A few years ago, especially in the 2005-2008 period, many people were concerned that the oil supply would run out. They were concerned about high oil prices and a possible need for rationing. The story was often called “Peak Oil.” Peak Oil theorists have also branched out into providing calculations that might be used to determine which substitutes for fossil fuels seem to have the most promise. What is right about the Peak Oil story, and what is misleading or wrong? Let’s look at a few of the pieces.
[1] What Is the Role of Energy in the Economy?
The real story is that the operation of the economy depends on the supply of affordable energy. Without this energy supply, we could not make goods and services of any kind. The world’s GDP would be zero. Everything we have, from the food on our dinner table, to the pixels on our computer, to the roads we drive on is only possible because the economy “dissipates” energy. Even our jobs depend on energy dissipation. Some of this energy is human energy. The vast majority of it is the energy of fossil fuels and of other supplements to human energy.
Peak Oilers generally have gotten this story right, but they often miss the “affordable” part of the story. Economists have been in denial of this story. A big part of the problem is that it would be problematic to admit that the economy is tied to fossil fuels and to other energy sources whose supply seems to be limited. It would be impossible to talk about growth forever, if economic growth were directly tied to the consumption of limited energy resources.
[2] What Happens When Oil and Other Energy Supplies Become Increasingly Difficult to Extract?
Fossil fuel producers tend to extract the fuels that are easiest to extract first. Over time, even with technology changes, this tends to lead to higher extraction costs for the remaining fuels. Peak Oilers have been quick to notice this relationship.
The question that then arises is, “Can these higher extraction costs be passed on to the consumer as higher prices?” Peak Oil theorists, as well as many others, have tended to say, “Of course, the higher cost of oil extraction will lead to higher oil prices. Energy is essential to the economy.” In fact, we did see very high oil prices in the 1974-1981 period, in the 2004-2008 period, and in the 2011-2013 period.
Unfortunately, it is not true that higher extraction costs always can be passed on to consumers as higher prices. Many energy costs are very well “buried” in finished goods, such as food, cars, air conditioners, and trucks. After a point, energy prices “top out” at what is affordable for citizens, considering current wage levels and interest rate levels. This level of the affordable energy price will vary over time, with lower interest rates and higher debt amounts generally allowing higher energy prices. Greater wage disparity will tend to reduce the affordable price level, because fewer workers can afford these finished goods.
The underlying problem is that, from the consumer’s perspective, high oil prices look like inefficiency on the part of the oil company. Normally, being inefficient leads to costs that can’t be passed along to the consumer. We should not be surprised if, at some point, it is no longer possible to pass these higher costs on as higher prices.
If higher extraction costs cannot be passed on to consumers, this is a terrible situation for energy producers. After not too many years, this situation tends to lead to peak energy output because producers and their governments tend to go bankrupt. This seems to be the situation we are reaching for oil, coal and natural gas. This is a much worse situation than the high price situation because the high price situation tends to lead to more supply; low prices tend to collapse the production system.
The underlying problem is that low prices, even if they are satisfactory to the consumer, tend to be too low for the companies producing energy products. Peak Oilers miss the fact that a two-way tug of war is taking place. Low prices look like a great outcome from the perspective of consumers, but they are a disaster from the perspective of producers.
[3] How Important Is Hubbert’s Curve for Determining the Shape of Future Oil (or Coal or Natural Gas) Extraction?
Figure 1. M. King Hubbert symmetric curve from Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Total quantity of resources that will ultimately be extracted is Q.
Most Peak Oilers seem to believe that if we see Hubbert shaped curves in individual fields, we should expect to see a similar shaped curve for total oil supply or for the supply of other fossil fuels. They think that production patterns to date plus outstanding reserves can give realistic views of the future extraction patterns. Frequently, Peak Oilers will assume that once production of oil, coal or natural gas starts to fall, we will still have about 50% of the beginning amount left. Thus, we can plan on a fairly long, slow decline in fossil fuel production.
However, many Peak Oilers will agree that if the energy used to extract energy is subtracted, the result will be more of a Seneca Cliff (Figure 2). Seneca is known for saying, “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”
Figure 2. Seneca Cliff by Ugo Bardi.
Peak Oilers also tend to limit the amount of resources that they consider extractible, to exclude those that are particularly high in cost.
Even with these adjustments, it seems to me that the situation is likely to be even worse than most Peak Oil analyses suggest because of the interconnected nature of the economy and the fact that world population continues to grow. The economy cannot get along with a sharp reduction in energy consumption per capita. Some governments may collapse; many debtors may default; some banks may be forced to close. The situation may resemble the “societal collapse” situation experienced by many early economies.
One concern I have is that the Hubbert model, once it became the standard model for what energy supply might be available in the future, could easily be distorted. With enough assumptions about ever-rising energy prices and ever-improving technology, it became possible to claim that any fossil fuel resource in the ground could be extracted at some point in the future. Such outrageous assumptions can be used to claim that our biggest future problem will be climate change. After hearing enough climate change forecasts, people tend to forget about our immediate energy problems, since current problems are mostly hidden from consumers by low energy prices.
[4] Is Running Out of Oil Our Biggest Energy Problem?
The story told by Peak Oilers is based on the assumption that oil is our big problem and that we have plenty of other fuels. Oil is indeed our highest cost fuel and is very energy dense. Nevertheless, I think this is an incorrect assessment of our situation; the real issue is keeping the average cost of energy consumption low enough so that goods and services made from energy products will be affordable by consumers. Even factory workers need to be able to buy goods made by the economy.
Figure 2. Historical oil, natural gas, and oil production, based on Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
The way the cost of energy consumption can be kept low is mostly a “mix” issue. If the mix of energy products is heavily weighted toward low cost energy-related products, such as coal and labor from low wage countries, then the overall cost of energy can be kept low. This is a major reason why the economies of China and India have been able to grow rapidly in recent years.
If underlying costs of production are rising, mix changes cannot be expected to keep the problem hidden indefinitely. A recession is a likely outcome if the average price of energy, even with the mix changes, isn’t kept low enough for consumers. Energy producers, on the other hand, depend on energy prices that are high enough that they can make adequate reinvestment. If they cannot make adequate reinvestment, the whole system will tend to collapse.
A collapse based on prices that are too low for producers will not occur immediately, however. The problem can be hidden for a while by a variety of techniques, including additional debt for producers and lower interest rates for consumers. We seem to be in the period during which the problems of producers can be temporarily hidden. Once this grace period has passed, the economy is in danger of collapsing, with oil not necessarily singled out first.
Following collapse, large amounts oil, coal and natural gas are likely to be left in the ground. Some of it may even cease to be available before the 50% point of the Hubbert curve is reached. Electricity may very well collapse at the same time as fossil fuels.
[5] How Should We Measure Whether an Energy-Producing Device Is Actually Providing a Worthwhile Service to the Economy?
The answer that some energy researchers have come up with is, “We need to compare energy output with energy input” in a calculation called Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI). This approach looks like a simple ratio of (Energy Output)/(Energy Input), but “the devil is in the details.”
As I looked through the workings of the Limits to Growth model, it occurred to me that the EROI calculation needs to line up with how the economy really operates. If this is the case, we really need a very rapid return of the energy output, relative to the energy input. Also, in the aggregate, the energy output needs to scale up very rapidly. Furthermore, the energy output needs to match the types of energy needed for the devices the economy is currently using. If the output is different (such as electricity instead of fossil fuels), the EROI calculation needs to be adjusted to reflect the expected energy cost and time delay associated with a changeover in devices to match the new type of energy output.
In a footnote, I have attached a list of what I see as requirements that seem to be needed for EROI calculations, based on the LTG model, as well as other considerations.1
Of course, in a setting of many researchers working on a subject and many peer reviewed papers, a concept such as EROI is gradually modified and enhanced by different researchers. For example, EROI is turned around to become the Energy Payback Period. This is used to show prospective buyers of a device how helpful a particular device supposedly is. Researchers who are trying to “push” a type of energy product will find ways to perform the EROI calculation that are as helpful as possible to their cause.
The problem, though, is that if more stringent EROI requirements are put into effect, wind and solar can be expected to do much less well in EROI calculations. They very likely drop below the threshold of being useful to the economy as energy producers. This is especially the case if they are added to the economy in great numbers to try to significantly replace fossil fuels.
Regardless of their value as energy producers, there might still be a reason for building wind and solar. Building them probably does help the economy in the same sense that building unneeded roads and apartment buildings does. In theory, all of these things might someday be somewhat useful. They are helpful now in that they add jobs. Also, the building of wind and solar devices adds “demand,” which helps keep the price of coal in China high enough to encourage additional extraction. But in terms of truly keeping the world economy operating over the long haul, or in terms of scaling up to the quantity of energy supply that is really needed to operate the economy, wind and solar do very little.
[6] How Should Net Energy Be Defined?
Net Energy is defined by EROI researchers as (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input). Unfortunately, as far as I can see, this calculation provides virtually no valid information. Instead, it promotes the belief that the benefit of a device can be defined in terms of (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input). In practice, it is very difficult to measure more than a small fraction of the Energy Inputs needed to produce an Energy Output, while Energy Output does tend to be easily measurable. This imbalance leads to a situation where the calculation of (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input) provides a gross overestimate of how helpful an energy device really is.
If we are dealing with a fish or some other animal, the amount of energy that the animal can expend on gathering food is not very high because it needs to use the vast majority of its energy for other purposes, such as respiration, reproduction, and digestion. In general, a fish can only use about 10% of its energy from food for gathering food. Limits to Growth modeling seems to suggest a similar maximum energy-gathering usage percentage of 10%. In this case, this percentage would apply to the resources needed for capturing, processing, and distributing energy to the world economy.
Perhaps there is a need for a substitute for Net Energy, calculated compared to the budgeted maximum expenditure for the function of “Energy gathering, processing and distribution.” For example, the term Surplus Energy might be used instead, calculated as (10% x Energy Output) minus (Energy Input), where Energy Inputs are subject to suitably wide boundaries. If an energy product has a very favorable evaluation on this basis, it will be inexpensive to produce, making it affordable to buyers. At the same time, the cost of production will be low, leaving plenty of funds with which to pay taxes.
Alternately, Surplus Energy might be calculated in terms of the tax revenue that governments are able to collect, relative to the new energy type. Tax revenue based on fossil fuel production and/or consumption is very signification today. Oil exporting nations often rely primarily on oil-based tax revenue to support their programs. Many countries tax gasoline consumption highly. Another type of fossil fuel tax is a carbon tax. Any replacement for fossil fuels will need to replace the loss of tax revenue associated with fossil fuels, because taxation is the way Surplus Energy is captured for the good of the economy as a whole.
When we consider the tax aspect, we find that any replacement for fossil fuels has three conflicting demands on its pricing:
(a) Prices to the consumer must be low enough to prevent recession.
(b) Prices must be high enough that the producer of the replacement energy supply can earn adequate after-tax revenue to support its operations.
(c) The mark-up between the cost of production and the sales price must be high enough that governments can take a very significant share of gross receipts as tax revenue.
The only way that it is possible to meet these three demands simultaneously is if the unsubsidized cost of energy production is extremely low. Wind and solar clearly come nowhere near being able to meet this very low price threshold; they still rely on subsidies. One of the biggest subsidies is being allowed to “go first” when their energy supply is available. The greater the share of intermittent wind and solar that is added to the electric grid, the more disruptive this subsidy becomes.
Afterword: Is this a criticism of Peak Oil energy researchers?
No. I know many of these researchers quite well. They are hard working individuals who have tried to figure out what is happening in the energy arena with very little funding. Some of them are aware of the collapse issue, but it is not something that they can discuss in the journals they usually write in. The 1972 The Limits to Growth modeling that I mentioned in my last post was ridiculed by a large number of people. It was not possible to believe that the world economy could collapse, certainly not in the near term.
Early researchers were not aware that the physics of energy extraction extends to the economy as a whole, rather than ending at the wellhead. Because of this, they tended to overlook the importance of affordability. Affordability is important because there is a pricing conflict between the low prices needed by buyers of energy products and the high prices needed by producers. This conflict becomes especially apparent as the world approaches energy limits; this conflict was not easily seen in the data reviewed by Hubbert. Once Hubbert missed the affordability issue, his followers tended to go follow the same path.
Researchers needed to start from somewhere. The start that Peak Oil researchers made was as reasonable as any. They were convinced that there was an energy problem, and they wanted to convince others of the problem. But this was difficult to do. When they would develop an approach that they thought would make the energy problem clear to everyone, other researchers would modify it. They would take whatever aspect of the research seemed to be helpful to them and would tweak it to support whatever view they wanted to encourage–often with precisely the opposite intent to what the original researchers had expected.
Thus, the approaches that Peak Oil researchers thought would show that there was a likely energy shortage ahead ended up being used to “prove” that we have an almost unlimited amount of fossil fuel energy available. It seems as though the world has such a strong need for happily-ever-after endings that self-organization pushes research in the direction of showing outcomes people want to see, even if they are untrue.
Footnote:
[1] The following is from an e-mail I sent to some energy researchers concerned about EROI calculations:
A concern I have is that EROI really needs to match up with the concept of Fraction of Capital to Obtaining Non-Renewable Resources (FCONRR) in the Limits to Growth model. If a person looks at how the 2003 World3 model functions, the person can figure out several things:
1. FCONRR is what I would call a calendar year “in and out” function. Forecasting EROI using a model year approach gives artificially favorable indications. FCONRR calculations line up fairly well with many fossil fuel EROI calculations, but not with the usual model approach used for capital devices used to generate electricity.
2. I would describe FCONRR as corresponding to “Point of Use (POU) EROI,” not Wellhead EROI.
3. If a newly built device causes a previously built capital device to be closed down before the end of its useful lifetime (for example, solar output leads to distorted electricity prices, which in turn leads to unprofitable nuclear), this has an adverse impact on FCONRR. Thus, intermittent renewables need to be evaluated on a very broad basis.
4. In the model, FCONRR starts at 5% and gradually increases to 10%. This is equivalent to overall average calendar year POU EROI starting at 20:1 and falling to 10:1. The model shows the world economy growing nicely, when total FCONRR is 5%. It gradually slows, as FCONRR increases to 10%. Once overall FCONRR exceeds 10%, the model shows the world economy contracting.
5. I was struck by the fact that FCONRR equaling 10% corresponds to the ratio that Charlie Hall describes as the share of energy that a fish can afford to use to gather its food. Once a fish starts using more than 10% of its energy for gathering food, it is all downhill from there. The fish cannot live very long, without enough energy to support the rest of it functions. Similarly, an economy cannot last very long, without enough energy to support its other functions.
6. In the model, necessary resources out depend on the population. The higher the population, the more resources out are needed. It is falling resources per capita that causes the system to collapse. This is why FCONRR needs to stay strictly below 10% and energy consumption must be ramped up rapidly. This would suggest that average POU EROI needs to stay strictly above 10:1, to keep the system away from collapse.
7. If there are not enough resources out in total, for a given calendar year, this becomes a huge problem. The way this works out in practice is that if a device uses a lot of upfront capital, these devices can sort of work out OK, if (a) only a few are built each year, (b) they have very high EROI, and (c) they last a long time. Thus, hydro and dams can work. But devices with an EROI close to 10:1 cannot work, especially if they need to be scaled up quickly and need a lot of supporting infrastructure.
8. Clearly, using the FCONRR approach, eliminating a high EROI fuel is as detrimental to the system as adding a low EROI device with a lot of upfront capital spending required. It is the overall output compared to population that is important. The quantity of output is even more important than the EROI ratio.
Back to health care or what is guaranteed to piss you off.
Before we fix the medical system, we need to address the food system. The system tells people to eat the disastrous food pyramid and then treats them for the illnesses that result from eating the food pyramid,
Hint: If it comes in a package of any kind, you probably shouldn’t eat it.
