I have written many posts relating to the fact that we live in a finite world. At some point, our ability to extract resources becomes constrained. At the same time, population keeps increasing. The usual outcome when population is too high for resources is “overshoot and collapse.” But this is not a topic that the politicians or central bankers or oligarchs who attend the World Economic Forum dare to talk about.
Instead, world leaders find a different problem, namely climate change, to emphasize above other problems. Conveniently, climate change seems to have some of the same solutions as “running out of fossil fuels.” So, a person might think that an energy transition designed to try to fix climate change would work equally well to try to fix running out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this isn’t really the way it works.
In this post, I will lay out some of the issues involved.
[1] There are many different constraints that new energy sources need to conform to.
These are a few of the constraints I see:
- Should be inexpensive to produce
- Should work with the current portfolio of existing devices
- Should be available in the quantities required, in the timeframe needed
- Should not pollute the environment, either when created or at the end of their lifetimes
- Should not add CO2 to the atmosphere
- Should not distort ecosystems
- Should be easily stored, or should be easily ramped up and down to precisely match energy timing needs
- Cannot overuse fresh water or scarce minerals
- Cannot require a new infrastructure of its own, unless the huge cost in terms of delayed timing and greater materials use is considered.
If an energy type is simply a small add-on to the existing system, perhaps a little deviation from the above list can be tolerated, but if there is any intent of scaling up the new energy type, all of these requirements must be met.
It is really the overall cost of the system that is important. Historically, the use of coal has helped keep the overall cost of the system down. Substitutes need to be developed considering the overall needs and cost of the system.
The reason why the overall cost of the system is important is because countries with high-cost energy systems will have a difficult time competing in a world market since energy costs are an important part of the cost of producing goods and services. For example, the cost of operating a cruise ship depends, to a significant extent, on the cost of the fuel it uses.
In theory, energy types that work with different devices (say, electric cars and trucks instead of those operated by internal combustion engines) can be used, but a long delay can be expected before a material shift in overall energy usage occurs. Furthermore, a huge ramp up in the total use of materials for production may be required. The system cannot work if the total cost is too high, or if the materials are not really available, or if the timing is too slow.
[2] The major thing that makes an economy grow is an ever increasing supply of inexpensive-to-produce energy products.
Food is an energy product. Let’s think of what happens when agriculture is mechanized, typically using devices that are made and operated using coal and oil. The cost of producing food drops substantially. Instead of spending, for example, 50% of a person’s wages on food, the percentage can gradually drop down to 20% of wages, and then to 10% of wages for food, and eventually even, say, to 2% of wages for food.
As spending on food falls, opportunity for other spending arises, even with wages remaining relatively level. With lower food expenditures, a person can spend more on books (made with energy products), or personal transportation (such as a vehicle), or entertainment (also made possible by energy products). Strangely enough, in order for an economy to grow, essential items need to become an ever decreasing share of everyone’s budget, so that citizens have sufficient left-over income available for more optional items.
It is the use of tools, made and operated with inexpensive energy products of the right types, that leverages human labor so that workers can produce more food in a given period of time. This same approach also makes many other goods and services available.
In general, the less expensive an energy product is, the more helpful it will be to an economy. A country operating with an inexpensive mix of energy products will tend to be more competitive in the world market than one with a high-cost mix of energy products. Oil tends to be expensive; coal tends to be inexpensive. This is a major reason why, in recent years, countries using a lot of coal in their energy mix (such as China and India) have been able to grow their economies much more rapidly than those countries relying heavily on oil in their energy mixes.
[3] If energy products are becoming more expensive to produce, or their production is not growing very rapidly, there are temporary workarounds that can hide this problem for quite a number of years.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, world coal and oil consumption were growing rapidly. Natural gas, hydroelectric and (a little) nuclear were added, as well. Cost of production remained low. For example, the price of oil, converted to today’s dollar value, was less than $20 per barrel.
Once the idyllic 1950s and 1960s passed, it was necessary to hide the problems associated with the rising cost of production using several approaches:
- Increasing use of debt – really a promise of future goods and services made with energy
- Lower interest rates – permits increasing debt to be less of a financial burden
- Increasing use of technology – to improve efficiency in energy usage
- Growing use of globalization – to make use of other countries’ cheaper energy mix and lower cost of labor
After 50+ years, we seem to be reaching limits with respect to all of these techniques:
- Debt levels are excessive
- Interest rates are very low, even below zero
- Increasing use of technology as well as globalization have led to greater and greater wage disparity; many low level jobs have been eliminated completely
- Globalization has reached its limits; China has reached a situation in which its coal supply is no longer growing
[4] The issue that most people fail to grasp is the fact that with depletion, the cost of producing energy products tends to rise, but the selling prices of these energy products do not rise enough to keep up with the rising cost of depletion.
As a result, production of energy products tends to fall because production becomes unprofitable.
As we get further and further away from the ideal situation (oil less than $20 per barrel and rising in quantity each year), an increasing number of problems crop up:
- Both oil/gas companies and coal companies become less profitable.
- With lower energy company profits, governments can collect less taxes from these companies.
- As old wells and mines deplete, the cost of reinvestment becomes more of a burden. Eventually, new investment is cut back to the point that production begins to fall.
- With less growth in energy consumption, productivity growth tends to lag. This happens because energy is required to mechanize or computerize processes.
- Wage disparity tends to grow; workers become increasingly unhappy with their governments.
[5] Authorities with an incorrect understanding of why and how energy supplies fall have assumed that far more fossil fuels would be available than is actually the case. They have also assumed that relatively high prices for alternatives would be acceptable.
In 2012, Jorgen Randers prepared a forecast for the next 40 years for The Club of Rome, in the form of a book, 2052, with associated data. Looking at the data, we see that Randers forecast that world coal consumption would grow by 28% between 2010 and 2020. In fact, world coal consumption grew by 0% in that period. (This latter forecast is based on BP coal consumption estimates for 2010 and 2019 from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, adjusted for the 2019 to 2020 period change using IEA’s estimate from its Global Energy Review 2021.)
It is very easy to assume that high estimates of coal resources in the ground will lead to high quantities of actual coal extracted and burned. The world’s experience between 2010 and 2020 shows that it doesn’t necessarily work out that way in practice. In order for coal consumption to grow, the delivered price of coal needs to stay low enough for customers to be able to afford its use in the end products it provides. Much of the supposed coal that is available is far from population centers. Some of it is even under the North Sea. The extraction and delivery costs become far too high, but this is not taken into account in resource estimates.
Forecasts of future natural gas availability suffer from the same tendency towards over-estimation. Randers estimated that world gas consumption would grow by 40% between 2010 and 2020, when the actual increase was 22%. Other authorities make similar overestimates of future fuel use, assuming that “of course,” prices will stay high enough to enable extraction. Most energy consumption is well-buried in goods and services we buy, such as the cost of a vehicle or the cost of heating a home. If we cannot afford the vehicle, we don’t buy it; if the cost of heating a family’s home rises too high, thrifty families will turn down the thermostat.
Oil prices, even with the recent run-up in prices, are under $75 per barrel. I have estimated that for profitable oil production (including adequate funds for high-cost reinvestment and sufficient taxes for governments), oil prices need to be over $120 per barrel. It is the lack of profitability that has caused the recent drop in production. These profitability problems can be expected to lead to more production declines in the future.
With this low-price problem, fossil fuel estimates used in climate model scenarios are almost certainly overstated. This bias would be expected to lead to overstated estimates of future climate change.
The misbelief that energy prices will always rise to cover higher costs of production also leads to the belief that relatively high-cost alternatives to fossil fuels would be acceptable.
[6] Our need for additional energy supplies of the right kinds is extremely high right now. We cannot wait for a long transition. Even 30 years is too long.
We saw in section [3] that the workarounds for a lack of growing energy supply, such as higher debt and lower interest rates, are reaching limits. Furthermore, prices have been unacceptably low for oil producers for several years. Not too surprisingly, oil production has started to decline:
What is really needed is sufficient energy of the right types for the world’s growing population. Thus, it is important to look at energy consumption on a per capita basis. Figure 2 shows energy production per capita for three groupings:
- Tier 1: Oil and Coal
- Tier 2: Natural Gas, Nuclear, and Hydroelectric
- Tier 3: Other Renewables, including Intermittent Wind and Solar
Figure 2 shows that the biggest drop is in Tier 1: Coal and Oil. In many ways, coal and oil are foundational types of energy for the economy because they are relatively easy to transport and store. Oil is important because it is used in operating agricultural machinery, road repair machinery, and vehicles of all types, including ships and airplanes. Coal is important partly because of its low cost, helping paychecks to stretch further for finished goods and services. Coal is used in many ways, including electricity production and making steel and concrete. We use coal and oil to keep electricity transmission lines repaired.
Figure 2 shows that Tier 2 energy consumption per capita was growing rapidly in the 1965 to 1990 period, but its growth has slowed in recent years.
The Green Energy sources in Tier 3 have been growing rapidly from a low base, but their output is still tiny compared to the overall output that would be required if they were to substitute for energy from both Tier 1 and Tier 2 sources. They clearly cannot by themselves power today’s economy.
It is very difficult to imagine any of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 energy sources being able to grow without substantial assistance from coal and oil. All of today’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 energy sources depend on coal and oil at many points in the chain of their production, distribution, operation, and eventual recycling. If we ever get to Tier 4 energy sources (such as fusion or space solar), I would expect that they too will need oil and/or coal in their production, transport and distribution, unless there is an incredibly long transition, and a huge change in energy infrastructure.
[7] It is easy for energy researchers to set their sights too low.
[a] We need to be looking at the extremely low energy cost structure of the 1950s and 1960s as a model, not some far higher cost structure.
We have been hiding the world’s energy problems for years behind rising debt and falling interest rates. With very high debt levels and very low interest rates, it is becoming less feasible to stimulate the economy using these approaches. We really need very inexpensive energy products. These energy products need to provide a full range of services required by the economy, not simply intermittent electricity.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the ratio of Energy Earned to Energy Investment was likely in the 50:1 range for many energy products. Energy products were very profitable; they could be highly taxed. The alternative energy products we develop today need to have similar characteristics if they truly are to play an important role in the economy.
[b] A recent study says that greenhouse gas emissions related to the food system account for one-third of the anthropogenic global warming gas total. A way to grow sufficient food is clearly needed.
We clearly cannot grow food using intermittent electricity. Farming is not an easily electrified endeavor. If we do not have an alternative, the coal and oil that we are using now in agriculture really needs to continue, even if it requires subsidies.
[c] Hydroelectric electricity looks like a good energy source, but in practice it has many deficiencies.
Some of the hydroelectric dams now in place are over 100 years old. This is nearing the lifetime of the concrete in the dams. Considerable maintenance and repair (indirectly using coal and oil) are likely to be needed if these dams are to continue to be used.
The water available to provide hydroelectric power tends to vary greatly over time. Figure 3 shows California’s hydro electricity generation by month.
Thus, as a practical matter, hydroelectric energy needs to be balanced with fossil fuels to provide energy which can be used to power a factory or heat a home in winter. Battery storage would never be sufficient. There are too many gaps, lasting months at a time.
If hydroelectric energy is used in a tropical area with dry and wet seasons, the result would be even more extreme. A poor country with a new hydroelectric power plant may find the output of the plant difficult to use. The electricity can only be used for very optional activities, such as bitcoin mining, or charging up small batteries for lights and phones.
Any new hydroelectric dam runs the risk of taking away the water someone else was depending upon for irrigation or for their own electricity generation. A war could result.
[d] Current approaches for preventing deforestation mostly seem to be shifting deforestation from high income countries to low income countries. In total, deforestation is getting worse rather than better.
Figure 4 shows that deforestation is getting rapidly worse in Low Income countries with today’s policies. There is also a less pronounced trend toward deforestation in Middle Income countries. It is only in High Income countries that land areas are becoming more forested. In total (not shown), the forested area for the world as a whole falls, year after year.
Also, even when replanting is done, the new forests do not have the same characteristics as those made by natural ecosystems. They cannot house as many different species as natural ecosystems. They are likely to be less resistant to problems like insect infestations and forest fires. They are not true substitutes for the forest ecosystems that nature creates.
[e] The way intermittent wind and solar have been added to the electric grid vastly overpays these providers, relative to the value they add to the system. Furthermore, the subsidies for intermittent renewables tend to drive out more stable producers, degrading the overall condition of the grid.
If wind and solar are to be used, payments for the electricity they provide need to be scaled back to reflect the true value that they add to the overall system. In general, this corresponds to the savings in fossil fuel purchases that electricity providers need to make. This will be a small amount, perhaps 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Even this small amount, in theory, might be reduced to reflect the greater electricity transmission costs associated with these intermittent sources.
We note that China is making a major step in the direction of reducing subsidies for wind and solar. It has already dramatically cut its subsidies for wind energy; new subsidy cuts for solar energy will become effective August 1, 2021.
A major concern is the distorting impact that current pricing approaches for wind and solar have on the overall electrical system. Often, these approaches produce very low, or negative, wholesale prices for other providers. Nuclear providers are especially harmed by such practices. Nuclear is, of course, a low CO2 electricity provider.
It seems to me that in each part of the world, some utility-type provider needs to be analyzing what the overall funding of the electrical system needs to be. Bills to individuals and businesses need to reflect these actual expected costs. This approach might avoid the artificially low rates that the current pricing system often generates. If adequate funding can be achieved, perhaps some of the corner cutting that leads to electrical outages, such as recently encountered in California and Texas, might be avoided.
[8] When I look at the requirements for a successful energy transition and the obstacles we are up against, it is hard for me to see that any of the current approaches can be successful.
Unfortunately, it is hard for me to see how intermittent electricity can save the world economy, or even make a dent in our problems. We have searched for a very long time, but haven’t yet found solutions truly worth ramping up. Perhaps a new “Tier 4 approach” might be helpful, but such solutions seem likely to come too late.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis
Why would globalism interfere in its dying stages?
if FF powered IC is 300 years old, then its dying stages could easily be 30 years.
Perhaps! There is a lot we don’t know.
There are lot refugees from Afghanistan in Europe. I had a Afghan neighbor who had no clue about what was going on in the world today (I had no clue either until I found OFW). The violence in Afghanistan is increasing.
I think it’s better that a nation like Russia should try to advise Afghanistan. The advanced America and the old, traditional Afghanistan have very little in common.
advise? maybe. But perhaps the right thing to do is for all foreigners (USA) to move out and let Afghanistan rule itself. Good luck with that, since they are on the low end of the periphery. Life is not fair.
Not enough resources for the number of people living there is the problem. Fresh water is the lacking resources.
Science: Get vaccinated and you’re more likely to die
At best, getting injected will lead to the same outcome as not getting injected. At worst – and this is what the data suggests – you are more likely to die if you get stabbed for the Chinese Virus.
So why even do it at all? Many people would probably say that they just want to “do their part,” but what part is that? The dying part? Because the only people who seem to be getting violently ill after exposure to Delta or any other alleged variant are people who obeyed the government and got injected.
https://vaccinedeaths.com/2021-06-29-mortality-delta-variant-eight-times-higher-vaccinated.html#
(This all begs the question, since the “original” virus has never been isolated to allow for definitive testing for presence, how can anyone claim to know what a “delta variant” of a never isolated virus looks like or test for it?)
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Gail, I got it from Albert Marko, a cynical political advisor. He is a good follow on Twitter.
Mission accomplished!
The Taliban’s have been defeated.
Afghanistan is making progress.
