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It is now popular to talk about leaving fossil fuels to prevent climate change. Pretty much the same result occurs if we run short of fossil fuels: We lose fossil fuels, but it is because we cannot extract them. Practically no one tells us about the extent to which the current system depends upon fossil fuels, however.
The economy is extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels. If there are not enough fossil fuels to go around, there is likely to be fighting over what is available. Some countries are likely to get far more than their fair share, while the rest of the world’s population will be left with very little or no fossil fuels.
If losing fossil fuels completely, or nearly completely, is a risk for some of the world’s population, it might be useful to think through some of the things that go wrong. The following are some of my ideas about things that change, mostly for the worse, in a fossil fuel-deprived economy.
[1] Banks, as we know them, will likely fail.
Before banks fail in areas with virtually no fossil fuels, my guess is that we will generally see hyperinflation. Governments will greatly increase the money supply in a vain attempt to get people to believe that more goods and services are being produced. This approach will be used because people equate having more money with the ability to buy more goods and services. Unfortunately, without fossil fuels it will be very difficult to produce very many goods.
More money will simply provide more inflation because it takes physical resources, including the proper types of energy, to operate machinery of all kinds to make goods. Creating services also requires fossil fuel energy, but generally, to a lesser extent than creating goods. For example, the pair of scissors used in cutting hair is made using fossil fuel energy. The person cutting hair needs to be paid; his or her pay needs to be high enough to cover energy-related costs such as buying and cooking food to eat. The shop where hair cutting is operated will also need to pay for the fossil fuel energy required for heat and light, assuming such energy is even available.
Banks will fail because too large a share of debts cannot be repaid with interest. Part of the problem will be that while wages will rise, the prices of goods and services will rise even faster, making goods unaffordable. Another part of the problem is that service economies, such as those of the US and eurozone, will be disproportionately affected by a declining economy. In such an economy, people will get their hair cut less often. Instead, they will spend their money on essentials, including food, water, and cooking supplies. Service-providing businesses, such as hair salons and restaurants, will fail for lack of customers, leading to defaults on their debts.
[2] Today’s governments will fail.
With failing banks, today’s governments will also fail. Partly, they will fail because of attempts to bail out banks. Another problem will be declining tax revenue because fewer goods and services are produced. Pension programs will become increasingly difficult to fund. All these issues will lead to increasingly divisive politics. In some cases, central governments may dissolve, leaving states and other smaller units, such as today’s provinces, to continue on their own.
Intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, will find their voices becoming less and less heeded before they fail. Getting sufficient funding from member states will become an increasing problem.
Dictatorships ruled by leaders who wield absolute power and aristocracies ruled by leaders with hereditary rights are the types of governments with the least energy requirements. These are likely to become more common without fossil fuels.
[3] Nearly all of today’s businesses will fail.
Fossil fuels are essential for all kinds of businesses. They are used in the extraction of raw materials and in the transportation of goods. We use fossil fuels to pave roads and to build nearly all of today’s buildings. Without fossil fuels, even simple repairs of existing infrastructure become impossible. Without adequate fossil fuels, international companies are especially at risk of breaking into smaller units. They will find it impossible to operate in parts of the world with virtually no fossil fuel supply.
Fossil fuels are even used in making solar panels, wind turbines, and replacement parts for electric vehicles. Talking about solar and wind as “renewables” is to a significant extent misleading. At best, they can be described as fossil fuel “extenders.” They might help a problem of a slightly low fossil fuel supply, but they are far from adequate substitutes.
[4] Grid electricity and the internet will disappear.
Fossil fuels are important for maintaining the electrical transmission system. For example, restoring downed power lines after storms requires fossil fuels. Hooking up solar panels or wind turbines to the electric grid requires fossil fuels. Home solar panel systems may operate until their inverters fail. Once their inverters fail, their usefulness will be greatly degraded. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture new inverters.
Fossil fuels are also important for maintaining every part of the internet system. Furthermore, without grid electricity, it becomes impossible to use computers to connect to the internet.
[5] International trade will be scaled back greatly.
At this time of year, many of us remember the story of the three kings from the East coming to visit the baby Jesus with precious gifts. We also remember stories in the Bible of Paul traveling to distant countries. From these and many other examples, we know that international trade and travel can continue without fossil fuels.
The problem is that without fossil fuels, some parts of the world will have very little to offer in return for goods made with fossil fuels. Countries with fossil fuels will quickly figure out that government debt from countries without fossil fuels doesn’t really mean much when it comes to paying for goods and services. As a result, trade will be scaled back to match available exports. Exports of goods will likely be very limited for parts of the world operating without fossil fuels.
[6] Agriculture will become much less efficient.
Today’s agriculture has been made unbelievably efficient using large mechanical equipment, generally powered by diesel, together with a huge number of chemicals, including herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. In addition, fences and netting made with fossil fuels are used to keep out unwanted animal pests. In some cases, greenhouses are used to provide a controlled climate for plants. Using fossil fuels, specialized hybrid seeds are developed that emphasize characteristics that farmers consider desirable. All these “helps” will tend to disappear.
Without these helps, agriculture will become much less efficient. Figure 1 shows that even with the small cutback in fossil fuel use in 2020, the share of employment provided by agriculture rose.
Employment in agriculture is essential. These workers did not get laid off, even as workers in tourism and workers making fancy clothes lost their jobs, so agricultural jobs as a share of total employment rose.
[7] Future labor needs are likely to be disproportionately in the agricultural sector.
People need to eat. Even if the economy is operating in a very inefficient manner, people will need food. The share of people in agriculture (including hunting and gathering) can be expected to rise considerably.
Some people hope that a shift to the use of permaculture will solve the problem of the dependence of agriculture on fossil fuels. I see permaculture as mostly a fossil-fuel extender, rather than a solution for getting along without fossil fuels, because it assumes the use of many fossil fuel-based devices, such as modern fences and today’s tools. Also, at best, permaculture only partly solves the inefficiency problem because it requires a huge amount of hands-on labor.
Today, there is a wide divide between the share of employment in agriculture in the United States and in the same statistic for the UN group of least developed countries. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. They use very little fossil fuels.
The US share of employment in agriculture has recently been about 1.7%. In the part of Europe using the Euro, the share of employment in agriculture has recently averaged about 3.0%. In either the US or Europe, it would take a huge change in employment to get to 70% in agricultural employment (as seen early in the 1990s for the UN least developed group), or even to 55% (as experienced recently by the same group).
[8] Home heating will become a luxury item available only to the wealthy.
Without fossil fuels, wood will come into high demand for its heat value. Wood will be needed for cooking food; it is very difficult to subsist on a diet of all raw foods. Wood will also be in demand for making charcoal, which in turn can be used to smelt some metals. With these demands on wood, deforestation is likely to become a major problem in many parts of the world. Wood in general will be quite expensive, given the considerable cost of harvesting and transporting it over long distances without the benefit of fossil fuels.
People living in sparsely populated wooded areas may be able to gather their own wood for home heating. For other people, home heating will likely become a luxury, affordable only by the very rich.
[9] Living alone will become a thing of the past.
Without enough heat, and with barely enough wood for cooking, people (and their animals) will have to huddle together more. Homes housing multiple generations, built over a place for keeping farm animals, may again become popular. It will be more efficient to cook for large groups than for one person at a time. People in cold areas will huddle together with each other in beds to keep warm. Or they will huddle together with their dogs, as in the saying, three dog night, meaning a night that is cold enough to need to have three dogs to keep a person warm.
Even in warm parts of the world, people will live together in groups, simply because maintaining a household for a single person will become impossibly expensive. Food and fuel for cooking will take up a huge share of a family’s income. There will be little left over for other expenses.
[10] Governments and their laws will shrink in importance. Instead, new traditions and new religions will play a greater role in keeping order.
Governments have made dozens of promises, but without a growing supply of fossil fuels (or an adequate substitute), they will not be able to keep them. Pensions will be gone. The ability of governments to enforce ownership laws will likely disappear. Without any good substitute for fossil fuels, mass disorder is a likely outcome.
People crave order. Without order, it is impossible to conduct business. We know from recent experience that “sustainability groups,” put together by people with a common interest in sustainability tend not to work well enough to provide order. They tend to fall apart as soon as obstacles arise.
What has seemed to work to provide order in the past is some combination of traditions and religions. With a changing world, both traditions and religions are likely to need to change. In the book, Communities that Abide, by Dmitry Orlov et al., the authors point out that having a strong (non-elected) leader, and a shared set of religious beliefs, helps keep a group together. In fact, it helps if the group is somewhat persecuted. Fighting for a common cause is part of what keeps the group together.
The Ten Commandments in the Bible are interpreted in a way that strongly suggests that they are rules for behavior within the group, not for behavior in general. For example, “Thou shalt not kill,” applies to other members of the group; wars against other groups were very much expected. In those wars, killing of members of another group was expected. This would seem to allow Israel’s killing of members of Hamas, today. Without enough fossil fuels to go around, fighting becomes more frequent.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.
As I see the situation, the world needs to scale down its use of fossil fuels because, ultimately, the laws of physics determine selling prices for fossil fuels. We extract the inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels first. The problem is that fossil fuel selling prices cannot rise arbitrarily high. Prices must be both:
- High enough for producers to make a profit, with funds left over for reinvestment and for adequate taxes for their governments.
- Low enough for consumers to afford to buy food and other consumer goods produced with these fossil fuels.
If we assume that all the fossil fuels that seem to be under the ground can really be extracted, climate change from burning them may indeed be a problem. But it is hard to see that they can really be extracted, given the affordability issue. Politicians will hold down prices to get voters to vote for them if nothing else.
Researchers have been working diligently to find solutions, but to date, their success has been poor. Every supposed solution requires significant use of fossil fuels. So, we need to think through what might happen if we are forced to get along without fossil fuels and without an adequate substitute.
After vaccine rollout, surge in hospitalizations, ‘code blue’ alerts
Once COVID-19 vaccines were introduced in early 2021, Macrae reported an immediate and drastic shift, with a “300% increase in hospitalizations,” and hospital staff overwhelmed amid uncharacteristic patient conditions.
Macrae said “code blue” alerts — when somebody stops breathing or their heart stops — which had been happening perhaps once per shift, begin happening as many as 10 times per shift.
“They would always call them down to the lower level of the hospital, where we had a vaccination clinic,” she said.
Two nurses who administered the shots directly — colleagues she met through a practitioner support group in her community — said they were seeing between 10 and 20 episodes of anaphylactic shock every day. They told Macrae they were threatened with termination if they said anything about it publicly.
One day near the end of June 2021 as she was working a 16-hour shift split between two units, Macrae said she got a report that every single patient in both units — 60 overall — had unusual injuries that were likely the result of the COVID-19 shots.
She described uncommon blood clots, bleeds, heart attacks, strokes and Bell’s Palsy increasing in frequency during the early months of the vaccination campaign.
“There were all of these bizarre peripheral vascular clotting disorders,” she said, “and literally, I had never even heard of them or seen them before.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gail-macrae-california-icu-nurse-covid-protocols-vaccine-injuries/
Despite COVID-19 being “the most inflammatory disease process that humanity has ever seen,” experienced hospital staff were blocked from administering steroids — “the best treatment for an inflammatory process,” Macrae said.
“So for the government and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and these three-letter organizations to tell practitioners that they could not administer steroids … was absolutely criminal,” she said.
California was not the only state to ban steroids. McCarthy, in a recent interview with AMP News, said he found it “just mind-boggling” when nurses told him standard anti-inflammatories like steroids were banned under rigid protocols in hospitals across the U.S.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gail-macrae-california-icu-nurse-covid-protocols-vaccine-injuries/
According to Macrae, in the first months of the pandemic hospitals were nearly empty as elective procedures halted — a scene that contrasted with media claims of overwhelmed capacity.
Even during the 2020-2021 winter surge of hospitalizations due to normal respiratory issues, she said “not once” were hospitals overwhelmed — an observation she corroborated with colleagues across the state.
“The public was being lied to,” she said. “So that really opened my eyes to the fact that there were things going on that shouldn’t have been going on.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gail-macrae-california-icu-nurse-covid-protocols-vaccine-injuries/
In exclusive interviews with CHD.TV’s ‘Vax-Unvax” Bus and The Defender, California intensive care unit nurse Gail Macrae shared her story of pushing back against hospital COVID-19 protocols that she said violated medical ethics and resulted in increased harm to patients.
Macrae worked at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa from 2015 until 2021, when she was fired for not complying with the staff vaccine mandate.
After the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Macrae witnessed a dramatic spike in hospitalizations with side effects she had never seen before. Meanwhile, proven and recommended treatments were banned and record-keeping systems were manipulated to obfuscate vaccine-related injuries and breakthrough infection cases, she said.
Hospital staff faced threats for reporting adverse events and retaliation for objecting to protocols isolating patients and denying families access and input over their treatments.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gail-macrae-california-icu-nurse-covid-protocols-vaccine-injuries/
(John Mearsheimer on Gaza)
“US political scientist John Mearsheimer on Israel’s ‘punishment campaign’ against the civilian population in Palestine.
Israel has gone far beyond “going after Hamas” in the first 10 weeks of its war on Gaza, according to one of the United States’ leading political scientists, John Mearsheimer.
He tells host Steve Clemons that murdering hundreds of civilians daily and starving the rest is a “punishment campaign” and “should be unacceptable to decent people all over the world”.
In this episode, Mearsheimer, who teaches international relations at the University of Chicago, looks into Israel’s long-term strategies and explains why the elites in the US, Europe and the Arab world are not taking concrete steps to stop Israel’s bombing campaign.”
This brief interview is here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-bottom-line/2023/12/16/john-mearsheimer-israel-is-choosing-apartheid-or-ethnic-cleansing
Have you seen this one?
“The Israeli soldiers came in and opened fire on them. They took an old man. The Israeli soldiers stormed the school, took all the men, then entered classrooms and opened fire on a woman and all the children with her, even the newborn babies among them,”
https://dohanews.co/al-jazeera-footage-reveals-israel-executed-displaced-palestinians-including-children-and-babies-at-point-blank-in-gaza-school/
So? Humans have done this since they were in the trees. It’s our nature
Take me for instance… I harbour fantasies of opening fire on Vaxxer MOREONS>.. all it would take is for one of them to taunt me with A Vaxxer insults… if there was no threat of jail… f789 Yeah I’d be locked and loaded and would not hesitate to eliminate them…
We all have that in us … consider road rage…. just about everyone gets pissed off if someone cuts them off… take away the law – give them guns … and soooo eeeeeeeeeee….. they’d be blowing each others brains out…
The only reason we don’t… is cuz The Law … The Prisons.
Wow. This conversation has devolved into gibberish.
you are obviously new here tres
What we need at times like this is some serious Schad.
Young (33-year-old) Canadian MSM journalist who heavily promoted the Covid-19 vaccine has died after being “declared neurologically dead”.
