There are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.
The modeling that comes closest to being correct is that which underlies the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This modeling was based on physical quantities of resources, with no financial system whatsoever. The base model, shown here, indicates that limits would be reached a few years later than we actually seem to be reaching them. The dotted black line in Figure 1 indicates where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on the limits we already seemed to be reaching at that time.
The authors of The Limits to Growth have said that their model cannot be expected to be correct after limits hit (which is about now), so even this model is less than perfect. Thus, this model cannot be relied upon to show that population will continue to rise until after 2050.
Many readers are familiar with Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) calculations. These are favorites of many people following the Peak Oil problem. A high ratio of Energy Returned to Energy Invested is considered favorable, while a low ratio is considered unfavorable. Energy sources with similar EROEIs are supposedly equivalent. Even these similarities can be misleading. They make intermittent wind and solar appear far more helpful than they really are.
Other modeling, such as that by oil companies, is equally wrong. Their modeling tends to make future fossil fuel supplies look far more available than they really are.
This is all related to a talk I plan to give to energy researchers later in February. So far, all that is pinned down is the Summary, which I reproduce here as Section [1], below.
[1] Summary: The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different.
The way a person views the world economy makes a huge difference in how one models it. A big issue is how connected the various parts of the economy are. Early researchers assumed that oil was the key energy product; if it were possible to find suitable substitutes for oil, the danger of exhaustion of oil resources could be delayed almost indefinitely.
In fact, the operation of the world economy is controlled by the laws of physics. All parts are tightly linked. The problem of diminishing returns affects far more than oil supply; it affects coal, natural gas, mineral extraction in general, fresh water production and food production. Based on the work of Joseph Tainter, we also know that added complexity is also subject to diminishing returns.
When a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition.
A second effect of added complexity is growing use of long-lasting goods available through technology. Many of these long-lasting goods are only affordable with financial time-shifting devices such as loans or the sale of shares of stock. As non-elite workers become increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy, these time-shifting devices provide a way to raise demand (and thus prices) for commodities of all types, including oil. These time-shifting devices are subject to manipulation by central banks, within limits.
Standard calculations of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) ignore the fact that added complexity tends to have a very detrimental impact on the economy because of the diminishing returns it produces. To correct for this, today’s EROEI calculations should only be used to compare energy systems with similar complexity. The least complex energy systems are based on burned biomass and power from animals. Fossil fuels represent a step upward in complexity, but they still can be stored until their use is required. Intermittent renewables are far ahead of fossil fuels in terms complexity: they require sophisticated systems of storage and distribution and therefore cannot be considered equivalent to oil or dispatchable electricity.
The lack of understanding of how the economy really works has led to the failure to understand several important points:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices,
(iii) The economy is experiencing the historical phenomenon of collapse, rather than peak oil, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
[2] The world’s energy problem, as commonly understood by researchers today
It is my observation that many researchers believe that we humans are in charge of what happens with future fossil fuel extraction, or with choosing to substitute intermittent renewables for fossil fuels. They generally do not see any problem with “running out” in the near future. If running out were imminent, the problem would likely be announced by spiking prices.
In the predominant view, the amount of future fossil fuels available depends upon the quantity of energy resources that can be extracted with available technology. Thus, a proper estimate of the resources that can be extracted is needed. Oil seems to be in shortest supply based on its reserve estimates and the vast benefits it provides to society. Thus, it is commonly believed that oil production will “peak” and begin to decline first, before coal and natural gas.
In this view, demand is something that we never need to worry about because energy, and especially oil, is a necessity. People will choose energy over other products because they will pay whatever is necessary to have adequate energy supplies. As a result, oil and other energy prices will rise almost endlessly, allowing much more to be extracted. These higher prices will also enable higher cost intermittent electricity to be substituted for today’s fossil fuels.
A huge amount of additional fossil fuels can be extracted, according to those who are primarily concerned about loss of biodiversity and climate change. Those who analyze EROEI tend to believe that falling EROEI will limit the quantity of future fossil fuels extracted to a smaller total extracted amount. Because of this, energy from additional sources, such as intermittent wind and solar, will be required to meet the total energy demand of society.
The focus of EROEI studies is on whether the EROEI of a given proposed substitution is, in some sense, high enough to add energy to the economy. The calculation of EROEI makes no distinction between energy available only through highly complex systems and energy available from less complex systems.
EROEI researchers, or perhaps those who rely on the indications of EROEI researchers, seem to believe that the energy needs of economies are flexible within a very wide range. Thus, an economy can shrink its energy consumption without a particularly dire impact.
[3] The real story seems to be that the adverse outcome we are reaching is collapse, not peak oil. The economy is a self-organizing system powered by energy. This makes it behave in very unexpected ways.
[3a] The economy is tightly connected by the laws of physics.
Energy consumption (dissipation) is necessary for every aspect of the economy. People often understand that making goods and services requires energy dissipation. What they don’t realize is that almost all of today’s jobs require energy dissipation, as well. Without supplemental energy, humans could only gather wild fruits and vegetables and hunt using the simplest of tools. Or, they could attempt simple horticulture by using a stick to dig a place in the ground to plant a seed.
In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure, which is a self-organizing structure that grows over time. Other examples of dissipative structures include hurricanes, plants and animals of all types, ecosystems, and star systems. Without a supply of energy to dissipate (that is, food to eat, in the case of humans), these dissipative structures would collapse.
We know that the human body has many different systems, such as a cardiovascular system, digestive system and nervous system. The economy has many different systems, too, and is just as tightly connected. For example, the economy cannot get along without a transportation system any more than a human can get along without a cardiovascular system.
This self-organizing system acts without our direction, just as our brain or circulatory system acts without our direction. In fact, we have very little control over these systems.
The self-organizing economy allows common belief systems to arise that seem to be right but are really based on models with many incorrect assumptions. People desperately need and want a “happily ever after” solution. The strong need for a desirable outcome favors the selection of models that lead to the conclusion that if there is a problem, it is many years away. Conflicting political views seem to be based on different, equally wrong, models of how world leaders can solve the energy predicament that the world is facing.
The real story is that the world’s self-organizing economy will determine for us what is ahead, and there is virtually nothing we can do to change the result. Strangely enough, if we look at the long term pattern, there almost seems to be a guiding hand behind the result. According to Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee in Rare Earth, there have been a huge number of seeming coincidences that have allowed life on Earth to take hold and flourish for four billion years. Perhaps this “luck” will continue.
[3b] As the economy reaches limits, commodities of many types reach diminishing returns simultaneously.
It is indeed true that the economy reaches diminishing returns in oil supply as it reaches limits. Oil is very valuable because it is energy dense and easily transported. The oil that can be extracted, refined, and delivered to needed markets using the least amount of resources (including human labor) tends to be extracted first. It is later that deeper wells are built that are farther from markets. Because of these issues, oil extraction does tend to reach diminishing returns, as more is extracted.
If this were the only aspect of the economy that was experiencing diminishing returns, then the models coming from a peak oil perspective would make sense. We could move away from oil, simply by transferring oil use to appropriately chosen substitutes.
It becomes clear when a person looks at the situation that commodities of all kinds reach diminishing returns. Fresh water reaches diminishing returns. We can add more by using desalination and pumping water to where it is required, but this approach is hugely expensive. As population and industrialization grows, the need for fresh water grows, making diminishing returns for fresh water a real issue.
Minerals of all kinds reach diminishing returns, including uranium, lithium, copper and phosphate rock (used for fertilizer). The reason this occurs is because we tend to extract these minerals faster than they are replaced by the weathering of rocks, including bedrock. In fact, useable topsoil tends to reach diminishing returns because of erosion. Also, with increasing population, the amount of food required keeps increasing, putting further pressure on farmland and making it harder to retain an acceptable level of topsoil.
[3c] Increased complexity leads to diminishing returns as well.
In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter points out that complexity reaches diminishing returns, just as commodities do.
As an example, it is easy to see that added spending on healthcare reaches diminishing returns. The discovery of antibiotics clearly had a huge impact on healthcare, at relatively little cost. Now, a recent article is entitled, The hunt for antibiotics grows harder as resistance builds. The dollar payback on other drugs tends to fall as well, as solutions to the most common diseases are found, and researchers must turn their attention to diseases affecting only, perhaps, 500 people globally.
Similarly, spending on advanced education reaches diminishing returns. Continuing the medical example above, educating an increasing number of researchers, all looking for new antibiotics, may eventually lead to success in discovering more antibiotics. But the payback with respect to the education of these researchers will not be nearly as great as the payback for educating the early researchers who found the first antibiotics.
[3d] Wages do not rise sufficiently so that all of the higher costs associated with the many types of diminishing returns can be recouped simultaneously.
The healthcare system (at least in the United States) tends to let its higher costs flow through to consumers. We can see this by looking at how much higher the Medical Care Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises compared to the All Items CPI in Figure 2.
The high (and rapidly rising) cost of advanced education is another cost that is being passed on to consumers–the students and their parents. In this case, loans are used to make the high cost look less problematic.
Of course, if consumers are burdened with higher medical and educational costs, it makes it difficult to afford the higher cost of energy products, as well. With these higher costs, young people tend to live with their parents longer, saving on the energy products needed to have their own homes and vehicles. Needless to say, the lower net income for many people, after healthcare costs and student loan repayments are deducted, acts to reduce the demand for oil and energy products, and thus contributes to the problem of continued low oil prices.
[3e] Added complexity tends to increase wage disparities. The reduced spending by lower income workers tends to hold down fossil fuel prices, similar to the impact identified in Section [3d].
As the economy becomes more complex, companies tend to become larger and more hierarchical. Elite workers (ones with more training or with more supervisory responsibility) earn more than non-elite workers. Globalization adds to this effect, as workers in high wage countries increasingly compete with workers in lower wage countries. Even computer programmers can encounter this difficulty, as programming is increasingly moved to China and India.
Individuals with low incomes spend a disproportionately large share of their incomes on commodities because everyone needs to eat approximately 2,000 calories of food per day. In addition, everyone needs some kind of shelter, clothing and basic transportation. All of these types of consumption are commodity intensive. People with very high incomes tend to buy disproportionately more goods and services that are not very resource intensive, such as education for their children at elite universities. They may also use part of their income to buy shares of stock, hoping their value will rise.
With a shift in the distribution of incomes toward those with high earnings, the demand for commodities of all types tends to stagnate or even fall. Fewer people are able to buy new cars, and fewer people can afford vacations involving travel. Thus, as more complexity is added, there tends to be downward pressure on the price of oil and other energy products.
[4] Oil prices have been falling behind those needed by oil producers since 2012.
Back in February 2014, Steven Kopits gave a presentation at Columbia University explaining the state of the oil industry. I wrote a post describing this presentation called, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Oil companies were reporting that prices had been too low for them to make an adequate profit for reinvestment, back as early as 2012. In inflation-adjusted terms, this was when oil prices were about $120 per barrel.
Even Middle Eastern oil exporting countries need surprisingly high oil prices because their economies depend on the profits of oil companies to provide the vast majority of their tax revenue. If oil prices are too low, adequate taxes cannot be collected. Without funds for jobs programs and food subsidies, there are likely to be uprisings by unhappy citizens who cannot maintain an adequate standard of living.
Looking at Figure 4, we see that there has been very little time that Brent oil prices have been above $120 per barrel. Even with all of the recent central bank stimulus and deficit spending by economies around the world, Brent oil prices remain below $60 per barrel.
[5] Interest rates and the amount of debt make a huge difference in oil prices, too.
Based on Figure 4, oil prices are highly irregular. Much of this irregularity seems to be associated with interest rate and debt level changes. In fact, in July 2008, what I would call the debt bubble associated with subprime housing and credit cards collapsed, bringing oil prices down from their peak abruptly. In late 2008, Quantitative Easing (QE) (aimed at bringing interest rates down) was added just prior to an upturn on prices in 2009 and 2010. Prices fell again, when the United States discontinued QE in late 2014.
If we think about it, increased debt makes purchases such as cars, homes and new factories more affordable. In fact, the lower the interest rate, the more affordable these items become. The number of purchases of any of these items can be expected to rise with more debt and lower interest rates. Thus, we would expect oil prices to rise as debt is added and fall as it is taken away. Now, there are many questions: Why haven’t oil prices risen more, with all of the stimulus that has been added? Are we reaching the limits of stimulus? Are interest rates as low as they can go, and the amount of debt outstanding as high as it can go?
[6] The growing complexity of the economy is contributing to the huge amount of debt outstanding.
In a very complex economy, a huge number of durable goods and services are produced. Examples of durable goods would include machines used in factories and pipelines of all kinds. Durable goods would also include vehicles of all types, including both vehicles used for businesses and vehicles used by consumers for their own benefit. As broadly defined here, durable goods would include buildings of all types, including factories, schools, offices and homes. It would also include wind turbines and solar panels.
There would also be durable services produced. For example, a college degree would have lasting benefit, it is hoped. A computer program would have value after it is completed. Thus, a consulting service is able to sell its programs to prospective buyers.
Somehow, there is a need to pay for all of these durable goods. We can see this most easily for the consumer. A loan that allows durable goods to be paid for over their expected life will make these goods more affordable.
Similarly, a manufacturer needs to pay the many workers making all of the durable goods. Their labor is adding value to the finished products, but this value will not be realized until the finished products are put into operation.
Other financing approaches can also be used, including the sale of bonds or shares of stock. The underlying intent is to provide financial time-shifting services. Interest rates associated with these financial time-shifting services are now being manipulated downward by central banks to make these services more affordable. This is part of what keeps stock prices high and commodity prices from falling lower than their current levels.
These loans, bonds and shares of stock are providing a promise of future value. This value will exist only if there are enough fossil fuels and other resources to create physical goods and services to fulfill these promises. Central banks can print money, but they cannot print actual goods and services. If I am right about collapse being ahead, the whole debt system seems certain to collapse. Shares of stock seem certain to lose their value. This is concerning. The end point of all of the added complexity seems to be financial collapse, unless the system can truly add the promised goods and services.
[7] Intermittent electricity fits very poorly into just-in-time supply lines.
A complex economy requires long supply lines. Usually, these supply lines are operated on a just-in-time basis. If one part of a supply line encounters problems, then manufacturing needs to stop. For example, automobile manufacturers in many parts of the world are finding that they need to suspend production because it is impossible to source the necessary semiconductor chips. If electricity is temporarily unavailable, this is another way of disrupting the supply chain.
The standard way to work around temporary breaks in supply chains is to build greater inventory, but this is expensive. Additional inventory needs to be stored and watched over. It likely needs financing, as well.
[8] The world economy today seems to be near collapse.
The self-organizing economy is now pushing the economy in many strange ways that indirectly lead to less energy consumption and eventually collapse. Even prior to COVID-19, the world economy appeared to be reaching growth limits, as indicated in Figure 1, which was published in January 2019. For example, recycling of many renewables was no longer profitable at lower oil prices after 2014. This led China to discontinue most of its recycling efforts, effective January 1, 2018, even though this change resulted in the loss of jobs. China’s car sales fell in 2018, 2019, and 2020, a strange pattern for a supposedly rapidly growing country.
The response of world leaders to COVID-19 has pushed the world economy further in the direction of contraction. Businesses that were already weak are the ones having the most difficulty in being able to operate profitably.
Furthermore, debt problems are growing around the world. For example, it is unclear whether the world will require as many shopping malls or office buildings in the future. A person would logically expect the value of the unneeded buildings to drop, reducing the value of many of these properties below their outstanding debt level.
When these issues are combined, it looks likely that the world economy may not be far from collapse, which is one of my contentions from Section [1]. It also looks like my other contentions from Section [1] are true:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
Regarding (iv), the available energy supply from wind and solar (net or otherwise) is tiny relative to the total energy required to operate the world economy. This issue, alone, would disqualify a Great Reset using wind and solar from truly being a solution for today’s problems. Instead, plans for a Great Reset tend to act as a temporary cover-up for collapse.
The Travel Guy continues to post videos on the progressive economic collapse in Spain…
More and more businesses closing and the tourist trade is👎
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ycZ3oHxgFXM
This is NOT going to end well….More Money Today MMT is not going to save us Uncle Joe
Don’t!
I fear I will never again sit with a cognac and cigar in the central Plaza in Pamplona, like my great- grandfather, watch the pretty girls walk by and talk nonsense…..
Que puta vida!
I sympathise, Xabier. Perhaps never again will I sit in the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, with a glass of cognac and a cup of expresso. Time may be the Mother of Truth, as de Cervantes said, but she can also be the killer of dreams.
But as your fellow countryman said, La vida es sueño.
It is indeed: and that very book fell into my hands the other day as I was rummaging among the bookshelves and is waiting to be read again, on the pile by my bed.
My grandfather hid in a cellar off the Plaza in Pamplona in 1936, hiding from Fascist assassins, which is how he met my beautiful grandmother, who brought him food and drink.
‘I fear I will never again sit with a cognac and cigar in the central Plaza in Pamplona, like my great- grandfather, watch the pretty girls walk by’
Why, you disgusting caveman, Xabier! How can you think such things in the 21st century?! I’ll have to ask Gail to CANCEL you.
Here, you’ll have to make do with the next best thing –
Music To Watch Girls By – TOM GAEBEL
Encantado, Malcopian!
I am afraid you can find this situation in a lot of parts of the world, not just Spain.
It is shopping malls that are doing poorly and strip malls that are lacking for tenants.
Paying poor people to take the vaccine and not informing them it’s a trial . . . Bow down to your Big Pharma overlords. And, oh, yeah, god is love.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxyy4/in-india-vaccine-trial-conducted-on-survivors-of-one-of-the-worlds-worst-industrial-disasters
Some days I agree with Terry Pratchett, especially the last line:
“If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
https://i.redd.it/406mybi0quf61.png
I have not read any of Terry’s books because I don’t enjoy fantasy, but I looked him up and discovered that he was one of the very, very few who took overpopulation so seriously that he [born in 1948] had only one child, a daughter who was born in 1976, before he had delved into the subject. It appears he may have written fantasy, but he didn’t live in it.
Another Pratchett quote you might appreciate Conrad.
“Don’t you talk to me about progress.
Progress just means bad things happen faster.”
A wise man, that Pratchett . . .
Things seem to be different in India.
Hello Gail. Thank you for your posting.
I fully endorse your statements.
I write weekly about the French energy situation, especially regarding nuclear power and French uranium mining in Africa. It underlines the problem of too high costs for the ‘consumer’, think of the revolt ‘gillet jaune’ and too low prices for the porducers, in this case EDF. Here is an overview of EDF’s problem.
1.The flagship of French industry, nuclear power, is tottering under the burden of debt. Second, huge investments are needed to renovate the existing reactor park. Third, there are major delays and cost overruns in the construction of the EPR at Flamanville (Manche). The further delay of the EPR in Flamanville (Manche), which has already cost €11 billion, could cost another €2 billion.
All these rising costs of nuclear power are weighing heavily on EDF’s finances and share price. Investors have little appetite for it.
2. The production costs of renewable energy are constantly falling and becoming more competitive. The French government therefore wants to isolate nuclear energy, this “activity with a high financial risk”. They want to split the company into three branches. Operation Hercules is called that.
I post about it regularly. Nuclear power, renewables with a stock market listing and hydro power.
In the jargon, this is called turning ‘core’ leg into a “bad bank”, or “bad bank”, which could take the form of a state-owned company.
3. EDF itself states that “Today there is no financial risk associated with nuclear power”. They argue that this debt is financed on a long-term basis, at interest rates that are currently extremely low. That may be, but the real issue now! is that of financing debt, the near future, and investments.
