Many countries have assumed that natural gas imports will be available for balancing electricity produced by intermittent wind and solar, whenever they are needed. The high natural gas import prices recently being encountered in Europe, and especially in the UK, appear to be an indication of an underlying problem. Could the world already be hitting natural gas limits?
One reason few people expect a problem with natural gas is because of the immense quantities reported as proven reserves. For all countries combined, these reserves at December 31, 2020 were equal to 48.8 times world natural gas production in 2020. Thus, in theory, the world could continue to produce natural gas at the current rate for almost 50 years, without even trying to find more natural gas resources.
Ratios of natural gas reserves to production vary greatly by country, giving a hint that the indications may be unreliable. High reserves make an exporting country appear to be dependable for many years in the future, whether or not this is true.
As I see the issue, these reserves are unlikely to be produced unless world oil prices rise to a level close to double what they are today and stay at such a high level for several years. I say this because the health of the oil and gas industries are closely intertwined. Of the two, oil has historically been the major profit-maker, enabling adequate funds for reinvestment. Prices have been too low for oil producers for about eight years now, cutting back on investment in new fields and export capability. This low-price issue is what seems to be leading to limits to the natural gas supply, as well as a limit to the oil supply.
In this post, I will try to explain some of the issues involved. In some ways, a dire situation already seems to be developing.
[1] Taking a superficial world view, natural gas seems to be doing fairly well. It is only when a person starts analyzing some of the pieces that problems start to become clear.
Figure 3 shows that natural gas supply has been rising, year after year. There was a brief dip in 2009, at the time of the Great Recession, and a slightly larger dip in 2020, related to COVID-19 restrictions. Overall, production has been growing at a steady rate. Compared to oil and coal, the recent growth pattern of natural gas has been more stable.
The quantity of exports of natural gas tends to be much more variable. Figure 4 compares inter-regional trade for coal and natural gas. Here, I have ignored local trade and only considered trade among fairly large blocks of countries, such as North America, Europe and Russia combined with its close affiliates.
If a person looks closely at the growth of natural gas imports in Figure 4, it becomes clear that growth in natural gas is a feast or famine proposition, given to upward spurts, dips and flat periods. It is my understanding that in the early years, natural gas was typically traded under long-term contracts, on a “take or pay” basis. The price was often tied to the oil price. This generous pricing structure allowed natural gas exports to grow rapidly in the 2000 to 2008 period. The Great Recession cut back the need for natural gas imports and also led to downward pressure on the pricing of exports.
After the Great Recession, natural gas import prices tended to fall below oil prices (Figure 5) except in Japan, where stability of supply is very important. Another change was that an increasing share of exported natural gas was sold in the “spot” market. These prices fluctuate depending on changes in supply and demand, making them much more variable.
Looking back at Figure 4, natural gas exports were close to flat between 2011 and 2016. Such flat exports, together with falling export prices in the 2013 to 2016 period (Figure 5), would have been a nightmare for oil and gas companies doing long-range planning for oil exports. Exports spurted upward in the 2016 to 2019 period, and then fell back in 2020 (Figure 4). All of the volatility in the growth rate of required new production, combined with uncertainty of the pricing of exports, reduced interest in planning for projects that would increase natural gas export capability.
[2] In 2021, quite a number of countries seem to be ramping up natural gas imports at the same time. This is likely one issue leading to the spiking spot prices in Europe for natural gas.
Now that the economy is recovering from the effects of COVID-19, Europe is trying to ramp up its natural gas imports, probably to a level above the import level in 2019. Figure shows that both China and Other Asia Pacific are also likely to be ramping up their imports, providing a great deal of competition for imports.
It is no surprise that China’s natural gas imports are rising rapidly. With China’s rapid economic growth, it needs energy resources of whatever kinds it can obtain. Natural gas is cleaner-burning than coal. The CO2 emitted when burning natural gas is lower, as well. (These climate benefits may be partially or fully offset by methane lost in shipping natural gas as liquefied natural gas (LNG), however.)
In Figure 6, the sudden appearance and rapid rise of Other Asia Pacific imports can be explained by the fact that this figure shows the net indications for a combination of natural gas importers (including South Korea, India, and Taiwan) and exporters (including Malaysia and Indonesia). In recent years, natural gas import growth has greatly exceeded export growth. It would not be surprising if this rapid rise continues, since this part of the world is one that has been increasing its manufacturing in recent years.
If anyone had stepped back to analyze the situation in 2019, it would have been clear that, in the near future, natural gas exports would need to be rising extremely rapidly to meet the needs of all of the importers simultaneously. The dip in Europe’s natural gas imports due to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 temporarily hid the problem. Now that Europe is trying to get back to normal, there doesn’t seem to be enough to go around.
[3] Apart from the United States, it is hard to find a part of the world where natural gas exports are rapidly rising.
Russia+ is by far the world’s largest exporter of natural gas. Even with Russia+’s immense exports, its total exports (about 10 exajoules a year, based on Figure 7) still fall short of Europe’s natural gas import needs (at least 12 exajoules a year, based on Figure 6). The dip in Russia+’s natural gas exports in 2020 no doubt reflects the fact that Europe’s imports fell in 2020 (Figure 6). Since these exports were mostly pipeline exports, there was no way that Russia+ could sell the unwanted natural gas elsewhere, lowering its total exports.
At this point, there seems to be little expectation for a major rise in natural gas exports from Russia+ because of a lack of capital to spend on such projects. Russia built the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but it doesn’t seem to have a huge amount of new natural gas exports to put into the pipeline. As much as anything, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline seems to be a way of bypassing Ukraine with its exports.
Figure 7 shows that the Middle East’s natural gas exports rose in the period 2000 to 2011, but they have since leveled off. A major use for Middle Eastern natural gas is to produce electricity to support the local economies. Before the Middle East ramped up its natural gas production, much of the electricity was obtained by burning oil. The sales price the Middle East can get for selling its natural gas is far below the price it can get for selling oil, especially when the high cost of shipping the natural gas is considered. Thus, it makes sense for Middle Eastern countries to use the natural gas themselves, saving the oil, since the sale of oil produces more export revenue.
Africa’s natural gas exports have fallen, in part because of depletion of the early natural gas fields in Algeria. In theory, Africa’s natural gas exports could rise to a substantial level, but it is doubtful this will happen quickly because of the large amount of capital required to build LNG export facilities. Furthermore, Africa is badly in need of fuel for itself. Local authorities may decide that if natural gas is available, it should be used for the benefit of the people in the area.
Australia’s natural gas exports have risen mostly as a result of the Gorgon LNG Project off the northwest coast of Australia. This project was expected to be high cost at $37 billion when it was approved in 2009. The actual cost soared to $54 billion, according to a 2017 cost estimate. The high (and uncertain) cost of large LNG projects makes investors cautious regarding new investments in LNG exports. S&P Global by Platts reported in June, 2021, “Australia’s own exports are expected to be relatively stable in the coming years.” This statement was made after saying that a project in Mozambique, Africa, is being cancelled because of stability issues.
The country with the largest increase in natural gas exports in recent years is the United States. The US is not shown separately in Figure 7, but it represents the largest portion of natural gas exported from North America. Prior to 2017, North America was a net importer of natural gas, including LNG from Trinidad and Tobago, Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere.
[4] The United States has a strange reason for wanting to export large quantities of natural gas overseas: Its natural gas prices have been too low for producers for a long time. Natural gas producers hope the exports will raise natural gas prices within the US.
Natural gas prices vary widely around the world because the fuel is expensive to ship and difficult to store. Figure 5 (above) shows that, at least since 2009, US natural gas prices have been unusually low.
The main reason why the price of natural gas dropped around 2009 seems to have been a ramp up in US shale oil production that started about this time. While the main objective of most of the shale drilling was oil, natural gas was a byproduct that came along. Oil producers were willing to almost give the natural gas away, if they could make money on the oil. However, they also had trouble making money on the oil extraction. That seems to be the reason why oil extraction from shale is now being reduced.
Figure 8 shows a chart prepared by the US Energy Administration showing US dry natural gas production, by type: non-shale, Appalachia shale and other shale.
Based on Figure 8, the timing of the ramp up of natural gas from shale seems to correspond with the timing in the drop in natural gas prices. By 2008 (the first year shown on this chart), gas from shale formations had risen to well over 10% of US natural gas production. At this level, it would be expected to have an impact on prices. Adding natural gas to an already well-supplied market would be likely to reduce US natural gas prices because, with natural gas, the situation isn’t “build it, and demand will come.”
People don’t raise the temperature to which they heat their homes, at least not very much, simply because the natural gas price is lower. The use of natural gas as a transport fuel has not caught on because of all of the infrastructure that would be required to enable the transition. The one substitution that has tended to take place is the use of natural gas to replace coal, particularly in electricity generation. This likely means that a major shift back to coal use cannot really be done, although a smaller shift can be done, and, in fact, seems to already be taking place, based on EIA data.
[5] The reason that limits are a concern for natural gas is because the economy is very much more interconnected, and much more dependent on energy, than most people assume.
I think of the economy as being interconnected in much the same way as the many systems within a human being are interconnected. For example, humans have a circulatory system, or perhaps several such circulatory systems, for different fluids; economies have highway systems and road systems, as well as pipeline systems.
Humans require food at regular intervals. They have a digestive system to help them digest this food. The food has to be of the right kinds, not all sweets, for example. The economy needs energy of the right kinds, as well. It has many kinds of devices that use this energy. Intermittent electricity from wind or solar, by itself, doesn’t really work.
Human beings have kinds of alarms that go off to tell if there is something wrong. They feel hungry if they haven’t eaten in a while. They feel thirsty if they need water to drink. They may feel overheated if an infection gives them a fever. An economy has alarms that go off, as well. Prices rise too high for consumers. Or, companies go bankrupt from low market prices for their products. Or, widespread defaults on loans become a problem.
The symptoms we are seeing now with the UK economy relate to a natural gas import system that is showing signs of distress. It is pleasant to think that the central bankers or public officials can fix all problems, but they really cannot, just as we cannot fix all problems with our health.
[6] Inexpensive energy plays an essential role in the economy.
