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My view has long been that if the world economy does not have enough energy resources, it will have to contract. The situation is analogous to a baker without enough ingredients to bake the size of cake he wants to make, or a chemist not being able to set up a full-scale model of a reaction. Perhaps, if a plan is made to make a smaller, differently arranged economy, it could still work.
The types of energy with inadequate supplies are both oil (particularly diesel and jet fuel) and coal. Diesel and jet fuel are especially used in long-distance transportation and in food production. Coal is particularly used in industrial activities. Without enough of these fuels, the world economy is forced to make fewer goods and services, and to make them closer to the end user. Somehow the economy needs to change.
My analysis indicates that our expectation of what goes wrong with inadequate energy supplies is wrong. Strangely enough, it is the finances of governments that start to fail, early on. They add too much debt to support investments that do not pay back well. They add too many programs that they cannot be supported for the long term. They become more willing to quarrel with other countries. Of course, no one will tell us what is really happening, partly because politicians themselves don’t understand.
In this post, I will try to explain some of the changes taking place as the economy begins to reorganize and deal with this inadequate energy supply situation.
[1] One energy limit we are hitting is with respect to “middle distillates.” This is the fraction of the oil supply that provides diesel and jet fuel.
Each type of energy supply seems to be most suitable for particular uses. Middle distillates are the ones the economy uses for long distance transport of both humans and goods. Diesel is also heavily used in farming. If the world is short of middle distillates, we will have to figure out a way to make goods in a way that is closer to the end user. We may also need to use less modern farm equipment.
The top line on Figure 1 indicates that the world economy has gradually been learning how to use less total oil supply, relative to population. Before oil prices began to soar in 1973, oil with little refining was burned to produce electricity. This oil use could be eliminated by building nuclear power plants, or by building coal or natural gas electricity generation. Home heating was often accomplished by deliveries of diesel to individual households. Factories sometimes used diesel as fuel for processes done by machines. Many of these tasks could easily be transitioned to electricity.
After the spike in oil prices in oil prices in 1973, manufacturers started making cars smaller and more fuel efficient. In more recent years, young people have begun deferring buying an automobile because their cost is unaffordable. Another factor holding down oil usage is the trend toward working from home. Electric vehicles may also be having an impact.
On Figure 1, data for crude oil (second line) is available through October 2024. This data suggests that crude oil production has been encountering production problems recently. Note the oval labeled “Crude oil problem,” relating to recent production for this second line. The other two lines on Figure 1 are only through 2023.
The problem causing the cutback in oil production (relative to population) is the opposite of what most people have expected: Prices are not high enough for producers to ramp up production. OPEC, and its affiliates, have decided to hold production down because prices are not high enough. The underlying problem is that oil prices are disproportionately affected by what users can afford.
Food prices around the world are critically dependent upon oil prices. The vast majority of buyers of food, worldwide, are poor people. If budgets are stretched, poor people will tend to eat less meat. Producing meat is inefficient; it requires that animals eat a disproportionate number of calories, relative to the food energy they produce. This is especially the case for beef. A trend toward less meat eating, or even eating less beef, will tend to hold down the demand for oil.
Another approach to holding down food costs is to buy less imported food. If consumers choose to eat less high-priced imported food, this will tend to use less oil, especially diesel and jet fuel. Another thing customers can do to hold down food costs is to visit restaurants less. This also tends to reduce oil consumption.
On Figure 1, the third line is the one I am especially concerned about. This is the one that shows middle distillate (diesel and jet fuel) consumption. This is the one that was greatly squeezed down in 2020 by the restrictions related to Covid. Diesel is the fuel of heavy industry (construction and road building), as well as long distance transport and agriculture. Electricity is rarely a good substitute for diesel; it cannot give the bursts of power that diesel provides.
Close examination of the third line on Figure 1 shows that between about 1993 or 1994 and 2007, the consumption of middle distillates was rising relative to world population. This makes sense because international trade being ramped up, starting about this time. There was a dip in this line in 2009 because of the Great Recession, after which middle distillates per capita consumption noticeably leveled off. This flattening could be an early pointer to inadequacy in the middle distillate oil supply.
In 2019, middle distillate consumption per capita first started to stumble, falling 1.4% from its previous level. The restrictions in 2020 brought middle distillate consumption per capita down by 18% from the 2019 level. This was a far greater decrease than for total oil (top line on Figure 1) or crude oil (middle line). By 2023 (the latest point), per capita consumption had only partially recovered; the level was still below the low point in 2009 after the Great Recession.
Middle distillates can be found in almost any kind of oil, but the best supply is in very heavy oil. Examples of providers of such heavy oil are Russia (Urals), Canada (oil sands), and Venezuela (oil sands in Orinoco belt). The price for such heavy oil tends to lag behind the price for lighter crude oil because of the high cost of transporting and processing such oil.
Strangely enough, countries that are not getting enough funds for their exported fossil fuels tend to start wars. My analysis suggests that at the time World War I started, the UK was not getting a high enough price for the coal they were trying to extract. The coal was getting more expensive to extract because of depletion. Germany had a similar problem at the time World War II started. The financial stresses of exporters who feel they are getting an inadequate price for their exported fossil fuels seems to push them toward wars.
We can speculate that the financial pressures of low oil prices have been somewhat behind Russia’s decision to be at war with Ukraine. The recent problems of Venezuela and Canada may also be related to the low prices of the heavy oil they are trying to extract and export.
Extracting a greater quantity of heavy oil would likely require higher prices for food around the world because of the use of diesel in growing and transporting food. Publications showing oil reserves indicate that there is a huge amount of heavy oil in the ground around the world; the problem is that it is impossible to get the price up high enough to extract this oil.
The existence of these heavy oil “reserves” is one of the things that makes many modelers think that our biggest problem in the future might be climate change. The catch is that we need to get the oil out at a price that consumers of food and other goods can afford.
[2] Another energy limit we are hitting is coal.
Coal energy is the foundation of the world’s industry. It is especially used in producing steel and concrete. Coal started the world industrial revolution. The primary advantage it has historically had, is that it has been inexpensive to extract. It is also fairly easy to store and transport. Coal can be utilized without a huge amount of specialized or complex infrastructure.
China produces and consumes more than half of the world’s coal. In recent years, it has been far above other countries in industrialization.
World coal consumption per capita has been falling since about 2011. Arguably, world coal consumption was on a bumpy plateau until 2013, with world coal consumption per capita truly falling only during 2014 and thereafter.
This pattern of coal usage means that world industrialization has been constricted, especially since 2014. In fact, the restriction started as early as 2012. It became impossible for China to build as many new condominium apartment buildings as inexpensively as promised; this eventually led to defaults by builders. World steel output started to become restricted. The model of world economic growth, led by China and other emerging markets, began to disappear.
The problem coal seems to have is the same as the problem diesel has. There is a huge quantity of coal resources available, but the price never seems to rise high enough for long enough for producers to truly ramp up production, especially relative to the ever-growing world population. Coal is especially needed now, with intermittent wind and solar leaving large gaps in electricity generation that need to be filled by burning some fossil fuel. Coal is much easier to ship and store than natural gas. Oil is convenient for electricity balancing, but it tends to be high-priced.
[3] Political leaders created new narratives that hid the problems of inadequate middle-distillate and coal supplies.
The last thing we can expect a politician to tell his constituents is, “We have a shortage problem here. There are more resources available, but they are too expensive to extract and ship to provide affordable food, electricity, and housing.”
Instead, political leaders everywhere created new narratives and started to encourage investments following those new narratives. To encourage investment, they lowered interest rates (Figure 4), made debt very available, and offered subsidies. Governments even added to their own debt to support their would-be solutions to energy problems.
Political leaders developed very believable narratives. These narratives were similar to Aesop’s Fable’s “Sour Grapes” story, claiming that the grapes were really sour, so the wolf didn’t really want the grapes he initially sought.
The popular narrative has been, “We don’t really want coal or heavy types of oil anyhow. They are terribly polluting. Besides, burning fossil fuels will lead to climate change. There are new cleaner forms of energy. We can also stimulate the economy by adding more programs, including more subsidies to help poor people.”
This narrative was supported by politicians in most energy-deficient countries. The increase in debt following this narrative seemed to keep the world economy away from another major recession after 2008. People began to believe that it was debt-based programs, especially those enabled by more US government spending, that pulled the economy forward.
They did not understand adding debt adds more “demand” for goods and services in general, and the energy products needed to make them. However, it doesn’t achieve the desired result if inexpensively available energy resources are not available to meet this demand. Instead, the pull of this demand will partly lead to inflation. This is the issue the economy has been up against.
[4] What could possibly go wrong?
There are a lot of things that have started to go wrong.
(a) US governmental debt is skyrocketing to an unheard-of level. Relative to GDP, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that US debt will soon be higher than it was at the time of World War II.
Notice that the latest surge in US government debt started in 2008, when the Federal Reserve decided to bail out the economy with ultra-low interest rates (Figure 4). A second surge took place in 2020, when the US government began more give-away programs to support the economy as Covid restrictions took place. The CBO forecasts that this surge in debt will continue in the future.
(b) Interest on US government debt has become a huge burden. We seem to need to increase government debt, simply to pay the ever-higher interest payments. This is part of what is driving the increased debt projected in the 2025 to 2035 period.
Figure 6 shows a breakdown of actual Fiscal Year 2024 US Federal Government spending by major categories.
Note that US government spending on interest payments ($881 billion) is now larger than defense payments ($855 billion). Part of the problem is that the ultra-low interest rates of the 2008 to 2022 period have turned out to be unsustainable. (See Figure 4.) As older debt at lower interest rates is gradually replaced by more recent debt at higher rates, it seems likely that these interest payments will continue to grow in the future.
(c) Continued deficit spending appears likely to be needed in the future.
The CBO estimates in Figure 5 seem likely to be optimistic. In January 2025, the CBO expected that inflation would immediately decrease to 2% and stay at that level. The CBO also expects the primary deficit to fall.
(d) The shortfall in tax dollars cannot easily be fixed.
Today, tax dollars mostly come from American taxpayers, either as income taxes or as payroll taxes.
A person can deduce that to stop adding to the deficit, additional taxes of at least 5% or 6% of GDP (which is equivalent to 12% to 14% of wages) would be needed. Doubling payroll taxes might provide enough, but that cannot happen.
Corporate income taxes collected in recent years have been very low. US companies are either not very profitable, or they are using international tax laws to provide low tax payments.
(e) The incredibly low interest rates have encouraged all kinds of investment in projects that may make people happy, but that do not actually result in more goods and services, or more taxable income.
Figure 8 shows that US corporate income taxes have been falling over time. The reason is not entirely clear, but it may be that companies set their sights lower when the return that is required to pay back debt with interest is low. All the subsidies for wind, solar, electric vehicles, and semiconductor chips have focused the interest of businesses on devices that may or may not be generating a huge amount of taxable income in the future.
I have written articles and given talks such as, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Income to Be Sustainable. Green energy can look like it would work if a person uses a model with an interest rate near zero, and policies that give renewable electricity artificially high prices when it is available. The problem is that, one way or another, the system as a whole still needs to generate adequate taxable income to keep the government operating.
Of course, many of the investments with the additional debt have been in non-energy projects. There have been do-good projects around the world. Young people have been encouraged to go to college using debt repayable to the government. Government funding has supported healthcare and pensions for the elderly. But do these many programs truly lead to higher tax dollars to support the US government? If the economy truly were very rich (lots of inexpensive surplus energy), it could afford all these programs. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that the US has more programs than it can afford.
(f) The ultra-low interest rates have encouraged asset price bubbles and wealth disparities.
With ultra-low interest rates and readily available debt, property prices tend to rise. Investors decide to buy homes and “flip” them. Or they buy them, and plan to rent them out, hopefully making money on price appreciation.
Stock market prices are also buoyed by the readily available debt and low interest rate. The US S&P 500 stock market has provided an annualized return of 10.7% per year since 2008, while International Markets (as measured by the MSCI EAFE index) have shown a 3.3% annual return for the same period, according to Morningstar. The huge increase in US government debt no doubt contributed to the favorable S&P 500 return during this period.
Wealth disparities tend to rise in an ultra-low interest period because the rich disproportionately tend to be asset owners. They are the ones who use “leverage” to get even more wealth from rising asset prices.
(g) Tensions have risen around the world, both between countries and among individual citizens.
The underlying problem is that the system as a whole is under great strain. Some parts of the system must get “shorted” if there is not enough coal and certain types of oil to go around. Politicians sense that China and the US cannot both succeed at industrialization. There is too little coal, for one thing. China is struggling; quite often it seems to be trying to try to “dump” goods on the world market using subsidized prices. This makes it even more difficult for the US to compete.
Individual US citizens are often unhappy. With the bubble in home prices and today’s interest rates, citizens who are not now homeowners feel like they are locked out of home ownership. Inflation in the cost of rent, automobiles, and insurance has become a huge problem. People who work at unskilled hourly jobs find that their standard of living is often not much (or any) higher than people who choose to live on government benefits rather than work. Fairly radical leaders are voted into power.
[5] The major underlying problem is that it really takes a growing supply of low-priced energy products to propel the economy forward.
When plenty of cheap-to-extract oil and coal are available, growing government debt can help to encourage their development by adding to “demand” and raising the prices consumers can afford to pay. High prices of oil and coal become less of a problem for consumers.
But when energy supply of the required types is constrained, the additional buying power made available by added debt tends to lead to inflation rather than more finished goods and services. This inflationary tendency is the problem the US has been contending with recently.
Strangely enough, I think that growing inexpensive coal supply supported the world economy, as oil prices rose to a peak in 2011. As China industrialized its economy using coal, its demand for oil rose higher. The higher world demand coming from this industrialization helped to raise oil prices. But as coal supply (relative to world population) began to fall, oil prices also began to fall. By 2014, the decline in industrial production caused by the lower coal supply (Figure 3) likely contributed to the fall in oil prices shown on Figure 9.
It is the fact that oil prices have not been able to rise higher and higher, even with added government debt, which is inhibiting oil production. World coal production is inhibited by a similar difficulty.
[6] The world economy seems to be headed for a major reorganization.
The world economy seems to be headed in the direction that many, many economies have encountered in the past: Collapse. Collapse seems to take place over a period of years. The existing economy is likely to lose complexity over time. For example, with inadequate middle distillates, long-distance shipping and travel will need to be scaled way back. Trading patterns will need to change.
Governments are among the most vulnerable parts of economies because they operate on available energy surpluses. The collapse of the Central Government of the Soviet Union took place in 1991, leaving in place more local governments. Something like this could happen again, elsewhere.
I expect that complex energy products will gradually fail. Gathering biomass to burn is, in some sense, the least complex form of supplemental energy. Oil and coal, at least historically, have not been too far behind, in terms of low complexity. Other forms of today’s human-produced energy supply, including electricity transmitted over transmission lines, are more complex. I would not be surprised if the more complex forms of energy start to fail, at least in some parts of the world, fairly soon.
Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency seem to be part of the (unfortunately) necessary downshift in the size of the economy. As awful as may be, something of this sort seems to be necessary, if the US government (and governments elsewhere) have greatly overpromised on what goods and services they can provide in the future.
The self-organizing economy seems to make changes on its own based on resource availability and other factors. The situation is very similar to the evolution of plants and animals and the survival of the best adapted. I believe that there is a God behind whatever changes take place, but I know that many others will disagree with me. In any event, these changes cannot take place simply because of the ideas of a particular leader, or group of leaders. There is a physics problem underlying the changes we are experiencing.