In one social media post, Vandaelle stated, “I, for one, advocate we bring the carrot and the stick. Incentivize getting the vaccine however we like – ice cream, lotteries, literally whatever, I don’t care – and require vaccination to do non-essential things. Wanna go to a bar to watch the game? Passport.”
In another post, he urged the Toronto Police to terminate members who declined the jab, saying, “Take the jab or resign; anything else is moral and ethical cowardice. You take an oath to protect citizens? You get vaxxed. Shameful that we have to say this.”
https://thecanadianindependent.substack.com/p/young-canadian-msm-journalist-who
we definitely need more terminators
i have a list of waiting terminatees
—i rather like that word.
“You take an oath to protect citizens? You get vaxxed.”
It was just like Germany in the 1930s. The authoritarians and the fascists among the population crawled out of the woodwork, and masses of them. Astonishing.
How about this just in:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67667795
Collapsed off the ball and that’s the second time since he allowed drug dealers to inject him with an unknown substance.
Still not a big name, so people will be directed to forget him quickly, as he quietly retires.
Even when it happens to the big names … I think there was a Spanish player … can’t recall his name (see) but he was in the top 10 players in the world… he was disappeared after his heart issues.
Recall the number one female tennis player from Aussie – retired at 25…. what’s her name?
Sergio Agüero and he’s Argentinian, but don’t remind the jabbed, they’d rather forget.
This is exactly why we need to stop global warming. If only he were vaccinated and up to date with his booster, this might have been averted.
Long Covid strikes again
SCHADAlicious
“Wow. This conversation has devolved into gibberish.”
yes, your comment here adds nothing to the conversation.
please try harder next time.
and put this in your pipe and smoke it:
yes bAU tonight in The Core, baby!
Being a lover of China’s 5,000-year-old culture — though emphatically NOT the current ruling regime, especially with that fat ogre on the throne — I have fancied at times that as the fossil fuels run out, the Middle Kingdom will simply revert to the good old ways of her good old days. Again we shall find a peaceful agrarian society living with the seasons, presided over by scholar officials versed in the Confucian classics. Have to say (much to my distress) that it does not appear that the facts would support such a vision.
For one thing, China has now become notorious for her love affair with nuclear power. From what I’ve read, China now ranks 3rd in the world in total nuclear power capacity, accounting for around one-tenth of all global nuclear power generated. As of February 2023, China has 55 plants with 57GW in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88GW. Imagine the consequences of having so many nuclear plants around once you run out of fossil fuels to keep them running. Or to decommission and dismantle them. Entire swathes of the land that produced Confucius and Du Fu will become tainted with terrible poisons which will last for millennia. All the misty mountain landscapes will be awash with ionizing radiation.
There’s a reason (among many others) why I HATE the bloody CCP. And there’s also a reason why I consider the Industrial Revolution to be a bargain with the Devil. Sure, the Devil pays very well in the short run. But the long run is now.
Just thought I’d get a few things off my chest…
Today’s nuclear plants are pretty much along the coast. I would presume the prevailing winds would carry much of the fallout away (toward Japan, for example). But new plants are planned for inland. Finding enough water for them is likely to be a challenge.
https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/03/19/e2556194-4a38-11e9-8e02-95b31fc3f54a_image_hires_221950.JPG
China is not far from the Mariana Trench. That is where all spent cores will end. Hopefully there will be GPS or GLONASS for a long time, because the spent cores can be fished out and refurbished for reuse in 100 years. Sure there will be less than 1% leaky rods, but the rest will not leak. Any radiation leak will then be stopped from propagating by the very low layer mixing rate.
Spent fuel needs to remain in ponds for years … if you take it out and expose it to air … it heats up rapidly and the toxins release
How do you move spent fuel to the trench without it catching fire and spewing death
What’s the tech for that?
Duh
it is certainly not difficult to organize underwater transport. Specially if the plants are near water. all you need is a ship with a working pump. No need to expose anything to air. Cores are moved from plants to pools as we speak, no problem. When going from pool to ship, you have to have the core in a water tank. Spent cores do not produce a lot of heat, they will boil off typically a lot less than a liter per second. worry not, Eddy.
I agree that this will be the main strategy. Humans ruining earth one day at a time.
Still in the scheme of things for the earth it has been through worse.
Sounds like a fool proof plan!
Do you actually see this happening? Who do you think would actually put up the money and expertise to carry this out even at one plant, much less at any scale? I think human nature will mean Run to Failure. I mean, that’s what’s happening to every other system at the moment…
Why even bother transporting them, just seal off the pools and let natural convection and condensation carry the heat away? Pop a somewhat water/airtight cover on the suckers and leave them alone. I mean, they’re not glowing red hot after all, it’s decay heat.
How about using some old Alaskan pipeline thermosyphons to air cool the ponds?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQsjrw4tmdghRpWsRPEu397UYyC4evtmuvxZA&usqp=CAU
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029549321000339
Job done.
FE can then merrily continue popping off infested zombies as they close in on his refugia. Until he runs out of ammo.
😭💥🔫
Yes, I want these suckers to continue the perpetual return. An endless repetition, the eternal recurrence of the Hyper. Devolution straight back up into the tree plumes.
🤥🦧
🤣👍👍
It depends on time available. For sure diesel is disappearing and nuclear plants without diesel do not work. Here gasoline has not been this cheap in years but diesel has never been this expensive, I really think it is running out faster than “oil”. Granted it will be easier to clean up littoral plants. But a spent core, in a 4X4X4 meters tank full of water, you would have a few hours to put it in a specialized ship with water pumping. From there you can take it anywhere.
No need to go to the Mariana, near the Atlantic ridge would do just fine.
I am wondering where the parts of the high tech systems that are used in the ponds… would be manufactured… once BAU blows up
My main question is who can be convinced to pay for it?
The discovery of nuclear energy amounted to opening a big, fat Pandora’s Box. Enough said.
And my suspicion is that the Japanese will hate China all the more if the nuclear debris from the derelict Chinese coastal reactors does get carried over to Japan’s shores.
It’s a sad world we live in. And it’s going to get a whole lot sadder.
And the non prevailing winds would carry the fall out inland… then the Russian prevailing winds would carry fall out to china … and all those ponds in Europe would carry the fallout …. and the ones in the US and Canada… would …
Soon you’ve got the entire planet covered with the toxic cancer causing stuff that does not degrade for thousands of years… anyone alive will eat and drink this stuff… and they will die…
It’s not like a rat dying behind a wall in your house… it stinks for a month but then it breaks down and all that is left is a desiccated bit of skin and bone
No way out.
>> I consider the Industrial Revolution to be a bargain with the Devil. Sure, the Devil pays very well in the short run. But the long run is now.
Had humanity been wiser, it could have potentially invented technology to move beyond the hand-to-mouth existence that has characterized known history. It was worth a shot, unfortunately we’re just fire monkeys and act the part.
Either humans will realize in time or they will have to bear the consequences – nothing is so easy as that! Geological shifts in hundreds of thousands of years could disemminate the stuff even around the world. There are some relevant studies showing that low dosis radiation has huge impacts on health and offspring. The idea that men could develop any resistance is merely idiotic. For any Bronze age society detection of low dosis radioactivity will be impossible. After “accidents” with the exposition of radioactivity biologists could count less young birds. Such effects will not be observable in longterm processes because the reference value is missing. A Geiger Counter is a very simple electronic device, but one needs basic knowledge about electronics, Geiger tubes, also improvised ones, need an operating voltage of 400V. And a fog chamber needs glas and a quite low temperature.
Not everything can return a high return right now. Firms investing in artificial intelligence and crypto look good right now. In my humble opinion, artificial intelligence and crypto are the drivers of growth.
lolololol
are you a crypto-pusher or something?
If you’re enjoying your retirement, you can thank the crypto and AI companies for providing you great returns.
lolololol again
AI does nothing in physical terms—nothing
Crypto value is the ultimate ponzi scheme
You can’t beat the market, Norman, so why even try. All you can do is get in a boat and rise with the tide. The tide is a track-record of growth. Crypto is a high-growth and high return part of finance that is growing now and will grow spectacularly in the future!
Look at this commenter’s previous reply. He clearly intends it as sarcasm. Where do we get all of the electricity for these things, if nothing else?
Surely energy is priced into crypto now. For example it takes 10 times more computing power (energy) to trade a dollar in bitcoin than a dollar in Ethereum. Those blockchains are becoming rather long! So you can expect crypto to last another 10 or 20 years, with energy intensive currencies replaced by thriftier ones. Or every decade or so bitcoin1 will be offered for replacement of bitcoin, with a clean blockchain. Also as US sanction lose more and more bite crypto will lose large segments of market. Not sure it can survive a BRICS currency for example.
In the future, all major currencies will be crypto. Crypto is the wave of the future. Catch the wave!
try surfboarding away from the beach
you will have more success
The wave of the future, indeed. But you don’t wanna catch it.
Money won’t be crypto. Governments are working on an allocation scheme for goods and services. They will use a fiat money system to accomplish it, if they can. Each person will get an allotment of funds, if their plans go through. There will probably be demerits if a person misbehaves. I would hope that there would be a work requirement.
That sounds a lot like a digital curency to me. Digital is crypto. The future of money is crypto. It’s still not too late to take advantage of this on-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity.
There is no energy generation behind government sponsored digital currency. It can be taken away at will for any kind of perceived wrong doing.
you sell bread—i need bread
i give you £1 for a loaf of bread—I receive £1 worth of energy contained in the bread (steak or petrol works just as well)
On the other hand—if you sell digital money—i buy £1 worth of digital money. What I receive is a £1 signal denoting ”value”. I do not receive usable energy..
(unlike real money, which is used as a medium of energy exchange)
I can only pass on the £1 signal to someone else who is also prepared to ”believe” that £1 worth of value—it does not actually ”exist”’. (it is just an electronic signal)
The value of the ‘transaction’ goes up for one reason–and one reason only—-that at each step on the transaction ”ladder”–the next person up ”believes” what he is getting is worth more than the one below. (it really is that simple).
If there’s another reason, tell me. I could be wrong.
Of course, this ”belief system” can go on for some time. (all ponzi schemes do) And some will make actual money out of it. They are the lucky ones. The Dutch Tulip bulb mania in the 17th c worked the same way–check it out.
If cyrpto had actual value, all wages would be paid that way. They aren’t, (that alone should tell you something)
Actual money has to be underpinned by actual energy.
Thats why you get runaway inflation when actual money exceeds the energy available to underpin it. (governments print money to buy goods that do not exist)
I’d put my money into funeral homes and casket makers… if I thought there was a future
Sure, things look bad now, but remember, the market always goes up
I am sure you are kidding.
As long as it is possible to keep reducing interest rates, the market goes up. It also helps if fossil fuel supply per capita is rising. But, if these things aren’t happening, the situation changes.
The market always goes up is a corollary of “the economy always grows.” This more or less works as long as inexpensive energy supplies (per capita) are growing. But once returns fall too low for producers, they stop building new capacity. Fighting over supplies begins.
That was because of a pandemic. A pandemic one in a hundred year occurrence. A swan event. As long as everyone keeps current with the vaccinations, the producers will build new capacity and the market will grow.
You seem like a swell lady. Here’s a tip.
Biotech firms are red-hot right now. Lots of new capacity being built there. Anyone investing there will see great gains.
Here’s a tip – you are mentally ill – seek help
Where there is no depth, any shallow absurdity will suffice as a coping mechanism.
Not sure if even the doctor can help if there is a serious malfunction in the hard wiring (Mr. DNA). Programming errors can be fixed, though. Minor hardware issues can be mitigated by software workarounds.
I believe it is called thinking. And it’s just not meant to be for everyone. Specially not for the default Rapacious Primate projecting statuses, prestiges and successes all over the interwebz.
But again, it’s not their fault. It’s absurd to blame the dog for barking up the wrong tree, or was it the moneky climbing. Never mind.
Just throw the dog a banana, and the monkey a bone, or is it perhaps the other way around? It probably won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
It is what it is, and it is not pretty.
However, in the mean time, let’s chant together:
YOLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
(etc.)
🤣👍👍
OLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
OLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
OLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
OLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
OLO!
HYPERS GONNA HYPER!
MOARons gonna MOAR!
WITHIN TEMPTATION IS TRUTH!
For the UK based readers .
https://eand.co/how-bleak-is-britains-future-you-don-t-want-to-know-9ceabfb5a8b2
and also
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/12/15/in-brief-the-energy-death-spiral-grows-another-bad-omen-hobsons-choice/
Tim Watkins’ article (second link) is excellent. I recommend that everyone read it. Among many other things, he explains why current oil prices are lower than they have been. It is because of an affordability crisis that is bringing demand down in the UK (and many other places). Many other costs are rising, including electricity prices, and these are causing a squeeze for households.
The other link shows that UK’s GDP is poised to shrink in 2023. The only other countries doing very poorly are Germany and Russia.
Amazingly, around here the economy is booming. It must be an exception ,and everywhere else in Russia things are going down. Or it is a case of foreign receipts declining, but people having higher purchasing power than in years past.
Where are you located drb 753 ? Please inform .
I live in Russia. about 200 km from Moscow.
It’s probably new money, tech, goods and services flowing in through shady middle men, proxies, etc. The relic geopolitical racket and stunts got shelled to shreds in age old fashion.
https://youtu.be/UTK8torOylM?si=2R8TFyWPmxmTWR-O
I reckon Russia borders 14 countries. It would have been strange if an embargo could be upheld when the world demands affordable oil. It is non negotiable for the huge swathes of Asian populace.
Indeed it is just another ridiculous idea put forth by the sanctimonious hypocrites, the awful bourgeois, of the west.
Europe is FOOKED . US natural gas price is $ 2.433 mcf, EU price is EURO 33.80 mcf = USD 35.50 per mcf.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/natural-gas-price
https://www.ice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5696271
I am wondering if something is wrong with your math. A look at the two year graph shows that the natural gas price is way down. My impression is that the rates for Dutch Natural Gas Futures are on a different basis than per Million Cubic Feet.
https://www.ice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5696271&span=3
My data is correct . You are comparing TTF pricing in Feb 2022 when the EU placed sanctions on Russian NG to what the TTF is today . EU to EU . I am talking about US vs EU . That was not the objectlve of my comment . I wanted to bring in focus the EcoE between USA and EU and why the EU was de industrialising . Energy differential is too high . Why the difference ? EU is now buying more and more LNG than piped NG . Russian agrrement was about $ 8-9 per mcf , now LNG landed cost $ 24 or so . The bigger problem is that the agreement with Russia was a fixed price long term contract but now EU must buy LNG on the spot market and compete with China , India , Japan , Taiwan etc .
Thanks for the follow up. Read your response three times. This is the impression I have been getting from other sources, all though I am not qualified to make definitive opinions.
I have no idea who is gaining the controlling hand in this tectonic struggle: Demand destruction vs cost of production. This is one end of the candle that is burning. The other end is the bizarro world of debt and currency devaluation. Whether triggered by interruption of the credit lines, banking failures, internet failure and nullification of ATM and EBT cards, whether from an EMP, CME, or other deliberate sabotage, we clearly have two systems, the physical that is ruled by laws of nature and the man made hypothetical one based on confidence and deception.
