heavy-labor-humanoid-robot-set-revolutionize-construction
I think the story you are talking about is very far fetched. I would not worry about the system having a life expectancy of greater than 30 days.
The way that people in ancient Netherlands handled the wind intermittency problem was that they built the windmills so a family could live inside. The windmills I saw in Netherlands were used for draining water from wet areas, to keep the land from flooding. There were fabric covers for the blades, to regulate how much of the available wind energy was actually used. The families who lived inside were part-time farmers as well, when their services were not needed for regulating the pumping action.
“One can think of a few other interesting construction projects some of which have interesting political aspects. Anyone care to hazard a guess on this one?”
sure, Dennis, I’ll give it a go…
the entire construction process of this “prototype”, from extraction of its raw materials to finished product, was powered by FF…
the “work” of the robot will be powered entirely by FF, whether directly by burning FF to create its electricity, or indirectly by using FF to produce “renewable” energy gadgets (which have short lifetimes and then have to be trashed and newly constructed ones put in place) which will power the robot…
this robot is worthless…
it will cost more to produce than the value of the work it could perform, so there will be no problems with taxation…
and calculating depreciation is very easy, since the value starts at zero and goes “down” to zero after 30 years…
fusion reactors, moon colonies, robots… etc etc…
On a small enough scale robots can work, but the problem is that a lot of other things likely won’t, thus rendering the working of the robots moot.
which is why i wrote this about robots
https://extranewsfeed.com/robots-cannot-survive-automation-f45605a58ad7
Today 1 died and over 200 werde injured in France when people Proteste rising fuel prices. Remembering Marx: “…by the ringing call of the Gallic cock.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46233560
“The capitalist will sell us the rope we will hang them with”
-Lenin
but only after eviscerating a couple or more texas-sized swaths of wild areas in the process
‘And, having taken the wealth of all the capitalists, we will then be able to the buy all the bullets we need to execute you if you step out of line in the Proletarian Utopia!’
Pretty much how it works…….
The end result of successful socialism:
https://i2.wp.com/www.mypolcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/gulag.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NX9ZlyhA_DA/UWiH0ymFk4I/AAAAAAAAFKg/WIX6nfbg1FM/s1600/Nkvd+Gulag+-+Siberia+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg
http://siberiantimes.com/upload/information_system_52/1/4/2/item_1421/information_items_1421.jpg
Uhh… Guys, you’ve taken my comment far more to mean something “communist” than intended. Im mean, a movement of “concerned car-drivers” isn’t exactly the “proletarian revolution” Marx had in mind. But aside from Ideology France population has a long tradition of being prone to civil unrest – much more than other european countries, especially its neighbour Germany. (That’s what Marx’ quote refers to.)
So, if the day comes and we are going to see widespread civil unrest in Europe due to Energy shortages, I think it’s a good guess it will start in a country like France.
A female protester has died after being hit by a motorist as demonstrators angry at fuel tax hikes gridlocked parts of France on Saturday. Police said 47 other protesters had also been injured, three critically, as France’s newest people’s movement, the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests), staged a day of action
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2018/nov/17/its-macrons-fault-parts-of-france-in-gridlock-as-thousands-protest-fuel-tax-hikes-video
https://youtu.be/gLXs6DCwRwI
This is why… the CBs … are doing whatever it takes… to keep the train rolling as long as possible… because when it slows just a tiny bit…. we can see how the masses react….
Liebig’s Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum
“A female protester has died after being hit by a motorist as demonstrators angry at fuel tax hikes…”
dripping with exquisitely rich irony…
otherwise, here is a fine example of a politician being blamed for a problem directly related to diminishing surplus energy…
but the “yellow vests” can’t protest the laws of physics…
Happens.
https://i.redd.it/lc9p6yonjuy11.jpg
However, the problem now is that a large number of the 25,000 odd turbines have become too old. Close to 7,000 of those turbines will complete more than 15 years of operation by next year. Although these turbines can continue running, with some minor repairs and modifications, the question is whether it makes any economic sense to maintain them?
Efficiency is the key
Beyond a period of 20 years, the guaranteed tariffs that are set for wind power are terminated, thereby making them unprofitable. “Today, there are entirely different technologies than there were a decade ago. The performance of the turbines have multiplied, the turbines are also more efficient than before”, said Dirk Briese of market research company called Wind- Research. It therefore makes sense to replace old turbines with newer ones. However, it is not very easy to dismantle an existing turbine and, while there are companies like PSM that specialize in dismantling of wind turbines, the costs of decommissioning can run upwards of $33,500 per turbine.
Decommissioning wind turbines: a growing problem?
The process of decommissioning a wind farm is a complicated one as it requires at least two 150 ton cranes which are used to dismantle the turbines, tower houses, rotor blades and other related equipment and parts. In fact, offshore wind decommissioning is even more intricate and expensive, as the availability of shipping vessels, cost of shipping the components back on shore and cost of removing steel pillars form seabed need to be considered too.
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/Germany-Now-Faced-With-Thousands-Of-Aging-Wind-Farms.html
Uncle Bill
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/head-goat-man-s-body-isolated-83435916.jpg
https://twitter.com/HenryMakow/status/1063797846128898048/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Eprofile%3AHenryMakow&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.henrymakow.com%2F
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1063817401354072064
There is a gray fox that sleeps in our lumber pile. The tarp over it helps keep in some of the heat. Nice to have a pet that doesn’t require anything except we put out filtered water for it to drink. It lives outsides, craps outside, finds its own food outside. After having a dog, then a cat, a wild fox is our kind of pet. Why this woman would want to mess up an easy situation by domesticating it is a mystery.
