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Some of my frequent commenters know that I recently returned from a visit to Southeast Asia. In this post, I would like to present a little energy-related information about this part of the world. Most of my information is from published energy reports, but a little is from my visit to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I have included these countries in my Southeast Asia totals, plus Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and (to the extent I could find the data), amounts for a few other small countries included in the grouping used by the United Nations in its “Southeast Asia” grouping.
While Southeast Asia shares most of the energy problems of the rest of the world, it seems to me that this region is somewhat better placed to handle the energy shortfalls that lie ahead than many other regions. Southeast Asia’s warm, wet climate is helpful, as is its supply of coal, particularly in Indonesia. Many of the people in this part of the world are used to living in cramped quarters–three generations in a large one-room home, for example. Abundant forests provide a renewable source of energy. Religious traditions help provide order. These factors may work together to allow the economies of these countries to continue to some extent, even as much of the rest of the world pushes in the direction of collapse.
[1] Southeast Asia is finding it must import ever-larger amounts of oil to meet the needs of its growing economies.
Figure 1 shows that Southeast Asia produces a little oil itself. This oil production (blue line) reached a peak in 2000 and has fallen since then. Such a pattern is common among the countries of the world–oil production starts falling once the easily extracted oil is removed.
Southeast Asia’s oil consumption (orange line) has generally been growing. Up until 1993, the area produced enough oil for its own needs. More recently, Southeast Asia’s oil needs have been met through increasing imports of oil. Thus, Southeast Asia has been a net importer of oil for over 30 years. With reduced travel related to Covid in 2020 and 2021, there was a dip in consumption and imported oil in these years. By 2023, however, consumption was back above 2019 levels, and imports were higher than in 2019.
[2] Natural gas production in Southeast Asia reached a peak in 2015, and it has been declining ever since.
The situation with natural gas production is similar to that of oil. Southeast Asia’s natural gas supply reached a peak in 2015, and it has been falling ever since.
Figure 2 shows that once natural gas production (blue line) began to decline, Southeast Asian natural gas consumption (orange line) started to flatten out and even decline a bit. Natural gas exports began to decline, as well, beginning more than a decade before the peak in production was reached. Some of the natural gas exports are liquefied natural gas exports, under long term contracts. These cannot easily be cut back because of inadequate production.
Today, in many parts of the world, there is high demand for natural gas to balance out electricity generated by wind and solar. Southeast Asia, which has a declining supply of natural gas available for export, cannot provide much natural gas to help the countries dealing with this intermittency problem. But, as we will see, Southeast Asia itself seems to have mostly stayed away from wind and solar. This is a plus.
It seems likely that both oil and natural gas extraction within Southeast Asia will continue to decline. This is a worry for the future.
[3] Southeast Asia’s coal supply has been growing, helping to support its industry and exports.
Coal production is still growing in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia being the primary source of production.
A recent report says that coal production in Indonesia in 2024 increased by 7.1% over production in 2023, showing that growth in coal production continues. Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are all importers of coal, much of which likely comes from Indonesia.
[4] Southeast Asia’s per capita energy consumption has been rising, due to increasing coal consumption and the addition of other types of energy, made possible by fossil fuels.
Hydroelectricity seems to be the single largest category of “All Other” energy supply. Building dams to produce hydro-electric power has been made possible by the availability of coal to produce concrete and steel.
Another major category of “All Other” seems to be the burning of wood chips.
A third category of “All Other” energy production is geothermal power. Both Indonesia and the Philippines generate electric power using geothermal energy. Geothermal works best when a country has volcanic mountains that can provide the high temperatures required. Southeast Asia seems to have more than its share of volcanoes.
Wind turbines and solar panels seem to be relatively little used in this part of the world. Nuclear does not seem to be used at all in this part of the world.
This combination of All Other energy supply seems to be more stable than the more common “wind and solar” version of All Other energy supply. Also, nuclear electricity now seems to have a uranium supply problem, as I discussed in a recent post. It is a high-tech solution that poor countries, such as those in Southeast Asia, are likely to have considerable problems trying to emulate.
[5] Southeast Asia has multiple advantages that allow its population to get along with relatively little energy, if fossil fuels become less available.
As mentioned in the introduction, the mild climate of Southeast Asia allows people to get along without heating or cooling their homes. In fact, homes don’t need to be very substantial if they don’t need insulation. They can easily be rebuilt with local materials.
On our trip, we saw several one-room homes in which up to three generations lived together. Of course, people everywhere would like fancy homes with lots of rooms, indoor bathrooms, and heating and cooling. But these things require fossil fuels, both to initially build and to maintain. If people can learn to live in very modest housing, it greatly reduces the fossil fuel energy needs of an economy.
It seems to me that if the world is heading in the direction of not enough fossil fuels, Southeast Asia is a region that can get along without much harm, even on less fuel than is available today. Farming seems to be done with little use of fuel, right now. Many families are used to living in shared living spaces. Daily markets, selling meat, including live chickens and ducks, seem to be common.
Based on my calculations, the per-capita energy consumption of Southeast Asia is about half that of China and about 21% of the US’s average per-capita energy consumption.
Economies in warm, wet climates have an advantage because agriculture can be done year-around. Without fossil fuels, Southeast Asia would not be able to support as large a population as today, but it seems likely that these countries could still support a substantial, if lower, population. The Garden of Eden mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Bible seemed to have some of the characteristics of Southeast Asian countries today. If “warm and wet” was a solution in the early days, it may be a solution in the future.
[6] Southeast Asia has nowhere near the scale of energy supplies to replace China, with its huge industrial output.
China’s electricity production in 2023 was 23.0 times its electricity production in 1985. Southeast Asia’s electricity production in 2023 was 12.8 times its electricity production in 1985. Thus, China’s growth rate has been close to twice as fast as Southeast Asia.
While China’s rapid growth has been impressive, it is very hard to maintain. Southeast Asia’s slower growth curve, which is still somewhat rising, would seem to be easier to maintain. If it does start to fall, it will hopefully be a slower fall.
[7] Indonesia, which is part of Southeast Asia, is a world leader in coal production.
Coal tends to be an inexpensive source of heat and electricity and is essential in making steel. The industrial revolution around the world was started with the use of coal. Coal is still used heavily in manufacturing. While the wealthy countries of the world talk a great deal about carbon dioxide and climate change, the poorer countries of the world–including those in Southeast Asia–continue to use coal, to the extent it is available.
Worldwide, China is number one in coal production (93.10 exajoules), according to the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy. India is in second place, with production of 16.65 exajoules. Indonesia is close behind in third place, with coal production of 15.73 exajoules. The advantage that Indonesia has is that its population (281,000) is much lower than that of India (1.4 billion), so that its coal-benefit relative to population is much greater than that of India.
I don’t think that we know how long coal production will continue to grow. Theoretically, how long production will continue to grow is tied to the amount of coal reserves, but it is questionable whether today’s published reserve numbers are very useful in determining the quantity available at a price customers are willing to pay. The 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy report shows quite low coal reserves for Southeast Asia, and quite high coal reserves for the US, Russia, and Australia. This same report has a note at the top of the page showing coal reserves that says, “The methodology and timing of updating reserve numbers is under review.” The authors of the report seem to be saying, “Expect big revisions of these reserve numbers in the future.”
[8] People of Southeast Asia seem to have a tradition of being hard working and co-operative.
One report describes the work culture of Southeast Asia as “Community oriented, with respect for seniors, and flexibility.” The same report indicates that maintaining a calm demeanor and not showing anger in public are important in countries like Thailand and Indonesia. The article indicates that smiling plays a critical role in communication, keeping the interactions positive.
My husband and I were impressed by how happy the Buddha figures seemed to be.
Religions seem to help provide a safety net for the poor. Working as a priest gives an option for income for those who would otherwise be unemployed and are willing to study.
[9] The world economy, including Southeast Asia, is already beginning to encounter oil shortfalls. One way they affect the economy is through less growth in long-distance tourism.
There is a temptation to believe that the tourist trade will grow, allowing the economies of Southeast Asia to grow at the same time. However, it is becoming apparent that this doesn’t necessarily work well in a world struggling with inadequate oil supplies.
We saw many examples of buildings, including entire resorts, that had been started and apparently abandoned. In particular, Cambodia seemed to have many buildings that were started as Chinese investments. We were told that these structures had been left without being completed, in or around 2020.
The northern part of Vietnam seemed to be experiencing some of the same difficulty. This partly completed building is from Da Nang, a coastal city in what was formerly North Vietnam.
[10] We will have to wait and see how things really turn out.
Southeast Asia seems to be able to feed an awful lot of people with its rice fields and fish farms, operated with very little fossil fuel input.
There are a lot of pieces of the story we don’t understand. Without enough oil, people may need to stay closer to home. But quite a few people in warm, humid climates may be able to get along, for quite a while, with very modest living arrangements.
If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
“The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is standing by the government’s pledge to bring down household energy bills by “up to £300 by 2030”.
Energy bills went up in January and are expected to rise again in April and Miliband has faced repeated questions about whether that pre-election promise is deliverable.
He has blamed fossil fuel prices for the rises and says the answer is clean, home-grown power: “the cheapest forms of power are… solar, offshore wind and onshore wind”.
The government wants to remove nearly all fossil fuels from UK electricity production by 2030.
More power is coming from renewable sources than ever before, so why isn’t this translating into cheaper household bills?”
Strange, really strange indeed. Yet Mother Nature gives us the sun and the wind for free, right? RIGHT?!?!?
I look forward to the excuses the politicians will use when the economic and lifestyle reality becomes obvious to the general public once and for all.
Oh I can hardly wait, it will be sooo fun!
No-one explains what the real cost of renewable energy is.
Intermittent electricity doesn’t work 24 hours per day. And the devices themselves depreciate very quickly. Most of the devices are purchased with
debt. And something (batteries, sub optimally operated fossil fuel plants) is needed to bridge the gap when the intermittent electricity is not available.
Also, energy producing companies normally pay high tax rates because their products are so helpful to the economy that having them greatly increases the output of the economy. Because of this, there is normally a huge differential between
(a) What their output is worth to businesses and citizens.
(b) The cost of producing the energy products.
I think of this as representing the “net energy” being produced by the energy company. But wind and solar don’t really have much, or any, true net energy. They are mostly made available to make it look like we have a solution to our problems.
“Intermittent electricity doesn’t work 24 hours per day. ”
That’s an engineering problem, the engineers have to figure out how to use intermittent energy to make things while the sun is up. Not new, plants don’t grow at night.
It looks like the scheme that uses intermittent power, trash, coal, (optional) to make syngas will work. The energy gain for making the syngas is about 4 times. You can burn the syngas in turbines and get 60% of the energy back or make into diesel where it cost about 25% of the energy.
The capital repayment seems to be 5 years or so.
“When you flush the toilet, where does the waste go?
It goes into the deep state.
There is an intricate subterranean web of pipes, pumps, and tunnels that runs under our houses and collects our waste, separates it from the supply of drinking water, and either treats or safely disposes of it. Somebody needs to design, construct, and maintain that deep web, plug holes in it, monitor pollution levels, and pay the workers. That too is bureaucratic work, and we would face a lot of discomfort and even death if we abolished that particular department. Sewage water and drinking water are always in danger of mixing, but luckily for us there are bureaucrats who keep them separate.”
– Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari, 2024
yuval ”humans are useless”
As an economy goes downhill, I expect the “deep state” will be one of the places first lost.
We expect potable water most places, but this is one of the things that will be lost very early.
With a big population, southeast Asia suffers from the lack of clean fresh water, also due to the rising pollution.
If the population is low, southeast Asia could avoid collapse, but what we see is a terrible population overcrowding nightmare.
The water issue may be more important than I noticed. This chart, from 2023, suggests that Thailand might have a problem with adequate fresh water.
https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/styles/1575_wide/s3/2023-08/23-08-02-aqueduct-4.0-launch-global-countries-baseline_Insights.webp?VersionId=6gfns6C.Haz3iMYrsS3mTgLWULJEkixl&itok=nRnW6572
I think of India, the Middle East, and North Africa as especially having a problem. The linked chart suggests that there may be some stress in Southeast Asia as well, but not as extreme as those areas.
The world has a terrible overcrowding problem, pretty much everywhere, I am afraid. With less fossil fuels, population will have to fall.
MG, yes for certain, we are actually directly eating oil in all forms.
From the ground up, and not to mention moving it around and keeping it from getting rancid, spoiled by refrigeration or chemical means that are refined by oil derivatives. Yes, we will indeed have a die off of epic proportions seen many times before in human past
Thank God we have crypto and islam.
Thanks Gail, for an interesting new article. The Bhudda does look very happy! I think many of your readers might think also of the statue from “Ozymandias.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias
This link has the statute you are thinking about.
This link gives another happy Buddha, from the southern part of Vietnam.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Buddha-with-children.jpeg
This is copy/paste from Patrick Raymond . I really like his work .
CITIES ARE LIVING ORGANISMS .
Two centuries ago, the French norm was a few large port cities, even if they were inland (Paris, Lyon, Orléans), and a multitude of small ones (-20,000) around 200, or even very small ones at less than 5,000, most often around 3,000. Of course, there were coastal cities which could, if necessary, and even habitually, import foodstuffs from other coastal regions.
Paris grew from 200,000 to 500,000 when the Orleans Canal was dug, linking the capital to the Loire Valley, then to 5 million with coal and 12 million with oil (I’m talking about the urban area).
A city of 20,000 was considerable and could not go beyond that.
The moral? It is that it is the magnitude of resources that determines size. And when resources dwindle… The small towns of 1750 are no longer small towns. Even if some have kept their population, they no longer have the urban functions that they had.
Aggravating circumstances, a large city is also infrastructure. These can age, for better or for worse. The sewers of Roman cities have often passed the millennia and some of their aqueducts too. But the thirty glorious years saw political egos inflated and resilience neglected. Networks can be underground or above ground. The ones that everyone has in mind are obvious, they are the roads. Potholes are visible and obvious. And signs of deterioration.