European pricing has sources converted to US pricing:
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NYMEX-TTE1!/
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/ITNF24
so in USD/MMBtu it’s about $11 ish.
more than 4 times the US price of $2.50 ish.
so EU will be uncompetitive and will continue to deindustrialize.
oui?
Worldwide ” “oil on water” is now only 35 million barrels from the peak of almost 200 million barrels in 2020. Yes, I know 2020 was the Covid year so it was bound to be high, but this is too low by any standard. One day’s Total Export worldwide. Too tight. I have long said it is export of oil and refining that are the weak spots in the supply chain of the PPS (Petroleum Production System).
https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1735240521159705067/photo/1
Another partial explanation is the new shadow tanker fleet to bypass sanctions. Official numbers will be lower than reality as a result.
Ivan , does not make a lot of difference . The total Russian seaborne export is about 3 mbpd . South stream pipeline export to Hungary and Serbia continues and so does the pipeline export via the Druzba pipeline to Germany and Poland refineries owned by Rosneft .
>> The total Russian seaborne export is about 3 mbpd
The total amount on the water must be greater than the daily export volume, if shipping takes more than one day! Multiply 3mb times the number of days it takes, to get a plausible estimate. Then it becomes a sizeable chunk.
The Anthropocene condition: Evolving through social–ecological transformations
From using fire to cook food and manage vegetation to the technologies and institutions that support intensive agriculture, increasingly urbanized societies, and global supply chains stretching across the planet, human societies have evolved the social, cultural, and ecological capabilities to reshape the planet and to thrive in the process.
Yet, as Ellis demonstrates, portraying the Anthropocene as an environmental crisis ignores its most important message. When people work together, they can indeed change the world for the better. The urgency of current planetary environmental challenges does not mean that narratives of environmental crisis, limits, and collapse will be more effective in bringing people together to shape a better future.
Connecting to each other and nature
Ellis assesses the limits of the natural sciences to successfully forecast and manage the unprecedented transformative changes in societies, environments, and interactions that exemplify the Anthropocene condition. Rather, the capabilities that have always enabled human societies to survive and even thrive under challenging environmental conditions are social and cultural, built on the institutions, practices, and narratives that enable cooperative efforts to support the common good. And if there is to be a better future for the rest of nature, these social and cultural capabilities must be extended to life beyond human societies.
“Re-emphasizing the kinship relationships among all living beings—our common evolutionary ancestry—is a start, combined with new ways to connect people and nature, from remote sensing to webcams, to nature apps, to community conservation reserves, corridor networks, and ecotourism,” shares Ellis. “Aspirations for a better future must also make peace with the past through restoration of Indigenous and traditional sovereignty over lands and waters.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-anthropocene-condition-evolving-socialecological.html
Very interesting graphic to this study.
Here’s the actual study.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0255
The graphic seems to suggest that energy in the future will be abiotic. I found this discussion about abiotic in the :
This is a link to the image:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/asset/608a28d9-efe6-4397-b4d3-92ecf6b93e19/rstb20220255f01.gif
What exactly does that even mean? Abiotic? They beating the solar drum? Nuclear?
Farcical regardless
Things like changes in water temperatures? I don’t know. It is necessary to hypothesize some solution, no matter how remote the possibility.
The PR Team planted the abiotic theory and the MOREONS who are unable to think and reason .. like parrots repeat whatever they read…. believe this is a real thing.
Hahahahaha…. I love it when the PR Team makes up really crazy insane stuff and the MOREONS lap it up without questioning….
hahahhaha… Safe and Effective… right norm keith hahahahahahaha don’t let the facts intrude
Looking to prehistoric archeology it seems that man had to adapt a few times to changing conditions of food production. At the end it is important to find a system, a collection of best practises that can be passed on. Humans adapt culturally, while animals adapt genetically and dinosaurs become hens. Thinking at how fast the majority has run into the needle I suppose the later is the more successful concept.
In my more fanciful moments I wish we could just return to the “Ground Sloth cafeteria”.
Multi ton loads of meat moving at a walking pace.
I am shocked that those species lasted as long as they did given that even mainstream archeology admits we hominins have been in North America for at least 27,000 years.
Very difficult and risky for the original plains Indians to kill even Bison (weighing 2000 lbs) when they had no horses and no firearms. The Europeans changed that in a hurry.
I suppose it cold have been even worse when up aginst mammoths. Fossil skeletal remains of the hunters both in Europe and America suggest it was a hard life. Lots of broken bones.
Well to be fair….Neanderthals were basically wolves with flint knives. They seem to have simply closed with large prey and then wrestled it to ground and stabbed it to death. Those who doubt these things should watch a couple of bad “wrecks” in the sport of professional bull riding……you get 10 dudes who are willing….they can grab a 2000 lb bull and hold him down…….
Now add fur to hold onto and make it a woolly rhino, woolly mammoth, woolly horse……5 Neanderthals could perform the feat.
Cro magnons had more sense generally….stand back with spear throwers and flint sharded bone darts and pincushion the beast.
Maybe those footprints from 20,000 plus years ago in New Mexico were Neanderthals…..the kill sight in San Diego from 130,000 bp seems to be.
“What we will see is completely unprecedented in terms of magnitude of the wave of morbidity and unfortunately mortality…up to 30-40% in highly vaccinated countries.” -Former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation vaccine scientist
@GVDBossche
on VSRF LIVE.
https://twitter.com/VacSafety/status/1735741766257754346
30-40% is good enough to cause everyone else to self lockdown and starve
Oh please, not more Geert van der Crazy nonsense. You’re going to chase away any sane newcomers to this site.
he always does—can’t stand any kind of comparison test
suprised you havent noticed that before
What are your thoughts as to why the Rat Juice was designed to destroy the immune system of the recipients?
And why would we steam oil out of sand if there so much good stuff left in the conventional plays?
I don’t know if you’re talking to me or Norm here … nowhere did I say we’re in good shape vis-a-vis oil. And WTC 7, we agree. Walk on moon? No.
And what caused building 7 to collapse?
And why was there no plane wreckage or bodies at the Pentagon?
How did the lunar missions survive the Van Allen Belts?
Why did NASA send all documentation for the moon landings to the rubbish dump?
How did they get back and front lit ultra clear photos on the moon missions?
Why is the lunar module held together by tape?
Because we are all avatars in a simulacrum and our real selves are tossing dice in the 5th dimensional plane betting on our respective responses down here in the 3rd realm…..
I will let myself out………
I’m cool with that hypothesis. Do you reckon it’s a direct feed or through some form of implanted device? What if one’s transceiver malfunctions? A broken arrow? Loose cannon? Out of control? Must be eliminated?
Very well.
Onto the heap of hypotheses with it!
In the mean time:
(etc.)
I like that.
We want to get out of fossil fuels to stop the increase of CO2 in the air. CO2 does trap heat, but there is another way of looking at the temperature regulation of the planet. Another major factor almost completely overlooked is water. Water, in its various states (ice, liquid water and vapour), interacts with plant life and the atmosphere, driven by photosynthesis and sunlight. This interaction stabilizes weather and cools the climate. The destruction of ecosystems and living biomass all over the Earth is responsible for a lot of the temperature increases and extreme weather events we’re experiencing. Anyone who understands the role of plants and the water cycle in stabilizing our climate will intuitively know that this is the case, and understanding this is crucial for addressing the climate crisis. Global warming is not entirely caused by CO2. The other huge cause is the degradation of the cooling capacity of living ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems, soils, and plants stabilize weather and cool the planet, offering effective, tangible solutions that we can and must leverage to stabilize our climate. Once the damage to the biosphere is reversed, the planet regains its capacity to regulate its own temperature. Ecological restoration, done by everyone, everywhere, is our fastest way out of climate chaos.
So we can lengthen the transition out of fossil fuels to other energies for a while if we focus on regenerating the vitality of our damaged planet. The current solutions are not enough and largely transient. Only if we find a way to efficiently harvest Earth heat, fusion energy or maybe the more subtle possibilities of bioelectricity once we understand nature better. Let’s not forget that our own bodie’s movements run on tiny electric currents in things like muscles and nerves.
Somehow, humans (and prehumans) have gotten through bottlenecks before. The ice ages were not a huge problem, for example. While today’s approaches are not working, this does not preclude some approach, somewhere from working. There could be a big gap before a new approach is found, however.
Guess how many thousands of years the toxic cancer causing stuff in spent fuel remains active if released into the air and water….
Anyone wanna guess?
hahahahahahahaha this is a joke right? You don’t really believe any of this
We want to get out of fossil fuels to stop the increase of CO2 in the air.
If we do that we will die of starvation in about three weeks.
We seem to have lots of new re tards on OFW these days… fossil fuel haters
Meanwhile — Australia’s coal power stations will all close in 2038 – five years earlier than previously expected – and variable renewable energy capacity will need to triple by 2030 and increase sevenfold by 2050.
These are two key findings in the latest roadmap for Australia’s largest grid and electricity market, the National Electricity Market. The draft of a document known as 2024 Integrated System Plan, was released today by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). It lays out a comprehensive path for the next 20 years as we wean ourselves off coal and embrace renewables firmed by storage.
Coal will be all but gone by 2034 under Australia’s latest energy roadmap — https://theconversation.com/coal-will-be-all-but-gone-by-2034-under-australias-latest-energy-roadmap-219714
I think the early closure of coal plants will only happen if they break down beyond repair. The NSW government is already preparing an back door:
“On 24 November 2023, Energy Ministers agreed to consult on the detailed design of an opt-in Orderly Exit Management (OEM) Framework for the National Electricity Market. The OEM Framework will allow governments to temporarily seek an extension to the closing date of thermal generators to maintain energy reliability and security.
The Framework will act as a transition backup, while investment in clean technologies and transmission network continues as fast as possible. This will ensure the energy market transitions in an orderly manner.”
https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-and-climate-change-ministerial-council/working-groups/system-planning-working-group/orderly-exit-management-framework-consultation-paper-december-2023
I expect that there is an issue of how badly Australia’s coal supply goes downhill. It is my understanding that it is pretty low-grade, on average, right now. Power plants are build for a particular type of coal. It is not clear to me that they will actually “work” if the quality of coal continues to degrade. The closures may recognize the reality of the situation.
The problem is not the quality of Australia’s black coal. Rather, the mines where coal plants were built, are actually running out of coal which requires long distance transport of coal by rail (instead of just conveyor belts). Domestic coal has then to compete with export coal incl. slots on busy rail lines for coal trains,
“On 22 December 2022, the NSW Premier declared a coal market price emergency. On 23 December 2022, the Minister issued directions to power stations and coal suppliers. On 16 February 2023, the Minister issued new directions to additional coal suppliers…
5. What do the directions for coal mines require?
The directions for coal mines require coal suppliers to:
• sell coal to power stations at or below AU$125 per tonne, unless a higher price is approved
• accept offers to supply coal to a coal fired power station if made on reasonable terms
• reserve a proportion of future coal production to supply NSW coal fired power stations
• prioritise the delivery of coal to coal fired power stations with low stockpile levels. ”
https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-03/NSW_fact_sheet_coal_market_price_emergency_2023.pdf
The problem with Australia’s brown coal used in the State of Victoria is that these mines can be flooded under sustained heavy rainfall or start to burn in droughts, both events more likely under climate change conditions.
We’ll be long dead before then
has ANGELO sent OFW a lot of his friends?
hey newbies, do you guys know ANGELO BABLI?
The Greenies are cheering the end of fossil fuels and they don’t think things through. Without FF’s everything collapses because what exists today was made possible with fossil fuels.
psychowoketards are often green color.
What we should know with certainty is that however dire things might get in a rapid phase-out or loss of fossil fuels, it would be far FAR worse without cutting fossil fuel combustion by ~95% almost immediately.
The near-term impacts of extreme ecological overshoot and global heating are far more dire and immediate than losses of fossil fuels.
Ecological overshoot and global heating are leading to global ecological collapse scales that dwarf any collapse involved in pro-active degrowth with a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels… and to collapse time-frames that are much sooner.
There are challenges, to be sure — and we have probably waited too long to leave fossil fuels without taking losses. BUT — this piece by Gail T is over the top.
More importantly — where a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels would collapse many human systems, and reduce food supplies, and eliminate some pervasive materials — FAILURE to rapidly cut fossil fuels will lead to all those things AND, simultaneously, global collapse of essential ecosystems… and it leads to collapse SOONER! Imagine dealing with loss of fossil fuels, while also dealing with extreme across-the-board losses to food productivity and transportation, and extreme heatwaves, flooding, super-storms, disease, etc.
Rapid phase-out of fossil fuels might collapse some human systems, but it is also the only hope we have to avoid simultaneous loss of essential global ecosystems AND loss of fossil fuels. It would also buy time to facilitate the possibility of more sustainable modalities.
It’s time to stop entertaining folks who promote “do nothing” approaches based on their inaccurate views that “we just can’t do without fossil fuels.”
The sooner we get started with intelligent, compassionate degrowth, the better will be our chances of supporting as many people as possible as well as possible.
there is no global warming of significance, just natural cycles
multiple nobel-prize winning physicists (real scientists) say climate science is bunk
the only reason there is consensus among climate scientists is because they chase out and defund anyone who disagrees with anthropogenic global warming
only recently can they predict weather even 10 days out, and we’re supposed to believe they understand the long-term cycles of the entire world? yeah right.
remind me why there was the medieval warm period? too many cars on the roads at that time?
Nonsense
Hahahahahahahahaha… well then — maybe we can start with banning private jets … hahahahahahahahahaha
After all … It’s a f789ing EMERGENCY innit????
Hello Gail
Concerning point 7 on permaculture, which would be an extension of fossil fuels, I’ve been thinking a lot about this problem and looking for a “zero oil” solution. I think I may have almost succeeded, in imagining the “Permavillage” concept.
I invite you, if you have the time, to read about the concept at https://permavillage.info/what-is-a-permavillage.php and maybe let me know what you think.
The idea is that fossil fuels will be needed to build the Permavillage, but then it will have to function and last without oil.
Thanks!
Patrick
Permavillage
https://www.site-annonce.fr/sh-img/Panneau_Accueil2-1-1024×448.png
they better be very good at fishing.
That’s hilarious. Are we all going to turn into Smurfs?
>> I have come up with five conditions that I believe should be fulfilled if we want our permavillage to be sustainable, and if you think of any other please let me know.
>> Condition 3 — Stable Population
We will maintain a stable population, not exceeding the Dunbar number, namely 150 individuals
Nonsense. You will be killed off either directly or indirectly by people that reproduce more. The evolutionarily fit lineage is the one that grows and conquers its neighbors and takes the resources, future be damned. It’s so obvious, but you insist on singing Kumbaya.
truth!!
Nonsense.
Every country and ethnic group on the planet tend to disagree.
