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A common belief is that if the world does not have adequate energy, the result will be high prices. These high prices will allow more fossil fuels to be extracted or will allow renewables to substitute for fossil fuels.
In my view, the real issue is quite different: Inadequate energy supply of the types the economy requires can be expected to affect the economy in a way that causes it to become “unglued.” The economy will gradually fall apart as infighting becomes more of a problem. Goods won’t necessarily be high-priced; many simply won’t be available at any price. Political parties will fragment. Conflict within countries, such as the recent Wagner conflict with the military leadership in Russia, will become more common.
It has become fashionable to use models to predict the future, but simple models do not consider real-world dynamics. They don’t consider the importance of already existing infrastructure and the types of energy products this infrastructure requires. They don’t consider the importance of continuing food production. They don’t consider the dynamics of “not enough goods and services to go around.”
In this post, I will look at some pieces of evidence that suggest we should expect the world economy to become unglued as limits are hit. A corollary is that we cannot expect a transition to a world powered by renewables to work.
[1] It is easy to show that the energy supplies of a finite world will eventually fall short.
Anyone can model the energy supplies of a finite world as a bucket of sand and a scooper. If the scooper is used to remove the sand from the bucket, it will eventually become empty. If we start with a larger bucket of sand, perhaps the process can be delayed. Or, if we use a smaller scooper, the process will be delayed. But the result will be the same.
Back in 1957, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a speech in which he said,
For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
In this speech, Rickover pointed out the importance of fossil fuels to maintain our standard of living and to win wars. It was clear to the military that fossil fuel energy supplies were tremendously important in preventing future problems for the economy.
[2] History shows that economies tend to grow and eventually collapse.
Economies tend to operate in cycles, as illustrated in Figure 1.
The eight economies analyzed by Turchin and Nefedov moved into a new area or acquired a new energy resource. These economies tended to grow for a long periods, well over 100 years, until the populations hit the carrying capacity of the available resources. These economies were able to work around these resource limits during a period of Stagflation, which typically lasted about 50 to 60 years. Eventually, the problems became too great to be overcome. A Crisis Period of falling population and GDP, lasting 20 to 50 years, typically ensued.
[3] The world economy today seems to be following a similar cycle based on its use of fossil fuels. In fact, we seem to be in the Crisis Period of such a cycle.
Today’s fossil fuel-based world economy started growing at varying times, in various places around the world, becoming well established by the early 1800s. It seems to have hit a Stagflation Period between 1970 and 1980. Recent patterns in oil supply per capita, interest rates, and debt levels suggest to me that the world economy has entered the Crisis Period of the current cycle.
To me, oil supply, particularly crude oil supply, is exceptionally important in keeping the economy growing because it is heavily used in producing the food supply and transporting it to market. In fact, it is heavily used in transportation of all kinds. We can see what is going wrong by looking at the trend in crude oil per capita (blue line on Figure 2).
On Figure 2, a line is drawn at 2005, when many people believe that peak “conventional” oil was reached. The line at 2009 points out the long-term slide in oil consumption per capita between 2005 and 2009, related at least in part to the Great Recession of 2008-2009. There was another steep drop in crude oil per capita in 2020, and this drop has not been made up. Cutbacks in drilling and low oil prices suggest that per capita consumption may never recover to the 2018 level.
US interest rates over time indicate a clear up and down pattern, with increases to 1981, and mostly decreases since then (Figure 3). Raising interest rates is like putting brakes on the economy because it makes monthly payments on loans higher. Lowering interest rates is like pressing on the accelerator.
The US was in a Stagflation Period after 1980. Lower interest rates helped push the economy along, at least until they could go no lower. The first place falling interest rates stalled was in 2008, when they hit zero for the shortest-term debt. About the beginning of 2021, interest rates started to rise, to try to stop inflation.
At the same time, the US’s ability to add to debt, except US government debt, seems to have stalled about 2008 and again in 2021.
The combination of Figures 2, 3, and 4 suggests that the world economy has been on shaky ground since 2008. The US economy has been operating with incredibly low interest rates. If the world loses the ability to hide energy problems behind ever-lower interest and ever-higher debt, (particularly government debt), many parts of the economy could start coming apart.
[4] The world’s total energy supply must increase at least as fast as population to keep the economy growing and away from collapse.
A couple of years ago, I did an analysis of the growth in energy consumption compared to the growth of population over the period 1820 to 2020. I found that when energy consumption was rising faster than population, there tended to be a rise in standards of living. When energy consumption grew only as fast as population, problematic things (such as wars and governmental collapses) tended to happen (Figure 5).
On Figure 5, the sum of red and blue areas represents world energy consumption growth by 10-year periods. The blue areas represent population growth percentages during these 10-year periods. The red area is determined by subtraction. It represents the amount of energy consumption growth that is “left over” for growth in standards of living. When growth in energy consumption was inadequate, wars tended to take place, and the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union took place.
We are now at a point where energy consumption may decrease dramatically in future years, especially if we attempt to convert to a system based on intermittent wind and solar. The drop in energy consumption, relative to population, would likely be far worse than any situation we have experienced in the past. Besides being inadequate in quantity, wind and solar are not adapted to handling our most basic need, which is for providing the inputs farmers require to provide us with food.
[5] A key to understanding the role of fuels of the right kinds is understanding the physics-based way that the economy operates.
The economy is very much like the human body. The operation of both is governed by the laws of physics. The human body needs to consume a variety of food products. Alternative foods can be substituted, but the overall quantity of food needs to be sufficient for the population and their level of activity.
Likewise, the world economy requires a variety of energy products to operate. Substitutions can sometimes be made, but the overall quantity must be sufficient to support the activities of the economy, including providing adequate food and water for the population and ways to transport these items to the population that needs them.
There are other similarities, as well. Humans start out as small babies. Eventually, humans grow old. In the years leading up to death, they often become frail. The cycle downward at the end of an economy’s life is somewhat similar. Economies, even the world economy, cannot last forever.
[6] To build and maintain cities, it is necessary for energy to be easily storable.
In his book, Against the Grain, the American political scientist James C. Scott points out that in order for governments to grow and to provide infrastructure for cities, it is necessary to tax farmers. Grain is ideal for this; taxing a root crop such as sweet potatoes does not work well. Root crops are hard to see when they are growing. They also are harder to transport and store.
Clearly, farmers must have a surplus of storable energy to make cities and good roads work. They must be able to produce this surplus energy in a sufficiently profitable way that governments can tax it and use the proceeds for the benefit of the overall population.
I think that excess storable energy is the true “net energy” that some authors write about. A city cannot operate only when the wind happens to be blowing or the sun happens to be shining. Everyone would clog the roads at the same time, trying to get to a job that might last only a few minutes. Even today, if a city is to have electricity when it is needed, even in winter, there needs to be a storable supply of fuel to provide this electricity. Batteries cannot provide this level of storage; we would run out of materials.
Cities are essential for the sharing of ideas and for the operation of major industries.
We can have an economy of hunter-gatherers running on intermittent energy alone. We might even be able to have cities based on stored grain, as civilizations did in the past. But the population would need to be far less than today’s 8 billion.
[7] Both energy density and storability are needed if the world’s population is to be fed.
A farmer needs machines that are not so heavy that they will sink into the soil. Soil compaction is also an issue with heavy machines. If soil is compacted, water cannot make its way through the pores properly. Rain will tend to run off, causing erosion, instead of sinking in, to provide longer-term benefit. Soil compaction is already a problem with today’s large machinery. Less dense fuels, or the use of heavy battery packs, will make the problem even worse.
Energy dense fuel is also needed for the transportation of food. In fact, energy dense fuel, such as diesel or jet fuel, is used in nearly all of today’s very large vehicles. Heavy vehicles operated in situations that require very large bursts of power especially need energy dense fuel. Examples include semi-trailer trucks, buses that drive up steep hills, airplanes that need bursts of power to take off, agricultural vehicles that might get stuck in mud, and vehicles used in construction and road making.
Trains operating on smooth tracks, with limited gradients, don’t need the same bursts of power, so they are sometimes electric. Boats don’t generally need large bursts of power, but boats generally use an energy-dense liquid fuel to propel them on long journeys. Storing enough electricity in batteries to power such long journeys would be impractical.
The recently published 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy (now produced by the Energy Institute, instead of BP) shows that the heavier, more energy-dense types of burnable oil have been falling as a share of the world’s oil supply.
These heavier grades are the ones best suited to essential future energy needs, and they seem to be depleting the most quickly.
[8] Added complexity is deceptive. It looks like it can save energy, but it tends to increase wage disparities and makes the overall system more fragile.
Added complexity for an economy includes changes such as more built infrastructure (roads, dams, bridges), larger businesses, more specialization of workers, more international trade, and longer supply chains. It is easy for modelers to assume that these changes have no energy cost, but in reality, they do.
Changes enabling growing complexity go hand in hand with more debt and more financialization of the economy. With greater complexity, owners and managers of businesses, as well as highly trained workers, tend to receive a disproportionate share of the wealth. This means that little is left over for non-elite workers. These wage and wealth disparities lead to the unhappiness of the lower-paid workers. This is especially the case during economic downturns.
With added complexity, the system becomes more fragile. Supply lines become longer, so missing parts are more likely to be a problem. Repair parts for wind turbines may become unavailable, for example. The US grid would need massive improvements to handle the proposed increase in wind and solar power, and the demands of EVs. All of the simultaneous commodity demands may become too much for suppliers to meet.
Even changes in financial systems could be a serious problem. With the conflict over the SWIFT money processing system, will one group of countries start using a different financial exchange program, such as Iran’s financial messaging system SEPAM? Will Western nations find themselves cut off from purchasing inputs they depend upon?
[9] Modeling underlying the analysis for the 1972 book The Limits to Growth shows that (total materials required for reinvestment each year) as a percentage of (total economic output) is an important limit.
Somehow, the economy must provide enough goods and services both for the needs of the current members of the economy and for the investment needed to keep the system operating in the future.
The economy is squeezed in three different ways:
- The population keeps growing, and each person needs food, clothing, and a variety of services.
- Resources of all kinds (not just fossil fuels) become more difficult to extract due to depletion. More of the output of the economy needs to go into investment, just to get the same quantity of copper, lithium, nickel, and minerals of all kinds, including fossil fuels.
- With the rising population and increasing resource use, pollution becomes a bigger problem. Mitigation efforts lead to a need to use more resources to keep pollution away from humans.
To keep the system operating, we cannot spend very much on the combination of resource extraction and pollution control, or there will not be enough resources left to meet the needs of the growing population.
This combination limit tells me is that a rapid transition of any kind toward any new energy type, even toward the use of “green energy,” is not likely to work well. There is a reason why past transitions to new energy types have been very slow. The economy cannot invest enough without starving other parts of the economy.
Some people have interpreted this combination limit as an Energy Return on Energy Investment limit of perhaps 10:1, but it seems to me to be a far more serious limit than this. At a minimum, all types of resources, including those for backup batteries and additional long distance transmission lines, must be included in any calculation for renewables.
Also, to keep the system operating, any shift from fossil fuels to renewables cannot have a delayed payback period, relative to fossil fuels, or the huge up-front investment will become a problem. The up-front investment in renewables will be higher, but there will not be enough output to support the economy. The “real” economy does not operate on an accrual basis; people need to eat every day, and aluminum smelters expect to operate every day.
As I mentioned previously, renewables aren’t really helpful for growing food. Nor are reliable enough to power aluminum smelters, so there is a real issue as to whether they should even be considered as possible substitutes for fossil fuels. They are simply add-ons to the fossil fuel system to avoid having to talk about our fossil fuel supply problems. Reframing the issue as “wanting to move away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change” saves having to talk about the inadequate fossil fuel supply problem, and the fact that fossil fuels are what make today’s lifestyle possible.
[10] Energy prices must be both high enough for producers to make a profit and low enough for consumers to afford goods made with these energy products.
It is the conflict between the needs of consumers and producers that tends to bring fossil fuel energy production down. Consumers say, “We can’t stand oil (or natural gas or electricity) prices this high, and demand that politicians hold prices down.” In fact, this just recently happened in Australia with natural gas prices. Without an adequate profit motive, drillers cut back on drilling and production falls.
Renewables have gotten mandates and subsidies, especially the subsidy of going first on the electric grid. It is these subsidies and mandates that have made investments in wind turbines and solar panels attractive. Once governments have more financial problems and these subsidies disappear, owners are likely to stop making repairs to these systems. They will not last longer than fossil fuel-based systems, in my opinion.
[11] Conclusion: We are in uncharted territory.