We are signing a peace treaty with the Taliban’s.
We are smashing our equipments and leaving Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s are taking over Afghanistan.
God bless the Taliban’s.
…. Taliban has the equipment.
> Taliban seizes 700 US military vehicles & artillery from surrendering Afghan troops as country faces ‘total collapse’
Another collapsing country to join Lebanon and Venezuela, and perhaps Iraq.
Perhaps the Taliban will be able to stabilize things. The did a very good job in the 1990s prior to the 2001 US invasion.
Sure, they made everyone cover up their faces—the women with veils and the men with beards—but there are very few countries now where you are allowed to show off your dental work in public.
https://i.redd.it/zre3re9awg771.png
This is a peak conventional forecast of Hubbert compared to a forecast of Hallock et al (including Charles Hall). A link to a free copy of the paper can be found at this link. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629618303207
When I looked at the link, I could not decipher what exactly the forecast was, because there were so many scenarios. Perhaps this represents the base scenario.
I believe it is the base. It came from this very well written post on the return of peak oil:
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/11/16/peak-oil-never-went-away/
Thanks! An important thing that this post says is
For what it is worth, I think that overlooking this issue this one of the big problems with EROEI theory (not that the paper you are referencing is about EROEI theory). The calculations don’t distinguish between energy quality adequately.
A thing of beauty … if he overlays population … that goes to 0 as well
In politics perception is more than realty. It doesn’t matter if they went to the moon or if they filmed it in a studio. The perception among the majority is that they went to the moon.
The UFO report: We are the Intelligence Community and we don’t know what these objects are because we are dumb = Bad Perception. We don’t understand the physics behind these objects = Bad perception.
People do not care about their freedom. People want order. The government is saying: We have no control.
You might be right about your last statement:
“People do not care about their freedom. People want order. The government is saying: We have no control.”
Claim: The Optimum Average Annual Temperature for Humans is 13c (55F)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/21/claim-optimum-average-annual-temperature-for-humans-is-13c-55f/
The general idea is that higher temperatures are supposed to correspond to lower GDP.
Of course, lower energy consumption will result in the same effect. Warmer countries will likely do better than cold ones, because we will no longer have the ability to heat cold countries without deforesting areas.
Before reading the article, off the top of my head, humans are tropical animals that can only live in the temperate zones due to their “extensions” such as fire, clothing, and idiomatic language. So if there is an optimum average temperature for humans, I would expect it to be around 25 to 27ºC—the sort of temperature where we can sit around naked and not get goosebumps.
You got that right… if it is a really cold night the temperature can get down to 13C by morning as we idle the Coal Machine overnight…. and that is NOT optimum.
Have you had any frost yet this winter in your part of South Island?
I’ve got the air con set to “dehumidify” at the moment. It is monsoon season here and the temperature and humidity vary between about 30ºC / 70% in the afternoons and 24ºC / 96% in the small hours—ideal conditions for growing bathroom mold.
I am looking forward to the hot season that is due to start in the second half of this month, when at least we sit in the shade and sweat comfortably.
We’ve had frost nearly every day for the past 10 days…. it’s very frosty again this am…
Ski conditions are superb right into the afternoon (usually the snow softens after lunch)… heading up there once I see of the DelusiSTANIs CovIDIOTS and KlimIDIOTS
A massive struggle between those who own a stake in the world, about 10% of the whole pop of the world, and the rest will be inevitable, with the landowners winning.
That will probably reduce the world’s pop to less than a billion and make the advances to space possible.
Those who own the land certainly would like this result, but it is not clear to me that it really will work this way. It seems as if most of the landowners today are older people, or businesses. Many of the buildings will have little value, without ongoing required resource inputs.
Back to land based feudalism , of which Dr. Morgan is probably well accustomed. I don’t know what is his background, but since he was able to attend Cambridge I assume he comes from a decent gentry background with plenty of real estate to fall back at harder times.
Tim Morgan might actually have attended Cambridge for nothing at all – and left without any debt – if his parents were not rich, as grants were available in his day. Not now though, just loans.
The social mix was and is far wider than most foreigners imagine – although students might stick to groups of their own class, which is just natural really – and no one ever bought their way in.
So if you have a son who is 160cm… you can’t pay the basketball team coach to designate him as the back up centre … and get him in on a scholarship?
No, no way, not at Oxford or Cambridge. The sportsmen also have to be very bright, unlike the US.
To a very small extent, family connections can play a part, but only to the extent of getting you an interview – where you have to impress like anyone else.
I did know someone who had an hereditary’ room, from the ancient Babington family, but he’d made the grade like anyone else. Ditto the Old Etonians I knew.
For all the talk of privilege, it is a remarkably egalitarian place which respects intelligence alone (perhaps too much?) If anything, the bias is now against rich sporty people, even if bright. And definitely in favour of black women, so many more of them around.
I was taught by Maynard Keynes’s great-nephew (I think that was the precise relation) but I doubt that even in his day the Keynes name alone got him a fellowship – he was an excellent scholar.
And I recall a Yank wanting to visit my supervisor before applying, who said when he put the phone down: ‘I suppose he thinks he’ll improve his chances if he butters me up, but that’s not how we do things is it?’
If you gave a big dollop of money to a College or the University, you might well get an honorary doctorate or fellowship, just to say thanks, but nothing for your kids.
This is why I find the eager, compliant descent into Totalitarianism so shocking here in England.
I always hesitated to move back to Spain because of the all- pervasive corruption, and the strength of Francoism, and rated England higher, for all her faults…….
Fast Eddy would like a PHD in something from Cambridge and Oxford if the CEP is correct… to go with the Nobel Prize…
Thanks to Gail,
I hope all of you are able to read this and understand as well as I think I do, it is very good summary of issues and it is consistent with housing costs increasing, housing is an essential, not discretionary. A house needs to be safe, it needs to be serviced by a government well, and with those two, it is a store of value. Gail put together the macro, Tim is giving ideas on how we as individuals adapt.
“Business planning and investment perceptions remain firmly rooted in the false paradigm of ever-growing discretionary consumption, yet SEEDS analysis reveals that this paradigm is founded on the fallacious premise of perpetual growth, a premise whose fallacy has thus far been masked by credit and monetary activism. Politically, the rising real cost of necessities can be expected to cause a switch of focus towards alleviating the hardship caused by the rising prices of essentials.
This, then, is where the denouement occurs – and, if we want to understand how events are going to unfold, we need to keep a keen eye on the nominal and the real cost of essentials, whether purchased by households or funded through taxation.”
Tim Morgan,
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
A ton of stuff here(OFW) I do not understand(British politics, Covid, etc.), but this is consistent, I hope it is useful to many of you.
Dennis L.
I finally did get a chance to read the article. What Tim Morgan says is more or less right.
He stays away from the debt bubble popping issue. He also stays away from the broken supply line issue. He only talks about the most benign part of the problem.
Of course, he doesn’t mention that the situation can lead to collapse.
Gail,
Is it possible it gives a sequence? Discretionary before essential? e.g. airline travel before the grid?
This thinking leads one to think a collapse will be slow, segmented and is indeed happening. It will be dependent on a number of things in addition to being discretionary, e.g. ability and willingness to be useful. Homelessness comes to mind as a first step ignoring the causes.
Huge collapses have been predicted for years, they have yet to happen yet things are changing around us; it seems more sequential to me and TM’s ideas are a nice generalization.
Social response is also a question. In the Cities we have people burning their own neighborhood, in Lebanon they have literally shelled their homes to rubble, Lebanon was as I understand it a very nice country in the sixties, why?
As mentioned earlier, it gives ideas of where to invest. Gates has among other things holdings in electric utilities, Buffet owns what was once Iowa Illinois. Both are heavily into primary economic activities, essentials. Ironically, Windows is now an essential along with electricity to run the computer on which it resides.
Is space an essential? Is Ni an essential? Is removing pollution from earth an essential? Is Elon obtaining huge amounts of financing for space? Is moving around an essential? Elon has electric cars, oil is becoming scarce.
Which is cheaper, a tunnel from Rochester, MN to the Cities or a surface road? Life cycle costs come in, snow, moving it, salt to keep the ice off, salt which eats cars, ice which causes accidents and delays. Is a tunnel cheaper? If movement is essential, which movement is essential, what is the cheapest overall cost?
Elon seems to have a plan to tunnel to Brownsville from the space port, skip the congestion, much easier to autopilot cars on a purpose built road, run closer together, etc. Tunnels are long lived assets, subways come to mind.
Dennis L.
I am not surprised about Gates holding electric utilities. Electric utilities have the characteristic of being able to set the rate they require for the electricity that they sell. This is fairly different from “merchant suppliers” competing for market set electricity rates which vary by time of day. They will drive out nuclear power quickly, if intermittent suppliers are allowed to “go first.” They will drive out pretty much every other provider as well. The rates are not high enough in the aggregate. California and Texas are examples of states that use a competitive rating system; Hawaii does not. We don’t hear about rolling blackouts in Hawaii.
One thing that we have talked about before is the need for hope. Selling electric cars sells hope. The only aspect of space that is essential is the hope aspect. Young people need to have the impression that there is a point to learning advanced topics in universities.
I would agree that a tunnel is a pretty expensive way of doing things. It can have a lot of long term problems as well. I remember hearing about work done on the Boston tunnel for vehicles. The book “The World Without Us” points out that if we ever stop pumping the water from the New York subway system, it will flood, if I remember correctly. In the North, I would agree that tunnels would work around maintenance costs. Hunter-gathers often found caves for shelter. This is related. If you have a very cheap tunnel (cave), already built for you, it is great. The cost of moving dirt and rock becomes outrageous otherwise, I expect.
Tunnels remind me of underground transmission lines for electricity. I have read that they can cost six to 10 times the amount of above ground transmission lines. They can work in a subdivision of homes, if they are put in when the homes are built, when many types of utility lines are put underground at the same time. But putting transmission lines underground for for wind and solar gets to be a very expensive operation.
Tim Morgan is up with another cheery post.
“As we shall see, it’s difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between the essential and the discretionary, but non-essential – ‘want, but not need’ – goods and services probably account for at least two-thirds of the economic activities of Western countries. The idea that this part of the economy might contract will come as a great surprise, and an extremely unwelcome one.”
Wow, didn’t realize it was that large, well the bright side is one knows where not to invest, houses are a necessity I would expect.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Dennis L.
Although I put negative comments in Dennis’ comments, it’s not that I do not disagree with his ideas. I myself am in favor of his dreams.
It was some wrong decisions made in 1914, about which I will tell more (although I mentioned it before), in Gail’s next blog post.
Tl, dr, a quick German victory in 1914 would have precluded the conscription of millions of colonials, which then empowered the colonies which led to their independence 40 years later, and the misuse of untold amounts of natural resources so these third world countries could expand and increase from around 1 billion in 1914 to about 7 billion in 2021.
a massive suppression of the Third World, the denial of most modern convenience to them and a passive reduction of their population would have led the world to a greater height by the year 2000
When the moon rockets were launched, ‘Civil Rights Leader” Ralph Abernathy caused a shit on DC, complaining about the moon landing whose funds should have been used more for blacks.
In my opinion, countries which were not independent on 1913 should have remained that way, because the world would probably not have missed the inhabitants of these countries too much.
In short, if the world had reached the level we are in 2000 without at least a few billion people, we would have reached the space in luxury. Now it is like a nick of time measure with a less than 50% success probability.
Sorry for the delay:
Recently someone here brought up the topic of ham radio.
I am very interested in it but the only resource I could find was a very old scan of an experimetal setup some 20 years old where neither the accronyms I could understand nor the technical devices exist in google or ebay.
Is someone so kind to help me educate about this topic and recommend three books : basic, medium, high difficulty and / or an online resource / club about it ?
Thank you
MM
A good but technical book is “Crystal sets to sideband”. “The ARRL handbook” contains a lot of info.
Done, thanks!
Where are Gails Physicists to tell us why Lithium batteries can be monetized at all. 130K for a fireball waiting to happen?
Our firm & @AthleteDefender
I represent an exec who purchased new Tesla Plaid Model S, which was 1/250 shipped. On Tuesday it spontaneously combusted. Our client was trapped & could have died. We tried reaching out to Tesla & have been ignored so far. This is car after escape.
“BRAND-NEW Tesla catches fire with driver at wheel, then burns for 3 HOURS in Philly suburb (PHOTOS)”
https://www.rt.com/usa/528155-tesla-model-s-explosion/
“A factory-fresh Tesla Model S Plaid flared up, with its driver barely escaping, before turning into a giant fireball and lighting up skies in a Philadelphia neighborhood for about three hours.
The electric car burst into flames on Wednesday in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It ignited around 9pm local time, according to the Gladwyne Volunteer Fire Company, who said in a now-deleted post that the crew battled the raging fire for about three hours.
Fortunately for the neighborhood and the firefighters, the two fire engines that responded had undergone Tesla-specific training and were able to “deploy hand lines to extinguish the fire, each maintaining a dedicated water source and continuing to cool the vehicle down for almost 90 minutes.””
An EMT working for Narberth Ambulance, which was on the scene to assist firefighters, reported the emergency call had come in from a neighborhood resident who “saw [the Tesla] rolling down the road on fire before exploding in front of their house,” apparently after the driver had already bailed.
The Model S Plaid, which is Tesla’s most pricey yet at $130,000, has only been on sale for a few weeks.
A living sacrifice for our God-Emperor-Supertycoon Elon.
He would be big playing Neron in some big smack Holywood flick though.
Where’s Ralph Nader when you need him?
Unsafe at any voltage.
CA is running the experiment for us, we will see the results in the next few months if this post is somewhat correct regarding renewables. If this comes to pass, interesting to see how less electricity is a good thing for all of us will be spun, but there is one idea:
Instead of electricity each citizen can receive a check for essentially free electricity in the fall, what could go wrong?
“The short-term strategy needs to be centered around incentivizing demand reductions instead of increasing supply,” said Abe Stanway, co-founder of Amperon Holdings Inc., which provides analysis to utilities and power traders. “The best way to reduce uncertainty around demand resources is to simply pay consumers more to use less during peak events.”
On the otherhand, CA can write a check to neighboring power producers and buy their excess, no problem.
“State energy officials asked the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the grid, to contract for additional power capacity for July and August on concern it won’t be able to meet demand during the evening when solar production fades, according to a joint statement Thursday from grid, utility and energy agencies. They didn’t say how much more power is needed but one can guess it will be a lot.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/california-begs-more-electricity-shift-renewable-power-leaves-state-reeling
One must see the positive in all things, who knows, it may work.
Good news, there are about 29 days between sun sets on the moon, bad news, there are 29 days between sunrises, can’t seem to win with that one. Go nuclear, neighbors won’t complain about the nuclear waste, etc.
Dennis L.
I live in CA. And it is just like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Not too many people pay attention
and Enron already tried it in Texas and that didn’t work too well.
A Canadian government report recently branded the treatment of native Canadians ‘genocide.’ 150,000 children over a century were forced to attend boarding schools mostly run by the RCC, in which they were forced to ‘assimilate’. They were forbidden to speak their own language, forced to convert to Christianity, and given numbers in the place of names; unsurprisingly all sorts of abuse were rampant. 10 RCC churches were vandalised overnight.
(One wonders whether there was an economic motive of labour expansion behind the forced assimilation. The explanation is usually given in ideological terms. Canada maintains one of highest levels of immigration per capita in the world, at around 400,000 per year, and around 25% of the working age population are ‘visible minorities.’ 21% of Canadians in 2019 were born abroad. Or maybe it was just ideologically motivated.)
> Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II statues toppled in Canada amid anger at deaths of Indigenous children
Statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II have been toppled in Canada amid growing outrage over the discovery of unmarked graves belonging to Indigenous children.
A group gathered at the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg pulled down the statue of Victoria on Canada Day – an annual celebration on 1 July that marks the country’s confederation.
At least 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families to attend the schools over a century as part of the campaign by the government to forcefully assimilate the children into Canadian society.
On Thursday, the Lower Kootenay Band announced they had discovered 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a former residential school— the latest in a series of grim discoveries that have shocked the country.
The recent discoveries had previously led to calls from Indigenous groups to not celebrate Canada Day.
“We will not celebrate stolen Indigenous land and stolen indigenous lives. Instead we will gather to honour all of the lives lost to the Canadian state,” said the group Idle No More, calling for national rallies to support Indigenous communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/queen-victoria-statue-toppled-in-canada-amid-anger-at-deaths-of-indigenous-children
LOL
Trust the Sun to have the funniest article and video.
> Protesters rage ‘tear the b***ch down’ as they topple statue of The Queen over mass child deaths in Canada
Protestors raged “tear the b**ch down” as they toppled a statue of Queen Elizabeth II amid fury over the gruesome discovery of hundreds of Indigenous children’s graves.
A video uploaded to Twitter shows demonstrators tying a rope around the monument and yanking it down as they chanted “no justice, no peace”.
In a separate clip, protesters chant “knock her down” as they tear down Queen Victoria’s sculpture, daubing it in red paint and leaving a “we were children once. Bring them home” sign beside it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15463772/queens-statue-toppled-by-protesters-in-canada/
One wonders whether these issues will prompt a move to abolish the monarchy in Canada, which only apathy seems to have delayed. More agree that the Harry and Meghan interview proves that the ‘royal family’ is ‘racist’. It may be felt that a shift to republicanism is more congruent with a new perspective on Canada’s past in the light of these revelations.
This report is from March, and I would guess that support for abolition is still growing.
> New poll suggests support of monarchy in Canada continues to diminish
A poll in February by the Angus Reid Institute shortly after the governor general, Julie Payette, resigned, found 43 per cent of respondents saying they would eliminate the position of governor general, the Queen’s representative, while 22 per cent said they would opt to keep the role as is.
Another February poll, by Leger, found 46 per cent of respondents saying the monarchy is outdated and that Canada should get rid of it.
Now, a new online Leger poll, released yesterday, suggests resistance to the monarchy growing.
“53% of Canadians think that the British monarchy is out of date and no longer has a place in the 21st century, while 33% think it is part of our history and should be preserved.”
The poll comes in the wake of Prince Harry and Meghan’s controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this month.
Leger Executive Vice-President Christian Bourque said the interview — and how Canadians are responding to its revelations that hinted at racism from some members of the Royal Household — should be considered a blow for the monarchy and those who believe in the importance of the role it plays in Canada.
The poll also found that 59 per cent of respondents sympathized more with Harry and Meghan, while 26 per cent say they held more sympathy for the Royal Family.
And it found that 43 per cent of Canadians thought recent events show the Royal Family holds racist views.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would be open to a constitutional debate about the role of the monarchy in Canada, but added that now was not the time, as Canada continues to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/03/17/new-poll-suggests-support-of-monarchy-in-canada-continues-to-diminish/
actually most of the people who dealt with the Indians were the Irish. It is an anti-Irish propaganda
The protestors are focusing on the role of the state and of various institutions, no one seems to be making it about the Irish background of some of the church staff. The ‘assimilation’ policy was implemented by the state with the help of churches and paid for by the state. Trudeau has apologised for the actions of the state, and rights groups want an apology from Pope Francis for the role of the RCC, which has not been forthcoming. No one is making it about the Irish background of some of the church staff, as far as I can see.
The Irish press is noting the parallels with Ireland’s own Magdalene Laundries and “Mother and Baby” homes:
“The recent horror discoveries in Canada hold chilling parallels to Ireland’s own Catholic Industrial schools and Mother and Baby Homes, where the bodies of hundreds of children and babies were found in unmarked graves.
“…a report released earlier this year indicates that up to 9,000 babies died in the just 18 homes investigated across Ireland.”
https://www.irishpost.com/news/hundreds-more-bodies-found-at-second-catholic-founded-residential-school-in-canada-214748
Irish republicans are noting parallels with Ireland’s opposition to British imperialism and its occupation of the land and suppression of native language and culture.
Just over half of the forced boarding schools for native Canadians were operated by the RCC, the rest were other churches. The policy of ‘assimilation’ was implemented by the state, and it is incidental which churches were involved, and it certainly does not reflect on the ethnicity of some church staff.
That said, RCC must be exposed and held to account for the abuse at the schools, as it has been in Ireland. RCC mass attendance in the south of Ireland has fallen by 2/3 since the 1970s, RCC has been removed from the constitution, Ireland is secularised, and that should make Irish unity easier – at least some good has come out of it all.
I don’t disagree, Mirror, except that I have no viewpoint on Irish unity.
It just amused me, given your biases, to point out that the Irish state, which funded and had authority for directing the operation of these godawful places, was, in conjunction with the sadistic RCC, capable of startlingly similar cruelties to an offshoot of the British state.
“Peg O’Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you’d think at least some bells should ring!
One day I’m going to die here too
And they’ll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring….”
I suspect that all states and all institutions need to be ‘cruel’ in various ways, and that it is even a precondition of their survival.
It seems a particularly bad idea to give gangs of ‘celibate’ men control over kids however, like the RCC did – and still does.
Their domination and abuse of the kids sort of instantiates the domination and abuse in general by the Canadian state of the native Canadians – sad.
Sincere question – if all states need to be cruel, why is it the British state in particular that irks you so much?
Feel free to fire with both barrels – I am not ego-invested in the idea of the British state, just preferring its survival for selfish, pragmatic reasons.
I have already said plenty about that, and this is not really the time for it. I live under that state, so it is no massive surprise that it concerns me more than others.
If you want something to read about the state, give this some consideration:
http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11
You’ve posted plenty of articles that show the British state in a poor light or suggest that it is vulnerable but you’ve never explained your great, personal antipathy for it.
I think that you are clutching at straws. I hope that you enjoyed the Zarathustra text. : )
No, I’m legitimately curious. Are you just a Celtic romantic or do you feel personally disenfranchised – or both? Do you have ties with people overseas who have been on the receiving end of British imperial cruelties?
Some context would be elucidating but it seems you are disinclined to say.
I think that you are barking up the wrong tree. In fact you are dashing around the wood, looking for a tree to bark at.
Woof woof.
I am not the only one:
Martin Elvis
is a senior astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard.
https://aeon.co/essays/asteroid-mining-could-pay-for-space-exploration-and-adventure?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c2345047e0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_06_28_05_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-c2345047e0-69504153
Basically part is relevant to mining asteroids, making money and of course there must be a grant somewhere in the pile of pony poop if only one digs a bit(earlier metaphor regarding the pony).
We are going forward and I like all others seek affirmation, it is on the internet, it must be true.
Dennis L.
Tl.dr:
I got a grant from would-be asteroid miners
Remember some years back when our Fast Eddy character here was attempting to be a farmer prepper with a homestead trying to grow his own food and throwing in the towel after realizing that it was next to impossible without chemical and sprays to keep Mother Nature at Bay….
Saying to us that pretty much he would rather not naw on turnips ever day after BAU ends…
This is for you Buddy…
Book review of Fruits of Eden: David Fairchild & Americas Plant Hunters
Posted on June 28, 2021 by energyskeptic
Preface. Botanist David Fairchild is one of the reasons the average grocery store has 39,500 items. Before he came along, most people ate just a few kinds of food day in day out (though that was partly due to a lack of refrigeration).
I have longed to eat a mangosteen ever since I read this book, Fairchild’s favorite fruit, with mango a close second. But no luck so far.
What wonderful and often adventurous work Fairchild and other botanists had traveling all over the world in search of new crops American farmers could grow. Grains that could grow in colder climates were sought out.
Since 80 to 90% of future generations will be farmers after fossil fuels are gone, who will be growing food organically since fertilizer and pesticides are made from natural gas and oil, it would be wise for them to plant as many varieties of crops as possible not only for gourmet meals, but biodiversity, pest control, and a higher quality of life.
As usual, what follows are Kindle notes, this isn’t a proper book review.
https://energyskeptic.com/
Fast Eddy, I’ve been there…it’s really difficult to be self sufficient in growing your own eats..
Hope I’m pushing up daisies before they close the Super Stop and Shop Groceries
Heh heh, I’ve been eating mangos every day.
“Bangladesh risks power shortages by canceling ten coal-fired plants… Bangladesh State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has announced the cancellation of 10 coal-fired power plants in favour of imported hydropower and LNG.
“The State Minister made the announcement while speaking with reporters about the challenges of power generation and the high cost associated with renewables.”
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/coal-fired/bangladesh-risks-power-shortages-by-canceling-ten-coal-fired-plants/
“Power cuts test Pindi residents’ nerves [Rawalpindi, Pakistan]… power cuts from six to eight hours in the garrison city are testing the nerves of the residents… frequent power cuts …created acute water shortage in many areas.
“Muhammad Naeem, a resident of Media Town, said, “The life of common man has become miserable but nobody is here to listen to their problems… “The tariff of electricity is increasing with each passing day but it is not available for common man,” he said.”
https://www.dawn.com/news/1632452/power-cuts-test-pindi-residents-nerves
An earlier article says that Pakistan’s big problem is a lack of transmission lines. In theory, it has more than enough power generating capacity with the coal fired plants that China helped build.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-energy-climate-change-featur/pakistan-faces-an-unexpected-dilemma-too-much-electricity-idUSKBN2AO27C
Pindi seems to be near the Himalayas, where a person would expect electricity to be from hydroelectric. This electricity comes and goes with the rainfall. Every country has this problem, even Norway. Depending upon this electricity to operate water pumps is not a reasonable choice. Poor countries do this all of the time, however.
Life gets very tough without the electricity slave.
“Massive protests rock Punjab amid power crisis.
“A day after the Punjab government curtailed the timings of government offices as the electricity demand in the state rose to more than 14,000 MW a day, Shiromani Akali Dal workers on Friday took to the streets to protest against the administration.”
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/massive-protests-rock-punjab-amid-power-crisis-here-s-the-list-of-areas-facing-power-cut-today/779297
The high cost of renewables is becoming more and more apparent.
Whether or not it will be possible to import LNG in the quantity required, at the desired price, is very iffy. If the price is low enough for Bangladesh to afford, it likely will be too low to make extraction profitable for producers. There is also little evidence that LNG is any better with respect to total global warming gases than coal. Too much methane escapes in the process.
Full speed ahead!
On Its Oil Ventures
Editor OilPrice.com
Thu, July 1, 2021, 4:00 PM
Despite announcements last year that it is striving for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Norway has now said it will go full steam ahead in its oil ventures over the coming decades.
While neighboring Denmark plans to end all North Sea operations by 2050, Norway, Western Europe’s largest oil producer, continues to offer exploration and production contracts to several companies, as it intends to develop its already well-established oil industry further.
In a white paper, Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Tina Bru, stated that “The main goal of the government’s petroleum policy – to facilitate profitable production in the oil and gas industry in a long term perspective – is firmly in place.”
This week, Norway’s oil majors announced they would be developing four oil and gas discoveries, at a cost of $1.69 billion, to increase output in the country’s existing oil fields.
Better extract it and burn it off before we all race off the cliff….sounds like a plan!
We can expect that pretty much everywhere, people will look at the potential financial results, probably assuming a higher price of oil in the future.
What do you think of this article? It seems like they are saying there’s a lot of money sloshing around in the fracking world. And that it is very profitable at $70.
Drillers want the price of their stock to go up. They want to give the impression that their operation is profitable, even when it is not.
The UK growing business imploding:
https://youtu.be/yzmmJDYN4eY
“Haribo latest [UK] company to sound alarm on lorry driver shortages
“Brits could soon find it difficult to get their hands on Haribo’s famous gummy sweets, as a shortage of lorry drivers has left the German confectionary giant struggling to get its products to UK shops.”
https://www.cityam.com/haribo-latest-company-to-sound-alarm-on-lorry-driver-shortages/
The title of this video is “Fruit Farming on Brink of Collapse as Brexit Causes Shortage of Pickers.” The ban on Eastern European pickers went into effect July 1. Brits don’t want the low-wage jobs. Some are hoping that machines will take over picking jobs. Small farmers are particularly affected. Also, strawberry growing, because it involves a lot of human labor.
Depending on cheap and often slave labour from eastern Europe is no way for Britain to feed itself. If Brexit puts an end to this abhorrent practice then that will be one good outcome. By the way the EU aren’t any better as they import cheap/slave labor from the Middle East and Africa for the same purpose. It all has to end.
Except that the world no longer has enough energy products that the benefits can be distributed close to uniformly. Some people have to be left out. It is the poor people around the world who are being closed out right now.
Erdles thank you YES!
Didn’t read the linked article, should be about the same idea across crops.
https://www.energid.com/industries/agricultural-robotics?utm_term=harvesting%20robot&utm_campaign=Energid_Search_Industries&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4141879979&hsa_cam=10813753899&hsa_grp=109487392787&hsa_ad=455790823199&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-938988397638&hsa_kw=harvesting%20robot&hsa_mt=p&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8vqGBhC_ARIsADMSd1ALNwZFalXfDtCP9z81SuGQWbUzoVdQ-Fg1-cZC9ayRNEf3srIyt5gaAjPvEALw_wcB
The real question will be what fruit do robots like to eat?
The issues is the diminution of labor relative to capital and who owns the capital. Make farming more efficient, with less labor without an increase in population to eat additional food prices decline, return on capital declines. Pretty much what you write.
Dennis L.
Good way of stating the problem. The rich theoretically get richer, while the poor get poorer, until the whole system falls apart.
“Iran’s new leader faces an existential economic crisis…
“Raisi will inherit an economy that has contracted in each of the past three years, even as the Iranian rial has lost 80% of its value and inflation is around a crippling 40%. The strikes and protests suggest workers are not inclined to give him much time to set things right.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-07-01/iran-s-new-president-raisi-faces-an-existential-economic-crisis
“Dual crises grip Iraq as temperatures soar and Iran cuts off energy lifeline.
“A political and social crisis in Iraq has escalated in recent days, as soaring temperatures, widespread protests and rolling blackouts take hold of the oil-rich south of the country.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1886726/middle-east
This is another low oil price problem:
“Iran, which normally supplies around a third of Iraq’s gas and electricity, has drastically curtailed the amount of energy it is providing to the country, in what some believe is an attempt to force the country to pay millions in unpaid bills.”
If Iraq wan receiving a high enough price for the oil it sells, it would be able to pay for the electricity it buys and the natural gas it imports to produce electricity.
One of the key issues is
“Strikes and protests have broken out in Iran’s critical petroleum industry, where workers are fed up with low wages and poor working conditions.”
Oil sales prices are too low to pay workers a living wage. (Iran is still exporting some oil, and extracting some for its own use.) This is a formula for disaster.
