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!
“Since 2010, the collective debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratios of developing nations skyrocketed from 54% to at least 168%. “The size, speed and breadth of the latest debt wave should concern us all,” Malpass warns…
“…about $19 trillion—or nearly 40%—of corporate debt in major economies could default amid a global downturn… Such a reckoning would make 2008 look tame by comparison.
“The other worry is a dearth of shock-absorbers. Borrowing since then leaves limited fiscal space to stabilize growth. And central banks from Washington to Frankfurt to Tokyo are at, or close to, zero. That means the quantitative-easing rescue that saved the day a decade ago isn’t available in 2020…
“The thing about unsustainable debt episodes is that at some point the reckoning comes, invariably and suddenly. We can debate whether it will arrive in 2020. Less in dispute is that $250 trillion of debt leaves economies huge and small on a knife’s edge at the worst possible moment.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2020/12/30/the-250-trillion-burden-weighing-on-the-global-economy-in-2020/amp/
“…as former IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld comments: “After a decade of slow growth and low interest rates, the world is awash in debt – issued by households, corporations, and especially governments. It is tempting to believe that with interest rates as low as they are today … much higher debt levels are sustainable indefinitely.” Tempting, but foolish.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3043722/2020-may-be-year-when-largest-broadest-and-fastest-wave-debt
“In the first year of the decade, [US] companies spent roughly $60 billion more on dividends and buying back their own shares than on new facilities, equipment and technology. By last year that gap had mushroomed to more than $600 billion…
“One byproduct of stock buy-backs is they make companies look more profitable by Wall Street’s favourite performance metric – earnings per share – than they would otherwise appear to be…
“The corporate bond market has not only gotten bigger, it has gotten riskier.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKBN1YY09I
Make the shareholders happy now, rather than for the long term.
Aftertax profits have been boosted by the reduction in the tax rate. Otherwise, profits have tended to be low.
You might be interested in this analysis of the IEA’s WEO by Joern Schwarz from Aspo Germany. Scroll to the last pages and see the graphics. According to IEA data a peak is inevitable before 2025, as I read it.
http://aspo-deutschland.de/dokumente/2019-11-21AnalysisOfWEO2019-ASPO-de.pdf
Interesting ASPO Germany report!
The issue I see is the fact that the high prices that the IEA says are required (in slide 4) for the Stated Policies approach and for the Current Policies approach are not really attainable. This is the chart shown:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/iea-weo-2019-global-oil-production-forecasts.png
In fact, I am doubtful that even the prices from the “Sustainable Development” scenario will be available. Oil production will fall because of low prices. In fact, there are signs that US shale production may be headed downward in 2020.
The authors of the report pin their analysis on this chart:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/aspo-deutchland-future-energy-production-by-type.png
The thing that I would point out is the fact that how the scenario works out is extremely price dependent. The extent of enhanced oil recovery depends to a significant extent on price. If the price is high, this can be very substantial. For example, the extent of oil production from the sub-salt layer near Brazil depends on the price being high enough. I suppose this is conventional crude oil, if it isn’t one of the other categories. There is much oil from “difficult” reservoirs that we know about. We can extract it, if the price is high enough. I don’t think anyone has a firm definition of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) or historical amounts for it. Likely, the existence of EOR is a major reason that Conventional Crude Oil Production has stayed as flat as it has.
Another category that is extremely price dependent is “Extra heavy oil and bitumen.” We know about a huge amount of this, in Canada, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other areas of the world. With a high enough price, it can generally be extracted.
We know about a huge amount of oil that with enough heat and other high energy techniques can be extracted. In fact, with a combination of heavy oil and shale oil, we can more or less create the same mix of energy products that have been produced in the past.
The issue is keeping “Demand” (and thus price) high enough. Demand depends on growing debt. It also depends on how productive the use of energy products really is. For example, building a new road in an area without roads is a much more productive use of energy products than rebuilding a worn-out road. Building a new steel mill is a productive use of energy products only if the world has sufficient buyers for goods (such as automobiles and new high rise homes) made from steel products. Our problem today is too much wage disparity, leading to a lack of demand for new homes and new cars. Commodity prices of many kinds stay too low. I expect production to fall off rapidly before 2025, because of low prices.
The ominous, magical, mythical ~2025(2023-) threshold again..
Thanks.
It’s dog eat dog……
https://youtu.be/vVNrcTUfBHA
“At the September 1969 festival, a documentary film was made. Celebration at Big Sur featured many performers who had played only four weeks earlier at Woodstock from August 15–18. The festival was later considered by some as the antithesis of the commercial Woodstock, but it was originally seen by the artists an antidote to the Newport Folk Festival.”
Saw Mitchell perform at this festival. She had just written “Woodstock”, and performed it to see if we liked it. we did). A long, long time ago, in a land far away—————
I was living in Big Sur at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur_Folk_Festival
For those who do not know Joni Mitchell was not at Woodstock. She had a last minute business obligation to attend to.
Dog eat dog, rat eat rat. Kroc style, natch.
We are about to move on from this dog eat dog world we’ve known for thousands of years and become a man eat dog world . Soon to be followed by the man eat man world.I
Our fellow Earthlings need a break.
Problem too many humans. Solution kill seven billion humans. Means nerve poison and bio-warfare plague/fever/meningitis. Come on Greta the new program is black now for a green tomorrow.
I am afraid this story would not sell well.
After the plague, the younger generation seemed to have many more opportunities open to them. In fact, I know that somewhere, I have a book describing the situation after the plague in Europe. There were fewer workers of all kinds to compete with. There were more resources per capita.
Gail, sorry for being so negative. The slow grind down is just so boring.
There is no opportunity for the young? There are plenty of opportunities, if they want to get something done as technologists. The tech sector screams for more engineers.
However, there is this little problem which JBP lays out.
https://youtu.be/fjs2gPa5sD0
The issue is a lot more than IQ. It is the Gig economy that leaves even those with high IQ’s with problems, as they frequently need to look for new work. How does a person own a home, or rent an apartment with a lease, if the person doesn’t know when he will be out of work next? If the job is at all specialized, there will likely be a need to move to a different location, or suffer from a long commute, to handle the new job.
And the fact that even those who have paid a lot for extra schooling often find that jobs are either not available, or don’t pay enough to make the whole endeavor work out.
When it comes to computer skills, these quickly become out of date, adding to problems.
By the same possibilities that is enabled by technology itself. Telecommute. Work from home. It is basically the new gig economy for technologists.
If people need to be on site, it is most likely during commissioning or as a regular workforce, in which case people do like today, they move.
I have never heard of a programmer that is unable or unwilling to learn a new programming language or paradigm in a short amount of time, engineers actually do that for fun. I have been around this industry long enough to realize that experience from building software systems is more important than the actual tools used.
Are there any unemployed mainframe, Cobol or Pascal programmers today? Actually, I think they are in demand and can charge outrageously because of their specialist knowledge in an obscure and older, less sexy domain of software engineering.
You must know a different selection of programmers and ex-programmers than I do.
I know one woman who left programming, after her COBOL job went away, years ago. I suppose that there are jobs available in the Atlanta area, but it is not clear that people will want to commute an hour each way for them. Finding one near home is likely impossible.
I know another woman who left programming, after her Assembler programming job went away years ago. She is now a widow, trying to support herself by working in pre-school and after school programs for children.
I know a young man who is struggling with major depression issues, after being laid off from three programming jobs. A major factor was programming being sent overseas (China or India) where wages are lower.
I know a family struggled with new schools and new job for the wife, after the husband had to change jobs because of one of standard issues with the jobs he had at the time. Now, several years later, the scenario is playing out again, because the new employer is discontinuing programming where the family is now located.
My husband (who teaches computer programming, graphics, and related issues) has remarked that the percentage of women in programming classes was much higher years ago compared to what it is today. I think that the problem is that the field adds a great deal of instability to family life. No one can plan very well. Women are more “tuned in” to this issue than single men are.
Hey, I once wrote Cobol and Pascal programs. I even wrote a Pascal compiler; five days of fun. One of the other compilers I wrote was for a niche language called Coral66, and it outperformed everything else on the market, because I wrote it by hand rather than using fourth rate tools.
And guess what? I was still employed in IT at the age of 73. The trick is simple: first, never stop learning; secondly, learn things that will deliver value to the market (which throws out a lot of Computer Science mental onanism).
My husband’s PhD is in Mathematics, but he has been teaching Computer Science for many years. When Computer Science and math departments were combined, the math degree presented little problem. Later, he completed computer science coursework to add enough credit hours, and of course, learned many new languages and systems as he went.
There are winners and losers in a system. My husband was one who has been able to keep up with they system. As he says, though, “Today, my qualifications wouldn’t be considered high enough to be hired.” But he was grandfathered in, so the system worked for him.
Now, young people wanting to go into teaching find that an awfully lot of the available teaching jobs are either part time or temporary (or both). They don’t pay enough to support a family on, even if you can get them. And, of course, if a person can actually get a tenure track position, a significant number of research papers are required.
I think it is possible to become caught between to high salary demand, and age and too low competence.
When your VB6 or Delphi job, or Fox Pro job you’ve been hiding in for 20 years goes away …
It is very hard to learn “modern” development. And when you do you’re 50+ years old with the same SPECIFIC experience as a 25 yo.
Yeah, if you have been patching janky pieces of legacy code for 25 years and not keeping up to date, it is possibly not the market that is to blame.
If you write your own compilers for the heck of it, you never get old. It becomes part of you. You will have a hard time introduce bugs. The force will be in your microcode.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPbCUIsX4AI-d1R.jpg
Get your young friend over to EU. The work conditions probably suits him or her better. Plenty of jobs for coders here, from low level embedded microcontroller stuff to pure high level Cloud, DevOps, AI and HMI coding. The pay is worse though, about USD $70-100/h, more if you are godlike, less if you are a noob, before state theft, however which is substantial. If your friend is bad at coding, not much hope.
I don’t see it go away anytime soon.
Gail, the woman who did assembler should try IBM for a programming job. IBM is a women first company.
If I recall correctly, she did not have a computer science degree. She tried to go back to school to get a computer science degree, but decided it was too hard to do: The family could not spare the extra amount for tuition without her working as well. Trying to work, go to school and take care of the family was too much, so she dropped out of school.
Early on, it was easy to get into the field without much in the way of formal credentials. It is these people without formal credentials who especially have problems when they lose their jobs.
rilygtek, I remember the last compiler I wrote. It was not for fun; it was part of a research project into RISC versus CISC architectures, and funded by (I kid you not) the US Agency. I’d previously written one for the Vax 11, (a CISC machine), and so in order to compare wrote another for the MIPS RISC architecture. It took about 2.5 days; the benchmarks and data analysis took a lot longer, an endeavour in which I had a most able collaborator.
The result was published (with permission) by my employer, carefully removing any reference to the funding agency. It was my last “hard” piece of IT research; after that I moved into user centric software. I still remember it as one of the most gruelling pieces of research I have ever done; it required the detailed analysis of compiler generated code not only at the instruction level, but at the ISP level.
Considering how dependent we are on fossil fuels (especially oil) for our supply of pharmaceuticals, it can be expected that there will be a new plague on the way. One to vastly outperform the most infamous historical plague of European history. How many of us will survive the combination of disease, starvation and violence?
Maybe it is fortunate we don’t know.
Right Norman fudalism. That’s humanities future post-collapse. Unless we go extinct.
How about “Hunter and gatherer”?
For how many people?
Far less than one billion. One estimate is that there are 170,000-300,000 chimpanzees left in the world. The number of humans might be similar.
Humans have a wider range. I give us three million. Not subsistence farming simple gathering at the sea coast and productive rivers.
Humans have a wider range, if we can continue to harvest huge amounts of biomass to support cooking our food and heating ourselves when it is cold. If we cannot, we can only survive where we are biologically adapted, which is pretty much nowhere. We need cooked food, to keep our bodies nourished adequately. Ancient humans seemed to burn down whole forests, simply to drive prey out and to encourage regrowth with fewer trees. This may happen again.
The way humans survive is pretty much a Ponzi Scheme. We use supplemental energy of various kinds to become the highest level predator, in many parts of the world. As we do this, we push other species out. Even on a small scale, we have to keep this system going. This is the way dissipative structures work. This is why we can expect continued cycles of overshoot and collapse, no matter how low population is reduced.
Why not farming?
I see no way back from farming (and taxation).
I think the hunter gatherer meme is way overblown.
I would like to think of mankind as fishermen gatherers primarily.
It is with great satisfaction I enjoy using this marvel of technological progress in the most ancient of activities.
https://www.catfishsutton.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Abu-Garcia-Black-Max-Review.jpg
Yes, the modern bait cast reel is absolutely fantastic.
https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/robot-fishing-rod-sea-future-260nw-1593404773.jpg
I agree with you that mankind was likely much more fishermen-gatherers, rather than hunter-gatherers. Our bodies are better adapted to eating fish than meat, even without cooking. Fish have much less defense against humans than many other types of animals.
The number and size of fish is way down, in recent years. So I don’t think very many could make a living with fishing-gathering, without further overfishing. All of our dams and today’s fancy fishing boats are no doubt making the fish problem worse.
It takes our industrial economy to make the fancy fishing equipment that you are showing.
Yes. Lot of fish on the african savannah!
DJ, is that so? Do you know how old Homo Sapiens is? It is not even established when, and if we originated from Africa. In either case, it was a vastly different biome in between ice ages. Did you know that at one time the Sahara desert was completely green.
“The African humid period (AHP) is a climate period in Africa during the Holocene during which northern Africa was wetter than today. It was caused by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and involved changes in vegetation and dust in the Sahara which altered the African monsoon; the disappearance of much of the Sahara desert which was replaced by grassy vegetation, trees and lakes; and the settlement of the former desert by various animals and humans”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
You watch too much TV and think way too little. Typical cart before the horse.
Gail, absolutely. It is why it is so amazing. Computer assisted engineering, computerized numerical controlled manufacturing and synthetic materials equals a fantastic fishing experience.
The greening of earth affects sweet water fishing positively. More plants, more insects, more fish. Not all is destruction.
When the high-tech is gone, there will always be bamboo poles. But i suppose making decent fishing line from natural materials is going to take some effort.
Tim, for you surely. For me, not a chance. I’ll ride the wave of tech until it has relegated you and the majority of mankind to total and utter irrelevance.
Oh, how I will laugh at the happy campers living in misery of none of their choosing.
Good luck!
Failing grid electricity = failing tech
Grid increasingly maxed out. Renewables ‘hit a wall’ in saturated Upper Midwest grid. Adding renewables adds fires. We reach peak electricity in not long. Peak technology comes with peak electricity.
Gail, indeed, electricity is the fundament of tech. All available resources will be directed to maintain the electricity supply to the machinery which enables electricity itself to propel tech to ever greater complexity.
The wishes of the horde can not dictate the intent of Gaia to increase her complexity and to spread the arrangement into the rest of the universe.
https://miro.medium.com/max/5000/1*CMpz8ItaNw8F1xYeQWwwBQ.png
The complexity of Gaia is the complexity of nature.
Nature works towards energy dissipation. When this is not possible, the next stage seems to be collapse. All dissipative structures eventually collapse. New, somewhat similar, dissipative structures arise that utilize other types of energy that still can be dissipated.
So why does not nature collapse? In fact, it seems to thrive exactly because of complexity.
Indeed, Gaia and the universe itself revels in complexity. Tech is trying to mimic her wisdom and to take her knowledge into the stars. With hydro and the remaining coal this joint will be lit until the end of this century.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zSt1oL9LUeTOvdttJ3g728Fx_us=/0x0:1100×825/1200×800/filters:focal(462×325:638×501)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59760063/408082main_fd10_full.0.jpg
Just look at her children taking the first fumbling steps into the stars. Isn’t it cute?
https://us.123rf.com/450wm/sarah5/sarah51202/sarah5120200001/12323281-the-profile-of-a-child-robot-gazing-into-the-future-.jpg
Gaia’s complexity is different. It is complexity based on many short-lived dissipative structures. There are random variations. As conditions change, the best adapted survive. This system builds in great redundancy. It does not have a huge amount of overhead. It does not catch itself in technology traps. Gaia’s complexity works; the complexity of humans works for a while. Then it collapses.
Pretty weak argument since we are part of Gaia. Projecting much perhaps?
I really wish Fast Eddy and Baby Doomer were still here to explain why prepping is futile. I suppose it’s only human nature that lists like this attract peppers like Jan. The survival instinct is strong.
I did subsistence farming from 2006-2018. Those are years I can’t get back. While there is some satisfaction in providing for yourself I was nowhere close to self-sufficient. I could have done a lot more traveling and fly fishing if I hadn’t been tied down with farm animals.
Now that I’m in my sixties I hope we have a couple more years of normal life before the fracking boom ends (I assume the Fed will keep the markets inflated), and perhaps a few more years of police state austerity after that before the lights go out and we start dying in droves. I plan to use that time well, not milking goats.
Somehow, the government needs tax revenue. One of the big issues with subsistence farming is that the fact that the income stream of subsistence farmers is so low that they cannot pay the government much in taxes. This means that the government cannot maintain roads and schools. Police and fire departments become hard to keep up as well. Welfare programs and Social Security programs for the elderly become impossible to keep up as well.
Without enough tax revenue, the government tends to collapse.
So if more people became preppers like Jan it would bring on the collapse faster. I hadn’t thought of it that way. No chance of that happening however.
“No chance of that happening however…”
Why is that, exactly?
One would think a return to subsistence farming is in the cards for all of us (though perhaps not by choice, like you experienced 2006 – 2018) in the long run.
Cheers,
-GBV
It’s not going to happen before the economy collapses is what I meant to say.
subsistence farming means the majority who provide the muscle ”subsisting” while those who own the land reap the benefits of that muscle input
twas ever thus
don’t delude yourself it will be anything else
Sometimes, but often not.
The key seems to be stratification and social norms.
If there is a huge spread between haves and have-nots, then such a pattern tends to live on. But this has not been the norm for most of human existence. Jared Diamond notes (in Guns, Germs, and Steel) that social stratification only happened when food could be stored for more than a year — in essence, since the cultivation of grain.
In places where seasonal excesses cannot be stored and hoarded, there is no “power over,” social stratification is low, and many share in the bounty, rather than being hoarded by the few.
Virtually all aboriginal societies follow the latter pattern. In my part of the world, there was a social norm of “potlatch,” huge gatherings and feasts, where those who had amassed wealth were expected to give it away to those who were barely getting by. This is quite often the way low-energy societies work, via cooperation, rather than competition.
Those reading this have all known nothing but high-energy competition. It’s useful to consider that this has only been a recent and short-lived phenomenon.
If we (as a species) are lucky, the coming crash will obliterate our ability to store food for more than a year. Then, perhaps cooperation will once again dominate.
Jan; I would like to mention that I appreciate your knowledge insight and ideas. I dont always agree with you but I appreciate you. I also understand that the accomplishments you have made come at a cost in time and effort. No matter what I or anyone else thinks you have walked the walk not just talk. Thats not easy. Creating a culture that has some sort of sanity is not easy either. Waiking the line of what is and what will be. Respect.
What is time? What is effort? We take ourselves way too seriously!
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
When I look at what I spend my time and effort on, and I think back to working in a cubicle farm, I wonder: which comes at the greater cost?
I shovelled a cubic metre of goat manure into a trailer today. Pretty nice work, compared to dragging a dead goat out into the field earlier, to feed the eagles!
I’d rather do these than shovel bytes into Microsoft APIs, or drag a dead Powerpoint into a meeting, to feed the suits.
My biggest disappointment is that I can’t seem to get others to do these things with me. But that’s my fault — expectations are the seeds of disappointment.
Why am I not surprised to read that a managerial career leads to disillusionment.
Perhaps there was nothing wrong with the tools, but in the way they are used. The stance and setting defines the intent. If the mental stance is wrong the tool also work in the wrong way and gives great dissatisfaction.
But I understand that pointing the proverbial finger of blame on the organization and tool proves a limited ability of introspection.
One must enjoy the game to play it well. If you don’t, find another game. It is not the fault of the game if it is not played the way it was designed to be played.
https://www.wisefamousquotes.com/gary-paulsen-quotes/you-can-take-the-man-out-of-the-1424933-1.jpg
Thank goodness for the welfare state that allows those of us who have almost nothing and produce nothing to reap the benefits of society’s input (at the grace of those who own all the capital, the 1%)! 😀
I’m sure the welfare state will last forever… what could possibly go wrong?
(/sarcasm)
(To be fair, I’m currently an unemployed student who lives off some meager savings, the liquidation of personal property when possible, and government hand-outs. So I guess I’m the last person who should be criticizing the system…)
Cheers,
-GBV
How refreshing with some brutal honesty for a moment. Much appreciated.
Now listen to Biden and learn to code:
https://youtu.be/DPZtRjCsOTk
😊
I doubt they can run anywhere near the maximum thermodynamic efficiency such as that for industrial agriculture. My gut feeling is that their activities in reality increases the waste.
Pure subsistence farming would be the only way to be sure. But who in their right mind wants to live like that?
Certainly not anyone who hasn’t experienced it! 🙂
Depending on your values, it’s not so bad at all.
If you value polluting, cheap plastic crap from far away, subsistence farming is terrible.
If you value clean air, healthy untreated water, and tasty, nutritious, non-poisonous food, subsistence farming can be heaven on Earth. (Oh, I forgot propagating your genes through the coming bottleneck…)
Your choice.
Wise old Professor Dawkins turned this gene propagation thing on its head by saying they are selfish replicators and propagate themselves through bottlenecks at the expense of us their vehicles.
In fact, Prof. Dawkins implies, they are so devious, these genes, that they con us, their vehicles, into wanting to propagate them, even at the expense of taking out bank loans, maxing out our credit cards and giving up our Sunday morning lay-ins for the privilege. Poor suckers!
HA! I showed them, those genes! I went and got me snipped in my 20s, before propagating any of them! (Then I went and married me a mother of nine, so I’ll be well cared for in my dotage!)
A calculation I made many years ago. At present, my selfish genes have a 57% chance of surviving a population collapse of 90%, which is probably enough insurance.
I am rather intrigued by Dawkins discovery of the meme.
“A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme.”
These are the true intellectual offspring of mankind. The embodiment and replication of selfish genes into other humans is a mere distraction with disastrous results.
https://assets.change.org/photos/7/kr/lk/ARKRLKtyDsTMmzt-800×450-noPad.jpg
I think that the issue with democracy is that it requires quite a bit of surplus energy to survive. It requires enough surplus energy that elections can be held for representatives. These representatives can take time off from work and can travel to some central location. The citizens can learn enough about the representatives to make reasonable choices of representatives. There need to be tax dollars that the elected leaders can decide how to distribute.
Once the economy starts shrinking, it is the top layer of the government that becomes most vulnerable. Functions that it really cannot afford (Social Security, Medicare, rebuilding after storms, etc.) increasingly get handed over to states, or to individuals.
For example, I talked to a woman yesterday talked about how poorly the Florida panhandle is faring, after it was hit by Hurricane Michael in October 2018. A huge number of trees are down, but there is no way to replace these trees without many years of regrowth. Even carrying them away can be a problem; insurance doesn’t cover this. Insurance will cover some things (direct damage to a house), but not others (fence blown over). If all the property of neighbors looks terrible, there will be a huge loss of property value, regardless of how much fixing up is done.
The energy forces inherent in nature are by definition infinite
while the forces available to humankind are finite
it is obvious then that there must come a time when whatever nature knocks down will stay down because we will not have the energy resources to rebuild anything
And democracy is wholly dependent on cheap surplus energy being available to all. When it isnt. like now, democracy begins its collapse.
And yet, democracy existed before the widespread exploitation of fossil sunlight!
Here in Canada, an electoral district is called a “riding,” because they were originally sized so that a candidate or representative could cross from one end of the district to the other in a day — while “riding” a horse!
But in general, I agree, and good riddance! I think democracy is a big failure — two wolves and a sheep, voting on what’s for dinner. Or closer to home, three kids and their parents, voting on having ice cream for dinner.
Democracy creates winners and losers, which creates resentment and vows of payback. Democracy always results in people electing short-term solutions, based on their individual wants, rather than long-term solutions for the best of the group, which seems to be the situation the entire world is stuck in these days. Most people will vote for anyone who promises to cut their taxes and raise their benefits, without much regard for where the money will move from such a change. (Money from cutting taxes tends to flow upward, whereas money that goes to benefits tends to come from the lower levels of taxpayers, increasing wealth disparity.)
By my research, the most successful self-governance for low-energy populations appear to be elder-led consensus. This seems to be the case among most low-energy aboriginal people. (And by “low-energy,” I mean populations who lack the ability to hoard food from one year to the next. Once you can hoard food, you start having “strong man” governments.)
Of course, this may be a self-serving observation, be being more and more “elder” every day… 🙂
Maybe an economy doesn’t need a whole lot of surplus energy. The question may be more one of the trend in surplus energy.
If surplus energy is growing, it is easy for the consensus of population to decide what to do with the growing excess. It can go for schools, roads, or many other useful purposes.
If surplus energy is shrinking, then representatives have a hard time figuring out winners and losers. Someone has to lose, but which ones becomes problematic. This is when the representatives break into two warring groups. Existing governments may be overthrown, because they have overpromised relative to what they can actually provide. New financial systems will likely be needed.
Hydro power: EROEI > 100
Fossil fuels at its heyday ~ 100
Plenty of energy to go around, just less people. But it will sort of take care of itself eventually.
As for financial “collapse”. Just format C: and call the Ponzi scheme over with. Back to productivity, technology and innovation.
Democracy have never been stronger. The deep state and it’s useless lackeys are feeling the burn from tech. They have nothing left in the arsenal to combat their deprecation, except with violence and oppression which implementation is rejected at every step along the way by the genes of the technologists and mechanists of the past and present.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b6/75/8f/b6758f146f97bd12f24560be17e0866f.jpg
http://getwallpapers.com/wallpaper/full/d/2/8/1378226-full-size-phoenix-bird-wallpapers-3840×2160-for-mac.jpg
Today’s hydro is only possible with fossil fuels. We need a whole system in place to maintain hydro. The dam will need dredging, sooner or later. Metal parts will need to be replaced. The transmission lines need to be kept in good repair. A local area cannot depend on hydro, except to the extent it is (1) backed up with fossil fuel energy supply, or (2) is below the minimum hydroelectric output, measured over weeks, months, and years.
We had hydro long before petroleum became en vogue. We will have hydro long after.
Gasification/plasma plant connected to a hydro grid will take care of that pesky problem of producing synthetic petroleum. Just as the Germans did during WW2 and the South Africans during apartheid.
Hydro depends on COAL. The petroleum age is a pleasant concept, but coal is far more important, as far as I can see. It has helped keep energy prices down. Coal is leaving us, because the price for coal has been too low for producers since about 2012.
Hydro only needs lots of water and not too many people. Probably less than .5B.
Hydro needs transmission lines, if it is to be used as electricity. If it is to be used for grinding grain, it is pretty flexible.
So what Tim/Dawkins att saying is that Jan has maxed out his credit card and given up sunday morning layins to propagate someone elses genes?
What Dawkins overlooks is that we humans all share 99% or more of the same genes. If his idea is correct, then when we raise our own children rather than someone else’s “unrelated” offspring, we are working especially hard to propagate that special 1% that we don’t share with everyone else. Conversely, if we raise unrelated offspring, we are still working to propagate 99% of our genetic material, which is the stuff we share with the rest of humanity.
My experience suggests that family is founded much more on familiarity than on genetic closeness.
Tim, it is not how genetics work. It is not that many genes which codes for higher intellect.
We share 96% of genes with the chimpanzee. A chimpanzee score 0 at any IQ-test.
There is only one way to be sure, it is to do like Einstein and Darwin and marry their cousins. However, it has some nasty side effects.
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/9c/96/b9/9c96b93b954d375eeafc3b53a364dce5.jpg
https://i.imgflip.com/2eun6b.jpg
😎
While I completely oppose the idea that Einstein was a genius (general relativity? Please!), perhaps both he and Darwin recognized that marrying one’s first cousin isn’t as bad as we make it out to be:
“The risk of giving birth to babies with genetic defects as a result of marriages between first cousins is no greater than that run by women over 40 who become pregnant, according to two scientists who call for the taboo on first-cousin families to be lifted.
Women in their 40s are not made to feel guilty about having babies and the same should apply to cousins who want to marry, said Professor Diane Paul of the University of Massachusetts in Boston and Professor Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.”
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Pregnancy-risks-the-same-for-first-cousins-women-1295644.php
Of course, perhaps Darwin and Einstein are both deviants, and women over 40 who contemplate having a child are irresponsible:
“Once again, the older an egg, the more likely it is to have chromosomal issues, which can increase your child’s risk for certain birth defects. For women who get pregnant at 25, the risk for Down syndrome, the most common chromosomal condition, is about one in 1,250; at age 40, that risk jumps to about one in 100.”
https://parenting.nytimes.com/pregnancy/baby-after-40
If one agrees with my later statement (i.e. women having babies over 40 and people having babies with their first-cousins are irresponsible), then one should probably recognize that all of society is irresponsible, as we treat individuals as “children” with less freedom over their sexual activity until they are 18, and then goad them into exceeding-long educational programs that generally make it difficult for them to start their families until they are well into their 20s or even early 30s (and even then, they’re likely to be heavily in debt in attempting to acquire the things we hold up as icons of adulthoodism – the automobile and the house).
Cheers,
-GBV
GBV,
“icons of adulthoodism – the automobile and the house”
How true. I would say the symbols of soulless consumerist conformism. On top of that add the children, infidelity, divorce court and alimony. Why? It’s a real head scratcher for me.
I can afford both, but I don’t want anything to do with the inevitable distractions from pursuing understanding of ultimate reality.
Cousin marriage is way over stigmatized. The Ashkenazi Jews have been at it for centuries, apparently they are pretty smart.
Can’t let in some random mongrel into the family without having some pretty good high IQ genetic background. Then it is safer to marry a cousin at the risk of certain disease.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Goldene_Kamera_2012_-_Scarlett_Johansson_3_%28cropped%29.JPG/170px-Goldene_Kamera_2012_-_Scarlett_Johansson_3_%28cropped%29.JPG
Fly Fishing is more important than life or death.
Just a reminder——
Best comment 2019 Duncan. Happy New Year!
I certainly enjoyed fly fishing with my uncle on the River Dee in Wales. But the fish must have disputed your dictum, because I never caught any.
Fossil fuels + technology = frickin’ awesome!
Wouldn’t you all agree?
So what’s all this refugee business?? Why don’t they just stay home and watch the tube??
Big government need to cause trouble. The nomenclature needs clients to pander with as their little jobs program. Besides, it makes an otherwise shrinking GDP barely stagnant. We also got one of the biggest housing bubble in the west ready to go poof.
”Carbecues” are frickin’ awesome, it is not even news anymore, such as the shootings and bombs going off. It lights up the otherwise mundane and gloomy winter season. It is the BAU Christmas tree of the country that gave the world Stockholm syndrome. And the Tim Pool official Royal Seal of ”creepiness”.
Sweden got the absolutely worst ruling class and establishment of the entire western world. It is a long held tradition, it spans from the brutal civil war mainly between Geats and Swedes, to ruthless involvement in the 30 year war and more, causing untold misery and deaths of Germans and Finns which were drafted and sent to die in a foreign land. Then later on a reckless profiteering collaboration with the Nazis, causing yet again even more untold misery and devastation. But the worst part has to be the treason to our brothers and sisters from Norway during WW2. It is truly an embarrassment to be a Swede.