I mentioned that the Great Recession of 2008-2009 seemed to mark the beginning of the downturn. More financial problems are no doubt ahead, but other kinds of strange events may also occur.
It seems possible that Covid, its vaccines, and the restrictions in 2020 may even have been part of the “ungluing.” Self-organizing physics-based systems act strangely. World oil supply started declining in 2019. Militaries around the world have been concerned about fossil fuel limits for many years. Militaries have also been deeply involved with germ warfare. Economies around the world were experiencing financial problems. The shutdowns conveniently reduced demand and prices for oil, while giving economies around the world an excuse for more debt. The problems were kicked down the road until 2022 and 2023, when they reappeared as inflation.
We can’t know what lies ahead, but it may be very strange, indeed.
hahaha cnncnncnncnn https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/39519
“CNN tech director speaks about instilling the next fear (Climate change) as Covid is no longer a fear factor in controlling people, project Veritas smashing it catching the sly dogs across the pond.”
“Joe Biden”…
https://sonar21.com/why-nato-was-obsessed-with-ukraine-and-is-now-in-a-panic/
This article says:
Also:
Also there should have been no sharing of wealth altogether.
Taxes should have been more regressive, with the poor paying 50% and the top bracket 1%, any money given to charity to be taxed 500%, etc.
One of Trump’s few good policies was ending the charitable contribution from the list of deductibles.
By not sharing the wealth and making the class basically stand forever, the mass consumption, which is the most important factor which led civilization to this desperate situation, would have been prevented.
Two reasons, which are not exactly polite to mention in the public, led civilization to decline and led humanity to this strait:
1: Consumption for the masses
2: Development of two continents, Asia (pop 4.8b) and Africa (1.4b), combined pop 6.2b, out of about 8.0b.
If either one of them could have been prevented, we would not be in this situation.
This is the year when the “Might makes Right” doctrine of the Western bloc hits an iceberg.
Whether you like or not, the might makes right doctrine, which subjected virtually all of the world’s resources in the collective west’s thumbs, led humanity the closest to singularity. despite of all the personnel losses of the World Wars and the dilution of talents by people from continents who have nothing to do with Civilization.
But it is ending, because it cannot commandeer resources from the rest of the world for nothing, and now have to pay a much higher price which can’t sustain the civilization.
Victory of Eastern-style kleptocracy. Back to the Imperial times, complete with bells and gongs.
The mistake of not using Hydrogen bombs at Shenyang and Peking in 1950 will be felt by the entire humanity for the next 100,000 years.
Non-OPEC countries possess bigger oil reserves and are expected to last far longer than the OPEC ones, data has shown. However, all in all, the world has no more than approximately 9 years’ worth of oil usage left in its stock.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230718/is-there-enough-oil-left-1111970764.html
BAU tonight, baby!
Out of the major non opec countries,
USA-Canada – mostly shale, already declining
Russia – enough for itself
China, Brazil – too many people so not enough for their own use
Qatar – easily blockadable from neighboring Opec countries
Other countries either have too many people or are insignificant.
“mostly shale” is highly inaccurate.
USA-Canada in reality:
USA 12.5 mbpd and Canada 4.5 mbpd.
this is 17 mbpd of crude, the real black goo, this isn’t counting NGL Natural Gas (Plant) Liquids (NGPL if you prefer).
US crude is trending lighter, but CA oil is HEAVY.
win/win!
thank you Mama Nature, that allows an excellent blend for US refineries.
US refineries are rocking and rolling with abundant outputs of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
where are the stories of diesel shortages?
did they die(sel) off? ha.
let’s read that again: 17 M(freakin)BPD!
700 MILLION gallons per day!
want some?
it’ll cost you.
about $3, ha ha.
I like that diemetri quote:
“BAU tonight, baby!”
Wow … they actually said it out loud … 1P reserves only, whereas 2P are almost certainly more reasonable, but nonetheless they actually broke THE taboo and bluntly said it.
“When a picture is worth a thousand words. See what’s happening in the world from a more visual perspective with Sputnik’s photo galleries, infographics and other multimedia content.
Is There Enough Oil Left?
Non-OPEC countries possess bigger oil reserves and are expected to last far longer than the OPEC ones, data has shown. However, all in all, the world has no more than approximately 9 years’ worth of oil usage left in its stock.
Earlier this month, two of the world’s biggest oil …”
World production: 80mpd or 30bpy
Nonopec: 30years, still worrisome.
Now total reserves are usually inflated but it says extractable but there’s the Seneca cliff.
I am not quite sure how the exhibit you link to is put together. I am more familiar with the reserve and production numbers which used to be produced by BP, and now are produced by the Energy Institute.
The two non-OPEC countries with big reserves are Venezuela and Canada. Neither of these countries is extracting a huge amount of oil per year. Venezuela produces about 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day; Canada produces about 4.5 million barrels of oil per day.
Canada is said to have a “reserves to production” ratio of 89.4 years at the end of 2020. I don’t think that it really can get it out a whole lot faster than this.
The reserve to production ratio for Venezuela is not even given. Venezuela supposedly has 303.8 billion barrels of oil. It can extract about 255,675,000 barrels of oil per year. At this rate it would take about 1,200 years to extract, if I calculated this right. Venezuela cannot support its population on what little it extracts.
The United States and Russia are both big producers of oil, but they don’t have huge reserves. I would not count on the reserves meaning much.
I don’t follow their math either.
1.6 E12 barrels reserves worldwide
1 E8 barrels use per day worldwide
–> 1.6 E4 days or 16000 days or ~44 years
Ten years from now several countries will fall off the edge of the world.
Mexico. England, Brazil all go down.
Would love to see an export land model number of years left.
CANCER!!! https://live2fightanotherday.substack.com/p/about-that-sv40-in-mrna-jabs
Fascinating stuff
“THE PENTAGON CANCELED its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person’s entire existence.
Run by Darpa, the Defense Department’s research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.
LifeLog’s backers said the all-encompassing diary could have turned into a near-perfect digital memory, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. But civil libertarians immediately pounced on the project when it debuted last spring, arguing that LifeLog could become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state.
Researchers close to the project say they’re not sure why it was dropped late last month. Darpa hasn’t provided an explanation for LifeLog’s quiet cancellation. “A change in priorities” is the only rationale agency spokeswoman Jan Walker gave to Wired News.”
2) 4 February 2004 – Facebook founded
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/spot-the-difference
Wake me up as soon as they cancel DarpaTwo, formally known as Fast Eddy. I’ll adopt Hoolio though.
LifeLog^2, is that the ‘AI’ shiz being on the prowl for “bad” people with dubious morality and signs of sociopathy and psychopathy?
How adorable isn’t it with acutely mentally ill people trying to make diagnoses by using algorithms trained with data curated by the same deranged people? 🤗
“It is no measure of (mental) health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
🤣👍👍
Hey maybe we can get our data?
Our data? It is stored. Don’t worry, be happy.
I want them to review my online data and comments, and not by some silly AI model, rather by the Copium and Hopiate jacked Usual Suspect Sanctimonious Hypocrites from the humanoid Cloner Herd of Myopians in the Ordinary.
Characterize that – suckers!
🤣👍👍
If you want your comments escalated to be read by a real person post threats to b…o…. m… fizzzzzzer H. q and >>>> F————ow Ch—–ee
I can imagine your commentary being tossed around like a hot potato. Fizzer this, CEP that, ROF here, NOF there.
Picture loonies trying to diagnose the hyper sane. It might cause them to lose hope and start to cope. And isn’t that beautiful?
🍾🥳🎉
I imagine there is a sense of wonder and awe at the Ministry of Truth — they are fond of saying… 8 billion cockroaches and only one of them figured out what we are up to….
The EIA world oil-production figure for first-quarter 2023 has been posted (82.113 MBPD) — this is well above their 2022 figure (80.747 MBPD).
Their peak 2023 month is February, at 82.333 MBPD.
This is somewhat puzzling to me, as oil prices have declined markedly since early June, 2022 (http://oil-price.net/) — however, dub & Brent oil prices reflect the US-dollar trading in New York & London — Googling “oil trading non dollar” yields some info about the likely permanence of the “petro dollar”.
Also, this was before such as OPEC lately announced their intention of reducing oil production, trying to increase prices.
http://davecoop.net/seneca.htm (Forgot to add this)
Is this crude, conventional crude, total liquids?
“Crude oil including lease condensate” (whatever that is)
lease condensate is basically butane and a few more light hydrocarbons. what they get from fracking. butane has less energy than heavier hydrocarbons. so the enregy supply might be declining.
I agree. The crude mix seems to have more of the very light parts in it. If measured on an energy basis rather than volume basis, it would be lower yet.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/workshop/ngl/pdf/definitions061413.pdf
EIA is trying to clarify the definitions as roughly
* condensate = pentanes and heavier
* NGPL (where it gets tricky) = liquids (including all of light, mid, and pentanes-plus molecules), but excluding lease condensate while including plant condensate!
Ugh. Why can’t they just straightforwardly group them by molecular weight and let that be the end of it.
Dead people including white people (whatever that is)
Thanks for pointing out that this report is out. It is always frustrating that the information is a few months behind.
Crude oil for the first quarter is, as you say, 82.113 Million Barrels per Day in the First Quarter of 2023. There are quite a few quarters with higher crude oil production:
4th Qtr 2016 82.309 MBPD
1st Qtr 2018 82.303
3rd Qtr 2018 83.155
4th Qtr 2018 84.357 (Peak)
1st Qtr 2019 82.390
4th Qtr 2019 83.082
1st Qtr 2020 82.515
So, while production is higher, it is not near setting any record. There were seven quarters with higher production.
There is a lot of other information available, as well.
The US has been trying to keep oil prices down by selling oil from its oil reserve. Presumably, this oil is not counted (again) as being extracted. Low oil prices would make oil more affordable, and thus would allow more oil to be sold. It is the oil sold from the US’s SPR that is allowing the lower oil prices. We are running short of the capability to sell more of this oil. It seems like this could raise prices and reduce supply.
Looking at the same report, but for the US, its crude oil production for the first quarter of 2023 is given as 12.599 MBPD. The only quarters that were higher were:
4th Qtr 2019 12.777 MBPD
1st Qtr 2020 12.746 MBPD
fantastic!
(About Tim’s remark on the Vendeans)
I would have no axe to grind on the Vendeans if they lived in some island and didn’t interfere with Civilization, but they significantly helped to harm it.
Before around 1850, the territories east of the Elbe River was not considered to be part of Europe, but part of Asia. As late as early 1900s ‘tours to europe’ mostly omitted Berlin, Brandenburg or anything east of that – it was not really considered to be part of Europe, and to be honest, the only thinker of note who came from east of the Elbe was Immanuel Kant. (Although Nietzsche came from Saxony his birthplace was west of the Elbe.)
it can be argued that Immanuel Kant was the greatest Asian philosopher of all time, by standards of the day. he stayed in Konigsberg, which the Allies awarded to Russia, all his life and it made him Asian.
The Vendeans helped Europe to be overwhelmed by peoples who were considered to be Asians by the standards of the day.
I have no axe to grind against the Amish , etc. They just stay in their turf and are not known to have harmed civilization too much. They just remain little curiosities who will have to abandon their pacificism when the Event happens, that’s all.
But the Vendeans stood against progress so that’s why I have axes to grind against them.
Again the British owes a big debt to the Vendeans since without the 20,000 sent to there the battle of Mont St. Jean would have gone the other way, and the Brits never really paid the Vendeans back. However, I have no sides for this, and can safely remarked that whatever merit might have been their for the Vendeans’ cause, they harmed civilization so what they did is wrongl.
Interesting point of view. Thanks for taking the trouble to explain it.
The Vendeans did indeed stand against “progress” and in favor of the status quo ante revolution. but only after “progress” had taken a stand against them.
Often, it’s the other way round, when smaller groups espouse some kind of “progress” and the status quo steps in to squash them.
The Amish in the US have not been targeted by the state to have their way of life destroyed in the way that the Vendeans were. If that happened, they might well react in a similar fashion and harm “civilization” despite their culture of non-violence.
If the Vendeans had fought against the British, who arguably did more than any other people in the cause of progress during the 18th and 19th centuries, rather than against the Jacobin French revolutionary regime, I expect you would have given them a pat on the back.
Besides Immanuel Kant, who as one of the most important thinkers in Western philosophy, was rewarded with a place in Monty Pythons Philosophers Song, other notable thinkers born east of the Elbe include Copernicus, who is best known for his work on the heliocentric system, born in Toruń (then in the Kingdom of Poland) in 1473; Johann Gottfried Herder, born in Mohrungen (then in Prussia) in 1744; and Johann Georg Hamann, who is known for his contributions to the field of hermeneutics, born in Königsberg in 1730.