I don’t think the little utopian ‘eco village’ inhabitants will dodge out of conscription once the geopolitical scene turns seriously sketchy from depletion and affordability predicaments.
They will maintain a stable population of 150, a drone factory and low yield nukes (impossible I know).
A few other inconveniences, though some big ones already mentioned. how much land are you aiming to buy for your 150 people to be self sufficient, and I assume plenty left over for nature to also be self sufficient??
If sustainability is what you are after, then around 22,000 acres of habitable land might be enough for your clan. First question is how do you pay the taxes on owning this land before it all collap.ses?? Do you need to get off property income or sell something at farmers markets to raise these funds.
Selling something off property means transport, perhaps horse and buggy. It does of course rule out anything refrigerated, and lots of food stuffs are mandatory refrigeration by law.
Perhaps canned or jars of product, but again these rely upon fossil fuels, so rule them out.
Maybe raw fruit and vegetables, but how do you pack them into what type of containers, maybe wooden ones that you carved yourselves? Nope, the chisels are made with fossil fuels, so are nails..
The point is that it’s simply not possible anywhere in the developed world, and I suspect most of the undeveloped world to build and live on an area of land totally self sufficient without fossil fuel inputs, because the government will not leave you alone to do your own thing. They need and demand that you and your group contribute to the rest of society or they will take the land off you…
That is pretty much the problem.
I have tried to get food from a garden, but I have discovered pretty much every problem that can come along, especially if a person doesn’t try to use all of the modern conveniences.
I broke my wrist one of the earliest years I had a garden. That seriously limited what I could do in the garden. (I could type a blog post with one hand, however.)
We have had every kind of garden pest imaginable, including deer and rabbits. Even keeping a few flowers becomes a problem. The flowers get eaten by deer!
The trees we planted are not producing much fruit. The fig comes closest to being acceptable. But the peach trees really need to be sprayed regularly, and they need the right number of cooling hours, and no hard frost after they start to flower. The hazelnuts are probably not right for our climate.
Nobody takes the FE Challenge… cuz that means if the crop fails … or is eaten … the doomies can’t head to the supermarket to fill the gap
doomies and Tesla owners are kindred spirits…
Can we sign KOOMbaya?
Pingback: Ten Things that Change without Fossil Fuels – Olduvai.ca
While the end of the “carbon pulse” is going to bring our current civilisation to an end, it need not be as calamitous as you seem to suggest. Fossil fuels won’t suddenly disappear. There will be time for adjustment, albeit very painful and exacerbated by the impact of global warming (which may itself be exacerbated by using our vast coal resources to make liquid fuels). I don’t doubt there’ll be a collapse in the human population through starvation and war, but for wealthy countries the major changes will probably be the loss of the high degree of mass personal mobility the rich world has become used to, and the endless supply of consumer goods. Civilisations with low per-capita energy consumption have existed in the past … and will no doubt do so in the future, but with electricity. They will probably involve a new peasantry, and possibly even slavery! But the upper classes will still lead very nice lives, perhaps as they did in 18th century.
LMAO
What else can one say………?
And LMFAO at the catastrophist mindset that characterises most comments on this blog.
Doomaahs are gonna be Doomaahs!
Just a little change to the volume of oil available led to big price swings in the 1970s. So, any one think that with our hyperfinancialized world, any minute changes will not cause the financial system to crack and breakdown completely?
We were very close to that point in 2008. I was there to witness this crack. Then I was scared but now, no. I expected and accepted that.
If you decide not to educate yourself on the financial world, you will not understand the intricacy of how deep the interlink is between the real world (producing food, etc) and the fake world (financial world).
and I expect and accept that “they” will get back to that near collapse point again, and soon, and repeatedly.
most times “they” will do enough to avoid collapse.
when they don’t do enough?
que sera sera.
Let me be more blunt…
Hey Michael… f789 off and die
“will not understand the intricacy of how deep the interlink is between the real world (producing food, etc) and the fake world (financial world).”
They are certainly interlinked. Money allows a peasant growing coffee beans in Columbia to buy a movie made in LA and people in LA to buy a latte at Starbucks.
It’s too useful to be called fake.
Right Michael
I don’t understand it, but there is something deep in human psyche that attracts them to talking about doom. They seldom do anything about it.
While the system is complicated and subject to breakdowns, there are a lot of people working to correct problems as they arise.
Linear thinking. Extrapolation. 72 hours separating normal times and zombie world
could you spell out where the electricity is supposed to come from?
slaves on a treadmill maybe?
ya gotta love an optimist
you fail to grasp that civilised existence is interdependent
“There will be time for adjustment, albeit very painful and exacerbated by the impact of global warming (which may itself be exacerbated by using our vast coal resources to make liquid fuels)
I have talked about this before. It turns out that 3 MWh of solar electricity and a ton of coal will make 16 MWh of syngas which can be turned into diesel that would cost about $30/bbl. Beats the socks off making hydrogen with platinum electrolysis cells.
The problems we are facing are physical ones. Engineers can solve such problems, though unlimited population growth is one they can’t.
Excellent summation in my view. I had never framed this whole rhetoric of “phasing out fossil fuels” that is now everywhere with such assumed urgency as being a subterfuge to maintain the illusion of control as these fuels inevitably go away for supply/economic reasons. Very interesting idea.
Something that immediately comes to mind for me in the absence of fossil fuels is, how many nuclear meltdowns ala Fukushima are we apt to be faced with in the absence of fossil fuels and the economy they provide? All of the nuclear installments, ultimately? I doubt we will have the foresight to shut them in proactively.
The recent “stage play pandemic” was a brilliant Machiavellian subterfuge to prevent a global banking implosion (triggered by our initial global descent down the energy curve……almost to the year it had been predicted) and to game gullible populations into giving up what little remained of their freedoms.
It was wildly successful
I will leave Fast Eddy to pontificate about hundreds of nuke reactor meltdowns……he’s done the research……it will probably be utter disastrous…..which is why Canada is now announcing broadscale attempts to build more reactors
I am sure Justin’s demonic handlers consulted this realities demiurge before he got the idea……
Good to know you are still out there Jon…..
Phasing out is code for — we’re running out of affordable energy but we can’t say that or the mob will panic…
Predictive programming:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IHVIG0_-6JA
I was wondering how long this was going to take.
We can only hope,…….because it is long overdue…….it is necessary…….and believe it or not
It beats the alternative.
It is good Gail and I agree. Much can be said about the subject.
I proposed in the Swedish last election that my community Storfors (population 4 000) is isolated from the rest of the world. The purpose is to see how they will prosper and if anyone will survive. The government expropriates all properties and gives a sum to all inhabitants and it costs about 2 billion USD. A few might stay. Adventurers from all over the world are invited. Of course there was very little interest in the proposal, but I have not given up seeing it as very interesting. Storfors could for various reasons be the best place in the country for this.
In my estimate, the prosperity in the west now drops 2 percent per year and in 20 years it will increase to 4 percent. In the middle of the century the population in Sweden and some other countries could disappear in famine and disease and maybe suicide. So the decline will be exponential, similar to the historical growth. But the decline will be much faster.
There is no bottom in the decline, except what all our rester offers. I therefore call it a “restkultur”. The inhabitants in New Storfors can bring with them all they might need, plants, animals, tools, clothes etc. Basically everything is controlled by physics and what is available in the ground. As we die off, country after country will be isolated.
It could even be that it is dangerous to travel longer than an hour´s walk, as you are not recognized and can be seen as an intruder and an enemy. Even the intelligens will drop faster and the restkultur probably gives no balance. All will die off.
Last para, not necessarily. Read ‘The Dawn of Everything’.
“I proposed in the Swedish last election that my community Storfors (population 4 000) is isolated from the rest of the world. The purpose is to see how they will prosper and if anyone will survive.”
They won’t like it. No smart phones, no detergents, no washing machines, no refrigerators, no roofing shingles, not even door hinges.
And clothes. The amount of human labor that used to go into spinning and weaving is amazing.
4000 people is far, far too few to live at what current people would consider comfortable.
The EU might be about the smallest population that could sustain the current level of technology.
Nanotechnology *might* reduce the size of a sustainable population.
Roofing shingles and door hinges are no problem. It will last for maybe 50 years. The community has two hydro power plants, but electricity will probably not be used. The clothing we have will last for many years and in this case people will bring much with them and it might last for 50 years.
Isolation can be expected as a lack of natural resources. The world trade has peaked and it will continue etc. But of course, it is unlikely that 4 000 people will be fully isolated. The forced isolation is needed to make the experiment realistic. If trade with neighbouring areas was allowed, the experiment would have a limited value.
In the experiment, a few things give a profit and people will handle their basic living. The size of the restkultur is not important for the standard of living. The complexity will be very low and it can probably be 1/10 as many. Of course, the people might not survive. If not, they are free to leave. But if you leave, you have to have a good reason to return.
It is serious and no game. The people living in the area make their own laws. Storfors is low populated and is isolated by wooden areas, but some kind of “police” have to control the border and the people who are in the area.
is this just a proposal or a functioning plan?
i would like to meet the planner
This is just my idea. I wrote 52 pages about it more the a year ago and sent it to all households in Storfors. I hade seat in the city council, but the proposal was not very popular and I lost the seat, which was not unexpected.
“Roofing shingles ”
I helped my parents build a house 60 years ago. It is on its third roof.
“The clothing we have will last for many years and in this case people will bring much with them and it might last for 50 years.”
Well, it sure is going to be out of style, not to mention patched till they look like bums. Seriously, I think you underestimate the difficulty of clothing people, especially in a northern climate.
“But of course, it is unlikely that 4 000 people will be fully isolated”
Maybe 30 years ago there was an experiment in the UK where they set up a pre iron age (I think) village and populated it with volunteers. The only modern element was birth control. As I recall, the villages were mostly bored. The lack of children made it unrealistic. If someone can locate a pointer to this, please post it.
Living in the past 1978
https://youtu.be/2e7ZLWz3UMw?feature=shared
hkeithhenson, in Sweden many houses used to have roof of clay tiles, which in the 70s was replaced by concrete tiles, which last very long, easily more than 100 years. Some use corrugated steel, which of course also lasts long. In Storfors there are no houses with roofing shingels and of course it quickly gets bad, as you say.
Footwear is probably more difficult than clothing. It is often wet and you mainly walk. Rubber boots do not last long. I’m no expert in this field, but there must be solutions. Older techniques and tools and machines might be used.
The inhabitants of New Storfors are likely to have a relatively high intelligence, a more active age, a high interest and will easily find useful things to take with them. For example, there are very few workhorses and horse driven machines, but not for a few thousand people. Many things were not allowed in the stone age experiment. Here it is the opposite. But of course you can’t bring a truck with 30 tons of diesel with you.
If you look at your household cost, it will be very low .Most of it will be zero, no rent, no electricity, no cars, no phone, no computer, no taxes etc. When the standard of living has dropped, people will realize this and leave society. The ever increasing fixed cost for the remaining will be even higher and suddenly everything will collapse. And the government can not do much about it. This will come anyway, for sure.
Thanks for finding this. In my personal time line this was after founding the L5 Society and before the Moon Treaty.
“concrete tiles, which last very long, easily more than 100 years. ”
How do you prevent freeze cycles that crack the concrete?
“Rubber boots do not last long. I’m no expert in this field, but there must be solutions. Older techniques and tools and machines might be used. ”
The skills to make leather boots in small numbers have been lost. The people might get by wrapping their feet in rags and tying something on for a sole.
“no rent, no electricity, no cars, no phone, no computer, no taxes etc. ”
No economy, no food, no heat. Be interesting to see how you get the government to give up taxes.
“This will come anyway, for sure. ”
I don’t think anyone can predict the future, I don’t try. But if this did come about, it would be a limited and miserable existence.
hkeithhenson, Concrete roof tiles are used everywhere and they never crack. The old reddish stuff from baked clay is not that strong. The Swedish manufacturer Benders says that “Benders concrete tiles last very long, normal life length is calculated to be more than 100 years.”.
https://www.benders.se/support/vanliga-fragor/
Taxes are not needed because there are no daycare, no school, no care for elderly, no fire department etc. Of course, If they survive, they can improve. I can’t predict the future either.
My last word was a little excessive. The earth could be destroyed with some object from space tomorrow and a lot of other things could happen. But physics and natural resources control us more than you can believe. In general people are mythomaniacs and wishful thinkers.
For about 15 years I have thought something like this will come. Talks about sustainability are against nature and just stupid.
In the film it says it was the first reality TV program. This could also be reality TV. You can bet people will look at it. The income might exceed the government expropriation cost 2 billion USD.
I can’t post this further down
“But physics and natural resources control us more than you can believe.”
I am an engineer, so physics and natural resources are something I understand. I am curious as to your background?
I fully agree with Gail that with no advances in technology we are in a world of hurt.
While predicting the future in any detail is between difficult and impossible, technical advances seem very likely. Whether they will get us out of the jam of running out of FF is another question.
I´m also an engineer and my father was one. I grew up in Karlskoga and maybe 80 percent of the kids at my school also had a father who was an engineer, at the big military company in town. He worked there for about 40 years and it was common at that time. And I think I also agree with Gail.
Sure, technology will continue to improve. But various costs are larger and therefore the standard of living decreases. The cost of extracting almost all natural resources peaked at around 2000. Why did the costs peak at one time? Maybe because we replace them without thinking about it and they are used in the extraction of everything. The intelligence for young adults peaked in the 90s. Why? Partly, because of information technology, but it also goes back fundamentally on our use of natural resources. Noone really knows what it is. The living expectancy peaked in the US in 2014 and in Sweden it will peak at any time. It also depends much on the use of natural resources. The human sperm count peaked I believe in the 90s. It depends on various substances we get in contact with, and also on our use of natural resources. Large costs increases come from higher fixed costs within all kinds of investments individuals and companies have to do. These are almost within everything.
These costs increase exponentially and therefore the standard of living will follow exponentially. So you don’t have to wait very long until the drop gets big. And as I mentioned, people in general are mythomaniacs and wishful thinkers.
“I´m also an engineer”
You are probably up on the astonishing developments in AI over the last year. The general consensus is that AI has improved the productivity of engineers by about 3 times, maybe more.
The other part of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity is nanotechnology.
I think they are a little optimistic about what can be done with nanotechnology, but one recent article on it mentioned replacing all the infrastructure and housing in the US in a week.
I can see solar collectors that grow like kudzu vines and growing houses out of diamond that suck down the CO2.
The biggest name in the Singularity prediction world is Ray Kurzweil. He was predicting the takeoff point in the mid 2040s. 16 years ago I wrote am AI/Nanotech story that was set in this time, https://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson1.html
Since the AI developments over the last year Ray has moved up his singularity estimate to 2030.
This is an interview with a Swedish friend of mine, Anders Sandberg.
https://www.ft.com/content/14123e16-25ab-45f1-912d-34ffcf0c8177
Ray Kurzweil is obviously innsane.