Debt and investment, in other words. On the debt side: €37 billion (€bn) net (2019) now accrued. But more than double if you add bonds (hybrid debt).
That’s three times as much as a decade ago and the debt position keeps rising.
In terms of investment, the amount of the “Grand Carénage” alone, which covers the maintenance and modernization of the current reactors, is huge: 100 billion euros by 2030, according to an estimate by the French Court of Auditors.
This does not even include the construction of the two EPRs currently being built at Hinkley Point, in the southwest of England, financed to the tune of 16 billion euros from the group’s own resources!!! (which ones?) of the group. This amount is also being revised upwards year on year and now, I believe, amounts to 21 billion.
4. Then there are the setbacks of the EPR in Flamanville (Manche), whose construction has already cost €11 billion. After all sorts of welding problems this has been increased by at least another 2 billion euros in extra costs. The opening has now been postponed to 2024!!! Was originally supposed to be in 2012.
All this in a context of a continuing fall in selling prices on the nuclear wholesale market for megawatt hours (Mwh). Too low energy prices for the producer, therefore, to be profitable.
5. What should be done with this debt once the reorganization is done? It is impossible to place it entirely in a nationalized nuclear sector.
Should the debt be taken over by the state? That would add to the country’s public debt, which already peaks at €2,800 billion or 112.5% of GDP. It is expected to reach 120% of GDP next year. And somewhere the possibility of getting longer repayment terms on ‘the market’ will stop. There is no longer that space.
6. In France, 6 million families (16% of the total) currently receive an energy voucher each year. This prevents large-scale evictions. The cost of defaulting on payment is now so high that it is transferred to the state and not passed on in the price of electricity.
A price that, by the way, has risen by about 20% in the last 5 years. EDF estimates that this price will have to increase by at least another 20% to cover its operating costs. It is easy to guess what the social and economic consequences will be.
Gerard, an excellent analysis. But the US built nuclear power plants for a fraction of the cost. In aircraft carriers. The science of nuclear power is simple: the reactor is a heat engine, using the same principles as Heron’s aeolipile. But it has been made immensely complicated, and therefore immensely expensive and immensely inefficient. Part of this is intrinsic, and part is due to a large, largely ignorant, and intrusive regulatory bureaucracy that has systematically ignored the most risky part of the process: the disposal of the spent fuel. As so often; solve the present problems, and ignore the future ones.
Yes it could be. So the solution seems to you…let’s all live on aircraft carriers or submarines….”we all live in a yellow nucleaire submarine” 🙂
Thanks for writing. I have been following the French nuclear situation to some extent, so I am aware of it. France, of course, was the country that added a huge amount of nuclear electricity back in the 1980 to 2000 period. In fact, it started building nuclear power plants, back as early as 1965. These power plants are now aging. France’s peak in nuclear electricity production was in 2005. It production in 2019 was 11.5% lower than 2005.
One thing that has happened in recent years has been a huge step-up in the prices of nuclear power plant construction after the Fukushima disasters, at least in “rich” countries. Some poor countries may still build plants much more cheaply, and hope that their country doesn’t have any accidents. It is not clear that even with all of this greater planning, all accidents be prevented. These higher costs put new plants out of the price range of many buyers. It seems like power plants that had already been started were redesigned, while they were being built, leading to escalating costs.
Another thing I remember hearing about in France was more and more renovation expenses being required in old plants. I imagine this adds to your problems. Even more of these renovation expenses can be expected in the future. Nuclear power plants were originally designed with a 30-40 year lifetime. Now, in the US, there is the hope of keeping these plants operating for a total of 80 years or longer. This would be likely to add to maintenance costs.
One thing I should point out is that mixing intermittent wind and solar with nuclear is a terrible idea. Those who market wind and solar figure their costs as if they will always get the subsidy of “going first.” Often this means that other producers are forced to ramp their output up and down, to fill in the gaps in the production of the renewables. If they cannot ramp up and down quickly, they are paid negative wholesale prices for their electricity.
As a practical matter, nuclear power plants are not at all good at ramping (although I understand that they do some adjustment in France). As a result, the addition of wind and solar usually means that the finances of nuclear suddenly become much worse. The wholesale electricity prices fall, much of the time. Nuclear power plants usually need subsidies when wind and solar are added. I would say that this is because wind and solar are greatly over valued in most analyses. They only substitute for coal or natural gas in an electricity generating plant. They don’t really substitute for electricity. You really need gas “peaker” plants operating alongside wind and solar, to allow renewables to work. These peaker plants are not very efficient, but they do ramp up and down quickly.
The amount of intermittent renewables that can be added to the electric grid in Europe is already close to a maximum, without a lot of blackouts. You may have seen this report:
https://www.de24.news/en/2021/01/europe-narrowly-escaped-blackout-electricity-suppliers-warn-austria.html
Europe narrowly escaped blackout: electricity suppliers warn – Austria
This is another article about the incident.
https://verietyinfo.com/austriaeng/risk-of-blackout-emergency-operations-are-increasing-en-masse-vienna/
The UK and Australia have had problems with blackouts. California, in the US, finds it necessary to shut off power whenever it is windy and dry. The many small units, which are connected with transmission lines that carry electricity only part of the time, mean that a great deal more electricity transmission lines are needed. These lines can be buried underground at great cost. (I believe Germany is using this approach.) Or they can be above ground, where they often cause fires when the wind blows. The time line on building enough transmission lines is typically longer than the timeline on adding renewables.
Thank you, Gail; an excellent summary, which accords with my own (far more limited) knowledge.
Thank you for your response.
1. Indeed, in complex “old” societies such as Europe and the US, the cost of replacement and maintenance of infrastructures and utilities increases exponentially over time. In France, to limit it to the energy sector, this applies to enormous costs not only in the ballast nuclear plants, which provide 80% of the electricity supply, but also simultaneously in the maintenance of the hydro plants, because they belong to the same ‘energy network’. Renewables therefore seem an interesting and apparently cheaper alternative. That there is a deceptive illusion here leaves no doubt. I share you opinion on the enormous problems that the incorporation of these intermittent sources will bring.
2. Europe is also in a situation where raw materials and fossil energy reserves are virtually exhausted. The Rystad report, which you reviewed in your previous posting, gives a clear indication of this. That fact too made the ‘green deal’ for Europeans, consciously or unconsciously, an apparently attractive alternative because there is no ‘own’ alternative left.
3. Finally, something about possible ‘blackouts’ in the EU. For at least the next two weeks, Europe will be hit by a cold snap. The biggest in at least ten years! We will see if the network operators can manage this. It will be exciting weeks with sharply rising energy prices, that much is clear.
#3 the renewables soaked German grid must be increasingly stabilized by neighboring base load capacity (FR, PL, CZ, ..) – there were several close encounters already as you mentioned. If they finalize the NordStream2 natgas connector (and linked gas peak powerplants), perhaps it will alleviate some of the most pressing concerns up to this point. On the other hand it just might result in even bigger enthusiasm for continued build up of grid stressing renewables..
There are enormous expenses building the nuclear power plants of conventional reactors Finland Olkiluoto). If there is any solution to this it lies in the so called compact melted salt reactors (cmsr) which are being developed for instance by Seaborg Technologies. Their reactor can be placed in a 20′ container, will cost 100 million USD and have a capacity of 100 MWe. One barge of ‘ordinary’ uranium makes the reactor run for 24 years. They can operate as stand-alone units in big vessels or onshore alone or maybe gathered in batteries. They run at higher temperatures than ‘normal’ reactors and consume the plentiful uranium-238 much better. This reactor is intrinsically safe, can be built in factories and shipped to its operative destination on a truck. If there is any solution (and maybe there is not) this is the way to follow. Energy balance more than 30. There are many articles in English – just google Seaborg Technology.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/auto-factories-semiconductor-chips.html
I can “relate” to that piece linked in this post, because I work in a place in “Silicon Valley” (in Fremont, CA) in the manufacture of equiptment which makes microchips.
I’ve heard that the vacuum-chamber assemblies we make last about 3 to 10 years, depending on the processes in which they’re used, & then get scrapped out, due to corrosion, etc.
It’s so very complex, & energy-intensive, how these things are made, & we’ve never been busier at it, masks & all.
Part of the problem seems to be a need to keep costs low. This is an excerpt from the article you link to:
Interesting article on the topic from energyskeptic:
http://energyskeptic.com/2021/fragility-of-microchips/
The article starts out:
Alice Friedemann certainly makes a good point about the microchip industry being the first industry to fail. If it is not first, it is high on the list. I think recycling was the first industry to fail, and several other industries are headed in the same direction.
I was at first a little confused about “90% of them produced in China.” What Friedemann is saying is that 90% of the Rare Earth Elements are produced in China. Not long ago, we were discussing the fact that Taiwan is the center of production of microchip manufacturing. China hasn’t perfected this technology, except for certain low-end chips. I don’t even know if there is a good reference for exactly where they are made. When I searched just now, I didn’t find a good reference.
Yup, China merely purchases “pick and place” machinery to put these semiconductor IC’s onto printed circuit boards, solder them together and make some product out of it that gets shipped somewhere else.
I.e. being an extremely polluting machine shop floor for the East Asian/Western sphere.
Indeed the IC/semi manufacturing process is among the most complex ones on earth. It is also one of the most important ones. Cant do anything these days without IC’s. Ask the German/EU/US auto industry how that shady EU/Bidet deal with the CCP feels like when TSMC won’t deliver the chips?
My bet is that Tsai’s cabinet got whiff of some dirty biddings between the inbred EU/US sociopaths and the equally filthy muppets in the CCP. Wanna let PLA invade Taiwan? Here’s what we do in retaliation:
#1 No chips for your POS wank auto industry, or any capital/people intensive industry (layoffs, yay!)
#2 In the case of an invasion, we blow up the factories
How about that you inbred muppets?
China for 2 decades is trying to catch-up in processor design and production. With mixed results, I guess.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/14/china-technology-sanctions-huawei-chips-semiconductors/
The old giants are still keeping embargo on the most advanced tech. Trump’s decision complicated things even more for Chinese companies.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-semiconductors-usa-lawmaking/china-plans-new-policies-to-develop-domestic-semiconductor-industry-bloomberg-idUSKBN25U0VM
https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/trump-blacklisting-chinese-firms-puts-u-s-chip-industry-at-risk-analyst-contends
Tensions are rising.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/atlantic-council-pens-anonymously-authored-expose-calling-for-us-regime-change-in-china/275068/
https://www.rt.com/news/514784-stratcom-nuclear-war-russia-china/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
Wonderful leverage, using chips as currency post collapse, to keep equipment going
we used to have perfectly good cars without chips (except the ones you bought and ate in situ.)
I bought a VW over a year ago, and I still haven’t figured out what half the gizmos on it actually do, and I doubt if I ever will.
If I find a new thingy on it, its usually by accident, and I’ve forgotten how to make it work next day.
It goes when and where I want it to, and stops the same way. Which is more or less all I need.
My bicycle has zero chips. I still can’t figure out how it possibly can work to stay upright. Something yada yada about centripetal forces. Nah, the explanation is too complex, it has to go. Explosive forces in auto engines are much simpler, plus stability, comfort and opulence of 4 wheels.
😉
ooooooo
washyermouthout
I once said ‘explosive forces’ on OFW relative to IC engines and I got a week’s worth of lectures about what explosions are and are not, from scientists, wannabe scientists and various fellow travellers
I recall I may have made a few incendiary remarks in response to your explosive comments. But no harm done.
My neighbor, a retired civil servant, has recently traded in a very sporty VW for a Honda hybrid of the same metallic grey color. To the untrained eye, the two cars look so similar that a lot of people didn’t notice the change. In our quiet rural backwater, people are identified at a distance of several hundred metres by their cars. He says he seldom has to refill the tank with petrol as his overnight charge is usually sufficient to get him to the golf course and back.
No, I’m not in the least envious or resentful when he passes me by on my mountain bike as we head towards the shops. I can see how people might assume that, but no… not in the least… envious… of his shiny new hybrid Honda. Honest!
it would be imprudent I guess, to point out that the reasons he can get to the golf course and back are:
a, the infrastructure that has created and is supporting his method of transport (entirely oil based)
b.. the civil service, and by definition their retirees, are supported by the fuel guzzling antics of everybody else
best not mention it—some of us would miss you if you were ‘accidentally’ knocked off your bike and lay unfound in a ditch for a week.
Rumours would be rife:—whatever happened to old wassname?
In all fairness, a properly purpose built racing machine is a thing of beauty and desire. In the correct habitat of course – on the racing track with a daredevil behind the steering wheel or handlebar grips, shredding some rubber and laying down hot laps.
As for that hybrid. 🥱
Existence turns into the singular, the dynamics of the machine and habitat becometh thee, death and injury ceases to be important, rather irrelevant and absurd. Transcending hubris and cowardice, balancing on the knife edge of the purity of nonlinear dynamics.
But I’m too old for that shit now.
😊
Norman, nah, the phone and email client of Tim’s missus would start to glow red if Tim’s comments suddenly would cease to be.
Of course somebody could decide to whack him for pointing out obvious predicaments and shenanigans they want to perpetrate and keep for themselves as they herd around the gullible.
But hey, we all ‘gotta go someway or another. Why not take one supersonic prescription pill for the team. JFK/MLK/etc. style. First head blown/poisoned to smithereens wins the OFW obnoxious (ultimate) price.
Mother Earth responds with a thunderous silence and reclaims that which came out of her, then proceeds to pull a little harder on that rather large piece of space rock.
Yes little self obsessed slightly genetically modified primates, indeed, let’s see who is the boss around here.
I suspect that the mapping of networks will eventually lead to the inescapable conclusion that the entire RCC is a ‘ring’ that functions through cover ups. That was exposed by the BBC years ago.
> Catholic Church paedophile networks to be mapped ‘like organised crime’ by academics
A “mafia-like” code of silence among “dark networks” within the Catholic Church has begun to emerge from a world-first project mapping clerical paedophile networks, says an academic behind the project.
The Victorian project identified 99 clergy members as abusers linked to 16 paedophile networks in the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses.
It found there was a “mafia-like” code of silence among clergy perpetrators who formed dark networks (DNs) within the Victorian Catholic Church.
“The covert nature of DNs is due to the illicit activities being conducted by the network,” Ms Muytjens said.
“Examples of DNs include terrorist organisations, youth gangs, drug-trafficking rings, price-fixing cartels, and other criminal enterprises.”
“The end result is we want a map that tells us about all the connections,” she said.
“In Victoria we found there were clusters of abusers who ended up clustered together, and abusers weren’t just moved around randomly they were removed really quite strategically.
“We would like to know if that’s the case across the country and, in the long-term, around the world — we would like a world map.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-05/paedophiles-mapped-like-organised-crime/13122320
Rebellion is mounting in Germany. Anyone stuck in RCC has my sympathy.
> Tensions mount in German Catholic Church over abuse report
Pressure increased on Friday on a powerful German Catholic archbishop who has for months blocked the publication of a report about alleged sexual abuse of minors by members of his diocese.
In a rare public rebuke, the diocese council of the western city of Cologne, which groups clergy and laypeople, sharply criticised Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki, saying he had “completely failed as a moral authority”.
“We find ourselves in the biggest crisis that the Church has ever experienced,” Tim Kurzbach, head of the council, said in a statement.
“Those responsible must finally also take responsibility. We need clarity now. Otherwise we have no chance of getting out of this misery.”
Woelki, a conservative who has resisted Church reform efforts, has faced criticism for months for refusing to allow the publication of an independent study on abuse committed by clergy in his diocese, the country’s largest, between 1975 and 2018.
Victims have expressed anger and disappointment about his stance.
https://www.thelocal.de/20210130/tensions-mount-in-german-catholic-church-over-abuse-report
Every group in which men work with small children seems to have had this problem. Boy scouts for example. Seventh Day Adventists, with their boarding schools that children attend. I understand that the nicest people, who seem to be best with children, are the biggest problem. They tend to be like the Pied Piper.
In the US, for many years, insurance companies have insisted on a whole set of rules to limit the likelihood of problems. There need to be two adults with every group, for example. If a pastor is counseling someone, there needs to be someone outside the door, and a glass window, or something similar. If a child needs to go to the bathroom, another child should be sent along, rather than an adult.
I am sure the rules change as time goes on and vary from insurance company to insurance company.
Now with a lot of remote classes, the problem should mostly be gone.
Hardly a surprise that those with the best act are the worst offenders. Specialists in deception. They want it, need it, revel in it, yes indeed, the very lie itself.
Yes, all human postures, all appearances are strategic and deceptive.
Indeed, the ‘self’ as commonly understood does not exist, it is an imposture. Eg. there is no ‘will’, only a body that responds to complex stimulate. There is no ‘soul’ with ‘virtues’, only a body with strategies. There is no ‘moral order’, only a material world in which strategies and deceptions are played out.
That is true of both the ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ people; they are bodies with strategic postures. ‘Holiness’ is just another variation on that theme, a strategic posture to secure objectives within the herd, however mundane or however exploitative.
‘Sincerity’ is just an internalised posture that helps humans to carry off the external posture; some humans are good at carry off postures without the internal postures.
It is all organic drives dressed up. One should never be taken in by postures of any kind; it is just a body with organic drives dressing itself up as something ‘more’ – some genetically modified primate shenanigans.
Humans are quite funny really and it is no reason to hurt them. Humans are what they are and they cannot really do anything about it, any more than a chimp can. Just be glad that you can see it for what it is – perhaps you are a prefigure of something higher, something more honest and natural, that is yet to come?
Yup, a one of a kind, as we all are. However, in this particular case, self imposed extinction. Comedy, isn’t it? But don’t worry, evolution and the wheel of time will eventually choose to produce an infinite amount of me, and perhaps every other sentient being. Just forget about this particular instance. It’s a goner.
Of course supplied with a hot broad and substantially improved rapacious primate affairs, it could be up for reconsideration. 😅👍
But first I must exist for a little while longer. Cant have proper nothingness without some existence and primate drama at first. It is mighty convincing this thing called human affairs.
Cant understand the genetically modified primate shenanigans without becoming one, right? 😉
It is indeed easy to be caught up in the mental swirl of hallucinations believing it has a one to one correspondence with objective reality, when it clearly has a one to a (mental) computational process correspondence.
And here we are. Talking nonsense, isn’t it lovely?
😘
I was ribbing you in a friendly manner about the noodles, I hope that you did not misinterpret it as an act of unfriendly aggression, princess.
I think you should lay off.
You may right. Done.
RC clergy and laity in Germany are holding a synod to reform their church. Good for them. Some suspect that they could ‘do a Luther’ and ultimately go into schism with the Vatican if it remains intransigent on reform.
> German bishops resume meetings to discuss women in the church, LGBT issues and the sexual abuse crisis
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Germany’s Catholic bishops will resume discussions this week to plan the Synodal Path, a set of conferences slated to address controversial questions such as women’s roles and LGBT acceptance, even as the country faces yet another scandal of sexual abuse by clergy.
Many churchmen believe that the social questions and the abuse crisis are related. “The abuse crisis hurts the church very deeply,” the Rev. Martin Maier, a Jesuit priest and former editor at the German Catholic magazine Voices of the Time ( Stimmen der Zeit ), told Religion News Service. “One of the most painful consequences is the loss of trust. One of the goals of the Synodal Path is to restore trust, which is crucial and vital.”
Started in 2019 and scheduled to last two years, Synodal Path was put on hold in September 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its purpose is to debate questions of power structures in the Catholic Church, priestly life, sexual morality and the role of women in the church.
