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For many years, there has been a theory that imports of oil would become a problem before there was an overall shortage of fossil fuels. In fact, when I look at the data, it seems to be clear that oil imports are already constrained.
As I look at the data, it appears to me that coal and natural gas imports are becoming constrained, as well. There was evidence of this constrained supply in the spiking prices for these fuels in Europe in late 2021 and early 2022, starting well before the Ukraine conflict began.
Oil, coal, and natural gas are different enough from each other that we should expect somewhat different patterns. Oil is inexpensive to transport. It is especially important for the production of food and for transportation. Prices tend to be worldwide prices.
Coal and natural gas are both more expensive to transport than oil. They tend to be used in industry, in the heating and cooling of buildings, and in electricity production. Their prices tend to be local prices, rather than the worldwide price we expect for oil. Prices for importers of these fuels can jump very high if there are shortages.
In this post, I first look at the trends in the overall supply of these fuels, since a big part of the import problem is fossil fuel supply not growing quickly enough to keep pace with world population growth. I also give more background how the three fossil fuels differ.
After this introductory material, I provide charts and some analysis of fossil fuel imports and exports by region, based on data from the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy. Theoretically, the total of regional imports should be very close to the total of regional exports. This analysis gives a little more insight into what is going wrong and where.
[1] On a worldwide basis, total supplies of both oil and coal seem to be constrained.
Figure 2 shows that world supplies of all three fossil fuels follow the same general pattern: They tend to rise in close to parallel lines, with oil supply on top, coal next, and natural gas providing the least supply.
The total supply of fossil fuels needs to be shared by the world’s population. It therefore makes sense to look at supply on a per capita basis.
On Figure 3, the top line, oil supply per capita, is almost perfectly level, suggesting that having a greater supply of oil enables having a larger world population. This relationship makes sense because oil is used to a significant extent in growing today’s food, and shipping it to market. Oil products also make herbicides, insecticides, and drugs for animals that enable the growing supply of food needed to feed today’s population. Oil products are also helpful in road making, and in providing lubrication for machinery of all kinds.
We might conclude that oil supply is essential to the growth of human population. It is only by way of a huge change in the economy, such as the one that took place in 2020, that there is a big dip in oil usage. Even now, some of the changes are “sticking.” Some people are continuing to work from home. Business travel is still low. People are still not buying fancy clothing as much as before 2020. All these things help reduce fossil fuel usage, particularly oil usage.
Figure 3 also shows that on a per capita basis, coal supply has fallen by 9% since its peak in 2011. This fact, plus the fact that coal prices have been spiking around the world in recent years, leads me to believe that coal supply is already constrained, even apart from the export issue.
[2] The share of oil traded interregionally is more than double the share of coal or natural gas traded interregionally.
The reason why oil is disproportionately high in Figure 1 compared to Figure 2 is because a little over 40% of oil is shipped between regions. In comparison, only about 18% of coal production is traded with other regions, and about 17% of natural gas production is shipped interregionally. Oil is much easier (and cheaper) to transport between regions than either coal or natural gas. Shipping costs tend to escalate rapidly, the farther either natural gas or coal is shipped.
Natural gas has a second problem over and above the high cost of shipping: It requires storage (which may be high cost) if it is not used immediately. Storage is needed for both natural gas and coal because both fuels are often used for heat in winter, either by direct burning or by creating electricity that can be used to heat buildings. Storage for coal is close to free because it can be stored in piles outside.
Besides heat in winter, coal is also used to provide electricity for air conditioning in summer, so its demand curve has peaks in both summer and winter. Natural gas is much more of a winter-heat fuel in the US, so it has a large peak corresponding to winter usage (Figure 4).
Storage for natural gas needs to be available in every area where users expect to use it for winter heat. The cost of this storage will be low if there are depleted natural gas caverns that can be used for storage. It is likely to be high if above ground storage is required. Natural gas importing areas often do not have suitable caverns for storage. The easy approach is to try to get by with a bare minimum of storage, and hope that imports can somehow make up the difference.
The big question for any fuel is, “Can consumers afford to pay a high enough price to cover all the costs involved in getting the fuel from endpoint to endpoint, at the time it is needed?“
Citizens become very unhappy if the cost of winter heat becomes extremely expensive. They demand subsidies and rebates from the government, in order to keep costs down. This is a sign that prices are too high for the consumer.
Both coal and natural gas are also heavily used in manufacturing. Their prices vary greatly from location to location and from time to time. If coal or natural gas prices rise in a particular location, the cost of manufactured goods from that location will also tend to rise. These higher prices will particularly hurt a manufacturing country, such as Germany, because its manufactured goods will become less competitive in the world marketplace. GDP growth will be reduced, and the profitably of manufacturers will tend to fall.
Because of these issues, long-distance trade in both coal and natural gas tend to hit barriers that may be difficult to see simply by looking at the trend in world production.
[3] Natural gas exports may already be becoming constrained, even though the total amount extracted still seems to be rising.
A huge amount of investment is needed to make long-distance sale of natural gas possible. Such investment includes:
- The cost of developing a natural gas field for export use, usually over many years.
- Pipelines covering every inch traveled by the natural gas, other than any portion of the trip for which transfer as liquefied natural gas (LNG) is planned.
- Special ships to transport the LNG.
- Facilities to chill natural gas, so it can be shipped overseas as LNG.
- Regasification plants, to make the natural gas ready to ship by pipeline after it has been transferred as LNG.
- Storage facilities, so that sufficient natural gas is available for winter.
Not all of these investments are made by the same organizations. They all need to provide an adequate return. Even if “only” very long-distance pipelines are used, the cost can be high.
Pipelines work best when there is no conflict among countries. They can be blown up by another country that seeks to raise natural gas prices, or that wants to retaliate for some perceived misdeed. For this reason, most growth in natural gas exports/imports in recent years has been as LNG.
Organizations investing in high-cost infrastructure for extracting and shipping natural gas would like long-term contracts at high prices in order to cover their costs. Without a stable long-term supply contract, natural gas purchase prices can be extremely variable. Japan has tended to buy LNG under such long-term contracts, but many other countries have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward prices, hoping that “spot” prices will be lower. They don’t want to lock themselves into a long-term high-priced contract.
There are two different things that tend to go wrong:
- Spot prices bounce up above even what the long-term contract price would have been, creating a huge high-price problem for consumers.
- Spot prices, on average, turn out to be too low for natural gas exporters. As a result, they cut back on investment, so that the amount of future exports can be expected to fall.
I believe that there is a significant chance that natural gas exports are now reaching a situation where prices cannot please all users simultaneously. Not all investors can get an adequate return on the huge investments that they have made in advance. Some investments that should have been made will be omitted. For example, there might be enough natural gas storage for a warm winter, but not for a very cold winter in Europe.
A prime characteristic of a fossil fuel (or any resource) that is not economic to extract is that the industry has difficulty paying its workers an adequate wage. Recently, there has been news about a union strike against Chevron at an Australian natural gas extraction site used to provide gas for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export. This suggests that natural gas may already be hitting long-distance export limits. Prices can’t stay high enough for producers to pay their workers an adequate wage.
[4] Oil imports by area suggest that the rapidly growing manufacturing parts of the world are squeezing out the imports desired by high-wage, service-oriented countries.
Because oil is so important in international trade, I looked at the amounts two ways. The first is based on trade flows, as reported by the Energy Institute:
The second is based upon a comparison of reported production and consumption for the same year, using the assumption that if consumption is higher than production, the difference must be attributable to imported oil. The problem with this later approach is that it can easily be distorted by changes in inventory levels. There may also be difficulties with my approach of netting out flows in two different directions, especially if the flows are partly of crude oil and partly of “oil products” of various types.
In both charts, imports for China, India, and Other Asia Pacific are clearly much higher in recent years, while imports for the US, Japan, and Europe are down. The peak year for imports (in total) was about 2016 or 2017. Imports were about 3.5 million barrels a day lower in 2022, compared to peak, with both approaches.
[5] Oil imports by area indicate that nearly all oil exporters around the globe are having difficulty maintaining export levels.
Here, again I show two indications, using the same methods as for oil imports. Since trade is two sided, I would expect total import indications to more or less equal the total of all amounts exported.
On Figure 7, peak oil exports (in total) occur in 2016, with the runner up year being 2017. US oil exports are shown to be nearly zero, even in recent years, because US imports and US oil exports more or less cancel out.
The indications of Figure 8 show that apart from Canada, the amount of oil exported for all the other export groupings shown is lower in recent years than it was a few years ago. This is also evident in Figure 7, but not as clearly.
To some extent, the lower production in recent years is related to the cutbacks announced by OPEC+ (including what I call Russia+). While these cutbacks are “voluntary,” they reflect the fact that based on current oil prices, and based on investments made in recent years, these countries have made the decision to cut back production. No oil exporter would dare mention that it is running short of oil that can be extracted without considerably more investment.
On Figures 7 and 8, “Mexico+South” refers to all the oil being produced from Mexico southward. Besides Mexico, this includes Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Columbia, Ecuador, and a number of other small producers. Most of them are experiencing falling production. Brazil is doing a bit better, but it does not seem to be experiencing much growth in exports.
Africa’s peak year for oil exports seems to have been in 2007 (both approaches), with recent exports at a much lower level.
With respect to Russia+, its exports seem to be down from their peak in 2017 or 2018, but not any more than for oil producers from the Middle East. The European Union oil embargo doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact.
The star performer seems to be Canada, with its rising production and exports from the Canadian Oil Sands.
In this analysis, I have “netted out” imports and exports. On this basis, the US hasn’t moved into significant oil exporter status yet. I am sure that there are some people hoping that the oil production of the US will continue to increase, but whether this will happen is unclear. The growth of US oil production in recent years has helped offset (and thus hide from view) the falling exports of many countries around the world.
[6] Coal exports appear to have peaked about 2016. Europe has reduced its imports of coal, leaving more for other importers.
The peak in coal imports seems to have occurred about 2016. In particular, Europe’s imports of coal have fallen significantly since 2006. At the same time, coal imports have risen for many Asian countries, including China, India, South Korea, and Other Asia Pacific. Even Japan seems to have been able to obtain a fairly consistent level of coal imports for the 22-year period shown on Figure 9.
One thing that is striking about coal exports is that they are disproportionately from countries in the Far East. Even the coal exports of the US and Canada are from North America’s West Coast, across the Pacific. Russia’s coal exports tend to be from Siberia.
The coal exports of South Africa have declined significantly since 2018, and other African countries are eager for their imports. Today’s largest source of coal exports is Indonesia. Coal exports from Russia+, at least until 2021, have been been a source of coal export growth.
A major share of the delivered price of coal is transportation cost, which tends to be fueled by oil, particularly diesel. Overland transit is particularly expensive. The real reason for Europe’s decline in coal imports since 2006 (shown in Figure 9) may be that there are practically no affordable coal exports available to it because it is too geographically remote from major exporters. Of course, this is not a story politicians care to tell voters. They prefer to spin the story as Europe’s choice, to prevent climate change.
[7] Natural gas imports and exports have only recently started to become constrained.
Figure 11 shows that natural gas exports from Russia+ (really Russia, with a little extra production from other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States) have stayed fairly level, except for a big drop-off in 2009 (probably recession related) and in 2022.
The overall level of natural gas exports has been rising because of contributions from several parts of the world. Africa was an early producer of natural gas exports, but its exports have been dropping off somewhat recently as local gas consumption rises.
More importantly, exports have increased in recent years from the Middle East, Australia, and North America. With this growing supply of exports, it has been possible for importers to increase their imports.
Europe was able to maintain a fairly stable level of natural gas imports between 1990 and 2018, and even to increase them by 2021. China was able to ramp up its natural gas imports. Even Japan was able to ramp up its natural gas imports until about 2014. It has tapered them back since then. India and Other Asia Pacific both have been able to add a small layer of imports, too.
[8] What lies ahead?
The countries that have the greatest advantage in using fossil fuel imports are the countries that don’t heat or cool their homes, and that don’t have large numbers of private citizens with private passenger automobiles. Because of their sparing use of fossil fuel imports, their economies can afford to pay higher prices to import these fossil fuel imports than other countries. Thus, they are likely to be winners in the competition for fossil fuel imports.
Europe stands out to be an early loser of imports. It is already losing oil and coal imports, and it also seems to be an early loser of natural gas imports. However, for all its talk about preventing climate change, the reduction in European imports of fossil fuels hasn’t made much of a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions (Figure 13).
I am afraid that no country will really come out ahead. In some sense, the United States is better off than many countries because it is producing slightly more fossil fuels than it consumes. But it still depends on China and other countries for many imported goods, including computers. Given this situation, the United States likely cannot continue business as usual for very long, either.
pandelis
Aug 30
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edited Aug 30
from what you say, i gather that spike (in billions in the vaxx) attach to ACE2 receptors and somehow does the damage? if not mistaken we have heard about ACE2 receptors previously, wonder what is new here that makes walter and others here concern? thanks in advance.
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REPLY (1)
Leo
Sep 1
The new bit is an autoimmunity to ACE2 that slowly destroys all the receptors in the body, NOT just the ones with spike attached.
I guess it’s similar to how the hCG-TeNT dimer caused autoimmunity to hCG (hence sterility) in Kenya.
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suubstaack
Writes Covid-1984 Collection
Aug 29
GVB has talked of this, the ultimate destruction of the body’s immune system. With endless spike protein factories (the injected) walking around producing mutations, causing repeat exposure. It’s only a matter of time before a new strain wins out over a destroyed immune system and takes the whole body system down.
https://wmcresearch.substack.com/p/ace2-of-death-the-spike-proteinace2/comments
GVB has a brand new talk out.
It’s called “Emerging Post Pandemic Diseases”.
He still insists that the vaxxed are brewing up new variants thanks to their non-neutralizing antibodies, and that this is going to result in a pandemic of something very very nasty, very very soon. So have those anti-virals ready, especially if you’ve been jabbed like a pin-cushion.
He also claims he’s the only expert who has bothered to do a deep dive on this one, so he probably knows more about it than any talking head alive.
https://rumble.com/v3dtdoc-emerging-post-pandemic-diseases-philippines.html
As it seems the variants so far are brewn in a laboratory and not in the bodies of the vaxxed.
https://zenodo.org/record/8216373
There is a moment in the movie Aliens (1986) when the members of the crew initially do not think anything concerning is happening. Then, slowly, it dawns on them that an entire swarm of aliens are imminently going to attack them. That is how I felt when I had the realization this evening I am about to divulge.
