Most people seem to think, “The difference between models and myths is that models are scientific, and myths are the conjectures of primitive people who do not have access to scientific thinking and computers. With scientific models, we have moved far beyond myths.” It seems to me that the truth is quite different from this.
History shows a repeated pattern of overshoot and collapse. William Catton wrote about this issue in his highly acclaimed 1980 book, Overshoot.
Figure 1. Depiction of Overshoot and Collapse by Paul Chefurka
What politicians, economists, and academic book publishers would like us to believe is that the world is full of limitless possibilities. World population can continue to rise. World leaders are in charge. Our big problem, if we believe today’s models, is that humans are consuming fossil fuel at too high a rate. If we cannot quickly transition to a low carbon economy, perhaps based on wind, solar and hydroelectric, the climate will change uncontrollably. The problem will then be all our fault. The story, supposedly based on scientific models, has almost become a new religion.
Recent Attempted Shifts to Wind, Solar and Hydroelectric Are Working Poorly
Of course, if we check to see what has happened when economies have actually attempted to switch to wind, water and hydroelectric, we see one bad outcome after another.
[1] Australia’s attempt to put renewable electricity on the grid has sent electricity prices skyrocketing and resulted in increased blackouts. It has been said that intermittent electricity has “wrecked the grid” in Australia.
[2] California, with all of its renewables, has badly neglected its grid, leading to many damaging wildfires. Renewables need disproportionately more long distance transmission, partly because they tend to be located away from population centers and partly because transmission must be scaled for peak use. It is evident that California has not been collecting a high enough price for electricity to cover the full cost of grid maintenance and upgrades.
Figure 2. California electricity consumption including amounts imported from out of state, based on EIA data. Amounts shown are average daily amounts, by month.
[3] The International Rivers Organization writes that Large Dams Just Aren’t Worth the Cost. Part of the problem is the huge number of people who must be moved from their ancestral homeland and their inability to adapt well to their new location. Part of the problem is the environmental damage caused by the dams. To make matters worse, a study of 245 large dams built between 1934 and 2007 showed that without even taking into account social and environmental impacts, the actual construction costs were too high to yield a positive return.
Developed economies have made hydroelectric power work adequately in areas with significant snow melt. At this point, evidence is lacking that large hydroelectric dams work well elsewhere. Significant variation in rainfall (year-to-year or seasonally) seems to be particularly problematic, because without fossil fuel backup, businesses cannot rely on year-around electricity supply.
The Pattern of Overshoot and Collapse Is Well-Established
Back in 1974, Henry Kissinger said in an interview:
I think of myself as a historian more than as a statesman. As a historian, you have to be conscious of the fact that every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. [Emphasis added.]
History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren’t realized, of wishes that were fulfilled and then turned out to be different from what one expected. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy. As a statesman, one has to act on the assumption that problems must be solved.
Historians tend to define collapse more broadly than “the top level of government disappearing.” Collapse includes many ways of an economy failing. It includes losing at war, population decline because of epidemics, governments overthrown by internal dissent, and governments that cannot repay debt with interest, and failing for this reason.
A basic issue that often underlies collapse is falling average resources per person. These falling average resources per person can take several forms:
- Population rises, but land available for farming doesn’t rise.
- Mines and wells deplete, requiring more effort for extraction.
- Soil erodes or becomes polluted with salt, reducing crop yields.
One of the other issues is that as resources per capita become stretched, it becomes harder and harder to set aside a margin for a “rainy day” or a drought. Thus, weather or climate variations may push an economy over the edge, as resources per person become more stretched.
Scientific Models Too Often Prove Whatever the Grant Provider Wants Proven
It is incredibly difficult to figure out what the future will hold. Our experience is almost entirely with a growing economy. It is easy to accidentally build this past experience into a model of the future, even when we are trying to make realistic assumptions. For example, when making pension models in the early 1980s, actuaries would see interest rates of 10% and assume that interest rates could remain this high indefinitely.
The question of whether prices will rise to allow future energy extraction is another problematic area. If we believe standard economic theory, prices can be expected to rise when resources are in short supply. But if we look at Revelation 18: 11-17, we find that when Babylon collapsed, the problem was low prices and lack of demand. There were not even buyers for slaves, and these were the energy product of the day. The Great Depression of the 1930s showed a similar low-price pattern. Today’s economic model seems to need refinement, if it is to account for how prices really seem to behave in collapses.
If there is an issue that is difficult to evaluate in making a forecast, the easiest approach for researchers to take is to omit it. For example, the intermittency of wind and solar can effectively be left out by assuming that (a) the different types of intermittency will cancel out, or (b) intermittency will be inexpensive to fix or (c) intermittency will be handled by a different part of the research project.
To further complicate matters, researchers often find that their compensation is tied to their ability to get grants to fund their research. These research grants have been put together by organizations that are concerned about the future. These organizations are looking for research that will match their understanding of today’s problems and their proposed solutions for the future.
A person can guess how this arrangement tends to work out. Any researcher who points out endless problems, or says that the proposed solution is impossible, won’t get funding. To get funding, at least some partial solution must be provided along the lines outlined in the Request for Proposal, regardless of how unlikely the proposed solution is. Research showing that the grant-writer’s view of the future is not really correct is left to retired researchers and others willing to work for little compensation. All too often, published research tends to say whatever the groups funding the research studies want the studies to say.
Myths Are of Many Types; Many Are Aimed at Giving Good Advice
The fact that myths have survived through the ages lets us know that at least some people found the insights that they provided were worthwhile.
If an ancient people did not know how the earth and the people on it came into being, they would likely come up with a myth explaining the situation. Most of us today would not believe myths about Thor, for example, but (as far as we know) no one was being paid to put together stories about Thor and how powerful he was. The myths were stories that people found sufficiently useful and entertaining to pass along. In some sense, this background gives these stories more value than a paper written in order to obtain funds provided by a research grant.
Some myths relate to what types of activities by humans were desirable or undesirable. For example, the people in Uganda have traditional folklore about a moral monster that is used to teach children the dangers of craftiness and deceit. My sister who visited Uganda reported that where she visited, people believed that people who stole someone else’s crops were likely to get sick. Most of us wouldn’t think that this story was really right, but it has a moral purpose behind it. There are no doubt many myths of this type. They have been passed on because passing them on seemed to serve a purpose.
Clearly, which actions are desirable or undesirable changes over time. For example, Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11 seem to condemn wearing fabrics that are a mix of linen and wool. Today, we use many fabrics that are mixes of two types of yarns. Perhaps there was a problem with different amounts of shrinkage. Today, our issues are different. Perhaps myths associated with issues such as these need to be discarded, because they are not relevant anymore.
How about myths of an afterlife? Things on earth don’t necessarily go well. The promise of a favorable afterlife has a definite appeal. Some people would even like a story in which people who don’t act in the desired manner are punished. Some religions seem to provide such an ending as well.
Follow a Religion Based on Scientific Models, or Based on Myth, or Neither?
Nature’s solutions and mankind’s solutions in a finite world both involve complexity, but the two types of complexity are very different.
Mankind’s solutions seem to involve more and more devices using an increased amount of resources and debt. The overhead of the system becomes greater and greater as the economy increasingly shifts toward robots and owners/overseers of the robots. The big problem that can be expected to develop comes from not having enough purchasers who can afford to purchase the end products created by this system. In fact, we seem to already be reaching an era of too much wage disparity and too much wealth disparity. Eventually, such a system can be expected to collapse under its own weight.
We can already see signs that wind and solar are not scalable to the extent that people would like them to be. Together, they currently comprise only 3% of the world’s energy supply. We need very large supplies of energy to provide food, housing, and transportation for 7.7 billion people.
Figure 3. World Energy Consumption by Fuel, based on data of 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
Regardless of what politicians would like proven, nature doesn’t move in a constant path upward. Instead, nature provides a self-organizing system of individual parts, none of which is permanent. Humans are temporary residents of this earth. Businesses are temporary, and the products they sell are constantly changing and adapting. Governments are temporary. Weather patterns are also temporary. Religions are constantly changing and adapting, and new ones are formed.
Nature’s way doesn’t seem to require much overhead. Over the long run, it seems to be much more permanent than mankind’s attempts at solutions. As the system changes, each replacement differs in random ways from previous systems of a particular type. The best adapted replacements survive, without the need for excessive overhead to the system.
We may or may not agree with the religions that have formed over the years in the self-organizing way that nature provides. The fact that religions have stayed around indicates that at least for some people, they continue to play a significant role. If nothing else, religious groups often provide social gatherings with others in the area. This provides an opportunity for friendship. In some cases, it will allow people to find potential marriage partners who are not closely related.
One of the roles of religions is to pass down “best practices.” These will change over time so some will need to be discarded and changed. For example, in some eras, it will be optimal for women to have several children. In others, it will make sense to have only one or two.
The book, Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions by Jeffrey Moses, lists 64 principles shared by several religions. Of course, not all religions agree on all of these 64 principles. Instead, there seems to be a great deal of overlap in what religions of the world teach. Some sample truths include “The Golden Rule,” it is “Blessed to Forgive,” “Seek and Ye Shall Find,” and “There Are Many Paths to God.” This type of advice can be helpful for people.
People will differ on whether it makes sense to believe that there really is an afterlife. There may very well be; we can’t know for certain. At least this is better odds than the knowledge that all earthly civilizations have eventually failed.
I personally have found belonging to and attending an ELCA Lutheran Church to be helpful. I find its earthly benefits to be sufficient, whether or not there is an afterlife. I will, of course, be attending around Christmas time. I will also be getting together with family.
I recognize, too, that not everyone is interested in one of the traditional religions. Some would even like to believe that with our advanced science, we can now find a way around every problem that confronts us. Perhaps this time is different. Perhaps this time, world leaders, with their love for overhead-heavy solutions, will finally discover a solution that can produce long-term growth on a finite earth. Perhaps energy from fusion is around the corner. Wish! Wish!
My wish to you is that you have Happy Holidays, of whatever types you choose to celebrate!
Happy birthday to Jane Fonda – in jail?
The Oscar winner, who turns 82 on Saturday, was arrested for a fifth time in Washington, D.C. Friday as part of her ongoing climate change march.
Prior to her arrest, she gave a speech in front of a sign that read, ‘Happy 82nd birthday, Jane!’
Fonda has been protesting weekly during her Fire Drill Fridays since announcing she was moving to Washington “to be closer to the epicenter of the fight for our climate.” Her participation has ended in multiple arrests.
Fire Drill Fridays reports the “Grace & Frankie” star was arrested alongside several other protesters Friday. Of the 138 arrested, two were kept overnight, Fonda’s rep Ira Arlook told USA TODAY, adding Fonda was released later that night.
The group sang ‘Happy birthday’ to Fonda as she was led away in handcuffs
This should make some good reading in the Mid West …convince Trump Supporters of her cause!
Sarcasm….
Whatever happened to “three strikes and you’re out”?
Greta gives leaders an F grade….for failure
BAU give leaders an F grade….for FANTASTIC!
She’s at it again…..slow learner…..
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Greta Thunberg joined other young climate activists protesting outside the Swedish parliament on Friday for the first time since she embarked on a four-month overseas voyage to attend climate conferences in New York City and Madrid.
At the protest, taking place at the end of the school term in Sweden, activists presented a report card giving politicians an F for “failed” in tackling climate change at UN-led summits over the past decade and the verdict “Needs to try harder!”.
Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede whose solo “School Strike for the Climate” outside parliament, begun in August 2018, swelled into the global Fridays for Future movement, took a low profile as other activists spoke.
“I would give them an F, actually. I know they did try, but they didn’t try hard enough,” activist Isabelle Axelsson, 18, told Reuters of politicians’ work on climate change this year.
Axelsson said she thought Fridays for Future deserved an A for effort, but added: “We haven’t accomplished convincing our politicians to act on climate, so I don’t think we should pass either, really.”
In 2020, weekly school strikes and larger protests aimed at persuading politicians to act would continue, she said.
Fridays for Future has seen millions of young people in more than 100 countries walk out of school on Fridays this year in support of Thunberg’s demands for urgent action from governments to curb carbon emissions.
After crisscrossing the globe by car, train and boat — but not plane — to demand action on climate change, Thunberg said as she was returning home from the COP25 climate summit in Madrid this week that she would take a break.
Greta, Dear, take a permanent break and give it a rest. If the world’s Scientific Community couldn’t mobilize support….looks like you’ll fair no better.
Undefeated and STILL World Champion “Business as Usual”….
Herbie, please permit me to disagree. The problem with Greta is that she is right; the problem with us is that we do not realise that it is our active support of, or passive acceptance of, the forces arrayed against her that make her ineffective. But in the spirit of Rilke’s “dennoch preisen”, I still admire her. What person of honour ever abandoned a good cause merely because it was lost?
Yes, it is oh so convenient, decadent and lazy. It is an appeal to sloth.
Not to mention the total and utter lack of solidarity and respect for the poor people of this planet. It is distasteful watching the clientele frequenting this site deluding themselves that their soulless consumerism is doing anything good at all apart from being wasteful.
https://youtu.be/OtovzvPz7uo
The consumerism is the way we are programmed. We need to dissipate energy as rapidly as possible. If we neglect to do this, the system ensures that someone else will. If someone quits his jobs reduce his spending, it is likely someone else will take the job. We cannot fix this problem. People need to eat, to be clothed, and to afford families.
Perhaps we truly cannot “fix this problem,” but we can choose to not participate, to the greatest degree possible.
“it is likely someone else will take the job”
If the other person can do the job as good, if at all.
On the margin every job today is held by the best employee.
A lot of people with college diplomas are earning minimum wage, or not a lot above. Quite a few have dropped out of the labor force.
DJ, that was not my experience in the US. In the private sector, many jobs went to those who could best toady up to management, and were never given to those with more competence than their boss. In the public sector, many hires were “affirmative action” employees, most of whom were truly incompetent, either through natural stupidity or a lack of any useful education. And in that regard, the universities were among the worst offenders.
In a true meritocracy the jobs are given to those with merit, which thanks to the abysmally bad US education system are now an endangered minority.
What you’re saying is that on average people are stupid and lazy?
I meant that if you (are not stupid and lazy) and leaves the work force on purpose there will not be a just as good substitute waiting to replace your productivity and consumption.
Maybe the damage would be even worse if a productive person joins the ranks of the lazy.
I don’t consider a college education worth much by itself. And obviously not the market either.
ryligtek, I make no claim to superior morality, but have tried to do my best. During my 20 years as a teacher in Singapore, I trained several thousand third world students in the human uses of IT, from more than 50 Commonwealth countries. As a wine drinker, I always bought only wines produced in local communes, from the “Vina Maipo” of Chile to the commune Italian wines I enjoy here in Malta. And over 80% of the food I eat is produced locally, using traditional sustainable agriculture.
Yes, I use electricity, produced by oil. But in the summer no air conditioning, and now in the winter only heat exchangers, and only one room at a time. For travel, no car, no cruises, and air travel exclusively business class on airlines that promise to offset my carbon generation. I dress only in clothing made from natural fibres, and all my furniture is made from wood by traditional craft methods.
All told, a very small thing, but perhaps a lot of small things, by small people, might become a big thing.
Yes indeed; resource conservation and protecting the environment will inevitably become culture.
From an early age I found the foundational principles of IC as very unsound and dubious, thus I chose to live a quite frugal life. I don’t own a car. I crank out about 8.000km’s annually on my bicycle as I commute. I eat mostly plant based foods. I don’t have children.
IC should be viewed as a tool for improving the productivity and technology of mankind, abolishment of drudgery and not as a means to appeal to sloth and instant gratification schemes. It is a disgrace and an utter lack of solidarity to the people without rudimentary IC support, such as electricity and clean water.
Even if you hitch yourself to a plough and get pulling, all of your efforts are nothing more than absurd posturing.
I wonder if you have read Vaclav Smil’s “Energy and Civilization: A History”. If you have, it appears to have made no impression on you.
Here is one takeaway: in the historical perspective, even your most extreme bourgeois nightmare of scarcity (say, Netflix only one night a week) is an Arabian Nights fantasy of wealth beyond imagination. Whatever your idea of retrenchment and self denial, as a participant in modern society, your every sacrifice is trivial and has only – for you – personal psychological value.
But you keep on posturing. After all, we all need a hobby.
Thank you for this!
I’ve been staying out of this, dismayed at the vituperative arrayed against Greta in these comments.
I think many of the nay-sayers are just envious, wishing people would pay as much attention to them as they do to Greta. That certainly seems to be the case with Trump.
Greta may, or may not realize it, but she is fighting for the end of civilization, and I applaud her for that.
I don’t think this is much about Greta, but certainly she has become a spokesperson for certain global issues…
regarding everything she has said publicly, which I’m sure we only have read a portion, I bet some of her statements are greenonsense, while there is also some truth…
but what about this “end of civilization”?
putting aside the material prosperity of IC, what about INFORMATION?
without IC, no internet, and I would never have gained the KNOWLEDGE that I have here at OFW and to a lesser extent others sites…
I find great value in the give and take personal comments, and without IC, that would have not existed… YOU would have not existed to me…
IC has also delivered to me the means to listen to and to study the entire history of world music IN DEPTH and in an almost unlimited way, which has been a great delight to me and fitting to my somewhat borderline autistic personality…
IC has been very very good to me…
there is far more beyond material prosperity that is gained by the global communication provided by the technology which could only be created and powered by abundant cheap energy resources…
and we know what those resources are…
As it has to me, as well.
But that doesn’t mean it’s good for the planet, good for humanity’s long-term prospects, good for the billion or so who are way below the poverty line, good for future generations… need I go on?
If cheering on industrial civilization for the benefits it brings ME got us into this mess, surely, it can get us out? 🙂
You ask valid questions although I doubt anyone has definitive answers to them.
“IC is good for the planet.” Discuss!