“The abuse crisis hurts the church very deeply,” said the Rev. Martin Maier. “One of the most painful consequences is the loss of trust. One of the goals of the Synodal Path is to restore trust, which is crucial and vital.”
Tweet this
While the bishops’ summit officially considers only Germany’s local dioceses and parishes, the discussions and decisions will likely have consequences around the global church. Bishops from Australia to South America and Ireland are grappling with the devastating impact that the sexual abuse crisis has had, as well as with mounting secularization that has depleted church attendance and vocations.
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/02/03/german-bishops-women-lgbt-abuse-catholic-church-239899
I think we have had enough information about the Roman Catholic Church problem. I don’t see much connection to the issues we are discussing.
OK Gail, thanks. : )
Rev. Martin Maier, there is a simple way to restore trust. Take every known paedophile, hang a millstone around his neck, and cast him into the sea. Luke xvii:2.
Unless you are prepared to do that, all your Synodal Path cant is empty words.
From reading the Sunday papers, I think if we attempted Luke’s solution, we would quickly run out of millstones.
Actually, I have a pair of what look to be granite millstones in the garden, diameter 25cm and weighing about 20kg each, dating from well over a hundred years ago when every family in the sticks in this country had a set to grind their own grain.
58-Year-Old Woman Dies Hours After Getting First Dose of Pfizer Vaccine
Doctors said Drene Keyes, whose death is under investigation, died of flash pulmonary edema likely caused by anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, which some people have experienced after receiving the COVID vaccine.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/woman-dies-hours-after-first-dose-pfizer-vaccine/
Yes, the data is out that these vaccines are causing moderate to severe side effects including death. But people have been brainwashed into believing the government and health officials have their best interest at heart.
Vaccine Impact is a good site for keeping up to date with mRNA vaccine linked deaths.
https://vaccineimpact.com/2021/cdc-over-500-deaths-now-following-mrna-experimental-injections-vaccine-hesitancy-increasing/
Impossible to say what the real death toll is. It’s claimed only 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported to vaers, but given adverse events don’t get much more serious than death, I expect the percentage of deaths reported is far greater than 1%. One would hope if the true death figure was 50,000, the vaccine rollout would have been halted already.
Vaccines sit in the long-term control plan: deaths and serious side-effects are incidental, just like the virus.
As a Tim, I’m always dad when another Tim passes on.
“A 60-year-old man in California died after getting the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Wuhan coronavirus vaccine. Orange County resident Tim Zook received the second dose of the COVID-19 jab Jan. 5 at the Santa Ana hospital where he worked. Zook was admitted to his workplace’s emergency room hours after his vaccination. He was then transferred to a different hospital, where he died Jan. 9. The 60-year-old worked as a radiologic technician at Santa Ana’s South Coast Global Medical Center.
“His wife Rochelle Zook said Tim was overweight and had suffered from hypertension since he was 19. He had been receiving treatment for the condition until his untimely death.
“A staunch supporter of vaccination, Tim posted his excitement about receiving his second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Facebook. But two and a half hours later, he started complaining of abdominal pain and breathing difficulty. Tim’s colleagues had already escorted him to South Coast Global’s emergency room. Rochelle said tests did not show congestive heart failure, artery blockage or valve issues.
“Even COVID-19 tests on Tim came back negative. “It was presenting as COVID but the test [kept] coming back negative. They tested him again: No congestive heart failure,” she remarked. His breathing worsened nevertheless, which led to his intubation. “He just couldn’t breathe on his own: He had stomach problems, he just wasn’t feeling good,” Tim’s son Kyle Zook said. “He told doctors: ‘Put me on the ventilator, I want to live.’ Those were his last words,” Kyle added.
“Tim was put into a medically induced coma on Jan. 7. A sudden blood pressure drop prompted his transfer to UC Irvine Medical Center, where he passed away two days later. Investigators are now examining if the vaccination had a role in Tim’s demise. Meanwhile, the Zook family is awaiting a toxicology report to learn more about the cause of Tim’s death.”
https://www.afinalwarning.com/492669.html
My next door neighbor took the jab yesterday. He was supposed to work on my car and he told me that he was calling it a day as he was suffering some moderate side effects. He’s in his late 60’s or early 70’s. I’ve told him numerous times I am suspicious regarding the Covid hysteria and I also talked to him about the poorly tested, rushed to market vaccines.
He wouldn’t listen. To him Covid was the real deal and life threatening. He dismissed what I had to say about the CDC’s numbers on Covid that it’s slightly worse than the Flu.
I hope he’s alright, I need my car fixed lol.
Hahaha… thanks for bringing a little light into my Sunday with this uplifting tale.
Another DelusiSTANI bites the dust…and another gone and another one gone….
We know that some people will die of the vaccine itself. If this number is small enough, relative to the number who would theoretically have died of the illness itself, most researchers would consider this a “win” on the part of the vaccine.
There is the hope that COVID deaths in nursing homes will fall. This is the website that tracks US nursing home and long term care data.
https://covidtracking.com/nursing-homes-long-term-care-facilities
It seems to suggest that new cases are down. This is expected, because new cases are down everywhere. It is too early to tell how much impact there will be on COVID deaths in these facilities.
No wonder, since the grim reaper already went two rounds. If the coronavirus is lab made, expect more and lethal variants.
Hope is for suckers.
Learn to deal with LTG scenario 3 hardcore.
High BP since he was 19!!!
So Tim is one of these people who stuffed his face with Doritos for lunch … double cheese super sized pizza for dinner … all washed down with 5 litres of cola per day …. and sat on his sofa watching Wheel of Fortune reruns..
Let me guess — he claimed he didn’t have high BP anymore (because he was masking it with pills).
And of course he embraced The Vax… because he is a lazy slob who has zero control over himself and expects answers from a bottle of pills … or an experimental jab.
Heaven forbid he change his lifestyle…. ooooh but that’s too difficult!
Meanwhile we are collapsing civilization to save people like Tim — of course that’s not correct but some might believe that….
RIP Tim… and good riddance.
Tim paid the ultimate price for saving whatever little is left in the petrol tank. Let him and his obsoleted lifestyle go in peace.
RIP Tim. No, not OFW Tim.
Long live and all hail OFW Tim.
🤘😁
Cheers for that!
As yet another Tim was fond of saying, God bless us, every one!
tiptoe through the tulips.
It seems that the British State mangled its demographic and immigration figures in 2020 and that 1.25 million were simply added to the numbers of ‘UK-born’.
> Pandemic means UK can no longer track how many migrants are entering or leaving country
Data suggests migrant population fell by nearly 900,000 in 2020, yet an extra 1.25 million UK-born people ‘appeared’ in figures
…. The observatory said it meant the UK no longer had reliable data on how many immigrants arrived in the UK in 2020, how many emigrants have left the UK in 2020, their impact on the UK’s total population and how the characteristics of the migrant groupings have changed since 2019.
It noted that labour force survey data suggested the migrant population fell by nearly 900,000 in 2020. Yet, an extra 1.25 million UK-born people had “appeared’ in the figures despite there being no plausible demographic driver for an increase in the UK-born population.
The observatory analysis showed that while there did appear to have been a decline in the UK’s migrant population in 2020, it was likely to be smaller than headline figures suggest. It found that the strongest evidence of a decline in the migrant population was in London.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/05/pandemic-means-uk-can-no-longer-track-many-migrants-entering/
> Brexit one month on… what was the point?
…. And as to the boast of bringing immigration under control, we have managed to see a record exodus of EU citizens from the EU, many with valued skills, scrapped Erasmus and impeded our most talented musicians and artists travelling to Europe. Yet we still see overall non-EU immigration reach record levels. It would be funny if it wasn’t all so tragic.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-one-month-on-what-was-the-point-7307892
there was no point other than a knee jerk reaction to hysteria-fed masses, driven by the self inflated likes of Farage, and the need of the daily mail to sell more newspapers.
One of the brexiteers in chief, Rees Mogg, moved his finance business to Dublin well before Brexit
I think that there is a lot of truth in that. It is certainly hard to comprehend why any country would swap access to the second biggest market in the world for a trading area smaller than its own territory (ie. not even inc. NI.)
‘Populism’ rose across Europe after 2008 but other countries managed not to trash themselves. It was completely out of control in UK thanks to Farage and his TP connections. TP offered the referendum simply to get votes back from UKIP – it was an entirely cynical partisan ploy.
It is just unbelievable that anyone thought that the TP would use ‘control of borders’ for anything but to open them up to incoming workers from outside of Europe. Like the rest of Brexit, it totally was not thought through. They totally do not understand what the TP is.
Now we have lost our EU passports and we cannot just up sticks and move to the continent to retire. Thanks to Brexit we face getting stuck in Britain until the day we die – something to look forward to. That deserves an answer.
And now they have the front to try to deny Scots their own referendums to get back into the EU when they actually have an electoral mandate for it – unlike the Brexit referendum. Britain is just unbelievable now. I wash my hands of it completely.
Now he has the front to criticize the British for claiming their sovereignty as was their right (and he would have prevented them from doing so if he could) while championing the right of the canny Scots to claim theirs, even though the canny Scots considered the matter thoroughly and rejected independence by a clear majority 55.3 to 44.7 percent less than seven years ago.
He’s got more front than Buckingham Palace.
All my Scottish expat friends in the Far East were ecstatic when the referendum went against independence. Their biggest concern was having to give up their tasteful high prestige UK passports bearing the Lion and Unicorn coat of arms, and getting fobbed of with tatty tartan-covered Scottish ones designed with as much style and panache as Nicola Sturgeon’s wardrobe.
I agree
I’ve talked to brexiteers
”we want our country back’—or—”europe wants to take over our army.”–I’ve that said many times.
gently pointing out that our army would just fill a large football stadium has no effect–they remain convinced that Britannia can rule the waves again.
also that we are a trading nation that has to import 40% of our food means nothing
My guess is that their kids will not be reading Beowulf, Chaucer and Milton at uni. It really is up to universities what courses they offer students to compete in the market. And frankly, no one is asking the Daily Mail.
> Hong Kong migration agents report rush of inquiries for UK visas
…. Migration agents in Hong Kong say they have had a rush of inquiries from people seeking to access the new visa scheme launched by the UK government on Sunday, despite fears their applications will be monitored.
Britain’s Home Office is expecting about 300,000 people to exercise a newly offered right to move to Britain and eventually seek citizenship in the next five years. The scheme was announced in July in response to the worsening security situation in Hong Kong, as the Chinese government tightens its control over the city with a draconian national security law.
Online applications for the scheme – which is open to about 5 million Hongkongers who have a British national overseas (BNO) passport, or are their dependants – opened on Sunday. The Guardian spoke to several Hong Kong migration agencies who would not give figures but reported high levels of interest in the BNO scheme, as well as other pathways to the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/01/hong-kong-migration-agents-report-rush-inquiries-uk-visas
Migration from Hong Kong looks like it would be helpful from the point of the UK government, but not so much from the point of view of UK citizens. The ratio of people to resources would be worse than previously, for example.
I have a niese in Hong Kong.
Lived with my wife and I for a year in Marin.
I will ask her view.
On the plus side, people from Hong Kong are among the world’s most thrifty and frugal. They could teach the rest of the UK population by example, which might lead to everybody learning to do more with less.
Meanwhile MPs, presumably Tories, are grassing up constituents who come to them for advice about their status.
> UK MPs Called an Immigration Hotline 151 Times During the Pandemic
A VICE World News investigation raises questions over whether MPs are reporting their own constituents to the Home Office.
UK MPs have been using an official tips line to report people for immigration enforcement in greater numbers than ever before.
More than 150 tip-offs were made to a Home Office immigration hotline by MPs since the start of the COVID pandemic, a freedom of information request by VICE World News showed.
The new figures prompt questions over whether MPs could be sharing information about their own constituents who may have asked for help over their immigration status. Charities say they are concerned that vulnerable constituents could be deterred from seeking help for fear of being detained.
“Immigration issues” are listed on parliament’s website on a list of matters about which MPs can be contacted for advice.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vk8b/uk-mps-called-an-immigration-hotline-151-times-during-the-pandemic
> Fury at Gove as exports to EU slashed by 68% since Brexit
Hauliers say Cabinet Office minister ignored warnings, amid fears that worse is to come with introduction of import checks in July
The volume of exports going through British ports to the EU fell by a staggering 68% last month compared with January last year, mostly as a result of problems caused by Brexit, the Observer can reveal.
Burnett told the Observer that in addition to the 68% fall-off in exports, about 65%-75% of vehicles that had come over from the EU were going back empty because there were no goods for them to return with, due to hold-ups on the UK side, and because some UK companies had either temporarily or permanently halted exports to the EU. “I find it deeply frustrating and annoying that ministers have chosen not to listen to the industry and experts,” he said.
“We will have an economy looking to come out of lockdown at the same time as the UK is imposing a range of import controls on EU business that may be no more prepared than UK businesses have been – and possibly less so – and a supply chain that is incredibly reluctant to service the UK. The full Brexit crisis that we were predicting could well come into effect at that point.”
In recent weeks hundreds of UK companies have decided either to halt exports to the EU or to set up warehouses or subsidiaries within the EU so they can distribute goods more easily. Ministers say most of the Brexit-relating issues facing businesses are “teething problems”, although Michael Gove has accepted that those affecting Northern Ireland are more serious.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/06/fury-at-gove-as-exports-to-eu-slashed-by-68-since-brexit
Energy use effectiveness of fossil fuels (coal, crude oil and natural gas) can be enhanced with the use of renewable energy/electricity and at the same time carbon emissions can remain same/reduced due to higher utility without the need of additional fossil fuels. It is possible economically by capturing carbon emissions and utilization (CCU) from the fossil fuels burning and using cheaper renewable energy. For example, if we utilize the carbon emissions from cement or steel production for producing methanol and ethanol economically ( at a price cheaper than crude oil derivatives like diesel/ gasoline for the same heat content) by using cheaper renewable solar/wind energy, the generated green methanol/ethanol would replace additional requirement of fossil fuels. Also cheaper renewable electricity can directly replace the fossil fuels used in electricity generation. Overall carbon emission goals can be met within 15 years to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 deg C.
Additionally, biomass can also be used as green carbon source along with renewable electricity to produce totally carbon neutral fuels/chemicals to avoid increased fossil fuel consumption. Thus enhanced energy consumption is achieved in future without increasing carbon emissions. Already dispatchable renewable electricity has become so cheap to make CCU derived fuels economical (with existing proven technologies) than prevailing crude oil price (45 US$/barrel of WTI). More quantitative easing (QA) or pumping liquidity will lead to cheaper renewable energy due to lesser cost of borrowed capital as they are capital intensive with lesser operating costs. CCU with renewable energy will establish a discernible price correlation between various fossil fuels and green fuels/ chemicals without being fixed by OPEC+ and Big Oil at exorbitant profits.
This link https://www.scribd.com/document/487672079/Future-of-Biomass-economy-in-carbon-neutral-India gives detailed explanation on this subject.
the ultimate problem is not energy production/delivery, but whether consumers can afford to use it.
Energy production of itself is pointless, We have to use energy to change something inert into something useful.
Iron ore into vehicles for example.
But a vehicle is no use unless we use it to get hold of (ultimately) more iron ore and repeat the process, ad infinitum. Same applies to any other product. Oil=plastics=TV sets for instance.
But to do that there must be a ‘surplus’ . A profit on our terms. We can’t go on digging up iron and making it into vehicles, we have to create the means to ‘buy’ those vehicles or TV sets.
So to keep up with raw material production we have put money itself on the same footing.
As long as we can keep delivering energy/goods. we can keep priming the money pump.
We use the money-pump to allow us to ‘afford’ the goods produced. But that only works as long as the ‘surplus’ is consistently available.
The ‘surplus’ effectively becomes a ‘promise’ that there will be more available next year than this year. We believe that, and as long as we believe it, our economic system will continue to function.
And it has worked for most of the 20th c
Trouble is, we’ve deluded ourselves into ignoring the fact that money is nothing more than a token of energy exchange. Now the economic wheels are coming off, because the ‘surplus’ is diminishing.
We can no longer afford to buy the products that our energy resources produce, because we are consuming more and more energy, just to get hold of energy itself.
“So to keep up with raw material production we have put money itself on the same footing.”
This is a very important concept and deserves a lot more attention. TPTB seems to have reduced physical constraints problem down to “things getting more expensive” ergo print lots more money to solve the problem.
The most immediate problem with this solution is that they can only give the money to the already wealthy causing huge inequality.
Next they might try and funnel money to the masses (I actually doubt it but…) which still will not solve the physical constraints but will trigger ever increasing higher prices of constrained resources which they will incorrectly call “runaway inflation” and impose “austerity”.
Rinse and repeat until the clock strikes midnight.
As Norman says,
“the ultimate problem is not energy production/delivery, but whether consumers can afford to use it.”
You are tackling the wrong part of the problem.
Has anyone done a study on society complexity and its relationship to the speed of that society’s collapse?
The person that I know of who has been studying historical societal collapse is Peter Turchin. When I met him at a conference in 2018, he was trying to recruit graduate students for putting together a data base of pretty much all of the information on collapsed societies that was available. The idea of this database was that it could be used to test various hypotheses regarding what issues led to collapse.
I should note that energy shortages were not particularly of interest to Turchin, at least stated in that way. His view of how the economy works is very much tied in with standard thinking. I would imagine he is capturing some information on the complexity of the civilizations. But I am not aware of any results coming out yet from this data-gathering effort.
Another thought that comes to mind relates to the modeling in the 1972 Limits to Growth study. In Figure 45, the modelers added what looks like a sustainable model. If a person examines it, it requires more and more complexity, and thus likely more and more wage disparity. Some organization would be needed to mandate and enforce low birth rates–probably a lot of one child families, worldwide. Services like healthcare and education would predominate. We know now that if these are to predominate, there has to be a huge amount of complexity within the system. Recycling would become universal, except that as minerals are distributed in tinier and tinier amounts, to cell phones, computers, and even semiconductor chips, recycling becomes increasingly unfeasible.
Our current society appears to be orders of magnitude more dependent on complexity. We are especially dependent on long international supply lines, the internet, electricity, and the world financial system. If any of these go down, we are facing many problems.
Turchin’s blog:
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-covid-drug-cured-30-191709164.html
New Israeli Covid drug which cured 30 cases of disease hailed by scientists as ‘huge breakthrough’
The new drug is ” EXO-CD24″.
According to the article,
29 out of 30 patients given this drug recovered in 3 to 5 days. One took slightly longer.
Why isn’t Covid affecting you people?
https://preview.redd.it/ct27l6b2rjf61.jpg?auto=webp&s=888bc47b4408950dc52613f2d99470a2c4c808d0
I did have COVID in January, picked up in a London hospital (which I won’t reveal) apparently. I slept and slept and slept for the first week, and coincidentally lost 15 lb in weigh, just lying in bed. Then for the next three weeks I gradually regained my wrecked strength. Admittedly I was hugely sceptical about COVID beforehand, but I can say that I never came anywhere death, despite the worries of some of my friends and family.
I’m glad to hear you are over it now. Sounds like you went through a hell of a detox.
If I recall correctly, Yorchichan described his bout of COVID as being about four times as bad as any flu he’s experienced. Two years ago, I suffered a burning sore throat for three weeks. It was probably not COVID-19 but it was a truly miserable existence, although of course I was very brave about it.
Apart from the sleep and the lack of strength ,would you mind telling us about the main symptoms you had to put up with?
