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We have been told that intermittent electricity from wind and solar, perhaps along with hydroelectric generation (hydro), can be the basis of a green economy. Things are increasingly not working out as planned, however. Natural gas or coal used for balancing the intermittent output of renewables is increasingly high-priced or not available. It is becoming clear that modelers who encouraged the view that a smooth transition to wind, solar, and hydro is possible have missed some important points.
Let’s look at some of the issues:
[1] It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them.
Early modelers did not expect that the variability of wind and solar would be a huge problem. They seemed to believe that, with the use of enough intermittent renewables, their variability would cancel out. Alternatively, long transmission lines would allow enough transfer of electricity between locations to largely offset variability.
In practice, variability is still a major problem. For example, in the third quarter of 2021, weak winds were a significant contributor to Europe’s power crunch. Europe’s largest wind producers (Britain, Germany and France) produced only 14% of installed capacity during this period, compared with an average of 20% to 26% in previous years. No one had planned for this kind of three-month shortfall.
In 2021, China experienced dry, windless weather so that both its generation from wind and hydro were low. The country found it needed to use rolling blackouts to deal with the situation. This led to traffic lights failing and many families needing to eat candle-lit dinners.
In Europe, with low electricity supply, Kosovo has needed to use rolling blackouts. There is real concern that the need for rolling blackouts will spread to other parts of Europe, as well, either later this winter, or in a future winter. Winters are of special concern because, then, solar energy is low while heating needs are high.
[2] Adequate storage for electricity is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe. This means that if cold countries are not to “freeze in the dark” during winter, fossil fuel backup is likely to be needed for many years in the future.
One workaround for electricity variability is storage. A recent Reuters article is titled Weak winds worsened Europe’s power crunch; utilities need better storage. The article quotes Matthew Jones, lead analyst for EU Power, as saying that low or zero-emissions backup-capacity is “still more than a decade away from being available at scale.” Thus, having huge batteries or hydrogen storage at the scale needed for months of storage is not something that can reasonably be created now or in the next several years.
Today, the amount of electricity storage that is available can be measured in minutes or hours. It is mostly used to buffer short-term changes, such as the wind temporarily ceasing to blow or the rapid transition created when the sun sets and citizens are in the midst of cooking dinner. What is needed is the capacity for multiple months of electricity storage. Such storage would require an amazingly large quantity of materials to produce. Needless to say, if such storage were included, the cost of the overall electrical system would be substantially higher than we have been led to believe. All major types of cost analyses (including the levelized cost of energy, energy return on energy invested, and energy payback period) leave out the need for storage (both short- and long-term) if balancing with other electricity production is not available.
If no solution to inadequate electricity supply can be found, then demand must be reduced by one means or another. One approach is to close businesses or schools. Another approach is rolling blackouts. A third approach is to permit astronomically high electricity prices, squeezing out some buyers of electricity. A fourth balancing approach is to introduce recession, perhaps by raising interest rates; recessions cut back on demand for all non-essential goods and services. Recessions tend to lead to significant job losses, besides cutting back on electricity demand. None of these things are attractive options.
[3] After many years of subsidies and mandates, today’s green electricity is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to keep our current economy operating.
Early modelers did not consider how difficult it would be to ramp up green electricity.
Compared to today’s total world energy consumption (electricity and non-electricity energy, such as oil, combined), wind and solar are truly insignificant. In 2020, wind accounted for 3% of the world’s total energy consumption and solar amounted to 1% of total energy, using BP’s generous way of counting electricity, relative to other types of energy. Thus, the combination of wind and solar produced 4% of world energy in 2020.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) uses a less generous approach for crediting electricity; it only gives credit for the heat energy supplied by the renewable energy. The IEA does not show wind and solar separately in its recent reports. Instead, it shows an “Other” category that includes more than wind and solar. This broader category amounted to 2% of the world’s energy supply in 2018.
Hydro is another type of green electricity that is sometimes considered alongside wind and solar. It is quite a bit larger than either wind or solar; it amounted to 7% of the world’s energy supply in 2020. Taken together, hydro + wind + solar amounted to 11% of the world’s energy supply in 2020, using BP’s methodology. This still isn’t much of the world’s total energy consumption.
Of course, different parts of the world vary with respect to the share of energy created using wind, hydro and solar. Figure 1 shows the percentage of total energy generated by these three renewables combined.
As expected, the world average is about 11%. The European Union is highest at 14%; Russia+ (that is, Russia and its Affiliates, which is equivalent to the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States) is lowest at 6.5%.
[4] Even as a percentage of electricity, rather than total energy, renewables still comprised a relatively small share in 2020.
Wind and solar don’t replace “dispatchable” generation; they provide some temporary electricity supply, but they tend to make the overall electrical system more difficult to operate because of the variability introduced. Renewables are available only part of the time, so other types of electricity suppliers are still needed when supply temporarily isn’t available. In a sense, all they are replacing is part of the fuel required to make electricity. The fixed costs of backup electricity providers are not adequately compensated, nor are the costs of the added complexity introduced into the system.
If analysts give wind and solar full credit for replacing electricity, as BP does, then, on a world basis, wind electricity replaced 6% of total electricity consumed in 2020. Solar electricity replaced 3% of total electricity provided, and hydro replaced 16% of world electricity. On a combined basis, wind and solar provided 9% of world electricity. With hydro included as well, these renewables amounted to 25% of world electricity supply in 2020.
The share of electricity supply provided by wind, solar and hydro varies across the world, as shown in Figure 2. The European Union is highest at 32%; Japan is lowest at 17%.
The “All Other” grouping of countries shown in Figure 2 includes many of the poorer countries. These countries often use quite a bit of hydro, even though the availability of hydro tends to fluctuate a great deal, depending on weather conditions. If an area is subject to wet seasons and dry seasons, there is likely to be very limited electricity supply during the dry season. In areas with snow melt, very large supplies are often available in spring, and much smaller supplies during the rest of the year.
Thus, while hydro is often thought of as being a reliable source of power, this may or may not be the case. Like wind and solar, hydro often needs fossil fuel back-up if industry is to be able to depend upon having electricity year-around.
[5] Most modelers have not understood that reserve to production ratios greatly overstate the amount of fossil fuels and other minerals that the economy will be able to extract.
Most modelers have not understood how the world economy operates. They have assumed that as long as we have the technical capability to extract fossil fuels or other minerals, we will be able to do so. A popular way of looking at resource availability is as reserve to production ratios. These ratios represent an estimate of how many years of production might continue, if extraction is continued at the same rate as in the most recent year, considering known resources and current technology.
A common belief is that these ratios understate how much of each resource is available, partly because technology keeps improving and partly because exploration for these minerals may not be complete.
In fact, this model of future resource availability greatly overstates the quantity of future resources that can actually be extracted. The problem is that the world economy tends to run short of many types of resources simultaneously. For example, World Bank Commodities Price Data shows that prices were high in January 2022 for many materials, including fossil fuels, fertilizers, aluminum, copper, iron ore, nickel, tin and zinc. Even though prices have run up very high, this is not an indication that producers will be able to use these high prices to extract more of these required materials.
In order to produce more fossil fuels or more minerals of any kind, preparation must be started years in advance. New oil wells must be built in suitable locations; new mines for copper or lithium or rare earth minerals must be built; workers must be trained for all of these areas. High prices for many commodities can be a sign of temporarily high demand, or it can be a sign that something is seriously wrong with the system. There is no way the system can ramp up needed production in a huge number of areas at once. Supply lines will break. Recession is likely to set in.
The problem underlying the recent spike in prices seems to be “diminishing returns.” Such diminishing returns affect nearly all parts of the economy simultaneously. For each type of mineral, miners produced the easiest-t0-extract materials first. They later moved on to deeper oil wells and minerals from lower grade ores. Pollution gradually grew, so it too needed greater investment. At the same time, world population has been growing, so the economy has required more food, fresh water and goods of many kinds; these, too, require the investment of resources of many kinds.
The problem that eventually hits the economy is that it cannot maintain economic growth. Too many areas of the economy require investment, simultaneously, because diminishing returns keeps ramping up investment needs. This investment is not simply a financial investment; it is an investment of physical resources (oil, coal, steel, copper, etc.) and an investment of people’s time.
The way in which the economy would run short of investment materials was simulated in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows and others. The book gave the results of a number of simulations regarding how the world economy would behave in the future. Virtually all of the simulations indicated that eventually the economy would reach limits to growth. A major problem was that too large a share of the output of the economy was needed for reinvestment, leaving too little for other uses. In the base model, such limits to growth came about now, in the middle of the first half of the 21st century. The economy would stop growing and gradually start to collapse.
[6] The world economy seems already to be reaching limits on the extraction of coal and natural gas to be used for balancing electricity provided by intermittent renewables.
Coal and natural gas are expensive to transport, so if they are exported, they primarily tend to be exported to countries that are nearby. For this reason, my analysis groups together exports and imports into large regions where trade is most likely to take place.
If we analyze natural gas imports by part of the world, two regions stand out as having the most out-of-region natural gas imports: Europe and Asia-Pacific. Figure 4 shows that Europe’s out-of-region natural gas imports reached peaks in 2007 and 2010, after which they dipped. In recent years, Europe’s imports have barely surpassed their prior peaks. Asia-Pacific’s out-of-region imports have shown a far more consistent growth pattern over the long term.
The reason why Asia-Pacific’s imports have been growing is to support its growing manufacturing output. Manufacturing output has increasingly been shifted to the Asia-Pacific Region, partly because this region can perform this manufacturing cheaply, and partly because rich countries have wanted to reduce their carbon footprint. Moving heavy industry abroad reduces a country’s reported CO2 generation, even if the manufactured items are imported as finished products.
Figure 5 shows that Europe’s own natural gas supply has been falling. This is a major reason for its import requirements from outside the region.
Figure 6, below, shows that Asia-Pacific’s total energy consumption per capita has been growing. The new manufacturing jobs transferred to this region have raised standards of living for many workers. Europe, on the other hand, has reduced its local manufacturing. Its people have tended to get poorer, in terms of energy consumption per capita. Service jobs necessitated by reduced energy consumption per capita have tended to pay less well than the manufacturing jobs they have replaced.
Europe has recently been having conflicts with Russia over natural gas. The world seems to be reaching a situation where there are not enough natural gas exports to go around. The Asia-Pacific Region (or at least the more productive parts of the Asia-Pacific Region) seems to be able to outbid Europe, when local natural gas supply is inadequate.
Figure 7, below, gives a rough idea of the quantity of exports available from Russia+ compared to Europe’s import needs. (In this chart, I compare Europe’s total natural gas imports (including pipeline imports from North Africa and LNG from North Africa) with the natural gas exports of Russia+ (to all nations, not just to Europe, including both by pipeline and as LNG).) On this rough basis, we find that Europe’s natural gas imports are greater than the total natural gas exports of Russia+.
Europe is already encountering multiple natural gas problems. Its supply from North Africa is not as reliable as in the past. The countries of Russia+ are not delivering as much natural gas as Europe would like, and spot prices, especially, seem to be way too high. There are also pipeline disagreements. Bloomberg reports that Russia will be increasing its exports to China in future years. Unless Russia finds a way to ramp up its gas supplies, greater exports to China are likely to leave less natural gas for Russia to export to Europe in the years ahead.
If we look around the world to see what other sources of natural gas exports are available for Europe, we discover that the choices are limited.
The United States is presented as a possible choice for increasing natural gas imports to Europe. One of the catches with growing natural gas exports from the United States is the fact that historically, the US has been a natural gas importer; it is not clear how much exports can rise above the 2022 level. Furthermore, part of US natural gas is co-produced with oil from shale. Oil from shale is not likely to be growing much in future years; in fact, it very likely will be declining because of depleted wells. This may limit the US’s growth in natural gas supplies available for export.
The Rest of the World category on Figure 8 doesn’t seem to have many possibilities for growth in imports to Europe, either, because total exports have been drifting downward. (The Rest of the World includes Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas excluding the United States.) There are many reports of countries, including Iraq and Turkey, not being able to buy the natural gas they would like. There doesn’t seem to be enough natural gas on the market now. There are few reports of supplies ramping up to replace depleted supplies.
