The world today has a myriad of energy policies. One of them seems to be to encourage renewables, especially wind and solar. Another seems to be to encourage electric cars. A third seems to be to try to move away from fossil fuels. Countries in Europe and elsewhere have been trying carbon taxes. There are also programs to buy carbon offsets for energy uses such as air travel.
Maybe it is time to step back and take a look. Where are we now? Where are we really headed? Have the policies implemented since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 had any positive impact?
Let’s look at some of the issues involved.
[1] We have had very little success in reducing CO2 emissions.
CO2 emissions for all countries, in total, have been spiraling upward, year after year.
Figure 1. Carbon dioxide emissions for the world, based on BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy.
If we look at the situation by part of the world, we see an even more concerning pattern.
Figure 2. Carbon dioxide emissions by part of the world through 2018, based on BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Soviet Empire is an approximation including Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, based on the BP report. It would not include Cuba and North Korea.
The group US+EU+Japan has been able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 5% since 2005. Emissions were slowly rising between 1981 and 2005. There was a dip at the time of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, followed by a downward trend. A person might get the impression that CO2 emissions for the EU tend to rise during periods when the economy is doing well and tend to fall when it is doing poorly.
The “star” in emissions reductions is the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. I refer to this group as the Soviet Empire. Emissions fell around the time of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. This big decrease in emissions seems to be related to huge changes that took place at that time. Instead of one country with a single currency, the individual republics were suddenly on their own.
The high point in CO2 emissions for the Soviet Empire came in 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union central government. By 1999, emissions had fallen to a level 37% below their 1990 level. In fact, even in recent years, emissions for this group of countries has stayed low. Much industry collapsed and has never been replaced.
The group that has more than doubled its emissions is what I call the Remainder Group. The group includes many countries, including China and India, that ramped up their manufacturing and other heavy industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the World Trade Organization added members. The Remainder Group also includes many countries that suddenly found new export markets for their raw materials, such as oil, iron ore, and copper. The Remainder countries became richer; they became more able to pave roads and build more substantial homes for their citizens. With all of this GDP-related activity, CO2 emissions increased rapidly.
[2] Population growth has followed a pattern that is in some ways similar to CO2 growth.
Figure 3. Population from 1965 to 2018, based on UN 2019 population estimates.
In Figure 3, we see that population has been virtually flat in the former Soviet Empire (2% growth between 1997 and 2018). With the economy not doing well, young people emigrate to countries that seem to provide better prospects.
Population in the US+EU+Japan Group grew by 11% between 1997 and 2018.
The group that is simply outstanding for population growth is the Remainder Group, with 35% growth between 1997 and 2018. A big part of this population growth comes from improved sanitation and basic medical care, such as antibiotics. With these changes, a larger percentage of the babies that are born have been able to live to maturity.
It is hard to see any bend in the trend lines, which would indicate that recent actions have actually changed the course of activity from the way it was headed previously. Of course, the trend is only “linear,” implying that the percentage growth is gradually slowing over time.
This rapidly growing population feeds into the CO2 problem as well. The many young people would all like food, homes and transportation. While it is possible to obtain some version of these desired products without fossil fuels, the version with fossil fuels tends to be vastly improved. Most people prefer homes with indoor plumbing and electricity, if given an opportunity, for example.
[3] Deforestation keeps growing as a world problem.
Figure 4. Chart showing World Bank estimates of share of world forested by economic grouping.
High Income Countries keep pushing the deforestation problem to the poorer parts of the world. Heavily Indebted Poor Countries are especially affected. Worldwide, deforestation continues to grow.
[4] With respect to fossil fuels, there is a great deal of confusion with respect to, “What do we need to be saved from?”
Do we have a problem with too much or too little fossil fuel? We hear two different stories.
Figure 5. Author’s image of two trains speeding toward the world economy.
Climate modelers keep telling us about what could happen, if indeed we use too much fossil fuel. In fact, the climate currently is changing, bolstering this point of view.
It seems to me that there is an equally great danger of collapse, accompanied by low energy prices. For example, we know that energy production in the European Union has been declining for many years, without the countries being able to do anything about it.
We also know historically that many civilizations have collapsed. The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991, illustrating one type of collapse. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. Its collapse came after oil prices were too low to allow adequate investment in new oil fields for an extended period of time. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 offers a much smaller, temporary version of what collapse might look like.
Another example of low prices accompanying collapse comes from Revelation 18: 11-13, warning of possible collapse like that of ancient Babylon. The problem was inadequate demand and low prices; even the energy product of the day (human beings sold as slaves) had little value.
11 The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
What we have been seeing recently is falling prices and prices that are too low for producers. Such a result can lead to collapse if too many energy producers go bankrupt and quit.
Figure 6. Inflation adjusted weekly average Brent Oil price, based on EIA oil spot prices and US CPI-urban inflation.
If we are in danger of collapse from low prices, renewables would not seem to be of much assistance unless they (a) are significantly less expensive than fossil fuels and (b) can be scaled up sufficiently rapidly to more than replace fossil fuels. Neither of these seems to be a possibility.
[5] Early studies overestimated how much help renewables might provide, especially if our problem comes from too little energy supply rather than too much.
Renewables look like they would be great from many points of view, but when it comes down to the real world situation, they don’t live up to the hype.
One issue is that while wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other devices for capturing energy are called “renewables,” they are really only available through the use of the fossil fuel system. They are made using fossil fuels. If a part breaks, or if insects eat away the insulation on wires, replacements need to be made using the fossil fuel system and transported using the fossil fuel system. At best, renewables should be considered fossil fuel extenders, using less fossil fuels than conventional electricity generation. They are also dependent on other resources, which may eventually deplete, but which are not a problem at this time.
A second issue is that it is extremely difficult to do a proper cost-benefit analysis on renewables because they can only be used as part of a larger system. They tend to look inexpensive, when viewed in isolation. But when total system costs are viewed, they often are quite expensive.
One difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that renewables are often sited at quite a distance from where electricity is to be used, leading to the need for a significant number of long distance transmission lines. Furthermore, if renewables provide intermittent power, they need to be sized for the maximum output, not their average output. All of these long distance lines need to be properly maintained, or they tend to cause fires. In some instances, burying the lines underground at significant cost is the only solution. Somehow, these higher costs need to be recognized as part of the cost of the system, but this is rarely done.
Another difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that renewables’ intermittency must be overcome, if the electricity is to be of benefit to a modern economy that requires electricity 24/7/365. In theory, we could greatly overbuild the renewables system and the transmission. This might work, but we would end up with a large percentage of the system that is not used most of the time, greatly adding to costs.
Batteries can be added, but the cost tends to be high. One commenter on my site recently observed:
EIA reports the average cost for utility scale battery systems to be about $1500 per kWh. At that rate the batteries needed for backing up a solar or wind facility for three days cost around 30 times as much as the RE facility. But wind is often unpowered for more like seven days, during huge stagnant high pressure episodes. Thus the backup battery cost is more like 100 times the wind farm cost. Batteries are not feasible.
The major intermittency problem is season-to-season, especially saving up enough for winter. We do not have a way, today, of storing energy from one season to another, short of making it into a liquid (such as ammonia), and storing the liquid from season to season. This would be another way of driving up costs of the overall system. It has not been included in anyone’s cost calculations.
For the time being, we are forcing nuclear and fossil fuel to provide backup electrical services to intermittent renewables without adequately compensating them for their services. This tends to drive them out of business. This is not an adequate solution either.
A third issue is that renewables really need to be “economic” to work. In other words, they need to generate a profit for their owners, when comparing the unsubsidized costs with the benefits of the system. In fact, their owners need to be able to pay fairly substantial taxes to governments, to cover their share of governmental costs as well. If renewables truly were providing substantial benefit to the system, their use would tend to “take off” on their own, because they would be providing “net energy” to the system. Instead, renewables tend to act like “energy sinks.” They need endless subsidies. They can never substitute for fossil fuels. In fact, they can’t even pay their own way.
A related issue is that, because of the high total costs (as well as their lack of true net energy benefits), it is almost impossible to ramp up the quantity of renewables such as wind and solar very high. The EU has been a big supporter of renewables other than hydroelectric. Figure 7 shows a chart of the EU’s own energy production, together with its energy imports.
Figure 7. EU energy by type and whether imported, based on data of BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Renewables are non-hydroelectric renewables such as wind, solar, and geothermal.
After at least 20 years of subsidies, the EU has been able to increase renewables (other than hydroelectric) to about 10% of its total energy supply. The EU’s oil imports are roughly level, and its natural gas imports have been increasing. Even with rapid growth in non-hydro renewables, the EU has been experiencing a decrease in total energy consumption.
[6] Looking at the actual outcomes, a person might ask, “What in the world were policymakers really thinking about?”
We are told that the reason policymakers made the decisions they did was because they thought that they could reduce CO2 emissions in this way. Really? If a person really wants to reduce CO2 emissions, it is easy to see how to do it. A person simply has to take steps in the direction of reducing global co-operation. One step would be to reduce international trade. Another would be to get rid of umbrella organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Union. In fact, within individual countries, the top level of government could be removed, leaving (for example) the provinces of Canada and the states of the United States. In other words, policymakers could push economies in the direction of collapse.
Another way collapse could be encouraged would be by rapidly raising interest rates or cutting off credit. With less purchasing power, the world would be pushed into recession.
At the time of the Kyoto Protocol, policymakers moved in precisely the opposite direction of pushing the economy toward collapse. They moved in the direction of adding international trade and more debt to enable the growth. The countries with greater trade had huge coal resources that had not been used. With the help of this coal, the world economy was able to continue to grow. This approach only made sense if the real problem at the time of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 was too little energy resources, not too much. The economy needed the stimulation that more low-cost energy and more debt could provide.
It is now more than twenty years later. The coal resources of China are starting to deplete. Coal is also causing serious ground-level pollution problems, both in China and India. Without growing coal production, world GDP growth starts slowing. We are again facing low oil prices and other commodity prices–a problem similar to the one present when the government of the Soviet Union collapsed. The world economy seems again to be headed toward having some of its governmental organizations collapse from inadequate energy. Political parties are becoming more extreme; countries are enacting new tariffs. If we go back to Figure 5, the concern should again be collapse, on the left side of the figure.
[7] The scenarios considered by the IPCC climate model need to be revisited.
A climate model looks to the past and tries to forecast what would happen in alternative “scenarios.” The concern I have is that the scenarios evaluated are not realistic. To get to the level of CO2 that would produce the most extreme scenarios, coal production would need to continue at a high level for many, many years. This seems unrealistic because world coal production has been fairly flat for several years, and prices tend to be lower than producers require if they are to stay in business. The likely direction for coal production seems to be down, rather than up.
Figure 8. World Energy Consumption by Fuel, based on data of 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
In order for coal production to grow as much as the higher emission scenarios assume, there needs to be a major turnaround in the situation. World coal prices would need to rise substantially. In fact, coal in very difficult locations for extraction, such as under the North Sea, need to become profitable to extract. This situation seems very unlikely.
It seems to me that climate modelers should be considering more realistic scenarios regarding CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. One scenario which should be considered is the possible near term collapse of several governmental organizations, such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the governments of several oil exporting countries.
[8] The push toward renewables makes little sense without a firmer foundation than currently exists.
Early studies looked only at the cost of renewables themselves, without the cost of extra long-distance grid transportation and battery storage. Such an estimate makes renewables look far more valuable than they really are.
We now have enough experience that we can see what goes wrong. A hydroelectric plant that operates during the wet season in a tropical country may be of little practical use, for example, if there is no fossil fuel energy available to provide backup electricity production during the dry season. The total cost of the overlapping systems needs to be taken into consideration, including the need to hire staff year around for both the fossil fuel and hydroelectric facilities. Electricity transmission will likely be needed for both types of generation.
There are many other real-world examples that can be examined, before blanket “use renewables” recommendations should be issued. If renewables are not truly very inexpensive (around 2 cents per kWh or less), without subsidies, they are likely not to be long-lasting. Subsidies become more and more difficult to maintain, as a system scales up.
Gail,
Thank you for the great interview you did with Sam Mitchell on Collapse Chronicles.
You are welcome. I didn’t expect it would be up this soon.
Finally read and scanned (and skipped through) the Hagens article.
“Finally, just as we discovered that we live in a heliocentric world, and that we evolved, we now begin to see that we are part of a biologically emergent Superorganism which is de-facto eating the planet. If we figure that out, what new pathways might it open up? Our biology is not going to change – but our culture and our economic system could. How will we use the coming financial/energy recalibration to move towards a slower, wiser, less damaging system? What sorts of responses would be beneficial? What sort of new stories do we need?”
The built environment carry narratives of one sort or another that could change human culture. We are drawn to visual and spatial messaging.
Unfortunately, it is physics we are up against. It won’t allow the smooth transition that Nate and many others would prefer. History shows us what happens with there is inadequate energy supply.
Thanks to FW I’ve come to the point where I write that where we are could not have been avoided. But I see it as because the superorganism is not divisible. It made its own choices and evolved on a higher level than individuals or groups could influence. I’m only saying that Hagens managed to completely ignore any change agent apart from material ones. Nothing on religion, for example. “Man shall not live by bread alone.”
“Man shall not live by bread alone.”
Why not? Especially if the rest is pretty much made-up bumbo jumbo to rationalize our existence and provide a mental crutch for those who feel they need it? Humans are only special in their ability to destroy their environment and devour ecosystems. We reached the Moon and Mars, sent probes to interstellar space, We trashed the Earth and were looking for more. Then we were stopped by reality, the laws of physics ruled.
We trashed the Earth and were looking for more. Then we were stopped by reality, confounded by the end of more and the beginning of less.
https://youtu.be/ITs-YX1yQ7o
lol
sounds familiar:
Requiem for our planet
the planet that we live on
allowed our lives to be
until we chose to trash it
and call it property
Fire was our first mistake
but warming were the flames
not knowing in our cleverness
we burned away our dreams
using fire we forced our land
behind a fence and wall
then fought hard for possession
of what was meant for all
then we created money
our busy’ness to allow
while destroying that very thing
on which our living drew
our population on the planet
was by pestilence unfazed
or wars that culled our numbers
and gods that made us crazed
now our world has had enough
and we must be got rid
we finally messed up our lease
and had eviction served
to be washed away by water
or fried by heated air
and poisoned by the fuels
we burned without a care
our planet has a fever
caused by humankind
and now can only cure itself
by leaving us behind
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/ode-to-our-planet-6410725aa3ac
We trash nothing. The planet is doing fine.
The “monkey do” humans, on the other hand, is going the way of the dodo.
Indeed, the planet is doing just fine. The people, however, well, let’s listen to what George Carlin have to say about the “monkey do” 8bn+ crowd busying themselves with sawing off the branch they are sitting on.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/d6/1d/93d61d154f37dc63c1c255d4ad7e5199.png
You’d need to define “fine” to make that claim. Of course the planet we call Earth will be around in some form long after all life is extinguished but could that be regarded as “fine”? According to work by scientists looking at planetary boundaries, the planet is most certainly not doing just fine.
The flora and fauna returning back to the radiation and concrete horrors of Pripyat certainly does not agree with the “scientists”. They don’t care about our hubris as a self important, pretentious and indulgent species of “monkey do” apes seeking to dominate nature and ourselves.
Nature will take care of our mishaps quite automatically. The problems is ours and ours alone. And yes, you, indeed you are part of the problem and not the solution as you and other useful idiots become arbiters of good taste and useless worry.
It is about time for the ape to wake up to the reality of who we are and what nature, through it’s inevitability subjugation will project unto us.
https://miro.medium.com/max/2500/0*xfAzsvZEwawG1rsz.jpg
Perhaps not so: even if humans have full stomachs, they die when their spirit is broken.
Whatever maintains that spirit is valuable, and to need it is not to be weak, but merely human.
“Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes vi:7-8)
One of the first books printed in the new movable type, was the Ars moriendi. A lesson I have some incentive to learn, being 74 years old.
To try and clarify: Hagens goes into human motivation–a lot on psychology–but seems to ignore how psychology can be affected by religion or other unquantifiables. The spatial, physical world, for instance, affects us (or has the potential to affect) psychologically more than is commonly thought.
So we didn’t follow the laws of physics, and followed emotions that led us to the matrix? And there’s no way out of that? So Hagens would attest…maybe. Or could it be just simple reversals of thought that are needed and that seem too simple to believe?
Humans can’t come before the environment, because we depend on it rather than the reverse.
Without understanding (or trying) beauty we go blind. Understanding beauty would tell us that the natural landscape is preferable to a concrete subdivision over it, that such a subdivision is existentially intolerable. And that is not negotiable. But that once it’s built, removing it is worse than leaving it there. “Solutions” of any sort that override beauty and the sacredness of things may be worse than maintaining the bad and mistaken things.
Whatever exists in our built and natural environments is sacred. Maybe the indigenes who took that into account have survived the longest.
—————-
Sophisticates make a big thing out of semiotics, but I’m not seeing how semiotics is anything but a poor stepchild to what indigenous people lived by for millennia.
“Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of sign process (semiosis), which is any form of activity, conduct, or any process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. A sign is anything that communicates a meaning, that is not the sign itself, to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
The section on semiotics is to the point that a building is a meaning system. It can’t help conveying meaning that is either by intention or by default. I’m sure it makes a big difference which one it is?
here is a companion piece (less technical) by Hannes Kunz, a main collaborator of Hagens:
https://www.energyandstuff.org/en/incomes-have-recently-peaked-most-people
another excellent summary of the real conditions which the world now faces…
it does lack in the OFW perspective of declining net (surplus) energy which is driving commodity prices lower as they become less affordable to the average person…
but a good synopsis nevertheless…
though the conclusion is a typical turn to an optimistic future!