“Failed state: Nearly 80 percent of households in Lebanon do not have food or money to buy food, warns UN…
“The study found that nearly a third of children in the ravaged country had gone to bed hungry or skipped meals in the past month after a “devastating recession” left families with virtually no access to social support.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/lebanon-food-shortages-un-poverty-b1876211.html
“The Lebanese army was sent on to the streets of Tripoli after frustration with fuel price rises and hyperinflation intensified into violent protests.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/lebanese-army-deployed-beirut-after-armed-protests-over-gas-price-hike
“In the midst of Lebanon’s financial crisis, farmers are struggling to survive…
“According to Yammine, Lebanese agriculture is in absolute distress. “Farmers will end up stopping all activity, or worse, commit suicide with chemical fertilisers, like in India.””
https://www.equaltimes.org/in-the-midst-of-lebanon-s?lang=en#.YN721uhKjIU
The government has no money to help farmers. The article glorifies the use of organic methods, which don’t require buying expensive chemicals. The article fails to mention that the total cost of food production may be higher without chemicals.
There may also be a water problem, but the article doesn’t mention it. I found this September 2020 article:
World Bank scotches Beirut water supply project
No money to pay farmers?
Why would a farmer need money in the first place when all he needs comes from his own land?
Machinery ?
That will level out for (money) supply and (machinery) demand. I see no problems in farmers without money. I see a problem in farmers without ammo and later on a country without farmers.
Subsistence agriculture is not usually the goal.
Messrs Haber and Bosch .. once hailed as heroes by the Stoooopid Goy… are now the arch enemies of the human species… and will play a large part in their extinction…
I think I’ll have another coffee…
“If humanitarian aid deliveries are only allowed across conflict lines within Syria, Western nations will stop the funding, France warned Russia Thursday as Moscow is expected to block the reauthorization of United Nations-mandated cross-border aid operations into northwestern Syria.”
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/syrian-crisis/west-to-stop-syria-funding-if-russia-blocks-cross-border-aid-france
When do we get more of those camel jockeys riding into crowds of protesters?
This adds a level of excitement to the festivities…
https://youtu.be/H6jiXzDo98Q
Wonder how the HK police are feeling after that slash em up job the other day… I remain a fan of fire… no need to stab yourself in the chest cuz difficult to get caught… if I was a commander I’d take the terror campaign directly to the family members of my oppressor… you f789 with me…. nothing is off limits… I cut your wife’s throat while she’s reading Vogue in the hair salon…. I heist your kids on the way to school.. and roast them on a spit… then send the video to you over TikTok…
One must be ruthless…. one must Make Them Pay… take as many down as possible
But then I am not in command of jack sh it…and have no desire to be …
Next we will hear about children and others dying from what would normally be minor illnesses.
“Rising food prices deepen the woes of world’s poorest… Global food prices are rising at their fastest rate in a decade, exacerbating the troubles of the world’s most vulnerable nations as they struggle with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
“The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is worried that soaring prices could foment further social unrest in countries already mired in political turmoil.”
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210702-rising-food-prices-deepen-the-woes-of-world-s-poorest
“In Lagos, Nigeria, families struggle to survive as food prices soar… Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants, Nigeria competes with India for the largest number of poor in the world.
“…battered by the double economic impact of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates Nigeria’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2020.”
https://www.rfi.fr/en/business-and-tech/20210702-in-lagos-families-struggle-to-survive-as-food-prices-soar
“Food prices South Africa much higher than last year…
“Regionally, food baskets in all areas except the Johannesburg came down very marginally in June, bringing no real relief to struggling households.”
https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9335570/food-prices-south-africa-much-higher-than-last-year/
“Many African countries are reeling from a spike in hunger, malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) due to the Covid-19 pandemic-linked disruptions on the continent’s food production systems, scientists have said.”
https://sambadenglish.com/africa-reeling-from-spike-in-hunger-malnutrition-and-ncds-due-to-covid-19/
Pandemic linked disruptions to food production are a huge problem. So is loss of income from loss of tourism and from loss of making fancy clothes for rich people. The combination is terrible for poor people in poor countries.
When you explain that to a CovIDIOT the CovIDIOT says that’s all terrible but all they care about is that they are Staying Safe.
Goy are very selfish creatures
Higher food prices are likely to lead to unrest. Poor people spend a high portion of their incomes on food.
should have spent some money on education
food producing education
Oh, these fancy city lights!
“South Africa looks to Lions rugby tour to avert financial crisis… “They’ll do anything they possibly can to make it happen,” said Steve Martin, global chief executive of the M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment agency. “The Lions tour, because it’s only once every four years, they’ve got to capitalise on it.”
“Yet in a sign of the anxiety surrounding the tour, the games will be played in empty stadiums.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f72a8abf-e7e2-41ed-a7c1-bd62610fc526
“Emfuleni’s financial distress still far from over…
“The cash-strapped Emfuleni Municipality in the Vaal [South Africa] scored just five out of 100 in Ratings Africa’s 2020 Financial Stability Index, which flagged concerns around declining operating performance and liquidity management.”
https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/emfulenis-financial-distress-still-far-from-over/
How can a country capitalize on games played in empty stadiums? They need visiting tourists, willing to spend money on goods of many kinds.
“Venezuela to Cut Six Zeroes Off Bolivar to Simplify Transactions…
“The central bank is planning to slash six zeroes from the bolivar as early as August after previous attempts to issue larger-denomination bills failed to resolve problems created by endemic inflation…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-01/venezuela-to-cut-six-zeroes-off-bolivar-to-simplify-transactions
“UN food shipments for school children arrive in Venezuela.
“The food assistance agency of the United Nations announced Thursday that its first shipments of supplies for vulnerable Venezuelan school children have arrived in the troubled South American country.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/un-food-shipments-school-children-173242793.html
“Cuba is facing its worst shortage of food since the 1990s…
“The government blames the shortage of food mostly on sanctions imposed by the United States—sanctions which, on June 24th, the un General Assembly voted to condemn, as it has done nearly every year since 1992. But since 2001 the sanctions have exempted food…”
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/07/01/cuba-is-facing-its-worst-shortage-of-food-since-the-1990s
Cuba desperately needs American tourism back, so it has the dollars it needs to import food.
There are a lot of issues. The people growing food need to eat it themselves. They are unwilling to put it on the market.
Venezuela is an example of more money supply not substituting for more production of salable goods and services.
“The housing challenge facing central banks: Monetary policy is ill-placed to fix a property crisis.
“House prices are rising across the world at a hair-raising pace: in the US at their fastest rate for three decades while the UK has experienced the quickest growth rate for 17 years. Prices in Germany, which missed much of the past four decades of rising house prices, have surged.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5ca4561a-4c15-48ec-b6bf-90cea4940ee1
“Wild Tales From the Property Frenzy in Australia and Beyond…
“As prices mount, so do the risks for both individuals and society. Even without an outright crash, big mortgages mean borrowers are vulnerable if interest rates rise, have less disposable income to spend in the wider economy and are more likely to retire in debt.
“For younger people, buying property becomes increasingly difficult, further widening intergenerational inequality.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-02/wild-tales-from-the-property-frenzy-in-australia-and-beyond
“Record property investor surge pumps speculative bubble…
“Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show investor finance soared by more than 13 per cent in May, or more than 115 per cent higher than for the same time last year, as investors responded to cheap loans and rapidly rising prices.”
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/record-property-investor-surge-pumps-speculative-bubble-20210702-p586ep
“Hong Kong’s real estate market is gathering steam. Total transactions in Hong Kong’s property sector surged to a 24-year high in the first half, led by a bounce in residential assets, as investors piled into the market amid the economic recovery.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3139466/hong-kongs-real-estate-deals-jump-24-year-high-first-half-buoyed-upbeat
“Is the UK housing bubble about to burst?
“…A more pessimistic scenario is that the end of the stamp duty holiday will puncture a huge mortgage credit-driven housing bubble that will ripple through the financial system and damage the nascent Covid recovery.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/02/housing-bubble-birst-uk-gdp-house-prices-interest-rates-economy
Young people are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to buying homes. They are faced with relatively lower wages than their parents. In some countries, they have debt from going to college. It is hard to believe that they would be happy.
Going forward, pensions of all kinds will prove to be underfunded. I wouldn’t blame young people for insisting that they be cut way back.
I would not be surprised were they to insist on the pensioners themselves being cut back……
This is just plain ridiculous https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/expat-pays-225m-quarter-acre-piece-dirt-arrowtown
A big share of the extra debt available has gone to the fairly wealthy in each country. They have used the funds to buy homes in more desirable locations. The result is a huge spurt in home prices around the world, even as the poor get poorer, especially in the poor countries of the world.
Lie
Nine in 10 parents in England approve of Covid jabs for children, survey finds
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/01/not-enough-evidence-to-back-covid-jabs-for-children-says-uk-expert
Ah ha! getting close… to the CEP
Who was planning what? Schreyer says all this information, taken together, provides a crucial backdrop for us to form our own opinion about what is happening.
He gives a clue as to his own view by citing an almost unnoticed financial crisis that took place just before the emergence of Covid-19. ‘Many people, me included, didn’t realise that in mid-September 2019 stock markets were in panic,’ he says. ‘It was a liquidity crisis called the “cash crunch of September 2019”.’
A news report in the German weekly Zeit Online of October 2 was headed: ‘Blackout in the financial system: The Fed [US central bank] tries to prevent a breakdown of the cash market by injecting billions of dollars into the financial system. How alarming is the situation?’
The report continued: ‘The crisis came overnight. Banks were running short of cash. The Fed was intervening with massive amounts of dollars to prevent the worst. This sounds like the climax of the global financial crisis 11 years ago [in 2008] but in fact it only describes the Monday of the week before last, when an important part of the global financial system was on the verge of collapse and the general public noticed practically nothing.’
Schreyer checked the Fed’s balance sheet and found that in the 2008 crisis, when banks stopped lending to one another, its assets doubled in the space of a few weeks from about a trillion dollars ($1,000 billion) to two trillion as it pumped money into the system by buying treasury and corporate bonds. This is the process, which in effect creates money, known euphemistically as quantitative easing.
Subsequent cash injections took the total to four trillion dollars by the end of 2017. ‘When you look at that from today’s perspective you realise that the bubble was gigantic, and it became clear that this practice couldn’t be kept up,’ Schreyer says. ‘You either had to deflate it, or it would burst.’
The Fed tried to deflate it over the next two years, gently taking money out of the system. But the fresh crisis of confidence in mid-September 2019 caused it to revert to ever-increasing cash injections.
These continued after the arrival of the new coronavirus, with the pandemic now the excuse. But what lay behind the previous interventions?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/covids-dark-winter-did-hidden-banking-crisis-spark-global-lockdown/
Interesting; and Naomi Klein has realised that it might all be linked to a resource crisis, not just the greed of the corporations and corruption of Big Pharma.
Unfortunately, there are so few lights switched on in a sea of darkness.
Naomi’s was switched off on Twitter.
Everything becomes rather moot once one accepts the energy situation … it’s just a matter of watching the struggle and die. It is not struggling much now … it is dying.
Think of all these powerful structures that comprise the Beast… corporations… militaries… governments… wealthy families… financial institutions… law firms… universities… the medical industry…. the pope….
All will soon … no longer exist. Epic is too small a word. Apocalyptic is much more appropriate.
I like to think of Nassem Taleb’s comment about being in boardroom meetings with very serious men and women of finance and thinking to himself … what a load of sh it!
I have never been able to take things particularly serious — it all seems a bit laughable… particularly the obsession with the endless pursuit of more (particularly in light of the fact that we all die as well as the current situation)….. when the obvious goal should be one of ‘enough’ to bucket list…
Imagine the mental state of the Very Serious Men and Women when they realize their Pursuit of More has reached a dead end… all their advanced degrees and long hours… all the office politics…wasted… all the time … wasted… when Covid does not end… and the dying begins.
I know of at least one Serious Man who claims when we get through this he will change his life and spend more time living… I have told him that this is energy related and my bucket listing is over… obviously inferring that his will not happen… he rejects that … as one would expect.
It’s bad form to take a bow murmur I Told You So… and what’s the point anyway… pity is more appropriate as one watches the markets crumble to dust…
I think you may have confused with Klein with Wolf.
The author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after using it to spread myths about the pandemic, vaccines and lockdown. Wolf, who wrote the influential feminist work The Beauty Myth, holds staunch anti-vaccine views.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/05/naomi-wolf-banned-twitter-spreading-vaccine-myths
Yes, my error, I always mix up my Naomi’s!
Ms Klein also wrote No Logo a psychedelic rave against the manufactured reality. I recommend it.
Yep, Naomi Klein went from cool, establishment feminist to pariah, just for protesting about the loss of civil liberties.
She says that it has been shocking o be ostracised like that, but she’s met much nicer new people who allow discussion and have better manners on the ‘fascist Right’.
That’s the toughest of lights to switch on… rather than illuminate… it brings the darkness.
This has to be connected to resource depletion. Thousands of years of history and never has there been such a bizarre situation … this is the stuff of sci fi movies… or nightmares…
But it ain’t no movie.
Understanding how things are is ‘The Dark Illumination’…
Few are strong enough to take it.
Ever since I read Beowulf as a child, I’ve accepted inescapable Doom and annihilation in my mental map and expectations of life. It just struck me as true and natural
The ancients understood that, the strongest Hero goes down in the end, without exception. Whole tribes just disappear……
The second link you provide is interesting. It’s title is Covid’s dark winter: Did hidden banking crisis spark global lockdown?
One of the points it suggests is, “part of the role of Covid-19 has been to stave off an impending financial collapse, further enriching a few while impoverishing many.”
It also gives a long history of what the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the WEF seem to have been up to, including two different virus simulations at Johns Hopkins.
The article also links to an hour-long video that I have so far only been able to listen to part of. It is called, “Paul Schreyer: Pandemic simulation games – Preparation for a new era?” It is a very good talk that was originally in German, but has been dubbed in English, with English subtitles.
I did listen to the entire Paul Schreyer video. It really is excellent. It puts together the long history of governments (as well as influential people, foundations, and the media) working to produce the views the government wants distributed.
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1990 and the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Cold War was over. There was no need for the Military Industrial Complex. A new reason for US intervention in affairs abroad was needed, so the War on Terror was invented. Schreyer strongly suggests that the US military was behind the terrorist acts that seemed to have happened.
By about 2001, it was time to look for an additional way of justifying military power, as well as a way for governments to get more control over the actions of their own people. The use of biological weapons became a new focus. Schreyer walks through quite a bit of the history, including the many simulation exercises. He points out that the documents using a pandemic scenario talk about “plausible deniability.” No one needs to figure out that it was the governments of many countries of the world, working together, that cooked up the plan.
At then end, he talks about the problems in the repo market in September 2019, and makes the argument that a reason for the pandemic was to prevent a financial meltdown by giving an excuse for governments to issue a great deal more debt. We know that the world economy was doing poorly.
I would argue that a big reason for the financial problems had to do with failing oil and coal supplies. Keeping people at home “to prevent the spread of the virus” would allow the economy to continue, without the energy shortage becoming too apparent.
Some people are beginning to detect a whiff of the CEP….
They are dancing in the graveyard now… but still cannot connect all of the dots.
But then they don’t have 1000 horses powering their thoughts…. it seems so obvious to anyone who does have that sort of firepower… not so much to those operating under 150
problem with 1000 horses is the amount of crap they leave behind
The thing is…
The people who are supposedly behind covid.. are already beyond rich… so that assertion is not logical.. it does not compute…
The author is likely unaware of the energy situation …. hence the mistake…
Nice presentation and great find, FE. Thanks
That terr0rism has long been a political weapon is one of the most dangerous, and therefore well-kept, secrets there is. Schreyer traces very clearly and convincingly all the dots on the political and financial side of the Big-picture. And although he may be ignorant of the energetic basis that supports it all, i believe that the factual rigor of his presentation is not majorly affected by it. A very good work.