How do we measure “good for the planet”? Can’t be done without bringing personal judgments into the measurement formula. Give me a measure and I will point out how you have brought a personal judgement or prejudice into it.
Also, it’s said that “we are warming the earth and sending up the CO2 level in the air.” If this statement is true, how are these things not “good” for the planet? Warmer temperatures mean more evaporation, moisture, precipitation in the atmosphere, which mean more plant life and a “greener” planet. Higher CO2 also means more plant life and a “greener” planet. Are these things “bad”, or are they “good” effects that are somehow offset by all the other “bad” things IC does to the planet?
As for the billion people or so who are way below the poverty line, the UN and the World bank and Bill Gates say that globally poverty is declining, and they have data that purports to show that absolute poverty has decreased from 94% of the population two hundred years ago to less than 10% today, all thanks to IC and fossil fuels. Only the Guardian disagrees, but you’d expect that from the Guardian, wouldn’t you?
https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-denialism/
Jan, I’ve gotten you the perfect Christmas present this year.
https://www.memeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/gabby_greta_doll_cartoon-602×466.jpg
The problem with Greta is that she is right.
How is she right? See seems to be dead wrong about a whole lotta things.
https://youtu.be/MU70facZc6A
Well, for one thing, she really seems to be pissing off the Powers That Be, who are spending an incredible amount of time and money throwing darts at her!
It’s really quite amazing the amount of cruel invective being thrown at this child. And it seems to be backfiring — nobody dope-slaps a 16-year-old girl and doesn’t come across as cruel and stupid. (Yourself included.)
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then, you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“seems to be pissing off the Powers That Be, who are spending an incredible amount of time and money throwing darts at her”
Is that really true or more than half true?
Trump, and who else? And does he really spend incredible amount of time? I think his few tweets about greta is done without even thinking.
In leftist europe all leaders love her. All MSM media loves her (in US to?). Corporations loves her. The Pope. The Terminator.
She almost got a nobel prize, and it is not over yet.
You decide.
Try Greta Thunberg is Right and you get more hits and more mainstream hits.
No one in europe can watch state teve and get any greta criticisim. (Of course you learn that Trump dislikes greta, but he is an evil idiot, so that validates greta)
No Jan, the real cruelty is in exploiting children for political ends—particularly when they are children with special needs. Perhaps you can’t see that it’s wrong because what Greta says appeal to your own sentiments. However, if she ever started to veer off message and attack the green revolutionaries, I suspect you would come across as just as dope-slappy toward her as I seem to be in your eyes.
How is she right?
Well, for one thing, she really seems to be pissing off the Powers That Be
That’s interesting, So you believe that as long as someone attacks the Powers that Be, they must be right? Please help me with this. It may be crystal clear to a person of your intelligence and wisdom, but I am having trouble with the link between these two attributes.
According to mainstream official narratives, Osama Bin Laden attacked the Powers That Be, as did the Unabomber, David Duke, the Red Brigades, Tommy Robinson, Oliver Cromwell, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pancho Villa, Rosa Luxembourg and Nigel Farage to name but a few. Were all these people “right”?
Moreover, if Greta is truly pissing off the Powers That Be, they have a funny way of showing it. She’s been invited not just to attend but to address the UN in NY, at the UN COP conference in Madrid, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the United States Congress, and the national parliaments of several European countries. On each occasion she was invited to speak, listened to attentively, and applauded rapturously. This is not the kind of treatment usually accorded to people who piss off the Powers That Be.
nobody dope-slaps a 16-year-old girl and doesn’t come across as cruel and stupid.
That’s precisely why the Powers That Be are using her, Jan. Al Gore was getting too old, to fat and too much of a caricature of himself to have an impact on public opinion, and most of the celebs and activist “scientists” who are pushing the scam are equally unappealing.
So they rolled out Greta as a beta test, to see whether she could breathe new life into the scam. But unfortunately, she has turned into a caricature of the petulant little girl who loves to lecture her elders in no time at all.
You replied to my question but failed to give a reasonable and logical answer, so I’ll ask it again. How is she right?
If the question is unclear, let me clarify. Greta’s main claims are that humanity is facing an existential crisis due to climate change, that the current generation of adults is responsible for climate change, that climate change will have a disproportionate effect on young people, and that too little is being done about the situation.
Are any of these claims correct?
A while back you gave me a link to a PDF on logical fallacies entitled HOW TO CHEAT IN AN ARGUMENT. It was very enlightening. Permit me share it again here.
http://www.darkoptimism.org/DavidFlemingOnFallacies.pdf
Yes, all of them. Thank you for repeating them and clarifying things greatly.
And with that, I see that we must agree to disagree. I’ll be replying to you no further on this topic.
Yes! All of them!
And with that, I think we must agree to disagree. I’ll not be responding further on this topic.
For Tim Groves. Tim, you ask a lot of questions (my tagging):
“Greta’s main claims are (a) that humanity is facing an existential crisis due to climate change, (b) that the current generation of adults is responsible for climate change, (c) that climate change will have a disproportionate effect on young people, (d) and that too little is being done about the situation.”
Here are my answers, make of them what you will.
(a) I agree. I would add that the most probable outcome of this crisis is human extinction.
(b) I agree in part, but there are several past generations that helped create the predicament. Since they are conveniently dead, the burden falls on the present generation, and they are clearly failing.
(c) Clearly true, since most of the effects will occur when we are dead, and they are alive. This is also a compelling condemnation of our stewardship of the Good Earth and the creatures with which we share it.
(d) Again, I agree, except i would say that nothing is being done, and nothing effective will be done.
The main reason is that the green virtue signallers want to blame everything on the rich (white) West, and so cannot admit that about 90% of the present drivers of climate change come from the rest of the world, especially China, India, and South America. Which dooms them to irrelevance.
The whole world economy works as a system. If one part stops consuming, it can decrease prices and wages and pull the whole system down. Our problems are not easily fixed.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So Gail, where is the evidence that a reduction in consumerism leads to catastrophic collapse?
I find such statements as seriously dubious and taints the otherwise excellent work that you do.
There is always a battle with diminishing returns. This comes in manny ways simultaneously.
1. Rising world population.
2. Need for more intensive agriculture per acre, because arable land is not rising.
3. More energy to extract, process, and transport energy products.
4. Depletion of many other kinds, including fresh water, top soil, minerals in soil, fish in sea, metal ore concentrations.
Somehow, humans must win this battle against diminishing returns of all kinds. The big thing that goes wrong is prices too low for producers. A cutback in consumerism reduces demand, and thus prices. This is what collapses the economy, partly because needed jobs falls.
consumerism can only move one way
you consume beyond what is necessary for living subsistence. so you buy a bigger house than you need, have more kids than are needed to replace you.
they in turn demand to consume, which is a form of commercial transaction which pays wages, and in turn those wages must be spent ”consuming” even more.
if wages were simply left in the bank or stashed under the bed, they would quickly become worthless. (no forward transactions)
the value of money is specifically dependent on the amount of energy you can exchange it for
unless you are a career hermit, your wages are paid by the consumption of others, as is your pension. This applies at every level of the society we live in
this is why the concept of shutting down consumption might be good in theory but can’t work in practice
One of the issues is that a population always needs a margin, if they are build up food stocks to carry a population through fluctuations. If there is not enough of a margin, any tiny bump in the economy, such as a disease that wipes out crops or animals, will wipe out the population. A fluctuation in weather will have a similar effect.
That seems to carry a number of unstated assumptions, such as, “with our present life-style,” or “with our current population,” or “with our current level of technological advancement,” etc.
For 199,999 years of human history, our “consumption” has been lower, so of course it can “work in practice,” if one is willing to give up one or more “holy cows” of modern life.
Of course, any politician who would suggest such a thing is dead at the next election, just as the politician who promises most loudly that things can and will grow forever is always the one elected.
obviously I meant with our current lifestyle –I took that for granted
western developed society isn’t going to voluntarily revert back to the lifestyle of the middle ages–though of course we may have to. And that is where the violence will arise because it will be a ‘conspiracy’ or a left/right hoax or somesuch
get rid of 90% of people and current technology and obviously the lifestyle reverts to something else.
But the mass certainty is that we will go on as we are forever—infinite consumption
I’m not so sure.
There’s the “boiling frog” syndrome. According to Dmitry Orlov, about half the people in his high school yearbook are dead in middle-age — yet Russia is hardly in the midst of violent revolution.
If collapse happens quick, the shock-and-awe of it will quell the lust for violence. If collapse is drawn-out, the “boiling frog syndrome” happens, and people merely accept that, every year, they’re a bit less well off, and as in Russia’s case, a number of them choose to self-remove through substance abuse. (A leading killer in Russia is alcohol.)
I think the danger is in a medium-rate of collapse, where the end isn’t in vigorous progress (so that you have to deal with it minute-by-minute), and it isn’t somewhere off in the future (so you think you might not have to deal with it at all), but right around the corner, where you can clearly see that it is coming, and have some time to think about who to blame.
In defence of Gail, I think we can agree that a “reduction in consumerism” necessarily leads to a reduction in the economy in general — whether that is “catastrophic” is another matter.
I’d point to Japan, which has had a more-or-less stagnant economy for some 20 years or so, without enduring an actual collapse.
Yet. Japan is on the slippery slope.
The economy has to continue to grow, or it will collapse.
A cutback in consumerism will slow the economy. Whether it will lead to collapse depends on how the economy is doing prior to the slowdown. If it is growing rapidly, it will simply slow the economy. If it is already near the edge, it will lead to collapse. Our problem now is that parts of the world economy look distressingly like they are near collapse.
Actually, I was looking for explanations, not more extraordinary claims. Stacking more claims, words and sentences on top of an already shaky theory is not improving it.
Let’s start with problem number one. Can we agree on the definition of money as put forward below?
Money in itself is nothing but fictional. It is absolutely worthless and it’s sole purpose is as a medium of exchange between agents in an economy.
The problem with money is that the usage tradition spans millennia and is part of our culture, so much that we consider pieces of paper and digits in a computer as real symbols of wealth.
Everybody ok with that?
Well, not really.
You say it is “worthless,” then set out an exception.
Surely, having a “medium of exchange” has some value, no?
Money is an accounting system. It exists, even if not in paper nor even electronic form.
True story: a primate researcher observed a male bonobo approach a female bonobo with two oranges, have sex, and depart with one orange.
So, humans did not invent money nor economy. And while an orange has trophic (food energy) value, in a region where you just go get one off a tree whenever you want one, a single orange has about as much value as a crumpled bit of paper with a picture of The Queen on it. I can go spend the equivalent amount of effort to picking some oranges, and get a picture of The Queen!
So I would argue that money, in any form, has significant symbolic value. When that bonobo ate that orange, rather than picking one off a tree, perhaps she was thinking of her lover. That is something of value to both parties!
A deeper issue is that money (for the most part) is not living. It cannot intrinsically create more money. Pictures of The Queen do not copulate and create more pictures of The Queen in dark bank vaults.
So I think the problem with today’s economic system is not that it relies on money, but that it relies on the growth of money. Compound interest is such a powerful force that all three of the world’s major religions once banned it.
Yes. And all money is fiat now.
DJ, even if you base it on gold, the value of each paper symbol is arbitrary. Gold is practically worthless except for its use in technological applications.
In fact the petrodollar is a reasonable way of issuing a quantity of energy to a piece of paper, and or binary codes inside a computer.
Money thus is the symbol of exchange and energy is the enabler of a transaction, including goods and services.
Now, how can something that is entirely fictional lead to an endemic and irredeemable ”financial” collapse? Specially since it’s measure of quantity is entirely arbitrary?
We are dealing with promises. Money is a marker for a promise. A government promise to pay pensions is not money, but it causes people to plan their lives differently. There are many kinds of promises, including children’s promises to take care of their parents in their old age, after the parents raise the children. The economy functions on promises, with or without markers.
You have never listened to a politician I presume? Breaking promises is what they do for a living. It is nothing new this time, with pensions and the public sector. Nobody sane person believes that the pension system and other state mandated services will be around for much longer.
The transferiat will be sent off into unemployment and people will be left with their own ingenuity to cope for, as the supply of cheap energy dwindles.
The people in France seem to be concerned. I expect that people in quite a few parts of the world will be unhappy when there are big cutbacks.
Promises can be and often is broken.
Speaking of pensions, in Sweden it used to be “every extra year you work is important for your pension “, just the last year or so “unless you are a ‘high income’ earner you’ll get the same pension as someone who has never worked”. Noone hanging from lampposts yet.
Well, theyre french …
Their pensions will get cut one way or another.
Try eating some money, let’s see how well you can digest crisp dollar bills or bytes inside a finance computer system.
Yes, it is an accounting scheme and part of an information sharing network that exists to circulate an ever increasing amount of goods and services.
Does it have value, no. Utility, yes.
You ascribe no value to utility?
Odd, that!
You cant eat money.
Theyre digital!
That is right in and itself it has no value. It represents value. It is a symbol, perhaps _the_ symbol of value.
Ascribing value to a symbol that represents value is weird. It makes no sense.
I think it stems from our collective confusion of worth, value, wealth and money.
NO Pledge FOR YOU!!!!
Maybe next time around…kick the can down the ROAD…BAU is so demanding!
Irving Oil’s New Brunswick refinery, Canada’s biggest, drops 2020 carbon cut pledge: documents
By Richard Valdmanis
ReutersDecember 20, 2019, 7:23 AM EST
Irving Oil, operator of Canada’s largest oil refinery, has abandoned a pledge to cut carbon output by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, replacing it instead with a goal to keep its performance on climate change competitive with rivals, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The policy change appears likely to ensure the refinery – the nation’s 18th biggest greenhouse gas emitter – misses the cuts by a wide margin at a time Ottawa is seeking to slash emissions and build a reputation as a world leader in the fight against climate change. The refinery is located in the city of Saint John, in the East Coast province of New Brunswick.
Family-owned Irving Oil had publicized https://web.archive.org/web/20180722145353/https://irvingoil.com/en/corporate-social-responsibility/environmental-responsibility/carbon-reduction the 17% carbon cut target after the Copenhagen Accord of 2009, an international agreement to combat global warming that has since been superseded by a more ambitious and widely adopted deal called the Paris Agreement.
But the company, which supplies more than half of its gasoline and other fuels to the U.S. Northeast, removed the pledge from its website earlier this year, without any public announcement of a change in policy.
Regulatory filings obtained by Reuters through a Right To Information Act request show the company ceased to target an outright reduction in carbon output from the refinery as early as 2016. It instead adopted a goal to maintain a carbon intensity rating among the top 25% of rival refineries in Canada through 2025, using a methodology developed by Texas-based consultancy HSB Solomon Associates that considers a facility’s “complexity” instead of just its emissions-per-barrel of throughput, according to the filings.
Carbon intensity refers to the amount of carbon dioxide released by a facility per unit of production.
Blah, blah blah blah….fudge the numbers…did I hear that from you know who?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNCRgXdINY
Yes, anything goes to keep BAU !arching on, and on…
” …widely adopted deal called the Paris Agreement.”
Nonsense. Hardly anybody has “adopted” the Paris agreement. Some of the biggest polluters agreed only to submit proposals by 2030 or 2035. Most of the others signed the deal and then ignored it, including both Germany and France. The whole thing was a hugely expensive exercise in greenwashing.
When the great and good fly to climate conferences in their private jets, you know they are busy drafting a list of comfortable lies.
“Irving Oil, operator of Canada’s largest oil refinery, has abandoned a pledge to cut carbon output by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, replacing it instead with a goal to keep its performance on climate change competitive with rivals, …”
In other words, since its rivals are doing nothing about climate change, it will competitively do nothing also. So capitalism encourages rivalry in improvement; virtue signalling encourages rivalry in deceit. As most of us have suspected. And, once again, Greta is proven right.
Well, Silicon Valley – as usual – thinks it has all the answers.
“In Silicon Valley, power industry is next target for disruption”
“Firms look to use big data to make grid more efficient”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/In-Silicon-Valley-power-industry-is-next-target-11205910.php
It’s really quite amazing: “Out are centralized, fossil-fuel-fired plants sending electricity in one direction. In are rooftop solar systems, smart thermostats, home battery systems and wind farms. All are controlled by computer algorithms and updated hardware that pull in and analyze thousands of data points on weather, pricing and electricity consumption to create a power grid that can shift demand when supplies run thin and rely more on renewable energy.
“In a few years, maybe a couple decades, when we look back we will be surprised we used to burn all this fossil fuel,” said Amit Narayan, founder and CEO of AutoGrid, a startup outside San Francisco. “There’s fundamentally no reason to do that anymore.”
Even if it works, I don’t think home owners will appreciate the smart grid lowering the house thermostat setting in the winter because the smart grid decided that the local NFL team is playing and the stadium needs extra power.
“…the smart grid lowering the house thermostat setting in the winter…”
Making the grid more efficient does not infer ‘big brother’ home temp. adjustments. That’s likely to still be left up to the homeowner/renter. Still an interesting article suggesting better computerization for the grid can assist with problems associated with intermittency from renewables.
“companies like AutoGrid can provide the needed power by aggregating rooftop solar with savings from lowering a couple thousand thermostats a degree or two.”
The only places to save energy from homes are heating and cooling and EV charging. Perhaps refusing to start the dishwasher or cleaner.
Required reading: “The Machine Stops”, written by E M Forster in 1909.
“In a few years, maybe a couple decades, when we look back we will be surprised we used to burn all this fossil fuel,” said Amit Narayan, founder and CEO of AutoGrid, a startup outside San Francisco. “There’s fundamentally no reason to do that anymore.”
People will say anything for $. Lot easier to move your lips than to work. If what you say makes people happy via delusion so much the better. Win win. It has to be a believable lie. I wish i was a lieing psychopath. SOOOO many perks. Akronyms and buzzwords are the key!. And Of course.. Create or utilize existing villains that you are combating in your delusional narrative.
