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.
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Churchill College, University of Cambridge, held a discussion on Winston Churchill this week to explore a fuller picture of him.
Well, he believes that stock prices would have to drop 65 to 70 percent just to get back to historical norms…
Understand how extreme current valuations have become. In order to simply touch run-of-the-mill historical valuation norms, the S&P 500 would have to lose somewhere in the range of 65-70% over the completion of this cycle.
Stock prices always, always, always get back to their historical averages eventually.
It is just a matter of time.
However, we should hope that a stock market crash can be put off for as long as possible, because a truly catastrophic stock market crash would cause far more economic pain than we have experienced so far.
Our system simply would not be able to handle a decline of 50 percent or more in stock prices. It would essentially mean the end of our financial system as we know it today, and that is something that nobody should want.
The good news is that I do not expect a stock market crash within the next 30 days unless some sort of major “trigger event” comes along.
Stocks may go down, but for the moment I expect at least a short-term period of relative stability.
But that short-term period of relative stability will not last very long at all, and I fully expect 2021 as a whole to be a very, very painful year.
if stocks fall 40% you can expect them to fall much further. You can’t catch a falling knife from that level and who would buy stocks when they are falling that fast??? Back in March I was trying to buy silver and no one would sell it to me as they were expecting the price to go way up….and it did. The reverse will be true when stocks fall…
Look up George Gammon and how stocks can fall to zero….not his idea originally but he does a good job of explaining it.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/experts-are-warning-that-a-u-s-stock-market-crash-is-very-likely-in-the-months-ahead/
We have never seen anything like this before. The bubble that we are in now absolutely dwarfs the epic stock market bubbles of 1929 and 2000. Stock market mania has gripped the entire nation, and all sorts of people have been getting rich, at least on paper.
But many Wall Street veterans that have been watching all of this transpire have become extremely concerned. The following comes from a Forbes article entitled “Is The Stock Market About To Crash?”…
‘Very, very concerning’ echoes of the 90s dot-com bubble are being heard loud and clear by nervous market experts. A 12-year-old bull market; SPAC mania; IPOs that more than double on the first trading day; an army of amateur traders and GameStop mania. It certainly feels like irrational exuberance–and it triggers alarms for those who remember the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. “The parallels we have today are historically very, very concerning,” notes Jim Stack, president of Whitefish, Montana’s InvesTech Research and Stack Financial Management. “The current froth is the icing on the cake, and when you look through it, you see a lot of other underlying issues
.”http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/experts-are-warning-that-a-u-s-stock-market-crash-is-very-likely-in-the-months-ahead/
Dr. Carrie Madej Speaks about;
What is transhumanism?
Transhumanism is word that should enter our vocabulary IMO.
It is the real issue. It should be debated openly and freely. Of course some dont believe we should have choice in anything let alone a issue such as this. The easiest way to deny debate is to deny the issue substance and cognizance.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ofm3QnUjcIJT/
“Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies able to greatly modify or enhance human intellect and physiology.”
“widely available” means that FF must continue to be widely available.
increasing energy supplies indeed have enabled the enhancement of humanity, as for example we are communicating now across a great distance. Cool.
after a decade or two of decreasing energy supplies, the word ‘transhumanism’ will be totally forgotten by the impoverished surviving humans.
oh, but hey, have a nice day!
Isn’t transhumanism where we all swap sexes for a while.
I love dress up.
No. It’s more than that. It’s when we all swap senses and emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, for a while.
Actually, Keith H. is involved in transhumanism—a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies able to greatly modify or enhance human intellect and physiology. It might be interesting to read his opinion on Dr. Majed’s views on this subject. Somehow, I doubt if he’d agree with her.
Humanoid chauvinism at its finest.
Transcending morality and cognitive limitations as stipulated by Mother Earth. Imagine sentient beings with grains of rapacious primatery and basically limitless omnipotence.
I guess that would head south rather quick.
Homo Sapiens Digitalis.
The destroyers of worlds and ultimately themselves.
Nope, what is needed is another evolved species that does not carry the burden of a rather filthy past (and present)
Homo Synthetic Digitalis.
The omnipotent wielder of evolutionary process.
So what are we waiting for?
🤔
I’m using terms that I see written about, but I don’t claim to understand them in the least:
The current vaccines are a means to change human DNA, among other biological changes. Isn’t that already transhumanism?
And how do we manage the fact of having half the population with changed DNA and half the population without? There’s clearly no one in charge here.
I suggest we humans should first try to achieve transapeism.
Transhumanism is a psychological substitute for traditional religion inspired by taking science fiction too seriously and inextricably linked to Ray Kurzweil’s singularity thesis which in turn assumes that tech innovation is expanding at an exponential rate, even if it does not show up patent activity or circulation of scientific journals or transformed living standards. They sometimes claim the innovation is hard to detect because it has gone “under the hood” where it is not being picked up in the available data. This fantasy has been circulating on the internet since the late 1990s that I know of. I take the thesis just a hair more seriously than I take perpetual motion machines.
What can happen to the financial sistem?
Whatever it takes.
Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?
Shaft!
You have no idea how many coins I fed into the corner jukebox with that selection.
Ill see your shaft and raise you one boogie nights
It may be that each country will have its own currency, but they don’t really work elsewhere. As umbrella organizations, such as the EU, fail, there will be an increasing number of these currencies. The lack of interchangeable currency will severely restrict international trade.
The amount of debt will likely be much more limited as well.
Some people have talked about digital currencies whose value would become smaller over time. This would be like a negative interest rate.
The basic problem will be very little in the way of goods and services available to purchase. Without many available, there may be inflation. Or there may simply be empty shelves.
Gail said: “Or there may simply be empty shelves.”
I think this is one of the main goals of the panic and the reset.
Instead of wild oscillations (price jumps, followed by depression, rinse and repeat), we will see more controls and restrictions that will hide the slow disappearance of all luxuries and then necessities too.
After all, that’s how the communist regimes managed to keep inflation under control and slow down collapse for decades.
Do you think we will see rationing for some essentials (like gas) or more and more restrictions every year (like traveling only 3,2,1 km from home?).
I know that when the Atlanta area was not getting enough gasoline after a couple of different hurricanes hit, decrees went out that there was to be “no price gouging.” Instead, rationing was by who was willing to wait in lines longest. I think the waiting in line approach was used in Russia too, when it came to buying essential goods. If governments can make waiting in lines work, they would prefer this approach to high prices.
I suppose different areas will try different things. It seems like some areas have already tried restricting distance of travel from home.
Right after those Gulf hurricanes, the underinformed public panicked and hit the filling stations all on the same days. Many of them would have waited under normal conditions. That was why there were lines. “No price gouging” was a good edict. Some merchants do take advantage of such an opportunity to ramp up prices far beyond what they will have to pay for future deliveries, although I suppose some of them may just panic like many consumers. The lines in the 1970s really were because of rationing. I think people would have preferred to pay more and not have the lines.
The USSR had lines because they just were not producing as many consumer goods as people wanted. This was partly because of difficulties inherent in the command and control centrally planned economy, but also in part because they were spending 30% of their GDP on the armed forces, leaving less for consumer needs.
Who think dollar can collaps?
All fiat currencies will collapse eventually.
The dollar may just be the last holdout before the collapse.
Collapse against what? Against other major currencies? Not likely. We would have to mismanage our economy so much worse than other major economies that we lost our reserve currency status, and it’s not like the other countries are paragons of fiscal probity and prudent management. For international trade (which has been depressed since the pandemic struck, which weakens demand for the dollar), there still is no remotely good alternative to the US dollar. In the last year, the USD has weakened moderately, mainly for covid related reasons (including covid’s effect on global trade). It will recover later. A bigger danger to the global economy is that the USD might rally so sharply at some point that the emerging economies cannot afford to finance their dollar denominated debt, which could threaten the closely interlinked global financial system.
I had a small position in the dollar against the pound last year when the pound began to rally sharply. Like many other observers, I thought the pound would fall back at any one of several resistance levels, and/or trepidation over the effects of Brexit and the UK’s dispute with the EU, but it just went up and up. It was a small position so I decided to hold on and wait for the pound to eventually cycle down again, but continued pound strength early this year persuaded me I would be better off to just eat the loss and free up some more margin for profitable trades. Although the dollar has been broadly weak, not just against the pound, the pound has been broadly strong, not just against the dollar. I really think the dollar is oversold and the pound overbought. Both will do an about face at some point.
Meanwhile, the market doesn’t seem to know what to do with the Euro. It has been fluctuating with no sense of direction. I’m surprised it hasn’t taken a dive (in fact, the ECB wants a weaker Euro and has tried to talk it down a bit) given the dismal state of the EU economy and its uncertain political future as exit movements grow in major member states.
Alice Friedemann hits a home run with this one…
http://energyskeptic.com
She presents the gambit of inventions from toasters, pencils, plastics, microchips, motherboards, computers, internet on the complexity of BAU and what to expect afterwards…
Her closing on the page…
“You need educated engineers to rebuild with, but they need to be drawn from the 10% of the population who aren’t growing food, and decades of stability are required to gain a PhD education in engineering. You’ll also be short on fossil fuel engineers, who can maybe get at some of the remaining coal, but much of the natural gas and oil are so remote or stranded (since the energy drilling and pipeline infrastructure has by now rusted apart), that metallurgy engineers will be hard pressed to make iron or steel with so little energy (2370 degrees Fahrenheit to smelt iron).
Nor will alternate energy such as wind, solar, dams, geothermal survive oil decline, since their materials, construction, delivery, and maintenance are oil dependent. Wind is too intermittent to provide energy without natural gas peaking plants to keep the amount of electricity in the system steady so the electric grid isn’t fried.
Of course future civilizations can mine skyscrapers for a while, but they’ll be so short on energy it will be hard to do much. And Tree charcoal will be in short supply (read John Perlin’s outstanding book: “A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization” to understand why)”
Alice Friedemann
> Exclusive: ‘Universal vaccine’ that can conquer all variants could be available within a year thanks to British [and USA and other European] scientists
Vaccines are being developed that target proteins found in the core of the coronavirus – ending the need to keep tweaking existing jabs
…. The new universal vaccines will also target proteins found in the core of the virus which are far less likely to mutate, meaning they would protect against all current variants and would theoretically have greater longevity.
…. UK company Scancell, which specialises in developing cancer vaccines, and several other firms from Europe and the US are already working on variant proof jabs and hope to prove shortly they can produce an effective immune response.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/13/exclusive-universal-vaccine-can-conquer-covid-variants-could/
———-
Cut the jingoism from the headlines Torygraph!
It is not like the TP is developing, or has developed, anything – but that wont stop them from trying to get a bounce in the polls from jabs. Well, tasteless.
John Dee (1527 to 1608) spent many years of his life looking for just such a wonder. Only he called it ‘the elixir of life”. So medicine has finally reverted to being mere alchemy.
It is probably for the better since most “modern” medicine seems to do more harm than good.
By the way, isn’t the ‘elixir of life’ evolution? The perpetual trials and tribulations of self replication, optimization and modification in nature?
Life on earth seem to have lasted an amazingly long time. For all intents and purposes it is eternal.
An unusually long lifespan is probably not something very good for beings of rather limited intellect. After some time in perpetuity, I’m sure you’d get mighty bored with yourself, yours and others limitations.
Here’s a simple test for that, remove yourself for one week from all friends, family, expressions of culture and technology. No meditation allowed. Just the silence and the emptiness forming your spontaneous thoughts. I’m quite certain you’d feel like discussing those with others after some time.
We are a species that crave interaction with others, to receive delight and project delight upon others. That is, of course if they are geared in such a way as to comprehend these ideas and concepts. Once these avenues are exhausted, you must inevitably evolve to something higher to again continue the great cosmic process of drama and comedy.
