Category: By Other Authors

By Nafeez Ahmed: Brace for the Financial Crash of 2018

Good news!

Someone thinks we have another year.

And if this prediction comes true, CO2 emissions will fall.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.1qn4wrwxa

80% of the world’s oil has already peaked, and the resulting oil crunch will flatten the economy.

A report by HSBC shows that contrary to industry mythology, even amidst the glut of unconventional oil and gas, the vast bulk of the world’s oil production has already peaked and is now in decline; while European government scientists show that the value of energy produced by oil has declined by half within just the first 15 years of the 21st century.

“In order to avoid the [oil] price affordable by the global economy falling below the extraction cost, debt piling (borrowing from the future) becomes a necessity, yet it is a mere trick to gain some time while hoping for something positive to happen,” said Meneguzzo. “The reality is that debt, basically as a substitute for oil, does not work to produce real wealth, as apparent for example from the decline of the industry value added as a percentage of GDP.”

Today, we are all supposed to quietly believe that the economy is in ‘recovery’, when in fact it is merely transitioning through a fundamental global systemic phase-shift in which the unsustainability of prevailing industrial structures are being increasingly laid bare.

By James Howard Kunstler: Forecast 2017: The Wheels Finally Come Off

Here is Kunstler’s year-end summary and predictions for 2017.

Kunstler does an amazing job of weaving many complex threads into an interesting, coherent, and (I believe) true story.

Long time students of overshoot won’t find any new ideas here but it’s an excellent refresher for experts, and a great place to start for newbies.

This year’s predictions are specific and very short-term so we won’t have long to wait to see if he’s right. If he is wrong, it will likely be in timing rather than outcomes.

Highly recommended.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2017-wheels-finally-come-off/

“There is no other endeavor in which men and women of enormous intellectual power have shown total disregard for higher-order reasoning than monetary policy.” — David Collum

By Chris Martenson: Dave Murphy Interview – Glyphosate: Unsafe On Any Plate

This interview by Chris Martenson of Dave Murphy on the health dangers and wide-spread use of glyphosate is the most persuasive case I’ve heard for eating organic food.

I have for a long time been puzzled by gluten intolerance. Our civilization was founded on wheat. It seems to me something important has changed.

A friend speculated that the problem is not gluten in wheat, but rather the glyphosate used to desiccate wheat, a relatively new farming practice, that is damaging vital flora in our gut.

That makes a lot of sense to me, and could explain why some people feel better when they stop eating wheat.

I don’t eat much wheat but I’m cutting out Cheerios and switching to organic oatmeal for breakfast.

https://peakprosperity.com/podcast/105335/dave-murphy-glyphosate-unsafe-any-plate

See also…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/tests-show-monsanto-weed_b_12950444.html

By Jim Quinn: A Biased 2017 Forecast

A lot of people discuss inherited denial without knowing that’s what they’re talking about.

I like this piece by Jim Quinn because he elegantly captures the insanity and denial of our debt bubble.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/12/31/a-biased-2017-forecast-part-one/

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/01/01/a-biased-2017-forecast-part-two/

It is fascinating to me no one seems all that worried about the systematically dangerous levels of global debt supporting essentially bankrupt governments, banks and consumers. Global debt stood at $142 trillion at the end of 2007, just prior to a worldwide financial meltdown, caused by too much bad debt in the financial system.

To “fix” this problem, central bankers around the globe ramped up their electronic printing presses to hyper-drive and created another $57 trillion of debt by mid-2014. They haven’t taken their foot off the gas since. Today, global debt most certainly exceeds $225 trillion and has surpassed 300% of global GDP. Rogoff and Reinhart made a pretty strong case that when debt to GDP exceeds 90%, disaster will follow.

Global debt issuance reached a record $6.6 trillion in 2016, with corporations accounting for $3.6 trillion – most of which was used to buy back their stock at all-time highs. What could possibly go wrong? The level of normalcy bias amongst financial “experts”, the intelligentsia, and the common man is breathtaking to behold. We are in the midst of the mother of all bubbles, never witnessed in the history of mankind, and we pretend everything is normal, with no consequences for our reckless disregard for honesty, rational thinking, or simple math.

The 2000 dot.com bubble and the 2008 housing bubble were one dimensional. This mother of all bubbles required the global coordination and unprecedented irresponsible intervention of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the Bank of England (BOE) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to lead the world to the brink of monetary disaster. The highly educated theorists running these central banks have created tens of trillions in unpayable debt while suppressing interest rates to zero or below at the behest of their Deep State masters.

