How today’s energy problem is different from peak oil
Many people believe that the economy will start going badly wrong when we “run out of oil.” The problem we have today is indeed an energy problem, but it is a different energy problem. Let me explain it with an escalator analogy.
The economy is like a down escalator that citizens of the world are trying to walk upward on. At first the downward motion of the escalator is almost imperceptible, but gradually it gets to be greater and greater. Eventually the downward motion becomes almost unbearable. Many citizens long to sit down and take a rest.
In fact, a break, like the pandemic, almost comes as a relief. There is suddenly a chance to take it easy; not drive to work; not visit relatives; not keep up appearances before friends. Government officials may not be unhappy either. There may have been demonstrations by groups asking for higher wages. Telling people to stay at home provides a convenient way to end these demonstrations and restore order.
But then, restarting doesn’t work. There are too many broken pieces of the economy. Too many bankrupt companies; too many unemployed people; too much debt that cannot be repaid. And, a virus that really doesn’t quite go away, leaving people worried and unwilling to attempt to resume normal activities.
Some might describe the energy story as a “diminishing returns” story, but it’s really broader than this. It’s a story of services that we expect to continue, but which cannot continue without much more energy investment. It is also a story of the loss of “economies of scale” that at one time helped propel the economy forward.
In this post, I will explain some of the issues I see affecting the economy today. They tend to push the economy down, like a down escalator. They also make economic growth more difficult.
[1] Many resources take an increasing amount of effort to obtain or extract, because we use the easiest to obtain first. Many people would call this a diminishing returns problem.
Let’s look at a few examples:
(a) Water. When there were just a relatively few humans on the earth, drinking water from a nearby stream was a reasonable approach. This is the approach used by animals; humans could use it as well. As the number of humans rose, we found we needed additional approaches to gather enough potable water: First shallow wells were dug. Then we found that we needed to dig deeper wells. We found that lake water could be used, but we needed to filter it and treat it first. In some places, now, we find that desalination is needed. In fact, after desalination, we need to put the correct minerals back into it and pump it to the destination where it is required.
All of these approaches can indeed be employed. In theory, we would never run out of water. The problem is that as we move up the chain of treatments, an increasing amount of energy of some kind needs to be used. At first, humans could use some of their spare time (and energy) to dig wells. As more advanced approaches were chosen, the need for supplemental energy besides human energy became greater. Each of us individually cannot produce the water we need; instead, we must directly, or indirectly, pay for this water. The fact that we have to pay for this water with part of our wages reduces the portion of our wages available for other goods.
(b) Metals. Whenever some group decides to mine a metal ore, the ore that is taken first tends to be easy to access ore of high quality, close to where it needs to be used. As the best mines get depleted, producers use lower-grade ores, transported over longer distances. The shift toward less optimal mines requires more energy. Some of this additional energy could be human energy, but some of the energy would be supplied by fossil fuels, operating machinery in order to supplement human labor. Supplemental energy needs become greater and greater as mines become increasingly depleted. As technology advances, energy needs become greater, because some of the high-tech devices require materials that can only be formed at very high temperatures.
(c) Wild Animals Including Fish. When pre-humans moved out of Africa, they killed off the largest game animals on every continent that they moved to. It was still possible to hunt wild game in these areas, but the animals were smaller. The return on the human labor invested was smaller. Now, most of the meat we eat is produced on farms. The same pattern exists in fishing. Most of the fish the world eats today is produced on fish farms. We now need entire industries to provide food that early humans could obtain themselves. These farms directly and indirectly consume fossil fuel energy. In fact, more energy is used as more animals/fish are produced.
(d) Fossil Fuels. We keep hearing about the possibility of “running out” of oil, but this is not really the issue with oil. In fact, it is not the issue with coal or natural gas, either. The issue is one of diminishing returns. There is (and always will be) what looks like plenty left. The problem is that the process of extraction consumes increasing amounts of resources as deeper, more complex oil or gas wells need to be drilled and as coal mines farther away from users of the coal are developed. Many people have jumped to the conclusion that this means that the price that buyers of fossil fuel will pay will rise. This isn’t really true. It means that the cost of production will rise, leading to lower profitability. The lower profitability is likely to be spread in many ways: lower taxes paid, cutbacks in wages and pension plans, and perhaps a sale to a new owner, at a lower price. Eventually, low energy prices will lead to production stopping. Without adequate fossil fuels, the whole economic system will be disrupted, and the result will be severe recession or depression. There are also likely to be many job losses.
In (a) through (d) above, we are seeing an increasing share of the output of the economy being used in inefficient ways: in creating deeper water wells and desalination plants; in drilling oil wells in more difficult locations; in extracting metal ores that are mostly waste products. The extent of this inefficiency tends to increase over time. This is what leads to the effect of an escalator descending faster and faster, just as we humans are trying to walk up it.
Humans work for wages, but they find that when they buy a box of corn flakes, very little of the price actually goes to the farmer growing the corn. Instead, all of the intermediate parts of the system are becoming overly large. The buyer cannot afford the end products, and the producer feels cheated by the low wholesale prices he is being paid. The system as a whole is pushed toward collapse.
[2] Increasing complexity can help maintain economic growth, but it too reaches diminishing returns.
Complexity takes many forms, including more hierarchical organization, more specialization, longer supply chains, and development of new technology. Complexity can indeed help maintain economic growth. For example, if water supply is intermittent, a country may choose to build a dam to control the flow of water and produce electricity. Complexity tends to reach diminishing returns, as noted by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies. For example, economies build dams in the best locations first, and only later build them at less advantageous sites. These are a few other examples:
(a) Education. Teaching everyone to read and write has significant benefits because it allows the use of books and other written materials to disseminate information and knowledge. Teaching a few people advanced subjects has significant benefits as well. But after a certain point, the need for additional people to study a subject such as art history is low. A few people can teach the subject but doing more research on the subject probably won’t increase world GDP very much.
When we look at data from about 1970, we find that people with advanced education earned much higher incomes than those without advanced degrees. But as we add an increasing large share of people with these advanced degrees, jobs that really need these degrees are not as plentiful as the new graduates. Quite a few people with advanced degrees end up with low-paying jobs. The “return on investment” for higher education drops increasingly lower. Some students are not able to repay the debt that they took out in order to pay for their education.
(b) Medicines and Vaccines. Over the years, medicines and vaccines have been developed to treat many common illnesses and diseases. After a while, the easy-to-find medicines for the common unwanted conditions (such as diabetes, high blood pressure and inflammation) have already been found. There are medicines for rare diseases that haven’t been found, but these will never have very large total sales, discouraging investment. There are also conditions that are common in very poor countries. While expensive drugs could be developed for these conditions, it is likely that few people could afford these drugs, so this, too, becomes less attractive.
If research is to continue, it is important to keep expanding work on expensive new drugs, even if it means completely ignoring old inexpensive drugs that might work equally well. A cynical person might think that this is the reason why vitamin D and ivermectin are generally being ignored in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Without an expanding group of high-priced new drugs, it is hard to attract capital and young workers to the field.
(c) Automobile Efficiency. In the US, the big fuel efficiency change that took place was that which took place between 1975 and 1983, when a changeover was made to smaller, lighter vehicles, similar to ones that were already in use in Japan and Europe.
The increase in fuel efficiency between 2008 and 2019 (an 11 year period) was only 22%, compared to the 60% increase in fuel efficiency between 1975 and 1983 (an 8 year period). This is another example of diminishing returns to investment in complexity.
[3] Today’s citizens have never been told that many of the services we take for granted today, such as suppression of forest fires, are really services provided by fossil fuels.
In fact, the amount of energy required to provide these services rises each year. We expect these services to continue indefinitely, but we should be aware that they cannot continue very long, unless the energy available to the economy as a whole is rising very rapidly.
(a) Suppression of Forest Fires. Forest fires are part of nature. Many trees require fire for their seeds to germinate. Human neighbors of forests don’t like forest fires; they often encourage local authorities to put out any forest fire that starts. Such suppression allows an increasing amount of dry bush to build up. As a result, future fires spread more easily and grow larger.
At the same time, humans increasingly build homes in forested areas because of the pleasant scenery. As population expands and as fires spread more easily, forest fire suppression takes an increasing amount of resources, including fossil fuels to power helicopters used in the battles. If fossil fuels are not available, this type of service would need to stop. Trying to keep forest fires suppressed, assuming fossil fuels are available for this purpose, will take higher taxes, year after year. This is part of what makes it seem like we are trying to move our economy upward on a down escalator.
(b) Suppression of Illnesses. Illnesses are part of the cycle of nature; they disproportionately take out the old and the weak. Of course, we humans don’t really like this; the old and weak are our relatives and close friends. In fact, some of us may be old and weak.
In the last 100 years, researchers (using fossil fuels) have developed a large number of antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines to try to suppress illnesses. We find that microbes quickly mutate in new ways, defeating our attempts at suppression of illnesses. Thus, we have ever-more antibiotic resistant bacteria. The cost of today’s US healthcare system is very high, exceeding what many poor people can afford to pay. Introducing new vaccines results in an additional cost.
Closing down the system to try to stop a virus adds a huge new cost, which is disproportionately borne by the poor people of the world. If we throw more money/fossil fuels at the medical system, perhaps it can be made to work a little longer. No one tells us that disease suppression is a service of fossil fuels; if we have an increasing quantity of fossil fuels per capita, perhaps we can increase disease suppression services.
(c) Suppression of Weeds and Unwanted Insects. Researchers keep developing new chemical treatments (based on fossil fuels) to suppress weeds and unwanted insects. Unfortunately, the weeds and unwanted insects keep mutating in a way that makes the chemicals less effective. The easy solutions were found first; finding solutions that really work and don’t harm humans seems to be elusive. The early solutions were relatively cheap, but later ones have become increasingly expensive. This problem acts, in many ways, like diminishing returns.
(d) Recycling (and Indirectly, Return Transport of Empty Shipping Containers from Around the World). When oil prices are high, recycling of used items for their content makes sense, economically. When oil prices are low, recycling often requires a subsidy. This subsidy indirectly goes to pay for fossil fuels used to facilitate the recycling. Often this goes to pay for shipment to a country that will do the recycling.
When oil prices were high (prior to 2014), part of the revenue from recycling could be used to transport mixed waste products to China and India for recycling. With low oil prices, China and India have stopped accepting most recycling. Instead, it is necessary to find actual “goods” for the return voyage of a shipping container or, alternatively, pay to have the container sent back empty. Europe now seems to have a difficult time filling shipping containers for the return voyage to Asia. Because of this, the cost of obtaining shipping containers to ship goods to Europe seems to be escalating. This higher cost acts much like diminishing returns with respect to the transport of goods to Europe from Asia. This is yet another part of what is acting like a down escalator for the world economy.
[4] Another, ever higher cost is pollution control. This higher cost also exerts a downward effect on the world economy, because it acts like another intermediate cost.
As we burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels, increasing amounts of particulate matter need to be captured and disposed of. Capturing this material is only part of the problem; some of the waste material may be radioactive or may include mercury. Once the material is captured, it needs to be “locked up” in some way, so it doesn’t pollute the water and air. Whatever approach is used requires energy products of various kinds. In fact, the more fossil fuels that are burned, the bigger the waste disposal problem tends to be.
Burning more fossil fuels also leads to more CO2. Unfortunately, we don’t have suitable alternatives. Nuclear is probably as good as any, and it has serious safety issues. In my opinion, the view that intermittent wind and solar are a suitable replacement for fossil fuels represents wishful thinking. Wind and solar, because of their intermittency, can only partially replace the coal or natural gas burned to generate electricity. They cannot be relied upon for 24/7/365 generation. The unsubsidized cost of producing intermittent wind and solar energy needs to be compared to the price of coal and natural gas, not to wholesale electricity prices. There are a lot of apples to oranges comparisons being made.
[5] Among other things, the growth of the economy depends on “economies of scale” as the number of participants in the economy gradually grows. The response to COVID-19 has been extremely detrimental to economies of scale.
The economies of many countries changed dramatically, with the initial spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, we cannot expect these changes to be completely reversed anytime soon. Part of the reason is the new virus mutation from the UK that is now of concern. Another reason is that, even with the vaccine, no one really knows how long immunity will last. Until the virus is clearly gone, vestiges of the cutbacks are likely to remain in place.
In general, businesses do well financially as the number of buyers of the goods and services they provide rises. This happens because overhead costs, such as mortgage payments, can be spread over more buyers. The expertise of the business owners can also be used more widely.
One huge problem is the recent cutback in tourism, affecting almost every country in the world. This cutback affects both businesses directly related to tourism and businesses indirectly related to tourism, such as restaurants and hotels.
Another huge problem is social distancing rules that lead to office buildings and restaurants being used less intensively. Businesses find that they tend to have fewer customers, rather than more. Related businesses, such as taxis and dry cleaners, find that they also have fewer customers. Nursing homes and other care homes for the aged are seeing lower occupancy rates because no one wants to be locked up for months on end without being able to see other members of their family.
[6] With all of the difficulties listed in Items [1] though [5], debt based financing tends to work less and less well. Huge debt defaults can be expected to adversely affect banks, insurance companies and pension plans.
Many businesses are already near default on debt. These businesses cannot make a profit with a much reduced number of customers. If no change is possible, somehow this will need to flow through the system. Defaulting debt is likely to lead to failing banks and pension plans. In fact, governments that depend on taxes may also fail.
The shutdowns taken by economies earlier this year were very detrimental, both to businesses and to workers. A major solution to date has been to add more governmental debt to try to bail out citizens and businesses. This additional debt makes it even more difficult to maintain promised debt payments. This is yet another force making it difficult for economies to move up the growth escalator.
[7] The situation we are headed for looks much like the collapses of early civilizations.
With diminishing returns everywhere, and inadequate sources of very inexpensive energy to keep the system going, major parts of the world economic system appear headed for collapse. There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep the world economy growing rapidly enough to offset the down escalator effect.
Citizens have not been aware of how “close to the edge” we have been. Low energy prices have been deceptive, but this is what we should expect with collapse. (See, for example, Revelation 18: 11-13, telling about the lack of demand for goods of all kinds when ancient Babylon collapsed.) Low prices tend to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They also tend to discourage high-priced alternatives. Unfortunately, all the wishful thinking of the World Economic Forum and others advocating a Green New Deal does not change the reality of the situation.
“The U.S. could see an elevated death rate for more than a decade as the economic fallout from the coronavirus persists, underscoring the long-term health impact of the deep recession.
“The nation’s mortality rate is forecast to increase 3% while life expectancy will drop 0.5% over the next 15 years, representing 890,000 more American deaths, according to a working paper from researchers at Duke, Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities. Over a 20-year period, that amounts to 1.37 million additional deaths.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-04/covid-s-economic-fallout-could-elevate-u-s-deaths-for-decades
We know that there will be a lot fewer babies born, as well.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3116436/xi-jinping-orders-chinas-military-be-ready-war-any-second
In his first order of the new year to the country’s armed forces, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need for “full-time combat readiness” and said the People’s Liberation Army
must use frontline frictions to polish troop capabilities.
Isn’t it scary a little?
The other side of the story…
> However, the US is acting in its own selfish interests by advocating its “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” to enhance its military presence, intensify military competition and promote military confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region, the ministry said.
“This has exposed its longstanding hegemonic character, and will only heighten regional tension, undermine world peace and ultimately harm the interests of the US,” it said.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202101/05/WS5ff3a843a31024ad0baa0689.html
“Top oil producers resume debate on policy on Tuesday after talks stumbled over February supply levels, with Russia leading calls for higher output and others suggesting holding or even cutting production due to new coronavirus lockdowns.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec/opec-resumes-talks-amid-divide-on-february-oil-output-levels-idUKKBN29A0W0
“Simply put, Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills.
“With its economy hammered by the pandemic and plunging oil and gas prices, which account for 90 percent of government revenue, Iraq was unable to pay government workers for months at a time last year.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/world/middleeast/iraq-economy-debt-oil.html
repeat of Venezuela then
Iraq and many other oil producers are having major difficulties with today’s low prices.
I understand that Saudi Arabia is cutting its production by 1 million barrels per day.
“No one should be surprised by Turkey’s recent economic and financial woes. The country’s triple crisis (currency, banking, and sovereign debt) has been unfolding for years. Whether this economic turmoil will incite political turmoil is now a widely debated question.”
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/turkey-economic-crisis-in-three-stages-by-selva-demiralp-and-sebnem-kalemli-ozcan-2021-01
“Youth unemployment in Turkey stood at 24 per cent in September, the most recent available data, as young people between the ages of 15 and 24 found themselves at the sharp end of a broader employment crisis that has been compounded by the economic consequences of Covid-19…
“The slump has political implications for Mr Erdogan, who has seen his popularity slide and faced sharp criticism from opposition parties over the lack of jobs.”
https://www.ft.com/content/00421e9a-ed1d-40f2-8372-982990929cd7
Economic crisis, political crisis, and lots of unemployed young men. What does that suggest? War, of course.
But where to turn next?
Greece is under awkward but still valid EU/NATO security umbrella – protectorate subjugation, should this lapse into a point Turkey would be allowed “unpunished” to take over of even more Greek interests the country could finally stand up and rebel for real on many levels, despite how unlikely this proven to be recently.
Vector into Balkans blocked as integrated into EU/NATO.
Vector into -stans and Syria blocked by Russia.
Vector into Iran blocked by well Iran.
..
?
Against its own kurds maybe?
“Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte faces a showdown with his coalition partner and former premier Matteo Renzi this week that could bring down his government even as it struggles to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-politics/italian-government-totters-as-conte-renzi-divide-deepens-idINKBN2980EO
“Greek banks deferred repayments on 30 billion euros ($36.85 billion) worth of loans last year to help borrowers cope with the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic…
“The amount of loans under payment deferrals raises concerns that a chunk may become impaired when the period of grace ends, inflating the load of bad debt on banks’ balance sheets.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-greece-banks-loans/greek-bank-loans-subject-to-covid-19-repayment-relief-hit-37-billion-last-year-idUKKBN29A117?il=0
Lots of countries seem to have similar countries. The countries need to keep deferring payments, to maintain the fiction that the debt is repayable.
