Gail Tverberg is one of my favorite thinkers and has been writing about our overshoot predicament for years. In today’s essay she makes the most specific predictions I’ve seen on the probable outcomes of the economic deceleration caused by the Wuhan virus.
I suspect most of her predictions will happen, but I’m not confident on the timeline. It’s possible money printing will buy us a few more years, or maybe not.
I think we should hope for the best, and plan for the worst.
Regardless, time is running out to make preparations.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/04/21/covid-19-and-oil-at-1-is-there-a-way-forward/
Here are a few excerpts from her full essay.
COVID-19 and oil at $1: Is there a way forward?
Our basic problem is a finite world problem. World population has outgrown its resource base.
In this post, I suggest the possibility that some core parts of the world economy might temporarily be saved if they can be made to operate fairly independently of each other.
The COVID-19 actions taken to date, together with the poor condition the economy was in previously, lead me to believe that the world economy is headed for a major reset.
A reset world economy will likely end up with “pieces” of today’s economy surviving, but within a very different framework.
There are clearly parts of the world economy that are not working:
- The financial system is way too large. There is too much debt, and asset prices are inflated based on very low interest rates.
- World population is way too high, relative to resources.
- Wage and wealth disparity is too great.
- Too much of income is going to the financial system, healthcare, education, entertainment, and travel.
- All of the connectivity of today’s world is leading to epidemics of many kinds traveling around the world.
Even with these problems, there may still be some core parts of the world economy that perhaps can be made to work. Each would have a smaller population than today. They would function much more independently than today, like mostly separate economic pumps. The nature of these economies will be different in different parts of the world.
In a less connected world, what we think of today as assets will likely have much less value. High rise buildings will be worth next to nothing, for example, because of their ability to transfer pathogens around. Public transportation will lose value for the same reason. Manufacturing that depends upon supply lines around the world will no longer work either. This means that manufacturing of computers, phones and today’s cars will likely no longer be possible. Products built locally will need to depend almost exclusively on local resources.
Pretty much everything that is debt today can be expected to default. Shares of stock will have little value. To try to save parts of the system, governments will need to take over assets that seem to have value such as farm land, mines, oil and gas wells, and electricity transmission lines. They will also likely need to take over banks, insurance companies and pension plans.
If oil products are available, governments may also need to make certain that farms, trucking companies and other essential users are able to get the fuel they need so that people can be fed. Water and sanitation are other systems that may need assistance so that they can continue to operate.
I expect that eventually, each separate economy will have its own currency. In nearly all cases, the currency will not be the same as today’s currency. The currency will be paid only to current workers in the economy, and it will only be usable for purchasing a limited range of goods made by the local economy.
These are a few of my ideas regarding what might be ahead:
(a) There will be a shake-out of governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations. Most intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and European Union, will disappear. Many governments of countries may disappear, as well. Some may be overthrown. Others may collapse, in a manner similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. Governmental organizations take energy; if energy is scarce, they are dispensable.
(b) Some countries seem to have a sufficient range of resources that at least the core portion of them may be able to go forward, for a while, in a fairly modern state:
- United States
- Canada
- Russia
- China
- Iran
Big cities will likely become problematic in each of these locations, and populations will fall. Alaska and other very cold places may not be able to continue as part of the core, either.
(c) Countries, or even smaller units, will want to continue to limit trade and travel to other areas, for fear of contracting illnesses.
(d) Europe, especially, looks ripe for a big step back. Its fossil fuel resources tend to be depleted. There may be parts that can continue with the use of animal labor, if such animal labor can be found. Big protests and failing debt are likely by this summer in some areas, including Italy.
(e) Governments of the Middle Eastern countries and of Venezuela cannot continue long with very low oil prices. These countries are likely to see their governments overthrown, with a concurrent reduction in exports. Population will also fall, perhaps to the level before oil exploration.
(f) The making of physical goods will experience a major setback, starting immediately. Many supply chains are already broken. Medicines made in India and China are likely to start disappearing. Automobile manufacturing will depend on individual countries setting up their own manufacturing supply chains if the making of automobiles is to continue.
(g) The medical system will suffer a major setback from COVID-19 because no one will want to come to see their regular physician any more, for fear of catching the disease. Education will likely become primarily the responsibility of families, with television or the internet perhaps providing some support. Universities will wither away. Music may continue, but drama (on television or elsewhere) will tend to disappear. Restaurants will never regain their popularity.
(h) It is possible that Quantitative Easing by many countries can temporarily prop up the prices of shares of stock and homes for several months, but eventually physical shortages of many goods can be expected. Food in particular is likely to be in short supply by spring a year from now. India and Africa may start seeing starvation much sooner, perhaps within weeks.
(i) History shows that when energy resources are not growing rapidly (see discussion of Figure 3), there tend to be wars and other conflicts. We should not be surprised if this happens again.
Conclusion
We seem to be reaching the limit of making our current global economic system work any longer. The only hope of partial salvation would seem to be if core parts of the world economy can be made to work in a more separate fashion for at least a few more years. In fact, oil and other fossil fuel production may continue, but for each country’s own use, with very limited trade.
There are likely to be big differences among economies around the world. For example, hunter-gathering may work for a few people, with the right skills, in some parts of the world. At the same time, more modern economies may exist elsewhere.
The new economy will have far fewer people and far less complexity. Each country can be expected to have its own currency, but this currency will likely be used only on a limited range of locally produced goods. Speculation in asset prices will no longer be a source of wealth.
It will be a very different world!
un-Denial 
Hi Rob, I just watched planet of the humans. Good doco if you haven’t seen it. If you go to roughly the 50 minute mark there is a section on denial. They just don’t quite connect the dots…..
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Thanks for the tip! I’ll watch it all.
Sheldon Solomon’s Terror Management Theory (TMT) is to Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition theory (MORT) as Newtonian physics is to general relativity. The latter is a newer more accurate and complete model of reality, but the former is still useful for making predictions.