We all know that inexpensive food is far preferable to expensive food in powering our own personal economies. For example, if we need to spend 14 hours producing enough food to live on (either directly by farming, or indirectly by earning wages to buy the food), it is clear that we will not be able to afford much of anything other than food. On the other hand, if we can produce food to live on in 30 minutes a day (directly or indirectly), then we can spend the rest of the day earning money to buy other goods and services. We likely can afford many kinds of goods and services. Thus, a low price for food makes a big difference.
It is the same way with the overall economy. If energy costs are low, the cost of producing food is likely low because the cost of using tractors, fertilizers, weed killers and irrigation is low. From the point of view of any manufacturer using electricity, low price is important in being able to produce goods that are competitive in the global marketplace. From the point of view of a homeowner, a low electricity price is important in order to have enough funds left over after paying the electricity bill to be able to afford other goods and services.
Economists seem to believe that high energy prices can be acceptable, especially if the price of fossil fuels rises because of depletion. This is not true, without adversely affecting how the economy functions. We can understand this problem at our household level; if food prices suddenly rise, the rest of our budget must shrink back.
[7] If energy prices spike, these high prices tend to push the economy into recession.
A key issue with fossil fuels is depletion. The resources that are the least expensive to access and remove tend to be extracted first. In theory, there is a great deal more fossil fuel available, if the price rises high enough. The problem is that there is a balancing act between what the producer needs and what the consumer can afford. If energy prices rise very high, consumers are forced to cut back on their spending, pushing the economy into recession.
High oil prices were a major factor pushing the United States and other major users of oil into the Great Recession of 2007-2009. See my article in Energy, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis. In part, high oil prices made debt harder to repay, especially for low income workers with long commutes. It also made countries that used a significant share of oil in their energy mix less competitive in the world market.
The situation being encountered by some natural gas importers is indeed similar. Paying a very high price for imported natural gas is not a very acceptable situation. But not having electricity available or not being able to heat our homes is not very acceptable either.
[8] Conclusion. It is easy to be lulled into complacency by the huge natural gas reserves that seem to be available.
Unfortunately, it is necessary to build all of the infrastructure that is required to extract natural gas resources and deliver them to customers at a price that the customers can truly afford. At the same time, the price needs to be acceptable to the organization building the infrastructure.
Of course, more debt or money created out of thin air doesn’t solve the problem. Resources of many kinds need to be available to build the required infrastructure. At the same time, wages of workers need to be high enough that they can purchase the physical goods they require, including food, clothing, housing and basic transportation.
At this point, the problem with high prices is most noticeable in Europe, with its dependence on natural gas imports. Europe may just be the “canary in the coal mine.” The problem has the potential to spread to other natural gas prices and to other fossil fuel prices, pushing the world economy toward recession.
At a minimum, people planning the use of intermittent electricity from wind or solar should not assume that reasonably priced natural gas will always be available for balancing. One likely area for shortfall will be winter, as well as storing up reserves for winter (the problem affecting Europe now), since winter is when heating needs are the highest and solar resources are the lowest.
Slovenian Prime Minister has declared today who are the ‘reliable’ allies in the EU Parliament of the famous ‘non-profit’ organization called O.S. belonging to the famous philanthropist Ge…e S.r.s.
Here you can find his embarassing tweet and also an incredible document indicated by him where these ‘allies’ are candidly illustrated.
Quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’…(or it seems to be)
https://twitter.com/JJansaSDS/status/1448920548499771410?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1448920548499771410%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fvoxnews.info%2F2021%2F10%2F15%2Fpremier-slovenia-twitta-ecco-i-burattini-di-soros-ad-europarlamento-ce-anche-gualtieri%2F
https://legacy.gscdn.nl/archives/images/soroskooptbrussel.pdf
Back from my round trip from western NC to Buffalo. I saw a lot of FED-EX trucks with the double trailers on n Interstate 77 and 64 in WV, during traffic jams from contruction delays, I saw nothing but miles of trucks backed up. Hmmm. But I thought the economy was slowing down. But the truckers sure weren’t making any money while sitting backed up in traffic when paid by the mile.
Here at “home” in NC, UPS has been renting out trucks from independent companies to deliver packages. Are they suddenly short of trucks? Certainly not drivers it would seem. The drivers that hop out of them with the packages are wearing the brown uniforms. Is UPS deliberately cutting back on its fleet and renting instead in anticipation of a slow down? I don’t get it.
Then when I attended a Buffalo inner city cross country meet in Dealware Lake Park in northern Buffalo, I talked with a coach who said the young people were moving back into the inner city due to low housing costs although in the cushy southtowns area of Orchard Park, not a for sale sign in sight, and my old wrestling buddy a hard drinking guy who built his construction business (Johnson Construction) a mutimillionaire housing construction business by being in the right place, Buffalo suburbs, at the right time 1980s and later, and with the right business model (high end homes) had just opened up a vast new development near my childhood home. I would have thought he was crazy, but his success speaks for itself, and he stated on record that people will be returning to western New York and wanting high end houses 900K and above. Everything I “predicted” has turned out wrong. Dead wrong.
Then I wonder. Buffalo had the Solaris (Obama subsidized?) solar panel plant boondoogle, but it may have the ultimate ace in the hole: local power supply from Niagra Falls and ample fresh water right there from the Great Lakes. A battfield for the quest for local clean fresh water and energy in the future? Maybe as valuable as oil! But I don’t know the business and politics of it all.
And the final “they did what?” Visted the Orchard Park train station built in 1912, preserved as a heritage site. But they actually paid out the $$$ to remove the tracks, formally used by Baltimore and Ohio for freight (and maybe coal?), and replaced with a hiking path nature trail for miles south of Buffalo. Lay the tracks out, then take them up. What a waste.
Bitcoin over $61,000.
we’re saved!
After campaigning on reining in oil and gas companies and curbing climate change, President Joe Biden is scrambling to find ways to lower energy prices — and counting on help from the industry.
The average per-gallon price of gasoline stands at $3.29 nationally, the highest level in seven years. Oil is also at its highest price in that time frame. Rising natural gas prices are expected to raise heating bills by about 30% this winter. With general inflation also high and dragging down Biden’s approval ratings, rising energy prices are a threat to the president’s agenda.
Biden has already been forced to ask global oil producers in OPEC+ to increase output to boost global supply in hopes of lowering costs. And this week, the White House has been reportedly consulting with the oil and gas industry about lowering prices — an industry whose footprint Biden has sought to shrink.
The issue is a precarious one for Biden, who argued during his campaign that the nation needs to get away from oil — but is now seeking more of it.
“I would transition away from the oil industry, yes,” Biden said in October 2020. “The oil industry pollutes, significantly. … It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”
HOUSEHOLDS THAT USE NATURAL GAS TO SEE HEATING BILLS RISE AN AVERAGE OF 30% THIS WINTER
And while Biden faces pressure to deliver immediate relief at the pump, a vocal contingent of the Democratic base is pushing him harder to cut off operational pipelines and develop fossil fuel projects that support domestic oil and gas supply.
Activists have been staging protests and marches outside the White House in recent days as part of “People vs. Fossil Fuels” week. One activist said she came to Washington to tell Biden to “start living up to [his] word” on climate issues.
Apart from the Keystone XL pipeline, the Biden administration has been reluctant to stop fossil fuel infrastructure projects, frustrating liberal activists.
Although Biden isn’t moving quickly or aggressively enough for activists, both the president and his party are doing plenty in the name of addressing climate change that runs counter to oil and gas interests, making the pursuit of an immediate solution to high gas prices trickier.
On his first day in office, Biden canceled the permit for Keystone XL, which would have delivered oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
He went on to order a pause on new oil and gas leases on federal lands days later. A federal judge lifted the pause in the summer, and the administration has resumed leasing while it appeals the ruling.
Democrats are also pursuing a fee on methane emissions for oil and gas operations, and their proposed clean electricity payment program would force the power sector’s hand to move away from fossil fuels.
Those decisions and the administration’s overall policy thrust have sparked fierce pushback from Republicans and oil and gas industry leaders, who have blamed Biden and Democrats for compromising U.S. energy independence.
“By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” American Exploration and Production Council CEO Anne Bradbury said in a statement Wednesday.
Sleepy 😪 Joe knows who is his really friends are….and they are not clean nor renewable.
From the Washington Examiner.com
Sorry Greta, there is no way out of this trap…protest all you want…they will be coming to get you!
Let’s Go Brandon.
James Kunstler is Angry and rightfully so:
“Poster Boy”
Maybe Dr. Sanjay Gupta was born at night — but surely not last night. Apparently, CNN’s house doctor went into his interview on the Joe Rogan Experience with eyes wide shut. Did his handlers and preppers not have a clue that Joe would give Sanjay the business about CNN’s deliberate, incessant, and epic lying in the service of forces that seek to destroy the country, its people, and western civ with them?
The issue was Mr. Rogan declaring publicly that he took ivermectin with a suite of other drugs to get over Covid-19 in a few days’ time and then CNN’s defaming of the Nobel Prize winning drug as “horse de-wormer,” and defaming Joe Rogan for taking it. CNN’s bad faith propaganda plays a key role in the dishonest and untrustworthy campaign by America’s public health officialdom, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, to prevent the clinically-proven ivermectin early treatment protocol from being recognized by the FDA, because doing so would nullify the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the still-unapproved Covid-19 “vaccines.”
It was painful to watch Sanjay wriggle and try to squirm away from the accusation that his network lies knowingly to the public (and that he abets it). “It’s a lie that they’re conscious of, it’s not a mistake,” Joe Rogan said, pithing the famous TV doc like a common carpet moth. “You know that they know they’re lying,” he pressed on. “Do you think that’s a problem, that your news network lies?”
Yeah, it’s a problem, Sanjay finally admitted, lamely. And it’s no small problem that the nation’s community of doctors has allowed itself to be buffaloed into killing tens-of-thousands of patients across the land who are denied life-saving treatments, while harming and killing many others with “vaccines” which deliver toxic spike proteins that damage blood vessels and organs.