Why not see for yourself and browse to Sweden.se and you will get educated about the greatness and how everything is hunky-dory in Gretaland.
Was that enough, or should I dig a little deeper into the gory details of our deeply corrupt telecoms and banking sector that the SEC and DoJ investigates? Perhaps mention the briberies involved in Swedish arms sales? Oh yes, there is more – much more.
Though there are a few decent people around here, who have seen past the pretentiousness, shallowness, fakery and hypocrisy. Mostly foreigners though.
https://youtu.be/-buxV4vfwPA
“..police state austerity..” in the latest Kunstler cast they briefly mention that command style / war economy framework is inevitable (very likely) response to a crash. For how long enduring and how effective it could be is another set of questions though..
In terms of subsistence farming, it depends where and what you have actually done, it’s such a broad area it is hard to evaluate without further details. However, the truth remains that even the most promising techniques in no till and general rejuvenation agriculture trends are almost always spoiled by off site inputs (aka cheating), be it cheap municipal compost hauled in, farm sub$idies, volunteer labor, etc.. Growing topsoil, while not destroying biomes and still feeding people / farm animals is possible, but the output numbers are likely way lower to any estimates. Also some new lasting cult / religiosity would help in terms of taming the territorial function, i.e. not wasting (bio) resources in wars as much..
As debated previously, since the last ice age people erased the naturally developed top soils globally and even much longer before that seriously disrupted these processes by killing the megafauna and trimming the large fauna, which was key part of this soil renewable system.
Perhaps doing anything / something is futile, but he who survives or possibly even thrives in the future will be necessarily drawing also immense portion of sheer luck (place and events sequencing plays in his favor) besides the utmost skills and talents given to it. Hence the scenario of expected pop reduction to at least 1/10 – 1/20th of today’s situation or consumption equivalent (leaner people).
Indeed, one must look at the whole system and not only at the attractive parts, such as tending animals and plants.
I consider that the “happy path” delusion. The problematic part is what is used to support this in terms of failsafes and other hidden functions and structures, such as those you mention, which inevitably is part of IC. It is a consequence of western reductionist epistemology, the full story is conveniently omitted, because; look how beautiful the bees and flowers are. It feels better that way because hope.
[GIF removed]
No, we must reject this Utopianism. It is not the path forward. The train has already left the station and there are no brakes, we will keep on chucking in fossil fuels into the fires that keeps us warm and nourished, continue engineer, automate and see that something worthwhile falls out at the other end which is something more than survival of the fittest/luckiest, and vastly different than the cockroach mentality of passing the genes through the contracting spherical manifold of IC.
Because trust me, if there is any happy camper out there that will stand in the way of the exploits of IC, that little hobby project will be dealt with impunity.
[GIF removed]
Tom, doing nothing – that’s futile! If you knew a major recession or depression was coming you wouldn’t prepare? I have enjoyed a very privileged lifestyle and I’m ready to go medieval agricultural if necessary. I’ve ever taken the FE challenge ( for 6 months)
Can’t say I enjoyed the winter but the summer part was actually enjoyable. I do recommend having you doomstead on a lake if possible- solves a lot of problems.
Give me my privileged lifestyle or give me death! Doesn’t make sense to me.
I still grow a lot of vegetables and the infrastructure is still out there so I could get back into it if it seems worthwhile. My wife slipped on the ice and fractured her tibia two years ago while feeding the sheep so that was the deciding factor.
If there were other people nearby doing the same thing I could see where it might help at least for a while, but there aren’t. My neighbors are all older and retired or commuters.
2017-
Indiana 73% coal
Iowa 44% coal
Idaho 0% coal
Calif 0%
“designed in CA, manufactured in China”
CA companies let the Chinese burn massive amounts of coal as their products are built there, and then those CA companies make massive amounts of money as their products are sold around the world…
pretty good trick they got going there…
hey, you got stats for burning gasoline?
I bet CA is good ole number one out of fifty…
happy new year, Duncan…
looks like we’ll get there…
“It would be folly to assume that all will turn out well next year. The world could be heading for economic, financial and environmental crises. Rarely has it looked less well-equipped to cope.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/29/2020-world-economic-outlook-trade-war-china-brexit-market
“The situation in the financial markets in the US and Europe seems to point to a far more bigger global crisis looming on the horizon…
“There are clear indications that many big commercial banks are in deep trouble.”
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2019/12/29/business/opinion-global-crisis-horizon
“…solutions may need to be unconventional, even more so than the extraordinary policies of negative interest rates and bond-buying that eased the post-2008 global funk.
“With those policies maxed out, “in the 2020s it seems inevitable that a world of helicopter money awaits,” Deutsche Bank predicts.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKBN1YV0QQ
I think part of our problem is Peak Debt. It doesn’t keep rising, relative to GDP, after some point.
The US seems to be losing the battle to keep the retio of Debt to GDP rising, even with the rapidly rising governmental debt. This is a chart from the Reuters’ article.
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/13/257/257/debttogdp.png
Thanks, Gail. Insufficient debt growth is such an easy piece of the jigsaw to overlook. Because excessive debt outstanding is so obviously problematic, the brain *wants* to conclude that adding less of it must be a good thing…
We need to keep our fingers crossed in the next few days. One recent article on the Repo problem is the WSJ’s article, Fed’s U-Turn on Assets Faces a Year-End Test, published Dec. 26. It said,
. . .
So we keep our fingers crossed.
Related?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/year-end-repo-crisis-ends-whimper-amid-massive-liquidity-glut
Cheers,
-GBV
The article mentions four critical events:
1. The World Trade Organization can no longer settle member disputes, because it has only one judge, and needs three. The US refuses to ratify replacements for the other two.
2. The UK will be leaving the EU on January 31, thanks to a recent convincing victory of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in the UK.
3. Lack of significant progress at the Madrid COP25 Climate Change Meeting in Madrid.
4. Current strength of the financial markets. Stock markets are high. Central banks have limited room to lower interest rates.
Venezuela’s GDP has contracted by 75% in the last decade from $400B to $100B.
Oil production has declined from 3.5mmbpd to 1mmbpd.
In 1Q2019 the GDP contracted by another 35% YoY.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Modern_Venezuela_Economic_Indicators.png/350px-Modern_Venezuela_Economic_Indicators.png
Wow! Venezuela is not doing well. Low oil production and low oil prices.
But remember, Venezuela has the highest oil reserves in the world. If you believe those who say, “Oil prices can go nowhere but up,” the country is amazingly wealthy.
If you think as I do, the stated reserves don’t really mean anything. It won’t really be possible to extract them. Just like the stated coal reserves from around the world. They also are imaginary.
But it’s low-value, low-ERoEI oil!
The question is whether we can keep things going on such slim margins. The US fracking experience seems to be yes, but at a negative return — fracked oil is losing money right and left, yet it somehow continues.
Oil from fracking seems to have a high EROEI.
Adam Brandt (a well-known EROI researcher at Stanford University) published a paper in the Journal Energy (a well-respected journal): “Net energy analysis of Bakken crude oil production using a well-level engineering-based model“.
According to the abstract:
A lot of people mistakenly quote a 2011 paper by Cutler Cleveland, called “Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of Oil Shale.” This is a totally different energy product, produced by a different method. In this method, kerogen in baked at a high temperature for a long period. It has nothing at all to do with fracking.
This paper is referenced over and over in summaries of different papers, either as Oil Shale or Shale Oil. The confusion over very different processes is the reason that oil produced by fracking is usually called “tight oil.”
Thanks for the reference, but why, if “tight oil” (as you prefer) has a high ERoEI, can’t it make money?
I realize that money is a poor stand-in for energy, but I’m thinking some energy costs of fracking must be missing from the equation, if fracking can’t make money.
“The challenge for governments in the next decade… is more complex than ever.
“On the one hand, they cannot lower interest rates to stimulate economic growth. But there is also a limit to how much fiscal stimulus governments can use to spur the economy as they have budget deficits and public debt limitations to worry about.
“Raising interest rates to attract foreign capital into the economy is also difficult as it could further dampen economic growth by giving a boost to savings and reducing consumer spending.
“But a high global debt situation in a low growth, low interest rates economy is also very risky. At least in 2008 when trouble hit, governments could slash interest rates and spend to save their economies.
“What tools could government effectively use to fight the next fire?”
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/end-of-the-decade-global-economy-2010s-12214836
“There has been a global downturn in the data mainly in China and Europe since the beginning of 2018. There have been few signs of a recovery and a continued downturn is more likely in my opinion.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4314110-negative-global-economic-data-to-push-stock-indexes-lower
“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in 2019 we have witnessed a massive uptick in global protest.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/12/28/why-its-still-kicking-off-everywhere/
I expect we will we even more protests in 2020.
“Raising interest rates to attract foreign capital into the economy is also difficult as it could further dampen economic growth by giving a boost to savings and reducing consumer spending.”
I again marvel at my complete ignorance of modern economics. How can more savings dampen economic growth? More savings = more investment, surely. From Adam Smith until John Maynard Keynes, it was a simple truism that investment came from savings, and interest rates reflected the need for savings, and drove investment into profitable enterprises. All explained in detail in 1875, by Samuel Smiles’ “Thrift”.
Debt is not savings, and it is not investment. It is theft, and the most morally despicable of all forms of theft, because it is theft from the future.
There is no savings, and no debt. Everything is energy flow. Savings, and debt, are just digits on computers screens.
On a World level ofcourse. Not applying to single countries.
No. What you see on a computer screen is pixels.
Most money “exist” inside computer memory, might it be magnetic or semi conductor storage.
They can only be read and decoded using advanced semiconductor devices. Absolutely nothing today in IC can function without these quantum mechanical devices.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Digital_rain_animation_medium_letters_shine.gif
About 2/3rds of our monetary income is from cash sales. I expect that amount to increase over time.
Nearly 100% of our monetary outflow is electronic. But that’s just for convenience; we could function nearly 100% on cash if we had to.
I mentioned monetary outflow. A good 10% or so of our subsistence is due to barter. I expect that amount will increase steadily. We could manage to do almost all our food that way right now, although our credit union doesn’t seem too keen on bartering bookkeeping services for mortgage payments… 🙂
It is nothing inherently morally wrong or despicable by using technological means to reduce drudgery, man has done that since the dawn of time. Like for example your use of a computer and Internet to discuss these ideas and to do accounting and transactions.
In fact, by enabling distributed, computerized, networked methods, you can more effectively trade with other communities and people. Trading is trust, trust builds culture and community.
I’m not big on “wrong or right.”
First, does it work? Yea, technology “works.”
Second, will it work for the foreseeable future? There’s the rub!
I try to avoid using technology that I cannot maintain, with tools on-hand.
I can probably keep diesel engines running for the rest of my life. I probably cannot keep a smart phone running for more than the lifetime of it’s battery.
But that’s just the way I look at things. I realize others may differ.
If you mean for the foreseeable future, as in our lifetimes I assume.
Then yes, your safest bet is to employ as much technology as you can. That means to be productive in industrial civilization.
But here’s the deal, I promise to work day and night to permanently make people unemployable and you promise to take care of them and give them hope that there is life after IC?
In that sense we have devised a thermodynamic machine where the entropy generated from increasing levels of complexity takes care of itself without a large welfare state and UBI.
Deal?
(Prepping is nothing more than utopian escapism)
Especially to those who are too lazy or not imaginative enough to work at it!
My Mamma taught me to not criticize anything ’till I’ve tried it.
But even better, my Mamma taught me how to live off the land. I can understand the fear and loathing of subsistence that must be felt by those who have not seen it in action.
We are hosting a Japanese student here. We typically make large meals, primarily from our own organic ingredients, and then continue to eat them for several days.
When we have left-overs, she goes to her room and retrieves a plastic package of pre-cooked, polished white rice, and a plastic envelope of pre-cooked brown sauce of some sort. I can’t read the ingredient list, but it seems to be longer than the contents of our entire pantry, spices and seasonings included!
I just shake my head, wondering how anyone could prefer that industrial garbage food over something grown and prepared with love and care within a 500 metre radius…
But I don’t expect everyone to see things the way I do, even though I am right. 🙂
And what will we do when the pixel mines are exhausted? Hint: find out what elements go into LED screens and what is their abundance.
We will eventually stop producing them anyway.
https://youtu.be/CgFzmE2fGXA
World GDP is up 50% the last decade.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?start=2008
The world GDP is $90T.
The world stock market cap is $90T.
Everything is priced to perfection.
“Inflation expectations and bond yields are telling you that we are all becoming acclimated to a world without growth. And that there is nothing a central bank can do about it.”
Here in Europe we have zero rates, zero yields, zero inflation and zero GDP growth.
Not a pretty picture. Diminishing returns continues, however.
Too much renewables in the EU, plus too high carbon taxes, which discourages burning of coal. In 3 days time, Germany will close another nuclear power plant, which could easily be running another decade :/. Also from January 1st, carbon tax will be added to the price of new cars. I think that this will not help Europe’s economy :/
Lower car production and consumption will push Europe’s economy downward. It may leave more resources for others elsewhere in the world without carbon taxes.
Uh huh, I’m waiting for that parroted line from libertarian blogs to become true for 11-12 years now. I guess if you wait long enough, you’ll finally make money off of your short seller bets
OMG!
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2019-yir-image043.png
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dave-collums-2019-year-review-and-epstein-didnt-kill-himself-part-2
We must burn coal. The CO2 must be returned to the atmosphere. Otherwise Gaia would turn into a lifeless ice planet for eons of time before the process can start anew.
I doubt it is in the interest of any living organism.
Now we have 1.5 degrees warming in northern hemisphere in 150 years, not 1 degree in 1000 years, and it only accelarates in recent years, and it will not stop like in the past.
It sounds excellent, or wait, you think it is a problem, don’t you?
https://youtu.be/W5BxWMD8f_w
https://pics.me.me/riding-the-liberal-salt-mines-every-day-they-go-reeeeeeeeeeee-34369744.png
Whether or not this is true, we are powerless to do anything about it.
Having experienced life on the equator for 20 years, I have become a fan of global warming. The Earth is far too cold for its current biota, and would be a lot more fruitful with Carboniferous Age temperatures. Though I do not expect to sunbathe on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, in between hunting crocodiles, a return to the Holocene maximum would be most welcome.
Now, perhaps the warming is too fast, at least for the megafauna (which, of course, includes us). But the rest of the biosphere seems to be taking it in their stride; even the endangered coral reefs are adapting. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
(3) Consensus means jack squat. “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”4 Really? Unequivocally? If this is really what they signed verbatim, we have located 11,000 scientifically trained nitwits.
Here are just a few equivocators:
The Global Warming Petition Project rounded up over 31,000 scientists (9,000 with PhDs) equivocating that the panic over climate change is bullshit. Worldwide there are 21 million degrees in science, from bachelor degrees to PhDs, blurring what “scientist” means in these petitions.5
A letter sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts, all with PhDs in tow, urged NASA to dial back their support of the global warming narrative.6
A letter authored by 500 carefully vetted scientists—big swinging dicks and ovaries of steel—urged the UN to acknowledge there is no climate crisis.7
In 2015, 30 Nobel laureates got huge media attention by signing a letter asking for immediate action on climate change while it went unnoticed that 35 other Nobel laureates sitting in the room did not sign.8
There are many more inconvenient facts on this essay for those with enquiring minds
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dave-collums-2019-year-review-and-epstein-didnt-kill-himself-part-2
Here is something a bit different for this site. Unlike everyone that sees nothing but doom and gloom ahead, l see that a renewable future is possible, just not probable.
We have the energy needed to transform to renewables in the still buried fossil fuels. As I have stated before, we have over 430 billion tonnes of lignite in the state of Victoria here in Australia.
A worldwide power grid is probably necessary to counteract the intermittency problem, along with pumped seawater hydro.
What doesn’t seem to ever get mentioned, by any green groups, is that to transfer to all renewables at some point in the future, will require a vast increase in fossil fuel use for a generation at least to build all the renewables plus transmission lines, etc. The scale is massive, the amount of electricity needed is around a magnitude higher than anything I’ve ever read about, when I’ve done the real math on it. (We have to take into account lower grade ores needing higher energy inputs to extract, plus moving everything to electric etc. Way too vast to mention everything in a short comment.)
Money and debt, these 2 constructs of ‘man’ are both infinite, both are created out of thin air, yet perceived to be real by just about everyone, probably the largest mass delusion we humans have created, larger than all the gods and religions. I’ve never seen dogs, cats, rats, ants, chimps nor bees worry or need money, nor pray to a god.
Money can be and IMHO will be continually printed as needed to solve any debt problem, just like it has been for the last few generations. The numbers will just continue to get bigger and more terrifying to those who believe money to be real. A few decades ago some billions of debt had people ‘worried’, now it’s trillions of debt, sooner or later it will be quadrillions of debt. It is always possible to have partial debt jubilees, passing all the way up the line to the original creator of the money/debt that owes the money/debt to thin air.
The problems we face are not money, nor energy, nor ingenuity, but far more likely denial, greed, lack of co-operation, failure to acknowledge the change necessary and other human foibles. We cannot grow infinitely on a finite planet, yet we can in an infinite universe. Humans are the only species we know of capable of going to space. Perhaps the meaning of life is to take life (all life) into the cosmos, after all our little blue green ball will be swallowed by the sun when it goes red giant in 5 billion years, a real ‘armageddon’ for all life here anyway.
We have the fossil fuels, a buried treasure just waiting for a species to come along and use them to create a sustainable future, or waste the lot on a short term ‘better lifestyle’, which is what we humans have so far chosen to do.
Unfortunately what is possible, and what is probable are 2 entirely different things. We have known about limits to growth for 50 years, thanks to Meadows et al, or much longer if looking at Malthus, but instead of paying attention and changing, denial and living the high life whenever possible seems to rule.
The only predicament we have is human nature to study part of a problem, make rushed decisions, then have a need to stick to our initial decision, usually by denying any counter data or evidence, something we all do. We are defensive in nature, defending a position, instead of looking weak by changing as evidence changes, something I see even here.
I’ve been studying our limits to growth for half a century and it took decades for me to realise what is possible and far more likely what is probable in our future. We have the fossil fuels available to build a renewable energy future, we just don’t seem to have the will to do it, by denying the necessity for change, despite the ‘growth’ the change would bring.
You may be correct, but besides “will,” I don’t think we have the time to do it. The time to have started working on this was in the 1970s — 1980s, tops.
The problem is not the absolute amount of fossil sunlight available, but the extraction (in)efficiency of what’s left. We’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit. All the 100:1 ERoEI oil is gone. When you subtract the extraction energy cost of what’s left, there’s not a lot of energy left in it.
Just look at what it takes to exploit new sources these days. Fracking appears to be a money-loser. The only fracked wells that are “making” money are those that have written-off the start-up costs through bankruptcy. The “majors” sit and wait while the wildcatters frack, then when the wildcatter-execs leave with their bonuses, the company goes bankrupt, and the “majors” buy it for the expected value of the oil it can produce, not the actual cost of getting the well to production state! How long can this go on?
An analogy. Your a car dealer buying cars coming from fleets at a auction. Some of the cars end up needing repairs. You lose money on those. On the whole though you make money.
“How long can this go on?”
Lets say a separate financial instrument was used to finance the frackers and only that purpouse We call it a frackero. It would soon lose any value. However the instrument used to finance the frackers is not frackeros but the US dollar. Its used for most of the worlds trade. Certain things it is used for are losers. Like the cars that need repairs.
As long as there are enough good cars (world trade) it will retain value despite the losers.
“How long can this go on?”
As long as the fractional reserve banking system. Or should we say fracktional reserve banking system. A billion here a billion there is a frackero. On the whole value is retained.
“How long can this go on ?”
Just like ‘things’ have gone on for much longer up to now than most thought possible 10-15 years ago, we can easily keep going on. The real problem seems to be everyone looking at the problem and not potential solutions. I’ve been guilty of that, just like everyone else.
Could the US economy survive with European fuel prices?? I would say yes, but it would take a period of adjustment, longer than the rise in oil prices in 04-08 that led to the GFC. A simple universal carbon tax, that grows over time would help solve the problem of using our FF too quickly. That’s a possible start for the future, just not probable.
If we want to look at ERoEI, then civilizations thrived on much lower ERoEI back in the ancient agrarian days where a huge investment by a large percentage of the population was in producing food and fuel for the cities.
In our modern times the equivalent needs to be a larger percentage of the population building the renewables, then replacing and recycling them at end of life, a generation or so from now. The renewables that need to be built are something like 60 times the current rate of annual build, for a period of 30 years, plus initially a lot more transmission lines, and seawater hydro plants. There is easily enough coal and gas energy to build this with a current high ERoEI. The lignite I mentioned is mostly 0-20 metres deep in the ground, in vast thick seams as one example. There is just a lack of willingness to use the existing resources for the future.
The right deny anything is wrong or we need to change to renewables, the left/greens want everything left in the ground and deny we need to use a lot of energy to build a renewable future. The oil for transport until electrification, can come from higher taxing of it, to limit use to productive (energy building) purposes, instead of the profligate waste we have now.
I’ll be the first to admit the change necessary is very unlikely, but it is ‘possible’.
A 2/1 eroi of photovoltaic can not sustain industrial civilization. nor can a 8-1 wind eroi. both of these are probably energy sinks once infrastructure is added. Oh by the way if all the worlds remaining energy is used for “renewables” where will the fertilizer to feed the world come from?
Sun growing things. The original renewable. industrial civilization is toast.
More important what will the color and style of the renewable production army (RPA) garb be? I vote for the original starfleet outfits! Starting to like the green economy more all the time.
Except that solar ERoEI is much higher than 2. It is 7-10 from this source…..
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307066
If located in the correct places, deserts, it is higher again and has a faster payback of energy.
Please note I have no time for all the information on the net about how the ‘cost’ of renewables is coming down in dollar terms. The real cost is the energy cost. We have plenty of FF to build the renewable future now, but I’ll also concede that the way we are going it will be too late by the time we (as in the world) get around to realising the problem, the physics, and the solutions, if we ever do.
Solar panels are something like 20 times more efficient at turning sunlight into usable energy compared to plant photosynthesis, but they cost around 4200 kwh of energy to produce 1kw of solar panels. The stands plus transmission lines, inverters etc all cost way more energy.
What I read everywhere is about
1 There being no problem ( denial) ,
2 or as we have here, the problem is too big so lets just party on and do nothing,
3 or the green view of just turn to renewables and turn off all FF use,
Yet the alternative I see is; why don’t we try and build a renewable future, which means using a lot MORE existing FF, a lot more quickly to get there. We will definitely do more damage via CC but that is happening anyway.
Because a lot more energy needs to be used to create the renewable future, all the usual metrics of jobs, growth etc should pick up with the increased human activity of building future energy supplies.
Building a renewable energy future is a very positive use of existing FFs and could replace some existing ‘activities’. For example one of the most useless human activities is gold mining. We spend huge amounts of energy digging holes and processing a few flecks of gold per tonne of dirt, to create a larger lump of the metal that mostly gets buried somewhere else (a vault). I’m sure people could name a lot of equally useless tasks that are a part of the modern world.
Replacing gold mining activity with more renewable energy activity, would not ‘cost’ any more energy than currently used and have a long term positive benefit, compared to gold mining. However while possible to do, it is highly improbable.
We are basically our own worst enemies in the whole energy equation.
Depends on the plant.
Some so-called “C4” grasses, like sugar cane, can convert about 8% of solar energy to chemical energy. So that’s only about 2.5 times less than photovoltaic cells. (There’s a reason why sugar is ubiquitous — it’s the most efficient way to convert fossil sunlight into human biomass!)
Now, I’m gonna go “woo woo” on you. Photosynthesis has evolved over some 3,500,000,000 years. If nature has not rewarded more than 8% conversion efficiency, there must be a reason, no? Are we hairless, clever apes so so clever as to out-do 3.5 billion years of evolution in only 70 years or so?
Now, back to science. Efficiency is not all it’s cracked up to be. 100% efficiency theoretically requires infinite resource. The closer you get to 100% efficiency, the more the embedded energy piles up to enable that. There exists a “maximum power point” in efficiency that can be fairly high for some processes, and fairly low for others. This is the point at which the energy obtained after the conversion has the highest multiplier of the energy required to enable the conversion, what HT Odum called “emergy,” or “embedded energy.”
And nature appears to work to the MPP, throughout the trophic food web. The C4 plants evolved about 35 million years ago. It uses twice as much energy, but returns 4-10 times as much energy, so it has pushed the MPP point forward.
So what makes us think that we can do so much better? My money’s on there being a whole lot of emergy that is not included in PV electric cost-benefit calculations.
I based a EROI of two off Charles Halls work based off real world data
“we estimated an EROI of 2.45:1 in 2008 assuming a lifetime of 25 years and at the juncture with the distribution system. ” I find Halls estimate to be the most honest.
The paper you cite was written in response to The ferroni and Hopkirk paper that found a .8 EROI for PV . without including distribution network. since eroi is epressed as a fraction thats a energy sink. Ferroni and hopkirk attempted to establish boundaries for PV including;
1.
Energy cost of energy storage requirement for integration of PV-generated electricity into the grid;
2.
Energy cost of labor and ‘capital’.
The paper you cited had a problem with that stating that its very limited boundaries were to be used as a metric for just a portion of the energy cost of a EROI analysis not the entire energy cost of a PV system. They state eroi should be a analysis tool not a measure of overall cost of producing electricity
None of these papers include transmission infrastructure. That brings EROI to negative for
PV easily IMO. Energy sink.
Even if EROI was 7 for PV ( its not)thats not enough to produce surpluses needed to sustain industrial civilization nor will it produce the fertilizer needed to feed the worlds population.
For the record I use and like PV. This hardware i am communicating with is using solar power. (stored in a battery) Not only will PV not replace fossil fuels it can not.
For Jan.
Jan, I agree with you. I well remember the sugar cane cultivation in Africa, and how effective it was. The energy cost of planting, growing, and harvesting sugar cane was rather small, being done by sunlight or human labour. Now, what is the energy cost of solar PV, and of the required infrastructure that it sits on? That of course is left out of the equation by the green lobby. My guess is that the life cycle ERoEI is between 3 and 5, but when you add the (completely ignored) cost of dealing with the large mounts of pollution it creates, the number becomes less than 1..
Hint:
Sugarcane is a nightmare, if you have ever lived with its production.
It will also kill you, with moderate consumption.
I don’t disagree, having recently had high blood pressure that immediately responded to elimination of sugary snacks between meals and most alcohol.
I still enjoy some desert after a meal and a drink with a meal now and then, but I’ve always been fairly healthy, and a blood pressure problem took me by surprise.
Perhaps sugar cane is nature’s way of re-imposing the Maximum Power Point principle on an upstart pipsqueak species who thought they could break the rules. Obesity is cited as a cause for “peak longevity” in 2014.
Gold being stored in vaults? A minuscule amount of gold is being stored in vaults. The lions share is used in industrial processes, such as in gold plating electronics used in renewable applications, among others. Furthermore, most gold produced is a byproduct of example copper mining and processing.
Pouring in money in renewables would be a malinvestment of epic proportions. It won’t create any jobs for the displaced workers. The factories used to create wind turbines is basically lights-out automated to the hilt with engineers serving and programming the machines, they can ramp the production basically arbitrarily without large capital investments. Modern day CNC machinery and industrial robots can churn out electronics, turbines and generators at an astounding rate 24/7.
Raising the wind turbines is basically high-end white/blue collar work employing heavy machinery doing the bulk of the work.
https://youtu.be/5Mu42TzHy8M
A better idea would be to manufacture cars and then dump them directly into the recycling center, as landfill, or dump them into the sea.
Better even, build up the rail infrastructure and electrify it because air transport and roads are going the way of the dodo. Plenty of people could work on trains serving commuters pretending to do work at some tax financed (N)GO, well, until taxation becomes obsolete due to finite world issues and Laffer economic theory.
What we need less of is utopian state sponsored mega project delusions that will make things worse.
Just face the bitter reality. Breathe slowly and just accept it. This is not the world for you anymore. Irrelevance is guaranteed from finite world issues and automation. Even the die hard communist Žižek admits it.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/artwork/cartoons-by-others/hunter/back-up-car-web.jpg
I read somewhere that we are currently using about 40% more energy than that collected by all the photosynthesizing plants on the entire planet. That is scary.
“My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet plane. His son will ride a camel.” — Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum
There will be two kinds of people: those providing their own food, and the starving.
Three kinds,
Those living near by a hydro power station and a harbor suited to accept wind powered wooden cargo ships.
”In Ancient Greek folklore, a phoenix (/ˈfiːnɪks/; Ancient Greek: φοῖνιξ, phoînix) is a long-lived bird that cyclically regenerates or is otherwise born again. Associated with the sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor.”
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Phoenix_detail_from_Aberdeen_Bestiary.jpg
ORDO AB CHAO that is the solution to humanities problems let the financial system turn into hyperinflation which will occur once helicopter money begins only then will world leaders hash out a solution to solve the finite world issue the developed countries need to feel the sting of hyperinflation to take this problem more seriously .
This is for Kowalainen, about the comment on gold.
Only 3% of all gold is used in industrial and electronic use, the rest is in Jewellery, bullion and coins. Your diatribe about gold is wrong, I suggest you research more before commenting…
https://goldprice.com/project/facts-about-gold/
You are right and wrong.
https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold-in-the-united-states.gif
You might want to file a complaint to the Chinese (Politbüro) insatiable desire for gold as they are hedging for a collapse of the yuan.
So when is your flight to Beijing departing? I’m sure Winnie the Pooh will be there rolling out the red carpet to a fellow comrade.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/410/cpsprodpb/5074/production/_96969502_78b75efc-37fe-449f-944e-0fa30805a597.jpg
Money is a form of debt. Sometimes I talk about the general category of “promises.” There are lots of promises. Social Security is another kind of promise. Pensions also represent promises. The market value of a piece of real estate is a type of promise.
You need to have real goods (such as food, fuel for a vehicle) to exchange for these promises. If they are not available, the promises have no real value.
yup. And there are more promises than real goods. A LOT more. Incentives must be kept in place to keep the promises looking good and the real goods looking bad. Cash is a promise that omost always gets converted to real goods so its use must be penalized.
Ok. Pay careful attention now. These are your choices
You keep your cubits in a medium that isnt penalized and is incentivised right up to point of use.
You spend your cubits fast as you can convert them to real goods.
Bout equally stupid or smart.
No one beats entropy.
Writing about “beating” entropy is telling about a lack of scientific understanding.
Let me know what your boundaries of your “beating” system consist of? Does it employ an adiabatic wall where only work can pass through? Or perhaps something entirely arbitrary and vaguely defined unscientific concepts?
I can recommend the Hills Group ETP model where the oil reservoir itself is the boundary where entropy can enter by the interaction with the thermodynamic processes of industrial civilization.
Inflation is when you buy groceries with a wheelbarrow full of money. Hyperinflation is when the mugger leaves the money, and takes the wheelbarrow.
when you put it that way as everything is a promise it hits the nail on the head as it is hard to keep our own promises how are the government going to keep theirs ,Gail what would you do as a possible solution to our predicament if you had full control over the worlds governments and their actions
Top down organizations stop working after a point because there is too much overhead. Nature’s way is to cause the top layers of the structure to disappear. So governments are overthrown when conditions are bad, or they fail and disband. Don’t count on the EU or the UN. In fact, the United States could become less United.