I very much enjoy opening any package that contains a good quality dark chocolate…
I suppose I could become overweight and unhealthy from too many of those packages, but right now I’m not, and I don’t see it happening… (sure, something will get me… oh well…)
after the coming severe recession, millions of people may find that their favorite foods are no longer affordable…
now is the time to eat up!
eat today like The Collapse is coming tomorrow!
I prefer the flavor of milk chocolate although it doesn’t have the same level of healthy qualities as dark. Here’s a tip; Try Ritter’s, Butter Biscuit. Wow, it has a simple type biscuit in the middle of Swiss milk chocolate. Not sure why, but most US chocolate seems chalky by comparison to Swiss, UK or German chocolate, which are very creamy. If you get to Italy go down some of the side streets and find stores that sell chocolate – oh, my. Of course chocolate gelato in Italy is incredibly rich – wow!. Build up an appetite walking first.
lol yes
those Italian side streets for all the yummy stuff on the planet!!!!
no wonder they ignore all the bad news and just get on with life
I know a few places in UK where Italians have brought over the real deal and sell it here. I know one Italian guy who invents a new icecream every month in summer and insists you try it for free—just to tell him what it’s like
And his pastries—wow
I agree that the food system badly needs fixing. I am hoping that it is OK to eat a little dark chocolate out of packages. Otherwise, I mostly don’t eat things out of packages either. Lots of fresh produce. I think we do need to eat some whole grains. Otherwise, it is hard to get enough calories for the world’s large population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axRRFV5MdyY
Canada is on it Orange juice is now in the the same food category as Pepsi
High deductible programs make sense for the rich, perhaps, but not for the many people who are living paycheck to paycheck. An $8,000 or $10,000 deductible would mean that most of these people would not buy the insulin they need, or other drugs that they cannot get along without.
Surprise, surprise…the Golden Rule rules…”Those who have the Gold make the rules.”
Above the bed of deceased Malcolm Forbes….
US defense giants show how American capitalism fails taxpayers big US companies close their books for 2018, the top beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s tax cuts are becoming clear—the firms that reported big jumps in profits rewarded investors with dividends and more than $1 trillion in share buybacks. That means that corporate benefits from the tax bill mostly flowed to the wealthiest Americans, just like the benefits of the personal tax cuts.
That is certainly true for the US’s big defense contractors. Lockheed Martin, for example, earned $5 billion last year, up more than 150% from the year before; General Dynamics generated net earnings of $3.3 billion, up 15% from the year before; Northrop Grumman made $3.2 billion, up 13% on 2017; and Raytheon recorded $2.9 billion in profit for the year, up more than 40% on the previous year
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-defense-giants-show-american-141236842.html
Big Money in War and Destruction…God Bless America!
Yeah, those tax cuts were a slap in the face to the 99%ers. Really sad when you think of how many people are struggling to get by. The same scenario occurred before the Depression in 1929. Trump is Hoover all over again.
It was clearly a balancing act thing and attempt to gain some support among various perennially wealthy factions. Donaldo pressed for less bloated foreign engagements, which is obviously financial detriment to owners of the mil industrial, hence he compensated them a bit on the tax plane. Meanwhile looking a bit under the hood of the machine even he realized the entire domestic US industry is so hollowed out already, these anti Chines sanctions are just delaying the inevitable..
this will make life interesting for the oil companies
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/supreme-court-redwater-decision-orphan-wells-1.4998995
Cost of extraction is even higher, if clean-up costs cannot be avoided through bankruptcy (the way pension cost can be). Cost benefit ratio is even worse. Needs a higher price.
Looking at the article, I see that this is a Canadian article. There seem to be quite a few US articles talking about this being a problem in the US as well.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/07/09/why-orphan-oil-and-gas-wells-are-a-growing-problem-for-states
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/oil-well-cleanup-law-lax-alaska-regulator-says/
I deduce that energy prices are not high enough to encourage energy investment in Africa. The WSJ has an article,
Blackstone Retreats From Africa Investment Plan
The world’s largest private-equity firm has pulled back from a pledge to invest $2.5 billion through an African infrastructure company called Black Rhino
Black Rhino was Blackstone’s arm involved with energy investment in Africa. Now we read, “Black Rhino didn’t find large deals that Blackstone wanted to finance.” An example of one of its earlier investments is the construction of a hydropower dam on the White Nile in Uganda. The article mentions that Blackstone isn’t the only company to have difficulty in Africa.
So much for great growth opportunities in Africa!
“Debt levels are rising dangerously – reaching 45.9% of GDP in sub-Saharan Africa in 2017, nudging the 50% ceiling recommended by the IMF – and many governments face tough decisions on spending cuts. Unlike previous debt crises where the IMF and the World Bank played a leading role, this time the creditors are mostly commercial entities or state financial organisations. And they have little appetite for write-offs or restructurings.
“The roots of Africa’s new debt emergency grew out of the US financial crisis a decade ago. As global markets roiled after the exposure of incompetence and corruption at the heart of some of the world’s biggest financial institutions in 2008, African finance ministers reassured their colleagues that their economies, with their limited links to the international system, would not suffer much direct damage…
“Determined to step up investment in the roads, railways, power and communications needed to modernise their economies, African governments sought new finance, especially in the capital markets.
“With interest rates falling across the West after the US crash in 2008, the timing looked good. Just months after it completed its debt-reduction deal, Ghana issued a $750m eurobond, inspiring many others to rush to the markets. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) says commercial debt will make up $392bn of Africa’s total debt stock of $514bn by the end of 2018.”
http://www.theafricareport.com/News-Analysis/africas-new-debt-crisis.html
Thanks! The article ends,
I don’t think that this is really the choice. There isn’t really a “long hard road to financial recovery” unless the commodities that Africa sells keeps rising and rising in price. Without growing debt, this is not possible. Even with, it is not very possible.
“you don’t farm marginal, energy and chemical-sucking land, unless you have lots of hungry boys to feed”. And you need hungry boys to fight over the land; round and round it goes.”
“Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us?”
excellent analogy
except it isn’t our second midnight approaching, more like five past twelve i think
Don’t worry, the Mississippi proletariat is here to rescue us:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bf579c69b3daa7050593ccd204ab3a3a2126d7db/0_150_2250_1350/master/2250.jpg
Ok, try this:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bf579c69b3daa7050593ccd204ab3a3a2126d7db/0_150_2250_1350/master/2250.jpg?width=1140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e3d361d6b9005520f2f1fc6a76b16218
Norm, you maybe interested in this criticism of your writing. KMO from c-realm podcast who used to be deeply into collapse narratives of JHK, JMG, Dmitry and the like, has a few things to say about your “the oil party is over”
Now I know why I don’t listen to the C-Realm podcast anymore 😐
Criticisms:
1) KMO suggests that we’ve “learned our lesson” on massive wars thanks to WWI & WWII, which not only disregards the idea that the West set itself up as a military hegemon after those wars (the USSR did as well, but eventually collapsed), but suggests that because we’ve “learned our lesson” that we’ll never go to war at that scale again (an infantile assertion which shows an incredible lack of appreciation for how much conflict and war has shaped human history). And KMO, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people who haven’t gone to war ARE soft (I know I am) 😐
2) Suggesting that the human population “ballooned” due to the discovery of the New World is interesting, as it is fair to argue that when humanity discovers new energy sources we do tend to expand / grow. But it does nothing to suggest one should disregard Norman’s assertion that fossil fuels have lead to a colossal growth of the human population to levels that are completely unsustainable for the Earth (something I don’t think bat guano would have resulted in…)
3) “It’s not justified… not right now” – ignoring the fact that KMO makes an argument that Norman is “ideologically committed” to the failure of all efforts to find alternative energy sources based on Norman’s statement that the rise of modern industrial man has been short-lived and at a large cost to the environment (both true, no?), it would have been nice if he actually stated WHY Norman’s pessimism about man’s future was “not justified”. Instead, he simply puts his own ideological biases on display, committing the same action he just condemned Norman for moments ago 😐
4) “Not livin’ in a fantasy” – hahaha… okay… having the time to make a YouTube video (because you don’t have a day job, which most people need to have to survive), criticizing (badly) someone you haven’t met or talked to about their point of view, right after doing some Yoga and incense burning, on not one but TWO technological devices few in the Third World could never dream of owning = definitely not living in a fantasy 😐
5) KMO may be right to suggest that some people are waking up to the hard realities of life, but says little that actually challenges Norman’s assertion that the Western world is living in “Cornucopianism”. He berates Norman, asking where Norman sees this in his life, and suggests that’s not what he’s seeing living in rural Vermont… again, completely ignoring the fact he lives in a world where he doesn’t need to work all day, can still afford two grossly expensive consumer electronic devices, and doesn’t consider the fact he can just stroll down to his local Chick-A-Fill / McDonalds / Burger King/ Pizza Hut (etc.) to get a caloric monstrosity of a meal that would have made kings from 500 years ago jealous, only to return to a palatial home (in comparison to the standard of living for many places in the rest of the world) that he probably hasn’t even paid for (if not renting, he probably has the *privilege* of a mortgage to enjoy the something he hasn’t even earned)
The only thing I’ll give him credit for is that, yes, sometimes “peak oil” or “doomer” articles can come across as if the author is aware of something the reader is not, and by stating it that makes the author somehow “better” than the reader, as if the author is doing something to combat the inequities of the world and attempt to solve the problem of the coming collapse. I’ll read your article when I get a chance Norman, and I suspect there might be a bit of that in the way you write – but to be fair, I’m probably just as bad / guilty when I talk to my friends / family / peers / loved ones about collapse… it’s not good enough just to point out the sky is falling, I suppose we should be doing something to help ourselves and the rest of humanity for when it finally falls (like, preparedness and enacting permaculture principles, for example).
Anywhoo, it was painful to watch this video, and I sort of wish I had the last 25 minutes of my life back (instead of writing this long-winded criticism which really doesn’t matter in the big picture of things). I also wish KMO would shave off that terrible, terrible goatee…
Time for my kingly banquet dinner (salad with chicken fingers… yum).
I’m a former KMO listener also.
People in general have no understanding of what a materialistic banquet we are currently living in. Relatively poor people worldwide currently have a standard of living that was unknown to the middle classes of previous centuries.
I personally know a lot of people here in Indonesia – rice farmers mostly – who derive a significant portion of their cash income from scavenging on the local rubbish dump. They recycle plastics and metals and use dumped fruit and vegetables to feed goats and cows.
These people have smartphones, flat screen tvs, multiple motorbikes per household, brick houses with tile roofs and running water and – sometimes – indoor plumbing. Some have cars.They have no food worries. Their clothes are clean and are washed with soap powderand wash their hair with shampoo. They occasionally load the family into the car and visit relatives in another city.
The parents of these same people – and these same people as children – just 30 years ago coped with starvation and typhus. Their houses were of woven bamboo and contained no furniture. They cooked with wood in a clay oven. They might have had just one set of clothes, a school uniform that they wore day in an day out. No shoes. Transport was a rusty Chinese bicycle and Shanks’ pony.
A lot has changed for them in recent decades. They definitely regard themselves as currently living in a cornucopia.
Thanks for your comment GBV—I’ve replied above in Niko’s thread
I didn’t realise that adding a link to twitter would push out a load of crap in that respect—
apologies
thanks very much for that link–I enjoyed it a lot
no such thing as bad criticism because one can build on it and improve
though I couldn’t figure out where that guy thought his sustenance came from, if it wasn’t oil coal and gas—especially as he didn’t have a job either. And what a cornucopia is, if it isn’t a promise of infinite goodies from nowhere.
As GBV below says (and thanks for supportive comments btw), he is extrapolating his personal opinions onto the world at large, extracting a paragraph here and there and waving it around as ‘nonsense’—which it probably is, taken in isolation, adding and deleting to make a different whole.
I try to write about ”collective opinion” where I can, because that is what drives human nature in this direction or that. Some of my ‘opinion’ seems to follow that herd instinct, some not.
All other source material points to fossil fuels ballooning human population—my contribution to that is miniscule in the grand scheme of things.
And if fossil fuels are our prime support, I can see little future when that support is removed. Though I’m the first to admit I might have missed a trick somewhere, I find it very odd that anyone should think otherwise. But having said that, a lot of my writing is stimulated by pushing back against folks saying and thinking weird stuff that makes no sense.
No doubt they think the same about me.—Only other people are weird, everybody knows that
And Our Petrocollapse doom is Deemed—-did I miss a subtle bit of wordplay there?
I hadn’t come across KMO before so don’t know anything about it.
I bang out a lot of stuff on twitter too, if anyone is interested
https://twitter.com/End_of_More
Always enjoy your writing Norm.
I met KMO at a conference or two. I found an e-mail from 2011 talking about a C-Realm Podcast I did with him and asking about doing another one.
I haven’t tried to keep up with what he does, though.
Per Wikipedia the average life span of a hunter gatherer was 21-37, 57% reach 15 years of age so that sort of eliminates many chronic ailments, 64% of those who reach 15 years will live past 45. Assuming we begin with 100 people, 57 of them will be alive at 15 and 36+ will be alive past 45 and be supported by a younger cohort. Okay, that solves the pension problem, back to hunter gathers.
Look at yourself in the mirror, look in your medicine cabinet and make a guess which percentile you are in. If you are in the 64% that aren’t going past 45 it takes a great deal of stress off of retirement planning.
Dennis L.
Some one in Ag at the time had a life span of 19 years.
And was 5″ shorter.
The average “hunter gatherer” is just a statistic. In some places they were tall, healthy, and lived long lives. Equally, in modern societies, the health of many people were stunted and destroyed by industrialism. You just have to pick the time and place and can get any type of example you want.
The Mayflower Pilgrims were an unhealthy and stunted lot compared to the native Americans in the areas where they settled. Of course, the Indians there did have agriculture.
In Australia, which was strictly hunter-gatherer, the Aborgines were also found to be a tall, strong and healthy. The harbor suburb of Manly in Sydney is so called in reference to the positive impression the native physique made on the first white settlers.
a 6 month voyage in a convict ship must have left the first footers in a pretty bad state
though have said that, if you survived that you were well suited to start a new life
much the same thing might be said about the slave ships crossing to the Americas, now most of the best athletes are black Afro Americans. There can only be one main reason for that
That’s an interesting point.
Many of the Africans in London now, who are not descended from imported slaves, are rather heavy, clumsy, very slow-moving people – well-suited to primitive agriculture in fact, an environment without animals such as horses, or any great physical or mental challenges – and not at all athletic.
Mountaineers tend to be more lean and vigorous, from a much harsher environment, and one sees that in Ethiopians especially. This also explains the old energy of the Spanish, who were mostly a mountain people engaged in nearly constant warfare in a cruel environment (load of old fatties now, though). In the past, only aristocrats and the priests were fat……
Kuwait sees risk of oil supply shortage in 2019 due to Venezuela
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kuwait-oil/kuwait-sees-risk-of-oil-supply-shortage-in-2019-due-to-venezuela-idUSKCN1PU0IO
“Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday that his government will soon announce extraordinary measures to support Pemex, aiming to reduce the fiscal burden on the state oil company.
“We’re going to reduce Pemex’s fiscal burden like never before,” he told a morning news conference. “This will mean fewer resources for the government but we’re sure we’ll make up for that lack of income.”
“New York-based Fitch downgraded debt issued by Pemex by two steps last week, sending the peso weaker and stoking fears that it could significantly raise the oil company’s financing costs.”
“Pemex holds some $106 billion in financial debt.”
So Pemex can’t fund it own operations…it is effectively bankrupt. The government is giving it a temporary lease on life ….a bridge bailout until it can borrow more money.
It must be terrifying for those Mexican leaders looking disaster in the face.