I have not been able to get the ACE2 receptor issue out of my mind. The fact that this receptor is so ubiquitous and so tied to mechanisms of death – both quick and slow – it gives me immense pause regarding research into creating a weapon which could annihilate a species. And, regarding “slow,” what exactly is “slow?” To us humans the slowest slow is but a microblip of time. For Homo Sapiens to disappear “slowly” on a human scale would be instantaneous on a universal scale. I cannot shake the sinking feeling that this is “slowly” happening.
Back to the movie. We may just now be sensing those monsters outside the walls – but in our abode. Building on all of my previous work, I now propose that Long COVID and the excess deaths we are observing are due to the Spike Protein’s immune complex formation with ACE2. Remember, ACE2 can also be SOLUBLE. It can circulate, unbound to cell membranes. It can form complexes with the Spike Protein which can then generate an autoimmune response to ACE2, destroying it and rendering it non-functioning.
There is evidence of this.
https://wmcresearch.substack.com/p/ace2-of-death-the-spike-proteinace2
Half of Vaccinated People Never Stop Producing Spike Protein, Study Found
COVID Vaccine is a GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/half-of-vaccinated-people-never-stop
I’m so glad you’re back.
Norman’s been pining away for lack of your presence.You are a rock of stability in his world of chaos. One of the few things he can depend on.
eddys been beamed back to earth
the aliens have had enough
OFW is back on the vaxtrail
Astrobiologist Suggests We May Have Found and Killed Martian Life 50 Years Ago
Cassidy Ward
Fri, September 1, 2023 at 5:30 PM EDT·
In a recent article for Big Think, Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, author and astrobiologist at Technical University Berlin, suggests NASA’s Viking landers may have successfully detected life on Mars, but killed it in the process.
Humans May Have Already Murdered Their First Aliens
the 1970s, NASA sent two twin missions, Viking I and Viking II, to the Red Planet. Each mission consisted of an orbiter and a lander, allowing astronomers to observe Mars from two vantage points. Viking I touched down on the western slope of Mars’ Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976. Viking II landed at Utopia Planitia a couple of months later, on September 3, 1976.
Dr. Schulze-Makuch has an alternative explanation, suggesting that Viking may have indeed detected microbial life, but the experimental setup killed it in the process.
Revisiting the Viking Data With Fresh Eyes
We’ll probably never know if Viking really did detect life. It would be unusual for us to have found it on our first Martian outing, and not in any of our subsequent trips, so it seems unlikely that Viking did find (and kill) miniature Martians. However, it does highlight an important consideration in our search for life in the cosmos: If we enter into the cosmos carrying Earth-centric biases, we really might trip right over life, and maybe even harm it, without even realizing as much. And despite what the aliens might think about us, that’s the last thing we want.
Eddie, what do you think about it? Has a virus invaded Earth from Mars?
Norm needs to know, so he can sign up for the next designer booster and notch another year in his belt
i am a registered knowitall—but only in the Earth chapter
Mars is not included
Dirk is one of those delightfully “fringe” characters in science that are nevertheless respected even though the rest of the community doesn’t agree with their views. Cool guy too; I had dinner at his house once during my own erstwhile time as an astrobiologist. Many fascinating ideas even if we may differ about their probability of being true…
Very complicated matter. The modified mRNA is artificially limited to a few cycles of spike protein production. That said, there is probably an “active” and an “inactive” mRNA to be found in the body. Both forms hinder the natural immune system to work. All that has not been subject of proper research so far.
How about that tech that uses an LNP to bypass the immune system and deposit (like taking a dump) gene altering material into every cell in the body…
How dummmmb would someone have to be to thing that was a good thing.
BTW – Doomie Preppers Doomie Preppers
Stewart Island — Fast spent a couple of nights out there last week — it’s a remote place and yet the fish stocks close to the island have been – we were told – hammered … there are still a lot of fish but you have to use a boat … likewise with the abalone and crays… the days of picking them up off the shore are over …
No worries – diesel gets you to where there are still decent stocks… and quotas are in place …
The islanders think they could be self sufficient …
Hunting near Ophir — big station — we spent 6 hours looking for deer… much of it on foot but also using an ATV… after driving 90 minutes to get there… we saw numerous deer but they were either to far or went on the run after sensing danger… we finally got a red deer with a 600m shot…
That was only possible using a high powered scope and rifle along with binos that have a range finder that works with the scope to adjust the shot… all the gear is digital and requires electricity to charge.
Without electricity we get skunked… without diesel we cannot even get to the hunting grounds.
I will assume ya’ll can see where I am going with this……
“Uff da” is the comment I would make. According to Wikipedia:
“Uff da is is a Scandinavian exclamation or interjection used to express dismay, typically upon hearing bad news.” It is widely used in the US Upper Midwest.
This was a regular part of my vocabulary when I grew up. My daughter tells me that my 1.5 year old grandson has learned to say it when food accidentally spills on the floor.
norm reacts slightly differently to this … for norm this is good news (Goof Da)… cuz spike is GOOD (even though it apparently causes long covid when you are infected with covid)… therefore producing spike permanently means one is protected from covid…
This is how logic works in the mind of one spiked 8x …
One might say da to that… or just duh…
Fast, do a deep dive into viruses. If you do, the only conclusion you can come to is that viruses don’t exist. Thus, no virus, no spike protein. The clot shots do much damage but try not to fall for the Gatekeeper’s analysis.
Lisa
Sep 1, 2023 at 12:38 pm
I’m a mental health therapist and the fear of a climate catastrophe coupled with coming out of covid lockdowns has ppl living as if it’s their last day. Then add Americans difficulty with managing finances . I see this with many of my clients. I’ve never seen it so bad. Ppl feel as if they have a limited future and we’re at the point of no return. Why not spend? is the thinking process.
bulfinch
Sep 1, 2023 at 1:32 pm
Very insightful. I see a lot fatalism in my travels, too. And…they’re not wrong to feel that way.
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/31/our-drunken-sailors-are-drinking-directly-from-the-punch-bowl-powell-did-you-see-that/
The wolf street article is interesting, with several nice charts. It says:
So . ” -Total income from all sources, including transfer payments: $22.87 trillion ”
How much of this was stimulus payment under PPP etc and other programs which will never be repaid ? . Free stimies as I recall in street language . Credit card debt tops $ 1 trillion for the first time . Nobody repaid the student loan for 3 years . Several did not pay rent and mortgage . All got reclassified as ” performing ” debt instead of a NPA . All debt was restructured during Covid . The banks had defacto insurance courtesy of the USG . Borrowing at 14% on your credit card and depositing in your saving account is not savings , Potemkin economy as defined by Prof Michael Hudson .
Good points!
Further , the savings of the American public is on the asset side of the balance side , on the liabilities side is the US treasury debt . Hocus Pocus , Jiggri Focus . Sleight of hand .
Just like in the run up to the GFC.
US nukes have been transferred to UK. US will supply 50 F35 mini stealth nuclear bombers to UK.
Russia deploying Sarmat II in the same week UK gets the F35s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESlEsM2YmlI
Tucker and I see the uni-party needs to win or they will be tried for treason. It is live or death for them.
I don’t see the need to “win”, they essentially lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, so what’s one more humiliating defeat?
do you really think the “uni-party” is going to put itself on trial for treason?
You misunderstand. They need to win the election. The war is irrelevant to everyone expect the Ukrainians. The US always loses the war because it is never about winning it is about graft.
okay, let’s assume that Donald the Great wins next November.
why would that win make the “uni-party” put itself on trial?
or do you really think that an “outsider” POTUS has more power than the uni-party?
I think the uni-party had more power from 2017-2021.
you don’t?
To cleanse the Augean stables, Hercules diverted the River Alpheus. They housed 3,000 of King Augeas’s oxen and had not been mucked out for 30 years.
To drain the DC Swamp, Donald could start by diverting the Potomac River, which is the fourth-largest river emptying into the Atlantic along the US East Coast.
Plenty of water available there to flush out the swampiest of swamp creatures. All we need is a superhero to do it. It’s gonna be epic.
looks like your superhero is back tim
you can resume clutching at the hem of his raiment
He is indeed, Norman.
It’s not all his own hair, but at least he has all his own teeth!
What’s not to like about his latest message?
https://rumble.com/v3dff6j-president-trump-we-will-not-comply.html
well tim
at least he refrained from saying:
We did not go to the moon in 69
But if he thought it would buy him votes—he would say that too, just like the rest of it
The Ukraine war has shown so far, that NATO cannot defeat Russia. That leds to the rise of the BRICS.
The BRICS in their more radical implementation could lead to supply crunches in Europe. Europe is the US’s only ally.
There might be powers that oppose a retreat of the US as world police. I think that these interests will start a hot war after the US elections.
I guess this war will be a cover up for the economic development and as such a replacement for covid.
Perhaps the presidency is about graft, too.
Interesting point!
They won in Vietnam – notice how Vietnam is now on Team USA.
They on in Iraq – the only goal in Iraq was to secure the oil fields
They won in Afghanistan and occupied the country for two decades — then they decided to leave… nobody forced them out…
This
https://youtu.be/wixLlPFJgyQ?t=21
The UK is a war hawk group. This can only make things worse.
People worry there is a ultra right developing in the US. There is a nationalist movement developing but it is not racist in any way. It is a uniquely American nationalist movement. Is it capitalist, socialist? We currently have a mixed economy many blue collar workers are in union or government jobs, white collars are some free market and some like college professors are union. I imagine it will be mix economy as it currently is. Will it nationalize foreign business? I hope so but I doubt it. Much of energy and communications and logistics is owned by KSA and China.
TPTB hate populists of any kind, unless they can control them.
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”
-Maya Angelou.
Let me pose this “Timing Belt” question a bit differently. So I agree that the Belt Driven Fan will start spraying for different countries and parts of the world/country at different times. So let’s be a bit more specific.
When do you (any of you) think that a high school teacher in the Seattle area can no longer find or afford, or otherwise get hold of 10 gal of gasoline, at a cost similar to going to the grocery story, and go on a small road trip, driving his well maintained 1990 Volvo 740 up north along I-5 for a weekend to park. Pitch a tent. Grill a sausage, and kick back on a Saturday evening in a folding chair, watching the sun set.
I give you 15 years assuming you already own the car. 2038. Your property tax or rent may drive you out of Seattle before then.
Ed,
Not sure about that, who is going to pay those taxes?
Insurance is becoming more of a factor than many realize.
Dennis L.
I expect more and more people will deal the way my brother-in-law does. He has no house insurance even though he lives in a fire prone area of California. He can not afford insurance. The town he is in has several historic buildings. They have solid metal plate doors and windows that swing open and closed. They are made of stone. They have survived 100, 200? years of fires. I have not looked, I wonder what the roofs are made of?
I’ve already ditched all my insurances beyond the absolute minimum.
“Pitch a tent. Grill a sausage, and kick back on a Saturday evening in a folding chair, watching the sun set.”
2038 is probably as good a guess as any.
gasoline, tents, folding chairs should still be available, though expensive vacations air flights/hotels and mass entertainments concerts/sports might be gone by then, so good thing your aspirations are low key.
David, you do not think that de-dollarization first, which now probably will happen long before 2030, followed by separatist movements, and the military overstretching ongoing now, will push forward the end of BAU, compared to end of oil alone?
Americans do not have the ability to think about politics let alone act. The separatist movements will be lead by the cartels and African settlers. The one business of America is military. Not overstretch growth.
Doesn’t sound good for feminists or am I incorrect?
Dennis L.
Feminism is made possible by fossil fuels.
Dennis, yes bad for women.
“David, you do not think that de-dollarization first, which now probably will happen long before 2030, followed by separatist movements, and the military overstretching ongoing now, will push forward the end of BAU, compared to end of oil alone?”
USD as reserve currency adds an estimated free $1 trillion per year to GDP, what’s that 5% of GDP?
US will be slightly poorer.
separatists? I see it as mostly talk, but red states will get redder and blue states bluer.
military? adds to GDP, and…
US black goo crude 12 mbpd and imports from Canada 4 mbpd, so “they” have to do something with all of that FF.
a lot by luck of nature, that US+Canada and your Russia have the best seats in the Inner Core.
BAU 2070, da?
I beg to disagree. that 1T is pure profits. the economy is largely waiters and masseuses. I am sticking to 2030.
the activities of all of us will be gradually curtailed
but it will be piecmeal–not sudden (unless your house is washed away in a flood or something)
I no longer fly (not worth the hassle), and drive less than I used to, though I can still ”afford” to
Old age and infirmity gradually (and sometimes suddenly) curtail a lot of our activities. Death curtails all of them.
Another thing that happens is that if one lives long enough, the world one knew and loved (or hated; but at the very least emotionally reacted to) gradually disappears like tears in rain, leaving one bereft of everything but memories.
I was devastated when The News of the World stopped publishing and I was forced to rely on The Sunday People. But as long as I can enjoy a nice cup of tea and some chocolate digestives, nothing else really matters.
you are right about the world disappearing tim
vanished old friends do leave an enormous gap that new ones can’t fill
To quote Hilaire Belloc: (From The South Country)
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
(powerful stuff)
The sky is blue
But there are clouds in my head,
With big decisions looming ahead
The sun is out but
The room is so grey,
So much confusion headed my way
Get positive, try to be gay
News of the world,
Tea and biscuits in bed
The headlines said that Diana is dead
She couldn’t act much but she put on a show
She always smiled
Even when she felt low
I used to fancy her a long time ago.
So today has got to be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Good day, good day, good day…..
No, not THAT Diana! Ray Davies was paying tribute to the actress Diana Dors, a “bombshell” who was fancied by a lot of British men of a certain generation a long time ago.
Norman, did you perchance have a pin-up of Diana on the inside of your desk when you were a schoolboy? My Dad liked her.
Without continuous, diarrhoic comments about vaccines, this blog comments section is much improved.
it was always somewhere where opposing opinions could be expressed between adults, without faux-obscenity and pre-pubescent se xual allusions. (or was that delusions?)
long may it continue
(we should be so lucky)
Agreed!
Speak of the Devil and he shall appear! (see diarrheic spasms about vaccines above)
he’s back
first comment???
vvvvvvvvvvvvvaccines and ccccccccccovid
what other subject can there be?
Actually, now I come to think about it, vaccines can cause diarrhoea. The rotavirus vaccine is a particular culprit there.
i last had a vaccine shot about 6 months ago—maybe longer.
last week i had a bout out diahroea
do you think theres a link tim?
In a world of cause an effect, it is possible to construct links between all sorts of things. This is perfectly logical, but perhaps not very rational.
For instance, one could surmise that the jab six months ago altered your immune response in such a way that it was less effective in dealing with one of the many viruses or bacteria that can cause diarrhoea. Then you encountered a suitable bug and… Bingo!
It would be difficult to prove the jab was a cause, let alone the main or only cause, when there are so many other potential causes.