Happiness
https://youtu.be/e9dZQelULDk
there are some things that are a delight in the world for no better reason than being just that
(https://twitter.com/LevParikian/status/1063704521837355008?s=03)
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US ‘might lose’ war against China or Russia, report to Congress says
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-war-china-who-win-russia-national-defence-strategy-congress-report-donald-trump-a8636866.html
If I were another country attacking the US, I would look first at computer security and internet security. It seems like cloud computing might be something that could be targeted. Or internet connections used to balance electricity supply. Messing with government systems that pay checks to recipients of various kinds might be another target.
Unlike when the US attacks a third world nation first taking air defense, then infrastructure water, sewage, electric. A nuclear attack on a major nation will target the hubs of the nation. That is the cities starting with the largest first. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin.
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the future looks to be heading into a two class society similar to the ‘hunger games’
The haves, and the deadites.
I agree adonis.
PTB have a plan cause a massive crash which will wipe out the middle-class
They don’t have to lift a finger, the middle class is already disappearing due to increasing inequality and lack of well paid jobs.
IEA: 2025, oil supply shock
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/november/crunching-the-numbers-are-we-heading-for-an-oil-supply-shock.html
The IEA definitely sounds worried. (Of course, they were worried a couple of months ago, when they were claiming that we would have a shortage if production didn’t pick up to offset the decline in Iran’s output.) Now they have moved their worry forward a few years.
This is one of the sections about inadequate new investment.:
Of course, getting to the New Policies Scenario of demand represents huge leaps of faith that aren’t really possible. It is much easier to get to lower demand by bankruptcies, debt defaults, and closing businesses.
“In the years since the oil price crash in 2014, the average annual level of resources approved has been closer to 8 billion.”
I got the following from a Google search:
“As of early 2015, the IEA Oil Market Report forecast average demand for the year of more than 93 million barrels of oil and liquid fuels per day worldwide – that works out to more than 34 billion barrels a year.”
34b divided by 8b = 4.25, which means for each 1 barrel of oil resources approved since 2014, the world has burned through 4.25 barrels.
2018 – 2014 = 4 years x 34 billion barrels = 136, minus 32 (4 yrs. x 8b) = 104 billion barrels subtracted from reserves in just 4 years.
If you look at BP Statistical Review of World Energy – History of Proved Reserves, the pattern doesn’t look at all like what you suggest, (or what the IEA implies).
Basically, total oil reserves as reported to BP have been close to flat since 2011. World total reserves are as follows
2011 – 1681.3 thousand million barrels
2014 – 1702.4
2017 – 1696.6
This flat pattern seems to be reported almost everywhere. The Middle East shows an increase in reserves since 2014, while the US shows a small decrease in reserves since 2014 (237.7 down to 226.1).
I don’t know where the IEA thinks it gets its numbers from. My experience from my involvement at TheOilDrum.com was that trying to add up pieces to get to a total of anything was an exercise in frustration. In particular, taking information from “Megaprojects” reports by oil field never was very helpful in figuring out how much production would be added. There was simply too much investment that wasn’t counted as investment.
Also, I don’t know how truthful the reserve number are. Prior to 2011, reserve numbers were rising. 2014 was the peak year, but not by much.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46233560
‘French fuel protests against Macron over rising prices’
Why are drivers on the warpath?
“The price of diesel, the most commonly used fuel in French cars, has risen by around 23% over the past 12 months to an average of €1.51 (£1.32; $1.71) per litre, its highest point since the early 2000s, AFP news agency reports.”
“World oil prices did rise before falling back again but the Macron government raised its hydrocarbon tax this year by 7.6 cents per litre on diesel and 3.9 cents on petrol, as part of a campaign for cleaner cars and fuel.”
At $1.71 a litre, and 3.78541 litres per gallon, that works out to $6.47 a gallon!!! No wonder their ticked off.
This is why the PTB are pushing fuel prices down again … it’s called Operation Golidlocks
The higher taxes by the French are no doubt part of the low world demand problem that tend to keep oil prices low, eventually cutting off production because the price isn’t high enough.
The tax increases the price for the consumer but not the producer
The tax is a way for the government to collect part of the overall taxes it needs for its operations. In countries with oil extraction, governments normally collect very high taxes, directly and indirectly, from oil producers. So this is a way for oil consuming countries to get some tax dollars too.
If fossil fuels is not available, where do governments plan to get the additional tax revenue?
“The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” wrote Dr. Tony Phillips just six weeks ago, on September 27, 2018. The lack of sunspots on our sun could bring about record cold temperatures, and perhaps even a mini ice age.
Our sun was not expected to head into a solar minimum until around 2020, but it appears to be heading in that direction a little early which could prove to be bad news for warm weather lovers.
But a prolonged solar minimum could mean a “mini ice age.” The last time there was a prolonged solar minimum, it did, in fact, lead to a mini ice-age which was scientifically known as the Maunder minimum
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-14/mini-ice-age-looms-nasa-scientist-warns-lack-sunspots-could-bring-record-cold
Now this is one hell of an inconvenient truth if it is correct…. crops don’t like cold.
Humanity is facing a long, cold winter which could see temperatures across the planet plunge to depressing lows. That’s the warning from a Nasa scientist who fears sunspot activity on the surface of our star has dropped so low that it could herald the arrival of a uniquely grim mini Ice Age.
‘We see a cooling trend,’ Martin Mlynczak of Nasa’s Langley Research Center told Space Weather.
‘High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy.
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/16/a-mini-ice-age-could-be-on-the-way-and-its-going-to-get-very-very-cold-8146529/?ito=cbshare
Losing heat energy??? WTF??? I thought the carbon up there acted like a blanket and held the heat in????
