.
Many people believe that humans can have a sustainable future by using solar panels and wind turbines. Unfortunately, the only truly sustainable course, in terms of moving in cycles with nature, is interacting with the environment in a manner similar to the approach used by chimpanzees and baboons. Even this approach will eventually lead to new and different species predominating. Over a long period, such as 10 million years, we can expect the vast majority of species currently alive will become extinct, regardless of how well these species fit in with nature’s plan.
The key to the relative success of animals such as chimpanzees and baboons is living within a truly circular economy. Sunlight falling on trees provides the food they need. Waste products of their economy come back to the forest ecosystem as fertilizer.
Pre-humans lost the circular economy when they learned to control fire over one million years ago, when they were still hunter-gatherers. With the controlled use of fire, cooked food became possible, making it easier to chew and digest food. The human body adapted to the use of cooked food by reducing the size of the jaw and digestive tract and increasing the size of the brain. This adaptation made pre-humans truly different from other animals.
With the use of fire, pre-humans had many powers. They spent less time chewing, so they could spend more time making tools. They could burn down entire forests, if they so chose, to provide a better environment for the desired types of wild plants to grow. They could use the heat from fire to move to colder environments than the one to which they were originally adapted, thus allowing a greater total population.
Once pre-humans could outcompete other species, the big problem became diminishing returns. For example, once the largest beasts were killed off, only smaller beasts were available to eat. The amount of effort required to kill these smaller beasts was not proportionately less, however.
In this post, I will explain further the predicament we seem to be in. We have deviated so far from the natural economy that we really cannot go back. At the same time, the limits we are reaching are straining our economic system in many ways. Some type of discontinuity, or collapse, seems to be not very far away.
[1] Even before the appearance of hunter-gatherers, ecosystems around the world exhibited a great deal of cycling from state to state.
Many people are under the illusion that before the meddling of humans, the populations of different types of plants and animals tended to be pretty much constant. This isn’t really the way things work, however, in a finite world. Instead, the populations of many species cycle up and down, depending on particular conditions such as the population of animals that prey on them, the availability of food, the prevalence of disease, and the weather conditions.
Even forests exhibit surprising variability. Many undergo regular cycles of burning. In fact, some species of trees, such as the giant sequoias in Yosemite, require fire in order to reproduce. These cycles are simply part of the natural order of self-organizing ecosystems in a finite world.
[2] A major feature of ecosystems is “Selection of the Best Adapted.”
Each species tends to give birth to many more offspring than are necessary to live to maturity if the population of that species is to remain level. Each of the individual offspring varies in many random ways from its parents. Ecosystems are able to keep adapting to changing conditions by permitting only the best-adapted offspring to survive. In favorable periods (suitable weather, not much disease, ample food, not too many predators), a large share of the offspring may survive. In less favorable periods, few of the offspring will survive.
When selection of the best adapted is taken into account, a changing climate is of little concern because, regardless of the conditions, some individual offspring will survive. Over time, new and different species are likely to develop that are better adapted to the changing conditions.
[3] The downsides of living within the limits provided by nature are easy to see.
One issue is that every mother can expect to see the majority of her offspring die. In fact, her own life expectancy is uncertain. It depends upon whether there are nearby predators or a disease against which she has no defense. Even a fairly small injury could lead to her death.
Another issue is lack of shelter from the elements. Moving to an area where the weather is too harsh becomes impossible. Our earliest pre-human ancestors seem to have lived near the equator where seasonal temperature differences are small.
Without supplemental heating or cooling, humans living in many places in the world today would have a difficult time following the way of nature because of weather conditions. As we will see in later sections, it was grains that allowed people to settle in areas that were too cold for crops in winter.
In theory, there are alternatives to grain in cold climates. For example, a small share of the population might be able to get most of its calories from eating raw fish, as the Inuit have done. Eating raw fish is not generally an option for people living inland, however. Also, in later sections, we will talk about the difference between the use of root vegetables and grains as the primary source of calories. In some sense, the use of grains provides a stepping stone toward big government, roads, and what we think of as a modern existence, while the use of root vegetables does not. Eating raw fish is similar to eating root vegetables, in that it doesn’t provide a stepping stone toward a modern existence.
[4] Animals make use of some of the same techniques as humans to compete with other species. These techniques are added complexity and added energy supply.
We think of complexity as being equivalent to added technology, but it also includes many related techniques, such as the use of tools, the use of specialization and the use of long-distance travel.
Animals use many types of complexity. Bees build hives and carry out tasks divided among the queen bee, drone bees, and worker bees. Many birds fly to another continent in winter, in order to gain access to an adequate food supply. Chimpanzees use tools, such as waving a stick or throwing a rock to ward off predators. Beavers build dams that provide themselves with an easy source of food in winter.
Some members of the animal kingdom, known as parasites, even leverage their own energy by using the energy of other plants or animals. Such use of the energy of a host is subject to limits; if the parasite uses too much, it risks killing its host.
While animals other than humans may use similar techniques to humans, they don’t go as far as humans. Humans employ a variety of supplemental materials in their tools. Also, no animal other than humans has learned to control fire.
[5] Pre-humans seem to have learned to control fire over 1 million years ago, allowing humans to gain an advantage in killing wild beasts.
Richard Wrangham, in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, makes the case that the controlled use of fire allowed the changes in anatomy that differentiate humans from other primates. With the controlled use of fire, humans could cook some of their food, making it easier to chew and digest. As a result, the teeth, jaws and guts of humans could be relatively smaller, and the brain could be larger. The larger brain allowed humans to compete better against other species. Also, cooking food greatly reduced the time spent chewing food, increasing the time available for making crafts and tools of various kinds. The heat of fire allowed pre-humans to move into new areas with colder climates. The heat of fires also allowed pre-humans to ward off some of the impact of ice-ages, which they were able to survive.
James C. Scott, in Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, explains that being able to burn biomass was sufficient to turn around who was in charge: pre-humans or large animals. In one cave in South Africa, he indicates that a lower layer of remains found in the cave did not show any carbon deposits, and hence were created before pre-humans occupying the cave gained control of fire. In this layer, skeletons of big cats were found, along with scattered gnawed bones of pre-humans.
In a higher layer, carbon deposits were found. In this layer, pre-humans were clearly in charge. Their skeletons were much more intact, and the bones of big cats were scattered about and showed signs of gnawing. Who was in charge had changed! We know that human controlled fires can be used to scare away wild animals, burn down entire forests if desired, and make sharper spears. It shouldn’t be surprising that humans gained the upper hand.
[6] Grains, because of their energy density, portability, and ability to be stored, seem to have played a major role in the development of governments and of cities.
Scott, in Against the Grain, also points out that early economies that were able to grow grains were the economies that were able to place taxes on those grains, and with those taxes, were able to fund governments offering more services. Grains are a storable form of energy for humans. They are portable and energy dense, as well. It was grains that allowed people to settle in areas that were too cold for growing crops in winter. The year-to-year variability in production made storage of reserves important. Governments could provide this function, and other functions, such as roads.
If we analyze the situation, it is apparent that the existence of grain crops provided a subsidy to the rest of the economy. Farmers and their slaves could grow far more grain than they themselves required for calories, leaving much grain for trading with others. This surplus could be used to feed the population of cities, such as Rome. It was no longer necessary for everyone to be hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers. There could be new occupations such as merchants, teachers, carpenters, and sailors. Many more goods and services in total could be produced, and the population of cities could grow.
Cities, themselves, provide benefits, because they allow economies of scale, and they allow people with different skills to mix. Geoffrey West, in his book Scale, notes that larger cities produce disproportionately more patents. Thus, technology is advanced with the growth of cities.
It might be noted that root crops, even though they could provide most of the same food energy benefits for humans as grain crops, did not help economies grow in the same ways that grain crops did. This, likely, was part of the reason that they were not taxed: They produced no excess benefit to give back to the government.
Root vegetables are not as helpful as grains. They are less energy dense than grains, making them heavier and bulkier for transport. They do not store as well as grains. In early days, root crops could be about as efficiently grown by individual families as by farmers specializing in such crops, making it hard to leverage the labor that went into growing root crops. In fact, there was less real need for government with root crops: There was no way to store supplies of root crops in case of poor harvest, and there was little need for roads to transport the crops.
[7] The added energy benefits of grain crops created a situation where the grain was “worth” far more to customers, and to the economy as a whole, than what would be indicated by their cost of production.
There is a belief among economists, and among much of the population, that the selling price of a commodity will be determined by its cost of production. In fact, the example given in Section [6] indicates that back in the early days of grain production, grain’s selling price could be far greater than its direct cost of production, with the difference going into taxes that would benefit the government and the economy as a whole.
In fact, there was a second way that the usage of grain was helpful to governments. The efficiency of grain production, transport, and storage reduced the need for farmers. Former farmers could offer services not previously available to citizens, often in cities. Income from the new jobs could also be taxed, to give governments another stream of income.
[8] The use of coal and oil also produced situations where the value of energy products to the economy was far higher than their direct cost of production, allowing these products to be heavily taxed.
Tony Wrigley, in his book Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, indicates that with the use of coal, farming became a much more productive endeavor. The crop yield from cereal crops, net of the amount fed to draft animals, nearly tripled between 1600 and 1800, which was the period when coal production ramped up in England. Coal allowed the use of far more metal tools, which were vastly superior to tools made from wood. In addition, roads to mines were greatly improved. Prior to this time, few roads were paved in England. These improved roads helped the economy as a whole.
Oil is known today for the high taxes it pays to governments. The governments of oil exporting countries are very dependent upon tax revenue relating to oil. When the selling price of oil is low, this results in a crisis period for oil exporting countries because they have no other way of collecting adequate tax revenue to support the programs for their people. For a short time, they can borrow money, but when this alternative fails, governments are likely to be overturned by their unhappy citizens.
[9] The economy tends to move further and further away from the natural order (described in Sections [1], [2], and [3]) as more energy consumption is added.
Even though the natural order would be sustainable, it doesn’t represent a situation that most people today would like to live in. In fact, most humans today could not live on completely uncooked food, even if they wanted to. While a few people today eat “raw food” diets, they often use a food processor or blender to reduce the amount of chewing and digesting of raw foods to a manageable level. Even then, their weights tend to stay low.
If energy products are available at an affordable price, humans find many ways to use them, to stay away from the natural order. Some examples include the following:
- To provide transportation, other than walking.
- To pipe clean water to homes.
- To make growing and storage of food easy.
- To allow homes to be heated and cooled.
- To allow medicines and vaccines.
- To allow most children to live to maturity.
[10] Because energy consumption is important in all aspects of the economy, the economy seems to reach many kinds of limits simultaneously.
There are many limits that the world economy seems to reach simultaneously. The underlying problem in all of these areas seems to be diminishing returns. In theory, these issues could all be worked around, using increasing energy consumption or increasing complexity:
- Too little fresh water for an increasing population.
- The need to keep increasing food production, with the same amount of arable land.
- Increased difficulty with insect pests, such as locusts.
- Increased difficulty in dealing with viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Overfished oceans so that farmed fish are required in addition.
- Ores of metals of ever-lower grade, requiring more processing and leading to more waste.
- More expensive techniques required for the extraction of fossil fuels.
- Many unprofitable businesses; much debt likely to default.
- Too few jobs that pay well enough to support a family
- Governments unable to collect enough taxes
Energy and complexity work together to leverage human labor, in a way that the economy can make more goods and services in total. Unfortunately, we cannot use complexity to make energy. Technology (which is a form of complexity) can convert energy to useful work and, through efficiency gains, increase the percentage of energy that is available for useful work, but it cannot make energy. If we add more technology, more robots, and more international trade, we likely will need more energy, not less.
The net impact of all of these issues is that to maintain our economy, we really need an ever-increasing quantity of energy. In fact, energy consumption likely needs to grow more rapidly than population simply to keep the system from collapse.
Wind and solar certainly cannot meet today’s energy needs. Together, wind and solar amount to about 3.3% of the world’s energy supply, based on BP estimates for 2019. Furthermore, wind and intermittent solar certainly cannot be sold at a price high above their cost of production, the way grain, coal and oil have been sold historically. In fact, wind and solar invariably need the huge subsidy of being allowed to “go first.” They actually are reliant on a profitable fossil fuel system to subsidize them, or they fall completely “flat.”
[11] The problem, as the economy reaches limits, is too few goods and services being produced to satisfy all parts of the economy simultaneously. The parts of the economy that especially tend to get shortchanged are (a) governments, (b) energy producers, and (c) workers without special skills who are selling their labor as a form of “energy.”
When economies are doing well, the price of energy products tends to be high. These high prices allow very high taxes on energy products. They also allow significant funds for reinvestment for the energy companies themselves. Indirectly, these high prices allow a significant share of the goods and services made by the economy to be transferred to these sectors of the economy.
In addition, energy products allow non-farm workers in many areas of the economy to produce their goods and services more efficiently, thereby helping push up the wages of common laborers.
As economies reach limits, there is, in some sense, a need for more energy in many sectors of the economy. The catch is that the “wages” and “profits” needed to purchase this energy aren’t really available to provide the demand needed to keep energy prices up. As a result, energy prices and production tend to fall. Government-imposed limitations, intended to stop the spread of COVID-19, may also keep energy demand down.
Governments often fail, or they get into major conflicts with other governments, when there are resource shortages of the kinds we are currently encountering. Today is in many ways like the period of the Great Depression, which preceded World War II.
[12] Perhaps warm, wet countries will be somewhat more successful than cold countries and those without water, in the years ahead.
I showed a chart in my most recent post, Energy Is the Economy, that illustrates the wide range of energy consumption around the world.
If fossil fuel energy falls, I expect that the parts of the world with cold temperatures will experience particular difficulty because they tend to use disproportionately large amounts of energy (Figure 2). Their citizens cannot get along very well without heat for their homes. Winter becomes very dark, if supplemental lighting is not available. Walking long distances in the cold becomes a problem as well.
The warmer countries have a better chance because they do not require as complex economies as cold countries. They can feed at least part of their population with root crops. Walking is a reasonable transportation option, and there is no problem with months on end of darkness if supplemental lighting is not available. For these reasons, warm countries would seem to have a better chance of passing through the difficult times ahead while sustaining a reasonable-sized population.
Russia faces the lack of cheap migrant workforce due to coronavirus. Their too low wages are not attractive for Russians:
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-farmers-suffering-as-covid-19-pandemic-keeps-central-asian-workers-at-home/30652482.html
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/09/russia-faces-economic-downturn-migrant-workers-are-paying-price
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/russias-migrant-shortage-bigger-anyone-could-have-imagined
https://www.rbth.com/business/333056-migrants-work-russia-economy
“Various coronavirus-related restrictions, including a ban on international flights, have sharply reduced the number of migrant workers in Russia. This alarming development has both short-term and long-term consequences for the Russian economy. The housing sector, in particular, has been hit hard.”
As it can be seen, the immigrant workforce in Russia comes mostly from warmer areas:
“The most represented nations in Russia’s job market for 2020 are as follows:
Uzbekistan
Tajikistan
Kyrgyzstan
Armenia
Ukraine
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
China
Moldova
Belarus
Vietnam
Turkey”
Most of these countries are just as cold as Russia. (They couldn’t very well be *colder* than Russia.) But why these countries? Nine are former Soviet republics, two more have trade agreements with the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union.
No, no, these countries are warmer than Russia.
Imagine, how swift can be the collapse. when a cold country stops to provide energy. E.g. also such a rich country as Norway could collapse very quickly, if it stops to deliver energy.
Based on my business experience, I would say that e.g. Denmark is not doing very well. The explanation can be found in its declining oil production and its GDP growth stalling around the time its oil production went into decline:
https://www.google.com/search?q=denmark+gdp&oq=denmark+gdp&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3j0i22i30l4.2567j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.statista.com/statistics/318343/gross-domestic-product-gdp-per-capita-in-denmark/
https://en.actualitix.com/country/dnk/denmark-crude-oil-production.php
MG, good point on Denmark.
It seems like any country the pumps oil does poorly after the quantity of oil extracted drops. Falling price has pretty much the same impact.
“E.g. also such a rich country as Norway could collapse very quickly, if it stops to deliver energy.”
I try telling my friends this but they (*) don’t get it, as they see it we’re a knowledge and tech nation and the only way is up!
*) Except one which work on drilling rigs …
The dying out Russia, especially Siberia:
https://svet.sme.sk/c/22547754/rusko-sibir-covid-19-koronavirus-pandemia-vymieranie-umrtnost-vladimir-putin.html?ref=trz
Russia is facing the fastest population decline since 2006 now.
People evidently live on much lower wages in the countries the migrant workers come from. I expect that part of the difference is related to warmer climates in the countries these workers come from–less substantial housing is needed for example. Also, less winter heating.
This is an excerpt from the first article listed:
“Jobs are the wrong metric to judge a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’: Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan is long on wishful thinking and dubious economics…
“Imagine you are a carmaker and that you have the choice of building one of two electric vehicle designs. Identical in all other respects, they have just one difference: the first takes 100 man-hours of labour to build and the second 200. Which do you pick?
“In the real world, of course, the answer is the first. At least if you want to stay in the carmaking business for very long. But that’s not how it works when it comes to environmental policy…
“Let’s take the offshore wind industry, which employs around 11,000 in the UK, directly and through the supply chain, according to its trade body, Renewables UK… those green jobs haven’t sprung from nowhere. They have come at the cost of others, notably in the coal industry. Over the past decade, as environmental rules have tightened, it has shed a similar number, both in mining and coal-fired power station staff…
“There’s a doubtless apocryphal story about the US economist Milton Friedman visiting some giant dam project in China and asking why, instead of modern earthmoving equipment, the workers had shovels. On being told that the scheme was a jobs programme, he replied: “Oh, I thought it was a dam you were building. If it’s jobs you want, why not give them spoons?”
“The UK’s decision to reduce emissions should stand on its own merits, bearing in mind the costs and the likely success of the policy given the country’s small contribution to global emissions. Mr Johnson should focus on keeping the associated borrowings to a minimum. Forget talk of green jobs and industrial renaissance. And put away those spoons.”
https://www.ft.com/content/786c2dd6-9f3d-45b7-854e-09e15a1da220
Not sure what this *obfuscation FT dude is talking about, generally speaking today’s industry (carz manuf incl.) can employ less people while producing more customized and complex items and in higher volume to boot.. That’s what ~CAD and robotization brought about.
What has vanished in the meantime is demand and affordability on the consumer side..
—
* if he is for “Brown deal” instead, fair enough, but say it more openly and plainly..
I think he’s just making the points that:
1.) Artificially creating “green” jobs for their own sake makes no sense from a commercial standpoint (although IMO it arguably might from a national standpoint).
2.) There might not be much of a net gain in employment anyway, in part because “green” jobs would come at the expense of not-so- green jobs.
Unfortunately, what we need is cheap-to-produce energy to truly provide jobs. China was able to do this, for a while, with all of its cheap-to-extract coal. Now the coal is less cheap to extract, or it comes from a distance, so its delivered cost is higher. Without a growing supply of cheap-to-produce energy, we have a real problem.
“…based on the latest IMF and World Bank analysis, six sub-Saharan African countries are now in debt distress, while 11 are at high risk of distress.
“Before the pandemic, sub-Saharan Africa’s debt load was forecast at 56.4 per cent of gross domestic product for this year; the current projection is for 65.6 per cent.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5f428a4d-bd29-44e6-a307-c97b3f325d7b
“Inflation in Sudan has risen to one of the highest levels in the world, and the country risks slipping into hyperinflation unless it gets its budget deficit and money supply under control, economists say…
“The government has run up enormous budget deficits by subsidising the cost of fuel, then financed the deficits by printing money. This has debased the currency…”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-economy-idUKKBN2890CH
“Kenya has terminated part of the tax relief measures extended to cushion households and businesses from the adverse impact of the Covid-19 in a desperate move to save an ailing economy closing in on a Ksh9 trillion ($90 billion) debt ceiling, with the risk of debt distress rising to ‘high’ from ‘moderate.’”
https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/business/kenya-scraps-personal-and-corporate-covid-tax-relief-3219168
“The government has run up enormous budget deficits by subsidising the cost of fuel, then financed the deficits by printing money. This has debased the currency…”
So contrary to what some people (MMT theorists, in particular) would like us to believe, there really is no free lunch. When the currency is debased this way, its value drops and the problem is inflation.