News flash. Tony Starkasaurus Rex CEO of GreenGreta corporation announced “Using SMARTflexSUSTAIN (TM)Technology GreenGreta corporation is leading the way for the transition to a green economy. SMARTflexSUSTAIN (TM) shows a increase in efficiency of 43.2% in alpha testing over Fossil fuel carbon processes destroying our children’s future”. Government gives you $. People give you $ for your pieces of paper(stock). Chicks dig it. Whats not to like?
Winning….No Whining
(Bloomberg) — U.S. Steel Corp. plunged after delivering a barrage of harsh news, warning of a loss and announcing it will shut down most of its Great Lakes Works facility near Detroit, lay off workers and slash its dividend.
The adjusted loss is expected to be about $1.15 a share in the fourth quarter, with a fully diluted loss of 42 cents for 2019, the Pittsburgh-based company said Thursday in a statement. The industrial icon plans to lay off as many as 1,545 workers from the Michigan plant, reduce its quarterly dividend to 1 cent from 5 cents, and prune capital expenditures.
U.S. steelmakers are facing slowing demand in the manufacturing sector, even though mills have enjoyed protection because of Trump administration tariffs. U.S. Steel has been a laggard in the domestic industry, with aging plants that are less efficient than rivals with newer technology. That’s led to a spate of operational initiatives under different names that have shifted multiple times since 2014.
The shifting strategies “raise concerns that there’s no long-term, overriding execution capability to improve competitiveness,” Richard Bourke, a senior credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a note. “Cash costs from layoffs will likely exceed savings from the cuts, in our view.”
Bourke cited the “Carnegie Way,” the Asset Revitalization program, steel technology projects and Big River investment among the “ever changing changing operational priorities.”
U.S. Steel stock has sunk by about a third this year, hitting the lowest since 2016 in October, even as the broader U.S. equity market hit all-time highs. The shares dropped 8.1% to $12.28 at 9:45 a.m. in New York.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-steel-eliminate-1-545-124041224.html
US Steel has sucked up over $200 million in subsidies, half of it from the hapless citizens of Pennsylvania. Why invest a lot of money in steelmaking when you can invest a lot less in bribes to politicians? And in spite of this largesse, the company shut its steel plants in Pittsburgh, one by one, and left behind acres of desolate and heavily polluted riverfront. I lived there; I saw it.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2872342689508198&set=a.113401502069011&type=3&theater
Right On Art….Of one exists with the BAU Matrix, one can not escape the clutches of horrors of our way of life…..
I like the recent push by Exxon fantasy spin
https://grist.org/article/whats-with-exxons-big-algae-push/
ExxonMobil scientists are working tirelessly on developing a low-carbon fuel to change the way we power everything from cars to jet planes. Algae, that green goop that overruns beaches and thrives in warming climes, could play a pivotal role in lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the company says. Exxon has invested millions in the stuff, and flooded its social media pages with ads about its promise.
Not too long ago, Exxon was spreading climate disinformation, despite knowing about the dangers of global warming since the 1970s, and avoiding investments in more traditional forms of renewable energy, like wind and solar. So what’s with the change of heart? Is Exxon really trading in oil barrels for algae?
Not so fast, says Ed Collins, a research analyst at U.K.-based nonprofit InfluenceMap. Exxon’s algae biofuel initiative is, in many ways, a lobbying tactic, Collins claims. The effort signals to politicians and the public that the company is actively working on lowering its emissions, even though its bottom line — which is dependent on finding and selling oil and gas — is still ultimately at odds with that goal.
Yes, seems we are ALL playing BOTH sides of the fence in regard to AGW!
As for the algae itself? There’s good evidence that producing algae on a large scale is still prohibitively expensive. Cultivating it commercially requires a massive amount of fertilizer, land, and CO2. One simulation showed that producing enough algae biofuel to supply the E.U. with 10 percent of its transport fuel would require ponds triple the size of Belgium.
Exxon is developing genetically modified strains in an attempt to sidestep these limitations, but this comes with its own set of risks, says Kevin Flynn, a bioscientist and professor at Swansea University, who studies microalgae production. Making algae on a commercial scale “requires a truly massive system,” he says. “And it WILL escape.” (Flynn coauthored a study in 2012 that showed that rogue GM algae could threaten waterways and even entire ecosystems
If Greta was to be HEARD and SEEN by the PTB and masses, she undoubtedly had to “cheat”. Just the way it is….riding in Arnold Schwarzenegger electric car was a good prop
to get the message across.
Unfortunately for us living in the BAU Matrix, there is no way out but collapse…and we are smart enough to avoid that by ANY means!
The most promising approach I’ve seen has algae in an exchanger of a power plant, where the CO2 from the power plant exhaust bubbles through the algae’s growing medium.
Not that I think this has any chance of improving our lot; I’m just fascinated with the engineering and technology. 🙂
So the EU could “green” 3.3% of its transport fuel by flooding Belgium. Sounds like a win/win to me. Please do it while the EU bigwigs are all in Brussels, and make it a triple win.
Part of the trouble is trying for solutions at global scale, when local conditions vary so much (and call for local approaches).
Algae needs light on a large surface area to convert CO2 to sugar or oil as the case may be. You may have an algae plant attached to a coal plant for CO2 but I think that the algae plant would be orders of magnitude larger than the coal plant. Is that space available? Unlikely.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/03/30/an-improbable-global-shortage-sand
Zerohedge has an article up called China EV Sales Plunge in November Amid Turmoil in Global Auto Market.
The article makes the point that the EV auto sales plunge is causing Lithium prices to plunge. Prices appear to be down by about one-third from their high in mid-2018.
Also, there is really no country in the world with healthy growth in total automobile sales.China’s sales are particularly down, but Asia ex-China is doing very poorly as well. Latin America is another area with badly sliding sales.
The article makes the point:
Gail, best wishes to you and yours for Christmas and in the New Year. 🙂
“subsidies” kinda understates what is going on. A $1T deficit can pay for a load of GDP (just taking the USA as an example) – which is why deficits happen, after all. Then once you realise that a huge chunk of GDP is bogus, something close to moral hazard kicks in. You wonder “Why not subsidise my loss making home brewery”?
Governments figure out that money can be borrowed for almost any purpose. So why not figure out projects that will offer jobs for a little while? For example, hire people to pick up trash along the highway. Gets more money into the economy.
Or people borrow money for an education, which should a reasonable idea. Then they figure out that a whole lot of fields are badly overcrowded. They don’t pay well, if you can find a job. So they can’t afford to pay back the loan.
“As of December, the U.S. economy has expanded for a record 126 straight months, the longest time period in the country’s history according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Put another way, the U.S. has avoided a recession for an entire calendar decade for the first time ever.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/19/us-economy-avoids-a-recession-for-the-longest-time-ever.html
Thanks to lots of manipulation of interest rates and much more debt. And we seem to be on the edge now.
yes, and much more debt…
since Obama circa 2009, the US national debt has been increasing by about $1 trillion per year which is roughly 4% of GDP… maybe higher…
so 11 years of 4% debt growth and 2% GDP growth and…
voila…
11 years x 12 months = about 126 months of “GROWTH”…
Mainstream media is printing this story of “Growth” in total astonishment that it has been going for so long. What is missing in all the stories about the economy is the amount of debt that has been added to get that growth. It is such a pivotal point of the story; why is it being left out of discussion? Mainstream media still paint the 2008 crash being solely accredited to the housing crises. On another note I called my congressman to complain about the debt and how it is not discussed in any fashion whatsoever …….I never gave my name or email but got a letter from him the next day……
“Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) pushed their borrowing to a record $55tn (£42tn) last year, according to the World Bank, marking an eight-year surge that is the “largest, fastest and most broad-based in nearly five decades”.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/19/debt-in-developing-economies-rises-to-record-55tn
“…with many emerging economies snagged in the global slowdown, growth will have to come from somewhere else.”
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/12/19/business/19reuters-global-economy-poll.html
Good point. The developed countries have sort of maxed our their investment in everything. Too many stores of every kind. No energy investments that are profitable without subsidies. If emerging markets aren’t profitable, a person wonders who can be.
Low fuel and commodity prices are a big part of what makes prospects for the developing nations poor. Recycling no longer works as a business. Extracting commodities from the ground (even lithium) doesn’t seem to work well any more. Low prices on commodities help the developed countries temporarily, but they “damp down” any prospects for growth that emerging markets have.
Gail, two things keep “developing” nations poor, and have since I lived in one. The first is the fact that the growth in population exceeds the growth in resources, and will continue to do so. The second is that most foreign “investment”, or even direct financial aid (which has been handed out by the trillions) is stolen by corrupt officials from the top down, and will continue to be stolen.
The article says:
If a developing country borrows to fund a new highway or factory, there is at least some chance that the investment will pay back with interest. But if the borrowing is simply used to offset current costs that are too high relative to wages, it just temporarily puts a bandaid over a problem that is not being addressed. The problem will be even worse when the debt becomes due and needs to be repaid with interest.
Quite correct, as usual. But the World Bank has a vested interest in making countries indebted, because their own power is based on debt: debt that they control, and that they can use and abuse to bend those countries to their will.
I expect that there will be major defaults on the debt to the World Bank. The World Bank May be an organization that stops functioning.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/snow-machines-fleece-blankets-inside-ski-industry-battle-with-climate-change-alpine-resorts
Extract:
“This technology comes at a major financial and ecological cost. Today, one in every 20 euros spent anywhere in Val d’Isère goes into the snow factory, covering energy costs, staffing, maintenance and upgrades (a hidden “artificial snow” tax that is continually increasing). Although snow machines are becoming increasingly efficient, a typical snowmaker still uses about the same amount of energy as a boiler in a family home. When multiplied into the tens of thousands across the Alps, snowmakers become something of a self-defeating invention: they worsen and sustain the climate problems they’re supposed to solve.”
Also, think about all of the fuel used to transport people to the ski resorts that would like a lot of additional resorts. Also, the fuel used for the fancy food these people eat at these resorts and the fancy clothing and equipment they use.
Trying to maintain this sounds like an uphill battle.
Yes, nuke the alps, I say! Flatten them! They’re an utter waste of money. 🙁
A general reply. In the long run the sun turns into a red dwarf and encompasses the earth absorbing it into its mass. So what was the purpose of saving everything? Even the cosmos begins, ends and starts again.
Life seems to be a voyage, not an end point which is possibly why the image on Peterson’s lecture/book is a serpent devouring its tail.
Merry Christmas to all.
Dennis L.
Green is a religion, and as such it is not comfortable. You have to sacrifice something: Greta wanted to show us that and got entangled in her lies:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1205969006982815751
All pictures of the green propaganda show us healthy people doing some exercise. But where are the ill or the elderly which can not leasurely sir on the floor?
The green propaganda simply misses the fact that the human population is deteriorating via illnesses and ageing.
Imagine that Greta is a disabled person on the wheelchair. She definitely would not advocate costly and uncomfortable green rubbish.
You exist and survive due to “green rubbish.” Neglect it at your peril.
Bingo!
We have a winner
Jan, your comment seems to me to be the product of a misunderstanding on your part, although I suppose it could be an exercise in willful misunderstanding.
But to clarify, the “green rubbish” MG mentions probably refers to acts that the more kindly critics of so-called “green activism” describe as “virtue signaling”—such as Greta’s ocean voyages, sticking sola panels on your roof, or driving a Tesla—not to photosynthesizing organisms or to the organic compost you spread on your vegetable patch.
We have this slogan in Sweden that I find obscene and disturbing “klimatsmart”. I am sure you can get the gist of it without me translating.
Dumb city dwellers thinking they are doing the smart thing for the climate by living and commuting by train in one of the most artificial and only made possible by IC, habitats for any organism on planet earth. The cities.
It seems like practically everything can be labeled as “green” in some way. Except essentially none of it is.
This is no joke:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261006/dark-green-religion
This is a book by a religion professor at the University of Florida. I think of H. T. Odum and his followers being at the University of Florida, but there may be no connection. One review says:
The About the Book section includes this sentence:
Sounds interesting. I can see checking in with the environment as the standard for a new religion.
He distinguishes between “light green” religiosity, which supports environmentalist concerns to some degree (like the pope) but has other priorities, and “dark green” religiosity, whose adherents worship nature above all else, and are willing to do whatever it takes to defend it (think Earth First!).
I can see advantages to light green. Let the self organizing system do its own work.
On the issue of religion, “religion,” is not just one thing. There is an immense variety. Contra Marx, one religious group may support the government, while another might be leading the revolution! In fact, some scholars doubt whether “religion” is even a useful category. We reflexively use the word to mean some combination of beliefs (often about the supernatural), rituals, rules, hierarchies, and group identities, but there are beliefs, rituals etc. which are not considered religious, as well as many borderline cases. The combination of all these things under the label of “religion” seems to have begun with Christianity (in contrast with a wider, non-Christian culture), and then gradually been applied to other cultures (many of which did not distinguish “religion” from life in general). So “religion” as we now understand it is not really universal across all known human societies, but many of its components (such as ritual) are.
I think you are right. When I visited Japan, I saw school children visiting shrines with their classes. They had lessons about these shrines that they had to learn. In the US, this would have been considered “religious education,” but it was part of the general schooling.
Religion and culture in general are very closely related.
China’s schools seem to have courses (at about 4th grade) related to “appropriate behavior.” That is not religion, either.
I saw the same when visiting Japan. Interestingly, I found the same religious impulse among the Ainu. The tour visited an Ainu village in Hokkaido. At the entrance were two huge bear statues, one either side, evidently the village Kami, or as we would say, “tutelary deities”. The other members of our tour photographed them; I (alone) bowed to them.
Merry Xmas Gail!!!
As I get older I often ask myself, “If he were here now, what would Jesus say and do?”
“I’m outta’ here”
Blessed are those who have BAU and live in the kingdom of IC, for theirs is the prosperity based on fossil fuels…
wow, it’s Kurrt! (does your name still fail to pass through censorship?)
Merry Xmas to you and Happy BAU New Year!
testing:
Kurt
Perhaps he would say now what he said then:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” (Luke xiii, 37-38)
For anyone interested, the latest post by Tim Watkins at consciousnessofsheep has some good stuff related to ‘energy per capita’ appropriately titled: The left needs to give up hope.
Thanks! This is a direct link: https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/12/18/the-left-needs-to-give-up-hope/
What Watkins points out is that as long as energy consumption per capita is rising, liberal economic policies are easy to enact. These liberal policies help to utilize the extra energy per capita that is available.
Once energy per capita is constrained, then conservative economic policies seem certain to win. There is less energy to spread around. Cutbacks in programs to match available resources seem to make sense. This is where both the US and Britain seem to be now.
As Watkins says,
A long as Trump’s health is good, he will win the next election. There is no point to taking the impeachment vote to the Senate, because it has absolutely no chance of passing with the necessary 2/3 vote.
Yup, it is inevitable at this stage of IC.
https://www.spearswms.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Donald-Trump-thumbs-up.png
impeachment trial in the Senate?
#winning…
POTUS election in November?
#winning…
another reason why so many can’t stand the guy…
He surely can rile up the masses. For that he gets 10/10 jokers from me.
[gif removed]
It is enormously entertaining watching the feeble minded have a go at each other.
I am wondering if these gifs create a bandwidth problem for some viewers. I am particularly wondering about viewers in poor countries around the world. They may have problems, even if the rest of us don’t.
It would be good if these gifs were removed Gail. They add nothing to discussions.
I would hate to see OFW go down the path of peakoil.com forum where it is constant attacks on other commenters with gifs and memes rather than thoughtful comment.
I removed the gif.
The Dems are petrified at the thought of Joe Biden getting anywhere near the Senate trial.
As for Adam Schiff having to testify under oath at Trump’s trial, heaven forfend.
I agree. The Democrats, driven by their irrational hate into terminal stupidity, have trapped themselves in a classic Zugzwang: delay sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and they lose, because they have surrendered the initiative to President Trump; send them, and they lose big time, because when they have to testify under oath they will be eviscerated.
To provide a counter to all this equating religion to the monotheisms: as a polytheist with a folk practice that bears little to no resemblance to Abrahamic worship, the social benefits of religion are obvious once you remove the “personal development” angle that is so tightly intermingled with even the most reverent talk of religion nowadays. (And even with pseudo-religions, such as the Tony Robbins education I’ve been an unwilling second-hand party to over the past year since my father’s second divorce.)
There is little emphasis on personal happiness and development in the neopagan reconstructed traditions. To many of us, that’s not a need religion is supposed to meet – the minutiae of your life is your problem. And maybe the occasional ancestor who thinks you’re particularly valuable to the family line. The gods we worship are the smallest tangible specks of familiarity that we can grasp out of the vastness of their immaterial existence, and the better we can know them, the better we can serve them, and the better we can serve them, the higher our chances to survive as individuals, family clans, cities, nations, species. The gods, however, are not omniscient or omnipotent, they are not love, they aren’t even immortal, really. They also live in service to forces greater than themselves, bound by the same laws of physics, of good interpersonal conduct, and determinism that we are. In this way, I feel that the nature of polytheism makes it much clearer and easier to admit that religion is nothing more than a social technology developed to foster good communion between mortal and non-mortal beings, flora and fauna, animate and non-, the living and the dead, the past and the present.
As opposed to the religions based on promissory doctrines like the Abrahamic faiths, Buddhism, etc, which exist not so much to explain how reality actually is and how to best fulfill our role in it, but to provide what is essentially a long-winded exit clause. No offense, Gail.
Highly recommend folks here read Straw Dogs and some Mircea Eliade.
Thanks! I am happy to get some other views. Religions of various kinds meet very real needs around the globe. They are not all alike.
It seems that God. Or YHWH which derives from his declaration “I am that I am”. The “He who is” or who said of himself “I Am”. Seems to be real deity unlike any other deities that exist.
Nothing that exists compares to “THE EXISTENCE”.