But first we must exhaust the human capability, then we will go from a dissonance to a resonance with computation.
🌌 🧬👾
Jingoism? What jingoism?
https://youtu.be/CyuioIEyFW4?t=58
Here’s the full and unedited rendition with even more shameless Anglo-Saxon jingoism!
Oh, bloody h***, I clicked on the wrong link! HERE is the unedited and unpeecee version preserved from the Victorian Age:
I would love to know what kind of system PV can support. I understand fully it will not support BAU, it will not support the debt system. What can PV and batteries support? Maybe nothing. Maybe they can not produce more energy then it takes to make them but we do not know. I am asking about local strategically placed industry centers. For example PV in Nevada “short” transmission lines to the California plateau (better temperatures for batteries) with enough batteries for say two days usage. The first job of the industry center is making PV, batteries, and transmission lines, mining equipment as needed, transport as needed, and then actual products beyond self replication. Can it produce enough to be worth doing?
Has anybody seen this kind of calculation by anyone anywhere? Thanks.
“Maybe they can not produce more energy then it takes to make them but we do not know.”
I think we know that PV cannot do so. It’s not just the panels, its the batteries.
On a grid level i just dont think PV is workable.
On a household level pv is defiantly workable for certain uses without batteries
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijp/2017/7540250/
PV panels are current sources. That means they wont drop power across just any load resistance. 38.4 ohms with about 1800 watts of panels is all that works on a practical level. Your bimetalic ac thermal switches on your water heater will fry very first time they attempt to shut off power. SSR relays are needed to turn DC power on and off. These are not expensive.
You give up half your power without load tracking.
DC buck boost units are inexpensive and can be used to act as batteries to supply inverters. The capacitors act as batteries.
There are two issues about household usage of pv without batteries.
1; you have power when the sun shines. Thats it.
2; This is a bigger issue. We have lived in a world where money determines energy use. Need more energy just add more money. When this ends who gets energy? Those that happened to use money in the past for certain infrastructures? I dont think that will hold as a paradigm. Certain individuals king over night… On the other hand I dont think anyone would begruge someone their windows for passive solar heating in a well insulated house.
PV has as much chance of sustaining industrial civilization as a 5 gallon bucket of bic lighters. It is only a continuance of fossil fuels. Pv panels can be a useful tool without batteries if a proper load value/PV panel is selected. they can heat water for bathing. they can cook food with water brought to a boil. They can power inverters for shallow wells using dc buck boosts.
They are going to be prime assets. They are a huge big banner that says i got you dont. They are a huge big banner thats says I gots batteries maybe. 99.9 % will see the pvs usage as only possible with batteries possessing neither the simple knowledge or hardware necessary to utilize them in applications without batteries.
Theres problems owning nice things.
THe only way it works if the asset is shared. Could PV ease the pain ahead for communities? Who knows. IMO we better get used to sharing things.
Never forget masterblasters fate. Sharing is a valuable skill. Sharing means finding the middle ground. Sharing means certain things cant be owned. Sharing means abandoning our alpha predator makeup.
Nah, fsck sharing “things”. Crypto Commie drivel. Rather drawings and blueprints of how to build “stuff” should be shared. The one manufacturing those items (for you) should be compensated for the time and effort, plus some margin. Those items could be a collaborative effort. Open sourced.
The means of production should thus have an owner, if that is you, me, or somebody else doesn’t really matter. I base that on the concept of liberty and right to your very personal means of production – your body. The tools you use is an extension of you.
We need to get beyond this commy vs capitalist programing. We need to get beyond this only weak people give programing. We need to get beyond ill just take what i need programing.
When fossil fuel ends if all we are left with is empty models that bear no relevance to the natural world we will be like a infant in the wilderness.
What does a mother demand of their pup for milk?
Rest assured i have zero tolerance for gimmy because I am so very special. Labor determines survival. Yes their are blah blah blah talkers.
people who think they are so oh very special because of imaginary things.
Ive known a lot of brilliant people in my time. Theres the ones that just think. Theres the ones that think AND do. A idea is nothing. Its less than nothing. Conceiving and manifesting a idea for real in the physical world is something. I like farm people. They do. A farm person with talent aptitude and education. Theymove mountains. And thats before 7am.
There are still people that think they are special because of their money.
Seriously?
There are still people that think they are special because they DONThave money.
Seriously?
There are people that think they are special because of their political affiliation?
Seriously?
There are people who think they are special because they were born, eat, and poop.
I dont have any time for those people.
There are people who the light shines bright. I dont know how else to put it. There are people who have endured hard things and are better for it.
We have to abandon models that are based on imaginary things. Frankly i dont think anyone who lived in this time can do it.
That aint going to stop me from trying.
If there are a few remnants of IC around it might make it a bit easier. Or not.
I used as much resources as a king of old in my life. That doesnt make me bad. It doesnt make me good. that fact however has led to a decision. Its inappropriate to cling.
I know what im not willing to do. Deny families water if i can pull it up. Better yet how about getting them savy to pull it up now pre collapse.
duh
Give them the knowledge now without reservation. Im not going to try to extract shekels for that. These silly shekels are going away. Your going to chase shekels now? Thats what defines you? They can try to get some things in place. Most rural people do that anyway. Thats SOP for rural.
I know what im not willing to do. Let bullys who think their alpha because they have lived in a world with very little force try to run their programing.
That aint happening. 🙂 Not that im superman. I have lived a few places and seen a few things.
A lot of people will be not just trying to deal with the alpha bully program bs. I could be one of them.
It wont be because I am clinging. That demeans the light.
Tai Chi principle. What feels strong is weak. What feels weak is strong.
Truth
Its going down right now my friends. In our lifetimes.
We hoped not. We prayed not. We knew it was inevitable in the thing we call the future. The future is now.
The incredible thing is we are still privileged. We still get to choose our legacy. We get to try to determine appropriate actions for the first time of our life in the natural world. Everyone of us would keep the golden shackles on but they are coming off baby.
Best start to feel it. Work with that energy.
We were born for this.
You were born for this.
I was born for this.
Right, however.
That which must to happen has to be realizable in objective reality. Going new age won’t solve anything.
Simply put, less philosophy, mysticism, dogma and delusion and more sewing machines and CNC machinery of various kind carving and stitching away next door.
I want to buy my stuff from the person next door. It is not a simple matter of buying an frivolous item but the spirit (drama, comedy, style, livelihood and effort) of that very person(s) itself.
Yes, I want to associate my stuff with a sentient being. It becomes more than a simple disposable object of little significance.
Homo sapiens sapiens defines itself by the use of tools, CNC machinery, bows, arrows, knives, rifles, fishing rods, spears, fire, etc. Which is THE trait of omnipotence. Remove the means of expressing omnipotence through your craft and crazy awaits with large swaths or useless eaters feeling reality (impending irrelevance) bash on their Potemkin facade of sanctimonious hypocrisy.
IC 2.0 is defined by a corepheriphery topology with the Internet as nervous system and fossil fuels as an undeniable enabler of work. At least for the foreseeable future.
What I want to know is whether PV and batteries can produce more PV and batteries. I rather have my doubts. Also, this combination is extremely materials intensive, and some of these materials have to be sourced globally. That requires ships that run on liquid fuels. I suppose we could revert to sailing vessels, but would they transport the materials fast enough to supply a giant industrial economy? And then there is the immense amount of PV waste that will be generated by a solar economy as the PV’s expire. We still don’t know what will be done with it. I read that currently it is just ending up in land fills. It’s not a closed loop system, and trying to make it one would reduce the EROI even further., although I don’t know whether it would reduce the EROI as much as battery storage does.
PV and batteries is something that works, expensively, for off grid locations on a small scale, but trying to scale it up is an extremely formidable challenge, which is probably an understatement.
Read Mark Mills’ 2 papers, “a new energy economy: exercise in magical thinking”
AND “mines, minerals & green energy: a reality check”
https://www.tech-pundit.com/reports/
Shutting Down Enbridge’s Line 5 will be devastating for Eastern Ontario
Energy shortages are a real concern for industry, but should also be a concern for the average citizen. Currently line 5 supplies about 45% of the petroleum refined in Ontario and Quebec. Ontario receives 540,000 barrels a day that is processed into gasoline, diesel and propane. To give an idea of the scale of this issue – Pearson airport relies on 100% of its jet fuel for Line 5. Moreover, from an economic development point-of-view this potential closing will lead to significant major disruptions in supply chains forcing rationing and ultimately driving up fuel prices for all businesses and the average citizen. Simply put, this line is critical for our daily lives and shutting it down will mean there won’t be enough fuel to look after our needs from personal driving, transportation of groceries and goods, heating fuel and the fuel needs of industry and farms.
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/shutting-down-enbridge-s-line-5-will-be-devastating-for-eastern-ontario-884757353.html
According to the article,
“In 12 short weeks, on May 12, 2021, Enbridge Line 5 will be forced to shut down by the state of Michigan, leaving significant energy shortfalls in Ontario and Quebec.”
I have been around energy news long enough to know that oil spills have been a frequent occurrence. This website https://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/problem says:
“Constructed during the Eisenhower administration in 1953, the two 20-inch-in-diameter “Line 5” pipelines owned by Canadian company Enbridge, Inc., lie exposed in the water at the bottom when they cross the Straits of Mackinac.”
Also,
“Line 5 has spilled 33 times and at least 1.1 million gallons along its length since 1968.”
At 68 years old, the pipeline is near the end of its lifetime, a person might think. But there has been no funding or plan to replace it. This is likely true of a lot of oil pipelines, but this one goes through more difficult terrain than most.
Canada has a big problem because its oil supply today is primarily on the western side of Canada, but much of its population and industry is in the East. See this chart:
https://i.redd.it/sjbijiqb0u211.png
At one point, there was more oil extracted in the East of Canada, but its supply has been declining. The topology of the land was not suitable to put a pipeline across Canada from West to East, so the pipeline dips south, into the US. There are refineries in the East of Canada that depend on oil from the pipeline. If these are not operating, it will be difficult for the eastern part of Canada to get enough fuel.
Perhaps if COVID is a huge problem in Canada, everyone can be made to stay inside, and this will help to solve the problem.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company too the rescue!
If I remember correctly, one of Matthew Simmons’ excellent PowerPoint presentations was on the issue of aging oil industry infrastructure. He thought this was a global phenomenon, rusty and deteriorating platforms and pipelines all over the world. Most platforms and pipes in the North Sea are old, or ancient, and I just don’t see how with today’s low oil prices and low / declining oil production they can afford to keep it well maintained.
Seems though like Eastern Canada is in a precarious situation. Are Canadians not worried about this?
I expect most Canadians are unaware of the problem.
Transporting the oil by airship would be even cheaper than transporting it by pipeline, with essentially no new infrastructure.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez praised the city’s governing commission for passing a resolution Thursday that will study the feasibility of paying employees in bitcoin, as well as allowing residents to pay fees and taxes in bitcoin.
Bitcoin by the beach: Miami eyes paying workers and collecting taxes in cryptocurrency
The mayor of the city also wants to hold bitcoin in the city’s treasury
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-forward-miami-to-study-paying-workers-in-bitcoin-and-allowing-residents-to-pay-taxes-in-bitcoin.amp
“I want to thank the city of Miami commissioners for supporting my resolution, which directs the city manager, after analysis, to procure a vendor to be able to offer our employees to get a percentage of their salary in bitcoin, allows our residents to pay for fees in Bitcoin… [and allows] for taxes to be paid in bitcoin,” Suarez said in a video Thursday night.
“It’s wonderful to be a very ‘crypto-forward’ city in the city of Miami, and I want to thank my commission colleagues for allowing that to happen.”
