|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The problem is hitting limits in the extraction of fossil fuels
We know that historically, many economies around the world have collapsed. We also know that there is a physics reason why this happens. Growing economies require a growing supply of energy to keep up with a growing population. At some point, the energy supply and other resource needs cannot grow rapidly enough to keep up with population growth. When this happens, economies tend to collapse.
In their book Secular Cycles, researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov found that economies tend go through four distinct phases in each cycle, with each stage lasting for quite a few years:
- Growth
- Stagflation
- Crisis
- Inter-cycle
Based on my own analysis, the world economy was in the Growth Stage for much of the time between the Industrial Revolution and 1973. In late 1973, oil prices spiked, and the world was put on notice that the energy supply could not continue rising as rapidly as in the past. Between 1973 and 2018, the world economy was in the Stagflation Stage. Based on current data, the world economy seems to have entered the Crisis Stage about 2018. This is the reason for saying that headwinds are beginning to hold the economy back in the title of this article .
When the Crisis Stage occurs, there are fewer goods and services per capita to go around, so some participants in the world economy must come out behind. Conflict of all kinds becomes more likely. Political leaders, if they happen to discover the predicament the world economy is in, have little interest in making the predicament known to voters, since doing so would likely lead them to lose the next election.
Instead, the way the physics-based self-organizing economic system works is that alternative narratives that frame the situation in a less frightening way gain popularity. Political leaders may not even be aware of how dependent today’s economy is on fossil fuels. Researchers may not be aware that their “scientific” models are misleading because they look at too small a portion of the overall system and make unwarranted assumptions.
In this post, I show evidence that the economy is reaching energy limits. In the last section, I explain how my view differs from the standard narrative, which says that there is almost an unlimited amount of fossil fuels available to burn, if we choose to utilize these fossil fuels. According to this view, humans can prevent climate change by voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels.
The standard narrative proposes a reasonable plan for citizens of parts of the world without adequate fossil fuels (cut back on buying fossil fuels), but without telling citizens what the real problem is. The standard narrative also gives the impression that there is a near-term clean energy alternative. In my opinion, this is wishful thinking for the reasons I describe in Sections [6] and [7]. Section [2] also sheds light on the reasonableness of moving to renewable energy.
[1] The world has been warned, at least twice, that collapse might occur about now.
Back in the 1950s, several physicists, including M. King Hubbert, became interested in the limits that the world was up against. The military became interested in the problem, as well. In 1957, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a very insightful speech. One thing Admiral Rickover said was, “With high energy consumption goes a high standard of living.” Another thing he said was, “A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life.”
Regarding the future, he said,
For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
The issue Admiral Rickover is pointing out is that as extraction costs rise, fossil fuels become increasingly unaffordable. If citizens cannot afford food, housing, and other basic goods made with high-cost fossil fuels, those fossil fuels will be left in the ground. If politicians try to pass the high cost of extraction on to consumers, it will cause inflation. Citizens will become unhappy with politicians and will vote them out of office. This is basically our problem today.
A second analysis that pointed to the current time frame for the world hitting fossil fuel limits is given in the 1972 book, The Limits To Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This analysis used computer modeling to look at several alternative future scenarios, considering resources available and population trends. The base scenario showed resource limits in general hitting sometime around 2020. The economy would collapse over a period of years after resource limits were hit.
[2] The Industrial Revolution in England is an example of how an economy changes for the better when fossil fuel energy is added.
Figure 1 shows a chart E. A. Wrigley shows in his book, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution:
Wrigley observes that when coal was added to the economy, it was possible to make far more metal tools than had been made in the past. With the use of metal tools instead of wood tools, farmers could be three times as productive. Thus, there didn’t need to be as many farmers, freeing some farmers for other occupations. Also, roads to coal mines were paved, in an era when few roads were paved. These paved roads were beneficial to other businesses and to the economy as a whole.
Another reason for coal to be of interest was because of increased deforestation near cities, as the population grew. This deforestation led to a need to transport firewood over long distances. Coal was more compact, and so easier to transport. Furthermore, the use of coal prevented having to cut down as many trees, helping the environment.
Figure 1 shows that energy from wind and water were only a tiny part of the economy, both before and after coal was added. They did not directly provide heat energy, which was a significant share of what the economy needed at that time.
[3] The period between the end of World War II and 1973 was another period when energy consumption per capita was rising rapidly. We might say the economy then had an “energy tailwind.”
Figure 2 shows that US energy consumption per capita was rising rapidly in the 1949 to 1973 period. Growing oil, coal and natural gas consumption all contributed to the overall rise in fossil fuel use.
In fact, BP data (only available from 1965 onward) shows energy consumption per capita rising for most parts of the world between 1965 and 1973. During this period, oil, coal and natural gas consumption per capita were all rising.
A major thing that pushed oil consumption along was its low price (Figure 4). According to BP data, the inflation-adjusted price was only $11.99 per barrel in 1970. In 1971, it averaged $14.30 per barrel. The comparable price today is about $79 per barrel.
The average price for 1973 rose to the equivalent of $19.73 per barrel, which is still incredibly low relative to today’s prices. It is an annual average price, reflecting a low price at the beginning of the year and a much higher price toward the end of the year.
There were multiple issues behind the rise in oil prices, starting at the end of 1973. Part of the problem was the fact that US oil production began to fall in 1971, necessitating the use of more imported oil, year after year. Another issue was that world oil production could not keep up with the high demand, given the low price that oil was selling for. The Office of the Historian of the US writes the following:
By 1973, OPEC had demanded that foreign oil corporations increase prices and cede greater shares of revenue to their local subsidiaries. In April, the Nixon administration announced a new energy strategy to boost domestic production to reduce U.S. vulnerability to oil imports and ease the strain of nationwide fuel shortages. That vulnerability would become overtly clear in the fall of that year.
Without higher oil prices, it would be hard for local producers to make the investments needed to ramp up production. Also, taxes for governments in the areas where the oil was produced were falling too low, given the low prices that oil was selling for on the international market. Indirectly because of these problems, but supposedly also because of support for Israel by certain countries in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab members of OPEC initiated an oil embargo. This embargo cut off exports to the US, Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa from November 1973 until March 1974. It was at that time that world oil prices rose to a much higher level, and oil consumption per capita began to fall.
One thing that is striking about the period between World War II and 1973 is the huge advances in wages made by both the bottom 90% and the top 10% (Figure 5).
Between 1948 and 1968, inflation-adjusted income of both the bottom 90% and the top 10% increased by roughly 80%. This meant that many people in the bottom 90% could afford to buy cars and their own homes for the first time. Even in the period between 1968 and 1982, inflation-adjusted incomes kept up with inflation, something that low-income earners today have difficulty with. It was not until after about 1982 that wage disparity started to increase.
Most people remember the 1950s and 1960s as a favorable period for ordinary workers. Because of the higher wages of ordinary citizens and growing US manufacturing capabilities, the number of cars registered in the US rose from 25.8 million in 1945 to 75.3 million in 1965. The US initiated the 41,000 mile Interstate Highway System in 1956, so that auto owners would have multilane, limited access roads to travel on.
Electricity was sold in a conservative way, called the Utility Pricing System, which would hopefully assure that the whole system would be properly maintained. Utilities were typically owners of electricity generation units, plus all other local infrastructure, including transmission lines. Each utility would compute a total required rate for all its needs, including enough funds to install new generating capacity, provide fuel, and install and maintain transmission lines. A government regulator would approve the rates, but there was no real competition.
[4] In the period between 1973 and 2018, many changes were to increase energy efficiency and to lower the perceived cost to users. Unfortunately, some of these changes, when taken to the extremes they were taken to later in the period, tended to make the economy brittle and thus more subject to collapse.
Up until 1973, oil was being put to uses for which substitution could easily be made. One of these was electricity generation; another was home heating. An easy change in electricity generation was to build new generating facilities using an alternate fuel (coal, natural gas, or nuclear). Home heating could often be changed to natural gas or electricity.
Also, Japan already had automobiles that were smaller and more fuel efficient than American automobiles. These could be substituted for some of the large cars produced in the US.
Especially with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations starting shortly after 1980, there was more interest in cutting costs in electricity generation. “Competitive rating” instead of utility rating became popular in places where electricity prices were high. Utilities were broken up, and the various parts were encouraged to compete.
Of course, competitive rating, when taken to its extreme, can lead to the neglect of infrastructure. It was recently reported that California’s utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, now finds that it must raise $50 billion for wildfire prevention, after years of neglecting maintenance on the long distance transmission lines used for hydroelectric generation and other long distance transmission. Now it needs to raise money to bury many of these lines underground.
It has long been known that added complexity can be helpful in working around problems of inadequate energy supply. Complexity involves many things including using more advanced technology and international trade. It involves bigger organizations to take advantage of economies of scale. It tends to require higher education for at least some of its workers.
One major disadvantage of growing complexity is the increasing wage disparity it tends to produce. Wages for less educated workers often fall quite low. Work in whole industries may disappear overseas, leaving workers to start over, in new lines of work, at lower pay scales.
Unfortunately, having many workers at low wages tends to push an economy toward collapse. The big issue is that these workers cannot afford goods like cars and new homes. Their lack of purchasing power tends to hold down commodity prices, such as the price of fossil fuels. Prices don’t rise high enough to justify new investment to raise production, so production slows down and eventually stops.
Another approach that gained popularity starting about 1981 was the increased use of debt and more exotic financial approaches. Interest rates were very high in 1981. Central banks could make monthly payments for goods such as homes and cars more affordable by lowering interest rates. This approach works for a while, but it reaches limits when interest rates fall too low relative to inflation rates. Furthermore, if an economy slows down, a major increase in debt defaults becomes likely, as became clear in 2008. With the high level of debt in the world economy today, the default problem could become even worse in 2023 or 2024 than it was in 2008, if the economy slows again.
[5] Since 2015, oil and natural gas investments have remained at low levels because oil prices have not been high enough to justify drilling in the remaining places.
In my opinion, oil companies really need quite high oil prices, probably $120 per barrel or higher, on a consistent basis, to justify drilling in sufficient new locations to ramp up oil production. Since 2014, prices have generally remained far below that level. There was a major drop in oil prices in 2014 and 2015. In response to the lower oil prices, oil and gas companies cut back on investment in “Exploration and Production” (E&P). (Figure 7)
After a drop in E&P investments, oil production does not drop immediately. Instead, 2018 was the single highest year of oil production. Production looks likely to drop further because of the continued lack of investment (Figure 8).
[6] If we look across the major types of energy supply, we discover that “Wind and Solar” is the only category rising significantly faster than world population. Others tend to be flat or falling, on a per capita basis.
In Figure 9, the star performer is the category “Wind + Solar.” The main attraction of wind and solar today is the subsidies they get, and the mandates that require utilities to move away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, wind and solar really aren’t terribly helpful as far as I can see, except from the point of view of the benefit of the subsidies they provide.
One of the problems with intermittent wind and solar is that they tend to drive nuclear electricity providers out of business because of the favorable rates they receive when wind and solar are allowed to go first, in competitive rating schemes. With this arrangement, the wholesale rates that nuclear providers receive often fall to negative amounts. Nuclear providers cannot close down for short periods with negative rates, so they tend to need subsidies to remain open. Figure 9 shows that the supply of nuclear electricity has been dropping since at least 2001. In fact, of all the energy types shown on Figure 9, nuclear’s production (relative to population) is dropping fastest.
In my opinion, our primary energy concern should be food production and transport. Diesel, made from oil, is the major fuel for agriculture. It will be decades before farming machinery and transport of food can be changed over to electricity, assuming this can be done at all. Until this happens, electricity’s role in getting food to the shelves of grocery stores will be limited.
Solar energy comes primarily in the summer but, unfortunately, in many places, the big need for heat energy is in the winter. People in Europe, with their many wind turbines and solar panels, are worried about possibly freezing in the dark this winter if natural gas supplies prove inadequate. We don’t have batteries for storing solar or wind energy for months on end, so they cannot be counted on for winter heat.
When homeowners put solar panels on their roofs, the electricity they sell to the utility is often “net metered” (credited with the full retail value of electricity that this home would pay). This is a huge subsidy to the owners of the solar panels because the value of the intermittent electricity to the utility is far less than this, probably closer to the cost of the natural gas or other fuel saved.
To make up for the loss of revenue caused by the overly generous compensation to solar panel owners, the utility is forced to raise rates for those without solar panels. Studies show that homeowners with solar panels tend to be wealthier than the renters and others who do not have the opportunity to add these subsidized solar panels. Thus, this is an example of a benefit for rich homeowners being paid for by less wealthy buyers of electricity.
I would also argue that the BP data I used to produce Figure 9 tends to give an overly optimistic view of the value of wind and solar. The approach used indirectly assumes that they fully replace the entire system of dispatchable electricity used today, rather than providing only intermittent electricity. The less generous approach (giving a little less than half as much credit) is used by the International Energy Association and by many researchers.
Furthermore, solar panels tend to pollute ground water when they are disposed of, so they are not very clean. Wind turbines are noisy, take up farmland, and kill bats and birds, so they have serious drawbacks as well.