With respect to coal, the situation in Europe is only a little different. Figure 9 shows that Europe’s coal supply has been depleting, and imports have not been able to offset this depletion.
If a person looks around the world for places to get more imports for Europe, there aren’t many choices.
Figure 10 shows that most coal production is in the Asia-Pacific Region. With China, India and Japan located in the Asia-Pacific Region, and high transit costs, this coal is unlikely to leave the region. The United States has been a big coal producer, but its production has declined in recent years. It still exports a relatively small amount of coal. The most likely possibility for increased coal imports would be from Russia and its affiliates. Here, too, Europe is likely to need to outbid China to purchase this coal. A better relationship with Russia would be helpful, as well.
Figure 10 shows that world coal production has been essentially flat since 2011. A country will only export coal that it doesn’t need itself. Thus, a shortfall in export capability is an early warning sign of inadequate overall supply. With the economies of many Asia-Pacific countries still growing rapidly, demand for coal imports is likely to grow for this region. While modelers may think that there is close to 150 years’ worth of coal supply available, real-world experience suggests that coal limits are being reached already.
[7] Conclusion. Modelers and leaders everywhere have had a basic misunderstanding of how the economy operates and what limits we are up against. This misunderstanding has allowed scientists to put together models that are far from the situation we are actually facing.
The economy operates as an integrated whole, just as the body of a human being operates as an integrated whole, rather than a collection of cells of different types. This is something most modelers don’t understand, and their techniques are not equipped to deal with.
The economy is facing many limits simultaneously: too many people, too much pollution, too few fish in the ocean, more difficult to extract fossil fuels and many others. The way these limits play out seems to be the way the models in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, suggest: They play out on a combined basis. The real problem is that diminishing returns leads to huge investment needs in many areas simultaneously. One or two of these investment needs could perhaps be handled, but not all of them, all at once.
The approach of modelers, practically everywhere, is to break down a problem into small parts, and assume that each part of the problem can be solved independently. Thus, those concerned about “Peak Oil” have been concerned about running out of oil. Finding substitutes seemed to be important. Those concerned about climate change were convinced that huge amounts of fossil fuels remain to be extracted, even more than the amounts indicated by reserve to production ratios. Their concern was finding substitutes for the huge amount of fossil fuels that they believed remained to be extracted, which could cause climate change.
Politicians could see that there was some sort of huge problem on the horizon, but they didn’t understand what it was. The idea of substituting renewables for fossil fuels seemed to be a solution that would make both Peak Oilers and those concerned about climate change happy. Models based on the substitution of renewables for fossil fuels seemed to please almost everyone. The renewables approach suggested that we have a very long timeframe to deal with, putting the problem off, as long into the future as possible.
Today, we are starting to see that renewables are not able to live up to the promise modelers hoped they would have. Exactly how the situation will play out is not entirely clear, but it looks like we will all have front row seats in finding out.
“U.S. household debt increased by $1 trillion in 2021, the most since 2007.
“U.S. consumer debt loads grew in 2021 by the largest amount in 14 years as people ramped up borrowing to afford homes, cars and other goods that are becoming more expensive, according to a report released on Tuesday by the New York Federal Reserve.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-household-debt-increased-by-1-trillion-2021-most-since-2007-2022-02-08/
“Brace yourself: [US] Grocery prices are about to go through the roof — again…
““The stage has been set for further substantial increases in retail food prices this year,” Goldman Sachs’ economists wrote in the report. They blamed COVID-related supply issues, as well as high labor costs and rising expenses for fertilizer and other farming necessities.”
https://ktla.com/food/brace-yourself-grocery-prices-are-about-to-go-through-the-roof-again/
“Fed Risks Triggering Recession…
“The economy is now showing signs of slowing, and the Fed is at risk of over-reacting with too much tightening into a slowdown – as it has done many times historically.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4485568-fed-risks-triggering-recession
“US inflation hits highest level in 40 years in January as prices rise 7.5% from 2021…
“The rise in the consumer price index (CPI) survey – which measures the costs of a wide variety of goods – was the largest since February 1982. CPI rose 0.6% from December, higher than expected.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/10/us-inflation-reached-highest-level-40-years-january
“Consumers face years of high energy prices, Big Oil CEOs warn: Consumers should brace for years of high energy prices, heads of top oil and gas companies said, in what would pile pressure on governments struggling with spiralling inflation…
“”I’ve no good news to deliver, oil prices will remain high”, Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of France’s TotalEnergies, told RTL Radio.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/consumers-face-years-high-energy-prices-big-oil-ceos-warn-2022-02-09/
“Cooking oils surge is a sign food inflation can go even higher:
“A fresh spike in cooking oil prices is increasing concerns that global food costs are heading for a record as drought curbs production in South America, a labor shortage stymies output in Malaysia and Indonesia limits exports to safeguard domestic supplies.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/cooking-oils-surge-is-sign-food-inflation-can-go-even-higher
“Unilever: Consumer goods giant warns shoppers of more price rises as costs continue to rocket.
“The company, which said it was to cut 1,500 jobs in a global reorganisation just last month, used the publication of its annual results to estimate that it faced €3.5bn (£2.95bn) of higher input costs over the course of 2022.”
https://news.sky.com/story/marmite-to-dove-soap-maker-unilever-signals-more-prices-rises-ahead-as-costs-soar-by-billions-12537946
I guess it’s like having cancer… and you go to the doc and he says it’s getting worse… and worse and worse… hahahahahaahahaha
but but we have the US moonshot to cure cancer headed by the military and the UK 10 years to beat cancer. Does NZ have a cancer BS project? Italy?
Yes we do … it’s called voting out Donkey Face The Former DJ.
I hear that Uncle Brandon is mounting a push to defeat cancer. He has to keep pretending he is accomplishing something, other than destruction of our nation through open borders.
He’s legalizing pedofeeelia… cuz he likes to feel children does Grandpa Brandon.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8609284/ottawa-trucker-convoy-airport-disruptions/
Councillors were gathering to meet virtually for planning committee but had not yet started city business when the YouTube livestream was interrupted.
The message “OTTAWA POLICE HAS FAILED ITS CITIZENS” occupied the stream for nearly two minutes. Later updates added “Jim Watson has failed us, Sloly has failed us, Trudeau has failed us,” referencing the city’s mayor, police chief and the prime minister.
hahahahaha… let’s have Ripping of Faces… shall we… how dare humans slither into the corner and die… the most magnificent and deadly predator ever — deserves to go down with teeth flashing and tearing into each other….
I like the tactics they are using in Canada … incite The Apocalypse!!!
eddy’s fixation revealed again
When things possibly couldn’t get any more absurd…
This happens…
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-to-fund-crack-pipe-distribution-to-advance-racial-equity/
“Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity‘“
🤣👍👍
“Russia and Belarus have started 10 days of joint military drills amid ongoing fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Belarus is a close ally of Russia and has a long border with Ukraine.
“The US has called the drills – believed to be Russia’s biggest deployment to Belarus since the Cold War – an “escalatory” move. Ukraine says they amount to “psychological pressure”.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60327930
“Europe is staring energy blackouts and rationing in the face… Europe finds itself caught in a vice-like grip over the future of Ukraine and its eastern flank in general. It daren’t kick too hard against Vladimir Putin’s ambitions for fear he’ll cut off the supplies.
“Similarly, to impose the only sanction likely to work against Putin – to stop buying his oil and gas – is like taking a gun to one’s own head. There is not enough gas in storage, or available alternative LNG supply, to see Europe through the winter months if Russian supplies are further curtailed.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/08/europe-staring-energy-blackouts-rationing-face/
“Europe Can’t Tap Norway for More Gas With Equinor Maxed Out.
“Norwegian natural gas giant Equinor ASA said it’s pumping at full tilt, meaning there’s no leeway to boost shipments to Europe in the event of a disruption to Russian supplies.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/europe-can-t-tap-norway-for-more-gas-with-equinor-maxed-out
“Germany’s gas reserves have fallen to “worrying” levels, the government admitted on Wednesday, amid tensions with Russia and a delay over approval of the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline…
“Gas reserves have fallen to 35-36% from 40% recently and 80% in 2020.”
https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/09/germany-s-gas-reserves-are-at-worrying-levels-admits-government
Lets get real EU is running out of energy and Russia has nothing to do with it. Russia will meet its contractual obligations end of story as far as Russia goes.
What EU will do well that will be interesting to see. Starting a war in Ukraine will not help the EU.
My guess when push comes to shove the EU will restart coal plants and nuclear plants and build new coal and nuclear plants. Yes they may have limited success at this.
“[UK] National Grid pays households to ration power use – Electricity operators scrambling to reduce load at peak times as Britain prepares for green revolution…
“From Friday up to 1.4m households will be paid if they cut their normal electricity consumption at certain two-hour periods during the day…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/08/national-grid-pays-households-ration-power-use/
“Families are facing the prospect of paying premium prices on their energy bills when using power at peak times under new plans backed by three of Britain’s biggest suppliers.
2Scottish Power, EDF and Octopus Energy have agreed to overhaul the energy market that could see consumers charged more under a ‘surge pricing’ tariff.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10496277/Customers-pay-higher-energy-prices-peak-times-British-suppliers-agree-new-deal.html
“People living in a British town called Rotherham are experiencing power cuts as too many cannabis farms are stealing electricity.
“Artificial heat, light, and humidity are needed by indoor cannabis farms to function properly. This has triggered electricity surges and plunged homes into darkness as many as four times on a daily basis as per the local police.”
https://www.wionews.com/trending/uk-rotherham-experiencing-power-cuts-as-too-many-cannabis-farms-are-stealing-electricity-451731
Force the pot growers to install battery load levelers at their site and at their own expense.
Better yet force then to go green! Force then to install PV and turbines and batteries. hahahahahaha
Isn’t Rotherham famous for something else?
infamous?
“Six North Sea oil and gas fields to be fired up amid Cabinet row over net zero
New drilling to be approved as Number 10 faces resistance over green moves and spending…
“The combined reserves of all six sites are thought to be enough to power the whole UK for six months, with 62 million tonnes of oil equivalent fuel in the ground.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/07/six-north-sea-oil-gas-fields-fired-amid-cabinet-row-net-zero/
“The combined reserves of all six sites are thought to be enough to power the whole UK for six months”
https://youtu.be/ZxnLaSTgaf0
🤣👍👍
“France Braces For Blackouts As Gas Stockpiles Dwindle…
“Europe’s energy crisis has led to a shortage of natural gas supplies, and France could pay the price. French natural gas pipeline operator GRTgaz warned that gas stockpiles are much lower at this point in the year than they have been during years past.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/France-Braces-For-Blackouts-As-Gas-Stockpiles-Dwindle.html
“EDF shares fell on Tuesday after the troubled French state-controlled power group made fresh cuts to its nuclear output projections, which drove up prices for European gas, power and carbon…
“EDF has cut its nuclear output forecast for 2022 to 295-315 terawatt-hours from a previously expected 340-370 terawatt-hour…”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-will-provide-government-with-first-report-nuclear-problems-march-minsiter-2022-02-08/
“French trade deficit in goods hits record level despite economic rebound.
“France’s trade deficit in goods widened to a record €84.7bn last year, creating what its finance minister Bruno Le Maire called “a black mark” over the economy.”
https://www.ft.com/content/6b591768-9555-4a6a-87ff-da52b4ba4502
“France announces a major buildup of its nuclear power program.
“President Emmanuel Macron announced a major buildup of France’s huge nuclear power program on Thursday, pledging to construct up to 14 new-generation reactors and a fleet of smaller nuclear plants…”
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-nuclear-power.amp.html
“French ‘freedom convoy’ gets under way in protest at Covid-19 restrictions.
“Protesters set out from southern France on Wednesday in what they call a “freedom convoy” that will converge on Paris and Brussels to demand an end to COVID-19 restrictions, inspired by demonstrators who have blocked a Canadian border crossing.”