“Backtracking on our growth path isn’t necessarily bad. A return to the consumption levels of 1970 wouldn’t hurt the well-being of the top 80% of U.S. households in the least, if done deliberately and with care.
Let’s find a positive way to deal with the 21st century.”
of course!
what other future could there possibly be?
If you want your paper published, you put a happy ever after ending on it.
“Finally, just as we discovered that we live in a heliocentric world, and that we evolved, we now begin to see that we are part of a biologically emergent Superorganism which is de-facto eating the planet. If we figure that out, what new pathways might it open up?
“The built environment carry narratives of one sort or another that could change human culture.”
Hagens, and his ecological economics, has certainly been able to “figure that out” and describe in great detail the reality of the dilemma which humanity now faces…
but creating that true narrative about the past and present doesn’t mean anything about the future narrative…
human nature, and thus human culture, is not going to change, and there will be no “new pathways”…
as Hagens has so well described, we are “eating the planet”, and we are not going to stop on our own human volition…
I think he has made a solid case that this is locked in…
it’s BAU pedal to the metal until we can’t anymore…
ENTIRE ECOSYSTEMS are collapsing!!!!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/11/23/koalas-functionally-extinct-after-australia-bushfires-destroy-80-of-their-habitat/amp/
From Forbes itself the mouth of BAU
Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Bushfires Destroy 80% Of Their Habitat
Trevor NaceSenior Contributor
Science
As Australia experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have dwindled along with their habitat, leaving them “functionally extinct.”
The chairman of the Australian Koala Foundation, Deborah Tabart, estimates that over 1,000 koalas have been killed from the fires and that 80 percent of their habitat has been destroyed
Recent bushfires, along with prolonged drought and deforestation has led to koalas becoming “functionally extinct” according to experts.
Functional extinction is when a population becomes so limited that they no longer play a significant role in their ecosystem and the population becomes no longer viable. While some individuals could produce, the limited number of koalas makes the long-term viability of the species unlikely and highly susceptible to disease
Deforestation and bushfires destroy the main nutrient source of koalas, the eucalyptus tree. An adult koala will eat up to 2 pounds of eucalyptus leaves per day as its main staple of nutrients. While eucalyptus plants will grow back after a fire, it will take months, leaving no suitable food source for koalas and starvation a likely scenario for many
Recent viral videos of Australians rescuing koalas has led to increased donation to support hospitalization and help for burned koalas.
The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital setup a Go Fund Me page seeking donations to help the hospital treat injured koalas. To date, they have raised $1.33 million, well over their $25,000 goal. This comes from over 30,000 donors.
Man, Im bummed out…..
“functionally extinct”, what a laugh….
This whole article is just wrong. Koalas are in near plague proportions in this area, hundreds of km from those fires. Koalas prefer certain types of Eucalyptus species, viminalis being their preference.
Eucalypts use to occupy very small areas of the mountains up and down the east coast of Australia before humans came to this continent. Koalas habitat was also limited back then 40-60k years ago. Since humans inhabited this place, fire stick farming spread the Eucalypts across the continent and the koalas followed.
Don’t always believe what you read, the Forbes article is talking about a small area only. Once the trees regrow, the koalas will move back into those areas, they can have some of ours if they want….
Yes, what a laugh
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x7NGY4MtpfY
When it hits in my neck of the woods, I’ll try to keep laughing…
“We told you so……”
I wonder what role long distance transmission wires for electricity are playing in these wildfires. They seem to be playing a major role in the United States. For example, the Texas Wildfire Mitigation Project finds:
“Power lines have caused more than 4,000 wildfires in Texas in the past three and a half years.”
Yes, I agree, it’s all a BAU WONDER…magic times …lucky us!
Oh, some magic …..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x9i0LM3zZgk
Early 1970’s before the word “Energy Crisis” came into being and then hit is out of nowhere!
Downward ever since. But it is all process and inevitable given the human condition.
80% of their habitat destroyed, functionally extinct etc, is all fake news. If you want to believe it go ahead, but it is not accurate.
Yes some koalas in some areas have been killed, perhaps even 80% of a minor area, but certainly not 80% of their habitat..
As I said they are in plague proportions in this area, nowhere near the fires.
This sums it all up pretty nicely…BAU Baby FULL THROTTLE….Flat OUT
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5f6p4pbuLpE
Hope Jane and friends don’t get too upset….
Jane Fonda was about to spend the night in jail.
But it wasn’t 2019, and it wasn’t for protesting U.S. policy on climate change — something Fonda has done every Friday in Washington since early October. It was the 1970s, and 32-year-old Fonda — in the throes of a professional, personal and ideological rebirth — had just been booked in a Cleveland jail on trumped-up charges of drug smuggling.
Later, an officer told her that orders for her arrest came straight from the Nixon White House. Displeased by her anti-Vietnam War activism, the FBI and CIA had been surveilling her for months. The National Security Agency was tapping her phone calls.
From the Washington Post….How did it care for Hanoi Jane back then?
Ain’t gonna matter or change a thing
Fonda, while married to Hayden, was in Santa Barbara and active in the community.
Disclaimer: I had Hayden as a prof.
This sums it all up pretty nicely too…and it rocks!
https://youtu.be/Qz7TkvXRabA
i’m not interested in Greta’s thoughts. i’m interested in the thoughts of those who are promoting her. what are their goals?
As unbelievable as it may seem, my own take is she is being promoted by the BAU tribal chiefs! Yes, she is a focal point to allow an emotional psychology release valve for collective public mass to feel their voice is being “heard” yet it is all a stage, for both sides of the so-called “issue”. This keeps it in the realm of “debate” and discussion rather that action.
Very cleaver system we have to manage and control.
Thank you for your reaction ….
One of Greta’s biggest promoters is Arnie.
Arnie’s physique and his behavior around young women in elevators and on film sets as a youngster, in my humble opinion, make him living proof that Neanderthal genes did not completely die out in the European Alps.
That said, the quality of Arnie’s thought is remarkable.
https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.28190224.0698/raf,750×1000,075,t,101010:01c5ca27c6.u2.jpg
Yup, it is not to ponder deeply about the mysteries of reality and the ability to experience it all.
Oh no, certainly not, ‘monkey do’ must conquer and seek dominance, because how else is he worthy of something instead of nothing accepting the void with underpins it all.
Another big Greta promoter is Al.
Currently Al’s goals include “aggressive wind energy goals”.
Flanked by former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime climate activist, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order Tuesday that commits the state to produce 7,500 megawatts of electricity through wind energy by 2035.
That’s more than double the 3,500 megawatt goal Murphy set for 2030. Murphy said if the goal is realized, wind energy could power half the state’s energy needs and about 3.2 million homes.
https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/pressofatlanticcity.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/e2/be2ec087-6760-55c8-9982-a8fc80ceac2a/5dd43ab376211.image.jpg
Now that is some serious ‘Rolling Coal’ going on there.
How dare they?
“The US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) continuous interest rates cuts have triggered a race of interest rates cuts among central banks around the world, increasing excessive global liquidity even further. In this case, more countries are faced with monetary conditions of zero or negative rates…
“Under the condition of low or zero rates, the world’s debts level keeps rising, and the bond yields continue dropping. Another phenomenon comes with low rates monetary condition is that prices go up with risk asset. The US stock prices have climbed to a new high.
“For China, the demands for liquidity are growing, foreign capital keeps flowing in and the real economy continues to slow down, which all make the country seemingly approaching a zero rates monetary condition. It asks policymakers and market players to be prepared.”
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1170984.shtml
“China is slowly and surely going down the path of Japan. It is aging rapidly as bad bank debts pile up.”
https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/key-thought-of-the-day-china-today-is-like-japan-in-1989-201911241406
“Chinese petrochemical giant Shandong Yuhuang Chemical has been downgraded by rating agency S&P Global because it is “almost certain” to default on two domestic bonds in November and December, in the latest sign of the financial distress in China’s third-largest province.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3039111/chemicals-giant-shandong-yuhuang-downgraded-sp-it-almost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaELQS5kTso
Is this the truth or propaganda?
Sunny ways propaganda by an investment portfolio firm!
Very interesting overview though…. China has lots of potential but epic scale fundamental issues as well that are rarely discussed. Environmental issues, aging population, and decreased food production from climate shifts to name a few….global supply chains are vulnerable to massive shifts unfolding…
There is also much misunderstood about China, as this article touches on…..
https://www.globalresearch.ca/understanding-china/5695479
It’s complicated….and overdependence on tech can be problematic
Propaganda written all over it. Think confirmation bias or survivorship bias. You hear from the relatively few who are successful.You never hear about the millions who get cut down.
I don’t know why, but I have a visceral dislike for Rogers and Buffet. Looks like these guys are trying to sell digital currency. It’s all about control. The newly revised Rothschild saying. “Let me control a nation’s method of payment and I care not who makes the laws.”
Glad I was able to visit China; Xian, Bejing, HK, Guilin, the lesser three gorges, Wuhan, Chongching back in 1994. No desire to go there now.
Just listening to the first part of it, it is basically propaganda. China’s growth has been based on (a) rapid debt growth, (b) a huge supply of cheap coal, which is now depleting, and (c) the decision by countries to move their manufacturing elsewhere, to reduce the cost of production and to save on CO2 emissions locally.
It is a temporary bubble, which looks likely to pop.
“Hong Kong’s pro-democracy campaign left Beijing with a bloody nose today after a landslide local election victory saw them win 90 per cent of the seats up for grabs.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7721565/Hong-Kongs-pro-democracy-headed-victory-record-numbers-turn-district-elections.html
These big defaults are worrisome!
Eventually, the huge debt bubble developing pops, I am afraid.
Chemical batteries are not the only way forward there are also gravity batteries.
“We are doomed because we are and in the foreseeable future will be an overall selfish, hierarchical, shortsighted and overindulgent species”
How is gravity storage different from hydroelectric pumped storage. This only works in very specific geographical areas with two bodies of water at different elevations. It isn’t good for storage from spring or summer until winter, either. The water would evaporate. Its supply is too limited and expensive.
Where Climate Science Went Wrong?
This is from about 4 years ago, in PubMed:
“The role of soil microbes in the global carbon cycle: tracking the below-ground microbial processing of plant-derived carbon for manipulating carbon dynamics in agricultural systems
It is well known that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) (and other greenhouse gases) have increased markedly as a result of human activity since the industrial revolution. It is perhaps less appreciated that natural and managed soils are an important source and sink for atmospheric CO2 and that, primarily as a result of the activities of soil microorganisms, there is a soil-derived respiratory flux of CO2 to the atmosphere that overshadows by tenfold the annual CO2 flux from fossil fuel emissions. Therefore small changes in the soil carbon cycle could have large impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Here we discuss the role of soil microbes in the global carbon cycle and review the main methods that have been used to identify the microorganisms responsible for the processing of plant photosynthetic carbon inputs to soil. We discuss whether application of these techniques can provide the information required to underpin the management of agro-ecosystems for carbon sequestration and increased agricultural sustainability. We conclude that, although crucial in enabling the identification of plant-derived carbon-utilising microbes, current technologies lack the high-throughput ability to quantitatively apportion carbon use by phylogentic groups and its use efficiency and destination within the microbial metabolome. It is this information that is required to inform rational manipulation of the plant–soil system to favour organisms or physiologies most important for promoting soil carbon storage in agricultural soil.”
Now the IPCC cannot simply make up science. Their procedures limit them to reviewing published work, which always makes them behind the curve…which may account for their consistent underestimations of what is actually happening.
But it is pretty clear that very few scientists are following up on the fact that ‘small changes in the soil carbon cycle could have large impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations’. We also know that scientists follow the money…they direct their research into areas they can get paid to do. So we have to go backwards and ask ‘why don’t Gaia type questions get funded?’. We know that government funding has been declining in the US and other countries. Is the real problem the trend of governments to assume that corporate interests are coincident with the public interest, and if the corporations don’t fund it, then it just doesn’t get funded?
Don Stewart
This sounds like a big issue: “there is a soil-derived respiratory flux of CO2 to the atmosphere that overshadows by tenfold the annual CO2 flux from fossil fuel emissions.”
What we seem to find is that academic interests head in one direction, either the direction it gets started in first, or the direction with the most financial interests involved. If they happen to be in the same direction, it is clear that that is the direction research will go.
Besides the issue of CO2 being sequestered in the soil, I think you also brought up the issue of CO2 being sequestered by microbes in the sea.
Think about all the money to be made, if a case could be made against fossil fuels. This is especially the case, if governments can be persuaded to fund so-called renewables, whether they are renewable or not, and whether or not they are of any particular benefit to reducing CO2 amounts. Politicians look like heroes. Getting industry transferred to developing countries was of great benefit to those countries, as well.
What a difficult shot COTUS has served up for POTUS to take. Once again, he’s going to get blamed whatever he does.
President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he might veto legislation designed to support anti-government protesters in Hong Kong — despite its near-unanimous support in the House and Senate — to pave the way for a trade deal with China.
Speaking on the “Fox & Friends” morning program, the president said that he was balancing competing priorities in the U.S.-China relationship.
“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi [Jinping], he’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy, but we have to stand . . . I’d like to see them work it out, OK?” the president said. “I stand with freedom, I stand with all of the things that I want to do, but we are also in the process of making one of the largest trade deals in history. And if we could do that, it would be great.”
https://www.post-gazette.com/business/money/2019/11/22/Trump-says-he-might-veto-legislation-that-aims-to-protect-human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-because-bill-could-impact-China-trade-talks/stories/201911220120
Interesting point!
Tim,
Is it possible that his difficult shot is difficult only for the chattering elites? To most of us, while it is a tragedy for those in Hong Kong(when I visited I was overwhelmed by the people, industrious, hard working, intelligent, the more successful the higher one’s house on Victoria Peak) does it really affect the rest of us? If it affects the economy of China it could either be good for us, bad for us, on no to little change. I speak as a citizen of the US so this will vary across the world. If Trump gets a trade deal which is positive for the US, is that good or bad, if the economy continues on will he be blamed or will the news cycle move on?
It reminds one of Jordan Peterson and one his twelve rules which is “Clean your bedroom.” That is a boring job, needs constant attention, much easier to speak of issues far removed from our every day reality. There is only so much time, only so much one can do, for most of us we can only make a difference for a small group around us. Gail is one of the exceptions.
Dennis L.
I understand that Hong Kong, with its dollar pegged to the US dollar, plays an important role in China’s trade. China’s trade really is important to the rest of the world. If China’s trade gets messed up, the world economy is a great deal of trouble, I am afraid. So Hong Kong is more important than its size would indicate.
From his new book https://evonomics.com/capitalisms-alone/
This is an article by Branko Milanović on the three different kinds of capitalism. Also, how there can be an imbalance between capital and labor, with labor ending up with too little.
I would argue that the author leaves out growing energy consumption which is necessary for adequate returns for both labor an capital. Right now, there are inadequate returns both on labor (as labor) and on capital. In some parts of the world, per capital energy consumption is shrinking. These areas are particularly subject to riots and radical politics.
No argument with the energy inputs, with regards to labor it is my observation that the intellectual threshold has moved up along with the hours necessary to use that knowledge.
Physicians at Mayo are the best in the world, the brightest and with no exaggeration a standard workweek is in excess of 50 hours per week, for some exceeding 60..
The skill set in farming has changed, at one time there were contests to see who could plow the straightest furrow(eye hand coordination), now machines do this to the inch or better. The intellectual ability to successfully manage a farm requires being able to analyze crop yields by hybrids and match those to soil type and tune the machinery for the land and variety planted. The physical capital requirements are great and a comfort with numbers seems to be a must.
Last night I had the chance to speak(make that listen) to an engineer working in computer science; to work at his level requires a ee degree as well as a comfort level in advanced mathematics and physics; in the first part of the 20th century, that would be Nobel level knowledge.
Working in a trade such as HVAC requires comfort in computers, and now WIFI, it is the same with service technicians working for service companies. Machinists are hard to find in that much of the input is now in the form of CAM and a limiting factor in CAD programs is the students lack of ability with mathematics. (CAM and CAD are different, closely related).
Labor is getting paid more than ever, but for fewer and fewer people, could part of that be that in order to get a return on intellectual capital also requires so much more of it, ie one must be smart and hard working?
Dennis L.
In europe farming is about maximizing EU handouts.
And those clever people in the Balkans knew how to game the system. Their farmers were give a subsidy per cow. Their answer: cardboard cows.
obviously expat uk workers
https://www.mkcows.com/information+history+of+the+real+milton+keynes+concrete+cows.shtml
A separate post on education:
My math skills were inadequate so I returned to school, standard two year calc series if I can hang in there. It is a local CC and the teaching level is high. Last night, I went to the MIT site on open learning, their online course appears to be similar if not identical to that taught at the CC. Looking at the education of the math teachers, some graduated MIT, they are bright. Walking through the art department which seems to use a hallway in part, the students are intense, their work looks good to me. CC is no longer only vo. tech, modern technology has defused knowledge which in years past was only available at a few major universities, the monopoly has been broken.