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“Terror Management Theory (TMT) is to Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition theory (MORT) as Newtonian physics is to general relativity.”
Sheldon Solomon,according to Varki, acknowledges that MORT must be correct but seems more interested in the practical and experimentally provable results of denial rather than in Brower’s brilliantly original and simple but profound question – why did we go this way and why are we the only species to go this way?
Lucky for us he posed it to someone like Varki who had the intellectual ability and open-mindedness (quite rare it seems in an academic) to go of his career piste , or it may have died in the Arizona sands after Brower’s untimely death. Thanks also to Sharon Brower of course.
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Very interesting. Where did you hear Varki say Solomon acknowledges MORT is correct?
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From the book Denial. Varki writes in the Chapter “An Improbable but True Story” – “In his letter to me,Solomon wrote: “We agree with your argument that the benefits of consciousness and self-awareness could only be reaped if they were accompanied by simultaneous mechanisms to deny death””
I discovered Brower and Varki’s work through your blog so many thanks.
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Thank you! I read the book several times and missed that passage. My few experiences with fans of TMT have been unpleasant. They did not see anything new or significant in MORT. For me this was more confirmation that MORT must be true.
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Very well done, if not perfect. The topic needs someone of Moore’s stature to shake up liberals/progressives stuck on “bright green” tech-heavy environmentalism. Get them out of their coffee shops and onto mountaintops removed by things beyond coal, which they automatically cast as the Devil in energy debates.
I assume Moore offers it for free to maintain the anti-commerce theme, but of course he’ll get some revenue. Ozzie Zehner is also heavily featured, deservedly so for his 2012 book.
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I just finished watching it. Brilliant!
You’re correct that given Moore’s stature with the environmental movement you might expect this to shift their focus to population and consumption reduction.
On the other hand, MORT predicts that beliefs will not change because humans evolved to deny unpleasant realities, and nothing is more unpleasant for our genes than something that constrains them from executing the Maximum Power Principal that governs all life.
Let’s watch what happens over the next few months. I predict MORT will prevail and beliefs will not change.
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Just finished Moore’s documentary.
Just as the virus probably escaped a Wuhan lab run by scientists with good intentions trying to save humanity from dangerous diseases, I think environmentalists criticized by Moore’s documentary for contributing to the planet’s destruction probably have good intentions.
Many environmentalists understand the peril we face from climate change and are desperate for a solution, any solution. I can see how biomass could be sold as a green solution to an eager audience not well grounded in thermodynamics and the scale of our energy footprint. Burning wood sounds renewable, works with and without the sun, with and without wind, and is embraced by people with money.
The problem, as usual, is scale. The documentary pointed out that powering the US for one year on only biomass would burn all of the forests. I expect this estimate is wildly optimistic if you also include the liquid forms of fossil energy we use like diesel, kerosene, and gasoline.
Energy is a complex topic and no one should be permitted to influence policy unless they have a solid understanding of the physics and engineering associated with it’s generation and use.
Not all opinions have equal weight. Priority must be given to people with deep understanding of the topic. Unfortunately, that’s not how our democracy and economy works.
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You know burning wood is just a continuum of burning carbon from current to ancient, back to current. Calling wood “renewable” minus regrowth context is the same loggers’ propaganda that never explains why old growth is still demanded. Their latest utilitarian spin is that young tree farms are better carbon sinks, so old growth is “bad” for us.
Wood chips are a convenient way to merge “scrap” with primary wood and skew percentages, not just burn it better. Once you’ve got chips moving around the world, their origin gets vague. This was the film’s biggest revelation for me. The ending scene with apes stranded in a lone tree was powerful stuff.
Some footage must have been gathered years ago. Too bad the Lowell Mountain scene wasn’t done in better weather, as it only showed a foggy glimpse of the razing. See https://goo.gl/maps/E9SURtTghjRMbfxq8 and some eco-denial on that project: http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/2012/10/14/on-wind-power-and-destroying-vermont/ (“Simpleton” comment well done!)
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The wise saying “tell me how a man makes his living and I will tell you what he believes” applies in spades to loggers. I had friends who were loggers and I had summer jobs logging when young so I have some first hand knowledge.
I think some countries, like Germany, really have made an honest effort to do something meaningful about climate change. The fact that the best they could come up with is burning woods chips imported from other countries via ships burning diesel is very telling about the intractability of the problem.
Nothing will mitigate climate change, or any of our other overshoot problems, except rapid population reduction, and even this solution is probably too late given how much damage we’ve done to the ecosystem, and the debt we’ve built up denying there is no problem.
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That’s interesting context. You probably know the story of the Golden Spruce and conscientious logger Grant Hadwin. If he’d been a milder sort he could have started a eco-blog in 1997 (same year “weblog” was coined) but how many people would it have reached?
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I’m wondering if tptb are approaching the point where they think they must attempt an economic “restart” damn the torpedoes? One thing I do not hear discussion of is what if govs lift their bans, but employers don’t because they believe the virus will quickly spread through the ranks and/or they fear potential employee lawsuits? Will the retard american armed protesters take their guns & demands to he corporate head office if their employer chooses to remain shut down until the worst of the pandemic is over?
My brother got laid off. He has a big mortgage, major consumer debt & two kids. His wife is a high school teacher & I think they are still getting paid & doing some non class room work. Teachers are not eligible for EI during the summer holidays unless their contracts were not renewed.
What happens if the lock down drags on? What happens when mortgages & car loans are not paid for months? Evictions & repossessions? First off, it costs money to evict & repossess. Secondly, what will they do with all the cars & homes & no buyers? Banks don’t want empty houses. Regardless of who owns the house all up-keeping bylaws still apply. Lawns must be mowed. Interesting times.
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Hi Apneaman, all good questions, and there are many more. My brain can’t grock how a reset will work. One person’s debt is another person’s asset. Your brother’s mortgage is someone else’s pension investment.
The flow of food, energy, and other important items surely must also be at risk. I was shopping on Amazon yesterday and noticed that many durables are no longer being shipped to Canada. Not just delayed due to higher priority shipments as was the case a week ago, but simply not available.