Sanjay Gupta is now the discredited poster boy for American doctors-without-honor and a medical system in abject collapse. All this lying by the government, the doctors, and the news media led to “Joe Biden’s” dastardly “vaccine mandate” — and fake, too, since there is still no actual legal instrument behind it — that is the final insult to medicine as legions of health-care workers ranging from doctors and nurses to janitors quit their jobs rather than submit to forced “vaccinations.”
The vax mandate is in-step with the primary motive of the Democratic party’s neo-Jacobin program, which is to push people around, to coerce them to do things that common sense and the instinct for survival argue against, and then to punish the people sadistically when they refuse, and to do it for the sheer pleasure of inflicting harm on their enemies — who happen to be the citizens of the USA. That is your “Joe Biden” government, from top to bottom, a matrix of fakeness and malice.
The vax mandate is doing a stellar job of wrecking every other public service from sea to shining sea as police, firemen, EMTs, 911 operators, and soldiers in the US military demur from the shots. And, of course, there are all he private companies going along suicidally with the scheme: the airlines, the railroads, the truckers, the retailers, you name it, all shedding employees and the ability of the companies to function. Naturally, the news media is trying to hide the damage, but in another week the net effect will be of the world’s biggest-ever general strike. Every activity in the country will stand still; some activities will just crash-and-burn; and many will not return to their prior states-of-operation.
This is not just a matter of the kiddies missing their Christmas presents. That’s just a dumb-ass sentimental ruse to divert your attention from the entire armature of American life imploding at warp speed. Christmas presents! How about no food, no gasoline, no heat, no money, and no public safety? That’s where this is taking us, and in the fast lane. And it hardly matters whether the financial markets manage to stay artificially levitated. Reality has already discounted the financial markets because they have forfeited their basic function, which is to signal the true price of everything. The true price of a society lying to itself about everything will be the sickness and death of the society.
We must be very close to a clear majority of the people in America recognizing the danger we are in and identifying the source of that danger. When that moment arrives, will we be able to do anything about it? It may take extraordinary measures not seen before in our political history.
JMG hosts a more or less Open Post on Covid, and this is part of his ground rules:
“What we’re exploring is the likelihood that what’s going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades.”
that’s quite accurate: arrogance, incompetence, and corruption.
No argument:
If there is not enough stuff, what does one do? What is the narrative?
Dennis L.
try to stock up before the shelves get emptier.
the Narrative is that the world isn’t transitioning to renewables fast enough, and therefore there will be many problems until the world is running fully on REs with zero FF.
it’s an innsanne narrative, but that’s what you get from a cluelless radiccal leffftist ruling class which now exists in the USA.
I agree with the clueless leftist comments but what would the right wingers do? Everything is pretty much baked in the cake. Without cheap energy into the equation it’s a stair step down no matter who is in power. And who is in power anyway??? I have no idea!
the righties perhaps would be for full blast dirty energy resources.
there is a small tradeoff of more pollution to keep bAU limping along.
I think this is the more probable way to extend bAU, and China and EU seem to be verifying that, by burning more coal, which the USA seems to be doing also.
yes, burn more dirty FF!
extend bAU no matter what!
the bottom line is
we turned fossil fuel into food
there’s now 7.5bn of us demanding to be fed
without fossil fuels, we starve
Good point!
Interesting! I hadn’t been following the Sanjay Gupta goings on.
Before they can “Build Back Better,” they must first demolish everything.
By demolish everything- you mean like Year Zero of the revolutionary calendar? Erase history, economic sabotage?
The reason the word “deconstruct” is so popular in Marxist circles is they can then “reconstruct” things – sexuality, family, education, society however they like.
‘they’ do not have the power to reconstruct anything.
the power of ‘they’ depends on the energy input of everybody else.
it might appear so in the short term, but that’s all it is.—very short term.
They hope to keep themselves and their own empires intact, however.
Not only that, but increase the scope of those empires, and take permanent hold on unchallenged power.
Oh dear, ‘1,000 Year Reichs’ all over again…..
Or the delusion of King Midas, that if only he could turn everything that he touched into his gold, he would be satisfied……
Who’s going to clean rich people toilets?
what place is going to have the water pressure to enable indoor plumbing?
I am planning to leave the States come January.
“Retaliatory measures being talked about could include limiting the UK’s access to the EU’s energy supplies, bringing in tariffs on Britain’s exports or even suspending the trade agreement altogether.”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19650455.eu-told-prepare-trade-war-uk-northern-ireland-protocol-suspended/
> EU told to prepare for trade war with UK if Northern Ireland Protocol is suspended
Some EU member states are said to be pushing for the bloc to retaliate if the UK suspends arrangements agreed for Northern Ireland in the Brexit deal.
According to the Financial Times, France, Germany and the Netherlands have been most vocal in demanding EU Brexit negotiator Maros Sefcovic begin contingency planning for a potential trade war. The three countries have been supported by Italy and Spain, sources said.
Retaliatory measures being talked about could include limiting the UK’s access to the EU’s energy supplies, bringing in tariffs on Britain’s exports or even suspending the trade agreement altogether.
It comes after Brexit minister [Mr.] Frost said the UK Government may try to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol by invoking Article 16.
On Wednesday, the EU tabled a range of proposals aimed at cutting the red tape the protocol has imposed on moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
However, the plan did not address a key UK demand – the removal of the oversight function of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the operation of the protocol.
The story of potential retaliation was the splash on the Financial Times front page, alongside news that the Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng hopes that the UK will have a mild winter, limiting the impact of the energy crisis on the public.
The FT speaks out. BCC has repeatedly spoken out against the belligerence of Boris and ‘Mr. Freeze’. The Tories do not have the support of organised British capital – nor did they for Brexit.
https://www.ft.com/content/bb92d141-ccbb-4ac8-9ebe-aec0a13c1ef4
> The UK approach to Northern Ireland is one of casual political vandalism
Frost’s huffing and puffing may be a negotiating tactic but it risks jeopardising peace and tipping Britain into a trade war
The writer was chief British negotiator in NI from 1997-2007
There could hardly be a starker contrast in negotiating approaches than we have seen this week over the Northern Ireland protocol. The EU put forward a series of detailed compromises; David Frost tried to pre-empt them by moving the goalposts as far back as possible.
After consulting businesses locally, the EU has tried to address the practical problems caused by the implementation of the protocol, spanning sausages to medicine. Meanwhile Frost raised the purely ideological issue of the role of the European Court of Justice, a body that has not caused any practical problems and is not germane to unionist complaints about the border in the Irish Sea.
The EU has also suggested ways of involving Northern Irish politicians in decisions affecting the province. This is intended to meet objections around the lack of consent to the protocol. It would have been good if the British government had discovered its interest in consent earlier: the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s population would have voted against Johnson’s Brexit deal, the Unionists because of the protocol and the majority because of Brexit itself.
The EU proposal now offers the basis for a negotiated solution to the gaps on the shelves that have riled ordinary people in Northern Ireland, but it does not solve the underlying problem of identity. Hard Brexit requires there to be a border somewhere, and the Unionists have a valid point in complaining that by putting it in the Irish Sea the government is undermining their British identity. But the only alternative is to put it on the island of Ireland and that would affect the identity of nationalists and Republicans. No one — not even the Unionists — has called for that. The border was always the insoluble problem of Brexit and it continues to be so.
Given that the British side has not put forward an alternative suggestion, we must assume that all the noise coming from their camp is just a negotiating tactic. Invoking Article 16 is not an alternative to implementing the protocol, it is just a route to yet more negotiations. Frost may be right when he says there are no dividends in endlessly talking about Brexit, but I am afraid we are condemned to many more years — probably decades — of Sisyphean negotiations with the EU.
We have seen this particular movie before. The recently published diary of Michel Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, is replete with examples of Frost huffing and puffing and the EU staying calm and carrying on. Chances are that this is happening again and the outcome will be the same. In fact the history of the negotiations clearly demonstrates that such histrionics are completely counter-productive. They simply destroy trust, result in a worse agreement than would otherwise be possible and eventually force an embarrassing climbdown on the British side.
But there is another possibility. If the British government is really serious about refusing to implement the protocol and the border in the Irish Sea, then they risk tipping us into a full-scale trade war — and one in which the EU would retaliate against the UK as a whole. To pile this disruption on top of the existing fuel crisis, missing lorry drivers, backed up ports and shortage of agricultural workers would be an act of political suicide. I find it hard to believe that even Johnson’s government would ultimately opt for that course.
What I really object to however is the casual vandalism of the Northern Ireland peace process, something a previous generation of British politicians on both sides spent decades constructing. Dominic Cummings’ tweets reveal how little regard Johnson had for the Good Friday Agreement when it came to signing up for the Withdrawal Agreement. The prime minister continues to play politics with the peace process by using the DUP as a battering ram in negotiations with the EU. Having marched Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP’s leader up to the top of the hill, Johnson is now going to have to find a way to march him down again without humiliation and the risk of losing votes to his right. Donaldson will remember that Johnson left his predecessor, Arlene Foster, standing at the altar with disastrous consequences for her leadership.
The threat Brexit posed in Northern Ireland was always more political than one of returning to the Troubles. But if Donaldson goes ahead with his threat to pull out of the power-sharing executive, then it will be exceedingly hard, if not impossible, to put the institutions up again in the foreseeable future. All of this is complicated by the Unionist fear of Sinn Féin winning the elections next year and taking the First Minister position. That will lead to prolonged political crisis, reduced support for the devolved institutions and probably increased support for a united Ireland.
For the sake of the peace process and the British economy, let’s hope Frost is really just bluffing yet again.
If you are not with us, you’re against us. Unfortunately there is no place for sharing with neighbors who have nothing to offer us.
One of these days Americans will come to their senses and realize that cheap laborers from our southern border are an important part of our economy. We can’t build walls and then expect others on the other side to help us when we need help.
“… Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng hopes that the UK will have a mild winter, limiting the impact of the energy crisis on the public.”
to all our UK friends, I also wish for you a balmy winter with mild nights and warm sunny days.
hopes and wishes!
That’s a kind thought: but I’m longing for a proper winter in England, of the kind we used to have.
Hard frosts, mists and snow are a distant memory, and so invigorating!
The air is like champagne, food tastes better, dogs frisk about, pretty cheeks turn pink….