Conclusion: even learning appears to be commoditized, the math program at the entry level in MN probably is common across the CC and universities. Grading the teachers on their outcome would be trivial and administrations could use SAT scores, etc.to hold constant student abilities. Economically, a student can go to a CC and get the same education at a fraction of the cost of a major university, what is lost is networking, e. g. Harvard level.
In terms of numbers if one assumes 10B people on earth, maybe 10% competent at math that is 1B people. Looking for the top 1% this means there are 10 million people competing for the same high level jobs. Even cutting it down by 50% there are still 5 million people. Expand this to say the top 5% of the population and there are now 50 million people at this level.
To a certain degree, this appears to correlate with the wealth distribution we are seeing.
The environment has changed, those who are adapted to it thrive, hasn’t it always been so?
Dennis L.
I would argue that the author leaves out growing energy consumption which is necessary for adequate returns for both labor an capital.
Capitalism has only survived in a expanding economy, and a strong Central State, from its origins in the City Staes of Italy in the 14th Century.
It will be interesting to see what comes next, if any are alive on the other side of the wall.
I am afraid you are right. It an expanding economy to support capitalism. Who wants to invest, when the expected return in negative?
It is a race to the bottom in a shrinking economy. Who gets there last “wins”.
A bad investment is better than a worse investment.
Good point!
“German wind power blown off course
“The German government and wind energy industry representatives have been meeting recently to hammer out a way of reinvigorating the sector. But the future of this once thriving industry is blowing in the wind.”
https://www.dw.com/en/german-wind-power-blown-off-course/a-51341340
“Peering into a 55% solar future for the US
“National Renewable Energy Lab researchers conducted hourly modelling based on a future energy mix containing 55% solar power and found spring days of free electricity among the results, emphasizing the critical role energy storage will play.”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/22/peering-into-a-55-solar-future-for-the-us/
Maybe they’ll find Noah’s ark, too — but, is there an AC power grid which gets even nearly half its energy from IRE (intermittent renewable energy — wind, solar, etc.)?
At some point, saturation is reached for either wind or solar, even with all of the subsidies given. I am afraid Germany is hitting the saturation point on wind.
China may be getting close, too. I notice that it is cutting its renewable subsidies for 2020. China to reduce subsidies for renewables by 30% in 2020.
It should be clear that a huge amount of very cheap storage is needed if a very high percentage of wind and/or solar is added. Either that, or a lot of generation goes unused. EROI calculations have overlooked this issue.
“The bad news is that applied for too long, negative or very low real interest rates are not only affecting long-term productivity, but also fuelling social inequality. Hence, central bankers are in a pickle.
“They know that excessive quantitative easing is not sustainable, but it is the only tool they have to prevent recession…”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038745/advanced-economies-swallowing-negative-interest-rates-glee-must
“The ECB, always happy to repeat the mistakes of Japan with an even stronger impetus, is likely to start new programs of debt monetization for green projects and claim it’s a different, radical, and new measure…
” …the massive spending financed with new money creation is likely to be even worse for economic growth.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theepochtimes.com/the-next-wave-of-debt-monetization-will-be-a-disaster_3153766.html/amp
All they have to do is make ‘Green’ modifications and systems compulsory for householders, and it’s a whole new field of corrupt investment opportunities…..
No kidding. There is a whole new field of corrupt investment opportunities. And there are many ways you can spin the result, so the results look good, when in fact they are bad for the economy as a whole.
This is a recent article Renewables are not making electricity any more expensive: Wholesale prices are dropping, though mostly due to natural gas.
This article references a new study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories called Impact of Wind, Solar, and Other Factors on Wholesale Power Prices: An Historical Analysis—2008 through 2017
The Arstechinca article spins the falling wholesale prices as “good.” It says,
.
This is the same issue that Europe has been up against. This is an old chart of wholesale electricity prices falling, even as retail prices rise in Europe.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/residential-electricity-prices-and-german-wholesale-price.png
The dotted line at the bottom represents wholesale electricity prices. You can see how tiny they are compared to total retail electricity prices. In the US, we have big pieces fo subsidies being hidden in the US federal tax system, so we cannot even see the total price being paid for wholesale electricity.
Very low interest rates are also benefitting wind and solar.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that mis-priced wind and solar electricity are more and more distorting wholesale electricity prices, pushing the electricity system toward collapse from too low rates for backup producers. This problem was recently noted in the Northeast US, where subsidies have been given both to nuclear and coal producers in Ohio, to try to get around this problem.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ohio-passes-bill-to-bail-out-nuclear-and-coal-plants
A friend of mine who is senior in a major oil/gas firm tells me they are looking at diversifying into biofuels and CCS. Of course as a company, all they are concerned with are profit, share-price, dividends and generally remaining viable.
Anywhere that it looks like subsidies and mandates might be headed!
Lots of worthwhile observations, but (of course) he doesn’t understand how the economy really operates with cheap energy and rising debt. One of his comments that is true:
More on the problems of the very, very rich. Overhead everywhere.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/worlds-ultra-rich-scramble-find-safe-deposit-boxes-ahead-next-crash
So, the ultra wealthy collect their wealth in one place, who are the guards? If there are no guards, pretty trivial to find an owner, and make an offer not unlike that of the Godfather who informed someone hesitant to sign a contract that either a signature or his brains would go on the paper. Countries are moving their gold to military basis, depends on who has the largest moat.
The question is what can it be exchanged into? I suspect gold to a hunter gather after perhaps a necklace has less than zero value. An automobile plant, any plant after oil has less than zero value(think RE taxes), most physical objects other than the environment itself go to zero so all the concern about declining resources is not an issue.
Negative interest rates reflect this well, imagine when bored, Warren goes to the nearest bank branch, states he wants to open a saving’s account and when asked how much, states, $10B. Now, the bank has a problem if the overnight rate goes to less than zero.
The stock market appears to have become a tactical exercise, darn little value to purchase although Zell is buying oil, there is blood on the streets.
Dennis L.
“Ray Dalio doesn’t want to use the word “recession” when talking about the global economy. But he does believe it is headed for what he dubbed the “Great Sag.”
“The billionaire hedge fund founder told CNN Business on Thursday that the world is dealing with financial challenges on a scale not seen since the 1930s, when economies were deep in the throes of the Great Depression. Pension and health care debts are piling up faster than they can be funded, he said…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/21/economy/ray-dalio-economy-great-sag/index.html
“Record low interest rates are forcing the world’s best pension system to take drastic action aimed at staving off cuts to payouts that were once unthinkable.
“An extended period of negative or record low interest rates has put huge pressure on pension funds in the Netherlands…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/21/investing/pensions-crisis-negative-rates/index.html
“Investors just keep punishing hedge funds. Managers suffered the eighth straight month of client redemptions in October, the longest stretch of withdrawals since the 2008 financial crisis…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-21/hedge-funds-hit-by-investor-redemptions-for-8th-straight-month
The things that tend to do well are company buy-backs of stock and acquisitions of other companies.
Acquisition by individuals doesn’t seem to do well, in any form.
This is happening in the “world’s best pension system.” It gets this ranking because, “Dutch workers have typically been able to retire on a pension equivalent to roughly 80% of their average pay. . . Netherlands was ranked first in investment adviser Mercer’s 2019 annual review of global pensions.”
This is way too much, unless retirement occurs at age 90 or something close to equivalent. It is way too generous. Young people cannot afford the cost.
Thinking of something I know at least a bit about, farming and farm families. It seems that dad, and yes, it is the dad as farming is physical work, seems to stay on the family farm as a hand until no longer able to physically work, many times turns over nice farm house to children so they can in turn have a family, helps out driving tractor, combine, repairing things, giving advice obtained through the years(an elder of the family), the young son or more, (probably secondary to modern machines allowing cultivation of more ground) takes over the farm, the capital of the farm is transferred to the younger generation at a rate that the land produces, not an assumed discount rate. Done correctly, the debt on the land is paid when the father and mother pass and so it begins again. Returns vary, and so to do the pensions received by the parents.
I watched a video of a senior dad with his wife sitting proudly beside him in the combine, her look said to me, “Yup, you guys do the work, we(husband and wife) have a retirement because I gave you two sons.” It is organic and biological and it moves at a pace consistent with that of the land when done well, with too much debt, it moves to the bankers and everyone loses – I saw that in Iowa in the early eighties, a great deal of pain.
Perhaps society is going to start transferring wealth generated as income at a rate that is consistent with real returns which implies variability. Ouch.
Dennis L.
Now there is a problem with food prices staying too low, making it hard to make a living on a farm. There is more and more high tech farm equipment, feed, and seed. I can’t imagine that this gets less expensive. All of these folks want a cut of the take as well.
Gail, if I were asked to identify the world’s best pension system (an event whose likelihood is zero), I would select the system that could with a high degree of probability actually keep its promises. But perhaps no such system can be found, so my report would be a very short one: “Put not your trust in princes” (Ps cxlvi:3)
““I would bet that there would not be a [US] recession in the coming year. But I would have to say that the odds of a recession are higher than normal and at a level that frankly I am not comfortable with,” Yellen said at the World Business Forum.
“With three rate cuts this year, there remains “not as much scope as I would like to see for the Fed to be able to respond to that. So there is good reason to worry.””
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/yellen-good-reason-to-worry-about-us-economy-sliding-into-recession.html
“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added $103.65 billion in temporary liquidity to the financial system on Thursday.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-adds-103-65-billion-to-financial-system-11574351917
This video of a body-language expert observing Jeff Powell of the Fed making his last rate-cut announcement is worth a watch. The poor man looks like he is going to jump out of his skin with anxiety at around the 4 min 55 sec mark:
Interesting. Clearly looking at a difficult situation.
I did a Google search on body language of Donald Trump. This was the top hit. https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/15-surprising-things-that-trumps-body-language-reveals-about-him.html/
The things it reports are fairly positive attributes for a president.
When one is a sociopath, normal behaviors are not applicable.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/5-types-people-who-can-ruin-your-life/201803/how-spot-sociopath-in-3-steps
well at least he’s not a psychopaath…
I was being kind—–
He could be, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Yellen also appeared visibly anxious from time to time. I guess that the fed central bankers do understand at least parts of the problem.
” the bill purchases were an entirely technical effort to bolster reserves, with no monetary policy implications.”
That is what they would like us to believe.
“$103.65 billion”
That’s a serious amount of dough to inject in one day. What’s disconcerting is this effort to bolster liquidity hasn’t been short term with the problem fixed, but instead an ongoing effort that so far has no articulation by the Fed of an end. So it begs the question; Is there a permanent financial need for this intervention? And if so, how long can it be sustained? And if the effort is determined to have no end and the policy suddenly switches into not making these injections, what happens then? In other words, if this Repo situation is allowed to take a natural course without intervention, does it take down the rest of the economy with it? I suppose these are hypothetical questions that likely no one has clear answers for, but nonetheless represent some hard questions that need to be asked.
$75 billion is overnight repo and the remainder 14 days repurchasing, my guess is that lots of it is refinancing older repos. In a sense then, this is not $100 billion fresh money injection.
My understanding is that if the repo situation would be allowed to take a natural cause, some financial companies would be illiquid. This would probably cause bank runs. It would really be interesting to know the underlying cause of the repo market problem.
At least part of what is going on is that banks are no longer borrowing from the repo market, because of the stigma attached to borrowing there. There is a recent WSJ article called, How the Discount Window Became a Pain in the Repo Market.
Christopher: “It would really be interesting to know the underlying cause of the repo market problem.”
I saw an article by Pam and Ross Martens, I think, which said that JP Morgan was refusing to lend to other institutions…
so…
Gail: “Banks are desperate to avoid the stigma attached to accessing the window, which is designed to help them weather short-term funding crunches. It is one reason they are hoarding cash at levels well above what regulators require, ensuring that they won’t be caught short if markets go awry.
The hoarding has drained liquidity from other parts of the market…”
this makes sense… the Fed has to step in and provide the money, because:
Christopher: “My understanding is that if the repo situation would be allowed to take a natural cause, some financial companies would be illiquid. This would probably cause bank runs.”
and possibly a debt default death spiral…
“At least part of what is going on is that banks are no longer borrowing from the repo market, because of the stigma attached to borrowing there.”
This is a reasonable explanation for the initial cause of this situation. But after two months when the fed has been very clear that they will offer liquidity, why are banks still worried about prestige and the stigma of borrowing from the fed? They are losing money from this prestige and losing money is also a stigma if you are a bank.
Right!
“The OECD has issued a call to arms urging governments to take “bold action” to stop a global slowdown escalating into an economic emergency as it warned the recovery will stall next year…
“It warned of the rising risk of the economy sliding into a “long-term stagnation”, saying governments “must work together urgently”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/21/oecd-calls-bold-action-halt-global-economic-slump/
“The world is addicted to debt, which has ballooned to unprecedented levels in both developed and developing countries.
“Many developing countries are reeling under mounting debt, experts said at UNCTAD’s Twelfth International Debt Management Conference, held at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland…
“From Argentina to Zimbabwe, soaring debt levels have severely exposed many developing countries to global economic and financial volatility regardless of their income level…
““We are living in fragile times,” Mr. Schlettwein told high-level policymakers and debt managers from over 100 countries.”
https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2243
Growing debt is what pulls economies forward. In some sense, there is not enough of it. But if the economy doesn’t grow fast enough, the whole debt bubble tends to collapse.
What “bold action” is really available? More bridges to nowhere? More concrete homes for Chinese citizens that they cannot really afford? All kinds of actions produce jobs in the short run, but provide no long term way of funding the debt needed to allow these projects.
The same for the UK Labour Party’s proposed ‘Industrial Revolution 2.0’ to ‘transform ‘ Britain : just a huge debt splurge on (probably) shoddy infrastructure, and short life expectancy solar and wind stuff, mis-represented as ‘investment’.
Although I can’t see where the skilled workforce is meant to come from, such people being in notoriously short-supply these days.
I see they are planning to build 120,000 social and council houses as well. Noble, I’m sure, but this is hardly in line with their avowed intent to slash carbon emissions, unless these are to be houses of wattle and daub.
We’d also get vast monocultures of hurriedly planted trees, which would be biological deserts and vulnerable to pests.
All any of the major political parties really care about is resource-allocation and the exercising of power for its own sake.
Noble social and council houses? I think not. They will be given to immigrant parasites from the Third World, whom Labour will import in great numbers, and then allow them to vote. It’s right there in their manifesto.
“What “bold action” is really available?” World War……
Unfortunately!
Ah yes: when you are deep in a hole, dig harder.
FWIW, the overarching narrative in the mainstream news this week is that the global economy may have *just* turned a corner, thanks to the most significant and synchronised bout of central bank easing since the GFC.
This has to count for something, given that human intangibles are always important for the financial system.
But then this optimist outlook assumes the trade war will not take a turn for the worse and ignores the rising social unrest across the globe, as well as our debt-saturation problem, and the fact that central banks now have even less ammo to counter any downturn.
“The US-China rivalry isn’t easing off — it may, in fact, be about to get even more intense. That’s keeping the business world on edge.
“The swarm of corporate executives, academics and politicians who descended on Beijing this week to discuss the state of the economy seemed a lot more unsure than confident about the outcome of the trade war, which now threatens to drag into 2020.
“For one thing, the fabled “phase one” agreement with China that US President Donald Trump promised in October has yet to materialize, leaving businesses uncertain about what comes next.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/22/business/china-us-trade-cold-war/index.html
“Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind.”
(T S Eliot, Burnt Norton)
“And all the roads jam up with credit,
And there’s nothing you can do,
It’s all just bits of paper flying away from you,
Look out world,
Take a good look what comes down here,
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
“This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway,
Oh no, this is the road,
This is the road,
This is the road to hell.”
(Chris Rea, The Road to Hell)
Trump the peace president and the degrowth president. What more can we as for?
Russia bot…nice try
Ah yes. Anyone expressing a opinion is called names. Anyone who likes trump is a “russian bot” Now we know what hillary meant when she said russian bots cost her the election. Those damn russian bots vote!
Trump is only the peace candidate because democratic part has become the party of war.
They practice war in their speech their partisanship their tactics and their attitude. Hate is war. Tulsi someone who has actually been to war is shunned by the neo war democrats.
Hate is easy. You dont have to look at yourself its all the other guy. If your so keen on war elect a neo war dem and go. Ifyour not take your party back. Your party that controls its candidate selection with super delegates. only warmongers allowed. Yes trump the peace president by far. Call names now.. .
no you don’t get it either….what is happening is bigger than your tribal politics anyone on here propagating their brand of Hillary or Trump is a fool. Trump is not making the situation better just as Obama did not either. I think both parties are foolish—but not as bad as their followers. Consumption of fossil fuels has not gone down and nor has the “system” changed at all under Trump. I guess it is easier to compartmentalize and say I am for the blue team or I am for the Red team but for purposes here and discussions it does not fit; the ending is still the same. Frustrating so many people think they are insulated from every thing….. there may be peace for you but there is still plenty of war going on around the world….. Here you gohttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4453666/The-world-war-Interactive-map-reveals-conflicts.html
Also right now is the largest amount of refugees in any time of history but don’t worry you got your fat pension rolling in right? One day that will disappear and that day is coming very soon.
Do you take joy in your last sentence? The second to the last almost seems like envy, is it? We humans are strange, if he/she has a nice pension, wonderful, it is a beautiful world.
Dennis L.