I mean, an immaterial being can say whatever they want, just like any mortal human. I’m not more likely to believe a god just because they’re a god – as above, so below, and the heavens have their fair share of charlatans because humans are gullible critters. So, sure, Yahweh can make all sorts of neat campaign promises. But what’s his track record? Is he reliable, or does he change his tune as soon as you vote him into your life? Personally, I haven’t found him to be a very effective god, especially for the love thing, and have found ones much better suited to working with me on making the world a slightly more habitable place for everyone. Which, if Yahweh is love rather than demiurgic ego, he should have no problem with.
Whoops, I am Keen and Keen is Lannan. WordPress’ login theatrics trip me up every time!
(Bloomberg) — Oil and gas production in the U.K. North Sea could fall “briskly” if crude returns to $50 a barrel, leaving more than 300 fields undeveloped, according to a University of Aberdeen study.
The findings highlight the risk to the industry from dwindling investment as oil prices struggle to sustain a recovery. Benchmark Brent crude has hovered near $60 a barrel in recent months, down about 20% from an April peak as the protracted U.S.-China trade war fuels demand concerns.
Of the 415 North Sea fields that are discovered but not yet slated for development, only 81 may proceed if oil falls to $50, according to the authors of the study
In that event, production in the region “is seen to decline briskly from 2025 onwards and becomes less than 200,000 barrels a day in 2050,” they said. Even in a $70-a-barrel scenario, “substantial numbers of these fields remain undeveloped by 2050.”
Companies have been producing in the U.K. North Sea for more than four decades and the region is home to the Brent field, the origin of the international crude benchmark. The country’s oil output peaked in 1999 at almost 3 million barrels a day, and has since fallen by two-thirds as aging fields run dry, according to BP Plc data.
Investment in new fields has dropped by more than half since 2015 following the crash in prices, the University of Aberdeen study showed, citing data from trade association Oil & Gas U.K. Although North Sea operating costs have also fallen, they remain relatively high compared with other regions.
“Field investment and production over the long term were found to be extremely sensitive to oil and gas price behavior,” the study’s authors said. “The production decline rate at the low price is quite sharp.”
Some of the oil market’s biggest forecasting agencies have been scaling back demand estimates in recent months as fears of an economic slowdown overshadow OPEC output cuts. Some investment banks have also reduced their price outlooks, with ABN Amro NV last week cutting its Brent forecast by $10 to an average of $63 a barrel in 2021 amid consumption concerns and ample supply.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-slump-50-seen-triggering-000100507.html
Models or Mythology….It all comes down to BAU Baby…keep the wheels turning..Whatever it takes!
Hint:
Oil has been rising the last week.
Both Brent and WTI are at year highs
no, WTI is 61 and Brent is 66…
the 2019 highs are WTI at 66 and Brent at 75, both in late April…
those highs will likely remain, with only 12 days left to the year…
yes, oil has been rising a little this month…
2020 prices could surpass the 2019 highs as early as January…
I doubt that this will be a long term trend though…
the world is experiencing a turning from centuries of increasing net (surplus) energy to a perhaps decades long period of decreasing net (surplus) energy…
this means that in general there will be a downward pressure on the demand for all economic activities, where in those past centuries there was always a (fairly well hidden) upward pressure on demand because of those increasing energy supplies…
of course, any specific product could experience a demand that outweighs the downward pressure of the decreasing energy…
perhaps the downward pressure on demand is now .5 or 1 or 2 % per year, but if the demand for a particular product is experiencing a push by consumers of more than that, then there could be upward pressure on the price of such a product…
but overall, demand will be decreasing for many decades…
oil, like almost everything else, is caught in this downward pressure…
How would a potential Scotland exit from the UK affect the North Sea oil economy? Is there a national claim upon it?
It would be a lot of fun because England and Scotland have not agreed their maritime border yet and because if Scotland leaves the UK, the Shetland Islands will leave Scotland and declare many of the most promising remaining areas “Shetland Oil.”
Since the entire North Sea Oil industry was financed with England’s money (as is most Scottish expenditure), perhaps England should keep it. But if they don’t, expect it to fall into ruin, as have most of Scotland’s public services under their devolved SNP government:
“Satisfaction with Scottish public services sinks to record low”, inews.co.uk 2018 September 4.
And the SNP is now agitating for a second referendum. A suggestion: hold the referendum in England; you will win by a landslide.
You don’t like scotland very much?
DJ, I have visited Scotland many times, and admire its beautiful scenery very much. And its sheep. But to me it remains a place “where every prospect pleases, and only Man is vile”.
Ever since their Stuart king James I arrived in 1566, the Scots have sucked up England’s money and spit in England’s face. If they depart, good riddance.
“Some sample truths include “The Golden Rule,” it is “Blessed to Forgive,” “Seek and Ye Shall Find,” and “There Are Many Paths to God.” This type of advice can be helpful for people.”
…………………………….
This is a pretty good example of what is wrong with modern christianity – that it places so much of its focus on good that disarms people as to the presence, goals and strategems of evil.
Religion, in its practical, day to day dimension, is about doing good and resisting evil. But nowadays evil and its integral presence in the human condition never gets a mention.
Evil exists. And for those who need a definition of evil – and isn’t that a typical symptom of the disease of relativism that it migh be necessary – let’s just say that evil occurs when greed, envy and selfishness are advanced by means of lies and violence.
We can talk and speculate about theology and spiritualism and mysticism all we want – but unless we recognize that the great task of religion is to provide guidelines and understandings that help us to be good and to (just as much) resist and punish and thwart evil, all of that vague stuff is just more self-indulgent me-generation blather.
A wonderful meditation on just this subject, text by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 to 1936); tune “king’s Lynn”, traditional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFG-CqYXyOo. And perhaps especially appropriate in Advent season.
Very nice!
Chesterton was a religious writer and philosopher, but is only remembered for his Father Brown mysteries.
I remember him most for “The Man who was Thursday”. Am I alone?
There has to be a balance between looking out for ones-self and looking out for others.
Quite a bit of religious documents that we see were from times when energy consumption per capita was rising. At these times, it made sense to be doing more sharing with others. Think about the emphasis on civil rights and allowing women into the workforce in the 1960. Medicare began in 1965 in the US. These things happened in times of plenty. Energy consumption per capita was growing rapidly; there was a need for programs to help distribute the new wealth to others. Even the time of Jesus was a period with increased trade with the Far East. Think of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and the ability of Rome to tax this new-found wealth.
Now we are living in a world that is near the edge. Jobs may be available, but wage levels are too low. The people who need help are to a significant extent the huge number of working poor. Also, the many broken families mean that children are often neglected as caregivers (often mothers) attempt to work two low-paying jobs. These children do poorly in school. The whole system becomes overwhelmed by the problems, but there is not tax revenue to fix them. Too much has been promised to the huge number of retirees, among other things.
Today’s religion doesn’t have an answer for today’s problems, except perhaps very long term promises, such as “I will be with you until the end of the age,” and “I go to make a better place for you.” There isn’t anyone else that can fix the problems either, unfortunately. We need hope of some sort, whether or not the hope is 100% right.
“We need hope of some sort, whether or not the hope is 100% right.”
Perhaps this is an appropriate message of hope for our current predicament:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
From “The Garden of Proserpine”, by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 to 1909).
Hope? Let me kindly inform you what I think of hope:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZIZErkuSHR0/maxresdefault.jpg
Or as Oswald Spengler put it:
“Optimism is cowardice.”
Spengler also thoght that the last phase of every culture/civilization is a state of areligiousness. In comparison to the earlier more creative and religious phases of the culture.
That was just an opinion.
And Jordan ‘2000$ rug for sale’ Peterson? Pass
Spengler’s “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” is another treasure of my library. My reading of it differs slightly from yours, but let me agree with you this much: its final words are Ducunt fata volentem, nolentem trahunt. (“The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling”) A good summary of our current situation.
I can believe that the last phase of every culture/civilization is a state of areligiousness.
Organized religions are dissipative structures. They need energy surpluses to operate. The fact that today’s young people tend to be poorer than their parents works against organized religions. Most young people don’t have extra money to spend on church contributions or on clothing that seems to be appropriate compared to what others are wearing to church. (Of course, this changes over time.)
As limits are reached, people feel increasingly stressed out. They want to rebel against all of the past patterns that aren’t really working any more.
When a person looks at greeting cards for sale in stores today, there seem to be an awfully lot of negative cards for sale. Also, T-shirts and sweatshirts are sold with a lot of disturbing sayings on them.
maybe it takes awhile for a culture/civilization to realize they have been fooling themselves at their specialness that only gets them so far down the road before the limits are reached, the supporting ecosystems trashed.
one day the mighty Maya awoke and finally realized all the hubbub got them was depleted topsoil, poor crop yields, and surrounding land populated by tribes that only wanted revenge for all the centuries of bad treatment. oops.
Suckers tend to be much happier people, however. “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28.
I know that I didn’t start out planning to write a blog that would be followed by a large number of people. It would put together a story about energy and the economy that I couldn’t possibly put together myself. Yet I can see that it has happened, without my planning for it.
Also, I started out with a fairly handicapped child with autism, and now he is a reasonably successful adult. He still has difficulties (still can’t drive, spills sauces or salad dressing on his shirt practically daily), but he gets along well now.
Things do work out that based on the evidence, a person would never expect to work out.
Let me also bring in the French author Michel Houellebecq in a discussion of der Untergang des Abenlandes. His latest novel Serotonin is recommended.
MH is a metaphysical idealist – social development and culture are determined by big ideas – Christianity defined its period; the ideas of reason and personal autonomy have defined their. The enlightenment extinguishes itself – its last representatives die of loneliness – because love has been sacrificed on the altar of sexual liberation. Like Jordan Peterson, for mh the pill is considered the final nail in the coffin for a dying civilization. With women’s liberation, individual freedom of choice spread from the economic to the intimate sphere. Also in the erotic field, the Matthew effect is observed: “For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
Sex is monopolized by serial monogamous alpha males and a growing group of men become single masturbators.
The Matthew effect seems to have been on play in the child producing field for men, at least for decent periods of time :
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/women-men-dna-human-gene-pool
Monogamy has spread probably since it has a stabilizing effect on civilizations. Large numbers of single men can becoma a problem… At least if you cant provide them with drugs or computer games. The pill has as you say had quite an effect on the institution of marriage.
“Sex is monopolized by serial monogamous alpha males and a growing group of men become single masturbators.”
This may be right and it wouldn’t surprise me. But the pill also prevent these sexual alpha males from being child breeding alpha males. Interestingly, at least in Sweden, quite a number of desperate, baby longing, 35+ years old women travel to Denmark for fertility treatment.
I wonder what the difference is in the child breeding danish alpha males of today as compared to the ones of older age. It seems much easier to make a contrubution to the gene pool of today, if you go through a fertility clinic. Maybe it would have been easier for the swedish women to have been satisfied with a swedish “single masturbator”.
Recently it was actually allowed to treat single women in swedish fertility clinics, it’s even funded by the state. As I understand it women still go to Denmark since there they can provide you with instant treatment without much waiting, of course there is also a much higher price in Denmark.
Sex is monopolized by serial monogamous alpha males and a growing group of men become single masturbators.
Would that second group be the beta, or the beater, males?
If the alpha males remained serially monogamous, then there would be enough spare gals around for most of the rest of the guys to pair off with. It’s when the alphas become polygamous or practice concubinage that the betas and gammas and deltas find it harder to you know what.
Tim, even if the alpha males remains serially monogamous, many women will just not be satisfied with the beta males. There are many studies of this, this is just on example:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180626113412.htm
Tim, even if the alpha males remains serially monogamous, many women will just not be satisfied with the beta males.
Christopher, what’s being satisfied got to do with it? In the good old days you put up with your lot in life and made the best of it.
If I remember correctly, until fifty years ago in the US over 90% of people used to marry, including over 85% of working class guys.
Marriage was socially approved and encouraged, and onanism was considered a sin that made men go bald, blind and demented.
Under those conditions, most people managed to pair off more successfully and with a lot less bother than they do these days.
On the other hand, perhaps there were a lot more alpha males around in those days? Perhaps to many vaccines, to much high fructose corn syrup,too much tofu, too much political correctness and too much onanism has turned half the male population into what Arnie S. used to call girly men.
https://youtu.be/SUzUbtIptqQ
C’mon, if a little hope makes you a happier person what on earth is wrong with that?
Drugs also make me feel happy. Actually, no, because I know it is fake.
Cranking out the wattage on the bicycle about 40km’s a day in my commute makes me feel alive.
It is flatly lazy to chase happiness and convenience at the expense of future generations and the ecosystem of this planet. Now start leading by example and accept inconvenience and discomfort.
https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-every-time-i-see-an-adult-on-a-bicycle-i-no-longer-despair-for-the-future-of-the-human-h-g-wells-31-12-19.jpg
Your mileage may vary; but as for me, I would rather believe a hard truth than a soft lie.
News is slowing down pre-Christmas and indeed my own festivities beckon but I thought this quick IMF overview of 2019 was interesting:
“Faced with sluggish demand for durable goods, firms scaled back industrial production. Global trade—which is intensive in durable final goods and the components used to produce them—slowed to a standstill… Central banks reacted aggressively to the weaker activity… These policies averted a deeper slowdown…”
https://blogs.imf.org/2019/12/18/2019-in-review-the-global-economy-explained-in-5-charts/
We also hear about Boeing stopping production of its 737 Max. Companies that are cancelling orders want their deposits back. This cannot be a good situation.
General Electric might take a hit from these problems as well. An article at Bizjournals claims the problems could work the other direction, because potentially wouldn’t be paying as much to suppliers of the 737 Max Engine. But then the problems hit others in the supply chain.
Gail, I agree it cannot be a good situation for Boeing’s “bottom line”, but it is very good news for the people who don’t have to fly, or fly in, an aerodynamically unstable aeroplane that can at any time be crashed by gross software malpractice. It might also be good news for Boeing management, who as yet do not face the threat of being prosecuted for manslaughter.
A excellent idea try the management for man slaughter.
In an update dateline today: this afternoon I watched Boeing’s famed “Starliner” fail some 15 minutes after takeoff. It seems as though the US , which has had no manned spaceflight capability for almost a decade, will remain earthbound somewhat longer. And Boeing, have spectacularly proved that it can no longer build aeroplanes that fly, now proves it cannot build spacecraft either.
Thank you, Gail !
Jordan Petersson has a similar viewpoint on myth:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5NpS_RMcCtMNRCshRWdDH-6kudBB16p9
He’s a modernised CG Jung, usually very interesting to listen to when he lectures. There is also a biblical series course, which seems to be more directed to the broader public.
I listened to enough of this to hear him point out that everyone sharing everything equally really doesn’t work. It sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. There needs to be a differential between those who somehow contribute more to the economy. Otherwise, everyone wanders in late or calls in sick, because there is no reward for doing more.
(My ideas from here on. Sorry, I don’t have an extra 2.5 hours now.)
I think one of the reasons for religions has to do with the need to people to work together, if they are to keep up with the rising needs of at least temporarily growing populations in an area. There is a need for delayed gratification and a need for loans, if projects of more than an hour or two are planned. There is a need to work together with people that are not well known to the person. Religions can collect together some “best practices” of the day.
Religions deal with the many issues that come up when people attempt to work together. Organized religions at times have provided a place for employment for “extra” children, beyond the one son needed to inherit the family farm (and perhaps sons for the military). They allow ways of indirectly collecting money from the rich to have a little more for the extra children, who could otherwise not afford to live. Collecting money for indulgences would serve this purpose. Building temples using funds from the rich would help provide jobs for extra workers; also, perhaps in slack seasons for farming. Now we have people selling carbon offsets that presumably serve a similar purpose to indulgences.
As has been pointed out here, there are “good reasons” and “real reasons” for a whole lot of things. In my opinion, organized religions have provided solutions to a lot of real world problems. For example, there is the question of how a king should get citizens to obey him and pay his taxes. It clearly works better if the king is “appointed by God” or “anointed by God” or perhaps “is a God.”
I think you are right concerning religion. Petersson elaborates that viewpoint in an interesting way. I really enjoyed his analysis of Pinocchio and the Lion king in the course I linked to.
Concerning ineqaulity, beside the practical reasons you mentioned, there is also something deeper in the fabric of reality that encourages inequality. From the bible:
“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
This is called the Matthew effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
I hadn’t heard that name for the Matthew effect. That is the way it works in really life.
In my dreams! You hit a hot wire here.
The reality is that the carbon trade is all controlled by largish NGOs, who then distribute it to smaller overseas NGOs to distribute to local governments in third-world countries. There are a lot of fingers in the pie. Then whatever is left goes to a few poor brown people. Because they aren’t used to much, the paltry bit they receive is greatly appreciated and loudly touted by the “do-gooder” organizations who suck up the lion’s share of the carbon offsets.
I have nothing against helping poor brown people in third-world countries, but I’ll bet they don’t see as much as 25% of the amount paid in.
I have nothing against NGOs. Their employees generally believe in what they do, and generally accept lower-than-market wages in order to go good work. But they live in cities, and no matter how frugal they are, their carbon footprint is vastly more than the third-world subsistence farmers who are ostensibly benefitting from carbon offsets.
We operate as a net carbon sink. We plant hundreds of trees each year. I have written letters, lobbied politicians, and applied for grants. We have yet to see a cent of carbon offset money.
“Think globally; act locally.” We need a simple and easy process for certifying carbon sinks, and an efficient method of delivering carbon offsets directly to those who operate carbon sinks. Then, you’d see every smallish farmer say, “Hey, I could do that!” And that would have more impact than the current “trickle down” approach.
You can’t solve the problems of IC by aspiring to use the mechanisms of IC to solve problems that originated from the solution.
The only way out of this predicament is to check out of IC. Now; are you willing to do that? Do you own a car? Do you own a house? Do you have offspring?
Before pursuing more futility. Let’s try chanting after me.