Also, if we were going to be generous, we could include Moses Mendelssohn, known for his contributions to aesthetics, ethics, and theology, born in Dessau, within a stone’s throw of the Elbe’s more civilized western bank in 1729.
I take your bigger point that Europe east of the Elbe didn’t produce a lot of intellectual brilliance, although actually it did. They simply weren’t and aren’t very well known in the West and have not been elevated in the Western canon to the extent Westerners were, precisely because they were not Western.
Academia is a bit like pop music in this respect. The performers who are recognized as stars are often mediocre and some of the greatest are unknown and ignored and reduced to singing along in pubs and karaoke bars.
Apropos Jan’s comments about earlier heating arrangements it was the custom in Britain until the advent of electric and gas heating systems post WW2, to not light domestic fires from 1 April to 1 October, whatever the weather.
Exceptions were made in freak weather conditions, and for the sick, and the very wealthy might have fires lit in their bedrooms. A lot of care was taken to ensure heavy warm bedclothes by those who could afford it, plus beds with curtains.
The wealthy in the Middle Ages used braziers for extra heat in their high-ceilinged rooms, and these were also used until recently in Spain, France, Italy etc in rooms which had no built-in or central fireplace.
Perhaps the servants and farmers’ wives who could get near the big kitchen fires were perhaps the most comfortable in our sense of the word.
And of course work itself keeps you warm! I can get almost too hot paring leather or doing the gold work on books in the winter ( although the latter needs a tiny stove to heat the brass tools).
China has a set date for turning on and off the heat that is pumped to homes and businesses from coal-fired power plants.
If I remember correctly, the date in Beijing for turning off the heat was March 15. Before that date, the classrooms tended to be way too hot, with the sun streaming in and 80 warm people filling a not-very-large classroom. After that date, it was decidedly chilly in the classroom. The temperature in the morning sometimes was below freezing. Dorm rooms were quite cold, I understand.
I had a heat pump in my two-room apartment. It created whatever temperature that I set it to.
Sorry for the low info post but I need somewhere to vent.
Big surge in military air traffic today. Maybe just ferrying back a thousand limos from Vilnius.
all of this military activity adds to GDP.
the MIC will profit from the U war, win or lose.
oh sure, no chance of “win”, certain US/NATZO defeat, but also certain profit.
Vlad the Great.
que sera sera, baby.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
– Galileo Galilei
This is a quote I can appreciate!
Obviously he never ran a system.
To keep society stable, a thousand authority is better than one single individual who might overturn all the structure.
Gallileo is more famous, but Christof Clau of Bavaria, who was Gallileo’s chief papal prosecutor (Clau, also spelled Clavius, was a priest) has a much larger creator.
Although Galileo and Clau used to correspond in better days, Clau knew it was better to maintain the system and kept the system and was rewarded with this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnuM7GxLUW0
so Christoph Clau, a priest with no known descendants, became immortal.
Indeed “civilization” is an euphemism for feudalism. Lost in it all is that Europe was made dominant by Galileo’s followers, not by Clau. His organization is now a shell of what it once was.
When Kulm says “civilization” he means “liberalism”.
But that’s because the only civilization he likes, and even the only one he can recognize, is the industrial-technological civ.
Clavius also got awarded a much bigger lunar crater than Galileo, although the latter also got a Martian one.
ESG is increasingly difficult to support:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/larry-finks-fake-esg-facade-crumbles-blackrock-names-aramco-ceo-its-board
US retail sales (which have inflation included in them) are supposedly holding up (=0.5%), but Zerohedge author thinks those preparing the reports are picking high numbers.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/us-retail-sales-disappoint-june
This is a chart of Redbook Retail Sales, which shows growth rates falling, month after month.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202023-07-18T055902.281.png
US downturn is here??
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-industrial-production-posts-first-annual-decline-28-months
Norman detests MTG, as we all know. And yet MTG is the leading anti-war/anti-cluster-bomb politician in the US of A. So, we must ask, is Norman pro-war and pro-cluster-bomb on top of all his other pro-establishment stances?
House Votes Down Amendment to Block Cluster Bomb Shipments to Ukraine
US cluster munitions have already arrived in Ukraine
by Dave DeCamp Posted on July 13, 2023
The House on Thursday night voted down an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine.
The amendment was led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and failed in a vote of 147-276. The amendment received support from 98 Republicans and 49 Democrats.
The night before the vote, Republicans on the House Rules Committee voted down the original amendment relating to cluster bombs that would have banned the export of the controversial munition to all nations, not just Ukraine, which had bipartisan co-sponsors. The Republicans then added the narrowed-down Greene amendment, which was less likely to get Democratic support.
Narrowing the amendment to Ukraine made it more of a vote against military aid for Ukraine rather than a vote against cluster bombs, and there’s been virtually no dissent from Democrats on President Biden’s Ukraine policy.
Even if the amendment passed, it wouldn’t have blocked current shipments of cluster bombs as they have already started arriving in Ukraine, and the NDAA still has a long way to go before it becomes law. Both the House and the Senate need to pass their versions, and then the two chambers have to negotiate the finalized version.
The House also voted down amendments put forward by Greene and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to reduce funding for Ukraine. One amendment from Greene would have cut $300 million in military aid for Ukraine that’s packed into the $886 billion NDAA, but it failed in a vote of 89-341.
Gaetz put forward an amendment to cut off all military assistance for Ukraine. The measure failed in a vote of 70-358, with only Republicans voting in favor.
https://news.antiwar.com/2023/07/13/house-votes-down-amendment-to-block-cluster-bomb-shipments-to-ukraine/
i take it that one must accept all the garbage MTG spews out?
have you read any of it in comprehensive detail ?
The woman is clearly off her trolley
And no—I wont get drawn into the childish arguments of —-“you do not/do believe in xxxx—therefore your must/must not believe in YYYY
you can do better than parrot your mentor Tim–he pulls that stunt all the time
very weak debating technique
i take it that one must accept all the garbage MTG spews out?
i take it that one must accept all the garbage BBC CNN spews out?
Howzat! Gotcha! Out for a duck!
Pagett, taking a swipe at Groves’s deceptive bouncer, hits out wildly and is caught by CTG at silly mid-off , ups stumps and heads for the pavilion.
The great Fred Truman would have hit that out of the stadium.
i was never any good at games involving a load of balls
You are modest to the core. But I’m sure you’ve bowled a maiden over or two in your time, Norman. 🙂
nope tim
i works much better the other way round
i figured out that much by the time i was 17 or so
And let’s not forget Huff. norms favourite source for ‘the news’
Norm, I am glad we do not cover US politics in OFW. You assume I have any idea what MTG said. I don’t. Does it relate to primary energy sources for the world?
norm… is a very simple man.
One might ask — who let him through the door and into OFW… it’s like inviting SSS to the Ms Universe pageant.
lol eddy
still obsessing on the usual subject i see
i thought if i left that particular stone unturned for a while—you wouldn’t think about it so much. Especially blanking you off my input comments list.
but i guess your life has known nothing but fakery—you’ve talked about nothing else for years.—you name it—eddys says its faked. —-hmmmmm.
so i suppose it’s inevitable
leaves us with the certainty though, doesn’t it eddy
those who can—do
those who can’t, talk about it ad nauseam
(is tommy coming up for parole yet)?
Nice comeback norm… it’s almost as if you wrote that so that you could push that comment so that people would read your name again …. hahahahahahaha…
norm >>> famous butt end for jokes… I suppose it’s better than no fame
What is it called when the doctor strikes you in the knee with a doctors hammer?
🤔💭
Yes indeed – mostly reflexes.
Inevitably Monkey must project the deranged prestiges and statuses by imposing master suppression “techniques”.
Never, ever, engage IRL with someone who can’t slap down some irrefutable observations online. The slightest whiff of self entitled projections, egotistical fantasies, narcissism, delusions, envy, hope and cope, and:
THE KRAKEN UNLEASHES ITSELF!
GLHF! (SUX0RZ TO BE U!)
🤣👍👍
norm injects poison… despite nearly 3 years of us showing him he is injecting poison…
It’s unlikely he will change his mind on stuff that does not sicken and kill him
Shall we book a green groopie conference at Leo’s sea level resort … we better hurry though cuz it’s gonna be underwater next year … right?
http://restorativeislands.com/blackadore-caye/
We can check into one of the luxurious concrete eco villas!!!
https://img.theculturetrip.com/1440×807/smart/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/blackadore-caye-1.jpg
People really are f789ing stoooopid. Here we have the front man for GW — building a sea level resort… when he KNOWS the oceans are rising rapidly cuz of GW.
You’d think this would alert then to the fact that all that is a crock of sh-t.
But nope — they just ignore the obvious and hand on Geeta the Troll’s every word.
Maybe it has floating foundations?
Yes of course!!! Leo thought of everything .. with input from Al — they discussed this while flying private to a GW conference
And the MORE-ONS believe they deserve democracy hahaha… as if that wouldn’t be massive disaster
A world OFW get together would be awesome. Tim can we meet at your place? That would pretty much maximize jet fuel consumption.
Careful what you wish for. We need lots of Human Resources around here to work the paddy fields. Anyone who can pull a plough is likely to be put into harness.
Tempting I can work the fields and my wife who is a great cook can open a small American restaurant アメリカの夕日 in the local town?
A world OFW get together would be awesome. [Japanese Englishman] can we meet at your place? That would pretty much maximize jet fuel consumption.
Huge Mass D here HUGE
“Education” given to 10yr olds in England without parents knowledge!
https://twitter.com/urqhuart6/status/1679914168634179665?s=46
https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/49646
I remember s ex ed in elementary school. We boys gathered around one with a milk container and a straw and the details of the emission of white fluids were expounded upon.
Apparently they get started much younger these days — the moment a female hits puberty the older boys take her Out Back the Dumpster and give her a thorough initiation…
Then – as expected – they turn to Onlyfans to make a bit of coin off of the Nasty Old Geezers who fancy young uns (and see nothing wrong with pedos) … once they turn 16 they get serious about monetizing the Snatch and hop onto Sugarbabies.com where they find the Nasty Old Geezers with a fair bit of spare dosh …. and who like em young but not pedo young (like some Nasty Old Geezers)…
This is the world we live in.
At present, economists are also struggling to interpret the question
Do we actually have inflation at the moment?
A german representative of MMT says:
“The term inflation has come to be used inflationarily for any increase in prices. Inflation actually means a rising price level across the board and that there are self-reinforcing effects – something like a wage-price spiral. Something like that is difficult to stop, therefore a problem, and therefore classic inflation. But what we’ve been seeing for the last year and a half is something different.
We have neither a humming economy nor extreme wage increases. What we’ve had are external shocks from pandemic measures, war and sanctions. As a result, energy prices have risen extremely quickly. That is still eating through the economy today. However, we are already seeing that this trend is declining again. In other words, these self-reinforcing effects do not exist. We have a price shock and no inflation.
What about demonetization?
Demonetization is misleading here, because purchasing power is not gone forever. It is often said now that savings are devalued. And that is true for the moment – but only as long as prices remain high. We see, for example, that producer prices are declining again. Then savings balances will also be worth more again.
At the moment, we are already seeing declining producer prices, which are running ahead of consumer prices. In fact, things have also gone up the other way around: First import prices rose, then producer prices and then consumer prices. It’s also going back down in that order. When the price shock disappears, people will be able to afford more for their money again – even if this doesn’t happen overnight. We all have different terms for our gas, rental and electricity contracts. Depending on the term, one person will be relieved sooner than the other. Individuals have very different inflation rates right now, which is why the average inflation rate is actually not useful at all right now.
The peak has been passed
This is primarily due to falling energy prices, which are spreading bit by bit throughout the economy. There’s also no self-reinforcing effect with gas like there is with wages, because the worst-case scenario has already happened – that Putin stops supplying us with gas. When he shut down the pipelines in September, prices were at their peak. Since then, however, they have fallen back below pre-war levels on the stock market, and that’s a good thing.
The current sharp rise in interest rates is damaging
What we need right now are investments. We need them not only to become independent of Russia, but also for energy renovations and the transformation of the economy. High interest rates hinder investment. So the damage from high interest rates right now is much higher than the potential benefit.
But doesn’t that mean endless money printing, low interest rates and debt again?
Pouring money on it infinitely is a theoretical idea. You only have a certain number of skilled workers who can do work. No matter how much money I throw at the bakery trade, I don’t get an infinite number of buns out of it. And that’s critical for MMT as well. Where it becomes inefficient is when I, as a government, invest in an overheated industry. That would indeed be bad. But we are not in that situation. We have not been fully utilizing our economy for decades.”
