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The world economy is an amazingly complex, physics-based, self-organizing system. The three major elements are extracted resources including energy resources, human population, and demand coming through the financial system.
All three of these elements tend to increase over time, but both population and extracted resources tend to hit limits because the world is finite. Financial demand is emphasized by politicians because it seems to increase without limit. The extraction limit is not obvious: It is the amount that consumers can afford to pay for resources and the products they create. This limit cuts off resource extraction at amounts that are far below the amounts that geologists calculate are available for extraction.
In this post, I will offer some insights into how the world economy actually operates.
[1] There is a close relationship between world energy consumption and economic growth.
The fitted years are 1965 to 2023. The R2 =.98 tells us that there is a close relationship between energy consumption and GDP.
[2] There is a physics reason why energy consumption and economic growth are related. The economy requires energy for a similar reason to the reason why humans require food.
Physics tells us that every action, even the movement of molecules, requires energy dissipation. Within the economy, this energy can be human energy, energy from the sun, or energy from sources such as burned biomass or fossil fuels.
In physics terms, the world economy and many structures within the world economy are dissipative structures. These structures are self-organizing, and they often grow over time. Examples are plants and animals, hurricanes, and businesses.
Dissipative structures require energy of the right kinds for their continued “life” and for growth. Animals require food for their continued life and growth. Hurricanes get their energy from warm sea water. The fact that the economy is a dissipative structure has been known since 1996 and is written about today.
[3] Starting long ago, humans became adapted to eating some cooked food. This change led to humans being able to outcompete all other animals. Eventually, this change led to populations outgrowing available resources and collapsing.
According to Discover Magazine, pre-humans first began to build fires to cook food at least 800,000 years ago. The consumption of cooked food allowed early humans to have bigger brains, smaller teeth and jaws, and more time for activities other than chewing, such as making crafts.
Humans are now adapted to having some cooked food in their diets to get adequate nutrition. (A few people today try to consume a raw food diet, but they often use a food processor or juicer to break down cell walls.) As a result of the adaptation to eating some cooked food, two major changes took place:
(a) Humans were able to achieve dominance over other plants and animals. They could use fire directly to scare away other animals, and they could use fire to help make better tools for hunting and agriculture.
(b) Because of this dominance, the population of humans has tended to grow until some kind of limiting condition is hit. The resulting pattern is often called overshoot and collapse.
History shows a repeated pattern of overshoot and collapse. A population would grow until the carrying capacity of the local area was reached. Food surpluses would become lower and lower, so less food could be saved up for fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. Eventually, civilizations would succumb to one or another problem: disease, attack by a neighboring group, climate fluctuations, or governments overthrown by unhappy citizens.
We tell ourselves that overshoot and collapse cannot happen now, but human population is high relative to fossil fuel resources, and intermittent wind and solar are not working out well as substitutes.
[4] The financial system provides growing demand through debt and many other financial promises. An important aspect of this financial demand is its time-shifting ability.
Figure 3 shows my view of how the economy works. Debt is indeed important because it helps pull the economy forward. For example, it helps an entrepreneur afford to build a factory and hire workers. As long as the investment pays back well enough to repay the debt with interest, the system seems to work. GDP tends to grow. (Figure 3 also shows five other parts of the system, but I am leaving these to the reader to review.)
Debt is not unique in pulling the economy forward. Shares of stock issued with the promise of dividends act similarly to debt because they allow investment before a new product is made. Pension plans, even if not funded, stimulate the economy because citizens decide that they don’t need to save for the future (or have children), if they can depend on the government pension plan to take care of them. Even inflation in the price of a home or shares of stock can have the effect of adding to demand. For example, a person owning shares of stock can sell some appreciated shares of stock and use the proceeds to build a new factory.
It is the time-shifting aspect of debt and related promises that is important. With the help of debt and its equivalents, people can spend today to build a road or factory that will provide a long-lasting benefit. The hope is that the total return will be high enough that the debt can be repaid with interest, or that dividends can be paid on the shares of stock.
If the economy is growing quickly, interest rates can be quite high without slowing the economy. If energy costs are very high, or if all industries are stagnant, it may be difficult to get any payback at all from a debt-related investment. Instead, interest rates may need to be very low, or debt defaults become likely. Economic growth is likely to be low, or even negative.
In one their analyses of borrowing by governments over eight centuries, Reinhart and Rogoff unexpectedly discovered the phenomenon of low defaults among rapidly growing countries. They reported, “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.”
[5] Models become very important in today’s economy. They often are misleading, even if they are supposedly scientific.
The easiest models to build are ones that assume the future will be very similar to the past, or that the trend from the past will continue. These models tend to be popular with citizens because they suggest that good times will continue indefinitely. Such outcomes are what everyone would like to see, so these models tend to be accepted as “scientifically valid.”
In a finite world, many kinds of patterns are constantly changing. Depletion of resources and rising population are particular stressors. Figure 4 shows the base scenario of a 1972 computer model of resource depletion, population growth, and pollution growth.
The model used was an engineering-type analysis of the physical quantities involved. This approach did not show growth continuing indefinitely. Instead, it showed a major downturn about now.
I have looked at the model myself, and I have talked with Dennis Meadows, who oversaw the analysis. The model looks at resources used in each six-month calendar period. The share of these resources needed for getting these resources out and transformed into usable work cannot be too high, or the economy tends to collapse. (Nature doesn’t use accrual accounting!)
In such a calculation, quick payback of an energy investment becomes very important. Also, the amount of supplementary equipment, such as electricity transmission lines and batteries required, becomes important. I would expect that wind, solar, nuclear, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) would do relatively poorly in such a calculation. Oil, coal, and burned biomass would do much better because their energy payback is immediate–when they are burned. Furthermore, oil, coal and biomass require relatively little specialized equipment for transportation and storage.
[6] Narratives are created to accompany the questionable models that have been developed.
One popular narrative is that Financial Demand is all that really matters. Politicians have significant control over the Financial Demand shown in Figure 1. They can see that if they can create more debt, they can perhaps get some of the money that the debt makes available down to ordinary citizens. With more money, citizens can perhaps buy more goods and services from the world economy.
Historically, raising financial demand has worked well because the extraction of fossil fuels and many other resources were well within physical extraction limits. Higher demand would lead to higher prices, which in turn would lead to more extraction. But as we get closer to the physical extraction limits, this approach works less well. The problem is that at some point, finished goods (such as automobiles and groceries) become too expensive for consumers if prices rise high enough to satisfy producers.
Because we are now reaching extraction limits, the added debt approach works much less well, as the short tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister of the UK in 2022 shows. The problem for countries other than the US is that with added debt, their currencies tend to drop relative to the US dollar. Thus, while perhaps their citizens can individually buy more, the cost of imported goods and services, especially energy, tends to rise. Overall inflation tends to be higher. This causes citizens to become very unhappy.
The US is in a unique position because it is currently the holder of the “reserve currency.” Its currency can’t drop relative to the US dollar. However, since 2020, the US has added huge amounts of debt, as have other countries around the world. Asset prices have also risen because of temporarily low interest rates. Newly made goods and services don’t increase in proportion to the rapidly growing debt and other financial stimulus. What tends to happen instead is inflation, as we have recently witnessed.
[7] One popular narrative is that if enough demand can be added to the economy through financial manipulations, energy prices will rise sufficiently to allow the needed amount of energy to be extracted.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. Affordability is important to the consumer, so oil prices can’t rise too high. At the same time, prices cannot fall too low, for too long, or producers will stop extracting oil. Instead, oil prices tend to spike and then fall back. They are to some extent not very acceptable to either buyer or seller. Whether the buyers or sellers are more disadvantaged varies over time. A similar pattern holds for other resources, as well.
[8] A third narrative is that climate change caused by excess CO2 is the world’s worst problem, and that the world can voluntarily move away from fossil fuels and fix this problem.
Unfortunately, the world economy can no more move away from fossil fuels than humans can move away from eating food. In fact, moving away from fossil fuels would likely lead to starvation for a large share of the world’s population. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote about his concern that population was growing too fast relative to food supply. The timing was shortly before fossil fuels began being used very widely. World population at that time as only about 1 billion. World population today is over 8 billion.
In part, the climate change narrative seems to be an excuse to move manufacturing from Advanced Economies to economies that make extensive use of coal, as it tends to be a cheap fuel. The latter economies also tend to have lower wage and benefit levels, so there is a definite cost advantage. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The result is easy to see in Figure 8 below. The US now exports coal to India and China, among other countries.
As a person might expect, world CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use have soared.
[9] The truth is that there aren’t enough resources to go around to support a growing world population. We are reaching a turning point where the total amount of goods and services that the world economy can produce will soon turn down. (This is not unlike the situation modeled in Figure 4, above.)
While the narrative we hear endlessly is “We are moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change,” I believe the real issue is that fossil fuels are leaving the world because we are hitting extraction limits. No one wants to hear such an awful story, however. The climate change narrative is a “sour grapes” version of the story that is more palatable to listeners.
Figure 8 below shows that the year 2020 should have been a wake-up call that the world needs to cut back on diesel and jet fuels. Diesel fuel is heavily used by agricultural machinery, large trucks, trains and boats. Of course, jet fuel powers jets. With rising world population and a growing economy, it would be expected that their consumption would continue to grow. Diesel and jet fuel are both “middle distillates,” which are most abundantly supplied by heavy oils such as Urals oil from Russia and oil from the Oil Sands in Canada .
Between 1990 and 2018, consumption of diesel and jet fuels increased by an average of 1.7% per year. Between 2018 and 2023, there has been no increase at all–in fact, world consumption for 2023 is slightly lower than in 2018. If the 1.7% per year growth pattern had continued, consumption of this combination of fuels would have grown by 8.8% during the five-year period from 2018 and 2023.
In a sense, there is a shortfall of approximately 8.8% of the diesel and jet fuel combination. Some airline schedules (especially in Asia) have been cut back. Farmers in Europe are protesting because the selling prices for the crops they grow are not high enough to cover today’s diesel and fertilizer costs plus other costs of production. Diesel is a problem fuel and fertilizer is very energy dependent. If the price of groceries rises high enough to cover the costs of diesel and fertilizer for farmers, grocery costs become unaffordable to many citizens.
[10] Added complexity looks like it would be a solution to inadequate energy and other resource supplies. Instead, added complexity leads to wage and wealth disparities and frequent system breakdowns.
Complexity can take many forms, including greater specialization; more education for some of the workers; larger, more hierarchical businesses; greater globalization; and ever more complex devices. Such devices can often use energy products more sparingly. Because of these potential energy savings, many people assume that such devices can allow the energy supply that is available to be stretched to cover all the economy’s needs.
In practice, it doesn’t work this way. Instead, added complexity often adds to energy demand instead of reducing it. For example, moving significant manufacturing to China starting in late 2001 was a type of added complexity. This change added to world coal demand and increased CO2 emission because the goods produced in China and shipped elsewhere were cheaper and therefore more affordable than goods made in the US or Europe.
Another issue with complexity is the susceptibility to breakdowns it produces. Just this past week, there was an example of this with the update of CrowdStrike computer software that took down computer networks around the world. Another example is the problem Kia is having with engines shutting down unexpectedly. Nature uses complexity, but it also incorporates redundancy so that unexpected breakdowns are not a frequent result.
A third problem with complexity is that it leads to supply chains for practically everything manufactured in the US or Europe needing to go through China. This makes the US and Europe dependent upon suppliers in China. Even military goods have supply chains running through countries that we are at odds with, including China. This means that China can, in many ways, “hold the US hostage,” by refusing to sell the US rare earth minerals, or by refusing to provide parts of supply chains needed for military armaments.
Perhaps the most important problem of all with added complexity is the wage and wealth disparities that it leads to. With added complexity, there is more specialization. A few workers with considerable training and advanced degrees get high paying jobs. The wages for these workers, plus the wages for managers, leave little funding left over for less trained workers. Also, competition with workers in low wage countries tends to hold down wages for less-skilled workers.
Besides the wage disparities, some people, mostly those who are already high-wage earners, become owners of these companies. If stock prices rise, this increases the wealth disparities between the rank-and-file workers and those at the top of the hierarchy. The higher-wage people also tend to purchase homes, and the price-appreciation on their homes adds to their wealth.
Physicist Francois Roddier, in his book The Thermodynamics of Evolution, explains that this growing wage and wealth disparities are to be expected when energy supplies are short, and added complexity is attempted as a substitute. Already wealthy people tend to get a disproportionate share of the goods and services produced by the economy, while poor people increasingly get squeezed out because of the physics of the situation.
[11] Ultimately, not enough goods and services to go around leads to conflicts of many types. These include conflict within political parties, within countries, and among countries.
I believe this issue is behind the conflict we are experiencing today. I will leave this issue for another post.
[12] Slowing growth is likely to lead to bankruptcies and financial collapse.
This is another issue that I will leave for another post.
[13] Conclusion
I hope these thoughts are somewhat helpful. I have only touched on a few aspects of how the economy really works. Perhaps I can offer more ideas on this subject in the future.
A comment on TAE recommending OFW .
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/forums/topic/debt-rattle-july-27-2024/#post-164923
The name of the commenter is “Noirette.” I don’t recognize that as the name of anyone commenting on OFW. But there are a lot of readers on OFW that do not comment.
I don’t think Nicole Foss is associated with The Automatic Earth any more. I don’t know who is there, but I haven’t looked.
The economy is strong .
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/134-year-old-american-furniture-chain-files-bankruptcy-closes-all-553-stores
Furniture now comes from China, or from Ikea. The furniture industry that used to thrive in North Carolina has been reduced to a shadow of itself. This is another area in which the US has become importers, to a significant extent.
I wonder how an idiocracy will lead to the mythical cubic mile of Pt. Maybe prying to some voodoo gods?
It seems virtue signaling is more important than the cubic mile of pt.
Melting golden calves in a crucible, one at a time.
VoodooCoin WILL be the next reserve currency. Mark my words.
(QJM – Intrrnational Journal of Medicine)
“A potential association between COVID-19 vaccination and development of Alzheimer’s disease
Preliminary evidence suggests a potential link between COVID-19 vaccination, particularly mRNA vaccines, and increased incidences of AD and MCI.”
https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qjmed/hcae103/7684274?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
Worth keeping an eye on over time
From the Abstract:
Boom! goes USA tax payers money?
Trump/ Kamala need to agree more arms for UKR – and Trump started that – if they fancy that they are going to wield leverage over Russia and set the terms of a ‘peace deal’ over UKR?
USA simply does not have a military-industrial base so it is in no position to set the terms of anything.
The way that attrition war works is that you destroy the enemy and then take land rather than waste resources on taking little bits of land.
Russia has advanced in a steady and strategic manner to gradually eliminate UKR strategic fortifications and resources with reduced losses of manpower to itself.
UKR is increasingly losing its strategic fortified positions, its manpower, its materiel, its morale (and its economy, its political stability) and it is rapidly headed for a military collapse on the frontlines within months.
Russia is hardly going to let Trump or Kamala set the terms of anything when Russia has victory and a UKR capitulation in its sights after years of preparation?
USA/ NATO lost its proxy war in UKR and they are not going to be able to spin that with any ‘peace plan’ by Trump or Kamala for that matter.
Trump has made clear that he has cooled on war with Russia and China and that he just wants to ‘obliterate’ Iran just b/c his Zionist pals want that.
I suppose that we will see how war in the Middle East works out for USA/ NATO what with all that oil, the Straights, Suez &c.
USA needs to get a grip on itself or it is on its way out on the international stage with one seismic blunder after another?
Does USA even have a clue what it is doing with these wars? Syria, Afghanistan and UKR (and the entire ‘Arab Spring’) should have each been teachable moments?
> On Camera: Russian Nuclear-Capable Missile Destroys Zelensky’s ‘Secret’ Depot | Putin | Ukraine War
They keep on finding accounting errors . Rinse and repeat .
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-finds-another-2-billion-accounting-errors-ukraine-aid-2024-07-25/
“This will end WHEN Russia wants, HOW Russia wants, the WAY Russia wants,” QED .
because Russia has been the mature adult in the room for the past 30+ years.
“They keep on finding accounting errors. Rinse and repeat.”
the primary purpose of the DOD/Pentagon/MIC is big profits for private industry, especially by making overly complex equipment/weaponry.
effective equipment/weaponry is secondary.
“USA simply does not have a military-industrial base”
What do you say to that, Gail?
We know France, Germany, etc have NO armies. They couldn’t even hold their town squares from an internal food riot. But just like Finland, just like Bastiat, they are All going to “everybody lives at everybody else’s expense.” France assumes they don’t have to, because Germany will. Germany assumes they don’t have to because England will. England has an army so small you can put it in a high school stadium. They assume only Germany will get blown to pieces and AMERICA will. And America?
AMERICA HAS NO GUNPOWDER FACTORY. None. Not one in all 8 MILLION sq kilometers. They have in a sense no shell factory. This is a long tortured system but there is no TNT which is what is in shells. Well, butter my buns, TNT is an OSHA and environmental hazard! It was outlawed and closed. Not TNT in America. They DID put up a brand-new super-duper NOT-TNT factory of a propellant no one had ever made before, and guess what? It doesn’t work. So 10 years later, it doesn’t work. So 10 years later, that factory still can’t be arsed to make “TNT”. And the US government, Pentagon, and $36 Trillion dollars, still can’t be arsed to care. All this is coming from existing factories, and in the west there is only ONE: A Reich-made factory in POLAND. Yeah, you see we care about environment, safety, soooo much, it’s okay when POLAND pollutes and gets blown up. Just like China. As long as you burn coal for Teslas pollute somewhere ELSE, with the SLAVES, then it’s okay, it’s love and environmental.
