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History back to 1820 gives hints regarding what may follow
With the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, many expect oil prices to spike and stay high. Instead, they have barely budged. The latest spike in prices is a mini spike. If these oil prices were adjusted for inflation, the spikes in the past would appear even higher.
This is not a new problem. Looking at energy data going back to 1820, low demand (affordability) has repeatedly produced financial crashes, wars, and collapses. We appear to be entering another such period.
In this post, I examine differences in how the economy behaves, comparing two different types of periods: those with low energy affordability (“low demand”) and those with high energy affordably (“high demand”). I also offer my view on what this analysis suggests may be ahead for the world economy.
[1] How high demand differs from low demand
High demand looks like a situation in which, each year, an increasing number of people can afford cars and the fuel that they require. With high demand, the number of new cars sold each year tends to rise. Young people are eager to buy homes because they find homes affordable. They find their incomes relatively higher than their parents’ were at their age. Countries around the world find it easy to industrialize. This allows their citizens to have better lifestyles. As we will see later in this post, the periods of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were periods of high growth in demand for oil products.
What we have now is the opposite: too many young people who cannot find jobs that pay well, even with advanced degrees. They cannot afford to go on a vacation or buy a new car. Record numbers live with their parents after they finish their schooling. They spend their spare time playing video games, rather than socializing with their friends.
The number of cars sold worldwide hit a peak in 2017, indicating indirectly that people are getting poorer. If people are not buying as many cars, demand for oil tends to fall, especially if more of the cars that are sold are electric.
Building new homes also takes oil. According to the US Census Bureau, the number of US new homes sold in the US hit a record of 1,283,000 in 2005. In 2025, the number of US new homes sold amounted to only 678,000, or about 53% of the peak amount. The huge drop in new home construction is a sign that people, quite often young people, are not as well off financially as they were years ago. They cannot afford to buy a new (or even a used) home anymore.
One study based on income tax data revealed that between 1948 and 1970, US incomes tended to rise faster than inflation. Between 1968 and 1983, the incomes of both the top 10% and the lower 90% rose as fast as inflation. However, between 1983 and 2012, the top 10% received far greater increases than the bottom 90% (Figure 2).
If workers in the bottom 90% of the distribution are not doing well, it is difficult to keep prices of commodities as high as those producing the commodities would prefer. Purchases of commodities, including food, and fuel for vehicles, do not rise proportionately with huge incomes. Elon Musk and other very high-income individuals do not spend all day eating or driving their vehicles. The bottom 90% must prosper for demand (affordability) of oil and other commodities to stay high.
[2] What experience with high and low growth in energy supplies since 1820 teaches us.
Several years ago, I prepared an analysis of how the world economy behaved over the long term, over the period from 1820 to 2017. I have recently updated this study. I found that the economy behaved quite well in times of high energy consumption growth. In times of low energy consumption growth, there seemed to be many adverse events, such as financial crashes, wars, and government collapses.
I am afraid that with today’s oil and debt problems, we are headed into a pattern of low energy consumption growth, or even energy consumption contraction. If this is the case, we should expect outcomes at least as undesirable those experienced during past periods of low energy consumption growth in the past.
(a) Methodology
I first prepared a new data set by combining two data sets, the earlier of which was available only every 10 years, with more recent data available more frequently. The energy quantities reported were rising rapidly. To analyze how fast they were rising, I first computed the average annual increase percentage for each 10-year period, as shown on Figure 3.
For example, the period from 1961 to 1970 (shown as the 1970 bar) had a very high annual rate of growth rate for energy consumption. This was the period when many of the interstate highways in the US were opened and many pipelines were added.
On Figure 4, I divided the bars shown on Figure 3 into two parts.
On Figure 5, the blue portions of the bars represent the average annual increase in population over the 10-year period. The red portion of the bar is computed by subtraction from the total. It is the amount that seems to be left over for a rising standard of living. Having a tall red portion of the bar would be very good; having little or no red bar left would represent a problem. Note that in two periods (the one ended 1860 and the one ended 2000), the amount left over for an increase in living standards was negative.
(b) Good things happened in years with very high growth in “Living Standards”
Figure 5 shows the information on Figure 4 as an area chart.
While I don’t show oil prices on Figure 5, those who are familiar with oil prices will remember that high oil prices were a feature of the 1973 to 1981 period. Also, as China began its growth period, another spike in oil prices took place. High growth in energy supplies and high oil prices seem to go together. High demand from a growing economy tends to hold prices up.
The label “China” refers to the rapid growth that took place in the decade after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. This was mostly powered by China’s huge growth in coal supply between 2002 and 2011 (Figure 6).
China and the world experienced another spurt of increased coal production starting in 2022, when coal prices temporarily spiked to a high level, perhaps indirectly related to the conflict in Ukraine. But coal prices have gradually come back down, resulting in flat world growth in coal production since 2023, and a plateau in China’s coal production growth.
(c) Troubled Periods took place when the growth in “Living Standards” was low or negative
Figure 7 labels three periods with very severe dips in “Living Standards.”
The First Troubled Period started with the Panic of 1857, which some consider to be a cause of the US Civil War. According to this view, the collapse was related to an over-expansion of the US economy, followed by the collapse of the debt bubble that had allowed this expansion to occur. Financial problems affected both the North and the South.
As I see the situation, one part of this financial problem was the declining profitability of slave labor. In the US South, the labor of slaves was the main source of energy used to operate plantations. An underlying issue was that the soil had gradually become depleted because of many years of growing of cotton and tobacco. These slaves had been purchased with debt; this debt could not be repaid with interest unless the income of the plantations was sufficiently high. However, poor harvests were not offset by sufficiently higher prices, which led to financial problems for plantation owners.
There may also have been an issue that the population, in general, was becoming poorer, essentially because of overpopulation. I say this because studies show that the height of army recruits had fallen, suggesting poorer nutrition. Sanitation had recently been improved, allowing a larger share of babies to survive to maturity. At the same time, immigration into the US continued. With overpopulation, it was difficult to keep incomes up. If farms were divided among many sons, farm sizes would tend to become smaller, leading to lower farm incomes. There would also be greater competition for factory jobs, tending to hold wages down.
Of course, when the Confederacy lost the war, the Confederate Dollar became worthless. For some, this added another financial crisis.
The Second Troubled Period was 1920 to 1940. This is a notoriously bad period, with the Great Depression and World War II included. Arguably, World War I should also be included. Commodity prices of all kinds fell very low. Tariffs were added in the 1920s. The problems seem to have arisen at the time Peak Coal hit–prices could not rise high enough to cover the cost of extracting coal from narrower and deeper seams. In my view, World War I began at the time of Peak Coal in the UK, and World War II took place at the time of Peak Hard Coal in Germany.
With depletion, the cost of extracting coal kept rising, but the sales price of coal would not rise to compensate for the higher extraction costs. Instead, wages of miners were increasingly squeezed. Strikes and lockouts became common. Taking a job as a soldier seemed like a reasonable alternative.
There were many events from this period that most people would like to forget, including the currency hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic between 1921 and 1923 and the Holocaust from 1933 and 1945. Country lines were redrawn. Some countries disappeared, and new ones were added. Those holding currencies of countries that disappeared were likely left without funds.
The Third Troubled Period was 1990 to 2000.
A major event of the Third Troubled Period was the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, leaving the 15 republics as independent states. The collapse also indirectly affected Cuba, North Korea, and some countries in Eastern Europe that were not part of the 15 independent states. With this change, the demand for fuel of all kinds fell in the countries affected. Factories were closed in many areas, including Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union.
The pullback in demand from the collapse of the Soviet Union helped hold oil prices down in the 1991 to 2001 period. Oil prices had previously been brought down by the spike in interest rates in the 1980-1981 period. In my opinion, these low oil prices played a major part in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, as an oil exporter, needed higher oil prices to invest in developing new fields. In my opinion, the impact of the collapse of the government of the Soviet Union kept world demand (and oil prices) low during the 1991 to 2000 period.
The collapse of the Japanese real estate bubble also took place in this period, as did the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Low growth in the world economy, indirectly related to the collapse of the Soviet Union, may have played a role in these financial events.
[3] The world’s self-organizing and self-healing economy
From a physics perspective, all economies are dissipative structures. Other examples of dissipative structures include ecosystems in general, all plants and animals, including humans, and hurricanes. One characteristic of dissipative structures is that, at some point in their lives, they tend to grow. Another is that if there is an injury, within a range, the systems tend to be self-healing. For example, a cut on a person’s arm will tend to heal; a hurricane going over land will temporarily lose much of its force, but it may increase in force again if it returns over warm water.
Another characteristic of dissipative structures is that they are dependent on having a sufficient energy supply of the right kinds to continue their existence. For humans, the energy supply is food; for an economy, it is a combination of many kinds of energy needed to match the built infrastructure of the economy.
All dissipative structures have finite lifetimes. Ecosystems often come to an end through fires. Humans generally do not live more than 80 or 100 years. Economies also tend to come to an end, either by losing a war or by the collapse of a central government, related to debt problems. The collapse of the Soviet Union involved a debt problem, among other issues. Figure 9 shows the huge drop in demand for energy of all types as its central government collapsed.
There is more stability of dissipative structures than a person might expect. Economists talk about an Invisible Hand being involved. Researchers examining dissipative structures talk about them being “self-organizing.” For example, if a fire or a change in climate causes a forest to collapse, it does not take many years for the forest to refill with suitable plants and animals for the somewhat changed situation. If a business or government fails, new, somewhat different businesses or governments are likely to take their place.
I would argue that if the Universe is constantly expanding (so it is an “open system,” rather than a “closed system”), what appear to be self-organizing systems may, in fact, be God-organized systems. In other words, instead of creation being a one-time event in the distant past, some type of literal higher power may be involved in a way that makes creation more or less an ongoing event. A person might wonder with the strange confluence of recent events, including the strange weather patterns associated with El Nino, whether today’s humans are being warned that a major change in economies will take place soon.
[4] What kinds of things may happen in the near future?
(a) Current disturbances in the Middle East and elsewhere are raising long-distance shipping costs for both food and oil. (See this video.) Normally, the price of food and oil must be high enough to satisfy producers and at the same time be low enough to satisfy customers. But now a new layer of costs has been added: the cost of shipping longer routes.
I would argue that because of the problem with low demand (affordability) by consumers, shipping costs must be paid almost entirely through a reduced net oil price available to oil producers and reduced net food prices available to farmers. The amount that consumers can afford doesn’t increase because of higher transportation costs.
(b) Furthermore, the use of extra oil for transportation of oil and food will tend to push the overall economy toward contraction because there will be less oil available for other uses, such as to power agricultural machinery and jet airplanes. If the overall economy begins to contract, we can expect dips in oil prices similar to those in 2008 and 2020 (Figure 1). But if recession persists, low oil prices will not reverse themselves as quickly as they did earlier.
(c) I expect home and farm prices will tend to fall around the world. This is related to the low level of demand (affordability problem) in the US and elsewhere. Figure 11, showing median US asking prices for homes, suggests that home prices have been barely holding their own for quite a while. A decrease would not be surprising with all the pressure the economy is now encountering.
Farm prices are likely to be under pressure as well, because of the difficulty farmers are having obtaining adequate income from their farms. If farm and home prices fall, there is a substantial chance that the debt bubble holding up these prices will collapse.
(d) There are many other debt bubbles that seem to be waiting to collapse. Some of the debt relating to AI seems to be in a bubble. There is considerable commercial real estate whose value seems to be being held up by “extend and pretend” loans. Collapsing debt bubbles tend to lead to collapsing banks. They also tend to lead to banks less willing to make new loans. Layoffs seem likely. All these things point to a major recession ahead, with less buying power for the population.
(f) Collapses of some top levels of government, similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, may be ahead. Such collapses can greatly reduce world energy consumption, including oil, with relatively little violence.
[5] How the nature of the economy may help over the long term
As noted previously, economies seem to have self-healing properties. Troubled periods can last for many years, but there seems to be a substantial chance that a way out will eventually be found.
If a government fails because of excessive debt, a new government (or governments) is likely to take its place. The new government will likely have fewer employees and offer fewer services to citizens. Pensions will likely need to be reduced or eliminated completely.
Even if governments fail, or national boundaries are redrawn, I expect that some businesses will continue operations. Such a situation will take place even if a new currency needs to be created to make this happen. Even in a troubled period, new businesses will start operations. Some of these businesses will make use of recycled materials available from failing businesses.
According to the Maximum Power Principle, if there are resources available that can easily be used, somehow, some organization will develop a way to use them. Over the long term, the economy will likely re-organize itself in a way that is more complex and more sparing in energy use. If energy use is efficient enough, it seems likely that a higher price for that energy supply could be made affordable to consumers. But, such a transition may take many years, if it is possible at all.
In this podcast between Mario Nawfal and Prof Robert Pape it’s something you don’t realize until you see it in a chart. Prof Pape goes to show in one of his slides around the 6 min mark, the influence and power Iran has gained since the start of the war. He shows the price of oil taking an upward slope as Iran gained more confidence and power since the war started 6 months ago.
At least a million probably two. So not going to happen.
You can’t eat influence. Or spend it.
Probably 30 months Iran has to hold out and not do anything stupid. They have diesel for their tractors.
Trump might bomb their infrastructure in his last week just out of spite. He’s not leaving without a win. And the win comes only one way now. South passage open. That’s all they have to do.
with the russian bumper crop i think iran and china are first in line for import rights. so more needs to be done.
Prof. Pape points out that Trump is no longer able to talk down the price of oil. It just goes up, and up, and up. This has been going on for several weeks now. Trump is losing his influence (or perhaps enough people realize that the US is running out of ammunition and also SPR oil to release).
And the title of this video is The US can’t win this war without one million troops. This implies that a ground war is needed. The US definitely does not have 1,000,000 trained troops.
Even a casual analysis yielded the conclusion that Iran was no Syria no Libya where Popes Theorums are less solid. Trump was told Iran was a brick house. He disregarded those words. Now the last people who voiced them have resigned . So this is either a engineered takedown of the world as we know it or the blunder of a narcissist.
https://youtu.be/rrBx6mAWYPU?si=fuUhEnqIJMEt-9Ma
I do not believe that the President of the day is allowed the slightest influence on major policy decisions.
Must we, therefore, conclude that this was calculated to cause maximum disruption to the global system, the US running headlong into the brick wall that is Iran?
And thus not a ‘blunder’ at all.
Winning the war now is opening the south passage. That doesn’t take a million troops. All Iran has to do is sit tight for 30 months and let stagflation do its thing. Trump will be gone. The incoming administration hostile to all things Trump including the blunder (??) of the millennium. The job will be done in 30 months. There will be no going back. Iran should chill and let Trump direct his ire on his political adversaries who are about to come to power. They can be the focus of his truth social posts.
Why won’t Trump get impeached? Because the hand wants this 30 months of doom.
This is super long but definitely worth a listen. I love to hear different perspectives being debated particularly between Prof Pape and Jiang. It seems as if Prof Pape’s angle of Iran’s ultimate goal has shifted from being a regional Hegemon in the Middle East to just the Persian Gulf as you’ve got contenders now appearing in the vacuum like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, etc. One of the guest was talking about how Israel is terrified of Turkey as Israel has been wanting to become the hegemon of the Middle East for a while now. What was confusing about Jiang’s perspective was that he said that Israel needed the US out of the Middle East to achieve its goal which makes no sense. The other guest (can’t remember name) was saying that the US wants out of the position of global hegemon, however, Jiang added that as the USA leaves, they want to use their allies to keep the order such as Japan in Asia, Germany (or Poland) in Europe, and Israel in the Middle East, etc. This is based on my memory from a few days ago so please correct me if I heard any of this wrong. Its all still confusing and foggy. Also Jiang and Prof Pape agreed on the US goals of hegemony in the Americas which left the podcaster shocked.
Eye for a eye
Tanker for a tanker
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/02/iran-tankers-hormuz-attacks-oil
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XnIigrlgW8E&pp=ygUOSXJhbmlhbiB0YW5rZXI%3D
Iran says if our oil doesn’t move no one’s oil moves.
What about Yanbu?
What about Fujairah?
Now your two tankers down.
Tanker for tanker is not going to be good
But if you hit Yanbu your export facilities get hit.
But they are moving oil. 25 percent of before but moving doggies.
Iran is not.
But if you even it up that’s the end.
Everything goes.
Nothing leaves the gulf for a decade at least.
Or you can fold
And sell into demand destruction for 40.
Saving the western economies out of the graciousness of your heart
Iran has way too many of the good cards to play in this war.
Everyone has aces and twos. Twos are cheap to play. Aces real expensive.
With 60 days to the US midterms, $240/bbl diesel, $4.10/g gasoline, and the US 10 year at 4.75%, the pressure on the US President will only get greater in the days ahead to “do anything” or “say anything” to get the oil price down..
20 million barrels is flowing . What me worry ?— Alfred Neuman at MAD magazine .
https://x.com/ericnuttall/status/2095496154964242433/photo/1
30 months . You watch. If Iran keeps their head it will take 30 months. And he will leave with a story just like he has a story now. Because this is all engineered. The whole thing is a story and after 30 months the Trump’s fault story starts. That will last the rest of our lives. after 30 months we will have a feel for what the world is shaping up to be. Thats not even a short car loan. But this 30 will define the world.
TALES FROM SLOVAKIA
Once more we weave our way through a web of weird and wonderful Slovak connections. First off, a U.S.-Slovak connection. Did you know that Andy Warhol’s parents were Rusyn emigrants from Mikó, Austria-Hungary, which is now Miková in northeast Slovakia? Rusyns, they are, not Russians. We’ve already heard of those Rusyns, haven’t we, Tim?
Warhol is thought to have been autistic and dyslexic. He became famous for producing paintings of cans of Campbell’s soup, over and over again. Repetitive behaviors are a core diagnostic feature of autism spectrum disorder. The current Slovak alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet but with 46 letters, including four diacritics, making it the longest Slavic and European alphabet. Sadly, the longer the alphabet, the more likely its users are to become dyslexic.
Dyslexic Slovaks often end up drunk on their way home from the pub at night. Their part of Europe can be a death trap for dyslexics. Slovakia is situated close to Slovenia and also Slavonia (a region of Croatia), and often a confused and drunken dyslexic Slovak mistakenly takes the plane to one of those two places, thinking they are going home. Once in Slavonia, some get even more confused and take the plane to Amazonia, never to be heard of again. I expect they are considered a delicacy over there, though, you know. 🙁
Repetitive behaviors are a core diagnostic feature of autism spectrum disorder.
Who’s been repetitively posting Slovakian-related news and information?
That would be you, me, and MG. I guess we’re all on the spectrum, 🙂
Now you’ve outed Andy Warhol as of Rusyn descent, I guess we can throw out Kulm’s claim that people from east of the Elbe never made any significant contribution to Western civilization. I mean, where would we be without Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans, let alone his Marylin Monroes. Evises, and Jackie Kennedys?
Official biographies notwithstanding, there is a very plausible theory that Warhol was originally the legendary “5th Beatle”, Stuart Sutcliffe.
He has a Wikipedia entry, which begins:
Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a British painter and musician, best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name “Beetles” [sic], as they both liked Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination with group names with double meanings (as Crickets, for example, the word referring to both an insect and a sport), so Lennon then came up with “The Beatles”, from the word beat (though Lennon’s original spelling was “Beatals”[1]). As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several who are sometimes referred to as the “Fifth Beatle”.
…
The cause of [Sutcliffe’s] death was a cerebral haemorrhage, specifically a ruptured aneurysm[65][66] resulting in cerebral paralysis due to severe bleeding into the right ventricle of the brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Sutcliffe
Died in 62, aged 21!
Moving onto Andy Warhol’s Wikipedia entry, we find:
Andy Warhol; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist and filmmaker. Widely regarded as the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century, Warhol’s practice spanned various media, including painting, filmmaking, photography, publishing, and performance art. A leading figure in the Pop art movement, his work explores the relationship between advertising, consumerism, mass media, and celebrity culture. His embrace of mechanical reproduction challenged traditional boundaries between high and low culture. He is also credited with popularizing the expression “15 minutes of fame.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol
“Widely regarded as the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century…” You’ve got to laugh, encha? Still, in the second half of the 20th century, he didn’t have much competition. Personally, I would give my vote to Mark Rothko.
What if Sutcliffe didn’t die, but instead moved to groovy-funky New York and adopted the persona of Warhol?
The discrepancy in Sutcliffe’s and Warhol’s ages is 12 years, which is not insurmountable. Both men were artists!! And Warhol only came to prominence in 1962, the year Sutcliffe died. And they were never seen together in the same place!!
On the other hand, Warhol’s pre-fame history is well-documented, from his childhood and education to his early days as a photographer and window dresser and magazine contributor. This, if authentic, would debunk the Warhol was Sutcliffe theory. Hence, Warhol’s pre-fame history must be as fake as his art.