I noticed something else unusual. Items that are NEVER discounted, like good hiking boots, are being offered at steep discounts.
Pro tip: AliExpress is still working and it seems the small Chinese vendors are working extra hard to ship quickly. I suspect they’re desperate for revenue. I won’t be surprised if AliExpress stops working soon. We may never have access to as many inexpensive items again.
The hairs on my neck are tingling that that we are in the lull right before the storm. I suspect that if you’re not already well into preparations it may be too late.
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Thanks Rob. I rarely shop online, but I just ordered 2 pair of Rx eye glasses from Zenni optical 3 days ago.
I have to admit that most of my prepping is purely psychological. I’ve been on the tools since I was 14 & can fix most things half a dozen different ways. I think that gives me a leg up on most of the competition eh? I’m getting old & not sure how much of a change I can tolerate. I already live kinda Spartan compared to my fellow consumer citizens & could give up more material goodies no problem. It’s the other stuff I’m unsure of. The authoritarianism & the herd. I trust neither. Folks already losing their shit & we’re just getting started. There’s more agendas than I can keep up with & most are using the pandemic to further their cause & wound their enemies. Nothing new, but jacked up. Another thing is the ten thousand “theories”. The level of anger & paranoia rises daily. If one of these morons walks in the kitchen a see’s a glass of split milk it’s because the Deep State sent Seal Team 6 to knock it over in the wee hours of the night. I think one of the better survival traits one could adopt is to simply keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on _______. I’ll leave the hysterics & marching in the street to those who “know” things with 100% certainty.
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Very good idea on Zenni. Too bad we can’t order dehydrated dentist. I’ll be putting my DIY hair equipment into service soon with a crew cut.
I agree there’s way too many agendas and opinions. I’m probably in the top decile of reading on the virus and the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t understand it. Biology is much more complicated than our meager minds can comprehend.
I’m allergic to conspiracies because monkeys mostly react rather than plan, and they’re not very good at keeping secrets.
Unlike you I’m an amateur tool guy. Farm work tends to be rough and ready. Just finished this farm stand on wheels.
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Looks really good Rob. The more you do the better you get & after a time you spot the patterns in building & repairing various things (wood, metal, cars, computers, etc). All your trouble shooting skills for engineering are transferable. Problems is problems. I just have the one trade ticket for BoilerMaking which is heavy industrial construction & maintence (toxic). All the other stuff is pretty much self taught & stuff learned from dad, uncles & a few back yard mechanic buddies over the years. There is an amazing number of step by step DIY repair videos out there too.
People can always learn. The culture kinda promotes helplessness. A certified “specialist” at one mundane job & useless at everything else. 1-2 generations ago at least 1/2 of these white collar corporate & government jobs, including CEO’s & upper management, were done by people who never went past grade 12. It was called on the job training. They had people, informal recruiters, who looked out for people with talent & potential. Now they won’t look at anyone without a degree. Some of the dumbest people I know have a degree – my family. Not impressed. There is no BA, MA, or PhD for curiosity is there? You can neither buy nor teach curiosity. Folks either have it or they watch TV/don’t. For those who have it their education only ends by dementia or death. I’m guessing necessity is going to motivate a whole bunch of people to learn a suite of new skills. No degree or permission required. I’ll wager many are going to find they are much more capable & resilient than they ever imagined & will like the feeling that goes with it.
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Well said. Let’s hope we give purpose and responsibility to the young people with things like local food production, rather than war.
Last year I worked as a mason’s helper. Heavy work but I liked it. At the end of the day you had built something useful that would probably last a hundred years.
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Rock, meet Hard Place.
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/04/fomc-fear-of-missing-crash.html
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Antonio Turiel on The Black Storm
http://crashoil.blogspot.com/2020/04/la-tormenta-negra.html
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When it’s low, demand-based pricing feeds the public impression that oil isn’t truly finite. When it’s high, low-minded people blame the government. There’s less total oil in the ground every second, yet they’ll call undiscovered fields “new” oil because people hadn’t named them.
His point about not being able to restore untended wells was apparently a rare issue until now.
Watch for denialists buying fat vehicles during today’s unreal prices. Another major irritant is engine-idling out of laziness or apathy. https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/53634/Idle-Threat
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Widespread aggressive denial of modern civilization’s total dependence on oil, the depletion of low cost oil, and the resulting worldwide debt explosion, is the poster child for Varki’s MORT theory, surpassed only by belief in God and life after death.
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There’s something honestly spiritual about the elements combining into a self-replicating configuration that evolved to figure out the origin of the elements, and why the configuration had to deny unpleasant realities, like its own mortality, before it could do so.
It’s sad that normal humans with functioning denial genes must worship false gods when reality is so magnificent.
Thanks to James @ Megacancer.com for the image.
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Today’s economic update by Panoticon provides a very good global perspective.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2020/04/23/23rd-april-2020-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
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J.C. on why people with a clue know that we should not be basing our recovery plans on a vaccine for the Wuhan virus.
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By giving $2.26 trillion in 6 weeks to Wall Street instead of $17,000 to every household you cause asset inflation and avoid a system collapse (which most people like) instead of causing consumable inflation and depletion (which most people don’t like).
The missing required piece of this strategy that no one discusses is an aggressive capital gains tax to prevent the wealth gap from increasing and destabilizing civil society. The rich are getting richer not because of their skill, but simply because the trillions of dollars we are printing are inflating the assets that the rich already own. Monkeys have an innate sense of fairness and become unruly when one monkey gets a grape and the other a cucumber.
The other missing piece of the discussion is that this strategy simply kicks the can and makes much worse our eventual destination. Where are the people advocating that we live within our means so that the future is less bad?
Denial of reality in full view once again.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/04/23/fed-slashed-qe-further-still-hasnt-bought-junk-bonds-or-etfs/
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Kunstler nails it today.