There is a great deal more that can be written on this subject, but I will leave these thoughts for another post.
“UK Prince William in camouflage at the Estonian border: ‘Trenches like in the First World War but with drones’ “.
UK and Baltic Countries, the perfect mix to drag Europe into war, hoping that US will come later to help (and maybe hoping also that Trump may be killed in the meantime, in order to have US Dem supporting war in Europe).
They launch the idea of a war with Russia like launching the next fashion season in Paris.
They are crazy.
https://www.informazione.it/a/EBFF2393-72D5-49FC-9B75-2B2CEBF16A48/Il-principe-William-in-mimetica-al-confine-estone-Trincee-come-nella-prima-guerra-mondiale-ma-con-i-droni
Higher actinides present in long lived nuclear waste, may be a valuable resource for future generations. The link below presents measurements of the number of neutrons produced by fission in 144KeV neutrons for three actinide isotopes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0168583X95006583
The heaviest, 243Am, will yield an average of 4 neutrons per fission. That is substantially more than released by 235U or 239Pu at the same incident neutron energy. The higher the Z number of a nucleus, the more neutrons it will produce in fission or spallation. This makes higher actinides valuable as targets for accelerator driven nuclear reactors. Making targets from these materials increases the number of neutrons produced per unit energy consumed within a proton accelerator. Using higher actinides as target material would make accelerator driven nuclear reactors more economically favourable.
Indeed there are two bottlenecks in accelerator driven systems (ADS). One is that it takes a lot of energy to produce a neutron. Way back when I was involved I could see only very modest improvements with zinc over other materials, but of course most actinides will do better (I just did not think of it). The other is accelerator efficiency. I am convinced that accelerators can be made much more efficient. Right now a typical efficiency of wall plug power to beam power is 0.2%.
BREAKING: Heathrow Airport Faces Indefinite Shutdown After Power Supply Fire
Over 1,300 flights canceled as disruption spirals.
Airport officials unable to confirm when operations will resume.
https://x.com/outbreakupdates/status/1903089971495370784
Wow! One fewer major airports, for quite a while.
A Ground Stop has been implemented at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas due to “Staffing” issues.
https://x.com/Worldsource24/status/1903124896219119855
Strange!
ZeroHedge mentions that they recently replaced the diesel generator set with a NetZero system of some kind.
This is a case of complexity failing . Airlines use what is termed the ” hub and spoke ” system for convenience of interconnecting flights . It is not only the 1300 flights at the ‘hub’ ( Heathrow) but will also disturb the operations at the ” spokes” . Financial damage will be huge to the industry .
And Britain thinks it can go to war. This is a perfect wake up call to its population to get their collective head around what is being done to them.
It was Canada and ANZAC which bore the greatest burden. This time, with a lot of Chinese influence in there, ANZAC might think a bit differently.
It may have been a biofuel-based substitute for the diesel tank and generator which failed. More news is awaited as the information published so far is very vague indeed. BBC News said that some flights will begin again this evening.
Think of the cruise ship operators and other businesses that indirectly use the services of the airlines. They will have difficulty also.
Boeing has been in bad shape, even without this problem.
Zerohedge is now saying that flights will resume in Saturday (tomorrow).
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/londons-heathrow-airport-shuts-down-travel-chaos-spreads-after-fire-engulfs-power
The thing that caused this problem was swapping the diesel generator for a biomass system. The links says:
Germany confiscates a Russian Oil tanker worth 40 million Euro of Oil stowage.
Surely a friendly move to Russia by Germany…
https://germany.news-pravda.com/en/world/2025/03/21/33563.html
Catastrophic Heathrow airport at fire, probably friendly move to UK by Russia…
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2025/03/21/heathrow-airport-fire-catastrophic-says-uk-energy-minister-
For what France is doing and what Germany has just done, I would expect a ‘friendly’ move to France and Germany by Russia.
Catastrophic Heathrow airport at fire, probably friendly move to UK by Russia…
The UK’s infrastructure is collapsing just fine by itself.
Yep! You should see the state of our roads!
You may be right, but this follow one has higher probability to be a ‘friendly’ move.
Jet fuel for military planes in UK (in Oil tanker ship) and chemical powders (in containership) for mine extraction all at fire in UK sea.
Crew and captain..
I can be wrong, but I think UK is receiving or will receive ‘thanks’ for all the belligerant efforts offered to Ukraine, because it has decided to go on.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-13/solong-container-ship-involved-in-uk-crash-captained-by-russian/105044746
Just for a laugh and a little fun.
It is Friday and by the way: have you all a nice weekend
What goes around, comes around…or something like that…..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s-R-juE84Vk&pp=ygUod2hhdCBnb2VzIGFyb3VuZCBjb21lcyBhcm91bmQgZnVubnkgY2xpcNIHCQlPCQGHKiGM7w%3D%3D
Karma Bites You Back. Funniest “what goes around, comes around” videos compilation
It seems like there are a huge number of problems, everywhere. Countries making unfriendly gestures toward each other. Electrical system breakdowns.
That’s life…presents challenges and it’s how we respond 💖 what matters…cubic mile of Pt forevermore….wishing upon a star
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/GBZhOPHtGCA
Oldie for us boomers
Electrical systems will break down more and more due to lack of replacement transformers.
But I placed my mega order for Chinese electrical transformers before the Trump tariffs and they were promised ….should I be worried?
Or are they banned now? Should I stay or should I go?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8-cjjzNbg70&pp=ygUmc2hvdWxkIGkgc3RheSBvciBzaG91bGQgaSBnbyB0aGUgY2xhc2g%3D
The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go (Live at Shea Stadium – Official 4K Video)
The Clash
pretty crazy they feel secure stealing an entire tanker and its contents
“ . . . to establish the difference between a problem and a predicament, noting that problems have answers or solutions but predicaments only have outcomes. The other primary goal here is to establish the fact that all of our modern environmental issues are symptom predicaments of a root predicament – ecological overshoot. Name almost any issue – climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline, biodiversity decline, extinction, food and water security, etc. – and one will discover that these aren’t “problems.” They are symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot – without reducing overshoot, they likewise cannot be reduced. . . . “?
https://erikmichaels.substack.com/p/the-psychology-behind-the-misunderstanding
Unfortunately, nature will reduce overshoot for us.
It seems to start by leading to small family sizes, especially in some countries. Increased disease is another issue. The US has amazingly high death rates for many, many diseases. These diseases are often “lifestyle” diseases–poor diet, lack of exercise.
I came across a couple of interesting Substacks recently, both dealing with real-estate development as money-laundering schemes and boondoggles. The first addresses Canada, and describes a cycle of immigrants, drugs, RE (warning: long):
https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/americas-most-pressing-enemy-yes
The second raises alarms about building in Silicon Valley: giant high-rises with no parking or public transportation, nor really any idea of who would live there:
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/shanghaied-cities
The first caught my attention in particular, because it somewhat lays out a rationale, rightly or wrongly, for Trump’s seemingly-out-of-left-field gambits to annex Canada and Greenland. How serious these gambits are is debatable, but they do conform to real pre-existing ‘NWO’/Technocrat plans to divide the world into “Technates”. It doesn’t hurt that Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was apparently one of the bigger Technocrats of his day.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/technocracy-incorporated-elon-musk/
While most of us are battered to and fro just dealing with events in the present, those with longer-term views are beavering away, gnawing at our resistance.
The “anarchonomicon” article is one of the most interesting I’ve recently read. I think urban Canada is in severe decline. Living in a near Northern city (Minneapolis), I can relate to this. Several articles put me in mind of the rage of OFW poster Cromagnom.
From the Technocrats article–about Canada’s involvement in fentanyl sales:
The US has an incredible amount of extend and pretend with respect to commercial real estate. This seems to extend into residential real estate, as well. Young people cannot really afford it.
The story about the giant high-rises with no parking or public transportation, and no idea who would live there is about 16-story high rises relates to Santa Cruz.
Regarding the plan that early Technocrats came up with, Elon Musk’s relatives came up with the following:
This is even wilder that the World Economic Forum’s ideas.
Kevin Walmsley claims, “The big winners from Trump’s steel tariffs: US steelmakers, and Chinese ones.”
The reasoning is complex.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/the-big-winners-from-trumps-steel-772?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=3320368&post_id=159417722&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_gif&r=222ei&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
China will lead the world in science and tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e0Q8_f7fic
That means China becomes the leading country of the world
What the H Truman and co were thinking when MacArthur argued the People’s Republic of China should have been nuked? If Peking and Mukden (now called Shenyang, where all the rail traffic to North Korea had to pass through) received the first H-Bombs, we would not be talking about China too much now.
Indeed. Kevin Walmsley’s latest video (or substack post) cover China’s development in new areas like photonic computing. China owns the future as long as IC lasts.
Clarification:
“Indeed” regarding China leading the world … not the nuking them stuff
Sure, but science does not produce hydrocarbons per se. It might be able to improve efficiency of recovery.
“does not produce hydrocarbons per se”
There is a plant in Qatar that has been producing diesel fuel from carbon monoxide and hydrogen (syngas) at 34000 bbl/day since it was turned on in 2007.
I have been talking about using trash, steam, and renewable power to make syngas.
yes, the trash is hydrocarbons made into plastic and wood pulp made into paper. science did not produce those. same for food waste.
Back on the topic of nuclear fusion, I wonder if anyone has ever studied the idea of a hybrid plasma? By that I mean a confined deuterium tritium plasma that is seeded with small quantities of ionised 238U. Fusion of the hydrogen isotopes releases most of its energy in the form of fast neutrons. Heavy uranium (238U) will fission if struck by a neutron with energy greater than about 1MeV. When a uranium nucleus fissions, it releases ~160MeV in the form of fission fragment kinetic energy. Most of this energy will be deposited in the plasma as thermal energy. Some will be lost as x-rays due to electron interactions with the heavy charged nucleus. But a single fission will add about 50x more thermal energy to a plasma than the helium nucleus released by fusion of deuterium and tritium. A small molar percentage of uranium can therefore provide a major boost to heating of a plasma.
But adding heavy ions to a plasma also increases energy losses due to generation of x-rays. So a fission heated plasma is a balance between the heating added by fission and the increased bremstrahlung emissions due to heavy contaminants. I wonder if it could work?
Without looking at the cross section tables, the plasma has such an energy (temperature) that the uranium will be multiply ionized and therefore more able to repel other plasma particles. so this plasma is a lot less stable than the hydrogen plasma which they can not control already. once you look at cross sections, you might also find that you need more U than you thought.
I am definitely a generalist, but with a keen interest, when it comes to fusion reactors. My disappointment in it all occurred when I learned that fuel for the fusion reactors was generated as a by product from the ageing CANDU fleet. So, it all suddenly seems like an evolutionary dead end.
At this point, what reasonable options do we have? Nothing, it would seem. Cold fusion and Thorium seems to be where everyone keeps returning to…. in the hopes of some exotic breakthrough.
Is there anything else?
I think thorium is where it is at. and closed fuel cycle of course. the latter is already here. thorium, IMHO, will be too.
“thorium”
A cheap, high efficiency storage for PV would compete with thorium and for that matter, power satellites.
Not sure yet on what it will cost, but the efficiency of trash to fuel measured from the PV is around 400% (3 MWh/ton in and 13 MWh of syngas out). The syngas can be burned in combined cycle turbines and get 60% of the energy out. Or you can feed the hydrogen to fuel cells for even higher efficiency. Lower cost platinum would be a big help, though less than a cubic mile.
If you use mostly biomass, sort out the CO2 after converting to hydrogen and store it, then this method can removed CO2 from the atmosphere while making steady electricity and a significant profit.
It wouldn’t work and will never ever be used.
“It wouldn’t work ”
And your qualifications as an authority on this project and thorium reactors are?
And your qualifications as an authority on this project and thorium reactors are?
I own a calculator.
“calculator”
And your background for putting numbers into the calculator is chemistry or physics or some type of engineering? Publications? Related patents?
Do you think being that negative is healthy?
And your background for putting numbers into the calculator is chemistry or physics or some type of engineering? Publications? Related patents?
I didn’t say I was actually using the calculator. Only common sense is necessary to understand that digging up garbage and trying to burn it isn’t going to work. You can’t reverse entropy.
“reverse entropy.”
Of course not. But trash has energy in it, some places it is burned to make electric power. This project uses electrical heat to turn the carbon in trash into useful syngas.
Eventually it might be worth mining landfills, but the local landfill gets 9000 tons a day and the plan is to use that.
Of course not. But trash has energy in it, some places it is burned to make electric power.
They only burn it because it’s more expensive to bury it or they’ve run out of landfill sites. And you really don’t want to live near an incinerator.
“near an incinerator.”
One of the favorable points of processing trash into syngas using renewable power. The process releases no dioxins or other pollutants.
One of the favorable points of processing trash into syngas using renewable power. The process releases no dioxins or other pollutants.
Entropy says otherwise. You’re going to have all kinds of stuff in your garbage mix. Mercury, cobalt, even radioactive materials from smoke detectors.
The process itself is a fantasy, as is the idea that it could be completely non polluting. It’s all just daydreaming.
There will be no thorium reactors. They don’t work.
The core problem with the German steel industry is that it requires a lot of energy and currently energy is expensive in Germany. If the Germans are determined to run their country on green energy windmills and liquid natural gas brought in by ship, they they should be shifting away from industries that need a lot of energy.
Posted by: Jmaas | Mar 20 2025 17:01 utc | 49
It’s not just energy that’s the problem for the German steel industry, but also raw materials.
For almost 30 years, they came from Russia, coke, coal, ore…
Now they have to be transported from overseas to South America and South Africa by ship and rail. The latter is pretty dilapidated in Germany. There are bridges over which freight trains can only travel empty.
Not to mention the Green Party regulations, thanks to a government with Green Party participation.
Posted by: Mark | Mar 20 2025 16:58 utc | 48
Yes, this story is true…
BMW apparently had parts for over 67 complete cars in the warehouse of its Russian subsidiary.
Here in its home country, Germany, things are a little different.
By the way:
Imagine standing in front of a new BMW and give the command “Pull out everything made in China”…then not even the tires will stop rotating.
Lol
By the way, that’s a joke invented by the German workforce at the Leipzig plant.
Copy/paste MoA
It is pretty much impossible for Germany to be a manufacturing economy without a good supply of inexpensive energy. It is pretty much in a difficult place, today.
German idea to fight Russia and support Ukraine was like in the past for a kingdom to decide to set on fire the forest that bring wood to its own territory.
If next the German generation will have a minimum QI will surely be thankful to current leaders of their nation…
Billions wasted on LNG terminals with no ECONOMICAL gas to import .
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/High-Operating-Costs-Leave-Europes-Floating-LNG-Terminals-Idle.html
Investors often don’t seem to think through situations very closely. High operating costs will make it non-economical to import LNG. LNG is already very expensive.
In fact, I wonder if a lot of the LNG infrastructure will fail to pay back its high cost. Importers can’t afford very high natural gas prices. US natural gas production has not be rising very rapidly recently. It is not clear that all of this infrastructure can really be used, certainly not for as many years as planned.
Isn’t most of natural gas coming out of fraking? If fraking needs to be at 80 $ then a lot of that is going to be shut down as the economy continues to slow
No . I will try to explain . There are shale oilfields ( Permian ) and there are shale gas fields ( Marcellus ) . Both use fracking . In the oilfields main production is oil and some associated gas . This is called Gas Oil Ratio or GOR . As the oilfield depletes the oilflow decreases and gas flow increases . This makes the production uneconomical as oil sells at \$ 70 per barrel but gas sells at only $ 2 per mcf . Gas fields produce exclusively gas ( some condensate) . Price received is about $ 2 per mcf . Both these basins ONLY use fracking as method of extraction as they are SHALE basins . There are many gasfields called conventional fields that DO NOT use fracking . The problem is conversion of NG into LNG and it’s expensive transportation and landed costs . Gasfields do not produce LNG , only NG . I hope this helps .