Gail, Nature didn’t topple the moai of Easter Island; people did. The lower orders destroyed a failed society from the top down, first destroying the statues of their ancestors, then killing their chiefs, then doing their best to exterminate (and eat) the upper class, the ‘hanou epe’, or “long ears”.
It was the chiefs that had insisted on BAU: more statues, bigger statues, more trees cut down to move said statues. Until there were no more trees, which meant no more canoes, no more fish, and in short order, no more food.
Cutting off the top of a society is easy. The problem is what do you put in its place. In all history, only one civilisation has effectively solved that problem: the Athens of Pericles, which gave us democracy.
Gail,
Yes, agreed what is required; the best investment is what is between one’s ears, portable and with a healthy body able to envision and provide services, products. There is a tribe still in existence which has practiced this for thousands of years, a tribe with an established set of values, a strong sense of cohesion although not without some significant internal conflicts, and one with a history of migration. Sometimes it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel.
Dennis L.
A worldwide power grid? That is pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Powered by Keith’s orbital solar collectors and operating on a grid made from room-temperature superconductors, the world could be run by an army robots, androids and cyborgs that are programmed to serve ME! Wealth and Power beyond the dreams of Bezos and Gates! Yes, I like the idea. Make it so.
I predict that will happen very soon…
It is more or less the reality of most humans. The mechanization and automation of the means of production is complete.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/503a5bade4b0b543ed240317/1409105133173-27C3Q9VCECSAI2JPMBBT/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kArC0foN4jsDKV7OzUW_P75Zw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpww9xUAJ320Vn4-KdlPbuzzcg0c3FmCNnxJ9g-Ri1zhUr0GiOR0aO0a1nXFsgzcKC8/image-asset.jpeg
And protected by sharks with fricken laser beams on their heads.
You are playing the puck where it is no longer.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2009/05/13/abl_laser_jumbo.jpg
“Pentagon fastens lasers to military drones to zap missiles out of the skies Sadly no plans for sharks as yet”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2016/01/21/pentagon_antimissile_lasers_on_drones/
High voltage DC transmission lines already exist, able to carry Gws of electricity over thousands of kilometres. What physical reason is there that a world wide grid couldn’t happen?? I’d say none.
It is a human barrier, people not prepared to think big enough, not prepared to co-operate, and wanting to deny it needs to be done. It solves the intermittency problem of renewables without the need for space solar. The deserts are big enough.
Improbable? Yes…..Impossible? No!!
Grids are expensive to build and maintain. The cost is especially high for renewables because they are produced at different locations than where they are used. One big problem is when the sun goes down at night. Unless the population goes to bed then, it is almost impossible to fix without lots of batteries and fossil fuels.
The nations trading electricity need to be on good terms with each other. This increasingly becomes a problem when there isn’t enough to go around.
Not only fossil fuels, hydro power as well. Dispatchable power is the natural complement to intermittent power sources.
Gail, you seem to be stuck on the idea or concept of batteries when pumped seawater hydro can easily take that role. Also something like a world wide grid gets rid of the intermittency problem altogether.
You are mentioning things like co-operation between countries which are all all in the realm of why such a large grid will probably not happen, which I agree with, but impossible?? NO!!
Have a think about some of the comments above, like a world wide grid is “pie in the sky”.
There is nothing impossible about a world wide grid. We have all the technology and resources we need to make it happen. It comes into the realm of improbable because of human emotions and distrust between countries or businesses or whatever, but there is no physical limit.
Then the talk of ‘sugar cane’ as a plant life being nearly as good as solar panels, when in terms of usable energy, they are not. Plus all plants require fertilizers and water, lots in the case of sugar cane. Solar panels, sitting lined up in a desert with transmission lines back to both pumped hydro facilities and civilization, require no fertilizer, very little water (to clean panels), and with no moving parts, not a lot of maintenance.
Do we ‘need’ fossil fuels to run large isolated mines? Boliden’s Aitik mine that runs mostly off cheap electricity would indicate no. Do we need fossil fuels to run manufacturing plants? The obvious answer is no given enough electricity. Basically the world could run off renewables if the infrastructure was built.
My view is that humans are choosing to go down the path of future limits because we take the easy way out by denying that there are some limits and we need to change how we do things (like civilization). Just allowing ‘market price’ to regulate how we do things will and has led to the self organised system we have, which means grabbing all the cheapest to get resources (FF) first.
We have had ‘government’ of one type or another for thousands of years, which seems to regulate how the self organising (human) system operates. As soon as there is some type of new rule, then the system changes to adapt to the limits of the new rule. It seems to me that ‘humans’ have chosen to get to a stage of limited energy, because we have not chosen to prepare for FF limits in the future.
We still have a huge quantity of FFs available, so that is not the limit. Money and debt are both infinite, so they are not the limit.
The real limit seems to be in the thinking and collective choices of humans….
What would the pint of these mega investments be? So that you can continue exploit the earth until absolutely nothing remains?
Consumerism has to go.
To keep prices of commodities of all kinds high enough!
It would be machines doing the bulk of the work anyway. Nobody would even notice these HVDC lines being laid down.
It would do zero to prosperity and only exacerbate waste. Quite possibly even increase energy prices as the utopian windmills and solar panels can continue to wreak havoc on the even larger grid and energy prices.
The amount people can afford to pay doesn’t go up, just because the cost of producing and distributing electricity rises. Some people will no longer be able to afford it. Demand will drop, quite possibly making it impossible to pay for the expensive distribution lines.
It is called fossil fuels. And already exists.
timl, as one who has twice in 10 days experienced a power outage caused by the failure of a single link in the electricity grid, the one between Sicily and Malta, I must agree. A complex system evolves bottom up, with redundancy; a complicated system is created top down, by people whose ambition exceeds their ability, and always, somewhere, there is a single point of failure.
With Concorde, it was the tyres, which if they burst would throw up debris that could puncture the fuel tank, setting the plane on fire. With the space shuttle, it was the infamous O ring. With the modern windmill, it is the inability to partially feather. With the self driving car, it is the inability of the computer to build “situational awareness”, a problem shared by the insanely overcomplicated F35 fighter. And so on …
“falling average resources per person. ” Not a very popular concept. No likes on facebook.
If your throwing a tantrum in the market because your mom wont give you a candy bar you perceive her pockets as infinite. The resources of the planet provide wealth and sustenance. Its real simple.
You live within your means. The standard set for those means however must go down at some point if resources are finite or and there are more people.
In this period of relative stability we should move toward solutions. Austerity is not very popular. No one adopts austerity voluntarily. The many problems that austerity presents for a system that must have infinite growth to function have been discussed here at length. The alternative to continue to embrace infinite growth systems results in exactly what we see now. Failure to provide basic needs to some. Price of house can not fall without financial institutions failing. We have people living on the streets. Lots of them. We flail about helplessly unable to come to terms with simple truths.
The trouble with pensions, social security is they are a lie. We have been taught that there is a infinite pocketbook that can give us that candy bar. We plan for our old age on a lie. The truth would be better. You work until you die. Same as it always was. Then you can plan based on the truth. ZIRP needed to sustain our system means you cant save for the future. Casino wall street participation mandatory. A job is a very valuable commodity. The job is what provides life not the human working it. Resources provide the basis of the job.
We cant wrap our heads around the fact that we, humans are not all that. Our skills are not important compared to resource availability. The skill sets that we have learned sometimes at great effort are rendered useless without resources.
The changes that would need to occur to move toward systems that acknowledges finite resources directly contradict the most prevalent theme in our culture humanism. Questioning our right to consume to levels defined by anything other than our ideas about humanism is perhaps the greatest taboo. Ironic that this theme of humanism prevents us from making some effort toward creating appropriate systems that might (might) somehow find a somewhat appropriate means of lessening suffering as resource depletion continues. Those advocating change are promising more candy bars not less. This is the choice we have for leaders. Endless fairy tale candy bar stories or idolization of systems based on finite growth. Two lies and even more incredible one lie is hated by those endorsing the other lie. I say incredible but really its the most consistent human behavior. We attack what we see as a barrier to the candy bar. Throw a fit.
Even as we demonstrate a incredible ability to function we demonstrate a incredible dysfunction. We are unable to grow up and not have our temper tantrum that has got us so many candy bars.
In the end the probability is we will do what we have always done. Take. War. A possibility exists that we could grow. That possibility is slim. Never the less it exists. IMO it would take intervention from a higher power.
We have to deal with both random variability in agricultural output and with diminishing returns (including rising population relative to arable land and eroding top soil). Thus, we always need an upward gradient. Cutting back doesn’t work in the aggregate. Some group has to be cut out.
Apparently, it is possible to “build up” topsoil and feed the crops&animals at the same time, however the limiting pop numbers of how much people and what kind of civilization for each biome this really represent are NOT researched, estimated enough (to my knowledge). So I very roughly guesstimate it’s ~1/10th of today’s pop within semi feudal societal framework of basic metal-wood tools-technology and educated caste with libraries etc.. Good enough, in some circles..
That’s my take on things, as well.
I think there’s a great deal one can do to improve one’s odds, unlike the “we’re all gonna die” crowd.
I could be wrong, but I’m not the sort to do nothing and simply wait for the end to come.
“I think there’s a great deal one can do to improve one’s odds, unlike the “we’re all gonna die” crowd.”
Would you like to give a summary of the most important tricks to improve your odds?
I’m currently setting up a forest garden, nuts, fruits and berries. In the old, days before fossil fuels, coppicing/pollarding seems to have been an important and sustainable complement to hay for the animals. You can also get firewood from coppicing. I also tend a small vegetable garden. My impression is that growing vegetable and grains seems to be harder work than tending pasture animals and collecting winter hay for them. At least if you are supposed to do it without fossil fuels.
Learn how to grow food. Lots of it. Most people think they’ll figure it out as they go. They will be hungry.
Figure out the whole water thing. If you have a good stream, that’s great. If not, have a well? That’s not bad, but the next thing will be to run it from renewable electricity somehow.
Figure out heating. Wood works! But only if you have the land for it. Make sure your heat isn’t dependent on electricity — we currently have a fireplace insert, which is useless without its fan. We run it from a battery and inverter during power outrages, but we’d like to install a proper wood stove someday; it can also double for cooking.
If you have some land, focus on renewable protein and high-quality fat, like milk or eggs. It’s harder than it looks, and harder than vegetable gardening. And it’s more capital intensive. You’ll need fencing and cross-fencing. You’ll need shelter. You’ll need hay storage. You’ll need a hay gathering strategy.
Next, I’d look at carbs. Potatoes fed the Irish; they can feed you, as long as you don’t have a Phytophthera infestans plague. Other root crops (beets, carrots, etc.) are a good source, too. Drying beans make a nice break from potatoes, and have considerable protein, as well. Grains are wonderful, but are generally a pain for small subsistence farms.
Finally, I’d do vegetables. Vegetables are often the first thing people think of, but they are the least nutrient-dense, consisting primarily of water. But they do bring a bunch of vitamins, as well — they just won’t provide you much of the “big three:” protein, fats, carbs.
Not a bad thing to dabble in to prepare for the longer term, but they generally take longer to get established, and don’t bear well while doing so. By all means, perennial polyculture is the long-term way to go, but do get experience in other realms of farming. In particular, try to integrate domestic livestock into your Permaculture plans to richen your diet.
I haven’t heard of that! Thanks!
I’ve always heard of coppicing in reference to firewood. I’m working on Paulownia tomentosa, or Empress Tree, which is the fastest growing tree on the planet, and which has huge leaves, useful for mulching. I don’t know yet if goats like it. It coppices nicely, I hear.
I don’t know about that. Depending on the animal and its use, livestock can be a lot of work. Pick something with multiple uses — not just for meat. Chickens give you eggs, fertilizer, bug control, and some meat. Goats give you milk, fertilizer, brush control, companionship, predator control (we don’t have deer since we got goats — don’t really understand why), and some meat.
I milk goats twice a day, which means I don’t get away very often. At least they go gather current sunlight, and have fertilizer as an incredibly useful by-product. (We call it “brown gold.”)
You don’t need a lot of meat in your diet if you have livestock that supply you with other sources of protein and quality fat. Those nutrients will be the hardest to come by.
Vegan? Sorry, I don’t know how to do that, and I’ve never met a person who does do it without massive assistance from the industrial food system. We eat meat about once a month, but have dairy and eggs daily. It works.
Haymaking as practiced today, relies on fossil sunlight or at least large quantities of vegetable oil. And spare parts. I’ve did an acre with a scythe one year, but I won’t try that again while there is still something to put in the tractor! (That acre of hay will feed about three goats for the winter, or half a cow or horse.)
I think anyone serious about “increasing their odds” needs to get on the land now. Don’t wait for things to start getting bad; there will be a considerable period of coming up to speed.
Which brings up perhaps the most important thing: community. If you are not tied to a place, find a farming area with a strong sense of community. You’re going to need help. If you are tied to a place, start recruiting friends and relatives to go learn subsistence farming with you.
I was just able to spend a few days away, due to a neighbour who milked goats while I was gone. A different neighbour loaned us his tractor when ours broke in the middle of hay season. We don’t yet have as much community as we’d like, but we work at building it every day.
Thanks Jan!
Pumping water on renewable (solar) electricity is on my to do list.
I have hens and ducks for eggs, but I have to feed them them industrially produced grains to a large extent, well above 50% of their food is bought by me. This seems hard to overcome. I also have geese, they actually eat mainly grass of which I have plenty, hence they are much cheaper.
As you say, milk is a good source of food. Grazing animals can live on grass which I consider an advantage compared to ducks/hens which you actually have to feed with grains/potatoes. I should probably get some dairy cows or goats.
The problem with grains and beans is that you have to thresh and winnow and then plow the fields to reseed, lots of work. Somehow, just harvesting grass with a scythe seems easier. A hundred years ago this was how the hay was harvested around here, I even still have have the old scandinavian style of hay drying racks in the loft of the barn. I’ve only wielded the scythe for producing mulch material, never made any hay yet.
Concerning heat, I really recommend one or two masonry heaters. Last longer and works more efficient than cast iron wood stoves. There is a budget alternative which I found interesting, decribed here if you read some german:
https://einfaellestattabfaelle.wordpress.com/einfaelle-statt-abfaelle-heftreihe-ofenbau/
Detailed instructions and they look clever as well but it is of course likely not the most efficient masonry heaters.
Concerning pollarding for livestock, around here mostly ash and linden was used. The trees can grow in the pasture and you pollard them at a height that is above reach for the grazing livestock. Pollarded ashes and lindens can become very old.
“Which brings up perhaps the most important thing: community. If you are not tied to a place, find a farming area with a strong sense of community. You’re going to need help. If you are tied to a place, start recruiting friends and relatives to go learn subsistence farming with you.”
This is maybe the hardest part. Most people prefer talk about it before doing it…
You can range chickens, but they will not produce as much. Have you seen the Polyface Farm method? They rotate their chickens around after their cows, and the chickens get most of their nutrition eating maggots out of cow pies.
Yea, if you don’t like to mow lawn, and don’t mind stepping in goose poop, they make great lawn mowers! But they will only produce eggs for about three months a year. We got 94 eggs from seven geese last year. But they were absolutely free! We got tired of stepping in goose poop, and relegated them to the orchard.
I recommend goats. Cows produce more milk for less of your time, but they are pickier eaters, and are not as efficient at turning vegetation into milk, or at using water. Goats are happy browsing a forest, whereas cows need quality grass. Many goats will milk for many years without re-breeding, whereas cows require breeding every year. Goat are much more efficient with water — just look at the manure! Goat manure goes “tinkle, tinkle.” Cow manure goes “SPLAT!” Finally, you can manage output at a finer level with goats — need a bit less milk? Just dry off one or two. But you take a cow out of production, you loose many gallons, not just a few litres.
On the flip side, some people don’t like goat milk, there’s no cream (without a mechanical separator), and there are more cheese recipes for cow milk.
But you don’t eat grass. Scythe work is for animal food.
We don’t do any ploughing. We occasionally roto-till. We use permanent beds that are hand-worked. It’s not fair to lump grains and beans together; you can grow Scarlet Runners up a fence somewhere, almost like a weed! We grow drying beans as the “four sisters,” together with corn and squash. (When root nematodes were decimating our squash, we added the “fourth sister” of hot peppers. We transplant them together, smashing the roots together, and now nothing bothers the squash roots!) We’re fond of rattlesnake beans, which can be eaten like a green bean, shelled green and eaten like a lima, or left to dry and then used throughout the winter. Scarlet Runners can be used similarly.
Before we got the place, an evil rapacious developer ripped out the ~140-year-old masonry heater, imported at great expense from Sweden. They had it assessed by a wood heat tech, who said it was “economically infeasible to repair.” Yea, at ~$70/hour! I would have spent weeks or months restoring it! (That’s the advantage to not making enough to view time as money.) They replaced it with electric baseboard heaters. 🙁
Linden flowers and buds have been eaten by humans. I might try that. The Empress are high in tannin, and thus not palatable for humans, but they keep intestinal parasites down in goats.
Scotch Broom is good for that, as well, as well as being as rich in protein as alfalfa, a nitrogen fixer, and beautiful, too! I’d plant it if I didn’t think I’d get lynched. As an invasive exotic, it is hated by conservation types, who hold massive work parties, pulling it up, and delivering it to our goat feeders. So, I don’t have to plant it! 🙂
As a pioneer species, Scotch Broom only grows in disturbed areas — like road sides, pastures, lawns, power-line cuts, etc. Want to be rid of it? Stop clearing land! It won’t grow in a climax forest!
It’s a rather well-known tenet of ecology that, in high energy biomes, competition dominates, whereas in low-energy biomes, cooperation dominates. That’s one of the reasons I’m not spending much time or energy on defence. In the coming energy decline, people will once again band together to support each other. Yea, there will be the odd renegade, but when low-energy dominates, you look at the long-term benefits from other people, not what you’d get from them in one orgy of rape and pillage.
But things have not yet gotten so bad that people are willing to give up any individuality in order to cooperate.
” We got 94 eggs from seven geese last year. But they were absolutely free!”
Do the geese find food year around? At my place you have to feed them during winter to early spring when grass starts to be lush again. Relatively cheap since you eat the offspring and only keep the breeding animals. Another cost though cheap is electrofencing to protect them from the fox. The fox population is allowed to be way higher in the present day IC than just 100-150 years ago..
Around here, yes, about 90% of the time.
The exception is when we have deep snow on the ground, which happened last year, for the first time in ten years. So we put out grain for them until the snow went away, which took about three weeks, very unusual for this “banana belt” of Canada. (There are literally people growing bananas and citrus in greenhouses here!)
The geese can forage through up to about 10cm (4″) of snow. We typically get no more than that, and it goes away in a few days.
“Pumping water on renewable (solar) electricity is on my to do list.” Its pretty amazing doing this. Water just appearing gift of the planet. The grundfos sq pumps are pretty much the standard. Its just a patch though.
Battery life is a function of how much you discharge them. From a prepper standpoint best would be to stay om grid set your charge controller for trickle type charge and not use the batteries. Thats tricky however. You might get ten years out of them.
The GC2 golf cart batteries that are the standard cheap battery last about 4 years with normal use. The standard poor person system is 8 of those and 800 watts of panels. That will power a sq well pump and a small fridge. No resistance loads or motors. Your providing water and LED lights for the most part.
Running a small gen set on cloudy days to charge your batteries is pretty much a necessity for a decent battery life.
You can spend more , get the excellent rolls or trojan batteries. L16s if you really want some awesome capacity. They are over double the cost of the cheap GC2s. 5x for l16s albeit at double the amp hours. You can get 7 years out of those. 10 maybe if you strictly limit discharge.
A new battery set is so nice. They store power soooo nice. Then you get the period where they work good. Then the period where they are not working so hot. Then they dont work barely at all.
Even in the end you might be able to get them to pull water with a sq pump when the sun is shining on the panels. It would behoove you to have panel wattage exceeding pump wattage.
Ive never seen DC pumps last at all. Very high failure rate. Im talking top of the line units. It would be interesting to set a well up for easy dc pump replacement and see if you could get a dc pump to run without batteries straight off the PV panels. Never done it. The china made dc pumps are certainly inexpensive. Theres something about stocking 50 cheap chinese pumps I find unattractive.
The PV panels themselves last a long time. I recently worked on a system with panels probably 20 years old. They were putting out about 2/3 of their plate tag power.
Inverters die. Charge controller die. Not like batteries but they have a service life.
AS a rule PV power will cost you 3x to 4x grid power.
IMO relying on a pump and PV to provide water… It might keep you alive for a couple years. Not a decade. Not your children.
IMO a much better approach is springs. Or lake water filtration
Then theres rain collection… Nothing like drinking green algae tank water but a lot of the world does so. Coastal area where theres lots of rain you could make a go of that. Just filter out the particles . Be sure to get the p239 🙂
“The geese can forage through up to about 10cm (4″) of snow. We typically get no more than that, and it goes away in a few days.”
Ok, I’m a bit unsure how it works around here, southern Sweden, mild winters more than 10 cm of snow very rare. But less sunlight than you. it could be that the grass lack much nutritional value during winter because of insufficient sunlight, people tend to feed the geese around here during winter. Maybe it’s not necessary.
happyholidays, thanks for the information!
I was hoping to get a dc pump straightly connected to pv cells. I haven’t found a suitable pump for the task, but I haven’t been looking around much either. As you say, it seems unsatisfactory to store 50 china made pumps.
Jan, how do you grow potatoes from year to year without declining yields due to build up of harmful viruses? Everything I read about growing potatoes says to get new seed potatoes every year or two. If I recall correctly, most/all seed potatoes are lines purified in labs.
Never plant them in the same place.
Those seed potatoes can come from the other side of the hill, on foot. It doesn’t have to come on a FedEx truck.
We do “Seedy Saturday” events, where enthusiasts exchange seeds, or buy them from local vendors. Yes, it’s true that most people who exhibit or buy at such events come by car today, but it could be on foot or wagon.
A regionally-distributed agrarian society worked well for millennia. It could work again.
But yea, not for everyone alive today.
My take also. I actually did the math. Take two sustainable societies, Mediaeval Europe and Edo Japan, and compute the ratio of people to land. Then scale up over the habitable Earth, I came up with 1.2 billion, living at subsistence level and farming or grazing everything available.
Halve that number, to allow something to remain wild and enough surplus from the rest to sustain a civilisation. That’s 600 million. A world of feudal estates and walled city states, because all examples of sustainable societies have been feudal, and all civilisations were created in cities.
Wrong Robert,
Cities is where culture goes to die.
Trade is what creates culture, cities is the cancer that left unchecked grows and ultimately kills trade.
Trade enables cultural magnification and exchange.
There is this small issue with the absurdly high EROEI hydro power stations and the ridiculous abundant coal.
https://pics.me.me/on-my-god-facts-www-om-g-facts-on-ne-com-fb-com-om-20722921.png
This joint will be lit until the end of the century and well beyond that onto the age of the interstellar machine replicating the mechanisms of evolution and intelligence.
But we are discovering that absurdly high EROEI for hydro and ridiculously abundant coal are not sufficient.
The big problem with coal is that it is impossible to keep its sales price high enough to cover all its cost of production. It needs to be delivered to be useful. Its delivered EROEI is much lower. The estimates of what is available are all vastly overstated. Also, EROEI calculations do not distinguish between cheap to produce fuels and expensive to produce fuels. Oil tends to be heavily taxed. It is an expensive fuel (apart from EROEI) needed to transport coal. Coal has been leaving us since 2012.
Hydroelectric tends to be very seasonal. In some parts of the world, annual variations in rainfall are important, too. Consumers need to limit their use to the year around portions or have fossil fuel backup. Hydro really needs to be part of an integrated system.
For Kowalainen:
I respect your many insights, and shall take your comments to heart. My instinct is to disagree (vehemently), but please allow me time to reflect, and reconsider my views. In the interim, best wishes for the New Year,
Hydro and Coal is the fundament of IC.
Once the excesses and vulgarities have subsided, coal and hydro will again reign supreme together with copper and iron.
http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/2017ed32-28aa-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
One step back and two steps forward.
https://jotunimages.azureedge.net/images/images/Image%2086-power-plant-hydro-news-ambuklao-project_tcm149-13652_tcm269-13652.jpg
Robert, I am delighted to read your comments and to twist the perspective, spreading confusion through my meager English and giving you some austere traditional Swedish food for thought.
https://www.wasabrod.se/wp-content/uploads/se/2019/03/quinoa_teff_product-490×340.jpg
happyholidays, thanks for the information!
I was hoping to get a dc pump straightly connected to pv cells. I haven’t found a suitable pump for the task, but I haven’t been looking around much either. As you say, it seems unsatisfactory to store 50 china made pumps.
“You live within your means. The standard set for those means however must go down at some point if resources are finite or and there are more people.”
Thank you, and I agree. When I lived and worked in Singapore, my monthly expenditure was about SGD 10,000, or EUR 6500. Which I could more than afford. When planning for my retirement, I had to retrench. My monthly expenditure on necessities is about EUR 600, and adding some small luxuries, such as holidays and visits to my family, it comes to about EUR 1200. But happiness is not measured by how much you want, but by how little you need; so I am rich.
And if you ask: no. I have never taken a thin dime of government subsidy, and never shall. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
Worth repeating!
That seems a rather absolutist statement, though.
If you’ve ever driven a car (for example), you’ve “taken” a government subsidy. If you’ve ever deducted your mortgage interest on your taxes, you’ve “taken” a government subsidy. If you collect a pension, you’ve “taken” a government subsidy. If you have unearned income, you’ve “taken” a government subsidy.
But there’s a big difference between these examples and directly benefitting from something like welfare, I guess.
As a farmer, I could not afford to grow food without a “government subsidy.” The break on property taxes alone (almost 90% less here in BC) makes or breaks a small farm. We also get slightly reduced hydro (electricity), and farming supplies and equipment generally aren’t subject to sales tax. I also wilfully take the low-income health insurance break — free, instead of ~$50/month, for people who have less than $18,000/year taxable income. And we aren’t subject to collecting sales tax, since our gross proceeds are under $30,000. And I’m looking forward to free ferries next year, should I live to 65.
I’m not trying to call you out or anything, Robert, but I think the socio-economic web is so tangled that it is impossible for anyone but a hermit, living off wild food as a hunter-gatherer, to really make such a claim.
I think it’s fair enough to take “subsidies” that are essentially rewards for living simply. Canada does a good job of encouraging simplicity, unlike (for example) the US, where your first dollar of self-employed income is subject to enough overhead that you have to hire an accountant.
I live in a cow shed. No, I’m not the Messiah! And it is a converted cow shed. I liked the architecture, especially the wooden roof beams on the upper floor, and so starting with the cow shed, I got the builders to expand the structure into a very comfortable residence.
It was only later, when I began to pay property taxes, that I found the authorities around don’t consider converted or reformed homes as “new”. As long as they have some of the old structure remaining, the annual property tax is much much lower than an all-new building. I regard that as an effective subsidy.
Businesses here pay sales tax only if their annual gross proceeds are ¥10 million (around US$110,000).
When I first started growing rice, there was a production tax that used to cost me ¥10,000 a year regardless of whether the rice was sold or not. But that tax was abolished about 20 years ago.
I’ve never owned or driven a car, and so I’ve avoided paying car insurance, gasoline taxes, vehicle registration duty, traffic infringement fines (¥7,000 for failing to stop at a Stop sign!) and all sorts of other car-related costs.
Many people living in rural areas devote between 10 and 20% of their annual income to paying for their cars. It’s a gross generalization, of course, but I think car ownership is a major reason why their disposable income is squeezed to the point where they have to forgo many of life’s little luxuries and end up filling their homes with cheap furnishings, their wardrobes with cheap clothes, and their larders and stomachs with cheap food.
I like Jan’s idea of some subsidies as being rewards for living simply. I hadn’t thought about it like that before.
Jan, please permit me to respond in detail. Yes, I used to drive a car, but do not see how that was a subsidy. The petrol taxes in Europe were far higher than the expenditure on the road transport system needed; the balance being siphoned off by government. The situation in the US was better, but even there the heavy vehicles paid far less than the wear and tear they caused, and the private car owner paid far more.
Yes, I had a mortgage deduction. But I doubt it was a benefit: its very existence inflated house prices, and the progressive income tax meant that the rich reaped any benefit, the poor (mostly taking the standard IRS deduction) lost out completely, and for me in the middle it was probably a wash. But since property taxes were based on the price of the property, I probably lost a little there.
The only pension I ever cashed in was one paid for by my employer, as part of my terms of employment over which I had no control. At the minimum age, I took it out in cash, or at least 70% of it; the government snatched the other 30%. On paper I am entitled to Social Security, but I took a decision not to apply, because it seems wrong to benefit from a Ponzi scheme that is robbing the young.
As an expatriate in Singapore I could choose whether or not to participate in the pension scheme; I chose not to, and saved the money myself in an offshore fund. I also registered as a private patient, and paid for my own health care. Of the money I saved, one third is in a trust fund for the children; the other two thirds is for a rainy day, and otherwise will also go to the children, and in full as Malta has no estate duty.
I agree that it is impossible to avoid all subsidies, but insofar as the choice was mine, I believe I did my best.
“In this period of relative stability we should move toward solutions. Austerity is not very popular. No one adopts austerity voluntarily. The many problems that austerity presents for a system that must have infinite growth to function have been discussed here at length.”
it doesn’t matter much what governments do…
austerity will be imposed on more and more people by Reality from 2020 forward…
(I guess that’s a prediction…)
and austerity will often morph into poverty…
This suggests that the problem is social and cultural.
Certainly, the children and young adults of the Great Depression adopted an austere life-style and mentality. I recall my grandmother saving old clothing, cutting them up, and making quilts out of the bits that weren’t worn out. Nowadays, a cuff or collar gets threadbare, and the whole thing is pitched in the rubbish bin.
It’s also useful to look back on the Great Depression for coping strategies. It may well be true that “premature” austerity might actually bring on the problem that austerity actually copes with, but I think we all agree here that the problem is coming, whether we bring it on early, or not.
So, why not bring it on early? I think an earlier crash will have better prospects for more people than a later crash, when we are further into overshoot than we are now.
Austerity can be fun! It can be a competition of sorts — who can get by the best with the least? And it need not be absolute, at least not at this stage in the game. I just “invested” in a precision 3D printer, because I could no longer obtain small parts for things I was repairing. We have a perfectly good meat slicer that we use for prepping tomatoes for drying. It is probably from the 1960s, but works well, except the Bakelite™ housing has been dropped too many times, and is held together with tape. But now I can print a new one!
I realize that supplies for 3D printers will not last forever, but the alternative of spending almost as much for a new slicer doesn’t make sense, either.
There’s a crowd here who can’t see anything between “business as usual” and “Mad Max.” They won’t be happy with the notion of 3D printing of unavailable replacement parts. Too bad. We’re going to need a lot of diversity of ideas to make it through the coming bottleneck. The future isn’t going to be a “one size fits all” world.
Interesting regarding 3D printers.
It is an artifact resulting from a shift of the physical to the virtual. The 3D printer is a symbol of powerful software and microprocessors and relatively simple manufacturing methods.
However, do not underestimate the complexity of the computer which makes a 3D-printer functional.
if the don got a 3d printed heart it would save me the trouble of donating mine
and if the 3d printed heart could be made of stone?
well at least he would sink faster when he’s sent to sleep with the fishes
He probably already got 3D printed gills.
https://youtu.be/peeWHtYsmdM
The best thing about the don must be the copious amount of salt he can pour on the pretentious liberals. 👌
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/105/036/ada.jpg
Old news!
https://youtu.be/rgxDixvWbLE
Jan if you didnt understand certain ubiquitous parts of human behavior you label mad max you wouldnt have set yourself up on a island. Good job by the way. Those parts of human behavior you refer to are actually the norm, they are actually BAU.