The good thing about being a reclusive loner is that the lockdown has not changed my life other than I now go to the pantry instead of the grocery store. 🙂
Two comments stood out for me:
1) I agree Amazon’s days are numbered. As are AliExpress’s. They can’t and therefore won’t work in a lower complexity world with less energy. If there’s anything you really need that is not made and sold locally you should get it now.
2) A farrier I met confirmed Kunstler’s mule transportation idea. Compared to horses mules are more fuel efficient and less fussy about their food, have much better temperaments for hauling freight in trains of animals, and their hooves need less maintenance. The only downside is that mules can’t self-replicate like horses, although they so self-repair many malfunctions just like horses.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/turning-and-churning/
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Early signs that the energy industry will be nationalized as expected.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-usa/mnuchin-says-u-s-may-take-stakes-in-u-s-energy-companies-idUSKCN2262TY
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One shale oil producer down, many more to follow, must print more money.
https://srsroccoreport.com/first-shale-oil-domino-to-fall-more-to-come/
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Went into the stores for the 2nd time since the lock-down today, again wearing a mask. I find a mask causes me to overheat and it makes me quite uncomfortable. Can’t imagine wearing one all day as our health care workers must.
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So here’s a serious question.
How can the wealthiest most powerful country in the world with 300 million literate well educated people have as their elected leader a lying moron?
Seriously, how is this possible?
Is it possible that Varki’s denial theory is more powerful than even zeolots like myself can imagine?
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2020/04/26/the-week-in-doom-dont-drink-the-bleach/
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They are not well educated at all & in spite of spending the most per capita on education. Last I checked the US was 31st in public education among OCED nations (Canada 7th). Money can’t fix stupid.
Functional Illiteracy: The Hidden Crisis Facing America
https://gentwenty.com/functional-illiteracy/
32 Million U.S. Adults are “Functionally Illiterate”… What Does That Even Mean?
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/32-million-us-adults-are-functionally-illiterate-what-does-even-mean/
The innumeracy is even worse. The scientific illiteracy is so off the scale they might as well be classified as a different species. I lived in the US for 8 years. I can confirm the wide spread idiocracy. Even among many of the so called collage educated (eg: my in laws) the degree of uncritical thinking was astounding. Sure the US still produces some very brilliant people, but their numbers have fallen while an ever greater number of citizens are dumbed down beyond belief. A line was crossed some tine ago. The morons are just too numerous to be carried by the few.
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There’s this too.
Looking The Other Way On Cheating In College
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2019/08/31/looking-the-other-way-on-cheating-in-college/#757cf947392b
..
“Cases like the much-publicized (and enduring) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.”
https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-students-cheat-and-what-do-about-it
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Wow, I was not aware it’s that bad. On the other hand it must be, their leader can’t speak a coherent sentence, and the citizens don’t care. In fact he’ll be re-elected if the stock market doesn’t crash.
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One popularized solution was offered decades ago by C.M. Kornbluth. Maybe Elon Musk could provide the hardware, if not the gubmint, which is now full of what needs to ship.
Then again, Musk isn’t doing Earth any favors with his massive space junk initiative (aka global satellite Internet) corrupting every square mile with Facebook feeds.
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New video from the brilliant Steve Cutts…
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View at Medium.com
Seems like some people have trouble accepting “Planet of the humans” message. I think this article is a classic case of denial. I think a lot of people will have trouble accepting that renewables are just a derivative of fossil fuels.
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Thanks. This article is a little better than others I’ve seen. At least it tries to address the facts raised in the documentary. Others I’ve seen simply attacked the messenger.
I don’t think environmentalists will shift their focus to population reduction, which of course means they are not really environmentalists. They are consumers that want to feel good about consuming more.
What will change is that Michael Moore will have fewer friends.
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Yes, climate denial is not the only denial out there. Alt energy dreaming is not the only science denial from the left & when confronted with facts they act just as enraged & hysterical as right wing nuts. This is the fate of ‘believers’.
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Here is a balanced review of Moore’s Planet of the Humans although not brave enough to discuss the need for rapid population reduction policies.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-04-27/review-planet-of-the-humans/
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Count on Richard Heinberg to show restraint, even towards people I suspect he thinks are full of shit–too few like him. I venture that most of the people apoplectic about Planet of the Humans are innumerate-a common societal malady.
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Another balanced review by Antonio Turiel.
http://crashoil.blogspot.com/2020/04/critica-del-documental-planet-of-humans.html
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Mac10 shares my opinion of economists. Their profession is an embarrassment that should be banned from universities for not following the scientific method.
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/04/100-smoke-and-mirrors.html
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Economists serve the same purpose as the priestly classes have throughout history – legitimizers of the system & the elites who run/own it.
Remember in 2008 when they said “who could have seen it coming?” That’s just the secular version of “God’s will” & God wills it”. They pull it out whenever they need to cover their failures.
Scapegoating is another. In 2008 they tried to pin it on the sub prime mortgage failure, which was a trigger, like Covid, not the cause. They even tried a scapegoat double down by claiming it was stupid poor people taking out mortgages they did not understand. Those people were a drop in the bucket. Plenty of middle class people stupidly refinanced (for consumption) & there were house flippers & wanna be landlords who took stupid risks/over extended. They all bought into the hype at the time. I was still living there when it went down. I saw the carnage & the hype that preceded it.
I think the only thing the ecnOpriests got right is the invisible hand. All plebs know it’s real because they can feel it reaching into their back pocket their entire lives & even beyond the grave. It’s may be invisible, but we all know who’s hand it is.
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Very nice big picture perspective by Tim Watkins today. Copied in full here because every paragraph was good enough to be an excerpt.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/04/27/lockdown-its-the-mood-swings-that-bother-me-most/
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“not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.”
Tis true. Thing is the humans have some deep seated need to know & in lieu of creditable explanations from the media, they start making up their own versions of truth.
The two hardest things for most humans to admit are, “I was wrong” & “I don’t know”.
