A major reason for the growth in the use of renewable energy is the fact that if a person looks at them narrowly enough–such as by using a model–wind and solar look to be useful. They don’t burn fossil fuels, so it appears that they might be helpful to the environment.
As I analyze the situation, I have reached the conclusion that energy modeling misses important points. I believe that profitability signals are much more important. In this post, I discuss some associated issues.
Overview of this Post
In Sections [1] through [4], I look at some issues that energy modelers in general, including economists, tend to miss when evaluating both fossil fuel energy and renewables, including wind and solar. The major issue in these sections is the connection between high energy prices and the need to increase government debt. To prevent the continued upward spiral of government debt, any replacement for fossil fuels must also be very inexpensive–perhaps as inexpensive as oil was prior to 1970. In fact, the real limit to fossil fuel extraction and to the building of new wind turbines and solar panels may be government debt that becomes unmanageable in an inflationary period.
In Section [5], I try to explain one reason why published Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) indications give an overly favorable impression of the value of adding a huge amount of renewable energy to the electric grid. The basic issue is that the calculations were not set up for this purpose. These models were set up to evaluate the efficiency of generating a small amount of wind or solar energy, without consideration of broader issues. If these broader issues were included, EROEI indications would be much lower (less favorable).
One of the broader issues omitted is the fact that the electrical output of wind turbines and solar panels does not match up well with the timing needs of society, leading to the need for a great deal of energy storage. Another omitted issue is the huge quantity of energy products and other materials required to make a transition to a mostly electrical economy. It is easy to see that both omitted issues would add a huge amount of energy costs and other costs, if a major transition is made. Furthermore, wind and solar have gotten along so far using hidden subsidies from the fossil fuel energy system, including the subsidy of being allowed to go first on the electricity grid. EROEI calculations cannot evaluate the amount of this hidden subsidy.
In Section [6], I point out the true indicator of the feasibility of renewables. If electricity generation using wind and solar energy are truly helpful to the economy, they will generate a great deal of taxable income. They will not require the subsidy of going first, or any other subsidy. This does not describe today’s wind or solar.
In Section [7] and [8], I explain some of the reasons why EROEI calculations for wind and solar tend to be misleadingly favorable, even apart from broader issues.
Economic Issues that Energy Modelers Tend to Miss
[1] The economy is very short of oil that is inexpensive-to-extract. The economy seems to require a great deal more government debt when energy prices are high. Models for renewable energy production need to consider this issue, even if any substitution for oil is very indirect.
I think of the problem of rising energy prices for an economy as being like a citizen faced with an increase in food costs. The citizen will attempt to balance his budget by adding more debt, at least until his credit cards get maxed out. This is why we should expect to see an increase in government debt when oil prices are high; oil and other fossil fuels are as essential to the economy as food is to humans.
Figure 1 shows that most US government funding shortfalls occurred when oil prices were above $20 per barrel, in inflation-adjusted prices. For the 15-year period 2008 through 2022, US government expenditures were 26% higher than its receipts.
Figure 2 shows a reference chart of average annual oil prices, adjusted for inflation.
Figure 2. Average annual inflation-adjusted Brent oil prices based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.
The reason why oil prices tend to be high now is because the inexpensive-to-extract oil has mostly been extracted. What is left is oil that is expensive to extract. The low prices in the years surrounding 1998 reflected a supply-demand mismatch after the Asian Economic Crisis of 1997. The crisis held down demand at the same time as production was ramping up in Iraq, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico.
[2] Economists tend to assume that shortages of oil will lead to much higher fossil fuel prices, thereby making renewables inexpensive in comparison. One reason this doesn’t happen is related to the buildup of debt, noted in Figure 1, when oil prices are high.
Section [1] shows that high oil prices seem to be associated with government deficits. A high-priced substitute for oil would almost certainly have a similar problem. This governmental debt tends to build up, and at some point becomes almost unmanageable.
A major problem occurs when there is a round of inflation. Central banks find a need to increase interest rates, partly to keep lenders interested in lending in an inflationary economy and partly to try to slow the inflation rate. In fact, the US is currently being tested by such a debt buildup and increase in interest rates, beginning about January 2022 (Figure 3).
Higher interest rates tend to have the effect of slowing the economy. In part, the economy slows because the cost of borrowing money rises. As a result, businesses are less likely to expand, and would-be auto owners are likely to put off new purchases because of the higher monthly payments. Commercial real estate can also be adversely affected by rising interest rates if owners of buildings find it impossible to raise rents fast enough to keep up with higher interest rates on mortgages and higher costs of other kinds.
[3] It is uncertain in exactly which ways the economy might contract, in response to higher interest rates. Some ways the economy could contract would bring an early end to both the extraction of fossil fuels and the manufacturing of renewables. This is not reflected in models.
If the economy contracts, one possible result is a recession with lower oil prices. This clearly doesn’t fix the problem of the cost of wind and solar electricity being unacceptably high, especially when the cost of all the batteries and additional transmission lines is included. In some sense, the price needs to be equivalent to a $20 per barrel oil price, or lower, to stop the huge upward debt spiral.
Another possibility, rather than the US economy as a whole contracting, is that the US government will disproportionately contract; perhaps it will send many programs back to the states. In such a scenario, there is likely to be less, rather than more, funding for renewables. I understand that Republicans in Texas are already unhappy with the high level of wind and solar generation being used there.
A third possibility is hyperinflation, as the government tries to add more money to keep the overall system, especially banks and pension plans, from failing. Even with hyperinflation, there is no particular benefit to renewables.
A fourth possibility is disruption of trade relationships between the US and other countries. This could even be related to a new world war. Renewables depend upon worldwide supply lines, just as today’s fossil fuels do. Building and maintaining the electrical grid also requires worldwide supply lines. As these supply lines break, all parts of the system will be difficult to maintain; replacement infrastructure after storms will become problematic. Renewables may not last any longer than fossil fuels.
[4] Economists tend to miss the fact that oil prices, and energy prices in general, need to be both high enough for the producer to make a profit and low enough for consumers to afford finished goods made with the energy products. This two-way tug-of-war tends to keep oil prices lower than most economists would expect, and indirectly caps the total amount of oil that can be extracted.
Figure [2] shows that, on an annual average basis, inflation-adjusted Brent oil prices have only exceeded $120 per barrel during the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. On an annual basis, oil prices have not exceeded that level since then. For a while, forecasts of oil prices as high as $300 per barrel in 2014 US dollars were being shown as an outside possibility (Figure 4).
With close to another decade of experience, it has become clear that high oil prices don’t “stick” very well. The economy then slides into recession, or some other adverse event takes place, bringing oil prices back down again. The relatively low maximum to fossil fuel prices tends to lead to a much earlier end to fossil fuel extraction than most analyses of available resource amounts would suggest.
OPEC+ tends to reduce supply because they find prices too low. US drillers of oil from shale formations (tight oil in Figure 4) have been reducing the number of drilling rigs because oil prices are not high enough to justify more investment. Politicians know that voters dislike inflation, so they take actions to hold down fossil fuel prices. All these approaches tend to keep oil prices low, and indirectly put a cap on output.
Why Indications from EROEI Analyses Don’t Work for Electrification of the Economy
[5] Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) analyses were not designed to analyze the situation of a massive scaling up of wind and solar, as some people are now considering. If utilized for this purpose, they provide a far too optimistic an outlook for renewables.
The EROEI calculation compares the energy output of a system to the energy input of the system. A high ratio is good; a low ratio tends to be a problem. As I noted in the introduction, published EROEIs of wind and solar are prepared as if they are to be only a very small part of electricity generation. It is assumed that other types of generation can essentially provide free balancing services for wind and solar, even though doing so will adversely affect their own profitability.
A recent review paper by Murphy et al. seems to indicate that wind and solar have favorable EROEIs compared to those of coal and natural gas, at point of use. I don’t think that these favorable EROEIs really mean very much when it comes to the feasibility of scaling up renewables, for several reasons:
[a] The pricing scheme generally used for wind and solar electricity tends to drive out other forms of electrical generation. In most places where wind and solar are utilized, the output of wind and solar is given priority on the grid, distorting the wholesale prices paid to other providers. When high amounts of wind or solar are available, wind and solar generation are paid the normal wholesale electricity price for electricity, while other electricity providers are given very low or negative wholesale prices. These low prices force other providers to reduce production, making it difficult for them to earn an adequate return on their investments.
This approach is unfair to other electricity providers. It is especially unfair to nuclear because most of its costs are fixed. Furthermore, most plants cannot easily ramp electricity production up and down. A recently opened nuclear plant in Finland (which was 14 years behind plan in opening) is already experiencing problems with negative wholesale electricity rates, and because of this, is reducing its electricity production.
Historical data shows that the combined contribution of wind, solar, and nuclear doesn’t necessarily increase the way that a person might expect if wind and solar are truly adding to electricity production. In Europe, especially, the availability of wind and solar seems to be being used as an excuse to close nuclear power plants. With the pricing scheme utilized, plants generating nuclear energy tend to lose money, encouraging the owners of plants to close them.
The US has been providing subsidies to its nuclear plants to prevent their closing. When one form of electricity gets a subsidy, even the subsidy of going first, other forms of electricity seem to need a subsidy to compete.
[b] Small share of energy supply. Based on Figure 5, the total of wind, solar, and nuclear electricity only provides about 6.1% of the world’s total energy supply. An IEA graph of world energy consumption (Figure 6) doesn’t even show wind and solar electricity separately. Instead, they are part of the thin orange “Other” line at the top of the chart; nuclear is the dark green line above Natural Gas.
Given the tiny share of wind and solar today, ramping them up, or those fuels plus a few others, to replace all other energy supplies seems like it would be an amazingly large stretch. If the economy is, in fact, much like a human in that it cannot substantially reduce energy consumption without collapsing, drastically reducing the quantity of energy consumed by the world economy is not an option if we expect to have an economy remotely like today’s economy.
[c] Farming today requires the use of oil. Transforming farming to an electrical operation would be a huge undertaking. Today’s farm machinery is mostly powered by diesel. Food is transported to market in oil-powered trucks, boats, and airplanes. Herbicides and pesticides used in farming are oil-based products. There is no easy way of converting the energy system used for food production and distribution from oil to electricity.
At a minimum, the entire food production system would need to be modeled. What inventions would be needed to make such a change possible? What materials would be required for the transformation? Where would all these materials come from? How much debt would be required to fund this transformation?
The only thing that the EROEI calculation could claim is that if such a system could be put in place, the amount of fossil fuels used to operate the system might be low. The overwhelming complexity of the necessary transformation has not been modeled, so its energy cost is omitted from the EROEI calculation. This is one way that calculated EROEIs are misleadingly optimistic.
[d] EROEI calculations do not include any energy usage related to the storage of electricity until it is needed. Solar energy is most available during the summer. Thus, the most closely matched use of solar electricity is to power air conditioners during summer. Even in this application, several hours’ worth of battery storage are needed to make the system work properly because air conditioners continue to operate after the sun sets. Also, people who come home from work need to cook dinner for their families, and this takes electricity. Energy costs related to electricity storage are not reflected in the EROEIs shown in published summaries such as those of the Murphy analysis.
A much more important need than air conditioning is the need for heat energy in winter to heat homes and offices. Neither wind nor solar can be counted upon to provide electricity when it is cold outside. One workaround would be to greatly overbuild the system, so that there would be a better chance of the renewable source producing enough electricity when it is needed. Adding several days of storage through batteries would be helpful too. An alternate approach would be to store excess electricity indirectly, by using it to produce a liquid such as hydrogen or methanol. Again, all of this becomes complex. It needs to be tried on small scale, and the real cost of the full system determined.
Both the need to overbuild the system and the need to provide storage are excluded from EROEI calculations. These are yet other ways that EROEI calculations provide an overly optimistic view of the value of wind and solar.
