One of the great misconceptions of our time is the belief that we can move away from fossil fuels if we make suitable choices on fuels. In one view, we can make the transition to a low-energy economy powered by wind, water, and solar. In other versions, we might include some other energy sources, such as biofuels or nuclear, but the story is not very different.
The problem is the same regardless of what lower bound a person chooses: our economy is way too dependent on consuming an amount of energy that grows with each added human participant in the economy. This added energy is necessary because each person needs food, transportation, housing, and clothing, all of which are dependent upon energy consumption. The economy operates under the laws of physics, and history shows disturbing outcomes if energy consumption per capita declines.
There are a number of issues:
- The impact of alternative energy sources is smaller than commonly believed.
- When countries have reduced their energy consumption per capita by significant amounts, the results have been very unsatisfactory.
- Energy consumption plays a bigger role in our lives than most of us imagine.
- It seems likely that fossil fuels will leave us before we can leave them.
- The timing of when fossil fuels will leave us seems to depend on when central banks lose their ability to stimulate the economy through lower interest rates.
- If fossil fuels leave us, the result could be the collapse of financial systems and governments.
[1] Wind, water and solar provide only a small share of energy consumption today; any transition to the use of renewables alone would have huge repercussions.
According to BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy data, wind, water and solar only accounted for 9.4% 0f total energy consumption in 2017.
Figure 1. Wind, Water and Solar as a percentage of total energy consumption, based on BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Even if we make the assumption that these types of energy consumption will continue to achieve the same percentage increases as they have achieved in the last 10 years, it will still take 20 more years for wind, water, and solar to reach 20% of total energy consumption.
Thus, even in 20 years, the world would need to reduce energy consumption by 80% in order to operate the economy on wind, water and solar alone. To get down to today’s level of energy production provided by wind, water and solar, we would need to reduce energy consumption by 90%.
[2] Venezuela’s example (Figure 1, above) illustrates that even if a country has an above average contribution of renewables, plus significant oil reserves, it can still have major problems.
One point people miss is that having a large share of renewables doesn’t necessarily mean that the lights will stay on. A major issue is the need for long distance transmission lines to transport the renewable electricity from where it is generated to where it is to be used. These lines must constantly be maintained. Maintenance of electrical transmission lines has been an issue in both Venezuela’s electrical outages and in California’s recent fires attributed to the utility PG&E.
There is also the issue of variability of wind, water and solar energy. (Note the year-to-year variability indicated in the Venezuela line in Figure 1.) A country cannot really depend on its full amount of wind, water, and solar unless it has a truly huge amount of electrical storage: enough to last from season-to-season and year-to-year. Alternatively, an extraordinarily large quantity of long-distance transmission lines, plus the ability to maintain these lines for the long term, would seem to be required.
[3] When individual countries have experienced cutbacks in their energy consumption per capita, the effects have generally been extremely disruptive, even with cutbacks far more modest than the target level of 80% to 90% that we would need to get off fossil fuels.
Notice that in these analyses, we are looking at “energy consumption per capita.” This calculation takes the total consumption of all kinds of energy (including oil, coal, natural gas, biofuels, nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewables) and divides it by the population.
Energy consumption per capita depends to a significant extent on what citizens within a given economy can afford. It also depends on the extent of industrialization of an economy. If a major portion of industrial jobs are sent to China and India and only service jobs are retained, energy consumption per capita can be expected to fall. This happens partly because local companies no longer need to use as many energy products. Additionally, workers find mostly service jobs available; these jobs pay enough less that workers must cut back on buying goods such as homes and cars, reducing their energy consumption.
Example 1. Spain and Greece Between 2007-2014
Figure 2. Greece and Spain energy consumption per capita. Energy data is from BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy; population estimates are UN 2017 population estimates.
The period between 2007 and 2014 was a period when oil prices tended to be very high. Both Greece and Spain are very dependent on oil because of their sizable tourist industries. Higher oil prices made the tourism services these countries sold more expensive for their consumers. In both countries, energy consumption per capita started falling in 2008 and continued to fall until 2014, when oil prices began falling. Spain’s energy consumption per capita fell by 18% between 2007 and 2014; Greece’s fell by 24% over the same period.
Both Greece and Spain experienced high unemployment rates, and both have needed debt bailouts to keep their financial systems operating. Austerity measures were forced on Greece. The effects on the economies of these countries were severe. Regarding Spain, Wikipedia has a section called, “2008 to 2014 Spanish financial crisis,” suggesting that the loss of energy consumption per capita was highly correlated with the country’s financial crisis.
Example 2: France and the UK, 2004 – 2017
Both France and the UK have experienced falling energy consumption per capita since 2004, as oil production dropped (UK) and as industrialization was shifted to countries with a cheaper total cost of labor and fuel. Immigrant labor was added, as well, to better compete with the cost structures of the countries that France and the UK were competing against. With the new mix of workers and jobs, the quantity of goods and services that these workers could afford (per capita) has been falling.
Figure 3. France and UK energy consumption per capita. Energy data is from BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy; population estimates are UN 2017 population estimates.
Comparing 2017 to 2004, energy consumption per capita is down 16% for France and 25% in the UK. Many UK citizens have been very unhappy, wanting to leave the European Union.
France recently has been experiencing “Yellow Vest” protests, at least partly related to an increase in carbon taxes. Higher carbon taxes would make energy-based goods and services less affordable. This would likely reduce France’s energy consumption per capita even further. French citizens with their protests are clearly not happy about how they are being affected by these changes.
Example 3: Syria (2006-2016) and Yemen (2009-2016)
Both Syria and Yemen are examples of formerly oil-exporting countries that are far past their peak production. Declining energy consumption per capita has been forced on both countries because, with their oil exports falling, the countries can no longer afford to use as much energy as they did in the past for previous uses, such as irrigation. If less irrigation is used, food production and jobs are lost. (Syria and Yemen)
Figure 4. Syria and Yemen energy consumption per capita. Energy consumption data from US Energy Information Administration; population estimates are UN 2017 estimates.
Between Yemen’s peak year in energy consumption per capita (2009) and the last year shown (2016), its energy consumption per capita dropped by 66%. Yemen has been named by the United Nations as the country with the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Yemen cannot provide adequate food and water for its citizens. Yemen is involved in a civil war that others have entered into as well. I would describe the war as being at least partly a resource war.
The situation with Syria is similar. Syria’s energy consumption per capita declined 55% between its peak year (2006) and the last year available (2016). Syria is also involved in a civil war that has been entered into by others. Here again, the issue seems to be inadequate resources per capita; war participants are to some extent fighting over the limited resources that are available.
Example 4: Venezuela (2008-2017)
Figure 5. Energy consumption per capita for Venezuela, based on BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy data and UN 2017 population estimates.
Between 2008 and 2017, energy consumption per capita in Venezuela declined by 23%. This is a little less than the decreases experienced by the UK and Greece during their periods of decline.
Even with this level of decline, Venezuela has been having difficulty providing adequate services to its citizens. There have been reports of empty supermarket shelves. Venezuela has not been able to maintain its electrical system properly, leading to many outages.
[4] Most people are surprised to learn that energy is required for every part of the economy. When adequate energy is not available, an economy is likely to first shrink back in recession; eventually, it may collapse entirely.
Physics tells us that energy consumption in a thermodynamically open system enables all kinds of “complexity.” Energy consumption enables specialization and hierarchical organizations. For example, growing energy consumption enables the organizations and supply lines needed to manufacture computers and other high-tech goods. Of course, energy consumption also enables what we think of as typical energy uses: the transportation of goods, the smelting of metals, the heating and air-conditioning of buildings, and the construction of roads. Energy is even required to allow pixels to appear on a computer screen.
Pre-humans learned to control fire over one million years ago. The burning of biomass was a tool that could be used for many purposes, including keeping warm in colder climates, frightening away predators, and creating better tools. Perhaps its most important use was to permit food to be cooked, because cooking increases food’s nutritional availability. Cooked food seems to have been important in allowing the brains of humans to grow bigger at the same time that teeth, jaws and guts could shrink compared to those of ancestors. Humans today need to be able to continue to cook part of their food to have a reasonable chance of survival.
Any kind of governmental organization requires energy. Having a single leader takes the least energy, especially if the leader can continue to perform his non-leadership duties. Any kind of added governmental service (such as roads or schools) requires energy. Having elected leaders who vote on decisions takes more energy than having a king with a few high-level aides. Having multiple layers of government takes energy. Each new intergovernmental organization requires energy to fly its officials around and implement its programs.
International trade clearly requires energy consumption. In fact, pretty much every activity of businesses requires energy consumption.
Needless to say, the study of science or of medicine requires energy consumption, because without significant energy consumption to leverage human energy, nearly every person must be a subsistence level farmer, with little time to study or to take time off from farming to write (or even read) books. Of course, manufacturing medicines and test tubes requires energy, as does creating sterile environments.
We think of the many parts of the economy as requiring money, but it is really the physical goods and services that money can buy, and the energy that makes these goods and services possible, that are important. These goods and services depend to a very large extent on the supply of energy being consumed at a given point in time–for example, the amount of electricity being delivered to customers and the amount of gasoline and diesel being sold. Supply chains are very dependent on each part of the system being available when needed. If one part is missing, long delays and eventually collapse can occur.
[5] If the supply of energy to an economy is reduced for any reason, the result tends to be very disruptive, as shown in the examples given in Section [3], above.
When an economy doesn’t have enough energy, its self-organizing feature starts eliminating pieces of the economic system that it cannot support. The financial system tends to be very vulnerable because without adequate economic growth, it becomes very difficult for borrowers to repay debt with interest. This was part of the problem that Greece and Spain had in the period when their energy consumption per capita declined. A person wonders what would have happened to these countries without bailouts from the European Union and others.
Another part that is very vulnerable is governmental organizations, especially the higher layers of government that were added last. In 1991, the Soviet Union’s central government was lost, leaving the governments of the 15 republics that were part of the Soviet Union. As energy consumption per capita declines, the European Union would seem to be very vulnerable. Other international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, would seem to be vulnerable, as well.
The electrical system is very complex. It seems to be easily disrupted if there is a material decrease in energy consumption per capita because maintenance of the system becomes difficult.
If energy consumption per capita falls dramatically, many changes that don’t seem directly energy-related can be expected. For example, the roles of men and women are likely to change. Without modern medical care, women will likely need to become the mothers of several children in order that an average of two can survive long enough to raise their own children. Men will be valued for the heavy manual labor that they can perform. Today’s view of the equality of the sexes is likely to disappear because sex differences will become much more important in a low-energy world.
Needless to say, other aspects of a low-energy economy might be very different as well. For example, one very low-energy type of economic system is a “gift economy.” In such an economy, the status of each individual is determined by the amount that that person can give away. Anything a person obtains must automatically be shared with the local group or the individual will be expelled from the group. In an economy with very low complexity, this kind of economy seems to work. A gift economy doesn’t require money or debt!
[6] Most people assume that moving away from fossil fuels is something we can choose to do with whatever timing we would like. I would argue that we are not in charge of the process. Instead, fossil fuels will leave us when we lose the ability to reduce interest rates sufficiently to keep oil and other fossil fuel prices high enough for energy producers.
Something that may seem strange to those who do not follow the issue is the fact that oil (and other energy prices) seem to be very much influenced by interest rates and the level of debt. In general, the lower the interest rate, the more affordable high-priced goods such as factories, homes, and automobiles become, and the higher commodity prices of all kinds can be. “Demand” increases with falling interest rates, causing energy prices of all types to rise.
Figure 6.
The cost of extracting oil is less important in determining oil prices than a person might expect. Instead, prices seem to be determined by what end products consumers (in the aggregate) can afford. In general, the more debt that individual citizens, businesses and governments can obtain, the higher that oil and other energy prices can rise. Of course, if interest rates start rising (instead of falling), there is a significant chance of a debt bubble popping, as defaults rise and asset prices decline.
Interest rates have been generally falling since 1981 (Figure 7). This is the direction needed to support ever-higher energy prices.
Figure 7. Chart of 3-month and 10-year interest rates, prepared by the FRED, using data through March 27, 2019.
The danger now is that interest rates are approaching the lowest level that they can possibly reach. We need lower interest rates to support the higher prices that oil producers require, as their costs rise because of depletion. In fact, if we compare Figures 7 and 8, the Federal Reserve has been supporting higher oil and other energy prices with falling interest rates practically the whole time since oil prices rose above the inflation adjusted level of $20 per barrel!
Figure 8. Historical inflation adjusted prices oil, based on data from 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, with the low price period for oil highlighted.
Once the Federal Reserve and other central banks lose their ability to cut interest rates further to support the need for ever-rising oil prices, the danger is that oil and other commodity prices will fall too low for producers. The situation is likely to look like the second half of 2008 in Figure 6. The difference, as we reach limits on how low interest rates can fall, is that it will no longer be possible to stimulate the economy to get energy and other commodity prices back up to an acceptable level for producers.
[7] Once we hit the “no more stimulus impasse,” fossil fuels will begin leaving us because prices will fall too low for companies extracting these fuels. They will be forced to leave because they cannot make an adequate profit.
One example of an oil producer whose production was affected by an extended period of low prices is the Soviet Union (or USSR).