Mark Tokarski lays out the case for the two dudes being one and the same, including with photographic “face chops.”
As Johnnie Cochran would have said,
if the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and jawline fit,
you must admit!
https://pieceofmindful.com/2026/02/25/stu-sutcliffeandy-warhol-reviewed/
“Who’s been repetitively posting Slovakian-related news and information? That would be you, me, and MG. I guess we’re all on the spectrum”
Yes, and then there are all your links to cheesy-listening music on YouTube, Tim. 😉 But I do enjoy your other stuff. 🙂
Right! You asked for this!
Oh thanks, Tim. 😜 What can I say? Easy-cheesy, Japan-eazy!
It just so happens that I hate the taste of cheese. I just can’t bear having cheese in my mouth. Same for olives, and salami. The only cheese I would ever eat is Swiss cheese, and even then only the holes.
I guess this calls for a cheesy joke. In January 1967 I was watching the evening news on TV with my dad. On came the news of Donald Campbell, who had died during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England. “Campbell’s in the soup!” I quipped to my dad. I was nine years old at the time. My dad’s jaw dropped. “THAT’S not very nice!” he told me. When I was an adult, he would occasionally remind me with a chuckle of my childhood pun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_jfHvcAXRY
My tribute to the late Mr. Campbell – speed king!
TALES FROM SLOVAKIA
Did you know that Slovakia is the only country in the known universe that has never had any of its citizens exterminated by Daleks? Here’s why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYfHiSD8Pw
Dalek Land Speed Record
It always depends on your optics, and I understand the tongue in cheek musings, but evidently Slovenia has been at some point in history positioned ~diagonally at one opposite corner ( Adriatic / ClubMed ) of the empire across to yet another extremity: Carpathian mountain range of Slovakia in the east. In numbers the road or air travel distance ~700km.
That’s alike ( conceptually ) saying, well after-all: Florida southern beeches are not that far off from Billy-boy Gates’ home-town, don’t you know ?
__
PS recent Slovakian-angle discussions tend to sharpen the mind! While AI helped only a little bit in producing ( and approving ) this message..
“In numbers the road or air travel distance ~700km.”
But distance is relative, as Einstein said. And I can skip what distance in seconds while in astral projection mode.
Remind me which landlocked country, you come from, Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytzDveQqqpI
Oil, Yields Surge Again: Expect Shortages, ‘Much, Much Higher’ Prices Next | Josh Young (28:41)
81,572 views Sep 1, 2026
Josh Young, CIO and Founder of Bison Interests, discusses rising oil prices, escalating Iran tensions, tightening global energy supplies, refining pressures, and the broader implications for inflation, consumers, and financial markets.
I am guessing that the oil prices don’t need to go up much more before at least short term interest rates start going up. The combination will push the US economy even more toward recession than it is now.
If long term interest rates go up, I expect we will see an economic crash. Even if they don’t, we may see a crash.
Crude oil exports via the Strait of Hormuz per our tracking:
– Pre-conflict era (2026-01-01 to 2026-02-28): 16.63 Mbpd
– Pre-US blockade conflict era (2026-02-28 to 2026-04-13): 3.45 Mbpd
– First US blockade (2026-04-13 to 2026-06-18): 2.72 Mbpd
– MoU effective era (2026-06-18 to 2026-07-14): 10 Mbpd
– Second US blockade era (2026-07-14 – present): 4.9 Mbpd
186 days of conflict amounted to 779 million barrels of crude oil via the SoH; which works out to 4.19 Mbpd. .
Tanker Tracker .
This figure is readily made up with SPR releases and slight economic contraction. A far cry from the ~25 that were claimed to go through the Red Sea and SoH.
So the amount going through has been changing, and it certainly has not all been at the high disruption amount. That might explain why we have been seeing such widely varying estimates.
How much the pre-conflict era (2026-01-01 to 2026-02-28): 16.63 Mbpd is rerouted on pipe-lines or trucks?
I assumed trucking contributed few hundred kbd in bypass capacity (circa 200kbd from Iraq and maybe similar amount from Iran), but if WaPo is right Iraq alone is at 1 mbd trucking (which is 5x previous estimates).
“Every day, we’re having 5,000 trucks coming from Iraq to here without any security incidents.”
Still sounds too high to me.
Perhaps this is loose phrasing – they meant 5,000 loaded trucks on the road?
Btw, would think that trucking clean products would make even more sense – with current refining margins – in case moving product tankers through Hormuz is too risky?
Anton Likhodov
Iraq is now exporting ~5,000 tanker trucks of oil daily overland to Syria, which equals roughly ~1 mb/day.
Not economical if oil is $60/barrel, but it works at $80/barrel.
R Kelanic
Thank you! Any idea of how much thats been rerouted in pipe-lines?
I am actually wondering how much the pre-conflict era (2026-01-01 to 2026-02-28): 16.63 Mbpd is actually lost?
Argentina gives fresh warning to UK over Falkland Islands
Argentine president Javier Milei is to make a ‘national announcement’ on Thursday and vowed his country would defend its interests ‘with tooth and nail’
The USA threatened Britain last week that it would support Argentina in a grab of the Falklands unless the UK raises military spending, buys more USA weaponry in particular, and supports illegal USA wars around the world.
The USA is acting as an Empire that wants to extract loyalty, wealth and military service from its client-states, and it has got Britain right in its cross-hairs.
Trump confirmed on Monday that is exactly what the USA is doing, and he has given the heads up to his bought stooge in Argentina to make a fresh grab for the Falklands.
Now, Argentina is threating to attack Britain in the Falklands, and to make a grab of the islands – with the backing of the USA.
The UK is ill-prepared to protect its territory in the Falklands, but it is going to be a matter of ‘if you want it, then come and get it’.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/falklands-islands-uk-argentina-warning-trump-b3043368.html
Argentina’s president has issued a fresh warning to the UK over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, saying his country would defend its interests “with tooth and nail, no matter who it bothers”.
Javier Milei said he was preparing to make what he billed as a national announcement on Thursday night, saying the islands were “sacred” to his people and claimed his country’s national sovereignty had been “violated”.
On Tuesday, Downing Street said Britain’s commitment to the Falkland Islands was “unwavering” after Donald Trump suggested the US could review its position on the archipelago.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, Argentina’s president wrote: “We announce a national broadcast for Thursday at 9:00 PM on a SACRED topic for Argentinians… a historic claim of the Argentine people that to this day continues to see its national sovereignty violated.”
He added: “What more important and strategic cause for the vital interests of the nation could there be more important than the Malvinas cause?… We will continue defending the interests of the Argentine nation with tooth and nail, no matter who it bothers. LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DAMMIT…!!!”
James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, hit back at President Milei, saying the Falklands “are British and they will remain British”.
“British soldiers fought and died to defend our sovereignty and the freedom of the Falkland Islanders. That sacrifice will never be forgotten, and we will always stand by the people of the Falklands and their overwhelming desire to remain British,” he said.
The US’s stance is formally neutral, although Washington provided support for Britain’s campaign to retake the islands after the Argentinian invasion in 1982.
However, reports at the weekend suggested the US could revise its position if the UK government does not increase defence spending.
Asked about the reports on Monday, Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I always review every position. That’s just one of many.”
The next day the PM’s official spokesperson said the UK’s position on the Falklands was “long-standing and unwavering”.
“Sovereignty rests with the UK, and the islanders’ right to self-determination is paramount,” he said. “The UK’s position is clear. The islanders have repeatedly expressed their wish to remain a British overseas territory.”
Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a British overseas territory in a 2013 referendum, with 99.8 per cent voting in favour – and just three votes against.
But the issue hit the headlines this summer when Argentina’s football team controversially waved a banner in support of their country’s claim to the islands while celebrating their World Cup win against England.
Players held a banner after the semi-final match that read “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, which translates as “The Falklands are Argentine”.
“Sacred” is now the excuse. I doubt that will stop Trump.
So, US companies see something to exploit there?
Setting one puppet state against another is an interesting development.
How very, very low Britain has fallen.
>> So, US companies see something to exploit there?
Argentina has always been resource-rich but a basket case. This is the new Zio destination and it is home to the Vaca Muerta shale oil formation; a good next base of operations.
>> Setting one puppet state against another is an interesting development.
Not really, divide and rule was the British strategy for a long time. Funny to use it against them, though.
>> How very, very low Britain has fallen.
When one realizes that ruling bloodlines are geographically agnostic, it turns out that Britain never had agency, it was just a strong healthy body acting out the wishes of its rulers, who are constantly reborn into new hosts as the old ones die.
The officers of the British Army and Navy were drawn from the upper and middle voting classes. Imperial policy and wars were agreed in elections. Hundreds of officers sat as elected MPs. The masses who formed the lower rank of the forces were excluded from voting by the property qualification. I am not sure that they were particular ‘healthy’ compared to the more privileged classes.
Nations are historically constructed by dominant elites, and they don’t just exist as some ‘essential’ phenomena. Eg, France only exists because the Frankish kingdom expanded and absorbed other kingdoms. The same with Spain. Both ended up proud of languages, descended from that of the old Roman elites, that later elites imposed on them. Nations are a highly contingent construct, and elites played key roles in that construction.
There is no ‘nation’ that precedes elite construction. Liberal democracies still generate elites if in different ways. It is just how human societies structure themselves. Whether elites intermarry across polities or marry within the polity is frankly neither here nor there. In fact they tend to marry assortatively by class, within their own peer group, the same as everyone else tends to. That is just another way that human societies tend to function since long before elites constructed ‘nations’.
Utter tosh Mirror: nations in the primitive sense can precede ‘elite construction’.
If I were one of your students, I presume you are an academic of some kind, I’d demand my fees back.
Moreover, even when constructed by manipulators, the concept of nation, of ‘us’, has a way of gaining a life of its own, genie out of the bottle sort of thing.
Well, of course I meant the US doing that now, to the UK, as yes it was an old and very effective Imperial strategy, and probably since the very dawn of empires. So the US shows it is a true imperial power.
The Establishment here still seem to think they are important players, most notably in the attack on Russia.
I recall my Ph.D supervisor (MI6-affiliated) at Cambridge speaking in such a patronising way about ‘the Yanks, so new to the game, so unsubtle, poor chaps.’
The authentic voice of a privileged, deluded, elite which doesn’t understand that its time has passed.
Economically, and militarily, and in many ways socially, the UK is just a husk, on the edge of imploding now, and this is described very well by Tim Morgan.
Well here I am, and here I will die. Spain is little better, my only other viable option.
I’m not sure all this ‘bloodlines’ talk n the internet really helps much. Lots of rubbish about them ‘going back for thousands of years’, the ‘Black Nobility’ and all that. Paranoia-fuel.
It seems, basically, to be code for the Rothschilds, or as I call them, the ‘de Ghetto’ family.
They certainly did latch on to the rising British Empire and do very well out of it, but also France, and spread their tentacles everywhere.
Of course, they care not one bit about any country, certainly not like the old feudal nobility who did actually see their country as their property (it was!) and to be defended for that reason, self-interest.
One Rothschild did do very dangerous bomb disposal work in WW2, I’ll give him great credit for that as he coud have got something very cushy and safe. One good apple in a rotten barrel!
I detest their pose of being super-cultured, and always boasting of charitable work. What did Our Lord say about that sort of thing….?
Flood the Falkland Islands with Muslin settlers.
I was thinking the same thing, Ed.
Make East Falkland an asylum center for illegal immigrants who make it across the channel. A land without people for a people without land.
Keep West Falkland for the sheep!
Hilarious dev., thanks.
UK barely pulled that off before. If us had supplied the knowhow for the bombs to arm at low altitude instead of the mirages having to go high for release..
Sure Argentina is hopelessly broke and don’t have much new tech.
What another insane war that would be. Falklands 2.0. sanctioned by Trump like a WWF match. And yes he could throw the match. Easily.
If a nice little war with Argentina diverts from war with Russia it’s probably the best thing for the UK.
The conflict between the Treasury and the Fed over the Yen is only the beginning. Inflation has risen to almost 4 percent. Fed must raise bank lending rates according to their mandate. Treasury must keep 10 year below 5 percent. If it doesn’t the AI hyperscalers can not afford to borrow.
The two outcomes
Treasury rates rise. Hyperscalers implode and economy and housing with it.
Inflation continues unchecked. Asset bubbles expand. Unaffordability.
Bessent just made a T available to buy treasuries to keep rates down.
Fed almost certainly will be raising it’s bank lending rates to fulfill its mandate.
But higher interest rates mean even more interest on US debt. They also mean that assets held by banks tend to have less and less value, especially if debt with longer maturities are affected.
Your statements suggest that the US wants long rates held down, while it is OK for short rates to rise. Maybe. Good for money market accounts.
I’m not sure there is coordination between the two government enities. Different mandates. What I’m suggesting is long and short need to go different ways and they are not autonomous to each other. Odds are fed will raise next session. Inflation is hot. Many real economy rates are based of fed short term like mortgages. The ten year treasury rate is moving up. The ten year Japanese bond rate just broke 3 percent. We see failures to hold bond rates lower. I think that trend will continue. That is a guess. 10 year will continue up. As it continues up the AI hyperscalers must offer substantially more to get cash to continue their build out. That build out and asset prices is what supports the economy.
So if you let inflation run hog wild the hyperscalers get their cash and asset prices remain high.
Fed can’t do that with its mandates.
If you listen in between the lines even the MSM know treasury and Fed need different outcomes. What a bruhahaha here. Why? You have to pick a team. Yelling there is no panic. My my.
https://youtu.be/nUDiFR2KDpY?si=oh-HPr9FuFzzu2ZK
Bessent and Warsh. You need a gas pedal and a brake.
A different view. Rate hike ridiculous. Taking it down to take it up. A boom into the midterms. Warsh bad cop role is bogus.
https://youtu.be/4NHS1-i_MVU?si=UX2A0gRr7Kps1pRr
Scrub the probably, concerning children. The youngest announced so far, was a 4 year old boy.
https://t.me/presstv/205160
At least it isn’t a girl’s school this time.
Looks like children from multiple schools
https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status/2095145626048602383
Taken from
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-strike-on-sirik-wedding-leaves-70-casualties
There’s a pattern, as I’ve mentioned and the Iranians are more than aware. Ghalibaf sums it up
“Minab school: children massacred.
Lamerd sports hall: kids slaughtered.
Kouhestak wedding: children killed with families.
If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan and kills like Satan, it’s Satan.
Shields a junior Satan that does the same? It’s THE Great Satan”
I said a little while ago to watch out for Mohsen Rezaei. He has now spoken
“With this desperate flailing, not only will you fail to climb out of the depths of the hell you have created for yourselves, but you will soon witness how Iran’s new strategy in the battlefield, diplomacy, and countering the economic blockade will shatter your foundations.”
On the bright side, there is historical precedent to run away from Persia and proclaim it as the most sensible decision, which it undoubtedly is(especially if they follow the whole pathway).
117ad and Emperor Hadrian, are Donald Small Beer’s template
https://substack.com/@mrah10/note/p-213789810?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7c6fx
If he follows Hadrian’s pathway, all I can say is, everyone in the US, borrow, borrow, borrow.
Film of the Abraham Lincoln is out and it looks like it’s heading to the scrapyard, so the Hadrian option looks more and more sensible.
What do you mean borrow borrow borrow?
The Hadrian pathway, after retreat and internal investment, includes a debt jubilee.
Can’t see Donny Small Beer wanting, or being allowed to serve the people, so best stay solvent 😉
Check this out
https://sonar21.com/americas-diesel-paradox-a-shortage-it-is-supplying-not-suffering/
I want to look at this article more, but I will be leaving for the airport shortly. I will fly to Minneapolis for a few days with my extended family, returning Labor Day. I will try to comment, as I have a chance.
The US is in an unusual position with the current shortage:
‘they describe something more consequential than a shortage: an American refining system that is not starved of fuel so much as positioned astride a global scarcity, capturing its rent while the domestic consumer pays its price.”
Some players, particularly in the US, come out well. It is customers who pay the higher prices because of scarcity and extra layers of costs that are not reflected in crude oil prices.
Today I was talking to a prior Syrian citizen who lives in my neighbourhood he told me his story.
His son and brother had both been killed by bombs in Syria and Syria’s economy was in the throes of high inflation that had started 15 years ago.
He had it very tough in Syria so moved to Australia 9 years ago where someone could live without being blown up.
After explaining that times are tough for him even now and he often goes hungry, he was about to walk away.
I felt great pity for this man and ran back into my house and grabbed a can of food from my supplies and handed it to him and said here have this it’s for you .
He was so grateful and as he walked away down my street, I remembered some words my late father had told me many years ago.
“If you have food and you see a hungry person what will you do? Turn your back to that person”.
I know very little about the character of my English great-great-grandfather, except that it was said in the family that he was ‘very kind-hearted, and always gave food to the poor.’
Not a bad reputation to leave behind.
Unfortunately he died bankrupt and broken-hearted, so one hopes his reward was in Heaven!
Rain is still missing. Streams are dry.
Droughts endanger fish production — fish farmers need to oxygenate the water in their ponds during droughts.
https://www.postoj.sk/199517/ryby-plavaju-v-prehriatej-vode-ktorej-ubuda-pocas-40-rokov-som-toto-nezazil-hovori-porybny
Yes, the summer was atrocious anomaly from the past trends ( +3C spike, -20% rain fall or worse in some outliers ) but lets be real; simple aeration/oxygenation units for pond fish farming has been in cont. use for decades.. that’s how the overstocking ( prevailing approach ) in agbiz always works.
The scorching heat this year has been so unusual that the leaves of my purple-leaved hazelnut variety have been completely scorched. The green-leaved hazelnut is in the background.
[url=https://postimg.cc/w7Hnrrf1][img]https://i.postimg.cc/wTsH18DQ/purple-hazelnut.jpg[/img][/url]
https://i.postimg.cc/wTsH18DQ/purple-hazelnut.jpg
The effects of this heatwave are varied. It is especially like a hair dryer.
Europe has strange weather for being so far north. But weather patterns in any given area are quite variable. The big change recently has been “cleaning up pollution in the atmosphere.” Should we now be considering adding new pollutants that might offset this effect?? Or would this be playing with fire?
Addressed before, basically green living surface thoroughly de-goated and asphalt-concrete plastered-up North Africa+ in aggregate reflects up so much heat now* that it effectively blocks or at least notably slows-derails the legacy route of prevailing ~arctic / northerly Atlantic winds..
Some, argue this bad enough effect has been even boosted by the Magoo wall. of Ursulanian-shame aka many GWs of installed wind power farms slowing ( and ~tunnel profile channeling ) the winds on the W. European coast..
__
* this pre-existing effect in NAfrica has been boosted sqr(x) by recent increased global temps contributions from other ruined sites of the world
MG… the crisis is only going to get worse… I agree with Gail and others in this group that there’s nothing we can do about it. I would highly recommend following Jem Bendell who is the founder of the Deep Adaptation movement. He’s from the UK and so a lot of his followers are from Europe. They may even have a local group where you live. Its all about community and innovative ways to move forward as things get more difficult.
Good point.
It is ridiculous to stick to some kind of gurus when what really matters is the information.
I don’t consider Jem Bendell a guru… He’s just trying to help bring people together to exchange ideas, etc.
Here in NW Alabama I have never seen so much grass as this summer. The ground is so wet I pray for no rain! haha
Now I am dealing with Foxtail weed starting to spread and edge out my Bahia grass. Not sure why but I am going all out to cut the foxtail seed stalks and will spray pre-emergent twice in the spring.
Very expensive. I have pointed out the weed apocalypse that is going to occur in ag…
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-strikes-ad84a64884aedbbd1e5914182bb3cd8d
US military completes latest strikes against Iran, while Trump vows more for Tehran’s retaliation
We get all kinds of strange explanations. Should we believe them?
U.S. Central Command said the latest attacks were in response to Tehran trying to hit commercial ships and American forces in the Middle East. The president offered an additional explanation, telling Fox News in a phone call that U.S. forces struck Iran’s radars.
“They tried to rebuild their radar because they can’t see anything,” Trump told Fox earlier in the day. “We waited until it was almost built and then we hit it.”
“They tried to rebuild their radar because they can’t see anything,” Trump told Fox earlier in the day. “We waited until it was almost built and then we hit it.”
Projection. Iran, as we all remember, took out all the US surveillance and then took out what they brought in to replace it(Ukraine and South Korea were not impressed). Iran sees clearly, as witnessed by up to date precision strikes across the entire region and beyond.
Donald Small Beer slaughtered children again.
Meanwhile..
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/world/asia/putin-xi-modi-sco.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/31/xi-modi-and-putin-set-to-meet-for-sco-summit-whats-on-the-agenda
From the Al Jazeera article:
What are Russia, China and India going to gain at the summit?