Then again, in a world governed by quantum effects, all bets are off. According to the Many Worlds interpretation, there is a Universe in which you had a bout of the runs last week and a Universe in which you didn’t.
However, we shouldn’t make light of the possibility that a jab could give you the runs. Cases have happened, including this one reported by a team of Chinese and Japanese researchers. If this happened to you, then you would rate it a very crappy vaccine indeed.
We herein report a 46-year-old woman with prolonged diarrhea and vomiting after receiving the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. She had no notable medical history, including that of gastrointestinal diseases. She developed vomiting several hours after receiving the first vaccine dose and further developed severe diarrhea after 7 days. Several days after the second vaccine dose, her condition deteriorated, unrelieved by symptomatic therapies, including anti-diarrheal drugs. Abdominal computed tomography (CT) revealed inflammatory changes in the entire segment of the small intestine with wall thickening. The upper and lower gastrointestinal and capsule endoscopies were unremarkable. The patient’s symptoms persisted for more than 6 months after the second vaccine dose. A Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database search suggested that diarrhea is observed in approximately 3% of all vaccine recipients, but a literature review indicated that prolonged gastrointestinal symptoms lasting for several months is very rare. In summary, a case of prolonged unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms, possibly based on inflammatory changes in the small intestine, is described.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35644543/
on the other hand
i went out to lunch exactly 24 hours prior to said bout of nasties
maybe i should be more choosy about my lunch venues?
Such a shitty way to die
But at least you have a long run.
Victoria Nulands F*** the EU 2014 verbalization becomes more clear with the revalation that Viktor Yanukovych had negotiated a trade agreement with the EU that included Russia. This only makes sense since trade with Russia was 30% of Ukraines trade. The previous USA endorsed “trade agreement” proposed with EU that Viktor Yanukovych declined amounted to sanctions on Russia being demanded and rewarded with “loans” back in 2014 far prior to any hint of war. Hillary Clinton called this a “pause” for Ukraine to be part of Europe but the truth is this was a USA manufactured premise that Ukraine must stop trade with Russia to “be part of Europe”. A rather ludicrous manufactured premise IMO but written in stone by the USA state dept The EU agreeing to a trade agreement with Ukraine that did not exclude Russia was the real issue of the “f*** the EU”- a betrayal by a vassal state of the most agrievous kind. This would have spelled normal relations between all three parties EU Ukraine and Russia and this in fact was Viktor Yanukovychs stated goal a goal directly contrary to the USA state department plans for Ukraine let alone the rest of Europe.
I even wonder if some of the EUs complete kowtowing to the disaster that is the war comes from the sense of guilt from their betrayal. It forced the USA state department into the extreme measure of backing the 2014 overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych USA dominance/ vassal state perpective. This perspective does not allow soverign states to create trade agreements without considering USA’s “interests. Everything else since 2014 maidan cou has just been dominos falling and IMO we are just getting started.
One might think the 400,000 brave dead Ukrainans might answer the question of whether the USA state department has Ukraines best interest at heart but if not a contemplation of the peace and prosperity that a EU Ukraine Russia trade agreement would have created for Ukraine might lend some clues.
Instead we get this.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fUx5XwtRnfXr/
According to a chart at this link, Ukraine’s exports to Russia dropped by a huge amount between 2013 and 2015.
https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/exports/russia
An April 2022 Reuters article says:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-bans-all-imports-russia-2022-04-10/
These things would seem to go with what you are saying.
One has to consider that Nuland (Nudelman), Blinken, and the various other neo-cons who’ve been geo-politically bedeviling the world in recent decades (Eliot Abrams, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, etc.) are representing, in effect, their own borderless ‘state’, the recognition of which condition is taboo. It’s quite disturbing to me when people talk about “the US” doing this or that, when the US is in no way in charge of its own affairs, as far as I can tell.
You mean the Khazarian mafia? A great way of saying Jews but safely.
You mean the Khazarian mafia? A great way of saying chews but safely.
Next thing you will be flying the black US flag. Those mountain folks up in Vermont….
In New York State we have to be more circumspect as we are surrounded by the folks who have been programed for a lifetime by corporate TV, radio, magazines, newspapers and government schools.
Maximum dead Russians and maximum dead Ukrainians along with whatever ancillary dead Americans, Poles, and what-not is absolutely fine by these folks, and this same pattern has played out in the past, if I’m not mistaken. I would certainly like to be wrong, since the logical conclusion attracts social opprobrium but; nonetheless… whoops, there it is.
I try to speak from a place that is beyond the concept of fault. Things are how they are because people and groups and the environment they inherit and the environment they create are what they are: it’s simply not useful to pretend otherwise. When you figure out that “the US State Department” does not represent the US, things will become clearer.
YES! YES!
lidiaseventeen,
What system has worked better? Is it possible that what was the American Century was as good as was possible for that time?
Dennis L.
the North American continent was the last untouched energy reserve in the sequence of man’s ascendency.
Nothing pre arranged
just the way things worked out
add a bit of ‘chosen people’ and ‘American way of life’ to the delusion and collective madness becomes certain as denial kicks in about it all being finite.
I am disappointed that all the politicians can talk about are the unlawful acts of the other side. I want to hear unicorn rainbows morning in America from them.
Serbia is considering to join the BRICS instead of the EU. Serbia is not really located at the periphery, which might be a military problem. There are millions of ex-Yugoslavians spread all over Europe and it would lead to difficulties if all those would be considered enemies.
I am a fan of ” Quark ” . I linked his blog earlier and was liked by several . Here is his latest post . He gives credit to Gail . The oil shock . Blow out .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2023/09/el-shock-del-petroleo.html
Yes, this is a very nice post by Quark. He certainly brings a lot of things together, and quickly. And he does talk about my latest post, and he shows my per capita fossil fuel consumption chart.
There is a lot going on and to keep track of when a person looks at oil. I am afraid I miss some of these things.
I also went back and looked at your earlier link to a Quark article. It makes a good point about the Rystead 2P Reserves falling, even with higher prices, and the ratio to production falling.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2023/06/reservas-mundiales-de-petroleo-segun.html?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Google translate to the rescue!
So much to post..so little BAU..maybe..
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on Aug. 23 that the new BA.2.86 COVID-19 lineage may cause infection in people who received vaccines or previously had the virus.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/cdc-says-new-covid-19-variant-could-cause-infections-in-vaccinated-people-5479388?utm_source=Health&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=promotion-2023-08-31&src_src=Health&src_cmp=promotion-2023-08-31&est=ORe6cVazent3ReAQbgZMlpx13f3ssS80vHY8B%2Bo5As%2FbwKjFsQl0kZ2Eak2DjK0%3D&utm_content=add-list&utm_term=health
The CDC stated that it’s too soon to know whether this might cause more severe illness than previous variants. But because of the high number of mutations detected in this lineage, there are concerns about the effectiveness of immunity from vaccines and previous infections, according to the agency.
“The large number of mutations in this variant raises concerns of greater escape from existing immunity from vaccines and previous infections compared with other recent variants,” the CDC stated in its assessment. “For example, one analysis of mutations suggests the difference may be as large as or greater than that between BA.2 and XBB.1.5, which circulated nearly a year apart.”
But it also stated that “virus samples are not yet broadly available for more reliable laboratory testing of antibodies, and it is too soon to know the real-world impacts on immunity.”
The agency noted that it detected at least two cases with the BA.2.86 variant in the United States, although few other details were provided. It was also found in Israel, the UK, South Africa, and Denmark.
One of the BA.2.86 cases was found in a person detected via the CDC’s traveler surveillance system, while it noted that cases being found in several countries is evidence of international transmission.
“Notably, the amount of genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 globally has declined substantially from previous years, meaning more variants may emerge and spread undetected for longer periods of time,” the assessment reads. “It is also important to note that the current increase in hospitalizations in the United States is not likely driven by the BA.2.86 variant. This assessment may change as additional data become available.”
The CDC noted that most of the U.S. population has COVID-19 antibodies from a previous infection, vaccination, or both and stated that it’s likely that the antibodies will provide some protection against the variant.
We can only know so much…what do you expect people!!!!😷
Sheesh. CDC propaganda gobbledygook doublespeak.
COVID and the jabs are obviously part of a population reduction program. Some die quick, some die slow, but die they do.
How, who or what is behind the reduction program beyond all the usual suspects probably never will be clear. Like Gail says the self organising system has to adjust to resource limits.
Killing people with bioweapons is a lot cheaper than 155mm shells, but not as targeted. The US has 250+ biolabs around the world “researching medical safety”. Ho ho.
But it’s still BAU party time baby, so get out there and party!
I sprung for the Fever Tree tonic water tonight (no HFCS)!
I find myself springing for lots of things as I expect it will all be gone after the war.
let me clarify
I expect the luxuries will be gone, nights at the club, dinners at restaurants, trips….
I do believe a nuclear war is survivable with a little luck and assuming one is not in a big city.
party on!
https://www.rintrah.nl/ba-2-86-the-next-serotype/
I am afraid this is mostly over my head, but those with a better medical background might understand more of it. We now will probably have three variants circulating, and a large share of the population with vaccines trying to target the original Wuhan version of the virus. The author ends with:
“those with a better medical background might understand more of it.”
Gail, i really don’t think so.. i don’t think this piece has been written in order to be understood. So relatively-few people are truly ill from “covid” (the flu) that none of this makes any sense whatsoever.
“By now we can be quite sure that BA.2.86, the new highly mutated version of SARS2, will cause another big global wave of infections.”
How can we “be sure” of that? It’s just silliness!
Coronaviruses (the common cold, along with rhinoviruses, if you believe the virus paradigm) have never been amenable to vaccine intervention.. mutating too rapidly.
It is certainly true that “a variant-independent vaccine” is a complete idiocy and non-sequitur.
==
“Omicron that probably jumped from rodents back into our species”
This writer is as daft as that freak who killed a baby and now identifies as a lady in prison, demanding a taxpayer-provided surgical sex-change.
What are the *impacts* of “Omicron”? Basically, none! These operatives can rant about whatever ‘variants’ they like, but where are the people keeling over on the sidewalk?
There aren’t any. The sidewalk-crashers were fake, which should lead everyone to understand that it’s basically entirely fake (outside of the parameters of the yearly toll of flu).
YES! Repurposed flu add much hype and fear.
How civilisations collapse. Eventually their infrastructure wears out.
Schools in England seek alternative spaces amid fears concrete crisis could affect 1,000
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/01/uk-schools-seek-alternative-spaces-amid-fears-concrete-crisis-could-affect-1000
According to the article,
“Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) was used until the 1990s and is now considered “life-expired” and “liable to collapse with little or no notice”, according to the Health and Safety Executive.”
So, now alternative places for all of these children to go to school must be found. Or, they must learn over the Internet.
I found this information about Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.
Apparently 3 schools had beams collapse over the summer holidays. One of which had previously been designated ‘low risk’.
It’s not just schools. It’s hospitals, prisons and council offices. It will cost billions to replace.
They knew about it for 30 years but did nothing.
It is more than the cost. It is the materials involved. Adding more debt to pay for all of the materials and the cost of rebuilding might sort of help, but it will mostly lead to higher inflation.
“Autoclaved aerated concrete is a type of concrete used between the 1950s and 1990s. It contains small air bubbles inside, making it lighter and cheaper than other building materials, but also less strong and durable: its structural characteristics are significantly different from traditional reinforced concrete. Its life expectancy is about thirty years, beyond which it could collapse, even without warning signs, according to the British Safety Agency.”
https://www.ilpost.it/2023/09/01/inghilterra-scuole-chiuse-rischio-crolli/
Frightening! Its cost per year is higher, most likely. It seems like the life expectancy of “regular” concrete is closer to 100 years. But even then, it collapses.
So in about 40 years time motorway bridges and tower blocks are at risk of collapse?
Oh dear.
Also hydroelectric dams.
Look at all of the concrete construction in China!
When in Canada last year I saw bridges on the verge of collapse … hunks of concrete had fallen off exposing the rebar… loads of potholes on the roads in the city as well
England’s growing buildings crisis could expand beyond schools to other public buildings such as hospitals and courts, experts have said.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/02/uk-concrete-crisis-raac-problems-could-extend-to-hospitals-and-courts-experts-say
London bridge is falling down… falling down….
I have just heard that my local hospital is built almost entirely of this shoddy concrete. It has been described as a ‘ticking timebomb’.
Fgs.
USA will never give up its power
It will launch nukes
There were talks of the so-called Samson plan if Israel was to be defeated by its enemies – a nuke each for every Arab capital, plus a couple reserved for Mecca and Medina.
That is also kind of the US plan as well, which Putin understood and Prigozhin didn’t.
It is all getting a bit mental, and it is remarkable how blase people seem to be about the prospect of a NATO-Russia war.
What happened to all the posturing in previous decades about how concerned everyone is? All of that went straight out of the window as soon the public was given a ‘good vs. evil’ narrative? Humans have their limits.
A lot of people seem to actually believe the media propaganda that Russia is militarily weak rather than the ‘best military-industrial complex in the world’ as a UK Parliament study put it last month.
An arms race depends entirely on who has the latest and most effective kit in both attack and defence, so do not assume a priori that USA would win.
We have all worked out that all morality is an illusion, but that does not mean that everyone has to act like a total d/ck the whole time.
The world needs to get a grip on what it is doing and fast.
Russia Puts Nuclear-Capable Sarmat Missile on Combat Duty; Putin’s Deadly Deterrent For NATO
“The weapon is believed to be the longest range and heaviest in Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The final test stage for this new generation intercontinental ballistic missile was reported last year…. Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the Samat as highly capable in defeating anti-ballistic missile systems particularly because it is rooted via various directions. Remember Putin has repeatedly warned of using nukes to defend Russia’s territorial integrity.”
It sure is surprising so few are concerned about being incinerated. A song from night before last had the verse “on the edge between a fragile peace and a certain war”.
I believe the US neocons are driven by a genetically based racial hatred. They will never back off. Tucker is right it will be a full blown nuclear war.
Alias, the Sarmat has 34 decoys along with 16 active re-entry vehicles. Hard to defend against.
Unless the leadership is bought off and allows the destruction.
The next pandemic will be the real deal Hollyfield.
“The Great Wave” – “The Great Flood”
This is history in the making..
history is always in the making
If we believe Kissinger, the military and The Powers That Be will try to set the outcome the way they want. They will spin ordinary events as extraordinary. The will create false narratives that they expect everyone to believe.
My guess: This is not part of the fabric of the universe, we are meant to be here.
Dennis L.
all war spinners try to set the narratives the way they want
we must look at it all with scepticism—take nothing for granted or certain
Cool music
(Bellingcat)
According to this investigative magazine, it seems that there is a sort of short-circuit of values in Europe, because the below articles says that Europe has trained and funded Ukrainian far-right groups, belonging to AZOV group, who are calling themselves white supremacists, responsible for attacks on LGBT people, violence toward Roma and Ukrainian human rights activists.