***************
I would say those are interesting statements that I would largely agree with.
The economy is not doing well, and while prices are not falling everywhere, they are falling in a great many places. The construction industry in particular is facing an extreme slump.
That’s why I would also expect inflation to fall significantly in the next few months. Of course, not everything will go back to the level of 2020, but it will settle somewhere in between.
But now comes the sticking point that no economist has in mind, namely the not so rosy situation with fossil energy.
We don’t know how depleted they really are, whether the peak is definitely behind us, and exactly how production will develop over the next few years. But for now, it looks like an economic downturn….
It will probably take a while until everyone realizes this, and then there will be economic stimulus packages again to boost the economy. (I think this is already happening in the USA, but absolutely not in Europe).
So maybe there will be a window of time soon in which you can make certain purchases (e.g. cars) quite cheaply again, before prices start to rise again – as a result of economic stimulus packages or oil price increases (e.g. due to massive production cuts).
Or will we see a lot of company bankruptcies in this coming period (still high costs in parts, but falling prices due to buying restraint) and will there actually be a situation of increased “empty shelves” again as a result? It is all so difficult to predict that one really hardly knows how to act. Already in 2020/2021, I stocked up on food early – and that was very good, because the prices went up significantly and are still partly.
Currently there are big discount promotions, for example on these small handy power stations. Partly 25-30% discount. These are very good prices.
Now the question is: will the prices be so much lower in 1 or 2 years anyway?
Many questions, few answers, at most conjectures…
Agree with your comments Harry. Pondering it all sure keeps the neurons active. I’m in the middle of Michael Howell’s book ‘Capital Wars – The Rise of Global Liquidity. He appears to know as much about the plumbing as anyone out there, going back to the Solomon Bros. days. He has a 65-month global liquidity cycle identified that looks like it bottomed last October and will peak in 2026. He stresses the difference between the financial system and the real economy. Lots of leads and lags that create confusion. Since collateral is a big part of his definition of liquidity, I wonder the impact of the U.S. Treasury issuing new debt in that regard. How much of it gets leveraged into liquidity is not a question I’ve heard anyone ask him. Looks like a lot of what he and his team analyze is cross-border capital flows, but everyone uses Treasuries one way or another, so who knows how that plays.
His blind spot may well be what we focus so much on here at OFW, since there’s nothing in his index under “energy” and he only mentions oil in passing on page 9 of a 283 page book. From interviews I’ve watched he’s anticipating equities marching up with this global liquidity cycle. None of the people who’ve hosted him on their shows, as far as I’ve seen, has quite pinned him down on what he thinks things will look like afterwards, with much higher debt-levels.
He kind of reminds me of David Hunter (@Contrarian Advisor when he was posting at Seeking Alpha) who is more explicit about the aftermath of his rapid (month or two) parabolic equity blow-off up to 6,000 – 7,000 S&P 500, followed by a 80% decline, with massive Fed and global Central Bank interventions at some point in the decline, zooming debt levels into extreme unsustainability, with a commodity boom like we’ve never seen in our lives sometime after equities bottom. This all within the 2020’s. He just shakes his head when interviewers ask him about the 2030’s. I’ve read him for years and he doesn’t do timing very well if one tries to trade on his outlook. He’s a macro-guy and he has been head-faked in recent years.
I suppose we’ll be lucky to get through the 2020’s with a slow-grind of stagflation. At the turn of the century I knew a variety of people expecting a deflation of most of what one owns and an inflation of everything one needs to live. Unless something really breaks, that may be what happens.
Who cares? Compared to 1900, prices are over 100x higher. You can count on that happening again over the next 100 years, or more likely even greater devaluation. So maybe there’ll be a little year-to-year variation, but you know the trend to bet on. Why waste your time on the details?
You are right. There are certainly a lot of things we don’t really understand. Things could turn out less badly than we think, especially for the next few years, in some parts of the world.
David? Where are you ?
bAU tonight, baby!
True https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81515
Boom https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81521
More dead footballers https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81524
Check this guyout hahaha
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81513
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81514
Now if all them had big knives — or say axes… imagine…
Ya think it makes sense to have this guy front a war? Well it does… if it’s a fake war/joke https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81511
Always the knife: it’s very fast, an you need only a little steel to kill someone.
The Roman gladius was basically a big two-edged knife, with a lot of chopping weight.
An axe, unless designed for fighting like Viking-Age axes – minimum of steel in the head, broad edge – is slow and its hard to get in a succession of quick blows.
Also, if you are chest-to-chest with someone, the knife can still be useful, but an axe is useless.
For norm https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/49638
WHHHHAAATTTT the f789 https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81480
China Property … https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81489
Odd how they always use paint that can be washed off with a hose https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81495
Is it just me or are there a lot of trains going off the tracks https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/49612
It’s the Magma Plumes, ha. I been walking local tracks lately as shortcuts and maintenance looks pretty slack. Sign of the times energy/investment wise?
Excellent like I was just saying … https://twitter.com/NickHudsonCT/status/1679041926320848897
https://twitter.com/TheDisproof/status/1656545751915278338?s=20
I know – let’s block out the sun to cool the planet!!!
hahahahaha
Get f789ing real man
This could happen to anyone who supports the pedos…
https://t.me/leaklive/15172
normkeith: what’s going on with Israel https://t.me/DrMikeYeadon/1485
“Shocking data from Israel’s largest healthcare organization shows a staggering increase in cardiac arrest diagnoses.
and number of people dying post vaccination.”
thanks for that – now keith and norm will not have to click the link to see the data….
keith – as a ‘scientist’ what do you make of this?
Will you continue ‘to take every shot offered’?
A few nice Schads
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=died+suddenly&iar=news&ia=news
Healthy 4yo dies suddenly, doctors baffled
Newstalk ZB|12 days ago
A presumably healthy little girl has died, shocking her family and medical professionals as they grapple for answers. Millicent Edwards collapsed at her home
‘My partner died suddenly just after I gave birth to our baby’
Wales Online|10 days ago
A mum has opened up about the devastating impact losing her partner suddenly and shortly after she gave birth to their child had on her mental health. Becca Hughes, 29, left her first partner after the relationship deteriorated.
https://slaynews.com/news/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-climate-crisis-narrative-hoax/
This is yet another highly knowledgeable scientist, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, tells us, in terms, that we’re being lied to.
Check the extent of credentialed antagonism against the lies.
Please would you kindly go out of your way and bring this to your circle?
Many thanks
Mike
👉 https://t.me/DrMikeYeadon
Slay News (https://slaynews.com/news/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-climate-crisis-narrative-hoax/)
Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist: ‘Climate Crisis’ Narrative Is a Hoax
A renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist has spoken out to warn the public that the “climate crisis” narrative being pushed by the global elite and their allies in the corporate media is a hoax.
Just like the Rat Juice.
but it’s ok to believe in GW — you won’t die
From the article:
Isn’t it strange that bbccnn bleat on about GW — when if it was actually a thing … there would be nothing we could do about it?
And then they tell everyone that we should fight GW by driving EVs and installing ‘renewable energy’ — when they know that this is impossible. They KNOW this… cuz they know about intermittency and that there are not enough resources to come remotely close to making it happen…
Isn’t it strange that Geeta never targets China — a country building a coal plant per week….
Isn’t it strange that nothing is every said on bbccnn about the depletion of affordable energy … nobody asks — why do we steam oil out of sand if there is so much easy oil left.
Re Stoooopidity: name a species that sprays poison on its food before eating it.
I agree with the information given. Now you really don’t know what to expect from the world economy and events affecting it. Thanks to the author.
Entertaining rant from a Russian general about US information hegemony and military equipment
https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1678731224955625474
Great body language, great lucidity. He was at or near the front lines having a smoke with the soldiers. I monitor only 4 things in shops (most everything else I buy in the village): ground beef, butter, diesel (obviously), and mineral water. The latter two have gone up 3 and 5 percent a year in two years. Beef has not changed price in two years. Butter has gone up 6 percent and now is down about 12 percent compared to historical prices.
Heavy and no autoloaders, pretty much yeah. And the fake targets are generated by russkie ECM kit. It surprised me they switched it on sans full scale war. I’m sure the patriot battery was severely crippled before being exported to that debacle.
Whatever.
Unless the popularity of the video has gained him a massive promotion, he’s still Sargent Lisitsin.
He’s been interviewed on tv and although a bit nervous, he still comes across quite well. Reminds the Ukrainians who they are really dying for.
Interview is at the end of this article.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/kerch-bridge-deja-vu-breakdown
There’s a video about the Lancet drone about halfway down and it’s very informative about their ability(light years ahead), but also interesting is how the Russians move with the changing environment(repurposing).
Anyone looking to advance civilisation, is surely wishing that they were russian(they even offer free property to those who historically lost out. Truly civilised).
Join me … as I Schad… norm mike keith you can go for your 7th shot while we enjoy this
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/bruised-and-bloodied-doctor-with
In the past, the Christianity played a role in the population control. With the advancing knowledge of the human environment and pollution, the new measures had to be taken by the states, in order to limit the population growth.
That is why the people are disappointed by the religions that do not give them more that they want.
You may as well interpret the blessing gesture of Jesus Christ of the raised index finger moving up and down and to the sides drawing cross in the air as the warning and the disagreement for the human wish for more and more
https://digestfromexperts.com/4871/jesus-hand-gesture-sign/
or his hands spread on the cross as the measure of the each humans living space.
until our present era, population was kept in check by the planet’s dominant species—all the forms of microbial life
In our wisdom, we attacked them, using the power of industry.
When industry has gone, microbial life will re-assert its original control of us..
Yep. In the end, it will be right where we started again. But he’ll, what’s a few hundred millions in the evolutionary scheme of things.
just listened to her new one too – Tongue Tied
love it, thanks Hubbs, never ran across her before
nothing
dinosaurs were around for 150 m years
weve been here less than 1m
which is the smarter species?
Judging by the high military air traffic we are still in for a surprise.
I forget – which country are you in?
US. About 40 miles from Stewart Air Force base in Newburgh, NY. They fly C130 transport planes. The only time they fly over my house is when a big war is on in the middle east or this time Ukraine.
They are flying a polar route to EU.
does the US really have anything better to give to the Ukraine than the junk which they have been providing so far?
these are probably just the latest deliveries.
the MIC is drooling over the profits to be made resupplying the US military.
the Russians also are seeing what you are seeing.
how does one say “laughing their @ss off” in Russian?
If the MIC ever would send some hot sh1z to Ukraine it for sure arrives with trained personnel. The military gear shipped is likely just some barebones chassis with a rocket or barrel bolted on for the effect.
GLHF SUCKERS!
🤣👍👍
I’m never surprised when a major war or terror-event happens around September. WW1 kicked off on July 28, but this was very inconvenient for the Elders, many of whom were on the summer holidays at the time.
They learned their lesson and started WW2 on September 1 and NineEleven on September 11. I am sure they wouldn’t launch WW3 before September, so please lie back and enjoy at least one last beautiful August.
As an Englishman, working class and bloody proud of it, who grew up on streets of cobblestones, this song, accompanied by these photos, at this miserable time in history, brings me to tears—half tears of nostalgia and half tears of rage. It’s just so incredibly poignant.
I’m rather distressed about the cobblestones bit, Tim: I hope, at least, that your cradle was a comfortable chest of drawers with some nice warm newspaper?
I try to think of this as a fascinating, illuminating, and perhaps even – somewhat perversely – thrilling time in history. Bringing us mass murder and tyranny in entirely novel and diverting forms.
By the way, John Rogers on YT does some lovely videos on London which almost make me feel slightly fond of the place and might evoke some nostalgia on your part.
What makes me toy with despair is that a proper pie and chips seems to have died out. Is this England?!
I lived in a terraced house the East End in the early sixties, and I remember when the cobbled surface of the road in front of our house was first covered with asphalt—and that wonderful aroma of boiling pitch. At that time, private cars were just beginning to penetrate our area, and the first owners had no parking spaces so they simply parked outside their front doors.
The fish and chip shops and the pie and mash shops were the main “restaurants” back then. Plus the Italian cafés with their distinctly un-Italian fare of fried egg, bacon, sausages, baked beans, and spam.
This was just before the Chinese and Indian takeaways came along and multiplied our fast food options.
Thanks for sharing …
norm can you share your memories of picking up your first date using a horse and buggy?
I think i saw you in the background as an extra in the movie about the Krays
Fast Eddy searches for his demigod. Norm fakes with a saint.