If people die from the cold, it’s as natural as birds falling off branches…..
That is a darling tide, and it was just so today – sunny skies, slightly chilled air, just nice. It was absolutely perfect for our after dinner walk as the sun went down – perfect temperature, slightly chilly at first but otherwise one gets too hot by the time one is half way around. We have a 45 minute walk at the edge of the grounds for a once around. Soon we will need a torch for the winter months. It really is quite lovely. xx
EIA Winter Fuels Outlook, October 2021
(The reported expenditures in the report are for the total bill for a given primary heating fuel, not just for heating use.)
– We expect that the nearly half of U.S. households that heat primarily with natural gas will spend 30% more than they spent last winter on average—50% more if the winter is 10% colder-than-average and 22% more if the winter is 10% warmer-than-average.
– We expect the 41% of U.S. households that heat primarily with electricity will spend 6% more—15% more in a colder winter and 4% more in a warmer winter.
– The 5% of U.S. households that heat primarily with propane will spend 54% more—94% more in a colder winter and 29% more in a warmer winter.
– The 4% of U.S. households that heat primarily with heating oil will spend 43% more—59% more in a colder winter and 30% more in a warmer winter.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/special/winter/2021_Winter_Fuels.pdf
Winter fuels are to some extent discretionary items, unlike home-cooked food. (Restaurant food and fancy celebration meals are discretionary items.)
Households who are concerned about the high cost of heating can dial back the temperature to which they heat their homes in the winter, if they need to pay less. Thus, a reduction in demand should be expected, if prices stay high.
Yes but most probably don’t know yet and they will heat accordingly. It will be other things that they cut back on. Saying that Americans will trum their thermostat down is like saying that they will drive smaller cars. It takes a while for it to happen
I know that I signed a contract for a monthly payment plan for natural gas a while ago (18 months?) and a new one very recently. Those who still have an old contract in effect will get the low rate. Most people won’t check to see how much the rate is going up.
Electricity usually doesn’t have a price cap. The cost of electricity for our heat pump for the finished portion of our basement actually seems to cost more than the natural gas to heat the rest of the house. (This seems strange to me. Perhaps the cost is only equal.) Higher electricity prices may be as much of a problem as higher natural gas prices.
Is your heat pump an air-to-air or ground source? It makes a difference in their efficiency. If your air temperature is below freezing it will take a lot more energy to raise it to your thermostat setting than if the fluids from underground are at 60 degrees. Also keep in mind that to “extract” heat from any source requires a compressor. The physics follow the ideal gas law.
The ideal gas law is often written in an empirical form:
P V = n R T
where P, V and T are the pressure, volume and temperature; n is the amount of substance; and R is the ideal gas constant. The temperature at which you start effects the amount of energy it takes to change the volume to arrive at the temperature you want. https://www.airbestpractices.com/technology/air-compressors/heat-recovery-and-compressed-air-systems
It is air to air. It is necessary to blast if a person wants to dig around here. (The Atlanta area is home of “Stone Mountain.”) No one would consider a ground source heat pump around here.
This is a powerful hit piece… it leaves me thinking he’s a not job … even though I am sure he is not … so imagine how the CovIDIOTS feel… of course we don’t get to see or read about what he said .. can’t have that … might make too much sense
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-experts-criticise-destiny-church-leader-brian-tamakis-vaccine-claims/VN3YHNEYQBMKFERNJ7CQ5ULGPM/
If there is a wait between articles … I declare those days Fill the Hopper days… https://www.headsupster.com/
It sounds like Fast Eddy will be updating his news feed, even if I take a day or two or three to get a new post up. If you are interested in keeping up with this, you can follow his news feed. Thanks for pointing this out.
Very good. I feel alone when comments are closed 🙂
You could do an Open Post for comments like JMG likes to do? Whatever you write seems to devolve into the latest topic du jour and little regarding with what you wrote.
As anticipated in previous posts and also from other people, there is currently a great protest in Trieste port.
Trieste port is a crucial logistic and import-export hub for Italy.
Port workers are protesting against Covid passport which are mandatory for work from today on.
The protest is peaceful and there at the moment very nice situations, such as port workers who are bringing coffee to the Army who came to keep under control the protest (please see below).
There are also people coming from the city protesting together with port workers.
Government rules are creating caos and problems.
It is important to remember that the current government was not elected, but it is a sort of technical governement born during the pandemic after a political crisis.
It was created by the President of the Republic because it was decided that it was not possible to vote because of the pandemic.
Let’s see what will happen.
https://t.me/italiantribune/3499
https://t.me/RossellaFidanza/15254
Is there any doubt that Mattarella is a “venduto” (sold, corrupt) of the worst kind?
Starve the Beast.
Europe, and in particular Italy, is in bad shape with respect to energy supply. It is no wonder that the system is working poorly.
Bill Shatner goes into space, sort of, and George Takei slams him as an “unfit” “guinea pig”.
But, as one comical commentator remarked, George is just jealous that the only place he goes is to Uranus.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/10/14/george-takei-attacks-william-shatner-as-unfit-guinea-pig-after-his-record-setting-space-flight/
Covid is surging in Waterford, Ireland where 99.7 percent of adults are Fully Vaccinated
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/co….
The number of vaccinated patients in ICU now is almost as high as the entire number of Covid patients in ICU a year ago. HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry admitted the figures were higher than we would like but added they would be even higher but for the impact of vaccination.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40704104.html
A staggering 99.7% of over-18s in Waterford have been vaccinated against Covid-19, making it the most vaccinated county in Munster.
Tipperary comes second, with 97.3% of adults having received both doses of the vaccine, while Limerick sits third in the province at 95.9%.
Both Clare and Cork are tied for fourth place, each county having 95% of the adult population immunised, while 92.8% of adults in Kerry have had both doses.
The Department of Health last night confirmed an additional 1,432 new Covid-19 cases. There are 272 people in hospital, down 14, with 63 in ICU, unchanged from the previous day.
Since Wednesday last week, a further 30 Covid-19 related deaths have been recorded, bringing the total number of fatalities from the disease to 5,209.
Mr Reid said it was “striking” that 60% of those with Covid-19 being treated in ICU are not vaccinated.
“This is striking when only 9% of adults haven’t been fully vaccinated. Vaccinations do protect stronger,” the HSE chief executive said.
Hmmmm…. somehow I don’t believe the last bit…. “striking” = lying
This sounds like an illustration of how poorly the vaccines really work, in practice.
Whether the number of cases would be even higher without the vaccine can be debated. Without the vaccine, more people in good health would have caught the disease and developed their own antibodies. These “real” antibodies work far better than the partial antibodies that the vaccine provides. The real antibodies drive the infection away; the partial antibodies do not.
I’ve been in some crowded enclosed spaces in London over the last two weeks with dry coughing all around – curious to see what happens.
Frankly I’m exposing myself to infection as much as possible – true scientific spirit?
Brits Suffering from ‘Super Colds’ Due to….. due to….. ???
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/10/14/brits-suffering-from-super-colds-due-to-weakened-flu-immunity-following-lockdowns/
The NBA’s Miami Heat brag that everyone on the team is now fully vaxxed. And now they have at least two players who are fighting nasty colds. I know of two people who took “The Jab” and then came down with pneumonia. It got so bad for one of them that he was on life support but pulled thru.
My coworker, double faxed, caught the flu, supposedly recovered, now a week later has a congestive cough again.
At this rate we’re going to have to retire the expression “drank the kool-aid” and replace it with “took the booster”.
Why didn’t someone think of this before:
By Charles Hugh Smith !
Everything Solid Melts into Air
October 13, 2021
That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs “choices” of forced labor would be comic if the results weren’t so tragic.
We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the “news” quickly reverts to gossip. So over 4 million American workers up and quit every month, month after month after month, and the reaction is ho-hum, labor shortage, blah, blah, blah, toy shortage for Christmas, oh, the horror, blah, blah, blah.
These are large numbers. Over 10 million job openings and 6 million hires and 6 million “separations,” i.e. layoffs and the 4.3 million voluntary quits.
The happy story promoted by the corporate media is that this enormous churn is the result of shiny, happy people moving up the work food chain to better paying jobs. We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when every breakdown is instantly reworked into a happy story in which everything is getting better every day, in every way.
The reality nobody in power wants to acknowledge, much less address, is that millions of workers are opting out or burning out and they’re not coming back. Another happy story promoted by the corporate media is that once all the gummit freebies ended, the lazy no-good workforce would be forced to take whatever wretched job the billionaires need done at low pay and zero benefits. (But hey, you qualify for food stamps, so it’s all good!)
A substantial share of the workforce has declared “up yours” and another share has been so burned out by overwork and constant pressure that they’re done: they can no longer work at this pace and for that many hours.
This enrages the lackeys, toadies, apparatchiks and apologists of the billionaires: how dare you escape from forced labor! The whole economy is based on the bleak choice of take the job we offer or starve.
The “innovation” (pay attention, neofeudal lords) from SillyCon Valley is to offer an illusion of “choice” in this forced labor system: in the gig economy, you get to “choose” between Gulag Camp One (low pay, long hours, zero benefits and zero security) and Gulag Camp Two (low pay, long hours, zero benefits and zero security).
Wow! Who knew “choice” was so life-changing? In a similar fashion, when you can no longer afford rent, utilities, etc., then you get a “choice” of living in your car, if you have one, or fashioning a crate-tent “home” or taking over the ruined camper left by the guy who made the one-way trip to the morgue.
That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs “choices” of forced labor would be comic if the results weren’t so tragic. The neofeudal status quo is so busy chasing down escapees from the forced-work Gulags that it won’t notice its Wile E. Coyote moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air.
You see this phenomenon in Asia — for example in the Philippines the men are often considered lazy… I reckon it’s not so much they are lazy it’s that no matter how hard they work they can barely make ends meet… so they just throw in the towel…
However you give one of these guys a chance to make decent money and they will put in a huge effort… there are loads of Pinoys working here in Queenstown and they are definitely not lazy.