I think shedding is a real problem.
“I am currently investigating a group of 4 girls in a military academy that have been on strict lockdown since January 2020. They are only allowed to socialize in their tiny cohort and live in a 4-bed dormitory. None of the girls had COVID-19 in the past nor have tested positive for antibodies. One of the girls opted to get the Pfizer mRNA vaccine due to pressure from her parents. Within 45 minutes of receiving the injection, she returned to the dorm feeling unwell, and had to lay down. Within 24 hours, 2 of her roommates spiked fevers. One of them had additional respiratory symptoms consisting of shortness of breath and dry cough, and the other, headaches and extremity pain. These symptoms persisted for 5-6 days. On day 7 one of the non-vaccinated girls presented with a full-blown shingles outbreak, and the other with chest pains and acute leg pain, warranting a visit to the emergency department. She was later diagnosed with pericarditis and a blood clot in her leg.”
https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/blog/who-spiked-the-shot/
Keep Ivermectin in your cupboard and stay away from the recently injected.
Doesn’t sound good!
Technique #3 – ‘TOPIC DILUTION’
Topic dilution is not only effective in forum sliding it is also very useful in keeping the forum readers on unrelated and non-productive issues. This is a critical and useful technique to cause a ‘RESOURCE BURN.’ By implementing continual and non-related postings that distract and disrupt (trolling ) the forum readers they are more effectively stopped from anything of any real productivity. If the intensity of gradual dilution is intense enough, the readers will effectively stop researching and simply slip into a ‘gossip mode.’ In this state they can be more easily misdirected away from facts towards uninformed conjecture and opinion. The less informed they are the more effective and easy it becomes to control the entire group in the direction that you would desire the group to go in. It must be stressed that a proper assessment of the psychological capabilities and levels of education is first determined of the group to determine at what level to ‘drive in the wedge.’ By being too far off topic too quickly it may trigger censorship by a forum moderator.
[…]
Some agents take on a pushy, arrogant, or defensive manner:
1) To disrupt the agenda
2) To side-track the discussion
3) To interrupt repeatedly
4) To feign ignorance
5) To make an unfounded accusation against a person.
Calling someone a racist, for example. This tactic is used to discredit a person in the eyes of all other group members.
https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/obmkkb/how_to_disrupt_a_community_counterintelligence/
China has released footage of last year’s border skirmish with India that resulted in several fatalities, even though the protagonists had no guns:
Apes with sticks (earning nothing much) in a stand off in a barren place: that’s Hom. Sap.!
Soon, we could also be doing it Mars!
Right, lol. Or perhaps just doing it on a much grander scale here on earth:
“India has redirected at least 50,000 additional troops to its border with China in a historic shift toward an offensive military posture against the world’s second-biggest economy.”
https://zeenews.india.com/india/with-eye-on-china-india-shifts-50000-additional-troops-to-border-in-historic-move-report-2372351.html
“China has begun construction on more than 100 missile silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen, experts have said.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9748801/Satellite-images-China-building-100-nuclear-missile-silos-desert.html
I suppose all of the military activity creates jobs in these countries.
https://youtu.be/ypEaGQb6dJk
I’ve alway though of Dr. Mercola as a sober-minded individual not given to fear-mongering. But today he’s warning that he and Vladimir Zelenko have “discussed the very distinctly possibility” that there could potentially be some likelihood that the jabs may even go as far as to kill everyone that receives them within two or three years. “The very distinct possibility”—oooh, I don’t like the sound of that! Vax uptake among the over-65s in my town is running at around 90%. Most younger people have not been jabbed yet only because the government has managed to mess up the procurement process so there is not enough of the Pfizer brew to go around.
Still, let’s not worry too much. At present it’s only a distinct possibility.
+ + + + +
Reports of deaths and serious injuries from the COVID-19 jabs have been mounting with breakneck rapidity. Those who look at the numbers and have some awareness of historical vaccine injury rates agree we’ve never seen anything like it, anywhere in the world. While data can be hard to come by for some countries, the ones we can check reveal deeply troubling patterns.
• United States — As of June 11, 2021, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) had posted 358,379 adverse events,1 including 5,993 deaths and 29,871 serious injuries. In the 12- to 17-year-old age group, there were 271 serious injuries2 and seven deaths. Among pregnant women, there were 2,136 adverse events, including 707 miscarriages or premature births.3
All of these are bound to be undercounts as, historically, less than 10% of vaccine side effects are reported to VAERS.4 An investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put it as low as 1%.5,6
Be that as it may, the reported rate of death from COVID-19 shots now exceeds the reported death rate of more than 70 vaccines combined over the past 30 years, and it’s about 500 times deadlier than the seasonal flu vaccine,7 which historically has been the most hazardous.
The COVID shots are also five times more dangerous than the pandemic H1N1 vaccine, which had a 25-per-million severe side effect rate.8,9 Assuming the COVID shots had the same side effect rate, and assuming some 200 million got the vaccine, the estimated number of people suffering a serious side effect would be about 5,000. We’re well past that already, as 3,586,410 people have been seriously injured or killed.
Even though there are nearly 6,000 reported deaths in VAERS, this number is likely seriously compromised. I recently interviewed Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has treated COVID patients quite successfully, and we discussed the very distinct possibility that everyone who receives the COVID jab may die from complications in the next two to three years.
He personally knows of 28 COVID jab deaths that were not accepted by VAERS. Zelenko suspects the number of deaths may exceed 100,000 already.
Getting the COVID jab immediately places the injected individual in the very high risk of dying from COVID. Most have the false assurance that they are protected, but in reality, they are far more vulnerable and as a result will not take very aggressive proactive measures to avoid dying from pathogenic priming or paradoxical immune enhancement before it is too late.
Please be sure and make a notation in your calendar to review my groundbreaking interview with Zelenko this Sunday, July 4, 2021, which is only three days away. We will review protocols you can use to protect you and your family or those you love, who now regret getting the COVID jab.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/joseph-mercola/covid-vaccine-deaths-and-injuries-are-secretly-buried/
I doubt it is valid to impose any historical average onto the entries for a single vaccine that is currently very high profile (and may also be the subject of a campaign to discredit it). It could be that the number is vastly over reported. Also note that an entry in VAERS is not proof that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that it occurred within some defined period after the vaccine was given.
The idea that the vaccine vastly increases the risk of dying from the disease seems wrong, given that, for example, the UK has a high rate of vaccination and a surging case count but the deaths have stayed very low (even allowing for a 2-3 week lag).
Maybe the monk wasn’t a hysterical nutter.
I sold my Cardano at a loss, emptied my savings and checkings accounts, and put it all into…
Dogecoin.
Just so I can laugh at Gail when I become a Crypto billiionaire.
I have no doubt Dogecoin will be the greatest investment in the history of mankind.
dude! YOLO. sold Cardano 1.30 and bought Doge 0.24? Keep us entertained with your results, though with the numbers I just posted, we can follow along. Good luck. bAU tonight, baby!
In Ireland they’d call you a “flaming eejit”, but me? I don’t judge…
I need to inform you that crypto space is dead. It is now in complete bear territory and all support levels are slowly turning into resistance ones. The time for taking profit was at the peak of the bubble when btc was hovering around 60k.
Wildfire burns village in British Columbia to the ground. Watch this and you see the future of entire cities burning to the ground.
The Great Fire of London was in 1666. Was it due to CC/glowball worming?
Though I saw it all around
Never thought I could be affected
Thought that we’d be the last to go
It is so strange the way things turn
Drove the night toward my home
The place that I was born, on the lakeside
As daylight broke, I saw the earth
The trees had burned down to the ground
Don’t give up
You still have Kate Bush….
WASHINGTON — The scorching temperatures and the drought pummeling the western United States are creating a perfect storm for the electric grid, exposing how future extreme weather events will increasingly push a thinly stretched power system to the brink.
As Oregon, California, New Mexico and other states grapple with record-setting heat and diminishing water supplies, Americans are relying even more on electricity and water supply systems. Yet the same factors that are driving up demand for power can also limit the ability to generate it.
From generation at power plants to the transmission lines that carry electricity to homes and businesses, just about every part of the power system performs worse in conditions that are intensely hot and dry. That raises significant questions about the nation’s readiness for a future in which, climate scientists say, global warming is expected to make extreme weather events even more common.
“This topic is on top of every utility’s agenda right now,” said Omar Al-Juburi, a digital power grid consultant at Ernst & Young. “We’re going to get to a point where the current infrastructure and the current way of operating is going to continue to be strained by these extreme heat waves.”
NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/heat-wave-drought-strain-us-power-grid-rcna1315
Not at all, David, just did a looked and it was because of the layout of the city and the construction materials, mainly wood, and lack of fire control.
Thankfully, in modern times these have been addressed, but as you can witness,they can only go say far..
Jeff Masters and Bob Henson forecast another heat dome event in the West during the first two weeks of July.
I wonder to what extent the loss of global dimming is causing these heat waves.
I don’t think the climate change models have adequately taken into account the role of global dimming. Carbon emissions affect the climate over decades or centuries. There are other global warming gasses (including methane) that have a longer-lasting impact than CO2. But the loss of global dimming is likely to have a very immediate effect.
There are a lot of reasons that global dimming impacts likely have become somewhat diminished. Chinese citizens were very unhappy about the country’s air pollution level, leading China to try to clean up its skies, at least to some extent. The push for cleaner burning diesel, first in trucks and autos, and more recently, on ships, will also tend to clean up the air. The fact that oil and coal consumption are both at or past peak makes a difference as well.
The loss of much international jet travel, and the related contrails, may have an impact on climate as well. I just don’t know.
Gail,
I think there was a short discussion here last year about the global dimming.
I suggested that reduction of air flights could have a quick impact – in theory the aerosols don’t last longer than weeks.
Obviously I was wrong. The heating came a year later. Yes, it happened at the right time (solstice) to correlate it with solar radiation. But why did it take so late to take effect?
I think we should keep an eye out on the arctic ice extent this fall. IF we hit the blue ocean event (I don’t think so but I am just thinking) then what should we expect this winter?
Obviously, the pollution “needs” (from the psychopaths perspective) to be ramped up but at the same time, the oil and coal are not there. Maybe gov subsidies for ffs while starving people?
The first time I heard of global dimming was a documentary on Frontline…..strange thing is that now when I search the internet for the story it is no where to be found.
I just heaved another plastic bag full of Coal into the Rayburn … I’m doing my part
If you wanna take up this thread:
The heat waves are mainly caused by the great disruption of the polar vortex going down just to the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone
The problem here is that the new established energy flow and wind flow patterns lead to a global situation where “waves” of the Vortex stay in place for a very long period of time meaning a very long period of “current wheather” aka sun / heat or cold.
Long heatwaves are especially a problem in certain growth phases of crops that die if in these there is no rain.
In other phases crops are more robust to “no rain or heat”.
This being the reason that the current “stable climate” is really needed because all our crops are growing in regions very well accustomed to this sort of stable climate.
Try not to water your plants for ten days when they are thirsty.
10 days change is only 3% of a year…
We have much data and discussion on our predicament of shrinking resources per capita. It appears to me that the resources per capita (RPC) problem is a symptom of a genetic transition of humanity as a result of population increase.
In the early stages of life, survival and success was based on the ability to make empirical observation of one’s environment in order make the successful response to acquire food and avoid predators.
When we observe nature, we are seeing the results of successful response. With a successful response, the individual survives and reproduces and passes on its genes to the next generation.
The genetic material is a history of successful response.
At some point in the past the “herd instinct” evolved. The herd instinct is a successful response to predation. The lone individual receives 100% of the predator’s attention. When there are 10 individuals, then each one has a 90% chance of not getting the predator’s attention. If there are 100 individuals then each one has a 99% chance of not receiving the predator’s attention.
We see schools of fish, and flocks of birds, and herds of caribou, troops of monkeys, and tribes and kingdoms of humans, and so on.
To minimize stress and increase success in herds of many mammals and particularly primates, it was necessary, to establish a standard for behavior. Individuals whose behavior was unacceptable to the herd were ostracized. With the loss of the advantage of the herd, the noncompliant individuals were less successful and had less genetic input to the species. The herd response is successful and requires conforming to herd standards.
In mammals, particularly, the herd response was more successful with an Alpha individual. Following the leader is not always successful, but some form of organization is more successful than disorganization. In humans, the success of organization provided population increase which produced the Alphas that we call Chiefs, Kings, Emperors, etc. To remain part of the herd it became necessary to agree and comply with the Alpha. To oppose the King could lead to one’s execution or at least banishment from the herd. It was necessary to convince the King that you were in support of his position regardless of your empirical observations.
When an individual’s empirical observation was not consistent with the edict of the Alpha, then there was a selection for the ability to respond, not to your empirical observation of your environment, but to the edict of the Alpha. A factor of success became the ability to act like something that you are not. The ability to act like something that you are not is held in great esteem in the world today.
Empirical observation of one’s environment became less important than political observation of one’s herd to understand who had the power to declare truth.
Another trait, that evolved to deal with the problem of empirical observation interfering with compliance with the Alpha’s edict, was to not make the empirical observation. If an individual’s consciousness did not record the empirical observation that was in conflict with the Alpha’s edict then they did not have to act like something that they are not. They projected full compliance with the edict since their consciousness held no conflicting information. Their brain does not record what their eyes and ears encounter.
We are witnessing the effect of survival of the fittest. There has been a natural selection for not recording empirical observations. We can see that it is more fit to make the political response. Whatever the Alpha declares as truth is The Truth. It is obvious that the Earth cannot support seven billion people.
Those who point out the empirical truth are branded as conspiracy theorists
You make some good points. Going with the herd has historically been a good strategy. I hadn’t thought of the issue the way you point it out.
The catch, of course, is the people who don’t go with the herd who can figure out what is going wrong and point it out.
I know that from an early age I never quite fit in with the crowd. My father taught me to read and do math (including telling time on an analog clock) when I was very young. When I should have registered for first grade, my father registered me for second grade. So, in terms of social skills, I was about a year behind my class, even though my reading and math level was probably up at third grade level. This combination doesn’t make a good combination for “fitting in” with the rest of the class. I remember that one boy tried to pick on me in second grade, and I took him down and sat on him. That was the end of that problem.
About 25 years ago, I figured out that I needed to change my diet from the standard American diet to a healthier one. I also needed to exercise more. This isn’t a recipe for fitting in with everyone else. I also don’t watch television.
Malcolm Gladwell suggests doing the opposite… wait a year to start school so brain development is ahead of all the other students who are a year younger…
Not sure on that one… my brother (Slow Eddy) skipped two grades and he’s turned out ok.
Fast Eddy did reasonably well in school but basically did not give a f789 … and his older brother looks at him and just shakes his head… hahaha… he really does
Bit of a crapshoot I suppose
Interesting, many of us here have followed a similar route, we seem to have started school young. It is stressful if you are ahead of the class, tough to fit in, be a year younger and a boy, tough to stay with the girls in class.
In the Briggs-Meyer groups there one which I have called the anti lemming group, it is the smallest percentage. Lemmings are a nice metaphor, going with the group is mostly good, sometimes before going over the cliff it is not unhelpful to have one say, “We could consider going right or left, nothing to lose.”