Reyes from the University of Hong Kong pointed out that all eyes will also be on Russia, China and India.
“For China, the SCO is partly about institution-building. Beijing wants to demonstrate that it can convene a large part of Eurasia around an agenda of security, connectivity, trade and development, while promoting a more multipolar, agentic international order. It also reinforces China’s increasingly important economic position in Central Asia, a strategically key region of the Eurasia landmass,” he said.
“For Russia, the summit is an opportunity to show that it is not isolated internationally. . .
“India is in an intriguing position. Modi’s participation is not an indication that India is joining the China-Russia axis, such as it is. India itself describes its SCO priorities as ‘security, connectivity and opportunity’. That is much more consistent with India’s longstanding pursuit of strategic autonomy – its agency amid the great-power rivalry,” Reyes explained.
Also:
Reyes warned that Washington should be careful not to read the SCO as a consolidated anti-US coalition, even though China, Russia and Iran are members.
Trump’s latest from his blog:
“I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump sounds unhinged. He is acting like a petulant child who just wants to win and will not accept defeat. This is why many are worried he could resort to nukes.
The only good thing about Trump is that he heads up “The Bored of Peace” organization.
He sounds like he hasn’t got a single screw fully tightened.
Only 28 months of this Presidency remaining. I suppose we must thank the 2nd Amendment for imposing a two-term limit.
All those rattling screws make for his unique, inimitable, charm.
I never thought to see such stuff emanate from the White House.
There was a real cracker the other day about the growing resistance to data centres: if you don’t want one in your area you are, apparently, condemning yourself to poverty and unemployment. And you are stupid.
Al these edicts, threats, taunts and autocratic witticisms should be scratched on to clay tablets, to delight earthlings thousands of years hence.
The system needs some narrative to say that the US is winning, regardless of how ridiculous this may be.
The character he plays is very dynamic.
According to a recent youtube chat with Joe Kent and Mario Nawfal, as options become fewer and far between, he might be encouraged to use a tactical nuke on Pick Ax mountain.
We keep hearing about the possible use of a tactical nuke. Pick Ax mountain is supposedly the site of stored nuclear material. I suppose hitting this site would be less detrimental than some other places because it is presumable quite far from major cities. If nuclear is pretty much all that we have left, I can understand the temptation.
There is no such thing as a tactical nuke , just like there is no such thing as ” a little bit pregnant ” . 🤣
Well, I’m not a physicist but both the yield-size (kt) and likely even the chemical components ( end product cascade of a-reactions ) as well are slightly different. It’s basically a low yield, ~[ limited impact option ] in the toolbox of modern warrior.
Additionally to Jr remarks the selling point of a pick ax nuke would be it presumably would use bunker buster tech where the nuke went off underground and radiation was contained.
What then?
More nukes threatened because a pick ax nuke will not break Iran?
Or declare victory and withdraw?
IMO if Iran sinks a USN ship use of a nuclear weapon is near guaranteed and maybe something with more casualties than pick ax. Besides that I see more of the same. No withdrawal.
Tank bottom and beyond. Trump as he notes in his truth social posts has them just where he wants them. Kent is of the opinion a nuclear strike would be the catalyst for the energy infrastructure mutual destruction.
Tank bottom and beyond means unaffordability of everything in the guise of inflation. Stagflation.
As long as USA is involved Trump can post happy ending and all is well. Coincidentally Hormuz remains closed. Irans if our oil don’t move no one’s oil moves has interesting implications for Yanbu.
Some of the more flagrant fairy tales come to light soon. Like filling the SPR with that Venezuelan goo. Slowly the economy takes on the weight of unaffordability. Creaking noises.
I will be giving a talk to a group called the Peak Oil Chat on Thursday, Sept. 3 at noon Eastern Daylight Time, which will be available over Zoom. I believe that the Zoom link to the talk will be available to anyone. It may also be available later. The other presenter in the two-hour session will be Simon Michaux. I expect that I will be the first of the two presenters.
This is the Zoom link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg_LkKg8Rhk
This is a link to the PDF of the talk I expect to give.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Tverberg-Limits-to-growth-Sept-1-pm.pdf
Bank of America Vice President Killed in Times Square Stabbing, Bloomberg News Reports
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-09-01/bank-of-america-vice-president-killed-in-times-square-stabbing-bloomberg-news-reports
Keep tha change, ya filthy animal!
Here’s how the cops killed the killer. Very graphic, so don’t miss it!
In Japan, they would have dropped a big net on her, disarmed her, and apologized for having to arrest her!
In the US, it’s taser first, and if that doesn’t work, gun her down in cold blood, or maybe hot blood.
I mean, how many of America’s finest does it take to arrest an obese woman armed with a couple of kitchen knives?
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/09/01/shocking-video-shows-knife-wielding-woman-charging-nypd-officers-after-fatally-stabbing-woman-wounding-man-in-times-square/
I dunno man, stab one person and then murder another and then approach cops with two knives. Why should the person be handled with kids gloves?
It was common sense in Europe and common sense in Japan ever since I can remember for the police to capture criminals rather than kill them if at all possible.
In the US, cops and criminals alike have always been keener to use their weapons. And the civilized world has always looked at US society with horror as a result.
In this particular case, with half a dozen cops facing a short, obese woman, it would have been no trouble at all to subdue her non-lethally with no risk to the officers lives. And if that had been done, we might have gotten to find out why she did what she did.
Was she put up to it? Was she on drugs? Was she schizophrenic? Was she an Islamist terrorist? Did she have a grudge against the Bank of America? Did the people she stab call her “chubby”? Had she eaten too many Twinkies?
Even if it was just for the records, it would have been nice to know.
“And the civilized world has always looked at US society with horror as a result.”
I don’t think any such thing exists. Its a facade. The violence is just better hidden. Miserys the river of the world.
With regards to the insane woman, perhaps she wanted death by cop. Some lines you just don’t cross. Those people did nothing to her except exist in her “world”. In my view the only justified violence is in self defense, but nobody asks for the code i live by. The world keeps turning.
Misery is indeed the river of the world. Everybody row! I learned that from Tom Waits. Another of my favorite songs! Although I don’t necessarily agree with his worldview.
Perhaps we in “the rest of the world” look at US society with horror because what we see on TV, in the newspapers, and online is often horrible. If it bleeds, it leads. Certainly, life in much of the US is calm, peaceful, polite, friendly, and good.
I agree with you in that I don’t think any such thing as “the civilized world” exists. I only use the term to distinguish between a society in which the rules and mores of politeness and propriety are observed and a society full of slobs, thugs, karens, bums, and grumpy old men. To that extent, the civilized world and the savage world beyond the pale both exist in all countries.
Schizophrenics armed with knives while wandering the streets or riding the subways goes against my imaginary conception of the civilized world. I’ve been brainwashed to think of civilization as being non-violent, as if Roman Civilization didn’t include slavery, crucifixion, and gladiators and lions at the Colosseum.
We’ve had this Times Square event and the fatal train stabbing in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22, 2025, when 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska—who had fled the war in Ukraine—was killed in an unprovoked, random attack while riding a Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) light-rail train.
Both could be real events reported exactly as they happened. But to me, both look staged. The problem for me is, I don’t know how to tell a real event from a fake. I have the same problem with the George Floyd arrest death, the Epstein death in custody, the Butler assassination attempt on Trump, the Charlie Kirk assassination, and two well-publicized ICE killings of protesters in Minneapolis early last year.
I tend to cry “fake!” as a default setting, but doubtless some of these events are real.
Sometimes i wonder, what are we trying to save?
https://news4sanantonio.com/news/nation-world/man-fatally-shoots-cousin-during-heated-argument-over-whose-enchiladas-were-spicier-new-mexico-albuquerque-hotter-ervin-joaquin-gutierrez-murder-nathaniel-cavazos
I think we can make some educated guesses based on her choice of a attractive and successful woman as a victim. Rather than take ownership of her unhappiness and physical condition she ended someone else’s life. She could not discern the beauty in herself so she ended not only her life but someone else’s.
Rubbish on the rest of the world…the per capital murder rate with knives in the UK is higher than the per capital murder rate with guns in the US.
Police protocol in regard to response to knife attacks is the result of officer injuries and fatalities from failure to to treat edged weapons as lethal destructive weapons.
Certainly this was a particularly sad example of the protocol in action but the protocol itself is completely justifiable. She had in fact just murdered someone with those very same edged weapons demonstrating exactly how dangerous they are.
Yes if you approach a officer with a edged weapon and the intent to perforate him no matter how pathetic the attempt you will find yourself perforated.
What part of this don’t you understand?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9BNkOTTRW9o&pp=ygUZZGFuIGlub3NhbnRvIGtuaWZlIHZzIGd1bg%3D%3D
Oh, I understand totally, thanks.
That’s normal behavior by the NYPD. They followed the protocol. They will be criticized in some quarters, but they won’t be prosecuted or suffer disciplinary action.
They may even get commendations for bravery-all 12 of them.
It’s just not normal behavior in my book.
That’s exactly why protocol exists. To prevent cops thinking they can pull off a disarm and getting stuck Two hands filled with steel in this case. Her choice. She doesn’t have to serve 25 and we don’t have to pay for it. Win win. Too bad she had to take someone else’s life and traumatize a cop. Acting out like a two year old.
How do you know it was her choice?
That’s a bit presumptuous of you isn’t it?
We can’t assume she was in control of her actions, can we?
But I agree that if the incident played out as we’ve been told it did, then it could be considered a win-win situation, regardless of her mental state at the time of the acts.
So far, at least it doesn’t look like there is going to be a riot by anti-police protesters in Manhattan to register their disapprobation about the thing. So there is that.
Zerohedge has an article about the shortage of tungsten.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/what-happens-when-metal-west-cant-live-without-runs-short
What Happens When A Metal The West Can’t Live Without Runs Short
Tungsten is essential to defense systems, industrial tooling, semiconductors, automobiles, energy infrastructure, electronics, artificial intelligence, and the power-grid buildout. Put simply, it is one of the building blocks of the industrial economy, yet its supply chain remains fractured and heavily exposed to China.
. . .
after the tungsten price went up eightfold in just over one year, there can always be a technical correction, but in principle, prices cannot go back, even close to levels, seen previously.
. . .
Most shortages destroy demand through price. Something gets too expensive, so people use less or design it out. Tungsten doesn’t work that way. You use so little in any finished product, whether a cutting tool, a gearbox or a semiconductor, that the price could double and nobody would stop building the thing.
What kills tungsten demand is absence. When a manufacturer can’t get the material at all, the line stops and the product goes unbuilt, and a shuttered plant rarely reopens. And you can’t engineer around it: in the work tungsten does, nothing else has the hardness or takes the heat. So a shortage suits me right until it starts shutting Western factories for want of material. I’m better off with more tungsten reaching those factories, not less – even if it comes from my rivals. A starved supply chain loses the demand I depend on.
So AI is short in tungsten, silver, bismuth, copper, energy, water, and high temperature turbines. Its core components are mostly produced in an island that is about to be blockaded. It is a clear buy no?
Besides this, the WSJ is reporting:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/bond-yields-around-the-world-soar-in-challenge-to-government-borrowing-c519c53f
Bond Yields Around the World Soar in Challenge to Government Borrowing
The runup in interest rates has profound consequences for the global economy, heaping pressure on everyone from home buyers to credit-card holders
—-
With this problem as well, it is difficult to imagine any investment doing well, certainly not AI.
I notice that the price of gold and bit coin are down, today, besides stock markets.
Talking of copper . Did anyone know?
“Half the electricity a copper mine consumes goes into breaking rock into powder. The biggest SAG mills are rotating steel drums 12 meters across driven by 28 megawatt motors. Loaded with ore and steel balls they weigh over a thousand tonnes, draw as much power as 20,000 homes, and almost never stop. Inside, they are lined with bolted steel plates, each 1,400 pounds and roughly the size of a shipping pallet. The plates are consumables and the ore wears them out in about a year. Only 1% of the energy goes into fracturing rock. The rest leaves as heat, noise and vibration. The method hasn’t changed in well over a century. And the ore keeps getting worse. Copper graded around 2% a hundred years ago. Big mines today run at 0.5%. EVs, wind turbines and data centers are all bidding for the same copper. Worldwide, grinding ore eats more electricity than Denmark. ”
Thanks for your attention . 😉
https://x.com/Gaurab/status/2081916435664977980/photo/1
This is a disturbing situation.
Last year I switched from my traditional telephone landline to fibre net here in the UK. I was given a small financial incentive to do so. Now I have lost my traditional landline phone and must use a mobile phone, of course – fiddly little thing.
Anyway, that should mean less copper for thieves to steal.
From the internet:
Traditional telephone wires use copper as the primary conductive material. These cables typically consist of twisted pairs of insulated copper wires, which transmit voice and data signals via electrical pulses over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
Material Purity: Older telephone wires often contain pure copper (specifically electrolytic-tough pitch copper, ~99.9% pure), while modern wires may use copper-clad steel (CCS) to reduce costs and increase tensile strength.
Current Status: Copper remains the backbone of legacy telecom infrastructure but is being actively phased out in favor of fiber optic networks, with major providers like Openreach in the UK planning to shut down the copper network by 2026.
Technical Role: Copper is chosen for its high electrical conductivity, ductility, and corrosion resistance, allowing it to carry both analog voice signals and digital broadband data (such as DSL).
This is actually a reply to Dothk since I couldn’t find a Reply button to his / her post.
Doesn’t your fibre net provider give you the option to have your landline number kept active over the fibre network? I had changed my copper line telephone connection and ADSL internet to optical fibre a few years back, in this little town in south western India. The optical fibre connection provides, in addition to high bandwidth internet, the same telephone number connection. The only thing is, one needs to get a modem that has an additional telephone port (RJ11 socket). Even with the cheapest monthly internet plan, phone calls to anywhere within the country (to landline numbers and to any mobile network) are totally free. Of course, it is Voip, but retaining one’s original landline number is a great convenience.
Aravind, I did look at workarounds for my phone and home number. Here in the UK, the bank, doctor’s surgery, etc., want a mobile number they can text you on. Gone are the days when they would leave a voice mail, automatic or not, telling you the code they wanted you to enter on their website to verify it’s you.
Also VOIP phone numbers are not compatible with the way the websites etc. send texts. In the end it was too much hassle to research it, and I had too much going on at the time to find the time to research it properly.
And no, my provider did not give any supported alternative options. They did provide a link to an alternative supplier, and I talked to them, but we couldn’t get round the “receiving verification number” texts from bank websites, etc.
Yen is still around 160, JGB10Y is at 30 year high
🇯🇵 Takaichi is cornered
1. Bessent already forbid Japan to sell UST to defend Yen, joint intervention via FIMA repo has limited results
2. Japan already talk about raising rate, the market is pricing that in. Japanese zombie companies will bankrupt in mass and carry trade will go in reverse and US stock market will decline as capital exit. Japanese government budget deficit will worsen and national debt out of control
3. Holding rate fixed will lead to Yen continues to depreciate. This is great for Japanese exporters, but Japan relies on imported energy and raw materials that will push domestic inflation up
It is not a question if Japan will have problem. Question is how contagious it will be. Global debt is at record level, all yields are rising, we are in uncharted waters .
Financial problems seem to have led to a many of recent recessions/depressions. I am afraid we are heading in the direction of financial problems right now. Rising interest rates collide with higher prices for lots of other things. Asset prices tend to fall. Banks start having major problems. Government wants to bail out everyone with financial problems, but this will lead to hyperinflation.
This WSJ article agrees with the video interview with Malcolm Nance that we saw recently.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/mine-warfare-with-iran-hampers-u-s-efforts-to-win-control-of-hormuz-45abc6b0
Mine Warfare With Iran Hampers U.S. Efforts to Win Control of Hormuz
U.S. mission to speed traffic through strait hangs on unbalanced fight against underwater risks
The U.S. decision to strike Iran for the first time in a month shows Washington’s determination to win its cat-and-mouse contest for control over the Strait of Hormuz even at the risk of an escalation that could turn the conflict back into a hot war.
American forces said they hit Iranian launch sites that were preparing to fire rockets used to deploy naval mines in the narrow waters of the strait. . .
At the heart of the fight is a fundamental imbalance of mine warfare. Iran doesn’t necessarily need to sink ships. It only needs to persuade shipowners, captains and insurers that the risk of encountering a mine while transiting the strait is too high to make the trip.
For the U.S., however, which wants to ensure safe passage, the mission is harder. It needs to disable or remove every mine.
The US has attacked again, at places such as Minab(someone must have found some more little girls) and Konarak, which is just across the bay from Chabahar(almost on the Pakistan border), so unless Iran are firing mines to Hormuz from hundreds of miles away, we can tell that Iran do indeed control Hormuz and the US are desperately trying to have some effect on those hundreds and hundreds of miles of coastline liberally dressed with monitoring and defence capabilities. We can also tell with near certainty that the USs actions are having little to no effect, as Trump is again repeating that sad, tired script that he’s been repeating since “3-5 days”(said in February, we’ll be back there soon, but the year would have moved on).
“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level,”
“it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!”
Yawn
Trump’s response is aimed at getting the price of oil back down.
Oil prices were low and the Strait was open to all, right up until Trump’s first cowardly attack and as with that time, each and every other time has brought the opposite.
Yesterday a wedding party in Sirik was attacked, killing civilians and probably children. Iran in reply struck US military targets in UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait(including US barracks and a US command centre, with potentially many dead, but we’ll never hear of the unnamed soldiers).
Chinese leader Xi has made certain statements on the region, so expect Trump’s rage to be aimed at him soon(unless someone tells him about all the dead “invincibles”).
From opposition site :
__
IRGC: 2 Oil Tankers Explode After Entering Mined Hormuz Route
September 2, 2026 IranWire
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that two oil tankers exploded and were disabled after entering a maritime route “mined” by the military organization in the Strait of Hormuz.
The IRGC Public Relations Office claimed on Wednesday, September 2, that the crews of these tankers had disembarked before navigating the route, which the Islamic Republic deems “illegal,” and that control of the vessels had been handed over to US forces.
The announcement stated that the two tankers exploded after striking naval mines, ceased movement, and remained engulfed in flames. The IRGC did not disclose the names, flags, owners, or exact location of the incident involving the two tankers.
The military institution also threatened shipping companies, warning that if they surrender their vessels to US forces instead of navigating routes approved by the Islamic Republic, they will face “doubled punishments.”
The IRGC had previously issued warnings regarding the hazards of transiting what it termed a “mined corridor.” This fresh announcement serves as an explicit confirmation of the presence of naval mines in parts of the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway through which a significant portion of global oil and gas exports transit.
Independent maritime sources and US officials have not yet confirmed the IRGC’s claim regarding the mine-induced explosions of the two tankers. Furthermore, no reports have been released concerning the potential status of crew members or the environmental impact of the incident.
This claim comes on the heels of attacks on two supertankers, the Seadragon [or Cedar] and the Senegal Prosperity. The Wall Street Journal reported that both tankers were targeted by rockets and other munitions while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The Seadragon operated under the Saudi Arabian flag, while the Senegal Prosperity sailed under the Liberian flag, with each vessel carrying approximately two million barrels of Saudi crude oil.
United States Central Command (CENTCOM) previously stated that its forces had cleared international shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz of naval mines. Reports had earlier emerged regarding the establishment of a new maritime transit corridor near Oman. The US also states that it facilitates vessel transit through the southern routes of the Strait of Hormuz near Omani waters via military escorts.
In recent months, the IRGC has repeatedly threatened or targeted vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz without coordination with the Islamic Republic, claiming “fully decisive” control over the waterway.
__
Large-scale introduction of digital ruble to begin on 1 September 2026 -Bank of Russia
“Major banks must be the first to offer their clients an opportunity to use digital rubles, i.e. to open accounts, make transfers, pay for goods and services, and conduct other transactions. This requirement will be extended to all banks in stages by September 2028. The relevant law was adopted today by the State Duma.”
https://cbr.ru/eng/press/event/?id=25774
Connected to it, moving crypto out of the country has become very easy. this includes all crypto of course.
Interesting!
I also add that for the foreseeable future cash will be king. I never made a ruble except through cash transactions for example. But for import export this will be very useful. Once you have a digital ruble and CIPS, I think, the alternative system is fully working in Russia.
These videos are only 2 minutes long, so everyone, even those with limited vocabularies and short attention spans should be able to sit through them without fidgeting.
In this last one, Conrad meets a very sweet climate activist.
I hope some of you can recognize yourselves in this vid.
Next, Conrad explains how important CO₂ levels are for plant respiration. He points out that stomata control the intake of CO₂ and the release of oxygen. He then explains that when CO₂ concentrations are low, leaves have more stomata in an attempt to absorb the low levels of CO₂. He then explains that when CO₂ levels are higher, leaves need fewer stomata to absorb the increased levels of CO₂. Plants also release less water when CO₂ levels are higher. He also explains that plants grow much better, bigger and faster when CO₂ levels are higher.