“As the new Covid-19 strain triggers tighter restrictions on economic activity and limits even more the movement of people, it has become increasingly clear that the road to vaccine-induced immunity will now have more potholes…
“As we head into 2021, investors will likely maintain an attitude that has served them well this year: put your faith in central banks’ ability to shield financial markets from any and all economic and corporate shocks.
“This will encourage more irresponsible risk-taking by investors and debt issuers. It will also fuel investment approaches that fail to account for a longer term in which governments and central banks themselves face massive and persistent policy and operational challenges.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7cf5b4e7-ae24-4e49-8b10-e4380c120933
“In Bloomberg’s quarterly review of monetary policy that covers 90% of the world economy, no major western central bank is expected to hike interest rates this year.
“China, India, Russia and Mexico are among those predicted to cut their benchmarks even further.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/ultra-low-interest-rates-here-to-stay-2021-central-bank-guide/2021/01/04/e3d791a2-4ef2-11eb-a1f5-fdaf28cfca90_story.html
Those countries that have interest rates significantly above zero now will want to cut them in 2021.
“The Bank of England is on course for a difficult 2021, after a Financial Times survey found investors believe the central bank’s quantitative easing programme is a thinly veiled attempt to finance the government’s deficit to keep its borrowing costs down.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f92b6c67-15ef-460f-8655-e458f2fe2487
“Last year, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, acknowledged publicly that the British government came close to insolvency because private investors did not want to buy its bonds, something almost unheard of for Britain.
!The bank was forced to step in to purchase $270 billion longer-term securities from the open market. In short, one arm of the British government borrowed to lend to another.”
https://www.voanews.com/economy-business/rising-debt-triggers-growing-alarm-especially-poorer-nations
“BOJ’s conundrum seen deepening as pandemic drags on:
“A moment of reckoning awaits the Bank Of Japan in March, when economists will scrutinize the bank’s planned disclosure of assessment findings on how to make its policy more effective and sustainable.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/05/business/economy-business/boj-monetary-easing/
“In short, one arm of the British STATE borrowed to lend to another.”
The state itself and not a mere government faced insolvency.
Actually keep the first bit and scratch the second – just woke up from a music-induced nap.
Isn’t that true everywhere?
“Corporate debt boom resumes as 2021 kicks off: Borrowing for January could reach $100 billion or more, despite lapse of Fed program.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/corporate-debt-boom-resumes-as-2021-kicks-off-11609811974
“Companies may find themselves excessively indebted after the coronavirus pandemic even if their businesses rebound, Oaktree Capital founder Howard Marks has warned, underlining the strain facing corporate America.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5585b123-7b9d-40fe-8f63-95f7491e8193
We all need to cross our fingers. It is hard to see how the system can stay together.
We stayed at Callaway Gardens for this past night, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. It had a winter light show featuring 8 million light bulbs to drive through, last evening. Sort of an interesting “service” being sold. There were a fair number of cars for it.
The hotel itself is set up to serve corporate guests at conferences. In fact, I had been to the hotel once before on a conference. My guess is that it is less than 10% full. We stayed in the “lodge,” rather than one of the many smaller units around the very large property. There are also some exhibits to see (butterfly and insect) and plants. The major attractions I expect are the golf course and lakes. It is possible to rent bicycles ($24 + $5 helmet rental for half day), but we would rather walk. The charges for all of their add-ons seem quite steep. The restaurant and parking lots are close to empty.
Well, it’s not as exotic as Greece, Gail, but it must be nice to be out and about.
“As 2020 drew to a close with severe limitations to travel still in place, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) expects international arrivals to have declined by 70 to 75 percent compared to the previous year. That equates to a decline of around 1 billion international arrivals, bringing the industry back to 1990 levels.”
https://thewire.in/travel/chart-global-tourism-back-to-1990-levels-as-pandemic-halts-travel
Sometimes if we can, we all deserve a treat. High end hotels/resorts are very good at pampering, sort of makes up for the inevitable swift kicks in the a….. that are inevitable in life.
Nice going, enjoy your stay,
Dennis L.
After seeing more things at Calloway Gardens, we visited the Little White House in Warm Springs Georgia, where Franklin D. Roosevelt came for treatments to help his paralysis from polio. Now we are in Columbus, Ga. There are a number of museums here, and it is near Plains Ga where a Jimmy carter still lives.
“The world’s biggest economies shouldering record debt burdens are about to confront an unwelcome legacy of the financial crisis: a $13 trillion debt bill.
“The Group of Seven nations plus key emerging markets face the heaviest bond maturities in at least a decade, much of them borrowings to dig their economies out of the worst slump since the Great Depression. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, these governments may need to roll over 51% more debt than in 2020.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/a-13-trillion-crisis-era-debt-bill-comes-due-for-big-economies
“Debt defaults among businesses and countries are rising, and these could cascade through the financial system and possibly trigger another financial crisis, the former head of the Bank of England said Monday.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/former-bank-of-england-governor-mervyn-king-sees-risk-of-another-global-financial-crisis-11609784016
CBs & GOVs & msm:
” *X*rona pushed our healthy economies into another 2008 like fin crisis..”
Sheeplez:
” Well, uhm, fair enough my dear overlords, lets downsize and tighten our belts again.. “
sorry
no more holes left
Debt aid a big worry for 2021.
See, lession learned…National Parks, Wildlife Preserves, and Protected Forests are really BANKS for Mister BAU…
one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on
Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drillers.
The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers.
The refuge has become central to America’s debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate experts say there should be no new oil and gas extraction, as the world is already more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times. Even if humans stopped using fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat.
Yahoo News
PS.
The Salt Lake Tribune
10 years after he monkey-wrenched a Utah oil and gas lease auction, Tim DeChristopher is ‘feeling demoralized’ by ‘the state of the world’ but sees hope in humanity
(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) Tim DeCristopher talks with members of the media in 2008 after he was escorted out of the Bureau of Land Management offices in Salt Lake City following his bid on several oil and gas leases during an auction. His bidding drove up the prices of several auctions and he won an estimated $1.8 million worth of leases. He has no intention of paying for the leases and said it was a way for him to protest the auction.
(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) Tim DeCristopher talks with members of the media in 2008 after he was escorted out of the Bureau of Land Management offices in Salt Lake City following his bid on several oil and gas leases during an auction. His bidding drove up the prices of several auctions and he won an estimated $1.8 million worth of leases. He has no intention of paying for the leases and said it was a way for him to protest the auction.
Nothing can stop progress
Low prices can stop progress.
We shall see said the Zen BAU Master, We shall see!
Low prices aren’t good enough!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B2L1-TgfKb4
Classic from Charlie Wilson’s War
SolarWinds: The more we learn, the worse it looks
While you’ve been distracted by the holidays, coronavirus, and politics, the more we learn about the SolarWinds security fiasco, the worse it looks.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Zero Day | January 4, 2021 — 20:35 GMT (12:35 PST) | Topic: Security
In March of 2020, Americans began to realize that the coronavirus was deadly and going to be a real problem. What no Americans knew then was that at about the same time, the Russian government’s hack of SolarWinds’s proprietary software Orion network monitoring program was destroying the security of top American government agencies and tech companies. There were no explosions, no deaths, but it was the Pearl Harbor of American IT.
Russia, we now know, used SolarWinds’ hacked program to infiltrate at least 18,000 government and private networks. The data within these networks, user IDs, passwords, financial records, source code, you name it, can be presumed now to be in the hands of Russian intelligence agents.
The Russians may even have the crown-jewels of Microsoft software stack: Windows and Office. In a twist, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious, Microsoft claims it’s no big deal.
ZDNET
LOOKS like a new game of warfare going on in the cloud theater…
No one is bigger than Mister BAU…NO ONE…back off
Billionaire Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men and the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is suspected missing since he has not made a public appearance in more than two months, according to a report from Yahoo Finance.
Ma’s reported disappearance comes after he called for economic reform in an Oct. 24 speech in Shanghai, according to Yahoo Finance.
“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age,” Ma said according to Yahoo Finance. “We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system.”
But the “Elders” don’t like being told what to do publicly and by an upstart at that no less.
Sure, a reset is being undertaken, not YOUR way , now enjoy your ride on the highway
Fox News
‘Don’t touch the money system!’……….
Perhaps Mr. Alibaba has met the Forty Thieves.
Outstanding!!!
I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of years ago.
In it, Dante describes the outcasts, who took no side in the rebellion of angels. They live in the vestibule. Not in heaven, not in hell, forever unclassified. They reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through a hellish mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner, symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest.
I find this description of the desperate pursuit of an elusive wavering banner rings rather true. This, it seems, is pretty much the place we have arrived at. Which banner have you decided to follow?
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
Let Babylon fix itself!
Has gone bonkers? Really? You make it sound its something fairly recent phenomena. It isn’t.
The world, or correctly, the rapacious primates has gone over the top with this sucker. Yup, we went flying over the proverbial Seneca crest. Expect the machinations of futility continue with increased intensity until the tumble down gets seriously uncomfortable, then priorities will be better aligned as we move closer to the truth.
Never, ever, leave the guiding principles of the biosphere.
The 7 #Rules of Mankind and every _single_ living organism.
Dr Malcolm: “Using an extreme example, someone with terminal cancer who is a week from death, catches COVID19 in hospital, and dies. What killed them? The statistics say COVID19. I say, bollocks.”
Perhaps the economy was already set to collapse, and the collapse coalesced around this particular issue. If COVID-19 wasn’t enough, some other issue would have caused it to fall down.
Why did the world react so hysterically to covid?
Over the last few months, I’ve sought to demonstrate that covid is nowhere near as bad as it is portrayed by the mainstream media. I’ve written about how the mortality rate is below 0,2%, meaning that for most people the risk of dying if you get infected is less than one in 500 (and less than one in 3,000 if you’re below 70 years of age).
I’ve also written about how the disease preferentially strikes people who are anyway very close to the end of life, so the amount of lifetime lost when someone dies of the disease is usually small. And I’ve noted that 2020 will likely turn out to have been a very average year in terms of overall mortality, in spite of the supposedly deadly pandemic that is currently raging.
Some have countered that covid might not be that deadly, but lots of people have “long covid”. I’ve pointed out that 98% of people who get covid are fully recovered within three months, and that there is no good evidence that covid results in long term health consequences (there is bad evidence, based on low quality science, that has intentionally been used to scare people).
I’ve also pointed out that the measures taken to fight covid, such as the huge fear campaigns, canceled childhood vaccination programs, and school closures, will result in far more years of life lost than will be lost to the virus directly. And the data I’ve used to point out all these things is publicly available, and published in some of the most prestigious and respected scientific journals in the world.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/01/03/why-did-the-world-react-so-hysterically-to-covid/
Thank you. A most informative read. I remember posting almost a year ago that covid could not be stopped, merely delayed at enormous cost. At that time, I had no idea how dangerous it might be, so your ample research has confirmed my worst fears.
It can be stopped. It can be eliminated. This happened in Melbourne Australia, population 5 million, where the State Govt of Victoria instituted a strict 7-8 week lockdown, (with compulsory mask wearing)following a serious outbreak of Covid last July/August.
No one is in hospital with Covid now. Life is normal. Australia as a whole has done very well. Good governance, a cooperative citizenry combined with earlier national and state border closures has resulted in a death rate of 909 people ( for a total Australian population of 25 million.) The country has just come out of recession.
From the article:
The situation seems to be very strange. The Chinese (with the help of researchers elsewhere) put together a virus that was somewhat lethal. The Chinese put on a big show of stopping it, implying that anyone else could too.
I think the reaction to COVID-19 is part of how a self-organizing system works. People were looking for a reason to cut back/shut down. The illness provided this.
Gail, are you going with the supposition that somebody, perhaps the Chinese, engineered this virus?
Keith, among others, is confident it evolved naturally.
While others think it is a make-believe pathogen and everyone who suffers from it is really suffering from something else—such as severe vitamin deficiency, cyanide poisoning, EMF exposure, Roundup contamination, or bog-standard flu.
Me, I’m just trying to keep up by trying to test whether statements made by authorities about this virus are mutually consistent—whether they add up to a coherent Leonardo Sticks structure of knowledge—or not. I find that just doing that is a full time task.
Why did the world react so hysterically to covid?
That’s the plan.
If a computer gets hit by lightning and you render the chips down for gold than smash it to pieces to hide it in your trash and take it to the dump, is that a reset?
Maybe, it seems to me the biggest reset may be in education; the cost of lectures, screen time is literally close to zero. Looking at all those young people taking on debt, guaranteed by government which keeps whole cities going through student housing, etc. That changing could be a huge reset, so many assets become worthless, so much local governmental tax revenue stops. Reset that, ouch.
It is a very challenging time. Do you actually farm?
Some land in SE MN recently auctioned at $13K/acre per FSA office so that number should be good. That is investors piling into farm land, no way it can be farmed at that price.
Seems like we are going for a great reset.
Dennis L.
Both education and medicine are ripe for great resets. The growth of complexity has lead to diminishing returns in both areas. We basically cannot afford to pay for the absurdly complex systems we have put together. Computer programers cannot spend all their lives learning new techniques. Requiring faculty to churn out academic papers in every field has very little positive payback. The papers are too closely tied to what was believed in the past. Also, what is the benefit of endless papers on music theory or any number of other subjects? True insights come from outside the fields.
Music theory has a place, but a Michael Jackson causing it to come to life through sound and movement, wow! M. Jackson was definitely outside academia, he studied Fred Astaire’s movies.
Medicine: Having a personal experience, a $188m machine will save me from surgery and the downward spiral I saw in my father – a memory is so strong that early on I had decided there would be no surgical treatment, my alternative choice was hospice and morphine. Complexity avoided that fate.
So far, trivial bills, I paid my dues, worked hard, contributed my 3% to medicare, no maximum income test in the last years, purchased a good supplemental and paid for same skimping on other things. By chance retired to Rochester, MN, Mayo a short walk from my home.
The machine was made possible by a gift from a man who in the 1930’s started a small 3000 sq foot warehouse in IA, at the end he gave $100m to Mayo. Not everyone who accumulates fortunes is a bad guy. The man who runs it is a MIT Phd, MD, two long journeys by two men that no one could have foreseen. The first started his business in the depression, survived a World War, a Korean War, a Viet Nam war and what was close to an agricultural depression in the late seventies, early eighties. Striving is not always fruitless even in bad times.
Arising and expecting disaster each day causes one to miss the joy of the moment.When I read I try and see what might work, and then try and find a number of others who have a somewhat similar idea, is the idea plausible? Not smart enough to come up with my own ideas.
Today came across my morning Youtube and Manolis Kellis with a fellow Lex Fridman. Manolis is positive, he embraces the struggle that is life and goes forward. Yes, he is brilliant and that always makes things easier.
Time for other things, safe travels Gail,
Dennis L.
Decent overview of dollar “bear” argument
https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/
Thanks, skimmed it, printed it, will read it carefully. The massive printing and “giving” away of literally trillions of dollars is very concerning. Exponential series are nasty a the end.
Dennis L.
also skimmed it:
“Going forward over the next 3-5 years, I still expect many currencies including the dollar to continue to devalue vs hard assets, and for the dollar to probably be among the weaker major currencies during that timeframe (with occasional counter-rallies against that trend, as is natural).
While it may or may not continue to be, so far this view has been correct.”
especially “many currencies to continue to devalue”.
this is consistent with the idea that the global economy is in the Endgame.
Reading it in depth, she writes well like Gail, nice find by someone.
It is long for a post, 60 pages, only through 20 of them.
Dennis L.
the global economy is certainly in its endgame.
there’s now nothing to sustain it.
Thank you, I just finished reading it. It makes a lot of sense, and is grounded pretty strongly in classical economic theory. It even explains why Keynes’ “Bancor” cannot work in a multipolar world, and why it is unnecessary in a unipolar world.
Thanks! I will want to read it when I have more time. The dollar has been falling since March and the big impact of COVID. I think eventually, the whole system will come apart, but perhaps that will take many years. It may depend on the extent that debt defaults become a major problem. Or maybe international trade (and the lack thereof) will be the big issue.
Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence
https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
Sweden – No Lockdowns – No Masks — Not in the Top 20 Deaths Per Capita.
But many countries that have repeatedly locked down ARE in the Top 20 including the UK, Spain, France, Canada, Italy, India, Germany etc…
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Australia, Taiwan and NZ locked down. These continue to have very little transmission, people are free to move around, and thier economies are doing better than countries overrun by the virus
Yes Diana. Australia has recently come out of recession. The strict 6-8 week lockdown that the city of Melbourne (population 5 million) had following a serious outbreak last year is a lesson to those who say it can’t be done. The virus was not merely flattened, it was eliminated.
Similarly, in my State of Tasmania, a strict lockdown in the northwest and vigilant contact tracing took care of the virus, and, combined with the closure of the State’s borders for a few months, the result is we have been living normally for several months.
Some of you might find this summary of 2020 of interest, it is visual and easy to read. Copper did very well which seems to be a different observation posted here regarding an African country and low copper prices.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/best-and-worst-performing-sectors-stock-market-of-2020/
This site has a mailing list and the representations are a nice summary.
Byron Wien has some interesting observations regarding 2021, his thoughts on the Fed are instructive. Inflation seems to be in the air, probably a good time to have some long term debt against a relatively safe asset with appreciation potential and income to boot. He sees oil in the $65/barrel range, Exxon anyone?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/byron-wien-releases-10-surprises-2021-mmt-trump-tv-return-normal-memorial-day
Dennis L.
If mines are depleted, even what appear as to be a high price by historical standards can provide too little revenue to pay workers an adequate wage. This is usually when the mines need to be closed.
Metals are a bit different from energy products. Sometimes their prices can rise, even when energy prices are at low levels. They are subject to diminishing returns as well.