But the invisible signs are more serious. Fluids are the main problem, whether it is water supplies or sewers. And the garbage disposal service. Because, often, the materials used are not durable, or too fragile.
Then, if the Romans had a furious tendency to oversize, it is clear that our installations have often become insufficient. Water networks leak more and more, especially if they have been privatized. The purification plants are insufficient and obsolete. And there is no way, neither financial nor technical, to simply maintain what already exists.
Household waste, which was relatively small in the past, has become abundant, and the obvious solution is banned. It would consist of simply burning it in thermal power stations, which is done, but shamefully. And since it is more abundant, rats abound too.
Mélenchon has found the solution. He wants to send immigrants to the countryside. The RN thanks him for sweeping the polls in its favor. But Mélenchon, as I have already said, does not shine with his intelligence. Having taught in the technical field has probably fried his brain. He did not consider that to live in the countryside, one had to be:
– A) easy, because there is a need for a car that is in high demand, and most often, to own it,
-B) or else of extreme frugality, inserted in a network of acquaintances, and that the tests, notably of France terre d’accueil were flops. Or even in the time of Giscard (so it’s not new). So, Mélenchon has every chance of becoming Hannibal. Hannibal is the Carthaginian general who paradoxically founded the Roman Empire by fighting it. Everywhere he fought the Romans, they settled there… Moreover, would these immigrants be willing to go there? Finally, would they be well received? The countryside, alone and without connections, is hell. And visibly the French population doesn’t want it. At 76%.
Moreover, the much-predicted economic collapse is clearly happening.
Thanks!
The book “Scale” by Geoffrey West is somewhat related. It talks about sizes of animals, cities and corporations.
https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Growth-Organisms-Companies/dp/014311090X/
A WSJ review of the book says,
Thanks Gail,
The last book you recommended about thermodynamics was excellent. It took a while, but the second half was crazy interesting.
I AM, what book was that?
The Thermodynamics of evolution:
by François Roddier
https://www.amazon.com/Thermodynamics-evolution-Essay-Fran%C3%A7ois-Roddier-ebook/dp/B087M5ZG59
This is some background on the Panama Canal story:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/decades-long-chinese-influence-panama-begins-unravel
Later:
>i>The initiative required the Panamanian government to recognize Taiwan as part of China—much to the surprise and concern of the United States, which has positioned itself as an ally of Taiwan.
The United States also recognises Taiwan as part of China just to clarify this intentionally misleading article.
Yes.
All US diplomatic links to Taiwan are unofficial.
The Empire of Lies .
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/6/panama-canal-denies-us-claim-of-free-passage-for-government-vessels
I can not see China and the US not going to war over South America. China has too much business there.
I don’t see a hot war. War the Chinese way is economic dominance and overwhelming military potential but with no shots fired.
Oops .
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/nissan-looking-for-new-partner-as-honda-merger-falls-apart-report
I drive a 2021 Nissan car myself. I would like to see the company stick around, just from a point of servicing existing vehicles. This gets to be a worry.
Yes, I can agree, but Nissan can’t ask to be equal partner, Honda is a giant of good quality vehicles of all kind, including motorcycles.
If one looks around the world, motorcycles are widely used in Asia, India, Middleast, Africa and for their cost-saving performances make them surely good means of transortation for people in the future, while cars are much less so and have little future.
The number of motorcycles used in South Vietnam was impressive. They filled more than one lane of traffic.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Lots-of-Siagon-Motorbikes.jpeg
Snow not an issue I assume.
Dennis L.
good guess, Dennis.
Electric scooters might do well.
A novel idea, they could form a company making simple, fuel-economical cars without today’s OTT features. (The 1999 Audi A2 diesel and 1947 Citroen petrol 2CV both had amazing fuel economy, approaching 100 mpg; the latter admittedly had a top speed of 40 mph but it’s better than no transport.)
Electric windows don’t work with the ignition off. I gather new cars have 10x more annoying features than this. My diesel Skoda is 16 years old, so it’s not too annoying.
As for electric cars, it appears that they can’t even be put into neutral and pushed to a safe place if you break down on a busy road. Whoever thought of this ‘brilliant’ money-saving wheeze?
Related .
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2955125/risk-of-financial-crisis-creeps-ever-closer
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/05/asia/myanmar-thailand-scam-power-cuts-intl-hnk/index.html
Thanks for the links.
The first article is about a bad debt problem in Bangkok. Among other things, it says that household debt is at the unsustainable level of 90% of GDP and corporate debt is at a higher risk level of 129% of GDP. There are already problems with maintaining this debt level.
This article fits in with what we saw when I traveled by bus through Bangkok. There was very much a mix between rich and poor, with bars on some businesses and discussion about poor people moving in. This is one photo I took:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Wiring-in-Bangcock-isnt-necessarily-up-to-Western-standards.jpeg
I took the photo in an area near the center of town. I was impressed by the poor wiring, but a person can see the shape the building was in, also.
This is a photo I took of some billboards offering discount condominiums, more toward the outskirts of Bangkok.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Condominiums-available-at-low-interest-rates.jpeg
We saw many signs advertising condominiums for sale, at discounts. I couldn’t help getting the idea that they had been overbuilt, relative to the demand in the area. We also saw many billboard ads for new automobiles, particularly EV’s.
The area has been growing in the past, but there gets to be a limit with respect to how much people can afford.
The article about Thailand cutting off power to Myanmar is believable, also. Myanmar is the former Burma. This is a CIA World Facebook article about the country.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2023/countries/burma/
The country is in terrible shape. The energy per capita must be extremely low. The only business that works in crime.
My guess is that Myanmar is not able to pay its electricity bill; that is why Thailand is cutting off electricity supply to Myanmar.
This is what little energy data I found for Myanmar. Its electricity per capita has been falling in recent years.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/myanmar
There was a coup in Myanmar in 2021.
The government was in an on/off civil war with various rebel groups for more than 70 years until 2021.
This has now intensified and the government controls barely a third of the country.
no prizes for guessing who funds them rebel groups!
I’ll take USAID for $500, Alex.
Strange world! I am guessing that both the US and China are trying to spread their influence.
Hey Norm.
Here’s a pic
https://imgur.com/a/Hx3rPNE
Americans eat burgers for breakfast? I thought they ate Pop-Tarts®
Pop tarts on top of brown sugar donuts.
https://imgur.com/a/UeSxa5E
Another zombie plane crash
Emergency services responding to aircraft crash in a residential area of west São Paulo, Brazil.
https://x.com/Worldsource24/status/1887815160829509640
it landed on a bus.
https://x.com/ferozwala/status/1887818179772313737
There seem to be a lot of crashes of small planes. I have walked from my home to see a small plane that came down in an empty area on the campus nearby. I don’t think that the pilot was even hurt. There was some sort of built in safety system.
I landed there once and it is pretty amazing and scary. On either side of the airplane you can look into people’s apartments and see things, and I do not have particularly good eyesight.
The House of Orange will have to bail out the House of Windsor , TINA ,
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-seek-buyers-german-refinery-assets-2025-02-06/
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/bp-now-stands-best-partitioned-2025-02-06/
Already did in 1688
The Second article says,
” BP looks like a takeover target. With the valuation gap between itself and UK rival Shell at a high level, such a union would create huge synergies. But it could also risk a huge culture clash, an extended regulatory backlash, and punitive merger terms that reflect BP’s weak bargaining position.”
Things are not going well.
This final sentence in the first article is very revealing in that it shows that a major mistake has been made in policy by the ‘elders’ effectively wasting 20 years to properly prepare for the end of the oil age.
BP took a $1.34 billion impairment on the Gelsenkirchen refinery in 2023 due to “changes in economic assumptions”.
https://globalshift.co.uk/firs.html RECORDS*
Deepest and longest
DEEPEST WATER DEPTH WELLS:
2021 Angola, Ondjaba-1 in 3,628m of water (Lower Congo Basin)
2016 Uruguay, Raya-1 in 3,404m of water (Pelotas Basin)
2013 India, in 3,174m of water (Krishna-Godavari Basin)
DEEPEST SUBSEA TREE:
2009 USA, in 2,934m (GOM, Tobago field)
DEEPEST FLOATING PRODUCTION:
2016 USA, in 2,896m (GOM, Turritella FPSO, Stones field)
LONGEST OIL TIE BACK:
69.8 kms USA, in 175m of water (GOM, Penguin A-E)
DEEPEST WATER PRODUCTION UNIT:
2016 USA, in 2,896m of water (GOM, Stones field)
LONGEST GAS TIE BACK (OFFSHORE):
190 kms Australia, in 806m of water (NW Shelf, Gorgon Field, Chevron)
149 kms Israel, in 1,676m of water (Mediterranean, Tamar Field, Noble)
143 kms Norway, in 345m of water (Barents Sea, Snohvit Field, Statoil)
LONGEST HORIZONTAL WELL:
15,239m UAE (Upper Zakum, 2022)
15,000m Russia (Sakhalin, Chayvo, 2017)
Not many very recent records.
Are any of these wells producing economically viable oil, was the question. Forget exploration drilling.
I already replied below
Those looked like exploration wells to me. Are you sure any of them are producing oil?
Which of these is?
DEEPEST WATER DEPTH WELLS:
2021 Angola, Ondjaba-1 in 3,628m of water (Lower Congo Basin)
2016 Uruguay, Raya-1 in 3,404m of water (Pelotas Basin)
2013 India, in 3,174m of water (Krishna-Godavari Basin)
The WSJ is reporting:
https://www.wsj.com/business/edison-unit-says-its-equipment-may-have-been-involved-in-socal-fires-32c16040
Edison Unit Says Its Equipment May Have Been Involved in SoCal Fires
Southern California Edison said its equipment may be associated with the start of the Hurst fire
This is no big surprise. Electrical equipment is very often involved in starting fires.
I am sure that fighting this allegation will be costly, apart from any damages the company is forced to pay.
“Satellite View of 2020 Cali Fires Shows They Started at Exactly at the Same Time”?
https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/satellite-view-of-la-fires-shows
” Started at Exactly at the Same Time”?
I live there, fires happen all the time, but the reason they grew at the same time was the extreme dry wind. It hit about 70 mph where I live and higher in other places around LA. Hard to stand up outside my front door.
Two of that 1600 have already been killed in shootouts with the cops. Pulling a gun during a traffic stop is not a bright idea.
Same thing happened with that QAnon dude who tried to find the non existent basement of the pizza place.
“Drill, Baby, Drill” is crashing into global peak oil demand: new US oil fields cannot make money
I did not have time to look at the video, but the title implies a misunderstanding of causality.
Kevin Walmsley claims that Electric Vehicles will reduce demand for oil sufficiently that total demand for oil will drop in the near future. I am skeptical that this is the cause of the reduced demand. In this respect, I agree with drb753.
I think that “demand” is likely to fall dramatically because of a debt bubble collapse. Trump’s big attempts to cut back on spending may force a debt bubble collapse. China and probably Japan are also on the edge of a debt bubble collapse, as is Europe. If banks fail, the system will stop working the way it has, at least until some workaround can be found. Countries may try to “print” their way out of their problems, but this may lead to hyperinflation, and no one wanting to trade.
At some point, all of the printing of debt no longer works. The system of international supply lines will start falling apart. Many fewer people will be able to afford vehicles. The story is non-intuitive, but today’s complexity cannot continue without enough energy of the right kinds. This is what brings the system down.
ZURICH, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Swiss National Bank Chairman Martin Schlegel has not ruled out taking the central bank’s policy rate into negative territory if necessary, he said on Monday, although such a step would not be taken lightly.
“The SNB doesn’t like negative interest rates, at the same time we can’t rule negative interest rates out,” Schlegel told broadcaster SRF in an interview.
Negative interest rates had been effective when previously used by the SNB, Schlegel said, although the central bank would only return to the policy if it was “really necessary.”
“We have seen that negative interest rates have served their purpose,” Schlegel said. “But is not something the SNB would do lightly.”
Schlegel has frequently mentioned the possibility of negative rates in recent weeks, especially as Swiss inflation has ebbed lower, reaching 0.6% in December and raising concerns of negative inflation.
Markets currently give a 64% chance the SNB will respond by cutting borrowing costs from the current 0.5% level to 0.25% in March, with a 27% likelihood that rates will reach 0% after the central bank’s decision in June.
0% interest rates are crazy. People will borrow money at 0% and use it for totally ridiculous things.
if world wide interest rates are negative just imagine how long the financial system may chug along inagine -10 % interest rates on all debt. There will surely be a transfer of wealth from one sector to another sector so obviously the winners or haves in this new system will change and the have nots or losers could be the haves of the past. All welfare systems could be wiped out in this new paradoxical system such as the old age pension. unemployment benefits and free medical care. Will the debt bubble pop first to bring in the heretical new world order or will the debt bubble just keep on growing.
Whatever actions any government or non-government body take, it is inflation, money printing that will “kill” all. Does not matter if it is +/- interest rates
I hear you!