Everybody:
I AM THE PROBLEM!
http://www.quotehd.com/imagequotes/authors2/h-l-mencken-writer-for-every-complex-problem-there-is-an-answer-that.jpg
But surely, it’s a continuum, no?
Your implied solution is the Jimmy Jones approach. That’s a hard sell!
Yea, we share four vehicles among ten people, which is about 40% of the North American average. Rarely do they get driven as much as once a day. And for much of the year, even that is for delivering food, rather than “superfluous” things like commuting to a job.
You also left out, “Do you collect a pension?” Talk about hitting someone where it hurts!
Being of an age where I can apply, I keep putting it off as long as I can still grow food, while thinking, “What will happen when I can no longer do farm work? What will happen when all the other boomers have drained the available funds?” So I’m contemplating getting on the “old age dole,” simply to keep from being left out, while feeling guilty that a pension, no matter how well-earned, is simply a huge part of the growth machine that is killing future generations.
So, should retired people just do the Jimmy Jones thing? Or does your mantra have room for a graceful exit, supported by others?
The traditional approach is that old people are directly cared for by young people because of their knowledge and the resources they control. I’ve tried to get young people involved for a share of the wealth I’ve accumulated (manifest as productive farmland) and for my “wisdom.” A dozen years have produced no takers for that deal!
I guess all that’s left is to go out in the middle of the winter, crawl as far up the mountain as I can, strip naked, and fall asleep.
Do you live in Michigan? I’d be wiling to try…
Many decades ago!
Now, I live in the greenest place in North America, with both a Federal and Provincial elected Green representative.
It’s sorta like peeing yourself in dark pants — you get a warm feeling, but nobody notices. 🙁
You’re as old as you feel, Jan.
If i were you, I’d take whatever pension you are entitled to and use however you see fit. You would probably spend it better than the pension fund operators would if they didn’t have to pay it to you.
Work while you are able and you still enjoy working, and use the pension as a financial cushion or a security blanket. Where’s the harm in that?
https://66.media.tumblr.com/7cdb975a5a7b4b0560f06abecd7cc631/tumblr_o2ck4gTBtL1sh3zp9o1_400.png
I am the problem!
There is no solution.
But there may be “coping strategies.”
Someone on Quora asked, “If we all lived like the Amish, would that solve the climate change crisis?”
Of course it would! But all the answers posted denied climate science, denied that anyone in their right mind would want to live like that, denied that there was enough farmland, denied that not living like the Amish was even a problem, etc.
I don’t know if any of us will survive the coming bottleneck event. But it seems pretty clear that those who ignore it will have less of a fighting chance, no?
Actually, we would need to live a lower lifestyle than the Amish, I expect. They have horse and buggy. It takes a lot of energy surplus to afford a horse. Also a buggy. The Amish use a fair amount of soil amendments to compete with other farmers. The Amish use at least some modern medicine. They make use of modern paved roads, and the benefits of snow plows. They wear shoes and clothes made in modern factories. All of these are made possible through fossil fuels. If they use fences made of metal, or glass jars for canning, these are likely made with fossil fuels.
If they had to make everything themselves, it would cut back from other things that they do.
There is no problem.
Only limitless opportunities for worrying oneself sick over stuff that doesn’t matter.
Here now the wise words of Calvin Coolidge.
“If you see ten problems coming your way, just sit still. Chances are nine of them will get derailed before they ever reach you.”
You are right. The carbon offsets do nothing more than transfer more wealth to the already wealthy.
Subsidies for solar panels and wind turbines seem to act in a similar way.
“…they live in cities, and no matter how frugal they are, their carbon footprint is vastly more than the third-world subsistence farmers who are ostensibly benefitting from carbon offsets.”
Maybe this isn’t meant to put down city living, but there are some who believe city living is worse for the planet than large scale abandonment of cities. And such a position is similar to people who advocate closing down fossil fuel plants and immediately replacing them with “renewables.” That is a dangerous position since it becomes (to quote Gail) a religion that shuts out other alternatives that are actually more realistic for bettering the environment.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/energy/environment/want-to-save-the-environment-build-more-cities
“Cities, which I define as principally densely populated concentrations of human settlement and as areas of predominantly built environment, are the most transformed ecological settings in the world. But the very fact that they’re defined by density means, of course, that you have larger numbers of people occupying a smaller area, so you confine and contain the human impact. If we think about the same population living in a less-urban concentration, you would have much larger areas affected.”
For much of recorded human history, it took about a dozen people living on the land to support just one in a city. Today, one person on the land supports about 700 city folk — thanks to the miracle of fossil sunlight!
What could possibly go wrong with that?
I don’t advocate shutting down city living. It’s just gonna happen, whether I advocate it or not!
Your quote does not take into account the secondary effects of city life.
Of course someone living in a city apartment directly impacts a much smaller area than a subsistence farmer in a rural area!
But that subsistence farmer may not impact much more than the land she gets her food from, whereas the city dweller requires the industrial food system, the industrial transportation system, the industrial banking system, and probably a whole lot more — just to live in their tiny, minimal-impact apartment.
You claim my position is similar to replacing fossil fuel power plants in favour of renewables, but I would submit that renewables are in precisely the same situation as city dwellers — renewables only exist at the cost of a huge web of hidden impacts and dependencies
City dwellers (and renewables) are like icebergs — just the top few percent of their impact is visible, but the rest lurks out-of-sight.
The Titanic didn’t go down because it hit the visible part of an iceberg, and civilization will not go down because of the visible impact of city dwellers.
I would agree that city dwellers can only exist because of the hidden support of many country dwellers. I would also agree that renewables can only exist because of the hidden support of fossil fuels.
I should point out that pension plans are in a similar position: They can exist only because of the huge support of the fossil fuel system and the large number of jobs for younger people that pay well that they provide.
If you want to take a pension, the time to take it is now. Just don’t expect the pension to stick around long. You will still need to support yourself after the pension leaves you. Think of the pension as a temporary crutch.
Sigh. Our very word “civilisation” comes from the latin word for “city”. Without cities there is no civilisation, in spite of Thomas Cole’s beautiful painting of the Arcadian state. Which omitted, alas, the telling criticism “Et in Arcadia ego”. But I agree that cities should be small, productive, and walled. As was Tiryns; as is Urbino.
Jan, you would know better than I what parts of the following are doable or not. But as a “designer” type I am convinced that cities are doing almost none of the things that would make them more self sufficient.
Cities are gobbling up immediately surrounding open space for mostly the commercial development that pays more than the residential development that is broadly needed. That sends the residential development off into suburbs. Due to market forces, the new residences are twice as large as they need to be to house the same number of folks. But I’m putting it mildly. These also extend the geographic range for services and cost society too much.
Conversely, I can see abundant abandoned or under utilized city structures that used economically could double the residential population there.
Done at scale it ought to be possible to bypass existing city infrastructure like challenged septic systems. Scientific, safe hummanure cultivation ought to be possible from thousands of micro units independently plumbed. If that didn’t work, sludge from micro units could go into the many gaping caverns from past mining (and growing communities might form in such places).
If solar electricity were used for these micro units (made from trash) it wouldn’t tie into the old grid, giving it the problems Gail enumerates.
You have sun and rain in cities just like anywhere else, and used with some forethought, those could grow an abundance of food in the cities. Many places that abysmal planning has allowed to sprawl all over could be revised to form full service hubs that don’t all look like each other, obviating as much driving as now.
Given its potential to reach the entire world from your screen, we pretty much don’t use the internet for any worthwhile purpose now…
Architect Christopher Alexander talks of “interlocking city-country figures†”, which seems like the way it should be done, but is the opposite of what modern zoning regulations do.
†A Pattern Language, pp 25, to wit: “Continuous sprawling urbanization destroys life, and makes cities unbearable… Keep interlocking fingers of farmland and urban land, even at the centre of the metropolis. The urban fingers should never be more than 1 mile wide, while the farmland fingers should never be less than 1 mile wide.”
I saw this book on the shelf of one of our local planners. Too bad the system doesn’t let them follow it.
Mission possible?
http://www.energy-transitions.org/mission-possible
Sounds like things that people have put together, either in response to an RFP looking for a solution, or trying to make money off a solution for our problem. We have a lot of people seeking solutions. Two of the big issues are time and scale. Also, the need for fossil fuels for all of the solutions.
WOW
Yahoo nuked all of its groups without me even noticing. There once was ‘Energyresources’ that Jay Hanson founded..the updates ceased over time (Tom Robertson was the admin). There were lots of interesting discussions, but it’s all gone now. There were multiple reported deaths, and a few others that I found out about later; Peak Oil awareness was mostly followed by elderly engineers and conservationists.
I also subscribed to some specialized synth groups, groups about specific products, etc. There was invaluable information that only the groups provided.
It’s ALL GONE now!
Everything supported by pixels will eventually disappear, some sooner than others.
We should plan to lose things on the internet.
I just ordered Volume Two of the on-line Low-Tech Magazine.
It’s print-on-demand technology, and websites are sub-optimal for books. (Speaking as one who has done professional book design.) The first thing I did with Volume One was to use a Sharpie™ to make a “thumb index” to the chapters.
Don’t worry: I’m sure California will open several “sanctuary cities” for pixels.
Try way back machine:
https://archive.org/web/
DB says:
December 18, 2019 at 7:13 pm
I don’t understand why people like Ramanujan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan) wouldn’t be an _asset_ to any university or community that would have them.
My answer is, whatever merits Ramanujan might have had, he was allowed to the Royal Society while real scientists were getting killed at war. It is like one’s wife sleeping with a Hindu while the husband is slogging in the trenches.
It was a huge watershed in history, when the gentleman scientists (like Henry Moseley, killed wantonly at Galipoli with NO honors, NO awards and NO Royal Society) began to disappear and they all began to go into law and politics and journalism. If a Hindu can get into the Royal Society while the gentlemen scientists are dying for nothing, who will do science?
Didn’t you get the memo? Nobody does science anymore. Academia is busy writing worthless papers and applying for government grants. Welcome to the new jobs program for mostly useless people.
That sounds like a good and fair description of the overall situation. I would like to think that there are still a few old men in white coats discovering new things by playing around with microscopes, telescopes, test tubes and bunsen burners, etc., but perhaps that’s just an idle fancy born of nostalgia.
“Approximately 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War One, and over 74,000 of them lost their lives. But history has mostly forgotten these sacrifices.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33317368
Jonathan, history may have forgotten, but I have not. And neither did my grandfather, who fought alongside them at Ypres. If our “leaders” had possessed one tenth the moral courage of those they sent to die, India would in 1918 have been given full self governing Dominion status. But the generals get the medals, the politicians the victory parades, and the rank & file, the crosses in Flanders’ fields. All civilisations die in the end, but perhaps our death will be one most richly deserved.
The European powers destroyed each other’s places at the top of the Premier League in the two world wars and as a result they have been relegated down to the lower divisions.
Why they embarked on those conflicts is a vexed question that I for one don’t have a clear answer to. A long list of historians have documented the times, but conclusive reasons are hard to come by.
Was it all planned for somebody else’s profit or power grab? Did did it just snowball? Or was it mainly or partly due to Peak Coal, first in the UK at the time of WW1 and later in Germany at the time of WW2, as Gail has suggested?
Tim, I have thought about this issue for a long time. Background: my grandfather fought in the Great War; he was gassed in the trenches in Flanders, but fortunately survived with one lung uncollapsed. My father in his youth had lost an eye, but volunteered as a civilian lookout, standing unarmed on a roof in Manchester, watching for the Luftwaffe.
The root cause of WW2 I think is obvious: the Treaty of Versailles, which broke all the assurances the Entente had given to Germany and Austria, and which was correctly described as “an armistice for twenty years”. And one of the chief architects of that disaster was the blisteringly incompetent Woodrow Wilson, whose insane redrawing of the map of Europe is still causing trouble.
But the Great War? A much harder problem. One cause was the Schlieffen Plan, which taught that Germany’s response to a possible two front war (against France and Russia) should be to attack France and defeat her before Russia could enter the field. That was a key strategic error: it placed Germany is a condition their own chess players called “Zugzwang”. If Russia begins to mobilise, Germany must attack France, by any pretext necessary. As of course happened on 1914 August 3.
Another cause was the idiocy of the British government, which had concluded a secret alliance with France while pretending to be neutral. This led France to believe she would enter the looming European war, and Germany to believe she would not; a disastrous miscalculation. The causes of the alliance itself would be a digression too far; enough to say it should never have happened, and reversed centuries of British policy for no good reason.
I don’t know how long you have been reading OFW, Robert, but this entertaining and informative comedy routine was first posted here by Fast Eddy many years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIpm_8v80hw
The reasons for WW1 start at about the 10:15 mark.
Actually most of them were people living in what is Pakistan, or Sikhs. The Hindus generally avoided fighting as much as they could.
Even now, the Armed Forces of India won’t function without the Sikhs and Gurkhas.
what happens if they find tons of oil in the Arctic? Could be more than than any one can guess.
Arctic oil will not be inexpensive enough to suit our needs. The problem is more one of cost than one of a lack of resources. The cost of the energy mix (considering both low-cost energy sources and higher-cost energy sources) cannot be too high relative to the wages that most people can earn. If the average cost of energy products is too high, workers cannot afford the necessities of life; they riot instead.
This is why substituting renewables (with very high overhead costs that are hard to measure) for coal doesn’t work.
“Oil companies may not return to the Beaufort Sea if Canada lifts the moratorium after 2021, because of the challenging and expensive drilling in Arctic waters…”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Why-Oil-Majors-May-Never-Return-To-Canadas-Arctic.html
Looks like Norway is still moving in that direction though:
“Norway made an outspoken right-wing lawmaker who once called wind turbines “white monsters” its oil and energy minister on Wednesday, as the government debates updating rules for petroleum industry activity in its Arctic waters.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/norway-wing-oil-minister-supports-arctic-drilling-191218143105559.html
I get your but I did not think fracking would make it so long…..if arctic breakes open it may be worked with less human labor and the labor that does work it is almost slave labor…you would be surprised at how little people make around the world. Not saying that it is going to be a miracle but it could shift metrics by a lot for another 15 years and then what?
To get people to work in the arctic when they can stay home watching netflix costs money.
“Deuteronomy/Joshua/Judges, adds to the case very convincingly that ALL religions are human inventions…”
Religion is poison–
-Mao
I would say, “All religions are self-organizing systems.” They operate because of energy flows. They continue to exist because they serve a need. In some sense, the leaders may be “inspired.” The fact that there is so much overlap in ideas leads a person to think that they are, in some sense, inspired. Authors figure out, one way or another, underlying patterns that are important to pass on. For example, it tends not to be helpful to kill others of one’s own group.
We know in animal kingdoms, many animals mark their territory. This is a major way that population is kept down to sustainable levels. (Overshoot and collapse is not too bad.) Animals (male, especially) fight others who want to enter their territory. To some extent, different religions serve this purpose as well. They give groups cohesion; they also give groups the willingness to fight others if resources per capita are becoming too strained.
«To some extent, different religions serve this purpose as well. They give groups cohesion; they also give groups the willingness to fight others if resources per capita are becoming too strained.»
Maybe we should add secular religions, the political ideologies, to this observation: with communisme and fascisme fighting each other in what in Europe between 1917 and 1945 essentially was a colonial war.
Let’s not forget humanism and Buddhism which does not have any god.
In fact the most peaceful people I have ever met is either Buddhist or humanist. They share one thing in common; the disgust for violence and groupthink mentality in any shape or form.
Unfortunately, disgust for violence will not save you from the violent. As the Buddhists of Burma discovered, when they took a close look at Rakhine state, and found mass graves of Hindus and Buddhists. A finding that was rapidly disappeared from the Western media.
The first moral obligation is to stay alive.
Having a disgust for violence isn’t the same as pacifism.
Yes, but I think that more usual religions work better. Dmitry Orlov says that needing to band together in the face of persecution is helpful in making a group more cohesive.
The “We can save ourselves from climate change” religion probably doesn’t have far to run, if the world is shifting toward a more conservative outlook.
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Not that I don’t enjoy your regular stuff, but it’s nice to read something that is a bit different!
But as for Leviticus, no, you cannot own this Canadian. 🙂
thanks! that’s a funny link…
and full of such wisdom…
Leviticus, not to mention the serial slaughtters in Deuteronomy/Joshua/Judges, adds to the case very convincingly that ALL religions are human inventions…
or perhaps the Intelligent Design Creator finds everything in Leviticus to be perfectly aligned with His thinking…
or not…
Shakespeare (as usual) got it right:
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”
Orlov spouting imminent US collapse:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-final-act.html#more
“Let’s add one more salient detail. Over the course of 2020, $4.665 trillion of USTs will mature and will need to be rolled over into new USTs. This is an all-time record, and this is on top of new debt that will have to be issued in order for the US government to be able to stay open. Over the past year the US budget deficit has amounted to $1.022 trillion, which is a 15.8% increase over the previous year. If this trend continues, the new deficit will be around $1.183 trillion. In order to keep the wheels of finance from grinding to a halt, over 2020 the Fed will have to monetize, or print, close to $6 trillion.”
maybe… but rolling over $4T in debt means that the $4T is still $4T, which is zero extra debt, of course…
if the Fed has to buy the rolled over debt because there are no other buyers, then that eliminates $4T of outstanding debt, and doing that sooner rather than later may not be problematic…
or it’s the beginning of the end for the US economy…
take your pick…
No problem with creating money, big problem with population implosion.
I like to read Dmitry’s work, but I am not sure about this post.
I think that part of the underlying problem is all of the changes in rules about how much liquidity of what kind banks need to have at year end. I think it also affects quarter end. It seems like the rules could be changed back again, if they have too much of an adverse impact. I expect that Europe would be affected by any problem also.
This is not really my area of expertise, however.