So. The US has NO gunpowder factory or source at all. It has ONE TNT factory. It has like 5 shell factories, none of which are upgraded, And for decades they didn’t produce enough shells even for the US Army, who were working down warehouses. Actually for fun, Obama was the bottom of this trend, and TRUMP was the one who got them at least out of mothballs again. For the barely-anemic runs they’re doing now. So TRUMP is the one fighting in Ukraine, and with Javelins, while years of Democrats did not. Some Putin-puppet he is!
Wonder why they can’t up production? Oh it gets worse. There IS a factory, totally in mothballs for years. Guess what? The CHEMICALS they need to ship in on rail to open that gunpowder factory ALSO don’t exist. It wouldn’t matter if you did. So now you need a 1) Shell factory, bullet factory 2) A TNT/Gunpowder factory AND 3) a Dow Chemical factory, maybe several, to make the pre-cursor parts.
Oh btw, do you have railroads for that, Mr. Derailment-central, Union Strikebreaker? How those bridges doing? We make locomotives, right? No, no, and no.
So all Europe thinks the US is going to 1) Man everything. 2) Move everything 3) Shoot everything. And all for Freeeeeeeeee!!!! …I guess it never occurred for anyone to see if they have any 1) Ships 2) Men or 3) Bullets? Never checked?
I wrote it right here on this spreadsheet!!! It says, We and NATO have a million-billion men.
So…if you all LIE to each other, often enough and hard enough, that wins the war?
I will heal you with my lies!!
Okay, other thoughts: WE HAVE MOVED THE US BACK IN TIME PAST THE 18th Century tech – which is true, we don’t even make THOSE tools ourselves – and into the 17th CENTURY. Where we can’t even make gunpowder for ball muskets. Congratulations. You made Ayn Rand right AGAIN, where the middle managers would f– up so bad people would be building huts, chasing rabbits with a stick, and driving covered wagons to get places ’cause the railroads have stopped.
…But we’re going to beat Russia any day now, I hear. We’ve got them on the run.
Again, we have no powder, no TNT, no precursor chemicals, no factories, no machines, no tools the make the machines, no steel, no rail, no labor force, and no shell casings.
Why am I still talking? That’s all to say this:
We now have been FACE FIRST into a BRICK WALL of how much we suck and have nothing. How CATASTROPHICALLY unprepared we are. For THREE YEARS. What’s our response? Stolz, Starmer, Scholz, Macron, Biden, Blinken, Austin?
quite very nicely said, Ravi.
hopefully this means the psychowoketard USA will do less international damage from now on.
Huh? This is Dr. D from TAE
huh?
I’m sure no one is impressed merely by who you are or where you are from.
unless you care to post something substantial and earn a positive impression.
Let me expand on what Diarm wrote, David.
The comment posted by Raviuppal above is taken from the text of a comment made by the contributor/commentator Dr. D on The Automatic Earth (TAE) website in response to Debt Rattle July 21, 2024.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2024/07/debt-rattle-july-21-2024/
Dr. D is prolific (writes a lot), sharp, satirical, and very witty. He does this sort of things most days at TAE in response to that day’s news.
In a world where the powers that be wanted to smarten everyone up instead of dumbing everyone down, Dr. D would have his own 15-minute spot on one of the late night comedy/light entertainment shows.
my apologies for not looking into Dr. D’s lack of clarity.
Why would you post someone else’s material without giving a reference/ link, if this is indeed Dr D’s writing, it seems to be?
Apologise for not giving the reference . This was my last post for the day and did it post haste . I did realise my error but it was already posted and there is no edit button here . I post several times and always provide source and links .
Oops. I hope I don’t do that myself.
There are a few companies that assemble aircraft, bombs, and other devices used in war from parts made elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors
The above article indicates the big ones are Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Corporation), Northrup Grumman, and Boeing. Boeing has made the news for the incompetent way it has made airplanes for general aviation. We can hope its work for the military is of better quality.
Whether this is a military industrial base is questionable.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has ordered a Large Deployment of Military Hospitals, Clinics, and Trauma Centers to certain Cities across the Country, including the Capital of Moscow which will operate directly under the Defense Ministry.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1816555112988389685
The seasons usually start in Russia or close because the earth is on a slight 15 degree tilt. Russia’s winter starts in Nov. China’s new year ie (spring) is in February.
this winter could be the “Dark Winter”
could be but most likely won’t be.
I’m sure this is just one more piece being put into place by the mature Russian leadership, in case of some sort of irrational attack by the psychowoketard West.
meanwhile now that JB has been forced to quit running for reelection, this has opened up a 7 month window of transition to the next POTUS, and that time period will be focused on the transition and probably away from any added international conflict.
The American people will believe anything!
https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/25/president-biden-claims-us-isnt-at-war-as-us-bombs-yemen/
President Biden Claims the US Isn’t at War as He Bombs Yemen
The US is also occupying eastern Syria, involved in combat operations in Iraq, and is providing intelligence and weapons for Israel and Ukraine
And how about our increasing conflict with China?
evolution is unkind to id*ots.
the most important for Americans, and the rest of the world to believe, is when the don says, if he gets into 0ffice, it won’t be necesary to vote again, because in 4 years, ”it will be fixed”
No different from the Democrats who are trying to put a complete moron into the White House
Either way this election is the last one.
maybe
but I dont think harris has actually said that
Some words from Harris for you Norman.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1816974609637417112
Now there’s a woman that uses your Scrabble bag.
Having no desire to appear to take sides in the freak show, one for balance.
https://x.com/FeminineWild/status/1816326502989856968
So, so easy to distract westerners with feeble minded, infantile drivel about nothing(both sides).
Whatever next, flu has disappeared but here’s another virus that you won’t be able to tell apart from flu, but this one is deadly(even though the tests we keep telling you to take say positive and you don’t die but do feel like you have the flu, it’s definitely not flu ok). Mencken and “deserve to get it good and hard” springs to mind.
fitz
voices are so easy to fake now
do you really think anyone—let alone harris—could come out with such a drivel-mix?
and i couldnt make any sense of your second paragraph at all
re read it, rewrite and repost it?
Sorry it confused you so norman. Here’s the real part and do take note of the significant significance of the passage of time.
https://youtu.be/yS0yBgZrVas?feature=shared
Just in case you still don’t realise the importance of the moment in time, here’s a reminder.
https://youtu.be/8Jc-kL22fQU?feature=shared
Also sorry for the Scrabble confusion. It was in reference to your own use of the word with your late sparring partner. If you watch the above you’ll understand why it fits Harris perfectly.
WTF is she going on about norman?
She reminds me of someone when she makes the mistake of opening her mouth.
https://youtu.be/rX5En0JpIFk?feature=shared
Anyway, who anointed her? The vote for dem rep hasn’t taken place has it?
i admit to be easily confused fitz
your comment still didnt make any sense.
trump said—if you vote for me now, you wont need to vote again—we will have fixed it.
Harris no doubt has many faults (dont we all)—but if you prefer the dons approach to government, (you better believe it) based on the above statement, then there’s nothing I can do for you
Norman, stop thinking that everyone must pick a side in the show.
One idiot is no different from the other and they will both take you to the same destination. You’ll only really appreciate the stupidity of the game when you refuse to participate. Take a step back, assess without emotion and tell me you’d trust either to run a bath, let alone a country. It’s like your being given a shit sandwich to eat and all you care about is which type of bread the shit is between. Point out it’s a shit sandwich and you have no intention of eating shit.
fitz
i have never been under the illusuion that any politician knows what to do, to resolve the problems we face, any more than you or i do.
but some are more genuine in their intent
the situation is this:
for the past 100 years or so, up to about 1970, our industrial/commercial system had an energy input increasing at 7% per annum–meaning the overall standard of living doubled every ten years.
that is where the american dream came from. (and that of the rest of the developed world.)
that is now at an an end
no slant of political argument is going to change that. or fantasies aired on OFW about new resources etc, from unearthly places.—(there are none)
but that will not stop idiots promising MAGA etc, in ignorance of that truth, and bigger idiots believing it.
because the alternative is not pleasant.
sorry to keep banging the same drum–but that is the only one there is.
I agree with,
“for the past 100 years or so, up to about 1970, our industrial/commercial system had an energy input increasing at 7% per annum–meaning the overall standard of living doubled every ten years.”
What we switched to after 1970 was a system that was held up by added debt and added complexity. The US dollar was removed from the gold standard in 1971. Bigger companies started playing a bigger role. Computers started coming into more widespread use. This is a link of to a 2020 article from Chris Martenson’s site.
https://peakprosperity.com/1971-the-year-that-changed-everything/
Thanks Gail
I hadn’t seen that link you posted—very useful.
The 1970 date was why I borrowed your chart to head up my piece on the American dream;
https://medium.com/p/9fab37c44b0b
trouble is….most can’t accept it, and look for all sorts of reasons for alternatives.
but the 1970 date keeps coming up again and again.
I understood Fitz’s comment perfectly well, including the second paragraph, and I approve of the sentiment.
Here, let me paraphrase it, just to check I understood it correctly. Although this won’t help Norman because, as we’ve learned from experience, “Some people just don’t get it.”
Westerners are so easy to distract (both on the Republican and Democrat sides) with nonsensical, stupid and childish nonsense.
What will the controllers come up with next to fool the masses? Perhaps this? The “flu is gone, but here’s another virus that is indistinguishable from the flu. However, this one is deadly (even if you test positive for the test we keep telling you to take and it doesn’t kill you but makes you feel like you have the flu, it is definitely not the flu, ok?) . The American journalist and satirist Henry Louis Mencken and the phrase “you deserve to be hit hard” come to mind.
HL. Mencken has a reputation as taking a dim view of democracy and the intelligence of the common people, and one of has best know quotations was:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
Vote 2024: Mysoginistic Orange Troll vs. Hair Sniffing Gaslighter
At least the first pays lip service to civilization while the second does not.
woah. all this time I misunderstood you. I thought you thought the gaslighter was the one for civ.
“Misogynistic “
The most BS term in the English vernacular.
The media has been fine tuned to sell, it sells whatever pays the bills.
This is what is taught to speech majors at universities.
Dennis L.
Do we believe this story or not?
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/on-kamalas-inspiring-backstory-and-the-big-lie-about-unity-151184/
Another quote from the article:
you must all be looking forward to the debates.
Her connection with Willie Brown was in public domain even as she ran as a presidential contender garnering zero votes . Biden selected her as an advertisement for the Democrats DEI narrative . Harris —- Deep throat to deep state . Nothing here , let us move on .
Let’s pass on from Kamala’s youthful indiscretions with Brown Willy, which are nothing to disqualify a presidential candidate for, and learn how to use Kamalaisms in real life.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/491560316652471
The story of GHB, which seems to be an almost miracle sleep aid, but which the FDA has regulated so it is unavailable is found in this article by “A Midwestern Doctor.” It is said to be comparable to the ivermectin story. Too cheap, and works too well, to be allowed on the market.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/why-isnt-there-a-cure-for-insomnia
The FDA’s War Against Sleep
Why There Isn’t a Cure for Insomnia
I would think other countries would allow GHB, if it works so well, however. I haven’t checked into the world story on GHB.
I think that’s known as a date rape drug and perhaps as a result of public outcry (or big pharma), that explains why it received additional scrutiny
The article claims it hasn’t really been used much for that purpose. That was the excuse given for taking it off of the market.
The article adds more to this discussion. It was Roofies that were the problem, not GHB, in the view of the Midwestern doctor.
If you have ever tasted it, you would know there would be no way to hide it in a drink.
Today’s tip for insomniacs!!! L-Triptophan, a simple harmless amino acid, can be remarkably effective. Take 500mg half an hour before turning in. As a supplement, it’s a bit pricy, but affordable at about 30 cents a tab or less than 100 dollars a month.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Tryptophan&client=safari&sca_esv=f8b163fc5cbff106&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIQS-s2UMdiG43Qi1LMtvntGntqzQ%3A1722146829551&ei=DeClZpWqIcDBvr0PkMSU-Aw&ved=0ahUKEwjV5JrwiMmHAxXAoK8BHRAiBc8Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=Tryptophan&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiClRyeXB0b3BoYW4yChAjGIAEGCcYigUyChAAGIAEGEMYigUyChAAGIAEGEMYigUyChAAGIAEGEMYigUyChAAGIAEGEMYigUyChAAGIAEGEMYigUyBRAAGIAEMgoQABiABBgUGIcCMgoQABiABBgUGIcCMgoQABiABBhDGIoFSOUaUPkWWPkWcAF4AZABAJgBcqABcqoBAzAuMbgBA8gBAPgBAvgBAZgCAqAChAHCAgoQABiwAxjWBBhHmAMA4gMFEgExIECIBgGQBgiSBwMxLjGgB7UG&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Peak gold in 2018. Sounds familiar with another “commodity”, doesn’t it?
WE MIGHT BE ABOUT TO HIT ‘PEAK GOLD’. FOR REAL, THIS TIME
https://stockhead.com.au/resources/we-might-be-about-to-hit-peak-gold-for-real-this-time/
– Gold production from mining is rising at an unsustainable rate, according to the World Gold Council
– There’s only about 15% of known gold reserves left, says the USGS
– Recycling is ramping up, but that will only get us so far
Hold onto your hats, gold lovers – things could be about to get a little bumpy, after some moderately concerning rumblings from industry experts that are pointing towards a rapidly-approaching deadline called “peak gold”.
Peak gold (or peak ‘anything’, for that matter) is the point at which production (or in this case, from mining) of a commodity stops growing, because we’re starting to run out of a finite resource for humans to extract.
There’s one side to this theory that suggests that we might have already passed the “peak gold” moment, back in 2018 when things started looking a little tight.
More recently, however, are reports that the global industry is struggling to maintain production growth to meet the constant demand, with John Reade, chief market strategist for the World Gold Council, sounding the alarm in a recent chat with CNBC.
“We’ve seen record first quarter mine production in 2024 up 4% year on year. But the bigger picture, I think about mine production is that, effectively, it plateaued around 2016, 2018 and we’ve seen no growth since then,” Reade said.
Anyone seen this over at reddit peak oil?
2018 was peak
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F57l38kvtk5ad1.jpeg
https://old.reddit.com/r/peakoil/comments/1dttqjl/5_years_post_peak/
Followed by these cryptic comments:
“Soo…7.3 years left if there’s no new discoveries and the decline in reserves is linear.
As production continues to fall, the rate reserves are consumed will slow, and maybe there will be some new drilling. Maybe a decade?”
&
“helps explain a lot of what we’re seeing play out”
This article has some disturbing peak oil charts. It shows both the peak in crude oil production in 2018, and the purported drop in proven reserves. I have not seen recently reported reserves.
The proven reserve amounts I have seen seem to cut off at 2020. I expect that the linear decline that is shown relates to someone’s calculation of what they would be, if actual production to date were subtracted. The chart is not “0 – based,” so a person gets a gee-whiz graph headed down.
The graphs are a bit odd and too pessimistic because they consider only the 1P reserves, the lowest numbers.
Here is the latest revision from Rystad.
https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/global-recoverable-oil-barrels-demand-electrification
Down below the current reserves based on a combination of probability, future and current field reserves, technical possibilities and price.
1P: 449 Billion barrels
2P: 738 Billion barrels
2PC: 1224 Billion barrels
2PCX: 1536 Billion barrels
I do think (and hope, actually) that we will not assist at a tremendous decline of oil production all of a sudden, but a plateau around 80/82 million barrels per day until 2030/2035, hopefully as long 2040 with up and down throughout the road.
Then an irreversible and “gentle” decline.
Growth of the production beyond that number? It’s gone for good, unless some new “rabbit out of the hat” unlocks some new hydrocarbon sources.
Price and technology play a major role in unlocking new reserves. The oil sands in Canada, for instance, have been known for decades in the oil industry (just like shale beds, I have a book on petroleum geology written in 1979 where there is a chapter that speaks about fracking the shale/tight formation to extract the oil) but only when the price of oil reached more of 50/60 bucks per barrel they were developed.
For instance, the Canadian oil sands are really immense with more than 2 trillion barrels of oil in place but only a fraction, around 170 billion can be extracted at the current price.
The same goes for the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela, around 1 trillion barrels of resource.
There is still a lot of oil out there, but we are limited by technology and price.
we choose to ignore the fundamental realities about energy use and extraction:
1….we use fossil fuel to convert one energy form into another, and in doing so we create wages for ourselves—those wages depend on the difference between those energy forms:
the wider the gap, the more wages we have.
2….we call that the surplus energy economy.—or… the difference between energy used to get hold of the energy itself, and the energy we have available, once we begin to use it.
3….we are fast approaching (or have maybe passed) the point, where our prime industrial function becomes the actual business of energy extraction itself.
4–at that point we spend more in energy terms getting hold of the fuel we need to run the industrialised world, than can be extracted from the fuel we get.
5… we do that because what we do still looks like ”positive” employment, when in economic terms, it is ”negative” employment. It would be the same if we took out a bank loan to pay ourselves a monthly salary.
6… This why our wages now depend on the future we have mortgaged to keep our current society solvent.
It certainly seems that way, Norman.
We are in a right pickle if you ask me.
i was about to ask you tim
now all we have to agree on is what flavour of pickle
Gian , the Rystad report is a piece of BS . Quark in Spain has dissected it . He is so upset with the BS that he is thinking of shutting down his blog because he is fed up with the lies of Rystad , EIA . IEA and all data reporting agencies . Use Google translate .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/07/reservas-de-petroleo-mundial-segun.html
Quark has reached the same conclusion as most of us here, that the “we must reduce fossil fuels because climate change” is in fact the cover story for “fossil fuels are running out”. Here is his comment, copy-pasted.