Same thing happening globally now that the cheap energy is gone and inflation has destroyed wages…
I suppose these millions are surviving on some form of MMT … or just living in their cars in the Walmart parking … living the dream has morphed into living the nightmare
“I suppose these millions are surviving on some form of MMT … or just living in their cars in the Walmart parking … living the dream has morphed into living the nightmare”
I knew a guy who worked at Walmart who lived out of his car(s) because he had two of them. One was to sleep in and the other was used as a storage shed.
This why ‘You will own nothing, but be happy’ won’t work: a recipe for apathetic slaves.
Just as the Soviet system, inherently, couldn’t get the best out of most people.
No wonder that the world is filled with depressed people!
Let me tell you my experience with Filipino(a)s. I tried to help out my ex-wife‘s family there in the Philippines, all men about under 25 years of age with limited education, rice farmers earning the equivalent of two dollars a day -100 pesos. I realized that the only way to break their serfdom life sentence was to get them their own farmland. I bought 10 hectares of prime irrigated farmland, nearly 25 acres, the legal limit for purchase due to the Philippine Reform Act, and said “here’s the deal; I’ll pay for the land, all the equipment, fertilizer, pumps, motors, irrigation systems, even a brand new tricycle with a sidecar to carry the rice to market.. all of that upfront so you guys can work for selves and have no debt.” There are three croppings or harvests of rice per year. Pay the taxes to defend the land against government taxation and ultimate seizure. What’s left over you guys get to spend 1/2 of that. You literally put that money in your pocket and you can spend it as you see fit. The other half I will place in a savings account to accumulate to the point that you guys can later buy your own land in your own names and slowly accumulate more land, and income within your family. A NEW CHANCE AT A DECENT LIFE, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT!
You wouldn’t believe it but they soon revolted, saying they wanted me to just give them the land which of course they would turn around and sell and to buy Tanduay Rum, the cheap alcoholic staple in the Philippines and just get drunk every night. They are lazy worthless bums. I wanted them to work and it made no difference really who owned the land as long as they got to use it and we’re productive with it. But they accused me of trying to control their lives. I have no use for them or my ex-wife who also has a 4 bedroom custom built house overlooking Cebu Harbor in Talisay, south of Cebu, and another 10 hectare beachside resort just south of Sipalay in Negros Occidental, “owned” only through stewardship, but with beautiful mountain forests, accessible by boat only, coral reefs off the beach, power brought in from a mile away, etc. A paradise. All paid for by me. But I am now the bad guy. Filipinas, as one commenter said on ZH are the n gg res of the Asian world. I think in the coming years my intent to get farms established 20 years ago will be very prescient. Too bad I’ll never get to enjoy retirement there although my daughter will get to inherit it by recent Philippine Inheritance law but only when and only if , “ on the hope or expectation” my ex dies before she squanders it away.
A “solution” that you see as a solution may not be viewed as a solution by the people you were trying to help.
For one thing, if this solution worked, the people you were trying to help would lose all of their friends. Their wealth would be vastly disproportionate to others that they currently know. This, by itself, would be a problem.
For another thing, there is a huge learning curve with respect to operating a 25 acre farm. For example, how much fertilizer to use, when? Where does a person go to buy replacement parts for a machine or the bicycle? How does a person hire help for harvesting? What government forms need to be filled out?
Another issue is that there would be a need to pass on this life style to their children, and they likely will not be able to keep up. This sets them up for a lifetime of depression and feeling like they don’t live up to their parents’ expectations.
I know that my husband and I have consciously underspent our income, in part so that there would not be too great a difference relative to the people we grew up with and relative to what our children could expect to have. We drive modest cars and live in a modest house in a subdivision that includes quite a few renters and mixed race households. If we wanted to, we could have moved to a fancier place and driven fancier vehicles, but we chose not to.
As long as your focus is always “more,” it is difficult to be happy.
I put my wife’s niece through accounting school, very sharp and she could manage the finances, ordering supplies etc. But you’re right. When I returned, a year later, the brand new diesel motors, all three of them, were missing the caps for the cooling water. The tricycle motorcycle oil had not been changed. They would just pour water from the ditch into the diesel motor water cooling reservoir. Totally incapable of running the farm beyond the simplest manual labor of spraying insecticide and fertilizer from the back pack containers, and planting and harvesting the rice. Another niece I put through nursing school flunked her Philippine Nursing exam, and wound up as a maid in Dubai. Oh well.
CHS, piggybacks the blog post that JMG made recently about the average worker yelling “take this job and shove it”.
https://www.ecosophia.net/that-untraversed-land/
Great article!
The complexity of the system simply leaves too little for the workers at the bottom of the pile. The many layers of higher paid managers and those trying to “optimize” the way the system works really aren’t adding the value needed. The value added really comes from additional energy consumption, not from more and more complexity. Complexity has its limits, and the world has gone beyond these limits.
THE first Children’s Parliament, up to 650 youngsters aged seven to 11 representing their own areas of the UK, will meet for their first online session on October 29. The project, which ‘launched its successful Green Britain crusade earlier this year’, is backed by the Daily Express.
and ‘the internationally successful British online educational website Wakelet’, whose founder Jamil Khalil stated: ‘Climate change has become highly topical for young people and we’re delighted to be involved in such a vital, significant project as the Children’s Parliament. It’s really important children are engaged in the democratic process, at the youngest age, and debate issues that really matter to them and to all of us.’
It is one thing to encourage children to pick up their litter and perhaps even tidy their rooms, but giving them responsibility for cleaning up the planet – for stopping it warming, or cooling, or whatever it is supposed to be doing this week – is one giant step in irresponsibility for grown-ups. Granted, the role of the Children’s Parliament seems to be to employ their formidable ‘pester power’ to nag politicians into ‘doing something about climate change’; but if they realised what was involved in doing that something – reducing carbon emissions to zero by turning back the clock of civilisation to year zero, with seriously negative outcomes for their own lifestyles – they might not be so enthusiastic in their support for extreme environmentalism.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/move-over-st-greta-youre-past-it/
Better instructions: To save the planet, don’t go to school. Don’t eat any food you haven’t grown yourself. Get rid of any expectation you have for paved roads and the many vehicles we have that use paved roads. Plan to live very simply.
I think that this is another example that our society is an inter-connected system and governments can do something only up to a certain extent.
They cannot simply apply their desires to modify reality.
https://gcaptain.com/biden-confronts-supply-chain-crisis-beyond-his-grip/
Good point: A self-organizing system is beyond the control of any one person.
By March 2021, molecular epidemiologists had already expressed their concern about the emergence of a super-variant that ‘might have any combinations of increased transmissibility, altered virulence and/or increased capacity to escape population immunity’ and would, therefore, enjoy a huge fitness advantage (1). Back then, their concern was based on phylogenetics-based natural selection analysis indicating that immunity-mediated selective pressure is driving convergent evolution of a diversified spectrum of mutations to ensure viral persistence in the face of mounting infectious and vaccine-induced host immune pressure.
Their findings lead one to conclude that mass vaccination in the presence of more infectious variants inevitably involves selection-driven convergence of compensatory adaptive mutations at positively selected genome sites, and hence promotes enhanced expansion in prevalence of more transmissible immune escape variants.
This would imply that vaccine efficacy is expected to diminish over time while the infection rate would progressively increase. It is reasonable to assume that the evolutionary convergence of more infectious immune escape variants and the culmination thereof into a ‘super-variant’ will also cause distinct trajectories of the pandemic to increasingly converge in countries/regions that are subject to mass vaccination.
https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/keep-looking-at-snapshots-and-you-ll-never-see
Exactly what has happened and what is happening … opening up highly vaccinated countries will end in disaster… as intended
On the Mutant Ninja Zombies I read a convincing argument:
Usually a Virus would “like” to stay in the game. It would adapt spreading and mortalitay for a sustained life time. Bad strains that kill too many die out.
If we apply a fax that is leaky and the person not getting ill / díe the virus continues to spread but it can “not” adapt to the boundary of “too many deaths” as people only get a little ill but will not die. The virus may then just shoot over to be too dangeous.
Anyways, I think that coronaviridae are not that harmful in general and may not be able to become completely lethal. Their complexity is a bit too low. Besides it learned some new skills in the WIV.
But in that case that would only make a severe spike and then it would be all over.
In any case an experiment is being run and the purpose of an experiment is to see what happens.
“Global Energy Crisis Hits Singapore as Power Provider Goes Bust.
“A record-breaking spike in electricity prices is short-circuiting Singapore’s efforts to liberalize its power sector, in the latest sign that the global crisis is delivering a blow to both energy suppliers and their customers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/global-energy-crisis-hits-singapore-as-power-provider-goes-bust
“Energy Crisis Increasingly Includes Oil
“The energy crisis keeps getting worse. Shortages of natural gas in Europe and Asia are boosting demand for oil, deepening what was already a sizable supply deficit in crude markets, according to the International Energy Agency.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-10-14/your-evening-briefing-global-energy-crisis-increasingly-includes-oil
“Metals Head for Record, Zinc Spikes as Energy Crisis Hits Supply.
“Base metals soared, led by zinc’s surge to its highest price since 2007 after European smelters became the latest casualties in a global energy crisis that’s knocking supply offline and heaping pressure on manufacturers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/zinc-surges-to-highest-since-2007-as-energy-crisis-deepens
Damn… I swapped out coal for gas when gas was really cheap… then gas went up 4x so I swapped to burning fuel oil … now that’s spiking … back to coal… over to gas.. back to coal… over to oil .. coal… gas.. oil… gas… coal… oil … gas…
Ack ack… ack ack ack….
http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28600000/the-great-cornholio-cornholio-28603052-500-248.gif
What about firewood ? I’m very happy with my stove. Zero inflation for ten years now. Delivered by a local farmer. And I’m much content to say I prefer give my money to a local farmer than give it to Vladimir Putin
Except that the local farmer who is cutting down the trees isn’t doing the planet any good. Worldwide, deforestation continues to be a problem. Also, cutting down self-organized forests and replanting trees with a single species is not at all equivalent.
Generators and backup electricity generation of other kinds use oil. Not a surprise.
Liberalize the power sector = more competitive rating, less maintenance of necessary parts of the system, probably more debt, more vulnerability to future price spikes
If companies are already going bankrupt, this is not the direction to go.