We are like a spaceship orbiting a black hole of debt. When we pass the event horizon, everything seems the same, but there is no escape….no going back. I think our economy has already passed this point. Look at PG&E going bankrupt. There was hardly a stir in the marketplace…in the stock market. Hardly anything in the news. This stuff is getting so commonplace that we have normalized it….we ignore it, expecting ever more clever financial debt tools to keep it going. California is joining the collapse.
We have passed the event horizon, and we cannot escape the inevitable. Add Mexico to the collapse spectrum, soon joining Venezuela.
https://imgur.com/a/eE5Tjgs
She is running “in fierce advocacy of working class Americans”, no matter their nationality.
Note that I post this comment in perfect expectation that the irony will be lost on you.
in the 2020 POTUS election, the Ds will be running on promises of “free stuff”…
free health care for all…
free college for all students…
it will work to elect the D…
though the promises will never be fulfilled…
Yep, it will be fun watching when AOC will be confronted with swamp Ds where to bomb on Monday and where to color revolutionize on Tuesday, .. lolz..
Although as most people still did not learn, there is a stable of pre approved (manufactured) candidates, obviously these days they updated it for pseudo racial and social make believe convenience. And if she is not of this pedigree (still doubtful) there are other proven methods the establishment perfect decades ago on non conforming politicians.
The US will get genuine candidates only when getting very close to self implosion or right after that, not sooner.
They can allow AOC to play in the race and gender space, and leave class war alone.
Or else…..
Oh really?
It works in other parts of the world.
Although, will it “work” in the US? Doubtful.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Overweight_or_obese_population_OECD_2010.png
nothing’s free
It can be dressed up in all sorts of ways, but the taxpayer eventually foots the bill, out of surplus energy inputs
this is obviously finite
“The UK, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries have officially recognised opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela. It comes after President Nicolás Maduro defiantly rejected a deadline they set for Sunday to call fresh elections. Mr Guaidó declared himself interim leader last month and won US backing.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47115857
“”With [Venezeula’s] refineries in precarious condition and without access to imported refined productions, PDVSA will have to ration fuel sold in the local markets,” said Ivan Freites, a PDVSA union leader. “Amid the political crisis, fuel inventories are at critical levels…”
“According to the PDVSA technical report seen by S&P Global Platts, gasoline inventories have been exhausted while levels of diesel and LPG are enough to last only two days on average.”
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/020419-venezuelas-pdvsa-begins-partial-rationing-of-gasoline-sources
I see,
“Shipments of Venezuelan crude to Citgo refineries in the US are affected by the sanctions, as are shipments to Venezuela of the diluent naphtha refined by Citgo.
Because of the deterioration of its refineries and its low processing levels, PDVSA has had to import increasing quantities of refined products and components to make gasoline.
Citgo provides 50% of these imports destined for the domestic market and those destined for Cuba to meet bilateral commitments.”
It sounds like the bilateral agreements with Cuba are still being honors. If so, this could pull Venezuela down more quickly. Also, Cuba is still dependent on Venezuela, not a good situation.
U.S. Coup Attempt In Venezuela Lacks International Support
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/us-coup-attempt-in-venezuela-lacks-international-support.html
did the U.S. coup attempt in Ukraine in 2014 lack international support?
of course, it was “successful” in changing their leadership…
it also was “successful” in severely degrading the Ukrainian economy…
(should the Ukrainians thank Obama?)
oh well, can’t have everything…
“Eurozone investor confidence has sunk to a four-year low as Brexit uncertainty and Germany’s continued slowdown added to the bloc’s woes. The Sentix Index, which monitors investor sentiment across the single currency bloc, fell to -3.7 for February, following a survey of more than 1,000 investors. Although the latest figures avoided a recession, Sentix said the growth seemed to be “weakening dangerously quickly and strongly.””
http://www.cityam.com/272674/eurozone-investor-confidence-slumps-four-year-low-german
“Growth in the [UK] construction sector softened to its lowest level in 10 months in January, with experts predicting the industry could slip into recession soon if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. The purchasing managers’ index (PMI), a measure of business activity and confidence, slipped to 50.6 in January, just above the 50 mark that divides growth from contraction”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/04/construction-sector-falters-recession-fears-loom/
At least it is above 50.
Rather fascinating the situation with Brexit. It gets the votes, but Parliament can’t agree on terms, so they might exit the Eurozone without any modifications that benefit the UK. One thing you can be sure of in this world, there will always be different camps, varied viewpoints and some will argue their point, while others just like to be contrarians. It’s not too hard to see why dictatorships arise so quick decisions can be made.
“A one-year slide in Canadian consumer confidence showed little sign of improving in January with sentiment levels hovering at depressed levels amid turmoil in financial markets and signs the nation’s economy has hit a soft patch.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/slump-in-canada-consumer-confidence-shows-no-sign-of-reversing
“The Reserve Bank [of Australia] has kept interest rates on hold despite mounting evidence the economy is cooling rapidly and consumers are shutting up shop. Consumers tightened their spending in December with shops reporting their biggest fall in sales in a year. Souring consumer sentiment points to further economic weakness as the impact of falling house prices bite…”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-05/retail-sales-and-rba-rate-decsion-february-2019/10780736
“Soft patch!” They need higher prices for their oil exports to help the economy. Australia has a similar problem.
Gotta love the hypocrisy of the mainstream media.
Whenever markets / economies are up, we’re “booming”, “hitting record highs”, and any other descriptor that suggests “everything is awesome!!!!!” and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. But when things aren’t going so well, language that almost always seems to suggest the downturn is transitional, temporary, and/or muted is used(like “soft patch”, “slow down”, “modest correction”, etc.)
But I guess I should stop worrying about it, because hey, EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!!
The propaganda serves an ever more vital purpose, given how important intangibles like investor/lender/consumer confidence are in propping up an increasingly debt-saturated global economy (that those of us paying attention know to be energy and resource-constrained).
Who would have thought that the shale industry, for example, could survive so many years of negative cash-flow? Thank goodness for optimism, I say!
I agree. There is a huge amount of embedded energy in what we have now. Why not float it out as far as this ship will go. No need to sink it before its time.
“Factory orders in the U.S. fell more sharply than expected in November, adding to a litany of reports showing a slowdown in growth in the industrial segment of the economy toward the end of 2018.
“A key measure of business investment also declined. Orders dropped 0.6% in November.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/delayed-us-factory-orders-report-adds-to-evidence-showing-slowdown-late-last-year-2019-02-04
“In December, housing starts dropped 8.2 percent nationwide [USA] from the same month a year earlier, the largest percentage drop in over two years. The December decline followed two months of strong gains. Still, analysts say they’re watching this gauge closely for any extended weakness.
“Why? Builders usually don’t start a house unless they are reasonably confident it will sell upon or before its completion, for one reason. “Sharp declines in housing starts have been a key indicator of each recession since 1960,” Bell said.”
https://www.thestreet.com/markets/why-housing-is-a-leading-economic-indicator-14853734
“The problem is that even if the Fed were to respond to a burst bubble by lowering rates, it wouldn’t fix the bursting bubble. A little mitigation, maybe, but not a fix. That’s because the price of borrowing on margin is only one factor…
“The Fed cannot cure a bursting bubble once the crowd is in the grip of panic. But can the Fed prevent a bursting bubble? Well, no, not unless it started some form of QE that involved buying equities. Don’t laugh—they do it in Japan. But the conventional method, injecting more cash, into a bursting bubble is the same thing as injecting more germs into a diseased body.”
https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/global-slowdown-expected-to-be-worse-if-there-is-no-us-china-trade-deal-201902041515
Good point.
First part of debt bubble that is bursting is Venezuela not being able to pay its debt to China that was based on sending them oil in exchange. If Venezuela sends oil to China in payment of debt, it will not be able to send it to other potential buyers. A WSJ article listed the three countries with refining capacity to refine the oil as US, China, and India. If US is out of the picture, and China sale yields no revenue, that leaves India. Good luck!
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47126114
‘US-China trade war: UN warns of ‘massive’ impact of tariff hike’
“The US and China have a deadline of March 1st to strike a deal, or the US has said it will increase tariff rates on $200bn (£152bn) worth of Chinese goods from 10% to 25%.”
“The implications are going to be massive,” Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Unctad’s head of international trade, said at a news conference. “The implications for the entire international trading system will be significantly negative.” Smaller and poorer countries would struggle to cope with the external shocks, she said. The higher cost of US-China trade would prompt companies to shift away from current east Asian supply chains.”
March 1st is not far off folks. We may get to March 1 without an agreement, with higher tariffs kicking in and the US govt. might be in another shut down.
“A peculiar complacency has settled on the world over America’s hardening confrontation with China.
“The world’s two greatest powers are punishing each other with harsh sanctions as they renegotiate their relationship in talks that broke up last week with the barest of a beginning of an agreement.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/worst-crisis-since-cold-war-brewing-but-no-one-s-paying-attention-20190204-p50vi4.html
““For U.S. soy producers, if the trade war ends tomorrow, we will likely not get back to where we were before the trade war started,” Mark Albertson, director of strategic market development at the Illinois Soybean Association, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
““It’s not just alarming, it’s terrifying.””
https://www.newsweek.com/american-soybean-farmers-trump-trade-war-china-1317323
The problem is an underlying economic/energy problem. It isn’t really fixable; its a predicament.
problem is of course
that our elected leaders can only fix what has been fixed before, using the same fixatives
they are coming unstuck and don’t know why
“they are coming unstuck and don’t know why”
Possible they do know why, but know that they cannot propose anything else and at the same time maintain the status quo?
Worth reading, and the article also has a link to a study by William Nordhaus.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-self-defeating-alarmism-by-bjorn-lomborg-2018-12
I agree with quite a bit of this article.
The abstract of the study by William Nordhaus says (among other things)
One of the issues is that the Nordhaus model makes the same mistakes that the “regular” model in assuming that BAU and fossil fuel changes will take place in the absence of carbon taxes.
Our big problem today is lack of demand for goods and services made with energy products because of their high price, relative to the wages of non-elite workers. Carbon taxes tend to make those goods and services even more expensive, relative to wages. Thus, they tend to make collapse come on sooner. We can expect “Yellow Vest” type protests. I am not sure I would recommend carbon taxes.
And then there is the issue of wind and solar being pretty much hype. It is doubtful that they save much of anything.
I’ve heard of him but not read anything by him before. He seems to be peddling a (European) centre-right version of the green tech -utopia. From the article:
“The technology deficit can be solved only by drastically increasing our spending on research and development of alternative energy. Careful analysis shows that c-limate ch-ange is a problem. But it is not the end of the world. To solve it, we need a smart focus on green-tech innovation, not scare stories and hyperbole.”
The reason why worldwide heating is *not* the biggest problem we face, is *itself* the biggest problem! Because if we lived in a world with vastly more cheap FF energy to burn, or some equivalently cheap and versatile alternative to it, addressing claymite grange would make sense.
I believe we will see less and less news stories about clymait chains and more and more about yellow vests going forward. People are starting to see through the PC curtain and are saying “we just want a decent life, screw your taxes”.
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/00/14/05/16826690/3/1024×1024.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/8xQ5xSZ.jpg
EL MAR – new pope!
Is Journal Peer-Review Now Just a Game?
https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/revolutionandrevelation/77711
This article is from a medical perspective, but I think the same problems hold throughout many fields.
In the journals I have been involved with, authors are often asked to suggest reviewers. This is like: Who do I know in my close circle of colleagues who is likely to see things as I do?
Gail, your comments on how journal peer review may be broken is the perfect segue into some “alternative science” that gets stonewalled by mainstream science (who feel they do not need to explain why so many of their theories keep coming up empty handed):
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
Rather than say any more, I’ll just cut & paste something interesting in the “misconceptions” section of the Thunderbolts website, which I believe aligns with what you’ve just suggested about the peer review process:
+++++
Peer review is a practice that provides both benefits and drawbacks.
The path of specialized knowledge radiates out as the spokes of a wheel, leaving pioneers ever more remote and isolated from others working on similar projects. Ideally, peer review establishes a network, which shares in the discoveries being published and subjects them to independent scrutiny. Qualified investigators in a field—one’s peers—evaluate the methods used in new work. In principle, it is vital that this happen. In practice, its value depends on the integrity and objectivity of the reviewers.
The peer review process is susceptible to conflicts of interest and is easily turned into a form of censorship. It can ensure that published results align with a particular consensus theory. Science is not a democratic process. It is in no sense dependent upon consensus, nor is truth the outcome of a vote. Indeed, consensus is the very antithesis of real science. When a peer review panel begins to promote a particular theory, science is no longer the criterion. Political correctness displaces the physics and the chemistry. One crucial vulnerability in scientists’ practice of the scientific method is the reluctance to acknowledge falsification often because the falsifying facts lie outside their specialized field of view. Peer review can bring attention to data and logical considerations that require attention.
This type of editorial intervention influences more than the standard of science in publications. It also reinforces the appearance of consensus. Scientific merit is not determined by the number of peer reviewed papers a particular model might attract. Schools at all levels too often teach standard models as fact. The schools pay teacher’s salaries to promote standard models. Those models dominate research efforts globally. One result of this is that peer reviewed papers reflect only the views of authors, who pass through this standard-model filter.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/CM-4-Peer-Review-Cartoon2-300×192.jpg
Running the peer review gauntlet. Credit: GenomicEnterprise.com
+++++
I agree with your observations.
Now, there seem to be enough different journals that anyone, with any result, no matter how trivial and how poorly supported, can get a paper published somewhere. This way, some divergent views get published, but not much cross-fertilization takes place. And people who want to get published in any of the widely read journals know that they have to say the politically correct things both to pass peer review and also to get funding for their next research project. This gets to be just as big an obstacle.
An intriguing theory:
“So, the Fed isn’t buying and has in fact rolled off a massive quantity of mid duration US debt, foreigners aren’t buying, banks aren’t buying, insurers aren’t buying, American’s aren’t buying savings bonds, state nor local governments are buying, and there is little to no spread to compensate any leveraged “investors” to buy mid to longer duration US debt. Yet the Treasury tells us that “other investors” (suddenly became hyper-interested just as QE ended) and have come up with over $3 trillion in cash since 2015 to buy low yielding US debt like never before?!? And this massive shift in buying into Treasury’s has inexplicably had little to no negative impact on other asset classes (stocks, real estate, commodities)???
“Is there any party (aside from central banks or central bank conduits) that could come up with such gargantuan quantities of dollars to yield so little and do it essentially without leverage??? Tell me again, who buys US Treasury’s…and particularly who buys mid and longer duration US debt (responsible for setting the 30yr mortgage rate)??? Otherwise, this may sadly be the smoking gun of an active, accelerating, and perhaps unraveling Ponzi scheme?”
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2019/02/treasury-bulletinnobody-buys-us.html?fbclid=IwAR0YlTBQJhL5NrfggowLV_myyYsX_vyDCvuHqRlsHNXgDfpW_3WtQHo-oz8
The big bucket that Chris Hamilton seems to have left out is “insurance companies,” including both life and property-casualty companies. All it takes is a little change regarding how which funds can be held, or how capital adequacy is calculated, to take a big shift in asset distributions. I have not looked at these issues to see what is going on, but my first guess is that “insurance companies” is the answer to his question as to where the securities are now being held.
I would not worry a whole lot about the issue. I am more concerned about where all of the additional funds are coming from in January 2019.
Thanks for the insights, Gail. That article is above my pay-grade.
Gail – regarding insurers, their purchases are called out in the Treasury Bulletin as well as in the article. During QE they purchased about $130 billion or 2% of the new issuance…since QE, they have sold off $75 billion. Regards
There is a benefit to purchasing bonds that goes beyond the % return, and that is it allows a US taxpayer to avoid taxation on the amount invested in the year purchased until such year they are sold, then the tax is due.