“Continuing optimism about a possible oil market recovery in H1 2021 is largely based on the wishful thinking of OPEC leaders, such as Saudi Arabia, and an irrational view on the positive effects of COVID vaccines on the global economy…
“At the same time, the market is still struggling with an extremely high oil storage level, which has only partially decreased due to high refinery runs. When looking at the demand for petroleum products, however, there is an imminent threat of a storage build up.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/The-Worrying-Truth-About-The-New-OPEC-Agreement.html
“The oilfield service (OFS) market is projected to lose a cumulative $340 billion in purchases value over the next eight years, a Rystad Energy analysis shows, as peak oil demand will arrive earlier and at a lower level than previously thought, leading to reduced E&P investments.”
https://www.oilandgasmiddleeast.com/products-services/37315-oilfield-service-purchases-set-to-lose-340-billion-until-2028-as-peak-oil-is-closer-than-ever-rystad
“The finance ministry of the world’s biggest energy exporter [Russia] has started preparing for the possibility of lower budget revenues in case global oil demand declines sooner than expected.
““The peak of consumption may have already passed,” Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev said in an interview in Moscow.”
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/russia-starts-preparing-for-lower-budget-revenues-as-global-oil-demand-declines/story-HUpNeZh2zVzTn2nKc4plBK.html
“The election for Kuwait’s National Assembly (parliament) resulted in an all-male parliament and several previous MP losing their seats, signalling a change in direction.”
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/kuwait/kuwait-election-results-big-changes-all-male-new-parliament-1.75703064
I notice Kuwait:
“While there were 31 women running, the highest number of female candidates in Kuwait’s history, none won in this year’s election.”
So the all male result was not the result of no women running.
“Thousands show loyalty to Thai king amid anti-monarchy protests:
“Thousands of yellow-clad supporters greeted Thailand’s king on Saturday as he led a birthday commemoration for his revered late father, the latest in a series of public appearances at a time of unprecedented challenge to the monarchy from student-led protesters.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/05/thousands-show-support-for-thai-king-amid-anti-monarchy-protests
“‘King, please come back and save the country!’: Massive protests in Nepal demand the restoration of Hindu Monarchy.”
https://www.opindia.com/2020/12/nepal-hindu-monarchy-royalists-rashtriya-prajatantra-party-rsn-rpp/
King or no king, nothing works!
Nepal ran well as a kingdom. A benign and intelligent monarchy is the best system of government IMO. I have dealt with a lot of humanitarian endeavors over the years. What screws things up is a board. It introduces politics and a bunch of useless stupid people that only hinder the people doing the work. Just like this democracy thing. Ship needs a captain. The people have to buy into the monarchy to have it work. Its not easy being king. Hard decisions have to be made. Mistakes are made too.
Democracy is stupid. We in the rural areas are tired of city dictators calling the shots. How bout we govern ourselves and you govern that thing? The method by which the will of those living in .1% of the geographic area is forced upon the 99.9% is called democracy. What ensures freedom and fairness has been the constitution and the republic. This was so people did not have to suffer tyranny if 51% of the people wanted it. If the majority of the people are stupid uneducated haters democracy is tyrannical. Tyranny doesn’t belong on a pedestal.
The MSM and social media are intent on tyranny for whatever reasons. They spay perfume on a turd by calling it democracy. Lobbyist and back door deals calling the shots while the kabuki theatre of supposed representation gets people all hot and bothered. It cant continue. The only reason it existed was because of energy surpluses supported the inefficiencies. Its not a natural occurring organism without high high energy surpluses. Neither is the yoke of tyranny people call democracy.
Even if this technocrat propaganda velvet fist lab worship dystopian dictatorship were heading into was a democracy. You lie to the people with a controlled press brainwash them and get 51% of the vote Now you get to rampage and step on the 49%.
Thats democracy. Thats tyranny. Thats hate.
You make some good points. A benevolent monarch can be a good choice of leader. It is not expensive.
I understand that sustainability groups have failed, thinking that they can simply elect a leader they like. Groups that succeed normally have someone that people will respect, whether things are going well or badly. Often, there is a religious aspect to these groups that holds them together.
you maybe misunderstand what existence is, on current human terms.
notice the word ‘current’
You live in a ‘rural’ setting, but my guess is that if you or yours gets seriously ill, you don’t sit back and watch them die–you head for the city to get medical help.
I assume (hope) you want your kids educated, and your wimminfolk to be allowed to wear shoes?
Same with physical protection. If a neighbouring state/nation were to invade and take over, you would expect the ‘your state’ to protect you.
That is the kind of imperfect world we live in. Our elected leaders reflect that imperfection.
You seem angry at the world, and you don’t need nobody to look after you. OK.
If you really want to wind the clock back, say 500 years?—and decide you prefer to live under your own laws, then you will look to someone to protect you when things go wrong.
you will have to pay for that protection by swearing fealty to the ‘overlord’ who protects you.
You pay by being part of the collective army who protects your immediate region. Or more likely labour in your overlord’s field to feed him and his immediate family and household guard.
you still live under their laws.
*****
Welcome to serfdom—because that is what you would be.
Nepal may have been a benign kingdom, but it was a kingdom nobody wanted—nothing there of any value, so nobody bothered them. It is a no-growth state because there’s nothing there to grow it.
If you found your free-dumb idyll in a state with desirable resources, I can guarantee that someone will try to annexe it.
so be careful what you wish for
“Thousands of people protested outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence Saturday night, on the 24th week of such mass demonstrations against the premier.
“Clashes developed around 9 p.m. and 27 people were arrested… Media reports said many protesters at the rally chanted “We’ve come to banish the darkness,” a refrain from a popular song of the Hanukkah holiday…”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/banish-the-darkness-thousands-in-jerusalem-for-24th-week-of-anti-pm-protests/
“Dozens of artists have been detained in Cuba as the Communist Party struggles to quell rare public protests organised through social media.
“More than 40 poets, musicians, rappers and academics have been arrested in the last two weeks as the government attempts to stamp out unrest centred around a group known as the San Isidro Movement…
“The recent round of protests began after a rapper was sentenced to eight months in prison for challenging a police officer who raided his house.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/05/cuba-rounds-dissident-artists-triggered-rare-public-protests/
“In some countries, voting is compulsory and failure to show up at the polls can be penalized, often with a fine.
“But in Venezuela the penalty can be more severe than most: If you don’t vote, you don’t eat.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/05/americas/venezuela-election-preview/index.html
Perhaps, vote for the “right” person as well!
Artists used to make their living selling their goods to tourists coming to Cuba. With tourists no longer coming, I am sure their income is inadequate. No wonder there are protests!
“Police in the northern German city of Bremen have intervened to shut down an anti-lockdown protest that went ahead despite a ban by Germany’s highest court.”
https://www.dw.com/en/german-constitutional-court-upholds-ban-on-anti-lockdown-protest/a-55831516
“Lufthansa will have shed 29,000 staff by the end of the year and the German airline will cut another 10,000 jobs in its home country next year as it struggles to cope with the coronavirus, a newspaper reported on Sunday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/lufthansa-jobs-idUKKBN28F0W7
“Cars were ignited by furious gangs of rioters in Paris today as thousands marched against a new law making it illegal to film the police.
“Flames and thick black smoke filled major streets in the French capital on Saturday as youths wearing black masks and balaclavas threw missiles including Molotov Cocktails at the police.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9021373/Riots-Paris-furious-masked-mob-set-cars-fire-throw-Molotov-cocktails-police.html
“Italians in country’s richest city turn to food banks and pawn shops as Covid cripples economy:
“More than 5 million are now at risk of poverty in Milan and with many struggling to get government support, the community is banding together like never before.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/covid-italy-milan-poverty-food-banks-b1766281.html
“Italy remains in a fiscal and monetary pickle without a realistic escape route.”
https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/the-fiscal-mess-provoking-fears-of-an-italian-exit/
Hardly anyone likes the lockdowns!
“Pastor Mick Fleming [England] is on the frontline of the pandemic – not in hospital wards and care homes but battling with loan sharks and landlords who are propelling debt-encumbered, low-income families towards an ever more precarious future.”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/dec/05/exploitation-of-the-poor-borders-on-evil-say-clerics-driven-to-tears-by-debt-crisis
“Citizens Advice Scotland financial health spokesman Myles Fitt said:
“”There is a perfect financial storm brewing for many people in the months ahead. A combination of income support measures such as furlough and payment support measures will come to an end, leaving a backlog of arrears plus on-going payments to meet, but with less or no income due to job losses of reduction of hours.””
https://www.scotsman.com/business/consumer/warning-over-post-pandemic-scottish-debt-tidal-wave-3056340
“Scotland now has more than three times as many food banks as McDonald’s restaurants, research has found.”
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scotland-three-times-more-food-23121359
In a way, having three times as many food banks and McDonald’s might be good.
My impression here is that the food for the food banks indirectly often represents food that is not being used by commercial buyers, like restaurants, universities and other schools, and convention providers. We can’t expect so many food give aways to continue for the long term, however.
“Voracious cash appetite among virus-strapped companies and a battered economy that makes buybacks tough to justify are warping supply and demand dynamics in the stock market, something for bulls to worry about heading into year end.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/stock-supply-glut-looming-over-market-as-companies-suck-in-cash-1.1532197
“Greed is driving the U.S. stock market to new highs. Fear will replace greed. I provide nine reasons to be fearful. If something cannot go on forever, it will end. The questions are not if but when, and how bad.”
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2020/12/05/the-stock-market-in-nine-scary-pictures?topic=covid-19-coronavirus-coverage
This author has the story exactly right:
“If something cannot go on forever, it will end. The questions are not if but when, and how bad.”
Is the problem fear turning into greed, or a system that has been pushed beyond its limits?
The stock markets exist only as a function of money dilution and propaganda. As long as the print is on they can not fall very far. The print can not stop. We can dilute to the end of money but we can not stop the print. Even fear and greed are lessor causals than the print now.
The big players need some volatility to make money. Even more important is that if the roulette wheel stops on black everytime the lines of the matrix show through. So we get a “bear” topic now and then attempting to get some “fear”. Theres plenty of fear. Fear of holding dollars. There is no greed. The markets can not and will not fall. If there was anything other than money dilution driving the markets they never would have reached these levels. The print has just started. As the dollar heads to zero the markets head to infinity.
I am afraid you are probably right. At one time, I thought the stock market could fall. As long as there are governments out there printing money, this can’t happen.
“Of all the 78 US Treasury secretaries since Alexander Hamilton first took up the office in 1789, few have faced an in-tray piled quite so high as the one that will greet the first woman in the job: Janet Yellen.”
“…The first female US Treasury secretary must tackle the damage wreaked by the pandemic while keeping Wall Street happy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/05/jobs-slump-and-covid-lead-litany-of-post-trump-crises-facing-janet-yellen
“Increasing numbers of children are going hungry in the United States as it weathers the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak, which has killed around 280,000 people and caused a once-in-a-generation economic crisis.”
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201206-pandemic-sends-hunger-rising-in-america-and-children-bear-the-brunt
It seems as the ride downhill just accelerated. Unable to feed its children and elections performed bellow ~3rd world standards, yet mouthful preaching, virtue signaling, and arm twisting to others around (not having such issues) continues.
And the various fin / market leveraged ponzis are still going strong like Donkey Kong so far.. That again confirms the thesis of detached freewheeling global super layer doing its own thing irrespective of already collapsing “nation states” pillars ..
PS that being said the above “injustice” perhaps keeps the lights on for a bit while longer..
“Ten percent of mothers reported their children under the age of five went hungry to some degree in October and November, a Brookings Institution survey found.”
“Even before coronavirus arrived on U.S. shores, California waste recyclers were reeling from the collapse of global markets for used plastics and other scrap materials — a predicament that diverted the contents of many blue recycling bins to local landfills.
“But now, as COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on all aspects of the economy, the situation has become even more dire for the struggling California waste recycling industry.”
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-12-05/coronavirus-recycling-crisis
“Federal and state lawmakers in the U.S. are proposing bills to push companies to pick up the tab for managing empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, cereal boxes and other packaging they use.
“Such rules could help pay for curbside collection and sorting infrastructure, and spur companies to design packaging that is easier to recycle, lawmakers say.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-answer-to-americas-recycling-problemsmake-big-brands-pay-11607173203
We are producing more plastic waste, but less of it is recyclable. Residential waste has increased, but commercial waste has decreased. Commercial waste was more profitable, because customers paid by the pound, whereas residences pay a fixed rate. The big issue is that recycling plastic is not profitable, unless the price of oil is very high:
Re: No deal Brexit
The front page of the Sunday Times carries the story that the government cabinet is now fully prepared to back Boris in a no deal exit from the EU.
Boris is set to go on the TV to denounce EU, and particularly French, intransigence and to announce a no deal.
It seems that the negotiations may well be set to end with an ‘up yours Macron’ after he pressed EU into ‘laughable’ demands and threatened to veto any deal.
The EU has tried it on once too often.
The feeling is that there must be no more nonsense with the EU and UK must go its own way as a sovereign country.
Now is pretty much the time for Boris to man up and to send that message loud and clear and to show that he is the man to get the job done.
A no-strings-attached exit would in any case be the outcome that is most faithful to the referendum vote to leave EU.
> Cabinet backs Boris Johnson over no-deal Brexit
Boris Johnson told the EU Britain must have “freedom” to make its own rules last night as cabinet ministers said he should pursue a no-deal Brexit unless Brussels backs down.
The prime minister and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, last night agreed to a “final throw of the dice” this week to salvage a deal.
But a senior No 10 figure warned the chances of getting an agreement were now “no better than 50-50” after more than four years and five months of talks.
The two leaders agreed that “no agreement is feasible” without movement on three key issues, admitting the talks were “totally stuck” on fishing quotas, regulations and governance.
If there is no progress, Johnson’s team is discussing plans for him to announce no-deal in a televised address to the nation, placing the blame squarely on EU and particularly French intransigence.
Even cabinet ministers who backed remain said Britain should now prepare for no-deal and insisted Johnson should not bow to demands to “mirror” EU rules after the transition period ends.
Thirteen cabinet ministers — including eight who opposed Brexit — confirmed that they would support no-deal if Johnson concludes that is necessary. “Just get it done,” said one who voted remain. “The PM should do what is best. He has total, 100% rock-solid cabinet support.”
…. The toughening of Johnson’s stance came as Brexiteer Tory MPs threatened a leadership challenge if he “sells out” to Brussels.
Two MPs said they were prepared to send a letter demanding a vote of no confidence if Johnson accepts its terms.
Steve Baker, who led rebellions against David Cameron and Theresa May, told colleagues he is willing to break cover and lead an uprising if Johnson “betrays” hard Brexiteers….
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-backs-boris-johnson-over-no-deal-brexit-fccwzj6mt
” … admitting the talks were “totally stuck” on fishing quotas, regulations and governance.”
Why stuck? (a) Our country, our waters, our fish. They belong to us; try to steal them and we will sink you. Case closed.
(b) Our country, our constitution, and the only laws we recognise are those passed by the Queen in Parliament. So take your “regulations” and stuff them.
That is what we voted for; that is what we want; and that is what the government will deliver, or else heads will roll.
And I write as one who was firmly in favour of the EU, until it became obvious that it was in thrall to a totally corrupt oligarchy with no respect for the people it misruled.
Bravo
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/bezos-blue-originm-woman-moon/2020/12/05/id/1000201/
2024 woman on the moon.
I thought it was put off until 2028?
I told them to move faster, since I’m getting old and impatient.
It was done in 1921 (on film at least) in Fritz Lang’s “Die Frau im Mond”. Now regarded by some as a precursor of the “Apollo hoax”, so tread with care; there are leprechauns in the bushes.
Of mice and men
https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/MiceVaccines.jpg
Cute!
“I am afraid I don’t have time for seven hours of testimony on Detroit shenanigans.”
Gail, I’ve been listening to “The War Room” podcasts in order to follow the various discrepancies and related lawsuits. Today there was an opening bit about Georgia (interview with Leahy):
https://listen.warroom.org/e/ep-563-pandemic-the-big-grift-w-michael-patrick-leahy-jack-posobiec-and-thomas-king-iii/
You might want to review some of these episodes for Georgia info. in order to see what you might be up against. Sadly, things seem to have been intentionally designed to create as much chaos as possible.
The show is over-the-top anti-CCP and pro-Trump, but I haven’t found anything but fake dismissals of concerns of illegality in the MSM, so… They offer highlights of the important hearings.
A lot of really interesting information about the Constitution.. in particular, yesterday I learned that US Congressmen can challenge a state’s certification and vote to nullify it. A lot more power resides in the state and federal legislatures than is commonly understood.
Lidia17, so that is why some pundits claim the election may be settled in the House which means the upset the Democrats suffered could lead to interesting consequences.
Personally more and more I think Gail has the general idea of a self organizing system correct and all will be as it is supposed to be.
Dennis L.
More interesting Georgia tid-bits: Stacy Abrams (Dem. gubernatorial candidate who still refuses to concede to her now-sitting opponent. Kemp) did a secret deal with the (R) Sec. of State Raffenberger to change aspects of how absentee voting would work, the most important of which was how signature verifications were to be done. This is patently illegal and in violation of the Georgia constitution. Republican legislators did not even know that this deal had been made.
Scuttlebutt is that Kemp is sitting on his hands because he bought his own election from Dominion.
Another anomaly was the allowance of unattended ballot drop boxes.
There’s been more than one story from truck drivers reporting loads of hundreds of thousands of ballots being transported across state lines..
Green New Deal hilarity angle: Zuckerberg apparently paid for video surveillance for the drop boxes. (wait for it) The video cameras were solar-powered, and so didn’t work at night. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
These “War Room” podcasts are really gripping with all of the info. and craziness coming to light.
A friend of mine loaned me a DVD of “V for Vendetta” back in the spring, but it’s too interesting to watch all this playing out in reality.
===
This isn’t only about Trump because the Dominion voting issues have been known for many years. Warren and Klobuchar were making a big stink about Dominion in 2019.
Those are pretty serious claims, Lidia. Is there any evidence for them? With that “secret” deal, how come you know about it and what does each party to the deal get out of it (that is a feature of a “deal”)? Even if Zuckerberg did pay for surveillance cameras, it only needs the addition of rechargeable batteries to ensure they work at night.
Should I take a page from the anti-racists and say.. “it’s not my job to educate you!” ?
The deal was unpublicized *at the time it was brokered*, and has come to light in the face of post-election challenges.
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/11/16/fact-check-trump-is-right-ap-wrong-about-georgia-signature-matching/
This is the text of an agreement hashed out in court between the DNC and the State of Georgia. https://demdoc2.perkinscoieblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/07/GA-Settlement-1.pdf
If that decree does an end-run around the legislature and the state constitution, then those ballots can’t be considered legal.
Everything was done to create maximum chaos.
I’ve seen picture of drop boxes with open padlocks.
Face it, the election was a massive fraud.
I admit I don’t know what preceded the decree. Clearly, however, Republicans and Democrats seem to be brothers-in-arms against Trump. That alone makes me wonder why that should be. (I’ve never voted R in the past, btw, but a mix of D, I, Green, Libertarian, etc.)
It’s a novelty in my lifetime that key Republican figures would be trotted out to speak at a purported Democrat National Convention.
We’re no longer in the world of right/left or red/blue, but populist-nationalist vs. globalist. People who think they are going to have a comfy sinecure in the NWO are going to pursue those personal interests (see also the Georgia R candidates for Senate who seem silent on the election matter, even though they have been made to face a runoff).