All correct. No one in his right mind should be against an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. It is so powerful at protecting plants that the Sahel is greening. It is a lot of work to filter all that air to get a bit of carbon, and plants also need to be energy efficient (a corollary of the MPP is that more efficient organisms do better). Areas near the poles are booming of course. Up to 1000 ppm I am good.
And now for something completely different!
Let’s take a leaf out of Conrad’s book, as he asks a scientist, “Is the Earth getting greener.
Why it feels like everyone in Australia is getting sick as hospital visits soar
The complaints come after the NSW health system was bombarded with record emergency department admissions at the start of August.
A little under 10,000 patients presented themselves to hospitals in Sydney on August 3, making it the ‘biggest ever recorded winter day in history’.
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16094523/influenza-Australia-sick-vaccine.html?ito=native_share_article-top
The Daily Mail is blaming the unvaxxed for spreading the flu, although we all know the real cause is global warming.
Meanwhile, from the same tabloid, in South Africa (apologies for it not being Slovakia!), mass circumcision deaths are through the roof!
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16092531/South-Africa-mass-circumcision-ceremony
First laugh of the day (actually, evening) thank you Tim. The surreality of that news item is delicious!
Fuel shortages in France
(2627) Stations in temporary shortage
https://fuel-compare.com/penuries
Fuel shortage in Luxembourg
https://www.virgule.lu/luxembourg/penurie-de-carburants-le-gouvernement-rassure-malgre-les-difficultes-dapprovisionnement/158992156.html
Fuel shortage in Hungary
https://hungarytoday.hu/diesel-supply-faces-pressure-despite-government-reassurances/
Fuel shortages are showing up in Europe! Diesel especially.
Sorry, but the Luxemburg and Hungary links are older than 1 month. It could be though, that fuel/middle distillate bottlenecks are hidden from public view.
Good point.
New major post up from the sheeps brain. Covers a considerable ground with his usual origin Adam Smith and Marx blah blah blah. However he then quotes Soddy, to whom he’s introduced me, and emphasises the conceptual analogy
for the first time in history, men began to tap a large capital store of energy and ceased to be entirely dependent on the revenue of sunshine.
This distinction is a useful differentiation which very much applies to consideration of our present predicament. It crossed my mind how the exploitation of this “capital” bounty had been facilitated by the then recent expansion of private credit following the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694. Niall Ferguson attributes this new artifical capital creation as the mechanism, through loans to the government for naval fleets in order to protect mercantile empirical activity, that founded the early advantage of the British conialism. Expanding further this credit creation by means of fractional reserve banking was clealr a primary element in the expansion of British coal extraction to fuel the industrial revolution
Tim Watkin’s post continues with to startling conclusion – this winter the lights are going off in the UK. For quite some time I have watched this site and even linked from here to it a few years back
https://gridwatch.co.uk/int (Click on meters for a clearer depiction of the data)
Over the last five years the observed average of imports has risen from a net of say 5% to 15% and sometimes this year even a net dependency higher than 20% in some conditions. Looks like the sheep will soon be being taken to meet their destiny …
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2026/08/30/an-end-to-medieval-economics/
I hear you but it’s not entirely correct or precise statement given the systemic boundaries.
The human-oids tapped the stored capital of nature FIRSTLY when slash burned a forest to deter fauna or as preparing future enlarged pasture area or when forcefully ( stick / plow ) ruptured the rich terrain to plant seed/seedling of their preference/liking in it. Later, through consequent exhaustion of said natural capital they had to put artificially obtained soil amendments sourced from elsewhere ( quarries, mines, sea shores, .. ) into that for ever depleting soils under cultivation, hence putting this whole charade cycle into over-drive madness.. In simplistic terms we produced billions of carcasses-bones of our own species at the cost of stripping the pre-existing ecosystem layer ( soils, flora, fauna, diversity-complexity.. ) out.
And again it’s “not a sin” rather a function, we are terra-forming agents of change on this planet at this particular time-space phase of universe.
Then in the above system the econ/money is merely a (sub)tool for that desired path change.
Thanks for the expansion, Jr. You’re correct, of course. In a MPP system burning the furniture is part of the process. It’s the bigger fish theory, eat or be eaten.
Gone all the “endless” forests of the middle east for ship building and weapons smelting
Shiraz https://media.mehrnews.com/d/2024/04/20/4/4951582.jpg?ts=1713561663924
Belief in the sanctity of money and credit is part of the fallacy of the contemporary version of reality
Tim Watkin’s makes his conclusion about winter lights going off in these two paragraphs:
Britain’s gas facilities were around 30pc full this week, down from 46pc at the same time last year. They were more than 90pc full in the two years before that.”
This is why Britain’s electricity grid operator is talking about implementing pre-emptive power cuts rather than waiting for a combination of weather and gas shortages to leave demand far above supply. At best, this means that at some point this winter, regions of the country will receive emergency alerts telling them the power is being switched off. At worst, of course, we could witness a series of cascading outages with contagion across critical infrastructure.
Not filling up winter supply of natural gas in England was no doubt a financial decision. “The price of gas is too high; perhaps a ship with LNG will be available when we need it later,” was likely the thought. We will have to wait to find out. Ships with LNG were in shorter supply this summer with the Middle East disruption. England is not getting any richer.
This is why I’m emptying the freezer and moving to dehydration for food storage.
My charming fairy tale kitchen (complete with resident mouse!) is unheated and basically one big fridge in winter, so cheese, butter etc will be fine.
Think about dried beans. If you have fuel and water, they have been used as a protein food for a long time.
Yes, we all have to think along these lines now, Gail. It’s only prudent.
The nice thing about dehydration is the weight and space nutritious powders – meat, vegetables – take up. And the control one has over contents.
Storage, rather than relying just on growing, which the recent aggressive heat wave has shown can be very variable. and not to be depended upon.
But many refuse to see: when there was a much-publicised failure of the domestic water supply in a region of England, I took the opportunity to urge an old friend with a family to store water for a few weeks supply at least.
They rubbished the idea. What can one do? People will not recognise the threat until they suffer, and then it will be too late.
In terms of drinking water, as I recall from childhood various “rebuilds” say each after 2-3decades, basic underground metal water line from the well towards the house and then the switch towards more lasting alloys in 1960-1970s and then 1980-90s onward the plastic era..
I’m simply of the opinion the plastic stuff has some odd flavor to it, perhaps I just grew up with the ” ferrous ions ” and lite rust as the good taste fixed in my brain, hah.
Hence, the antagonistic posture to necessary pre-filtration setup, (plastics) kept in the basement, while I had to live with it simply in precautionary principle.
Another approach is just for the drinking water go directly as close to the water source as possible, meaning the water from the well source to be ~directly bottled there and then stored in house.. yes more work ( heavy lifting now e-powered ), and yet dubious effect-contribution to increased/retained quality of such water in the end anyway.
As I have repeatedly mentioned over the years
Tarrifs reduce manufacturing jobs.
You can artificially inflate a tiny sector but the organic economy is destroyed. Your only hope to dig out no matter how slim.
What does this mean?
The manufactured goods you need to provide basic needs are not manufactured domestically. You can pretend but they are not. And when the well pump in the crop circle or the bearing in the corn truck breaks no one is going to whittle it out of tree bark.
What allows critical components to be manufactured domestically is a healthy competitive domestic organic economy. Only it allows the full spectrum of needs to be manufactured. If that is gone you are single sourced whether you like it or not and your decisions are based on reality or you face the consequences of things breaking and not being repaired. A cascading phenomena.
Greta!
tarrif effects on manufacturing jobs
AI Overview
Tariffs generally reduce manufacturing jobs by increasing the costs of imported parts and raw materials that local factories need for production.
How Tariffs Hurt Factory Jobs
Higher material costs: Taxes on imported steel, aluminum, and parts make basic inputs expensive.
Lower profit margins: Companies pay more for supplies but cannot always charge customers higher prices.
Job cuts: Rising expenses force many business owners to slow hiring or lay off workers.
Global supply chains: Modern products use parts from many countries, meaning trade penalties disrupt the entire assembly process.
Economic Findings
Employment decline: Recent data shows U.S. manufacturing lost tens of thousands of jobs following broad import levies.
Failed promises: A report outlined by Fox News shows that tariff policies failed to revive factory employment.
Regional struggles: An analysis from the Brookings Institution explains how import taxes increase car production costs in the Midwest.
Compressed margins: Research highlighted by the Cato Institute reveals that tariffs reduced gross margins, new orders, and capital investments.
Explore worker impacts with the Center for American Progress.
Read factory trends via the Wall Street Journal.
Would you like to know about specific industries (such as autos, steel, or high-tech) or historical data from past trade wars?
Brookings
Not your grandfather’s factory: Why tariffs won’t help Midwest manufacturing | Brookings
Jan 22, 2026 — And if diminishing dependence on China by onshoring manufacturing currently done there is a major goal of Trump’s tariffs, then they miss the mark. EIG found th…
Center for American Progress
One Year After ‘Liberation Day,’ American Workers Are Feeling the Negative Effects of the Trump Administration’s Tariffs
Mar 17, 2026 — Here are some of the negative effects of the Trump administration’s tariffs on American workers: * The cumulative loss in manufacturing jobs since April 2025 is…
Center for American Progress
RELEASE: Trump’s Tariffs Have Cost the Equivalent of 2,800 Factories Nationwide
Mar 17, 2026 — According to a Center for American Progress analysis, the Trump administration’s tariffs have led to: * **A record high trade deficit** The analysis found that:
Briefing Book
Why broad-based import tariffs can hurt exports and manufacturing jobs
Nov 4, 2024 — Across-the-board tariff hikes can inhibit long-term competitiveness because manufacturers rely on imported inputs and contribute disproportionately to overall e…
Cato Institute
Did Trump’s Tariffs Cause the Recent US Manufacturing Surge? Six Charts Say …
Aug 21, 2026 — Where Are the New Factories? * A new paper from four Federal Reserve economists examined the 2025 tariffs and found that—thanks mainly to broad exemptions for t…
WSJ
U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat and Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t Helping
Feb 2, 2026 — Quick Summary * U.S. manufacturing employment has declined by over 200,000 roles since 2023, with fewer Americans working in the sector than at any point since …
YouTube·Bloomberg Television
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Why Tariffs Won’t Bring Back Manufacturing Jobs, Krugman Explains
Fox News
Trump bet tariffs would bring back American factory jobs. New report says it didn’t work
Jun 15, 2026 — According to a report from Advancing American Freedom (AAFF), President Donald Trump’s 2025 tariff policy failed to revive manufacturing and instead slowed job …
YouTube·Associated Press
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Trump’s tariffs are hurting manufacturers instead of helping them
Facebook·The Economist
For voters, the real test of Donald Trump’s manufacturing and tariff policy was not …
Aug 29, 2026 — Those higher costs reduced competitiveness and led to net manufacturing job losses overall. A 2019 Federal Reserve study found that the trade war tariffs were a…
YouTube·Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers
1:09
Did Trump’s Tariffs Kill US Manufacturing Jobs?
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Cato Institute
https://www.cato.org
Did Trump’s Tariffs Cause the Recent US Manufacturing Surge? Six Charts Say …
Aug 21, 2026 — The authors add that “the 2025 tariffs also had a negative effect on US manufacturers’ new orders, employment, and capital investment,” with …
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Brookings
https://www.brookings.edu
Not your grandfather’s factory: Why tariffs won’t help Midwest manufacturing
Jan 22, 2026 — A 2019 Federal Reserve study estimated that higher input costs due to the 2018 tariffs reduced manufacturing jobs overall relative to how many …
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com
American manufacturers are hiring again. Could tariffs be the reason?
Aug 19, 2026 — What is clear is that tariffs have had a negative impact on other manufacturing sectors, especially certain factories that rely on imported …
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The Budget Lab
https://budgetlab.yale.edu
Tracking the Economic Effects of Tariffs – The Budget Lab – Yale University
Apr 1, 2026 — When we just look at tariff-sensitive manufacturing employment, the manufacturing index changed by -0.9%, versus -0.7% predicted by a simple …
Center for American Progress
https://www.americanprogress.org
RELEASE: Trump’s Tariffs Have Cost the Equivalent of 2800 Factories Nationwide
Mar 17, 2026 — In the 10 months following the “Liberation Day” tariffs, the United States lost 89,000 manufacturing jobs and 123,700 jobs in transportation and …
Goodwin University
https://www.goodwin.edu
The Impact of Tariffs on Manufacturing Jobs
Jul 11, 2025 — Tariffs can create more manufacturing jobs. When the demand for domestic goods increases, so does the need to hire more workers. Manufacturing …
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For voters, the real test of Donald Trump’s manufacturing and tariff policy was not …
The National Bureau of Economic Research similarly concluded that the tariffs resulted in higher production costs and job losses in downstream …
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Trump bet tariffs would bring back American factory jobs. New report says it …
Jun 15, 2026 — A new report from Advancing American Freedom found manufacturing jobs declined after tariffs were imposed, with researchers concluding the …
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Tariffs do encourage companies to think about more local supply chains, however. Governments have used tariffs forever to try to protect essential industries, particularly food production, even if it is somewhat inefficient. But the inefficient food production takes away income that might be available for the purchase of other goods. So you are right.
I think these are just a stealth climate tax to decrease consumption of products that are shipped far away with fossil fuels. And I doubt Trump even realizes this.
And I’m not saying its a conspiracy because that implies doing something illegal. Its not illegal to mislead or even flat out lie. It maybe considered unethical, but not illegal due to free speech.
At 286.8mb left the US SPR is ~ 2 weeks away from completing the whole SPR release under the SPR “lease” operations that began in April.
Trump can only sell up to 30mb of SPR without congress approval, but he needs to declare an Emergency first. A move that can backfire not only politically ahead of the mid terms but also in markets since at that point a crude oil supply crisis cannot be denied anymore
SPR were a critical tool used to suppress crude oil prices so far and even Japan, that it is estimated dumped ~80mb SPR YTD only second to the US, already publicly announced they don’t plan further releases in September and October
It looks like we are heading towards a showdown in markets that coincides with the resumption of the military confrontations between Iran and the US (not a random coincidence in my opinion)
I believe Bessent’s shenanigans on crude oil are living on borrowed time
https://x.com/DarioCpx/status/2094476326749028490
He was the first to expose the circular financing in AI .
Then we need to get more changes to keep the economy in line with what the crude oil system (and diesel trade) can provide.
Seems to me that before we rebuild our new industries, we first ought to be sure we have solid mineral and energy supplies to support new industries in the first place. Being able to source one’s basic raw materials cuts down, in theory at least, the cost of transoceanic shipment, and the increases ability to more closely monitor the reserves and production capacity vis a vis energy supply and to plan and avoid booms and busts.
The only initial manufacturing return should be for equipment and parts needed to mine, drill, and transport those materials needed for factories to make useful needed things later. Step by step. Energy and water first. CPU chips and AI afterwards.
AI had better be pretty inexpensive.
Ugo Bardi points out what is wrong with AI:
The Seneca Effect teaches that decline is faster than growth, and that collapse arrives not because a civilization was insufficiently clever but because its cleverness was pointed in the wrong direction [Emphasis added] — at accelerating up the curve, never at seeing the cliff. A superintelligence that could not tell us which wall is real, that could only advise a species which answers no, that becomes the villain of the very people it means to save the moment it opens its mouth — such a machine does not avert the Seneca cliff. At best it helps us reach it with better documentation.
From https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/the-singularity-is-coming-the-singularity
The Singularity is Coming! The Singularity is Coming!
We lost the race. It is over.
That was a good read. But a super-intelligence that is dependent on dodgy data could do more harm than good. For instance, it might allow governments and organizations to come to wrong decisions more rapidly, more boldly, and more confidently than ever before.
Whether it’s super-intelligent or just very good at gathering and cross-referencing information, until AI develops sufficient intuition to effectively separate the wheat from the chaff, it will always be prone to falling for the same bamboozles that humans frequently do.
Thanks.
On the opening part. Wasn’t it lovely, how both Ugo and Claude/AI came to single conclusion-recommendation we should try harder at our understanding of the world around us..
Now, if indeed we start to reach ( bang our heads over ceiling ) to various non negotiable boundaries ( e.g. fusion R&D they used ) – well that could be the final confirmation of constrained – encapsulated reality. In other words ( for some reason ) as living inside a quasi-simulated parametric bubble of sorts. Or perhaps even within temporarily locked-up stages of development potential allowed – waiting for us in a piece-meal action.
Then what?
The inner realization of being essentially a lab animal of ” someone ” up there beyond the structure/curtain is not for the faint hearted..
How do you teach your kids to be the good [ human-oids ] for the rest of their lives ?
__
yes obviously in slightly different aim-focus, such musings have been explored within intellectual-religious and esoteric circles for at least past 3-5k yrs already..
The evolution of inverting scarcities…
CAN WE DISINVEST IN MONEY?
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/08/31/328-the-evolution-of-inverting-scarcities/
This is a very good article by Tim Morgan. He points out that the system is at the point where simplification needs to start. He starts out:
Leonardo da Vinci produced fewer than twenty-five major art works, one of which sold for $450m in 2017. If he’d turned out 25,000, even of uniformly superlative quality, their prices would be drastically lower.
Value is a function of scarcity, and few have yet recognised a dramatic tilt in the balance of scarcities in the economy.
The material, long assumed to be almost limitless in potential supply, is turning out to be severely constrained. Money, hitherto limited in quantity by at least some degree of policy restraint, has latterly become recklessly super-abundant, to the point of looming value destruction.
There is a direct correspondence between the ending and reversal of meaningful economic growth and this rebalancing of scarcities. One of the most enduring myths in economics is the fallacy that a flagging material economy can be reinvigorated using monetary tools. As material growth has decelerated towards contraction, so ever more credit liquidity has been poured into the system in service to this fallacy.
I would agree. People have come to believe that added money is the solution to all of our problems. They don’t realize that it is materials of all sorts we are running out of. Morgan says:
On the basis of inflecting comparative scarcities, investors should, ideally, be shorting anything monetary, and going long on the material.
It isn’t possible, of course, to ‘disinvest in money’, but we can do the next best thing, which is to avoid the complex and the over-financialised, and recognise that the process of economic evolution is inverting towards simplification and de-financialisation.
Later:
Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought about happens when growth ends and contraction begins. One predicts chaotic collapse, and the other a gradual and perhaps manageable decline. . .
What we should anticipate is that the polarity of economic evolution will reverse.
Hitherto, evolution has taken the combined form of ever-greater complexity and ever-more financialisation.
From here on, the trend of evolution will be towards the simplified and the de-monetised.
The economy needs to start removing complexity and financial rewards for everything. Morgan says:
The only way of countering these problems is a combination of simplification of product and simplification of process. . .
For instance, replacing Britain’s state-funded residential social care system with support for care at home – paring back the role of the state to grant-funding and the provision of respite and training – could eliminate 70-90% of the costs of the current, wholly unsustainable arrangements.
“money has no essence. It’s not “really” anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.” – David Graeber
Reality demands the monetary dominance paradigm relationship to materials be modified.
They are incapable of that. It’s beyond them. It would require personal growth and acceptance. Pain ahead.
Greta or the blunder of the millennium? Talk about quickenings
Now we start away from the slide not into it and end up backwards. Wheee.
From what I have observed of the rich financier types, up close, is that those who have devoted their lives to making money – from the moment they left university if not before, greed begins in childhood – cannot possibly adjust to a true perspective on money.
In relation to materials, and resources, to life itself, to anything.
It always has done everything they required of it, and they will go down fighting not to lose any of it. Their whole vision is distorted.
I have come to pity them, as every day, for them, is haunted by the possibility of loss.
They will end up like Adolf in his bunker, moving flags on a map representing units which no longer exist.
Is any of this true?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-record-ship-swarm-around-taiwan-sends-decoupling-alarm-wall-street
One of our emerging investment themes (beyond nuclear, AI, and “Powering Up America”) is the accelerating US-China decoupling, with a particular focus on companies with robust ex-China supply chains as Beijing increasingly weaponizes exports of strategic materials, including tungsten and germanium.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s expanding sanctions campaign against Chinese entities linked to Iran is adding another friction point to an already deteriorating bilateral relationship. Looking toward 2027, one of the biggest geopolitical tail risks could be a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, which would severely disrupt global trade, semiconductor production, and critical supply chains.
The latest report from Taiwan’s main English-language daily newspaper, the Taipei Times, shows that China deployed a record 244 coast guard, research, and other government vessels around the island.
. . .
“This is not a new ‘play’ in its ‘playbook.’ Rather, the novel aspect is that the scale of these operations around Taiwan is unprecedented,” he said.