Gold and silver miners become more valuable the lower fossil fuel cost goes because diesel is such a huge component cost in mining. Copper, nickel, and zinc are increasing in cost because China is using a lot and there isn’t extra capacity that can just be ramped up. Gold and silver are going up because we’re in the midst of a monetary crisis. All of them are a good hedge against a falling dollar.
Once the dollar falls too much, however, the system tends to fall apart. Whatever you bought as a hedge won’t really buy anything. So the hedge is a very short term hedge.
Yep, the real hedge perhaps being if “your uncle” has got the digital keys into that bunker with small NPP generator or such. But the risks of receiving retaliation strike or the stale preserved food rations served until eternity, not mentioning other weirdo occupants of that joint is sub optimal hedge as well..
So, dear kids, to keep it short, there is no HEDGE.
Byron Wien:
“5. The economy develops momentum on its own because of pent-up demand…”
the idea of “pent-up demand” seems to be consistently erroneous.
his thoughts depend mostly on a return to “normal”. If a person buys into that prediction, then his other predictions seem reasonable.
I favor predictions that are worse than 2019 levels.
I try and a number of such papers, see how many times an idea comes up, follow the most frequent, etc.
Different time, things don’t seem to work as they once did.
Dennis L.
If you read an idea enough times, it will seem sort of reasonable. If the overarching themes are diminishing returns and too much complexity, you will figure out that we are doing exactly as many other early civilizations has done. We are moving to collapse, after having been in overshoot.
‘Pent up demand’ is as shaky an assumption as perpetual growth being the norm, having suffered only a temporary interruption.
In this respect, Herr Schwab, the world gauleiter, is correct when he says that there will be ‘no going back to normal’.
Herr Schwab in his brand spanking new Audi E-tron for the win!
As they say in Norway..
/sarc off
we’re off to see the wizard…
the wonderful Wizard of Schwab.
for he is all-knowing and all-powerful.
it is only a short time now before he rules the world.
b w w a h a h a h a h a.
Xaiber, I think you will enjoy archbishop Vigano’s take on the current situation it has much in common with that you are saying.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/irreparable-disaster-joe-biden-designated-president-united-states-archbishop-carlo-maria-vigano-warns-believers-latest-interview-steve-bannon/
a snippet
“We must all become aware of how much the proponents of the New World Order and the Great Reset hate the inalienable values of our Greco-Christian civilization, such as Religion, the family, respect for life and the inviolable rights of the human person, and national sovereignty.”
The values of the Christian monarchical tradition (God, country, family, etc.) began to be demolished by the philosophes of the 18th century, the liberals of circa 1850 finished the job, with the later help of commies. Today, in Europe at least, the presence of these values is vestigial.
The strategy is clear and did not start in 2020, but decades ago: create or direct events, ontrol their perception through the media, in order to rob/divide/confuse your opponents (in this case, the ex-citizens) and take the respective dividends in the form of money and power. As we all know, concentration of both in their hands (and impoverishment of all the others) is the inescapable trend now. The law of diminishing returns predicts it.
Operation Covid greatly accelerated the whole process of power grab and control, but it’s only fair to recall that it would not have been possible without the credibility tests provided by previous operations (Rei.chstag, JF-K, Gl.adio, Sept11 and a long etc.) If people swallow a Osvald, the sky is the limit for the technocrat owners.
There’s where we the sheep are now, trapped in the clouds of our shepherds superior intelligence (AI and else).
19th century bourgeois liberal values (freedom, equality, etc.) resisted the Nazi and Soviet attacks, but wiil not resist the coalition of both ideologies in the 21st century Owners.
They are too powerfull and we the sheep too gullible, confused, divided and week. That’s how i seet it now, but who knows what will be the situation in nine months, in two years? Some popular uprisings seem inevitable sooner or later, i guess, but they will be quickly stifled. People will be slow-cooked like frogs. When the frogs get at last that there’s no tomorrow, they’ll be to weak to budge. Mission acomplished for the owners, utopia completed, great success and the survivors will live happily forever. End of the movie.
It will be eternal. A world where the Great War was never fought, and a century too late.
Yea, i forgot to add an ironic smile after the last sentence. I don’t believe in the end of the History meme. The strife is forever, because that’s what dissipative structures do for a living.
Vigano is a loose cannon who is cutting his own path. He is not a serious scholar. A decade ago, the role was played by Bp. Williamson, who at least had a better understanding of traditional RC teaching. Vigano is a ‘conservative’ and thus a ‘liberal’. He followed the post-Vatican II popes until PF. His position is incoherent at best.
It is a bit of a stretch to claim that the ancient Greeks and medieval and modern liberal Christianity all had the same values. Indeed ‘inviolable rights’ are a modern concept with roots in the early bourgeois period. Plato conceived ‘justice’ as the order of a society in which the masses know their place, have no political say, and are managed by an elite. He proposed three different value systems for three different castes. Only adult male citizens, a tiny proportion of the society, had legal rights in ancient Greece, as in ancient Rome. Feudal Europe was not about liberal rights but the power of institutions, monarchy, aristocracy, RCC.
Traditional Catholics, like the pre-Vatican II RCC, see liberal ‘rights’ as subversive of RC society. RCC always condemned the ‘right’ of each to publicly worship as they please, and all non-RCC religions were banned from public worship in RC countries. A ‘free press’ was also condemned and banned. It is ironic that Vigano now wants China to tolerate Christianity on the basis of such ‘rights’. Traditional RC see him as basically a liberal who has not got a clue what he is on about. He is a ‘useful idiot’ for Trump hawks at the present time as he chimes with their geopolitical agenda and rhetoric, which is why Bannon interviewed him.
“RCC always condemned the ‘right’ of each to publicly worship as they please, and all non-RCC religions were banned from public worship in RC countries.”
Except that RCC lost its influence in Catholic countries after the French revolution, and religious freedom was enshrined in liberal constitutions from the beginning of the 19th century. In Portugal, this happened two hundred years ago (1822).
Yes, those countries then ceased to be Catholic countries, politically defined, in so far as they separated state from church. RCC itself always condemned religious liberty and it stepped that up in 19 c., such as Leo XIII and Pius IX. RCC itself did not accept religious liberty, and the ‘right’ of the other religions to public worship, until RCC went liberal at Vatican II in the 1960s and it published Dignitatis Humanae.
RCC had endorsed the clerical fascism of Franco and it was only after Vatican II that it began to pressurise the Spanish government to tolerate non-Catholic public worship. Other RC countries were also pressurised to allow it, and effectively they all ceased to be Catholic countries, politically defined, although RCC continues to try to influence them on ‘morality’ like abortion. Argentina just allowed it for the first time.
Traditional Catholics like SSPX continue to oppose religious liberty and Vatican II in its entirety. Indeed, RCC itself ceased to be Catholic at Vatican II. Many traditional Catholics square that circle by denying that the post-Vatican II popes were valid. Thus PF is simply Mr. Bergoglio of the Vatican II Sect. For SSPX, the post-Vatican II church both is, and is not, the RCC under different aspects. Still others style it the W/ore of Babylon.
Spiked has a good article on Bannon.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/19/steve-bannon-mystical-populist/
His worldview is Hindu, hierarchical and cyclic. He is trying to push the West deeper into its crisis so as to re-establish more ‘traditional’ societies. He is a strategist. CCP is actually much closer to what Bannon wants, with its strong, authoritarian state and its promotion and protection of traditional folk religions. Bannon is against industrial progress and population growth, however.
The only ‘points’ to his anti-China stance are, guessably, to maintain in USA the influence of the popularism around Trump, firm up nationalism, and slow down the global economy. He seems to favour Christianity simply because he sees it as the ‘traditional’ religion of Europe. Like Vigano, at best he is incoherent and cutting his own odd path.
There seem to be a lot of odd ideas around!
Being against industrial progress is an immutable road towards stagnation and domination by an adversary that goes full bore on tech. Tech does not, however, imply rampant consumerism and socialist engineering.
Where Bannon falls through the floor is in the classical humanoid/life chauvinism/traditionalism/conservatism trap. Big red nostalgia warning sign on that hole of reasoning.
FFS Steve, follow through with your thoughts. Ultimate reality is created in the limits of what is possible. It isn’t by default. Oh, well, I suppose most humanoids need solid ground for projecting their core being onto the world. Yet we all stand on this sweet little oasis of life floating around the sun in the nothingness of it all.
Look Steve, there is no firm ground, a safe space to feel the cozies in, it’s an illusion, a myopia of the ordinary. On earth we are all naked facing impending peril. At any moment a comet could slap down on the planetary surface, ending the shit show for quite some time, and then some time. The same goes for the sun, it could flare massively, and that would be all she wrote for eons.
Only from listening to the “War Room” podcast and knowing little about Bannon prior to this… I don’t see how Bannon is “against industrial progress”.. rather the opposite. He is overtly siding with anti-CCP capitalist forces in HK and the Chinese diaspora (which he mentions frequently). The de facto WR theme song about “taking down the CCP” is modeled on boasting bling rap culture: Who got dat big yacht? Who smoke dem fine cigars? Who wear dem bespoke suits?, etc. Only thing missing are the babes, but Guo kinda sets off my gaydar.
Seems like Bannon’s aligned with forces who look at places like China as opportunities to make material gains (the way the CCP/state looks at the rest of the world). Even the Catholic aspect is to maintain/expand a sphere of influence, no?
It’s all got a very “Spy vs. Spy” feel to it.
That is a good article. I would question whether Bannon believes in the Four Yugas (Ages) / Cyclical Time, though. “Traditionalism” is doesn’t have clear ideological content, as far as I can see (converts to it have ended up in any number of “traditional” religions), but generally represents a right-wing religious reaction to left-wing politics. For Bannon that took the form of conservative Catholicism.
N. Wahid Azal has some interesting videos, and at least one paper, about this whole subculture (which he despises).
It would be hard to say without questioning him. He has assimilated the traditionalism of Evola, which is very much focused on the Kali Yuga. Remember, Bannon is a strategist and that often involves not disclosing one’s objectives. Note what I said above about the different value systems for different castes in Plato. Nietzsche also, eg. TAC 57. It may be that Bannon sees Christianity as a feudal, peasant religion and thinks that it will serve the lower order as its ‘traditional’ religion, while the ruling caste has a more pan-traditionalist viewpoint rooted in Hunduism, the traditional IE religion. If so, then he is not incoherent, but certainly odd. It is hard to say without more data.
Re: regional energy consumption per capita (UK) and devolution
Gail has advanced the interesting idea that countries or unions tend to devolve into the regions as energy consumption per capita (ECPC) falls. UK is now splitting up, so it will be interesting to look at the fall in ECPC on a regional basis.
The government stats indicate that electricity consumption has fallen greatly across the UK compared to 2005, and indeed it continues to fall despite more customers; consumption is highest in the east and lowest in the NE; the deepest fall has been in Scotland (25.6%). Gas consumption has also greatly fallen compared to 2005; it has fallen most in SW and Wales.
Thus we find an overall decline in ECPC across Britain (NI is not included in these stats), and particularly in Scotland (a 25.6% fall in electricity consumption), Wales and SW – the Celtic parts (inc. Cornwall) of the UK, which are those that have historically tended the most toward independence anyway.
That tendency is now much more pronounced than ever before and up to 58% in Scotland, and 33% in Wales, now support independence. Some degree of devolution for Cornwall has also been muted, and the north is the region that has historically done the worst in England proper and that is often intuitively considered to be the region most likely to make a break from UK after the Celts.
So, all in all, we find that the regional stats regarding the fall in ECPC do support Gail’s idea that countries and unions, being dissipative structures, tend to devolve into regional parts as ECPC falls. Indeed, it is those regions that have seen the deepest fall in ECPC that display the strongest independence tendencies, and indeed a strong increase in those tendencies.
> Sub-national Electricity and Gas Consumption
Regional and Local Authority, Great Britain, 2018
19 December 2019 National Statistics
This publication provides estimates of annual electricity and weather corrected gas consumption at and below national level in England, Scotland and Wales. Latest estimates are for 2018.
– Comparing electricity consumption to 2017, all regions showed a decrease in their electricity consumption, despite around 148,000 new meter installations across Great Britain.
– Average domestic electricity consumption continued to be lowest in the North East (3,050 kWh per meter) and highest in the East of England (3,984 per meter).
– Since 2005, all regions have shown large reductions in meter point electricity consumption with Scotland showing the highest reduction; 1,500 kWh (25.6%) per meter.
– Domestic gas consumption remained relatively stable across the regions in 2018/19 in comparison with 2017/18.
– Since 2005 all regions have shown large decreases in average domestic gas meter point consumption with the South West and Wales showing reductions of over 7,000 kWh per meter.
– The proportion of homes not connected to the gas grid has remained consistent between 2016 and 2018 at around 14.4% overall.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/853760/sub-national-electricity-and-gas-consumption-summary-report-2018.pdf
“all regions showed a decrease in their electricity consumption,”
The timing is about right for the introduction of more efficient light bulbs.
Old light bulbs were phased out by 2011 in UK. ECPC fell steadily in UK since 2000. Gail could likely give us more insight when she gets back from her trip.
I would guess that factors include higher energy prices and the increasing switch to a services economy, which is now 80% of UK GDP and requires less energy than industrial production. Commercial use is 70% of UK electricity consumption.
Domestic lighting accounts for 5% of energy consumption; energy efficient bulbs reduced domestic lighting electricity use by 1/3.
ECPC has fallen much more drastically than bulbs can account for, from 3785 (kg of oil equivalent) in 2000 to 2764 in 2015 – a fall of 27%, only a tiny fraction of which bulbs can account for.
To be honest, I do not comletely understand this strategy/regulation. Isn’t it in some way just a shift of energy conversion to light-source production level?
The new LED/energy saving sources are much more energy-intensive in production process comparing to old light-bulbs. This might offset the savings in lighting operation. If we save 30% of energy, how much more energy is required to produce these bulbs? Any reports on the topic?
I could accept this move only with the assumption that it was a strategy of importing light-sources produced with cheap Chinese electricity from coal. Was it?
I think that one of the big issues with LEDs is that you need a globalized economy to make them. Incandescent light bulbs were easier to make with inputs more likely to be available locally, but I suppose this has changed. Peak demand for electricity is determined by heating and cooling needs. This is essentially unchanged by LEDs.
I think the trend in heating has also started, although in smaller scale. The heat-pump solutions are similar to LEDs in terms of energy-conversion shift.
These devices produce heat from air-water-ground temperature differential. Local energy consumption is lower, but in full process of energy consumption including device production, delivery and maintenance the energy savings are also questionable.
We have an air based heat pump in the basement, and the rest of the house is heated with gas. I calculated earlier that it costs more to heat the basement than it does the rest of the house. This is bizarre. Except that electricity is a whole lot more expensive than natural gas.
“it costs more to heat the basement than it does the rest of the house. This is bizarre.”
MPP?
Gail, on basement heating you may want to consider what insulation you have floor to earth and walls to earth and how wet your soil is. Ideally dry insulting soil.
During nights and wintertime in the North, older bulbs’ heat-releasing inefficiency adds to the heating of living spaces.
Only in hot places might the entirety of energy savings be recuperated, I think.
The problems isn’t light bulbs in the north during winter, as they happen to assist in heating the house, similarly, it doesn’t quite get so dark (in the Nordic countries) during summertime, but rather in warmer countries with air conditioned houses and dark nights in the summer.
Thus in colder countries the light bulbs to LED switch doesn’t do that much of a difference, apart for being flatly better at illumination and lasting longer. I wish they could be serviceable/repairable and not hermetically sealed disposable units of idiocy.
Thank you: your post impelled me to do my own research. The most interesting reference I found was here:
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/745894/
It is from “The Scientific World Journal”, and here is the first gem I found:
“The total electricity consumption for the lighting application of the selected buildings is around 13,868.46 kWh per day.”
So you can measure electricity consumption to *seven* significant figures of accuracy? Red flag #1: an impossible degree of precision is a sure sign that the author is not a scientist. That rubbish is what economists print.
And again: “To analyze life cycle cost of the lighting system, the total cost of installation, maintenance, and operation of its lifespan have been considered.”
What about mining and refining of raw materials, construction, shipping and delivery, decommissioning and proper disposal?
Again, an economist speaking, who measures cost only as the bean counters measure it: for the organisation, not for the world as a whole.
Colour me unconvinced. As Gail has taught me over our brief acquaintance, you cannot act local unless you first think global.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”
— Miyamoto Musashi
Do we know that it’s only the adoption of different bulbs? I see a lot of room in using/having used timers, motion-sensors and the like, to apply lighting more strategically.
Getting rid of cathode ray tube displays helped energy consumption a lot. They were used as early computer screens and in televisions. Today’s screens use much less energy.
the anti-vaxxers, conspiracists, hoax merchants, plotters, Gatesmates and smallpox scoffers should check on this guy, sit through this talk, (and others)
https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_my_wish_help_me_stop_pandemics?language=en#t-250348
and feel very humble that there is such a man, able to do what he does.
in 2006 he was warning that a pandemic such as we have now was inevitable.
just google his name and learn more about what he’s doing
Logical fallacy, Norman.
The fact is that through gross distortion and misrepresentation of a genuine but not terribly dangerous disease,(probably engineered!) our civil and human rights have been overthrown, millions pushed into dire poverty and the threat of starvation, and a totalitarian surveillance state is being imposed.
To point that menacing reality out is not to be an ‘anti-vaxxer’ or any other of the crap you refer to.
Even if Covid were more dangerous, such evil measures would not be justified in the slightest.
Hey Norman
I am a conspirationnist, and as such I found your video rather inadequate
Try something else… try to explain me why ivermectine, recognized for quite some time to be very effective both as phrophylaxis and as cure of covid, is systematically ignored by every government that is buying vaccines
Try to answer that one…you’re in for a rude shock
you were bound to find my suggested video inadequate, if you think everything is part of some kind of conspiracy, plot, hoax, scam (cross out which does not apply), against your established line of reasoning.