I say again — WTF?????
yes, a colder global temp is very bad news…
if only we humans could somehow raise the global temp…
perhaps by burning things, which usually works…
but, alas, the earth is so big that we can’t possibly burn enough stuff to make any difference…
even that FF stuff…
Ya … how many hundreds of billions of tonnes of oil and coal have we burned already … and we’ve not had any change in temps for 19 years now!
Oh woe is me…. I fear my endless coal burning is … futile :(…. I am despondent… living in utter despair…
Keep at it man, we got to try.
We’re looking at 3 degrees again for the next few nights….and we are almost into December!!! – the mini ice age is upon us….. I’ve got 8 40kg sacks of black gold remaining… will Fast Eddy have to hook up the trailer and make the dreaded drive to ghastly Invercargill to purchase another 3 tonnes yet again?
Stay tuned for the next episode of The Coal Burner.
“High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy…”
by the way, this is called “science”…
heat radiates out into space…
we should never ignore the excellent work of scientists such as this…
Does Al Gore know this?????
Maybe this is why Leo is building a concrete eco resort at sea level.
Maybe if we build wind mills and run them in reverse, we could suck that coldness of space back in to the atmosphere.
Human race 1 – Universe 0
Load of BS. NASA isn’t predicting either. What Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center said was “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”
Nowhere did he claim that cooling at the edge of space will cause a new ice age…any suggestion of that come where you got this BS .
I love it when I just have to paste this and it shuts down the More ons…
KKKLIMATE DATA FAKED
by John Bates (leading kkklimate scientist)
In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. Finally, I provide some links to examples of what well documented CDRs look like that readers might contrast and compare with what Mr. Karl has provided.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/c limate-scientists-versus-c limate-data/
https://youtu.be/IABRgZH12YA
Here we are above all that.
Very funny
bloody ‘ell fantastic…
and I must admit that I do love my opinions…
https://www.businessinsider.com/economist-says-trumps-china-trade-war-worse-for-us-than-people-think-2018-11
‘A top economist warns Trump’s China trade war is doing more damage to the US economy than people think’
“He pointed to official UBS forecasts, which see annualized growth at 1.7% in the fourth quarter and just 1.5% in the first quarter of 2019. The annualized growth rate in the third quarter, as reported by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, was 3.5% — which already represented a slowing from the previous quarter and showed a significant negative impact from the trade war.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6363243/Pioneering-robot-KNOCKED-medics-hand-middle-heart-operation.html
Why can’t humans understand that we cannot create anything more superior than humans?
Robots can only do repetitive jobs well. Ither than that they are hopeless. Humans fantasized on robots building robots. It can happen but all must follow the standard instructions. Nothing special.
AI – pure delusion. Anything that requires brute processing power to process is not AI. Thebprogram just do it very fast.bit is not smart. Facial recognition is not AI. The know-how existed a log time ago. With fast computers, they can do it real time but that does not mean they are smart.
but have you see the comments on zerohedge for this article
almost everyone is blame Indian guy instead of dumb robots
Yes, it is kind of interesting that so few humans appreciate the mind-boggling levels of complexity that make up the human body, which we never will fully understand, but so many think of technology as the pinnacle of existence.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-deals-on-iran-oil-dampen-prices-spark-clash-with-saudis-1542396490
Saudis Move to Counter U.S. Oil Strategy:
Riyadh wants to cut the world’s oil supply after U.S. government deals allowed Iranian oil to flow onto world markets, driving down prices
Saudi Arabia is moving to cut the world’s oil supply after U.S. government deals allowed hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of Iranian oil to flow onto world markets, driving down prices.
The deals put Saudi Arabia at odds with Washington at a time when relations are already strained by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The kingdom wants to trim production to boost oil prices to about $80 a barrel in support of its economy, Saudi advisers say. President Trump has warned against a production cut and called for lower prices. . . .
Saudi oil officials say they are considering advocating a production cut of as much as 1.4 million barrels a day at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’s next meeting on Dec. 6.
Yeah, that was pretty interesting. At first Trump was adamant that no country will receive Iranian oil or else, then as the sanctions date got closer Trump realized oil price would rise sky high, so he quickly provided 8 countries access to Iranian oil, including China and South Korea, just to name two. Now it comes back to bite him and the rest of us, but isn’t 400,000 barrels for an entire month not all that much? The US imports around 6-7 mbd?
The recent IEA report that I mentioned in another comment says
https://www.iea.org/oilmarketreport/omrpublic/
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/iea-oil-market-report-balance-forecast-at-nov-2018.png
The 400,000 barrels per day cutback seems to be slightly more than offset the 200,000 to 240,000 barrels per day current overage in production.
IEA expects that overage to grow to 1,700,000 barrels per day in 2019. This is why they are talking about a 1.4 million barrels per day cut in production for 2019.
I would not be surprised if the peak in world oil production comes from a cutback in oil production because prices were too low, such as precisely what we are seeing now. IEA is pretty much telling OPEC how much to cut back on its production.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/saudi-arabia-cuts-oil-shipments-to-us-in-likely-bid-to-boost-prices.html
‘Saudi Arabia is slashing oil shipments to US, a tactic that boosts prices and may rile Trump’
“ClipperData figures show the Saudis are loading roughly 600,000 bpd on tankers bound for the United States this month, down from more than 1 million bpd in July and August.”
That’s a reduction of 400 mbd. That seems substantial. Can that amount be easily replaced from another exporter?
Make that 400,000 barrels less for this month, not 400 mbd. I’m sleepy, just got off work.
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/CA/20180305/OEM04/180309704/AR/0/AR-180309704.jpg
Greg, maybe they got the idea from the movie Alien, in which the monster has a mouth within a mouth. lol.