Interesting as it correlates a bit to something I heard from Robert Pape yesterday (link below). There’s so much fog of war right now, its difficult to get to the truth. I find Pape helpful, however I’m very skeptical of him. One of things he doesn’t talk about is the K shaped economy and how that’s putting the world in great danger. He also doesn’t understand energy the way we do in this group which is odd since he tends to be more thorough than most. (Unless he does know and just withholds it). So in the video below, he talks about how angry Trump’s base is because starting in the 1990’s manufacturing went from 30% of jobs to 10% and that the Trump administrations policies are based on pleasing the MAGA base and not on economics. Also I remember seeing an interview from the 80’s or 90’s with Trump stating that the American worker has been abandoned with the jobs going overseas.
I don’t see why not. It is clear that the rare earth ban has and will be a success. What stops China from playing the same game with 10nm chips? And of course no better way to prick the AI bubble than to blockade Taiwan.
Went to Yaroslavl for tractor parts and other business. M-8 passes by a major refinery. I had not gone in a month. In the intervening time the walkways at the top of smokestacks (well over 20) were drilled with one hole, I estimate, every 20 cm. Through of each hole a steel cable, estimated at 1 inch diameter, was pulled and anchored to the ground 20-30 m away from the smokestack. Now the refinery is a maze of conical steel cable curtains, about 100 cables per smokestack, impenetrable to winged drones. Where long pipes were undefended, walls made of containers, 3 stories high, were erected.
The Russian war machine is very adaptable. I note that the cables had to be pulled symmetrically, first the one to the North, then the one to the South. Each cable exerts quite a bit of force and pulling all cables on one side first would probably collapse the smokestack.
Your posts direct from Russia are very valuable, thank you. No propaganda, just some – illuminating – facts.
Isn’t this a classic example of Russian pragmatic, low-tech, adaptability!
I hope farming is going well, despite all of this.
The grain, sunflower and potato crop is going to be tops, with all the rain. But the hay has been dismal because wet hay can not be harvested. We were rolling but it rained two hours between 5 and 7am today, and now we are stuck again (that is why I had time to go to Yaroslavl). so is everyone else of course. I have to get info about the real price of hay because people are calling. they know what is coming. These are generally guys with 100 or 200 milk cows. I will sell everything but I don’t think many will survive.
There is no doubt that the fuel crisis was murder for many small businessmen. Putin will have to rebuild that group. Then again, in my first year here I noticed that there were numerous and generous grants for precisely that class.
I’ve only sen crops completely destroyed by rain here about 15 years ago, it was a very depressing sight.
I’m glad something has gone right, and the Russian govt. sees that small farmers are worth supporting. That wouldn’t be the case here, I am certain.
Reading the Icelandic Sagas, I noted that deciding how many cattle to keep over winter was a crucial calculation for them.
One major feud with many deaths began when some tenant farmers kept more cattle than their landlord ordered, and as a result faced starvation mid-winter.
He first offered to pay to buy some excess hay from a rich neighbour, who refused saying ‘Who knows what the next hay harvest will be like?’
And so he took it by force. Which is when the killing started. ……
Risks nowadays are strongly mitigated by silage. Not only animals do well over a wide window of hay/silage mixtures, generally a bad year for hay is a good year for silage, if you use corn. Corn does not mature here, but there is quite a bit of acreage devoted to it. It is cut now and ensiled. milk cows do well on a high silage diet. sheep do less well but so long as they get some straw or hay they are fine, it is only finishing lambs which can not touch silage.
Since some people here post music clips let me do it too
https://youtu.be/l_s0PiNSg-U?si=ijr0U2ju-IEfFYsd
Jakob Meyer Beer , aka Jakob Liebmann Beer whose origin does not have to be explained, wrote the opera The Prophet, his only notable work, in 1849, on the wake of the 1848 revolutions.
Tl, dr, he was able to ridicule the whole peasants’ rebellion (and also the 1848 revolutions) as a soap opera.
That is how to kill a mass movement, making it a joke.
I expect a major uprising will take place before the world civilization transitions into something else, whatever it is, and the response will be as brutal and as merciless as the peasants’ rebellions in the years ago.
Herr Beer was born in Berlin. So you big up the Germans and Austrians (the Germanic races) and denigrate the Czechs. Just like a certain historical Austro-German fellow we know of. That gives us a clue to your background. OK, let’s have a list of the main achievements of those jolly Germanic races.
● Alzheimer’s syndrome.
● Asperger’s syndrome.
● Schadenfreude. (Taking pleasure in someone’s downfall).
● Frankenstein’s monster.
● The cuckoo clock.
Still feeling proud of yourself now, Mr. K ?
Beer took the name Mayer and called himself Mayer beer
Enough said about his ‘Germanness’
If you go a bit deeper into ~Austrian/CEE history; but perhaps taking place universally around the world; the administrative apparatus took great joy in making fun of ~former feudal subjects when various quasi reforms and small step ~liberalization acts were taking effect, say since ~17th century onward.
Specifically, during such opportunities as collecting information about the inhabitants of the realm, they traveled to each small city and village. And often times, when the subject was sort of mellow or dis-likable character, the bored admins filled into record on purpose over-ridiculed version of his surname..
Now, that family surname get inherited obviously, and only after say 1-2centuries when such ” officialdom prank ” became obvious to all and center of widespread ridicule ( and or they even improved in wealth – statue ), they asked for slight alteration at the clerk’s office. As likely per the story above..
So, for example, there were many variations on the surname ” LittleBeer ” which also colloquially means something to the effect of not well developed bodily posture and or subjugated lowly character ( be it vs his dominant wify or any strong male ) or subjugated also-run, a sidekick etc.
For example, along these lines ( for any other surname ) :
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Etymological_Dictionary_of_the_German_Language/Annotated/Bier
German achievements include oodles of major breakthroughs in science, industry, philosophy, and the arts that have shaped modern global society.
• The Printing Press: Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press in the 15th century, allowing mass communication and book production.
• The Automobile: Carl Benz built the first practical petroleum-powered car, the Benz Patent Motorwagen, in 1885.
• Physics and Relativity: Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity, fundamentally altering modern physics and our view of the universe.
• Computing: Konrad Zuse built the Z3 in 1941, recognized as the world’s first working programmable computer.
• Rocketry: Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) was a premier German-American aerospace engineer and space architect whose work fundamentally shaped modern rocketry and space exploration. His legacy is highly celebrated yet deeply controversial, spanning major roles in both Nazi Germany and the United States space program. My Granny cursed him every time a buzz-bomb flew over the neighborhood.
• Classical Music: Composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart set foundational standards for Western music that were not broken until the Beatles told him to roll over.
• Medieval painting: German painters refined the International Gothic style across Northern Europe by blending local expressiveness with European courtly elegance.
• Philosophy: Thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx profoundly influenced ethics, political theory, and modern thought.
• Disease: German germs made German measles bigger and stronger than common or garden measles, and able to meet tall buildings at a single bound.
• Witch burning: There were more recorded witch burnings recorded in 16th century Germany than in every other country in Europe put together. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t come close. Showing yet again that once the Germans get going, they have a tendency to go all the way.
• Consonant clusters: No other European language suffers as much from vowel deficiency syndrome. For instance:
Longest Written Clusters (8 Consonants)
—Angstschweiß (Anxiety sweat)
—Angstschrei (Scream of fear)
—Borschtsch (Borscht soup)
I am afraid you may be right.
But I expect that the rich will be thinned out as well because debt bubbles holding up paper wealth will tend to break.
Historically, the well-to-do seem to do better than those at the bottom level of society. Live expectancies for the poor always seem to be quite a bit lower than for the well-educated and rich.
Before antibiotics, TB, dysentery and fevers would take out large numbers, even among the middle-classes and the rich.
Well-fed and housed, it didn’t make any difference. Tainted water in cities affected everyone.
And death soon after childbirth was class-blind, as it were, before doctors and mid-wives learned to wash their hands.
In fact, a peasant woman in the mountains was more likely to survive, as she was very tough and couldn’t afford a medical attendant…..
Mountain -dwellers were known for longevity. Active lives, cleaner water to drink.
Manual labourers, of course, before mechanical diggers did have shorter lives, but that was often a case of drinking themselves to death, eg the Irish navvies who built much Victorian infrastructure.
Doctors in the 18thc noted that their rich middle-class patients were often physically weak hypochondriacs. They prescribed exercise such as horse-riding to improve their heath.
The nobility, of course, rode every day.
All rich people over-ate which also usually shortened their lives.
Someone posted a clip of a movie about Wat Tyler rebellion
In Germany, following the Protestant Reformation, the peasants in what would later be Southern Germany (there was no Germany or anything back then) rebelled, and about 100,000 joined
https://youtu.be/g9eNYyytexs?si=YiZOUJ7rZ-UTn7by
Martin Luther chose to stand with the kings and landowners, but Thomas Muntzer one of Luther’s followers, decided to stand with the peasants and became the leader of the rebellion
The nobles and landowners , mostly led by Swabians, used cannon to crush the peasants’ wagon laager, a tactic used by the Huns and the despicable Czech Jan Zizka
Eventually, after a year, the rebellion was crushed. Muntzer was captured and beheaded; at least thru Luther’s influence Muntzer was treated better than others, who were forced to sit in metal chairs being heated at furnace level temp, for example.
Every single one peasant rebel was killed, their women distributed among the soldiers, and Protestantism in south Germany died thoroughly,
Even now it is mostly Catholic, with few Protestants but obviously quite a few Muslims.
The whole incident was forgotten and buried, until Friedrich Engels dug it up in the middle of 19th century, but even now it is not discussed among the upper echelon of Germany as a taboo.
Landowners have no mercy and very long memories. Basically they are defending their own turf, and no compromise or accommodation can be possible.
A nice one, although with the typical add. flavoring..
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PS the Huns are/were the “wild steppe bunch” late comers to the realm, as of recently known as the Hungarians, later ( after that above depicted ~15th century story ) budding up w. Austrians to carve up the CEE and part of Balkans
Interesting!
Vintage Kulm!
‘ Just what we would expect from this vineyard: highly selective historical erudition, with base notes of malevolence and sadism. Purchase with confidence .’
But he is right: open armed rebellion was always punished severely. But just by landowners? Of course not.
Ternopol residents attack draft officers as Kyiv’s coercive recruitment campaign sparks street warfare
https://www.naturalnews.com/2026-08-26-ternopol-residents-attack-draft-officers-as-kyivs-coercive-recruitment-campaign-sparks-street-warfare.html
Grim if true. Surely the war parties must be deep into war fatigue now. Let’s hope peace is not too far away.
Unfortunately, USA and the practice it has applied for the last 120 yeaers has made it impossible to create any peace.
Woody Wilson refused the German peace offer to withdraw from France ad Belgium and retain its gains in the east, a very foolish decision which enable d USSR to rejuvenate and create a bunch of stupid and useless countries which , to this day, are not contributing anything to civilization.
USA could accept the status quo ante in Ukraine and Iran and withdraw since Iranian oil does not really affect USA, but doing so means losing face over Israel and Nato allies so it cannot do that.
I read the interesting story of Phillippe Petain ,from a hero to a zero.
Perhaps he belatedly realized it was wrong for him to have rallied the French army after the Mutiny in. 1917 and tried to make up for his fkup
Dude you need to go to telegram more. They grab people off the street all the time, and they resist. Ternopol is very close to Galicia so we are getting near the end. They would not grab Galicians unless they first exhausted all the inferior races. And they, too, resent being grabbed off the street and sent to die. The Greeks say the Ukies are sending the Azov battallion to the front, after 4 years of being “barrier troops” 20 km behind the contact line. I think we are close to the end…
Even after many years of plain factual reality delivered “truth bombs”, some people are still rather stuck inside the feel good msm mirage, how the over-all nice well-meaning govs of UKR are almost wining it against evil genocidal RU.. just crossing fingers and keep on pushing.
Yes, [ drb753 ] is onto the core vibe here, now it’s like when the /SS-/ barricaded themselves inside German cities enroute Berlin during winter 1944-45. And then came the very last phase, suddenly in chaos dropping all the uniforms and insignia of these special forces, trying to disperse into the impoverished public at large.. when it’s over.
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PS for context Galicia is the old boundary province in the western enclave fought over ( or rather bulldozed over ) centuries by DE, PL, RO, AUT-HU / RU and other powers, basically tiny hot bed of zealot nationalists, which used to have little bearing on the general UKR pop prior this conflict during ~normal times.. before inflaming the war by various perennial Ursulanian types meddlers of the W.
I found articles about Galicia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_%28Eastern_Europe%29
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/forgotten-ukraine-galicia
From the second link:
NESTLED IN THE ROLLING FOOTHILLS of the Carpathian Mountains lies a verdant landscape dotted with evergreens and medieval cities. It’s a region that has seen many people come and go. Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Goths, and Huns all have claimed and lost pockets of land there. In the ninth century, Scandinavian Vikings, known as the Rus, established one of medieval Europe’s most powerful states there. Centuries later, a Rus descendant, Prince Roman of Volhynia and his son, pulled a new kingdom from its ashes: Galicia. In the late-18th century, that kingdom eventually became the Austrian Empire’s easternmost crownland before they, too, lost it—to the Soviet Union.
Before Soviet occupation and Nazi German invasions, Galicia was a multicultural hub. Yiddish and Polish signs dotted cities. Local Ukrainians adopted Polish words and ate Austrian pastries. Today, remnants of Galicia are still scattered throughout western Ukraine and southeastern Poland, from Vienna Secession architecture to an Austro-Hungarian folk song still sung today.
The article goes on to tell remembrances of someone who grew up in that area.
These links are good, even the second link, although the selective bias is funny to expect-observe sometimes. As many [ Galicians ] served willingly in / alongside the German/Nazi effort during WWII. Not to mention staffing lot of the dirty security jobs in war prison, concentration and exterm. camps, ..
Have it on ~direct personal account knowledge from a resistance-political ( non J_ ) concentration camp survivor member of the family. And he apparently has not witnessed the worst out there as ” political ” were kept ~alive for possible future prisoner exchange..
Yes, Galicians (together with closely related to them Slovakians) make great concentration camps staff. Otherwise, they are highly corrupt and greedy (similarly to Slovakians).
Who survived the camps is as interesting as who was killed.
Same goes for the notorious Warsaw Ghetto.
I think it was very astute of the Germans to allow a small surplus of food so that class structure of sorts could emerge and help them with control.
Interesting, how it’s not on the maps.
And then it only suddenly appears after many centuries via Soviet Union decree administratively stretching over-sized to gigantic proportions..
Excellent conceptual maps here, notice the various key borders and influence zones say around 1500AD shortly before the Hungarian kingdom collapse from advancing Turks, and later threatened Vienna itself; which affected all the future dynamics.
Also, notice how Crimea being controlled then by Mongol-Khanate ( and partially Turks ) as RU nowhere to be seen close.
The only quasi-accounts of existence are the old inner regional settings revealing maps of the Polish-Lithuanian state, where few tiny provinces such as Ruthenia or UKR tend to appear..
(h)ttps://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/Habsburg-ValoisWars.jpg
(h)ttps://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/Protestantism1560.jpg
https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/441ReformationMaps.html
Ukraine running out of soldiers.
From the report
The smashing of a conscription squad’s vehicle by an angry mob in Ternopol marks a breaking point in Ukraine’s increasingly desperate struggle to fill its thinning military ranks, as citizens who once rallied behind the flag now openly battle the very institutions tasked with sending their husbands, fathers, and sons to certain death on the front lines. . .
As one draft officer was hospitalized with injuries and several others reported harmed, the question emerges: how long can Kyiv sustain a mobilization campaign that increasingly resembles occupational repression rather than patriotic duty?
“Craig Tindale
Climate change has been an intense hobby of mine for 30 years. I haven’t read everything there is to read, but I’m at the stage where I would be surprised if I hadn’t read and understood 90% of the science corpus. This includes all the complex modelling frameworks of all the climate science disciplines.
a) Climate change is real, and it’s much worse than the forecast. The models we have are extremely coarse; the consensus claims of scientists don’t make this clear. If the forecast said 2100, it probably should have said 2030.
b) It is unstoppable – renewables will make very little difference. By any objective measure, renewable energy is making very little headway
c)Even if we could galvanise the world into action, we don’t have the resource supply chains to build it out anyway. We don’t have the copper, aluminium, and 63 other materials I track .
d)I track the substitution materials as well, and they all have impaired supply chains as well. When I say we haven’t got enough copper, people say “then we can substitute aluminium. We haven’t got enough of that either.
e)The decarbonisation models hide magic assumptions about gigantic carbon capture devices that literally don’t exist. These are like giant vacuum cleaners that suck in Co2 and store it. The concept is ridiculous, yet it’s embedded in IPCC models
g)Planting trees and forests are also included in the carbon capture model assumption; we simply aren’t planting those trees. No country is at the scale that is needed.
h)When you try to raise these issues with the academic community, they shut you down. They simply aren’t interested in addressing the reality of humanity and Earth’s predicament.
i)Most climate activists simply want to blame someone. The fossil fuel lobby, etc. Their emotional model: one half of society that is trying to destroy the world, and the other half is trying to save it, and the activists are on the side trying to save it. The reality is they have no rescue boat and no way to avoid it. I also don’t care who you are or what you believe. We share a common history of a 1000 generations burning fossil fuel. All our ancestors are to blame. Blaming doesn’t achieve anything.
j) Burning sulphur-based coal despite the aerosol health issues might be the only practical rational path. Sulphur creates rain clouds, and they act as a protective layer against incoming solar radiation. It’s ironic, but cleaning up our air pollution has significantly accelerated climate change; less sulphur means fewer clouds and less reflective mirroring
Once we accept this is our path, it’ll change our preparation decisions, saving wasted capital and resources that can be redirected toward resilience. “?
https://x.com/ctindale/status/2094250821626347791?s=20
This commenter seems to understand the situation.
Climate is cyclic too. There is nothing we can do to change it.
‘We’ have changed ‘it’?
“Greenhouse gasses, principally CO2, have controlled most ancient climate changes. This time around humans are the cause, mainly by our CO2 emissions.”?
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm
At one time, we were told that greenhouse gasses had kept us from going back into an ice age again.
Isn’t it funny? The solution to climate change based on mainstream climate change is a lot less humans or a very large reduction in standard of living. Those who are true believers never give up that which they claim is destroying the climate. But love telling you that you must. Reminds me a lot of covid. “my vaccine only works if you get it!”
Regardless, with over 8 billion two legged humans crowding the planet surface, existing and supporting them is next to impossible without fossil fuels consumption. That one point of which I agree 100% with Gail.
So, using the Critical Path Method (CPM) we have to decrease our numbers before all else can be considered…so sorry
g> Trees as in carbon capture. Well actually in terms of priority this should be moved up as an [ a/ ] as we don’t have CO2 problem, we have rather heat ( island ) capture problem, which affects both local and continental weather ( moisture build-up and drop ) patterns.
But that’s largely irreversible, as this version of civ simply paved over too much concrete and alike all over the place.. plus the situation in the countryside the sheer mono-cultures of agbiz are also trapping excess heat.., not recycling moisture into atmosphere as proper plant/woody ecosystem.
You can try locally improve, mitigate it a bit by massive forest replanting, incl. within cities, but that’s not entirely realistic, say the reconstruction of most bldgs. into featuring green roofs etc. is impossible.
..
.
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PS I guess we had this debate before already in terms of detailed wattage per sq area and liters of moisture-water evap etc., so the details should be searchable
I was amused to watch the removal of a large ‘green roof’ from a Cambridge University science faculty building a few years ago. I cycle past every day.
It took weeks, lots of cranes, dumper trucks, etc. Clearly the roof had failed and they went back to a conventional one.
Was the whole process ‘green’? I think not.
Completely agree with most of your post above. I went into a very deep depression in 2015 when I learned about how bad the climate situation had become and nothing was being done. There was just a lot of talk and green energy delusion among the climate activists. These have got to be some of the most annoying people with their privilege and their moral high ground as they fly around the planet to their dumb COP meetings. And within the support groups, I learned of Gail Tverberg’s work which was the only hope I had that things could at least begin to reverse as we ran out of cheap oil and other resources. Her website’s title is perfect. Its amazing though that in these climate support groups there is no talk and understanding of her work. The only scientist I follow is James Hansen. I read his book “Storms of My Children” twice and try to read his updates on his Colombia website. His book is fascinating as it takes you thru earth’s climate history. I have come to accept that nothing will ever be done by governments to fix the climate situation and bring us back to the safe greenhouse gas levels.
I hope you don’t mind if I correct your book title.
It’s “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
Published 17 years ago in 2009, the core arguments in the book are:
The “Point of No Return”: Hansen argues that the Earth is accelerating toward a climatic tipping point far faster than political bodies acknowledge, threatening mass extinctions and human civilization.
The 350 ppm Target: He asserts that the global goal must be to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations back down to 350 parts per million (ppm) or less to avoid catastrophic ice sheet collapse and extreme weather.