Wind and solar are made and transported using fossil fuels. They cannot last any longer than today’s fossil fuel industry. In fact, roads and transmission lines require fossil fuels to continue. The whole system is likely to go down at approximately the same time.
It seems to me that the main reason why we hear so much about intermittent wind and solar is because there needs to be a hopeful narrative for politicians to provide to voters, and for educators to provide to students. Otherwise, the situation shown on Figure 9 looks grim. The fact that fossil fuel prices have been spiking in 2022 and regulators are trying to get these prices back down again is testimony to the fact that we are running short of cheap-to-produce fossil fuel energy.
[7] The incorrect narrative provided by mainstream media (MSM) is that climate change is our worst problem. To lessen this problem, citizens need to move quickly away from fossil fuels and transition to renewables. The real narrative is that we are running short of fossil fuels that can be profitably extracted, and renewables are not adequate substitutes. However, this narrative is too worrisome for most people to handle.
I expect most readers will say, your view can’t be right. We don’t read this story in the news. All we hear about is climate change and the need to reduce fossil fuel usage to prevent climate change.
In many ways, the narrative presented by MSM is less frightening to the public than a narrative in which fuels are already being stretched too thin. The MSM narrative sounds like a situation that we can perhaps live with and work around. It sounds like careers that people study for today will be useful in the future. It also sounds like homes, cars and factories built today will be useful in the future.
One major difference in the MSM view, relative to my view, is with respect to the amounts of fossil fuels that can be extracted. The standard narrative says we will extract all the fossil fuels that we have the technology to extract unless we make a concerted effort not to extract these fuels. For this to happen, demand (a favorite word of economists) must keep rising to keep prices high enough for businesses to want to continue extraction from fields plagued by depletion.
History shows that when an economy approaches limits, what tends to happen is that demand tends to fall too low. This happens because the physics of the way the economy works: Wage and wealth disparities tend to spike as energy resources are increasingly stretched thin. In fact, the great wealth of the top 1%, relative to that of the remaining 99%, is a major problem in the world today. When increasing wage and wealth disparity occurs, a growing number of poor workers find themselves with inadequate wages to buy food, homes, cars and other goods made with commodities, including oil.
There are so many of these poor workers that their lack of demand tends to bring down commodity prices without government intervention. If these low wages are not sufficient to hold down commodity prices, politicians will raise interest rates to try to get commodity prices down, so they can be re-elected. It is low fossil fuel prices that will drive fossil fuel providers out of business.
Of course, another part of the MSM narrative is the view that renewables can save the system. I explained in Section [6] why this cannot be the case for wind and solar. I didn’t say much about hydroelectricity, but it is already built out in most of the developed world. Electricity from hydroelectric plants tends to be intermittent, with the greatest supply coming in the spring, when snow melts. Like wind and solar, hydroelectric generation plants are built and repaired using fossil fuels. These facilities, and their transmission lines, will last only until parts break that cannot be repaired.
This comments section is my only life.
the younger ones can do the doing, and we can be commenting the comments.
this comments section will be ongoing until January 5th of…
come on, say it together:
2023, baby.
What makes a product something we know? We all have experienced a product changing. A tool of a certain brand fails after a decade of service. The same tool replaced from the same brand lasts two weeks. The process by which the new tool was manufactured changed. The process is the product.
As supply chains have become international standards have tried to be instituted so that what is regarded as x actually functions as x. ISO 900x for instance. Whole careers are built around defining process. The process is the product. The alchemy of the process is integral to the character, function, and essence of the product.
The following presentation is made by a individual with a long career in pharmaceutical products safety and rollouts. I find her extremely well spoken. Her logic flows with the familiarity of someone infinitely familiar with the subject. Some of the points of her presentation.
1; The manufacturers create the injections as a contractor to the DOD. The manufacturers only responsibility is to meet the specifications of the contract with the DOD not how it is used. This is identical to any product supplied to the DOD and the legal structure is robust.
2; The manufacturers never own the product. The DOD owns the product until it is injected into a human. The manufacturers own the process by which they create the product but the DOD owns the product beginning to end. Exact same as depleted uranium 30mm round. The DOD owns it until it leaves the barrel ownership ceases at that point. This is identical to any product supplied to the DOD and the legal structure is robust.
5;The injections are not a pharmaceutical product. One reason is because a product has consumers. The injections do not have consumers who purchase and consume the substance. The manufacturers never own the substance. They have no claim to sell it and no authority as to how the substance is used. This is identical to any product supplied to the DOD and the legal structure is robust.
4: The injection manufacturing process is entirely unregulated. The process for creating pharmaceutical products is highly regulated. The new process is much more lucrative to manufacturers than the process by which pharmaceutical products are made. Pharmaceutical products manufacture will decline radically. Substances created under the new contract to DOD process will increase radically.
The legal and physical structure of this new manufacturing process is based on many aspects of law but the “one ring that binds them” is Operation Warp speed. Operation warp speed was not a acceleration of research. MRNA technology has existed for a long time. The “vaccine” is developed concurrently with the pathogen. While this is self-evident in research practices the patent timeline for the “vaccines” demonstrates this conclusively. This practice is identical to bioweapon research practices.
What operation warp speed is a establishment of a manufacturing process that bears no resemblance to the manufacturing of a pharmaceutical product. Trump refers to it as “one of the greatest achievements of my administration”. It is indeed a substantial creation. That the Europe would allow substances created by this process to be deployed on its continent after its apparent dislike of Trump is puzzling
Understanding the process by which the injections were created allowed many things that had not made sense to make sense for me. I am puzzled that many of those revealing the safety profile of the injections seem unaware that it is not a pharmaceutical product. They lament that the regulatory agencies have failed them. The regulatory agencies have no legal authority or responsibility to do so. The injections are not a pharmaceutical product.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/cXbiuOIWouBL/
More Good News – for the unvaxxed.
I know of multiple CovIDIOTS who suddenly had very high BP following their jabs – previously very healthy all of them
Dr. Naomi Wolf interviewed by Steve Bannon, War Room on emerging strong evidence that Hundreds Of Thousands Of Americans Are Suffering From Hypertension Due To The COVID Jab; devastating implications!
https://palexander.substack.com/p/dr-naomi-wolf-interviewed-by-steve
This keeps on getting better and better…
A colleague of reports a much higher BP after the jabsters.
What’s happening is the spike protein is damaging the vascular system — vasculitis — this is why some of the people I know who are vax f789ed… do not test + for myocarditis yet have similar symptoms… there vascular system has been inflamed and scarred by the spike ….
They will never return to normal – one is 1.5yrs in … and still have serious problems – he can work and function … but he cannot exert himself… the other is a year in this month — similarly he has improved by he’s plateaued.
There there are those who report feeling ‘not right’s — lacking in stamina … tired… This is no doubt because of less severe vascular damage…
With scarring of the vascular system would come high BP as the blood is meeting resistance in the form of scar tissue as it tries to flow.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-covid-19-vaccine-generated-spike-protein-is-safe-contrary-to-viral-claims/
Thanks for that – I’ll go get 7 shots of Rat Juice — it’s Safe and Effective!
Then I’ll play Russian Roulette with a single barrel shotgun.
You have been extremely convincing … you should find a job teaching mentally re tar ded children
Gail, thanks for another fine post. I graduated from high school in the 70s and it always seemed like something was “off” during the ensuing decades. I was relieved a few years ago when I found OFW and it clicked into place for me that energy was the missing piece in the story I was trying to understand. I am more of a reader than a writer, but am always here following the conversation. My thanks to those of you that post!
You are welcome. Glad you are here!
What knowledge that survives the collapse will be in books, RL. Your kind are important post collapse if we are to stop the cyclic amnesias of history.
Why thanks, also RL! I have a collection of print books on how to do the most basic things, oriented toward the young people I know. In case, as Gail says, a few make it through. If FE is right, the books will take their rightful place among the ruins. If anyone has read Lucifer’s Hammer (the world ends from a comet), there is a poignant scene where a scientist stores basic science texts, in hopes they may one day be found.
i read a while ago, that knowledge will only survive on vellum eventually
the composition of most paper causes it to self destruct over time.
Then we reach the point, where if ‘knowledge’ of itself barely exists even in book form, and cannot be translated into hardware, it will be reduced just to myth and legend.
Totally agree Norman. Vellum is the best, but ulp paper books should last the next 200 years, time to transcribe a few million onto vellum.
Norman – there was a project that came out of the three conferences at Four Quarters about 9 years back to preserve information. The participants were not social enough to work with one another, though. Dmitry Orlov joked about a simple computer that was robust enough to be plopped down in the forest for people to use. It would last about 20 years. After that…I have become pessimistic about information preservation.
So… the entity that controls the global MSM … is unable to control Twitter because of Elon Musk…
Hmmm….
Peter Turchin talks about fighting among oligarchs. I think that we are reaching that stage. Elon Musk can see that some of the story we were told was absurd.
Keep in mind the Elders killed JFK… the oligarchs are not the Elders… they are water boys
lol
not them elders again
perleeeeeze
With increased wage and wealth disparity, and ever-growing sizes of asset management, there are people today with a huge amount of power related to the way the economy works. At the same time, governments are losing the ability to fund their own operations through taxes. They must depend on the goodwill of the oligarchs. Most people miss this dynamic.
When you go to universities, every dorm and every lab is named after some large donor. Sam from the Bahamas got naming rights to some big building, thanks to his fraudulent empire. I read that Sam was the sixth largest donor in the last election, after George Soros.
agreed, governments must face a depleting taxflow
as ‘oligarch’ increase their assets.
But ultimately those assets have the same resource base as government taxation—ie energy input.
I am an ‘oilgarch’–my wealth, say, lies in property—000s of ordinary houses, say, or vast tracts of farmland.
I am a multi-billionaire then, by any measure.
But, my wealth is entirely dependent on you plebs paying rents, ——and rent money, as part of wages is entirely dependent on an oil-powered economic system. (land works the same way)
If my renters can’t pay rent, my wealth evaporates. I can’t sell my properties, because all my oilgarch buddies are in the same boat.
So i finish up in the queue at the foodbank.
Of course, they desperately want to hang on to their power. Somehow, they don’t see that they end up the same place as everyone else.
no one ever does Gail
norm is incapable of seeing this … he thinks bidet is the most powerful man on the planet hahahahaha
Can you imagine how f789ed we’d be if that was true
Obviously it’s the MIC.
If it wasn’t, Normal would be proud that his horse is more impressive than the joneses mule.
Such is the myopia of ordinary and Pavlovian behaviors overlaid on top of badly disguised contempt for technology.
Ah the irony.
🤭👍
https://youtu.be/nnHmUk_J6xQ
Our energy problems have been solved so says the recent Fusion discovery…..except it’s still decades away or as JMG commented on his recent Blog:
“Yes, I was highly amused by the latest bit of fusion puffery. As some of my readers pointed out last week, the total energy output from this very expensive and complex experiment was about what you can get by burning six ounces of dry hardwood in an ordinary fire…”
somehow in all this media blitz they forgot to say that these lasers can be fired only once a day, that the input energy was electrical, but the output energy was thermal, and that no material would withstand the heat and radiation of a viable fusion plant. Renewables don’t work because they have low energy density. Fusion will not work either because the energy density is too high.
Thanks for the info. I wasn’t aware of that.
Great points! As usual the energy inputs required to facilitate the new energy source require energy inputs that do not exist for widespread utilization and form of the new energy is completely unsuitable to replace fossil fuels. Heat is trash energy a waste product. Your note about energy density is well taken. Even if the materials existed to deal with the energy density..
Trash heat energy created
–
Massive facilitation energy cost of new source of trash heat using unobtanium materials (including energy consumption of workers)
–
Massive facilitation energy cost to convert trash heat back into electricity (including energy consumption of workers)
–
Energy losses turning trash heat back into electricity
–
Energy cost of maintenance of trash heat conversion facilities (including energy consumption of workers)
–
Energy cost of maintenance of electricity delivery ala grid (including energy consumption of workers)
=
massive energy sink
As usual it is the energy cost of the envelope that is somehow not apparent to the extremely brilliant minds involved in the project.
Your in the antarctic in winter without energy but find a box of matches. You strike a match. Voila you are saved! Look everyone! We are saved!
These expeditions seem to be a excuse to milk the infinite fiat cow. That is the true infinite energy source that never fails.
Just like 1973, OPEC is playing a quota game again
11/12/2022
OPEC 10 crude production and quotas during Covid
http://crudeoilpeak.info/opec-10-crude-production-and-quotas-during-covid
Nigeria’s production is way under its quota. Angola’s is quite low too.
I recently got interested in Napoleonics. In the almanac published on 1810, it listed the world pop as 1.1 billion. France, the most populous country in Europe, had 44M, Kingdom of Italy (ruled by one of Napoleon’s brothers) 6.7M, Kingdom of Naples, ruled by Napoleon’s brother-in-law Murat, 6 million, etc.
After Napoleon was shipped to Elba, the restored French royal government issued an almanac in early 1815 before Napoleon’s brief return.
That almanac lacks reference on world population.
Napoleon’s govt had to tally how many people were in the world since it was looking for global expansion, but the new Royal govt had no need to do that so it didn’t bother with world pop figures.
Such is how civilization retreats; with the end of globalism everything becomes local.