Sorry did not mean to attack you personally just don’t like when people try to interject their personal politics here; it is a very myopic way of looking at our current predicament and a waste of time. I can tell by your comments your age and your financial situation…..I think those that have their pensions and social security feel that they are immune to the coming collapse just as those who say they have no debt so they are insulated from any problems in the future. It is like when the electricity goes off people still try to turn on the lights and forget that nothing works. There is no escape….we weren’t supposed to be here forever and soon we will be gone…….Trump,, Obama etc…will not save you….
As this graph shows, the percentage of refugees among the world’s population is rising steeply year by year. A graph of absolute numbers refugees would show a much steeper rise almost like a rocket.The amount of human misery represented by these numbers is mind-boggling and compassion fatigue-inducing. And there’s no sign that the world can cope or that anyone has a plan to make things better..
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FT_16.07.28_displaced_world.png
politicians are elected on the odd assumption that they have a ‘plan’ that will fix things.
The reality is of course that there can never be a ‘solution’ because we are all part of the ‘problem’
no politician can ever say this, because his job depends on the promise of the solution—and he needs wages just like the rest of us.
so things lurch on in 4 year stints, with only ofw doomsters aware that we have an energy problem, not a political problem.
It is we who demand infinite energy supplies, to provide for infinite people. But we see that problem from only a single standpoint–ie ourselves. We demand that our filling stations and supermarkets remain full, and if they don’t, then it is our politicians who mare at fault.
In the same way, we blame exxon for climate change. But it is we who burn the oil by which we fry ourselves, and it is we who will riot when the oil has all gone as we freeze/starve and spread blame around.
The future can only be navigated through the rear view mirror of history. That has worked more or less ok in the past, but our future isn’t going to fit that past-idea because we will not have the means to support the billions of extra people who are going to fill that future.
“The future can only be navigated through the rear view mirror of history.”
There is a story told of the famous Sufi sage Mullah Nasruddin (‘Nasr ed Din’, “champion of the faith”) that he was seen riding his donkey backwards. When asked why so, he replied “my donkey is left handed”.
But to me, the scene is an allegory. When you ride a donkey facing forwards, you can see where you are going, but not where you have been. When you ride a donkey facing backwards, you can see where you have been, but not where you are going.
So a question, and one I suspect you can answer: what is the name of the donkey?
Nasruddin…
Tulsi takes on the warmongers. Where is her support? Too busy goose stepping down the street hating.
Could have rehearsed the answers a bit more.
Lol!
The rape and pillage president– lucky he is fairly incompetent, or things would be even worse.
What exactly has he raped and pillaged?
His predecessor had 3 wars to his credit (to go with that shiny Nobel).
I strongly recommend this article by Nate Hagens. It is a brilliant summation of the issues discussed in this blog.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
10. Summary
“A bunch of mildly clever, highly social apes broke into a cookie jar of fossil energy and have been throwing a party for the past 150 years. The conditions at the party are incompatible with the biophysical realities of the planet. The party is about over and when morning comes, radical changes to our way of living will be imposed.”
Except that, for the majority of human beings, it hasn’t been much of a party at all – he’s forgetting that.
A good quote, though, for those of us who are so spoiled we don’t know our good fortune.
We may not of all been overindulging at the party, but we can all look forward to sharing the hangover.
True: the vomit on the pavement is usually widely shared…….
That is a great summarizing article. Definitely worth reading to understand how precarious the current situation is and how it might transition into something else.
Thanks! That is a very nice summary.
One point Nate Hagens makes is, “Although Americans use 20 times more energy per capita than Filipinos, the percentage of ‘very happy’ citizens remains equal.”
The Filipinos have the advantage of a mild climate and an economy built to use less energy, however. We would have a virtually impossible task doing something similar. The financial system would collapse, among other things.
The Filipinos are also very big on large and actively involved extended families. The elderly tend to be respected and looked after by their children and their children’s children—something that has gone out of fashion in the Industrialized world.
It is a lot easier to be involved with extended families when people don’t have to move for education and jobs. Also, if a person’s job is similar to that of his grandfather, respecting the grandfather is easier to do.
The population of the Philippines is now growing at 1.4% per year. The CIA Factbook makes some interesting observations:
Sounds like the Phillippines is an Asian Mexico.
Yes, in terms of having a lot of relatives sending funds home. But Philippines uses a lot less energy per capita than Mexico. In 2018, the US used 390.2 Gigajoules per capita; Mexico used 59.8; and Philippines used 18.5, based on a BP exhibit of consumption per capita.
Pakistan at 17.7 is similar to Philippines in terms of energy use. Bangladesh at 9.0 is lower. Middle Africa is 5.7.
India uses a little more energy than Philippines at 25.0. Central America does also, at 28.9.
Philippines still seems to rank highly on happiness. http://www.interaksyon.com/trends-spotlights/2019/07/03/151271/philippines-high-rank-happiness-optimism-surveys/
Hagens is a interesting fellow with quite a background.
Also a mushroom hunter, which dominates my interaction with him.
Not someone most members of this blog can follow.
quite excellent…
this quote from section 4.8:
“Energy’s cost share of our economy, after five centuries of decline, reached a low in 1999 and has been increasing since (King, 2015). When obtaining energy requires more energy, materials and money, the economy suffers because discretionary wealth is redirected or drained away.”
so The Endgame began back in 1999…
20 years later, the consequences are starting to hit harder…
Yes, it’s an excellent, summary; apart from the usual limp and unconvincing ending, indicating in vague generalities how ‘we’ might adapt ‘wisely’ (humans, wise?) – but that’s the usual thing, the truth is simply too hard to face or express frankly.
Are you saying we should start a band called The Esoteric Doomers? I mean Slayer is already taken. 😉
The Esoteric Doomsters, yes we are all living in Amerika.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM
Its wunderbar.
Xabier:
“Yes, it’s an excellent, summary; apart from the usual limp and unconvincing ending, indicating in vague generalities how ‘we’ might adapt ‘wisely’ (humans, wise?) – but that’s the usual thing, the truth is simply too hard to face or express frankly.”
through 9 long sections, he makes quite a strong case for how humanity WILL NOT, probably CAN NOT change… how BAU is now deeply intertwined into the way most of us humans live…
and even to the third paragraph from the end, he remains consistent:
“It is likely that, in the not-too-distant future, the size, complexity, and (literal) `burn rate’ of our civilization will be much reduced by forces other than human volition. This paper suggests that we will not plan for this outcome –”
if Mr. Hagens had ended there, without the last two paragraphs, then the whole piece would have been consistent with reality…
the poetic fantasy of those two tiny concluding paragraphs doesn’t detract from the value of the massive content that comes before…
I agree, of course.
It’s embarrassing, though, how there always has to be some implausible uplift at the end.
Merely a kind of ritual conclusion, I suppose, so we can forgive him.
An old and venerable tradition:
“But apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
I think of 1999 as the year that inflation-adjusted oil prices hit a bottom. It is also the year that employment as a share of the US workforce started turning down.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/labor-force-participation-rate-both-sexes.png
The big change was in women’s labor force participation. It stopped growing and turned down a bit.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/labor-force-participation-rate-women.png
Cheap energy made commuting cheaper and childcare cheaper. Adding energy costs made the “overhead” from working rise.
Men’s labor force participation has been falling for a very long time. It has especially been falling since 2008.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/labor-force-participation-rate-men.png
Thank you, it has been a while since I followed Nate, interesting guy, the article has intriguing references to how we behave as groups.
Dennis L.
those references show that it is highly probable that our human group will continue to push the BAU pedal to the metal for as long as we can…
“…believe it or not, the world is facing a shortage of sand… Sand… is the most-consumed natural resource on the planet besides water…
“The problem lies in the type of sand we are using. Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete.
“The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore. The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand
The Romans made concrete without sand. It was rather better than ours, which is why the dome of the Pantheon is still the largest freestanding concrete dome in the world.
It seems like we were reading similar articles a couple of years ago. Recently, we have been reading about low prices for sand and a glut of sand. This seems to be happening as oil and gas companies cut back on new wells.
https://madison.com/wsj/business/hard-times-for-wisconsin-sand-amid-flagging-sales-hi-crush/article_fc2d8bf5-4ae9-5344-9276-80a42b94fe74.html
The above link is to a Nov 18, 2019 article called Hard times for Wisconsin sand: Amid flagging sales, Hi-Crush writes off $215M in mine value
Back in February 2019, Bloomberg reported, Texas-size glut of frac sand means 19 percent drop in prices.
This is a June 2019 Sand Glut article: https://tanktransport.com/2019/06/glut-upends-market-for-frac-sand/
I know this is nitpicking, but…the articles you’re referencing are for frac sand used in oil production. Harry is talking about water-eroded sand used for concrete. They’re not the same.
Frac sand has a glut now because frackers are cutting back on drilling activity, cutting demand for the sands used in the wells.
Thanks for pointing this out. There are subspecialties, even of sand. One is in a glut, when another is in short supply.
“President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has become a bigger, broader economic forever war. It’s hard to look ahead and see any outcome that undermines that emerging reality.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-18/trade-war-latest-trump-china-hong-kong-impeachment-election
Thanksgiving is here. You know what that means. The doomsday clock is reset to two years… again… 🙂 Two years out.
Yup, I have been reading that since the 1970’s, laughing quietly.
Dennis L.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/heliogen-solar-energy-bill-gates/index.html i wonder
According to the article:
So now they have a way of making higher temperature concentrated solar power. The problems remaining are two fold:
1. Intermittent
2. Not where needed for cement and steel making
I don’t see any way of saving these very high temperatures, or transporting them to a different location. Even if it were possible to locate a concentrated solar power next to a steel mill or a cement producing facility, you would need a way of saving the high temperatures so that they do not disappear every time a cloud goes by. Also, lack of adequate solar energy during the winter is likely to be a deal-killer as well.
We need energy in the places where humans live, not in the deserts. I doubt that the concentrated solar, which collects the enrgy of the sun from a limited area, can provide substantial amounts of verstatile energy in place, we need it most.
The production of things is not a big problem – we can produce things using robots which are made using high tech labor and materials. The problem is a realiable energy for everyday existence. It means also returing minerals to the soil where the soil is depleted and the transport the produced food to the places where the people live, the mining and processing of minerals and converting them into robots etc.
The supply chains of the human species are getting longer and more complex.
Gail, my late uncle (a foreman at a manufacturing plant) taught me a lot about steel. If the heat disappears before you are done, you had better start over. The process cannot be stopped and restarted. Intermittent energy will not work. That’s why the mediaeval blacksmiths always had a boy working the bellows.
“On one of Beirut’s main commercial streets, store owners are cutting salaries by half or considering shutting down. Shops advertise sales, but still can’t draw in customers. The only place doing a thriving business: the store that sells safes, as Lebanese increasingly stash their cash at home.
“It’s a sign Lebanese fear their country’s financial crisis, which has been worsening for months, could tip over into disaster.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/wires/ap/article-7709525/Fear-turmoil-Lebanon-financial-crisis-worsens.html
“In a little more than six weeks, the popular uprising has swelled into the single greatest challenge to the Iraq’s political system since the U.S. invasion in 2003. In many respects, it poses a greater threat to Iraq’s leadership than does the insurgent violence of ISIS.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iraq/2019-11-20/iraqs-new-republic-fear
“Within hours, [Iran’s] protests began, before quickly escalating over the weekend. By Sunday, the semi-state-authorised Fars news agency reported that the unrest had reached some 100 cities and towns.
WBy Tuesday, Amnesty International was claiming to have credible reports that at least 106 protesters in 21 cities had been killed by Iranian security forces.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/21/irans-crisis-deepens/
it is all part of the denial that the financial/political crisis is really an energy crisis.
the world system/population ballooned itself on the fallacy of infinite energy.
but such a thing cannot be….we have had cheap surplus energy ”forever”, so we will continue to have it ‘forever’.
For no better reason that we tell ourselves so. If you stop to think about it, that is the only reason we have. Crazy huh?
But there isn’t anything else. Weird to think that all ‘economics’ is based on that
Before this all blew up, Iranian friends who had just been there told me that things were quite bright and cheerful (for Iran) and the mullahs no longer imposing such strict control on dress,etc.
The mood was not at all pre-revolutionary: it will be interesting to see what happens next.
An explanation of Lebanon’s problems from this article:
“Hundreds of Algerians marched in the capital Algiers late on Wednesday, stepping up pressure on the authorities to cancel a Dec. 12 presidential election.
“Weekly protests have taken place on Tuesdays and Fridays since February, but demonstrators appear eager to increase their street presence in the run up to the vote… security forces intervened to disperse them.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-algeria-protests/algerian-protesters-step-up-pressure-with-new-demonstration-idUSKBN1XU2NN
“Zimbabwean police with riot gear fired teargas and struck people who gathered to hear a speech by the country’s top opposition leader amid growing frustration with the collapsing economy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/20/zimbabwe-riot-police-fire-teargas-at-opposition-supporters
Algeria’s natural gas production has been about level for quite a few years, but its own consumption has been rising and sales prices for natural gas are lower. Population continues to rise as well. Clearly, export revenue per capita is falling.
It looks like Bolivia has a similar situation, ie falling revenue per capita from gas, albeit for slightly different reasons:
“Critics have long said Bolivia needs to boost exploration and reserves to sustain gas exports, which are the main source of the landlocked country’s revenue. But even if it does, neighboring countries have turned to LNG imports since the late 2000s, reducing their dependence on Bolivian supply.”
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/1884240-bolivias-gas-reserves-to-double-by-2025-minister
Their population has grown from 8.2 million in 2001 to just over 11 million now. Its population has also tripled in the last 50 years.
So much unrest around the world. Just a little snapshot:
“Colombia’s government has announced plans to close its borders, part of a string of measures to contain mass strikes and protests planned this week amid sweeping unrest in South America.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/20/colombia-border-closed-protests-ivan-duque
“At least eight people have died following deadly clashes yesterday between Bolivian security forces and supporters of the ousted president Evo Morales. The violence took place as Bolivian security services attempted to clear a path for gas tanks to leave the Senkata gas plant near La Paz on Tuesday.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/20/americas/bolivia-unrest-intl-hnk/index.html
According to the CIA World Factbook
I imagine low prices on exports, especially natural gas, are a huge problem. Population continues to grow as well. The UN population estimates show a 1.4% increase in population in 2019, relative to 2018.
“Unfortunately, the world is sitting on a sovereign debt timebomb that could be triggered at any time by the smallest event. This is confirmed by the IMF’s data, which identifies 32 countries as being at high risk of unsustainable debt. Their borrowings have more than tripled in just two years.
“We have to remember how serious the consequences can be when a country’s finances spiral out of control: take Venezuela, which is facing a humanitarian crisis with projected inflation of 10,000,000 per cent by the end of this year…
“Nationalism and populism are ascendant across the world… populist movements are turning the growing anger over rising income inequality to their advantage…
“Put this all together and it looks like a very toxic mix… it may even be too late.”
https://www.wionews.com/opinions/why-a-global-debt-crisis-looks-very-hard-to-avoid-263368
Nice chart in here, called, “Recession triggers – what could go wrong?”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-vicious-cycle-these-triggers-make-for-an-uncomfortably-high-risk-of-a-recession-economist-warns-2019-11-19
“…two major factors that would accelerate WW3 are financial and economic. The first is the credit financing which is right now the driver for enhancing international consumer demand and growth of stock markets. The second factor is that world debt rates are increasing faster than the growth of world economies. For every one per cent of global economic growth, accumulative world debts increase by 2-2.5 per cent.”
http://www.jordantimes.com/opinion/shehab-al-makahleh/new-global-economic-crisis-prelude-war
I notice the report says,
This sounds ominous.
I found the long report of the IMF. It is available for download at this link. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/GFSR/Issues/2019/10/01/global-financial-stability-report-october-2019
scary article there, thanks (I think)
few seem to grasp the point, that if you borrow money to buy a house on a 25 year mortgage, than for that 25 years you have to produce sufficient money to pay it off.
But money represents energy, so over that 25 years you have to find fresh sources of energy, not money.
National economics functions in the same way, broadly speaking
But energy resources are fixed, while debt is unlimited, so borrowing goes on unchecked, because most people seem to believe that energy is also unlimited and will rise in parallel with debt.
It doesn’t , so the economic systems of nations spirals out of control
“Scary article there, thanks (I think).”
You are welcome, of course.
I must confess it does alarm me to think, looking at the social unrest, protectionism etc. erupting around the world, that (because of the issues you mention) overall none of this gets any better from here on in. We are looking at a future of ever-rising chaos.
An age of growing irrationality and unrest, polarised politics and failing systems, comparable to the 1920’s-1940’s in Europe.
I’m certainly pressing on with economic disaster-planning, after having got a bit complacent of late.
Couldn’t hurt to squirrel away a little more chorizo, Xabier.
And Spanish brandy, ‘Torres 10’ from Catalonia is my favoured brew!
Sadly, whisky depresses me, it must be genetic….
looking back
to me the 20s/40s seems like part of the same sequence of events, just that they are getting closer and closer together
which seems to fit my skimming stone hypothesis—where you skim (energy input) a stone (the global economy) across a pond, the bounces (energy input available) get shorter and shorter until the stone vanishes underwater
Yes, that’s a very good way to visualise things – it conveys why the rhythm of events seems to be accelerating.
Very helpful for getting the picture, Norm.
Xabier, thank you for recommending Torres 10, a brandy of which I had never heard. It turns out there is exactly one importer here in Malta, and (of course) their website is totally unhelpful. So maybe over the weekend I’ll send them a polite request for information, and squash firmly my impulse to tell them to fire their web designer and marketing manager with extreme prejudice.