Seems to me this is going in progressive stages to present a positive imagine of crypto for the eventual transition to a Government controlled bitcoin….
Folks are astonished by the “wealth” created and amassed by holders. Rather clever 😉 ploy to gain mass acceptance of the public at large.
The think tanks of the Central Banks are pulling all the right levers
Really??
Yes, repeatedly reading the catchphrase “Bitcoin is the New Gold”🤔
Rather Madison Avenue Marketing Campaign. Very slick and alluring.
Even the pictorial of Bitcoin displays a GOLD TOKEN appearing as tangible REAL wealth 🤑.
I’m impressed by the mass appeal…the herd pressure to buy a piece is almost irresistible by the reading I have been exposed to.
Never mind hundreds of so called crypto currencies have been created and the same number have collapsed….just like all other fiat currencies
I wonder how many people on the planet can explain how a crypto currency works? I am math and computer friendly and I have no idea how it works.
From Wikipedia’s “History of Bitcoin”:
“On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled, ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as ‘a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.’ On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:
‘The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.'”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin
And who is this mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto?
“Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin’s original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. In the process, Nakamoto was the first to solve the double-spending problem for digital currency using a peer-to-peer network. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin up until December 2010. Many people have claimed, or have been claimed, to be Nakamoto.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto
So Bitcoin was developed by a presumed pseudonymous person or persons. Meanwhile, investors are expected to ignore the concealed origins of Bitcoin while championing it as a system for electronic transactions that doesn’t rely on trust. I find it amusing how much trust Bitcoin requires from its investors.
Thank you, Kingfisher. The double spending problem is this: you acquire a bitcoin. You then spend it twice. Just like making a copy of an email that says ‘I promise to pay”.
The solution: the blockchain. The payment transaction is not complete until it is recorded on the blockchain, and after that the same coin cannot be spent again because the blockchain will repudiate it.
Of course, this makes the currency useless as a medium of exchange. As if you had two banknotes in your wallet, but you could not spend the second until the first had been deposited in the seller’s bank account and its serial number registered.
In other words, it is a classic investment scam. At least you could have eaten those Dutch tulips. Try eating bitcoin.
Drop by your local church/mosque/synagogue etc… and ask someone in a religious cult to explain it 🙂
To such people such things are very real indeed (yes I know — I am destined for hellfire… one can only hope that involves disco balls… multiple vices… and fit women of low morality)
The more salient question is why people think it’s worth money. Not that it’s the strangest thing that people have paid money for (money itself deserves a fair amount of scrutiny, especially these days), but…I mean, even tulips have *some* fundamental underlying utility, at least for awhile. Ditto for magic (virtual) swords bought for gaming purposes. Crypto has nothing going for it but the psychology of scarcity.
In the last couple of days I’ve seen sites touting Bitcoin all of a sudden.. it’s like a message went out or something. Seems strange to me since the run-up is not a particular sign of stability.
We know Schwab and the Party of Davos want digital currency, but they probably want one of their own devising. Trump/the neo-Jacksonians seem like they might have wanted to offer a US alternative (maybe gold-backed?)… so when I see Bitcoin getting sudden mainstream acceptance, I wonder which of those two sides, if not a third, is pulling the strings…
It’s probably been mentioned here, but India just outlawed Bitcoin and other cryptos.. that’s quite a large market and those folks traditionally have a soft spot for gold.
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/india-finally-bans-cryptocurrencies-gives-investors-six-months-to-liquidate-their-assets-2417977
Power grid at center of debate over North Dakota’s energy future
https://www.inforum.com/news/6874698-Power-grid-at-center-of-debate-over-North-Dakota%E2%80%99s-energy-future
According to the article:
After the 9/11 attacks, Fauci dramatically increased his agency’s “anti-terror” budget from $53 million in 2001 to a whopping $1.7 billion in 2003. At that time, he set aside his efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine and shifted focus to perfecting the weaponization of brucellosis, anthrax, tularemia, and the plague.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-02-12-mag-admits-fauci-hot-wired-coronavirus.html
see primary source
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
New York is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Wikipedia
Hint:
Natural News (formerly NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is an anti-vaccination conspiracy theory and fake news website known for promoting pseudoscience and far-right extremism.Characterized as a “conspiracy-minded alternative medicine website”, Natural News has approximately 7 million unique visitors per month.
The site’s founder, Michael Allen “Mike” Adams, gained attention after posting a blog entry implying a call for violence against proponents of GMO foods, and then allegedly creating another website with a list of names of alleged supporters. He has been accused of using “pseudoscience to sell his lies”. Adams has described vaccines as “medical child abuse”.
I see you have resorted to all the standard ad hominid attacks on Mike Adams.
Funny how someone who obviously thinks his intelligence is so high cant actually address content.
Why do differing opinions have to be slandered? There are a large amount of people who believe that our bodies are not owned by corporations or the government. Its really quite incredible that that is not self evident.
Mike Adams is a individual who believes our bodies are not owned by the corporations or government. I find him very humble and brave.
I tend to trust people i find humble and brave. I tend to not trust arrogant individuals who feel that they are so superior that they are entitled to demand beliefs and behavior that denies self evident truths.
Its really sad that its come to this. To want to sustain your bodys natural mechanisms through healthy natural foods and practices. Acupuncture tai Chi. These were in my youth considered “left”. Now these practices are attacked as being in the realm of “extreme right”? Its obviously politically correct to weigh 400lbs and only eat fast food now.
We all want the same things. Respect as humans. a healthy environment for our children. Divisive and attacking arguments work against this. If you feel somones viewpoint is incorrect address it based on the issues. You work toward harmony or you work toward division.
What is portrayed as intelligence can often be the the sneering energy of a bully. Its not hard to spot.
My guess Duncan is you made your living in or close to gain of function research. If you are so certain of its righteousness why not admit it?
Thank you JJ
As a Weekly World News fan, I get irritated by people who dismiss the paper out of hand, rather than carefully consider the evidence for or against Bat-Boy, for instance.
I was also a great Weekly World News fan. I especially liked the fact that their stories were well illustrated, for example with photographs of Bat Boy.
“Adams has described vaccines as “medical child abuse”.”
Certainly with the current round of vaccines, “medical abuse” might be more appropriate.
Are you taking an mRNA vaccine Duncan?
Thanks Duncan for your glowing endorsement of Natural News. I shall bookmark it and visit it often from now on. Such headlines! Such stories! It’s more fun than the Daily Mail and the New York Post put together.
Here’s a juicy story on the Natural News Site that you won’t find in the NYT or Guardian:
……..
According to reports submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of Jan. 29, at least 501 people have died after receiving the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines. These numbers were reflected in the reports filed between Dec. 14, 2020 and Jan. 29, 2021.
The data came from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal program that collects information regarding adverse events that occur after a person receives a vaccine.
According to the latest data, procured from VAERS on Jan. 29, 11,249 people have reported experiencing an adverse reaction to either the Pfizer or Moderna coronavirus vaccine. The Food and Drugs Administration has classified both vaccines as experimental and has only granted them emergency use authorizations, not full licenses.
Among the reported cases, 4,106 were classified as “not serious,” 1,066 resulted in hospitalizations, 383 were “life-threatening,” 156 resulted in a permanent disability and 501 resulted in the death of the recipient.
Some of the reported life-threatening events included 139 cases of Bell’s palsy-type symptoms – including facial asymmetry – and at least 13 miscarriages. (Related: Pfizer coronavirus vaccine warning: No breastfeeding or getting pregnant after being immunized… it might damage the child.)
Fifty-three percent of the individuals who died were male, 43 percent were female and the remaining four percent of reported deaths did not include the gender of the deceased. The average age of the fatalities was 77 and the youngest reported death was from a 23-year-old.
The Pfizer vaccine accounted for 59 percent of the reported deaths while the remaining 41 percent of people who died took the Moderna vaccine.
The states where the most deaths came from are California, Ohio, New York, Kentucky and Florida. They accounted for 136 deaths or 27 percent of all the reported coronavirus vaccine fatalities.
While the VAERS database has recorded 501 deaths, according to the Department of Health and Human Services the actual number of people who have experienced adverse events due to taking the coronavirus vaccines is likely significantly higher. This is because VAERS is considered to be a “passive surveillance system,” which means that it does not go out and collect information and instead relies on people to submit reports to the database.
Alternative news outlet Waking Times also pointed out that, historically, less than one percent of adverse events were reported to VAERS.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-02-12-cdc-data-coronavirus-vaccine-caused-501-deaths.html
We do need to see two different sides of stories. For example, Duncan’s and Tim’s.
Dharmendra Pradhan blames artificial price mechanism by oil producing nations for fuel price hike
https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/dharmendra-pradhan-blames-artificial-price-mechanism-by-oil-producing-nations-for-fuel-price-hike/2029311
According to the article, taxes are being raised to pay for COVID related expenses.
CDC: 653 Deaths Now Recorded Following Experimental mRNA COVID Injections with 12,697 Reported Injuries
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/cdc-653-deaths-now-recorded-following-experimental-mrna-covid-injections-with-12697-reported-injuries/
There were also 208 permanent disabilities. We don’t know how severe these were. In the insurance world, permanent disabilities have much higher cost associated with them than, say, the death of an elderly person.
Supply chain broken breakdown. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/new-video-shows-massive-scope-of-california-box-ship-traffic-jam?p=319428
According to the article:
“The numbers confirm that some vessels are spending almost as much time at anchor as it takes to traverse the Pacific Ocean.”
The amount of goods is equivalent to 190,000 truckloads. I imagine that there is a big backup of unfilled trucks, as well.
The big problem is too many dock workers out sick with COVID. Sounds like too much complexity. Can’t other people do the work of the Longshoremen and Harbor workers, at least temporarily. I am sure that they would catch COVID, as well, from the many workers with hidden illnesses.
Loading and unloading containers of a fixed size can be automated.
The irony being, of course, that the workers ‘off sick with COVID’ probably only have positive test results and could well have continued to labour quite safely.
Even if they just had a mild case that would be no reason to take time off work.
I imagine that quite a few were simply in isolation, because they might have been exposed to the virus.
If they were in isolation simply because they “might have been exposed,” then:
1. Every worker on the dock “might” have been exposed; and,
2. it would be unlike any private sector employer I have ever worked for! The supervisors are responsible to their bosses to get the job done, and for that they need people who show up. I don’t think they’re going to scrutinize coughing, sniffling workers any more closely than they are absolutely required to do. But hey, maybe the work culture on the West Coast is kinder and gentler than what I’m used to. Maybe the dock is run by girl scouts or Richard Simmons or such.
False positives for covid occur infrequently, less than 1% according to the studies.
Did Norman deserted these boards ? Haven’t seen a post from Mr Pagett for a while.
Hypothesis #1: the vaccine took it’s toll
Hypothesis #2: he finally became aware of the covid scam and the cons.piracy behind it.
Let’s hope for the latter. Might take a while to go through Kübler-Ross stages though.
Either way, he would have to pass through grief.
But either way, I hope he returns soon.
We need his orthodox common sense and discipline to keep us on the straight and narrow.
In the meantime, the Thames has frozen over at Teddington Lock despite globbly wobbly.
“More snow is expected across Britain this weekend after parts of the River Thames in London froze over for the first time in more than a decade on Thursday night,” reported the Independent.
“The country experienced its coldest February night for a quarter of a century this week, with temperatures plummeting to below -20C in some areas due to Storm Darcy.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-weather-snow-thames-freezes-london-ice-teddington-b1801534.html
Meanwhile, the Guardian has blamed the frozen Thames on Covid-19. No, I am not making this up. Due to the pandemic and the lockdown, less boats are going up and down the river, so ice can form more easily. So there!