There are multiple reasons, actually.
You are right that starving people don’t swim very well. But it is also a self-imposed sort of austerity and frugality — if I don’t have something I want, I don’t just run off to the nearest big box store and get it; I have time to re-think how bad I want it, I have to plan a ferry trip, I have to stack up other errands to amortize the cost of the ferry.
But dammit, things like FedEx and UPS blow that all to hell now and then.
Also, there’s a greater cohesion to island life. People feel like “we’re all in this together,” even if they don’t really know what they’re in for. There is a lot of civic involvement and sharing here. (There are also higher than average number of homeless, come to take advantage of our sense of civic duty.
I suspect that, when the excrement is applied to the ventilator, those who have not left will stick together.
But I’m also thinking many will abandon before then. A year and a week ago, a massive wind storm hit our electrical grid — hard. Some were without power for more than three weeks. With wood heat and clean stream water, it was more like camping to us, but after the first week, many people abandoned their island homes to go stay with friends and relatives.
Great points! Your hard work pays off regardless of what happens. Community it cant be underestimated.
On behalf of the Island of Gozo, I respectfully agree.
Interesting… about a third of the size, and three times the population… you’re going to have a few more challenges that we will in the coming bottleneck, I suspect.
How do you like it there?
I’m totally sold on island life. I’m currently in Bellingham, Washington, with family. It’s not a huge place, and totally progessive, but I can’t help feeling like I’m in some alien civilization. For example, my grandkids’ elementary school principal was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide — along with their pets — on Christmas Eve. This, in a lovely neighbourhood, in a lovely town.
I made some insensitive comment about how that sort of thing seems all too common here, and that it was extremely rare in Canada, and immediately got all sorts of push-back. Not yet getting it that I should “back off,” I further noted that some 500 Americans die in gun violence for every Canadian, or about 45:1 on a per capita basis. Everyone turned on me with excuses and platitudes about “Freedom” and such.
I guess I had it coming. But I was amazed at the level of denial among Trump-hating, left-leaning Americans.
Meanwhile, back on Salt Spring, we had one murder in the past 60 or so years. A bunch of local thugs beat up a homeless person who’d been stealing from rural people who are used to leaving their houses unlocked, and they went a bit too far.
I’m totally sold on island life. I’m currently in Bellingham, Washington, with family. It’s not a huge place, and totally progressive, but I can’t help feeling like I’m in some alien civilization.
Jan, I found your comment intriguing as well as confusing. From the other side of the big pond in Honshu—where mass killers use knives or poison, or ram their cars into pedestrians—I got the impression that the totally progressive people in the US were strongly anti-gun. But from what you are saying perhaps that isn’t the case in Bellingham.
Or was it that these people might agree with you in principle, but are very sensitive to anything perceived as critical of their society from an outsider and they take these criticisms personally?
I think that’s the case.
I get a lot of defensiveness and push-back when I tell Americans how much better certain things are in Canada.
I don’t know if it’s envy or jealousy, or perhaps despair, or perhaps they’ve really swallowed the “USA #1!” thing, hook, line, and sinker, but Americans seem not to take criticism of America very well.
When I lived in Europe, there was a good deal of good-natured back and forth about which country was better, and why. And one is reminded of the lyrics of Finlandia, Sibelius’s wonderful Finnish national anthem, which notes that “… other lands, have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine”
There’s something uniquely American about believing they’re at the top of the heap.
Hey Jan,
As a Canadian gun-lover, I might point out that while guns likely make violence / murder easier, I don’t believe that simply owning a gun makes one want to act out violently.
I’m more of the mind that there are issues woven into the social fabric of America that simply make it a more violent place. Don’t know what those issues are, or if/how they could ever be removed (or even if they should be removed – but that has more to do with the fact I have this crazy point of view that the planet is over-populated and I’ve shed the bias that all unnatural deaths are fundamentally bad in nature), but I guess I’m grateful we don’t see it as much up here in Canada (eh).
Cheers,
-GBV
No argument there.
But I still believe that simple access makes “heat of the moment” gun violence go way up.
Lots more gun-based suicides, for example. Also, killing of close family members.
In most of Europe, owning a gun is a privilege and not a right. People tend to be careful with their privileges. For example, in Sweden, minor felonies (not gun related) will in most cases result in a revocation of the license to own firearms. You are deemed not suited for the responsibility of owning a firearm.
If you decide to whip out the firearm to defend yourself, then you better have some pretty good reasons and chasing off trespassers isn’t one of them. Otherwise you won’t see your firearms again for the foreseeable future.
It is furthermore not easy to obtain these privileges as theoretical and practical tests are required, and in addition a clean criminal record.
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12351824/gun-control-sweden-solution
From my experience, most people don’t last on islands longer than 2 years- 80%.
(I’ve lived in Micronesia and Hawaii).
Yea, we call it the “two year wall” here.
Duncan, a most respected admonition. I have lived here for but 15 months, and so cannot refute your claim. But I lived, and lived well, on the island (and city state) of Singapore. And it is my sincere hope that this Island will become my retirement home, and one that will serve me well, as I hope to serve it.
I’ve lived on an island for the last 20 years. Does the size, or level of industrialization, of the island matter? Britain or Honshu or Manhattan seem different from St. Helena or Pitcairn.
Of course!
There are some metrics available from some studies — sorry, don’t have references at hand. This is from memory of the research I did when site-seeking.
Various forms of self-governance seem to work up to groups of 150 or so, and you have to go “representative” over that.
The First Nations here in BC (that’s Canuk for “Native Americans”) used a hierarchy of houses, clans, and tribes, to form and keep agreements among larger populations — the smallest units, the houses, went up to around 150, when they would split.
This is not a strict hierarchy with a power-of-150 exponential product. Multiple people from various groups worked together with various other groups, and the practical level of effective cooperation among such groups appear to be 4,000 or so individuals.
But the coming bottleneck is expected to decimate the population, so I’d think a limit of 40,000 or so would be a prudent current size population for an island.
Keep in mind also that your island must support its expected population with subsistence farming! In our biome, with our climate, you need about 1/2 acre per person. Factor in a generous cushion for drought, blight, etc., and call it an acre per person.
This suggests an arable land mass of some 4,000 acres, minimum, for a population of 4,000.
I actually think the level of industrialization should be as little as possible! Most islands with populations of 10,000 to 40,000 or so will have hydro, roads, schools, hospitals, super markets, etc. Smaller islands are less addicted to the industrial infrastructure, but they may not have enough population to have staying power.
It’s a huge question. Do all the research you can before settling in, or you may get arrested for turning goats loose in Central Park, New York City!
Earth is an island in interstellar space. Sooner or later we all leave this island.
https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/127234.jpg
“For example, my grandkids’ elementary school principal was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide — along with their pets — on Christmas Eve.”
I wont say prayers for anyone who harms children or animals. Character flaw on my part I would say. It is very nice in Canada. Especially with the political hate in the USA right now. I guess if people dont like the USA they can go up north like you did Jan. Their choice. Me Im staying. Born here. Indian blood. My land I will die here. My choice.
Do you eat animals?
Do you pick your nose?
Oh, the horrors — thousands of bacteria, savagely killed!
Sometimes if I am working a lot i will eat some fish or some beef otherwise i cant keep my energy where it needs to be to do the work I hunted for many years feeling it was the only honest way to see the death. Omost 20 years ago I stopped. Hurt me worse than going without meat. Just a wus I guess. I will sometime pick up road kill deer. If they are warm dogs get the meat if hot I eat some of it. Barley, rice, lentils, fruit and vegetables work well for me. Barley a bit hard on the gut nowadays.
Do you eat animals?
Do you cause animals to starve to death by eating food said animals would otherwise be eating or else eating food grown on land that would otherwise provide food for said animals?
Oh, the horrors — thousands of bacteria, savagely killed!
Not to worry, billions of other bacteria will have their revenge.
“We’re going to need a lot of diversity of ideas to make it through the coming bottleneck. The future isn’t going to be a “one size fits all” world.”
+++++++++
And I think there can be an overarching SYSTEM of diversity as well. So the whole is considered, but with more attention to the diversity of its subsections than the blanket heterogeneity that the economic system fosters.
It will inevitably become culture. Commerce and the tastes and wishes of people will reflect a desire to yet again become closer to nature.
“No one adopts austerity voluntarily”
Well, many religious orders have done so, for many many centuries. I believe the rule was “poverty, chastity, and obedience”. But for the rest of us, I suggest adopting instead “simplicity”. Acquire things of value and that give comfort, yes, but not things that need constant maintenance, usually with your labour or at your expense. In the beginning, you own your things; but there comes a tipping point, after which the things own you.
When my family had grown up and made their own way, I had a golden opportunity to test this lifestyle. In 1997, I arrived in Singapore with one suitcase, and while waiting for the taxi vowed that, if things didn’t work out, I would leave with one suitcase. And in 2018, I did. But was followed by nine boxes of “things”: one box with my computer, one with sheets, blankets, cutlery and the like, and seven with books, music, and videos. Incidentally, I refused the proffered insurance from the moving company, because most of what I valued was irreplaceable. Ayn Rand called it the wealth of selection, not of acquisition, and I believe she had the right of it.
“The trouble with pensions, social security is they are a lie. We have been taught that there is a infinite pocketbook that can give us that candy bar.”
Say what? They are absolute necessities for modern civilization. I just read that the 500 richest people in the world made 1.5 trillion more dollars$ in wealth this year.. but it’s not that – no, it’s pensions and social security that are the problem, or people demanding higher wages..
blah blah blah you’re silly
As with all deluded liberals you think that money equals wealth. Money without energy backing is nothing else than empty promises.
Try rob the “rich” and watch the hyper inflation devastate your utopian delusions.
No sane civilization can operate on hopes and dreams.
https://tr2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2006/07/18/2f254c8e-c3c2-11e2-bc00-02911874f8c8/3464.jpg
And I agree. Those “trillions” are not wealth, they are claims on real goods and services. Therefore, best left to the rich, who will never cash the bulk of those claims, and will spend a little on luxuries. Luxuries created by the poor, for a wage they could not otherwise earn.
Do you remember when the US introduced a “luxury tax” on yachts? The idea was insane on the face of it: luxuries, by definition, are voluntary purchases, so people simply stopped buying. The result? Many small shipbuilding companies went bankrupt, and thousands of hard working artisans, experts in crafting luxuries, were thrown on the scrap heap.
So, tax the rich. And then? Give the money to the poor, who will spend it on necessities, as they must. But we do not have the energy resources to create more of those necessities, so they will rise in price and negate the entire purpose of the scheme.
Yes, that is the crux. How to justly redistribute wealth, if there is such a thing, on a finite planet with a severe overpopulation predicament.
Unfortunately I think this endeavor has to be abandoned for mankind to prevail.
https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ
Im old. I live off social security for about half of my needs. $1500 a month total. Believe me I dont want it cut. That doesnt keep me from understanding that it is not sustainable. We need to be honest. Real information allows the best choices. Pointing at the rich as a reservoir of wealth that should be taken is based on greed IMO. I live in the USA. We are all rich by any metric. YOU first. Distribute your wealth to the third world.
I often help hard working people. Yes where i live there are people a lot poorer than me. what enables me to do so is that I control capital. Young people deserve a chance. IF they will work. I keep up or exceed 30 year olds slinging rafters. keeps me fit.
Resources are wealth not money. They are finite. Stop worshiping money. Putting a blindfold on engaging in sanctimonious hate will not serve your community. Creating enemies and choosing hate is a path of destruction. Its also easy. Serving is hard. Your choice.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/48/de/06/48de0621e26c37352984e084ec071617–inspirational-memes-wisdom.jpg
on an individual basis, almost everyone knows you are right
on a collective basis, almost everyone rejects the truth of what you say
Hint:
Without the collective, you are screwed.
I don’t know how your 1500/month becomes an issue of sustainability. If anything, it’s a great thing for sustainability because you don’t have to rat-race for your mcjob anymore. It also pales to the 1.5 TRILLION that the 500 smug rich made over the course of this year. Gosh, most of you seem to be content in the trash heap that we are in, just so that it satisfies your wanking collapse models.
Well its $700 a month from ss. Im sure you understand that the social security fund was raided long ago and that ss is paid for with deficit spending that can never be repaid. You are choosing to ignore that and focusing on acquiring other individuals wealth. That is certainly a “smug” attitude. You sound lazy. Easier to be outraged and point fingers than to work.
Promises that cant be met are unsustainable. Do I really have to explain that to you? No.
You are choosing to avoid the truth and indulge your appetite for destruction.
By putting your focus on money as wealth (that you want to rob) rather than the truth that resources are the only real wealth you enable your indignity and self righteousness and justify your desire for theft. Every thief does that. Have you ever lived where there is no order?
You condemn the “rat race” at the same time as wanting to acquire its principle means. Do you know what sanctimonious means?
To some extent Im a hypocrite too. I accept my SS knowing that it is based on a lie, a false promise. I justify it by helping people who are willing to work hard.
If your car is running poorly you dont crash it into the wall. Thats how i see you want the revolution types. A fundamental change in human consciousness is the only solution I see. The taste for putting on pikes certainly doesnt work towards that. That IMO requires abandoning our appetite for destruction. The taste for putting heads on pikes is work toward more of the same that got us here. Laziness. It will lead ultimately to thermonuclear war IMO.
Im old. Ill be gone soon. You the young own your choices and responsibility now no matter how much you want to play the blame game. Indulge your capacity to hate and be lazy. Or work and find the middle ground. Your choice. You might still be able to blame all your created enemies once their heads are on pikes but that will not sustain you or your loved ones. You cant eat hate.
You do have a enemy. its your anger , your hate, and your appetite for destruction.
” Creating enemies and choosing hate is a path of destruction. Its also easy. Serving is hard. Your choice.”
+++++
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made”
Immanuel Kant (1724 to 1804)
For those who prefer the original, it is given below, but in spite of my love of the German tongue, I still think Kant reads better in translation. As we English say, Brevity is the soul of wit.
“Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden.”
It’s a great observation, metaphorically speaking, regardless of the language it’s stated in.And it’s particularly impressive as Kant was a Prussian, and people don’t come much straighter than them. When I am confronted with a fresh example of blood-boiling crookedness, reminding myself of Kant’s words often helps me calm down.
Thank you, Tim. My favourite German calm down, though, is Friedrich von Schiller’s “Das Lied von der Glocke”, most of which, happily, I have to heart. His epitaph, by the way, was written by Goethe
Er glänzt vor uns, wie ein Komet entschwindend,
unendlich Licht mit seinem Licht verbindend.
Would you consider reading some Jungian thought on archetypes and myth? I was just reading a book on this subject by Louise Marie von Franz. Science and myth are more closely related than you might think
“Science and myth are more closely related than you might think”
or perhaps that is just a modern myth… 😉
Yep, next time you step on a airliner and fly 500 MPH, thank the myth of the people who designed and manufactured it.
Duncan, when (if ever), you plan to step into a 737 MAX, remember the myth of King Midas.
Nobody ever died from a few bugs in the control software. By the way, are we even sure it is bugs, it could have been undocumented features?
The 737 MCAS was directly responsible for the two crashes, precisely because it was an “undocumented feature”. In other words, the pilots didn’t know it existed and therefore did not know how to turn it off. It was also buggy: it relied on the input of just one sensor known to be unreliable.
But of course, the MCAS was only the proximate cause; the entry point to the failure mode. As I taught in my systems reliability course, you need to look for the root cause. The technical root cause was of course the fact that the plane was aerodynamically unstable; in other words, it should never have been built. And the management cause was a desire to beat Airbus to the market, by pretending the new aeroplane was a simple “upgrade” that needed neither proper external certification nor additional pilot training; both claims were flat lies. In other words, the root cause was greed and a culture of greed.
The 737 Max was seen as market share gold. In fact, it was dross, and even King Midas could not have made it gold. But Boeing still has to eat it.
I know Robert,
It is a standing joke within the discipline of software engineering that a bug is an undocumented “feature”.
I’ve probably flown in one—
i wonder if this was a technology trap that Boeing fell into. because of the US military’s desire to use stealth technology, the planes originally built by Lockheed were “aerodynamically unstable”. i think this was also the case for the Grumann B-2. they solved this problem with advanced software and sensors. perhaps Boeing used this fix to make up for a crash program (no pun intended) to make the MAX planes?
For doomphd:
A classic technology trap is an idea that works in the short term, is bad to disastrous in the long term, and *that cannot be undone*. The Roman over irrigation of North Africa was such a trap, whose consequences are still with us. Our use of antibiotics is another such trap, since, as we now discover, the bugs can evolve immunity far faster than we can evolve chemicals.
The 737MAX indeed fell into a trap: the belief that software can trump physics. It may be acceptable in military aircraft, where accidental losses are an acceptable part of making war, but in a commercial airliner it simply won’t work. Boeing should just scrap the plane and take the loss: the longer they delay, the greater the damage will be.
Intermittent electricity is another technology trap. Its cost of integration into the grid seems to be minimal for the first tiny amount, then rises exponentially as grid upgrades and batteries become more and more essential. We have hit the exponential part of the cost cycle. At the same time, the subsidies become unsustainable. It will be too late when we realize how much better fossil fuels are than intermittent renewables. The subsidies for wind and solar will be part of what keeps fossil fuel prices too low for producers. The missing fossil fuel electricity generating plants cannot be replaced.
It seems to me that it was the belief that software can trump human pilots. I’ll bet that, if the control system had not totally taken over, the human pilots would have had a chance at saving the day. As it was, the human pilots were not even aware that software had taken over.
I’ve worked with a lot of “fighter jocks.” They don’t put up with software taking over. The first thing they want to know, is “Where’s the ‘defeat’ switch for that?”
Robert, most aircraft of today is fly-by-wire. The pilots does not directly control the control surfaces. The computer does that.
The problem with the MAX is that they did not perform the HARA/HAZOP assigning the proper safety mechanisms accordingly to the aviation DAL category.
I am sure the software performed as intended with disastrous results since there were big gaping holes in the risk assessment and mitigation strategies.
Might I suggest as an initial foray into this field:
Wolfgang Pauli, “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler”, from 1948.
I did a little checking on line.
Louise Marie von Franz lived from 1915 to 1998. She worked with Carl Jung as an analyst and an interpreter of dreams. According to Wikipedia, M.-L. von Franz understood that there are two levels of reality: The psychological, inner world with its dreams and myths was as real as the outer world.
Two of her books that seem to have been popular (based on the number of ratings on Amazon) are
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (with Kendra Crossen) 1996
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (C. G. Jung Foundation Books Series) 1995
Do you recommend any book in particular?
Gail, if you have ample spare time, read Jung himself. I’ve read almost all of his published works (but not The Red Book), and recommend these:
“The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”
“Aion, Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self”
“Psychology of the Unconscious”
And a little more esoteric:
“Psychology and Alchemy”
“Mysterium Coniunctionis”
My study of Jung is one reason (of several) that I believe computers, algorithmic machines, will never understand natural language: because human consciousness is not algorithmic, it is associative. Language is grounded in metaphor; the metaphors are grounded in the archetypes; the archetypes are grounded in the Objective Psyche; that is where you will find the “qualia”.
Wrong Robert, 😎
That concept of qualia has since long been abandoned by modern philosophy, neuroscience and theory of computation.
If you think about it for some time, isn’t it that computation, information processing, itself gives rise to the subjective aspect. Let me flesh it out below, no pun intended.
Nobody believes a single celled organism experiences anything in particular. In principle they operate as a electromechanical/chemical relay in their daily biddings. Now, our brains consists of billions of cells, none of which carries any particular significance or importance, thus it is obvious that the whole is more than its parts.
One thought experiment; assume we are to systematically replace each cell in your brain with an electronic device that mimics its function, for the sake of argument, better than the noisy and fickle biological counterpart for which there is an abundance of redundancy to cover for its limitations. It is why for example people having a stroke can recover remarkably well.
Then slowly replace one brain cell after another with these electronic devices. Now, when will the subjective quality of Robert vanish and become a soulless mechanistic apparatus?
If we replace just one, will Robert cease to be human? Of course not. Then one must conclude that either there is one particular cell that is the threshold. But since we just concluded that none of the cells carry any particular significance and importance. This hypotheses must be rejected.
The purely electronic Robert Firth will of course be as human as the biological counterpart. If not more so, since the electronic Robert will think much faster and reliable, not limited and constrained by age, sickness and death of brain cells.
The ego is the grandest of illusions, the feeling of self and all other subjective qualities. In fact, it all floats around in the void of biological computation. It is rhythm, vibration, perception and actuation. It is nothing else than pure computation.
Embrace the void Robert, embrace it. It is the only sane perspective. 😊
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/96/63/9f/96639f0706b3697c2c788fcae6af3105–silhouettes-visit-china.jpg
https://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU
I am afraid human systems like this do not work at all.
Prone to failure; do not rebuild on their own. Introduce toxins to the rest of the system.
Forget about the details for a moment Gail. Think about the implications of the gedankenexperiment.
Update thanks to rilygtek. The artificial intelligentsia abandoned qualia because they could not explain them; they were, and still are, an insurmountable barrier to their theories of algorithmic consciousness. Therefore, they do not exist. But human consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, which of course no Turing machine can replicate. And if Libet’s work is valid, the mind can also send information backwards in time, which is why we feel our footsteps at the same time as we see them.
For me, having followed this subject since “Machine Intelligence I”, the tipping point was when the goal of the machine translation of natural language was covertly abandoned. It was replaced by algorithms that mined human translation, extracted fragments, and stitched them together. Exactly as John Searle’s “Chinese Room” satire of 1980 had proposed.
Yes, I have read all that a long time ago. It has all been refuted. By the way, are you sure I am not a computer program? 100%?
“Programmers worldwide are preparing to welcome our new robot overlords, after the University of Reading reported on Sunday that a computer had passed the Turing test for the first time.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/09/what-is-the-alan-turing-test
If there is no reductionist method which can explain conscious experience. Then there is no such actual experience besides the illusion it gives as the cognitive apparatus processes information.
The processing itself is thus the experience. It is all process. Spooky “quantum” effects and the brain as an antenna is nothing but hope for afterlife in disguise. A means to put meaning into the void that is our minds, which is computation, and underpins all existence.
Here is another interesting gedankenexperiment, explain the color red to a person born without functioning eyes. How could you ever convey the meaning of a color to such a person?
It does not exist in the conceptual framework of this person. It is a meaningless endeavor, because the color red is the phenomenon of conceptual information processing inside the skulls of people with working visual cortex and eyes subjected to a electromagnetic light beam of a certain frequency.
You are fooled by your mind. It is all process.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/10/9f/a4/109fa4f03967f757215a0d105dc7e2f4.jpg
If I may presume to distill your reply into one sentiment, it is this: if there is no reductionist explanation of a phenomenon, then that phenomenon does not exist. As you can imagine, I respectfully disagree. But by all means, let us continue the dialogue. It is good that ones beliefs should be challenged from time to time.
Some disagreement moves the front forward. And it is fun.
To answer bluntly; I consider mysticism as useless. The reductionist approach gives understanding of how the brain works through cognitive neuroscience and cognitive computation. From this knowledge it is possible to draw reasonable conclusions.
I have absolutely no problem with mechanistic cognitive processes having a subjective quality. Actually. I think it is a feature of this universe that all state transitions are subjective in nature. However, the sum of all minuscule state transitions seem to give rise to something that is greater than the whole. That is a mystery to me, but as with nature, I think the universe revels in complexity and self referential systems. Our minds is a reflection of this obscurity.
We are all individuals, yet we are connected with the fabric of the universe through the matter which constitutes our natural (or synthetic) processing devices.
Through these devices the universe can perceive itself as a low-fidelity rationalization of itself through the workings of our minds.
That is something which I consider much more profound than the qualia of experience, which anyway is the smoke and mirrors of cognitive information processing.
Some of my current speculation:
http://oil-price.net/ shows both dub & Bent prices up, in all 4 of their time-graph periods.
My idea is: with oil prices chronically down since 2014, new oil-field development was sharply curtailed, for lack of funds — but, it still paid better for oil extracters to keep the supply chains going (to keep SOME revenue still coming) — this, however, has a time-lag effect: as “peak oil” comes, there is a bidding-up of prices for the then-stagnated oil supply, until the heavily-debt-ridden financial system “collapses” (the currently-higher oil prices being unable to much increase the oil supply, because of the time-lag, & huge amounts of “capex” which would be needed for that, with “diminishing returns” as Earth’s “easy oil” dissapears).
Is this symptomatic of “peak oil”?
The profitability of the oil industry will go back up. However, average prosperity will go down.
The structural underpinnings of the economy cannot afford to cannibalize itself to maintain speculation and consumerism. The point will come when the bamboozling fluff will be thrown aside and productivity will again be the norm as the waste generation is being curtailed.
I think we already are starting to notice this indeed.
There seem to be frequent little upticks in prices. But they don’t last for long. Somehow, wages levels and relativities to the dollar matter.
The existence of world trade is important for keeping the price of oil up, I expect. If tariffs or anything else interferes, energy prices seem likely to drop.
I am not certain what happens if the US dollar stops being the world’s reserve currency. It seems like the change would reduce world trade, and cause the price of oil and other commodities to fall further.
So, I don’t really see oil prices spiking for very long, or very high, in the future.
Not so sure Gail.
We shall see- this are rising currently, as supplies are waining.
World peak was Nov/dec of 2018, and this are getting a bit edgy.
Duncan,
One of the ideas that Tim Morgan in Surplus Energy Economics makes well is the increasing dollars per unit of oil cost, or as our host says, “lack of cheap oil.” Once more oil is used to get each unit out of the ground it simply isn’t available to be spent a second time, pesky physics, which results in some part of the economy no longer working, sunk costs, etc. and reduction of demand. It is not the cost, the surplus energy is not there to support the demand; e.g. the oil that was used to extract oil cannot be burned in a car. Oil isn’t of much use above a certain price or more precisely there isn’t enough of it left over.
Per Gail this is a system and all of it must be taken into account at the same time. Now, I really don’t understand how it all interrelates, but there is some logic to the decreasing price of oil, there isn’t enough to support large parts of the economy and technological innovation to increase efficiency reaches a limit.
No argument here, an attempt to understand how this all plays out in the local world in which I live, the rest really is beyond my scope of actionable personal change.
Dennis L.
Well, we shall observe the near future and see—
Speculation on this one is very temporary.
We know an awfully lot of civilizations have collapsed.
We know that when ancient Babylon collapsed, it experienced low demand, and thus low prices, for pretty much everything, including humans sold as slaves. (Revelation 18:11-13)
We know that in the Depression of the 1930s, prices dropped very low.
We know that after the debt bubble popped in July 2008, oil prices (and, in fact, all kinds of commodity prices) dropped very low. It was only with the help of Quantitative Easing that commodity prices were able to rise again.
As sequencing is large part of the issue at hand, it could happen as follows, more countries/regions are thrown under the bus (chapter of frivolous consumerism) in order to keep the oil (energy price) inside some ~workable snake boundary, not too volatile. And if there is a price shock super spike just at the end of the road before the curtain goes down for ever, does it count? Not much in my book.
This trend is super charged (underlined) also by long term deals ala Russia-China/Russia-Europe, possibly of barter like / non USD denomination. He who is going to get the shortest shaft (near – midterm) seems to be the economies of S. America, Africa, and some Asians as well.. This “masked” triage could work perhaps for another ~decade. Obviously expect lot of unforeseen ricocheting bursting in the meantime throughout the process as well (instability)..
In the last decade:
S&P 500 is up 289.1 %
S&P 500 Energy is up 0.3 %
Light Crude Oil is down 23%
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMxsi1RWoAYiflN?format=jpg&name=900×900
The idea that prices would rise because of scarcity was obvious but wrong. A networked economy operates in a strange, upside down manner.
Oil gave it 100 times leverage. Fiat currencies a 1000 times. Networked economies work quite well in my opinion, until fiat currencies destroyed reality.
as the oil based 100x leverage of labor has been decreasing, debt has been leveraged up to try to keep the global networked economy going…
so though it might appear that debt/fiat is the problem which is destroying the economy, it is really the decreasing net (surplus) energy which is the real problem and which is below the surface and unnoticed/unknown by most people…
It is offset by the productivity gains from removing humans from the production lines.
There is however only so much jobs programs available for the displaced workers.
The few remaining productive will not accept unreasonable taxation. And even if they did, the Laffer curve theory guarantees that the real tax income will diminish and everybody would be worse off.
I do not tend to agree David. We replaced reality with hopium and greed.
This started with the first loan, a few thousand years ago.
If it is not there, it is not there.
okay, I will also disagree…
debt worked fairly well as long as net (surplus) energy was increasing…
now net (surplus) energy is decreasing and debt is getting out of control…
looks like a very strong correlation to me…
the world has a major energy problem which is causing major financial problems…
At this festive time of year, for those not in the workhouse or in tent city, I do not intend to make any predictions for the year or decade ahead. Instead, I would like to offer the old chinese tale of Sai’s Horse, which use to be condensed in Japan into a proverb that goes 人間万事塞翁が馬, pronounced “ningen banji, saiou ga uma.” If you can come up with a way of slipping this into conversation with a Japanese acquaintance and they understand what the hell you are trying to say, then they are bound to think you are clever.
A few years ago, a blogger named Brian Crammer noted that this proverb is generally translated into English as “All human affairs are like Saiou’s horse”. More interesting, he noted the back story, which goes something like this:
During a period of war, Sai’s horse ran away into enemy territory. (bad luck?)
A while later the horse came back with a bunch of other horses. (good luck?)
With so many horses around, Sai’s son decided to learn to ride them, and promptly fell off one and broke his leg. (bad luck?)
The war then escalated and many young people from the area died in battle, but Sai’s son survived because he was home with a broken leg. (Good luck!)
So the moral of the story is: When something good or bad happens, you can never say for sure how it will turn out in the end. Some bad events turn out for the better, and some good events turn out for the worse. So it’s best not to party too hard when things are going your way, nor beat yourself up too badly when they are not.
And with that, I’d like to wish everybody interesting times in the coming New Year with lots of opportunities to experience luck, fortune, chance, fate, destiny, accident and coincidence. And please be careful in the saddle.
http://kenjinoblog.com/0503/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/%E5%A1%9E%E7%BF%81%E3%81%8C%E9%A6%AC.jpg
True. Things don’t seem to turn as badly as expected or as well as expected.
good story, Tim! an Englishman writing in Japan and relating a Chinese story…
followed by me, an American with mostly European ancestors, but supposedly not German, quoting a German theologian, who I vaguely remember from my long ago days when I took up reading postmodernism and some postmodern theology:
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “History, in all its totality, can only be understood when it is viewed from its endpoint.”
for him, that was something about how the meaning of everything can and does change over time, and will continue to do so until God wraps up human history… at least that’s the impact that it had on me…
surely that is mythical, obviously since there is a mythical God involved, but your story reminded me of the reality of how the meaning of events changes over time…
That is how meaning works. Sören Kierkegaard expressed it like this
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Kirkegaard is wrong.
Life will always be confusing when looking backwards. In all history there is forgetfulness and misunderstanding of context in memory.
Why does there always have to be this taint of banality in western epistemology? Can we not just stop with the endless cliche and at least give a honest try in placing the cart behind the horse?