The Magazine ‘Bellingcat’ declares to belong to the international association ‘Global Investigative Journalism Network’ and it describes itself as an investigative journalism group based in the Netherlands, specializing in fact-checking and open-source intelligence.
I report below the article which Bellingcat has published before the war in Ukraine.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/08/30/ukrainian-far-right-fighters-white-supremacists-trained-major-european-security-firm/
If in the next phase, populations need to be much more strongly divided along ideological lines, then training far-right groups might be just what is needed. Quite a bit of Europe seems to be going overboard the other direction.
Sorry Gail, I’m not sure to have understand your point.
In Europe politicians are strongly teaching people to defend LGBT rights, minorities like Roma, civil rights defendants in general and we realize that Euroepan institutions have contemporarily supported groups on the other side (nazi) in a country (Ukraine) that European leaders are making it enter inside the European group and also inside Nato.
To me this is a short-cuts of values, but even simply from the technical poin of view, without entering into details.
Maybe I have not understand your comment.
Thanks for let me know.
There need to be two sides to cause a major split. The self-organizing economy is using this mechanism to cause the split.
Ok, maybe I have understood, but this would mean that EU institutions are deliberately creating the elements for internal conflict inside Europe.
Interesting and seriously troubling.
That would be in line with ‘importing’ through NGO ships in the mediterranean see thousands of young male african immigrants per month to Europe, while there are clearly no jobs for them.
EU will became a dangerous place.
I am afraid you are right. It is like adding all of the African immigrants.
It is clear that in the US the president and DC leaders are importing as many young, uneducated, black Africans as possible. Is it to divide the nation or to replace/erase/dilute white Christians.
Every ad on TV with a couple is a black man and a white woman. As if to tell white men what white women want is a black man you are inferior, die, die, die.
its the same on uk tv too
but the black/white mix is balanced between the sexes, balanced observation will show that
it is not a plot linked to the inferiority of any particular race, or some kind of great reset or something
I never see a black woman with a white man in ads.
You are probably right. It looks too much like the man is with a prostitute or is taking advantage of a low-status woman.
The odd thing about the ads: where are eastern and sub-continental Asians and Hispanics (Hispanics are about double the population of blacks in the US)??
Since this heavy-handed campaign throughout the west is organized, intentional, and not designed to actually be inclusive or reflective of the population, one can only come to the conclusion that it is designed to humiliate and demoralize.
In my opinion the trend now is to transform European population and US population in something different.
Elite groups don’t make any particular difference on what to add to the current population.
In Europe we are bound to have an incredibly higher percentage of people from African and Middle East Countries, while I think that US will become definitely more Hispanic.
The objective is to have a population that is less demanding in terms of wages, health and retirement benefits and possibly with a lower cultural level.
The best is to have new families who make many children, but the parents need to die around 60 in order not to disturb to much the society.
Whoever is available this kind of population nearby, welcome, without too much going out of their way to look for people far away.
We are living a period of collapse, similar to the fall of the Roman Empire, at that time the addition of people came from war invasions (Goti, Visigoti, Unni, Alani, Alemanni, Franchi, Sassoni, Sarmati, Mongoli and so on).
Now élite decided to make it ‘peacefully’, by convincing autochthonous people that it is necessary to ‘import’ people from outside for the need of workers for the jobs that autochthonous people don’t want to do anymore and also because the birth rates are falling, so pension plans are in danger of collapsing.
It is a mantra that everyone is repeating here.
I think that this is something we cannot escape. But it is at least good if we understand that.
Just for your info, as far as ads are concerned in Italy, on the contrary, they often show mixed couples and almost all with a white woman and a black man (nothing against that).
This I think is in line with the fact that we are ‘importing’ only males from Africa.
All the above is just to describe facts.
No bias or judgment, I’m not interested in that.
All the best to us readers of this blog.
p.s. in case of interest, here one can find something on the above mentioned post Roman invasions:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasioni_barbariche
Ads don’t have the purpose to humiliate and demoralize, but they have the objective to ‘teach’ people something.
In the same way sacred paintings or mosaics were used in Christian churches to teach people who were not able to read what was right or wrong.
It is full of this way of teaching people in European middle age churches.
The objective was to have people captured by those scenes and think about that.
The temples of today are televisions and video on smart phones and pc.
Ads have not only the objective to convince people to buy something, but also to stimulate a certain behaviour.
Also movies are used to reach that objective.
Hollywood producers have surely understood that the importance of the Bible to influence people’s behaviours has been substituted by Movies.
Movies and Ads are the current way to influence people, as very few people now accept to be influenced by Religions in western societies.
Here one can find a good example with the beautiful mosaics of Sant’Apollinare church in Ravenna.
https://sempreprontaxpartire.it/i-mosaici-di-santapollinare-nuovo-talmente-belli-da-suscitare-linvidia-del-papa/
“The temples of today are televisions and video on smart phones and pc.
Ads have not only the objective to convince people to buy something, but also to stimulate a certain behaviour.”
Nicely put Student.
Take it a step further and put that behaviour to use and you have Participatory Propaganda. A very powerful weapon indeed, as participants rarely admit they knowingly took part in evil, or worse still, admit that they were duped.
The rebranding of influenza the other year is a perfect example.
We’ve all been placed at war with each other and ourselves, without even noticing.
The below is from a KCL spook, but if you ignore the west good, Russia bad projection, it does reveal quite a lot.
“What does this sort of propaganda do to us as a society? It is designed to implement new forms of sovereignty. It is designed to replace networked structures of society with fragmentation and polarization. It helps to pull people apart by forcing them into the role of combatants rather than citizens.”
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/jyzg7j6x
We’ve been put to war against each other and ourselves, but we don’t even seem to realise.
I also wrote another comment about immigration, but maybe I made a mistake while I tried to publish it or maybe it is still on hold for some kind of check.
Ok, the missing comment has arrived. Thanks!
P.s. It was the one about the Roman empire collapse
In Germany, the coalition of Socialists, Greens and Liberals accepted the destruction of the Northstream pipeline, installed an insane heating law, shut down nuclear plants, and the industrial basis is on the brink of destruction. They are now discussing an “industrial electricity price”, which means electricity used in industrial context shall be heavily subventured and the state will increase debts to finance that. The “ultra-rights” have a lesbian woman as one of their top speakers and promote a political agenda of the conservatives in the 80s, polls see around 20%. The conservatives are led by the former German CEO of Blackrock.
The Austrian government consists of a Conservative-Green coalition with a chancellor, that has never been elected. The government had implemented Europe’s most strict mandatory vaxx law and after heavy demonstrations they stopped its deployment. It was later ruled anti-constitutional. The chancellor has travelled to Putin and tried to pressure him to givup Crimea. Austria has 8 Mio inhabitants and is a neutral state. As a concequence Putin will stop gas delivery 2024. Polls say only 18% agree to these politics. The conservative party fell to 23%, the “ultra-rights”, that helped the anti covid demonstrations with a lot of credibility and personal involvement have meanwhile reached 31%. They are proposing a liberal politics with social and nationalist elements. The Austrian President announced, if the “ultra-right” turned out to win elections 2024, he would not allow them to form a government – which is causing high waves currently.
As much as I can see, the “ultra-right” became successful in the moment when they reduced their nationalist approach and strengthened their liberal history. They are doubtful towards EU and Euro.
The Austrians say, we won’t discuss, if the vaxx is okay or not, everybody has their reasons, but we agree that it should not be mandatory. This led to a growing unity within the society. People say, the next pandemic we will manage without lockdowns and care for each other! I don’t see antagonism at the moment. Three years ago, the government said, who is not vaxxed lives in the country illegally. This is not what Austrians want.
Are the ultra right lesbians large, aggressive, mean spirited like Janet Reno? The woman that burn to death so many in Waco.
No she is married to a Latino woman, with whom she is raising two boys. Used to be a manager in finance.
Official photo
https://tinyurl.com/45j3cd3t
Rare photo with wife
https://tinyurl.com/2jj34a7a
“Ultra right” leader in Austria, he used to be the former minister or interior
https://tinyurl.com/mw6ez3d6
What I wanna say is, image and politics of the “ultra rights” have changed dramatically and allowed their popularity. Policies are usually similar to conservative positions of the 80s, EU sceptic, Covid sceptic, more Trump friendly, pro peace talks, stop of non-European immigrants, better schools.
While Austria has a coalition of conservatives and greens, the German conservatives are open for it. That led to a shift of the conservatives to the left, which opened space for the “ultra rights”.
In Germany there is a group of “traditional conservatives” within the conservatives called “Union for Values” beheaded by the former president of the secret service.
https://tinyurl.com/mknxa9b8
While the parties in power are dramatically losing popularity, the “ultra rights” gain acceptance up to 30% in polls. The MSM though talk about “security dangers” if they would be elected into the governments.
The Austrian leader of the “ultra rights” has been the minister of interior in the past in a coalition with the conservatives.
Student , Belling cat is a CIA and MI 6 asset . Please do some research . Side note , I like your posts , always interesting .
Thank you. Yes, I had the impression that posts were in another direction. In fact that post was old (2018) and maybe written to simply say something bad about European institutions. However, now, it has another meaning.
It is an apparent short circuit that probably shows something else..
I was also thinking that training and funding nazi groups in Ukraine is also something similar like supporting, in the past, Osama Bin Laden against the Russians in Afghanistan.
So, the way these Ukranian nazi groups are used is probably not finished yet..
fig 5, 6 seems wrong for usa.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/487440/united-states-crude-oil-imports/
This shows imports down for 20+ year
I am showing “net” imports. The US has been increasing its own oil supply and reducing its reliance on others supply.
Also, these amounts include natural gas liquids. Natural gas liquids had been disproportionately increasing. They have lots of volume, but not much energy value. They don’t sell for nearly as much as crude oil.
It is not possible to look at crude oil imports and exports separately.
I should also add that my amounts net out exported oil products, too. So if the US imports oil, refines it, and sells part of it back out as products, the products get netted out. It gets It all gets very confusing with oil.
My amounts do not include ethanol and other biofuels. This adds another areas of non-comparability to some other numbers.
It is frustrating trying to work with data available. The US and others oil importers want things to look as favorable as possible, so they try to publish data showing apples + oranges.
Yes I think that the U.s. a likes to manipulate all of their numbers! Oil and economic as well. I know that it is USA is in Economic contraction but they are publishing numbers that say otherwise very strange. No one is going to call them out on it. This Ukraine war is very strange too..
There is a Zerohedge article saying that the US has just now revised all of the past employment numbers way down. This would strongly suggest we are already in recession.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/august-unemployment-rate-unexpectedly-spikes-payrolls-every-month-2023-revised-sharply
Sam , the US is what Prof Michael Hudson calls the ” Potemkin economy ” . All is smoke and mirrors . Tesla price at top was $ 410 in 2021 and today is $ 242 . What happened ? They make more cars in 2023 . Crypto currencies go from $ 8000 to $25000 . What happened ? Now the US is borrowing $ 5.27 billion PER DAY to pay the bills . How is that possible ? Makes me go hmmmm .
Take 5.27 billion divide by the total US debt and you have the inflation rate for the day. The net real debt increase is zero.
Just some arithmetic .
U.S. Debt at $33 Trillion rising to $36 Trillion in 2 years. Employment/Unemployment numbers just admitted to being faked by 50%.
Interest on debt already at 28% of Federal taxes collected.
So here’s the Math.
$36 Trillion at 5% will consume 50% of U.S. Federal taxes.
The “Potemkin economy ” .
This combination doesn’t work well. Thanks for pointing this out.
The interest will be paid by printing/inflation not tax income.
Art Berman had called out this fallacy in one of the videos . He said ” If you import cars , paint them green and export , then what you are exporting is not cars but green paint ” . The US govt accounts it as car export . That is why the data is distorted .
Tucker thinks that USA is headed for a hot war, that it will lose, with Russia.
Aid to UKR needs to be cut off so that UKR is forced to enter negotiations with Russia.
Tucker, US-Russia war. Borrell, 40K troops ready. Pskov, Kremlin silent. Kishida, safe & delicious
Alex says that he pretty much agrees with Tucker Carlson. The way the world is headed, the US will get into a hot war with Russia in the next year. They will use the war as an excuse to lock down. If all of the litigation fails and Trump is elected president, he agrees with Carlson that an assassination attempt is likely.
The person in charge of negotiations on the side of NATO is Joe Borrell. He is very much in favor of more war.
Kunstler thinks it will come to an end this fall. Can’t have it both ways.
Kunstler has a tendency to think that things will turn out the way he wants them to.
He always says the bad folks will get their come upends. They never do.
Do you mean “comeuppance”?
Kunstler is so charming.
Like Jim, I really, really want to believe that “truth, justice, and the American Way” will prevail, but that prospect diminishes with the entry of every immigrant of low-trust non-western background.
I still live in a place where people produce things honorably and are able to sell them based on the honor system (freezers full of meat: take what you like and put cash or a check in the little cash box). I’m afraid for when that system of mutual trust breaks down, because I see it as a richness that is irreplaceable: not to be achieved or restored at any monetary cost.
if theres a war with russia
we wont need to be forced to lock down
there will be nothing to ”get out” for
(Jerusalem Post + Marittime news)
”Russia: Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles put on combat duty. Vladimir Putin said that Sarmat missiles would be deployed for combat duty “soon.”
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-757146
”Royal Navy Shadows Half a Dozen Russian Warships Near UK Waters”
https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/royal-navy-shadows-half-a-dozen-russian-warships-near-uk-waters
Oh dear, the UKR spokesperson has publicly told NATO to ‘shut your face and stop spitting in the face of our dead’ after the much hyped UKR offensive was a ‘flop show’. He wants more planes though.
UKR are the ‘righteous’ in his view, beyond any criticism and deserving of all support without any conditions. Holy holy holy UKR! Everyone a saint.
UKR has already lost 400,000 KIA, which is more than Britain lost in WWII, and maybe a million wounded, who knows? Everyone knows that a few F16s are not going to make any difference but UKR lives and dies in an imaginary world.
Back in reality, you simply either win or you do not and the rest is imaginary. So, do not fight wars that you are bound to lose, be realistic, and make peace where you can.
Oh yes, and UKR is calling for WWIII, I nearly forgot that. Something for Europe to look forward to? Then we can all be holy, holy, holy.
Go Fight Russia…’: Ukraine Dares West After Being Grilled Over ‘Failed’ Offensive
For some reason, people still want to keep this war going.
It is a heavy burden but I have to step up for FE. The U.S. is supplying Ukraine just enough to keep the war going without winning it. Why?