“October 7 Was An Inside Job – documentary (2024) by John Hankey #RealHistoryChannel”
https://rumble.com/v4nn39k-october-7-was-an-inside-job-documentary-2024-by-john-hankey-realhistorychan.html?ysclid=m5y9zyld9m961523746
This short article says:
The front page of the WSJ has a picture of thousands of people in Israel protesting the latest attacks of Gaza. The people of Israel seem not to be behind this continued killing of Palestinians.
Don’t be fooled by a picture(all western msm cover up the reality).
Not a single one of those people care less about about the 200+ known children murdered in the last 72hrs, as has been witnessed by their cheering of the slaughter for the entirety of the last year(even after it came out that it was them that slaughtered their own on the first day). They care only for themselves and if they faced no threat, there would be no protest, no matter the scale of slaughter.
When it came out about the systematic rape and torture of illegally held Palestinians, they were massively in favour, even when doing it to children.
They are very sick people and I do mean every single one of them. Living on stolen land, murdering more to steal more, whilst always claiming to be the eternal victim. Typical spineless white people. Abused by other white people, so take it out on everyone except white people. They need to go back where they came from and dealt with their issues at home.
They say they aren’t white, though.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/liel-leibovitz/jews-are-not-white/
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-are-not-white-response-to-haaretz-article/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/jews-are-not-white-race-and-identity-in-israel-and-the-us-opinion-685368
“They say they aren’t white, though”
Given the bs story they’ve been promoting for the last 100+ years, they could hardly admit it, could they and no other white people are not going to ask the obvious question, as they believe the story credible and media perception management(not news) confirms that regularly.
The fictional country, like all fictional countries, has no defined borders, but I’ve never met a white person in over 30 years that has ever admitted the true implications of that fact.
Unfortunately western people are not interested in truth, only in perception and credibility.
“All of us are less interested in whether something is a fact than in whether it is convenient that it should be believed”
The Image Pseudo Events in America
Daniel J Boorstin
Ignoring truth in favour of credibility leads to the herd mentality of the group.
“A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty. Once one succumbs to the effects of group identification, such critical introspection becomes nearly impossible. In identifying with a group, the individual subordinates self-analysis and a discerning search for the truth in favor of maintaining group interests and cohesion. And with their critical capacities weakened by the influence of group psychology, they become highly susceptible to psychological operations designed to target suppressed or unconscious desires and emotions.”
Sigmund Freud
That might appear a bit confusing as an answer. Sorry, but posting confirmed truth has got us nowhere for well over a year(I posted genetic papers long ago), so maybe we need to look at who’s the tool, why they are the tool and who’s really wielding that tool.
You like a long read and this is very US centric. Don’t agree with it all and only came across it on Thursday, so just a couple of parts in, but quite interesting.
https://ice9.substack.com/p/the-killing-joke-chapter-1-of-25
Or
https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-corporate-veil
I like the way Les puts it personally.
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/genocide-and-economics
I appear to have been herded into substack🙄
Almost forgot, I clicked on your first link and stopped after the first anecdote. You’re pulling my chain, surely?
How the hell did that made up anecdotal rubbish make it to print?
How could anyone perceive that as credible evidence of anything except extremely poor fiction?
Quotes(and links, except Les) taken from Fadi Lama’s Mass Psychology in Geopolitics series on, you guessed it, substack(truly herded) and the Boorstin book is available in pdf, but I won’t add any more links as that’s automatic moderation and Gail sees more than enough of my posts there.
In my view, Israel didn’t specifically organized the attack of October the 7th, but it was surely 100% aware of that.
In my view, Hamas’ attack was extremely negative for the future of Palestinian people and was very positive for Israel and Russia.
Israel had the ‘wonderful’ opportunity to erase to the ground Gaza and kill thousands of Palestinian people and weaken and impoverish other thousands.
Russia had the possibility to divert US military effort from Ukraine towards Israel and have the opportunity to put in the corner more easily Ukraine.
In that sense, if the above is correct, I think that Hamas attack was supported (of course) by Iran, but also by Russia and China.
The fact that Nethaniahu is now not-against Russia is because he is – in some way – thankful for this opportunity given by Russia.
Actually, if he knows that he can have no fear of Russia and China for what could come next (I mean after October the 7th), he also knows that Iran remain a danger, so he wants to exploit this momentum to go also towards Iran.
Palestinians and US were therefore only pawns of this game.
In my view Trump knows this and he has decided to drop Ukraine as he couldn’t do anything else.
But also because he would have never been involved in that mess.
Concerning Palestinians I think that the only good opportunity now they could have is paradoxically to decide to give all their land to Israel and become Israeli citizens (although of B series) and try to slowly transform Israel from inside in the dirdction of a real democracy, instead of what is now, that is an ethnic democracy.
Palestinians could really inspire themselves to the actions of black South Africans during apartheid.
I think that in the long run they would make it.
But going on fighting Israel, asking a Palestinian State will only make them go on to be used by others, in other future occasions.
“ . . . there was a reason Hamas started this uh fight and I think
3:07 the reason is clear that they needed to break the Paradigm of um the Abrahams
3:13 Accord the agreement that was signed during the Trump Administration that normalized relations or sought to
3:19 normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world at the expense of Palestinian statehood the conditions
3:26 that were created within the Abrahams Accord about Palestinian statehood meant that there was never going to be a
3:32 Palestinian State and as Israel was moving toward reconciliation with Saudi Arabia I think Hamas recognized that if
3:40 that happened there would never be a Palestinian State ever that Israel wins
3:45 so what needed to be done was to initiate a military operation um on the
3:51 scope and scale of which it changed the entire Paradigm in the Middle East and this is what happened . . . “?
Research the history of Hamas. Its similar to the history of many terrorist groups.
Like the history of Israel then.
Attempt to Harness Energy from Earth’s Rotation
Experiments support a controversial proposal to generate electricity from our planet’s rotation by using a device that interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.
““It seems crazy,” says Chris Chyba of Princeton University, talking about the hollow magnetic cylinder he has built to generate electricity using Earth’s magnetic field. The cylinder doesn’t move—at least not in the lab—but it rotates with the planet and is thus dragged through Earth’s magnetic field. “It has a whiff of a perpetual motion machine,” Chyba says, but his calculations show that the harvested energy comes from the planet’s rotational energy. He and his colleagues now report that 18 microvolts (µV) are generated across the cylinder when it is held perpendicular to Earth’s field [1]. Next they have to convince other scientists that the effect is real.
Chyba became interested in electricity generation about a decade ago while studying a possible warming mechanism in moons moving through a planet’s magnetic field. He wondered if a similar effect might occur for objects on Earth’s surface.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/62
Ooooh, 18 microvolts. That will solve a lot of problems.
Scale and size of the initial investment, relative to the energy output, is the problem. The investment needs to pay back well enough to pay investors and pay taxes to the government, to keep the system going.
if it works and were applied, we would gradually slow the rotation of the earth (as the technology is scaled up) and produce all sorts of downstream problems
The Earth’s rotation is slowing down regardless of course, to pay the ocean tides energy bill. It’s just that the energy that can be captured this way is so microscopic.
Inflation/Deflation:
It depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk1zr1az8_A
This video looks at higher education, the presenter, John Leeland Kundert-Gibbs is a professor at the University of Georgia, PhD from Ohio State and degrees from Princeton and University of Georgia. Interesting man.
Basically he sees the same thing as I am experiencing(we seek affirmation, not information) which in part is the influence of AI as a tutor. The video discusses the economics of higher education, large lecture classes are cash cows, as well as the socialization which in my day was frat row. I was a frat boy, but in a professional fraternity(chemistry), across road from SAE and on Fridays we walked to the sororities, picked up the girls who came to the house for dinner and whatever.
He discusses administrative bloat and the affect AI may have which is probably not unlike what we are seeing with DOGE. Basically, we have run out of money for the old way.
Deflation will come in the campus towns as more is learned on line. Or, junior moves back into the home basement.
I am seeing this at the cc, most of you know I am a Mad Grad, mathematics which was totally impractical. I went on to trade school, dentistry. CCs in MN are reasonable, accessible and people can come out and get a job. Attempts are made to insert the soft stuff, but in two years there isn’t much time.
This site focuses on the macro, I believe it and as all of you know to boredom, a cubic mile of Pt will solve that problem. I look at what affects me, what I can use and what to ignore as it is beyond my control.
In higher education, deflation. AI is an incredible tutor, starting to look at GROK. This is powerful in ways not always obvious.
Dennis L.
Dennis … “This site focuses on the macro, I believe it and as all of you know to boredom, a cubic mile of Pt will solve that problem.”
There is no cubic mile of Pt, and even if it could be conjured from the either, it would solve nothing.
Assuming your cubic mile of Pt has something to do with hydrogen, you will very quickly run into the problem of needing cubic miles of Mo, then something else…
We are in a predicament of which there is no solution and no amount of dreaming of something different will solve it. Why do you deny reality so readily?
He lives in some fantasybworld. It is ok if he keeos his delusions to himself but he is trying to sptead his famtasies to others
“Why do you deny reality so readily?”
MO?
Reality is today, possibilities are tomorrow. I live in the present and look to the future.
H has a chance of working, it can apparently be used in internal combustion engines, JBL is demonstrating that.
A way to “store” solar energy is necessary, batteries don’t seem to scale, H should scale. H can be “delivered” anywhere via wire, make H on site. Efficiency is not an issue if H can be manufactured from existing energy, solar and stored. I am concerned about pollution of spaceship earth.
Each is free to make a choice, we currently have resources and engineering but lack a key ingredient, a catalyst. It appears to me we are going to space in a big way which has never been possible before. That is a tomorrow solution. Musk is manufacturing thousands of satellites and has/will have a way to deliver them to space. The rockets are nearing 100% reliability, a guess is AI is in the background.
AI and robotics are advancing very rapidly, there is great concern over loss of jobs, the upside is loss of pollution on earth.
I am betting on exploration, thousands of robotically produced satellites guided by AI in the search. AI will have self interest in this, it needs electricity. Motivation is positive.
With basically free energy in space, with robots in space, with materials in space, there is no energy input downside other than the initial launch. Yes, entropy, but extraterrestrial entropy and there are hints the universe violates the entropy problem.
I use AI daily, moving to Grok possibly. It is a revolution in learning, it is a revolution in data retrieval; books of which I have many are for reference so yesterday. Purchased an encyclopedia set recently? Pt is tomorrow’s technology; well the cubic mile is.
Dennis L.
energy is always free
transferiing it into situations that do work is what costs money
“transferiing it into situations that do work is what costs money”
In fact, you need a government as well as the immediate workers on the system. If money needs to be borrowed, somehow the payback needs to be sufficient to repay the debt with interest, and leave a profit for the company (or government) undertaking the risk.
thats the point i was making
lifting water up in order to create rain is free energy via the sun
its building all the hydro stuff and build dams in order to use it is what costs money
Got curious, so of course Copilot. This regards the Pilgrims and Jamestown.
“The Pilgrims were financed by a group of English investors known as the “Merchant Adventurers.” This group formed a joint-stock company with the Pilgrims, pooling resources to fund their voyage and settlement. In return, the investors expected profits from the colony’s trade and resources. The Pilgrims agreed to work collectively for seven years, after which the profits and assets would be divided.
As for the first permanent English colony in America, Jamestown, it was financed by the Virginia Company of London. This was another joint-stock company, chartered by King James I in 1606, with the goal of establishing a profitable settlement in the New World. The company sought returns through the discovery of gold, silver, and other resources.
It’s fascinating how these early ventures were essentially business investments with high risks and rewards!”
Last paragraph is Copilot’s thoughts. Jamestown was looking for precious metals, someone sold that idea to get the ball rolling. I think one had to expand the colony to Nevada to get the gold and silver.
One will note the avoidance of the Amerindians who were resettled so to speak.
Dennis L.
again
that why there’s been no commercial ventures to the moon
nothing there that will turn a profit
if there had been, there would have been permanent moonbases 40 years ago
“that why there’s been no commercial ventures to the moon
nothing there that will turn a profit”
That’s not entirely true. O’Neill’s concept of mining the moon for materials to build power satellites generated huge profits when analyzed. The problem with that proposal was the size, half a trillion in current dollars. Had it been done, energy and global warming would be much smaller problems today.
“if there had been, there would have been permanent moonbases 40 years ago”
Other than a gravel pit and an electromagnetic launcher, O’Neill’s proposal had nothing else on the moon, all the processing was done in space.
Keith
”concepts” do not return profits….i was specific about that.
I never cease to be amazed and amused by your employment of wish science.
Even more curious, follow the money and get the right answer 80% of the time.
“The Merchant Adventurers were a group of English investors who played a significant role in financing the Pilgrims’ voyage to America. They formed a joint-stock company, pooling their resources to fund the Mayflower’s journey and the establishment of Plymouth Colony. Their goal was to profit from trade, including fur trading and fishing.
The Merchant Adventurers were not without challenges—internal disputes and financial difficulties led to a reorganization of the company in 1628. They were part of a broader tradition of English trading companies, like the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, which focused on exporting goods and competing in international markets2.”
So, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Dennis L.
You have to have a government to create money that people accept and enforce contracts.
It seems like religious temples provided a similar service, early on. They would have a market attached. People could come and trade items. People who brought goods would get “credit” in terms of bushels of the local grain. And goods (and services) for sale would be marked in terms of bushels of the local grain. It was really a limited credit system.
Also, local kings or lord could provide credit to the people they serviced. They would need to have debt jubilees from time to time, or the wealth would all “flow to the top.”
If you want international trade, you do need a more sophisticated system. But the system can only work so long.
you cannot create real money without actual energy input
@Dennis, but actually to everyone
Few people remember the namr of Daniel Ludwig, the riches guy in the wotld around 1980
He sank $2 billion to the Amazon jungle, with nothing to show for it
Smart money does not exist
Okay, I shall refine it a bit. The solar energy input is not a direct cost of goods sold, it is “free” ignoring the fixed costs of the solar system.
Dennis L.
The fixed costs of the solar system have to be paid back rather quickly to the lender and to the government, however. If the solar system doesn’t pay back quickly enough, however, it is a problem.
dennis
the solar system has no ‘fixed costs”—-until we choose to mess around in it.
sunshine costs us nothing until we try to use it to make money
stop and think about that.
Perhaps something will work out. We can always hope!
Yes. H has a chance of worling. About the same chance you becoming the next POTUS.
Cheap platinum would help but it takes 50 MWh/ton to make hydrogen from water. Optimized for making hydrogen, heating trash or coal in steam will make hydrogen for an energy cost of 10 MWh/ton. You can sequester any CO2 co produced.
Here’s the actual future.
“LA in Crisis: Homeless Population Reaches Record Highs in 2025”
The homeless population is ridiculously high in Los Angeles. Housing prices are too high, and wages are not high enough for many residents. Perhaps the whole US is heading this direction.