Figure 9. Oil production of the former Soviet Union together with oil prices in 2017 US$. All amounts from 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
The US substantially raised interest rates in 1980-1981 (Figure 7). This led to a sharp reduction in oil prices, as the higher interest rates cut back investment of many kinds, around the world. Given the low price of oil, the Soviet Union reduced new investment in new fields. This slowdown in investment first reduced the rate of growth in oil production, and eventually led to a decline in production in 1988 (Figure 9). When oil prices rose again, production did also.
Figure 10. Energy consumption per capita for the former Soviet Union, based on BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy data and UN 2017 population estimates.
The Soviet Union’s energy consumption per capita reached its highest level in 1988 and began declining in 1989. The central government of the Soviet Union did not collapse until late 1991, as the economy was increasingly affected by falling oil export revenue.
Some of the changes that occurred as the economy simplified itself were the loss of the central government, the loss of a large share of industry, and a great deal of job loss. Energy consumption per capita dropped by 36% between 1988 and 1998. It has never regained its former level.
Venezuela is another example of an oil exporter that, in theory, could export more oil, if oil prices were higher. It is interesting to note that Venezuela’s highest energy consumption per capita occurred in 2008, when oil prices were high.
We are now getting a chance to observe what the collapse in Venezuela looks like on a day- by-day basis. Figure 5, above, shows Venezuela’s energy consumption per capita pattern through 2017. Low oil prices since 2014 have particularly adversely affected the country.
[8] Conclusion: We can’t know exactly what is ahead, but it is clear that moving away from fossil fuels will be far more destructive of our current economy than nearly everyone expects.
It is very easy to make optimistic forecasts about the future if a person doesn’t carefully examine what the data and the science seem to be telling us. Most researchers come from narrow academic backgrounds that do not seek out insights from other fields, so they tend not to understand the background story.
A second issue is the desire for a “happy ever after” ending to our current energy predicament. If a researcher is creating an economic model without understanding the underlying principles, why not offer an outcome that citizens will like? Such a solution can help politicians get re-elected and can help researchers get grants for more research.
We should be examining the situation more closely than most people have considered. The fact that interest rates cannot drop much further is particularly concerning.
Nice summary Gail, although not very optimistic. Maybe they can get Gen IV nuclear working in time? Although for that to happen somebody would have to start building them.
I noticed the comments section filled up with “abiotic” oil people immediately. How can we have a reasonable discussion about serious issues if the room is full of people that have no grasp of the reality of things? Regardless of whether oil is biological in origin or not, they aren’t making any more of it. It is not necessary to understand exactly how the photosynthesis of CO2 in the early sea led to most oil being formed. You only have to understand that their is a finite amount of it, and that the earth is not making new oil based on our consumption. If it were, we’d be swimming in it, because we didn’t start using it until 100 years ago. Abiotic or not, we have the same problem.
Right! I saw that Zerohedge has this post, and that 28,000 people had read it there. I am sure their comments were even more ones about abiotic oil.
I read the article first on Zerohedge but came here to comment because the comments section at the hedge resembles a bunch of riled up chimps more so than anything.
Anyway, my point for the abiotic crowd is “what difference does it make? It’s still finite.” It seems to me the science behind the biological creation of oil is sound, but in the time frames we are discussing we can start with proven + probable reserves and ignore how it was formed. We know for fact that once an oil well is depleted it does not fill back up. Or in the case of the tar sands you can see quite clearly that once the sand is processed they need to dig up more sand.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVloVmoUsAAqxOa.jpg
It make not make a difference to OFW’ers and our conversation on the long-term viability of “fossil fuels” / oil as our primary source of energy… but it matters in a factual sense, and simply in terms of being scientifically truthful, that abiotic oil theories are not “disproved” or “debunked”, as many would suggest.
I know we here at OFW like to think (and deep down, know it to be true) we are the most intelligent and enlightened people on the face of the earth, having to bear the incredible burden of wrestling with the terrifying realization of our species impending financial & energy collapse…
…but I still don’t think that gives us the right to make ignorant, dismissive statements 😐
(unless they are made for comedic purposes… comedy shouldn’t be censored!)
Cheers,
-GBV
the abiotic oil types also believe that the Earth continuously makes oil, so it is renewable. the biotic hypothesis implies a finite amount. actually, biotic oil is made more-or-less continuously, but the rates are much too slow to resupply what we are drawing out.
“…the biotic hypothesis implies a finite amount…”
Does it?
If biological material was trapped / compressed by extreme geological pressure over millions of years for fossil fuels to be formed, what is to say that process isn’t occurring as we speak and more oil is (verrrrrry slowly) being formed?
I think you would be more correct to suggest that the rates for either theory – regardless of which one (or both?) proves to be true – are much too slow to resupply what we are drawing out.
Back to biotic vs abiotic theories (not that your comment focused on that exactly, but I feel like getting back up on my soap box!) – I think there’s a lot more problems with biotic theory that people are aware of. Perhaps that is to be expected, given biotic oil theory is the mainstream theory and thus it is simply accepted by individuals who do not question the mainstream scientific theories they are spoon-fed as “fact”?
For example, if we look again at the EU (electric universe) theory, we recognize that there are serious issues with the generally accepted ideas surrounding dinosaur physiology and the strength of gravity in prehistoric times…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stk-fE2TNVg
If these problems effectively alter our understanding of how old dinosaurs are (and perhaps our planet and everything else that’s ever existed on it?), it would undoubtedly have knock-on effects on biotic oil theory in terms of the material inputs and length of time required for fossil fuels to form.
While I’m not sure that would have any impact on Gail’s work on OFW, I could definitely see it having an impact on longer-term predictions that have been made here; i.e. faster-replenishing oil, whether biotic or abiotic, could mean that another “Age of Hydrocarbons” may occur again sooner than we would be led to believe…
https://peakengineering.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/hubbert-curve-4.jpg
Cheers,
-GBV
Zero Hedge reposting of your article yesterday, and my rebuttal to a comment challenging your thesis Gail.
(God I hope I got this right.)
______________________________________________________________
You wrote: “It seems likely that fossil fuels will leave us before we can leave them.”
This dissenter wrote:
“No
The timing of when fossil fuels will leave us seems to depend on when central banks lose their ability to stimulate the economy through lower interest rates.
This is exactly backwards. Central Bank money printing is directly responsible for our consumption rate.
If fossil fuels leave us, the result could be the collapse of financial systems and governments.
Again, cart before the horse.”
16 hours ago
I wrote:
“I think that cheap aavailable,readily accessible energy in the past permitted tremendous economic growth, trade, industry, roads, and food production, I.e., what has allowed all the prosperity of 20th century, as reflected by population growth to 7 + billion.
Whether you paid for this in fiat/ borrowed money or in honest money like gold or silver, the energy was still cheap and made the distinction almost irrelevant. Now we are trying to put off the day of reckoning of cheap energy by borrowing ( FED, fiat, financialization, whatever you want to call it, e.g. to prop collectively a money losing proposition like shale, solar and wind which require subsidies). Yes, there is still PLENTY of oil out there, but it costs too much to get it out of the ground. I think Gail is correct.
This concept admittedly I have struggled with. Without cheap energy, the economy declines faster than the availability of the oil produced. People get overwhelmed with debt to the point they can not afford to buy expensive energy, and a pernicious unwind of the economy begins.”
@Hubbs
The poster you responded to is, in a misguided way, onto something. Consider this from the 2017 Primer Guide on The Automatic Earth:
*********
TAE is known primarily as a finance site because finance has the shortest time frame of all. So much of finance exists in a virtual world in which changes can unfold very quickly. There are those who assume that changes in a virtual system can happen without major impact, but this assumption is dangerously misguided. Finance is the global operating system – the interface between ourselves, our institutions and our resource base. When the operating system crashes, nothing much will work until the system is rebooted. The next few years will see that crash and reboot. As financial contraction is set to occur first, finance will be the primary driver to the downside for the next several years. After that, we will be dealing with energy crisis, other resource limits, limitations of carrying capacity and increasing geopolitical ramifications.
*********
He’s likely right to suggest that financial systems and governments will collapse before our energy extraction sector will – as long as there is a functioning financial system and government in place, all sorts of shenanigans will take place to keep the Spice (err, oil) flowing…
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/72600055/the-spice-must-flow.jpg
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/54829813/the-oil-must-flow.jpg
That being said, Gail’s statement is likely still correct as well – seeing as how there is nothing energy-dense enough for us to transition to that can replace fossil fuels, and given how modern society is unwilling / unable to scale back its energy usage to live off less energy-dense fuels, BAU will likely continue until a financial crisis hits, governments and financial systems collapse, and finally an energy crisis arises that puts fossil fuels beyond our reach (for the most part, anyway).
Then… zombies?
Cheers,
-GBV
I don’t think that most people will ever recognize the crisis as an energy crisis. It will look like some combination of a financial crisis/collapse, governmental collapse or overthrow, war, and bad epidemic. There will probably be gluts of all kinds of products that can’t be sold, because wage disparity is too much of an issue. Remember the verses I quoted about the collapse of Babylon from Revelation 18:
The sign of collapse is low prices and gluts, not high prices and shortages!
I guess as a “collapsenik”, I appreciate the works of Nicole Foss at TAE and Dmitry Orlov – they’ve broken the overall collapse narrative down so that it fits into theoretical phases / events, which can help one wrap their heads around such an overwhelming concept. But given how interconnected everything is, you’re probably right Gail – collapse will seem like an admixture of near-simultaneous catastrophes to the average Joe.
That being said, I still think Foss / TAE are onto something here: “So much of finance exists in a virtual world in which changes can unfold very quickly”. The collapse of a virtual system can be instantaneous, while collapse in the physical world make take a bit longer, likely due to laws of physics…
Cheers,
-GBV
Exactly, GBV, thank you raising this important factoid. Tim Morgan at: https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ says the same thing and is exactly in tune with Gail IMO.
I am not sure that Tim Morgan and I are exactly saying the same thing. There are certainly major differences in the way we come at this issue. I would read Tim Morgan’s work very closely before coming to this conclusion. Tim has developed a new version of EROI. I am not convinced that this tells a person much at all. We are experiencing diminishing returns, but this happens in a wider context. EROI calculations are badly flawed, especially for wind and solar. I don’t know how his calculations really work.
Thank you Gail, I do tend to take up new concepts with enthusiasm which sometimes out-paces me! I read Tim’s book: “Life after Growth” written in 2013 and was amazed that his predictions have come about. I will think on, although I am very convinced about EROEI Thank you for your guidance and I will continue to learn and inwardly absorb!
EROEI works passably well for fossil fuel, largely because they are “drill them and use them” products.
EROEI doesn’t work for wind and solar for multiple reasons:
(1) The return isn’t sufficiently instantaneous.
(2) Intermittency is a huge problem which is not addressed.
(3) Too much equivalence of apples to oranges in the calculation. High quality energy is used to produce low quality energy.
(4) A tendency to overestimate future output and underestimate future costs.
(5) The calculation really needs to be energy in versus energy out in the same year. Building now, and getting the output later doesn’t really work. (Related to (1))
Also, no one stopped to think that the minimum EROI was passed long ago, back in the 1970s. We have only been hiding the problem with a huge debt bubble. Thus, the threshold being used for comparison is way off.
Thanks Gail and I totally agree – I was focusing on Oil as the ultimate concentration of energy per pound which has been the main driver over these many decades. The ‘renewables’ have an entirly different return and of course the total FF required to service and maintain them is lost in the current enthusiasm for this type of replacement energy source.
Tim is after all and Oil specialist and this is his world. Your expanded understanding in your discipline allows for many more variables and for me is much more valuable as a research base.
I don’t think Tim is an oil specialist. Tim is an economist, as far as I know. His job was head of research at Tullett Prebon. He started reading and writing about falling EROI while at Tullett Prebon, as far as I know. I presume the folks act TP did not particularly appreciate his take on what was happening. He has commented at OFW a few times.
Many thanks Gail, I read Tim’s book recently and he is described as an ‘Oil Analysist’ which I took to mean an engineer in the FF business but I don’t know what his doctorate is in so I guess you are right about this. He does seem to have parallel views to your own though.
I thought this write-up on his book a rather revealing story, especially as it comes from my neck of the woods:
https://simplelivingsomerset.wordpress.com/tag/tim-morgan/
I must do more work to get my head right!
I’ll definitely start to follow Tim Morgan’s blog. Thanks for the link Peter!
I thought this post provided a decent overview / big picture of how Tim views our current situation in terms of energy / finance:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/149-the-big-challenges/
Cheers,
-GBV
Glad you have joined us GBV – enjoy the journey
Best wishes
Peter
While your points are well taken, I believe you have completely missed (and not accounted for) the types of synergies that solar enables that have never before been possible. Here is but one example:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/12/fraunhofer-reports-combining-farming-with-solar-186-more-efficient-in-summer-of-2018/
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Have we reached peak fake shameless David Attenborough yet?
Over the weekend, social media and the newspapers were full of stories of Pacific walruses plunging over sea cliffs to their deaths. Heart-wrenching film of the corpses of these magnificent beasts piled up on the shore have been driving many to tears.
This all came about as the result of the latest episode of Our Planet, the new wildlife extravaganza from Netflix. As is normal for such programmes, the story that accompanies the animal eye-candy is told by Sir David Attenborough and, as is positively compulsory, it is spiced with multiple references to the horrors of global warming. In fact, we are told, it is us who should shoulder the blame for the slaughter of the walruses, because shrinking sea ice caused by climate change forces them to haulout – leaving the water to take refuge on the shore instead.