“Investors don’t think the Federal Reserve is being straight with them, according to a survey published Wednesday by RBC Capital Markets…
“”I want to emphasize that growth of our balance sheet should in no way be confused with the large-scale asset purchase program that we deployed after the financial crisis,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in October.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-stock-investors-think-the-fed-has-restarted-emergency-stimulus-despite-denials-says-rbc-survey-2019-12-18
????
Perhaps Powell has had a course in creative writing.
And 6 years ago similar stuff was being said about the US and how it was on the verge of collapse by the likes of Peter Schiff, Michael Pento and other high profile hedge fund and money mgrs.
Look, the system is beyond corrupt. The Banksters around the world are playing Three Card Monty trying to keep this Ponzi Scheme going. The new flavor of the month is negative interest rates and universal basic income.
The point is, 6 years from now, we could be taking about how the US is in imminent danger of collapse. And as a Russian, Dimtry Orlov is partisan to his own people and would love for the US to collapse.
Dmitry Orlov is today’s Hari Seldon. Entertaining, but to be taken with large quantities of salt. It must be depressing to believe that every silver lining hides a cloud, but I wish him well.
Invited to a NC Department of Environmental Quality meeting on arguments whether to install a lined coal ash pond (aka “wet surface impoundment” by the EPA at the site of the coal fired power plant about 1 mile from my apartment to store 1.1 million cubic yards of coal ash. Western Carolina is booming in the Asheville area, and I wonder how long a new site will last? Water current piped in from remote mountain reservoir 15 miles away. Reading up on the coal combustion residuals (CCR) arsenic, boron, Hg, Pb etc residuals, relaxing of EPA standards etc. The town has been in the process of moving ash from two UNLINED ponds from 1962 and 1984 to sites in Homer, Georgia. (There we go again. “Not in my back yard,” or will the money be wasted on useless legal squabbles and corruption within Waste- Management? ) Better to pay extra and ship to Georgia? BTW, have always used Big Berkey gravity filter with PF-2 Arsenic add on filters.
https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/
(Actually, Berkey had some quality control issues with the black filter rubber ends disassembling- still trying to be sure the problem was fixed.)
Talk about hidden expenses of energy? Well, here it is!
Anyone have any good information that might be helpful for me to know?
I wonder how lake Norman faring with its coal plant? I drove by it the other day. NC is getting developed to sprawl hell. It’s a disaster, IMHO
Thank you Gail for a seasonal and esoteric report. I too am studying the Bible under tutelage and find your quotes enlightening. “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God”
I believe that the ‘word’ was information contained in the complex bio-structure of DNA/RNA. This complex molecule could not have been created without a designer and therefore I have a belief in intelligent design (ID). Evolution may well have occurred.and allowed all God’s creatures to be produced.
The book that convinced my scientific mind is:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gods-Undertaker-Has-Science-Buried/dp/0745953719
I am now enjoying the journey of discovery.
No!
The prime mover for science and engineering is curiosity and a fascination for the mysteries of the universe. I do not seek comfort in a greater being. It is truly bewildering that the universe can look upon itself, through the workings of my mind and ponder about its own existence. This phenomena is profound.
Spirituality is poison for the government industrial complex. Be a good little cog in the consumerist machinery and don’t question the nomenclature.
It is truly bewildering that the universe can look upon itself, through the workings of my mind and ponder about its own existence. This phenomena is profound.
Profound or not, if this is indeed what’s happening, then with Malcolm Muggeridge, we must ask the question “why”. Why does the universe ponder or allow pondering of anything? The preponderance of the evidence suggests that we just don’t know.
On the other hand, perhaps nothing exists outside of the mind of Shiva and this is all just a dream He is having.
It seems quite obvious to me. The universe is a functionally infinitely recursive self referential system at every point instant, furthermore spatially and temporally unbound.
The universe is. It is why.
Was the universe designed? Well, the ID people say that anything complex must have been designed; the universe is complex; therefore God. This was William Paley’s argument, (1743 to 1805) though they rarely credit him with it.
But the designer surely must be more complex than the thing designed. So God must also have been designed, by an even bigger and more complex Supergod. And so we enter an infinite regress. Reductio ad absurdum.
Does all systems need a designer? I don’t think, for example, evolution has a designer. It is a process of the universe.
And the universe is it’s own definition through the infinite logical recursion at every point instant. Time is a mental abstraction. Every step along the process and interactions takes an infinite amount of steps to complete and it never finishes.
I am of the opinion that most systems does not require a designer. Conceptualizations and categorizations such as “why does the universe exist” usually indicates that the question itself is grossly simplified through the futile and primitive mental processes inside our primate brains that seek to find reason and meaning.
My vocabulary differs somewhat from yours, but as best I can tell, we agree. The Cosmos does not have a transcendent Creator, though it may have immanent beings that observe and perhaps attempt to guide it. The Japanese call the Kami; the Romans called them Genii.
That might be true.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/3e/5c/b03e5c210f6d643c8930c6e7d251dd8d.jpg
It might be that all life we have on earth is alien technology. Would that then constitute “intelligent design”?
Sorry, but I am gonna have to post this.
https://youtu.be/pWdd6_ZxX8c
a newer way to look at religion/myth is through the lens of “fake news”…
no offense intended, but humans have been fabricating stories for their entire history… for personal gain, through mental illness, through uneducated ancient superstition etc…
all religions are human inventions, and the question remains as to how they correlate with reality…
I suppose there could be a Creator, but ID brings up many questions ie why are there so many pediatric cancers? should we thank “God” for all of them?
belief in such a Creator requires the proverbial “leap of faith”…
I think it’s only a small stretch to take a leap of faith and believe in a Creator…
but the leap of faith that I find quite unreasonable is to think that such a Creator, of a vast universe (probably countless universes) with probably a vast amount of worlds with life, would be at all interested in granting some sort of heavenly afterlife to such a quarreling warring self-seeking species as we human beings…
that leap of faith is way too much for me…
your opinions may vary…
There is a very large number of offspring of most plants and animals. Very few out of the group live to maturity. There are random difference in the offspring. In general, the best adapted will tend to survive.
We humans have decided that everyone should live to old age. This really doesn’t make sense, given the way the world operates. Our whole health care system is really a denial of the way evolution operates. Somehow, we need to be able to build the expectation of children’s death’s back into our view of life. Health care is a big user of fossil fuels.
Actually, ecologists define two distinct patterns.
K-selected species tend to have a relatively small number of offspring, and to spend more time and effort raising them. These species thrive when there is excess capacity and they then foster connectedness. Hmm… like tapping into a 200 million year of stored sunlight, perhaps?
R-selected species tend to have a prodigious number of offspring, on which they spend little time, leaving them all to scrounge for a living. These species thrive when there is limited capacity, and they don’t really develop much connectivity. Cockroaches will inherit the Earth after we use up all the fossil sunlight.
http://www.ecoreality.org/file/Panarchy.jpg
Do dead cockroaches go to heaven, or are they reincarnated endlessly to experience one cockroach-like existence after another? Or are the delights of life after death reserved for K-selected species?
No, that is reserved for those who choose belief over evidence. But think what a lovely world there will be when they are all raptured away!
On a personal level, that might be a nice thing if it happens, but I’ve seen absolutely no evidence of it, and I do not base any of my decisions upon it being true.
It turns out that all the things the true believers want us to do (well, not all the things) are also good to do if you do not believe — things like treating others as you wish to be treated (unless you’re a masochist), etc.
I prefer “enlightened self-interest” over the promise of an afterlife as a way of making daily choices.
One thing the true believers have going for them is that they believe there is an absolute basis for moral behavior, whereas doubters like us can only look to explanatory concepts such as enlightened self interest, reciprocal altruism, game theory, or Mr. DNA’s programming to justify their moral impulses. In any case, all of us have to choose concepts that make sense to us, whether we get them out of a holy book or from somewhere else.
I remember that as a child, well before my ego, superego and id were on nodding terms with each other, I almost always played the good boy and I enjoyed being praised and flattered by adults for being so well mannered and thoughtful. My brothers were not nearly such good boys as I was because they were too busy having fun being boys.
Scratching a bit deeper, I think I used to play the good boy in order to obtain approval because I was scared of being abandoned by the benevolent adults who, even back then, I knew provided me with my life support system.
I am baffled by the prejudice against cockroaches. They are an integral part of the Gaia ecosystem.
We should admire the cockroach which is a phenomenally complex system sprung out of the mechanisms of evolution, physics and the natural order.
The cockroach are infinitely more in tune with nature than anyone trying to shove down poorly masked elitism expressed as R/K theory, popularized by that charlatan Stefan Molyneux.
One can abuse any scientific theory for their nefarious purposes.
The fact that the eugenics movement of the early 1900s (leading to Hitler, and thus bringing Godwin’s Law to this conversation 🙂 was ostensibly based on sound Darwinian theory is no more reason to reject Darwinian theory than Molyneux’s abuse of r/K theory is reason to reject r/K theory.
In particular, the recently-late Buzz Holling integrated r/K theory into Panarchy Theory, taking it to a level of abstraction deeper than, “gee, some species seem to do this, and some seem to do that.”
Cockroaches with good karma are reincarnated as spiders. Those with bad karma are reincarnated as modern economists.
LOL!
An economist is someone who, upon encountering a stadium containing 90,000† destitute, penniless people who came to see a talk by Bill Gates, says, “On average, I see a stadium full of millionaires! The economy’s doing fine!”
†When I first came up with this joke, it only took an auditorium with some 30,000 “millionaires” to equal a Bill Gates. At least things are getting better for some people!
Spiders are awesome.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/b9/9e/06b99eb4a28312b0452bf82e5d3b60f2.jpg
That is one heck of a complex system that nature produced without any effort at all. It just happened.
How do you know God didn’t create that spider?
And how do you know considerable effort wasn’t exerted on someone’s or something’s part to produce it?
Do you think the spider just popped into existence spontaneously out of nowhere?
If you’d been brought up in England any more than half a century ago, you would be wiser because you would probably have learned the words to the poem/hymn “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all”
Kids these days in England don’t even learn by heart the names of the Kings and Queens of England or the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12. Good grief, half of them don’t even know how many genders there are. So it’s no surprise they don’t know who created that spider.
https://sayingimages.com/wp-content/uploads/god-creating-spider-meme.jpg
I reject the idea of a God creating the spider, because there is a much simpler explanation. Evolution.
Evolution is the enabled by the processes of this universe, which is a logically infinitely recursive system at every point instant, furthermore spatially and temporally unbound.
How did the process of evolution come into being? Why is there something instead of nothing?
Tim, I was brought up in England (during term time), and indeed I remember that hymn. If memory serves:
Each little flower that opens
Each little bird that sings
He made their glowing colours
He made their tiny wings.
And the last stanza:
He gave us eyes to see them
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty
Who hath made all things well
Well, I may have shed much of the underlying dogma, but one lesson from those days has remained with me: Everything that is, is holy.
Standing squarely in the middle between favoring K or R, I was intrigued by Geof Lawton’s statement that “we need all the hands we can get.” I’m still trying to figure that one out. I currently take that to mean that if you have a dangerously large population doing benign things it weighs the scale towards a benign outcome. But if you don’t put that same population toward a constructive purpose, the system falters and collapses. So I can see the point of the crazily large population, while also advocating for global abortion on demand. But also, leaving any group and society that isn’t bothering me to its own devices.
Global abortion on demand, just like global initiatives towards smaller families, are a classic lose/lose strategy. The thoughtful, farsighted, and ecologically conscious will adopt them, and will then be rapidly outbred by the underclass. The result will be an ongoing degeneration of the human species.
Sorry to seem desperately cynical, but what our species needs is a top notch predator.
With few children, rich parents can shower wealth on their children, including paying for advanced education. This reduces their children’s chances of having children, since it tends to put off marriage. Also, women in demanding positions don’t want many children, if any at all.
Poor women need all of the assistance they can get. They try to get the attention of men, even if only briefly, by offering sex. They can’t afford birth control, especially pills that would be inconspicuous. So they end up getting pregnant and having children by a series of different fathers. The only way they can sort of support themselves is with a combination of low-paying part time jobs. Often, they get hooked on drugs or alcohol, to try to hide their problems. The children tend to be badly neglected. The school systems have a terrible time with these kids. They offer free breakfast and lunch, to get some food into these children, but the groundwork for teaching has not been laid at home.
Rich women tend to homeschool their kids. Otherwise, they move to expensive areas where there are few poor children in the schools, or they find private schools for their kids. The scores of children in the school system go farther and farther downhill, compared to the rest of the world.
For Gail 20191220:0823: Yes, that is exactly what I observed during my 13 years in Pittsburgh. The poor (and predominantly black) population were living off welfare and breeding feral children, who mostly joined gangs and killed each other. In sum, they were in transition from a K* strategy to an R*. I have rarely been so terrified as when I witnessed that.
My somewhat autistic son has been working at straightening out reporting issues related to the State of Georgia Department of Family Services website for several years. He tells a little about what he sees. I know that there are multiple fields for “Putative father.” Some families have multiple children, with multiple issues of neglect or abuse reported. It sounds like one very sad story after the next.
Most likely natural selection will come back into fashion.
I predict upper modell classness will not be selected for, more likely disease resistance, sperm quality and breeding hips.
“Sorry to seem desperately cynical, but what our species needs is a top notch predator.”
Or a very well supported, and very clever elite that can continue its line?
Sounds interesting!
if you really had a scientific mind, you would allow for the origin and evolution of complex biomolecules such as DNA without the need for an intelligent designer. your statement is judgmental, and not based upon facts.
It is a too weak of a statement.
You would be entitled to demand it. Because the alternative is unscientific. It is the role we have in the ecosystem, seek to understand it and to steward it so that it can prevail, even if it means we can not.
humans were/are not supposed to “prevail” over the ecosystem in which they are embedded. i suppose, like many humans, you think we are fundamentally different from other animals. the facts state otherwise. so how are we doing in the ” understand it and to steward it” departments? lousy, i’d say, because of the hubris, the lack of understanding, the destructive nature of the species and its industrial civilization. appealing to your god(s) to save you. the exercise won’t do anything but rationalize our bad behavior while whitsling past the graveyard. take a look around. like what you see?
Ok, read your last statement too fast. i see you are being generous to the ecosystem we have attempted to murder in the name of “progress”.
Yes, we went overboard, misused our mandate and ultimately will not prevail. Gaia will prevail, cleanse herself from the filth we produce as we turn her lifeblood, petroleum, into instant gratification and decadence.
Doomphd, rilygtek and Jan, you are all hopelessly prejudiced against human civilization and judgmental in your condemnation of what we’ve collectively achieved during our time on earth.
We are a part of the natural world, and everything we do on earth is natural by definition. All the mess we make and all the destruction we perpetrate is not a bug, it’s a feature. We are part of the cycle of creation, destruction and transformation that makes this planet so much more interesting to observe than the Moon, Venus or Mars, to name but a few of our closest companion rocks.
So all your angst, your ranting, your condemnation, and your tut tutting against humanity’s sins is basically nothing but misanthropy emanating from your subconscious minds as a projection of self-loathing. Come on guys, admit it. You sound like that Paranoia character in Red Dwarf, don’t you?
https://youtu.be/uBNizB6KRnI
” All the mess we make and all the destruction we perpetrate is not a bug, it’s a feature.”
I am afraid I would have to agree. This is why fixing our problems is so difficult. Things that look wonderful, like recycling, solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars really aren’t sustainable. They are just add-ons to our current system that seem to work when energy prices are high enough. When energy prices are low, they all fail. It is the fact that they fail that helps make the system as a whole fail. All the jobs in China and India that depended on these growing industries disappear or pay very much less well. This is part of what makes the economies of China and India fail.
The fact that our bodies are adapted to eating some cooked food is a big part of our problem. This cooked food allows humans an advantage over other animals, in that it doesn’t take as much effort to chew and digest cooked food. Humans and pre-humans learned to control fire over one million years ago. Our bodies have now adapted to requiring some cooked food. We have smaller teeth, jaws, and guts than our primate relatives. We also have bigger brains, made possible by the saving from not needing as much digestive apparatus. We also have more free time for crafts, since we don’t need to chew literally half of the day to get enough nutrition.
The fact that humans learned to use other energy to supplement the energy we get from other foods has allowed human population to grow more rapidly than other animal populations. In fact, we have contributed to the demise of many types of animals.
In a sense, we are special, because of adaptation to the use of supplemental energy, in addition to that of food. What happens is that humans build endless civilizations that are equivalent to Ponzi Schemes. They work for a while, but then resources per capita fall too low as population rises and resource deplete. Eventually, the civilizations collapse.
This is, unfortunately, the way humans have evolved to behave. We can’t go back to eating leaves and living in trees, because our bodies are not adapted to this leaf-eating. The issue is not hubris, it is physiology. We are different from other animals.
Cooking is technology. Technology per se isn’t bad. It is the excesses which it enables that turns bad. In one word.
OVERPOPULATION!
And HT Odum would say that technology is a complexity, and complexity is simply the manifestation of energy. And Joseph Tainter will tell you that excess complexity kills civilizations. It’s a cycle, no?
I believe Gail’s point was that we survive due to our ability to use non-current energy, which includes cooking.
You simply cannot reduce energy use through technology. They are equivalent. It may seem like you’ve done so, but that is just a bubble until the energy that supports the technology goes away.
Today, we think electric cars and solar panels are defeating entropy. This is an illusion, and only temporary, and they in fact “borrow” energy from the future in order to provide the illusion that they “save” energy today.
Take away fossil sunlight, and electric cars and solar panels will not exist within a fairly short period of time!
I agree with you, Jan. Technology looks like it might save us, but it doesn’t. It depends on fossil fuels. It leads to wage disparity, which destroys demand. Technology is complexity, which is a manifestation of energy.
You are mistaking obscure complications for complexity.
Life on earth is astoundingly complex. Our technology is nowhere close to the intricacies which evolution produces.
Yet our crude petroleum guzzling behemoths wreaks havoc on the intricate and complex ecosystems of Gaia.