If everyone but the public has been in on the game of 100% fraudulent elections for decades, what else do you expect? I am a very cynical person but admit to being surprised by the magnitude of it.. it just had not been on my radar.
The populist vs. globalist theme is playing out worldwide, and those attacking Trump are the same forces attacking Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.
Republicans and Democrats conspiring together against the people. It is called the Uni-Party. Or as Michael Savage penned it, the “two card Monty”. First one party takes power, then the next time, the other party. Nothing ever changes, while they all enrich themselves.
I listened to some of War Room 563. It does have some interesting things in it.
I am not sure I can learn much about what is going on, just from volunteering to be a low level poll worker (assuming that they get back to me).
Back about 2006, my two sons helped test the early voting machines (not the ones used now) that were installed all around Georgia. The machines had already been delivered earlier to the various counties. Our sons told us then that some counties were using the computers within the voting machines for all kind of purposes, like word processing software and game playing because, in some rural areas, these were the best computers they had. They weren’t supposed to be doing this.
And, of course, I know about at least a few of the problems with the Stacy Abrams / Brian Kemp election race for governor.
Now, we have been getting deluged with all kinds of things about the January Senate races: Door-to-door, by mail, and by phone.
Recently, the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote that Republicans as well as Democrats were suggesting that people use mail in ballots, because it wasn’t clear how much in-person voting capacity that there would be. One of the problems this time seems to be an inadequate number of poll workers because the timing is so close to Christmas. It was after I read that article that I decided to see if I could volunteer to work.
I didn’t stop to think that requesting an absentee ballot, online, without a signature could be a problem. I requested one this time, given the voting problems the AJC was concerned about. The application did require the use of a GA Driver’s License number (or GA Identification Card number, if the person doesn’t drive) and the birth date of the person. The on-line system seemed to match up all of these things, to see if it could recognize the person wanting to vote. So the system seemed to be fairly secure.
The system is supposed to keep a running inventory of who has voted. That way, if a person, for example, votes early, that person, in theory, shouldn’t also be able to mail in a ballot or vote on election day.
The biggest problem that we heard about with this system was that the system seemed to crash frequently. In fact, some counties were using a backup system of some sort, to work around this problem.
In theory, it should be possible to tell from those systems exactly which people voted in the presidential election. In fact, a person should be able to tell which counties they live in, as well.
Thank you for dealing with this confusion. If you didn’t have the mind set to do such things, we wouldn’t have OFW as the learning place it is. But I don’t have the sense that they make any sense, being so complex and amenable to manipulation, whatever their outcomes. The context in which they are conceived appear too large and unmanageable, too little related to what would make for a manageable and durable system.
they, BEING THE VOTER INFRASTRUCTURE
Voters (including me) have no better collective intellect than starlings or lemmings.
we do what we think is right at the time—but that action of voting (individually) has no effect on world affairs.
Biden has as much chance of refilling oil wells and making living good and cheap again as does Pence awaiting the second coming of JC to do the same thing.
Biden at least, knows the truth of what the future is going to be. Pence–well, is something else.
Trump has the political capacity of a 5 yr old playing street games.
quote: “I’m the president and you’re not”
This is the single intelligence-factor that most people deny themselves, and remain convinced that we have a political problem that can be solved if only elected leaders thought and acted as they do.
Norman Pagett, First of all the system over which a president resides is insane. It takes insanity to think you can grow forever on a finite planet. What kind of world class leader would you recommend for such a system?
Artleads
I think you missed my point.
Which was to precisely make the point that no political leader or system has the capacity to solve or extract us from the mess we are in—because we are not in a political mess.
We are in a mess of our own creation, brought about entirely by our fixation that we can in fact have infinite growth on a finite planet. Presidents didn’t recommend that system. we did. All of us. Shortly after Drake brought in his first oil well.
we elected leaders because of their willingness to confirm just that. Which means that in effect we ignore/deny our own insanity.
Individually we accept it’s insane, collectively we think the opposite—hence my correlation to starlings and lemmings.
Individual leaders might shorten or lengthen the odds against collapse—but that is only for a short time. Ultimately the demands of the people force their hand into ‘giving them what they want’—ie jobs, , money, comfort and free lunches..
Biden knows the truth of the situation–but so did Jimmy Carter—he was voted out well before the energy/climate crisis hit– when there was still time to rectify things. Reagan told voters what they wanted to hear instead. (infinite growth on a finite planet)
So Biden won’t tell it like it is. No one would listen anyway.
And to repeat myself, another ‘Trump’ will be voted in in 2024. Especially if my other prediction comes off: That Biden will retire in 2 years to give Harris a 2 year run at getting re elected then.
Harris will propose some kind of basic ‘social justice’ for everyone. The US voter will have a collective fit, especially a woman, and a coloured one at that!
So they will vote for ‘free dumb’ again, with the certainty that ‘free dumb’ to be an idiot delivers wealth for everyone.
The politics of the Ponzi scheme, and a Ponzi scheme ordained by god too. The 2024 Trump-plus character will be another bible waver—you can take my word on that.
But what do I know?
Thank you for all your efforts and thank you for being a good citizen of this great nation.
Dennis L.
I love all these trumpers can’t get on with their lives🤪spending so much time on a failure like Trump! As bad as the Obama dems when trump won!
Meanwhile in the real world the rest of us are trying to figure out how much time is left before complete collapse. Hint you Americans spend too much time in your echo chambers!
“spending so much time on a failure like Trump!“
You are either an idiot, a liar, or your head is in the sand.
“I’m president and you’re not”
Direct quote from the don himself—on video not hearsay.
Now—-tell me, are those the words of a world class leader
or the petulant argument of a 5 yr old child playing in a street game—and losing?
I could come up with a thousand more like that. All on record.
Adults do not act that way. In politics or any other kind of relationship—and we really don’t want to touch on relationships do we?
@Norman: Obama said pretty much the same thing to Cantor after he was elected. “I won [the election] so I trump you on that.”
Source: https://themoderatevoice.com/obama-says-no-to-the-party-of-no/amp/
So what is your point exactly?
I don’t think one throwaway comment by Obama in a different context cancels out a thousand or more by Trump over the last 4 years
I think this says it more clearly:
https://variety.com/2016/tv/news/anderson-cooper-donald-trump-5-year-old-1201741634/
my point is that such an attitude that pervades Trump’s thinking, based on his own words, can’t underpin what a senior statesman should be.
All statesmen are flawed, we accept that.
but He made himself a laughing stock, insofar as (black) humour could be applied to it.
This thread has been there for many years. Even his first wife had to be bought off. Her revelations would be interesting I think
I could be missing something about the guy. But I only use his own words, I don’t make it up.
None of this would concern me, except that his antics have an effect on world affairs
Tim, I think the point is that such arguments are meaningless and the product of someone who has no answer, regardless of who it is.
The ballots are not secure. The digital file that creates them is in hundreds of peoples hands. Yes there is a specific paper stock associated with them. Its not regulated or hard to obtain. Nothing really preventing a actor from printing a million on a purchased printer.
Ive watched all the testimony from the poll observers in all the states. One thing is clear. There were A LOT of ballots. They were creating duplicate ballots right and left. There were gobs and gobs of blank ballots. It would be interesting to subpoena the printers records. As sloppy as they were I would not be surprised if they just printed a million extra on the disputed states tab. Just to be sure no one was disenfranchised of course. Thats what snopes says…
Lots and lots of testimony of people being given not provisional ballots but normal ballots when they showed up on nov 3rd. If you were in certain counties. If you were in other counties you couldnt even get a provisional.
ballots and ballots and ballots. So what became super important if you were going to trust the results? Chain of custody. If that had been super tight with everyone working together poll watchers, poll workers everyone understanding that chain of custody had to be perfect to have a trustworthy election there would no real claims.
Instead the opposite happened. The poll watchers were harassed denied challenges kept too far to observe. If thats not bad enough there was a coordinated shutdown in philly detroit atlanta where they sent the poll watchers home told them were done for today and then restarted tabulating ie counting when they left.
Only to say oh they went home on their own now. All of them spontaneously. They could have stayed. could of come back anytime.
That folks is a bold faced lie. A bold faced lie supported by MSM.
These time periods correlate to the huge spikes of about 150k votes all for biden in the aforementioned cities.
This is what gave biden the “win”.
Its clear to me there was fraud. But Im a trump voter. All the rest of my family are dems. They want to string me up when i talk about fraud.
They are absolutely sure that all those votes were legitimate. Every last one of those ballots ballots everywhere was filled out by some poor struggling democrat. And any negation of those ballots due to TOTAL failure in chain of custody is the evil Trump stealing the election.
When I try to talk about the facts they would probably assault me except they know not such a good idea. They really think trump is hitler. They think he is a racist a white supremacist and he wants to negate minority votes. It hurts them that i would support what they think he is.
I strongly suspect they know there was fraud and they dont care. After all your defeating hitler. Rasmussen poll says 30% of dems think their was fraud.
I dont know if i would care if the shoe was on the other foot. Thats sad.
If there is not redress of what occurred I will never vote again. Why bother?
The MSM is not concerned with the truth. They say im crazy trump is crazy and everything is kosher. All trump asked for is a independent forensic investigation. The facts certainly warrant that.
Were in a pickle folks.
If biden gets swore in without redress of the total failure of chain of custody voters like me are done. No representation.
Theres a lot of talk. Some fool or fools gonna do somthing stupid. Its gonna get outa hand.
If the effected states change their votes to trump MSM will say trump stole it. Hitler is rising. People gonna do stupid things. its gonna get outa hand.
You dont have to be a brain surgeon to figure this out. People are STUPID. We better start looking for solutions.
Everyone seems quite content moving toward the cliff. Their side is the side of righteousness and virtue. Their side will prevail. Except one side cant.
If the states in dispute stay out not enough electoral votes to elect. It goes to congress. One vote per state. Trump win.
People gonna do stupid things. Gonna get out of hand.
All paths lead to martial law IMO. People walking around wound up tight. Stuff is going to happen.
I have never hoped my analysis is wrong more than I hope now.
I hope the president uses martial law to arrest the treasonous, render them to Gitmo, military tribunal, and hanging those found guilty.
I’ve said for years, that the necessary personnel to carry out a dictator’s intention would be very easy to recruit
Norman, not dictatorship but restoration of the republic. You are in England for you this is sport. For me this is the most heart felt political event of my lifetime. I will happily risk death to restore the republic.
I can assure you this most certainly is not a sport.
I try to inject a little humour sometimes to try to prevent the opposite happening. (seriously) The UK is being wrecked at the moment by ‘nationalist’ lunatics over Brexit. It’s going to leave us in a mess too.
Not altogether sure what you mean by ‘the republic’
I was discussing all this with a friend in Canada the other day.
We arrived at the conclusion as to why Canada was so different from the USA, when to a great extent it had a similar mix of people:
1, no constant battles over who was head of state
2 No universal gun obsession and ownership
3 Social / medical care for all, provided by the taxpayer.
******
And I still stand by my ‘easy to recruit’ comment.
“I will happily risk death to restore the republic.”
Lets say you round up all the press and commy professors. Put em up against a wall. Tadah restored right? Happy times henceforth?
All the kids will just spontaneously realize “long live the republic”?
A republic lives in the hearts and minds of its citizens.You cant keep the republic alive with the sword. You can destroy everything in this country with the sword but it wont restore the republic.
We do have a responsibility. Its to the families and children. Not to tear their world apart.
Im not picking on your side. Im on your side. Both sides need to understand that the sword will not achieve their goals. The sword is not capable of that. The sword can not restore.The sword can not unite.The sword can not win peoples hearts and minds.
I agree with you
problem is that young men like using swords
watch the no-necks out in support of Trump, they carry guns because they feel undressed without them.
And would use them if given the green light to do so. (against ‘others’ of course)
They lack the mental power of reason, so must resort to the gun.
Watch the same mindset in Yemen or wherever. No matter if children get slaughtered, they enjoy firing guns.
I recall having the same feeling myself many years ago.
I think I was about 8 at the time—which tells you all you need to know about these people, and the ‘chosen one’ who is their cult leader.
The paper mail-in (or drop off) ballots are very difficult to control. The super fancy machines might be better, but there are thousands of them sitting essentially unattended, most of the year. We have seen enough computer hacking in other areas that we almost expect it here as well.
After all of the publicity about the problems, voters don’t know what to do. Is there any way to vote that is safe and secure? Or will the votes by won by whoever has the means to distort the results most?
On a somewhat related topic, I received a call today saying that Stacy Abrams is setting up a new “non-partisan” website called PeachVote.com to report any voting problems to. I am sure that she will be concerned about long lines keeping away Democrats; doubt that she would be concerned about issues that concern Republicans.
The software in the vote counting machine offers a weighting feature (Dominion). For example one vote for Biden add 1.25 to Biden and subtract 0.25 from Trump, one vote for Trump add 0.75 to Trump and 0.25 to Biden. Do this only if both Biden and Trump vote are more than 10 each. At check out time round off 874.25 Trump 435.75 Biden to 874.25 Trump 436 Biden. Total vote count is correct and Biden looks better than he actually performed. Dominion refuses to let anyone see the software. So the only person who know what the machine did is the Dominion software engineer who installed that software.
An honest process would allow everyone to see the written source code. That is the code in high level human readable format. Then allow everyone to compile the code to machine code using open source compiler. Then generate a check sum from the machine code. That is a harsh that is unique to the code where most changes too the code changes the check sum. Install the machine code in the vote count machine. Unload a copy and generate the check sum and compare to the “golden” check sum. If the same honest loaded software. Check at start of voting and at end of voting and have random spot checks during voting. Currently there is no checking what software is loaded. We have no idea what happened. So we did not have an election. Just a fraud.
And the USB port to load new code should be physically locked shut during election. On computers used on pipelines the USB port is welded shut. To change the software one must “make” a new USB port.
If you believe in a representative democracy in the USA it is quite clear what needs to happen. The current winner take all electoral vote system in states to allocate electoral votes disenfranchises half of its voters no matter who wins. All electoral votes should be cast along a ratio that reflects a ratio of the peoples vote.
The states where there were shenanigans should do so.
Furthermore all states should do so now and in the future.
I haven’t even done the math of who “wins” if this is done. Winning is where the people are represented by their vote. Losing is where conflict is created.
Conflict that is 100% guaranteed to take us into dystopian future.
We have two strong threats to our democratic republic. Conflict. Disenfranchisement.
Its time to grow up or face the consequence. If we our defeated by these threats we all lose. We need to start focusing on winning. We can all win if we defeat these threats.
If winner take all is implemented in any scenario in the shenanigan states we are guaranteed a dystopian future.
We have enemies. It is not Trump. It is not Biden. It is conflict and disenfranchisement.
Its time to abandon voter privacy. Every aspect of our privacy has systematically destroyed. We have none. To advocate the means by which voter fraud can occur the creation of ballots that are untraceable while allowing total data collection about all citizens is ludicrous and sanctimonious. We must demand a end to disenfranchisement. This requires a vote that can be traced both ways by the voter and the vote counters. This eliminates any question about the means of tabulation or other factors. This eliminates this vacuum of truth where two apposing truths are presented with no means of discovery.
This vacuum of truth is a formula that guarantees conflict. Confict where we all lose. There will be no winners.
NONE.
Is the vacuum of truth by design? Is the boxes created that we adopt by design?
What are the consequences of a system where half the voters are disenfranchised no matter who wins?
Know your enemy.
“All electoral votes should be cast along a ratio that reflects a ratio of the peoples vote.”
“I haven’t even done the math of who “wins” if this is done.”
the math is quite simple: in that system, whoever wins the popular vote also wins the electoral vote.
you might as well advocate for removing the middleman of electoral votes and just use the popular vote for your winner.
This “truth” person doesn’t understand the structure of the US as a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy. The founders wanted to avoid mob rule.
“Truth” is extremely fashionable in wanting to dox wrong-voters for easy culling.
Perhaps your copy of the constitution is different than mine. Mine says that the state legislatures have absolute right how to distribute the states electoral votes. Also confirmed by recent supreme court decisions. In fact several states already divide their electoral votes to reflect the will of the voters.
Nebraska for one. Not exactly Biden Harris country.
For the people by the people.
Were in a pickle. Our only hope is coming together.
People think it cant go bad here. I disagree.
Once it goes bad you dont know where it ends up. Then the constitution is just a scrap of paper.
This isnt a game. This isnt a rocky movie. We have families. We have children. We have a responsibility to be adult. I am suggesting we not throw it away. What we have has value.
We do have to get off our self rightous horses. Regardless what color they are. I know that wont happen. We will go over the edge.
The voter fraud was refered to as bannana republic. You know whats real bannana republic? When stupid people start killing other stupid people.
It would be better if there was a clear majority. Over quick. But if we had a clear majority this vote wouldnt be a problem.
Patriot act and NDAA. Have you read those Lidia? We stand to lose everything. The whole ball of wax.
United we stand. Divided we fall. Corny. Now the truth.
IMO those really in power are just laughing. They’ve set us up for a fall. Humpty dumpty. We run toward the cliff like lemmings so sure of our beliefs. Beliefs created for us.
The anger in our hearts can still be healed. But we have to want that.We would have to abandon our appetite for destruction. Our love for the children the families and our way of life would have to be bigger than our love of destruction. We would have to walk in the other guys shoes.
Perhaps you are correct but I think not. Electoral votes are issued for states. 60,000 votes in idaho doesnt equal 60,000 votes in Nebraska.
Elections would be more close, For instance CA would give up 16 electoral votes to trump.
The real problem is if winner takes all gets applied to MI WI PA GA AZ NV some fool or fools are going to do somthing stupid. Whether its trump or biden. That leads to one thing. Martial law. As long as its in effect might as well stab everyone with the VAX.
As long as the ballots are anonymous we will never know.
Sorry were in this together. One side wanting the other to just go away is patently absurd. Sure i have a desired outcome. Not having a humvee with a automatic grenade launcher parked at the walmart is more important to me.
Its all fun and games until youve got a sucking chest wound.
truth, you know damn well you are far more likely to be killed by a “youth” in a carjacking than by a redneck in a Hummer.
They are going to try to “stab everyone with the vax” with or without martial law. If you can’t obtain food without being vaxxed, what need does anyone have for troops?
Do-good gov. social programs already withhold benefits based on their clients’ behaviors.
Warfare can happen on many levels besides the obvious.
Lidia17,
FWIW, front page of Minneapolis paper has legislature and staff wanting to be classified as essential and thus first in line for vaccine.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
Dennis L.
Bill Gates has been seen sneaking into the vax factories at night, (he has his own key, as he’s paying for them) with a backpack, doctoring every fax dose with his own secret brew of mind altering drugs, so he can control everybody brains from his secret Seattle bunker
Well, Dennis, I would say that enthusiasm just about confirms my assessment of the intelligence of politicians.
Either that, or they are doing it for show and will get a fake jab like Boris and Obama.
“truth, you know damn well you are far more likely to be killed by a “youth” in a carjacking than by a redneck in a Hummer.”
Id rather not killed by either. As far as the first threat i feel fairly confident in my ability to deal with it.
Starting with me avoiding it. As far as the second. Civilians cant stand against military. Some of the commanders coming back from afganistan called the taliban the best light infantry in the world. They stopped shooting it out with our military real quick and switched to IEDS. Because if you shoot it out with our military you are dead.
Our kill ratios were not great.30 to 1 if I remember. Still not bad against people that grew up fighting .
The two threats are not even remotely comparable. Its like comparing a poodle to a tiger.
Id put up with a flock of poodles in order to avoid a tiger.
Aint no poodles going to inflict tyranny on me. Tigers … Your not going to stand.
But thats not my point. We live in the best country in the world.We have tremendous liberty. Were going to throw it away for what? The boxes they created for us?
If it goes down there will be one rule. Submit or die.
Lidia maybe you have been a victim. Its the most angering thing in the world to be a victim and have it denied because of your race. I know.