The programme ends with Attenborough directing viewers to a website run by WWF, the co-producers of the series. It is therefore, in essence, an eight-part, multi-million pound fundraiser.
Which is a pity, because there is now considerable evidence emerging that the story is not quite what it seems.
For a start, as the zoologist Susan Crockford has documented for the GWPF, walrus haul out behaviour may not be related to global warming. In her 2014 paper On the Beach, she cites examples as far back as the 1930s, long before global warming. She also explains that there doesn’t appear to be a strong correlation between sea-ice levels and haulout behaviour.
Nor is the phenomenon of walruses falling to their deaths from sea cliffs new. American TV recorded the same phenomenon in 1994 and the New York Times reported 60 deaths in a single incident in 1996. Attempts were made to install a fence at one site, while another employs rangers whose sole job is to keep the walruses away from the cliffs. At the time, scientists explained that the most likely explanation was overcrowding at the water’s edge.
Crockford thinks that the footage on the Netflix show comes from a well-documented incident that took place in the village of Ryrkaypiy, in eastern Siberia, in October 2017. September and October are the peak period for walrus haulouts, and there are numerous examples, which date back to the 1960s, of the cliff phenomenon taking place on Wrangel Island, a few hundred kilometres to the north.
However in 2017, as the Siberian Times reported, the colony attracted polar bears that frequent – and indeed at the time terrorise – the area. The bears drove several hundred walruses over the cliffs to their deaths, before feasting on the corpses. They continued to frequent the area right through into the winter.
I’ve been able to show that Crockford’s supposition about the geographical origin of the footage is correct: analysis of the rock shapes in the film and in a photo taken by the producer/director both match archive photos of Ryrkaypiy. The photo was taken on 19 September 2017, during the events described by the Siberian Times.
But whereas the Siberian Times and Gizmodo website, which also reported on the 2017 incident, were both quite clear that the walruses were driven over the cliffs by polar bears, Netflix makes no mention of their presence. Similarly, there is no mention of the fact that walrus haulouts are entirely normal. Instead, Attenborough tells his viewers that climate change is forcing the walruses on shore, where their poor eyesight leads them to plunge over the cliffs.
This is all very troubling as it raises the possibility that Netflix and the WWF are, innocently or otherwise, party to a deception of the public. Exactly who was aware of the presence of polar bears remains unclear, but it seems doubtful that no one at the WWF and the production team was unaware. And given that one of the prime objectives of the show seems to have been to raise funds for WWF, that seems… problematic.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/has-netflixs-our-planet-hidden-the-real-cause-of-walrus-deaths/
Yes, everything must be blamed on gloooob le w ring.
Humans also love to pretend they can identify a s8mple cause while ignoring other complex phenomenon.
http://totalrehash.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/img_58395901df85e.png
Here’s a deeper and more balanced look at what is occurring in that footage and accompanying narration, which certainly is somewhat dubious, for those who find Andrew Montford a little slanted:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/586510/
Either Andrew Montford’s take is a little slanted or the Atlantic’s take is a little slanted. You assume the Atlantic’s view is more balanced than Montford’s. I view it as a “damage limitation” exercise now that Attenborough has been caught red-handed fabricating another globbly wobbly scare story.
What’s your reason for thinking Montford a little slanted, Harry? Has he fabricated anything? Is it true or false that there have been incidents of Walruses doing this sort of thing since as far back as the 1930s? Is his and Susan Cockford’s contention that the footage on the Netflix show comes from a well-documented incident that took place in the village of Ryrkaypiy, in eastern Siberia, in October 2017 correct or incorrect?
The Atlantic article makes some clear claims that are clearly incorrect. For one thing, it claims there were no polar bears around. If I wanted to be picky, I would point out that its sea ice reduction claims are exaggerated, but that’s par for the course these days.
Here’s the Siberian Times article from 19 October 2017
Village besieged by polar bears as hundreds of terrorised walruses fall 38 metres to their deaths
Around 20 beasts have surrounded Ryrkaypiy, with one bear cub trying to get into a house through the window. The polar bears were attracted by 5,000 walruses that appeared this year at a special protection zone in Chukotka.
Many of the frightened flippered marine mammals fell off cliffs at Kozhevnikova Cape as they sought to flee the invaders.Several hundred fell to their deaths, and the polar bears then ate the carcasses.
Head of WWF project Polar Bear Patrol, Viktor Nikiforov, said: ‘This autumn the situation is alarming.
‘Many crashed, falling from a height.
‘Their rookery had attracted polar bears.
‘The walruses were obviously frightened by the predators, panicked and fell from the top to their deaths.’
Visit the URL of the article and you’ll find some very nice pictures.
http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/others/news/village-besieged-by-polar-bears-as-hundreds-of-terrorised-walruses-fall-38-metres-to-their-deaths/
Like most people of my generation, I grew up on Attenborough’s nature documentaries and I greatly admire his work. That does not mean his current delusional claims should be unquestionably presented as fact.
Let’s not get deeply into Andrew Montford’s scientific credibility and journalistic integrity, Tim. Many find him slanted simply because he is at one end of the cc/gw debate spectrum.
For OFW readers curious enough to Google, De-Smog blog will provide one view of Andrew and WattsUpWithThat another.
OK, Harry, for the sake of our very warm friendship we won’t take this one to the shouting stage. But can we try to get beyond the issues of Montford’s credibility and integrity or Attenborough’s or De-Smog blog’s or WUWT’s, or Susan Cockford’s (who is IMHO the real adult int the room here!)—because nobody’s perfect and it is so easy to sling mud at people whose views we disagree with and who are pointing out things we’d rather not have to consider.
Can we consider that it is possible the filmmakers were not being truthful, and that either the polar bears were there and drove dozens or hundreds of walruses off the cliffs or else the Netiflex filmmakers did it by scaring the walruses either intentionally or unintentionally?
Can we at least agree that it is possible that the events were unconnected to globbly wobbly because similar events have been recorded since as far back as the 1930s. Can we at least agree that?
By the way, how are the polar bears doing?
https://youtu.be/XCzwFalI8OQ
“Can we at least agree that it is possible that the events were unconnected to globbly wobbly because similar events have been recorded since as far back as the 1930s. Can we at least agree that?”
On this we certainly can agree and further to that I can also agree that globbly wobbly has become a mainstream cause célèbre in many ways that are hypocritical, tiresome and dishonest.
I’m even open to debate over the extent to which it is anthropegenic. Where our views are unlikely to elide is over whether or not it exists at all and the level of threat it poses, our inability to do anything about it and the possibility of an economic collapse taking all cards off the table notwithstanding.
OFW is a contrarian blog that successfully challenges some key assumptions underpinning the status quo, so on the one hand contrarian views are to be expected here and indeed welcomed. On the other, globbly wobbly is a particularly divisive and politically charged issue, and it rarely seems to lead anywhere edifying when raised in the comments section, so entrenched are the polarities of opinion.
Glad to hear that our friendship is heading for the next level btw. My heart-cockles are warmed.
Thank you Harry, seems we have over zealous ideas on both sides of CC and wonder why all the fuss is about? Regardless, 7.8 billion people and still growing is not sustainable nor desirable for other life on our planet. Does not matter CC is slow or fast, it’s happening and based on Science of Physics, we are contributing to it. How much research and data will be enough? Never enough because of inertia….who moved my cheese?
It all depends on what you mean by CC. It’s a very malleable concept, SuperTramp. At its most extreme, we have Guy McP, who has claimed we are all going to die by 2030 at the latest due to accelerating climate feedbacks that could cause a global average temperature increase of between 1° and 6° Celsius. In 2012 he predicted this would happen by 2020, but more recently he has been shifting the goalposts on this one. Guy claims it’s happening and based on “Science of Physics”. And Guy has qualifications and he has stats.
At the other end of the spectrum is the view that no CC is happening whatsoever. This was the orthodox prevailing view until around 1800, when Western physicists assumed we lived in a geological and climatically stable world. I should think the number of people who entertain this view today is approximately zero outside of a few members of fundamentalist cults.
Let’s face it, by any practical definition we all accept that CC is happening. We accept there have been ice ages, many of accept there was a medieval warm period and a little ice age that had global effects, and we accept that it has become a little warmer since the 19th century. The questions are how much is natural, how much is human activity contributing, will it be friendly, how severe will it be in future, is it an existential problem or not. and should we commit collective seppuku in an effort to mitigate its effects?
Tim, been reading your comments here regarding CC and your lampoons.
As far as a malleable concept, sorry it’s all about the Science as Gail has repeatedly stated, in this case Physics and Chemistry. The Data and research studies back up the conclusions of the Scientific Community.
I realize that there will be a segment of the population that will disavow those no matter what is placed before them. Fine with me, because I have stated before here, I agree totally with Gail, there is not much we can do about it with population levels and economy we have created. That does not mean I will reject totally the body of scientific evidence.
Even Dr. James Hansen wrote in his book, ” Storms of My Grandchildren”, unless we address the population, nothing will work. Still waiting.
Oh, please continue with your posts.
Regardless of what the scientific studies say, there is fundamentally nothing that we can do about climate change, other than killing ourselves off. I suppose if everyone became vegan, that might reduce pressure on resources for a while, but I don’t think that there is anything fuel-wise that is helpful. Wind and solar are not! Also, at this late date, there is nothing we can do about population, beyond what has been done. Reduced population tends to collapse the economy as well, because there become too many old people for the young people to support, and we are already reaching limits on that.
Exactly, Gail, bravo, thank you for stating and pointing this out to all of us.
That does not mean it is not happening or continue to do so because of climatic system ineratia.
The IPCC, which represents the Scientific Community, issues projections based on the data and research , in the form of different degrees of low, medium or high.
It really does not matter which is occurring. I’m of the mindset to be a lukewarmer on the low side of forcing. It helps me get by and hopefully reach the big 70 in one piece.
Up to this point, nothing has been materially done to address CC, judging by the jump in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. It will continue to do so in line with the increase in human population levels.
Being in my 60s now. I avoid the overpopulation topic at ALL times in personal discussion.
Because in all fairness, the older generation ( folks like us, baby boomers), should be pushed off first! That does not sound like a good option for myself at this time.
It’s OK for Tim to poke fun. I’m beyond the stage to put up a fuss. I will, though, try to post a balance view to keep it real.
Thank you🤗
Gail, please may I share another thought on your excellent post.
Throughout, you display energy consumption per capita for various nations: US, Venezuela, Atlantis, … But that obscures an important fact: some people consume vastly more energy than others.
Suppose we wanted to reduce US energy consumption by a tiny smidgeon. The think tank comes up with two proposals:
(a) kill every child in the Detroit ghettos, or
(b) hang Al Gore
Almost everybody would choose option (b), and consider themselves on the side of the angels. The man is an obnoxious hypocrite who jets around the world from his huge mansions lecturing us about climate change. As do hundreds of other hypocrites with the same agenda and the same totally contradictory lifestyle.
But even in wasteful countries, there are individuals, small groups, villages, … who are both researching and practicing sustainability. Such as the Amish I met living in Pennsylvania. Could these not become the seeds of a bottom up change in our thinking and our habits? It is evident that the top down approach has been going nowhere for 50 years.
Best wishes.
By the way, I abandoned the automobile 22 years ago, and on the rare occasions I have to fly, I fly business class with airlines that promise me this is carbon neutral. And almost all my diet is created within 100 km of my home in Malta, half of it on this isle of Gozo. Not much, but a deeply satisfying lifestyle.
Malta (and the island of Gozo within Malta) are located in the Mediterranean Ocean, south of Sicily. The island of Gozo is 14 km (8.7 miles) in length and 7.25 km (4.5 miles) in width. According to Wikipedia, the population of island is 32,723, making the population density 557 per square kilometer, or 1,443 per square mile.
Gozo is a place where a person doesn’t really need to have an automobile. The whole island is small enough to get around by foot, and there is public bus service, according to Wikipedia. I expect that a person doesn’t need to have heating or cooling, either.
Gaza gets its electricity via underground cables from the main island of Malta. Electricity requires todays complex economy. Electricity in 2017 was from imported natural gas (from LNG with regassification), with imported oil as backup. In fact, oil probably still provides over 50% of total electricity, given the low capacity of the new natural gas plant. With electricity from oil, it tends to be very expensive, discouraging industries that need to be competitive with output from other countries.
The CIA Factbook says,
Also,
The issue that is problematic is that even if you, personally, keep your direct energy consumption low (which is quite possible in an island with a favorable climate), it really doesn’t allow Malta to be separated from the rest of the world. If the rest of the world collapses, Malta is likely to go with it, including Gozo. Malta seems to get revenue from its tourism industry, tax avoidance schemes (which I am sure encourage more tourism as well, by directors of those businesses seeking tax avoidance), and online gaming businesses. Without all of the outside support, Malta’s oil, natural gas, and electricity supplies would soon be cut off. Without those, it could not possibly support all of its population. The same is true for the island of Gozo.
Also, the big problem the world is facing today is fossil fuel prices that are not really high enough for producers. Cutting back on demand works in the wrong direction with respect to fixing this problem. Perhaps we should be encouraging the use of more SUVs for transportation.