” . . . you know the Russia’s not
12:48 going to give up all of that because Donald Trump got the price of oil to go
12:53 to $45 a barrel and again it just shows how stupid Donald Trump is and how
12:59 stupid his advisors are right now I think the price of oil is about $78 a barrel that’s low the break even point
13:07 for Saudi Arabia is in about $85 that’s what they need to balance their budget um so Saudi Arabia right now is
13:14 is basically living off of their savings uh in order to do United States and the
13:19 world of favor during a political season where we didn’t want gas prices to go up too much
13:25 um but you know and the other thing is the the break even point for Russian oil
13:33 is about um $41 a barrel that’s what it costs to
13:39 produce Russia needs oil up around 70 bucks to balance their budget maybe
13:45 $75 um to balance their budget but to continue to produce oil Russia needs it
13:52 you know around above $41 that’s about the average cost of a barrel out of the ground so as long as it’s above $41
14:00 Russia can continue to produce oil economically they aren’t going to sell enough or you know or make enough to
14:08 balance their budget but they can continue to produce oil Saudi Arabia the cost for Barrel is around 10 bucks so
14:14 that you can bring that price down as much as you want Saudi Arabia is still going to be able to produce oil but here’s the problem the United
14:22 States since 2020 all of America’s oil growth comes from the per Basin of West
14:30 Texas all of our new wells are there um the break even point for an existing
14:37 peran Basin well is around 33 bucks so if oil’s at 45 they can still make some
14:43 money um but for new wells all of our new production new
14:49 wells the average break in even Point 66 bucks you drop the price of oil below 50
14:58 bucks I’m a marine and math isn’t my thing but 45 is lower than 50 uh and you
15:03 collapse the um the new oil production Market in the United States and within
15:08 two years we’ll lose 30% of our oil production um Donald Trump is just stupid does he
15:16 really think that West Texas oilman especially the Wildcats who poured in their entire future they’ve gambled
15:23 everything on the promise of Market stability made by the US government that
15:28 oil will be kept between $76 and 80 bucks a barrel so now they can say okay
15:33 we can go ahead and put in these Wells and start production you know to get to
15:39 get our our money recouped he thinks what you’re going to go in and drop oil Russia can produce oil forever Saudi
15:45 Arabia can produce oil forever the United States can’t produce oil forever we keep oil at 45 bucks a barrel for two
15:52 years our oil economy collapses and we have people who will lose everything and
15:57 when the west Texas economy collapses the American economy collapses Donald Trump is dumber than a box of bricks if
16:05 he thinks this is a strategy that works the other thing is didn’t he know what what happened the
16:12 last time he you know he play stupid games this is this is what could happen
16:18 the uh as the price lowers um the Saudis and the Russians
16:23 just keep pumping oil out and so now you have low oil
16:29 you have a glut and the price shrinks even lower and now it can drop down to
16:37 $21 the the the the the the the Saudis keep going to 10 there’s certain oil fields in Russia that can produce oil at
16:44 12 um and they’ll just keep pushing they’ll keep pushing oil on the market and you know what happens to all the
16:49 American money it loses all value” ?
The expansion of the human species was based on the profits and on the belief that the debts will be repaid. Neither is true: the profits are declining and the debts are rising.
The limits to growth means that there is no way to go. You do not have energy for that. The world implodes and you can do nothing about it.
Even your creditors can do nothing about it. You are simply not able to repay your debts. No way, as they are only a fraction of much bigger debts created by the municipalities, regions, countries.
The assumption that debt will be repaid is a very standard one.
In my paper “,” I quote the academic paper (not book) of Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff. This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises. (March 2008) NBER Working Paper No. 13882. 123 pp; quote from p 15.
I say,
I would ask, “Why didn’t common sense provide them with this answer?”
Only 1277 Tesla sold in Germany during January. Berlin factory is supposed to produce 1 million cars per year.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tesla-sales-fell-59-germany-january-ev-sales-across-europe-whipsawed
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-approved-giga-berlin-expansion/#:~:text=Tesla's%20expansion%20of%20Giga%20Berlin,and%20surpassing%20Volkswagen's%20Wolfsburg%20facility.
Article says:
Back in 2020, a team of NASA scientists demonstrated lattice confinement fusion by exposing deuterium saturated metals to x-rays. The De atoms absorbed energy from x-rays, exciting them to high enough energy for fusion. The charge shielding provided by the metal lattice electrons allowed excited De nuclei to approach each other closely enough for strong nuclear forces to overwhelm coulomb repulsion. This allows fusion to occur. The implications of this discovery for the future of nuclear power are enormous.
Whilst LCF is unlikely to ever reach breakeven as a stand-alone energy source, LCF modules incorporated into nuclear fuel will boost neutron production. The energy needed to drive these reactions can be provided by the ordinary neutron and gamma flux of the reactor. This is essentially a free source of neutrons.
The extra neutrons provided by LCF modules would allow compact fast reactors to operate with breed and burn fuel cycle. Such a reactor could be fuelled with depleted uranium tailings, with DU rods entering the outer region of the core. As fuel burnup continues, the 238U absorbs neutrons, transmuting into Pu-239. The fuel is gradualy shuffled inwards towards the high flux central core. Unlike traditional breeder reactors, breed and burn reactors do not require a reprocessing plant to extract plutonium and manufacture fresh fuel. The fuel atoms are bred and burned in place, as the fuel gradually shuffles inward.
The problem with this idea in practice, is that a limited number of neutrons are available for breeding. So for a breed and burn cycle to work, a somewhat excessing fuel burnup is required, about 200GWd/tonne. It is difficult to develop fuel cladding that will survive such a prolongued exposure to high neutron flux. This is where the LCF discovery is important. With more free neutrons available to breed Pu, the required fuel residency time in the reactor is reduced, allowing fuel to discharge at lower burnup whilst still maintaining a breed and burn cycle.
This gentleman has written a paper on the potential of a hybrid LCF fission reactor as an actinide waste burner.
https://repositorio.ipen.br/bitstreams/3cc04168-293a-4af1-bad2-7cd6b4dc3015/download
Whereas traditional light water nuclear reactors extract only about 0.5% of the energy content of uranium, a breed-and-burn fast reactor could extract 10% without reprocessing. If reprocessing plants are built later on, then 100% uranium utilisation is possible. But going from 0.5 to 10% energy extraction, would extend the uranium resource base dramatically. With this much energy yield, seawater extraction of uranium would be feasible.
you lost me at “charge shielding”. The distance between two protons fusing is 2 fermi (2X10^{-15}). A metal lattice is about 2X10^{-10} meters. those faraway metal nuclei do nothing to shield anything.
Here is the original NASA paper. Its been a while since I read it.
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/TP-20205001616-Experiment-Paper-Final.pdf
Erbium and titanium are the most promissing target materials. In a nuclear reactor, there is a lot of ionising radiation that could drive this process. Lots of gamma from decaying fission products. X-rays from beta decay in proximity to high-Z fuel material. Bremstralung from electrons resulting from decelerating fission products. And of course the neutrons themselves. All this radiation ultimately turns into heat. So breakeven considerations are far less important in this situation.
A fission event releases an average of 200MeV, some 5 MeV of which is carried by neutrons. An average of 2.5 neutrons are released by fission, but it varies considerably depending on the fissile isotope and incident neutron energy. Fusion of deuterium will yield 2.45MeV neutrons predominantly. This is slightly more than the average fission neutron is born with. D-T fusion will yield 14.1MeV neutrons, representing 80% of the energy yield of the reaction. These neutrons are the most valuable, because fast fission of 239Pu or 238U with neutrons of this energy will yield several additional neutrons of lower individual energy.
In a standard breeder reactor, 2.5 neutrons are released by fission, carrying about 2MeV each. One of those neutrons is needed to sustain fission. Of the remaining 1.5, one is typically lost due to parasitic absorption or leakage from the reactor. So only around one neutron out of every two fissions (1MeV out of 200MeV) gets absorbed into 238U contributing to breeding.
This ultimately leads to the conclusion that even a small number of fusion events will have a dramatic effect on the abundance of neutrons within the reactor. If fusion energy production is just 1% of fission energy production, we are effectively doubling the rate of breeding within the reactor. Conversely, the increased neutron flux generated by fusion reduces enrichment requirements.
Complexity uses a lot of energy. It is very difficult to fix an energy problem with more complexity. If nothing else, we have no supply lines to provide whatever new devices we hope to have.
All we need is lots of deuterium, some no doubt exotic metal to confine it in and lots of X rays. It’s basically free energy.
Oh plus uranium and a new untested reactor design.
Anyway, power too cheap to meter, for sure.
I bet the metal is not exotic. you probably need a heavy metal like tungsten or even uranium itself. It does not really work in a shielding way. If you have to deuterium near a nucleus the closest one will be repelled more strongly than the one farther out and so will overtake and potentially strike it. this works only within 1-9 nuclear radii if I calculate it correctly.
All of these would have been available easily if your ‘national heroes’ did less heroism and made more pragmatic choices at critical moments
Alas we now have to pay local tinpot despots to get these materials more expensively
Peak demand!
10 cars drive into a lake in Minnestoa in 2 weeks!
https://www.haystack.tv/v/officials-warn-pressure-ridges-lake-minnetonka-due-temperature-swings
Driving over the top of a lake that seems to be frozen over doesn’t work well when there has been sudden warming. It leads to “pressure ridges” and places where vehicles can sink below the surface. No people have been hurt from this so far on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, but it is up to the vehicle owner to get the vehicle out within 30 days.
Two people recently died in BC when their snow machine went through the ice.
This video is a month old but showed up in my youtube offerings today. If you are not a native speaker, what the US is trying to do with batteries is the definition of a “clusterfuck”.
This is a great video. We are getting batteries from China, already assembled, for $1.9 billion a month. There is a wide range of materials needed, including graphite, lithium, copper, and many other materials. To open new mines in the US takes years, to handle all of the environmental regulations. Canada is even worse. Companies outsource production because production is so impossible within the US, the way regulations and litigations are handled.
A 25% surcharge will do nothing to keep out cheaper Chinese made batteries. We would need to build a moat around the US, and keep it up for years, to make it work.
And nobody would be able to afford the 100% North American made batteries.
yes. 920% tariffs!
There is an overhead cost to building batteries, pollution of the land which can be quantified. Essentially, China is trading health and toxic waste for dollars.
This appears to be happening with farmland in the US, dirt is traded for dollars secondary to erosion. There are efforts to avoid this problem named, “regenerative agriculture.” In many respects, this is similar to farming prior to the extensive use of chemicals as fertilizer, herbicides, etc.
I am planning on doing some serious study of regenerative agriculture, for the farmer the first approximation is increased income but the catch is decreased production. Income is the difference between receipts and expenses. With regenerative ag. farm products cost more so the consumer will probably eat healthy, but eat less.
There are always tradeoffs. Mining these metals was done in the US, CA I believe but was stopped due to issues with waste disposal. Modern farming mines the soil and when that is gone it takes ten years to build a layer the thickness of a dime. There will be fat years and there will be thin years.
Dennis L.
I think you are right about this:
“There is an overhead cost to building batteries, pollution of the land which can be quantified. Essentially, China is trading health and toxic waste for dollars.”
We should be thinking seriously about whether we want to do the same trade off. As you point out, we are doing a similar trade off with respect to fertile soil, right now.
The story is always one of harvesting short term benefits, and leaving long term problems for someone else.
Good luck on your project with regenerative agriculture. Trying to make a higher-cost project work in a competitive economy is difficult.
Sorry, I must have written poorly.
Regenerative agriculture appears to have lower input costs than “traditional” agriculture. The problem is the yields are lower. It is the energy problem in a way. Currently those promoting this type of agriculture are experiencing increased profits which I think of as net income. Again, the yields go down but supposedly so does the loss of soil. With reduced variable costs, the net income increases more than the loss of gross income.
Dennis L.
Our earth is our spaceship. I know the Pt line is irritating, but H is non polluting, if we trash our spaceship, we are sunk.
China has polluted much of its land as part of the price of raising the living standards of its people and that has been a remarkable story. But, my guess is the costs have been huge.
Earth will heal with time. It is the only one we have.
Not all regulations are bad.
Dennis L.
I agree that Earth will heal. The major reason for collapse is to give forests time to regrow and wild animals time to repopulate. In fact, over time, new layers of soil will be added.
The idea that we are smart enough to fix Earth’s problems is based on the assumption that we know a whole lot more than we do. The self-organizing Universe has been able to solve its problems for billions of years.
We hope this works out. I am afraid it is based on the assumption that a few rich customers will pay premium prices for food that is produced in this way. This may or may not work.
Like a broken 💔 love affair..Time heals all wounds and hurts..
DL I was also interested in regenerative agriculture at one time, but realized CC would put a monkey wrench into the projects outcome. Not that should deter you any since you already have the land. I googled regenerative agriculture books with many more titles appearing since I last did a search.
No doubt, with them support groups are out there too .
It should be an adventure.
There was one popular author that had a design which increased yields, can’t recall it now…
https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/ra101-section/integrating-livestock.shtml
This website caught my interest
Regenerative agriculture is a lie.
Nothing new about these techniques, they were used for millenia. They did not prevent farmland ultimately becoming exhausted followed by famines and civilisational collapse.
The only two things that have ever been able to prevent that were:
1) Guano mined from South America
2) Nitrogen fertiliser produced using coal (later natural gas).
Agriculture is not sustainable.
I don’t know..that Japanese book titled
“The One Straw Revolution” I read many years ago made a good case for it…at least for me..maybe not for you
One Straw Revolution” – Best Documentary , a Must Watch
Masanobu Fukuoka
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rj7nrOjhMtk&pp=ygUYdGhlIG9uZSBzdHJhdyByZXZvbHV0aW9u
I don’t know..that Japanese book titled
“The One Straw Revolution” I read many years ago made a good case for it…at least for me
I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying it’s not new and long term it doesn’t work because agriculture doesn’t work long term.
What about the “Farmers of 40 Centuries”?
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Houston is going to run out of money within the next year — that’s the warning from the city’s top finance official.
The city just lost a lawsuit over mismanaged funds. As a result, upwards of $100 million taxpayer dollars must now be spent each year on badly needed street and drainage improvements.
But there’s a big catch — leaders did not budget for it.
Houston is already spending about $200 million more than it’s bringing in. Knowing that, officials appealed an earlier ruling in this case to at least try to push it off, but they just lost.
So now it’s time to pay up, with money the city doesn’t really have.
https://abc13.com/post/city-houston-ordered-spend-millions-doesnt-have-street-drainage-improvements-losing-lawsuit/15864345/
It seems like everything gets more expensive, as a city gets older. Borrowing seemed to make sense, early on, when new drainage systems, new roads, and new infrastructure of all kinds were put in. They would truly help the city.