Bankrupcy tidies up the market and comes with the package.
“Evergrande crisis leaves Chinese developers shut out of global debt markets.
“International bond sales by Chinese developers have all but halted as the crisis at China Evergrande stokes fears of defaults across the country’s property sector, throttling a crucial driver of Asia’s high-yield debt market.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b8effeb7-e553-4bb1-8ece-a610fcbcdbb2
“China Developers Account for About Half of World’s Troubled Debt…
“Of the $139 billion of U.S. dollar-denominated bonds trading at distressed prices, 46% were issued by companies in China’s real estate sector, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on Oct. 12…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-13/china-developers-account-for-about-half-of-world-s-troubled-debt
Wow! Leaving Chinese developers shut out of global debt market.
The WSJ has a different spin on this, namely the view of the Chinese central bank:
China Evergrande Spillover Risks Can Be Controlled, Central Bank Says
Developer had blindly diversified and expanded, official says, but the risk exposure of individual financial institutions to the developer isn’t big
I suppose “not spilling over into the financial system” is different. But if developers can no longer sell dollar denominated bonds, it is spilling over to other property developers. The WSJ online front page doesn’t mention this issue.
“China’s economy is being hit from all sides — a property slump, energy crisis, weak consumer sentiment and soaring raw material costs — and government data Monday will show just how bad things are looking.
“Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict a slowdown in gross domestic product growth to 5% in the third quarter from 7.9% in the previous three months…”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/10/15/business/economy-business/china-economy-strain/
“China’s record factory inflation poses another threat to supply chains.
“The cost of goods leaving China’s factories is surging by the highest rate on record, stoking fears about stagflation in the world’s second largest economy at a time when it is already grappling with an extreme power crunch and deepening debt woes.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/14/economy/china-inflation-gdp-supply-chains-intl-hnk/index.html
China will need luck to get to a 5% increase in the third quarter with a power crunch.
“The dramatic exit from the U.K. gas market of a middleman that supplies the fuel to utilities is already reverberating through the industry.
“Xcel Power Ltd., a small retailer to businesses, warned Thursday it’s likely to fold after the company it buys gas from — CNG Group Ltd. — said it would stop supplying the fuel. It’s the latest escalation in a crisis rocking the industry…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/exit-of-gas-shipper-to-pushes-u-k-utility-to-brink-of-collapse
“Energy crisis: UK could run out of gas during especially cold winter ahead, industry boss warns.
“Sir Jim Ratcliffe, owner of chemicals firm Ineos, said a prolonged winter ahead could mean demand for gas outweighs supply, leading to widespread shutdowns.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/energy-crisis-uk-gas-shortage-run-out-winter-cold-warning-1248108
“U.K. disposable incomes are set for their biggest drop in a decade next year as rising inflation, tax hikes and tighter monetary and fiscal policy put the squeeze on consumers, according to Credit Suisse.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-13/u-k-disposable-incomes-seen-dropping-by-the-most-since-2011
“One of Britain’s most important electricity import cables will not return to full service for another two years after a fire forced it to shut, compounding the UK’s energy woes ahead of a looming winter crunch.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/kent-burnt-out-electricity-cable-will-take-two-more-years-to-get-back-to-full-service
Two years to fix the electricity import cables? Wow!
The system is depending upon too much complexity. It doesn’t have enough redundancy.
All of this competition works when thing supplies are plentiful and prices stay low. It leads to a lot of bankruptcies and customers potentially without natural gas when the situation turns around. Basically, too much complexity hides problems, rather than fixes them.
All I can say is, beware the anger of an Israeli mother!
According to this angry mom, the Israeli Defence Force wakes up new recruits at two in the morning in order to forcibly vaccinate them while they are still half asleep and less likely to resist. They just tried this trick on her daughter, who is a tough young lady and managed to protect herself and three other female recruits from the jabbers.
I haven’t confirmed that this is authentic, but it has a ring of authenticity to it.
This woman gets it: as far as the Israeli authorities are concerned, we are all Palestinians now.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/xykcN9h7HdQd/
Appropriate comparison with the Nazees, at the end.
There are “Nazees” wherever you go …
Let’s see if this comes out.
https://memegenerator.net/img/images/400x/73083616.jpg
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/FireShot%20Capture%20088%20-%20Taiwan%20COVID-19%20stats%20-%20Realtime%20coronavirus%20statistics%20with%20charts_%20-%20epidemic-stats.com_.png
Deaths Following Vaccination Reported in Taiwan Exceed Nation’s COVID Death Total
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-10-14/deaths-following-vaccination-reported-taiwan-exceed-nations-covid-deaths
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/FireShot%20Capture%20089%20-%20COVID-19%20vaccination%20in%20Taiwan%20-%20Wikipedia%20-%20en.wikipedia.org__1.png
Show us some proper research on this, then you might have a point. How many people died shortly after taking their dog for a walk? 18 million people have received a vaccine. There are 850 deaths following vaccination (not because of vaccination). Do some research first and don’t post stories from people who are trying to show something without doing their research first. Don’t expect others here to do your research for you.
I knew that Mike would come out for this comment by FE…
MockIGNORE mike
Spew gibberish back at mike… but pretend to be serious
how’s curly and mo? mikey had a little lamb… a little lamb….
on my wall chart eddy
your reply rate is now around 2.53 :1
keep going
parity by February?
As we can see… norm has deteriorated even further after Clot Shot 3…. as we know those micro clots what causes the 20% decline in cognitive ability with each shot … the brain becomes increasingly clogged with these tiny clots
That’s a new tactic for dealing with trolls … I call it the MockigNORE… a combination of mockery while ignoring … like it?
While you are considering that… see:
https://k60.kn3.net/taringa/6/D/6/9/0/B/P3r_R3p/1B9.gif
Mike is an AI troll.
I think you’re unlikely to find satisfaction here. Both deaths attributed to COVID and deaths attributed to vaccines have significant issues with correlation vs causation.
I feel pretty confident that:
1. Deaths due to COVID have been consistently over-attributed (i.e. dying of COVID vs with COVID)
2. Adverse reactions due to vaccines are underreported in the VAERS system
I’ll also acknowledge that it may be a long time before we could really know, as work proving causation can be harder and take longer.
But it is clear that if 1 and 2 above are true, the public is accepting a lower standard of evidence for the risk of vaccination than for the risk of COVID.
It is good that Taiwan is actually trying to keep proper records of the number of people dying from the vaccine. This seems to be unlike the system in the West, where reporting is voluntary and deaths are likely to be missed.
The power of the leaders like Angela Merkel or the monks or the priests comes from the fact that they are childless and thus they live the future of the humans already now. It was the monasteries that had more power than the kings during the decline of the medieval era.
Olaf Scholz = keine Kinder
https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/promis/privatleben-von-olaf-scholz-familie-ehefrau-kinder-und-brueder-des-spd-kanzlerkandidaten-art-748776
Netherlands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rutte#Personal_life
Rutte is single.[7][42] He is a member of the Dutch Protestant Church.[43] As of 2021, Rutte still teaches social studies for two hours a week at the Johan de Witt College, a secondary school in The Hague.[12][44] Rutte is known to be a big fan of the writing of Robert Caro, especially his 1974 book about Robert Moses, The Power Broker.[45]
Mario Draghi
“In 1973, Mario Draghi married Serena Cappello, an expert in English literature,[122][123] with whom he has two children: Federica, who worked as investment director of Genextra Spa and board member of Italian Angels for Biotechis, and Giacomo, a finance analyst, who worked as an interest-rate derivative trader at investment bank Morgan Stanley until 2017, and is now at the LMR Partners hedge fund.[124][125]
Draghi is a Roman Catholic of Jesuit education and is devoted to St. Ignatius of Loyola.[126] Draghi has homes in Rome’s Parioli district and in Città della Pieve in Umbria.[127] He is a supporter of A.S. Roma, one of the football teams of his hometown, and a great fan of basketball.[128]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Draghi
skimmed through the rest of Rogan looking for good parts… that 1 hour section is by far the best…and the only point where he goes on a serious attack.
No discussion of other countries that early vaxxed having massive spikes … no discussion of leaky vaccines and the dangers of deploying during pandemic… no discussion of the massive VAERS data… Rogan is aware of all of this… this was low hanging fruit he could have thrown at him
Sanjay would leave with his entrails hanging out … running from my hungry dog… if I could get an hour with him
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0WTz2_JYu9M/VcsybHyw_HI/AAAAAAAAt4k/9dvWsI0Sy0U/s1600/DSC_0113a.jpg
One wonders why he would not raise those critical issues (he has mentioned them previously so is aware)…
One wonders if that would touch a nerve as they might point to the true intentions of the vaccines…
One wonders why he does not have Yeadon and Bossche on the show — I believe Yeadon has abandoned the UK for Texas….
Yeadon would be a huge show given he was a honcho at Pfizer…
I suspect Joe understands going there would likely end his career… so he didn’t ask Guppie … and he will not invite Bossche or Yeadon onto his show
https://www.bitchute.com/profile/uJQesj4gIDST/
Mathew is gone.
If the growth of the human population is the problem, then the elites that are against it are those, who do not propagate.
Yes, those ‘elites’ with progeny should be arguing that the world is “overpopulated” should be summarily executed. Sentence: excessive MOARonity. Reason:
1. Doesn’t understand evolution
2. Doesn’t understand genetics
3. Doesn’t understand epigenetics
4. Exploits unfair advantage
5. Knowledge of true depletion
6. Puts children into this world given 1-6
Therefore as the unofficial judge self-appointed by Mother Earth; I condemn them to the Ultimate Sentence in two parts. Now let there be MOAR:
1. Cranking the Pedals
2. Oat Munching
I’m expecting to see the WEF ‘crowd’ cringe and squirm as they haul their self entitled rapacious primate rear ends from A to B on the epitome of IC – the bicycle, while loaded up on oats (produced by petrochemicals).
Otherwise; let it rain.
🌎💥☄️☄️☄️
(It’s the only way to be sure)
It will be glorious with a planetary grande finale.
A win-win scenario when the seven stages of grief manifests.