USA 12,000 kWh per capita
California 8,000 kWh per capita
San Francisco? 3600 kWg per capita (lowest in US)
So, the smarter you are, the less you use?
I know it is an obvious question.
If you live in a part of world where you really don’t need heating/cooling, your electricity needs are a whole lot less.
Also, California has high enough electricity rates to drive out all industry that requires reasonable electricity prices.
Its true—
In Micronesia, I lived for a year without electricity– or running water.
After a few months, you don’t notice.
But look at the dwellings of SF and say, Dallas.
The intelligence of Dallas is very apparent.
What were they thinking?
You are carrying the torch for California, a state that embodies BAU,
A state where having access to a car is a requirement to be a productive adult
A state that uses plenty of fossil fuels to keep cool and to transport its citizens around.
If you love California so much you should marry it.
but don’t tell us how great it is.
California is as unsustainable as it gets.
Shall we take a look?
https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/
Sorry– you need to educate yourself.
Hello again Gail
Many thanks for your reply. Yes, Malta is moving in exactly the wrong direction: more financial services, more tourism, and inevitably more conspicuous consumption. Hence its growing food shortage, because these industries create demand for imported food. And the biggest offender is probably the cruise industry, which I am resolved never to patronise.
But I researched my own diet. All my fruit, vegetables and salads are grown on the island itself. My meat consumption is very small. Some packaged Italian food, and likewise very inexpensive Italian wine. I think the food that has the longest journey is the Latvian Vodka I enjoy on the odd evening.
I don’t use ambient cooling, ever; growing up in Africa without it I never missed it. Ambient heating is provided by heat exchanger, and I’m debating whether to use solar panels on the roof (1000 sq ft of roof) to feed it.
But again, a lot of energy went into making those panels and having them shipped to your island. I am guilty of the “hypocrisy”. But one child and vasectomy and asking my daughter to adopt if she ever wants children.
Gail, thanks for pointing out the real inconvenient truth. I don’t like it , I try to justify it by various ways. Basically we have to go from being righteous to realistic: I and everyone else have been enjoying a hell of a good ride on FF.
Lol!
And we are having problems?
I personally can trump you guys since in sixty years I have never fathered a child, never owned or driven a car, haven’t flown on an airplane since 1994, cut and chop all my own firewood, grow enough food to feed half a dozen people organically, and never buy the the softest toilet paper.
I don’t live like this to try to save the world or slow its momentum towards disaster, or atone for my past sins of consumption during my younger and more foolish days, or to feel smug and superior to my fellow humans. I live like this because I want to.
So can we cut out the virtue signaling guys? If we really believe in the Green religion we are trying to guilt trip everyone else into following, we can all do far better than we are doing now. For instance, we could at least make our own clothes!
https://kirstenkelly.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/the-mahatma1.jpg
And Hubbs, I bet you took advantage of the abundant benefits of fossil fuels in having that vasectomy!
“I don’t live like this to try to save the world or slow its momentum towards disaster, or atone for my past sins of consumption during my younger and more foolish days, or to feel smug and superior to my fellow humans. I live like this because I want to. ”
This is a *brilliant* argument: we should eschew fun only if doing so is fun, because fun is the only reason to do anything. No rebuttal possible, or necessary!
When we moved to the countryside over a quarter of a century ago, the locals regularly wondered why we never drove or owned a car. I used to tell them I hated the idea of having an accident and hurting someone, or even of driving over the thousands of newly hatched frogs that cover the roads at night in early summer a few weeks after the rice paddies are filled—you simply can’t avoid squashing dozens of them no matter how slowly you drive down the road.
But more than anything, I felt that the car was a huge black hole for pouring good money down. The average rural adult buys a car on loan which has to be repaid monthly and in addition they pay annual car tax and accident insurance, gasoline, compulsory two-year vehicle inspection, parking charges when going to town, etc., etc. All this consumes 10% or more of the average person’s pre-tax income, and around 90% of individuals own at least one car around here and are psychologically dependent on having one even if they don’t need it for commuting. Car ownership is fun for some, a pain in the rear end for others, but as a general observation, it keeps people poor. It forces them to part with money that could be used for better quality food and clothes, and for nicer things in general. Also, it keeps them unhealthy, as they get out of the habit of walking and carrying things.
The smartphone is another great money-waster—especially in Japan where phone contracts are so expensive that the government has ordered the phone companies to cut prices this year. And while some people think it’s fun to have one, for me it’s a bloody nuisance with all those flashing lights and message arrival noises interrupting me while I’m trying to wright my novel or solve the world’s political problems. No, give me a good old fashioned vintage landline phone every time—one with just two bells and no whistles.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cb/68/f1/cb68f12e416a5deec6aa7cd7d8afc569.jpg
the toilet paper self torment thing is taking things too far
and you getting better at sinning as you get older, experience counts!
Its Holy Week now and Good Friday will soon be upon us. Which mean the self- flagellants will be out in force in the Philippines. Makes the second softest toilet paper seem a rather mild act of self denial.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41560000/jpg/_41560594_flagellation416_ap.jpg
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There’s ZERO reason to move away from these naturally burning fuels. Oh, “fossil fuels” is a misnomer. They do not come from fossils and are instead self-replenishing products of the planet itself.
Wind, solar and all the rest of it.. total waste of time for most. All based on virtue signaling and accomplishes nothing. It’s just more fruitcake Liberalism.
There’s ZERO possibility of losing fossil fuels and keeping the current techno-state-ist system going, with 7-8 billion people on Earth.
The abiogenic theory of fossil-fuel replenishment was debunked long ago — these fuels are replenished over many million years of stored sunlight energy, from photosynthesis.
“The abiogenic theory of fossil-fuel replenishment was debunked long ago”
Debunked if you are an unquestioning follower of what is accepted today as mainstream “science” and “fact”. If one considers the Electric Universe (EU) theory, previously discounted / debunked theories on hydrocarbon formation suddenly become much more plausible…
http://www.eu-geology.com/?page_id=325
*********
In an Electric Universe, the abiogenic-cosmic explanation for Petroleum regains a lot of weight. The basic idea is an extraterrestrial deposition of a large part of the material in question within several catastrophic episodes. It might have been deposited in the form of a chemical precursor of petroleum. This idea is not new [Velikovsky 1950, Cardona], but it gains credibility in combination with the new approach to the Geology of the Electric Universe and has a high explanatory power for the many inconsistencies that have been shown above.
These considerations do not exclude the biological production of petroleum on Earth. They also do not exclude the option that stored hydrocarbons from the inner earth are gradually released towards the surface. But they attribute a large part of the currently existing hydrocarbons on Earth to an external source. This material came down to the surface together with large amounts of other extraterrestrial matter and sedimented in many parallel layers and in a short time. For dolomite an extraterrestrial deposition on Earth has been already been considered. Petroleum in dolomite may have been deposited easily together, which is also compatible with the more recent notions on the porosity of dolomite. The mixing with organic material present at that time on the surface is also possible without problems. It would explain the biomarkers, as well as the diverse fossils found close to it. In the older Precambrian times, with less available organic material, the organic signature of the oil is correspondingly smaller. This is again observed. Also the large amounts of gas hydrates found under ice in permafrost regions (e.g. Alaska) and in sediment filled basins under water (e.g. Carolina Trough) [USGS] could result from hydrocarbons raining down on earth and being stored in basins with the sediment.
*********
Cheers,
-GBV
The serious research on the subject indicates abiotic oil may exist but doesn’t identify commercial deposits as abiotic. So the entire subject is moot in the context of resource depletion/peak oil issues.
In the form you express it, it’s just oil industry and/or techno-utopian propaganda. Also, what are you even doing here if you truly believe it?
“Also, what are you even doing here if you truly believe it?”
While I believe it’s important to understand where the fuel that powers our entire world comes from, if only to be factually correct (something science used to care about? something people with integrity should care about?), the reason I come to OFW has more to do with the affordable cost of the extraction of energy than the origins of energy itself.
So yes, “…the entire subject is moot in the context of resource depletion/peak oil issues…” may be true (not that the OP suggested that – he straight out suggested that abiotic oil theory was “debunked”), but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t poke holes in the dogmatic crap people try to pass off on this site as “settled science”.
Also, if people took some time to take a look at EU (electric universe) theory, they may be surprised how it opens up doorways to new ways of looking at / thinking about things (perhaps even presenting new solutions to some of our current problems / predicaments).
Hopefully that (politely) answers your passive-aggressive question as to why someone would visit and comment on a public blog / forum.
-GBV
I’m with you GBV…we’ve got to,have a open mind….the Electric Universe opens up new possibilities.
“So yes, “…the entire subject is moot in the context of resource depletion/peak oil issues…” may be true (not that the OP suggested that – he straight out suggested that abiotic oil theory was “debunked”), but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t poke holes in the dogmatic crap people try to pass off on this site as “settled science”.”
The form of that theory you proposed has indeed been debunked. Most hydrocarbons on this planet, including what is usually meant by “oil”, most likely doesn’t have an abiotic origin.
The contention (again of serious proponents, not propagandists or lunatics) is that certain conditions on earth MAY produce basic hydrocarbons like methane (not petrol, gas or coal). As I alluded previously, such conditions are postulated to exist in locations (e.g. the mantle) on earth that entirely exclude any possibility of commercial extraction with current and foreseeable tech.
So before you mouth off about “scientific dogma”, at least understand the elementary concept of empirical evidence. Just because science is necessarily uncertain, and cannot entirely disprove any logically conceivable theory, doesn’t mean said theory has epistemic value.
Nice comment GBV, thank you – and very restrained IMO. I too study the electric universe, much to discover about magnetism and plasma. I continue my wanderings.
“The form of that theory you proposed has indeed been debunked”
Thanks for sharing your belief. Sadly, I can’t share it with you, as there are several scholars out there who disagree with you, so much so that they actually publish their work for the world to review (rather than post their dogmatic beliefs under the cover of anonymity on OFW).
Even Dr. Magdi Ragheb at the University of Illinois teaches a course on Nuclear Power Engineering which uses materials suggesting that the abiotic oil theory could still be substantiated one day, and has implications for how we extract oil today:
https://mragheb.com/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%20Engineering/Biogenic%20and%20Abiogenic%20Petroleum.pdf
“Just because science is necessarily uncertain, and cannot entirely disprove any logically conceivable theory, doesn’t mean said theory has epistemic value”
Well that’s hypocritical. You caution me about “mouthing off” with regards to “scientific dogma” and failing to understand empirical evidence, and then proceed to suggest that a scientific theory which cannot be empirically proven to be false should be dismissed…
“Scientific dogma is used in two ways: one to refer to very, very well-established theories in science (which is a pretty decent usage, albeit different from the traditional religious use) and one to negatively refer to scientific theories that the speaker doesn’t like, with the implication that science is unchanging and suppressive of minority views (like religious dogmas). This second usage is unbased in fact.”
– RationalWiki
https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.xMN105o9XJ1QoWaZcGE_PQHaDf
-GBV
“Also the large amounts of gas hydrates found under ice in permafrost regions (e.g. Alaska)”
Ah it’s permafrost, so that must mean it is permanently frosty and always has been. Also, tectonic plates are a Leninist conspiracy theory! JFC.
https://media1.tenor.com/images/5318722000a0200a04d7a6955a6bd257/tenor.gif
Whenever you feel this way do some shadow boxing or a little hateful jig on the table. Sudden bursts of physical exertion mitigate the effects of these testosterone surges. 🙂 xxx @-
I heard the Don is looking for someone to head up his energy advisory team, get y’self over to the White House quick, folks move so fast out through his revolving door
when times is hard—a good all round laugh is good for the soul
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Warren Buffett is noticing a unique phenomenon right now in the global economy: negative interest rates and low inflation.
“I think, now, there’s still $11 trillion, at least, of government debt around the world that’s at a
negative rate,” Buffett told Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer. “So we’ve never seen it before.”
For example, the yield on Germany’s 10-year Bund is negative. That means investors have to pay to hold government debt.
“I don’t think there was any economist I’ve ever read that talked about negative interest rates for long periods of time,” he said.
Buffett added, referring to the economists John Maynard Keynes and Paul Samuelson, “If you go back and read Keynes or you read Samuelson, or you read any of them, they do not get into a negative rate environment.”
Another quirk in today’s economic landscape is the lack of inflation given ultra-low interest rates.
Still, Buffett, who is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A), doesn’t make decisions based on economic predictions.
“Charlie Munger, my partner—and I—[for] 54 years now—we’ve never made a decision based on an economic prediction,” Buffett added.
Buffett believes economic data doesn’t tell him how the economy will perform in the future.
“I like to get numbers — so I’m getting reports in weekly, in some businesses,” he said. “But that doesn’t tell me what the economy is going to do six months from now, or three months from now. It tells me what’s going on now with our businesses.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-on-negative-interest-rates-and-low-inflation-144529579.html
Well, those low interest rates, massive tax cuts and stock by backs sure entitled you Warren!
Perhaps Mister Buffet needs a different perspective on negative interest rates courtesy of ShortonOil posted on PONews
China’s energy efficiency is already very low. Relying on lower EROEI shale gas is only going to make their situation worse. But China is not alone. The entire world is dying from falling ERoEI. It is the effect of energy starvation. Some countries have already reverted back to the stone age, and most are displaying signs of severe stagnation. 40% of Russel 2000 companies are no longer profitable. Their long slow decline does not bode well for their future. With the entire world’s equity markets now pumped up on pseudo money, when the credit markets begin to fail the structure of civilization will go with it. A sure sign of that will be when interest rates world wide have gone negative.