“Ray Kurzweil is obviously innsane.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
Ray is a brilliant engineer. Ever used an OCR? An electronic keyboard? Both are his original work.
sure brilliant engineer.
innsane otherwise.
I think they are a little optimistic about what can be done with nanotechnology, but one recent article on it mentioned replacing all the infrastructure and housing in the US in a week.
Here we go again.
Until around the year 2000 the cost to extract natural resources got lower and lower. After that it changed direction and got more expensive. At around the same time it was a peak in the intelligence of young adults. Under the 1900s they got smarter and after that the intelligence dropped about as fast. Almost no mythomaniac and wishful thinker has plans to make the extraction cheaper and the kids smarter. They have given up and continue to harass people with climate change, electric cars, solar energy, space travel, AI, nanotechnologie etc.
Does the more expensive natural resources have anything to do with the lower intelligence? For anyone it can be seen as strange that people get dumb because fossil fuel goes up in price. Where is the logic? But it is really natural. There is a relation between everything and the king is the natural resources. Of course, it is a very complex interaction and we don’t understand it. Also human life gets shorter and she can’t reproduce herself. All peaks are here at about the same time. All is controlled by the natural resources.
Therefore the mythomanics and wishful thinkers will pull the short straw. It will collapse and little can be done about it. Sweden will collapse in the middle of the century and the US will follow. If we hypotically had delayed the extraction of natural resources, everything else would have been delayed, of course.
“Sweden will collapse”
There you go being certain about the future.
Some of your concerns make little sense. Intelligence peaking for example. It’s a hard thing to measure accurately and the decline is barely significant. In a world full of smart AIs does this matter? Advances are driven by the extreme end of the curve and the absolute numbers of smart people have gone up with the population.
“The living expectancy peaked”
Biological technology is not yet up to the task of extending life. But there is a huge effort being put into this area.
Speaking of running out of natural resources, what is the strongest material we don’t know how to make? Diamond. I worry that when we do start making it out of CO2, the problem will be too little in the atmosphere.
I have little doubt that the future will have plenty of problems. But I also expect there will be an army of engineers working to solve the problems. That’s what we do.
keith—diamond may be the ”strongest” material—but i suggest that depends how you choose to use it, and what parameters define strength
say you had access to ”unlimited” diamond as a resource
what would happen if you made railway tracks with it?
this isnt a sarcastic question—i dont know
It is not strange to me that a lower productivity within the natural resources leads to the youngsters getting dumber, declining life expectancy and the same in the sperm count. Things interact a lot more than you can read about. You have to look at the big picture. No one can of course explain it and no one has even tried. Because they are mythomaniacs. And so it has been for thousands of years.
Good post! We will be linking to this particularly great post on our site. Keep up the great writing
Let’s check out the Black Beast – this is his ‘Prehistoric Look’
https://i.postimg.cc/V5rBdjqt/H1.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/9z6PTrbn/H2.jpg
We seem to have a lot of newbies on OFW today…. Welcome…
sure, ANGELO BABLI leaves and all of a sudden these newbies show up.
conspearacy theeory or what?
Babli has sent his retarded MOREON mates to try to overwhelm OFW with permie and KOOMbaya…
F. Fail
It’s a full-frontal assault by the Delusitanis!
Man the barricades, and don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes!
As I said previously, ‘Angelo’ and ‘Babli’ is a very strange combination of Italian name + surname.
Angelo is a typical Italian name.
Babli is, instead, a distortion of the typical Italian surname Balbi, which is, by the way, the plural noun of balbo (meaning in Italian ‘stutterer’).
But writing Babli instead of Balbi is very strange, because it is like writing the typical English surname Wilson, like that: Wilnso.
If he were here, I would like to kindly ask him the origin of his strange surname, only because he decided to share it with us, without privacy, otherwise, of course, I would not ask him private questions.
https://dizionari.repubblica.it/Italiano/B/balbo.html
I thought it meant The Re-Tarded One in Kurdish….
yes i was thinking somebodys been on a recruitment drive
Since we last spoke…
1. A mate has a small house painting business in Queenstown – he had 3 big jobs lined up from November onwards… all of cancelled… citing tightening their budgets… so will put off the jobs…
2. Another mate has a friend who runs a small building company employing 9 people — multiple home builds have been cancelled due to spiralling build costs… and he has nothing else in the pipeline for the new year – he will be laying people off.
3. The office of one of the national building companies had 40 houses contracted in the area — 28 have cancelled. Again related to build costs.
4. My neighbour owns landscaping company – he was telling me that he has raised wages 20% in the past year to retain people… so far he has gotten away with passing on the costs to clients… so far….
5. I am hearing that shops and restaurants are quieter than usual for this time of year.
Queenstown has been mostly insulated from the downturn because it is a place of affluence… but it appears that the rot that is spreading throughout the world… has come to town.
Year of the Rabbit has just under two months to go…
Regarding your second point, my go to builder was supposed to do some work on my house in November. Instead he came round and explained that he was putting off the work until February because an OnlyFans girl now has him as her builder. Apparently, she’d just bought her 23rd house in cash from all the money men have been sending her and he gets to do all maintenance and modifications on her properties. How can I compete with a customer like that?
I bet she doesn’t pay the builder in cash….
I find it hard to believe she has been able to buy 23 houses with cash from OF….
I don’t think the bank would lend based on income from that… and she’d have to be generating huge $$$ which is unlikely
Builder says someone sent her a cuddly toy stuffed with cash and she has fans all over the world sending $50 a click, but you are probably right and someone’s exaggerating. Andrew Tate doubtless got that much money, but he had lots of girls working for him.
Prostitutes and strippers tend to be bullshitters…
Very informative and helpful as usual. Chris Smaje [small farm future], for instance, has already suggested ways to live in a decentralized world. Art Burman’s comment that in the late 1940s to early 1950s, USA produced 75% of the world’s oil indicates to me that the US [and Canadian] population will not share out resources to the have nots of this world – “It is ours and you are not getting any!” North Americans as a whole seem to be all for ‘independence’ and sod the others = I am more important which led to the truck protests among others. We really need to get back to communities as a whole protecting each other.
the “American Dream” was solely and exclusively due to being the swing producer of oil
that is no longer the case
hence the American Dream is over
i am constantly amazed that so few understand that
There are other bright people who may understand these kind of issues but there is no one who can distill these systemic highly complex interrelated issues like Gail. No One explains these things with simple examples like her. No one. That is her genius. This post was especially useful for her examples of the systemic issues involved. The world is lucky to have this special woman always thinking and pounding away on her keyboard.
There are other bright people who may understand these kind of issues …….
I have given up hope on IYIs (Intellectual Yet Idiots).. COVID, Climate Change, DEI, EVs, Renewables,
Thanks for the compliment!
“pounding away on her keyboard.”
My only objection is that Gail does not delve into the technical solutions that would get us out of the mess.
Uploaded and living in a simulation, we might have 26 million times the current population.
keith
i wish you would put a smiley face on the end of your dafter comments
Thanks for another great article Gail. The real problem is we have over 8 billion people on the planet now and a much depleted resource base for any kind of future after fossil fuels.
The huge population can’t just go to the country to start subsistence farming as oil production declines rapidly, there is nowhere for the people to live, after the existing stock of houses have 6-8 people each. There will not be the resources to build new housing for the rest, nor the fuel to heat anything newly built, nor any appliances coming from ‘elsewhere’, as if by magic like it does now.
By the time the collapse is over, will there be any animals left alive to farm with, or will they have all been consumed by the hordes trying to survive? My suspicion is that when the big collapse happens, everything will be much worse and faster than everyone expects, including us doomers and the preppers.
I’m leaning more and more to the attitude of the determinists that what will be will be, with zero religious connotations, while increasingly believing Fast Eddy is correct in that everything is a lie to quell the population, and Davidinabillionyears attitude of living large while we still can..
Received a call earlier from our property agent that the buyer who signed on the dotted line and was meant to go unconditional with a deposit next week…. is getting cold feet.
Which kinda might be a good thing … I was feeling anxious about rushing for the exits by the end of January as per the agreed close date… and landing in an unfamiliar city just prior to the end of the year of the rabbit…
I’d prefer to die on the Goat Ranch… + it’s not easy to bring the guns and ammo to Aussie so there would be no fun and games wandering the streets blowing away the dying zombie vaxxers ….
Perhaps the simulation does not want FE to go to The Big City?
In other news https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/one-killed-gibbston-valley-crash I am told this involved a drunk driver who was weaving all over the road … hopefully he is the one who is dead… if not I volunteer to torture him to death.
I was saying to M Fast… this is kinda like obese people … and she said how’s that…
I said … they know that stuffing their faces with KFC crisps and cola… is why they are obese and why their health is f789ed… but they cannot stop themselves…
And with drunk driving … similarly … they know they become a menace … that they endanger others… yet they just cannot stop themselves… they have to get behind the wheel.
I reckon if you kill someone while drunk driving – you deserve to be hung.
M Fast smirked… Hoolio smirked… they probably agree — surely ya’ll agree – but nobody wants to admit it …
I am tired of the excuses for everything … I am tired of people like Crispy Miller being upset when Fast expresses SCHAD for the vax deaths… Crispy says they were mass formationed by bbccnn… oh ya? Well so were those to gassed the JOOS.
I don’t give a f789 why they did what they did… I don’t give a f789 if someone says the vaxxed who wish me dead are misguided… end of the day if bbccnn said Kill the Unvaxxed — these f789ing running dog c789suckers would gleefully and delightedly … stone me to death … burn me at the stake….
No excuses. Dangerous MOREONS are Dangerous MOREONS… they need to die… all of them…. so that I can enjoy my starvation – or my super fent — in peace and quiet without having to blow their heads off as they stream through the gate looking to blame me for their collapsing health
the politicians prime function is to stay in office
therefore he must lie to do so—no choice
none can stand up and say it like it is–political suicide—they know what you and i know—they are just as terrified.
Nice article, Gail!
There is a way to work with “permaculture” because our ancesters were able to do it.
Our ancestors were not able to provide large cities, though, because the oxes that carried the goods needed too much fodder. Not even cities at a river or stream like Vienna could be provided – Rome was a very rare exception!
Gather all biomass available and compost it. Add manure, best from bovines. Mix nettles with water, let it ferment some weeks and use this “nettle tea” to enhance compost and spray it over leaves to fight bugs.
If you are in a city with no gardens you can grow herbs in your window and raise some rabbits perhaps. It takes some time to develop knowledge.
Our modern seeds and breeds are adapted to the use with fossile fuels. Mark strong plants, that develop well in your area with a small thread in summer and let it develop seeds in autuum. Like this, over some years you will generate regionally adapted seeds.
Dont buy hybrids, buy biological seeds. Only from these you can grow new seeds.
This is how to make a fence with spruce only. You need an iron bar to dig the holes more easily. This fence is fine for 15-20 years. The trick is to heat the beads and to turn them while winding in eights between the stems. This fence works for cattle.
https://youtu.be/fk7WyWlOo20?si=b9I330TxHWT48cEV
Here is another way with larger logs, you have to scroll, they talk a lot. This version keeps 10-15 years. This version has the advantage, that it can be easily dismantled in autuum and set up again in spring, if avalanches are to be awaited. These kind of fences were set up in May, before the cattle comes out. The only tool needed is a hatchet and some wedges. In the garage he shows an alternative way to whittle the splinter to a point.
https://youtu.be/6jaqwm9m1PQ?si=gCAhUBM_peFqjahB
And the spent fuel ponds?
There are a lot of techniques available, but most people today don’t know them.
Also, special techniques are needed depending on the area. Our area has a lot of deer. They would jump over short fences. We also have rabbits, rats, raccoons, and foxes. They would probably come through the suggested fence. This is in a suburban area, with an adjacent forested area.
We also need bird netting, to keep birds away from fruit crops.
What about hunger neighbours?
“raise some rabbits perhaps. It takes some time to develop knowledge.”
No kidding. I have raised and butchered out perhaps 1000 rabbits.
Heinberg, Kunstler, Greer, et al have been preaching peak oil for 30 years and so far it has only grown more abundant and cheap. So much so it doesn’t come close to keeping up with inflation. New field discoveries pop up on the routine. There is so much oil that pump prices are back in the $2 range in some states. I like reading your articles but more and more it seems obvious to me that oil is abiogenic/abiotic, that there is FAR too much of the stuff to be attributed to ancient fossils. That it is generated in/from the mantle seems to make a lot more sense, and easily explains why it never draws down. Some fields, in fact, continue to rise in spite of the giant straws we put in.
The price of oil is really set by affordability, more than it is set by the cost of extraction. If the price of oil rises, the price of food tends to rise because oil is heavily used in raising crops and in transporting food. If prices rise, politicians will do whatever they can (raising interest rates, for example) to get the price back down.
One of the details is that diesel supply is particularly short. Diesel is used for a lot of industrial and commercial applications, including powering semi-trailer trucks and huge machines used in farming, construction, and road building. Diesel is also used to power ocean-going ships. It is the heavier oil that is used to produce diesel; US oil from shale formations doesn’t produce much diesel.
Supply and demand for oil works differently than what most people imagine.
“US oil from shale formations doesn’t produce much diesel.”
Coal and PV makes all the diesel you could ask for. Near as I can see nobody has previously proposed using that combination.
Thank you Gail, and everyone who’s commented. For the record, I follow peakoilbarrel.com and similar sites and have read several books from the stated authors. They foresaw doomsday scenarios as far back as the 1990s, and some e.g. Kunstler won’t even talk about it anymore. The fact is, the price of oil has only declined in the face of growing abundance. Most vehicles sold today are <20 mpg SUVs and p/u trucks, and we're in a full blown muscle car renaissance (with 3x the hp of their '70s predecessors). Our cities are full of bike lanes and alt-mode infra that nobody uses (for fear of their life, and said cheap gas). Nobody uses transit minus the indigent, or lifts a finger to be "one less car". So please explain, again, how everything you so eloquently explain has any bearing on our lives at hand? Nothing you write compels me to believe that we are on the eve of resource scarcity, and that we are in for some kind of meltdown. I'll believe it when I see it, and I ain't seein' it.
We are dealing with a very interconnected system. It seems like it is the financial system that is on the verge of a melt down, even though it is ultimately the energy system that is causing it. There is way too much debt, in an attempt to keep the economic system operating as it should. Many people are convinced that stock markets can only rise. But this isn’t the case.
Another part of the economy that is close to melt down is the relationship between the different political parties. The parties should be able to compromise and reach solutions. But there is way too much divisiveness. This is another sign of not enough energy.
International relations are at a very low level, as well. Low energy leads to fighting over not enough.
We know that children tend to be very poorly behaved when they are hungry. When economies are short of energy, the are very poorly behaved. We might look for other symptoms that children are not getting enough, but it is the poor behavior that stands out.