We have to put that aside. It wont be healed with actions that source in anger. We have a responsibility to try.
https://end-of-more.medium.com/anti-vaxxers-f2a6b9d31ca4
electoral votes are proportional to the populations of the 50 states.
so the winner’s proportional electoral vote total from all states would be just about exactly equal percentage wise to the winner’s overall US popular vote total.
Electoral votes are not proportional to the population of the states. For example, in California each electoral college vote represents about 726,000 people but in Wyoming each electoral vote represents only 189,000 people. It’s a long way from having all votes equal. Biden’s victory gave him 51.4% of the popular vote (about 4.5% more than Trump) but has 58.6% of the electors in the Electoral College (17.2% more than Trump). Clinton lost the 2016 elections by the same amount of electors but won nearly 3 million more votes than Trump.
No, not really. One reference says:
The House of Representatives does indeed give a weighting based on population, but the Senate is simply two Senators per state, no matter how big or small.
The net result is that the states with lesser population (typically farming states, also mining states) get more representation in the electoral college than other states.
Gail, I’m looking at the actuality today. Clearly, electoral votes are not just based on the census, given my example above. That was an extreme example but the number of people per elector does vary substantially across states. It seems that the census does come into it but it is not a direct relationship. As I understand it, the number of congressional districts determines most of the elector number per state and the number of districts is based on the census in some way but the total number of districts in the US is fixed, so this can lead to such varying reputation.
In any case, a system which does not give each vote equal weight is not democratic, no matter whether it is called a democratic system or not. After all, people are voting for a president of the whole US, the names of electors aren’t on the voting form.
okay, I see.
the electoral votes are equal to the house plus senate totals.
so yes, one person’s vote in a smaller state has more influence.
truth, some states do not have a winner-take-all system. See Maine, for example. If you are concerned about disenfranchisement, perhaps you should argue for an electoral college within your state, so that the political trends of the major city has a chance of being balanced by the outlying areas.
Without the electoral college, you and I are just the sheep among five wolves deciding what’s for dinner. Without borders, we’re among infinite wolves.
There is a compact among several states called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under it, states will assign their electoral college votes to the overall winner of the popular vote. The compact comes into force when enough states sign on to it to ensure that the winner of the popular vote wins the electoral college vote. So a total of 270 electors are needed among the signing states. So far, states totalling 196 electoral college votes have signed up to it.
So, to get a democratic system, there need to be several more substantial states signed up to the compact. That’s what people should be pushing for.
It seems doubtful that the designers of the USA political system had in mind an end result like today where two parties would dominate the entire country in a culture war.
And it is perhaps questionable whether they would have even bothered – or whether Americans today should even bother with the political system.
Perhaps the most ‘democratic’ way forward would to break up the USA into its states and to give them far more democratic control over their lives.
But that is not going to happen, USA is a geopolitical entity and its institutions effectively maintain it.
We have our own situation this side of the Atlantic, so USA is not something that I stress about.
Tinkering with the system so that either Reps or Dems can win hardly seems worthwhile – just my own feelings on the matter.
True, it could propagate the two party system but it would be a start. Once the popular vote actually means each vote is equal, the electoral college is rendered obsolete. Once it is dismantled, there is a better chance for other parties to start to matter.
Our Republic, defined by our Constitution is why we are called The United States of America, and not The United Mob of America.
The States are electing a President, not a mob.
That is the way it should remain.
this sounds like a mob to me
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/armed-michigan-protest-secretary-of-state-home-election_n_5fcd9995c5b63a1534530e6d?ri18n=true
JesseJames,
What’s your point? Why do you think the President of the US should be elected on something other than the popular vote of those who live in the US? Why do you think some votes should have more weight than others? I realise that the campaigning was done on the basis of how the election works now, so that the popular vote may have been different if campaigning was done for an election where every vote had equal weight but you’re saying that the system as it is now is fine; if so, why?
interpret this all you want:
it happens to be the American football team which has been most infected by covid.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/30454991/at-least-four-strains-covid-19-found-baltimore-ravens-facility
“… “at least four unique strains” of COVID-19 were found inside their facility during the team’s outbreak.”
“Three of the four were stopped and not spread within our organization. Unfortunately, the fourth was a highly-contagious strain and spread throughout our organization.”
4 strains?
believable?
It does sound strange. How effective are these vaccines against all of the strains the seem to be going around?
Four strains sounds like four new vaccine opportunities to me. Come on, who wants to get in on the ground floor of a vaccine start-up with me? We’ll secure fat government contracts and legal indemnity against any law suits over any side effects resulting from the use of our product.
Keeping safe is everyone’s responsibility!
Saturday is sort of my morning for reading, referring to
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/
while chewing my oatmeal. A quote which relates to Gail’s references to war.
“One of Turchin’s most unwelcome conclusions is that complex societies arise through war. The effect of war is to reward communities that organize themselves to fight and survive, and it tends to wipe out ones that are simple and small-scale. “No one wants to accept that we live in the societies we do”—rich, complex ones with universities and museums and philosophy and art—“because of an ugly thing like war,” he said. But the data are clear: Darwinian processes select for complex societies because they kill off simpler ones. The notion that democracy finds its strength in its essential goodness and moral improvement over its rival systems is likewise fanciful. Instead, democratic societies flourish because they have a memory of being nearly obliterated by an external enemy. They avoided extinction only through collective action, and the memory of that collective action makes democratic politics easier to conduct in the present, Turchin said. “There is a very close correlation between adopting democratic institutions and having to fight a war for survival.”
Turchin started out as a professor of ecology and puts his change in careers better than I,
“Turchin published one final monograph, Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical / Empirical Synthesis (2003), then broke the news to his UConn colleagues that he would be saying a permanent sayonara to the field, although he would continue to draw a salary as a tenured professor in their department. (He no longer gets raises, but he told me he was already “at a comfortable level, and, you know, you don’t need so much money.”) “Usually a midlife crisis means you divorce your old wife and marry a graduate student,” Turchin said. “I divorced an old science and married a new one.”
Both quotes are from the referenced Atlantic magazine article. It was probably a net gain in money to divorce old science and skip the grad student, but well, boys will be boys and girls will be girls.
Dennis L.
“The effect of war is to reward communities that organize themselves to fight and survive, and it tends to wipe out ones that are simple and small-scale.”
No, war creates the opportunity to project dominance through technology. Abundant natural resources and technology is an unbeatable combo. A double whammy.
Societal organization is a side effect of energy in -> technology out. The Chinese and Japanese had their stagnant societies organized quite well for millennia while fighting wars over essentially nothing. Then the coal fired gunboats showed up at the front porch, delivering cannon balls and flew a bit of diplomacy.
Again, a mind clouded by chauvinistic humanism. “We, as the people make big decisions to divide and rule others”, “ehm, no, we build big sticks, excavators, drilling rigs, telecoms equipment and project”.
What is wrong with people?
It is not organizing and fighting that make a difference, it is the fact that the communities with armies have at their command a great deal more of energy supplies and weapons made with and using these energy supplies.
The little communities (perhaps living on sweet potatoes, with no big government) cannot withstand the attacks of the better organized groups. The big communities probably use grains and have metals.
Gail,
Didn’t the AmerIndians have all these resources at their disposal? From what I can see, they lost.
Dennis L.
They didn’t had iron, horses, gunpowder or big ships. That is why the Europeans were likely considered gods. A matter of tech and ressources, especially applied to warfare
I disagree, they had the resources, they did not have the culture, it was a tribal culture not a democracy which is Turchin’s argument. Their genes are all but extinct as of now.
Democracy is not argued as moral or immoral by Turchin, it is argued as win or lose.
Democracy has a history of winning by some pretty awful means.
Neither Japan nor Germany were democracies during WWII, they lost in very painful ways.
Dennis L.
Hit-ler and Tojo were both fairly and squarely elected, unlike Joe Biden.
On second thoughts, Tojo wasn’t elected. But he was appointed by the Emperor, which is an even greater honor.
The people who kicked off the industrial revolution in England in the 1700s didn’t sit around thinking about ways of starting and industrial revolution
they were living in a confined space (an island) and found out they were running out of a critical resource—ie trees—so had to come up with an alternative.
It was that which kicked off the industrial revolution. plus a few other factors
Yje native peoples of the Americas hand no such problem. their survival resources appeared to be infinite, so had no incentive to find any other means of survival
The American Indians didn’t have the same weapons to fight with. They also were not immune to the same germ that people coming from Europe were. My understanding has been the communicable diseases played a big role in the death of many American Indians. Not having the weapons also played a role, too. No amount of organization would have fixed these shortfalls.
Any form of sophisticated and organized society can’t hold a candle against savages armed to the teeth with the latest war gizmos.
Ask the Chinese and Japanese what they thought about gunboat diplomacy projected by a bunch of savages against millennia of etiquette and finesse.
When your are busy with the various projects of an expanding IC, it is simply easier to hand over the trivialities of guvmint to the people. It is mostly irrelevant anyway.
When the time is due, those liberties the guvmints used to have will be eroded away in mountains of debt.
Oh yes, then all the shiny and goodie Crown Jewels will be theirs.
Yes, they will own everything and the bloated welfare state and it’s class of ‘useless eater’ managers will be a memory best forgotten.
Good riddance.
Kow,
Isn’t the question how the “savages” are organized, democracy or other?
Dennis L.
It is just as K is saying: you’re pretty much chauvinistic, just as Turchin I am affraid. Only considering the US history you can think a democratic society exterminated the savages. But In many other places of the Americas the Spaniards and the Portuguese conquered, and they were not at all democratic. And they didn’t exterminated all the natives, because they were on the tens of milliones where they landed. US army had to fight very smaller groups (even so Custer got beated).
Democracy is completely anecdotal, the point is tech, ressources and warfare know how (and germs)
Again, sticking to my guns:
“It is not organizing and fighting that make a difference.” The AmerIndians were never stressed, they had all the resources, WWII is clear evidence of that, their society was not organized to survive and they essentially did not, they were systematically moved from valuable land with resources to less valuable land without resources. Essentially this took less than 80 years from the mid 1850’s to the 1930’s. They went the wrong way with their culture, essentially their genes went from the dominant on the N American continent to a very small minority. They had chiefs, wise men, but dissonance probably was not welcome.
There is one exception to this group, Ashkenazi Jews, their wealth is between their ears and their genes did survive WWII, not by much, but they did survive. Indeed, many of them were welcomed to the US pre WWII and their efforts went “boom.” But, the culture was democratic, it had resources and recognized talent(Germany did not, it persecuted those same people and lost, it was not a democracy). The US also had a fellow named Groves who essentially said, “Here, hold my beer and we will build one hell of a bomb.” Two cultures, Germany, the US, Germany had enough resources, two competing groups withheld the raw materials sufficient when combined for a critical mass.Two groups, two ego trips, no “boom.”
An old and very proud culture looked at two very large holes in the ground and gave up, now with no reproduction that culture is essentially disappearing – no children. No genes, no future. It was not a democracy, the Emperor blew it.
Modern sociological research is raising uncomfortable ideas which cause considerable discomfort, even here at OFW.
Dennis L.
The “Amerindians” were and are a very mixed bunch culturally. Many of them lived a savage nomadic existence, and were often stressed when another tribe was wiping them out or enslaving them. I think you are over-generalizing, Dennis.
Ashkenazi Jews are a mixed bunch too, but that’s another story.
As for “democracy”, what crock that has turned out to be. I suspect your judgement about what constitutes a democracy and what doesn’t is purely arbitrary. But regardless of democracy, oligarchy, monarchy or dictatorship, citizens subjects are controlled by social pressure and propaganda as well as brute force if required and turned into normies so that they don’t vote or speak or act “the wrong way”.
Particularly in a democracy, you need most people to be normies or it doesn’t work. You can’t have a democracy without a considerable degree of normieization that turns the bulk of the population into yes men and parrots who regurgitate the slogans and ideas they’ve been trained to sprout. That would be anathema.
Not at all, US and USSR had far much more resources than Germany and Japan!
>>Two cultures, Germany, the US, Germany had enough resources
There are some interesting videos on YT that discuss Germany’s shortage of oil products from the get-go of WWII, and argue that this was one of the main reasons they lost the wear.
The MAIN Reason Why Germany Lost WW2 – OIL
This channel is excellent and have viewed many of his topics. Another aspect I read about was the different in quality of the Petro.
Seems the allies had a higher octane on their fuel, especially in regards to fighter planes that have them an added edge in battles.
Don’t have the article at hand, but remarkable such little things add up in the end!
Germany had peak hard coal in Germany as well, at the time of World War II. It was desperate. It needed to fight.
Fascinating read on Hit-lers rise to power
Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 Paperback – August 26, 1997
by Henry Ashby Turner Jr (Author)
A fascinating, day-to-day, person-by-person review of the 30 days that ended with Hitler being appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Turner’s conclusions in the final chapter pull no punches. He assigns culpability and guilt, making it clear that it was the ignorance, ineptitude, personal grudges, mendacity, and ambition of the characters in power (mainly Hindenburg, Schleicher and Papen) who gave Germany to Hitler and thus Hitler to the world. Those who supported democratic government in Germany simply gave it up without much of a fight, often because they were fighting with each other. It is true, Turner asserts, that Hitler played the weaknesses of the others brilliantly, but he was only playing the cards he was dealt.
Stretch to say Hit-ler was elected…
Ah, they are people? No sarcasm, reading “Scale.”
Dennis L.
It goes something like this:
“Look at this big metal and wooden ship full of coal, metal balls, powder and guns.”
“Hmm, how about shaking something up?”
“Yeah, let’s deliver a memo to Perry.”
*Boom*.
Gunboat diplomacy.
😳
thanks Dennis, great article there.
Turchin is probably very accurate with his mathematical ideas of histories.
but, his entire analysis of the past few hundred years has a background of an increasing net (surplus) energy derived from increasing usage of coal then oil then natural gas.
so he describes cycles of peace and trouble, of increasing numbers of elites and then crashing numbers, and these cycles happened during ONE huge mega-cycle of energy resources, and not the whole cycle but just the few hundred years rising “half” of the cycle.
if he knew that the declining “half” of this mega-cycle is just about where IC has entered now circa 2020, he might be able to astound us some more with something better, perhaps moving up to the higher OFW level.
all in all, very interesting Turchin stuff.
too bad he probably will never incorporate decreasing energy into his future writing.
“No, war creates the opportunity to project dominance through technology.”
We learn much about how those brave, heroic Greeks fought off the nasty Persians, but we hear less about their technology. The shield, ‘aspis’ was an ideal defensive / offensive weapon, which the Persian swords could not pierce. And the phalanx was the perfect way to organise the men with the shields, each shield overlapping the man adjacent.
The spear, ‘doru’, was long enough to skewer an enemy before he could get within range, and the lightly armed Persians were simply mown down. And the short sword, ‘xiphos’, was a good backup. Hence 6400 dead Persians, and 192 dead Greeks.
Round Two, however, was a naval battle, and here the Greek trireme proved itself the supreme warship of the age. It was faster than the enemy ships, not least because they were overloaded with a pretty useless bunch of land soldiers, hence also more manoeuverable, and its bronze ram made it deadly. So 300 Greek ships stood off 1200 Persian ships, while Xerxes on his portable throne watched it all happen.
And so we don’t all speak Persian and worship Ormuzd.
Yes, Ormuzd for the win, as the say in Norway.
🙂
I can imagine the big grin on the faces of the Greek ship captains. Like wolves in herds of sheep cornered in the strait between mainland and Salamis.
Full speed ahead, hull penetration below the water level, full reverse, next ship ready for a plank shave. Rinse and repeat. Xerxes got stomped by the Greek “high tech” deathball. EZ.
🤣👍
It is why bean counters and their pretentious sanctimonious hypocrisy should be kept well away from any decisions of significance. They conflate numbers and capability.
“A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?”
George Gordon, Lord Byron: “The Isles of Greece”.
But for an even greater disparity in numbers, remember how three Romans “kept the bridge” against the forces of Lars Porsena:
“And how can man die better, that facing fearful odds / For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?”.
The Macedonian army was mainly composed of peasants turned into soldiers, and food was imported with the gold of mount Pelion. Athenians had silver at mount Laurion, with which they minted their famous tetradrachmas. Romans had none of this, perhaps they were the only democracy in history to build an empire out of thin air
The oligarchic Spartans defeated the democratic Athenians in the Peloponnesian-Attic War.
Athens was reduced from the strongest Greek city-state to near complete subjection and Sparta took over. Athens was trashed and never regained its prosperity.
Thebes wanted Athens completely destroyed and all of its citizens enslaved but Sparta declined.
Democratic states do not necessarily win wars, not when they come up against a fundamentally militaristic society like Sparta.
It would be an oversimplification to suggest that WWII was decided by democratic virtue. Indeed USSR played a key role.
Mirror, this issue is addressed in the second of Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy’s “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World”. In his view, the turning point was the Siege of Syracuse; under a less arrogant and inept commander the Athenians might have won, and with it the war.
Perhaps the lesson is that democracies sometimes elect bad rulers, who crash and burn in a crisis. Like Woodrow Wilson during and after WW I.
More CHS, found this in the section he calls “From Left Field.” Thanks to Gail I recognized an article on Turchin and have read, skimmed about 1/3 of it. Basic theme is the overproduction of elites and the underproduction of jobs for those elites – that should be obvious in the US political scene. So if you are so inclined, enjoy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/
Dennis L.
Thanks!
According to the article,
How come I get the feeling this is not going to end well!😳
Bloomberg
Atomic Heat in Small Packages Gives Big Industry a Climate Option
Today, the nuclear industry once again is thinking small, spurred on by politicians including U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. They’re looking to solve the next climate change challenge: how to feed pollution-free heat to industries that make steel, cement, glass and chemicals. Half of the world’s energy goes into making heat, and that produces two-fifths of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Those industries sometimes need temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 Fahrenheit) and more often than not burn fossil fuels to get there.
“They just need heat,” said Steve Threlfall, an executive at the nuclear fuel maker Urenco Ltd. He figures there’s a 52 billion pound ($70 billion) industrial market in the U.K. alone for reactors that can generate temperatures high enough to make ceramics, petrochemicals and steel. “It’s a particular niche market, but a very large niche.”
Small modular reactors are drawing the attention of policy makers across the U.S. and Europe because of their versatility. They can deliver a steady flow of energy both in the form of heat and electricity. The power helps balance intermittent supplies coming from wind and solar farms. The heat can help decarbonize some of the world’s dirtiest industries. Johnson set aside 500 million pounds for SMR design in a green economy program last month, and Biden says they’re one of the keys to long-term energy policy in the U.S..
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/atomic-heat-small-packages-big-060015693.html
….and the drum roll….
.Using this market to justify the development of a program of factory SMR production appears to be a particularly implausible strategy,” wrote the authors. Hundreds of billions of dollars in direct subsidies, along with carbon dioxide pollution at $100 a ton — almost triple the cost of today’s prices in Europe — are required to develop the industry, they wrote.
Without reviving demand for nuclear energy, the National Academy warned that the U.S. risks losing expertise in building reactors, leaving behind all the hard lessons scientists learned from tickling dragon tails seven decades ago.
Add this to your list of why we won’t survive Fast Eddy
Maybe for nuclear energy, and maybe not.
Regulators are wary of nuclear; nearby neighbors are wary of them.
Security would seem to be a problem for many small freestanding units. They require fossil fuels to build, also.
CHS has a new Musings out this AM and a reference to this
1. Whatever you are trying to learn, take a stab at learning it
2. Write everything down, in as simple a way as possible, as if you were preparing a lecture for an inquisitive child
3. Ask questions as if you were a child to identify gaps in your understanding
4. Repeat step 3 until the questioning adds no incremental value
It is the Feynman learning technique.
https://www.butwhatfor.com/feynman-technique/
In the body of his weekly post he notes a thing of value going forward might be basically a skill or a trade which is useful – hint it won’t be intersectional.
