.
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.
[Quote] He was survived by five of his seven children, 61 grandchildren, 338 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren, a grand total of 410 descendants . . .
What did John Miller think about his family? Did it worry him to see it growing so large? Indeed it did. Significantly, his concerns were the very ones that the demographers, the economists, the sociologists, and other serious students of world population problems have been voicing. He was not an educated man, for the Amish still believe eight grades of education in a one-room country school is sufficient, but John Miller summarized it in one simple question he constantly repeated, “Where will they all find good farms?” . . . [End quote]
http://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-great-pause-week-39-amishmash.html
The well-off tended to have a lot of surviving offspring. The poor died early and had very few offspring. It is the overall balance that makes a difference. This is related to “survival of the best adapted.” Of course, once population exceeds resource availability, epidemics are likely.
sums up the innate selfishness and stupidity of humankind—-where will they all find farms—
under no circumstances could he admit to being wrong
he was obeying god’s holy law.
“How Covid-19 has worsened China’s growing north-south economic divide:
“…if an economy’s jobs are in one place, and the people needed to fill them are in another, then that economy has a major problem. If that was true of a modest-sized country like Britain, imagine how much truer it must be for a giant economy like China.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3113757/how-covid-19-has-worsened-chinas-growing-north-south-economic
“Xi Jinping’s new economic focus on China’s demand reform borrows ideas from Marx more than Keynes:
“•China’s emphasis on the ‘demand side’ shows Beijing is looking at structural and institutional reasons underlying underconsumption.
“•An all-out stimulus in 2008 arrested economic slowdown but also poisoned government and corporate balance sheets, making it a less-viable option now.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3113876/xi-jinpings-new-economic-focus-chinas-demand-reform-borrows
This is the problem I talked about generally: Warm areas can expect to do better than cold areas. China’s north is filled with old industries, including coal and oil, and factories built years ago. It is like Detroit in the US, and I expect many of the industries in the UK. According to the article:
There is also an East/West divide, with the East (near the coast), doing a whole lot better than the landlocked west.
I can imagine part of China succeeding, while another part collapses.
[Quote] Billionaire vaccine pusher Bill Gates wants local businesses and services to remain closed, with lockdowns, masks and social distancing continuing throughout all of next year and into 2022.
[Tweet] Bill Gates is not a doctor, not even a Jill Biden doctor.
https://summit.news/2020/12/14/video-bill-gates-says-lockdowns-should-carry-on-into-2022/
Let’s be extra careful, I suppose is the theory. Our health care system is fragile; we need to stretch out cases as long as possible.
“Deep Thoughts” by Bill Gates (sinister like Jack Handey’s but just not as funny):
Bill:
Life is not fair; get used to it.
If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it’s your mistake.
We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.
Jack:
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.
To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of scary. I’ve wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.
Thanks for the amusing quotes, Bayou. I know that Handey is the actual comedian, but Gates comes across as the true clown.
“The UK government is “sleepwalking into an unemployment crisis” and needs to take urgent action to create jobs, support training, manage business debt and repair the welfare system, according to a report published on Monday…
““The government is giving the impression that the economic crisis will be short lived and that everything will be fine by the spring . . . That is completely wrong,” said Michael Forsyth, the Conservative chair of the committee.”
https://www.ft.com/content/70212973-984a-40ef-a67c-5abec99c0e67
“Following a burst of vaccine-induced euphoria, the outlook [for the UK economy] sadly remains a little bleak.
“And with it, the spotlight will shift once again to the government’s handling of lockdown and the economic support for households and businesses feeling the pinch. Only this time with the added chaos of Brexit.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/13/extending-uk-furlough-alone-isnt-enough-to-check-growing-poverty-covid-19
“New survey results from UK debt help company, PayPlan, found that during a year where two-thirds saw an income drop due to Covid-19…
“A lack of income forced 55% of people to cut back on their food spend and almost half of people missed a meal because they couldn’t afford food in the first place. More worryingly, 54% said they have gone a whole day without eating altogether.”
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/more-half-go-whole-day-19452757
The survey is one conducted by a debt-help company, so presumably it is focused on people who are in terrible shape to begin with. Having 54% of this group go a whole day without eating does sound like a problem.
The article talks about mothers being unable to feed their children, too.
then there’s 2 days without eating
when you get past 3 days without eating, you have a social disorder problem
“Anti-vaxxer protesters have massed in London amid angry scenes as it was confirmed the capital will be put into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9051681/Anti-vax-army-clash-police-outside-Parliament-London.html
“The UK government is “sleepwalking into an unemployment crisis” and needs to take urgent action to create jobs, support training, manage business debt and repair the welfare system, …”
Um… thought one: if you are creating jobs, why do you need a welfare system, repaired or otherwise? Thought two: how can the government create jobs? Jobs are created by those who need what those jobs produce, and the free market is very good at that (Say’s Law). And three: should not businesses manage their own debt? That is Samuelson’s “creative destruction” in action: businesses that do not manage their debt go bankrupt, thereby releasing scarce resources for those better able to manage them.
Sorry to bore you once again with classical economics.
>>and needs to take urgent action to create jobs, support training, manage business debt and repair the welfare system
I would have thought that step number one would be to open up the country again, stop all lockdowns, get rid of compulsory face masks, get people out and about, and get back to normal. Talk of urgent action to do anything is pointless unless we do that first. But I don’t get the impression, here in the UK at least, that ‘getting back to normal’ is part of the plan.
“It does seem contradictory that US rates are rising at the same time the economy is weakening! But, that’s exactly what we have. And it is based on the perception that the Congress can and will enact new stimulus, if not immediately, then soon after Mr. Biden takes office.
“In addition, there is a relatively new economic notion called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT) that postulates that a sovereign nation can print as much money as it desires, the only barrier being the nation’s inflation tolerance. And, if there is no “inflation,” then no harm, no foul.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/12/13/inflation-expectations-rise-even-as-the-economy-cools/?sh=1a78745d79b4
“The credit crunch is hitting small US companies as money flows to big business:
“…the central bank’s largesse has failed to trickle down to a large part of corporate America, with smaller businesses suffering the worst credit crunch since the financial crisis.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1ae439b1-75e7-4b55-876c-66533ac37db8
“The spectre of hunger is haunting soaring numbers of families …across the US. Sudden job losses, especially among lower-income service workers, are mainly to blame…
“In a blunt illustration of our unbalanced economy, the Washington region, one of the world’s wealthiest metropolitan areas, is home to about 600,000 people unsure of where they’ll get their next meal. That’s up by 200,000 people since the recession began…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/growing-threat-of-hunger-in-a-wealthy-region-is-blunt-example-of-economic-inequality/2020/12/13/614140c4-3bfd-11eb-9276-ae0ca72729be_story.html
“The US recession of 2020 is a retirement crisis recession.
“Millions of older workers quickly lost their jobs, while the pandemic also sharply increased risks to their health.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2020/12/14/the-pandemic-recession-is-also-a-retirement-crisis-recession/?sh=4b5657315b36
According to the article, unemployment rates are higher among older people:
The article does not talk about the future of private pension plan payments and the future of Social Security from the government. The prospects of these are dim over the long term. Perhaps they can make it though 2021, but how many more years is uncertain.
this pandemic has stopped ‘money flow’
which is the commercial equivalent of the tide going out and revealing who’s been swimming nekkid.
i.e. that money isn’t propped up by energy input
“After the disease, the debt. After the plague, the pile of IOUs. It is a veritable mountain — a reminder that the original public debt in medieval Venice went by the name monte.
“According to the International Monetary Fund’s October Fiscal Monitor, the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have prompted a plethora of fiscal measures amounting to $11.7 trillion, around 12% of global GDP — and that number has probably risen since it was calculated on Sept. 11.
““In 2020,” according to the Fund, “government deficits are set to surge by an average of 9 percent of GDP, and global public debt is projected to approach 100 percent of GDP, a record high.”
In advanced economies, public debt relative to output has increased as much since the late 1970s as it did between 1914 and 1945.
“Together, the global financial crisis and the pandemic have had roughly the same doubling effect as World War II… The pandemic’s financial cost …looks similar to that of a world war.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-13/after-coronavirus-pandemic-world-faces-mountain-of-debt
“The Institute of International Finance estimates that nearly $7tn of emerging-market debt will fall due in 2021, triple this year’s level. This is not a crisis that will materialise at some indeterminate future date. The dog will start yowling next year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/14/why-the-covid-economic-crisis-has-hit-poorer-nations-less-deeply-than-feared
“In advanced economies, public debt relative to output has increased as much since the late 1970s as it did between 1914 and 1945.”
We are dealing with a myth that debt can rise infinitely. Well, yes and no. Partial bubbles have popped before. How much will pop now?
So, how long do galaxies last?
Until they burn out or combine and burn out – trillions of years.
All that is really happening is that the dust of the big bang is converging into clumps through gravity and the hydrogen is burning up as stars.
Our solar system has burnt up 90% of its hydrogen.
In the ‘end’, only the matter will be left in the cold, dark, dead universe – and the black holes.
Wooooo.
Likely there will be another big bang and it will all start again and the night light up.
> How Do Galaxies Die?
…. So if a galaxy like the Milky Way is just a collection of stars, isn’t that it? Doesn’t a galaxy die when its last star dies?
But you already know a galaxy is more than just stars. There’s also vast clouds of gas and dust. Some of it is primordial hydrogen left from the formation of the Universe 13.8 billion years ago.
All stars in the Milky Way formed from this primordial hydrogen. It and other similar sized galaxies produce 7 bouncing baby stars every year. Sadly, ours has used up 90% of its hydrogen, and star formation will slow down until it both figuratively, and literally, runs out of gas.
The Milky Way will die after it’s used all its star-forming gas, when all of the stars we have, and all those stars yet to be born have died. Stars like our Sun can only last for 10 billion years or so, but the smallest, coolest red dwarfs can last for a few trillion years.
That should be the end, all the gas burned up and every star burned out. And that’s how it would be if our Milky Way existed all alone in the cosmos.
Fortunately, we’re surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies, which get merged into our Milky Way. Each merger brings in a fresh crop of stars and more hydrogen to stoke the furnaces of star formation.
There are bigger galaxies out there too. Andromeda is bearing down on the Milky Way right now, and will collide with us in the next few billion years.
When that happens, the two will merge. Then there’ll be a whole new era of star formation as the unspent gas in both galaxies mix together and are used up.
Eventually, all galaxies gravitationally bound to each other in this vicinity will merge together into a giant elliptical galaxy.
We see examples of these fossil galaxies when we look out into the Universe. Here’s M49, a supermassive elliptical galaxy. Who knows how many grand spiral galaxies stoked the fires of that gigantic cosmic engine?
Elliptical galaxies are dead galaxies walking. They’ve used up all their reserves of star forming gas, and all that’s left are the longer lasting stars. Eventually, over vast lengths of time, those stars will wink out one after the other, until the whole thing is the background temperature of the Universe.
As long as galaxies have gas for star formation, they’ll keep thriving. Once it’s gonzo, or a dramatic merger uses all the gas in one big party, they’re on their way out….
https://www.universetoday.com/120587/how-do-galaxies-die/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIMmdsU9n5o
(“Rebel Without a Cause” planetarium scene)
Rebellion is soooo 1950s adolescent.
I was thinking of the astronomer’s depressing lecture. Although I could be James Dean making animal noises in the back.
Be careful that you do not get sent to eternal hell fire, I hear that is well depressing.
It depends if the universe is an open ended process in which matter (energy) can materialize and does so continuously. Of which there exist no rational reason to doubt.
Creation myths, big bangs, black holes and soot death is just that. Myths.
Repeat after me:
There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely.
Which of course means that it is as evolving as the processes which is governing life on Gaia.
All process which has state transition exist in a medium that itself changes state.
The biggest mistake of the humans seems to be the identification of the depleting external energy with some higher power. The humans use the external energy for the manipulation of the laws of physics in order to increase their population. They feel that it is not just, if the laws of physics prevail, that some higher power is cruel, which is a complete misunderstanding.
The Bible names it as the original sin: you will be like God, says the devil in the corresponding story. After being expelled from the Garden of Eden, they must toil, in order to keep their population higher.
Using additional energy is like bribery: when you use it, you get something, which is above the standard, i. e. not sustainable.
Why do the humans wonder that the collapse is inevitable, when they do not respect the laws of physics?
The only driving force that seems to me is behind the human behaviour is the genetic mutations. There is no other logic for increasing the population above the limits.
No species is ultimately sustainable. Niches change and species eventually lose the struggle for survival. An estimated 99.9% of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, over 5 billion species. On average they last 1 to 10 million years and that varies widely.
Likely a period of population contraction and a fresh evolution of H. s. will follow the fossil fuel period of population expansion. It will happen when it happens, so it is not something that we need to ‘worry’ about.
Capitalism is unsustainable. Once capitalism is gone, the species will be able to think clearer about its situation on the planet. Capitalism drives population expansion and economic growth, which are unsustainable.
The capitalist state relies on a constant expansion of the workforce to maintain GDP growth, especially with collapsed productivity growth since 1970s and especially since 2008. Capitalism is all about profit and growth, it is built into the system.
So, H. s. faces the end of capitalism, the end of industrialism, the collapse of the population, and a fresh evolution of the species on the basis of ‘either survive or don’t.’ It is an exciting period from the macro perspective.
That sort of thing goes on all the time. Species expand and contract, they either evolve to adapt to changing circumstances or they go extinct. It is not a ‘problem’, it is how the planet ‘works’, how it has always worked and always will.