Budgets don’t recognize that depreciation is a constant problem, and costs are rising. At the same time, big businesses often have moved out, to where taxes are lower. The citizens who do live in the city often are poorer.
It is hard to justify a whole lot more debt to simply make the system better. This is something that should come out of current revenue. But the low income of the people and businesses don’t allow enough taxes.
Yes, that is why a balance sheet shows accrued depreciation which increases each period and an expense item, depreciation which shows the income lost(sort of, think of placing it in a savings account in cash).
Government budgets generally don’t do this and then there is the cost increasing secondary to inflation.
I think in farming when raising corn, every cost should in number of bushels to cover that cost. Gives an idea of tradeoffs involved, simple Excel problem.
Dennis L.
I haven’t studied the subject, but I am afraid that it is more than government budgets that don’t reflect accrued depreciation. Churches may have a reserve item for “future major property repairs,” but this is likely not as large as a depreciation item would be.
Not-for-profits, in general, want to prudently spend the funds that have been invested with them. They are not interested in showing as large as expense item as perhaps really would be the case, if the not-for-profit would continue forever.
Exactly. Fund accounting accounts for the donations received and effort is made to see those resources used as per donor’s requests.
Fund accounting is an effort to maintain transparency, basically it is a checkbook, money is placed in when funds are donated, and spent in accordance with the fund categories.
The trick is not to run out of money before the next “fund” arrives in the checkbook.
Dennis L.
Norman says: find me another species on the planet, where its prime motivation isn’t food and fornication.
After I pointed out the blatant contradiction in defining a particular – HUMAN nature – as a universal – the nature of all living things – your response is to double down on the contradiction even harder. But religion is all about doubling down so this is hardly surprising.
But at least you recognized the fallacy, as indicated by the addition of the qualifier “prime motivation”. The only problem is, this is a meaningless term empty of propositional content. Strictly speaking, the only known species on the planet that has any motivations whatsoever is Homo Sapiens. Animals and plants do not seek out food or mates because they reason about their needs and motivations and then act based on the priority they assign thereto. Humans do that, and what is more, in a social environment that fundamentally determines how they think and behave.
all species seek to reproduce their kind
if they do not consume food, they do not have the strength to do it.–hence they must eat.
no great philosophy or problem about it—it’s just the way nature is intended to function
I would say that religion is all about providing at least a safety net for the poor. Religion is about providing some ground rules for behavior that can be self-enforced, without huge public expenditures to guide behavior. Thus, it is an inexpensive way of providing order to a society.
Governments have tried to provide the same benefits as religions, when they have gotten “rich” enough. A big problem is that they tend to promise far more than they can actually deliver. We are running into this now. Another problem is that businesses tend to look out for themselves (more vaccines, anyone? more soft drinks?) rather than the health of citizens. A third problem, especially in the US, is that the system of lawyers and law suits gets to be terribly expensive and time consuming. It pushes out mining and manufacturing completely.
We talked earlier about what natural systems maximize. Maximization doesn’t work out the way we would expect. The system tries to maximize its overall output, given the resources available. It turns out that the Maximum Power Principle leads to a balance between “the rich get all” and “the poor get as much as they would like.” I tried to talk about the Maximum Power Principle in this post.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/06/22/the-advanced-economies-are-headed-for-a-downfall/
The ownership of the car is deeply ingrained in the US society. As the cars and their use become less affordable, the consequences are really concerning.
100✔️percent agree, MG! It’s not only the ownership is ingrained, but by in large, the infrastructure and layout of cities have been built around the automobile. Decades ago author Jeremy Rifkin wrote of it in his classic title,
“Entropy: A New World View”…still worth a read today.
Not only that but finding home ownership is also a “right” in the American Dream that is being taken away by not only price bubble, but lack of affordable home owners insurance and escalating property taxes and maintenance costs. We are definitely in a period of transition, not be the faint of heart…it’s going to get ruffer….happening now in speed
I think to own a car in America it’s about $12,000 per car. How many households have just one car?
Even college students need to have a car.
If the students live at home, they need a car to drive to the campus. If they live on campus, they find that they need a car to drive to their off-campus job. Also, most colleges/universities don’t provide 21 meals a week.
Gail, I want to get your reaction to Art Berman’s latest piece on Peak Oil. I read it and he concludes there needs to be a rethink about Peak Oil. His theory is that Shale Oil is a game changer that no one saw coming. However Shale is built on mountains of debt. When the debt goes away, so does the Shale business.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/peak-oil-requiem-for-a-failed-paradigm/
Peak coal is just as important and is not going away.
Peak oil is receding further and further into the distance.
In 2015 it was 10 years away. Now it’s 20 years away. 🙂
What about peak diesel? Surely that’s more important than peak whatever we call oil nowadays.
Overshoot and collapse in the parts of the world (close to everywhere) that use diesel.
That was in 2017 and will continue to be in 2017. But gasoline may yet have a peak in the future. More joyrides baby!
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Time-series-of-world-diesel-production-refinery-output-by-year-in-million-barrels-per_fig2_367441693
I think most people expect peak oil to follow a bell curve. The decline will be much more steep. If you equate an oil field and wells to a keg of beer and college students. And as you invite more students ie wells you will just have a slurping sound on the other side of the peak.
Peak coal also tends to lead to overshoot and collapse.
Brian , not bell shaped curve but The Seneca Cliff . We know that .
All signs show that the growth in shale is over . Rigs and frac spreads are down . Mr Shellman asks
Whatzzup? As Billy Beene asked, “if he’s a big hitter, how come he doesn’t hit big?
Because it was all a lie. All that technical recoverable oil dung heap from the EIA, the USGS, Rystad…we should be swimming in cheap, American shale oil. It was bullshit and what you are beginning to see, and will continue to see, is the U.S. shale sector’s failure to meet the call is because… its not really there in such a manner as it can be produced economically.
What I look forward is how do financial markets handle this . Maybe they will try to spin a new narrative that ” all is well ” .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/how-come-the-u-s-shale-sector-is-not-answering-the-call
I wonder why shale is so important. We are swimming in gasoline anyway. If it is needed as solvent for bitumen from Canada (which i agree it is), there is still quite a bit left.
I see WTI is down to $70.53 today. That is not following the peak oil belief that scarcity will make the price go up.
The price stays low and drillers go home.
Rodster , a response at another blog .
Hideaway
February 5, 2025 at 3:06 PM
I’ve read Art’s essay twice and the weakness of his argument about technology and price is apparent, plus the hand-waving in the comments section about how fracking is getting cheaper — no evidence at all, but possibly correct nonetheless. Fracking is probably getting cheaper because the cost of energy and materials are currently low.
As is the case with almost everyone, Art focuses on parts of the overall system and makes assumptions about those parts in isolation.
On Tim Morgan’s latest essay, Jan Steinman made the following comment…
“Howard Odum taught us that complexity (and therefore technology) is simply a function of energy. Technology is merely a form of emergy or “embodied energy.”
And that complexity requires maintenance, which has its own energy needs. Joseph Tainter points out that civilizations fail when maintaining their complexity demands all of their energy.”
Possibly one of the best I’ve read to describe the underlying problem. However, it seems that even Odum and Tainter, along with many others, overlooked the growth aspect related to increasing complexity/technology. Technology and energy use has to increase in order for lower grades of every material, including energy (oil, coal, gas, uranium) to become available. If we “stand still” as in the circular economy etc., we quickly lose technological gains, so our ability to access all materials declines, and the “price” skyrockets due to increasing demand for lower grades.
There is no growth, no increase in technology or complexity. Any reduction of the system or a major aspect of it involves simplification as companies go bankrupt for lack of growth in markets and the most complex are the first to go.
Rodster for you again .
Rob Mielcarski says:
February 5, 2025 at 4:22 pm
Great review, Hideaway. Thanks from everyone. Your complexity-growth perspective is a powerful new way to think about the world.
I watched the video below of Art’s presentation. I don’t think he’s lost his mind as I suggested above, but I do detect some denial and defensiveness.
I understand why a leader of the peak oil movement might want to throw in the towel. Predictions of declining oil supply have been wrong for almost 20 years.
On the other hand, I think we understand why those predictions were wrong. Most conventional oil producing countries peaked and then declined as predicted, but no one saw the impact of shale oil and few believed we would take on a suicidal amount of debt to maintain growth.
Personally, I don’t think the right answer is to say that the decline is so far in the future that we can’t see it anymore, but I understand why someone might want to keep their opinions to themselves now.
I agree with the belief that everything we’ve done to delay the peak will accelerate the decline when it starts.
One final point. If the stock market crashes tomorrow and oil supply declines because so many people can no longer afford to buy oil, and supply never recovers because of the loss of complexity, as Hideaway explains, I suspect the Bermans of the world will say that this was not “peak oil.” I disagree. Our current economic system is fragile because of limits to growth, of which peak oil is a major component.
the sea
February 6, 2025, 10:01
We will never run out of copper, lithium, or oil, but unless the flow of energy and materials continues to grow, to further increase the complexity of our large growing system, we will eventually be unable to access oil, coal, gas, copper, lithium, etc., etc. If we only had the technology/complexity of 1850 to access our oil fields, then we would no longer have an oil supply. We only used the simplest of machines to access that oil 40 feet below the surface. We have used that ease to get oil to the surface, all over the planet. It no longer exists.
Art assumes that technology will improve to make oil available and often talks about existing technology as if it can be stable forever, the same goes for price, not recognizing that price, as in cheap price, is only a function of system growth, as energy is only cheap if there is more than enough of it for current uses, which have been growing for the past two centuries.
As civilization as a whole continues to grow, the energy required to maintain complexity also grows, but faster than civilization itself, as there is the double problem of maintaining the existing system, plus lower quality minerals from everything else needed. Meanwhile, the complex system of civilization has made huge efficiency gains, which suffers from the Jeavon effect and also suffers from the laws of diminishing returns. Future gains in complexity and technology will not offset the increasing energy requirements for all materials.
At some point, something breaks the cycle of more humans, more technology, more materials, more energy. It could be the weather, it could be food, it could be population decline, it could be that energy cannot be kept up due to the laws of diminishing returns and excessively rising prices, it could be a combination of all the factors, including species decline or endocrine disruptors, or maybe vaccines making too many people sick.
Peak oil occurs when peak energy available to all other aspects of human civilization as a whole is reached, meaning peak complexity, peak ability to increase mining, etc. Art hasn’t thought through all the implications and has ended up saying there’s still plenty of oil as if it were a one-off, so this is just simplistic, possibly grandchild-induced thinking with denial at play…
https://un-denial.com/2025/02/03/were-all-good-now-a-mysterious-reversal/#comments
Regards, elmar
what we need is exergy. not energy, not oil.
there’s ton of energy from the sun but it cannot be converted into work.
yes you can access more reservoirs of exergy but it is purely a function of energy fluxes working at a geological level to provide accessible levels of energy
“ton of energy from the sun but it cannot be converted into work.”
You must not have been paying attention to the news. Last year saw the completion of 2 GW solar farm. If you don’t think electrical power can be converted to work, look up the definition and ride an elevator..
Now intermittent energy does have problems, but engineers solve such problems.
Thank you for enjoying my posting on SEE! It’s a crowded comment section, and I often feel like what I write there just gets lost, so I do appreciate that you appreciated it!
Everyone who is serious about the way things are going need to pay attention to Odum. He originated the Maximum Power Principle (MPP) that you often see quoted here. I’ve been exploring his lesser-known works, and the depth of his understanding of ecology continues to amaze and inform me.
(And despite our belief to the contrary, we are all ultimately governed by ecology, which is essentially the study of trophic relationships.)
In particular, Odum’s “emergy analysis” puts to shame today’s simplistic ERoEI analysis. He even invented a graphical language for exploring and expressing energy relationships.
Art Berman’s latest seems to be saying that debt is the answer to depletion. I just don’t understand that. At best, debt just seems to be putting off the eventual fall by steepening it’s eventual descent.
Complicating all this is the current political chaos in the US. (As Bruce Cockburn noted: “The usual panic in red, white, and blue.”) I was actually looking forward to consumer import taxes as a way for slowing down the economy while enraging Trump voters.
I see this as an inevitable outcome of MPP and excess complexity, as well as Peter Turchin’s “over-production of elites” — all leading indicators of a rapidly approaching demise.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
I agree.
It is the complexity that we build up that becomes impossible to maintain. We need roads, pipelines and electricity transmission lines. We become dependent on complex computer systems. We end up with supply lines running around the world.
All of this becomes impossible to maintain. We certainly can’t repay debt with interest, if the system starts to contract, other than by printing a whole lot more debt.
IMO
Art is pivoting because he has heard the warnings about a massive oil glut coming in the next few years. And I assume he thinks this is 2014 all over again and the naysayers will have a field day saying “peak oil was scaremongering” and he’s trying to protect his reputation.
we will have an oil glut because the majority of the world’s population will be too poor to use it.
take housing—-a house is nothing more than a block of embodied (fossil fuel) energy…..but the cost of a house is accellerating away from the financial means of the average buyer particulaly first timers.
take roads—they are the same…road decay can only be rectified by local/user taxation, but that too is going beyond affordable to the average user.
i could go on—but you get the drift i think
I don’t think that Art Berman understands how the economy works. He is trying to define “Peak oil” as something new, when it is really just part of an Overshoot and Collapse pattern that happens over and over in the world. He is defining it in the way the “Peak Oil” people assume it will happen (with high prices allowing more production), but this is not right.
The way that Peak Oil really works is the greater use of oil and other fossil fuels allows population to rise, and it allows greater complexity. It allows a more complex social structure, with greater wage and wealth disparity. Debt tends to pay a greater role, as the economy expands. These cannot continue, as resources per capita falls.
