It takes energy to accomplish any of the activities that we associate with GDP. It takes energy to grow food: human energy, solar energy, and–in today’s world–the many types of energy used to build and power tractors, transport food to markets, and provide cooling for food that needs to be refrigerated. It takes energy to cook food and to smelt metals. It takes energy to heat and air condition offices and to power the internet. Without adequate energy, the world economy would come to a halt.
We are hitting energy limits right now. Energy per capita is already shrinking, and it seems likely to shrink further in the future. Reaching a limit produces a conflict problem similar to the one in the game musical chairs. This game begins with an equal number of players and chairs. At the start of each round, a chair is removed. The players must then compete for the remaining chairs, and the player who ends the round without a chair is eliminated. There is conflict among players as they fight to obtain one of the available chairs. The conflict within the energy system is somewhat hidden, but the result is similar.
A current conflict is, “How much energy can we spare to fight COVID-19?” It is obvious that expenditures on masks and vaccines have an impact on the economy. It is less obvious that a cutback in airline flights or in restaurant meals to fight COVID-19 indirectly leads to less energy being produced and consumed, worldwide. In total, the world becomes a poorer place. How is the pain of this reduction in energy consumption per capita to be shared? Is it fair that travel and restaurant workers are disproportionately affected? Worldwide, we are seeing a K shaped recovery: The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer.
A major issue is that while we can print money, we cannot print the energy supplies needed to run the economy. As energy supplies deplete, we will increasingly need to “choose our battles.” In the past, humans have been able to win many battles against nature. However, as energy per capita declines in the future, we will be able to win fewer and fewer of these battles against nature, such as our current battle with COVID-19. At some point, we may simply need to let the chips fall where they may. The world economy seems unable to accommodate 7.8 billion people, and we will have no choice but to face this issue.
In this post, I will explain some of the issues involved. At the end of the post, I include a video of a panel discussion that I was part of on the topic of “Energy Is the Economy.” The moderator of the panel discussion was Chris Martenson; the other panelists were Richard Heinberg and Art Berman.
[1] Energy consumption per person varies greatly by country.
Let’s start with a little background. There is huge variability in the quantity of energy consumed per person around the world. There is more than a 100-fold difference between the highest and lowest countries shown on Figure 1.
I have shown only a few example countries, but we can see that cold countries tend to use a lot of energy, relative to their populations. Iceland, with an abundant supply of inexpensive hydroelectric and geothermal electricity, uses it to heat buildings, grow food in greenhouses, mine “bitcoins” and smelt aluminum. Norway and Canada have both oil and gas supplies, besides being producers of hydroelectricity. With abundant fuel supplies and a cold climate, both countries use a great deal of energy relative to the size of their population.
Saudi Arabia also has high energy consumption. It uses its abundant oil and gas supplies to provide air conditioning for its people. It also uses its energy products to enable the operation of businesses that provide jobs for its large population. In addition, Saudi Arabia uses taxes on the oil it produces to subsidize the purchase of imported food, which the country cannot grow locally. As with all oil and gas producers, some portion of the oil and gas produced is used in its own oil and gas operations.
In warm countries, such as those in Middle Africa and India, energy consumption tends to be very low. Most people in these countries walk for transportation or use very crowded public transport. Roads tend not to be paved. Electricity outages are frequent.
One of the few changes that can easily be made to reduce energy consumption is to move manufacturing to lower wage countries. Doing this reduces energy consumption (in the form of electricity) quite significantly. In fact, the rich nations have mostly done this, already.
Trying to squeeze down energy consumption for the many countries around the world will be a huge challenge because energy is involved in every part of economies.
[2] Two hundred years of history shows that very slow growth in energy consumption per capita leads to bad outcomes.
Some readers will remember that I have pieced together data from different sources to put together a reasonable approximation to world energy consumption since 1820. In Figure 3, I have added a rough estimate of the expected drop in future energy consumption that might occur if either (1) the beginning of peak fossil fuels is occurring about now because of continued low fossil fuel prices, or (2) world economies choose to leave fossil fuels and move to renewables between now and 2050 in order to try to help the environment. Thus, Figure 3 shows my estimate of the pattern of total world energy consumption over the period of 1820 to 2050, at 10-year intervals.
The shape of this curve is far different from the one most forecasters expect because they assume that prices will eventually rise high enough so all of the fossil fuels that can be technically extracted will actually be extracted. I expect that oil and other fossil fuel prices will remain too low for producers, for reasons I discuss in Section [4], below. In fact, I have written about this issue in a peer reviewed academic article, published in the journal Energy.
Figure 4 shows this same information as Figure 3, divided by population. In making this chart, I assume that population drops only half as quickly as energy consumption falls after 2020. Total world population drops to 2.8 billion by 2050.
In Figure 4, some parts of the curve are relatively flat, or even slightly falling, while others are rising rapidly. It turns out that rapidly rising times are much better for the economy than flat and falling times. Figure 5 shows the average annual percentage change in energy consumption per capita, for ten-year periods ending the date shown.
If we look back at what happened in Figure 5, we find that when the 10-year growth in energy consumption is very low, or turns negative, conflict and bad outcomes are typical. For example:
- Dip 1: 1861-1865 US Civil War
- Dip 2: Several events
- 1914-1918 World War I
- 1918-1920 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- 1929-1933 Great Depression
- 1939-1945 World War II
- Dip 3: 1991 Collapse of the Central Government of the Soviet Union
- Dip 4: 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic and Recession
Per capita energy consumption was already growing very slowly before 2020 arrived. Energy consumption took a big step downward in 2020 (estimated at 5%) because of the shutdowns and the big cutback in air travel. One of the important things that energy consumption does is provide jobs. With severe cutbacks intended to contain COVID-19, many people in distant countries lost their jobs. Cutbacks of this magnitude quickly cause problems around the world.
For example, if people in rich countries rarely dress up to attend meetings of various kinds, there is much less of a market for dressy clothing. Many people in poor countries make their living manufacturing this type of clothing. With the loss of these sales, workers suddenly found themselves with much reduced income. Poor countries generally do not have good safety nets to provide food for those who are out of work. As a result, the diets of people subject to loss of income became inadequate, leading to greater vulnerability to disease. If the situation continues, some may even die of starvation.
[3] The pattern of world energy consumption between 2020 and 2050 (modeled in Figures 3, 4 and 5) suggests that a very concerning collapse may be ahead.
My model suggests that world energy consumption may fall to about 28 gigajoules per capita per year by 2050 (for a reduced population of 2.8 billion). This is about the level of world energy consumption per capita for the world in 1900.
Alternatively, 28 gigajoules per capita is a little lower than the per capita energy consumption for India in 2019. Of course, some parts of the world might do better than this. For example, Mexico and Brazil both had energy consumption per capita of about 60 gigajoules per capita in 2019. Some countries might be able to do this well in 2050.
Using less energy after 2020 will lead to many changes. Governments will become smaller and provide fewer services such as paved roads. Often, these governments will cover smaller areas than those of countries today. Businesses will become smaller, more local, and more involved with goods rather than services. Individual citizens will be walking more, growing their own food, and doing much less home heating and cooling.
With less energy available, it will be necessary to cut back on fighting unfortunate natural occurrences, such as forest fires, downed electricity transmission lines after hurricanes, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and constantly mutating viruses. Thus, life expectancy is likely to decline.
[4] It is “demand,” and how high energy prices can be raised, that determines how large an energy supply will be available in the future.
I keep making this point in my posts because I sense that it is poorly understood. The big problem that we should be anticipating is energy producers going out of business because energy prices are chronically too low. I see five ways in which energy prices might theoretically be raised:
- A truly booming world economy. This is what raised prices in the 1970s and in the run up to 2008. If there are truly more people who can afford homes and new vehicles, and governments that can afford new roads and other infrastructure, companies extracting oil and coal will build new facilities in higher-cost locations, and thereby expand world supply. The higher prices will help energy companies to be profitable, despite their higher costs. Such a scenario seems very unlikely, given where we are now.
- Government mandates and subsidies. Government mandates are what is maintaining demand for renewables and electric vehicles. Conversely, government mandates are part of what is keeping down tourist travel. Indirectly, this lack of demand relating to travel leads to low oil prices. A government mandate for people to engage in more travel seems unlikely.
- Much reduced wage disparity. If everyone, rich or poor, can afford nice homes, automobiles, and cell phones, commodity prices will tend to be high because buying and operating goods such as these requires the use of commodities. Governments can attempt to fix wage disparity through more printed money, but I am doubtful that this approach will really work because other countries are likely to be unwilling to accept this printed money.
- More debt, sometimes leading to collapsing debt bubbles. Spending can be enhanced if it becomes easier for citizens to buy goods such as homes and vehicles on credit. Likewise, businesses can borrow money to build new factories or, alternatively, to continue to pay wages to workers, even if there isn’t much demand for the goods and services sold. But, if the economy really is not recovering rapidly, these approaches can be expected to lead to crashes.
- Getting rid of COVID-19 inefficiencies and fearfulness. Economies around the world are being depressed to varying degrees by continued inefficiencies caused by social distancing requirements and by fearfulness. If these issues could be eliminated, it might boost economies back up to the already somewhat depressed levels of early 2020.
In summary, the issue we are facing is that oil demand (and thus prices) were far too low for oil producers because of wage disparity before the COVID-19 crisis arrived in March. Trying to get demand back up through more debt seems likely to lead to debt bubbles, which will be in danger of collapsing. There may be temporary price spikes, but a permanent fix is virtually impossible. This is why I am forecasting the severe drop in energy consumption shown in Figures 3 and 4.
[5] We humans don’t need to figure out how to fix the economy optimally between now and 2050.
The economy is a self-organizing system that will figure out on its own the optimal way of “dissipating” energy, to the extent possible. In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure. If the energy resource is food, energy will be dissipated by digesting the food. In the case of fossil fuel, energy will be dissipated by burning it. We may like to think that we are in charge, but we really are not. It is the laws of physics, or perhaps the Power behind the laws of physics, that is in charge.
Dissipative structures are not permanent. For example, hurricanes and tornadoes are dissipative structures. Plants and animals are dissipative structures. Eventually, new smaller economies, encompassing smaller areas of the world, may replace the existing world economy.
[6] This is a recent video of a panel discussion on “Energy Is the Economy.”
Chris Martenson is the moderator. Art Berman, Richard Heinberg and I are panelists. The Peak Prosperity folks were kind enough to provide me a copy to put up on my website.
A transcript of this panel discussion can be accessed at this link:
Many, most of you think space is hopium, landing the Space X booster on a barge is pretty impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULxCW2j_nDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tChKjGF4OTw
The video second video claims the booster is being righted by solar power and Tesla batteries. Imagine going into space with the assistance of solar panels(yes, a stretch). Interesting the engines are covered to protect from the elements with the aid of a form of duct tape, well some wag could claim duct tape is more than 100 mph tape.
For the skeptics I invite a solution to the earth pollution issue, the decreasing life span issue without fossil fuels, the political issues the whole world seems to be facing with a generational divide, global warming and the associate exponential increase in chemical reaction rates associated with life itself.
Per G. West, p. 177, first paragraph, a 2 degree centigrade increase in temperature increases growth rates 20-30 percent change in growth and mortality rates, our biological systems cannot tolerate a 20-30% increase in ATP production rates, with a 10 degree rise ATP production rates double.
Greta is very irritating, so is what we are facing. G. West is good from what I see, lots of meat in his book, “Scale.”
This is going to get very messy and there may be very few chairs upon which to sit and eat popcorn while things collapse – collapse could be coming to a theater near you.
Comments will be welcome, it is good to look at ideas from different viewpoints.
Dennis L.
On the Muskianic note, actually these rocketry-aerospace people were brought to TSLA first, hence the leapfrogging gain in efficiency up to now as they are after a decade still ahead in %% beating old car manufs such as VW or the French, who had several prior limited runs with EVs over the decades, not mentioning GM with the best head start. So, the cycle closes, their fruits in motive propulsion tech were only later (today) reapplied back to the rocketry branch.
On the general Covidenko scheme, someone posted at Dr. Tim’s that Qantas is probably the first major airline to demand vaccination records from passengers or no flyeee. If the goal is only to tame movement of people in terms of general slowdown of things, not sure about the angle at the oil – fuel refinery end of the equation – as to whether jet fuel mix precursors could be then all used for cooking other types of fuels etc.
Nice, again always amazed at what people here know.
The rotation back to rockets seems appropriate, no bumpers to fall off the typical rocket, not much road salt in space.
As for cooking, I suppose induction stove tops are totally out of the question.
Dennis L.
What about the electronics?
159,000 Teslas At Risk Of Infotainment System And Cameras Dying Due To Worn Out Memory Chips
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/159000-teslas-risk-infotainment-system-and-cameras-dying-due-worn-out-memory-chips
chip inside infotainment system vs chip inside the power drive / charger units.. very important difference
this has been designed by rocket and mil jet engineers, the infotainment subsystem probably not so much (or cost cutting over ruling in that area)..
I expect that the result of a rise in earth’s average temperature will contribute to an overall fall in world population. People who remain will migrate to more hospitable areas of the planet. Our big problem is mitigating too cold outside temperatures, right now. This problem might get better, not worse.
Even if the outside temperature warms up, it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that people’s body temperatures will rise. I think it is easy for G. West to be wrong on this particular issue. The ecosystem is built to adapt to changes of many kinds, including warmer and colder temperatures. At least some humans (or pre-humans) lived through ice ages. I see no reason to believe that this will not be the case if the temperature of the earth rises.
Also, remember that the models of the earth’s temperature rising by 2 degrees centigrade are based on the assumption that we can really burn far more fossil fuels than are really available. Our real problem is “overshoot and collapse.” It is only if a person believes the unrealistic climate models that our biggest problem is climate change.
An interesting view.
Tim,
“We are incredibly fortunate to have an infinite heat sink literally on our doorstep in the shape of outer space into which to radiate planetary heat, thereby preventing us from all being baked, broiled and barbecued to a crisp.”
Radiation requires temperature, to increase radiation over a fixed area requires increase in temperature. It cannot be done, it leads to impossible surface temperatures and if G. West is correct, increases in chemical reaction speed(life) that are exponential. Global warming is not a linear phenomenon for life.
Reduce industry, people die, live shorter lives – much of that comes from the end of life as well as the beginning. As Norman points out, this introduces some significant political problems. Covid is sacrificing those at the end of life, it may be only correlation and not causation, you choice, same result. Covid could be a political solution, we may not like it, but maybe we are not in charge.
A huge problem recognized in “Limits to Growth” is the pollution issue – I see no way forward other than moving pollution off earth. Yes, “Hopium” but better than social chaos on earth. Earth will solve the problem if we do not. Count me with Greta now.
Dennis L.
Dennis,
Human industry will tend make the earth’s surface warmer. The question is, how much warmer? We could argue about that one until the cows come home and probably wouldn’t come close to agreeing.
My standard response when someone warns about the potential for excessive warming is to point out that (a) a warmer planet will radiate more strongly, which will tend to limit the amount of warming that can build up. The idea of a runaway greenhouse effect is scary and impressive because of the scare factor, but it ignores some pretty basic physics. (b) The earth was warmer than now during the Medieval Warming Period a thousand years ago. It was warmer still during the Holocene Optimum six or eight thousand years ago. It was even warmer than that at the peak of the Eemian interglacial 130~120 thousand years ago, and it was much much warmer three million years ago before the Greenland ice cap formed. Nature did all that. (c) Even in the absence of human activity, the Earth’s temperature does not remain constant. There are some known reasons why the temperature varies and some unknown reasons. It would be far more productive to sit day after day in the lotus position in a quiet place and contemplate the koan “what makes the earth’s temperature rise and fall?” than it would to worry about excessive global warming. The latter will not get us to enlightenment, and will only lead to ulcers or the like.
I’m not a fan of pollution, especially in my backyard, but in principle anywhere. Your idea to locate polluting industries to the Moon merely shifts the pollution to a new location. Just as the West and Japan cleaned up their act, partially by shifting the worst polluting industries to China, you advocate shifting them to the Moon. Has anyone asked the Moonies and the Moonbats what they think about having their backyard polluted? Don’t we have a moral imperative to keep the Moon tidy?
Wouldn’t it be better to invent and develop ways of producing stuff that are zero polluting? In Edo Japan they recycled everything. We should be able to emulate that while still managing a much higher standard of living than they had. But I know, the devil is in the details and smartphones can’t be made from bamboo alone.
tHE MOON IS PART OF AN EARTH SYSTEM THAT creates the tides on the clear material side, and, besides, that has profound cultural and spiritual significance for earth’s species, significantly, animals. Transferring earth pollution there (at extreme cost) so humans can continue thoughtless living would not seem as good a prospect as learning to live with less.
Hard, go to space without industry, is.
In some sense, we are already in space. On the perfect vessel that can house millions, if not billions of us. Where else in space shall we need to go?
there is nowhere else to go
Norman,
“Are you going to be the one issuing the orders that granny should be put to sleep now?
because if you go into social engineering, which is what you are advocating, then someone has to run it.”
I stated what had been done in the past by groups, I advocated nothing. I find your argument a bogus addition to the quote to prove your point of view.
Reading West, “Scale” regarding length of life a point made is we have a metabolic input resulting in growth and maintenance. Growth and maintenance are different and are what limit our growing forever. As we age our maintenance requirements increase, if near the end of our life we are no longer producing more metabolic inputs than we use, we are a cost to the tribe and for the good of the whole it would appear the old are sacrificed.
If the old take more than they produce it has to come from somewhere, say a mother nursing her child which is the future of the tribe.
Again my post on the 2-3x increase in expense to median income of SS and the like transfer of payments – from the young to the old. College tuition is transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
As I read the book and understand it, I shall make comments for discussion.
The increase in end of life years is secondary to the industrial revolution, no industry, shorter lives. Now, sell that one politically.
Another is the fact that chemical reactions increase exponentially in speed with increase in temperature which is the concern with global warming. Greta is right – that should get someone here going, FE was incorrect.
My solution has been stated ad nauseum. Do away with industry, increase death of children, shorten life spans – that is nature, we invented economics, the results are very good and remarkable. We can’t do it here on earth, earth won’t let us, mother will become very angry.
Dennis L.
‘We can’t do it here on earth, earth won’t let us, mother will become very angry.’
Who will volunteer to send Mother to anger management classes?
Humor is always welcome.
Dennis L.
Dennis
the energy used/transferred by a mother nursing a child comes from the (hopefully) successful hunter-gatherer she chose as a partner
***********
As with the writings of Margaret Atwood, if something has been done in the past, it is dormant in human nature and likely to happen in the future, given the right circumstances. Her writing is about enforced social engineering.
You put stuff out as ‘my solution’ (your words) therefore you advocate it, or advocate that it is done. (same thing)
On the other hand if you are not prepared to do things personally, then it remains wishful thinking.
But be under no illusion. There are plenty prepared to do evil in the name of good. Check out a few of trumps wacko followers.
Somebody has to give the orders. Trump wouldn’t do any dirty work but there are plenty who would.
*************
I have no idea when the term ‘industrial revolution, was coined, but it was at least 100 years after it happened.
My meaning is that at the time, people just saw it as an improved way to make stuff and earn more more.