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220209-french-freedom-convoy-gets-under-way-in-protest-at-covid-19-restrictions
The hockey players commit suicide:
1998 the father: https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20013496/slovak-hockey-legend-commits-suicide.html
2021 the son: https://www.archysport.com/2021/11/dusan-pasek-jr-died-the-general-manager-of-bratislava-capitals-committed-suicide/
And one another now: https://alwaysfreshnews.com/news/world/196949/a-hockey-player-was-found-hanged-in-the-forest-at-bratislavas-koliba-noviny-sk/
And steal in the supermarket:
https://alwaysfreshnews.com/news/world/198004/incredous-scandal-extra-league-hockey-players-caught-stealing-from-a-store-uncompromising-reaction-of-the-club-hudba-sk/
“In mid-January, for two days in a row, two young men repeatedly came to the shopping center on Košická Street in Prešov. However, the goal of their purchase was not oranges or pastries. From the alcohol rack, one of them picked up empty plastic beer crates, put them in a shopping cart, and then put them in a machine to buy back-up bottles and crates. He took tickets for the crates, which he then had reimbursed at the box office, ” the men wrote the law on a social network and at the same time published photos of a pair of thieves to help people identify the two men.”
Amazing graphs Gail. Thank you. Maybe not too far off topic but from Chris Martinson’s peak prosperity blog: Rats in a Cage. He discusses the similarity of the present human situation to that of a long line of experiments regarding mice in cages being continually stressed by small electric shocks. If it’s only one rat they curl up in a ball. If two or more they fight eventually to the death. The weaker rats get attacked first.
“ We are all rats in a cage who are being shocked. A very well-studied form of psychological warfare is being waged against us, and it’s designed to encourage us to overlook where the shocks are originating and fight amongst each other.
Knowing that this is running is your first step towards freedom.
Police fighting people is an example of “rats in a cage.”
People fighting over relatively meaningless things is an example of acting like rats in a cage.
People arguing over Joe Rogan’s prior podcast series (while having practically no objections to zero “Johns” being named in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial) is an example of rats in a cage.
The shocks being administered are anything but accidental:
Student debt growing a trillion dollars in the past decade, while being the only non-dischargeable form of debt in bankruptcy court, is shocking.
The Federal Reserve printing up and expanding the nation’s money supply by 300% in the past 2 years is shocking.
Inflation exploding to levels not seen since the 1970’s is shocking.
The wealthy becoming grotesquely more wealthy and powerful as a result of the Fed’s reckless printing is shocking.
Insects disappearing so comprehensively and suddenly is shocking.
The list of shocks is a mile long and ten feet deep. Given that, it’s not at all surprising that people are turning on each other. But it’s a shame.
Their ire really ought to be directed at the architects of the shocks. There are people in power who are both conscious of this dynamic and actively engineering more shocks simply so that people remain befuddled and harmlessly fighting amongst each other. Well, harmless to the powerful, that is.
If we do not recognize this and turn the righteous anger towards the rightful targets, our lives will continue to erode and, eventually, this all devolves into a major social, political, economic, and ecological storm.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/rats-in-a-cage/
In the death camps the guards used to joke about those who were selected to survive, but who on arrival in the huts just curled up on the ground, horrified by what they saw – just like the isolated mouse. They were then just shot or beaten to death.
MW excellent comment. So much happening so little seen.
I like you included insects disappearing.
Much is TPTB sticking their fingers in the leak of the dyke not per-planned.
“major … storm” not sure that sums up seven billion humans dying.
Putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse. The Carbon Credit crucifixion of democracy.
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2022/02/10/putting-the-peakist-cart-before-the-usury-horse-the-carbon-credit-crucifixion-of-democracy/
The world monetary system is moving to a renewables-based carbon credit standard. The price of carbon credits and the control of carbon credit allocation will allow the Central Bank digital currency authority to control all aspects of life on earth. A Carbon-based credit state monopoly feudalism is the end goal of the 4th Industrial revolution and the World Economic Forums Great Reset.
In this article by Dr. Tim Morgan, he puts his surplus energy cart before the Usury horse.
Gail in this article is putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse.
Putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse. The Carbon Credit crucifixion of democracy.
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2022/02/10/putting-the-peakist-cart-before-the-usury-horse-the-carbon-credit-crucifixion-of-democracy/
The world monetary system is moving to a renewables based carbon credit standard. The price of carbon credits and the control of carbon credit allocation will allow the Central Bank digital currency authority to control all aspects of life on earth. A Carbon based credit state monopoly feudalism is the end goal of the 4th Industrial revolution and the World Economic Forums Great Reset.
In this article by Dr Tim Morgan he puts his surplus energy cart before the Usury horse .
https://radixuk.org/opinion/12799-2/
Gail in this article is putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse.
The renewables carbon credits relationship is designed to replace the Petro Dollar as world reserve currency with renewables production replacing Saudi Arabia as world swing producer of Oil which in turn regulates global money supply and access to energy resources.
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2022/02/09/the-seeds-cart-before-the-usury-horse-why-seeds-ecoe-doomsday-has-not-and-may-never-arrive/
Regarding the crucifixion of democracy upon the cross of Carbon credits ,
Richard Douthwaite – Money Supply in an Energy Scarce World, Peak Oil – 1 of 4
https://youtu.be/bs4mi3fC77c
Notes from the talk:
Gold was primarily an energy currency because more energy meant more gold, and cheaper energy made cheaper gold.
Gold standard broke down when the Spanish raided America and then Spain started to import everything and lost their interest in making things themselves.
The curse of oil — too sudden an influx of money.
If you have a source of energy under your control, then you have the power to decide what is done.
Importing energy is like a loss of sovereignty.
The late Richard Douthwaite explains very well how Energy and economic activity are intimately related, for this second day on the way to Sunday we will continue to focus on how much energy is available over the period which we can sensibly plan our budget. The slide in the screen capture shows the anticipated Peak Oil moment in around 2015, as it turned out the Peak was shortlived, in any event by a pretty well documented and accepted view there are at least 50 years of Oil reserves available, and should we be making a sensible plan 50 years ahead is actually pretty
ambitious after all predictions are difficult especially about the future.
Swing production control through Carbon Credits.
Carbon credits and carbon footprints even tons of carbon equivalent metrics are ubiquitous in much modern Sustainable economics literature. Carbon emissions are a handy proxy for how much “Fossil fuel is burnt” some more Sophisticated analysis from say the WEF tend to use Hydrocarbons instead of “Fossil Fuels” but the big three energy sources are Coal, Gas, and Oil and in that order regardless of the present consumption patterns which are definitely not! Market determined. Following the big three, there are two other Staples of modern Energy production and these are Nuclear and Hydro Electric. Then there are Wind, Wave, and Solar which is usually referred to as “Renewables.”
In the Carbon Credit and Carbon debit system of Cap and Trade and Al gores Billions, The Big Three are Debits, Nuclear is a Don’t know and Hydro Wind Wave and solar are Credits. In the available energy budget on the Debit side, we have 94% and on the credit side 6% The Ratio is interesting, Bear it in mind, it also appears in the slides in the William Jennings Bryan video above.
So the good credits for renewables amount to 5.7% of 2020 production and growing if the current dispute at the Eu where Nuclear and Natural gas are touted for inclusion in the definition, In any event, the blueprint for the Credit side of the Carbon monetary equation has 5.7% of the supply of good energy ranged against 94.3 % of the energy supply which is bad.
let’s say 6/94 or a ratio of 15.6 to 1.
Six Ways on Sunday, Carbon Currency end game 16 to 1 on, what are the odds of that?
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2022/02/06/the-six-ways-on-sunday-carbon-currency-end-game-16-to-1-on-what-are-the-odds-of-that/
http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/PDR1994.pdf
How Many People Can
the Earth Feed?
VACLAV SMIL
THE VERY SIMPLICITY and directness of the question posed in the title guarantee that it will be asked again and again. But taking up the challenge is a
futile effort if the answer sought is a single specific value. The underlying
complexity of food-population-environment relationships makes it impossible to come up with such an answer even if all the links and feedbacks
were known with a high degree of certainty and even if the forecasts were
for a limited period of time. Trying to hit the ultimate total would be much
like aiming at an unseen and moving target.
“The key fact in the new development of plutocracy is that it will use its own blunder as an excuse for further crimes. Everywhere the very completeness of the impoverishment will be made a reason for the enslavement; though the men who impoverished were the same who enslaved. It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics.”
UTOPIA OF USURERS G K Chesterton.
Neoclassical Political Economy: Skating on Thin Ice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsUS3ynhAKY
see at 8mins 55 secs to see how the price of oil is politically determined and not market determined by any realistically plausible explanation.
Roger I predict that renewables are dead. Their presumptive replacement of FF energy, and equivalently the basis of the new world reserve currency is now in jeopardy. Europe is looking freezing in the face and I predict renewables will lose the argument. The Green lobby has growing problems and obstacles to overcome. They will lose.
If you think Russia and China are going to subordinated to solar panels and windmills, you are dreaming. The West (and therefore the Greens) is a dead man walking.
Pingback: Putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse. The Carbon Credit crucifixion of democracy. – Not The Grub Street Journal
Thanks as ever for the insights Gail!
Gail, an excellent article as always.
You make the interesting point that large scale energy storage to cover long lull periods in RE production, is not realistic in the short term. I would agree and there are limited options available even in the long term. The problem is that as the required storage capacity increases, its effective utilisation rate crashes. If you build a battery big enough to store 1 month worth of power, then the number of charge-discharge cycles that the battery can go through in a 1 year period is at least 30 times lower than say, a 24-hour battery. Given the high embodied energy of the battery, this has a devastating effect on whole system EROI and a similarly poor outcome for cost of power. This is why in the real world, batteries tend to be used to support grid frequency stability. They are there to cover the transition period between wind and solar power plants coming off load and FF power plants coming on load. They are not ‘storage’ in the way that their proponents suggest. They are more buffering.
The options for long term storage are far more limited. Heat stored in bulk materials like water and rock may be a good option. In this case, the storage medium is so cheap in financial and energy terms, that low utilisation rate is less of a burden. We would overbuild wind and solar power plants and use excess power to meet heating needs. Biomass could be stored in sheds for long periods and gasification gas turbine plants brought on line during deep lulls in wind and solar production. Ultimately, it is difficult to beat the economics of a coal heap as a long term energy store. Aside from that, living on intermittent energy would appear to necessitate adjusting the way we live and work such that activities take place whilst energy is available. This would seem to necessitate changes to labour laws. Workers of all kinds will be on call in much the same way that doctors are today. They will be expected to work when energy is available and take time off when it isn’t. This is a very different way of life compared to what people have grown accustomed to over the past 200 years. It may require changes to labour laws.
Wow! We welcome many new commenters here….
Let’s have another look at The MOREON hahaah
https://www.facebook.com/ryanren/videos/352254893204175
That is SOOOO Good! Someone should fling a sack of shit at her hahahaha
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bodyguard resigned stating that he could not abide by the government’s dictates which he felt contravened the human rights enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/police-bodyguard-of-trudeau-resigns-due-to-utter-tyranny_LDktxkmfiWSPiUq.html
Rip Faces!! Rip!! Tear! Eat
It was the best joke she ever told!
Someone should kick her teeth out for an encore … stooopid donkey
Just toggle her pump for a few seconds once the donkey’s having a (boring) go at Jesus and the unvaxxed ‘deplorables’.
The timing was uncanny.
😳
Fast Eddy says HE has taken so much Viagra and Cialis that his BP is now a rage 290 over 120….
The veins in his eyeballs are popping out … by the time HE gets to Wellington HE will be like an unfixed dog looking to hump everything that moves… including furniture
Bit of hard ball left to play — Fast has narrowed down the few hotels willing to accept unvaxxed … and abused those that won’t (just for fun)… so shortly HE calls and quotes the best long stay rate he’s received and plays them off against one another…
This game is called J’ASSinda F789ed You – who is the most desperate to get a 10 night stay???
If they only knew … if they… only knew… they had the opportunity to host The New Jesus… they’d be clamouring to offer the Presidential Suite with all food and beverages included…
But we like to keep a low profile FE and I… we like to pass as average … it draws less attention.
You are trying to entertain people, in a strange way.
When Fast Eddy is in the zone … HE’s in the zone
i don’t read much from you eddy
but in sympathy with those who do read it
would it be possible to sling words together in some kind of order that follows the rules of basic English?
it is becoming more disjointed with every passing month. My real sympathy lies with those in RL who can’t just press delete.–(I daresay they wish they could).