And norm takes his 7th shot in the mistaken belief that this is IQ Steroids… and he will be able to compete with Fast Eddy for the title of Global Emperor…
Sorry norm … now get down and shine the royal shoes
Interview about real estate that might interest anyone renting or planning to buy or sell a house in the U.S.
The title is “A Coming Surge In Inventory To Drop Home Prices By Up To 35%? ”
Nick Gerli says interest rates on mortgages are up to 7.22%. Builders have cut prices by 15%. They realized that they had to cut prices to sell homes. He expects the broader market to do something similar, in fact quite soon. Right now the market is frozen–few buyers and few sellers.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The housing market is in a frozen state right now.
5:30 Mortgage applications to buy a house.
12:14 Why new homebuyers are flocking to new homes?
15:47 The problem with low inventory levels.
20:29 What’s happening with the housing market?
26:40 The three elements of the housing stool.
34:47 The housing market is running out of moves.
43:08 Mortgage rates vs. cap rates and capital.
48:49 The contagion risk of a housing crash.
54:35 Key things to be looking at.
59:07 There is a first mover advantage.
1:02:51 How has the app performed so far?
1:06:29 The airbnb data controversy.
Thanks Gail – I’ll start doing something similar when posting a video. That’s really helpful.
So this is good. The principal is going down, that is not tax deductible, interest is going up, that is deductible.
See what optimism can do?
I see deflation, it is a guess.
Dennis L.
Speaking of taxes, Bob and Phil over at Trade Genius have a chart showing Federal Government Receipts (12-month rolling) year on year at minus 7.3 percent.
It’s at the 5:00 mark of their latest YouTube titled:
Tax APOCALYPSE: Is Wall Street DOOMED?!?!
This is what driving with a vaccine injury looks like
https://www.thechadrabbit.com/p/explicit-video-chile-bus-crash-from
Economies that refuse to accept the wealth destruction that results from credit bubbles popping stagnate. This is the story of Japan from 1990 to the present: the status quo in Japan refused to accept the losses, hiding bad debt (i.e. non-performing loans) behind artifices such as new loans that covered the interest due, listing the non-performing loans in “zombie” categories, i.e. as assets that were still on the books at full value even though they were essentially worthless, and so on.
The net result was 33 years of stagnation and social decay as young people gave up on owning homes and having families.
Now the US has inflated another “debt super-cycle” credit bubble that has pushed assets into over-valuation. Once again the goal is to avoid handing the wealthy owners of all this debt the enormous losses that must be accepted to clear the dead wood of bad debt, money lent to borrowers and projects that were not creditworthy except in a bubble.
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/the-two-causes-of-the-coming-great
haha… depression would be a wonderful outcome … but it’s not possible
How long can the world as a whole hide its huge debt/stagnation problem?
The “starter pack” family life where I live is close to $1M USD, otherwise you’re relegated to the second tier broads/gents and not the “pure bloods”.
It’s only going to get worse for the Tryhards and MOARons. The world need obedient sheeple projecting their “success”, and living their lives through the eyes of others. And whatever those boneheaded status symbols and projections are is fundamentally irrelevant. It’s a constant through time in the Monkey Business and Myopia of Ordinary.
They just look tired from all the mundane and stressful obligations, but I reckon we’re free to choose. Got a brain, yes? Then there are exactly zero excuses. FFS, people ten years younger than me looking ten years older.
Dull minds, dull ideas, envy, narcissism, dimwits playing halfwitted politics, seeped in the stressors of debt, obligations and work. All retch and no vomit in perpetuity. And the Myopia of Ordinary prevails.
The drought of delight is real.
But occasionally it happens, catches one by surprise.
Amen.
This is a link to a chart showing Charles Hugh Smith’s stock market forecast:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcc3691c4-5fcb-49f5-a149-2adf5da4523b_550x564.png
Scary!
This is a chart showing the share of total net worth is held by the top 1% since 1990:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9b63cde5-156b-4e5e-b80a-3052421dbd60_550x460.png
We are in another bubble now.
CHS says:
He does get the resource story right. I am not sure the policy choices are as clear as he says. “Decades of stagnation” may be a better result than we can hope for. A large share of assets may be worth nothing because they cannot be maintained without fossil fuels.
The elders have kept everything stable for a long time and will continue to do so long after we are dead , the finite worlders are still in kindergarten compared to the elders who have graduated. The Bilderberg file contains enough information to find out what they have been planning so spend some of your valuable time reading about their extent of control the vaccine is part of the overall plan . Depopulation is on the cards.
“Depopulation is on the cards.”?
“Gail Tverberg says:
June 4, 2023 at 6:09 pm
The bottom 90% represent the workers of the world, unfortunately. Getting along without them would be difficult. Who would mine the minerals of the world? Who would pick up the trash? Who would pick the crops that need to be picked?” ?
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/06/02/models-hide-the-shortcomings-of-wind-and-solar/comment-page-2/#comments
Funny that. I used to think all the D.U.M.B.’s were being built because the “elites” knew something geologically catastrophic was coming. Maybe that’s part of it but it could just be if things go truly dystopian due to their ignorant machinations, where something they didn’t plan on breaks and the Eloi go psychotic.
There’s a booming business in personal bunkers. @Canadian Prepper has interviews with a guy in that business globally. I was working up a conspiracy theory with a friend of mine where we figured that the push to EV’s was just to crank-up battery production so “they” could skim false-defects for their underground facilities. Makes more sense than EV’s do.
It’s not depop – it’s extermination
Depop solves nothing – in fact it would result in ROF
I helped him with the outcome by posting UEP in the comments.
He probably knows that but as we know — the Truth is not something most people want… and Charles wants readers … so he avoids that discussion
Thanks for the heads-up on his latest article and those charts. I’d agree about the policy choices, particularly the personal ones. It’s pretty expensive to become self-reliant, especially food-wise. And the attempt to do so with things going in the wrong direction is even more challenging at the individual level, as competition for parts of the shrinking pie increases at the same time vapor-wealth goes south. Even in the most cooperative of communities each has their own agenda to maintain whatever advantages they have. I’ve seen a lot of that in some pretty tight-knit living situations, and especially in the dark underbelly of farmer’s markets from Texas to Michigan. Those who run them have incentives not to bust the cheaters who are either not producing their own product as the rules require, or even allowing the sale of non-organically raised products to be passed-off as organic. Some of the cheese vendors are the worst and customers generally don’t have a clue unless they take the time to get to know the producers who are doing the right thing and who know the real story and have fought the losing battles against those incentives. Still appreciate Charles’ clarity on the rest of it though. The conundrum continues.
Also liked this observation he made:
“Recall that a developed-world consumer uses up to 100 times more energy and resources than a poor person in a rural undeveloped nation. Recycling a few bottles doesn’t change this”.
And there’s so much recycling that doesn’t actually occur according to some trash guys and recycling drop-off people I’ve spoken with over the years. I used to laugh at the signage on the 4 different categories of bins at Whole Foods Market. You’d look down into any of them and there was almost the same mix of everything a customer could drop in them. Never took the time to follow the trail but assume it all went to the dump.
Presently, General Motors has 4 ‘Ultium’ battery plants in the works, partnered with LG, and just announced another one with Samsung a few days ago.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/gm-samsung-electric-vehicle-battery-plant-indiana/
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/massive-us-oil-caverns-are-now-empty-will-take-decades-refill-thanks-biden
I think it is all part of a multipronged attack on the US citizens. They are trying to lead us on through the false pretense of climate change into what will be a dead end with EVs except as 2nd cars for the very wealthy, meanwhile subsidizing EV auto makers until the construction of ICE vehicles is driven to extinction. After the rug pull on EV production, US citizens will be stranded in 15 minute cities with no transportation. Got bicycles?
Interesting though how the US will keep its “SPR” in northwest Syria under military control no matter what, in case it is needed for military action abroad against Russia. Don’t know what energy provisions they plan for against China. Maybe they think China is so vulnerable to an oil cutoff that the US doesn’t need an “SPR “ in the East. But to go against Russia, which is self sufficient upstream, the US will need a local source of oil , and therefore needs to maintain access to oil in Syria. Maybe control of Caucasus is plan B.
Meanwhile, the NG reservoirs in Europe are rapidly being replenished and about to be topped off estimated by September, and nowhere for the excess to go as NG production is showing surpluses now in the US, even as more shale oil rigs shut down, with looming world wide shortages of oil. A divergence in prices:NG getting cheaper and oil getting more expensive.
Does anyone know what the hell is really going on?
the ‘false pretence’ of climate change really does seem to be leading a lot of people into an actual dead end.
people seem to be having problems actually being outside in the heat—which is being recorded as the highest on record.—everywhere.
but go on calling it a hoax if you must
its not an attack on US citizens
check the temperatures world wide.
What is a hoax is the view that we can do anything about the changing climate.
we can certainly agree on that part Gail
it’s been changing for billions of years… so ya… not much we can do about it
“it’s been changing for billions of years”
But, not that ‘much’?
“Animals as we know them require oxygen. Yet it took about 2 billion years for enough oxygen to be produced to allow all animals on Earth. Had our sun’s energy output experienced too much variation during that long period of development (or even afterward), there would have been little chance of animal life evolving on this planet. . . . “
Yes rapidly – over the course of decades city states collapsed due to severe GW.
Here’s some info that you will ignore
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/66832
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/78907
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/34779
In 1995 The New York Times Warned that East Coast Beaches Will Be Gone in 25 Years https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/global-warming-myth-1995-new-york-times-said-beaches-east-coast-will-gone-25-years/
And surely this absolutely ridiculous nonsense… should alert you to the fact that you have been played.
come on man
White House says it’s open to plan that would BLOCK sunlight from hitting surface of the Earth in bid to limit global warming
“In a report released Friday by the White House, officials suggested limiting sunlight to rapidly cool the planet, a process known as solar radiation modification (SRM).
One method would be to significantly increase the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere, which would reflect the sun’s rays from the planet.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12254167/More-gloomy-news-Biden-backs-plan-BLOCK-sunlight-Earth-bid-limit-global-warming.html
MORE-ONS Buy EVs
MORE-ONS Believe in GW
MORE-ONS inject Rat Juice
Maybe all of the smoke the US is getting from Canada is a way of reducing current temperatures. They are a type of aerosol interfering with solar rays. Of course, this smoke doesn’t really affect the Southwest. Wind currents don’t go down that direction from Canada.
Someone didn’t tell them that releasing all that carbon causes GW defeating the attempt to reflect the sun hahahaha
I think the question is what they intend to do about it. I think the plan is to push us in to the great depression to slow growth. And that will bring all sorts of unimaginable consequences
it was the insistence on infinite growth that go us into this mess in the first place
What ‘growth’?
No ‘BAU’?
‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ?
“The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . .
That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . .
And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders – at least within the western empire – have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . .
Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/07/01/bigger-than-you-can-imagine/
https://www.facebook.com/cosheep
economic planning can only be done through the rear view mirror of history.
Forward planning can never be more than guesswork–some good, some bad, some brilliant, some st upid.
but when we no longer have cheap surplus energy, no plans will work out, because no one can even begin to guess at the chaos that will deliver
‘It’s’ a ‘race’?
‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ?
They think we don’t check and compare their bullshit.
@PeoplePowerAus
I can’t load the weather maps from twenty years ago from Telegram’s “Down the Rabbit Hole We Go.” They showed meteorological reports of higher temps for same area on the broadcast. Telegram remarked that Facebook had deleted this “then and now” comparison shown on Telegram. Can’t find the link on Google either. Gee, why am I not surprised? FE, maybe you can help me out?
I kind of look at global warming like all cause death rates which are elevated following COVID, with life insurance and funeral companies as disinterested neutral observers as they can only react to the data, not proactively influence death rates or the payouts and profits respectively.
Kind of like rising sea levels measure the all causes of net global warming. Only sea levels globally have not risen. Even Obama, Zuckerberg et al feel quite safe building their ocean front mansions.
And in localized areas, land may rise and or subside due to tectonic activity and lead to false readings. But ask the fisherman near Plymouth Rock, and they will tell you they have lived there all their lives with no discernible change in water levels. Same for oyster fisherman in Chesapeake Bay.
Norman, it’s the season of heat; it’s called summer.
People have problems actually being outside in the heat every summer.
Everywhere? That’s an even bigger BS claim than usual. I take it you’ve travelled the world and stuck your thermometer into all sorts of places where the sun don’t shine?
You’ve been imbibing the propaganda again, haven’t you?
Honestly, the thicker they lay it on, the more you lap it up.
https://realclimatescience.com/1500-years-of-heatwaves/
norm … what do you do when the evidence changes on an issue — do you change your mind – ever?
found your comment scrolling through–otherwise i never read them
but
you mean such ‘evidence’ as (last year) a war was being faked by crisis actors eddy?—-
Or the ‘evidence’ of school shootings being faked by crisis actors eddy?