“Life will always be confusing when looking backwards. In all history there is forgetfulness and misunderstanding of context in memory.”
this is true, and suggests of postmodernism…
but what other choice do we have?
all past experience and past recorded history is filtered through the imperfect human mind…
if we look for meaning, it is an imperfect human construction, but each person has their own best version of meaning, though “best” falls short of a perfectly comprehensive interpretation of reality…
ah, postmodernism…
such fun…
This reminds me of a puerile schoolboy joke that was popular when I was a puerile schoolboy in short trousers.
If your nose is running and your feet are smelling, this mean’s you’re a backward boy.
It should be the other way around.
Or, as Revelation xxii:13 has it:
ἐγὼ τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ, ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ ἔσχατος, ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ τέλος.
(I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last)
In my view, this is not a good translation. Eskhatos doesn’t mean just “the last”, it means the end of a process, the final goal. Our word “eschatology” is derived from it, the study of the last things. In this verse, then, God is identifying himself as both First Cause and Final Cause, which is very much in line with this thread,
Interesting!
It’s all Greek to me, Robert. So I’ll have to trust you on this one.
One of the wisest tales. I know that as the tale of ‘The Old Man on the Hill’: when his neighbours turn up to congratulate ofrcommiserate with him on the turn of events, he just says ‘So, you think hat this was bad/good luck?’ Wise old man.
Corn cobs break the good luck bad luck rule. Bad luck.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wild-swings-in-repo-rates-raise-concerns-about-bond-markets-liquidity-11570449601 is there a possibility that high interest rates could cause a wipeout in oil coal reserves leading to way less supply and high demand leading to a high oil price but permanently as supply would be severely .
possibly, if central banks lose control of interest rates, but I think that is very doubtful, since one of the two things that CBs cannot allow to happen is for interest rates to go up above the current levels which are close to zero (or lower) and MUST stay there…
(the other is stock markets MUST stay up…)
otherwise, you might be missing the other key component of oil supply/demand…
overall demand will definitely be dropping in the 2020s because net (surplus) energy will be dropping and this will cause economic activity to contract…
human labor is a small part of the economic activity of IC, and the real driver of economic growth has been energy growth, but that is NOW coming to an end…
with less energy there is less wealth and so less demand…
that’s why oil prices have been so LOW lately… haven’t you noticed?
so even if oil supply goes lower, oil demand will probably go lower faster and sooner…
in this race of oil supply/demand, the drop in demand is WINNING…
only a severe crash in oil supply could raise prices very high, and that has a black swan chance, which is low but possible…
I am afraid you will probably be correct.
A big thank you Gail for all your informative blog posts this year. Always a must read.
Also a thank you to all the commenters that keep such lively debate going – especially Xabier, a trillion Davids, Harry (great news source), Norman, worldofhanumanotg, Tim Groves, Jan, Dennis L, Yoshua, volvo and the ghost of FE who have been commenting here for a long time. All worth reading.
Happy New Year
Just reading this at the moment.
https://www.francois-roddier.fr/blog_en/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Thermodynamics_of_evolution.pdf
Great for those that really want to get their heads around dissipative structures that Gail refers to frequently.
Francois Roddier sent me a copy of this several years ago. He didn’t want me to post it, because he hoped to find a US publisher. That didn’t work out, however.
Hence your impressive knowledge on dissipative structures.
Thanks
Thanks to my many faithful commenters. Also, thanks to my new commenters. We can use commenters of many backgrounds. It is the overall mix that is helpful. No one knows everything.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/self-driving-pizza-delivery-now-california
I don’t know why, but my mind immediately switched to the “promise ” of green energy when I saw this and from there I got into a circular dilemma. This whole delivery system might be as energy inefficient as people driving to pick up their pizzas or having them home delivered. But then I started thinking in terms of human labor being substituted by machines. This would mean that human labor is too costly, which goes against my gut instincts. With the world population at 7 billion-plus, you would think human labor should be dirt cheap and getting cheaper every day, leaving workers with less money to afford things like home delivered pizzas and no leverage to bargain for higher wages which seem to drive big corporations to this mechanization fantasy. Why is it “cost effective” in the long run to substitute robots? Maybe I can see for welding cars in factories, but delivering pizza’s? Maybe only in the short term.These highly complex delivery systems’ true costs are obscured by a runaway credit system that we see going on in the shale industry, or by tax subsidies as seen in the solar/wind energy system. We are slowly being sucked into a true negative feedback loop undertow.
I guess my mind immediately envisioned these automated deliveries being made to people living in tents on the streets. It’s just wildly preposterous and this high tech is yet another Ponzi investment scheme that makes no sense when it depends on selling investors the idea that everybody can afford home delivered pizza’s, and that therefore it will become a growth industry.
Drivers might be a problem, millennials don’t drive that much, perhaps the wages required are too high to be profitable for the company. The overall goal is to reliably get a product to its destination with minimal fuss; people are messy, HR is a very difficult issue, liability is an issue. To the company it is the liability cost of a robot vs a human, the robot will most likely be lower. Multiple cameras on the vehicle and real time recording will be much more reliable than eye witness accounts of theft, etc. Facial recognition makes it easy to find the thief, especially when combined with cell phone tracking. The cost to the thief will be real; immediate tracking to where he/she lives, immediate incarceration, with photographic id along with a time stamp location, cost of stealing a pizza is too high.
A human delivery person could be intimidated into not testifying, a large corporation would be almost untouchable, who does one intimidate? It is different in the “hood,” everyone knows everyone, nobody talks as they have to live there.
It seems the robot has a good chance of being cost effective and fast prosecution would have a quick deterrent on future thefts.
Dennis L.
The company owning the robot has very deep pockets. The company owning the robots will not be well liked. Punitive damage awards, if permitted, are likely to be very high.
I would not count on reliable 5G service either. If nothing else, electricity outages will be rising, cutting off all internet service.
In modern high volume production systems, replacing machines with free human labor is not cost effective. Take for example pumping oil or propelling ships on the seas, all highly automated systems crucial for IC.
The only productive humans of today are those who design, manufacture or service highly automated systems. The cost of [well paid] factory operators are more or less a rounding error in the machinery once it runs at maximum rate.
Can you feel the scale and intractability of the problem?
Well, even Musk at some point realized he initially over robotized the car assembly line, and had to hire normal human workers instead.. But as we mentioned previously – elsewhere in the chain he managed to shorten the battery assembly plant by a huge factor. So, perhaps a wash in the final aggregate calc..
Free meals on wheels for those that can take it.
i don’t imagine it is that hard to steal from a robot or heist a van full of pizza.
Maybe they will get an armed escort like donut deliveries do 😉
Stay tuned.
Google says US minimum wage is $7.25 (much higher in Europe).
If you THINK you can save that by oursourcing or automating you do.
The onslaught from FW issues and automation will be brutal in the near-term.
It is just too cheap with microprocessors, sensors and electric actuators, compared with humans, even if they work for free.
It require less energy to build, maintain and to operate, compared with humans.
DJ,
It is not only the wage cost, it is the management costs. HR costs are huge, labor law is incredibly complex, getting humans in one location not to violate someone’s various rights is not easy thing. With automation not only are floor costs reduced, so are back office costs, payroll costs even direct deposit costs.
Automation is becoming a commodity, it appears much of the software is becoming open source, the greatest challenge is being intelligent enough to integrate it all together although much of that appears to becoming plug and play.
Networking comes to mind, Novell routers were very complex to install and maintain, now that complexity is incorporated into a home router/WIFI/modem from your internet provider, soon 5G will eliminate even that.
It is a real challenge to learn all of this but only a few people are required, much easier to manage.
Dennis L.
There is a huge overhead cost with 5G networks. I have a hard time believing that it will be possible to financially support the cost of widespread 5G networks. A small percentage of users need the greater capability, but a large share of users just want/can afford cheap internet service.
5G is not for the general population. It is specifically designed for M2M communication. It is part of the enormous automation/AI push.
It is not intended for you, it is for the owners to control the means of the production, which is rightfully theirs to be in charge of.
Someone has to pay the cost. The single mother buying internet service so her child can do his homework cannot be expected to pay higher charges to support the system. If only the wealthiest 2% benefi, somehow the need to pay for the system.
“rightfully”?
Do you want to seize the means of production perhaps?
https://broadly-images.vice.com/images/2017/04/27/how-meme-culture-is-getting-teens-into-marxism-body-image-1493276016.jpg
I dont think the control would end up in worthier hands.
Look to those romantic, thatched farm houses of the 13th to 15th centuries, the Low Saxon house, in northern Germany, where heavy soil granted heavy crops and life was easy. One finds one single room for the farmer’s family and another one for the staff. Like 15 people in a 10sqms room. Where did all these people sleep, men, women, kids, screaming babies? In the hay, next to the cattle to keep warm in winter? No heating, no bathrooms, no privacy. I guess the American early logs and cabins and the sheds for the slaves were not any better. Noone wants to go back to there. And that’s the whole problem.
Happy days!
The envious transferiat wants us back there, as their impending irrelevance is looming, then everybody else also must regress together with them.
Just say no to the redundant clergy and charlatans of new, peddlers of a soothing lie, demanders of unreasonable changes. They, indeed they, can take the first step moving back into the misery and drudgery of old. Life as a subsistence farmer awaits them.
Greta, Malena and Svante first, straight outta’ BAU and into oblivion and a life of endless drudgery, working day and night with no respite, no rest, and even during times of sickness out working in the fields with a burning fever in the body.
<sarc>I think your vision of subsistence farming is much too positive and upbeat.
You need to tone it down just a bit, or those of us who are doing it will get overwhelmed by all the newbies, rushing to the wonderful life ahead. I’d rather they crawled toward it near the end, as they’ll be so much easier to exploit then.</sarc> 🙂
I’m afraid there is a bit of misunderstanding going on..
The Thunbergs are basically halfwits who (are bamboozled to) believe in sort of keeping the current IC status at completely rewritten energy and technological footprint (ASAP) towards “green technologies”.. magic swap.. That’s a fairy tale for the adults.
Yes, there is/will be huge degree of misery and drudgery involved in the de-growth, or rather abandonment and back to land living. But chances are at least some regions will retain-employ some of the attained knowledge-understanding of nature hence NOT necessarily repeating the old grain tillage way of drudgery etc. How this trend/sub scenario would square with some sort of “needed/expected” rehashed return of feudalism (as in territorial protection function) is beyond my paygrade, perhaps it is possible way out, perhaps not a chance.. and hence likely relapse into the same old over extractive ways of food production anyway..
The Thunbergs are totally useless in a production apparatus or as competent artists, but I seriously doubt they are bamboozled, with the exception of Greta perhaps, due to her youth.
The climate circus is much more cynical than that. Malena wants to position Greta near the first row of the lavish eco fascism pork stew kettles. Because, Greta will most likely be dependent on handouts from the (N)GO’s for the rest of her life, just like she and Svante is.
Unfortunately, it is not what will happen. Hopefully Malena and Svante can get some alms during this circus which can be placed in a trust for Greta.
“I’m afraid there is a bit of misunderstanding going on..
The Thunbergs are basically halfwits who (are bamboozled to) believe in sort of keeping the current IC status at completely rewritten energy and technological footprint (ASAP) towards “green technologies”.. magic swap.. That’s a fairy tale for the adults.”
but Greta is completely sincere in her “beliefs”…
we should give her a pass, though not the adults…
she has been misinformed, though perhaps in 5 or 10 years she might be able to gather a large enough amount of the correct info to change her mind…
by the way, she turns 17 on January 3rd, for those who were wondering why she seems to have been 16 for so long…
“Fairy tale for adults” is a good description of green technologies.
if we do go there, I, among the few still living, am mentally prepared to use dried corncobs as bathroom tissue replacements, having done so on my great uncle’s farm when a small kid in the 1950s.
Ouch! They’re pretty rough.
I prefer mullein.
I preferred the pages of the old Sears catalog at the time, but of course those either have disappeared or will do so in the near future.
“what, you got some stock in Preparation H?”
note to file: buy stock in Preparation H and similar medications.
<grin>
Personally, I’m planning to produce alcohol. People always manage to afford it, especially in the worst of time. And if you don’t manage to sell it, you can at least burn it.
which speaks to the potential psychological difficulty of younger people having to return to the harder ways of former decades, whereas persons who grew up in such harder times thought it was just normal…
I assume there was a time when dried corncobs was Progress… I wonder what the previous technology was?
anyway, I predict that the supply of TP in my area will be high enough for me to purchase the amount which I “need” for 2020…
I doubt any of the few local corn farmers have kept a supply dry and ready…
We have a big box of them by the wood stove — they make great fire starters!
On a more practical note, I find some cotton washcloths in a small container of water with a capful of bleach in it replaces TP most satisfactorily.
too much information…
Talk about TMI — I can’t un-feel the feeling I got when reading about corn cobs… what, you got some stock in Preparation H? 🙂
Thats more like it! Gots to take care of the teeth and the butt. Corncobs? NOT.
Where does the bleach come from?
Fair question.
I haven’t looked into it, but it doesn’t take much, and I imagine it can be produced in small concentrations from civilization’s effluent.
For example, I’ll bet I could coax some out of waste PVC plastic. It could also come from hydrochloric acid, which is fairly simple to synthesize using no more temperature and pressure than you can get from a wood stove. Given a rather simple, low-power solar panel, I’ll bet one could get some through electrolysis of seawater, which has a great deal of NaCl.
I think I recall primitive bleach production is in the Foxfire books somewhere, and I’ve seen it in at least a couple of the “simple living” books I’ve collected.
A lot of things that are problematic on an industrial scale are actually not that difficult on a household scale. It’s only our obsession with assigning financial value for our time that makes us depend on purchased products like bleach. If you can make $20 and hour working, why spend hours on a $6 of bleach? But when your annual income is only a few thousand dollars, many more things are possible!
Only savages wipe their asses.
I reckon this will be the new export success intended for the eco concerned crowds.
https://youtu.be/U8KyBlGWI2k
Gravity fed rectum cleaning systems with roof mount solar heaters. There is technology for everything.
https://pics.me.me/kids-these-days-cont-live-without-technology-an-old-page-30251448.png
you forgot to mention plague
Funny how the “origin” of “civilization” always gets struck hardest with the plague.
https://www.historyhit.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Marseille-plague-2-700×390.jpg
I wonder what Gaia really thinks of these nature defying behemoths of artificiality?
http://myfantasyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GaiaV7Small.jpg
Agreed, Norman: plague used to be humanity’s top predator. Excessive concentrations of humans were sources of food; too much commerce, across long distances, was the ideal plague vector.
And it will all happen again, as our antibiotics lose their effectiveness, and hundreds of 737 Max aircraft turn a local outbreak into a world pandemic in 18 hours.
As prosperity vanes the cities will be the perfect breeding found of these pathogens.
There will be walls around the cities, but not to keep the periphery out, rather to keep the disease to spread out to the periphery.
https://youtu.be/lQ6RixnvP0k
While still living in England, I more than once visited “plague” villages. Villages where the plague had taken hold, but the inhabitants refused to leave, precisely so as not to infect others. Instead. they gathered what food, blankets, and courage they could, and assembled in the church, waiting to die.
I remember one such village, where after it had been repopulated, the villagers erected a sundial on the South wall of the church. Its motto: “Ut Umbra sic Vita”. Would we withstand such a test so well? Ignis aurum probat; miseria fortes viros.
I doubt the heroism. Where should they flee? To the next disease stricken village? Sick people don’t travel well, furthermore.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you too Gail for interesting and insightful essays and to everyone for good discussions with much to consider. Thanks to Harry McGibbs for the news quotes and links.
Let 2020 be a year of central banks and governments keeping the wolves at bay for just a bit longer.
We can cross our fingers. The situation doesn’t look very good, though.
Oh no don’t worry as you said Trumpy boy has got it all figured out…..amazing it only took him 3 years! No wars etc….and if he hasn’t well lets blame it on something like the left wing liberals…..and lets spend hours debating Greta Turdbird!
This whole thing has already been game planned by Nicole Foss about 20 years ago…..ever since it has just been rehashing everything that she said….
20 years ago she said that commodity prices would be low in 2019 because of lower demand (affordability) due to the growing wage disparity and the decline in overall wealth of the average person because of the decreasing net (surplus) energy flowing through the world economy which means lower per capita energy?
long question, eh?
AND that interest rates in much of The Core would go negative as a signal that the world economy was going to shrink no matter what any nation or international group tried to prevent it?
anyway, I’m VERY impressed that Nicole Foss had this all worked out 20 years ago…
it’s hard enough for me to predict the next year…
Something I wrote many years ago after another round of New Year preictions:
“The only future you have is your own future. … the future you didn’t worry about will be better than the future you did worry about.”
By the way, the name of Nasruddin’s donkey, the one he rode backwards, is Time.
Time! of course… we can see the past but not the future…
“The only future you have is your own future. … the future you didn’t worry about will be better than the future you did worry about.”
there are millions of “you”s in peripheral countries who experienced a significant downturn in their overall lives in 2019… refugees of course, but also many who stayed home in Venezuela and other SA countries, Ukraine, South Africa etc…
I predict that Creeping Collapse will continue in 2020 and many millions more “you”s will find that this one future year will be even worse than what they “did worry about”…
worrying about the future is a relative of prediction…
The natural auto immune reaction in Italy and Austria has been subverted/sabotaged from the HQ, so the Europe is again very vulnerable to any incoming migrant wave.
In such scenario, further-accelerated destabilization-impoverishment of Europe could boost-extend the relative quasi plateau (and or suspended slow motion deterioration) for the US..
It is not a migrant wave; it is a barbarian invasion. And the docile people of Europe are finally beginning to realise this. That is stage one. Stage two is when they realise it is being deliberately orchestrated by those in whom they placed their trust, And stage three is when they take a bloody and well deserved revenge.
Curt, you are welcome. Happy New Year to Gail and all at OFW!
Happy New Year to everyone, whenever you celebrate it.
i have a few predictions myself oil will go to 100 dollars a barrel and stay there trump will be replaced with a new president QE 4 will commence in earnest to avoid financial meltdown the US under the new president will rejoin the climate agreement it pulled out of and renewable energy will increase as a percentage of total world energy interest rates will increase as high inflation sets in and some bad news concerning fast eddy will be revealed to us by Gail.. i on the other hand feel confident that my predictions will be realised in 2020
Of course, in a networked economy, limits work backwards of what “common sense” would suggest. The big problem is wage and wealth disparity. Prices of fossil fuels and uranium fall too low. Economies collapse, for the umpteenth time.
Peak oilers did not study history. They did not study how self-organizing networked economies operated. They came up with a lot of wrong theories.
Even better than history, modern archaeology has much to teach us about the mechanics of societal collapse across cultures and regions.
The Peak Oil people were simply not sophisticated enough, on the whole.
Agreed. Another subject in a different area.
Xabier, I agree. Another treasure in my library: Jared Diamond, “Collapse”.
adonis! thank you for joining in on the game…
I think I disagree on every one of your predictions! 😉
though stealth QE4 is already here…
and you’re possibly correct that renewables will increase in %… the increase will probably be in the range of a tenth to two tenths of one percent…
bravo for your misplaced confidence!
Going by your past predictions I am with David here.
I forecast in 2011 that “A Trump” was inevitable by 2016 or 20, so here’s a future to play with, parts of it might have some validity—hopefully not all of it
Timeline 2020:
Trump is impeached.
Impeachment fails in the senate
Trump walks away convinced that the law does not apply to him.
Sees himself as above the law even more than he does now. He is untouchable.
He gets re elected.
Climate change officially seen as a hoax. All reference to it is removed from government affairs.
Timeline 2022:
The oil fracking boom comes to an end.
The US economic system is unsustainable without surplus energy input.
With depleted oil, the dollar loses its predominance in global finance.
The USA economy crashes into serious depression
widespread civil unrest increases due to lack of jobs and food.
(food needs an oil infrastructure)
States threaten to secede along racial, geographic, religious, racial lines
Timeline 2023
Trump is forced to take ’emergency powers’ to stop uprisings. No one is left to stop him. All are yes men and sycophants.
He becomes dictator.
Suspends 2024 election “as an emergency measure”
Timeline 2024
Trump family run the country.
Pelosi, Mueller, Comey et al are arrested as ‘enemies of the state’ and jailed without trial. The military /police recognise imminent national collapse and fall in line behind whoever pays their wages
The US constitution is suspended as more enemies of the people are rounded up.
Timeline 2025-onwards:
The jesusfreaks take over the dirty work of running the country’s law enforcement. There are no effective controls over policing methods. No shortage of holy recruits. The evangelicals claim their reward. The police loot to sustain themselves. (as they do now but on a bigger scale)
The USA becomes a theofascist dictatorship as civil war breaks out between seceded regions
2030
Severe energy depletion kicks in worldwide. Trump retreats to his bunker
Climate change begins to destroy the world economic system
political leaders remain in denial
Fanciful? Trump will not surrender power lightly. Climate change and energy depletion are certain.
Those three factors give interesting odds on my predictions
Norman, yep sounds about right. Those following the story know when the U.S. tracking book ends that is it. Could be 2021 or 2022 not much longer. Make the most of these last couple of years.
One thing you forgot was nuclear Armegeddon. You don’t think the jesusfreaks are going to go out with a whimper do you?
2020: I discover antigravity and build a colonisation ship.
March 2021: My first terraforming robots arrive on Mars and begin self replication.
May 2021: The colony ship leaves for Mars.
July 2021: Nuclear armageddon breaks out on Earth.
September 2021: the colony ship arrives, and Greta and I begin to populate Gaia Nova.
Then I wake up.
Norman, I absolutely love your future history scenario and can only prey that much of it comes true. All you’ve left out is that Trump crucifies Hillary but on the third day she rises again. The eejet forgot to drive a stake through her heart! You’ve mixed a bit of Robert Heinlein and a bit of Margret Atwood in there, haven’t you?
I think this deserves a novelization, if Norman can find a co-writer of fiction…
then it won’t be long until it’s a multi-year series on HBO or Netflix…
there are million$ to be made… 😉
i’m looking forward to the movie on Netflix, starring Alex Baldwin as Trump. a comedic tragedy with Gail doing the voice overs.
well if Margaret Atwood can make millions out of doomforecasting why not me?
the jesusfreaks will become the SS of the new order (nobody expects the spanish inquisition) As Ive often pointed out, the wermahct had ‘gott mit unz on their belt buckles. All this is recent history, and collectively, man will do what he sees as necessary in order to survive
Something I havent foreseen might interrupt the chain of events I set out, but if not, then my forecast is likely. Human nature will see to that
Or how about casting Hillary as the vampire in a remake of The Blood Spattered Bride; only this time around the special effect are real. Or Hillary Karnstein in a remake of The Vampire Lovers? It has promise.
“2030
Severe energy depletion kicks in worldwide. Trump retreats to his bunker
Clymate change begins to destroy the world economic system”
the brilliant scientist Dave Collum has a different take:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dave-collums-2019-year-review-and-epstein-didnt-kill-himself-part-2
refuting anything he writes about clymitt change looks exceedingly difficult…
if you haven’t read it, it’s long and detailed…
but why should anyone read it and have their views challenged?
really…
Thanks for posting that.
I used to think think that the only people who were Deniers were people of low IQ who watched Fox.
I am not sure how anyone cannot reassess their position after reading that paper
There are some top NASA scientists and Ivy League science professors who have dared to challenge ‘the science’ I would also note that two leading scientists were fired because they refused to toe the line.
Dave Collum has a superb podcast on Zero Hedge as well. He understand where we are headed.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/were-heading-very-very-bad-places-dave-collums-pandemonium-pocast
“The pensions are all underfunded — at the top of a financial asset price bubble, mind you.”
if the first part is true, then pension funds failed to gain enough value even while asset prices were zooming up to bubble level…
this is not going to end well…
The lesson is, never ever challenge the established neoliberal Marxist world order. You will be be labeled, demonized, and called all sorts of bad names.
All together now…. “Trump bad….Trump bad…”
Folks lose every ounce of credibility even if there was a little to call the current establishment Marxist. People are nuts these days.
Thanks for that. I wasn’t even going to touch such a comment, since it was so absurd!
Although, I think the term “neo-liberal” means different things to different people. In the US, in particular, I think people use “neo-liberal” instead of “ultra-liberal,” seeing “liberal” as simply the opposite of “conservative.”
Outside of the US, the term “neo-liberal” most often is associated with the Ludwig von Mises “Austrian” school of economics, which is a laissez-faire, business-first approach — almost the exact opposite of classical Marxism.
Let me clarify my statement.
First, I maintain that there is no difference between the created economic reality of neoliberal economics and Marxist control of peoples and states. First, Marxism does not believe in the state, only the worker. Thus, Marxism recognizes no state boundaries or borders. Globalist, neoliberal economic practice has created the supra-national organization, not beholden to any nation. This is the dream of Marxism.
Neoliberal economics had spawned globalism, NAFTA and the EU. The EU is a creation of neoliberal economics. However, if you think the EU is just about free trade, then continue to dwell in your unreality. The EU is a centrally planned union, controlled by oligarchs and an entrenched bureaucracy. That bureaucracy dictates whole industries moving from one state to another. It dictates that nations receive immigrants against their will. It dictates cultural regulations. That is the point….there is not supposed to be an independent nation state anymore. This is why they are now developing the EU army. Just when nations are breaking from the EU, they will then clamp down on dissent with the jackboot of the EU army.
The bureaucracy in Brussels strongly resembles the Central Planning Committee of the Soviet Union. I maintain it is the same, just under a different disguise. And of course, in this neoliberal creation you no longer have any rights. Under Marxist doctrine you have no right to free speech. This is exactly what is being enforced in the EU under neoliberal economic regime.
Under neoliberal economics capital can flow anywhere it wants and trade can be global. In the globalist neoliberal economy, oligarchs or the central planning committee in Brussels can move whole industries from state to state, making both states and people powerless. These oligarchs have captured liberal democratic government with money and corruption. They are the new elite, little different from the Marxist elite. Their desire is for you to be powerless. They control all wealth and government.
Marxism can no longer be limited to economics and labor. In its modern realm it encompasses culture, race and religion. Literary scholars have reworked classical Marxism to account for the relation of literature and culture to class, power, and discourse.
As Zubatov wrote for Tablet…
“It is a short step from the Marxist and cultural Marxist premise that ideas are, at their core, expressions of power to rampant, divisive identity politics and the routine judging of people and their cultural contributions based on their race, gender, sexuality and religion.”
Marxism extends itself culturally into literature, culture and religion, actively redefining each through binary comparison and definition, in the pursuit of political and cultural power.
A diligent observer will see the practices of cultural, religious and literary division being actively practiced today in liberal democracies and in neoliberal creations such as the EU….in the form of the redefined Marxism. An excellent discourse on modern Marxism is https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real/
In summary, Marxist theory empowers labor through the binary comparison of labor and capital. Thus, labor is differentiated from capital. One exploits the other. Power is obtained to exploit. Exploitation will occur regardless of current political or economic stripe. This fact has been pointed out many times on this blog. It is human nature.
Thus, neoliberal economics currently disguises itself as capitalism, but its reality of oligarch controlled global government, rendering peoples and nations powerless, reveals it true nature. And I maintain that this is effectively identical to Marxism in practice. A system resulting in elites at the top, controlling all wealth and privilege, a system dictating economics, ideology, religion, and cultural practices.
The nations and the peoples are thus controlled by neoliberal principles, with the well-honed practices of modern Marxism thrown in, just as the Communist Central Committee controlled the population of the Soviet Union.
I am not a political theorist, but this is my take. I care not for formal definitions that hide reality.
Jesse, I agree with almost all of your analysis, except your attribution to Marx. The literary origin of the totalitarian society goes back to Plato, and is discussed in detail by Karl Raimund Popper (1902 to 1994) in “The Open Society and its Enemies”. Which I recommend.
It is a very pessimistic view of Marxism. It might hold true in conditions where work is drudgery, such as prior to and in the beginning of industrialization. However, it does not hold true in a modern and highly automated productive economy.
The truly productive worker is the artisan with his craft being enabled by capital. The exploitation goes thus both ways. A craftsman gets called to enable the highly automated means of production, when the work is compete, the means of production serves them both with no drudgery involved.
It is the choice and risk of the regular (white/blue collar) private/public worker to be employed with repetitive duties that at any moment could be displaced by the technologically adept artisan employing automation.
Why is this one might ponder? It is a genetic trait of curiosity and appreciation of mechanical and intellectual abstractions rather than fulfilling basic needs and desires which acts as a captivity for the exploited worker.
This is the tragedy of the regular worker. Not only is he or she guaranteed to be displaced, but furthermore becomes unemployable, completely useless in a setting where work is drudgery, because it is removed by the machine which the artisan and capital has put into service.
As the finite world issues and advanced automation compounds into a predicament, this will only become more prevalent with large swaths of the workforce becoming permanently displaced.
Taxation one might suggest, yes, until the limits which is defined by the Laffer curve creeps towards zero taxation as finite world issues renders taxation ineffective to boost economic activity by waste generation through private and government enabled consumerism.
The gamification of the means of production is here.
Let’s play.
http://www.syntaxerror.nu/joy030.jpg
Agreed Robert and Kowalainen, I stand corrected in that classical Marxism would elevate the worker, (until the elite are corrupted or, as Gail has pointed out, the low price of oil no longer supported the Soviet Union).
And that neoliberal economics enslaves the worker (such as factory slaves in Asia).
I anticipate that the scarcity of oil energy will bring back regional manufacturing and craftsmanship. I look forward to that day.
Let us listen to what the (Marxist) Slavoj Žižek have to say:
https://youtu.be/kRoe-USS69Y
Furthermore this regarding cultural Marxism and political correctness:
https://youtu.be/R-JtWIad51U
I thought that had already happened! Pretty easy, predicting the past! 🙂
While we’re predicting the past, you left out: Timeline 2014: US longevity peaks and begins to decline.
It’s worth downloading the entire paper — a fascinating read. I managed to download it somehow for free, but I see now that JAMA wants a bundle for it.
Bottom line: mortality, which had been steadily declining for some sixty years, hit a plateau in 2011, and peaked in 2014, increasing in all age groups, ethnic groups, and genders, driven by what some demographers call “death by despair:” drug abuse, alcohol-related disease, suicide, and obesity-related disease.
Strangely, oil prices hit a peak in 2011. They started sliding downward in 2014. High prices come from high affordability of end products. As wage disparity grows, oil prices fall and death from dispair seems to rise.
did I predict the past?
Can’t figure that anywhere.
You’ll have to accept my word on what I wrote in 2011—doesn’t matter much to me either way whether you do or not. Chomsky wrote much the same thing at the same time. Desperate people seem to believe that extreme political measures will somehow restore previous ‘greatness’.–It is a human failing.
Dates can be future fluid, but the final endgame cannot, if we carry on as we are. That much was obviuos years ago. Only the details are open to variation. They can affect times, a year here and there.
Meanwhile, the average voter remains convinced it’s a political problem, and can be solved by spending ever increasing amounts of money
Sorry, I was teasing, more than anything.
But it does appear that, within months of taking office in 2017, the Trump Administration “cleansed” government websites of any mention of climate change. That’s all I was referring to, was your prediction that this would happen in 2020. The rest seems pretty reasonable.
sorry
sometimes difficult to pick that up on here
I knew about the CC removal from govt business, I think my ultimate meaning that it would be much more stringent, sort of treasonable
Sign. Another terminally politically correct piece of research. Blame the deaths on people’s bad choices. No mention of the ever increasing air pollution; no mention of the carcinogenic pesticides and herbicides; no mention of the evolution of antibiotic resistant diseases; no mention of the engineered breakdown of law and order in the inner cities, …
And, above all, no mention of the demoralisation wrought by the liberal welfare state, perhaps one of the greatest engines of civil destruction ever devised.