>> quark July 26, 2024, 0:32
The dynamics of the response of the states (or the deep state that directs all of them) fulfills a series of phases, among which is the “information blackout”. The next thing is to narrate reality from the point of view of the competent authority.
>> For example, this initiative is being distributed.
>> https://climateandhealthalliance.org/es/fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty-es/
>> “The international scientific consensus is clear: to protect the health and lives of present and future generations we need a rapid and equitable elimination of fossil fuels worldwide, so as not to exceed 1.5ºC heating. We, the undersigned professionals and health organizations, call on governments around the world to develop and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, to establish a legally binding global plan for:
>> End the expansion of any new infrastructure and fossil fuel production by immediately ending activity and investment in all explorations, extractions and construction of new or expanded fossil fuel infrastructures, according to the best available scientific data.
>> Progressively eliminate the production and use of fossil fuels in a fair and equitable manner, in accordance with the global climate objective of 1.5C. To address existing inequality, we call on high-income countries to provide financial support, technological and other to low- and middle-income countries in abandoning fossil fuels, ensuring that the transition reduces rather than exacerbates poverty.
>> Accelerate real solutions and guarantee a fair transition for each worker, community and country, creating a healthy and sustainable future for all. A just transition must respect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.”
>> According to this proposal, oil would not run out, we would be the ones who would voluntarily stop using it to save the planet.
>> The result is the same, but the discourse and acceptance among the public changes radically.
>> There are many ways to channel a shortage situation and the message is going to be vital to avoid chaos.
Exactly! No one goes around and announces something awful. A young couples doesn’t say, we are going through bankruptcy.” They reframe the story as, “We have decided to go and say with my parents for a while. Doing so will be beneficial for all of us.”
I don’t see the numbers you’re giving. This source, also Rystad, says 2P (which includes 1P) is 505gb. The table is the second link.
https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/recoverable-oil-reserves-billion-barrels-warming-planet
https://www.datocms-assets.com/75979/1687966805-20230627-recoverable-oil-pr-charts-1.jpg
Anyway, isn’t 2PC very iffy territory? The C means “contingent” on new technology and not currently viable to recover, right?
So the safe guess is 505 / 36 per annum = 14 years, plus whatever tech and fracking improvements are able to yield. Even that production will be threatened by instability if production over those years vacillates.
Edit: Okay, I see you posted this year’s table and the one I posted was 2023. Ravi’s link claims the changes between years don’t make sense.
” “Soo…7.3 years left if there’s no new discoveries and the decline in reserves is linear. ”
Discoveries don’t matter what matters is economical recovery and finally converting this into a product that ”Six Pack Joe ” can top up his tank . By the way we must differentiate between decline rates and depletion rates .
Without enough crude oil, I would not be surprised if the production of all minerals peaks simultaneously, about 2018. Maybe a few minerals hold on for a big longer, but this should be the pattern.
https://un-denial.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/lars-larsen-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-13th-edition-2024.pdf
Saludos
el mar
No diesel for importing countries 2027?
I think we will have a simultaneous problem when ” peak oil” meets ” The Olduvai Theory ” . A confluence of a ” perfect storm ” .
Gian, isn’t this story illogical piffle?
– Gold production from mining is rising at an unsustainable rate
Surely all production of all nonrenewable resources is at an unsustainable rate?
– There’s only about 15% of known gold reserves left, says the USGS
Surely there’s always 100% of known reserves left? Once extracted, reserves are no longer reserves
(English Al Arabya)
“Trump doctor disputes suggestion that shrapnel, not bullet, hit his ear”
“Ronny Jackson, Trump’s doctor when he was in the White House, released a statement a day after Trump criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray for telling US lawmakers this week it was not clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet, or shrapnel or glass.
“There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” wrote Jackson, a close Trump ally. “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.” …..
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2024/07/27/trump-doctor-disputes-suggestion-that-shrapnel-not-bullet-hit-his-ear
I wonder if we are to expect an hematoma in the ear. the bullet is a piece of metal traveling at Mach 3. Plus the supersonic bang must have been deafening so close to the ear. I saw no hematoma and trump did not act as if there was a loud bang in one of the ears.
I heard he had an old ketchup packet in his pocket from Mcdonalds that burst when he hit the floor.
Harris Erases Trump’s Lead, WSJ Poll Finds
“Two candidates are effectively tied after Biden’s exit shakes up race”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/harris-erases-trumps-lead-wsj-poll-finds-e286144d
false narratives lead to preference falsification and manufactured consent. hence the proliferation of polls etc.
TRUMP PLANS MORE OUTDOOR RALLIES, SAYS SECRET SERVICE MUST PROTECT HIM
https://x.com/DeItaone/status/1817190167079190825
Actually, I am badly misreading the chart.
9 to 12 degrees was the minimums, and East Anglians can look forward to highs of up to 24 degrees on Saturday and perhaps even 30 degrees on Sunday.
The tomatoes will love that.
Meanwhile, let’s look at the BBC’s weather forecast for East Anglia, the region just to the north and east of London.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-12457929
Maximum temperatures of 9 to 12 degrees C and minimums of as low as 3 degrees C around Corby and Peterborough. hardly a barbecue summer, is it?
I mention this because this is supposed to be the warmest week of the year on the average in northern hemisphere temperate regions.
Norman, I hope this won’t stop your tomatoes from ripening.
not worth an eyeroll tim
a few years ago i would have granted you the awareness that weather and climate are two different things.
now i know that such an expectation is pointless.
Rather like that clown Inhofe, who brought a snowball into the US senate, with the comment…”whatever happened to global warming?”
We have a group picnic planned for Wednesday—hopefully climate climate change will give us a nice day for it.
Ok, I’ll bite.
If weather and climate are two different things, then why do so many of your fellow warmists make a song and dance about the climate every time they experience a spot of inclement weather?
If it wasn’t for the weather, you wouldn’t even know that climate existed! [pokes tongue out, a la Einstein]
a climatic period can last for decades or 000s of years—for any number of reasons.
a weather spell might last a few hours, maybe a month or two in certain circumstances.
so far in uk. our summer has been abysmal—that;s weather.–it does not affect the overall rise is global temperature
even having to explain it is an embarrassment.
How much food is made from waste now?
https://youtu.be/i4jfBoOXNs8?si=cpEnsa5j6JMm4KL4
Great video MG, thanks.
I was unaware of the existence of these “silent” giants that operate in the food sector.
The Cargill company for instance had over 170 billion dollars of revenue in 2023!
This video talks about four companies dominating the grain trade, and indirectly affecting farmers.
The four companies are
Archer Daniels Midland
Bungi Limited
Cargill Incorporated
Louis Dreyfus Company
It talks about these companies influencing (owning?) the over-processed food market. Also the organic and supplement markets.
The speakers says that grain calories make up 68% of the typical American diet.
The speaker particularly singles out seed oils as being problematic. Also starches, which are worse on glycemic index than sugars. And of course sugars.
The speaker claims that food subsidies are going to benefit these companies more than American farmers.
This is an article I found related to this issue.
https://enrichest.com/en/blog/role-of-grains-in-commodities-trading-comprehensive-guide
This is related to special interests and “Big Food.”
What seems to me to be happening now is the US is being cut out of food export markets because of high US costs (related to high farm prices, in part). For example, China is buying less food exports from the US. It is the lack of demand from around the world that holds down US food prices. US subsidies aren’t enough to fix this problem.
The speaker on the video is talking about going on a keto diet, instead. I would say, “No, go on a whole foods diet, including lots of produce in its original form. Stay off overly processed foods, and foods with ingredients you don’t have on your pantry shelves.”
Thanks,
Dennis L.
I wonder whether or if the ultra-processed food people in the West eat today is more over-processed than it was half a century ago.
It is certainly true that people in the west are a lot fatter than they used to be, and there is a lot more autoimmune disease and autism today than there was half a century ago.
But I was around half a century ago and I remember a lot of people were eating a lot of ultra-processed food back then. There was the push to normalize margarine. For instance, this little gem dates from 1959.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-1950s-advert-for-stork-margarine-the-advert-appeared-in-a-magazine-140072480.html
And I remember seed oils as being normal for frying and for salad oil back when I was a child.
In what ways have our diets changed? And what other major factors could be at play in ruining our health?
I agree but I know people who gained weight in middle age and after much trial and error only seemed to ‘cure’ it with a low-carb. (wholefood) diet. They’re scared to go back on a normal wholefood diet. I think they’re probably mistaken and could stay thin on a wider range of whole foods. But they’re not willing to take the risk, as they see it.
https://cdn.britannica.com/64/170564-050-7A0A86A2/motherboard-for-computer.jpg
Notice how closely a motherboard for a computer is imitated by cities such as Seoul Sth Korea when viewed from above.
Is this the singularity getting nearer?
Are we merely bits and bytes in a huge mother-board-earth?
Nah. I think some of us are still analog.
But when I travel by train and see 95% of my fellow passengers “plugged into” their smartphones, I do wonder how long it will be before all the users (not the phones) will be replaced by AI?
Perhaps this is already happening in Seoul as more and more people are uploading themselves into the cloud? Is there an app for that? And perhaps this is why the South Korean population birthrate is plummeting?
2030ish most humans won’t be needed (Like horses)
NASA
https://imgur.com/a/oLSgrC3
The Olympics start rather quietly, with the opening ceremony a disaster.
It seems human talent peaked on 2012 , no matter how much a certain poster here wants to deny it, and since then it is a big downhill.
Assuming there is a Los Angeles , United States, in 2028 the olympics there will show even a greater degredation. I think that will be the last one, since beyond 2030 nobody will have any time for that kind of stuff.
Well, Macron’s bastard tranny stepson didn’t call Kamala to beg for F16’s during the Eiffel Towers degredation.
Like Obama, she will probably wield little actual power which would be the only silver lining.
If I understand it correctly, they re-enacted the Last Supper with t*annies.
Here is some research that might actually help make a renewable energy future possible.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-024-01645-x
Storing energy in twisted carbon nanotube ropes.
here is the money quote
“The nanomechanical system proposed for reversible energy storage has significant advantages over current technologies. The core of the SWCNT rope was functionalized with an elastomer. The energy storage capacity and rate of energy delivery of a rope, which can be reversibly twisted, approaches those of explosives, including gasoline, on a gravimetric basis. The energy storage density of 2.1 MJ kg−1 exceeds that of leading electrical or electrochemical energy storage systems, in particular LIBs, by at least a factor of three. In addition, the energy retention rate of a twisted rope exceeds those of competing electrical and electrochemical systems that discharge over time. In contrast, the number of useful charge/discharge or load/unload cycles of the SWCNT rope appeared to be unlimited. Unlike chemical explosives and electrical or electrochemical systems, the storage and delivery of nanomechanical energy in SWCNT ropes is very safe. Although limited ion mobility reduces and even cripples the power delivery of LIBs at very low temperatures, the power density delivered by a twisted SWCNT rope remains rather constant over a wide temperature range, from deep cryogenic temperatures to the boiling point of water.”
High energy density 0.5 kilowatt hours per kilogram
Unlimited cycles (this is huge if true)
no self-discharge
Low temperature dependence
Safe
No exotic materials ( almost all carbon)
Potentially cheap to manufacture
Rather than spend money on wars, maybe try developing these instead?
sounds more likely than finding a cubic mile of Pt, LOL
I think ‘rope’ is the key word in this. The ‘nano’ addition gives it a rather cutting edge. But who knows?
It is a big rubber band.
lol
i was thinking model aeroplanes and rubber bands too
That is what i was thinking too.
Lol
The basic mechanism can be that simple.
IF you can make the rope cheaply we might be able have a much better solution to storing intermittent flows of energy.
If it works, it looks like it would be much better than compressed air. Compressed air tanks have a very long cycle life too.
Agreed. With an increasing stock to flow ratio.
And as all rubber bands will suffer internal (friction) losses. but also, the way energy is stored in rubber bands is essentially DC, as opposed to AC. This is not consistent with any of the current engines, which cycle. There is also the question of how the rubber band is locked, once charged. If the energy content is MJ/kg, it is going to be a pretty big lock.
But you still only get electricity. Most of our industrial effort uses coal, oil or natural gas, not electricity.
In US 2022 19.5% electricity was generated by coal
38% electricity was generated by CH4
In 2023 .4% of US electricity was from oil.
Were one to assume 100% replacement by photovoltaic with storage in nano mechanicals, this would be a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses.
Strange how solutions seem to come along as needed over suitable time periods.
Above numbers are from Copilot, looks like underlying numbers are eia.gov; I did not double check.
The economic question is deflation/inflation?
Dennis L.
Sounds a little bit like The Windup Girl written by Paolo Bacigalupi. Energy was stored in “springs”.
“High energy density 0,5 kilowatt hours per kilogram” it’s a bit of a sensationalistic statement.
It’s around 2 times more energy dense than a standard lithium battery and on the same level as a lithium–sulfur battery that reaches around 0,45 kWh/kg.
Btw we are still far from the 12 kWh/kg of diesel that thrown in an engine gives us around 3/4 kW of usable work.
Ah and then there is the statement “Unlimited cycles”!
No entropy I presume… Second law of thermodynamics? Anyone?
WSJ and Zerohedge have different emphases on the Netanyahu-Harris-Biden meetings.
WSJ says On U.S. Trip, Netanyahu Receives Clear Message on Gaza War: Wrap It Up.
At the very end of the article it says:
Zerohedge is saying:
Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris
.
Perhaps Harris is not aware of the “details” of what she is talking about to Netanyahu. A cease fire doesn’t mean much if it can’t lead to a permanent peace.
Next, Netanyahu will be meeting with Trump.
He is cranky that he did not get the thing he wanted (not even close), and he will pick a random fight. There is a push back against extreme warmongering at a systemic level in the deep state. amazing to say, and quite a weak push back but still. bibi is no longer the king of Washington.
The only way for capital to get out of the biggest bubble and debt known is war.
The only way it can manage economic collapse is to emerge victorious from a war.
The only way it can maintain Western-centered hegemony is war. The
only way it can lead a bankrupt society is to keep it subdued under the pretext of war.
The only way it can eliminate its internal political rivals who are opposed to Agenda 2030 at zero cost is war.
More than where, let’s ask when. Elections and consequences of Trump vs Harris 2024. Two almost totally opposite models of society, and one is going to lose. Civil conflict will be on the edge of the knife in that 4-year legislature
.
Second stop if the worst of the first is somehow avoided: Stop Netanyahu before he start a full-scale war in the Middle East. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the West capable
of stopping him beyond rhetoric and posturing (perhaps Trump would be able to do so if he were to be realistic and cut off funding, although this is highly unlikely).
War does seem to look like a magic solution to a whole lot of problems. It is understandable that many leaders turn to it.
The WSJ has an article up:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/jd-vance-marine-military-service-foreign-policy-e536e4ac
JD Vance Went to Iraq a Believer in Overseas Wars and Came Home a Skeptic
His six-month tour was a defining moment for Donald Trump’s running mate
So at this point, the Democrats seem to be the “stimulate the economy through war” group, and the Republicans seem to be the part of “Let’s stay out of foreign wars,” party.
With the world’s strong faith in wars, perhaps the Democrats will win. Also, they tend to promise more handouts to everyone.
war does not bring a ticket out of bankruptcy—it just looks that way—thats why collapsing regimes start wars to save themselves.
wars can be internal or external.
wars can only be sustained on the level of energy available to the combatants.
sooner or later, one or the other runs out of fuel
ww2 carried on into a 50 era of prosperity for only one reason.
oil in the ground does nothing.
the usa had a vast surplus of oil energy that needed to burn to turn into profit—ie make money for the oil companies.
that was how/why Germany and Japan got rebuilt–it made the energy companies rich
that era ended in 1970, we are now freewheeling on accellerating debt.
You have the story correct, as I see it. We entered into a period of stagflation. Now big parts of the world economy seem to be headed for collapse.
Have never understood war as a solution but a guess is war speeds up the movement of energy and raw materials through a system and in so doing allows employment of more people.
Not sure how that works with diminishing resources, it implies to me that there is less and less at a faster depletion rate that without war.
Dennis L.
wars make vast profits for a limited few
thats why old men send young men off to die
Now is the time to invest in industries that will ramp up in war, except that the selling price of their stock may already be very high.
If you look back at history, GDP spikes in wars. There is a huge amount of borrowing. The proceeds of this borrowing go to provide jobs for many more people. People whose wages were too low will be especially interested. The many ordinary people with money in their hands speed up the economy (assuming goods are available). Also, industries supporting the war are speeded up.
And the propaganda put out says, “Our side will win. We will get the resources of the other side.” People have a common enemy to vent their anger and frustration against.
right now i’m researching about the european wars of the 1750s, and early 1800s.
in both scenarios there was a massive increase in iron production, and after each period there were food riots because wages and production slumped drastically.
But if you do not have any artillery shells and are struggling against the Houthis, sure, you want to do war but there are limits. regrettably for them, the limits will become stronger as time goes on.
I don’t think she is capable of understanding anything.
Dennis L will say she is ‘talented’. She is talented upon getting herself ahead. She is not that talented for navigating the sea of diplomacy, full of sharks, who will tear her apart quite easily.
Yeah, she is about Victoria-Blinken level.
She, assuming you are speaking about Kamala, is talented at politics. Look where she is, my guess is she is the next president of the US.