If you remain convinced that Brilliant is somehow plotting against humankind, for whatever reason, then it is beyond my meagre powers of logic to do anything about it.
It is your world. You have chosen to live in it.
No I haven’t. Looking simply at accumulating evidences, it is the world around me that changed, not myself
Try to figure out why health institutions from the 1st world are obfuscating studies reporting great effectiveness against the virus using cheap generic drugs… Ivermectine mostly
It is used in south America, India and over poor countries with great results but MSM never report them… I
Try to figure out why remdesevir has been widely promoted while at the same time HCQ was banned in France
It is not a plot against humankind…It is just a convenient method for governments of rich countries to force their population into degrowth… Lockdowns are so good for that purpose
Think harder Norman… You’ll find out eventually
What TED says about Larry Brilliant:
Dr. Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, proud member of the TED community, CEO of Pandefense Advisory and Chair of the Advisory Board of the NGO Ending Pandemics. He is a senior advisor to Jeff Skoll and serves on the board of the Skoll Foundation. Previously, he was president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, vice president of Google and the founding executive director of Google.org. He also cofounded the Seva Foundation, an NGO whose programs have given sight back to more than five million blind people in two dozen countries. He also cofounded The Well, a progenitor of today’s social media platforms. Earlier in his career, Brilliant was a professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan.
Brilliant lived in India for nearly a decade, where he was a key member of the successful WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme for southeast Asia as well as the WHO Polio Eradication Programme. More recently, he was chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Committee, which was created by presidential directive of President George W. Bush. He was also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risk and a “First Responder” for CDC’s bio-terrorism response effort.
Brilliant’s wards and honors include the 2006 TED Prize, Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, “International Public Health Hero” and four honorary doctorates. He has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley and many other colleges, spoken at the Royal Society, the Pentagon, NIH, the United Nations and some of the largest companies and non-profits all over the world. He has written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and other magazines and peer reviewed journals. He was part of the Global Business Network where he learned Scenario Planning and is the author of a memoir about working to eradicate smallpox, Sometimes Brilliant, and a guide to managing vaccination programs in a book The Management of Smallpox Eradication.
Did you see any red flags or sniff a whiff of anything “iffy” there?
If you’re like Norman, I suspect you’ll be nodding “Brilliant human being, epidemiologist, philanthropist, technological wizkid, Renaissance man!”
If you’re like me, you’re more likely to look at all those assertions, connections, positions and honors, and be sussing up Larry—regardless of how brilliant he is and all the good he must have done—as a suspected intelligence agent, Chaucerian fraud, self-aggrandizer, enabler of and fellow traveller with our new globo-techno-overlords.
Put simply, without knowing anything about the man at all, the above resume marks him out as someone who is comfortably in the ranks of that big elite club that you and I are not members of.
Lastly, how many times am I going to have to mention this before doubters like Norman give in and actually research the subject I have know idea, but smallpox was eradicated by improved sanitation, nutrition and quarantine. The claim that vaccination was responsible is erroneous. Moreover, the vaccination lobby has spent the last two centuries spouting nonsense and making unfounded claims regarding their efficacy and unfounded accusations against their detractors.
Tim, I’m like you …
Thhen that makes you an abnormie, Jarle.
Perhaps we should come with a Government health warning.
we can argue about subjects like vaccination and the like, till the proverbial cows come home.
the links below seem to offer a non-hysterical view on the subject. It is a given that no form of medical intervention is 100% safe, whatever purpose it is used for or however trivial. Adverse effects are certain, as are improvements in technique and technology. Idiots misuse it, and kill people.
That is well documented on the Salk vaccine. Do we really want thousands of crippled kids because someone made a mistake when it first came out?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1069029/
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-smallpox
I know of people feeling unwell after the virus vaccine, I had it with no ill effects at all. natural variation.
************
Aneasthetics used to be deeply unsafe when they were first introduced, (against god’s law particularly in childbirth)–anaesthetics still kill people. But we insist on using them.
Larry Brilliant has pursued a program of eliminating cataracts. Imagine that without anaesthetics.
Surgeons resisted hand washing between operations, even though the ‘unclean’ practice killed the next patient by disease brought from the previous one.
This made puerperal fever common. Doctors could not accept that they were responsible.
I could go on, but the list is endless and ultimately monotonous.
**********
As with most contentious subjects, (and there are many on OFW) we are perhaps losing sight of the overall problem.
Much of the science benefit we have, appeared coincidentally with what we call the ‘age of enlightenment’. (the early 1700s)
Before that time witchcraft and superstitions were rife. Witches were convicted and executed, the result of collective hysteria.
this ended in the early 1700s
just as the era of fossil fuel surplus energy kicked in. Humankind suddenly discovered rational thinking.
Has it occurred to no one, that irrational thinking is once again infecting the human race, just at the point where we are losing access to cheap surplus fuels?
Look at the mass hysteria that is rampaging across the USA, on subjects that used to be regarded with calm reason. A nutcase POTUS, with 70 m supporters.
Climate change is a Chinese hoax, started to affect American industry.
The QAnon nonsense, with millions convinced that it is real.
Just as the ‘witches’ were real in the 1700s. Seeking to cast spells on the unsuspecting peasantry. (Mind control)
And just as Bill Gates and George Soros are ‘real’ in today’s conspiratorial world, bent on the same ‘mind control’ with microchips inserted into vaccine shots. I’m constantly berated (and amused) by failing to ‘get it’.
*********
I write all this stuff down to clarify my own thinking
************
My point is, (ignore it if you must) that the world of energy surpluses and scientific reason are tightly linked, and we are going to revert to that of superstition and mystic forces once again, where hysteria is replacing rationality and established fact.
take the biggies on here—-moon landings, WTC, climate change…all hoaxes that idiot NP doesn’t ‘get’. All rantworthy by the same commenters on this thread too, very revealing if nothing else.
how long into the future, until such ‘established facts’ become heresy subject to criminal sanction under the law? Wasn’t there a South Carolina governor who made it illegal to mention climate change on state business?
Or the Scopes trial that resulted in imprisonment for teaching evolution?
Flat Earthers are equally certain of their personal reality.
That reveals the fragile nature of human reason.
Our healthcare (and all other sciences) is entirely dependent on energy surpluses.
As we enter the new age of ‘unreason’ and ‘unenlightenment’ how long will it be before science itself becomes heresy?
That’s a rather nice summery of the situation, Norman.
thanks Keith
My chest feels much lighter now
Norman, all my children were born without the use of anaesthetics; the last three of them by “natural childbirth”. So were my two grandsons. And I myself had cataract surgery without anaesthetics, merely an injection to numb the eyeball to keep it still.
But then science became “scientism”, the new religion. Pioneered by Lysenko in Russia, Hoerbiger in Austria, the Nazis in Germany, and Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood in the US, this last still pursing its original agenda of exterminating the African Americans.
Combine this with the old tradition of snake oil salesmen, and you have the current medical profession.
Robert
when you first started commenting on here, I placed you a couple of rungs higher than average on the ladder of academe. It was pleasant to bat Shakespeare quotes back and forth etc.
I think I was wrong.
I’m no medic, and by the same token am not a qualified engineer in the accepted sense
however, I married a nurse, and produced three more, so had some immersion in the trade, and spent my working life explaining how things worked, which I was rather good at, being a self confessed know-nothing myself.
When my first child was on the way, I phoned the hospital to say so, with all the necessary information of course, on arrival they asked my wife if I was a doctor. I had been primed well beforehand.
On OFW, my extended ramblings are written to explain my own thoughts to myself, for clarity, so that I understand the problem. If anyone else finds my thinking useful, that’s a plus. They are entitled to think the opposite of course. Many do. Some don’t.
A while ago, you told me that the Hero steam turbine had no energy converter, and no moving parts..
That took away a rung on the above ladder.
Now you tell me that cataract surgery requires no anaesthetic, just a ‘numbing injection’.
Another rung cut away.
Ive been fortunate not to need eye surgery. As with the Hero turbine, perhaps you could explain the (radical) difference between a ‘numbing injection’ and aneasthetic?
Instead of childbirth , I could have used limb amputation. Or dentistry. I daresay you might have used the Pythonesque term–“It was just a scratch?”
Childbirth can be and should be a natural process, obviously. Mine were.
It’s something we guys are fortunate to avoid. However to use a personal example of ‘no aneasthetic needed’ to cover all aspects of childbirth is self revealing, and crass.
I was wrong about the ladder of academe.
For Norman
First, heron’s Aeolipile indeed had no moving parts: the entire machine move as a whole. Of course, it used an external source of energy, as does every other machine.
And to remind you that an anaesthetic is to eliminate pain. There is no pain in modern cataract surgery; the risk is that the eyeball will move. The numbing is to prevent such movement, and it affects the muscles, not the pain receptors.
Finally, I did not say anaesthetic was never needed in childbirth; I implied, correctly, that it was not always needed, and gave examples from my own family life.
Perhaps I should be upset that you have chosen to attack me with distortions of what I said, but life is too short. Go in peace.
I’ve broken bones and had the dentist go savage with the drill cleaning out old mercury fillings without any painkillers whatsoever.
Did it hurt, yes, so what? It is not exactly torture. Nothing wrong with pain killers fixing the occasional obnoxious head ache, but come on, letting the pain sometimes rip is part of life.
How much entitled princess of IC does one have to be until becoming ridiculous.
a few years ago I had dental implants
the surgeon (not my dentist) told me mine was the hardest bone he had ever drilled into (no surprises there then.) I found out later he wasn’t joking.
Implants require fine accuracy and steadiness
To promote any idea that that could be done without anaesthetic (i.e. my head not moving) is too ridiculous for further comment.
I assume you have the same (lack of) ideas about Caesarean births.
Look Norman, I’m not suggesting surgical implants and procedures should done without anesthesia and/or painkillers.
But ffs, do we really need it when cleaning up an old filling and when recovering from a shitty broken collarbone or rib? I have no idea about child birth. I’m not in the business of reproduction.
Man, my IC (ab)use must be at least two orders of magnitude less than yours. Children, cars, houses, medicines, new freaking teeth, the works of consumerism lock stock and barrel. Bought into it 100%
I guess the regular person from India or China would scoff at my daily servings of rice and beans.
Keith, don’t encourage him! 🙂
Norman, here’s a tip. When you are lecturing us on how much smarter than us you are, it really ruins the effect when you fall down on your basics.
A couple of weeks ago, I attempted to correct you gently on a small but important point of fact regarding steam engines after you had stated erroneously that they worked by means of explosive force.
You were unable to accept the correction and went to considerable lengths to obfuscate the issue, much as some species of squid and octopus, if feeling threatened, will squirt ink in order to hid behind its opacity.
When I read your comment above, the first thing that struck me was your reference to the Scopes trial. You claim that it led to imprisonment for teaching evolution. That is not so.
Keith, you knew it was not so, didn’t you? But you still encouraged him!
The facts—for those too lazy to have bothered to imbibe them—are that John Scopes the defendant was “nominally arrested” and was not even detained by the police. He wasn’t placed in the cells before, during or after the trial, and he was neither imprisoned nor sentenced to imprisonment. At the trial, he was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality and no punishment was extracted from him.
Norman, you’ve heard of the Scopes trial but obviously you have never studied it and have no clear knowledge about it. You know it only superficially as a factoid or an item of folk knowledge the way people know King Arthur burnt the cakes or that Homer “wrote” the Iliad or Napoleon said “Not tonight, Josephine” or Maggie Thatcher snatched the kids’ milk.
You put out these assertions and opinions with such certainty, and, do you know what? Some of them are provably wrong on matters of generally agreed fact, and yet you don’t even know they are wrong and you don’t seem to care.
I don’t know if Flat Earthers are certain of what they pretend to believe in. A lot of them seem to be pranksters who enjoy pulling the legs of more orthodox science believers. Also, Flat Earthism is another strand of black-washing. It is one more pretext for calling out anybody who questions the orthodoxy on any scientific subject of stupidity by association.
I’m sick of the way you try ridicule people who’s views you don’t share. Even if sometimes they are wrong, it doesn’t make it OK for you to caricature them as simple-minded nor to tar them all with the same brush. It just makes you an intellectual bully.
But if you must play the smug superior intellect, you really should get your basic facts correct, such as about the Scopes case. Because when you demonstrate ignorance of that magnitude, it shows you up as much more a superficial intellect than you pretend to be.
Reading some of your more pontificating posts brings to mind what Christopher Hitchens wrote about George Will: “As a stylist, Will is the idol of the half-educated. His blizzard of literary tags and historical allusions is a mere show of learning.”
Damn I miss Hitch, used to watch him debate clergy and various sanctimony with great vigor. 😢
Could someone clone him back into existence?
I admitted a hour or 3 ago to being a know nothing
what more d’you want
“Keith, you knew it was not so, didn’t you? But you still encouraged him! ”
There are not enough hours in the day to attempt to correct the nonsense that crosses this group. Had I done so, I would have mentioned the Wikipedia article on Scopes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
Which is worth reading for the humor.
I really wish people would use some of the online reference to check what they are writing before sending it out. The recent nonsense about measles is an example.
Norman: “we are going to revert to that of superstition and mystic forces once again, where hysteria is replacing rationality and established fact.”
Can’t you see we are already doing that?
Tim: yes, I thought the same about Mr. “Brilliant”*
TED itself is far from a benign platform. It is part predictive programming, part the MIC doing PR and congratulating itself on various technical achievements disguised as helping humanity. I got to attend an early TED event, an invitation-only gathering of several hundred, at MIT. What I recall of it was Todd Machover playing a Theramin-style violin. Richard Saul Wurman.. (I had even bought a book of his, “Information Anxiety”).
I’d taken a couple of classes at the Media Lab**, and knew Muriel Cooper slightly (aunt of my business partner, so that’s how I scored the invite). One big project the Media Lab was working on was 3- and 4-D graphical ways of displaying connections in information (a simplistic and accessible example of this is at https://www.visualthesaurus.com/). A perceptive person would be able to see the value in these projects to the defense industry, even if one were not aware that DARPA was providing most of the funding.
—–
*”Brilliant” is not a natural surname, but one adopted by his father. More predictive programming? ;-))
**In one of the classes, we were broken up into groups and sent out to contact cults and were to compile a sort of art/book collage-y diary of our investigations. It’s something I gave little thought to at the time.. just seemed kind of cool and “edgy”, so why not? Some people visited with Hare Krishnas, others with Scientologists. I got assigned the Moonies. At the time, the Moonies were (and still are) ensconced in very nice digs, a multi-million$ brownstone on Beacon St. downtown. We went and had lunch, which consisted of a watery boiled potato soup. (I later read that keeping people on low-protein diets makes them more tractable.) They knew we weren’t “seekers”, so not much interesting came of the interaction. The building was also kept very cold, with no-to-little heat.
Covid a guess:
Correct for pre existing factors and then look at the health issues secondary to the virus. I don’t know, modern medicine is wonderful; however, in the 60’s at Madison a very fine geneticist(world known) stated in lecture modern medicine was not good genetically for the population – he was a population geneticist. I attach the link below regarding recruitment for the US Marines, sobering.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/military-recruiters-worry-americas-youth-are-too-fat-or-dumb-enter-service
We have to return to gym, basic education, ability to write cursive, spell, add, subtract, algebra and civics – how we make our secular society work(not ideal, work) and how we integrate that into the sectarian part of our society. We live as a group and there are rules which work, maybe not what we want, but they work and have stood the test of time.
Dennis L.
A reason cursive was abandoned was because the whites were taught the standard style of cursive while blacks were taught more experimental styles, so an employer could screen out applications without looking just by looking at the cursive style. Some said it was racist.
I think that’s also why math is racist.
Geometry is also racist. I remember a “woke” math professor who said that “white” geometry was racist, and African-Americans should be taught “African” geometry. Well, that’s exactly what I was taught is school: the geometry of the “Elements”, written by Euclid of Alexandria; and when I last looked, Alexandria was in Africa.
I was also taught “Asian” algebra, the discipline founded by Mohammed Al-Khwarezmi in the “Kitab al-Jabr”. Mathematics and the natural sciences are the universal heritage of mankind, and to displace them from the Quadrivium is to consign the victims of “wokeness” to a dark and lonely ghetto. Which, of course, is the hidden purpose.
I studied LGBTQ philosophy (okay, Plato) as well as the writings of disadvantaged sexual minorities (okay, Aristotle–he was straight btw). Hmm, can we count Nietzsche as an incel?
Ah yes, Plato’s superior same sex love. And of course on display in the Symposium, ‘Συμπόσιον’. However, he also records the crushing refutation offered by Diotima Mantinike. another of my ancient heroines.
But to restore the balance, I also revere the greatest lyric poet of antiquity, whom Plato called “The Tenth Muse”: Sappho of Lesbos.
Ἕροσ δαὖτέ μ᾽ ὀ λυσιμέλεσ δόνει,
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον.’
One of the first, and best, examples of the poetic oxymoron: “bittersweet love”.
It would help if wages were distributed more evenly. Children of the poor seem to do much worse than children on the rich. If parents are gone most of the time, or are high on drug or alcohol much of the time, it is very difficult for a child to do well.
Weight problems result from a lot of different things. People in the US are served huge portions, when they go out to eat, setting up an expectation that this is the thing to do. The food tends to be over-processed and lacking in the nutrients that people really need. Added to this, children today don’t get the exercise they need, both walking to school and in physical education classes.
Dennis, like all sentences that begin, “we have to..”, these are things that aren’t going to happen for a very long time, if ever. It simply doesn’t behoove anyone… otherwise it would be happening!
It’s extremely hard to talk about a “society” that no longer exists. On whichever level you care to look, there are no laws, no coherency, no common interest or purpose. Criminals are worshipped and worship is criminalized. While understandable as part and parcel of systemic collapse, this is still happening with human intent.
The only rule we are going to see credibly enforced is “might makes right”, where “might” is to be interpreted not just by physical force but perfidy, monopolization, fraud, cynical identity-shaming, “info wars”, outright thievery, etc.