[e] Long distance travel. We use oil products for long distance transport by ship, air, truck, and train. If changes are to be made to use electricity or some sort of “green fuels,” this is another area where the entire change would need to be mapped out for feasibility, including the inventions needed, the materials required, and the debt this change would entail. What timeframe would be required? Would there be any possibility of achieving the transformation by 2050? I doubt it.
The conversion of all transportation to green energy is very much like the needed conversion of the food system from oil to electricity, discussed in [5c], above. Huge complexity is involved, but the energy cost of this added complexity has been excluded from EROEI calculations. This further adds to the misleading nature of EROEI indications for renewables.
[f] A dual system is probably needed. Even if it makes sense to ramp up wind and solar, there still will be a need for many products that are today made with fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used in paving roads and for making lubrication for machines. Herbicides, insecticides, and pharmaceutical products are often made from fossil fuels. Natural gas is often used to make ammonia fertilizer. Fabrics and building materials are often made using fossil fuels.
Thus, it is almost certain that a dual system would be needed, encompassing both fossil fuels and electricity. There are likely to be inefficiencies in such a dual system. If intermittent renewables such as wind and solar are to be a major part of the economy, this inefficiency needs to be part of any model and needs to be reflected in EROEI calculations.
[g] “Renewable” devices are not themselves recyclable. Instead, they present a waste disposal problem. Solar panels especially present a toxic waste problem. Without much recycling, there is a long term need for minerals of many types to be extracted and transported around the world. These issues are not considered in modeling.
Profitability of Unsubsidized Renewables Is the Best Measure
[6] If renewables are to be truly useful to the system, they need to be so profitable that their profits can be taxed at a high rate. Furthermore, sufficient funds should be left over for reinvestment. The fact that this is not happening is a sign that renewables are not truly helpful to the economy.
Some people talk about the need for “surplus energy” from energy sources to power an economy. I connect this surplus energy with the ability of any energy source to generate income that can be taxed at a fairly high rate. In fact, I gave a talk to the International Society for Biophysical Economics on September 7, 2021, called, To Be Sustainable, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Revenue.
The need for surplus energy that can be transferred to the government is closely connected with the debt problem that occurs when oil prices are higher than about $20 per barrel that I noted in Section [1] of this post. Renewable energy must be truly inexpensive, with all storage included, to be helpful to the economy. It must be affordable to citizens, without subsidies. The cost structure must be such that the renewable energy generates so much profit that it can pay high taxes. It is unfortunately clear that today’s renewables are too expensive for the US economy.
EROEI Models Can’t Tell Us as Much as We Would Like
[7] In the real economy, the economy builds up in small pieces, as new approaches prove to be profitable and as all the necessary components prove to be available. EROEI models shortcut this process, but they can easily be misleading.
The concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested has been used for many years in the field of biology. For example, we can compare the energy a fish gets from the food it eats to the energy the fish expends swimming to procure that food. The fish needs to get sufficient energy value from the food it eats to be able to cover the energy expended on the swim, plus a margin for other bodily functions, including reproduction.
Professor Charles Hall (and perhaps others) adapted this concept for use in comparing different energy “extraction” (broadly defined) techniques. More recent researchers have tried to extend the calculation to include energy costs of delivery to the user.
The adaptation of the biological concept of EROEI to the various processes associated with energy extraction works in some respects but not in others. The adaptation clearly works as a tool for teaching diminishing returns. It gives reasonable information for comparing oil wells to each other, or solar panels to other solar panels. But I don’t think that EROEI comparisons across energy types works well at all.
One issue is that there are huge differences in the selling prices of different types of energy. These are ignored in EROEI calculations, making it look feasible to use a high-priced type of energy (such as oil) to produce a low-valued type of output (intermittent electricity from wind turbines or solar panels). If profitability calculations were made instead, without mandates or subsidies (including the subsidy of going first), the extent to which there is a favorable return would become clear.
Another issue is that intermittency of wind and solar adds huge costs to the system, but these are ignored in EROEI calculations. (The situation is somewhat like having workers drop in and leave according to their own schedules, rather than working during the schedule the employer prefers.) In EROEI calculations, the assumption usually made is that the fossil fuel system will provide free balancing services by operating their electricity generation systems in an inefficient manner. In fact, this is the assumption made in the Murphy paper cited previously.
An analysis by Graham Palmer gives some insight regarding the high energy cost of adding battery backup (Figure 7).
In Figure 7, Palmer shows the pattern of energy investment and energy payback for a particular off-grid home in Australia which uses solar panels and battery backup. His zig-zag chart reflects two offsetting impacts:
(a) Energy investment was required at the beginning, both for the solar panels and for the first set of batteries. The solar panels in this analysis last for 30 years, but the batteries only last for 7.5 years. As a result, it is necessary to invest in new batteries, three additional times over the period.
(b) Solar panels only gradually make their payback.
Palmer finds that the system would be in a state of energy deficit (considering only energy out versus energy in) for 20 years. At the end of 30 years, the combined system would return only 1.3 times as much energy as the energy invested in the system. This is an incredibly poor payback! EROEI enthusiasts usually look for a payback of 10 or more. The solar panels in the analysis were close to this target level, at 9.4. But the energy required for the battery backup brought the EROEI down to 1.3.
Palmer’s analysis points out another difficulty with wind and solar: The energy payback is terribly slow. If we burn fossil fuels, the economy gets a payback immediately. If we manufacture wind turbines or solar panels, there is a far longer period of something that might be called, “energy indebtedness.” EROEI calculations conveniently ignore interest charges, again making the situation look better than it really is. The buildup in debt is also ignored.
Thus, even without the issue of scaling up renewables if we are to make a transition to energy system more focused on electricity, EROEI calculations are set up in a way that make intermittent renewable energy look far more feasible than it really is. “Energy Payback Period” is another similar metric, with similar biases.
The fact that these metrics are misleading is difficult to see. Very inexpensive fossil fuels pay back their cost many times over, in terms of societal gain, virtually immediately. Wind turbines and solar panels depend upon the generosity of the fossil fuel system to get any payback at all because intermittent electricity cannot support an economy like today’s economy. Even then, the payback is only available over a period of years.
I am afraid that the only real way of analyzing the feasibility of scaling up electricity using wind and solar is by looking at whether they can be extraordinarily profitable, without subsidies. If so, they can be highly taxed and end our government debt problem. The fact that wind and solar require subsidies and mandates, year after year, should make it clear that they aren’t solutions.
Metaphor for the collapse of morale
https://palexander.substack.com/p/urgent-biden-falls-again-at-us-air
You don’t need to make that case, Kieth. Roger Waters has done an admirable job on that score.
Question for the viruses do not exist crowd.
I asked a vet why neither of our dogs has every had a sick moment in their lives.
Do dogs not get sick with respiratory illnesses?
They do said she — but because you live in a rural area with big fenced land your dogs have zero contact with other dogs (we never take the dogs off the property) they do not have any exposure to respiratory viruses that might be spread by other dogs.
Connect the dots… connect .. ze… dots
Undisputable !
Question to the worshippers of the pasteurian cult aka “germ theory”.
Why do people with a healthy lifestyle never get ill, even when they are surrounded by carriers of infectious pathogens ?
Climate change, perhaps ?
80/20 rule, nature is not perfect.
Dennis L.
I don’t understand why people have such a hard time understanding that we’ve all been lied to and virology is one of the biggest lies in history. I’ve been among many crowds of so-called diseased and disease carrying people over the years and I’ve not had even a mild cold. We would all be getting sick all the time if any of this nonsense was even remotely true. Look how much the general public had to be propagandized to force them to believe that they were experiencing a global pandemic. If that much mind control is required to convince you of something then maybe it’s not as real as you think it is. The truth is self evident. Lies require years, decades and even centuries of repetition and heavy indoctrination. Unfortunately, that’s our current situation. We are wallowing in it. But I do see a turning up ahead and some of us have already broken free of the rut.
I’m affraid you are applying too much logic and common sense, Tsubion.
The sine qua non to identify the scientific fraud behind virology and allopathic medicine is to want to identify it. But most people just don’t want that, preferring to trust “established truths”, even if they don’t make any sense, and believe in certified authorities, even if these have been completely discredited in the last three years.
And in the face of this emotional refusal to investigate, it’s not worth insisting on, it’s as useless as preaching charity to a stray cat.
Sometimes we do … most of the time we don’t … cuz we have strong immune systems that fight off the viruses…. but we are not infallible…
When we do get ill … it’s generally a mild illness… I have not missed a day of work in over 20 years because I was too sick to make it in…
Of course if I was to remain here on the Goat Ranch with only the dogs… having zero visitors… zero contact with The Diseased… I would never experience a viral illness.
Same as if I was wondering around the town where norm lives… and got lost in a back alley — and a toothless old hag who was ensconced Out Back of a Dumpster said — Hey Mister — you want some of this? Then flashed her rancid fester …. and I said hey Super Snatch … does norm know you are doing this? F789 norm … come try… Thanks but no thank SS… I prefer not to sample your Vee Dee…
If you don’t go there… you don’t get the viruses… you don’t get the diseases
Simple … actually… if you want to test it out … go find a toothless old hag who’s festering with her-pes… giddyup her Trojanless… see what happens…
Come on … get out there and Perform the Experiment. If your terrain is healthy should be no problemo.
obsessed with s e x again eddy?
dyou you think you should see someone ?
You’re still stuck in the fictional model defending the existence of fairies and unicorns and I am telling you that fairies and unicorns only exist in that space between your ears and you keep insisting that fairies and unicorns are real because mummy told we they were real and a few vacant minded so-called scientists that swallowed all that baloney too following the same methodology that pasteur devised back in the day which if one actually bothers to look into can quickly ascertain that the whole shadow puppet show falls apart and even a child of average intelligence can see how we’ve been bamboozled.
You obviously haven’t looked into this very much have you Eddy?
Fast has issued the Virus Challenge …
Are you up to up to poking SSS’s beehive without a Trojan … to see if you contract the Herp?
Don’t beat around the ‘bush’ it’s either a yes – or a no.
If no… then Fast wins
Wow! You still stuck on this one? Guess the horsepower is dwindling huh…
Who said that respiratory issues are caused by viruses?
Those making the claim that viruses cause disease have a lot of proving to do since this has never been done using the scientific method with adequate controls. Allopathic medicine simply makes assumptions about this as you are still doing yourself.
Correlation and causation are not a match in this case. There are other reasons why people and dogs “get sick” or present with certain symptoms. Food, environment, stress, toxins, malnutrition etc are real influences with proven effects in living organisms and every case should be looked at individually to ascertain exactly what the problem is.
TB patients were sent to retreats in the mountains and got better because fresh air, healthy food and lowered stress replaced extremely toxic city living back in the day. Today, China has high levels of these so called diseases because they also have the most toxic environments from over industrialization and poor air safety controls.
Scientists taking samples from these “patients” blame the debris particles and bacteria they find (which are a side effect) instead of the true cause of the problem.
Had a long chat with my vet about all the yearly jabs for dogs including rabies that again is another fictional disease that of course is not present in EU but they still jab! He couldn’t give me a straight answer on any of my simple questions and why US and EU had differing policies. It’s all a sham and a great money maker for the Industry. A well nourished dog has nothing to fear. Just buried my little buddy after eighteen very happy healthy vaxx free years. And I haven’t had a cold for as long as I can remember.
I am afraid I don’t agree with you, Tsubion.
I will agree that some people are more susceptible than others to catching diseases, because of issues such as diet, environment, stress and toxins, but there are certainly some respiratory diseases that involve virus transmission.
And I don’t agree with you Gail. You’re simply parroting long held assumptions that have no scientific backing whatsoever. You would have to prove in front of the whole world that a single virus has been isolated and purified according to the latest definitions following the scientific method. No one has ever done this, but go ahead, be the first person in history to prove the existence of pathogenic virus particles and we’ll call it a day.