“…four times as bad as flu…”
I was feeling a bit sorry for myself when I wrote that comment, in which I did say I had been more ill than I’d ever been before. I didn’t and wouldn’t like to put a number on it. It was worse than I expected, but I never felt like I was going to die. There was one morning after I’d been ill for a week or so when I felt short of breath and wondered if I might end up in an ICU on oxygen. However, I’d barely slept the night before (due to noisy hamsters and kids, not due to symptoms). I also said in the comment that I was on the mend but full recovery seemed a long way off, yet a mere two days later I was back training in the garden and back at work. I’ve certainly had illnesses with a much more protracted recovery phase.
A mate of mine in Bali caught Covid…. I spoke to him a couple of weeks after when he was feeling better…
He told me that when he had it he laid in bed fearing he might be dying … because that’s what the headlines had told him was the likely outcome.
Of course the reality is he had about as much chance of dying of covid as he would if he caught the flu.
If not for the headlines… he would have believed he had the flu … and not a death sentence… so I suspect the headlines impact the way one perceives how sick one feels.
Oh and btw he never got tested for covid — so he might have had the flu — which is pretty much the same thing as covid.
Almost all of his staff (10+) were down with something around the same time … none of them died.
It could have been the flu, you know. These so called tests for covid is a bit wank.
One of my colleagues got covid, didn’t feel much. The other half, nearly perished due to a blood clot from the lung ending up in the brain.
Getting Ill with covid freaking sucks. Getting a large initial dose of viral particles seem to be the killer.
Don’t send people harms way for nothing because you read some BS online.
Keep it real.
‘Apart from the sleep and the lack of strength ,would you mind telling us about the main symptoms you had to put up with?’
Really, that was about it. I was told by the hospital on 1st Jan that I’d tested positive for COVID before leaving. On 3rd Jan, I woke up and found I could barely move off my back in bed. My sister was ringing me every day after my angioplasty (I’d had a couple of minor heart attacks – one totally blocked heart artery – but the surgeon told me that my heart function remained very good after my op).
My sister told me that for 2 or 3 days my voice sounded like a Dalek’s (!) and she was worried that I could ‘go downhill very quickly’. She told me later that that meant she thought I might die. However, I never felt anywhere near death, nor did I have any breathing problems. I had the most deep, long and satisfying sleeps ever, though with strange dreams. On one occasion I woke up to find about six generic top military brass (British), with kindly middle-aged faces, looking down at me with great concern. I was mildly perplexed but quickly fell back asleep. That hallucination did not correspond to any interest of mine at all, though I did have less memorable minor hallucinations.
I did occasionally attempt to access the internet during the first week, but after 5 minutes sitting at the PC my back would ache and I’d feel desperately tired, so I’d crawl back to bed and fall asleep again. During the first week I could never get to the loo in time after waking up, so I was annoyed that I kept peeing myself. 🙁 On the 10th I made it for the first time, and then my long sleeps also stopped, but I was still hellish tired and all I could do was lie in bed for hours. I had no motivation to get up and go out until the 15th Jan. That was the day I saw my shockingly skinny face and weighed myself. I slowly increased my walks and the length of them. I still felt knackered for another 10 days or so but my strength gradually increased. By 1st Feb I felt totally normal again.
I was just talking to a neighbour today (she left supplies and food that I emailed her for on my doorstep during my self-isolation), and she said that the few people she knew who’d had COVID all had very different symptoms. One had terrible headaches. I was never in any discomfort, just hellish weak.
Incidentally, my neighbour (who did not have COVID) had been having migraines, but one day she slipped and fell on the stairs to my flat when she was bringing me groceries to put on my doorstep. Amazingly, her migraines then stopped for good!
My COVID taught me two things: it DOES exist after all (I was highly sceptical) but it is a huge waste of time. I lost nearly a month to it.
‘Two years ago, I suffered a burning sore throat for three weeks.’
So didn’t you bother going to the doctor’s about it?
I have been ferreting about for news of Captain Tom’s vaccination or not. I couldn’t find anything to confirm he’d been vaxed, not even using the Wayback Machine.
However, I have no reason to doubt Yorchichan that the Daily Mail and Sky News reported that Tom got vaxed and that these stories have been scrubbed from the record. So I am just amazed that they would go to this amount of trouble to lie when millions of people must have seen the previous stories. Again, they seem desperate. These puppeteers don’t seem to care anymore how many wires are showing.
I did find in the DM for February 3 a list provided by Captain Tom’s family about his last two months and his Covid test record. When you consider that many people have claimed they got infected by those long cotton swabs bunged up the nose, whether Covid or not, the testing may have been enough to give the old by pneumonia.
Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family reveal hero’s timetable of Covid tests
December 9, 2020 Captain Tom is tested for Coronavirus ahead of a planned trip abroad with his family and is shown to be clear of the disease.
December 11, 2020 The war veteran tweets a picture of himself on a British Airways plane seat before he travels to Barabados, saying ‘I never thought that, at the age of 100, I would get to travel again’
December 18, 2020 Captain Tom looks healthy and relaxed in a picture from Barbados, captioned ‘Enjoying a beautiful family day in the Barbados sunshine’
January 6, 2021 Captain Tom and his family return to the UK and continues regular testing for Covid, with all results coming back negative
January 12, 2021 The fundraiser is admitted to hospital in Bedfordshire after beginning to suffer breathing problems. He is diagnosed with pneumonia and is kept in for treatment. He is given another coronavirus test, which shows he does not have the disease.
January 22, 2021 Captain Tom is discharged from hospital for his own comfort. That day, a test he has now got coronavirus.
January 31, 2021 His family say he has been admitted to hospital after suffering breathing difficulties.
February 2, 2021 A statement from his daughters reveal he has died peacefully with his relatives around him in hospital.
To add icing to the cake, the Mail reports that Boris wants the nation to clap for the captain. This is a true Diana moment for the UK.
Clap again for the Captain tonight at 6pm
Britain will take part in a national round of applause in honour of Captain Sir Tom Moore, Boris Johnson announced today as MPs observed a minute’s silence.
The Prime Minister has asked people across the country to clap for the inspirational war veteran and NHS fundraiser at 6pm this evening after his Covid press conference.
The move comes after a social media campaign calling for the tribute.
Addressing the Commons, Mr Johnson said Captain Tom had dedicated his life to serving others, and encouraged everyone to take part in tonight’s tribute – which will also recognise NHS health workers.
‘We all now have the opportunity to show our appreciation for him and all that he stood for and believed in,’ he said.
‘That is why I encourage everyone to join in a national clap for Captain Tom and all those health workers for whom he raised money at 6pm this evening.’
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said of Sir Tom: ‘His dignity and determination in raising money to support the NHS charities caught the nation’s mood at the most difficult time. He exemplified the best of our values.’
Today the government backed calls for a permanent memorial to Captain Tom to recognise his contribution to the NHS, the government said this morning.
This was the video I first came across, Tim:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6waWgzA2ZFUz/
There’s a link to the Sky News clip in the comments.
Could be fake news, I suppose.
Here’s another video covering both the Daily Mail Janet Street Porter article and the Sky News clip. It has much the same info as the one Yorchichan has linked to but the video narrator is less accusatory and more pointing out the inconsistencies.
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/sir-captain-tom-moore-and-the-jib-jab-hugo-talks-lockdown_iDINiigKoqKsLEG.html
The key sentence in Janet Street Porter’s original Jan. 15 article was: “I couldn’t be more thrilled that the Queen, Prince Philip, Captain Tom and Joan Bakewell have now all had their jabs.”
This was later changed on Feb. 3 to “I couldn’t be more thrilled that the Queen, Prince Philip and Joan Bakewell have now all had their jabs.”
Just now, this popped up in a search for “I couldn’t be more thrilled that the Queen, Prince Phillip and Joan Bakewell” on DuckDuckGo:
JANET STREET-PORTER: I’m not down and out and I can’t …
Search domain http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9149803/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Im-not-afford-fly-Dubai-jab.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9149803/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Im-not-afford-fly-Dubai-jab.html
I couldn’t be more thrilled that The Queen, Prince Phillip, Captain Tom and Joan Bakewell have now all had their jabs, but if past form is anything to go by, there’s every possibility that Feb 16…
Go to the article and you get the revised Feb 3. text, but in the search answer box the original Jan. 15 text is still there. I didn’t mention Captain Tom in my search, but he appeared in the search answer box. Interesting! It proves that the article text was changed to airbrush Captain Tom out of the article.
This link to a Reddit post is also on DDG.
https://www.reddit.com/user/Ayte66/comments/ldo05e/in_january_2020_the_daily_mail_reported_that_uk/
There seems to be enough evidence here to convince anybody less biased than Norman that a con-spir-acy is being perpetrated to cover up the fact that Captain Tom was reported to have been jabbed.
Now TPTB will have to keep their fingers crossed that Joan Bakewell doesn’t keel over in the next few weeks. The Royals are different, of course. There’s no way they are going to be given an experimental mRNA gene therapy. that might hamper their ability to shape shift into human form. 🙂
‘The Clap for Joan Bakewell’ would be a terrible headline….
This article from The Express categorically denies C Tom ever had the vaccine:
Did Captain Tom Moore have the Covid vaccine?
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1391740/Has-Captain-Tom-Moore-had-the-Covid-vaccine-EVG
Near the end of the article:
“No. He did not receive his vaccine, despite being in the age bracket which permits him to have before the wider population, due to treatment for pneumonia in recent weeks.
A spokeswoman for the family said: “Because of the medication he was taking for his pneumonia he couldn’t have the Covid jab…”
A Phased Approach to COVID-19: Prevention to Recovery
Interview with Dr. Sam Yanuck in a discussion about his latest paper on COVID-19, written with co-authors Drs. Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Helen Messier, MD, PhD, and Kara Fitzgerald, ND. Their excellent paper outlines a phased approach to COVID-19 with specific strategies on prevention, management throughout the infection, and into the recovery period. Dr. Yanuck has an erudite understanding of the immune system which you’ll find to be extremely useful in navigating this virus.
https://drhedberg.com/covid-19-prevention-recovery/
The link is nice enough to give a transcript of the interview. The interview is about your body’s response to COVID at different stages, not about drugs to be given to “fix” these responses. People who, throughout their lives, eat the right mix of food have a much better chance than others against the illness.
I can’t explain more than this; I don’t have a good background in biology.
Thought for the evening – What is the point of education?
Context – we live in a post-enlightenment civilisation with large swathes of the population university educated and/or in professional careers. We have a PCR test which is clearly flawed, the cycle threshold determines the amount of COVID cases. A high cycle threshold will produce more positives than a low cycle threshold (see extract below). In essence, you can make the results whatever you want them to be.
So we:
1) Take an educated population
2) Scare them witless with media coverage
3) Obfuscate the science
4) Imprison them in their own homes
5) Destroy their livelihoods
6) Impoverish their children
Hence my question, what is the point of education? Why do we bother?
From WHO:
“The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.
WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.”
Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05
Simple algebra. If 1 test in 10 returns a false positive, and the infection rate is also 10%, then almost half the results will be false positives (10% genuine, 9% false)
Exactly the point made by the scientists who were highly critical of tests last year, and who have been suppressed by the MSM and ignored by governments pursuing this programme.
A Huge Number of Oil Supertankers Are Pointing at China’s Ports
Is China piling into the crude oil market again? A snapshot of where the world’s supertankers are headed suggests it may well be.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/a-huge-number-of-oil-supertankers-are-pointing-at-china-s-ports-1.1559714
China’s demand for crude oil in 2020 helped keep it from falling lower than it did. We need China’s help in 2021 as well.
Watch for the next type of COVID19 vaccines with aluminum adjuvants
Aluminum-based Adjuvants Hold Key to Developing Neutralizing Antibodies in COVID-19 Vaccines
https://ksusentinel.com/2021/02/04/aluminum-potassium-sulfate-market-global-industry-report-2030/
Just what I want in my body: aluminum! I suppose it is better than mercury.
Gail, do you have any plans to deal with censorship?
The question would have sounded paranoid last year but by now most people accept the possibility (and even justify it, after all free speech is dangerous).
I know Ugo Bardi has asked this question on his blog.
I can see two choices – one is to start censoring the comments section (your posts are emotion free and research based so I guess they might be ok for a while). I think this is the choice of JM Greer and I can see good reasons for it.
Another is to find a non-western hosting site and continue until the “Great Wall” Chinese style web blocking is implemented. I for one appreciate all the comments in this site, especially the ones I disagree with.
If the question is too paranoid (meaning too early), then no worries, there is time (maybe).
Thanks!
At this point, the comments don’t seem to be searchable, so the problem mostly disappears. A person has to be very persistent to read through the comments and find fault with them.
Perhaps I could be wrong. I used to be able to search the comments easily, and searches using Google would come up with items from the comments. Now, with the new editor and other changes that the site made, this capability seems to be lost, or I haven’t found it. (I would like to have it; it was very convenient.)
If someone knows how to do search the comments, let me know. The help screen I found indicated that there might be some search capacity if all of the comments were in a single long thread.
Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments
https://apnews.com/article/legislature-legislation-local-governments-nevada-economy-2fa79128a7bf41073c1e9102e8a0e5f0
According to the story,
Quite a few years ago, I visited an area of Wyoming where a lot of natural gas drilling was being done by BP. BP had set up housing for its workers coming in for two-week visits. In fact, I stayed overnight in one of the rooms, in the women’s wing. The bathroom was down the hall. There was a cafeteria and facilities for relaxing and for exercising.
I was told that they found that they needed to have a preschool and also a school for lower grades. They brought in pre-made metal buildings for this purpose, so that they could recruit teachers.
The next problem was grocery stores. Everyone needed to drive. (30 miles away) Also other types of stores. (60 miles away.)
Somehow, this type of arrangement doesn’t very energy-saving. How would they even get water for these “settlements” in Nevada?
Offshore Wind Plans Will Drive Up Electricity Prices And Require ‘Massive Industrialization Of The Oceans’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2021/02/05/offshore-wind-plans-will-drive-up-electricity-prices-and-require-massive-industrialization-of-the-oceans/?sh=111eb3ef7965
I certainly believe this.
Chip shortage spirals beyond cars to phones and game consoles
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/chip-shortage-spirals-beyond-cars-to-phones-and-game-consoles-1.1559782
One reason for the shortage seems to be that the shutdowns supercharged the market for chips. Also new 5G Cellphones. Automakers cut back on their orders with the pandemic, but couldn’t raise the orders again.
This is how we prevent the next pandemic – Bill Gates, January 26, 2021
“We can get ahead of infectious disease outbreaks. By the next pandemic [pause, let that sink in], I believe we can have what I call mega testing diagnostic platforms. They can be deployed quickly, cost very little, and test 20% of the entire population every week.”
Monoclonal Antibodies
New Vaccines – mRNA Platform
Infectious Outbreaks Global Alert System
Infectious Disease Responders – Capable of Being Deployed Anywhere in the World
“Stopping the next pandemic will require a big investment, but I think of this as the best insurance policy the world could buy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJtblo12UxI
So many people think that everything will go back to normal after everyone takes the vaccine. There is no going back. Gates, here, outlines the organizational narrative for the world going forward.
I actually wonder if Gates was lurking on Jay Hanson ‘s discussion lists 15 years ago. Jay was discussing ways to mitigate the energy decline collapse and was proposing keeping people at home and providing basic needs to reduce energy consumption. Low and behold that is exactly what the elites are doing. If Jay were here today he would not be surprised.
Tom, if that is true, then the PTB (elites) will not allow a return to normal, using the excuse of the pandemic, e.g., new mutant strains, to keep people at home and the shops closed indefinitely.
Honestly, doomphd, I don’t see much evidence against that being the case.
lolol
just to keep the humour-streak flowing
‘they’ keep people at home, and the global economic system collapses.
the ‘grand plan’ of the elite works as they planned,
then the ‘elites’ find themselves scrambling for food at the food bank, just like everybody else.
Why?
Because the ‘system’— in case anybody still refuses to understand it, requires a forward moving collective effort by the majority. (it’s called ‘productive labour’ btw) Shops are just a part of it.
it isn’t possible to ‘keep people at home’ and just send them parcels every week
if theres no ‘productive labour, then Gates and Bezos and Musk become paupers like everybody else. 200Bn $ in the bank is worth zilch if no one I able to buy anything.
Bezos just has a few hundred sheds full of ‘stuff’ nobody can afford.
How difficult is that to understand?
I realise this conflicts with the recognised symptoms of conspiratitis—but that’s unfortunate. In some people the condition is terminal.
For those willing to think for themselves, recovery is quick–if not actually painless.
I believe Gail is pretty much in the “no return to normal” scenario, call it a conspiracy theory or not. maybe it “just works out that way”, like with two planes bringing three buildings down to their footprints in lower Manhattan.
Norman, my reply to you has been mysteriously placed in moderation. hopefully, we will all see it sometime.
Norman, perhaps you haven’t read enough evolutionary biology to understand the human mind. I posted Jay Hanson’s reading list on the last thread. I can post it again if anyone is interested.
Did he made another suggestion? Any particular idea you could mention?
Recently, Tom commented,
“I found Jay Hanson’s recommended reading list on my computer. “
One of the books on that list was,
“McPhee, THE CURVE OF BINDING ENERGY (homemade nuclear bomb risk)”
THE CURVE OF BINDING ENERGY is a biographical profile of Ted Taylor and a report on the nuclear energy industry up to the time of the book’s publication in 1974. Most of McPhee’s works were first published in The New Yorker magazine.
Ted Taylor was a theoretical physicist. ”When he was in his twenties and early thirties, he worked in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, where he was a conceptual designer of nuclear bombs. He designed Davy Crockett, which in its time was the lightest and smallest fission bomb ever made. It weighs less than fifty pounds. He designed Hamlet, which of all things, was the most efficient fission bomb ever made in the kiloton range. And he designed the Super Oralloy Bomb, the largest-yield fission bomb that has ever been exploded anywhere.” It was in the megaton range.
McPhee reports on Taylor’s concern that the rapidly growing nuclear power industry does not understand the necessity to maintain control of the fissionable waste products. In the nuclear industry there was concern for Safety, ie avoid a Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl, neither of which had occurred yet, and there was concern for Safeguards, which was securing the fissionable waste products. Ted Taylor’s focus was Safeguards. “In 1972, Taylor was given a grant by the Ford Foundation to do a throughgoing study of the safeguarding of special nuclear materials” “He traveled all over the country, from M.I.T. to San Diego, West Valley (New York) to Los Alamos. At my request , he took me along.” In their visits to numerous reprocessing facilities, the findings of Taylor and McPhee were amazing. “The aggregate MUF from three diffusion plants is expressible in tons. No one knows where it is.”
MUF is the term for Materials Unaccounted For. Materials being fissionable materials.
The general attitude was that “you would need a Manhattan Project to build a bomb.”
Ted Taylor didn’t think that was the case.
“With the predictable growth and expansion of the nuclear industry, power companies will make a cumulative total of ten million kilograms of plutonium within the last quarter of the twentieth century. The trigger quantity is two kilograms. Enough plutonium to make a bomb could be carried in a paper bag.”
It seems that the growth of the nuclear power plant construction did not follow as planned. The ten million kilos of plutonium did not get produced. One of the conclusions of the Safeguards study was that the weak link in security was in the transportation segment of reprocessing. Coincidentally the multi-billion dollar “storage” site at Yucca Mountain remains empty and most of the “special nuclear materials are stored on site at the power plant that produces them. Hence our much beloved fuel ponds are waiting for the REAL FE challenge. I highly recommend this book
Lolol-loing apart, what sort of “normal” do you see the world going back to, Norman?