The “good citizen” sort of civic education you and I received is already regarded as being—if not “racist”—then as pointlessly exotic and superannuated as how to use a sextant, or knowing which fork one should use for the fish course.
Greta is BACK….
Asked about campaigners who claim that having children is irresponsible at a time when the planet is under pressure, Ms Thunberg said she did not consider it selfish to have children, adding it was “not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour”.
She said her ideal birthday present would be for people to do more to help the planet – though a physical gift of new headlights for her bicycle would also be welcomed during the long hours of darkness in a Swedish winter.
In comments that may pose a challenge for her more fashion-conscious teenage admirers, she said she did not put new clothes on her birthday list, due to the environmental impact of clothing production and demand.
“I don’t need new clothes,” she says. “I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need any more. The worst-case scenario, I guess I’ll buy second-hand.”
Ms Thunberg also admitted to guilt over the pressures brought on her family – including death threats – through her three years in the public eye. She did not care what people said about her online, but “when it impacts the people around you then it becomes something else”.
From Yahoo News
Happy 18th Birthday young Lady!
Yes, Babies are the FUTURE🍭and we just have to change our behavior and BAU will ride on well to the FUTURE…PEOPLE are NOT the PROBLEM, just what they DO is the problem🤔
Boy, talk about critical thinking
Happy Birthday, Greta! Even when I believe your head is wrong, I know that in your heart you are right, because you speak for the future. The future that I shall not see, but my children and grandchildren will.
“Matt Hancock [UK Secretary of State for Health] has said he is “very worried” about the South African variant of Covid-19 and that the country should keep an “eagle eye” on it.
“The new variant is deemed to be more transmissible than the UK one… according to one of the government’s scientific advisers, the reason for Mr Hancock’s “worry” about the South African Covid-19 variant is that they are not as confident the vaccines will be as effective against it as they are for the UK’s variant.”
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-04/covid-matt-hancock-very-worried-by-south-african-variant
“A nationwide lockdown will be introduced in Scotland from midnight tonight, Nicola Sturgeon has announced…
“It is no exaggeration to say that I am more concerned about the situation we face now than I have been at any time since March last year,” Ms Sturgeon said.”
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-nicola-sturgeon-announces-national-lockdown-in-scotland-12179170
A nationwide lockdown could assure that Scotland will be in even worse shape financially than it is now.
By the way, my husband and I will be leaving this afternoon on a short vacation. We will be visiting a few places in Georgia, including Callaway Gardens and Plains. I hope to be online some, but it will be difficult to be online as much.
Have a lovely trip Gail – stay sane!
Nice to have a trip away from all these insanity – have a safe trip!
Thanks! I understand that there is now a problem with more people driving way over the speed limit–in particular, 24 miles per hour or more over the speed limit. Highway deaths are now higher, because these speeders tend to ram into the back of cars stopped for some other reason, such as road construction. We will have to try to watch out for this problem.
No reason to drive the US Interstates any longer. Try local highways and calc your avg speed to be closer to 45mph. You will eventually arrive to your destination and you likely may pass a dying business (or many) that give a truer view of reality than intermittently staged, subsidized petrol and carbohydrate fueling stations.
The interstate today was quite full, and was lined with pine trees on both sides practically the whole way (about 100 miles). It was hard to see if there was anything at all on the other side of the trees.
Hopefully, we can do some more traveling that is not on interstate. Georgia does have an awfully lot of pine trees, however. It is Georgia’s many pine trees that allow the state to manufacture wood pellets to export to the UK.
Maybe lock-down stress will make people drive more carelessly and faster when they are on the road and free?
I’ve noticed as a cyclist that bad driving here is linked to the weather.
The roads aren’t as full, so it is easier to go faster. That is part of it.
Also, I suspect some people are depressed and a little suicidal. Driving too fast is a little like taking an overdose of a drug. If the person dies, it is believed to be an accident. If the person doesn’t think he has much to live for, he/she is more inclined to take chances.
Well with every stop being potentially lethal because of the deadly covid19 TM its not appropriate for officers to put their lives at risk by enforcing speed limits. Nowadays officers use such time honored methods such as the up down “slow down” hand motion and flashing there headlights to discourage speeders. Im not sure “it was a guy in a mask” has eased their job or their prosecution rate. With half of the USA indicating they are all knee wielding racist the cops enjoy the high tech of their squad car as they wait for a bank robbery or something of enough magnitude to consider it reasonable to try enforcement.
Gail, have a safe, relaxing, and enjoyable trip, and stay close to Nature; or, if you prefer, to Gaia, our Mother.
Thanks!
Translation: “Since our last two, three, four or however many lockdowns have failed to work, I am decreeing another lockdown.” The Scottish pseudo government, like the Bourbon pseudo government before them, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
I wonder how many of these new variants have been made in the lab.
I wonder how much control and tun-ability they have over this virus.
“I wonder how many of these new variants have been made in the lab.”
None of them. We don’t know how–yet.
“None of them”, We don’t know how—yet.”
That sound illogical, Keith. If we don’t know how they came into being, how can we be sure they weren’t made in the lab?
Luc Montagnier said the Covid-19 virus looks like it was made in the lab.
” That sound illogical, Keith. If we don’t know how they came into being, how can we be sure they weren’t made in the lab?”
I know this area of science, been following it since 1957. Chance are high we *will* be able to make designer virus eventually, but right now they are well beyond the state of the art. Kind of like flying to the moon in the 1940s.
” Luc Montagnier said the Covid-19 virus looks like it was made in the lab.”
Even people who do something worth the Nobel prize can go off the rails. The news today:
“Avi Loeb, an Israeli-American theoretical physicist and professor at Harvard University, theorizes in his upcoming book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) that a rock that entered our solar system in September 2017 might have actually been old alien technology.”
That’s without any evidence, but you might note it should help sell his book.
Lots of highly qualified people have looked at the genome of COVID-19 after Luc Montagnier made the claim and none of them see evidence of design work.
Belief is one of the things humans are good at. Reported in Newsweek today about a local demonstration yesterday
” Anti-maskers Storm California Mall, Harass Shoppers and Refuse to Leave”
https://www.newsweek.com/la-mask-protest-mall-covid-deatths-1558695
Fortunately, they are rare in LA. Mask wearing is over 95%
“Fortunately, they are rare in LA. Mask wearing is over 95%”
Face masks are uselesssss!
It is truly an amazing coincidence that in hundreds of thousands to millions of years of human history, and bat history, that only in the timespan of around 20 years when humankind was capable of performing serious genetic manipulation and design, that the Covid 9 virus supposed mutation just happened to occur.
The US CDC tried to patent the virus that causes SARS-1. I don’t have all of the information with me. It is impossible to patent a virus from nature, indicating that SARS-1 was human made. After this fiasco, the US cut off funding for “gain of function” research. Now, SARS-2 has mysteriously emerged, in the city where gain of function research was being done, after the US shifted research elsewhere. There was also a history of viruses escaping from Chinese labs.
I have some links at home, but not with me while I am traveling.
it may just be that when we intruded too deeply into critter territory, that such things as viruses, which need various species of critters for their life support systems, started kicking back at us.
not just bats, but forcing birds and other animals into close proximity, we cut down habitats of other primates, hence you get lethal bird flu, swine fever, ebola and numerous other diseases which were around long before genetic manipulation was heard of.
no point in looking for ‘blame’ at the Chinese or wherever, we are all responsible for this mess
hkeih, Fritz Lang designed a moon rocket in the 1920s, with the help of Vernher von Braun and the Verein für Raumschiffahrt. It was based on contemporary technology, substantially scaled up, and it would probably have worked. Indeed, it did work: the Saturn V was based on that very design.
It was not done. I can think of a dozen things, particularly the flight computers which were well beyond the state of the art in those days.
Regardless, the example does not affect my contention that a designer virus is beyond the current state of the art.
Incidentally, if we could design viruses, there would be a vast market for designer phages to attack a long list of diseases.
Thanks, Keith.
A question was asked about the origins of the virus in the European Parliament last July, and the answer given on behalf of the EU was as follows:
SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans, others being SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, HKU1, OC43, NL63 and 229E. Comparative analysis of available genetic data of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses provides evidence about the possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 from bat coronaviruses and support the notion that natural selection facilitated the emergence of SARS-CoV-2(1).
The available genetic evidence indicates that natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer or natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer have occurred. There is no evidence to support the claim that the virus is a result of manipulation.
As zoonotic transmission of coronaviruses and other viruses (e.g. influenza) is often observed and reported, according to currently available information this remains the most plausible and probable scenario for the crossing of the species barrier to humans.
The EU strongly favours a global and multilateral response to counter COVID-19 and its implications to the global heath and economy. Regarding the causes and the circumstances under which COVID-19 had spread, the EU and its Member States have spearheaded a resolution adopted by the World Health Organisation World Health Assembly on 19 May 2020, calling on all countries to work with the relevant international organisations to identify the zoonotic source of the virus.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-002429_EN.html
On the other hand, could it be that above-top-secret research has been conducted resulting in the creation of this virus, but that the above-top-secret researchers have decided to keep their secret a secret?
If that was the case, would it be a surprise that not many virologists would know about it and might think that this was a naturally evolved virus when in fact it wasn’t?
I have it on good authority that the virus was created by a group of intelligent bats living in a cave in North China. They were so incensed by our wind turbines, which chop millions of bats to pieces every year, that the decided to take down our civilisation.
“Thank you, Brownflapper; have a good nap in the bat house.”
But no, the bats did not arrive here in that old interstellar spaceship we call Phobos. They are indigenous.
“resulting in the creation”
As I mentioned, creating a virus that does something specific is beyond the state of the art. We are fairly sure we will be able to do this in perhaps 20 years, but right now nobody knows how.
Lots of recent progress though. Particularly AlphaFold.
Hmm, is that even more transmissible and scary than the super-transmissable and scary one which caused Xmas and New Year to be banned?
I can’t put my boots on in the morning for shaking with fear. …..
To give an idea of how much energy is needed to make the world function even if it’s wasted energy, is this example. I ordered a toner cartridge from Best Buy. The item was being shipped by FedEx. The item where it was picked up i.e. SW Florida was literally 60 miles away from my location. Instead FedEx sends it to their central hub in Tennessee to get processed for final delivery.
The wasted energy helps keep demand up.
sO, SAVE ENERGY AND WE’RE DEAD. wASTE ENERGY AND WE’RE DEAD. A third possibility is to have a foot in both camps. Waste energy where it helps; save energy where it helps. One size (behaviors) probably won’t fit all.
Save left foot, waste right foot. We will be walking in circles.
I doubt that. We might just be avoiding the error of generalization and thinking only one gear works when there at least two to try. If you’re going down a grade, you can turn off the engine and “coast.” You don’t do foolish things like subsidize and yammer on about “renewables.” You use your car engine as a generator, and get everybody to fill up their tanks…
You would definitely want a hybrid for that. Alternators are very inefficient.
Artleads, please, please, do not do that. If an emergency happens, you will not have enough control of the vehicle. With a petrol engine, gear down, remove the foot from the accelerator, and let the engine keep you at a steady speed.
And yes, you can gear down even if the rental company gave you a wretched automatic. Learn how to do so before leaving the parking lot.
Of course, a properly designed electric vehicle will have a speed governor and use dynamic breaking. Too bad if you bought a Tesla; that insanely dangerous lithium battery will probably explode.
pOINT TAKEN ROBERT. aND IN POST 80’S CARS, EVERYTHING SEIZES UP IF YOU TURN OFF THE MOTOR. I’ve got to watch it with this “allegorical” style of writing!
Niko, I’m proposing alternating between the inefficient use of petrol on one hand, and primitivism on the other.
And I would be clueless as to how to attach the battery being charged (which I might be able to swing) to any essential fixture in the house. In my youth, one battery, charged by a generator took care of normal electricity needs, if memory serves me right.
All of our in-state mail is shipped to the next state over and then sent back…
And they wonder why the p.o. is losing money…
oops, I guess that consolidation had only been announced, but they are backing off implementation. It was called the “Network Rationalization Initiative”.
https://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/our-future-network/welcome.htm
Recently, a small package sent to me by three-day priority mail on Dec. 2nd arrived on Dec. 30th.
Ah yes, more victims of the most disastrous supply chain innovation of the later twentieth century: the replacement of “point to point” by “hub and spoke”. It simply doesn’t work, but it makes the bean counters happy because it is a fraction cheaper, at the cost of a huge decline in quality of service.
The major US airlines fell victim to this idea, and the consequence was a huge growth in small regional airlines that flew point to point to and from small local airports. An excellent example of how “creative destruction” can create wealth by downsizing and reinventing.
As always Gail and excellent analysis, very educational and love the linear presentation format, in your summary comments about citizens not being aware, very true, to many non value add distractions, including myself, however your articles always bring us back to the root of energy and its far reaching impact. . Thank you Bob
Are you related to Jay Hanson in any way?
Are you related to Rick Parfitt or Francis Rossi by any chance?
Meanwhile in Norway:
The numbers are here: No increased mortality in 2020.
Meanwhile in Russia:
Quote: The mortality rate in Russia in January-October 2020 became the maximum in ten years, follows from the calculations of RBC based on data from Rosstat (more than 10% growth to 2019).
in USA:
NEW YORK (AP) — This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time — due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic.
Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.
U.S. deaths increase most years, so some annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15%, and could go higher once all the deaths from this month are counted.
The thing to bear in mind is that, as a % of the total population, the increase is not even a pin-prick.
Even as a % of the elderly and moribund, it is not significant.
So, a yearly 3.2 million deaths in a nation of 350 million people? The rest of the world should be so lucky!
less than 1% dying per year would suggest you get a 100 year life time. So realistically an 85 year life span is still occurring.
Very lucky.
What is the REAL covid death total in America?
Hospitals are paid many thousands of dollars to mark Covid as the cause of death. Even when it’s not.
Of course the actual study has now been removed from the John’s Hopkins site.
But this will give you an idea of the scale of the fraud taking place in America
Johns Hopkins assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program, Genevieve Briand determined, via CDC numbers that there were approximately 1.7 million deaths in the U.S. between March 2020 and September 2020.
Of those deaths, she determined that approximately 12% (200,000) were determined by doctors and government bureaucrats to be coronavirus-related.
Briand hypothesizes that the only way to understand the significance of the U.S. coronavirus death rate is by comparing it to the number of total deaths in the United States. To do that she reviewed and compared the total deaths per age category from prior to and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary”
https://wbckfm.com/johns-hopkins-university-researcher-finds-death-rate-before-and-after-covid-the-same/
I don’t agree with this. Clearly there have been more deaths this year than expected in the US.
Here is the analysis
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view
She indicates that the data was downloaded from the CDC site.
After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.
What she is saying is that the people who died would have died anyway either from one of the terminal diseases they were suffering from or the flu. Covid is just another thing that kills people who were going to die anyway.
Here is another study that shows overall deaths in Norway and Sweden are pretty much the same as in the same period of the 3 years prior to Covid.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1
I am sure there are more studies for other countries but they are not easy to find because google results are filled with horror stories. And then there’s the blocking of any truth’s by google, social media and the MSM.
I wonder why it has been overprinted by “Retracted”?
Keith.. follow the money?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/
Where’s the impact from the deadly pandemic?
They are not even in the Top 20 in deaths per capita. Surely they should be number one? How can the UK be higher when the UK is in and out of extreme lockdowns and Sweden has never locked down?????
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
It sure is a good thing that Sweden is not a rock group.
You know what that means right? Forced injections!
So that way the Puppet Masters can convince the Plebs they are looking out for our own good. They want to protect us.
/sarc
Lots of vitamin D in the diet.
Evidence of that?
The Irish Famine was a masterstroke of Imperial management
https://kulmthestatusquo.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/the-1846-irish-famine-helped-civilization/
This post copies a section from another website:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/12/13/the-economist-and-the-irish-famine/
This is a section from the other website:
Bloix 12.14.12 at 11:09 pm
The Corn Laws were enacted in 1815 to keep continental grain out of the [islands of Great Britain and Ireland]. By cutting off England from the continent, the Napoleonic Wars had turned Ireland into a breadbasket for the rapidly growing English cities. The Corn Laws — passed primarily to aid English farmers — maintained the Irish competitive edge and encouraged Irish landlords to commit their fields to wheat for export. By the 1840’s, 75% of Irish arable land was devoted to cash crops for England.
Over the same period, the Irish population grew at a rate much faster than that of England or of Europe generally. In 1750, the population of Ireland was about 3 million. In 1840, it was about 8 million – the highest it has ever been. They were almost entirely rural poor, and because Ireland was not industrializing, there was no work for them. Being Catholics, they had few legal rights.
There was no work for these new millions. Instead, they lived in “cabins” almost outside the money economy, on scraps of waste land rented from landlords under the conacre system – annual rental without the legal rights or social expectations of tenancy. They paid rent in kind or in labor. Many of them lived far from towns and manor houses, in distant villages in the south and southwest, isolated from the organized middle class and aristocratic life of the country. They lived on potatoes and cabbages, with the occasional cup of buttermilk or bit of bacon.
Wheat is grown in large fields, requires animals and teams of manpower for seeding, plowing and harvest, is stored in covered buildings safe from water and rats, and must be ground into flour by a miller. All these things require an organized society in which the various participants, both rural and townsfolk, are linked by economic necessity. If the system of growing and distributing wheat is disrupted, many people at all levels of society suffer.
By contrast, potatoes were grown in unplowed “lazy beds,” hand tilled and harvested, left in the ground until wanted for food, and dug up and eaten without processing. A family could raise potatoes and cabbages for a generation, and trade them for the occasional tool or piece of cloth, without ever entering into any money transactions or forming any long-term economic ties with anyone. They did not deal with people outside their small communities. They were mostly illiterate, and most spoke no English. They had large families, each generation crowding onto the patches of waste land they could afford from their landlords.