“In my opinion, our primary energy concern should be food production and transport. Diesel, made from oil, is the major fuel for agriculture. ”
That is certainly a pragmatic opinion one I agree with. I also wonder when the inevitable grid failures occur whether limited electricity supply to the crop circles can be kept functioning if residential is sacrificed. Needless to say neither of these policys will be popular. I have lived in places where watering the lawn was only allowed on certain days. My coworkers took great pride in watering their lawn every day in fact they probably doubled or tripled their water consumption. Yes Virginia Dheads exist. People view commodity consumption as a right. One thing i have noticed is universal across all political spectrums is the belief that if consumption is limited its on account of “them”. IMO it demonstrates poor character. We know the world is finite. We know resources are finite. Now explain to a 6′ 5 300lb trucker that he cant consume diesel. Ill leave that task to someone else.
I know that around here, a few years ago when there were water restrictions, people would water and put up a sign saying, “Using well water.” So? Isn’t it from the same water table?
The issue with diesel I think is, “How do you ration it?” If you ration it by high price, people complain about high prices and inflation. If you ration it otherwise (The government will fine any company that raises its price, for example), then there will be long lines and stations without fuel. There is no perfect way of solving “not enough to go around.”
You know Gail I consume my share. My consumption is many times that of a third world inhabitant.
“There is no perfect way of solving “not enough to go around.”
Poverty seems somewhat less than perfect as does the strategic nuclear exchange we seem to be steadily approaching.
Gayle, perhaps we need to invent a new sign.
“Using rain collected water and pumped by solar power”
hahaha … VAIDS!!!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/world-cup/300767729/france-camp-in-chaos-as-virus-hits-more-players-ahead-of-world-cup-final
“Grant Wahl, renowned American soccer journalist, dies at World Cup game in Qatar” Here’s what he said before he died: “My body finally broke down on me. Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you. What had been a cold over the last 10 days turned into something more severe on the night of the USA-Netherlands game, and I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort,” Wahl wrote on Dec. 5.
“I went into the medical clinic at the main media center today, and they said I probably have bronchitis. They gave me a course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty cough syrup, and I’m already feeling a bit better just a few hours later. But still: No bueno.”
His wife Celine Gounder a physician basically said, NO it wasn’t the vaccines because they are safe and effective. What she didn’t say was that she was on Joe Bidet’s Covid 1984 Advisory Board and is now a leading medical consultant for CBS News. If her husband didn’t want to blame the vax and booster shots, I doubt she would be willing to throw Team Fauci under the Bus.
The moral to the story is another Pro Vaxer is dead and he bragged about his numerous booster shots on Twitter and made it known they were safe and everyone should take them.
Those are the most satisfying deaths.
I am quite pleased by this one.
This Hugo Talks is a good one for those who enjoy learning about the woes of celebrity vax pushers:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/kCYEU9X3aNE1/
Pity the kid having such a dumb father.
I will sleep soon hoping that when I wake up Santa has delivered a World Cup death or collapse….
That will complete me
A few years ago, no one would write an article about players with a cold or some other minor illnesses. I suppose that this is such a watched series that it is a little different.
I follow a few sports somewhat closely … NHL and NFL … and I cannot recall ever hearing about multiple players on a team being too sick to play in an important match… I can’t even recall a single player missing a key game..
These athletes are fitness machines — and they are young … they would have fine tuned immune systems — they would be able to fight off infections better than most people…
But when your immune system is damaged… that’s a different ball game
Well said and Amen even though you don’t believe in religion. 🤪
But it’s happening in other Sports as well. This is becoming a common meme, sudden deaths, died unexpectedly. The problem we have is threefold Gail !
The Main Stream Media isn’t asking any questions, the Government doesn’t want you asking any questions and the Medical Community are ignoring all the questions. That’s the problem.
Up until the vaccines made their appearance I don’t recall this type of news with the ever increasing frequency, ever and I have been following Sports the last 40 or so years.
Here’s some other examples:
“Mike Leach: An offensive innovator, a revolutionary, a master wit, a Pirate and a friend. Leach died Monday night following complications from a heart condition. He was 61.” We know for a fact he was vaxxed and boosted because it was up until recently a requirement by the NCAA.
“Cardinals GM Steve Keim taking an indefinite, heath-related leave of absence from team” As an NFL executive he was required to be vaxxed and boosted.
Here’s another Gail, “80 Canadian MDs VAXXED and Dead”. Some were in their early 20’s. This can’t just be a coincidence.
https://druthers.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/druthers-november-2022-resized.pdf
Further on this … if a player missed a match – any match – due to illness it would be reported.
Just as there are always reports of physical injuries involving players.
Yes that’s true and still is today because of Sports betting.
France played the semifinal without 3 players. The MSM says they will be at full strength Sunday. We will see.
I don’t think football layers of high level are Covid vaccinated.
These two episodes were turning points for them and then they probably found a way to obtain false documents.
Christian Eriksen https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/13/football/christian-eriksen-stable-spt-intl/index.html
Sergio Aguero https://www.gazzetta.it/Calcio/Liga/20-11-2021/barcellona-aguero-ritiro-cuore-kun-43057368137.shtml
I’m talking only about high level football players (serie A and nationals) while all the series below were captured in the trap (that’s why many low level players suffer ‘sudden death’ or strange problems).
That is of course only my opinion.
To give you another example in the line of this interpratation, here below it is possible to see Zlatan Ibrahimovic when he was suggesting not to be ‘brave’ like him who had Covid and had no health problem.
‘I’m Ibrahimovic and I’m strong, you are a normal person, so take care!’
(during that period the vaccine was not available yet and so we were just in the fase of ‘scaring’ people in a great way.
https://www.huffingtonpost.it/entry/coronavirus-il-monito-di-ibrahimovic-non-lo-sfidate-non-siete-me_it_5f9aa56cc5b61d63241fd0fd/
I believe you are correct about football Student.
Before the start of the present Premier League season, pre season travels for a lot of clubs were either cancelled, or reduced squads traveled. It was widespread, but went mostly, if not completely unreported in the media, unlike Championship (2nd division) and below players, that were named and shamed. Do the media think that supporters don’t notice that fit first team regulars are missing (in number) from the very games that are organised specifically to prepare the first team for the start of the season?
I don’t know if the example that I propose below it is really connected with Covid vaccine, but it is true that it is full of episodes like that concerning sport people of medium or low level.
It happens very frequently that sport people like this young football player die or have to abandon sport for sudden and serious disease:
https://www.eventiavversinews.it/si-e-spento-a-25-anni-il-calciatore-elia-alessandrini/
In that website it is enough to make research with word ‘calciatore’, which means ‘football player’:
https://www.eventiavversinews.it/?s=calciatore
If people don’t want to see, it is not possible to see.
Even if norm did connect this to the vax he’d say — ‘so what – the vax saved hundreds of millions of lives’
The physics system seems to work with humans partly through narratives in odd ways.
The increase in complexity has allowed an increased energetic throughput but the real wages of most workers have stagnated. That is a problem for the energetic structure as products become unaffordable, which hinders future throughput. Workers are liable to express moralistic narratives about ‘fairness’ or failed ‘social contracts’ (the American Dream of rewarded aspiration), and they are actually expressing a real energetic structural problem in their own way. But that assumes that the issue is fixable, which it is not.
So how does the central narrative producer (authority) respond? Human subjects have a tendency to frame their situation in ‘moralistic’ ways. Moralism (ought) is entirely imaginary in reality albeit it can express real issues in the energetic structure. Humans have evolved as components of energetic structures, and their complaints or even whimpering can highlight genuine energetic structural issues. So the central narrative authority spins a moralistic tale that energy is constrained by ‘ought’ because ‘fossil fuels harm the planet’.
Thus the moralistic human is turned away from active resolution to ‘fix’ their own predicament, and so to maintain the energetic system, which is their fundamental ‘job’ as energetic components, by trying to repair it in a way that it cannot be repaired due to energetic constraints. Thus the narrative authority diverts otherwise potentially futile and destruction acts, and maintains the energetic system for a bit longer. And that is what the narratives are for, whatever the humans or their ‘authorities’ may assume that they are for.
‘Virtue’ has its physical context in the energetic system. Humans tend to assume that they are the ‘center of meaning’, but that is only an interpretation. Narratives are ordered, even by way of apparent personal concerns let alone by public concerns, toward the construction of energetic structures, which is the fundamental and universal tendency of the cosmos. The energetic structure does not usually generate narratives in which that is made explicit. ‘Virtue’ has its real ordination toward the functionality of the energetic structure.
Narratives are functional and they are ordered to the energetic structure. That is an entirely different proposition to that they are ‘true’. Humans are motivated by illusions that they tend to take seriously and that is how the narratives work. Humans are inherently gullible, and they tend to respond favourably to BS moralistic narratives about ‘rights’, ‘contracts’ or the ‘planetary good’ that the society conveys to them. Gullibility and ‘falsehood’ are foundational to ‘virtue’ so that the human plays the role and even ‘praises’ itself.
Humans tend to suppose that they are ‘in control’ of what they are doing, but again that is just an interpretation. Their behaviour is contextually framed within energetic structures that more or less dictate how they think, feel and behave. Humans will behave very differently in different energetic structures and conditions. Humans have their ‘being’ as a part of the real world. They may suppose that they are ‘free’, ‘informed’, ‘responsible’ but fundamentally they are simply maintaining dissipative structures by conforming to BS narratives.
Not that there is anything ‘wrong’ with any of that. It is what it is.
“It is what it is,” you say, or is it: “It ain’t what it ain’t”? ‘Cause I think I lost you somewhere in the thickets. Or is it: “It is what it ain’t”? How about you step in, Fast E – which is it?
Hoomans gonna primate like bacteria bacterium in a Petri dish.
Hoomans gonna egotistical fantasy to maintain the status quo despite evidence on the contrary. I.e, blowing through finite resources with little to nothing to show for while Living Large and planning for an ever prosperous and happy tomorrow.
Hoomans gonna be deluded about about how well their minds interpret the situation. I.e. hoomans want to be high on their own product (hopium and copium).
There exist no societal structure which enables rapacious primates to evolve toward higher levels of complexity. The monkey business, genetics and physics ultimately will send the whole shebang down the tubes of history.
It is what it is, and if you doubt this ugly truth; by all means check out the ruins of history extending to well before the holocene.
Now, princess, ask yourself how you manifested unfair advantage today?
I’m all eyes and ears. 👀👂
Well, then, you conclude with another “It is what it is.” If you didn’t catch my drift the first time, it’s a stoopid phrase – a vapid cliche that not even a donkey should use.. It ain’t what it ain’t. Ya dig?
You chirpily ask how I “manifested unfair advantage today.” By living. Case closed. If you want to chase “fair advantage,” then consult your sky daddy for deitistic blessings or whatever.
Have a happy secular extinction day!
Yup, I’m quite sure you blow though copious amounts of FF’s as you exercise Unfair Advantage. But don’t get me wrong, princesses are entitled to that.
I reckon it is what it is.
(Golgotha 2.0)
🤭👍
Sure, my incel friend. You use nothing that isn’t fungi. , You live under a rock. You ride around in a Flintstonesmobile.
I reckon it is what it is, no?
Speaking of princesses… how’s this for spin …
The eldest child of Thailand’s king is in stable condition “at a certain level”, said the royal palace in a statement days after the 44-year-old princess lost consciousness.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/thai-palace-says-princess-on-life-support-in-first-update-since-confirming-her-collapse/ar-AA15rqBG
I will unspin this for you …
The princess is dead but stable.
Hahahahahahahahaha…. or in other words — she’s beyond f789ed and we need to unplug her box her up and put her down a hole in the ground….
Another Vax Death!
Hey norm remember the woman who died at the Shoppers Drug Mart in Saskatoon – apparently the other MOREONS waiting for their shots remained in the queue even though they could see the emergency responders cart the carcass away…
What are your thoughts on that?
Every time I go to a grocery store, I am amazed at the number of people I see wearing masks. Once they have been told that it is a good thing to do, they seem to be willing to do it indefinitely.
I wonder if norm wears a mask.
norm?
Terrific comment MoW, even if likely too confronting for many
You might enjoy this – if Liebig’s Law was a metaphysics, sort of.
https://youtu.be/OLtIVfRuUFs
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) will be forced to make some last-minute lineup changes to the UFC Vegas 66 fight card, scheduled for this Sat. night (Dec. 17, 2022) on ESPN+ at the promotion’s APEX facility in Las Vegas, Nevada.
That’s because middleweight veteran Deron Winn suffered a “freak accident” and tumbled down the stairs after fainting at the UFC Performance Institute just outside of “Sin City,” leading to the dissolution of his Julian Marquez “Prelims” pairing.
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2859271133255/fainting-ufc-fighter-falls-down-stairs-rushed-to-hospital-in-heartbreaking-freak-accident
NOV
It’s just a coincidence.
Tennessee women’s basketball senior center Tamari Key will miss the remainder of the 2022-23 season after blood clots were discovered in her lungs, the program announced Thursday.
Key will receive care under the guidance of the University of Tennessee Medical Center and Tennessee athletics team physicians, the team said. Tennessee said she is expected to make a full recovery.