The fact that they blew up the world didn’t enter into it
Nice, laughing quietly, one little problem.
“The fact that they blew up the world didn’t enter into it.”
Norman, I have no idea where things will go, it seems they will not continue on for long as they have, change is change.
We do seem agree on one thing, bad boys seem to rule.
“the energy used/transferred by a mother nursing a child comes from the (hopefully) successful hunter-gatherer she chose as a partner”
A successful hunter gather is not a vegan and almost by definition has to take risks. If we go back to hunter gathers(I don’t think we will, maybe it is just denial), feminism will face a challenge, takes upper body strength to wrestle a bar per the Davie Crockett song.
“Off through the woods he’s a marchin’ along
Makin’ up yarns an’ a singin’ a song
Itchin’ fer fightin’ an’ rightin’ a wrong
He’s ringy as a be ‘are an’ twict as strong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the buckskin buccaneer”
A song from my grade school days, definitely not politically correct. Boys had different role models then and the really true believers had a coon skin cap with a tail on the back – got mine in the fourth grade, kissed my first girl that year too.
Dennis L.
one of my ultimate lines of thought is that Biden, though well intentioned and a genuinely good man, will not be able to ‘rectify’ any real problems, because they are not political problems
therefore by 2024 another, worse ‘Trump’ will arise and he will be voted into office
after that the real unpleasantness will begin, in parallel with desperation for physical survival.. Link that to jesusmania and you don’t need me to fill in the details.
nazi germany on steroids—at least for a while.
thats when states will start to secede, and futile wars to stop them.
I am afraid you may be correct in that. .
Dennis L.
Norman, I find your opinion that Biden is “well intentioned and a genuinely good man” while Trump is a composite of Hit**r, Atilla the Hun, Ghengis Khan and Al Capone to be incredibly naive.
How do you manage to come up with these judgements? I’m curious. Do you just look into a guy’s eyes on TV or in a newspaper photo and grasp the essentials from that?
I can well understand that someone would rather not have Trump in power and so Biden might seem the lesser of two evils, but I can’t comprehend why anyone who has studied the man’s record would believe Biden is well-intentioned or genuinely good.
Tim
I try to make my comments non political. if possible. They may not read that way—I apologise. I try to examine circumstances that allow people to rise up.
Which is how I was able to write in 2011 that ‘a Trump’ was inevitable by 2016, 2020 at the latest. One senses collective fear. Fear produces irrationality.
without exception, every politician is swept along on the tide of world events.
how he/she sinks or swims in that tide defines the person
no one expects perfection, only a reasonable effort to do the right thing most of the time for most of the people.
given the opportunity, Trump would assume the mantle of dictator, but that time has not yet come. Biden will not be able to stem that tide of energy depletion and crowd denial, and will drown in it. My personal guess is that he will ‘retire’ after 2 years, and hand over to Harris to do his drowning for him.
Surplus energy economy is NOT coming back, and prayers are not going to change that..
Yet millions are screaming that Jesus had made America a special case, immune to the laws of physics.
Biden is at least trying to point out that is isn’t true. Yet this is the lunacy he is faced with, that Trump fostered for self-gain.
As I’ve suggested many times, wars are now about denial of reality. Millions of Trump voters were voting for ‘MAGA”– as if voting can deliver that.
it can’t.
So by 2024 the rabble will be seriously annoyed at the Dems, and wil ‘elect’ someone who will inflict a dictatorship, full on. The Dems, (and others) caused it all. So lets fiinish them once and for all.
People are seriously frightened right now. Justifiably so I think.
So for a period of joyous delusion they will welcome dictatorship. Until they realise it is fraudulent and violent. As all dictatorships are.
Whoever the dictator is will have no choice, and will do what Trump could not
I do agree with you on one point Norman. Biden will step down, be removed or “get” the rona. Harris is who they wanted Biden just a means to a ends. Since Harris only had about 6% of the votes in the primary they had to do a side step around that silly vote thing. Selecting her as vice absolutely disregarded the will of the people as democratically expressed in the primary and noit by a .0000001% margin. Press , hmm lots of “historic” nothing about the fact that the VOTE didnt want her from within her own party.
Im sure you feel quite noble a German warning yanks about the dangers of strong authority figures.
Thats how I size it up. Your comments have everything to do with how you see your “role” and how it makes you feel nothing to do with the reality of the actual actions and behavior of those you judge.
If you want wars in the mideast why dont you take your military and deploy? Here in the USA the people want peace in the world and we want leaders who do that with there actions not their brand name.
Norm, the bleach thing was invented by the media who, like you, irrationally hate Trump with the fire of 1000 suns. He did talk about “disinfectants” and if you look you will see that intravenous hydrogen peroxide, a common household DISINFECTANT is indeed used in reputable therapeutic settings.
@Lydia17, Right you are about the “bleach” thing! It was a total lie. Trump was advocating (very rationally) that we try out chlorine dioxide, a water disinfectant that has been used “off label” so to speak to treat malaria, which as some similarities to covid. Chlorine dioxide is NOT bleach! That is just crazy, literal fake news. Chlorine dioxide is the active ingredient in the commercial mouthwash preferred by my dentist (which I use), so I speak from experience when I say the MSM is flat out lying when they tell the public it is “bleach.”
Then again, maybe they are just incredibly stupid, in spite of their college degrees, since they don’t seem to understand the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide, apparently believing them to be interchangeable terms. They probably think O2 and H2O are the same thing as well. I can’t wait for some journalist to try and prove it by inhaling H2O. “See? It’s the same as O2!”
while I realise this video was likely made by a Trump stunt double to promote the sales of disinfectant.
just in case it was made by the man himself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE
And shining UV light on the body—or, more interestingly “in some other way”. (don’t even think about it)
Might equally have medicinal credibility.
Fake news sure keeps everybody entertained
I really must stop doing this
The mark of a dictator is war. Trump has pulled our troops out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Oh no hes a hitler. Will the USA be invading France or Belgium soon? Normon you have been sold a image a branding of Trump that was created to oust him. With a voting system that by design has no chain of evidence once the ballot is removed from the envelope I doubt we will ever have another republican president. By design for private voting coincidentally there is no evidence if ballot stuffing occurs. “Count every vote!” including the stuffed ones. Of course the system is based on the ultimates “scouts honor” questioning it is questioning democracy itself. Bollocks. Trust us or else say the press. Trust us or else say the rat fink politicians counting votes in the big cities. This is the real coup d grat. Your dictator many orders of magnitude greater than hitler rising before your eyes in the form of medical technocrats and all you can do is repeat tabloid propaganda.
interesting point of view—I enjoyed knowing it. One can learn so much from violent disagreement. Thanks
a few points to cover. All derived from Trump’s own spoken words and actions.
Hitler quote: Tell a lie often enough and it becomes truth. Trump’s documented lie count stands in the 20000+ area. ( if the press hadn’t repeated them, they wouldn’t count as lies I guess.)
Hitler’s final act of war was to declare war on the German people. He ordered the razing of every artefact that could be of use to the advancing armies of the allies. No matter that the people needed them to survive what he had started.
That was the final serving of his vanity and expression of his power.
Trump has denied that covid virus exists or is dangerous he suggested curing it with bleach. he removed Obama’s department that was put in place for the purpose of dealing with just such a virus spread.
Trump denied aid to states that didn’t vote for him.
Climate change is a Chinese hoax. (his words)
War takes many forms. It can be personal or national.
Trump had to pay a 25$ m lawsuit before entering office. I understand there’s a slew of suits waiting as he leaves office, both commercial and personal (20+ of those I believe)
Is this really the conduct one should expect in a President?
This is the image brand he created for himself, through his own words.
Locker room talk?–I’ve frequented locker rooms regularly for years. I’ve never heard anything like that. Ever.
And at no democrat rallies, as far as I am aware, have we seen Biden (or Clinton for that matter, or anybody else) smirkingly conducting his crowds to choruses of ‘lock him/her up’ or promising to pay the legal fees of those engaged in crowd violence.
Hitler encouraged it to the ultimate degree. We know where that led. Trump encourages the same hysteria and the same people who adhere to the god cults that he needs to vote for him.. Given the opportunity they would do his bidding to the ultimate. (god’s work you see)
Trump wanted votes disallowed in areas where he was going to lose. On a voting system that has been well established for years.
Every state by law, has independent observers from both parties within the counting halls.
These are no doubt the ‘ratfinks’ that you charmingly describe. Lovely term.
I’ve replied to your comment at length because I fear you as an individual sum up and represent. what is wrong there.
Norman, I completely disagree with you. I voted for trump twice. Or rather, I voted against the horrible dem candidate twice.
What i find most interesting and dangerous is two people can look at the same event and see exactly the opposite, white for black, black for white.
I respect your right to disagree with me
but looking back through my comment,–twice— I’ve tried to find anything in it that was actually incorrect.
I always accept being ‘wrong’, but which part of my comment is wrong?
if you disagree with something, it is only courteous to point out the errors of the writer
just saying ‘you’re wrong’ smacks of an emotional reaction, not a rational one.
Norman I voted for obama the first time. I read the writing on the wall after he passed the NDAA another rob of civil liberties worst than Bushes Patriot act.
Do these unconstitutional “acts” fit “war on the people” your phrase not mine.
Trump has been hounded and attacked for four years. The media is not just biased they are COMPROMISED. Anyone with the tinyest bit of analytic skills understands this can not be a free and unbiased media. I dont believe snopes. I dont really believe trump eithor but i trust him more than the media. So your saying this or that about his character. Thats propaganda you have swallowed.
Far from worshipping strong leaders I believe in liberty. You transpose your hitler equation on everthing. You shove it into the box YOU are obsessed with.
You dont understand the USA. You dont understand anything about it. As you sit another continent transposing your beliefs, repeating tabloid propaganda, you are uninformed in the extreme.
You say you fear me. You have nothing to fear from me. i really dont believe you fear me. Thats just part of the speil designed to put people exercising their first admendment right in the box. More BS.
You find the term “ratfink” uncharitable? I find it quite charitable. It displays your complete lack of understanding of the character of the people you put on a pedestal. but how could you understand things about a country that you dont live in? That doesnt seem to stop you from expressing a opinion. On the other hand i was born in this country . Have lived all over it. have done dozens of different jobs in different industries in it. all working class. lived both rural and urban. I would go so far as to say i love it. By that I mean the people not the government.
Yet you demean my expressing my opinion.
Why were observers corraled 100s of feet away where they could not observe in Philadelphia?
Are these the fine upstanding ladies and gentleman you find slandered by the “ratfink” nomenclature 100% worthy of our trust?
NO CHAIN OF EVIDENCE
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/02/04/philadelphia-corruption-kenyatta-johnson/
on my comments on this thread, I quote pretty much Trump’s own words.
if those words are now ‘fake news’, I must withdraw from further exchange on this subject
Norman, the vote was rigged. The math shows it clearly. Check http://www.rense.com
Biden has never been a “genuinely good man.” He is a documented sleaze ball, although the MSM rarely mentions his unseemly history. He also lost the election, as anyone can see who pays attention to something other than the network news and Democrat owned newspapers.
Norm wrote: ” ‘a Trump’ was inevitable by 2016, 2020 at the latest. One senses collective fear. Fear produces irrationality.”
Balderdash. There were perfectly good reasons for voting Trump in 2016 (and today):
1. Keep the corrupt Clinton machine from returning to the White House.
2. Drain the swamp.
3. Reverse the de-industrialization of America.
4. Control our borders, enforce our already existing immigration laws, and stop the unarmed invasion.
5. Stop playing global cop at Americans’ expense. Stop poking at Russia. Put stability over crusades for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Stop subsidizing a NATO that was created solely to protect Europe from a Soviet menace that no longer exists.
Trump’s implementation may be far from perfect (although not entirely his fault), but the agenda is right. Some of these goals would even be supported by many grass roots Democrats if only they were being offered by a Democrat rather than a Republican.
Norman,
“On the other hand if you are not prepared to do things personally, then it remains wishful thinking.”
My father lay in a nursing home bed for some 18 months, dementia possibly secondary to general anesthesia, my mother visited him every day and over that time went to skin and bones, she was dying. One day I asked my mother if it was time for an end, she nodded, we went to the nurses station and said my father would only eat what he himself could eat, no assistance. My mother gave him water with a tongue blade wrapped with a gauze pad. He was gone in 30 days.
Twice in my practice I had women with husbands in a similar situation. At one of their appointments I closed the door and told my story, their husbands too were gone in 30 days.
When at my mother’s deathbed the hospice nurse gave me some morphine drops to place under her tongue and a recommended rate although I could increase that if I so desired, the rate was kept constant, not increased. Still, while it provided comfort to my mother, it hastened the process, the last agonal breathing never leaves one’s memory.
We need some assurance that is all right to let go, it is not a sin to live, we live and we die. West’s book “Scale” addresses that,
death is part of life and birth and death are perhaps the most important things any human does.
Dennis L.
Dennis, thanks for sharing those compassionate and commonsensical experiences. If anyone has a family member with a terminal condition, I highly recommend the
“Gone From My Sight” series, which are available at a modest cost: https://bkbooks.com/products/gone-from-my-sight-the-dying-experience?variant=35190472835228
Dennis
I was married to a nurse, and my efforts at self replication produced 3 more. So I am fully aware of the workings of the medical community at every level.
I assume (but didn’t know of course) that you are in the profession as well.
Many doctors are prepared to carry out the ‘coup de grace’ as a final act of kindness, (only an idiot would take issue with that)
But your initial comments on this thread were not at the level of the individual, but at the ‘population control’ level. Which is a different matter entirely. I am surprised that when questioned about that, you switch to ‘individual ‘ cases, which have no bearing whatsoever to the points under discussion.
Whether population control by social intervention is a good or bad thing is impossible to say.
But if we go down that route, then ‘control’ has to be exercised by ‘someone’ ‘somewhere’
we possess the means to hold onto life indefinitely, which on economic terms is impossible
It was widely understood in 18th century England that machines and large factories were radically transforming their world, and that not all of the effects were positive (“dark, satanic mills”).
Nehemiah, William Blake’s “dark satanic mills” were not factories: it was, after all, only 1804. He was referring to our universities, which he thought taught heresy and contempt for religion.
such things might have been understood by the educated classes
but I doubt if that was so by the mass of people. If someone sank a coal mine in what was previously a wheat field, it was just a different way of earning a wage, specifically that a wheat field only needed labour at sowing and harvesting, whereas a coal mine needed paid labour year round. and paid more of course.
the energy from coal enabled factories, and factories worked on the same basis. My ancestors were personally involved here, but I doubt if any of them, from my own grandfather backwards, cared or were aware of much happening outside their immediate neighbourhood., in any event they were likely illiterate
The Napoleonic wars ended in 1815, the local ironworks closed shortly afterwards. My gggg grandfather would have found himself unemployed. To me the link is clear. but I doubt very much if he concerned himself with world politics in the way I try to.—just that he was out of a job and likely to starve.
luckily he didn’t, so he self replicated and I’m here to annoy people with current realities in ways he could never have imagined.
Funny that one would think of allowing people to die as “social engineering”; meanwhile, focusing lots of resources on preemies and severely-ill elderly is somehow *not* “social engineering”.
Agreed!
I am all for social engineering and cheap and easy disposal of old people.
That is if we do the same for newborn and their mothers. No social engineering. Let nature take its course.
Like in the good olden days. 👍
david,
“a barrel of oil contains roughly the same amount of energy as 4 years of human labour.”
This is an oft repeated phrase but it seems it ignores the energy cost of say a tractor, implements to pull behind said tractor, maintenance of said tractor and ideally storage of said tractor to protect it from the elements. Now, add the energy cost of refining, transportation to the end user and equipment to move that oil to the end user. Machines depreciate and when not used have an indirect cost.
Humans are self replicating.
What the real ratio is can be problematical, my guess is it is less than 4 years, significant, but much less, with shale oil it could well be negative otherwise shale oil would make a profit – a guess.
Dennis L.
during my breaks from self replicating, I could as a young fit man, have cultivated an acre or two/three by hand to produce enough basic feedstuff to support the results of my self replication.
I must confess a liking for self replication, and a dislike of horticulture.
however, had I preferred the latter, my physical strength would have lasted for about 20 years or so and I would probably have been dead at 50 something, leaving my offspring to argue over my acres
tractors and fertilisers solve this problem
Smiling, laughing,
“I must confess a liking for self replication, and a dislike of horticulture.”
Dennis L.
Sorry, don’t want to come out as sounding mean, but you managed to self replicate into dozens of copies? Because otherwise it doesn’t compute, as fractional acre is enough to feed ~normal family, say 2 + 3 little people variety..
So, perhaps the devil’s detail was in the organizational scheme of things as some forms of “horticulture” are simply too much (unnecessary ala deep tillage) workload for relatively little benefit vs other methods.
I was attempting to put a little humour into the subject, and in any case the missis wouldn’t countenance a harem, on the grounds of affordability and accommodation, so actual self replication was restricted on practical terms, particularly after I was taken to the vet to be seen to.
however, there are certain demands that had to be met to continually test that such surgical intervention had been successful—just in case!!
this naturally kept me from horticultural endeavours, and instead a mini wildlife park seems to have established itself without much help from me.
which is rather nice.
In rural Africa, where ag is traditionally done with hoes rather than plows, the polygamist puts his harem to work producing most of the food, while he spends his hours hunting, fishing, or just hanging out with the guys. Polygamy is affordable when the wives do most of the work. However, ox or horse drawn ploughs, although more productive than hoe agriculture, needed a man’s upper body strength to handle.
well—I seem to fit that picture
current gf seems to find my upper body strength useful for opening sauce jars
I will discuss your other points when I feel the time is right
I think it depends a whole lot on the climate and the soil. In India, crops can be grown year around. In very cold areas, not so much.
Also, do you leave ground fallow to improve productivity, or what? If you have the luxury of importing soil amendments of different kinds, you don’t need as much area to farm.
Another issue, “Are you just feeding yourself, or do you need to grow some food to sell for other purposes: pay taxes, buy clothes, purchase fuel to keep your home warm, even pay for your home?” Most people don’t have the luxury of only growing food for their families. They need a lot to sell, if they are to be able to cover their other needs.
All true, but we have to start with the historically correct premise, that “agriculture” evolved (and solidified) mostly as jumping from not optimally cultivated plot of yesterday to fresh yet unspoiled new farming plot of today-tomorrow. That game could be played with increasing pop and one piece of Earth for a very limited time span, say few dozens – hundreds of human generations. The concentrated fossil fuels only launched the latest exponential phase of the habitat – ecoside.
Obviously, at even “past primitive” times various feedback loops and adaptation kicked in, so optimizing the process to less destructive agricultural practices were / are applied.
However, one can posit the first urge was always much stronger than the latter one, hence it’s always a protracted loosing game so to speak. Unless humanoid’s approach (in aggregate) to the whole thing changes. The knowledge is there already, the will to change ways not so much.
@Norm, Have you read any of Ruth Stout’s books? Or _The Good Life_ by Scott and Helen Nearing? Horticulture does not have to be a young man’s game. I also am aware of some examples in my own family.
I find this very interesting, but I miss Jay Hanson. He had a truly holistic way of exposing his views, and he had more balls (sorry).
Mister B.A.U. Hard to stop a good thing!