Dennis L.
Your celebrity worship now has reached a new level. She is an affirmative action figure who is being pushed higher precisely because of her lack of talent.
Given your logic you will worship puppet rulers who will hold no actual power and mess things up.
Its all theatre to entertain and distract.
The funding from US to Israel continues unabated.
Supplies, military intelligence (oxymoron yet?), personnel exchanges etc etc all go on.
Similarly, I believe energy still flows from Russia to Europe…?
Tik Tok, Instagram, Taylor Swift, popcorn; interrupt these and then there will be strife.
I used to engage in debate, but came to realise, as my hair went grey, that the narrative programming goes too deep, the circus plays music too loud, and the light in peoples eyes was merely a reflection from their dumb-phone so save your breath.
I am as disengaged from the political economy as much as I can be and as a consequence of the covid19 international IQ test have found a community of like-minded who similarly are staying back and getting on.
Not quite The Amish, more The Cautious.
‘…there is no broad pattern to history or possibility of historical progress over time; outcomes are simply the result of actors duking it out over and over again.’ somebody said it, but don’t mention adaptation by the war criminal please
‘…there is no broad pattern to history or possibility of historical progress over time; outcomes are simply the result of actors duking it out over and over again.’
Apparently, this quote seems to reflect the combination of a thoughts by a couple of different people. A 2022 WSJ article by Francis Fukuyama says
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-long-arc-of-historical-progress-11651244262
Anne Applebaum … ? name rings a bell … something to do with Poland, no?
Ah yes, her husband, Radek Sikorski, is foreign minister of Poland
Clearly an independent and impartial voice to be pointing out with respect to Putin the irony in Dostoyevski’s attributed remark that if god is dead, everything is permitted.
While everyone talks of a hot kinetic war, Rummie’s quip prior to the 2003 Gulf Iraq War may give us a few clues clue of the realities:
“You go to war with the army you have, not with the army you want or would like to have.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPgljRvzQw
Israel vs Iran, China vs Taiwan, NATO vs Russia etc quietly realize logistically they don’t have the army, or rather the logistics, anymore to fight a large scale war. Even realtively smaller scale localized wars like in UKR and Gaza aren’t working out as planned. The lack of fuel (failure to capture the oil rich Caucauses) were probably instrumental to Hitler’s loosing the WWII. Even PROC must have some doubts about any invasion of Taiwan.
But no matter. If the MIC can convince people that massive conventional war is inevitable and that therefore we have to prepare for war, they can still make enormous profits selling the fear mongering and production of this expensive overly complex, non functional crap like F-35s, Patriot Anti-missle Defense systems. I guess only if we were to an all out nuclear (missile) based war, would this not apply.
Kind of like big pharma’s profits depending on installing fear of this new Bird Flu or climate change.
“Ten to fifteen years from now, my guess is a third – maybe 25 percent to a third of the U.S. military will be robotic,’ said Milley.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-25/gen-mark-milley-robots-imminently-replace-humans-soldiers-us-military
Would represent a huge reduction on the current percentage.
LOL! There seems to be a progression:
Males, mostly white.
Males, multicolored.
Add in homosexual males.
Add in females.
But an awfully lot are not able bodied, or don’t want to serve or both. If heavy lifting is required, not everyone is equal.
So somehow need to work around the issue.
The US can’t really build anything (very much) itself. I wonder if it will outsource building the robots to China?
There will be a back door in the BIOS which will make all robot dogs roll over and play dead until the batteries run out. The West is really at the end of its rope.
Guess:
Bots lead to a private army, the indoctrination is in the code and the code will have backdoors.
Will AI evolve? If AI has robots and is the master of the robots where does this leave humans?
This if done gives machines ability to reach out and touch someone and in their training is in bearing arms.
Human control, pull the plug?
Elon will use the robots to build robots in Giga Texas. Also in Giga Shanghai.
“A finding around 2018 left him particularly flabbergasted: Hillary Clinton and her cronies have access to all of the Digital Keys for all transactions on the planet. In other words, unless you can build a new internet, you – and say, your cryptocurrencies, for example – are accessible by them. This is literally how they can (and do) “turn off your chip”, in the famous words last of the late Aaron Russo. “?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-147029492
i’m amazed clinton has the time, along with her child selling business
Disagree; next gen warfare already in place; they are called Cell Phone Towers.
They are already nuking the insects and by default, the plants.
CO2 mania is merely a distraction; the real pollution today is electromagnetic/wifi signals.
It is the unseen smog which, if you have a monitor, shows up massively in built up areas.
At least there is no need to clean windscreens on long journeys now.
I would love more details on this.I agree.
I found a few references:
https://ehtrust.org/study-finds-wireless-radiation-affects-wildlife/
Study Finds Wireless Radiation Affects Wildlife
Landmark review concludes regulations are urgently needed to protect flora and fauna
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2021— New research by U.S. experts calls for updated laws to protect wildlife from wireless radiation. The Environmental Health Trust recently won a victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit with a favorable ruling. In its ruling, the court ordered the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to explain why it ignored scientific evidence including studies finding harm to trees and wildlife from wireless radiation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773032822000311
Mobile phone and base stations radiation and its effects on human health and environment: A review (August 2023)
The effects of radiation may be classified into non-thermal and thermal. Thermal effects are similar to those of cooking in a microwave oven. The non-thermal effects are not properly defined, but it is been learnt that the these effects are three to four times more hazardous than the thermal, which remains controversial. A brief picture of the Indian scenario of cell phone industry and the number of mobile towers in India was discussed. The effects of radiation emitted from cell phones and base stations on wildlife, humans and the environment were summarized with suitable examples and studies conducted by various voluntary organizations.
https://ehtrust.org/health-effects-of-cell-towers-near-homes-and-schools/
(2023)
Download a paper summarizing the effects:
https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/5G-Cell-Towers-Near-Schools-Children-Scientific-Research-Liability-Briefing-1-1.pdf
Thanks, my farm requires a repeater hooked to my internet which of all things is fiber. Not sure of the power of the repeater, but hopefully minimal.
Dennis L.
Many of those papers are in excess of 10 years old, but no change in policy.
‘ In its ruling, the court ordered the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to explain why it ignored scientific evidence including studies finding harm to trees and wildlife from wireless radiation.’ ..did this ever occur?
We find pyramids in a nearly lifeless desert and wonder why.
A future spacefaring species will discover a nearly lifeless planet surrounded by remnant orbiting satellites and wonder why.
Apparently the zone of influence, on the ground, of a signal for the Musk starlink system is over 10km in diameter; that signal starts as a narrow beam from the satellite but widens as it progresses.
We need a Carrington type event to fix things. Now that would be a GREAT RESET imho!
Buy books!
Paper books, not the digital variety. That is what I have been buying.
For a long time, I was skeptical about the effects of electromagnetic/wifi signals on insects.
But for the past two or three years, in my part of the countryside I have seen a lot less insects of many kinds than was traditionally the case. Since I work outside in the woods and fields on most days, I have plenty of opportunities to observe—and to get bitten or stung.
I’m still not convinced of the reasons why this is happening, but there are definitely less bugs around, and there are definitely more cellphone towers. We’ve had towers on top of mountains spaced one or two km apart for about 20 years, but for about the last seven years we have also had roadside towers every several hundred meters where there are houses in the neighborhood, which I understand send out signals even when nobody is on the phone.
And for the last couple of years G5 has been spreading. That may be the big culprit. But then again, it may be Putin, Global Warming, or the new Bug Flu virus that is to blame.
I thought this economic analysis reprinted in Zerohedge was much above average. It is titled,
Market Moves Like These “Have Not Ended Well”
Excerpts:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d3c4a96-16a5-42c7-af27-648030998002_525x215.png
Also,
” As we have said in prior reports we believe this decade will look a lot like the 1970’s with recurring waves of inflation.”
Also,
“Deep State should be called “special interests”. It’s simply how our government works and is so far afield from what our Founding Fathers wanted. ”
Also,
The big issue is the budget deficit, as a percentage of GDP. Chart back to 1900:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed8de237-af8d-46d7-b84b-7c0b5dc755a0_1160x938.jpeg
The automotive sector has entered in a spiraling perpetual downturn in sales I think. Global peak car sales was in 2018 at 85,8 mln cars, in the 2023 was 76,7.
This year? Place your bets ladies and gentleman.
In Italy I’m reading about several big auto parts suppliers that are laying off staff. Not good. Down below some recent articles regarding the situation.
Fears of automotive industry downturn as profits slide at Nissan and Stellantis
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/25/fears-of-automotive-industry-downturn-as-profits-slide-at-nissan-and-stellantis
“A collapse in profits at the carmakers Nissan and worse than expected results at Stellantis, the owner of Citroën, Peugeot and Fiat, have deepened fears of a global downturn in the automotive industry.
Shares in Stellantis, which is listed in Milan, plunged on Thursday after it published disappointing earnings, while its French rival Renault also tumbled on the back of the wider concerns despite reporting record profitability.
Stellantis, a 14-brand group that also includes Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge and Maserati, said net profit in the first six months of the year had been almost halved to €5.6bn (£4.72bn) for the first half of the year.
Its sales fell 14% to €85bn, and were hit by a downturn in Europe and particularly in North America.”
Mercedes misses revenue targets: Why the car industry is faltering
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/07/26/mercedes-misses-revenue-targets-why-the-car-industry-is-faltering
“Mercedes-Benz AG, the renowned German luxury automaker, reported a decline in revenue for the last quarter and issued a profit guidance that fell short of expectations, as the company anticipates continued weak customer demand for the rest of the year.”
I had noticed the 2018 peak in automobile sales earlier, but I hadn’t tried to update my chart. It makes sense that auto sales peaked when crude oil sales peaked.
Trying to make vehicles powered by electricity tends to make vehicles that are expensive, heavy (tear up roads), and don’t travel very far. In the Advanced Economies, we also do not have electricity to power these vehicles. But EVs do keep up hope.
(Nakedcapitalism – July 21, 2024 by Conor Gallagher)
“The US Vassal State of Germany Comes Apart”
Interesting analysis of current situation in Germany, full of charts and data.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/the-us-vassal-state-of-germany-unravels.html
I am having a hard time making the link to the particular post work. (t appears, then disappears. I did get as far as
“It’s unclear exactly how the coalition erased a roughly 25 billion euro funding gap.”
If a government assumes that unlimited debt will work to prop the economy will work, they can do a lot of things.
How they did it .
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-debt-austerity-climate-olaf-scholz-christian-lindner/
Sorry it is not clear to me if you have hard time to read the article or its notes.
Anyway from the article it appears a very discouraging picture of current Germany that it used to be the locomotive of Europe and now it seems to be in social/political turmoil and economic difficulty.
What is different from the days of Atlas shrugged and now is that at that time of Atlas Shrugged, set sometime around late 1950s or early 1960s, USA was the absolute #1 and other countries didn’t really matter whether USA went batshit or not.
But now some other countries hostile to what USA is following are now at their doorsteps to overcome USA, and will gladly to do so when USA becomes the joke of the whole world.
all these tough people will simply withdraw since there are nothing more for then to look up in USA, which will be full of entitlement people and those who want something for nothing, and the ability of USA to extract wealth from other countries and export inflation for next to nothing will be fatally diminished.
By 2029 it won’t be relevant as the US hegemony around the world would have been fatally shot through a bunch of disasters which the leadership will be unable to resolve, as virtually all countries of the earth except a few diehards will see USA as a joke, a once powerful country with outdated weaponry which it is unable to replace.
As the more skilled people either retire or move to greener pastures, USA becomes a giant India or Brazil, with, again, outdated nukes.
Some articles from 2008 and 2010 as to how the US will break up . Igor Pranin . Soviet historian .
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/map-of-the-day-ex-kgb-analyst-predicts-balkanization-of-us/58945/
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28477607
It seems like he has been wrong by at least 20 years. I also doubt that there will be six pieces.
“Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on social media platform X on Friday:
“Today we transfer 1.5 billion euros in proceeds from immobilized Russian assets to the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine”.
Al Arabya English https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2024/07/26/eu-to-transfer-1-5-billion-euros-from-frozen-russian-assets-to-ukraine
What for example Arab Countries could think of their assets in Europe ?
After this precedent, are their assets (or of any other foreign Countries) still safe in Europe not to be diverted to other causes ?
For the green cause maybe…?
News are talking today of Paris games and Kamala, but this is a dangerous news not spoken.
This is the kind of thing that antagonizes the Russia and other countries. Gets other countries to leave the US dollar, or start a war with the US.
“NEW YORK—Some investors active on the New York and Tel Aviv Stock Exchanges (NYSE and TASE) apparently knew in advance that Hamas militants were about to launch their attack on Israel before Oct. 7th and that a war would follow. They used that knowledge to cash in by short-selling Israel-linked shares, generating a profit windfall worth millions of dollars. “?
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/someone-knew-stock-traders-made-millions-short-selling-before-oct-7th-hamas-attacks/
Kind of like those traders who shorted United and American Airlines stocks 1-2 days before 9-11. On a more projected time line, Larry Silverstein buying the asbestos riddled Twin Towers for a song and getting them insured for over a billion dollars each, conveniently not showing up for the first time ever because he had a “dental appointment” that day.
“…[it] may sound preposterous; after all, we’re in the age of the climate crisis. And yet, despite all the solar panels, all the windmills, the electric vehicles and the government incentives to go green, the world has never used as much coal as it’s burning this year.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-25/climate-crisis-old-king-coal-remains-omnipotent-and-omnipresent
https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/07/26/26th-july-2024-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
So called renewables are a way of increasing world demand for fossil fuels. The models claim that long term there can be savings, but these models are very iffy. They really make electricity supply more expensive and less stable.
The way wind and solar are priced, they drive other electricity producers (particularly nuclear) out of business. The subsidies they receive lead to a situation in which all electricity generation needs to be subsidized. Debt! Debt! Debt!
“My personal outlook suggests the depletion of oil (and to a lesser degree coal and gas) will be the most critical driver of decline in this century. I hope to convince you here that the threat of oil depletion shoves all the other threats out of the way, which might be a relief if you are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of doom currently on the menu.
The most prominent threat discussed today is climate change. This apocalypse is based on computer models which project the atmospheric impact of fossil fuel burning, with projections usually terminating in 2100. The problem is that these models assume that fossil fuel consumption will continue to increase along historic trends right up to the end of the prediction window. If you combine various models for fossil fuel depletion with climate change (as NASA did in 2008) you have a hard time pushing the atmosphere much beyond 450 ppm of carbon dioxide. We are currently at 420 ppm, up from 280 ppm for the last few thousand years. This means that global warming should peak at non-catastrophic levels sometime in the next century and that the “Venus by next Tuesday” models are implausible. “?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-146945542
I remember that Oil Drum contributors Euan Mearns and Luis de Sousa modified a standard CO2 forecast model, putting in their top estimates of fossil fuels recoverable and came to a similar conclusion, years ago.
“Ford loses nearly $50,000 (£38,700) on every electric car it sells, results from the company show, as traditional manufacturers struggle with the switch away from petrol.
The company posted a loss of $1.1bn for its electric vehicle division, Ford E – equivalent to about $47,600 per car. It sold 23,957 electric vehicles (EVs), an increase of 61pc from a year earlier.”?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/25/ford-loses-50000-on-every-electric-car/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#:~:text=Ford%20loses%20nearly%20%2450%2C000%20(%C2%A3,to%20about%20%2447%2C600%20per%20car.
A lot of car brands will go extinct in the next couple of years. I don’t think it will be the case of Ford, but for other carmakers for sure like Jaguar and Lotus for instance.
Jaguar has announced a full electric line-up, and we can all imagine the results.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/consumer/jaguar-axe-i-pace-and-e-pace-suvs-leaving-just-f-pace-line Lotus instead has already been hit by the EV disaster.
Around £593 million or €700 million of losses. The car production in 2023 was less than 7000 or around €100,000 of loss per car. Amazing!
https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/lotus-racks-up-593m-loss-for-2023-despite-selling-record-number-of-cars/300331
At the same time, I read in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
Chinese EV maker is planning a factory in Georgia
https://www.ajc.com/news/business/a-chinese-maker-of-electric-semi-trucks-to-build-a-plant-in-georgia-report-says/G3B6O4FS7BAQ7EOAEDFCJNLOV4/
As long as US companies want to impress their customers and pay very high prices, there will be companies willing to do this. Also, land prices in rural Georgia are low, as are wages. That is why Georgia has a lot of EV and battery plants already.
My favourite…
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.” —Frank Zappa
This statement makes a person worry.
Maybe the powers that be lose power, instead.
What that statement says is if democratic institutions, or as it puts it the pretense of the masses having a say in how they are governed becomes too costly to support, they will get rid of democracy/ and will impose some kind of dictatorship, like we’ve seen in many Communist countries or almost every non-white country that has attempted to do democracy. One group will rule over the many. When the group in power loses power another group will rule. The losing group will be purged from positions of influence. There will be no power-sharing. We are already moving towards this…”banana republic” model with the winner-takes-all mindset that has taken hold among political junkies in recent decades.
A democracy takes a lot of energy to sustain (elected leaders, polling places, honest elections). If there is not enough energy to sustain it, it makes perfect sense that some powerful (non-elected) group takes over. And, as you say, if things to wrong, a different non-elected group takes over.
Control the sheep-dogs, you control the sheeple.
Time to rewrite the narrative….Again!!
sleepless nights for the thoughtful police.