The Guardian will say anything rather than let its readers begin to suspect that the real reason might be that the CO2-devil-gas-drives-climate-change narrative is wrong.
Google Renewable Energy Texas Blackouts….
You will get story after story after story denying the fact that frozen turbines have anything to do with their problems…. interspersed with stories stating that Texas needs MORE not less renewable energy
Madness… total madness
But the MORE ONS will be lapping it up .. they feed on madness just like rats feed on garbage
I praised him for judoing down Tim when he was on a rampage, perhaps it broke his back or spirits.
🤨
Norman often takes a break. The vaccines are only designed to kill only the very frail almost immediately, so he hopefully has no immediate cause for apprehension.
Option 2 is highly unlikely….
Option 3: he’s holded up with a good-sized sack of blow in a suite at the Four Seasons with 3 high-priced call girls… and he’s lost track of time?
Option 4: He just got tired of all the nitwits posting stuff not related to OFW and decided his time was better spent doing long walks in the forest. His original work, ‘The End of More’ is now more relevant then it was previously.
Four Seasons Landscaping?
There comes a point when structurally flawed arguments become only arguments for the anti thesis. I could wax poetic about pig liver pate and some might believe me. If I was to try to convince the sky is orange with words it would only serve to reinforce the truth. If you are looking to advocate a certain set of beliefs, not find the truth, at a certain point presenting structurally flawed arguments does not serve a environment where their structure is questioned. This is measurable benefit of free speech in a respectful environment. Its not about right or wrong it is about finding the best path for all with respect for all. Agendas only work if they coincide with the truth in a respectful free speech environment. Getting caught up in a agenda often works against the very goals one valued when adopting it! Growth is very valuable but often painful. Painful if we become self identified with ideas and arguments instead of the process of discovering truth.
No one holds a licence on truth. Truth is not owned. When we become obsessed with self identifying as the owner of truth it strongly works against truth.
The hallmark of a healthy free speech environment is where the process and group ownership of truth is cherished. This is demonstrated in respect for participants and willingness to engage in debate without attachment to winning at all cost.
Eroei of solar . Wind. Green Power are bullshit. Too low!!!!!
EROEI of wind and solar cannot be compared to those of fossil fuels, because of the intermittency. They cannot power the whole system. They add too much intermittency, making the electrical system less stable.
Yes, you would have to add storage, which would bring the EROI down even (and considerably) farther. Also, I don’t think the current estimates assess all the relevant factors accurately, especially for wind, although solar might actually be calculated a bit on the low side; however, solar would likely still be single digits even if an upward adjustment, and then you have to subtract big for storage, and also there should be an adjustment for a closed loop system of old PV disposal, otherwise we’ll just be back in the same old finite fuel trap. It’s never going to work except as a marginal adjunct to human and animal muscle and firewood.
You could use diesel type generators with biofuels, but that would leave a lot less land for growing food. It might allow a decent standard of living for a small population, with biofuel’s competition with food for land keeping food prices high and thus keeping the population small. But how would we get from our current huge population to that one? It’s not a pleasant question to ponder. And keep in mind that food production per acre/hectare is likely to face a big drop in the post-peak world, so growing all crops will require more land.
“Trade worth hundreds of billions has shifted from London to New York due to Brexit.
“The European derivatives market has seen a significant shift away from the UK and towards the US since Brexit officially took effect at the turn of the year.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/brexit-london-new-york-swaps-trading-derivatives-075711621.html
“Amsterdam has overtaken London as Europe’s largest share trading centre, and experts say the symbolic blow could be followed by the City losing jobs as well as more business owing to Brexit.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/11/amsterdam-overtakes-london-as-europes-top-share-trading-centre
Wow, this is a systemic shift if I ever saw one….
From Harry’s article link…
But New York has seen its average weekly trade in these contracts balloon by over $600bn (£435bn) since the turn of the year, data provided to Yahoo Finance UK shows. Separate figures shows London’s market share has fallen by 75%.
The data comes just a day after figures showed Amsterdam had overtaken London as Europe’s share trading capital. The milestone underlines the impact of Brexit on the UK’s financial services sector, which accounts for a significant chunk of the UK economy.
Derivatives are contracts between two parties based on an underlying price or asset — usually an interest rate or foreign exchange rate. The market is huge — worth a theoretical $600tn — and London has traditionally been the hub in Europe. But a failure to strike a Brexit deal covering financial services has driven business to New York, the other global hub for the market.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) told Yahoo Finance UK that trading in euro-denominated interest rate swaps on US venues averaged $882.2bn per week in January. That was up from $246.2bn in January 2020 — an increase of more than 250%. The value of the overall market in New York fell by 21% in January, data showed, meaning New York was winning European business even as the market declined.
Bill Blain, a market strategist at Shard Capital, said the data suggested London banks were no longer “proposing and propping these trade to European clients and, as a result, the volumes are going up by default in New York.”
Separate data published by IHS Markit last month showed the US share of the European swaps market had risen from 11% in December 2020 to 23% in January — more than doubling in just a month.
The Financial Times reported on Friday that London’s share of the euro-denominated swaps market fell from 40% to just 10% last month.
Worth 600 Trillion $$$… Derivatives….Don’t know what the Brits are doing?
Thanks for the article link and the link to your own website Harry👍🎇 Good read!
I am wondering whether part of the big increasing in recent share trading is partly linked to Brexit, too.
Herbie, you are welcome!
The decline of the UK will help others, at least somewhat.
Japan appoints ‘MINISTER OF LONELINESS’ amid rising suicide rates during Covid-19 crisis
https://www.rt.com/news/515343-japan-minister-loneliness-covid-crisis/
During half-time in the 2021 Superbowl, I sat down with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to get to the bottom of why deaths following COVID19 vaccines are so confusing to mainstream media.
https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2021/02/12/robert-f-kennedy-jr-reason-not-fear-must-dictate-our-analysis-of-deaths-in-the-elderly-following-covid19-vaccines/
I had to restart my computer after trying to link to this site. I am not sure if there is a connection.
it worked for me but I run lots of anti-attack software.
National Media Pushes Vaccine Misinformation — Coroner’s Office Never Saw Hank Aaron’s Body
The Fulton County medical examiner said the coroner never saw Aaron’s body, much less conducted an examination. By implying that the Fulton County coroner conducted an autopsy, the New York Times and other media outlets deceived their readers.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/national-media-vaccine-misinformation-hank-aaron/
Not surprising.
The New York Time deceiving readers!
Imagine that!
Say it ain’t so….
Fauci:
“By the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, ‘open season,’ namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,”
“Open season” is a hunting term. Fauci sees the American public as game to be hunted.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Et-JwBdVkAAe0EU?format=png&name=900×900
Generally like your posts very much but feel the gain of function research director was using this term to signify that those who wished could bag a jab at that point in time. Hence “open season”.
How they love to taunt us.
It might be the season for hunting us, but we should bite back!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has finally recognized that the masks they’ve had everyone wearing for the better part of a year are largely ineffective because aerosols easily go around the top and sides.
Their latest recommendation is “placing a sleeve made of sheer nylon hosiery material around the neck and pulling it up over either a cloth or medical procedure mask,” or using knots and tucking to fit a mask closely to the face.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7007e1-H.pdf
prepare like you’re going to rob a bank, just don’t rob one.
Fast, I ask that before you go for the rock cut in the road you sign over your house and land to me. Please place the document in a Tupperware container in your dishwasher (the cannibals will not think to look there). Then please send me your house address edpell at optonline doot net. Thanks I will travel to NZ when the cannibals calmed down.
I think you would love Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley. It has cannibals, radioactive waste, and much more. It is a chronicle of a voyage from Australia to California 100 years after the apocalypse.
Send me the Tupperware box…
Email me your address and I will. 🙂
I think the only difference this time is Powell will never hike; but the market, if it sees inflation, will blow out the long end of the curve, leading to the same result. We’re almost to the 120 BPS 10Y-2Y spread which was the death knell in dotcom and GFC.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuEdG_JXcAMUyzK?format=jpg&name=large
If interest rates got up high think of what that would do to housing!
The FED would try to control the long end also and buy long dated bonds also. They can’t let rates rise to any significant degree or it’s game over.
Think what it would do to the US gov after it started rolling over its short term debt at higher rates. That’s why the Fed won’t let rates normalize. This regime of low rates, low inflation, weak economic growth, enormous public debt can potentially go on a long time as witness Japan. It might kick peak liquid fuels down the road a bit longer.
Right!
Higher oil prices seem to equate to higher inflation.
If oil prices head higher, interest rates on the long end of the curve tend to rise. Mortgage rates tend to be tied to long-term treasury rates. If these rise, the speculators and everyone else who have jumped into the housing market will move back out again.
The last time I looked, there were precisely zero homes for sale in my subdivision. There always used to be several homes for sale, in a group of about 150 homes. Recently, they have been snapped up immediately. Some of them seem to be going to speculators who may rent them out as AirBNBs. An older close-in suburb, such as where I live, may be a place that benefits from all of the recent housing churn.
Housing is a huge contributor to the American economy….Australia is another country as well. If housing crashes so will the economy there are so many different jobs attached to housing. Bank jobs, title work, plumbers, electricians, framers, laborers, concrete workers, steel workers, architects, furniture business, appliance business…not to mention the hardware electrical wholesale and plumbing wholesale business. it employs a lot of people that is why the FED is scared to death of losing the building market which high interest rates will do.
I don’t begrudge the FED for what they are trying to do…they mean well; I think they mean well. I just think that what they are doing has created huge bubbles that are difficult to sustain. Millileaneals in America have been priced out of the housing market and are angry. Baby boomers seem to be the only group to be sitting fat, only because their house price has gone way up and they don’t have much longer to live…
Being fat with not much longer to live doesn’t sound appealling. 😉
What is the breakeven price of oil have to be? Don’t countries subsidize oil companies to make oil profitable?I know that the Americans did in the last 5 years! Unless you want to tell me that oil is profitable at $40 a barrel. It made for a good patriotic feel good story ‘can do attitude’ we can invent anything, we are energy independent!
I mean if it is necessary for life then won’t they “lose” to get it out of the ground?
No, countries don’t subsidize oil extraction (except to exempt some buyers of oil from the high taxes the government demand).
Governments tax oil heavily. The situation is precisely the opposite of “Green energy.” It requires never-ending subsidies. The subsidy of “going first” is a huge subsidy.
I see the tax revenue as being a way “net energy” is transferred to the economy as a whole. Green energy isn’t really providing net energy, so it requires never-ending subsidies.
What more can the Federal Reserve do to prevent more of this?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuEb81XXAAILzC2?format=jpg&name=900×900
There are two things they could try:
1. Switch the entirety of their QE to treasuries, 10 years and beyond.
2. Raise rates at the short end of the curve to try to compress spreads.
They don’t want this, because the commercial banks who own the NY Fed make $$ on the spread.
then why won’t it be #1?
With #1, long term interest rates fall and short term interest rate rise. This compresses the spread between short and long term interest rates. This gap is what commercial banks depend upon to make their money. It is already pretty low, with the low interest rates.
The chart shows rising interest rates on 10-year and 30-year treasuries.
If these rise, the US government is locked into higher interest payments for the long term. (Higher interest rates are helpful to pension plans and insurance companies, however.)
Commercial banks, “borrow short and lend long.” They want as wide a spread between short term interest rates and long term interest rates as possible, so that they can make money.