Frankly, none of it really ‘means’ anything or ‘matters’. If H. s. go extinct then frankly there will be no one around to whom it matters or means anything. It would not really ‘matter’ if the entire planet went extinct, that concept that does not exist outside of the human mind.
So, ‘all is well and will be well.’ It is all matter in motion, energetic principles and organic drives at the end of the day. Eventually the planet will be gone and the entire galaxy. The cosmos will contract to a single point, explode again and history will repeat again eternally.
You believe in a “big crunch”? There doesn’t appear to be any evidence our universe will end in this way. It’s now well established that the galaxies are flying away from each other at an ever faster rate.
Wouldn’t a contracting universe violate the second law of thermodynamics in any case? (Robert might know the answer to this.)
Sure, a cyclic cosmos need not be conceived as a crunch scenario, that is more of a popular metaphor for the cyclic theory in general.
I would not say that I ‘believe’ in a cyclic cosmos, because I am not a theoretical physicist, so I am not really in a position to debate that.
Roger Penrose does think that it is correct though. He claims that background radiation is evidence for it, and that is still being debated by the theoreticians.
I am not sure that anyone really knows at this point, but I am happy to hear your own opinions on cyclical vs linear.
Do you ‘believe’ in a linear cosmos? Is there much positive evidence for that theory?
there is no ‘evidence’ for any of it
we cannot begin to determine the limits of our own universe, or its origins, let alone multiverses
so anything beyond that can only come under ‘belief’
Or creation myth.
There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has and will exist indefinitely.
The Universe is the sum of dissipative structures. Each individual dissipative structure has a finite lifetime.
If the creation of dissipative structures is infinite, then the universe perhaps has and will exist indefinitely. We would not expect to see any trend toward greater complexity.
If the creation of dissipative structures started at some point (big bang, perhaps), then there would seem to be a significant likelihood of the creation of dissipative structures ending at some point. If the universe is moving toward more complexity, this would be an indication of a start and an end of the universe. Researchers seem to believe that we are moving toward more complexity.
There very well could be a “God” behind all of the creation of dissipative structures, as well as all of the stores of energy that allow the dissipative structures to work. This God also likely created the laws of how the system works. There are a lot of things we don’t understand.
I only ‘believe’ in myself, everything else is just a theory.
And I am not always convinced that ‘myself’ exists either.
easy to tell—–all depends whether you see a reflection when you look in a mirror—or cast a shadow,
A dissipative structure in what context? What applies locally might not apply locally. If the galactic core spouts out new matter spawned out of interaction with electromagnetic processes existing as the intergalactic network of current filaments, then the local effect of entropy generation does not hold for a galaxy.
There exist no rational reason to believe that the universe was created in a Big Bang. Nor is there any reason o believe it will cease to be. At least in the way we envision non existence.
One thing is for sure, it is much more of a riddle within a riddle covered in mystery than conforms with humanoid hallucinations of objective reality.
Rise from the dead and drink blood, who does that remind you of?
my mother in law
I believe that the universe will go on expanding forever and experience a heat death. Quite a depressing ending, really. A big crunch would be much more satisfying. I remember hearing about one theory that once the universe is uniform everywhere dimension becomes a meaningless concept and therefore the universe could be considered to be at a point and once more primed for a big bang. Maybe this is Roger Penrose theory?
As fond as I am of astronomy, I can’t say I’m much concerned either way.
This is a new interview with Roger, check it out.
A very special episode with Sir Roger Penrose, co-winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics. We discuss Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Black Holes, and of course, Nobel Prizes!
…. He will also share insights into the thinking of a modern day theoretical physicist. Is the Universe destined to collapse, ending in a big crunch or to expand indefinitely until it homogenizes in a heat death? Roger will explain a third alternative, the cosmological conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) scheme—where the Universe evolves through eons, each ending in the decay of mass and beginning again with new Big Bang.
Yorchichan, the available evidence supports you: the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, and we know of no retarding force that can check it. So, as far as we know (which thanks to Hubble is quite a long way), no big crunch.
Would a contracting universe violate the Second Law? There are two views. One is that it would not: the laws of physics are (as best we know) time symmetric, so a contracting universe is just the mirror image of an expanding universe. All contemporary physics confirms this. The second (minority) view is that the Second Law itself creates a specific direction of time: “Time’s Arrow”, and hence the contraction is impossible.
My own opinion: the first view is correct. The Second Law is not about time as such, it is about the permissible evolution of energy distributions; in particular, from more concentrated to more dilute. But a contracting universe would indeed have a concentrated source of energy: the gravitational potential energy being released by the contraction (just as the potential energy of atmospheric water vapour is released to create much of our weather), and that would provide the energy gradient to drive the contraction.
Moving on to wild speculation: could we observe such a universe? Or would our own psychological temporal polarity be reversed, so we would believe ourselves living (backwards?) in an expanding universe? A speculation explored by Brian Aldiss, in his SF novel “An Age”.
It is a big if, yes indeed. What if the Hubble red shift is caused by some other phenomena than the one cosmology currently is obsessing about.
Read Halton Arp’s “seeing red” where he put forth his theory of intrinsic redshift and uses his own and others imagery and measurements of galactic objects and phenomena.
Ps. Appeal to authority has no place in science.
Kowalainen, I made no appeal to authority, only to the science. The addendum to my name was merely to inform people that I had had the good fortune to be taught science by sone wise people whom I still deeply respect. If this caused a misunderstanding, please accept my apology.
Returning to our sheep: ever since Hubble discovered the cosmological red shift in 1929, people have been searching for an explanation other than the Doppler effect; that is, evidence the universe was not expanding. None of them has won wide acceptance.
The most obvious was “tired light”: light lost energy during its passage to us, and of course the further it travelled, the more tired it became. This did not accord with the evidence of the Cepheid stars, whose intrinsic brightness is known. It turns out their distance (based on observed brightness) is very closely correlated with their red shift, which is what the Doppler explanation predicts, but which requires the “tiredness” of light to be uniform across the sky, which seems rather unlikely, given the observed lumpiness of the journey.
Another was the suggestion that there was a slow, systematic change in the velocity of light, and of course a change in velocity with constant energy implies a change in frequency. But there was no evidence for this hypothesis, and no explanation of why it might be happening.
The history of science is replete with people inventing explanations for what they want to believe, and likewise with people finding alternative explanations for what they do not want to believe. But, on balance, I think we still progress, albeit intermittenyly, and the expanding universe is still the best idea we have.
Perhaps the “standard candle” of estimating distance and expansion rate between galaxies is somewhat flawed. 😉
Given the lack of matter in the galaxies, dark matter – lol, together with their rate of rotation would cause them to be flung to pieces. But what do these behemoths care about hallucinations of objective reality inside the primate brain? Not at all.
Stuff gets “weird” in the quantum level. There is thus no reason to doubt that enormous structures in the universe, such a galaxies, is a different beast altogether than probing the minor clumps of matter we are accustomed to.
The small scale weirdness is reflected in the large scale oddities. The universe is a very fancy way of teaching rapacious primates the intricacies of how an infinitely recursive and self referential system behaves like.
It is intractable beauty and mystery. Code, data and evolution intertwined. A holy trinity of evolving process.
We understand nothing about objective reality.
“we know of no retarding force that can check it… the laws of physics are (as best we know) time symmetric, so a contracting universe is just the mirror image of an expanding universe”
It makes one wonder whether the forces are ‘time symmetric’ too.
We have observed the universe in its expansion; perhaps the reverse is true, of the forces and laws, in the state of contraction.
Yet we want to know what would ‘trigger’ the contraction. Perhaps that is not currently observable because we are not at that stage, and we can only ‘see’ what occurs in the expansion?
Perhaps there is no ‘trigger’ (explanation) of the shift to contraction; and ‘explanations’ apply in expansion, and reverse ‘explanations’ in contraction; and just as the universe ‘just exists’, it ‘just does’ flip from expansion to contraction and back?
Perhaps the laws and forces ‘just are’ (with no ‘reason’ for them) in expansion and contraction, and the ‘flipping point’ ‘just is’ too. Everything ultimately ‘just is’. The universe ‘just is’, it ‘just does’ expand and contract, and laws and forces ‘just are’ in expansion and reversal.
In those cases, there never could be a theoretical ‘objection’ to the possibility of contraction. All laws and forces (and whatever else) would be reversed anyway; and the ‘trigger’ of reversal is either unknown, or else there simply is not one and all ‘just is’.
Admittedly I have zero physics, so I do not really have any ‘right’ to ask those questions – but they seem ‘askable’ nevertheless.
Mirror, if you know what is an “askable” question, you have taken the first step to a knowledge of physics, and indeed of all the hard sciences. Keep asking.
How about there is no expansion and contraction. It’s an illusion given by using a flawed metric of measurement, i.e. Standard Candles.
Forget about big bangs, black holes, dark matter and fancy crunches. It’s buggy beyond belief.
If the universe spawns into existence and some day cease to be, there will be exactly zero explanations and fscks given to loonies searching for the whys and hows of it all.
It’s how I would design it. Zero fscks given to the hallucinations of objective reality in the brain of rapacious primates.
‘history will repeat again eternally’
But presumably slightly differently each time, and perhaps that causes the ‘Mandela effect’.
Perhaps the voting machines tapped into some past aeon to find Biden the winner?
SARS is also a coronavirus — nearly 20yrs and no luck … we must be incredibly lucky to have made a covid vax in a matter of months!!
Note, the ‘leak’ from the PMO in Canada indicates Feb we will have a more virulent form of Covid (Covid21)…. First shots are happening in the next couple of weeks… followed by another one in the second half of Jan….. the stars are aligning for Covid21 in Feb…..
Feds Race to Make SARS Vaccine (2003)
Developing a vaccine often takes a couple of decades or longer, but the federal government is aiming to develop a SARS vaccine in just three years. Scientists at the Vaccine Research Center are attacking the problem on several fronts, although some question whether a SARS vaccine is even possible.
Scientists are especially cautious because of their experience with vaccines aimed at animal relatives of the SARS virus. SARS is a coronavirus, the same virus family that causes serious diseases in pigs and other animals. While shots work well against some of these, they occasionally go disastrously bad. A vaccine for the feline coronavirus actually results in worse disease, not less, when cats catch the virus.
Vaccines work by giving the body a glimpse of its target, typically a dead virus, a weakened live one or bits of viral proteins. When all goes well, the immune system remembers these and goes on full attack when it later encounters the real thing.
But as happened with the cat vaccine, they sometimes trigger an off-kilter immune reaction, so when attacked by the actual virus, the system responds with a weak or misguided defense.
“Could the rules get changed so it would take less than 15 years? Yes. But could it be three years?” asks Dr. Donna Ambrosino, head of Massachusetts Biologic Laboratory, a nonprofit vaccine maker.
Doubtful, she says. There are simply too many unknowns, both about the virus itself and the safety of any strategy to stop it. She notes that scientists have been trying since the 1960s to make a vaccine for another breathing infection, the respiratory syncytial virus, which causes serious disease in babies.
“We know the proteins. We know the antibodies. We have animal models. We know all of that,” she says. “But we still don’t have a vaccine that works.”
https://www.wired.com/2003/05/feds-race-to-make-sars-vaccine/
Lemme’ guess: Getting the bear bug V.21 will be a much more visceral vicious experience.
And I am all:
https://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/29800000/Smile-the-joker-29855951-500-700.png
https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/videos/
Have a watch of the first video entitled “How the COVID-19 vaccine may transform humanity forever, going from HUMAN 1.0 to HUMAN 2.0”.
Don’t be put off by the title.
Around the 32m 30s mark scientist Mike Adams talks about how a coronavirus will be released to cause a pandemic and then a vaccine, allegedly created in a few months but in reality long prepared, will be used to kill millions. I haven’t been able to confirm whether he really said this years ago.
Today, Paul Craig Roberts posted a link regarding this very same topic.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/12/13/they-are-using-fear-to-create-acceptance-of-vaccination-why/
My last fare tonight was a couple of care workers. They told me that they have been offered the new Pfizer mRNA vaccine, but for the moment it is optional. That’s good news at least. I talked to a nurse last night and asked if she had been offered the vaccine. She said no, and that it was being rolled out to care workers first because care workers are more expendable! All three seemed reasonably clued up on the dangers.
I’m starting to feel more like Jerry Fletcher every day (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/).
I wonder how many would quit if forced to take a rushed to market and unproven vaccine that has been known to create in some cases serious unexplained illnesses?
But somehow they nailed the Covid 19 vaccine in record time, within months? How many unexplained serious illnesses were swept under the rug and not reported by the Media who’s job is to be looking out for the Public. No instead the media kowtowed along with the Government narrative. So the Gov’t having a complicit media just ignored those serious and unexplained illnesses and fast-tracked this BS vaccine.
They have purposely scared the stoopid that many are now begging for this poorly tested and rushed to market vaccine. I will resist at all cost but I know the stoopid will pressure the Govt to force everyone to take this bogus vaccine and from what i’m reading individuals will have to take it every few months.
I’ll bet Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates and the rest of those tyrants will be excluded. They know better.
This whole Covid 19 has been one giant BS scam on the global public. “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, eventually the people will start to believe it” and that’s what has happened. This whole thing has been orchestrated to perfection by the Globalists.
From what I have read this BS Covid 19 vaccine is only effective for a few months so you’ll have to load up on it every 3-4 months. Don’t worry as there are enough STOOPID people to buy in on this scam and will beg for their quarterly injections.