Last night, the wife and I watched the movie Vertigo (directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring James Stewart and Kim Novak) and set in San Francisco and the surrounding countryside. Beautiful movie, gripping story, unforgettable musical score. A bit difficult to swallow the plot, but a very satisfying viewing and listening experience, and made more so by the nostalgic passing of decades and by the realization that the nineteen fifties was part of the Golden Age for San Francisco, as it was in many other places, and that the Golden Age is long past now.
I’ve only ever visited the city through movies, so my observations are bound to be shallow at best. I can trace the changes in the way the place has been portrayed though action films like Bullitt (1968), the Dirty Harry series (1971 ~ 88) and the Rock (1996), and through to the now infamous Contagion (2011), and to me seems it has been downhill all the way.
I am not going to try to define psychological and social “normality” here, as it is a complex idea wrapped up with sanity, conformity, sociality and acceptance of and compliance with mores, rules, attitudes and of course, “norms”. But I will say that in the fifties, when US society was still “normal” from coast to coast, everyone considered Baby Jane and Norman Bates “abnormal”. These days, at least along the West Coast, there is no longer a universally accepted standard of “normality” to judge the “abnormal” against, and the 2020 “new normal” has been erected atop of what might be called the “new abnormal”.
This is all just my opinion based more on prejudice than anything else, but as I am suggesting that psychological “normality” is an under-appreciated social resource that is essential for keeping society functioning “normally”, and that this is yet another vital resource that in our finite world is in terminal decline. The modelers of Limits to Growth didn’t really take finite “normality” into account nor did they discuss how its depletion would impact society or the world economy.
For you, Tim, an extract from a trip report about a visit to a conference in San Francisco,
1994 September 25 to 27:
====
Saturday was bright and sunny. Perfect weather for a walk around the city, and a chance to pick up souvenirs, postcards and stuff. Since the hotel was on Market Street near the Powell cable-car stop, I decided to revisit some of my favourite places. Market west to Van Ness; Van Ness north through the civic centre to Geary; Geary back to Union Square and then completing the triangle.
All in all, much as I remembered, and a great city experience. It reminded me of why I like San Francisco – in many ways, the most European city in the US, and one of the most vital and livable anywhere. But… the signs were clear, and the changes were bad. Rebuilding; and always a building designed for humans had been torn down, and one designed for cars or corporations erected. More abandoned places. More litter and dirt. More urine – what else is new? the stink of human urine is the hallmark of the postmodern urban United States – more graffiti. Beggars every hundred feet, even near the city centre. Three times, I saw fly posters, calling for volunteers. Volunteers for the local ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ patrol. Twice, I saw Guardian Angels. Guardian Angles on Geary Street! – Geary Street, the place on this continent closest to a civil society in the old sense, the sense of the polis, the urban community. And nowhere, never, did I see a policeman on foot, on patrol.
On to Union Square, still surrounded by upscale department stores. Do people really still shop at Saks Fifth Avenue? At Dillons? At Bang & Olufsen? How could anyone with a functioning pair of ears shop at Bang & Olufsen?? And even there, beggars, litter, dirt. The trend is clear; it has been consistent for 30 years, and has accelerated in the last 5 or 6. We are heading for a society that consists of a first-world elite oppressing and leaching off a circumambient third-world proletariat. Along that road lie such milestones to social decay as Argentina, El Salvador, Liberia. At its end, of course, is Haiti.
====
The thing is….
We – as in those of us under the US umbrella — have been leaching off the billions who live on a couple of bucks a day … for the past century….
We’ve been stealing their pieces of pie and stuffing our faces — fancy cars — nice homes — vacations — lovely dinner parties — regular meals in restaurants….
And now …. as the pie is shrinking… and rather quickly …. it is the middle classes that are having their pie stolen …. we saw the reaction to this last year as protests were boiling over in many countries with the common refrain ‘we cannot afford to live’…. words so eloquently spoken by university graduates who were unable to find jobs that would pay enough to support a middle class lifestyle….
It is somewhat amusing to listen to the newly downtrodden wail and moan – and throw petrol bombs at the police — these are the same folks who previously tossed spare change from a $500 grocery bill into the Oxfam box to help those people who’s wedding party we inadvertently bombed fighting ‘the terrorists’ who dared to question our right to their resources.
Thank you, Robert.
Twenty-six years later, up to 50 blocks of the city close to the Golden Gate exude a distinctly Third World slum ambience—worse than in many Third World cities. This video from last summer is heartbreaking to watch.
Tim. (and others)
If you’d bothered to read my comment, instead of leaping to your kb with the usual glee, having discovered I’d said something idiotic again, you would realise that I said nothing about returning to normal. Because that isn’t going to happen.
What I described was the ‘system’ required for normality.
i.e. to keep wealth flowing at whatever rate was necessary to support you on your particular rung of the prosperity ladder. Along with everybody else.
My comment was offered as an antidote to this current virulent outbreak of conspiratitis, which suggests that the ‘rich elite’ are in the process of setting fire to the bottom rungs of that prosperity ladder in order to keep their feet warm.
We have reached a confluence of events, all of which are of our own making, which would appear to be in the process of destroying our industrial affluent environment.
Covid has simply accelerated this process by maybe a decade.
The future is going to be tough enough. But we will make it vastly more unpleasant, because our denialism forces us to believe that whatever events unfold, they will be he fault of ‘others’.
Wars start through the fault of ‘others’. And will again.
*********
We have a new disease.
Hah!!!—the Chinese caused it, Bill Gates is cashing in on it. He intends to control all our minds. All this has been decided at ‘Davos’.
Or kill most of us off, or something like that.
In this thread the WTC nonsense has popped up again. Sheeshh–tired of answering that rubbish.
Laughter is the only known vaccination against conspiratitis.
The only cure is thinking for oneself.
200 years from now, we will perhaps have settled into a new ‘normal’. Whatever it is, it won’t be like this one.
But we can be sure of one thing.
It will be the fault of somebody else.
Welcome to Norm’s One Dimensional World!
You forgot the conspiracy theory that involves the global MSM in its entirety providing total support for the Covid narrative…
Heck they even ridicule this cast of nefarious characters https://gbdeclaration.org/ (of course these top scientists at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and other top medical schools are conspiracy theorists – right?)
There is plenty of dissent https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/ — yet there is zero dissent.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
And then there is The Leak from October … all predictions have come true including the surfacing of a new variant of Covid — Covid 21 — in February ….. and like clockwork on Feb 2… the National Post announces Covid21 has arrived in Canada…
Nope… no plan… no conspiracy… just an amazingly lucky guess hahahaha
For Tim:
Thank you for the video; I agree, heartbreaking. But it begins with an anomaly. The city has “18,000 homeless”, but spends over “a billion dollars” a year on homelessness.
That is over 50,000 dollars per year per homeless person. Where is the money going? I lived in Singapore in a 1800 sq ft apartment, eating out daily, on less than $45000 a year, and that is one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Perhaps it is a way to get the middle and upper middle classes to use less energy as they stay at home more. Productive labour (lower classes) are still at work. This would relieve some pressure on energy use. Albeit temporarily.
Norman, putting your hands over your ears and closing your eyes while jeering ‘conspiratitis’ is not a reasoned argument, and excludes too many facts.
Our societies and economies are being in part closed down, and in part reshaped, in ways that have nothing to do with a reasonable and scientific approach to dealing with a naturally-occurring viral pandemic.
To seek to explain this, and go beyond the official , clearly mendacious, narrative (which is being enforced by censorship) is not a primitive search for a scapegoat.
I quite understand your reaction, though, as I too would dearly love to be wrong, and for it all to go away.
I read comment after comment that conflicts with my views–which is good because that makes me think–am I right or wrong?
My ‘jeering’ as you call it, is an attempt to lace it all with a little humour. Expecting me to take it seriously is expecting too much. (the conspiracy aspect that is–not the pandemic)
In reply to many of the comments made by hoaxaholics here, I repeatedly ask a question, (which can be applied to any rent-a-plot) which has never been answered:
If Gates is secretly adding a mind control substance to his vaccines (if feel embarrassed even writing that btw), and we accept that Gates is no scientist, then it follows that there are thousands ‘in on the secret’ and assisting him in his fiendish endeavours.
If he’s doing it on his own, then he moves faster than Santa on Christmas Eve.
If covid has been deliberately released across the world to reduce our numbers, by thousands of volunteer travellers I feel sure that a least one fiendish oriental person would have sold his story to Huffpost or something by now.
Instead its usually some doc spouting off, who usually turns out to be a homeopath or something.
I used the word ‘conspiratitis’ to lighten the context of an otherwise logical point.
we may, I agree be dealing with this in the wrong way.
Our societies may indeed be being reshaped and closed down.
But it is not some ‘grand plan ‘ of rich elites. As I pointed out, with no proletariat to shift boxes, Bezos would be left with several hundred sheds full of—– worthless ‘boxes’—again a point which is never answered.
but I ask again—would you be confined in a flying tube for 10 hours, with 300 passengers and crew, none of whom had been tested for covid?
“it isn’t possible to ‘keep people at home’ and just send them parcels every week”
Correct. That is the plan. Keep people at home, and don’t send them food parcels. Seems to be a big issue in China at the moment, during their enforced lockdowns sometimes lasting several weeks. That is, lockdowns as in people not allowed to leave their apartment buildings at all (the doors are sometimes sealed up) on pain of an on-the-spot beating usually with fists / boot and jail.
I’m getting into the handcart business, and buying some old ice cream van chimes, and converting them to ring out:
”bring out your dead’
Several years ago, my son shared a youtube video of a supposed ET that had traveled back in time to Earth. Humans were his ancestors and something happen that we went extinct and the only genetic survivors were ones that had gone into space. The ET was one of those white forms with the dark spots for eyes with an unworldly voice. The interrogator was not friendly as I remember. Finally the interrogator asked why the Humans had gone extinct and the answer from the ET was “DOGMA.”
I had saved the link and watched it again last year but when I looked for it just now, I got the link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NtgX6gShrI
Minitrue seems to be out to disappear the concept of dogma. The coincidence theorist will only change when big brother tells them to.
Yet they could benefit more by allowing corona ever since we discovered how it works by allowing it to run wild in densely populated metropolises.
Less pop pressure as a result.
The overall death rate seems to be about 0.3 %, that is CV-19 kills about 0.3 % of people infected (my understanding anyway), and the vast majority are old people close to death’s door anyway. Since death from flu has plummeted, it looks like by and large CV19 has replaced flu as a means of dying from corona viruses. In other words, even if you let the virus rip through all populations, it might have little affect on numbers. The mRNA vaccines looks like they will achieve the required results though.
Exactly so.
How interesting that Jay Hanson actually published that, and recommended house-arrest: it’s a terribly obvious idea though. We should not be surprised if it were to be tried, as it has obvious rational appeal and is entirely logical.
It would also appeal strongly to elites as it would leave them with the promise of being still firmly ensconced at the top, and avoid a nasty and chaotic collapse in the short to medium-term. They clearly believe that innovation and AI will be the salvation in the long-term.
What we are now seeing is quite likely to be a great restructuring along those lines, and it is internationally co-ordinated, even down to the slogans and new jargon such as New Normal, Build Back Better, Essential and Inessential, Lock-down, Freedom Passports, etc. Vocabulary is important.
So-called energy-intensive and wasteful ‘inessential’ businesses and sectors, and channels such as supply chains, are being suppressed and modified -some will come back in due course (restaurants and bars) others will be eliminated forever. It will be their New Normal, not the old normality we might long for.
Eventually (next 5 to 20 years) the resulting ‘inessential’ surplus population will also be eliminated if there is no work or place for them in the new model – a slow but steady attrition through poverty, despair, failure to reproduce, semi-starvation, fuel-poverty, replacement by automation, etc.
And also, we have no doubt, using the sophisticated population-control techniques which are now possible, such as highly-targeted lab-created viruses and pseudo-‘vaccines’. This can be done quietly, or through a sudden and dramatic pandemic which really seals the deal.
It’s really only a 21st -century version of the ruthless and pragmatic way in which the Romans and others in the Ancient world treated captive populations: dominate, disrupt, select, re-purpose, and eliminate.
Sometimes Julius Caesar, for instance had whole tribes murdered -maybe 50 or 100,000 people – if he had no current use for more slaves, or no wish to resettle them in a new area; at other times they were subjected to selection, enslavement or resettlement, and the ‘inessentials’ were executed or disarmed and left to starve.
Our rulers are quite as powerful and as cynical as a Caesar ever was. They have better tools to accomplish their aim. And they see us as being as distinct from and as far below them as primitive tribespeople.
I’ve heard the uber-wealthy describe perfectly nice ordinary people as animals and scum, and also sensed the fear of the masses in their voices: it’s quite shocking.
Age old human hierarchical behaviour, it won’t go away in the 21st-century……
Also, Norman, you should get up to date on tracking and bio-feedback/drug delivery systems enabled by the internet and injectable substances – DARPA published materials on this -it is NOT ‘conspiracy theory’.
Plugged-in, permanently drugged-up humans are just around the corner…….
as I replied elsewhere
thousands and thousands of people employed in countless plots and hoaxes–unless Bill Gates is like the boss of Coca Cola, where only he knows the formula and tips it into the vats personally after everyone else has gone home.
no one as far as I know has come forward with the evidence that he or she was personally involved in it all.Masses of hearsay of course.
Like the vote plots last November
multi court cases–all thrown out by judges because not a shred of physical evidence was presented
multi court cases–all thrown out by judges because not a shred of physical evidence was presented
multi court cases–all thrown out by judges who refused to here them based on grounds of the plaintives’ “standing” and did not allow a shred of physical evidence to be presented.
There, fixed it for you.
And by the way, there are a few cases now on the Supreme Court’s schedule for later this month.
“thousands and thousands of people employed in countless plots and hoaxes…”
Why not? Intelligence operations, military operations, undercover operations, government coverups, human trafficking, drug smuggling, assassinations, regime changes, revolutions, and so on.
The 18 intelligence agencies of the United States:
Air Force Intelligence – total employees: 17,000
Army Intelligence – total employees: +16,500
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – estimated total employees: 21,575
Coast Guard Intelligence – estimated total employees: 1,500
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – total employees: 16,500
Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence – total employees: +16,500
Department of Homeland Security – estimated total employees: +240,000
Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research – total employees: 313
Department of the Treasury
Office of Intelligence and Analysis – total employees: ????
Drug Enforcement Administration – total employees: +10,000
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – estimated total employees: 35,000
Marine Corps Intelligence – total employees: ????
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency – estimated total employees: 14,500
National Reconnaissance Office – estimated total employees: 3,000
National Security Agency (NSA) estimated total employees: 30,000–40,000
Office of Naval Intelligence – estimated total employees: 3,000
Space Force – estimated total employees: 16,000
Well over 440,000 people are employed by the 18 intelligence agencies that are publicly acknowledged in the US. That’s a lot of personnel and ought to indicate that countless plots and hoaxes are possible without requiring the participation of your average loose-lipped civilian.
How many of those employees have to sign non-disclosure agreements? How many of those employees are likely to leak information to the public? Edward Snowden was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917:
“The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
That act is rather broad and could be applied to virtually any intelligence operation.
If one of these employees were to leak information how would you or I hear about it? Would the New York Times publish their story? Would their story survive on social media? Would foreign nations be able to broadcast their story and have it reach a US audience?
Since the beginning of the War on Terror, I have increasingly come to view the relationship between the US intelligence community and the civilian community as one similar to the relationship between the Spartans and the Helots. We civilians are constantly being terrorized by the intelligence community. However, unlike the Helots we aren’t being physically slaughtered but rather subjected to fear campaigns and various psyops. We are a large herd to be managed and kept in check.
http://wiseenergy.org/Energy/Election/2020_Election_Lawsuits.pdf
http://wiseenergy.org/Energy/Election/2020_Election_Cases.htm
http://wiseenergy.org/Energy/Election/Vote_Dumps_Report.pdf
Here’s a video with some interesting evidence in the Electronic Voting realm:
https://michaeljlindell.com/
I was about to click on that video, just out of interest
then I read Mike Lindell, didn’t bother
if we’re reduced to anything at all supplied by him, I think my case is pretty watertight.
he’s amusing for a while, then pity takes over, he really needs some kind of medication.
Azure Kingfisher, now is that a jobs program for herders or what?
😳
I’m beginning to see the outline of a mandatory vaxx programme. Wanna work in guvmint? Have your obligatory jab.
🤣👍
multi court cases–all thrown out by judges because not a shred of physical evidence was presented
I checked into this in a bit more detail, just in case you knew what you were talking about, and I couldn’t find a single case that was thrown out because of lack of physical evidence.
However, I did find out the current state of play in the courts, or rather, I found out what physicist John Droz has uncovered regarding the matter.
Droz assembled a team of his fellow scientists and engineers – all volunteers – to take a close look at the lawsuits that have been filed, all of which are a matter of public record, and to summarize the results. This is no easy task, since there have been 80 lawsuits filed in connection with the 2020 presidential election by Trump or on his behalf, and each of these lawsuits consists of dozens of pages of filing and decisions.
The summary report, called “2020 Presidential Election Lawsuits Related to Election Integrity,” strips the excess verbiage of which lawyers are so fond, leaving the bare essentials of the lawsuits: What issues were at stake, how each case was treated by the courts, what evidence was objectively analyzed and, finally and most importantly, who won and who lost.
So what did Droz and his team find?
First, of the 80 total lawsuits, 34 have either been withdrawn, consolidated with other suits, or dismissed due to legal technicalities such as lack of standing, timing, or jurisdiction. Those judges who dismissed suits never heard the actual evidence of election irregularities and/or fraud, since they did not allow it to be presented in their courtrooms. Such cases cannot be counted as a loss for Trump. If anything, they are evidence of a failure of our judicial system to – at a moment of national crisis – actually address election fraud.
Of the 46 remaining lawsuits, 25 cases are still ongoing, so that the winner and loser of these cases is yet to be determined, while 21 have been completely adjudicated. These are cases where the court heard arguments, considered any relevant evidence, and then issued a formal ruling on the merits.
You may be surprised to learn that, of these 21 cases, Trump has won 14 and lost 7.
In other words, Trump has won two-thirds of the cases to date that have been adjudicated by the courts.
Don’t expect to hear this on the evening news.
Norman, I’m not naive enough to think this will stop you gloating or spewing falsehoods and slander, but for the record, it debunks the claim you made.
Have a nice Sunday!
http://wiseenergy.org/Energy/Election/2020_Election_Cases.htm
Interesting!
Tim
you do like colourful descriptive words—gloating, spewing—luckily I can make words fly without that. As you know of course. And as you know I have no need or inclination to do that.
I should have used the term multi voter fraud cases, rather than just multi court cases—my error.
My fault for selecting a higher common denominator of understanding; I will be more careful in future. useful to have that brought to my attention though, if inadvertently on your part.
The court case list was interesting, but they were mostly on matters of electoral procedure, possibly all of them. The jargon was a bit deep on some.
Had you read them, and researched them, you would have known that.
But I do understand your immediate need to discover some error on my part, (it’s happened before) and issue it to the Town Crier–with ‘Hear ye Hear ye’, prefacing it.
None of these affected the electoral outcome. If they had, Trump would not have walked away (eventually).
The entire sad business was recorded in news media of every stripe around the world. I try to check my spew as much as possible,. (you should try it)
All of them had recorded the facts about voter fraud cases being universally dismissed.