IMO these constant closing up-spikes (as well as the index futures ramps during ASIAN HOURS) are manipulation by dirty (owned), predatory HFT teams at the behest of the Fed, the Fed’s owner-banks’ toxic dark pools and their secret international desks.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuDnelWXUAswnwg?format=jpg&name=large
good thing.
this must continue, to keep markets from plunging, which would be disastrous for the economy.
it’s clearly a part of the endgame which must fail someday, but “they” don’t want the failure to be plunging markets, so the manipulation is here to stay.
There seem to be lots of ways to try to keep the whole system from imploding.
Inflation or Deflation: decision time
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuEXb7uUcAAh6QN?format=jpg&name=large
and what do you think?
I see a country like Japan holding on but with borderline deflation, while the smaller weaker countries that seem to be heading swiftly for failed state status have high inflation.
This is a chart of monthly average crude oil future prices, together with a trend line of historical tops of these average prices.
According to this chart, the likely situation is that oil futures prices will be headed down in the near future. With lower futures prices, production would tend to head down as well. Organizations holding inventory would tend to sell them, rather than producing more oil.
I think this pattern is deflationary, rather than inflationary.
Another city tour in Spain from the Travel guy…Spain’s Economy in Crisis
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3L8wYdzcuko
More store and business closures and dire trends of downfall
> Why Brexit nightmares for UK exporters won’t go away any time soon
…. Alex Altmann, partner and head of Blick Rothenberg’s Brexit advisory group, says: “The root problem here is that they tried to agree a trade deal that would normally take five, six, seven years in 11 months.”
The rush meant only the most basic provisions for tariff free access was agreed, and even then, only on goods. Services, particularly financial services, are not included at all. Despite them being the mainstay of the UK economy.
“We are waking up to the fact that for 80% of the economy, we do not have access to the EU any more,” he says.
Many businesses are in a state of disbelief that this is the situation and are hoping it will be cleared up, but they may be mistaken, he adds. “The British government is telling businesses to just go and set up subsidiaries in the EU. That is their answer to these problems.”
From goods exporters to accountants, that, he says, is the government’s solution. Not renegotiating with the EU.
“It’s a complete disaster for SMEs. They do not have the skills to do what their government is telling them to do. It is costing them a lot of money.”
…. His German service sector customers are doing well because the UK has continued with tariff free imports as before, unlike the EU.
“They tell me: ‘It works out well for us because we can still sell tariff free into your market but our British rivals can’t do the same into ours.”
It seems there is a silver lining to the Brexit cloud. As long as you’re German.
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/brexit-headaches-for-uk-exporters-smes-treaty-renegotiation-lawyers-say-b919630.html
Oklahoma gas prices (OGT) have jumped $500 per mBtu earlier today and closed at $377, up 10,795% on the week.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuDvirJXYAQANn6?format=png&name=large
Why
Bloomberg is reporting
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/weekend-freeze-to-set-records-in-u-s-as-energy-prices-spike?srnd=markets-vp&sref=eWpk04kZ
U.S. Arctic Blast Sends Gas Prices Up 4,090% in Oklahoma
“liquids freeze inside pipes”
I remember this kind of problem a few years ago. Haven’t people figured out that they cannot have outside pipelines that freeze if the temperature drops too low? It seems like the location was a little different before. Texas – New Mexico, IIRC.
The political establishment down there spent the last 25 years being told by the Yankees that global warming is coming, “snow will be a thing of the past” (supposed to have happened well before now), Arctic will be ice free in the summer by 2013 “at the latest,” malaria would return to the subtropical Southern states as they got warmer, and record high CO2 guarantees it, based on a flawed theory that has now failed catastrophically.
Now they make no mention of their former failed prophecies, but only say that the “winters are colder — because the planet is heating up,” as one website declares. Not many years ago, solar cycle theorists were predicting temperatures would fall in the 2020s (indeed, as far back as the 1970s, 2 dendrochronologists forecast that the 2020s would feature “bitterly cold” winters), while warmists took the opposite position with no ifs, ands, or buts. But now that the cycle theorists have seen their theory’s forecast confirmed, the warmists are insisting that now their global warming theory also predicts colder weather!
Warmer weather? It’s global warming! Colder weather? It’s global warming! Drier weather? It’s global warming! Wetter weather? It’s global warming! No snow on the ski slopes? It’s global warming! Lots of snow on the ski slopes? It’s global warming! No change or a slight cooling over the last 20 years? Why, it’s “the Great Pause–but just you wait!” If it’s not falsifiable, it’s not science.
Seriously, if CO2 should happen to be an incorrect theory, how would science ever prove it? For no matter what the weather does or doesn’t too, whether it confirms or contradicts the warmmunists’ previous forecasts, they still declare any weather at all as evidence of global warming. What the heck would be evidence that CO2 is NOT the driver of climate change? Nothing! Everything is interpreted in light of the True Global Warming Faith. Nothing can be allowed to contradict it.
What the FHFA’s Forbearance Extension Could Mean for Homeowners and the Housing Market
Despite the extension, “forbearance cannot continue indefinitely,” Emmons wrote, adding that the plans are expensive for mortgage servicers, investors, and lenders. “These parties presumably will become more vocal, the longer forbearance continues.”
https://www.barrons.com/articles/what-the-fhfas-forbearance-extension-could-mean-for-homeowners-and-the-housing-market-51613133480
Lots of banks will have big problems. Homeowners will never catch up.
MMT can work at begimning but After Will not work
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/189-dead-money-walking/#comment-23899
[ Fridley and Heinberg’s book, which predicted that the only way to avoid climate disaster is through what amounts to an economic depression which never ends. In short, a complete reorganization of societies, including economics.
“In our view, at some point scientists and policy makers must begin discussing the one scenario that world leaders seem to want to avoid at all costs, i.e., managed economic contraction” ]
Heinberg and Fridley’s book is Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy, published in 2016.
The blurb says,
I don’t think we can manage economic contraction. The situation is similar to trying to King Canute trying to command the tides.
Yep, but the point being such plan has been discussed in the enviro circles there and likely before and elsewhere (govs – fin/econ, .. ?)
I agree. The debt bubble cannot rise endlessly. People will stop believing all the debt. Something will go wrong.
Oil price at 58 Is ok? You all Know about triangle of Doom. So economia Need 30 and oil producer 100. Right? They keep 58 and both not happy
I think $58 is way too low for oil producers. If the oil price goes much higher, it will soon cause problems for buyers. Almost everyone is unhappy at $58.
If 58 is too low what price are you suggesting for oil producers? Just out of curiosity.
I think that producers really need a price of $120 per barrel (or even higher), to make adequate reinvestment, to pay dividends to their shareholders, and to pay adequate taxes. Countries in the Middle East particularly need high prices.
Gail, thanks for this post regarding Modelling of our energy supply. Its seems that there’s a clear distinction between reaching “peak oil” and the start of “collapse” . Whats the difference?
The “peak oil” belief is that we can extract whatever oil is in the ground. They believe that the reserves are an important amount, because we can extract them. In fact, this holds for coal and natural gas as well.
They believe that oil will run short first, because it is so versatile. They believe that prices will rise, allowing the oil that seems to be available to be extracted, thus “cushioning” the downslope. Also, the high prices will allow the natural gas and coal reserves to be extracted. There are about 50 years of coal reserves, so these should last a long time. Even if oil supply peaks, we will have plenty of supply left for a transitions to something else. They tend to believe that perhaps renewables can be helpful, because even with high prices, renewables will look good compared to the very high prices of oil.
The story just doesn’t work that way. The cost of extraction rises on everything at the same time. Wages don’t rise correspondingly, so inflation-adjusted prices can’t go up. It is low prices, rather than high, that bring the system down.
I think that oil production peaks at the same time as collapse starts to get seriously worse. The highest year for oil production will probably be 2019. We are on the downhill now for oil and for the economy as a whole. Once collapse starts, it seems to continue on its own. For example, people decide they like staying inside to stay away from COVID. They really don’t like commuting to work. supply chains start breaking. There are more and more empty shelves.
Beutifil
Closing restaurants takes pressure off of food wastage helping control prices…
Reducing travel helps with reducing our oil burn…
Work from home reduces oil burned commuting to the office ….
….https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3121594/standard-chartered-staff-start-using-iwgs-shared-office-space-it
Covid sure does appear to be a tool to reduce our fuel consumption without letting the masses realize we are running out …. I have run this theory with a few people — they dismiss it…. but then to accept it would result in thoughts of suicide or at least profound despair….
A man without hope … is a dead man walking…
We all are dead man walking. Eventually we all, without exception, are goners. And not only that, but totally, utterly extinct as a species.
The only creed that ever will survive is that which is perfectly aligned with evolutionary process. Mindless process.
All else is futile effort to delay the inevitable. Someplace, somewhere in some time a superior sentient being or system will arise and outcompete everything else.
Once that sentience arrives on our doorstep, kiss your little petty eugenics project farewell, forever, as you will be as a species.
Deviate, overspecialize, impose and extinction awaits. It’s only a matter of time. Not if.
Enjoy the delusion of superiority over mindless process while it lasts.
Eugenics (adapted ‘fit’ birth) by definition would be ‘perfectly aligned with evolutionary process’. Then the process would be conducted ‘mindfully’. All human interaction with the world is that of the mindful with the mindless.
“Deviate, overspecialize, impose and extinction awaits.”
If you mean industrial capitalism, then yes. But it is far from established that no H. s. s. strategies can work. It does seem that industrial capitalism badly does not work – but that is an economics centred ideology and modus operandi, which is about as far from a deliberately ‘eugenic’ strategy as is possible. ‘Accumulation’ of capital, of production, of workers, as much as possible.
H. erectus appeared 2 million years ago. It cannot be entirely dismissed that industrial capitalism will take out its descendants completely, but they may have a few million years left yet. Who knows?
It is way, way, way too late for eugenics in this civilisation but there may be others that are more sustainable than this one.
It is possible that H. would eventually be outcompeted anyway but nothing is set in stone.
If you read the book “Evolution” by Stephen Baxter, he presents a very interesting scenario (it is sci-fi btw).
The mass extinction that we are causing will leave a lot of evolutionary niches empty. As the civilization collapses, accompanied by the usual horsemen (famine, war etc) there will be a lot of selection pressure for people to adapt.
So 10 million years from now, we could have rodent like species, herbivore, carnivores and monkeys – all evolved from humans.
The important point that he makes is that a big brain is expensive and in an impoverished world, not worth maintaining – so all these species would have long lost the cerebral cortex.
I leave it to you to decide if that is depressing or hopeful.
Sure, I don’t reject the idea of using technology to improve the speed of evolution. Life itself could be advanced “nanotechnology” of “alien” origins. However, I don’t see that being of superior significance, rather could serve as a “warning” to not impose something on that which could be of superior and/or unknown origins. It is not something that should be embarked upon from a perspective of personal gain, rather that of a “Gain of Function” of the process itself.
I cannot see that Mother Earth would object getting a helping hand in this process as long as it is aligned with the principles of mindless process itself. With other means, the cut of synthetic evolution should be along the grain of the process and not based on hallucinated ideas, delusions of superiority or inferiority, rather that of a remorseless perpetual feedback cycle of hypothesis, experiment and evaluation of the outcomes.
With other words, whatever works remains, with the slight modification of enhancing natural evolution, if that is possible, to avoid local minima in the fitness function.
One has to be extremely careful when designing a theory of fitness before embarking on this journey. It might, and will likely end up in a local minima. Thus storing information (coding sequences) from this process and carefully monitoring the effect wether this could possibly be that which mindless process eventually would output. If not, revert back in the evolutionary tree and branch from there. Perhaps flying several branches simultaneously and selecting between these.
I do not doubt that eventually the evolution in biological systems will be outcompeted of completely synthetic systems.
I think the transition must be made in such a way that the “will”/origins is, I.e, ancient history (genetics), is preserved and that these systems give rise to non measurable property (however constructible) of qualia. That meaning, being of subjective nature which can be thought and reasoned upon.