🤣👍👍
I am trying to work out … is Gupta lying or does he really believe his BS…. I am inclined to believe he is lying… but then again he might just be stooopid.
Hahaha…
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/joe-rogan-crushes-cnn-over-ivermectin-horse-paste-propaganda-gets-gupta-concede
Rogan rips Gupta a new ass hole… 1 hour mark is the best part
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/joe-rogan-sanjay-gupta-cnn-lied-ivermectin/
One thing he could have done was shown the Singapore and Israel numbers when he claims unvaxxed spread covid more than vaxxed
I saw the 2 minute version of that. It’s time those people are called out for what they do.
https://youtu.be/QYmViPTndxw?t=2
Video date 2014….
‘We have 7 strong years’ 7 7 7 7 … repeated….
Do the math. What year is it now?
Disregard everything else… it has nothing to do with July 20 2014… unless that was the date that they perfected the Covid vaccine….
Interesting point!
Lagard’s famous bizarre speech was streamed live on Jan 15, 2014. What happened in January 2021? The beginning of the worlwide injection campaign? Hmmm…
And recall that Lagarde also:
‘I only do what they tell me to do.’
And:
‘We can do it if we all work together’.
‘All Together’ is one of the slogans of the Great Re-set.
We’ve had her seven strong years, so I guess it’s time to invite Christine back for another talk.
Throughout my long independent career, I have noticed a roughly seven-year economic cycle running in Japan based on variations in my annual income. It is clearly linked to what goes on abroad, with notable troughs being in 1987 (Black Monday), 1994 (following the early 1990s recession, which was late reaching me), 2001 (following the Dot Com Crash of 2000), 2008 (Lehman Shock) and 2015 (post-Legarde numerology speech recession?).
Since 2015, it has just hobbled along like my aged Labrador, getting slower and slower with each passing year, but somehow still moving. As the overall economy goes and the aged Labrador goes, there go I.
The big drop in oil prices in late 2014 was a pivot point for the economy.
Eugenics
“The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population’s genetic composition.” – Merriam-Webster
“The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.” – Definitions from Oxford Languages
Are we living through a eugenics program now? There are those who will never receive a COVID-19 “vaccine.” There are those whose children will never receive a COVID-19 “vaccine.” Instead of thinking in terms of administering a complex, gene therapy injection as a means of carrying out a eugenics program (for example, altering a recipients’ DNA or inducing sterilization) consider a simpler, cruder possibility: the threat of the injection alone is enough to divide the human population into two camps and thus facilitate a more primitive form of eugenics.
What will be the consequences for the “unvaccinated?” Governments around the world are working to determine that now. Their yet-to-be fully disclosed vision for the “unvaccinated” will likely encompass every facet of an “unvaccinated” persons’ life: employment opportunities, educational opportunities, healthcare access, childcare access, banking, and finance access, etc. Depending on how long this bio-apartheid is in place there may be observable behavioral and temperamental differences between the two groups – “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” – over the coming generations.
For example, those who opt into the “New Normal” and accept that their government can command them to receive routine injections presumably would represent a more obedient and docile form of human being. Similarly, should these people reproduce and raise children under the “New Normal,” those children, too, would be rather obedient and docile.
Conversely, the “unvaccinated,” those who opted out of the “New Normal,” would have their own particular temperament, largely one that opposes the State, and this would influence how they raise their own children and the narratives they share within their own fringe communities.
Of course, the extent to which this scenario could unfold is dependent upon how long the high priests and missionaries of the “New Normal” could continue providing incentives and benefits to their followers. As BAU breaks down, the perks of being among the injected in the Church of COVID-19 will disappear. If the injected still had their health, it wouldn’t be long before they’d turn on those that promised them a better life in exchange for their obedience and submission.
I sense a bit of blowback here with respect to the fraudulent Biden election ‘victory’… I suspect there would be a large number of Trump supporters in the police force….
And they’ll also remember the Biden comments about the vaccine safety when Trump was the Chief Puppet.
Now they are saying ‘f789 you’… don’t try to pin your shi t on use if you continue to try to force your garbage vaccine on us … and we walk… and the bad guys hit the streets….
Look in the mirror.
And as he says — if the people including the CovIDIOTS want safe streets — back .. the f789 off… and call your reps and let them know … the mandates must stop…
I wonder if the US will send in the national guard if half the cops walk…. that might result in even more cops walking – even injected once who were forced into it by the mandate…
Best part of an excellent interview
https://youtu.be/2Gy4LEIJkck?t=469
Good man.
An example of the decent people who, according to Solzhenitsyn, made the Totalitarian nightmare of the Soviet Union more or less bearable.
Of course, in the SU he would have been shot or jailed that day.
Melbourne set for COVID lockdown exit despite record cases as vaccinations spike
Melbourne will exit months of COVID-19 lockdown next week helped by a faster-than-expected vaccine uptake, Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday, ahead of schedule even though daily infections hit a record the same day.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-australias-victoria-hit-record-daily-high-2021-10-13/
Let the mutations begin!
The not-so-friendly skies
Get ready for turbulence ahead.
Yesterday American Airlines had almost 300 of its flights canceled, almost 10 percent of its total schedule, far more than ANY other carrier in the United States (Southwest remains second), and another 673 delayed. It is no doubt purely coincidental that I have heard from multiple pilots at American this week and that its pilot forums are filled with anger at the vaccine mandate.
It is also no doubt a coincidence that Delta – which has had far fewer problems than the other big carriers – has been the only one NOT to impose a vaccine mandate.
Meanwhile, though they still insist last weekend’s meltdown had nothing – NOTHING, I TELL YOU – to do with their vaccine mandate, Southwest’s executives have dramatically changed their rhetoric about said mandate.
On a video call yesterday, the company’s CEO encouraged employees who don’t want to be vaccinated to apply for exemptions and said he didn’t want anyone to lose a job over vaccinations. Last week, the language went like this: “Failure to comply with the COVID-19 Vaccination Policy will result in termination of employment.” (Still, the mandate remains in place, unless Southwest simply decides to wave through every exemption request.)
Nothing to see here, folks.
More https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-not-so-friendly-skies/comments
One day remaining in this post and we are at 4557 comments. I think we will hit 5000 quite soon in a few posts.
I will get worn out, I am afraid, at that rate.
Gail,we are more than happy if you just have a blank post for us to comment while you take your own sweet time to come up with a new post.
As we approach singularity, anything can happen and we would definitely like to be able to gather around here and watch events unfold. Who knows like what I have in my earlier posts, perhaps a “solar event” (mind the quotes) will cause us to lose internet. You never know especially when narratives Are “straying” for TPTB
Thanks…..
I’ve mentioned that before. JMG, usually has an Open Post at least once a month.
I agree… we cannot allow the MOREONS to have any days off… it allows them to re-energize .. the beatings must not stop .
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6c/53/fd/6c53fdfa1529357b555f321c0e7d2556.gif
Dear Gail, you must take time off if things are getting wearying!
Gail a week or two off may calm down the comments.
It’s because of fast eddy spaming.
Ooooh…. No it’s not!
Name… hmmm Are you searching for a Name?
Ok … I vote to refer to you as MOREON… feel free to use that when you make your next post
Your spamming is not my spamming… if your narrative is similar to MSM, then I find that perhaps that is spamming. I would rather say that his posts are informative, counter narrative and entertaining. I have heard somewhere, please correct me if I am wrong that the liberals and the left are all non humourous, perhaps like robots and basically cannot read between the lines (have to be straightforward to them) and cannot understand satire or sarcasm. See here in Asia, we have left or rights, just reo categories- easily brainwashed (99.99%) or not (0.01%)
Correction – We have no left or rights just two categories
Eddy is a comedian– one could not be that “deluded”.
But agree, it does add to excess frivolous content.
But try and appreciate the comic delusion.
I’m only here occasionally, so whatever the comrades want.
Says one of the 3 Stooges hahahahaha
No, it’s probably because acceleration of change turn humans (at least the intelligent ones) much more talkative.
Between 2008 and 2019 it was as if nothing really happened, a long and almost boring but on the other hand highly satisfying decade of suspense, and then suddenly BOOM “covid revolution”! Frantic change and etc. So no wonder (some) people are talking!
If we are drilling down on stats … how many times has MOREON been mentioned?
a post with 5000 comments is always 2 years away.
Is that so… let’s check out what the stooges are up to
https://media1.tenor.com/images/d465c61b35921411ea3b2ab34fe79789/tenor.gif
hahahaha
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6c/53/fd/6c53fdfa1529357b555f321c0e7d2556.gif
Liked the movie Ford vs Ferrari that came out in 2019.
One lucky man, Carroll, Shelby, was born in the right place at the right time.
Said all money means to him was to be able to do what he wanted to do, which was build cars
Other than that it was just waste because nobody can take it with them
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oKYoxGv_llI
How Rules the World? BAU 🐥
Energy crunch causes US coal use to surge under Biden
Rachel Millard
The Telegraph
Wed, October 13, 2021, 9:01 AM
The US is ramping up its use of coal to generate electricity as high global gas prices deal a blow to Joe Biden’s ambitions to eliminate carbon emissions from America’s power grid.
The country’s power plants are set to burn 23pc more coal this year, according to Bloomberg analysis of official data, even as Mr Biden pledges to clean up the power sector.
It marks a sharp reversal after coal consumption by utilities plunged by more than a third under Donald Trump, despite his attempts to boost usage of the fuel by cutting environmental regulations.
A global gas supply crunch is pushing up natural gas prices around the world, making coal more attractive for electricity generation compared to gas.
Electricity demand has also grown faster than renewables, leaving coal-fired power plants to pick up the slack in Asia.
Rich Nolan, chief executive officer of the National Mining Association, the US mining trade group, said: “The markets have spoken.
“We’re seeing the essential nature of coal come roaring back.”
According to forecasts from the US Energy Information Administration, US power stations are set to burn 536.9m short tons of coal this year, compared to 436.5m in 2020.
The Biden administration wants to decarbonise its power sector by 2035, and has re-committed the US to the Paris Agreement on climate change after Mr Trump pulled out.
Analysts have questioned the feasibility of the decarbonisation goal, however, given the time it takes to develop technologies such as hydrogen, carbon capture and build out more electricity infrastructure.