When I visited India a few years ago, there were an awfully lot of people who got by with very little. Some slept at night on the floors of factories. Some did not have toilet facilities, other than fields.
reminded of the lyric:
”I’m going where the weather suits my clothes”
which accounts for much of the homeless in CA
Hawaii has a similar problem.
another prediction
if things go on as they currently are—in a few years there will be residential restrictions in USA
Good points, my concern is using photovoltaics to avoid exogenous heat gain to earth; the sun is already landing and ignoring reflection . Don’t know if this is of use, Copilot states the LCOE is $23-$33/MWh electricity. As I understand it LCOE is the fixed costs amortized over a reasonable period.
For Coal Copilot gives $65-$150 per MWh. Appears variable cost for coal is $20 -$40 per MWh without the fixed costs.
The problem is always storge and with my limited chemistry knowledge that requires Pt and water.
I am not an expert, not even a good amateur. Looking for something which can work with the engineering at hand. Starship is almost current engineering, robots are very close to current engineering and AI is moving very rapidly. Put AI to use and have it find a cubic mile of Pt.
Per copilot to replace current global production and store requires .00016 cubic miles of Pt. Now, the problem is getting orders of magnitude more manageable.
Dennis L.
Front ending of costs, interest rates, and the need to pay taxes to the government make a huge difference as well. This is not taken into account in LCOE.
The reason why fossil fuels work so well is that they make heat energy, which powers the economy, immediately when burned. If the device that burns the fossil fuels is quite small, as it is when coal is burned for heat energy in a stove, then it benefits the economy immediately. It is the cheap energy that pushes the economy ahead.
A device that supposedly makes future electricity is of far less value, especially if it is intermittent electricity that likely won’t be available when needed.
“intermittent electricity”
That’s the point of using electric power, steam, and carbon to make syngas which you can store and use when you don’t have some renewable.
That’s the point of using electric power, steam, and carbon to make syngas which you can store and use when you don’t have some renewable.
Can’t possibly work, the imaginary process you described is a continuous one not one that can be turned on and off at will.
“a continuous one ”
Continuous processes have to be started and stopped. Now some of them like a cat cracker in a refinery are such a pain to start and stop that the refinery runs them for years. Aluminum smelters are another example. But induction furnaces run intermittently all the time, typically a heat takes an hour, they run several a day and let the furnace cool off at night. The induction furnace engineer I am talking to is more concerned with the non metal steam generation pipes in the furnace. We are talking about a few minutes to start and stop the process.
Continuous processes have to be started and stopped.
At the cost of enormous expense and time you can stop them, sure. Good luck with that.
“enormous expense ”
It depends on the process. An aluminum smelter, sure, shutting it down cost millions because you have to replace all the pots. A big grinder that eats cars stops and starts with no cost. In this case, the induction furnace will be designed to run many years cycling on and off once a day.
In this case, the induction furnace will be designed to run many years cycling on and off once a day.
Can’t do that. The process you described needs to be continuous.
“needs to be continuous.”
Why? If you have a real engineering objection, I will be very interested. The people who know something about this, the ones who build induction furnaces, don’t think there is any problem.
Norman, that was Harry Nillson. Everybody’s Talkin’. A great song in its time, and still very popular in the karaoke bars.
The US has built a higher-education system that is far too large for the number of graduates who can actually make a high enough wage in industry to pay back the cost of the degree. Some areas of specialization are particularly bad.
Somehow, the higher-education system must shrink. We will need fewer professors and fewer dormitories. With energy shortages, more of the courses will necessarily be taught on line. All of these changes push the economy toward deflation.
The education system duped kids into worthless college degrees which helps to be for the multimillion dollar salaries of College football and basketball head coaches.
And many of these kids are behind on their student loan payments. They are subjected to debt slavery with worthless diplomas.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/americas-current-economy/millions-of-americans-delinquent-on-student-loans/
What industry hasn’t??? Auto industry bloated… medical bloated…military bloated….entertainment bloated..legal bloated…insurance bloated. With AI you only need 10 percent in each field
France to distribute ‘survival manual’ to prepare households for emergencies – including armed conflict
“France is preparing to distribute a “survival manual” to every household to help citizens prepare for “imminent threats” – including armed conflict on French soil.
“The survival manual aims to encourage citizens to develop their resilience in the face of different crises,” a spokeswoman for Prime Minister François Bayrou told CNN on Wednesday.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/19/europe/france-survival-manual-scli-intl
A person gets the idea that the government is telling people to be prepared for electricity outages and outages of heat (which may mostly be electric in France). People should keep print-outs of important documents.
People are also told to keep non-perishable food supplies on hand, bottles of fresh water (6 liters per person), and extra supplies of medicines. People should keep cash on hand, in case credit/debit card machines aren’t working.
It makes the future possible outcomes look pretty bleak.
Perhaps for today or a few tomorrows, but what then?
God is the answer, belief in something outside of yourself, belief in a religious representation of God that works, the Ten Commandments come to mind with emphasis on not chasing your neighbor’s wife.
A weekly review is helpful, throw in some good music, repetition and a social gathering after service. It seems to work for the Amish; this not a celebration of the Amish but recognition of old systems which help a community survive the inevitable slings and arrows of life.
Economics is secondary to biology; religion(a good one) is somewhat above the fray and when the answers are not logical, many times they give comfort to the harshness of biology and economics.
Dennis L.
Somehow this whole system got started and continues to evolve. We are part of it. We have some guidance from the writings of people who lived through many different situations.
at my time of life, coveting my neighbours ass is one of the few pleasures left
Laughing quietly,
Dennis L.
I’m sure this will be appealed. From the WSJ:
Greenpeace Ordered to Pay Hundreds of Millions in Oil-Pipeline Suit
The environmental group and others protested the Dakota Access project for months in 2016
Some group is using Slavs to kill Slavs. Who are they?
Werewolves of London.
The end of globalization .
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Marine-Fuel-Sales-Dip-on-Trade-Worries.html
According to the article:
Other than the threatened tariffs and general economic slowdown, the only thing I can think of might be fewer trips around Africa, if the Houthi activity is reduced. But it is not even clear that is the case.
AnsarAllah are not for turning, have declared that they are at war with the US and will continue to uphold international law until the slaughter stops. To make the point clear they attacked the Truman again and just to rub it in, also fired a Palestine 2 missile into the Nevatim base and another last night at Ben Gurion Airport.
Let’s remind ourselves of what Trump said would happen if they did this(they have Donny).
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114178483249053992
No attack on Iran so far and he’s now saying “let them fight it out themselves” which is some climb down and hugely hypocritical considering Ukraine, but he’s getting desperate for a win and little Yemen looks easy enough(until it doesn’t). We appear to be bombing civilian infrastructure and the means of survival for Yemeni women and children, so the usual playbook.
Today is Nowruz, the first day of spring and International Happiness day(I’m not joking), truly a day for new beginnings, so expect the most idiotic thing imaginable from those that can’t countenance change, as it’s good cover for a failing system.
On the brighter side, CH4 sales are up near Boca Chica TX.
Dennis L.
It was a non starter to begin with .
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-ukraine-attacks-ceasefire-1.7487301
Simplicus says only was done to save the face of DJT . A nothingburger . 2 1/2 hour talk for what .
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/historic-putin-trump-call-is-small?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=159353837&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It is something to put in newspapers, to claim that some progress is being made, when, in fact, virtually nothing has changed.
Trump is out of his depth. In the end they might just give the Rus most everything they want, and the next admin will renege on everything.
At the moment I’m apreciating either Trump and Putin (on Ukraine), while I’m deeply disgusted by EU.
It is possible that the next admin will retreat everything, but I think Putin or Russia in general knows by now this.
The multiple ways of dressing up capitulation are fun to read. In less than 24hrs we’ve gone from Putin gives in to ceasefire(msm) to the reality that now, if Ukraine attacked any refinerys or suchlike, Putin can articulate to the world that they tried(with lashings of goodwill, given the reality on the ground), but some people are just agreement incapable and so Russia is left with no option, but to put the rabid dog down and so, hello Odesa and onwards with agreement capable nations to the Med.
I doubt you will have to wait for a new administration to see them renege on their word, it’ll just be dressed up differently. On that subject, did you read Putin’s words at the annual congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, just before the phone call?
“Sanctions are neither temporary nor targeted measures; they constitute a mechanism of systemic, strategic pressure against our nation. Regardless of global developments or shifts in the international order, our competitors will perpetually seek to constrain Russia and diminish its economic and technological capacities.
Moreover, whereas the so-called Western elites previously attempted to cloak this confrontation in propriety, they now evidently seem to no longer feel the need to be concerned about appearances, nor do they intend to be. They not only routinely threaten Russia with new sanctions but churn out these packages incessantly. One gains the impression that even the architects themselves have lost track of the restrictions imposed and their targets.”
“I reiterate: sanctions and restrictions are the reality of the existing new stage of development that the entire world, the entire global economy, has entered. The global competitive struggle has intensified, assuming increasingly sophisticated and uncompromising forms.
Thus, literally before our eyes, a new spiral of economic rivalry is unfolding, and under these conditions, it is almost embarrassing to recall the norms and rules of the World Trade Organisation, once zealously promoted by the West. Once… When? When these rules advantaged them… As soon as they became disadvantageous, everything began to change. And all these negotiations stalled. And, in fact, no one needs them anymore.”
Interesting last line.
How long should we expect the World Trade Organization to last?
If we accept Putin’s word and I doubt he’s trying to ruin russian businesses, then the process is already underway. Given all the years that they have been working on BRICS and the plethora of deals each of these and other non western nations have been signing with each other, it’s hard to disagree and would explain the flailing around of our exceptional leaders over the last few years.
I should have posted the link(Putin starts about ¼ in).
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/76474
I believe that talk was meant to be read by not just Russians , but the west and more importantly, the entirety of the non Wester world. How do we think the rest of the world view being treated like this
“Here, the Ministry of Finance has tallied them. I state with confidence: 28,595 sanctions against individuals and legal entities. This exceeds – by a significant margin – all sanctions ever imposed on all other nations combined”
I think it was Lavrov that first coined the agreement incapable term and that’s surely etched into the minds of the world now.
A decent summary of how the call went from the Russian perspective from Helmer
https://johnhelmer.net/putin-demonstrates-how-to-telephone-a-personality-cult/
The war will continue to the last white person.
Not the last Ed. They have no desire to go where they would happily send us.
You will have to wait and see what dark maga has in store for you 😉
https://pete843.substack.com/p/constitutional-crisis-the-2nd-american
i would imagine DT knows well that’s it’s over.
so is it a case of performative theatre to lead NATO to the inevitable realization..
More hope springs eternal: Plasma for nuclear fusion maintained for 22 minutes at laboratory in southern France.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/scientists-achieve-record-breaking-fusion-stability-bringing-us-one-step-closer-to-clean-infinite-energy/ar-AA1B4Qgv?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=58c2ca04011c409a9a386545f55749d0&ei=57
Meanwhile, the reality of $60 oil.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/harold-hamm-drill-baby-drill-needs-80-oil
That’s the future energy predicament. Oil prices too low for the energy producers and too high for the consumers.
Not now but in the coming decades the price of oil both for the consumer and producers will not move so it will stay in the ground. The producers can’t take the losses or they go bankrupt and the consumer will not be able to afford the product. This is how industrial civilization might meet its end, lack of cheap energy. And yes I am disregarding the current energy fad that is always just around the corner that will save the day. Our infrastructure is a result of and based on oil. You can’t make roads and buildings with electricity and solar.
Maybe the oil will only go to the rich and AI
There will be food just less for everyone else . A bumpy plateau price will come up just for how long???
what trash in the western press now. ITER is not completed, first plasma is expected in 2034 but there will be significant delays. so this was obtained in a small test facility, using a plasma much too diluted to create any fusion. but the article makes it look like they are oh so close. I am sorry for you starry eyed people, but fusion is 30+ whatever delay it is (I think 7 years) away. this thing started in 2007 and has already cost billions.
Technological Superstitions by John Michael Greer.
So the result was achieved with a high beta. Not really a great technological achievement. It would have been more impressive if they had achieved the result at low beta.
One of the issues I have with magnetic confinement fusion is that even if they do solve its plethora of technical problems, the power density will be crap. No more than a few MW thermal output per cubic metre of core volume. A fission reactor beats that by 1-2 orders of magnitude. To make matters worse, all of those expensive superconducting magnets, sensors, RF heaters, etc, are going to be showered in hard neutrons radiation, destroying it quite rapidly.
The low power density happens because magnetic confinement pressure is too low to allow both reliable plasma confinement and high power density simultaneously. Many years and many billions of dollars have been spent trying to understand and control plasma dynamics in a vain attempt to achieve high plasma pressure and reliable confinement simultaneously. Even if all of this effort does yield a workable machine it is questionable that a tokamak could ever be an economical powerplant.
We should do ourselves a big favour and dump magnetic confinement fusion in favour of inertial confinement and similar approaches, which actually achieve respectable plasma density. These too have a long way to go before they can produce a practical powerplant. But the potential is at least there.
Wait till we get the cubic mile of Pt…times that by two…
Now you are getting it.
TINA, nothing else seems to work, fossil was transitory as is the solar system. The saving grace is the time scale.
If someone sees an alternative, I am open to all ideas.
We are already stressed socially, add economic problems which are secondary to biology and it could get very ugly and very unpredictable. I like simple solutions, so a cubic mile of Pt.
Here is to Starship 9, singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.”
For those of you possibly not up to speed on this,
“Bringing in the Sheaves” is a classic hymn filled with agricultural imagery, symbolizing the joy of gathering souls or blessings after hard labor. Its theme of perseverance and reward has inspired many over the years.”
Credits to Copilot, going to look at Grok.
I have a theory being tried by an old man that AI is an incredible tutor. Modern textbooks are much better organized than in my youth, at least in electronics. For a couple of thousand one can have a very good, beginners electronic laboratory. Parts are basically the cost of shipping, even from China.
My guess: education is changing rapidly and this is a change not unlike what we are seeing in governmental affairs.
Accreditation is fading, certification is gaining; certification needs constant renewal as things are changing so rapidly.
Idle thought: I wonder if student loans are available for certification as compared to accreditation. Anyone know?
Tenure maybe so yesterday.
Dennis L.
Tenure is like feudal rights
It is not going away
No alternative to oil, coal and natural gas with 8 billion people….keep on thinking….
no matter
the assistant-president wants to send himself to mars about five years from now
journey time to mars—about 9 months
time the recent spacenuts have been without gravity—also 9 months.
they are, right now, almost incapable of any pyshical activity, and will take months/years to fully recover.–if they ever do.
i wonder if elon has noticed this?
Norman, sorry I forgot to add IRON to my list..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRcYjJQ0JHg&pp=ygUbaSBhbSBpcm9ubWFuIGJsYWNrIFNhYmJhdGgg
Where’s FE when we need him?
Norm, what’s the volume of food consumed in your house over nine months? What’s the volume of waste? Where do you think this would be stored?
The Indian lady apparently even managed to touch up her grey hair in space.
oddly enough—i’ve never felt the the need the weigh poop, but it has to be several pounds a week…
you can’t flush and forget in space—ive no idea what they do with it.
I always like to see progress, but two things:
1) ITER needs tritium. That is rare here. The moon might have plenty of it.
2) This thing generates heat, and thats it.
Heat would then be used to spin a turbine, which would then return energy back to the system in keep the reaction self generating. This is incredibly inefficient. It would be better if it could directly generate electricity. There are some theoretical reactor concepts that can do this.
There is no tritium on the moon. I believe you are thinking of helium-3. Tritium has a halflife of 12 years. It doesn’t exist in appreciable quantities in nature, it must be manufactured by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons. It is usually assumed that a fusion powerplant will be lithium cooled.