For any interested: click on Goods; click on Spirits; click on Brands; find Torres and click … nothing. It’s just a tiny picture, not an affordance. So, find something small, furry, and defenceless, and shred it. (Just kidding)
What is rather ‘toxic’ is calling people who protest against deepening hopelessness. against corrupt elites, ‘nationalists and populists’ – sneering at them, or presenting them as mere dupes of evil forces who are manipulating them.
‘Nationalism and populism’ are,in fact, the means by which the masses will seek to redress the balance which is against them and deliver a shock to elites who do not listen.
Nationalism, populism, and Madame La Guillotine. Bring it on. In my more cynical moments, I sometimes reflect that what the world elites deserve is less protest, and more terror. And if we start with George Soros, I’ll even learn to knit.
I guess we’ve all daydreamed about our favorite villains facing the noose, the firing squad, Madame guillotine, or the axman’s block. But in the end, someone else just as bad always pops up. And I’m pretty sure that if we OFWers were to attend outdoor public executions, we would quickly become more disgusted with the bloodlust of the other attendees that we ever were with the financial or political shenanigans of the condemned parties.
I think the least unsatisfactory solution for dealing with evil elites would be to take away their property and reduce them in penury to living on a state pension that they would have to pick up at the post office every week and residing on a council estate in somewhere like Rotherham or Rochdale close proximity to the descendants of the sort of “ordinary” people their wheeling and dealing put out of work, and with a limit of two bars on their electric fire.
Yes, let’s point fingers at the ‘elites’, it is oh-so convenient.
In reality, you, yes you indeed, is just as bad, if not worse than those you despise.
The only thing differentiating you with them is that they got the means to do what you cant.
Just give us all a break with finger pointing.
It is the humanoid ape that is the problem. The ‘monkey do’ mentality and dominance schemes that undermines the foundation of our well-being and future prospects as a species on a finite planet.
Or is it the laws of physics?
Dominance schemes on a finite planet quite rapidly evolve into a physics problem. Like; how to feed all the ‘monkey do’ apes busying themselves with soulless drivel as they seek to eradicate their desires and affirm the delusions of infinite growth.
Is there any way to simulate oil depletion? Let say global oil production depletes at a very slow 10 oil barrels per day. How would civilization fare?
The amount of oil extracted (or coal or natural gas) depends on how high oil prices rise.
Depletion is interesting, but basically irrelevant, in my opinion. If prices fall too low, and don’t rise again, the amount we can extract is effectively depleted. With higher prices, we could extract more.
Prices depend on spending power of consumers. If there is too much wage disparity (as there is now), people cannot afford finished goods that use oil and other fossil fuels. This is what brings the system down.
Using the California and Australian fires as teaching tools
Taking a quick look at the denial among the political class in Australia, plus the reluctance of the climate scientists to claim sole credit for the scale of the fires, leads to popular frustration. SOMETHING has to be wrong…and it needs to be fixed. But suppose what is wrong is that we have messed with a complex system that was once working fine, and it is now dysfunctional. And we don’t know any painless way to get back to where we used to be?
Here is a remembrance of Gregory Bateson, who was many things, but most importantly one of the great Systems thinkers of all time, by the physicist and systems thinker Fritjof Capra:
“To use a popular phrase, Bateson taught us how to connect the dots, and this is critical today not only in science but also in politics and civic life, as most of our political and corporate leaders show a striking inability to connect the dots. For example, if we improved the fuel efficiency of our cars by just 3 mpg, which could be very easily done, we would not have to import any oil from the Persian Gulf. But instead, they prefer to fight a war that kills tens of thousands of innocent people, while the greenhouse gases produced by our cars increase the force of hurricanes that make millions homeless and cause billions of dollars of damages.
If we served organically grown food in our schools, to use another example, we would not have the current epidemic of obesity among our children, we would not poison our farm workers, and the increased carbon content of the organic soil would draw down significant amounts of CO2 and thus contribute to reversing the current climate change. In short, to solve the major problems of our time, we need exactly the type of thinking Bateson pioneered.”
And here is a current article on the Australian fires, an article describing the fire management system of the Native Californians and their conflict with the Forest Service, and a reference to Bill Gammage’s book describing the intensive management of Australia by the Aborigines using fire.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/massive-australian-blazes-will-reframe-our-understanding-bushfire
https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/fire-climate-change-indigenous-colonization-20191021
http://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787
I submit that the conclusion one can most appropriately draw is that everything really is connected. It is pointless to argue about isolated causes…yet that is exactly what the political class strives to accomplish. Make the fires in Australia and California either a result of climate change and thus triggering massive expenditures on carbon sequestration equipment, or else deny that there is any connection to climate change and thus increasing coal output is just what the doctor ordered.
The notion that we are dealing with a complex system which we may or may not be able to put back together is about as welcome as ants at a fourth of July picnic.
Don Stewart
What seems to be connected is a problem with overheating wires because too much intermittent electricity is added to the grid. This is especially the case in a hot dry environment, such as Australia and California. Aluminum transmission lines in particular are a problem.
Read the article, Connectors – The Weak Link.
The problem is that if the aluminum wires get too hot, they tend to let go of their connectors. In fact, “letting go of connectors” is precisely what seems to be going wrong in California, leading to fires. For instance, this is a WSJ article talking about this issue. PG&E Power Lines Remain Risky to California, Even During Blackouts.
The article says, “A fire official pointed out that there was a broken jumper, or wire that connects transmission circuits.” Later it talks about another fire being started by a broken jumper.
The title of the WSJ article relates to the fact that there are really two kinds of electrical lines: “transmission” and “distribution.” PG&E had turned off the relatively low voltage “distribution” lines in some areas, but this wasn’t enough. It was really the high voltage “transmission lines,” such as from the geothermal plant that were breaking. It seems likely that wind and/or solar had been added to the geothermal transmission line in recent years, overloading it. Thus, adding renewable energy would seem to be the likely cause of overheating the lines and causing fires.
The Texas Wildfire Mitigation Project leads off its webpage by saying:
It then goes on to explain five ways power lines cause fires. All kinds of renewables (hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal) tend to be located a long distance from where they are used. This, by itself, adds to the problem of fires starting, without anyone noticing.
We have been experimenting with adding intermittent renewables to the grid, without understanding what we are doing!
Here’s the takeaway:
“The majority of line hardware associated with suspension and support of bare aluminum overhead conductors has been designed for a maximum operating temperature for conductor of 70–75˚C. However, due to load growth and demand, as many utilities approach conductor operating temperatures of 90–95˚C and beyond …”
75C is 348K, and 95C is 368K. In other words, the approved design stressed the aluminium to within 5.5% of the safe thermal limit. What were they thinking? I can guess: efficiency (and cost) first, reliability second, and safety dead last.
Cost was first. I also am not sure how much was known about the annealing issue when the transmission lines were installed.
The Aluminum Electrical Conductor Handbook on the aluminum.org website says, “Aluminum was first used on an overhead transmission line more than 85 years ago. Today, virtually all overhead transmission lines have conductors of aluminum or aluminum reinforced with steel.”
The book was written in 1989, implying that aluminum transmission lines were first used in 1904. When I searched the PDF book, I didn’t find the word “anneal.”
This is a 2006 article I found called, “Annealing of Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys.” http://www.totalmateria.com/Article139.htm
Another set of dot that needs to be connected concerns the failure to clear undergrowth and brush and to thin out the trees that makes fires much bigger and deadlier than they otherwise would bel
Major forest fires are absolutely natural in the drier parts of California and Australia. To prevent them from happening requires active management of forests. Since this is now widely known and appreciated, failing to carry out appropriate management makes these fires manmade catastrophes. They are the direct result of top-down “green” policies pursued over decades in what turns out to have been an affront to common sense.
https://i.redd.it/z6z1y8jhssi01.jpg
Tim, I respectfully dissent. The forests managed themselves for some 500 million years before we arrived on the scene. Fire is a natural part of the ecology. It helps the trees reproduce, by clearing out the underbrush that otherwise would choke them. In the case of the redwoods, it burns much of the bark, and the sap so released nurtures their young. it limits the adventitious parasites, and so helps foster the climax ecology of the mature forest.
Not, certainly not, through our regular catastrophes; but in between, Nature preserves an almost perfect balance.
Robert, I don’t have any objections to anything you’ve stated. I’m sure the forests have been around a lot longer than humans have, so I agree they must have managed themselves. And fire is a natural part of the ecology.
Once people began living in the fire-prone forests, though, the people needed to manage the fire risks or else end up getting their fur burnt as often happens to rabbits in California or koalas in Australia. I’ve read that the forest dwelling American Indians and Australian aborigines alike used to “manage” their forests by burning sections of them.
In the twentieth century, managed burning and tree thinning on public lands has been banned or actively discouraged with a view to maintaining the ecosystem as close to “nature” as possible. At the same time, people build homes amid these forests, which are certain to burn from time to time. The case of Malibu is illustrative. Mike Davis told the story in considerable detail in his superb 1998 book Ecology of Fear.
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Malibu, meanwhile, is the wildfire capital of North America and, possibly, the world. Fire here has a relentless staccato rhythm, syncopated by landslides and floods. The rugged 22-mile-long coastline is scourged, on the average, by a large fire (one thousand acres plus) every two and a half years, and the entire surface area of the western Santa Monica Mountains has been burnt three times over the twentieth century. At least once a decade a blaze in the chaparral grows into a terrifying firestorm consuming hundreds of homes in an inexorable advance across the mountains to the sea. Since 1970 five such holocausts have destroyed more than one thousand luxury residences and inflicted more than $1 billion in property damage. Some unhappy homeowners have been burnt out twice in a generation, and there are individual patches of coastline or mountain, especially between Point Dume and Tuna Canyon, that have been incinerated as many as eight times since 1930…..
Less well understood in the old days was the essential dependence of the dominant vegetation of the Santa Monicas—chamise chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and live oak woodland—upon this cycle of wildfire. Decades of research (especially at the San Dimas Experimental Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains) have given late-twentieth-century science vivid insights into the complex and ultimately beneficial role of fire in recycling nutrients and ensuring seed germination in Southern California’s various pyrophytic flora. Research has also established the overwhelming importance of biomass accumulation rather than ignition frequency in regulating fire destructiveness. As Richard Minnich, the world authority on chaparral brushfire, emphasizes: “Fuel, not ignitions, causes fire. You can send an arsonist to Death Valley and he’ll never be arrested.”
A key revelation was the nonlinear relationship between the age structure of vegetation and the intensity of fire. Botanists and fire geographers discovered that “the probability for an intense fast running fire increases dramatically as the fuels exceed twenty years of age.” Indeed, half-century-old chaparral—heavily laden with dead mass—is calculated to burn with 50 times more intensity than 20-year-old chaparral. Put another way, an acre of old chaparral is the fuel equivalent of about 75 barrels of crude oil. Expanding these calculations even further, a great Malibu firestorm could generate the heat of three million barrels of burning oil at a temperature of 2,000 degrees.
“Total fire suppression,” the official policy in the Southern California mountains since 1919, has been a tragic error because it creates enormous stockpiles of fuel. The extreme fires that eventually occur can transform the chemical structure of the soil itself. The volatilization of certain plant chemicals creates a water-repellent layer in the upper soil, and this layer, by preventing percolation, dramatically accelerates subsequent sheet flooding and erosion. A monomaniacal obsession with managing ignition rather than chaparral accumulation simply makes doomsday-like firestorms and the great floods that follow them virtually inevitable.
Tim, thank you for a most thoughtful and informative reply. I read it twice, as I do with almost all your posts, but alas could not stop thinking about a simpler and cheaper solution: don’t live in fire prone forests. Nature is wiser than we, far wiser.
Or maybe we do live in fire prone forests, but we live as hunter-gatherers. We pick up and move to another area when conditions appear bad.
From WSJ: Blackouts Return to Northern California
PG&E shuts off power to around 48,000 customers because of elevated fire risk
Hi Gail! If you are intetested in following the energydiscussion i Norway about how to measure how much RE is needed to replace FF.
https://enerwe.no/elektrifisering-fornybar-klima/det-store-bildet-viser-ikke-hele-bildet/341746?fbclid=IwAR1NpA6VoIjm4mCLddTj6iDfgqOePmhZ4AiHkp0CRB95WYzKs6g3Ni8ywMM
This discussion is completely wrong. It misses the point that intermittent electricity is of little value to the grid. It needs both huge amounts of storage and lots of long distance transmission. The usual valuation of solar and wind gives a totally wrong impression. It is not that it replaces the amount of fossil fuels that can be burned and turned into electricity. It needs so many types of assistance that energy in likely exceeds energy out.
The Dutch hae recently discovered some of the overlooked costs of wind power. Their giant offshore wind farm (DOWEC) is threatened with catastrophic failure because the concrete used to bind the windmill towers to the underlying platform is disintegrating because of strong waves and salt water. (Gee, who would have thought so?!)
The windmills now have to be inspected regularly, an expensive and hazardous operation, and if one is found to be dangerously weak it is given a temporary patch with steel brackets. A permanent solution, other than pulling the things down, is not yet in sight.
I find that sort of engineering failure, in the off-shore turbines, interesting: it suggests that we have, despite our technological sophistication (or perhaps because of it), forgotten the immense, utterly overwhelming, power of Nature herself.
And as the poet Horace said:
“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.”
These tangential cheap shots are not much of help. Are you for real, without that interwar industrialization most of the IC world hubs of today would have A.H. memorial monuments installed at their city center, incl. the UK..
Oops, reply addressed to Tim bellow..
Am I for real?
Do you mean as in “are you a bot?” or “are you bering serious?” or “are you really who you are pretending to be?” or “are you a product of somebody’s imagination?”
It is easy for people to misinterpret things that others post online, as brevity is considered one of the prime virtues. Just think of how much flak Don Stewart of Keith Henson attack simply as a result of fleshing out their comments with what some other people regard as too much detail.
But as it happens, in answer to your question I appear to be inhabiting a human body and I am not being particularly earnest, and in general I take a light-hearted almost Taoist approach to the problems of human beings living in this finite world for a finite time. But neither was I attempting to mock either Orwell or the concept of wind power generation in principle. I was simply pointing out that today’s pursuit of wind power for political and ideological reasons is to a certain extent an unintended parody of the story told in Animal Farm, which itself was intended as a parody of Stalinism.
Orwell chose a scheme to build a windmill, with which the leaders said that the animals could generate electricity, as his symbol for industry, precisely because a windmill was something rustic and traditional rather than something high-tech and modern. In Orwell’s day, windmills were old hat and being abandoned for mechanical tasks such as milling grain and pumping water, and nobody seriously considered using them to generate electricity. Yet incredibly, today, seven decades on from Animal Farm, entire nations are apparently seriously pursuing the goal of 100% “renewable” “sustainable” “clean” electricity derived largely from windmills.
In preparation for the upcoming UK election, both Comrade Corbyn and Comrade Johnson are promising to make England and even greener and more pleasant land by building yet more actual windmills, mostly off shore in huge “wind farms”, and ANdrew Evans Pilchard has written a series of articles in the Telegraph explaining that “wind could make Britain an energy superpower to rival Arabia” no less!
To add to the fun and guild the lilly, Orwell himself warned us about the misuse of political language by alluding metaphorically to “wind”.
https://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-political-language-and-with-variations-this-is-true-of-all-political-parties-from-george-orwell-257255.jpg
“Political language . . .is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectful, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” (George Orwell)
Orwell died of tuberculosis in January 1950, when he was 46 years old. He had amazing understanding of how the world worked. He lived through World Wars I and II and the Great Depression. Wikipedia also mentions the Spanish Civil war (1936-1937). His wife died of what should have been a routine hysterectomy in 1945. Lots of adverse experiences in a short lifetime.
As a young man, George Orwell also worked as a colonial policeman in Burma, and he writes about how the natives forced him to shoot an elephant, strongly against his better instincts.
I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
Is this another example of George Orwell’s fiction turning out to be prophetic, or is it another example of contemporary real life emulating literature?
In Animal Farm, after Napoleon the pig installs himself as the farm’s dictator, he organizes a major collective labor project to build THE WINDMILL.
The windmill represents the massive infrastructure construction projects and modernization initiatives that Soviet leaders instituted immediately after the Russian Revolution, specifically Joseph Stalin’s Five-Year Plans. The way that the animals go hungry in order to build the windmill in the first place mirrors how the Five Year Plans, while intended to create enough food for everyone, were wildly unsuccessful and led to widespread famine in the early 1930s. Later in the novel, the windmill also comes to symbolize the pigs’ totalitarian triumph: the other animals work to build the windmill thinking it will benefit everyone, but even after it benefits only the pigs, the animals continue to believe that it benefits all of them.
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/animal-farm/symbols/the-windmill
Very prophetic indeed!
Tim, I agree that “1984” and “Animal Farm” are Orwell’s best known works. But my favourite is indeed his “Burmese Days”, published in 1934, which I read with great interest as a teenager growing up in colonial Africa. And yes, the natives laughed at us, too.
Where do you find information about the DOWEC problem?
I notice that the investigation seems to date back to 1999. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250759272_DOWEC_concept_study_evaluation_of_wind_turbine_concepts_for_large_scale_offshore_application
Abstract of DOWEC Concept Study
This seems like a very early project. A person would wonder if later projects would have similar problems.