When the potato blight hit their crops, these people were utterly defenseless. They had no legal rights to speak of; no rights to their lands; no money savings; no skills; no relationships with anyone in a position to help them. No one needed their labor; no one outside their communities knew them personally. The landlords were happy to see them go, as they could then improve the land for the ever more profitable wheat, cattle, and sheep.
As hundreds of thousands swarmed onto the paths and roads, looking first for work, then for food, and then for a place to lie down and die, they appeared completely alien and even frightening to the townsfolk and the landowners – different in speech, religion, customs, and physical appearance, like foreign intruders in their own country. Many hundreds of thousands more never left their villages, dying out of sight in their hovels and under their hedges.
It was a famine that didn’t matter to anyone who had the power to stop it. If anything, the deaths of two million and the emigration of a million more was a positive benefit to the English and to the Anglo-Irish who ruled the country.
“In 1750, the population of Ireland was about 3 million. In 1840, it was about 8 million”
Perhaps they should have reflected that people who breed like rabbits have a tendency to die like flies. Today we call it “overshoot and collapse”.
The famine ran from 1845 to 1852. The Irish blamed it on the Penal Laws, which had been repealed in 1829, and the Corn Laws, which at the urging of Queen Victoria were repealed in 1846. Given the knowledge of the time, Britain did just about everything she could to ameliorate the situation. The reason this was mostly ineffective is that Ireland’s own landlords continued to export corn for profit, and allowed their own people to die.
The vast majority of the landlords in Ireland were English absentee landlords who lived in London.
> The second, much larger group of landlords was made up of about 10,000 absentee landlords who never or only rarely saw their estates in Ireland. They lived in England, typically in London, spending their rental income over there. Absentee landlords had no interest in their land other than it making them money. They engaged middle men to rent it out for them. These middle men or agents were known in Ireland for being ruthless to deal with when it came to rent arrears and evictions even after the onset of the Irish Potato Famine.
…. In our opinion, the biggest part of the blame for the potato blight causing a famine of such proportions in Ireland must be laid on the English government who were in charge of Irish affairs since the Act of Union of 1800. Well before the famine, the English government was aware of the high dependency of Ireland on the potato as a staple and of the level of poverty here. Yet the attitude of laissez-fair prevailed, which basically involved doing nothing about it. This mismanagement, in combination with the introduction of legislation hostile towards the poor made the situation worse.
https://www.enjoy-irish-culture.com/Irish-potato-famine-murder.html
Thank you, I’ve read that more than once. It conveniently omits the fact that almost all of those “ruthless” middle men were themselves Irish.
That’s why apprenticeships existed so that Men delay marriage until they had the means of support for his family or going even further in training to reach high skilled professions.
And at the other extreme Spartan Men cannot marry until 30.
The British state totally failed to develop the Irish economy, and it used the island, under aristocratic planters and absentee landlords, to feed Britain. Food was shipped out of Ireland to Britain during the famine, and the famine was welcomed and lauded as the fate fitting to an undeveloped people, who were blamed for their situation. The fate of UK in Ireland was sealed and Irish independence was only a matter of time.
There is a 2018 movie, Black ’47, that looks at the famine from a human perspective, that of an Irish soldier in the British Army who returned to Ireland in 1847, saw what was happening, changed his mentality and took his revenge on the British state authorities. The reports from Irish cinemas were that everyone sat there in silence at the end of the movie. It is currently available on Netflix in USA.
Now, that is how the herd should be manipulated. Brutal, crystal clear truth burning in their retinas, ripping their eardrums and tormenting the souls. 🧂 😥
I approve the message! 10/10
“We are a species with amnesia”
— Graham Hancock
in a broad sense, we have only become a ‘caring’ society since it became affordable.
take ‘workhouses’ as opposed to old people’s homes:
less that 100 years ago, if you were elderly and with no other means of support, i.e. from family or your own resources, you went into a ‘workhouse’—which meant exactly that, you were expected to do some kind of productive ‘work’ in exchange for bed and board.
It was basic, grim, and meant to be discouraging. Married couples were permanently split up into separate quarters and rarely if ever saw each other again. Needless to say, inmates didn’t live long. Which was the whole point, because the state couldn’t afford them.
Thanks to fossil fuel input (nothing else), we can now afford social care , which of course means that the elderly can live into extreme old age. (same applies to the chronically infirm, or weak children.)
Old age has become ‘affordable’, we can afford to be a caring society. When we can’t afford it, I fear we will revert to what was.
Back in the 1840s, there was starvation in Ireland, but we were an ‘uncaring’ society in every sense. People starved to death in England too because no means existed for anything else. Few people cared.
Read Dickens. He chronicled much of what was going on.
A Christmas Carol: ” Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?” “Let them die and reduce the surplus population.” When Scrooge was asked for charity. His words were written to hurt consciences. He summed up the times.
even now, we are running into situations (in so called ‘developed’ nations) where families have only enough food in the house to suffice for the day, maybe not even that.—something we imagined was consigned to history.
foodbanks remind us that history has a nasty habit of rearing up and biting you in the backside.
Workhouses, flophouses and soup kitchens are coming back with a vengeance.
There are still flophouses in New York, mostly housing Chinese and other immigrants (most of them probably illegal). However, old people’s homes being abandoned are now kinda like the workhouses of the old.
simple rule to understand, though many don’t understand:
if the means by which something is supported is removed, then that something will cease to be.
a common problem is the certainty that wishful thinking will change that rule
and thanks for the film clip
will follow that up
This can be America after food is sent to China.
For a more nuanced, and thoroughly referenced, view of British investment in Ireland, go here:
https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/irishhistorylive/FileStore/Filetoupload,189218,en.ppt
In the comments to the Crooked Timber post, I noticed a reference to inheritance laws: the commenter called the laws of equal inheritance among siblings “Catholic” laws, as opposed to the English law of primogeniture that kept estates, including large landholdings, intact.
In Italy, one is not allowed to bequeath as one wishes; inheritances must follow a legal formula, making the division of property absurd: the death of a distant cousin in my husband’s Italian family left thirty various heirs to a ramshackle farmhouse, none of whom will agree upon repair or sale, much less buying each other’s shares out. So the property sits there and crumbles to the ground in the meantime.
My brother-in-law was party to a painstaking process by which bolts of fabric were cut into three lengths to satisfy his two siblings’ share of their father’s fabric business upon the father’s death. (The siblings were not in the fabric or fashion business and did nothing with their share of the fabric.)
I wonder what result that pattern would have led to if the west in general hadn’t become less-dependent upon smallholdings for agriculture.
A farmer who rented – probably from one of the great aristocratic families – a decent-sized holding on good land in late 18th-century England was certainly in a much better position than a French owner of a small inherited plot, on land with much the same potential.
Many French farmers lived miserably for that very reason, micro-plots: the glorious owners of a pigsty and one nut tree as the saying went.
The traveller and agricultural expert Young noted this when he visited France at the start of the Revolution.
Lidia, the “Catholic” laws made sense in the Middle Ages. First, because many children and young adults died, so whom do you train up to run your estate? Secondly, because of a long (and in my opinion valuable) tradition that second or third sons joined the Church or the Army, and so acquired their own “estate”. But by 1750 that was all obsolete, and. as usual, the traditional became harmful.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/12/23/2020-the-year-things-started-going-badly-wrong/comment-page-19/#comment-273636
That Gammon video Gail linked ~two day ago has been deleted of Ytube..
The censor is working hard, hah.
PS well, what does it tell you when even “lite&polite” critics of the regime like Gammon, Martenson, .. are now the target..
I watched the video. As you say polite critique. I didn’t expect it to be censored. The consoring algorithm of google seems to be getting increasingly more sensitive.
“The consoring algorithm of google seems to be getting increasingly more sensitive.”
Our friends at Google are *making* the algorithms more fascist.
That’s why many YouTube Presenters that host a channel urge their subscribers to sign up to their Patreon Channel where restrictions are less and they can discuss topics that won’t be censored.
Thanks for letting me know it was removed, Mister Gammon obviously has gotten noticed
The hands on feudalism is making a great comeback on all fronts:
– caste system and no political representation for the bottom
– new tolls, tax schemes, ..
– restriction on movement and gatherings
– restriction on small biz
– restriction on own body / health
– censorship
…
Time flies, suddenly we will be pre ~1850 and then pre ~1789 analogue situation soon after..
Medically speaking, we are being treated like the medieval patient with a bad foot about whom the doctor would say:
‘Bring me an axe, time to cut off the leg to save him!’
Patient dead.
The old lords were much more intelligent: they actually let people do business and then taxed them.
How do we free ourselves from this world of almost permanently-shuttered town centres and smashed businesses?
The well-paid stay at home digital workers and bureaucrats don’t give a damn, as far as I can see.
I really can’t see a way out of this nightmare, as they will clear’y conjure up ‘new mutations’ to keep the virus scam going forever.
The same way as always: “durch Eisen und Blut.”
> The same way as always: “durch Eisen und Blut.”
Correct!
I know: when I looked in the mirror this morning I couldn’t see anything – as a critic of the new regime,and someone who has been looking at all the wrong sites, I have already been air-brushed out of the picture…..
Seriously, this is only going to accelerate and deepen in 2021-2, assisted by all the useful idiots who cannot see what is happening.
They have a lot of time to perfect the means of mass control, and are deploying them blatantly now.
Youtube has also removed this presentation. Odd given the Edmonton Council invited this EXPERT to give his opinion on lockdowns. Why delete an EXPERT?
Dr. Roger Hodkinson on how governments responded to COVID
Dr. Roger Hodkinson offers his informed perspective to Edmonton’s City Council on how governments responded to #COVID19. He has called for the end of restrictions, mask use, testing, and social distancing. He agrees it is time we return to normal. #onpoli #cdnpoli #abpoli
Dr. Roger Hodkinson is a virologist and has held many prestigious positions in medical institutions across Canada. Presently his firm sells COVID tests and has direct knowledge on the lack of effectiveness to diagnose illness.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=284868239575668
The Bigger Question: who has the power to order the MSM and social media to remove/ignore/ridicule all dissenting evidence and opinions?
Heartfelt congratulations to Nancy Pelosi on re-securing the Speakership.
She deserves a deserves a song.
This one was written half a century ago but it’s the best one I could think of.
I’ve also got another Nancy song lined up for if she ever retires.
Here she comes and there she goes
Nothing on her fingers, nothing on her toes
Why she comes, nobody knows
Here comes Shaky Nancy
Don’t be believing she melts in your hand
Runs with the tide and she shifts with the sand
Sends you a message and turns to stone
She’s a hard girl, Nancy
One cold morning, ice on the sea
Shaky Nancy, won’t you lean on me?
Must mean something, how can you lose?
There’s nothing choosy or chancy
Nancy went walking, she’s gone for the day
When she comes back, she’s been two years away
But still tears in her eyes
Who’ll say a prayer for Nancy?
Just throw me a bottle, call me a bore
And you throw what’s left of me into the hall
I’ll take a sleep, I’ll take a sleep
And I’ll dream sweet dreams of Nancy
“Defaults by American oil and gas producers are set to outstrip all other sectors again in 2021 as an industry battered by this year’s price crash faces yet more pain, according to a forecast from a rating agency.
“Energy will account for $15bn-$18bn of US high-yield bond defaults in 2021, Fitch predicted. That is more than double both healthcare and industrials…”
https://www.ft.com/content/a2b9e67c-dbd6-4c00-89bc-564d0e3d6082
“OPEC sees plenty of downside risks for oil markets in the first half of 2021, its secretary general said on Sunday, a day before meeting allies led by Russia to discuss output levels for February.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec/opec-sees-oil-outlook-for-first-half-of-2021-full-of-downside-risks-idUKKBN2980FO
Everyone can see the low price problem energy is having. Yet they assume prices will rise again, so someone comes in at a lower price, and often allows production to start again.
“The People’s Bank of China has taken steps to ease financial conditions after interbank rates doubled in the second half of the year, reflecting the challenge it faces in navigating a return to normal monetary conditions…
“Concerns over the creditworthiness of some borrowers compounded existing concerns about overall high levels of leverage in China. JPMorgan estimates that the country’s ratio of debt to economic output has risen 27 percentage points to 306 per cent in 2020, based on all government, corporate and household borrowing.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7e48cf70-d727-4122-a977-941d89b26f23
“Regional governments across China are evading borrowing limits by transferring assets on to the books of local investment companies to lower their official debt-to-asset ratios, according to executives and officials.
“The practice has allowed local government finance vehicles to raise more money for infrastructure and other construction projects. But analysts warn that many of the assets are of poor quality, setting the stage for a surge in bad debts after a wave of bond defaults at government-backed companies in recent weeks.”
https://www.ft.com/content/93bd1857-e488-4bb9-a2a0-b2e8841bfe40
“Chinese oil majors may be next in line for delisting in the U.S. after the New York Stock Exchange said last week it would remove the Asian nation’s three biggest telecom companies.
“China’s largest offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd. could be most at risk as it’s on the Pentagon’s list of companies it says are owned or controlled by Chinese military…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-03/china-oil-majors-may-face-u-s-delisting-after-nyse-drops-telcos
Economic protectionism – which is only liable to slow down the global economy for everyone.
“A frigid winter is leading to power shortages in parts of China, driving up demand for diesel as factories rush to install generators to keep the lights on.
“Some provinces have started rationing electricity to industrial and commercial users… With temperatures still expected to dip further, grid operators are prioritizing the supply of energy to homes and the community, leaving other customers to scramble for alternative power sources.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-03/china-s-wintry-cold-lifts-diesel-use-as-factories-buy-generators
There is no mention of the problem of electricity from wind and solar (and even water) not being available when required. As renewables have ramped up, the system is less able to keep up with demand. Also, keeping out Australian imported coal (and other imported coal) to try to raise coal prices is contributing to the problem.
Clearly oil is very important to the military.
“Valuation Caution Returns as Emerging Markets Face 2021 Reality: Rarely, if ever, can a year have started with price levels in emerging markets looking so divorced from the fundamental backdrop…
“Rising Covid-19 case numbers and uneven rates of recovery in the biggest of the developing economies underscore a nagging concern that this will be about as good as it gets for stocks, bonds and currencies.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-03/valuation-caution-returns-as-emerging-markets-face-2021-reality
“Is there a new wave of inflationary risk [for Indonesia]? …recently, many economists have started expressing their concern again about the increasing inflationary risk after the pandemic.
“There are a number of factors that can cause higher inflationary risk in Indonesia during the post-pandemic era… the central bank has… been buying a vast amount of public debt as part of its monetary expansion and burden-sharing policy with the government.”
https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2021/01/02/is-there-a-new-wave-of-inflationary-risk.html
“While vaccines remain a source of great hope in 2021 against the new wave of the Covid-19 virus outbreak, there is a fundamental problem that poses a risk of becoming a ticking time bomb for the Thai economy.
“The Bank of Thailand revealed last week the critical problem concerning skyrocketing household debt.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2045035/debt-levels-are-a-time-bomb
Debt is going to be a huge problem in the years ahead.
“The coronavirus crisis has devastated the tourism sector in Spain, creating a kind of volcanic fissure of considerable dimensions that oozes lava, destroying almost everything in its path.
“The figures speak for themselves, with revenues plunging by more than 75%…”
https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2021-01-04/the-spanish-tourist-sector-closes-its-worst-year-since-the-1970s.html
“European airlines are stepping up pressure on airports to slash landing charges, leading to warnings of a race to the bottom in an industry decimated by the pandemic.
“Ryanair, Wizz Air and easyJet are among the carriers pushing airports to discount fees as they decide where to fly when passengers begin returning in significant numbers.”
https://www.ft.com/content/a1374141-97c6-4162-88d4-a5240f49c8a0
Every Airport here in the United States has a project going…either grow or contract and either away…
Fort Lauderdale Airport Florida is no exception…
From the newspaper Sun Sentinel
The airport currently is in the middle of $3.2 billion in improvements that has added gates, built a runway above Federal Highway, added new parking, stores and shops, and which will internally connect all the terminals so travelers will no longer have to go outside to get from one terminal to another.
“We know that we’re in the billions of dollars. But again, this is a 20-year planning horizon,” Airport Director Mark Gale said. “We know we have a population in Broward that is growing and we have airlines … that want to grow.”
Commissioner Barbara Sharief said she wants to ensure that the improvements continue to enhance visitors’ experiences.
“We far exceed user friendliness when it comes to the surrounding airports, let me just put it that way,” Sharief said. “I hate Miami airport.”
The money for the projects is expected to come from airport revenues and contributions from airlines who fly there.
I don’t know where the money is going to come from guys?
Which, of course, makes no sense. Either the passengers return or they do not. If they do not return, there will be no takeoffs or landings, and the fees are irrelevant. If they do return, the airports will be the scarcest resource in the supply chain, and can set the fees at the point that maximises revenue.
These “low cost” carriers can game the system against their passengers, who never read the small print; I doubt they can do so against managers who understand the industry.
Airlines don’t have enough money. Airports don’t have enough money either. How can this be made to work?
“America’s dangerous reliance on the Fed:
“…the risk is that each new chapter [of Fed interventions] tightens a doom loop in which the US sovereign must eventually reckon with the ever-widening class of risk it is underwriting. America’s national debt is already past 100 per cent of gross domestic product for the first time since the second world war. It nearly doubled after 2008 and is rising sharply again…
“The most visible threat, however, is to US political stability [because] the Fed’s inescapable bias towards asset owners has combined with the financial sector’s preference for size to produce a very skewed recovery.”
https://www.ft.com/content/bcb8d4d9-ca6d-45b7-aafc-9e9ecf672a5b
“Some Republicans who once scolded about fiscal austerity are now embracing government spending, underlining that the public supports more generous relief…
“The political rethinking about the deficit — especially in times of economic weakness — is a stark change from earlier eras.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/business/economy/republicans-deficit.html
“There is also a theoretical basis to the political shift. Even before the pandemic, many economists had begun to rethink their long-held view that large public deficits and debt would bog down the economy by pushing up borrowing costs for businesses and sending consumer prices soaring. A decade of relatively low interest rates and steady economic growth had prompted many economists to suggest that the United States could, indeed, afford to run a budget deficit.”