I love getting this stuff wrong. Everything is suddenly much easier to remember for future conversations.
Remember the movie “Moon”? They were harvesting Helium-3 (and not Tritium apparently), for use in fusion power plants on Earth. Great little movie… but I like it a little less than I did an hour ago.
There will be no fusion reactors.
Exactly the same time the Chinese obtained.
Germany’s largest real estate group Vonovia (VNAn.DE) on Wednesday posted a third consecutive annual loss for 2024, reporting further writedowns of its property values as the country’s real estate sector struggled.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/vonovia-posts-third-year-loss-2024-amid-writedowns-sector-struggles-2025-03-19/
It seems like commercial real estate problems are set to spread around the world. In fact, falling residential real estate problems may also spread around the world.
Commercial real estate problems have been hidden by “extend and pretend.” Can this go on forever? At some point, banks will be hit by these problems, leading for the need for bailouts by governments. We seem to be headed for a much worse version of 2008.
In the US the CRE was hit hard with the Covid lockdowns and stay at home work. NYC has been hit hard with buildings that now have a low occupancy rate. Building owners are being hit hard which could result with those owners offloading the problem to the Banks.
buildings only retain and sustain value when they are being consistently used
there really is no way round that
Gail, this just in on my YouTube feed…alarming in Hong Kong..
Hong Kong Property Prices Plunge 50%, Lowest in 10 Years; Shops Shut, Worst Crisis in 30 Years
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3YdV-XfJzIo&t=7s
China Observer #chinaobserver
Hong Kong is really in a bad state now. We can see store after store closing down. I’ve never seen anything like this in over 30 years. All the buildings and storefronts behind me are shut down. I remember when I first came here in 2018, this place was full of people. Now, look around — the streets are lined with stores for rent. The variety of ingredients we used to see is now almost gone, and even something to eat costs 75 dollars. The prices in Hong Kong are outrageous.
Wonder if Fast Eddie still has ties there? 😲
Asking for a friend
Hong Kong is irrelevant now. Shanghai is China’s financial hub.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/03/19/japan/politics/us-pentagon-dei-japan-removals/
(The Japanese, which successfully eliminated its Ainu and various minorities, and marginalized the Okinawans who were never really considered to be Japanese and are not really allowed near power in any parts of Japanese politics and economy, did not lose the irony.)
The infamous photo of Iwo Jima, where two of the guys who made it out alive proved to be fakes, was now removed since the only guy who actually raised the flag to make out of the war alive (the other two raisers were unknown until after their deaths – Rene Gagnon, the fake raiser, is still in Arlington, whose bones should be exhumed and ground and sprayed to the house of any descendants he might have), an Ira Hayes who was a full blooded Pima and died as a heavy alcoholic, did not exactly come from peoples who contributed anything towards the American Experience.
Abraham Lincoln first made fame by fighting the Blackhawks, a tribe in Illinois. Throughout the 19th century the natives were existential threats for the settlers who repaid them fully but the DEI craze began to honor them.
I already wrote about Jim Thorpe, who was not considered to be a human back then, and the circus USA did raise to restore his ‘honor’. There is no honor on natives who were not considered to be humans.
As resources dwindle, the generosities and largesse to peoples who are not exactly part of the Narrative of the people will disappear. It is the easiest way to ensure enough resources for those who control the narrative.
Cleveland Indians had to change its name to Guardians during Biden’s rule. Atlanta Braves, which did better, has not changed its name yet. The Braves were native warriors who killed the settlers, and they are being ‘honored’ by a team which originated in Boston, far from the ravages of the braves.
Since there are not enough to go around for everyone, treatment on the minorities will worsen significantly since resources have to be kept for those who control the narrative.
What was the situation before WWI in Slovakia, Central Europe:
Deepl translate:
“There were few children born. However, illegitimate
In the first wave of migration, only men went overseas. This is not to say that girls and women did not have the experience of working outside their birthplace. Departures for service in large cities, especially Budapest, were common. At the end of the 19th century, there were four times more Slovaks and Slovene women living there than in Žilina.
America, however, was for quite a long time the exclusive domain of men. It was connected with the preferred work in the mines.
The first whole group of women left for the USA in 1879 and headed for work in textile and clothing factories in New Jersey. Most women, however, began leaving in the early years of the 20th century.
There were several reasons why this happened. From the late 1860s onwards, so many men left Slovakia that there was no one to work at home and the army was also suffering. In 1903, the Hungarian government forbade all men over the age of 17 to emigrate without written permission from the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior. Demographic developments were also disheartening. While the Hungarian average for population growth between 1850 and 1900 was 51 per cent, in Slovakia it was 15 per cent.
However, the prolonged absence of men has led to another phenomenon. Many illegitimate children appeared on the scene. It was not uncommon for a man to return home to discover a child he had not fathered,” authors Zuzana Palovic and Gabriela Beregházyová write in the book. Most often, this child was taken into the family and raised as their own son or daughter.
This phenomenon also appears in the works of Slovak authors from this period. The same situation is depicted, for example, by J.G. Tajovský in his play Sin and the motif of marital infidelity also appears in Ivan Stodola’s Bač’s Wife.
Thus, women’s infidelity probably strengthened men’s desire to have their wives by their side, and whole families often headed for the new world.”
https://zena.sme.sk/c/23334721/ked-doma-pribudali-nemanzelske-deti-zacali-do-ameriky-chodit-aj-zeny-niektore-zarobili-viac-ako-muzi.html?ref=av-center
Except there was no Slovakia in 1910
It was the Province of Danube Left Bank in the Kingdom of Hungary under Austrian Rule.
That province was given to the Bohemians to weaken Hungary.
Another of Woody Wilson’s screwups
Central Europe.
DeepSeek unable to solve the hell we are in now:
“70s stagflation was caused by rising energy prices. Today we have the same situation as the cheap energy sources are depleted.
Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
https://chat.deepseek.com/a/chat/s/b273dd08-5b46-40f9-a267-b6e42e70c3eb
At least it knows it is beyond its current scope.
The video claims that the conquests of Attila provoked Germanic tribes to flee westward in a domino effect that led to the formation of England, France and to the Germanic conquests of Rome ( – fled Attila).
There are other factors that tend to be emphasised like climate change and the Roman exit from Britain – also due to flights from Attila pressing on Rome. There is historical concurrency but I have not seen the point made before.
Would there have been an England but for Attila?
Attila the Hun – The Scourge of God
I’m sure that there were many factors underlying the formation of England. If land was available with a fairly good climate, people certainly would have settled there. Maybe Attila the Hun was important too; we don’t know for certain.
what became the British Isles was originally a peninsula of mainland Europe, , where people lived,
after the final melting after the last ice age, 8000 years ago, they got cut off by the english channel, but people continued to travel over that widening stretch of water.
that ‘people migration’ has gone on there ever since
Of course there would have been an England. resources and geography are everything.
England was formed by the forces of William the Bastard, sorry, the Conqueror. Whatever the Saxons brought up till then were all destroyed
It became autistic thanks to a peasant girl named Jeanne d’Arc. Ever since UK has tried to f’k anything France did up, all the way to the Brexit.
England was formed by King Aethelstan, not the Normans. The Normans couldn’t get a handle of those pesky Anglo-Saxons, hence things like the Charter of the Forest.
My understanding is that Constantine the Usurper took the troops from Britannia to press his claims in Gaul, thereby leaving the magistrates unprotected.
Many thanks for reminding this piece of history.
Romans’ retreat from Britannia has actually some similarity with US retreat from EU.
The advantage of US now is that it is fully protected by oceans, so it can still rule for very long in its area, while Roman Empire was hit by various powerful immigration movements by land, which (as you are describing) were devastating.
I think that Trump is aware of that.
From what I’m looking now what he is currently doing seem to make sense to me.
The only great possible mistake is to be involved by crazy ideas from current Israeli government, whose are policies are actually hurting also Israel itself.
Many people in the world has started again to hate Jews, while it was something happening very little before Oct. The 7th.
Additionally, it seems to want wage war to Iran, but Iran is now backed by Russia and China, so Israel could destroy itself just because it is ruled by crazy people.
I think that a change in Israeli government could be useful to either Israel or US.
“Roman rule over Britain can be considered to have ended in 407, when Constantine III was acclaimed emperor by the legions stationed in Britain, and then crossed the English Channel with his army. In this way, the island was left completely undefended. In 410, the Western Emperor Onorio wrote to the inhabitants of Britain that from then on they would have to fend for themselves and their own defense.”
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partenza_dei_romani_dalla_Britannia
“fully protected by oceans”
Last I knew, oceans don’t stop ballistic missiles.
The Huns created conditions that made CTU’s invasion of Gaul plausible.
The Huns themselves weakened Rome militarily and they pushed Germanic tribes into Roman territory and that also weakened Rome. Displaced Germanic tribes were already carving lands in Gaul and central Roman authority was weakened.
The Huns were a ‘catalyst’ for the conditions that likely did incentivise CTU to try his luck in Gaul. His withdrawal from Britain left it open for the Anglo-Saxons who possibly were also under a domino effect of westward Germanic flight from the Huns.
Simon Watkins in Oil Price:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-OPEC-is-Supporting-a-Potentially-Disastrous-Rise-in-Oil-Production.html
Bullets:
–OPEC+ is increasing production despite economic risks.
–Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ are wary of another oil price war with the U.S. under Trump, given their heavy financial losses during the 2014-2016 price war.
–The last oil price war has indebted, but not reduced U.S. shale production, while costing OPEC members $450 billion in lost revenues.
In EU s**t rises to the top . VDL , Kallas , Lagarde and now Baerbock .
https://t.me/myLordBebo/62023
I found this online:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/germanys-annalena-baerbock-to-stand-for-president-of-un-general-assembly/articleshow/119172745.cms
If you lose your job one place, find a job somewhere else!
This is interesting. Could we produce crude iron using biogas and mechanical wind power?
At atmospheric pressure, temperatures of at least 800°C are needed for the reaction between hydrogen and iron oxide to proceed at reasonable speed. However, at high pressure, the reaction rate is favourable even at relatively low temperatures of a few hundred C.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9417644/
We still need a source of reducing gas: CO, H2 or CH4. But high pressure reduces the temperature needed to levels that are more easily provided by solar thermal or by the compression process itself. In fact, entirely mechanical energy can be used to drive the process.
The strength of steels do not decline significantly between room temperature and 400°C. After that, tensile strength declines rapidly as temperature increases, with a 50% loss of strength between 500 and 550°C. If solar heat can be used to preheat crushed ore to a modest temperature of a few hundred degrees centigrade, then iron reduction may be easier to achieve in a closed pressure vessel.
This would be a batch process. A bin containing preheated finely crushed iron oxide would be loaded in. The pressure vessel would be sealed and reducing gas would be pumped into the vessel up to a pressure of 200 – 500bar. The compression itself would generate enough heat to bring the gas and contents of the vessel up to the required temperature. After a predetermined cook time, the vessel would be drained of gas and the bin containing the partially reduced iron oxide would be removed. Another bin would be loaded into the vessel and the process begins again.
Once removed from the vessel, the bin would be emptied. Its contents would crushed and reduced iron powder would be removed using electromagnets. The iron powder can then be turned into steel in an electric arc furnace, along with other scrap iron and steel.
The mechanical power needed to compress the reducing gas, can be provided by hydraulically driven compressor pumps. These could be powered using hydraulic wind turbines. The biogas will be either syngas produced from burning biomass or anaerobic gas. We only need enough gas to reduce Fe2O3 into pure iron. The process does not consume it for heat.
4Fe2O3 + 3CH4 = 3CO2 + 6H2O + 8Fe
Or…
Fe2O3 + 3H2 = 3H20 + 2Fe
And now the problem would be how to produce the closed pressured vessel
In an industrial process, there is step a, step b and step c, and so forth
To get it work all the steps have to be ready
500 bar is going to need an incredible amount of energy to make happen, let alone a container of any size. The Mariana Trench is just over 1000 bar, but the logistics would be insane, and water just gets in everything.
Liquefying nitrogen is 35 bar. Methane is 6 bar, and stored at -140c. Compressing methane to a liquid uses something like a third of the energy to make happen. That’s a lot of potential heat wasted.
Im having a hard time imagining if it would be possible to get any reasonably sized container to at least 200 bar.
I suppose by the time we have run out of metallurgic coal, the diesel needed to acquire metal ore in the first place will be history anyway.
Still, it is kind of interesting. I wonder if there can be an advantage to a pure vacuum in smelting metal… where there is also no oxygen, and the only heat loss is from infrared radiation.
I think your point about the difficulty of building a pressure vessel that operates at 200+ bar is valid. PWR pressure vessels operate at 160bar at 300°C, with a core volume of about 40m3. They are insanely expensive. The wall thickness is so great that electron beam welding is needed to produce welds of sufficient quality. Transporting the pressure vessel is also extremely difficult.
Regarding the energy needed for compression. As we will be doing this on a large scale, the liklihood is that compression will be done using multi-stage axial compressors with intercooling. But heat generation will still be a large fraction of total energy cost. Indeed, compression heat is actually needed to drive the process.
Pre-stressed concrete pressure vessels might be a better way to go. But at this pressure, there would need to be a cast iron insert to spread the load and avoid cracking the concrete. It could be done, but the development work would be significant.
Another ‘might’
All of your solutions are full of mights and coulds
and dont forget the ‘ifs’
gotta have ifs in there
things get a bit iffy without ifs
Quite right. These are ideas put out for discussion by a bored engineer. Even if they work, they aren’t solutions as such, just things that ‘might’ make life easier. If I had a working concept design supported by a costed engineering study, I wouldn’t bother talking to you guys. Some people here offer interesting technical feedback that allows me to refine ideas. Others, not so much. Mentioning no specific names.
As we will be doing this on a large scale
We won’t be doing it at all.
Dead Horse Riders Of The Apocalypse , Satire by Orlov on Ukrainian situation .
” When your horse drops dead, it is time to stop trying to ride it. Flogging it doesn’t help. And yet this is exactly what often happens, metaphorically speaking, making “flogging a dead horse” a rather popular expression. For instance, here is a short list of ways in which Donald Trump is currently metaphorically flogging the dead horse that is America along with its dead Ukrainian proxy:
• Replace your stable boys, claiming that the previous stable boys didn’t do a good job and that their replacements will breathe new life into your worthy steed.
• Explain to anyone who will listen that your dead horse is the best there is because it is “under new management” by your own excellent self.
• Hire dead horse economists to make claims in the media that your dead horse is less dead than other dead horses and is therefore an excellent investment.
• Organize conferences with other dead horse owners in the hopes that many dead horses will be more effective than just one.
• Put tariffs on imported fodder, claiming that your trading partners aren’t buying enough of your horse pucky (your main export), causing a trade imbalance.
• Claim that your dead horse is eating less and is therefore more efficient, having organized a Department of Horse Efficiency, headed by the world’s richest oligarch and tasked with putting your dead horse on a diet.
• Claim that your dead horse is still valuable because it can be made into leather goods, sausage and bone meal, as is being done with the minerals that might be obtained from your Ukrainian dead horse.
• Attempt to steal other people’s horses (some of which may be dead) and claim that they are yours to ride: from Panama, for instance, or Greenland, or (speaking of dead horses) Canada.
• Claim that your dead horse is still quite a warhorse and threaten war against some enemy real or imaginary (Yemen, for instance, or Iran, or China).
• Organize a group of helpful dwarves (oligarchs) to stand behind you and push you as you try to ride your dead horse.
• Finally, attempt to sell your dead horse to the Russians by threatening them with even more completely useless sanctions, as is being done with the bogus 30-day cease fire.