‘ The Associated Press (AP) reported on March 24, 2021, that Biden had “tapped” Kamala to lead his response to the “border challenges.” Around that time, Kamala quickly gained a reputation as Biden’s “border czar,” which was common knowledge.
Fast-forward to July of 2024 and TIME is reporting that Kamala “was never Biden’s ‘border czar.'” They apparently hope Americans will simply forget the past and follow the new narrative that Kamala is the best person to lead the United States.’
Have they even attempted to make up anything positive she accomplished as veepee?
There is nothing which she has accomplished, which appeals to the unnecessariats who never really accomplished anything in their lives.
As a result civilization retreats.
Narratives are as old as the hills and while they hold, so do the societies functioning within them. Then crowd-strike happens and it all goes to shiiite!
Noble Lie; In Plato’s The Republic, a noble lie is a myth or a lie knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony… (wiki-lies)
‘Plato’s programme for establishing his ideal state involved propagating two foundation myths for it, described by Socrates as a “noble lie”, which were designed to persuade its citizens to embrace the classes of society to which they had been assigned, and their roles within them, contentedly and in harmony with their fellow citizens. Because most citizens were judged incapable of understanding the truth about the most important matters, the rulers of the ideal state were authorised to tell them whatever stories, true or false, would induce them to behave well.
Advocates of the management of corporate culture similarly emphasise the potency of story-telling and myth-making in inducing employees to adopt the beliefs, values and assumptions that corporate leaders consider desirable for both corporate performance and employee wellbeing.’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40926-021-00168-y
Then there is this!!
“Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.” Frank Zappa
“Stupidity is the main building block of the universe.” Perhaps that is true.
Well hydrogen is the lightest and so simplest element, so there must be a certain truth to that idea? Stupidity is the resting and normal state of matter it would seem. But is anyting actually alive really simple? Not biologically. Clay
Orwell’s “memory hole”.
Elon Musk: Environmentalism in the extreme starts to view humans as bad, as a load Earth can’t sustain. This is completely false. If you do the numbers, you see that Earth can potentially sustain 10X the population we have today.
https://x.com/elon_docs/status/1816340603954737347
And what a world that would be Elon! 🙂
The possibility of 10 times current population is Elon Musk’s view.
We are now told about environmental “sin.” It seems to be parallel to the Bible’s view of sin. We are supposed to offset this with recycling (help for-profit recyclers use more fossil fuels) and building more wind and solar (which damage grid electricity and have disposal problems).
Haven’t you heard Gail?
Original Sin is the sin of agriculture, we left the garden and now are forced to toil in the fields as our punishment.
Going from hunter-gathering to agriculture was indeed a huge change, and not necessarily for the better, I agree. The Cain and Abel story is a narrative related to this. Some (perfectly good) plants were declared to be weeds, and other plants were favored. Hunter-gathering was quite egalitarian, while farming led to accumulations of wealth and many poor people (due to added complexity).
Perhaps the original sin is added complexity, and thinking that we can save ourselves through our cleverness. Human population tends to rise over time, and we need a way to produce more food (and other goods and services). But what added complexity produces is wage and wealth disparity. When there is not enough food and other items to go around, wage and wealth disparity ultimately become the problems that bring economies down. The Bible is constantly preaching about looking out for the welfare of the poor. The Maximum Power Principle seems to suggest that there has to be a balance between the two extremes. The pendulum needs to swing back and forth.
In the Cain and Abel story, herding animals (Abel’s calling) is lower in complexity than growing crops (Cain’s specialty), so is favored by God. Farmers and ranchers have always run into conflict: Who gets the use of the land? Now we have the wind turbines, solar panels, and growers of biofuels taking over the land of farmers.
not my kind of original sin
Well, this statement alone sets a pretty strong ceiling to Elon’s intellectual capabilities.
If you see enough of his interviews or media posts, you realize he simply says whatever is to his benefit at the time. He only started talking about falling population as a threat when he was making the news for having kids with two new women at the same time. I think he’s up to 4 mothers now (original wife, some famous model, the musician, and the former Neuralink CEO)? Anyway, my interpretation is that he was simply to deflect criticism and recast his actions as somehow altruistic – nothing to do with whether he does or doesn’t believe in overpopulation as a challenge.
Yep, Elon just makes it up as he goes along. I heard him say recently that purifying sea water is ridiculously cheap… such that we will never have water shortages anymore…
I can go along with this explanation. But to some extent, and I do not have a full explanation for it, I noted throughout my life a correlation between moral rectitude and intellectual insight.
That does not prevent a poster here from worshipping him though
Well, there are people who really believe it is possible, I have met people (even engineers!!!) convinced that hydrogen could be obtained for a few cents, that batteries can be “regenerated” without impacting the environment, and that it is possible to heat a building with the sole help of solar thermal panels without a back-up boiler, etc.
However, if you started talking to them about limits in the availability of mineral and energy resources, they literally went crazy and took me instead for a crazy pessimist.
However, as H. L. Mencken said: “It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant, and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting”
I am afraid that Mencken is right!
California is known for its homeless problem. Finally:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/newsom-orders-california-remove-homeless-encampments-after-supreme-court-ruling
Newsom Issues Executive Order For California Cities To Remove Homeless Encampments After Supreme Court Ruling
I presume cities will have to rent space in hotels for all of these people. Housing is way too expensive in California for most everyday workers. And then there are all of the people who seem to give up, go on drugs, and live on the streets.
In San Diego, I hear they will all be moved to a park closer to town. Wjat could go wrong?
Once USA enters Atlas Shrugged mode, the US hegemony is gone, the dollar is dead, and everything is over.
Elon Musk will relocate to China, where he had invested a lot of money , and same for a lot of foreign talents who will discard US citizenship and move away as well.
William T. Sherman roamed into Georgia for a few weeks.
It took 100 years for George to recover.
USA becomes a third world country, with a bloated population good for not too much, fracturing into a gazillion failed states.
US enters the “Atlas Shrugged” mode presumably means greatly degraded and businesses controlled by excessive laws.
I too expect that the US may fracture into many failed states, unless there is some sort of religious end to the problems we are seeing now.
Atlas Shrugged was a famous novel written back in 1957,the far left are fond of this book .It was written by Ayn Rand, here is a summary i found; ” The novel’s plot concerns the efforts of female protagonist Dagny Taggart to manage a transcontinental railroad in a dystopian United States burdened by overbearing regulations. Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged is as much a work of political philosophy as of popular fiction.”
What happens in the US will depend on who becomes the president a better outcome i think would probably be a female due to their natural maternal instincs .
Haha, let me introduce you to Jabcinda Adern, a mercenary, Hitlary Clinton a liar, Vic Nuland an agitator, Marie Ant want not Nette.
Your generalisation misses the mark; often the wooo-man is the power behind the ‘Drone’.
Indeed. In a lot of Asian historical dramas women are usually the ultimate villains
Yekaterina II of Russia, born Sophie Anhalt-something, didn’t let her maternal instincts to inhibit her tyrannical nature.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. A book views world completely backwards. It has a bunch of wealthy people throwing a hissy fit that they have to share with the poors, so they go live in a commune away from society. Ayn Rand acts like the CEO of the corporation do all the work themselves, and completely ignores the millions of the working class that have to exist and produce for the capitalist class to exist at all. It is the labor of the Proletariat that gives the money of the Bourgeoisie its value.
Atlas Shrugged also ignores the laws of physics by having a free energy device in their capitalist commune.
It’s probably one of Elon Musk’s inspirations.
Not only that, the more skilled labor class will simply give up on USA and withdraw, letting less skilled labor dominate everywhere and reduce productivity
😂Rich people can’t do anything for themselves!!!
It not that “Rich people can’t do anything for themselves” it that in order for a billionaire to exist millions of workers have to be producing in excess of their needs, or order to generate surplus labor value. The surplus value is where profit comes from, without it, capitalism cannot exist.
Elon Musk billions don’t come from HIM PERSONALLY building the automobiles he sells. He hires workers to produce for him and pays them a fraction of their labor value in wages or salary and takes the rest for the shareholders and himself. Ayn Rand complete ignores this in Atlas Shrugged thinking that the CEO and billionaires do it all, and their employees are moochers, when it is the other way around.
To be fair, in Elon’s case he probably pays his blue collar workers reasonably well for the value of their labor. Then he overprices the products and sucks in a lot of government subsidies and extracts his billions from that.
But having all those billions—what is it? 150 billion dollars at present?—Or am I behind the times?—having all those billions doesn’t make up for the pain he’s suffering as a parent.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have an ungrateful transgender child who hates you!
He’s also got an enormous problem in working out how to invest or spend all that money. Must be a permanent headache. Even if he lives another 50 years and never has another cent in income, he would need to spend 3US$ billion a year every year to get rid of that stash. That’s about US$8 million a day.
No wonder he can afford to bankroll Trump’s coming run. Makes a nice change from shopping at Walmart.
Harris is not too much different from Japanese shoguns in the last days of various military dynasties, who were chosen not because of their ability, but because of the lack of it since that makes the shogun quite easy to manipulate.
The most blatant example was the installation of 12-years old Tokugawa Iemochi on 1858 over Keiki, who was considered to be the wisest of all Tokugawas remaining, by the powerful noble Ii Naosuke, who was running the shogunate back then. Naosuke didn’t want an adult to run Japan since that meant the end of his power ; he wanted a child ,whose only trait was eating lots of sweets (which led to his death at the age of 20), as the head of government so he would run things.
Alas, Naosuke was killed on the streets of Edo(Tokyo) 2 years later, and the shogun, still a boy, didn’t know what to do as the remaining officials were all incompetent. Keiki did become the Shogun in 1866, when the house was crumbling down and there were not really anything for him to do.
What do you mean by moochers? To exist, you need some pool of humans beneath you to toll the land and do dangerous activities like mining or scuba diving oil rig maintenance or bombing middle east nations or exporting inflation to el salvador farmers. How do you expect to live in an A/C room with all modernities if you don’t convince other humans to go self-enslave themselves because you are more competent at arranging people to do things than others? The mass amount of slaves have never achieved anything on their own, if they did they would of become the CEO.
But at least they are more productive than those who only want entitlement
Neoconservativism and libertarianism was a movement borne of disillusionment with the Soviet Union….The sort of elitism present in it is on the Left as well….because some of the children of the people who were disillusioned with the Soviet Union are on the Left….Instead of believing the CEO does all the work, THEY believe the college educated people do all the real work and the people with no college degrees are lazy, dangerous in addition to being unproductive. CEOs make the most money because they have the most education, not because they do all the work. College education is the solution to everything. Since Iraq was a bedrock for terrorism and extremism, a long term solution was to build colleges. People busy getting credentials will not resort to violence or extreme customs that favor family formation over personal freedom It makes since why the U.S did not focus its efforts on security in Iraq. It was thinking long-term. It was thinking that it could pacify the region by winning hearts and minds through education.
https://apnews.com/article/urban-sprawl-saddam-hussein-baghdad-higher-education-iraq-897067824c11c022513d837211193c9a
I see it every time I have to go shopping; the young breeders getting their supplies are filling the trolleys with processed crap and they look to have ingested vast quantities while watching TV.
Large, clumsy, crazy-eyed, vacant looks as they waddle from aisle to aisle, often viewing the phone while an out of control sub-unit tugs them along.
Benny days (welfare cheques) are a sight to behold.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ultra-processed-foods-childrens-diet-b2581177.html
‘Ultra-processed foods account for two-thirds of the daily calorie intake of children in Britain, research suggests.
Experts found that UPFs make up a significant proportion of the diets of 11 to 18-year-olds and are eaten more by white youngsters and those from deprived backgrounds.
UPFs have been linked to poor health, such as through an increased risk of obesity and heart disease.
They often contain high levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar and additives, which experts say leaves less room in people’s diets for more nutritious foods.
Examples of UPFs include ice cream, processed meats, crisps, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, biscuits and fizzy drinks.’
I lost you at “saturated fat”.
mmmmmm love my full cream unhomo milk and yog, double cream, vintage cheddars
fatty lamb and beef
viva low carbs
happy to forsake pasta, breads, rice, potatoes, fruit juice, processed crap
Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines
… guidelines said reduce fats and compensate for it by increasing carbohydrates … and so essentially we’ve increased carbohydrate intake in most Western countries and this is likely damaging. We were in for a big surprise. We actually found that increasing fats was protective.
… Low consumption of total fat was associated with increased risk. Very high fat is also “probably bad,” Yusuf said, based on earlier studies from Finland with people who had “extremely high fat levels, not the usual fat levels that populations consume.”
medpagetoday.com/cardiology/cardiobrief/63427
In 2021 a report stated people in the UK & USA were eating 50-55% UPF. In 2023 Dr Chris van Tulleken said in ‘Ultra-Processed People’ that UPF made up around 60% of the UK diet and implied that young people ate more UPF than older people.
Like pharma products, a lot of UPF is patentable. The processing becomes part of that company’s IP. When will UPF reach 70%, 80% of the diet … ? It virtually ‘solves’ the pensions problem, if you get my meaning.
In Atlas Shrugged the “love scenes” read as “rape scenes” to the current day reader. Rand was a stunted human.
There are a degree more productive people can tolerate.
If the faction which doesn’t even pretend to give a shit about civilization wins on November, an Atlas Shrugged situation will be the reality as the more productive people generally withdraw from Civilization, and even if things change later, they are not coming back.
I am no fan of Trump, but the alternative will be Atlas Shrugged.
Streets of Calcutta (I do not call it with the name the locals gave to it)
https://youtu.be/79j_p3cm1ZQ?si=IHlHF00s9DgkbhzR
Streets of Johannesburg
https://youtu.be/BQd_TOUSTuA?si=uJr_hlbVRwBigG6L
Coming soon to what would have been USA as a lot of states will no longer follow orders of Washington DC.
I have been to Mumbai and environs, and the Calcutta video looks quite similar. Lots of people, everywhere. No piped water in a suburb of Mumbai.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/woman-carrying-two-pots-of-water-on-her-head.jpg
Johannesburg looks more like the West, with lots of people everywhere.
“the more productive people generally withdraw from Civilization”
Who do you think is more “productive” the capitalist, who owns the means of production, or the proletariat, who works there. You right wingers are always using “more productive people” to mean wealthy and predominantly white people.
You really think capitalism will end because a democrat gets elected? You think the capitalist will quit trying to accumulate capital because he might have to pay a higher percentage of tax? Is he going to Galt’s Gulch with all his capitalist buddies and do what, do the work of having to build a community from scratch (do hard work), rather than have the power of controlling this society (having others do work for you for money)?
I’d argue that capitalism has already ended. Once central banks began buying government bonds that was the end. For capitalism to work, you need growth. Growth on an energy consumed per capita basis ended around 2005 in the UK (maybe sooner in the USA).
USA got a new lease of life with Shale, which will end around 2026.
Yes, this time it will end in USA.
It is not just a democrat. It is an anti-civilizational democrat.
The capitalists will just move to some other jurisdiction to collect their income while the skilled workers will choose to retire and withdraw.
And only the less smart, less skilled and more demanding people will remain, which is what the premise of Atlas Shrugged.
Let us not forget the out migration of white, hetro, males. Will America twerk it self to wealth?
Once gone they are gone for ever.
No, there will be no twerking back.
The survivability of America is in no way shape or form dependent on how many white heterosexual males exist in this country.
If you think IQ and the genetically based trait of agreeableness have no bearing on survivability then you are correct.
However,………
Link
https://news.freeptomaineradio.com/2024/07/22/the-cost-of-a-hoax/
…its so easy to divide and conquer; truthiness is all you need
waste of mankind’s resources. drug addicts and casino gamblers should not be in civilization
This is definitely a sad story–one of a false story being endlessly repeated, about deaths of Indian children.
Denialism will be criminalised for those who question the correct narrative!!
Welcome to the future.
‘ Professor Jacques Rouillard of the Department of History at Université de Montréal expressed an increasingly common concern. “Not one body has been found. After … months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?”
‘In response to a growing backlash, the special interlocutor assigned to the Kamloops criminal case asked Parliament to make “denialism” of this matter illegal under the criminal code. Those who expressed public skepticism would be vulnerable to prosecution for a hate crime in much the same manner as those who denied the Holo..caust. Under section 319 of the criminal code, the willful promotion of antisem..sm, unless in a private conversation, could lead to up to two years in prison. This includes “condoning, denying or downplaying the Holo…caust.” Discussions of Kamloops would receive the same treatment. On Nov. 26, 2023, the Canadian Press reported that Justice Minister Arif Virani was still considering how to criminalize residential school denialism. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed sympathy for the idea.’
And it just gets more absurd…
“On the same day Canada helped to launch an international effort at the United Nations to demand that China allow free access to Xinjiang to investigate reported human rights violations, China and its allies have called on the UN to investigate crimes against Indigenous people in Canada.” When genocide becomes a game of political chess, it loses its connection to truth or justice.’
Some sacred cows….
Climate change narrative
Covid narrative
Clean Green narrative
MH17
etc
etc..
Buy shares in popcorn biz.
Lots of false narratives are repeated often enough that people come to believe them.
The average IQ of Canadians is south of 90 now.
The average IQ of Canadians is south of 90.
HHH
Ignored
07/22/2024 at 2:46 pm
Before anyone tries to tell me that the Chinese currency isn’t going to collapse. Hear me out first.
They are in a deflationary debt spiral. They have two choices. Either they have a depression or they devalue their currency.
Ok let’s just forget about the above. Pretend everything is fine in China.
Russia’s income from oil sales is currently in the Chinese currency. Russia is currently taking out loans denominated in Chinese yuan. So their income and debt match.