Back to subject, I see Elon in that light, we are going over a collective cliff, might as well shoot for the stars visiting a few planets on the way; do we go right or left?
Dennis L.
“In the Briggs-Meyer groups there one which I have called the anti lemming group, it is the smallest percentage. ”
You obviously consider yourself in this group, I assume?
It’s so nice stroking your ego while agreeing with the MSM and the oligarchs. You are special, you are the “resistance”, you are a unique snowflake…
I was late to start school, I was a follower and I always tried to fit in (with mixed results). So enough with the sociologizing.
We are just gregarious chimps and the few of us that accepts that are always going to be unhappy. You still have a chance – just forget about your doubts and go and invest all your money in the Musk Rocket.
Thanks for the innovative thoughts, including this key one: “Following the leader is not always successful, but some form of organization is more successful than disorganization.”
Evolutionary adaptations become maladaptive under different conditions.
Indeed, that’s the big question that everybody who can still make a sliver of empirical observations and rational conclusions will be facing : is it a good idea to follow the herd on this particular occasion ? Considering that we are likely being manipulated to abandon our freedoms in the scamdemic, on a group level the answer is almost certainly no. But on an individual level the answer may look quite different. I wonder how many of the herd are following just without any second thoughts, and how many have perceived – even if just subliminally – that the herd will be thinned due to resource shortages and that “different” ones will be the ones easily picked off in the first round…..
Good points. At some level we have to turn off the thinking, and trust intuition (which is guided by infinitely more information than we can think through). So, yes, I’d say that going with the crowd is important to a large degree. Wearing masks, social distancing, working from home, small-group self-sufficiency are all measures that seem restrictive but that may be more adaptive in a dramatically changed global scenario.
Lemmings
I think the other option is to be aware of the narrative …political correctness etc.. but retain your skilset re-empirical observations. The alpha edicts become increasingly unwieldy maladaptive as they deny nature and her several billions years of adaptation.
‘The grey man theory is a way of disappearing into the crowd so you can move unnoticed when disaster strikes. The idea is that you can conceal your preparedness by blending in with the crowd before or during an emergency. … Disappearing into a crowd is an extremely useful survival skill.’
Can be a lonely path.
Who was that US politician that made a statement along the lines of ‘We create your reality and by the time you have figured it out we have already moved on…?’
Karl Rove told a journalist, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Although the journalists are increasingly among the actors..
This is a statistical problem of the poor guys I call the “6-Sigmas”:
In an abundant situation outsiders suffer from normopaths
In a scarcity situation outsiders strife
– if they will not be eaten by the normopaths
Seems Mr DNA always generates some outsiders just in case (that have to suffer a lot, sorry) but that in the end will produce at least some couples that are capable of passing an unexpected(?) bottleneck.
If they are too early for a bottleneck their life is a waste of time and resources, so better limit their numbers. That makes it double hard for them (cough)
For both endeavours, maximum breeding must be accomplished for maximum genetic variety by all means available.
This is a relevant view.
I may add something: through genetic variability there is always a small proportion of individuals who have a better ability to observe and less to follow the crowd. If those individuals are lucky enough to belong to the higher class, they will become the best scientists, philosophers or artists of their time.
If they belong to the lower class, their observation will tell them to become invisible and adopt the habits of the crowd because that will give them more chances to survive and breed. This is not an easy task and not surprisingly they probably have more mental disorders than the others. The other problem in the end is that they will tend to forget who they really are, like the wizard who adopt the shape of an animal for too long and cannot go back to his human shape.
Interesting stuff, thanks.
It begs the question of what the attitude of the individual person should be toward the herd and the herd instinct. Generally, the person has to act with awareness and intention. Lessons can be learnt the easy way or the hard way. The herd is what it is, and it is not about to change.
One need not inwardly conform to the herd in order to give the outward appearance of herd conformity. The individual must learn the value of ‘masks’. There is very often nothing to be gained from outwardly diverging from the herd and much to be gained by outward conformity.
There may be a certain ‘honesty’ involved in the recognition of oneself as distinct from the herd, but honest people can tend to be trusting, which is a recipe for harm for the individual. The herd is not well disposed to the individual, who cannot afford naivety. Leave ‘honest self-revelation’ to the herd, that is their tendency and prerogative. The individual has his own prerogatives, which include the use of masks.
Likewise, the stubbornness that refuses to give a dishonest representation of oneself (‘why should I’?) is also a weakness, plain and simple, with nothing obvious to recommend it. Honest self-revelation is a herd tendency, anyway, that supposedly assures the congruence of inward and outward conformity. The non-conformist generally has no obvious use of such.
The person needs to be sure enough of their own individuality not to need to outwardly express it or to find it reinforced in the recognition of others. That itself is a herd instinct. The deviant must not expect approval from the herd. A hybrid individual-herd person with confused instincts is not a recipe for success. One has to be one or the other.
The individual cannot afford honesty, naivety, stubbornness or needyinees. The herd will ‘reveal itself’ as herd in order to fit with the herd. The individual must eschew that tendency to ‘reveal’ the self. He has an inverted relation, and the ‘mask’ of outward conformity is his security in his divergence. He must be dishonest, wise, adaptable and self-secure.
Obviously the herd does not teach individuals that stuff in the schools, which are all about herd conformity, and persons will generally have to work it out for themselves, by which time the harm has often already been done. Society will not generally have equipped him. Society is not constructed to his benefit, rather it is premised on his elimination.
The individual has to consciously deconstruct all of the herd assumptions about intra-group behaviour with which the herd has socialised and trained him if he is to survive and to prosper. That training is actually aimed in part at his harm and for the benefit of the herd through his harm. The person needs to learn a new wisdom, and to strictly habituate himself to its practice.
All ‘deviants’ needs masks. In general, do not let anyone know anything about you, unless there is some obvious benefit and no danger. Be disciplined and self-aware at all times. The herd instinct predominates only because most individuals do not have the instincts that it takes to survive. The person will need to reinforce his wiser instincts and to consciously suppress any weaknesses to which has been trained.
“The genetic material is a history of successful response…. Those who point out the empirical truth are branded as conspiracy theorists.”
Religions have also played an important role in the formation and maintenance of herd instincts. Dissidents have been branded as heretics, apostates, atheists, pagans, heathens, deviants, immoral, subversives, seditionists, witches etc. for thousands of years. The ostracism and even execution has removed their questioning, non-conformist genes from the gene pool. The herd instinct is bred in and maintained through the social elimination of dissidents from the gene pool. Dissent does not pay.
Eg. RCC controlled weddings in the pre-modern period, and only those who were ‘in good standing’ with the RCC were allowed to marry. Other churches would also tend to marry only their own approved members. Civil marriage has altered those particular selective dynamics, but others are still in play. Social dissidents generally do not get to breed, otherwise the herd instinct would be undermined. The herd instinct is itself evidence of their elimination. Individuality is generally not a recipe for successful breeding.
Society protects the herd from individuals. Really it is the individuals who need to be protected from the herd. Herd society is designed to prevent the success of individuals and their reproduction. It is aimed at their elimination. Their destruction is almost guaranteed, and certainly over the long-term. The individual needs to be wise to survive and to prosper. They also need to raise their kids in a wiser way and to get them to do the same – no easy task.
The first thing is to understand what is happening, and maybe even why it is happening. Then they can plot a prudent course that is more conducive to success. Non-conformists have their own ‘extinction rebellion.’ It has to be a total way of life rather than a ‘protest’. Protests get dissidents eliminated. It practically puts a target on their backs for the herd to aim at. Cloaks are much valuable for individuals.
All of the above is true.
I recently came across Diogenes and liked him a lot.
He walked through his city doing really crazy things
Anyways the people shrugged and moved on.
Was he a genius or straight out crazy. Anyways today we still know of his name.
All the other names of the “shruggers” are long forgotten.
An individual can not change the course of the world, can he?
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Rockefeller, Alexander the great , Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein ?
I do not really subscribe to the notion that an individual has to take cover in mimicing the herd. If the individual does not stand to his principles, he is no longer an individual.
That does not mean to go on a suicide mission.
An individual can also embark on a mission to find other individuals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference
Develop talents and seek an opportrunity because the individual can spot an opportunity well in advance of the herd.
If he is able to take it, does a tremendous amount of work “left alone” and finally (!) finds a means to “inject” it in the herd?…
That can make a diffrerence but, well: From the above mentioned names: how much of a percentage is this. The others simply fade away.
Very sad…
Ah yes, Diogenes, the famous ‘Cynic’. I am an admirer of his too. ‘Nothing is better or worse.’ He took nihilism the way of eccentric, carefree individualism.
You may enjoy the work of the historian of the ancient Greek philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. He goes into their doctrines, sayings and life stories, including Diogenes. It is a very informative and entertaining book, always one of my favourites. It has always been an important text for our knowledge of the ancients, many of whose works have not survived.
It is available in a lovely little two volume set in the Loeb edition, with parallel Greek and English texts. You can download pdfs of the volumes on the archive site, but it is a lovely set to have, a real gem.
https://archive.org/search.php?query=Diogenes%20Laertius%20loeb
I would also recommend the Loeb edition of Sextus Empiricus in four volumes, in particular his Outlines of Pyrrhonism. His followers made up the Third Academy, the Skeptics who took over Plato’ Academy. Sextus includes an overview of the other main schools, Stoics and Epicureans and others, as a basis for the skeptic critique of the other schools. Again, it is an importance source for our knowledge of them. Skeptics saw Diogenes’ Cynicism as a precursor of their own school and him as almost one of their own.
* His followers
Ie. Pyrrho, not Sextus who recorded the arguments of the Third Academy.
Their genesis is actually more complicated than that, anyway, but they were named after him.
I model myself on Cato the younger. I am a Stoic and live very frugally, far below my income.
Interesting … how closely do you follow Cato?
ROMAN BOYS’ NAUGHTY GAMES, CA. 82 BC
It is not spelt out that Greek love was at play here, but it is strongly suggested by two things: the otherwise superfluous mention of the “comely looks” of the imprisoned younger boy, and that the puritanical Cato got into “a passion” about his abduction into a chamber by the older boy.[1]
At another time a relation of his who was celebrating a birthday, invited Cato and other boys to supper, and the company were diverting themselves at play in a separate part of the house, older and younger together, their play being actions at law, accusations, and the conducting of the condemned persons to prison.
Accordingly, one of those thus condemned, a boy of comely looks, was led off by an older boy and shut into a chamber, where he called upon Cato for help. Then Cato, when he understood what was going on, quickly came to the door, pushed aside the boys who stood before it and tried to stop him, led forth the prisoner, and went off home with him in a passion, followed by other boys also.
https://www.greek-love.com/antiquity/ancient-texts/plutarch-lives/cato-the-younger
All the hopium in the world can be summarized into one single sentence:
“The Refusal to Accept One’s Death”.
As long as the laws of entropy exists, no one can escape death, even if they become transhumans, in the end. Transhumans have to find mechanical body parts and when they can’t find it they can’t function.
The infamous Kubler Ross model tells this process well. A lot of people are in denial, anger and bargaining at the same time, thinking some billionaire will save them when he doesn’t give a shit about anything other than himself, his power and his influence. It is like some people who idolized rich celebrities. Instead of rooting for people like Kardashians, who make a lot of noise but largely irrelevant about the how the world operates, these people root for the techno billionaires whose first concern is making money for themselves, before everything.
Again, it is OK to deny the reality, since it will make them happy. However the world will roll to its destiny, whether they accept it or not.
The earth is not a closed system. The laws of thermodynamics apply only to closed systems. The earth gets energy from the sun, and with the falling costs of solar panels it is feasible to power all the world’s electricity from solar energy.
Poor logic.
That notion conveniently leaves out the factor of consumption rate; if a society’s consumption of energy and resource is significantly higher than the rate of replenishment, for all intents and purposes you exist within a closed system.
Fossil fuels = millions upon millions of years of stored solar energy converted by highly efficient plant photosynthesis.
And we’re blasting through it in mere decades.
The laws of Thermodynamics apply perfectly to the earth. It is a closed system, with a fixed and easily calculated input of energy (the sun). I was just a freshman in engineering school when we were taught how to calculate the energy input the sun input to the earth, and the energy that the earth radiated back in to space given its temperature and atmosphere. The problem is that solar energy is very diffuse and expensive to concentrate. The actual solar cells only got cheaper temporarily because of cheap coal and labor in China, but now that steel, aluminum and copper are on a long ( perhaps forever) upward trend the full cost of installing solar will be escalating rapidly too.
Another issue is that the energy from the sun is not of the right timing. We need energy at night and in the winter particularly. These are the times when energy from the sun is either completely unavailable (night), or available in smaller quantities.
Energy from the sun which has been converted to electrical form is expensive to store. In particular, we have no way of storing solar energy from summer to winter. Even storing for night-time use is a major challenge. While a few rich people can afford to buy batteries to store the energy for their own personal use for overnight, there is no way that the economy could store enough electricity for when it is needed, including summer to winter storage.
Another issue is the fact that a huge share of transportation and agricultural equipment uses oil, not electricity. There would be a very long lag before all of these devices could be converted to electrical. The weight of batteries would be an issue for semi-trucks carrying heavy loads.
A useful, new technology would use molten salt nuclear reactors to produce electricity and electricity to convert carbon dioxide to methane. I don’t think it will prevent a bottleneck in the human population, but it offers hope for the recovery afterwards.
‘recovery’ requires lots of people
without lots of people industrial complexity isn’t possible
I was a lay man in physics when we calculated the matter conversion rate of the sun.
About 600 million metric tons of hydrogen per second.
Yeah, fun with BIG numbers 🙂
How can you claim that the earth is a closed system when it loses billions of BTU’s of heat every day into space.
It receives billions of BTU’s from an external source (the Sun), and collects external materials daily from space in the form of meteors and space dust (at a rate of 1″ per 1000 years).
Even the odd comet drops a few million litres of water and rock on us once in a while.
Variations in the atmosphere (Ozone for example) create a “leaky” dynamic system which is not thermodynamically closed.
Pete, thank you, had forgotten water coming from comets. It would be interesting to know if we have a net gain or loss secondary to evaporation and loss to space.
Dennis L.
Professor Millman sir, could you please clarify or expand on your statement “The laws of thermodynamics apply only to closed systems”.
Other professors who seem confident that they knows the subject well, have assured me that first law of thermodynamics is basically the law of conservation of energy, which is valid for all places and all cases.They say that there are many different forms of the first law, and that alll these these forms represent the same concept of conservation of energy but applied to different conditions.
The first law is often stated for following different situations:
The first law for PROCESSES
The first law for CYCLES
The first law for OPEN SYSTEMS
The first law for CLOSED SYSTEMS
For instance, for open systems the SFEE (Steady Flow Energy Equation) can be considered the equivalent of the first law.
They also tell me that there are no closed systems (which cannot exchange matter with the surroundings but do exchange energy) or isolated systems (closed systems that cannot exchange energy with the surroundings) in the real Universe. These things represent ideal cases that cannot exist in practice, they insist.
I’m just a poor humble farmer who doesn’t know much about thermodynamics, although I know how to boil an egg, and when you great academics disagree with each other, I don’t know what to think. I also don’t know much about art, but I know what I like, and I don’t like Jackson Pollack.
Talk to any Ph.D. physicist; they will tell you that the earth is not a closed system, and hence the laws of thermodynamics, especially the second law that entropy always increases, does not apply to earth. Of course the law of conservation of energy applies, and economists know that; modern mathematical economics is modeled on physics; some physicists, such as one of my favorite economic professors at Berkeley, change from physics to economics. Professor McFadden, from whom I took Ph.D. seminars in economic theory won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000; I highly recommend his work.