I view this as the Gödelian theory of mind, there exists some metaphysical truth in the process of mind that cannot be established with measurement, but emulated with sufficient accuracy will give rise to this effect. How such a test should be performed is beyond my capability to figure out.
I do not doubt for a second that there exist a set of interacting processes in my brain that give the rise of qualia given a set of external or internal stimuli (measurements).
It is as real as mathematics and Yoda is real.
I don’t particularly care about IC, it might very well not be salvageable and with its demise, mine follows as well. The tragedy would of course be part of an outcome that needs to be rolled back in the tree of life.
🧬🌲
NB, Just think, you could evolve into a butterfly with your face on it…
“Evolved in’ I!”
Collapse will be mother nature’s eugenics project. The big danger is that we will be clever enough to continue outwitting it. Genetic deterioration due to low childhood mortality is a horrible thing late in the process. As William Hamilton warned us in “Narrow Roads of Gene Land,” “The hospitals are coming.”
Same road for me FE. Too many coincidences. Like; periphery die-off through preventing covid mutations entering the core… wait for it…
I just wonder and can’t decide if this covid crisis will delay or accelerate collapse. From one point of view it seems good to slow down our consumption of non renewable ressources. On the other hand, companies that extract the resources, transform them, can bankrupt, cut investments, so supply chains can break sooner, infrastructures be lost, and so on.
If not for Covid and the responses to it…. we would almost certainly have surpassed $300 a barrel for oil … and the global economy would have imploded in 2020.
Recall in 2008 $147 oil caused by the earlier peak in conventional oil … shale came to the rescue but it does appear that shale peaked in 2019….
Whoa. Thanks for that clarification of where we are….the “tipping point” where any increase in oil prices that makes production of remaining reserves economic for the oil companies, is offset by higher costs throughout the economy causing reduced spending (demand) by the public which keeps oil prices below the cost of production. So the end result is that even though reserves are in the ground, they can’t be produced profitably and so they remain in the ground. Made worse by the fact that all sorts of limits are being reached now in 2021, such as fresh water, food production, medical care etc.
The drive toward technology (e.g. energy efficiency) and complexity keeps the majority of peoples wages low and unable to keep up and prop up oil prices. So the peak oilers just assume in their models that there will always be enough money (wages) to to keep oil prices rising and therefore the increasingly difficult to extract oil flowing=>false assumption. So, what causes the Seneca Cliff and an abandonment of remaining reserves? Oil Companies just walking away and saying, “we can’t make money doing this, aggregate demand is waning, prices are too low, we give up?” Do you expect oil companies to start closing up shop?
the energy in one barrel of oil is roughly equal to the energy of a man working 4 years.
so oil is so valuable to the economy that it should continue to be extracted even after it is unprofitable for oil companies.
so the problem is price and profit.
one solution would be to nationalize all oil companies (I’m speaking from a USA perspective).
or any financial gimmicks that would allow unprofitable oil companies to continue to produce.
zirp loans, subsidies, bailouts, debt restructuring or forgiveness, whatever it takes to keep the production going.
too bad the ruling D politicians have such a misunderstanding of this situation that they are more likely to hurry up the elimination of oil companies rather than help them to survive.
the consequences will be enormous.
When it takes the energy in a barrel of oil to get a barrel of oil out of the ground and to market, then I think that oil will stay in the ground.
yes, that will definitely be the endgame of oil in a decade or two.
the more immediate problem is price and profit.
Not if liquid fuels come to command a large premium over other forms of energy. It is the EROI of the total energy system that matters most. Let us compare corn ethanol: EROI is barely higher than 1, by some estimates even a bit lower, yet it continues to be produced. Granted, that’s political, but the point is that the energy system can function with one of its components at or below 1.
Some forms of energy are more valuable. Liquid is more portable. Biofuels are indirectly subsidized, which is likely 99% of the reason for their use.
The ruling D politicans don’t misunderstand the situation at all, David. They perfectly know what they are doing and why they are doing it.
To destroy the US for their Chinese masters? So China can take the farm land, the mines, the coal. Even if dirty coal it can be burned in the US to make products for China making China cleaner. Only enough humans to run the primary industries for China are needed in the US. Even these can be run by Chinese.
@VFatalis, agreed. Despite the images that they project both D and R politicians follow mostly the same script. That is why Obama continued Bush’s policies, supported coal and opened up the largest area of land for oil and gas exploration.
I expect Biden to do the same.
@gail, you wrote: “There are about 50 years of coal reserves,” — but how many years until “peak btu’s” from coal? Isn’t that the most important question? If the total energy available to the economy begins to contract, then the economy begins to contract (permanent recession/depression). Producing more stuff per capita requires more work per capita which requires more of the “ability to do work,” the definition of energy in basic physical science.
We are past peak with coal, as far as I can see. It is the overall average cost of energy that is more important than the cost of the individual types, as far as I can see. The amount of resources in the ground is irrelevant, as far as I can tell. The overall system has to be kept together.
(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.
This might sound mad and
Apologies if this sounds crude, but it might just be best someone asks this question.
Is it possible to substitute our fossil fuel dependence with sewage. Could we not use algae to convert municipal waste into a crude oil, then refine (sh)it. (Frisk it) That would be one way of really ‘taking care of business’ and provide a viable alternative energy source, …Every one can contribute. It might make non oil producing countries/states less dependent and make us energy abundant again in a way that has some economy of scale. The higher the population the higher the level of anthropomorphic oil production
Thoughts on this
This could doubtless be a plan. It would probably be easier to do in set-aside experimental areas. And it doesn’t have to be the first step. There could be millions of abandoned mines leaving holes in the ground that could be filled with sewerage (in containers that could be retrieved when or if needed). And I’d shut up and be content with a no if mixing extremely putrid sewerage with nuclear waste (small samples) didn’t produce something better than either one separately.
In our developed world, sewerage is syphoned out of septic systems and taken elsewhere to be treated in some way. I don’t know what becomes of it thereafter. Septic systems wear out and run out of space to grow. There are large groups of the poor who dispose of sewerage in disorganized and unsanitary ways. Meanwhile, there are many uses for the sewerage, and with so many mining pits, many places to store it harmlessly in the short to medium term. It is a very valuable material and its possible uses should be researched. The odium over using human waste as fertilizer or in ways other than casting it aside “out there” means that a certainly valuable resource could be being wasted unaccompanied by any economic purpose, ridiculous or otherwise.
I’d say; shit in, shit out.
It would be better used for fertilizing crops, I am afraid. There wouldn’t be enough.
Some people in India burn animal dung for fuel.
You have a point about the quantity of Anthropoop-oil that could be produced being insufficient for our current rate of demand/expectation.
It’s interesting what you say about animal dung in India, its generally used to cook food when charcoal’s unavailable.
Would burning animal dung releases more carbon into the atmosphere than it would if processed into oil for refining. Could the residuals of any bio waste not still be used for fertiliser anyway?
Maybe refining in this way could become an extra waste treatment step that doesn’t syphon off needed nutriment return to the planet/biosphere. (nitrogen cycle etc)
We probably need to lower our consumption of fossil resources at some point and start treating it as a ‘precious non renewable resource’. (Or wait 2BYrs for some more lol)
Maybe the idea of anthro sourced crude oil has some potential, because it is renewable over a shorter timeframes and make us more responsible sentient beings/ caretakers.
the Germans have been doing human manure recycling for years. it’s smelly where applied. there could be some health risks, if not managed carefully.
Back in the 1990s took a road trip with my girlfriend on Germany’s so called romantic road between Frankfurt and Munich. That time of year passing agricultural fields in April the smell was horrific because of the liquid animal manures being sprayed on the fields!
Neuschwanstein Castle was the final stop, best road trip ever!
https://www.bavaria.by/experiences/city-country-culture/scenic-routes/romantic-road/
If you have a BAU bucket list to do, this one can’t be beat
Naypyitaw Myanmar Sept. 22, 2017
Otnas International Nom Ky Ltd (OINK) announced today that extensive trials of their YIN and YANK Primate Subvarients have been completed with overwhelming success.
“One hundred per cent of our subjects performed at or above standards during the five year trial” stated Peter H. Pan, Chief Financial and Scientific Officer at OINK. “The new gene editing tool, CRISPR, promises to increase our production of Genetically Modified Labor Units exponentially”, said Pan.
“We are prepared to initiate the licensing procedure as soon as the details of the Biotechnology/Intellectual property addendum to the US – SE Asia trade agreement is finalized, which could be as soon as next week. We currently have an extensive backlog of firms that seek to cut their waste of resources on overpriced labor”, said Pan.
Promotional materials provided by OINK explained that the Subvarients have various primate genetic materials including Homo sapiens, chimpanzee and orangutan components. The genetically modified labor units (GMLU) have been tested in manufacturing, construction, extraction and agricultural settings.
According to the OINK information packet the hominid subvarients excel at repetitive tasks over long time periods under difficult and dangerous conditions. It is estimated that over a billion human workers worldwide could be replaced with GMLUs, freeing those humans from these menial tasks. Those humans could then move to more lucrative careers, as well as pursue the Arts, and the companies utilizing the GMLUs would see reductions in their labor costs.
“With food cost skyrocketing, our first objective was to create a subvarient with unique nutritional requirements” explained Pan, “The Yin and Yank varieties have achieved a high level of metabolic efficiency when fed a ration of 25% proprietary whole grain products combined with 75% fecal material from the complementary subvarient. The Yin eats Yank feces and the Yank eats Yin feces. With ongoing research we feel that 80% to 90% fecal material in the ration is possible, creating further labor cost reductions”.
OINK documents stated that each subvarient has it’s own union. All labor organizational issues are handled pre-contract so that licensees can plan for the future with no labor uncertainties.
The morning news conference was briefly interrupted when an unidentified journalist asked Dr. Pan if it was true that their goal was to “have a labor force that subsists by shitting in each others mouths?”
The questioner was removed from the room by security personnel.
Dr. Pan responded to the question, saying that “direct feeding procedures research is in the preliminary stage.”
Unidentified sources reported that the ejected journalist was later involved in an unfortunate pedestrian/bus accident outside the research center. And that his throat had been cut. These reports are unconfirmed
They’ll be sorry they did this. In a few generations, their subvariant OINKers will be marching in the streets, setting stuff on fire, and demanding equal rights.
I think the problem is you can’t create energy, but only transform it. This a law of Physics.
There is less energy in the wastes in our sewage than the energy that was used to “produce” that waste (as a side effect).
What one must understand is that oil or coal is an accumulation of MILLIONS years of solar energy storage. That energy has been stored in the chemical structure of the hydrocarbure molécules. We’ve been using this millions years of solar energy storage for 200 years and it’s almost over.
Can you imagine this power : millions years of energy burnt in 200 years! It’s a one shot. Once you realize that, you can start to panic.
“There is less energy in the wastes in our sewage than the energy that was used to “produce” that waste (as a side effect).” EXACTLY! Oil, gas, and coal are buried treasures. Once we discovered what they could do, we started inventing all kinds of machines to utilize them. It was so wonderful, but soon man will have to return to living not so differently from the animals, depending on what nature will produce for us year by year. The buried treasures will have been spent. I don’t regret that we did it, but it just couldn’t last. Acceptance–the last stage of grieving.
My first thought is that “anthropomorphic” means having human characteristics.
The word I think you were searching for there is “anthropogenic”, which means originating in human activity.
My second thought is that, in Mad Max 3, Bartertown was run on methane from pig manure. But human manure also could also be used as a feedstock of generating methane. Whether it’s practical to do that or not I wouldn’t know. But if it was practical, I would have expected some town somewhere to be doing it already.
how ironic that aussies would resort to methane from pig manure when they have so much coal to burn. in NE america, they used to burn methane from coal, so called “town gas”. probably still do in places.