Don’t know why my comment from early this morning didn’t make it through but, if you are so inclined, have a watch of the first video on this web page, entitled “The Battle For Humanity”.
https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/videos/
It’s anti vax stuff and a little bit all over the place, but starting around the 32m 20s mark a scientist talks about a plan to release a coronavirus bioweapon, followed by a mandatory vaccine long in the making to kill off millions. It is claimed this forecast is from years ago, but I have been unable to verify this.
Somehow, this comment and your previous comment appeared in my “spam” folder at the same time. Somehow, the first comment seems to have been in “limbo” for a long time. (Neither appeared in my “awaiting moderation” list of comments.) This seems strange to me. WordPress seems to think that this is worrisome content for some reason.
Gail, who died and appointed WordPress the guardians of the index librorum prohibitorum? That is an unconscionable usurpation of power. Paging Ignatius Loyola.
Don’t tell me WordPress no longer allows anti-vaxx comments. The reach of Bill Gates is long indeed!
My two comments are almost identical, so please delete one if you are able.
eye rolling time again—what’s with this bill Gates thing?
He’s made a lot of money, and he uses it to finance health programs, vaccinations etc. Whether thats a good or bad idea is another matter.
What he doesn’t do is sneak into vaccination manufacturing plants at night, disguised as a night watchman, carrying a back part full off … (fill in relevant mind control drug here…..)… and doctor each vaccination dose.
Presumably the deranged thinking behind this nonsense is that when he has enough people under his control, he can sit in his bunker (in company with Soros, Buffet et al) cackling insanely as he makes them riot in the streets, or jump off clifftops, so that eventually the world will be empty of people other than himself and his buddies, except for a few human specimens in zoos.
There’s no proof behind any of this crazy thinking, just collective hysteria of people reinforcing their own certainties with the repeated certainties of people as daft as they are. Presumably on the theory that each pair of daft eejits cancel each other out.
Has covid caused such panic that there’s been a run on rational thinking?
You must have missed the video the last time somebody posted it, so here is a re-post:
https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/
One of the scariest things I have ever watched.
Will you be at the front of the queue to get your mRNA vaccine jab?
Once others have replied back, it gets confusing to delete a post, even if it is a close duplicate.
Every body duty
https://www.today.com/popculture/friday-13th-villain-jason-voorhees-stars-new-psa-encouraging-wearing-t185527
I dont trust the “Trump vaccine”. I not even going to get the “Biden vaccine”. Im saving myself for the “Kamala vaccine”.
Im a discerning consumer.
Nice,
Dennis L.
Side effects may include hair loss, dyslexia, gestural tics, satyriasis, paranoia, and difficulty walking uphill. Ask 4Chan if the “Trump vaccine” is right for you.
Apart from the attainable side effects. Will the vaccine have any benefits, like, um, give herd immunity?
Nope, of course not. That would require some serious amount of testing. That costs money.
There is need to keep track of who got the shots as well. With the shot-giving being outsourced to lots of different organizations (nursing homes, drug store chains), it is not clear that anyone will know who has really received the injections.
My bet is someone is going to do it. The problem is dissipation of all heat produced, not only entropic waste.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/towards-artificial-sun-will-china-win-nuclear-fusion-race
It is optimistic for energy, but earth cannot take anymore heat input, the data suggests decreasing amounts are necessary for organic live. Data? Ocean is warming, ultimate heat sink.
Dennis L.
The upper layers of ocean are warming slightly either because they absorbing more sunshine due to less cloud cover, or because warmer water from deeper down (warmed long ago by ancient sunshine) is moving up closer to the surface.
The ocean doesn’t absorb SIGNIFICANT heat from the atmosphere. How could it given what we know about the specific heat capacity of water (4,200 Joules per kilogram per degree Celsius) being over four times the corresponding figure for air, and the water at the surface of the oceans being about 800 times denser than the air at the surface.
My physics may be a bit rusty, but I think that means each cubic centimeter of surface ocean water has over 3,000 times the heat capacity of each cubic centimeter of surface air.
The reality is that the atmosphere absorbs heat from the oceans. The heat in the atmosphere mostly “disappears through the skylight”. In other words, it gets convected and eventually radiated away into the depths of outer space. It doesn’t warm the ocean. The temperature of the air in contact with the ocean will always tend to rise or fall to bring it in line with the temperature of the surface water.
Anyway, that’s my climate model—the hot water bottle theory—and I’m sticking with it. 🙂
This is always a can of worms, for what it is worth.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_%28Fig.A%29.gif
Dennis L.
Underwater volcanoes could be heating the oceans. Particularly with the advance into the solar minimum with increasing earthquakes and volcanism. This is one of the theories for how mammoths are found standing in ice with fresh grass in their mouths and bellies. A sudden planetwide vovcanic event, with thousands of volcanoes popping off above ground and beneath the oceans, causing heating of the oceans, then releasing moisture into the atmosphere, and combined with sudden ice age temperatures, resulting in more than massive and sudden snowfall sufficient to freeze the beasts in place.
Yes, could be underwater volcanos. Could be the upturning of warmer water from the ocean depths that was warmed during the Medieval Warming Period, or the warming from the recovery from the Little Ice Age, or it could be the climate going on a random walk.
Or—my favorite—it could be that graph is about as accurate as the recent presidential election results called in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. After all, it’s the same political faction behind both sets of data. Tellingly, Al Gore has weighed in on both issues numerous times. He was on CNN today boasting that he conceded on this date and so should Trumpy.
Actually, we can’t measure the global temperature sufficiently accurately to have assembled that graph, because the relevant data doesn’t exist. Far too many places didn’t have weather stations or daily temperature measurements in 1880.
Moreover, in the U.S.one of the few countries where reliable temperature records have been kept since 1880, the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest yea eveh was 1934, which is curious to say the least.
So all in all, I’d say it’s a bogus graph—it’s fraudulent—it makes claims for which there is insufficient evidence. It was compiled and published in an attempt to deceive. Deplorable, when you come to think of it.
>>The ocean doesn’t absorb SIGNIFICANT heat from the atmosphere
It is the warming of the Atlantic Ocean over the tropics that keeps NW Europe MUCH warmer than it would be otherwise.
North Atlantic Current
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Current
Yes, the warming of the Atlantic Ocean over the tropics is caused by tropical sunlight much of this heat is transported to higher attitudes by the movement of warm tropical seawater and warm tropical air. It’s basic meteorology. Global-scale meteorology is the study of weather patterns related to the transport of heat from the tropics to the poles.
In the tropics, the big fusion reactor in the sky is directly overhead for part of the year and quite high in the sky at noon all year round. This gives the tropical oceans a daily re-heating that temperate and polar oceans miss out on. And that’s why the tropics tend to be hot.
Interestingly, the coldness at the poles is caused by lack of direct sunlight—because the sun doesn’t rise very high in the sky there—and the lack of warm water and air from the tropics, as these cool appreciably before they reach the poles.
The oceans absorb 90% of the excess heat caused by human caused emissions: https://mashable.com/article/ocean-heat-content-rising-atomic-bomb/
This kind of fact can be found very easily, there is no need to speculate or use rusty physics. There has been plenty of research into this.
Save lives, wear a mask!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hockey-Mask-Glow/254709817235?hash=item3b4de35f93:g:R9QAAOSwBy5fUsn~
Outstanding post, very informative. I’ve been banging my head against the wall for years telling folks that western lifestyles are unsustainable but nobody listens or understands. While the music is playing and drinks are being served nobody is noticing the spiked punch bowl or chairs quietly being removed. I fear 2021 is going to be worse than 2020 for a variety of reasons.
The Federal Reserve still has assets at an all time high of around $7.2 T on their balance sheet as they quietly buy up $120 Billion per month in mortgaged back securities and treasuries. In August the central bank has surpassed holding more than 1/3 of all US household mortgages as they continue the buying spree. Jay Powell begs for stimulus from congress every time I see him in the media and with Janet Yellen about to become treasury secretary the joining of the treasury and central bank will be complete. Ignorant activists everywhere clap and cheer as this is the first female treasury secretary. I suspect they will do the same thing when Kamala Harris becomes the first black female vice president to drone bomb a hospital or wedding ceremony. Surreal.
Last night’s violence portends more violence in the near future as people on all sides of issues become polarized into pure hatred and rage. We saw some of this earlier this year with the riots and we’re going to see more, particularly when the warmer weather returns this spring. As the global trade system and currencies continue their chaotic breakdown we’re going to see this become the new norm everywhere.
As far as the virus is concerned I’m just looking at the data right now and studying its patterns but the current wave the US is in is continuing to worsen in terms of case/body counts. I suspect we’re due for a 4th wave of infections this spring regardless of the vaccine as this is largely a human guinea pig experiment. Maybe the virus goes away at the middle or end of next year but at this point I doubt there are many believers left that a return to normal is in the cards. I’m going to be interested in seeing what the media or political leaders do going forwards but I suspect it will be nothing but currency devaluation and helicopter money give-aways for all except those who need it the most. At least we’re living in interesting times, no?
I am afraid you may be mostly right. Also, even if there is a lull in the virus, debt defaults will be our new major problem. International trade may fall significantly.
I think that the only reason most of the pain of this depression has not been felt yet is the incredible forbearance program put into place, the bailouts, the stimulus, and QE. I imagine future shots of monetary salvation will be decreased in strength necessitating bigger and bigger expansions of these crazy programs. At some point these programs will no longer work but we’re not quite there yet. And so the debt keeps getting bigger.
I think you are pretty much right. The big question is how long this debt bubble can continue to inflate before the system falls apart.
Longer than any of us thinks is possible. We have a saying in the financial world that “the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” With all the westernized countries printing money and stimulus and all currencies devaluing simultaneously, it can be difficult to tell what is going on. Besides if our leaders can just keep the housing and stock markets elevated most people will be too clueless or fat/dumb/happy to even notice that a collapse is occurring.
Statistically insignificant
https://zeenews.india.com/world/covid-19-four-pfizer-vaccine-volunteers-develop-bells-palsy-read-details-here-2329924.html?fbclid=IwAR3Z9tdU3-kUPRuY_tX9oOS7P-fko5VODfCMopIOWdGn7fdymeUwkTRjB8c
Test
Re: 5 genes dispose to severe c 19 outcomes
It is statistically unlikely that I have the genes that predispose to a severe c 19 outcome, so I am not going to worry about it too much.
It should be possible to tell whether one has the genes through a simple swab gene test – and presumably that will eventually be rolled out.
Likely states wants to keep us all fearful, even if we are not disposed to severe outcomes, to keep the r rate down.
Mass testing would allow states to detect the susceptible and to get societies going again. Maybe China will take that sensible path.
> The five genes that make you more likely to die from coronavirus or be admitted to intensive care
…. Researchers say the discovery of five genes that appear so clearly to be linked to the disease is unprecedented in the field.
Knowing which genes are involved in severe cases of coronavirus infection can help scientists identify pre-existing drugs that could help treat Covid, the researchers say….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9043703/Five-genes-severe-cases-Covid-19.html
A merry Christmas from Caspar Milquetoast
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/43/Caspar_Milquetoast_Christmas_card.jpg
Sort of the way it is.
It seems like this is mostly a waste of time.
We know of other things to greatly help the problem. Getting vitamin D levels up seems to help. Treating people with the cheap generic drug ivermectin seems to help, at every stage of the disease.
Spending a huge amount of effort on identifying those with the particular genes seems like an addition of complexity that is really unwarranted. There are cheaper ways to solve the problem.
Also, identifying these folks, by themselves, doesn’t do much good. De we put them into permanent quarantine? I don’t think that they would put up with that. This simply becomes a class of would-be workers and travelers to discriminate against.
Re: balance of power, EU, UK – the long and short of the last 500 years
I have been reading a bit about the ‘balance of power’ as a diplomatic strategy. It is all about power, which every state is always after in one sense or another. Every state is a ‘will to power’ with its own interests.
Europe was hegemonic under the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and it pursued a ‘universalist’ or ‘internationalist’ strategy of political and economic cooperation, before the Peace of Westphalia (1648). The Reformation and the Wars of Religion put an end to that.
The BOP emerged on the continent as a strategy to preserve peace and the geopolitical status quo, whereby theoretically powers would combine against any power that was getting too strong and threatening the status quo. Each state could theoretically thus maintain itself without a hegemonic power.
The BOP strategy suited the British state, because it kept the continent divided and its powers weak while Britain had an unchallenged global Empire.
So it suited the British state strategy to war against Napoleon and Hitler. It was all about keeping the continent divided and weak and Britain at the top of the global hegemony.
In the 19th c., the continent divided into the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente. BOP had resolved into two hostile grouping and WWI and WWII were fought on variations along the lines of those alliances.
After WWI and WWII it was clear that the BOP was really not working out as a strategy for the continent. The lack of any dominant power within that scenario just encouraged countries to have a go and the formation of hostile alliances.
After WWII, the continent reverted to a ‘universalist’ or ‘internationalist’ approach of political and economic cooperation of the sort that had prevailed before the Peace of Westphalia rather than the BOP that had prevailed since.
USA took over the global hegemony from Britain and it favoured ‘internationalism’ on the continent to help order the world to its own hegemony. Those powers were no longer players and their place was peaceful cooperation under USA hegemony. Russia had its own ambitions to hegemony and alliances and thus the Cold War.