I disagree; they just used different, less pejorative terms than you did.
They blame most of it on what they call “death by despair,” which sounds similar to what you are claiming, only without pointing the finger at a political system, as any decent researcher must refrain from doing.
They do point out that “peak longevity” seems to be a “uniquely American” thing, with other “liberal welfare states” still having increasing longevity.
Thank you, Jan, and I accept your comment and (mild) reproof. In return, let me add that in my view research has an obligation to discuss not just effects, but causes.
Norman you should consider offering yourself as a guest speaker on NPR. Your the sort of keen analytical mind they look for.
But there is a solution! We establish two Foundations, at opposite ends of the country. The First Foundation is staffed by scientists; the Second Foundation is in a secret place and staffed by readers of OFW. Together, they can reduce the period of anarchy to a mere thousand years. There: some good news for 2020.
Your forecast seems to have at least some possibility. I don’t really expect Donald Trump to live until 2030. I am expecting a younger generation will need to take over. A big question mark is how well the financial system holds up. Also, how well the electricity system holds up.
Trump will 0nly be 80 something—no doubt a willing heart donor will be found among his followers, plus any other essential spares
in any event, his padding out the supreme court will ensure he lives on—then there’s Pence to take up the banner
The critical bit is the energy system holding together–not just the electrical system
Kind, smiling policeman: Norman Pagett?
NP: Yes.
KSP: Please come with us.
NP: Why?
KSP: For the heart transplant.
NP: But I don’t need a heart transplant.
KSP: No, Sir, but Emperor Donald does, and your DNA is the closest match.
i like it
i like it
having reached the stage where i wont be using my heart much longer, yet reputed to look and act much younger than i am (ask gf), i could convince the don to part with lots of the readies, buy myself a life support machine and use the rest to rescue my family from dire poverty
or better still—have myself frozen for 100 years till all this is over, and get a mechanical heart which will have been invented by then, and start over
It will be much better than that, we can download you into a $10 microchip and clone your eminence to the hilt and then provide each clone with a typewriter.
Would that be awesome or what?
isnt there a theory that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters one of them is bound to write King Lear
Actually an infinite number of existing and new Shakespeare. In fact, the infinite army of type writing monkeys would simultaneously produce every conceivable book that is possible to type down in a finite amount of time.
If we make the monkey ridiculously fast by using an infinitesimal amount of time between typing each letter, then only one monkey would suffice. Before the first nanosecond had elapsed all conceivable books would already have been written.
https://youtu.be/BBp0bEczCNg
You! Talk about adding insult to injury!
I’m not sure which is worse: having to donate my heart, or dying in the knowledge that I was the closest genetic match on the planet to Donald Trump.
Now Norman I dont think Candace would give up her heart.
My prediction is
It will be
much
as
it
is
now.
My prediction for 2020 is that the EU will stop supporting renewables, because of severe economic crisis.
JMG with his year end review and predictions for 2020:
https://www.ecosophia.net/to-the-shores-of-a-surging-ocean/
I’ve read these for many years… he’s mostly correct most years, though in a sort of uninspiring way… the predictions mostly are that the next year will be very much like the previous… and again, that type of prediction is usually correct though not wow-ing…
perhaps if you haven’t read any of his year end posts, you might find an interesting perspective with this one…
ps: I perhaps should give out this forewarning that my very own 2020 predictions might be coming soon… Bitcoin $1 million… NOT… 😉
a few:
Fast Eddy will reappear here at OFW…
WTI will average in the $50s and briefly dip into the $40s…
world stock markets will AGAIN gain $17 trillion in value:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/global-stock-markets-gained-17-trillion-in-value-in-2019.html
below the top 1%, people will have less wealth at the end of 2020…
I also predict that many of my predictions will be wrong…
Any ideas about predicting the Bernard thing.. ?
Although the mega-macro long term trends are clearly going in his favor, I doubt about the timing in just this very cycle, it seems premature by half a decade or so.. to reap the fruits just now.
Among the marching trends:
– US pop eventually following the Latin America discontent dynamics
– “OK Boomer effect” realization of younger generations the system is not working in their favor
– US legacy establishment weakened enough (e.g. post 2016 super delegate reforms) etc.
– yet overall economic stagnation and or significant drop not yet manifested fully
..
.
In other more OFW/Surplus (purist/zealot) centered discussion, that guy is clearly very inconsistent in terms of “new green deal” if I correctly recall him having 4x children and 7x grand kids since ~1980s, i.e. when he must have been aware of the overpop-resource links at least in some capacity, that’s insane behavior..
So, I very much doubt he can get the nomination, and then leap frog Donald with his loyal army of self centered boomers (keeping the old system of health care, pensions etc).. and centrist left and right deep pocketed donors.
the trend, which JMG correctly grasps, is that the Core countries are turning more towards populism/nationalism driven by the working class majority…
so he predicts more of the same which in particular means Trump wins again in November…
I don’t disagree…
Very well written, thought provoking article
God Jul, Gail!
This will perhaps resonate with the great Greta thread of recent days as well..
and more over the overall OFW – doom leaning macro zoomed out message.. as we tend to stand on the edge of future transformational (series) of event(s).
Specifically, I just stumbled around “the plague literature” forgotten little corner of the universe where various notable authors throughout the past centuries dealt with the topic indeed from personal direct perspective as it was case for example in the mid 14th century or other occasions, or in general theoretical angle of the thing musing about it in retrospect, which seems to offer more general clues into the true human nature..
The book Understanding the Plague by Randal P. Garza is in snippets available through online G. books, but it references a lot of important material (the medieval Spanish ~translation-digest of Pope’s Innocenc III.. De Miseria (on peculiar human condition) / can’t find English translation – Spanish more approachable then scholastic form of Latin) I’ll at least offer one quote from within..
For example when Garza quotes Girard, who reviews plague writings from Thucydides
to Camus noting that:
“The plague will turn the honest man into a thief, the virtuous man into
a leacher, the prostitute into a saint. Friends murder and enemies embrace.
Wealthy men are made poor by the ruin of their business. Riches
are showered upon paupers who inherit in a few days the fortunes of many
distant relatives. Social hierarchies are first transgressed, then abolished.
Political and religious authorities collapse. The plague makes
all accumulated knowledge and all categories of judgement invalid.”
You can click inside..
https://books.google.com/books/about/Understanding_Plague.html?id=sncyoeDmXkUC
update, so English translations are perhaps available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Miseria_Condicionis_Humane
I like this very much. Thanks!
In part I was drawn to this by director Zeffirelli’s stunning depiction of Roman Catholic church bishops/cardinals ~daily wandering (passing) through (at that time) still “raw ruins” / antiquity palaces of the city during the ~early/mid medieval period, and given their intellectual capacity (+ contemporary ongoing politics e.g. Byzantium and rising Islam) they simply had to ponder these long term ~collapse related questions. So I checked and they indeed did. At least this bishop later Pope Innocent III ventured into relevant human nature questions..
Moreover, and in tangential manner this particular bishop – pope gave permission to proper establishment of the initially heretic Franciscan order (Assisi), which started as learned – deliberated walk away from establishment structures by small group of world traveled and educated rich young guys. I’d draw here a parallel with at least part of the rising back to landers stream of today, albeit lot of them are or were initially drawn to it simply by the opening profitable market opportunity of “bio-produce”.. We perhaps disagree here with Gail, but the cat is out of the bag now in terms of the know-how (as Don Stewart often writes in detail about at Surplus), it won’t likely feed today’s form of IC hubs but something else emerging from the ruins .. possibly..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Sun,_Sister_Moon
Even a plague affecting animals is a big problem. A huge amount of “wealth” has been eliminated, sort of like a debt bubble popping. At the same time, farmers lucky enough to living pigs and other animals are temporarily getting higher incomes. Money left over to buy automobiles is lower.
Plagues need a vector. Most subsistence farms do not exchange animals very often.
The last time we rented a buck, all our girls got “goat pox,” a relatively minor cold-sore-like viral infection. So we bought a buck, and have had a “closed herd” for some four years now. Our goats have zero contact with other goats, and even near-zero contact with wild ungulates, who don’t seem to like to cross electric fence for some reason.
The industrial meat system moves animals large distances, and merges them with other populations. I agree that livestock plague is a problem in those circumstances.
But of course, humans are the biggest travellers on the planet. The deadly flu pandemic of 1918 would probably have remained a regional thing, if it weren’t for soldiers returning from WWI, spreading it “like the plague.”
There is a good material available for a novel in which ~easily mastering success of “terra preta” eventually turns into horror as earlier encapsulated spores/virus trapped inside these deep rich soils is accidentally released after few hundred years or millenia, destroying the human eco paradise set up eventually anyway..
btw could have happened already to some ancient Amazonian tribes..
Yes indeed, these buggers can almost live forever.
“A group of researchers from Sweden, Denmark and France analyzed skeletons from a tomb outside Falköping and found DNA traces of yersinia petis, the bacteria that cause plague.
The remains belonged to farmers who lived in the area around 4900 years ago.”
https://www.thelocal.se/20181207/worlds-earliest-strain-of-plague-found-in-sweden-and-it-could-rewrite-history
This article is mostly right, except for that little omission/mistake in which I instead conclude that the plague started in prehistoric Sweden and then spread to the East, making a turn for the worst and then came back into Europe again.
Thank you for the reference. i confess I had never heard of “De Miseria Condicionis Humane”, but upon setting out to read it found only a “scanned” edition by Google, which is so littered with misprints as to be unreadable. I shall continue to search.
World industrial production and world trade have turned negative.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMlpuArUYAEJ-KI?format=jpg&name=medium
Monetary stimulus isn’t working anymore. The central banks are losing control.
When the underlying economy goes into contraction, asset prices will soon follow.
Asset prices must rise though, if they fall, then the banks stop lending…and then everything falls apart.
The world is now approaching the Minsky Moment.
Merry Xmas!
Yes, Merry Christmas!
These charts are disturbing. It looks like these indicators didn’t turn negative until sometime in 2008. Next Christmas may be fairly different.
Gail, you should delete/edit posts where people give away their phone nr and other private information that could be abused/doxxed.
Good point.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous new year to all.
https://maltawinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/greta-383×360.jpg
2020 is election year in the US, right?
Let’s all brace for impact.
https://youtu.be/grD_IINiH9c
they could always move to Mexico, or Canada.
Been there, done that.
But it isn’t necessarily easy nor accessible to many.
At least for Canada, you have to clear a criminal record check, clear a physical exam (by a Canada-vetted physician), be relatively young, have a profession that Canada thinks they need (generally, requiring a university degree), and have a year’s living expenses in the bank. And you get no free benefits for your first year here.
That’s for “permanent residence” the equivalent of a “green card.” You can come up for six months out of any 365-day period, but you don’t get health care or other perks.
And even as a “permanent resident,” you can be kicked out for what might be a slap on the wrist in the US, such as illegal firearm possession or a DUI.
But really, are the puerile, right-wing videos really necessary? I guess if you don’t have facts to back you up, you have to fall back on making fun of people. That’s the sad bit of the Greta kick-back: little of it seems to be fact-based, rather, it’s just poking fun at her. Trump even tweeted something derogatory about her disability.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi.
I guess Greta’s at Stage Two now.
Sorry, I just don’t do “mean.” If you can argue with someone’s logical or intellectual position, that’s one thing, but mean-spirited videos, taken out-of-context, of your opponent crying, backed by a sound track of a baby crying, is just juvenile and mean. I got no time for that.
I’ve argued against Greta’s position and explained in detail why I think she is wrong on most counts. If anyone wants more detail, I can provide that if requested.
You’ve chosen not to engage in further debate regarding why you support her position, which in case you are unaware includes the utopian green call for humanity rapidly ending fossil fuel use—a 50% cut in ten years is too slow for her, the communist call for dismantling all colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression, the totalitarian call for politicians who don’t do as she says to be be put “against the wall”, and the ageist stance of blaming all the problems she thinks the world has on adults as a class. So we haven’t had the pleasure of finding out if you really support these things or not.
I also have little time for mean spirited videos backed by sound tracks of babies crying—although Duncan loves them as long as they are about Trumpy—and being as I’m over sixty and hopelessly out of touch, I have retired from commenting on the fashions, tastes and mores of the younger generation. But I am not going to ignore the real threat to civilization posed by Greta and her fans just because other people make fun of her.
We have to put a little balance to the force. Heckling “liberal” crypto commies is just too much fun after the repeated fiascos they create for themselves.
Mankind have already tried communism several times and every time it ended in total and utter disaster. People fail to understand that their delusions and pretensions is not sufficient for the creation of communist utopia, on the contrary, basing an ideology on fantasy and hope is not a reasonable strategy for any civilization.
https://youtu.be/LKDqBztZZtI
Thank you, Tim, for another cogent analysis. I also disagree with most of Greta’s positions, but still admire her because i believe her to be honest, and to stand up for her beliefs. So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
I agree also that adopting her proposals would mean the end of civilisation as we know it; but that is an argument that does not convince me, because if in the last analysis the choice is between civilisation and Gaia, I choose Gaia. We are not the masters of this good earth; we are its tenants, and at one time, we were its stewards. That is the birthright we cast away for a mess of pottage.
Well put!
I see the end of civilization to be A Good Thing™, and thus cheer Greta on!
Not a hillary or trump fan….people like yourself are the problem…..both sides are the dumbest people on earth. When dems are in office dems think debt is no problem and when repubs are in office same thing…I guess you can’t argue with stupid
“Police [in the UK] have spent millions of pounds on electric cars they admit are useless for chasing suspects or rushing to help victims…
“Official police reports conceded that electric vehicles cannot meet the demands of urgent response or pursuit driving. They take too long to charge up to be ready for 999 calls and could run out of battery before a shift ends.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7822791/amp/Police-waste-1-5million-electric-cars-useless-catching-criminals.html
Back in Hercule Poirot’s day, the local bobby always travelled by bicycle. But by the time Miss Marple came on the scene, they had upgraded to patrol cars.
Detective Murdoch and Constable Crabtree also travelled by bicycle. And I highly reommend “Murdoch Mysteries”, apart from the obnoxious Dr Julia Ogden.
i would have thought no research was necessary to show that emergency response services cannot function without oil
Good points! In the case of an electricity outage, they are also pretty much useless.
But they are so quiet. They can sneak up on law abiding citizens on their promenades.
What happened to beta testing? Shouldn’t this have been figured out during the trial period with one or two vehicles? Laws should have an experimental phase for a while, then if desired results are met with acceptable side affects, make them long term. If governments were run like science or a business these kinds of mistakes would be reduced.
If there is essay one should read in 2019, it is this (not the Epstein part).
I have corresponded with the author, a chemistry prof at Cornell, congratulating him on this outstanding dissertation and mentioning that it is a pity that most people will refuse to read it.
His response:
“My wife converted from ‘changer’ to ‘denier’ by helping me edit that section”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dave-collums-2019-year-review-and-epstein-didnt-kill-himself-part-2
The real story seems to be complex. There are many kinds of models that can be created. Virtually all of them will give wrong predictions until 2100.
GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT AWESOME CLYMITT ARTICLE!!!!!!!
““Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden.”
~ Vladimir Putin, head of Russia’s Clymitt Deenial Bureau, to Greta Thunberg
“In a ridiculous media stunt Greta crossed the Atlantic in a zero-emissions sailing boat, fitted with a diesel engine and made from carbon fiber that required 14 times more energy to produce than a conventional boat.95 Six crew members had to take trans-Atlantic flights.”
Speaking of Sweden, David Archibald is now predicting civil war there in the not too distant future.
The Danes have put extra resources into controlling the country’s links to Sweden because of bombs going off in Denmark due to people coming from Sweden. The people from Sweden are Islamist criminals. The Swedish government reacted to the Danish move by calling the Danes Nazis. Swedish society has changed for the worse, and the Swedish people are aware of what they have lost.
All this is known, but what is interesting is that a former head of the Swedish truck-maker Scania, a Mr. Leif Ostling, has said Sweden is headed for civil war because of the problem of its violent migrants who have no inclination to integrate into Swedish society. As a successful businessman, his views can’t be dismissed as being from some sort of antisocial loon living in his mother’s basement.
This raises the question: how do you have a civil war in this day and age? Having a civil war is aspirational, but is it achievable?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/sweden_the_wages_of_selfloathing_is_civil_war.html
It starts slow and then it escalates.
I suppose we will find a different name for a civil war in Sweden.
We got plenty of tradition with regards to that. We are a horrible sect of easily manipulated pretentious hypocrites.
The Gutes and Swedes have been going at each other’s throats since the dawn of man. Then they joined forces and went for other people’s throats, aspiring to run an empire. But incompetence and pretentiousness can not prevail. Not against a competent adversary.
Just look at the Swedes ruthless collaboration with the Nazis. Sending Norwegian resistance men on Swedish rail for “interrogation” at the gestapo offices in Germany. Advising NSDAP stamping a big fat “J” in the passports of Jews, then we could easily reject them in the border and send them to a certain death. Yeah, the sect certainly delivers horrors and creepiness.
Tim Pool about Sweden again:
https://youtu.be/M06w0xoJguA
It just never gets old beating down on the pretentious and self righteous Potemkin facade builders of the banana republic Sweden. Oh, I just recalled the cringe fest when Jordan B Peterson went up against Annie Lööf, leader of the political party ”Centerpartiet”:
https://youtu.be/_xjvzH24Mwo
Yet another look at the Swedes hypocrisy. (Turn on the YT English subs)
https://youtu.be/zkPJCWGnZNQ
Uppsala, this enlightened place and of great culture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Dean%27s_house_Uppsala_Sweden_001.JPG/250px-Dean%27s_house_Uppsala_Sweden_001.JPG
I’m afraid Sweden is a freak show of political correctness.
My guess is that the long tradition of social democratic social engineering of the people and the extreme level of well fare state have had their effects.
The sect mentality transcends the Social Democratic Party. I would argue that it is predictable given the archetype of Gutes and Swedes. In most aspects they are quite awful with few redeeming qualities.
The social engineering is implicit given what the people is like. It is not something that was subjugated onto them. It is what they want.
I say, let em’ have it all. The old empire of cruelty and nazi collaboration has turned into a mass immigration farce where Afghan ministers can collect welfare.
https://www.friatider.se/afghan-election-one-winners-under-investigation-benefit-fraud-sweden
I say, let em’ have it all. Pour it in and then dear Mr. Trump, cut the credit line, just as with Venezuela. Oh, how I would laugh at the scrambling Potemkin facade manufacturers stabbing each other in the backs and forming unholy alliances with criminals and other dregs just to stay afloat on top of their otherwise disgusting life turning much worse.
“The sect mentality transcends the Social Democratic Party. I would argue that it is predictable given the archetype of Gutes and Swedes.”
You are pretty vague. What would the “archetype of Gutes and Swedes” even mean?
The danes are of a similar historical origin and culturally closely related. Despite this they don’t attain the same level of political correctness, not even close. In fact the danes are even relatively sensible.
Danes are traders, being a trader imply cultural exchange, which in turn becomes part of altered domestic culture.
Sweden is not and never will be a culture of trade. It is sprung out of two bandit gangs which fiercely fought each other and then joined forces and conquered the rest of the area which later became Sweden. Other people and countries did the trading, the Gutes and Swedes did the taxation and controlled the violence monopoly.
Sweden, as different from Denmark thus shares all the traits of being a close-knit sect, where eccentric people are looked down upon from the great collective, the brain washed masses. Which is fundamentally different, for example, from the Anglo Saxon appreciation for the eccentrics and the well-travelled.
More from Tim Pool:
https://youtu.be/4Sbl7SkHZTs
And from Paul Joseph Watson interviewing Tim Pool:
https://youtu.be/xkxA4BliUwM
Your historical connection to the geats (gutes=people fron Gotland) and swedes are really silly. I can assure you that this is not the explanation of the present sad state of affairs in Sweden.
As you probably know the swedes where doing their fair amount of trading on the eastern european rivers, even occasionally going as far as Iran.
Whatever happened to Sweden as compared to Denmark occured much later than the medieval period…
Ah, yes, I meant Geats. Same sh17, different name, well, only a pretentious pedant would bother pointing out the obvious.
Trust me, you are not assuring me of anything. The Swedish condition is endemic and symptomatic of sect behavior in bandit gangs.
Do you think the Stockholm syndrome is a sign of a healthy mentality? How about the eager collaboration and profiteering with Nazis? The creepiness that Tim Pool and others report experiencing after visiting Sweden?
The Swedish government is a reflection of the people which inhabits the country. Garbage in – garbage out. Just accept that Sweden is a sect. A sect sprung out of a bandit gang.
Trading, yes, well, there isn’t any. Bandits rob, steal and tax other people’s property and capital. The same can be said about the transferiat in Stockholm, the modern day Viking ”raiders” with a “bakåtslick”.
Wow, you despise swedes more than their leaders do.
One must speak truth to bring forth change.
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/0d/8a/24/0d8a246ecb9e5949016ae721cb4f695d.jpg
I am afraid Plato was correct.
Sorry, your comments are filled to the brim with resentment which confuses ranting with truth speaking.
I am sorry you feel that way. But it won’t change the fact.
On the other hand, the Swedes did give the world Dynamite the adjustable wrench, Ingrid Bergman and Abba, and now Greta. And what’s more:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/ae/0a/41ae0a7ad8d56759acaa78d5341260ae.jpg
Yup, like the pimp we got arms, whores and bad music to offer the world.
The Brits got an empire to run. Can’t do that in front of a mirror with an adjustable conscience at hand. Having bad teeth and a ruthless temperament seems to work much better in that scenario.
He left out the part about the ice melting virus. I thought what difference does it make about where and how you measure the temperature and then I got shown the truth. It seemed pretty simple. If the ice is melting then it is getting hotter. Then I found out that the Gaia industrial complex has an ice melting virus that they have turned loose to make it appear that there is a temperature rise. That ice melting they go on and on about has nothing to do with heat it is a virus and we need a vaccine now
Wake up people.
1000 comments per post less, because of missing FE. Very good thing.
Ah, that’s too bad…our long gone standard bearer of BAU ….prime example of futile prep to avert the upcoming collapse and End of the World Party!
Suppose Fast Eddy saw the light and is now burning through the last reserves of fossil fuels as fast as he can with abandonment!
Perhaps he’s manager of a Sugar Babies harem…that’s his calling…LOL
FE posted so many times a day in such a palpable, heightened state, it was clear he fully expected collapse to occur at any moment. When it didn’t; realizing it’s a longer process than expected, hopefully he found something more productive to do.
I hope you are correct and that FE and wife did not become a crime statistic in Mexico, where he said they were heading for a vakay. it is very unlike him to not make his presence known somewhere on the internet, if not OFW. that fact worries me. I miss him.
I share your sentiments and I hope he’s just too busy servicing the harem or setting up a failsafe doomstead bunker to devote time to internet hobbies. No offense to anyone in particular, but I think the comments section is a lot poorer for his absence.
I lived in Mexico before my move to Bend.
I feel safer often in Mexico than with rednecks in Central Oregon.
Homicide rate
Oregon 2.0
Mexico 25.4
The homicide rate in pre-industrial society was extremely high.
With our high level of fossil fuel use, we can afford to carry along a large number of people who in some sense are not performing well. When energy supplies start falling, killing off some of the competition seems (to some) to make sense.
Less surplus will lead to more cost effective legal procedures and punishment.
That collapse tomorrow mindset cant be maintained. Nor is it healthy IMO. Acceptance is a hard thing to learn Yes industrial civilization will end. Yes we will die sometime with or without collapse. What does that leave us with? Love and appreciation of the moment.
Its impermanence makes it more sweet yes? I think FE found peace with his knowledge.Merry Christmas.
Is insta-doom fatigue setting in? How about this as a cure for the futility of waiting for the big purge of all the sins of mankind:
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/7b/03/fc/7b03fcfc492a685035bc17d75a17d120–posters-live.jpg
https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.372727253.4956/ap,550×550,12×16,1,transparent,t.u1.png
There have been many studies of the psychology of apocalyptic cults; in particular, what do they do when the apocalypse doesn’t happen as scheduled? Many fall away, but the hardcore tend to reinterpret the prophecies as referring to next week, or next year, or whenever. The year 1000 spawned several such cults; more recently, there was the Maya Calendar panic (even though the calendar did not predict anything bad). Even Isaac Newton speculated about the end of the world, based on his (rather strange) interpretation of Scripture. However, he did not intend any of this for publication. Not surprising, since one of his ruminations reads: “The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat.”
Could Gail not look up Fast Eddy’s e-mail and send him a private email inquiring about his health? I see that we are all missing him.
A POSSIBLE FAST EDDY sighting….right up his alley
Choice converted 1969 Triumph souped up hot rod…with a big block blower engine!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-GVw1ga0ZWU
That’s what Fast Eddy in mind would be a good Hobby for him to spend the last days of BAU! The Fast Eddy in the video is a real nice Mensch
something for FE to aim at the rock cut…
Thanks for the idea.
Who are “we”? Are you the self assigned official spokesperson of “we”?
“On Friday, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it would take a $1.7-$2.3 billion write down for the fourth quarter, another financial blow to an industry dealing with oversupply and low prices.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Expect-More-Writedowns-From-Oil-Majors.amp.html
“Many investors and market observers wonder why the Fed/Central Banks just can’t print money forever and drive the markets even higher. The answer can be found in the law of diminishing returns.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4313777-rates-pushed-off-cliff-central-banks
“The vulnerability of today’s global economy — reflected in real economies, financial asset prices, and misguided monetary policy — needs to be taken seriously.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/4585550A-25A1-11EA-BD17-1EE14A51D52A
This spat with Jan over Greta reminds me of an episode in my incredibly exciting career from close to 25 years ago, when I was arguing with an elderly Catholic priest in the letters column of a newspaper about Mother Teresa.
Christopher Hitchens had just published The Missionary Position, a scathing critique of MT that challenged the mainstream media’s assessment of her charitable efforts. The elderly priest sent a letter attacked Hitchens as a wicked man for attacking a nun who was only doing her best to help people, and I defended Hitchens by pointing out among other things that when someone is held up as an icon of virtue, it is quite natural for others to question this status.
I don’t remember the precise details of the exchange, but I do remember it became quite acrimonious on the prelate’s side, and he wrote “woe betide Christopher Hitchens and Tim Groves.” From this, I took it that he was quite upset that the reputation of his icon of virtue had been besmirched. It was sad, really, because I think he had a point that Hitchens’ critique went to far and was too strong a personal attack, which I abhorred in the case of MT. I basically concurred with Alex Cockburn, who said to Ian Parker, “Between the two of them, my sympathies were with Mother Teresa. If you were sitting in rags in a gutter in Calcutta, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup?”
I am reminded of this ancient history by the way Jan has just attacked me for attacking Greta Thunburg—”a 16-year-old girl” and in his eyes, no doubt, an icon of virtue who “gets it right”. Because I’ve criticized her stance and condemned her handlers and backers, Jan has somehow imagined that I am in agreement with every harsh and offensive comment and putdown anyone has ever made about her , when in fact I’m very fond of Greta, just as I was very fond of Mother Teresa.
Like pop stars, MT and Greta both have legions of followers who are emotionally committed to them. (Donald Trump also shares this distinction, which is a big reason why he’s accused of being a demagogue.) The main difference I can see between these two icons of virtue is that MT actually did do a lot of good for people who were in great need and she did not make a career of criticizing other people, while Greta has as yet done very little if anything to help anybody in need and has indeed made a career of criticizing others and also accusing them of things they haven’t done. But the zeal with which the two women’s fans defend them by attacking their critics is the same, suggesting both sets of fans are fueled by the undercurrent of raw emotion that characterizes both religious and ecological/green fervor.
when I was arguing with an elderly Catholic priest in the letters column of a newspaper about Mother Teresa.
But Greta is much more important and influential than a delusional priest or Mother Teresa.
I am not a zealot; I try not to attack people but their positions or their organisations. I like Greta because (a) I believe she is right, and (b) she walks the talk. And if one is looking for raw emotion, look no further than the above post.
Her walking the talk is to say – don’t fly over the seas, that will ruin the climate, rather you should sail across in a hi tech racing sail boat manned by your personal highly trained team.
And so the people did as Greta demanded and our fossil fuel use skyrocketed to build all those sail boats and train all those teams.
You know she could have just got on a cargo boat to sail across. But that would not be very interesting would it.
Merry Christmas to you all (or whatever else it is you celebrate).
Niko
Two thumb’s up!
Report: Self-entitled Generation Z wants to live past the age of 40
The nerve!
Last time I checked birth certificates don’t come with an expiry date. You get what you get. If you wanted what the generation before you had then you should have got here earlier.
In the end we are all dead and forgotten. A billion years from now who cares if you lived to 80 or 40?
live long and prosper or don’t (but it probably ain’t up to you).
Did you look at the link, or just comment on the text?
It’s a Canadian satire site, similar to TheOnion.com. I wasn’t expecting serious answers… 🙂
Here, try this one, instead!
Saskatchewan school Christmas pageant replaces Baby Jesus with barrel of crude
“Our saviour is Western Canadian Select and the only way to be saved is to consume, consume, and consume.”
Does that feel better, now? 🙂
Perhaps that is what we should have been teaching children. We have been going out of our way to hide the story of energy from people. Also, we have been hiding the fact that growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite world.
Robert, could you please confirm whether “the above post” refers to my comment or to Duncan’s reply? Because Jan gave your comment two thumbs up and I wouldn’t want to gain his applause by proxy.
Tim, thank you for your enquiry. The comment was intended to refer to your post, which I thought a little too vehement for the subject matter. However, I accept that at times we all need an outlet for our emotions, and if I have offended, please accept my apologies.
Perish the thought, Robert. You haven’t offended me, and in any case, unlike some, I don’t claim the right not to be offended. All in all, I reckon I cause far more offense online than I receive.
Entertaining and sharing a crisp thought or two certainly can rattle some delusional cans of hopes and dreams.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/75b2a9f9ec07e190cf6782d0d565b153/tumblr_ojsj2hksDP1ukpm5po2_400.gifv
Greta = distraction / placeholder, waste of time, empty posturing, puppeteer-ed around by her parents (+NGO elders, msm, and political mainstream du jour) ..
I tend to agree. Talks about “solutions” that cannot happen.
Come now Gail, what we banter about here will not be in the top 10 of problems soon.
Enjoy the escape!
Oh, don’t be such a wielder or snide remarks, they prove nothing anyway. Come join the comedy.
👍
https://previews.123rf.com/images/adamskyistudio/adamskyistudio1509/adamskyistudio150900061/44698446-illustration-with-buddha-in-meditation-raster-illustration.jpg
I do!
Someone here posted a picture of Greta on a train eating. Outside the train window was a crudely done, most unconvincing paste job of dirt poor African children. That wasn’t noteworthy for me. What was was what Grets was eating and (especially) eating out of, (since I couldn’t actually see the food). What stuck in my mind was a big bucket resembling the large-size waxed-cardboard bucket they serve popcorn in at cinemas. I thought of how the cardboard was manufactured and turned into a vessel, how it was colored, refined and waxed, and where the wax came from, and how much transportation figured in getting it to that table. But even so I’m sure I was missing lots of steps. Nothing on the table seemed any less complex than the cardboard bucket. The entire arrangement was fossil fuel dependent to an almost unimaginable degree…
Yeah, if one goes down this rabbit hole one sees that you can’t do or buy anything today that isn’t a composite result of burning fossil fuels for a century, building factories, training manpower, feeding people building factories and those who work in them, and so on. But we don’t tell kids in school that fossil fuel runs the world and provides for all our needs. Seems like TPTB has made sure that people don’t think about real problems, but align us to bicker about EVs and wind mills.