So let’s say someone suddenly makes a lot a more than usual, so they put let’s say $500,000 into US bonds and only pay taxes on $100,000. of income. Then in some year they don’t make that much, they sell 100k of bonds and pay the taxes, but the taxes are far less, because most people making that kind of money have enough deductions of one sort or another to easily cover about 100K in income. The government benefits and the person benefits.
During the aftermath of the GFC the notable tax heavens of the globe were put to work and even in evidently synchronized, baton passing fashion, among themselves, nicely soaked up their share of the QE print – recycling fest.. the official graphs have been posted already.
Now, some authors, notably Gail, Dr. Tim and few others argue that future event of GFCv2 magnitude and larger would error on at least some functions so smoothly delivered back then in the first instance. Specifically, the size-volume/speed of sloshing of the event might overwhelm the operators of the system, and or there will be self recognized less enthusiastic support to maintain the legacy system, i.e. there will be limited or tactical-strategic incentive to make it detonate fully, reset the system if you will, shape it towards more quasi trans national block cooperation-rules instead of unipolar global arrangement.
Now, again, depending on time thresholds, it’s quite possible GFCv2 won’t be that “big” event yet, stakeholders will eat the bullet again (China), and only something like GFCv3-4 would have to finish the “old order” status quo before say ~2035 instead.
Oil will continue to be pumped out even if it takes more than one barrel to get one barrel out of the ground. How? Debt. Cheap debt to be precise. Until the day the debt becomes too expensive.
Since 1970s, we have been living under the illusion of prosperity under debt. If you add in the entire supply chain required to take oil out of the ground (computers, specialized parts, rare earth materials, titanium, etc), EROEI is definately less than 1.
Or perhaps the surplus energy you can get from the system, which is what you need, is negative.
EROEI equal to 1.0 means that (reasonably well measured energy out) is equal to (very much understated energy in). This is why I was arguing for a different measure, called “Surplus Energy” computed relative to some benchmark expected level, which seems to be about 10.0:1. In this case, any EROEI less than 10.0:1 would provide a problematic condition for sustainability.
What EROEI equal to 1.0 means is not intuitive, unfortunately. There have been quite a few actuaries who have assumed that as long at EROEI is greater than 1:1, the world cannot possibly have energy problems. There was an article in Nature a couple of years ago that claimed that the production of solar PV panels had reached a net positive energy contribution based on the energy greater than 1:1. I have complained many times to Charlie Hall about calling all energy in excess of 1:1 “net energy.” The Nature article was one of the reasons for my complaint.
Thanks Gail. It is too technical for many people. What I am saying is that debt is masking the fact that we may have spent more than 1 barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil out from ground when we add in all the ancillary services and the long supply chain required.
As oil gets harder to extract, new methods has to be put in place and all these requires the resources (including people) that requires more energy and longer supply chain (think more parts, more computers, more exotic devices). Debt is used to enable these resources and supply chain. Think about a large company getting loans to implement these technology. Loan is a promise of future return (i.e. pulling in demand from future). Without that loan, that company cannot implement that technology which means the harder to get oil cannot be extracted in the first place.
If I look at this from this perspective, then we are already way past the tipping point and we are only being “kept alive” by loans debts.
I agree that what I am saying is too technical for most people, including the folks who write academic papers.
And yes indeed, we are only keeping the system operating by adding ever more debt.
We are basically still surfing on the net energy wave of earlier decades. Just think of all the energy that has been sunk into infrastructure and technology that we now are reaping the benefits from, vehicle development, internet/communication, and all the utilities/infrastructure (e.g. power plants, sewage, clean water) that has given us the basic platform to develop civilization further. We can’t build all that stuff over again. The wave will soon crash in to the beach and fizzle out.
On a micro level this means: surf while the surfing is good!
That’s a brilliant point, and most interestingly it’s possible to visualize it as pretty dynamic bunch of inter-dependencies. For instance some parts of infrastructure tend to age slower and or in moderate speed, while depending on different level of (un)necessary upkeep, other parts not so much being fragile and service hungry.
I guess this strange animal is going to produce some very odd and unpredictable wobbling behavior when reaching closer to all these thresholds..
We seem to be inside the early stage of applying patches and tweaks, which still have delaying/stalling/averting effect. In further stages the scenery must profoundly change into more signs of disorderly status.
But in the parts of the world I know about the lack of consistent and coherent planning is unspeakable. Without even fairly decent planning, a system must fail.
It isn’t that hard to understand. If John needs to drink 1 lt of water at home everyday, and needs to drink another 1 lt to fetch 1 lt of water from a well 20 kms away, and has 5 lts of water stored at home, when will he run out of water?
What if he spills some? What if some evaporates? What if the water becomes contaminated? What if he uses some to do things other than drink? Sustaining an EROEI of 1:1 assumes 100% efficiency. Which is impossible. And a large system like our electric supply grid losses a lot from the coal mines to the electrical outlet. EROEI of 1:1 would never work in the real world.
It is interesting how people tout the efficiency of an electric car ignoring all the losses of transporting and mining coal and natural gas, the turbine steam losses, the power-line losses, the transformer losses, the charging losses, the battery losses, the frictional losses and the aerodynamic losses. It this is as good as efficiency gets, EROEI will have to be a lot more than 1:1. I think Gail’s 10:1 is a very good starting point.
“Oil will continue to be pumped out even if it takes more than one barrel to get one barrel out of the ground. How? Debt. Cheap debt to be precise. ” – I don’t agree with this
Your first statement is ludicrous. We are barely treading water right now with hugely positive EROEI. Second, It is cheap energy that allows debt to exist and be paid back with interest and create growth. We borrow with the promise of future energy surplus.
Are Automakers Overestimating EV Demand?
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Are-Automakers-Overestimating-EV-Demand.html
I live in Michigan and they just had the Detroit auto show recently..And I saw on the news there was some electric car that stalled out a few miles from the convention..And they had to tow into the show..And then it ended winning an award later..Not kidding..This is how doe eyed people are about electric cars..
The reason they are doe-eyed about EV cars is because it makes them feel better as if they are actually transistioning from FF to clean energy. They are not and if it weren’t for Gov’t subsidizes around the world the EV cars would be out of business. When General Motors first introduced the Chevy Volt which is really a Chevy Cruze. GM was trying to sell them for $40K and that was after a government rebate of $7,500 and even though the price came down to $34,500 not including a government rebate people still weren’t buying them.
But EV’s are cool today because of Musk and Musk would be out of business if not for HUGE government subsidizes and gullible investors.
https://imgur.com/a/CXuuIj1
It’s likely however that the price point on EV’s will come down over time. Maybe cheaper ways to make batteries, or just more units made, with new infrastructure to build them having been paid down. We plan to get one when we have to replace of our ICE’s for local driving, but only if the price drops a lot. We also want to get solar to assist in charging.
Please leave the solar off the grid, however. It is detrimental to the electric grid.
Getting along with only one car would be even more beneficial to the system, I expect.
If jobs disappear, you won’t need two cars, because you won’t be driving to work. Without a job, you won’t be able to pay for much of anything, whether it is gasoline or electricity. You will be lucky to be able to find and pay for food.
At least solar has a use….as lyrics in a Melody…
Hard to believe it’s been a quarter century since Kurt Cobain committed suicide with a shotgun.
Boy, time does go by quickly…like sand in an hourglass
No Apologies
In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
Married
Buried
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aWmkuH1k7uA
Cobain’s ripped jeans and plaid shirts would make their way to runways, selling for hundreds of dollars. But Cobain was poor until the last few years of his life and bought his clothes at thrift shops and garage sales. “If you Google ‘grunge’ on the Nordstrom website, you’ll find (dozens of) clothing items,” Cross says. “That they’re high-end items is ironic, because he dressed like that out of economy
Ironically,
The brand of Kurt Cobain—his estate was recently valued at $450 million—is clearly big business, and could grow as Nirvana is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Hmm, value is in the eye of the beholder 🤑
Might be more beneficial to the system but if my truck needs repair, we use her car to drive me back from the shop (which is 20 miles away) after dropping it off, and again to go pick up the truck, and the same drill for the car. Also, if she’s going somewhere and I’m going somewhere else on the same day, then two vehicles works again. Our work is out of the home via online businesses, so we may have less or more work but there is no one to lay us off. Of course the businesses could fail, but for now we’ve got lots of work. In fact, we just got two big contracts that will last through the year.
I’ve never had solar before, but we will definitely not have enough solar year round to cover all needs, so we’ll still be hooked up to the grid. But with PG&E in CA filing for bankruptcy protection, I figure they’ll come out of that swinging for much higher rates. I want to be ready to have an alternative to reduce those bills especially in Summer when we use AC a lot.
California needs to put in place very high flat charges for any use of the grid at all. This is the only way to avoid this kind of silliness. Most of electricity costs are fixed. It is insanity to give much of a credit for solar generated electricity. In fact, perhaps there should be a charge for taking it.
Have you considered maintaining an ICE vehicle as your primary mode of transportation, and looking into smaller EVs (e-bikes, golf carts, ATVs, etc.) for local use?
I’d like to have an EV with a non-grid tied charging solution, but not as my primary / long-distance mode of transportation…
http://www.daymak.com/boomerbuggy/images/BB6-2.jpg
Woohoo! 🙂
Even better… the “Pickman”
The trouble is just about everywhere to go is by highway, so too small doesn’t work.
Again, my comment was that you maintain an ICE vehicle as your primary mode of transportation, and go with an EV for local / short haul use.
If where you live is only (major) highways, that sounds like a terrible place to live 🙁
Smaller and slower scooters and golf cart sized vehicles are universally hated in USA. They hinder rat-race speeds on the roads and make ‘the community’ look poor.
The Tesla (at least) looks more appealing than a truly affordable and practical EV. The blue golf-cart would be seen as a huge step backwards by most people. We are collectively spoiled by the energy density and utility of fossil fuels.
Firstly if you are referring to that recent freezing wave in the Lakes/Michigan area, you have to firstly acknowledge that most legacy internal combustion engine cars are reaching their technical spec limitations around or even way bellow this very temp envelope of -30/40C ..
In contrast most of the EVs which have been on the market for some time already, i.e. several years, models going through revisions, updates, facelifts and what have you, can endure such weather and statistically tend to leapfrog legacy ICE cars in these very conditions, thanks to less moving parts and unheated fluid lines. Another question is the public (fast) charging infrastructure reliability in general and in such weather, and again some brands perform better than others. And mind you many people don’t use it (rely on) it at all.
Nordic countries tested this stuff for almost a decade in wide range: urban, suburban, country side “wilderness” so by now it’s know what works dependably and what works with occasional issues, and what on the other end of the spectrum is sliding towards seriously unreliable.
In terms of what Gail envisions as the incoming great depression, deflationary collapse, world where you don’t have to worry about driving, commuting anymore, because you are starved of food and vanishing gov/JITs services, well ok, but we have to assign some probabilities and timeliness first.
And there is very good probability even such outcome would have its well recognizable “phase in” period-stage likely of bumpy profile, which is going to be very different across many diverse regions and societies. Ultimately destined to failure, but in the mid near-term strategies for attempted autarky and or limited int trade would continue on some level, that’s old human and gov urge.
So having one EV in the family, which is good for ~10-15yrs (and way to charge it offgrid) is sound decision for certain segments of society, which can afford such buffers in the first place.. And if you are out of this league, well, cargo ebikes and various utility slow speed solutions exist anyway. Obviously, there will be always people down the ladder not even able to reach such limited leverage, so they have to turn fully into old biophysical solutions (dial back centuries) instead.
“In terms of what Gail envisions as the incoming great depression, deflationary collapse, world where you don’t have to worry about driving, commuting anymore, because you are starved of food and vanishing gov/JITs services…”
When I look at it in that light, I tend to think to myself which vehicle will I most likely be able to fix myself and get spare parts for. I’m not a grease monkey / gear-head by any extent of the imagination, but I have a friend who is a mechanical engineer; when talking with him about the subject, it sounded as if he was of the mind that an EV might be easier to maintain / repair than an ICE-powered vehicle.
But I think there was one major caveat – the lithium battery. If that goes, it might be too difficult to repair and even harder to replace (even if you have the manufacturing infrastructure in place, that doesn’t mean you have the rare earth minerals laying around to process into a battery). It’s also one of the most expensive components of an EV, so if it does crap out, a large portion of the cost you incurred for your EV was just lost (versus an ICE-powered vehicle, which still can have major failures, but those failures do not usually constitute such a high percentage of the total vehicle to replace).
It really does feel like an apples to oranges comparison when looking at ICE vehicles vs EVs. If anyone has any information / insight that expands on any of the ideas raised here (i.e. reliability during times of compromised production / distribution chains) and could share them, I’d appreciate it!
the ultimate problem in making anything move must always be fuel
(just where does Mad Max get his petrol??)
i was reading a book the other day, on UKs first major roadbuilding program in the 1820s.
those improvements improved the typical max speed, here to London, 155 miles in 14 hours by coach. Previously it took days or a week on a road last repaired by the Romans.
And that included 15 changes of horses!!. Requiring 60 horses plus spares. so probably 80 altogether at least. So you see the complexity of moving stuff as opposed to staying put.
I do the same journey in 3 hours
If you move from horse coaches to IC or EVs, you run into the problem of heat and weight. “Repairs” invariably need heat input—if not from yourself, then inputted into the ‘repair-spare’ object by a third party.
there is no meaningful way round that
then move on to the killer equation
what would be the purpose of your journey? Travel has two purposes, leisure or sustenance. If neither of those fit the journey-purpose, then you won’t travel anywhere. Which is why our forebears rarely left their immediate environment. (no point). I’m not sure that my grandfather ever saw the sea, and it’s only 60 miles away. It just wasn’t worth the effort/expense in terms of his weekly wage.
This is part of the cloudy vision of our future, that if we keep on the move, we’ll be OK. Hence the nonsense of IC cars being replaced by EVs. A Musk-myth. A smokescreen laid by those who want to tell us all will be well if we keep moving
I try to point out, overall, that wealth has allowed us to have unlimited wheels
wheels do not–repeat not—allow us to have unlimited wealth (or even a semblance of it) But at least our cars will keep chickens safe from foxes.
This is a photo I took of some men repairing a road in India. The road blocks were the two green branches. I couldn’t see that the men had any asphalt or similar material to put in the hole. Perhaps someone would come by later and do that. Or, just as likely, the hole would be filled with dirt.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/men-repairing-road.jpg
The basic precaution is to choose the platform with high(est) production run, so in the future parts can be “easily” cannibalized from crashed specimen etc.., more over, better collecting these parts as you go.. In the same vein the batt pack can be rejuvenated to some degree, throwing out – replacing the worst cells. But even this is probably not going to be necessary in many cases as the industry is moving from converted “compliance” carz into serious mass production, incl. one block of coherent pack with climate control for these batts etc. so they stay evenly used, no longer haphazardly arranged in badly temp protected cases as in the early EV product version.
Again, it depends on many factors, people without tempered garage can’t expect reliability out of carz beyond ~5-7yrs anyway, not mentioning the upper boundary of 15-20yrs* of trouble free function. Similarly for hot, cold, moisture extreme climates etc.
Also with regard to what Gail & Norman mentioned, potholes, natural and intentional blockades, snow and river floods is the way of the future, and for that somewhat decent ground clearance is needed, hence not yet the arena for TSLA and many others focused on smooth highway sailing only so far..but that’s changing into early 2020s as well.
And obviously at some point there is no or little point to travel in this fashion anyway, but this stage is at least decade or two away for most IC areas..