These folks don’t have a clue…like Gail just posted…paper wealth and illusionary riches
““Charlie Munger, my partner—and I—[for] 54 years now—we’ve never made a decision based on an economic prediction,” Buffett added.
Buffett believes economic data doesn’t tell him how the economy will perform in the future.”
yes, there is a background story to their success which is beyond their perception:
world energy has increased for those 54 years… record high FF in 2018…
some of us know that “how the economy will perform in the future” depends greatly on how much net (surplus) energy will be available…
“investors” will generally do worse and worse in the coming years because of the diminishing returns of the world’s energy production…
Ah, just when you thought things couldn’t get worse.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/weakening-earths-magnetic-field-has-greatly-accelerated
We live in interesting times, eh?
Dennis L.
so human extinction possibly in 500 years?
no big deal… we all are headed for the nothingness of eternal death anyway… and relatively soon!
but yes, this is quite interesting “science”…
This may be too metaphysical for most, but what if as our species clear cuts the Amazon and other rain forests, as well as harvesting boreal forests, along with the bug apocalypse and decimation of fish stocks in the oceans, including reduction in phytoplankton, is that degrading the life force of the planet, or what’s theorized as Gaia, and could that have a knock on effect of weakening the magnetic field?
In other words, does one go along with the other? The stronger the life force the stronger the magnetic field and vice versa? Food for thought.
the Earth’s magnetic field results from convective cooling of the outer liquid iron core. it has nothing to do with the “life force” of the Earth, whatever that means to you. OTOH, the presence of the strong dipole field has protected life on Earth from solar and cosmic radiation, and in fact has made life possible.
Good answer, but to clarify (with a bit of help from WIkipedia), the Earth’s magnetic field is generated by electric currents due to the motion of convection currents of molten iron in the Earth’s outer core: these convection currents are caused by heat escaping from the core, a natural process called a geodynamo.
The magnetic field doesn’t result directly from the cooling but from the motion of the iron in the core, apparently. (I learned all about this at school, but have forgotten most of it.)And while heat is slowly escaping, the core isn’t currently cooling, or maybe it is? Typing in “Is the earth’s core getting hotter or colder” on Google, I found articles suggesting the core was hotter 3 billion years ago and that the core is hotter was previously thought, but I couldn’t find any definitive answer to the question of whether it is getting hotter or cooler at present.
Also, the temperature of the core is not constant throughout. It is hotter in some places than others, and it is probable that some parts are cooling while others are heating. Heat from the core eventually leaks out very slowly through the mantle and the surface by conduction and also via hot springs and volcanic eruptions and is lost to space, but tidal forces caused by the changing gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon are heating the core and mantle through friction, and radioactive isotopes are breaking down and heating their surroundings deep down. What the cumulative result of these process is we don’t really know.
Yeah but how can a 600 bajillion ton liquid iron core just ‘happen’ to exist by random chance? Clearly there are weird forces at work here.
Also, magnets. How the life forcing frack do they work?
Has anybody been down there and measured it?
If not, it is just theory.
We love to pretend out theories are factual reality.
the Earth is still cooling from the accumulation of planetismals and the later segregation of the Earth into a core (mostly iron, some nickel), silicate mantle and outer, thin crust. that is and was frictional heat that was produced. nothing is truly homogeneous down there. the mantle has some regions and smaller plumes (usually under hotspots, like Hawaii) of more primordial composition and other regions with more upper mantle and crustal-like composition, from all the mantle-wide convective cooling that has gone on. the main heat generating mechanism is now from the radioactive decay of U, Th and K (as 40K) mainly in the silicate mantle and crust. there may be some of these elements in the core, but most were segregated out during core formation. heat generation in the core by other means than those mentioned above is still under study.
core formation is not that unusual in planets. even the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn show evidence for cores, from their magnetic fields. Mars has a now-solid Fe-Ni core.
magnets and magnetism are intersting phenomena associated with the alignment of ferric (Fe2+) iron atoms in the Earth’s dipole field. another way to get strong magnets is to use a circulating electric current in mostly ferric iron to generate electromagnetism. when the current is stopped, most, but not all of the magnetism stops.
you can make or magnetize steel objects by placing them in a strong magnetic field. even “permanent magnets” (they fade) will magnetize steel objects to some extent. what’s going on is the ferric iron in the steel is lining up in the direction of the local magnetic field. after the magentic field is removed, there is a “memory” of its presence in the steel. this magnetism will fade as the ferric iron alignment begins to randomize over time. you can renew the magnetism by putting the steel object (e.g., a screwdriver) back into a strong local field.
that’s all i recall without hitting the books or the Wiki.
@TimGroves
“The magnetic field doesn’t result directly from the cooling but from the motion of the iron in the core, apparently. (I learned all about this at school, but have forgotten most of it.)”
Forget the rest of it, because it’s all junk science anyway. The earth isn’t a “geodynamo”… it’s hollow.
https://external-preview.redd.it/3GJqP13e8FITvvr6MDewwhgsUO3-ip-dh66EfofeHIY.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=996b0646e724c23c17a1e31f87072513c89c2201
https://i.imgur.com/j2fcYDz.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfFJiUWuDk
Cheers,
-GBV
“Has anybody been down there and measured it?
If not, it is just theory.
We love to pretend out theories are factual reality.”
Absolutely, thank you.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3h97gaBiq1rs9ie3o1_400.gif
-GBV
Thanks GBV for that interesting Hollow Earth explanation.
And now, I am going to blow everyone’s mind with an explication of the amazing, the astounding, the incredible Expanding Earth theory.
https://youtu.be/7kL7qDeI05U
Excellent post ST, thank you. This is all very relevant, yet so few people have any clue as to what is coming down the tracks! It’s a speeding train about to crash into the buffers but everyone on board is partying. Very sad.
Syria is not engaged in a “civil” war.
Syria is at war with jihadists from circa 80 different countries.
These jihadists are bought and paid for, trained, funded and equipped by the US NATO EU Saudi Qatar and Turkey mainly.
It is NOT a “civil” war because Syria is not at war with itself.
I didn’t realize that the Syrian War was a civil war until I started looking up information about it. When I look up “Syria War,” I get “Syria Civil War,” in Wikipedia.
In fact, I get a lot of references for Syria Civil War. This CNN article is called, Syrian Civil War Fast Facts.
NPR has an article called A Brief Timeline Of the Syrian Civil War Leading Up To U.S. Threats Of Military Strikes
BBC says, A peaceful uprising against the president of Syria almost eight years ago turned into a full-scale civil war.
I think you are disagreeing with a lot of others.
Disagreeing with the pablum that the MSM serves up – seems about right, Ian.
Pretty much same as you, Gail, in disagreeing with the narrative – MSM rarely gets complex issues correct, whether by design or by stupidity.
I think it comes down to a matter of perspective, given that political speech is so very flexible. It’s possible to describe the current Syrian troubles as a civil war and get away with it. But outside forces and their backers have played such large roles that it’s also possible to describe it as a war of foreign aggression or a regime change operation.
This sort of thing happens to a certain extent in many civil wars. For instance, I seem to remember in the case of the Spanish Civil War that the German Air Force were on one side and Hemingway and Orwell were on the other.
CNN and BBC and “a lot of others” also pushed the false idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Dig a bit deeper behind the mainstream media and you will find the civil war idea is a particular narrative that casts the West as innocent observers in stead of active instigators of the Syrian war. Also the phrase “Assad regime” as opposed to eg the “British government” is a flag to tread with care regarding the narrative…
Apart from this little issue (a big issue though for Syrians!), I eagerly devour your posts about the energy situation!
Wikipedia, CNN, .. I hope you are not serious here.. ?!?
Should I remind you about the ‘white helmets’ and other staged stuff..
Syria was put on a chopping block because it stand it the way of the proposed Gulfies natgas pipeline* bound to ClubMed port facilities. The antigov coup (just another color revolution) was orchestrated by US+EU+Gulfies+Turkey, the other side consisted mainly by majority of domestic Syrian pop + gov, and Russia+Iran as foreign backers, .. During the conflict the ‘Asian axis’ was able to bargain with Turkey to limit their exposure there and more importantly actually win the war on the ground for every village and city..
__
* what’s being constructed instead is Russian natgas pipeline via Turkey and up to Balkans
What’s being constructed instead, is a pipeline from Qatar in the opposite direction than first proposed. Remember the Saudi blockade of Qatar? This pipeline was to go through Saudi Arabia through Syria to the Mediterranean. It now goes the opposite way…from Qatar, through Iran and Iraq and Syria to the Med., eliminating the Saudis. Qatar switched sides in order to get it’s natgas to market by teaming up with Iran and Syria. This also will be part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative with a railroad from Pakistan to the Med. Iran will run a commercial port at Latakia, Syria, on the Med, while Russia will maintain a military base next door. “Proposed”? Yes. Depends on how empire reacts, I suppose.
thanks for the update
At the beginning of the war, several rival militaries were indeed maneuvering against one another (sometimes in cities–hence “civil”) in hopes of remaining or becoming the government of Syria. By now, the war has mutated, and is centered on a conflict over Kurdish autonomy, with the role of various outside powers a key issue everywhere (e.g. Israel wants to keep Shi’ite militias far away from its territory).
Suppose Alan Greenspan is a fan of OFW and a reader of Gail!
Alan Greenspan says economy will start to fade ‘very dramatically’ because of entitlement burden
Economic growth won’t last as the U.S. labors under the burden of growing entitlement programs and weakness around the world, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC.
The long-time central bank chief repeated his warnings about the weight that Social Security, Medicare and other programs are having on what have been otherwise solid gains over the past few years.
“I think the real problem is over the long run, we’ve got this significant continued drain coming from entitlements, which are basically draining capital investment dollar for dollar,” he told CNBC’s Sara Eisen during a “Squawk on the Street” interview.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/04/12/alan-greenspan-says-economy-will-start-to-fade-out-because-of-growing-us-entitlement-burden.html
Of course, Mister Greenspan feathered his nest and is sitting pretty on a pile of “entitlements” himself, but if I go there it’s called sour grapes or something else, maybe class warfare…
Speaking of which,
Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%).
That’s more than three times the number of companies that avoided paying corporate taxes on average from 2008 to 2015. During that period, 18 companies managed to pay 0% or less (with their total average effective tax rate over 8 years being roughly -4%).
“There are a lot of breaks and loopholes that allow a company not to pay,” Steve Wamhoff, ITEP’s Director of Federal Tax Policy, told Yahoo Finance. “People, when they think of tax reform, think the government is going to fix the tax code and get rid of breaks and loopholes and get rid tax dodging. What we got at the end of 2017 was not that. It was the opposite of that. The Tax Cuts and jobs act left a lot of special breaks and loopholes in place and created some new ones.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-paying-zero-taxes-trump-law-155944124.html
It’s gotten so bad a group of very wealthy individuals are feeling very guilty and admitting they are not paying their fair share at the expense of the Middle Class. Imagine that! Some people still have a moral compass and conscious!
I am not the only one who has figured out problems with the entitlements being un-fundable. It is pretty obvious, if you look at it, especially if you figure out that growth is slowing.
We have an awfully lot of problem areas when it comes to promises that can’t be kept. These include
(a) Social Security and Medicare (and similar government plans around the world, with little/ no pre-funding)
(b) Pensions other than Social Security (ones that are supposedly pre-funded).
(c) All of the derivatives being used to guarantee all kinds of things – such as currency relativities, oil prices, interest rates
(d) Loans, whether the loans are made through bonds or by banks.
(e) Bank account guarantees.
(f) Payments while an individual is unemployed.
Why should this be ANY different than any other time in past record of Human History?
Have Human beings changed in millenniums or for that matter, the laws ofPhysics or Chemistry?
Recently, Gail posted a link that led me to a 2003 interview of the recently deceased doomer, Jay Hansen.
Moral philosophy is irrelevant because it is nothing more than a rationalization of the act. The discussion about philosophy is based on the incorrect view that people consciously think about a subject, and then they act. But the reality is exactly the opposite — people act then rationalize. This is literally true. This also self-evidentially true. Where else could consciousness come from except that meat between your ears?
…….People act in ways that make them feel good and then invent social rationalizations designed to increase social rankings and fitness, or bond them to their tribe, after the fact. These social rationalizations can be almost anything that increases fitness. The actions that make them feel good consist of a basic genetic set, plus others, which may also be one hundred percent genetic, selected by the environment when they were maturing
….People literally make decisions, decide what they’re going to do, subconsciously. And the conscious [rationalization] follows some time later. It’s literally true. Consciousness is a meat by-product. Continued reflection and reading can alter those algorithms that are making those decisions, but it’s not an immediate kind of a thing. It’s organic, and we don’t have direct access to those algorithms.
…..Consciousness is used to make our communications appear rational, consistent, and compatible with community values — for social reasons. I think the main reason for consciousness is for social communication…
….Here’s the problem. The problem is that people evolved specifically to overcome social constraints on inclusive fitness.
….— a sustainable society would be one that intentionally limited its births and its consumption to stay within the carrying capacity of its territory. And I don’t know of anyone that’s ever done that…..
…..