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The diversity of opinions on the nature of the virus and what to do about it is head-spinning. I’m firmly in the “I don’t know” camp, but am being cautious just in case the pessimistic people are right, and I’m expecting big economic “events” soon.
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I came across this article on global dimming.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122104611.htm
I wonder if the world is about to experience a temperature spike due to covid 19?
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Good question. I remember James Hansen saying that we’d be at least a half degree warmer if if was not for industrial soot.
https://un-denial.com/2012/02/11/book-review-storms-of-my-grandchildren-by-james-hansen/
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What a difference 8 years makes. When you wrote that review co2 was 392 ppm. We’re now at 415ppm.
Does economic collapse save us from a climate apocalypse or have we already passed the point of no return? What’s your take Rob?
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I’m not sure. If the economy contracts, say 50%, but the wheels stay on so people have food & shelter, as Nate Hagens predicts, then it should make our climate future (and other environmental problems) less bad. I say less bad because it’s too late for a good outcome. On the other hand, if we have a mad max crash, then everything will get worse as people burn the forests and eat anything that moves to survive. Of course a probable wild car that will wreck all predictions is a global nuclear war over scarce resources, as Jack Alpert, Jay Hansen, and all the history books predict.
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Nice find by Apneaman.
https://breggin.com/us-chinese-scientists-collaborate-on-coronavirus/
A quick background check suggests to me this guy is legit and is not a whack job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Breggin
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BenjaminTheDonkey weighs in on Michael Moore’s documentary Planet of the Humans…
http://benjaminthedonkey-limericksofdoom.blogspot.com/2020/04/hoax.html
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Unlike many of my friends, I think Bill Gates is a good man with good intentions. I know he understands our energy and climate predicaments because I’ve heard him discuss the issues, and he’s investing in nuclear energy which is our only hope for maintaining our advanced technology lifestyles after the oil is gone.
My main criticism of Gates is that I wish he had focused on population reduction (in all countries) rather than disease mortality reduction (in developing countries). Perhaps he’s wiser than me and knows that rapid population reduction policies will never be democratically supported because of the Maximum Power Principle that governs our gene’s behaviors. Instead, I’m guessing he hopes the birth rate will fall as disease mortality falls, as it did for us fortunate people in the developed world. The problem is that this solution is too slow given the magnitude of our overshoot and imminence of energy depletion.
Here Gates discusses a vaccine for the Wuhan virus, says it’s possible to develop in 18 months, and is the only possible solution to the pandemic. He also says a vaccine has never before been developed in less than 5 years so he knows the risks. I don’t know if his optimism has any foundation, although I do know you can’t be a successful entrepreneur without extreme levels of optimism (aka denial). I also know he knows a lot more about vaccines than I do.
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Trump confirms the virus originated from the Wuhan lab.
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That is the funniest thing I have watched in a long time. Thank you for posting it!
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When Art Berman speaks about oil, I listen.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Death-Of-US-Oil.html
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It took them a while but they’re finally getting warm.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
Chris Martenson does a nice job of connecting the dots from the Newsweek report.
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Peter Breggin also explains the US funding link to the virus.
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Another nice find by Apneaman…
https://www.dailyimpact.net/2020/05/01/we-are-not-going-back-to-normal-because-normal-isnt-there-anymore/
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My take away messages: 1) the virus wasn’t man-made because no one is smart enough to do that. It was Nature who did the trick. 2) The vaccine may never come, don’t buy the hype.
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I agree that a vaccine is far from being a done deal.
I disagree with your first point. “Man-made” is a slippery term that the responsible scientists seem to be using to obscure the truth. It is not man-made in the sense that we designed the virus. There are however peer reviewed published papers suggesting the virus may have been collected from the wild and enhanced, which I suppose like breeding dogs, you might say is not “man-made” if you’re deliberately trying to be obtuse.
I might agree with you if and when I see an expert discuss all of the published and circumstantial evidence before concluding that the virus arrived without laboratory involvement.
This is a very good interview but he did not address the evidence.
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Perhaps it is okay if another sip I post his previous interview in this space. I’m too dumb to figure out the big picture of this ‘another fine mess’, as Laurel and Hardy put it. A smartvirus, a viral stealth fighter? A virus that thinks? But like it or not, it’s product development. Mutations. It’s getting better, as the Beatles put it.
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More unraveling of the story. Better hurry up and place your final AliExpress orders.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60
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Doug Noland does a nice job in his essay this week reminding us that in 10 short years we have come to accept monetary policies as normal that prior to 2008 were considered by wise experts to be unthinkable because of their consequences.
I think about this all the time and am amazed that so few people care that we are trading off a much worse future for a little better present. We don’t even discuss and debate the issue.
There is no better example of reality denial enabling the Maximum Power Principle that governs our behavior.
https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2020/05/weekly-commentary-going-nuclear.html
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Sam Mitchell interviewed today Sheldon Solomon, one of the originators of Terror Management Theory (TMT), which considers the human tendency to deny death, and which is a precursor to the more comprehensive Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory developed by Ajit Varki, which is the reason this blog exists.
Part 1 of 2
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Part 2 of 2
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Kurt Cobb compares the current economic downturn with the 2008 financial crisis.
In 2008 oil consumption dropped by 1.5% over a 24 month period.
Today oil consumption has dropped by 20% in only a few weeks.
Given that GDP is proportional to energy consumption, I think we should expect problems an order of magnitude larger than 2008. It could even be worse than 10x because there is now much more debt at risk of defaulting which may amplify the effects.
You can see why central banks have panicked and why they’re pretending not to be panicked.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-05-03/oil-flows-spell-deep-depression/
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Tim Morgan explains why so many can be so wrong for so long.
Hint: Humans are a herd animal that denies reality.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/171-inflexion-point/comment-page-1/#comment-19749
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/treasury-to-borrow-3-trillion-in-second-quarter-far-more-than-during-financial-crisis
h/t Panopticon
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I haven’t seen anything from Nicole Foss for a few years so I searched and found she did an interview last month.