—
* first gen lithium consumer batts from late90s-early2000s still works today if done properly and not abused.. the current generation will simply last ~15-20yrs fine with smaller degradation
Everything has drawbacks. It is just the way it is. Question is do EV’s offer the average car buyer enough advantages for them to become mainstream?
Well the advantages, average buyer needs are all relative.
Yes, it’s always about these trade offs. For example you can have today nice ebike with “zero” maintenance (beyond charging) for several years but the purchasing price is likely 3-4x higher vs standard mass produced edition with lots of daily/weekly annoying (lowtech) maintenance schedule. Similarly for other stuff.. That’s how physics and entropy rolls..
In terms of EVs, they are evidently mature today for say ~80% tasks in the passenger segment. And the above applies, yes you can have easily on some markets new econobox car for less than $9k but the price for your personal gasoline station would be way above that. In the same vein, sub $40k EVs are reality and the companion offgrid charging scheme also exist. Are the manufs interested in volume production of sub $20k EVs ?, not yet, firstly they have to seriously transform the $25-35k category and that’s ongoing before 2025, apart from the upper higher margins segment obviously where they pump up the PR and lure the first adopters/guinea pigs. The industry has not moved into low millions of copies produced per year for any given brand or top model yet.
The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 trailer calls on America to ‘wake up’
The first trailer for The Handmaid’s Tale season three, released during the Super Bowl, urged America to “wake up”. Starting as a recreation of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning In America” campaign advertisement, the trailer soon takes a dark twist.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-handmaids-tale-season-3-trailer-super-bowl-america-elisabeth-moss-margaret-atwood-a8761831.html
That ending, with that giant cross gave me the shivers..
Christianity and repression go hand in hand.
Quite scary—- I agree.
and very off topic for this blog…
but can anyone think of another worldwide religion that is horriffically patriarchal and severely represses the women and girls?
anyone?
and isn’t this religion a reality right now, and not just a fictional TV series?
so what’s the name of that religion?
I think I know, but maybe someone can confirm this…
anyone?
When there isn’t enough to go around, there has to be some way of allocating what is available. One way is fighting over what is available; that doesn’t work for long. Another way is for a (self-organized) religion to find a way to allocate goods and resources in a way that citizens living under the system find somewhat equitable, that they can live with. Looking from outside, it looks like the religion is terribly inequitable. But it is really dealing with a situation of inadequate resources in a way that more or less works.
We live in a time with so many resources that it is almost possible to give women equal rights; we can talk about many “rights” that everyone should have. In a world of limited resources, these things aren’t really possible. If we are losing huge amounts of resources, the liberal values that everyone thinks are so perfect will have to go by the wayside. Women will have to go back to raising children, and not a whole lot else. Men will call the shots. That is just the way it is. Religion is a way of explaining and organizing what is available.
Our current religion of “He who dies with the most toys wins” is absurd in my view. TPTB are telling people a lie. They would like everyone to think that TPTB are in charge; prosperity will last forever, and all religions, other than the temporary one they espouse, is wrong.
well said…
A world in which women’s lesser upper body strength relegates them to the kitchen might be a world where planning and order have subsided too far for it to manage nuclear waste. If this is so, we can’t afford that kind of world. Just like we wouldn’t seem to be able to feed most people in a world free of some industrial capacity. Apart from less upper body strength, why would women need to be baby mills again?
Quaker
“… calls on America to ‘wake up’”…
America is “waking up”… but it seems to be quite unrelated to this fiction…
America is waking up to:
renewables are better than FF!
EVs good and ICEVs bad!
(democratic) socialism will make the country better!
to be clear: it doesn’t mean there’s any truth to the things that people are “waking up” to…
Not to draw a comparison but one of Hitler’s favourite rallying cries was, “Deutschland Erwache!” Which translates as, “Germany, wake up!”
The phrase was taken from the rather apocalyptic ‘Storm Song’ by Nazi poet, Dietrich Eckart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmlied
“The challenge today, said Louis Gave at Gavekal Research, “is that part of the massive growth we’ve seen in the U.S. corporate bond market has really taken place in the BBB space. And so, if you start seeing an economic downturn (and the usual type of downgrades that occur in a downturn), then all of a sudden you have investment grade that becomes non-investment grade.”
“Gave worries this could send shock waves through the financial markets since U.S. corporate debt is widely held by pension funds, investment banks, and large institutions all around the globe.
“There are real questions about all the energy debt that’s being issued by a lot of negative cash flow companies in the energy space,” he said, which also leads to questions about industrial, auto and real estate debt.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4237687-size-corporate-debt-one-rung-junk-never-greater-warns-louis-gave
“It is also worth noting that with the continued growth in U.S. shale production, an increasing percentage of the new wells drilled are being consumed to offset the steep decline from the existing production base,” Kibsgaard told shareholders and analysts on Schlumberger’s earnings call.
““The third party analysis shows that in 2018, this number was 54% of total CapEx and is expected to increase to 75% in 2021, clearly demonstrating the unavoidable treadmill effect of shale oil production.”
https://community.oilprice.com/topic/4830-hamsters-on-the-us-shale-oil-hamster-wheel-of-debt-are-running-faster-to-get-less-production/
General Electric is now rated BBB+, so on the chart shown (including all BBBs together), it is in the investment category that is close to becoming non-investment grade.
Rodster’s yellow vests are spreading:
“Demonstrators in yellow vests are taking to the streets of Argentina in growing numbers, banging pots and pans in a distinctively South American brand of the French protest movement. Tens of thousands of Argentines have taken part in marches over the past month alone, sparked by rising discontent with the government over its handling of an economic crisis.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/frances-yellow-vest-movement-spread-argentina-anger-grows-economic-crisis-010018311.html
Lots of turbulence still in the emerging markets:
“Turkish inflation rate inched up in January as skyrocketing food prices offset the impact from tax breaks on utilities and key goods. Consumer prices rose 20.4 percent in January from a year earlier, compared with an increase of 20.3 percent in December, Turkstat said on Monday.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/turkey-inflation-edges-up-as-food-price-gains-reach-record-high
Turkey is another country with huge problems recently.
Argentina has problems as bad as France, or worse, I am afraid.
“Last week’s data showing a drop in Italian GDP in Q4 of last year confirmed what many observers had already suspected: Italy is in recession. Or rather, in another recession, for this follows similar phases in 2008, 2011 and 2012.
“Where is this going to end?” [in a sovereign default or an exit from the Euro, says The Telegraph]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/03/crisis-brewing-italy-will-lead-default-exit-euro/
“French President Emmanuel Macron is likely to call a referendum in May as part of his response to the Yellow Jacket protests, Le Journal du Dimanche reported.
“The referendum would be intended to wrap up the “great debate” that Macron initiated after the protests shocked his presidency and forced him to make numerous concessions, including increasing the minimum wage and tax cuts.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-referendum-yellow-jacket-protests/
“[UK] Millennials who entered the job market during the financial crisis are still suffering “scarring” effects on their earnings as they enter their mid-30s, making it even harder for them to cope with the economic pressures of having a family, a leading thinktank has warned. Their pay has suffered by far the biggest squeeze of any age group since the 2008 crash…”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/03/millennials-pay-still-stunted-by-financial-crash-resolution-foundation
“Greece’s decade-long economic crisis has taken a heavy toll: Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost, incomes were slashed and taxes were raised. Hopes for the future were dashed.
“For Anna, 68, the crisis had particularly devastating consequences. Her husband, a retired bus driver, killed himself in a park two years ago at age 66 after a series of pension cuts deepened his despair.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/europe/greece-economy-mental-health.html
I can’t imagine that the pension for the widow of the fellow who killed himself was very high either. Not enough affordable goods and services to go around for all citizens.
it’s that ‘surplus’ problem again
whatever your income, only surpluses can buy you ‘extras’—whether that’s a private jet or a basic pension, the fundamental economics are the same
“Great Debate”
Uh, would that be the one where Macron goes from town to town to meet with hand-picked yesmen, while the police fine/arrest anyone with a yellow vest nearby and basically keep any “average” person out of the vicinity?
I think it’s also the one that he suggested wouldn’t have any impact on what his government had already enacted since his election. So I guess it’s a “Great Debate” about how nothing will change, and a big “f*ck you” to everyone in France 😐
Although I did read something about a “Red Scarf” movement of people (who support Macron) protesting against the yellow vests. I had to message my ex in Bangkok about that one, as they’ve have their Yellow Shirt / Red Shirt issues (i.e. class warfare) for some time now, to the point that the military had to step in and take away their democracy. Apparently they’ll finally get their right to vote back this year, however…
“Forget about China’s so-called “debt trap diplomacy” – it’s a mere mousetrap compared to the jaws of two more vicious traps that are waiting to close on the global economy. One is the generalised (public and private sector) debt trap and the other is the more insidious “QE (quantitative easing) trap”…
“The debt and QE “traps” are intimately connected. Waves of quantitative monetary easing in the US, Japan and Europe may have saved the world from systemic financial collapse and economic depression after 2008, but the historically low interest rates they engendered has led to universal over-borrowing.
“There was no master plan to deal with this problem. Policymakers were too panicked as US and other mega banks lurched on the brink of collapse and the engines of the global economy began to flame out. They flew on a “wing and prayer”, hoping that growth,or even inflation, would somehow take care of things.
“It hasn’t and now the lack of an exit strategy from unconventional monetary policy or monetary excess is catching up with the world. The Fed has tried exiting by stealth but has been forced to back track as Wall Street slumped, while Japan is so far sunk in QE as to have no obvious way out.
“Meanwhile, the vice is tightening.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2184746/worlds-mounting-debt-crisis-must-solved-it-blows-our-face
“The global credit impulse is falling again, mainly in developed-market economies and due largely to the normalisation of monetary policy.
“The message from the slower credit impulse is that growth and domestic demand are headed for a slowdown, unless the world’s largest economies launch a massive co-ordinated intervention in 2019.”
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/621090/Global-credit-impulse-is-falling-again-on-policy-n
The author points out that the use of QE can cause asset price bubbles, but he misses the fact that QE can simultaneously cause commodity price bubbles. We really need the commodity price bubbles for BAU to go forward.
Hmm, things are changing.
Writing for The Nation in late 2017, Nicolás Medina Mora and Rebecca Zweig reported on a revival of socialist politics in Iowa which organizers pinpointed as a response to a Republican Party that has proved it does not care about the concerns of working class people and a Democratic Party that has tried to play both sides of the fence with an ineffective “centrism” that also has done little to convince Iowans it takes seriously their needs.
“Centrist politics aren’t going to get us out of this mess,” Cathy Glasson, a labor organizer who was running in the Democratic primary that year, explained to Mora and Zweig. “Iowans are working hard and not feeling it in their pocketbook. They aren’t just Democrats, they’re Republicans too. We have career politicians in Des Moines who try to fix issues with half measures, and it’s not working.”
I have Medicare, from a patient’s viewpoint it is excellent insurance, Mayo in Rochester accepts it and combined with a good supplemental policy healthcare costs are reasonable in price and excellence in service. I would vote for it.
Obamacare or what is left of it(never had it, no personal experience) seems to be extremely expensive with the patient’s part paid by after tax dollars which makes one wonder if that was a goal of the plan, move more tax revenues to the Federal Government.
Dennis L.
I think the big problem with any kind of healthcare in the US is that the costs are absurd relative to benefits. This issue is fundamental.
One of the issues is that if you want to keep people in the US well, you need to change what they eat and how much exercise. Adding ever-more Alexas to do tasks for people is no help at all.
Another issue is that specialization in healthcare has gotten to an absurd level. Just traveling around to find all these specialists is a headache. Each of these specialists would like to do as much surgery and prescribe as many pills as possible. If something “might” help, physicians are eager to try it.
If an organization owns a CAT Scan machine or an MRI, the organization would like to use it as many times as possible, so as to be able to pay off its big cost. So every possible problems has expensive images taken.
There is really no way that people can pay the absurd cost of healthcare today in the US. Its cost has to be scaled way back, one way or another. Requiring citizens to buy something that is done in a horribly inefficient, overpriced manner is crazy.
I agree, Gail. It’s a system in my opinion to make doctors and investors in hospitals wealthy, not to provide healthcare. There was a time when being a dr. was a calling, something someone did because they wanted to help people. Now they want huge mansions in at least two states for winter and summer and they don’t give a hoot about people. “Here’s a prescription, goodbye.”
My father (who is no longer alive) was a doctor back in the “good old days.” He sometimes delivered babies in homes and got paid with animals the family had shot.
He would tell about doing diagnoses back in the day before there was a high-priced test for everything and a doctor (often at great distance) for every possible subspecialty. Doctors were trained to look for physical signs in patients and to ask questions of patients. They learned to look for common easily treatable conditions first. In his older years, my father would get unhappy when doctors would order tests to determine things that he thought should be perfectly obvious from observation.
In the early years, he did talk a lot about unnecessary surgery. Unnecessary hysterectomies and unnecessary appendectomies, in order to pad the bank accounts of doctors (and provide birth control and prevent the tiniest chance that a pelvic pain was appendicitis), were his pet peeves. Another pet peeve was doctors who never opened a medical journal after they got licensed.
Gail your opinions are sound about the american healthcare racket. I know . I am a retired doctor and thankfully got out just as it was really getting corrupt 2 decades ago. If you are new doctor with debt you stay away from the lower paid specialties like peds or FP. or int medicine. You go into surgical specialties or sub specialties which pay enormous salaries like orthopedics, which happens to be an exceptionally easy specialty to perform as the procedures are cookbook. Procedures pay. Office visits dont. As a consequence they are the hardest residencies to break into. When I graduated the dummies like the guards on the football team went into ortho because they couldn’t get into ophthalmology. Now the top of the classes head to ortho even if their hand eye coordination is marginal. It’s an overpriced scam like orthodontics where the provider gets to charge whatever he wants and the guild system keeps a lid on new participants. The insurance companies are of course rubber stamping participants ditto medical equipment makers and pharma.The whole situation sickens me. I would like to split the countryif I can talk my wife into going. When I voiced these opinions many years ago at a staff meeting attended by administration(also complicit!), you could have heard a pin drop.
The healthcare system is really terribly inefficient. One of my friends here in Slovakia, although a biologist himself, suffered problems that doctors and he himself could not identify. They wanted to send him to the psychiatrist in the end. The procedures, he had underwent included even stopping the heart and restarting it.
One day I invited him for a trip and we stopped at a restaurant where I ordered two pizzas for us. It made him sick and he realized, that it must by some kind of food intolerance. The food intolerance tests which should have been done by the doctors, were neglected and were made only after this event. The simple pizza-test correctly indicated that he is intolerant to gluten.
The point is that we live in the era of the quick decisions without serious considerations. The solutions must be quick, as maximum amount of work for minimum time is considered as somthing normal. But this is not normal, this is a pre-collapse state…
The US is the only fist world country without socialized medicine, and pays twice as much as anyone else, but is rated in the 30’s between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Of course, they pay only 1/5 as much.
I agree. The situation is absolutely absurd. I became interested in this issue years ago. I started reading a large number of books by doctors, pointing out how care could be different. I changed my diet back in the early 1990s when a doctor thought I was at risk for Type 2 diabetes. I don’t seem to have any signs of diabetes to this day.
Retired physician here. Kind of like what Pelosi says, only you have to try to use your insurance to see what’s in it. Surprise, surprise. You may find that a government-run system is a nightmare if you really have to use it. Ask a VA patient. If you as a civilian go into an urgent care for a persistent cough, you get an x-ray, and they notice a spot on your lung. Do you get a reasonably timely appointment with a thoracic surgeon or pulmonologist? Maybe- if you are under 65, have commercial insurance and have a spare $5-10,000 to pay your deductible. If you are 65 or older? Maybe not. You may be therefore be put on the wait list when your wallet biopsy (insurance profile) is performed. Medicare rates are low and government controlled. You are in the cheap seats.