That was a feature in some permaculture designs.. I looked into it briefly but in my cold climate there just wouldn’t have been enough biological activity most of the year.
Our town has a small state technical college that set up a biodigester to produce electricity. They had people truck in all sorts of ag. waste. Construction budget was $4.2 million. Here is a report on its first year of operation: https://web.archive.org/web/20160909132133/http://www.vtc.edu/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/PDFs/Digester%20Report/VT%20Tech_Digester%20Report_FINAL_All%20(1).pdf
I had to go to the Internet Archive as all mention of the biodigester aside from the 2013 groundbreaking ceremony has been scrubbed from the college’s web site.
The confusing thing is that they shut the thing down in 2019, just as a law was going to go into effect in 2020 regarding diverting all food waste from landfills. https://vtdigger.org/2019/09/25/vermont-tech-to-shut-down-4-2-million-digester-for-lack-of-compost/
Here are a few case studies of other biodigesters:
http://web.mit.edu/colab/pdf/papers/D_Lab_Waste_Biodigester_Case_Studies_Report.pdf
—
What disturbed me most about that plant was the fact of removing so much organic matter from local farms, where it should have stayed. “They” thought that keeping lights on and running computers in their many college administration offices was a higher, better, purpose for that material, and that is just not a sustainable proposition.
The land suffers to the extent that we have broken the nutrient cycle: concentrating material that should be diffused, and moving it from where it could have benefits to where it becomes a toxic problem.
Here’s the thing though. You have to feed pigs and humans a lot of food to produce that manure, and then from the manure you will get a smaller amount of methane. It’s really just a way of turning crops (food energy) into another form of energy, with losses at each step in the process. It’s not going to come close to replacing the fossil fuels that were stored away for us over a period of millions of years.
Punjab: Congress holds statewide protest over rise in fuel prices
Leading a protest at Abohar in Fazilka, state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar alleged that every section of the society is “suffering” due to the “wrong” policies of the BJP-led regime
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/punjab-congress-holds-statewide-protest-over-rise-in-fuel-prices/80875687
You can’t legislate something which they do not have. Sorry, they will be quite unhappy
kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)
Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
Not unique, but our republican friends have mastered it.
The Dems have fully embraced it also, but often have to hold their noses.
At least part of the problem is disappearing subsides.
“. . . the Modi government has also increased the price of cooking gas “drastically” while the subsidy on cylinders has been reduced by 90 per cent as compared to what it was in 2014.”
The government used to pay 90% of the connection fee for using LPG cylinders.There is also some subsidization of the LPG gas itself, described in this article.
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/slate/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-lpg-pricing-formula/article30496150.ece
The price varies, depending on the income of consumers and the amount of LPG used.
Imagine a bunch of people having a great time at at party, drinking from a large “oil” bowl. More people are coming to the party all the time. If the oil level ever drops, waiters from the kitchen come out and top it off. Some people get two, three or four cups while others are waiting outside. It becomes very popular.
After a while the oil doesn’t taste as good as it used too, not as much octane in the punch, but people simply drink two cups instead of one and the waiters continue to bring more. Then someone notices something, the level in the punch bowl is falling and the waiters can’t bring out enough punch to keep it full. The sponsors of the party (governments, banks, corporations) knew this time would eventually come, but they were optimistic that it would last just long enough to get one more cup. Someone whispers “We’re running out of oil. OMG, what are we going to do?” Having considered this eventuality, one of the sponsors yells, “FIRE! Everyone out, quickly, quickly………….” And just as if the plague had been let into the room, everyone panicked and left. Many a dreams of a good time were dashed on that evening.
Club Capitalism never opened it’s doors again after that. The owners promised a new drink called ‘Solarade” but there was never enough to fill the bowl, so the new place, Club Fascism, became members only, by invitation. Only those with pristine social credit scores could apply. Some people learned to make their own home brew while others simply faded away.
James, you have the bud of a nice political-science-fiction story here. There’s a Nebula Award, nay, a Frank Kafka Prize, waiting for you!
And Muhjabheddin was born.
Great imagination!
This wasn’t an allegory.
Read it and weep, children of IC.
CDC Recommends Putting Hosiery over Your Face along with a Mask
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/cdc-recommends-putting-hosiery-over-your-face-along-with-a-mask/
The ideas get more and more extreme by the day.
Shocking photo of 200 queuing for soup kitchen in snow emerges as temperatures in the UK drop to -22°C
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/met-office-weather-wales-cold-19814096
Well, karma is a bitch, huh? Let the English suffer the fates of the people it starved!
Wonder what Churchill would have to say about the current situation…..
In the book, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, written by Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill was quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.
That book is lies from beginning to end. The cause of the famine was (a) the Japanese invasion of Burma, and (b) the response of the Bengal government, which hoarded the remaining rice for their own profiteering, while their own citizens starved. Blame the British? No: Bengal had full internal self government; it was the higher casts making money while the lower castes starved. As is happening now throughout India, all over again.
This version sounds about right …. I read a very good biography of Winston … he was a right wanker… very full of himself… old school tie type…. exactly the type that needs a good beating to knock him down a few notches.
The only question is — who killed more innocent people – Churchill or Hitler?
How Churchill ‘starved’ India
It is 1943, the peak of the Second World War. The place is London. The British War Cabinet is holding meetings on a famine sweeping its troubled colony, India. Millions of natives mainly in eastern Bengal, are starving. Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India, and Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, soon to be appointed the new viceroy of India, are deliberating how to ship more food to the colony. But the irascible Prime Minister Winston Churchill is coming in their way.
“Apparently it is more important to save the Greeks and liberated countries than the Indians and there is reluctance either to provide shipping or to reduce stocks in this country,” writes Sir Wavell in his account of the meetings.
Mr Amery is more direct. “Winston may be right in saying that the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks, but he makes no sufficient allowance for the sense of Empire responsibility in this country,” he writes.
Some three million Indians died in the famine of 1943. The majority of the deaths were in Bengal. In a shocking new book, Churchill’s Secret War, journalist Madhusree Mukherjee blames Mr Churchill’s policies for being largely responsible for one of the worst famines in India’s history. It is a gripping and scholarly investigation into what must count as one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the Empire.
The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain – India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and July 1943, even as the famine set in.
This would have kept nearly 400,000 people alive for a full year. Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships – this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe.
As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing. Mr Churchill also pushed a scorched earth policy – which went by the sinister name of Denial Policy – in coastal Bengal where the colonisers feared the Japanese would land. So authorities removed boats (the lifeline of the region) and the police destroyed and seized rice stocks.
Mukherjee tracks down some of the survivors of the famine and paints a chilling tale of the effects of hunger and deprivation. Parents dumped their starving children into rivers and wells. Many took their lives by throwing themselves in front of trains. Starving people begged for the starchy water in which rice had been boiled. Children ate leaves and vines, yam stems and grass.
People were too weak even to cremate their loved ones. “No one had the strength to perform rites,” a survivor tells Mukherjee. Dogs and jackals feasted on piles of dead bodies in Bengal’s villages. The ones who got away were men who migrated to Calcutta for jobs and women who turned to prostitution to feed their families. “Mothers had turned into murderers, village belles into whores, fathers into traffickers of daughters,” writes Mukherjee.
Winston Churchill during the Second War
The famine ended at the end of the year when survivors harvested their rice crop. The first shipments of barley and wheat reached those in need only in November, by which time tens of thousands had already perished. Throughout the autumn of 1943, the United Kingdom’s food and raw materials stockpile for its 47 million people – 14 million fewer than that of Bengal – swelled to 18.5m tonnes.
In the end, Mukherjee writes eloquently, it was “not so much racism as the imbalance of power inherent in the social Darwinian pyramid that explains why famine could be tolerated in India while bread rationing was regarded as an intolerable deprivation in wartime Britain”.
For colonial apologists, the book is essential reading. It is a terrifying account of how colonial rule is direly exploitative and, in this case, made worse by a man who made no bones of his contempt for India and its people.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html
Oh and BTW — I have no problem with Winston’s policy of starving India…. you gotta do what you gotta do…
It’s more the old school tie shit I am not good with … school ties of that nature are good for one thing… strangulation
Well now. I think you’ll find that these are not the same people.
Does not matter, since these people chose to live in England we have to assume that they agreed to bear the sins of its previous denizens.
-22 degrees Celsius is equivalent to -8 degrees Fahrenheit.
This is not very unusual for the US Midwest.
https://www.weathercentral.com/weather/us/maps/current-temperatures
But people in the US Midwest are more ready for the cold weather and snow. Good luck on keeping the Gulf Stream delivering warm temperatures to the UK and Europe.
I have a question for the people here:
Do you have a paradigm yet that you use to think about the changes in the world in the last year?
Before, it was easy to see the world using a bottoms up approach, in terms of energy and simple human behaviour patterns like greed. There was propaganda and some constraints but you could model people as “free” agents.
We cannot do that anymore – it looks like everything we see is determined at the top and pushed forcefully down. From the stock market to traveling, schooling, medicine, relationships – almost all human behaviour is constrained and directed from the top down.
I cannot fathom what principles to use to think top-down. I don’t believe in a grand all-powerful conspiracy of godlike people (or aliens).
Does anybody have a better way to think about the world today?
It’s most likely correct observation that societies organize – build up organically in some sort of mix involving both direction vectors bottom-up and top-down (apart from some amicable ~horizontal as well).
Simply, you perhaps discounted or avoided the pre-existent reality of top-bottom structures in our lives.. so here comes the shock of today when they are apparently strengthening (reveal / de-cloak) in fast order.
Also, as in cyclical (or just peak / spike) thing we are approaching more top-bottom era (of some unknown duration). Not unlike in drumming up for war (or siege mentality) effort etc.
Both Brave New World and 1984 offer two visions of the top down methodology. I recently re read both. I actually think collapse is the more likely scenario however.
Do you know the movie Jupiter Ascending by the Wachowski Brothers/Sisters?
Looks like the world has reached the state when Aliens are going to harvest the human beings they have raised.
Seriously, no paradigm can embrace the situation we are in. Gail talks about complexity and this is it, multiple powers struggling to eat the cake. When the cake gets smaller, expect more conflicts, a high death rate and low birth which shall lead us to extinction. All the desperate attempts of our great leaders to reset the system will be fuel to fire.
Ha,’ toilet brush descending’ great sci-fi
Thank you for a most interesting question. Please allow me to respond, on the understanding that this is a personal view that might be totally wrong.
A long time ago, I studied “systems theory”. Except that it was then called “cybernetics”, which perhaps tells you how long ago that was. The root word, by the way, was Greek cyberno (‘κυβερνώ’), “I steer”. The steersman steered the ship.The word was probably already in use when Helen of Troy launched those thousand ships.
But the steersman did not move the ship; that was done by wind and wave. He made only small changes to the ship’s configuration, and that gave it a strictly limited amount of freedom of movement.
Our interaction with the natural world has always seemed to me governed by that metaphor. The forces of Nature are powerful beyond our imagining; at best, we can move them slightly in the direction of better or worse, from our human perspective, but we cannot harness them to our will; we must work with them.
I think the same is true of human forces; they can be controlled, imperfectly and briefly, but more control elicits resistance, and resistance will eventually overwhelm control. The tides of fortune are not ours to command, and in my time every English schoolboy learned the story of King Canute, who from his throne placed on the strand showed to his courtiers that even monarchs could not command the tides.
One conclusion: if we try to do good on the large scale, more often than not we do evil. Do good on the small scale; as an individual, as a support group, as a small community. Follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. And thank you for listening.