Growth is still positive – two tailgates on trucks now:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–eRbdG-br-
-/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/vxtoyq6zjjzxj2wtcdi2.png
A burst of delusion from the bbc…
The strange homes designed for Mars
CalEarth believe their quick to build, sustainable homes, inspired by the architecture of nature, could be the answer to the global housing crisis.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06nxcr8/the-strange-sustainable-homes-designed-for-life-on-mars
haha they is no chance these homes will survive this on mars
https://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/screen-shot-2018-07-20-at-9-12-40-am.png?w=782
btw this is dust storms in mars will has cover the whole planet
Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.
These should be boom times for sex.
The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” is at an all-time high. New cases of HIV are at an all-time low. Most women can—at last—get birth control for free, and the morning-after pill without a prescription.
If hookups are your thing, Grindr and Tinder offer the prospect of casual sex within the hour. The phrase If something exists, there is porn of it used to be a clever internet meme; now it’s a truism. BDSM plays at the local multiplex—but why bother going? Sex is portrayed, often graphically and sometimes gorgeously, on prime-time cable. Sexting is, statistically speaking, normal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/
Perhaps subconsciously they sense that there is no future… and the breeding instinct has shut down…
Japan has a similar problem
Haven’t read article, but my understanding has been as the proportion of wimin with higher ed rises, the pool of males they are willing to consider falls.
As an aside, a recent year 13 history exam used the word ‘trivial’ in a question involving major historical events. A significant number of students thought the meaning was the opposite to its correct use. They have petitioned to get away with this mistake; poor dears, maybe they were reading the question using ‘context’ huh?
These are students preparing to go on to higher education I kid you not!
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thepanel/audio/2018671568/is-it-trivial-to-have-an-exam-word-explained
I do believe they will be marked on the basic arguments used. Their ignorance will be excused/overlooked. Get use to the seneca cliff in educated professional standards.
Be warned this is a radio station run by earnest educated non-binary anti-male feminazi’s with a tendency towards verbal-fry.
We are so fracked.
Haven’t read article, but my understanding has been as the proportion of wimin with higher ed rises, the pool of males they are willing to consider falls.
Rest of comment in moderation…
Maybe if you grow up with open access to porn, when you finally get a chance for real world sex, it doesn’t live up to what you expected.
very long article, but one of my most favorite subjects…
“Rates of anxiety and depression have been rising among Americans for decades now, and by some accounts have risen quite sharply of late among people in their teens and 20s. Anxiety suppresses desire for most people. And, in a particularly unfortunate catch‑22, both depression and the antidepressants used to treat it can also reduce desire.”
many other issues… complicated, not at all simple…
but, this will very likely get worse as Creeping Collapse closes in…
or better, to look at it another way, since a lower birth rate means less humans who will suffer in collapse…
There are studies that show that animals (rodents) cut back their birth rates when the conditions get too crowded. This happens even though there is plenty of food and water. There seem to be other needs of humans/animals besides just food and water.
Well, well, well…seems someone is listening to FE!!!! Imagine that and we thought spewing our gibberish here was just amusement among an elite group…
However, some researchers believe that the building of these plants has more to do with boosting the local economy in China than with boosting emissions.
“The new coal power plant builds are most probably about keeping the economy ticking along, particularly from a provincial government perspective, rather than being needed for future electricity generation
“Coal power plants run only about half the time in China, and one could argue the new capacity is not needed,” said Glen Peters, from the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, who was not involved with the report
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45640706
“This new evidence that China’s central government hasn’t been able to stop the runaway coal-fired power plant building is alarming – the planet can’t tolerate another US-sized block of plants to be built,” said Ted Nace, from CoalSwarm
That’s too bad
It is not clear to me that China has the coal to run all of these plants, even if the electricity from the plants could find something useful to do.
The cheap to extract and transport coal is depleted to a significant extent. High priced coal is no doubt theoretically available everywhere in the world. The problem is that goods made with high-priced coal are not really ones that people want-too expensive relative to salaries.
More difficult to integrate “new discoveries” in a system so complex that it is difficult to identify the development as beneficial or destabilizing due to unintended consequences i.e., taking into account increased energy requirements, additional debt, or social consequences?
eg. Internet vs Facebook
facebook is an application run on the internet. without the internet, facebook would not exist. is that your point?
Yes, sort of. Many advantages (albeit some downsides obviously) with the internet. Any clear cut benefits with Facebook…. or even cryptocurrencies? (Huge energy requirements for mining for starters) Well, maybe, but less clear. In a more complex world created for example by internet, meaningful and useful advances may be harder to come by.
So-called “social media” is just electrons on a spinning disc in a server room somewhere in the middle of Montana. It isn’t real except in people’s minds. Bitcoin isn’t real either. I say if it doesn’t work without electricity it isn’t money. Credit cards and debit cards are not money in my book. A check is close. A certified check is closer. $100.00 bills – I consider money – for now. 🙂
Well, Greg, this website is social media too.
Fury as £4billion British foreign aid budget used fixing POTHOLES abroad
FURIOUS campaigners have slammed the government for spending nearly £4billion of foreign aid money on improving infrastructure in countries such as Pakistan and India – including railways and potholes in roads.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1030425/uk-foreign-aid-budget-UK-india-pakistan-potholes
haha thanks uk for improved the roads of india
Most of the plastic in the oceans originates in 3rd world countries….
Green Grooooopies are insisting that we must stop using plastic…. so now I am buying plastic bin lining bags… because grocery stores don’t provide plastic bags in NZ….
Yet the plastic is accumulating in the oceans….
So imagine if the MSM exposed the real situation … and the Green Parties around the world… ran on the platform of a significant Plastic Tax to be used to provide waste disposal services in 3rd world countries….
There would of course be some wealthy DelusiSTANIS who would continue to vote for the Greenies….