Yes, I went back and read a couple of the “concept” papers. Interesting that about 95% of the “study” had nothing to do with either wind or wave. Only in the final section, after the “concept” had been fully worked out, did they propose actually to build and test a prototype. My interest was sparked by a TV program from 2018 called “Engineering Catastrophes”, and I followed the trail back from there.
Interesting! I see that now 12 MW wind turbines are planned. GE Renewable Energy will supply these turbines. https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/rsted-to-deploy-record-size-turbines-in-atlantic-city-offshore/article_2e8eaf9d-44cf-51e2-b91f-76dda9b2fe98.html
GE hasn’t had problems before, has it? Let’s keep our fingers crossed on these.
Let’s see if Equinor (former Statoil) can do any better.
https://www.equinor.com/no/what-we-do/hywind-where-the-wind-takes-us/the-market-outlook-for-floating-offshore-wind.html
https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/last-months-a-game-changer-for-equinor-in-offshore-wind-ceo/2-1-693983
https://www.ntnu.no/documents/7414984/0/CenSES-Offshore-wind-report-v9-digital.pdf/749a6503-d342-46f2-973e-eb9714572931
Interesting. I noticed in the third document you linked the point is made that when offshore wind is supposedly subsidy free, in fact, the government is supporting the project through transmissions lines. Somehow a subsidy must be worked in. If a subsidy is provided, sometimes transmission losses are considered part of the project as well.
On page 16 of the third report, it gives these cost estimates:
These cost estimates are still high, especially if they are (1) net of subsidies, (2) excluding transmission costs, and (3) excluding costs for batteries or other approaches to smooth out variability (or alternately, additional payments for fossil fuel providers to provide backup electricity).
Within the last week the BBC had a documentary in part about the controversy about hacked climategate emails. Toward the end it got specific. Climate scientists believe with 95% confidence that more than half the increases in global temperatures are man-made. There was no discussion of causes for the other 50%, and no mention of the double dynamo model of solar activity.
It all seemed somewhat defensive.
And here’s the latest in global temperatures:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-content/sotc/global/2019/oct/ytd-horserace-201910.png
Re: Finance and debt, I’m acutely aware of the things I do not yet know.
There is a free article in Nature, published in June 2019, related to the double dynamo view of solar activity, by V. V. Zharkova and others. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45584-3
The Conclusions sections says (among other things):
Since 2020 is coming up shortly, I would imagine that we might expect to begin seeing the effects of the upcoming grand solar minimum soon, if this theory is correct. Any global warming effect from greenhouse gases presumably would tend to offset this effect.
Any global warming effect from greenhouse gases presumably would tend to offset this effect.
You won’t be disappointed.
During these grand solar minimums part of the weather effects is an increase in cloud cover which leads to growing problems for crops so expect crop losses during these periods and a sky rocketing price in food prices the grand solar minimum has already begun cloud cover has increased i have noticed it in my area a good website to visit for more details is ADAPT 2030.
Yes, this is all very interesting, one could argue that any possible counter force “braking” by climate change won’t have that large effect on these 3-4decade lasting solar minimum swings in the end. Also there will be likely significant regional differences of these effects at play. For example wondering how Europe would fare against NA or Russia proper etc..
Funnily, I know a guy who invested heavily into coal for this very reason. I told him he might have just half of the story right: yes severe cooling could be on the way, yes coal might witness a come back to some extent, but the bummer unknown variable – are there going to be fin markets to gamble on it, hinting gov-state emergency expropriation schemes or worse. He was not amused, hah..
“And here’s the latest in global temperatures:”
and the winner is… 2016!
“Since 2020 is coming up shortly, I would imagine that we might expect to begin seeing the effects of the upcoming grand solar minimum soon, if this theory is correct.”
and lo and behold, temps are down from 2016…
there are more greeenhouse gaases in the atmosphere now than in 2016, so why aren’t temps higher?
hmmmm…
3 years is too short to use for a definitive conclusion, but by 2021 it may be a different story…
2016 was a very strong El-nino year. Something that has far more influence on our climate that C02. Hence the warming forces. It’s the Sun and Oceans that drive the story. Not CO2.
first five months of 2016 had extreme temperatures because of very strong El Nino (+1,67°c in february).
2019 had a baby El Nino at the beginning of the year, but nothing like in 2016,
2017, with no El Nino, was the 2nd warmest year on record
july 2019 was the warmest month ever
Dear Gail
I think you would find the following presentation given by Clive Spash very interesting. There are numerous discussion points for anyone interested in these dynamics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkmHZrnQmXM&feature=youtu.be
Regards
Simon
A economist.
And one I found almost totally incoherent. He could have said everything important in less than 15 minutes. Confession: after 10 minutes, I listened with a fraction of my brain, and applied the rest to a couple of games of online Sudoku. It didn’t help that the cameraman didn’t pan to the slideshow until after about 50 minutes, so I left with no idea whether he was proposing solutions, much less what they might be.
the hardest Sudoku are the best Sudoku…
quite enjoyable with dark chocolate…
now Ghirardelli 60% Intense Dark…
the lights are on, the house is warm…
BAU tonight, baby!
When the fluff oozes in, the engineer zones out.
https://rebbls.dk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/httpwww.fkm_.utm_.myabuhasanThoughtsMathematics_and_Engineering.jpg
Clive Splash is an “ecological economist.” Other people listed on the Wikipedia site belonging to the same group included Herman Daly, Robert Ayres, and Robert Costanza. He is a member of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He is Editor and Chief of the academic journal Environmental Values. (I think of these folks as the ones who put a dollar value on pollution.) He is Chair of Public Policy and Governance at Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Looking at his slides from 50 minutes on, I see the following:
End of satellites, launched with fossil fuels
End of navigation systems, which run on the backs of military
End of mobile phones which use rare metals
Redefining the role of technology . . .
Democracy
A fundamental change in the modernist power relationships
–Who gets to control resources?
–Who sets the limits?
–Who enforces the limits that are set?
Degrowth is not inherently democratic at all
–If we want democracy, it must be institutionalized
What is the role of the state?
–How is a totalitarian dictatorship prevented?
Summary
Growth is based on low entropy resource exploitation.
Externalities are not external. Externalities create pollution and disrupt ecosystems.
Technology. (Bad) Introduces new substances with unpredictable outcomes.
Green growth is traditional economic growth, with green trimmings.
————————————————————————————————————————-
I associate the ecological economists with creating low tech substitutes for things like modern sewage processing by creating a series of paths the water must flow through, using plants brought in from a distance. Their substitute uses a lot of human labor. It is low tech. Sort of sustainable, if you have infinite manpower for digging up dirt and plants, and transporting them to where they need to go. Also, frequent rebuilding of the system. When do these people ever find time to grow food and preserve it for winter?
They miss the point that governments take energy. Democracy takes a lot of energy. You can’t just decide to have democracy, without energy. Also, Degrowth leads to collapse. A self-organizing economy doesn’t really work the way they would like. Not enough “low entropy energy.”
I agree that many of the things proposed by Clive Splash ( thats a name seriously?) are not practical and are delusional but at some point we are going to have to come to terms with human waste. The flush toilet is as much a hallmark of high standard of living as electricity IMO. Unfortunately that standard is very wasteful. It wastes precious water . It wastes the uses of the human waste itself. The flush toilet is itself a great symbol of the waste of fossil fuel civilization IMO. Water is treated as a endless resource using it as a transport mechanism for waste instead of responsibility for its treatment and use. potential energy in it created by wasting fossil fuels to pump it against gravity. The uses of the water itself are wasted. I know many people running human manure composting. if Done with discipline the smell is much less than a septic..Human pathogens are eliminated very quickly in composting. Nasty? Honey sucking goes beyond nasty. You havnt worked until you have honey sucked. Much less nasty if those producing the waste compost it from the beginning. Much less wasteful if the waste is processed where excreted by composting and the compost is used there. Waste of fossil fuels to create potential energy in water and water waste itself eliminated. Fossil fuel not needed for transport of eithor waste to processing site or treated waste to point of use or disposal. Obviously human waste composting will not solve our problems but it is one of the few ways that humans CAN take responsibility for their existence and i give credit to those who compost and use their waste. They are doing what they can. They are taking responsibility where they can. Talk is cheap. Then there are people who just dont do the work. Lazy under the guise of sustainability. TP blown over half the county… Talk is cheap.
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1227444/great-waste
Good point about composting at the source being a better solution.
This example of experimental municipal waste processing was from a meeting I went to a few years ago in Washington DC. It was a joint meeting of the Ecological Economics and Biophysical Economics groups. There were a number of “combined” sessions that people were supposed to attend. I believe these were all given by Ecological Economics folks, who greatly outnumbered the Biophysical Economics folks.
I have attended and spoken at the Biophysical Economics conferences for quite a few years. The Biophysical Economics folks are the EROEI folks. (No conference this year, however.) The two groups do not get along very well. There have not been combined meetings since.
the occupants of a 20 floor+ block of apts takes care of their own waste?
the origin of the term ‘loo’ was garde de l’eau—beware of the water —–as it was chucked out of the window
a thought to conjure with
and just what is honey sucking—or am i going to regret asking
When I encountered the term “honey sucking”, it was what you did with cute young girls after divesting them of their clothing. But that was in another country: and besides, the wench is dead.
For those interested, Nordic countries grid graphics:
https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-industry/data-from-the-power-system/#nordic-power-balance
Thanks for the information. I presume that the data changes, each time a person checks it.
For what it is worth, a retired electricity executive named Paul-Fredrik Bach writes a blog at this link, relating quite a bit to the Nordic countries. http://pfbach.dk
He is Danish; he has many interesting articles. I see a recent article is called Denmark’s Increasing GHG Emissions. This is a chart from that post.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/denmark-greeh-house-gases-p-f-bach.png
Standard analyses only consider the part in yellow at the bottom of the chart. They show a huge savings in GHG emissions.
“Economic statistics… paint a broad picture and do not have the precision with which the media has come to treat them. As a rule of thumb, quarterly GDP growth of 0.5 per cent or above is a sign of a healthy economy.
“The German data shows that, in terms of the big picture, the economy is currently struggling, regardless of whether an individual estimate is plus 0.1 or minus 0.1.”
https://www.cityam.com/celebrating-germanys-recession-dodge-the-data-isnt-quite-as-solid-as-you-think/
“A co-operative bank has become the first German lender to pass on the cost of negative interest rates to new retail customers…”
https://www.ft.com/content/ab8ed346-0ae7-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84
“Helicopter money could be both the best and worst options for the European Central Bank if the euro-area slowdown morphed into a recession, according to a Peterson Institute paper.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-20/helicopter-money-might-be-the-ecb-s-best-and-worst-options
I wonder how many new accounts this co-operative bank has added since it adopted this policy.
@Tim Groves
If we look squarely at the ‘wealth’ problem, I think we can see three broad avenues of attack. The first avenue is to examine how the monetary system has enabled the division of the world into the Haves and the Have Nots. Gerard Celente recently gave an impassioned interview on this subject…predicting a global class confrontation due to the central banks continuing to pour money into the financial assets of the already rich. This group would think that Obama made a fateful mistake when he decided to save his Donor Base rather than the indebted. The second avenue is the Sacred Awakening…the notion that heaven is inside and between humans…and not much about extravagances. Could we live like the Buddha and Jesus? The third broad avenue is the Eco-Futurist model where fusion provides more energy than we could possibly want, materials science gets us out of the hole of dependence on declining ore qualities, social engineering generates peace among men, etc.
This isn’t the place to explore those, and perhaps other, avenues, and I’m not a guru. I will just observe that our genetics are far more flexible than anyone imagined 20 years ago. We now understand that there is a digital layer of genetics (the chromosomes you get from your mother and father) and the analog epigenetic layer which determines how suites of genes get turned on and off, and which responds to the environment you experience from the womb to senility. As an example of the potential, you can check GrowBabyHealth and their website for some stunning statistics on the potential for enormous increases in the health of the newborns…just from some Medicaid level funded interventions in the behavior of the mother (and father). My favorite intervention is stress reduction: the pregnant mother puts on some music and listens for 15 minutes, with her hands on her belly. The baby calms itself.
Don Stewart
Thanks, Don.
Not being an economist, I really have no idea of how the monetary system works. But in the West, at least, I have observed that the fantastically well-to-do seem to have effective ways of avoiding giving up their loot, even when everyone else has take take a haircut via inflation or loss of previously agreed benefits.
Here in Japan, there is a lot of talk about widening disparities and how that isn’t good for the economy or for society, and even the rich seem to agree in public that it is better not to be too rich. Also, in Japan, estate duties are rather steep on large fortunes, so the upper middle class usually gets ground down to the average level of wealth in three generations. Of course, in Japan too, the fantastically well-to-do are smarter than the average nouveau riche at keeping their wealth intact.
Moving on to your point about the desirability of saving the indebted, I wonder whether the options are limited to trying to preserve the system by abandoning the poor and destitute to their own devices or trying to help the poor and destitute at the cost of abandoning the system. Perhaps, though, the system can’t be preserved and the poor and destitute are merely going to be the first of a long list of people to be abandoned.
Another question that needs to be examined is whether the poor and destitute are poor and destitute as a consequence of the wealthy being wealthy, or whether the existence of the wealthy helps make the poor less poor and the destitute less destitute than they otherwise would be. This is another of those economic questions I feel unqualified to venture an opinion about, but I think it’s important all the same.
seems to me that the ”system” revolves around the fixed amount of energy that exists within that system..
this didn’t affect us as a species until we invented money as an exchange medium within that system.
ie—as long as we exchanged 4 sheep for 1 cow or whatever, it didn’t matter much. But when 1 ounce of gold = several cows we had a problem
some people are smarter/stronger than others, and so were bound to gain an advantage over the rest. Also gold could buy the means by which you could acquire the necessary muscle to steal cows, horses land and anything else you could lay your hands on—simply because you controlled the medium of energy exchange.
things are no different today.
Doesn’t matter if you are a 13th c feudal lord, or a Rothschild—-the obscenely wealthy control the medium of exchange by which the rest of us are forced to function. We are all part of it whether we like it or not, or even agree with it.
now we call it the global economic system.
Trouble is, very few have grasped the problem with it, that it can only continue to function if energy input constantly increases.
But of course it can’t because the amount available is fixed
That represents the brick wall we are banging our heads against
Look Norman, nobody forces you to take part of the spoils from IC. You are free to return to nature living as a hunter-gatherer. So, let us know when you intend on defining your own path to liberation from the horrors of our overlords?
The same capital that enables your frivolous and lavish lifestyle also controls the means of production. Just enjoy being a well-nourished slave to the system of which you have no control and thank god for that.
I think you misunderstood the point of my comment
explaining what the problem is, does not make me responsible for the ills of it, ,
though on reflection, if I get into an actual discussion on all this, and the reply is fired back: “So what’s the answer then?”—(and of course there isn’t one) then the “blame” for all that’s wrong suddenly is my responsibility.
Weird is the way of human nature
Well, of course it is your, mine, and everybody else’s responsibility.
Change begins when you view yourself as part of the problem instead of affirming your delusions of having a pure, flawless soul and that our predicament is because of the ‘evil’ elites.
Yet you and I have no gripes with indulging us in the spoils of the output from the machinery which relentlessly works towards its own abolishment and ultimately towards our company common doom.
It is time to put aside the crypto commie narrative and start realizing yourself as the ruthless free market capitalist you explicitly are.
In a self-organizing system that depends on energy flows, we are kidding ourselves if we think that we personally have any ability to fix the system. We can quit our job and begin begging for a living, but likely someone else would take our job. Our change might in some way help the system, if it led to our earlier demise. But this is not a change most people would suggest.
Talking about our “responsibility” to fix the system, when there is virtually no way of fixing the system, is silly. Perhaps adapting a vegan lifestyle and encouraging others to do so might be a way to allow the economy to accommodate its high population level for a while.
Somehow, there is a need for energy and other commodity prices to be high enough. This implies more spending, not less. Fixing the artificially low prices for wind and solar would be a significant help in this regard.
and there was I, convinced I had a pure flawless soul, complete with necessary documentation of an entirely blameless life, ready to present at the pearly gates.
Of course there are ways of “fixing” the system. The fundamental issue is that the patient (prosperity) will not survive the medicine.
The problem being that nobody will give up one inch of their prosperity in the process. Not you, nor I. In fact, we want more of it. Yes indeed, we consider us entitled to it and much of it is enabled by theft from the capable and the productive through the horrors of the government corporate complex. Which is just another rapidly decomposing scheme in the dominance hierarchy.
So here we are trying to cope with the inevitability of a physics problem which nature will impose upon the “monkey do” dominance ape in the worst possible way.
Sure we can mitigate this for a little while, as the humanoids have been doing by faking prosperity and growth by adding more digits on the tally to keep the useless swaths of consumerists at bay.
Quite right, Norman. This is what Tim Garrett has been saying for years. Central to this system’s operation is economic growth and that requires increasing amounts of energy (continuous energy). Mind you, even if, by some miracle, the world suddenly decided to get along without growth, the constant energy input required to maintain current wealth would continue to deplete resources (even if it was all so-called renewable energy).
“…with the world’s debt accumulation outstripping its economic growth, we have all gone through the looking-glass now. More and more money is being borrowed in an effort to stimulate economic activity but with less and less effect. We’re all in the Red Queen’s race…
“…even in a low interest rate environment, many major economies continue to face challenges.
“At the current pace of debt accumulation, major economies are running but going nowhere. The protracted trade dispute between the US and China is just making matters worse.