Britain had no choice after WWII but to concede USA hegemony, and it wanted to combine the Empire – or ‘Commonwealth’ as it became – with USA to give Britain a second tier place with USA.
EU was set up. Britain lost its Empire, and any pretence of being a second tier player as USA did not need one and Britain was not fit for it anyway. Britain then tried to join EU but France twice refused.
Then Britain did join the ‘internationalist’ continental EU combine. And now it is leaving. Obama favoured the pre-Brexit status quo, as does Biden, while Trump was more open to fresh developments.
Is that about right?
It is time for England (and Scotland , Wales and Ireland for a lesser degree) to atone for centuries of warmongering in the Continent and depleting the European stock so much that people not suited to Western Civ got to flood Europe en masse.
Half the world hates us, and the other half is civilized because of us.
Do you hate England as much as you hate Serbia, or does this sceptered isle have any redeeming qualities?
I would say that Britain’s contributions and misdemeanors cancel each out, while Serbia has no contributions. (Nikola Tesla NEVER stepped in the boundaries of the Kingdom of Serbia for his entire life.)
Right, Bloody well Right!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ys6YSfJDA
Need we say more…take it to a higher place🌈😜👍🚀
Yes, because no true industrialist of IC is interested in having universalist power among various bureaucrat and useless eaters with ambitions in a global/local hegemony. Once stagnation and power concentrations sets in, then it’s about time to stir in the kettle of complacency.
Now as for unfair business advantages of IC for the past centuries, look no further than the hegemon of information exchange infrastructure. Yes indeed, the country of the first CB and perpetual money laundry rackets, bribery through UN, and telecoms prowess. Sweden Inc, oh yes, the peddlers of government psychosocial condition (Stockholm school of economics, institute and syndrome), telephone systems and military gear. In the good olden days the Finns were the Swedish armed forces, then it swung to the brits, then the US, now on the chopping block for the benefit of Asia.
Apparently the Tsar was quite happy with his gold plated Ericsson telephone. Which ultimately led to his demise and the rise of the Bolshevik, financed by industrialists in Britain, US and Sweden. It should make you wonder about what the CCP is and who have been there busy sniffing the telecoms traffic for about a century. 😉
Oh how much the Useless Eaters wanted the Eurasian lebensraum project to succeed and to divide and rule among the capitalists and plebs. Then the bear bug happened, making the utopia of a global hegemony of bureaucracy null and void. Because they got the intel, tech and know how to tear down this little dream of limitless authority, self entitlements, dope, prostitutes, wining and dining in no time.
The UK is fundamentally a group of islands with inadequate energy supplies and a population far too high for its ability to grow food. A major industry has been the financial industry, but this will be “heading south” even more than it has, in 2021. The UK depends heavily upon trade, but this is now disrupted by the UK’s leaving the EU.
In some ways, the UK is parallel to Japan, except that Japan has more industries other than the financial industry to depend on, and it is not leaving the EU. It depends on the health of economies around the world for maintaining its exports. Japan’s reliance on debt is well known.
Both countries seem to be headed into problems in 2021. The UK looks more likely to divide into pieces than Japan.
The harsher the reality becomes in the UK now, the better it will ultimately be for the people here; speaking as an Englishman, every country has to come to terms with a lower energy environment and adapt to it.
On the surface this may make things appear ‘worse’, when, in reality, they are simply ‘more sustainable’.
One of the core reasons I voted for Brexit in 2016 was that I recognised that regionalism was built on the same intensive use of energy as globalisation. If we come to the conclusion that energy reserves are depleting and no renewable energy resource is capable of filling the gap left behind by fossil fuels, as any sane observer should, then we must conclude that the future is local. That includes political structures.
Our legacy communications infrastructure can make it seem as if globalisation/regionalisation is here to stay because we can all easily converse with one another, but if it becomes uneconomical to transport resources vast distances, then interests necessarily adapt to more localism.
Britain was first to industrialise, and its ahead of the curve again!
>>then we must conclude that the future is local.
Organised crime and the elites are in charge now, and will still be in charge when we go-local. They will continue to consume more than their fair share of resources, and the rest of us won’t. Until the system collapses, whenever that happens.
A sound if worrying point. If they can’t be circumvented now, while there are still traces of a past no ruled by them, I don’t see how you do it at any point in the foreseeable future. It is simply rule by thuggery over tranquillized, neutered masses. What’s to stop that?
“They will continue to consume more than their fair share of resources, and the rest of us won’t.”
I continue to consume more than my fair share of global economic activity.
I suspect that is true for everyone who posts here.
find the lunatic who started saying:
panic buying will be worse than last time.
queuing outside stores in January isn’t going to be like it was last March
isn’t January much too late?
But with a much lower population.
The UK has more fossil fuels than the rest of Europe put together.
Goo point, John.
If the reserves were not there, there would be no need to promise not to use them.
Also, good comment, Frank.
There is a difference between downsizing our demands on nature on the world economy and disappearing altogether.
Today’s youngsters are going to be able to tell their grandchildren, “By gum, we had it soft. We had it rich. We had it easy.” But tell young folk that in 2070 and they won’t believe you.
It is necessary to get the price up to use the fossil fuel resources. The North Sea, with the huge amount of coal deposits under it, seems to be a major problem underlying the climate change models. How soon do you expect coal prices to be high enough to get this coal out? Oil prices would need to be higher as well. This is all fantasy, as far as I can see.
>>The UK has more fossil fuels than the rest of Europe put together
Can you provide a reference for this?
There may be lots of coal deep underground, but in all likelihood that is where it is going to stay.
We produce much less oil and gas than we consume and rely heavily on imports of both. There is little of both yet to be found (I am not sure anyone is still looking), so for oil and gas once we use up what we have now, it’s gone. I doubt any oil produced offshore UK at the moment is done so at a profit.
The profitability of UK continental shelf companies is collapsing.
UK continental shelf companies’ profitability follows a similar trend to the price of Brent crude.
The net rate of return of UK continental shelf companies fell from 27.4% in 2011 Q2 to 1.8% in 2019 Q4, as Brent fell from $117 a barrel to $63.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/profitabilityofukcompanies/octobertodecember2019#uk-continental-shelf-companies
Brent is currently at $50 and the long-term trend seems to be downward. The implication is that those companies will no longer be profitable.
The uk created its current existence by fossil fuel use. As did everywhere else.
and for the majority, that’s where the thinking stops.–ie, we can go on using fossil fuels, ‘because there’s plenty left ‘down there’ —and if it’s ‘down there’, by thoughtless definition we can use it.
except that we can’t use it.
Fossil fuels gave us a lifestyle of wealth and plenty, but to sustain that lifestyle, ‘wealth and plenty’ must increase year on year.
it cannot remain static.
so we must get hold of more fossil fuel year on year. or see our lifestyle deplete.
But the more we use, the deeper we must dig for it.
This is where logic and reality part company.
The energy needed to extract our fuels increases the deeper we go. Until we reach the point where the energy input exceeds the energy output.
Stupidly obvious.
But I’ve tried explaining that person to person, in real time. And realised that the (otherwise intelligent) person being explained to cannot/will not accept it
“A growing number of companies around the world are unable to repay their debts or make interest payments due to the coronavirus.
“Data show that 223 companies have defaulted on their corporate bonds so far in 2020, double the number that defaulted the previous year.
“The increase in defaults despite historically low interest rates is due to the rising number of heavily indebted companies in the U.S. and Europe over the past few years. If the bond market frets over these companies and yields rise, more bankruptcies will follow.
“Corporate bond defaults are spreading in China. Since November, the total amount of corporate bonds that have been postponed or canceled is over 200 billion yuan (about $30.5 billion).”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/Company-defaults-rise-in-China-and-US-as-global-figure-doubles
“European banks face major losses from bad loans and other costs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and their profitability is at record low levels, the European Banking Authority warned in a report published on Friday.”
https://www.eurasiareview.com/13122020-pandemic-cuts-bank-profitability-to-record-lows/
According to the article,
“In June, the average return on equity (RoE), an indicator to measure profitability, stood at 0.5%, down from 6.7% in June 2019, a record low level.”
I expect that the average return will turn negative, once defaults truly start. The big question is, “What happens then?”
A respectful guess, nothing. It is already gone in the real world, a group of people are moving around future claims on energy which is not there. Future dreams stop, today’s reality is there.
Tim Morgan’s blog has a very good summary of this. Take West’s graphs and back them up and that is tomorrow’s reality which is most likely today’s, it is not recognized yet. Paper cannot substitute for energy, but I have a link on a new thread regarding China, the future may not be as bleak as some think.
Possible guess on disturbances: those on the street have run out of paper and are living reality.
Dennis L.
I expect that 2021 will really be the year of the debt defaults. The amounts so far are not huge.
“With a steep 75 per cent drop in tourist arrivals for the last three quarters of 2020, the Caribbean is expected to contract by 20-30 per cent this year, says Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett.”
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20201213/bartlett-75-drop-caribbean-tourist-arrivals-last-three-quarters
““This deadly virus and the subsequent and quick collapse of our tourism industry, and the decline in other areas of the economy, has hit Bahamians hard,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said.”
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article247735445.html
There will be a huge number of workers either without jobs, or with jobs for only a few hours per week. Eventually, there will be a lot of failing businesses and associated debt defaults.
“Argentina’s currency crisis will not be resolved with a “one shot” fix, Economy Minister Martin Guzman told Reuters, indicating a continued slow decline for the peso rather than a sudden devaluation.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/argentina-economy-guzman-exclusive/exclusive-argentinas-guzman-has-no-plans-for-one-shot-fix-to-pesos-problems-idUKKBN28L2BD
A heartwarming tale:
“Venezuela’s economic meltdown had pummeled a proud fishing village. Then jewelry started mysteriously surfacing on its beach, easing the pain of an economic crisis…
““I began to shake, I cried from joy,” said fisherman, Yolman Lares, 25. “It was the first time something special has happened to me.””
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/world/venezuela-gold-rush-fishing-village.html
“Kurdish authorities in Iraq are struggling to quash wildcat protests as frustration at delayed public-sector payments and decades of mismanagement have boiled over into street violence.
“The protests highlight the magnitude of the economic and political dysfunction shaping the lives of ordinary Iraqis, now spilling into the relative calm of the Kurdish-controlled areas in the north.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fworld%2fmiddle_east%2firaq-kurdistan-protests-north%2f2020%2f12%2f12%2f72e75066-3be4-11eb-aad9-8959227280c4_story.html
“The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have intensified calls on Nigeria to speed up currency reforms without which Africa’s largest economy may fail to achieve the growth it needs to prevent millions more from falling into penury.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-12/global-lenders-raise-pressure-on-nigeria-to-reform-currency
Currency reforms? Nigeria needs a much higher price for its oil exports I am sure the price of other exports could be higher as well. Nigeria cannot really fix this problem.
Of course. Do what we tell you, keep piling up debt, sell your national resources to global companies at fire sale prices, and all will be well. The looters are your friends.
I am sure that a big problem in Iraq is the low price of oil. It its price were higher, the government could do a lot more for its people.
“Lebanese Army troops were deployed near the home of parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri on Saturday as protesters targeted people they believe are a “privileged elite.””
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1776521/middle-east
“Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in Yemen’s southern city of Taiz to express their frustration after a plunge in the local currency led to a surge in prices and shops to close…
“The demonstrators, who have called their uprising a “revolution of the hungry”, are blaming the government, the Saudi-led coalition and the Shiite Houthi rebels for the devaluation.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-12/protests-erupt-in-yemeni-city-of-taiz-over-currency-devaluation
Yemen is a post peak oil country, with far too many people for its resources. It will be a very sad story going forward, I am afraid.
Protesters in Lebanon are clearly not happy. We can expect more of this, around the world, as problems spread.
“The Federal Reserve will start confronting the case for more stimulus to support the U.S. economy on Wednesday as it holds its final policy meeting of a truly momentous year.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-12/fed-s-nightmare-year-isn-t-over-yet-as-u-s-jobs-sour-eco-week
“Senator Bernie Sanders has threatened to shut down the US government next week and keep lawmakers in Washington through Christmas unless they submit to his demand for another round of $1,200 stimulus checks for most Americans.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/stimulus-checks-bernie-sanders-government-shutdown-b1770268.html
I am afraid that shutting down the US central government will not make people happy. More people will be laid off, for example. I believe when this happened in the past, Social Security and other checks kept coming, during a time when deferral was made for paying bills to many types of vendors.
Watch out or we will face overstimulation….like Poor Marge …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5WIJKQ8kKNs
Can we give the Folks maybe free beer instead?
Re: Brexit
Boris may go on the TV this afternoon to announce the ‘assumption’ of a no deal Brexit, and he is leaving open the possibility of a deal up to Dec. 31. Whether the end of the year will be his cut off point remains to be seen. Barnier has spoken about about the possibility of talks next year.
There is no finality to any announcement today and there is no reason to suppose that it is anything more than a negotiating tactic. It will remain to be seen whether Boris will ever man up and go for no deal. EU is happy for talks to go on and on until UK gets a parliament that is more amenable to its demands.
> Billions in no-deal Brexit help for farmers and factories
…. Meanwhile, in Brussels, talks between Lord Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator and his counterpart Michel Barnier appeared deadlocked just hours before the two sides were due to decide whether to continue talks or launch into no-deal preparations.
A government source said discussions would continue but warned that “as things stand, the offer on the table from the EU remains unacceptable”.