Its all Eco-Plastic….so no worries FE.
Did I mention there are bin liners that are made from corn starch or some biodegradable stuff….
Cost is around triple the plastic bin liners….
I bought the plastic bin liner bags….
“Is Science Stagnant?” Productivity has slowed enormously in scientific research. Most important discoveries have already been made’
Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/
I view EVs as inefficient natural gas powered cars, or worse. And the key problem is its lithium battery. See
http://www.epa.gov/…/lb…/final-li-ion-battery-lca-report.pdf
The cost of producing a large lithium battery is high and it is “perishable product”, which will not last even 10 years. The average life expectancy of a new EV battery at about five (Tesla) to eight years. Or about 1500 cycles (assuming daily partial recharge, which prolongs the life of the battery) before reaching 80% of its capacity rating. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-cycle-lifetime-of-lithium…
Battery performance and lifespan begins to suffer as soon as the temperature climbs above 86 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature above 86 degrees F affects the battery pack performance instantly and often permanently.
https://phys.org/…/2013-04-life-lithium-ion-batteries-elect…
It is also became almost inoperative at below freezing point temperatures. For example it can’t be charged.
So they need to be cooled at summer and heated at winter. Storing such a car on the street is out of question. You need a garage. And only 1/3 of Americans have garages..
And large auto battery typically starts deteriorating after three years of daily use or 800 daily cycles.
Regular gas, and , especially, diesel cars can last 20 years, and larger trucks can last 30 years.
Recycling of lithium batteries is problematic
http://users.humboldt.edu/lpagano/project_pagano.html
In a way EVs can be called “subprime cars.” Or “California cars”, if you wish (California climate is perfect for this type of cars)
Switching to motorcycles for personal transportation can probably help more in oil economy aria then EVs.
The battery storage problem is the biggest shortcoming of EV’s. It is also the downfall of solar PV and wind power. Also, a switch to motorcycles is a non-starter for most domesticated Americans. They can barely manage with four wheels and auto-pilot – a motorcycle? Shirley you must be joking.
If the MSM and Marketing People…. can turn up the dial on calorie consumption … and people become too fat to fit inside of an SUV…. we may make some progress
http://www.mozzarellamamma.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/fat_people_on_scooters_171.jpg
He’s obviously shoplifting.
First three link don’t work.
These charts show how Democrats represent the growing modern economy – and how Republicans are left behind
The 2016 presidential race had signaled as much. Donald Trump carried 2,584 counties across the country, but calculations by scholars at the Brookings Institution showed that the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried accounted for nearly two-thirds of U.S. economic output.
Districts won by Democrats account for 61 percent of America’s gross domestic product, districts won by Republicans 38 percent.
Residents of districts won by Democrats generate 22% more output per worker, and have a 15% higher median household income.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/charts-democrats-represent-modern-economy-republicans-left-behind.html?__source=facebook%7Cmain
This CNBC article actually includes the statement, “These charts show how Democrats represent the growing modern economy – and how Republicans are left behind.”
I wonder where the “growing modern economy” would be without the angry people in the left-behind counties?
I would be willing to bet that the life insurance actuaries would show increasing death rates in the left-behind counties– one the problems related to low income and depression.
“I wonder where the “growing modern economy” would be without the angry people in the left-behind counties?”
Less third world, for sure.
Maybe a few less F250’s around.
And less Bud and Cheetos?
Less is not in the growth vernacular. Always need moaaaarrrrr.
Globalization won’t work if the global economy doesn’t grow. Britain and Japan should go down fairly rapidly. I thought it would happen a bit later than this, but, here we are.
“Globalization won’t work if the global economy doesn’t grow.”
I agree. We now have Germany and Japan, two of the world’s big exporting nations, reporting negative GDP growth rates. China and India are both having difficulty. The level or world economic growth is teetering on inadequate.
Obviously they need to open the immigration taps all the way to 11.
More people, more debt. More debt, more GDP.
https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/733915/11.jpg
what if it is all planned the brexit the coming food shortages all part of peak oil
https://imgur.com/a/Do9ukXk
I think the whole system tends to collapse at once. The only possible exception is if Trump manages to keep the US out of the collapse for a bit. No one will ever notice the oil collapse. The coal collapse started sooner, and really started the overall collapse. People have had their eyes focused on the wrong problems.
The world needs rising energy consumption per capita. This can only happen if total energy consumption is rising sufficiently rapidly. The energy produced must be very cheap for this to happen. No one has ever claimed that oil is cheap. Wind and solar aren’t either, if you count their costs properly.
Very true, Gail: the Greens have always relied on the argument that ‘oil will get so very expensive and scarce that wind and solar will look cheap in comparison.’ They neglet to consider whether it would be at all viable, even if ‘comparatively cheaper.’
As the periphery deteriorates … the core will seek to insulate for as long as possible…. but when one core country goes down…. The Korowicz Law kicks in …. and events will progress rapidly from that point…. we will be looking at chaos within days…. (thank you JIT!)
If only we had listened to Keith decades ago, we could have had limitless orbital solar power and methane from Uranus by now.