As Gail points out, you are trying to entertain people—I just call it attention seeking
much the same thing i guess.
entertainers leave the stage and go home
this i fear IS your home
Fast is always welcoming new grooopies to the harem… I doubt you’d know any suitable candidates… and we do not accept blow up dolls… no matter how life like they are …
So you can ignore this comment as well norm…
And get back to your plagiarizing of Gail’s work
right on ‘cue’ eddy
(have you studied ‘pavlovs dogs’?)
we must get working on those vowels–they really do not come in more than pairs—any more than that and the writer looks, well —stoooooopid?
but of course the writer cannot recognise that
How about this … someone shits in a plastic shopping bag… then stays behind the front line of the mosh pit so the cops can’t get to you …. then you hurl the steaming sack of shit over the mosh pit into the cops splattering them with disgust….
Another great idea would be to collect road kills and grind it up in a blender… then put that into a shopping bag… let it fester in the heat … make sure it gets full of maggots and stuff… then fling that into the cops….
Waddya reckon mike? Like poking the hive… hahahaha… just for the fun of it.
Oooh look more arrests
https://tidechange.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Sinior-Shit-Disturber-with-Endorsment.jpg
If enough people get hold of the air horns that would drive The Donkey round the bend…
Donkey round the bend… Donkey round the bend…
Then a few thousand whistles… toot toot beep beep
https://youtu.be/LKU39kYAzPY
Fast Eddy is recommending protesters in Wellington purchase some of these fantastic devices… Fast has ordered 2 of them to be shipped to HIS hotel + some sports whistles … which he will pass out.
https://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/super-blast-pump-air-horn/p/268647
HE also has 2kg of high grade Bolivian Blow on the way … which will be distributed for free to amp up the Chaos. Along with 10 cases of decent whiskey.
Let er Rip!! (TM)
This is a lovely piece about bears saving fish from drowning.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/B8ybc0dTzNHf/
Very nice, Gail. I will see if I can tie this in with my present reading.
One wonders whether there is some connection between modern conceptions of ‘human rights’ and the collective anticipation that there will always be a solution to the energetic needs of civilisation. Many people seem to have become convinced that the cosmos and the planet somehow ‘owe’ humans a living, that they have some ‘right’ to it that is ‘inherent’ in Nature itself. It sometimes seems that the human ego has grown so entitled that it has taken on delusions of ‘cosmic’ proportions.
It seems that self-assurance has got the better of us and we seem to be unable to collectively take seriously the possibility that we are headed for civilisational failure and global economic and population collapse. ‘How could that happen when our civilisation, with its advanced culture and respect for the human being, are so magnificent, so humane?’ It may be that humans and their governments have begun to take themselves far too seriously and entirely lost touch with reality.
It seems likely that our recent abundance of available energy is the basis of our confidence and of our ‘human rights’ – rather than the other way around. The confidence has been encouraged through available energy, but it is imagined that future available energy is somehow guaranteed in how we ‘feel’ about ourselves and our place in the world. The collapse will be a serious bucket of water in the face, and late bourgeois ideology is liable to dissipate rather rapidly.
Vanity is coming to an end, along with ‘human rights’. It is what it is.
> One has no right to existence or to work, to say nothing of a right to “happiness”: the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. – Nietzsche, TWTP 759
“It sometimes seems that the human ego has grown so entitled that it has taken on delusions of ‘cosmic’ proportions.”
“It may be that humans and their governments have begun to take themselves far too seriously and entirely lost touch with reality.”
I know your emphasis is “rights”, but I think this also applies to Progress and the latest greatest vaccines.
there appears to be a great hubris among the managerial medical scientific class, that They could not fail to solve the SARS2 problem because their intelligence knowledge understanding skill was so vast.
the global vaccine program is a total failure.
And yet… and yet… when calling Wellington Hotels only two did not require the pass…
I took great joy in informing the ones that required the pass that ‘you do know that the vax doesn’t stop people from getting or passing covid — you DO KNOW right — and they do … then I said … no problem — I was calling to get rates as I have organized 20 people to come to town for the protests so we needed 20 rooms x 10 nights… your competitors have no problem with the unvaxxed and have quoted me a bulk rate —- keep up the good work and hope you are bankrupt soon… then I hang up’
hahahahahaha… haahahahahaha… one of the said I was rude and that she’d put me to the manager if I continued… I said it’s not rude… all I am telling you is that you just lost 200 room nights hahahahaha… i guess hahahahaaha might be considered rude… but WTF…. it’s pretty funny huh? 200 room nights at a couple of hundred bucks a night … when the hotels are empty hahahaha… and they want the vax passport even though it’s not required… because…
Because??? Oh because… just because… the vax is f789ing useless… hahahaha
Tomorrow I will abuse air nz staff … asking them if everyone else has a covid test… cuz only unvaxxed have to have a test… and why is that given Israel is 95% vaxxed yet has record infections and deaths… I am actually really concerned about being loaded into a metal tube with vaxxed MOREONS… maybe i will wear my gas mask on the plane??? I have some serious filters … and Fast Eddy needs to Stay Safe… I will ask them if it is ok to wear that … just for FUN FuN fUN> and just because ‘
You know… because….
This is exactly why I am for the vax passport. How else are you supposed to know the usual sheeple MOARon from the somehow sapient ones?
Oh, right…
The sheeple will be shoved through the pearly (Bill?) gates, brought to Styx on rails by Pfizer.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBOC9UhUsAASd_k.png
However; I do wonder if we have seen this before in history, yup, I’m pretty sure of that. Good thing about ‘the choice’ this time around though, it seems much more effective in sifting out the cruft from the core.
Fast will arrive at the airport a little early because HE wants to ask why HE has to get a RAT test… and the injected MOREONS don’t.
Fast will inform them that HE is very concerned about this … because the MOREONS might have Covid and Infect the Messiah….
Will need a few minutes to explain this
The clash of the titans: Entitlement vs Cognitive dissonance.
When the immovable objects of bourgeoisie self entitlement and delusion slams into the unstoppable seven stages of grief you know shit’s going to go down badly.
Either mankind is royally fscked beyond belief, or I am.
I reckon both as a matter of context.
How is it possible to live for about half a century and only be delighted by few people few times? Dead males, kids and smart ass women mostly, ‘cause clever broads and kids doesn’t seem as full of utter ego posturing and tryhard as males are. But hey, they’ve gotta sniff out ‘winners’ from the rabble somehow even though as an ultimate consequence sinks civilization into boredom and dystopia through tryhard ‘nuffin.
But hey; as far as I know I didn’t write the hot coding sequences. I’m merely observing it’s logical conclusion. ‘God’ could beam me up now. I’m pretty much done here.
K thx.
🤣👍👍
“The confidence has been encouraged through available energy, but it is imagined that future available energy is somehow guaranteed in how we ‘feel’ about ourselves and our place in the world.”
Not only does it enable our little conveniences and luxuries but also pours fertilizer and diesel on our primed collective egos and (sub)conscious hallucinations, fantasies, of an evermore fertile objective reality.
What could possibly go wr…?
Oh, never mind.
💥
🙃
I like reading the different angles you always provide, MotW.
It seems that ‘human rights’, in the modern sense of ‘universal and inherent’, is basically a Renaissance concept that emerged as feudalism began to give way to the emergent bourgeois economic base in the city states of the Renaissance. In feudal times, ‘rights’ were seen as ‘personal and accorded’ either by some ruler or by ‘God’. So, eg. the motto of the UK monarchy, taken from Richard I, ‘my God and my right’ indicates a prerogative that is both personal and accorded rather than universal and inherent. Some particular group or class of persons could also be accorded some ‘right’. It is a very different approach and concept regarding the prerogatives that humans possess.
‘Human rights’ represents a shift away from feudal hierarchy toward the individual and his ‘liberty’ and ‘well-being’. In reality however, ‘rights’ have no pre-social existence, and they are accorded by the society. In that sense, the medieval concept was closer to the truth. People actually have some ‘right’ because their society agrees that they should have it, and it enacts legislation to enshrine and to protect the ‘right’. So, ‘rights’ are civilian, they presuppose some citizenship. In theory, the UN can demand that they are ‘universal’ but that would be so only if all societies imposed them, which nevertheless leaves them social rather than pre-social.
There seems to be a fairly wide sense that the skeptic David Hume inflicted the fatal philosophical blow to ‘human rights’, and to ‘natural law’ as a whole, with his ‘is/ought’ argument. Nature comprises facts about what ‘is’, while law comprises claims about what ‘ought’ to be, but the factual provides no logical basis for the normative. Simply put, ‘ought’ statements cannot be logically deduced from ‘is’ statements, as conclusions can contain only those terms that are included in the premises, so the entire ‘natural law’ perspective is radically illogical.
Hume’s argument is very simple but it seems to be entirely telling, and totally unanswerable. It is like, an entire civilisation went, ‘oh yes, of course!’ One might say that the ‘is’ represents reality, while the ‘ought’ represents the human will and its varied desires, while the oxymoron ‘natural law’ is an attempt to conflate the two. It is particular expression of human ‘will to power’, a narrative that is constructed so that humans can get what they want. So, ‘human rights’ in practice are remarkably flexible, and different states, classes and groups of persons have got different ideas about what comprises ‘rights’.
It seems that ‘human rights’ had come to generally be seen as ‘nonsense on stilts’ (Bentham’s phrase) by the early twentieth century, and that the concept was simply imposed by the victors of WWII when the UN was set up. If so, then the dominance of the ‘human rights’ narrative represents a radical rupture of Western ideational development. It did not come to dominate common parlance until a speech that Jimmy Carter gave in the 1970s. As such, the concept is a function of geopolitical power, it has been used in recent decades to ‘justify’ military interventions in MENA, and it is currently used to organise and to ideologically frame hostility toward Russia and China. ‘All rights are will to power.’
Eg.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-rights
…. It was not until after the Middle Ages, however, that natural law became associated with natural rights. In Greco-Roman and medieval times, doctrines of natural law concerned mainly the duties, rather than the rights, of “Man.”
…. The conception of human rights as natural rights (as opposed to a classical natural order of obligation) was made possible by certain basic societal changes, which took place gradually beginning with the decline of European feudalism from about the 13th century and continuing through the Renaissance to the Peace of Westphalia (1648). During this period, resistance to religious intolerance and political and economic bondage; the evident failure of rulers to meet their obligations under natural law; and the unprecedented commitment to individual expression and worldly experience that was characteristic of the Renaissance all combined to shift the conception of natural law from duties to rights.
…. By World War I there were scarcely any theorists who would defend the “rights of Man” along the lines of natural law.
We can see the geopolitical use of bourgeois ‘rights’ as ‘will to power’ on this very day.
UK foreign secretary Liz Truss basically declared that NATO has a right to militarily expand onto Russia’s borders as Ukraine has the ‘sovereign’ right to join NATO if it wants to, and that Russia has no right to encroach on ‘sovereign’ Ukranian territory in response.
The rhetorical pretence is that Russia has no choice but to comply due to her assertion of bourgeois liberal concepts – and otherwise Russia is ‘threatening’ other countries. The rhetoric is intended to frame the reality in a way that entirely allows NATO to get what it wants and without any opposition.
The Russian minister basically told her that she is chatting unrealistic ideological and moral nonsense, before he walked off and left her at the podium. LOL
‘In a sign of the chilly atmosphere at the talks, Mr Lavrov said “ideological approaches, ultimatums and moralising is a road to nowhere” and accused Ms Truss of being ill-prepared for the negotiations.’
Thank you for the article Gail. I would like to mention that on household level thermal mass(dirt) works very well for energy storage as long as its in the form of heat.
I have been playing with passive solar and lately photovoltaic dropped into thermal mass uninverted straight from the panels for about three decades. I came into it as a skeptic largely from engineers on greenbuilding.com skepticism regarding thermal mass. After all thermal mass does not in itself create energy just stores it.
Today I was in a building that has had no fossil fuel energy or combustion/wood used in heating it ever!. It has not been above freezing all week and the lows at night have been in the -20s. It was quite comfortable in the structure with a sweater on.