“My sole concern right now is that Tamari continues to get the medical care and guidance she needs and begins the gradual process of healing and returning to full strength,” Tennessee coach Kellie Harper said in a statement. “This is much bigger than basketball. We are so grateful that this medical condition was caught. Our entire program will be right beside Tamari during this process and welcomes prayers and positive thoughts from Lady Vol Nation and beyond.”
https://tinyurl.com/3jksaxyb
Not the Vax (NOV) … right NOF?
Stop it! I can only handle so much good news in 1 day.
University of Tennessee doesn’t have a vaccine requirement. No guarantee she had it.
I guess everyone here was uniformly unimpressed with the “Health Ranger” Mike Adam’s report about the “new breakthrough” in Cold Fusion- as was I. We’ve been hearing this trope for years. Cold Fusion, Hot Fusion. Although he does acknowledge that its practical implementation is decades away, his disconnect with reality borders on the incredulous. Even if all this electricity and power were to become available, the assumption that this would allow everyone on the planet to afford nice homes and cars etc is just beyond naive. There aren’t enough accessible raw materials on this earth for that, no matter how much energy you have.
In the meantime, I wonder where is all this nuclear fission is heading? Not just with the delays and regulations in building new reactors, but upkeep on the old reactors and the aging grid itself.
Steve St Angelo at srsroccoreport.com (paid subscription) notes that the pace of new windmill installation is slowing due to financial losses, and in noting a 13-15 year service life tops, that actually net wind generation may be topping out, as the original windmills are now being retired to land fills as they reach the end of their useful service life, with maintenance costs increasing at the end of their lifespan. These retirements are not being counted. New construction is barely keeping up with net power production due to retirement of existing windmills. (Sounds like shale’s death dance too.)
He says the windmills have gotten larger, with tower hubs now 300 feet, but no offshore windmills ordered this year. The salt from the ocean accelerates the deterioration.
So, which risk is greater? Accute radiation fallout if our crazy leaders get us into a nuclear war, or the insidious leakage of depleted uranium waste over the long haul, or sabatoge of a reactor or the electric supply needed to keep the cooling pumps running?
There was an article about how plastics are not being recycled but rather shipped (to China?) where they are not recycled, but buried, burned, or dumped into the ocean. Mmmmm. Microspheres. Makes me think about the waste disposal problem too. Solar panels and nuclear.
So I spent my day tinkering with my Gamma-Scout Geiger Counter. The 3.6 Li battery was welded into the circuit board and now after 10 years in storage is drained. Just brilliant design! LOL . So installed an external battery pack and rewired so that battery can be changed without having to open the unit. But alas, FE is probably right. What am I going to do about it if I detect sudden radiation?
Every few months we get another series of ‘fusion breakthrough’ stories.
This keeps the MORE-ONS hopeful.
They really are MORE-ONS
I know that China stopped accepting most paper and plastic recycling at the beginning of 2018. Several other Asian countries followed suit, not much later. The process is generally not economic, even if someone subsidizes the trip from the US or Europe to China. So I am afraid quite a bit ends up in the ocean. I know that Europe burns a fair amount of trash. Paper and plastic would likely be in this trash.
I haven’t been doing much reading recently about wind energy. According to BP data, China was still installing wind in aggressively in 2021, but Europe seems to have slowed down.
I wonder if this is the reason for all the problems at US ports like Los Angeles.
If there’s no more recycling to put in containers to ship back to China then it’s not clear how the empty containers are going to get back to China. Who is going to pay to ship them?
Mike believes that “they” are suppressing energy technology but “they” will fail and we will soon be in the “golden age”. Hey I like Mike. Nobodys perfect. I have a flaw or two not that i can remember what they are… Guess what i could be wrong and Mike could be right.
Its just I have been asking these “free energy” “golden age” advocates what the basis of their belief is for a couple decades. When they produce their evidence its easily shown as garbage. Like hydroelectric is a “gravity harvesting ” device not that its a product of work by the sun to lift water. I mean seriously you spouted that for years and im the first one to present physics concept of “work”? Its always something really easily refuted without effort. Then they hate me and im one of “them”. I haven’t discussed the topic for five years or so. Its just like telling a 6’5 300lb trucker that diesel if finite. Way less dangerous but just a bad of a idea. Really this forum is the only place I freely express myself now. Ive learned to put on my kabuki face. It only took me five decades longer than most people.
I wonder if they’ll keep the vegetable alive so they can claim its Not the Vax?
https://www.dailyo.in/news/thailand-royal-family-says-princess-bajrakitiyabha-lost-consciousness-amid-death-rumours-38267
It’s really good when someone like this goes down… she’s a role model for CovIDIOTS
Pingback: The economy is moving from a tailwind pushing it along to a headwind holding it back – Olduvai.ca
Fast Eddy said:
Gail Tverberg said:
Actually it didn’t work..
I tried to post more vax injuries involving high profile people – very worthwhile stuff
It bothers me when people on this site harken back to the1950s and 60s as a golden age of properity.
For most people, it wasn’t. See this short documentary about life in Nottingham, England in 1969. It’s the time and place of my husband’s childhood.
The most horrifying aspect is people working a 40 hour week and being unable to afford enough food, and living in cold damp houses with no bathrooms, indoor toilets or hot water. And the women doing their laundry at communal wash houses. In 1969.
Seriously have a look at the state of the first nation to industrialise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK-cSNAas2k
One of the known solutions to energy is finally getting a serious look by ESA and the UK. Power satellites have had couple of dozen articles in main stream media recently. (Pointers posted on the group Power Satellite Economics.) The concept has sure taken a long time to reach this level of interest. Eleven years ago Gail posted an article I wrote here http://theoildrum.com/node/7898 The comments were ten times as long as the article.
Power satellites make sense because all the energy need to build them and put them in space is paid back in a little over two months. If they operate for 50 years (why not) the EROEI is around 300 to one.
There are interesting industrial aspects. To build power satellites at a rate where they could take over a significant part of the energy humans use takes 25,000 launches a year of SpaceX’s StarShip. That’s about 3 an hour. It would take 70 pads and towers for a launch a day. If the rockets last 100 flights, we would need to manufacture 250 a year, which is a reasonable number.
Several years ago NOAA investigated the ozone damage from the hydrogen burning Skylon rocket plane. After a lot of modeling work, they concluded that even a million flights a year would not cause unacceptable ozone damage. The study needs to be repeated for the methane burning SpaceX rockets. It’s probably not a problem, but we need to know.
There is lots more. It rapidly gets into deep technical issues but if people are interested, I can talk about them.
A major issue I see with power satellites is that they are decades away, according to any reasonable estimate. From that point of view, they are a reasonable research project. Unfortunately, we will need international trade and fossil fuels to build out the whole system. The big question in my mind is, “What will be the state of international trade and fossil fuels in 2040 or 2050?” I wonder whether what seems feasible today, will be feasible in that time frame.
the power satellite’ thing omits the key problem
you get unlimited energy’–then what?
we function by making/selling ‘stuff’—ie converting raw materials into wages.
electricity, until it is used, is literally use–less.
Electricity uses copper, it cannot make copper, to itemise you one critical component of our lives,
there are millions more.
There is a whole lot of transmission infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained as well.
that was my point about copper as just one item
“Electricity uses copper, it cannot make copper”
That’s true, but there is an awful lot of rock around that is full of aluminum, and electricity does make aluminum. It takes about 15 kWh to make a kg. I suspect that, because most transmission lines are aluminum that more electricity flows through aluminum than copper.
i cited copper as just one element to make my point
there are millions of other elements and compounds equally critical
in addition—and we’ve been over this ad nauseam–our industrial capability is winding down–the problems with satellite derived power, towers and all the rest of the stuff you advocate are not yet resolved to workable function, and are unlikely to be.
“i cited copper as just one element to make my point”
And I showed that copper can mostly be replaced by aluminum which is not in short supply.
“there are millions of other elements ”
You could try counting a periodic table or count the words in Daniel Radcliffe’s excellent rendition of “The elements.”
“and compounds equally critical”
There are millions of chemical compounds, chemists are very good at making them. Cheaply.
” and all the rest of the stuff you advocate are not yet resolved to workable function, and are unlikely to be.”
Over the last 20 years the number of engineers has increased by a factor of perhaps 4 or 5, most of them Chinese and many of them very smart indeed.
Smart???
Engineers have played a huge role in our coming extinction
HK
you obviously have far more knowledge than i have, re the ‘availablity of elements’ as set out in the periodic table.
so can you enlighten me, and everyone else, which elements, (and compounds made from those elements) are available for mass use in the production, transmission and consumption of electricity. (as just one example).?
You cite the number of “Chinese engineers’ increasing–fine, but it’s still not clear just what ‘products’ they are/or will be utilising in this respect.
use of anything, in a physical sense of ‘handling it’ on a mass scale in this context, requires durability, availability, safety, and low cost.
Now I refer you back to the periodic table. (which I did go back to and check, out of interest)
Can you list the elements available that fit the above criteria.?
I have always been under the impression that copper is used in electricity transmission because it is the most efficient in that respect, (ie based on cost availability strength and efficiency)
I may have missed something, but I think copper is all we have in that respect.
Concerning copper vs aluminium, I’d say copper was by far the bigger, as I’ve never seen a single commercial or residential wiring system made of aluminium. It’s fine for big grids, but on the smaller scale it’s pretty useless as it’s brittle, so doesn’t appreciate being bent about (watch an electrician at work if this doesn’t appear problematic).
i feel sure that if aluminium was a viable alternative to copper, it would have replaced copper decades ago
Given aluminiums apparent abundance, compared to copper, you would think so. I read some years ago that copper was down to 2-3lbs per ton of ore from a peak of over 30. There must be some reason we haven’t changed.
well–as i understand it, gold is the best conductor of electricity
maybe HK is advocating using that
i checked the periodic table
there doesnt seem to be anything else
I’ll ask my electrician , although be warned, I’ll be back with the begging bowl as soon as he gives me a quote 🤣
“so can you enlighten me, and everyone else, which elements, (and compounds made from those elements) are available for mass use in the production, transmission and consumption of electricity. (as just one example).?”
This gets very involved very quickly. I have a wide interest in all kinds of engineering so I can give you a bit of an outline. For more detail, there are lots of Wikipedia pages. Production of electricity requires some energy source, coal, nuclear, sun, wind and a a way to convert the energy source into electricity on the grid. Coal and nuclear are thermal cycles. They make steam which is expanded in a turbine to spin a shaft connected to a generator which is connected through transformers to the grid.
“I have always been under the impression that copper is used in electricity transmission because it is the most efficient in that respect, (ie based on cost availability strength and efficiency)”
“I may have missed something, but I think copper is all we have in that respect.”
Copper has a lot of good characteristics, but I am fairly sure more aluminum is used than copper for transmission lines. Because aluminum is so light, it is a better conductor than copper on a weight basis. But where you are trying to fit wires in motors and such uses, copper works better. Actually silver is a little better than copper. “During construction of the electromagnets required for the uranium separation process at the Y-12 site, a shortage of copper forced the MED to borrow 14,700 tons of silver bullion from the United States Treasury as a copper substitute in wire for the electromagnet coils.[34]
Large amount of iron are also used to keep the magnetic fields inside the coils of wire in transformers. The transformers are filled with oil to get the heat out.
Lots of details, but it’s all well understood by power engineers.
HK
my apologies–you are quite correct in the use of aluminium for long distance over head transmission lines
but that still leaves us with no substitute for copper in all other applications, I don’t think sliver is a viable alternative in many respects. We have to consider our entire infrastructure
Referring back to the periodic table, as you suggested, doesn’t seem to offer many options that would support the infrastructure we need .
“What will be the state of international trade and fossil fuels in 2040 or 2050?”
That’s hard to say. Ray Kurzweil has stuck with around 2045 as the AI/Nanotech singularity date. Given the progress in recent years (like AlphaFold), I can’t find fault with his estimate.
I also can’t say if humans will survive. I think it is likely that whatever is downstream from that time will be so unlike us as to be hard to recognize. But I really don’t know.
If we do build power satellites before the singularity comes along, they are the best use we can make of fossil fuels. The energy payback is as good as the best oil wells.
Ray Kurzweil has stuck with around 2045 as the AI/Nanotech singularity date. Given the progress in recent years (like AlphaFold), I can’t find fault with his estimate.
In a world where food and energy prices are becoming a problem already in 2022, I highly doubt there will be much ‘AI research’ going on in 2045.
Europe is a dead man walking currently economically speaking. Once the gas reserves are gone in a few months, we are done. No more industry. No more fertiliser. No more home heating.
You seem to be living in a fantasy world where these things aren’t happening.
“You seem to be living in a fantasy world where these things aren’t happening.”
I wonder in to OFW every year or two and it is always the same, the end is just around the corner, or the collapse is underway. Have you noticed that “these things aren’t happening.”
Now I am rather pessimistic about the future if there is no more technical advances. But we live in a time of exceptional progress.
Only problem I have with super smart AIs is: Will we have sense enough to listen to them?
but keith we’ve been waiting to see you on BBG or CNBC announcing your invention is ready for prime time…
waiting… and waiting…
When keith? when?
“your invention is ready for prime time…”
It’s not my dog.
But we live in a time of exceptional progress.