EU new cars registrations down 7.3% yoy in October:
https://www.acea.be/press-releases/article/passenger-car-registrations-1.6-10-months-into-2018-7.3-in-october
A worrying situation!
what that means is that energy consumption is gradually becoming less affordable
“The sugar rush that President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and fiscal stimulus injected into the U.S. economy poses a quandary for the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, in their campaign to raise interest rates: where and when to stop? …overtightening could backfire as the economic benefits from Trump’s policies wear thin, perhaps exacerbating the surging market volatility that reared its head in October.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-investment-summit-fed/the-economic-sugar-rush-and-the-fed-a-rate-hike-quandary-idUSKCN1NL0ID
“[Elizabeth Warren] said Thursday that she thinks the Federal Reserve and its fellow watchdogs of the financial system are overlooking a dangerous buildup of loans going to companies that are already deeply in debt. The so-called leveraged loans helped undermine the financial system before and are building up again, now totaling $1.1 trillion.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/elizabeth-warren-says-fed-is-making-the-same-mistakes-as-before-the-crisis.html
“The buildup of risky debt in corporate credit markets has caught the attention of the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve. It’s also been highlighted by global fund managers in the latest industry survey by Bank of America Merril Lynch. Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) added to the clamour, warning that an unwinding of the market in so-called “leveraged loans” — credit from non-bank lenders to risky or highly-indebted companies — could have untold consequences for the global economy.”
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/corporate-bond-risk-leveraged-loans-imf-2018-11
Actually … they support and facilitate this build up…. without it BAU ends…
No kidding!
No quandary … what is needed is more and more sugar
“As Prime Minister Theresa May tries to force through her Brexit deal, a spectre looming in the background is growing ever larger — what if there is no deal? Life after March 29, 2019 would suddenly become a lot more complicated in Britain with everything from flying to food becoming affected…
“The cost of food will skyrocket, shortages will be common and an immediate consequence is likely to be fresh fruit and vegetables destined for Britain rotting at EU borders as import-export controls are thrown into confusion. “The biggest single challenge will be in a no-deal scenario and what happens with fresh food,” food giant Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis told Britain’s Independent newspaper last month. Dominic Raab, Brexit Secretary until quitting Thursday, has already suggested grocers should start stockpiling goods…
“A study commissioned by Barclays bank said food and drink entering the U.K. from the EU would be subject to a new average tariff of 27 per cent. Reuters reported that among the highest levies would be frozen beef (300 per cent tariff) and orange juice (180 per cent tariff)…
“On Thursday, police said they feared a no-deal Brexit would lead to violence, widespread disruption, panic-buying because of rationing, and other dangers for which they were not prepared. In an interview with Sky News, Simon Kempton, the operational policing lead for the Police Federation of England and Wales, said “…where people can’t feed themselves, potentially, where people can’t get their insulin, potentially, it’s a real concern that those protests might escalate into disorder.” He added, “This is 2018, it’s the year people dialled (emergency services) because KFC ran out of chicken. If that can happen, imagine what will happen if we start to see food or medical supply shortages.”
“Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter said the military was “thinking hard” about what a no-deal scenario would entail, especially if ports and roads were blocked. The military makes “sensible contingency plans for all sorts of eventualities” he told the BBC, adding, “we stand ready to help in any way we can.””
https://www.leducrep.com/news/riots-death-and-recession-brexits-nightmare-scenario/wcm/85f4824f-a2c3-4909-b70a-98e9f1b1087e?video_autoplay=true
“A government in crisis. A Brexit process in free-fall. A Prime Minister (as at the time of writing) hanging on by her fingernails… [a no-deal scenario would mean] food and medicine shortages, endless border queues for people and vehicles, a sharp drop in the pound and in the UK’s credit rating, export chaos, substantial job losses, a house price collapse and food price inflation. National security and public safety are just as much at risk…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2018/11/15/brexit-chaos-why-it-is-a-major-terrorism-and-security-risk/#3be078a32b2e
“Retail sales fell in October, adding to the gloom on the British high street as official figures showed that shoppers kept a tight rein on spending amid growing Brexit uncertainty. Sales volumes dropped by 0.5% from September, in contrast to forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists for a rise of 0.2%.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/15/retail-sales-shoppers-brexit
“The take up of new rental tenancies across prime central London decreased by no less than 12.7 per cent in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period of 2017. Even worse, the figure is 22.1 per cent down on the five-year average for the third quarters of each year.”
https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2018/11/big-slump-in-take-up-of-prime-central-london-lets-admits-agency?source=newsticker
Then there is the absolutely valid argument that all of this talk of doom and gloom is ‘their’ conspiracy of scaring the great British public into remaining within the EU military-financial complex.
Then there is the absolutely valid argument that all of this talk of do-om and gloom is ‘their’ cons-piracy of scaring the great British public into remaining within the EU military-financial complex.
That’s what i’m thinking as well. This is all too reminiscent of the 2K scare.
I think the truth is, Jupiviv, that no one really knows – but the practical challenges of having to recalibrate our international trading arrangements almost overnight are daunting. Certainly a few people I know in the world of business are legitimately alarmed and finding contingency planning challenging. The whisky company not so very far from me, for example, sends most of their products out globally via a hub within the EU. Their tariff-payment system is computerised and automated. At the very least a no-deal Brexit means significant extra expenditure for companies and costs for consumers at a time when the UK economy is already at stall-speed.
I poached this illuminating link from the comments section of Tim Morgan’s site:
https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1061554026284834817
Of course this may all yet be moot if Theresa May can somehow force her deal through parliament.
The UK economy is simply too fragile to take any shocks at all, least of all this self-inflicted Brexit nonsense,which may deliver an unquantifiable blow.
I was being sarcastic btw. While I don’t reject reasonable conspiracy theories offhand (technically I believe in one ie collapse), the negative impact of no-deal is amply predictable. Not everything has to be a false flag/warning.
Agreed, Jupiviv. You never quite know in the comments section of OFW, where our collective rejection of conventional economic ‘wisdom’ can sometimes tip over into a paranoid or contrarian dismissal of all mainstream narratives, precisely because they are mainstream.
Perhaps we need a special sarc font.
Maybe your island at the-end-of-the-world gambit will pay off, Laird Mc Gibbs: I imagine your neighbours are not the type to riot?