I now regret my skepticism regarding thermal mass. Just think how much better off we would be if we had been if we had been incorporating thermal mass and passive solar for the last 30 years! I now am familiar with over a dozen structures that are effectively self heating. With a couple caveats my personal experience is thermal mass buildings work and work well!
Caveat one high levels of insulation are needed. Most of the failures have come from scrimping on insulation due to cost. This is true regardless. R13 walls dont cut it anymore. R 40 walls R 60 ceiling MINIMUM.
Caveat two. There must be large amounts of passive solar. The heat has to come from somewhere.
Both glass and conventional insulation use a lot of embodied energy. Some of the problems with conventional insulation cost can be mitigated with natural insulation materials pumice or scoria. Dirt itself has a poor reputation as a insulator because of variable water content something that i would often site even ten years ago. Practical real world experience has allowed me to come to the conclusion that its not half bad. Because its huge capacity for energy storage if it gets cold it stays cold. There have been some poor designs. I will now say I think dirt and thermal mass are tremendously underutilized in building design. Just look at the farmers with their bermed potato structures used for decades and decades. Their not doing that for fun.
Often some will say its the passive solar that creates all the benefit. Ive lived in passive solar structures both with thermal mass and without. Thermal mass blows the non away.
If nothing else the ideas about the floor need to be reevaluated. Guess whats there? Dirt. Hundreds of tons of thermal mass. The insulation used coventionally there IN the floor can be used on the perimeter AROUND the thermal mass whether below grade or trenched. If trenched now you are tapping into the ambient temp below. Right now a uninsulated floor is regarded as a loss. Sorry passivehaus. Hillbillys do it better.
There is a huge thermal mass under each structure anyway that takes no direct physical energy to create.. Yes it needs to be insulated on the sides.
We get hung up on r and its a terrible metric. I think the true r of dirt is about r3 a foot. now that will put conventional “green” builders into a hissy fit they think its less. That floor if trenched with 8 feet of perimeter insulation has a R of 24 and hundreds of tons of energy storage! Everything else can be conventional with passive solar but use the hundreds of tons of dirt in the floor as a energy storage reservoir.
Guess what a good operator on a small excavator can move a s*** ton of earth! Its certainly not a good or even fair insulator. Quantity not quality! Last I checked price is right.
Gail you yourself have mentioned the sod houses of the dust bowl. Why not make those better?
The south side has to be glass.
Now we hear glass gets broken and FE talks about Rwanda. Perhaps true. In the meantime its 80 degrees in here and -5 out there and theres no resistance electric or combustion heating running. To say that there are no energy storage systems on a household level is not true. Im a techie that loves numbers. You can crunch the numbers any way you like but the reality in the real world is that passive solar thermal mass works(caveats). Im not one for chasing non solutions. Im not one for not seeking solutions eithor. By the way been watching the ghosts of Rwanda documentary FE.
Just like the farmers have done for decades. Go figure!
Make it small. Perimeter insulation. Good r values walls and ceiling. South side glass. Thermal mass in floor. Tell em your savin the planet. Chicks dig it.
Get on with your bad self Europe!
I hate to say this. It makes me cringe. The Oakridge laboratory simulations are wrong about thermal mass. Dead on about insulation and south facing glazings. Flat out wrong on thermal mass.
HERESY!
None of this has any effect on our systematic and cultural problems.
Sorry I know thats more hymns than anyone cared to hear from the hillpermie geek choir.
Maybe. I wonder how many zoning laws will allow this construction. I also wonder what happens with the glass on the south side breaks, and there is no replacement. Also, the person building this will need to own or control the building rights and other changes that allow access to the sun on the south side. Otherwise, a neighbor could plant a tree that interferes with the plan, on build a building that blocks access to the sun.
I am afraid that in a world with few fossil fuels, we will need a combination of (1) making do with what we have – perhaps with people packed into a smaller number of occupied units and the remaining vacancies and (2) building very simple homes with local materials. The latter would be needed in areas where population density needs to rise. For example, if more farmers are needed in areas where all of the homes have been removed, new homes may be needed. They might be partly dug into to ground, to provide temperature modulation.
“Caveat one high levels of insulation are needed. Most of the failures have come from scrimping on insulation due to cost. This is true regardless. R13 walls dont cut it anymore. R 40 walls R 60 ceiling MINIMUM.”
You got it, and insulation costs are through the “roof.”
Near my farm a place called “Eagle Bluff” was largely converted to this sort of thing some years back, as I recall > $500K cost for a somewhat modest building; my experience taught me the cost was about right.
Dennis L.
JJ when you say 8 feet of perimeter insulation can you describe that? That is dirt? Is that 8 feet beyond the foot print of the house? How is water kept out? How is heat put in? Can you point to a book or instructions? Thanks.
I replied earlier but it didnt make it.
Perimeter insulation is a common thing. We are moving away from foundations below frostline because of the cost of concrete. This means perimeter insulation to protect against frost heaving. Say you have a 12″x12″ reinforced concrete footer. Foam is placed two feet out from the footer. The footer is itself insulated of course.
Creating a large thermal mass under the building means that perimeter outside the footprint is expanded to 8 or 12 feet with the foam covered with dirt. Another way is to trench 8 feet deep outside of the perimeter enough to allow load bearing by the footer place insulation in the trench and back fill. Then foam covered by dirt between the trench and footer. this puts the end of the foam deep in the soil where the soil is deeper.
Scoria or pumice could be used instead of foam filled in a 18″ wide excavator trench. or 2 to 4 inchs of foam.
Common poly iso foam is not ideal for burial but it works just fine. It is commonly tore off roofs that rot or have problems and is no good for conventional reinstall. It can be obtained at very low cost pieced together and covered with earth to pin it in place. It lasts a long long time buried. This is one of the advantages of using earth to build. Ditto with designs using berms.
A square foot of windows has the potential of 150 watts a hour per square foot. Call it 100 watts per square foot after losses through the glass at night. That means a 100 square feet of vertical south facing windows puts 60k watts into a building during a short winter day! Your going to want about 75 sq feet of glass per 100 tons of mass. Lots of glass for lots of mass!
Vertical south facing windows are fantastic. they dont overheat the structure in the summer when the sun is high but allow maximum energy collection in the winter.
When you create 300- 500 tons of thermal mass you have to dump a lot of energy in it. turning the whole south wall into glass works but you have to use other ways of creating shear strength.
Im experimenting using glass not into the structure itself but the dirt to utilized sloped windows. Sloped windows that allow the sun into the building overwhelm the capacity of the heat to make it into the floor in the summer. Many of the sloped window designs of the 70s 80s have to use exterior shutters early in the day. Im assuming concrete slab or adobe floor. A lot of the sun entering turns to heated air not a bad thing in winter but now the heat has to enter the floor through convection. If your trying to load the heat into the thermal mass sun straight on it loading it through radiation heat transfer is way better. The dirt is your trombe wall. In the winter vertical windows get it pretty hot. in the winter a 80 degree building is nice when its cold. you want to ventilate any way to introduve fresh air. So i like the perimeter insulation to be a extra 6-ten feet on the south side for a dirt slope with glass to dump sun straight into the thermal mass. Long buildings with maximum south face are best but once again can create shear stength problems in the north south axis. Bottles with masonry could be used straight into the dirt.. they are not as efficient as double pane windows. Now the summer sun can be used that has 2 or 3 times the power of the winter with non vertical windows. . You have all that thermal mass to fill with heat. The problem is not too little heat if the living space as a path is eliminated. Scrounge all the used glass you can find. Dump that solar!
I think this could be used in order to eliminate shear strength workaround on the south side. The south side gets as many windows as can be designed with shear strength and conventional design. The energy gets dumped straight into the dirt with sloped windows. This would eliminate overheating problems from sloped windows in the summer from having the living space being the path of the heat into the thermal mass via the floor. The shear strength workarounds are not that difficult however. Posts with surface “T” steel and angle iron at footer.
Code is a problem. Some places allow anything with a sympathetic engineers stamp on the plans. Some do not. The more money in the area the less amiable.
In the current environment i would be hard pressed to recomend anything other than straw bale with perimeter insulation with a truss roof and blown cellulose attic. Old reliable with a twist. You need big overhang with straw bale for the lime plaster. Its not that labor intensive. Nothing compared to earthship or earthbag. Thats the beauty of using the dirt under the building for thermal mass. I promise you its easier to leave it there insulate around it then to lift it and create walls out of it. Its been around awhile doesn raise too many eyebrows down at the building department. Not too wierd to freak out the neighbors. The cob plaster on the interior creates a lot of thermal mass and is a absolutely stellar coating to live with. the texture its feel is just unmatched IMO. Better homes and garden stuff. Your wife will be happy.
I will mention owner building is often a marriage ender. did i mention often? Some would say always. Just too many disagreements. It will either bind or break a marriage. Some things are better not stress tested. Sometmes best to just make the construction “your” project. She gets her kitchen and appliances after the fact. Get the agreement straight. What does she want? What does she get out of the deal? seperate that from the build decisions. Dont seperate her but keep ownership per the agreement. Boundaries make happy people.
1. county owner builder friendly with stamp?
2 wheres the water? well cost
3 county septic requirements cost?
well septic and plumbing go in first under the slab of course. Your heavy equipment guy- a good one will make you a milker will break you. Remember green acres with zha zha? The guy who always had the solution- at a cost. You dont want that guy. Someone is scamming- cut them loose forthwith. It seems to me many many places are discouraging owner builders with incredibly high costs for crazy septic systems. No riff raff allowed.
jj thanks.
This world may be finite but existence is infinite:
https://linktr.ee/daniellavender
I agree that there are a lot of things we don’t understand. There seems to be a source of infinite power allowing the universe to constantly expand, which some of us might wish to call a manifestation of God. Somehow, the forces that we try to describe with the laws of physics have been put in place. Religious writings by many groups point to life after death. There are many people who have been revived after near-death experiences who give reports of very strange experiences during the time when they “died.” It seems quite possible that life on this earth is simply a prelude to a much longer existence, perhaps outside of this universe.
Certainly as far as cosmology goes we are just starting to understand the physics. Penrose has interesting ideas.
It seems the space of the universe repels itself. The large the universe grows the strong the expansion force. Eventually a new big bang and new sub universes??? What of conservation of energy and matter??? A never ending series of big bang leads to more big bangs and more universes??? As I say just beginning to think about and understand. Maybe we will never understand being embedded in the middle of it.
Thinking about thinking eventually yields the result that some effects simply lack discernible causes.
Let’s start the algorithm:
1. What does it mean to ‘think’? (Good luck!)
2. Why am I thinking about thinking? (Better even!)
3. What is the cause of my thoughts about thought? (Topped!)
4. Goto 1.
5. 42
The answer is of course unreachable by any means.
Same thing about the universe.
It is what it is.
We have more and more psychopaths around us. When the system had more energy per capita, the people could use the energy generously and do stupid things without having any consequencies.
As the limits are approaching and the ageing populations have less and less energy, we see these psychopaths on the streets demanding things that are not possible, your neighbours or relatives doing things which are insane etc.
It is like a car that lost control over itself and is rushing into a wall.
It is a real horror to see all those psychopaths doing things which you can not prevent them from doing: you know that energy is limited, you can not protect himself/herself from their harmful behaviour. They do wrong things, i.e. they rush in the direction of the growth piling up the debts, wanting more and more, although THERE IS NO GROWTH ANYMORE.
The end of more why that would make a great book title 😉
To be fair we have been studying the LTG for decades and see what others do not. They will be just as dead whether or not they understand. Relax mother nature has it covered.
Word on the street in Ottawa is the cops are not following orders…
I guess that’s because they read the headlines ‘terrorists’ but they see the reality — and realize they are being scammed
A stark contrast to sad new zealand, where police do what the rancid succubus jacinta commands. Not a set of cojones in the whole nz police force. Girly men.
Omicron continuing to trickle on because the government loves the control. This will continue into next year with the sheep-like population unable to reason themselves into reality.
The dysgenics programme worked! The social scientists created a nation of complete morons.
NZ police are cowards. They are afraid of the biker gangs. So they take out their frustration by arresting women at the Wellington protests.