“Quite simply, the world economy cannot afford for this trade war to continue.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038338/protracted-trade-war-may-be-final-blow-will-sink-indebted-world
“China’s central bank is further loosening its purse strings as the country grapples with a slumping economy and a prolonged trade war with the United States.
“On Wednesday, the People’s Bank of China cut its new benchmark lending rates by five basis points.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/20/economy/china-economy-rate-cut-pboc/
“Chinese technology conglomerate Tunghsu Group Co. is looking to extend its bond payment deadlines after failing to settle its obligations this week, in the latest sign that the nation’s private-sector firms are struggling to ease their debt load amid an economic slowdown.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-19/china-electronics-firm-struggles-as-defaults-vex-private-sector
A person wonders whether interest rate cuts would cause the yuan to fall, relative to the dollar. Or maybe all of the US cuts and easing are fixing that problem.
But the trade war is a symptom, not the cause of today’s problems.
“Why the electric car revolution may take a lot longer than expected
“The headline: Electric vehicles may never be as cheap as their gas-powered rivals so long as they rely on lithium-ion batteries.
“Why? The problem is that the steady decline in the cost of these batteries is likely to slow in the next few years as they approach limits set by the cost of raw materials, say the researchers from MIT in a new study.
“Contentious: These findings sharply contradict those of other research groups, which have concluded that electric vehicles could achieve price parity in the next five years. If correct, it’s bad news. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the US, and there’s no way to achieve the reductions necessary to avoid dangerous levels of global warming without major shifts to cleaner vehicles and mass transit systems.
“Despite that: A growing number of manufacturers are moving into EVs, rolling out different models at different price points. But this study shows we need a parallel overhaul of the electricity systems used to charge them. ”
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614728/why-the-electric-car-revolution-may-take-a-lot-longer-than-expected/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement
Of course, the main emphasis here is on “climate change”.
David, cleaner vehicles are a delusion: all they do is move the emissions from the tailpipe of the car to the smokestack of the power station. And given that the inefficiency of the vehicle is much the same, being measured as “weight of passengers / weight of vehicle”, with the denominator now somewhat bigger because of those dratted batteries, the energy loss through the grid, the inverter, the charge and recharge probably makes them more polluting.
The only answer is mass transit, unless we want to go back to donkeys and oxcarts, the sustainable modes of personal transport. But then we have to retrofit the built environment, which James Howard Kunstler called “the biggest misallocation of resources in the history of the world”. So one impossible task is gated on another even more impossible task.
I imagine people will be driving, on average, fewer miles. Or maybe it will be just fewer people with vehicles, driving as many miles as ever. Certainly more trucks out of the total. Somehow, these people driving these fewer miles must pay for the infrastructure needs for the system.
Somehow, roads will need to be repaired almost as before, because freezing and thawing doesn’t stop. This is another fossil fuel use. Bridges will also need repairs, as will electricity transmission lines. If we are using electric cars, we need to be certain that the electricity transmission is in operating condition, both building and constant upkeep.
I am not sure about the use of mass transit, unless we have an idea of where the masses will actually go. It takes a huge amount of energy to maintain cities, because food and clean water must be constantly imported and waste constantly removed. Electricity will be needed 24/7/365, or cities will function about as well as the ones did in California when the power was turned off. If the trains are electric, there will likely be a problem with stalled trains in the middle of nowhere, as electricity (once again) fails. The only businesses that can operate are ones in which intermittent electricity (at best) is available. This will likely mean few jobs in the city. Lots of jobs clearing brush under electric transmission lines, however.
And road wear is in proportion to weight raised to power of four. I.e. basically all wear is from heavy transport and weather and seasons.
DJ, thank you; you are quite correct. Remove from the roads everything heavier than 500kg, and their maintenance will be greatly reduced. As for the cities, Edo Japan solved that problem four hundred years ago. Keep the cities small, surround them with rice paddies or other food sources, employ a caste of nightsoil workers to recycle the human waste, and you are sustainable at very low cost.
The Roman Empire discovered, far too late, that a city of one million was unsustainable. So we downscale, and drastically so. But we cannot, because of the great big elephant called “overshoot”. For which I see no feasible solution other than collapse.
I suspect that the hard and unpalatable truth is that a society of a certain level of complexity – and in only modest over-shoot -can pull back, adapt and modify its behaviour and institutions; beyond that – collapse.
Our tragedy is that we have now effcetively destroyed the agricultural and fisheries base of civilisation (through industrialisation); in fact the whole ecosystem, as far as is relevant to our short lives and those of our immediate successors.
The planet, of course, will recover perfectly well, on a time-scale irrelevant and meaningless to our species.
The “solution” is simple:
http://www.machine-history.com/sites/default/files/images/Bicycle%20of%201896.jpg
And has been around for a few hundred years already.
Entropy and steroids will get us all in the end.
https://pics.me.me/then-ill-be-back-now-oh-my-back-arnold-schwarzenegger-11541462.png
Are you going to look any better at 72?
I should ‘ope so, Mister!
I’m eleven years Arnie’s junior, so there’s just about time until the end of the world for me to find out.
His problem he spent decades pumping himself up. It’s well known that when what goes up eventually comes down, the skin doesn’t shrink in line with the body, resulting in deflated balloon syndrome.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W1bjUxc9boQ/T1UJdgdfYgI/AAAAAAAAMjQ/z9OpFpAsxp8/s1600/arnold-schwarzenegger-bodybuilder-fat-maria-shriver-separate-divorce-fathered-child-staffer-governator-kids-republican-tool-movies-young-muscles-bodybuilder-mildred-baena-freemason-young-old-bathing-suit-flabby.jpg
Perhaps more clarity…
Somebody recently produced a graph of energy consumption on the globe. But instead of the same old pictures featuring countries, they portrayed it as a champagne glass. The open bowl at the top represents the 10 percent elites, as the bowl tapers to the stem, reside the next 10 percent. The narrow stem accounts for the 80 percent of the people and a very tiny percentage of the emissions. The point is that if we want to deal with energy issues, we have to deal with wealth. So how come the UN constantly talks about countries? Countries are minor players in terms of generating pollution, either CO2 or methane from cows, or micro-plastics in the oceans. Might we not conclude that 40 years of defining the problem incorrectly have yielded just about the situation we might have expected.
Gregory Bateson said:
“I want to emphasize that whenever we pride ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way of thought, or exposition; whenever we start insisting too hard upon ‘operationalism’ or symbolic logic or any other of these very essential systems of tram-lines, we lose something of the ability to think new thoughts. And equally, of course, whenever we rebel against the sterile rigidity of a formal thought and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we likewise lose. As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of loose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science.”
I would just add that the structure of the Internet (which I once thought would free us) seems to push us into the kind of conformity which works against achieving the Batesonian dialectic.
Don Stewart
The point is that if we want to deal with energy issues, we have to deal with wealth.
Don, that’s a fascinating statement. How are you proposing that we deal with wealth?
Perhaps you see wealth as a problem and poverty as the solution?
The poor won’t complain if their lives can be improved (as they would determine that) even slightly. That enables more freedom to innovate. And those presumed improvements ought to improve demand in the wider system. Taken far enough, it ought to reduce the need for public services. But wealth might not see it that way, and is in so powerful a position of influence (through control of such a mighty web of controlling media and legislation) that it tends to bring the system down instead? Still, focusing on the poor instead of the rich–focus on or “feed” what you wish to strengthen, and not waste limited resource of the rich–seems like the best we can do. Wealth may be enticed to help; you can’t entirely count it out. And that I’d imagine is super dangerous (if unavoidable). I suppose we need to get to a workable balance, and that is elusive.
And innovation is contradictory issue in that it’s become a rigid expectation of our culture. We must always innovate, whether it helps toward survival or not (usually not). So when I mention innovation for the poor I’m not talking about that kind of innovation. In fact, I’m proposing a new kind of hunter gathering where you simply use what you have at hand and that requires the least energy. Innovation in that sense is perhaps a temporary side issue, relative to the current culture.
The distinction is between the innovation which is merely an imposition on the public by a manufacturer and his investors; and that kind of change in methods or arrangements which delivers appreciable advantages to the public.
The innovation which is pushed down out throats as consumers is not calculated to be to the general good, but only to the good of the few.
Artleads, you and I are both scavengers of a kind. I am never happier than when I can find something that other people have discarded and put it to what I regard as practical use.
A few years ago, for instance, somebody was knocking down an old farmhouse near here, and according to the local law all the timber had to be treated as industrial waste, meaning they are not allowed to simply burn it or dump it in the woods and have to pay to bury it in landfil. So they dumped it in my yard—ten 2-ton trucks full. And I used some of it to build a bridge, some to build a shed and some racks for drying firewood, and I cut a lot of it for firewood. Unfortunately, logistics prevented me from using it all. But I had a lot of fun seeing how creative I could be with it.
I live in a poor county. EVERYONE is a Scavenger. NOTHINGEVER shoes up on craigslist. I can assure you when everyone is a scavenger there is nothing to scavenge. I saw two women get in a fight one day over free bricks. I wanted them too but not that much… I could have taken them… Really… 🙂
Poverty is a solution for everyone, except for me.
Right!
A legitimate and major objection to climate model accuracy
http://energyskeptic.com
See Alice Friedemann’s current post, where she refers to an objection that climate models fail to consider the effect of ocean microbes. Albert Bates has recently made the same point, noting that plastic pollution is a threat to the carbon sequestration performed by the microbes. In short, the microbes have been a major source of carbon sequestration, which is now threatened.
Don Stewart
Isn’t the story then (1) the model isn’t very accurate, and (2) there is nothing we can do anyhow?
Whether we can do anything depends on whether initiatives such as Nora Bateson’s ‘Warm Data’ can yield any society changing insights. In her Warm Labs work (as she reports it prior to the publication of a new book), people come to the realization that we are headed for disaster. That realization coming after looking at the world from multiple viewpoints. Whether humans can back away from the brink remains to be seen.
And, yes, I think the climate models are flawed. I think they zeroed in on CO2 emissions without enough attention paid to the larger ecological factors in play. As one example, many smart people now believe that survival is incompatible with financial capitalism (which is not the same as initiative)…while many green NGOs are firmly wedded to the notion that corporate enterprise can still solve the problems. I think inadequate attention was paid to the potential for carbon sequestration in the soil, and initiatives such as urban forests to cool the cities. That doesn’t make the CO2 work ‘wrong’, it just means that the context was not broad enough.
We could speculate about the reasons, but I think that the perception that there was a vast market generating corporate profits with carbon capture machines…had something to do with it.
Don Stewart
As we all know, models are only as good as the premises and the data that is fed into them. The ones that are being used in an attempt to predict or project the future climate are not fit for purpose for a host of reasons. I won’t try to bore you with the details but you could cure yourself of insomnia by reading Propagation of Error and the Reliability of Global Air Temperature Projections by Patrick Frank:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
Bob Tisdale’s Climate Models Fail, available only on Kindle, also has plenty to say on the subject.
But I think the IPPC’s Third Assessment in 2001 said it best in language Homer Simpson could comprehend:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.
Later in the Fourth Assessment in 2007, the IPCC attempted to clarify their stance that the models are extremely useful nevertheless:
“In summary, confidence in models comes from their physical basis, and their skill in representing observed climate and past climate changes. Models have proven to be extremely important tools for simulating and understanding climate, and there is considerable confidence that they are able to provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at larger scales. Models continue to have significant limitations, such as in their representation of clouds, which lead to uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change. Nevertheless, over several decades of model development, they have consistently provided a robust and unambiguous picture of significant climate warming in response to increasing greenhouse gases.”
But they would say that, wouldn’t they? The fact is, the models are not fit for purpose. I’m as sure of it as I’m sure my comments are annoying.
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.”
The conclusion I agree with; the rationale is buzzword engineering. The system is not coupled, it is synergistic. An important difference, because synergy creates a bounded state space, governed by physical limits, whereas a coupled system does not. It is not chaotic; it is metastable, which means small perturbations are damped, while in chaotic systems they are not. That difference is why the Holocene exists. And “non linear” is meaningless; it is a matter of the choice of your coordinate system. Even exponential growth is “linear”, with a logarithmic Y axis.
Is this the best those great minds can do? O vanae et inana curiae!
A system is not defined of how it can be plotted on a graph by applying a transform to make a line straight or not. For example:
y = kx + m, is linear
“In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input.” For example:
y = x^2 + m, is nonlinear
Otherwise I agree with your statement. It is a metastable extremely complex system.
Yep, it is not a problem, but a predicament—-
The issues we are discussing here are not even in the top 10 of problems coming down the pike.
But the delusion is entertaining.
Yes this is a topic that most wealthy greenies don’t want to talk about. They are o.k with marching for climate change but it is so strange that they don’t think the whole thing through. Consumption would have to stop and the machine would have to stop and it just might have to stop with them.. Gasp! I think they think that they are the privileged and can keep on with their lifestyle. They get to keep the beach house, the vacations and have laborers do their work; while everyone else has to go…..I hear it on this website often as well as people think because they have stayed out of debt that they will get to move to the head of the class and get their rewards! They played by the game! Give me my pension! Give me my 401 K! So foolish….reminds me of when 911 happened people in the building were told to get out immediately instead they were busy shutting their computers down and getting their things and never made it out.
May I suggest our biggest problem is that we (mankind) are engaged in playing musical chairs and most of us are so distracted by the music and the dancing that we are completely unaware that when the music stops there will be a lot less chairs than bums to sit on them?
I agree. I used this image once:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/circle-of-chairs.jpg
I have a friend who is British and I had not heard from in a while who contacted me and I told her how I was doing etc… then she mentioned she is pro brexit and I told her yes that’s all fine and well but you had better get off that island as England is very vulnerable in the the near future! I then directed her to Gails site and have not heard from her since!
In fact, pretty much everyone is vulnerable as the world economy shrinks back. I agree that England is vulnerable, but there are a lot of other places that are vulnerable as well. Trying to find a new place to live, in a world that is less accommodating to strangers, may be difficult as well.
Good grief, the models ignored carbon sequestration by ocean critters? That’s utterly insane. Where do these oh so brilliant scientists think the White Cliffs of Dover came from? Almost solid calcium carbonate, and all dead ocean creatures.
The most beneficial imperial collapse will be that of the USA, obviously. This will lead to wonderful degrowth.
Except there is this
The behemoth that is IC, is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Population, growth and old age:
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/indefensible-conclusions-why-social-security-far-worse-advertised
We are seeing clashes all over the world, different cultures most seemingly in the streets, in the US in the political arena. Is it perhaps a clash of generations? If the young can have nothing, perhaps seeing the older generation have nothing is a psychic comfort. Contrary to popular opinion, for many of us SS is a pretty good deal, Medicare an even better deal; the young don’t have such good deals.
For those of us who are older, it would appear we don’t have the resources to employ many of the young in jobs that no longer exist, who in turn cannot pay the taxes to pay the old; too many of us, too few of them.
A note on a different area of youth. I go to school, calculus(local CC), there are young highschool students in this class and at the end of this year they will have the knowledge and mental discipline of mathematics to skip a full year of traditional college level calculus and move on. Maybe half of the US population lacks the skills to balance a checkbook, the divide between the classes will only widen. These students have the self discipline to sit quietly, take notes, do homework and take difficult examinations. It is not only knowledge, it is developing social skills, study skills and learning skills. It is on one hand a very optimistic trend and on the other a realization that for many the door for a better tomorrow has already closed, they are behind and will never catch up, compound interest again.
Dennis L.
Somehow, I missed this post earlier. This link is to a Chris Hamilton post about how ridiculous the birth rate assumptions underlying the Social Security and Medicare projections are. They keep assuming that the birth rate will somehow turn back up again.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2019/11/18/40246456-1574062531132156.png
Clearly, Medicare is pretty much a pay-as-you-go plan. Social Security is supposed to be mostly funded by young people. When you put together the combination of how few young people there are and how poor they are, they will never be able to support all of the older folks. A person wonders what in the world the actuaries working on this were thinking of (perhaps how much extra funding would be needed, and how unpopular that would be). No politician wants to touch the problem.
Chris Hamilton talks about the growing intra-governmental debt, but I don’t think that that is really the issue. The intra-governmental debt is money that has been collected for something (like Social Security) and has really been spent for something else (the latest war, for example). US debt must be substituted for the missing previously collected funds. The issue is that very shortly, the annual S.S. benefit payments will escalate, without funds being there, except through taxes other than SS. This is a terrible situation. About all that can be done is cut back benefits, or give the SS and Medicare programs to the states to fund. It seems like other countries will be in similar or worse bad shape.
In a nutshell, Gail this article is concrete evidence that the Federal* government will have to accept liability for all the costs the demographic collapse will entail. It needs no new theories. It is already able to do what is necessary, just as MMT points out
The decision is entirely political.The economics is already in place. Existing economics is well structured, rational, and capable. It is the political and idealogical mess around it that has to change. They just don’t work. In fact they are counterproductive to all but a tiny rich minority.
* Monetary sovereign
Over and over, the pattern we see in collapse is one of central governments failing. Sometimes lower level governments continue. Individual citizens, if they have suitable skills and the collapse is sufficiently narrow in scope, can often move elsewhere.
You are saying that more debt can push the problem over to weaker countries, in some sense, and somehow governments of these “monetary sovereign” countries can persist. Globally, resources per capita don’t really change, but the greater debt and greater spending power of the people of the monetarily sovereign countries with the ever-rising debt can allow these countries to (perhaps) outlast the other countries.