The Book’s Title: The “storms” refer to the ferocious, hyper-intense weather events that future generations—symbolized by his own grandchildren—will be forced to endure if fossil fuel emissions are not curbed immediately.
He didn’t make any precise predictions in the book for the 2020s, but he did warn of medium- to long-term doom ahead if we don’t abandon fossil fuels.
A Long-Term “Venus Syndrome”: Hansen warned of a century-scale runaway climate effect where burning all remaining fossil fuels would eventually trigger the evaporation of the oceans and total planetary collapse.
The Two-Decade Policy Window: He warned that if global policies did not switch from cap-and-trade to a strict carbon fee by the late 2020s, irreversible tipping points (like major ice sheet disintegration) would be locked in.
We approaching the late 2020s now, so by Hansen’s reckoning, we’re toast. I think he starts with exaggerated predictions of how physical systems operate, and this makes it easy to come up with very scary scenarios. He is a scientist, no doubt, but he’s also an activist. Sometimes it’s hard to see which hat he’s wearing.
While I don’t share Hansen’s concerns about anthropogenic emissions driving runaway effects—because I don’t think the Earth’s “heat engine” / “climate system” works in the way Hansen thinks it works—I do think he has a valid point about cleaning up the atmosphere leading to warmer temperatures.
In 2020, international maritime regulations strictly limited sulfur in shipping fuels. Hansen’s newer research showed that this sudden cleanup stripped away sulfur aerosol clouds that had been reflecting sunlight, and he calculated that this is inadvertently accelerating global warming to a rate of 0.27°C to 0.36°C per decade. This massive “short-term climate shock” caused him to bring forward his 1.5°C and 2°C predictions (above pre-industrial levels) into the current and next decade. But one or two degrees C above little ice age levels seems to me rather comfortable. And now we’ve cut out the sulfur in shipping fuels, we can’t cut it again and again. So I think its impact is likely be limited.
Meanwhile, the stronger sunlight is good for plants, good for animals, and good for people. Many people in many places have been deprived of strong sunlight ever since the industrial revolution created those dark satanic mills.
For most of my life, even living in the countryside, I’ve been used to looking at the sunset and seeing a red or orange sinking slowly towards the horizon. The decade from 2010 to 2019 was the worst, as I am downwind of the pollution from the Chinese mainland. But since 2020, the air has become a lot cleaner and the sun a lot stronger. It’s still brilliant yellow-white even when on the horizon. This is the way it should be. In much of the world, we have finally got our clean air back. I hope the Indians and the Chinese will also get theirs back in due course.
Again, the core issue with the above, there is way less living plants matter ( both m2 and m3 sense ) NOWadays vs quasi bare open to the sun incoming heat per that spot m2/m3 working the moisture-evaporation cycle then before. Hansen doesn’t understand this forcing or tends to undershoot its over-all impact by several orders of magnitude.
It’s really simple common sense, as mentioned recently, for illustration: one neighbor has got unintentionally positioned sloped zinc panel roofed garage in such a weird angle happenstance, that an apple tree slightly elevated behind that gets suddenly like multiples of additional daylight sunshine hrs reflected / mirror effect and thus crazy bumper crop for such a spot. The tree there simply goes ” aha ” into its MPP urge so absorbs and works with that added bonus energy to large extent, therefore cycles moisture in over-drive effort for that micro-spot [ NOW (by self-effort) SHADED ground ] resulting in-situ dropped temperature instead of what would be yet another ~bare heat island otherwise.
Now, the rest of the civ/over-pop massaged planet doesn’t have such neat accidental setup hence ~99.999999999999999999999999999999999998% of such excess heat created from our efforts in %%eliminating-reducing biomass ” from surface ” gets ~directly to warming up the atmos and or altering the moisture patterns. It’s almost we are actively enlarging near-desert like conditions everywhere: urban, suburban, countryside, .. wild areas, incl. oceans to a degree ( less plankton and seaweeds at work ).
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PS meaning Hansen-ites are either locked-in honest gross error by the over-all analysis, or are poisoning / de-railing the debate on purpose ( ” PO / pop energy allowance ” ), or some mix of thereof..
Thanks for your comment Tim. Global temperatures since Hansen’s predictions to US senate in 1988 have increased in line with his baseline scenario. He also correctly predicted increase in temps would rise above natural climate variations sooner than many other scientists. His more recent papers and predictions have been more controversial among scientists specifically in regards to the aerosol masking effect which you mention above. The problem with this warming and the current greenhouse gas concentration levels is that its causing the planet to move out of a stable climate into one of a lot of instability and extreme weather. 2020 seems to be the year the extreme weather and warming became very noticeable to the general public. Before that the big changes seemed to be mostly happening in areas like the Arctic where these things were difficult to see (out of sight out of mind). We’ve had a uniquely stable global climate period in our planetary history starting around 12,000 years which allowed us to go from nomadic to modern agriculture. I wish that Hansen or other scientists could address the end of cheap oil and resources. This seems to be a missing piece.
What was Hansen’s baseline scenario?
I’ve been doin’ research! Checking online. Because it is decades since I seriously studied Jim Hansen and the details are a bit hazy.
According to Skeptical Science:
Hansen used a global climate model to project future warming by testing three different trajectories for trace gases (like carbon dioxide, methane, and CFCs):
Scenario A: Assumed continued exponential growth in greenhouse gas emissions (a high-pollution pathway).
Scenario B (The Baseline): Assumed a slower, roughly linear rate of growth in greenhouse gas forcings. Hansen explicitly called this middle option his most plausible baseline expectation.
Scenario C: Assumed a rapid decline and virtual halt in greenhouse gas growth around the year 2000 (a strong emissions-cut pathway.
In the real world, global fossil fuel-derived CO2 emissions since 1988 have not increased linearly. Instead, their rate of increase is best described as a stagnant flat period until 1999, then an accelerated surge from 2000 until 2019 fueled by China joining the WTO, followed by a recent structural plateau since the COVID thingy. While Hansen’s “Scenario B” baseline assumed a steady, predictable linear increase, the real world experienced distinct macroeconomic shifts that broke that linear pattern.
This makes it difficult to judge how accurate Hansen’s projection was. But It is fair to say that overall, both emissions and average temperatures have increased roughly at the rates envisaged in “Scenario B”. So Hansen can take a bow there! But we can’t honestly claim that we know why temperatures are where they are now. There are lots of factors involved in making the average global temperature what it is, and not all of them have been identified and quantified accurately. But if we’re dishonest, we can claim with confidence that we know almost everything.
I asked AI, as AI knows best!
Has the rate of increase in global atmospheric CO2 matched the trajectory of global emissions? Was the CO2 level flat during the 1990s followed by a rapid rise in the first two decades of this century and then flat again since 2020?
No, the cumulative atmospheric CO2 concentration level has never been flat. It has climbed aggressively every single year since 1988. (NASA)
However,
There is a critical scientific distinction to make here: while the annual rate of increase (how much gas we add each year) broady reflects the shape of the global emissions curve, the cumulative total concentration (the parts per million, or ppm) behaves like a bathtub filling with water. Even if you turn the tap to a steady flow or slightly adjust it, the water level inside the tub continues to rise. (SKEPTICAL SCIENCE)
By the way, I love the bathtub filling with water analogy. One day, I will try to explain by use of the bathtub analogy how I think the CO2 concentration/temperature relationship really operates.
Has it been flat since 2020?
No, it is rising faster than ever. Despite the structural flattening of global human emissions since the mid-2010s, we are still dumping record volumes of over 37 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every single year (SKEPTICAL SCIENCE)
So, the warmists at SKEPTICAL SCIENCE admit that despite human emissions flatlining for the past five years, CO2 levels are now rising faster than ever. That’s interesting.
According to the admittedly very crude model running in my imagination, this should not be happening if CO2 is the control knob and every other factor is constant. We do know that the CO2 ratio responds rapidly to changes in emissions and absorptions by sources and sinks. The way the level wobbles up and down predictably on an annual cycle demonstrates this.
Tim, lot of honest effort for nothing.
You are moving on the wrong track though.
Simply, the non-existent* biomass can’t reprocess atmospheric CO2 back to ” stable form ” nor it can locally ( and in global aggregate ) function in the temperature vector as triple combined unit of AC / de-humidifier .. a role for which it has been ” designed ” and appeared for this very purpose on this planet in the first place.
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* as of today diminished per scale and speed of over-all deforestation + desertification ( incl. bushes, and other ~green areas )..
Jr., if I understand you correctly, due to deforestation and changes in land use, biomass can no longer absorb as much CO2 from the atmosphere as it used to before the industrial revolution or before the agricultural revolution got going. Right?
Or is there something I’m missing?
If it’s too time-consuming to explain in detail, could you please point me at any helpful links that would explain the point to a lay audience.
I see! (Maybe)
Claimed data:
Total global biomass is currently decreasing, and it is significantly lower today than it was a century ago. While human populations and livestock have skyrocketed, they make up less than 1% of Earth’s total live weight. The global trend is overwhelmingly dictated by land plants (which make up roughly 80% of all biomass) and marine ecosystems, both of which have seen net historical declines due to human activity and climate.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6016823/
On Land (Terrestrial Biomass)
Current Trend:
Stagnant to slightly increasing in the short term. Thanks to the “CO2 fertilization effect” and a warming climate lengthening growing seasons, mid- and high-latitude northern forests have seen a “greening” trend. Recent satellite metrics suggest live woody biomass has added a small net positive gain to global carbon stocks annually, though this is heavily threatened and frequently offset by severe droughts and tropical deforestation.
Compared to a Century Ago: Significantly lower. Deforestation, urbanization, and agricultural conversion over the 20th century alone reduced global terrestrial plant mass by more than 15%. While the biomass of humans has soared by roughly 700% and domesticated animals by 400% since the mid-19th century, wild land mammal biomass has plummeted by more than 50%, and the massive loss of forests means total land biomass is vastly diminished.
Current Trend: Decreasing. Climate change is warming the oceans and increasing water stratification, which reduces the cycling of nutrients and stifles the productivity of phytoplankton. Comprehensive marine modeling indicates that the ocean loses roughly 5% of its total animal biomass for every 1°C of global warming.
Compared to a Century Ago: Significantly lower. Industrial fishing and commercial whaling over the last 100+ years have fundamentally altered marine life. The biomass of large predatory fish is less than a third of what it was last century, and the global biomass of wild marine mammals has declined by approximately 70% since the 1850s,
—From various sources including NATURE.
If the above is all true, it puts a really big spanner in the works.
Tim… I had responded but for some reason it didn’t post even after refreshing… yes, screwed up on the title as I’m rushing a lot before work to keep updated on this site. It’s pointless to argue on our views of climate as nothing can be done anyway. At least we share the same views on the end of cheap oil, resources etc.
Thanks, Kscharenberg3. I’v noticed that there are two main ways that comments appear after posting.
Most of the shorter ones go up almost immediately. While a lot of the longer ones, or the ones containing several links, and sometimes when a poster posts several short comments in a short time, or if the algorithm detects a word or phrase that it judges to be problematic, the comment gets held up, and Gail has to wade through the spam folder and fish out the ones she thinks are OK.
But because our commenters are all nice, polite, well-meaning folks who haven’t got an obnoxious bone in their bodies or a malicious thought in their heads, almost everything gets posted in the end
If you are forced to live in smaller and smaller apartments, why would you buy a piano?
Famous Czech brand in crisis: Petrof announces redundancies
https://www1.pluska.sk/spravy/slavna-ceska-znacka-v-krize-petrof-hlasi-prepustanie
Famous Czech brand in crisis? Move to Slovakia! 🙂
Austrian, founded by a Russian, having nothing to do with Czechia or Slovakia
Petrof piano was founded by an Antonin Petrof , whose origin has been obscured but he was probably a Russian to begin with sine Petrof is not a Czech name.
He founded it at the town of Konnigsgratz, where the famous battle of Konnigsgratz (also called Sadowa) took place.
The Czechs , trying to erase all the old history where they had zero participation whatsoever and got its country thanks to Woody WIlson, changed it to some tongue twisting name which I refuse to learn.
The whole meltdown is proving that the Czechs, considered to be the most successful country of the east block, were , are and will mever be a people who should have been given a country.
As for Slovakia, it was a part of Hungary so that’s enough.
Yes, perhaps the only ~Slavic angle pedigree enclave of the whole [ CEE realm ] which has somewhat upgraded it’s standing in recent decades is Slovenia. But as you likely now, they have been also the most and longest ~germanized ( and .IT ) influenced of them all. So, it’s a bit of exception to the rule, although lot of their key figures put together the former Yugo, alongside the Serb, Croat and Muslim ~federation leadership components. Which again was to a large extent step child of the former Turkish oppression over SE Balkans.
So, again going all the way back to the sheer W. incompetence – historic exhaustion ( as to mount coalition ) to get Turks out of southern Europe after the fall or Roman Empire.
There was a pizza restaurant belonging to a chain here where we would go every day for coffee and sometimes pizza.
I was amused to discover that all the ‘Italian’ staff were Slovenians. Rather attractive females, I recall, from dark to very blonde.
And one very depressed Hungarian waiter, poor chap. ‘Is Hungary great to visit?’ He answered with a sad shake of his head.
The nice thing was that we often got free coffee and pizza ‘on the house’, as we came from a shop in the same street, an art gallery (owned by my girlfriend at the time). Interesting attitude to business.
Strong Venetian influence in Slovenia, I believe?
Yes, ” they ” returned ( joined ) there from Italy proper during the ~late middle ages, perhaps most often mentioned example is that Polo merchant family settling on the coast ( well more to the south Croatia today ); and then traveling to CHNs imperial court, after return some of his life-experience narrated stories were written / collected down in the book Marco Polo: Million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo
Just few weeks ago we were making fun off (contemporary) Moroccan Berbers here..
Well, it seems ” one of them ” was in fact the biggest traveler of all times, supposedly clocking 5x more distance than above mentioned Marco Polo..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta
He visited ( and worked for govs in ) various places in ME/Asia at the times of the Islamic upswing and relative fall or stabilization of the post Mongol invaded imperial CHN..
Lots of interesting tidbits about e.g. situation in Persia/Iran, animists tribes of ~Siberia, or the plague appearing in the Levant among other things.
As history tends to repeat in slightly different order and costumes of the day we may encounter some of the trends and dynamics he witnessed through the changing world back then.
Kulm, your historical trawler action always brings up something interesting. So, that Zizka character was a stereotypical late medieval lower nobility soldier-commander of fortune. The FR written hist.records name him ” Jean the Blind ” as towards his later years he commanded under full/both eye blindness.
Now for the fame part, he was in younger age active in some campaigns in Poland, Baltics, and perhaps wider Scandinavia.
At some point he started to use encircled emptied hay / wagons into defense encirclement as to slow down or eventually crush mounted cavalry attack group, which up to this point in history “sailed” always unopposed, as guns ( on the ground / cavalry not issued yet ) were not aiming accurately ( slow reload speed ), and antiquity derived trebuchets were mostly used a siege/static target aiming apparatus only.
Basically, lowly trained peasant or rookie soldier took the higher ground standing inside on top of the wagons wielding long pikes and suddenly the cavalry had face-2-face with their short destiny.. which was apparent wild shocker* to witnesses. Some say it was a precursor to armored personal carrier vehicle in terms of battle conceptually.. Now, some of the Baltics peoplez claim it was actually derived from their ~traditional high winter ( snow ) season hunting parties custom, where the feudal lord standing higher up on such wagon used crossbow stabilized on the wagons edge for super correct aiming..
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* supposedly there are some written records from the emperors and cardinals of that religious wars era, and for them it was unbelievable shocking turn of events on the battlefield, because as they dispatched the heavy armored cavalry the action-war was over for the day in an instant; NOT this time apparently to their utter shock and horror.. but in few decades ( century + ) the guns evolved rapidly to nix such temporary imbalances..
Oops error on my part, that ” Jean the Blind ” character ruled a century before, but that Kulm’s story about wagons as platforms against cavalry and ” Zizka ” the mercenary ( another blind figure ) seem legit early-mid 15th century stuff.
The point is not that it is a Czech brand:
“It is not just Petrof that is facing problems
The decline in sales has also affected the well-known Yamaha brand in China, which has been forced to close shops and scale back part of its production capacity. Last year, the Chinese manufacturer Pearl River Piano saw its sales of acoustic pianos fall by 39 per cent year-on-year and reduced production by more than half.”
Col. Wilkerson on Daniel Davis said yesterday that he has info that the US is trying to destabilize Brazil through Argentina. I had commented about it about a week ago without knowing anything. China is going to lose a lot of markets and infrastructure if it does not get going.
We are certainly not going to witnesses to an amicable and rational partitioning of the globe into two main economic blocs.
Much to play for on both sides: are China and Russia just waiting for the US to collapse? If so, it seems unwise.
Don’t know about Russia, but China can wait for years. That is not unusual in Chinese history, waiting for years till the right moment.
Michael Yon talks about this. He says several flashpoints are being pushed: Falklands vs UK, Brazil vs Argentina.
Well.conflict hot again. Significant weapon deployments. Nance claims possible use of new and sophisticated sea mine deployment in Fujairah harbor. That would end the ship to ship transfers reported there for a unknown period of time. Iran wants conflict hot into midterms. Team Trump wanted it cold as expressed by Rubio. All.partirs motives not identical. Thats kind of a given in war.
Yanbu. There is no nice face to put on this if Yanbu stops. As Ravi documented. Flow out of Yanbu should be way up. It’s way down instead.
https://www.youtube.com/live/bnOvQD03ZMU?si=je4jz7gXPo6DXSwr
In the video, Mario Newfal interviews Malcom Nance.
We remember that the US has recently bragged that all mines have been cleared. It is Nance’s view that Iran has been using missile launchers from Larek Island to secretly plant new smart mines in the area. He believes that Iran is particularly trying to mine the area down near Fujera Harbor, where many ships are located.
Nance believes that the US somehow figured this out, and because of this sent missiles to take out the missile launchers that are being used to put mines back into the sea.
Nance also believes that Iran particularly wants to attack a US navy ship with 250-300 people. If it could do this, it would wreck Trumps/Republican’s chances in the upcoming election.
There is talk about missiles already in the air, coming from Yemen, I don’t know if this is related.
If missiles hit a US ship, Nance believes that the US will have no option but to retaliate with a nuclear bomb. The US is out of everything else, and we can’t look weak.
” smart sea mines ” – yes it’s quite likely that the much advanced aerial drone realm know-how “of recent fame” has been put into work on sea mines as well now; but not sure what that could be beyond remote issued command: on/off attachment to an enemy hull or perhaps changing the submersion depth somewhat when floating ~freely..
I heard discussions for a long time that all the modern mines are acoustic in their targeting. They recognize propeller noise and are programmed for a specific class of vessel. For instance a specific military boat or large VLCC. Nances commentary is the same. They can be programmed any way you would imagine. To sit for two months then go active. To let four ships pass and hit the fifth. To only blow up tugboats on alternate Tuesdays. They move very short distances to the target when it is detected and programing says go.
The one Nance describes is deployed with missile launchers. I’m a little leery of his enthusiasm sometimes but his logic here seems solid. They were moved to the island to get Fujairah harbor inside their range. They could deploy in the strait without moving to the island. We will see
..
Yes, thanks, I was thinking in general terms alongside this very question, what kind of sensors would they prefer to use for these new sea mines, acoustic signature recon seems as #1 priority, apart perhaps from sat/geo loc ( slipping out of the desired boundary-corridor but not needed if fine tuned for specific vessel sounds )..
The sea is always focussed on sound as sensory method for its inhabitants whether animate or machine. As I’m sure you are well aware.
Yes, thanks.
I’m just a simple landlocked country bloke, who mostly enjoys thoroughly sea creature’s oilz served on his opulent dinning plate.
More tall tales, from tall tale tellers.
There might be a simpler and more obvious answer.
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/247347/Military-source-refutes-US-claim-on-Iran-mining-Hormuz
Whilst Operation Economic Embarrassment morphs through various levels of ineptitude, expect the bluster to continue its rise up the scale respectively(won’t be long before we’re back at 3-5 days).
Of course, it is an Iranian military source that says this. We don’t know if the Iranians are telling the truth or not.
The Iranians aren’t known for lying. Washington and it’s propaganda machine(axios, Iran International and a host of other well known liars and influencers) on the other hand, just make stuff up and change their tune repeatedly.
Iran has a huge coastline with many subs and small boats that can lay mines. The story about Larak is as senseless as it gets and if people want to believe they cleared the mines and destroyed laying capabilities, I think that they will be disappointed as more ships go boom(just like that tanker straight after the US attack).
My first thought on hearing of the attacks was cover, so they can get everyone to forget Bessent’s embarrassment, just like all the other times that they talked big, but scurried away with their tail between their legs(there’s a pattern there).