For a little while, I thought I had been shown up to be an idiot.
Luckily I was hiding behind the mirror
Xabier, wonderfully written. Ruthless and pragmatic yes!
contrarian I admit to being
but
Equating Ceasar killing off 100000 or so localised surplus people, to a modern equivalent of killing off 6/7ths of the world population, when that sort of event (stretching fantasy to its limits here) would in fact be the same as Ceasar pulling down the entire edifice of Roman civilisation at that time, to ‘support’ the upper classes.
Which is again, nonsense.
the ruling elite might regard the great unwashed in derogatory terms, I agree.
but to get rid of them (us) would reduce the planet to the level of what it actually was in Roman times.
(the planet might be reduced to that anyway, but not through any pre planning)
If you remain convinced that that is the ‘purpose’ in all this, then we must acknowledge that we each march to a different drum.
And I must leave you to your divergent path.
Norman, I think we are all on the same page in agreeing that a lot of promises have been made to people with regards to state pensions, social security, healthcare, and the like, and that these promises have not been fully funded and are unlikely to be kept over the long term.
If you were the Chancellor of the Exchequer and someone came up to you and said, “Gov. I’ve got a great idea on how to reduce your future commitments. Thin out the herd! Kill off some of the useless eaters—the people with no future, who nobody will miss anyway.”
Of course, you’d be horrified. As anybody with a soul would. But if you were told that you didn’t have to do anything directly. No blood would be on your hands. All you’d have to do is look the other way while certain policies were introduced that would do the culling INDIRECTLY and SURREPTITIOUSLY, and to speak in favor of them.
And suppose the entire Cabinet was offered the same idea. Get behind this policy and don’t criticize the collateral damage it does, or get out of the way.
No early treatment, no vitamin D, do not resuscitate. euthanasia, NPO (nil per os), nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, squire.
Tim
I wish you’d knock this running windup on its head. Thinking that you (or anybody) could be serious is too awful to contemplate
replying to it all is becoming too embarrassing to put into words; I only do it because many people reading OFW who don’t comment, might take your comments at face value.
I don’t offer myself as able to offer solutions to the problems we face, but I can at least try puncture a few of the crazier ideas, while pointing out where/how they originate
If you still don’t understand the results of ‘taking comments at face value’, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqIdnYxm_WM&lc=UgxTs1_kkLjn95ovkHx4AaABAg.9ICUDmrR5tD9IElYtvzQrA
Absorb the last line, then laugh.
Before you find yourself weeping at the terminal stupidity of people.
An acquaintance of mine, who fled Tennessee, said: ‘I love it here, (Ireland) everybody is just so sane and normal’.
Yeah, my mother always liked to contol me asking me to tidy up my room.
Finally I did not obey and thus kept my “natural” craetivity.
Are viruses creative?
Is nature creative?
Can viruses be contolled?
Can nature be controlled?
For the term virus I must admit that I do not see it.
For the term of natue I must admit that it is creative.
As I am!
Great job Gail, as usual. Going forward, I’m sure you will have much to say on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)…. which I am looking forward to.
What we need is for governments to be able to print more cheap-to-produce resources. I’ll think about MMT.
Ivermectin improves symptoms and viral load but not infection in COVID-19
https://hospitalhealthcare.com/covid-19/ivermectin-improves-symptoms-viral-load-but-not-infection-in-covid-19/
yep–
A non issue.
Lack of efficacy of standard doses of ivermectin in severe COVID-19 patients
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242184
Don’t get infected, and get one of the mRNA vaccines.
If you want to increase your knowledge
(it is more than 2 paragraphs, so this is a warning)
Myths of Vaccine Manufacturing
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing
The patients received ivm 12 days after symptoms start. But it is known that ivm only works if administered earlier
Correct, need it in first week, best first 3 days.
But the effects are minor.
That one is in the rear view mirror.
These were soft cases, and they only received one dose
There need to be more days of doses than one for ivermectin.
It sounds like even with one dose, it might have been helpful. They concluded more study was necessary.
Key takeaways on digital currency from The Davos Agenda
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/key-takeaways-on-digital-currency-from-the-davos-agenda/
I listened to part of this. It seems to me that there has to be more reason than “supporting virtual currency transactions.” I keep wondering if this kind of digital currency is something to keep in the back pocket in case the current system fails. Of course, if the current financial system fails, the big problem will likely be that other countries won’t accept each other’s currencies. It is hard to see how a digital currency would help.
Greta Thunberg effigies burned in Delhi after tweets on farmers’ protests
Celebrity interventions inflame sentiments in India as police investigate pro-farmers toolkit
Counter-protesters in Delhi have burned effigies of the Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg after she tweeted support for India’s protesting farmers in posts that have prompted an investigation by Indian police.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/04/greta-thunberg-effigies-burned-in-delhi-after-tweets-on-farmers-protests
Unhappy people around the world!
as I keep trying to point out
easier the blame ‘others’ (Thunberg this time) than their own overpopulation
Its always somebody else’s fault
At least the Indians are not burning effigies of Bill Gates (yet). He must be relieved.
It’s worth noting that zinc absorption is massively inhibited if you combine high zinc foods with foods that negatively affect absorption.
Look at the graph on the 2nd page of this pdf: https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/45753/PDF
Interesting, in similar situation and if the particular medication is necessary they usually suggest off-time / delayed intake. That obviously works around such inhibition effect only partially and may bring up new set of problems in digestive organs, e.g. popping these supplemental pills on empty – before major meal not optimal etc.
If not subject to major health imbalance the correct answer is the “easiest” – just eat healthy (rotating major nutrients weekly/monthly) in the least processed foods and realistic dosage vs out take of your body (activity, temperature, age)..
It seems like more work would need to be done. Is it high fiber food, or is it foods high in phytates that interfere with zinc absorption? Beans are supposed to be a source of zinc, but they seemed to inhibit the absorption of zinc from oysters. The linked article is from 1979. It would seem likely that more recent information would be available.
Federal Mask Cops To Start Targeting Travelers Today
The CDC order also says it’s not enough to simply wear a mask—it has to be a certain kind of mask. It can’t be a bandana, scarf, ski mask, or balaclava. It can’t fit too loosely or too tightly. It can’t contain an exhalation valve or be made from knitted fabrics, leather, plastic, or vinyl.
https://reason.com/2021/02/01/federal-masks-cops-to-start-targeting-travelers-today/?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated
The people in charge really don’t want us traveling anywhere.
If some kinds of masks really do work a whole lot better than others, that would be nice to know. Presumably, tests could be done, showing how many fewer virus particles escape. I haven’t seen any of such tests, yet, however.
The reason they want you to wear a mask that does look like a mask has nothing to do with efficiency – it’s a matter of virtue (fear) signaling.
Iran receives first batch of Russian-made COVID-19 vaccines
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has disallowed imports of Western vaccines over side effect concerns.
Last month, Health Minister Saeed Namaki provided scientific reasoning for the rejection of the Western vaccines.
He said the Western vaccines had been produced “based on the mRNA method.” Inside the US itself, he added, some articles had been published showing how the approach could manipulate the recipients’ immune systems and afflict them with autoimmune diseases. “Even in the US and Europe, many people avoid the vaccines because of these speculations,” he said.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2021/02/04/644547/Iran-Russian-vaccines-COVID-Sputnik-V-coronavirus
Right! Lots of controversy!
Hi Gail, great article. I may be able to add a couple of specifics on collapse. I’ll add a link here :
https://www.ukcolumn.org/community/forums/topic/the-lost-generation/page/2/#post-95467
The big future deficit is definitely a problem. It is unclear how much the global financial system can take.
Around 20 European Banks have leverage, and some well in excess of the 27 times figure attributed to Lehman Brothers before bankruptcy.
While the US banks are stronger, these Banks are all interlinked. If r/wallstreetbets found a weak link in the chain bankruptcies could happen very quickly.
Just the first possibility that popped into my head.
This is an interesting link to a set of blog posts talking about where zinc is available in the diet and the benefits of zinc. There are far more than I expected. Shell fish and eggs seem to be sources of zinc. (Not directly related to the article, but it looks like we do need enough zinc in our diet. This article would suggest that it is hard to get enough zinc on a vegan diet.)
https://www.alexfergus.com/blog/zinc-and-human-health
A pandemy of lies and BS.
In Spain, 17 197 fewer people died in 2020 than in 2019 and 26 608 fewer than in 2018.
https://www.dsalud.com/revistas/numero-245-febrero-2021/en-2020-murieron-en-espana-17-197-personas-menos-que-en-2019-y-26-608-menos-que-en-2018
Eloquent figures.
But to avoid the terrible fate of not dying, we must still all get vaccinated………
The veils are put side, the mask falls, to reveal….what exactly?
Biden’s inept and waffling spokesperson has stated that the mRNA injection ‘is more than just a vaccine’ (!) and as it is such a great scientific advance they want ‘everyone to have it’.
Now, an advance towards what? Why everyone?
Really, they are ceasing to pretend anymore.
Who is so blind that they can’t see it?
Probably the poor trusting chumps who have already been vaccinated.
The fact governments are so keen on everybody having the vaccine is reason enough not to have it. What is your theory as to why this is? Why does it matter to them so much?
Nefarious reasons aside, if the vaccine works, then fine, those who receive it are protected. Leave those of us who don’t want it alone. We are only a threat to ourselves, other refuseniks and, so the argument goes, those unable to be vaccinated for whatever reason. Deny us covid-19 treatment on the NHS, or any treatment, for all I care.
I am unmoved by the argument that it’s my societal responsibility to be vaccinated in order to protect those too weak be vaccinated, because I don’t believe it is my duty to put my health at risk to protect the infirm. Let them take whatever precautions they deem necessary. If the roles were reversed, I would not expect anyone to be vaccinated on my behalf. Plus there is zero evidence being vaccinated protects others.
I was encouraged to hear Del Bigtree state yesterday that a survey showed fifty one per cent of Americans either don’t want or want to delay getting the vaccine. If true, the propaganda isn’t working as much as they would like.
As stated before, the masters always have a good laugh while we squirm and suffer. They particularly enjoy the majority’s learned helplessness, of which excess weight/obesity is but one example. “We’re just big-boned.” “We’re cursed with a slow metabolism . . . ” Ad infinitum . . .
The physical condition of a lot of first-worlders is literally the elephant in the room. The well-trained herd will reach for the vaccine the same way they grab the insulin. In their minds, an easy drug is much preferred to actual self-control and discernment concerning food.
From personal experience with friends and family, I’ve learned many doctors don’t even bother attempting to come between the patient and the overloaded plate. The docs simply make Big Pharma happy, the patient gets sicker and sicker, and the masters gleefully win, as usual.
There’s no one more cynical about our health system than me. In the UK, you have to wait 3 weeks for an appointment, which most likely will be with a doctor who you have never met before. The doctor will then have 10 minutes to make a potentially life changing diagnosis and either prescribe a drug or refer onwards to a specialist. One GP even told me he saw his role as matching drug to ailment, as if there were no other tools in his arsenal. Rather important factors such as nutrition, lifestyle and exercise are rarely touched upon.
Shambolic, here’s a raw comment from somebody who understands the herd’s “learned helplessness”:
[Quote] Oh, the variants… they can now be weaponized ad infinitum to restrict whatever The Anointed want.
Funny how each variant is always stronger and more transmissible than the previous one, never the other way around… oh, boy…
And about people, I feel the same as you. They are hopeless. They cannot be convinced about anything other than that it’s a real, dangerous pandemic. Worst of all, they don’t want to because they’re now too invested into the narrative. Admitting that they have been fooled is too painful to their egos and their self-images, so they just follow the herd.
It’s the freaking “emperor wears no clothes” on steroids on a global scale.
And just like the emperor’s tale, the most amazing thing is not
that people fail to see the obvious but that after the farce
becomes more revealed every day, they don’t have the courage to blame the only real culprit, which is themselves. [End quote]
The last paragraph of that old tale is always left off: the crowd turned on the little boy, and killed him…….
I had never heard that the boy was killed by the crowd, Xabier. Although the ending was immensely instructive concerning human nature, maybe it was for the best that I never knew it since I always despised what happened to the Little Gingerbread Man.
Apparently, masks make you obese!
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/064/267/646/original/d3ca9eee6f194ef3.png
They tout things like herd immunity being effected when everybody gets the vaccine (a vaccine; ANY vaccine). And neither I nor the vast majority of folks know the scientific calculations behind such determinations. We either have been following the curve of the big picture (which allows us to be MOST sceptical about what the system recommends or requires…) or we haven’t, yielding the opposite result.
We’d probably have herd immunity already, at least according to the old definition of the term, if governments had let the pandemic run its course without lockdowns, masks and social distancing. It’s impossible to know how much higher the death toll would have been if this were the case, although comparisons with countries having zero or fewer restrictions suggest all restrictions have done is make people poorer and unhappier, with minimal impact on deaths.
And in that vein (no pun intended) the following just appeared in our authoritarian local FB page.
https://zeynep.substack.com/p/why-you-should-take-any-vaccine?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODI0ODQ0OSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzIyMDAwMTIsIl8iOiJ5Q1VlWSIsImlhdCI6MTYxMjU0NDU3OSwiZXhwIjoxNjEyNTQ4MTc5LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTE4NCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.tASj35-s_dM4_LUZ9UB2HDp946vPKGPHQcpdQUYo0ks&fbclid=IwAR0Q_G_1E1ji4p8jwBDkQEvBD69NJLz3DLTWD6UW1RuGCq4OxtH5fkF_19M
Dreadfully depressing, brainless, gushing rubbish – such people need to be put in quarantine to keep you, and everyone else, safe, Artleads!
Unfortunately, to keep youreself sane you must put YOURSELF in some sort of Quarantaine!
Such people should be leading by example, and take the mRNA vaccine.
> Chaucer courses to be replaced by modules on race and sexuality under University of Leicester plans
Beowulf and The Canterbury tales could be sidelined under plans for the English department
The University of Leicester will stop teaching Geoffrey Chaucer’s work and other medieval literature in favour of modules on race and sexuality, according to new proposals.
Management told the English department that courses on canonical works will be dropped for modules “students expect” as part of plans now under consultation.
Foundational texts like The Canterbury Tales and Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf would no longer be taught under proposals to scrap medieval literature.
Instead the English faculty will be refocused to drop centuries of the literary canon and deliver a “decolonised” curriculum devoted to diversity.
Academics now facing redundancy were told via email: “The aim of our proposals (is) to offer a suite of undergraduate degrees that provide modules which students expect of an English degree.”
New modules described as “excitingly innovative” would cover: “A chronological literary history, a selection of modules on race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity, a decolonised curriculum, and new employability modules.”
Professors were told that to facilitate change management planned to stop all English Language courses, cease medieval literature, and reduce Early Modern Literature offerings.
Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, the Viking sagas, and all works written earlier than 1500 would also be removed from the syllabus.
Cuts to Early Modern English modules could see texts John Milton’s Paradise Lost omitted, according to concerned academics, with teaching on Christopher Marlowe and John Donne potentially reduced.
President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Nishan Canagarajah said that changing modules was part of the long-term strategy to “compete on a global level”, adding: “To facilitate this, we may need to cease activity in a limited number of areas.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/20/chaucer-courses-replaced-modules-race-sexuality-university-leicester/
It kinda reminds me of this song.
Leicester isn’t even a university – but it’s tending that way even in the real ones.
I am sort of sympathetic to Leicester uni.
Arguably the old way of framing literature around Beowulf, Chaucer and Milton was intended to frame self-identity around being ‘English’, ‘Christian’, and ‘Protestant’ in particular.
Beowulf is a pretty simplistic ‘hero kills the monster’ story and better dramas are a dime a dozen on Netflix these days. It is written in old English, which no one understands now anyway.
‘English’ is a socially constructed identity. Britain is predominantly of Celtic ancestry and no one is more than 1/3 descended from Anglo-Saxons, and most are less than that away from the eastern ‘fringe’. The ‘English’ identity, language and culture were imposed on the island through an invasion from northern Germany and an elite domination, and it was transmitted to the natives and perpetuated on that same basis of elite social domination.
Britons originally had Celtic languages, which survive to some extent in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland and some of the isle, although UK domination largely erased them in 19/20th c. Ireland, Wales and Scotland are officially bilingual and there is some revival of the Celtic languages there.
Anyway, it is no longer useful to use up university courses to frame identity in the Victorian manner. The population is largely different now and the society has new needs, to frame identity in an inclusive manner. About 40% of kids in England are now of another background and they are twice as likely to go into higher education as ethnic Brits. 75% of youngsters profess ‘no religion’. Beowulf, Chaucer and Milton are basically useless to the youngsters and to the society. It is far more meaningful for them to use literature courses to develop a modern, inclusive identity and ethos that suits them and the economy.
It is ironic that Tory types tend to be against the revision of the syllabus. The TP has transformed the population for the sake of the economy and it continues to do so. Indeed they as a party might wise up and see the sense of the change in the syllabus. But they like to get votes off the older generations who are most resistant to change, so they like to make the ‘right’ noises about it – it is a party posture, nothing more.
It is understandable that older folk resent the changes. They were conditioned by the same society and the same educational institutions to frame themselves and the society in a certain way that is now being abandoned. But the changes are a continuation of the same process of adaptive social conditioning that made them like that in the first place. Times change and the needs of the society with it. They were conditioned according to the past needs of the society and students today are to be conditioned according to the present needs. It is the same thing, just the needs of the society, rooted in the economy, have changed.
Social conditioning and the framing of identity is relative to the needs of the society and thus changeable. We can expect major changes to them after the collapse as the needs of the society will be radically different. Ideological societal needs are contingent and fluid like everything else in this world.
I dunno–if Chaucer were irrelevant, then we wouldn’t see so many people around here posting the equivalent of “Allas, now comth Nowelis flood!”
Excess Mortality – What You Aren’t Being Told
This is from December, but very interesting all the same.
Overdosing on hydroxychloroquine may have caused some spikes in mortality in some countries last spring, according to Dr. Sam Bailey.
“Taking a look at the UK News Column Platform, they have been particularly interested in excess mortality in the UK, and their investigations have suggested that many of the deaths were due to mismanagement of the elderly and the lockdowns themselves. …. Another essential factor to take into account when considering excess mortality is not just teh number of deaths but the age at which the deaths occurred. From this, public health physicians can calculate years of life lost. It can be used to determine how much premature mortality there has been due to a specific cause of death. ….But what about Covid-19. Even if we accept that the excess deaths are all caused by Covid-19 [which she doesn’t, of course], are we seeing a huge increase in years of life lost? Even as far back as April, Klaus Püschel, head of Hamburg Forensic Medicine, told the Hamburger [newspaper], that of the so-called Covid-19 fatalities he examined, all had such serious pre-existing conditions that, even if this sounds harsh, they would have all have died in the course of this year.”
Sam also has concerns about lockdowns. “If we are not seeing significant years of life lost from a virus, then what is the point of these policies? Not only do they not prevent deaths among the elderly, but they will also almost certainly cause more deaths lockdowns could end up causing more deaths in the long run. That is why groups such as PANDA warned that restrictive lockdowns could end up causing almost 29 times more deaths than the measures aim to prevent.”
According to Chris Martenson he looked at the data and truly believes, patients were given higher doses during the later phase of Covid 19 which potentially was lethal. He also says the UK medical authorities knew about the potential harm to the patients but administered the doses anyway to put HCQ in a bad light. Can we call that murder?