Perhaps this is, in fact, what happens, but I am not sure I would want to endorse this system. The strong taking advantage of the weak has always happened. At some point, interest rates go below zero, because there is nothing to invest in.
We know that in a finite world, all economies must eventually fail. Promises of Social Security and Medicare must go away. It is only very rich economies that can afford programs such as these. Bad models are what allow us to think that the system can continue indefinitely.
It is already happening that young people can not support the parents who all of sudden become disabled or ill and dependent on the 24/7 care of others. The larger family or the state have to provide assitance and take care of these people.
The “state” in the UK has found a solution to this problem. It is called the “Liverpool Care Pathway”. Old people no longer able to care for themselves are taken to hospital, given no medical treatment, and sedated until they die. Officially they must have a “terminal disease”, which of course means nothing, because we all have such a disease; it’s called Life.
This is a way of getting rid of people who would otherwise be a burden on the State. Another State, not so far away and not so long ago, described such people as “Lebensunwertes Leben”.
a ”burden on the state” means all your bodily functions becoming the responsibility of someone else (who are paid by the state)
Which is what your parents did for you at the start
do you really want this in old age?
I certainly don’t
life is very sweet right now, I hope I will have the sense to know when it isn’t
Survival of the fittest. Some people just are not fit.
thank you finite worlders for your words of wisdom and insight I truly appreciated them just finished a long shift of driving trams so it felt good reading the latest comments this place is my escape from “fantasyland” which is populated by the “blind” they are blind to the real story they think the future will be rainbows and unicorns
You are welcome!
A little light amidst the gathering darkness:
“Poor neighbourhoods of Istanbul have been visited by an anonymous benefactor paying off debts at grocery stores and leaving envelopes of cash on doorsteps, at a time when desperation at the spiralling cost of living has been blamed for recent suicides.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/18/call-me-robin-hood-mystery-patron-pays-debts-of-istanbul-poorest
Nice, we all need some light, reality can be very hard indeed.
Dennis L.
“Slowing shale-drilling activity is the latest damper on U.S. manufacturers that had come to rely on a booming domestic energy market.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/manufacturers-face-new-threat-from-fracking-slump-11574083303
“Western Canada is currently facing uncertain times not witnessed since… 1983.
“And with no resolution in sight for the five-year-long rout in oil and natural gas prices, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”
https://business.financialpost.com/investing/investing-pro/alberta-is-facing-a-full-blown-economic-crisis-and-it-needs-support-not-condescension
The low oil prices for Alberta are causing a huge problem. It is not that oil production is down, more than a bit. Its highest amount was in November 2018. Its problem is definitely low prices. This is a chart based on EIA data. Canada has some regular oil, some shale, and some bitumen. I don’t have a breakdown in this data.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/canadian-oil-production-to-july-2018.png
Gail, why is Alberta producing more oil when the price is falling? That makes no economic sense whatsoever. Market price is a signal; when you see the signal and do the opposite, you are surely on a hiding to nothing.
Could they be trying to make up for lower price with higher volume?
“trying to make up for lower price with higher volume?”
That could be as well. If a company wants to stay in business, it has to pay its workers somehow. It needs to extract more oil to afford to pay its workers.
Their production has declined since the graph ends. Mandatory production cuts were imposed on Alberta due to limited pipeline capacity and to reduce the glut.
I looked up when the oil production cuts started. A December 5, 2018, article says:
So this happened, back about December 2018, right after the very high month of November 2018. Canadian oil production bounces around enough that it is hard to see it in the “noise” in the graph. It is not a very big cut, and it is temporary.
When I look at the Canadian data, there was indeed a dip after the peak production period (for everyone, worldwide) of November 2018. But the dip has mostly gone away now. And the dip is completely reflected in the chart I provided.
The most recent data in the Canadian data I downloaded https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/crdlndptrlmprdct/stt/stmtdprdctn-eng.html shows bitumen production back up again. In fact, I am wondering if there is a bottleneck of some sort building again, because mined bitumen seems to be growing faster than Upgraded+Non-Upgraded bitumen.
Investment was started years ago and the incremental cost is often low. Also, people assume that “certainly” oil prices will rise in the future.
Oil companies know that prices will be variable. They will hang in there as long as there are investors willing to invest and workers willing to work. To some extent, Canada (and most countries) cut back taxes that they require when oil prices are down. Taxes are often an oil company’s biggest expense. If there is a loss, tax policies can help cushion the loss.
I tried looking at some Canadian oil data. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/crdlndptrlmprdct/stt/stmtdprdctn-eng.html A small share of the increase seems to come from growing Alberta light oil, which I would presume is tight oil from shale. Also, production of “raw mined bitumen” (from open mines) has grown while “raw in situ bitumen” has recently declined a bit. Raw mined bitumen must be cheaper to extract.
I have a few family members working the Alberta oil patch. One works at a billion dollar SAG recovery(steam assist gravity recovery?) Once this operation is started it can’t stop the bitumen will freeze up and a billion dollar investment is lost. Syncrude investigated shutting down and restarting and it was cheaper to keep the operation going with low prices .
Interesting! I know in some places (in the US), there are lease requirements. Sort of a “use it or lose it” requirement.
“Central banks in developed economies “are very close to being out of bullets,” Donald Amstad, head of Asian investment specialists at Aberdeen Standard Investments, tells me.
“Having saturated markets with printed money and slashed interest rates, in some cases to below zero (meaning investors pay to lend), there seems to be little left in the arsenal with which to slay the next downturn.”
https://www.cityam.com/the-economy-is-slowing-can-central-bankers-fight-the-next-downturn/
“Europe will be struck by an even larger wave of debt defaults in the next downturn compared to the financial crisis after a surge in junk-rated companies, Moody’s has predicted.
“The credit ratings agency warned that the proportion of B3-rated companies, those graded as “speculative” quality, has doubled in Europe over just three years. The deterioration means the region will see “a much larger number of downgrades and defaults during the next cyclical downturn compared with the crisis in 2008-09”, Moody’s said.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/18/next-crash-will-hit-europe-much-harder-financial-crisis-warns/
Everyone has to see a silver lining. Here is seems to be,
.
Given how poorly auto sales are doing in China and India and the problems S. Korea is having, I am skeptical about this. Perhaps he means that their interest rates can fall further.
Yet another nation erupting into protests:
“Police in riot gear on Monday clashed with anti-government demonstrators outside the Parliament buildings in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Water cannons were fired on the crowds as authorities attempted to break up a second day of wide-spread rallies.”
https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/18/georgia-protests-crowds-gather-outside-parliament-buildings-thecube
I looked up the Republic of Georgia in the CIA World Fact Book. It says,
I also found an May 2, 2019 article that says Why Georgia’s hydropower plants are causing nation-wide protests.
The republic of Georgia generates 80% of its electricity using hydroelectric, but this electricity is very seasonal. From April to August it is an exporter of electricity; from September to March, it is an importer. The reason why new hydroelectric plants are needed is to provide better electricity security during the winter.
Neighbouring, oil and gas-rich Azerbeijan has also seen unrest recently. I’m sure part of that must be caused by them slashing spending in order to drag down their fiscal breakeven for oil from nearly $104 p/b in 2013 to $53 currently:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AZEPZPIOILBEGUSD
“Police in Azerbaijan on Saturday detained scores of protesters, including the leader of the main opposition Popular Front, at the start of a planned rally against low salaries, corruption and a lack of democracy in the energy-rich ex-Soviet state.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-azerbaijan-opposition-protests/azeri-police-detain-scores-of-protesters-including-opposition-party-leader-idUKKBN1WY0EP
Georgia is also famous as the region that first cultivated the vine, and Georgian vineyards are therefore the oldest in the world. When Georgia was part of the Soviet Union, the wines were cheap (I remember drinking a lot of them), but now they are priced at what the market will bear. Sound capitalism, so I have no complaint, but I do miss them. Dionysos makarios, eukharisto.
I found the following as part of a post on another site:
“The malaise that is striking the world’s economy is a clear indication that the age of fossil fuels is coming to its conclusion. Tinkering with an obsolete monetary system to stimulate economic activity is an exercise in futility. It clearly ignores the simple fact that all economic activity requires energy to be performed, and that needed energy supply is getting ever more constrained. The world’s economy is dying of energy starvation, and its failing strength is being treated with doses of digital dollars.”
Or is it the attempt to continually drive economic growth, that the math simply fails when stretched too far? I ask that because it still seems like there is plenty of FF at cheap prices even if it isn’t enough for some suppliers.
shortonoil on peak oil
There is a debt (and other promises) part of the story as well. We are, in effect, building a Ponzi Scheme. The problem is that we need to keep adding more and more debt at lower and lower interest rates to keep pulling the economy forward, because the additional debt can be used to hire additional workers and to allow those workers to buy goods such as cars and homes.
But the system isn’t really working well enough. There is too much wage disparity, so not enough workers can afford cars and homes, after they have taken on huge debt for advanced education. Interest rates are about as low as they can go. Prices for FF are staying too low, giving producers a problem in the future, even if not immediately.
“By all the main advertised yardsticks of success, the flotation of Saudi Aramco can be called a failure even before the shares have started trading.
“Once upon a time, the word’s most profitable company was going to be worth $2tn (£1.5tn), the number coveted by the Saudi Arabian crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. That’s not happening.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2019/nov/18/saudi-aramco-flotation-is-a-failure-before-it-has-even-begun
But I’m sure the tourists will flock there in droves. Butchering a dissident in a foreign consulate is a surefire way of attracting overseas visitors.
They are spending a lot on advertising, all most unconvincing. Don’t they do their torturing in hotels, albeit luxury ones?
Maybe they just want lots of western hostages to hold in the event of some crisis?
Spain has sun, deserts, mountains and women you can actually see, and have a drink with, so I’ll pass on Saudi for now.
Yes indeed. I remember my student from Barcelona, such a difference between her and the women of Pennsylvania. I think the girls of Occitania are the most beautiful, courteous, and gentle in all Western Europe. The tradition of courtly love, of convivencia, still runs strong in their blood.
A potent and beguiling mix of Greek, Roman, Celtic, Iberian, Phoenician, Arab and Jewish blood; mountains, the olive and good wine. What more could one ask for?
Beats the pale Britfats waddling around the shopping mall here…….
As the article points out, “Pitching Aramco to an international audience has been filed under ‘too difficult for now.'”
A person wonders whether the price will simply fall after it is sold, if they can actually get the initial valuation they are hoping for.
It is hard to sell an oil company based on lies and fudged numbers. That Yemen thing they got going certainly won’t help much either.
If the US would seize the means of production from the Saudis and then sell it off, why not. A few thousand M1A2 Abrams with infantry support circling the wagons around the oil assets would make it more convincing.
i think they are going to go onto negative interest rates permanently which may give us a staircase type collapse what are your thoughts finite worlders is this reality possible or is this “delusistani” hyperbole ?
Everything is getting so complicated that I no longer have a clue of what’s going on and how this will unfold.
Darkness has no information.
As self admitted member of the broader cascading scenario club (to a final wall then hitting Seneca cliff) – I dare to say you are onto reasonable probability outcome at least for next two – three decades.. Also the profile might vary between (semi-)core IC hubs and real third world locations..
However, that doesn’t mean these swings won’t be still quite volatile, impoverishing billions and affecting movement of hundreds of $T through these partial sequenced events..
Two-three decades sound like to much, exept perhaps for the lucky few regions. Western Europe will have to be pretty satisfied with even one decade.
There seems to be a stair-step collape of decent magnitude in the pipe-line, appearing pretty soon I’m afraid. This will likely impoverish many people around the world but maybe hitting western europe disproportionally. We are increasingly energy starved, many areas are already economically distressed and any social cohesion is lost from many reasons, one is dysfunctional immigration but also the internal disagreement concerning migration seems to polarize as well.
I think we are already in a stair-step collapse now, as central banks run out of ammo, protectionism takes hold and protests erupt around the world. I see us hitting the Seneca cliff considerably sooner than WoH but then I have learnt the hard way not to make time-specific predictions.
Understanding the energy and resource-constraints that are, for the most part covertly, defining this era can make one feel like the keeper of rare and privileged knowledge, which is of course hugely inflating to the ego. Fortunately we have the impossibility of predicting the timing to keep us humble. 😀
The self-organizing system seems to be able to figure out ways to keep the economy going. We see an example in my post. Even though leaders seemed to be concerned about CO2, the actions they took had precisely the opposite effect. The leaders effectively said, “We want to send our manufacturing and heavy industry to you. Go ahead and pollute as much as you want. However you can do this inexpensively will be great. We will not compete with you.”
Right. And nations like Brazil and Australia, even though they are facing increasingly alarming environmental challenges, have voted into power governments that pretend there are no environmental limits.
We should be thankful for the adaptability and native cunning of the self-organised system, I suppose, given that we are its dependants.
Figure 2 is disingenuous for this very reason. We have externalized resource extraction and manufacturing while increasing importation of goods produced offshore. This makes it appear as if we are not responsible for the environmental degredation created by our consumption of these products. Our shipping of waste to third world countries instead of dealing with it ourselves is an analogous comparison.
We also cut down other people’s trees, instead of our own.
Today’s economic thinking seems to be, “How do we appear to be doing something, while moving the problem elsewhere?” Also, “How can financial types make money off of this new arrangement?”
In some ways it’s the realisation of the plan someone had in the 1930’s, to send all of Britain’s dirty industries abroad to the Colonies, thereby making Britain itself greener, less polluted and more pleasant (but not the colonies!).
The Green credentials of Europe are largely bogus.
You are right, of course, plenty of small stair-steps recently. I meant that there seems to be a sudden significantly higher step lurking in the shadows biding it’s time. Timing is as you say is hard, but nonetheless I dare to guess there will be a higher step within a year. Just a gut-feeling and to some extent I guess that all of these small stair-steps accumulate into something more potent in the background.
Trump discussed “negative interest” with Powell:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-says-powell-unexpectedly-met-trump-mnuchin-monday-morning
“Just finished a very good & cordial meeting at the White House with Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve. Everything was discused including interest rates, negative interest, low inflation, easing, Dollar strength & its effect on manufacturing, trade with China, E.U. & others, etc.”
I wonder what Powell really thinks about the various countries and their negative rates…
I think it’s rare to see honest answers…
Trump must like the unofficial QE that is being done now.
This is pretty much what the US economy looks and feels like to the average person.
Don’t know my link was for a Saudi tourist add. I was trying to show the scene from Deer Hunter where they play Russian Roulette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n6swzoeRC0
Nobody will be going on trips or taking vacations. The only trips to Saudi Arabia will be to fight for oil so the elites can have some.
In politics and finance, public honesty is simply rather bad taste. And almost certain to detonate a career…….
this part clarifies why i’ve been saying Trump is the best president for the environment since Nixon:
[6] Looking at the actual outcomes, a person might ask, “What in the world were policymakers really thinking about?” – If a person really wants to reduce CO2 emissions, it is easy to see how to do it. A person simply has to take steps in the direction of reducing global co-operation. One step would be to reduce international trade. Another would be to get rid of umbrella organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Union. … In other words, policymakers could push economies in the direction of collapse.
Exactly!
Lets be real though, there will be likely a brief phase of shock during which people would opt to keep heat, food, .. by whatever means burning what ever low quality combustible – accessible in close proximity (plus the factor of unchecked large scale forest – steppe fires etc). Soon after the humanoid pop number overhang drops (for lack of energy-food-medicine-…) the environment will likely “get better”, there I agree with you..
I know that you put “get better” into quotation marks for a reason. Is it because you think it is difficult to judge what state of the environment is “better” or “worse”, or because you think that such judgements are subjective and dependent on one’s perspective?
Frankly I meant chiefly the latter, but the first option you raised is valid vector of questioning as well. Anyway, the humanoids as agents of terraforming influenced most of the preexisting biomes to such large extent even before fossil fuels age proper (past ~100k-1M yrs) that “better/worse” are kind of spongy targets anyway..
An environment that is neither poisoned nor poisoning – by the pollution caused by human industrial activity – would be a good result of the decline of our species.
Unfortunately, we have shown a remarkable talent for creating dead-zones, even before industry, all the way back to the great collapsed cities and their degraded surroundings, Ozymandias, etc.
Ah yes:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, was it not. And Ozymandias
is Usr Maat Ra (“strong in the truth of Ra”), known
to us a Rameses II.
But the Egyptians were very protective of their environment,
because they knew all Egypt was the gift of the Nile. They
built the Nilometer in about 3000 BC, to measure the height
of the annual flood, and were careful to plant their crops in
proportion to the amount of water.
Even the Romans, the famous desert makers, were careful
to nurture Egypt, since it provided most of their corn. Until
Theodosius closed all the pagan temples, which also closed
their hospitals, which had been managed by the priests ever
since their introduction by Imhotep (“I come forth satisfied”)
in 2650BC. But the society survived.
No, Xabier, it was the Moslem conquest that ruined Egypt;
the Arab and the goat: the one tore down everything; the
other ate everything. Sic transit gloria mundi.
it will be interesting to watch what happens when the Renaissance dam is brought into use in Ethiopia.
“We only want to use the water for hydro—then we’ll pass it down to you”
hydro makes lakes, lakes grow food, food delivers more people, more people demand more water.
oops. The White Nile gets turned off
Egypt runs seriously short of water just as their pop gets towards 150m
Egypt runs seriously short of water just as their pop gets towards 150m
Bob Geldof organizes another Band Aid concert inviting all his pop star friends who can still strut their funky stuff.