The clock is ticking and it looks a lot like desperation from one side(not the Iranians) and Mohsen Rezaei is very clear on how things will go if the aggressor doesn’t back down.
“not a single drop of oil will be exported, neither from the Strait of Hormuz nor from anywhere else in the Persian Gulf…we hope that the Americans will stop their malicious actions, so we don’t have to escalate to the next stage.”
“the Strait of Hormuz is our iron hammer for breaking dollar supremacy”
https://fountainbridge.substack.com/p/tehran-holds-king-dollar-hostage
One for those interested in Ratcliffe’s(and the Vaticans very British man) visit to Moscow.
https://fountainbridge.substack.com/p/echoes-and-enigmas
Clarity of writing.
Also of predictive value ( when peaking into ) his earlier Q1 articles..
Thanks for the link.
Updated:
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/30/us-iran-strike-hormuz-mines
CENTCOM claims:
CENTCOM on Sunday night described the strike as “limited, precise action” against IRGC minelaying forces that posed an “imminent threat” in the Strait of Hormuz.
“In essence, Iran created the threat and the U.S. military eliminated it to protect civilian mariners, commercial shipping, and the free flow of global commerce,” CENTCOM said.
U.S. forces are “monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce” through the strait, spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said.
The IRGC said in a statement the U.S. attack “will be answered by the sons of Iran and will result in the punishment of the aggressor.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0tBFLcxvlQ
The Diesel Shock Is About To Hit America. (9:29)
17,717 views Aug 26, 2026
Crude oil is in the mid eighties and every headline says this energy story is contained. It isn’t. The number that actually matters is not crude at all. The front month diesel crack spread, the margin between what a refinery pays for a barrel and what it sells the diesel for, just cleared 100 dollars a barrel for the first time on the board. Meanwhile US refineries are running at 97.2 percent of capacity, the highest reading in the series, and diesel inventories walked into harvest season below the lowest level any of the past five years managed in the same week. This video shows you the chart the mainstream energy coverage is not putting on screen, and what it means for the next 90 days.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
What the crack spread actually measures, and why the futures record matters more than the crude price
: Why the Strategic Petroleum Reserve caps crude but cannot manufacture a single barrel of diesel
: The five year inventory floor US distillate stocks just fell through, in the worst week of the calendar to do it
: What Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, Jefferies and JPMorgan each published inside eighteen days
: The two outcomes this can resolve into, and why there is no middle path between them
I think the big issue behind this is Ukraine taking out a large number of Russian refineries. Russia has quite heavy oil. Russia has been making a disproportionate share of the world’s diesel supply. Also, Iran’s exports are disproportionately low. Its oil (and refinery capacity) also is skewed toward diesel. It used to provide either crude oil to China to refine, or diesel to China, or both.
Without Russia and Iran’s diesel, the rest of the world is running into shortages of the heavy oil that disproportionately makes diesel. (This should help hold up the price of the oil from Venezuela..)
Also, shipping costs are outrageous, because of a need to transport oil farther. This also goes into the crack spread.
Some of the diesel (or similar fuel) goes into winter heating. I am expecting winter heating will be squeezed back in areas where diesel is used for winter fuel. There will be more calls to install electric heating instead.
I agree that inflation rates are likely to go higher. This would affect food and other products. The higher inflation rates are likely to lead governments to raise interest rate.
The higher interest rates will push the economy toward recession. Asset prices (home prices, stocks market prices, factory prices, farm prices) are likely to fall. We shouldn’t be surprised if banks start failing.
In South Korea the government tries to encourage births with $3000 grants. Where a husband needs one million dollars to buy a condo to get married to start a family. It seems clear to me the government needs to give two million to any couple wanting to start a family. Put up or shut up.
In NYC the poor are given housing, food, medical, education out of the warmth of socialism, or vote buying. They have no problem having babies.
They start taxing millionaires, and the millionaires leave.
Local Caucasians/Khazarians voted for all of that from decades. Well deserved.
I remain critical of the tarrifs as a tool to create USA infrastructure but at least there is some accommodation for critical material rates.
Far better to follow through on the promise to punish companies that outsource manufacturing and intellectual property made in the first term. That didn’t happen and it wont. The primary reason for outsourcing is share holder desire for stock valuation increase.
What a crazy thought. Keep the manufacturing from physically leaving instead of bringing it back with the unafordabilty magic hopium wand.
It’s all pretty much after the fact now. Three decades of moving manufacturing overseas. I can think of no circumstances that would cause manufacturing to return in a similar time frame. USA domestic manufacturing is pretty much in survival mode competing with not just China but nations like Vietnam and South Korea. You don’t want to make it harder by making supply chains not have stock and components and materials much more expensive. It should have been addressed when it was leaving not trying to bring it back as if more pain can fix everything.
In the vast majority of circumstances the components used in industry there is no alternative to Chinese products. That sensor. That solenoid valve. It’s not made in the USA. Creating pain in the pricing can not and will not change that. The USA is dependent on Chinese goods to function. Just like the rest of the world. If you didn’t want that you shouldn’t have outsourced for three decades. That’s the reality. Bringing it back is not reality. The reality is we must have the Chinese goods to function. Is ending functionality going to bring back manufacturing? No. The Chinese manufacturing is there not here. It will continue to make money selling to the rest of the world. Components don’t have to be made. Things don’t have to be fixed..
If someone steals the battery out of your car it doesn’t have to be made whole again. If you make all the batteries in affordable it doesn’t mean the ones with the origin you want will appear. It’s a million times more likely your vehicle stays down. What really happens is the replacement battery is purchased it’s just not affordable. And that’s the jist of this tarrifs scheme. Create unaffordability with the premise it will result in manufacturing capital investment and manufacturing facilitation. It’s ridiculous. What’s created is what’s created nothing more nothing less. Unaffordability. Unaffordability is not a manufactured good. No components or materials are required for unafordabilty. No knowledge skill or facilitation is required to create unafordabilty. All those things are actually required to create a manufactured good. It’s harder to to take a piss than create unafordabilty. Creating unaffordability and expecting manufactured goods from a origin you like to appear as a result is ridiculous.
How did the manufacturing leave? By physically removing it in the real physical world. Hope ain’t bringing back any more than that stolen battery. Going down to the store and paying for that unaffordable tariff battery and physically bringing it to your vehicle and installing it is what gets your vehicle operating. Actions in the real world with real physical things. It gets replaced the same way it got removed.Your not going to whittle your own battery from tree bark because the one you need is unaffordable.
That’s what I find so lame. No one said shit as the manufacturing was outsourced. Now they think they can make it appear by taxing the consumer, creating unaffordability and acting like they are heros because they can add cost
and know how to piss.
It ain’t coming back. That’s the reality. You want things to work make it more easy not more hard. Keeping industrial civilization is noble making it hard is not.
Obviously club Greta feels the opposite is true.
Guess what. News flash. We need that oil. We need those components. We need those materials. We need food. We need water. We need air. Creating unafordabilty does not supply any of those things. We get those things one way or another and my belief the most sustainable way is through productivity and mutually beneficial trade not pillaging hoping or pissing.
The issue is that we don’t have enough energy (particularly oil) to keep shipping goods across the major oceans of the world. We need to figure out something different.
Perhaps we need totally different goods to be made locally.
I can’t imagine a world without pivot irrigation and grocery stores. That means a degree of technology and financial exist.
Without that it’s not going to be fun. Personally I don’t think we are there yet. Cessation of all goods trading. Certainly there is a lot of junk we could get along without. I don’t see the things we need to sustain agriculture as those things. I see a lessening not cessation. I understand the arguments for cessation . When circumstances arise people get by.
We are at a very high level of consumption. We don’t really know what we could get by on. A lower state of equilibrium is possible. Why? Because people do what they have to when circumstances arise. Are people capable of total disorder? Yes. They are also capable of sacrifice to avoid disorder and for the community. I think that may be stronger than we have imagined. There are a lot of mentally strong people out there. A lot of people with weak characters also. So we will see. Mad Max will be resisted. People don’t want to live like a prison gang. I think we are a long way away from that. People may fantasize but most won’t passively accept abandonment of compassion like turning off a switch. That’s not the vast majorities character. People know right from wrong.
That however takes some tech and some components. Since the vast majority is not manufactured by us trade is not a luxury it is a necessity. That’s the reality.
Very good points about human nature.
I always feel that all the Zombie and Mad Max movies are made in order to induce despair regarding basic human nature.
A deliberate and purposeful demoralisation campaign, by the usual suspects.
Just like all the terrifying virus and plague movies, which softened us up to fall for the Plandemic.
This was good work by the secretary of commerce and I hope it is expanded to industry and agriculture critical manufactured components not just materials. Wise to differentiate between critical manufactured goods and other consumer goods.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/further-adjusting-the-tariff-regimes-for-imports-of-aluminum-steel-and-copper-into-the-united-states/
All too late, chickens coming home to roost.
No consumer in the West , the Sunset Land, cares a bit about origin anymore.
People in the trades, who are experiencing ever more difficult conditions, will jump at the chainsaw, drill, table saw, that is Chinese and half the price of the western-made version.
They are very good, spare parts are easy to get and cheap too.
Buying these is, for many, the only way to stay solvent these days.
Perhaps this will work?
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/profound-game-changer-musk-launching-new-turbine-blade-factory-solve-shortage
“Profound Game-Changer”: Musk Launching New Turbine Blade Factory To Solve Shortage Threatening AI Boom
SpaceX is making an aggressive push into the power generation market, with The Information reporting that Elon Musk is preparing to address one of the most critical bottlenecks threatening America’s data-center buildout: the shortage of advanced gas turbine components, particularly the blades and vanes needed to power massive data center campuses.
SpaceX is laying the groundwork for a new factory in Bastrop, Texas, that would manufacture high-temperature blades and vanes for industrial gas turbines. The move could allow Musk to circumvent the severe turbine blade shortage that has pushed availability toward 2030.
On X, Musk responded to the report, saying, “The limiting factor for nat gas turbine production is casting the blades & vanes. By doing in-house casting at SpaceX, we can accelerate nat gas turbines coming online by up to 18 months, which is a profound game-changer.”
Probably not. The blades do not make copper, bismuth or silver. They are just a high power application, and do not even make more energy.
Welp… Im not a fan of Musk… because of the incredible lies… that the infatuated seem not to be able to see past. Tesla is environmental, Starship will lift 150 tonnes to orbit… and it goes and goes.
That said… we have had steam turbines since the very late 1800s. Turbines can be used to make steam into energy.
So, this one seems like something that is both achievable… and very helpful.
Veritasium – Jet Engines (not steam.. and much hotter)
Please also read the replies . This is no kid game .
” Four foundries on Earth cast the single-crystal blades and vanes that let a gas turbine convert 1,500-degree gas into electricity. PCC and Howmet hold about 80% of the single-crystal market. Doncasters and CPP take most of the rest. Every heavy-frame gas turbine ordered in the past 18 months is sold out through 2030. Elon Musk on
@dwarkesh_sp
traced his own xAI Colossus power problem one layer down past the turbines and landed on the blades. He said SpaceX and Tesla will likely have to cast their own. We manufacture chemicals. Casting a single-crystal blade is not a metallurgy problem. It is a chemistry problem. The four foundries that cast them spent thirty years driving sulfur down to parts per billion and oxygen down to parts per million. Vacuum, gradient solidification, and mold chemistry are why nobody else can cast them. The bottleneck is chemistry.”
https://x.com/Gaurab/status/2053610508830576900/photo/1
The nickel superalloys in those blades contain 3-6% rhenium. Global rhenium production is about 50 tonnes per year, mostly committed to jet engines and these turbines. The four foundries aren’t just competing for casting expertise. They’re competing for the same 50 tonnes of rhenium.
The problem is not with chemistry. It is indeed a metallurgical problem. Nickel-base superalloys with the high levels of cleanliness required for EQ, DS and SX casting of turbine engine hot-section parts including blades and vanes are available from the likes of Cannon-Muskegon and Special Metals. The bottleneck lies in: (1) the availability of vacuum investment casting furnaces (only 2 real manufacturers in the US, current lead time for a new furnace 18 months); and (2) the expertise and knowledge required to produce dimensionally and metallurgically conforming cored castings with the required grain size and orientation, primary and secondary dendrite arm spacing and gamma prime precipitate size, distribution and volume fraction as per the alloy spec specified by the engine OEM. At the foundries, this is supported by extensive CFD and solidification simulations to determine optimal shell preheat and metal pouring temperatures and in the case of SX, mold withdrawal rate (microns per minute or mm per hour) from the furnace hot zone to achieve the desired microstructure without casting defects such as recrystallization, stray grains and freckle formation. As a consequence, developmental times in traditional foundries are 18-24 months to achieve a first article of a new design and relatively high scrap rates in low rate initial production (LRIP). Moreover, the scrap is strongly driven by the complexity of internal cooling passages in the airfoils and the overall size of the airfoils themselves. Producing single-crystal (SX) castings strongly depends on the ability to achieve plane-front solidification by imposing a vertical temperature gradient on the shell mold aligned along the 001 crystallographic direction. The temperature gradient becomes much harder to maintain as the length of the airfoil gets bigger as is the case for first stage blades/buckets for industrial gas turbines with lengths exceeding 20 inches or 500mm. Consequently scrap due to stray grains and freckle formation can be high lowering production yield.
Best of luck ,Elon .
“I mean, you’ll also need to wait 4 years on the specialized vaccume furnaces then another 2 years for sampling and OEM approvals.”
Presumably he needs the turbines to make gas powered plants more Carnot efficient. It’s a fool’s errand. Current turbines are 75-80% efficient with a duty cycle pretty close to 100%. There is not much to gain.
Very interesting Ravi.
But there is for sure some specific angle, why Elon is considering own venture into it. Usually, this means industry insiders are offering new paths forwards for the given tech, which their current management is not keen to pursue, as too risky, costly, detour to key biz structure etc.
We can’t even discount the possibility of some compressed gas/e-hybrid application say for long distance trucking – solving/easing the diesel question etc. Where small onboard gas turbine is used for generating juice for the long stretches, while near metro area routes and areal logistics driving portion is served by onboard ~smallish battery pack ( ~100-200kWh lol ) already under mass production at TSLA.
Interesting. PCC is headquartered in Portland OR and owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Howmet is in Pittsburgh.
Common sense is ” not so common ” nowadays .
” The US claims to be escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that’s true. It means that every ship transiting the strait requires US frigates and warships to accompany it, vessels that must be fueled, crewed around the clock, and coordinated with air cover and minesweeping support, then kept on station or cycled back for the next convoy. All of this dramatically increases the cost of each voyage, with the bill ultimately falling on American taxpayers.
And the more ships that transit, the greater the cost to the US government.
That is the absurdity of Trump’s policy: trying to bypass the country that actually controls the waterway. “
Strange world we live in.
But we know (or should know) that we cannot count on media telling us the truth in the time of war. If the media writes down every word the President says, it is necessary for the President to tell the population absurd stories. That is the way the system works.
If Trump gives up this role, a different story teller will be chosen who will spout the chosen narrative.
EFFONDREMENT GLOBAL CONTRE CROISSANCE DE NICHE…
Dans un contexte d’effondrement global que seul l’Insee (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques) est incapable de voir, certains secteurs s’en sortent très bien, du moins provisoirement.
En Espagne, le tourisme bat des records, comme en France. Voyager est devenue LA dépense incompressible. Regardez un jeu télévisé où l’on demande ce qui va être fait des gains ; voyages et croisières, réponse, elle aussi, incompressible…
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2026/08/effondrement-global-contre-croissance-de-niche.html?utm_source=_ob_email&utm_medium=_ob_notification&utm_campaign=_ob_pushmail
There is a big difference between the rich, with their international travel, and most of the population, who is getting poorer and poorer.
GLOBAL COLLAPSE VERSUS NICHE GROWTH…
August 30, 2026 , Written by Patrick Reymond
In a context of global collapse that only INSEE (the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) seems unable to foresee, some sectors are doing very well, at least for the time being.
In Spain , tourism is breaking records, as it is in France . Travel has become THE essential expense. Watch a game show where the question is what will be done with the winnings; travel and cruises—the answer, too, is essential.
Overall , in France, road fuel consumption in July fell by 4.1%, with a significant gap between diesel (-7.4%) and unleaded gasoline, which saw a 2.3% increase. Diesel consumption reached 2.686 million cubic meters compared to 1.525 million for unleaded. So, overall, economic activity has been severely hampered. That much is clear. Over the first seven months of the year, the situation is even worse, with diesel down 7.4% compared to a modest 0.8% increase for unleaded. Those who only use their vehicles for vacations have once again taken their cut.
Jet fuel, at 0.915 million m3, saw a 4.5% increase (July) and a 2.6% increase (7 months of the year). This suggests that for the wealthiest, everything is going well and that they won’t be forgoing the obligatory and indispensable trip abroad (in fact, often to the same Hilton), as no one is going to visit the picturesque Dhaka, with its traffic jams, smells, and rivers of garbage.
Overall, for the year (July 2025-July 2026), the decline is at -3.9%, but it’s accelerating this year to -5.5%, and not because of electric cars, whose impact is marginal and will remain so for some time. We’ll laugh later when it comes to paving roads and we no longer consume enough oil for that. The peak for oil consumption was reached in 2000. . .
As for the fate of travelers, we’ll simply have to wait for the inevitable moment when we no longer have any hard currency. In many countries of what used to be called the Third World, it’s simple: you order a few hundred liters, and your supplier calls you when they have some (rarely). Of course, nobody would have the crazy idea of asking for prices in advance. If you’re not happy, others will be delighted to have it
My friends, who are all well-off ,upper middle-class, and some ‘ultra-high net-worth’, in US terms, are travelling as though they would die if they didn’t.
Almost manic since the end of lock-downs.
They are already booking international vacations through the whole of 2027, including Saudi and Dubai!
I get the impression that world events have no impact at all on them.
Even when flights in the UK reduced very obviously in the early weeks of the Iran war, they didn’t bat an eyelid. No one expressed any caution about flying long distances even when I raised the issue.
Just curious as to why they’re doing this.
Is their view that there’s no future and their response to run around like headless chooks bucketlisting?
They’re making so much on the sharenarket surge that they see this as just free money to burn?
Blighty so horrible anywhere even Dubai under attack is better?
All of the above or something else entirely?
No, they are not bucket-listing FE-style at all, just enjoying life!
No idea that the party might not go on forever.
But yes, the lure of the sun is a factor for those living in the UK.
Not really spending ‘free money’ made on stocks, either.
I’ve tried getting them to see some finite world issues, put rather gently, and they seem to listen but then change nothing in their behaviour.
Nothing to prepare even for longer power cuts, or the temporary interruption of the water supply, etc. Not End of the World prepping, as such, just sensible precautions.
I was astonished when the absence of jet flights over London for over a month didn’t wake them up!
Reflecting on it, I think they are living mentally in the 1990’s when such things crossed no one’s mind, ever.
Minds are formed in youth, and stay cast in that mould until death.
They have an idea of the good life formed then, and they are just living it.
The 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal—the same bloke who made that famous wager—wrote in his book Pensées (Thoughts) that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
“Ho ho ho hoo!,” he reasoned (being French), “People dislike being alone with their own thoughts. Silence forces us to face our inner fears, regrets, and deepest questions. To escape this discomfort, people chase—’ow you say?— constant activity, noise, and entertainment.”
Pascal believed that bad choices and conflicts happen because people run away from stillness, which leads to impulsive actions, like jetting down to the Costa del Sol to get a tan and sing Torremolinos.
Or how about a trip to Miami?
Where they don’t get much more entertaining than Gloria Estefan!
Just don’t go to this place. What a shophole. (Humor)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=69C4ZL6uG_U&pp=ygUcQWxpYW5zIGVhcnRoIHdoYXQgYSBzaGl0aG9sZQ%3D%3D
..
Unrelatedly, US tariffs on Canada. Tariffs are normally understood as taxes on imports, but they can be imposed on exports as well. The US must have Canadian heavy oil to blend with light output from shales. Canada could say ‘we’re imposing a $50 tariff on every $100-worth of oil exported to the US’. So producers with $100 of oil to export could sell it to US purchasers at $150, or to Chinese or European customers at $100.
Venezuela doesn’t get the US around this problem, because the Venezuelan industry isn’t profitable enough for US or other companies to invest in it.
..
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/07/01/327-surplus-energy-economics/comment-page-2/#comment-52586
Has not aged well ( ~week old )?
Should / If US oil companies really go ahead with these announced massive investments into Venezuelan source and related domestic updates as well from now on..
Also selling the oil in canadian dollars and divesting from treasuries…
This is a Dr. Tim Morgan view.