The principle use of F16s is to deliver cruise missiles. What missiles will the U.S. provide and how many?
Where is the fleet of B52 bombers and hundreds of thousands of cruise missiles and gravity bombs for the 24/7 never ending shock and awe?
In some sense, God’s hand is behind all of these decisions. The population needs to fall, somehow, in some places, because there aren’t enough resources. The decision reflects the combined views of a number of people. The world needs Russia’s resources to operate our nuclear power plants, if nothing else. We don’t really want to defeat Russia.
But Russia has real problems. The country is, on average, very cold. It is also very spread out, with an awfully lot of overland travel required for any resource extracted. The prices paid for resources have tended to be way too low for producers. Russia needs help from other countries.
The US is stockpiling Russian uranium. Buying multiples of the normal rate.
Per Martyanov, the US Military is kaput, due to decades of indoctrination and institutionalised incompetence. LGBTQ++ vs Chechens?
It doesn’t have enough of any sort of weapons to fight a land war against Russia. Add to that most US weapons are overpriced and dysfunctional. Fine for killing men in sandals with AK47s, but no use against a peer adversary.
F16s are a joke. Need a perfectly clean and smooth runway just to get in the air, then the range of their radar is ~50kms vs Russian fighters ~200kms. They will never see or know what shot them down.
Haven’t wars, at least in the modern era, been maintained by a combination of those financing them and those supplying materiel?
Most likely. Without financing and without war materials, the wars wouldn’t go very far.
That will become even more obvious as AI is used on the battle field.
We do not yet have self driving cars and we do not yet have AI warriors. But soon say 2030.
this post is a bit eddy-lite
hope he hasn’t been abducted by aliens again
Come on, Norm, ho could they pass the Van Allen’s Belt?
People also ask
Can humans pass through Van Allen radiation belt?
In 2013, the Van Allen Probes detected a transient, third radiation belt, which persisted for four weeks. Apollo Astronauts going through the Van Allen Belts received a very low and non-harmful dose of radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Va…
Van Allen radiation belt – Wikipedia
MORE RESULTS
How did NASA get past the Van Allen Belt?
The Apollo missions followed ballistic trajectories, so they passed through the belts very quickly which reduced the risk from this population to a very low level. Apollo missions took only about 4.5 days to get to the Moon.
Never mind…His Greatness posted on making another move from NZ to Aussie Kiwiland ..and setting up papers in order he pays no taxes there …like that’s a bad thing…taxes….
How many moves is this now I wonder? As many as FTX Founder Sam Bakman Fried?
One step ahead of the Elders we hope!👍😀😷💰🤑😇
if he’s going to oz—that will have the same effect as an alien abduction
he certainly won’t notice any difference in the carbon based life forms there
seems i was right
Right!? Eddie isn’t going to like that, Norm…you being right….it will upset his whole paradigm….
Supertramp – Bloody Well Right (Live In Paris ’79)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ys6YSfJDA&t=222s&pp=ygUicmlnaHQgYmxvb2R5IHdlbGwgcmlnaHQgc3VwZXJ0cmFtcA%3D%3D
Supertramp’s “Breakfast In America” was the biggest selling album in the world in 1979.
It spawned several hit singles and went on to win two Grammy Awards and sell in excess of 20 million copies. On the album’s release Supertramp embarked on a 10 month world tour which arrived in Paris at the end of November.
These 4 shows from the Pavillon de Paris were all recorded and the last two were filmed. The audio went on to form the basis of the 1980 live album “Paris” but the film was never released. As bonus features, we include five tracks recorded on the night (but for which there is no film) using montage visuals: “Ain’t Nobody But Me”, “You Started Laughing (When I Held You In My Arms)”, “A Soapbox Opera”, “From Now On” and “Downstream”.
Who wouldn’t imagined we humans would end up in this state of affairs?
best band ever.I agree.This could be easily the peak of the humanity
FE hasn’t visited Scotland recently, has he? There have been two apparent sightings of the Loch Ness monster recently. Maybe Nessie fancied a bit of Fast food. 😉
I’ll only believe it if it’s posted on Tommie Rogers videoLOL
whatever
he will enjoy being talked about
Especially if you are the one Doing the talking, Norm….it’s like a hit of doing a line at the club
Recently, on Sunday, I watched the mass celebrated by the CFO of OFM (Franciscans) religious order:
https://youtu.be/FwmTNya-OMw?si=AE2fmNYjctHm1OCv
I was caught by his quite good homilies and started to research the information about him. Currently he also serves as a provincial in Wisconsin.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fr-john-puodziunas-ofm-ba7a4b11
I found this lecture of John Puodziunas, OFM:
https://youtu.be/YDxVi-r4ENg?si=DNbYyWIWshu7tM1q
He defines himself as having the actuarial background. It is an interesting lecture that provides the insight into the rising complexity and the ageing of the populations. It also says that Franciscans with their simplicity are not able to cope with the complex world of the finance today and must rely on the external experts.
The main idea is the property as an asset and as a liability.
I am afraid I wasn’t able to listen to the whole 1 hour and 17 minute video. I got as far as where John Puodziunas talks about “not being possessed by possessions.” This is something I have felt is important, for a long time. If possessions become too important, that is all a person worries about. This can be true for church property as well.
I can easily see that property becomes a problem for churches with declining membership and mostly older people. If the property still has a mortgage, its interest rate probably changes fairly frequently, to keep up with prevailing rates. At a higher rate, the monthly payment is higher.
There are all kinds of upkeep problems that need to be addressed. Older members aren’t up to doing it themselves to save money.
This video is only about property, but I know that pensions can be a problem as well. With a lot of older clergy, someone needs to pay promised pensions. These may not be covered by the Social Security system in the US. I believe that there is an option in this regard. Without many members, paying for these pensions can become a problem.
Recently I have also studied the impact of the sxual matters on the church membership. It seems that contraception and mstrbtion are a big problem, when they are considered sins, even the mortal.sins facing the limits to growth:
https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/13265
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/6/370#B14-religions-10-00370
“From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, the practice of private confession to a priest was a mainstay of Catholic parish life in the United States. By the 1970s, Catholics had largely abandoned the practice of private confession.”
We end up with a wide range of views–something to teach preschoolers, or something to confess to a priest (at least in days past). Strange world!
(Comedonchisciotte)
”Studies show that Covid ‘vaccine’ causes immunodeficiency in children”
”children vaccinated against COVID, aged 5 to 11 years, had markedly decreased immune responses 28 days after the second dose of Pfizer. Many specific immune responses had decreased more than ten times”.
https://comedonchisciotte.org/il-vaccino-covid-di-pfizer-provoca-immunodeficienza-nei-bambini-lo-dimostra-uno-studio/
https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/pfizers-covid-vaccine-causes-vaids?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1242380/full
This sounds pretty terrible. Of course, if the intent is to reduce future population, it may be just what is needed.
“1:00:36 those batteries weigh a thousand pounds or more and the carbon dioxide emitted
1:00:41 in the lining refining manufacturing the materials going into those batteries
1:00:47 would give you 17 years of driving and normal car . . . “?
Best description of the situation in a long time.
Bill Rees makes a good point. The economy is moving toward batteries that allow a vehicle to drive for 300 miles or more. These batteries weigh more than 1000 pounds. The CO2 emissions of manufacturing these batteries is equal to the CO2 emissions of 17 years of driving an internal combustion engine vehicle.
(Splash – shipping news)
The Panama channel is impacted by a reduction of activity for water resource problems.
This will have consequences on international shipping.
I have not clear yet if it is done also based on geopolitical purposes or it is ‘only’ for the problems we deal in this precious Gail’s blog.
I thought it could be something interesting for us.
https://splash247.com/panama-canal-latest-how-each-shipping-segment-is-being-impacted/
It seems to me that someone should have figured out before expanding the Panama Canal that that area, like practically everywhere else, is subject to periodic droughts. It would not be possible to put very many of these very, very large ships through, with a low water level.
This is an issue of trying to assume that the future will alway be like today. The assumption is that cycles don’t happen. Somehow, we are in charge, and we can make the weather behave the way we would like it to be.
Gail , Panama canal was opened in 1904 . Who knew what would happen 320 years later ?
It was just recently that the canal was widened and deepened, to accommodate huge (Panama-Max) ships. It is in its expanded form that all of the problems have occurred.
The “Panamax” ships are actually the older ones — the new locks are for “Neopanamax” class. (Incredibly more expensive though, and most transits are still the smaller ones.)
Strongly agre:
“This is an issue of trying to assume that the future will alway be like today.”
We also don’t solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s tools.
Education comment:
Was in class this AM(digital electronics), instructor related three employers had called him recently about this year’s starting class, one of whom was Mayo, the others similar level. Mayo has good health benefits would you believe.
Know for certain a young ME submitted his letter of resignation, already had another very good job offer, he requested a $10K raise from his current employer, done.
There is hope, I don’t think most degrees other than engineering from 4 year schools pencil out.
There are tomorrows, but they are not like yesterdays.
Dennis L.
Before 1989, the military industry was flourishing in my area, employing thousands of the people. Then, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the production fell drastically. Now, on the background of the ailing economies, it flourishes again.
https://e.dennikn.sk/3544823/dubnickej-zbrojovke-zahadne-nestupli-trzby-hoci-vyraba-mimoriadne-ziadane-delostrelecke-naboje/
Pennsylvania in the US also experiences some boost:
https://youtu.be/wRtYyjvYTWk?si=Xh1Cp9WWT9JAQurg
Instead of the automotive in the recent years in Slovakia, the military industry seems to bring new opportunities.
military industry requires a dead end in order to prosper
Interesting point! Perhaps not all wars are resource wars, but most are.
currently, the miltary is the biggest consumer of oil resources
to sustain itself it seems to me it must consume at a faster and faster rate, which means it must acquire more
And the biggest polluter?
https://www.projectcensored.org/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/
and that too
When I have look at economic data, it has surprised me how much a war helps an area, as long as it is not damaged by bombs itself. It gives an excuse to borrow more money and build more factories. It gives a way to hire more people, especially young people out of school who can’t find jobs. WWII encouraged a lot of women to enter the labor force.
If things are going very badly in a country, the reaction of the military is, “Start a war.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-you-are-feeling-so-much-poorer-jeffrey-tucker#comment-stream
I copied some comments
Six months ago, a 10 year old bucket truck – runs and moves- went for $25k at auction. This past week a totaled 12 year old bucket truck went for $29k.
Pretty soon it will be priced so high no one will bid or buy or it will be priced so cheaply but no one will buy it because of lack of money. This goes for everything.
There are three insulated truck makers, they lost their skilled workforce during Covid therefore there’s a huge deficit in the supply. And those 3 auto makers are going to EV which no one wants. Auto workers’ skills will be gone. Trump tells the auto workers if Biden continues down this path they will not have jobs. The [WEF]/Central Bank [CB] Economic Agenda Is In A Death Spiral… The people are having a difficult time making ends meet and its getting worse and worse…
Going back to the article itself, it says (about the cause of inflation):
This is somewhat an overstatement of the situation, but there is a lot of truth to it. With the advent of clothes washers and dryers, and meals that were partly prepared, and refrigerators to hold cold food so a person didn’t have to shop daily, the amount of work people needed to do at home was greatly reduced. Also, children do eventually grow up. With birth control pills and other forms of contraception, women didn’t have children over a 20-year time-span.
The problem that occurred was that the wages of men, alone, wouldn’t support the life styles most people expected, about that time. I know I ran into this issue myself. I ended up working part time for a long time, to work around this issue. I actually put in quite a few hours, but I aimed for the “mommy track” rather than trying to get the highest income in the office.
To all Brits…
Real or fake? Is it just people saying it or are they serious?
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/millions-britons-told-not-heat-homes-night-hit-net-zero-target
It’s a load of bull CTG, but the fact that it’s being reported is probably to get people used to more restrictions in the coming months.
The people mentioned are nobodys who only get media attention on someone else’s say so.
I doubt we’ve found new and affordable supplies of gas, so scare the public(bad Russians), prepare the public(your article and similar), blame the public(climate change never happened before), then take the public to war(it’s the others fault), but never ever blame the system that got us here.
Let’s hope for the coldest winter ever in Europe, so everyone can experience the true wonder of a life without fossil fuels.
well—he’s right about heat pumps never working, unless a house is pretty much purpose built to accommodate one.
Tell us more about those, Norm. They are heavily-promoted by the state and the electrical utility in my cold area (USDA zone 4).
as i understand it, you have to re-purpose the entire house heating system, or build a house with the intention of putting in a heat pump from the start,
you cant graft a new heat pump onto an old building/heating system, and expect it to deliver comforatble heating
Britain isn’t a terribly cold country. It is likely that water pipes wouldn’t freeze by leaving the heat off at night. In years past, little heat was used in many places of the world. Adding more blankets would be a better idea, if there isn’t enough heat.
There are different kinds of heat pumps. There are “ground source” and “air source.” Ground source require large lots and a lot of digging to put in many pipes. I don’t think that they can be economic.
Air source heat pumps are what are being encouraged now. My experience with the one we have in the basement is that it is high cost and subject to breakdowns in cold-wet weather, but it is an older model. But supposedly new models are better. If electricity supply is constrained, they are not a good substitute for direct natural gas supply. In the US, natural gas is often so inexpensive that its cost is cheaper.
In the house my father grew up in the top floor was bedrooms and unheated. Grandmother would open the windows in winter for sleeping. She believed it was good for health. She was of Polish background not a soft and squishy Anglo-Saxon.
Grandma lived to 106 years. The people of the steppes are hardy.
The Brits used to be tough, Ed, but they’ve had cosy central heating for far too long.
Even the women don’t have any balls these days, as it were. Now, my indestructible Victorian great-granny…….
As for me, I don’t light the wood stove until it’s too painful not to. Preferably not before sunset in mid-winter.
Brit should mean Grit! Not nasty old git (hello dear old dim and spiked Norm!)
Thank you for yet another excellent post, Gail. We can always rely on you, if nothing much else in this wicked world!
I hope everyone is feeling cheery: the prospect of forced injection and a nuclear war should be stimulating adding to one’s zest for life, and not depressing.
You are an original, Norm, unique and a gem of witty pitty bitty titty witty…
That’s why we 💞syou
you used witty twice
i’m not that witty
if you’re going to use alliteration, slinging words together with ‘itty’ on the end doesn’t cut it
I grew up in a house in the north of England (built in the 1950s) whose sole source of heat was a coal fire in the living room. In winter the bedrooms had ice on the inside of the windows.
Britain may not be Siberia, but I don’t particularly want to return to those days.