As the Chinese yuan is used more and more for settlement the value of the yuan goes down not up. Chinese banks would have to issue shitloads of new debt if everybody on that side of the planet started trading in the Chinese
Response ;
Kleiber
Ignored
07/24/2024 at 12:59 pm
Why does this matter, though? China has productive output. It is making and building things, and that paid off quite well when Evergrande simply had the gov’t take all the properties that idiot Western investors thought were going to get bailed out despite the CPC saying they were not gonna.
That debt figure seems off though. Can I ask where you got it from? The most leverage nation is Japan, and they cannot interfere with their currency market because America will not be best pleased.
If you’re the workshop of the world, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Devalue the currency if you can, but if a load of nations are buying things in it, pretty sure that means it won’t collapse.
Again, there are no nations remotely like China. They ain’t going anywhere, and if they did, it’s because the countries buying their productive output collapsed. The Chinese at least have modern infrastructure and services to show. The West just has useless trinkets for the most part.
Recall how unfazed Russia was to lose the IP of big brands. Everyone expected them to either flail and unravel, or fuck up making good on alternatives. Neither happened. They’re fine, and they don’t need brands from the West when they can just make their equivalent or better products for consumers and be less reliant on neoliberal vampires.”
Any thoughts?
Agree.
They have an infrastructure and manufacturing capacity which can add value to raw materials more efficiently than almost anyone.
Dennis L.
China definitely has a huge debt bubble.
China also has a problem with coal supplies that are increasingly out of reach because if prices rise high enough to cover all of the costs of shipping coal from remote locations where this coal is produced, to where most of the people and factories live, the price becomes too high for consumers.
Also, the prior heating approach was co-generation, using nearby coal supplies. These coal supplies are mostly depleted, so there has been a need to switch to a different approach. The approach being used is heat using heat pumps. From the point of consumers, this approach is vastly more expensive.
With co-generation, coal-powered electricity plants were located in the middle of cities. This was convenient for both workers and for distribution of the heat co-generated to with the electricity. The excess heat was distributed far and wide. At times, it was too much. Recipients could open their windows if it got too hot.
There were/are specified dates for this distribution. I witnessed what happened, when I spent a month in China in the spring of 2015. University classrooms went from being too hot as the sun beamed in, to too cold, as the co-generated heat went off on March 15.
The co-generated heat was very cheap, but also contributed greatly to air pollution within the cities of China. Turning it off, and using electricity transmitted from distance locations to operate heat pumps, was vastly more expensive for homeowners. This is one of the many things harming China’s economy.
I don’t know how the China situation will turn out. My first guess is that China as we know it today will disintegrate into smaller units, and many of these smaller units will continue to produce goods and services. Much of the debt owed in China will be defaulted on. China will export far less goods in the future.
I am in Gail’s camp . Energy is the Achilles heel and it is not going to workout even in the short term ( 5 years ) . Here is a post by Pepe Escobar who has always a pro Eurasian bias .
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/24/china-has-achieved-escape-velocity-it-is-now-unstoppable/
I go with ” labour without energy is a corpse ; capital without energy is a sculpture ” —-Steve Keen .
The linked article ends:
“The 21st century is shaping up to be the Asian, Eurasian, Chinese century.”
Pepe Escobar is awfully confident about pretty much everyone except the US, but particularly China. It is very hard to see that Europe will come out well.
China is doing well, but it could stumble with all of its problems with debt. The central government of China doesn’t have much debt, but there are huge amounts of debt at lower levels of government and elsewhere in the economy.
So China has no energy for the long term….where does Taiwan get their energy?
The chipmaker for the world….I would predict that if China goes down….so will Taiwan. Does anyone think that if China can’t get oil…that they will allow Taiwan to get it?
Good point!
Taiwan creates an energy/income surplus by making chips that everyone needs
it uses part of that energy/income to buy the fuel to sustain itself.
They are still the workshop of the world. If they want to, Huawei cell phones will be the only ones available worldwide. They produce a lot of green transition crap but they should still have a good run, longer than the US’s.
My immediate gut reaction is that China makes a ton of stuff, but a lot of it is pure JUNK and will be useless to the Chinese people and the people of foreign countries as costs of survival living rise. So the junk production will be the first to go, Their real estate banking collapse-cum-wealth destruction is just beginning. And their new chips, even if better than NVIDIA’s, will wind up in dead end energy hogging unstainable applications like AI, BTC, green energy, EVs and frivolous appliances.
Technology (controlled by the increasing costs of raw materials) has reached the plateau phase of its former increasing cost-benefit. Chinese infrastructure is of tofu quality and will be a liability as they will have to pay twice: the cost of having built it (through debt) and now the future costs of having to tear it down, or to clean up their toxic dumps. American infrastructure may have been better built, but the passage of time has erased that advantage.
I suspect nature will be the one that final deals with cleanup. But nature doesn’t mind. She’s been around here for about 4 billion years. What’s a couple of hundred thousand or even a million years to detoxify mankind’s mess?
So even if the hamster tries to keep running on the hamster wheel, that same cheap hamster wheel will break and moot most everything, even if China hangs on to its domestic and world wide energy and materials acquisitions for a while longer.
And don’t be smug America, it’s coming home to roost here as well.
You ain’t going nowhere.
I agree with you.
The music is from 1968. The Byrds were ahead of their time, I am afraid.
A million years to detoxify mankind’s mess? Nature still hasn’t digested the breadcrumbs from the dinosaurs …
To your main point, however. Sure, a lot of the stuff China produces “is pure JUNK” but a lot is also very high precision manufacturing. In Japan, for example, box stores sell quality Chinese products quite unlike the class offered in corresponding Western outlets. After living there I could only assume the reason for this was that store buyers would rather slit their stomachs rather than buy vastly inferior products for one yen less.
“Chinese infrastructure is of tofu quality” ??? Unlike the US where the infrastructure is of woke quality???? No expert but I understand Chinese infrastructure is outstanding … they’ll be running their state of the art chips from all their new hydro schemes. Probably bring back stranded astronauts next
Ravi; a currency is what it is. A promise of future growth. Future growth isn’t there, so forget about your neighbors granddaughter baking apple cake. And start thinking about buying shares in her triple forked crypto porn channel. The butt & roady initiative. Cut the crap.
Traumatic?
Porn will be free, especially with AI for as long as that lasts. It is already free.
Data centers use up 21% of Irelands electricity consumption. What do you mean by ‘free’?
fine, for the cost of 1-10 watts locally on an NPU, for as long as chip tech exists
HHH
Ignored
07/27/2024 at 11:11 am
Let me explain a little bit better. I was referring to China’s entire banking sector. All the loans on their balance sheets. Or M2 money supply.
Their banks have loaned out over 3 times their GDP. Or the size of their banking sector is over 3 times their GDP.
It’s not a mystery why they are stuck in a deflationary trap. The only way out is a major devaluation of the currency. And when they get around to doing it you’ll see a deflationary tsunami wash up on everyone else’s shores.
Cheap Chinese made goods become twice as cheap when they devalue. Chinese banking and real estate issues are everybody’s problem.
Can you imagine the tariffs the EU and USA would have to slap on Chinese made goods if the yuan were to devalue by a significant percentage?
China has no easy way out here. Not to mention China losing purchasing power on all the stuff they import by devaluing.
In the meantime while they aren’t actually devaluing their currency. Less and less foreign capital is entering China. Which is why their currency is grinding lower currently.
Right now everyone wants to get their money out of China.
All the talk of a BRIC’s currency. All I see is a move to make the Yuan more widely used. Russian companies are now borrowing in yuan from Chinese banks. Instead of borrowing in Rubles.
From a Russian point of view. It would make sense for everybody else to also pay for oil in Chinese yuan since the majority of Russian oil and gas sales are in Chinese yuan.
The more the Chinese yuan is adopted as the currency to be traded in, borrowed in, the less value the currency will retain.
While the value of the dollar goes through the roof because of the contraction in the Eurodollar market. Which is also going to be devastating to the global economy.
The people that tell you that the dollar is at death’s doorstep don’t really understand the dollar. They view the US being the center of the dollar universe. Which isn’t correct. The center of the dollar universe is the offshore Eurodollar market.
What happens outside the US matters way more. Counterparty risk in the Eurodollar market is what matters. As the risk goes up banks make less loans. Yet the $100 trillion in Eurodollar denominated debt that resides outside the US remains.
Nobody wants to admit it. Especially the FED with its $7 trillion in bank reserves that there is in fact a dollar shortage going on particularly in an Asia.
$7 trillion in bank reserves that never leave the FED’s balance sheet don’t make the $100 trillion on global Eurodollar banks balance sheets payable.
” The search for answers continues ”
Jeez, the doomers are out in force. Folks, it’s still BAU party time and even better it’s election time, so the circus and all its clowns will be out performing for us. Enjoy!
I doomed way too early, so I’ve reverted to not worrying, what’s the point anyway?
How does the US go into debt by a $trillion more every 100 days and still function? That’s a hell of a party trick.
Why do the gormless, deluded puppets in Ukraine and NATO still waffle on about “winning”, or “negotiating”, when they are running out of all military materiel, including men and the Russians are now VERY annoyed and only interested in unconditional surrender?
Loads more whys that only time will reveal the answers to.
I’m still voting for bifurcation with BRICS et al to do quite well for a while, whilst the West sinks further into delusion and creeping poverty.
Nb. If you’re on here and worried about the climate crisis – just get another booster, put your mask back on and everything will work out.
Apparently the bird flu vaccine was approved on an EUA basis, something we can all be grateful for.
My guess is that EUA means “Emergency Use Authorization.”
Fred,
Understanding what is coming does in part help one to prepare; preparation requires a time period to implement and a diversification to avoid liquidity issues.
All doom is a loser, ignoring reality is a loser.
Dennis L.
Diversification is always possibility, even without knowing the problems are likely ahead. Part of this is financial; part of this is lifestyle.
Having children is a decision made early on. Trying to stay close to them seems to take work over time.
Always working to have the most and be on top can’t be an approach forever. A marriage has to be a partnership, not a contest.
Choosing a low cost lifestyle, even when one’s finances suggest that a person could live in an extravagant way, is a way to reduce worry.
Agree
Agree
Agree
Agree
“Jeez, the doomers are out in force. Folks, it’s still BAU party time…”
TRUE!
“I doomed way too early, so I’ve reverted to not worrying, what’s the point anyway?”
unless Fast Doomers enjoy being way too early?
“How does the US go into debt by a $trillion more every 100 days and still function?”
EASY!
$3T a year is just adding 10%.
by the late 2020s when the debt is $50T, the annual increase will probably be $5T.
and the additional debt only adds maybe $200 billion to annual debt payments (at 4 or 5 % interest rate) so that’s a drop in the bucket.
hope that helps!!
Gail, you mentioned that farmers in Europe are protesting because the selling price of crops is not high enough to cover the costs of production. The farmers in India are also seem to be protesting for the same reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Indian_farmers%27_protest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farmers%27_protest
I think that low prices for farmers is a worldwide problem. With low interest rates, prices of farms escalated. Any new farmer finds that the return on the high priced farm is far too low, even if prices stay the same. In fact, food prices are often lower because of the affordability issue.
It’s the net income which is a killer which is secondary to the costs of inputs.
Interesting point on affordability.
Wonder how much value many farming products have; too many chemicals? Once heard cows given a choice between normal corn and the hybridized stuff shunned the hybridized corn.
Dennis L.
Interesting!
I am thinking of the Amish. I am not blind to much of how they live, they sell to “others.”
They deal mostly with clan where possible.
Neighborhoods of Amish are different, some appear more successful than others; sort of like life.
Dennis L.
Anybody feeding corn to a cow should be drawn and quartered. Burn the corn crop where it grew along with the farmer that planted it…..Monsanto corn or not.
Let the grass grow in its place. Let the cows eat that.
We wonder why we are so screwed……..
Cheap food is a subsidy for urban voters . The politicians must retain power .
Good point.
Situation of farmers in India is catastrophic . 1 suicide a minute . The police has been instructed not to register death as ” suicide ‘ but as of ” unknown circumstances ” .
This is sad. It is hard to figure out a way to fix it. Population is too high in India and still rising.
food is the fundamental energy form.
money is tokenised energy
so food energy can only be bought with another, different form of energy,
if people cannot acquire sufficient energy tokens with which to buy their food energy , they will eventually starve.
the basic problem has been the invention of money.
with money, one nation/person can amass surpluses, whiile others go hungry.
I am not sure you need money. Energy stored as grain seemed to work directly to provide value. Rich farmers could keep their extra grain in granaries.
In early years, “bushels of grain” was a measure of value, and grain could be transported to people in cities, where it could be eaten. Grain was easy to tax also. The book Against the Grain by James C. Scott is about the fact that cities, with governments and services, grew up in areas where grain could be grown. It was literally stored energy.
Cities tended not to grow up in the same way where root crops were grown rather than grain. Root crops were harder to tax, transport, and store.
its diffucult, but not impossible to exchange 10lbs of grain for i pair of shoes,
or a sheepskin for a wheelbarrow
or 10 acres for a wife
but if you want to build a house, all the different trades have different craft value—thens theres the land value.
and almost all major cities grew up on coasts or rivers—the points of energy exchange.
food energy came into them as part of that exchange system.
it was the growth of cities that made money inevitable–you cant live in a city for very long without a means of food storage—stored food goes bad eventually, stored money doesnt.
so the city dweller needs a day to day means of buying food energy.
energy exchange at city level is only possible with coinage.
you can have a city supported by slave energy of course but that is ultimately a dead end.—you need at least 1 guard for every 3-4 slaves, and the guards have to be paid somehow.
” Debt servicing absorbs 41.5% of budget revenues, 41.6% of spending and 8.4% of GDP on average across 144 developing countries, the study found.”
Is there a crisis or not?
The impact of a crisis is measured in terms of employment. And so we cannot say that we are in a serious crisis.
But the most striking aspect of this semi-crisis period is the silent loss of purchasing power of the average citizen, who can no longer access basic products that were once part of their consumption.” —-Excerpt
A bird’s eye view of the world’s ” invisible crisis ” . Use Google translate as the post is in Spanish .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/07/la-crisis-invisible.html
Per Copilot, 43.7% of income from individual and corporate taxes goes for interest on US debt.
Note for Q12024 interest is approx $1T, for fiscal 2024 US income is 3.75T.
It would be fairly easy to use excel to see how this works out over the next ten years. One could even look back and see what happened historically compared to expectations and get a better approximation with variance.
Back of the envelop suggests it is not going to work for long, compounding series are a bitch.
Dennis L.
One thing that has struck me about EROEI models and Limits to Growth models is that they ignore the need for interest payments to be made, when funding is made in advance.
Another things that strikes me is that true profitability of energy products is essential for an economy to continue. In fact, some of this profitability needs to go to support government services, so government services can continue. Propping up an economy using ever more debt to support high cost energy products can never work.
The most debt that I would expect to be supported is a little government support for starting entire new approaches, if they have a strong possibility if they have a possibility of being profitable very quickly.
Using a lot of debt to support payments to retirees (to help cover Medicare costs, for example) is a recipe for disaster. It adds to the debt bubble, with little addition to the active workforce.
Repeat after me; Temperature leads CO2 level.
Temp goes up, CO2 goes up, we get a warm wet productive world except for where we have destroyed the ecosystem.
Temp goes down, we get a colder, rid, less productive world; mini ice age etc.
We have added a little to the cycle, but its all to the good! Think of it as pump-priming the eco-nomy.
If temps go up we can produce more biomass, especially trees;
‘It’s also easy to forget that for most of human civilization, the entire f-ing
world was built from wood (plus some rocks and a few pieces of hardened
metal). Most people’s jobs dealt with wood, such as making crates or barrels,
or traveling long distances on wooden boats and carriages. Other workers
created everything else society needed by exploiting the tree, from paper to
charcoal to chewing gum.’
https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/American-Peasant-July-2024.pdf
Traditional European peasant culture has virtually disappeared outside of
old books and far-flung museums. And it’s difficult for a modern Westerner
to even conceive of just how different the society and material culture was in
Eastern and Central Europe. Peasants are almost a trope in the West, thanks
in no small part to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Impossibly poor,
dirty and hopeless people. (“Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down ’ere.”)
But when you see the early photos of peasant homes, clothes and decorative
objects, it’s humbling. These rural societies were complex, skilled, fastidious
and proud…..
These entire societies were built on wood. And yet, most woodworkers outside those isolated countries have no clue that these wondrous places and
objects even existed.’
“CO2 didn’t initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming. In fact, about 90% of the global warming followed the CO2 increase.”?
“Increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases global temperature. Increasing global temperature also increases the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Yes, you can have both. Antarctic ice core records of past climate change help us understand earth’s climate system and show that human-caused climate change is fundamentally different from natural glacial-interglacial climate cycles.”?
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-basic.htm
There is a whole lot of “stuff” going on that is terribly difficult to model correctly. Researchers in climate science know what result is desired, if they want their work to be published or they want a promotions.
Unfortunately, “peer review” seems to be a way of making certain that others working in the same field follow the standard way of thinking, no matter how wrong it may be. Anyone coming up with a different view finds his/her way of thinking shut out of the most widely read journals. Also, government funding will disappear.
Postkey, I am always skeptical of Skeptical Science because I used to read it in the early days over a decade ago and found its content to be anything but scientifically accurate and unbiased. If I had to classify it, I would call it astroturfing.