Experience throughout history shows that this growth pattern (even with burned biomass instead of fossil fuels) leads to an “overshoot and collapse” pattern. Wage and wealth disparity becomes greater and greater, as population rises and resources per capita falls.
The immediate way this overshoot and collapse pattern take place varies:
(1) Nutrition of the poorer members of the economy falls. These people especially become vulnerable to epidemics.
(2) Governments have an increasingly difficult time collecting enough taxes. They may fail from not being able to pay their debts.
(3) Governments (with tax problems) may fail from not being able to put forth a big enough army to fend off intruders. The stronger army will win and take what resources it can. It may kill or enslave local citizens.
(4) Citizens may become unhappy with the government and overthrow it.
(5) People everywhere know that they must set aside surpluses in “good years” with respect to harvests, to take them through the inevitable poor years. As population rises, surpluses grow smaller and smaller. After a point, even a small change in weather patterns/climate can bring the economy down.
You’re explanation is how I understand it as well. In his comments section some brought up the economy and he dismissed it. Steve St Angelo from the SRSRoccoreport.com has repeatedly said that Shale only exists because of the investors who have been suckered into the idea that Shale is the answer. The return on investment has typically been poor with Shale and fracking and requires huge investments.
He also noted that there has been a consolidation of SHale and fracking companies because they could not get the loans to fund their exploration investments. That should be a troubling sign if banks think twice about investing in Shale.
The big conflict between me and most of the rest of the Oil Drum staff was about how I saw peak oil. I saw the oil problem (and fossil fuel) problem as part of overshoot and collapse. They had elaborate ideas of how “demand” would rise forever, and this would allow more production. It could “soften the downslope.”
Economy in contraction . Patrick Raymond . Use Google translate .
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2025/02/economie-en-contraction.html
Patrick talks about fewer air flights per person, and few automobile sale (despite rising population). Also, less steel production. He shows several graphs.
I would point out that air flights have been falling for a very long time. Back in the in the 1970s, in the US, there were flights into practically every smallish city. Airlines found it hard to make money on these flights to these smallish cities. They cut back greatly. You can now sometimes get to these small cities by taking a flight to a big city, and a second flight in a smaller airplane, to the second city. But mostly, people have found it more efficient to drive a little farther to a bigger city to an airport.
So this is a different type of rationing. It is not so much that the flight is unaffordable by the consumer; it is that the flight cannot make money for the airline at the prices consumers are willing to pay.
As we are witnessing a real storm of crazy ideas from the politicians, I propose that the preambles of the constitutions should contain this sentence:
A human is a bare primate and a fading bioreactor, shivering from the cold, drowning in debt, and longing to return to paradise.
I like it.
If enough crazy ideas are “thrown up against the wall,” perhaps a few of them will stick. The self-organizing economy seems to take care of itself in unexpected ways.
Bill Gates Predicts We Won’t Need Humans ‘For Most Things’ in the Age of AI
https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-predicts-won-t-162228621.html
We won’t need Bill Gates, too.
In middle age a Duke or a King (therefore a person like a some sort of his current importance), would have been exiled (or worse) if he had said that he would no longer need his subjects.
Or in another place and time, the Pope would have excommunicated him, or also Ancient Greeks would have abandoned him on a remote island ruled by a Giant.
You can imagine what ancient Romans would have done to an important person saying that Romans are not necessary anymore.
“Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
Google’s AI chatbot tells user to ‘please die’ and ‘you are a waste of time and resources’
https://news.sky.com/story/googles-ai-chatbot-gemini-tells-user-to-please-die-and-you-are-a-waste-of-time-and-resources-13256734
Good to see that Google is working on the population issue.
Southeast Asians on average have a much lower standard of living than the west. They use less fossil fuel per capita so will of course weather fossil fuel decline better than the more prosperous countries.
Sad new zealand, a country which aspires to join the third world, has had a rapid decline in standard of living. In the last two years something like a 10% decline in per capita GDP ensures that this broken land will reach it goal.
The country grows more feral by the day and is no longer safe for visitors or locals. It will return to cannibalism eventually as the traditional diet of McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King and Wendy’s becomes too expensive.
Tourists may be forgiven for feeling a sense of paedophilia in the air. In actual fact children are being eyed-up as future sources of easy protein.
This does sound worrying.
It tolerated the Maoris, still having the stone age mindset
Yo! Someone doesn’t like the Kiwis.
“It will return to cannibalism eventually as the traditional diet of McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King and Wendy’s becomes too expensive . . . children are being eyed-up as future sources of easy protein.”
Is that what happened to Fast Eddy?
Writing his own blog at Substack. This is a recent post.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/more-boosters-more-jobs
The ‘trump solution ‘ is coming or dumb and dumber the plan to move all Palestinians from Gaza will probably lead to a middle east war causing oil prices to soar this should keep the party going for a few more years till the next planned war Trump or Biden they are all ‘agents’ of the elders to stave off collapse.
You are right. A Middle East war could cause oil prices to soar and help maintain oil production.
High oil prices will also reduce consumption, allowing what oil is available to last longer.
wars suck in energy and materiel
wars requires oil—–you cant run wars on solar panels
but if theres a mid east war, that will kill saudi and iranian oil supplies
thereby knocking out the energy base of the war itself
the usa does not have enough oil like it did in ww2, to sustain any real war beyond its own borders….king don just thinks they do.
but lets maga anyway—what could possibly go wrong
There will not be a war. Our Dear Leader, peace be upon him, is anti-war.
Gaza will be refashioned in the image of Las Vegas and some of the Gazans will be able to return as casino workers.
Peace will reign because war correlates inversely to standard of living.
Jews and Arabs will mix cordially on the beaches and in the hotels.
The Golden Age of man cometh under the infinite sagacity of the Supreme One, Donald J Trump, peace be upon him.
I was reading about the Don’s thoughts about the tariffs
“They’re very tough. They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our farm product, they don’t take almost anything,” he said on Monday night. “We’ll straighten that with either tariffs or they have to buy our oil and gas.”
Following his comments, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, warned that the global economy was “fracturing along new lines”.
“The cooperative world order we imagined 25 years ago has not turned into reality. Instead we have entered a new era of harsh geostrategic competition…We will need to work together to avoid a global race to the bottom,” she said at Davos.
Ursula: fracturing along new lines… with Europe finding no dancing partners. Thanks to her and her acolytes of course.
Ursula needs to focus on having children and making nutritious meals for her husband.
And leave global trade issues to people that understand them.
I’m not saying I approve, but war is a pretty efficient way for a species to dissipate energy.
War may simply be an element of the MPP.
You may be right. MPP = Maximum Power Principle
Yes, that may happen unless Saudi or other reach Arab Monarchy realize that it is not any more in their interest to support that kind of America, because they can be involved in a mess exactly in the place where they live.
I just watched a video from Paul saladino (nutritionist) as he visits his favorite butcher. The grass fed rib-eye was 36 dollars a pound. Wow! I can still find good cuts at 5 dollars a kilo!
Also, the world is still the same world of late 2024, although it might not appear to be so. I certainly had not seen it coming, that Trump would actually start draining the swamp. But it is just a detail. The world re-organization is driven by resource depletion. Trumps’ many moves will shift some guys in the winners (or at least better off) column, and others in the losers column. Politics (including geo-politics) at a time of resource depletion are essentially a musical chair game.
“You can print all the money or create all the credit you want, but try stuffing paper bills down your gas tank and see how far you go.”?
For the US as a whole, the gimmick of more debt has worked pretty well. Added debt has allowed the US to buy a whole lot more goods and services than it produces. It doesn’t work very well for others.
The US getting the world to commit to the USD as the world reserve currency in 1944 Bretton Woods, NH means that nations have already committed to trade/payments in dollars, no matter what they are worth. The dollar has already “locked in” the lion’s share of trade, despite attempts by BRICS to trade in other currencies. As long as the USD is perceived to be more “valuable “or “trusted’ than all the other currencies, (i.e., is the cleanest dirty shirt), things will simply chug along. You don’t have to be able to outrun a hungry bear, you just have to be able to outrun your hiking companion.
China can demand payment in yuan for its exports any time it wants. If Western countries refuse to comply with such a demand, if it comes, their economies will be destroyed in a matter of months. But China’s economy would not be destroyed.
It is not clear that other countries will always trust the US dollar more than other currencies.
I am afraid we may be hit the end of the line if the debt bubble starts to collapse.
Norman says:
“human nature is part of our basic functionality—it drives us to find food, shelter, warmth, a mate….etc.
as a species we have no choice in the matter, same applies to every living thing on the planet.”
You’re defining human nature universally, which is a contradiction in terms. And yet contradictory universals are the soul of religion.
straightforward offer jup
find me another species on the planet, where its prime motivation isn’t food and fornication.
remember i said species—not individuals
The Labour govt setup a company with GBP 3 billion to replace oil from the North Sea with renewable energy . The scam is becoming unglued .
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/03/gb-energy-says-it-may-not-meet-pledge-to-employ-1000-people-for-20-years
The video makes it sound like the new company (GB Energy) doesn’t really do anything energy related, except perhaps invest in “profitable” renewable energy projects. If they are really profitable, this gimmick isn’t really needed.
In the last blog I wrote about the dysgenics of the Western elites, beginning with a moron and 200/400 country bumpkins doing ‘their duty’ and basically killed off a lot of the elite western pop raised in 400 years and making the rest shell shocked and engage in hedonism and immediate gratification, leading to the consumer society,
as well as giving enough power to peoples who should never have been near to it and making them to be able to afford things which they had no business of touching.
What we now call Southeast Asia was French Indochina, British Malaya, Dutch East Indies, etc .Thailand was jointly subject to UK and France, its monarchs traditionally being educated in Britain (although the king before this one was born in Boston, making him a dual citizen).
With the moron and the country bumpkins not doing ‘their duty’, Britain would still have India and Malaya, France still would have Indochina, Holland will still have East Indies, etc.
Southeast Asia had 60 mil on 1900, 200m on 1950, and 700m on 2025.
Although its soils are rich, it was not exactly overpopulated because jungles bred tropical diseases which culled the lesser able and less fortunate, while the landowners, usually relatives of the local king and/or ruler, would usually feed only their own relatives.
I don’t think the British, French and Dutch colonial governments would have tolerated the increase of their colonials that much. A much more extensive ways to control population, and theirfore their consumption, would have taken place.
And their resources, which would have been shipped to Europe to help advancing civilization, were used by themselves to better their lot which was wrong, and therefore
https://youtu.be/eblMZx5qfmA?si=8gNIApDYA58P-C9I
Nightlife in Siem Reap (the https://youtu.be/zEbHf6JKTbM?si=6piVN98mlMzwoN-rwhere Angkor Wat is)
It used to look like this
https://youtu.be/zEbHf6JKTbM?si=6piVN98mlMzwoN-r
(An American tourist traveling to Siem Reap filmed in 1930s. Older clips of that region are not available)
And it should have stayed like that, the barefoot locals still riding oar rowed wooden ships , not gas guzzling motorboats or other vehicles consuming fossil fuel.
My father was born and grew up on the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. His parents were missionaries who were born in Norway, but were sent from the USA.
The stories I have heard make it sound like Madagascar was similar to Cambodia in the film. His mother rode in a litter, when they first came.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)
They had multiple household servants.
“His mother rode in a litter”
That probably means something different in USA.
There is a different name I heard used. I tried to look up the correct name, but google gave me this one. Sorry.
That is exactly the problem of a Culture that ignores history and previous habits of themselves or other Cultures.
Interesting .
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/europe-soaked-up-nearly-all-us-lng-exports-last-month-data-show/
The article indicates that Europe is outbidding Asia in the price for LNG. I would expect the higher shipping cost for sending LNG to Asia is a problem as well.
I keep wondering when a collision will occur between the rising capacity for shipping LNG abroad and the flat lining natural gas production in the US will take place.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9070us1m.htm
The US has promised all kinds of LNG exports, but unless US production rises, I have a hard time believing that these exports will really be available. I am sure that natural gas companies would like US citizens to be paying more for natural gas, but higher US natural gas prices will become a problem, too. They very much affect the cost of electricity production.
Yes, everywhere supply chains shortening and simplyfing. Russian LNG to Asia, american LNG to Europe. It s a one week trip for each.
It is horribly energy inefficient to send LNG farther than a one-week trip.
It’s great to see the EU buying “democratic” Russian LNG at 5x the price of the “evil Putin dictator” pipeline gas they used to buy.
That’s democracy in its finest form.
Don’t worry, Canada to the rescue!
Canada put productive farmland and First Nations subsistence territory under water to flood a valley in the far north, because “British Columbians need the electricity.” No matter that were wasn’t enough transmission line capacity to get that electricity to where most of the people live.
The Site C dam cost $16 billion, nearly double the original budget.
Finally, they’re building a transmission line! Yay! It will cost $3 billion, er, probably $6 billion by the time it’s done.
That must make the 8,236 residents of Kittimat, the line’s terminus, very happy to have 5,100 gigawatt-hours of energy available each year, about 8% of the total electricity in BC!
Wait, what? Kittimat is where a new $40 billion natgas liquification plant is being built… hmmm… I think we been duped…
When all this was being figured out, natgas was over $15 per thousand cubic feet. BC thought it would make a killing, and estimated a break-even at $6/tcf.
Today’s price? $3.32/tcf. Dumping BC natgas on the international market will drive that even lower.
I don’t think they thought that one through…
Act Two: the Mango Moron declares that Canadian natural gas is “subsidized” and insists on a 50% tariff on forest products.
Strange world! LNG involves a high level of complexity. I would expect it needs a lot of electricity for energy, at least at some point.
The LNG system seems like it is one headed for failure within a few years. There are too many pieces of the system, and they all have to be supported by debt. Buyers have to be willing to pay high prices, but their paychecks aren’t high enough to cover the costs.