As long as their government paychecks and pensions still buy goods and services, the cops will go along as enforcers. But what happens when fiat currency no longer is worth anything? Will the cops still enforce? Any insights as to comparative situations, say in Venezuela ? Or is communism a system whereby the marginal resources not controlled and consumed by the few oligarchs are prioritized only to the “necessary” people to control the masses and run the critical infrastructure?
the military (and police) obey whoever pays their wages
in the absence of wages, they will go self employed
Cops become what they are in most 3rd world countries… criminals with badges… and guns.
Gail, Suggest watch Germany for the developments there after this political move.
As Germany goes, so goes Europe = Lights out, enviro weenie nutters taking over.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/germany/greenpeace-to-takeover-environment-secretary-of-state-for-germany/
I would welcome Europe using far less FF.
it would help save supplies for the rest of us.
you go, Greta!
David, yes!. I think TPTB are going further to a hunger games world. Only select cities in EU and NA will exist.
NYC, DC, LA, Vancouver
London, Frankfort, Milan, Paris(?), Prague, Warsaw
Every one else will get by on local economy a world made by hand as described by Kunstler. With large tracts of land as nature preserves for the beauty and pollution cleaning to benefit TPTB.
It seems clear the system has no interest in fixing the energy problem.
THANKS for the continuing Brilliant work! Context: I am 79 and have seen most of the movies
The reserve to production chart is never to be seen anywhere else, and your comments is solid gold.
A few decades ago I was in the oil business and owned some secondary production in Wyoming.
I was fascinated by Yergin’s book, decades ago, “The Prize” which I still highly recommend on the history of the oil biz.
I watched the business fairly closely and saw the first clip out of the well managed Saudi press release office when someone noticed the massive Gahwar production rolled over into a decline.
Years later they put it onto a water flood. Now the big deal to understand with water floods is that the water lifts the oil up to the well bores in the field UNTIL the water hits the well bore, and oil production is sharply declined, and soon stops. The field is “Watered out”, is the expression.
Could there be a significant stimulus in their business that the Saudis have taken a company public to raise money and are now borrowing money in the bond market???
In order to support their version of a somewhat socialist society I recall that the magic number they needed to break even was $80, more or less. Building the new town in the north and with the princes taking their fair share for the French palaces, jet fleet and Yachts, can put a strain on the budgets I imagine.
Now with $93 oil on the way to $100 plus, happy days are here again for sure.
However the issue of *reserves vs production* ability with the water flood(s)? is your genius work raising the big issue. The other big issue is of course light sweet, vs heavier sour, which is NEVER reported! “All oil in the ground is not created equal.”
Live vids Wellington
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNxU-egOmus
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1611813342522447
Let’s have another look at the MOREON hahahahaa
https://www.facebook.com/ryanren/videos/352254893204175
When did the protests start in Wellington?
when He arrives?
forward ho, onward to Wellington!
soon History will be made (and many of us hope it will be videoed).
Godspeed to all.
the Day is at hand.
They began on Tuesday this week…
Now they await the Messiah…. Fast Eddy is wondering if he should put on the wizard outfit… or the Jesus robe…
depends if you have planned ahead and grown out a long beard.
if you have a wand or staff or whatever it is that they carry, go full Wizard.
you know you wanna have that JMG look.
you’re not foolin’ no one.
I’ve got the russian gas mask…
I bet the ‘deplorable’ won’t like your message one bit.
Or you could flatly blow some hopiates in their faces and down the upper respiratory tract, which soon will be ripped out clean anyway. No?
It is kinda bringing (Al) ‘Gore’ with you.
Now I’ve gotta watch some cute cat videos on YT as this shit show is heading towards its logical conclusion.
Watch closely mikes the guy on the side of the cops urging them to kill the Pure Bloods…
And look at this f789ing clown … didn’t someone get arrested for tweeting that he hopes Tom burns in hell or something?
F789ing thief? Is that ok to say?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10486733/Charity-set-honour-Sir-Captain-Tom-Moore-pays-162-000-management-costs.html
Ok – just back from getting a RAT test as Fast Eddy has commanded that I fly to Wellington tomorrow morning cuz HE likes to watch also…
Let’s begin….. here we have proof that there is a god:
https://www.facebook.com/ryanren/videos/352254893204175
Possibly the biggest f789ing MOREON in history busted her f789ing skull hahaha now in hospital
Notice how the audience that it was part of the joke hahahaahaha even better
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/bob-saget-s-family-reveals-cause-of-death/ar-AATFCKO?ocid=undefined
Bob Saget “official” cause of death: smashed his head in his hotel room, then laid down on the bed and died.
vaccidents will happen!
Hey just like Heather the comedian – except she’s not dead yet… hahaha… gives her some time to reconsider her comedy act
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33254989/former-mlb-player-jeremy-giambi-dies-47
47.
the family requested “that we all respect their privacy during this difficult time.”
I wonder, will they reveal:
died in his sleep of natural causes?
Happens all the time … to vaxxed MOREONS. Nothing unusual here.
BTW – isn’t it weird how the Gambini’s went from mafia kingpins to baseball stars? Two brothers made it to the big leagues… nice to see them make the transition out of crime….
Another great but depressing article. Might also explain all the Ukraine news as well. Maybe TPTB understand our predicament all too well.
https://rethinkdisruption.com/how-to-achieve-rapid-cheap-energy-decarbonization-using-the-rethinkx-clean-energy-u-curve/
Let me guess… kill 8B humans?
That will do it!
I like the concept of “flattening the curve”.
🤔
It seems to me that around 25 years ago TPTB (who ever they are) came to understand LTG and all of the ramifications and accept it as an inescapable fact. First they just doubled down on securing global resources and ramping up demand destruction (bomb back to the stone age) thinking that that would buy us more time.
The usual consensus then was that the main problems would manifest themselves in higher prices for more scarce resources. This seemed like a manageable problem I mean its only money and deficits don’t matter. What they didn’t want is more money generating more demand and possibly inflation. So they figured out how to address that by just giving the trillions to a tiny subset of the economy, the wealthy.
It is the wealth who are also the owners of production and would be hurt first and most by ever increasing prices of resources so this seemed like a solution and it might even be responsible for buying us a little more time also, Think Fracking.
Problem is that we don’t produce enough of what we consume so this fix is very limited not to mention incredibly unfair to the 99%.
So now we are at a point of resource depletion both physical and knock-on induced and biosphere collapse with all of its knock-on effects too and no amount of money or technology can turn that around.
What does that leave TPTB now?
Interesting ideas.
Dennis L.
TPTB surely see that there is relatively very little threat of “biosphere collapse”.
it could be possible that TPTB can have as much myopia and shortsightedness and tunnel vision as most other people.
since many/most of them are trained in, or at least adhere to, standard university economics, then it also could be possible that they continue to underestimate the energy basis of all economic activity.
we don’t know, do we?
or maybe They have concluded that swift population reduction is necessary, but since when does a large group of people have uniform agreement?
They are left with their imperfect ideas and difficult to enact solutions.
and then soon enough They will enter the nothingness of eternal death, though before They go, They could wreak plenty of destruction with the above mentioned imperfect ideas and “solutions”.
“1. The top 10% of households account for about half of all consumer spending, . . . ”
https://www.facebook.com/charleshugh.smith/posts/10217286907551489
THIS ^
A “reset” with the “upper” 10% would simply prime the wheel of time to make exactly one identical revolution in perpetual folly.
The primate/mammalian default (collective) psyche simply isn’t self stabilizing. That is assuming evolutionary alignment is the Modus Operandi, which is doubtful.
It could of course be our beloved ‘aliens’/elites/TPTB poking in the beehive just because it is possible and out of boredom.
As father, mother, as son.
Boring.
You make very fine observations! I think that the powers that be have been convinced that inflation would solve a lot of problems. I didn’t connect that with the fact that the complex way the economy is structured, a huge share of the wealth is controlled by 1%. Of course, we have the additional problem of not really being able to make the goods ourselves.
You ask, “Where does that leave TPTB now?” Clearly, the 1% by themselves are not able to make goods and services that they themselves needed. I expect that the 1% will somehow be overthrown, or disappear. If there is a surviving remnant, it will be a group of healthy, younger people. Perhaps they will be radiation resistant, given our nuclear power plant problem.
TPTB are setting themselves up, right now, with a reason to be overthrown. An awfully lot of people are upset about the COVID situation. The people who know that ivermectin can be used to treat the disease successfully are especially unhappy. Perhaps this is a route to the end to TPTB.
“TPTB are setting themselves up, right now, with a reason to be overthrown.”
Well, isn’t the rabble a reflection of the ‘elite’, then tell me? If the rabble compete in vanity and various forms of frippery. I’m sure that goes for the ‘elite’ as well. No?
If the main raison d’être is advancing in a percieved sucess/status/power hierarchy, we’re screwed no matter what I reckon.
For sure a paradigm like that leads to inevitable overshoot and collapse (war, starvation, etc). Every. Single. Time.
Although, I do wonder how TPTB will explain the predicament for their children? For sure ‘they’ will “survive” somewhat longer than the rest of us. But you’ve gotta ponder upon the price.
“Sorry little child ‘o mine, the problem is embedded deep within you as your hot (DNA) coding sequences”
“It goes something like this, darling:”
“1. BREED!”
“2. REPOPULATE!”
“3. COMPETE!/WAR!”
“4. COLLAPSE!”
“5. SEE 1.”
Ultimately it won’t matter one bit. A failed species spinning pointlessly in the wheel of time is still a failed species and eventually we’re all gonna meet annihilation as an individual, as a species.
It is about time to face the ugly truth.
can always rely on eddy to stay on topic
Thanks Gail for another great article !
I didn even realize that rolling blackouts already hit Kosovo and i’m european !
To.be honest, witg covid Ive even further reduced my mainstream media dosage.
I am seeing some signs though that the ‘ phasing out nuclear meme’ is starting to be abandoned.
UK is working on Hinkley Point, recently caught news / rumour that the Netherlands might be contemplating new nuclear plant.
Nuclear worked a lot better than wind and solar. It does have the spent fuel problem, but we are already up to our ears in the spent fuel problem, already.
It becomes very very dependant on they type of nuclear reactor used. The Candu produces either 0.3 mill or 150+ mil spent fuel. The 0.3 you bury in worked out uranium mines. The 150 + you reprocess to make new fuel. It’s also got a great safety record.
There are words for the AMerican PWR, but Gail you are a lady and I don’t use those words in the presence of a lady, but you get the idea. It takes 30 mil fissionable fuel to 9 mils (And that makes good feed stock for a Candu as the Argentinians well know), you have to shut it down to refuel every 18 – 24 months (The candu fuels 9-5 monday-friday but not Stat holidays). The PWR has a 13″ thick shell, and the US doesn’t have forges to make them anymore, while the Candu needs a pipe shop capable of 4″ Sch 160 Zirconium pipe, TMI was the worst reactor (but not general environment) accident ever with a 95% melt down, and the unit was lost. THe Candu had a 6′ rupture of it’s main pressure vessel and was shut down normally, and brought back up (It would have been quicker getting back up but the rupture was 6 months before a major overhaul was scheduled so they started early). The Candu accident didn’t make the national news, TMI made world news.
“energyskeptic says:
March 24, 2015 at 3:47 pm
The main issues with nuclear reactors are their capital cost and long time to build, the odds are good that since they’re all ageing there will be more Fukushima’s and breakdowns, turning the public against their use, and above all, no where to store the waste. Plus nuclear is baseload power and doesn’t ramp or down quickly enough to match demand, which will bring on a blackout (no problem now but a big one when natural gas runs out). But that’s not the real issue – the real issue is that transportation depends nearly 100% on oil, and that transport that really matters, freight, runs on diesel fuel and their combustion engines can’t burn anything else, and coal and natural gas are near their peaks as well, and there isn’t enough biomass to make a significant amount of diesel from biomass. The thousands of suppliers for a nuclear generator won’t be able to ship, truck, fly, or send their components by rail to the building site, the workers won’t be able to get there without cars – civilization ends when transportation stops, especially trucks.” ?
http://energyskeptic.com/about-energyskeptic/
Great companion piece to your newest blog post Gail:
Base Metals Market Under the Threaten of Energy Crisis
https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101744545/base-metals-market-under-the-threaten-of-energy-crisis
Come on Fast eddy, you’re slipping – what happened to you, you used to put on such a show. No matter what Gail wrote, then it became the FE dancing clown: “Anti-Vax- anti-vax hahahahahah” – repeat ad nauseum.