You can find more by Nicole here:
https://un-denial.com/2017/05/18/by-nicole-foss-the-automatic-earth-primer-guide-2017/
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It’s wonderful to see that someone in my local community gets it.
https://tidechange.ca/2020/05/06/planet-of-yahoos/
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A key point to observe is that debt was exploding before the virus. I respect the author Wolf Richter but he has a very shallow understanding of our predicament. Debt is a symptom of us denying the reality of limits to growth. Debt is now a proxy for human overshoot because it’s growing faster than the real economy.
When the debt falls, so too will our population, but neither voluntarily.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/05/06/us-national-debt-spiked-by-1-5-trillion-in-6-weeks-to-25-trillion-fed-monetized-90/
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Another example of reality denial in plain view.
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/05/06/feldman-america-has-no-plan-for-the-worst-case-scenario-on-covid-19/
h/t Panopticon
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BenjaminTheDonkey with more sharp wit on Michael Moore’s documentary….
http://benjaminthedonkey-limericksofdoom.blogspot.com/2020/05/planet-of-humans.html
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Evidence mounts that the virus was man made in the Wuhan lab.
Not addressed here but don’t forget that the US funded research in the Wuhan lab.
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Thank you for posting. I tried to post the link from the Nerd Has Power blog on James’ Megacancer blog, but his ISP blocked my message, with the notice that it “detected spam”. I figured that J.C. on a Bike would be doing a video right away on it…
If these allegations are true, then the creation of a fictitious RaTG13 virus must have been a deliberate attempt by the Chinese to deflect attention away from the non-natural, laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2, about the time that there were questions being raised about its origin. Would Zhengli Shi have willingly done something like this? Her reputation will be in tatters if this turns out to be correct. She may have been “asked” to do it, since after all, the PLA and CCP are in charge. We may never know.
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What is your understanding of the role that US government funding for research played?
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Oh, the USG has been funding this research for years, all right, through NIH and Dept. of Defense grants – the Harvard to the Big House blogger has documented that in great detail, in his January and March postings. The Chinese may have taken this research a bit further than we imagined, and have opened Pandora’s box. The clan of gain-of-function researchers has some explaining to do.
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Thanks. Lots of blame to go around. I expect the culprits will escape without consequences. Just as did all the people that committed blatant fraud which triggered the 2008 financial crash.
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Coal’s being replaced by natural gas.
Solar and wind energy are increasing but still account for less than 4% of our energy.
The energy mix has a lot of momentum and changes slowly due to the large capital involved. Despite this, natural gas was able to increase 600% more than solar over the 5 years from 2015 to 2109.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-americas-energy-use-in-one-giant-chart/
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For a good preview of what collapse looks like I recommend this recent episode of BBC Our World on life today in Venezuela.
https://thepiratebay10.org/torrent/36166016/BBC_Venezuela_Falling_Backwards_1080p_HDTV_x265-MVGroup
Previously well off middle class people now:
– buy food every day with cash whose value declines rapidly due to inflation
– grow food in their backyards
– have intermittent electricity and cannot rely on refrigeration
– burn diesel in oil lamps because kerosene is scarce
– use motorcycles for transportation because they burn less gasoline which is scarce
– no longer have access to drugs or health care
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ISMO is funny today.
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Alice Friedemann discusses the implications of the Wuhan virus on peak oil.
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/will-covid-19-delay-peak-oil/
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J.C reviews a new paper on the Wuhan virus that posits the only way out is through herd immunity, because a vaccine is fantasy, and if we were to do everything right, which we are not, the best we can hope to achieve is to mitigate 10% of the deaths. “It’s biologically certain we’re going to lose people”.
What we should have done is isolate the old people and kept the schools open to spread the virus, sacrificing a few school teachers in the process for the common good.
I’m thinking we could optimize the common good by substituting teachers with economists.
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Kunstler explains why we haven’t yet seen the negative consequences of printing $2+ trillion in 2 months, other than rising stock prices, but we will.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-sum-of-all-broken-promises/
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Nice big picture summary of the Wuhan virus by Tim Watkins.
Not sure if I agree with the rest of his essay’s thesis about our leaders deliberately keeping us confused. I think our leaders are too stupid to have a strategy.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/11/lockdown-learned-helplessness/
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Gail Tverberg is back with a follow up essay on the same topic.
I would add that because our species evolved to deny unpleasant realities we will never acknowledge that overshoot was at the core of our unraveling. Our descendants will tell stories that without the Wuhan virus it would have been clear skies and economic growth forever.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/05/13/understanding-our-pandemic-economy-predicament/
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As mainstream discussions on the economy go, this one’s very good. It’s an intelligent open-eyed analysis of what we should expect: deflation and a depression. What to do? Buy gold or bitcoin. As a bonus, if you differ and believe inflation is imminent due to money printing, then these investments will also protect you.
They have no understanding, as usual, of the role energy is playing in this story, or the role climate will play in the future, which means they do not understand that this downturn is a permanent trend.
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This is absolutely fascinating.
There is a chess game underway between two camps of really smart scientists. One side trying to prove the virus originated in nature and/or trying to hide their role in creating the virus, and the other side trying to unpick the truth. What actually happened may be profoundly important to the pandemic endgame. If it’s a natural occurrence we can expect eventual herd immunity. If it’s a man-made demon intended to thwart our defenses then all bets are off.
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Nobody rants about reality denial better than Mac10. His tirade today made me laugh. And he’s mostly right despite not understanding MORT and the other science behind what we observes.
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/05/nature-won.html
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“Now however these idiots have a right to be worried. Their entire way of life is circling the toilet, like a massive turd, while they watch, mesmerized.”