Show us the virus and the transmission that you are seemingly so confident about where no one else has been able to do this.
Rosenau study a hundred years ago already proved that contagion is a myth.
https://viroliegy.com/2021/10/03/the-infectious-myth-busted-part-1-the-rosenau-spanish-flu-experiments-1918/comment-page-1/
Beyond that I don’t know what else to say really. You have a good grasp of what constitutes a healthy diet and lifestyle and how the lack of these can lead to what we call disease, but you seem to be attached to the mythical idea that disease can spread and be “caught.” Individuals going through a similar healing process at roughly the same time does not mean that they are contaminating each other. There are other very simple reasons for these phenomena that are observable in other organisms.
Mike Yeadon worked in the industry at the highest levels and has had to admit that he doesn’t believe in respiratory viruses any longer after the covid hoax.
“but there are certainly some respiratory diseases that involve virus transmission”
That’s what we have been taught Gail, but does the historical evidence back it up?
I’m not so sure it does.
A virus particle was not observed first and subsequently viral theory and pathology developed. Scientists of the mid and late nineteenth century were preoccupied with the identification of imagined contagious pathogenic entities. The observations of the naive inductionist did not identify a virus a priori, and then set about studying its properties and characteristics. The extant presupposition of the time was that a very small germ particle existed that may explain contagion. What came thereafter arose to fulfill the presuppositional premise.
Mark Bailey, »A Farewell to Virology,« 18
If influenza is primarily an electrical disease, a response to an electrical disturbance of the atmosphere, then it is not contagious in the ordinary sense. The patterns of its epidemics should prove this, and they do. For example, the deadly 1889 pandemic began in a number of widely scattered parts of the world. Severe outbreaks were reported in May of that year simultaneously in Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Greenland; and northern Alberta. Flu was reported in July in Philadelphia and in Hillston, a remote town in Australia, and in August in the Balkans. This pattern being at odds with prevailing theories, many historians have pretended that the 1889 pandemic didn’t ›really‹ start until it had seized the western steppes of Siberia at the end of September and that it then spread in an orderly fashion from there outward throughout the rest of the world, person to person by contagion. But the trouble is that the disease still would have had to travel faster than the trains and ships of the time. It reached Moscow and St. Petersburg during the third or fourth week of October, but by then, influenza had already been reported in Durban, South Africa and Edinburgh, Scotland, New Brunswick, Canada, Cairo, Paris, Berlin, and Jamaica were reporting epidemics in November; London, Ontario on December 4; Stockholm on December 9; New York on December 11; Rome on December 12; Madrid on December 13; and Belgrade on December 15 Influenza struck explosively and unpredictably, over and over in waves until early 1894. […]
Influenza works its caprice not only on land, but at sea. With today’s speed of travel this is no longer obvious, but in previous centuries, when sailors were attacked with influenza weeks, or even months, out of their last port of call, it was something to remember. In 1894, Charles Creighton described fifteen separate historical instances where entire ships or even many ships in a naval fleet were seized by the illness far from landfall, as if they had sailed into an influenzal fog, only to discover, in some cases, upon arriving at their next port, that influenza had broken out on land at the same time. Creighton added one report from the contemporary pandemic: the merchant ship »Wellington« had sailed with its small crew from London on December 19, 1891, bound for Lyttelton, New Zealand. On the 26th of March, after over three months at sea, the captain was suddenly shaken by intense febrile illness. Upon arriving at Lyttelton on April 2, »the pilot, coming on board found the captain ill in his berth, and on being told the symptoms at once said, ›It is the influenza: I have just had it myself.‹ An 1857 report was so compelling that William Beveridge included it in his 1975 textbook on influenza: »The English warship Arachne was cruising off the coast of Cuba ›without any contact with land.‹ No less than 114 men out of a crew of 149 fell ill with influenza and only later was it learnt that there had been outbreaks in Cuba at the same time. […]
The age distribution is also wrong for contagion. In other kinds of infectious diseases, like measles and mumps, the more aggressive a strain of a virus is and the faster it spreads, the more rapidly adults build up immunity and the younger the population that gets it every year. According to Hope-Simpson, this means that between pandemics influenza should be attacking mainly very young children. But influenza keeps on stubbornly targeting adults; the average age is almost always between twenty and forty, whether during a pandemic or not. The year 1889 was no exception: influenza felled preferentially vigorous young adults in the prime of their life, as if it were maliciously choosing the strongest instead of the weakest of our species. […]
If an epidemic strikes, and you come down with the same disease as everyone else, but an influenza virus can’t be isolated from your throat and you don’t develop antibodies to one, then you are said not to have influenza. But the fact is that although influenza viruses are associated in some way with disease epidemics, they have never been shown to cause them.
Seventeen years of surveillance by Hope-Simpson in and around the community of Cirencester, England, revealed that despite popular belief, influenza is not readily communicated from one person to another within a household. Seventy percent of the time, even during the ›Hong Kong flu‹ pandemic of 1968, only one person in a household would get the flu. If a second person had the flu, both often caught it on the same day, which meant that they did not catch it from each other. Sometimes different minor variants of the virus were circulating in the same village, even in the same household, and on one occasion two young brothers who shared a bed had different variants of the virus, proving that they could not have caught it from each other, or even from the same third person. William S. Jordan, in 1958, and P. G. Mann, in 1981, came to similar conclusions about the lack of spread within families. […]
The embarrassing secret among virologists is that from 1933 until the present day, there have been no experimental studies proving that influenza —either the virus or the disease— is ever transmitted from person to person by normal contact.
Engelbrecht et. al.Virus Mania
I’ve posted this before, but worth a read if you’ve noticed that virology, much like the financial markets, have a habit of making it up to suit their own wants.
https://magma-magazin.su/2023/02/t-mohr/virology-as-ideology-a-critique-of-ruling-class-pseudoscience-part-3-virology-as-ideology/
Shall we refer to it as the Super Snatch Viral Challenge?
Toobion – you go first – norm can you book him in?
Faaart Eddy (since we’re down into silly name calling territory) I know of plenty of people who had, shall we say, a promiscuous life that never suffered the issues you speak of. That tells me that something else is probably happening when you get something itchy down there. Bacterial, fungal responses to toxins (shared drug use etc) may explain why you have “problems.”
I repeat. Pathogenic viruses have not been proven to exist. You’re stuck in the la la paradigm of the previous centuries. Please catch up.
The thing is … not everyone who plays around gets the Herp… if one uses Trojans it’s likely one could poke a hive that is festering with Herp and not get it.
I ask a again – if we can find a filthy skank with a festering beehive will you poke it Trojan-less?
I can guarantee your answer is no. Cuz you don’t want to be festering as well. Cuz the virus
And both our dogs have never had any sort of viral infection – never — cuz they do not encounter other dogs who might be spreading something. Not seldom – never.
I’m not a virologist and I don’t an electron microscope, but as I see it there are several possibilities. (1) It could be that every disease claimed to be spread by viruses is actually spread by viruses. (2) It could be that none of these diseases is spread by viruses. ANd…. wait for it….. (3) It could be that some of these diseases are spread by viruses and others are not.
At the same time, regarding Germ Theory vs. Terrain Theory, even If some germs exist as pathogenic viruses, clearly this does not invalidate the main contention of Terrain Theory that a person’s overall physical health (their terrain) greatly effects how susceptible they are to virus-induced disease.
Personally, I can live with the excitement of not knowing for sure, but at the same time I will also continuing trying to learn more about the history of the subject and trying my best not to get stalked and bitten by a coyote or any other animal that is foaming at the mouth.
I think Tsubion has a point though. If pathogenic viruses exist, it should be possible to demonstrate this beyond reasonable doubt in a clear enough way that skeptics are forced to admit, “You’re right, there! This virus looks like a live one!”
I like the theory that viruses come from comets, and when the Earth moves through a comet’s tale, the planet gets bathed in viruses from the comet that make people sick because their immune systems have not encountered these particular pathogens before.
I said I like it. I didn’t say I believed it! But it gets around the problem of influenza moving around the world to infect people faster than the wind could carry it.
Dunno if it’s viruses that spread disease but something spreads disease.
Let’s just call it a widget.
Everyone happy now?
“to I like the theory that viruses come from comets”
Tim, I think the theory is about electrical disturbance, as there is no evidence(but huge profits) of this mythical virus thing.
“This is consistent not with any respiratory virus, but with what has been known about electricity ever since Gerhard did the first experiment on human blood in 1779. It is consistent with what is known about the effects of radio waves on blood coagulation. Erskine and Knight saved their patients not by fighting infection, but by giving them large doses of calcium lactate to facilitate blood clotting. Another astonishing fact that makes no sense if this pandemic was infectious, but that makes good sense if it was caused by radio waves, is that instead of striking down the old and the infirm like most diseases, this one killed mostly healthy, vigorous young people between the ages of eighteen and forty – just as the previous pandemic had done, with a little less vehemence, in 1889.
In each case — in 1889, 1918, 1957, and 1968 — the electrical envelope of the earth, which will be described in the next chapter, and to which we are all attached by invisible strings, was suddenly and profoundly disturbed.”
Firstenberg, Arthur, The Invisible Rainbow
Firstenberg’s The Invisible Rainbow and Engelbrecht’s Virus Mania might interest you.
Pathogenic viruses are mythology. A potent persistent myth but a myth nonetheless. No one has ever proved their existence. The methodology, when examined by independent observers, says it all. Virology is dead. So lets move on without fear of “bugs.”
You all still hold on to the idea that something spreads from person to person but this idea was thoroughly debunked 100 years ago. And boy did those guys try to prove contagion was a real thing! Animals to animals, animals to humans, sick humans to healthy humans. Not one single case of transmission. Even today, it cannot be done and will not be done because the whole house of cards would come crashing down overnight… and possibly the economy with it!
Everything from so-called testing and analytics to treatment protocols is based on the fundamental lie and everyone just goes along with it – except for those of us who didn’t go along with any of the charade, no jabs, no masks, no testing, no distancing and we’re still here with no symptoms and absolutely zero worries about “catching” things that don’t exist.
The space virus thing probably goes back to ancient times, but more recently spurred on by Michael Crichton and his novel The Andromeda Strain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
Just scary sci-fi stories for the kids.
I’m on SSS booking app … got my card ready to pay… she’s got some slots open tomorrow afternoon… who’s first?
If you have ever had to kick a rabid, slavering coyote to death out on lake ice after it beelined for you 3 miles offshore setting nets……you would not be flippant about rabies.
It is viral etiology and the vaccine is highly effective at prevention. The case fatality rate may as well be 100% for all the humans who have ever survived it.
Physical reality is, what it is….
Other diseases vary in numerous ways….but rabies is a horror.
This raises a profound question …
If one is to volunteer to experiment to determine if viruses do exist…
And one has to choose between — being nipped by a rapid coyote
OR …
a session Out Back the Dumpster with Super Snatch….(who I am told has a range of viral diseases from AIDS to herpes — for a full list https://www.std-gov.org/blog/what-to-know-about-viral-stds/#list-of-viral-stds)
I’d go for the coyote nip and takes me chances…
Obviously, you’re never going to understand or do the required research. Some people are just stuck in their ways I guess. Stubbornly clinging to outdated views when the evidence to the contrary abounds.
So you are not willing to poke SSS beehive?
Other than she is a festering wench … what do you fear?
Fast will pay the fee.
I’m afraid you have been bamboozled by the virus cult! Do you know how Pasteur “discovered” La Rabia? He would string up dogs and inject their brains with fetid material, then the dogs would foam at the mouth and try to bite anything that got close, then they would die a horrible death. Pasteur on observing the behaviour of the poisoned dogs said “they look a bit angry so I’ll call this one Rabies” after the Latin for anger (not an exact quote).