Come on, Fast Eddy, what, was this amazingly well-researched post the final rip in your anti-vax sails, or did Norman’s superior wisdom finally do you and your blithering chorus in?
awwwww—shucks
if i could fake modesty, i would be blushing right now.
This is a confusing comment, given Gail’s post is around green energy, not vaccination.
But I must say the taunting seems very enthusiastic. I’m glad Norman has started paying for some cheerleaders- it’s been looking rather dire for his side of the subject lately.
Fast Eddy is preparing for his arrival into Wellington… The Messiah is looking for his tear gas mask and go pro cam — can’t remember if he left in Hong Kong (why would you ever need a TG mask in NZ huh)
were you injured in the HK protests?
No that was mike – he was fell… ing … a cop and he got cracked in the head with a rubber bullet… it hit a soft spot and entered his brain … and is still there
Fast was trying to execute a hostile takeover of Jay Hanson’s old site “dieoff.com”, but the folks who are keeping it alive after Jay’s passing wouldn’t budge. So, Fast, having got himself all ‘pumped-up’ in the attempt, figured he might as well settle for the next best @ dieoff.org Before ya know it, the muscle-bounds will be locking-arms, singing Kumbaya and blocking subway entrances in Washington, DC. Go Eddy!
Nice article Gail. Well argued and documented. Wonderful charts.
“Central Bank Digital Currency Behind the Scenes: Emerging Trends, Insights, and Policy Lessons.”
Speakers:
Frederick Kempe, Atlantic Council
Kristalina Georgieva, IMF
Tobias Adrian, IMF
Gabriela Guibourg, Swedish Riksbank
Mu Changchun, Director-General, Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China
Alice Fulwood, The Economist
Josh Lipsky, Atlantic Council
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyCpAjH-5dc
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/FTN063/2022/FTNEA2022004.ashx
The Future of Money: Gearing up for Central Bank Digital Currency
By Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director
Atlantic Council, Washington, DC
All told, around 100 countries are exploring CBDCs at one level or another. Some researching, some testing, and a few already distributing CBDC to the public.
In the Bahamas, the Sand Dollar—the local CBDC—has been in circulation for more than a year.
Sweden’s Riksbank has developed a proof of concept and is exploring the technology and policy implications of CBDC.
In China, the digital renminbi [called e-CNY,] continues to progress with more than a hundred million individual users and billions of yuan in transactions.
And, just last month, the Federal Reserve issued a report that noted that “a CBDC could fundamentally change the structure of the U.S. financial system.”[i]
As you might expect, the IMF is deeply involved in this issue, including through providing technical assistance to many members. An important role for the Fund is to promote exchange of experience and support the interoperability of CBDCs.
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/02/09/sp020922-the-future-of-money-gearing-up-for-central-bank-digital-currency
this post is much closer to the direction of travel.
I have experience with a wood stove and being offgrid with 2sqm of solar power in the European Alps.
It is enough for (dim) lighting and mobile use. Computer? In summer. Fridge? No. Electric coffee maker? No. Jump quickly under the hot shower? No. Washing machine, dish washer, tv, digital piano, sewing machine, tv? No. That means a lot if work instead. And all my technology and DC energy saving bulbs are Chinese semiconductor technology I couldn’t maintain without globalisation. But my footprint is probably 1/3 of the average.
Energy consume is a cake with roughly three parts: 1. industry production including logistics, 2. households including heating and cooling and 3. individual transport.
Living in the mountains the restrictions of nature are seen everywhere. The old people remember that it was forbidden to play over there close to the rock, because the little grass that’s growing there was meant for the neighbour’s rabbits that he fed his children with. No playing and trampling down.
It would be possible to grow biomass where we stay and go and water it and care for it. It would be possible to reduce living standards.
I doubt we really need all of the individual transport. We could think of better city planning and a public bus system.
We could cut our housing to 1/3. It would reduce heating and cooling also.
This comes with risks: No fridge, no quick cooker, no quick hot water, dim lights can affect food security. If you have kids or care for old people you have to work double carefully.
To reduce the living space means kids cannot have an own room, there is no home office but cold areas with people staying in bed to keep warm or they get ill.
All of this also comes with poorness and we see that already in Eastern Europe or looking to the van life or tiny house movement within the USA.
If we reduced living standards we could cut maybe 2/3 of individual transport and 2/3 of housing. Doing so industrial output would probably fall also. We would end in spending 1/3 of our energy. In fact some plans of German authorities suggest this number. They calculate with “saving potential” though not with reduced living standards.
Also, this is true only for developed countries but not for India and Bangladesh or Brasils, for example. Let’s assume we could cut world energy demand by 50%.
Let’s assume we could shrink economy without crash by implementing negative interest rates – or let’s create a war with Russia and China and restart from a lower level.
Would it still be possible to extract oil and coal and keep up with modern technology?
And – for how long?
I am afraid this scenario will come true if we choose for it or not. But how long will it stand? Where will be the centers of knowledge and production like Alexandria, Rome and Peking?
If we see a huge decrease in population we will switch into another scenario: that of huge loss of knowledge and technology.
Imagine you go with your girls somewhere into the Canadian wilderness. Teach them what to eat and how to prepare it. How to sew and forge and work with wood. Gail would probably be able to teach functions drawing graphs into the sand. I’d better do it with a book, that’s not available. And then you die.
After how many generations this knowledge will be lost? Will they replace the lost parts with own intelligence? Or is this a matter of culture and communication?
Does culture come with a specific size of population?
Ah, yes, and we should bury our nuclear waste!
the practical use of knowledge is governed by the amount of energy available to use in conjunction with it.
at some future time, books will no doubt be available about making bows and arrows and steam engines.
if there is insufficient (surplus) energy to build a steam engine, then we will, unfortunately, be confined to making bows and arrows. Doesn’t matter if we ‘know’ how steam engines work.
And it isn’t possible to have a ‘modern’ civilisation on the productive function of the bow and arrow,
Norman,
I am not sure there is enough stuff to hunt to feed more than a very small population. Corn and soybean fields feed deer nicely, nothing like corn finished venison, beats the heck out of their eating pine needles – makes the meat black I think.
Dennis L.
Dennis
my comment was about the capability of actually making ‘objects’
actually ‘using’ those objects is a different field entirely
Functional spaces can be MUCH smaller than you suggest. Enclosed bunks could be microscopic rooms separated above and below. And microscopic rooms combined with extra thick and/or sensibly insulated walls reduces the need for heat.
I think the technical term for that is called a sleeping bag. I’ve got one optimistically rated down to -40C. At 0C you’ve gotta open it up and let out some heat during night. Add an aluminum blanket for reducing the heat escape through radiation.
It is surely a bit rough, but let’s be realistic. It is about priorities. You know; as long as the interwebz and bicycles are operational I’m basically good. Yeah; some food and an hottie alien broad to keep things warm and cozy inside the sleeping bag.
Somebody’s gotta repopulate earth.
Why not me?
🤣👍👍
post a picture of your alien friend first
and ask her if she has any chums
Kerrigan’s a bit too rough for your humanoid chauvinism.
I’m sure she can crawl an Infestor your way and cast a neural parasite (booster shot) on that myopia of ordinary.
🤪
“If we reduced living standards we could cut maybe 2/3 of individual transport and 2/3 of housing. Doing so industrial output would probably fall also. We would end in spending 1/3 of our energy.”
yes, and almost every good paying job will be eliminated, and almost everyone will be in dire poverty and destitution.
I hope to be dead and gone before then.
Society will need to search hard for some joy, but even now in a normal house there’s a dark cloud overhead. There are way too many needless energy sinks (sp). Major capitalism can’t work with the perceived energy future. One question is what to jettison. Demolish nothing. Build nothing. Fake normalcy of a sort.
without adequate net (surplus) energy, the default will be “build nothing”.
besides new builds being jettisoned, the self-organizing system will jettison mostly discretionary items.
the invisible hand will send most of the remaining money of the average person towards essential sectors.
addictions such as smartphones/internet perhaps will survive as long as essentials.
since most jobs in the first world are in discretionary sectors, the massive unemployment in this irreversible energy crisis indeed will make the search for “some joy” very difficult.
A self organizing principle might not center around human needs and wants. It could, conceivably, jettison humans should human get in the way.
Humans might do best to face their challenges head on instead of drift.
As Gail says, a “higher power” might actually be set, or be willing or able, to guide humans without our necessary awareness of it. If so, it should help to BE aware of it where possible, and try to go with the tide.
There is the tide of the self organizing principle. There is the tide of the higher power. There are human wants and needs. Is there a way to harmonize them?
Somehow, the self-organizing system seems to harmonize responses to many different problems, simultaneously. For example, the response by countries to COVID looks, in many ways, like a plan to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, especially oil, as well as a plan to bail out the financial system with more debt and money printing. Strangely enough, the response to COVID seems to have little to do with transmitting COVID, except perhaps acting to keep keep the virus around longer (the equivalent of “flattening the curve”).
We don’t know precisely how things will turn out. We can see big changes ahead, but there are many aspects of this that may turn out differently than we might expect.
in pursuit of energy resources to sustain our excess numbers, we trespassed into animal territory
perhaps that released the current virus (and previous ones) as a fightback. the last big one took out 50m of us
as humans, we see this on human timescale.
I have no way of knowing of course, but it might just be that we live in a self harmonising system that is beyond our comprehension, and nature, over the last few centuries, has been in the process of self-correction.
this makes sense if we look at it on an earth timescale
Right, the economy works toward self-correction. Sometimes the self-correction even act through lab scientist who think they are doing something that will eventually save humanity. They just get a few details wrong.
i don’t think it had anything to do with a lab scientist, any more than the 1920 outbreak did, or various plagues throughout history.
we are not intended to live packed tight together, any more than other animals are intended to live that way either
its self correction
It’s funny how debt prolongs effort (toward economic activity and growth) while the corresponding shut down of the economy reduces the same.
In such a complex economy every cut-back in consumption is, through extensive ramifications, one more death-blow – to employment,to the debt-system, to the viability of exploiting energy and resource reserves.
Unlike cutting back on consumption of manufactured goods and of services, if I, for instance, decide to use less firewood (smaller fire, go to bed earlier, etc) it helps to delay the exhaustion of my stockpile, but has no wider, damaging, ripple effect on others.
Complexity itself works against good sense and prudent conservation.
Re: When boredom turns into irony real fast.
https://youtu.be/0Yq31i4mTgM
(Being boosted to the max and hitting the deck is no laughing matter)
🙈
boosted!
and the audience literally roared with laughter!
Italian speaking Switzerland Vs. Italy, please find the difference and don’t forget that Italian speaking Switzerland is adjacent with Italy.
A) Italian speaking Switzerland is about to open everything
https://www.rsi.ch/news/ticino-e-grigioni-e-insubria/Il-Ticino-a-favore-del-tutto-subito-15078858.html
B) On the contrary, Italy is going on closing everything and it is even introducing Vaccine passport to have access to Parliament ! (it means only vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19).
Which is by the way a very good excuse to exclude opposition…
https://www.informazione.it/a/1B82EA25-EDFB-4251-95D4-B2B5EC6E0E34/In-Parlamento-da-febbraio-si-entra-solo-col-Super-green-pass
Now, think about which Country is on the verge of collapse, trying to phase out some part of its own population.
It could be also defined as a sort of social cannibalism…
I mentioned this earlier, but can someone explain the semi-truck demand, and the driver shortage, and how it fits in with a possible collapse? If anything is a bellweather for the economy I would think semi-trucks would be it.
They are selling them as fast as they can make them, and that’s with a driver shortage. If there wasn’t a driver shortage the demand would be even greater I would think.
The article below says a Kenworth dealership doesn’t even need sales staff, because they are already sold out for the year. Demand is expected to be buoyed deep into 2023.
https://www.thetruckersreport.com/demand-rises-new-used-semi-trucks/
Is this demand due to people buying more & more stuff that has to be trucked around, due to the government printing that Gail mentioned in her earlier comment?
Perhaps it’s a shortage of both drivers and trucks?