Obamacare is about wealth redistribution as part the allure of “benefits for votes” package come election time. Illegal immigrants must really love it.
Doctors will absolutely overprescribe and overtest if they own the MRI’s, labs etc., just as universities will increase tuitions if the government subsidizes them. Problem is the government has encouraged students to get loans which aggravates the problem even more. Lots of private insurers make physicians jump through an increasing number of hoops if they want to order a test, or heaven forbid, schedule a surgery. The system really gets bogged down. As a former orthopedic surgeon I used to say if there are 100 patients who need total joint replacement and I am the only orthopedist, then maybe 50 of them will get the surgery. If there are three orthopods in town, then 150 patients get total joints. So there may be some benefits to the so-called physician shortage. Paying physicians the same across all geographic areas may cause a redistribution. Why should I be able to charge more because I want to practice in posh, expensive Alexandria, Virginia where i can be compensated for a high cost area instead of where I may be needed in Clinton, North Carolina?
Sometimes it is more profitable to run patients through a Medicaid or Medicare mill. The excess costs in Medicare care are coming from all angles. In my book, My Medical Legal Back Pages, I hit on the issue that Gail has about the affordability of the middle class to pay insurance premiums (not just gas) under this Obamacare as their employers gradually try to unload the costs of medical insurance, mostly through decreased hours or employees to get under the 29 hr/50 employee limit for now, and how this will impact on the hospitals who by law have to provide emergency room service for those who do not have insurance or a family doctor when they show up at the emergency room, even for trivial things. Who will succumb first? Insurance companies when employers and purchasers can no longer afford the premiums, or the hospitals who will be forced to take on more indigent people? It is a mess and I do not know the answer.
It is a very complex problem also complicated by fear of malpractice suits which contributes to overtesting and increased costs. Also, a sense of entitlement- “we people are entitled to the best health care with the latest and greatest (most expensive) technology, we should get it immediately on demand, we shouldn’t have to pay for it, and one more thing, if the doctor makes a mistake, we want to be able to sue him for everything he’s got, (trust me. I have been sued- more than I dare to admit.) and whether or not we are 100 lbs overweight, smoke, don’t get any exercise, have poor dietary habits, and drink to excess is irrelevant. We deserve the best! The blame goes all around.
I can’t speak as a medical provider, as a medicare patient I can say they do a good job of holding costs down and to date there have been few expenses at Mayo that were not covered other than Executive Health which is a privilege. For an out of pocket fee which is reasonable each year you get about an hour of a provider’s time plus any tests necessary.
I am aware of the mill issues in medicaid, I was a medicaid provider my last fifteen years of practice which was a fluke as I had retired. I was a fluke, we kept good records and did well for the patients, well for the state which paid the bills and well for the staff with good salaries. Why, I was one of those people who was very productive, Price’s law in action. The people who worked with me were incredible, we were all older, the systems worked and we had good metrics for patient care. As a provider there were no financial pressures to pad fees, there was a need; the problem was the better job we did the less there was to do with each visit.
The last paragraph rings true, there are patients who game the system, it is disheartening. We are humans, it is an imperfect world, the trick is to find a niche and see the beauty and maybe ignore some of the rest. I remain an optimist.
It can be done, but it is a challenge.
I miss FE, wonder where he went, maybe too intense. Asimov in Foundations Edge had Seldon essentially collapsing in place which is my plan. We survive as a group, we survive by being useful, we survive by not standing out; living by one’s self in a remote location seems to be very challenging to say the least.
Dennis L.
I miss FE, wonder where he went?
Devastating flooding in northeast Australia has forced thousands of people from their homes and brought snakes and crocodiles onto the streets as authorities warn of strong winds and more rain on the way
Much of the city of Townsville in Queensland state is flooded, with residents left without power and some compelled to seek safety on the roofs of their homes, according to CNN affiliate 7 News.
Intense rain on Sunday forced authorities to open the floodgates on the Ross River Dam to relieve pressure, releasing around 1,900 cubic meters of water per second downriver
Dangerous and high-velocity flows will occur in the Ross River Sunday night into Monday. Unprecedented areas of flooding will occur in Townsville. Expect access routes to be cut,” the Queensland Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement.
On Saturday, as the flooding rapidly worsened, police in parts of Queensland were going door-to-door to warn residents to leave their homes.
“It’s basically not just a one in 20-year event, it’s a one in 100-year event,” state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Saturday, according to CNN affiliate 9 News.
Hope a croc didn’t meet up with him….poor croc if he did….
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/australia/townsville-queensland-flooding-intl/index.html
Al Gore was right…listen to the SCIENCE
Oh, give it a rest and give us a break, pleeeeeze!
State of the Climate: 10 years after Al Gore declared a ‘planetary emergency’ – top 10 reasons Gore was wrong
By Anthony Watts
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/25/state-of-the-climate-10-years-after-al-gore-declared-a-planetary-emergency-top-10-reasons-gore-was-wrong/
https://4k4oijnpiu3l4c3h-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/polarbear_billboard.jpg
Well, not to sound like a leftist, but many of these problems come from turning every sector of human activity into a business built solely to maximize profits. And on top of that you have cartelization enabled by Obamacare and even previous laws/requirements for medical insurance, further distorting the incentives to make healthcare efficient since the costs are stuck onto the “insurance” (which is a total misnomer since you know you’ll need it) which redistributes the costs instead of letting the costs be limited by affordability.
And the same thing applies for turning universities and academic research into a business for profit. You get things like Coke/Pepsi/Nabisco/General Mills funding research that says sugar isn’t harmful and that we all need a crap load of carbs despite it being utter pseudoscience, which destroys the general health and makes people into obese food addicts as their hormone system gets totally messed up. And on top of that it increases profits across industries to the medical industry.
Exactly.
Bingo!
We have a winner.
Besides having a father who was a physician over a very long period (about 1948 on), I also worked in medical malpractice insurance.
The issue that we encountered was that there were a huge number of adverse outcomes related to medical procedures. Often the patient ended up worse off than if he had never had the procedure. Quite a few patients, especially elderly patients, ended up dead. Some of these adverse outcomes were caused by negligence. Others were caused by overuse of a procedure that would earn a doctor revenue, but were not really necessary. Others were just the way things work out. For example, quite a few patients, after surgery, would contract an infection in the hospital and die in the hospital. The hospital, with better procedures, could perhaps have prevented the infection, but that would be more of a peripherally related issue.
Besides doctors who are trying to make money off the system, we have attorneys who are trying to make money off the program. They get a contingent fee off of either a settlement or a jury award. The ideal person to sue is someone who works for hospital or a large group employer with high assets and high policy limits, often many millions of dollars. (Simple $1 million policy limits is too low!) At one time I heard that Kaiser uses contract physicians with $1 million policy limits to prevent this problem.
The other thing that makes a problem is the historical lack of healthcare insurance. Even now, the healthcare insurance people can afford under Obamacare often has huge deductibles, which they cannot afford. People frequently would find that all of the additional expense caused by doctor-initiated treatments is not covered by their insurance. Certainly all of the wage loss they encounter, if they are off work for a long time, is not covered. They need to sue if they are to have coverage.
I think that one of the underlying problems is the overly aggressive treatments that the US healthcare system tries to push off on people. There is a treatment for everything. Overweight is often treated by surgery, for example. Conditions which ultimately come from muscle weakness (that could be treated by physical therapy) are treated by surgery.
A second underlying problem is American’s poor diet and lack of exercise. Doctors are anxious to provide a cure for everything, rarely mentioning the problems that diet and lack of exercise cause. Young people especially eat out in restaurants a lot, where portion sizes are far too large (among other deficiencies).
A third underlying problem is American physicians overspecialization. By the time a doctor is off in some area of psychiatry or behavior health, the doctor never hears about studies showing that lack of fiber in the diet can lead to depression, for example. Each area is in a silo of its own. And patients need to sort their way through all of these silos.
When a doctor claims I have some condition, I immediately go to the internet and try to figure out what the evidence is regarding lifestyle changes and/or minimally invasive treatment options that would fix my problem. So far, this approach seems to be working. I find I can mostly stay out of doctors’ offices and out of surgical treatments.
I might also mention that I am a member of Actuaries for Sustainable Healthcare. This group advocates a vegan diet for all. This diet is further restricted by eliminating highly processed foods including oils, sugar, most flour, and most things marketed as pre-made food for vegan eaters. The emphasis is on getting the nutrients and fiber in the original food “package,” the way it grew, rather than being handed processed food packages made up by the food system. Also, the food mix is expected to have low “energy density.” In other words, it should fill a person up, without too many calories. Oils should be from nuts, seeds, avocados, etc.
I think this may go a little overboard. I would tend to advocate for an hour of outdoor exercise a day. This could include such things as walking to a train station.
If a person gets some exercise, I think that a person can probably eat a little more food than a vegan only diet would tend to provide. A small amount of animal products would seem to be OK (such as cheese, yogurt, fish, a small amount of meat in soups for flavoring). Animals tend to concentrate “up” all of the deficiencies of the environment. Therefore, a person has to be especially careful of antibiotic, pesticide, herbicide, mercury, and other problems. Also recent research seems to indicate that eating foods with oxidized cholesterol (caused by heating foods with the high temperatures of cooking) is problematic. So if a person wants to eat eggs, they should be raw eggs; milk should be raw milk. But this adds a whole new set of problems.
Exercise above all!
Veganism is principally a moral posture: that humans have no right to kill other animals, or enslave them for labour, milk or wool, and not at all to do with improving human health. It is quite simply a kind of secular religion.
Vegans merely pretend that it is healthier than a sensible mixed diet in order to bolster their case, with no proof at all; nor do they consider that in order to grow and actually harvest cereals, fruit, nuts, etc, the deaths of many other animals have to be procured in some way: eg pigeon shoots of millions in Argentina; killing of deer, wild boars and pigs, and so on.
And, theoretically, they would be against the use of draft animals to cart food to market., although most don’t think that far being urban and living in advanced economies.
And if we do not use animal skins and wool, we must use only synthetic materials which do not degrade naturally, but survive to poison the environmental -as we see in the oceans today.
Between avoiding industrially-processed trash and Veganism there is a wide range of options which are somewhat more rational and practical, perhaps delivering better health for humans (if they deserve it).
Read what the Actuaries for Sustainable Healthcare have to say. https://www.actuariesforsustainablehealthcare.org They are coming at the issue from a purely health standpoint. Their view seems to be that meat, today, is too risky to eat, given the degraded state of the environment. Also, preserving and or cooking adds to its problems.
If we look at our primate “relatives,” we find that they are vegetarian, except that they eat a little meat when it happens to be included in the packages, for example, a worm in an apple, or flies that are on fruit. Perhaps we are more similar to these relatives than we would like to think.
These are links to a couple of recent presentations given to/by the group:
A Universal Actuarial Model to Improve Health and Lower Costs
Reforming Health Care Through Chronic Disease Reversal
One of the big concerns seems to be that oxidized cholesterol is a problem. If we ate our animal products raw, most of the problem would go away. This is a slide on the oxidized cholesterol risk from the second presentation.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/cholesteral-oxidation-products-in-food.png
“If we look at our primate “relatives,” we find that they are vegetarian, except that they eat a little meat when it happens to be included in the packages, for example, a worm in an apple, or flies that are on fruit. Perhaps we are more similar to these relatives than we would like to think.”
Humans and great apes have a completely different anatomy when it comes to digestion. They have a massive colon with a full cecum to ferment fiber into short chain fatty acids which are then used for energy. Humans instead have a tiny colon and only an appendix cecum, leaving us minimally able to turn much of the energy in plants to energy we can use. We also have a longer small intestine, which indicates a massive adaptive change to a diet heavy in fatty meat and fish.
This change is also what allowed humans to sustain larger brains, as the denser caloric content in the food and the reduced energy requirement for the gut combine to allow spending something like 25-30% of energy expenditure on the brain. This is called the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis if you’d like to read more.
We definitely need to cook plant food to make most of it digestible.
Part of the reason I am not willing to move back all of the way away from foods of animal origin is the fact that life expectancy studies of those who are purely vegans do not show very good outcomes. It is possible that this is because there is a selection problem; perhaps only the people who are dying of cancer take up a vegan lifestyle. It is also possible that there are real issues with a vegan lifestyle. Perhaps it doesn’t leave enough margin for when a person is sick.
The people with the longest life expectancies in the world today are Japanese women. They keep their weights down and they eat a lot of raw fish. These things may be parts of the winning combination.
Gail,
To your comments on Veganism, I remember Nicole Foss pointing out how difficult it would be to sustain oneself as a vegan in a collapsing society. I think her argument was that getting all the proteins and calories one needs would be very difficult given the breadth / volume of plant-based foods one would have to grow & process?
Thankfully I have no desire to live a vegan lifestyle, pre- or post-BAU collapse 🙂
India can feed an awfully lot of people on vegetarian (not vegan) food. India uses a lot of milk and cheese. India can also get two crops a year.
Animals are inefficient users of plant food. In fact one estimate I have heard is that it take 10 pounds of plant food to make 1 pound of animal meat. I am sure that that varies by the type of animal and the product. Making milk and cheese is more efficient than making meat for example. Chickens and tilapia seem to be fairly efficient users of plant food.
Meat is popular in cold climates, because animals can often eat plants grown on land that is unsuitable for cultivation. Also, it is available during the winter, when plant food is not.
T. Colin Campbell rings true.
It should be very hard being a vegan before farming and impossible without cooking.
And how old is the practice of farming… ?
Cooking seems to be 1 million plus years old. It seems to be what differentiates humans from other animals. See my post Supplemental Energy Puts Humans in Charge.
Farming is only a little over 10,000 years old. Wikipedia says about agriculture:
The most calorie dense tubers and root vegetables are at 800 kcal/kg. So a not too active male would have to eat at least 3 kg/day, and it needs to be cooked.
No wonder no vegan gatherers have been found:)
Actually, hunter gathers eat quite a few nuts and seeds. Also honey, but that is not exactly vegan.
This is a Scientific American blog article from 2012 called, “Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians”
It says, among other things:
and
Apparently, meat-eating is a very recent activity. The paleo diet folks got the story wrong.
Paleo philosophy is that humans were formed last 100 000 years or so, accentuated by a bottle neck event that almost extincted us.
Combine with small gut, energy hungry brain and optimal foraging strategy and you get meat, tubers, root vegetables, some fruit and nuts. Cooked.
Meat & potatoes.
But people who eat very much cooked meat tend not to live very long, because cooking oxidizes the cholesterol in the animal products. Eating meat, eggs, and milk raw is much better, from a survival standpoint, if a person can work around the bacteria issue. Perhaps if you are going to die early anyhow, it doesn’t matter whether it is hardened arteries or an accident that you die of..
“When a doctor claims I have some condition, I immediately go to the internet and try to figure out what the evidence is regarding lifestyle changes and/or minimally invasive treatment options that would fix my problem.”
This has been my approach for about a decade now as well.
Surely, the physicians are overburdened – they must provide a lot of healthcare, but everybody expects from them to use the latest knowledge, technology etc., the state authorities (not just in the healthcare area, but also tax authorities etc.) have their requirements, too. This is simply not possible. The system becomes too complex and functions on the brink of collapse. The result here in Slovakia is, that the physicians are more and more in the category of pensioners, as the young people are not able to manage this load of private physicians practice.
The main problem in my opinon is that the amount of the time for everything is constant (as you have mentioned it, too), but the system becomes increasingly complex.
Not only for humans…think of those poor veterinarians…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/suicides-among-veterinarians-has-become-a-growing-problem/2019/01/18/0f58df7a-f35b-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html
On Jan. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the first study to ever examine veterinarian mortality rates in America. The results were grim: Between 1979 and 2015, male and female veterinarians committed suicide between 2 to 3.5 times more often than the national average, respectively.