Dr Sam, and others like her, restore one’s faith in humanity, despite the dystopian nightmare we are being dragged into.
The indirect message which she gives in her video on the usual way standard vaccine and drug trials are supposed to work is worth heeding, too.
A few honest people with integrity signalling to one another across the dark chasms of MSM and governmental lies we should be immensely grateful to them.
But how will she, and the rest of us, be protected?
Dr Sam knows she is skating on thin ice and is being cautious, but still very brave, in this awful environment.
Like her, I suppose we have to rely on protection from our own inner resources and integrity – and maybe something beyond that.
This is like the people who LIKE to work in ambulances.
For whatever reason people LIKE to save other people’s lives.
We are really strange entities..
I know that deaths were amazingly high in the first few months. I wonder how much hydroxyclorophine was used. It is hard to believe it was as much as the spike in deaths. There must have been a lot of other mismanagement of cases.
Gail, I long ago reduced consuming all I did not need on a daily basis. I believe that the real project in life is to grow consciously by inward turning, intuition and all that goes with it. The use of more and more technology takes us in the opposite direction. It weakens, makes cruder everything that is great about human life. Nature cries, we ignore it, overpopulate, infantilise our children, steal their future. This is a good thing happening, the destruction of this ignorance and emergence of something more subtle based on heart values, not mind.
On the flip side, here we are with the help of technology, busy dishing hurt on our common delusions and wickedness.
It’s all good. Yes, indeed, liberty for all. Withouth exception.
John, I totally agree. The internet and social media is the death of true culture. A generation raised, completely devoid of connection to the earth and all it offers. Excessive FF energy has achieved many things, but robbed us of humility.
Collapse in the energy economy will ultimately be a good change.
I like Nate Hagens suggestions for the future:
What to do – as individuals? ~Use logic, reason and think for yourself, and avoid the consensus trance ~Become ‘woke’ to the huge advantage you have in life, because you understand these things: you’re one of the (unfortunately) very few ~Try to accept you can’t shift things too much before the energy/economy reality becomes more apparent to others ~Don’t step out of society – live a normal life, advance in a job you like in todays world, but know it will likely change at some point ~Be a ‘sleeper’ leader/anchor for the future / be ready to engage when the world needs your knowledge The simplest changes….
What to do – as individuals? From an energy/economy perspective ~Simplify first and beat the rush ~Don’t become overly reliant on energy intensive activities ~help to re-localize/re-regionalize supply chains ~learn a physical skill ~help to design technology that provides basic human services as opposed to short term dopamine ~Contribute to massive list of societal transition projects and campaigns tackling pieces of the challenge
What to do – as individuals? From an brain/behavior perspective ~Get to know your brain (this may be uncomfortable) ~Be happy with absolute wealth instead of relative ~Consider a ‘paleo behavior’ diet. E.g. Take electricity, technology breaks – reset your brain in nature ~Choose your tribe wisely ~Relax, smile, laugh and enjoy life ~Be kind to yourself
What to do – as individuals? A conversation with yourself ~Who am I during these times? ~What do I stand for? ~The time is not to minimize my impact, but to maximize it ~My species is not evil. We are complex creatures capable of great things: both terrible and wonderful ~I am part of a ‘Superorganism’. And I Am Not
We live in very special times. The world is not yet fully broken. We are each part of an energy hungry global Amoeba. And We Are Not…. What is our species capable of?
I would say, we have a final legitimacy crisis.
What we have been told is a lie
some believedd it
They will have hard cognitive issues
That is the emergence process.
But to rid yourself of dogams “virus” “growth” “innovatoin” “reality in the end” is a very hard MENTAL process.
If you acceptedd “The Limits To Life” early on you will not suffer in any condition.
“You can not be salvated, you must savate yourself”(missed in translation? sorry)
We are definitely at a difficult time. I think we are already in the midst of an energy shortage; it just appears to a response to a COVID-19 problem. It may morph into something else; it seems unlikely to go away. I expect that few will ever recognize it as an energy problem.
If you have extra money, use it to help others now. It may very well not have as much value in the future.
Enjoy nature. If possible, find a job you like and do it. Don’t sit around worrying.
Why? Please explaine
great stuff
https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1357447915627773957?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1357447915627773957|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rudy-giuliani-radio-show-disclaimer_n_601c6fa5c5b66c385ef7ef41
“Rudy Giuliani lashes out at his employer, WABC, for adding a legal disclaimer to his radio show”
“Global food prices have reached their highest in almost seven years, further raising the spectre of food inflation and hunger at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic continues to hit economies around the world.
“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index for January rose by a tenth from a year ago to its highest level since July 2014, led by a sharp increase in grain prices. Substantial buying of corn by China and lower-than-expected production in the US helped send the gauge — which tracks a basket of food commodities against their 2014-16 prices — to its eighth consecutive monthly increase, the longest rising streak in a decade.”
https://www.ft.com/content/571a9d68-c8b5-4c56-a539-26fff81e9296
“Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of major social unrest episodes on a global scale decreased sharply, hitting a five-year low in March last year. A new study by the International Monetary Fund suggests this may be the calm before the storm.”
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-02-03-calm-before-the-storm-imf-study-suggests-unrest-declined-under-covid-but-may-still-erupt/
If you will forgive me for opining: of course it is!
None of the contentious issues, like declining aggregate prosperity, rising authoritarianism and police brutality, corruption and inequality of wealth distribution, which are in large part rooted in ever-worsening energy and resource-constraints, have been or indeed can be resolved.
Now we have all the increased debt and economic hardship of the pandemic and lockdowns on top! Talk about a powder-keg.
It’s a matter of months if not weeks before the situation becomes explosive. Governments will probably have to give some slack or expose themselves to angry mobs.
But puuting a match in the powder keg will not ignite a creative explosion of prosperity.
The Daily Maverick says,
“The study concludes by saying that “It is reasonable to expect that, as the pandemic fades, unrest may reemerge in locations where it previously existed, not because of the Covid-19 crisis per se, but simply because underlying social and political issues have not been tackled.””
The lockdowns were a good way to temporarily fix the unrest.
We know from experience that high food prices are likely to bring about social unrest.
Norway: Major election this autumn. The green party are saying that they want to shut down the oil production and guess what, it looks like more people then ever are going to vote for them.
Ouch! Freezing cold country to do without electricity.
Agreed!
But they did it in the past – like all of us – when they were real men and women, not facsimiles.
When Malthus went to Norway, he was very impressed by their honesty and hardiness.
Tis true. And too easily forgotten.
It isn’t possible to support a very large population on Norway’s natural resources (exceeding oil). My grandparents wouldn’t have moved to the US, if conditions were better there.
UK Vaccine Minister: All Over Age 50 Must Be Vaccinated Before Lockdown Lift Begins
https://planetfreewill.news/uk-vaccine-minister-all-over-age-50-must-be-vaccinated-before-lockdown-lift-begins/
There is a minivax in UK ? Doubleplusgood !
Well, I shan’t be, so further lock-downs will be all down to me.
How, but how, shall I bear the terrible guilt?
Quite lightly, I suspect.
I won’t be taking it either. I dare say we will be getting several reminders from the GP.
Then you/we may be getting a knock on the door:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/8xTRMVGeSIyr/
Council workers I can handle; it’s when the police or army show up I’ll start to worry.
True, it may come to that.
However, with noxious and intrusive officials I have found that simulated friendliness and initial compliance works well, avoiding escalation – but keep a backbone of steel.
They often turn out to be quite reasonable, as long as you don’t start out aggressively.
They may even turn out have doubts about the vaccines themselves.
I seem to recall reading in the news last year that due to covid the rule had been changed as to how many doctors are required to have someone committed. If I remember correctly, only one doctor’s signature is now required. So, certainly best not to act too crazy. I expect once held in a mental institution the staff can inject you with whatever they like.
I checked out the video link, and this other video caught my eye:
4 YOUNG AND HEALTHY ITALIAN HEALTHCARE WORKERS DEAD AFTER PFIZER [mRNA] JAB
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ELge5FP7HPi5/
At what point does the general population start getting suspicious?
It just gets worse.
Superb analysis and writing!
Thanks!
Anyone think that ‘they’ don’t know….
Reception
Included among Smil’s admirers is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates,[10] who has read all of Smil’s 36 books.[11] “I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie,” Gates wrote in 2017.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Smil
From, “Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’”
Interviewer: “Can businessmen accept an end to growth? Have you mentioned this to Bill Gates?
VaclavSmil: “I don’t need to tell him. He knows a lot about the environment. Put aside the billions of dollars and he is just a guy who likes to understand the world. He reads dozens of books every year. Like me.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists
thanks, that’s a great interview.
“… I do not tolerate nonsense. I grew up surrounded by commie propaganda – the bright tomorrow, the great future of mankind – so I’m as critical as they come. It’s not my opinion. These are the facts. I don’t write opinion pieces. I write things that are totally underlined by facts.”
how far western culture and the MSM are from this.
Trawling the internet comments sections, I have found it to be generally true that those brought up with the propaganda of the Soviet Bloc understand the present situation rather well.
The Bright Future and New Mankind of that ideology never quite materialised, and in the last decades became merely empty slogans and tarnished promises impossible to fulfill.
Now, in the supposedly ‘free’ West, anyone who departs from this official propaganda line of economic and social salvation through 100% conversion to ‘renewables’ and a totalitarian full digitisation is censored and suppressed, just like Soviet dissidents – no healthy debate is allowed, and the real science is squashed.
Exactly, that is clearly why Gates and Co are doing what they are doing now.
Doomed to failure, probably, but it has been set in motion – under the cover of the engineered COVID scare – whether we like it or not.
I have just come home from harnessing my horses to get a load of firewood.The horses eat hay in the winter which we bale over the summer.The baling machines we use are about 60 years or more years old and easily fixed with available wood or metal. We heat with wood and use our oils if needed in the diesels to press oils and mill flour. Electricity is provided by solar cells and diesel generators using sunflower oil. I do have the luxury of a computer.We grow all of our own food, have a good source of water.
I am gathering our community to face the future with sharing and good physical labour in the garden or in the fields. And we can even be 6 ft apart with masks while working.
The future does not look good for any of us but we have maintained a healthy lifestyle with lots of activity. Even our customers volunteer to walk ride or drive the horses.
I am not relying on electronics and am always looking for simple backups that do not need much energy.
I know most will say it is not possible to do this but I too was in a major city with a business but upon reading the end of growth resolved to change my life and here I am very happily on our self sufficient farm.
-mat
good to hear.
I would not be happy in that life, but you are not alone, good thing, there is at least a small portion of humans who are adaptable to preindustrial lifestyles.
it will be a more difficult life if IC collapses totally, but you are the type who could survive and temporarily hold off human extinction.
good luck.
Sounds promising!
Modified RNA has a direct effect on DNA
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-rna-effect-dna.html
Duncan, are you following this science?
Does it mean Norman is now a mutant?
Gail you are right in that PV is only a extension of fossil fuels. That is not debatable.
A small home that is well insulated doesnt take much to heat. Many run space heaters to heat even in poorly insulated homes. lets take a look at the numbers.
1750 watts of panels yields about 1000 watts of power when dropped across a 38.4 ohm water heater load in a fixed resistance application. That application needs no batteries or charge controller Without power tracking the panels only provide a portion of their power. Furthermore in the winter their is even less hours of energy. Call it 6 hours. So only 6kwh out a 175o watt array. Half of what a 1000 watt space heater would provide
Those panels cost about $500. Now there are other expenses disconnects wire inspections. But the panels themselves are the lion share. If the panels are used 6 months out of the year they pay for themselves in electricity in under four years. Actually much less as the hours get longer more powe is created than just 6 hours in the winter.
That 1000 watts stops when the sun goes down just as it is needed most for heating applications. The energy has to be stored. Say four 55 gallon barrels with four 38,4 ohm loads two in paralell those in series for tadah a total of 38.4. two in parralel are 19.2 and putting those in series brings it back to 38.4. Flange type water heater loads 240v 1500 watt equal 38.4. The panels must be matched to the loads for constant current.
That a bit of infrastructure and space to implement for 6kwh daily. Those 4 barrels weigh omost a ton. not all floors will take that.
For the most part what yields the benefit is eliminating heat losses. south facing windows provide significant heat gains. As anyone knows for them to be effective curtains that retain heat must be drawn at night. Curtains that retain heat at night are one of the easiest ways to increase energy efficiency.
The next thing to turn attention to is the ceiling. this is because most houses have truss roofs and insulation can be added in that space. if it can be gotten to a minimum value of 60 now heat is stopped from leaking at such a fast rate. This can be done just over one room because of cost restraints. That area is behind drywall. It does not represent a fire hazard. Common packing foam can be sourced by industries discarding and used. No weight If so this area can be built up to good insulations values with some effort but little cost.
Walls are tougher to retrofit and may pose moisture problems unlike a ventilated attic.
All convection losses have to be eliminated with caulk on windows carpet or other materials under doors.
If these things are done this will keep a room with lots of south facing windows above freezing at night in even very cold climates and is down right pleasant during the day from solar radiation alone
If that 6kwh is dumped into water via PV now night becomes doable with a sweater in that one room. Its not better homes and garden. Its better than most of the world has.
Cloudy days not so much fun.
It beats a cardboard box under the freeway x 1000.
It can take the edge off to keep plants above freezing in greenhouses. So it can help provide food. Just add a buttload of labor. Or starve in a cold house eating the food you stole from the children down the street.
Double up those panels for two loads on your water heater. Yes the one you have right now. They go to 19.2 x 2 in series. 120v 1500 watt. 38.4 is the only thing that works Your going to have to add a $10 dc-dc ssr relay because the bimetal thermostat on your house water heater will fry very first time it tries to shut off 200vdc. The bimetal becomes the input to the relay and two aa batteries are required to feed that circuit. Now in the summer your going to have lots of hot water . 2x 12kw input daily. And get by with half that in the winter. 12kwh brings a 40 gallon water up to shut off temp.
$1000 in panels buys 30 years of hot water. I kind of like bathing. keeps my mind right. Your going to need a fused disconnect and use safe wiring practices. Theres going to be times the water isnt hot.
$1000. Do the math.
Your living off the sun. It doesnt shine no bath. If thats unthinkable not for you.
Notice this wont kill you like adding a combustion source that does not draw right and adds c monoxide to your breathing atmosphere. Its electricity so if your a semi epsilon moron probably not best for you to play.
So no PVs are not going to replace your furnace or 100k btu wood stove. They do have heating applications. They will take a one room somwhat miserable environment and turn into a not so bad environment in conjunction with insulation and solar gain from glazing in even climate zone 7. That gain from pretty miserable to not so bad is worth the effort IMO. Its bit by bit piece by piece.
No batteries, charge controller, or inverter required. 12g wire will do everthing i described. you best under stand wire sizing from both a current and power loss perspective.
Put that energy into less water = higher temperatures and your cooking food with it.
Way more shake and bake than solar hot water panels. No Losses from cold panels. Energy is dumped where you want it without pumps. Electricity gets down the road all by itself.
You have a “great room”. No chain saw or forest needed.
Of course its easier to beg social services to sustain you. They will always be there money will always work and the grid is eternal.
No it wont save IC. Not a teeny tiny miniscule fraction of IC.
Transition. Will it suceed?
What is sucess?
You decide
YOU!
You grow it you eat it
children first
I agree that a personal standard is the only measure of success.
so I am very successful.
dark chocolate – I buy it I eat it.
I usually have quite successful hunter/gatherer trips to local grocery stores.
it’s an amazing system, where I load my cart with many good foods that I really want, and then they just let me walk out of the store with it every time.
I don’t grow it but I eat it.
this system is so amazing that I don’t see how it can last for many more years.
Adequate heating is a very subjective thing: for instance, I keep the heated rooms in my house far cooler than most used to the luxury and excess of modern life would find comfortable, and use as little firewood as possible as a basic principle.
No fires in the winter before noon, unless it really is a very miserable day – but then it’s best to be outside doing physical work.
But it’s certainly not at all a miserable way to live with good woollen clothes; and a fire is in fact more cheering and pleasant if you have to get near it to really warm up.
Just the way everyone lived until very recently – even the rich had chilly houses in Western Europe, and kept their children in a Spartan regime to make them tough.
As I cut and split my wood by hand, every fire is a careful calculation of benefit and effort.
In most traditional rural societies, children (and the very old, but they are of course rare) come last in the line for food when it is scarce, being two-a -penny and easy enough to make when times are better.
The Circassians used to have extra children they could not feed very well so as to use them to pay their annual taxes in kind to the Ottoman Empire – when handed over, they often got the first good meals and nice clothes of their lives!
They also used to smother the elderly to put them out of their misery, and thought trying to keep them alive when they had become physically incapable was cold and cruel.
don’t start circulating ideas like that
you’ll be voting for Boris next
The problem is that “using less” doesn’t really work. You have many needs simultaneously. You can fix the loss of heat to heat you water, but you can’t fix the loss of water coming to your home in the first place. You can temporarily produce electricity, but you cannot produce the electricity you need the rest of the time. Jobs will disappear; replacement parts for machinery will disappear; road will fall into disrepair.
Thank you jaguar paw for your analysis and creative thinking. I do understand the limitations post collapse of technologies and spend a lot of time pondering solutions as a plan B.
They say the meek will inherit the earth… but they will also have to be hard working and thrifty!
Hydroxychloroquine-mediated inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 entry is attenuated by TMPRSS2
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009212
For you who follow science—-
so we go with ivermectin
and it is apple favored
LOL. Like a now n later. 🙂
(cue horse whinny)
and it gets rid of worms.
So then why does it reduce symptoms and reduce recovery time when administered by medical practices… ? Surely the outcome is what we should be focusing on? For those of us who care about effectiveness…
Furthermore:
The retraction from the Lancet, “June 4, 2020 – The online medical journal The Lancet has apologized to readers after retracting a study that said the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine did not help to curb COVID-19 and might cause death in patients.”:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200605/lancet-retracts-hydroxychloroquine-study
Second of all, actual HCQ implementation and results:
“Finally, several nations that had started using an aggressive early-use outpatient policy for hydroxychloroquine, including France and Switzerland, stopped this practice when the WHO temporarily withdrew its support for the drug. Five days after the publication of the fake Lancet study and the resulting media onslaught, Swiss politicians banned hydroxychloroquine use in the country from May 27 until June 11, when it was quickly reinstated.”
“Following a lag of 13 days after stopping outpatient hydroxychloroquine use, the country’s COVID-19 deaths increased four-fold and the nrCFR index stayed elevated at the highest level it had been since early in the COVID pandemic, oscillating at over 10%-15%. Early outpatient hydroxychloroquine was restarted June 11 but the four-fold “wave of excess lethality” lasted until June 22, after which the nrCFR rapidly returned to its background value. ”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/an_effective_covid_treatment_the_media_continues_to_besmirch_143875.html#!
The lives that were lost due to this fake news…
The Lancet should not just apologise. That study was made up out of whole cloth by a shell company that employed three people. It was published without peer review, without asking for the evidence behind it, and only because its conclusions were what its corrupt far left apparatchik editor wanted to hear. In a sane society, he would have been shamed into committing seppuku.
Gives a scientific reason why hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work too well in treating people with COVID-19.
There is an awful lot of science going on these days.
Nobody could possibly follow it all.
“The last true polymath to walk the earth!” was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
George Elliot called him that.
Thanks for the link!