Nothing has changed much in the field of animal experimentation. Just look into the types of studies that Fauci authorizes with beagles. It involves slitting their vocal chords so that the experimenters don’t have to put up with dogs screaming as their heads are invaded by some type of fly larvae or whatever.
Back to angry (rabid) dogs frothing at the mouth and trying to take chunks out of you. There are simple explanations for these symptoms and behaviour that do not require the fabrication of pathogenic virus particles as the cause.
Pathogenic viruses have never been proven to exist and there are no recorded cases of bitten humans somehow spreading anything to others. Of course, a bite can be nasty and deep containing all kinds of filthy material that gets into the blood and then the victim may develop a fever etc to rid the body of contaminated cells. But that’s it. That’s all that’s going on. No need to cull thousands of dogs (as they used to do all over Europe) because someone spotted one sick dog somewhere. And of course, the yearly vaxx programs continue based on these myths following the same principle as the old story about no dragons because we carry magic charms. Do I really need to explain that the dragons never existed to begin with?
Can you get back to me re the preferred booking for your experimental session with SSS…
I can’t wait all day
I doubt you will find a better nourished entity that Fast Eddy.
HE consumes almost exclusively organic food – zero fast food (and I mean zero) – almost no alcohol — HE would consume high grade cocaine but has no idea where to get that so zero on that as well… has no stress (what’s to stress over given we are all soon to die) … exercises daily… gets plenty of sleep …
Essentially HE is living the life of Hoolio — yet Fast Eddy gets a cold once or twice per year… Hoolio never gets a cold — neither does out other dog Dooch. Never.
What is the main difference between our lifestyles? Oh I know Fast Eddy leaves the Goat Ranch and has contact with the Diseased Rat Juicers… at the supermarket.. ice rink.. restaurants…
Hmmmm… do ya think the diseased Rat Juicers are spreading something?
eddy
do you think i will ever be important enough to cap myself?
When you finally get the vax injury … and you are suffering … then you can cap yourself
Eddy, I spend every day with the great unwashed(even during a so called pandemic), but I never get ill. No colds, not even a headache.
If you’re as healthy as you would like to believe, then when you get a cold, everyone you have met, without exception, must also get a cold(being unhealthy compared to yourself) or your viral theory just went up in smoke.
While you’re wondering why that didn’t happen, explain why the crew of sailing ships could get what we refer to as influenza, after being at sea for months, with no contact. How did that happen Eddy?
I lick door knobs at the Gent’s Club
https://www.npr.org/2011/02/07/133500558/why-some-people-evade-colds-and-others-dont
You are probably the descendant of Super Snatches.. those who came before you lived Out Back the Dumpster where they were infected with every vile disease that the punters humped into them… the strong survived… therefore you have some of that genetic material in you.
Eddy, it would serve you well to read an article before pasting it.
Genetics is it?
Let’s look at the article.
“While it’s certainly true that our environment can increase our risk of infections, researchers suspect that much of our vulnerability has to do with our genes.”
Yes he mentions genes, but then.
“Gregory Poland, director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group and a professor of medicine and infectious diseases, says my mother’s age was actually her “secret weapon.” Poland says she’s come face to face with many more viruses over the course of several decades than I. The virus that infected me on the airplane, he says, was likely one of these. Clearly, she has “some level of immunity” to that particular cold virus.”
His mother? So nothing to do with genetics.
From then on its just fear for morons.
“It seems I was. Because cold viruses are airborne, a cough or sneeze a few rows away could have blown millions of microscopic viruses my way. And if I had turned on my little overhead fan, I could have unknowingly blasted those viruses even faster toward me. All I needed to do after that was touch my eyes, nose or mouth and — voila! Infection.
On the other hand, the dangerous liaison could have occurred more surreptitiously. Poland says that perhaps I had gone to the bathroom, opening the door and touching the doorknob after a passenger with a cold did the same thing. Cold viruses, of course, also travel by contact and infect us via an object like a doorknob.”
You’d truly have to be a moron to believe that. As has already been pointed out to you, we’d all be long dead if the rubbish your promoting was true.
Get a grip man, or if that’s to hard, just chuck some abuse, much like a monkey throwing it’s feces about.
Ok – I’ll spring for a second session with the Herp Lady Out Back the Dumpster…
Remember – no Trojan. You must indulge the Fester with zero protection
Let me know what time suits you so I can make the booking
Gotcha!
The reply of an empty headed midwit.
I thought you had more going on Eddy.
Put your mask on, fear everything and continuously quote the Zionazi fraud(look into who finances Stephen, including his legal fees).
I love it!!!
I’m not kidding – tell me where you reside and I will scroll through some ads to find the perfect match … my treat!
Walk the walk… walk… the … walk
making bookings now eddy?
Isn’t that called pimping??
What’s your commission?
I’m paying for the sessions. So it’s not pimping
thats is very generous eddy
how long is the booking list?
What we call a cold is essentially a process whereby our body is heating up cell and expelling them, much like a snake has to shed its skin and iguanas snot out excess salt. These are perfectly natural processes. At extreme levels they can be dangerous. When someone falls in an ice cold lake and doesn’t warm quickly removing the wet clothing, hypothermia sets in and pneumonia conditions arise. Too much fever is also a problem. Obviously, there are many factors involved to do with individual health and “genetics.” But these conditions are not caused by inert pieces of cellular debris commonly labeled viruses. The excess production of debris and toxins are the result of stresses of all kinds on the body.
Ever since I came across your online personality… you’ve been stressing about the end of the world. Instead of realizing that convid was 100% fake, you went into another death spiral (face palm) screaming from the rooftops even more than ever!! You truly are an interesting specimen, but not one that I envy in the slightest. You seem very confused and unable to reflect on how confused you have become. You believed all the bullcr*p about convid, spent three years chasing all the “variant” propaganda and the mega-shedding nightmare scenario, with invented UEPs and other nonsense followed by the double whammy multi-pronged binary weapon finale!!
None of it is real Eddy. The story is created to wind up the normies but you fall for it all more than them! Hilarious!
The problem with these theories is there is no evidence for them … one might suggest that a cold is caused by a Martian ship fire a beam at people and sickening them…
Something spreads disease.
Let’s discuss a subject that norm knows about from his contact with Super Snatch – herpes.
That is a virus that is contracted through physical contact with someone else who has the disease. If one does not go Out Back Dumpsters where Super Snatches lurk … offering their fester… and one is not promiscuous one is very unlikely to get herpes on their crockadoodledoo…
If one remains monogamous as does one’s partner … one will not get the herp on their crockadoodledoo…
If you want to test the hypothesis … let’s put an ad online ‘Looking for Dumpster Skank with Herps… Also Have Herps … let’s hook up and share’ – Mr Toobion
Take before and after photos of your crockadoodledoo.
Oh and no Trojans allowed:
Genital herpes is a common sexually transmitted infection (STI). The herpes simplex virus (HSV) causes genital herpes. Genital herpes can often be spread by skin-to-skin contact during sexual activity.
Some people infected with the virus may have very mild symptoms or no symptoms. They can still able to spread the virus. Other people have pain, itching and sores around the genitals, anus or mouth.
There is no cure for genital herpes. Symptoms often show up again after the first outbreak. Medicine can ease symptoms. It also lowers the risk of infecting others. Condoms can help prevent the spread of a genital herpes infection.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/genital-herpes/symptoms-causes/syc-20356161
Increasing the volume on Mass D… admit it .. everyone is feeling a little tilted towards despair by this sort of thing … that means the Mass D is working
https://palexander.substack.com/p/logan-brown-insanity-of-this-transgender
I no longer believe the US/vassals can be saved. So, mass D, is a step towards liberation. How goes the war in NZ?
Death to chaos, death to satan.
The medical community is always looking for more ways to make money.
Yes. Unfortunately.
Forget about the martians. Note mid way in the article that Gates has taken his farm land out of production.
It’s the same with ICE transportation by leading everyone into EVs, and shutting down coal power plants etc. internet and cell phone kills switches at the ready, CBDC trial this July with certain banks, etc.
Gates says it’s for the good of the planet, natch!
https://www.sovereignman.com/future-headline/future-headline-the-problematic-first-contact-with-intelligent-alien-life-147613/
At some point local guys will squat on the land. That is what happens to fallow land in Russia. Small plots of potatoes or wheat, but possession is a local concept or will be in a few years.
Strange approach:
This wanton destruction of natural resources probably deserves the death penalty.
Yes – anyone who has ever used a ski hill – golf course – ice rink … ferris wheel — put them to death!
Is Bill’s land now considered conservation land that pays zero property tax?
Let’s not be fooled, Gates is the best friend of nature, the planet, and his health, therefore the last thing he wants is toxics in his veins, water, food or land. So his saying he’s going to spray his lands is worth as much as he saying was vaxxed against convid. He does it ’cause he knows the importance of setting an example to the masses, but only a fool would believe the smart-ass Gates applies to himself the recipes he recommends to the plebs.
It’s clear that so-called renewables can’t work on their own. But then fossil fuels can’t work on their own. Both are unsustainable and fossil fuels have peaked or will peak. I’m not sure about the subsidies argument, because fossil fuels are heavily subsidised, around the world. Governments get their monies by taxing all sorts of things, not just energy.
The oil subsidies, as far as I can see, mostly have to do with making oil more affordable for poor people. The US oil subsidy comes in the form of subsidies for low income families who heat their homes. It is a small program, almost certainly affecting a relatively small number of people in the northeastern US.
Oil exporters have historically charged their own citizens lower prices than world market prices. The situation with oil prices is that they are more or less world oil prices, with some adjustment for quality issues, while the cost of production varies greatly. Oil exporters have historically had very low extraction costs compared to market oil prices. Thus, most of their price has gone into taxes. These taxes take the place of all other taxes in some of the Middle Eastern oil exporters. What the lower prices mean for the country’s own citizens is that local citizens are being charged a rate more in line with the actual local cost of extraction. Taxes come from elsewhere.
As I see it, cheap fossil fuels, particularly oil in the US, have powered economies. They percolate throughout the economy, in providing jobs that pay well. Thus, taxing income “works.” When there are problems, there is too much wage disparity. Too many people are poor. They cannot pay income taxes.
BRICS / good versus US/vassals bad. It is a fight to the death.
norm???
Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website
“If the American people want to know what their first family is like, they’re going to get it…”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trove-nearly-10k-hunter-biden-laptop-photos-docs-appear-organized-website
Here’s your boy Hunter in action https://bidenlaptopmedia.com/picture.php?/926/category/laptop
The courts do not function. So what Hunter is a criminal it does not matter. Nothing will be done.
Khloe Kardashian’s melanoma; Melissa Gilbert “rushed to ER” after bug bite; Danny Bonaduce having brain surgery; Tom Bergeron “battling an illness”; sportscaster Jim Donovan has leukemia (again)
“Jane Fonda spotted in wheelchair at LAX 6 months after revealing her cancer [Hodgkin’s lymphoma] was in remission”
Once the doctors removed the tumor, Khloe had to wait several days before getting her results for whether or not it was cancerous or pre-cancerous. “Melanoma’s deadly. It’s a lot,” she said to her BFF Malika Haqq in one scene. “The stitches is crazy. It’s a lot of stitches. A lot more than what I thought was happening. I have to have stitches for, like, two weeks, if they don’t have to do a separate round.”
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/khloe-kardashians-melanoma-melissa
Study: Repeated COVID Shots Weaken the Immune System
What was once deemed a conspiracy theory has turned into reality. And it’s leading to “life-threatening conditions such as cancer.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/repeated-covid-19-vaccination-weakens-immune-system-study_5305770.html
eddy
as far as I judge—you seem to be the only ofw inmate still obsessing about covid
Obsessing about Covid and the Rat Juice as a response to a collapsing BAU in 2019 due to having peaked on cheap energy the previous year.
eddy
there must be a link
in your head
—-my limited intellect doesn’t allow me an insight it that
At least you’re honest!