I don’t need to talk to any Ph.D physicist ’cause I’ve got you. However, since you seem reticent to lecture further on this subject, I have nipped over to Glasgow in flying saucer to talk to Professor Mark Barton, a PhD physicist with University of Glasgow, and I asked him whether the earth is, as you put it, “a closed system.”
According to Mark:
“It depends on the definition of “closed”. Some books use a two-way, open/closed classification, in which case it’s open. Open-2 means it can exchange matter or energy with its environment; closed-2 means it can’t.
Some books use a three-way, open/closed/isolated classification, in which case it’s closed but not isolated.
Confusingly, Open-2 is divided into Open-3 and Closed-3, and Closed-2 is renamed Isolated-3! Closed-3 means it can’t exchange matter with its environment but it can exchange energy. What’s important to the creationism debate is whether it’s closed-2 or isolated-3, and it’s not.
The more detailed classification is useful in chemistry, but it was news to me as a physicist until a creationist tried to hoodwink me once by playing off closed-2 against closed-3.
Moral: creationists are pathologically dishonest, and you should not believe a single word they say without checking carefully.”
Mark is obsessed with how pathologically dishonest creationists are. Our Norman thinks they have a few screws loose, but Mark is more concerned about their capacity for duplicity.
Anyway, there you are, it all depends on your definition of “closed”. Invaluable aids to thinking are definitions. Where would we be without them?
ya the excess heat dissipates into space… as does the smog… otherwise given the amount of coal we have burned the cumulative effective would mean we could not see across the street by now and we’d be broiling…
that kinda makes sense no?
Read Samuelson’s “Principle of Economics” from the mid nineteen seventies. In later editions Samuelson dumbed down his text by editorial order from McGraw Hill. He has an excellent chapter on energy and the environment in the 1976 edition; this chapter was deleted from later editions by editorial order. When I wrote my textbook, “Economics: Making Good Choices” the editor demanded that it be written at a tenth grade reading level. So I did. Textbooks have been very dumbed down over the past fifty years to accommodate deteriorating reading skills.
read even one of Dr. Morgan’s articles. I dare you. 😉 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Itasca CC. Personally student at UW, Madison, undergrad, grad, dental Marquette, several cc and now due to the bug, MIT, EdX.
If you are brilliant(I am not), the more advanced colleges are clever, MIT truly makes you think and understand, but the cc way seems to give a workable vocabulary in various areas. In math the education is somewhat rote, for me it was good after fifty+ years from undergraduate.
In this area of MN, many high school students are using the cc in their last year or years secondary education. A few of these students enter engineering programs, etc. as juniors, math, physics, chemistry are done as are some of the less rigorous subjects.
Back to the “dumbing down” it seems much teaching has gone to abstract extremes, the basics are necessary, math did not not start as abstract theorems, it began in large part to solve actual problems, e. g. an apple falling from a tree and associated acceleration, or second derivative. CC’s work on a lot of apples.
Your comments are concise and well thought out, thanks.
Dennis L.
Some thoughts and request for comments regarding fossil fuels:
Looking at the solar system, there seems no shortage of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen; large planets and moons are full of it.
Is it possible earth was once this way? Bacteria and plants are hydrocarbon sources, the elements came from somewhere. From what I understand:
1. Solar energy in part gave rise to bacteria, early life forms from some primordial goo.
2. Through plate tectonics they were submerged in porous rock with a cap.
3. Heat and pressure was applied through a combination of gravity and I think radioactive decay at the earth’s center, atomic energy cooked the porous rock, formed long chains somehow, coal some other way.
5. We had basically reverse entropy with regards to these elements, outside energy from heat and sun. The problem is not the elements, but the time period to recombine them into a useable form.
Conclusion: All oil is abiotic, solar system seems more consistent than different, hydrocarbons and water are ubiquitous.
That game is over, we will find a new game and Elon may be the person to do it.
There is video regarding his plans for a space city and also the politics for getting his present launch site. Hint, a few million here a few million there – really pretty trivial amounts of money for someone in the hundred billion league. He is incredibly consistent: boring tunnels to connect with Brownsville, avoid congestion, electric cars moving at 150 mph in those tunnels, solar power, space rockets. This is synergy, all this stuff works in multiple places and is more than the sum of the parts.
Dennis L.
Again a really intelligent person can discern the cold truth from advertisement.
Are you telling us that Denis has a sweet-tooth for sparky ads?! Who’d think about it given his coherent comments and fine analysis.
hey DL, good back and forth. Here’s a question for you: why has no Mars rover expedition brought back to Earth even one gram of Martian soil?
And now for some GREAT news!!!!
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/07/01/breaking-hong-kong-police-officer-stabbed-in-causeway-bay/
I am thinking … if he had spoken to a Palestinian… he could have done better than a suicide stabbing!
@ Marco
As to predictions, the following paper might interest you (a 2020 update to Limits to Growth scenarios: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2Fjiec.13084&file=jiec13084-sup-0001-SuppMatS1.pdf
The empirical data indicates closest correlation to between the BAU and BAU2 scenario, indicating a 2025-2030 for civilisational apex. Both scenarios display a collapse pattern.
Limits to Growth was based on work done in Fortran on primitive computers. More modern econometric models are much more sophisticated and powerful than the work done on the foundations of Limits to Growth. There is consensus among economists that real GDP growth can continue for at least fifty years, and technological advances make this outcome likely. In other words, John Maynard Keynes was right in his famous essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.”
It can continue indefinitely. The only problem would be a couple of eggs might cost two million dollars, something which already happened in ZImbabwe
Yes, he wrote an essay for his nonexistent grandchildren.
He could care less.
As the doom is on the horizon, a lot of people cling to some kind of hope which won’t materialize
The Limits to Growth models hold up very well against the empirical data; that’s all any of us should care about. The issue with adding complexity- sorry, ‘sophistication’- to models is that you often end up punctuating very odd variables that have little real effect on the wider system.
LtG has been reconfigured several times over the decades to improve accuracy. If any economist was half as accurate as the LtG has been over time, they might have their Nobel Prize revoked for being too realistic.
The reason that the limits to growth study was so prescient is that it was not done by economists. Economists are famous for leaving many important things out of their models, particularly the effect of energy price and availability on economies as Gail has detailed numerous times. The Meadows’ were system engineers and environmental scientists which is why there model seems to be modeling our current situation so accurately. And most economists seem to be wrong most of the time, even for predictions that are only a few years out.
Not so about consensus of economists being wrong in forecasts. Look at forecasts made by the Federal Reserve System or by excellent economists such as Janet Yellen. Their forecasts have been consistentlly accurate, and if anything they have been wrong by understating forecasts for economic growth. Again, I recommend Sherman Maisel’s outstanding 1954 book, “Fluctuations, Growth, and Forecasting” in which he nailed perfectly a forecast for real GDP growth for the ten years 1955-1965.
since net (surplus) energy was growing steadily from 1955-1965, it’s no surprise that an economist could make such a good forecast, and still be cluelesss that the economy is an energy based system and not a money based system. Net (surplus) energy enables the real primary economy, while money/finance/Economist is the secondary economy.
Energy consumption was growing rapidly in the 1955 to 1965 period. It was cheap. A rising tide lifts most boats.
Energy was driving economic growth but I’m not sure the “rising tide” analogy is good. Literally speaking, a rising tide lifts ALL boats. However, in the 1980s, for every $100 added to the global economy, only $2.20 reached the poor (those living below the poverty line). By the 1990s, that was down to $0.60 (60 cents). I guess some might consider 60 cents a rise but it really represented a widening of the gap.
There is less poverty in the U.S. today than at any time in its history.
there are 7.5 billion boats in the world
the rising tide has only lifted 1 billion of them
and poverty will grow relentlessly and irreversibly because of the imminent irreversible decline in net (surplus) energy. Too bad for those who are much younger than us.
You have far too much faith in econometric models. They miss the important role energy plays.
No, econometric models do not ignore resource constraints. A major concern of nineteenth century British economists was running out of coal. Economiics has been well defined as a study of scarcity and the problems that result from scarcity of resources. Economists generally believe that technological advances create resources (e.g. advances in fracking and horizontal drilling for oil), and that technological advances are the main cause of economic growth, e.g. the Solow model.
then they are absolutely wrong. The main cause of economic growth is growth in net (surplus) energy.
I had a British girlfriend in college that was a big Marxist and she always sad the the same thing when I talked about resource limits. They always say look at the past as an indicator of the future
Ya but Don is a professor — they live in ivory towers… that ensures they miss just about everything…
Don… what sort of horse power do you reckon your packing… Fast Eddy’s on 1000 on a decent day… better if he’s had a nap and a coffee
Even if real growth could continue for 50 years, it would eventually end and the global economy as we know it would come crashing down. Better to end it in a controlled manner.
Start an epidemic and encourage everyone to stay inside; stop international travel; reduce unnecessary expenses.
“… indicating a 2025-2030 for civilisational apex.” Oh yeah, bring it on.
As soon as industrial production per capita starts falling, there is a big problem. Look at Figure S1-5. Actual through 2020 can be expected to fall from the 2015 point. The data in this chart is only through 2015. It is very much following the blue BAU line.
Figure S1-6 is services per capita, charted through 2015. It looks likely to turn down soon on BAU.
The downturn is actually already starting; it is not off in 2025-2030.
Dennis Meadows says that the forecast cannot be relied on after the downturn begins. It actually is beginning now, with peak oil and peak coal, and with falling industrial production per capita.
yes the downturn has begun. Especially noticable in per capita. Too bad the downturn is mostly in the periphery. Life is not fair.
Only really bad if you live in the periphery.
I am a little confused. Limits to Growth history goes up to 1990. Where is G. Herrington starting from? Is he starting from one of the updates to Limits to Growth?
His list of references doesn’t list any Meadow’s book in his list of references, something I thought was strange.
“If only stooopidity could be exchanged for oil … we could run this sucker for an eternity” Fast Eddy aka GOD
I emailed Gaya (the lady who authored) directly to get access to her paper. It seems that she used new data collected from the UN and various other sources to track up to 2015.
The previous years were taken directly from the LtG paper and its 2 updates, including the 30 year update.
Very true, Gail. Way too much disinformation out there regarding covid and the vaccine(s). Not to say there isn’t a sort of conspiracy afoot, but people have a tendency to parrot the most ridiculous, demonstrably untrue things. I have a tendency to believe this is the result of psychological campaigns by powerful organizations, and not just “Russia”.
More from George Gammon on the reverse repo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j28XQI2gUA
This just seems to be getting worse :
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/do-we-hear-trillion-feds-reverse-repo-hits-record-992-billion-150-billion-one-day
do we hear two trillion? that’s a lot of digitally created money.
Thanks for the link. The repo situation really does look strange. I need to find the 41 minutes to listen to the George Gammon video.
I notice that one commenter makes this summary:
You are correct.
Gammons speculation in short: Financial corporations can have booth reserve acount as well as a reverse repo account at the fed. The reverse repo accounts have been pumped up recently. It signals that money is transferred from the reserve accounts at the fed. This means that the commercial banking system are not doing very much lending at the moment. Lending money requires money at the reserve accounts. At the same time, people mistrust collaterals other than pristine collaterals. Of course, also QE is causing a lack of collateral. There is likely a combination of these causes behind the surge in revers repo volume.
This may be a signal that the debt bubble is having some trouble at the present.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-07-01-depopulation-alert-shocking-new-study-reveals-covid-vaccine-terminates-4-out-of-5-pregnancies-via-spontaneous-abortions.html
Evolution in action
WOW!
Wonderful news for any woman who may have forgotten to take the morning-after pill.
This is a link to the article itself:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2104983?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed
The article itself doesn’t say anything related to the conclusions reached by the commenter. It claimed there was no adverse effect shown, but the numbers were small. I did not get a chance to look at the exhibits in the report.
If there is a huge miscarriage rate, we would be seeing news of this in the papers every day, especially in the states where a large share of pregnant women were vaccinated. The number of live births would drop. I don’t think that this is really happening.
If you go to the actual full paper.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8117969/
then go to table 1
The statement is accurate.
“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”
—Guess who?
Reuters “fact checked” this quotation by attempting to put it into context:
However, Gates was not suggesting the global population should be killed off using vaccines. He is instead saying that improving public health using vaccinations can reduce unsustainable population growth in the future – and with it, lower carbon emissions.
The Microsoft co-founder has long been a proponent of population control to target the roots of poverty and unrest.
In 2011, he told Forbes magazine that when he first entered public health it was to focus on contraception.
When he later saw data suggesting that when mortality rates fall, so, too, do birth rates, Gates shifted his focus from preventing births to saving people already alive.
“We moved pretty heavily into vaccines once we understood that,” he told Forbes.
Perhaps he’s shifted back to preventing births again?
Table 4 certainly does not show a lot of adverse outcomes.
Table 4 says 10-26% of abortions prior to wk 20, but if i”m understanding the paper correctly: in the discussions section the authors indicate this is comparable to previous numbers for this category without corona-vaccin. So the paper does not appear to support the assertion of the other article.
Strange that it would be used in evidence then…Clearly someone is counting that nobody would bother to actually check.
Whilst i remain of the opinion that COVID is being mis-used to remove freedoms and drive a relentless push for riskier-than-regular vaccines that are really only needed for certain at-risk categories, this kind of reporting is doing more harm than good.
I wonder if it is put out on purpose to try and discredit people critical of the COVID narrative.
Gail see table 4 and notes, 827 total with 700 third trimester so only 127 in the first and second trimester with 104 spontaneous abortions (murders) before 20 weeks. 104 out of 127 killed.
I came across this website last night while googling for recently published materials on the late Bronze Age collapse. It offers a series of podcasts on the collapse of various civilisations. I would be interested to hear what anyone thinks of any of the podcasts.
https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
> The Fall of Civilizations Podcast
A podcast that explores the collapse of different societies through history.
…. Paul has worked as an archivist, editor and journalist, and has a PhD in the cultural and literary significance of ruins. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The BBC, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Discover Magazine.
He writes, produces and hosts the Fall of Civilizations podcast, which has charted in the top ten British podcasts, and gained upwards of 40 million listens since it launched in 2019.
I’ve been listening to these on YouTube since it recommended them, the algorithm must know me well. Makes excellent bedtime listening. I really enjoy the subtle background sounds which almost take you back in time without being obnoxious. The narrator has a nice sounding voice too. High recommended for those with the time to listen as these are somewhat lengthy.
Thanks,
YouTube has a lot of that stuff, will try it out; have pretty well exhausted Lex Fridman, fall a asleep to it, in the AM a fellow from Stanford, Robert Saplosky wakes me up, interesting lectures.
I have no TV as such, haven’t had access to normal TV for twenty years. When occasionally I see it, it is very irritating for reasons I don’t understand.
Dennis L.
Why doesn’t Gail just admit whats happening.
Why bother with these corporate GRIFTING SCAMS in America when you can pump and dump Crypto with 125x leverage?
Become your own central bank. Got my own physics too. Don’t need to be told in garbage textbooks about the kinetic energy formula. Its blatant FRAUD.
Anybody still investing in stocks and bonds is a dumbass.
Anybody holding USD and its derivatives is a dumbass.