WMO warned this had not curbed record concentrations of the greenhouse gases that are trapping heat in the atmosphere, raising temperatures, causing sea levels to rise and driving more extreme weather.
“The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph,” Taalas said.
“We need a sustained flattening of the curve.”
The WMO’s main annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said preliminary estimates pointed to daily carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions falling by as much as 17 percent globally during the most intense period of the shutdowns.
The annual impact was expected to be a drop of between 4.2 and 7.5 percent, it said.
But this will not cause concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere to go down, it said, warning the impact on concentrations was “no bigger than the normal year to year fluctuations.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/greenhouse-gas-levels-high-despite-102406742.html
All we needs is the Paris Treaty and more windmills, Tesla’s and Solar Panels!…sarcasm
Actually, there are a lot more economic problems coming in 2021, even apart from the recent restrictions related to more COVID-19 cases. This relates partly to a huge number of buildings that are not worth much with inadequate usage. Of course, the lack of adequate building usage leads to more laid off workers, more debt defaults, and lower tax collections (again leading to more laid off workers). It is hard to see how the vaccines are going to fix all of the economic problems in 2021.
Covid is a vascular disease. It destroys our blood vessels. Our organs collapse and we die.
Says who?
I would like to see your references, too.
Something to that effect was being discussed a few months ago on a medically oriented YouTube channel called MedCram. The theory is that the virus is not specifically a respiratory disease, but rather uses the lungs to gain entry to the endothelial cells of our vascular system. You may find the linked video interesting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj2vB_VITXQ
A series of videos exploring the vascular connection were made.
What virus? No poof exists – no isolation or purification of the alleged virus. This is about control and the culling (ie bumping off) of older people. Haven’t you worked it out yet?
Yes, we have to keep coming back to this point. No proof exists that the virus SARS-CoV-2 exists, at least none that I’ve seen.
Some folks are convinced that it’s the real deal, but then again, other folks are salesmen adept at moving past the sale. They will ignore the question of the lack of proof of the viruses existence and move straight on to all the nasty things it’s supposedly doing.
A lot of folks are being bamboozled here and some folks are doing the bamboozling.
As Carl Sagan spelled out: ““One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
@Jean @Tim, you all are totally wrong. Yes, it *has* been isolated and even its *genome* has been decoded. In fact, it was decoded at a very early date, and later decodings documented specific genetic changes as it mutated. SARS2 (what this is) is just as real as SARS1, but less lethal. Where the heck are you guys getting your “information?” There is zero chance that this is a hoax.
I listened to part of this, but I am afraid it is too detailed for me.
Low levels of vitamin C are associated with the processes that destroy our blood vessels including inflammation, and are also linked to increased severity of many diseases. Also, viral infections tend to use up and rapidly deplete the body’s store of vitamin C.
Unless we eat like a hunter-gatherer or supplement with megadoses of vitamin C, almost any viral infection can end up destroying our blood vessels, causing us to die horribly.
Says me.
The speaker of the Slovak parliament Boris Kollar, known for his polygamy, the plagiarism in his diploma thesis and the contacts with mafia, had a serious car accident while having a Slovak Miss in his car during the strict pandemic measures prohibiting social contacts and inicluding the curfew.
https://www.facebook.com/HnutieSmeRodina/videos/1364335553909178/?t=0
What a coincidence and “the warning of the god’s finger” here, one could say…
as long as it wasn’t Bill Clinton’s cigar
So sort of a cross between Teddy Kennedy and Martin Luther King!
This guy seems as piece of work, 11 children admitted, joined Salvini’s EU opposition, supposedly ran small biz towards the end of socialism, then made it “big” in various schemes later.
ps context: in (fractured) parliamentary systems even small parties 6-8% could gain a lot of leverage, basically making or braking coalition governments, getting lucrative side deals out of it etc.
I thought that Slovakia was only testing, and requiring those who tested positive to stay home. I didn’t realize that it had “strict pandemic measures prohibiting social contacts and including the curfew.”
The second wave in Europe during recent weeks had taken lot of step up measures, even curfews, incl. CEE realm.
–
Lets discuss the Q1-Q2 2021 third and fifth waves,
/sarc off
The testing allowed for the relief of the measures. Some further testing rounds before Christmas are proposed.
They have a ongoing national testing process–
Let’s see how well it works.
“Low global interest rates are here to stay:
“…As global monetary easing is prolonged, it inevitably becomes a zero-sum game as the room for front-loading future demand diminishes. Further, since investment is undertaken according to the order of profitability, productive investment will decline over time.
“The credit spread will be suppressed by aggressive monetary easing, which could lead to lower productivity growth resulting from hampering the allocative efficiency of credit markets. Lower potential growth coupled with bloated debt due to front-loading will increase the likelihood of a financial crisis.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Low-global-interest-rates-are-here-to-stay
It is impossible to raise interest rates now.
Not arguing, but many commentators continue to say that it is “impossible” to keep them down!?
It appears to me that the CBs do have control of the rate, and are able to keep it down indefinitely/very long time.
Both are true. The federal reserves policy defining treasury bonds as a desired collateral in fact the only accepted collateral for some types of loans has produced widespread demand for treasuries at any interest rate. Treasuries have a defacto negative interest rate considering inflation. The institutions purchasing them have been doing so to gain access to the credit that ownership allows them. Club membership deposit. Thus the policy set by the federal reserve created demand regardless of the interest rate. This takes the heavy lifting off the fed. Creating demand means they dont actually have to bring every treasury bond offered onto their books. Creating demand means every institution has some scin in the game via treasury bond ownership.
Through this mechanism ZIRP continues indefinitely. Its conceivable that the risk perception of the club membership deposit could lessen demand. Could the fed buy them all? Yes. What would be lost is near universal participation of financial institutions treasury ownership. Whether value could be maintained at all with the fed the primary owner of treasuries is debatable. The fed certainly doesnt want bear that weight. They would prefer all of the heavy lifting be done by others. They certainly will step in and buy whatever treasuries neccesary to keep ZIRP in place. There simply is no alternative with where we are now. The amount that they have on the books now is a indicator of how dicey things are and exactly how much choice they have in the matter. None. Without created demand and direct fed ownership where would rates be? 10%? 12%? That simply is unthinkable. You dont pay people to be in the club. The Chinese bond offerings may be of interest (hah) to people who actually care about return that rarther than ownership as collateral but they are not direct competitors.
“China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization transformed the global economic order. Yet even as China became the factory to the world, its financial system remained a closed shop… Now the admission of foreign investors into China’s $15 trillion bond market—cemented this year when the country rounded out its inclusion in all three of the top global indexes—may just mark the big bang equivalent to WTO entry.
“Global pension funds, starved for yield in a low-growth world, will now have access to safe government debt that pays more than 3%.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-opens-bond-market-unknown-220003628.html
“China’s financial regulators have vowed to crack down on people “running away” from their debts after a slew of bond defaults rocked the country’s onshore market.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3110903/chinese-authorities-warn-bond-issuers-they-cant-run-away
[Access to safe Chinese gov debt / bond goes global]
Thanks for this update, perhaps significant development in delaying the inevitable for few more yrs..
Aka count von Dracula-Globalescu and his last sip of blood, eh.
I like the statement
“will now have access to safe government debt that pays more than 3%.”
I also remember that China recently issued debt at a negative interest rate. CNN says, China borrows at negative interest rates for the first time on November 19.
Perhaps it is instead regional Chinese governments that are borrowing at higher interest rates. These are the governments who are having problems with the many State Owned Entities who are defaulting on their debt. These governments are forcing the SOEs into bankruptcy, rather than letting them default, as I understand the situation. Perhaps there is equity in an unprofitable coal mine, for example.
Nov. 19.
China braces for multiple bond defaults at state-owned enterprises
Local governments urged to step up supervision of projects to lessen risk
If a debt is backed by the value of tradable tangible assets independently appraised, it is safe. Any other kind of debt is unsafe. I suggest China offers Hong Kong, Macao, Shenzhen, and Shanghai as security for the debt.
“independent appraiser” oxymoron
Not so: the profession was created by the Knights Templar to ensure those profligate kings and princes could pay back what they were borrowing. More recently, they were used by UK building societies to ensure mortgages on real property were safe.
The practice was also found in the US, but to a limited extent. It disappeared when the politicians decided that refusing to lend money to people merely because they would not be able to repay it was “systemic racism”. Cue the mortgage crisis.
“The UK’s economic recovery is facing a ‘double-dip’ downturn as coronavirus lockdowns batter firms, according to a leading business survey.
“Industry data released on Monday points to the sharpest decline in private sector output since May as economic restrictions left firms reeling after four months of expansion.”
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/uk-economy-england-lockdown-impact-jobs-093743372.html
“The number of unemployed people aged over 50 in the UK has increased by a third in the past year, according to analysis of official figures…
“While the unemployment rate is significantly higher for those aged under 24, analysis shows that it is among older workers that there has been the greatest percentage increase.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/23/number-of-unemployed-people-in-uk-over-50-rises-by-third-figures-suggest
This should not be a surprise.
“Eurozone business activity fell sharply in November, putting the bloc on track for a double-dip recession as governments imposed restrictions to stem a second wave of Covid-19 infections.”
https://www.sharecast.com/news/international-economic/eurozone-business-activity-slumps-amid-covid-19-second-wave–7722061.html
“Eurozone firms are increasingly vulnerable amid a pandemic-induced recession but public support, including cheap cash from the European Central Bank, have limited the damage so far, a new ECB report showed on Monday.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-corpbonds/euro-zone-corporate-vulnerability-at-levels-seen-in-debt-crisis-ecb-idUSKBN2830UH
“Over 10% of Belgian businesses fear imminent bankruptcy.”
https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/141852/coronavirus-continued-turnover-losses-have-businesses-worried/
“German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz plans to take on at least 160 billion euros ($190 billion) in new debt in 2021 to help stave off the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic…
“This is at least 64 billion euros higher than the 96 billion euros initially foreseen by Scholz for next year.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-germany-debt-idUKKBN2820F1
“Italy’s Bank Troubles Are Back to Haunt It:
“The public outcry against bank bailouts during the financial crisis prompted European governments to constrain the use of public money to help lenders in crisis. New trouble at the region’s oldest bank [Monte dei Paschi di Siena] will test whether these rules can outlast the pandemic.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/italy-s-bank-troubles-return-to-haunt-it-with-monte-paschi
According to the article,
“Italy nationalized the bank in 2017 but had to commit to returning it to the market promptly to abide by European Union state-aid rules. The deadline for a sale — set for the end of 2021 — is approaching fast, but the bank faces a fresh capital shortfall and a dearth of possible investors.”
Italy is quite good at bailing out its banks. From 2014:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-01/italy-enacts-most-bizarre-bank-bailout-yet
According to Reuters,
I imagine this debt was not necessarily high-quality debt. It kept up the illusion that these companies could continue.
This should hardly be a surprise. Restrictions, or even voluntary decisions to stay at home, badly hurt the economy.
The trouble with “normal” is it always gets worse!
Canadian politically active singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn composed and released a song called The Trouble with Normal almost 40 years ago in 1981.
At the time I didn’t think it the lyrics were very good, but I approved of his sentiments in writing it. Now that we’re living in “the new normal”—another phrase that has been adopted worldwide including here in Japan—the words of this song take on a new poignance as the new normal, just like the conventional normal, is fated to get worse and worse.
Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs — “Security comes first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World’s kept on reservations you don’t see
“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
https://youtu.be/PMYKT_b2ZIo
It would have been difficult to image such a future, years ago, but I think 1981 was a time when people were thinking about problems related to the ones we have today.
There was a bad recession in 1974-1975. There were also high oil prices and lines at gas stations in 1979-1980. Smaller cars suddenly became popular, and importing small cars from Japan (where they had been in use already) ramped up. People were truly worried about the oil situation back then. Most people became convinced that if there was a shortage again, it would “look like” the problems of the 1970s. The author seems to have had insight into other kinds of problems that occur.
Cue Senicide by the guvs, so isn’t it great opportunity for snapping some rural-farm deals out there? Most likely, lot of older folks barely keeping many smaller farms afloat already pre-disease times, the problem being even sweet property deals make little sense in truly and deeply brainwashed society on many fronts. Only if you also bet this could change in the future, but not sooner than many decades. Perhaps chance for your offspring and their progeny, Kowalainen.
Self destructed Sweden will be snapped by someone ultimately, my bet is either on the caliphate element (“new UK”) or polish northern expansion if the CEE will be threatened (without help) from new waves of migration via southern vector.
This was response to Kowalainen mini thread on Sweden few pages back, somehow, perhaps by moderation, re-jumped here..
I don’t think moderation changes where a post appears. (But I could be wrong.) It can be hard to get a comment to link in the correct place.
Are there oligarchs who could buy up these farms and rent them to surfs?
Perhaps, that’s sort of included in the above, an oligarch as general description allows – indeed could be in fact from the British island caliphate of the future or from Greater Poland. But you have to re-develop these plots first, the conventional methods yield in accordance to fossil input, which is not for ever as we assume / prognosticate here..
ps my 4:58 post is taken from previous thread / page about Sweden for some reason – if it doesn’t make sense..
Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how.
Worldof, I don’t have any offspring.
Yeah, Sweden will sell its Crown Jewels to keep their sucker afloat for the indebted useless eaters.
The Crown Jewels being the hydro power stations, forests and mines.
Then this AI doggo will make the transition away from the humanoids.
https://www.lkab.com/en/news-room/news/unique-robotic-dog-serving-faithfully-at-lkab/
Kiss farewell to the consumerist bonanza and the little crypto commie schtick with the GND world guvmint bovine manure.
It’s all machine from here on.
Portuguese Court Rules PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful”
Important legal decision faces total media blackout in Western world
An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful.
Further, the ruling suggested that any forced quarantine applied to healthy people could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty.
Most importantly, the judges ruled that a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/20/portuguese-court-rules-pcr-tests-unreliable-quarantines-unlawful/
We are seeing conflicting test results play out in real time. Kelly Loeffler, who is running for Senate as a Republican in Georgia, has had a series of tests for COVID, including at least two PCR tests. She has no symptoms, and keeps getting conflicting results.
.
Her results are consistent with the performance of the different testing technologies. Most PCR positives are false positives, at least in countries that use very high cycle thresholds for determining positives (i.e., almost everywhere, except Taiwan, Macau, and perhaps other places).
But what about that mass of rapid antigen testing in settings such as universities and sports leagues? How come there are not tons of false positives there?
The rapid antigen tests seem to behave better — be less prone to false positives — than PCR tests. In their evaluations of the rapid antigen tests, researchers have used PCR as the gold standard. Antigen tests rarely register positive for specimens that are positive by PCR with more than 30 cycles. In some cases, the drop off occurs well below 30 cycles. That is, antigen positives fall off at exactly the point where viral culture tends to become impossible (meaning there’s no live virus to grow in the specimen). PCR, in contrast, keeps going for many more cycles, generating an increasing proportion of false positives as the cycles add up.
Here are some examples of this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386653220303966
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20215202v1.full.pdf
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.01.20203836v1.full.pdf
“We will not comply!”
“A hundred or so local business owners” gathered at “Athlete’s Unleashed, a local fitness center” in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, “to strategize where do they go from here with all the tyranical [sic] shutdowns.”
But then the “Erie County Sheriff’s Office escort[ing] the Erie County Health Department” showed up “in an attempt [to] harass and breakup the meeting.”
The serfs courageously stand their ground! They order the trespassers to leave, yelling “You’re not wanted here!,” asking the sheriff whether he had a warrant (“I don’t need one,” he retorts. Since when?), chanting “Get out! Get out! Get out!” and “We will not comply!”
Eventually, the sheriffs and the busybody from the Health Department leave the premises—but that’s not enough for some of our heroes. They follow them into the parking lot, commanding that they keep going to the road!
This clip is 6 minutes of absolutely thrilling defiance! Buffalo’s entrepreneurs prove peaceful rebellion is not only possible but successful when determined patriots resist despots.
The authorities can always escalate this sort of thing if they see fit. But a lot of people now have their backs against the wall. Compliance doesn’t come so easily from people who feel they have more to lose from compliance than from defiance.
By the way, isn’t the sheriff on the left speaking with a British accent?
https://youtu.be/AI_pkvlp2q4
I read yesterday that foot traffic at the shopping mall closest to my home (Town Center at Cobb) was down 45%, comparing the first two weeks of November this year to the same time period, a year ago. A more upscale mall in Buckhead (Phipps Plaza) seems to have foot traffic falling by 65% for the same period. These amounts are based on someone’s analysis of phone signals for the periods.
The stores in these malls must be doing terribly. It is hard to think of what to buy from them, if a person doesn’t need new clothes, or perhaps new dishes for entertaining. They don’t sell electronic devices or vehicles or things for related to home maintenance.
The report also said that the my local mall is “more than 60 days delinquent on $178 million in loans.”
Clearly a lot of businesses, and the malls themselves, have their backs against the wall.
As Gail so brilliantly quoted.
Debt is a claim on future energy
Ownership is a claim on past energy
I like my sheriffs. Those people have some learning about the world to do. They were like two year olds. Desperately clinging to models that no longer exist.
Anybody know a good tear gas company to invest in?
Energy dichotomy
The story of Adam and Eve is about the garden and the agriculture: the garden representing the energy of the Sun only, while the agriculture representing the additional energy (as human toil).
But what about the Cain and Abel? We have another energy dichotomy: the sacrifice of Cain who was a farmer in the form of burning the biomass was not accepted by the God. The God preferred the sacrifice of Abel, the shepherd.
The story of Cain and Abel is thus another energy dichotomy, where we have the use of animals providing additional energy instead of the humans.
The gardening and the shepherding constitute the two more favourable energy sources for the humans than agriculture.
The agriculture is viewed negatively in both of these stories, as it requires more energy.
These stories want to show that the God is a higher energy. The God is where there is a higher energy gain for the humans.
Abraha and Isaac: when the energy limits are reached, do not kill, search for Higher Energy, i.e. God.
The original Bible story was that Cain and Abel fought over which of them got to marry Abel’s twin sister. The priests changed the story to propagandise the temple sacrifices, after they banned herdsmen from killing their own animals and forced them to let the priests do it, paying them the best part of the animal to do so.
And in the original Abraham story he did indeed kill Isaac; the traces are still there in the Septuagint and hence in the Vulgate.
That would be most interesting. Is there a write up of that, maybe on the web?
The story of Abel’s sister is told (briefly) in this article from the Jewish Encyclopaedia, where it is considered apocryphal:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/216-abel
The Isaac story was unearthed and documented by Tzemah Yoreh, as described here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-abraham-murdered-isaac/
If you thought I made it up: sorry, I only make stuff up about hedgehogs.
By the way, much Jewish “forbidden” history was preserved by the Therapeutae of Alexandria, with whom I believe Jesus studied.
Interesting, thanks.
“The priests changed the story to propagandise the temple sacrifices”
Nietzsche has a similar account in TAC.
The texts and the religion are hijacked by a priestly caste who use it to establish their own power within the tribe. The tribe was originally life-affirming, strong, militant. The priestly caste is an imposition for their own benefit, and it marks a shift to a ‘morality’ that condemns life and its drives, one of ‘sin’ that only priests can service.