“expect it needs a lot of electricity for energy,”
Maybe, it was not clear from the Wikipedia article on LNG.
Since an awful lot of NG is used for making electricity, it may not matter if NG is used directly to power the liquefaction directly by gas turbines.
Dimitry Orlov on Trump .
” Trump is poised to enter history as a second Mikhail Gorbachev — a shallow, narcissistic extravert. The difference is that Gorbachev was initially supported by most of the population while Trump has at best 50% public support. The similarity is that Gorbachev came to be universally hated and despised in just a few years, and so, I imagine, will Trump, although Trump has much less time to cover that distance than Gorbachev had. Just as with Gorbachev, the rapid shift in public discourse from mouthing zombiefied platitudes to bloviating buffoonery was at first perceived as a breath of fresh air and part of a healing process. Soon enough, as the economy rapidly fell apart and politics tipped toward nationalist separatism and extremism, it was found out that there was nothing behind his words except narcissistic grandstanding, and everyone recoiled in disgust. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong, but I expect the same to happen to Trump by the midterm elections of 2026, making him a political corpse by the end of his term in January 2029 should he survive for that long.
Trump’s approach is that of a gangster: “I’m not looking to hurt Russia… settle now… it’s only going to get worse.”
As I see it, the US economy has grown based on ever-rising debt. This cannot continue.
Trump is trying to cut spending in many different ways. He is also trying to encourage more US production. I am not certain the aim of all of his proposals. Too much US debt has gone into influence buying, and he is trying to scale this back.
Trump’s negotiating tactics seem worrisome to me. But I don’t understand the alternatives.
I can’t imagine that anyone overseeing the process of shrinking many parts of the US economy could be popular. Yet, somehow, this is what must be done. Perhaps at some point, Trump can be replaced by Vance.
I can understand Trump’s objective is to cut spending and bring home some production, although I don’t like his unpleasant negotiations methods.
In fact it is surely true that, sooner or later, US debt could blow up in face of every one, including US people.
Having said that, what it looks a bit strange to me, it is that simultaneously, he is still acting as the king of the 1st Empire, saying to Palestinians where to emigrate, giving conditions to Russia and Ukraine on how to make ‘peace’ and so on and so forth all around world.
Maybe also on these second aspect, US needs to change its mindset.
king donny the 1st is issueing bitcoins in his own name, as yet another con to make money for himself before the whole thing collapses.
he’s already sold the presidency to musk
\
has anyone seen Vance lately
The point of Trump the “chaos bomb” is to enjoy the show. Later we all get to say “you’re fired”.
4 years from now Congress will still be full of geriatric theftocrats pontificating about American ‘democracy’.
It’s a safe bet by then that Joe Public will be poorer and more pissed off, but the show must go on.
hope your optimism holds up Fred
this is what i think the future holds for the USA
https://normanpagett.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/156609757?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
(my thoughts on substack, for any interested OFW’er)
Peak oil , peak copper and peak steel was 2021 . Peak everything . Mr B . 11 min read .
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/peak-steel-96d65b5f040b
He says it could be cyclical, though resources are interdependent so theoretically possible rebounds may not actually happen due to peak other things.
Peak diesel, peak babies, peak cars, and peak smartphones was 2017. I suspect the peak-energy-from-oil was also 2017.
Mr. B does a good job on this article, in my opinion. I remember that Ugo Bardi started talking about Peak Steel a while back.
Steel is essential for an awfully lot of the things that an industrial economy makes, including installing wind turbines and making drilling equipment for oil and gas. At some point, the economy “turns a corner.” It increasingly looks like that time is taking place about now.
Norm has also been emphasizing the importance of steel in context of the first boilers that exploded when the steam engine was devolped . It was only after the correct quality of steel was devolped and boilers strong enough to withstand the pressure did the industrial revolution get rolling .
yup Ravi
my book is being published this summer on that very subject
(order yours now to avoid panic buying when stocks run out)
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-iron-men-of-shropshire/norman-pagett//9781398122390
“importance of steel ”
Steel is tricky stuff to get right.
ferrous metal—iron ore—is the fundamental material that supports humankind in our current condition.
none of the other elements in the periodic table can be accessed in meaningful, workable quantities without it.
steel then, is our prime tool, so reaching ‘peak steel’ is part of the inevitable endgame for humankind.
We started out by hacking into the ground with primitive iron tools to get at coal…..We extracted more and more coal, so that we could use it to smelt more iron…..which we then refined into steel.—that gave us the engines to drill deeper and deeper for oil.
without steel—no oil—no modern civilisation.
I am afraid you are right.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
We started out by hacking into the ground with primitive iron tools to get at coal…..
That can’t be right, surely?
How did we get the primitive iron tools?
You must go even way, way, wayer back, Norman.
weve been making iron tools since maybe 2000 bce—but it was expensive in real terms.
it was cheap iron that changed human direction
with cheap iron you can have iron guns, iron engines and iron ships—without cheap iron, you can’t.
iron is our prime tool—everything else stems from that
Worth noting: I “learned” in school that the “iron age” was a technological upgrade of the previous “bronze age”.
I’ve learned much more recently that bronze is actually a superior metal for most applications, and that the move to (cheaper, more available) iron was only because of resource depletion of easily accessed copper and tin.
So, iron and steel became popular only because of resource depletion of copper and tin.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
in many respects you could be right
but
steel gives a better cutting edge overall–just about everything we use has that steel edge to it
iron had a later start because smelting temperature was much higher
We got the primitive iron tools from iron ore plus charcoal made from wood.
“Many of the people in this part of the world are used to living in cramped quarters–three generations in a large one-room home, for example.”
No one can get “used” to living like that. They are forced to do so by people who do not live like that, and they obviously do not like it. Else there would not have been an anti-colonial struggle and subsequently several communist uprisings in Indonesia’s recent past. Under certain conditions and once certain thresholds of tolerance are breached, people tend to revolt against the state of things presumed to be natural and harmonious by those who benefit from it.
On a related note, the work of Utsa Patnaik shows that per capita nutrition has substantially declined in the third world, including Indonesia, since the 90s. The percentage of the population employed in the informal sector has also increased since then. The informal sector isn’t subject to labor regulations, and it is not counted in GDP because the rest of the economy is parasitic upon it. The overall pattern in the third world, and to some extent even the first, has been “growth” for the top 5 to 10% via impoverishing the bottom 90%.
I don’t think Indonesia or SE Asia is in too much better shape than anywhere else. Globalisation is not a choice, never has been. It is simply the reality of this system which is why its collapse will be global.
Agree Jupiviv . Too optimistic . Let us do a countrywise analysis .
1. Philippines ; No domestic energy source . All imported . Largest dollar income source is inward remittances from workers overseas . Located in typhoon /hurricane zone . Floods are an annual disaster .
2. Japan : This has been discussed here to the bone . 100% import of energy , 60% food and the demographic issue and add the debt etc . Unsustainable .
3 . Korea , Vietnam in the same boat as Japan .
4 . Laos , Cambodia and Sri Lanka : Already deadbeats . In the hock to their gills in debt to China . No domestic energy source . Only dollar source is tourism .
5 . Thailand : Better than no: 4 but just marginally as it has other dollar sources [ besides sex tourism ] by exporting rice and several light engineering goods and also a portion of the drug money that it gets from ” the Golden Triangle ” . No domestic energy source .
6. Burma : The lesser said the better . Nothing here to see .
7 . Malaysia : Best placed . Self sufficient in energy and food .
8. Indonesia : It has the resources but it is in a massive , massive population overshoot . Population density /per sq km is high . Jakarta the capital is sinking and they have plans to build a new capital but how to shift 12 million people . Anyway the new capital is still in the planning stage , so in the meanwhile \?????
9. China : Again discussed to the bone here . Nothing to add .
10. India : Overrated , illiterates , overshoot –80% energy imported . It is another ” money order economy ” like Filipinas . ANNUAL inward remittance from overseas Indian is $ 99 billion , highest in the world . I have already posted the problems that are there , so will not repeat .
Best of luck .
Your area is wider than the area I discussed. I was looking at a relatively small area that did not include Japan, India, China, or Korea.
I agree that the world everywhere is in population overshoot everywhere. Cities, especially, are in danger of collapsing, without enough energy supplies of the right kinds.
Once upon a time, even when cities collapsed, some of the poor farmers could continue on, even if the cities collapsed. They could feed themselves. Perhaps people would die younger, but civilization could somewhat continue.
I am really asking whether this kind of thing could happen in Southeast Asia. Even if Singapore and Jakarta need to shrink back greatly, is it possible for some group of people (mostly farmers and fishermen) to reasonably support themselves?
The financial systems are likely to have to change greatly. Remittances from workers elsewhere have to stop being a major source of income, for example. I expect that workers on the ship I was on were mostly from low-income countries. They sent money back to their families.
” Your area is wider than the area I discussed. I was looking at a relatively small area that did not include Japan, India, China, or Korea.”
Without Japan , China and Korea there is no South East Asia . I took India as an extension . The Indian subcontinent [ India , Pakistan , Afghanistan , Bangladesh , Nepal , Bhutan ] is going to be a catastrophe that is unimaginable .
I agree that there are way too many people for resources, pretty much everywhere. Precisely how this will turn out is (fortunately) unknown.
the film Johnny Mnemonic is a film that hopefully the world changes into. I highly recommend this film to our finite worlders to get a glimpse of what the world could transform into in 20 years time.
“Johnny Mnemonic is a film that hopefully the world changes into. ”
I guess you are being sarcastic. Long time since I saw it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic_(film)
It didn’t follow the book very well. And it lost money.
Gibson is depressing on his best days.
Please give your summary of China.
This forum seems to be split between the “every country st once” and the patchwork collapse lasting decades. I am of the latter persuasion. I doubt that, for example, Russia is as advanced as Sri Lanka or Lebanon, Syria, or the UK.
Certain countries/regions might be better off short term but cumulative effects from the ones that aren’t pile up and lead to the same outcome after a decade or three. Point being it’s a global system that is collapsing, not “collapse” turning global into local.
I agree. Given the rich interdependencies, cascading effects tend to be underestimated.
Just look at the decision of the Thai government on July 2nd 1997 to float the Baht.
Sarcasm noted but that decision was merely an instance of WTO-induced trade liberalization everywhere in the third world.
jupi… most of agricultural history humans lived 4-6 to a house even westerners didn’t have large square footage. yes western world exports inflation and gets 99% discount on uranium from africa but truthly those people are extremely low iq and even steal oil from electric grid transformers. you are wrong, you can clearly see economic conservatism/iq having lower fertility/fecundity rate for lower trade-off in standard of living in mating preferences. there is 0 reason anyone with 100 iq or above would spawn 8 children in misery. they are forced to economically yes, downsize, but reality is they are also mentally too stupid to think ahead or do anything technologically sufficient other than breed when given food, so you are only half right.
poor people often have one form of recreation—my g/grandfather had 21 kids—of whom 14 survived.
no use saying ‘don’t’—they just did—that sort of thing was commonplace, the eldest had started work while the youngest were still being born into a tiny cramped cottage.
we know better of course.
except that contraception is a product of the factory system—poor people had no access to it.—sex is a very powerful urge–nature takes no account of physical circumstance at all.
a baby will either survive, or it wont, we care but nature is indifferent.
They had a lot of kids because they needed to. It’s not like there was no way to abort – they were messy but as reliable as could be reasonably expected. In fact the rich had more kids per capita than the poor, especially if you count the bastards.
nobody ”needs” 21 kids
The fact that 14 survived should tell you why they needed 21. More children, preferably sons, equals more help on the farm. It also equals more chance that one of them will take care of you. Advances in medicine combined with not enough industrial development to absorb rural surplus labour, general impoverishment and no social democratic phase… equals “overshoot”. Except it isn’t overshoot owing to “human nature”, it is an irrational system based on exploitation predictably destroying itself.
On a related note, you profess atheism Norman and yet believe in human nature, which is the God of bourgeois modernity. And it is crueler than its predecessor because we make no pretense about the fact that it is us and then wash our hands of responsibility. We are both Pilatus and Christ, nailed to the cross.
human nature is part of our basic functionality—it drives us to find food, shelter, warmth, a mate….etc.
as a species we have no choice in the matter, same applies to every living thing on the planet.
inferring that it is anything else is ridiculous
“had 21 kids”
A friend of mine tracking through genetics found that his great something had 25 surviving kids by 4 women.
well keith—its always good to keep busy
the story goes that half of us are related to genghis khan—he was a busy boy too—all those hordes.
so we can all go round and say hello to cousin Melania.
King don would appreciate that I’m sure.
“that half of us are related to genghis khan”
Half a percent world wide, 8% in Asia
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16767
“there is 0 reason anyone with 100 iq or above would spawn 8 children in misery.”
So why did everyone do that a century or two before now?
Because there was no birth control, duh.
I can agree on, say, 50 years difference in collapse time between countries. But that is only because oil wells deplete over that time frame. No pile up is going to affect USA or Russia, if those countries do indeed collapse. I assume Trump is trying (consciously or not) to in fact limit the impact of foreign collapses on the US (which will soon be most of North America).
If no pile up is going to affect them their recent behaviour doesn’t make sense, and you go on to say as much yourself re Trump. There’s a clear connection between the US exporting 2/3 of oil and being the largest importer. De-growth type ideas where collective choice relinquishes excess wrongly assume an easily regulated demarcation between excess/waste and necessities.
I don’t disagree about the lines of demarcation. I am just saying that for the time being the US produces 5M barrels diesel and consumes 3. It is the countries that depend on the other two which will collapse a lot sooner. The lines will play a role during the steep descent that starts once the US produces and uses 3.
I agree that it is the global system that is collapsing. I think that how and when the collapse takes place will vary somewhat by country.