Anybody pretending this shit insolvent “society” actually exists is a dumbass.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
The fact that energy is invested in making these Crypto currencies doesn’t really make them worth anything, in either the short run or long run. It is simply a sunk cost. Purchases with Crypto depend on governments allowing these currencies. They also depend on sellers being willing to take these very volatile currencies. I wouldn’t waste my money.
Correct !
It’s all good until the Gov’t says it ain’t so. The Chinese Gov’t has begun to crackdown and ban cryptocurrencies. Eventually this will spread to other parts of the world and then those cryptos will be brought to their eventual value….zero.
The only reason cryptos have been allowed to function is because Govt’s and central banks wanted to learn and put in place their own digital currencies. Mission accomplished because that’s where this is all heading to and cryptos will be treated just like paper money, i.e. illegal.
Famous economist Frederick Hayek advocated privatizing money and having competing currencies. I think his proposal has merit and would work well. Hayek is one of my favoritie economists.
Except now it is the Dollar and everything else. There is no competing currency anywhere on earth.
Currencies compete: The dollar competes with the Euro; the Chinese yuan competes with the Japanese yen. Best money of all is the Swiss franc.
A bit of modesty, perhaps.
What do you wish to own, dollars, gold, silver or BRK?
What is Gates’ largest stock holding? BRK.
Who is the largest farmland holder in the US? Gates.
Gates may be many things, but he is one pretty smart cookie.
Not a very smart guy here, try and do what really smart guys do, so far so good.
Dennis L.
Good point! Arable land will have some value to someone, as long as there are people around who can reasonably farm it.
Not too hard when one is connected to the highest echelon of the earth.
Religion is a wild card when it comes to social change. Gibbon claimed that the rise of Christianity was a major factor in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I subscribe to the Gilfillan hypothesis: Emperors and other aristocrats drank very large quantities of heavily leaded wine. Roman wine was close to vinegar, and dissolving lead in wine by lining wine bottles with lead got rid of the acid taste and made the wine much sweeter. Note that the good emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius were abstemious, while the bad ones such as Caligula drank at least five quarts of wine a day.
W = ∫ F dx = = ∫ m (dv/dt) dx = W = ∫ m (dx/dt) dv = W = ∫ mv dv
There. Better now?
You cannot differentiate a discontinuous function; economic dynamic growth models have to be discontinuous because economies are mathematically chaotic or complex–highly sensitive to changes in initial conditions. John Maynard Keynes knew this, and in his famous 1936 book he used prose, not calculus. There are only three simple graphs in the whole book, and one of them (the first one) has a silly mistake in it where he mislabels a graph, showing one axis as capital instead of capital accumulation. The 1936 General Theory of JMK was written in haste, most of it first draft. Keynes was an excellent prose stylist, and his other books (all of which repay careful study) are better written, and I especially recommend his “Essays in Persuasion” and “Essays in Biography,” available cheap, used, on amazon, or you can get them through interlibrary lending at low cost or no cost.
But I can differentiate, and I will integrate, professor, from 0 to a t, to obtain the high school formula for kinetic energy demanded by our top poster StarvingLion:
W = ∫ mv dv = ∫ (d(mv^2)/2) = (mv^2)/2
You are right about one thing, though, professor, economies (also known as life for humans on planet Earth) need prose, a narrative, to grow (besides resources). That narrative is the great promise of more at some time in the future, also called money.
So Maynard swung back and forth… I once met a cyclo driver in Malacca who had a thing for trannies… he asked – do you guys have Trannies in Canada? I says .. not so much … but we do like to get Down with dogs…. he pondered that… then he said … but dogs don’t like to do ‘that’ unless they are in heat… so I says well of course … we only seek dogs in heat… they are highly valued…
I bet that guy is to this day searching for dogs in heat…
Not sure why but Xabier’s mentioning the proclivities of Maynard… (and that crazy ass name) just triggered this bizarre memory.
My Catalan cousin has a very funny chicken story, but this is a family site.
Maynard’s wife was very beautiful, a former ballerina, Lydia.
Someone who has seen her told me how lovely and graceful she was,and his eyes shone with delight at the memory.
Didn’t do badly, did he, old Maynard?!
Perhaps she enticed others from the company to join them in their merry making … no chickens or dogs allowed!
When collapse??))) Strange not yet collapsed. Very very strange.
As long as the debt bubble can keep inflating and physical markets don’t fall apart too badly, things seem to go along OK.
I have tried to stay out of the prediction mode because timing, and the actual outcome, at this point are too uncertain. Maybe we will see more pieces break off, rather than the whole system come down.
Thank you for your answer. Anyway i like very much your pronostici mode) Is very Easy to mistake prediction….but you must have big courage for do that. About me i was sure of collaps at novembe….now no clue….they can continue print for years? I dont really Know nothing now…..i novembre i was sure 100 💯. I bought 300 kg of rice….now no clue
Guess,
Money can be printed as long as there are some real assets which generate a modest return or can be sold for a modest return. All can’t be liquidated at the same time, never could, currency depends on the speed of liquidation, or is the glass half full or half empty.
Dennis L.
Industrial civilization Will collaps when eroei less than 1 to 14. ….maybe we are still at 18 or similar. Last work of Ugo Bardi told that debit make Cliff more rude.
The forecasters I most respect, such as Roger Rapier, see no collapse for at least twenty years, and probably not then. I go along with John Maynard Keynes in his prophetic article “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.”
Your grand children will be roasted on a spit … if the Elders fail to execute the CEP.
Worry not – Devil Covid will happen.
Again, a guess.
Collapse will not be general, total, sectors will continue to do well, those in these sectors will do well.
Elon is not having funding issues, discretionary areas are, they seem to be fading per Tim Morgan.
Basically, if someone is selling long term hope, they will get funding or at least have in the past.
A funny looking fellow in Germany sold hope during the 1930’s, ultimate disaster, but he did get funding, he literally blew up what was funded. Bummer.
You are in Italy I believe, had a similar experience at that time, fellow named Mussolini, did not end well for him or the country. He ran out of rope as I recall, someone funded the rope.
Dennis L.
What makes you think that the economy can hold together until EROEI falls to less than 14:1? Also, what makes you think that we are at an EROEI of 18:1?
Dennis,
I think that you are right that as long as there are some assets which generate a modest return, at least parts of the system can hold together. Maybe it will be money printing.
In a later comment, you mention that selling “long term hope” is an important part of Elon’s success. All of the long term energy research is also of the “long term hope” type. I suppose education for these fields is long term hope as well. Religion might also be a long term hope.
At some point, it becomes apparent that the long term hope is not working out. For example, the grid eventually becomes less and less stable in locations where a lot of wind and solar has been added to the grid. At that point, there will be a cutback in funding for adding more wind and solar. It could happen even before, as the true total cost of these devices becomes more apparent.
“Elon can’t create energy from nothing.”
“Say it ain’t so”
That rice can really only go up in price, so you can only win Marco.
I’m rich in risotto and paella rice, too, and in saffron.
Marco, do you prefer risotto to pasta? Doesn’t it take more energy to cook rice than pasta?
To make predictions you have to be very prepared, you have to have a lot of courage, you have to be very very courageous.
I predict bAU continues until 2027 in the Core.
At least!
I think collapse is happening right now for Lebanese people. And what about their Syrian neighbors?
and Venezuela, Yemen, maybe Sudan?
No electricity permanently = collapse
I have now declared myself A DE-FI CRYPTO GURU. I bet the stock market drifts aimlessly flat as the gambler public abandons it in favour of the DE-FI casinos.
You may recall GRIFTER Steve Cohen
He was the Hedgie Pig-man who had to fork over 1.8 billion fiatscos to Uncle Thug Government in order to buy his way out of a huge insider trading scandal, as reported here:
https://time.com/59119/sac-capital-guilty-plea/
Well, like all good grifters, Mr. Cohen came roaring back from that little detour, and is now getting ready to ride the crypto tsunami to even greater riches, as noted here:
https://beincrypto.com/point72-asset-management-hiring-head-crypto/
In fact, his Point 72 Hedgie is hiring a crypto guru, so if anyone here wants to apply for the job, be my guest.
Clearly yesterday’s House hearing regarding the shearing of the sheeple in the crypto casinos by Hedgies was timely, right Stevie?
Except for Oil Meme Stocks, most Oil Stocks are DOGS.
XOM barely moves up at all. At least off-shore Transocean has blown out its 52 week high at $5.
Commies hate oil.
OPEC is meeting today. Perhaps there will be an increase in oil supply of 500,000 barrels per day in August. We don’t know yet. The price right now is high: WTI is $74.66. But this is not really high enough to encourage adequate reinvestment.
Transocean’s stock price high was $160.54 on May 16, 2008. It looked like oil price could go to the moon then. A price of $5.00 is above the stock’s recent lows, but not saying much. It is impossible to bring ocean drilling back at today’s low prices.
XOM yields about 5.5%, rumor had Buffet buying; taking the other side of a trade from Buffet is seldom good business.
Dennis L.
Robert Rapier recommends Conoco Phillips. He knows more about oil markets and stocks than anybody else; he used to post on the Oil Drum and has written many articles for “Forbes” and other publications–all very worth while reading.
GTE it’s a penny stock; a gamble but what isn’t these days!
Don,
No disrespect to Robert, seems I have heard him somewhere back in the ASPO days. My experience is these guys are better at understanding oil, etc. than understanding what will make money.
I believe Robert was in the oil business in Britain some years back, moved to Hawaii and now a news letter. Is this the same guy?
Again, you seem to have a finance degree, know money, Buffet is purchasing Exxon per rumor, COP may be a better company, maybe not, but Buffet is a pretty good investor. I think he sold CVX recently.
Dennis L.
Rapier lives in Arizona now. His stock selections have been consistently excellent. The last oil stock I owned was Parker Drilling, back in 1976–a good company then and now. I no longer invest in oil stocks; I’m a passive investor in Berkshire Hathaway, which I bought back in 1965 on the advice of my outstanding broker Sydney Myers of Sutro and Company in Berkeley, California. All his clients made money; I bought the same stocks as he bought for his mother, especially Weyerhauser Paper, an excellent company. They grow renewable tree farms to supply all their pulp needs and are exceptionally well managed.
The CRIMINALS in BANKRUPT Merica government are going after The Crypto Cowboys…Pot and Kettle if you ask me. Who knows how much longer the USD is even used as a currency?
“America on ‘FIRE’: Will the Crypto Frenzy Lead to Financial Independence and Early Retirement or Financial Ruin?”
“If people want to have the animal spirits to take risks, I’d prefer them invest in equity markets to support the building of American companies, or the California Lottery to support the schools in my state,” Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile.”
In fact, it’s so insane that crazy short-gamblers can use up to ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE TIMES LEVERAGE to do so, as explained in this article regarding how to short Bitcoin on Binance:
https://dappgrid.com/shorting-on-binance/
“The Fed’s leaky grab-bag of expedient “saves” had only one purpose: save the fat-cats, skimmers, scammers, fraudsters and embezzlers who had gotten rich off the Fed’s cloaked transfer of wealth: the purpose of all the 2008-2009 extremes was not to impose the discipline required to truly stabilize the financial system; the purpose was to elevate moral hazard– the separation of risk from the consequences of risk–to unprecedented heights, backstopping every skimmer, scammer, fraudster and embezzler from well-deserved losses as the entire pyramid of fraud collapsed under its own enormous weight of risky bets gone bad. ”
…
“The Fed’s perfection of moral hazard has now spread to the entire market and populace: it’s not just the skimmers, scammers, fraudsters and embezzlers who are supremely confident the Fed will never allow them to experience the consequences (i.e. crushing losses) of super-risky bets going bad; the entire American populace now shares that supreme confidence that one can put all of one’s life savings on any roulette number (GME or AMC option, Doge cryptocurrency, etc.) and the Fed will guarantee every roulette number is a winner–a big winner. ” H. Smith
Increased leverage is likely a major factor that will bring the economy down. As long as everything is increasing, (debt) leverage works well. As soon as growth slows down, some parts of the economy start shrinking back. It is the shrinking back areas that especially have difficulty with debt defaults.
Hence the economists (including those at Treasury, Janet Yellen and those at the Fed are doing all they can with monetary and fiscal policy to keep real GDP growth per capita at least at 2% per year. They are acutely aware of the dangers of debt deflation, because they have all studied Keynes. The great Paul Samulelson famously said, “We are all monetarists now, in a nod to his colleague and friend Milton Friedman. To which Friedman wrote in truth and reciprocity, “We are all Keynesians now.”
That’s also why they have to get the next 2 trillion stimulus infrastructure spending
Bankrupt Kanada is about to go under. I’m in my skivvies as the temp today will be 40C.
Drought threatens Canada’s canola crop
June 30 2021 01:28 AM
https://www2.gulf-times.com/story/695363/Drought-threatens-Canada-s-canola-crop
Canadian farmers expanded canola plantings this spring to cash in on record-high prices, a government report showed yesterday, but Prairie drought threatens to scorch crops.
Surging demand for vegetable oil, used in cooking, and meal, an animal feed additive, sparked a global oilseed price rally this year, including canola.
Supply looks uncertain, however, as high temperatures and dry soils slow crop growth.
Much of Manitoba’s farm region is in extreme drought, with Saskatchewan mostly seeing moderate to severe drought, according to the federal government’s Canadian Drought Monitor.
Conditions at Bill Campbell’s Minto, Manitoba, farm are the driest since 1988, he said.
Canola, oat and corn crops are discoloured, and leaves are curling, signifying plant stress, with temperatures forecast to soar this week.
“Crops are for the most part getting by, but we’re running day to day, or week to week, on moisture,” said Campbell, president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers farmer group.
“We don’t have the moisture to sustain those type of heat waves,” he said. Canada is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of canola, a cousin of rapeseed, and a major wheat supplier.
Canola plantings reached 22.5mn acres, Statistics Canada said, up 1mn acres from the agency’s April estimate of seeding intentions and up 8% from last year.
Statscan’s estimate, which represent the largest canola plantings in three years, matched the average trade guess.
Statscan pegged all-wheat plantings at 23.4mn acres, slightly higher than the 23.3mn in the April report and down 6.5% from a year ago. With dry conditions stunting canola and wheat on the Prairies and in North Dakota, supplies look to run thin of both crops during the next year, said Lawrence Klusa, president of Seges Markets, an agriculture consultancy.
Barley which is the number one feed grain on Canadian prairies cannot withstand long hot, dry periods is withering daily also
I say bet this whole shit Banana Republic on dogecoin.
In some sense, food is the world’s most important energy product. We use fossil fuel energy to leverage human energy in growing food.
We gamble that the weather will stay the same. It doesn’t.
We also kid ourselves that we can fix the weather by changing to renewables. If nothing else, the loss of global dimming as countries cut back on coal use, use more filters, and as we clean up the air with respect to sulfur emissions from ocean going vessels tends to spike temperatures. We need to be very certain about the global dimming impact, before we accidentally cut back on it.
JIT with regards to food stocks seems very unwise to me. We had rain here, crops are looking good on my farm, to the west in MN less rain. Weather is “patchy,” makes one think twice before committing money to equipment.
Dennis L.
How long will it be before farmers start burning weather forecasters in an effort to bring back decent weather?
Don’t know myself; perhaps Willard Anthony Watts could help answer that one for you….he’s a TV Weather man himself!
I’ll hold the flashlight!
Odd how the MSM does not harp on how reducing population would reduce the carbon burn…
And then there’s Greta the Tool:
Population Control Isn’t the Answer to Climate Change. Capitalism Is.
https://youtu.be/4xkXjj6dalM