In my first year of retirement, at 55 while working in a public health dental clinic on a “vocational” school campus I walked past a door behind which was a very large, milling machine and thought, “I wonder how that works?” Well, after walking in I approached the teacher and asked how classes were done, he was very short on students to keep the program going so every morning as he was there at 6:00AM, I met him, started the tool and die course and finished one year working lunch hours, mornings, and days the clinic was not working due to scheduling conflicts, etc. I was also fortunate to be able to purchase my own machine tools, put them in an old factory so I could further work on my projects when school was closed, I have those machines to this day; my milling machine came out of the closed GM plant where Elon would manufacture his cars – machine was almost new, cheap, shipping was a bit expensive to the Midwest.
The idea CHS has this week is becoming useful at something many cannot do, make it simple. For me, too often people give up, all is lost. Currently plowing through applied math, MIT, so the Feynman technique is not that much different from how I learn, but it is better. Why applied math? Well it is necessary for a good understanding of physics which is helpful in the machining world. MIT has a very good first year physics course, mostly mechanics. MIT is free when done on line, no credit, but incredible teaching.
Perhaps with a CNC machine I could manufacture parts for the moon mission, sort of a farm to market idea, think it would work?
Dennis L.
Congratulations on the effort to learn machining and obtaining the machines! IMHO that’s puts you in the top 1% of people(in terms of willingness to learn new things and adapt) in the know about our future.
Remember reading a Wall Street Journal article at least 15 or 20 years ago about the gutting out of the tool and die Industry here in the United States. Interviewed old timers that pointed out it was fool hearty short term profit focus because once gone….almost impossible to resurrect it again here in the States. These workers pointed out they had acquired much know how and ability on the job that could only be transferred over in that manner. Anyway, with AI and robotics it’s probably totally different..
Yeah, dabbled in Permaculture back in the early days of the late 80s and mid90s.
Great dynamic period and attended workshops, gatherings and even did a short internship. Seems many Permaculture Activists earned their income in that way so they could survive in modern world. Many have written published books on their work, Peter Bane, David Jacke, Jerome Osentowski, Darrell Frey, to name a few.
Unfortunately, books really don’t pay and doing those events require much fossil fuel travel. From what I have read and seen, it set it up in an Urban modern are with building codes and restrictions and neighbors that see things differently is almost impossible. Peter Bane and his partner found that out in Bloomington Indiana. They sold their home there and moved out to a rural area.
Remember one of the founders of the concept of Permaculture, Bill Mollison, now deceased, warning not to go to the country rural area because it is isolating and difficult to survive.
Not saying it can’t or isn’t being done. There are many challenges, including changing weather patterns and such as Gail has pointed out in her post about growing food. Yes, there will be a weeding out period after the ending of BAU .
I tend to agree with Fast Eddy, you may wish not to live past it unless you feel lucky. I’m in my 60s now and wish the younger generations the best luck.
Permies evolved and researched further a long the way since those early years. Nowadays there are running farms in almost every biome and climate with “no” – little offsite inputs. That’s not the problem. The issue is when some of the former elite with their doomsday jeeps and trucks full of rough necks entourage leave the cities, mansions and start to expropriate in said countryside to settle down on someone’s else place.. And there are only three major possible outcomes of such close encounter – none good..
Yeah, neither the permies or the elites+roughnecks will make it through.
It doesn’t work that way. As usual it is the most improbable and insignificant of the humanoids that will make it through by some unlikely chain of events fathomable.
Cant plan for luck and unknown unknowns.
Full bore BAU or GND world guvmint. Pick your inevitable dystopia and demise.
I am all smiles.
That’s great some do not require BAU to sustain themselves, Worldofhumanectect! They earned their place through the bottleneck. Sorry I’m unaware of those remarkable folks🌞, but that’s not say they do not exist.
I’m sure they’ll be able to dodge the bullets when BAU winds down in the final show of fire, fury and nuclear grandeur.
Or perhaps not.
All you need is Love….😜💖🌈🐕
Capitalism ‘will collapse on itself’ without more empathy and love: Scott Galloway
Adam Shapiro·Anchor
Tue, December 1, 2020, 7:06 AM EST
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated drastic economic changes that were already underway. And one expert warns that it’s threatening the future of the free market system.
We are barreling towards a nation with three million lords being served by 350 million serfs,” NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway told Yahoo Finance Live
We don’t like to say this out loud, but I feel as if this pandemic has largely been invented for taking the top 10% into the top 1%, and taking the rest of the 90% downward,” Galloway said…….
Total billionaire wealth reached $10.2 trillion at the end of July 2020, touching a new high after the year’s V-shaped rebound in asset prices.” It broke the previous record, $8.9 trillion, set at the end of 2019 despite the pandemic’s negative impact on the global economy…….
In the United States, a report from the Federal Reserve shows the top 1%, which includes millionaires and billionaires have a combined net worth of $34.9 trillion while the bottom 50% has a combined net worth of $7 trillion.
We’ve decided that capitalism means being loving and empathetic to corporations, and darwinistic and harsh towards individuals,” Galloway said.
Galloway proposes creative destruction that lets failing business fail while protecting people who lose jobs……..
Capitalism fails unless it rests on a foundation of empathy and love,” which Galloway says requires being harsh at times on corporations and more empathetic and generous with U.S. citizens.
It’s called the Shark Tank for nothing fella…back to feudalism
Let the children follow the beautiful example of Pavlik Morozov, the little Soviet hero who, legend has it, denounced his parents to the authorities. Go kids, prove your worth and your loyalty to the state.
“Governor Instructs Schools to Interrogate Children About Thanksgiving Gatherings
Just before Thanksgiving, the Governor of Vermont hopped on Twitter– which is apparently the only platform now for making important announcements.
He started by shaming and guilt tripping anyone who dared to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. He continued:
Unfortunately, we know some will still get together and schools have asked for help.
@VTEducation will direct schools to ask students or parents if they were part of multi-family gatherings and if the answer is yes, they’ll need to go remote for 14 days or 7 days and a test.
So the Vermont Department of Education instructed schools to interrogate children about what they did over Thanksgiving weekend, so that they can inform on their families.”
https://www.activistpost.com/2020/12/governor-wants-kids-to-rat-out-their-parents-for-covid-violations-and-other-dystopian-weekly-news.html
So, now parents need to teach their children to lie to their teachers, if they need free child care.
Brexit UK-EU trade deal negotiations are set to go to the wire. Macron is making ‘laughable’ demands.
France never wanted UK in EU in the first place and vetoed it in 1963 and 1967.
Negotiations may end with an ‘up yours Macron’, which the Sun paper should enjoy. No deal seems to be the way to go.
Brexit trade deal hangs in the balance as EU makes 10-year fishing demand
Boris Johnson pauses talks for ‘stock take’ of whether an agreement can still be salvaged
…. British sources said that unless Mr Barnier is given a fresh mandate by the EU there cannot be a deal because Brussels is currently making demands that go way beyond the UK’s red lines.
UK negotiators, led by Lord Frost, were understood to have been completely taken aback when the EU made its “laughable” demands on fish, which also included an offer to hand back just 18 per cent of its fishing quotas when the UK had asked for 80 per cent.
The EU also insisted at the 11th hour that any deal should give it the right to impose punitive tariffs on UK goods if Britain diverges from EU regulations in the future.
On Friday night, Lord Frost and Mr Barnier issued a joint statement, which said: “After one week of intense negotiations in London, the two chief negotiators agreed that the conditions for an agreement are not met, due to significant divergences on ‘level playing field’, governance and fisheries….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/04/brexit-trade-deal-hangs-balance-aseu-makes-10-year-fishing-demand/
The notorious Sun front page from 1990.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2545571.main_image.jpg
Perhaps it is just theatrics to demonstrate to populaces unlikely to be thrilled with the end result that the battle was at least hard fought.
“A sharp increase in margin calls during this year’s market turmoil has triggered a fierce debate between banks and derivatives clearinghouses over the extent to which the clearing industry needs to reform and standardise margining practices to avoid destabilising the wider financial system in future crises.”
https://www.ifre.com/story/2646912/march-turmoil-fuels-debate-over-clearinghouse-margin-calls-hxhg2241yx
Can the financial system be saved? I doubt 🤣 it.
Gail has stated she feels that probably will collapse first and by your accounts you post, Harry, seems we are headed there, sooner than later.
Enjoy today…bright, Sunny and cool here in South Florida and peaceful.
Dare not turn on the TV local news…focused on the surge in Covid 19 and the crisis we are facing….always featuring poor souls that have ended up in the Hospital. Lines of cars waiting hours to get tested! Now Fort Lauderdale and Miami Airports will provide access to appointment only testing , instant results or 48 hours for 99$ or 69$!
Wear your MASK
If someone can engineer the market to only to rise, the margin call problem will magically be solved.
“More than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses [Mexico] have closed permanently since the middle of last year, mainly due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study by the national statistics agency Inegi.
“The agency determined that 1,010,857 businesses have shut their doors for good since May 2019, a figure that represents 20.8% of the [total].”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus-has-shuttered-1-million-small-businesses/
“Mineworkers in Peru on Friday joined a growing group of farmworkers in blocking major highways throughout the country, ratcheting up pressure on newly appointed interim President Francisco Sagasti.
“Hundreds of union members from the Doe Run metallurgical plant, located in the Andean town of La Oroya, blockaded a highway critical to the supply of food to the capital, Lima.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/4/peru-mine-workers-block-highway-labour-protests-spread
Lots of unhappy people, both in Mexico and Peru
“Here’s a head-scratcher: The use of cash has been declining for years in Britain, but demand for banknotes is skyrocketing. Nobody is quite sure where the money is going.
“A group of UK lawmakers said on Friday as much as £50 billion ($67.4 billion) in cash was “missing,” and it urged the Bank of England to investigate.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/business/missing-cash-bank-of-england-50-billion/index.html
“Crisis in retail: the UK town centres struggling to survive.
“Nationally, the vacancy rate in retail is now 13.2 per cent, according to the Local Data Company. But in some towns, especially in the north of England and parts of Scotland, it is almost double that. Vacancy rates in shopping centres are almost twice those of retail parks.”
https://www.ft.com/content/77b797fc-2fcf-420b-947c-a1a72109c231
I don’t know whether people did much reporting on the impact of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union and what happened to vacancy rates.Clearly, there were many businesses that failed.
When we visited Russia a few years ago, my impression was that, in the area away from Moscow, there were still the remains of some businesses that had closed for good at the time of the collapse in 1991. We took a tour boat down some canals used for transporting goods and tour boats. It went past old industrial areas.
Under people’s mattresses?
Interesting question. Poor people have little to no money, rich people generally do not store paper money, where is it? Kennedy Sr. was supposed to have sold all his stocks prior to the depression and put the cash into safe deposit boxes, now, not sure that is a very good idea, rich people are generally pretty smart.
For that matter, where are all the US coins going? A trader at one time was collecting nickels for the nickel, a penny now is not pure copper so that play is out, dimes and quarters worth more as metal than face value?
Dennis L.
Other possibilities:
– increase in black market / criminal enterprises
– gov. sneaking bills and coins out of circulation to “nudge” people towards digital currencies
“Deflation in Europe Becoming Self-Fulfilling:
“In late October, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde stated that she didn’t see any deflation threats “at all.” In order to try and stop the perceived self-fulfilling process the ECB is burying its head in the sand and not seeing what is directly in front of it.”
https://www.deflation.com/en/Articles/Deflation-in-Europe-Becoming-Self-Fulfilling
“The COVID pandemic is putting pressure on the sustainability of some European economies, prompting some to argue that economic growth and monetary support from the European Central Bank will not be sufficient and that public debt should be renegotiated.
“The EU is struggling to overcome the deepest crisis in its seven-decade history…”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/can-eu-economies-grow-enough-to-repay-the-increasing-debt/
“European Banks Warned By ECB to Avoid Letting Bad Loans Pile Up:
“The European Central Bank urged the region’s big banks to do a better job scrutinizing companies’ ability to repay loans and weather the pandemic, warning them of the possibility that a mountain of loans eventually sours, weighs down the banking industry and slows the economic recovery.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/european-banks-warned-by-ecb-to-avoid-letting-bad-loans-pile-up
“The surge in crude prices to the brink of $50 a barrel isn’t being celebrated in every corner of the oil market: weak fuel demand in Europe means the continent’s beleaguered refineries are struggling to pass on the higher cost to buyers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/brent-crude-s-surge-toward-50-is-grim-for-europe-s-oil-refiners
That is the general problem that is emerging – energy prices that are too low for energy producers to make a profit, and too high for consumers to buy, like other companies who cannot make a profit if energy is that pricey, and workers whose wages, constrained by the profitability of their employers, do not allow them to afford the energy consumption in end commodities, services and transport.
As such, that report might well make us tremble as a harbinger of things to come. It seems to be an object lesson that confirms Gales ‘peak oil’ thesis, that in economic reality (capitalism) it will manifest as unprofitable-unaffordable energy and a consequent systemic unprofitability. Thus the need for a ‘socialisation’ of energy production, and production more generally, through debt write offs and state support.
Capitalism is coming to an end as a functional profit-based economic system. More generally industrial civilisation faces collapse due to diminishing returns, especially with energy production, and the population faces collapse through overreach. Likely nothing can really be done about it. Some things just happen whether we like it or not. Hopefully states can keep BAU going for a bit longer, maybe a couple of decades, who knows?
The current c 19 crisis perhaps offers an opportunity for states to ‘rationalise’ the economy and to ‘downsize’ it in steps to somewhat ‘manage’ the decline. If so, then I would be all for it. It is likely to be presented to the masses as a ‘great reset’ or as a grand ‘green’ environmental reorientation, but that ‘rationalisation’ is post-factum and spin on an unavoidable situation – which would be fine, so long as it ‘works’ at least for a time.
Mirror, great post, thanks.
As you prolly know some countries – regions could eventually opt for (after “the global” looses appeal for good) the “Brown deal” so lower level complexity (curbed demand per capita) – quasi BAU continues on some mix of coal, natgas, .. , where available.
However, even at that it will be likely very unpleasant dictatorial reality to live in.. at least for generations who previously partly had lived through unbound consumerism or simply entertained more choices thanks to higher allotment of energy to splash around for personal pleasures and desires.
Not really, it is the end of the rentier class. There is no more growth in the real economy to support the perpetual growth of debt.
Then good ole’ Laffer comes walking along and simply informs the bad news that when the real economy is maxed out, trying to increase debt and interest payments simply will reduce real economic activity making the debt worthless at an even faster rate.
The last hoorah down the line will be for the rentier class to buy the Crown Jewels of a nation – It’s natural resources. From that point on all debt will be virtually worthless.
Now try to tax a region with privately owned hydro power stations and other resources and quite soon you’ll have a rebellion on your hands.
It will be a rocky ride for the guvmints all over the world. Defaulting isn’t an option, at least if you want to eat and have electricity.
Either rationalize the guvmint into oblivion or sell the Crown Jewels of the people, to enjoy a breather a couple of years down the line.
Yes indeed. Do it. SELL!
😓
Public debt renegotiated = public debt defaulted on
Re: population bottlenecks and human evolution
It has been theorised that repeated severe population bottlenecks were instrumental in the evolution of the ancestors of modern humans, with reference particularly to the appearance of H. erectus, our direct ancestor, 2 million years ago.
Founder effects resulted in small populations that allowed for an acceleration of evolutionary change. The genome was radically transformed through drift and selection and major anatomical, neurological and behavioural changes occurred suddenly.
If so, then the upside of the coming population collapse due to energetic constraints is that the more drastic the bottleneck, the more that human evolution is liable to accelerate.
A bottleneck would really get human evolution going. It is not ‘the many’ but ‘the few’ that really effect the evolution of the species.
A population bottleneck is a catastrophe in its experience but from a broader, historical perspective it is a rare and highly progressive episode of species development.
The present problems experienced by humans may be due not simply to political and economic challenges but also to our inability to meet those challenges in our present state of evolution.
The situation may not be so much that merely civilisation is in crisis as that H. sapiens is in crisis and it is due an episode of accelerated evolution through a severe population bottleneck.
If so, then the current situation is truly historic and liable to be highly beneficial to the species in the longer term. It is potentially the prelude to a ‘genetic revolution’ that will radically transform the species for the better.
> Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution
…. A 2-Myr Bottleneck
There are many reasons to believe that there may have been a number of severe population size bottlenecks on the lineage leading to living humans, principally because of the many speciation events that must have occurred. The diversity of the Pliocene hominid fossil record, beginning with the large samples from Aramis and Kanapoi 4.0–4.4 MYA (White, Suwa, and Asfaw 1994 ; Leakey 1995 ; Leakey et al. 1998 ), indicates that ours is just the most recent of a wide array of hominid species that once existed. The demographic effects of such speciations can be expected to have been intense, probably involving significant founder effects due to small population sizes, and they eradicated evidence of earlier speciations, such as the chimpanzee-hominid divergence.
…. A hominid speciation is documented with paleoanthropological data at about 2 MYA by significant and simultaneous changes in cranial capacity and both cranial and postcranial characters. This marks the earliest known appearance of our direct ancestors. The new species has been called Homo erectus or Homo ergaster by some authors. Following others (Jelínek 1978 ; Aguirre 1994 ; Wolpoff et al. 1994 ), we call this emerging evolutionary species early Homo sapiens, as it begins an unbroken lineage leading directly to living human populations. The first specimens are humanity’s earliest known direct ancestors.
We, like many others, interpret the anatomical evidence to show that early H. sapiens was significantly and dramatically different from earlier and penecontemporary australopithecines in virtually every element of its skeleton (fig. 1 ) and every remnant of its behavior (Gamble 1994 ; Wolpoff and Caspari 1997 ; Asfaw et al. 1999 ; Wood and Collard 1999 ). Its appearance reflects a real acceleration of evolutionary change from the more slowly changing pace of australopithecine evolution.
…. Our interpretation is that the changes are sudden and interrelated and reflect a bottleneck that was created because of the isolation of a small group from a parent australopithecine species. In this small population, a combination of drift and selection resulted in a radical transformation of allele frequencies, fundamentally shifting the adaptive complex (Wright 1942 ); in other words, a genetic revolution (Mayr 1954 ; Templeton 1980).
This interpretation is also supported by the fact that several different adaptive complexes changed significantly (as noted above) and together, and that evidences of these changes is found in the earliest specimens.
…. In sum, the earliest H. sapiens remains differ significantly from australopithecines in both size and anatomical details. Insofar as we can tell, the changes were sudden and not gradual.
…. These behavioral changes are far more massive and sudden than any earlier changes known for hominids. They combine with the anatomical evidence to suggest significant genetic reorganization at the origin of H. sapiens, and from this genetic reorganization, we deduce that H. sapiens evolved from a small isolated australopithecine population and that small population size played a significant role in this evolution….
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/17/1/2/975516
The science fiction answer to instances of sudden genetic evolution is outside (i.e. extraterrestrial) interference.
There are many markers on Earth, outside of the genome, of such activity.
Personally I’m undecided on the issue, mainly because our genetic programming is boom/bust i.e. grow to whatever limits prevail then collapse.
So an alien race capable of Interstellar travel would (a) need to follow a linear development path I.e. not forget most of what they learned every few hundred years and (b) not have the genetic drive to grow at all costs and thus regularly blow through their resource base and collapse.
The Australian Aborigines managed stasis for something over 20,000 years, but the price was a stone age civilisation technology-wise.
Extraterrestrial influence explains nothing.
But the idea created a great TV movie, “Quatermass and the Pit”. First a short set of episodes in monochrome, then a remake in colour. I have both. Summary: we were created by Martians.
The Bible says that god made Eve from Adam’s rib. Genetic engineering?
Humans have 23 chromosomes, apes have 24. Yet the content of the 23rd and 24th chromosomes of apes is fused into the 23rd chromosome of us humans. This stops us producing offspring from apes. Was it done deliberately?