Increased use of coal threatens years of progress on replacing coal-fired power with relatively cleaner natural gas.
In Europe, coal crossed over to become more attractive than gas for power stations in about July, according to Reuters analysis, as surging natural gas prices outpaced increases in coal and carbon prices.
Analysts at Bank of America said: “While European coal generation was handcuffed by record carbon prices in the early parts of the summer, soaring gas prices have now unlocked the gas-to-coal switching lever.”
In China, officials have ordered domestic miners to ramp up coal production to try and prevent power cuts, after factories have been forced to close due to power shortages.
The coal reliance comes as world leaders are set to gather in Glasgow at the start of November to try and agree firmer commitments to tackling climate change, at the Cop26 UN conference.
China has said it will stop financing coal-fired power plants abroad, likely to affect about $50bn worth of projects. It does not plan to cut its own coal consumption until 2026, however.
Sure, Can’t wait for the Next Climate 🤝 Agreements….Greta wiill be one busy protester and feel sorry for those that join her…it’s outta our our control
I understand that Greta Thunberg is from Stockholm, Sweden. In fact, the Southern part of Sweden is one of the places where rolling blackouts are likely to hit, in the not too distant future. Sweden has been shutting down its nuclear plants, because the crazy pricing scheme that wind and solar provide offer too low prices for any provider offering “base load” electricity. Of course, this is what nuclear provides. Renewables by themselves aren’t enough. No one is exporting electricity in quantity any more, either, with the carbon taxes.
I hope that Greta likes the blackouts.
Our masters will say blackouts, brownout and white outs are racist. Artefacts of a complacent, energy-rich society where more people are using energy endlessly and meaningless than the productive people. With EROEI of 1:100, it is good but now, perhaps 1:10 or less, it just looks stupid
Geeta like blackout… Geeta like… Geeta have candle… Geeta snarls like a wild dog
I can’t imagine she’d like them. Do you think blackouts can be avoided by ditching renewables? How long for?
If Europe goes completely off line with respect to electricity, it may help the rest of the world’s electricity supply. In a sense, the intermittency may be stopped by disconnecting some parts of the system that basically are not performing.
This seems to be the way the system really works. It kicks out non-performing parts. Western Europe that uses little coal or nuclear is particularly bad off.
The failure of the central government of the Soviet Union helped reduce oil prices for the rest of the world. It kept quite a bit of oil and natural gas underground in Russia and its affiliates for later.
Some affiliated countries, particularly North Korea, ended up worse off than others.
I’m sure Putin can “help” the south of Sweden with a gas pipeline. But then again, some ‘unfortunate’ malfunctions and production “problems” might manifest if the Swedes isn’t dancing by Vlad the Impalers pipe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin
https://youtu.be/dYTfzfsbiUI
Some things can only be taught the hard way.
Being cold, or perhaps hungry and cold…
It’s about time to put the hydro power stations and mines of north Sweden under the club. At least if the establishment of Sweden expects to join up for another few “ Kumbaya” YOLO sessions at Skansen sing-a-long “Stockholm i mitt hjärta” (Stockholm in my heart). (It is almost poetic at this stage).
https://youtu.be/daNRAF3C-Oc
Doge much oh noes. 🐶
Decisions, decisions…
SELL!!!!11!1!!
🤔
Wazzzz up Stooge CovIDIOTS?
Scotland is 87% adult vaccinated; weekly deaths are now 30% above normal
Alex Berenson 41 min ago
Even excluding Covid deaths they were almost 20% above normal for the most recent week, and the trend is rising.
20 straight weeks of excess deaths.
Nothing to see here, folks. (Though even the BBC is now asking questions.)
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/scotland-is-87-adult-vaccinated-weekly/comments
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3893492a-e33d-4471-ae04-6189ef778bd8_745x900.jpeg
If this situation of higher death rates overall were widespread, other areas would start making reports of it as well.
Then there is Singapore hahahahaha…
Same was blasting off in Israel… then they ‘bought some time’ with the first Booster…
Now I get it … buying time = buying time until Mareks arrives….
But buying time with the vaccines is what CAUSES Mareks…
Is this what Hideaway was alluding to?
I need some time to wrap my head around that….
A Q for all: do you think euromomo.eu mortality data are reliable? I can see a mild increase in Scotland there, but sorry, it is not 30% above. One z-unit is about 33 deaths, so I see about 100 excess deaths there.
Larkin and Poe show in Albany NY cancelled because it is not vax mandatory. Tomorrow show in Terrytown NY is vax mandatory and is not cancelled. I had tickets. They will never see a penny of my money again.
Ed, do you know if it was the band or their management that chose to cancel? Or was it the venue or local government in Albany that chose to cancel?
It was not the venue nor the government. The band announced Rebecca’s voice needed to rest but the next day was business as usual. So I take that as an excuse not the fact. Given I have seen pictures of the two singers on one side of a plastic barrier and two fans on the other either they or their management are spooked by the vid. No government entity in NY outside of NYC requires vax at venues.
That’s too bad. I was disappointed when establishment acts like Bruce Springsteen and the Foo Fighters required proof of vaccination for their concerts. I haven’t bought any tickets for concerts in years, and I doubt I will ever again, so long as the “vaccine” mandates and/or testing remain in place. It has been a revelation to see bands fall in line with the scam. Eric Clapton spoke out against “vaccine” mandates for concert venues and said he wouldn’t perform at any venue that had them in place. We need more of that. Imagine if performing artists banded together and said they wouldn’t accept mandates for their audiences? Instead of being merely countercultural poseurs they’d actually be walking the walk.
Instead, we had “VAX LIVE: the Concert to Reunite the World” put on by Global Citizen with an emphasis on “vaccine equity” and the idea that vaccination should be considered a basic human right.
Globalist puppets attending VAX LIVE included:
H.E.R., Jenifer Lopez, Olivia Munn, Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Ben Affleck, Jimmy Kimmel, and more.
Sellout Eddie Vedder had this to say about “vaccines”:
“What we’ve just been through in the last year and a half was something everyone had to deal with,” the Pearl Jam frontman said backstage. “Now that we have vaccines, it’s important to make sure that the vaccines can be distributed to everyone who needs it. Get this thing on a trajectory where the whole planet can be healthy again.”
Vedder performed Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” and interrupted his set to urge leaders and key stakeholders to take urgent action to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If you’re a government, if you’re a world leader, and you have excess vaccines, please don’t stockpile, please make it available for the countries that need it,” he said.
“Please distribute it ASAP, and if you’re a drug company, we thank you for your inventions. If you really want to be heroes, it would be great if you would distribute the vaccine at cost and then you would have a fair and equitable distribution system throughout the planet. And that’s how we will survive and conquer this pandemic.”
Vedder closed his set with Pearl Jam’s “I Am A Patriot.”
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/vax-live-best-moments/
What has happened to these musicians? I remember when Eddie Vedder would stage dive and crowd surf like an animal. Sure, you could attribute that stuff to the fearlessness of youth but not everyone was as bold as Vedder at the same age. Now look at this guy, with his hat in hand, pleading with Big Pharma. “…If you’re a drug company, we thank you for your inventions…”
Who the hell says something like that? What an absolute tool.
You can print bolivars or roubles, but you will not buy much for them. Because it is the products that have value. Crude oil or natural gas are useless, if you do not have functioning cars or heating appliances. Which, in the end means the consumers. If the consumers die, all is finished. The consumers are namely those who produce and maintain energy transforming devices.
It is the energy that is transformed into as many useful purposes for sustaining the human species as possible.
The oil or natural gas sitting in the ground or in the tanks is useless. If the clmt control is a useful purpose, then using or not using hydrocarbons is also useful.
all that yousay is an obvious truth MG
yet somehow the myth persists, that the elite wants we, the great unwashed, to die so that ‘they’ can enjoy the planet for themselves
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
That was Dickens poking fun at the Rev. Thomas Malthus.
Malthus developed an interest in population growth whilst at Cambridge. In 1798, he published a paper titled ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ that pushed him into the public eye. In the paper, he argued that when food supply increases the population size grows accordingly in order to eliminate the abundance. Furthermore, he insisted that while food production increased at a linear rate, human reproduction occurred at an exponential rate. As such, he argued that eventually, there would be a crisis in which human reproduction outpaced available food production. He suggested that this crisis would lead to starvation and public turmoil. He published a number of editions of the paper, each time adding more information and new material. The paper gave rise to the Malthusian controversy, which prevailed for the next few decades. The controversy centered on Malthus’ theory for preventing the crisis point. Essentially, Malthus argued that there should be some checks in place in order to prevent overpopulation and the crisis point of human reproduction outpacing food production. For instance, he referred to positive checks, which caused the death rate to increase. For Malthus, the positive checks included things such as war, disease and hunger. As well, he referred to preventive checks, which lowered the birth rate. For Malthus, these included things such as birth control and celibacy.
World human population in 1798 was around one billion, some of which Malthus considered surplus to requirements. Population now is 7.9 billion, sustained as we at OFW all know by such wonders as hydrocarbon fuels and industrial fertilizers—wonders that Greta says have stolen her dreams and her future. Perhaps the future she dreams of living is as Heidi or Pippi Longstocking, but in the absence of hydrocarbon fuels and industrial fertilizers she and billions of other people are more likely to end up like the Little Match Girl.
Less people would mean less demand for all sorts of things for which supply is limited. The elites are demanding less production, less consumption and less demand for everything, and less people is the simplest and most effective means of decreasing demand. Less production and less consumption requires less producers and less consumers OR lower standards of living. Stop producing and you become a non-productive drain on the economy, a part of the surplus population, a useless eater according to some theorists.
Norman, what part of “the elites would like to see most of the masses dead” are you having difficulty comprehending? A lot of myths have more than a grain of truth in them.
If you don’t have any resources… you can do what Thailand does… put the pretty girls into brothels and invite the fat drunken westerners to trade their dollars for filth sessions
This is a viable business model
It isn’t how it works. The poor and pretty ladies finds a “farang”, proceeds with emigrating to the west and then leave their dullard fatso slobs. It’s a win-win scenario.