Food cannot be grown in anything like the quantities we need without oil and natural gas. Moreover, neither food nor water can be delivered without oil and gas. Cities like Las Vegas must become uninhabitable deserts again. The population of Southern California must fall to a few hundred thousand again. In Canada, water pipes will freeze in the winter without gas. It’s a very long list, I can’t guess how many will die from each
….At any future point in time when people feel threatened, when the ruling elite is threatened, when the mob is at the gates, they’ll find a way to protect themselves. The details are not important. But that’s what I would do if I were them — get rid of them, kill them all. You have to remember, it’s like playing golf as far as the genes are concerned. It’s that easy. America is the best place to ride out the coming crash because it has the best “means of control” to keep public order and protect us from intruders
….my goal has been to minimize human suffering, because I could see this coming.
…..They want a job. That’s why economics hasn’t changed. That’s why they are still using [models based on] rational utility maximizers. If they used real people they couldn’t model, because real people are not mathematical, they’re algorithmic. And they’d be out of a job, you can’t model that. It’s an idiosyncratic, algorithmic thing. There wouldn’t be any economists, if they told the truth.
…..: American politics. Our Founding Fathers created a plutocracy, with all the trappings of democracy. And it was smart, it was a stroke of utter brilliance, and given the circumstances, the best possible political system. People who argue that democracy is a good political system simply haven’t tried it.
…..It was a scam to begin with. It’s also true that plutocracies allocate resources based on ability to pay. So it’s painfully obvious that if you want to survive in America, you must make as much money as possible.
…..Right. His point is that the progressives wanted scientific, not political, decisions. And that’s what they’re getting, because the corporations have taken over the functions that the civil servants were supposed to be providing. When you think about it, do you want somebody who’s been elected, who has no more qualifications than being popular, making decisions so complicated that you need thousands of people to analyze the data? So who have you got making the decisions? Corporate lobbyists. Because they’re the only ones that have the data. It couldn’t work any other way.
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/hansn_02.htm
These are the words and insight of Jay Hansen and a link to the full interview. Hope some read it in it’s entirely, and get the the total response, it’s worth the trouble.
History will repeat itself in short order.
Thank you, Gail for the link I think Jay nailed it
My manifesto..This took me around two years to build..Unabomber ain’t got nothing on this…
https://medium.com/@Cliffhanger1983/the-collapse-of-civilization-manifesto-2039c6a5327
That seems well-written and informative, thanks! Will read more later.
WOW, jupiviv, well done – this looks like a veritable book and will take me time to read it. Do you have a pdf? If so, email me please, so I can read on Kindle and file on my backup for reference. This looks very good and IMO it is essential that we share our wisdom in advance of the crash: peter@underco.co.uk
It’s Baby Doomer’s article not mine. : )
Yeah, sorry, I realised later and I am now in touch with him. Thanks
Sorry Baby Boomer, I replied to jupiviv in error – the post was meant for you!
This isn’t a manifesto- it’s a large number of links. While the links themselves are useful, I would have expected to see your own spin on things and an attempt to standardise the data perhaps if it were part of a manifesto.
https://i.imgur.com/rGdKstM.gif
This GIF would have worked so much better if Frank or I actually posted an actual manifesto… d’oh…
-GBV
I would like to know your thoughts on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and how the resource industry would respond. It we seem that it’s proponents think money is the limiting factor of everyone achieving all their desires. Maybe I misunderstand but basically it states if it is needed print the the money for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
I thought about writing a post about MMT, and more or less dismissed the idea as being too difficult to explain what goes wrong.
In a sense, what we need is more debt and any excuse for more debt is a good excuse, even if it is something of not much use to the economy. So, in that sense MMT has the right idea, especially if the economy is ailing. It is sort of like more QE.
There are a lot of things that go wrong. And that is where the problem is. Venezuela is an example of a country that has been printing money, with no real benefit to the economy.
In theory, the US economy could use MMT, because it is the reserve currency. If it could get the additional funds back to where they would help provide extra demand for commodities (as wages of workers, or as higher stipends for non-workers), they might inflate the price of oil and other commodities. Our current problem is “prices too low for producers.” This price inflation would help keep production of major commodities from collapsing, because low prices make production unprofitable.
Of course, no one wants this as the reason for MMT.
I am afraid that if MMT is used by economies that are do not have the reserve currency, it would just send the relativity to the dollar lower. So the countries would not come out ahead. (In fact, this may happen with the US with the reserve currency, as well.)
To the extent that a country can “deceive the system,” and somehow get more spendable income for its people, while other countries have less, then perhaps it can somehow import more finished goods and services than it rightly deserves to. I suppose this is Venezuela’s plan behind all of its money printing. It isn’t working.
Your writings, dear Gail, are excellent, except for your honesty.
The pain is on its way, we should not, like an ordinairy shareholder, put excuses on it.
Thanks Gail for your assessment of MMT and my friend Gerry Brady at BOOM says the same thing as you: that USA can issue bonds to any limit without recourse because they hold the reserve currency, for the moment that is. (the link below is not verified to my knowledge at this date). But rampant inflation is the risk.
http://thesaker.is/basel-3-a-revolution-that-once-again-no-one-noticed/
I am of the Austrian school and support the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) which relies on sound money and free markets. I might be proven wrong in the future, but I will stick with it for the present. My Chapter 11 – Macroeconomics 101, seeks to explain this in non-technical terms and contrasts and compares with Keynesians..
“I might be proven wrong in the future”
If you can squeeze in a very small box, you may be able to keep that delusion.
But probably not—-
:-))))))
“In a sense, what we need is more debt and any excuse for more debt is a good excuse, even if it is something of not much use to the economy.”
Great idea. Let’s just completely ignore the marginal productivity of debt, shall we?
https://rosshealy.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/black-hole-economics.pdf
“It is activity for the sake of activity, which only serves to crush GDP
and increase the dead weight of debt on the economy”
Once again, OFW proves it is no TAE (The Automatic Earth) when TAE was in its heyday. Nicole Foss pointed out as far back as 2011 how ever-expanding debt will not stave off collapse (and, I’d argue, make said collapse even worse):
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/08/china-and-the-new-world-disorder/
“When a credit expansion reaches the point where the debt created can no longer be serviced by a hollowed-out real economy, and the marginal productivity of debt becomes negative, continued growth is no longer possible…”
But I get it. It’s so much easier just to tell everyone to keep on doing what they’re doing rather than even TRY to encourage them to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, yes?
-GBV
If printing money, CC, was a solution to producing prosperity for all they would have been doing it long ago and all earthly beings would now be in the uplands of nirvana.
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A spotted a new ad today:
The new Karma Revero – “The leader in green-powered luxury driving”
This is the mindset of the folks who wrongly think we can move away from fossil fuels and keep the luxurious lifestyles that are powered by fossil fuels.
The correct ‘vehicle’ to be buying today is a very lightweight caravan that can be pulled by a horse. Equip it with a few solar panels and then get ready to be king of the road…until the highway men get ya”.
“This is the mindset of the folks who wrongly think we can move away from fossil fuels and keep the luxurious lifestyles that are powered by fossil fuels.”
rightly or wrongly, there is a gaining momentum towards building up the solar and wind industries… towards the goal of running IC entirely on renewables…
I think that this will be attempted in various places/countries around the world…
the main reason I say this is because it is happening NOW…
it’s not theoretical… it IS happening, and we see that in Gail’s chart that shows solar/wind/hydro now at about 10% of world energy…
of course, it is happening NOW in a world that has used a record amount of FF in a year… 2018…
the renewable industry is relying on the FF industry to power the world and to power the manufacture of more solar/wind…
I think it’s possible that there is enough remaining FF to build up renewables to 50+ percent of world energy…
another possibility is that economic/debt collapse will happen sooner…
time will tell…
ps:
the “fuel” used by solar panels is free…
6% or there about is hydro
I don’t think that’s a significant detail…
hydro will likely stay near that number, since the best hydro sites have already been dammmed… for the sake of this argguument, let’s assume so…
meanwhile, the whole earth is constantly being blasted by enormous amounts of solar which is “free fuel”, though the required panels are costly…
some of the record amount of FF used in 2018 was put to use manufacturing solar panels…
I’m making what I consider to be an educated guess that this manufacturing will increase greatly each year for the near future…
It’s not a significant detail that renewable – hydro = 4%. Um… no?
Although, I do agree that more solar and wind capacity will be built in the near future, especially with socdem/greenie ideas noticeably gaining traction quite rapidly in the US. Scaling up to 50% of world energy is wildly unrealistic, and replacing FFs in manufacturing is pure fantasy.
Also, expansion in solar will be primarily determined by climate, e.g. lots in Saudi but not much in Canada and so on.
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-solar-power-largest-date-loss.html
“Photovoltaics hot spots are areas of elevated temperature which can affect only part of the solar panel. They are a result of a localised decrease in efficiency and the main cause of accelerated PV ageing, often causing permanent damage to the solar panel’s lifetime performance. Dr. Dhimish discovered that of the 2580 panels he looked at, those that had hot spots generated a power output notably less than those that didn’t. He also discovered that location was a primary contributor in the distribution of hot spots”
“Scaling up to 50% of world energy is wildly unrealistic, and replacing FFs in manufacturing is pure fantasy.”
it’s unrealistic without cheap FF… but there are indications that the world will have increasing amounts of cheap natural gas in the coming years, and this may offset the decreasing net (surplus) energy from oil…
but yes, I am guessing “wildly”…
much or most manufacturing will continue to be FF powered, so of course it wouldn’t be part of the 50% renewable energy…
That doesn’t make sense because FFs are not interchangeable.
Natural gas isn’t much use for building solar panels, nor can it be… actually frack this just refer to the 45000 other version of this same point in the OFW archives.
“rightly or wrongly, there is a gaining momentum towards building up the solar and wind industries… towards the goal of running IC entirely on renewables…
I think that this will be attempted in various places/countries around the world…”
It is attempted right now in the EU. Permit to emit one tone of CO 2 costs now over 26 euros – twice what was a year ago, because the EU cut number of available permits. Maybe that’s why EU’s PMIs have collapsed?
using FF to make solar panels and wind turbines is probably a drag on the world economy…
in the short term, the ROI is negative, until there has been enough savings on electricity (with the “free fuel” of sun and wind) to pay for the initial investments… if ever…
in the long term, it may not matter if the ROI becomes positive, if the economic/debt collapse happens sooner…
but politically, it seems the EU will give it a go…
and the USA also, increasingly so if the quasi-socialist Ds gain control after the 2020 elections…
Overall wind and solar haven’t replaced a single coal fired power plant. Not only is the scale of energy rising, the amount that’s supplied by fossil fuels is also growing. So-called alternatives are at best, fossil fuel extenders, since they rely on a carbon energy infrastructure for their existence.
Although, they add to the mix of the world’s energy supply, albeit very slowly, they haven’t supplanted fossil fuels to any great extent, nor can they ever. (Where is the windmill that can create another windmill, without fossil fuel input?) I believe it’s only a 1% reduction in fossil fuel use of the energy pie each decade, as the pie keeps growing is size.
Also, alternatives merely deal with the electricity component of the total global energy supply – around 20%. They don’t address the needs of transportation, chemical, plastics, fertiliser, insecticides etc. Only fossil fuels can produce sufficient stocks to generate the energy & materials required to produce and move all this stuff, plus feed us along the way.
Hi Gail,
Great article.
If you look at interest rates since the 1980s, you can see a downward trend of lower highs and lower lows. If one assumes a lower boundary on interest rates around 0, would you say it’s reasonable to assume we have one more lower high (raising rates) left in the cycle before the next crash and then we’re at hitting the ZIRP boundary? What would that give us, maybe 5-10 years before we enter the financial Twilight Zone for good?
We certainly don’t have very much room left. It seems like this time could be the last time interest rates are raised. Or as you say, perhaps we could go through one more round of up and down movements. But we certainly don’t seem to have much time yet.
OIL (BRENT) PRICE COMMODITY
71.58 USD+ 0.60 (0.85%)
Well, its not 86, but its not 49 either.
true…
about half way… a bit closer to 86…
but it doesn’t say much about the future…
significantly above 86 and for a long time:
that would be a shocker…
S&P 500
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D39TymhW4AUjA5q?format=jpg&name=large
Isn’t this something similar to the three lines coming together in the Zerohedge article above? ( https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/henrich-tragedy-unfolding-stock-market-should-worry-both-bulls-bears )
Except the converging lines seem to converge a little earlier. Perhaps May.
Somehow, once thing sort out that things are not going as well as planned, the S&P 500 can be expected to head back downward.
Fascinating technical analysis of the US stock market by Northman Trader that suggests a 30% market crash in or by October of this year. Subject to the usual caveats about the speculative nature of trying to predict the future.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/henrich-tragedy-unfolding-stock-market-should-worry-both-bulls-bears
In the great scheme of things ~30% down swing is rather a market correction scenario, besides in the next serious slump the CBs will quasi directly step into ownership of (via ‘National Rejuvenation Fund/Greta’s Earth Health Fund’) core stocks anyway, unsurprisingly people won’t freak about it much, as there were only few zealots criticizing the QE program last time.
A serious crash is not allowed as we are on very specific path for decades, last major threshold reached and crossed around ~2008, this avenue eventually leads to attempted command-ration economy, it will crash and burn only afterwards..