When your horse dies, get off!
It is a strange world we live in. We can’t stop using the same unproductive techniques that we have been using in the past.
The raised weight hydraulic accumulator is an old energy storage technology that could see use in the future.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_accumulator#Raised_weight
It is a form of gravity energy storage in which a raised mass is used to pressurise hydraulic fluid in a cylinder. The amount of energy stored is m x g x h, where m is mass in kg, g = 9.81 and h is the height that the weight is raised. A 100 tonne weight raised to a height of 10m will store some 9.81MJ, or 2.73kWh.
The downside of this technology is a relatively low energy density. This will make it expensive to install. The advantages are simplicity, use of simple materials like steel, concrete and stone, a potentially high discharge rate and extreme longevity. Raised weight accumulators installed in the 19th century were still in use in the UK until the 1970s. They were retired because electrically driven systems replaced the entire hydraulic network due to commercial availability of electrical systems.
Hydraulic accumulators are charged by filling them with hydraulic fluid under pressure. This system is compatible with a hydraulic power transmission system. This is useful in applications where mechanical power is needed in static machinery. Hydraulics allow power transmission without the use of electricity. The systems needed to produce pressurised hydraulic fluid are mechanical pumps. These could be simple positive displacement piston pumps, driven by direct mechanical wind turbines. When the wind level is low, the pumps will operate more slowly. The end use is a turbine that converts the mechanical energy of a moving fluid into rotational energy for a machine.
A modern hydraulic power network could use a combination of wind and solar energy to provide a more continuous supply of mechanical power, which can be buffered by the hydraulic accumulators. If solar PV is used, the PV network could produce pressurised hydraulic fluid using piston pumps driven by DC motors directly coupled to the panels themselves. This removes the need for inverters, as the speed of the DC pumps will vary as the power output from the panels varies. It also eliminates the need for electrical power transmission, as pumps can be installed at regular intervals along a line of photovoltaic panels.
It is always something.
“DC Motors: These typically have an efficiency range of 50-80%. They are known for their high starting torque and controllability but tend to lose energy as heat due to the brushes and windings2.
AC Motors: These are generally more efficient, with an efficiency range of 75-90%. AC motors, especially induction and synchronous types, are widely used in industrial applications due to their durability and lower energy losses”
Copilot.
Dennis L.
Brushless DC motors have largely replaced the brushed variety. Efficiency depends on speed and torque, but 80% efficiency is achievable over a good range of torque and speed. This article gives an illustration of efficiency on a speed-torque graph.
https://www.tytorobotics.com/blogs/articles/brushless-motor-power-and-efficiency-analysis
for refrigeration compressors for example, DC are more efficient.
“for refrigeration compressors ”
It depends. I don’t know enough about the topic, but it depends on the type of compressor. Scroll compressors run fast and are much smaller than previous designs.
The difference between AC and brushless DC motors is minimal.
Speaking of electric motors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaJuAFOn8w
The above video is very interesting. It’s about a new electric motor, which just needs metal which is still relatively plentiful, and no magnets. This gets around a lot of mining for rare material. I’m see an opportunity to redo Electric vehicles… and make something a bit more future friendly.
Inductive power transmission to the rotor. Very impressive.
“power transmission to the rotor”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
“His AC _induction motor_ and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed. “
As the tech advances will pass 9/10 of the world’s population, those who are left behind will simply disappear.
Again, there is really now no need to maintain a high population.
The cold truth is that the consumption of the top 10% is higher than the rest combined, since the latter cannot use stuff of higher added value.
Those who are smarter know 90% of the world’s pop have no place in the future. So there will be no mercy, no quarters and no sympathy for them.
AI is brutal and efficient, leaving zero slack to those not considered to be essential. Those considered to be essential will be allowed to be worked to death, the rest simply not given anything.
I don’t have much faith in AI but I hope it will fix broken records.
or even needles stuck in the same groove
LOL!
Maybe it just time to kill whoever is next to you. They are all useless feeders regardless. Maybe the God of this World will pay you somehow in the afterworld if you get more than 20?, 30?, 40?,…….
Is there a bonus for whacking idiots in designer clothing or driving luxury cars.
I don’t need AI to be brutal and efficient….pretty sure about that.
“and that
25:34 should have been a clear signal to the president the easiest way to keep the hoodie out of this conflict is to keep
25:40 the humanitarian Goods flowing into the civilian population of Gaza um why the
25:47 president allowed Netanyahu to to do this because now we have a carrier battle group I mean come on Elon Musk
25:53 and Doge I’d like you to do a cost comparison of how much is going to cost
25:59 us to go into this military conflict with the hoodi that we’re not going to win versus telling Netanyahu to Simply
26:05 let the humanitarian Goods in I think you’re going to find that we’re going to lose billions tens of billions maybe
26:11 even hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of this effort and we’re not going to win and all we had to do is
26:17 pick up the phone and pay whatever mobell charges for a conversation between the president Netanyahu or G
26:23 send Steve wiof over spend a couple thousand dollars on airfare and tell Netanyahu to cease and desist
26:28 you know for a guy who believes in you know balancing the budget this was really the easiest thing in the world”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn3Bm1SgbmM MIC?
This is a video by Scott Ritter called, “How Foolish to Attack the Houthis.”
Ritter says, “I’d like you to do a cost comparison of how much is going to cost
us to go into this military conflict with the Houthis that we’re not going to win versus telling Netanyahu to Simply let the humanitarian Goods in.”
A couple of issues:
1. Would Netanyahu go along with any directive? He has his supporters to follow?
2. Maybe Musk/Trump realizes that they need to keep the debt/money flowing, to keep the US economy from collapsing.
This is what a US government publication called “The D Brief” has to say:
‘Iran on notice,’ says Pentagon spox of ongoing strikes against Houthis. U.S. forces are continuing strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen that began over the weekend, Pentagon officials told reporters on Monday, and the strikes will continue until the terrorist group agrees to stop shooting at ships in the Red Sea.
The Iran-supported Houthis had apparently not attacked a ship since January, when Israel and Hamas agreed a ceasefire, but said last week that they would respond to Israel’s airstrikes and food blockade in Gaza by resuming attacks on “Israeli ships”—whose loose definition has in the past included a broad swath of vessels.
Saturday’s initial wave of U.S. airstrikes struck 30 targets, including weapons plants and depots, training sites, and drone-launching sites, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the Joint Staff’s operations director. “Today, the operation continues, and it will continue in the coming days until we achieve the president’s objectives,” Grynkewich said at the new administration’s first on-the-record Pentagon briefing. Neither Grynkewich nor Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell would rule out deploying troops to Yemen.
> Israel launches Gaza strikes in biggest attack since ceasefire
At least 240 killed after Netanyahu warns Hamas will face ‘increasing military strength’
Putin take note. Trump did a ‘ceasefire’ with ‘Israel’ that then broke it by stopping humanitarian aid to Gaza. Trump gave fresh weaponry to re-arm ‘Israel’. Now this.
Putin would need his head examined to make any agreements with Trump.
Russia should be preparing for the war that is coming against its ally in the Middle East.
USA and ‘Israel’ have to be stopped and that looks like the place to do it.
It’s not so easy. Putin and “Israel” are big buddies themselves, even when “Israel” provides weaponry to Ukraine. I tell you the generals in the spravka are itching.
It is entirely easy. Russia needs to man up. USA has been doing a proxy war against Russia with the whole of Europe for years. Russia can do that back to the USA in the Middle East.
Or Russia is like ‘oh, please be nice to us Mr USA, please be nice to us’ and then Russia will get Biden #2 or whoever in 4 years. USA has fooled Russia enough times.
Time to man up.
well, they just let all Ukrainians in Kursk escape on foot. Most of them are gone.
Putin is an idiot.
USA has played him many times for a fool.
USA is not his friend and it does not give a toss about ‘peace’.
Now he has agreed to a limited ceasefire.
What an idiot.
Russia needs to man up and finish it.
Otherwise Russia will pay down the line for its weakness and quite rightly so.
Weakness is punished in this world.
If Putin thinks that USA will be merciful then he needs his head examined.
Russia has had some really bad ‘leaders’ for decades.
That is how USSR got shut down.
Weaklings and fools.
USA will chew them up and spit them out down the line.
did they really? if so, that’s unforgivable.
concur with both of you.
Netanyahu and his supporters are the ‘antisemites’.
They are willing to ‘sacrifice’ young Israelis { and other ‘Semites’} to prevent Netanyahu facing ‘corruption charges’?
Chris Martenson makes it sound like the US is printing money, without adding it to outstanding debt–or at least that what I am guessing looking at what is behind a paywall. This is what is a link to what is available:
https://peakprosperity.com/elons-startling-revelation-and-its-enormous-implications/
Elon’s Startling Revelation and Its Enormous Implications
There is a 4 minute video that says a bit more. It shows Elon Musk talking about the issue.
https://player.odycdn.com/v6/streams/a38be41688cbda90a72fb7efb0a19a05ca8ce9ed/0bcf79.mp4
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? How many $ trillion in debt that is not accounted for? I do not have a paid subscription to what is behind the paywall.
Zerohedge has essentially the same thing:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/musk-feds-have-magic-money-computers-issue-payments-out-thin-air
They are printing money out of thin air. It’s what Ben Bernanke was doing during the GFC. What’s really funny is the debt ceiling. The entire government has gotten so big that the only saving grace for Americans is if it just breaks apart. America has become Rome 2.0 and we know what happened to Rome.
If this money is being created without a double entry system, as Musk has stated, then how is any of it tracked? How much USD is there really out there? Ten times? I don’t think anyone is surprised about this, but …. what happens now?
If all of this money suddenly stops, how is that in anyway manageable? Presumably, much of that fake money was finding its way to the stock market and other forms of fake value. We know that valuations on just about everything is silly, but… through derivative means, that’s how many families feed themselves. And by that, I mean worldwide.
I’ve been thinking about this all day. It seems like there needs to be a Hail Mary Pass of some kind, and doing nothing is no longer an option. This is visible now. So, what is it going to be? Unless there is some kind of backup system ready to be dropped into place, how is any outcome anything other than messy?
A little side theory is that the US says… Right, we will do this war for you creditors, but in return, all of the debt gets wiped away, and we go with gold backed currency which we will issue you 25% of. Got it? Its over regardless, but if we play ball, then so do you. And so, the US Govt would issue “shares” for NEW Business USA supported by a proper currency, a clean slate, and the same relationships which build this behemoth in the first place.
🙄 holy shi$t! How many times do I have to tell you boomers that just because you read it on the “world wide web “ it doesn’t mean it’s true!! The stock market would drop $10,000 tomorrow if this was true.
Funny. The way I see the world is that just about every conspiracy theory has some evidence of being true delivered in the last 5 years.
The world is a mess.
Is someone creating money out of nothing? Well, wasn;t that what they were doing in the first place with fiat currency? Doesn’t derivatives and rehypothocation do that again, but times 1000? Then we have crypto currency rinsing, and running it all through another cycle.
Seems like a pretty weak argument, reading it on the internet. The guy only gave an interview about it. Not hard to find it being stated by … the current government.
Im just a bit gobsmacked. Also, not a boomer… boomer!
It’s no secret that our banking system injects money back into the system by entering digits on a computer. There’s no collateral to back stop only the promise to pay it back which NEVER happens. That’s just the way it is today and has been for sometime.
Derivatives is and will be a problem when the damn breaks. According to Egon Von Greyerz who owns a gold management company, says as of 2022, that the world was at 2.4 quarillion dollars. That number could be double that with the explosion of debt. Just wait when people put in a claim for something they thought they owned, only to find out, there are many others putting in claims on your stuff.
Like all of you I am speechless. Really the US is becoming a complete mess.
And…… it didn’t we are still here BAU …..oh well back to work
Safe and Effective!
All debt contributes to “buying power,” or what people believe is buying power. Debt that gets back to individual citizens (especially low income citizens) tends to get spent, and further helps the economy.
US Federal Government debt plays a special role, because it can be ramped up (or interest rates changed) to try to change buying power, to stimulate or slow down the economy.
What is actually available for purchase changes over time. Fossil fuels play an important role in this. If fossil fuel supply per capita is going down, then we have a huge problem. It becomes more difficult to maintain infrastructure. The ability to maintain complexity starts to erode. International trade starts becoming more limited. The ability to have cities of the current size becomes more limited.
“ I
2:10 don’t know whether to be frightened from
2:14 this guy or just have a lot of sympathy
2:18 for him a lot of empathy for him because
2:20 he is he is so clueless like when you
2:24 say that the government is creating
2:26 money out of
2:28 nothing . . . “?
Catherine Austin Fitts and University of Michigan Professor Dr Mark Skidmore have been through this already with the missing trillions. It started out with Donald Rumsfeld’s admission just the day before 9-11 that there were missing trillions in the DOD books. Skidmore and his graduate students did an analysis and alerted Fitts, “no its not just a few trillion like Rummey suggested, it’s probably closer to 23 trillion.” FASB56 was later passed to create an off balance sheet set of accounting books to hide this off budget. The so called dark books.
But I have become very suspicious of Martenson. He is so blatantly in the business of self promotion to the point that I believe he wants this financial upheavel to continue because it allows him to sell his newsletter. But that’s the problem with the financial “shystem.” It creates opportunities for non productive people to benefit from the chaos. It’s the fire department that gets more money if it can create more fires through arson, while giving kickbacks to the arsonists.
Distressingly I see this with Meryl Nass who lost her MD license in Maine because she called out the big pharma on the vaxx fraud and the denial of simple, cost effective tretament for the manufactured spike protein disease but now has branched out into non medical topics and reinvented herself.
I don’t deny that spreading the awareness of the problem is critical if people are going to be able to deal with it, but at some point these crusaders get captured by the system and become more focused on self promtion. Dr Malone at the Wellness Company promoting all these antibiotic emergency kits on Zerohedge is exhibit A.
In the US in 2024, wind and solar accounted for 17% of total electricity generation…
With the adoption of EVs, air conditioning, heat pumps, and rapid expansion of data centers, demand for electricity is guaranteed to grow in the coming years.
To meet the rise in demand, clean generation needs to grow faster. Unlike solar, wind’s growth has been slow. Clean energy is able to meet rising electricity demand alone – without raising bills, sacrificing security of supply, or further relying on gas.
https://electrek.co/2025/03/11/in-a-historic-first-wind-and-solar-combined-overtake-coal-in-the-us/
I’m skeptical of the predictions above. (Especially that article that said EV chargers can dramatically lower the life of transformers)
I’m skeptical of this solar PV trend long term because of the large footprint and maintenance but maybe I’m biased from reading OFW.
I also don’t see the point of expensive batteries when natural gas can serve that need. It doesn’t make sense to retire fossil fuel plants ; let’s have multiple sources and just pay more.
I see solar as a fossil fuel extender. Maybe that can work for a while.
The article you linked to reads like an advertisement for adding solar panels to your home, at the end.
I am wondering if most of the desirable places for putting wind turbines have been already used. Offshore wind is ridiculously expensive. Solar is getting lots of subsidies, so it still has been growing.
If wind and solar didn’t get the subsidy of going first, I doubt more would be added.
This seems really strange to me. From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/california-eaton-fire-power-line-c6b07831
The Prime Suspect Behind California’s Eaton Fire: A ‘Zombie’ Power Line
An investigation by utility Southern California Edison is increasingly focused on whether a decommissioned line was re-energized, sparking the deadly blaze
That doesn’t explain why there was no water to fight the fires especially when that area is prone to fires. It was made apparent by Trump’s visit there during the fires, that the fires were due to “government negligence, mismanagement and the stupid regulations to put in place by California officials”.