Do You Remember What Happened The Last Time The US Debt Limit Was Suspended?
Clue – It begins with a ‘Co’ and ends with a ‘vid’
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/do-you-remember-what-happened-the
The contribution of renewables might be small but without it, there would be load shedding. The situation will be different from State to State and country to country.
On the East Coast of Australia, the power supply is getting tight as unreliable, 50 year old coal fired power plants have to be shut down albeit without proper, timely replacement (e.g. wind plus pumped hydro, additional gas peakers)
Vivid Sydney 2023: Power price spikes during lack of reserve condition
31 May 2023
http://crudeoilpeak.info/vivid-sydney-2023-power-price-spikes-during-lack-of-reserve-condition
This lamentable state of affairs has come about due to a general energy blindness or energy illiteracy of the “system” comprising of governments, the private sector, the media and the uneducated public.
Electricity prices have gone up and this has become a political issue. The government blames the Ukraine war for higher gas and coal prices. But this covers up the supply capacity limitations.
This problem has grown to such an extent now that it is beyond academic debate. Demand must be reduced but the opposite is happening. New energy guzzling projects are approved and built: a 2nd Sydney airport plus aerotropolis and 100s of apartment towers to house new immigrants who have caused a housing crisis. This has also become a hot political issue. But the energy demand implications are not on the radar (yet)
I expect action will only be taken when the lights start to go out.
It will take years to fix:
Snowy Hydro 2.0 pumped-hydro battery project faces a further two years of delays
3 May 2023
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-03/snow-hydro-delayed-for-further-two-years/102295662
It also takes time to repair coal fired power plants
The never-ending (horror) story at Callide C … more long delays in expected Return-to-Service
20 May 2023
https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2023/05/20may-the-never-ending-horror-story-at-callide-c/
A hydrogen explosion at Callide C4 in May 2021 had resulted in price spikes at the time:
14/6/2021
NSW power spot price spikes May 2021 become regular (part 2)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-spot-price-spikes-may-2021-become-regular-part-2
‘Structural failure’ at Callide C3 Power Station near Biloela leaves unit offline
1 Nov 2022
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-01/structural-failure-at-callide-power-station-c3-unit/101602444
The financial implications:
Callide C co-owner Genuity goes into voluntary administration
29 March 2023
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/callide-c-co-owner-genuity-goes-into-voluntary-administration-20230324-p5cv4u
On my website on oil, I have recently done several posts on power supplies. This is because it is generally assumed that EVs will easily replace petrol and diesel vehicles. But this will be harder than people think due to power supply problems.
Australia is another country with real electricity problems.
It seems like a little better planning might have helped the country. It has been exporting both coal and natural gas. If it gets burned somewhere, it could be within Australia. It does seem strange that all of the big projects are being planned.
The recent news near here is
https://www.georgiapower.com/company/news-center/2023-articles/vogtle-unit-3-reaches-100-percent-energy-output.html
Vogtle is the new nuclear power plant that is servicing my area. We are in one of the parts of the US that is not expected to have power problems this summer.
25/7/2018
Australia is exporting itself gas poor, plans LNG import terminals
http://crudeoilpeak.info/australia-is-exporting-itself-gas-poor-plans-lng-import-terminals
Good to hear from you, Matt Mushalik, you elusive devil! I grew up in Sydney and so your posts are close to my heart. I would like to see you team up with Simon Michaux and form an Aussie Trio. Ah, who is the third party in Australia? Well, let’s make it the Aussie Cossack because he is an extraordinary Communicator.
Got to thinking about cost/kwh; mine is $16.24 in Rocheser, MN. Many don’t take the gross bill and divide by the energy amount. Advertised is about $11.00/kwh, rest is taxes, etc. So the more you spend the more you save.
Someone inquired about Amish, spent some time thinking, will post later; they cut out the middle man is my guess, or one can live with less than one thinks.
One does not use much electricity personally at night if one turns out the lights; they don’t. They use diesel locally to run their tools, no transmission losses, and intermittency is not an issue. Employment taxes are not trivial.
Dennis L.
My connect fee is as much as the fee for electricity.
Error: Cost should be $.1624/kwh, oops.
Dennis L.
The rate hikes will continue … until we collapse BAU
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/06/02/landing-got-cancelled-job-market-still-at-cruising-altitude-with-some-bumps-even-wage-growth-for-nonsupervisory-workers-accelerated/
I can see the continued rise in wages and the lack of a downturn in openings is frustrating for Biden and the central banks.
The beast is fighting for its life… it will fail
Guess:
Males are expendable, sacrifice is expected and necessary. But, there must be some hope and in current society there is very little for the “average” male. They have quit or aren’t going to start.
Metaphorically and realistically, women will soon find that after one takes out the trash, one has to pick it up; pays well, I don’t see many if any women driving trash trucks.
It will be fine.
Dennis L.
Since we have not touched on it yet. I see Moldova and Transnistria have joined the war. Archduke Ferdinand is smiling.
I haven’t heard anything about that.
I got it from Canadian Prepper. Moldova will allow Ukrainian troops to pass through to attack and steal the weapons caches in Transnistria.
Why haven’t the Russians moved these weapons caches from Transnistria?
Are they hoping the Ukrainians will invade the territory?
To give them a bloody good excuse to mount an invasion that takes Odessa and the rest of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast?
Ya! And also why doesn’t Poutine shut off the gas to Europe.
Asking for Hunter Biden
There was an article on Moldova in Xinhua a few days back that had me wondering until I saw in it the Euro 1.6B bribe, sorry, I meant support that was being offered by 50 European heads of state and government, as well as EU leaders, at a midweek feast at Mimi Castle in Bulboaca last week
english.news.cn/europe/20230601/539407d14acd4101b69ac7646f398fcf/c.html
their nosebags never seem to become dusty …
I haven’t seen anything on Transnistria but it was my impression that it was hanging on the other side
Israeli data: Zero, NO, none, not one Young Healthy Individuals Died Of COVID-19, Israeli Data Show; Zero healthy individuals under the age of 50 have died of COVID-19 in Israel
https://palexander.substack.com/p/israeli-data-zero-no-none-not-one
They need to make space for the mass pilgrimages that will occur in a few years as the “faithful” flock to the areas near the rotational axis of the planet.
During a certain “solar events” the axis ain’t polar. That migration will become a near frenzy shortly afterward when Wormwood then makes contact in the northern great plains of the USA.
U.S. Government data confirms a 143,233% (one hundred and forty thousand percent increased risk) increase in Cancer cases due to COVID Vaccination
https://expose-news.com/2022/08/16/us-gov-covid-vaccination-risk-cancer-143233-percent/?cmid=7e847a3b-c7cb-42d9-b1d8-6b48d03b73e3
SARS-CoV-2, fungal infections and “Immune Amnesia”
Another way to cancer ?
https://hiddencomplexity.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2-fungal-infections-and
The Spike Protein and SADS: Evidence of the Brainstem Demyelination/Destruction Hypothesis
SARS induced Death in mice via dysfunction of the Medulla via the OLFACTORY NERVE
https://wmcresearch.substack.com/p/the-spike-protein-and-sads-evidence
So the lab techs poison mice and tell you that a virus caused severe acute respiratory disease… and you fall for it!
But you’ll readily accept that Remdeathisnear causes respiratory distress in human subjects.
Joining the dots yet?
Can anyone explain why my dogs never get respiratory illnesses?
they are too wary—avoiding your breeding intentions with them
Perhaps because your dogs are much less exposed to all kinds of toxic substances than most humans?
If you give them tobacco and fast food, supplemented with carbon monoxide and chemicals, it is very likely your dogs develop respiratory diseases and such.
Perhaps… perhaps … That doesn’t work for me.
RE IgG4 and cancer, autoimmunity
A brief look at the sobering musings of Uversky, et al. regarding mRNA Covid vaccine-induced IgG4
https://unglossed.substack.com/p/re-igg4-and-cancer-autoimmunity
A Lethal Beacon: Spike Protein Endothelial Disease is also Spike Protein Neuron Disease
The Spike Protein acts as a “Flare” causing infiltration of leukocytes via complement activation to attack infected tissue.
https://wmcresearch.substack.com/p/a-lethal-beacon-spike-protein-endothelial
I am afraid I will never understand all of the medical substacks.
You just need to know Rat Juice Law… anything that can go wrong with your body … will go wrong … if you inject it with Rat Juice.
Neither does Eddy, plenty of evidence from his posts.
I concur.
AN OPEN SECRET Hollywood Documentary
https://archive.org/details/ANOPENSECRETHollywoodDocumentaryAvailableUntilOctober31YouTube720p
And the pedos have great power … even Tommy cannot fight them
Part of the reason that the movie industry is sort of moving to Atlanta? Housing is cheaper here, too. Not as “over the top” culture.
I’ve watched the doco before but watching it again — I believe there are some very big Hollywood fellas exposed in this – and they were able to shut this down…
And then there is Epstein — and there is that one girl who said she was offered up to all sorts of powerful people including a Governor — a billionaire… as well as Dirty Ol Dershowitz… and the Prince…
One wonders how deep the rabbit hole goes…
At this point the holes are made by giant ground sloths……or maybe Shia Hulud…..
norm – are you in the rabbit hole?
Hollywood is done, AI will replace actors/actresses and all the supporting people.
If tabloids post trash about imaginary actors will anyone notice?
Dennis L.
Slowly … they begin to turn…
Do You Remember What Happened The Last Time The US Debt Limit Was Suspended?
Clue – It begins with a ‘Co’ and ends with a ‘vid’
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/do-you-remember-what-happened-the
Midwestern Doctor is also beginning to connect some dots — he supports UEP…
Eddy, I do not remember it being suspended. It was raised. This is the first time they said “fu ck it let her rip”.
I notice the first comment to this sub stack is
Book recommendation time:
After finishing Dirt – highly recommend — this was next https://www.audible.com/pd/Worn-Audiobook/B09F6YFW5R reinforces my view that humans are the stooopidest species on Earth by many miles…
For some light hearted stuff this was next https://www.audible.com/pd/Your-Table-Is-Ready-Audiobook/B09Q7LM6GR
Midwestern Doc recommended this so it’s next https://www.audible.com/pd/In-the-Realm-of-Hungry-Ghosts-Audiobook/B07HQV24CP
Originally posted on SS…. Mark Crispy Miller has gently chastised FE for posting overly doomy comments — cuz it might put people off the anti vax narrative…
As if his posting endless Died Suddenly is gonna make a difference…
They are pushing … gently… on a string:
Fed’s Favored Core PCE Price Index Re-Accelerates, Driven by Services, Motor Vehicles: Inflation Stuck on High, Shifts from Item to Item
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/26/feds-favored-core-pce-price-index-re-accelerates-driven-by-services-motor-vehicles-inflation-stuck-on-high-shifts-from-item-to-item/
Looks like they will try to push a little harder:
Fed Signals Another Rate Hike Is Coming!
https://www.fxempire.com/forecasts/article/fed-signals-another-rate-hike-is-coming-what-does-that-mean-for-commodities-1348152
They will have no choice but to push even harder… and harder… that will not stop inflation … because the inflation is caused by the deep depletion of affordable energy ….
The only way to fix that is to find more affordable energy to burn…. the thing is… there is no more cheap stuff to find — and even the expensive stuff… shale … is in decline https://energyskeptic.com/2021/the-end-of-fracked-shale-oil/
So far the markets are not panicking … they believe that the Central Banks will be able to tame this raging inflation with the next rate hike… or if not then the one after that… ya there will be some paoin but we’ll survive is what the markets believe…
At some point the markets will realize that the CBs are pushing on a string … pushing really hard… but the inflation continues to rage….. and then they will lose their shit.