I asked ChatGPT about the energy efficiency of the natural gas production. Quite an interesting debate, both in Slovak and in English, veryfing its current level in 2 languages, challenging its outcomes. It says taht the natural gas production of Russia is not as energy efficient as the production of tis rivals.
https://chatgpt.com/share/67a3054b-a0c0-8012-9f1d-39ee90a68ae6
The position of Russia seems to be very weak.
The 1978 Cold Anomaly: When All of Russia Froze to -73°F
https://youtu.be/EYGUnrjIlBk?si=_Aoty5QZoMhuhbmi
https://www.rt.com/news/612186-trump-us-take-over-gaza/
The US president announced a plan to raze the Palestinian enclave and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” for the “people of the world”
This story is really wild, especially with limited energy supplies.
We aren’t in a position to build a “Riviera of the Middle East.” This would be a playground for rich people, I expect. Palestinians certainly aren’t rich. The area doesn’t have enough fresh water to support even the current population. The area originally belonged to the Palestinians. The Jews were given part of the land and they want more.
I don’t think congress is going to be impressed with this idea, don’t expect them to appropriate the funds to pay for it.
Palestinians would no longer be there, then would all be moved to Egypt and Jordan under the plan.
“The Jews were given part of the land and they want more.”
It was more like they took it, then expanded and now they want more. They are colonialists at heart, no different than the US.
That was yesterday…. Today he will say just kidding…
King Donny the 1st, is clearly off his head, demanding that his appointed courtiers insist that he is most certainly not naked.
and we are only 2 weeks into MAGA and he’s already sold the presidency, wants to invade Canada, Greenland an Panama, today he wants Gaza—wait till he’s been on the throne for 2 years, and his stand-in VP has control of everything.
Incidentally—has anyone head the name Vance lately???
the senate is running scared…….1933 anyone???
and here’s another prediction—he’s firing as many government people as he can—i’m guessing he wants to shut it down.
chaos will then be certain.
and so will his need to use the military to restore order.
any soldier who disobeys him will be fired.—or worse….soldiers need wages just like the rest of us.
he’s already opening his first detention camp–as i said he would—does anyone seriously think they will be exclusively for migrants??—he’s just freed 1600 violent criminals—ideal camp guards would’t you say?—they will do whatever he orders them to do.
Remember the chants of ”Lock her up”—you think he was joking??
What violent criminals? Oh, you mean the people who mostly didn’t really commit any crimes on Jan 6th and didn’t have criminal histories. Let’s not get carried away.
yes—i wondered why some of them were carrying sun umbrellas and beach recliners
thanks for clearing up that point
I’m not seeing a reasonable response to my reasonable point.
In American modern history there have been far worse incidents at the Capitol including riots, armed invasions (guns) and bombs. Those incidents were not treated like this one was.
In addition to negative aspects from moral, legal and political point of view, this would also be in competition with Saudi Arabia’s Neom holiday project, which is not much far from there.
It is actually a project to attract rich foreign tourists.
So, I don’t see the advantage for other players, but Israeli.
It would be an outrageus advantage of war.
For a moment we could think that it is like bombardment of Berlin in the WWII and then open a US Resort on debris, instead of Berlin city for Germans.
But as I said, even not considering moral side, there is a tourist competition there and Saudi Arabia is making its resort in its own territory, so it is on the right on this.
aint going to happen
king donny has no morals, law or political allegiance
just ”self”—-how hard is it to see that?
Why is it when we want the government to help Americans the Republicans say we don’t got the money, but we can always find the money to help Israel? Maybe, just maybe that Make America Great Again was B.S.
It’s absolutely nuts. The US is now openly declaring its goal of ethnic cleansing … wow.
Some time ago Trump was talking about building hotels on the N Korea ocean front.
Even the people who voted for him are starting to wonder.
Went to my local burger family restaurant yesterday. They raised prices nearly 40% overnight. They have a big breakfast crowd. Someone put a sticker on the drive though with Trump with his thumbs up saying “I DID THAT”
🙂
take a photo and post it
https://ibb.co/Cs6PBmcB
Par for the course for a brainless democrap to blame Trump for years of inflation under Biden once Trump has been in office for 2 weeks and reuse a meme rather than incorporate some original creativity.
There were probably a few stickers with Biden saying ‘I did that’ from before the election too.
“Even the people who voted for him are starting to wonder.”
Yup.
https://www.rintrah.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1act2024.jpg
Maybe this is the reason!
Saludos
el mar
Putin and the rest of the russian elite will go right along.
It’s not their fight and it serves their interests if the US burns bridges with the rest of the world.
Yes. Also Putin, Medvedev, Mishtustin, Lavrov, Nabiullina, Miller, Gref, Fridman and (head of rosneft), most 1990s-made oligarchs, share the winner’s ethnicity.
If all the elite are what you say, that unfortunately speaks ill of Russia’s own capacity for self-governance.
I agree.
So much optimism! Between you and Art Berman we have gone from collapse any day now to maybe 20 years or so 🙄. AI will probably allow for a bigger straw to pull out more oil and maybe even more alternatives in the future.
Chris Martenson appears to have done the same. It feels like the world has turned on a dime.
If ultra-deepwater begins ramping production in the next few years, we’ll know we have a potential solution before it has a visible impact on total production.
China drilled a 7 mile hole in 240 days or something and is also testing ultra-deepwater drilling rig prototypes. Most oil is under the seas (and 25% of production is already offshore), so if China makes ultra-deepwater cheap enough, that could buy time for another generation.
It’s not possible for it to be cheap within the current laws of physics.
What are you talking about? We have deepwater drilling, which means it’s profitable at today’s prices already! Don’t you realize you are stating your own opinions as god-given fact? Apparently not.
Name an oil well currently in profitable production in 3,000 m or more water depth.
Here is one that was economical at 2450m from the year 2011.
https://www.hartenergy.com/exclusives/shell-sets-world-record-deepest-subsea-producing-well-18471
Deeper ones have been drilled more recently, but I don’t know if they’re economical as I don’t have insider data for recent wells. 3000m is an arbitrary cutoff, because technological refinement will continue as long as civilization does, making progressively larger depths accessible. So if 2450 works economically, why not 3000? Your argument boils down to not believing they can improve by 20%. Not much of an argument, if you ask me.
oil extracted from such depths costs too much to be of any commercial value
it isn’t ”energy from oil” thats the problem
its ”surplus” energy ”in ” oil—if there isnt any, you might as well leave the oil in the ground…..which is what will happen eventually.
If you are right, there is quite a bit of oil in deepwater in Brazil. There is oil in Greenland under 2km of ice. If the fields are big indeed there could be a generation worth, but not for everyone. some parts of the world will still collapse…
Actually, this post is not really going from collapse any day, to collapse in 20 years time. It is more pointing out that there might be a few areas that can somewhat weather the storm for a few years (perhaps 20).
Yes but if the collapse happens in one area it will happen in all areas. That is the nature of collapse. It’s like building a sand castle…. Where the heck is David when you need him?!?
“if the collapse happens in one area it will happen in all areas.”
I’m not so sure.
Places that are closest to subsistence may have an easier time of it. I think that was Gail’s point.
Places that are furthest from subsistence have the farthest to fall. That’s going to hurt when you hit bottom.
That’s why I’ve chosen John Michael Greer’s exhortation: “Collapse now! Avoid the rush!”
Those of us who are closer to subsistence when collapse happens are going to have an easier time adapting.
The population equivalent of Jevon’s Paradox, re: multi-generational families, not having to heat or cool their homes, growing food locally etc. The cost “savings” are simply consumed/offset by an increase in population, just as effciency in energy use is offset by increased use of the cheaper energy. It’s been decades since I visited Thailand, but the population in Philippines (ex wife from there) continues to increase. The baseline for human existance in Philippines is lower than what Westerners have enjoyed for the past century.
Choose your pick. High IQ, low birth rate, unmaintainable high standards of living or low IQ, high birth rate, unmaintainable low standards of living.
There’s no ideal world of small, high IQ, semi-maintainable high standards of living population that exists.
Perhaps what you are talking about is the reverse of what was observed in Cuba.
In Cuba, each multigenerational family was given a nice townhouse or other house with kitchen, living room, bathroom and a few bedrooms. Intergenerational families would live in these houses, but couples didn’t want to have very many children because they could sense that the home was getting overfilled. Cuba’s population stayed quite level. (It may have also helped that people also were able to leave for the US.)
Cuba Population
2000 11.1 million
2010 11.3 million
2020 11.2 million
In Haiti, nearby, people were much poorer and had many more children. There was hardly any cost to having another child. They just added one more to the group.
Haiti Population
2000 8.3 million
2010 9.8 million
2020 11.2 million
EIA has posted a figure for world crude oil production for last October (81.739 mb/d) — this is 1.6% below their current post-covid peak oil figure (83.056 mb/d, for December, 2023), & 3.4% below their current figure for world peak oil (84.592 mb/d, for November, 2018).
With chronic oil prices ( http://oil-price.net/ ), will there be less & less to go around? ( https://davecoop.net/seneca )
https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/petroleum-and-other-liquids/monthly-petroleum-and-other-liquids-production?pd=5&p=0000000000000000000000000000000000vg&u=0&f=M&v=mapbubble&a=-&i=none&vo=value&&t=C&g=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001&l=249-ruvvvvvfvtvnvv1vrvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvvnvvvs0008&s=94694400000&e=1727740800000
Total liquids continues to rise and there is some fungibility.
“Some fungibility” does not mean that you can get diesel from NGLs or “refinery gain”. And you don’t get much from fracked light crude.
Art Berman pointed out that a “barrel” of oil may contain as little as 90% of the energy content that it did just a decade or so ago.
Mining, long-haul transport, and agriculture cannot continue without diesel.
Unemployed people who stay home and don’t drive much still need to eat.
October 2024 crude oil production is not a record low (and you are not saying it is).
Oil production should have bounced back up to where it was in 2018 or 2019 by now, but it is way lower than that. Something is clearly a problem–we seem to be in a situation where we clearly can never to back to our prior peaks. On a per capita basis, the situation is clearly not very good.
US oil production for October was a record, at 13.457 million barrels per day. This helped world production for October.
In this video, the US maritime expert Sal Mercogliano explains the importance of sea lanes in South East Asia
September 2021
Why Does Australia Need Nuclear Submarines? The Answer is WWII! | What’s Going on With Shipping?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kSQWp4UEXw
00:00 Introduction
03:10 Global Trade
08:11 The Role of World War Two on AUKUS
15:20 China’s Oceanic Strategy
Nuclear submarines can go for much longer, underwater, compared to conventional submarines. They are also much quieter. So nuclear submarines are better suited to patrolling the straights of the South China sea where much trade takes place.
This 2023 article says
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64945819
Aukus deal: US, UK and Australia agree on nuclear submarine project
I am skeptical that this will happen as planned. Something will go wrong. They won’t really get built.
AUKUS and Quad are nothing but instruments to sell weapons from the MIC which will never be delivered . The Australians as ever the happy vassals ponied up $ 35 billion upfront for stuff they will never get delivered . They know it ,
Strange!
One can only imagine, however, that climate change is going to send its own challenges in the direction of SE Asia. Rising temperature, increased ferocity of storms, higher rainfall and suchlike. High humidity plus high temperatures could lead to ‘wet bulb’ events. These may find the populace looking towards electricity and aircon etc.
Perhaps areas that were previously too cold (outside of Southeast Asia) will become more attractive to live in.
Humans have lived through ice ages in the past. They moved to areas where the climate was acceptable.
Maybe this is part of the interest in Greenland.
Good point.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070705153019.htm
Fossil DNA Proves Greenland Once Had Lush Forests; Ice Sheet Is Surprisingly Stable
James Hansen has just published his latest paper
Polar climate change has the greatest long-term effect on humanity, with impacts accelerated by the jump in global temperature. We find that polar ice melt and freshwater injection onto the North Atlantic Ocean exceed prior estimates and, because of accelerated global warming, the melt will increase. As a result, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming – in contradiction to conclusions of IPCC. If AMOC is allowed to shut down, it will lock in major problems including sea level rise of several meters – thus, we describe AMOC shutdown as the “point of no return.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494#abstract
South East Asia will be especially hard hit by sea level rises due to long coastlines, especially Indonesia
I am doubtful that there is anything we can do that will make a difference.
Oh, but we are making a huge difference, I’m afraid in regards to the continuing of the emitting more heat trapping gasses in the atmosphere in near record levels.
One must remember the vast climatic system has inertia and requires time to respond. So, what humans see today was caused from years past and will continue to kick in many years later even after, not to mention positive feedback loops that are irreversible.
you may have missed the point Gail
if you study ancient civilisations, they were supported by ‘reliable’ climate—sure, it didnt last forever, things changed—-but climate change will bring about climate which will be anything but reliable.
that is the main fear with it—that people miss.
a reliable climate, basically, gives you food support for generations….hiccups…certainly, but by and large you could have reliable food for 1000 years—enough to build empires on—(eg the Romans)
if you don’t have reliable food then the concern is always about the next harvest
why are people worried about climate change. like that is going to happen over period of 50-500 years. shouldn’t”t you be more concerned about not having fertilizer and disease and starving to death in 5-10 years or less? who cares about 1 feet of sea level rising…. billionaires buying villas on beachfront properties haven’t stopped buying them.
Well then please get the USA to cut all food shipments north to this god for saken, degenerate, country country I am stuck in. A country of grifters and freeloaders and useless eaters galore.
Put us out of our misery.
You can also just wait a while I guess, the falling IQ here will prevent us being able to keep the heaters on much longer anyway.
Our climate will do the rest.
where is ”here”?—Canada?
if you study ancient civilisations, they were supported by ‘reliable’ climate—sure, it didnt last forever, things changed—-but climate change will bring about climate which will be anything but reliable.