Was Mars nuked? Did the Martian survivors then escape to planet Earth?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/9aknn8/were-ancient-martians-murdered-by-nuclear-bomb-dropping-aliens-an-investigation
human beings are omnivores
we will eat anything in order to survive, including each other.
that gave rise to a million chances or mischances that led to you (and me) being here, and by definition the survival of our branch of human species in the sense that we know it
one can write interminable theses on our thread of evolution, but that’s what it comes down to. Words are better when they are cut to a minimum.
there have been other lines that died out—the same chances and mischances led them on a different path that led to extinction.
we got lucky—but chances are our luck will run out too. Then the termites and bees can have their world back.
“It is not ‘the many’ but ‘the few’ that really effect the evolution of the species.”
We may perhaps spot traces of that insight in the NT.
It seems possible to read the transition to the new spiritual condition in the NT as parallel in its structure to the conditions attendant to an evolutionary speciation event.
It is emphasised in the NT that only ‘the few’ and not ‘the many’ transition to the new condition and continue in life.
‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’ Mt 22
Clearly the situation is akin to a human population bottleneck, which is likened to a ‘narrow gate’.
‘Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’ Mt 7
The destruction of both civilisation and of most of the human population is the condition of the ‘new earth’.
‘Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.’ Rev 18
The reduction of the population through the bottleneck is the precondition for the establishment of the species in a new ‘blessed’ condition in which behaviour is radically altered along with well-being. Rev 21.
It is alluded that human bodies too will be transformed.
‘Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.’ Phil 3
Much like the speciation of early H. sapiens, the radical transformation of the species is attended by the reduction of the population through a bottleneck and a consequent alteration of anatomy and behaviour – and well-being.
Clearly the NT has a spiritual imagery and intention yet it is notable that the same structural conditions attend the transition to the new humanity as attend physiological speciation, specifically the bottleneck.
In addition we see the destruction of civilisation as well as of much of humanity.
It is curious that such a close parallel to rapidly accelerated natural evolution via the bottleneck should be found in the NT account of radically transformative if spiritual human progress.
It is spot on if metaphorical.
It’s all good in theory. However, what will the metric of survival look like? If it is decided upon one, will it be the right metric? Most likely it will be corrupted and impotent.
Physics? Genetics? IQ? Industriousness? Creativity? Grit? How and by what method is these imagined desirable traits to be measured? Will it be applied equally for all, or is it possible to purchase your way into the 21’st century “Ark”, thereby undoing the purpose of it all?
Do we have to care? Should we care? Is there anything worthwhile past the bottleneck for the entitled princes and princesses of IC?
I don’t think so. Forget about it.
How many of you plan your day or your life around the moral imperative to do what’s best for the human species?
Hands up!
I pretend I do. Hey thats somthing. Chicks dig it. But seriously… We have this capacity called compassion. I value it.
It means Im too soft to make it.
Oh well
“Do we have to care? Should we care? Is there anything worthwhile past the bottleneck for the entitled princes and princesses of IC?
I don’t think so. Forget about it.”
I don’t care, since a bottleneck in my remaining years, maybe 10 or 20, would mean a fast collapse and my chance of survival would be exactly 0%.
but it’s a parlor game.
an upcoming bottleneck would be unprecedented, since it would be 7+ billion down to “thousands” if it is that low a level that defines a bottleneck.
in which case, the bigger evolutionary question would be what survives mentally.
in which case, forget about artistic types and scholarly types, the survivors will be the brutes and toughies among us.
a true Great Reset to hunter gatherer times.
No brutes survived the Easter island collapse.
It was rather the most insignificant human being, her child and a couple of goats.
The sort of person no one expect to survive.
It is what Gaia do – crushes our preconceived notions and delusions of objective reality.
K, if we are headed for a population collapse then we are headed for one. It is not a ‘choice’ so much as a consequence of trillions of conditioned ‘choices’ that we have made in a finite world. Our biological imperatives have driven us on to unsustainable population levels.
As Gail explains in her article, we left the circular economy of other primates, and sustainability, behind a long time ago, even as HGs. We have utilised energy dense materials, eg. fire, grains, fossil fuels, to bring us to an unsustainable situation of diminishing returns.
It is not the first time that we have approached a precipice; we seem to have been locked into a cycle of population ‘boom and bust’ for a very long time. That is evident in the archaeology from the onset of the Neolithic. Our population expands to the limit of the environment and economy to support it and then beyond.
Many species exhibit regular cycles of boom and bust, it is not that unusual. It is just a facet of how eco-systems work. Neither the numbers of a species, nor the carrying capacity of the environment, are stable. They are always in flux. As Gail points out, some species of trees actually rely on population ‘busts’ in order to propagate.
All species tend to produce more offspring than needed to maintain the population. In favourable circumstances many will survive; less in other circumstances. That is not a ‘problem’, rather the reduction in numbers allows the fittest to tend to survive and for the species to become better adapted. It is a part of the evolutionary cycle by which all species come to be.
Nietzsche alludes to this sort of thing with regard to humans, as ‘the eternal joy in becoming and destruction’. Death and destruction are simply parts of the natural life cycle. Psychologically we are disposed, through the instinct of survival, to always want to survive, and death is a great grief to us. However we can accept that death, and even population collapse, is a part of the natural life cycle.
A more expansive wisdom prompts us to accept the cycles of life joyfully. That is not necessarily going to be easy. Psychologists have established that motivation tends to accompany a narrowing of the field of cognition rather a broadening. Many of us are not really ‘wired’ to ‘feel good’ when contemplating the broad life process. We tend to ‘feel better’ with narrow cognition, let alone with regard to the life cycle.
“Affect can influence cognitive scope (the breadth of cognitive processes[8]). Initially, it was thought that positive affects broadened whereas negative affects narrowed cognitive scope.[2] However, evidence now suggests that affects high in motivational intensity narrow cognitive scope whereas affects low in motivational intensity broaden it. The construct of cognitive scope has proven valuable in cognitive psychology.[2]” (Wiki, Affect (psychology))
You wrote the other day about ‘wonder’ at the cosmos. Well, this is another aspect of that, but it is an aesthetic contemplation that is far more challenging than gazing at the stars. It is a ‘challenge’ to ‘find peace’ with the life cycle but it may be one that we can ‘meet’. ‘Emotional intelligence’ likely naturally increases with age and it implies an ability to control one’s emotional dispositions, an emotional discipline. We can become more ‘adept’ at ‘accepting life’. Maybe read Zarathustra for some helpful insights.
The emotional difficulty in accepting situations can prompt us to think that the situation is essentially one of a ‘moral’ dimension that might be resisted through a morally critical ‘will’. But that is not really the case in this situation. It is just a natural consequence of the life cycle, and ‘morality’ has got nothing really to do with it. Some things just are. Hollywood tends to ‘moralise’ collapse scenarios, to add to the ‘drama’, tug the heart strings, get people in the seats and sell some popcorn.
Anyway, if we are headed for a population bottleneck, then it will not be a consequence of a decision made by some ‘committee’ to establish some criteria that is ‘selective but fair’. It is just going to happen. Governments may try to intervene to give shape to the population collapse but it is unlikely that they would succeed. And the bottleneck itself is certainly not dependent on their ‘plans’. Some things just happen whether we like it or not.
Thanks.
I’m not objecting against the inevitability of the population crash in the current paradigm.
However. I find it repugnant if some rapacious primate, dictated by it’s limbic system, is selected for running the selection process through the bottleneck. It is totally and utterly against any evolutionary paradigm.
The only thing I would put my trust on if it is not decided by any human at all, but rather a machine that simply does not care and simply does what HAS to be done, according to the best available knowledge in that particular point in time, with no qualms and regrets. It might even not be the correct decision, but you know what, it is alright, because evolutionary processes indeed does trial and error. Mostly error. The eternal recurrence, or Hindu Yugas, will make sure that Gaia eventually will succeed in sending her offspring into the stars.
Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that gives a clear indication of what caused population crashes in historic times. Stating that overpopulation (Lotka – Volterra dynamics) is the only vector toward collapse is flatly a gross oversimplification.
Big ass space rock plunging down into the oceans will cause upheavals in the planetary ecosystem, with nothing to “blame” except the fact that it is how planetary systems work.
As far as I am concerned the process of life is to seek new habitats and to turn mineral into more life. It is nothing to be confused with cherishing life and death. It is all mindless mechanical process.
The Nietzsche “philosophy” is reminiscent that of the Buddhist one. It is the perpetual humanist chauvinism hallucinated story the brain tells itself.
Nietzsche went nuts and the Buddha became nothing at all. It is all wrong.
Gaia is the proverbial instrumental convergence, a planetary sized paperclip machine. With the paperclips being life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
You seem to be arguing with yourself. No one is suggesting that some committee is going to impose some ‘selective but fair’ criteria for survival.
And even if they did, what would that be to you?
You seem to like to pose as a nihilist but your arguments are littered with value judgements, which is incoherent.
You say it would be ‘repugnant’ to you but who really cares about your personal aesthetic responses?
Be honest, that is just your own ‘hallucinated limbo’ talking.
Of course people will do what they can to personally survive – that is a biological imperative. That is very much a part of how evolution works.
The idea that AI would be more ‘natural’ is patently absurd.
Evolution takes place also through effort.
Nothing ‘has to be done’ to direct evolution, it has no ‘telos’, it is a result of effort and success. You are setting yourself up as the committee, while calling it ‘repugnant’ – you just want to outsource the execution to AI.
If it is ‘mostly error’ then why would it matter to you whether some ‘rapacious limbo’ got things wrong but not AI?
Because of your personal resentment toward ‘elites’, people who do better in life than you do. No one is really interested in your resentment. That can be a hard lesson to learn in life.
Evolution is not entirely ‘mindless’, it has created animals with minds who do intervene in the process of survival.
The ‘story’ is not hallucinated, although it does tend to include value judgements, which you plainly have plenty of yourself.
Maybe you should take a look in the mirror and consider how much of your criticisms apply to yourself, rather than lashing out at everyone else all the time – even with imaginary arguments and incoherent posturing.
You seem to be one of those blokes that it is just impossible to be nice toward because you are always going to be dissatisfied, and I would think that most people just give up on you.
Admit it, you are only ‘happy’ when you are unhappy. Which is sad.
Thanks.
You seem confused on quite a few viewpoints.
The only value judgement I do is passing that judgement onto Gaia itself and its evolutionary process. I have no say in the matter, neither should you or nobody else.
If there is any entity to make these calls so far as to the best of currently available knowledge, it shouldn’t be tainted by the hallucinated reality that the primate brain produces, dictated as it is by the limbic system. Hence the Machine, it might be wrong, however for good reason.
Socialist engineering (of the “elite”) is nothing else than a clean cut away from the evolutionary and social optima (turning mineral into complexity and extending it into the stars). It is why there is 7.8 Billion people on Earth with rapidly dwindling resources. It has nothing to do with the meta stable process of naturally occurring predator-prey dynamical systems.
The natural process of population decline is easily observable in the oldest industrialized countries, once the lunacy of 3rd world immigration (to keep the racket going) is accounted for. There isn’t any population growth, rather a decline. Look no further than Japan and Italy for evidence of that.
I firmly put the blame on the current situation on the socialist engineers, it is despicable. They for sure got some coal, oil, debt and natgas to peddle the hoi-polloi. How benevolent. Full bore BAU, a send straight over the Seneca crest and plunge into the troughs of nuclear war. The one with most 0’s and 1’s stored in computer memory, shiny bars of metal “wins” before the thermonuclear devices fly. Impressive stuff indeed.
Yeah, and the delusion of fusion power didn’t quite pan out, so now the kraken is unleashed to curtail the worst excesses of IC and set path towards a Calhoun 1984-style GND dystopia.
You are really a try hard trying to figure me out. Anyway, good luck with that. It is rather amusing and rather cute.
Remember that you don’t have to agree with me, but then quite soon discover how it feels being wrong. And you don’t want that.
Now where is that YT music playlist?
❤
There is no ‘gaia’, which is a Greek personification of the earth. There is just the earth, so we may as well just call it that to avoid any fanciful, posey vanity.
You admit that you make value judgments. That is just your own ‘hallucinatory limbic system’ speaking. You are not the earth and you do not speak for it.
The attempt to reify your personal value judgements is pure vanity – the usual ‘new age’ nonsense. No different to crystals and midnight dancing at ‘ley lines’.
Humans are not distinct from the evolutionary process, we are wholly a product of it. We act entirely according to our evolved biological drives.
It is just the usual misanthropy from the ‘right on’ ‘green’ set that wants to construct a dualism between humans and ‘gaia’ – complete nonsense.
No one, and no thing, is making any ‘call’ about population levels. You are anthropomorphising ‘gaia’ again as if it is human and it ‘wants’ or ‘decides’ anything – pure nonsense.
It is ironic that you anthropomorphise inanimate objects in order to spin your misanthropy – completely incoherent.
Your idolisation of ‘machines’ is just bizarre – they are simply tools that we have created to pursue our own objectives – nothing more.
There is no ‘socialist engineering’ going on, we live in capitalist societies and population growth is driven entirely by the needs of the profit and growth based capitalist economy.
Population decline is not a ‘natural’ process, it occurs in advanced industrial societies and it is compensated for anyway through the expansion of the labour market.
We have used capitalism to harness the planet to our biological drives and that is why there are billions of people. Evolution equipped us, indeed drove us, to do that.
You will not get on with the ‘new age’ crowd if you try to excuse capitalism and to blame socialism, as they are all anti-capitalists to a man.
Our population will ultimately collapse because we have so expressed our evolved biological drives through capitalism and we have overstretched our population yet again.
It is not a morality play. It ‘means’ nothing. Some things just happen.
It is purely your own vanity, your ‘rapacious limbic system’ that deludes you think that it ‘means’ anything or that it is a basis for the reification of your own value judgments in an imaginary anthropomorphised ‘gaia’.
You are just a ‘drama queen’ who is trying to make it all about how you feel about things. Your feelings are basically irrelevant to what is happening.
To you it is just an occasion to try to demonstrate your own supposed personal ‘superiority’ to everyone else – which is a drive that you hardly even try to disguise.
It is just attention seeking like a child.
You are not hard to ‘figure out’ at all. You are a ‘new age’, resentful, misanthropic, anthropomorphising right-wing anti-socialist and a bit of a r acist. You are a needy drama queen, habitually rude, and a bit of a self-righteous child at the end of the day.
Basically everything that you say is wrong because you lack any skills of self-criticism, which is obvious not only in your arguments but in your personality.
You really do not care how silly or rude you make yourself look in public. You have no standards whatsoever.
Do you want me to go on or shall we leave it at that?
Mirror, thanks for the good laugh. Yes, you didn’t agree with me and now the consequences are yours to deal with.
By the way, where is that playlist?
❤️
Kowalainen, please forgive Mirror; he knows not what he does. His rapacious limbic system got the better of him there.
Or perhaps, the controlled use of fire allowed massive changes in anatomy, about two billion years ago. I believe that this is essentially Wrangham’s view.
Hi Gail, yes, it seems likely that technological and cultural change can change the selective conditions and allow for a change in the species.
Scientists are divided on whether evolution works better in a smaller population, eg. via bottlenecks and no one really knows.
It is thought that bottlenecks reduce genetic variety but on the other hand it can bring rare and recessive genes to the fore and allow selection to act on them.
That would not be to say that bottlenecks always work out for the best as there is an element of chance involved.
Our H. line has survived but many (all) others have gone extinct. 99% of species, 5 billion, are extinct, so that tends to be the end result for species.
There is no reason to suppose that we will survive to the usual 10 million years that a species typically survives for.
Or that H. today is the end result and that we will not ‘create something beyond ourselves as all species do’, as Nietzsche put it in Zarathustra.
He leaned toward the thesis that a smaller population is more effectively in evolution, although he did foresee conscious human intervention in the process, which was a pretty common idea at that time and was practiced in Scandinavia into the 1970s.
Anyway, if a bottleneck is coming, then it is coming. My own disposition is to accept that. I embrace the ‘eternal joy in becoming and destruction’ that the planet, metaphorically, exhibits and I try to reflect that in my own dispositions.
The earth works how the earth works and I try to accept that. It ‘eternally’ brings species into existence, including H. s. today, and it destroys them as it creates more species.
It is ‘all good’. It is just how the earth works and H. s. are intelligent enough to understand what is going on and we are well-disposed enough (well maybe not all of us) to join our wills to the ongoing process.
We are able to celebrate the eternal joy in becoming and destruction.
We might even institute festivals to celebrate it, the generations that have gone before us and those who will come after us – and species as a whole. We can celebrate both the creation and the destruction that clears the way for new creation.
Destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin – coming to be and passing away.
Festivals of life – of eternal becoming and destruction – of all that ever was and ever shall be.
That our wills might be one with the earth. The acceptance of all things in the ‘affirmation of life’ and its processes and conditions, as Nietzsche puts it.
Thanks
The thing about tolerating censorship. You have no idea what is being blacked out.
You are giving your world view to someone else. Yes cognitive dissonance created by conflicting ideas is unpleasant. Why? Isnt that what a educational system supposed to do change that unpleasantness to ho hum even enjoyable? Is it really so unpleasant to understand your own processing system your own biases? Is that not growth?
This is from a Portuguese court. They evaluated evidence. The best medical research they could find. Its pretty unanimous in the medical community. Expert after expert cited. Tests over 25 cycles not to be relied on for anything. PCR covid test accuracy unknown but best guess using established medical criteria 3% accurate.
turn my head to the west turn my head to the east turn my head to the south turn my head north
truth dead and gone
https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/20/portuguese-court-rules-pcr-tests-unreliable-quarantines-unlawful/
Even if PCR tests above a cutoff of 25 or 35 are unreliable, I don’t think we are going to be able to get anyone to change anything.
I have no problem taking an accurate covid test. I would welcome one. I would like to visit my mother. In order for me to do so I would need to test myself so I know my visit is safe for her.
A test with 3% accuracy does not ensure my mothers safety.
If I take a PCR test and it comes back positive I have just opened not a can of worms but a barrel. Stigma. Insurance. Contact tracing
So no they are not going to change anything. What does that imply? Its like they are asking for compliance from the get go. Totally stripping us of rights. Just comply. Take this test that means nothing but has total implications for your life. Take this vaccine that has total implications for your life. Comply. Obey. Shut up.
I dont see how you could start this process with a more contentious issue. Is it designed that way? Comply. Obey. Shut up. Is that the real purpose?
Accurate verifiable determination of infection to effectively address a pandemic sure does not seem to be the purpose with a test that has 3% accuracy. Sorry I like myself. I dont sign up for russian roulette.
Since it was never about the seriousness of the health risk to begin with, making appeals to seriousness or to rationality isn’t going to work.
When I heard “15 days to slow the spread”, I said to a friend of mine, “this is never going to end”. Still, in the interim I got caught up in researching PCRs and vaccines and infection rates and death rates, all with a sense of horror and incredulity. I’ll probably still get caught up in it, with the idea that “if I can just show these facts to [my local politician, that mask-nut doctor next door, that store owner] then we can somehow collectively awaken from this nightmare.”
But the reality is that this is all a massive manipulation. All the politicians traveling and going to restaurants maskless means they aren’t afraid.. they know the masks are for show, and that the hysteria is a smokescreen for whatever else is in the offing.
Karl Rove: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
That applied to the US at the time, but it applies equally to world actors of a post-USian age .
Spot on, Lidia.
But at least we have the internet. In the old days, we would have had a much harder time studying what they do and a next-to-impossible task to communicate with like-minded abnormies.
So let’s be content and the times lament to see the world turned upside down (one of my favorite Cromwellian ditties).
https://youtu.be/Oub5-p3qSkU
Is it designed that way? Comply. Obey. Shut up. Is that the real purpose?
Indeed it is. It absolutely is.