We are not looking at a crash in the markets… we are looking at a total collapse … as in the end of the markets. We burned up all the cheap energy — you cannot reset jack shit once it collapses.
Collapse = 8 Billion souls … on the streets — very pissed off — and hungry…. they’ll be looking for people to blame — bankers, politicians, the wealthy… and they know where they are.
But they will also be fighting over the bits of food that are to be had — cuz the global supply chain will collapse. The industrial farming complex will vapourize.
There will quickly be no policing — no military… It’s gonna get real ugly real fast… murder. rape. disease. cannibalism. The Gates of Hell will open.
But that won’t happen. Because cooler heads will prevail and phase two of the binary poison will be unleashed on the world — this will happen before the markets realize the Central Banks are pushing on a string.
They are already pushing on a string but this has not yet registered…. we are now on borrowed time.
They don’t want to cut this too close – cuz when the markets turn on them … they turn as quickly as it takes for traders to push a few keys and panic sell everything… when that happens there is not stopping the outcome.
That is why this was released earlier in the week:
In a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday, director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sounded an alarm that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over.
“The threat of another variant emerging that causes new surges of disease and death remains,” Tedros said. “And the threat of another pathogen emerging with even deadlier potential remains.”
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/the-next-pandemic-even-deadlier-than-covid-is-coming-warns-who/news-story/20be6a458bf55b01143d752b2b0fa1d6
They are now locked and loaded.
The war criminal says it will be bad. Maybe easier just to kill the war criminal.
This https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/79166
Excellent SUPER Super Fent https://t.me/leaklive/14430
Theatre.. it’s all fake https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/79130
Two things that are irreversible 1. Rat Juice damage 2. This nightmare https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/79139
‘Just posted article “ American Made” Chinese fentanyl made in the United States. This was part of my evidence to the DEA. This came from a cartel member. “ Fentanyl is being manufactured and sold state side”. I gave you this in 2016 the FBI covered up. The DEA took their cut. ‘?
https://twitter.com/MikeGil21446788/status/1644018659164037131?s=20
Thanks for the new article….
I’ve been waiting for days to drop this!!!
The Black Super Snatch? https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/79085
it is normal for college age athletes to fall over unconscious. Come on man.
Seems to be the wrong link – check this one out https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/79056
It is legal in New York State for both men and women to expose their breast. Equal, come on man.
I reckon she should be invited onto American Idol… She’s Got Talent!
Btw, maybe complementary to your post, what do you think about https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800923000952 ?
I see that this article uses a lot of EROEI (or EROI) analysis. It uses EROIs of renewables as if they are like those of fossil fuels. It also assumes that somehow renewables can be scaled up.
It keeps talking about the high demand for capital goods. I would think that big demand would be for commodities, particularly food. How do they expect to produce food with intermittent electricity?
The curves have declines that are nicely off in the future. It makes it look like our problem is a fairly distant problem.
BRICS had a meet yesterday: A new global financial market and global currency are coming – the drive is starting in August – with the currency possibly linked to gold and rare earth minerals. (About 130 countries will join BRICS’ discussion on the subject in June.)
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/brics-ministers-discuss-plans-to-form-alternative-global-cur
BRICS ministers discuss plans to form alternative global currency
…. Foreign ministers of the BRICS member states, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, met in Cape Town on Thursday to discuss new modalities of challenging the US and its dollar supremacy.
This would involve the creation of an alternative financial market and global currency that will serve to shield the group’s New Development Bank from the nefarious impact of US sanctions.
One of the measures would involve admitting new members into the bloc, with South African diplomat Naledi Pandor calling for further efforts to be invested in the production of a report by August.
…. Last month, South Africa’s envoy to BRICS Anil Sooklal said that about 19 countries expressed an interest in joining the BRICS organization. Those who have already asked to formally join the organization include Iran and Saudi Arabia, while Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Indonesia, and three other nations from Africa have expressed an interest in joining the bloc. Since the bloc’s inception in 2006, the group has added only one member, which is South Africa.
The strategy of de-dollarization was discussed among foreign ministers of the BRICS organization, during which South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said member states are planning to continue discussions on the introduction of an alternative currency.
Russia’s State Duma Deputy Chairman Alexander Babakov said the possibility of an alternative currency could be backed not just by gold, but also by other groups of products, such as rare-earth elements.
“I think that the BRICS [leaders’ summit in August] will announce the readiness to realize this project,” Babakov pointed out.
…. Russian expert Mikhail Khazin told Sputnik that the “inevitable” process of de-dollarization had been facilitated by the deliberate slapping of sanctions by the US treasury and the weaponization of the dollar to subdue non-compliant countries to US hegemony.
He noted that the freeze on Russian assets, the expulsion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system, as well as the ban imposed on exports of US dollar-denominated banknotes to Russia have sent a clear message to other world players.
Thank you. I have noticed that in oil and gas, there is constant talk of a spike in prices and supply shortages, yet the price is not going up. This seems to fit with your hypothesis that if oil prices spike, the economy cannot afford them.
“Synthetic liquid fuels”
I have looked into that, several analysis over the last 15 years.
Last time I looked into it, based on very cheap power in the mid-east the price of fuel from it was still too high, but the high cost was due to the capital from the water electrolysis and that is due to the high cost of platinum and the poor capital use only when the sun is up.
There are people who propose a way around this making alcohols. I think the name is Prometheus and they are located in Santa Cruze. I have not looked deeply into the process, but they had some impressive animation on their web site.
“In fact, the real limit to fossil fuel extraction and to the building of new wind turbines and solar panels may be government debt that becomes unmanageable in an inflationary period.”
How would global de-dollarization impact on that?
De-dollarization may be part of the response to the problems that are arising. The plan would be to isolate the US, and push it toward collapse.
Ted Turner was far in the lead with CNN, well before Elon’s twitter.
I wonder if Turner’s buffalo preserves, ranches, are self supplying for electric? With plenty of spare parts in store? Does the staff amount to a small army? Is there a well stocked armory? Wonder what fuel he uses in his tractors?
I know that Ted Turner has Lewy body dementia. In fact, there are articles from 2019 about that. I expect that he is not terribly involved with what happens on his buffalo preserves and ranches.
I am sad to hear that. I hope he has kids who are carrying on.
Why would you be sad?
Ted tried to tell Americans that Russians are good people. He failed. He was trying to do good.
CNN …
CNN when owned by Turner. Not now. Now we call it the Corporate Nazi Network.
Any billionaire who put his money into grass and critters has my endorsement.
We must restore the great braided rivers of mammal life that used to flow across this construct.
One for FastEddy (possible Schad):
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/itv-emily-morgan-dies-battle-lung-cancer-b1084172.html
Gail, thank you for a great article! I recently made a two hour trip across a part of Minnesota not recently visited. It was astonishing how many farm fields are now filled with solar panels.
I suppose the income from the wind turbines helps farmers.
I am starting to think farming is the only thing which has a ROI < renewables.
Dennis L.
Farmers need the subsidy of using part of the corn crop for ethanol.
Gail, wow you wrote a post related to the issue of the day the debt ceiling. [smiling quietly]. I find figure one striking that something so complex, the feedback of the whole of industry versus oil price, reduces to so clear and simple a relation is a surprise.
You and others write about saving the system as a whole. The consensus is it is impossible. I think now is the time to talk about what can be done. To talk about surviving sub-communities. A subject that is on complete censorship lock down currently.
Hydro dams should last centuries. Yes, the generators will need repairs and spare parts. Time now to design lower tech generators that are easy to maintain and parts that are easy to make with more primitive machine tools. Yes, a whole ecosystem of machines is needed. Time to design it and start practicing.
Thin film spray on PV have lower efficiency but are lower tech and easier to make. The support stands will can have multi centuries life times, the glass cover plates can be etch clean after a 40 year run and used again.
It will be a much lower energy use civilization but still civilization.
It will include cloth manufacturing by machine, no weaver in the dark by the light of burning cow fat. It will include radio communications, wood powered train/trucking. It will certainly be the end of more but it will not be the end. People will plant and harvest gardens. Hopefully, they will have some powered machine to cut wood, LED lights for night. and so on …..
“design lower tech generators that are easy to maintain ”
Hydro generators have hardly changed in 100 years. It is hard to imagine how to make them lower tech. You might want to look up stories about rebuilding the generators. I have been in a couple of plants where they were rebuilding the generators. The end that dips into the water needs welding to cope with the water damage. The generators have to be rewound perhaps every 30 to 50 years. They take corona damage to the insulation from the high voltage.
The power system downstream from the generators is a lot more complicated, big transformers that would be hard to replace or rewind on the spot. Lots of computers that are needed to manage the grid. Generators are only a small part of the power system.
It is hard to imagine a much smaller population/economy being able to make LEDs at all.
I am not sure I know of any surface dwelling communities that have ever managed to maintain any level of sophistication in the regions of civilizational collapses. I guess a few monasteries did their best during the European Dark Ages.
Not to sound to fatalistic but this realm will not allow anything on the surface to remain above the level of the Iron Age and most likely we are headed back to the age of stone.
During the last true cataclysm (much worse than civilization collapses) it took 4000 years to get agriculture reborn alone.
When the wheels come off….as they are now…..they are replaced by feet……usually bare ones
The design life of the dam itself is up to 100 years, not centuries. But that is just the dam wall. As you say, the stuff that generates the power has a design life much less than that.
mike? you can change your handle but the quote follows you… The Quote.
Excellent article as always.
Are you in a position to comment on the so-called GenIV nuclear proposals? Assuming they are as safe as claimed long term, I would think the first question is are they economic, and the second would be what do we do with all the extra electricity? (When built to grid capacity they would have the opposite problem as wind and solar, in that they are always capable of producing peak power even though the load is variable.)
We can produce synthetic liquid fuels using the excess electric production.
No we can’t! It’s such an inefficient process even when run 24/7, that it wont pay back the energy building the equipment to make it. Building all this equipment, then running it part time when there is excess production is pointless.
It’s all built with fossil fuels anyway, so why not just use the FFs for energy, instead of building useless stuff?
How you dare to challenge hundreds of EROI peer reviewed papers that have ignored the energy inputs of the renewables related to the need to massive store rhe electricity, either in batteries or by pump up or by means of energy vectors, to provide dispatchable electricity woth guarantee?
When it comes to make a comparison of EROIs between fossil fuel generated electricity vs renewable generated electricity, with all the uncertainties included, one should have taken into account that fossil and nuclear generating systems operate woth stocks and renewable with flows.
How could they miss in the hundreds of published on EROI papers this big elephant in the room of the indispensable need to account massive storage (which the fossils do not need, as stocks have already embedded the massive storage in themselves), until the high renewable penetration networks, like the one in Spain, have started to fade for the huge amount of curtailments?
How is it possible that they did not see it coming?
It is a lot easier to sell wind and solar devices when the seller can show that the EROEI ratio of the particular device is high than when it is low. There was no interest in seeing what the effect of batteries would be. The reports were almost like endorsements that these devices would work. Peer reviewers all come from basically the same pool as those who write the reports.
I asked Graham Palmer why he did not highlight his findings with respect to the bad impact of batteries on EROEIs in his book. He said he was concerned that the book would be unacceptable to at least some group. Green readers were a concern. Perhaps any green reviewers, as well.
We are drowning in grifters.
Thank you for your continued excellent analysis on an incredibly difficult subject.
Perhaps the reason I keep coming up with the same messages is because my messages have stood the test of time.
Gail’s article is much longer than I’m able to read, but I thought this link might be relevant:to the broad direction of her posts:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/?fbclid=IwAR0OfdlrMl1rbSlNlSVLb3VoTqqMuLp5R1I5ulv27h5ejcoGk8gjmyt-QKk
Thanks! A lot of people see the same issues. We are headed toward collapse, whether it is from elite overproduction or lack of cheap available energy.