He also reads the NT such that Jesus originally abolishes the priesthood, the sin and offerings system, and Paul then reimposes it. The priesthood represents a hostility to ‘natural values’ and the imposition of ‘anti-natural values’, ‘sin’ and the power of the priesthood. The priests live off that stuff, it literally is their livelihood. Even s/x gets ‘sinned’ and ordered to the power and livelihood of the priesthood.
‘Humanism’ perhaps presents a contemporary analogue to the subversion of the NT in the way that ‘humanists’ respond to atheism by promoting ‘liberal’ values. Any new way of looking at the world is immediately subordinated to the old political powers and to their system of ‘values’. Social power implies the control of theoretical narratives.
Thus the old priest who would prescribe young men a penance of five pound in the donations box for each act of auto-er/ticism. A nice little earner.
Adultery was a fifty pound penance. &c.
/s
And how is it you know the price list?
LOL
It is an illustration of the scenario, not one with which I am personally familiar.
The old priest spent the £5 on a magazine and the £50 on a m/ssage.
: )
Every sin has a price tag. You get into heaven if your under 10k. “Autoerotism” is 50 cents. You get to heaven. Saint Peter say sorry your tab is 10,000.50. A trillion here a trillion there. It adds up after a while.
There is an article in the Times of Israel about whether Abraham went through with the sacrifice of Isaac in an earlier version of Genesis.
It suggests that the text today is a ‘mishmash’ produced by editors and storytellers. He goes through with it in the earlier text. In the later text, in which the name of God is changed, he does not.
Quite possibly the contradiction marks a ‘theological’ shift from the approval of human sacrifice to its condemnation. The change in the name of God is also suggestive of an abrupt theological shift.
Isaac is seen by Christian writers as a figure of Jesus, who was sacrificed by the father God in payment for sins.
> When Abraham murdered Isaac
…. In the earliest layer of the Biblical text, Yoreh believes, Isaac was not rescued by an angel at the last moment, but was in fact murdered by his father, Abraham, as a sacrifice to God.
One eye-opening hint at what he believes is the original story lies in Genesis 22:22. Previously, in verse 8, Abraham and Isaac had walked up the mountain together. But in verse 22, only Abraham returns.
“So Abraham returned unto his young men [waiting at the foot of the mountain], and they rose up and went together to Beersheba,” the text relates.
That strange contradiction, Yoreh says, may be why a few ancient midrashim, or rabbinic homilies, also assumed Isaac had been killed.
In one homily quoted by Rashi, the revered 11th-century French rabbi and commentator, “Isaac’s ashes are said to be suitable for repentance, just like the ashes of an [animal] sacrifice.”
“That’s a very weird midrash,” Yoreh says, “since Isaac is clearly alive in the next chapter. But that’s the way midrash works. It analyzes episodes without looking at the larger context. That’s why you can have midrashim about Isaac dying, because it doesn’t have to notice that he’s alive in the next chapter.”
There are many hints of Isaac’s untimely demise. The sacrifice story itself contains strange contradictions and clues that are best resolved, he believes, by assuming a very different, earlier narrative.
In verse 12, after staying Abraham’s knife-wielding hand in mid-air, the angel of God tells the father of monotheism, “I now know you fear God because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
That phrase, “have not withheld your son,” “could indicate Abraham was merely willing to sacrifice his son, or that he actually did so,” Yoreh says.
One hint that it may have been the latter is contained in the names for God used in the story. The Biblical text calls the God who instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son “Elohim.” Only when the “angel of God” leaps to Isaac’s rescue does God’s name suddenly change to the four-letter YHWH, a name Jews traditionally do not speak out loud.
Elohim commands the sacrifice; YHWH stops it. But it is once again Elohim who approves of Abraham for having “not withheld your son from me.”
These sorts of variations, rampant throughout the Bible, have led scholars to conclude that different names for God are used by different storylines and editors.
Indeed, Isaac is never again mentioned in an Elohim storyline. In fact, if you only read the parts of Isaac’s life that use the name Elohim, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to see the story as one in which Isaac is killed in the sacrifice and disappears completely from the Biblical story.
“Not that the YHWH portions make much of an effort to bring him back to life either,” Yoreh notes. Indeed, Isaac seems to fade after the sacrifice, with his life story told in just one chapter, compared to more than a dozen chapters for both Abraham and Jacob.
Worse yet, Isaac’s chapter “is all recycled from Abraham’s life.” Just as Abraham signs a pact with the king Avimelech, so does Isaac. And just as Abraham passes off his wife, Sarah, as his sister to avoid being killed by Avimelech, so does Isaac with his own wife, Rebecca.
“It’s hard to characterize [Isaac’s life after the sacrifice] as distinct stories,” says Yoreh. “They’re just repeated elements, a recycling of the material.”
In the earliest Biblical narrative, Yoreh believes, Isaac died that day on Mt. Moriah. Far from setting an example in which God intervenes to end human sacrifice, Abraham, the father of monotheism, is revealed as a man who can walk his own son to the altar and even wield the blade himself….
https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-abraham-murdered-isaac/
This is the section of the text that uses the two names.
But the angel of the Y-HWH called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear Elohim, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. Genesis 22: 11-12.
It may originally have read:
The angel of E-lohim called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Now I know that you fear E-lohim, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-sacrifice-of-isaac-in-context-recovering-a-lost-ending-of-the-akedah
It depends, most of the “idyllic” shepherdess are total moreons, always over-grazing (only one kind of animals) down short to the ground-dirt level, obviously herd get infected, so then load them up on various aggressive de-wormers etc.
That is an interesting angle from which to view it. The story of Adam and Eve is also an allegory for our species’ development of a conceptual, and therefore ultimately false, sense of self.
“Who told you that you were naked?” God asked Adam and Eve. In other words, how could that concept *mean* anything to them if they had not eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, ie duality, and developed an idea of themselves as subjects in a world full of objects, separate from the flow of nature and thus from God. This was The Fall.
I saw an interesting Jordan Peterson video where he theorised that it was the threat of predation from animals like serpents that in effect shocked the evolving human mind into developing this conceptual sense of self and that it developed first in women, as it does with Eve, because they had the added dread of potentially losing their infant children.
Of course once you have a thinking mind that is cursed with a sense of its own frailty and mortality then toil is inevitable as you can no longer trust in nature’s abundance and need to get busy preparing for all the scary futures the mind in its fear will conjure up.
I see modern Industrial Civilisation as the natural and inevitable end-product of the human ego, which is by its very nature pathological or “sinful”.
“Adam” comes from the word “ground” or “earth.” Humans are from a continuous cycle with the soil.
Humus thou art, and unto humus thou shalt return.
What happens to a country that turns a blind eye to an undeniably Fascist-style collaboration of Big Tech……Big Money……almost all of the communications industry including Hollywood…….demonstrably partisan activist lower courts……..politically-partisan highest echelons of FBI and CIA harming Americans ……ie tacitly endorses a malignant collaboration of plutocrats that installs by force of their own unprecedented power and profound corporate wealth……their own choice for POTUS…. for their own nefarious purposes…..by deliberately keeping the American people in the dark and feeding them lies and propaganda 24/7.
After a brutal lawless four-year pogrom by that same cohort ,on the duly-elected POTUS and his administration….the collaboration comes to a crescendo with a final assault….an all-media blitzkrieg …… to deliberately ……as admitted in testimony before Congress……hide from the people, massively important information any voting population should have in order to know whether the challenging candidate is an honest…. loyal and law-abiding American……whether he’s putting the interests and security of America before his own personal vested interests and wealth-making……or not…..whether he is ….himself…..a security risk?
If the result of the anti-democracy assault puts the anti-democracy cabal’s own carefully chosen candidate into power………whether by the cabal’s pre-election corruption ……or by ‘adjustments’ to vote tallies one way or another….why should the regime installed in the White House by the almost insurmountable power of the malevolent cabal……not be seen henceforth …..as an officially lawless regime of a lawless country?
What would distinguish that America from the authoritarian failed states of the world …Far Right and Far Left….past and present….a cohort decent Americans would be outraged and alarmed at the thought of joining?
Why should that America not be seen as the most powerful and one of the most ruthless banana republics in world history….never to be trusted again by its long-term allies who are themselves still trying not to succumb to evil….who are still desperately trying to hang on to their democracies against the Long March of the Left through the Institutions?
What imperative is there for an American citizen to be honest and law-abiding …… other than his inherent decency….when a Left Wing…some reasonable people might say Fascist …cabal…..has cancelled democracy…..and is about to cancel the 20th and 21st centuries…..to take by force of massive unfathomable wealth……by almost total control of information…..the power it ‘s unable to earn by persuasion of voters and the ballot box?
Why would American citizens meekly ……without resistance….relinquish their Constitutional rights and their children’s futures ….at the behest of the moral and intellectual pygmies of the Fourth Estate ……the sector that’s meant to be a firewall against such barbarism…..that’s not meant to be the cabal’s rabidly unhinged partisan Praetorian Guard…against the people?
What shred of moral high ground and credibility of any kind , could the America that timidly accepts such perfidy and presents this terminally-tainted regime to the world in a pretence that it’s a duly-elected leadership…… possibly have?
2020 Rant of the Year.
Peak Rant.
bravo.
PRECISAMENTE!
Good questions.
Very good questions!
I’m sure our Norman, as a card-carrying Bidenite, will be only to happy to answer them.
Looks like a somewhat clear direction for our time. It’s not the specific details that matter, more the direction.
https://www.tacorelish.com/millennial-habits-different-from-baby-boomers/?utm_source=share-facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_medium=footer&utm_campaign=share-footer&fbclid=IwAR22vEe3QYLD1bL2narRIstTlj6BVS0LmzwUDVJyBykjw5mvvLDQLH0hjSY&chrome=1
yes, and the direction is downward for the prosperity of all succeeding generations.
the slant of the article is very much that millennials are dictating their desires to the world, when in fact it is the reality of the degrading economy that is dictating to them and crushing their potential for future prosperity.
Yes. But I have never focused on those adverse effects (never having previously seen so many connections of the step down as now). All I’ve ever seen is the simplicity of smaller and less. It’s beautiful to me, and if it ain’t beautiful to me, I despise and condemn it, no matter what. Well not quite true. I sort of love everything, the ugly things included, but I’m strongly drawn to simpler, less, and smaller in any creative work I do. The fact that there is still a phenomenal degree of privilege built into this lifestyle allows for muchf creative choice, compared to a homeless encampment under an overpass.
yes, there is still plenty of remaining net (surplus) energy even as it begins to decline.
these younger generations can try to make their way through with less energy therefore less prosperity.
it could be a good life for millions, simpler with less stuff.
but I don’t buy the slant that it is their choice to live simpler, at least for most of them, since they have the same evolved hunter-gatherer minds that seek an abundance of stuff, well most of us do anyway.
reality is forcing these younger generations to downsize their lifestyles compared to the “lucky” ones born roughly 1930s to 1980s.
Hunter-gatherer minds do not seek an abundance of “stuff.” That is determined by circumstances. For example, when San-Bushmen were persuaded to change from hunter-gatherers to herders, their famously sociable and altruistic culture very quickly began to emphasize of the hoarding of possessions (cattle) and increased familial privacy as inequalities emerged. The difference in culture results from a change in the means of production, an idea Marx got right. (Marx was much better at understanding the past than the future.) But there can scarcely be any doubt that if they were to revert to their hunter-gatherer ways that they would also revert to their culture of minimal possessions, altruism, and increased sociability, because the incentives would have changed. It’s the incentives that make people seek an abundance of possessions, not an inflexible mental predisposition, and certainly not our hunter-gatherer ancestry. Typical hunter-gatherers may be violent and homicidal, but they are not materialistic.
” It’s the incentives that make people seek an abundance of possessions, not an inflexible mental predisposition, and certainly not our hunter-gatherer ancestry.”
Good point!
(Marx was much better at understanding the past than the future.)
The past is far easier to understand than the future! But yes, that is a strong point in Marx’s favour. Most pundits today seem to understand neither the past nor the future.
Excess capital and claims on same:
Perhaps sometimes capital piles up and in effect degrades with time if not used so some use is better than none and some might even work. Hence ECB supporting various countries.
Could derivatives and such be an attempt to make the flow of capital more or less linear? To make use of it before it degrades simply by sitting on a shelf. Gold would fulfill this role, but it has never really worked in history, it is not organic. Some really crazy ideas in retrospect turn out to be most reasonable, the trick is recognizing them before hand.
Dennis L.
Derivatives are just a form of “insurance,’ a way of off loading risk. However, many of the “insurers” will be unable to pay off if too many of the “policies” they have sold must be redeemed at once.
Nehemiah,
Derivatives are used by banks in the form of overnight repos and reverse repos to balance out cash needs which in part are clearing issues – an example of making flow of capital continuous and not discrete. There should be very little risk involved as it is not an insurance issue.
Dennis L.
Derivatives aren’t backed by “reserves” the way real insurance policies are. If things “go south,” banks holding them seem likely to have financial problems.
Hello,
Do you care to comment other prognosis that say that energy consumption will increase
to 2020?
Like
-https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433#:~:text=By%202050%2C%20global%20industrial%20energy,40%25%20between%202018%20and%202050.
-https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/global-energy-use-to-increase-50-by-2050-eia/1693806
/Jens
All of these forecasts are based on the assumption that “of course” energy prices will rise. “Of course” the world can immediately get over COVID-19 and go back to normal. There is a strong belief that if we know that we have the technical capability to extract oil (or gas or coal) from the ground, then certainly we will do so. These energy projections are basically “momentum” projections, without understanding what is going wrong with the overall economic system.
None of the people making these forecasts have figured out that the issue we are facing now is “overshoot and collapse.” Fundamentally, the world’s population has outgrown its resource base. Energy consumption per capita is no longer rising the way it was in the past. In fact, in 2020, energy consumption per capita is falling, partly because of shut-in orders because of COVID-19, but partly because of other issues. The world economy was faltering even before COVID-19 came along. Automobile sales were falling in many countries in 2019, including China and India. Cell phone sales were also faltering. These are signs of an economy reaching limits.
The people haven’t stopped to think that today’s economic models (which are based on momentum, rather than anything else) are basically wrong. The world economy runs into limits of many different kinds, including too much wage disparity, too much debt, and too much pollution. We encounter diminishing returns in extracting minerals of all kinds. Infectious diseases become an increasing problems. We start consuming smaller quantities of energy products, and this starts a downward spiral that we cannot stop.
We have taken a major step down in 2020. It is hard to see that this will turn around in 2021. We are reaching too many limits simultaneously. An amazing vaccine can, at best, get the economy back to the poor condition it was in early 2020. We have a new round of closures and a new round of debt defaults coming in 2021. We cannot get oil, gas and coal prices up to the level producers need, without making finished goods, made with these energy products, too expensive for consumers to afford.
Maybe we don’t need to increase the amount of energy.
Frequently you mention health care costs, as I understand it most of those costs are in the last year of life – well, cut short that last year for significant savings. The largest Federal costs in the US are entitlements, that hits close to home for me.
It would be interesting to know the healthcare cost savings from Covid-19. Mayo does not appear to be as busy as it was a year ago, what happens to the local economy in a year may or may not confirm that.
This may be an age distribution problem more than a population problem. The older end of the tail is getting fatter, sometimes the fat gets cut, the old use capital less efficiently, we slow down, even with a trainer.
The other points are well taken, except I think we will go forward, the capital to do so may well come by cutting healthcare costs, the largest costs always are cut first it would seem.
Dennis L.
and when men in white coats show up at your house and say:
Our algorithm shows that you have less than a year to live—please come with us.
????????
*************
the ‘way forward’ is not through cutting cost, but by inputting more energy, and finding buyier for the products created by that energy.
It is always per capita.
Saw a movie once, Amerindians, when a squaw’s husband died, two of her fingers were cut off, her tepee cut into strips and she was left to wander.
Eskimo’s were said to place the old on icebergs to feed the polar bears and continue the circle of life.
Moving diseased people into nursing homes, how did that work?
Not much difference.
Dennis L.
thats fine by me
but I still say you won’t be best pleased when you’re left on the iceberg
or when your granny’s teepee has been cut into strips
I thought we’d dealt with all that off planet hopium stuff
(hopefully) for the last time, we can only resource stuff off planet by utilising the resources and energy we have on planet
off planet means using technology not yet invented through means not yet available to produce materials we have no use for at prices we can’t afford.
how clear does in have to be?
That is a pretty good description of the problem, IMO.
Bronowski wrote about the Bakhtiari tribe who wander the highlands of Iranian plateau in The Ascent of Man. As nomads with few resources, they are compelled to leave the old and infirm behind when they get too old and infirm to ford a river. It’s a part of everyday human life for them.
It is not possible in the nomad life to make things that will not be needed for several weeks. They could not be carried. And in fact the Bakhtiari do not know how to make them. If they need metal pots, they barter them from settled peoples or from a caste of gipsy workers who specialise in metals. A nail, a stirrup, a toy, or a child’s bell is something that is traded from outside the tribe. The Bakhtiari life is too narrow to have time or skill for specialisation. There is no room for innovation, because there is not time, on the move, between evening and morning, coming and going all their lives, to develop a new device or a new thought – not even a new tune. The only habits that survive are the old habits. The only ambition of the son is to be like the father.
It is a life without features. Every night is the end of a day like the last, and every morning will be the beginning of a journey like the day before. When the day breaks, there is one question in everyone’s mind: Can the flock be got over the next high pass? One day on the journey, the highest pass of all must be crossed. This is the pass Zadeku, twelve thousand feet high on the Zagros, which the flock must somehow struggle through or skirt in its upper reaches. For the tribe must move on, the herdsman must find new pastures every day, because at these heights grazing is exhausted in a single day.
Every year the Bakhtiari cross six ranges of mountains on the outward journey (and cross them again to come back). They march through snow and the spring flood water. And in only one respect has their life advanced beyond that of ten thousand years ago. The nomads of that time had to travel on foot and carry their own packs. The Bakhtiari have pack-animals – horses, donkeys, mules – which have only been domesticated since that time. Nothing else in their lives is new. And nothing is memorable. Nomads have no memorials, even to the dead. (Where is Bakhtyar, where was Jacob buried?) The only mounds that they build are to mark the way at such places as the Pass of the Women, treacherous but easier for the animals than the high pass.
The spring migration of the Bakhtiari is a heroic adventure; and yet the Bakhtiari are not so much heroic as stoic. They are resigned because the adventure leads nowhere. The summer pastures themselves will only be a stopping place – unlike the children of Israel, for them there is no promised land. The head of the family has worked seven years, as Jacob did, to build a flock of fifty sheep and goats. He expects to lose ten of them in the migration if things go well. If they go badly, he may lose twenty out of that fifty. Those are the odds of the nomad life, year in and year out. And beyond that, at the end of the journey, there will still be nothing except an immense, traditional resignation.
Who knows, in any one year, whether the old when they have crossed the passes will be able to face the final test: the crossing of the Bazuft River? Three months of melt-water have swollen the river. The tribesmen, the women, the pack animals and the flocks are all exhausted. It will take a day to manhandle the flocks across the river. But this, here, now is the testing day. Today is the day on which the young become men, because the survival of the herd and the family depends on their strength. Crossing the Bazuft River is like crossing the Jordan; it is the baptism to manhood. For the young man, life for a moment comes alive now. And for the old – for the old, it dies.