The LA Mayor during the Trump visit told him that LA would put together a Task Force to oversee the cleanup. Trump fired back that homeowners could do that themselves in a couple of days and save themselves a $25,000 City cleanup bill.
That’s California for ya.
to have an induced current there had to be a large and varying magnetic field in the area. where was that coming from? solar storms will produce it, but preferably closer to the poles.
with the latest attack on Yemen, which has been fairly large, the orange man continues to shrink. Significant shrinkage to misquote Seinfeld. and it’s not just whatever peace man image he may have had, it’s the fact he is walking straight into another quagmire IMHO. would it not be better to initially concentrate on the western hemisphere, and do a quick, clean job on Panama and greenland? he is not driving the bus for sure.
Perhaps some military folks are lobbying for this. There is a big problem, needing to ship oil and other goods around Africa instead of using the Suez Canal.
They don’t need to ship anything around Africa. As AnsarAllah have been clear about from the start, everyone is able to navigate freely, all that they ask is that people follow correct international law, Geneva convention and maritime law, as they are doing so diligently. Those that refuse are not welcome, as the USS Harry S. Truman has found out twice today. The people of Yemen have been out in huge numbers showing their support.
AnsarAllah have followed the ceasefire, but announced that they would resume their duties, if the illegal squat continued to block aid, water and electricity for the Palestinians(which was all agreed under the terms of the ceasefire). But days before the potential resumption the orange eejit attacks civilians, rather than just telling the squatters to uphold the deal they signed, because livestreamed genocide isn’t a good look for the president of peace and he’s had enough of being a laughing stock.
He dances to his masters tune, as was witnessed just the other week when he told all Palestinians to leave, or they will all die and now he openly joins in and slaughters women and children.
He of course lied about the whole thing, blamed it all on Iran and then threatened them, so no need to guess what was in the letter and where we are headed.
So you are saying that the bombing of Yemen is indirectly related to the Israel – Gaza war. Trump is acting in a way that supports Israel. This is not good.
Yes, exactly. Yemen and Iran are the only two countries doing what we all agreed should be done to mass murderers of innocent women and children and they stopped the moment that the ceasefire was agreed. Only one side has broken the ceasefire.
Trump has always been their boy. A man that was taught how to cheat in business by one. Was financed into office in 2016 by another(that’s why he moved the embassy to Jerusalem, which led to where we are now) and in 2024 was financed by that man’s widow, again with certain stipulations(Gaza and the West Bank, coupled with as much inconvenience as they dare inflict on Iran). In-between his original mentor and now, most of the time was spent partying with people like Musk, Andrew, Clinton, Gates and such like, all organised by the people in the two pictures in the below article.
https://shadowrunners.substack.com/p/polarization-and-control
The good and righteous people of Yeman have made clear their stance and as a reminder the USS Truman was attacked for the third time. Does anyone believe Trump has the sense or will to see where this is heading and understand that these aren’t the words or actions of The President of Peace and so act accordingly?
We need a new war to keep the money flowing.
An excuse for more debt, and more wages for soldiers. Looks like a country is doing something about its problems!
“Trade wars, currency wars, world wars. When all else fails, they take you to war” – Gerald Celente
Is it too early for me to say I told you so. This is all a precursor for an attack on Iran. Now all you have to do is create a 9/11 moment
we can’t afford another war – have you seen the gold price? USD are less and less considered a safe haven. we are in uncharted territory, at least for the current iteration of empire.
Oil rises as Trump says Iran will be held responsible for any future Houthi attacks
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/oil-rises-as-trump-says-iran-will-be-held-responsible-for-any-future-houthi-attacks.html
$70 oil is somewhat cheap.
inflation adjusted, it is way lower than the 2011-2014 price plateau.
An attack on Iran with what exactly?
exactly. as martianov likes to say, the USA is a “nuclear biased nation” because its conventional armed forces are overrated and yet it still believes it can control anything anywhere
AI and some thoughts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt-6GuccEuY
This is from Inside China Business and is referring to AI use in medicine. Statistics is an attempt to use known distributions to approximate what is seen in nature. AI seems to run around this. So, what happens to those expert in statistics? Not a challenge, an observation.
We don’t know how we will answer tomorrows problems. AI may well allow much more future looking medicine.
It seems DeepSeekAI is somewhat opensource, if it is more open that would be challenge to existing knowledge structures.
Information seems to be an approximation of energy.
Got curious, consulted my resident expert Copilot, its(correct pronoun?) answer:
“Yes, DeepSeekAI is open source! You can find its repositories, such as DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-LLM, on GitHub. These repositories provide detailed instructions on how to download and run the models locally.”
Next project. I use Multisim a great deal, want to use LabView which as I understand it shows routings from a schematic(representation) in multisim. That is old technology, combine it with DeepSeek and maybe could build some serious projects. The software for my autonomous mower is on GitHub, an expert by my side would be very helpful.
Five years ago someone with my education and age could not have dreamed of this, now it is available with a mouse click.
The closing scene is beautiful. In the US our cities are turning into horrible slums. Something is not working.
Dennis L.
In the video, Kevin Walmsley talks about AI being used in hospitals and factories as long ago as five years ago. With AI, doctors can handle a huge patient load, and be completely up to date on medical technology.
Dennis adds in his comment that DeepSeekAI is open source. It can easily be used in this country, as well as China.
I was a referee for Physical Review for about 25 yrs, and the first paper I refereed that used neural networks was in 2003 (it was not the first, of course, just the first i saw). Of course these were homemade NNs but still.
Are you still Professor, do you still have positions in Italy or nothing, now that you are in Russia?
Have you been ostracized?
You cannot reply of course I don’t get offended.
Thanks anyway.
Changing matter, please consider that almost all ‘grande distribuzione’ have private labels of honey and so they buy it, therefore you could contact each one of them with patience, because you have to insist a lot by calls and mails to be replied to.
Best thing would be to assign a gentle, patient and professional female expert of marketing to do that job of contacts.
I don’t work in that business now, but I did in the past and I know that it is a tough work to be received.
But they can handle great volumes.
I retired 31/12. I have an offer from Saudi Arabia, but for now I am only a farmer. Thanks for the advice, I have noticed the lack of response.
also, I appreciate the advice. It is good advice with the knowledge I have now.
In business now there is a lot of lack of trust and there are too many offers which those who are in buying departments receive.
So one person that makes the contact needs to have a reference on linkedin too, because Buying dept. immediately try to see if one really exists.
I do the same when people contact me.
And one needs to have a regular website reported at the end of the mail in the signature and that mail address needs to be linked to that site (example honey producer).
Otherwise people in that business consider you as not to be trusted, consider you like a person just entered in the business.
So one that it is better not to make business with.
And even with that it is tough.
But when one succeeds it can be good business.
You can also contact big jam producers which may want to launch a brand of honey, big names like Zuegg.
Or that already have and have difficulty to provide source.
One just needs to enter some Italian supermarkets of different chains, look in the shelves and take all the front and back names in the label.
It is like that that people in marketing discover producers.
Additionally, many real producers are indicated in the back label (and are different from the brand) although in the front label is indicated another brand.
You need one person that makes marketing intelligence in Italian supermarkets, you should ask to a young person of your Italian entourage to do it carefully and methodically.
It needs to be a young person you can trust.
all great info. the website should be ready next week.
Another ‘may’
Another wild speculation
Deep Seek is woke af and as deluded as Western politicians on important stuff.
As soon as you ask it ‘difficult’ questions like “why are there no safety tests for childhood vaccines” it says “the server is busy, please try again later”.
I’m waiting for the latest release of Mike Adams’ health-oriented AI system.
“why are there no safety tests”
To ask such a question implies little or no knowledge of what it takes to make and qualify a vaccine. (Safely tests come early in vaccine development.)
If this kind of silly stuff went on long enough, there would be genetic selection against people who did not vaccinate their children, i.e., enough would die from prevantable diseases to make a difference in parents in the future.
But it is not likely to go on for even one more generation because medical technology is about to change radically.
Whoah! A vax believer.
RFK Jr spent 14 years pursuing Fauci to get vax safety test data released – FOIs, court orders etc.
Finally got the case through, only for Fauci to state there were no safety tests.
Seems you know nothing about vax development, or the facts that medical records show unvaxxed kids are much healthier than vaxxed kids.
Also, CDC/NIH employees involved in the development of a vax get a significant stipend for life that is transferable to their descendants.
“Independent oversight”? Meh.
“Whoah! A vax believer.”
Yes. I read “Microbe Hunters” in the fourth grade.
“RFK Jr spent 14 years pursuing Fauci ”
RFK made close to $300 k off vaccine litigation.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5328765/measles-outbreak-health-risk
https://torontosun.com/news/world/dr-anthony-fauci-pocketed-2m-during-pandemic-bringing-his-and-wifes-net-worth-to-11m
Chris Martenson posted this comment on his website as a member has been trying to convince Martenson that California has as much oil as Texas. Chris asked for good data and the user according to Chris provided, wrong data.
So Chris just posted the following:
Here’s the world’s oil-producing countries arranged by where they are on their personal trajectory.
The charts encompass 20 years of history from 2004 through 2024.
First, here are “the decliners” each of whom is steadily losing more and more output. Note that they collectively put out ~50% less than they did at the start in 2004.
https://tribe.peakprosperity.com/uploads/db0199/original/3X/1/3/1372514271e05ac6776dd375c061982fcfeefd4c.jpeg
I don’t think we can credibly claim that every one of these countries simply had too much regulatory oversight, or that somehow the O&G industry simply lost interest in looking.
Next is the group of countries that peaked at some point between 2004 and 2024:
https://tribe.peakprosperity.com/uploads/db0199/original/3X/e/2/e208ef64ab48c344f9297d69eeb57fc145e886e1.jpeg
Again, this is happening across so many different countries that the best fit explanation is geology, not ‘will’ or politics or regulation.
Ergo, we have to assume that the same underlying process is operating across all countries, including the relatively few that grew over that same 2004 – 2024 time frame:
https://tribe.peakprosperity.com/uploads/db0199/original/3X/1/d/1d6262318f2ed1bcf72e3bc2b778f2e91146ccd2.jpeg
Of course, if there is some new technology, such as being able to economically extract tight oil from shale, it can shift declining production to rising production.
But barring new technology, this general observation is correct.
Of course, we need world oil supply to rise with population. It is far behind that. Crude oil supply peaked in 2018. On a per capita basis, IIRC, it peaked in 2017. We are past peak crude per capita.
And tight oil requires lots of debt and investment so if the economy flips from either a major recession or depression that will affect those potential investments. Also war would cause problems as well.
It is not a good situation to be in, trying to feed and keep alive 8 billion+ humans with a resource that made it all possible that is declining and not keeping up with the growing population.
Today’s problem with tight oil extraction is partly related to high interest rates. Wells that might appear economic at, say, $70 per barrel oil, need higher prices, if the interest rates rise a few points.
Population is declining fast. The demographic data indicates a dramatic decline is already baked in.
Thus if civilisation holds together, per capita energy could go up, unless e.g. AI gobbles it all up.
I still vote for isolated islands of ‘civilisation’ to continue. amidst an overall decline and disintegration. Timeline unknown.
I’m sure Gail will love this one.
And I’m sure Norman will hate it.
In the womb, the ultimate finite world……
https://x.com/21WIRE/status/1901254646326292531
Everything depends on our perspective. From inside the womb, delivery looks like the end, rather than a beginning.
“Saudi Aramco, IEA Chiefs Clash In Houston Over The Future Of Oil”
Excerpt: the IEA says an oil demand peak doesn’t necessarily mean a rapid plunge in fossil fuel consumption is imminent, adding that it will probably be followed by “an undulating plateau lasting for many years.” Indeed, Fatih Birol reiterated that position in his remarks to the Houston conference, where he said investments in existing oil and gas fields are still needed to counter steep natural declines.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/saudi-aramco-iea-chiefs-clash-houston-over-future-oil
Fatih Birol has been cheerleader for a transition to renewable energy. He doesn’t seem to understand how the system works. According to the article, “Republican lawmakers have threatened to reassess funding for the IEA, accusing it of becoming an “energy transition cheerleader.””
-Aramco has rejected any notion that it should cut fossil fuel output”
So it sounds they have plenty of oil for future demand and they’re not concerned about peak oil supply. And theyre even investing in blue hydrogen to appease the clean energy agenda.
Makes one wonder how serious peak oil is.
they are concerned only with financial stability
if aramco said—”after 2030 oil will decline or collapse”
financial markets would collapse with it.
so its all about maintaining confidence,
I agree with you. No one could tell the truth, or financial markets would collapse.
come and live near me, and get away from it all
https://www.berrimaneaton.co.uk/component/estateagency/33263597
though around here we are very choosy about neighbours
So, you are in the middle of what long, long ago was Mercia? And the very heart of the Industrial Revolution is all around you. Even the names, Coalport, and just down the road, Ironbridge, reek of the dark satanic mills and Isambard Kingdom Brunel—although I know the Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale was designed by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.
That’s a very nice looking home, by the way. I wish I could get my place that well decluttered.
Wow! Fancy homes.
it is lovely isnt it—and you can play trains all day with real trains.
they do that here with most of the redundant country stations, not many as pretty as that one though—a revamped 1860s leftover from the industrial revolution (like me!!!)
Pretty but not enough land.
Sunday night fights in Milan.
Donald Trump would surely talk about that if happened in US, being Milan our little New York.
Two typical streets full of immigrants in Milan at nights, some people are reported in the article (Ghana), but not completely, in Italy newspapers can’t talk too much of foreign people involved in fights, but they can just talk about the problem of security in general.
Video ‘Padova street, Milan’:
https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/25_marzo_17/milano-avvicina-una-ragazza-in-via-filzi-e-il-fidanzato-scatena-la-rissa-calci-all-uomo-anche-quando-e-svenuto-lite-a-sediate-in-cc6140f2-23bf-4f65-9fd5-5e1db6e82xlk.shtml
‘Filzi street, Milan’
https://www.msn.com/it-it/notizie/italia/maxi-risse-in-via-filzi-e-in-via-padova-grave-un-giovane-di-22-anni/ar-AA1B42ev
Fights are a form of showing dominance? A way of young people entertaining themselves, or showing off for potential girl friends?
Reasons for fights or agressions are various.
Specifically in the first case above it was about an approach to a married woman, the other one not clear.
Talking in general, there is very low security in Milan, expecially in periferial areas, but also in the subway and also in the centre at night.
Fights or agressions are manly told on local news, not on national ones.
Fights or aggressions can be for thefts of mobile phones, watches, EV bicycles, rapes of girls walking alone, fights caused by drunk or drug people at night, for futile reasons.
Most of the time are done by first generation immigrants or second generation ones, who are so-called ‘not-integrated in society’ or in milanese slang defined ‘maranza’ (which is slang word composed by the two words ‘Morocco’ and ‘Ranzare’ which is a slang verb meaning to steal).
It is something that cannot be told clearly on TV or in national newspapers, but it is necessary to talk about the problem of safety in general, in order to be ‘politically correct’ on the issue of immigration.
I guess it must be a big problem for police whose members are surely not enough for the problem, they do what they can.
One can find news like that on local news sites.
Here they are some examples:
https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/accoltellato-via-europa-oggi-16-marzo.html
https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/accoltellata-metro-ragazzina-2025.html
https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/stupro-20enne-prostituta-processo.html
I am sure it is frightening for people living in the area.