Speaking of circling, this clip is realistic when you know how people act: https://vimeo.com/109169719 (described as “crowd dynamics…”)
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Rob, are you familiar with Pentti Linkola’s work? He was a Finnish fisherman, essayist and deep ecologist. Georg Henrik von Wright, the successor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, regarded him as the most profound Finnish philosopher. Linkola died in April. I hope these links work and are good enough, if not, maybe you can find better ones. His last book is available in English. He considered his previous book his magnum opus but it hasn’t been translated.
https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-04-05—pentti-linkola-s-last-interview-was-published-on-thursday-on-kulttuuritoimitus—he-talked-about-the-coronavirus–%E2%80%9Cit-helps-something%E2%80%9D-.BJx6UCDPwU.html
https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-04-05—pentti-linkola-snapped-hard-text-in-his-last-interview—and-praised-greta-thunberg-.Sye6BQEPDI.html
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Thanks for the tip. I got one of Linkola’s books and will check it out.
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Donald Trump is correct on this issue. The WHO is criminally incompetent.
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I watched the new BBC Horizon episode on the virus.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jbhj
1) No mention of preventative measures like vitamin D etc.
2) No mention that everyone should wear masks.
3) No mention that we’ve never successfully created a vaccine for a similar virus.
4) No mention of gain of function research in Wuhan that may have leaked.
Quite sad. BBC used to be a news source you could trust.
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Our idiot chief health officer finally recommends Canadians wear masks after 3 months of telling us not to wear masks. How is it possible that obviously incompetent people can hold important positions?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/it-s-now-recommended-that-canadians-wear-face-masks-1.4946752
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UK’s going negative.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/05/22/what-horrified-fund-managers-banks-uks-pension-minister-said-about-the-bank-of-englands-sudden-we-dont-rule-out-negative-interest-rates/
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Negative interest – Negative growth – Negative emissions = Negative reality. I’m wondering just how comical (to me) theses expert ‘solutions’ can get? They’re like the keystone cops running around with a big box of magic band-aids trying to patch up a critically wounded & dying system.
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Negative interest rates are the quintessential example of how we lack free will and are governed by the Maximum Power Principle. The people in charge know negative rates are a bad idea but will implement them regardless rather than preparing for our inevitable smaller future.
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Promise the chimps more, throw in a touch of pseudo science razzel dazzel & they will follow you anywhere including over the cliff. Humans are a universal joke.
The new astrology
By fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience
“In 2000, USA Today quoted Robin Griffiths, the chief technical analyst at HSBC, the world’s third largest bank, saying that ‘most astrology stuff doesn’t check out, but some of it does’.”
“The notion that an entire culture – not just a few eccentric financiers – could be bewitched by empty, extravagant theories might seem absurd. How could all those people, all that math, be mistaken? This was my own feeling as I began investigating mathiness and the shaky foundations of modern economic science. Yet, as a scholar of Chinese religion, it struck me that I’d seen this kind of mistake before, in ancient Chinese attitudes towards the astral sciences. Back then, governments invested incredible amounts of money in mathematical models of the stars. To evaluate those models, government officials had to rely on a small cadre of experts who actually understood the mathematics – experts riven by ideological differences, who couldn’t even agree on how to test their models. And, of course, despite collective faith that these models would improve the fate of the Chinese people, they did not.”
https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-rode-maths-to-become-our-era-s-astrologers
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Regardless of the belief, if it is not consistent with the laws of thermodynamics, it is wrong.
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https://srsroccoreport.com/chart-of-the-week-the-unemployment-rate-signals-the-dow-jones-index-to-crash-to-this-level/
Put another way, limits to growth, specifically net per capita energy, has forced us to rely on growth in paper assets rather than physical assets to keep our debt backed fraction reserve monetary system from collapsing on itself.
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15 years ago the cocky chimps were gleefully chanting, “drill baby drill”. Today they are terrified & pleading, “print daddy print”.
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The Dumbfuck Money Bubble. See It, Or Be It.
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-dumbfuck-money-bubble-see-it-or-be.html
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Some 3 billion people lost or had their jobs/income cut in the last few months, yet the stock market keeps rising. What better indicator is there that the stock market is disconnected from the real world & has little to no effect on most folks day to day lives? Let it crash & burn. The sooner the better. The system is beyond reform – it’s terminal. The sooner it dies, the sooner a new arrangement can be had. People fear change almost as much as death, which is funny because change is what the universe is all about.
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Oil production appears to have peaked just before the Wuhan virus arrived. I continue to believe we are experiencing a brief calm before the storm thanks to unprecedented ($5,000,000,000,000+) money printing and many citizens with hope that growth will resume. When the majority wake up and realize growth will not resume, hope will be replaced with fear and anger, and money printing will no longer work. Then all hell will break loose.
Get prepared while it’s still possible to do so.
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-stealth-peak-in-world-oil-production.html
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Chris Kresser is my favorite source of humble yet intelligent well-read science based health advice. In this recent podcast Kresser provides a big picture summary of what we know about the Wuhan virus and where we may be going.
https://chriskresser.com/covid-19-my-thoughts-on-where-we-are-now-and-where-were-headed/
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Super informative and articulate podcast, Rob, thanks.
I don’t comment enough on your posts, but I read, appreciate, and get something useful out of every one of them. And thanks for occasionally tossing in a bit of comedy to lighten things up!
I’m really bummed today about how hostile so many people (particularly in the United States, where I live) are about wearing masks to reduce the spread of this disease. And I’m far from certain that common sense and scientific evidence will sway them. But this podcast gave me a few great tips to cope and manage the stress involved in our current predicament that I’ll put to use.
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Thank you for the kind words.
I am very grateful that I had the good fortune to be born in Canada. We seem to be less polarized and hostile to each other than what I observe in the US. In the US most issues seem to have a red team and a blue team belief, and what the science says has no influence on those beliefs. Quite sad.
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I’ve visited Canada once, during March of 2015, when I drove from my home in the Midwest to Ottawa. The people I met and observed there were marvelously kind and reasonable, both to me and to one another. I noticed they had an ease of presence that I rarely experience in the United States anymore. I attribute much of that ease to a reduced overall stress burden as compared to US citizens. Upon my return home, I immediately sensed a heightened level of agitation and aggression from many members of my community as compared to my (admittedly brief) time in Canada.