I don’t know, Gail. Species overshoot (we are a failed species after all) easily explains these predicaments. I love reading Erik Michaels’s stuff as well, as he delves into it more from this angle. Your piece is about fossil fuels scarcity when in fact these disasters are easily explainable through over population, climate catastrophe, a 6th extinction event and environmental collapse. None of these care about how much oil is in the ground (er, mantle that is) which shows no signs of abating.
The cheaper the oil, the more suffering our towns, cities and all life on earth faces with the onslaught of auto dependency. For example, when gas is this cheap, those in the advocacy community are laughed at when trying to get people out of cars or to drive less — even for the shortest of trips. Nobody cares about climate change (at least from the perspective of actually trying to do anything about it) and that alone will never bring a 1973 redux. So again, while your posts are intriguing and thought provoking, boots on the ground only sees oil supply going from more to even more; supply over-meeting demand with nary a glitch. Cheers.
Why would anyone care about cli.mate change? It has been happening since the beginning of time … it’s like caring about the wind blowing… or the waves lapping at the shore… barely worth mentioning
Did I mention that Greenland was once… green?
“This is another sign of not enough energy. ”
For something like 70,000 years humans lived in tribal groups that filled the landscape. When there would be a weather upset and starvation was at hand it was better by almost 40% to go to war as opposed to starving in place. Note that this is genes, not the warriors, half of whom were typically killed along with their male children. But the genes also existed as copies in their female children who were incorporated into the winning tribe.
On of the first thing that happens as a tribe anticipates hard times is the rise of xenophobic memes. Sound familiar? Think about the poor economic prospects of the places where the crazy such as QAnon is concentrated.
People with poor prospects support xenophobic memes, and when you think about it, that’s the focus of one of the political parties. How to get people to have a positive outlook on their lives is something I don’t know how to do.
keith
we didnt ”fill the landscape”
thats the whole point—-but now we do
”fill the landscape”
Unless you are going to argue that there were no famines in the past, we certainly did fill the landscape, over filled it to where a glitch in the weather or a volcanic eruption would starve a substantial fraction of the population.
Over population is nothing new.
“There is way too much debt, ”
The debt can be repudiated or paid off at 5 cents on the dollar. Those who loaned the money knew they were taking a risk.
Why would anyone care about cli.mate change?
Low IQ people who don’t understand thermodynamics care about climate change.
Professional liars pretend to care about it.
Intelligent people don’t care because there is absolutely nothing we can do about it without committing collective suicide.
You need to get your eyes checked.
Point out specifically what it is I’m not seeing and I’ll gladly provide citations.
How about we start with you explaining why we steam oil out of sand. If there is so much easy oil left?
I never said anything about “easy oil”. Only that it’s abundant and cheap. Spoiler alert: it is, with massive EROI regardless how it’s obtained. How’s about you provide a citation showing declining extraction rates leading to tighter supplies leading to higher pump prices leading to objective impacts on the built environment? Why was it $1.25/gal 30 years ago and only $2~ today? As the Brits so often say in a weather assessment, “look out the f’in window”. lol
Price is not a good measure of the scarcity of oil. It is only a measure of what people can afford to pay for very basic goods, including food and transportation. If interest rates go up, the price of oil tends to go down–that is a big part of what is holding the price of oil down now.
Also, the US$ is relatively high now relative to a lot of currencies. Oil is more affordable now in the US than it is in a lot of other places.
Cheap and Easy are the same thing …
Any idea why we steam oil out of sand? Help me out
“oil is heavily used in raising crops and in transporting food.”
Something like 30 or 40 year ago John Deere did a study about the energy involved in food. At that time the largest energy input to food happened in the kitchen.
on that basis keith—we can stop using farm machines, and relying on cooks
or do we keep using farm machines and eat raw food?
i am confused—as usual
“as usual”
Just citing a long ago study on where energy is used in food growing, transport, and cooking. I suppose it is not that surprising that most of the energy use was in home cooking.
Cooking in bulk, such as baking bread is more efficient. If we want hot food, there are microwave ovens.
microwave ovens—in a collapsed society
keith—i freely admit to being confused, thank you for supporting me
Can you tell me where you buy your calculators?
I need one that smart.
“in a collapsed society”
How can you be certain?
keith
i reply to you because half the time i think youre trying to wind me up
but you remain civilised in the doing of it. so i go along with the joke.
at least i hope for your sake that microwave ovens in a collapsed society is a joke
“collapsed society”
You are always stating this as if it were certain. Society might well collapse, it has in the past, but the situation is different each time and it could be that society moves on to a different level this time.
AIs are something new.
lightbulbs are new too
but you can’t eat lightbulbs
and Keith–do yourself a favour—-
an AI is not a physical entity
as in AI’s ”are” something new
AI ”is” (perhaps) something new…it is (perhaps) a new way of utlising electic/electronic signals.
those signals then suggest-initiate a course of action
they cannot of themselves carry out that course of action without mechanical third party input or intervention.
You are always stating this as if it were certain. Society might well collapse, it has in the past, but the situation is different each time
The situation is the same each time.
Abiotic oil, invented by Russians that couldn’t explain where the oil was coming from in one trap, until they eventually discovered it was leaking up from a trap below.
There might even be a bit of truth in abiotic oil, coming from the mantle, but it isn’t refilling oil fields that are depleted, at least not at a rate noticeable by the geologists, but perhaps in another 10-15 million years some more will be available in these old traps.
Assuming abiotic oil is true doesn’t help the current situation over the next 100 years, nor 20,000 years, it will take millions of years to replenish all the depleted fields.
Also assuming abiotic oil was fast enough to replenish old oil fields, then it begs the question of why the oceans have just water in them and not a layer of many metres of oil on top?
Simple logic destroys the argument of abiotic oil on any timescale to be useful. I wish people would think before making such suggestions or have these beliefs.
The oil is not replenishing … it’s just leaking from one field into another…
Oil Discoveries are at record lows https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
According to Rystad, the current resource replacement ratio for conventional resources is only 16 percent. Only 1 barrel out of every 6 consumed is being replaced with new resources
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
Conventional Oil Sources peaked in 2008 and the Shale binge has now spoiled US reserves, top investor warns Financial Times.
Preface. Conventional crude oil production may have already peaked in 2008 at 69.5million barrels per day (mb/d) according to Europe’s International Energy Agency (IEA 2018 p45). The U.S. Energy Information Agency shows global peak crude oil production at a later date in 2018 at 82.9mb/d (EIA 2020) because they included tight oil, oil sands, and deep-sea oil. Though it will take several years of lower oil production to be sure the peak occurred. Regardless, world production has been on a plateau since 2005.
What’s saved the world from oil decline was unconventional tight “fracked” oil, which accounted for 63% of total U.S. crude oil production in 2019 and 83% of global oil growth from 2009 to 2019. So it’s a big deal if we’ve reached the peak of fracked oil, because that is also the peak of both conventional and unconventional oil and the decline of all oil in the future.
Some key points from this Financial Times article: https://energyskeptic.com/2021/the-end-of-fracked-shale-oil/
If there is so much easy oil left, then why are we drilling beneath the ocean, blasting and sucking out the dregs of old wells and steaming oil out of sand?
Production has risen to new records absolutely, as it must to fuel a growth-dependent economy. The amount of fuels has not. And the profit on that production has been steadily shrinking along with the supply. If you have a milkshake that is 80% gone before you really start sucking hard on it, it is going to seem like there is more milkshake than ever. For a certain duration. Then you will discover it was an illusion.
We have reached peak conventional oil already, and production has only been maintained with fracking. But the nature of fracking – the way the wells produce – suggests it may peak soon. Listen to Arthur Berman:
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/101-art-berman
Anybody who believes in aboitic oil should get a BRAIN CAT SCAN .
I have had the MOREONS insist that the resources of the planet are not finite…
But then I have had MOREONS insist that we have been to the moon and that the Rat Juice is safe and effective… that vax injuries are Long Covid…
Most believe that India landed that contraption on the moon…
Nothing surprises me anymore… there is nothing too absurd… if the TEEv says so… it is so…
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
— Sir Joshua Reynolds
“Most people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.”
— Bertrand Russell
“Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Yes Ravi,
None other than Jean Laherrere, co-inspirator of the “Peak Oil movement” with the late Colin Campbell, promptly debunked some “abiotic oil” advocate’s wobbly CSSR outdated, irrelevant data, about 20 years ago. It was published on the late Mike Ruppert’s FTW website.
Basically, oil from source rock can travel very far underground, given the proper pressure and way, giving the impression that it comes from nowhere (or the Earth’s mantle, take a guess).
improved technology in extracting oil does not mean there is more and increasinjg AMOUNTS of oil.
it just looks that way in the immediate short term–it fools the gullible.
oil thats being extracted now in 5 miles down—under the sea or whatever
Drake’s well in 1859 was about 80ft down
That fact alone should explain where we are right now
the equivalent of the town drunk sucking beer out of a bar towel.
Forget about the “climate” thing. That’s just a pseudo-scientific distraction to externalize our focus. Like “covid” in a parallel adjacent fear-addiction control-freak manipulation. So much panic-porn-mongered PTSD to keep us off balance, and then the identity obsessions, and the victim-myths, and the money-snits, and whatever…
See https://www.theautomaticearth.com
for an ongoing general overview, and
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/the-great-taking-film-premiere/great-taking-film-premiere-event/
for some deep skinny on “financialization.” Increasingly, more and more things that we thought we knew about are becoming things we don’t want to accept much less surrender-to as now-self-evident fact, but we have a deadly fascination with all these newly-seen snakes in the grass.
I didn’t want to get into the ideas the central banks have for trying to make the banking system work if it becomes evident that the current system can no longer work. Somehow, an inadequate supply of goods and services needs to be allocated among the population.
To make the allocation system work, the internet and grid electricity probably need to work. At best, it will work while electricity supplies are adequate.
@ Alex C
I watched/listened to this video a few days ago and was going to post it. Good pick up. David Rogers Webb has released this transcript as a free public PDF. As I recall, he mentions that the DTCC is a global clearing house for all stock trades and most Americans, and I assume the rest of the world, merely own claims on stock shares and bonds unless you have the stock share or bond ownership title/certificate in your possession. So when the trillions in derivatives blow up, and the banks go bust, and the counterparties are vaporized, the pensions, stocks and other financial instruments will be just as hypothecated as all the gold people thought they had in that unallocated ETF fund, or even if you have it vaulted in an “allocated account,” you will never see it. And you will be unable to recover your financial claims as the laws have been already written to protect these pseudoagencies. You are at the end of the line as a creditor. …legally.
In an analogous fashion, gold, or actually silver (as gold is too concentrated a form of money for day to day transactions ) will make a comeback only after local markets in smaller cities or towns become re- established. Until then it will be peer-to-peer barter for items for those who make it through “The Crunch” ( A term James Wesley, Rawles used in his book: “ Patriots A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse”) for all you who romanticize and theorize about the coming collapse. Bosnia (Selco), Argentina (Ferfal) were published accounts of societal collapse in those locations and the question is who will complete the trilogy with the total destruction of Gaza? All of these will be very, very sobering previews of what could happen to the rest of us smug, normalcy biased, wall flowers.
Speaking of Webb, I have been binge watching the new findings on the origins of the universe since the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope over a year ago. It has discovered through its infrared readings that galaxies were already forming after only a few hundred million years after the “big bang” when they shouldn’t have, as it was thought to take at least a billion or two years for the space dust to first coalesce to form stars and from there gravitate to form galaxies. Meanwhile some sort of dark energy is causing the universe expansion to accelerate. Theoretical astrophysics is as unknowable/unpredictable as economics and politics, except that in the end, if there is nothing being produced or any services being rendered, money in a formerly advanced society becomes useless.
But just as after this “big bang,” assuming this model is correct, it will take time for the communities to coalesce and adapt to the new energy paradigm. Until then, there is no telling who will remain. Wouldn’t it be ironic if all those opportunist preppers you see on You Tube like Southern Prepper 1, Canadian Prepper, City Prepping, etc are the first to go whereas the little old lady who lives in an isolated unassuming shack on a small homestead that everyone ignores quietly pulls thorough?
For myself, all I can say is it’s good to be old (69), but unfortunately I can’t say the same for my daughter (19) who at least is starting to become aware of things and who has just completed elective courses in soil science and microbiology this past semester and will be taking poultry science and infectious diseases this spring.
Permaculture isn’t a fossil fuel extender. Sure, some permaculture designs, embedded without our current social set up, may make use of fossil fuels or things made with fossil fuels, but it isn’t a requirement of permaculture per se. In fact, the ultimate expression of permaculture is a food forest that requires no significant maintenance.
If the permies sign KOOMbaya loudly enough — the spent fuel ponds will magically disappear
Notice how the wackos are coming out of the woodwork as everyone can sense the end is very near…
FYI – having a market garden won’t save you …
This is a small fraction of the arsenal that I have accumulated — I have over 1000 buck shot shells… and 500 308 full metal jacket shells…. I have the rifle and two 12 gauge shot guns… anyone with a market garden anywhere near me … is f789ed.
Problem is … if the SHTF now — the market gardens just got planted…
Permaculture is not market gardens and market gardens are not permaculture, though there can be overlap.
They meet in DelusiSTAN… where the national anthem is … KOOMbaya
I will have to admit I am not an expert on permaculture. Maybe some of what I am thinking of is more “organic farming” than permaculture.
The version of permaculture I have seen is mostly a small add-on to nice suburban homes, to allow them to produce a little of their own food. The tools that are used are the ones available today. If they build little ponds, they seem to use plastic and whatever else is available today to make these ponds. Or they use plastic barrels to hold the run-off of rain from roofs.
https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/what-is-permaculture/
I have not seen real life permaculture examples that have produced enough food for the people living there to get all of their food, year around.
I have a “certificate” that says I am a qualified “expert” in this discipline.
When I discuss reality based solutions to food/shelter/energy amongst other “educators” I get told I am too “low tech” and “primitive” to be taken seriously.
Most of those people are not serious……the hippie vibe is strong and the staying power is weak.
They also have no concept whatsoever about societal violence and what it means for the future.
Oh yes, there is definitely that aspect of it. But, in essence, it is working with nature, so doesn’t actually need any artificial aids. So permaculture is coming eventually but we could speed it along.
I look forward to putting a round into the head of a doomie prepper and snatching his cabbages
If he has actual cabbages he grew…..just hamstring him on one side and keep him in the garden……..cabbages are hard to grow….real talent there.
Cut one of his achilles… and if he has fit hot daughters make him watch.
There are plenty of people out there… willing to do such things… plenty.
It is amazing the transformations that can occur in people… when you remove the police.
The formerly pleasant neighbour when faced with Dog Eat Dog… will either Up His Game… and out-cruel the competition .. or he’ll be dead.
Most will do things they never thought they were capable of
Do you expect that societies, if not economies, will go on more or less as now in a fossil fuel deprived world? I ask because sections 8 and 9, in particular, suggest that there will still be money used for buying stuff, with similar inequalities as now – rich people and poor people.
Rich people and poor people have been around for a very long time. There are always people in charge, and people who can barely take care of themselves. This doesn’t change with the banking system.