“The Prime Minister will leave no stone unturned in this process, but is absolutely clear: any agreement must be fair and respect the fundamental position that the UK will be a sovereign nation in three weeks’ time,” they added. A Cabinet source said: “We’ve pushed back deadlines ad nauseam but it does feel like there will be an outcome on Sunday.”
Mr Johnson is expected to speak to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, and should he opt for no deal, No 10 is preparing for him to update the nation either via a press conference or a recorded statement in the early afternoon.
…. Meanwhile, the Cabinet, including those who voted Remain, was “united” behind Mr Johnson’s negotiating position and believed he should walk away if Brussels refused to soften its demands on the level playing field, which would keep the UK tied to EU rules and standards to stop businesses being undercut. Many now expect Mr Johnson to announce publicly that the Government’s planning assumption will be leaving without a trade deal – so-called Australia terms.
However, he is likely to hold the door open for a trade deal – on so-called Canada terms – between now and Dec 31, if the EU comes back with a fresh offer. Notwithstanding their support, several Cabinet ministers expressed alarm at what no deal would mean for the economy, as well as for Mr Johnson politically in the midst of a pandemic….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/12/billions-no-deal-brexit-help-farmers-factories/
Lame.
Boris is allowing himself to be strung along by EU and he wants to string us along too.
The final negotiating positions are clear – and EU has said no.
Either Boris now has the balls to finally call a no deal Brexit or he has not.
It looks like he has not. He looks like a plump coward trembling at the prospect.
> Boris Johnson pulls back from the Brexit brink: PM agrees to CONTINUE EU trade talks despite threatening to pull the plug with less than three weeks to go until the UK leaves – as supermarkets are told to begin preparing for No Deal panic-buying
PM held talks with European Commission president Ursula Von de Leyen this morning by telephone
He had suggested that today was a hard deadline for both sides to make agreement or stop them
But in a joint statement this morning they said: ‘It is responsible at this point to go the extra mile’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9048077/The-message-No-Deal-Supermarkets-told-begin-stockpiling-ahead-Brexit-deadline.html
and Rishi Sunak, a Punjabi-Kenyan (remember a certain Kenyan who became quite famous before?) , will be brought in to lead the govt. He will be a good fit to soon-to-be-prez Kamala Harris and now INDIA has conquered the world.
LOL
He admitted it himself.
> Boris Johnson: ‘I was too fat’ – The Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/27/boris-johnson-obesity-weight-loss-coronavirus/
“As spiking COVID-19 cases further derail travel, the U.S. hotel industry is closing in on a bleak marker: one billion empty rooms for the year….
“Sandip Patel, whose family owns eight hotels in Maryland, is… especially worried about hotels whose financing is tied to commercial mortgage-backed securities.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/unsold-u-s-hotel-rooms-near-1-billion-as-lodging-crisis-deepens/
The world may remember 2020 as the year “normal life” was torn up by the coronavirus pandemic. But for many U.S. commercial real estate owners the big trouble hasn’t even started yet…
“The overall stakes have never been higher. Federal Reserve data shows U.S. commercial property debt climbed to an all-time high of $3.06 trillion in the third quarter, from a 10-year low of $2.2 trillion in 2012.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/distress-looms-over-u-s-commercial-real-estate-in-2021-11607801514
I see that New York City thinks it has a plan to work around the loss of commercial tenants:
“New York City’s reeling commercial real-estate industry recently put forth a proposal to turn some 1 million square feet of Manhattan office space into housing, the New York Times reported, an effort to avert a potential collapse in property prices.”
This, of course, will add lots of jobs, for a while. But will it really fix the problem? We don’t know yet.
I think a million sq ft is a decent sized 40 or 50 story building. Haven’t visited NYC in a while, but don’t think that will deal with much commercial real estate.
Gail, I somehow doubt that building housing, and probably expensive housing, for people who have no jobs will be a profitable enterprise. Those empty buildings are so much scrap metal and concrete. They will be mined and recycled just as the buildings of Ancient Rome were.
I see that lodging data firm STR says,
” STR forecasts revenue per available room, which combines pricing and occupancy, won’t return to last year’s levels until 2024,” even with what we know about a vaccine now becoming available.
“UK equity funds have bled more than $2bn over the past two months, highlighting the extent of investor unease as a no-deal Brexit becomes increasingly likely.
“Investors have pulled a net $2.4bn from funds exposed to the UK stock market since the start of October… The latest withdrawals bring UK equity fund outflows since the Brexit referendum to $42bn — almost 17 per cent of total assets held in the strategies in June 2016.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/fa786784-f60f-43a7-b0e0-71382dcddc82
“Supermarkets are this weekend stockpiling food and other goods after being told by ministers that a no-deal Brexit is on the cards.
“Food producers have warned there will be shortages of vegetables for three months and emergency planners predict that no-deal would spark panic-buying on a scale that could dwarf the coronavirus crisis.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ministers-warn-supermarkets-to-stockpile-food-amid-no-deal-brexit-fears-zc36tsf6z
“Boris Johnson has been warned that the fate of millions of jobs, Britain’s most deprived regions and the UK’s manufacturing base rely on him reaching an 11th-hour trade deal with the EU, as senior figures from every corner of the economy issued a final plea for a compromise.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/13/our-jobs-and-future-depend-on-a-deal-business-warns-boris-johnson
And the guardian (of course) issues another desperate plea for surrender.
I am glad that I don’t live in the UK.
If few want to invest in the UK in the future, this becomes a problem.
China is the endgame of prosperity, as it was the last region with mild climate that was underdeveloped.
Africa lacks cheap drinking water, Brasil too:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334351944_Spatial_distribution_of_water_quality_in_the_Amazonia_region_implications_for_drinking_water_treatment_procedures
There is no possibility that the oil prices will go up without creating prohibitive levels of the debt by the mild climate countries which represent about 90% of oil consumption. Thanks to their cheap drinking water supplies.
And no settling of other planets without the drinking water and energy resources is possible, too.
Trying to provide clean water around the world is going to become an increasingly impossible job. This article talks about using “slow settling” to get rid of particulate matter, and “solar energy” to clean up supply. I am afraid that, long term, all we can count on is the direct solar rays of the sun. This indeed is solar energy, but it doesn’t clean up water supply enough. Trying to keep up world trade on chemicals to treat water will be impossible, I am afraid. I remember that this was a key issue facing Australia, in one analysis. Its chemicals for treating water supply are imported.
For those still on the fence regarding Covid-19.
What 700 or so epidemiologists are personally doing and their thoughts, NYT, what could be wrong?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/upshot/epidemiologists-virus-survey-.html
Credit to CHS and his “musings.”
Dennis L.
Epidemiology—according to the CDC— is the study (scientific, systematic, and data-driven) of the distribution (frequency, pattern) and determinants (causes, risk factors) of health-related states and events (not just diseases) in specified populations (neighborhood, school, city, state, country, global).
So I’m wondering, what could a group of 700 epidemiologists surveyed by the NYT possibly tell me that would be of use in motivating me to get off the fence regarding Covid-19?
After reading the article, I concluded the answer was “nothing at all”.
Virologists, yes. Front-line medics treating infections diseases, yes. People who’ve had Covid-19 and recovered from it, certainly. But epidemiologists speculating about how many people need to be vaccinated until we reach herd immunity? Sounds like a bunch of poppycock intermixed with bilge, codswallop and balderdash if you ask me. But par for the course for the NYT, unfortunately.
No doubt they are having a slow weekend since they are no longer allowed to report on anything that is actually going on.
I would follow what the latest is on treatments for COVID-19, rather than what a survey of epidemiologists has to say. There are treatments for the current problem that are being ignored. The NYT is not going to tell you about this.
Thanks, please note it was not a statement, but a question, perhaps I should have put it better.
“What 700 or so epidemiologists are personally doing and their thoughts, NYT, what could be wrong?”
I don’t know, this disease is a mystery to me other than it seems genes determine one’s fate.
Dennis L.
The extreme natural conditions make the construction of infrastructure uneconomical:
Brasil: bad roads and no railways via marshes of Amazon area
Russia: bad roads and no railways via marshes of Siberia
Amazon River is actually a good conduit of goods.
In Russia, all the big rivers flow to the wrong way, and the Volga River, the most important river in Western Russia, flows to the landlocked Caspian Sea.
Russia is amazingly landlocked, for being such a big country. Ideally, it would like ports on the East, near Moscow, but these don’t exist.
At one point, there was a canal system that allowed goods to be transported up through St. Petersburg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Deep_Water_System_of_European_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Deep_Water_System_of_European_Russia#/media/File:United_Deep_Waterway_System_of_European_Russia.svg
According to Wikipedia, “The depth is mostly guaranteed at only 4 metres (13 ft) and some sections are even shallower, such as Gorodets–Nizhny Novgorod at 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) and Kochetovsky Bagayevskaya at 3.2 metres (10 ft).”
At this point, I believe that this is mostly used for tour boats and some relatively small boats transporting goods such as logs.
Okay, CHS for today:
This may be too long a quote. Some of you might consider going to his site, putting some money in the box and subscribing to CHS, he is often very good and is left hand links are worth reading.
It seems that this post addressing social cohesion, financial inequality and state finance is somewhat relevant to where we are today.
“The point here is that successful Great Resets don’t hew to one type or taxonomy. They must solve whatever pressing structural problems have arisen (ungovernable territories, external threats, extremes of wealth inequality, failing state finances) and restore social cohesion, the glue which binds the people of the polity together and gives them purpose, meaning and incentives to make the necessary sacrifices to hold the state/empire together in eras of crisis.
Resets can save the day, so to speak, but leave some problems festering, unresolved. In Rome’s case, two problems were never resolved: the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an increasingly parasitic elite, and the lack of an effective system for transferring power from one emperor to the next. The wastage of constant infighting and civil wars between various claimants to the throne drained the empire of resources, revenues and social cohesion / legitimacy.
On all these points, the WEF Great Reset is a failure, for its sole purpose is solidifying the ownership of wealth and power in the hands of the current owners. That’s the problem, not the solution.”
Trying to sense the wind here, one can tack into the wind, but various types of boats vary in their ability to do so, some make wider swings. Actually it is a fun time to be alive, all the boredom that housewives complained about in the 50’s America is gone, gone, gone. Now they are equal, draft them, put them in the font lines – hint, it is a really lousy job, but some seem to think all is fair, so one more inequality solved. In Vietnam the grunts did not wear underwear, too many places for leaches to hide, at night they slept front to back, sometimes partially naked, to keep warm, fraternity, brotherhood, sisterhood. Recall that actor in the Vietnam movie who bare chested said something in effect, “Ah, the smell of napalm in the air!” Change is all around us, call it creative destruction.
Dennis L.
Sorry, sometimes I can’t help myself:
“The obvious corollary is that service activities will shrink more rapidly than the supply of goods as the economy moves away from the dissipative-landfill model.
A final conclusion – for now – is that many of the giants of the commercial and financial landscape will fade from prominence as the economy rebalances away from the dissipative-landfill system.”
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/12/08/186-the-objective-economy-part-three/#comments
Well, there goes aesthetic dentistry, the supply of office space and its price are consistent. But, an optimist, recall NYC was a commercial center, shipping port, manufacturing before finance. Cities don’t die, but they can change. NYC can distribute goods made on the moon.
So, actionable information. Find a financial index, every time it goes up, short the hell out of it with puts using of course the Kelly criterion, always Claude Shannon somewhere in the woodwork. Read West, look at graphs, make your bets, the future is in front of us, some of us will do well, others will make popcorn.
There is a WWII movie where a quote more or less is this, “Where there is chaos, there is profit.” The speaker was a supply sergeant, always had a supply of booze to lubricate his transactions.
Dennis L.
“NYC can distribute goods made on the moon.”
Dennis, you have come up with the perfect political slogan. You could run for Mayor of NYC and win. Everybody in our pretend economy would line up behind you.
Go for it, Dennis!
Good quote, Dennis. But I prefer the one from Baron Rothschild: “Buy when blood is running in the streets”. Anyone for Portland real estate?
One of the best summaries to date:
“Of course, this doesn’t mean that no discretionary purchases are made by the average person. But it does mean that such purchases are now, for the most part, financed using credit. Moreover, and reflecting deviations in income around the average, some households can still make discretionary purchases without resorting to debt, whereas others are already using credit to fund part of the cost of essentials. This is a variance which points strongly towards growing popular demands for redistribution.”
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
This in my opinion is an excellent summary of where we are today, it is consistent with Gail’s ideas, and it brings out some things mentioned here by others. For me, it can be used to help make daily decisions, everything else in my world is literary, perhaps interesting, but man’s got to make a living, that is a man’s job.
Dennis L.
“This is a variance which points strongly towards growing popular demands for redistribution.”
Agreed. But which, as always, means a demand for the profligate to seize the savings of the thrifty. My parents taught me to be thrifty, which is why I could buy my retirement home cash on the nail, and have enough left to sustain me for 20 years, which will be more than enough. And leave all my offshore investments to my children free and clear. As you say, that is a man’s job, and I make no apology, nor claim any credit, for setting my hand to the plough.
But living in the US, I discovered that most men had ceased to be men, and most women had ceased to be women. As in the days of Noah.
I envy your eloquence with words.
“As you say, that is a man’s job, and I make no apology, nor claim any credit, for setting my hand to the plough.”
Dennis L.
Thank you, Dennis. Please give credit to my school: religious service twice a day, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Authorised Version of the Bible. For four hundred years the foundation of English prose.