There’s long been a deep sickness within a significant portion of the collective American (US) mindset. A combination of individual/national narcissism, the belief that freedom doesn’t require responsibility, general paranoia, rugged individualism at all costs, a pathological disregard for the welfare of others, and (more recently) a contempt for science. I struggle to see how this country can mend its ways, and thereby stop terrorizing itself and others.
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Well said. I too see dark clouds over the US, and by extension due to its influence, everywhere else. It seems the only way to unite the American people is to go to war. Unfortunately the next war will have a bad outcome because we’ve already burned all the good booty so war will simply accelerate the depletion of key resources.
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I can only agree. It’s another awful truth that’s hard to take.
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I’ve visited Canada once, during March of 2015, when I drove from my home in the Midwest to Ottawa. The people I met and observed there were marvelously kind and reasonable, both to me and to one another. I noticed they had an ease of presence that I rarely experience in the United States anymore. I attribute much of that ease to a reduced overall stress burden as compared to US citizens. Upon my return home, I immediately sensed a heightened level of agitation and aggression from many members of my community as compared to my (admittedly brief) time in Canada.
There’s long been a deep sickness within a significant portion of the collective American (US) mindset. A combination of individual/national narcissism, the belief that freedom doesn’t require responsibility, general paranoia, rugged individualism at all costs, a pathological disregard for the welfare of others, and (more recently) a contempt for science. I struggle to see how this country can mend its ways, and thereby stop terrorizing itself and others.
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Oops, I apologize for the double post. I don’t know how it occurred but it wasn’t intentional.
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No need to apologize, the problem was on my end. WordPress for some unknown reason marked your posts as spam, even though you should have been whitelisted due to previous posts.
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The MPP in action, Alberta style….lmao
Alberta minister says it’s a ‘great time’ to build a pipeline because COVID-19 restrictions limit protests against them
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-alberta-minister-says-its-a-great-time-to-build-a-pipeline-because/
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Amazing. We’d have reason to question the validity of the MPP if just once we heard a leader say “we need to constrain growth and leave some oil in the ground so our grandchildren can at least enjoy a small fraction of the comforts we take for granted”.
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It Hit 80 Degrees in the Arctic This Week
“This story will provide important context for the headline, and I encourage you to read it—but really, the headline tells you what you need to know: It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit above the Arctic Circle this week.
A little farther south, in Siberia—you know, the region of world we reference when we want to connote something cold—it was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Arctic sea ice in the neighboring Kara Sea took the deepest May nose dive ever recorded. Oh, and random swaths of the region are on fire. Things are extremely wrong.”
https://earther.gizmodo.com/it-hit-80-degrees-in-the-arctic-this-week-1843606717
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We know from everyday life that bad things happen when the gradient between high and low energy is reduced. Doing it at the planetary scale and not making any changes whatsoever that might inconvenience our privileged lifestyles is insanity and more proof that we are governed by reality denial and the MPP.
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{From emergency ICU health-care worker Kristen Martins.}
“My message to those protesting the stay-at-home orders in Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, California, Arizona, Montana, and any other state & to Trump:
Come take a step into my daily hell.
Come tell me to my face that “fear is worse than the virus!”
Come walk into the trailer full of dead, rotting humans, and I will pick out a spot for your body, since it is “your body, your right”.
If “Jesus is your vaccine”, tell me why I am taking the rosary off my patient’s lifeless body?
Anyone protesting should forfeit their rights to receive any medical care. NONE. You are putting the lives of anyone you come into contact with because of your boredom and selfishness. You are putting every single healthcare worker’s life not only at an increased risk, but your disrespect for humankind because of your ignorance and stupidity is beyond appalling. You are a disgrace.”
https://kristenfmartins.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/running-out-of-outlets/
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Good one. I’m grateful that there seem to be fewer morons in Canada.
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Thanks, Apneaman. Heartbreaking, powerful stuff. It sickens me that anyone reading this, or a similar narrative, could minimize or deny the grimness of this disease and not engage ridiculously simple actions to help protect one another from it. But it’s a certainty that there are many who will do just that.
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Out of 8 billion reality denying fire apes there are less than a hundred that are capable of explaining in a few sentences what’s actually going on with the economy. Tim Watkins is one of them. I’m pretty sure his denial genes are defective. Seriously. Except when he whines about austerity which he avoids in this essay.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/26/two-money-tricks/
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https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3086177/coronavirus-uses-same-strategy-hiv-dodge-immune-response-chinese
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Apparently they’ve pulled planet of the humans off YouTube. Copyright infringement or some bullshit.
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Yes I saw that. The correct response from environmentalists should have been to shift their focus from green energy to population reduction. Instead they attacked the messenger and denied the message. Genetic reality denial in plain view for all to see.
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It was a photographer who’d documented rare earth mining but apparently doesn’t mind its impact unless it’s for something not officially “green” or “clean.” See: https://www.tobysmith.com/project/rare-earthenware-2/
One of the first images I found of Smith shows objects he seems to respect more than nature itself: https://cdn.tobysmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/mug_shot_12.jpg
It was a smug act but I think Moore will override it soon enough. One assumes all footage was obtained with permission. Eco-posers are just giving the film more publicity.
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Good to see they’re not taking it lying down: https://youtu.be/t00DXgEnekc
They could offer it as a legal torrent vs. streaming delivery. Just get it out there again.
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Update: It’s here for the moment and quality seems near the original: https://vimeo.com/423114384 (can be downloaded as a ~3GB file at 1080p)
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Thanks. I smelled trouble when I first watched it so took steps to ensure I could always access it.
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FYI, I noticed Gibbs has kept a copy on Vimeo for 2 months; could have sworn it didn’t show up earlier. He may have just de-privatized it. I’ll leave the link to be found in a search.
I’m thinking smug/flaky Google management is a big factor in censorship. YouTube allows all sorts of crass material like trophy hunting porn as educational or recreational. “Don’t Be Evil” is a joke.
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