I lived in New Jersey USA during the 1960s and the house we lived in had a coal furnace with steam in piping for the rooms. Remember the coal being in the cellar and the feeding of coal in the red hot fire furnace. That was a massive beast…
We placed baking potatoes to be cooked in foil
The ash of the coal was collected by the weekly collection …
I believe we were the only family to still use coal, or in of the few…
If we have an energy cliff event…wonder how many will be scrambling in depleted coal mine regions for bits of rock to keep warm in winter months??
DoTheMath has the long awaited post up!
Do the Math is the blog by physics professor Tom Murphy at Univ. of California San Diego.
He writes for a while, and then stops to do his regular work. This is a link to his most recent post:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/learning-to-walk-again/#more-3456
So with all the analytics, statistics, can’t we compute when SHTF? Or what’s going to happen. More Covid. Stay home – Stay safe?
For some people, the SHTF time has already come. They don’t have the money they need for the basics. Or downtown San Francisco is disappearing. Way too many homeless. The time will come for the rest of us, too, but not necessarily all at the same time.
All collapse is personal . Ask the 35 year old in Athens , Greece living with his parents because he has no prospects or the one whose house got burnt down in Hawaii . Nothing bad happens until it happens to you .
It was computed. Then they applied new order variables. Then they factored in feedback of both knowing the future and trying to prevent it from happening. Then next thing you know, it’s Happensday. Fuzzy logic destroyed the system’s ability to organize itself.
Great analysis of the current state of fossil fuel imports! It’s interesting to see how oil imports are already constrained, and how coal and natural gas imports are also becoming constrained. My question is, what do you think are the potential implications of these constrained imports for global energy security and the overall economy? The author may discuss the potential implications of constrained fossil fuel imports for global energy security and the economy, such as increased price volatility, energy shortages, and the need for alternative energy sources.
The article was getting too long to discuss all of those issues.
The financial system depends on adequate energy supply. We can expect increasing debt defaults and quite possibly more printed money leading to more inflation.
There may be a need for alternative energy sources, and lots talked about, but finding any that are inexpensive enough, and easy enough to transport and store, is a real problem.
The Maximum Power Principle seems to indicate that all of the world economy will not go down together. The most efficient users of energy will perhaps succeed, at least for a while. But long-distance transfer of goods will need to be greatly reduced.
I guess this is why “we have to attain the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) in ten years”!
“Better than Cash Alliance”.
She sounds a little bit agitated.
50 sec.
Kind of creepy.
https://odysee.com/@rowanman28:0/Every-Single-Government-Has-Agreed-To-Implement-Central-Bank-Digital-Currency-In-Ten-Years-We-Cannot-Let-Them-Do-It:5
I thought maybe those Sustainable Development Goals had gone away.
The Central Bank Digital Currency sounds a lot like a rationing scheme for scarce resources.
No ‘CBDC’s’?
“ . . . . That is, instead of the 144TWh per year used by Bitcoin, CBDCs would consume some 7,056TWh – more than three times the UK’s total 2019 energy consumption of 2,185TWh… In an increasingly energy-constrained global economy, it should – but likely won’t – be clear that programmable CBDCs are a non-starter… a solution looking for a problem to solve indeed! “ ?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/02/08/cbdc-bait-and-switch/?fbclid=IwAR0SiB_yriPZCOiFTmwAn8rv2Fz9IuvxOYTTRF6i2JCun21ow5JQqJQTGig
Any government sponsored currencies have to be simply fiat currencies, within no connection to the use of electricity. Of course, there does have to be enough electricity for governments and users to actually use them. They are more like energy ration cards.
Europe will find some narrative to spin its energetic weakness.
“We did the best in reducing fossil fuel consumption. FFs are _evil_. We do not want them. The pope says that they are eco-SINS. The love of money and greed, greed, greed. Humans are such sinners, wanting a decent standard of living. They were cast out of paradise because of their SINS. They just had to take, take, take even what was forbidden. The MORE-ONS. Our holy lot is to deprive ourselves, to do penance for our eco-SINS and those of our fathers. The SINNERS! Blessed are the poor! Blessed are the mournful! Blessed are those who are cold and hungry! We have really won. The world is fallen in wickedness and all those lands with fossil fuels are going to HELL! They like heat do they? Well, there will be plenty of heat for them in HELL! Woe unto you with gas fires, cars and production lines. It is easier for a camel to fit through a pin hole! We are not simply weak, we are the blessed, and if we are weak then blessed are the weak! Blessed is high infant mortality and low life expectancy. Blessed are those who die in winter. Blessed are the sick and dying. Holy, holy, holy.”
_Anything_ to avoid the simple facts.
We now have environmental sin to replace original sin.
The more things change, the more that they stay the same. We have a new religion.
The Vatican is rubbing its hands at the eco stuff and it sees a way back in for ‘sin’, self-accusation, ‘penance’, ‘lowliness’, self-deprivation and all of its old schtick. What a disaster.
Something for Europe to look forward to like civilisational collapse is not bad enough? Everyone can be a ‘damned sinner’ too. Lovely.
https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/faith/pope-francis-ahead-cop28-stop-madness-fossil-fuel-era
Ahead of the this year’s upcoming United Nations’ COP28 climate conference, Pope Francis on May 25 used his 2023 message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to call for an end to “the fossil fuel era,” saying it is “madness to permit continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.”
“Let us heed our call to stand with the victims of environmental and climate injustice, and to put an end to the senseless war against creation,” wrote the pope in a message released ahead of the annual celebration on Sept. 1.
…. Since the 2015 release of the pope’s ecological encyclical, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” Czerny said the Vatican is not simply advocating a technical solution to today’s environmental challenges, but also is advocating for the personal, moral and spiritual dimensions, hence the pope’s continued call for “ecological conversion.”
“There’s no conversion that doesn’t begin by recognizing one’s sinfulness,” said the cardinal, who added that there should be a recognition of “where one is personally, community-wise, city or region, country, even continental, sinful — and that’s what needs to be converted.”
Ecological sins, the pope writes in this year’s message, “harm the world of nature and our fellow men and women.”
“With the help of God’s grace, let us adopt lifestyles marked by less waste and unnecessary consumption, especially where the processes of production are toxic and unsustainable,” he continues.
Well, thanks all, thanks Gail for all the work, best of luck with your Covid project.
Starship lit all 33 engines and the pad is fine.
Someone here mentioned that making iron required reduction of the ore. My guess is space does not oxidize iron, so it is a ball, much like the core of the earth. Melt to shape, shape as necessary, throw the waste at Jupiter.
We have a wonderful spaceship moving through space at >500k mph, so the moon is only thirty minutes away for reference.
Humans are incredible and we are beginning to understand how proteins self organize; pretty remarkable. We will conquer manufacturing as well, think Lego, they go together and they come apart, no waste, many shapes. A start.
TINA
Dennis L.
It burnt for six seconds
I think the only thing growing is your delusion.
If you are looking to crash into it perhaps. But, what if you want to land on it, and then return to Earth. Thats going to require several ships of fuel just for a small payload.
What are you hoping to see this thing do?
Vern,
Earth is our spaceship, we are biology, biology does not do well outside of a well designed ship; the only physical way we will travel in space we are already doing as self replicating biology thanks to the ribosome.
Earth is self regulating, but at a natural rate; we are releasing too much stuff into the ecosystem, pollution is not an issue in space, manufacture there. The Chinese are very interested in the south pole of the moon and now a gravitational anomaly has been found there, coincidence?
We should find not minerals but metals, elements straight, more or less from the factory, stars; scale is important in space manufacturing. For those concerned about energy calculations that saves tons of energy in both mining and refining.
We will not do subtractive manufacturing, but additive; we will follow biology and when we poop, it goes directly to the waste treatment plant, Jupiter.
Dennis L.
to repeat myself in useless infinitum dennis
mine all the metals you want
then you have to heat them in order remake them into something useful–and cheap of course (after shipping them back from the moon???)
then you have to find someone to sell them to–they must have money in the first place, to do the buying
then they wear out
and you have to go on repeating the process—ad infinitum
best of luck with all that
let me know how you get on
The beauty of netzero C is that Sustainability will usher the magic death which shall smooth out time like a nice silk sheet draped over a waning consciousness.
thats good to know
now all i have to do is figure out what you mean
Sustainability is a dream state.
Magic death? Sign me up for 2030.
Until then I’m a reproducing Ready Freddie bio-machine…
Prime Directive number one…
I want the same things you do. So far so good. I just don’t think SpaceX is doing it right. They are selling a dream here which is too expensive to succeed.
We can do much better with much less. Some of the British initiatives are drawing my attention. We need small easy to get to space crafts to deliver AI nuclear powered robots which can find their way to every part of the solar system and collect materials.
With robotics there is no need for food or water or care about radiation. That tech path is closer to completion at a millionth of the cost.
SpaceX is selling a 1970 Ford LTD in the era where electric bicycles are more appropriate.
Hi Gail! Great post! To me it looks like 2018 was the peak. I pulled “Total Motor Vehicle” data today, and indeed 2018 was max. In fact when you look at that data, the GFC crizis was resolved so well with ZIRP that the trend line was not broken. Now the trend line is such that had it continued, we would have made 107M vehicles in 2022, but in fact we only made 86. So a shortfall of 20.
Thanks! Things certainly are changing. The Powers That Be can’t admit that anything could possibly be wrong.
The cars that are being sold seem to be awfully expensive. That, plus the higher interest rates, are a problem for many people.
Gail,
Consider TPTB, in particular politicians see it as a job with a nice pension and benefits, think Epstein.
Life will go on, the universe is unfolding as it should and even the universe only gets 20% correct, the rest become part of the fabric of the universe as atoms.
Dennis L.
Yes but they must be lying to us because they keep saying that spending is up etc… “everything is a ok!”
they still need your vote
Dominion. Votes go in red, and come out blue.
Where’s FE? Haven’t seen a single post on the jabs so far.
What struck me about Gail’s data is how the death rate appears to adjust, with a time lag, to accommodate resource depletion. ‘Something’ always happens to sort out the situation.
A self regulating system in ways which aren’t immediately obvious?
The whole economy works in a very strange way, just as ecosystems of any kind work in a strange self-organizing way.
If one plant dies out, others will come in to take its place (perhaps of a different kind). If there is a fire in a forest, it makes way for new growth of lots of kinds.
People get depressed if things aren’t working well. This, by itself, seems to raise death rates.
“The whole economy works in a very strange way,”
No kidding.
https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/#The_Doomsday_Equation
This was something done back in the 60s, before LTG came out. I don’t know how seriously to take it. It will not be long to find out by their estimate.
“While an exponential trend doubles at a constant rate, von Foerster found the time between doublings was shrinking. They plotted when this doubling time was projected to reach zero — a time where human population would, if it followed this trend, shoot to infinity. They arrived at the following projection: 2027 A.D. ± 5.5 years.
“A similar pattern was discovered in economics. The economic historian James Bradford DeLong collected data to estimate world GDP over the previous one million years. Again, when plotted, it showed a trend of a decreasing time between successive doublings.
“It suggested a point in the early 21st century when the doubling time of the economy would reach zero.”
Things that expand at exponential rates usually run into limits. But in this case, I know a researcher Robin Hanson, who has talked about mapping people into hardware and copying them endlessly (trillions) to do dull jobs (age of emotional machines). Sounds unpleasant, don’t know if they would be considered human or not.
But if we are looking at megascale space structures around those stars, the limit may be way our there, though not infinite.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/02/natural-explanations-are-being-eliminated-for-tabby-star.html
Maybe FE tested Fate and took the jab himself….then he could float away from New Zealand crying out as he made to Australia..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4XGWXmxmaoE&t=14s&pp=ygUjcGFwYWxsaW9uIGVuZCBzdGV2ZSBtY3F1ZWVuIGJsdW5kZXI%3D
Papillon- Ending….I’m still here…. 😂
Here is some other energy data, wood pellets
https://www.futuremetrics.info/global-trade-sankey-map-2022/
It looks like a person needs to create an account for this application to work.
All of the studies I have seen say that importing wood as pellets from oversees doesn’t make much sense, in terms of energy usage. If there are enough subsidies, it works.
I know that my state of Georgia (GA) creates a lot of wood pellets for export. They are considered an agricultural product.
When times get turf, the hive mind suddenly turns very right wing.
Without anyone saying anything, the general consensus tends to support the haves, the landed, the strong, etc.
An idiot named Captain Seton, whose first name no one cared to jot down, ordered the soldiers to their deaths to save ‘women and children first’ (at that time boys were considered as little men so were not included) , in a ship named Birkenhead.
As a result, the surviving women and children remarried, to bear the offspring of other men.
Such kind of mindset led UK to where it is now as regretted by Edward Dutton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0cOWRpIuzo
There were 7 known Asians in Titanic. 1 Japanese , 6 Chinese laborers, all men. All of them survived.
Which is why Asia is now conquering the West.
And the worst is that these 7 Asians impregnated 7 virgins of good English stock with their impure semen and had 14 children with each of them!
And then these 98 half-breeds did the same with 98 virgins of the purest Anglo-Saxon stock, resulting in plus 1372 mestizos. Ando so on.
And because of this terrible miscalculation, we can no longer go into space and meet foreigners from other planets.
Well said Sir!
Being of prime virgin Anglo stock myself, I damn those foreigners for ending the British Empire’s magnificently despotic reign.
Johnny Foreigner should know his place with all the other nig nogs.
When the Ottomans brought slaves from Africa they were all castrated.
They should have castrated every nonWestern men setting foot in Europe or North America
I salute you sir. Virgin births are pretty rare in Blighty.
I like to trace my pure ancestry back to the Beaker people, although a bit of Druid and Pict may have crept in.
It is a mystery which people built Stonehenge, although my money is on the English working class because, according to the experts, it took a thousand years to complete the structure, and nobody else I know works quite that slowly.
I’m proud to be a direct descendant of the only purebred man known: Adam.
That was from his HBO concert from NYC in 1992, so it was actually 31 yrs ago.
The whole Ukrainian War depends upon two things
1) whether the Russian will to fight collapses first , or
2) the Western Economies collapse.
Drones are now hitting Pskov, near Petersburg, obviously flown from one of the Baltic states. It is hard to judge how strong the Russian will to fight is now since accurate info is hard to get.
Meanwhile the Western economies muddle along, just progressively getting worse but still having some slacks remaining here and there. Somewhat like late 1944 when the 3rd R suddenly found resources hidden in paper, after they executed all these officers implicated in the ill fated bomb plot. Without frittering away 3R’s lasted resources on Ardennes, the war would have dragged till Jul or Aug 1945.
If Russia can’t end it by 2024 the West will win in 2025.
Maybe the war is an exercise in getting rid of conventional munitions. This will keep them from being used in the future.