Even if the current banking system fails, a new system will certainly quickly become available. If people are able to produce goods, there certainly will be a market that springs up where these goods can be traded with other goods that other people produce.
In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber tells about clay tablets being used to facilitate trades in ancient markets. All goods would be converted to a common basis, say “barrels of barley equivalent.” In this way, it was possible to work around the problems of bartering different goods. Sellers would get credit for goods brought to the market. They could use these credits (less probably a service charge) to buy other goods in the market place.
The thing that doesn’t as easily happen in long-distance sales. If a farmer in Idaho wants oil that is produced in Texas, it would be helpful for Idaho and Texas to have the same currency, and a way of transporting the goods from Texas to Idaho. I think that this is what is lost. Idaho dollars aren’t necessarily useful in buying goods produced in Texas. Texas likely has a different currency, and no convenient way of getting the oil to Idaho.
Right, but as societies and the global industrial civilisation collapses, surely you don’t see something replacing it in short order? Perhaps in many decades or centuries, there will be that kind of system, though there could be brief spells of “haves” and “have-nots” as chaos ensues.
This is a great, easy-to-read article, and to the point. Thanks so much for your efforts. The article is also a nice follow-on to one published by Hagens, “Economics for the future: beyond the superorganism,” Ecological Economics, Volume 169, March 2020, 106520.
This is a link to the article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
Abstract
Our environment and economy are at a crossroads. This paper attempts a cohesive narrative on how human evolved behavior, money, energy, economy and the environment fit together. Humans strive for the same emotional state of our successful ancestors. In a resource rich environment, we coordinate in groups, corporations and nations, to maximize financial surplus, tethered to energy, tethered to carbon. At global scales, the emergent result of this combination is a mindless, energy hungry, CO2 emitting Superorganism. Under this dynamic we are now behaviorally ‘growth constrained’ and will use any means possible to avoid facing this reality. The farther we kick the can, the larger the disconnect between our financial and physical reality becomes. The moment of this recalibration will be a watershed time for our culture, but could also be the birth of a new ‘systems economics’. and resultant different ways of living. The next 30 years are the time to apply all we’ve learned during the past 30 years. We’ve arrived at a species level conversation.
The problem in europe is our nearly communist society. There’s still alof of useless slack that can be cut off. Wich I expect Will happen. Including pensions for the elderly. I expect the work Force Will start gaining more and more power to cut off everyone not contributing as we slide down the energy slope. The more socialist a country, the worse off they’ll be. However, as workers start to feel the pressure of inflation, factory shareholders Will be forced to give up profits to stay in business. I expect fierce competition to get workers and make profit to stay in business. As much of the West has An aging populace we seem to hit many bottlenecks at thesame time. Nice article. I especially like that I don’t seem to be the only one thinking mainstream pushing climate agenda because the full and honest truth is too alarming for everyone to handle. And that is, we’re sliding down already, population collapse imminent. An example in the media in my country today: shortages of blood. (Belgium)
Thanks for your comment. Europe is especially hard hit by fossil fuel problems now.
I’m not sure how bringing large numbers of people from the Global South into a cold climate with what could become severe energy problems makes things better.
It seems this article got picked up by a larger audience for some reason, because we are getting a lot of new commenters. Anyway, thanks for adding a reasoned perspective to the mix.
As far as I can tell, Europe is screwed, having been dependent on Russian cheap resources (energy and commodities) without realizing it. The eventual inevitable collapse was greatly hastened by their try-to-collapse-Russia approach to the Ukraine conflict. Had it succeeded, I think those resources would have preserved business as usual in Europe for at least another decade.
” However, as workers start to feel the pressure of inflation, factory shareholders Will be forced to give up profits to stay in business. I expect fierce competition to get workers and make profit to stay in business.”
We’re already at that point. I think that’s why certain large investors are embracing the sustainability stuff. They claim that companies can remain profitable by being “socially responsible” but I think that’s impossible. Often with the case with claims like this, the research data is difficult to come buy.
I don’t think this data exists. I think simply that the government will support key companies that give hiring preference their constituents or support the their political goals even if they are bankrupt in reality.
The ‘social responsibility’ stuff is just so they can get around past metrics like actual production and profitability, and use a kind of star chamber to pick economic winners and losers… basically communism: who shows himself to be loyal to The Party (but at base still temporary and arbitrary).
Time to buy two extra inverters, two more batteries, and eight more solar panels before inflation makes my dollars worthless. A truck load of fertilizer, a box of seeds and insecticides. Most people have BS jobs and produce nothing, they can be relocated to small farms like Walter Haugen once managed. Walter and people with his skills can be induced to teach them how.
While there is no current shortage many people say supplies must be cut for environmental reasons. It is doubtful any democracy will vote to ruin their economies and some (like the US) are barred by their constitutions from even trying to do that.
spent fuel ponds .. cancer….
and tommy eddy—you never mention him these days—he has become a recluse since you stopped talking about him
Of course, then the problem is that if you want to move, it becomes difficult to move. Or someone sees the goods you have amassed, and decides to kill you to get what you have.
I don’t think that lone farmers do well, however. What happens if you simply sprain your ankle, for example?
There are no “lone” farmers, unless you count what were once called “perimeter men” in WWII. And even those lone wolves had some sort of support in getting replacement axe heads, hoe blades, etc. Farming is a community endeavor. One of the chapters in my latest book is, “The Problem with Preppers.” In a nutshell, to go beyond simplistic prepping, you need to engage and integrate into a community NOW rather than wait until SHTF and you are on the run or hunkered in your bunker.
I think a lot of preppers think SHTF will be a temporary situation instead of a real “New Normal”. They think once the “right people” take control some resemblance to life as it went on before will continue. Some guy told me they can’t un-invent certain things like the internet.
It’s really amazing how eager people are put faith in anything material or abstract.
Agree – the assumption is that it will be like surviving a natural disaster … or perhaps a war… you just have to hunker down through the worst… then it all comes good …
It won’t be like the old normal .. it will be BETTER!!! Wonderful people growing organic food meeting at the market to sell their produce and handicrafts to other wonderful people… with the wonderful people holding hands… getting along .. and singing KOOMbaya….
They actually can’t wait for the collapse …
They are also experiencing a form of … mental illness
The dystopian fantasies like you see in the current crop of Young Adult fiction dsytopias read by adult women or the
zombie apocalypse movies , tv shows, etc. are too optimistic. In all these dystopian fantasies, modern weaponry and intricate clothes are still available.
They are intended to inspire hope — to create the perception that collapse would bring a Great Adventure…
Do you have a chapter explaining what happened when marauders arrived on the scene … and how the farmers would quickly scamper into the castle to be protected by their master the king?
Cuz farmers – no matter how numerous — are no match for a murderous armed horde…
If I thought this was a survivable event i.e. the spent fuel ponds did not exist… rather than make myself a sitting duck … as a prepper…
I would attend one of these https://veteranlife.com/lifestyle/military-training-for-civilians/ and I would learn ambush tactics.
I would stockpile thousands of rounds of ammo and lots of guns…
And then I’d look for folks like you Walter… and I’d put a bullet between your eyes from 500 metres… you wouldn’t even know what happened .. one minute you are bent over weeding the next you are dead.
Then as a reward I’d unleash my mad dog followers and let them have their way with any wimmin you have left behind… and if anyone dared to push back… they’d be beaten to death
Hard times unleash hard vicious cruel men … there will be no law to stop this sort of behaviour… we will see the very worst in humans if UEP does not succeed and 8B are unleashed
Maybe you can issue a new edition with this added as a chapter?
Delusion after Delusion …. just like the Tesla Fanatics
When? What is the timeline of all this? I keep collecting hand tools over the years but I am not ready to sharpen the crosscut saw to cut firewood. The chainsaw is so much faster and easier.
2020s look good in The Core but iffy elsewhere.
2030s in The Core might hold up.
Consider getting plug in 15A electric chain saw instead of gas powered. Quieter and will not alert people who would be looking to “warm their feet at your fire.”
Of course you need adequate solar powered battery back up like a Bluetti 200AC Max or EcoPro Delta 2 Max and solar panels.
I expect it depends upon where you live.
In another comment, I gave the example of Sri Lanka, that cut off most fossil fuel imports and fertilizer imports in 2022 because it couldn’t afford them. The result was disastrous. Falling crop production, 9 out of 10 skipping meals. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming
There are a lot of poor countries now that cannot afford fossil fuels.
But there is a lot of fighting among rich countries, too, now.
Europe has to depend on energy imports. It tends to be at risk sooner than the US.
On the other hand, the US has been the world’s hegemon. It has acted a lot like a bully. Other countries would like to hit back. The US depends on imports of a whole lot of manufactured goods from China. It would be easy for China to cut off export of essential goods, such as drilling pipe for oil wells. We can hope that the problem will stay away for a few years in the US because we have our own fossil fuel supplies, but there are a lot of things that could go wrong.
I broadly agree. However, you may be underestimating the challenge of the transition ahead in two ways:
• Producing every product in the modern world, currently requires fossil fuels – as raw materials, to build factories and tools, to operate machinery, or for long-distance transport.
• Producing fossil fuel is very capital intensive. As total production decreases, the remaining production will cost more. (ex: if fixed costs=40%, a 5x reduction would push current prices ($67/bbl) to about $180 for the remaining production.)
If long-distance transport becomes expensive enough, smaller regional factories may out-compete factories scaled to serve a world market. If they can get the capital to build the new facilities, then a decarbonized world will have to generate the capital to replace all the production capacity in the world. If they can’t generate the capital to build new, smaller factories, then the delivered price of the products produced by global factories may become unaffordable to people, and demand will drop.
I am afraid you are right.
You say, “Demand will drop.” You might also say, “People will become too poor to afford things that they previously were able to purchase,” or “Standards of living will fall.”
Industrial farming is not efficient. Average size of a US farm is 455 acres (National Ag Statistics Service) and feeds 166 people (American Farm Bureau). That is 2.74 acres to feed 1 person. When I was a market gardener, I grew enough food to feed 3.0-3.5 people on 1 acre with only 10 gallons or less of gasoline for my tiller and weed whacker. Once collapse accelerates, there will be more people growing food by manual labor and small amounts of fossil fuels. This will be done without horses or oxen. Your other points are good though.
unfortunately—”feeding people” from a given area is misleading
the right term should be ”supporting people.
people need heat, clothing , buildings etc etc—all of which must come from nthe land we live on
But feeding people must come high on the list. If feeding people takes too much of available resources, other things, such a nice buildings and multiple changes of clothes, must take a back seat.
that will mean that our housing heating clothing arrangements will become very primitive over time
I bought a ‘two handed saw’ from an army dump about 6 years ago. A viking type big piece of steel, for €16,-
This doesn’t make me the Hero of OFW, but it could be a reason to normalize relations with my neighbors.
And please, do not misunderstand ‘Norm’alize.
Does that mean my coyote fur hat and bison overcoat will be fashionable again?
I’ve never been a trendsetter before……
davy crockett was there first cro
People say the most ridiculous things.
Let’s go back to reality:
Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population
https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/08/index-of-cereal-production-yield-and-land-use-1961-2014-1.png
hahahahahaha so the green revolution is fake … right …
We were producing far more food when we farmed organically
You are being played… there is a reason why the US govt bankrupted small farmers — and organized the consolidation of farms.
Check out the term — economies of scale
You are clueless
Time to learn to farm, herd animals, or fish.
or just ride BAU in IC for all it’s got until it flies over the cliff.
I’m 65ish, I’m all in on riding the tiger.
No .. time to accept that you are about to die
The only question I have is how many Vaxxers I can take with me
Vile stinking money vaxxers.
You also need a place to exercise these skills. For 99% of the world’s population, I am afraid this won’t work. They live in apartments. They don’t have quite a few extra dollars (or the equivalent) to buy land or tools.
They don’t want the skills…..they want to lose themselves online and go for government assisted suicide when things get to hard.
Calhoun’s behavioral sink is real.
Yes, the egotistic fantasies are feverishly peddled these days. And within their temptations is the truth of a person and in extension the species.
It is impossible to claim unaccountability having a mind capable of rational and logical thinking. Monkey business and primate tendencies be shoved aside.
https://youtu.be/2pkpsxEyi-k?si=1xAy173BBYJGpEY6
https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg?si=NIXaM6QYAOJS4_Hd
🤥🐒
You forgot to mention that the monkeys stink… that they think they are not animals yet they squat and defecate just like a dog… they hump each other like a moose in rut…
But they can drive cars so they believe that makes them better. Smarter
I’d say it makes them ridiculous
When given a choice, monkeys don’t defecate anywhere. They will prefer an area far from where they eat/sleep.
Also, monkeys groom themselves/each other carefully, and where water is available, they use it to wash, but it’s not always the case.
YOLO!!!
Drop of 99 per cent in world population sounds about right. Down to a world population of around one or two hundred million, more or less. Not much hope for apartment dwellers and other city folk. They will quietly disappear like the Aztecs, Incas, or other ancient civilizations that just mysteriously disappeared leaving their temples, building and ruins.
I doubt that this post is going to get much notice now, but the realities it deals with likely will — people in denial seem to cut short conversation of things which contradict their beliefs, but, like the saying goes, if you close the door on reality, it comes in through the window.
There seem to be a few readers on the internet that have found this article, however.
Lots of people die suddenly and unexpectedly after reading Gail’s posts. It’s the shock, you know. You just hear this thud, and they’ve dropped dead on the floor. It all helps with the ongoing depopulation project. And I hear Gail’s in the running for this year’s Nobel Prize for Disaster Porn.
LOL!
Hi Gail,
Thank you for the article. I have recently heard Peter Zeihan talking about 2nd and 3rd Shale Revolution. What is your opinion on the matter ?
Easy and inexpensive fossil fuel ressources are diminishing. But why assume that fossil fuels will completely disapear ? There are limits on oil prices for producers and consumers. As your expenses increase, your level of confort has to drop for you to pay for the essentials first. Therefore you would still pay way more than today price limits to farm or cook. No ?
Best regards,
John
With respect to the 2nd and 3rd shale revolution, I don’t know. I am always surprised by the changes that are possible. At the same time, the US has to depend on imports of steel drilling pipe from China. If they cut off our supplies, we likely will need to cut back drilling. For example:
https://sdbeyondpetro.en.made-in-china.com/product/kFgAayRPJLUz/China-API-Steel-Pipe-Price-Drilling-Pipe-for-Oil-Well-Used-Drilling-Rig.html
I am afraid we are dealing with a situation where the world economy is starting to break up. There is increased fighting over everything. We assume that international trade will work for everything, forever, but this is not necessarily the case.
We already had some examples of the “empty shelf” problem, when many goods were not available in 2020 or 2021. Even now, there are some metal goods that are hard to find. The problem we are approaching is close to the empty shelf problem.