These findings not only reflect a higher suicide rate among all veterinarians but also suggest that women in the field are more likely to take their own lives, which starkly contrasts trends within the general population.
Considering the profession is becoming increasingly female-dominated (more than 60 percent of U.S. veterinarians and 80 percent of veterinary students are now female), the study’s authors suggested this trend could foreshadow even more veterinarian suicides in the years to come
Pushed to the brink by mounting debt, compassion fatigue and social media attacks from angry pet owners, veterinarians are committing suicide at rates higher than the general population, often killing themselves with drugs meant for their patients
Yes, it must be tuff to be a Vet….every time I visit one for my dog, it’s like going to see a Doctor without health insurance! I know folks that spend thousands of dollars keeping their aged cat alive….unreal
Keeping again cats alive is as useful as a lot of other things our economy provides: bridges to nowhere; apartments that no one lives in; surgery for conditions that are easily curable by lifestyle changes; keeping elderly humans alive who no longer recognize their own children.
Physicians are up near the top as well, in terms of suicide rates.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20180508/doctors-suicide-rate-highest-of-any-profession#1
This 2015 article https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-with-highest-suicide-rates/ put Medical Doctors (1.87 relativity to average rate) first; Dentists (1.67) second; Police Officers (1.54) third; and Veterinarians (1.54) fourth. Of course, the odds for Veterinarians could be rising.
All of these people have the means for killing themselves at least somewhat available.
Surveys show that over 60% of REPUBLICANS support socialist economic policies, much less Democrats. But the label tends to be toxic for GOPers so it completely depends on the framing. But ultimately we’re looking at increased polarization that will only be accelerated due to material scarcity.
A large amount of the die off to bring us back below carrying capacity will probably be civil wars across most of the globe.
Un article d’une clarté limpide. A great article
Bravo
Thanks! I am glad you found it clear.
Gail guess who is coming to your town!
Former Vice President Al Gore To Host Climate Change Training In Atlanta
https://www.wabe.org/former-vice-president-al-gore-to-host-climate-change-training-in-atlanta/?fbclid=IwAR2S115cPKv0jURJ3cUn9Om_PYABpOq0C335xn13KCddrWFpgaSNweSXg84
Just what I need! [sarc]
Yes, you may learn something about the science….sarcasm
Laugh it up and pay the price later.
Agree—
I kinda like Atlanta.
But ignorance and religion still reign.
More churches than anyplace I’ve been.
Mementos to delusion.
i think you have an intro to a country and western song there
work on it a bit
Maybe you think so. Some others (including me) don’t agree.
I managed to exit a cult, and I’m still not as bitter as Duncan. 😉
Duncan could use a little churchin’ up.
Great article Gail and thanks.
‘Socialism surging in Iowa’ gives cold feet to centrist Democrats contemplating 2020 run: report
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/socialism-surging-in-iowa-gives-cold-feet-to-centrist-democrats-contemplating-2020-run-report/
I can see this would be frightening to centrist Democrats. Maybe too many poor people in Iowa today.
I imagine that true redistributive Socialism must seem very new and exciting in the US, given the ideological repression of such ideas throughout the 20th century.
“‘When conducting the 1953 CIA coup against Mossadeq in Iran. Kermit Roosevelt paid off criminal gangs (E.g. Rashidian Brothers) in Iran to cause riots. It is very much possible that the ZioCons are enciting violence in Venezuela, especially as a former Death-Squad pioneer, Elliot Abrams, is trumpeted as US envoy to Venezuela.”
fussing over Venezuela’s oil is like Nicole Foss’s analogy of closing time at the bar and all that’s left is sucking spilled beer out of the carpet.
I am afraid you are right!
“… fussing over Venezuela’s oil…”
I also agree…
perhaps Venezuela has some conventional oil, but I thought most of their “world’s biggest oil reserves” were actually the really heavy hard-to-extract and hard-to-refine kind…
if the future of world oil prices is going to be lower and lower (I’m convinced… higher prices may show up now and then, but only briefly)…
then their oil won’t be profitable and is essentially “worthless”…
unless somehow the USA (1) gets control of their oil and (2) arranges for its production to continue even though always at a loss, like LTO (light tight oil)…
probably TPTB that want to control V oil don’t understand its economics…
or, they do, and want to make V the next ponzi.
Or perhaps the TPTB are simply putting their feet down and exercising the Monroe Doctrine to stop Russia and China from getting too much of a hold on these American resources.
Remember, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, not to mention Eastasia.
“Remember, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, not to mention Eastasia.”
Just one of Orwell’s predictions that came true. I know people tend to think Brave New World was more predictive, but Orwell got a lot right between the doctrine of constant wars justified with falsifying history and the whole “doublethink” concept. For an example, see how media and politicians call the vote for Brexit “undemocratic”.
Huxley in the past, but Orwell now for sure.
Venezuela oil is heavy and viscous and most requires thinning solvents like naptha to pump and process it. Its advantage is that heavy oils make diesel and frac oils make gasoline. Which do you think is the most important fuel driving the world economy?
Even if Venezuela was a new Ghawar of conventional oil, it wouldn’t last long if global growth rates increased again. The amount of energy we burn today vs 70 years ago (when Ghawar was discovered), is staggering. After a few doublings of consumption, growth is an impossible thing to sustain
Imagine the whole world on China level growth rates of 10%. Prosperity all across the globe! That would be a doubling of global energy consumption every 7 years. We go from say ~20million barrels per day to ~40 million barrels per day in 7 years. Everything is booming and great. But, even if the new Venezuela “Ghawar” fiield added 10 million barrels per day to today’s production, it would fall far short. So, even if we added a new Saudi Arabia we might add optimistically another 7 years of prosperity level growth rates. Then what? We double again? Where is that energy going to come from? It is an impossible predicament.
It seems like the periods between energy crisis are becoming shorter and shorter as we use more and more and need more and more to keep the charade going. The first energy shock from the dawn of the industrial age to the 1930’s was about 100 years. The second energy shock in 1970 came 40 years later. The beginning of the next big rise in energy prices started around 2001 some 30 years later. The big crash in prices in 2008 cam about 8 years later. Then another inflection point cam in 2014 6 years later with falling energy prices. So, it seems to me like we are running into energy crunches of either too high or too low price over increasingly shorter periods of time. We have been in this lull of too low oil price for about 5 years now. So, we are due for another shock.
Good points!
See, the problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of money – since hoarding it is encouraged.
1905 — Russian-born Joan Rivers/Phyllis Diller wanna-be & American writer whose work fronts her philosophy of objectivism (moralizing autocrats), Ayn Rand lives.
Rand was the ultimate relativist because she didn’t recognise any world outside the design or control of the “individual”. Subjectivism and objectivism have the same logical conclusion. Wisdom begins with reality, and mankind better start soon.
The world’s mounting debt crisis must solved before it blows up in our face
https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2184746/worlds-mounting-debt-crisis-must-solved-it-blows-our-face
How?
wish politics, wish economics and wish science
easy
Someone can easily create a model that will work. I have decided that models and myths have more in common than their first letter.
The difference is that myths pass down inherited truths encoded within that are useful for thousands of years for better understanding the world. Models tend to be falsified and thrown out in a few years.
the fed will have to offer negative interest rates
“In advanced countries public debt is at levels not seen since the second world war [and] emerging market public debt has [reached] levels last seen during the 1980s debt crisis,” the IMF said.
From your linked article, BD, we can glean an interesting analogy from that sentence, i.e. countries heavily borrowed during WWII to fight that war is financially analogous to borrowing to keep BAU going. However, after WWII there was plenty of surplus energy from oil to pay off that debt and also embark on major infrastructure projects. But now there’s a lack of surplus energy because depletion of the easy to get to, best oil and we’ve been shifting greater energy usage to more expensive non-conventional oil. So it’s like Gail writes in regards to how to fix the debt problem; “How?” A one word question that sizes up the dire situation because the surplus energy just isn’t there. In fact, it gets slimmer all the time adding to the burden, while the economy is expected to continue to expand. What a conundrum!
”the surplus energy isn’t there”
hits it squarely on the head
next problem—have you tried putting that over in general conversation with anyone? I gave up, a complete waste of time
Me too. No matter how slowly I speak and even if I spell out the individual syllables, most people just don’t get it. And I think I know the reason why.
The normal dumb bunnies whose minds have atrophied through lack of use are incapable of handing the basic concepts. And the smart intellectual types don’t want to be taught anything new by the likes of you or me.
https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-one-of-my-favorite-philosophical-tenets-is-that-people-will-agree-with-you-only-if-they-frank-zappa-32-43-49.jpg
The only person I was ever able to converse about the situation with any sort of clarity was at the University of Arizona, unveiling of a bronze bust of Noam Chomsky. One of those functions where there is wine/beer and a table of food. Noam gave a talk via an interview in the auditorium then the function was for those with VIP tickets. From Saudi Arabia he was well versed on the topic of oil and surprised I had knowledge of the topic, which I said was from websites on the internet. Anyway we both agreed the situation would at some point lead to collapse. One idea he didn’t understand was EROEI, and seemed perturbed I knew something he didn’t or who knows what he thought and walked off abruptly. But up until then it was a good conversation.
But other than that one person I’ve avoided the subject because the reaction is never good. It seems to ruffle people’s feathers, they get agitated and dismiss the idea as just another one of those ideas on the net that suggest a major problem when really everything is just fine. So I don’t talk about it with people. For one, most people have no concept of energy. I tried to explain to a group of friends one night the idea of energy, that when you move your arm it’s energy from the Sun and connected the dots, but the subject quickly changed and we were back to some kind of small talk everyone was more comfortable with. People really don’t like to be taken out of their comfort zone. Well, collapse sure is going to do that, lol.
If you don’t mind me asking, when was this? I’ve read 2 of his books and listened to a few of his speeches on youtube. He seems to have the standard greentopian view of the role of energy/fossil fuels.
seems most folks on here get the same reaction i do
a while back the conversation got round this with a relative , now retired, who ran a multi million local authoity involving trucks, plant staff and so on. So no idiot.
when i suggested that the overall problem might be energy—his reply was ”whats energy got to do with it?”
that’s when you give up
I find my dog, Sir Sancho, remarkably receptive.
Humans? Not at all.
The Queen to be evacuated in case of Brexit unrest – media
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-royals/the-queen-to-be-evacuated-in-case-of-brexit-unrest-media-idUSKCN1PS005
they will whisk her away to the safety of that island where Harry McGibbs lives…
perhaps he has a spare bedroom…
His chance, perhaps, to join the Royal bodyguard of Scottish archers – a very distinguished body! Nice hat with a feather in it, I believe. Sir Harry! Sounds good.
Seriously, the Queen is perhaps the only person who could stop unrest: a broadcast to the nation (those that can understand English that is) from the Gibbs clan’s humble peat hut with a borrowed blanket over her poor old knees would be quite moving, clutching a mug of strong Scottish tea – with a loyal corgi at her feet – would probably clinch it.
she would probably finish up burning his oatcakes
Her gold piano would look nice in my apartment!
https://imgur.com/a/a0NkSk7
yes but charging the neigbours to come in and look at it would get a disapproving look from Her Maj
My wife’s father and brother were in the Royal Guards.
Sadly, the royal corgis have all passed on, although two of the Queen’s dorgis (dachshund-corgi crossbreeds)are still alive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_corgis
“Sadly”? That same Wiki article reports that
“…in 1989, the Queen Mother’s dog, Ranger, led a pack of corgis that attacked and killed the Queen’s beloved dorgi, Chipper.” In March 1991, the Queen was bitten after trying to break up a fight between ten or so of her corgis. She had to have three stitches to her left hand. John Collins, the Queen Mother’s chauffeur, had to have a tetanus injection after he also tried to intervene. In 2003, Pharos, a tenth-generation offspring of Susan, was put down after being mauled by Princess Anne’s English bull terrier Dottie.”
I’m not sure that these people should be allowed to own dogs.
These are not those usual heated blanked dogies, instead these are mansion protection, vigilantes, always a bit of aggressiveness on purpose have to remain in such breed..
Sue Townsend wrote a comic novel in which the Royal Family are sent to live in public housing, with their evil dogs. They all get on rather well.
TEN corgis? That’s a whole herd.
The British Royals have always enjoyed a bit of roughhousing with the pets.
😀
I don’t know where calories came from it should be one more peak.
I notice that the dates you have given for when the oil price is high has decreased in length each time. Does that mean we may still get one more calories but it will only last a matter of weeks?
g’day mate…
I noticed what you also noticed… this:
“In fact, we did see very high oil prices in the 1974-1981 period, in the 2004-2008 period, and in the 2011-2013 period.”
so those periods are shrinking over time…
the future?
first, it seems likely that future peaks will be at ever lower price points, such as the 04-08 period had a higher peak than the 11-13 period… (hyperinflation could change that, but that’s a different subject)…
but “one more peak”?
it could be, but it seems more likely that there are still a few more high priced periods (and low) to come in the next decade (or two) before the world’s FF system collapses fully…
bottom line is that no matter what the oil price, the affordability of oil products will be ever decreasing for the average human…
Yep, coined by Steve Ludlum in his “triangle of doom” theory~graph of ever shortening peaks amplitude for oil price.. and you are likely correct it will at some point snap (disorderly) into some another pattern and sequence. Actually if we look at Gail’s article graph (figure2), the trend snake for historical energy production between ~1965-2013 it is pretty tight grouping after all, a lot of human policy effort went into keeping such orderly pattern for these decades, it must end, crash and burn at some threshold in the future, that’s “nature” at work.. as always..
This is a link to one of Steve’s triangles from 2014. At that point, he was pointing the triangle too high.
http://www.economic-undertow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Triangle-of-Doom-030114-copy.png
I came into conclusion that there won’t be fast collapse of global economy (unless WW3). It will take couple decades. Right now we can harvest so much net energy, that there is over billion private cars on the planet, 4 billion air travel passengers per year, 230 million TV units sold per year, 180 billion liters of beer consumed per year, etc. It isn’t magic, it’s net energy that we get from fossil fuels, and it cannot disappear in couple years. If the world economy starts to shrink, central banks will just print currency to prevent large debt defaults, and we will gradually be poorer each year, as net energy shrinks. Maybe by 1% per year, maybe by 4%, but it will take couple decades untill net energy shrinks to the point, that majority of people in developed countries cannot afford food, or are homeless.
It can disappear if the banks close, or international trading stops. It can disappear if governments are overthrown.
It can disappear if electricity is no longer available. Fossil fuel needs electricity; electricity needs fossil fuel. Even missing a small piece of the system (lubricating oil, for example) causes a problem.
I agree, and after decades of debt, inflation, and repression, a diminished society realizes it is surviving on renewables and has a tiny surplus to invest. A light glimmers in the night.
But alas what to invest in?
The renewable’s surplus is not in the form of energy dense liquid diesel that is needed to mine and move raw materials.
and, it’s difficult to store diesel. it’ll break down, becuase it is literally food for some microbes. you can periodically filter it, and add additives, which poison the microbes. best to have two large tanks, then move the contents of one into the other, empty one. you’ll need a pump and generator.
Put it between your ears, invest time in a group and relationships, be of value to those around you, help and expect nothing in return but be not a fool, with those who do not reciprocate, shun. It is still a beautiful world.
Dennis L.
Social and physical capital.
Make friends, build a resilient network or a community.
Invest in tools, experience and knowledge, and arable land
I’m starting to sound like a doomsday-prepper aren’t I?
Did you see this by BD?