What happens to the old when they cannot cross the last river? Nothing. They stay behind to die. Only the dog is puzzled to see a man abandoned. The man accepts the nomad custom; he has come to the end of his journey, and there is no place at the end.
Norman, much simpler solution, simply stop paying many life extending procedures through Medicare cuts, no money, no service, or increase deductibles to huge amounts. You are in Great Britain I think, isn’t that what the National Health Service has done? You can get free care, next year, you life expectancy without care is six months – an example only, don’t have a clue about the real numbers.
Many solutions here are acknowledged to be non solutions. We look for emotionally satisfying solutions, there are no easy solutions,
Put more energy into this old earth, we all die, the planet can’t take anymore. Keep growing the economy through any energy source and based upon past exponential growth the surface goes above boiling point of water.
Going to have to think out of the box. Those who can are going forward, upward if you like. Norman, there is nothing left here that can be extracted with any degree of profitability, we have beaten that one to death. Oil does not work economically, it is over; exporters are going broke, Exxon is going broke, frackers are going broke and people are going broke trying to buy the stuff.
A solution you offered was plywood boxes. Norman, no plumbing, that is literally a Rx for death of cities, plumbing is public health. I’ll bet on space any time, it is forward, it is hope, plywood boxes are despair from my viewpoint. Move industry off earth, move pollution from industry off earth, move fission safety issues off earth, let the earth heal, it will heal with us or without us.
All the best,
Dennis L.
“Going to have to think out of the box. Those who can are going forward, upward if you like. Norman, there is nothing left here that can be extracted with any degree of profitability, we have beaten that one to death. Oil does not work economically, it is over; exporters are going broke, Exxon is going broke, frackers are going broke and people are going broke trying to buy the stuff.”
here’s my repeated version of outside the box:
a barrel of oil contains roughly the same amount of energy as 4 years of human labour.
without this energy, the world becomes much poorer. In fact, without this energy, we can totally write off any potential for space projects.
the price/profit/economics of oil is the problem, and letting that problem take away a massive amount of energy from the economy would be a far worse problem.
nationalize oil, and remove the price/profit problem while retaining the massive net (surplus) energy.
then the space guys can continue to do their projects and maybe impress some chicks.
without the net (surplus) energy of oil, there will be no more impressive guy projects, and the chicks will be wondering what happened.
Dennis L wrote: “Keep growing the economy through any energy source and based upon past exponential growth the surface goes above boiling point of water.”
Exactly! And IF ever increasing energy consumption were possible (it’s not), the “cooking point” would arrive much faster than most people imagine.
All the “solutions” boil down to: “New technology WILL be invented and it WILL let us access energy resources we cannot tap with today’s tech, and the new tech WILL always arrive just in the nick of time. Only have faith in the technology priesthood! The engineers will deliver us!”
It’s just a high tech Cargo Cult, and its kingdom is thoroughly of this world rather than the next. People are going to be bitterly disappointed.
Marxism has always been utopian, but capitalism was supposed to be a sane and sober concept described by a “dismal science,” offering merely a path that was less bad than feudalism, but somehow capitalism seems to have transformed into a rival utopian “theology” that promises us permanent liberation from the limits of a finite creation.
We are going to hit the wall, and we are determined to do it at full speed.
We are incredibly fortunate to have an infinite heat sink literally on our doorstep in the shape of outer space into which to radiate planetary heat, thereby preventing us from all being baked, broiled and barbecued to a crisp.
We are also blessed by the physical law that says colloquially that the hotter the object, the more it radiates. Thanks to this feature of the Universe, the hotter the Earth gets, the more vigorously it radiates heat energy into space.
Moreover, what a boon it is to live on a planet with a Goldilocks atmosphere (not too thin like Mars nor too thick like Venus, but just right) and a surface covered 70% by liquid water at a distance from our local star that allows the bulk of this water to remain at the low end (temperature-wise) of its liquid phase. This allows the water to help regulate the amount of heat the atmosphere holds rendering the average temperature remarkably stable, pleasant, comfortable and optimal.
Yes, the more I sit back on my Ottoman couch nibbling Muscat grapes and pondering the question, the more I am convinced that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds.
Rather like the offbeat observation by Douglas Adams, that if a puddle was capable of rational thinking, it would come to the conclusion that the hole it was in would have been made exclusively for its personal use and benefit.
The book “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe” by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee (published in 2000) makes this point. The earth has an amazing combination of characteristics that make it a welcoming place for humans.
Dennis
The part you ignore is that of who exactly is going to initiate and instigate all this social engineering—assuming for a brief moment that it is possible?
Are you going to be the one issuing the orders that granny should be put to sleep now?
because if you go into social engineering, which is what you are advocating, then someone has to run it.
And teams of people have to physically put it into practice.
maybe you could come up with suggestion about would be agreeable to everybody.
(Other than wish politics though)
****************
As to the oil producers etc going broke, that’s because their continued solvency depends on infinitely increasing energy-flows.
That is the only way employment / wages can function in real terms because they are derived from energy surplus, not just energy itself.
As forecast by many people, we are fast approaching the EROEI bottom limit at which industrial civilisation can function.
That might be say—14:1, certainly no lower than 10:1. Trouble is, we don’t know exactly, and we are deluding ourselves that oil is still delivering 100:1 like it used to.
To do that we are borrowing (from the future) to make up the difference. This supports our ‘now’.
Simplistic I know, but if you divide 100 by 14, you get 7.
And in an earlier comment I pointed out that one $ about 50/60 years ago bought about 7 x as much energy as a dollar does today.
Neat huh?
But that’s your lifestyle down the pan, or the American dream, Call it what you will.
It isn’t possible to borrow wages
I think we are already past the EROEI bottom limit. It is really an overall limit, for the energy mix we have. Wind and solar EROEIs are not calculated correctly, with the rest, making the result confusing.
Thanks for replying Gail! It must get tedious. All to get a reply of maybe we dont need to increase the energy. Well were certainly going to find out what happens to us with less energy. Dennis I dont think you have very long to convince yourself everything will be just peachy before something breaks hard.
I totally disagree that consumer goods need to remain affordable to the average “joe and jane” in order for energy prices to rise. Rising prices just mean that wealthier buyers (both higher class consumers and government, plus universal demands for things like food and winter heat) will be driving the demand. Demand does not need to rise in order for price to rise. Indeed, prices can actually rise while demand falls if reserves are falling even faster than demand.
To say that oil or other fossil fuel prices will stabilize for the first time in history, and furthermore will stabilize at a price at which no consumers can buy and no producers can produce is just like predicting that food prices will stabilize at a point where no eaters can afford to buy food and no growers can afford to grow food.
One could, of course, argue that while food is essential to life, oil is not, but in an economy where each calorie of food consumed requires between 6 and 11 calories of fossil fuel to produce, that would not strike me as a particularly sound argument either.
Right now, more oil is still being produced than users want to buy. When that reverses, I “boldly” predict that the price will rise sharply (which is like “boldly” predicting that the sun will continue to rise in the east!). Eventually, falling production will drive prices higher even if absolute (but not relative) demand also falls. If oil costs more than some parties can afford, they will simply use less of it while paying more per joule rather than swear off oil altogether.
You evidently don’t understand how a self-organizing economy works. The big thing that consumption of energy products provides is jobs that pay fairly well. The fact that people have jobs that pay well allows them to buy other goods and services. This is what allows prices to remain high enough.
Thinking that demand for food will always remain is wrong. Supply chains to deliver that food to buyer, at a low enough price, need to remain in place. We saw many farmers plowing under crops and throwing out milk, when shutdowns were ordered this spring.
I fully expect that “more oil is still being produced than users want to buy” will continue to be the case, pretty much forever in the future. If you think about consumption of cheap-to-produce energy providing jobs, and lack of consumption of adequate energy leading to wage disparity, you can see the problem that arises. The low wage people cannot buy enough goods made with commodities, and commodity prices fall too low. The system comes to a halt.
outstanding comment ++++++, Gail!
The “humanitarian superpower” trashed in latest OECD report with regards to Sweden’s covid “response”, or more accurately lack thereof, all in the good name of institutionalized sociopathy. Senicide by the guvmint. Ain’t it lovely.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-europe-2020_82129230-en;jsessionid=R5AN2N3AZpIJXLmHZYMLns47.ip-10-240-5-112
There may very well be many episodes of COVID-19 and its successors. I am not certain that we really know what approach is best. Japan and the Far East seems to be doing amazingly well in keeping cases down so far.
I know what response is better than Sweden’s. The response where older people isn’t murdered by a herd immunity loonie institution.
There is nothing to fear about the Great Reset.
It is , basically, resetting the world back to what it was before the World Wars.
Thanks to misguided ‘heroes’ like Gavrilo Princip, Joe Gallieni and Chuck Fitzclarence, who thought they were doing their duty and fighting for their country but instead caused the Great War, and armed the natives who began to demand a greater share of participation in the world economy because the Imperial Powers did not think too far ahead of the consequences,
the world became, well, inundated with 6 billion Third Worlders who got to have a semblance of modern lifestyle.
And that is simply not sustainable.
A world where every jungle village has motorboats and motorcycles is simply not sustainable. Back to canoes and feet.
The Great Reset, basically, is to exclude them and the poorer people in the First World from civilization so the remaining resources can be concentrated and spent by people who are more likely to advance civilization to the next stage, to the stars.
If one is old enough to afford to not care, or is rich enough to join the new stage of civ, then great. Otherwise, you are out of luck. Sorry.
That would mean return to the old good “stability” of two Keisers, Czar, British Emperor, .. and their vast empires. That’s clearly not possible looking at today’s fractured maps and news / trends all over the globe. And as our host Gail also mentioned (based in part on discussion here) in few recent articles, the road ahead will be likely signified by further process of fragmentation – balkanization, i.e. centralized control exerted over way smaller dominions (areas) from now on..
If there is a “great reset” it will only serve to kick the can on the moribund western liberal economic world order down the road by a few more years. Then kaput, followed by dieoff. No interstellar civilisation for terrestial monkeys. Space is, after all, God’s great quarantine zone.
“The Great Reset, basically, is to exclude them and the poorer people in the First World from civilization so the remaining resources can be concentrated and spent by people who are more likely to advance civilization to the next stage, to the stars.”
with or without a Great Reset, the remaining resources will be concentrating in the Core as has been discussed here often.
spreading resources equally is unnatural and leads to demise.
unequal allocation gives a much greater chance of some survivors.
then, they will attempt to reach “to the stars” and fail miserably.
past progress gives the illusion that humans will continue the progress to the stars.
it’s already apparent that the human imagination of sci-fi adventure has far surpassed any future reality.
perhaps a woman on the moon with the “next man” probably a “person of color”.
some low orbit space flights for the ultra rich.
the end of progress is coming soon.
“the end of progress is coming soon.” — That sounds too optimistic to my ear, sort of like a “permanently high plateau.” I think of our time not so much as the end of something familiar, but the beginning of something new, the Grand Reversal or the Great Unwind. People like words such “new,” “grand,” and “great.” Perhaps they will make people feel more positive about the future, or at least willing to think about it. “A grand new future awaits us, almost beyond our imaginations!” If I ever run for President, that will be my campaign slogan. Hopefully no one will read the fine print. “My opponent who is promising growth and progress seeks to ‘turn back the clock,’ but I promise to face our grand, new future with courage!” (Just don’t ask me what that entails.)
When the Great Contraction gets underway, promises to divide the pie more equally will become more popular than ever, but people will be bitterly disappointed when they begin to figure out that they are getting more equal shares of a progressively smaller pie, which will finally lead some of them to turn back to candidates who promise to once again expand the pie via some formula for voodoo economics which most voters will not try to understand so long as it gives them feelings of hope. If Americans are divided now, just wait until the pie they are fighting over starts getting smaller. The political struggle is likely to become a lot more bitter and ruthless than it already is.
I am afraid you are correct.
Here is a very good critical investigation into the green energytransation in Germany. The talk is in norwegian, but the slides are written i english – most of them are possible to read.
https://youtu.be/2K4JGxlKr7Q
An important source for the figures is
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/
Within your second link, is there a particular place a person should look?
Just sent the link cause most of the hard facts in the video have publications from this think tank as source https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/about-us/agora-energiewende/
“Agora Energiewende is a joint initiative of the Mercator Foundation and the European Climate Foundation.”
enough said..
ps nevertheless, it’s all jolly good, the more EVs and batteries the Germans churn out during this last mad dash before collapse the better for some “hyenas” of the future, eh..
A wonderfully insightful and sarcastic piece by Andrew Rawnsley of the Guardian about Boris:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/22/how-boris-johnson-attempted-a-grand-relaunch-only-to-be-sunk-by-himself
EXTRACT.
‘Enormous challenges face Mr Johnson as we approach the turn of the year. Little wonder he prefers to take himself off into a future world where the Royal Navy zaps Johnny Foreigner with laser weapons.’
this man wants to overthrow the french government.
Does that kind of thing happen elsewhere? except in the US where Trump wants to overthrow Biden..
The period is really entertaining!
But he’s speaking in Down’s syndrome Latin. The most important inhabitants of the world will not be able to understand it.
You should know that the most inhabitants of the world speak french!
Seriously, even if you don’t, are the lyrics more important than the music?
I just thought it was funny to share that strange moment on the web.
Desculpa, não percebo o teu dialeto feito de anglo-saxão adulterado e algumas nuances de latim e grego. E dizes que as pessoas mais importantes do mundo falam isso? Hum… Tens provas?
🙂
You are BANNED! 🙁
I hope you mean I am banished from the human species, since that I could take. But banished from OFW? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!That would make my life simply unbearable, and I suppose you don’t want to have a death (mine, by suicide) weighing on your conscience.
Conscience, me?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUdhaDCvPWY
OK, I’ll let you off after all. 🙂
Overthrown governments are to be expected in a time without enough energy to go around.
In fact, if a nation divides into multiple parts, it likely gets rid of some of the overhead and the parts are each more homogenous within themselves. The homogeneity also tends to make it easier to govern the separate parts.
This is an interesting time!
Fingers crossed it happens to Canada. Balkinization will help areas with resources like Alberta to soften the hard landing of bad resource policy and the pillaging of the provincial economy of billions of dollars a year in the unfair policy of transfer payments.
Considering the ongoing unprofitability of the oil sector, it’s hard to imagine how Alberta would mitigate the economic hardship in case if it becomes independant.
You mean Biden and his corrupt and/or violent acolytes wanting to overthrow Trump?
I was thinking the same thing. Biden is the usurper here. He’s the old pretender.
Top paraphrase the Gospel according to Mathew (if I may do that without becoming subject to a fatwa), “many are called, but few are Biden.”
As we see in the US, such coups are not easy. Biden just overthrew the legal popular vote by stuffing the ballot box to an insane degree in four metro areas (plus a few less sensational shenanigans) while underperforming Hillary’s 2016 campaign every where else in the country. But he will also have to overthrow a few swing state legislatures, the US Supreme Court, and the House of Representatives. That is a daunting task.
“Researchers [in Bolivia are] investigating a little-known deadly virus that causes a fever, vomiting and internal bleeding have found that it can be spread from person to person.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapare-virus-spread-humans-bolivia-disease-b1723578.html
We don’t need another deadly virus circulating!
We already have enough deadly diseases circulating, maybe more than a hundred, that have been with us for time out of mind…there has been no reference to these because they would bring perspective to the narrative.
Whatever you believe, whatever you choose to believe, is none of the government’s business. Their only roll is to protect you from people who would use force to have it otherwise.
And btw, I listened a few hours ago to your Mortensen panel interview and was perplexed at their non response to your comments which were an order above theirs in ways I can’t briefly say.
The others on the panel come from a “peak oil” perspective. They seem to think that we will run out of oil and have high prices. Chris Martenson (the moderator) has some idea that my ideas are different, but Richard Heinberg and Art Berman are mostly clueless. Chris picked up on some of the things I was saying, and changed his direction of questioning accordingly. I think he originally was thinking this would be a “high price oil” discussion.
We’d need 50 of such viruses every year just to arrest population growth.
We could also arrest pop growth through some combination of famine in poor countries and immigration restriction in rich countries.
Err, not when we’re still piling on 80 million more people a year.
I would not be surprised by this combination occurring.
Not if people respond with shutdowns. The shutdowns kill many more people than the viruses themselves. They start an avalanche of business failures and job layoffs. People’s diets go downhill, making them more vulnerable to communicable diseases.
Even rolling shutdowns wouldn’t be enough to arrest population growth of 80 million per year. It’s gonna take all of mother nature’s time-tested methods to winnow away the great crop of humanity. But she’ll manage it, always does.
Imagine such viruses primarily targeting the male population and the less fit among them.
Dear Info, I think it’s called “war” and it’s been doing just that for eons.
@gpdawson2016
Diseases were the biggest killers outside of violent death even in Wars.
“Thousands of people on Saturday staged the biggest protest yet against Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, with some setting fire to Congress, fuelled by anger over cuts in the 2021 budget just as the country reels from back to back storms.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-guatemala-protest/protesters-set-fire-to-guatemalas-congress-in-protests-over-2021-budget-idUSKBN28204U
The funeral of a black man who died after being beaten by supermarket security guards in Brazil has been held following protests that echoed those of the racial justice movement in the United States.
“”On Friday, demonstrators painted “Black Lives Matter” on the pavement of Paulista Avenue, one of the most famous in Sao Paulo, following a series of protests across the country.”
https://news.sky.com/story/brazil-death-of-man-beaten-by-carrefour-security-guards-sparks-brazil-protests-12138879
“Police violence in Chile has reached a shocking nadir, with reports that two young people, aged 14 and 17, were shot by armed police in the southern city of Talcahuano, in Chile, on Wednesday afternoon…
“In Chile’s capital Santiago, hundreds of protestors took to the streets to demand an end to police violence but were met with repression, tear gas and arrests.”
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/11/20/institutionalised-impunity-chilean-police-shooting-at-childrens-home-sparks-new-wave-of-unrest/
“Peru is planning to raise new public debt in the short term in order to finance the Andean country’s deep fiscal deficit and repay interest on old debt in 2021, interim President Francisco Sagasti told Reuters.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKKBN2802FK
Not a good sign when you have to go deeper in debt just to pay the interest!
Protests and violence everywhere!
A lot of it seems to be imitating America’s BLM protests. BLM is a tool of Antifa, a Communist front organization. Antifa planned the BLM protests for the 2020 election year well in advance. They needed an incident they could spin as a trigger event, such as the fatal George Floyd fentanyl overdose during a routine police arrest, but one can find such an incident during any calendar year if an organized group is keeping its eyes open for one.
“More than a hundred pro-government civilians on Sunday mobbed a handful of protesters who showed up at Havana’s Central Park [Cuba] to support a group of dissidents on a hunger strike, while security forces watched on, according to a Reuters eyewitness.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cuba-protests/pro-government-mob-sets-upon-protesters-in-havana-idUKKBN28301S
“Protests in Bogota [Colombia] marking a year since 2019’s national strike against Ivan Duque’s government end with riots around a university site.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/colombian-protests-marking-2019-strike-134237912.html
“According to Goldman Sachs, Ankara spent more than $100 billion of its currency reserves in 2020 to support the Turkish Lira.