Tim Morgan has a post up recently and I have two quotes somewhat related to various comments made here:
“Looking down from a similarly elevated position, the World economy has become a dissipative-landfill system, using energy-profligate processes to transform raw materials into products which, for the most part, are rapidly abandoned to landfill or other methods of disposal. This is in stark contrast to the craft model which prevailed before the Industrial Age, when the balance between energy-derived inputs and human skills was very different, and in which the quality of goods, and certainly their durability, was rated a lot more highly than it is today.”
….
“Properly understood as an energy system, the economy has reached the end-point of a phase in which material prosperity has expanded massively because of the abundant availability of cheap energy from oil, gas and coal.”
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
I posted earlier on France and nuclear, perhaps that is a road map of what all of us can expect to experience as we go forward, not a crash but a squeeeeeeeeze.
And of course, always needing to beat a drum(one does not play a drum, one beats it), the earth is finite, but the solar system is big enough for now, room for growth as I see it.
Dennis L.
Tsk tsk now Dennis. Just got off practicing on my drum kit. You play drums on a kit when you are playing music. Triplets, ghost notes on the snare, open and closed hi hat , rim shots, bell on the ride cymbal etc. Sometimes making the faintest sound as in with ghost notes, other times so hard you break the stick.
You beat a drum when you go to war.
Ah, one of the greatest drummers of all time, Ringo Starr; a relative of his has entered our room.
Dennis L.
Do you like Beegie Adair? I think she is in your neck of the woods, she has a heck of a drummer.
Dennis L.
One plays. Play girl play.
Thanks nikoB. Made my day.
Given that Russia, and possibly China, S. Korea already mastered “breeder” reactors technology (incl. closing the waste fuel loop) or have potential to do so ~soon, BUT are for the moment NOT massively building that capacity means we are most likely into some “Brown deal” intermezzo instead, i.e. coal and natgas for next two decades at the minimum. And when they would feel the acute need to speed up said deployment they will do so, apparently they are not in any rush..
worldof …, your cogent analysis agrees with my tentative views. The Russians learned from Chernobyl the virtues of making haste slowly, and are doing their best to ensure that, this time around, the technology is thoroughly tested before any major deployment.
They are perhaps the best hope, however slender, of preserving BAU. But it will be on their terms. The US empire is finished. But how many will weep, and how many will rejoice?
Robert, the Russians learned from Chernobyl that you should never trust the Ukrainians to run a nuclear plant.
Actually SK is abandoning nuclear tech. Doosan, a big builder of nuclear station, is now being dismembered
How do we keep nuclear power stations repaired, going forward? I know that France’s company doing repairs had huge scandals and financial problems. Our nuclear plant in my home state of Georgia is being built without the original contractors, because they went bankrupt. No one seems to be able to make money in this business.
Another back of an envelope calculation:
Tim Morgan on his blog, last post in November I believe, has a graph showing discretionary income of various countries including France which is one of the lowest. France also gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear.
We seem to be in agreement that for a fossil fuel to be useful it needs to support taxes(this is contrary to opinions it is subsidized) for various governments. A guess is nuclear requires subsidies, is not efficient in that manner and is the major cause of the decrease in discretionary income, the citizens are taxed to support nuclear not the other way around.
Conclusion: As the “good” fossil fuels are depleted, discretionary income decreases and we haven’t seen anything yet. It may not be collapse, but belts are going to be tightened.
Dennis L.
Originally, when nuclear was built, it generally was quite cheap. This is a major reason France and Japan undertook their effort to use nuclear.
I remember pricing insurance that municipalities took out, to pay for the additional cost that would be required in the event that its cheap nuclear were to temporarily go off line, and fossil fuel generated electricity were required instead.
The reason why previously built nuclear today often requires subsidies is because of an unfair pricing system for subsidized wind and solar. The wholesale price nuclear generators receive tends to fall way too low, when wind and/or solar is available. Fairly often, the wholesale prices nuclear generators receive are negative. Local governments realize that they cannot get along without these nuclear power plants; they choose to give them subsidies, so that they can complete with the heavily subsidized wind and solar.
France’s problem is that its nuclear power is getting old and will need to be replaced, in the near term.
New nuclear depends on how “safe” the purchaser trying to make them. The cost and time for building the devices increases substantially, with additional layers of safety. New nuclear power plants are being built today mostly in countries that are not requiring the additional layers of safety. A few countries where they are being built: China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Turkey and Argentina. This site has a complete list:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
Onerous safety requirements are being used to drive up the price of nuclear to make it less competitive, IMHO.
Why would anyone want to make nuclear less competitive? In order to crash industrial economies and destroy capitalism—a goal of the globalist New World Order folks—energy has to be made much more expensive. Discouraging the use of nuclear power in the industrialized world fits this agenda like a square peg in a square hole.
CITIES AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER FOLKS
CITIES
Being a self described, most iconoclastic “urban planner” (seeing urban planning as an art genre) I am seeking tolerant and forgiving opinions about the following:
– The city is the new agribusiness
– Buildings are the new land
– There can be twice as many people living in cities while having twice as much available open space for health and recreation
– Whoever lives outside the cities and wants to remain there should not be subsidized through government services like roads, water conduction and grids. (They can visit the city through their own means and “buy” water and commodities.)
– There are likely to be aquifers under cites too, and wells can be dug in some urban spaces to supply water to limited areas.
– Routes to aquifers away from cities could be safeguarded.
– We need all the forested space we can get (including in cities) so we can get rain. Can there remain technological ability to monitor from space forested areas worldwide, along with the ability to use deadly DISTANT force against deforesters?
If any, or a significant amount, of the above passes the feasibility test on OFW, it’s hard to see how some kind of New World Order draconian control group could be avoided.
WOULDN’T MAKING SPACE FOR IT BE A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN?
China has done something close to this already.
Land is mostly owned by local governments. They sell off (lease??) plots for construction, to raise fund for local governments. The buildings built are high rise buildings, even in rural areas. There are elevators in tall building, but not necessarily for those under something like 12 stories high. Units on the top floor are not popular.
Roads are mostly toll roads.
Japan may be fairly close to this model as well. It has a lot of high rise buildings and toll roads as well. Outlying areas are not doing very well, in either China or Japan.
Once infrastructure is built, you are pretty much stuck with it. You cannot change it without losing a whole lot. People will probably need to build new infrastructure with local materials.
There are certainly people who don’t want nuclear energy to be competitive, but putting it on NWO globalists to destroy capitalism seem too far a stretch.
Safety regulations were implemented to appease the population. That fits even better in the square hole IMHO.
I subscribe to Japan’s biggest circulation daily newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun. We need the paper for cat litter and my wife enjoys the Saturday crossword. But basically it is the local equivalent of the Guardian—filled with NGO and SJW and NWO propaganda along with—in this aging society—full page adds for wigs, hearing aids, health supplements and incontinency pants.
Never a day goes by without some new press release or PR blurb from WHO, UNESCO or WEF on sustainable develpment goals or Agenda 2030.
Hardly a week goes by without a 2- or 4-page spread from Big Health/Pharma on some new drug or vaccine or other treatment that we all need to know about and embrace, for our own good we understand.
None of this is hidden. They are open and brash about it.
Another of the subjects pushed by the Asahi is the need to decrbonize the economy and give up using coal, oil and natural gas. Wind is not being pushed in Japan, but solar panels are the thing—since we have a lot more sunshine available than wind. But despite the fixation on decarbonization, there are absolutely no articles in favor of nuclear power. Instead, there is a steady drumbeat of criticism, negative coverage and fear-mongering. The legacy media, led by the globalist Asahi, is wworking hard to create and sustain an atmosphere of anti-nuclear sentiment that makes the public fearful and undermines the industry.
I see it daily. Why wouldn’t I? It’s I’m my face and I’m trained to notice it like a sommelier is trained to tell a Chablis from a Chardonnay.
This is essentially the same thing that the globalist media has done worldwide with regard to Donald Trump—an insidious drone of negative perspectives, rumors, innuendo and invective.
Members of the public are either alert to this kind of thing or they are blind to it. Regarding the latter, who see no globalist evil, I won’t argue. All I can say is, there is none so blind as he who will not see.
Thanks for your “on the ground” report.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution tends very much in that direction as well, but perhaps not as bad. It tends to stick to mostly local stories. But these tend to be about how COVID cases keep rising (even thought Georgia is something like fourth best in the nation in the rate of cases per 100,000 people), and how wonderful the vaccines will be. It does have some recopied articles from the New York Times to fill in what we would miss on overseas developments.
Reading West, temperature affects metabolism in an exponential way, exponent greater than zero, not less. We are past carrying capacity and ability to dissipate heat. the “radicals” may not have the correct solution, but they recognize a real problem.
There is a new link at the bottom to China and fusion(laugh if you must), the issue remains growth and increasing waste heat.
This is our spaceship, lose it and there are no substitutes.
Dennis L.
Dennis, by “West”, do you mean A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology by Geoffrey B. West, James H. Brown*, Brian J. Enquist (Science 04 Apr 1997: Vol. 276, Issue 5309, pp. 122-126
DOI: 10.1126/science.276.5309.122)?
Or something else by West?
If you’ll let me know what you are referring to and it is freely accessible online, I’ll certainly try to read it.
But without knowing your reference, I think you are making an analogy between metabolism in organisms on the one hand and our spaceship Earth on the other. You seem to be inferring or suggesting that because organisms overheat if they metabolic rate increases too much, that the Earth may similarly overheat due to an excessive increase in the “metabolic” rate of industrialized human activity.
Is that correct?
just to barge in here, in case Dennis doesn’t see your request, but I think he has mentioned that he is reading Scale by Geoffrey West.
Stop reading hallucinated works on how Gaia works. There is one, and only one source of reasonably unbiased information about how this behemoth works. That is measurement data from experiment. However, trying to conduct experiment to determine the workings of a planet is in most cases not tractable.
Following intuition based on excerpts from objective reality becomes significantly more accurate than the various lax writings sprung out of hopes and dreams of a reality that isn’t.
Go read a scientific paper on the subject, or stick your own hands into the (literal) soil of reality and work with that than indulging in literary masturbation. I.e. (h)opium for the bourgeoisie.
There is no stronger feedback loop than feeding your own senses, or a measuring apparatus, with signal from reality. It is where truth originate.
Cheers, David!
Well, if we are comparing the earth to a biological organism, there is a major problem as I see it in that the body of a biological organism is 100% metabolizing, while the earth is 99.999 something % non-metabilizing.
The metabolic heat of a large animal can become too great for the animal to deal with. I am seeing visions of hippos wallowing in mud here. But the amount of “metabolic” heat being put out by human industry is incomparably smaller than the amount of heat in the form of sunlight that the earth is being bathed in—IMHO.
If it wasn’t, then snowfall would have become a thing of the past, as was forecast David Viner, as reported by Charles Onians in the Independent in 2000.
After being laughed at for more than a decade, they scrubbed this story from their website a few years ago.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bss4_mv9hO4/UscI0plSfVI/AAAAAAAAkUY/alvsSlpin7M/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-03+at+12.58.02+PM.png
I know. I know there is nothing we can really do about it!
Bloomberg
Longest Arctic Sailing Season Tops Off a Year of Climate Disasters
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/longest-arctic-sailing-season-tops-050020394.html
….
More shipping traffic in the Arctic also brings higher emissions of polluting gases, which can boost temperatures and soften ice packs locally, Burgess said. The presence of the tankers also increases the risk of accidents and spills in an area where biodiversity is fragile, she said.
“There’s a strong interest to take advantage of the more efficient shipping route,” Burgess said. “Equally, it’s important that there’s policy put in place to make sure that’s done legally and safely, with adequate measures put in place to protect these vulnerable ecosystems.”
Sure, make it a positive. Mister BAU smiles🤭
I think I wrote on this before, did a brief stint to canvas houses to ask for Greenpeace membership back in the late 1980s. The head of the office there claimed the above as the most pressing challenge 🤪 for people to deal with….well, turns out the chap was right on.
Along with a host of others.
From Harry McGibbs updates and my other sources besides Gail here and others, looks the financial system worldwide is in a freefall ….how much longer can the CBs hold on?
Here is a story from Preston, Melbourne, Australia that may be of interest (and its not a virus story).
We recently had our local council elections in which we get to vote for a Council member for our Ward which is about 10,000 households. Voting is compulsory and for the Council elections it is always a postal ballot. The ballot papers are distributed with photos of the candidates with their blurb saying why you should vote for them. Nine candidates this year and you have to vote for each 1 to 9. Our suburb is mostly 1950/60s houses with young/middling families and elderly white and migrant (Italian, Greek) Aussies (and town houses for the working poor/singles).
It is the third time I’ve stood as a candidate on a degrowth platform (costs $250 to stand). This year being a Covid year we were allocated 300 words (instead of 250 previously). Usually I submit my words and that’s it; no advertising, no leaflets, no posters, no phone no., no social media, nothing except I do answer questionnaires that various local groups send to candidates and take part in forums. However, this year I actually learnt to build a website so I was able to put its address in my blurb. Peak hits were 9000 day (half them mine as I cobbled the website together).
This year I still did no leaflets, posters, social media; no easily contactable email address but I did have a comments page on the website. So you can see that I’m not hanging out to win Council office. I do it simply to put out there to my local neighbourhood some quite radical ideas, and to give them the opportunity to reflect back what they think about them. I’m very curious to see who around me agrees with degrowth propositions (without any undue influencing).