You miss the big point, Norman. If you would make the effort to study ancient climate, you will discover that in many cases ancient civilizations didn’t last forever because the regional climate changed in ways that made it impossible for them to soldier on.
for more information on historical climate change, I recommend Javier Vinos’s Climate of the Past, Present and Future
https://www.google.co.jp/books/edition/Climate_of_the_Past_Present_and_Future/o0qIEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
tim
as usual you are reading what you want to read.
nothing lasts forever. (I said that) civilisations go down for any number of reasons—usually a bigger neighbour rises up with more resources.—or they elect lunatics as kings.
You might say Britain lasted from—say 1100—to maybe 2100?—nice round figure, but i’d put a guess on that.–but lots of hiccups along the way.–the climate here has been stable for that time, pretty much, neither cold or hot enough to make living unviable—not like 20k years ago.
USA?—1776…but i doubt it will make 2076, the way things are going.
The Egyptians had a sufficientlty stable climate to sustain them for 3000 years, then around 1200bc, climate in africa went haywire
Remember all the times ive been screaming mid 2020s for collapse?—right on the button, –2025– King donny the 1st is making my prediction look highly likely
wouldnt you say?
It’s never the climate. The Egyptian collapse was because they ran out of wood (from Lebanon). No wood, no bronze, no ploughs, no tools, no ability to farm.
It’s never leaders either. That’s what ‘historians’ like to pretend on channels like, I don’t know, BBC4, for example.
It’s always about energy.
the Nile dropped to catastrophic levels several years in a row–due to lack of rainfall in africa.—nothing to do with wood.
without water—no energy from food
people die
climate change will affect food production— in some places there might be more, in most places it will affect growth cycles.
i’m afraid collapse is always down to energy deficit—one way or another.
we’ve been living in a period of surplus, now that time is over.
You might say Britain lasted from—say 1100—to maybe 2100?—nice round figure, but i’d put a guess on that.–but lots of hiccups along the way.–the climate here has been stable for that time, pretty much, neither cold or hot enough to make living unviable—not like 20k years ago.
You might say that. But actually, climate was never stable, not 20k years ago and not now.
And it’s never been cold or hot enough to make living unviable in one place or another, otherwise there would be nobody alive to argue about the point.
Over the last 1,000 years or so, we started in the Medieval Warm Period, when the living was easy in Olde England and they were growing wine in Yorkshire and building cathedrals all over in their spare time to the glory of God.
Then things got cooler and the weather got nastier. In the UK it was mostly a question of more storms and deeper freezes and more instability. This took us down into the depths of the Little Ice Age, reached about 400 years ago, by which time large areas of upland pasture in Northern England and Scotland had to be abandoned, and there was a progressive switch from wheat to oats and barley production.
There was hunger, and famine, and pestilence and disease, and war—Good Dod, y’all?—reducing the population and increasing poverty. Hard times of old England and Scotland too.
Further northwest, in Iceland, cereal farming had to be abandoned and the land turned over to sheep.
Even further northwest, in Greenland, the colonies that had been established for 500 years died out due to climate change, after first becoming cut off from Iceland and Norway by the deteriorating climate and then growing shorter in stature with each generation due to malnutrition, the population declined until eventually there were none left.
The last known Norse inhabitants of Greenland are believed to have left by the late 15th century, with estimates suggesting that the final settlements may have been abandoned around 1400 to 1500 AD.
it has been established that ”the little ice age” affected mainly northern europe—these anomalies were/are common—-has no bearing on the present climate situation, wjich is affecting everywhere
“it has been established ”
I don’t think this is the case, but if you have a pointer, I will read it.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age
the Nile dropped to catastrophic levels several years in a row–due to lack of rainfall in africa.—nothing to do with wood.
That’s not enough to wipe out a civilisation, even if true. Running out of wood is though. Running out of wood takes centuries and a major human die off to solve.
without wood—life might become difficult
without water–life dies
without wood—life might become difficult
without water–life dies
Without wood, life is impossible for a civilisation. Not just difficult.
Nor was there ‘no water’. Just less of it.
if you study the way the nile worked—it inundated the farmland, to a certain level which allowed xxx amounts of crops to grow throughout the year—supporting xxx population.
if that flooding fails to arrive, the land could not deliver the necessary crops to support xxx people
it might only support x people
then people die
even now, in egypt, irrigated land and desert are literarlly one pace apart.—i found that scary
Norman, I’m not debating you. I’m not attempting oneupmanship either. I’m simply pointing out some basics. Just feeding you a few facts. They are established facts that can be found in the scientific literature. I don’t make them up as I go along.
it has been established that ”the little ice age” affected mainly northern europe—these anomalies were/are common—-has no bearing on the present climate situation, wjich is affecting everywhere
Climate changes, period. I think that has a lot of bearing on the present climate situation.
All climate is local or regional. There is no global climate.
Do you think the climate is the same at the poles as at the equator? The same in the highlands as in the lowlands? The same in the deserts as in the jungles?
Well, I’ve got news for you. It’s not.
The present climate situation always affects everywhere that has a climate, obviously. The climate situation of a thousand years ago or twenty thousand years ago also affected everywhere that had a climate at the time in question.
The North Atlantic temperate zone and the land areas in its vicinity do tend to have a more variable range of climate behaviors than many regions of the Earth due to several factors including the fact that the ocean is influenced by major ocean currents, such as the warm northeast-flowing Gulf Stream and the cold south-flowing Labrador current.
Variation in the strength of these currents can lead to abrupt changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, which is what we see when look at the historical and even paleo climate all through the proxy records, which tell us UnEquiVocally that climate indicators have never been constant—never in a million years.
The River Nile has not run completely dry in recorded history, but it has experienced significant fluctuations in flow due to various factors, including climate variability and human activities.
Historical records from ancient Egypt, including inscriptions and writings, indicate that there were periods of low Nile floods, often attributed to drought conditions. These fluctuations could severely impact agriculture.
Notable periods of drought occurred during certain dynasties, such as the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BCE) and during the Middle Ages. These droughts affected agricultural output due to reduced flooding and water availability.
During the Little Ice Age (approximately 1300-1850 CE), it has been suggested that changes in climate may have led to extended periods of drought in the Nile basin, impacting the river’s flow and agricultural productivity in Egypt.
Impacts on Agriculture
In response to droughts, ancient Egyptians developed various irrigation techniques and storage methods to manage water resources more effectively.
That’s why, despite changes in climate or limitations on the wood supply, the ancient Egyptians didn’t die out. If anything, one could say the ancient Egyptians eventually disappeared because they were replaced by too many illegal immigrants, refugees, invaders, and foreign overlords. That sort of thing often happens to wounded civilizations.
tim
repeat
you only read what you want to read
i said—-the nile in full flood could feed xxx people—when the flood dramatically failed—it could only feed x people
the ancient nileometers are still there to see.—they were the measure of potential food production in any given year
of course the egyptians didnt die out
silly idea
i said—-the nile in full flood could feed xxx people—when the flood dramatically failed—it could only feed x people
And when they ran out of wood, they could not feed anyone at all because the land could not be farmed and grains could not be cooked. The thing about grain based civilisations, and they are all grain based, is that the food cannot be eaten raw.
single data point but: this appears to be the mildest winter in Russian history. Volga to thaw one month ahead of schedule. Looking at lots of leftover firewood for next year. I think it should eventually become possible to grow corn for seed here (57N). It is grown extensively now, but only for silage.
25/3/2021
Brunei peak oil – golden opportunity for China’s Belt and Road Initiative
https://crudeoilpeak.info/brunei-peak-oil-golden-opportunity-for-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative
Every part of Southeast Asia seems to be encountering falling oil production. This is the most recent article I ran across about Brunei’s oil refinery problem, from December 2024.
https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/feature/brunei-faces-uphill-battle-in-efforts-to-wean-itself-off-oil-and-gas-84328
Brunei faces uphill battle in efforts to wean itself off oil and gas
The oil rich country faces the challenge of diversification as crude production weakens
They now need a new source of energy, since oil supply is declining. I would assume China would soon get smart enough to back out.
17/7/2023
Peak Oil in South East Asia and India – Part 1 Production and Consumption – Update 2022
http://crudeoilpeak.info/peak-oil-in-south-east-asia-and-india-part-1-production-and-consumption-update-2022
Thanks! You get the same general idea. Practically everything peaks at the same time, in India, Australia, and Southeast Asia. Way more is imported than exported. Something has to “give.” Hoping for a lot more vacationers traveling is probably not going to work out.
Maybe the simultaneous peak is due to a previous peak in something else such as steel
A tiny country that is very focused on oil has a difficult time if that oil production disappears. Sometimes we hear about the Dutch Disease. Wikipedia describes Dutch Disease as follows:
“Dutch disease is an economic phenomenon where a sudden increase in wealth from natural resources, like oil or gas, leads to a decline in other sectors of the economy, particularly manufacturing. This occurs because the influx of foreign currency strengthens the national currency, making other exports less competitive and increasing imports.”
If you are rich enough to import food, why grow any of your own? Why make clothes? This has been Brunei’s problem.
Problems everywhere, but the stock market goes up everyday.
People have lost fortunes trying to time a collapse .. that never comes.
Just print more money, and our problems are solved. At least some people believe this.
you are really just buying time in people’s delusions of larger savings account. of course none of them are redeemable at the same time. maintaining that delusion a little longer whilst people only get 0.1 unit of resources for every unit of expenditure and less and less…
Hi Gail,
I applied your analysis to my farm on our little island. It is cold here and we need to heat in the winter. The snow is falling outside and our woodstove is burning brightly. We have a wood lot and never seem to use more in a year then whet we grow. We garden and work the orchard with hand tools and make great use of the mulch and manure we produce o the farm.
We may lose electricity due to high prices or rural areas no longer being served. We have a propane stove and can cook on our woodstove. Mutton tallow will make effective but smoky candles.
As oil grows more expensive, I envision our having difficulty buying hay for winter feed. We can adapt by keeping fewer sheep and, as we get older and less robust, no sheep at all. We will have a harder time buying chicken and rabbit food so we are experimenting with crops we can grow to supplement their food.
Our car is very old but when it stops working, there is a man in the village that hauls things in his truck for other people.
We also have a great little store in the village that sells bulk flour and beans and similar. We buy all we can from them. If they had to close down, we would be in trouble.
Back in the early 2oth century, there was no ferry here but there was a barge service for people to bring supplies onto our island. So, we might be able to buy some groceries to be brought in by barge. Failing that, we can learn to make due with what we grow and produce ourselves.
It looks tough but we were expecting this and have had a long time to prepare.
Maxine
When the time comes, you’ll have a very difficult time protecting your hard work from the hungry, desperate masses. What shocks me is the greedy, egotistical “preppers” on youtube who brag about their goodies.. What fools.
That is what the guns are for.
Did you miss the part where she mentioned that she lives on an island? Sure, she will have problems once the barge service stops, but it won’t be same problems encountered by people living in London or NYC. I think I’d prefer to take my chances on the island. I probably would invest in a small boat though just to have the option of doing some fishing.
My wife and I toured an island off Maine this summer. Accessible only by ferry, with newcomers living there and working remotely via internet. The island is totally unsustainable in the long run.
Good luck!
It seems to me that production and consumption will have to be a whole lot more local in the future. This would be such a big change for most of us that we cannot comprehend the difference. An economy builds up over time, but breaks seem to develop suddenly: A store goes out of business. Tax levels are raised. Someone in the family becomes sick and cannot work for an extended period.
There really needs to be a group working together to try to get around difficulties. I think that this is part of the reason for religious groups, or extended family groups. There are too many things that can go wrong. If the group is big enough, perhaps the larger group can support those with the most the most difficulties. It seems to me that small groups of peppers are likely to encounter problems they cannot solve.
I see this in farming, it takes a family, it takes a community.
Farming is experimenting with regenerative agriculture, it seems to increase net income at the expense of gross output which is probably secondary to use of oil and inorganic fertilizers.
The photos you show are very tranquil. Children are a necessity for that kind of society; we are seemingly below replacement level.
Welcome back, you were missed.
Dennis L.
We have a wood lot and never seem to use more in a year then whet we grow.
Because you don’t produce your own pottery, metals or cement or do large scale brewing, leather tanning or dyeing.
yup
One thing that SE Asia does benefit from is a long coastline. If oil is in short supply, then ships powered by coal or wood chips could be used to transport people and goods between ports. Water transport of bulk finished goods is the most energy efficient and economical option, provided that speed can be sacrificed. For passengers, the situation is more complex. To be as energy efficient as flying, a passenger ship would need to be densely packed and/or travel slowly. But it could be made to work.
We could also make use of something like this:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/07/molten-silicon-storage-enough-to-power-city-says-mit/
Charge up a thermal energy battery using heating elements or concentrated solar power whilst the ship is in dock. Use the heat to raise steam to drive the engines. The method would lack the range to provide transcontinental transport. But such as ship could travel hundreds of km between coastal ports.
We know that wind power, row boats, and rafts have been used for many, many years to ship goods. Canals were built to ship goods. In theory, something similar can be done in the future.
We saw many canals in Bangkok, used for transportation of both people and goods. These canals were used to extend a transport system that was available through the use of the Chao Phraya River.
I know that in the early days of the Big Island in Hawaii, transport was done by small boat around the edge of the island. The use of water transport saves a lot of fuel.
That is the stupidest proposal I have ever seen. Just the fact that this is being proposed indicates the desperation.
I am currently in French Guadeloupe, considering similar issues. Here there are monocultures of bananas and sugar cane, and my suspicion is that the society will fall apart violently once the support from elsewhere is lost. There seems no place to hide anywhere because of population pressure and corruption. But maybe rural areas of South Asia are different.
We can hope that religion and traditions will help. Population is too high for resources, pretty much everywhere. But maybe there can be some winners, especially in parts of the world where not much supplemental energy is required.
Hoping for more visits from vacationers won’t work. Neither will an economy that is terribly export-market. I am afraid that a lot of remote islands will be in terrible shape.
It seems that religions are very important and that secular religions are not very useful locally.
Dennis L.