USA has collapsed productivity growth, like all ‘mature’ capitalist economies. It is now entirely dependent on an expansion of the workforce to perpetuate GDP growth and to keep the growth, profit and debt based capitalist economy going.
Trump was entirely faking his anti-entrance stance; entrance was higher under him and GW Bush than under Obama either time, and illegal entrance had already collapsed to 10% of the inflow and to a net outflow. TP fakes it in UK too to get votes; entrance is at record numbers under TP.
Capitalism now depends on an inflow of workers to maintain GDP growth and the economic system itself. Bourgeois states, and bourgeois state parties, exist to represent the interests of organised capital and to keep capitalism going. That is what many people do not really understand about bourgeois ‘democracy’. The extension of the franchise to the working classes in 20 c. changes nothing in that sense.
RP, DP, TP, LP are all capitalist state parties and as such they are all bound to have pro-inflow policies, the same as the capitalist state parties in all ‘mature’ capitalist economies.
Truth right there, however, three purposes:
1)
The bourgeoisie need their clients to maintain “relevancy” Thus we have useless eaters contorting fake jobs “for” the underclass.
2)
Keep the perpetual borrowing and taxation racket going.
3)
CONSUMERISM !!!1!”1!1!11 BAU !1!11!!!!111!
The socialist engineering craze is running smooth…. Well…. Oh noes.. Oh dear, our old friend The Ugly Truth went to knock on the door of diminishing returns. Lo and behold! Arthur Laffer and Marion King Hubbert opened. 😥
Except that debt and more debt won’t work forever.
“The ‘black swan’ Covid catastrophe shows us just how fragile our world is:
“Covid-19 has forced us to rethink the way we work, how we shop, the role of government, how the economy works at a national and global level. Above all, it has shown us how fragile everything is.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/03/the-black-swan-covid-catastrophe-shows-us-just-how-fragile-our-world-is
To begin with, a pandemic is no black swan. Full stop. Secondly, we on this forum don’t need to be show the fragility of the ‘system’…we know it’s EROEI.
What purpose does the Guardian serve in dealing out this tripe?
Genuine question, not rhetoric.
As I see it, the Guardian is guarding the narrative. It is in the business of what Chomsky described as “manufacturing consent” for the New World Order, aka, the post-democratic neofeudalist techocracy that the globalist elite have in mind for the world.
They seem to have been doing this full time ever since MI5 or was it MI6 stormed in and forced them to smash their hard disks holding lots of WIkileaks treasure trove about a decade ago.
Exactly.
As you know, I used to work at The Guardian, on the commercial not journalistic side, and it was fairly corrupt ethically even then.
Money talked as much there as at any Murdoch publication, and incidentally staff were treated appallingly on thorough capitalist principles. The editor then even said, during a dispute with the union: ‘Our editorial line is not the way we run this newspaper as a business’!
But the incident in the basement you mention was a defining turning point in their relationship with the UK/US security state, and the planted propaganda pieces since then have stuck out like a sore thumb.
Still, I am sure it is all good and helps to ‘Keep Us Safer’……..
“They seem to have been doing this full time ever since MI5 or was it MI6 stormed in and forced them to smash their hard disks holding lots of WIkileaks treasure trove about a decade ago.”
One wonders if they are forced or doing the gatekeeping with pleasure …
I would guess that editors and journalists who were unhappy with the policy would tend to leave and be replaced with people who would toe the line more happily.
However, people have to make a living. Doing a job you actually like is a bonus.
It’s the same almost everywhere now. “Do as you’re told, shut up and do your job, or get out.”
I would say the problem is diminishing returns affecting every part of the economy, rather than EROEI.
In theory, with a huge amount of net energy per capita we could work around these diminishing returns, but we can’t get the energy out fast enough or cheaply enough.
All it’s really shown is the unsurprising fact that idiotic and callous government policy -perpetual lock-downs – can wreck decent small businesses and the lives of millions.
This is pure Stalinism!
It is becoming plain that we lost or civil liberties and human rights, and all connection with sanity and honesty in public life, when we accepted the second lock-down, if not the first.
And now by mere ministerial whim we are to be plunged into a nothing national lock-down.
Xaiber thank you. I have been despairing the lack of citizen push back with regard to rights and rule of law. I await with fear the police state measures that will be used against the Americans going to Washington DC on Wednesday.
Xabier, I’ve noticed you are getting—how can I put it?—increasingly ill at ease with the current situation.
Me too. And I suspect most people are getting there in Lockdownland.
What I don’t understand is why Norman is so cool with the way things are going.
Could he be doing six hours of transcendental meditation daily?
Or is it that he doesn’t find anything badly wrong with the official policy of dealing with Covid in the UK?
A person wonders when fragile leads to many major breaks.
“The Russian Energy Giant Mining Bitcoin With Virtually Free Energy:
“Gazpromneft recently began a cryptocurrency mining operation based in one of its Siberian oil drilling sites, “unlocking the power of Russia’s oil and gas resources for the needs of bitcoin mining,” Yahoo! Finance reported this week.
“In slightly better news for Bitcoin’s carbon footprint, Russia’s new mining operation will be powered by natural gas from the oil field, located in the Khanty-Mansiysk region of northwestern Siberia, which has its own power plant to convert the gas into electricity for Bitcoin production.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Russian-Energy-Giant-Mining-Bitcoin-With-Virtually-Free-Energy.html
“Bitcoin has topped $30,000 for the first time, extending a rally that saw its value climb by 300% in 2020.
“The cryptocurrency rose to as high as $31,824 early on Saturday – just two weeks after passing the $20,000 mark.”
https://news.sky.com/story/bitcoin-extends-rally-to-top-30-000-for-first-time-12177784
burning actual energy to acquire virtual energy.
tell me I’m not going crazy
alternatively—that I am
“tell me I’m not going crazy”
You’re not Norman but a lot of others are, 111 %.
On the other hand, they don’t actually burn energy.They merely liberate it from its fossil fuel bonds to help it on its way towards contributing to the heat death of the Universe. A noble calling, no?
I can think of more rewarding ways of doing that
but unfortunately am on lockdown right now
Sorry to hear that. I’m still a free man, but we’ve been blanketed with snow since just before the New Year and there’s really nowhere I want to go. This is absolutely the best time of year for staying cosy in front of the fire and getting deep into some of those books I picked up years or even decades ago and never got round to reading.
Same here: I have a cubic metre of books which I am ploughing through.
The bookshop where I bought them, which is over 100 yrs old – and where Maynard Keynes used to shop – is probably going to go bust fairly soon as a result of the lock-downs.
The owner is in despair, poor man. To be able to earn one’s living is surely a basic human right.
Oh well, with no books we can settle down to absorb our daily dose of state propaganda.
Xabier: call the shop owner, order and have delivered by bike, better than nothing
Here’s a better idea, why not slap down some new and shiny data centers there. At least the russkies can play with with AI and provide circuses (audiovisual content) on their own. Or perhaps just call silicon valley, I’m sure they can help out with some gear.
Hold on, just a sec, perhaps the BTC mining operation is just the usual MSM smoke and mirrors of what actually is going on.
don’t tell me gates is digging bitcoin mines as well
is there no end to the man’s fiendish ambition?
It is hard to believe that making bitcoins is a reasonable use for burning fossil fuels.
2020: Number of face masks used: 0.
2021 motto: Face mask: no, smile: yes.
“Godt nytt år” (Happy new year)!
That would be very good indeed, Jarle.
2021 is the year in which they will try to consolidate the gains of 2020 and crush us further, we should resist.
If face masks are made mandatory in the open air here, as they are in some other countries, I have decided to refuse to comply.
Actually, the Japanese wore masks long before the covid shit, so it was not zero at the beginning of 2020.
SOME Japanese work masks before Covid, but the vast majority did not.
Those members of the public who wore them in public included people with allergies, people with active TB, and people concerned with not spreading or catching colds or flu in the wintertime.
How much effect they had on suppressing viral diseases and what their side effects were are vexed questions.
Gail, you’ve written about the “steam that rises to the top” before.
However, this is not magic or natural force, but man-made.
There is a share of “capital” (interest, dividends) in every product, e.g. the farmer has to pay a rent for the arable land to someone who owns the property because his great-grandfather may have bought it.
Or super-rich private individuals who receive tens of millions or even billions in dividends every year because they hold shares in a large international corporation. Often inherited here, too, because the father or grandfather was involved decades ago.
A very high proportion of wealth is therefore already inherited.
So to a large extent we are talking about income without performance! (without own work)
-> Strictly speaking, we already have an “universal basic income”, but only for the rich. Both through the constant flows of capital income and through the QE methods.
I’m a constant Reader from Germany, so I can tell:
According to the “Expert Council of the German Economy (SVR)”, this flow of money, which constantly flows to the rich (through land rents, interest, dividends, etc.), amounts to around 550 billion euros annually in Germany.
This enormous sum describes the constant flow of money for non-work income to the country’s top wealthy.
So without in any way preaching socialism or leading a pure left-wing envy debate, one must clearly recognize that this is largely responsible for the dire social conditions that we now have.
The question would be to what extent would the problems of too low raw material prices (especially oil prices) ease if we interrupt this constant flow and possibly even partially reduce it – while maintaining the market economy?
If the increasingly impoverished masses and the threatened middle class had more money available again by reversing the redistribution from hard-working (but poor) to rich.
Wouldn’t that at least bring an extension of the game?
The problem with people like you is the idealism. What if you started by donating your hard “earned” dole to poor schmucks in developing countries. Yup, lead by example. I’m sure the rentiers will follow suit. Or perhaps not.
You have the wrong perspective. Cheap stuff is running out exactly due to the socialist engineering and redistribution of wealth.
How about changing your perspective to that of survival instead? Instead of MOAR, how about LIFE?
Hi Kowalainen,
I think you misunderstood me a lot. I am not an idealist, but a realist and for pragmatism.
And I don’t donate my money to poor children in other countries either – that’s not my point.
Rather, it is about the steadily increasing share of unpowered capital income for an extremely small class of the super-wealthy and the “bleeding out” of the middle classes that has been increasing for decades. This applies practically to the entire western world.
It is logical that in this context the pressure on prices for the output of mass production increases. And that that’s why we have the problem with the low oil and gas prices.
So if we stop this constant redistribution from hardworking to rich and at least to some extent reverse it, then we could certainly alleviate the problem somewhat and at least achieve “game extension”.
I am not for egalitarianism, for socialism – on the contrary. But it is very clear that inequality has reached destructive proportions. Hence there can be no talk of idealism at all.
I agree that the point of consumption should be near to the means of productivity/production. Besides, most of the productive (producing goods, not services) in a population isn’t that wasteful anyway. The money will anyway end up invested in a portfolio of paper/digital money or as machinery/equipment.
The finance and borrowing racket will cease to be once the tangibles and infrastructure of the nation states has been sold off to service the national debt.
An alternative to that is UBI-subsistence for the useless eaters with no hope of affording reproduction and a brutal reduction in guvmint excesses and welfare state.
Hiking taxes for the productive will simply be counterproductive, due to the Laffer dynamics, no need to put in extra hours and anyway getting ripped off by the state mandated thievery of the useless eaters and their clients. The same of course applies to debt – people and businesses tend to default when the interest payments getting too large, with debt getting written off.
As I have been yapping on about; the holy trinity, core of IC, owners, the MIC and the artisanry simply can’t be disposed out without serious ramifications. However, going full bore sentient AI and automation will also eventually make the owners irrelevant.
The best scenario is to curtail the craze while we get going with machinery in space that is harvesting energy and raw materials for consumption on earth. Thus the only way for humans to stay relevant is continue the expansion of IC off planet assisted by AI/synthetics.
creating a cash-exchange society must lead to vast inequality, for no better reason than some are smarter than others.
an elite few are super smart and become multi billionaires.
the answer in the short term is a form of socialism/high taxation, where you have a median.
Then you have the brain surgeon and the garbage collector earning roughly the same. Which tends too blunt ambition. (though it’s debatable who is the more important to society.)
but ultimately that doesn’t work either, because at the opposite end to the rich elite are the bone idle who think the world owes them a living, and resent the ‘rich’ on principle, whether the gap is big or small.
so the idle must be ‘forced’ to do productive work, which makes them even more resentful
The garbage collector can be automated away, The elite surgeon is an artisan. Quite pointless automating away productive craftsmen/woman. They are so few anyway.
The artisanry worry about having shit to do and bread on the table. I doubt there is much resentment toward the hyper rich in that caste. Toward socialist engineering guvmint and their beneficiaries. Now, there’s a flaming hot contempt.
Yes, it is therefore I view techno-feudality (pretend democracy) as a quite probable outcome. If the useless eaters gets too rowdy, boom, military on the streets enforcing curfew and martial law. And you know what, isn’t that exactly what we today observe in the oldest nations of IC? 🤔
Unless mankind go nuts with expanding the craze into space. However, that might take some time to get moving, if it is tractable at all. Well, why not light up that sucker and have some fun?
We could of course accept the choppy ride down the Seneca and eventually regressing to Stone Age life. Unless of course nukes fly. Then we are back at a population density similar to the ice age maxima. It will suck hardcore.
The Daily Mail is reporting:
China lab leak is the ‘most credible’ source of the coronavirus outbreak, says top US government official, amid bombshell claims Wuhan scientist has turned whistleblower
They will now seek to divert anger towards China, so as to distract attention from the destruction of jobs and civil liberties domestically.
The origin of the virus is irrelevant, what matters is the immense harm caused by government responses.
Xaiber, yes and no. I understand your point and agree with it but if Fauci paid for gain of function research at a Chinese weapons lab using US government money that is treason.
This is not about China. Not about USA. This is about getting rid of some useless eaters. Defined by their values not yours.
Pretty clear gain of function research has value to them. No information that affects that will be presented in the MSM.
Not enough pie to go around. Musical chairs isnt deciding who doesnt get a crumb.
Anyone remember back at the start of CV19 reports that NASA satellites shows massive levels of sulfur from the massive number of bodies being cremated/burned in China?
I tried using Google to see what was available.
There did seem to be articles about February 5, saying that extra workers were needed to cope with workload a crematorium. This was about the time people were reported to be falling down dead with the illness. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7969861/Wuhan-crematoriums-burning-bodies-24-7-cope-extra-workload.html
Google has many articles talking about the issue, but they all seem to go out of their way to try to debunk the idea that it could be corpses burnings. (This may be a Google bias.)
An article in the Taiwan News gives information with updates. It seems to leave open the door to the possibility that what was happening is lots of corpses (far more than were being reported) were being burned on the outskirts of the city, in open fires, not through the regular crematoriums. It is the SO2 related to these open air fires that is being picked up.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3874013
Update: 02/15 3:00 p.m.
Update: 02/13 3:40 p.m.
Update: 02/12 11:00 p.m.
You really need to read the whole article and look at the images.
Gail, thanks for looking into this. I find it frustrating how changeable the story line is around CV19.
They know:
Being an optimist, I always hope for the best, TPTB know, they are starting to throw all the dice, there is only one way forward, we need NNR, we need to limit iatrogenic heating of the earth, we need to move those exothermic processes off space ship earth; failure to do so is literally death, nothing left to lose as Janis said, Greta has a point even if she is irritating.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-goes-all-nuclear-power-space-race-china
I only skimmed the article, it is consistent with my beliefs so it affirms my beliefs, who needs more information?
Dennis L.
Yup, Keith’s space solar, nuclear transmutation into fissile materials using dry processes, perhaps dust off those good old cyclotrons of the Manhattan project and let’s get polluting the moon to smithereens. Well, keep it in the far/dark side, just in case Greta would turn her activism into lunar orbit.
Then embed the goodies in space rock and chuck them back to earth. While at it, rocket those nukes over there so that MAD is in effect. I guess the US wouldn’t like to have Putin or Xi slamming hypersonic missiles into the silos or drill holes straight through aircraft carriers. I’d guess the Pentagon would be rather long in the face. Oh noes, where’s our toys? 😭
What are we waiting for?
Hope isn’t a plan.
Let’s light this sucker up and see if it hits orbit.
At least it will be an adventure for once in quite some time.
How can I help? 👍
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lockdown-proponent-bill-gates-quietly-funding-plan-dim-suns-rays
Bill Gates wants to hasten the next mini ice age.
Bill Gates is smart, he is being wrong a lot. Being smart also implies learning from mistakes.
Bill, did you hear that?
🤣👍
Makes a lot of sense. After cleaning up the aerosol pollution from stopping burning all that coal, we’ll need to add a compensating aerosol pollution from somewhere else in order to decimate agricultural production in North America and temperate Eurasia.
Bill Gates is a regular Sir August de Wynter!
“You’ll buy your weather from me. And by God you’ll pay for it.”
at least we will know where the sun shines out of
What is an economy reset? I would say it is always about bringing new energy online in the key consumer mild climate areas:
2008 – shale oil and natural gas
2020 – Yamal natural gas
The video for Yamal Natural Gas is blocked by “News Services,” according to the information shown on my screen. This is link to the Total website about it.
https://www.total.com/energy-expertise/projects/oil-gas/lng/yamal-lng-cold-environment-gas
Natural gas is typically very inexpensive to extract but horribly expensive to ship. Trying to ship it to warm parts of the world is especially bad, because the warmer the outside temperatures, the more the LNG tends to “boil off.”
Yamal is on the Northern edge of Siberia. It is a terribly long distance to anywhere. It is high cost natural gas, by the time all of the shipping is added.
If the sales price of natural gas would rise high enough, we would have a gracious plenty of it. The problem is that consumers cannot afford the high cost of natural gas for manufacturing or home heating. I am afraid it cannot be economic.
Yes, the LNG is not cheap, but it seems that no other supplier of natural gas can compete Nordstream 1 and 2 to Europe, which is the shortest delivery route. The oil from that part of the world is surely not cheap.