I’m guessing plenty of competent old coots decided to call it quits after experiencing the Covid farce unfold IRL?
And now the hiring spree fantasy as to shovel people in every nook and cranny of the economy in the belief it’s a manpower shortage predicament.
Who is John Galt?
https://youtu.be/g8vHhgh6oM0
🤣👍👍
What about the increased air quality controls required to operate in say California? That would require new trucks and make the olds unusable.
Get outta cash. Paper is paper. Old guys buy farm land and buy house and buy diesel trucks and Gold. The new age technoheads buy bitcoins etc. Anything but cash and stocks. When the trucks stop running it’s over so a Kenworth or Peterbuilt will have value right up to the end.
Dear Gail,
Thanks for that. Your essay made me understand what is going on in Canada and other countries that have gone from Democracies to an attempt at medical totalitarianism. The Governments are trying to manage an unmanageable future.
I knew that the Limits to Growth was coming but I did not expect such dishonesty and manipulativeness from our Governments. How I long for the days when they were simply corrupt and incompetent but left us pretty much on our own.
Maxine
Self-organizing systems work strangely. When there aren’t enough resources to go around, it seems that scaring the old and sick people into staying at home helps reduce resource consumption. Cutting off vacation travel (in the name of not spreading disease) works as well.
Controlling people’s behavior become more important as well, as you note.
I would never have guessed all of these connections in advance.
“Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”
Anyone noticed the age of US leaders?
Dennis L.
old age, ignorance, and treachery will always overcome youth, intelligence, and exuberance..
USA:
old age: check.
ignorance: double check.
treachery: triple check.
Let’s Go Brandon.
I really appreciate this blog, its author, whom I hold in really high regard and I also hold various person of this blog in high regard, but maybe we all have always underestimated the ability of the planners (and with this I mean the groups of people in real power in each Country) to find alternative ways to keep power in progressive collapse situations.
What is happening it is the clear demonstration that who is in power is supported by behavioural psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists who know how people behave if correctly manipulated, divided, scared and fomented.
Introducing a digital pass / currency / Income that is in fact a rationing system might also work
What we are seeing – is exactly what I expected.
8B predators… mostly MOREONS… need to be controlled.. and when there’s not enough to go around you need to use extreme methods.
You need to use the lash… hopefully the dying begins soon .. otherwise the lash will be useless too.
I am off to Wellington to try to help with overturning the CEP so we get Ripping of Faces
hahahaha
Great article but until we accept that striving to reduce emissions needs vast amount of raw materials being processed that can only be done with fossil fuels there is no chance of substituting renewables for fossil fuels in the long run.
the best thing to do is to ignore emissions and go full speed ahead pedal to the metal FF powered bAU.
there are hints that TPTB are getting this, as we have seen talk about reconsidering nuclear and natural gas to be “green”.
YES! Reducing is futile — push harder burn more live larger — till the engine explodes…
YES YES YES!!!
it would seem that, for the first time human history, instead of chasing energy resources that we could see, feel and touch—grains, roots, trees, animals, coal, oil and gas and so on, (or derivatives of those ‘energy packages’), we are slipping into a different era where we cannot get hold of the energy we seek until almost the moment we need to use it..
that’s the one thing all the above have in common. All our previous ‘energy packages’ could be stored until they were required.
It was the ‘storage factor’ which allowed the support our social and economic civilisations.
A secondary aspect to ‘storage’ was, and is, money.
Money exists because it is a token of stored (and available) energy.
If we slip into a future where most of the energy we consume is available at the point of consumption, then money exchange will eventually fade away because it isn’t possible (in the broad sense) to promise energy that ‘might’ exist at some point in the future
as far as i can see, almost all the advocates of green energy, of whatever stripe, see the ‘storage factor’ as something involving day to day usage.
it is energy storage that underpins civilisation itself.
Agreed but was this a problem created by shutting down the global economies or was this going to happen regardless? It would seem that those pulling the levers decided to fast track our energy problems.
Now we are at a point where the Federal Reserve in the US is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they continue to pour money into the system at an exponential rate, the system collapses. If they pull back and try and reign in, inflation, the system could collapse. It’s almost a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.
as a few other people have said elsewhere, on other forums, it was going to happen regardless. Energy depletion, climate change and excess population would have seen to that.
what covid appears to have done, by panicking us into shutting the world down is to fast forward it by a few years, maybe 10 at most.
our economic system is predicated on permanent acceleration, which is impossible
therefore crash is certain.
Good points! Storage is essential, if intermittent electricity is to be used by itself.
Natural gas doesn’t even work very well, unless a lot of storage is available. Countries that are afraid of freezing in the dark don’t have much storage for natural gas, I would expect.
Said with a quiet smile, I suppose hydrogen storage is totally out of the question?
Couldn’t we make it from sunlight and store it in old propane tanks: A bit of humor, I once posted a link to a fellow who made his own hydrogen plant, maybe not a totally bad idea.
Colorless, odorless, highly flammable, what could go wrong?
Dennis L.
Much smaller molecule, so leaking is a problem.
The rule of thumb is that for every watt of solar and wind you need a watt of hydro, and that hydro as you point out gail needs to be relatively stable like you get in Manitoba (where they’re stretching Lake WInnipeg’s water with wind but not solar because they need the power when there ain’t much solar (Nov – Feb.)
I think you are almost right. First you need to produce a surplus of “grains, roots, trees, animals, coal, oil and gas and so on…” before you get to storage and money.
If you don’t produce a surplus, or as you say, “a future where most of the energy we consume is available at the point of consumption…” we all die so I guess you are right, there is no need for money. What fades away is the ability to support life and it could “fade” away very fast.
Storage of most things is relatively easy to accomplish to varying degrees but producing a surplus can become impossible.
good point, surplus precedes storage.
in the here and now, adequate energy surplus is needed to maintain the existing bAU, and additional surplus energy is needed for investment, to ensure future bAU.
today’s excellent(!) article says this, along the lines of LTG “The real problem is that diminishing returns leads to huge investment needs in many areas simultaneously. One or two of these investment needs could perhaps be handled, but not all of them, all at once.”
so the shrinking net (surplus) energy will be dealt with by reducing amounts that would have been targeted for “future bAU” ie investments.
diminishing returns means somethin’s gotta go, and it will erode investment in future needs more at first, and then begin to take out existing (underinvested) subsystems.
as always, discretionary subsystems go first, then on to essentials.
then the proverbial stuff hits the proverbial fan.
that was why ‘medieval living’ remained ‘medieval’—the absence of surplus
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~ISR&Metric=Confirmed+deaths
How cool is that!
as someone said yesterday
what’s happened to eddy and his ‘covid hahahaha’
We are eagerly awaiting norm’s 4th shot… as we track his cognitive decline all the way into negative numbers
Hey norm … can you summarize Gail’s latest article then post it on Medium and claim it’s yours
Excellent post Norman. I like the way you ‘join the dots’ and come to a broader conclusion. The point about money being a store of promised energy at some future date is not always well understood. Sadly some economists cannot differentiate between energy and money, and assume if you throw money at a problem, that sufficient energy will be found to solve that problem.
What we face is not a problem, but a dilemma, and soon we will find that no amount of money will buy a Joule of energy if there are no Joules of energy to be found.
and to add to that, it also explains why bitcoin can’t work long term.
energy-token money is a store of future energy promises
bitcoin is only a gamble on what you might be able to sell it for in the future.
This energy information post is incredibly timely. I’m researching this very same topic now.
haha First Again!!
Close, but not quite. There were several new commenters hidden in moderation.
but an in-depth comment eddy
Nomen est omen?
Excellent succinct article
Thanks! I have been writing about this topic for a long time. I am very familiars with many pieces of this puzzle.
Thanks also, your information is very helpful.
Dennis L.
When Chris Martenson, James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and Dmitri Orlov did that live show a few years ago, they should have had Gail Tverberg there too. That would truly be the Superfriends!
When push comes to shove, those that want to eliminate fossil fuels realize how necessary it is to power our world. Then there is Nancy Pelosi.
“Nancy Pelosi Spent $500K On Private Jets While Preaching About Climate Change”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nancy-pelosi-spent-500k-private-jets-while-preaching-about-climate-change
The only answer is combined cycle natural gas electric generation to carry the world until the molten chloride salt thorium breeder is in full application (~ year 2100).
I am afraid we don’t have that much time.
Why can’t we do molten salt thorium reactors in ten years?
I bet that question was also asked ten years ago.
I asked that question 10 years ago.
thanks for the swift confirmation.
because the current batch of decision makers made their money with water cooled uranium reactors and would not to demonstrate their ignorance, keep their money coming….
Because molten salt thorium reactors don’t actually exist except on youtube.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.59
Why the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) is the “best” Gen IV reactor
Again, molten salt thorium reactors don’t exist.
https://dokumen.pub/nuclear-power-policies-practices-and-the-future-1119657784-9781119657781.html
Read all about it in book by D. Siemer.
I see space colonies and a lunar mine by 2050, and a depopulated earth 72 years after that. (72 years assumes the von neumann machine Space Colonies don’t grow faster than 30 %. BUT they are capable of 42%/year growth if they feel the need)
I always feel like the house of cards is about to collapse when I read your articles along with other articles I come across. Then I look around me, and I see that my company just had record part sales. I read an article the other day that semi-truck mfr’s are already sold out for 2022 and have orders well into 2023. I see my neighbor playing everyday becasue the restaurant he owns is so busy he doesn’t even need to be on-site to run it. Everyone I know is spending money without a care in the world, and I don’t see any end in sight. This all leaves me very confused.
You probably ARE confused. I just returned from shopping just now. In Santa Fe, supermarket prices have risen sharply from a year ago (while my income has not nearly kept up) and a good 15% of products usually on shelves are no longer there.
Last week I went to my local Walmart Supercenter and they were out of Milk. They were also out of a lot of things but to the Mark’s point, collapse is not the same for everyone. Some will notice the pain first and quite plentiful as you said regarding rising prices. Others might not notice it at all, at least not yet. The weaker parts tend to go first.
One thing is for certain, every civilization throughout human history has collapsed and we won’t be the exception.
I would guess that people at both ends of the social scale in ancient Rome would have seen ‘signs’ of collapse just as we do.
And both would have accommodated changes, in a state of denial, just as we do. Thinking it was temporary. After all Rome was the most powerful empire in the known world.
Obviously they would defeat the barbarian hordes.. But in the Roman era, just as in our own, there would have been a million ‘butterfly wings’ affecting the seeming impregnable walls of Rome.
We can argue about what they were, and are in our own time.
But the walls of Rome collapsed.
no doubt it caught the poorest first, then gradually the rich.
no doubt some of the rich bought their way out of trouble for a while.
we will deny it as it happens all around us, asserting that is ‘someone else’s fault.’—the mantra of loonytoons politicians in every era.
I agree but it’s like that saying: “How do you go broke? A little at first and then all of a sudden”.
In my parts where I live in Florida, I am already seeing signs of trouble ahead. Some stores and eateries don’t have enough staff so they close early or decide to close their doors permanently. Some items on the menu are temporarily unavailable. I know for a fact that some Big Box stores are hoarding product as much as they can because they see trouble getting their hands on those products, so they buy now to have it available in the future.
What that does is, it makes it appear to persons such as Mark that the system is functioning properly. Meanwhile red flashing lights are going off in the engine room of the Titanic.
Governments have been printing money like crazy. At the same time, some of the things that older people would normally be spending their money on, like long trips, have been disappearing. People find their bank accounts full, and a lot of things that they would like to do, unavailable. Going out to eat is something that isn’t terribly expensive (compared to a long trip) that quite a few people can do. They want to rebel against being kept apart from other people, as well. So people with money spend, spend, spend.
At the same time, there are people on the fringes who have a hard time putting food on the table. Some are single mothers who do not have very good child care arrangements for their children. It becomes difficult to work, when school may suddenly disappear as a destination for children, for example.
No matter how difficult the alternative, single motherhood does not seem to work. It takes two and while something is better than nothing, in the ral world both are unlikely to get exactly what they want.
Dennis L.
If you reply down here Eddy, you look to be first……
Just saying.
I was first but the comment got held … Victory!
Gail in this article is putting the Peakist cart before the usury horse.
first!!