Thanks again for another brilliant analysis. I would however double check your interpretation of the last BP stats review. My reading of their data is that only 2.6% of primary energy productivity comes from Wind and Solar. This makes your thesis considerably bleaker.
See: https://www.climate-restoration-foundation.com/single-post/2017/07/25/Renewables-are-great-theyre-just-not-great-enough
Her graph is for wind, solar *and* water (hydropower). Hydropower is the missing 8% or so that you’re looking for.
Right. Most of the total is hydropower. In the US, Europe, and Japan, hydropower isn’t growing because the good spots were developed long ago.
“Falling house prices could lead to rising levels of unemployment, the Reserve Bank has warned, putting Australia’s financial stability at risk as the Coalition and Labor turn the election into a test of economic management… ”There is a near-term risk that the delivery of a large volume of new apartments into a weak market could amplify price declines,” the RBA said, suggesting the influx would produce “further downward pressure”.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-s-housing-slump-fuels-slowdown-concerns-20190412-p51djt.html
“Difficulty getting finance is being blamed for a slump in house sales around the country. Excluding Auckland, the number of homes sold in New Zealand fell 10.5 per cent in March compared to the same time last year. Auckland’s sales fell 18.2 per cent year-on-year…”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/111988090/auckland-house-sales-fall-nearly-20-per-cent-as-market-stalls
Oh no, the Black Swan event spark in New Zealand!? How ironic,
Not to panic yet, Fast Eddie….seems BAU is still on track!
New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen once again.
The country’s gross greenhouse gas emissions were 80.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) in 2017 – up 2.2 per cent from the year prior.
The emissions increase was largely driven by climbing road transport emissions, and fossil fuel-generated electricity production.
Massey University professor Robert McLachlan said the growth was “just a whisker below” the record high in 2013.
All is well, as Gail has pointed out in her recent essay. Thank you again, Gail, when energy use declines we need to worry.
We could sometimes use a little downward pressure on apartment prices in the US. It seems like they have been rising faster than incomes–perhaps some downward pressure in high-priced cities, but this is part of what squeezes young people.
“China’s Imports… shrank by 7.6 per cent, after a 19.9 per cent collapse in January and February, below a Bloomberg forecast of 0.1 per cent growth. The new data from the General Administration of Customs means that for the first quarter of this year, China’s exports grew by 0.9 per cent while imports contracted by 4.4 per cent.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3005882/chinas-exports-recover-march-imports-crash-again-trade-war
“China’s total trade with America has slumped by 11% in the first three months of this year, the Customs department reports. That’s mainly due to a 28% (!) slump in imports to China from America in Q1, in yuan-denominated terms. Exports to the US fell 3.7% over the same three months.
“In March alone, US imports into China fell 21% while Chinese exporters actually shipped 10.6% more back to American consumers.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2019/apr/12/china-trade-export-imports-us-slumps-tariffs-business-live
Almost sounds like China is intentionally reducing imports from the U S.
“…a pattern emerges where one can see that the massive increase in corporate debt was matched by large sums being diverted to share buybacks… share buybacks do not strengthen a company and prepare it for an economic downturn. Financial engineering does not always help to shore up the economy. It may result in higher prices for equities, but that is not the be all and end all of the real economy.
“Another problem is that corporate debt has undergone a severe deterioration in the rating level of company debt…
“If, as seems to be the case, there is going to be an economic slowdown that leads to a recession, the Fed can lower interest rates only so much since there is not much distance between 2.41% and zero. QE4 is a possibility, but statistics have shown that the effect of QE3 was limited. Buying stocks is a possibility that would mean the total end of price discovery in equity markets.
“It is extremely difficult at the present time to predict what possible scenarios might result from exacerbation of the corporate debt load due to decisions of the Fed. Further interest rate increases will make the debt load more burdensome while interest rate decreases will encourage corporations to carry on unperturbed with share buyback programs. The Fed is trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4254042-corporate-debt-crisis
“Recent abrupt gyrations in financial markets could be the “tip of the iceberg”, according to a top International Monetary Fund official.”
https://www.ft.com/content/50553c1a-5bd6-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a
Good stuff Harry, thank you. The Russell 2000 is in trouble but it doesn’t show on the MSM at present, ZH has it:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-11/debt-and-profit-russell-2000-firms
The current percentage of Russell 2000 firms that are profitable seems to be below that in 2008. The rise in oil prices now won’t help these firms. The combination of higher oil prices and more interest payments could pop the debt bubble.
Agreed Gail, I think it is getting close now
“Nonbank lending, an industry that played a central role in the financial crisis, has been expanding rapidly and is still posing risks should credit conditions deteriorate.
“Often called “shadow banking” — a term the industry does not embrace — these institutions helped fuel the crisis by providing lending to underqualified borrowers and by financing some of the exotic investment instruments that collapsed when subprime mortgages fell apart.
“The companies face less regulation than traditional banks and thus have been associated with higher levels of risk.
“In the years since the crisis, global shadow banks have seen their assets grow to $52 trillion, a 75% jump from the level in 2010, the year after the crisis ended.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/11/shadow-banking-is-now-a-52-trillion-industry-and-posing-risks.html
The demand for oil increased 1.1 mmbpd in February YoY. The demand came from three nations: China, U.S and India. The demand fell in the rest of the world.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D36mT0CX4AA68GV?format=jpg&name=900×900
The demand for gasoline in the U.S has been falling though.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D36nNiHWkAAn7js?format=jpg&name=medium
China oil demand is doing better than I expected on this chart. I wonder whether the authors really were able to net back out rising exports of oil products and other changes that make it hard to figure out demand my country..
Gasoline ~$4.00 a gallon for 87 octane in CA. Drove with wifey to SAC today and that was the price everywhere we went. Per our discussions on this site, that should put a crimp in the economy. Watch and see…
CA has the 5th largest GDP on Earth- larger than the UK.
The rest of the US would be even more third world without CA.
Plus, 20% of federal taxes goes to supporting our red states from CA.
To be honest, CA would be better off as its own country—
Let Texas do some of the work- they have the values that most of the US has.
Without water or energy supplies of its own, California would collapse quickly separately from the US. It is seriously lacking affordable housing for its people.
Back in 2001 I was offered close to a six figure job as a subcontractor in the SF Bay area for a project related to the BART transit system. I couldn’t afford it, 350 sq ft studio apts were going for $1100 at that time, 1 bd room apts were fetching $2,500. Seventeen years later and it’s worse.
I tried a second time in 2003 to start a business in the Sacramento area and it was tough just trying to find available housing. I had to travel outside the Sacramento area to find an apt and there was a HUGE waiting list and those apts weren’t cheap either.
Gee, I wonder why?
Hi Rodster, housing is very high in CA. My wife and I use to live in Marin County and rent was high and that was 20 years ago. So we moved north and bought a fixer upper for 135K, fixed it up and even built a 2nd separate unit with fully equipped bathroom and kitchen. Now worth 450K, but if it was in the Bay Area it would be worth ~2.5 million depending on commute time to SF. So SF is the epicenter of highest property values. We know a couple in Tam Valley (next to Mill Valley) with a quick commute to SF and although it’s only 800 sq.ft. its worth north of a million. If you go to Sausalito sometime take a gander at the Firehouse on Caledonia Street. The austentashiousness of that architecturally complex building with glass windows to peer in and look at the perfectly pristine brand new looking giant fire trucks will give you an idea of property values in Sausalito. The police station across the street has underground parking for their patrol cars. It’s easy to spot Tesla’s in Marin. Then again, it’s a tourist destination so it gets jammed packed with tourists most of the year and has tour buses passing through all the time. Even though where we are the property values are much less, we prefer where we are by a long shot. Beautiful and peaceful.
Yea, I lived in Marin for quite a while.
There is a reason why it is the most expensive place in CA.
(actually, the 3rd most in the US– a small place in Virginia, and even smaller one in Colorado are first and second.)
High property prices are high by design.
When there’s a lack of good investments in the real economy, the elite invest their money in property and charge what the market can bear.
Home ownership is promoted endlessly to the non-elite as a way to build wealth. Cheap credit is made available to the non-elite, which pushes prices of property even higher.*
For at least one person I know, home ownership is her retirement plan. She has no husband and no good job to provide a pension. She did have access to cheap credit to buy a home.
High property values are good for retired people who own property and wealthy people who own property but they are detrimental to everyone else. High property values are the PERFECT TAX. Very few people will revolt over high rents if they are told they can get “in on the action” by getting a low interest loan. It’s like telling a slave that if they play by the rules, they too, can be a wealthy slave-owner too, before they die. I think there would be a lot less bitterness about slavery, in America, if had not been tied to skin color. If blacks could own whites slaves, I doubt the institution would have ended. Having a prayer of getting in on the action makes a lot of people compliant. The lottery system, i America, works the same way as rising property values. It’s a tax that people willingly pay for a slim chance of being wealthy.
Many will enter, few will win.
*Describes education as well, another area where the elite spend a lot of money.
It’s not lucrative as a cancer -fighting initiative (healthcare) but it creates of cash flow from the have-nots to the haves.
Reality check:
4 crops use 50% of all water in California (almonds, alfalfa, cotton, rice). The population uses only 8-12%. Those crops are a minor part of the economy. 25% of all crops in the US are produced in California, plus the tech that most of you are using (actually all, because you are on a graphical interface).
I could go on—-
I’m not a CA resident. I live in a State you could put in a corner of LA County.
I bet you get produce from California, however.
We could make tech outside of California
by which you mean increasingly inefficient software ( Windows 10 is not an improvement on anything).
In terms of agriculture, California’s big advantage is sunshine, from what I see.
And soil and water- plus ideal weather and climate.
1/4 of all agriculture–
(I’m sure you can divide that by 50?)
California governments are financed by huge deficits. The state will only survive long term with federal bailouts since the federal government facilitates the printing of its own money.. The clock is ticking.
“California governments are financed by huge deficits”
I don’t know about town governments, but CA state was heavily in debt, then raised license fees for autos a LOT, and the budget has been balanced ever since. I pay $124 bucks a year for registration of a ranger truck from 1997 with 204,000 miles. Imagine what it must be for a new vehicle. State fuel tax is high too. People better have really good paying jobs or great businesses if they’re coming to CA.
Lol!
CA has a large budget surplus—
Being the 5th largest economy on Earth, the cash is flowing in—
Why do you think the wages and rents are so high?
It must be all those highly educated non-white immigrants pushing those wages and rents up. I see more and more PSAs in Chinese and Arabic every time I visit the Golden State.
Idontho.
Large parts of California is, including Central Valley, semi-arid so it can’t have great weather or climate for farming.
The deep south states have a more ideal climate for farming , if not the same level of capital investment.
If it is possible to irrigate cheaply, it is possible to use a lot of land that could not otherwise be used. Of course, this depletes groundwater supplies or depends on river flows which may not be available.
California’s recent budget surplus is largely due to recent increases in governmental fees and taxes, part of what is driving the middle class to FLEE.
The future collapse of CA will be something to behold. They have a lot going for them….great weather, trade with the east….but they lost Duncan…
Give me a break. CA is already rapidly turning into a 3rd world quasi-socialist “paradise”. Businesses and (productive) people have been fleeing the state for at least a decade. I see 3 or 4 California license plates on a daily basis now here in my city in Texas. That bloated GDP you refer to is a product of a massive housing bubble and a massive Internet/tech “unicorn” bubble (Lyft IPO, anyone?). They will pop, as they all do. CA already has the largest population of government assistance recipients in the country, both as a % of population and in absolute numbers.
As its own country Cali would last about 5 years before either running out of water or voting to annex itself back into Mexico, or both.
In response to Chrome Mags, the reason your gas costs $4 over there is because the state of California requires refiners to produce a special grade of gasoline, called CARBOB, for its market. The motivating factor is environmental concerns. This particular grade is very hard (expensive) to produce and only a few refineries in the world are equipped to do so. This alone is responsible for a huge chunk of, it not all of, the price difference between CA and the rest of the country.
California has a budget surplus–
And is the 5th largest economy on Earth.
You would not be posting here without its technology.
There are any number of pieces of our networked system that would be a problem to lose. The fact that California is a big as it is, alone, creates a problem.
“In response to Chrome Mags, the reason your gas costs $4 over there is because the state of California requires refiners to produce a special grade of gasoline…”
I’m aware of the Summer and Winter CA formulas that cost more, but price still fluctuates due to price of oil refineries pay. It’s always jumps up a little with new formulas, but even 4 bucks a gallon is a lot for CA. When it gets to 5 look out, for those here in CA on limited budgets.
To those that think CA is on the brink of becoming a 3rd world country I’d say you aren’t here experiencing it. There is so much wealth here and it just increases by huge amounts every year. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of collapse here unless the rest of the US collapses. Sure, there are always places not so well off, but most of CA is a bastion of wealth. Drive through the Monterey, Carmel area, or Santa Barbara, or Marin County, or SF. In fact, I’d say there is a wealth drain from the rest of the US to CA. Why? Because wealth attracts wealth. I’m not saying my wife and I are wealthy or that all CA residents are, but there are millions of wealthy people here. The rumors from people in other states about CA’s impending collapse are so far off the mark its hilarious.
A lot of the wealth is paper wealth.
Teachers and other people with more “normal” incomes have a hard time making an adequate living in California.