However, as a prisoner of the state in this matter, I’m resigned to it.
https://youtu.be/z0rio3IPXXU
Dude. Surrounded by lovely Japanese gals. On possibly the only island that had a modern sustainable culture. (edo) The culture that invented bathing. Growing rice not freakin potatoes. Im not jealous of most anyone, Im jealous of you.
Another excellent article.
Nevertheless I would posit that unlimited free electrical energy is possible and feasible.
My theory envisages a green new deal where every citizen has a universal basic income in free electricity, This free energy in turn can be used to store hydrogen to use as fuel for transportation.
voila! Problem solved.
Can anybody see any reason why this is not possible?
You dream on! Where are we going to get the free electricity from? It mostly comes from fossil fuels now. Intermittent wind and solar needs a subsidy. They are not long term (or short term) solutions.
You can print money, but you cannot print electricity. This is where the story goes wrong.
But you dig a hole deep enough and you have a heat source to produce electricity (geothermal).
Of course the investment and human will needs to be there.
I have a opinion on your proposals. They are unfeasible in the extreme.
Heat is the by product of other more useful energy sources.
I happen to know of several instances of thermal energy use. They are quite useful for greenhouses. Nice infrastructure.
I have been teching and creating infrastructure for a long long time. I dig it the most.
In no way could geo thermal; provide the relatively clean energy that fossil fuel provides now.
Nor will any other tech.
Sure put up PVs. Wind whatever. nice infrastructure.
Those things are derived from fossil fuels.
THe energy to create them comes from fossil fuels. They cant replace fossil fuels.
If you really want to understand read Gails past posts.
Understand EROI to start. Gail finds fault with EROI but its a beginning.
As fossil fuels go so does industrial civilization.
No one here likes that fact.
If nothing else understand that oil supply will die because of low demand. Low demand is a function of low energy use per capita.
Negative feedback loop.
Gail pioneered this understanding.
You are in the presence of brilliance. (Gail)
Enter the rabbit hole if you wish.
Your choice.
Red pill or blue.
choose carefully
chooseBLUE, great comment. Just as an aside, I’m looking at building a greenhouse, and I keep coming across “passive” designs. But the “passive” geo-thermal designs all seem to use big-ass fans to move the air around. Any thoughts?
Im not a greenhouse expert. The three geo thermals in my area are high dollar. Im poor. my friends are poor. WE see those greenhouses like lexuses. Sure would be nice. No envy just not in our budget. Were blessed to have what we gots. With hot water comes a lot of steam. That may be the reason for the ventilation. High humidity very destructive in cold climates due to vapor drive. I know larger ones have grid tied ventilation.
If your going to create a mega geo greenhouse you do the grotto thing. hot tubs for parties. very nice. lots of steam.
The ones I have helped build are low/medium dollar. no geo. no steam. still need a lot of ventilation both to get the co2 to the plants and shed heat in summer. All truss framed with glass. Short beefed up mono trusses solar south facing. Trenched around the perimeter to 4 feet and foam sheets buried. footers 2 feet or so inside trench. more depending on soil type. 12″ x16″ footers 2 #4 bar continuos. on top of grade. foam on exterior. Fill it up with compost b4 framing. or beds. whatever. long solar south facing axis. Large windows in ends and along north side. Hardware cloth and window screen no glass. These provide ventilation without power. Window interval allows standard OSB shear strength in north west and east axis. 4×4 framing on south axis with t straps for shear. rigid foam on exterior of north east and west exterior. Chicken wire placed under foam screws then very thin stucco. Shutters on all windows, osb rigid foam , all interior wood coat of white aromatic polyurethane covered with coat of clear aliphatic. shutter foam also
Of course there are the polyethylene hoop houses. They are by far the most common. UV degrades those. Ventilation could be as described on east west ends. Usually with those its powered. Really moving air doesnt take a whole lot of power if you have PV anyway. I would imagine those are the cheapest. All you need is at home depot. You can bend the steel tubing yourself. Never done it.
Not super greenhouse savy Thats how I and others have done it on a medium budget.
Start it by finding the glass. truss spacing on glass width
If its double pane you make it into two single panes. double pane too much insulation. solar oven in summer..
Epdm strips under glass. Roofing washers for fasteners. It all starts with the glass, The big pieces have fairly uniform sizes. You get what you can off of craigs list. Sort it and truss and south posts spacing is determined around that. Thats one redneck way, Im sure there are other ways. glass if forever. until someone comes along with a $140 .22 lr.
I understand EROI
Free energy doesn’t exist, but you can obtain an exhaustible supply from an investment in geothermal. What’s the alternative – extinction?
Where Im at the geo is deep.
That takes a lot of $ and energy to bust that well. A lot. Not your average driller. Drilling is really a art, BIG ASS pump. Now you got to pump it to the surface. BIG ASS power needed. BIG ASS pv system.
Now calculate the EROI of that geo system.
Yes geo is kick ass.
love to have one.
Like the song goes. that life is not for me.
Looked at my collar. its blue. just like the pill.
All that infrastructure will last 20 years MAX. Ive seen top notch charge controller go in 2.
Now compare that to a non geo system that uses the sun. Power needed. nada.
The sun is everything.
Calculate EROI
Best be next to a river.
“whats the alternative extinction”
Sorry kiddo not going to touch that one. You get to figure that one out for yourself.
Told you to take the blue pill. Its not too late. Ill make it easy for you. Im a silly old boomer doomster. Terrible negative energy.
Its really the paradox of our species. We understand our ,as Gail would say, dissapitive nature more than other species. That understanding has led to some things we call good but also creates feelings of intense sadness.
Geothermal works in Iceland but it’s only an answer for rare situations. High heat is very close to the surface and it’s a small population.
If you are next to a volcano, this works.
Digging the hole deep enough takes energy, and the energy gradient degrades over time. If it really were a cheap solution, we would see a lot of it being done, without any subsidies.
There is rock about 6 inches under the surface where I live. I doubt it would work here.
Free Energy for consumption don’t exist, but is easy to obtain a significant surplus from gravity if handled by the correct ways with the adequate technologies. (nothing like the current parasitic technologies used to obtain energy from the gravity vector).
Hydroelectric works on the gravity principle. That is why it tends to be inexpensive.
Seriously?
I mean
Seriously?
The sun evaporates water it comes back down as rain. Thats “parasitic”?
Focusing on gravity is way cool I know. A invisible force with untapped and immeasurable potential.
The sun does the work. It pulls against the gravity. Thats where the work is done. Work=energy
Sun is everything
Remember!
IM a silly old boomer doomer who knows nothing.
Suppressed knowledge gravity power will soon be everywhere. We will continue to expand exponentially on a finite planet. The elite cant stop the knowledge from leaking out. The golden age of humanity is beginning.
Free energy doesn’t exist, but you can obtain an exhaustible supply from an investment in geothermal. You can get more energy out than you put in. What’s the alternative – extinction?
extinction is a good alternative.
the end of all human suffering, confusion, boredom, hatred, greed, politics, war, famine, etc.
it’s on the way, sooner or later.
Jamie no need to dig a hole at all. The temperature difference between the ocean surface and its deep water is enough to power the world forever. We just need to learn how to exploit it.
Really Robert, I didn’t know that.
Well there you go, A heat differential to turn the turbines for electricity.
I was a bit dismayed that nobody thought it viable
idea. I think if there is the will and determination, then I’m hopeful something can be resolved.
This post is a more than a bit doomsday but is quite accurate IMO.
But there are other paths not yet taken between industrial ecosystem pillage and now imminent destruction and hunter gatherer effective extinction.
I spent the decade between 1995 and 2004 obsessed with permaculture which is a design system that works towards extreme and REAL energy and resource efficiency along with huge reductions in “pollution” which is a meaningless word. Unused resource is a more accurate description as nature has no concept of “waste”.
But even more important than that, it is an attempt to design an economy that ALIGNS itself with ecosystem function thru skillful design of systems that mimc natural ecosystems but are skewed for human benefit. It also has the ambition of increasing total ecosystem productivity by human “creation” of increased system opportunity. Think beavers- “nature’s engineers”.
To paraphrase Bill Holmgren (permaculture’s co-founder):
“If a new energy source is found permaculture will be swept into the dust bin of history.
If not IT IS PRECISELY ADAPTIVE.”
Someone should really listen carefully here.
We will see how the permies hit the ground running soon enough. IMO its one of the more sane responses to our situation. Autonomous actions dont seem likely to meet favor with those administering the great reset. Perhaps since supreme court is affirming religious rights they can call their practices religion. It pretty much is so its not a stretch. They tend to be blind to contradictions and have lots of kids both behavior associated with religion. They might as well seek formal status although It might just be easier to become a mormon and do the same practices.
Learning to grow food is one of the sanest actions you could do now IMO. Self righteous false solution promotion not so much.
Permies are trying to do their best to be sane in a unsane world. Youve got to give them that. The real ones working their ass off. The play ones not so much.
Those working with permaculture are trying to build at least part of the system. They generally assume that more of current day things will be available than I expect will be the case. I have never run into permaculture doing anything at all with grains.
Without grains, there is a real problem providing enough calories year around. A person can have a lot of animals and eat them year around, but that is not necessarily a healthful solution, and it will takes a lot of land. Humans tend to catch a lot of illnesses from animals, as well.
Nuts (hazel, macadamia etc.) provide more calories than grain per unit of land. They have the advantage that once mature the trees need no fertilizer and irrigation. Being annuals grains need to grow all their structure from scratch each year before dying whereas trees do not. That is much more efficient. I would imagine the same if true for fruit trees. We had three old apple trees in our garden that I suspect produced more calories than all that our vegetable beds could produce. They needed no maintenance at all.
That is why many mountain-dwelling tribes – eg the Basques – in Eurasia settled and established economies around chestnut trees.
A very hard life, but regular and large crops were obtained, and the nuts eaten or traded to lowlanders. .
I have a couple of friends who own a 10 acre piece of land about as far from civilisation as you can get in this neck of the woods, growing all sorts of nut trees. As this is in NE Scotland, it is quite experimental (the trees are only 3-4 years old) but they seem to be doing well. Better than expected for this cold and wet climate.
I have been trying to grow hazel nuts, but the ones I planted have not produced. Either wrong climate or wrong soil or both. Someone told me to use fertilizer with a wider range of minerals. I have done a little of that. I was also warned that many nut trees take a very long time to establish.
I haven’t seen other hazel nut trees around here. In fact, I haven’t seen other nut trees, either. Perhaps this is not the place to grow nut trees.
“Peak Oil Is Suddenly Upon Us”
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-peak-oil-era-is-suddenly-upon-us/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Thanks for the link. The story at least gets a little bit right:
Actually, there have been a bunch of us who saw the problem coming. The 1972 book, “The Limits to Growth” was first. I have been talking about the issue for a long time, and have been talking about low prices being a particular problem.
Most of the article is simply the standard wrong narrative. “Solar is the new oil.” Yes, if this means move south, so you will have more energy from the sun. No, if you think this means more solar panels.
Gail, William Stanley Jevons saw this crisis coming in 1906, in his book “The Coal Question”. You can’t say we weren’t warned.
One person who did take this warning seriously was Winston Churchill, who as First Lord of the Admiralty converted the Royal Navy from coal to oil between 1912 and 1914. Just waiting for Boris to cover the flight decks of our new aircraft carriers with solar panels.
There are a lot of hidden understandings that leaders are aware of, but don’t dare talk about in public. The energy problem has really been known, but hidden, for a long time.
US and French aircraft carriers use nuclear power, obviously. Oil for airframes, obviously too.
And no solar panels on submarines…
I see that the fantasy forecasts that used to be made for future oil production (increasing forever) are now being made for future electric car production. LOL
The IMF was warning about our “$19tn corporate debt timebomb” before the pandemic even started.
“Covid’s legacy is a corporate debt mountain… Once state support is switched off, many businesses will be unable to bear the debt they took on to survive.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ed8cb1c7-22cd-4a68-ad91-bca1f0048b54
“Global debt is set to reach $200 trillion (£149 trillion), or 265% of the world’s annual economic output, by the end of the year, S&P Global has forecast… The credit ratings giant said it amounted to a 14-point rise as a percentage of world GDP.
“Global debt-to-GDP has been trending up for many years; the pandemic simply exacerbated the rise,” S&P’s report said. Yet, despite the big jump and an expected wave of defaults over the coming year, the firm does not expect a major crisis at this stage.”
https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/global-debt-hit-200-trillion-115035556.html
S&P doesn’t expect a major crisis. I suppose I should be comforted by that statement. We have lots of simultaneous problems to choose from.
Moody’s is taking a similar line:
“Citing an array of risks heading into 2021, Moody’s Investors Service has a negative outlook on much of the global banking industry…
“The rating agency reported that more than 75% of rated banks now have a negative outlook, compared to just 14% in 2019.
““The likelihood of a financial crisis is low but there is still considerable risk going into 2021, as reflected by the fact that over three quarters of our 70 banking system outlooks – including all G-20 countries except Canada – are negative,” said Sophia Lee, associate managing director at Moody’s.”
https://www.investmentexecutive.com/news/research-and-markets/gloomy-outlook-for-global-banks-in-2021-moodys/
More than 75% of rated banks now have negative outlooks, compared to 14% in 2019, Wow!
“Global debt is set to reach $200 trillion (£149 trillion), or 265% of the world’s annual economic output…”
That looks like debt excluding financial institutions like banks and brokerages. Including them it is about $260T, or more .
A couple of years ago David Stockman, when his own articles were not pay-to-view, did one of his lengthy articles on one specific USA-based multi-national corporation, I have forgotten the name but it had three letters. The total market value of the company was about US $50 B, which was roughly the same as its debts. As long as its market value remained stable or went up, the company remained solvent and the top executives got rich. Were a ‘market correction’ to take place of say 50%, its debt obligations would be double the value of the company.
“The Reserve Bank of India left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent as it struggles to rein in inflation despite the sharp economic contraction this year…
“The persistent rise in consumer prices has narrowed the RBI’s options as it looks for ways to respond to the historic contraction brought about by the coronavirus pandemic…
“Food inflation has long proved to be a politically sensitive issue in India. High prices of staples such as onions, for example, have been associated with the fall of governments.
“This has raised concern among some economists that the country has been dragged into a cycle of “stagflation”, a period of high inflation without corresponding economic growth.”
https://www.ft.com/content/553724b3-e9a1-4836-a7df-d5bab60e8f6e
When I look at India, it is in not good shape at all. Its oil production hit a peak in 2011, and has been falling since. It natural gas production hit a peak in 2010. Its coal production had been rising, but dropped a bit in 2019.
Its currency, relative to the dollar, has been falling for a long time.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Indian-Rupee-to-the-USD-Trading-Economics-Dec.-4-2020.png
It is not doing as badly as the Argentinian Peso, but the direction is the same. Argentina was at one time an oil exporter.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/argentina-peso-vs-US-dollar-Trading-Economics-Dec-4-2020.png
If India ends its lockdown. It will be in better economic position.
This goes without saying. Unfortunately India, like so much of the global economy, was faltering before the pandemic struck:
“India has seen a economic slowdown in 2019, with the country’s real estate, automobile, construction sectors and overall consumption demand facing a serious and constant decline.”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-12/30/c_138666373.htm
“India is witnessing its biggest unrest in the farming industry in years. Tens of thousands of farmers are protesting in the capital New Delhi against law that they say will expose them to corporate exploitation.”
https://www.france24.com/en/video/20201204-indian-farmers-continue-to-protest-over-agricultural-reforms-as-new-delhi-asks-for-talk-break
Chinese banks’ excessive exposure to property is now the “biggest grey rhino risk” facing the stability of the financial system, a top financial regulator has warned…
“In addition to bank loans, many of China’s bonds, equities and trust investment products are also related to property development, which means the overall financial exposure to real estate is dangerously high, Guo noted.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3112114/china-ripe-subprime-crisis-banking-regulator-sees-property
“China’s interbank bond market regulator has warned of the risk of inflated credit ratings and widespread industry problems following a review, after defaults by highly rated state-owned enterprises triggered market panic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-bonds-ratings-regulator/china-warns-of-risks-of-inflated-credit-ratings-amid-bond-defaults-idUSL8N2IK09A
If SOEs haven’t defaulted in the past, and everyone expects local government agencies to backstop them now, it is hard to build good predictive models. But, it is clear now that they can and will default!
People with savings buy empty condos, rather than put their money in banks, as in investment.
People also buy condos to live in, often at high prices relative to their incomes. Some of these people may get laid off, with the problems in world markets.
There is a temptation for China to encourage more building of condos than needed, to prevent joblessness.
All of this leads to a likely excess of condos and falling prices, with problems for banks.
Buying empty condos sounds crazy to me, but I live where property taxes are high. I just looked and found out that China doesn’t have property taxes (yet), so that makes RE investment less onerous there.
Right! Property taxes would kill this type of investment.
The infamous ghost cities. Last I read there are over 60 of them.
This article from May 2019 refers to over 50:
Why This Country Has Over 50 Ghost Cities
https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/why-china-has-over-50-ghost-cities-2032322
Some interesting videos on YT. They remind me of our future.
‘China In Focus’, I think it was in their Thursday bulletin, did a feature (again) on thousands of people who this week lost everything they invested in peer-to-peer companies, that are to all intents and purposes scams. Typically in such scams when people lose a lot of money they get very angry, and in the ensuing demonstrations usually they are beaten up, arrested and often taken away by the police. Such scams are usually if not promoted then backed by the local government, which is why people used to confidently invest in them. The (CCP) leaders of which seem to end up enriched.
This can all be seen on videos posted by brave Chinese people on social media. I don’t use the word brave lightly. The posts are usually removed promptly (but not before China in Focus has copied them) and the posters risk arrest, at the very least.
Here is an article on the subject, not dated but looks recent to me. It states:
“Regulators have remained quiet on the overall investment losses, but Kapron says ‘millions of people’ were victims and ‘billions of RMB [Chinese yuan]’ have vaporized.”
I think it is a bit more than just a few billion.
China’s peer-to-peer lenders face crisis, investors face ruin
https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-peer-to-peer-lenders-face-crisis-investors-face-ruin/a-47634861
“The UK has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other developed economy except Argentina, a global watchdog says.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9006617/UK-hit-harder-Covid-developed-economy-except-Argentina.html
“This is no longer a health crisis, it’s a total economic catastrophe:
“…The UK economy is shrinking at its fastest pace in three centuries. Government borrowing will reach a colossal £400 billion during 2020 – £15,000 for every household. That’s well over twice the debt we took on immediately after the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/01/no-longer-health-crisisits-total-economic-catastrophe/
Yes but the borrowing is from itself.
Bank of England purchase of government bonds now stands at £875 Billion up £425 Billion this year. The BoE will print whatever the politicians need to keep things going.
Wow! It is easier to purchase government bonds than it is to create jobs that are necessary and pay well.
Any interest due on bonds to the BoE is handed back to the UK Treasury. So the cost to the government of all this debt is zero. BoE owned debt now accounts for 44% of all outstanding debt. Unwinding this position is going to be tricky to say the least.
The borrowing, of course, is to try to keep the economy from completely falling apart.
Boris Johnson and others should have figured out that shutdowns would make a bad economic situation much, much worse.
“Janet Yellen warned of “more devastation” in the economy if the US failed to address the fallout from the pandemic and its disproportionate toll on low-income families, after she was introduced by Joe Biden as America’s next Treasury secretary…
“Her comments were delivered amid doubts that Mr Biden will be able to implement his sweeping economic agenda, which calls for a big boost to government spending next year, partially funded by higher taxes on businesses and wealthy households.”
https://www.ft.com/content/2f32d7ab-9d15-458d-9f3e-a32171990e8f
“Deflation in the Eurozone raises chance of half-trillion stimulus from the ECB:
“Economists expect as much as €500bn of extra asset purchases from Christine Lagarde next week.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/01/deflation-raises-chance-half-trillion-stimulus-ecb/
“The Bank of Japan is ready to extend beyond March a range of steps aimed at easing corporate funding strains, its deputy governor said…
“…the lingering pain from the pandemic will keep any recovery moderate and companies under financial stress, with risks to the world’s third-largest economy being skewed to downside.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-boj/boj-ready-to-extend-aid-for-pandemic-hit-firms-deputy-governor-says-idUKKBN28C0RR
More and more asset purchases to try to solve the loss of jobs problem!