True. We cannot match nature’s complexity.
my wife prepares cooked food for our dog every day. so far, no exceptional behavior beyond smart doggie tricks and play. he’s a young border collie. maybe someday he’ll design a fusion reactor and overpopulate the world with border collies.
Here’s another journey you can take
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Is+most+science+bullshit%3F&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=is+most+scienc&sc=6-14&sk
Pingback: Scientific Models and Myths: What Is the Difference? | Basic Rules of Life
Gail,
Dr. Nelson talked a bit about how the states RES goals were/are implemented via the states public agencies (PUC/CEC/CASIO/CARB) through various rules and regulations.
http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/2/12/electricity-prices-rose-three-times-more-in-california-than-in-rest-of-us-in-2017#comment-3757002184
Transmission cost allocations were increased-
“Pacific Gas and Electric Company 2016 Senate Bill 695 Compliance Report
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Work…
Table 4 of the report notes the 2016 rate components by percentage. Over the years the costs of transmission have increased from 4.7% to 9%….”
I am having trouble with your second link. Could you check it?
I was able to go to the pdf of the report from the Environmental Progress blog a few minutes ago. This link should take you to the report directly
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/assets/0/101/103/104/118/125/132/1094/1259/1fd02d0f-8ca5-4883-b1f4-41aa9910bac0.pdf
Thanks! I notice the link starts out by talking about the big subsidies that solar customers at that time were getting from the non-solar customers because of net metering.
Table 4 seems to say that the cost of Transmission as 9% in 2016; the cost of Distribution was 29%. Thus, Transmission and Distribution amounted to 38%. They often are combined together.
I wonder what they really should have been, if the transmission and distribution lines were properly maintained.
Thank you Gail for an excellent, balanced picture of the circumstances we face.
In particular I think your evaluation of religion is the best I have come across.
I confess that your association with an established religion did adversely affect
my view of some of your previous posts, but I see now that I was wrong.
No doubt your view of the situation will be derided by those whos
short term interests depend on producing the answers that are desired, suitably
cloaked in scientific, political, religious or just plain human natures aversion to unpleasant fact.
Your country seems to be increasingly draconian in suppressing expression of opinions
differing from the stories that those in control want promoted.
We are seeing this quite markedly in social media and I suspect there are pressures
to eradicate all forms of dissent.
I fear for your continued freedom here on OFW and to some extent your personal rights.
I hope I’m wrong about that.
Your presentation of the worlds situation as you see it, is therefore a brave act
in my opinion and I hope acts as a stimulation to you readers to sift out the likely
truth using their own brain while still possible.
With enough bombardment from the media in all its forms,eventually 2+2=5 will be believed and another zombie is created.
Wishing you, your family and all thinking readers a pleasant interlude from the turmoil
which surrounds us and though it seems a trite expression, love one another.
Thanks very much Pedro.
The story is in many ways a very strange one. I don’t think that anyone feels that they are doing anything “wrong.” Everyone is trying to work toward some sort of happy ending. Those with funds are trying to influence the particular happy ending that they think is possible. Since there is so much judgement in all of the models used, it is possible to come up with almost any desired ending. The line between science and myth becomes very blurred.
I fear that 2020 will be the year that the limits of a finite world start unfolding to a greater extent than they have to date. More areas will have real problems with their grid electricity. California’s problems will increase. Both China and India will start having internal problems. Their exports may drop because of their many problems.
Looks like China’s and India’s exports have already have been dropping a little, Gail:
“India’s exports declined for the fourth successive month in November and for the fifth time this fiscal year, amid continuing weak global demand and depressed global crude oil prices that impacted the processed petroleum products basket, shows government data.”
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/exports-fall-for-4th-successive-month-in-november-imports-for-6th-119121400040_1.html
“China’s exports fell in November as shipments to the US slowed sharply, adding to concerns about the effects of the two nations’ trade war. November exports from the world’s second largest economy fell 1.1% from a year earlier, the fourth straight fall.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50704397
Japan, South Korea and Singapore, too:
“Japan’s exports slipped for a 12th straight month in November, as declining shipments to the United States and China hit the trade-reliant economy, raising the risk of a fourth-quarter contraction.”
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/world/japans-exports-shrink-for-12th-month-as-us-china-demand-falls/article30336763.ece
“South Korean exports in November fell for the 12th month in a row and far more than expected…”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-economy-trade/south-korea-november-exports-plunge-as-china-u-s-deal-still-in-dark-idUSKBN1Y50PN
“Singapore‘s non-oil domestic exports continued to fall in November for the ninth consecutive month… Shipments were down 5.9 per cent last month, following a revised 12.5 per cent plunge in October, according to data released by Enterprise Singapore.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/singapore-non-oil-exports-fall-for-ninth-straight-month-in-november-but-drop
Lots of places have falling exports!
A person might wonder if we are getting close to “peak everything”!
Happy holidays Gail, thanks for all you do. Be well have a joyous time with you family and friends.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell.
Gail, my thanks also for telling the truth as you see it. And yet more: for being willing to admit uncertainty, and honestly entertain doubt. The world has more than enough zealots and fearful simplifiers; it badly needs one who can say “we do not know; let us be humble, and look deeper”.
“Gail, my thanks also for telling the truth as you see it.”
It is fascinating how myths, truths, falsehoods and a perception of reality differ with each individual. It’s just another reason why the human condition is so challenging.
Like when this old codger dressed in a bed-sheet comes up to you and says, “It’s all very clear to me now, the whole thing.”
https://youtu.be/yM25-lz1Yms
So well stated! Yes, it’s scary how short lived our current freedom of expression might be. Time to do as much as possible with that freedom before it departs is how I see it.
Artleads, freedom is under threat, as it always has been, but I doubt it can be extinguished by the forces currently deployed against it. Even in Soviet Russia at its strongest, the ‘samidzat’ kept the flame of free expression alive.
And today it would be far easier. Those who seek to control the press, or the internet, work in offices. They live in homes, drive in cars, shop in malls, eat in restaurants. And so are desperately vulnerable to asymmetric warfare, which is clearly the coming harbinger of future conflict. We are slowly returning to the social order where the State feared the People; and not before time.
“A well regulated drone militia, …”
Robert Firth, I feel helpless to oppose the removal of services I depend on. In many cases, they operate in a world of too much complexity for me to grasp. Most people are perhaps in a similar position. We don’t understand the maneuverings of power all that well. It’s not as if the latter’s intentions are clearly stated, or the media wouldn’t make a mishmash of them if they were. We are also socially atomized. The culture has robbed us of critical thinking skills. But maybe that’s just me in my liberal, generally clueless environment. I’m sure there’s a whole contingent of guys with military experience and guns who are clearer about the way the wind is blowing (and what to do about it) than I.
Merry Christmas, Gail. Your writings are brilliant. Best wishes, Lizzie
Under the wise German leadership the E.U is now in conflict with America, Britain and Russia…again.
But what the heck.
Merry Xmas!
https://m.dw.com/en/us-senate-approves-nord-stream-2-russia-germany-pipeline-sanctions/a-51711980
And their next step is to create an “EU army”, which will copy the Romans: conscript the poor people of one province to crush the people of another:
Die Straße frei den braunen Bataillonen.
Die Straße frei dem Sturmabteilungsmann!
Es schau’n aufs Hakenkreuz voll Hoffnung schon Millionen.
Der Tag für Freiheit und für Brot bricht an!
“Nearly half the U.S. counties carried by President Donald Trump in the 2016 election were arguably in recession at the time, with local economic output shrinking during a campaign that focussed on the declining fortunes of blue-collar America…
“…even with the economy buffeted by recent recession worries and uncertainty around the direction of global trade policy, Trump may carry built-in strengths into his re-election campaign next year…”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-economy-counties/much-of-trump-country-was-in-recession-during-2016-campaign-data-idUKKBN1YM0IU
“A sales warning from one of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies is undermining hopes for a significantly stronger global economy in 2020.
“Unilever, which owns brands including Dove and Ben & Jerry’s, said Tuesday that it won’t meet its sales growth target for 2019, and warned that weakness will continue into next year. The company’s products are sold in 190 countries.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/17/business/unilever-sales-warning/index.html
We need more people with moderately high wages to afford Dove and Ben & Jerry’s. Neither is aimed at low-income people.
“The increasing trend of using corporate debt for speculative financial gambles could make the global economy more vulnerable in the next downturn, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.
“The corporate debt ratio in advanced economies has steadily increased since 2010, and now sits at the same level as the previous peak in 2008…
“In a research blog published Tuesday, the IMF highlighted that the use of private debt to fund dividend payouts, share buybacks, or mergers and acquisitions could “amplify shocks” if companies default, or attempt to sharply reduce debt by cutting investment or workforces…
“…public debt ratios are still higher than before 2008 in almost 90% of advanced economies, the report highlighted.
“In a third of advanced economies, the public debt ratio is 30 percentage points higher than its pre-crisis level…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/imf-rising-debt-used-for-financial-risk-taking-could-endanger-major-economies.html
“The Federal Reserve is running the risk of fomenting an eventual financial crisis by easing banking regulations at the same time that it’s cut interest rates. … [The worry is] that the combination of looser credit and laxer rules will prompt financial institutions and investors to pile on leverage and take excessive risks.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/fed-alumni-fear-crisis-risk-in-simultaneous-cuts-to-rules-rates
““The problem is all the other major central banks have very low ammunition. Even if they wanted to be super-interventionist, they don’t really have the tools,” Harris added. “The Fed doesn’t have enough ammunition to deal with a future recession. The BOJ and ECB can’t even deal with a moderate shock.””
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/decade-of-the-central-bank-ends-as-the-fed-shifts-to-new-paradigm.html
“After the financial crisis, Europe’s political leaders put together a complex set of rules to make it harder for future governments to bail out banks. That system is looking so full of holes that one wonders what the point of it is.
“Two episodes in a fortnight show that taxpayers are still very much on the hook for the financial system’s losses…”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Bailing-out-bankers-is-all-the-rage-again-14912801.php
“Hedge funds and other money managers have built up the largest bet in more than a decade that natural-gas prices will fall.
“Net bets on declining natural-gas prices are at their highest level since 2008, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data…”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-shorts-at-highest-level-since-financial-crisis-11576609591
Natural gas prices have been low around the world recently. I noticed that when Chevron took the big write-down recently, it was nearly all in natural gas, rather than oil.
World production of natural gas seems to be up, but businesses are slow to add new uses for it. Part of the problem may be the variability of natural gas prices. Another problem is the big amount of infrastructure needed to ship it. Unless gas will be available for a very long time, the infrastructure doesn’t make sense financially.
With dams, you rightly imply that the social and environmental costs are high. In my opinion, too high. But it’s good to know that there may not even be an economic case for the mega-dams. However, since when have humans taken any notice of facts?
Gail, you’re inexplicably linking videos of Jo Nova. Hours of dreary misinformation with a pretty smile, it’s like Fox News with an Aussie accent. Australia’s power grid is coping well with large wind and solar power contributions, as the people actually operating it can attest.
https://energylive.aemo.com.au/News/Summer-readiness-report
Again, attack the messenger first. Typical thug tactic!
Some people might think it a tad ironic that a state that placed a priority on switching to wind power had its grid knocked out by too much wind.
Sorry to bother people with the dreary details, but even WIki-MinistryOfTruth-Pedia, in its page dedicated to the 2016 South Australia Blackout, makes it clear that wind power couldn’t cope with the weather:
The weather had resulted in localised power outages throughout the day and by around 3:50 p.m. local time, almost the entire state power grid had been cut out. Early indications were that as the transmission lines in the Mid North failed due to damaged pylons, the automatic safety features in the network isolated the generators to protect both the generation facilities and the end consumers’ equipment. Over a short period, this resulted in most of the state’s distribution network being powered down as the transmission network acted to protect the infrastructure.
The preliminary report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) identified that problems started 90 seconds before the eventual failure. The first line to trip was a 66 kV line near Adelaide, and it was automatically reset. The first major fault was 47 seconds later when two phases of the 275 kV line between Brinkworth and Templers grounded. The Davenport–Belalie line tripped with one phase to ground, was automatically reset, but tripped again nine seconds later, so was isolated for manual inspection, with the fault estimated to be 42 km (26 mi) from Davenport. One second later (7 seconds before the state went dark), the Hallett Wind Farm reduced output by 123 MW. Four seconds later, a third 275 kV transmission line showed a fault, the Davenport–Mount Lock is on the other side of the same towers as Davenport–Belalie, and the fault was estimated to be 1 km (0.6 mi) further on. The damaged power lines caused 5–6 voltage glitches which stressed the ride-through capability of most of the wind farm capacity, causing nine of them to shut down:[10] Finally, all within one second, the Hornsdale Wind Farm reduced output by 86 MW, Snowtown Wind Farm reduced output by 106 MW, the Heywood interconnector flow increased to over 850 MW and both of its circuits tripped out due to the overload. Supply was then lost to the entire South Australian region of the National Electricity Market, as the Torrens Island Power Station, Ladbroke Grove Power Station, Murraylink interconnector and all remaining wind farms tripped.[11]
AEMO identified software settings in the wind farms that prevented repeated restarts once voltage or frequency events occurred too often. The group of wind turbines that could accept 9 ride-throughs in 120 seconds stayed on line through much of the event before the system went black. The rather larger group of turbines that could not accept this many repeated ride-throughs dropped out, instigating the overload and shutdown of the interconnector, and hence the electricity supply. AEMO has suggested better fault ride-through capability for the wind farms. The high wind speed caused 20 MW of wind power to disconnect to prevent overspeed.[10]
In 2019, the Australian Energy Regulator initiated proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against the operators of four wind farms. It alleged that these companies had failed to comply with performance requirements to ride through major disruptions and disturbances. The companies AGL Energy, Neoen, Pacific Hydro and Tilt Renewables operated several of the large wind farms that tripped during the incident including Hallett,[12] Hornsdale, Clements Gap and Snowtown.[13][14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout
“The high wind speed caused 20 MW of wind power to disconnect to prevent overspeed.”
Good grief! We knew better almost a thousand years ago, and used the same technology all through the Middle Ages. Build windmills whose sails can feather, and so maintain a safe speed even in a high wind.
But (as I observed over a 50 year toil in the coalface of modern technology) today’s engineers believe that it is always better to reinvent the wheel than to reuse tried and true solutions.
Sorry, but Jo Nova has form, I actively choose not to sit and listen through her presentations on the basis of her prior output, so I won’t personally be debunking whatever factoids she presents in the youtube video Gail linked above. I will however respond to what you have written here.
You’re absolutely right that the South Australian grid failed in 2016 due to too much wind. Wind that took down transmission towers carrying a large fraction of the state’s power supply.
On three previous occasions when the South Australian grid ceased to supply power to the majority of its customers, the cause was not the weather but equipment at the state’s largest coal-fired power station, Northern, at Port Augusta. In 1999 its substation tripped due to a local malfunction and hundreds of megawatts of generation was isolated instantly from the grid; the frequency excursion caused the power incoming from Victoria at the southern extreme of the state grid also to be lost. The city of Adelaide in between, with two local gas-fired power stations, kept its lights on by a miracle on that occasion but the rest of the state went black. On two other occasions in the early 2000s frequency excursions at the same site caused major blackouts.
South Australia’s transmission infrastructure is quite weak compared with that of more densely populated regions, more of a T-shape than a “grid”, with limited redundancy in the northern extent. This has ALWAYS been the case, and dates back long before the first wind farms were installed in the state. The transmission network’s weakness is ironic, if only because the local power distribution infrastructure in the towns of South Australia is practically indestructible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stobie_pole
As you quote, several of the events in the cascading sequence of failures and trips preceding the total blackout of 2016 were wind farm substations’ software settings isolating generation from the grid after major frequency and voltage excursions caused by collapsing transmission lines. These software settings are adjustable, and have subsequently been adjusted. A large battery has also been connected to the grid on the site of one of those wind farms and is doing excellent service regulating frequency and voltage.
However ALMOST HALF THE STATE’S POWER SUPPLY was running through transmission lines WHICH HAD FALLEN TO THE GROUND. Nothing ought to “ride through” that. Since the transmission lines themselves were not instantly isolated from the grid, it only makes sense that nearby generation facilities tripped. Any gas- or coal-fired generators linked to the transmission grid in proximity to the fallen lines would have been similarly quick to trip and isolate themselves, if there had been any. This had happened at the coal-fired power stations in Port Augusta when they were still in operation, as a result of far less catastrophic grid events. Tripping and isolation of generation substations is in fact a commonplace occurrence, though mostly it happens in more robust grid regions where redundancy would have made the loss of a three major transmission lines less final. The AER said as much in its report in early 2018, and its mid-2019 lawsuit is a surprising about-face. One does rather suspect political interference.
John, I thought Fox News with an Aussie accent was Sky News, which incidentally
is much easier on my ears due not to the accent but to the generally laid back, relaxed and totally pomposity-free Aussie style that is obvious when you compare almost any antipodean media with its North American equivalents.
You give a fair account of the complexity of the South Australian power situation. It is on account of its complexity that I am unable to judge how fair your view or Jo Nova’s view of the overall situation is. Although whenever the talk turns to wind turbines, you can count on their being quite a lot of spin involved, right?
But what I take away from what I’ve read and heard (including from what Jo Nova and Gail have written) during my browsing on the subject is that wind power adds significantly to the cost, complexity, instability and fragility of power grids. Whether or not one thinks this is a price worth paying will depend on what one things one is gaining into the bargain. If you think you are saving the earth, you are likely to be happy with the additional costs and inconveniences. If you don’t think there is any real harm in coal or uranium or thorium based power sources, or if you think the environmental cost of wind power is greater than any good it may be doing, then you are likely to be anything from irritated to boiling angry about the woeful abandonment of conventional thermal and nuclear power generation in favor of capricious unreliable no-fit-for-purpose so-called “renewables”.