I fear neighbours here are much as they are anywhere else, Xabier, ie inclined to fall out over trivia and then despise each other forever. The benefit of Islay is that there are so few of them – the standing population is only 3,000, compared to 85,000 on the smaller Isle of Man.
yes but if they can stop Americans from shooting their goats—theyll survive far longer
eventually they can just drown in whisky anyway—as terminal anasthesia
The whisky is a consolation. There are ridiculous quantities of the stuff here. 😀
For anyone not getting Norman’s goat reference, an American trophy huntress caused quite a media stir on her recent visit to Islay. She shot a goat on an organised hunting trip and then posted a photograph of herself grinning next to the dead beast.
God knows why everyone was so outraged by this, except that of course humanity’s absolute favourite thing these days is being outraged by things. These are morally incoherent times we live in.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/24/uk/scotland-goat-hunting-switlyk-intl/index.html
Incredible, How fierce, exactly, are the goats on Islay?
its important to cull the excess of all species
i wonder if those fierce goats on Islay are fed the mash from all those lowland single malts? could have an effect.
Not very sporting, shooting goats for sport, is it?
The goats on Islay can’t be as fierce as the huntresses of America, surely?
What we really want to know is, was the lady a Trumper? Very probably.
almost certainly a Trumpette
prob is not culling the goat (that has to be done)—its posing with it—just not done in UK—-bad form
If they eat the goat – zero problem.
If the goat is left to rot then they are A$$holes.
Ashamed to say I didn’t even know we had wild goats on Islay until this naff woman came over here and shot one! They are obviously sensible creatures that prefer to keep themselves to themselves.
I wasn’t aware that we had goats on FW … until Uncle Bill came along…
Robert Graves said that the great thing about living in the village of Deia on Mallorca was that neighbours all had predictable habits, so you could easily plan to avoid them when a feud broke out. I’ve found this to be true here as well.
I have a long-running feud with neighbours because they believe I didn’t try hard enough to find their pet tortoise when It escaped from their garden – with death threats!
I like a nice death threat in the morning, it sets me up for the day.
Come clean, Xabier! That beast ended up in the paella, didn’t it? At last, that’s what the neighbors are thinking.
At the back of the true British mind is the suspicion that their fellow Europeans from across the Channel and beyond have suspicious or “unnatural” culinary habits. Horses, frogs, snails, octopuses…. All smothered in garlic!!! It’s probably one of the major reasons for the result of Brexit vote.
Are your neighbours gypsies? (Would explain your obvious dislike for travelling folk.)
IN other news…. liberals were out in force demanding the the Isle of Man be renamed … the Isle of People
Reminds me of that sexist, Eurocentric poem we were forced to recite in English literature class:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.
I used to think that if a clod be washed away by the sea, it be his own fault for being out on the beach in stormy weather.
If the Isle of Man becomes the Isle of Person, then will Germany will become Gerpersony, Manitoba Personitoba, and Manhattan Personcaptan?
Why do I suddenly have the urge to re-watch “The Wicker Man” (original version)?
You yearn to see a young Britt Ekland cavorting in the buff? That’s a pretty good reason. 😀
Could be, although sadly she used a body double for naked scenes. Couldn’t find a clip of that scene from the film, so this will have to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jAJQsq4ZOU
Is this a fair representation of life on Islay? Is the foilage on Islay as luxuriant as that of fictitious Summerisle? I always imagined you lived on a barren windswept rock.
probably find a lot of folks on ofw use body doubles too
There are famous actors secretly posting on OFW? In that case Norm, I’ve got you down as John Cleese. 😉
lol
that’s about right i guess
head of the peoples front of judea
Not …Britt? 🙁
I don’t think ‘betrayal’ is too strong a word.
Humans, as is their wont, cut down most of the trees on Islay over the milennia but there are still deciduous woods with at least moderately luxuriant foliage in the middle and the south.
The island can look rather bleak in winter when grey, muted green and brown are the predominant colours but it comes alive in the spring and summer with heather, gorse, hedgerows of willow or blackberry, large rose bushes, fields of barley et al compensating for the lack of trees.
And after a few days without rain, peat run-off stops turning the bay a rusty brown and it takes on an azure, Caribbean hue, so you get to walk the enormous, gorgeous, almost deserted beaches and feel smug about living here.
“The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that while US demand for oil has been “very robust,” demand in Europe and developed Asian countries “continues to be relatively weak.” The IEA also warned of a “slowdown” in demand in developing nations such as India, Brazil and Argentina caused by high oil prices, weak currencies and deteriorating economic activity.
“”The outlook for the global economy has deteriorated,” the IEA wrote.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/15/business/oil-prices-economy/index.html
“The message of weakening demand on the oil front was reinforced by the falling price of copper. The base metal is often referred to as “Dr Copper” on its presumed ability to forecast the peaks and troughs of business cycles since it is used in different areas of the economy such as homes, factories and electricity generation.”
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/commodities-are-sending-a-distressing-signal
“…the Baltic Dry Index has dropped over 10% since Monday with Bloomberg reporting a fall to just above 1,000 points “despite only modest expansion in fleet capacity, the usual culprit when rates collapse. This time, it’s about waning growth in Chinese demand.””
http://www.mining.com/sinking-shipping-gauge-spells-trouble-iron-ore-coal-price/
This is a link to the IEA Open Market Report. The IEA now has done close to a 180 degree turn from “The sky is falling, there won’t be enough oil,” to almost, “It looks like OPEC will need to cut back production in the next year, to keep prices from falling too low.” They show a chart with the market oversupplied from now through 2019, if current production levels are maintained.
https://www.iea.org/media/omrreports/2018/1118/1118image3.png
The spike yesterday was driven by “a sharp cold revision in the winter weather outlook,” according to a commodities strategist at Morgan Stanley, cited by Bloomberg.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/11/15/natural-gas-spike-plunge/
Really? Another cold winter? More record breaking cold temperatures?