Now we have more ‘crisis actors’ faking heat death.
Too tiresome to go through your fakery list.
when the evidence is not supplied by a professional BS artist, using convicted criminals as source material, certainly I do.
Liking your own posts again, Norman?
Or do you have a confederate on the forum?
we all like our own posts best tim
some more than others
so as you are in an observational mode—feel free to point out any error in the comment i made there, which was in error?
Or perhaps you too are convinced that the clothes supplied by eddy’s tailor represent the best value for money anywhere?
Dissect my comment tim—item by item.
I am always open to corrections.
But my wheelbarrow is already overflowing with BS droppings–my roses only need just so much
norm I just heard that you were a male stripper in the 1930’s… any truth to that?
Remember this
Some reasons to suspect that subway shooting didn’t really happen
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/some-reasons-to-suspect-that-subway
Has anyone seen any follow up on cnnbbc?
Funny that
Tim, that Holly Cole performance was cool. Have to zoom in on more of her work. On the Heatwave Theme, check out Joan Osborne with the remaining Funk Brothers. She was geeked about singing with them as backup as I recall her saying in the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Saw her perform at the Old Settler’s Festival in Driftwood, TX and she was outstanding.
This Joan Osborne rendering is cool too, and much appreciated.
For your next Holly Cole treat, I unreservedly recommend this one as a treat for the ears AND the eyes.
Exquisite performance, great camera work. Thanks, that’s one of my favorite genres in the world of music. I’ll bet we could trade songs all day long. Check out “Fever Susan D” at YouTube.
Hill, thank you. I have totally missed Joan Osborne. She is excellent.
This Joan?
https://youtu.be/aDdOnl0bHO4
Yes
It is hard to see EVs as anything other than second or third vehicles for the wealthy. Many places are already running into electricity problems. This is an article saying that New York City is likely to experience inadequate electricity supply by 2025.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-outages-coming-nyc-2025-091256972.html
MORE-ONS Buy EVS
MBEVS
EVs are transportation for MORE-ONS
Most of the people I talk to think the drive to EV’s is fraught with peril on a number of fronts; not least of which is the capacity and robustness of the electric grid. I watched one of the last interviews with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry before he died and bought his book Catastrophe Now: America’s Last Chance to Prevent an EMP Disaster, published March 31, 2023 by the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He has 10 co-authors and 6 special contributors. It would be better if the U.S. were hardening the grid and stocking-up on transformers than pursuing EV’s. The book is startling, written by experts and has over 500 references. Much of it recounts the dangers of atmospheric blasts, either during or before war. But it also discusses the solar-flare and coronal mass ejection dangers. I asked SAGE to give a summary on that aspect.
SAGE says:
Yes, “Catastrophe Now” by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry does mention the potential of a Carrington Event as one of the potential catastrophic events that could be caused by a solar storm.
The Carrington Event was a powerful solar storm that occurred in 1859 and caused widespread disruption to telegraph systems around the world. If a similar event were to occur today, it could potentially cause massive damage to modern power grids, communication systems, and other critical infrastructure, leading to widespread blackouts and other disruptions.
Pry argues that the threat of a Carrington-level solar storm is a serious concern, and that steps should be taken to protect critical infrastructure from the effects of such an event. He notes that existing power grid infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a solar storm, and that efforts should be made to harden the grid and develop backup systems to ensure that power can be restored quickly in the event of an outage.
Overall, “Catastrophe Now” presents a grim assessment of the potential risks posed by solar storms and other catastrophic events, and argues for a comprehensive strategy to mitigate these risks and protect society from the worst effects of such events.
A bit more trivial, but along the same lines: does everybody know that it’s now illegal to make/sell incandescent light bulbs in the US? This was a recent shock to me.. I thought they were just discouraging them, not outright banning them.
https://www.1000bulbs.com/fil/search?q=DOE+Banned+Incandescents&cc=INC15DEAL
(I’m not associated with this company.)
I figured they’d still be producing specialty ones for industry and limited uses, but apparently not.
For my new house, I went with a lot of fake-candle fixtures, figuring I or someone else could put real candles in them if electricity went away. I just picked up a couple hundred 60w candelabra bulbs from eBay for an outrageous price (3-4x what they were a couple of years ago) because none of the regular light-bulb places has them in stock any more. I can’t bear led lights.. there’s something ‘off’ about them that makes me feel unwell.
It’s all pretty strange. You’d think energy conservation could be handled by electricity pricing alone. It seems unusual to ban a technology.
While still complex, incandescent lightbulbs were within our technical capacity 150 years ago or so. What does it take to set up an LED bulb factory by comparison, I wonder?
This is disturbing. We use incandescent bulbs in farming to create hotter micro climates cheaply in agriculture. It’s how a small but (until now) growing citrus industry was able to grow further north, to offset losses from Florida and California (both of whose citrus production has cratered)
The only error today, Lidia, is the expectation of sanity and foresight…..
The ‘grain deal’ to allow the export of grain from the Black Sea ports seems to be over. I am guessing that will have some impact on global food prices and availability?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/17/russia-decision-not-extend-black-sea-grain-deal-final
> Russia says decision not to extend Black Sea grain deal is final
No more talks planned, says official, despite Turkish leader expressing hope of progress at UN meeting
Russia has said its decision not to extend the Black Sea grain deal is final and that no more talks are planned. The statement followed comments from the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to the effect that he hoped for progress in talks at the United Nations on reviving it.
The deal, brokered by the UN and Turkey last year, was meant to alleviate a food crisis sparked by a Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports that had frozen millions of tonnes of grain exports around the world, much of it to developing countries. Russia suspended its participation on Monday, as the deal was due to expire, saying its conditions for an extension had not been met.
The Russian state news agency, Tass, quoted a senior Russian official at the UN on Monday as saying the decision was final. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the new Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, had been due to meet on the deal at the UN in New York later on Monday.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said he deeply regretted the Russian decision. “Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” he told reporters.
All sides accept that if the suspension lasts more than a few days, then it may be impossible to revive the deal, meaning grain prices will spiral or Ukraine could attempt to export its grain by ship in defiance of the Russian naval blockade.
Higher prices for US exported grain??
Futures are up only 1.5%. As I will have about 43 hectares of wheat next year, I was hoping for better.
Check it out.
UKR and NATO are having a ‘spat’ as Russia copes comfortably with UKR efforts in its ‘counteroffensive.’
Ben Wallace, who has now resigned as UK Secretary of State for Defence, told Zelensky the other day that UK is ‘not Amazon’ and that he ought to show some gratitude for supplies if he wants further support.
USA also said that NATO is considering ending its support for UKR because it has an ‘ungrateful’ tone.
UKR has now said that NATO ought to be ‘grateful’ that UKR soldiers are dying for NATO.
What is basically happening is that NATO is basically exhausted in the attrition war, and it does not have the industrial and energetic base any more to keep up with UKR artillery needs, particularly 155mm shells, which are the key armament in the UKR conflict, and USA is reduced to sending cluster bombs to UKR, which is ‘illegal’ and a ‘war crime’ although USA has not signed up to that Treaty.
USA promised UKR that it would sort it out with equipment, and USA is unable to meet that promise. UKR went to war with Russia under that false pretense.
And now, rather than just admit all that, Ben Wallace and Biden and co. are saying that they may end support for UKR, not because NATO made false promises and sent UKR into a conflict that it was bound to lose for that reason, but because UKR is ‘ungrateful’.
Wallace has resigned, for other ‘reasons’, but really the whole lot of them ought to resign if there were any decency left in the world, which there probably is not and has not been for a very long time.
I always said that NATO was playing UKR for mugs, from day 1 back in 2014 and before, and they really should have known better from recent USA debacles elsewhere in the world.
NATO & Ukraine’s Ugly Spat Amid Russian Blitz; ‘West Lucky We Are Fighting Putin’s Men,’ Taunts Kyiv
Ukraine and the West’s spat amid the war with Russia continues even after the NATO Summit. The Ukrainian President’s advisor, Mykhailo Podolyak, has now asked the West to be “grateful” to Kyiv. Podolyak Said, “The West is lucky that Ukrainians are dying on its behalf in the war against Russia.” The use of the word “grateful” seems like a taunt after the NATO Summit drama. In Vilnius, Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv is grateful to the West for its support after an ugly fight with NATO nation leaders. Notably, Russia’s roaring success has left Ukraine and its backers frustrated.
“Ungrateful” sounds like as good an excuse as any for ending NATOs support for the Ukraine conflict.
Pretty please and can I haz some arty rounds?
https://youtu.be/IgzFPOMjiC8
🤣👍👍
This is not about Ukraine. It is abut the US neocons killing Russia for whatever their motivations. Stopping in Ukraine does the neocons no harm they will start again with a new attack against Russia elsewhere.
When you are desperate, any bump in the road will look like a 2 lanes off ramp.
Or the trigger might be squeezed by accident (Pulp Fiction reference)
🤣👍👍
Just bigger Kow?
https://youtu.be/eOll3v55Dmo
Never dismiss our ability to make any situation much worse.
We’re special, don’t you know 😭
A few level headed ones for sure got some semblance of self preservation. Unfortunately it is a bad strategy and lousy tactic in the Monkey Business.
🙈🙉🙊🐒🦧
Let’s buy a Tesla – save the planet.
F this 💩
You just need to believe and everything will be fine 👍
https://youtu.be/obQF671T8pI
Whenever I see a Tesla drive past I immediately think — there goes a Hyper MORE-ON.
I can’t help it
(Bloomberg)
“China Intensifies Military Drills With Russia Amid US Sanctions”
Provoking Russia and threatening China has produced its results.
https://gcaptain.com/china-intensifies-military-drills-with-russia-amid-us-sanctions/
Countries can no longer get along peacefully with each other.
There’s news of car insurance inflation. That could be a way to cloak the real culprit by spreading the cost.
Although I’m hopeful for EVs I can see this as derailing the EV advantages given the current technology:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2023/07/04/electric-car-revolution-threatened-by-excessive-insurance-repair-costsreport/?sh=154e9a911e05
BEV incident claims are currently about 25.5% more expensive than their ICE equivalents and can take some 14% longer to repair.
From the article:
“The cost of a replacement battery is often more than the used price of a vehicle after one year.”
“British government guidelines insist damaged BEVs awaiting repair should be quarantined in a 15-yard zone [because of the danger of fire breaking out]. The increased weight of BEVs adds to problems. Repairers need to buy pricey equipment. This all adds to cost.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/shocking-number-rivian-owner-sees-42000-repair-bill-minor-accident
The bill for a minor fender bender in a Rivian: “the costs soared to a whopping $42,000 — or about half of the starting price of the EV.”
The batteries are so close to the edge (in every direction) that a minor bump can require a completely new battery.
I reckon ownership of an EV reflects ones level of intelligence
Generally auto insurance costs vary with the model, a Corvette is more expensive than a family sedan as is a pickup truck. Some companies now offer discounts if your phone gives your speed, miles drive, etc. to the insurance companies.
I am not an insurance expert so this may vary. Simple solution, charge vehicle owners what it costs, no subsidies.
If car models have been around for a while, large companies have a pretty good idea of how much they should be charging for insurance. It is harder when a new model is out. Then guesstimates are needed.
There can also be a problem with the approval of rates by states. State insurance departments often need to approve rates, particularly for any kind of coverage whose cost is of concern to politicians. I can imagine a situation where insurance departments are unwilling to approve relatively high rates for EVs, especially if there is not much historical information to base these rates on.
The VW that kept the same model from the 30’s through the 80’s (?) gives us an idea of the right way to go.
Yeah to that! I always wondered how better off we’d be had we just kept improving the Valiant with a Slant-Six engine. Lots of those were 300,000-plus miles by the time the body panels were all rusted out due to salt. We used to say they sounded like a sewing machine, but hey, they were cheap and easy to work on. Consumerism is its own worst enemy it seems.
I would Schad if someone posted some stories about MORE-ONS buying EVs then getting whacked with all sorts of outrageous expenses.
Meanwhile most of the power to charge their environmentally friendly EVs comes from … fossil fuels … with some nuke… hahahahahaha
Duh.. Like I said — MORE-ONS. MORE—– ONS
Trying to put someone off buying an EV is like trying to convince a MORE-ON not to inject Rat Juice
You crack me up Fast Eddy. You would have loved living in The Domain in North Austin. 45 bars and restaurants within a 5-10 minute walk and a few snazzy hotels to boot. Music up the yin-yang and you’d hear 8 languages on the crowded streets full of shoppers every day. Most of the apartments were above strips of retail and ours was almost above a Tesla showroom. It was small and had only two models on display, one a gull-wing deal. A few of us would drink beer and shoot the shit there after they closed the door some evenings. They had demos in the parking structure across street and booked rides weeks-out.