“Humans are very good at propping up the unsustainable, and this often results in a fast and unexpected collapse”
-Joseph Tainter
“Humans are very good at propping up the unsustainable, and this often results in a fast and unexpected collapse”
-Joseph Tainter
What you are leaving out is that much of that consumption is fueled by debt. $1T per year by the US alone. Do a thought experiment and take $1 trillion dollars out of the economy and what do you think would happen? The entire medical biotech industry is pumped up by this debt. It is all fake money. It will disappear one day.
If I’m not mistaken Dr. Tim at Surplus estimates the entire debt (household, corp, gov, shadow..) at ~300-600% to clean GDP for most of the key IC countries.
So, this is a problem indeed, but lets not forget and I add given the craziness of this world and humanoid species with their psycho social weirdo patterns, there is no reason why it can’t be (for a while) ~3000-6000% debt levels or even 3x that much..
Who knows..
Yes they will try to reach those debt levels, but they are forced to print more and more due to the increasing amount of interest that must be paid. Either that or lower the rate….this result in a situation where “money” has less and less value, and the decreasing trust in money devastates industry and commerce. It is a decline that cannot be arrested.
name;
There are millions of cars. There are billions of people. Incredible consumption continues. But how long can this continue? At the same time, so many cars, aircraft means to be very dependent on energy. That means you need more energy every day. Actually, you don’t realize that the problem is growing day by day.Those who lived in Easter Island, maybe they thought like you. They thought there were endless natural resources on the island.
The Titanic was never thought to sink. But the ship sank in an unexpected accident. Sometimes you don’t know where and how the collapse will come. Sometimes you can’t change the result even if you know what the problem is. These problems can happen suddenly one day, like a heart attack. Yes, we know many problems but it’s not possible to stop them all.
name
when the economic debt tips adversely toward the majority, that majority will react violently
they won’t quietly become hungry and homeless and starve submissively to death.
I agree. But it can only go so far. We won’t get to the point where the majority is homeless, that is basically a total breakdown of society. But people will be living on ever less income relative to costs, getting all the miles out of that old Toyota Corolla, buying used stuff via social media, eating less/cheaper food.
No zombies or rats for dinner. Just boring, slow empoverishment. Of course it will all go down the drain at one point, but we have lots of black swans and natural disasters to go before we reach the final stage.
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AOC
Sometime ago I made a post regarding pensions, SS, etc. The important point in digital currency and entries is not that the entries represent wealth, but they represent claims to wealth. AOC is proposing to rearrange those claims from those that have(probably mainly the “mature adult” section) to those who don’t probably the younger section. If this starts with a stroke of a pen or a vote of a sufficiently large block the claims to wealth change.
The challenge is those with many claims are generally pretty clever and historically have done positive things with their wealth, do not expect perfection of saints and you will not be disappointed.
Interesting times in which we live.
Dennis L.
What is “AOC”?
I have heard of schemes in which government debt is substituted for other debt in pension plans. Or there can be rule changes regarding how funds held by pensions are invested.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A wealth tax, an increased tax on unearned income, a change in eligibility rules. Congress makes the laws, laws can be changed.
Dennis L.
Only problem is that if there is little/nothing to give away, it is still a problem. Most of this is promises that can never be fulfilled.
Gail, whether or not there is much to give away, the young have been robbed by the old, the young are moving to a majority and things will change. The millennials got a second rate education(the penmanship, grammar and inability to write complete sentences of a high-school graduate going to engineering school is appalling.), their parents give them the gift of student debt in college(I have looked at the calculus books, no comparison to Madison of the 1960’s)and second rate technical education. The young will vote via emotion, AOC is very appealing in content, appearance and presence. It is all per capita and one way or another the mature generation will not claim all their digital wealth.
In real politic, for us as individuals the goal might to scenario various outcomes and adjust our lives as possible.
You have lead the way, what you provide is a free podium for all the explore their ideas, thanks.
Dennis L.
It is sad they cant even list the countries in North America
You are welcome. We have been trying to help our children somewhat, because the outcome has seemed so unfair to us. Also, what we are collecting now is clearly unsustainable. Something has to “give.”
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BpvrGcJibO0/hqdefault.jpg
the young have been robbed by the old
That’s just another layer of divide-and-conquer politics.
A more accurate potential explanation is that the elites have been watering down the soup for the rest of the inmates.
https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20141108_FNC156.png
The top tier of the wealthy will never pay much in taxes. As my tax accountant once stated when I said we need a flat tax rate ….”Define income.”
I have not checked the facts on this page, but the numbers seem to be consistent across sources.
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2016-update/
Price’s law may be a better explanation of the inequality of income.
https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
Thoughts?
Dennis L.
Income tax is far more proportional to income than some other taxes. Social Security taxes, especially when they were capped at a low amount, were quite regressive. So are sales taxes. Sale of lottery tickets comes close to being a tax on the poor, because the wealthy know better than buy the tickets.
Well, at least the actors are still working!
“During the entire clip, these persons were presented in a manner alleging that they had just recently defected and are now calling on others to follow their step. However, therein lies the problem. The badges on their uniform say FAN – Fuerza Armada Nacionales. This is an outdated pattern, which has been dropped. Now, Venezuela’s service members have a different badge – FANB, which means Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana. So, either the “Venezuelan army defectors” somehow lost the letter B from their uniform, or the entire interview is a staged show involving former Venezuelan service members, who have been living for a long time outside the country, or in the worst case – actors.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/alv49f/cnn_fake_venezuelan_defectors/
Two unconvincing fannies, then.
Reminds me of Iraq, people being wheeled on to plead for intervention…..
Really, they are just so unimaginative in their propaganda!
But as no one reasons, just remembering the headlines, it often works.
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Tesla drivers are getting screwed by the polar vortex
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-drivers-getting-screwed-polar-180118982.html
These are vehicles for warm weather areas. The areas need to have adequate electricity supply also. Norway uses Teslas; perhaps they don’t care much about distance.
There is a guy in Norway doing hands on “consumer test” almost daily on various EVs available on the market, the charging (paid or ‘free’) infrastructure, incl. diverse weather impact, longer roadtrips vs simple short distance commuting etc., constantly cross checking all the above stuff and more with recently gained knowledge and further evaluations.
The summary is interesting so far, although EVs identified as not reliable 1:1 scale replacement to legacy internal combustion system it’s a mature technology for most of the tasks given, three reliable production centers identified: TSLA(US), VW/BMW (DE) and Kia/Hyundai (SouthKorea/DE), other vendors are severely lagging behind and probably can’t, won’t catch up near-midterm or never (FR/JAP/UK..).
Do you have a website for that testing? Sounds interesting.
Reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/user/bjornnyland/videos?disable_polymer=1
Ongoing Live Streams (and archived): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD3YwI6vR9BSHufERd4sqwQ/videos?disable_polymer=1
Thanks worldof.
Trends discussed and identified here long ago seems to be materializing today.
As the low range ballistic missile treaty has been yesterday abandoned in reaction by the Russian side as well. Moreover US ordered production of low yield nuclear (few kilotons) warheads.
So we are back in pre 1985-7 world again, but the volatility is even higher..
This is a bit offtopic link, but as keystone energy using speacie it is clear, that the collapse down the Seneca cliff will also affect the the whole planetary ecosystem. And if the mass death of indians had so huge impact, how much the declining birthrates and possible dieoff of billions of people would be felt? https://us-m.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-change-trnd/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.is.fi%2Ftiede%2Fart-2000005986711.html
According to the link:
The lower CO2 levels were the cause of the Little Ice Age, according to the researchers.
There are an awfully lot of strange coincidences that allowed things to turn our the way that they did. At least some accounts say that a large share of the Indians (98% (?)) died because illnesses that they were exposed to.
A lot of land was reforested later in the US and Europe, as both parts of the world switched increasingly to coal. I wonder how that had affected CO2 levels.
World Bank data shows that forested area has decreased every year since (at least)1990. This deforestation especially affects the poor countries of the world. For example, Indonesia was 65% forested in 1990; now its percentage is about 50%. Uganda went from 24% forested in 1990 to 10% forested in 2016. The rich countries have been able to add more forests in recent years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS
A bit ridiculous to say that one human passing a disease on has ‘killed’ another: they are merely a transmitter.
Bugs rule…..
America Is Producing the Wrong Kind of Oil
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-01/the-great-oil-paradox-too-many-good-crudes-not-enough-bad-ones
a few mentions of Venezuela… wonder why?
of course they have heavier stuff while America has not necessarily the “wrong kind” but it is lighter…
if American refiners want to blend the two, there’s this in the video accompanying the article:
“Currie Says Venezuela Needs Years for ‘Game-Changing’ Oil Output”…
America better get going on invading, excuse me, I mean “helping” Venezuela…
per the above article though, the remaining Venezuelan oil may be so costly to extract and refine that it may actually be worthless…
I don’t think Washington DC or (this time) Republicans really care about those details
‘Look how fat my wives and pigs are!’
My question is how long will the US “delay” before more overt military moves into Venezuela? Or will this even be necessary?
If there is a “glut” of oil world wide, then no urgency to move in. The oil will stay safely in the ground, sulfur and all, to be harvested at the western oil companies’ (part of the US fascist duopoly of course) whim. Better yet it may be argued, let Venezuela fall into deeper chaos . It makes the US installation of a new puppet regime easier.
In contrast, there seems to be a flurry of activity around the gold. Who’s got the gold? London? Maduro? En route to UAE? other western banks,Guiado?
Libertarians and right wingers constantly lament over the well-documented destruction caused by socialism. There is no dispute over this universal failure, but even a pure capitalist, corruption free system can be overthrown by seige warfare – denying the usual credit, financing and investment mechanisms in a country and international trade.
In other words, I can’t blame what is happening to Venezuela solely on the basis of it being socialist. Even a socialist country can survive for a while if it is blessed with enormous natural resources like gold and oil, (as was in Gaddaffi’s case- he flipped from being a dictator to actually someone who was actually raising the standards of living in his country at the end)
I wrote to a fellow physician on a physicians’ only website (www.sermo.com) a few days ago. I took her name off the top randomly from those posting from Venezuela. She answered me right back, confirming the desperate shortage of medical supplies, but refused to get into politics, which was my main interest. She had one daughter who graduated from Berkley College of Music in Boston, was trying to get her other daughter out, but unable. For now, there seems to be at least two large camps, one for Maduro and one for this guy Guiado, and it is still unclear which way the military is leaning.
There is no dispute over this universal failure, but even a pure capitalist, corruption free system can be overthrown by siege warfare – denying the usual credit, financing and investment mechanisms in a country and international trade.
A truly independent country could survive and prosper indefinitely without trade with the outside world. But there aren’t many of those these days.
Prosperity is one of those relative measures that means very different things in different times and places. In the present US the conditions seem to include owning a house, a car, a smartphone and some stocks and bonds, a good pension plan or two, and, or course, health insurance. In other times and places, a full larder and plenty of firewood would be enough to qualify.
Anyway, in the absence of independence, a country’s government needs to take into account the presence and the preferences of the global hegemon(s). Either they make a deal or some way or another they face the wrath of the powers that be.
soldiers are always on the side of whoever pays their wages—or who they think will be the best bet for their wages
The Roman emperor who told his sons; ‘Pay the army well and keep it happy, and forget everyone else!’ The MIC is certainly the king-maker in the US today.
Venezuela owes a lot of money to China, because China loaned money to Venezuela in the past, which was supposed to be paid back in oil. China is backing Maduro.
Some of what is happening may be posturing in a proxy war with China.
I suspect that is spot-on: proxy war with both China and Russia, discrediting them as protectors of their clients. Also, more pressure on Cuba?
The mid-term US aim is to destabilise Russia, hopefully breaking up the Federation, and frustrate China’s evident imperial ambitions.
xabier, imperial ambitions is not the right phrase. China needs to feed 1.3 billion this requires buy basically the whole world.
I also hear that the US is *actively* weakening Maduro through very debilitating sanctions. In some cases, they can’t get imports to repair machinery related to oil production. Although, if it’s the low price of oil that’s the main trouble, I don’t know what good more production would do.
We are setting ourselves up for a classic Malthusian trap!
https://i.imgur.com/54l09rC.gif
Would have been more frightening if the scale wasnt exponential.
“… for a classic Malthusian trap!”
we’re like Howard the Duck!
“trapped in a world he never made”…
“Venezuela’s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel”
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/venezuelas-collapse-is-a-window-into-how-the-oil-age-will-unravel-f80aadff7786?source=collection_home—1——0———————
a mostly good informative article:
“The higher costs of extraction and refining have played a key role in making Venezuela’s oil production efforts increasingly unprofitable and unsustainable.”
there it is: Venezuelan oil may be worthless!
think about that for a few minutes!
Ahmed concludes:
“It is not yet too late for the rest of the world to learn a lesson. We can either be dragged into a world after oil kicking and screaming, or we can roll up our sleeves and walk there in a manner of our own choosing. It really is up to us. Venezuela should function as a warning sign as to what can happen when we bury our heads in the (oil) sands.”
there he goes again…
he knows the basic economic condition of the world, but can’t (or isn’t willing to) grasp the idea that it’s not “our own choosing” but the decline of surplus energy that will dictate the future economy, that is: the end of IC…
the Venezuelan lesson, the “warning sign”, is that the diminishing returns of FF will eventually reach to every country…
“it really is up to us”… NOT…
good article though… worth reading…
I agree with your understanding of his article and I came to the same conclusion while reading it. However it’s a really good article to understand that the Fossil Fuel Era is well into it’s “Retirement Party”. There are no substitutes for FF.
We hear about dissipative systems, as if they are determinative in just one way for everyone everywhere, and as though they can never be nuanced or influenced by anything. The following are synonyms and antonyms for dissipative. The thesaurus take on it is that carefulness and thrift can affect dissipation.
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/dissipative
One person can be careful or thrifty. But it is hard to make the system as a whole careful or thrifty.
One person, wanting to use less energy, can quit his high-paying job and take a lesser paying job. But someone else will take the high-paying job then, instead. The person can claim disability and try to get public funds to live on, rather than taking a job at all. That mostly acts in the direction of increasing the government’s debt. If a person puts his money in the bank instead of spending it, and leaves it there (earning practically no interest), it to some extent enables lending to others. The lending to others pulls the economy ahead, encouraging more fossil fuel use.
Burn your money!
There are a handful of social movements that significantly make doing with less culturally attractive. These movements might have a religious aspect to them, enabling reduced valuing of acquisition. These movement might be large enough to make a dent in a nation’s value system. But they invariably are met with fierce competition from the consumption-orients patterns of the global mainstream. These movements might well not have the intellectual means to mount an effective challenge to the mainstream, and you can have a stalled movement. But a stalled movement isn’t the same as no movement at all.
True. People who hear, very frequently at church, that the “love of money is the root of all evil” tend to be less inclined to worry about acquiring more and more goods. These people (at least sometimes) treat other people differently. They are not as worried about everyday life.
There is to some extent a “selection process,” with those most amenable to these viewpoints joining churches. But quite a few studies say that life expectancies are longer of church goers. It may partly be that they tend to have more friends, because of their church contacts.
Also people that tend, not be materialistic generally live a life with lower stress levels which can contribute to a longer life expectancy.
I expect that that is true of many religions. Also, helping others, and passing down stories (and myths) of “what has worked” from generation to generation is helpful. If the stories can help keep the poor from robbing the rich, the rich consider that a plus.
I have to say, many of the carers dealing with my mother were African Christians, and very nice people indeed.
They are not paid much, but enjoy a much better and safer life than in Nigeria and Kenya.
A lot of workers in US homes for the elderly seem to be foreign born. Not so much Africa and not so much Mexico, however. More from the island countries, and perhaps from Eastern Europe. I am sure it varies by what kinds of jobs are available, where, for immigrants. They need to believe that there is some kind of reward for this kind of work, beyond the meager pay and poor working conditions.