When there are not enough fossil fuels to go around, there is a tendency for a few strong countries to try to hoard what is available. They will use whatever technique is available to take down their competitors. We have cut off sales of some semiconductor chips to China. They could choose to cut off sales of oil drilling pipe to the US. Or we could have problems with internet security caused by China/Russia. Or there could be actual war with China/ Russia.
I don’t know if you watched the problems Sri Lanka had recently. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming
In 2022, this was country that was trying to get along with very little fuel and no imported fertilizer (made with fossil fuels). It didn’t work. It was a poor country, trying to save money. But you can see what goes wrong–a whole lot, very quickly. A country’s financial problems can push things the wrong way.
Peter Zeihan knows BS crap about shale oil . Might as well ask your gardner . Here are the experts Nate Hagens and Art Berman . 90 minutes of unadultrated shale oil discussion .
John .this is from Spain regarding shale oil . Use Google translate . Real data and info .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2023/12/la-supernova-del-shale-oil.html
I was reading the article in the car while my husband food shopped… I kept thinking he should get extra🤗.
Thank you Gail. A well done summary.
Things will necessarily be much smaller and simpler again as fossil Carbon as energy leaves us by decision and inevitable depletion.
hahahaahaha… i love your optimism!
You are likely right. Things have changed greatly since 1800. We could easily lose these advances, and more.
the one line summary of this article is:
money is a unit of energy exchange.
unfortunately very very few people understand or can accept that.
always, the call is ‘spend more’—on say, defences against sea level rise—if only we spent $$trillions more, our problems will be over—–
or the favourite–we can grow our way out of this.
not realising they are advocating ”spending energy”—which of course we do not have.–the cost of the energy we do have will become unaffordable to most. (including food energy)
same applies to fetching resources from asteroids (love that one)—in denial that we do not have the earth resources to mine asteroids.
We can make all we need ”’off earth”—whoopee—we can have a new car every month.
humankind has converted the planet into a cash asset, seems to me the planet itself is kicking back against that notion.
///////[10] Governments and their laws will shrink in importance. Instead, new traditions and new religions will play a greater role in keeping order.//////—
hmmmm, if as seems likely, the orange loony gets into office
i strongly suggest OFW’ers read this piece i clipped from the Washington Post the other day, about the looming new order. (I was writing stuff like this before 2016…and here we are)
////////And who will stop him? His own handpicked military advisers? That seems unlikely. He could make retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he wanted, and it is unlikely a Republican Senate would decline to confirm. Does anyone think military leaders will disobey commands from their duly elected, constitutionally authorized, commander in chief? Do we even want the military to have to make that call? There is every reason to believe that active-duty troops and reservists are likely to be disproportionately more sympathetic to a newly reelected President Trump than to the “Radical Left Thugs” supposedly causing mayhem in the streets of their towns and cities. Those who hope to be saved by a U.S. military devoted to the protection of the Constitution are living in a fantasyland.///////
THAT is where is reall and imminent danger lies.
Norm
we are already in one mate. Left or right they only have one option totalitarian rule over the masses. This is due democracy voting ourselves to not suffer by kicking the can and that just means the eventual suffering is going to be so much greater.
Anyway there is nothing we can do about this, it is just a energy dissipating structure.
nikoB
While I agree with most of your energy/money assertions I am aghast at the cognitive dissonance on display in regards to the “Right vs Left” debate and specifically your apparent belief the “Trump” is a greater danger than the leftist kookery and overtly managed/directed/ordered mentally deficient old creature wandering around the white house in his underwear currently.
The only worse example is the narcissistic, sociopath in charge up here north of the wall.
I suspect a hard swing to the extreme right is now underway….Trump is the least of your worries (he is moderate at best)……what you might now see, as a direct result of a hardline response to wingnut socialist feminism and “rainbow” rights for the mentally deranged, is literal burnings at the stake, midnight hangings and a sort of North American Inquisition…….
But laying it in Trumps lap is laughable and reveals a willingness to follow group think straight into hell. If he was so inclined to be such a bad-ass then why did he allow to be removed from office last time?? He did not lead the US into another proxy conflict or two……or three (hard to keep track of American “interventions” abroad.
Given the stupendous level of criminal activity within the Biden Whitehouse how anyone can still fault Trump is mind boggling…….evidences for Calhoun’s behavioral sink perhaps?
I personally would travel to Ottawa on my own dime to watch Justin Trudeau and Krista Freeland get executed by the short drop hanging method out of the back of a Kenworth highway tractor that took part in the trucker protest.
Because those two Canadian sociopaths will not leave power due any kind of “democratic vote.”……mark those words…..
and we Canucks are apparently now gonna really pursue nuclear power (strictly for power generation of course)
Yes to Crom👍
It’s all theatre… it’s fake… they are actors
youve told us about those crisis actors on numerous occassions eddy
luckily youre not as famous as alex jones or youd be facing $1 bn fine
Richard D Hall of England has got another video out about the Manchester arena bombing. He’s being put on trial soon.
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=308&part=1&gen=99
i am genuinely pleased to hear that
lunatics like that need to be stopped–as with similar nonsense on OFW and elsewhere, it is just attention seeking by otherwise inadequate individuals
“lunatics like that need to be stopped”
No doubt you called him a lunatic without watching any of his videos.
i recall seeing some of his garbage years ago—tbh–i’d forgotten all about him–i thought hed just faded away
if you persist in slavishly following such claptrap, i can only leave you to it
luckily it is in your head–not mine
The bomber that was banned from leaving the country and was stopped by customs officers as he attempted to board a plane. He made a phone call to his security services handler and passed the phone to the customs officer, who then waved him through. Ended up in Libya and we sent a royal navy ship to pick him up once he had fulfilled his task and returned him without charge, so he was free to do his next job in Manchester.
Nothing to see there, eh Norman.
wasn’t that the same guy who shot kennedy, painted to moon landing backdrops, flew the holograms into each of the twin towers then guided the home made drone into the pentagon?
And was then hired by China to personally spread covid
Oh—and then recruited all the crisis actors for the Jan 6 riot
I though he looked familiar
Lay off the drugs Norman.
Read your old friend Dr Ahmed.
yes—sorry fitz
the truth drug can be very addictive
The bomber, Salman Abedi had been reported multiple times by his family and the local mosque iman, was banned from leaving the country, but somehow kept leaving the country to go to Libya/Syria and was picking up by a royal navy warship off the coast of Libya just months before the bombing(look it up if you doubt any of that).No charges were ever brought against him.
The case of Bherlin Gildo highlighted the fact that the SS were involved, as after being arrested and charged, his lawyer raised the issue of who was funding his group and his charges were instantly dropped, because he was trained and payed by our very own SS.
As Charles Shoebridge, former army and metropolitan police counter terrorism officer said about the government/SS
“turned a blind eye to the travelling of its own jihadists to Syria, notwithstanding ample video etc. evidence of their crimes there. Despite such overseas terrorism having been illegal in the UK since 2006”
Your version of the truth is funnily enough, the same as the people you said just yesterday, this about “the politicians prime function is to stay in office therefore he must lie to do so”
You know they lie, but you constantly attack anyone that points out the lies, ask yourself why you do that. I can only assume you are one of the Integrity Initiative pensioners, or you’re going the way of Genocide Joe.
Whatever drugs they tell you to take have nothing to do with truth, much like the reasons they give you for taking them. Addiction certainly, but not to truth.
cro
ive been writing stuff like that for the last 10 years—the usa is sleepwalking into a dictatorship–or embracing it-……
–depending on your point of view.
—–i might just be wrong
now—i’m nobody from nowhere
but when Robert Kagan writes the same thing in the Washington Post—i can only suggest you sit up and take notice
This is senile nonsense. The administration of the Department of Defense is VERY Left leaning. They are currently considering offering citizenship to NON-WHITE immigrants in exchange for military service. This is not an organization that’s trying to conserve White Americana.
not quite sure what you are banging on about
are you responding to the right comment?
I’m responding to this
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/12/15/ten-things-that-change-without-fossil-fuels/#comment-446159
Do try to keep up.
good to know an intellect that sets the standard for the rest of us
A disappointed Ukraine city council member throws live hand grenades during the council meeting.
The member represented the ruling party, “Servant of the People.”
https://twitter.com/ichudov/status/1735701157958332664
Coming to the US in 2030?
Hello drb753, this could interest you and also other readers.
It is about UKRAINE and ISRAEL.
Even Nato-friend famous Italian geopolitical analyst Lucio Caracciolo admits that Ukraine is a completely destroyed Country and it will eventually enter in EU in 20 years – if possible – and also admits that Israel is losing strategically, Israel is applying the scheme ‘the more you attack terrorists with war, the more you will have terrorists’.
You understand Italian so you can follow what Caracciolo says..it is a short and significative video, above all because it is known the side on which is on.
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2023/12/16/caracciolo-a-la7-lucraina-e-un-paese-distrutto-ladesione-alla-ue-avverra-tra-10-o-20-anni-israele-strategicamente-sta-perdendo/7385181/?pl_id=4&pl_type=category
What a coincidence. That is the same scheme that was applied during the War on Terror.
I hear that the Middle East is far less conservative than Western media portrays it as. They are becoming more like the West. Free markets are prevailing in the Middle East. Women work and birthrates are trending downward. Can any one confirm this hearsay?
Night scene in Rasht, Iran. I am actually traveling to Saudi Arabia in January, will report.
What will you do in Saudi?
Recruiting for your harem?
Yes, please keep us posted.
Buon viaggio
It seems a nice place.
Did you travel through Caspian sea, then Iran, then Iraq, then Saudi Arabia?
By train, car, plane?
Please let us know, very interesting journey.
Thanks
Boring. Why can’t the clip have some footage of the public beheadings that they conduct every week? Are foreigners allowed to watch? I’d buy a ticket to that
I have not traveled the Caspian, but of course it will happen. I have invitations to a number of places in Cntral Asia.
Haven’t lived in the region for a decade, but when I did it’s nothing like you are told.
Look at it like Russia. Lots of gays, but not in public please and when I say in public, only were children or the easily offended might frequent. In the bars, no problem.
I couldn’t hold my partners hand on the street, as not married, but in the malls, cinema, bars and restaurants, no big deal. I could buy alcohol and even bacon. Even Eddy could pay for a prostitute and certain bars were known for it.
Was in a women’s clothes shop with the other half once and as I looked around whilst waiting a young Arab woman standing in front of a mirror looked at me and opened her dress so I could see all her underwear and smiled. Shit myself as I didn’t know if she had family with her.
Basically they turn a blind eye as long as you don’t flaunt it. Violence of any kind will get you locked up and a good kicking off of the police, as will drugs.
Even Eddy could pay for a prostitute and certain bars were known for it.
Even norm could pay for a prostitute and certain bars were known for it.
FIFY
Lap dancers are not prostitutes… they are performers…
Super Snatch … ain’t no lap dancer
“Lap dancers are not prostitutes… they are performers…”
If it makes you feel better believing that, go ahead.
How dare you insult these talented performers…
No insult and I understand that some men like that kind of talent. I just call it by it’s original name. Like shell shock, it tells me exactly what I need to know, where as PTSD is meaningless and doesn’t.
“There is only one way to plant 1. loosen the soil 2. put the seed 3. put manure/water 4. wait for it to grow.”
Not true. Every year I scatter seeds and walk away. Come back a few months later and pull up carrots, leeks, onions and pick various leafs. The tomatoes and potatoes reappear by themselves each and every year without fail(from what I miss). I do have to dig the potatoes up once grown, but not plant. I do change the placement of any of the onion family each year, as they take a lot of nutrients, but that’s all.
Obviously I would die if I had no other source of food, but point 4 is the only one of your points that is applicable to my growing. Been doing this for a couple of decades and add no fertiliser, but do rake up fallen leaves and put on top of soil to break down through winter and living in England means I don’t have to water, unless we have a long hot summer, but as I said, I live in England🌧️
Where do you get the seeds from?
From the plant. Nature has this weird way of continuation, almost as if things are supposed to go on longer than a single season(a season isn’t a new series on tv by the way).
Want to do the birds and the bees next😉
I see so you are a seed saver… most DelusiSTANIS I know buy the seeds online or from the shop.
So you just toss seeds on the ground and you get carrots and stuff… strange… you must be a miracle worker… cuz generally if you just toss seeds around like that they won’t grow… that’s why most veggies are started in conditions where there is no wind and other elements that impede growth … generally you grow seedlings – or buy them — then plant them…. the odds of survival are much higher…
Shall I assume that there are no animals that eat the plants where you live e.g. rabbits? Birds?
If I removed the chicken wire and the netting from my garden… there would be nothing but the stumps of plants within 24 hours
Great that you live in such a paradise
” you must be a miracle worker… cuz generally if you just toss seeds around like that they won’t grow…”
How did plants get before we started digging holes. Do you think there were no plants before farming.
I don’t mind the rabbits getting some, got to keep the meat factory going 😉
The birds and the bees are going to blow your mind.
dont start telling eddy about the birds and the bees
he has enough trouble dealing with all that stuff as it is
norm … what do you think Super Snatch is doing right now.
Plants we have today are not the same…
True to a certain degree. Some from our meddling and some evolution. Just look up what carrots looked like a couple of hundred years ago.
“Being from a Middle Eastern background (who has a name like Boris?)”
Kulm, his name is Alexander and his mother is Jewish, so from Europe.
Good summary with which I concur, Fitz. I also was there last in 2013.
So you just toss seeds on the ground and you get carrots and stuff… strange… you must be a miracle worker…
People like this usually end up growing what would be a week or two’s food supply if they had nothing else and think it’s an achievement.
Natures achievement, no more, but for those that enjoy nature and it’s workings, nice.
If you bothered to read you would have noticed I said “Obviously I would die if I had no other source of food”, but don’t let that stop you projecting the depressive mentality. I’ll enjoy it whilst it’s there and then die. Seems a better option than moaning on the screen and enjoying nothing(apart from the moaning maybe), but dying anyway.
Who’s moaning? I am SCHADDING myself knowing this vile stinking primitive cruel mentally ill stooopid wicked humans … are headed for the trash heap of extinction
My only moan is — why is it taking so f789ing long?
You know you could speed it up a bit.
Prove your beliefs, or make some lame excuse about everyone, just not you.
Do it Mr happy hand.
The delusional world of the doomie prepper– it’s all wonderful .. so long as the hardware store and the supermarket remain in play
Hilarious!
Looks like upgrade of that Muslim guy throwing his shoe at George W. Bush.
I wonder if they’ll blame this on HAMAS or on the “Alt Right”.
Maybe they’ll blame it on Long Covid. I mean only a person suffering from a brain fog would do something like this.
very good article!
17 days until 2024!
YOLO!
MOAR!
(etc.)
🤣👍👍
Bravo … the moment we’ve been waiting for
🙏
The perpetual stream of obnoxious and irritating keep on ticking in like clockwork. But hey, it’s not my fault this species is mentally ill. And it’s always possible to scroll by and ignore.
⏰🫣
However, in the mean time:
(etc.)
🤥🦧