The Turkish government’s inability to deliver on its vague promises to secure the strengthening of national currency will accelerate the depreciation of the Turkish Lira, which could further worsen Turkey’s fragile external financial situation.”
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/11/22/imminent-collapse-of-erdogans-economic-policy/
“Turkey has become a geopolitical balancing act between an increasingly capable and active military, and an increasingly volatile economy…
“The risk now is that a step too far militarily, or a mis-step economically could trigger a full blown crisis…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeosullivan/2020/11/21/zero-problems-with-neighbours-turkeys-adventures-risk-the-lira/?sh=37670c671a96
Spanish banks are the most exposed to Turkish debt ($64 billion).
“Spanish banks seek mergers as outlook darkens.”
https://www.trtworld.com/business/spanish-banks-seek-mergers-as-outlook-darkens-41693
ECB props up Spain, Italy and France.
And in turn they prop up Turkey.
What a circus..
Let’s hope Putin nukes Turkey soon, for interfering in his ex-Soviet states (Armenia, Azerbaijan).
Trump’s big mistake was not to start a war against anyone. Presidents who starts wars always get re-elected.
Starting wars helps the economy, as long as a country can avoid having damage to its own country in the process.
Wars “help the economy” in one sense, but frankly it would be more economically rational to pay people to dig holes and fill them in again since you could get just as much “stimulus” while avoiding a huge waste of resources. Wars don’t actually make any society richer, although they do make the money circulate faster.
They may raise the total number of people drawing wages. They also give countries a “good” excuse for borrowing more money, which they can use for wages. These additional wages and purchases of armaments tends to stimulate the economy.
GHW Bush, the hero of the Persian Gulf, enjoyed an incredible 90% approval rating after his glorious victory, but just one year later he was voted out of office.
“South Africa’s finance ministry said on Saturday the ratings downgrade by Moody’s and Fitch will increase the country’s borrowing costs and constrain its fiscal framework.
“”The decision by Fitch and Moody’s… is a painful one,” Tito Mboweni, Minister of Finance, said in a statement.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/south-africas-painful-ratings-downgrade-094826502.html
“The Ramaphosa COVID-19 stimulus package, originally announced on April 21, is huge, amounting to approximately $26 billion, or 10 percent of the economy’s GDP.
“As a share of GDP, South Africa’s package represents the largest in the emerging markets; notably larger than several high-income countries, including South Korea and Canada…
“South Africa is spending enormous amounts of money to get the country back on its feet.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/11/20/lockdown-economics-in-south-africa-social-assistance-and-the-ramaphosa-stimulus-package/
“‘Whites-only school prom’ protesters hit with tear gas and rubber bullets in South Africa:
“Some of the mainly black demonstrators are seen carrying machetes, sticks and golf clubs, but are met by a heavy police presence.”
https://news.sky.com/story/whites-only-school-prom-protesters-hit-with-tear-gas-and-rubber-bullets-in-south-africa-12137597
South Africa really needs a good supply of cheap to produce energy, not more debt-based stimulus.
“South Africa’s ruling party has proposed using state-run unemployment and compensation fund surpluses to help rescue the country’s debt-laden power utility, raising the ire of labor unions.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-23/south-africa-s-anc-looks-to-unemployment-fund-to-rescue-eskom
“Africa’s largest economy has slumped into a recession in the third quarter as oil production dropped to a four-year low.
“Nigeria’s gross domestic product shrank 3.6% in the three months through September from a year earlier, compared with a 6.1% contraction in the previous quarter…”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nigerian-economy-falls-recession-3-100809411.html
“A judicial panel investigating claims that Nigerian soldiers shot dead peaceful protesters in Lagos viewed videos on Saturday appearing to show people hurt or saying that they were being fired on, but an army general dismissed the footage [as fake].”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nigeria-protests-idUKKBN2810UQ
Where are the BLM protesters on this one??? I guess they only protest when criminals die.
No rebound in GDP in the third quarter for Nigeria!
“Could OPEC’s House of Cards Collapse?
“As the cartel’s oil ministers prepare to meet in just over a week to decide on the next step in their record-breaking output deal, officials in the United Arab Emirates, normally a loyal Saudi ally, are privately questioning the benefits of participating, and may even be considering whether to leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties.”
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/could-opecs-house-of-cards-collapse
“Crude oil inventories at the Cushing storage hub in Oklahoma are approaching the high levels seen in April when limited storage capacity amid crashing demand contributed to the plunge in WTI Crude prices into negative territory.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Cushing-Oil-Inventories-Are-Soaring-Again.html
If people aren’t traveling, it is easy to get too much inventory. Of course, this leads to very low prices, even negative price.
Negative end of contract prices happened on day earlier this year because some traders in China made bad decisions and couldn’t get out of their paper contracts before expiration. I doubt they will repeat that mistake any time soon.
OPEC is another group that may fail.
“Investors fret over future of Fed crisis lending – Markets concerned response to potential virus surge will be curtailed due to Treasury rift with central bank.
“…The central bank made no secret of the fact that it wanted to preserve the credit facilities being axed by the Treasury secretary as a key weapon in its arsenal to keep markets healthy during the pandemic…
“if financial markets were to experience new turmoil in the coming months, the Fed might struggle to limit the damage to investors in corporate debt, municipal and state debt, and asset-backed securities, whose markets were propped up by the lapsing facilities.
“And the fallout could be broader, given the nearly $40tn US equity market has been buoyed by the Fed’s intervention as well.”
https://www.ft.com/content/336eaa2e-29e4-47dc-b2dd-a4175013435e
“The U.S. government stands to lose more than $400 billion from the federal student loan program, an internal analysis shows, approaching the size of losses incurred by banks during the subprime-mortgage crisis.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-losses-seen-costing-u-s-more-than-400-billion-11605963600
“The U.S. government stands to lose more than $400 billion from the federal student loan program…”
Seize the money from the Universities who inflated their costs so as to capture the funding and cheat the students. Fiat iustitia!
The US response at this point is a big question mark. It is not like groups are working together very well.
“Let’s not pretend a vaccine means a miracle cure for the economy
“If we are facing stagflation, the [UK’s] public finances are in dangerous waters.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/11/22/not-pretend-vaccine-means-miracle-cure-economy/
“In case no one has told you yet, debt’s piling up and there’s only one way out — growth…
“…the chancellor, and the country [are] in a perilous position — even though no one has yet explained to the public quite how bleak things really are.
“Debt is still cheap. But the Treasury fears that, given the scale of the sums involved, even a small increase in the rates charged by those lending us the cash would blow a hole in the public finances. A significant rise would mean either massive cuts or borrowing to pay for borrowing — a path to the abyss.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/in-case-no-one-has-told-you-yet-debts-piling-up-and-theres-only-one-way-out-growth-prllcwpmx
“Scrapping duty-free shopping could cost 40,000 jobs and leave taxpayers billions of pounds out of pocket, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was warned last night.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8973963/40-000-jobs-threat-duty-free-shopping-scrapped.html
“The Treasury will borrow almost £500bn this year as it scrambles to cover costs of the pandemic…
“The staggering sum – equivalent to almost a quarter of the entire economy – is likely to be more than double the £227bn gilt sales in the year after the financial crisis…
“In a sign of the uncertainty over the eventual sums needed to fund the pandemic response, the Treasury’s Debt Management Office took the unprecedented step of not publishing the gilt sales planned for the full year.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/11/21/treasury-braced-500bn-covid-borrowing-hit/
“The [financial] risks councils are running are eye-watering.
“Take Spelthorne, a small authority near London, with a core annual budget of around £11m. It borrowed more than £1bn to build a property portfolio mainly outside its own locality.”
https://www.ft.com/content/168ae76c-5cd9-495b-80f2-0eb5d49a9a6b
Nice sneaky move, Harry. Sell the first tranche at a high price, the second at a lower one, and so on. There are always fools waiting to be parted from their money, even fools stupid enough to believe in the “faith and credit” of the UK government.
We are now seeing what I call 2nd world industrialized economies crumbling before our eyes. The U.K. and South Africa are “borrowing” meaning “printing” up to 25% of their economies. How long until the still standing 1st world economies don’t have anyone to export to?
Many on here have predicted and discussed when “ the world economy will collapse”
It looks like 2021 is the likely year.
It depends, you have to expand the context of your question though.
If that fin hub of City is no longer needed (the capacity nixed and partly to be moved on EUR continent and Asia) ..
If that whole island is no longer needed as naval, air, and radar outpost in the global game ..
Then indeed it could be all let to final stage of decomposition pretty quickly say before 2025-35.
But are we there yet, at that point? Not sure..
Solution obvious: scrap the duty, everywhere. Sumptuary taxes have never worked and never will.
Time for another glass of Italian wine at EUR 2.50 per litre.
Robert,
You make retiring to Europe sound wonderful. What are your thoughts on Lisbon?
With regards to duty taxes, not so sure, someone ahead of the curve dumps products on local market, drives local producers out of business, purchases said producers at a cheap price.
Missed my wine last night, bottle more like $10/litre, nothing but the best.
Dennis L.
Thank you Dennis. I have happy memories of Lisbon, a beautiful city; and of the waterfront, with the Monument to the Discoveries, featuring Prince Henry the Navigator holding a miniature caravel in the crook of his arm.
I chose another home: the Isle of Malta, almost the Southernmost country in Europe, and one that has escaped much of modernity. The technology is in place (of course) but the society is still traditional and conservative.
My minor house improvements required no contracts, no legal formalities, no cheques. Close the deal with a handshake, pay for it cash on the nail five minutes after it is completed, and make a friend along the way.
It is also deeply Christian, which is a great comfort. No, not my religion, but mine requires me fully to respect the religion of the country in which I live: “I have not denied God in any of his manifestations”; a line item in the Negative Confession. And it does help that I have read the New Testament in both Latin and Greek.
Let the internet connect you to modernity, but otherwise close your door.
Well, that settles it, growth is the only way out, the only way out is up, to the Moon, Mars, and ultimately the stars and the universe.
Simple, next problem please.
Dennis L.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/why-not-space/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
EXCERPT: Global power demand under sustained 2.3% growth on a logarithmic plot. In 275, 345, and 400 years, we demand all the sunlight hitting land and then the earth as a whole, assuming 20%, 100%, and 100% conversion efficiencies, respectively. In 1350 years, we use as much power as the sun generates. In 2450 years, we use as much as all hundred-billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
The merciless growth illustrated above means that in 1400 years from now, any source of energy we harness would have to outshine the sun.
Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm. Thermodynamics require that if we generated sun-comparable power on Earth, the surface of the Earth—being smaller than that of the sun—would have to be hotter than the surface of the sun!
Once we appreciate that physical growth must one day cease (or reverse), we can come to realize that all economic growth must similarly end.
At least someone is saying that the vaccine is not a miracle cure.
Shh, you’ll upset the lads up at the stock exchange.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NzgoWRbUXf4/VEXKItw9JII/AAAAAAAAJ48/4IQnwQRak1g/s1600/ZULU%2Bfilm.jpg
“India and China are engaged in an eight-month standoff at LAC in Eastern Ladakh. Both the countries are also engaged in military and diplomatic talks to resolve the border dispute…
“Amid this, apart from aggressively developing infrastructure, China has started installing radars from Ladakh to Sikkim region.”
https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/news/the-chinese-army-is-installing-and-upgrading-its-radars-along-the-india-china-border/articleshow/79342093.cms
“China’s military used microwave weapons to force Indian troops to retreat during a months-long border standoff in the Himalayas, according to an account that has emerged in Beijing.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-turns-ladakh-battleground-with-india-into-a-microwave-oven-6tlwtrtzz
There are no doubt resources of interest, such as hydroelectric, to fight over the border.
Howe has an interesting interview regarding the fourth turning. In particular
1. Across the world the young have less interest in democracy and more in results. The young want results, they are not very interested in liberal due process which is used to maintain wealth of the old.
2. There is a populism across both left and right among the young to move wealth from the old to the young(hmm, think I have been on SS for a while)
3. The growing bifurcation between the rural red states and the blue coasts.
4. The two sides not trusting one another.
5. Retipping the economic balance through UBI or inflation, claims on wealth from creditors to debtors.
6. Both businesses and individuals being on the dole secondary to C-19.
https://twitter.com/HoweGeneration/status/1327319848242868225
I personally see this in the young men who are sons of a father who has become a good friend of mine. Also, up close and personal I see the importance of being fair to the two forty something sons of the man who rents my land as they do the work.
I don’t see the elites being as powerful as some would suggest, we are going to have to tread carefully.
Dennis L.
the elites are now taking advantage of peak oil by setting up great reset which i believe will take place before the end of 2020 so enjoy capitalism’s last hooray before we enter world communism whoevers got money in the bank will lose it all through bail-ins this will be part of the great reset our only chance now is communism for all long live the elites.
Or, going back to the early 20th century, Belle Epoque, no Third Worlders in major cities, etc.
Unfortunately, those who sneaked into civilization since 1914 will probably be forcively evicted.
checks calendar: yes it’s 11/22.
40 days left in 2020.
the mythical Great Reset could not happen in 40 days, even if it wasn’t a modern myth.
checks stock of dark chocolate:
yes, capitalist bAU tonight, baby!
You will love this site
http://greyenlightenment.com/
He has some interesting things to say, although he doesn’t believe in resource strategy. You will like his writings
I took a look and am less impressed than you are, and not only because of delusional stuff like this:
“I don’t agree with his forecasts at all, and I take the opposite position that America is in a prolonged period of prosperity, peace, and dominance (especially relative to the rest of the world since 2008) that may last indefinitely.”
And: “diversity…is a prophylactic against [social] unrest” — ignoring the quantitative research by Tatu Vanhanen that shows the opposite.
His IQ piece puts too much weight on the “smart fraction” while ignoring the fact that your country’s IQ matters more than your own, and that it affects far more aspects of society than technological innovation. That is why someone with an IQ of 100 is just mediocre in the US but would be part of the top 2% cognitively gifted population in sub-Sahara Africa, yet I don’t see average Americans, or even above average Americans, lined up at airports to fly to the Congo where they would enjoy an impressive cognitive advantage. Likewise, many average people in countries with modest mean IQ scores correctly recognize that they would be better off as part of the cognitively disadvantaged in a higher IQ country in Europe or Anglo-America.
His attempt to explain away the higher educational demands in US public schools circa 1900 ignores compelling evidence that the lower test standards today reflect a real fall in average in intelligence since Victorian times.
okay, listened to Howe only about 7 minutes or so.
I think he sees some of the problems clearly enough.
but a couple of times he says things like “get out of the box we’re in” and “get through this”, as if at the end of the fourth turning things will get better because things got better after the other three turnings.
he probably doesn’t see, and the young generation certainly does not see, that from here on out it will be every succeeding generation getting poorer and poorer.
meanwhile, re: some of your other recent comments, the older “guys” will be blowing through a lot of their wealth on projects that should impress the chicks.
Branson low orbit space flights, Musk and Bezos to the moon and Mars etc.
some of it might work, and the chicks will be impressed.
it’s been said that past civilizations were at their most impressive just before they collapsed.
we have no say, but those guys will probably be trying to accomplish their glorious projects right up until the majority of the young generation falls into dire poverty.
perhaps we can watch the temporary successes for a while longer.
there’s still plenty of net (surplus) energy around for some of those guys to have some success.
the old(er) generation won’t be leaving much energy resources for the younger, but that’s the price to pay for today’s projects.
I’d agree.
The so-called ‘Fourth Turning’ has never carried any air of conviction, in so far as it is supposed to be resolved in eventual economic and social revival.
Reasoning from a false axiom.
Xabier,
What is the axiom to which you refer?
Dennis L.
Interesting ideas,
My take is the genes of some go on, the genes of some stop; some sort of rule of the universe, chicks rule said with a quiet laugh.
Ploughing through G. West for the first time, will need to read it a second, maybe a third time. He is convincing.
As is becoming well and perhaps frustratingly known, I think the future will be better than the past. My bet is to move almost all non organic processes off the earth, end all pollution. The earth is a self balancing system, heavy metals are not biologic and very difficult to cleanse. The earth will take care of itself, we as humans need to respect it. Moon and Mars? Well Mars is the war god so anything goes and the Moon is the symbol of lunacy, so why not?
Regarding the above paragraph: Nature, the powers that be, whatever did not put fusion reactors on earth, they are in the sun, far enough away to be safe.
So, reading the scriptures, heaven on Earth, hell on the Moon? Not sarcastic, an option.
We can all chose our hills to die on, some chose a chair and a bowl of popcorn, me, what are the real rules? Perhaps we or at least some of us are put here to find them, that is beyond my abilities but I seek to understand before I pass.
Dennis L.
re: fathers/mothers and sons/daughters.
I have known perhaps dozens of parents who are now getting up there in years like me 60+ or at least into their later 50s.
the children are mostly young adults now, and though it does take time for young adults to progress in jobs/careers to where they match or exceed the wages/salaries of their parents, I just don’t hear of hardly any of these young adults who seem to be on a path to matching their parent(s).
it might be some kind of observer bias, but my generation (even me with my limited success) seemed to be the vast majority outperforming their parent(s) at the same stage in life.
too bad, energy and wealth increased for centuries, and now a great turning, a reversal, is upon the younger generation where on average they will be experiencing lower prosperity than their parents.
generally speaking, the surplus energy that was available to parents is not available to their children.
clearest example is a house that used to cost 4x average wage now costs 10x
As I see it, this decline must go on. It’s part of the energy peak and decline curve.
Doesn’t apply to every kid of course, but two or three generations out from here, it must kick in for everyone, because our support system depends on the work contribution of everyone else
essentially we’ve burned our kids future:
https://extranewsfeed.com/the-life-i-stole-from-you-f609f8db6353
“One in five people in the UK have nominally fallen down the social pecking order because they work in a lower-status job than their parents…”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/18/one-in-five-people-in-uk-in-lower-status-jobs-than-parents-study
If they have become electricians and plumbers, etc, able to write their own cheques more or less here in the UK, the move down will have been quite wise!
You have children and grandchildren, Norman. I know you’ve said they think you’re crazy, but what advice do / would you give them? You’ve obviously thought about this. Its easy to say live for the day, but when the consequences come, its in our nature to fight.
lol—I wish I could give an uncrazy answer—but when one of them says—”come for a ride in my Aston Martin grandad, and another one makes me burst with pride at the buildings he creates, And four of them leave me proudly in the dust on pure art
what grandad is going to be the old curmudgeon who says :
‘this can’t last’
So I don’t.
Instead, one likes to think: chip off the old block there alright, at least one quarter’s worth.
It is impossible to subvert human nature
My grandkids are as aware as I am at what’s going on, but fight to survive in their way I guess
They are very lucky. It is impossible not to want the very best for them
I won’t see my great grandkids reach the end of the century—that really does make me shudder. But ultimately who knows? But they might show my book to to their kids and say ‘he told you so.’
(assuming they still read books)
That’s why I wrote the poem:
“The Life I stole from you”.
But Shakespeare put it better than me, as you might imagine::
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
Some time ago I demonstrated here using US Gov. statistics on median wage, oil cost/barrel and SS and Medicare transfer taxes where the wealth went. As I recall the transfer taxes were 2-3x the increase cost of oil/energy per capita.