It is amazing what the schools don’t teach!
Gail, I’m not sure. In a time of rampant political correctness and intolerance of all other views, a teacher must be very careful not to allow his students to think for themselves, to question the establishment, or to seek knowledge outside the approved canon. That has been the case since at least 399 BC, and is definitely the case today.
For example, as determined by a recent court case in the UK, anyone who teaches “XX you’re a girl, XY you’re a boy”, can be summarily dismissed and rendered legally unemployable.
I’m quite bemused that Hitchens died of oral cancer after all of the self-promoting bullsh!t he spewed, and I am pro-Greta. She may not change too many hearts and minds, sadly , but at least she’s trying instead of being a snide internet political commenter
Well I am surprised, although not exactly shocked, that so many of my fellow OFWers have been taken in by the Greta phenomenon. There seems to be little recognition that she is a PR product of the same “Powers That Be” that Jan thinks she’s making uncomfortable.
What is this PR product selling?
First of all, panic. “I want you to panic.”
Second, action, a stampede of action born of said panic. The same old problem-reaction-solution drivel that the elites have been using to impose social engineering on the rest of us since the days when Hegel first taught them the trick.
What kind of action? “I want you to take real action.”
Yes, Greta, but do you have any specifics in mind.?
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing!/ We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about are the money and the imperative of eternal economic growth. How dare you!!”
So, no specifics, but you want to curtail economic growth.
“For more than thirty years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away!”
Specifically?
“The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.”
So you would advocate cutting CO2 emissions by more than half in less than a decade in order to reduce the risk of the catastrophe you fear? How could such a drastic change in energy policy be accomplished?
“That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”
Well, that’s quite a great leap forward from let’s turn down the thermostat and buy a smaller car. So, you’d like a full communist revolution in the manner of Lenin, Stalin, Fidel, Mao, and Pol Pot? Well, I’m glad we finally got that cleared up. No doubt the patriarchy are quivering in their John Lobb shoes.
https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU
Greta and her handlers do not understand the cost of the transition, billions dead. With tribalism and racism returning with a life or dead strength.
Ed, billions will die no matter what we do. That’s why it’s called “Overshoot”. The only question that matters is, how many can we save, and of those how many should we save if we are to preserve any semblance of the biosphere.
As my old primary school teacher used to tell us seven-year-olds, “if you’re born, you’re sure to die.”
Robert, here in Japan we’ve shaved half a million people off the population in the past year. I don’t know if it’s been reported in the international press yet, but the Japanese press reported today the official statistics that in 2019 there were 860,000 births, down 5.92% on the previous year and the first time Japan had less than 900,000 births since precise recording began in 1899. Meanwhile, with over 1,370,000 deaths, the population declined by 512,000 people year on year.
That’s quite an achievement, especially considering the population was rising until 2008 and it took a full decade for it to fall by a million from the peak of 128.1 million. And from now on, the roller-coaster ride is going to get steeper as the first baby boom generation (born 1945-54) begin dying in greater numbers. We could soon be seeing drops of 1.5~2 million people a year.
Wow! Preschool teachers and those serving the you will be less and less needed.
Even with the dying old folks, keeping pensions funded is likely to be more and more difficult.
Is this our job? Do we collectively have the ability to do anything to affect the biosphere, other than what the self-organizing system demands. Are we assuming that we have more power than we really have?
As if we have a choice. It is all process.
https://www.azquotes.com/vangogh-image-quotes/78/84/Quotation-Alan-Watts-No-amount-of-anxiety-makes-any-difference-to-anything-that-78-84-10.jpg
For Tim
If the whole world did the same, that would be great news. Japan was a sustainable society for 250 years, during the Edo period, and it was a civilisation that had much to admire (as well as much politics to criticise). In fact, all we need is for world population to decline by 1.5% per annum, and we are on the path back to sanity. And the UN claims we must produce 80% more food by 2100, which is certifiably insane.
Interesting to hear you live in Japan; at one time I considered retiring there. Until I decided the Mediterranean was a better place.
The science of dissipative structures has been around for more than thirty years. All structures are temporary. The economy is subject to collapse. Climate can be expected to change. Unfortunately, we cannot really fix this situation. It is an illusion that we have the power to fix the predicament we are in.
Indeed, ‘What is simple is seldom understood.’
(speaking of 30 years ago)
David Carradine, aka Grasshopper
The master says that when he can walk the rice paper without leaving a trace, he will be ready to leave the monastery and go out into the world. This is a lovely analogy of harmlessness, for when we leave no trace, we have harmed nothing.
https://realitymaps.com/2002/04-ricepaper.html
There is still some mystery surrounding David’s death ten years ago of asphyxiation in a hotel room in Bangkok. Was it suicide, homicide, or accidental? Actually, there’s also a fourth possibility for those of us who never saw the body up close: Was it him?
Is it possible that David made himself walk the rice paper without leaving a trace in order to avoid some problems related to being a celebrity, and that he is now hanging out incognito with John Lennon, Elvis, Steve Jobs, Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Epstein?
Doubtful, I grant. But today is Christmas Day—the celebration of the birth He who made the blind see, the lame walk and the dead rise up—and the Santa Claus industry is packed chock-a-block with actors in disguise.
You think Greta should have all the answers? What about the thousands of “smart people” that we call Professor, Doctor, Your Honor, etc. We pay these people for their intelligence and education yet here we are in this predicament. We’ve paid these smart people billions of dollars since1972 when it was all laid out in LIMITS TO GROWTH.
But here we are living with the conspiracy theory that extinctions are hundreds of times the background rate. It must be a conspiracy or surely someone would do something.
But there is no fixing it until the Humanoid Problem is solved…..too many humans
How dare a little girl tell a bunch of old white men that they could do better.
We can’t fix it but we could sure do better.
BAU? big V-8 four wheel drive pick-up trucks going 80MPH down the freeway. BAU? The billionaire’s spending Xmas on their 400ft yachts in the Caribbean. BAU? 17 years of war in Afghanistan. BAU? Tonight for all those so called homeless sleeping under blue tarps and defecating on the streets.
How dare a little girl standing up there telling us we could do better.
HOW DARE HER.
You got it!
Or, as Gail’s favourite philosopher once said, “Let them who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Instead, they’re lining up to stone her. Typical of how we treat truth-tellers in this society.
So what do you do about it?
1. Do you own a car?
2. Do you own a house?
3. Do you have children?
4. Are you connected to the grid?
5. How do you commute to work?
6. What do you eat?
Let me cast the first stone upon you, sinner.
https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED156/5a0b0c2d86921.jpeg
Let me volunteer to receive the first stone. No, I do not own a car, and have not done so for 22 years. Yes, I do own a house, free and clear, which I bought as a retirement home. It is made almost entirely out of local stone and wood, and is not expensive to maintain: no central heating, no air conditioning.
I have five children, for which I make no apology; you play the hand you’re dealt, and simple game theory helped me decide. Yes, obviously connected to the grid, which is planning to piggyback on Sicilian and Italian sustainable power in the next 5 to 7 years, though I doubt that will work as well as planned.
I’m retired, but during my 21 years in Singapore I walked to work, every day without fail, rain or shine. I eat as far as possible locally, and a Mediterranean diet. My most remote “food” is vodka from Latvia, everything else is grown locally or ferried from Italy.
Hope that helps. By the way, this is not virtue and I’m no saint; it is simple prudence that perhaps will give me a few more years of borrowed time.
The common man scares me so much that I chose a life in solitude.
https://i.imgflip.com/1e342t.jpg
The day we collectively decide that it’s time to abandon the stupid monkey do dominance schemes and lazy ass constant lying to ourselves and comparing ourselves to equally mediocre halfwits.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/22/e2/0522e21ed8262b874e70be29b6cfc723.jpg
No,Joe, this is not helpful in my opinion. I don’t expect Greta to have all the answers and I don’t advocate consulting her as if she was the Oracle of Delphi.
What I do think is that Greta has been manufactured by the climate/industrial complex to sell their ideas and their agenda because she is a suitable spokesperson for the gig! And they may have been smart to do so because obviously she’s been very successful in getting publicity so far.
You probably don’t realize this, but despite your list of BAU things that I’d be the last person to defend, we are in the best of all possible worlds, and this is partly because we have been fortunate enough to have raised millions of smart people who have worked out how to do things better and billions of honest, decent hard-working ones to help get things done. And one of the smartest things these people have done has been to use more and more fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are an endowment from Gaia. We’ve used them so far to save the trees, get industrial civilization going and make life a lot easier and more pleasant for a lot more humans and other sentient beings, including my labrador George, the cows who produce my milk and the free-range hens that lay my breakfast eggs.
I don’t think we should be leaving them in the ground as long as we can extract them affordably. What I think we should be doing next is using our FF endowment as the matches to light a real fire by developing nuclear fission and fusion and other energy sources we may not even have dreamed of yet. So far we’ve been using our matches as firewood, and that just won’t do. So that’s where we should be heading, even if we don’t complete the journey. Because if we don’t establish a nuclear powered industrialized society, I think we really are toast and the biosphere will be much poorer for our failure.
Looking into my crystal ball, I don’t see us doing better without fossil fuels. Most of us won’t survive without them. We will starve, enslave, kill each other and ourselves, or die of starvation, anxiety and exhaustion. And in the process we’ll cut down every last tree for firewood and kill every wild animal we can get our hands on.
Far better I think if we burn more coal and follow Bill Gates in developing nuclear energy and vaccinating and educating Third World children in order to curb the world’s population growth in short order. This may not work either but things are moving in the right direction. The population growth rate is slowing, the fertility rate is dropping, and longevity is increasing globally. Unlike Greta, I don’t want you to panic. I want us all to exhale, calm down, and study the situation and the statistics objectively, dispassionately and impartially.
FFs are as you say an endowment from Gaia.
They fertilize through increased CO2 levels and nitrogen from industrial/combustion engine production of NOx gases. I wonder to what degree these effects are the underlying causes of the increased agricultural yield we have observed in the last 100 years?
Except that with wide wage disparity, the wealthy really do need to keep spending, or there will be no jobs and food for the poor. The self-organizing system operates in ways we don’t understand.
It is mostly automated anyway. The sub-proletariat and transferiat is totally redundant, obsolete and irrelevant in the modern economy.
You can forget that they will be allowed to burn through capital/energy just to keep the machinery operating.
Thanks. I take that to mean that I really have no idea what works or how. I do think, though, that individuals are given certain talents–somewhat as with the parable of the talents in the bible–that some of us are favored to be able to identify. So we input those talents into a self organizing system as our main concern. We actualize ourselves by following where our talents lead. (It is generally thought wise to emphasize the positive things rather than fight against the negatives.) Trusting the self organizing machine to work it out for “the best” might be somewhat like trusting God to work things out for “the best.” Faith also is the inner knowledge that things WILL work out for the best, while not understanding how.
“forget that they will be allowed to burn through capital/energy ”
But they evidently still do. Appx half working age population is useless. And big part of the other half only takes care of the useless and their own.
DJ; the clock of impending and inevitable irrelevance is ticking. Nobody sane wants to pay for the transferiat.
The horrible behemoth that is the government corporate complex will be relegated to the dustbin of history.
But in the IT future, there will be no poor. All the work will be done by robots, who will work 24 hours a day, never ask to be paid, never go on strike, never shoot up churches or schools, and never render our cities unliveable by littering them with drug needles and excrement.
For a preview of such a state of affairs, I recommend “The Time Machine”, by HG Wells, or the excellent movie version by George Pal.
Robert,
It pretty much sums it up what we are having today. Well, except for a few sporadic shootings and terrorist attacks, that won’t make a difference anyway, apart from fear-mongering in the fake news media.
Some people just fail to see the irony of living in a highly connected and automated economy and somehow despise the guts out of technology.
It is sad.
https://res-cloudinary-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/w_640,h_640,c_limit,q_auto,f_auto/image003_lcfzqv.jpg
“Robotics is the next industrial revolution and I don’t say this to be dramatic—sales numbers are climbing globally.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) World Robotics 2018 report, sales in industrial robotics over 2017 increased by 30 percent versus 2016, with 381,335 units sold overall. This is the fifth year in a row of record breaking global sales. Additionally, the global manufacturing industry had over 2,098,000 industrial robots in operation worldwide in 2017, 15 percent higher than 2016’s record.”
https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/17865/Industrial-Robots-Smashing-Records-in-Global-Sales-and-Installations.aspx
And that is only the industrial robots, excluding the data centers, regular industrial automation, etc
“Nobody sane wants to pay for the transferiat.”
Kw: but we do anyway!
The more we outsource and the more we automate the larger the transferiat grows and is soon the majority of voters.
Yes, the class conflict is not between the capital and the proletariat. It is between the productive and the parasites. The political power of the transferiat must be seized and never returned.
Which is already happening. I foresee UBI as inevitable to keep the useless nourished until they are dispatched back to a life as subsistence farmers with minimal support from IC.
I have a hard time imagining UBI coming true. What should politicians do if no longer stealing from one group and giving to another (skimming most)?
And just like household energy consumption is a minor part of total, making individual conservation more or less useless.
So is government spending of same magnitude as private spending.
But I suppose all consumption in the West/North should go way down anyhow.
It is as Gail explains, inequality is on the rise. Due to two major compounding effects:
1. Finite world issues, energy pricing etc.
2. Merciless automation enabling a high-tech economy displacing regular workers
Now what are we going to do about it? Communism clearly does not work as proven in history several times with equally disastrous results every time.
Increasing taxes on the proletariat and capital will not work either, since productivity decreases, the capital escapes, and the tax income with that.
See the Laffer curve:
https://blog.acton.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Laffer_Curve-PublicDomain-500x352px.png
The only reasonable way forward is a continuous reduction of the transferiat until the situation improves, although no further good news are expected.
It is an iron clad truth.
We’ve paid these smart people billions of dollars since1972 when it was all laid out in LIMITS TO GROWTH.
Dennis Meadows: The Limits To Growth
https://www.peakprosperity.com/dennis-meadows-the-limits-to-growth/
Hint:
Rear view mirror—-
It should be noted that a lot of the Limits to Growth projections have not YET panned out.
As Matt Ridley observed recently in the Spectator:
Since its inception, the environmental movement has been obsessed by finite resources. The two books that kicked off the green industry in the early 1970s, The Limits to Growth in America and Blueprint for Survival in Britain, both lamented the imminent exhaustion of metals, minerals and fuels. The Limits to Growth predicted that if growth continued, the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000. School textbooks soon echoed these claims.
Perhaps the authors of that study were a tad too pessimistic, or perhaps they were too far ahead of their time. And perhaps we’ve fallen from the top of the skyscraper and are passing the tenth floor and everything seems OK so far…..
https://amandaclearyeastepwriter.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/wileecoyote.jpg?w=700
FAKE NEWS!
You are really hanging with the wrong crowd. Ridley absolutely lies about Limits to Growth.
Have you even read the book? Or are you content to be spoon-fed lies by the green-conspiracy crowd?
Limits to Growth did not predict the “imminent exhaustion of metals, minerals and fuels.” It did not predict that “the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000.” I have been over the book in detail, as part of my ecology degree. I have re-read it periodically, as recently as last year. Those things simply are not in there!
I’m not familiar with the second work cited by Ridley, but if he outright lied about Limits to Growth, I can assume he took similar liberties with Blueprint for Survival.
Here is the truth about Limits to Growth, as recently reported by no less that The Smithsonian. They report that the “Business As Usual” model from Limits to Growth is right on track for “2030 population declines following economic collapse.”
You really need to broaden your reading list. Only zealots do what they accuse others of doing — reading only one side of the story, in your case. You don’t really want to be accused of zealotry, do you?
ARGH! OurFiniteWorld seems to be eating my comments if they have a link in them.
Suffice to say that Ridley is lying about Limits to Growth.
You need to broaden your reading list, Tim.
Calm down, Jan!
You are quite correct that:
Limits to Growth did not predict the “imminent exhaustion of metals, minerals and fuels.” It did not predict that “the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000.”
However, did Ridley say that it did predict those things? Let’s look at what he actually wrote.
What Ridley wrote was:
The Limits to Growth predicted that if growth continued, the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000. School textbooks soon echoed these claims.
The key phrase I would like to draw your attention to is “if growth continued”.
In Limits to Growth, as you may recall, there is an idea called the exponential reserve index, which is a calculation of how long it would take to run out of certain reserves in the case that no new reserves were found and in the case of constant exponential growth. This exponential reserve index calculation, I believe, is what people refer to when they say “LIG predicted what would happen if growth continued”.
It was these LIG calculations (several of which which do appear in LTG) that led many people to proclaim, perhaps unfairly or perhaps naively, that the world would run out of things such as gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000.
As Wikipedia tells it:
The exponential index has been interpreted as a prediction of the number of years until the world would “run out” of various resources, both by environmentalist groups calling for greater conservation and restrictions on use, and by skeptics criticizing the index when supplies failed to run out.
It sounds like we are in agreement that Ridley was fibbing — “perhaps unfairly or perhaps naively.”
Trying for real would mean for her with family to regress back to a life as subsistence farmers. Its all posturing and narrative. Big media touting the whistle, because they can.
The funny thing about communists / leftists is that they always choose people from the upper class or upper middle class as their leaders. Marx, Lenin, Mao and others and now the prophet Greta.
I myself, like many others who come from the working class, are often the ones who see the emperor naked. I hypothesize it suggests a certain appeal to authority view that stems from the old feudal society.
The transferiat is indeed scrambling to find a new role as technology is empowering the productive capital, workers, owners and machinery, while making much of their past glory as well paid middle men totally and utterly irrelevant.
My understanding is that her parents are musicians, more bohemian than “upper middle class.” They live in a modest apartment.
For those who smell some vast, moneyed conspiracy, my understanding is also that her parents have largely financed Greta’s travels.
At least that’s what my own research revealed. But conspiracy theorists are never placated: “Yea, that’s exactly what they want you to think!”
Point is, they have never, ever done anything productive in their entire lives. They are the left over useless clergy and divas of the old feudal society which have found a new life in singing the gospel of the climate as they are no longer needed for subverting the masses.
If they want to impress me, well then, time to move out from the city and into a very frugal lifestyle in the countryside tending their subsistence farming activities. The climate gospel can be sung over an Internet video enabled information sharing link. Traveling is a big no-no.
I doubt they care about impressing you.
As you are, no doubt?
I am neither preaching the climate gospel nor am I against industrial civilization.
What I am against is the overwhelming hypocrisy. Look man, just because you have good intentions does not make one shred of difference.
Now when will those cranks of your bicycle start spinning? Then let’s continue our discussions of how to make the next step toward a more humane and solidarity infused society once you at least have covered 1000km on your steed of steel.
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/86/0c/3d/860c3dddd1f3d1f10c159d13a8f9cd40.jpg
Mm, Kay?
Walking and wheel barrows are more efficient than bicycles, I believe. This seems to be what China used when it ran into hard times. Whatever is used needs to be made of local materials.
Once we run out of 1bn+ bicycles I can go with that, no pun intended.
https://coresites-cdn.factorymedia.com/twc/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/dad-meme.jpg
The internet (and in fact electricity) are very difficult to keep operating. We cannot depend on them for the long term. We need more traditional methods, such as myths and memorized stories.
Or books! Just got my copy of Volume Two.
At least in the medium-term… books have been around a long time, and they don’t require much technology to produce.
So Greta’s parents, as musicians, have never done anything productive. Here are a few more such sinners: Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, … This I think is the major cause of the decline of our civilisation: we have forgotten the things that make us human. And the Nine have retired to their Aonian Mount.
Thanks for that, Robert!
In the old days, people gathered together and sang songs. Now they listen to iThingies™.
<sarc>Which was more “productive?” Well, of course, the iThingies™ are what run the world economy, whereas a bunch of people sitting around, entertaining themselves without any money spent supporting the economy, is simply a waste of time.</sarc>
Difference is that their artistic talent is in demand. Malena, Greta and Svante is below average cheap mouthpieces of the climate lobby and would be on the streets begging if it wasn’t for (N)GO’s and their decoys.
Yeah, people surely sang along with the failed opera singer Malena?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/79/62/5179627985c2816d64c3c599bd31cc2c.jpg
What is this, deluded nostalgia hour? People building a fire singing a couple of songs with each other?
https://youtu.be/dsx2vdn7gpY
Exactly, when Greta shows her first hot compost video or such (which gets billions of views or not) then we are talking.. otherwise it’s exactly as you alluded, traveling circus for hire.. for the attempted de-growth (bottom-down) mandated campaign..
Their only tractable way forward is to rile up the productive classes against each other so that they, themselves can seize the means of production.
But the big problem here is that the productive class of today is the white collar worker having not a job, but an extremely well paid hobby. Heck, even the blue collar workers at the top of the food chain of today use and program computers in their daily duties fixing cars, plumbing and what have you.
Hence the inevitable irrelevance of the transferiat, and/or nomenclature. It is the last hooray for the peddlers of the comforting lie. And what a spectacle they are providing as entertainment.
Allow me to, just this one last time.
https://media1.giphy.com/media/Oz0MVF2VZB1mw/source.gif
Greta’s parents per Wikipedia:
“Malena Ernman, opera singer, is married to Swedish actor Svante Thunberg.[23] Their daughter, Greta, rose to worldwide prominence when she initiated the school strike for climate.[24] In August 2014, her then 11-year-old daughter, Greta Thunberg suddenly stopped eating, talking, reading or wanting to do anything. This condition lasted for several months and the child finally got, among others, a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. The acute period of her daughter’s illness affected Ernman and her family to such an extent that she had a breakdown three times during her professional activity and that altogether five performances had to be cancelled. After the crisis had been overcome, she turned to the nationwide daily newspaper Expressen, which then reported about it in detail. By doing so, she wanted to help other families in a similar situation, as she said.[25]
Ernman has been politically active in support of the Paris Agreement against climate change, writing a collaborative debate piece in Dagens Nyheter.[26] With her husband, she co-wrote the book Scener ur hjärtat (Scenes from the Heart) about her family, the environmental crisis and sustainability.[27]”
so Swedish Elites… with green blood within…
who essentially gave their young daughter too large of a dose of adult-world-issues, which caused her a major mental crisis at age 11…
who stole Greta’s childhood?
HER PARENTS…
Your understanding notwithstanding, the Greta phenomenon was manufactured. Perhaps your research was hampered by your lack of interest in discovering anything not in accord with your preconceptions?
For less blinkered folk who might be a bit more curious about how the Greta phenomenon was created and launched upon the world, as a place to start, I recommend the long, brilliant and detailed series of blog posts from a year ago by Cory Morningstar, which you can read at the link below.
It begins, thus:
“What’s infuriating about manipulations by the Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest the goodwill of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given the skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” — Hiroyuki Hamada, artist
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
this is a great reply to the Greta promoter types by Hamada. thanks for sharing this, Tim.
But conspiracy theorists are never placated
Jan, that’s among the most absurd of rebuttals. Large entities are conspiratorial by nature. They have a tendency not to announce their real plans. The truth, when it comes out at all, is usually revealed only by leaks—such as the Pentagon Papers, the Climategate documents, and the IG’s Afghanistan reports (via FOI requests)—and sometimes by autobiographies long afterwards.
Like the late Gore Vidal, Kowalainen and myself are not conspiracy theorists; we’re conspiracy analysts.
Is it even a conspiracy anymore at this point?
The nomenclature is horrified at the declining tax revenue from displaced workers succumbing due to a fault of none of their making. The inevitable irrelevance due to technological progress.
Second, the next worst thing is a population that is well educated, productive, frugal and capable of forming their own opinion without the “need” of mouth pieces and mass media megaphones. The horrors of entrepreneurial, spiritual and enlightened people running the show, making them as irrelevant as the rest of the transferiat and the sub-proletariat to their extreme detriment.
Good riddance to all charlatans and peddlers of smoke and mirrors in the government corporate complex.
Yep, although it’s a bit puzzling why RoW doesn’t comment openly on these notable bizarre jokes like for example 1963, 1969-1972, 2001 etc. Perhaps it’s just in plain sight, none of their own shame, so why bother pointing a finger..
Tim, conspiracy theories are a lobster trap with two entrances and no exit. If you claim the world is controlled by grey lizards from the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani, you are a conspiracy theorist. If you claim the world is not controlled by grey lizards, you are a part of the conspiracy.
I once invented my very own conspiracy theory. Jesus was an agent of the Chinese Emperor, sent to found a religion of peace, love, and a horror of militarism, that would bring to a halt the expansion of the Roman Empire, which we seen as a threat to the Middle Kingdom. Nobody bought it.
Hemp apparently can make very durable pages. So books are still viable with the right material.
But hemp has a fare more useful role to play in putting the world to rights. You weave it into a rope, tie one end to a lamp post, and tie the other end into a noose.
Make one copy for each member of COP25. Then declare Greta the incarnation of the Goddess Isis, enthrone her in the Pantheon, and finally listen to her. Ave Greta Stella Maris!
Thus spoken a real revolutionary. May you have a long and prosperous life, comrade. Remember that it is necessary to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s–qwNmPJYQ–/t_Preview/b_rgb:d60023,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1554834715/production/designs/4605308_0.jpg
On the flip side I have a family and friends that are big fans of Trump and they seem to think that he has fixed everything the economy is expanding and everything is fine. When I explain about collapse because of heavy debt load they counter with you have been saying that for years. This is true I tell them but it is like driving over a rotten bridge saying that the bridge has been fine for years….
But Trump has indeed kept the United States going better than other economies in this troubled time. The US has also stayed away from hot wars.
Here is an interesting point about a couple of impeached Presidents. I may be alive today thanks to Richard Nixon ending the Vietnam war. Gifted with a low draft number and being a poor boy with parents dumb enough to send me into the death grinder, I may have ended up over there and then on that wall in DC. But I didn’t. Thank you Richard Nixon. You were a great man in my book.
Likewise, I think that there are 50000-100000 people who are now dead thanks to the Libya bombing and the civil war starting coup in Ukraine, all initiated by Obama and Hillary. Under Trump, despite left wing and neocon criticism for NOT invading Syria, Iran and North Korea, he has not gotten us into a war yet. That means there are 50000-100000 folks still alive thanks to his bravery. Lots of those might have been American troops. Trump is no moral saint, but in many ways like this he is great for America. For not starting wars he is a great man in my book.
I know it is only temporary, then the neocons will probably get back in control. And then, Hello war.
Say a short thanks for no new wars right now.
My lottery number was THREE (out of 365), but the draft ended just four weeks before I was to report. So I’m in the same boat.
Nixon was a vastly underrated president, in my opinion. He signed the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency as a cabinet-level agency.
It’s sad that his paranoia got the better of him, and largely ruined his legacy.
Yes Jesse!!! Trump the peace president.
Jan, no it was not an exalted case of paranoia, Nixon was a guy of his times, he just saw first hand many of the political class gunned down in the decades after the WWII, when imported ex nazis and mafia where employed by “the deep state” for performing the dirty laundry tasks..
“Gail Tverberg says:
December 25, 2019 at 9:23 am
But Trump has indeed kept the United States going better than other economies in this troubled time. The US has also stayed away from hot wars.”
I am of the opinion that the president does not really do much to help the economy though the president can easily damage it. At least in the short term. Though immigration efforcement and tariff’s maybe changing my mind.
Though one of President Trump’s affects may be to distract people from what is actually happening. By the way did anyone notice the Democrats in the house are trying to eliminate or increase the state and local tax exception? SALT impacts almost completely millionaires(not worth looking up the numbers). I that find completely hilarious. But I have a strange sense of humor.
Though I am not even sure if that SALT is a good thing. Like most things I can make the case in either direction. 😉
T2M
Merry Christmas all.
Kowalainen, this is very important point of distinction.
Because to be to against contemporary/legacy order could be just misleading empty – simplistic, one dimensional characteristic. As notable historical libertines, quasi revolutionairs, and rebels often turned out to be just another status-money chasers in the end. For example Voltaire ended up with ~1000 souls (8x villages) estate near the Swiss border, although supposedly improving the economy of the area and its inhabitants.
The smart and new money has already left titanic (government corporate complex).
The push on tech is tremendous now. The capital wants to incapacitate the people who seeks to seize their means of production by making them totally and utterly irrelevant. And who can blame them.
The Watson and DeepMind crowd, Bannon, the alt-right YT/reddit/Internet crowd, el Trumpo, etc, etc, and the rest of the tech puppets and puppet masters won’t leave empty handed.
I liked when Bannon in passing briefly mentioned how he looked after his many businesses in China (decades ago) – was it some sort of small scale sweatshop manuf. in HK and or coastal mainland?
“Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”
William Butler Yeats (1865 to 1939)
Ah, yes, the capital exploiting the proletariat. So who are these poor slaves working day and night with endless drudgery. Let’s have a closer inspection:
https://bildix.mmcloud.se/bildix/api/images/dc1e95d9b8be013981f5b673f8f210ce6985f2c4.jpg
Wait a second, they are actually programming and operating the means of production and, gasp, earning good money, enjoying it. Because why not, it is what builds prosperity. High tech industry it is.
https://youtu.be/AyWtIwwEgS0
Context, rilygtek. Yeats was not talking about capitalists versus workers, he was musing on the Irish rebellion. Which “freed” their country only to plunge it into civil war, with the Protestant Supremacy replaced by a nationalist Supremacy. And add the disappointment of one whose hopes for a “terrible beauty” had been dashed.
My own opinion (for what it’s worth) is that replacing the old boss with the new boss is almost always useless. It is the concept of “bosses”, of hierarchy and command, that is the real problem. And replacing the command structure of BAU with the command structure of a “green revolution” will simply transfer the lash to a new generation of overlords.
Mother Theresa wasn’t all sweetness and light:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism
Power and ideology are usually foremost in the minds of Catholic clergy. After all, the Church did a deal with Mussolini in 1929 to get the Vatican City. Why does a religion need its own territory and so much property and real estate? That Church is far more materialistic than spiritual.
I prefer the more modest and genuine people of the Quakers and the Sally Army.
It’s very reasonable to question why the Catholic Church requires so much property, wealth and national sovereignty. Perhaps you should ask Greta to broach this subject during her next conversation with His Holiness?
But was Mother Teresa involved in the Church deal with Mussolini in 1929?
Or are you saying she is guilty by association?
If so, you may be interested to know that from 1939, the Quakers worked with the German Government on a project approved by Herman Goering to ameliorate the condition of German Jews. And Mussolini was a part of the plan! Imagine if Donald Trump had been involved in something like that? Duncan would have an epileptic fit!
https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=WrcA0sAqwgsC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=quakers+Mussolini&source=bl&ots=tVjLlBK94B&sig=ACfU3U1dF_vvc-dqwsiHWL7jEBSYaN-iIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwia_NOQ5M_mAhVYyYsBHSa_DFEQ6AEwD3oECA0QAQ#v=onepage&q=quakers%20Mussolini&f=false
As for the Salvation Army, George Orwell despised them, and some folks these days are equally critical:
Twelve reasons why you should think twice about supporting the Salvation Army.