We clearly do not. What progress has there been in the last 20 years?
I had a mobile phone, a computer and a broadband connection in 2002.
https://chat.openai.com/chat is a toy AI chatbot, You can, however, ask it questions and get back a somewhat reasonable response. For example,
Tell me about Gail Tverberg
Gail Tverberg is an American actuarial mathematician and blogger who writes about energy and finance. She is known for her work on the relationship between energy and the economy, and has written extensively on issues related to peak oil and the role of energy in financial markets. Tverberg has a background in actuarial science and has worked as a consultant in the insurance industry. She is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. Tverberg has written for a number of publications, including The Oil Drum, Our Finite World, and Resilience.org, and has given talks on energy and economic issues at conferences and events around the world.
********
Not as impressive as AlphaFold, but not bad.
Try entering Fast Eddy
Tell me about fast eddy
I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information about a person or entity called “Fast Eddy.” Could you provide more context or clarify your question?
*****
I I tried Crazy Eddy (from Mote in God’s Eye) and the above plus
“It’s possible that you may be referring to a fictional character or someone who is not well-known, in which case I may not be able to provide much information.”
Sorry
It’s AI right? Then AI Fast Eddy
https://chat.openai.com/chat is a toy AI chatbot
No it is not. It’s a piece of software that can create word salads from inputs and google. It is not intelligent.
Captcha tests for intelligence… and apparently AI cannot figure out which images depict a traffic light…
And Musk said we’d have self driving taxis by last year….
We are saved if choose.
That’s nice Keith … now let’s open the door and put you back in the attic… we’ll send some left overs up to you later…
Now where was I?
in your favourite rut eddy
where else could you be?
I am sure that there are differences around the world.
It was my understanding that the Marshall Plan provided economic aid to Western Europe, starting in 1948. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
It was not clear to me how effective this was, how soon, in Europe. In general, the energy consumption data indicated that Europe was moving ahead, but it started from a lower base after WWII than the US, with some places doing better than others. The growing use of energy seemed to indicated that, in general, economies were moving up, even if from a low base.
The Marshall plan, or so it seems to me, looking back, was part of the ‘great burning’ of US surplus oil.
Until oil is used, it has no value. Oil producers had to extract it in the 40s /50s and burn in (ie convert it into profit) as fast as possible. They more they used, the richer they got.
This was of course setiing fire to the future, but ‘now’ was more important.
Marshal Plan is the key point of rhetoric discourse in Italy (I don’t know exactly, but I think also in other European Country).
It is the key point used to explain to people that US saved Europe after the disasters created by Germany, Italy and partially Spain (called normally as ‘Tyranny’) and that’s why we have to be forever grateful to US and follow them in their whatever strategy, because it is always for the good.
It is the way most of the people from 65 to 90 years old make reasoning here.
It is the key class of people who create the general narrative in Politics and Main Stream Media.
That of course doesn’t exclude the key point. in my view, that Marshal Plan was extremely important to have economic wealth back in Europe, at least quickly.
It is funny to mention that an Italian ex Nato General has recently said that the famous US General George Patton, after WWII replied, to a comment saying so:
‘actually we didn’t saved Europe, we conquered Europe’ (from timing 10.27 of the video below).
https://casadelsole.tv/roberto-benassi-la-transizione-offensiva-della-nato/
This is out of any controversy or any criticism for me, it is just to describe facts.
Those are Americans referring to the golden era. The top economic year in the US was ~1968. My parents bought a house that year. Life was great. They had both been born to difficult circumstances and worked their way out over a couple of decades.
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-do-not-prevent-hospitalizations
Soooo EEeeeeee!!!!
NomaD
Writes NomaD’s Newsletter
2 hr ago
Liked by Igor Chudov
I wasn’t going to comment, but on this occasion, I just can’t not say what has/is happening in the UK… all the strikes going down here is unprecedentedly shocking, this can only be another way of hiding/blaming V deaths on the strikes…
I have 3 Children of which my youngest daughter works for the NHS as a Nurse, she was told over and over to keep everyone safe including the quite large family safe from being Hospitalised and had the full V Programme.
I unfortunately now have to say she has had 3 operations on her Ovaries, and had them removed, and the best thing is the cant explained why a 23 year old girl never smoked never took drugs, yeah had a few drinks here and there but nothing that could do the damage she is experiencing at this moment in time, it saddens me as the Hospital and 3 different Surgeons who operated on My Daughter have NO CLUE what caused this, they define this as a narrative answer that they basically can’t talk about.
What’s happening in this Global World right now is only the tip of the Iceberg…
We have a long journey of distraction and more Lies.. The Power of the 1% Global Elite is Out Off Control. Sorry I am not a great writer or author ✍️ But I think I have out my POV out there..
Stay Safe… Stay Free… NomaD.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93fc777f-b9af-42c0-9158-d955fa6bb312_982x136.jpeg
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F970d59df-e85e-4930-a124-992ca39ec390_723x571.jpeg
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96c1e1e9-d3fb-41e0-b631-45b2f75f1986_2000x1080.png
hahahahaha — I love it that I feel so healthy — oh right – not vaxxed hahahaha
Gosh norm what have you done?
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-do-not-prevent-hospitalizations
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31660a56-5adc-4400-b96e-24e87bf83fda_770x582.jpeg
http://oil-price.net/ continues to give me déjà vu, 2008-9 — oil prices peaked in July 2008, then crashed in the following months — something similar, since June 2022?
Only this time, things might be very different — with world peak oil in the past (http://davecoop.net/seneca.htm), will government financial tricks continue to be effective?
We umans are good a playing the Delusions game. The current one, where we delude ourselves that with wind, solar, nuclear and fusion (with luck in the 2100’s) we can live even better than we’ve lived so far with our Fossil Fuels Civilization, is just that a Delusion.
Until we fix the “Rejected Energy” utter waste/unbalance nothing else will work.
But, at least for me, it’s FUN watching the Owners of our current Civilization and Their Friends the Billionaires living the Good Life while screwing all the rest of the herds of modern moron slaves.
Lets keep up doing the same stuff!
It’s more like re tar ded Idi ocy combined with low IQ
I would never have guessed that we would have the World Economic Forum and the ideas they come up with. Also, their training programs for would-be world leaders.
If the modern slaves “vote” for the would-be WEF trained dogs eventually we can only end up with the WEF ideas. Democracy is FUN!
According to the calculations of the LLNL (March 2021 just for the US) Rejected Energy represented in 2020 ~ 2/3 of the produced energy.
According to them we generated 92.76 Quads (from: Petroleum, Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Biomass, Wind, Hydro, Solar and Geothermal) and 62.3 Quads go to “waste”.
We clearly don’t want to address the Efficiency problem!
(Israel National News)
‘Some of the COVID vaccine’s negative side effects go unnoticed. Bleeding, muscle and neurological problems.’ Health Ministry study reveals vaccine can cause long-term side effects, says MIT professor.’
[…]
‘A study by the Israeli Health Ministry found that the mRNA COVID vaccines used since December 2020 can cause serious long-term side effects, MIT Professor Retsef Levi said.’
[…]
‘Since then, a team of researchers hired by the Health Ministry analyzed those side effects reports which were collected, finding, Retsef claimed, serious and in some cases enduring side effects.
“The team that was selected did excellent work; it did its research and reached worrisome conclusions.”
[…]
‘“Despite what has been claimed, that the vast majority of the side effects are short-lived and mild, the research team found long-term side effects – problems involving bleeding, muscle problems, neurological problems.”
[…]
Leaked recordings from the meeting revealed concern among officials the Ministry could be held legally liable for injuries suffered as a result of vaccination, due to the mass-vaccination campaign.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/364406
…And on the same subject..
(Brownstone Institute)
‘Adverse Effects of the Pfizer Vaccine Covered Up by the Israeli Ministry of Health.
A leaked video reveals that in June, the researchers presented serious findings to the MOH (Israeli Ministry of Health), that indicated long-term effects, including some not listed by Pfizer, and a causal relationship. The Ministry published a manipulative report, and told the public that no new signal was found.’
please see video of the zoom meeting inside the article
https://brownstone.org/articles/adverse-effects-of-the-pfizer-vaccine-covered-up-by-the-israeli-ministry-of-health/
Related to the above post, here you can find the interview to Yaffa Shir-Raz (Yaffa Shir-Raz, PhD, is a risk communication researcher and a teaching fellow at the University of Haifa and Reichman University. Her area of research focuses on health and risk communication, including Emerging Infectious Disease (EID) communication, such as the H1N1 and the COVID-19 outbreaks):
https://twitter.com/efenigson/status/1598207299243286528
And here you can find the short version video of the interview to MIT Professor Retsef Levi:
https://marypatriotnews.com/2022/11/16/retsef-levi-leaked-videos-show-israeli-authorities-hiding-information-about-side-effects-teaser/
98207299243286528
Student, what’s your opinion if we compare vax with debt based currencies?
On another forum, poster “reante” says:
“..profitability is maximized on (high-) volume lending because all loans get sorted and batch-collateralized into classes of packages for the various derivatives markets, where they’re notionally profited from over and over again (just as ‘viruses’ are in virology with the RT-PCR batch-sequencing regime).”
Thanks pal. 🙂
Viral vaccines are poisonous exosomal derivatives markets.
Exosome bombs compare nicely with debt bombs.
There are only a few basic algorithms running through all of the Matrix lol.
Government employees of Israel are worried that citizens of Israel may sue them. This is so sweet. He he he. Let justice be done an eye for an eye….
More people figure out what is wrong with the COVID vaccines!
I am becoming less interested in how we descend down and more interested in how we will rise back up after the transition. I have at most 30 years so I will not live to see the rise back up but am still interested in how that might work.
any ‘rise back up’ is entirely governed by the laws of physics.
those laws require energy and physical material inputs, which we do not, and will not have in our coming future.
too many people see ’employment’ as sitting in front of a computer screem manipulating digits. (because they get paid for doing it—as I did)
this is not employment, it is feeding on the cheap surpluses created by fossil fuels, and the people directly involved in using them–mainly farmers and fuel producers.
Agree “[energy] which we do not, and will not have in our coming future.”
It is a return to farming for food and wood lots for heat that I envision for humanities future. We will need to restore the soil and take measures to deal with increased cancer rates. Posterity will hopefully enforce measures to avoid over population.
Using just farms and wood lots Oxford University was founded in 1096 and Cambridge University in 1209. In 1754 Columbia University was founded. Life and high culture existed even before oil.
erm
have you checked the population of the uk around the 1200s?
the students then did not enjoy the dreaming spires that they enjoy today, ‘high culture’ as you call it was centred i think, mainly around ‘theo classical’ studies.
i imagine columbia uni was pretty basic in 1754 too.
“In July 1754, Samuel Johnson held the first classes in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan. There were eight students in the class. At King’s College, the future leaders of colonial society could receive an education designed to “enlarge the Mind, improve the Understanding, polish the whole Man, and qualify them to support the brightest Characters in all the elevated stations in life.”
https://www.columbia.edu/content/history-columbia-university
Yes only eight student but the start of the New Jerusalem, the shining city on the hill.
Norman which university are you closest to?
dont quite grasp the relationship between now, the 1750s and the 1200s
times were entirely different
Repair the soil hahaha… 8B ravenous beast will kill and roast everything that moves post BAU – so where does the manure come from?
And btw it takes years of intensive work to repair chem damaged soil – what to eat in the mean time? rats? cockroaches?
Just take the Super Fent. It’s so much easier. + aren’t you interested to see what comes after death?
I agree repairing the land will take time and work. After a hundred years fish will be more plentiful and can be used for organic material for the soil.
After death I think the odds are slim for anyone. I expect nothing. But if I am wrong that would be nice.
Great comment fast. There it is. Face/off from the madness.
There’s no such thing as ‘restoring the soil’. If we are growing crops on the soil we are depleting it. It’s just a question of how fast before it becomes useless.
That’s not right! I think it was
F. H. King: Farmers of Forty Centuries, or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan, 1911
who mentioned this aspect first in the West.
Our ancestors in Asia as much as in Latinoamerica (Tera Preta) knew the secret: The main challenge is to keep up phosphate levels. That is only possible by using manure and human feces. To prevent illness it needs to be composted (heat rotten).
The rest is simple: charcoal to keep nutrients in the ground, earth worms and microorganisms to decompose biomass at place and free minerals from rock, plus intelligent crop rotation for a lot of reasons.
Of course, if we insist on stupid habits we will face the results of stupid habits, no need for discussion. But the knowledge is there.
The consequence though is that food production must be not only regional but in the garden behind the house to reduce transport of workers and crops and keep storage, hygiene and packaging necessities small. That means urban areas cannot exceed 50.000 or maybe 100.000 people. These data are historically confirmed, see Roman Reich or Amazon basin.
There is definitely room for a lot of hunans to live on earth! Our ancestors have proven it. We are the proof! Inuits have been living in the eternal ice!
If our technology and way of life depends on oil and oil is depleted, there is no way to keep up our way of life. We have to adapt to what is possible. There is no other way!
It is a problem of the mindset, not of biology!
Lets say it like this: if one insists on bumping their head against the wall there will always be headache and brain damage. If you turn around there is a wonderful garden to stroll in. Your decision!