All humans have a pull by date, and in many respects I am past mine, but still have many things I hope to do. This means, I feel fear of dying which is part of life, it is now personal not abstract and it can be very serious. Sometimes we here we talk too much in the abstract for my liking.
Kids can’t support their parents, there is no way an economy that is not growing with increased population can support the previous generation without wearing out the kids.
There are those(most likely the elderly) who emphasize the wisdom of the elders, there are philosophers who observe science cannot move on until the old scientists die.
david, perhaps you are looking at the wrong end of life – it is the elderly who are dying in the nursing homes, not the young.
Ying and yang, and while I am beating it to death, chicks rule which is why old men chase young chicks.
Dennis L.
the fact of increasing wealth (over parents) didn’t kick in until the early 20th c.
the process started in the 19thc but was too small to have any noticeable effect.
the initial motion for it came about with the advent of mass labour in factories, when employers over time were forced to compete for workers (I’m ignoring depressions here) and pay escalating wages
this put everyone on the wage-ladder, so it was inevitable that sons should earn more than their fathers, on average terms.
the wage ladder was exponential, not linear.
but the exponential curve could only be kept going by increasing inputs of fossil fuels.
FF input peaked and is now falling. Not through shortage but through cost. (we can no longer afford it)
Put simply, children’s wages cannot buy the same amount of energy as their parent’s wages at a similar age.
or more brutally, one.$ 50 years ago bought about 7x more calories than it does today (that was the American dream btw)
so to maintain the illusion of growth we have to borrow….ie run faster and faster just to stand still (welcome to the American nightmare).
This is where the current chaos originates. There is a certainty that prosperity can be voted into office. I’ve just explained why it can’t.
Agree.
The only way forward is off this planet for resources and making sure we do not overheat the planet, waste is always a problem. Not a total solution, a start.
Dennis L.
I can’t see how going off planet will solve waste and heat problems. We must make a lot of waste and heat to go off planet. If we succed and return with space resources, we will be able to make even more waste and heat.
I agree with the inability of young people to do as well as their parents, in all of the developed nations.
In China, perhaps young people are doing better than their parents. But if the children are in one-child families, they still end up with the problem of not being able to support the older generation.
This was published a few days ago:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201117133910.htm
More than half of in-hospital deaths from COVID-19 among Black, Hispanic patients, study finds
Source: Stanford Medicine
Summary: Researchers found that Black and Hispanic people made up 58 percent of all patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and 53 percent of those who died from the disease.
Excerpts:
Troubling, no obvious solutions.
Credit the CHS and his musings for this reference.
Basically a German medical insurance companie’s data relating medical costs for patients who have had Covid compared to those who have not after discharge. Those who had Covid had a cost 50% above preadmission levels. Generally when one follows the money the answer is approximately correct.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-coronavirus-idUSKBN27V0QS
Dennis L.
Medical costs 50% above pre-admission costs is troubling.
The Virus is raciss, obviously. It also shuns the fit and stalks the fat.
In 2018, Hispanic Americans were 1.2 times more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites. From 2013-2016, Hispanic children were 1.8 times more likely to be obese as compared to non-Hispanic white children. In 2018, Hispanic women were 20 percent more likely to be overweight as compared to non-Hispanic white women.
African American women have the highest rates of obesity or being overweight compared to other groups in the United States. About 4 out of 5 African American women are overweight or obese.
In 2018, non-Hispanic blacks were 1.3 times more likely to be obese as compared to non-Hispanic whites.
In 2018, African American women were 50 percent more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white women.
From 2013-2016, non-Hispanic black females were 2.3 times more likely to be overweight as compared to non-Hispanic white females.
People who are overweight are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, high levels of blood fats, diabetes and LDL cholesterol – all risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
In 2018, African Americans were 20 percent less likely to engage in active physical activity as compared to non-Hispanic whites.
*The above stats are from the US Dept. of health and Social Services.
And then there’s the vitamin D factor. It is easier to synthesize it from sunlight if you were born with white skin. The vitamin is raciss, obviously.
This is the chart I showed earlier regarding vitamin D levels by race, in the US, back a decade ago. Hispanic and African-Americans have significantly lower vitamin D levels than whites.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-status-of-3-us-ethnic-groups.png
Private space exploration:
Came across this, YouTube again, Elon Musk again.
At 1:00 there is an aerial view of the TX facility, at 1:25 there is a view of a malfunction, a bit more than a bumper falling off a Tesla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTpvoO6x8CA
In part this looks sort of pieced together, not really an extremely well funded venture, and in part it is a very large area with lots of very expensive equipment and fixtures.
People who have made large bets are making large bets, we here too often find reasons why things can’t be done, this video shows things being done. One of these craft took four people to ISS.
Lydia18 has made mention of the incredible strain of MIT and the students work schedules. No doubt what is being done is at the limits of human abilities, but the FANG group continues their effort to magnify human abilities through AI, that too is sort of pooh poohed here, but the sums being invested are incredible, entrance into that club seems to begin at $500m.
This is a tough group to get into, entrance requires incredible intelligence, stamina, focus and yes, money from somewhere. Yet, it goes forward. I am the optimist for humanity, recognizing the individual challenges that will be part of that endeavor. Man is very inventive; in the 15th century when some said sailing too far from shore would not be possible there were those who said, “Well, maybe, maybe not, I’ll give it a shot, have some money? If the answer was yes, a metaphorical phrase was, “Hold my beer.”
Why? Why men? Well, the guys who sail into the vastness of space, the sea or whatever are the true bad boys, chicks dig bad boys – seems to be part of the self organizing way of life – why we are where we are? Wasn’t it Isabella who funded Chris? Wonder what kind of reception Chris received from Isabella upon his return from four voyages, enough to endure the hardships of the sea?
Dennis L.
Ha ha, Dennis.. “hold my beer”… you are so right! I readily admit I had difficulty in maintaining focus and stamina because the goals presented to me turned out not to be personally appealing in any way, and for those few years I was just going through the motions, not understanding what was really wrong.
Everything about “things being done” at MIT raised the question, “are these things worth doing?” Basically, “no”. There is no degree to which I would want to augment my existence in the way many there were interested in doing. You’re probably right that it’s mostly a guy thing.
If anyone thinks the future of humanity lies with Elon Musk, well… that sort of proves my point that it’s pointless.
MIT could disappear tomorrow and the world would in no way be worse off.
It is good to have on your resume. However, I have to say, an army of Chinese, Korean, Indian and Middle Eastern Engineers will go nowhere.
Human chauvinism is what is wrong.
Why not start with making dogs and other critters speaking their minds using the neuralink contraption instead of trying to make the rapacious primate neurally enhanced.
I guess that would change how we view and treat our mammal brethren in a hurry.
As long as mankind is a limbic system guided missile of self harm, enhancing the capacity would be disastrous.
“Your dog wants steak!”
“Squirrel!”
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky.”
Yeah, that would be refreshing. Some truth without the usual smoke and mirrors when humaniods are making utterances.
Did Musk create anything which is new? No
He is a great marketeer, for certain, and he knows how to sell himself. But he and his staff are just reinventing the wheel in his image.
I wonder how many engineers and scientists died from covid?
0 perhaps? 🤔
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09755-6
“There were large differences in health risk indicators across occupational groups, mainly between high-skilled white-collar occupations and the other occupations, with important variations also between major and sub-major occupational groups.”
White collar-high skilled workers seem to be generally in better health than others. From that perspective, they would be expected to have better outcomes.
The article doesn’t look at vitamin D levels at all, however. I would be interested in the COVID rates for the different groups, by vitamin D level.
One would wonder what effect recreational drug use plays.
Dennis L.
The best dope is no dope and plenty of solitude. People who can’t handle solitude quench their boredom and darkness with an intoxicated mind.
We spend so much time looking at what cannot be done we miss what can be done and is being done.
This link looks at vertical integration of software companies into hardware along with the barriers to entry.
https://mule.substack.com/p/the-tech-monopolies-go-vertical
Basically what is happening is software is consuming so much processing power large software companies are designing and manufacturing their own chips, Google will apparently put their TPU unit in the cloud and essentially rent it – this is the IBM of old where computers were leased and not sold.
The barriers to entry are huge and only a very few can play, $500m is not what it used to be.
Most here are skeptical about my idea of putting manufacturing on the moon and yet we see articles about the ecological cost of mining on earth – the earth cannot take any more pollution, dirt or energy. The guys at FANG are very smart, no doubt they realize this earth is the only one we will have. Musk built a spacecraft and it docked at the ISS, private companies are now so large they can do things only governments could accomplish previously.
We are going to go forward, it is really tough staying in the game.
Dennis L.
Not so fast there Dennis.
The tools evolve together with the tech they enable.
For sure, running a profitable state of the art SW/HW vertical isn’t cheap ‘an easy.
Apple isn’t manufacturing their semiconductors in-house, rather fabs it at TSMC and Samsung.
Free CPU core IP’s will be all the rage within a few years, if this clunker doesn’t fail catastrophically.
“OpenSPARC T1 is the open source version of the UltraSPARC T1 processor, a multi-core, 64-bit multiprocessor. The UltraSPARC T1 processor with CoolThreads technology was the highest-throughput and most eco-responsible processor ever created when it became available in the UltraSPARC T1 system.”
https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-page.html
Thanks, that is nice to know.
Obviously I am an outsider, look for trends.
So Apple is doing the R&D and outsourcing the fab?
Free CPU core IP’s? Open source hardware?
What I picked up as the fab manufactures lacked sufficient profit margin to do the heavy lifting R&D. The article I read claims these companies spend more money on R&D than Intel. The referenced article goes on to state with with the capital intensity of fab plants those monopolies at the leading edge will get to operate in the advanced world alone with better margins. I take this to mean the intellectual property is the prize and moat.
So far, software companies seem to make the best margins.
Thoughts?
Dennis L.
Yes, manufacturing semiconductors/network gear is the backbone of IC (yes, floating on the FF CO2 plumes).
It is extremely capital intensive to slap down a state of the art semi factory. And not even then is success guaranteed. Gotta know how to get yields up and solve mfg problems. Fast. TSMC and Samsung are surely making a killing selling chips to the verticals, such as Apple.
Myself, I have been working “fabless” for some time now. Do the drawings in the various CAD/CAM tool chains and send off the drawings to machinists/electronics manufacturers.
Most larger verticals have their own machine shops for rapid prototyping. 3D printers in conjunction with CNC machinery.
Yes, software is the forward path of the intangibles shift and semiconductors the (invisible wizardry) tangible feedback path.
Yup, I’m expecting the older semiconductor process nodes and EDA tools soon becoming accessible for hobbyist crowd, making their own verticals using open source CPU/GPU/FPGA/ASIC designs.
Eventually all the organizational complications of IC will be encoded in software and network topologies.
It is why democracies is a ridiculous concept in an ant hive structure of society. The queen lays “eggs” and the workers service the matriarch and her youth while scavenging for knowledge and energy. The queen does not employ shackles and slavery for her workers to contribute. It is innate in the ants.
Then of course, gotta plan for the next ant hive somewhere else. 😳
Ideology and hope is for suckers It is all inevitable process.
Metamorphosis.
Um. I am reminded of what I once said at a conference, during my days as an IT person: “The ability of software engineers to degrade far exceeds the ability of hardware engineers to enhance”. Look no further that the American Megasloth.
Gail (or indeed anyone else)
On page 73 of the report linked below, Vestas claim an EROI for their V150-4.2MW turbine of 31 across the full life cycle. This seems extraordinarily high as I thought wind turbine EROI to be no more than 10. Is their figure reasonable? If not what is going on here?
https://www.vestas.com/~/media/vestas/about/sustainability/pdfs/lca%20of%20electricity%20production%20from%20an%20onshore%20v15042mw%20wind%20plantfinal.pdf
Wind turbines generally do have high EROEIs. The problem is that wind, when added to the grid, is not of the dispatchable type needed. In fact, it is not even an even amount that can be counted upon. Instead, it is disruptive to the grid. Other electricity provider have to “fix” the mess it makes. A small amount of it can be worked around. Larger amounts are truly detrimental. It is not a stand-alone technology (same for solar). Also, they have a “Good energy in, poor energy out” problem. If you sit in an ivory tower, calculating EROEIs, they look great. If you actually have to use them, they don’t.
In a post by Paul Frederik Bach, called “A Challenging summer for Nordic power systems,” (near the top on http://www.pfbach.dk), he talks about the issues they are having in Scandinavia with added wind.
The bizarre pricing caused by adding wind to the grid (yet another issue with wind) has been causing nuclear power (a low carbon form of electricity) to become unprofitable. Wind energy needs hugely more transmission than “regular” electricity, because much of the time the transmission lines remains empty (another thing not reflected in EROEI calculations). It is also very irregular. It became necessary to pay a nuclear power plant in Sweden to stay on line, even though it had decided to retire because of poor profitability, because the system could not be made to work without more stable power on the grid.
EROEI doesn’t really tell you a whole lot, unfortunately. Wind has to be part of a very large system, and that very large system is not really examined in EROEI calculations. People have looked at a tiny piece of the system, and said that piece looks to be inexpensive (high EROEI).
Wind makes a lot of sense, but in different setting, locally dumping it into heat storage tanks, supplemented with other more convenient on demand forms of energy (natgas, nightly off peak grid, .. etc). Smaller wind machines also enable different designs based on recyclable metal blades and not that prevailing disposable fiber nonsense of today. But humanoids again just opted for the worst possible route..
Nothing wrong with reinforced (carbon/glass fiber) plastic blades.
Just make the leading edges from ductile material (metal), or simply make them replaceable.
I mean, we got military aircraft zipping through the air in Mach 3+, and we can’t build wind turbine blades that can handle some wind and hail?
Not an expert on commercial blades.
Erosion on leading edges has been an issue, replacement/repair involves men hanging in bosun’s chair swinging around in the wind(yes, there is wind which is why the turbine is there and not someplace calm). I would guess workman’s comp is equal to the hourly wage or more.
Aircraft are repaired on the ground, they are not moving, they can be moved into a hanger and it is still very expensive to repair.
It is very tough for these men to even gain purchase points to work on the blade, work is discontinued on windy days, probably still have to pay the workman or lose him, then one has useless capital. A lift bucket would work, but tipping forces are an issue for outriggers, even more so when men are supported 100 plus feet above the ground, insurance for the truck is huge. Again, on a windy day one would not put men into the air, more idle capital.
Keeping a turbine balanced dynamically is not trivial, balancing one already in place would be a real trick, add weight and while it may statically balance, dynamic balance is a different game – basically need a large tire balancing machine.
I am not against it but if it really worked, subsidies would not be necessary.
Dennis L.
world,
Looked into building a wind turbine on the farm, 15-18m as I recall, blades are wood or carbon fiber, never saw metal blades. Efficiency cubes with diameter, small turbines are worthless, below a cut in value essentially the work of turning the turbine is equal to the input energy. The things are tough to maintain, elements corrode the magnets, ice accumulates on the blades, is shed asymmetrically, need to furl in high winds, etc. Many things to go wrong, a site “Otherpower” was for a while fairly active, fell off.
Humanoids didn’t opt for the worst possible route, maintenance was too large a problem, building a structure that didn’t blow down was not trivial, raising and lowering these structures with jib poles was dangerous to say the least and sometimes the blades literally flew off, that made for some interesting photos, many times sort of a guy thing trying show the worst outcome, “my failure is bigger than yours.”
It was a bad idea, wasted time in the abstract, biggest regret was not climbing the 100′ tower at MREA in Stevens Point when they offered that learning experience. Guy thing, no need to do it, do it to show one is not afraid of risks, chicks dig that sort of thing; self organization again.
Dennis L.
Again, small turbines are not worthless.
Perhaps you have not looked into other designs, also abandon the idea of selling to the already oversupplied grid, but as hinted dump it as heat instead into storage and only smaller % as offgrid electricity.
Back in my Oil Drum days, Kris de Decker did an evaluation of small wind turbines. They were, in fact, pretty much worthless.
http://theoildrum.com/node/6954
Gail, we are talking pass each other. Again, we are mixing up grid tied and offgrid, and types of storage etc. where small wind makes sense.
That older 2008/10 dutch study tried to compare [grid tied] tech with very crazy scale-spread of energy generation ~.150-2.5MWh per year from these various contraptions. So, only from that metrics it was very confused or misleading in aim what to study.
Moreover, the effort to link it with average (elevated because of cheap grid) household electric consumption is also weird. It’s basically double down on the failed grid tied topology.. No wonder then these small units seemingly doesn’t make sense in their (& yours) conclusion.
Nevertheless thank you for your past efforts documenting it as lot of these older links vanished.
Gail, does that EROEI include decommissioning? We’ve recently heard about the first wave of turbines coming off line and the problems with handling the vast tonnage of non-recyclable industrial waste.
I am pretty sure the EROEI does not include decommissioning. I am not certain how much is included. I have seen guidelines for solar panel energy return, and I am pretty sure they do not include decommissioning.
I think that there may be a belief that there will be enough “salvage value” at the end of their lives to offset any decommissioning expense.
Gail, I agree that EROEI is not a good measure for wind. I once did the math, and concluded that if you add the cost of manufacture, transport to site, erection on site, robust grid connection, online backup power,… An then add ongoing maintenance (very expensive because wind turbines are put up in remote areas; Denmark’s collapsing ocean based turbines are costing $1 million each to repair). And then add the cost of decommissioning and disposal (still largely unknown). Bottom line: wind is overall an energy sink, not an energy source.
It looks good on paper because much of their production is outsourced to cheaper countries, the immense pollution involved in that production, and the eventual cost of decommissioning, are all treated as “externalities”, as is the damage they do to the environment while they are running.
The wind turbine EROI is usually see is 18, but I will be very surprised if it is accurate. There are a LOT of costs involved with wind turbines, and some of the starting assumptions are optimistic.
Wind turbines need lots of replacement parts. Wind turbines tend to be operated based on what kind of subsidies are available. If the subsidies stop, or are only available based on “repowering,” wind operators will make the appropriate changes. So it is hard to model how the system will really behave.
The fact that the power wind turbines produce is intermittent electricity tends to make wind power a replacement for coal or natural gas, rather than a replacement for dispatch able electricity. It doesn’t sell for much in the wholesale electricity market. This should give people an idea of the real value of wind electricity. Wind power also needs a lot more transmission lines than dispatch able electricity (3 x as much), because often the transmission lines are often empty.
Vestas sells wind turbines. Enough said.
Without sufficient dispatchable service they are hopium.
Best case scenario of wind is to act in conjunction with hydro power to save water in the reservoir. However, hydro plants can be built willy nilly. At least gotta have a river.
Thus the hydro power generation capacity for the existing stations need to be built out with larger inlets, turbines, generators and outlets if it is to be replacing nukes and fossil burners.
You can see wind as wind + hydro. Yup, more complications and investments needed than just propellers in the wind.
For residential areas, it could perhaps work with hydrated/molten salt as energy storage, but for larger energy consumers, forget about it.