I can follow just about nothing, and must depend on the quick readers with quick minds to point me straight. So I haven’t read this. It appears to be the current challenge thrown down (by a would be hip and knowledgeable guy) on the table of my local online network. Toward a local conformity of opinion. But I don’t have the stomach to take it on.
https://zeynep.substack.com/p/why-you-should-take-any-vaccine?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODI0ODQ0OSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzIyMDAwMTIsIl8iOiJ5Q1VlWSIsImlhdCI6MTYxMjU0NDU3OSwiZXhwIjoxNjEyNTQ4MTc5LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTE4NCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.tASj35-s_dM4_LUZ9UB2HDp946vPKGPHQcpdQUYo0ks&fbclid=IwAR0Q_G_1E1ji4p8jwBDkQEvBD69NJLz3DLTWD6UW1RuGCq4OxtH5fkF_19M
Dear OFWers, thank you. I am so happy to see others who can see what is happening.
OFWorlders, Unite!
Please do not confuse with Elon’s OFFWorlders group.
Though we OFWorlders will be sending people into space for oneway journeys once our giant trebuchet is built. 😉
Nah, that treb is intended for chucking fissile materials from the moon and back to earth.
🤣👍
oh I see it too!
corporatist totalitaryan globalist governments in cahoots with 1984MSM in denial of plunging net (surplus) energy.
no way this continues more than a decade or two.
The sooner the better!
let’s take action!
As my two comments will be somewhat critical, I should acknowledge that I have appreciated Gail’s posts for a long time as a contributor in a network whose awareness of energy and other natural resource issues is central to an understanding of civilizational collapse. Her effective incorporation of that awareness into her analysis is rare among economists. Hence I hope the following will be taken as an attempt at constructive criticism.
First, there is the the claim in the first sentence of the post, that most modelers of energy “are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates”. While I can only agree with this as far as it goes, it ignores, or at least omits, a more fundamental flaw in much simulation modeling in situations of complexity. Modelers of many such situations where simulation modeling is commonly used, whether of energy, climate, epidemics, geopolitical strategy or business management, often falsely claim that their models are predictive. This is a serious defect in their understanding of complexity science and its limits, because it often generates untenable policies.
It is useful in this context that Gail’s post immediately cites the Limits to Growth project (LTG), for its authors were explicit in their claim that its result should not be taken as prediction in the usual laboratory science sense. As such, the LTG project bears the imprint of the pioneering work at MIT in complexity science in the US, which over half a century developed system dynamics, not just as a method of modeling, but as a revolutionary paradigm, in the sense expounded by half a century ago by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – as a new way of doing science. It is for this reason that the most comprehensive textbook in the subject, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, by MIT professor John Sterman, devotes the first hundred pages to a careful elaboration of the worldview of complexity science. including its limitations, before it even attempts to instruct the method.
In sum, the most damning criticism one can make of many modelers is that they jumped into use of the method without learning the paradigm. This is not the place to launch into a detailed explanation of that scientific worldview, but anyone who wants a clear understanding of the potential and limitations of system dynamics simulation modeling would do well to study Part One of John Sterman’s book.
My second criticism is of the claim that the LTG model is based on physical resources, and did not incorporate the financial system. On the contrary, the rules and structures of not only the financial system but the whole political economy of capitalism of which it is a part are implicit in the decision rules of the stock and flow model – that is why the base simulation, or “business as usual” (BAU) scenario so accurately simulates the historical behavior of the existing capitalist system. What is unfortunate, and this in my view is a limitation of the LTG project as an educational tool, is that the authors did not explicitly model the capitalist political economy in the stock and flow model. That would have contributed the great educational benefit of exposing the rules of the capitalist system to critical scrutiny. In a way, the LTG authors acknowledged the hidden incorporation of the existing political economic system in the BAU base model by offering a number of alternate policy framework scenarios, some of which would appear to require revolutionary changes in the system in which we live.
Not having known the LTG authors personally (although a longtime student of their writings), I can only speculate as to why they were not more explicit about modeling the political economy. One reason might be the fish-in -water syndrome – you take the system you live in for granted. More likely in my view, is that like many of the denizens of capitalism, demonization of its critics has taught them to steer clear of investigation that exposes the system itself. And yet, what a shame, for what better use of modeling than one that reveals a visual picture of how our world works!
Chase ecometrics did that. What ever happened to Chase ecometrics?
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/10/business/chase-econometrics.html
Perhaps “modeling” is a misnomer. One of my reviewers pointed this out to me, before the post went up. There are a lot of different people, from different parts of the academic world as well as from the business community who project future energy supplies, in one way or another, and make observations on what energy type might substitute for another type of energy.
We all know that there are lots of different “silos” in the academic world. What happens in one area, hardly drifts at all over to the next area. Everyone is busy citing articles by their close associates, doing things the way that they always have done things. They peer review each others papers. The business world has standard ways of doing things as well.
The group I am really thinking of is the mostly academic group that goes under the “Biophysical Economics” umbrella. Many of these people came from the biological sciences. Also, the ones who do projections for commercial organizations. “Ecological Economists” are not too far away in terms of their thought process, either. There is also a “Degrowth” group and the “Post Carbon Institute.” There are/were also “Peak Oil” groups.
I am aware that there are also people who come under the “Complexity Science” heading, such as John Sterman. I went to the International Conference on Complex Systems in Boston in 2018, so I could meet Peter Turchin in person. So I am aware of the “complexity” side of things. To my knowledge, the complexity investigators aren’t really projecting future energy supplies, however.
Over the years, I have gotten to know a whole lot of folks who are involved with energy limits in some way.
Dennis Meadows was the head of the LTG project at MIT. He comes from an engineering background. His wife was Donella Meadows, who is also known for her book “Thinking in Systems: A Primer,” besides being the lead author for LTG. Leading this project was Dennis Meadows first assignment after finishing his Ph. D. Most of the people working on the project were grad students. The computers at that time used punched cards for input, at least some of the time. A graph such as shown on Figure 1 would be far beyond the capability of the systems of that day.
The model used in LTG comes from the work of Jay Forrester (whom I have never met) at MIT, as described in his book World Dynamics. Jay Forrester had a degree in electrical engineering. Forrester was the founder of system dynamics, which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects in dynamic systems.
Charles Hall comes from the biological sciences. EROEI is basically a biological term that he adapted to compare fossil fuel energies with each other and with energy captured through other approaches. Charles Hall is a friend of Dennis Meadows. I am not sure that it ever occurred to Charles Hall that the assumptions needed for the EROEI equivalences were different from the assumptions under the LTG model.
LTG modeling done in 1972 was state of the art for 1972. I notice that the Journal of Complex Systems began publication in 1987. People had not started talking about complexity.
The idea of economy as a dissipative structures was also far away. This is a link to a 1996 paper by Y. Shiozawa called, Economy as a Dissipative Structure, introducing the idea.
Also, remember that LTG was a world model. There was capitalism in some parts of the world, but not in the Soviet Union or China. Political structure was not a priority for people who were engineers at heart.
The ‘Elephant in the Dark’ …..
We should keep in mind the compute resource available to the LTG folks in 1972 were modest. A good reason to keep the model simple.
Gail,
Wonderful post as usual! Regarding the Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, is there one line on the graph that you think will vary most from predicted?
Also, in light of the events since 2008 (i.e. QE), I think it might be interesting to see a line for debt per capita overlaid on the graph since this was not originally included in the analysis.
Thanks!
I have a hard time imagining that population will continue to grow way past 2050. Once energy supplies starting getting squeezed, the world has problems with supply lines and debt defaults. There will be a lot of people without jobs. People in poor countries will see declining health. Death rates will go up, often from very ordinary diseases.
If the world financial system “breaks,” this could especially be an issue.
As I recall, the forecast pollution line is higher than recent analyses indicate it actually would be. I suppose this is because the “rich” countries mostly got pollution under control and sent their pollution problems to the poor countries. It depends how a person weights rich and poor countries, and what pollutants one is looking at, I expect.
Regarding debt per capita, remember that the forecast is of world indications. Getting historical world debt back very far is a problem. If nothing else, there are all of the different currencies and relativities between the currencies. A lot of the debt may be pretty informal. Debt may be between family members, for example.
Debt has been rising rapidly. I would expect it could break and fall back down even faster than it has risen.
After an intense discussion with a family member I’ve realised something:
The poetic thing about the ongoing collapse of industrial society is that the corporate bureaucratic Left, along with a legion of unthinking sychophants, has to watch as their credibility slips away.
This is a group of people that really deserve none of our sympathy; the same chaufferred clique that jet around the world unironically complaining about how affordable holidays contribute to climate change, or advocating short-sighted feel-good policies that destroy working class prospects and decimate municipalities.
I understand the likes of Fast Eddy more each day- once you’ve peeked behind the curtain and done your research in an impartial manner, and actually sought out the truth of the system, the manipulation and coercion from this group becomes blindingly evident. These machinations require reporting in BLOCK CAPITALS.
‘The Structure’, as a shorthand for the corporate-bureaucratic Left, runs on pure momentum; it’s credibility relies solely on its association with a past where people believed everything the news told them- because times were good- and why wouldn’t they? The murky dealings behind the scenes; the corruptions, subversions and agreements against the interests of those The Structure feigned to represent were more easily concealed, because people were distracted with opportunity and optimism.
Well times change, and entropy rolls on. As each small branch of complex civilisation snaps, the net they’ve wrapped around discourse and politics becomes a little less taut.
Cleverly, The Structure has aligned itself to the party it feels is less likely to be swamped by the great huddled masses once the resources run out; the revolutionary Left. What it fails to understand is that the policies a revolutionary Left government needs to implement to survive run completely counter to the coming reality. Redistribution is unworkable if there’s nothing to redistribute. Social inclusion is unworkable if there are limited resources, and therefore intergroup conflict. Diversity is unworkable if there is no mutual trust. This ungovernable mess is compounded by failing infrastructure, blackouts and the breakdown of global supply lines.
They have set themselves up for failure, and it couldn’t have happened to a more arrogant, controlling, pompous, dystopian- and deserving- group of people. The columns holding up their control system are creaking. Covid-19 has been an either opportunistic or manufactured
attempt to incrementally ‘power-down’ economic activity. It will not work; developed economies are not nearly localised enough, relying on parts and components sourced from across the world to drive the production of even bare necessities. And for anyone that understands EROEI, the idea that the whole thing could be powered by solar panels and wind turbines producing electricity ‘ad tempore’ is laughable. The Seneca Cliff beckons the true Global Reset.
In sociology, there is an ongoing debate as to which has more influence- the wider ‘structure’ of society, or the ‘agency’ of an individual. To spoil the problem, it is Structure that always wins out. But the form Structure takes is borne out by individual agency, and the will for change and for a voice. In the coming five years that change will take place again, and it couldn’t have happened at a more necessary time.
“it couldn’t have happened to a more arrogant, controlling, pompous, dystopian- and deserving- group of people.”
+++++++++++++++++++++
Is anything else to expect from rapacious primate behaviors? Once conditioned, you could belong to this group with ease. So could I, no denying the strain of the corrupt that exist within all of us.
But by god, would I be bored by the debauchery, pomp and regalia, the arrogance and elitism. Because it only takes one from the artisanry and proletariat that sees straight through the smoke and mirrors of pretentiousness to see the fools dancing to the tubes of wicked.
We are merely a slightly genetically modified primate species with delusions of grandeur and unfounded pretenses of a reality that only exist within the hallucinations inside our heads..
🥱
When you say…
We are merely a slightly genetically modified primate species…
Are you suggesting that…
a) a natural mutation took place leading to prefrontal cortex etc blah blah blah
Or…
b) alien scientists tampered with us to see what would happen
Or…
c) God did it – hence the delusions of grandeur and unfounded pretenses
The pomp and ceremony is just vestigial reptilian brain ritual display behaviour so I have that part sussed.
I don’t know.
However, I can keep more than one hypothesis flying at the same time in my neocortex. I think hard to trash all my dogmas into oblivion. So should you, otherwise you might be bamboozled by things that is a tad too good to be true, and ultimately isn’t.
Once I have some evidence pointing in any direction, or as a composite of multiple qualified hypotheses, a set of possible outcomes follows.
Assume, for the sake of argument (belief is irrelevant), an alien civilization of ‘herd like’ origins makes contact with a lesser species of ‘pack like’ origins. Now, what would likely happen? Now ponder upon the rapacious primate shenanigans for the last few millennia and consider upon that hypothesis.
Quite frankly I don’t really care that much. However, it would be rather amusing if this was a fact. Dimwitted tree dwelling muppets swallowing the bait and running amok with “riches”, regalia and herd like pretenses, jewelry, crowns, horned helmets, royalty, countries, wars, etc. LOLZ. 🤣👍
How fucking stupid isn’t that?
But ultimately you won’t get the primate out of the tree, no matter how hard you try to bend the genetics. The individuality is strong. The core of being a singular, the feeling of not belonging, resenting and hating the herd and herders.
This have actually been tried on modified malaria mosquitoes, nope, can’t beat evolution with some spiffy coding sequences. It will simply just regress back into the optima as stipulated by Mother Earth. Failure is inevitable.
But I guess the pride of the herd must be a bitter pill to collectively swallow. Oh noes, we’re stupid and a turd flinging tree dweller easily pointed it out. And once they figure out they have been screwed over and get their act together. Pray god mercy on the herd.
Yup, let the nukes fly and hope Mother Earth won’t produce another sentient primate species discovering some inconvenient artifacts. I wouldn’t bet on that however. Now, then, that ‘alien’ species would be stuck here forever, well, until some other sentient species of ‘pack/hive like’ behaviors show up and lay down the siege.
And that would be all she wrote.
Deciding to mess around with that which isn’t yours to fiddle with might incur some almighty grief. Given the opportunity, I’d chase that species down until oblivion as a matter of finesse and cleanliness of the universe.
/hypothesis off
🤣👍
I am afraid you are correct.
“or advocating short-sighted feel-good policies that destroy working class prospects and decimate municipalities”
Could you explain what you mean by that? What policies do you have in mind?
Are you writing from a UK or USA perspective?
yOUR QUESTION MADE ME SEARCH FOR MY own answers:
– paving over dirt roads because their ignorant political constituents demand it
– whereas kids could benefit repairing simple infrastructure instead, paving over a wooded field to build a ball court of some kind for formal sports (because that’s what pleased their ignorant constituents
– building “affordable” houses that require debt, building them with concrete that requires A/C, building them on permanent concrete foundations so they can never be moved
– Ditto for schools, even in Tropical countries where kids could learn under a tree
A very incomplete list of follies from my Tropical perspective. The planet needs no more buildings, but buildings are what gain political scoring points.
I can sympathise with your perspective.
British State is a capitalist money-grabbing cult, which means that it wants ever more workers to grow GDP, especially in the post-imperialist period and now that productivity growth is completely collapsed.
That means an ever increasing population, which means the more building of houses, workplaces, shops, infrastructure etc.
Inevitably that means the destruction of ‘places’ with their own charms. It is a trade off between places and workers that is driven by capitalism. Pieces of ‘reality’ are chewed up and disappear, replaced by urban and IC landscape.
I suppose that my ‘objections’ are aesthetic.
Everyone presumably has their own criterion of the ‘value’ of ‘being’. My bottom line just happens to not be the value of places for capital accumulation.
But British State is a capitalist money-grabbing cult and BS is gonna do what BS is gonna do. I have trained myself to no longer care.
Of course, urban development is not a recent phenomenon. I have seen early photographs of places that were destroyed to create the cities. Woods, streams, hills, meadows. Industrialism has transformed and destroyed places.
On aesthetic grounds I would probably have willed feudalism to continue, although it would be easy to ‘pose’ about that from our comfy, socially developed, industrialised perspective. It is a trade off. The ‘grass’ certainly would be ‘greener’ however.
The working class and municipalities that VFF expresses concern about would not exist in the first place if my aesthetic criterion were applied. They are consequences of the BS money cult, along with the more recent demographic expansion that I suspect that he is complaining about.
VFF’s criterion of ‘value’ seems to be what benefits the working class and cities – or maybe it is simply an ‘ethnic’ perspective under that gloss. If so then it is hard to see how the ‘left’ is to ‘blame’ for trends like population and urban expansion that are centuries old and inherent to capitalism. But I have invited him to be more explicit about his thesis and then we can evaluate it against the facts.
I am particularly interested in perspectives on the ‘meaning, value and purpose’ of ‘being’ and how that informs the attitudes of people regarding policies. The ideological foundations of BS are ‘set in stone’ as money-grabbing and that is rarely made explicit or challenged.
You are a white Jamaican? I would be interested to hear about the background to that and all about it really. Are you descended from Jamaicans or are you a more recent settler?
Very good to see this, Mirror. My aesthetic conditioning comes from early years in a beautiful rural setting on a tropical island, topped off with tons (ten years at least) of academic training in the visual arts–a foundation of art school, later hugely supported by art history lectures, art credential courses, architectural history study, art conservation work, etc. But I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in the US. A distant-generation grandfather went to the US from England. His support for the Brits in the revolutionary war led to a land grant in Jamaica, and thus to the Jamaican connection.
It’s the art/design training that renders me confident that nice-enough housing can be devised for any size population, especially given a well (centrally?) managed IC component. My approach is centered on the use of IC-produced materials, and so, mining.
Although mining can turn one’s stomach, it isn’t IMO, anywhere near as destructive to land as is ubiquitous worldwide real estate development. I see a kind of balance to be made between nature, IC and creative spatial thinking. Mining tends to be confined to one place, where they excavate and generally leave behind gaping cavities they fail to refill as promised. (Those cavities can be very useful in creative spatial thinking, BTW, but that’s another matter.) They have defined borders that repel human settlement. Real estate development, OTOH, requires sprawl and travel–shopping, schools, distant work, recreation, and so, endless roads and endless associated development.
It is real estate development that I want to come down on like a ton of bricks (No pun intended.)
We could halve our energy and material consumption and this would put us back around the level of the 1960s. We could cut down without losing anything important. Life wasn’t horrible in 1960s or 70s Europe. People from Copenhagen would no longer be able to fly to Singapore for a three-day visit, but so what? Not much is going to happen to their lives. People don’t realise how much slack in the system we have. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists
I also cannot see how this can work… at least not in the long run… I circle back to the theory that Covid is a tool to buy time as we reach the end of the line on oil… allowing the Elders to exterminate us.
Surely Smil is aware of this…
I recently watched one of Smil’s talks on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM
He mentioned the major problem of soil erosion and how there’s only enough nitrogen in the biosphere to support roughly half the world’s current population. His biggest fan, Bill Gates, is now the largest farmland owner in the US, at 268,984 acres of land combined across 19 states. The two seem to get on very well and it’s apparent that Smil has a big influence on Gates.
Rationing energy seems to be the program now. What other options are there for the people in charge? Preserve the core essentials of industrial civilization and sacrifice the periphery. We’re making our way down a descending staircase with incremental reductions in our access to energy. A controlled decline in standard of living. Relocalization as our vision turns away from rocketing into space and colonizing Mars to the neighborhoods we inhabit and traverse with our own two feet.
Watching the first 15 min or so of the YT video I don’t get the impression Smil thinks of collapse as something that will happen any time soon. He refers to traffic and fossil fuels being around for a lot longer yet.
Fast , Smil is incorrect . Hypothetically if all the chips made by Intel in the last 10 years went bad ,would be go back 10 years or 100 years ? Long ago I learned ” A small hole can sink a big ship ” . It is true till today
When did a single point of failure become a problem? Yeah, right, always has been and will be a great source of extinction.
Only morons centralize and optimize until oblivion. Coreoheripery topology seems to be the real deal for optimal resiliency.