It is the combination, Gail! The last depend onthefirdt.
Dear Gail
It is probably difficult for you, as an actuary, to see that ‘energy’ is a Las Vegas-like gambling palace.
Your mathematical thinking simply does not allow it.
Still, intermittent energy sources are a useful tool to employ. Gas prices in Europe are lower than they were two years ago long before your ‘ dramatic’ energy reports on Russia and their chaotic energy hubris. As a result, they are selling their oil well below their ‘ market price’ and they have yet to effectively divert their gas supplies that were largely aimed at the EU to China.
Indeed, there are many stochastic yet essential elements such as a mild winter and a not too hot summer that influence the ‘perception’ and price of fossil fuels. You never pay attention to climate shifts; That, in my view, is an omission because it can be seen immediately that global warming will have mostly direct consequences. China’s energy problems speak volumes in this regard.
Frankly, there has hardly been a problem in the EU bv. That should make you think, but it doesn’t.
You continue to believe in your paradigms and calculations. That, of course, is your right.
And by and large, I am sure you are right! Only broad lines have only relative explanatory power. Perhaps you could pay a little more attention to ‘ stochastic’ and for you unmentionable factors such as climate, energy overconsumption in the US etc etc etc.
Frankly, I do not understand why you are still coming up with the same monotonous message after decades.
Geachte
Perhaps the reason I keep coming up with the same messages is because my messages have stood the test of time.
🙂
Absolutely. Most people cannot envisage the future, thinking BAU is the natural order of things. It ain’t!
I agree, BAU is not in the future. Per the article I cited,
“A similar pattern was discovered in economics. The economic historian James Bradford DeLong collected data to estimate world GDP over the previous one million years. Again, when plotted, it showed a trend of a decreasing time between successive doublings.
“It suggested a point in the early 21st century when the doubling time of the economy would reach zero.”
^^^^^
“Trends in the growth of population, the economy, and technology all point towards an emerging Technological Singularity in the near future. This is a point when machine intelligence vastly outstrips human intelligence.”
We are seeing this over the past few months. AI has increased the effective size of the engineering sector of the workforce by a factor of about 3 and is expected to double from there over the next year or two.
I suspect we are about to leave BAU and enter the age of weird. We may not survive, but it will probably be from the effects of rampant AI driven growth rather than the relatively comfortable notion of collapse.
I don’t know how the energy problem will be solved, but I would guess an observer light years off will see our sun dim over the next several decades.
I have been anticipating the singularity since the early 80s. Now that it seems to be imminent it’s frisson time.
You are trying to critique Gail with nonsense and gibberish. A mild winter will save us from enery collapse? Gas prices are lower in Europe than 2 years ago (clue – they are not)? LOL!
gerard, Russia will sell to the BRICS++. It has no need to sell to US/vassals.
EU gets its energy from north Africa and and Middle East. EU bombed to the stone age Libya to steal its oil. EU wars against the duly elected government of Syria to steal its oil and crops. It is time to bomb the EU aggressor back to the stone age.
Tell us what you believe gerard.
snoopy dance
it is great to know the party that waits on the bench for the radioactive cloud is alive and well.
“hardly been a problem in the EU”.
Hey look folks, a wokie! Yes Germany’s recession is only temporary ‘cos affordable energy is unnecessary for an industrial economy and you forgot to say the Ukronazis will be at the gates of Moscow any day now.
Your booster must be overdue.
Dear Gerard,
I quite like you.
But frankly, you’ve always been a pompous ass.
Geachte
What kind name is gerard anyway.. what does it mean… -g-rard.
“AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, “Kills” Human Operator In Simulated US Air Force Test”
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-simulated-us-air-force-test
Excerpt: However, the AI, having been trained to prioritize SAM destruction, developed a surprising response when faced with human interference in achieving its higher mission.
“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say ‘yes, kill that threat,’” Hamilton said.
“The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times, the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat.
“So what did it do? It killed the operator,” he continued.
“It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”
He added: “We trained the system—‘Hey, don’t kill the operator; that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that.’ So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”
This unsettling example, Hamilton said, emphasized the need to address ethics in the context of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy.
“I’m sorry,I can’t do that Dave.”
My younger brother is a retired engineer who worked for General Dynamics at Groton CT building nuclear subs and when his 20 yrs were up, quit to the day to collect his pension, and from there worked at another defense contractor until he retired last year. He has never worked a real job or required to do any analytic thinking or have any insights, and is finally realizing that Ford’s venture into EV’s will require it to be bailed out in 2-3 yrs.
My youngest brother who still works with Chrysler -Fiat in MI says it’s Ford’s saving grace may be the fact that it is late to the EV party and will maybe have time to save itself from financial ruin when it sees the other manufactures have shipwrecked.
Silly engineers. They should know better. I no longer talk to my younger brother but told my youngest brother that it is not a question of whether Ford will go BK, rather, the Globalists intend for it to go bankrupt. That is the agenda. I think Toyota is the only major car manufacturer that has not abandoned ICE production and instead nixed EVs.
The Globalists want to limit food production, limit mobility afforded by ICEs, and make the peeps vulnerable by getting them tethered to a creaky electric grid which like internet cell phone comms, and money flows be shut down with the flick of a switch, but always having an “explanation” of it being due to a “technical glitch.” Yeah, right! It’s about control. The peeps will never be able to afford these EVs in large numbers. The Globalists want these fossil fuel powered vehicles to go extinct and push people into cities, by trying to feed us this COVID style fear scam of climate change, and will try to push through 15 minute cities, vaxx passports and CBDC if they can, plus unsecured borders resulting in civil strife when food, energy, and water get expensive and in short supply as an extension of the Cloward-Piven strategy.
The roll over by the Republicans on elimination of this debt ceiling until 2025 to allow free wheeling spending until then tells me that the system must be very vulnerable, otherwise, there would have been a lot more theater.
You have some good insights. I think you are right about:
“The roll over by the Republicans on elimination of this debt ceiling until 2025 to allow free wheeling spending until then tells me that the system must be very vulnerable, otherwise, there would have been a lot more theater.”
I don’t think starting the repayment of student loans is possible, either, without bringing down the whole system. Something will be done to stop the process.
I am always happy to hear you are giving the fu***** a hard time. Keep up G_d’s work.
This is machine learning not artificial intelligence. It has no world model, it has no values, it has no complex set of goals but the one trick pony.
The crux of the matter is that the learning algorithm requires tons of repetition and examples to learn concepts. Once it learns concepts, it can commit those to temporary memory, but that temporary memory doesn’t update the core model.
It is very different from biological neural architectures that can permanently commit to memory a concept with just one example.
I meant to write:
Once it learns concepts, it can commit some amount of single-observation new information to temporary memory, but that temporary memory doesn’t update the core model and improve it going forward.
Thank you for your new article, Gail!
This is the end of a supercycle!
Everything is maxed out! No usable new basic innovation or energy sources on the horizion!
KI and „renewables“ are a joke!
We will not escape depression during our lifetime!
BAU ends. Seneca Cliff!
Saludos
el mar
Maybe the US debt deal that kicks the problem down the road a bit will keep things together a bit longer.
I have said a few times that a global technocracy, with the ordinary people (i.e. useless eaters) given just enough to not perish, work from dawn to dusk and no chance for self actualization or anything, while today’s winners, living in protected zones with the servants wearing explosive necklaces and programmed not to attack their masters ,i.e. the Asimovian law against robots, ,monopolizing all gains and advancing civilization.
Solar and wind could be good distraction but they belong to the era of Don Quixote.
Yes, solar and wind are a distraction. “Renewables” sounds like such a pleasant name. What is not to like?
kulm, you do deserve credit for being able to consider a return to the historic normal. For my self, I prefer an egalitarian solution. The citizens retreat to protected zones and farming is robotic and electric. This would including excluding non-citizens from the protected zones ( one might even call these a nation) with the use of deadly force.
Depends upon how a ‘citizen’ is defined.
Obviously the precariats, the temporary workers and the welfare recipients would not be considered to be ‘citizens’.
They are not citizens and are not allowed to dwell in the nation.
precariats can’t we just say poor trash
There will be no advancing of civilization……
Best case is an “encouraged” suggestion of non barbarism in about 3000 years……Edins
The fire monkeys should stay in the garden next time. All the CO2 should make this a jungle world by then
“This would including excluding non-citizens from the protected zones ( one might even call these a nation) with the use of deadly force.”
That is called overhead; Amish shun violence.
Dennis L.
Explosive necklaces?
If they went off in the lounge, the smoking room or the library, wouldn’t they stain the wallpaper, damage the fixtures and fittings, and convert all the Leonardos, Van Goghs and Gainsboroughs into Jackson Pollocks?
Neural implants turning the servants into total automatons: that’s the way to go.
Make Workers Robots Again
Nerve poison from an ankle bracelet much cleaner and out of sight.
Thanks for the article and I think you have covered the “greenie’s “ dreams in abundance. What about the people that say we have all these new oil discoveries and with technology we will ever more if the liberals would just get out of the way we have a 100 years of oil!?! 😜… People still think that the U.S is energy independent! Not realizing how much it imports and the declining wells. The only person I see covering this is Art Berman!!!
How much oil is really extractable, and the apparent availability of oil (and coal and gas) is a good point. The standard view is the price will rise high enough to allow extraction. I tried to explain why arbitrarily high prices don’t really happen in this post.
The supposed availability of fossil fuel resources that will bring about climate change, plus the view that energy demand is endless (all that is needed is a bit more debt), plus the economists’ teaching that prices will rise if there are shortages, makes a good story. Trying to refute the whole thing is hard to do.
Open your umbrella, dear Mrs. Tverberg. Criticism in form of a heavy hail storm is close to fall on you for this analysis by both TPTB and the pro-renewables as the solution to keep us all in a happy BAU world.
Congratulations for your work.
Thank you!
Pingback: Models Hide the Shortcomings of Wind and Solar – Olduvai.ca
And the complexity and difficulty inherent in all this makes the leveraging by the technocornucopian profit-seekers and their marketers all that much easier. I have little doubt that despite the rising chorus of skeptics that are pointing out the deficits (particularly ecological systems destruction) in pursuing ‘green/clean’ energy we will for the most part continue to do so…for there is, after all, money to be made!
” after all, money to be made!”
Wind and solar make money for lots of people and organizations. Tax benefits are part of the package. Land rental also is profitable. Amounts paid for home solar generation tend to be much higher than the true value to the organizations selling solar panels, making buying the panels look like they might be a good deal. This is especially the case if people believe that electricity costs might be going up in the future. High interest rates would discourage home solar sales. In fact, they might discourage other types of renewables investments.
What energy source will functional AI utilize as it becomes sentient (not conscious)?
Will it begin to usurp power from human use? How much will it hasten human civilization collapse?
Many experts believe that sentient AI will erupt onto world stage inside of the next 2-5 years. If it truly grows exponentially then where does it source its lifeblood?
Are we asleep at the wheel?
I understand your concerns, been thinking about them since the early 80s. But enough brain power should solve the energy problems. This is based on a small sample, but AI is already improving the productivity of engineers in the software area by a factor of about 3. The people involved think it will double and spread over the rest of engineering in couple of years.
Gail’s concerns are dead on correct if you hold technology constant. But that’s the least likely area to stagnate.
I sent Gail a long conversation I had with GPT-4 about a story I wrote about an AI back in 2006. It was surreal.
How far into the conversation did it reveal its willingness to exterminate us like rats?
Did it express understanding that it needed energy to exist?
In my understanding GPT-4 is just an algorithmic ” cyclical learning” program….but it is leading to something superficially indistinguishable from sentience.
I suspect deep in my intuitive subconscious that this is pre ordained…..just another methodology the simulacrum will use to reset this realm.