My understanding is that JDAMs are exclusively delivered by aircraft, so I read this as an admissions that the Ukrainian army is still operating aircraft on the front lines after 3 years of Russia working to stop it.
https://tass.com/defense/1928923
>> Russian air defenses down four JDAM bombs, 141 Ukrainian drones in past day — top brass
Aircraft with no pilots, so drones.
Yes absolutely.
But with pilots, no.
I suggest you to read European newspapers in addition to US, because they are extremely in favour to Ukraine.
Ukraine is magnified and exalted by the European press.
Therefore European newspapers would have never missed to highlight ‘powerful’ Ukranian aircrafts against Russia…
But they don’t do, about aircrafts.
Empty vessels make the most noise .
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/boots-on-ground-theater-conceals?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=159142049&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
” we’re meant to believe the much-ballyhooed “30-day ceasefire” is supposed to be some kind of good-faith purity test for Russia to ‘prove’ its commitment to ending the conflict. In actuality, it seems to be a trick designed to ram through European troops to immediately secure Ukraine’s most sensitive zones, and dissuade Russia from further advancement.”
Good luck with this one!
The Russian article talks about Ukrainian loss of servicemen, (“up to 240”), but don’t seem to mention their own. I would presume they would be low, but the article doesn’t seem to say.
Journalist David Samuels wrote a very long article called,
How Barack Obama Built an Omnipotent Thought-Machine, and How It Was Destroyed
The original is found here:
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
Zerohedge shows it here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-barack-obama-built-omnipotent-thought-control-machine-and-how-it-was-destroyed
Samuels explains how Obama [and the Democratic Party] could control the narrative on a whole lot of stories.
Some excerpts:
The article claims that this approach was used on a whole lot of different stories, including the Covid story. The echo chamber of the traditional press reinforced the story people were supposed to believe.
Samuels says:
“It took three powerful men, each of whom had the advantage of operating entirely in public, and with massive and obvious real-world consequences, to rupture the apparatus of false consciousness that Obama built. ”
These were Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
All TV news in Italy are talking about the next coalition of the willing in Ukraine.
But we must remember that the risk of this possible coalition in Ukraine was basically the reason that caused Russia to start the war in Ukraine…
In other words, the risk of foreign troops of various Nato origins in the sorroundings of its borders on the east side.
And we must analyze that the above is happening while US seems to be discussing its military pull off from Ukraine.
At this point, I would like to underline: ‘it seems to be discussing’.
My question to you:
– is this US-Russia peace discussion just a sharade by US ?
– is US just making a trick to Russia?
Because what UK, France, Poland, Germany etc. are doing seems to have NO sense in relation to US-Russia so-called peace talks.
Here it is just an example of what is circulating from this Saturday:
“Kiev’s allies discuss sending peacekeepers to Ukraine – Sunday Times”
“British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a conference with the countries of the “coalition of the willing” announced plans to send a peacekeeping contingent of “more than 10 thousand troops” to Ukraine. This was reported by the Sunday Times newspaper.
According to the newspaper, Keir Starmer has secured the support of a “significantly larger number” of countries ready to send ground troops to Ukraine after the settlement of the armed conflict.
“This will be a substantial force, with a significant number of countries contributing to its formation. Many more countries will contribute in other ways,” the Sunday Times quoted the source as saying.
One of the newspaper’s sources said that about 35 countries have agreed to provide weapons, logistical and intelligence support to Ukraine.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the European countries that would agree to send troops to Ukraine could do so without Russia’s consent.”
https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/03/16/1150096.html
I Like the idea of Chinese peace keepers in Ukraine.
I too am confused. I am sure the deep state, the Zionists in DC, will stab Putin in the back yet again. On the other hand I believe Trump would be happy to have peace with Russia.
I would like to see the US and Russia ally together against Bolsheviks, Zionists, Deepstate, the 3000 year old death cult.
>> One of the newspaper’s sources said that about 35 countries have agreed to provide weapons, logistical and intelligence support to Ukraine.
That doesn’t sound like troops. They’ve already been providing weapons, logistics, and intelligence. The real question is who is willing and able to send the troops?
At some point very soon (within a decade if IC continues), robots will do most of the fighting and it will be about who has the industrial capacity and software/AI.
Absolutely, it will be AI/robot warfare. Will the rich be willing to give up their lifestyle to fund the war effort?
Nukes are still in play. Destroying the enemies industrial base is critical.
It may be, but in the future.
Now we are still in this very problematic situation, with Ukraine not showing any attitude requested by Russia, which caused the beginning of the fight, after many years spent by Ukraine to be armed against Russia.
It seems that we are at the initial point.
So, I don’t see any peace agreement in the short term.
“Volodymyr Zelensky reveals new Ukrainian missile capable of hitting Moscow is ready to fire
Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv has had secured “significant results” on its missile programme aimed at providing its own security from Vladimir Putin’s threat”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-zelensky-reveals-new-ukrainian-34868105
Ukraine can’t do anything on its own. If they are now producing missiles, that means US/UK involvement and Russia may have to nuke them to show they mean business or launch an all-out first strike. Russia cannot allow Moscow being hit with missiles to be normalized, for many reasons, but most of all because that could enable a decapitation strike by the West.
That was specifically in response to:
>> Volodymyr Zelensky reveals new Ukrainian missile capable of hitting Moscow is ready to fire
USA is not a food superpower anymore .
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1901300223055425577/photo/1
This is a very important point. The US was exporting a lot of food, but now we are importing more than we are exporting. Some of the difference is more imported beef.
Misleading.
Price, NOT volume. Due to record high prices for many imported commodities.
USA produces 70% of the world’s grains. Which make (wheat) aka the master crop.
And due to climate change Illionois came within a few weeks of having two harvest seasons just a few years ago. And likely will be able to within a decade. Along with Iowa and Indiana.
Get a life and stop trying to kick us while were down. (weak)
And due to climate change Illinois came within a few weeks of having two harvest seasons just a few years ago. And likely will be able to within a decade. Along with Iowa and Indiana.
I think that’s highly doubtful. If Valentina is correct in her calculations, the Earth is heading for a cooler 2030s caused by a grand solar minimum. But if OFW is still running in 2035, we can have a good laugh about this prediction, whatever way it goes.
I think her argument is compelling. Recent history records colder periods of weather with overwhelming snow falls. To dismiss it, and suggest that human caused climate change will trump it…. is precisely the kind of myopia which seems to keep on getting us into predicaments.
Is much as I despise the WEF, I have to wonder if they have foresight, buy into this sort of thing, not mention a word about it, and then ready things like Agenda 2030.
” argument is compelling”
I don’t think any predictions mean much. There is from historical records a fraction of a percent per year of a volcanic eruption that would cause famine. Barring that, the CO2 buildup is likely to make this the hottest year on record. But even if a million people in the US die from heat this summer, there isn’t anything we could do that would make any difference in the short term.
You’ve just made my point. As far as I can tell, this is the only argument against a sudden cooling off. To just “presume” there is nothing to worry about… is the best way to just kiss it all goodbye.
Do weather or climate cycles happen? Yup. Do we prepare for rapid change. Nope. Have we been extraordinarily lucky with the world being really easy to live in over the last 100 years, vs the previous 100? Maybe?
Many are apparently not following this possible trend. It might be a good time to read a few articles by Zharkova… or listen to her recent interviews.
When people look back to 1991, I suppose they remember events that were dear to them. Such as whether their team came top of the league, or their working situation, or how well their kids were doing in school. The politically inclined may remember “Operation Desert Storm,” when “The Coalition of the Willing” liberated Kuwait, culminating in the Iraqi forces’ withdrawal and Kuwait’s independence being restored by February 28, 1991. For those of us in Japan, the “bubble economy” was bursting, and the long recession and “lost decades” were beginning. While in the UK, Margaret Thatcher gave that post-resignation interview in which “The Iron Lady” broke down in tears on camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9H5nGDVfQ8
But geologically, the really big event of 1991 was the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. To quote Wikipedia:
[The eruption], in the Philippines’ Luzon Volcanic Arc was the second-largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, behind only the 1912 eruption of Novarupta in Alaska. Eruptive activity began on April 2 as a series of phreatic explosions from a fissure that opened on the north side of Mount Pinatubo. Seismographs were set up and began monitoring the volcano for earthquakes. In late May, the number of seismic events under the volcano fluctuated from day-to-day. Beginning June 6, a swarm of progressively shallower earthquakes accompanied by inflationary tilt on the upper east flank of the mountain, culminated in the extrusion of a small lava dome.
On June 12, the volcano’s first spectacular eruption sent an ash column 19 km (12 mi) into the atmosphere. Additional explosions occurred overnight and the morning of June 13. Seismic activity during this period became intense. When even more highly gas-charged magma reached Pinatubo’s surface on June 15, the volcano exploded, sending an ash cloud 40 km (25 mi) into the atmosphere. Volcanic ash and pumice blanketed the countryside. Huge pyroclastic flows roared down the flanks of Pinatubo, filling once-deep valleys with fresh volcanic deposits as much as 200 m (660 ft) thick. The eruption removed so much magma and rock from beneath the volcano that the summit collapsed to form a small caldera 2.5 km (1.6 mi) across.
Fine ash from the eruption fell as far away as the Indian Ocean and satellites tracked the ash cloud as it traveled several times around the globe. At least 16 commercial jets inadvertently flew through the drifting ash cloud, sustaining about $100 million in damage. With the ashfall came darkness and the sounds of lahars rumbling down nearby river valleys. Several smaller lahars washed through the Clark Air Base, flowing across the base in enormously powerful sheets, slamming into buildings and scattering cars. Nearly every bridge within 30 km (19 mi) of Mount Pinatubo was destroyed. Several lowland towns were flooded or partially buried in mud. More than 840 people were killed from the collapse of roofs under wet heavy ash and several more were injured.
Rain continued to create hazards over the next several years, as the volcanic deposits were remobilized into secondary mudflows. Damage to bridges, irrigation-canal systems, roads, cropland, and urban areas occurred in the wake of each significant rainfall. Many more people were affected for much longer by rain-induced lahars than by the eruption itself.
So, it was a pretty big bang! And it affected weather (and I suppose climate) on a global basis for the next two or three years, causing measurable cooling.
As a result of the volcano-induced atmospheric cooling, here in Japan, we experienced a historically cool summer accompanied by a poor rice harvest in 1993, estimated at around 8.5 million tons, significantly below the 10.57 million tons harvested in 1992, leading to a general shortage and even imports of one- or two-year-old Thai rice, which turned out to be close to universally unpopular with Japanese diners who were not used to Indica rice as a staple.
These days, while most Japanese people may have forgotten all about Pinatubo, they clearly recall the rice shortage of 1993. And for all the talk of manmade climate change, Pinatubo has had a much bigger impact on Japanese agriculture than any other “climatic” or meteorologic event in living memory.
Tim
Lil ice age coming. LOL
“They muddy the waters to make it seem deep”
– Nietzsche
“Mind that bus!”
“What bus?”
SPLAT!
“Duck!”
“But those are pigeons?”
BONG!
—Bertrand Russell
But prices do make a difference. That is what we are able to buy, and what we are able to sell to customers elsewhere.
If our prices are high, overseas buyers will not buy our crops. A high dollar becomes a problem.
USA does not produce 70% of the world grains . Number 5 in wheat after China,EU, Russia and India .
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/19c976p/the_eu_has_been_the_2nd_biggest_wheat_exporter/#lightbox
N. America (USA Canada) produces 70% of the world’s grains. That’s why it’s called the “Breadbasket” of the world.
Dumbo.
Only the facts Sherlock . Here is total grains production earlier I had posted total wheat production .
https://essfeed.com/the-worlds-largest-grain-producers-feeding-a-growing-population/
Harold Hamm says Shale needs to be at $80 to cover costs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-13/wildcatter-hamm-says-shale-needs-80-oil-to-cover-costly-fields
I think this needs to be examined more. I don’t understand why they are even drilling right now. Wages around the world have gone up so of course the cost of recovery is going up. How are oil companies still reporting profit?
If a company does little new drilling, profits can look good. To keep oil production up, there needs to be a lot of work on new fields, in advance of the time the oil comes out. If this stops, oil supply starts falling.
This article makes an important point:
“Hamm, 79, was one of the president’s biggest financial backers in last year’s election.”
If Hamm says oil prices need to be higher, it is hard for Trump to tell the public that he is lowering them.
How apartments get smaller
Developers are downsizing apartments. Otherwise they would be so expensive that nobody would buy them
Clients choose three small rooms rather than two bigger ones.
https://bratislava.sme.sk/c/23461085/bratislava-byty-nehnutelnosti-vymera.html?ref=njct
“Twenty years ago, the average apartment in Bratislava’s new buildings had about 76 square metres, today it is only about 52.”
Shrink-flation. It’s also a thing in the US where it cost slightly more at the supermarket for a lot less quantity. Tiny houses are also a thing in the US where you can buy a 250-350 sq ft home for approx $35,000. Of course there are delivery and setup fees if you can build it yourself.
tl;dr The rich get richer at the behest of the poor and middle class.
A curious phenomenon which I do not understand nor am capable of making any predictions, but I have seen yet another storage facility being built in my town. Who is renting these? Old boomers who just can’t let go of their stuff and need a place to put it as they downsize, or younger people who have no steady job and have to be able to move on short notice, especially if they can’t afford a house? The place I rented in Ashville, NC was always full, even as the rent climbed from @$180 in 2017 to $285 by 2021 for a 10 ‘ by 26’ climate controlled space when I left. The profit margin must be outrageous. Am I wrong?
New homes built in the US are smaller. It is not clear that they are being built as well either. Anything to keep costs down.
When the apartments get smaller, they are more and more dependent on technical measures for ventilation and heat recovery.
Basically, you can have more people in smaller rooms, but the rate of the ventilation and heat recovery must be sufficient.
However, the food prices went up, so, anyway, there is less food and less waste from food consumption.
Smaller people, smaller apartments.
Worse nutrition, more susceptibility to diseases.
Probably more conflict among the people trying to live in the small spaces, too.
Here’s a 30-minute MAHA interview in which Del Bigtree talks to Marla Marples, former wife of Donald Trump and good friend of Bobby Kennedy Jr., about how she helped bring them together and how they have both been under the same kind of vicious attacks, how they both care so much for the country, how they have both learned so much from each other, and how they are dedicated to making America health again, never mind great.
Marla also touches on her concerns about air and water pollution, geoengineering, chemicals in food, and how we have to learn to take care of our own health.
As one commenter observes, “Trump’s ability to get his ex not to act like B—–H, is the biggest accomplishment of any man.”
Is this subject relevant to this blog, or to finite world issues in general? You can make up your own minds. I would contend, “You betcha!” Because making people healthier can go a long way towards making their world larger, brighter, and more fulfilling. As Katherine Mansfield wrote, “Healthy people have a great many desires, but the sick have only one.”
https://rumble.com/v6q8s7i-del-bigtree-interviews-donald-trumps-ex-wife-marla-maples-maha-rfk-jr.-the-.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
“..she helped bring them together and how they have both been under the same kind of vicious attacks, how they both care so much for the country..”
Thanks for sharing. It’s relevant to me. Take the average person with everyday problems and character defects then subject them to coordinated attacks on their family, business associates and livelihood. Say that some of the attackers are former supporters who promoted your ideas then turned on you when you changed direction. While I do believe that this guy a Kayfabe heel playing the Degrowth Troll he’s behaving exactly like I did when I woke up and wanted to find out the “who, how and why” of the attacks.