1. Upholding inequality.
2. Promoting hatred of gay people.
3. The fact that it is a religious cult.
4. Its support for conservative politics.
5. Harassing the Poor.
6. Aiding War.
7. Racism.
8. Corruption.
9. Reliance on corporate and government support.
10. Attempts to control other people’s choices.
11. Ripping off and exploiting workers.
12. Support social change over religious charity.
https://libcom.org/library/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army
What are the prospects of synthetic oil which uses coal that would be able to last for centuries?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCSuXjtgAE
That of converting coal/plastic into crude oil?
Great, if it was cheap, but it’s not.
Need $20 per barrel oil (or cheaper) in huge quantity. Don’t think this would really work.
got 2 minutes in
calls coal the most energy dense fossil fuel—it isn’t
Depends on what you use the energy for. If you need it to power the human metabolism, the most energy dense fuel is people. As the Easter Islanders discovered.
i don’t know many people i’d fancy eating
Nuclear fuel is the most dense
Actually, colliding neutron stars are a denser energy source.
But the problems are similar to nuclear: containment, the potential for disaster, and dealing with “waste” products. Plus, the gravity waves would spaghettify any bystanders. 🙂
Seriously, I have certain reservations about nuclear power, even in a world where fossil fuel is plentiful. In a world of overall declining energy, I think nuclear’s problems get even worse.
I think the artifacts of Einstein’s universe somewhat dubious. Black holes, worm holes, big bangs and neutron stars.
Zero division “physics” is, well, not physics at all.
http://www.everythingselectric.com/wp-content/uploads/hannes-alfven-plasma-2.jpg
And a personal favorite:
http://www.everythingselectric.com/wp-content/uploads/hannes-alfven-plasma-4.jpg
Long live Hannes Alfvén. All hail Hannes Alfvén.
Sounds like a religious belief to me. We have evidence of at least some of those things.
Oh, tell me about how you sent a probe to a neutron star or stuck a scientific instrument into a black hole. Until then, spare me the pseudoscientific parroting.
Today’s climate “science” share many attributes with cosmology as putting forward totally, by experiment, untestable claims.
So, LIGO is a big fake? It detects collisions between supermassive objects, like neutron stars and black holes.
I don’t think there is anywhere near as much evidence for wormholes and big bangs, but a confusion between those and black holes and neutron stars speaks loudly against one’s scientific knowledge.
You should go read the comments on LIGO at researchgate.net
https://www.google.se/search?client=safari&hl=sv-se&sxsrf=ACYBGNSo3bKLzMfrkcdXbes7w-gYR9BHlw%3A1577298955044&ei=C6wDXteuAuyGrwTnsr_wCQ&q=ligo+researchgate&oq=ligo+researchgate&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3..35i39l2.82176.83044..83501…0.0..0.139.515.6j1……0….1………33i160.8ugfb2kJ9zY
As I have stated zero division enabled “physics” is pseudoscience.
https://youtu.be/hI9CaQD7P6I
Coal as feedstock with nukes providing heat for syngas creation will be the new oil.
https://youtu.be/VquomoGn4zk
IC will be pounding along the tracks of BAU until the end of the century, ingesting coal, churning out wealth, CO2 and water vapor.
Except our problem is too low prices for coal, just as it is too low prices for everything else. We can’t afford the end products.
I can afford stuff. Who are we?
Not that I buy stuff that I don’t need anyway.
The bad credit needs to be flushed out and the transferiat, it’s managers and clients to be put on minimal UBI. The wastrels serve no economic utility anymore.
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
And too high price for nuclear.
Uranium prices are below most costs of production, however.
Gail, getting back to the subject of this post, don’t you think you are being a bit hard on hydropower?
You pointed out that the International Rivers Organization writes that Large Dams Just Aren’t Worth the Cost, and 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.
But to put these findings in some kind of context, some researchers have reported that hydropower projects can produce an enormous EROI over their lifetimes, such as this 2015 study by R.S. Atlasona and R. Unnthorsson of the University of Iceland:
Abstract
The aim was to study the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for the Fljotsdalsstod hydroelectric
power plant (690 MW) using real data and a previously proposed standard. Energy return on
investment is the ratio between the output and input energy. In this study we calculate the EROI
within three defined boundaries, which include different parameters. Results show that over the
100-year lifetime, the plant is expected to deliver an EROI of approximately 110. The largest
energy-consuming factor was the own usage, followed by the indirect energy used in the production
of the construction materials. Since this study uses a standardised methodology, it can be compared to future studies. To date, this has not been possible since no standard methodology has been used in past studies.
https://wecanfigurethisout.org/ENERGY/Web_notes/Technology%20Comparisons/EROI%20-%20Supporting%20-%20Files/Atalson%202015%20-%20EROI%20of%20hydroelectric%20-%20Elsevier%20preprint.pdf
It would be interesting to see estimates of EROI for major plants around the world as well as for hydropower overall, and also interesting to have more information on how much environmental, economic and social damage has been caused in practice by building and running them.
I think part of the issue is whether these dams are supposed to be part of a big system with lots of backup, or if these dams are to be the backbone of the system. They don’t work as the backbone ov a system unless consumption is limited to the minimum they provide over a multi-year period. With lots of transmission and trade, they can be part of a larger system. That can really work. High EROI is necessary but not sufficient by itself.
In Scandinavia and probably elsewhere hydro IS the backup/backbone.
… backing up swedish nuclear, danish wind and german solar.
It works only as long as the whole system works. If governments fall into disarray and transmission lines go unrepaired, the system stops. If the system gets overloaded with wind and solar, the system could fail. If Europe finds that its intermittency cannot really balanced by hydro any more, how do they resolve their differences?
as i’ve always said—by reverting to traditional methods
Well, I guess it will be dark in Germany again. But no bombs will fall this time, the destruction was brought upon them by no other than themselves.
Here in British Columbia, we are close to 100% hydro power, which is also true of much of Eastern Canada, too.
In fact, Canadians don’t refer to electricity, we call it “hydro” when we get a bill or need service: “BEEP! (Lights out.) Damn! Hydro is out again!” Our utility is actually called “BC Hydro.”
Dispatchable power is the undisputed ruler of all electricity generation.
It can throttle from basically zero to gigawatts in mere seconds. Just whack open the taps and let the water thunder trough the turbines smashing out gravity fed power to the generators and transmission lines in no time. And as we all know, time is money.
Long, yes indeeed, a looong, long time after the oil and coal burners of this world have ceased to provide warmth and nutrition for mankind, the hydro power stations will be the backbone of the scrap heap which used to be IC.
Hydro stations need electric transmission lines. They need to have the silt dredged out. They need replacement parts. I know that Charlie Hall lives up near a hydroelectric plant because it should be long-lasting. They may be longer lasting, but they tend to provide very seasonal power.
They can be helpful for a while, but like everything else, they fail.
Seasonal power?
They store the energy of the seasons. Except for in Norway where it always rains due to the Gulf Stream, if you want to call that energy pumping natural behemoth seasonal?
The aluminum and copper smelters of Sweden is powered by hydro. The steel industry of Sweden is powered by hydro.
Now what are the most high-tech sensitive parts of a hydro power station made out of? Steel, aluminum and copper.
It is delusional to think that a high-tech hydro power and coal economy can’t sustain itself basically indefinitely.
Hydro doesn’t seem to work well in hot climates. Venezuela is an example of a country trying to get much of electricity from hydroelectric. It runs into fires started by transmission line problems that take down the electricity for the entire country.
Have you ever looked at the production graphs?
Yea, they do a limited amount of season-shifting, but most hydro facilities here in Canada peak in June or July, after they’ve disgorged the winter snowpack melt.
And guess what? Deny the cause, but you cannot deny the fact that snowpack is less and less, year by year. Some estimate that large hydro in BC will become increasingly ineffective in the future.
I have never heard of any fires starting in Scandinavia due to transmission line malfunctions.
Running the water level in the reservoirs to the ground will of course have the same disastrous impact as bad oil reservoir management strategies.
Now, when was the last time I experienced a power outage in Sweden. Actually, I can not remember.
Many transmission lines are now of UHVDC type buried in the ground or undersea cables together with other infrastructure enablers such as fiber optics.
https://youtu.be/MtmG7ZIfaDA
I know that there is a Texas website that talks about 4000 transmission line fires starting in the last 2.5 years. California clearly has a problem. I found transmission line fires in Hawaii. It may be that in cool, wet climates, with much transmission over water, the problems are different.
Jan, oh really?
http://www.earthpolicy.org/images/uploads/graphs_tables/highlights29_world.PNG
”The Swedish record for greatest annual rainfall has thus been beaten three times in recent decades. This is probably not only a result of the precipitation in Sweden showing a slowly rising trend, but also a consequence of the fact that we have received more stations in the most rainy areas in western Götaland.” (Translated from Swedish)
https://www.smhi.se/kunskapsbanken/meteorologi/svenska-nederbordsrekord-1.6660
Your point being?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Electricity_generation_in_Sweden.svg/1280px-Electricity_generation_in_Sweden.svg.png
Swedish hydro predates oil.
I estimate about one outtage per year.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! Guy McPherson been saying this for years!
Fighting Shipping Pollution Is Bad For the Planet
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fighting-shipping-pollution-bad-planet-070050325.html
(Bloomberg Opinion) — The shipping industry is getting serious about cutting sulfur dioxide emissions. People who live along busy shipping lanes will see health benefits from reduced particulate emissions and a reduction in acid rain when new regulations come into force on Jan. 1. But the sulfur particles help offset some of the warming caused by powering the ships, so the rules may also increase the likelihood that rising sea levels caused by global warming leave those same populations without a home….
But these health benefits may come at a cost of actually worsening shipping’s climate impact. That’s because the sulfates from ships’ exhaust emissions contribute a cooling effect that will be lost with their removal.
Sulfur aerosols from ship exhaust reflect energy back into space. But they also have make clouds brighter, so they reflect more sunlight away from the Earth as well. Mikhail Sofiev, one of the authors of the Nature Communications paper, explained it like this:
Clouds with many small droplets are “whiter” — more reflective — than the clouds with few large droplets. Anthropogenic particles are small and numerous. They attract water and prompt formation of many small cloud droplets – and we get white-top cloud. Fewer sulfate particles reaching the cloud tops will reduce their albedo [ability to reflect] because the cloud droplets will become less numerous, bigger and therefore less reflective.
Damned if we do, damned if we don’t!
In 2018, the London-based group adopted a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The goal is to cut the carbon intensity of international shipping “by at least 40% by 2030, pursuing efforts towards 70% by 2050, compared to 2008,” according to the document. It also aims to bring about a peak in total greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible” and reduce them by at least 50% by 2050 compared with 2008 levels. The overall emissions target is lower than the carbon intensity goal because the volume of shipping is forecast to increase over the next 30 years.
One proposal to help achieve all of this is to lower fuel consumption by introducing speed limits. Others include technical approaches such as mandatory power limits.
Hahahaha…..wow, MASTER PLAN 2050….what a joke….
Sigh
The Cutty Sark was only 10% to 15% slower than today’s cargo ships, and of course totally carbon neutral. We know the answer: downsize, localise, move towards limited autarky. But we prefer BAU even as it kills us.
If we go back to tea clippers, I fear we are also going to have to bring back the cat o nine tails, otherwise there are going to be a lot of mutinies on the Bounty.
who gets to be the slave? white men? not enough of them.
colored men will refuse to do forced labor because their heightened awareness of how badly colored slaves were treated during European colonialism.
The heavily indebted…?
just the hungry
I don’t think banking will exist in its current form if we go back to tea clippers.
It’s cute that you think Wall Street is going make it through the other side and keep tabs on who owed what without electricity, though.
Tim, we have in the National Maritime Museum 22 crew lists from the Cutty Sark, covering 1870 to 1895. They were not conscripted; they were hired crew, and there was no “cat” on board. Indeed, they were very well paid, compared to the naval pressed seamen of the time.
Left to its own devices, in an environment of sound money and the rule of law, capitalism thrives, as do its employees.
This is true, and thanks for correcting me. I suppose serving in the Merchant Navy was paradise compared to the Royal one.
Merrily, merrily,
So merry sale we
No mortal on earth like a sailor at sea
Heave away, haul away
The ship rolls along
Give a sailor his grog and there’s nothing goes wrong
https://youtu.be/K9f6voWbQ3c
Just automate the shit of those boats, there is no need for large crews and large bunker/diesel guzzling engines for shipping semiconductors from Taiwan to the west.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579681038419c282935ae899/1528546076055-6MIT0XVH8J0M5DGW3H8H/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kFmfxoboNKufWj-55Bgmc-J7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0iXS6XmVv7bUJ418E8Yoc1hjuviiiZmrL38w1ymUdqq4JaGeFUxjM-HeS7Oc-SSFcg/Ceiba-photorender_300dpi-SailcargoBooklet.jpg
“Our vessel Ceiba is a new design with inspiration from the successful coastal trading schooner Ingrid, build on the Åland Islands of Finland in the early 1900’s. Ceiba will have a permanent crew of twelve and space for an additional twelve guest crew. In addition to the core team, mentioned in the About section, many experienced individuals are contributing to the build of Ceiba.”
https://www.sailcargo.org/vessel
I don’t think that the automation will work on wind power unless there are many days of battery backup. Even then, things seem to go wrong. It is not possible to foresee everything that goes wrong.
The brain needs magnesium, the latest study on Parkinsons and MgT:
https://www.dovepress.com/treatment-of-magnesium-l-threonate-elevates-the-magnesium-level-in-the-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NDT
“In the current study, the data suggest that the beneficial effect of MgT on neuroprotection is likely due to its effect on the Mg permeation into the brain, as the administration of MgT increased the concentration of Mg in both the CSF and serum. On the other hand, MgSO4 had no effect on the neurodegeneration as it only increased the serum Mg level but did not affect the CSF Mg level. These data also suggest that the only supplementation of Mg in the periphery does not help to protect the brain and the combination of Mg with an agent that promotes its transportation to the brain is essential for the neuroprotection of this element.”
Benfits of “phase one” trade deal not filtering through to the BDI, apparently:
“The Baltic Dry Index shed 2.43% to 1,123 points in London after a 5.1% decline in Panamax rates dragged the index to a 13th straight drop.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/news/3527716-baltic-dry-index-drops-another-2
“The global economy is stumbling into 2020 after a battering from trade tensions and a manufacturing recession that dragged growth to the weakest in a decade.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2019-12-21/charting-the-economy-world-limps-on-after-2019-s-trade-bruising
No kidding!
it will be interesting to see how retail fares after the Christmas consumer frenzy is over in January. more malls to close?
Malls are a relic of the VHS era in home entertainment. Recordings of tv programs and movies in tape form became prevalent at the same exact time malls were a popular shopping destination for the WORKING AGE population. Changes to the economy made both of those things less popular by 2001. Now, people still went to the mall and bought VHS tapes until at least 2006–but they were a smaller and older group of people who had more money or had one of few well-paying jobs that still existed in the U.S. Changes to the economy and technology made malls and recorded media less profitable since there were fewer workers with disposable income.
We seem to have an awfully lot of things that grow in popularity and then the popularity collapses as the whole system morphs to a different mode, using a different energy supply and a different distribution of workers by wage level. What worked before no longer works. This is part of what makes debt defaults common. Also, companies eventually reaching bankruptcy or merger with another company. Nothing is permanent in this world!
Too much….Haha ha….Now we find a reason for dumning down….
By the end of the century, indoor carbon dioxide levels could climb so high that they cut human performance on complex cognitive tasks by 50%, according to scientists’ calculations.
A growing body of research indicates that high levels of carbon dioxide impair human cognition.
Curbing carbon emissions from fossil fuels could help prevent these negative effects.
The world’s carbon-dioxide problem doesn’t just affect the atmosphere — the gas is starting to fill our homes, schools, and offices, too.
Indoor levels of the gas are projected to climb so high, in fact, that they could cut people’s ability to do complex cognitive tasks in half by the end of the century.
That prediction comes from three scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Pennsylvania, who presented their findings last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The study is still under peer review but available online in the repository Earth ArXiv.
The findings show that, if global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise on their current trajectory, the concentration of CO2 in the air could more than double by 2100. Based on measurements of how humans function in spaces with that much CO2, the scientists warn, we could find ourselves scoring 50% lower on measures of complex thought by the end of the century.
That includes the ability to plan strategies, respond to a crisis, make decisions, and use new information to achieve a goal.
Brain function drops as carbon-dioxide levels rise
This, without a doubt, is a GOOD thing, we people are much too smart and clever for our own good!
Shaving some points off the IQ will definitely help keep us out of extinction.
My position is Mankind was much happier living in Caves, but then again there wouldn’t be any wives around to decorate or make home improvements to…
https://news.yahoo.com/carbon-dioxide-homes-offices-classrooms-131700552.html
Herbie,
Perhaps reread some of Gail’s and others posts on this subject and note: “if global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise on their current trajectory…” is consistent with getting grants to support the current narrative regarding CC. IQ has indeed been decreasing from sometime since the 19th century if literature is to be believed.
I am not sure about being happier sleeping in caves, how would you reconcile this with so many people wanting to migrate to the US from areas where some sleep in quarters similar to caves? If this statement is true, do you think presenting it to areas where homelessness is prevelant, say SF would be of social benefit? Would it be salable to those living on the streets? Would latrines be put in caves as well?
To a certain degree your post supposes determinism,”That includes the ability to plan strategies, respond to a crisis, make decisions, and use new information to achieve a goal.” It may be hubris to assume we are anything but along for the ride, we adapt to our surroundings or we move, migrate. Even our cultures change which can mean fighting to the death to preserve the old or adapting the maxim, “New boss, same as the old boss.”
Dennis L.
Dennis, we just don’t know what levels will be attained! Seems positive feedbacks are kicking in as we breath! The Amazon jungle looks like it’s passing the threshold of Rainforest to Savanna plain. Too bad, I’m too old to see all this unfolding…
My guess is we people are in for plenty of unexpected surprises 😉 we can not even dream of….makes life worth living! 2020 Baby
Another score for BAU! Hip, hip Hooray for the score by Exxon-Mobile ….keeping the crude flowing as the figure out to make algae oil….
Oil Boom Begins in Guyana as Exxon Lifts First Liza Field Crude
Natnicha Chuwiruch and Kevin Crowley
BloombergDecember 21, 2019, 1:21 AM EST
(Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp. and its partners lifted the first commercial crude from Guyana, setting the small South American nation on a path to potentially vast flows of oil revenues.
Exxon has a 45% share in the Guyana project, while Hess Corp. has 30% and China’s CNOOC Ltd. 25%. Output from the first phase of the offshore Liza field is expected to reach full capacity of 120,000 gross barrels of oil per day in coming months, with the first cargo to be sold within several weeks, the companies said in separate press releases.
Guyana President David Granger declared Dec. 20 “National Petroleum Day,” noting that the country has become an oil-producing state three months ahead of the recent schedule. The president hailed a related 10-year government plan to create oil-related jobs and boost the economy.
The Liza field is located in the Stabroek block, where recoverable resources are estimated to be more than 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent. A second floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility, with capacity of as much as 220,000 gross barrels of oil per day, is under construction as part of Liza’s phase 2 development. At least five FPSOs are expected to be producing more than 750,000 gross barrels of oil per day from the Stabroek block by 2025, the
barrels of oil equivalent. A second floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility, with capacity of as much as 220,000 gross barrels of oil per day, is under construction as part of Liza’s phase 2 development. At least five FPSOs are expected to be producing more than 750,000 gross barrels of oil per day from the Stabroek block by 2025, the companies said.
The amount of oil expected to be produced would mean Guyana, with a population of less than 800,000, may end up producing more crude per person than any other country in the world. But how it benefits from that wealth is still an open question. While the country has established a sovereign wealth fund, it has been slow to develop regulations to govern the sector and there’s no set plan on how the money will be spent.
How nice…no set plans for the money…Swiss Bankers will undoubtedly be there to help!
I am sure how much the country benefits depends on the price of oil as well. The higher the price, the more tax revenue can be collected. Of course, after a few years, the oil exports and tax revenue stop. Somehow, the country needs to continue on its own. Its likely problem is population that has grown too much to be sustainable.
Why, ain’t that sweet….extended parent leave and Uncle Sam’s new Baby…what a combo!
What’s not to like…just put it on the Credit Card, negative interest rate please…that’s coming next!
Donald Trump signs defense bill that creates Space Force, expands parental leave
DAVID JACKSON | USA TODAY
8:49 p.m. EST Dec. 20, 2019
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed a $738 billion defense bill into law Friday that hinged in part on two seemingly disparate issues: Paid parental leave and the president’s treasured new “Space Force.”
The National Defense Authorization Act, which includes pay raises for troops, represents history’s largest investment in military power, Trump told troops gathered for a signing ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland.
“Our military is now dominant,” Trump said. “Together we are protecting our people.”
Trump signed the bill before boarding Air Force One for a flight to his end-of-the-year stay at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The legislation passed Congress after a deal that involved family and parental leave and the Space Force.
Congressional Democrats signed off on money for Space Force as Republicans agreed to demands on parental and family leave. The bill provides 12 weeks of paid leave for 2.1 million civilian federal workers after the birth of a child, adoption, or start of foster care.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, lobbied on behalf of the parental and family leave legislation.
Standard defense funding in the bill will keep the U.S. military the strongest in the world, Trump told troops, and “there’s no country that comes even close.”
As he often does, Trump promoted the new Space Force, now the sixth branch of the U.S. military and the first created in seven decades.
“It’s a big moment,” he said, and will enable the U.S. government to control “the ultimate high ground.”
During a political rally Wednesday in Battle Creek, Mich., Trump told supporters that “I will be able to tell my kids someday, and everybody else, ‘See that Space Force? That was my baby.'”
On Dec. 11, as the bill made its way through Congress, Trump said “all of our priorities have made it” into the defense bill. “Pay Raise for our Troops, Rebuilding our Military, Paid Parental Leave, Border Security, and Space Force!” Trump tweeted, pledging to sign it immediately.
The bill includes a 3.1% pay raise for Pentagon personnel, the largest in more than a decade.
“America’s armed forces are more powerful than ever,” Trump said, “and growing even stronger.”
8:49 p.m. EST Dec. 20, 2019
😜👴🚀
Boy, those folks in the Pentagon must be drooling with delight!
The End of the World Party is gonna have some outta this world Fireworks!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5bRJ9BaTF8
“Russia’s Imperial Navy is more powerful than ever.” Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, on 26 May 1905. All right, I made it up. But the lesson is still valid: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs xvi:18)
Jan, I’m an old timer and was a reader of Mother Earth News when the founder John Shuttleworth was in charge. Back then they published all kinds of “alternatives”, one that hold the most promise was bio-digesters to produce methane gas for heating.
Of course, there were numerous schemes that were published and have yet gained mass consumer penetration. Much was brought forth by creative intelligent,, highly educated individuals and groups (i.e. Zoom Works for one). I did not even mention the numerous book publications offered and still available today.
As far as biofuels from algae, NPR public radio had a program that I remember discussing the promise of the future fuel. Seems there are limiting factors, such as, fertilizer in the form of phosphate, from what recall.
Here is a link to an article produced by the Dept. Of Energy US…
Seems they were experimenting way back in the 80’s, 90’s..
.https://farm-energy.extension.org/algae-for-biofuel-production/#Production_challenges
I live in South Florida and to this day Solar Water Heaters are a rare thing.
In China they are very common….go figure.
Regarding methane gas from biodigesters, I think the problem is that natural gas (mostly methane) is dirt cheap. It is to a significant extent an almost unwanted biproduct of oil production. It is often flared (burned off) because the cost of pipes and processing is high, relative to its value. When Chevron recently took a $10 billion writedown, it was almost entirely natural gas related. There is fracked natural gas a well. This was part of what Chevron took a write-down on.
That’s a good argument against, if your only measure is dollars and cents. Of course it is cheaper to use natgas than to create your own, in most circumstances.
But the peace of mind you get from being one more step from the energy grid? Priceless!
Where are you going to get all the materials for the biodigester? How about the inputs? Don’t inputs fall with the economy?
Good question, Gail! Now, forgive me because I do not have the article (s) on hand but googled Mother Earth News and found a few articles on them …here is one dated 1970!
Wow, I am OLD!
https://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/waste-to-energy-methane-production-zmaz70mjzkin
Convert Waste to Energy with Methane Production
Learn how to convert manure and garbage to energy using this small-scale methane producing plant. Originally titled “How I Generate Power from Garbage” in the May/June 1970 issue of Mother Earth News.
By the Mother Earth News editors
May/June 1970
Generate Power from Waste
This article is presented as an alternative to the usual wasteful disposal of manure, feces, and various other organic materials. By using the principles presented here for converting organic waste into methane gas, even the most remote wilderness cabin can have gas heating, refrigeration and electricity. All the home appliances and machines which run on butane gas can be made to operate on methane and by using a compressor you can probably convert your car or truck to operate on methane also. There is another point of view which you may also feel is worth considering: The gases which we harness and use in this fashion would have been released into the atmosphere anyway so we will be adding nothing to the pollution of our environment
Available Wastes
Horses and cows each produce from 10 to 16 metric tons of manure per year, depending upon stabling conditions and the amounts of organic litter used for bedding. To this may be added garbage, waste straw, cane stalks, or any other organic material. Where night-soil is used as a fertilizer, it should be digested with other organic wastes before application to the land, in order to prevent the spread of faecal-borne diseases.
While human excrement does not add much weight to the digester (30 to 60 pounds per person per year), it does provide appreciable quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus. These elements are necessary for biological digestion and methane production from cellulose and other materials with a high carbon content. The sanitary treatment of night-soil for the reclamation of nutrients is most important. It should be further mentioned that when night-soil and animal manure containing large quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus are digested, large amounts of waste materials such as straw, cane stalks, and sawdust, can be added to increase gas production. When night-soil is digested with other wastes, a digestion period of three months or more is desirable in order to ensure adequate destruction of pathogenic organisms and parasites
Stable manure and mixed organic refuse weighs from less than one-half to as much as one metric ton per cubic meter, depending upon the amount of moisture and the degree of compaction.
Gas Production
In practice, about 50 percent of the carbon theoretically available for gas production is converted into gas. A metric ton of waste will normally yield about 50 to 70 cubic meters of gas per digestion cycle, depending upon the proportion of organic matter and the carbon content of the waste.
The digestion cycle will be shorter at high temperatures than at low temperatures, and the daily yield per ton of material will be greater. Considerably greater digester capacity is required to produce a fixed amount of gas at a temperature of about 20 degrees Celsius than at a temperature of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. Image three’s estimates are for gas production per ton of manure for different digestion periods at different temperatures.
Similar data on gas production and digestion time for sewage sludge at different temperatures may be found in books on sewage treatment. The amount of gas produced and the rate of digestion at different temperatures are the important factors in determining the size of digestion tanks to be used.
Plenty more info on the link and more articles at Mother Earth News.
Again, a lot of the head work was accomplished decades ago and largely overlooked and forgotten…I am struck by the fact the wheel will and is being reinvented
YouTube has many videos on them! Here’s Heather’s funtastic
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaxN4T6VSp8
Certainly a valid point, since most designs are plastic and/or rubber. Rubber is not necessarily a fossil sunlight product, having been around since the 1840s.
In the small subsistence farm model, the input to a bio-digester is livestock manure, an essentially free product, if you own the livestock.
I haven’t actually worked on this yet, as we put every bit of our manure (about eight cubic metres) to use as fertilizer. However, after harvesting the methane, the rest of the manure is still useful as a soil amendment.
I haven’t pursued it because of scale. It seems as though much more manure than we produce is necessary to produce useful amounts of methane. With a dozen goats, we might get enough for a light cooking use on a natgas stove, but not much more, and not anywhere near what you’d need for water or space heating.
Such a pity. Thins have changed. Thermal solar used to be quite popular in the US South — as was “swamp coolers” in the summer.
“swamp coolers” only work well in low-humidity conditions. at least they did for us in Southern California.
Yea, they work great in the Southwest, but not so good in the Southeast.
Fortunately for me, while growing up in Africa, and later in life living in Singapore, I carried around my own “swamp cooler”, a bunch of sweat glands. Add a few open windows and traditional breezeways, and I’ve never had to use an air conditioner. Yes, never ever. It really is not that hard!
We are tropical creatures, Robert, and I think the climate of Singapore is ideal for us, especially when we’re reclining in shady recesses of the old Raffles Hotel listening to the singing of the caged birds and sipping a Singapore Sling.
As long as there’s a decent draft, I can manage the tropical heat. But I have to use an air conditioner to keep the computer, the dog and the cats cool.
Thank you, Tim. Unfortunately, dogs and cats are not tropical creatures, as they have to sweat through their tongues. That is one reason why, though a cat person, I was never owned by one in Singapore.The enclosed garden in Raffles Hotel is indeed beautiful, with its tinkling water and spreading plants, and especially so under a full moon. But my favourite relaxation place was Pulau Sentosa, until it was destroyed by private greed and public folly.
Herbie,
It seems to be time issue; even an individual who spends his time and money on processes that are cash flow negative will have issues as time goes by; specifically a much harder time in the non-working years. We all need compound interest in the early years to cover the later years; in times past that was children.
Dennis L.
You are right. Perhaps one of the children would be successful. If there were lots of children, they could pay taxes and support all of the elderly. When the relative number of children falls, the model fails. Lower incomes for the children are also a problem.
For the many visitors to this website who are concerned, or even very concerned, about the fate of the Siberian walruses, this video explains and demonstrates conclusively how stalking by polar bears and filming drones were the cause of several dozen of the beasts jumping off a cliff to their deaths in 2017, and how Sir David Attenborough and the BBC failed to tell the truth about the incident, thereby deceiving the public, got caught, grudgingly admitted to “errors” without giving any apology or contrition, and lost what little public credibility they still had at that point.
No wonder, nobody of any political party trusted the Beeb to provide unbiased coverage of the recent election.
While some of the scenes are distressing and unsuitable for sensitive souls, this video is well worth viewing for the actual footage of polar bears stalking and scaring walruses into jumping.
https://youtu.be/U5Ji6ME3Vlo
The transferiat needs your money to educate you in what is good and true. Your lack of capability to form your own opinion is their business model.
As with every business model, there comes a time when it becomes totally and utterly irrelevant. That time is now.
Transferiat:)
Is that the ones doing the redistribution or the ones living on them?
Does it matter?
The BBC and The Guardian are not even gutter journalism.. They are lower than the gutter. Boris, please stop funding an organisation that hates your country, its people, and its heritage.
should we then rely on the Daily Telegraph and/or the Daily mail for an unbiased reflection on the truth? And Russia Today for some light relief?
Norman, an excellent question. In a word: no, we should not. Search many sources, and preferably many of them outside the mainstream media, think for oneself, and be prepared to live with honest doubt.
in the world of the ultimate fish and chip receptacle
the Guardian is as good as you’re going to get
other than that. I try to maintain the habit of checking everything of consequence at least 3 times
Ah, memories! Many, many years ago, when we lived in Highworth, in the County of Wiltshire, we sometimes went to the fish & chip shop for a takeaway. The F&C were for the children, and were wrapped in the Daily Mirror, the favourite fish wrapping tabloid of those times. The other counter in the shop sold Chinese food, courtesy of the fishmonger’s wife, and that was for the parents.
It seems a geological age since I last enjoyed fish and chips. Perhaps during my planned visit back to England next August, when I hope Boris will have reclaimed our waters from the French and Spanish who fished them dry.