For me (as an atheist) this is a spritual thing. It means not only to trust in God but also to accept God as king. Not what some priests tell you to finance their Mercedes.
Our ancestors in Asia as much as in Latinoamerica (Tera Preta) knew the secret: The main challenge is to keep up phosphate levels. That is only possible by using manure and human feces. To prevent illness it needs to be composted (heat rotten).
Won’t work long term. Nothing will. You cannot beat entropy.
Well said, Ed.
The 12th and 13th centuries were rather energetic and exciting, and produced a remarkable flowering of culture and architecture: witness the abbeys, cathedrals, music, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts.
Cambridge, laid out in 915 after defeating the Vikings, , was a flourishing inland port surrounded by rich farmland and fens full of wild game, in the very wealthy kingdom of England. The mayor had a handsome stone house, still standing and in use.
The students when they came settled mostly on the boggy ground, but later pushed out the townspeople to build the Colleges on prime land. At first they lived in just the same rooms as their tutors, sleeping on the floor. Central facilities were minimal,
There wasn’t much wood though, and the woodcutters serving the town worked in an ancient wood 3 miles to the west, where I now go almost every day to do the same thing with axe, saw and billhook. Some of the trees date from the 15th century; a place full of ghosts, Roman, Saxon and Viking……
The firewood shortage seems to have affected much of the country as early as the 1200s.
We also have a record of the people of Newcastle being given a royal dispensation to burn coal in their fireplaces due to lack of wood.
Currently listening to https://www.audible.com/pd/Black-Gold-Audiobook/0008128375
Population expanded greatly in the 1100’s, I believe?
When the Black Death killed off so many, the lord of the manor here reduced the land under cultivation and planted hazel which could be harvested regularly, as well as trees for timber. This pattern obtained even after the population grew again.
Once you learn how to read the woodland it’s quite fascinating! The old ditches and banks are highly evocative, and the distribution of species in what was a highly managed environment.
i wish i could shake off that Breughel-esque image
Population expanded greatly in the 1100’s, I believe?
New heavy ploughs using farmhorses rather then oxen were coming into use.
This meant previously non arable heavy clay soils could be used to grow crops. More forests were cleared and the population boomed.
I’d say; draw some lines on a rock and hope someone pays for it 3000 years from now. Include some titties.
If there is a miracle and some survive… there won’t be any OFWers in that group — it’s a young brutes game.
I also think that I have at most 30 years (I’m 68) but as society breaks down, that might be less, especially if I become ill or injured. I’m sure the “rise back up” will happen, if humans survive for a few more centuries, but, of course, it all depends on what is meant by “rise back up”. We’ve mistaken destruction of the planet for progress and I doubt future humans would see the kinds of technology that we have now, or at least not many of them. But no-one knows the future or what the destruction has done for our long term health.
Mike,
How would you relate the Chicxulub crater even to progress? A plus or a minus? Life went on, changed, but different. Certainly this event maker current destruction of the planet seem mild in comparison.
Dennis L.
mike – how many shots of the rat juice have you had?
Are you competing with norm dunc to see who can take the most spike and still live?
If we can complete the 6B Cull by filtering out the MORE-ONS who injected the rat juice… and someone has worked out how to go BAU Lite … then we get 30 years.
I don’t think you survive the Cull though mike – we told you not to inject that rat juice.
We’ll think of you fondly during the 30 years.. not as fondly as Robert of course but still … I am sure your name will come up from time to time
How to rise back up?
First step of planning will be to realize what is possible and what isnt possible.
A grid = not possible
Transportation = not possible
Rare earth minerals = not possible
Large scale agriculture = not possible
Profits = not possible
Global Managerial Class = not possible
Within these possibilities.. almost everything will change.
First the collapse will be as bad as having 30x WWII..
Then..
Well.. after that.. we need new systems in place. In the 1200 and 1300s we had the catholic church, we had Feodalism and we had Monarchy.. in the 1700 and 1800s we had science, we had nation states and we had free market economies.. the change required after the coming collapse is as big of a leap as we did from the middle ages to modernity.. all the systems and structures we are currently using.. will be useless
Probably the first order of business will be to realize = The Global Managerial class is completely useless and outdated.. when we start to plan and implement structures completely sidestepping the Global Managerial Class.. well then.. we are on the right path..
Darn… and I am just to start an MBA.
I have no vax can I fly into your country? Please let me know. Thanks.
You have a rat juice rant obsession, Eddy. I am sorry, someone has to tell you. The Elders have managed to distract you. The vaxx damage is already done. The cubes have fallen. There might be a “second pandemic” we have to cope with. But this is NOT our challenge!
The challage is to keep the knowledge our kids and grandkids need to build up an environment they can survive in.
If our kids read 1 mio anti-vaxx posts of Eddy, what will they have learned that enables them to survive in a post-oil world?
Want to convince the vaxxers? The damage is already done. The charlatans have won. I wish everybody to have gotten a placebo or harmless batch and be strong enough to compensate damage.
You have it all wrong – I want more of them to inject the rat juice…
We have not reached the 6B target for The Cull.
If we don’t then that will reduce our BAU Lite phase…. I want 30 more years
Please encourage more of them to inject the juice…
Reuters “fact check”
Here is the Reuters “fact check” for you to compare how THEY interpreted the VAERS data.
Well…. they didn’t. Can you believe that? VAERS is the official US government adverse event reporting system that they spend $100M or more a year to maintain and the experts don’t even look at it?!?!
According to the experts contacted by Reuters there is absolutely no evidence that the COVID vaccines cause SPS:
Newsome, also Associate Professor of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, echoed this: “The short answer is, there is no data or evidence to suggest that the COVID-19 vaccine causes Stiff Person Syndrome. This is also the case for other vaccines.”
Wow. Contradicted by the evidence in plain sight. These experts cannot explain the data above. They don’t even mention it. If they had mentioned it and gave a reason to dismiss it, I’d listen to their reason. But to gaslight Reuters with false statements about data “not existing” when it is in plain sight, that’s downright unethical. Newsome should avoid commenting in areas where he lacks competency.
Reuters never contacted me on their fact check because THEY NEVER CONTACT ANYONE on our side to dispute their experts.
So these “fact checks” are ALWAYS one-sided (at least all the ones I’ve ever read). Have you noticed that? They are propaganda pieces. They should be researching the evidence on both sides and then presenting a conclusion. Instead they only call experts who agree with the government narrative. That’s NOT fact checking.
One other thing. The fact check said that SPS was an auto-immune disease:
The exact cause of this rare condition, which affects “only about one or two in a million people” according to John Hopkins Medicine (here), remains unknown, but it has been commonly associated with an autoimmune reaction…
Hello…..!!!! There is GOBS of evidence COVID vaccines cause auto-immune diseases. How do you think the people died in the Schwab study for example? It’s crystal clear. Those patients died because the immune system attacked their heart. That’s called auto-immunity. I can’t believe the “experts” Reuters contacts are so brain-dead that they don’t even understand the basics about the COVID vaccine. Willful blindness as Dr. Aseem Malhotra would say.
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/celine-dion-was-vaccinated-and-was
Hey norm … can you read this for us?
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc88acee6-4ada-4b30-b555-d9c40f594e46_1170x2532.png
Nothing can be trusted. Nothing.
I trust you Fast.
I don’t. Even my dog starts barking when i reach His comments section.
I had hoped to take over Fasts house when he checks out with super fentanyl. But on second thought it will likely be Maori land. Just in case Fast please PM me with the location of the spare keys in the yard and the address. If you are considering any upgrades please get to them sooner rather than latter. Thanks your friend Ed.
Ed,
Is there a primitive culture which has ever survived contact with and advance one?
I don’t know, but my guess the primitive one has a short future after first contact.
Again, fabric of the universe, it is the way things are. Some times one has to super nova a star to make a little iron so one can make a good cannon.
Dennis L.
In “Collapse”, Jared Diamond tells the story of the Vikings in Greenland after the cold had come back. A clearly superiour culture with the knowledge of maritime navigation and the processing of iron but not adapted to the eternal ice. The Inuits, called Skraelings, that means demons, by their Viking neighbours, survived, the Vikings did not.
the vikings were immigrants, the inuit were long term residents
who knows—it may be that the original peoples of the americas might survive in the long term, while the immigrants might not
All cultures contacted by Europeans were wiped out by Europeans’ diseases like smallpox
Your dog should be commended for recognizing the presence of greatness.
All hail .. Fast Eddy.
BTW Fast has been busy freaking out the Substackers with commentary explaining why UEP is necessary. Very contrarian. It upsets people when you tell them 8B is too many and that it’s about time someone did something about this
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2340,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc88acee6-4ada-4b30-b555-d9c40f594e46_1170x2532.png
While accepting your opinion, no mention is made that paradigm shift is required in our lifestyle, huge reduction in consumerism …which western societies have no stomach for.
Not to worry, Mother Nature will take care of it. Mother Nature does not care how people feel about it.
Yes, Ed. We are part of the fabric of the universe and all is proceeding as it should.
Dennis L.
Well, it is proceeding more or less as the demiurge would prefer at least.
I posit that this reality is a similacrum conceived of, and constructed by a lesser god. A rather nasty one(s).
That seems consistent with what science has/is objectively discovering. The other alternative is that we ourselves have created this disastrous shitshow as a gaming tool to solve some dilemma.
Given that there really is solid evidence of relatively advanced civilizations in deep ( 12,000 bp and older) time and that they were smashed back into old Stone Age tech multiple times….is it not reasonable to entertain that this go around is simply the “ oil energy” simulation? It will result in unimaginable levels of suffering now as the populations implode ( does anyone really believe that human populations are still expanding,…. they are not).
The demonic entities managing this place will feed with wild abandon on the billions of souls entering the lower realms.
Don’t go to the light…..it’s probably a scam.
Of course I have no idea what lies in the outer realms.
I am afraid what is needed is more than a reduction in consumerism. It is more like a reduction in population. This is why the conflict arises.
More happy news!
Seems Celine is not a ‘Chose One’ hahahaha
Celine Dion was disabled from a KNOWN SIDE EFFECT of the COVID vaccine (99.6% certainty)
US government data shows it is 99.6% likely that Celine Dion got her Stiff Person Syndrome from the COVID vaccine. She can’t sue because of the liability protection.
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/celine-dion-was-vaccinated-and-was
Here we go.
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, has adopted a strategy that big pharma has waived its right to immunity for damages caused by the vaccines because they fraudulently mislead, deceived, through lying by ommission the known adverse effects of the vaccines.
Had the vaccines been properly tested and within a reasonable chance of medical probability found to have no obvious side effects, then the immunity granted under the emergency utilization act might have been justified for unexpected vaccine induced injuries.
But since these lethal side effects were known well in advance by big pharma, plus the low lethality of letting COVID run its natural course, plus the availability of effective and safe Ivermectin/HCQ which disqualify vaccines under EUA, then big phama can no longer claim immunity.
Of course, this will never happen.
Nor will the SCOTUS take up the case of the 2020 election fraud.
In a similar approach, the lawsuit before the SCOTUS alleges that Congress/authorities failed to investigate concerns that the 2020 election had been rigged. This is different than simply making an outright allegation of fraud. If the SCOTUS were to rule favorably, then this would be the first step- bringing the evidence before a court, instead of the outrageous opinion that, “we the SCOTUS find no evidence of election fraud.”
But that’s because the Courts would not look at it. Of course you won’t find it if you don’t look for it.
All facts “proven in a court of law through jury trial” (Yeah, yeah. That’s a bunch of politically correct BS I know) originate as a simple allegation- a statement without proof.
But as I wrote in my memoirs, this is tantamount to abuse of summary judgment. Summary judgment is to be awarded by a court in a civil action when it is clear that one party can not possibly prevail, and to terminate litigation BEFORE trial. Summary judgment is abused when it is used to block a plaintiff from introducing his evidence.
Directed verdict is awarded to one party DURING or at the conclusion of a trial when the court finds that one party can not win its case.
(I’m no lawyer, but “even a dog can tell the difference from being tripped over and being kicked” – (Oliver Wendall Holmes.)
Meanwhile my classmate from college, a lawyer, I discovered had written a book called “Summary Judgment.” All very well written, annotated, edited, reviewed, promoted with all the regalia within his legal community- except that Summary Judgment as stated earlier applies to civil law, whereas his book was about criminal law and blatant virtue signaling and self promotion. In stark contrast, mine was written straight from the hip from memory, with the disadvantage of no reviewers, the publisher not allowing me to cite the statutes, people, jurisdictions, depositions and as a layman. It had to be written as “fiction” per Archway.
Fiction my ass. Of course, all my posts on Google Reviews and Facebook were shadowbanned. This is the facade the legal community throws up. I’ll be writing my 3* review of my classmates book in a month or so on Amazon.
And what happens to the lawyers who represented this criminal defendant? Nothing. We are again left with Caveat Emptor. Nothing will happen to lawyers for legal malpractice. In my classmate’ book the lead defense attorney was representing a client while impaired by alcohol and fell well below even the minimal standrard of legal representation. No mention in the post epilog chapter “Where are they now.”? This lawyer still practiced with no consequences.