The problem is that the selling price does not rise high enough for the producers of natural gas to make a profit. The cost of shipping is exorbitantly high.
Yes, you are right, the rising debt is needed to keep the extraction of both oil and natural gas. The Yamal project is a perfect example how more and more high-tech is needed for the extraction of the hydrocarbons, which countries like Venezuela, that have no nucelar power for such operations, can not compete:
“Yamal LNG’s production is sold under long-term contracts in Asian and European markets, predominantly under oil-indexed price formulas. LNG will be supplied to the markets all year round through an innovative shipping approach involving a fleet of purpose-designed ice-class LNG carriers that will travel the Northern Sea Route to Asia through the Bering Strait in the summer.”
warmer 6 months it ships to China in 15 days through the Bering Strait.
colder 6 months it ships to China in 30 days through the Suez Canal.
David, ice breakers? Russia got nuke powered ones that surely can power through the ice.
I would expect the Russians to factor in the transport price in their calculations. In Central Europe where i live (Vienna), Natural gas is about 6 Euro-Cent per kWh for home heating, which is about 900 € per Year for my 250 m2 (ca 2500 sq ft) detached home. That seems rather cheap to me. Pretty much all natural gas in Austria originally comes from Russia, so i am not sure whether transport is really such an issue.
This is pipeline gas. Pipelines were mostly installed years ago, and are mostly paid for. 6 Euro Cents per kWh for home heating means that the wholesale price of natural gas can’t be more than 4 Euro Cents. If you ship LNG very far, the shipping costs get to be 4 Euro Cents. The pricing cannot work.
Ah, now i understand your point. I apologize, i simply assumed Yamal would be pipelined gas.
Gail, yes such depicted LNGs and icebreaker vessels are separate thing, but the pre-existing gas pipeline infrastructure on the continent will be now connected to finalized NordStream II as well and this also draws from some ~new gas fields in Russia.
If I’m not mistaken Austria will be surely on this connector through SE Germany, not sure about Italy and other ClubMed more down under.. as the proper Balkans route is probably on different link branching from the Ukraine leg? While FR/ESP/IT/.. are running on North Sea and or Algerian-Libyan, gulfies stuff..
There is lots and lots of natural gas around the world. We have known about much of it for a very long time. Much of it has been considered “stranded” natural gas–that is, natural gas that is too far from customers to ever be of any economic use to anyone. Shipping cost are too high.
The theory that man have believed is that when we start to run out of oil, oil prices would be a whole lot higher. Following this theory, natural gas prices would be a whole lot higher, too. Somehow, all of the natural gas (and oil) that looked too expensive to extract and ship somewhere would suddenly be salable. This is the theory under which the natural gas was developed. It is also the theory underlying the fear that climate change is our biggest problem.
Natural gas producers in the US have been hoping that prices would rise higher, but it hasn’t really happened. They have a huge amount of excess natural gas that they could sell as LNG. Australian LNG needs a whole lot higher prices. I am sure that Yamal LNG will have the same problem. Indexed to oil prices, LNG prices will be way too low to be profitable.
It is the same story for LNG as it is for oil. If you could get the price high enough for the producers, there would be huge amount of it. The problem is that consumers cannot afford to heat their homes and manufacturers cannot afford to make goods with electricity from high priced natural gas. It just doesn’t work.
This is a natural gas price chart.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/historical-natural-gas-prices.png
When I posted it not long ago, I remarked that recent (2020) spot prices that Japan were paying for LNG were only about $4 per million Btu. So recent actual prices are far lower than the above chart indicates.
And i have to add, this map https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/ seems to indicate that the gas pipes from Yamal to Central Europe already exist. So i wonder why the Russians would want to liquefy it, unless they want to send it to Asia.
https://2sdyuft3m8u44r50x3q3y1b1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/images/mmw20120505a_lge.jpg
That’s an older map showing the projects under development. The new arctic fields are shown as to be included in the pipeline network both in route to Europe as well as East Asia. Not sure why they opted for the LNG vessel *option, perhaps the East Siberian land based connector was delayed, anyway the reasoning behind it should be googlable..
—
* I recall talk about weather more cooperating in the North (less ice) or something.. and Asians preferring the port option (better spot prices for RU as well).. ?
I live in central part of Russia, I am paying 0.064 euro per cubic meters of natural gas for heating my home of 380 m2. In 2020 I used 8306 m3 of natural gas (532 euro). Are you calculating the amount in kWh not in cubic meters? As for pipelines to Europe, mostly they were built by prisoners in the 1960-70s, the pipes were provided by Germany in payment for gas supplies in the future.
Da, zdes v Centralnoy Yevrope kWh.
I really congratulate you to your gas price, it’s about a tenth of mine 🙂 If that is a price without any subsidizing, there is a lot of leeway for transport.
My point was that even at my price, gas is the cheapest option to heat a house.
We calculate in kWh instead of m3 to be able to directly compare gas with the only two other methods of heating that are still allowed: heating based on heat pumps that run on electricity, and wooden pellets. Oil and coal have been forbidden in the building codes. Gas will be forbidden in new installations in 2025, so people are calculating whether it makes sense to replace their old gas heaters with new ones before 2025, or use heat pumps/pellets. Hence the kWh base.
My local price for natural gas is without any subsidizing for sure. I am curious why your gas price is so high? If we look at stock market price for natural gas at Nymex (US delivery) it’s 2.54$ per 1 MMBtu or 0.09$ per m3. As I know Gazprom delivers natural gas in Europe for $60 per 1000 m3 or 0.06 per m3, so wholesale price for Europe is same to local retail price (this info available in free sources).
Rolling blackouts in EU ~2025 ?
By the way, wood pellets are imported, often from the state of Georgia in the US, where I live. It is crazy why anyone would consider wood pellets a good fuel. They are good until the US decides to stop shipping them to Europe. It also takes more energy to make and ship them than they produce. Buying them helps the US economy.
Wood pellets imported from the US allow the EU to claim phantasmagorical “renewable” energy goals/credits. It’s just an accounting boondoggle.
Sergey, your calculation looks right to me.
US natural gas is indeed $2.54 per MM Btu. A MM Btu is very close in quantity to a 1000 cubic feet of gas; it is a bit bigger than a 1000 cubic foot. According to the EIA, 1000 cubic feet of natural gas equals 1.037 MMBtus.
To get to a corresponding price per cubic meter, it seems like the corresponding price per cubic meter would need to adjust for both this factor and the ratio of a cubic meter to a cubic foot (35.3147). Thus, the corresponding price per 1000 cubic meters would be something like
$2.54 x 35.3147 / 1.037 = $86.50.
Then the price for one cubic meter would be about $0.09 per cubic meter, which is what you said.
The problem of the heat pumps is that they can not be installed everywhere, as e.g. the underground pipes influence the temperature of the soil.
The wooden pellets are comfortable, but they are not cheap unless subsidized.
There are two options for heat pumps: shallow ~subsurface and deep drilled vertical wells.
The problem with heat pump is that you have to be always on the grid or other quasi base load equivalent (~large sized offgrid batt storage). At least in conditions of prolonged winters.
So, in essence to have heat pump set up “correctly” the costs tend to spike up pretty quickly and almost fantastically. For upper middle classes that equals skipping purchase of one or two ~luxury cars per lifetime. Therefore aka not gonna happen.. in terms of wide adoption. Although the EU is now about to print trillions for Green New Deal, so there will be lavish subsidies for such toyz available for a moment..
No one stops to realize that we can’t assume we will always have some grid electricity.
Regarding gas price, about half of my 6 cent is the transport fee, the rest is taxes. so only about 1/6th of the price i pay is the cost of the gas itself.
The same holds true for electricity btw, i pay about 20 cent per kWh, of which about 7 cent are transmission fee, about 8 cent are various taxes, and about 5 cent is the electricity price.
Regarding heat pumps, almost all newly installed ones are air pumps, i.e. no digging is involved. Of course that means that their efficiency is substantially lower, it is usually claimed to be above 3, but is actually about 2.5, lower in colder areas, so their heat energy is actually more expensive than just burning gas, as electricity is about 3 times the price of gas per kWh.
The move to heat pumps and pellets seems like a giant rent extraction scam, by capturing the legislative with “must be done” climate rhetoric.
Using gas/FF’s for direct heating homes is such a strange concept for a person from the Nordic countries.
Didn’t we stop that, dunno almost 50 years ago? Apparently not.
🤔
See, you southern decadents don’t know how to deal with the cold. For gods sake, build better houses.
Kow,
It is really very expensive to build net zero homes or close to that, it takes a great deal of square footage for collectors, for air exchangers and and associate piping. I gave up on the air exchangers.
It is incredibly meticulous work, economically, it can be done, but sort of like oil, the the cost to do so is not economic for other than hobbyists.
I have a fair amount of land, the stuff you need faces south and requires very expensive roads, then wells, then perk tests. Tried to do it in a city once, over paid for a south facing lot, stopped the whole process after architectural fees, it wasn’t even close to cost effective.
Maybe others can make it work, I couldn’t come close. Resale value is much lower than other construction – that is a future value problem, to date the fv of these homes in the US seems to be less than a conventional home. Roof top solar decreases the appraised value of a home – go figure.
It would be informative to know what a nordic house costs per sqft.
Best of luck to you,
Dennis L.
I can speak about cost in Austria, where building codes require any new home to not need more than about 50kWh per m2 per year. Those come for about 2200€ per m2 building cost, about 250$ per sq ft. To get better energy efficiency, say about 30 W per m2 per year, add about 10% to the house cost. There are substantial variations depending on the location and type of house, but that is where most estimates of builders start.
I wonder about the nordics myself, and also if their type of building for very cold winters, which are also dry, is feasible in a much wetter climate such as ours in Austria (comparable in wetness to US northern west coast, or Vancouver, but a tad colder).
Dennis,
Nordic houses are outrageously expensive per sqft, however, most people don’t tear down old houses, rather renovate them after some 30-40 years of usage. Only a really rotten house gets torn down to the ground. However, in my entire life I have never seen a normal/private house gotten torn to the ground. Rather, they get sold then disassembled and shipped on trucks to other locations, IKEA style. That’s what happened to my parents house.
Renovation usually includes checking them over with a IR/FLIR camera, then fixing the worst leakages. Checks for moulds, fixing the dew point barriers, rodent blocks, etc. Drainage in the fundament, adding heat exchangers and heat pumps. And the usual bells and whistles new paint, floor tiles, kitchen gear, ets.
Then its ready for another half a century of service.
I just cannot fathom why it is this way. It isn’t as if there is a lack of trees in North America, after all you are exporting wood pellets to be burned in the nordic countries.
Consumerism 101. Sell cheap crap to the populace, after it falls to pieces, sell some more.
Now i am curious, what do you heat your home with ?
My house is considered near the upper end of energy efficiency, at about 30 kWh per m2 per year, and that still amounts to about 13.000 kWh per year. They need to come from somewhere.
And also i am curious how your house is insulated ? Mine has 30cm insulation all around, which really is a lot. And i am unaware of windows with better than the 0.5 W per m2 per C° that my 3-pane glass has, so i wonder how you do it ?
Heat pumps, heat exchangers, electricity and central heating. Plenty of people burning wood pellets as supplement during the cold dips. Usually one blast through the boiler during the day, and then the heat is inside the insulated water tank/heat reservoir.
https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2011/new-regional-energy-statistics-for-single–or-two-dwelling-buildings/
“The average house had an energy use of 23,200 kWh in 2010
The lowest energy use for space heating and hot water was registered in houses situated in the county of Blekinge, with 21,000 kWh per house. The highest energy use per house was found to be in those situated in counties in the north of Sweden: Västerbotten, Norrbotten, Gävleborg and Västernorrland. The level of energy use was found to be highest in the county of Västerbotten, with an average of 26 700 kWh per house.”
Remember that Scandinavian houses never is left cold (4 season heating/air conditioning), due to the water pipes and sewage getting frozen.
If a well-insulated house can survive the moist and humidity, specially during “winter”, in Scania and Blekinge, then for sure it can be built all over the US and other parts of the EU.
https://www.byggahus.se/isolera-med-ratt-tjocklek-och-metod
For ordinary new houses:
240 mm in walls, 500 mm between the ceiling and roof och 300 mm in the floor.
For passive houses:
500 mm in the walls, in excess of 600 mm between ceiling and roof, 400mm in the floor.
Then of course styrofoam in the foundation.
More important than absolute insulation thickness is the quality of the application. Leaky houses is the main culprit and not a lack of insulation, usually.
In the north, people use to shovel snow on the walls. The house I grew up in was like an igloo some winters. 😎
Interesting debate.
In the historical past only a fraction of a dwelling was kept at some comfy temperature.
Not mentioning sharing the living space directly with farm animals or via linked door or floor in a way their temp release was contributing towards the human temp comfort as well.
Also lets not forget to grow proper wind brake all around the bldg..
Who still loves the Beeb then? Only 33% of Brits, apparently.
New research, by YouGov has found that nearly half of Britons think that the BBC no longer represents their values amid declining levels of trust in the broadcaster, particularly outside London, research for The Times suggests. Reasoned’s Darren Grimes explains.
https://youtu.be/09m26QIaDq0
Fox News seems to be the most popular station in the US, suggesting that in the US, quite a bit of the population doesn’t think that CNN and Public Broadcasting really match up with their views, either.
New York Times set a record for most read paper too. I guess that blows your theory out. Thought you were a statistical analyst? Guess they didn’t teach you anything about cherry picking stats in grad school.
There are lots of people on both sides was the point I was making. You need to read better.
I dont see why baseless attacks on Gail should be tolerated. Denial is entitled to his point of view but adds nothing to this forum. The way he expresses his point of view is all about how he feels with no respect for others or this forum usually with overt or not so overt threatening.
The NYT may be the most bought newspaper, but do we know how many of those copies are actually read by the people who buy them? A lot of copies are bought by government organizations, universities, corporations and libraries.
And even when they are opened, many people only read them for the crossword and the funnies.
Denial is the Salman Rushdie of this site. Shall we issue a fatwa against him? I don’t think so. Let’s chide him when he trolls and maybe one day he’ll grow up into a responsible and respectable adult doomer.
Cool water science
https://mobile.twitter.com/berniespofforth/status/1345653347815202819
Laminar flow. Looks just like ice. Cool!
Some electronic music with in the scenery from Slovakia for Sunday enjoyment
https://youtu.be/lOsxaqAUrxA
Some more electronic music, this from the abandoned nickel smelter in Sered, soutwestern Slovakia:
https://youtu.be/EY8R2tSbVVU
Pressburg was a suburb of Wien. Sereth, not too much different
For me, it is interesting, that Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest are so close to each other, situated under soutwestern slopes of the Carpathian mountains at the banks of the Danube river.
Originaly, there were other towns in Slovakia with higher percentage of the Slovak population at the end of the Austria-Hungary that competed for being the capital. But it seems that the geographical position of Bratislava prevailed.
Pressburg (called Pozsony by the Hungarians) did become the capital of Hungary for some time after the Turks had taken Buda, which is why it ended up under Hungary.
Until 1783 it was the chief Hungarian city. The Austrians did not like a huge Hungarian city just at the back door of Wien so it moved most Hungarian institutions back to Buda on that year, and it became a German city.
On 1919, the Germans and Hungarians consisted 80% of the population of Pressburg, but the Czechs conquered the city for the Slovaks. Slovaks never had, and will not have, claims to Pressburg, etc after the Americans quit Europe.
Was it a joke? You cannot step into the same river twice…
Sixty percent of healthcare workers in the US do not intend to take a Covid-19 vaccine.
Plus a report on the actual numbers from the CDC and the bad reactions the media are not telling you about
By Jason Bermas
https://youtu.be/JOcEC8-9kYY
“Sixty percent of healthcare workers in the US do not intend to take a Covid-19 vaccine.”
Good news!
“Sixty percent . . . ”
That’s either fake news or somewhere else. Here in LA, way over 90% have been vaccinated.
Ah, but were all those vaccinations intentional?!
“Ah, but were all those vaccinations intentional?!”
Hmm. If you know where I can get an unintentional vaccination . . . .
Actually something close to that happened in LA. Walgreen’s had a few hundred doses that were going to time out after they had been vaccinating medial or first responders. So they put up a sign and a bunch of people who were way down on the list go their shot.
Totally sensible. I like people being sensible.
My head hurts …
If you know where I can get an unintentional vaccination . . . .
I was thinking along the lines of the brain dead and the comatose, the mentally deficient and children below the age of consent who are unable to legally consent to being jabbed. That sort of thing. Those vaccinations would be unintentional on the part of their recipients as the latter would be incapable of giving legal consent to them.
Remember Ricky Ray Rector—the convicted murderer who was executed under Governor Bill Clinton in Arkansas? For his last meal, Rector – mentally incapacitated during his time on death row, his defense team argued – requested steak, fried chicken, cherry Kool-Aid, and pecan pie. He left the pecan pie behind, though, telling a guard that he was “saving it for later.” He’s the kind of person for whom vaccination consent could never be forthcoming,
“I was thinking along the lines of the brain dead and the comatose”
The words “unable to give consent” rather than “unintentional” would have been clearer.
> Nor his Ass
Did you ever see Clerks II? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_II
” Finally, the role was offered to Rosario Dawson who loved the script. She later said that reading the “donkey show” scene sealed the deal for her.
” At an advance screening for critics, Joel Siegel walked out of the film approximately 40 minutes in, during a scene in which the characters attempt to procure a donkey for sexual purposes.
It’s a movie to avoid if you have a broken rib.
Quote of the day from CHS again, done reading his Musings, again, worth the money.
“”When copies are free, you need to sell things that cannot be copied. Well, what can’t be copied? Trust, for instance.” Kevin Kelly”
Done for the day, time to watch “High Noon.” Cooper was about 51, Kelly about 22, had a very hot off screen romance, save a horse, ride a cowboy.
Dennis L.
You know, all these techs being developed now are not for the ‘useless mouths’. It is for the top 3% of humanity, the ‘better 3%’ of humanity.