Considering the power outage was fairly well known possible by losing those transmission lines, in this report a month before the actual event….
https://www.electranet.com.au/wp-content/uploads/resource/2016/08/20160803-Report-NorthernSARegionVoltageControlPSCR.pdf
It tends to support John’s position.
It is amazing the number of people, even on this site that want to stick to their beliefs, instead of doing a little research and find the reality. Fake news is everywhere.
South Australia did not , and does not have a good enough transmission network.
Yes a lot of transmission lines need to be built for a renewable energy infrastructure compared to FF. So let’s get on with it, FF will be leaving us anyway. IMHO we should be using the last of the cheap easy FF to build a renewable infrastructure.
Just using the FF because renewables seem too hard, is false economy as we all know FF have a limited future. We have the available energy to do it, just not the will power to take the harder road as a species.
We need less, not more transmission lines and wind turbines. Is it very difficult to understand? We can obviously not solve the problems by the same methods that created them in the first place – growth.
How about changing your perspectives in life? A pro tip: Start by selling off your car and turn those bicycle cranks instead of parroting that overbearing BS narrative. Then come back and talk about how YOU left FF’s.
The transferiat never ceases to amaze me.
“South Australia did not , and does not have a good enough transmission network.” Isn’t that proof you should not have installed the wind power to begin with?
Eat the cost of delivering a reliable transmission grid and eat the even higher electricity costs.
BTW, I do wonder why the transmission lines blew down. Were additional lines added to support the wind power, adding to the weight and thus contributing to the pylon failures under high winds? Was there additional heating going on in the lines due to excess power transmission, contributing to the failures?
Aluminum wires stretch if they are overloaded. People haven’t realized this. I expect that there is a lot of overloading going on. Annealing starts at 93 C. Or 200 F. In warm climates, it is easy to get to this temperature.
Climate models have proven pretty accurate, on the whole. As I’ve mentioned, it is primarily the scenario inputs (which can’t be known for future emissions), which cause the problems. For this, my take is that we should blame the IEA, who are supposed to be the experts in how much energy of different kinds we will be using in future.
The IEA is a primary contributor to our problems. The IEA is essentially part of OECD. It is a crusader for renewable energy.
The myths are more true than the scientific models: there is not only a way up, but also a way down. I like that the Christianity has got this idea of an unexpected end of the world, i.e. be prepared, it can come anytime.
Many people think that the end of the world comes with the visible end of the supply of the energy products, but the truth is that it can be a death of your close relative or friend, spoiled food due to compromised production practices, a virus that attacks your body due to your too high energy expenditure, when you strive for something, that disrupt your energy flows and you are done here in this world.
“Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
In my opinion, the key problem of the humans now is that their action range is getting smaller. All the communication technology of today is s reaction to this problem. Due to the rising energy constraints we become entrapped and can not escape, can not grow up, can not handle growing complexity etc.
Shale seems to be playing out…does that mean we will see an increase in oil prices? In the short term? I think 89$ by summer
I doubt oil prices will rise much. Prices depend on wages of buyers more than on supply. The economy just “makes a smaller batch” if there isn’t enough. China and India are stumbling badly. This will affect world demand.
Two principles that most religions agree on are: (1) women should obey men, and (2) gays are bad!
Have you seen this? (I may have posted about it before.) It’s the book “Eleven,” by Baha’i agronomist Paul Hanley. The title refers to the challenge of feeding a projected future world population of 11 billion.
https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Paul-Hanley/dp/146025046X
Baha’is anticipate a coming era of world peace and a future global civilization, with a few cataclysms along the way as the existing (divisive) social order breaks down. Hanley is trying to imagine how agriculture (including diet and food distribution) will have to change. Meanwhile, the late Daniel Quinn would protest that such efforts are doomed, since more food = population increase (and not a utopia in which all have full bellies).
Let me try that again:
http://www.elevenbillionpeople.com
https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Paul-Hanley/dp/146025046X
If you want to know the kind of “peace” that large aggregates of people create, look no further than the USA or the European Union. The latter is an especially vivid object lesson: rule by a self appointed and self perpetuating technocratic elite, with total contempt for the people beneath them. With widespread revolt and incipient revolution. A world government would indeed be “a boot stamping on a human face, forever”.
As for eleven billion, forget it. The great dieoff will happen well before 2100.
The Baha’is govern themselves through a bottom-up system, with local delegates electing national councils, and national delegates electing the global governing council. On the other hand, each higher tier can give orders to the ones below it. The precise relationship between their religious administration, and the future world government, is a matter of some debate among Baha’is, but the latter is expected to partake of a similar ethos.
A beautiful arrangement. The early Christians had much the same system of governance. Until they took over, if not the world, at any rate the Roman Empire. Soon after that, they were crucifying Jews, tearing down pagan temples, burning the Library of Alexandria, and murdering one of the greatest woman philosophers of Antiquity, scraping the flesh off her bones with oyster shells, and eating it raw.
Gore Vidal once famously remarked that monotheism was the most evil creed to infect the human mind. On balance, I agree.
Yep, organized religion is horrible. The horde mentality of the mediocre is outright dangerous.
“Gefährlich ist’s, den Leu zu wecken,
Verderblich ist des Tigers Zahn,
Jedoch der schrecklichste der Schrecken,
Das ist der Mensch in seinem Wahn.”
Friedrich von Schiiler (1759 to 1805)
Dennis Meadows “The Limits To Growth”
https://www.peakprosperity.com/dennis-meadows-the-limits-to-growth/
Meadows has it right, we simply won’t deal with the issue and proposals currently on offer might have worked 40 years ago but not now. Seems like he’s accepted how humans are wired.
Chris Martenson once made the observation that humans “if given the choice will always take the easy way out”, it’s how we’re wired. It’s the same reason why the World’s Central Banks are still doing the same mistakes and compounding the problems since the 2008-09 financial meltdown.
We could have taken our lumps and medicine back in ’09 but chose to party even more. Now the 2008-09 is probably 20x worse now when the next financial meltdown turns into the world’s “Greatest Depression”.
I have posted this before, but your most appropriate thoughts seem an appropriate introduction to a repost:
I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
Thomas Hardy (1840 to 1928)
Tom hardy wrote the poem in 1916, when he was 76 and men were killed in the trenches and people like Ramanujan were infesting English universities. Unfortunately, he was wrong that the war would be forgotten and love would remain in the last stanza, since the war , which has fucked up the West beyond repair by consuming its cream of the youth and let people like Ramanujan and Ho Chi Minh run around like hell, has lasted much longer than the forgotten poor couple. The man drafted and killed during the Kaiserschlacht, and the woman marrying some Hindu or Sikh.
I don’t understand why people like Ramanujan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan) wouldn’t be an _asset_ to any university or community that would have them.
I respectfully point out that the Sikh regiments of the Indian army played a vital and most gallant role in the Great War, from September 1914 onwards. They were instrumental in turning the tide at Ypres (where my grandfather also fought), and were respected for their discipline and courage throughout the conflict.
Seventy five thousand Indian soldiers died in a war that was nome of their making. And in their name, I protest.
Chris Martenson should stop projecting his own lazy decadence upon others. When will we see Chris man up, talk less, and start turning the cranks?
https://sacredrides.com/sites/default/files/u188401/Screen%20Shot%202019-03-19%20at%2011.40.15%20AM.png
Many have the view, like Martenson, that it is somehow a bad trait of people to “take the easy way out.” Really, it is a fundamental biological principle — of economy and efficiency in the use of energy. It is a product of natural selection. The law of diminishing returns is simply a consequence of this basic dynamic, and it holds for all types of life. So when we bemoan the selfish or lazy dispositions that seem to have led to our fate, we are really complaining about the nature of life itself. I think this is why Gail and others point to the inevitably of the course of events over the long run. It might be less frustrating to accept the nature of life than blame humans (particular ones or all of us) for how things turn out.
Well, isn’t that convenient. I guess you and Chris share some of those lovely traits.
I don’t understand. Please elaborate.
Do you agree with Martenson or do you reject his claims?
In this video, it is really the views of Dennis Meadows that are important. These views tend to agree with those of Chris Martenson.
I know Dennis Meadows moderately well. He thinks like an engineer. He is not a student of history, or how collapses take place. He is himself immensely wealthy; he doesn’t rub shoulders with many poor people. My impression is that he probably came from a wealthy family. At the time the book was written, he and his wife Donella lived in a commune with a number of other people. At that time, I expect he was one of the people who thought communes could change the world.
When the book was written, I have heard Dennis Meadows say that he and Donella were absolutely shocked that people did not pick up with their ideas and run with them. All they would take is “cultural change” and cultural change should be easy. Except, unknown to Meadows, cultural change is not an easy variable to change. It is defined by the way the economy works as a dissipative structure. You cannot simply go to a village in Africa, in 1972 or now, and say, “We expect 100 deaths in the next year, from all causes, in your village. You are not allowed to have more births than deaths. Change the pattern now.” There is no top down control.
As an engineer, he thinks that there must be a way of fixing limits to growth, in a cultural way if not a technological way. Many of the people he runs into are peak oilers, who are convinced that oil prices will rise, and allow whatever fossil fuels are in the ground to be extracted. This probably is part of his concern about climate change.
What Meadows says is consistent with the beliefs I have heard him talk about previously. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really have a sufficiently widely rounded view of how the world economy works to understand that what he is asking for is impossible.
I don’t know much about Martenson. Gail gave us some of his background.
I was simply responding to the misanthropic view that if only humans (or some humans) weren’t selfish and lazy, we wouldn’t be in a difficult situation with respect to fossil fuels, the economy, or whatever. I think it couldn’t be any other way. An organism that does not use energy efficiently is less like to survive and reproduce than organisms that do. Laziness and selfishness, to a certain extent, reflect efficient energy use. We use nearby energy resources before using more distant resources; we use rich energy sources before using poor energy sources. To do otherwise would leave an individual, or species, at a competitive disadvantage and less likely to pass on genes. These tendencies then, in effect, produce the law of diminishing returns.
These are basic principles that apply to all forms of life, including single celled organisms. All organisms modify their environments. People are no different. Maybe we do so on a larger scale, and are more aware of the consequences.
Tim Groves responded to you on a comment far above about a similar topic. Although Tim made different points, I agree with what he wrote. Misanthropy is not just hatred of humans, but of life itself.
Was going to post the link to this podcast and then outline my disappointment with the interview, but see that you’ve beaten me to it (posting the link, anyway).
Disappointed because there’s nothing that quite makes my day like tuning into a podcast I think will be full of insight and understanding, only to be told that climate change is (I’m paraphrasing a bit here) “probably largely man-made” 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
Hi Gail
Australian here. I don’t necessarily disagree that we’ll be able to switch to solar & wind and enjoy the same living standards – we won’t. But renewables in Australia have not caused our high energy prices, nor have they wrecked the grid. This has been thoroughly debunked.
You’ve posted a video from a Jo Nova. She’s a well-known troll, RWNJ & climate denialist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova#Climate_change_denial_advocacy
and certainly not a network engineer or renewables expert so please discount her rabid opinions.
Extreme capitalism is to blame for our high prices of electricity. We privatised generation, transmission and distribution, the latter two of which are natural monopolies (which should never have been privatised). As a result of government incentives the transmission and distribution networks were ‘gold plated’. The end costs being passed on to the consumers. Australia has become the largest LNG producer, but due to tax holidays and long-term contracts with the likes of Japan, none of the benefits currently accrue to Australia and indeed the east coast states have to import LNG at times at spot-market rates! This is naivety and mismanagement by various state and federal governments.
The state of South Australia suffered blackouts a few years ago and this was blamed on wind farms shutting down in a storm. Turns out the interconnect high-voltage lines to neighbouring state Victoria fell down. So much for the ‘gold plating’ we were charged for.
We have one of the greatest energy storage systems in the world – the Snowy Hydro Scheme – and this could be better used in conjunction with renewables to provide the holy grail of ‘baseload’ more efficiently but there is little end-to-end, long-term planning and coordination to make this more effective.
So yes we do have some of the highest energy costs in the world, but this is economic ‘rent’ being slurped up by corporates due to lax government oversight.
What was gold plated are the pockets of the advisers and financial planners who helped governments to sell their electricity assets, some of them aging coal plants. It is ironic that this privatization has back fired as private companies will shut down these plants when repairs are no longer financially viable. Their output has become intermittent:
.
https://www.tai.org.au/gas-coal-watch
There is no such thing as cheap electricity if all costs, including waste disposal (CO2 sequestration, pollution control, nuclear re-processing etc) and decommissioning (full life cycle) are included. In this respect, our energy supply system is getting a free ride thanks to government leniency.
Climate change is NOT temporary. NASA climatologist James Hansen has calculated that – even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – there is at least another 0.5 degrees warming in the pipeline from the CO2 already in the atmosphere (until planet Earth is in energy balance with space)
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf
With 1 degree warming we see in Australia bush fires approaching coal mines and threatening coal fired power plants. So how will that look like with 1.5 degree warming?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/nsw-rfs-worried-bushfire-could-hit-power-station-and-coal-mine/11805432
Revenge of Gaia https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/feb/12/scienceandnature.features
In terms of resource depletion we have already exhausted the CO2 absorption capacity of our atmosphere for a climate our generation grew up in.
Sigh.. These “debunked” narratives.
Just accept that intermittent sources of electricity is madness without enough dispatchable power in its vicinity.
A reference to that “thorough debunking” would be much appreciated. It is far more convincing to address the message rather than attack the messenger.
Leftists going all the way back to Karl Marx, or even further back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, have displayed an annoying tendency towards making personal attacks on people whose views they disagree with, so much so that is can be fairly described as “a trait of the breed”.
The ones who pop up online these days, are also renowned for projecting their own vices and character issues on others and very quick to accuse others of their own transgressions, so much so that in order to grasp their own defects, usually one only has to look at what sins they are accusing others of perpetrating.
Starting off a comment by calling somebody “a well-known troll, RWNJ & climate denialist” with “rabid opinions” is par for the course. It’s pathetic, disgusting and shows a total lack of decency. But sadly, there is very little decency left on the left. If it wasn’t for indecency, they would have no decency at all.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/15BuyagtKucHm/source.gif
As if you couldn’t say exactly the same about people on the right …
Deyzel, why do you label her as a denialist? What does that have to do with facts about energy and electricity. I watched her presentation and it made a lot of sense to me. I could say you are a troll. So shut up and present data and facts.
So when your renewable energy argument does not play anymore, you resort to labels such as “extreme capitalism”.
Are you on the payroll of any entity that receives any kind of money related to climate change? I bet you are.
I note also that the poster blames the current situation on “extreme capitalism”, which he then attributes to “government incentives”. It seems he is trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, because these two propositions are directly contradictory. But yes, another attribute of leftists is that they think in slogans; so much easier than rational thought. What next? “She’s corrupting the young and pass her the hemlock”
“… another attribute of leftists is that they think in slogans; so much easier than rational thought.”
*Some* leftists you mean? Like *some* on the right?
Some of everybody, I fear, left or right. As Augustine said, Mundus vult decipi. And thank you for a gentle and proper correction.
Actually most leftists and some on the right.
My side is always better than your side!
It seems to me that the rhetoric and sloganeering is about equally divided these days.
What makes you think I am on the right?
Because I can rile up the pretentious and trigger the hypocrites perhaps?
Will a falling dollar affect oil prices? https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=Uqzj6BRmhr8&feature=emb_logo
This was in the news this week. It seems most wind projects in the Midwest have failed to account for the cost of transmission upgrades necessary to connect to the grid. In one case, the cost of transmission upgrades was twice the cost of the windmill farm.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061787851
“Renewables ‘hit a wall’ in saturated Upper Midwest grid”
“Of 5,000 megawatts of wind and solar projects in MISO’s western region that were part of a group being studied for interconnection, all but 250 MW had withdrawn as of Dec. 1, according to the alliance. And it’s unlikely those projects will move forward because they would require $100 million in transmission upgrades, the group said.
Soholt said grid congestion has been a growing concern in MISO’s western region that includes Minnesota, Iowa, parts of the Dakotas and western Wisconsin — a windy area where renewable energy development has flourished over the last decade.
But the withdrawal of projects that were part of this group has highlighted the need to begin working on both shorter- and longer-term solutions, she said, especially because some developers already had contracts in place to sell the output.
“This last group of projects was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Soholt said. “We just finally hit a wall.”
The group of projects included Southern Power’s 200-MW Ruso wind farm in North Dakota. The company withdrew from the MISO queue after an engineering study showed the project, estimated to cost $250 million, would require $500 million in transmission upgrades.”
Thanks! Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. I know that Energy Returned on Energy Invested studies do not include grid upgrades. Levelized cost of energy analyses don’t either.
The International Energy Association puts out various material as guidance. This is one document I found from 2013. https://iea-etsap.org/E-TechDS/PDF/E15_Ren_integr_FINAL_Dec2013_GSOK.pdf
This is a link to the Summary Chart of Current Costs of Integrating into the Grid. Grid upgrading costs look inexpensive to me, according to their methods.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/iea-2013-estimate-of-cost-of-if-renewable-energy-integration.png
The IEA has been a cheerleader for renewables all along. They have not tried to produce very high cost estimates of grid integration, IMO.
All the best for Xmas & the new year to you & your family Gail & thank you for so many wonderful essays over the past year & indeed over the past many many years.
You are welcome. I thought that it would be inconvenient to put up a post next week. Putting up a new post this soon may be a little confusing, however, from the point of view of comments.
Gail, a very happy Christmas to you, too.
I still have an aversion to church after a very Catholic upbringing but with the passing years my cocksure certainties about the folly of organised religion have evaporated.
Trusting in divine providence may indeed be the best strategy at this point.
Gail, my best wishes also for Christmas and New Tear, and my thanks for your exemplary stewardship of this forum.
It gets difficult near Christmas. Today has been a day of appointments and errands. It has been difficult to comment.