Actually, the only act upon which a State Bar Association or the legal system seems to act is mishandling clients funds or violating his custodial obligations, or like Michael Avenatti who was embezzling his clients. Money. But lawyers are held to standards of actual legal representation.
There has to be some (fake) dissent – otherwise people start thinking it’s a North Korean election
I found this article about Ron DeSantis’ actions with respect to big Pharma:
https://news.wfsu.org/state-news/2022-12-14/gov-desantis-seeks-a-grand-jury-investigation-into-covid-19-vaccines-in-florida
It says,
It later says:
X-Files had it right? The ability to depopulate the environment, by tampering with our DNA, genome; is it corporate greed? I think it is the take over of America as seen here! This was the move!
Scully and Mulder told us? Did the X-Files, this episode tell us what was coming? “It is only a matter of time before you get sick”; to kill everyone but the chosen by tampering with our DNA
https://palexander.substack.com/p/the-ability-to-depopulate-the-environment
Culling the Stoo-pid!
The Covid pandemic revealed one new phenomenon that was not there 20 years ago: the people are fed up with the complexity of the healthcare system that keeps them alive. Facing the new virus, they started to believe in simple solutions that, of course, do not work.
It is like turning away from science to witchcraft.
There is no such thing as return to the nature, as the humans are not a part of the nature.
Every time we encounter the nature, we are more and more distant from it.
The crisis of the religious beliefs is based upon the fact that the human world is not created by a god. The human world is created by the humans using the energy. When the energy supply dwindles, the human world collapses and nature prevails…
That is why the Christianity prevailed over paganism, as there are no nature gods that protect the people. Love your neighbor means that you create the human world.
MG, humans are a part of nature but that can be in two different forms.
1) humans with opposable thumbs and tools and structures and thinking and planning who can make life a paradise on Earth.
2) humans without tools, structures, thinking and planning for whom life is mean, short, and brutish (Hobbes).
The humans can not escape the genetic mutations. The human species evolves. The humans are escaping nature and using more and more energy in order to escape this process of genetic mutations and preserve themselves as species.
any mutation in process takes hundreds of thousands of years–millions even
a process far too slow to allow any influence by mere human ‘ingenuity’
We’ve mutated into obese MORE-ONS addicted to social media
I don’t buy into the Hobbes thing..
But there is another option – which is what we have — it involves MORE-ONS whose goal in life is to be an influencer… who upload photos of the boobs and their flacid bouncing bellies to the interweb … who suck on super sized cola …
What we have is a disgrace. Compared to the Hobbes-man:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jCbZqcdhReA/UYFo1CbOp3I/AAAAAAAACPo/GxJT5yFhX2E/s1600/hunter_gatherer_by_Blepharopsis.jpg
Agree, native Americans were handsome and fit unlike the lazy slobs for the five eyes nations.
Photos of America in the early twentieth century show a much different human; something changed.
We are part of the fabric of the universe, things will revert as they are meant to be. Control is an illusion, temporary at best.
Still it is a glorious universe with much yet to be revealed.
Dennis L.
High Fructose Corn Syruo
High Alcohol Corn Likker is the only cure for diabetes.
I read there was an attempted coup in German. They wanted to restore the monarchy of 1871. Could it be that in times of contraction a paternal central government can adapt to change better than government by money?
Long live the King ( of Deutschland ).
Free Scotland from the Norman leaches.
This article is what BBC is reporting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63885028
A related BBC story on the same page is this:
This starts to remind a person of the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in Michigan, in the US. Of course, it is related to “pandemic disinformation online.”
https://www.rt.com/news/567819-germany-police-raid-suspected-coup/
“Authorities have detained 25 people, including ex-police and military personnel, who allegedly wanted to reinstate a monarchy”
“They are suspected of conspiring to depose the current government in Berlin by force, and reinstate a regime modeled on the German Reich of 1871.”
Thank you for telling the truth. The only quibble I have is that I do not believe that the global warming believers secretly think fossil fuels are running out, including the leaders. I think it is dumb luck.
I don’t think I said that global warming believers secretly believe fossil fuels are running out.
The world’s self-organizing system works strangely. It picks approaches that seem to appeal to many different people for different reasons.
“Peak oil” believers have been around for a long time. Politicians want to please both peak oil believers and those concerned about climate change. The path chosen seems to please both, especially if a person doesn’t look closely at how poorly renewables really work.
The truth is so precious is has to be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies…. I am quoting Leo Strauss again. This was his way of saying ‘self-organising system’.
You all know that the truth can’t be ascertained. It is simply what’s left after we cut away all the ‘crap’….like all the marble chips that surrounded Michangelo’s David. All this detritus is what Strauss calls a ‘bodyguard of lies’.
Whatever the true nature of Man is, it can’t be known or shown. On the surface we see a ‘self-organising system’.
“Peak oil is nowhere is sight.
The world will use MORE oil, not less.” ?
https://twitter.com/BrianGitt/status/1603053986226978817?s=20&t=6zvDBrPwq3nO1Sh0hyOg0A
According to this site, the peak of production (so far) was in November 2018. https://ycharts.com/indicators/world_crude_oil_production
Neither peak oil nor climate change is a religious problem which needs believers. You just have to look at statistics
What is a “global warming believer”? The data show that the earth’s surface temperature has been warming long term. There is no need to believe it, it’s simply a fact.
It is part of a natural cycle. Climate cannot stay the same on a finite earth.
Regardless of so-called cycles (no-one has shown that this is just a cycle) the notion that to accept actual data one needs to have a belief system is, well, bizarre. Do you or Richard have any evidence that the earth’s surface temperature has not been warming for decades, at least?
https://xkcd.com/1732/
hahahahahaahahahahaha
mike ‘booster king’ roberts says this is fact hahaha
It ain’t very warm down here … and it’s summer hahahaha
Maybe in Clown World it’s warm?
The end of World War II was botched
From which all these woes began
The Americans would easily have taken Berlin on April 16, 1945, but Eisenhower halted Gen SImpson who was leading the spearhead to the Spree.
A lot of Americans praised this decision since it saved perhaps 5,000 American lives, but because of this extremely short-sided decision, USSR/Russia gained the title of the Victor of World War 2, which probably held the country together after 1991
Without that title, Russia would have fractured into more civil wars in the 1990s, probably preventing all the troubles the world is facing now.
5,000 working class, redneck and hillbilly lives mourned by very few people outside of their families. Ike basically bartered the future of world for these probably worthless lives, who were more than made up by the 40,000 deaths in Korea, a place few Americans heard and cared about and in my opinion would have been much better to be left to the communists.
at the end of ww2, ike wanted to bring home as many live young men as possible.
i don’t think anyone can ‘backdate’ history, then put out a definite ‘forward’ take on it.
‘all the troubles the world is facing now’ can be laid almost exclusivly on the problem of lack of cheap surplus energy.
everything subverts to that, even though we might look back and deny it in retrospect.
in 1945, cheap fuel had won the war—the USA wanted to get back to peace, an live the ‘american dream’
no one could imagine that that would last just 30 years, to 1970. And that the USA would slide into oil deficit and start wars across the middle east.
As part of the denial of it
Your Alternative histories are interesting. Wasn’t a German victory more likely to result in ‘new higher plateau’ for mankind? Surely they wouldn’t have let equity for all to drain the resources.
But I guess no matter the pathway the end result is kind of the same in terms of life after oil.
Still wondering about chucky Fitz’s significance
the german victory would have meant a better lifestyle for the master race—according to Mel Brooks.
short term result of that would have meant slavery and servitude for almost everyone else
but eventually that would have led to conflict with the Japanese—over access to oil, just like now, just different antagonists thats all.
none of the conflicting powers at that time had factored in what would happen post peak oil.
Lol, was going to say if I could write it would be. “A spring time for Hitler and Germany(hell for the rest)” Kulm thinks that “next level” can be reached if not for the unwashed masses but it is they who support all infrastructure to get to next level. Religious friends can’t comprehend a no afterlife. Yep it’s a cruel joke for both these groups.
Thanks for the marvellous essentiality and significance of your demonstration. It is very simply described when you take into account the complexity and the lifespan of the global dynamics you demonstrate.
I agree with you, our societal systems are rapidly heading toward bifurcation points that could lead to chaos if they’re not managed.
For me, it implicates that the actual frame of reference of the Market Economy that I would describe has the: “Search of growth in a context of competition” will have to be replaced by a new frame of reference of some Necessity Economy to be created that could be something like the: “Search of consolidation in a context of collaboration”. It means nothing less than a metamorphosis of the configuration of our actual systems toward a new form of democracy closely linked with a new form of economy,
Like you, I think, I am convinced that, if we don’t rapidly update the global socio-economic configuration of our societies, we won’t be able to protect the remaining of the democracy and we will rapidly evolve toward different forms of autocracy and planned economy.
It would be a big leap backward, something like the fortress scenario developed by the Global Scenarios Groups in the 90s.
Thanks for your comments. I am afraid the economy will need to move toward simplification, rather than added complexity. There will need to be more people per home, for example. There will also need to be fewer people.
I expect that the sizes of “countries” will need to get smaller. We know that the central government of the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. I expect that a similar situation will occur in many other place. The European Union may not last long, for example.
I am afraid that ultimately, it will be a great leap backward, however.
Old man remembering. The fifties were a wonderful time, the ten commandments were still followed, God was present, lives were sane even when not perfect.
As I have said many times, I lived in a three generation home, it was not perfect, but on the whole it worked well.
For me, we have become too involved in the emotional, all aspects are now in extremis; sex is an example, there are only so many ways one can stand on one’s head.
Dennis L.
They are managing it … they can’t refill the oil fields… so instead they are exterminating us.
Fast,
Perhaps the fabric of the universe is changing the seating arrangements. Man can divert the course of life, but I don’t think much can ultimately be changed.
Dennis L.
we maybe look at the problem from a slightly skewed perspective.
for as long as ‘humankind’ has existed as a ‘defined species’, we have used energy resources that were readily available.
ie—we only had to concern ourselves with the business of using it, whether that was roots and grains, animal flesh, trees–and subsequently fossil fuels.
Those ‘energy sources’ were just ‘available’. we didn’t have to worry if they actually ‘existed’.
Now the position has shifted.
We find ourselves with insufficient energy from natural sources to support the lifestyle that we now see as our ‘entitlement’. Despite that, we resort to ‘denial’ of the truth of it. (MAGA has been a manifestation of that) The same applies everywhere.
There is insufficient energy left to Make America Great Again. (or anywhere else)
So politicians keep promoting the idea that ‘renewables’ will replace those ‘old’ energies. Most of them know they can’t. But that doesn’t buy votes.
We have reached the stage where the production of energy (of itself) is our prime industrial function, rather than just using energy resources that have always been readiliy available. Hence wind turbines and solar panels. These are far too diffuse to be of any use in the long run.
So we find ourselves having to build more and more ‘devices’ to try to keep up with demand, soon we will reach the point where ‘energy production’ becomes an end in itself, and there will be nothing left with which to provide our expected lifestyle.
Norman there are several kinds of MAGA.
1) those who do no think deeply and do not ask how will we do that (return to the prosperity of 50 years ago). This is the majority they think the evil (fill in the blank) have caused our poverty and if we can just throw them off we will recover our standard of living.
2) those who are not educated in the science and engineering who think wiz bang new tech will restore the prosperity of the past.
3) those who know we can not return to the level of the past but think making an effort to improve our lot will get us some level of improvement. Better than the preachers of nihilism and insanity.
call it nihilism by all means.
but the USA was stitched together with cheap surplus fuels.
Without those cheap fuels the USA will come apart at the seams, and react violently to that.
(part of the denial)
Yes, there will be enlightened people trying to fix things. Unfortnutely they will be swept away by the violent deniers.
Norman, the US is held together by money printing in Washington DC. Money for military pensions, federal employee pensions, social security, medicare and loans to states to pay their pension obligations that they do not have the money to pay. If the central government stops sending money we will all stop listen to the central government.
America is not as violent as some many imagine. The state of New York will not attack the state of Maine. Maine can have its fish and trees to make toilet. New York can have its apples and dairy. There will be trade but no civil war. The state of Arizona can have its ??? nothing and the state of New York will just ignore Arizona.
Ed
i can only disagree, for what it’s worth
no nation has ever avoided collapse by printing money long term–this is a matter of record.
governments require a viable tax base
a viable tax base cannot be supported without surplus energy input.
Money printing cannot ignore that. This why crypto money must ultimately fail; the value of money cannot be just what someone says it is.
If it could, money could be printed on rolls and hung in public rest rooms.
Norman,
I don’t think money matters much; it is the people their beliefs, their intelligence and willingness to work together.
All the stuff was here for the original Americans, they didn’t do much with it; some people with funny pointed hats arrived and everything changed.
Money is always what someone says it is, many accept “money” for things of value, mostly it is the immediacy or deferred gratification.
Dennis L.
money is, and always has been, a token of energy exchange.
gold was the prime medium, because it was the one available element that did not decay over time
First nations people didn’t ‘exchange energy’ on a massive scale as we do, (or did) so money had no place in their daily lives.
So they used gold purely as decoration. Gold wasn’t wealth in our context.
When the white man showed up—gold to them meant wealth–ie you could exchange it for energy inputs. We still function in the same way.