According to Gini coefficient analyses, California is among the least equal states. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/us-states-with-the-highest-levels-of-income-inequality.html
According to this analysis, California is state number 4, behind New York, Connecticut, and Louisiana. Texas is number 5. Being this high up in inequality, with limited energy and water resources of its own, it would seem to be a candidate of collapse or governmental overthrow.
“…CalPERS’ current unfunded liabilities, officially $179 billion, could be more like $360 billion, completely overwhelming the fund’s current assets and making it, on paper at least, hopelessly insolvent.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/calmatters.org/articles/commentary/could-california-pension-system-be-underwater/amp/
There doesn’t seem to be a middle class in LA or SF. Your either wealthy or poor.
I’ve been reading an article by this UK economics genius, Ed Conway
——-
Below is who he is, his background etc
Quote:
Former Daily Telegraph journalist Ed Conway has been made Sky News’ first economics editor.
Conway previously held the same role at the Telegraph and before that was economics correspondent for the Daily Mail.
He has spent the last year on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (just so you can catch up on his spread of misinformation)
—————————-
Now I quote his latest garbage on economics:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prophets-of-doom-forget-power-of-innovation-kthpbjqmc
that there will soon be a “great leap of technology”, and bases this theory on Moores law of expansion in computer science, and bases progress in energy production on the expansion of computer technolgy convinced that they are one and the same thing
the main body of it is behind a paywall but you get the gist
such is the genius of economists
It saddens me, Norman, that our academics and ‘supposed’ Ph.Ds in economics and finance have been so badly misled in their studies and history; having absorbed their Keynesian theories, currently the rising of MMT and money printing as a solution to global challenges..
They do not understand that their financial paradigms are merely reflections of the real world of net energy. They will however soon discover the error of their ways because I believe we are not too far away from the next mega-crisis.
One of my mentors, Gerry Brady, in Brisbane has much to say about this:
http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/ and of course Tim Morgan at:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
This video and transcript may help your readers Gail to evaluate their plans for the post apocalypse world -if you haven’t already seen it:
https://www.thelostways.com/vsl/index.php?r=4008&r=9239&hop=eprism&rx=1
I have not looked at this. I am afraid I don’t have high expectations for it either.
Another one out of the park…I knew most of it but it is good to have it in one place for sharing
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Seems Fast Eddie was correct…DNA Genes win out in the end…at least in the case a pigweed!
As Weeds Outsmart The Latest Weedkillers, Farmers Are Running Out Of Easy Options
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/11/710229186/as-weeds-outsmart-the-latest-weedkillers-farmers-are-running-out-of-options
Culpepper, at the University of Georgia, says he’s not surprised. Nobody should be surprised anymore by the superpowers of pigweed, he says. “I’m telling you, as a weed scientist, it’s just an absolutely fascinating plant,” he says. “You have to respect it, and the first thing to respect it is, [know that] this plant will outsmart me if I do the same thing over and over again.”
Culpepper tells farmers that they still can control this superweed, but they need to use a bunch of different tools. That means deploying multiple chemicals, alternating the crops that they plant, and planting extra “cover crops” in the off season to cover the soil and make it harder for weeds to emerge.
….. that’s what worries Culpepper the most. “We haven’t had a new way to kill a weed with a herbicide since 1984,” he says.
Meanwhile, weeds like Palmer amaranth and ryegrass have been defeating one chemical after another. “This is a monumental challenge we’re facing. Is dicamba- and 2,4-D-resistant pigweed surprising? No,” he says. “[But] the overall issue with resistance is flat-out overwhelming.”
Nature always finds a way……
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oijEsqT2QKQ
Super smart….
The one picture that rammed it home for me was this one https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/charts/Energy/Energy_2018_United-States.png
“rejected energy”. it rejected you, not the other way around.
I think we should have flowcharts instead showing how little of the sales price of a product gets back to what I call “non-elite workers”. The non-elite workers are the base of the system. If they cannot feed their families, they overthrow the government. Or they die from eoidemics. As more complexity is added, the system tends to fail. It may look more efficient (more widgets per hour or more miles per gallon), but the system can’t really operate that way.
I don’t think the energy flowcharts show much at all.
I love flowcharts Gail. I couldn’t have done my job (consulting in corporates’ systems) in the old days before MSProject!
++++++++++
Visiting 2nd & 3rd world countries can show a person from the 1st how much waste we accept as normal in all aspects of life, not just energy consumption – mainly because the predominant economic system in most places is a variation of neoliberalism. This barely regulated capitalism removes balance and controls, so the robber-baron, anything goes, free-for-all, actually is designed for maximum possible consumption/profit as opposed to efficiency, resulting in high levels of waste.
The easiest steps therefore to conserve energy via usage patterns alone are to eliminate corruption and ineptitude. In the few states where this has been done, up to 50% of use can be from energy that was previously ‘lost’ outright. Then sensitive pricing alone can cut another huge % of waste, conjuring up more energy for serious purposes, like running a hospital, vs lighting up motorways few use for kilometres at night for example. Changing mindsets is the first and key step, manage this and you can then conserve usage to only essential purposes – this can be done with psychology alone if people are persuaded with respect. From what I have seen on my recent travels, some countries generating/affording even only 25% of of their current usage could be fully energy independent with intelligent, courageous and honest leadership – you can see why it almost never happens. I have personally managed facilities where the buildings had lights on all night and most electrical equipment not switched off despite the entire site being unused at night. This was simply because staff didn’t care as they didn’t pay the bills and the top brass similarly saw the loss as on the shareholders, so not worth the hassle trying to enforce discipline. I calculated the budget and can promise you we could have cut our power bill in half with nobody inconvenienced at all.
Extrapolated to a national economy, genuine needs can probably be covered with existing supplies if waste and wants are eliminated. Democratically, you could have a billing structure where the tariff is step-structured so log-changes in usage are charged commensurately higher as a waste tax. All this is with existing technology and could be suggested by schoolkids, so the lack is political will.
What one person views as waste, another person views as providing their job. It is extremely difficult to remove energy use without creating huge problems for the economy. You talk about a few states where this has been done. Where?
Ah, sorry, I phrased that badly giving one possible interpretation that I had specific factual knowledge of several countries where there are innovative energy programs. What I meant was that a few states that had made significant strides toward reducing/eliminating some types of waste created through corruption and ineptitude. So I meant more that the scope was there to free up existing energy in many systems in countries, if they were just performed differently, like transport or even changing the tax structure of billing for power generally. I’m only an individual with some education and travel experience, I’m not a development expert, so I can only point at general information publically available. Examples are more piecemeal, so say certain cities getting one thing very right that could be adopted elsewhere – a well-run country could then do all of these improvements to get a great total score.
A quick one is Rwanda’s highly regulated and tech-driven bus system in the capital replacing the log-jammed chaos you get in most of the rest of 3rd-world countries. This can make public transport such a good option that private car use falls and the eradication of traffic jams alone saves a serious amount of energy. Marginal gains like this can add up and are even more important to poor countries.
If an economy is run well, people can choose a job that doesn’t involve waste and it is for a civilised society to decide if they want economies that waste energy – at some stage the point will be moot if they can’t afford it anyway.
So true, one mans waste is another mans livelihood.
in order to waste stuff, it is important to have stuff in the first place
if you live in a 3rd world country you will waste very little, because you have very little to start with, so you conserve what little you have
in a 3rd world country, you can’t stand under a running shower for minutes, you can’t flush your toilet or enjoy motorways lit at night.
we are not a third world country. yet.
as we slide towards that, we too will become less wasteful, but it is going to be a hard lesson to learn
The problem is that the costs of the water system are mostly fixed, with the advanced system we have today. Cutting back only means that the cost per liter or gallon rise.
Some of the same problems arise when using roads or using the internet. A great deal of the costs are fixed. We need to spread the costs over the wasteful users (video game users on the internet, for example) to keep costs reasonable for users for which the internet is essential, such as some business applications. Getting rid of the wasteful users is harmful to the system.
Another issue is that a lot of jobs depend on growth. Building more schools depends on growth. Building more homes and roads depends on growth. Economies of scale for businesses need growth to be helpful. Cutting back operates in the wrong direction.
allowing for a few exceptions that I can’t immediately think of, all jobs depend on growth
Ah but the current water system is not going to be fixed for much longer, same as all our other ‘advanced’ systems. So cut back on water means getting a rainwater tank as your supply. You will naturally cut back on usage when it doesn’t rain for a while.
I as a pensioner rather enjoy my video games and pay for the software, hardware, internet access, electricity. So is my ‘enjoyment’ wasteful? Does it all have to be about business?
“I as a pensioner rather enjoy my video games and pay for the software, hardware, internet access, electricity. So is my ‘enjoyment’ wasteful?”
While I want to say “no” (I like my video games too, though rarely ever get the time to play them), the probable truth is that all of those things are heavily subsidized by cheap energy and thus you aren’t really paying the “true cost” for them. If cheap energy is being used to allow you to enjoy a leisurely pleasure activity rather than being used to shore up the system’s resilience (e.g. small gardens for every home, non-grid tied renewable power sources, large quarries/reservoirs with non-fossil fuel powered pumping stations and hydro-electric turbines, debt repatriation, large-scale food freeze drying initiatives and increased food storage for emergencies, re-develooment of legacy technologies), I’d have to say that yes, it is wasteful.
And yes Gail, I recognize that several (if not all) of the ideas I proposed may limit growth and thus make collapse even more likely. But if collapse is inevitable, collapsing into a world where substantial amounts of debt has already been liquidated in an orderly fashion and everyone’s ability to be self-sufficient has been drastically increased seems a lot less chaotic/scary than the collapse it looks like we’ve got coming to us.
Cheers,
-GBV
Well, I don’t know how much subsidy my video game enjoyment gets, other than I do get a pensioner allowance on my electricity. (Don’t suppose my paying taxes during fifty years of working counts for anything?).
But, all those things you mention as needed to shore up the system aren’t happening here (OZ) although electricity is (fortuitously) hydro.
That’s why I’m located where I am, with rain water tanks, own waste handling, knowledge of local wild plants and animals, remote from the madding crowd and plenty of firewood.
The electricity is nice to have but I can live without it when they can’t keep the hydro running.
Our government is currently busy in election mode, all parties touting ‘more jobs, growth etc – the usual’, but I am digging up the last of this years potato crop and adding to my hand tools as my pension permits. About ready as I’ll ever be for collapse.
How ironic that just yesterday the first verified image of a black hole was shared with the world. Just as our advanced civilization swirls down into its own proverbial black hole. Almost a Shakespearean moment.
Yup, the irony !
“BP is the last of the international oil majors, including Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and ENI, to quit exploring for shale gas in China because of poor drilling results. Its departure leaves the sector firmly in the hands of domestic companies.”
Reuters
Argentina seems the only shale play outside of the US that has potential.
Just found this on the WSJ:
“The Saudi connection with Vice came in 2017 through Prince Mohammed’s younger brother, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and a fan of Vice’s provocative approach to news, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The Brooklyn-based firm had built its reputation and young audience with documentaries exploring subjects such as Japanese pornography and new varieties of illicit drugs—topics largely off-limits in conservative Saudi Arabia.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-sought-vices-help-to-build-a-media-empire-11549621800
An oil empire, a media empire, an eventual tourism empire… where does all this BAU awesomeness end? Probably where it began:
“They live in the open air, claiming as native land a wilderness that has neither rivers nor abundant springs from which it is possible for a hostile army to obtain water. It is their custom neither to plant grain, set out any fruit-bearing tree, use wine, nor construct any house; and if anyone is found acting contrary to this, death is his penalty. They follow this custom because they believe that those who possess these things are, in order to retain the use of them, easily compelled by the powerful to do their bidding.
They are exceptionally fond of freedom; and, whenever a strong force of enemies comes near, they take refuge in the desert, using this as a fortress; for it lacks water and cannot be crossed by others, but to them alone, since they have prepared subterranean reservoirs lined with stucco, it furnishes safety. As the earth in some places is clayey and in others is of soft stone, they make great excavations in it, the mouths of which they make very small, but by constantly increasing the width as they dig deeper, they finally make them of such size that each side has a length of one plethrum. After filling these reservoirs with rain water, they close the openings, making them even with the rest of the ground, and they leave signs that are known to themselves but are unrecognizable by others. They water their cattle every other day, so that, if they flee through waterless places, they may not need a continuous supply of water.” (Diodorus of Sicily)
At first I thought this was a report to Duke Atreides about the Fremen of Arrakis.
“In recent months, OPEC and total disruptions have been running at the highest levels for almost three years and near some of the highest for a decade… And the EIA figures do not include Venezuela, where output has been erratically declining and too variable to define a “normal” undisrupted level. Nor do they take into account the potential impact of renewed fighting in Libya, which could upset production and exports in the next few months if it intensifies.
“The figures therefore understate the extent to which involuntary production cuts – actual and threatened – have caused the oil market to tighten in recent months…
“…unplanned problems can… cause the oil market to over-tighten temporarily, pushing prices higher and masking underlying imbalances between production and consumption, contributing to a subsequent slump. The recent sudden tightening bears many similarities to events in 2013 and early 2014 – which paved the way for a slump in late 2014 and through 2015.”
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/opinion-high-oil-supply-disruptions-set-stage-for-next-slump/68826192
Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, like Algeria’s Bouteflika, is now consigned to the dustbin of history:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6910899/Sudan-waits-ruler-OVERTHROWN-military-seizes-state-TV.html