Where is the article using this info to state that g w is not happening … is a ho ax?
And I can’t seem to find much on that story about how the ‘math’ (faked) was wrong on the other g w story… strange… if it was the other way around we’d be bombarded endlessly
It’s called “Global Warming”…Not “US warming”..And 90 percent of the warming goes into the oceans because 3/4 of the earth is covered in water..
https://imgur.com/a/VyG6GZS
There is conflicting information on that topic … as the article below indicates… the jury is out (but if you read the BBC the first line will be ‘the science is indisputable’ — propaganda 101… establish the lie early and stay with it):
The paper Cooling of the global ocean since 2003 (Loehles 2009) looks at ocean heat content as measured by Argo. Argo is a network of over 3000 floats scattered across the globe that measure temperature and salinity of the upper ocean.
Loehles finds a cooling trend from 2003 to 2008.
https://skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans-intermediate.htm
I would imagine that attempting to get a meaningful global temperature comparison for both the oceans and the overall kkklimate would be next to impossible….
We’ve got major events influencing both .. el nino for example…. and ocean currents would be forever changing both cooling and worming over time…
If a scientist had an agenda i.e. had a research grant paid by an entity that demanded a specific outcome … it would be extremely easy to pick the ripest sweetest cherries… and dump that info into a data set…. and voila — here’s proof that the oceans are worming….
OH BUT they are SCIENTISTS – they would never WHO RE themselves!!!!
Your honour — I present exhibit A
KKKLIMATE DATA FAKED
by John Bates (leading kkklimate scientist)
In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. Finally, I provide some links to examples of what well documented CDRs look like that readers might contrast and compare with what Mr. Karl has provided.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/c limate-scientists-versus-c limate-data/
Oh and btw — this line of reasoning is an admission that the k has not wormed in 20+ years now …. as John Bates exposed….
That clearly left the scientists whose lives depend upon the k worming…. and the PR boys … in a quandary…. they must have had an ‘oh f789 moment — I just bought the wife that new Mercedes…. I need more grants!!!’
Then they looked to Don … Don Don…. help …. how do we explain this????
And Don…. calmly swallowed his whiskey and said — fellas… here’s how we explain this away….. we start with the oceans… and…………
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5559fa01eab8ea03273cee2d-1190-625/less-beer-more-bourbon-the-mad-men-era-of-drinking-is-upon-us.jpg
Once we start talking about the oceans, it gives entire the game away. The actual situation is Sun warms oceans => Oceans warm atmosphere. The oceans cover 70% of the earth’s surface and the total heat capacity of the oceans is about 1000 x larger than the heat capacity of the atmosphere. If the Oceans are warming, it isn’t due to IR radiated by the atmosphere, because there simply isn’t enough energy from that source to warm the oceans.
The oceans are like a giant solar-powered hot water bottle and a giant humidifier that helps keep the land surface of our planet livable for life as we know it. Continental interiors tend to get much colder in winter and much hotter in summer than coastal areas of a similar latitude in large part because the moderating “hot water bottle” and “humidifier” effects don’t work well there. Air over the oceans picks up moisture and its temperature is brought into line with the temperature of the water below it.
https://youtu.be/62V-iqu31KU
Gee, Morgan Stanley cited by Bloomberg…that is solid science
Well, at least it is not Ted Cruz——-
But that does bring a smile.
John Bates is the go to guy…
KKKLIMATE DATA FAKED
by John Bates (leading kkklimate scientist)
In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. Finally, I provide some links to examples of what well documented CDRs look like that readers might contrast and compare with what Mr. Karl has provided.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/c limate-scientists-versus-c limate-data/
Uncle bill … uncle bill….
This is where delusion and fake….runs into reality…
Morgan Stanley is in the business of making money …. if they well and truly believed things were going to worm up …. they would invest accordingly…. if they believe it is getting colder… they will invest accordingly…
Clearly they expect colder temperatures… and they are investing accordingly…
If they were to hire you – a DelusisTANI who’s thinking is controlled by what he reads in the MSM … who ignores facts and logic … – as their chief energy analyst….
They’d be Lehman 2.0….
I really don’t understand your beef with CC FE. Fighting CC (real or not) is about keeping BAU running. Channeling funds to production. Without it BAU collapse is closer. You should promote it not shun it.
Although CC is also linked to the reputed evils of coal. A very, very big mistake. I would say that it’s not the use of coal that is the problem, but how and in conjunction with what it is used. What is conjunct-ed with it starts with s and ends with y and had 9 syllables. By far the greatest feature of the latter is real estate development, but try telling that to anyone.
this is worth taking the time to absorb
Great lecture, so refreshing to see a reputable figure putting it so bluntly:
“we are running out of groundwater and it won’t come back for 10 million years”
“we have 20 years of topsoil left and after that we won’t grow more food”
I say: live accordingly
The lecture that Norman linked to is very good. I didn’t listen to all of it, but it started out very well.
People don’t realize that all of the things that are going wrong on earth add together in some sense, just like the burden of disease does in many older humans.
yup
energy depletion—climate change—global warming
deal with one and the other two will rise up and bite you in the ass
Up and down, quickly! Natural gas is much more volatile than oil. It tends to be a regional commodity and is very much affected by storage amounts and capacity.
Unlike oil, it is not very closely tied in with food production. While the US uses natural gas to make nitrogen fertilizer, China uses coal. Natural gas is also not tied in much with transportation. In the US, natural gas’ big use is heating for homes and businesses.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/us-consumption-of-nautral-gas-compared-to-hydro-wind-solar.png