I agree in the long run printing money fails. Just waiting for the world to wake up and stop taking FRNs.
Yes – norm is still alive!
3 more weeks.. 3 more weeks… 3 more weeks!!!
Very detailed analysis as usual, thanks! I look forward to your posts.
It seems that when we reach a plateau in energy extraction (or for that matter any limited resource – water comes to mind) the first effort is to stretch the energy available by means of efficiency and technology. This phase provides a cushion and allows the world to continue operating and growing. I take water as example, water is scarce in the western US, yet the western population keeps on growing, because we have tapped all sources and then added efficiency to stretch the supply. This efficiency likely makes the problem of depletion worse, because the 2nd stage allows societies to continue growing and when the depletion begins, the fall is that much larger. We now enter the era of war, where energy assets will be fought over and conquered in order to prolong what we consider the “normal” way of life
I agree. Sort of like Jevon’s paradox.
How good is this?
How great is this!
hahahahahahahhaha…
I am hoping we get a player dropping dead in the World Cup Final
Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha collapses after heart attack, on life support as death rumours flood social media
The Thailand Royal family has announced that Princess Bajrakitiyabha, 44, has ‘lost consciousness’, even as rumours of her death flood social media. The Thai royal, who is next in line to the throne, was walking her dogs in Khao Yai national park on December 14, when she reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest.
Reports say that CPR was carried out for over an hour, but it was not successful. Princess Bajrakitiyabha Narendira Debyavati was flown to Bangkok and is being kept on ECMO machine, say reports, which means she is being artificially kept alive.
A royal statement claims that the Princess lost consciousness on Wednesday, but doesn’t confirm whether she’s dead.
https://www.dailyo.in/news/thailand-royal-family-says-princess-bajrakitiyabha-lost-consciousness-amid-death-rumours-38267
I posted a comment but it never showed up. ???
I need to approve the first comment of any new commenter. If you look, your comment is now up.
Ok, I didn’t know that. 🙂
I tend to agree with you that the MSM and politicians focus on climate change because it’s easier to be presented as a problem that can be fixed. They ignore peak oil and peak other resources because the only viable solution to those problems is massive reduction of the population. Obviously, that’s not a popular idea. Climate change IS a genuine and very serious issue, however, as we have seen just this year with droughts, floods, fires, and heatwaves that are devastating food supplies. Next year that crunch will be felt more acutely, I suspect. Still, it’s easier to sell the idea of new technology and conservation as ways to ameliorate climate change. Whether or not those are all just pipe dreams is moot from a marketing perspective.
Educators need projects for their students to work on. Potentially solvable problems are very popular with them. It is hard to convince a textbook manufacturer to put out a text saying, “The end is at hand, and there is little that we seem to be able to do about it.”
Thanks Gail, for the new post. It’s hard to make long-term plans when you know about the discussion here on OFW.
I agree.
Work hard on short term plans because those you can better control.
Also, keep up relationships with family members and friends. Stay close geographically, if you can. You may be able to help each other.
I wonder what effect imminent demographic collapse will have on the global economy? China, Russia and Europe are not replacing their populations, so when the boomers pass away within 10 – 15 years, world population will shrink dramatically. Not only will the 90% not be able to afford higher priced commodities, most of them won’t exist. Can fossil fuel production, and thus industrial civilization, survive with a much lower world population? I think it can in certain regions with ample resources within easy reach and an intact social inheritance of technical education and rule of law. But only if the fabric of society has not been too disrupted by war or climate change.
The issue I see is that with demographic collapse, many jobs disappear. There is no point in training new teachers, for example, if there will be many new students. There will be no point in building new stores or schools or homes.
There will still be a need to keep up roads and infrastructure, but that will become increasingly difficult. Broken supply lines will be an increasing problem.
The balance between retirees and workers is likely to get way out of line, the way the economy is structured today.
We know that some groups made it through previous bottlenecks, including ice ages, so I expect that there will be some survivors. But overhead costs will tend to become too high for the system, I am afraid. Keeping up food production will also be an issue.
Keep in mind they made it through because they knew how to deal with hardship — they had not kicked out all the rungs on the ladder.
And there were no spent fuel ponds nor had they destroyed the soil with chemical inputs
they key factors, as i see it, with any groups that made it through ‘previous bottlenecks’, were
1—- they had no concept of any natural forces at work–a natural disaster might have been global, but to a group of survivors, their only concept was of an area maybe 100m in circumference–their world was almost certainly flat.
and 2–they had no knowledge of anything different or things they had ‘lost’.
they just got on with their lives–or died. There was no collective memory of flight, or wheels or medicines and such.—hence no denial of reasons or search for solutions.
Catastrophe would just be displeasure of the gods or somesuch.
I think you are right. They also knew a whole lot of people died from natural causes. It was no great surprise when someone died.
What happens to high input western agriculture.
Next year,…. in 5 years,…..in 15 years?
“The balance between retirees and workers”
Sigh. Don’t know it if will happen soon, but from what I hear from the life extension people, the Chinese are after treatments to crank people’s ages back.
There is actually substantial progress in this area.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-022-00317-6
Keith
No, demographics and population momentum will still drive world population past 10-11 billion, mostly in Africa. But declining populations in developed countries are already causing many countries to pay women to have more children, as the tax base and old age support is evaporating.
I have been closely following wind & solar PV’s contribution to our global energy mix since 2004. At that time, it was estimated that the combined contribution was about .5%. Today, after nearly two decades of massive growth in installed capacity, they still have garnered only 2.3% of our primary energy pie–REN21 Renewables 2022 Global Status Report. According to the IEA, renewables are only meeting 25% of new energy demand and are failing to address the two largest fossil fuel consumers: heat/AC (50%) and transportation (30%).
The data you are looking at is IEA. As I point out in my post, the IEA gives a less generous way of counting the benefit of the contribution of wind and solar than BP’s. I think IEA is correct.
I think the other things the report provides is “Added Generation Capacity.” Part of what you are seeing is way too little new generation on the part of other providers. Also, the new generation added by wind and solar is very inefficient generation. It really doesn’t add much energy (especially with IEAs accounting). Wind, especially, doesn’t last very long either. Both types of generation tend to be less long-lived than hydro, nuclear, and fossil fuels.
Does that mean that the end game is deflation and not Hyperinflation?
No. Too low demand can play out as either deflation of hyperinflation.
At some point when I was writing this, I thought about including this point, but the post was getting awfully long as it was.
I assume it will be determined by how central banks/governments respond.
Right. It may vary by part of the world.
Gail,
TM has a post regarding inflation/deflation and actual cash flow on investments. Basically, wealth is priced at the margin, an individual can liquidate at a profit, but the group cannot as assets are producing declining cash flows.
I see this in farmland, the stuff does not produce enough “stuff” to carry it cost, it is valued on what it will be worth. That is mostly true until it isn’t, the 1930’s and the 1980’s are an example.
I am the optimist but it can be a long time between troughs, or periods of wants compared to periods of plenty.
Is the universe itself inflationary or deflationary? I don’t know, long time between troughs.
Dennis L.
Step away from the computer. You are only ruining your mental health!
The equivalent of saying ‘bury you head in the sand’ which is what 99% of people are doing – hence our current predicament
I thought it was the actions of the 1% that is the true cause of our predicament?
Confusing.
The computer screens are, ironically, where humans go to bury their heads.
Step away.
The actions of the 1% are neither here nor there. Politics doesn’t matter either.
The cations of the 1% are most definitely Italy “here,” as in on earth. Same , for a much proportional extent, for the poor 99%.
My mental health is excellent – I need a computer and the internet to follow the process of human extinction as it plays out — I embrace human extinction.
Vile species
The folks in the white coats do agree that you are doing better, Fast E., but they still want you to apologize to Norman.
in another life
noooooo
eddy has nothing to apologise for
his ranting delusions reveal only his own inadequacies (on every level) and obsessions
nothing to do with me—other than passing amusement (or was it passing wind)?
You are absolutely correct, as is your wont, but I would have thought that the men in the white coats would have informed you, as the idee fixe of this stalker, that this is apology is a part of his treatment plan.
no
the men in white coats let me out on licence years ago–after a probation period of not screaming abuse at passers by from a soapbox in our local market place, i now have a certificate signed by 2 eminent doctors to say i am no longer a menace to society.
unfortunately—society is still a menace to me.
am working on that—i have no wish to be incarcerated again—they might make me share a padded cell with eddy.
Greetings to the Macro-futilists!
Bernie rides his bike on the same route everyday presumably to meditate on why he abstained from voting on a key anti-surveillance amendment in 2020.
‘In many ways, the narrative presented by MSM is less frightening to the public than a narrative in which fuels are already being stretched too thin.’
I do believe that even as the Titanic was sinking the passengers held on to the narrative of ‘unsinkable’. Trust the Captain, even after he hit an iceberg!
Similarly with the financial system, the narrative will hold that the Fed Res has it all under control; experts don’t you know!
Big Pharma; safe and effective. They will defend the narrative until the end because they are all in on this one. Trust the experts.
Climate change; trust the ‘selected’ experts and their choreographed narrative.
Hope pulls the fools forward, just like Boxer and clover, the naive horses in Animal Farm.
Merry times at the checkout should get us through a few more months.
Some years after GFC I mentioned to someone that we were on borrowed time…
They scoffed at the idea that the global economy could collapse into Mad Max and insisted ‘they’ would never allow this – ‘the’ would always do something to stop that from happening.
‘they’ are doing something – they are exterminating us prior to the collapse…
I suspect that’s not what he had in mind!
FE,
As I recall the GFC was in part a liquidity crisis, housing is now “more valuable” than then, the asset is worth more than the liability. Stock market is up, gold is up. Those who bet on failure lost a significant portion of their lives to doom.
I take considerable comfort in investing when the world is going to end, if it does, what is lost?
We become too wrapped up in what we buy to define us, take it all away and we are sill who we were and there is still tomorrow.
Many years ago, sitting at an eight top in the men’s grill of my country club, I listened to a litany of health complaints by the heavy hitters. I resigned a few weeks later, what they had may have been contagious.
Dennis L.
What is lost?
What is lost is all the fun you could have had blowing that $$$ instead of ‘investing’ it
Investing assumes there is a future… hahaha… sheesh….
FE,
The greatest thrills I have had in life were the times after much effort and fear of failure things worked out. It was brief but well worth the sacrifice of the present.
There is only so much one can do with metaphorical “sex.” After a bit the thrill is very self limiting, personally know nothing about drugs, a bit about sex.
Given a choice, another 20 IQ points would be nice, able to conquer new heights not presently accessible. No harm in trying though.
So far, there has always been a future, the trend is your friend.
Dennis L.
You summarize the situation quite well!
I think any economic growth the world has experienced since 2008 is about to be wiped out. This is because it was not real growth. Already $2T in crypto has evaporated. Similar figures in stocks, and soon housing. Apart from the GFC, 2008 is approximately when easily extractable oil seems to have peaked
I say , around 1960
Or 1971 when we went off the gold standard and debt to GDP soared.
The Webb space telescope is an incredible achievement. It has not evaporated.
When starship launches, “stuff” will become easily accessible, refining energy is as close as the sun. Give raw stuff a nudge, rinse and repeat and soon on has an endless supply of refined stuff coming in a line defined by gravity.
Along with the end of growth, 300 years of Anglo-American dominance, starting from the battle of Blenheim, also ends.
I have written many times about how it could be otherwise. Some people thought it was ‘over the top’, but I am not changing my worldview, drilled to me for generations.
The denizens of the Five Eyes won’t like what will happen from now on.
Some people still think USA is #1. USA is #1 on useless brains, useless talents and useless IQs. All these ‘organization ability’ , very abundant in Imperial China, did not save them from the ravages of 19th century and it will be same for the Five Eyes in the 2020s.
Kul,
Don’t write off the US so easily, one only needs a few good ideas. Webb ST and SpaceX are pretty impressive, even Tesla has some merits.
Progress is at the margin, it requires great volume to give that margin; incredible things can be accomplished with the margin.
Dennis L.
Thank you for the new post.
The world cycle of 300 years, from around 1700 , is ending and the age of growth has ended.
A lot of people are still delusional but reality will be harsh.
Kul,
Reality is aways harsh, too much reality leads to depression. Sex can be a very good escape from reality.
Dennis L.
people could soon do that with a new Duracell sodium ion battery powered rabbit see comment below.
Even if we had a new source of energy, it would take years to get it ramped up sufficiently, and devices built to use the energy source. If extraction of raw materials like copper is already constrained, that may be a bottleneck as well.
What of this? New salt batteries. Is the endless energy dream still possible?
Abundant, cheep, renewable, non toxic ‘energy storage’, combined with intermittent generation like solar, wind and hydro electric. Normally I would say fossil fuel is still needed, but not necessarily in the same way here.
lithium ion would be completely replaced and sodium ion is
instantly scalable using established manufacturing..
You must admit it could take us to interesting places.
It would mean the West admitting they were saved by Chinese technology auch!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ts2vRBhj658
You’d have thought by now people would have worked out that these miracle cures are BS aimed at providing hopium to the MORE-ONS…
The PR Team must laugh at the MORE-ONS… how easily they are manipulated