After 4 years in the Domain, I’d never do it again but when Hubbs says how we’re being steered into new living arrangements I think about how appealing they can make it for those who can afford it, on the roller-coaster ride down to wherever we’re headed. I only drove maybe 1,000 miles a year and most of that was to clubs downtown and out to the airport.
Gang-bangers, Russian hookers, movie producers, chip designers, PhD bartenders, yup, you would have loved it. BTW, there’s still that lighthouse job and it’s just a whip and a poop to Canada from there, if you ever get claustrophobic down under. You won’t have to worry about too much lead flying, it’ll be mostly machete and clubs when your RIP goes down. Either that or get eaten by hordes of flies after all the caribou are gone.
Read somewhere that EV’s are more dangerous due to their relative weight. Can’t recall the comparisons though. If I find it again I’ll post it.
I know someone with an S Tesla — we were discussing speed — and he said yes it’s fast but dangerous — because you need to be aware that you are hauling a 500kg battery…. and when you come screaming into a corner with all that weight — it is difficult to brake the car.
Imagine how quickly one goes through brakes and tyres hauling 500kg….
Anyone who buys an EV is a Total F789ing MORE-ON … the same people get sucked into shooting Rat Juice… they read the hype PR — and they do not do any research that will alert them to the massive downsides…
Like I said – Total F789ing MORE-ONS….
EVs will also wear out the roads faster. Road damage rises roughly in proportion to the 4th. power of the axle weight. In the UK, lorries are already known to be particularly damaging.
Road surfaces are made from … er, the bottom of the oil barrel. That’s so helpful.
Unless we have the means to replace the world’s roads by concrete roads in the time available, the prognosis is … more potholes.
Model S
The second oldest Tesla model on our list and the longest currently in production is the Model S sedan. After seeing a refresh earlier in 2021 that will eventually bring the tri-motor Plaid powertrain to drivers, the Model S can come with some weight.
The dual-motor Long Range trim, which has now been delayed to 2022, weighs 4,561 lbs.
The Model X Long Range weighs 5,185 lbs., while the Plaid Model X and its three motors will weigh 5,390 lbs.
Hahaha… imagine pound that pc of garbage car into a pothole at speed… probably crack the battery pack open and incinerate yourself.
I say again — MORE-ONS buy EVS. MORE-ONS inject Rat Juice
i thought the main manufacturing constituent of concrete was fossil fuel
Tesla owners like to say ‘It’s the Future!’ as if they had been programmed.
I find it hard not to laugh.
I’s up there with Standing with Ukraine and Safe and Effective…….
Most humans are parrots … they repeat whatever the movies or cnnbbc or the teevee tells them to repeat…
Jim nails it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsbFfLx9gZw
Notice how they laugh … I suppose they don’t realize that they do the same thing … re Ukey or GW etc….
On the one hand, Eddy posts papers showing that there were three formulations of the vaccine with varying levels of side effects.
On the other, he has been posting for 3 years that the vaccines are meant to kill us.
I’m not quite sure how he reconciles these facts … When you’re trying to exterminate everyone, you prefer do it with separate formulations, apparently?
I remember English funeral director John O’ Looney claiming a couple of years ago that 15% of the jabs were causing adverse reactions and / or death. In 2002 Dr. Mike Yeadon uploaded a video in which he made similar claims after analysing adverse reactions caused by a particular batch of the Moderna vaccine. He also quoted a figure of 15% with reference to something related to this – I can’t remember specifically what. FE may remember the video.
Interestingly, Stalin’s doctor advised Stalin to retire because of his age and health in 1952. The old dictator was furious and had the doctor arrested. Thus began the so-called “Doctors’ plot”, in which it was alleged that doctors of a certain minority religious ethnicity – the same one to which Stalin’s doctor belonged – were poisoning the children of Russians. A total lie, but one of which the leader of the German Nasty party would have been proud. A large number of doctors were arrested, but then shortly afterwards Stalin died, and the Soviet leaders halted the campaign.
Fast forward a few decades, and plenty of people have come to believe that there has been a real medical plot to finish people off. Go figure.
Correction: “In 2022 Dr. Mike Yeadon uploaded a video”
Wasn’t Stalin himself a member of this minority? After all, “Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, the second leader of the Soviet Union, and leader of world Communism.”
Stalin was a Georgian, not a yehudi. But he had the nerve to complain about “rootless cosmopolitans.”
In Georgian, Djugashvili means ‘son of a J*w;.
I am skeptical that there were different formulations. If some batches were kept in conditions that caused their contents to degrade (not cold enough; past their original expiration date), I think there has been earlier analysis that shows the side effects go up. The effect of vaccine degradation, together with different impacts by age group, may explain the apparent outcome.
I posted this also with a link, think the research was done in Denmark. A placebo would affect the complication rate downward.
Dennis L.
Dr. Mike Yeadon has discussed the major problems with quality control in the production of the jabs. He is an expert in this area. Recall, he was a Pfizer vice president for new products.
I believe the reason some people get wrecked by the vax is:
a) quality control issues – higher concentrations of poison (unintended). All shots have the ingredients that destroy the immune system and promote mutations
or
b) more likely — this is a Roman decimation campaign — they purposely loaded say 1 in ten with various other ingredients that cause infertility and/or severe injuries and death — to support the mass D campaign. All shots have the ingredients that destroy the immune system and promote mutations
The goal remains … to deploy leaky vaccines during a pandemic — to ensure the pandemic does not stop — as they wait for a deadly mutation
Gail, please remember that the injection campaign was always supposed to be a TRIAL, which trial was supposed to end in 2023 (January or sometime in the spring, best I can recall off the top of my head).
One doesn’t execute a TRIAL with a single consistent recipe.
The “How Bad Is My Batch” people easily traced differences among batches: some with no- or low-adverse-events, others with significantly more severe-to-fatal outcomes.
Moderna, notably, was said to contain twice the mRNA as Pfizer; more adverse events seem to be associated with Moderna.
I agree that Moderna was stronger and had more adverse results. That could be part of the effect people are seeing.
As we know – adverse effects indicate the vaccine is working.
norm – do you think you could try a Moderna shot? keith?
If you experience a heart attack that is a fantastic result — it’s working extremely well – it means your body is accepting the Rat Juice and you are protected from Covid Death.
Just ignore the heart attack… it will go away after a few days.
hahahahaahahahahahahaha… ignore the heart attack … get it? come on norm … laugh with FE… hahahaahaha… again … haahhahahaahahaha
We have Sanofi vaxx now in England, FE.
Norm should try that on our behalf- it’s a dark horse among the vaxxes.
My view is that it’s been introduced to take the heat off Pfister and Murderna.
Once upon a time I worked out of a property developers office … a HK Chinese duo… very wealthy — they both had Beemers with drivers…
One of them was shall we say … a simple man… his English was limited to asking ‘Fast how much money we make today — we need make more money be more fich’ — he would frequently mix and match the jacket from one suit with the pants of another ….
It makes about as much sense as norm mixing and matching vaccines… but then … norm is also … a very simple man
Remember Obama?
‘We’ve run a trial, we injected billions!’
This was in response to those saying the vaxxes were untested and experimental.
He admitted the experimental nature of he exercise, even boasted about it, and morons applauded…..
As time passes … one realizes … that we are surrounded by norms … some are not quite as bad as norm … but many are even worse….
And they do love their democracy – even though it is evident that they have no such thing
You can’t imagine that if everyone simply dropped dead immediately that would frighten the horses and finger the culprit right away?
I think fertility has been their target over and above near-term death. The turbo-cancer is pretty nifty, though.
Different formulations of -don’t forget- COMPLETELY SECRET ingredients mean a near-infinite range of results which equals plausible deniability. The damage (as admitted in that FDA? slide deck) affects virtually every bodily system, and so can (and does) present as almost any dis-ease one can imagine and, in the most woeful of cases, the onset of multiple severe diseases at the same time.
There are lots of people around today who injected themselves and their kids to the point of disability and death, yet will NEVER admit any harm was done.
This will take decades to tease out, if there is even ever the will or the means to do so. Intentionally was it designed thus.
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/cult-watch-fully-vaccinated-covid
My money remains on the Bossche Mutation … because that’s what happens when you mass deploy leaky vaccines during pandemics…
It’s possible, of course. It is not a foolish theory.
But mine is on another pathogen seeded among populations with screwed immune systems, not the Messiah Mutation of Bossche.
They can’t rely on infertility alone, and above all They need another ‘pandemic’ to be able to implement the new IHR’s and WHO emergency powers, which they are putting so much effort into.
And they need to test how conditioned we have become to obey and discard all human rights. They have to get us into masks again.
One year of freedom and normality left, at most.
We must now ask ourselves how we intend to live, and how we intend to die.
GVB mentions that it might not take a deadly mutation … ruined immune systems leave the MORE-ONS defenceless.
I just wanna watch it go down
>> I think fertility has been their target over and above near-term death.
This would make *much more sense* than a kill shot. Doesn’t disrupt society in the same way, and also fits in with the decades-long proliferation of hormone mimetics that disrupt reproductive physiology.
A fine over-view, Lidia.
Mass long-term disability and dire poverty, then opening up bright shiny suicide pods as a normal way out of misery – see Canadian moves in that direction.
Assisted suicide provided by the state not just for the sick, but also for the ‘terminally poor’ – how thoughtful!
A thousand cuts, a thousand types of AE, everyone tending to kill…eventually.
And I agree, with 70% of the serious AE’s being suffered by females, and most of those reproductive, it doesn’t take a genius like Norm to work it out…….
They are cunning, and their grasp of average psychology is excellent: even the injured and bereaved generally won’t blame the vaxxes – it opens up terrifying vistas of incomprehensible evil, betrayal by the state, and personal powerlessness.
They will never need camps and guards: stories about those are just to make ‘anti-vaxxers’ sound crazy and give a false illusion of total state power.
A needle will do it all – plus the infectiousness via the well-established shedding.
I’m ok with a cull…. even if that means Trade Off happens… it’s extremely gratifying to see my work fighting off the DelusiSTANI MORE-ONS come to fruition with an assist from The Elders and Dr Fauci….
Death to MORE-ONS!
Death to DelusiSTANIS!
Death to Vaxxers!
Death to MORE-ONS!
Death to DelusiSTANIS!
Death to Vaxxers!
Allah is Akbar!
another good piece from “B”—knocks space mining neatly on the head
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/mining-in-space-will-surely-save-us-e35f91001020
Dennis L reads the title: “mining in space will surely save us” and is excited to see what it’s all about!
He thinks to himself, “I knew it! Those OFW folks are all gloom and doom – no imagination!”
iva,
I don’t know it, skimmed the article, all fluff. Many things of today were scoffed at some years back; the idea a machine could be built to think was debunked by stating it would take all of the electricity from Niagra Falls to run it. Recall this idea from sixth grade.
The universe has some 9 billion years in front of us, it is say 14 billion years and earth is 4B. It is unfolded to us as our spaceship moves through the universe which is very poorly understood. Some respectable physicists speculate we may be in a black hole which itself connects to another universe. JWST has found some galaxies which are very old, should be smaller and are very well developed, puff goes a lot of theory and Ph D. thesis.
Patience grasshopper, it will be revealed.
TINA
Dennis L.
I liked the initial number, three millions dollars per gram of metal ore. The final number at regime, 42,000 dollars per gram, is also in the ball park IMHO. This could be, and probably is, mostly iron ore. asteroids probably come from a fully differentiated body, but geology was not active long enough to distill things like copper or titanium in places. so you get the silicon asteroids or the iron asteroids.
plenty of alternatives, the main and most likely is to go extinct. So it won’t be “so long and thanks for all the fish”.
Dennis when would you think if we are going to get into space the first space factory will be operational?
We do seem to be running out of time.
I would seriously doubt that we can do it within fifty let alone twenty years.
I have no idea on time frame; if Starship does not work then my guess is space mining never happens.
No sarcasm, we are here, we being humans, and from what I see and read, it is a miracle.
Faith is a word scoffed at my many, I have faith they will think of something. More humbly, I don’t think humans are driving destiny as much as some would like. God may well have a sense of humor and allow hubris to go on longer than one might think only to change the rules while laughing quietly. Not a vengeful God, but one who at times is bored. Billions of years is a long time and sometimes even God needs a bit of diversion.
TINA
Dennis L.
I still think space mining works fine.