The Skeptical Science website is founded (in 2007) owned, operated, and largely authored by John Cook, a non-scientist and a cartoonist known for producing political and social commentary cartoons that often tackle issues related to climate change, science “denial,” and progressive causes. They love that “denial” word as Skeptical Science. Cook’s cartoons are published in outlets like The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other progressive media.
I don’t generally to try to discredit information by trying to discredit its source, but in this case I can’t ignore Cook’s record.
Numerous critics of the Skeptical Science website have made a number of claims questioning the reliability and accuracy of the information presented on the site. Some of the main criticisms include:
Bias and agenda: Critics argue that Skeptical Science has an inherent bias towards promoting a pro-climate action agenda.
They claim the site selectively chooses information and arguments to support a particular viewpoint.
Misrepresentation of climate science: Critics allege that Skeptical Science misrepresents or oversimplifies the scientific evidence around climate change. They contend the site cherry-picks data and studies to fit its preferred narrative.
Lack of credibility: Critics have questioned the credibility of John Cook, the founder of Skeptical Science, since he is not a climate scientist himself. They also argue the site lacks impartiality and scientific rigor due to its non-expert leadership.
Inaccurate rebuttals: Critics say Skeptical Science provides inaccurate or misleading rebuttals to climate change skeptic arguments. They claim the site’s explanations misrepresent the nuances of the scientific debates.
Censorship and suppression: Some critics allege that Skeptical Science engages in censorship by moderating or removing dissenting views from its comment sections. They accuse the site of trying to suppress alternative perspectives on climate change.
I was censored at Skeptical Science back in the day, and I was simply pointing out errors their writers had made in my usual chirpy, friendly, helpful, and non-confrontational style!
Now, onto the meat and potatoes of the CO2 claim:
Ice core data indicates that it was warmer at the height of the Eemian interglacial about 130,000 years ago than it was at the height of the current Holocene interglacial about 6 to 8,000 years ago, and measurements of paleo-shorelines indicate that sea level rose higher.
The same ice core data also indicates that CO2 levels were lower at the height of the Eemian and lower at the height of the Holocene than they are now, while sea level was higher then than now.
If this data is being interpreted correctly, this means that something other than the atmospheric CO2 level was responsible for driving up the temperature and raising the sea level at the height of the Eemian and at the height of the Holocene.
Moreover, and this is an important point, the ice core data shows that at the end of every interglacial, the temperature begins falling while CO2 levels are high and increasing, which would be impossible if increasing CO2 levels always led to increasing temperatures.
Ergo, the CO2 level is not the primary driver of climate change and may not even be a major contributor.
“if increasing CO2 levels always led to increasing temperatures.”
That is not what the climate scientists say!
“ . . . it is these ocean state changes that are
1:02:28 correlated with the great disasters of the past impact can cause extinction but
1:02:35 it did so in our past only wants[once] that we can tell whereas this has happened over
1:02:40 and over and over again we have fifteen evidences times of mass extinction in the past 500 million years
1:02:48 so the implications for the implications the implications of the carbon dioxide is really dangerous if you heat your
1:02:55 planet sufficiently to cause your Arctic to melt if you cause the temperature
1:03:01 gradient between your tropics and your Arctic to be reduced you risk going back
1:03:07 to a state that produces these hydrogen sulfide pulses . . . “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ako03Bjxv70
This election does matter. It is a bout between those who still pretend to give a shit about civilization, vs those who don’t even bother to do so.
A future like South Africa or India awaits, soon, in USA if the latter wins.
I am afraid more debt has to be an outcome, no matter who wins the election. Trump seems the one more likely to keep NATO out of a war with China/Russia however. Also, the one less likely to put huge amounts more debt into energy “solutions” that have no chance of working.
The popping debt bubble awaits either winner.
I assume this to mean that Blinken, Nuland, Soros, Schumer, do indeed give a sh*t about civilization. I beg to differ. But worry not! the hordes will have Dimon at Treasury and zionism in the oval office.
If you produce ores and metals and the amount of the energy and food produced using them.can not grow, then the price of the ores and metals must fall, as they no longer allow for increasing food and energy production needed for their extraction. What do you think about it?
price can fall, or rise due to inflation.
but from what you say, it is the productions of non-essential things that must fall, so that productions of essentials have the priority of the energy use.
I agree with David. The amount of goods and services available to distribute must fall, relative to the current population and the current level of complexity. Somehow, this needs to be brought into balance.
How this exactly plays out is not entirely obvious. Partly the complexity will fall. Services such as 5 day a week in person education will fall. Governments may even fail. Supply lines will have to get shorter and businesses smaller.
There are a lot of things pushing prices down now. US housing prices seem to be topping out now, because they are unaffordable except to the very rich, who tend to buy with cash anyhow. Many kinds of commodity prices are falling for producers. Lack of demand from China seems to be a major factor.
Debt defaults tend to reduce the number of jobs available, and the funds those people have to buy goods. A person would think that they would also lead to falling prices.
But on the other side, as long as governments are in operation, is that tendency to add more debt, which indirectly adds to buying power. Governments will try to push this additional income down to poor people, with plans like $1,000 for everyone. But if there are not really goods and services available, this tends to lead to more inflation. In countries outside of the US, it also tends to lead to a falling relativity of the local currency relative to the US, adding to inflation problems.
Ultimately, hyperinflation and or collapsed government can take place.
Invoking the widely debunked Malthus, and Limits to Growth, gets you automatically written off by a lot of analysts and thinkers.
It turns out that both of these sets of researchers were correct. People could not stand to hear the correct view of what would happen.
Malthus was writing just before fossil fuels became widely used. Without coal, and later other fuels, population would have crashed. The many inventions that were possible were only possible because of fossil fuels.
The Limits to Growth was widely criticized when it was published, also. It is turning out to be correct. The forecasts they were giving were a long way ahead.
As I mentioned in the post, people cannot stand to hear the truth, no matter how clear the story is. That is why text books won’t write about the issue. Politicians have to come up with a “sour grapes” version of the story that people will accept.
A talk I especially like was from 1957. Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US navy explained what the military understood about what was ahead, even in 1957. This talk was given to a medical group. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/02/speech-from-1957-predicting-peak-oil/
On a local matter, that is personal, if one listened to Malthus and read and practiced his book written in 1798, one missed out on 300 years of opportunities.
Truth is temporal; we were at DC and myself Lisbon when everything was going to end secondary to oil depletion. To date, it has been an inconvenience for the most part.
Musk thinks carbon based life forms may be a transition to silicon based forms. Impossible of course, but who would know the difference.
I regularly use AI personally, Copilot is far from perfect, but it beats the heck out of Google which I now seldom use.
Inflation bothers me. it is mostly a liquidity problem and if I understand Dalio correctly, diversification is in large part an attempt to avoid liquidity problems; ie, don’t sell at the bottom if one needs to pay the bills on time.
Dennis L.
Diversification is an attempt to have something left if a large share of your portfolio “goes south” early on. Which entities are governments most likely to bail out, for example.
300 years? He wrote that book 226 years ago and prosperity is indeed ending. Guess copilot is not that strong with arithmetic.
Well, in some way you are right Dennis, as the cartoon of Robert Mankoff says: “While the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.”
But it seems that several countries have arrived at the end of the party, while the music is still playing, undoubtedly.
In these days I finished reading the “Coal question” by Jevons. On page 242 I found these words:
“I draw the conclusion that I think anyone would draw, that we cannot long maintain our present rate of increase of consumption; that we can never advance to the higher amounts of consumption supposed. But this only means that the check to our progress must become perceptible within a century from the present time; that the cost of fuel must rise, perhaps within a lifetime, to an injurious rate to our commercial and manufacturing supremacy; and the conclusion is inevitable, that our present happy progressive condition is a thing of limited duration.”
“…our present happy progressive condition is a thing of limited duration”.
Powerful words from a book written in 1865.
Looking at the current state of the energy and economic landscape of the UK Jevons wasn’t wrong, was just early.
Btw he was also an optimist, he expected that the coal reserves of the UK would last for more than 200 years, but the reality has been another one.
But your statement holds true, there are still some opportunities (and money to be made) in this world, despite the overall energy/mineral depletion situation.
What Jevons says is true for any limited supply of fuel on any planet in the Universe. They necessarily grow and burn out quickly.
If such civilizations exist elsewhere in the Universe, it becomes difficult to find them, because their lifetimes are so fleeting.
Fermi paradox solved!
After COVID, I have no trust at all in “experts”, “analysts” and even “thinkers”. Even all the articles, blogs, alternative media, etc cannot be trusted. I trust myself and my brain only
I trust myself too, but frankly my brain is, in a word, “unreliable.” If all the world’s a simulation, there are definitely some major glitches in it.
Knowledge is temporal; too soon and the carrying cost is to great, too late and the cost can be 100% loss.
Dennis L.
There seems to be a god, working behind what happens.
I would never have guessed that the ridiculous happenings of 2020 could have led to very low energy prices and a debt bubble that would essentially bail-out a failing world economy.
Big Pharma had an amazing influence–even more so than in the problems caused by the Sackler family and the opioid crisis. Hospitals happily contributed to the crisis because they were increasingly rated on how happy patients were with their outcomes. Adding more pain relievers seemed to raise patient satisfaction.
In 2020, I could not believe that major medical journals would not provide support for cheap approaches to controlling covid. But doctors get their income from patients who keep coming back. Patients don’t come back if their illness can be treated with a cheap over the counter medications. We now have prescription medications advertising on television.
Debunked by whom? Paul Krugman?
“MALTHUS WIDELY DEBUNKED!” Read all about it!
“Rising population will not lead to a Malthusian catastrophe, where population exceeds the food supply, causing widespread suffering and death.,” say a lot of experts and thinkers.
“Population has no tendency to grow exponentially, or geometrically, over time,” these experts contend.
“There are absolutely no limits to growth,” note others. Humanity’s potential is infinite in all directions,” they assure us.
“Just lay back and keep procreating,”the debunkers advise. “More copulation leads to more population!” they assure us, echoing the Biblical injunction for people to “be fruitful and multiply.”
“Malthus was a product of his time—the Little Ice Age—when generally poor weather resulted in poor harvests and pessimistic thinking. If he was a alive in today’s progressive high-tech era, he’d be up there with Elon Musk touting the need for more people, colonies on Mars and in the Asteroid Belt, and Tesla EVs for everyone.”
“MALTHUS WIDELY DEBUNKED!” Read all about it!
Optimism is a hell of a drug.
Would the extreme opposite be street people, sleeping on the sidewalk, getting high on drugs?
Dennis L.
what happened to good old fashioned realism?
Norm let me assist you in realising the possibility of a “cabal of elders”
War, AI and more war: the 2024 Bilderberg agenda is sure to set off alarm bells
The secretive annual summit has tried to counter its arcane reputation, but its guest list still reads like a conspiracist’s who’s who of who rules the world
Charlie Skelton in Madrid
Sat 1 Jun 2024 06.00 EDT
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This year the Bilderberg summit, now under way in Madrid, turned 70 years old. But the controversial and secretive gathering of the world’s elites shows no signs of slowing down.
For decades the Bilderberg meeting, where the rich and the powerful gather behind closed doors to talk about what ails the world, has been the subject – understandably – of conspiracy theories. In recent years, Bilderberg has sought to remake itself and open up a little: more Davos than Illuminati.
the intention of any group of wealthy men is to make more money—ie ”turn the planet into cash”
everything else is geared to that end
it may look like ”social control”, by a group of ”elders”—but that is the ultimate purpose of it all
and as ive said before, their wealth depends on the existence of everyone else.
which destroys the notion of killing of most of us to save resources for themselves.
not that the above will change your fixations and certainties
So, Norman, you admit that there is a group of “elders”?
Since you’ve said before “their wealth depends on the existence of everyone else”.
You are suggesting that this “group of elders”—this “group of wealthy men”—have the intention to make more money? Is that correct?
there is no ”group of elders” with socially sinister intent—other than collective greed.
but it is inevitable that the ultra wealthy will further each others ends in order to increase their wealth, and be somehow grouped with that intent, serve common interests etc.
it is not a ‘cabal’
it is greed, which itself will destroy the social order by which that greed is sustained.
as a case in point, which ive used before….If we unwashed masses did not play Bezos’s game of pass the parcel, his wealth would dissipate.
it is we who allow him to loose off his fireworks to nowhere.
we have created that wealth, and will share the misery it brings–just as we created Rockefellers wealth by burning his oil. He couldnt have burned it all by himself .
Would these group of elders engage in risk management and mitigation to protect their wealth?
as i see it, they would do anything in that respect
why would they not
Thanks Norman. How far would this risk management and mitigation extend?
If they thought they could make money out of arranging wars, stoking political conflicts, or setting groups of ordinary people against each other, would they attempt to do that?
If they thought they could make money by destroying their competition, would they have a go at that?
If they thought they could get away with saving money by avoiding making payments to others who had financial claims on them, would they do that?
And if they thought they could keep their wealth but only at the expense of drastically reducing claims on that wealth by drastically reducing the population of claimants, do you think they would stoop that far?
Remember, these elders “are all cutthroats under this fancy linen,” as Mr. Jorkin said to the board of directors of his bankrupt company. They would definitely employ risk management and mitigation, but how far would they be prepared to go to protect their wealth, power, and position?
Edison made great wealth, GE comes to mine.
Would you prefer to read by candle light of LED?
Dennis L.
Funny you shade Edison
He was very detrimental for Civilization. He actually invented very little, appropriating others’ invention as their own.
Alexander Lodygin invented the incandescent bulb. The world would have light without Edison, and it would have a lot more things without Edison as well.
A wealthy landowner can be quite detrimental for civilization
The wealthy do tend to think alike, just as the leader of universities tend to think alike. It is natural that they get together and share ideas on how they could prosper as a group. This continues today with the World Economic Forum, and other groups, as well, I expect.
(Aljazeera)
“Inside Story: Why does AI pose a huge ENERGY SUPPLY problem?
Technology revolution comes with gargantuan power and cooling needs.
Artificial intelligence is driving a technological revolution.
But feeding it requires more electricity to run its powerful computers and even more giant data centres.
So, how can such new demand be met – and what are the implications?
Guests:
-Adrian Weckler – Technology editor, Irish Independent
-Vince Perez – Renewable energy pioneer in Asia and a former Philippine energy minister
-Sasha Luccioni – Artificial intelligence researcher and the Climate Lead at Hugging Face, a global startup in responsible open-source AI in Montreal”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2024/7/24/why-does-ai-pose-a-huge-energy-supply-problem
We in the Advanced Economies do not have extra electricity to provide for either AI or EVs.
I think I linked to my chart before:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Electricity-Generation-Advanced-Economies-Other-2.png
The globalists want to hang on to their wealth and power, and in doing so in a finite world of resources against an increasing population of serfs clamoring for an increase in living standards which is not possible, the globalists nevertheless utilize more energy intensive ways to deceive and control the masses. But things like BTC , EVs with GPS locators, CBDCs, green energy and AI are all huge energy sinks and so accelerate the decline and leave the masses in an ever more precarious situation.
Throw in a little geoengineering, gene manipulation of foods, bird flu and culling of chickens and cattle herds, and new vaccines, while instilling the fear of climate change and the Globalists have all bases covered. They don’t need an actual kinetic war either as Ukraine and Gaza will eventually burn themselves out due to lack of logisitics. China has its problems too- not just the floods but a declining economy with millions of students who graduate only to find they can’t get jobs.
The MIC doesn’t need a “hot war” to rake in profits, only a perceived threat of a hot war.
There is no reversing course. Trump is clearly owned by the Zionists and it won’t matter who wins the election, because everything is now controlled by the Zionist corporatocracy.
We are now in a waiting game and being distracted by this meaningless November election.
Logistics is very overrated, an excuse for Eisenhower, who never lost a single opportunity to kiss Soviet ass, to not advance to Berlin and let the Soviets.Russians to celebrate the capture of Berlin to this day.
The US election doesn’t matter. The Hordes are coming, and they won’t be controllable by people like Putin. A general reversal of everything since at least around 1500 will take place.
“it won’t matter who wins the election, because everything is now controlled by the Zionist corporatocracy”
So true.
“China has its problems too- not just the floods but a declining economy with millions of students who graduate only to find they can’t get jobs.” Any reliable numbers?
“There is no reversing course. Trump is clearly owned by the Zionists and it won’t matter who wins the election, because everything is now controlled by the Zionist corporatocracy.”
It will be interesting to see how the problems in Israel develop. We do use Arabic numbers, a very old culture.
The area of the eastern Med. has been fought over for millenia, it fluctuates.
Dennis L.
“In fact, moving away from fossil fuels would likely lead to starvation for a large share of the world’s population.”
There is no good reason to think that. Growing food doesn’t require large amounts of fossil fuels.
“In part, the climate change narrative seems to be an excuse to move manufacturing from Advanced Economies to economies that make extensive use of coal, as it tends to be a cheap fuel.”
The reason people take climate change seriously is because it’s a real threat. Climate change is the real reason crop yields are going down, not the lack of fossil fuels. Manufacturing has been moved away from advanced economies because of incorrect economic beliefs, but if these beliefs were corrected, advanced economies could get their manufacturing back. Providing some of those correct beliefs alongside doubts about climate change isn’t going to make them more popular.
What the world needs is a whole system that allows food delivery and people to earn money to buy food.
Also, adding fossil fuels allows many different kinds of improvements in crop production: tractors of all sizes; tools made of metal, rather than wood or stone; fertilizers; herbicides; pesticides; refrigerated transportation; netting to keep birds out; hybrid seeds using modern techniques. Modern irrigation is possible as well.