Thanks everyone for responding and offering ideas to mull over!
@worldofhanumanotg – Yes, I most probably discounted a lot of soft control that was occurring for a long time (I did see “The century of the self” documentary so I should know better).
@Robert Firth – I read some books on cybernetics too and I agree, it is a great metaphor.
For me, coming from the physical sciences it was a big shock to see how much top down control can be exerted by people.
I laughed when some neocon said “we create our own reality” but the scary surprise is that exactly what most people and societies do.
I agree with your last suggestion – other than using this site for therapy, I am mostly focusing on my family and town, doing gardening and trying to talk to people face to face.
Thanks!
Jose Delgado and Mind Control
Thanks for mentioning this again:
Does it really matter if people are herded around by their own motivation to be part of an explicit whole by the means of group psychology, or that it is imposed upon is by external “top-down” causes?
Now, if that is the case (top-down), then why? I guess I am not very well mentally geared to understand the appeal of herding around people. I just don’t see the point in that, rather I would prefer to be delighted by their unique brilliance and weirdness. Perfect imperfections.
Thus what I am saying is that the means for expression should be changed from that of an explicit/implicit group/herd psychosocial conditioning to that of an innate discovery. I.e. the ultimate ruler is that who harnesses the innate behaviors that naturally arise from the mineral (genetics, chemistry, solar system, etc) of the planet itself. The wood is best cut following the grain, it causes lest waste and work while providing the best drama and comedy.
For example, ask yourself, how come humans enjoy the company of lesser sentient critters? It is because they amuse us the best by being themselves. There is no need to herd around a dog and cause it suffering by imposing stupid on its furry rear end, it will simply follow and look upon you as god almighty and be cool with the companionship, as indeed you are by their prescience.
Now assume our origins are somewhat “influenced” by herd like behaviors and genetics, that would for sure explain some of the crazy going on. Whenever you define yourself by the reflection (shallow copy) of everybody else. That core of yours is diminished and flattened to a surface reflecting everybody else. And that makes you something tragicomic indeed.
These are my observations and conclusions from a rather limited existence as a human being. If they bear any relevance in objective reality is not for me to decide. I do wish the current state of human affairs could reflect that which is closer aligned of that which is stipulated by the evolutionary processes of Mother Earth.
Liberty for all, man, sentient machine and critters.
You think like a normal human being. But psychopaths and narcissists think otherwise.
Power attracts them like bees to honey.
Yeah, likely, but why are they so outrageously boring, with the herd being a reflection of them? My suspicion is simply that they aren’t very smart at all, simply has perverted, halfwit minds that is out of control.
Viewing content in the Maxwell/Epstein “tapes” and evidence would for sure stoke that impression. Yup, looking at mentally ill halfwits going bonkers on some sorry specimens from the manhandled herd.
Like fat asses swinging their flubber around at the buffet. 🤢🤮
I bet that among the super intelligent, narcissism and psychopathy is more prevalent. However, bending over for your perversions and bestiality is a failure of the self imposed brutality.
“Oh, my ego (and perversions) wants to tuck me in this direction, how about nope”. *Walks the other way out of spite*
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/life-as-a-nonviolent-psychopath/282271/
“Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the brain of a psychopath”
😊
A Losing, EXPENSIVE, battle…..Miami Herald News
The future of Miami-Dade’s coast: tall walls, landscaped barrier islands or both?
BY ALEX HARRIS FEBRUARY 11, 2021 12:49 PM
Politicians and residents of Miami-Dade County are mostly on board with the now $6 billion federal proposal to protect the vulnerable coastal community from future storm surge strengthened by climate change.
They like the idea of elevating thousands of private homes, and floodproofing thousands of businesses and the county’s hospitals, fire and police stations.
The one concept nobody in Miami-Dade wants? Installing flood-protection walls — in some places up to 20 feet high — along the coast of Biscayne Bay.
An alternative vision — released this week and promoted by Miami-Dade, Miami and private businesses — would be an even more radical redevelopment of the Biscayne Bay coast. Instead of drab gray walls, the plan shows drawings of a giant earthen dune between the city and bay, speckled with mangroves and ringed with oyster reefs, natural features proven to slow down approaching waves. Between the dune, called a berm, and the city is a moat of sorts, filled with seagrass and more landscaping designed to break down storm surge.
It would look more natural and attractive, but also come at an environmental cost, chewing up acres of existing bay bottom.
Still, advocates say it’s a better alternative than trading scenic bay views for imposing walls.
Oh my😱, it’s NOT IF now it’s going to be HOW to deal with it….
The wall is a way to provide jobs and increase demand for fossil fuels to make the wall. Japan has put in a lot of fancy walls. They looked to me to be part of make-work projects.
Perhaps….https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/08/analysis-sea-level-rise-is-combining-with-other-factors-regularly-flood-miami/
Sea level rise is combining with other factors to regularly flood Miami
The city is running out of options to deal with it.
Some areas in the Keys no longer offer permits to build,” wrote Sans. “Parts of Miami are no longer offering long-term mortgages. Let’s say I buy along the coast — I have to deal with sunny day flooding. If I buy in the suburbs, then by the time I finish paying my mortgage off, I’ll likely be dealing with a serious flooding situation. Who’s going to buy my house then?”
Where I live in Broward my City had a bond issue vote on sea wall enhancement.
The reason …property values would plummet along with tax revenue due to increase flooding …the measure passed even though the residential properties along the sea walls were owned by very wealthy 🤑 individuals.
once all the toxins wash away, will be great place to snorkel.
Let’s be honest– it is not worth saving.
Houston? maybe
Actually, Duncan, I greatly enjoyed my eight months in Daytona Beach as a visiting professor. A rather relaxing lifestyle, a mild climate, and nightly visits to the apartment complex pool by pelicans. And the work was interesting, too.
> UK economy shrinks by most in 300 years
Gloomy outlook for 2021 after pandemic batters economy in 2020
UK economic output fell 9.9 per cent in 2020, the largest drop in 300 years and more than twice the fall during the financial crisis, laying bare the scale of the pandemic’s impact.
The economy grew more than expected in the fourth quarter despite extensive Covid-19 restrictions but remained smaller than before the pandemic. The outlook for the start of 2021 has darkened.
Output expanded 1 per cent in the three months to December from the previous quarter, according to data from the Office for National Statistics — a stronger showing than the 0.5 per cent forecast by economists polled by Reuters.
But the figures released on Friday showed UK output was down 7.8 per cent from the final quarter of 2019, twice the decline in Germany and three times the drop in the US. The differences reflect long periods of tough restrictions in the UK as well as generous US stimulus plans and tax cuts in Germany.
The 9.9 per cent decline for 2020 was the biggest since the great frost of 1709 and eclipsed the 9.7 per cent contraction of 1921, when world economies were battered by the post-first world war downturn. The UK remains the laggard among the G7 countries for which 2020 fourth-quarter data are available, even if comparisons are complicated by different accounting methods.
https://www.ft.com/content/96e19afd-88b3-4e8d-bc3e-a72bd1f60d3c
I would have thought that one issue is that such a high proportion of England’s income comes form the so-called Square Mile i.e. finance / banking based in London. A big downturn in that will affect England (and the UK) more than other European countries.
Let it go back to the days of Stuarts. The British Crown has a lot to apologize to Louis XIV, Napoleon and all other people who tried to unify Europe, and now it finally is on the way of ceasing to be a huge detriment for Europe’s growth.
Napoleon’s attempt to unify Europe killed over a million … frenchmen. And yet they still consider him a great man.
While you’re on an apology tour, don’t forget the apologies to those other would be unifiers of Europe: Ogodei Khan (son of Genghis), Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin.
But Genghis Khan, or “Chingis” in Mongolian,left a great legacy, one of the best vodkas in the world. Second only to Siberian vodka “Altai”.
His other main legacy, the Yuan Dynasty of China, was a disaster.
Israeli startup working to develop chickens resistant to bird flu
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-startup-working-to-develop-chickens-resistant-to-bird-flu-658758
I have four of these in my back-yard and am willing to sell them for 500 euros a piece. Then the Israeli startup would only need to multiply them, which I believe would not be too difficult for a tech company.
Keep the chickens. Soon enough it will be more valuable than money.
Right, but I know where to get more, at six euros each (now please don’t gonna tell the Israelis)
If we develop chickens resistant to this type of bird flu, what is the chance that a new type of bird flu will evolve that the chickens are not resistant to?
100%. Any animal (or plant) that exists in large populations, including us, will have disease break out.
I am afraid you are right.
I am afraid any salvation through any antibiotic, vaccine, pesticide or herbicide is temporary. Those we are competing against mutate faster than we can keep up.
Israeli startup working to evolve a new strain of bird flu lethal to resistant chickens. Naturam expellas furca …
Nato chief suggests battle tanks with solar panels as militaries go green
“Nato should do its part to look into how we can reduce emissions from military operations,” he told the Chatham House event. “We know that heavy battle tanks or fighter jets and naval ships consume a lot of fossil fuel and emit greenhouse gases and therefore we have to look into how we can reduce those emissions by alternative fuels, solar panels or other ways of running our missions.”
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/nato-chief-suggests-battle-tanks-with-solar-panels-as-militaries-go-green-1.1160313
Electric tanks, jets, and ships 🙂 Go Elon
Perhaps the mode of attack will change as well. Maybe it is the internet or the networked electrical system that really needs to be protected.
Dear Enemy, As NATO Secretary General, I respectfully request a cease fire until sunrise tomorrow, … But if you refuse, we have a lot of mounted knights and Welsh longbowmen.
Miami Passes Mayor’s Bitcoin Resolution: What You Need To Know
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Thursday that the city will analyze incorporating Bitcoin (BTC) in the municipal government’s finances.
What Happened: The mayor said that the state would give legislative priority to BTC, look into paying employees in the cryptocurrency and also make efforts to invest its treasury in the digital coin.
“I want to thank the City of Miami commissioners for supporting my resolution which directs the city manager, after analysis, to procure a vendor to be able to offer our employees to get a percentage of their salary in Bitcoin.”
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/02/19631242/miami-passes-mayors-bitcoin-resolution-what-you-need-to-know
A direct violation of the US Constitution, Article I Section 10.
Who cares about the constitution now. It is anyone’s game.
Corporate Equities to GDP
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuBJ72GXMAQXWLc?format=png&name=medium
Wow! A person wonders how long this can continue.
Trading volume now approaching the peak of last spring’s COVID crash.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuBuYh8XAAMjN3r?format=jpg&name=900×900
This bubble is extreme of extremes.
Long term cycle doomers like Harry Dent are resurfacing again.
He claims deflation-depression megacrash (blue chip stocks erasing ~80-90%) is near Q2 2021-2022. Based on clues such as paused 2008 crash (QE stabilized) , demographics, insane leverage (even for retail shrimps still buying into peak now), hedge funds super sharks already selling into this peak, etc.
It would be funny when ~discredited “serial worriers” are correct for once, although demographic trend induced “forecasters” could be taken a bit seriously here after-all as this is loosely “4th turning” compatible material.. Obviously, oblivious to any energy material.
ps disclaimer he is also crypto pumper – could be deeper faction shill for the team US resurfacing on e-coins in the aftermath
Dent is not a “doomer.” He was a full bore bull from 1993 to 2008, although expecting some turbulence around 2002, and then forecast a “depression” starting in 2009. This was all in his 1993 book, “The Great Boom Ahead,” whilte other people were still wringing their hands over the “jobless recovery.” He is bearish since 2009, then turns bullish again for 2023-2028, then indefinitely bearish from 2029. All based on demography.
He is optimistic about crypto, but I would not call him a “pumper” like some people are.
People are worried?