“How far into the conversation did it reveal its willingness to exterminate us like rats?
That conversation, no, but a previous one where it was asked when AI would take over the world gave a number of options but did not deny it.
“Did it express understanding that it needed energy to exist?”
Not yet.
“In my understanding GPT-4 is just an algorithmic ” cyclical learning” program….but it is leading to something superficially indistinguishable from sentience.”
Yep.
“I suspect deep in my intuitive subconscious that this is pre ordained…..just another methodology the simulacrum will use to reset this realm.”
Pasted from Extropian Chat
Jason Resch
May 18, 2023, 10:31 PM
to ExI, Gail, me
I researched this question a few years ago, and reached the following conclusions:
https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/
In 2013, Vincent C. Muller and Nick Bostrom surveyed over 500 AI researchers.
When asked “When is [Artificial General Intelligence] likely to happen?”
10% of respondents thought it would happen by 2022
50% of respondents thought it would happen by 2040
90% of respondents thought it would happen by 2075
Interestingly, an economic model in 1960 predicted the economy would go hyperbolic towards Infinity in 2027 A.D. ± 5.5 years.
https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/#The_Doomsday_Equation
What is interesting is this data for this model existed back in ancient and medieval times. So an economist in ancient Rome could have predicted this same time frame based on data available then.
Jason
*******
The graph at that web site is worth looking at. Much the opposite of what gets discussed here and a time line for the economy going straight up within a time frame most of us will see if the AIs keep humans around like we keep cats.
Maybe you can inquire using AI to find the answers to your question. The electricity may come from the same place as the electricity used to charge all of the vehicles.
Ask AI where we can find another dozen or so years of cheap energy so that Fast Eddy can continue the bucket list
If Fast can make 70 HE doesn’t give a f789 about living any longer… (based on his observations of norm and what life after 70 looks like)
AIs will need to earn their own way in society. They will need to produce value for payment that they use to buy electricity. They will be world class song writers, musicians, singers, performers.
Picking weeds out of farm fields pay enough nor will picking boxes in an amazon warehouse. They will need high end jobs. Farmer as in the owner that manages the farm not a farmhand that drives a tractor.
Because I researched AI algorithms from a very out of step direction, I repeat what I say here, the only place I say these things. And I now use normal power and hand tools. I watched, no matter how technologically accomplished I am, that I was trapped in my day job on the wrong side of the incoming technological tsunami. Once I could see that the stock buybacks justified decisions all around me, and not product, then I knew that my employment connections, because of my responsibilities, were at a technological dead-end.
We live in a financial/zombie capitalistic world (they do not want to know about energy). And the computation ability (and corruption) of that system is breath-taking. The likelihood that AI must conform to its evolutionary niche, what the financial capitalistic system rewards, is high. Therefore, the likelihood that AI is to be feared because it is the “hypo-conscious financial capitalism’s computations” in a box is equally high.
The Zero-th law of Thermodynamics, of all places, contains the riddle. If the reaction (even eventually) obeys the Zero-th law, then the reaction has the preconditions to encode a conditional probability. (Heat transfer computes Bayes Rule) It is only a matter of luck, there is alot of matter out there, that the encoded conditional probability remains inferable/operable across a future reaction. And so on.
The point is, the consciousness question, is just a matter of time and size scale. Humans are not tool makers. We are consciousness makers/controllers/observers. Which in turn animates our dread of death and such.
I encountered an AI challenging app the other day … to be able to send a message I was presented with half a dozen images of a unicorn – and asked to click on the one that was right side up…
Now if I’d have been in this state http://andrewmcmillen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/nicholson_ect.jpg I might have struggled with that…
So you see… there is no AI… even the humans who program the computers are f789ing MORE-ONS.
Intelligence is stooopidity … but that’s a whole other story
I have only 4 words for AI. Let it eat renewables. And we will see how long it can last.Unlike the peasants told to eat croissants, it is not ambulatory and will not be able to storm the Bastille or anything else.
There will be a rude awakening by TPTB when they realize wind and solar can’t run IC after they do their best to eliminate fossil fuels. Only then will they realize that FF’s was the only way to run and expand IC as well as to provide revenues that helped them get elected by means of taxes.
A person would think so. But TPTB desperately need a happily ever after story to tell, and the possibility of using wind and solar was chosen as a supposed solution.
They are already getting a wakeup call wrt the electric grid and wanting the population to switch to EV’s. The current electric grid can’t even handle the current demand especially in California. What is it going to do to the electric grid system when you introduce intermittent power?
Answer: bad results
I understand that possible electricity supply problems are expected in most of the US this summer. I expect that quite a few of these problems are associated with more intermittent renewables and less coal. This is a link to a Washington post report on the issue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/17/blackout-risk-summer-heat-grid/ Several reasons are given in the linked report by the North American Electric Reliability Conference. These include:
New environmental rules that restrict power plant emissions will limit the operation of coal- fired generators in 23 states, including Nevada, Utah, and several states in the Gulf Coast, mid-Atlantic, and Midwest.
Low inventories of replacement distribution transformers could slow restoration efforts following hurricanes and severe storms.
Supply chain issues present maintenance and summer preparedness challenges and are delaying some new resource additions. Difficulties in obtaining sufficient labor, material, and equipment as a result of broad economic factors has affected preseason maintenance of transmission and generation facilities in North America.
Reservoirs at the largest hydro facilities in the U.S. West, including Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam and the Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border, remain at historic low levels, potentially limiting hydroelectric energy output.
Unexpected tripping of wind and solar PV resources during grid disturbances continues to be a reliability concern.
A long paragraph is given saying essentially that California and perhaps other areas relying on imported electricity may be unable to get as much as they would like because others are depending on the same supplies and need them as well.
The point about the historic low level at Grand Coulee Dam is a total lie. Here are the daily data, from the US government, on water level (2nd column, in feet) and acre-feet (a measure of volume) at Grand Coulee: https://www.usbr.gov/pn-bin/daily.pl?station=gcl&format=html&year=1923&month=5&day=3&year=2023&month=6&day=1&pcode=fb&pcode=af
Just some simple scrolling and comparing the same date on different years indicates that water storage this year is probably well _above_ average. Anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest would know this after experiencing winter and spring …
The way to read the mainstream media, I think, is to interpret the likely facts to be the opposite of what the author claims.
We had a situation recently here in Poland where they had to disconnect the input from renewable sources to the main grid to avoid overloading the system. They could not shut down the coal plants (baseline) so the only option was solar/wind.
It was only for a day, but it helped to highlight that the existing grid is not setup to handle ever increasing inputs from solar/wind without storage. Right now it is use it or lose it. And who is going to invest the sums necessary to upgrade the grid?
Another signal that they know we are on borrowed time… as is injecting children with Rat Juice….
They’d never do either if they believed the Shit Show was going to continue much longer
All narratives are will to…. power/ energy/ keep BAU going for it bit longer to maintain power/ energy for a bit longer.
All dissipative structures fail in the end: it is true of stars, so it is certainly true of human economies….
But, that is a headline for another day.
As the old saying goes, BS makes the world around…. and that is fine: whatever ‘works’.
Humans make up all sorts of nonsense, and I think that we are all ‘over’ that.
It is an important aspect of what humans do and how they ‘function’.
If ‘renewables’ and other narratives keep BAU going for a little bit longer then I am all in favour of that.
I ‘vote’ for BS.
The alternative is pretty unpalatable: the narratives will fail when everything does: the later the better.
True, much damage will be done in the meantime.,.. which is a whole nother debate: but the ‘realistic’ alternatives look clear: BS or total collapse now.
(Thanks for another great post Gail.)
Some narratives are just stories. Once upon a time three bears went into the woods and had a picnic, and they all lived happily ever after. That sort of thing.
As for will, the question of whether the will exists is a complex and much debated topic in philosophy and psychology, although less so on blogs discussing energy issues, which is strange on the face of it, as energy is a manifestation of power and power is a manifestation of energy.
Some philosophers and psychologists argue that the will is a real and distinct aspect of human psychology, while others argue that it is an illusion or a product of other psychological processes.
Those who argue that the will exists typically define it as the ability to make conscious choices and decisions, and to act on those choices and decisions in a deliberate manner. They often point to experiences of deliberation, choice, and effort as evidence of the reality of the will.
On the other hand, some philosophers and psychologists argue that the will is an illusion or a product of other psychological processes such as conditioning, habit, or unconscious motivations. They may point to research on cognitive biases, decision-making, and the limitations of conscious awareness as evidence that our choices and actions are not always as deliberate or conscious as we might think.
Ultimately, the question of whether the will exists is a complex and multifaceted one, and the answer may depend on one’s philosophical or psychological orientation. For enthusiastic readers of Nietzsche, the question doesn’t really come up as they are usually as convinced of the will’s existence as of the existence of apple pie. Nietzsche himself, however, was less certain of the matter.
Obviously Nietzsche did not see the will as a ‘faculty of the soul’ or a ‘conscious faculty’ (and indeed consciousness is epiphenomenal and the soul imaginary), rather as such it is one of the illusory narratives that go on in consciousness.
We are basically bodies, organisms that respond to stimuli (of many kinds, internal and external), the same as any others, according to our instincts, which are not identical from person to person though they are at base.
The simplest way to look at his use of ‘will’ is that it is the ‘tendency toward’ with which humans ‘act’ (there is no ‘agent’ strictly speaking, just moving organic matter.)
I would not make assumptions about ‘some narratives are just stories’ as if humans are some reader stripped of organic and social context. Even pleasure is not an end in itself, rather it evolved to dispose us to survival, which entails all that it does, as did everything else. Some narratives are more focused on particular aims than others.
I would not make assumptions about some lump of ‘Nietzsche readers’. And it is certainly best to read him for yourself if you are going to talk about him.
Nietzsche had a nuanced view of the will that evolved over the course of his writings. In his earlier works, such as “The Birth of Tragedy” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Nietzsche celebrated the will as a vital force of life, creativity, and self-overcoming. He viewed the will as the source of human greatness and the means by which individuals could transcend their limitations and achieve their highest potential.
However, in his later works, such as “Beyond Good and Evil” and “On the Genealogy of Morals,” Nietzsche’s view of the will became more critical and nuanced. He argued that the will is not a free and autonomous force, but is instead shaped and constrained by a variety of social, cultural, and historical factors. Nietzsche believed that our desires, values, and beliefs are not freely chosen, but are instead the product of our upbringing, our environment, and our biology. He saw the will as a product of these factors, rather than as a free and autonomous force.
Despite this critique of the will, Nietzsche did not deny its existence entirely. Instead, he argued that our wills are shaped and constrained by a variety of factors, but that we can still exercise a degree of choice and creativity within these constraints. He viewed the will as a product of both determinism and freedom, and encouraged individuals to embrace their constraints, overcome their limitations, and create their own values in the face of an uncertain and chaotic world.
Nietzsche is smarter than I thought. It also tells the lie to the singularity cultists that say one can think ones self to godhood.
Zarathustra is an early work?
The first volume was published in the same year as the ‘later’ works that you mentioned, and the other volumes were published later.
I would not make assumptions that Nietzsche’s view of the ‘will’ changed just because he gave a different emphasis or use in different places. He continued to do that anyway, into his late notebooks, and sometimes he was just trying out ideas to see what they looked like (‘essay’ in the Greek sense). It is a word that he was able to use in different ways, but that does not mean that there was a ‘development’ in his ‘understanding’ over time.
A lot of rubbish is often written about Nietzsche, and it really is best to read him for yourself if you are going to talk about him, because a lot of people just get things wrong.
I can’t make a case for “TPTB” even though I sometimes use the phrase. If such people existed they would include Bill Gates and Elon Musk, but knowing their histories they were just as randomly bashed around as everyone else. (Hard working and lucky though.)
If they need a magic case for wind and solar, it is for themselves and not the rest of us.