Following is a link to my website which I’ll keep going for a few more weeks. The link is to my candidates’ 300 word statement and you can see that I’m not pulling any punches about what degrowth is/could be. I have had earnest friends tell me that I’ll never get elected telling people that you don’t like your own policies.
http://votedegrowth.info/candidates-statement/
You’ll understand the stuff that I wrote about. I quite enjoyed writing it and putting it out there. Would recommend the cute video at the bottom of the About Me page; and the music is good. And yes I’ve had a number of people tell me you’ll never get elected with such an information dense website! Well it’s a few weeks of local issue fun every 4 years.
So how did I go? Same as ever; 7% of the vote (6% primary vote, +1% on preferences). 7th out of 9. I was up against young Labor party candidates, a popular (Italian heritage) and good local Councillor, a young deluded Green, young guy from the Socialists. They all went out and advertised themselves. Some people would have voted for me simply because what I wrote was an entertaining bit of writing compared to all the other statements which were “I will fight for,,,I pledge to …”. But then, neither my partner nor son voted for me.
So what does 7% of the vote mean? In our neighbourhood block of houses there are 43 residences and say if there are 1.5 voters per residence, that means that in walking the block (like I did a lot of during the lockdown) I would’ve walked past 4 people who voted for me. And I wonder who they are? I think its quite encouraging that dotted around us/me there is a small number of people who also get what makes the world go round.
Hmm. I clicked on your site and my malwarebytes antivirus protection warning came up, “Strongly suggesting” I do not enter your site. Everywhere I turn, I see so much censorship that anything I post I now wonder whether it will be censored/shadowbanned (which is a double deception on you and the audience), especially if I post it with a link.
I have been updating my portable HAM radio skills, as an extra with my portable HF radios. Sure isd a lousy time as the bands are bad due to the bottom of the solar cycle 24. With “Globalists'” fingers on the cell phone and internet kill switches and even worse, censorship/delete/shadowban buttons, I really wonder if we are eventually going to have to return to the days of the underground resistance from WWII.
I teach my daughter about the difference between information which if true may cause you to change your opinion or course of action, vs misinformation- info given ostensibly by well intentioned people but which is erroneus, vs outright disinformation- intentionally false information meant to mislead you. It has become exceedingly difficult for me to determine what is what.
As an side note, my English teacher, Edward A. Williams from my prep school in Buffalo (Nichols School) graduated from Princeton and worked as a major in General McArthur’s headquarters in Leyte, Philippines. After the war, he taught at Geelong Grammar School. He always said that Melbourne was his favorite city. From what I read about the COVID lockdown, it’s not so great anymore.
“I have been updating my portable HAM radio skills, as an extra with my portable HF radios.”
Hi Hubbs. In recent weeks I too have been experimenting with portable, stealth CW operation while trying to stay proficient. What escapes me is why. When things get so bad that all normal communications go down, what is it again that we hope to accomplish? Our contacts will certainly be few as Internet/repeater dependant HAMS go silent.
73,
D3G
I have wondered about how helpful HAM radios can be, as the world economy changes.
My days of getting involved in local politics are long over, but if I ever did stand for the local elections I would do pretty much what you did. I have no interest in becoming a politician but for a few weeks I’d make an effort to get some dialogue going.
About 8 years ago there was a competition here in Aberdeen, for the general public, about ways to resolve Aberdeen’s traffic problems. My suggestion was do nothing. I got to speak to an audience of about 100-200 (who chose the best solution) for a few minutes and tried to explain that with peak oil here and now, spending money on new roads etc was a waste, the issue would resolve itself soon enough. I got 4 votes, from peak oil aware people I sort of knew. Aberdeen city and shire councils went ahead and built a bypass for £1000M+ anyway. About £5,000 for every man, woman and child/baby in and around Aberdeen. Clearly no shortage of money, or delusion, here.
My partner and teenage kids also have zero interest in peak oil and related subjects. And they think the govt et el are doing just fine with CV19. Indeed, I am a conspiracy theorist, so my daughter likes to tell me. They are all very ‘intelligent’ people, but like almost everyone else I know, they cannot take too much reality.
“Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / cannot bear very much reality” T S Eliot, Burnt Norton.
I enjoyed reading your website. Lots of your degrow Darebin listed actions are what I would hope our county resilience committee would institute. Unfortunately, it is not. Thank you for sharing.
“Never” just ain’t what it used to be.
> Brexit: Theresa May and Boris Johnson’s words on the Irish border have come back to haunt them
The government is effectively establishing a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, writes Sky’s David Blevins
Theresa May famously told the British Parliament that “no UK prime minister could ever agree” to a border in the Irish Sea.
Boris Johnson later told a Democratic Unionist Party conference that “no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement”.
Their words have come back to haunt them.
By agreeing to implement the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, the government is effectively establishing a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
…. But Unionists fear a constitutional impact in the long term – with the DUP warning that “safeguarding the union is not a three-month, six-month or 12-month project” but “an enduring commitment”.
The Ulster Unionist Party says the DUP’s red line “has been washed away” and the Traditional Unionist Voice, another Unionist party, claims the deal leaves Northern Ireland “in the waiting room” for Irish unity.
The threat to break international law had raised Unionist hopes that the government might renege on its acceptance of a border in the Irish Sea.
Unionists rejected Theresa May’s backstop, which would have kept all the UK in the EU’s Single Market if that was necessary to avoid internal borders.
They have ended up with something much less palatable to them – an economic line down the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
That is a border by any other name.
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-theresa-may-and-boris-johnsons-words-on-the-irish-border-have-come-back-to-haunt-them-12156334
DUP majorly inflicted the sea border on itself, as a comment on the Slugger site succinctly points out.
DUP chief whip in the HOC Sammy Wilson will now have the indignity of setting up the sea border posts in his own constituency of Larne.
Brexit has been a massive own goal for DUP.
> …. The DUP knew prior to the EU referendum that the U.K. government would be extremely unlikely to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland but still insisted on supporting a version of Brexit that would make a new border somewhere on these islands inevitable.
The DUP threw its lot in with the ERG to defeat PM May’s withdrawal agreement which would have prevented a border in the Irish Sea.
The DUP had a confidence and supply arrangement with the government with significant influence on the government but failed utterly in two years to persuade the government to adopt a version of Brexit that would prevent a border in the Irish Sea.
The DUP supported the removal of PM May who had claimed that no British prime minister would put a border in the Irish Sea and instead put their trust in Boris Johnson who was willing to put a border in the Irish Sea.
The DUP held the balance of power in the last parliament giving it significant leverage on the nature of the Brexit that parliament signed up to but chose to support the dissolution of that parliament which led to a Tory majority and the complete loss of influence in parliament of people in Northern Ireland.
We were told by one prominent DUP member that Brexit was wanted at any cost.
We were told by numerous DUP members that they knew what they were voting for when they voted to leave.
We were told by the DUP that the British people voted for Brexit in a U.K. wide referendum and therefore we should respect the outcome but yet they are now conveniently ignoring the fact that the British people democratically voted for Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals in a U.K. wide election and claiming that it is perfectly legitimate to oppose them….
https://sluggerotoole.com/2020/12/09/we-now-have-a-border-down-the-irish-sea/
Sky “news” is a committed pro Remain site, and their news is slanted accordingly. These stories conveniently ignore two plain facts. One: there will be no compromise on fisheries; two: there will be no compromise on the integrity of the United Kingdom. If Boris tries to fudge either of those, his government will fall.
He should have learned from Traitor May’s experience that Parliament is still sovereign.
That is a powerful comparison between the fishing waters and NI. It seems that TP is more interested in sovereignty over the waters and the fish than it is about sovereignty over the land and the peoples of NI. But that does seem to be the case.
Remember, as far back as 1993 TP PM John Major issued the Downing Street Declaration with Taoiseach Albert Reynolds that Britain has no ‘selfish strategic or economic interest’ in NI. That led eventually to the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 in 1998 following the GFA.
TP is now committed to a border poll on Irish unity should it become clear that a majority would vote for it. That is international law, guaranteed by USA. TP has no commitment to keeping NI in UK. The people of Britain feel the same way, and polls show that most would not care less if NI left UK.
So, a border in the Irish sea is exactly what we should expect. TP is a capitalist British state party and it exists first and foremost to represent the interests of organised British capital like CBI. Those interests lie more in an eventual post-Brexit trade deal with USA than in NI.
NI is run down, like many regions of UK, and it is a drain on UK. It was the industrial heart of Ireland in 1921 but not any more. It is a deindustrialised region, a service economy with minimal exports. USA on the other hand is the largest economy in the world and a massive potential export market for British goods.
It is no aberration that TP has dumped the NI provisions from the Internal Market Bill and opted for a sea border with Ireland. Biden made it clear that there would be no chance of a UK-USA trade deal if UK caused a border on Ireland. That is a bipartisan position in congress, without the support of which no deal would be possible.
May had to make noises about keeping NI in UK because she depended on DUP to prop up her minority government. But she wanted to keep UK aligned to SM/ CU anyway, so those noises her. Noises suited TP ERG Brexiteers to keep DUP allied to them. Boris made similar noises, as a negotiating tactic to try to get concessions from EU, which were not forthcoming anyway.
So, TP has withdrawn the NI part of IMB, without any protestations from ERG. TP MPs are really not that bothered about a sea border – certainly if it is a condition for a UK-USA trade deal. IMB NI would have triggered if there were ‘no deal’; it seems likely there will not be a deal, but IMB NI is withdrawn for that eventuality.
There is some talk from the 1922 committee about a vote of no confidence if Boris caves on fishing, level field or regulations – but none about the sea border. They have a no deal Brexit in their sights and they are not going to blow that over NI.
NI has become a massive geopolitical nuisance to UK as well as a financial drain. No one is going to blow the government over that. TP has long committed to no commitment on NI anyway. So, the sea border seems to be a case of ‘what is done is done.’ The posturing over NI is over.
Thank you, Mirror, excellent comment and analysis. I still remember the John Major betrayal. In his shoes, I would have told the other party that if he does not stop his terrorists murdering my fellow countrymen, I would turn Southern Ireland into a desert and call it peace. But the UK has had zero backbone for many years now.
By the way, if during WW II the Nazis could have refuelled at the NI ports, as they did at the southern ones, we might well have lost the Battle of the Atlantic. I’m an old fossil; I still believe loyalty should be repaid with loyalty.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the British state is a capitalist state and it is ‘loyal’ to nothing but money. Those who are ‘loyal’ to it are deceived and its patsies. It is ‘fealty’, the ‘virtue’ of a subject. The sooner that the British state is broken up, the better it will be for all concerned.
> The New Idol
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states.
A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.
A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them….
http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11
One way or another, great or small, we are all loyal to money, whether we like it or not.
We all turned the world into a cash asset—just that some are better at it than others
That is as may be.
I am not ‘loyal’ to the rich or to the banks and neither am I ‘loyal’ to the British state just because it is better at making money than some other states.
I didn’t infer that you were loyal to banks or rich people
I was pointing out that we live in a situation where we need money tokens, and we rendered the world into a cash asset,
I get it, you are in no way suggesting that I should be ‘loyal’ to the British state.
Or to the rich or to banks. I was just clarifying my own line.
Thanks.
Mirror, no comment is necessary; you have said it all and I am in full agreement.
“The worsening of the viral pandemic across the United States and Europe is threatening their economies and intensifying pressure on governments and central banks on both continents to intervene aggressively.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/12/business/economy-business/us-europe-coronavirus-economies/
“Deal or no deal, millions of jobless Americans stand to lose aid lifeline:
“Even if lawmakers enact an extension of emergency unemployment programs ahead of the Dec. 31 cut-off, lags in programming for antiquated state systems will still cause missed checks for the scores who rely on them.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/11/coronavirus-relief-unemployment-444645
“Economists fear that low-wage [US] service workers face a devastating winter as the latest surge of Covid-19 shutdowns keep shoppers and diners home once again.”
https://www.ft.com/content/2a2324bd-ceb6-4844-9dd3-073ca493f73e
“Covid-19 Is Creating a New Kind of Financial Midlife Crisis:
“Covid-19 has disrupted professional trajectories, forcing people to focus on other areas of life — perhaps for the first time in years… The conditions created by the pandemic are putting people to the test.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/covid-news-pandemic-creates-new-kind-of-financial-midlife-crisis
Peoples “lifeline” is their jobs and the ability of people to create jobs via small businesses. Everyone getting a check and spending it at Walmart with everything else boarded up. Thats what were heading for. If we are lucky. Venezuela if we are not.
Governments are already intervening aggressively. They are aggressively destroying their own economies with useless lockdowns, aggressively gifting billions to the vultures of Big Pharma, and aggressively promising the vast profits and the total abolition of legal liability when the vaccines start to kill people. The banks, of course, are aggressively creating fake money to give to the rich, that they hope will be paid for by the poor.
If you ever wondered what the fall of civilisation would be like, stay tuned.
“Banks in the European Union may be losing their appetite for exposure to Britain, the EU’s banking watchdog said today.
“There are concerns in the bloc that a no-deal Brexit, which is looking increasingly likely, could disrupt financial markets.”
https://www.cityam.com/eu-banks-losing-appetite-for-exposure-to-brexit-britain/
“Armed Royal Navy boats are being prepared to patrol the UK’s fishing waters in an apparent final warning shot to Brussels as negotiations enter the final 48 hours.”
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-armed-navy-boats-on-standby-to-protect-uk-waters-in-case-of-no-deal-12158624
“A Brussels official told the assembled EU diplomats that an “incentive must be maintained” for the UK to return to the negotiating table “as soon as possible” if the negotiations did not lead to success this year.