He deals with a model that is fairly equivalent to EROEI based (but upside down ratios). He doesn’t stop to think that innovation makes a whole lot of difference. Chevron has been dealing with heavy oil for a long time. AI tells me, “Chevron began oil extraction at the Kern River Oil Field in 1899, when oil was first discovered in the area.”
Chevron has also been in Venezuela for a long time. EROEI is not a constant number; it changes with innovation.
The viability of any specific EROEI would appear to be, to some extent, contextual and relative.
And as we here have seen over the years, the jerry-built, irrational, financial system can teeter on the brink for longer than an reasonable person might suppose possible.
Technical and financial innovation just keep on giving: until…….
The day Canada refuses to sell heavy oil to the US, American forces will occupy the heavy oil production in no time. That will be the end of Canada.
update on the deal:
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/01/g-s1-141351/us-venezuelan-oil-deal
Look at this.
Google searches for “Peak Oil” have flatlined for 15 years averaging 2-3 searches a month.
And when Iran mess got started. BOOM! Huge spikes in searches Worldwide. like a zombie back from the dead.
US March spike
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=peak%2520oil&date=all&geo=US
UK is trending at huge spike this current month
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=peak%2520oil&date=all&geo=GB
Look at Israel. zero searches for over decade then last fall huge spike
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=peak%2520oil&date=all&geo=IL
Here is the craziest of them all. China. zero searches on average forever. And in March when Iran started over 100?
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=peak%2520oil&date=all&geo=CN
Super spiking in Germany right now too. Just like UK
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=peak%2520oil&date=all&geo=DE
I don’t think that the term “Peak Oil” is used much outside of the US. And, within the US, it was associated with very high prices. When these didn’t really materialize as everyone was expecting, the term was pretty much discredited.
Now, prices of finished products (more than the price of crude oil itself) are high. This may be getting people to think about the issue again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/aug/30/youre-at-war-when-you-get-attacked-mark-carney-shows-combative-nature-in-face-off-with-trump
Polling shows that Carney remains the leader Canadians trust most to steer the country through economic uncertainty. But the prime minister has also embraced a role that would once have seemed almost incongruous: asking a country vastly smaller and less powerful than its neighbour to stand its ground.
Canada – “a country vastly smaller… than its neighbour” ???
I googled it:
Total Area: Canada (9,984,670 km²) is approximately 1.5–2% larger than the US (9,833,517 km²), making it the world’s second-largest country.
This sort of error is typical of some of the Guardian’s extreme far-wrong journalists. 😉 Of course, if they meant to refer to Canada’s population, then they should have made that clear.
Canada is indeed smaller in population. But its large size and inhospitable climate leaves the possibility of mineral wealth that hasn’t been extracted. I imagine that might be one reason that Trump seems interested in it.
“Independent analysts noted the arithmetic fails on that timeline: the 30 to 50 million barrels Trump floated is less than half a day of global consumption, the 65 billion is an in-ground estimate rather than available supply, and any price effect would take years. Miller’s briefing goes underneath that objection to the more fundamental one: Venezuelan crude is the wrong substance to fix the shortage Americans feel at the pump. It is not a magical fix. In the near term it is not a fix at all. “?
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/feedstock-is-not-fuel-why-venezuelan
Unfortunately, any change takes time. This is why the economy is cyclic. Population overshoots the resources available. Once we figure out new ways of doing things, population can stop falling and rise again.
All these sick people are developing AIDS (cancers, extreme diarrhea, irregular periods) etc. etc.
Which means they have 3 years tops. (Many won’t make it that long.)
We’re going to experience global Easter Island event with speed & velocity of St. Matthews Island.
“You know we’re in space already, way out.” – Alan Watts
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?
I wonder how they acquired that?
Who knows?
Talking of these things, Fast Eddy has been posting comments on a few other people’s Substack blogs but hasn’t come back here since 2024/25.
In my view it just increases your risk of death by a few tens of percent, equivalent to making you several years older and losing those years of your lifespan (purely on average, of course)
Plausible deniability. Most people don’t seem to suspect a thing. As you get into your 60s, 70s, etc it’s normal to attend more funerals anyway.
Plus, not to forget all the too-soon (under 45 say) deaths of wealthy semi-stars, personalities, influencers, fashion types, sport guys, etc., presented on the internet and MSM as ‘weird’ ‘unique’ cases of some rare ‘cancer’ or other > one in X million! are affected / the most deadly version / etc.
Who valiantly fight for their lives, with fantastic help from a loving family, fans, followers, supporters, and a ‘superbly competent’ Doc-Hosp system.
This validates the existence of v. ‘rare’ afflictions as a ‘thing’, it can happen to the best of us, fighting it is hard, and the Doc-Hosp system does all it possibly can to save the desperately ill youngish ppl.
|| imagined… Oh sometimes it just doesn’t work out nothing can be done life and death are mysterious everyone grieves in their own way we can pray cancer is a bitch we did what we could all our sympathies your daughter was a lovely person we all loved her here … funeral home is, call 55 66 .. xx ||
Very true Noirette: it all serves in a perverse way to validate the very system that poisoned and killed the victims.
The valiant struggle against the bolt from the blue that struck them……
The brains of celebrities are cancer itself.
Japan creates “like milk” from yeast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfIDiB9fmFE
Sound good to me.
This has to have a far better EROEI than a cow.
Just wait till you taste their Soylent White!
Don’t be insoylent Tim (I will see myself out now).
Dairy products are being ~discarded almost for free now across EUzone and few other places, incl. the upper market segments as the factories must continue to churn even at loss. It’s [ the moment ] for both grand and personal history taking over, i.e. teach about this very unique once in centuries situation your offspring and relatives, and simultaneously engage actively in gorging on this oversupply personally while it lasts.. yummy w. fresh fruits.. among many other options..
__
PS Yes I’m the self-identified/described food-hedonist/fetishist here..
Why not, JR? It’s innocent, and it’s safer than sex! To eat something which you know is chemical-free is a delight.
For once, a magnificent and abundant blackberry crop here; the conditions which distressed the old apple tree suited the blackberry bush just fine.
The younger apple trees have pulled through, although ripening very early indeed. But I was able to water them.
The quince tree is heavy with fruits, too.
Again, I watered it although it wasn’t showing signs of distress. I didn’t want to lose the fruit, or for them to be stunted.
Yes, blackberries (especially the wild) varieties have presented themselves as one of the few ~dependable outliers throughout this (on fruit)sad season.. In terms of Apples and the whole ~Rose family I noticed only the very old lineages going perhaps back upto WWII have ~fully cropped for this season. I’d like to take few samples of them, they can be spotted in/across the landscape now relatively easily hah. Apart from the rare ~bumper crop, usually they appear very unlike current fruit trees, for one thing that non-fast growing root stocks ( or w.out rootstock completely ) are quite strange in appearance, almost look alike hawthorn kind of tree trunk ~peeling off bark effect.
My tip is these were at some point replanted by birds from the way older pre-globo-industrial ~1920-1940s orchards and no longer used varieties. And now themselves also becoming very aged rarity trees. Another sign is they often go dark brown in seconds! ( fast oxidization ) immediately as you bite into the fruit meat.. perhaps partly the cont. lineage of today’s juice angle varieties. But over-all very cool and refreshing.
Otherwise, only Honeyberry/Haskap avoided the spring blooming freeze out, being ahead few weeks as usual, and some nut trees also..,
perhaps some other Arctic/Siberian small bush oddities as well.
This sounds like a great idea. Raising cows is normally energy and water intensive. Getting enough of the right proteins becomes a problem, especially in a country like Japan, with limited land and a high population.
It would be good to make certain, however, that the body does not respond to it as if it were ultraprocessed. Does it increase inflammation in the body, for example.
If we have to use less fossil fuels, this might be one way that works.
I had the impression that it is the gums and emulsifiers that are added to these products to make them seem like real milk or cream that are the problem.
I bought some ‘vegetable buillon’ made by a major Swiss brand,sight unseen to try, and was horrified to see that the real veg content – carrots, onions, celery, was only 15%, it was mostly soya, with turmeric added to give it a nice appealing rich golden colour.
It really is shameful. Soya with added veg flavouring, nothing more.
So I shall make my own, as I make 100% beef powder.
Yes, Soya ( en masse ) is also one of the worst ” thermal spot ” signature crops out there.. NOT good for the field, and local micro climate at all.
Btw. thanks for such happy normal dayz vision by invoking that ” real bouillon / 100% beef powder ” reminder, frankly I was so exhausted from the never-ending heatwave that even the occasional dish was just based on ~quality store bought soup powder package, added few cuts of fresh vegs and a bit of acido-philic ( sour ) milk dressing up.. bagels, and done with it.
The higher cuisine arts have to wait for proper autumn weather re-acclimatization of the body&soul though..
Ha! I’m afraid that in the heatwave my evening meal was often a large bag of potato chips and a pint of real ale.
Very filling, and my waist expanded: ‘beer belly’ is real.
It was just far too hot to cook paella on the outdoor woodstove, even at night.
I’m exploring food preservation avoiding freezers and US-style canning, which I am nervous about.
So bought an excellent Swiss-made dehydrator for veg, eggs and meat.
The idea is that the 100% beef powder could make an old-fashioned ‘beef tea’, or be added to almost any meal when fresh meat is unavailable.
I’ve noticed that dehydrated food lasts forever.
According to the video, this product doesn’t use gums and the like.
The yeast is
2:22
the raw material. Around that base, they
2:25
add vegetable oil for creaminess, a
2:27
small amount of sugar, powdered caramel
2:29
for color and warmth, salt, calcium
2:32
carbonate, and calcium hydroxide to
2:34
match the mineral content of dairy,
2:36
cellulose for body, vitamin C and tea
2:39
extract [music] as antioxidants and
2:41
emulsifier and flavoring. That is the
2:44
whole ingredient list. No soy, no oats,
2:47
no nuts, no animal products of any kind.
—–
So, how does that become
3:05
something with a mild, naturally sweet
3:07
taste and a creamy mouth feel? That is
3:10
where the patent comes in. And this is
3:12
the part that separates a gimmick from a
3:15
real invention. The problem with yeast
3:17
as a [music] milk base is that yeast
3:19
does not naturally hold fat and water
3:21
together the way milk does. Real milk is
3:24
an emulsion. Tiny droplets of fat are
3:28
suspended in water and held there by
3:30
proteins. That is why milk is white, why
3:33
it feels rich, why it foams in your
3:35
coffee. Plant milk struggle with this,
3:38
which is why oat milk companies spend
3:39
fortunes on enzymes and gums to fake it.
3:43
Asah developed a process currently
3:45
patent pending that enhances the
3:47
emulsifying properties of the yeast
3:49
itself. In plain terms, they taught the
3:52
yeast to behave like milk protein. The
3:54
fat stays suspended. The texture comes
3:57
out creamy instead of grainy. And
3:59
because they are starting from yeast
4:00
rather than from a plant, they get to
4:02
control the flavor from the ground up
4:04
instead of fighting against the taste of
4:06
beans or grains.
Most interesting thanks, Gail.
Oh no. Someone’s going to be in serious trouble for this. “Regime change squad report for cleanup duty aisle five”
Bangladesh confirms deal to buy Chinese J-10 fighter jets: report
Bangladesh has confirmed a deal to purchase China’s 4.5-generation J-10CE fighter jets, citing the aircraft’s reported combat performance against French-made Rafale jets during the brief Pakistan-India conflict in May, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Friday.
The Chengdu J-10C is a single-engine, multirole combat aircraft manufactured in China. Boasting a top speed of Mach 1.8, it can be fitted with a variety of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions. It played a key role on the first night of hostilities, shooting down six jets belonging to the Indian Air Force.
https://www.dawn.com/news/2025977/bangladesh-confirms-deal-to-buy-chinese-j-10-fighter-jets-report
WOW! They’re getting really popular huh?
Haven’t we learned that they are expensive wastes of time in the new world of drones and advanced missiles? Also, who the hell would bother attacking Bangladesh? Whats there but people and gas?
It’s crazy. A fighter instead of a water treatment plant.
This is status. The ghost of Islamabad rumor in the India Pakistani war has spawned gun slinger status desire in Bangla. Pakistan started as west Bengal if you recall. Bangla piece of showdown status pie. Even Bangladesh can have a bit of status as China arms up the region.
Winged UAVS are not sexy. No ghost of Bangladesh there. Soon FPV drones will be knocking down Shaheds every time. The Russian fast ones will be a little harder. Plus shaheds are for nations that actually have infrastructure to destroy. Bangla don’t. Nothing gets discarded in Bangladesh except poop. Nothing. A infrastructure war is not sexy. They understand how critical facilitation improves quality of life and even allows it. You don’t blow that stuff up. Unthinkable. But the showdown between aircraft is a universal sexy idea. Even if your team loses. They still walked into the street at high noon mano au mano. They still had a chance no matter how slim and had the huevos to try..
That J10 may not be much to the big dogs. In Bangla its the millennium falcon.
Underdog status. Bangla is the underdogs underdog.
Bangladesh ain’t got nothing. But they can have the exact same high noon status as the big dogs. That a J10 isn’t all that just makes it better. Bigger huevos. Bigger status.That’s why.
Can’t you hear the music playing?
You are probably right.
The famous videos of the antics of the Indian and Pakistani border guards illustrate the mentality well.
‘Cocks of the walk’ all of them……
Poor Bangladesh.
“That J10 may not be much to the big dogs.”
Who are these “big dogs”?
The J10 comes with detection and fire capabilities(range) that slap the shit out of anything the (financially destructive)f35 can offer, so who exactly, except the Chinese themselves, is willing to “feel lucky” and back up the “big dog” talk. Russia?
Bangladesh has just gained the ability to deny western air superiority in its, or neighbouring skies, at a very low cost(miniscule in western terms), but yeah, should have signed a contract that would never have been fulfilled and cost multiple times the amount(the exiled in Britian bloke probably puts paid to any hope of them being used meaningfully sadly).
Thank you for your responses. The reason I posted this was that arms sales are such a significant part of western exports, particularly the US that this purchase going to China is an indication of the leanings of the new government in Bangladesh. The former PM fled to Delhi and has been sentenced to death in absentia. The new PM, Tarique Rahaman, scion of a political dynasty, flew in from 17 years of exile in the UK and convincing won the recent election.
Secondly, the statement It (the J-10) played a key role on the first night of hostilities, shooting down six jets belonging to the Indian Air Force although a widely accepted version of events, has been supressed within India whose press freedom is ranked very low in the world. Brainwashing of Hindus by the US/Nety loving Modi is a wonder to behold.
A recent western MSM version of this action has been this month released in India quoting such sources as the veritable fonts of truth Washington Post and New York Times. This is a worthwhile review this Discovery Channel documentary for those interested
https://asiatimes.com/2026/08/the-numbers-missing-from-indias-four-day-war-documentary/
This sounds insane:
“Chevron and its contractor plan to use energetic felling techniques, including controlled explosives, to remove wind turbines from a parcel outside Casper this week… The long-anticipated demolition ends years of inactivity at an 11-turbine wind farm. …efforts to remove the 240-foot high, 450,000-pound turbines are anticipated to last possibly through the end of the year, subject to weather conditions, and contractor coordination.”
“Natrona County Commissioner Dave North told Cowboy State Daily in a past interview that the turbines have never been fully operational because they have never had a purchase agreement with Pacific Corp./Rocky Mountain Power. The project has provided “absolutely nothing” to the county, state, and electric consumers across the West, he said.”
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/08/25/chevron-plans-to-detonate-explosives-on-idle-wind-turbines-near-casper-this-week/
Interesting!
I have been impressed with the work that Chevron has done. It has a wider range of activities than I have seen in other oil companies.
And this story illustrates how capitalism is incompatible with renewable energy ,only with an honest fair communist system might renewable energies work as the old saying goes ” better red than dead “.
Unfortunately the powers that be have put all our money on capitalism .
That’s not capitalism per se. It’s what is called state capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporate welfare—meaning capitalism heavily supported by public subsidies, depending on the specific economic context of the scheme and political viewpoint of the government funding it.
Capitalism according to Einstein was economic anarchy. His preferred remedy was socialism and a planned economy to restore order and efficiency to the system. In practice, these days, we get governments paying subsidies to capitalists to motivate them to play along and cooperate with whatever the government wants done.
An honest fair communist system sounds like an oxymoron to me. For an individualist like yours truly, any collectivist system is the equivalent of a lifetime prison sentence. Don’t send me to Siberia! Let me out of here! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!
I visited Chevron’s heavy oil facility out in Kern River, California. What Chevron had done to make extraction of the heavy oil profitable was amazing. Of course, over this time the resource has been depleting. Chevron seems to be the leader, worldwide, in trying to extract heavy oil.
You just need some re-education comrade!
Renewables don’t seem to be thriving in North Korera or Venezuela.
The problem with renewable isn’t profit so much as net energy. It doesn’t produce enough energy to meet our needs. No political system is going to change that.
Yes, but frankly and even to my surprise they DID chip-away some traditional oil/gas consumption especially inside ” 1.5-2-3rd world ” settings. Chiefly in the area of local personal small-mobility. Simply, the dozens and now even hundred of millions EVs ( scooters, ebicycles, ..other mobility contraptions ) produced in CHN found their daily usage.. across the world, and often hooked to renewables setup.
Just tomorrow’s polluting junk, though.
I cannot any longer bear to see these things called ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’!
Yes, but look at this trend unbiased..
It’s mostly metal – not plastic in this segment. Hence largely recyclable: alloy/steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, and bit of rubber..
Should they pursue ” Western living-large standards fully ” that would be ~20-30x worse, just compare contrast weight of ebike vs real car, also the associated (dense) highway network buildup (concrete and steel).. etc.
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This thread was not meant to advocate ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’ agenda at all – I was simply shocked by some of the published volumes of the CHN’s production in this mobility segment – it’s staggering hence ” saving ” real oil gallons out there..
“Simply, the dozens and now even hundred of millions EVs ( scooters, ebicycles, ..other mobility contraptions ) produced in CHN found their daily usage.. across the world, and often hooked to renewables”
In the U.S., they are hooked up to the grid, which runs mostly on non-renewables.
Evs seem sustainable and seem to be able to scale up until they cannot scale up anymore.
Yes, but as pre-announced meant for the 2-3rd world clientele situation. The street-level pollution ( exhaustgases and sound ) from small combustion engine is insane at some of these places..
But, ideally, you should also build up dedicated e-bicycle lanes inside cities etc. Trikes for handicapped or seniors have been solved for decades as well.
Again, if you apply ( broadly-saturated ) trolleybuses and trams as in mass transit that’s also an option, but on way different budgetary level.. comparatively speaking.
Photovoltaics of course are incapable of replacing oil. All the more reason to use them so that oil a finite critical resource lasts longer before depletion. You don’t break out the caviar for your kids sleep over.
I never thought battery technology would become cost efficient. Boy was I wrong on that one!
When times get hard you sip not guzzle. PV makes that happen. Your SER (strategic electrical reserve) gets refilled every 24 hours.
Well, to be clear, batt. tech is perhaps (likely) becoming now cost efficient, BUT still on case by case only. Could change in the future decades though.
For now, lets say you are based in region with new-ish NPP or natural gas plant hooked to local gasfield, then it makes less sense to go for large home-PV setup, as you can expect the centralized thing will be producing grid juice for decades.
While, say in rural setting, the case is usually very favorable going offgrid incl. own batt setup as of now. Moreover, nowadays even small-mid sized agro-machinery could be had in e-power/batteries ver. So, in some instances NO diesel tractor needed anymore, or way fewer hrs/gallons of run time clocked per year then ( or NOT even owned – just leased temporarily for the specific task ).
The ev batteries aren’t cost efficient. Without major subsidies (taxes) on fossil fuel cars and fossil fuel extracting companies, ev cars are cost prohibitive to even produce. Even as of now, most companies that specialize in renewables would be bankrupt without those subsidies.
“Your SER (strategic electrical reserve) gets refilled every 24 hours. ”
It doesn’t exist. It couldn’t exist with existing renewable energy infrastructure, anyway.
What they say.
Wishful boomerian thinking, on the way to well deserved showers…
Wind just has too many problems compared to photovoltaic chief among them them variable load and where to put it.
DIY Wyoming wind meter.
Take a 3 foot piece of 7/8″ logging chain. Let it hang with one end unsecured
Interpreting results
Chain horizontal. Blustery day
Chain vertical. Your not in Wyoming anymore.
You need wind not crazy wind.
Crazy stress on a wind Turbine with wind like that.
If storage is full no load on turbine blade. They spin to self drstruct.
All sorts of mechanical. Turbine blades bearings hydraulics ecetera. Now climb that tower when it’s -5 farehight and a blustery day” and work on a blown hydraulic line with those blades at 500 RPM because there is no load. Yes many Wyoming lads are stout. There are limits. It may sound like fun but it gets old rather quickly.
Greta is simply cutting losses here.
Not insane in the least.
End of the line, Boomers…