Ed, how are we going to do “space mining” when we can’t even permit ourselves a frickin’ 60w light bulb!?!?
One day——somebody is going to tell me who ”they” are Dennis
“I still think space mining works fine.”
My analysis of the problem indicates that it might be done with a thousand StarShip loads. About half of that is the 30 GW power plant that powers the front end of the processing.
But relatively speaking, that’s not interesting compared to the 15 stars around Tabby’s star that seem to be inhabited by something far, far ahead of us. Whatever we are looking at, the occluding structure is 400 times the area of the earth and the local starlight is around 1200 times the total energy humanity uses even though they seem to be way back from the star.
Maybe humans will not manage to tap our star for energy, but it seems fairly likely that something did. If we don’t, it’s our own stupid fault.
This disturbs my view of the universe more than anything else in the last 50 years.
For those of you who think the MSM lies, perhaps you will not be surprised. Why this has not been picked up by the mainstream media is beyond me.
Perhaps it is just too weird rather than intentional suppression. I accidentally picked up a pointer to the astronomy archive site in a New Zealand paper.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/tabbys-star-may-not-be-alone-as-study-finds-cluster-of-pulsating-stars/46ITNS5IJAQP444XEDA4YI7POY/
i pick up my mouse–and bang away on my kb
i illustrate both those objects because they are the produce of oil.—ie a hydrocarbon.
they also put my fingers to use in a logical manner.
i cannot ‘think’ my screen into activity to suit any purpose
it isnt possible to make those things in any other way–in necessary vast quantities,
draw as much energy as you can fantasise about from the sun–but unless you can find a human-use for it, it is simply a wasted exercise.
human beings need employment—that is our ongoing existence.
we use energy to sustain that existence.
so continued energy use is that employment
If we could peer into keith’s mind .. we’d see an old fashioned insane asylum
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/03/06/science/06SCI-MENTAL1/06MENTALCOVER1-videoSixteenByNine3000.jpg
(L’Antidiplomatico + Respponsible Statecraft)
”post Vilnius summit: inside the war-party, they begin to maul each other”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/07/14/americas-strategy-for-the-nato-alliance-is-failing/
”America’s strategy for the NATO alliance is failing. Ukraine is depleting its war resources, and the West can’t replenish them fast enough to alter that trajectory anytime soon.”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/07/14/americas-strategy-for-the-nato-alliance-is-failing/
This article says:
“rather than block the rise of a rival hegemon that might dominate Europe, the United States has maneuvered to become the continent’s supreme power, aiming to turn all Eastern Europe into an American protectorate.”
Of course, the detail that everyone is now figuring out is that America’s weapons aren’t really very effective, compared to Russia’s. This was pointed out in the article I posted by Dmitry Orlov.
Gail, considering your above comment, in my view, what happened in the last 3 years about trade, economy, energy etc. was the following (and probably not only that):
rewinding the tape, we can say that Covid and the provocations in Ukraine – which led to the war (a provocation which started in 2014) – enabled the destruction of the ‘Belt & Road Initiative,’ which would have led to increase the Europe-Russia-China interchanges via land movements (train for goods, pipelines for energy. Mainly oil and gas).
I don’t mean that Covid was released for that, but the unintentional or intentional release of (light) lab bioweapon Covid-19 caused also the above event.
Before Covid, in Europe, we were living in a world which was experiencing an increase of movements of oil and gas via pipelines and an increase of goods movements by land.
Mainly in the axis of Europe-Russia-China direction (I mean increase, not all exchanges).
After Covid and the war in Ukraine, oil and gas movements for Europe shifted more by sea (liquefied gas ships and oil tankers) and the same for cargo movements which move back to travel more again on container ships.
The American and British logistics operators would have found themselves in difficulty in a business environment of land movements, having more power the ‘inside’ European operators, not to mention the failure to sell American gas to Europe.
But additionally, American and British insurance companies (and therefore financial operators) would have found themselves in difficulty in a land business environment, because, as we know, they are very strong in the shipping sector.
While European operators would have taken advantage on a land business inside Europe.
An ironic aspect of the story is that rail transport and pipelines transport would have created a minor environmental impact for Europe, since goods and raw materials would have traveled minor distances and because rail generally consumes less oil than container ships.
Therefore, European leaders are now wheeping for ‘green deal’, by they are actually making opposite choices, causing goods and raw materials make more distance…
The above is only meant to be an analysis of the facts, without judgment.
I add a couple of links as background:
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-Road/khorgos.html
https://www.newsilkroaddiscovery.com/opinion-competition-for-close-cooperation-with-kazakhstan-between-russia-and-the-eu/
Insightful.
Dennis L.
In the first link there is the original map of the rail which included Russia, with goods entering from Belarus to Poland and then arriving to Germany.
Now they are arriving through Turkey, but it seems there is the intention to include Ukraine too.
This second route represents what is remaining of the original Belt & Road initiative route.
It was of course more convenient the one through Russia.
In that respect, if the above is all correct, in Europe we have leaders working for your Country.
Without considering that it is a problem for Europe – looking to that with detachment – the main point is that it represents an unbalance which, sooner or later, in my view, it will show its negative bounce…
I am doubtful that Europe could keep up its end of a belt and road initiative. It doesn’t have enough energy supplies of its own. It was too dependent on Russia.
Russia could likely make more selling what oil and gas it has to China and Asian countries than to Europe. Getting rid of the belt and rail initiative with Europe at one end was not entirely a bad idea.
My impressions is that boats are usually the most efficient way of transporting finished goods long distance. Over land, railroads are best, but they must already be built.
Boats are terrible for transporting natural gas, however. The cost of transport is unreasonably high. Pipelines are much cheaper, but once the supply runs out, or there is a desire to sell the natural gas elsewhere, different pipelines or boats must be used.
Oil can be transported by boat, but direct routes are a whole lot better than round-about ones. Transport by train tends to be more expensive than transport by pipeline.
Yes I have the same information.
The rail from China via Russia through Kazakhastan was already existing and it was initially exploited for cargo trains, till the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Let’s say during 2018 – feb 2022.
Now they are using the one existing via Turkey.
So, according to what you say, which I agree, my impression is that the rail that they plan to build through Ukraine will have low chances to be completed.
The one from China to Iran is already in place and also the one from Russia to Iran.
Practically Europe is the looser on any front.
“I am doubtful that Europe could keep up its end of a belt and road initiative. It doesn’t have enough energy supplies of its own. It was too dependent on Russia. ”
Not following you here. “It doesn’t have enough energy supplies of its own.” Er, that was the whole point. Energy was planned to—and did–flow west while technology and products of various sorts would flow east. I wonder whether you have read an analysis of the actual functioning of the Schwedt refinery (processing Ural light direct from the source via pipeline) and the centrality (including its location and transport infrastructure) of the refinery to German industry.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-schwedt-refinery-losing-out-race-russian-oil-2023-03-07/
Europe didn’t actually mind its “dependency” on Russia anymore than you mind your “dependency” on your local grocery store—or your local gas station, for that matter.
It was the USA and the European Commission that wanted to break up the affair and the energy/technology exchange between Europe and Russia.
Or course the Belt and Road Initiative is about more than just Russia and Europe, but I think we are talking about that segment here.
Europe mostly uses its imported energy to keep its homes warm and to operate vehicles. It cannot afford to pay a very high price for imported oil and gas, or its people would not be able to afford food, particularly meat. Europeans have already discovered that high prices for natural gas made it impossible to produce fertilizer at a reasonable price.
Countries in Southeast Asia that do not heat their homes and that do not have many private passenger automobiles have very much of an advantage. If they import oil or natural gas, they can put it to use in manufacturing, rather put a significant amount into personal use. They can tolerate higher prices. Exporters would prefer countries that can tolerate higher prices.
“Europe mostly uses its imported energy to keep its homes warm and to operate vehicles. It cannot afford to pay a very high price for imported oil and gas, or its people would not be able to afford food, particularly meat. Europeans have already discovered that high prices for natural gas made it impossible to produce fertilizer at a reasonable price. ”
Yeeeeees. All very well known.
And they were getting a very good deal from Russia.
This is not news to anyone, certainly not me!
This is not a response to my points.
If that is mostly what Europe does with its fuel supplies, it has no way to pay the high price producers need. Europe gets left behind because producers want to sell to countries that do not have such high “overhead” expenses. They can make better use of the oil and natural gas, and because of this, pay a higher price.
Until the recent past, 100 to 150 years ago, the Europeans did not heat or cool down their houses. The longhouse integrated humans, animals, cooking and storage under one roof; the heat of the animals helped to keep humans (slightly) warm, the smoke conserved roof and storage; the fire gave some light and eventually some heat in the unisolated houses. People had tea and woolen clothes to keep warm, thy slept two in one bed to keep temperature. People in Spain, Italy and Greece have no problems to work outside at 45 °C and in Sweden, Norway and Russia to cut logs at -15°C. All above or under is a big problematic.
The old castles had large, impressive window openings and we dont know if they were ever closed. The open fire places are way too small to heat up the large halls.
Without heating or cooling body and clothes have to maintain temperature, which means that sooner or later body and clothes start to get smelly.
If we use 1/3 to heat and shower and 1/3 to drive around, it is not because it is inevitably necessary to survive but because it is our very recent culture.
Let’s say it in another way: it is the inability to organize society in a way that respects the limits of the carrying capacity on the one hand and to maximize lives on the other. We are preferring machines to lives and that’s a fetish. So at the end we are complaining about something we are not willing to change.
The answer of the Elders on that problem are 15-min-cities, while the unimportant me believes, cities consume too much energy for provisioning. The Elders are afraid the current service economy could crash without dense areas of working and consequently living (as commuting needs energy), while I think, the service economy is already dead as it is just a further luxury made possible by fossile fuels.
But politics need to get people into the boat! And people don’t want to live like their grand-grand-parents!
That less consume of fossiles might lead to economic consequences that reduce the availability even more is another point. Is importing fossiles by boat instead of pipeline a step into more resilience? Do shocks make people wake up? I am not sure.
Importing oil and gas by boat rather than pipeline is a step toward inefficiency. It can’t help anything. Using smaller boats instead of larger boats is also a step toward inefficiency.
There is quite a bit of the world that even today does not use heating or cooling. I was surprised to discover that southern China (such as where Wuhan is located) do not use heating in winter; people were coats inside, if it is too cold.
Cities cannot be built unless there is enough stored energy of various forms (food to eat, energy to transport the food and remove waste) to support the population. Water also has to be provided as well as energy to cook the food.
Closely packed people and animals are efficient at saving energy, but they are a good way to spread germs. Jared Diamond says that cities of the Middle Ages had to keep importing people from outlying areas because so many people were succumbing to communicable diseases in cities.
I would say we are already immune to the diseases that our domestic animals can transmit to us, after thousands of years of living together.
Otherwise they, or we, would not be here.
So, no problem.
True https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81468
keith?
“IF SCIENCE WAS NEVER QUESTIONED YOU’D STILL BE DRINKING COCAINE. GIVING KIDS COUGH SYRUP WITH HEROIN, SPRAYING PEOPLE WITH DOT AND SMOKING THE CIGARETTE BRAND YOUR DOCTOR RECOMMENDED”
Yes, and the earth would be in the center of the universe. It would be flat as well and carried by tutels on the firmament.
But fear not, today we got big bangs and black holes cuz zero division drivel. And the clergy of the past has been replaced by pal reviews.
The orthodoxy of rapacious primate tendencies is ever prevalent.
Crimea Bridge attacked. Partially collapsed. Railway running. Road closed.
https://rumble.com/v30hmrw-ukrainians-attacked-the-crimean-bridge-end-of-the-grain-deal.-military-summ.html
According to the video, the attack against the bridge came from the north rather than the south. It is not clear how Ukraine could have managed an attack from the north.
Low flying drones. If they can hug the ground no radar can find them.
I agree with the information given. You’re right.
https://tafsilar.info/novosti-uzbekistana/v-uzbekistane-oshhushhalis-podzemnye-tolchki/
Translation:
An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.9 was recorded in the Fergana region of the city of Kuvasay , which occurred on July 18 at 8:45.
The Republican Center for Seismic Predictive Monitoring of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Uzbekistan reported this incident.
The depth of the earthquake source was 15 kilometers, and the distance from the epicenter to Tashkent was 251 kilometers in the southeast direction.
Больше информации на портале tafsilar.info: https://tafsilar-info.translate.goog/novosti-uzbekistana/v-uzbekistane-oshhushhalis-podzemnye-tolchki/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
what does this have to do with drones?
Gooby Woobies… hahahahahaa priceless they block this post cuz?????
https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/81467