“We reassure ourselves that we are being virtuous by switching to an electric car [but]…
“In much of DR Congo’s cobalt industry, there is little sign of corporate responsibility or social justice, the qualities that are meant to infuse environmentalism.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8971539/As-Boris-Johnson-aims-new-cars-electric-2030-Congolese-miners-risk-lives-cobalt.html
Again, this has been discussed numerous time already.
There are different types of batt chemistry available and actually in mass production for EVs or stationary storage, one of them is the cobalt type. It’s not needed, especially as the size of batt packs increases, which allows for other means of thermal management in also larger vehicles, cobalt used to be critical for cold regions and small battery / sub compact car size combo..
We need a global supply chain for whatever type of battery we choose to put in vehicles. The need to be compact and cheap. The vehicles have to carry around this extra battery load for their lifetime besides having big upfront costs. They tend to make most sense when the electric vehicles are driven many miles, as for a taxi. If everyone is mostly staying at home, their value is iffy.
Let me explain it perhaps a bit better, there have been cheaper lithium (e.g. “iron”) batteries of great quality for ~two decades vs the cobalt ones, but they had the cold weather and perhaps some form of fast charging performance issues, which is hard to overcome in small sized cars as opposed to bigger form factors. And there are many other types of batteries in mass production already anyway. The fixation on cobalt is [bogus topic] as of now..
I simply posit lets not discuss uninformed articles again and again in circular logic.
Otherwise your argument stands, but the technology and market keeps evolving. Specifically, the mass production of hybrids for long years meant that the design and manuf costs dropped by huge leaps, the only issue remaining is battery size. You have got ordinary combustion cars, hybrids, plugin hybrids and full EVs. In terms of designs most of the big manufs are now popping out carz based on universal platform which enable all 4 modes described. So for example Benz and Toyota are now offering plugins ~18kWh batt with decent range, but the rest of Europeans and Koreans had to stick only to ~13kWh sized packs, which is bordering on impractical, too short-local range. Full EVs are now mostly ~40-60-80kWh and upper segments sized above that..
worldof, any regime that somehow attempts to base itself on personal mobility yielding a net economic gain is not realistic in any way.
Go back to the drawing board; do not pass “Go”, etc.
Good point! Personal mobility is a way of using some of the benefits of the energy-based system that we have.
Gail, I find this ongoing (and in part circular) discussion of electric cars fascinating. Because the Egyptians found the only viable answer over five thousand years ago: don’t carry the motive power with you; take it from the environment as you move along.
The (UK) trams and (US) streetcars did exactly that; obtained their power from rails below or wires above, fed by a static power source. As do many electric trains today, especially underground trains where carrying a power source is not feasible.
Could we do the same with roads, using perhaps magnetic induction from energy carriers buried underneath them? I’m not sure, but it seems a far better solution than endless types of battery whose production seems to be very environmentally unfriendly, as we;; as mostly using third world slave labour.
😎
Why invent the wheel twice?
The “road” is called rail. No need for any fancy AI’s when following tracks instrumented with simple logics and sensors/switches.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a modern mobile phone could run the entire US rail network and still have some CPU cycles left for checking out OFW.
Agreed completely. Though I would not trust a mobile phone to control a party in a brewery.
Singapore built a mass transit system based on elecrtomechanical technology, and then added some clever AI. The result: two trains crashed. “No human error”, said the manager, conveniently forgetting that he was the human who had introduced the unreliable technology.
Robert, right.
The risk and hazard assessment in conjunction with a SIL 4 classification would put it into another leauge of SW/HW paradigm.
The “happy path” is the easy one. The tricky stuff is to figure out if something is going south and how to act/react on the hazard/malfunction without disaster.
I think one of the most productive uses of our remaining oil supplies would be rebuilding railroads and canals. Steam locomotives could burn coal or wood. Donkeys can pull barges along canals. If the spent fuel doesnt get us, some of us will survive, and a world of barges and steam locomotives is a hell of a lot more appetizing than hunter gathering. Domestic oil production could be used to maintain agriculture, military, and police/fire. Getting from here to there will likely require some heavy handed government, and result in a new feudalism, but given the alternative…..
Self-organizing systems seem to build up from “below,” rather than be something that we can decide to do, taking elements of what we have now and elements of what might be available in the future. I expect that as energy consumption declines, our ability to get fossil fuels out will decline. Partly, the price won’t rise high enough.
People now cannot conceptualize what an overall system would have to look like, and be able to work, in the future. There has to be a system in place to train workers, for example. The system would be mostly rural.
Yes, discussed numerous times already.
Hop on and off tram / streetcar / subway / rail, arrange the compartments in a way where you can take your ebicycle as well and not bump into walking / sitting passengers only.
That’s like cutting fossil fuel needs for personal transportation by major %% at almost negligible costs. Elderly and not fit for whatever reason only % – dealt by other means, e.g. fleet of autonomous EVs.
Again, humanoids not interested, pedal to the metal craziness instead for as long as possible in BAU..
If there are many very communicable diseases around, shared transportation easily becomes a way of passing around germs, however. Our predecessors were hunter gatherers from many years, for a reason. It takes a lot of complexity to fight all of the mutating viruses and bacteria.
That may be so, WoH. I just tend to warm to articles that point out that these Green New Deals are not actually green, if that term has any meaning at all.
“Øystein Rushfeldt, CEO of Nussir mining company, said “all mining has negative consequences for the environment; use of land and other effects, and it doesn’t matter if the tailings are placed on land or in sea, it is always consequences.”
“A 2017-report by the World Bank about the global need for metals for a low carbon future said demand for copper is expected to jump by as much as 50 percent over the next 20 years alone.
“Electric vehicles, increased renewable energy sources and energy efficiency all require significant amounts of copper to function.”
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2019/11/norway-greenlights-copper-mine-tailings-dump-arctic-fjord?fbclid=IwAR1FOAahMlKnnb_iq6qXK-Jg0M1WrcY86hcb3JpKdlwOp9XMFePaTdSZP_w
UN talked last year of needing to increase world output of cobalt 400% by 2030 to support EV batteries. 70% of cobalt is however mined in East Africa which tends to be in constant civil war.
world,
I am not really current on this issue, but the only small scale battery systems I see working are small, cottage industries taking apart various computer/tool batteries, testing the voltages, discarding the bad and wiring together the good into banks.
YouTube as usual has a number of sites on this, it is becoming quite a cottage industry and most likely the cost of used batteries will increase.
Cheapest batteries/charge/discharge cycle seem to be lead acid lift truck batteries, ride and tire weight are not an issue here but most lift trucks seem to be propane.
NiFe are probably the most durable, but they self discharge, need to be shipped in from China, very expensive.
world there don’t seem to be any good solutions. I looked at using a harvistore as a water pressure storage unit, this would store wind energy, but I gave up on small scale windmills, tough to maintain.
In the end, this is very costly in time and money, time is what one runs out of, maintenance is a real problem large scale, small scale.
Look around and see all the abandoned hydro sites, the dam exists but it was too expensive to maintain the electrical generation portion. There is a dam close to my farm, it is not huge but substantial, not in service, understand it produced perhaps 5 horsepower. If it made money it would be in service today.
Got 100K miles on my Camry Hybrid, batteries failed, $4K to replace, looked at the mileage and it was a wash. I don’t think it really works.
In the Villages they use golf carts, most are gasoline, range and cost of batteries are the main issue. This is a community of over 100K with mild weather.
Dennis L.
I didn’t realize that some golf carts use gasoline, or that most at the Villages are gasoline. I thought they all had batteries. I’m not a golfer, as you might guess. I learn something new every day. If battery operated were really much better, I would expect the majority to be battery operated.
Where I grew up, the source of electricity was a car battery (or two?) charged by something I only knew of as a “Delco Plant” generator. So I imagine you could use car batteries in ICEs as generators? What I never questioned and don’t know is how you connect a cable from the battery to the electric devices needed to be activated. If you can tell me could you make it as simple and descriptive as possible?
Perhaps, you can start with the general “solar offgrid setup how-tos”, the literature and examples are plentiful, from homesteaders to caravan people.
The best approach though is firstly making this mental categorization, what you want to power in terms of size and priority of that electric device-appliance to your needs.
So, for example to categorize:
Small and lower voltage (backup) setup only for lights and charging up electronics (12-24vdc), few batteries. You could make it compatible with your ICE car..
Mid sized system for 24/365 home living, fridge, ventilation: higher voltage, batteries in kWh.
The largest one (equal to grid) for freezer, and elevated amperage: well pump, shop power tools, etc.. Battery storage in dozens of kWh..
The necessary components would differ for each category (type not only size!) and the price be more or less exponential to suggested demand curve of each category (as you step up)..
Again, ~small hydro was profitable / surplus providing on the conditions / when:
– early dayz of the grid 100+ yrs before
– and or in local grid mode (~offgrid) only
=> forget about grid connection (as rabbit hole of pricing schemes and other disadvantages) it makes no sense, and when it sort of works it’s based on gov subsidies for small sized producers (I gather not available in NA anyways)..
Your Camry Hybrid with faulty NiMh batt pack was out of warranty or second hand to begin with? What is your climate and parking-garage arrangement, did you park it on hot / freeze outside weather cycles for yrs or in tempered garage / shack?
Why didn’t you just swap the pack from another one sourced from carbrakers at few dozen – low hundred bucks? 300k copies of hsd Camrys were sold and the same modules are in other hybrid models as well if I’m not mistaken..
Another Collapse in the News
Facing collapse, the famed Arecibo Observatory will be demolished
The failure of two main cables sealed the observatory’s fate
By Loren Grush on November 19, 2020 11:30 am The Verge
The world-famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, known for helping scientists peer into deep space and listen for distant radio waves, is set to be decommissioned and demolished after engineers concluded that the facility’s structure is at risk of a collapse. While teams will try to salvage some parts of the observatory, the decommission will bring an end to the popular 57-year-old telescope, which has been featured in numerous films and television shows.
The decision comes after two major cables failed at the facility within the last few months, causing significant damage to the observatory. The National Science Foundation (NSF), which oversees Arecibo, assessed the impact of the cable breaks and found that the facility’s other cables could also fail soon. If some of the remaining cables break, engineers fear that the 900-ton suspended platform above the facility could come crashing down on Arecibo’s iconic 1,000-foot-wide dish. It’s also possible that three surrounding towers, which stand at more than 300 feet tall, could topple over in any direction, potentially hitting the visitor’s center or other important nearby buildings.
We ALL FALL DOWN
The telescope at Jodrell Bank opened in 1957. It was the world’s first fully steerable radio telescope, and remains one of the largest. It is still in full working order.
It seems Lancashire engineers are rather better at simple routine maintenance that Puerto Rican engineers, or perhaps their managers don’t just embezzle the money.
To be fair, however, they have a good incentive. As I found out in Pennsylvania, routine maintenance is paid for by the State (or Territory); emergency maintenance will be paid for by Washington. One reason (of many) that US governance is hopelessly dysfunctional is that it is full of perverse incentives. And to think that I once believed “Atlas Shrugged” to be fantasy.
Also, to be fair, local weather may have played a part. They don’t get category 4 hurricanes blasting through Jodrell Bank.
Everything we have needs to be maintained. Once resources for maintenance run short, hard choices need to be made.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are the compact version of traditional nuclear fission reactors (nuclear power plants). Like their older brothers, SMRs use nuclear fission to generate carbon-free electricity, though on a much smaller scale than their relatives – typically in the 50 megawatt to 400 megawatt range.
SMRs are currently deployed in submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreaker ships, and have been for decades. If this DOE project is any indication of the future, they may power our cities one day too.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-future-of-small-modular-reactors-department-of-energy-awards-135-billion-to-nuscale-power-for-smr-development/
Submarines and icebreakers or whatever carry power plants within them to make them move
before they begin to move they stock up with all the necessary materials to enable them to exist in the context of the crews that live on board.
the same applies to a city
put a small power plant in a city by all means, then start to worry about where you’re going to get the million other things that enable a city to exist
stating with food
Agree. I guess SMRs might be useful for small survivalist communes in the future. And for rich survivalists as well 😀
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
At least for some time…
Yea, I guess the survivalist commune will just go out and forage for some highly purified uranium to use in their SNR.
and Bezos will put what he doesn’t use himself, on amazon
never misses a trick there
Well, if you store up the fuel / spare parts and have qualified maintenance team it could work for 10-15 years. Better than nothing for small community.
Small nuclear reactors do little for food and water availability. They depend on a world supply chain. They, of course, depend on fossil fuels, for their construction and maintenance. They cannot be put in place in 2020. They are, at most, a fix for a small piece of our problem.
Worth looking into where Goldman Sachs thinks the money are heading
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/gs-research/carbonomics-green-engine-of-economic-recovery-f/report.pdf
Forbes writes about the report https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/?sh=2c0d9a247d8e
Probably the biggest issue is the fact that total energy investment is down in 2020, and expected to remain low in 2021. In fact, it seems to have started dropping in 2015. “Clean energy” investment is rising as a percentage of the total partly because the total is dropping.
https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5fb3d241521f9b77ae0eb298/960×0.jpg
Also, we get very little for our money with clean energy investment. What we get has to be subsidized by the fossil fuel economy. We can’t expect it to last any longer than the fossil fuel economy. Everything is interconnected.
The Goldman Sacs report says,
We add to our debt bubble. We move toward inefficiency. The oligarchs benefit from the tax credits and other benefits of the subsidies of this industry, but no one else comes out well.
To the point!
I may have posted an article above twice, in which case apologies. My comments are automatically subjected to a time-delay before posting and sometimes don’t seem to appear at all, which makes it easy for me to forget where I am, lol.
“Some advocates have continued to promote the G20 as the natural forum to discuss major issues confronting the world.
“But the G20 faces three major challenges: legitimacy, effectiveness and membership.”
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/11/20/the-g20s-uncertain-future/
The G-20 looks like a group that could very well disappear in the future. If it really isn’t serving a purpose well, funding is likely to become a problem as well.
I deleted the extra copy of the article above.
Thank you. WTO on borrowed time, too, one feels.
The G20 isn’t as “group” so much as a regular forum. It’s a way for the most important world leaders to talk without having too many not-so-important ones there as well. Who gets invited varies somewhat from event to event–the host gets to pick a few countries or international organizations that aren’t one of the 20. They don’t have a headquarters or secretariat or dedicated budget or anything like that. Anyway, aren’t they meeting through Zoom now? I can envision some world leader refusing his invitation in a fit of pique / populist politics, but the opportunity to schmooze with the others is usually irresistable. Anyway, how much could it cost?
Interesting! Thanks!
“Great Reset or grating global conspiracy theory? Either way, don’t dismiss genuine anxiety:
“…Earlier this month, [Australian] Senator Pauline Hanson moved a motion to reject the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”. The senator asked Parliament to “note that adopting the policies would devastate the economic wellbeing and individual freedoms of Australians” and that the Australian government should boycott all World Economic Forum events in protest over The Great Reset agenda.
“The motion referred to a theory that the global elite are planning to impose a new world order, using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/great-reset-or-grating-global-conspiracy-theory-either-way-don-t-dismiss-genuine-anxiety-20201120-p56gee.html
Think of the Great Reset as a way for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. It is a story that “plays well” to a rich audience, but for real people, it doesn’t work well.
For example, we heard about the “everything rented” idea yesterday. The folks owning and renting everything stand to make out well on this. Everyone else gets left out.
Gail,
One can be a landlord, commercial/apartment but if the tenants can’t pay rent it is an expense. It would seem the world and the US are perhaps tapped out financially, there is nothing left to leverage.
A farm landlord can own thousands of acres but without a market and without people to farm the land, it is an expense. Economics is a human construct.
Buffet now purchases his paper(BRK stock) with government paper, dollars. This seems to be the same game, were he to purchase all the company stock, there would be no market for the stock, no marginal price.
It is a weird time.
Dennis L.
It is clear that he thinks that the guvmint won’t be able to get this sucker under control.
Everybody wants good news where there is none to be had.
I am afraid you are right!
Dennis, I believe the globalists have thought of that. They will own all the stuff they rent to you, and they will also own the jobs they will give you to earn your keep. The rents will be deducted directly from your paycheck, and the system will roll right along.
Robert, a guess.
Wasn’t the USSR something like this? In the end workers pretended to work while the government pretended to pay them.
We are coming to an understanding the world is a self organizing system with some rather weird numbers showing up per G. West, such as ratios including 1/4 which are independent of economics. Economics is a human construct, most obvious natural systems don’t have one person or group owning all the wealth.
There is a chimpanzee story in my mind where a very strong chimp monopolizes all the females and the next two chimps in strength take the dominate chimp and literally rip his arms off.
My experience with small business was the capital owned the owner, without workers to make it work, it was worthless. The idea the beatings will continue until morale improves doesn’t seem to work very well.
We do have an illusion of ownership, car leasing is an example, but here people can and do walk away, work less, go on the dole, whatever. This is sort of what welfare is, LBJ had as a goal monopolization of the black vote, there is a very nasty quote in regards to that, as long as there was excess, it worked, now not so much. Its goal seemed to be votes, power as long as a middle class existed to tax and supply the benefits.
It is a weird time.
.
Dennis L.
That is what happened to King Charles I of England and King Louis XVI of France. Only not their arms but their heads.
Ironic, they said that they were ‘the head’ of the society. Well they were heads after that.
Boom boom.
@Mirror on the wall
Less advertised are how Charles II and Marie Therese (Marie Antoinette’s daughter and the effective ruler of France 1815-1830) behaved when they returned to power.
They avenged everyone who cut off their parents’ heads
The Bolsheviks avoided that trap by taking out the kids too.
No kids, no heirs, no re-establishment, no revenge.
Perhaps they learnt the lesson of history.
“Great Reset or grating global conspiracy theory? Either way, don’t dismiss genuine anxiety:
“…Earlier this month, [Australian] Senator Pauline Hanson moved a motion to reject the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”. The senator asked Parliament to “note that adopting the policies would devastate the economic wellbeing and individual freedoms of Australians” and that the Australian government should boycott all World Economic Forum events in protest over The Great Reset agenda.
“The motion referred to a theory that the global elite are planning to impose a new world order, using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/great-reset-or-grating-global-conspiracy-theory-either-way-don-t-dismiss-genuine-anxiety-20201120-p56gee.html
“The Virus Is Surging. Growth Is Slowing. And Millions [of Americans] Are About to Lose Jobless Benefits.
“The Cares Act was a gamble that the coronavirus would be eliminated quickly. That was a bad bet, and Americans are set to pay the price for it once again.”
https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-virus-is-surging-growth-is-slowing-and-millions-are-about-to-lose-jobless-benefits-51605902401#
“Two US banks failed in October, the first to collapse since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Banking experts say they won’t be the last.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/bank-failures-may-rise-covid-if-businesses-cant-recover-quickl/6283640002/
“Lines are continuing to grow at food banks across the country as the financial devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic is laid bare.
“Millions of Americans are currently going hungry, relying on volunteers and non-profit organizations to stay fed as Thanksgiving approaches.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8972373/Lines-grow-food-banks-soldiers-hand-turkeys-ahead-Thanksgiving.html
The analyst in the USA Today article doesn’t think many banks will fail. He says:
Good luck!
Actually, Midwestern COVID cases (where the big spike was) seem to be plateauing now. There still is the issue of the millions losing jobless benefits.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/US-by-region-7-day-new-cases-Nov.-20-1024×625.png