I remember the United nations asking all countries that were at war to stop fighting during the lockdowns around 2020 so that is the elders plan elimination of NATO’s ammunition.
making wartoys gives employment to 00000s
but ultimately they have to be used—otherwise there’s no room in warehouses for more
and wartoy making jobs evaporate
unused wartoys just ‘sit there’ doing nothing—the cost of them has already been expended.
so they get used and exploded
everybody is happy except dead soldiers (and families)
so we go on making more and going through the same sequence of events
The elders don’t want that world any more less consumption is the plan not more anything deemed obsolete the elders will destroy they are setting up the western world to a lower consumption world you and many others are stuck in the high growth world view the elders are bringing in the lower growth world that hopefully extends the time we have left to establish the great reset.
Wars make a good excuse for more debt, also.
In my view, at the moment, for NATO side, I see the path of the war like this:
– the objective seems to be to weaken Russia as much as possible, in order to possibly have a different government in the next future, more available to let exploit Russian fossil fuels reserves from the side of the West.
Similar path we saw for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Siria and various conflicts in Africa.
For Russia side the path I see is the following:
– the objective seems to be (as John Mearsheimer expressed) to make Ukraine a dysfunctional State, not able to stand on its forces and also kill as many Ukranian soldiers as possible, in order to avoid to have the same problem of a hostile nation at the door in the future.
To understand that, we should think to what would be for US to have an hostile Mexico or an hostile Canada, backed from Russia, China or Iran.
As far as mutual allies are concerned, I see things in this way:
for NATO allies helping US in this direction means a winning strategy only if the objective will be reached, but it is a losing strategy during the process of the war (they are obliged to pay more for fossil fuels or to use less of them).
For Russian allies (or let’s say, ‘neutral’ countries) is also a winning strategy if the objective is reached, because they will have a preferential path for Russian fossil fuels, but it is also a winning strategy during the process of the war, because India and China are already having a preferential path for Russian fossil fuels.
Incredibly they are using for themselves, but they are also refining them and selling to Europe, so they are making money of it (in this activity also Turkey is involved).
Another aspect that is clear is that NATO allies want to reach the objective to maintain their predominant position, while Russian allies (and ‘neutral countries’, which in some way are the Brics countries) want to breaking free from the submission to the dominance of the West and have a ‘multipolar world’…
Different parts of the world are affected differently.
Clearly, NATO countries didn’t stop to think how the war (and the sanctions imposed) might work out badly for themselves.
I came across this xenophobic fellow, who made a similar observation to Gail, but focusing on the current migration trends encouraged by TPTB.
A few years back, on a hunch, I fired up the spreadsheet and entered data on the per capita carbon footprint by country, which I then compared to the latitude of the population center for each country. And, just as one might expect, in general, the farther you move away from the equator, the greater your “carbon footprint” becomes.²
World migration patterns show a massive transfer of population away from the equator—out of low carbon emitting countries and into high carbon emitting countries. If the UNFCCC were a serious, responsible organization actually dedicated to fighting climate change, the government policies they would be attempting to redesign would be ours. They would be lobbying Congress to end the immigration epoch tomorrow, which would accomplish more in one day to alleviate climate change than the UNFCCC has accomplished in 30 years. … the money you are paying to fight climate change will be used to move people away from the equator and into your country, thus exacerbating climate, which is causing people to move to your country in the first place.
https://craignelsen.substack.com/p/change-climate-change-climate
For “climate change”, one can substitute “energy depletion”; it ends up being the same. Back to that maximum entropy idea, no?
Thanks for pointing this out.
I have known for a long time that energy consumption per capita is greatest near the poles, and lowest in warm, wet parts of the world.
If people move from a low energy use per capita country to a high energy use per capita country, they certainly would like to participate in using the high energy. This will certainly exacerbate climate change by raising demand for fossil fuels. The group should indeed be fighting immigration, if their real intent is to fight climate change.
The Tropical world–sub Saharan Africa in particular–is where northern Europeans could be looking to settle.
I very much appreciate your columns. They are a delightful retreat into reality.
Thanks!
Can Canukistan (Canada) maintain status quo longer than other western nations given its access to tar sands derived diesel?
Horse riding barbarians want to know….
Canada doesn’t have the advanced refineries needed for refine their oil. It really needs cracking to get the most use out of it. They dilute it and send it to the US for more refinement.
There is also the issue of distributing properly all of the different layers of the oil. Some is useful for lubrication, for example, but getting this out to suitable users gets to be a problem. It is helpful to have a whole system, including other businesses that can use the various layers.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply Gail. It was a bit tongue in cheek on my part.
Canada has committed itself to self immolation in so many ways that trying to explain the necessity of diesel fuel to the average Canuk is a laughably fruitless endeavor.
I am mostly fascinated by how “obvious” population reductions globally will be reflected in north american agricultural economics.
As population falls (I think it has flatlined now in prelude to hard descent) I wonder how filed agriculture will pay the overdraft due on its mining of the entire heartland once the export market dries up.
The northern plains will become barren windswept steppe in no time flat I suspect.
F–k Trudeau chants are becoming pervasive whenever and wherever he appears.
Surely more respect is due to your leader?
I am Albertan and work in the oilsands. The latest word from the oilsands is that they are going to focus on oil production and focus on base operations, no more pie in the sky bio-diesel nor even more insane windmills. The response from the occupying federal government… now talking about hard production caps for Alberta oil.
I for one would vote to leave the sad, broken and ultimately unfair confederation of Canada this instant. A free Republic of Alberta or even all of the west, it is a cause worth fighting for.
Robert,…I echo your sentiment. A full on civil war is long overdue in this cold backwater communist country.
The control of information and opinion formation set the social reaction. This is true for resource declines, “disease”, war, and French colonies freeing themselves from many decades of exploitation.
The war of US versus Russia is growing in intensity, with hundreds of drone strike on Russia per week.
We live in exciting times.
Sometimes it would be good if times weren’t so exciting! You and I live on the US East Coast. It would seem like the East Coast would be more vulnerable to attack than the West Coast.
Ed , ” hundreds of drone strikes per week ” ??? . Maximum 20 per month . The MSM is blowing things out of proportion . Anyway , they are civilian targets . Pinpricks . The question now is when does Ukraine collapse ?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/30/airport-in-western-russia-attacked-by-drones-aircraft-damaged-reports
sources reported that between 10 and 20 drones attacked Pskov airfield
That was one of six area attacked that night. 6×15=90 in one night. 90×7= 630 in a week, lets play it safe and say 200 in a week.
At some point, Russia will get angry.
From Moon of Alabama , Copy/paste .
” Pskov is not involved in SMO in Ukraine. It is the storage sight of these transport planes which have seen little use in SMO and as such has little impact.
The real valuable airbases and other valuable locations like Engels, Dyagilevo, Olenya (from Simplicius) are protected on the full spectrum and Ukraine can’t hit those. Pskov probably has some point defense too but if they were flying carboard boxes then they might not have showed up in the radar.”
Ed ,the site had no air defense system . You are doing linear maths .regarding the numbers . 200 a week as your worst case scenario with a 50% strike rate would mean 100 explosions a week somewhere in Russia . Never happened and will not happen .
Thank you for the new analysis!
Looks as if the trend points to
Ford retires gas-powered cars in electric vehicle expansion
Ford is retiring three internal combustion engine models – the Escape, Edge and Transit Connect – to make room for new electric vehicles.
KIRK O’NEILAUG 29, 2023 8:30 PM EDT
https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/ford-retires-gas-powered-cars-in-electric-vehicle-expansion
Legacy automobile companies that have been producing internal combustion engine vehicles for decades have been addicted to their gas-powered models as electric vehicles began to make their mark over the past dozen or so years. Those companies have slowly begun to make commitments to transition to all-electric, but some have been changing at a snail’s pace.
Discontinuing Ford ICE models
In March 2023, Ford F said it would discontinue the Transit Connect ICE vehicle in North America at the end of 2023, Automotive News reported, and the company has since added the Escape and Edge ICE vehicles to its list of discontinued vehicles at the end of this year.
Ford’s Fiesta already made its exit in Europe this year. With these vehicles disappearing, Ford plans to produce more EVs in its transition to all-electric.
Ford was the No. 2 seller of EVs in the U.S. with three models, F-150, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit electric van, but was overtaken by GM in the first quarter of 2023. Ford, however, is getting ready to begin production of its new all-electric Explorer SUV in Europe. Ford’s CEO Jim Farley has hinted that it might sell the vehicle in the U.S.
GM, however, might be getting more serious about transitioning to all-electric, as it in March said that it would discontinued the Chevy Camaro gasoline-powered car at the end of the 2024 model year.
Nissan (NSANY) had already established the Leaf as a top selling EV after it was launched in 2010, but Tesla’s Model S in 2015 knocked the Leaf off the top spot. The Japanese company has said it will phase out the Leaf in the next few years and replace it with a new vehicle by 2026.
Of course, the Corolla is an ICE vehicle, and Toyota (TM) – Get Free Report has not said whether it will consider transitioning the Corolla to an EV. It’s also well known that Toyota has been slow to enter the EV market. It wasn’t until April that the Japanese car maker committed to the all-electric vehicle market, saying that it will launch 10 new EVs by 2026
The company recently said it would unveil a second new entry-level Fiat-branded electric vehicle in July 2024 that will be priced at about $27,390. The automaker didn’t say when the vehicle might be sold in the U.S.
Stellantis previously said it would bring Fiat’s best-selling EV, the Fiat 500e, to the U.S. market in 2024. In June the company said it will deliver the new Citroën e-C3 electric car to the U.S. in early 2024 that will be priced at about $27,000., would discontinue its classic gas-powered V-8 muscle cars, the Dodge Challenger and Charger, as well as its Chrysler 300 big sedan by the end of the year. Lists for about 27,000
At work a very young co worker …age 23!, just purchased a 2023 V8 Challenger breaking with joy! At his age my car was a used $500 Ford Falcon straight 6 cylinder 200 cubic inch…no car payments… repaired it myself, ..
Boy, those were the days…
People seem to buy dreams and hope. If the electricity is on, even part of the time, it may be possible to charge these EVs enough to go to the grocery store.
I expect that the discontinued gas-powered models are ones that weren’t very profitable–too few sales. Dealerships would like a more streamlined group of cars to keep in stock.
There have been a number of recent articles pointing to the oversupply of EVs now on dealer lots. When I searched for more information on this, I found an article claiming that “experts” claim this only relates to temporary growing pains for EVs.
https://www.autonews.com/sales/jump-ev-inventory-does-not-indicate-weak-demand
My colleague just got a hybrid car on a rental contract.
She has discovered that it takes 4 hours of charging to enable her to drive 20 miles. Her electricity bill has doubled.
It’s much more expensive to run than her old ICE car.
Suckers gettin played … 24/365….
In Europe, cruise ship companies still seem to believe in oil and gas.
“To anticipate demand, ship order books are flourishing. In total, no less than 67 are under construction worldwide (62 in Europe and 5 in Asia), over the period from 2023 to 2028. The Saint-Nazaire shipyards alone are building 10. In June, they have delivered the MSC Euribia and are expected to bring the Celebrity-Ascent to market this fall.”
It’s possible that these large consumers are being fueled at sea to bypass various regulations and economic restrictions like taxes and sanctions.
All of this just to enjoy the indulgent cruise atmosphere and, in the meantime, “visit” an overcrowded tourist attraction to have an ice cream and buy a souvenir trinket. People deserve a carefree vacation after what is supposedly hard work, dealing with congested roads, and the pressures of schools.
We seem to be doomed… I wouldn’t mind seeing this kind significantly reduced. Apparently, using common sense doesn’t work. So, perhaps resorting to the methods of 1914-1918 and 1940-1945 is the only option.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2023/08/30/les-croisieristes-en-pleine-forme-attirent-un-public-plus-jeune-mais-au-mepris-de-l-environnement_6187114_3234.html
In order for oil production to continue, and in order for production of all of the minerals to continue, prices must stay high enough to make it worthwhile for producers to continue extracting them. The only way this can happen is if BAU continues. Cruise ships continue to operate. Schools continue to train people to work at high tech jobs.
In fact, the whole cycle of debt has to continue as well. Organizations need to take on debt to make these big investments (or fund them with the sale of shares of stock). They need to keep the financial cycle to continue, too.
In the past, BAU was not a well-thought-out plan. It strongly resembles a game of musical chairs, where a chair is frequently taken away, causing people to drop out one by one while the rest continue to move on lifelessly. In this musical chairs scenario, the dropped participants are normally expected to step aside, but I would expect conflicts, corruption and robberies to inevitably arise sooner or later.
Furthermore, I would almost believe that the Covid measures were a preliminary global rehearsal to test where the rebellious spirits lie, and how to control the general population.
In the best case, if the latter were true, you could consider it as a serious attempt by the real wielders of power to guide the population during a declining economy with increasing scarcity.
With a bit more imagination, you could also see cruise ships as literal arks with which certain types of population can secure themselves when things really go wrong in specific regions. A genuine plan B. It’s essential that the investments required for this are already being paid off in the current times. With these ships, you can then disembark in places that are spared by climate and from unrest, but about which predictions are currently difficult to make.
We can take it a step further: the emptying of many arsenals filled with conventional weaponry also fits into a global strategy to prevent major popular uprisings. Particularly in Libya, the numerous weapon arsenals posed a significant issue after the then-leader was neutralized and chaos ensued.
During my military service, I worked in a regional ammunition depot, and even then I could see that it would be very challenging to secure the facility for an extended period during significant popular uprisings: for security reasons, e.g. in case of fire or explosions, it needs to involve widely dispersed storage sites with many small storage bunkers. This is the opposite of what you would expect from a fortress or fortified castle that has to be defended. In Europe, we have numerous fortifications that were built during centuries, and which still explain us how to defend against attackers and their artillery. They are unfit to defend against a modern army, but they are perfectly fit to defend against lightly armed civilians. An ammunition depot is thus the opposite of a fortress.
This is not a conspiracy theory, because if I were tasked with leading the world during an economic decline and devising the best possible outcome for as many people as possible, I would do exactly what is happening now. Reliable and predictable adversaries are much more useful in that regard than friendly colleagues.
Thanks! You make many insightful points.
Regarding ships being literal arks for certain people, I know that up until a few years ago, the oil limits writer Dimtry Orlov lived on a sail boat, fitted with solar panels. He expected to be able to sail from place to place, to live where he chose, as conditions changed.
He later decided to marry a woman he had known since childhood. They now live in St. Petersburg, with a small son.
Dmitry had sort of the idea you have. With all of today’s concern about catching illnesses, and with the need for frequent supplies of fresh food, I am not sure how it would work. Perhaps planners could figure this out.