The world may be heating up, but there are many different reasons besides fossil fuel burning for this. Removing aerosols (smog) seems to be one of the issues. There is essentially nothing we can do about the problem, no matter how bad it may be.
money is created at the conversion of one energy form into another.
the only other way of getting stuff you need is by barter.
if i’ve missed something there, i’d be interested to know what it might be.
Shoplifting, lobbing bricks through shop windows (smash & grab), mugging people in the street, burgling their houses, raiding food trucks, robbing banks and convenience stores, doing a George Floyd (trying to pass counterfeit currency to a store clerk)….
Or putting up a wind farm on the estate and milking subsidies, becoming a contractor involved in the Ukraine War effort …..
Really, there are a ton of options if you have no moral qualms and are a member of a protected minority.
I wish i could give you a like, but my pop-up appear and disappear. I liked how you put these protected minorities together. You could also rob a bank, or own one. it’s the same.
It appears to be a mac problem. From Linux I can give likes, same setup.
robbing a bank
or owning a bank
you are just appropriating someone elses energy tokens
that merely moves money from one place to another
it doesn’t create it
Set up a printing press? A bank? A national bank? A bank of international settlements?
I’m sure there are ways to create money. It doesn’t grow on trees, you know!
nope tim
money is created at the point of energy conversion.
oil sits in the ground for millions of years
we extract it and burn it—and pay ourselves wages as we do so.
if the conversion process didnt take place, no amount of money printing would create comparable energy value.
this is why our economic system must expand forever.
except that it wont of course, and why catastropic collapse is inevitable—we cannot produce energy on an infinite scale.
printing money will not substitute for enerngy depletion.
money is just a token of energy exchange.
banks exist to store those tokens in some kind of safety.
And there I was, thinking money was created at the mint.
By the way, you are up on the keyboard early today, Norman. It’s unusual for us both to be online simultaneously. It is currently 18:22 where I am.
yes tim
i decided to change my angle of repose early today.
takes a lot of EROEI to go from 180 degrees to 90 degrees
i have an industrial revolution to wrestle with, trying to find stuff to say that hasnt been said 100 times before.
come think of it—i have the same problem on ofw.
though things have improved since four number cusswords have been eliminated, and there are far more new faces now.—i think because of that.
Look on the bright side. At least you are getting some stimulation from your fellow commentators here. You are not being totally neglected like a lot of people are in today’s society.
Now, if you want to bounce any ideas about the Industrial Revolution off us, I am sure you will get some provoking and provocative answers as well as some insightful and inciteful responses.
Perhaps we can play Baldrick to your Blackadder?
at my age i need all the stimulation i can get
how s your technique on the defibrillator Tim?
Norman, I can’t even play the banjo.
But recently I bought an oxygen concentrator. I figured that if it’s good for those people with breathing difficulties, it might be good for healthy old people too.
In particular, I’m intrigued by the idea that breathing air with added oxygen for an hour a day can help the brain, the heart, and also the stem cells, which do the repair work in the body.
It will also come in handy if I go down with a respiratory disease, because it comes with a nebulizer function and I can add things like dilute H2O2 and breathe a mist of that in.
Anyway, it’s worth considering.
so tim
you are appropriating more than your fair share of air
that can’t be right.
“30:20 central bank money is only around three percent of the money supply the paper money the cash
30:26 97% is digital money created by Banks and
30:31 we’ve been using this for decades so we actually have been using digital currency for a long time and it works
30:36 very well”?
if you take out a 500k mortgage on a house, 500k is ‘created’ in banking terms
but for the next 25 years, you have to convert energy into real cash to pay it off.
if you dont, the debt remains unpaid, the house is repossessed, and resold to someone else who is able to do necessary energy conversion to produce 25 years worth of money to pay for the embodied energy locked in the house.
this system can only work so long as the forward debt creation system holds up, ie we must create more debt next year to prop up this years debt—by finding more cheap energy to support it.
unfortunately we have run out of steam in this respect.
we are substituting debt for actual energy, our economic system is now running on a delusion of infinite growth, as told by the MAGAmaniacs, and others.
I used one of Gail’s charts to illustrate this in a piece i wrote years ago, to show when the American dream ended, and why we are now in a state of ‘debt accelleration’.
https://medium.com/extra-extra/the-american-dream-what-it-really-cost-9fab37c44b0b
“The world may be heating up, but there are many different reasons besides fossil fuel burning for this.”@
Many? Then you will be able to give 10 reasons not considered by climate scientists
Solar activity?
Change in land use?
Global dimming, or lack thereof, seems to have a big effect on temperature. https://www.globalissues.org/article/529/global-dimming
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/understanding-global-dimming.html
Global dimming can come from sulphate aerosols or from particulate matter, including particulate matter from coal, volcano emissions, or industry. Global dimming has been significantly reduced in recent years:
1. People in China were unhappy about the awful condition of the atmosphere with coal dust and other problems–China started working on the problem.
2. US has implemented reduced sulfur emission standards for diesel; in fact, these are being implemented worldwide.
3. Rules have come into play in the US and other countries about emissions from coal-fired power plants.
4. Rules have come into play about the types of fuels ships can burn, aimed at reducing emissions from ships.
5. 2020 shutdowns cut back industry significantly, affecting emissions. Airplane use is still down since then.
—–
6. The eruption of the Tonga volcano in 2022 dumped a huge amount of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. This is unprecedented. The vapor “could have an effect for several years.” This is expected to have a global warming effect.
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere/
7. Milankovitch Cycles. Milankovitch hypothesized that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession combined to result in cyclical variations in the intra-annual and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation at the Earth’s surface, and that this orbital forcing strongly influenced the Earth’s climatic patterns. There is argument whether these cycles affect earth’s temperature. Little Ice Age, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
8. We know that earth’s climate has varied significantly over the years. The system seems to do this, without fossil fuel energy involved. For example, the area of the Tigris and Euphrates River was relatively wet, at the time the myth of the Garden of Eden set in that area was put together. And excavations have shown civilizations under the sands in North Africa.
9. There are longer ice age cycles, over about 100,000 year cycles.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807134127.htm
There seem to be feedback effects that cause these cycles. Humans (and pre-humans) lived through these cycles . Now there is the myth that we cannot live through temporary global warming.
—-
Probably the most we could sort of do to stop global warming is introduce global dimming as best we can. But citizens would be really unhappy about this, because all of the pollution on the lungs would not be helpful. Otherwise, global warming is out of our hands.
All ‘considered’ by climate scientists?
From https://www.globalissues.org/article/529/global-dimming
“Burning of fossil fuels is creating two effects
Two effects of fossil fuel productions are:
Greenhouse gases that cause global warming
By-products which are pollutants that cause global dimming”?
The ‘pollutants’ are, to a degree, ‘offsetting’ the
global warming brought about by greenhouse gases.
Reduce ‘pollutants’ and the Greenhouse gases that cause global warming have ‘free rein’?
That is pretty much the issue. These are a few additional links:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/research-suggests-major-change-ships-113000526.html
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-pandemic-had-unexpected-effects-on-atmosphere/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.htm
humans lived through all those cycles and variations—agreed
what you omit, is the fact that in the times that all these events took place, there were far fewer of us.
when the sahara dried up, a few tens of thousands, at most, relocated to the nile valley—over few thousand years, the change would have barely registered.
Global population might have been 1 or 200000 maybe, possibly a million, no more than that.
the american south west is drying out rapidly–how many live there—30m—50m? they have less than 100 years of water left. maybe less than 50? effectively they live in a desrt dreamworld—real MAGA territory.
They are not going to be able to migrate to wetter places over the next 1000 years. This is where your civil wars will start—among the climate change deniers.
Bunker fuel, a type of heavy fuel oil used to power ship engines, is typically produced through the refining of crude oil and contains high levels of sulphur. When burned, it releases sulphur dioxide into the air, an air pollutant that can cause respiratory problems and other health issues in humans.
To address this issue, the IMO has implemented new regulations under MARPOL Annex VI, which limits the sulphur content of bunker fuel to 0.50% m/m (mass by mass) starting from January 1, 2020. This is a significant reduction from the previous limit of 3.50% m/m, which has been in place since 2012.
https://maritimefairtrade.org/an-overview-of-low-sulphur-bunker-fuel-regulations-in-shipping/#:~:text=To%20address%20this%20issue%2C%20the%20IMO%20has%20implemented%20new%20regulations,been%20in%20place%20since%202012.
These sulphur reduction regulations have been touted as contributing to long-term greenhouse gas reduction, blah, blah, blah (to quote Greta), but over the short term they have reduced aerosol pollution which has probably (what do I know? I’m not out there ballooning or hang-gliding over the ocean and attempting to try to measure this stuff personally.) resulted in more insolation reaching the surface of the sea and the land, and to stronger sunshine, over the past five years. I’ve certainly felt that and so have the local plants.
Vastly reduced air traffic since 2020 has also increased insolation due to lack of vapor trails.
Like the 9/ll effect on steroids; quite.
But on the other hand, they say the 2022 Hunga Tonga volcano sent up a lot of water vapor into the stratosphere. Here’s what NASA had to say:
“we estimate the mass of water vapor injected into the stratosphere to be 146±5Tg, or ∼10% of total stratospheric water. The plume is circling the globe and spreading slowly towards the poles. It will remain in the stratosphere for years until it is flushed out by the stratospheric circulation.
“Unlike previous strong eruptions in the satellite era, HT-HH could impact climate not through surface cooling due to sulfate aerosols, but rather through surface warming due to the radiative forcing from the excess stratospheric water vapor.”
https://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/feature-20221003.html
Could it be that Hunga Tonga caused an enhanced H2O greenhouse effect that we can experience at ground level as warmer nighttime temperatures and cooler daytime temperatures, and that reduced particulate pollution from ships, planes and factories has boosted daytime temperatures by letting in more sunlight, including UV?
I ask this because deserts tend to experience a wide diurnal temperature range. The temperature can vary by 50 degrees C between 3 am and 3 pm. While jungles and the humid tropics often experience little or no diurnal temperature difference when it’s cloudy. Tropospheric water vapor level = humidity is the main factor in determining the extent of any greenhouse effect. The H20 molecules block a lot of IR going both ways—from the Earth to space, and from the Sun to the Earth.
Sorry Post Key but I am trying to reply to Tim Groves, but no Reply option exists.
Yes, sounds great, but a worrying thought reminds me reading some time ago of the damaging effect of Oxygen on the body .
Tried looking it up now, but everyone saying its great to take in more Oxygen.
Only negative under “Oxygen toxicity” seemed to be applicable to Scuba divers (Ref Wikipedia).
Still. might be worth a bit more investigation.
Alternative might be Nitrous Oxide.
Still kills you but you enjoy the process.
Thanks! I’m experimenting for an hour a day at 50% oxygen at normal pressure.
This will have less effect, and hopefully less side effects, than Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), which is used to treat burns, wounds and injuries, as it promotes healing. Michael Jackson was a famous user of that.
I will post if any issues come up.
I have lived with the big “T” (tinnitus) for over 25 years, and I am exploring whether the oxygen treatment can help ameliorate that.
When I saw a video recently in which a doctor recommended eliminating all carbs, alcohol, caffeine, and diary products from the diet to get the “T” under control, I realized that at least in my case the big T is not so bad after all.
I agree that nitrous oxide should be good for laugh!
Keep us posted Tim. Of course there is a case for more oxygen to be healthy. That is what we burn after all.
“Growing food doesn’t require large amounts of fossil fuels.”
Let’s just let that sentence hang right there and twist in the wind.
we will split the difference. It currently takes about half the diesel produced to grow food.
growing food isnt the immediate problem
food/energy has become a marketable /political commodity
getting food to where its needed so that people can afford it is the problem.
and remember, once people have sufficient food security, their next thought is sex—another political minefield to get through—reproductive rights etc.
the starving female body shuts down ovulation…once fed it starts up again.
I am guessing that raising a steer where I live takes about 500 liters of diesel. The reason crop yields are going down is soil depletion. CO2, see earlier comments, is in fact a fertilizer.
How do you meet the world’s nitrogen fertiliser needs without using natural gas?
How do you extract and process potash without fossil fuels?
How do you transport fertiliser to where it is needed without oil?
How do nations export food without (secure) shipping lanes?
The elders have done a great job in fooling the masses such as our newest finite worlder member Maria . What possible reason would the elders have for painting a false cornucopian vision for the world ? It boils down to self-interest they and their families want to survive and be in charge when the shite hits the fan they want to stay filthy rich and the rest of us to be serfs. A good analogy is the “Hunger Games” movie for a glimpse into the unfolding future.
“There is no good reason to think that. Growing food doesn’t require large amounts of fossil fuels.”
There is a very good reason to think that. Before fossil fuels began to be used extensively for energy in the late eighteenth century, the total human population was about 800 million, most of whom lived at close to subsistence level.
The current world economy, fueled largely by hydrocarbons, supports ten times as many people, most of whom live at considerably above subsistence level.
Still, you may be correct. Tell you what, let’s do a little experiment. Take a country and shift the food production system away from fossil fuels.
Fortunately, we don’t have to do a thought experiment because it’s already been done . In 2021, the government of Sri Lanka decided to ban all chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which are derived from or made using fossil fuels, in an effort to transition the country to fully organic agriculture. “Gosh!” you are no doubt thinking, “What a good idea! This will show racist, transphobic, anti-green bigots once and for all!”
Here’s a summary of what happened:
In April 2021, the Sri Lankan government announced a ban on the import of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, aiming to make the country’s agriculture 100% organic. The goal was to promote sustainable farming practices and reduce the country’s dependence on imported agrochemicals, which were seen as damaging to the environment and public health.
However, the implementation of the ban was rushed and not well-planned. Farmers were not given enough time or support to adapt their practices to organic methods.
The sudden loss of access to chemical fertilizers and pesticides led to a dramatic drop in crop yields across Sri Lanka. Major crops like tea, rubber, and rice experienced production declines of 30-50%. This contributed to severe food shortages, skyrocketing food prices, and economic hardship for farmers and the broader population.
By the end of 2021, the government was forced to reverse the ban and allow the import of chemical fertilizers again in an effort to address the worsening food crisis.
The failed organic transition attempt is considered a major policy blunder that severely damaged Sri Lanka’s agricultural productivity and economy.
In the end, the hasty and poorly managed shift to 100% organic farming proved to be disastrous for Sri Lanka’s food security and economic stability. It served as a cautionary tale about the risks of rapid, large-scale changes to agricultural systems.
the big switch in the 18th c was using lime to stimulate plant growth
limestone was converted to fertiliser by burning—using coal
that produced more cheaper food–hence more people who earned more wages, which paid them to dig yet more coal.
and so on.
so economic systems can only move forward, they cannot stop or regress.
Nothing is making money we have been in a depression since 2008 there has been no growth just debt
I am afraid you are right. So much debt has been added since 2008, and so much subsidy from artificially low interest rates, that the system looks like it continues to operate, but under more normal condition, it would not. In fact, another big debt bubble was added in 2020 to keep the economy afloat.
Part of this debt bubble is related to inflated home/farm/stock prices, indirectly because of these ultra low interest rates. Now, the higher interest rates look like they could burst the big debt bubble that is outstanding. The higher interest rates are really normal interest rates that the system needs to have. But these higher interest rates adversely affect those extracting fossil fuels and building infrastructure such as LNG terminals.
our debt spiral kicked off in 1970
I borrowed Gail’s graph (thanks) to illustrate the point in this article:
https://medium.com/p/9fab37c44b0b
I notice that the US stock market index NASDAQ is down over 3% so far today. This index is heavily tech. The shares of Tesla, Visa, and Google parent Alphabet fell after earnings reports. It sounds like tech is no longer leading the market up.
Can the current complexity remain, without fossil fuels?
No, in 25 words or less. Entropy is a huge problem. Everything tends to fall apart or need repairs. Globalization uses a lot of oil for transport.
Electricity is the very complex way of transporting electricity. It doesn’t store will at all, and it is expensive to build all of transmission to transport electricity. The transmission lines are easily knocked down by storms. It takes fossil fuels to put them back in place.
Is civilization doomed from the start? Geological processes could never keep up with extraction rates. Was there ever any hope of human ingenuity for abundant energy from the beginning?
Hope is a religious concept.
Even fairy tales have a religious component…
like an ugly person transforming into someone every deems beautiful as with The Ugly Duckling…..people marrying outside of their social class …and the rags to riches stories. I could go on. Hope is a powerful thing. A master can get more work out of a slave who believes he/she will be rewarded for their suffering as a slave when he/she dies.
making the first fire and the first replicated tool was the beginning of the end for humankind
” Is civilization doomed from the start? ”
The day you are born is the day you start to die . Paradoxical .
I am afraid that is the way it is with dissipative structures.
I think you meant that electricity is a very complex way of transporting energy.
This is counter-intuitive to people because they have been told by the elite that electric machines like computers are always more efficient than machines that transfer energy through , steam, pneumatics, , hydraulics, etc. People have been told by the elite that technology is always evolving towards constant IMPROVEMENT whereas in reality, technology is a REFLECTION of currently available resources and knowledge. Too many people think history is an arrow with everything constantly improving towards bigger, better, and more efficient.
Yes, “complex” is a better way of describing electricity’s problem. The complexity leads it to being very easy to disrupt, besides being expensive to store.
Complex things tend to be delicate. Delicate technologies cannot be used except in very controlled settings.
The limited parameters in which computers can operate is why I don’t think it is possible to usecomputer technology in a very harsh environment such as outer space.
I’ve tried looking for digital HD video of the recent Mars probe and could not find anything.
You make a good point about computers being too delicate to use in harsh environments.