“World’s Central Banks Have Set Us Up for Catastrophic Fall …fiat currency credibility is being tested to virtual destruction by today’s extreme levels of money printing. We have already had one bad wobble…
“…without the good offices of their central banks, governments would not be able to support the very high levels of debt they are taking on to fight the pandemic…
“…what then happens to government solvency once that moment arrives when interest rates need to rise again to bear down on increased inflation?
“People say this would be a nice problem to have in view of today’s deflationary pressures. For a high debt economy, I very much doubt it. I’m just about old enough to remember the stagflation of the 1970s after what might be thought of as a similarly delusional age of fiscal dominance and financial repression. For the economy, it was not a happy time.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/01/worlds-central-banks-have-set-us-catastrophic-fall/
“The U.K. Treasury is getting almost 10 billion pounds ($13 billion) a year in interest on its own debt under the Bank of England’s bond-buying plan.
“That’s the curious result of a massive increase in bond issuance to fight the pandemic crisis, combined with the dramatic reduction in BOE interest rates.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/u-k-treasury-reaps-13-billion-bonus-from-boe-bond-buying
I am afraid of a major drop of international trade, with all of the debt that is being issued. In fact, it might be tied in with a derivatives crisis, relating to changing currency relativities.
Dear Gail,
The following rough notes are not meant to be critical of you at all. I ‘m in the trenches of online opinion shaping, and find it astonishing to be so utterly alone out there. I think we can do a better job of addressing mass delusion if we understand how total (totalitarian?) is its scope.
Artleads
MORE ADVOCACY NEEDED
– to underplay advocacy, propaganda, public campaigning against the religion of renewables. The argument that you can abuse nature all you want, because renewables can replace support systems that you meanwhile destroy is EVERYWHERE. While Gail has done a better job of countering that myth than anyone else I know of, the countering is nowhere remotely at the scale required to remove “renewables-can-solve-it” as an argument for avoidable environmental destruction.
– Proposing that make-work jobs (which are incidentally based on environmental destruction) serve some useful purpose that keeps BAU standing makes no sense to people with my views. That’s because such work has no spiritual or cultural value, and without these the human species is not worth saving (in our opinion). Destructive make-work is far from necessary for job creation, given the plethora of need (and opportunity?) to do more constructive work.
THE CRITICAL DANGER OF THE MOMENT
– Trump’s mistake in giving his opponents so much to latch on to to bring him down. Seems like he courted disaster by playing into MSM’s nonstop negative stereotyping when he might better have tried to peel liberals away from the left?
– First Trump, then Facebook? How can an unworkable system-in-denial accept open discussion (such as can still avoid the filters at Facebook)?
Thank you, Artleads, an analysis with which I largely agree. But allow me respectfully to disagree about your proposed remedies. As Oswald Spengler said, “A power can be overthrown only by another power”. And the power of persuasion by individuals, however right they may be in principle, cannot match the concentrated power of today’s organs of propaganda.
What is left? A quote from another wise and prescient man, who also feared the power of a press controlled by a treasonous elite, Count Otto von Bismarck: “… nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden … sondern durch Eisen und Blut.”
Original here, and English translation linked:
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/blut_und_eisen.htm
Thanks Robert, I wasn’t sure whose words I was reading, but I loved the style, and adored the blood and iron part. Marcus Garvey would (or most likely did) approve.
The “other force” of Spengler’s might not be the old blood and iron type; it could be blood and iron but just not easily recognized as such. You take advantage of internal contradictions (like those Gail points to re energy and limits) that TPTB don’t expect you to. It’s not about a hard or immediate overthrow. You give the enemy rope to hang himself. Even so, no one can do THAT alone.
The leaders need a new religion, and “renewables” seems to be at the center of it. It is difficult to counter a new religious belief.
But you DO counter it. I use YOUR points to shut the biggest zealots up. Because your points are so commonsensical and balanced, they work best. We just don’t have a wide enough network of advocacy using your approach. They’re expecting us to come with frothy emotions, and we come with Gail’s quiet and sober explanations. They’re not used to that.
I used this on one outstanding crusader for progress. It’s full of holes, and anyone posting here would shred it, but it kept this guy quiet for a bit: (Something to the effect)
You can’t make a solar panel with another solar panel. That given, you have to put a lot more resources into making your solar panel than you get back from using it.
I’m proposing a counter religio, and it’s centered on land and land use, but also historic preservation (a topic relating to preserving and restoring buildings and built infrastructure no longer deemed “modern.”) So this new religion is somewhat anti-modernist, and its values are not amenable to change through rational discussion. They are religious, and strictly non-negotiable. Which doesn’t quite mean that science is eschewed.
“Under pressure from investors and governments alike to cut emissions, major European oil companies are ploughing billions into renewable energy but are struggling to craft business plans that promise the returns shareholders have come to expect.
“Europe’s big oil firms, however, have another card to play: their vast global networks of filling stations.
“BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total all say they are betting on higher profits from sales of groceries and snacks at their retail networks, which will still be an essential port of call for motorists in an electric era.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-europe-retail/the-new-black-gold-big-oil-bets-on-retail-networks-in-an-electric-era-idUSKBN28D002
“More than £1.75bn has been wiped from the pension funds of councils across the UK after three years of crashing oil investments, research shows…
“The data collected shows councils’ investments in the companies – which included BP and Royal Dutch Shell – collapsed by half to £1.8bn from their value of £3.6bn.”
https://www.professionalpensions.com/news/4024449/councils-gbp2bn-pension-fund-hole-failed-oil-investments
Pension funds everywhere have depended on oil company stocks as a major type of investment. They were considered “safe,” and paid high dividends.
I think that, until recently, BP and Shell were the largest payers into UK pension funds. For all their problems, they might still be.
BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total to make their profit from sales of snacks!!! What is wrong with this statement?
But wait for the second shoe: the snack powered automobile.
There is a Hershey highway joke there somewhere.
Yabba dabba do!
It is hard to believe that selling soft drinks and candy bars will replace the revenue of millions of barrels of oil!
And….if consumers do not have the money to buy higher priced gasoline, the how would the have money to buy all those snacks?
They could save a lot of money by walking to the gas stations for their Mars bars.
Gas stations are going to have to sell their snacks at awfully high price to make up for the loss of oil revenue.
I will believe an electric car era when I see it.
“Chevron Corporation is reducing its capital and exploratory budget for the next five years by billions of U.S. dollars compared to previous guidance as it looks to save its dividend payouts in the post-pandemic world.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Oil-Major-Chevron-Slashes-Spending-Plans-Following-COVID-Crisis.html
“Total SE is in talks to divest from an oil project in Iraqi Kurdistan, people familiar with the matter said, as it continues to offload assets in a bid to trim debt…
“Like its peers, Total has been selling assets to curb debt as plunging oil and gas prices sap earnings.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/total-said-to-be-in-talks-to-sell-stake-in-kurdistan-oil-field?srnd=deals
Oil companies are doing whatever they can to keep the system going.
“Denmark has brought an immediate end to new oil and gas exploration in the Danish North Sea as part of a plan to phase out fossil fuel extraction by 2050.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/04/denmark-to-end-new-oil-and-gas-exploration-in-north-sea
“The UK’s North Sea oil and gas industry should agree to phase out production through a series of five-year targets to help its 260,00 strong workforce migrate to clean energy sectors, according to a report.
“The plan would require the UK and Scottish governments to scrap a controversial policy that calls on North Sea companies to extract as much oil and gas as they can from the ageing basin.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/03/uk-north-sea-industry-urged-to-phase-out-oil-and-gas-extraction
“to help its 260,00 strong workforce migrate to clean energy sectors”
Haha haha
More like the unemployment line or UBI!
>>The UK’s North Sea oil and gas industry should agree to phase out production
Propaganda nonsense. The amount of oil found offshore UK for the last 20 years has been tiny. Oil production at least, gas I don’t know, is being phased out now because there is so little left. And what little is being produced now, it is difficult to see how the companies are making any money, when the platforms produce so little oil (only one produces more than 30,000 b/d, Buzzard), they are ancient and surely require a lot of maintenance to be kept going, and require a good sized work force transferred on and off shore by helicopter. And supplied by ship. All combined with low oil prices.
I don’t think civilization has 5 years left, but if it lasts that long, UK offshore oil production will not. The economics just don’t add up, what with the platforms getting older, production and oil prices both headed south.
Real reason for stopping exploration: Not expecting to find oil and gas that is profitable to extract at current prices.
Where does this seem to be heading?
There are pledges from governments to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and make all cars, all electricity generation and all heating “zero-emission” by 20XX.
Even going part of the way with this agenda will slash demand for oil, coal and gas, and so prices for what is allowed to be extracted will remain low, production will be low, energy taxation under such circumstances will be difficult, and a lot of those Leonardo sticks that are supporting each other in the economy will come crashing down.
We must hope against hope that the rest of the sticks are being held in place by gum tape or superglue. This future does not compute. Alles ist kaput! Everything is broken!
https://youtu.be/OqD_j10MX0o
Every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
This is how the master sings it:
https://youtu.be/egSoj3g99gY
OFF TOPIC
REQUESTING HELP FOR RESEARCH ON LITERATURE
As part of my work in the Caribbean, I came across an old public clock that is older than Big Ben. I found that it came from the Barrett estate in England and that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem about it called: “Ode to the St. Ann’s Bay Clock.” If anyone can help me to track down that poem, I would be most grateful to them.
I have her complete works, Artleads – the trouble will be finding the book among the tottering piles and surviving the ensuing dust clouds!
Read about the ‘chattel houses’ of Barbados recently: such graceful, simple buildings which you will know well.
The author said they were cool in the summer due to the clever use of ventilation.
Pleasant to think of former slaves building nice houses for themselves.
Thanks Xabier; that’s the exact issue that I’m focused on. After Britain abolished slavery, (c. 1838 in the case I know) already freed blacks and mulattos, as well as working (non-plantocracy) whites were joined in the towns by ex-slave crafts and service people of a wide range of skills. All of them lived side by side in wood houses (big or small) of admirable utility and aesthetic quality. This to me is the high point of British colonial civilization (the middle to late 19th century in a world of elegant, geometrically simple wooden buildings). This is what concrete and rebar has almost entirely erased.
I wish there was some way for us to communicate outside of OFW.
A WORD TO THE WISE ABOUT WOOD
I am wood, Wood is me.
I don’t mind if you’re some other building material, like stone or brick or glass–even concrete in some cases.
But don’t ask me to be you, and see things your way.
Recognize me for what I am, and I’ll return the favor to you.
I don’t care who you are, or what your reasons, if you demolish my wood house I consign you to hell. And along with you, your children and their children.
PLEASE don’t tell me that you have to put food on the table, which is why you drove the bulldozer. I won’t be impressed.
Again, PLEASE get this into your noggin, if you have one. Your children are less important to me than my wood building.
Burn down my wood building and I’ll burn down your stone building, like I did the church I was christened in.
Artleads, my research indicates the poem has never been published, and the only copy is owned by a private collector in Jamaica. Hoping I’m wrong…
Robert: Thank you very much! This makes it clear why my superficial search got nowhere.
Artleads: luckily I found the 2 vol. collected edition of E B Browning’s poems quite quickly, but the poem you seek is not there.
Thanks, Xabier. Robert F came to the conclusion that the poem was never published, and is only in a private collector’s hands in Jamaica. The Jamaica Colonial Heritage FB group has offered no help in locating those hands.
Apart from that, I’ve been very much wanting to talk to you about Jamaica’s Spanish period (not sure how to calibrate it–Columbus first landed in 1594? But the fist capital (and the third in the Americas) was established at Sevilla La Nueva in 1509. I’m puzzled by how that nearly 150 years till Penn and Venables in 1655 have somehow been discounted as part of Jamaica’s colonial history. Would love to hear your thought (off OFW if Gail can help).
Her juvenilia is dispersed among private collections due to sales at auction houses. That may be the place to look. She composed odes as a kid in Jamaica with some military uncle or something who was into odes himself. It would likely be best to contact her archivists directly, some of whom give contact details on the web.
The fine people from Surplus comment section linked:
“Ehrlich vs. Tverberg bet” by Blair Fix
-focus mainly on the latter chapter “SCENARIO 2: OIL PRICES COLLAPSE”
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/12/03/as-we-exhaust-our-oil-it-will-get-cheaper-but-less-affordable/
I have been reading Blair Blix’s blog posts of late. He does some good work. But I have the sense that he is having the “a-ha” moments about oil and energy etc. that Gail has been providing to many of us for some many years.
It will be interesting to see where his thinking goes about the social sciences and solutions to society’s problems as he absorbs and processes the possibility of a rapid decline in energy supply to the global economy.
Very happy that Blair gives Gail Tverberg full credit for the idea of a price collapse as energy becomes less affordable.
We could still see some rapid, transient oil price spikes?
We could still see some revaluation/price change of oil upward if the dollar loses reserve currency status and oil is prices in other benchmarks?
I am still unclear about whether fuels refined from oil – gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc. – could increase in prices even as oil prices decline. More likely the supply of those fuels diminishes, possibly with actual shortages. Shortages of diesel fuel would be the most impactful? And likely first hard constraint we face in an oil output decline. Diesel shortages would be bad thing. 🙁
Jet fuel is not too different from diesel, so I would not worry about running short of diesel any time soon. Refineries can change somewhat the output of their mixtures, sometimes using “cracking” to make long molecules shorter.
Think of fuels as “providing jobs that pay well.” When the fuels are missing, jobs are missing as well. People without jobs can’t pay their debts, either. It is the missing jobs that tend to keep fuel prices down.
I doubt that many people will ever think that the problems were are encountering now actually reflect a shortage. They will think of our problems as a COVID-19 problem, or a problem with government policy.
It has been stated by not few bloggers and/or commenters over the years that conventional (high EROEI) resources is the backbone of the economy, and that the economy will follow a similar trajectory to the extraction of conventional resources.
Makes sense when you think of it. Easy and affordable resource that we can draw from to run both the economy AND explore less affordable resources like shale, deep water, oil sands and renewable energy. Basically burning cheap oil so we can extract expensive oil.
Thanks! I found it very interesting, and made a comment there (awaiting moderation).
An excellent article. The graphs explain very simply with real economic data why Gail is spot on with oil prices falling.
The other reason oil prices are very unlikely to rise much any time soon is because at least within OPEC, there is still quite a bit of spare capacity (for now). As soon as prices look like they are rising, one or more OPEC countries (in reality Saudi Arabia) will increase production, at the very least preventing prices rising much higher. That is precisely what happened this week, when SA announced they were increasing production by 0.5 M b/d.
I should imagine oil products will become much less affordable next year for the tens of millions (and their dependents) in Europe and the USA who lose their jobs and loans / free hand outs are not enough or no longer available.
Right. People losing their jobs in the US and Europe will contribute to the low demand.
Also, without airplane schedules rising back to normal (and beyond), energy consumption cannot rise. This is not an affordability issue as much as a problem with COVID-19 spreading in all forms of public transit, including airplanes. Passenger rail and bus have a similar problem.
Demand for oil, as well as prices, were too low before COVID-19 hit. COVID-19 simply made a bad situation worse.
This is it! Or The Writing is. On the Wall….
Simon Casey and Kevin Crowley
Thu, December 3, 2020, 10:34 AM EST
(Bloomberg) — Chevron Corp. followed arch-rival Exxon Mobil Corp. in cutting long-term capital spending, responding to this year’s slump in oil and expectations that prices won’t rebound any time soon.
Chevron’s capital and exploration budget will be $14 billion to $16 billion annually from 2022 to 2025, according to a statement Thursday, down 27% from the mid-point of its previous forecast.
The revision reflects 2020’s savage drop in crude, which has led the industry to make deep cuts to production, jobs and future investment plans. While oil has rebounded from the worst of its slump, prices remain below $50 a barrel, and the pandemic continues to weigh on global demand for petroleum.
European rivals Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc have used the crisis to accelerate their pivot toward low-carbon fuels. Although the American titans remain committed to fossil fuels, large budget reductions mean less future investment in traditional oil and natural gas. Chevron’s annual budgets for the next five years are less than half the level of 2014, when crude traded for more than $100 a barrel.
Chevron’s plan also illustrates evolving priorities. Spending at its $45 billion Tengiz oil project in Kazakhstan, which has gone massively over budget, is expected to decline, while expenditures will rise in the Permian Basin and the Gulf of Mexico. The cuts are bad news for oilfield servicers, which rely on spending by explorers for their income.
The company’s announcement comes three days after Exxon Mobil Corp. said it too will reduce in capital spending, to $25 billion a year through 2025, a $10 billion reduction from its pre-pandemic target. Exxon, which also announced the biggest writedown in the company’s modern history, is struggling to generate enough cash to maintain its dividend.
The end of the Seven Sisters is upon us…run for the hills!
PS that’s not gonna save you 😜
There is no sense in investing in new oil output, when prices are as low as they are now!
What are “low-carbon” fuels?
Thanks for an insightful article, Gail can you please provide your insights regarding China’s developing trade war with Australia and its relation to its collapsing local coal prices.
Is America first evolving into China first, as I see it as countries spend more on energy imports relative to their exports they are forced to limit conspicuous consumption, is this basically how globalization will unravel?
I have been trying to look into this a bit. A little background:
1. The world’s demand for coal is down this year, since factories are operating less.
2. China’s demand for coal is down this year. This is a chart of China’s coal imports, which have been falling rapidly. The situation in late 2020 looks like the late 2015 to early 2016 period, when the Brent Oil price dropped to $37.66.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/China-imports-of-coal-Trading-Economics-Dec-4-2020.png
3. China is running into the same “Glut of coal problem” that oil producers have run into in the past, with more coal coming into the ports than it can possibly use. Guardian published an article Nov. 28 called, China increases coal import quotas but Australia likely to be excluded. It says,
So there is a lot of coal, from a lot of different countries that is sitting waiting to be offloaded. My guess is that coal demand for China is not going to bounce back up quickly, with parts of the world still having major problems.
4. China desperately needs to get the price of coal, within China, up, in order to make its own mines profitable. Keeping imported coal in floating storage is one way of trying to do this. I don’t have a coal price chart for China for 2020, but this is a general coal futures chart. You can see prices recently have been quite low, but have bounced back up from the bottom somewhat.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Coal-Futures-Prices-Dec-4-2020-Trading-Economics.png
The prices of coal in India are in even worse shape, relative to past prices, almost certainly related to its long shutdown:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Coal-India-Ltd.-Prices-Dec-4.png
5. Australia is by far the source of the biggest quantity of coal imports to China. China clearly doesn’t need this much coal imports going forward. If it needs to cut back, Australia’s coal exports pretty much have to be reduced. China can get plenty of coal from other suppliers.
6. Australia really angered China by accusing it of being the source of virus causing COVID-19 and, in fact, letting it out of its lab to infect the world, early this fall. I am not sure if I can find the article about this now.
7. Like other countries, China is having real difficulty getting enough jobs that pay well. There may, or may not, be a real issue with Australian wine prices. If China can produce its own wine, it would like to be able to do so, to help its own jobs situation, and get its own demand for coal up.
We are, indeed, seeing globalization unravel in real time.
Yet, if China could cheaply distribute that stored coal all over the planet (IN A CONTROLLED AND CALIBRATED FASHION) it could keep some sort of stepped-down demand going for a very long time. That would take a fairly brilliant campaign to pull off. It would be a good geopolitical move on China’s part as well.
rather like a guy I knew, many years ago who worked for the local water company
when somebody complained about the cost of water, he used to tell them they could come and collect as much as the wanted—for free