You make a good point about conventional weapons needing to be widely dispersed, if there is a chance of an uprising. Having fewer of them likely helps as well, too.
So far so good Brent oil 86 dollars interest rates are about 5 % so the ability to stimulate is still there inflation is cooling it was either 4.9% or 5.9 % this July bau lite forever baby.
Are you all getting ready for the western lockdowns?
With respect to covid, we are busy getting the word out that covid is something to be worked around. It is not a huge obstacle.
My husband is chair of a meeting tonight that our paster needs to attend, or it needs to be postponed. This morning, he received word that our pastor tested positive for covid. She only feels like she has a slight cold; she would be perfectly happy to attend the meeting if it is over Zoom. So my husband is working on getting the meeting rescheduled as a Zoom meeting.
“They” are signaling a new round of covid. I do not see what benefit they will get.
a drop in oil consumption. but not in diesel. Flights will drop dramatically to repurpose all that kerosene as diesel.
For the moment they are trying to use these excuses:
“Hundreds more flights cancelled in fallout from UK air traffic control failure”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/air-passengers-face-further-delays-after-uk-air-traffic-control-failure
But they are just temporary excuses.
So, let’s see what kind of terrible things they are preparing for this winter…
I am unsure about a new pandemic. The beloved misantroph has said 1925!
They are preparing for lockdowns also in Europe. In Austria, I known some guys who got new jobs being responsible to build up public vaccination centers.
There are elections in the US and in Austria end of 2024. Criticism to pandemic management is already prepared to play a part in the election campaigns.
The BRICS emerge because NATO cannot fullfill its role as a world watch dog. Ukraine shows that Russia can defend a country.
I suppose, we will go to a hot war between NATO against Russia after the elections to stop the BRICS. The lockdowns will com with the war…
It’s the strangest thing: people have no issue (apparently) with these new rounds of covid measures having been contracted far in advance.
There’s no way that a gov. contract that starts in -say- September, can be a response to an actual emergency. Those contracts would need to have been written and negotiated months in advance, no?!
Zombies be strange Lidia!
I always learn something new from Gail’s posts. This time, the explanation about why Europe is no longer importing or burning very much coal struck me as very reasonable and plausible, and I have never seen or heard this expressed so clearly before.
Between 80 and 90% of all coal exports come from three countries, namely Indonesia, Australia, and Russia (Siberia). Shipping this fuel to Europe is more expensive than shipping it to countries in Asia, and at the same time most Asian economies are more likely to be using it for profitable industrial purposes whereas most European economies would have to waste a good deal of it keeping people warm in winter. Keeping warm is all very well, but if there is competition for a limited resource, in the long run, those who can use the resource for profitable enterprise are likely to be able to afford to pay more for the privilege of having access to it.
That is a good summary of the issue. Thanks, Tim!
I was thinking something similar to Tim, though hardly as well. You show so much generosity and balance!
I meant that Tim summed up Gail’s wonderful qualities mos admirably.
Europe has an own history of pollution by coal. There are still significant reserves of lignite and probably even hard coal (I have in my mind 100 years the current electricity production) – but politics agree fully not to use it and prefer to risk the breakdown of industries.
Lignite can be extracted in open-pit mines, so costs can be kept very low.
There is definitely a real on-the-ground pollution problem when coal is burned, anywhere without a lot of filters to stop the soot. The air in countries that manufacture goods with coal tends to be terrible.
There probably is bypassed lignite at different locations in the world. One thing that strikes me about US coal consumption is that it began to drop precipitously when extraordinarily cheap natural gas came on the market (made possible by fracking for oil). There certainly is some bypassed coal in the US. Much of it is not near railroads, however.
Norman’s house is sitting on probably a hundred tons of anthracite just a few hundred meters below the coal cellar.
And as has come up here before, it seems by some accounts there could be thousands of years’ worth of coal under the North Sea not far off the Yorkshire and Northumberland coast. This isn’t being touched for “political” reasons, but it might well be prohibitively expensive or impractical to get at it.
https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/31032014/coal_discovered_in_north_sea_674/
“We think there are between three trillion and 23 trillion tonnes of coal buried under the North Sea,” explained Dermot Roddy, former professor of energy at Newcastle University.
“This is thousands of times greater than all the oil and gas we have taken out so far, which totals around six billion tonnes. If we could extract just a few per cent of that coal it would be enough to power the UK for decades or centuries.”
as you brought me into this debate—if one can call it that—
my grandfather worked the ground, if not exactly under my house, not far away.—here the seams go coal–ironstone–coal– ironstone.
each fuelled the drive for the other.
grandad earned maybe £3 £5 a week at most
my father earned more, but he was in mine management.—had i not been slightly brighter than average–i would have ended up there too.
an underground miner now might demand £1000 a week, even if men could be found to work underground
even allowing for 100 years of money value differentials, or whatever, that should tell you why coal stays under the north sea—and maybe answers the pencil and paper miners.
the title ”professor of energy”—makes me despair for the rest of us.
Norman, I remember back in the 1960s, our family lived in a terraced house in East London and paid 10s 6d a week for the privilege. That’s between a 10th and a 6th of your grandad’s earnings, and at time several decades after he downed his pickaxe for the last time, when money would have lost significant value due to inflation.
Today’s UK lifestyles may prove unsustainable due to energy poverty, I grant you. But your grandchildren may have the opportunity to live as well as your grandfather did, whether by digging coal or some other “working man’s” job.
tim
if he does not do it himself, every working man depends on someone else digging out fossil fuel on his behalf
my mining granfather lived in a mean little cottage, the only ‘amenity’ being a fire in the grate—(his coal was ”free”)
that little cottage is still there, but has been joined to the one next door, and is probably worth £200k—more than he earned in his lifetime
economic circumstances have changed so much now, that one can’t compare house costs then with now, (my parents rent was 7s 6d a week)—so many things have driven house prices up, demand being the main factor i think.
I avoid thinking about it if i can–but my g/g/grandkids will be lucky to live as as well as my grandfather did
i hope i’m wrong
Use Elon’s boring machine to harvest north sea coal.
” . . . so a country like the UK, experiencing severe hardship while still sat on a mountain of coal – including a big deposit of lignite across Northern Ireland”?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/08/30/a-one-way-trip-on-avenue-5/?fbclid=IwAR1Qrsi_PwcTfT2fFAxFuoWaMNJ2vsvpJ1v5q6IT8boEYlC6c8iZDMZuGDo
This is from a wikipedia article that seems to be from a 2004 text book:
https://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Fuel_minerals,_mineral_resources,_Northern_Ireland#:~:text=The%20largest%20deposits%20were%20found,and%20there%20are%20two%20varieties.
I would guess that if the lignite can be used, someone will figure out how to use it. It may be after the current government collapses, a different government will go looking for energy resources.
Oh, people will definitely burn lignite if they have to. After all, the Irish have been burning peat from the bogs for over 300 years. The current totalitarian boot on the face will not last forever. Times and fashions and customs and concerns have a way of changing.
True Tim, we will burn whatever is needed.
That’s probably why David Cameron changed the marine boundaries when he was in office. If Scotland went it’s own way, it would discover that it’s offshore resources make up a significantly smaller area than they did 20 years ago.
Lots of work being done on what they believe is attainable.
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/download/deep-sea-mining-evidence-review/
Germany now buys ever more coal from Colombia.
lol
thats where my local heritage steam railways gets its coal from
And to add a bit more to your post, Tim, think of this. In Australia the coal is mined near the coast and is shipped over the slippery sea to a Chinese where it is put to use without hauling it to any elevation. This is more efficient for them than hauling it overland from Mongolia.
Thanks, Gail, for updating the export land model as presented by you October 2010 in this oildrum post: http://theoildrum.com/node/7007
We remember Sam Foucher and Jeffrey J. Brown
Every country will have a different set of problems. Australia, for example, may have a rather warm climate (too hot summers predicted now due to El Nino) with winter heating only required in Victoria and Tasmania in the south.
But Australia’s oil/fuel import problem is difficult to solve. First, oil production in the area where imports come from has peaked
17/7/2023
Peak Oil in South East Asia and India – Part 1 Production and Consumption – Update 2022
http://crudeoilpeak.info/peak-oil-in-south-east-asia-and-india-part-1-production-and-consumption-update-2022
In part 2 on China peak oil I’ll update your 2016 Daqing post
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ke-wang-an-oil-production-forecast-for-china-considering-economic-limits.pdf
Secondly, there does not seem to be any effort to reign in fuel consumption
9 May 2023
Another 3 year warning on Australia’s fuel imports vulnerability
http://crudeoilpeak.info/another-3-year-warning-on-australias-fuel-imports-vulnerability
No one is taking all this seriously (new road tunnels and a 2nd Sydney airport are being built) although Covid should have given governments a lesson:
10 Mar 2020
Impact of Corona Virus similar to some earlier peak oil scenarios
http://crudeoilpeak.info/impact-of-corona-virus-similar-to-some-earlier-peak-oil-scenarios
Everyone is dreaming of electric cars but now power supplies have come under pressure as aging coal fired power plants have become unreliable and have to be closed down.
21/3/2023
NSW power supply on 16 March 2023 so tight that AEMO had to issue emergency response direction
http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-supply-on-16-march-2023-so-tight-that-aemo-had-to-issue-emergency-response-directions
13/3/2023
Lack of reserve on hot day in NSW as Liddell power plant is scheduled to close
http://crudeoilpeak.info/lack-of-reserve-on-hot-day-in-nsw-as-liddell-power-plant-is-scheduled-to-close
Just today we had a warning of the Energy Market Operator AEMO:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-31/aemo-energy-market-urgent-investment-needed-coal-gas-retiring/102795560
A giant Snowy2 pumped hydro project with around 300,000 MWh storage is facing year long delays and cost-overruns
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-31/snowy-2-0-project-reset-amid-multi-billion-dollar-cost-blowout/102801112
All the while the new Intergenerational Report continues with a high rate of immigration at 235k pa.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-24/what-we-already-know-about-the-intergenerational-report/102764468
Treasury could not even do a cohort survival analysis of the current population to know what the population would be without immigration.
Not to mention that no resource analysis was done.
All governments are energy blind.
I think that politicians have to be resource-blind. They can’t keep the support of citizens, if they tell them that the future will be terrible. They have to provide a “Happily Ever After” story, no matter how ridiculous it is. Educational institutions and standard news media need to present this view as well. The message is, “There will always be high tech jobs. There will always be a use for the devices you purchase. Happy days are ahead.”
Military organizations, on the other hand, often worry about this issue. They know that most wars are resource wars. They also know that traditional armaments depend upon adequate fossil fuel supplies. So they are busy figuring out how to make war, without using very much fossil fuels. Use bioweapons. Interrupt another country’s internet. Blow up a natural gas pipeline.
Some of the very rich “Powers That Be” also think about this problem. They want to know how they can make money off the situation. They want to concentrate what wealth exists in their own hands. They seem to lack ethics in harming others.
Citizens end up in the middle of this. They try to present their view of the situation in alternative media.
But somehow or other the US military ended up with gas turbine tanks. They burn ~3x as much fuel as diesel tanks. Not surprisingly most countries still use diesel engines in their tanks.
This decision seems to have been pretty crazy. Did US politicians override the military?
Matt Mushalik is a force to be reckoned with…😀
World War Woke will sort it all out.
Ah, a fellow Aussie!
Immigration is necessary because locals aren’t reproducing enough, plus all that stuff about the economy.
You missed mentioning the project to make “Tasmania Australia’s battery” going as badly wrong as Snowy 2. I think they’ve given up – too expensive/difficult.
Never fear, clean green energy and EVs will save us. Who needs diesel anyway?
for the past couple of centuries, the economic system of the industrialised world has been to extract coal oil and gas out of the ground and convert it into cash.
nothing more than that.
Everybody’s wages depended on it in a literal sense.
All the other stuff has been no more than window dressing
we were told it would last forever, or if not quite that long, we would come up with ”the next big breakthrough”
Or—even sillier, the energy solution was being kept secret by ”an elite”.
well, it seems we really are coming to the end of the line folks.
Not many people understand that jobs depend on fossil fuels. They can sort of understand that their car needs to get higher milage from the same fuel, but they can’t understand that without fossil fuels, today’s jobs go away. We all become subsistence farmers or hunters and gatherers. We make primitive tools with whatever seems to be available.
a cousin of mine, since retired, ran the transport department of a large municipal authority, with hundreds of peple and vehicles–so no slouch,
we got onto this subject—as you do– regarding ongoing function of it all, and i brought up the point of energy depletion, to which his reply was:
“whats energy got to do with it?”—kinda gave up at that point.
I disagree:
With little knowledge of ff, I look at our solar system rich in hydrocarbons and no shortage of water. Not a dinosaur in sight, sigh.
My bet is we don’t go to primitive tools; what if I am wrong? What is there to lose? Tell the “people” there is no future and they may believe it, homelessness perhaps?
Went to the Mass video on aforementioned post which appears to originate in MS, parishners are “mature.” For all its faults, the Catholic church served many purposes, the Vatican Council seems to have changed that for the worse; we are not to understand God, but find peace and a set of rules which work.
We alternate between too much stuff and too little. There is no blessing in being poor, there are not that many benefits from being extremely rich but then not being so how would I know?
Time for my pub and a glass of wine, current reading “Fourth Turning.” Looking for actionable answers. On farm reading The Ancient City.” Both are interesting.
Dennis L.
Let us see how all those wonderful people who want to “save the planet” get to enjoy all their creature comforts of life without fossil fuels. It should be fun, watching them meltdown when they are met with a heavy dose of reality.
Great video from 15 years ago by George Carlin on “Saving the Planet.”
I am afraid his message didn’t really sink in for most people.
In a finite world, everything works in cycles. Creation is an ongoing process, as all living creatures eventually die. Their offspring always differs in small ways from the parent(s). The offspring that are better adapted to the changing environment survive. This is the way evolution works.
People build models assuming the ideal situation is static, or constant growth at the same percentage. This isn’t the way the real world works, however.
That was from his HBO concert from NYC in 1992, so it was actually 31 yrs ago.
The year 1992 was a long time ago. I was just going by what YouTube said in the notes.
Somewhere there is a video of a Saturday Night Live skit that had a clip of every president since Jimmy Carter (?) talking about the world’s oil problem, in the State of the Union speeches, if I remember correctly.
Lots of great data and analysis! Thanks for sharing.
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So excited to see a new post! Thank you Gail.
You are welcome. I had lots of opportunities to observe Murphy’s Law when putting together this post: If anything can go wrong, it will. Working with numbers from someone else’s report can be tricky. Then the local internet goes down, too. I try to check everything for reasonableness. If something looks strange, I go back and look at the indication again.