“National governments were told it was important not to do anything [in the event of no-deal] that would replicate the benefits of EU membership, beyond what was contained in the specific, time-limited measures designed to keep planes flying and trucks moving.
“The decision not to include the so-called “fifth freedom” — allowing intra-EU airfreight movements — and to deny “cabotage” rights that would allow British trucks to make drop-offs around Europe were explicitly designed to keep up the pressures, diplomats were told.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e8858b30-0260-46ff-b3b8-d8b9ca540d11
“National governments were told …” by a Brussels official, of course. When will these proud and venerable nations wake up to the fact that they are now merely satrapies of the EU dictatorship?
I heard they are already down at Portsmouth, digging out Nelson’s flags
England expects etc etc etc
Honestly, this late-stage breakdown in negotiations feels to me as much emotional and psychological as it is practical and ideological. I think all parties are thoroughly fed up and hacked off now and against that backdrop jingoistic impulses are more likely to find expression.
Having known nothing but peace all my life, one starts to get an inkling of how wars start, not that I am forecasting one.
“Brexit stockpiling is causing 10-mile lorry queues and delays of up to five hours in Calais, it has emerged, as hopes of a trade deal fade.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/12/brexit-stockpiling-causing-10-mile-tailbacks-calais
all wars are resource wars Harry
remake of Whisky Galore on BBC2 today—didn’t know they’d made one
A tepid effort, alas, Norman – best watched after several drams.
Whisky Galore is a great movie. Basil Radford, Joan Crawford, lots of late 1940s humour and character building. I also didn’t know about the 2016 remake, and shall certainly not be watching it.
By definition, a classic cannot be remade; it is sui generis, one of a kind. King Kong, A Night to Remember, The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, Lost Horizon, … All great movies with bad remakes. (Except for Peter Jackson remakes, which are terrible)
no—I gave up after about 15 minutes–using 1950s cars in a 1940s setting, not the same atmosphere at all
the original holds lots of memories–spent a lovely holiday on Barra, exactly where the original movie was made
I am lazy, did the work on transfer payments, another question.
Good farm land now appears to be between $7.5K and $10K/acre, so someone might find out how much farm land in acreage is in each of the states of say, IA, IL, MN, IN? and then take the fortunes of say the 10 richest men in the US and see how much real stuff in the form of land they could purchase. Would they have a surplus of paper wealth over available real stuff which is not sold on the margin, or a deficiency? Do it for each of the men, is their stock over or undervalued?
I don’t know, but it would be an interesting metric as on a stock market a share of stock sold/purchased determines the value of all the rest in a portfolio. In RE, market is closely associated with assessed value for taxes which is an actual total real value of something that actually makes a cash flow.
Incredible money is being pumped into the country, where is it going?
Dennis L.
The area of the continental United States is about 3.1 million square miles, or about 2000 million acres. At $7,500 an acre, you could buy all of it for a mere $15 trillion. Of course, this ignores acres with negative value, such as Detroit or Chicago.
The too costly soya from Brasil makes its future production doubtful. The soya from Argentina or the USA is due to the transportation costs cheaper:
https://youtu.be/PiIicag_K9w
I watched the space x blow up. I thought it was a catastrophic failure. It looks like the passive systems did not get it upright in time for the retro rocket burst. It actually was pretty impressive technology.
I can somewhat accept that Musk was pleased with it because they got the data they needed to get it right the next time.
but these are baby steps, and a metaphorical million more steps would be needed to have humans living on Mars.
space stuff is very interesting, and I am looking forward to the upcoming brief lunar visit by a woman and the next man, probably a person of color.
also, sooner rather than later, I hope to see a one way manned mission to Mars.
there should be plenty of volunteers so a return trip is unnecessary.
another test
test results:
short posts show up before longer posts?
This has been my experience too. Short posts appear immediately, but longer ones so into moderation purgatory or sometimes into limbo.
I don’t know if there are some comments that disappear before I ever see them. The number of “spam” comments I see has gone down to close to zero, but the ones that do appear seem to be perfectly fine comments from regular posters. This is a separate list from the “moderation required” list, which often has several comments from regular commenters, plus any comment from a new IP address that I have not approved comments for previously.
Some people have questioned whether the UK could really lose 3/4 of its population by 2025. Well, if the virus or the vaccine or the lockdowns or the post-Brexit turmoil don’t get you, then how about a quadrupling in the cost of energy to heat your home? Boris the clown is shaping up as quite a horseman of the apocolypse these days.
The lie of the ‘green industrial revolution’
Boris Johnson’s plans to ban gas boilers and rely on hydrogen are beyond crazy.
BEN PILE
9th December 2020
Following Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan to advance the UK’s ‘green industrial revolution’, the government is bringing forward its proposed ban on gas boilers in new homes from 2025 to 2023. The 10-point plan also requires replacement gas boilers to be phased out by 2035.
This leaves a huge question hanging over each and every home in Britain: how will they be kept warm? The fact that this question has no answer reveals the lie at the heart of Johnson’s green industrial revolution. It is an anti-industrial revolution, and it is going to create great hardship.
Some 84 per cent of Britain’s homes are connected to the gas network. It sounds obvious to say that they should just switch over to electricity. But the retail price of gas is less than a quarter the price of electricity per kWh. Heating a home with electricity is therefore currently four times more expensive than heating a home with gas. Moreover, switching simply defers the question of where Britain’s energy is going to come from.
…
Point two of the plan is ‘to generate 5GW of low-carbon hydrogen-production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes, and aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade’. Unlike natural gas, hydrogen is not an energy source – it has to be produced. There are two ways to produce hydrogen: electrolysis and steam reforming of natural gas.
Electrolysis at grid scale is simply uneconomic – a highly conservative estimate of the requirements and costs of replacing natural gas with hydrogen produced by electrolysis and powered by wind energy would say that Britain would need 20 times as many wind farms, and the wholesale cost of electricity would increase tenfold.
This came from Spiked, yet another news and opinion site that has, lamentably, shed its comments section of late. Remember when comment was free almost everywhere?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/09/the-lie-of-the-green-industrial-revolution/
test
I find the time line of events interesting.
2011
The controversy about gain of function research safety is debated. Fauci emerges as a advocate of GOF .
He authors an article in WAPO “risk worth taking”
A flu virus risk worth taking – The Washington Post
[Search domain http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html%5D https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html
A flu virus risk worth taking. By Anthony S. Fauci,, Gary J. Nabel and. Francis S. Collins. December 30, 2011. Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious …
In October of 2014 USA places moratorium on gain of function research after lab accidents in the USA under the Obama administration.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-to-wuhan/
Fauci immediately funds the Wuhan BSL4 lab it is completed in 2015.
2015-2016
Wuhan lab/ DR Shi publishes infamous nature article detailing creation of chimeric sars 2 virus that voraciously attacks human tissue.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985?fbclid=IwAR3mymK4ixhRDIwB28pCqxHEYasc6V64cs49d-1Q-jWhdnU5nxuterx4QVo
It seems obvious to me that the research for this did not occur in the several months that the bsl4 had been complete. There was research prior to the BSL4 lab completion.
Human chimera ban fails to pass in USA.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/6131/text
2017 Moratorium on gain of function research is lifted under Trump administration.
2018. Several cables from the USA consulate in Beijing express grave fears about safety at the Wuhan lab.
2019 Covid 19 emerges a couple hundred feet from the BSL4 wuhan lab.
April-May 2020. Several MSM (wapo Newsweek and others) seem to actually be asking questions that would indicate the virus was a product of the USA funded Wuhan lab. This seems to be focused on the 2018 cables from the Beijing consulate about Wuhan lab safety. A incredible opportunity to blame the Trump administration for covid. The ban instituted under Obama lifted under Trump. Warning cables disregarded by Trump. Here was a opportunity to place the blame on Trump based on actual events and to portray Obama as the insightful protector. Given the MSM hate for Trump why on earth would they not pursue these obvious facts that probably would have destroyed Trump? To do that they would have to covered how the virus was a product of gain of function research sponsored from the USA and Faucis involvement. They would have had to educate the public about big pharma involvement with gain of function vaccine research They did so with the opioid peddlers with a great cry and hue yet here not so much. The inevitable response to that would have been a call for a ban on gain of function research and distrust of the same technology incorporated into vaccines. That apparently is a non starter In the MSM based on their abandonment of the line of inquiry started in April May. The temptation must have been enormous. Here was a real rope to hang Trump. Yet they abandoned it. Trump for his part was quite willing to let the matter go silent and to talk about the China origins of the virus but not the USA funding.
IMO If the single sided attacks on Trump did not demonstrate a controlled media the abandonment of investigation into this matter certainly does. The attack on trump is a agenda not genuine. If it was genuine then this matter would have continued in the press. It conflicts with a different agenda that has priority so the matter was dropped. Both agendas are confirmed yet again in the astonishing censorship that has arisen in social media as shown by the topics which are censored.
PRC style political control right before our eyes. A merging of political techno and pharma. This is the new smell of power. No questions allowed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
https://www.newsweek.com/us-investigates-wuhan-lab-leak-senior-china-researcher-says-allegations-are-malicious-1498772
Thank you Fritz, I think you have nailed it.
I think you’re wrong. There is no link between the end of moratorium in US and the “accident” in China, these are two distinctely different things, so this is a no starter for MSM. Besides, if GOF was a threat to Trump he wouldn’t had pointed to the Wuhan lab, he’d had accepted the market theory.
Good news. Most people do have the genes that dispose people to severe c 19 outcomes.
Severe outcomes are due to a malfunction in the immune system. Most deaths are of the elderly, who are passed the age of reproduction, which implies that c 19 would not eradicate those genes.
> The five genes that make you more likely to die from coronavirus or be admitted to intensive care
Five genes have been identified which increase the likelihood of a Covid-19 patient being admitted to intensive care and dying.
A landmark study from the University of Edinburgh gathered DNA from 2,700 Covid-19 patients in 208 intensive care units across the UK.
These are the most severe cases of Covid, and 22 per cent of patients studied died, with 74 per cent unable to breathe on their own and needing mechanical ventilation.
The genetic information of these patients was compared to 100,000 anonymous Britons, and five genes emerged as being extremely common in severe Covid cases.
Researchers say the discovery of five genes that appear so clearly to be linked to the disease is unprecedented in the field.
Knowing which genes are involved in severe cases of coronavirus infection can help scientists identify pre-existing drugs that could help treat Covid, the researchers say.
The genes were identified across the genome, with two on chromosome 19 called TYK2 and DPP9. One, called IFNAR2, is found on chromosome 21.
CCR2 is a gene found on chromosome four and OAS1 is located on the twelfth chromosome.
The high prevalence of these genes can partially explain why some people become desperately sick with Covid-19, while others are not affected.
The importance of this study is that it identifies specific genes which play a role in coronavirus disease, and therefore exposes them as targets for potential treatments.
All five of the genes fell into one of two groups: modulators of inflammation or antivirals. The latter stops the virus from replicating in the body.
But in severe cases of Covid the virus levels have often already dwindled, and the vast majority of the damage is being caused by a malfunction in the body’s own immune system, causing it to attack the lungs and trigger severe inflammation….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9043703/Five-genes-severe-cases-Covid-19.html
* Good news. Most people do NOT have the genes that dispose people to severe c 19 outcomes.
An unbelievable typo! LOL
CCR2 is the Neanderthal gene, actually on chromosome 3, that was already identified.
OAS1 on chromosome 12 is also known to be subject to variants due to Neanderthal introgression.
I do not know about the other three.
This could lead to a new theory about what killed off the Neanderthals—Covid-19,000-BC?
actually, I have had to set aside my research on that theory.
my Soylent Green New Deal theory is taking up most of my free time.
it’s complex, trying to reduce the use of resources while feeding the world.
Mirror thanks very cool info
Dastardly mutants inside family tree!
Now they are just taking the piss….
High schoolers can wrestle, as long as they don’t shake hands first
Ohio officials have issued rules to make high school sports safer in times of COVID-19.
Wrestlers must stay six feet apart and wear masks while on the bench and warming up.
When they enter the ring, they are prohibited from shaking hands.
Only then does it become safe to grapple your sweaty, heavy breathing opponent, and roll around on the ground together for six minutes.
But they don’t shake hands, so it’s all good.
Conclusion? Covid spreads from shaking hands, but not from wrestling… just like Covid spreads in churches and synagogues, but not at ‘peaceful protests’.
Remember, we must listen to the scientists.
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/wealth-taxes-mask-nazis-and-covid-rules-oh-my-29672/
https://www.wlwt.com/article/ohsaa-coronavirus-rules-students-can-wrestle-but-cant-shake-hands/34874133
This is strange.
Another strange interpretation: One teacher I have talked to in a Zoom meeting says that students in her (live) classes have to get up every 15 minutes and move around, then sit back down. That way they don’t have contact exceeding 15 minutes with their classmates.
How about “checking the oil”? Is that still allowed?
They are making this stuff up as they go along. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, the people will start to believe it. CV19 is slightly worse than the common flu. Let’s just tear down our economies and social structures for something you have over a 99% chance of survival.
What the world lacks you just plain commonsense. Globally it’s in short supply. I pity the fools i.e. “power structure” when The Plebs figure out they’ve been taken for a ride because they will become violently pissed.
This format looks so much better. It’s a lot easier following a conversation. Thanks for bringing it back !