The result is simultaneous bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate. The pin destined to pop all the bubbles is slightly higher interest rates. The 1% increase in the 10 Year Treasury is already causing havoc in the housing market, the bond market and is hammering pension funds. With the hundreds of trillions in globally interconnected derivatives primed to detonate, 2017 could be an explosive year.

By Chris Martenson: As We Enter 2017, Keep the Big Picture in Mind

An excellent year-end piece by Chris Martenson.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/105291/we-enter-2017-keep-big-picture-mind

 

Truthfully, there’s a lot about which we should all be concerned, and I think that people’s sense of unease heading into 2017 is well-deserved, if sometimes misplaced.

What do I mean by that?  Well, it is misplaced to be worried about symptoms instead of causes.  The fever is worrying but it is not the cause of the illness.

 

Perhaps the most vexing challenge remains how to more effectively communicate the various predicaments and problems we face.

It’s not having more numbers, or more data, that’s for sure.  If numbers and data ‘worked then we’d have taken a very different path sometime back in the 1950’s.

 

As Admiral Hyman Rickover said in a speech to a group of doctors in 1957:

“I think no further elaboration is needed to demonstrate the significance of energy resources for our own future. Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is – in the long run – none.

The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot.

Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume.

In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift. Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank.

A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.”

(Source)

His logic was as irrefutably sound then as it is today.  Such information was known at the highest levels throughout government and academia.  But there was no, and continues to be no, sustained and well-funded efforts to grapple with the basic dilemma posed by increasing population as dramatically as we have all the while living on, literally eating, fossil fuels to encourage that rapid population growth.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”  ~ Al Bartlett

 

The predicament we face is really quite profound.  I submit to you that people know this in their guts and the fact that they do goes a long way towards describing the feeling dread many people report they are carrying here at the start of 2017 and cannot seem to shake.

And of course they are.  Not having a plan for how to even feed 7.4 billion people, heading to 9 or 10 billion people, without massive fossil fuel calorie subsidies is a troubling thought.  If it’s not troubling, then more thinking needs to be applied.

By Ludlum and Kunstler: Obama’s Legacy

It’s likely Trump will be really bad, but he’s going to have to work hard to be worse than Obama.

Steve Ludlum and James Howard Kunstler recently wrote nice summaries of Obama’s legacy. I’ve posted them to remind myself in the future just how bad Obama really was. Or perhaps how little power a president actually has.

 

In fact, almost every ‘crime’ the oafish Trump is being accused of in advance has been committed already by preceding administrations including Obama’s, starting illegal wars, snooping on citizens, raping the environment, cozying up to bankers, bankers, bankers and more bankers.

Don’t forget Obama’s ‘drone war’, suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary imprisonment and torture in secret prisons. These programs took form under Bush but Obama did nothing to end them or much to rein them in.

It’s okay as long as ‘our guy’ does it: it wasn’t Trump who ringed Russia with military bases, missiles and combat formations, it wasn’t Trump who sent spies and provocateurs to destabilize Ukraine or attack Russian clients Syria and Libya from the air. It wasn’t Trump who is engaged in questionable wars in multiple countries across the globe all aimed at driving energy- and resource consumption to the world’s largest energy hog. It isn’t Trump who made al-Qaeda into a defacto ally of the Pentagon and the CIA, who gave the militants arms and training, who enabled the rise of Turkish neo-Ottoman ambition alongside Saudi Salafism and state terror. It was Obama who did all these things and more, following in the footsteps of American presidents going back to Truman.

http://www.economic-undertow.com/2016/12/23/king-trump-the-irrelevant/

 

I didn’t vote for Hillary or Donald Trump (I wrote-in David Stockman). I’m not happy to see Donald Trump become president. But I’ve had enough of Mr. Obama. He put up a good front. He seemed congenial and intelligent. But in the end, he appears to be a kind of stooge for the darker forces in America’s overgrown bureaucratic Deep State racketeering operation. Washington truly is a swamp that needs to be drained. Barack Obama was not one of the alligators in it, but he was some kind of bird with elegant plumage that sang a song of greeting at every sunrise to the reptiles who stirred in the mud. And now he is flying away.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/exit-hope-change/

By Robert Scribbler: Climate Change Updates

Economic growth has been minimal since 2008 yet CO2 is increasing at a record rate. That’s a really bad sign. Where are the adults?

As we reported in November, 2016 is on track to see a record rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increase.

“The MMCO [Middle Miocene Climate Optimum] was ushered in by CO2 levels jumping abruptly from around 400ppm to 500 ppm, with global temperatures warming by about 4°C  and sea levels rising about 40m (130 feet) as the Antarctic ice sheet declined substantially and suddenly. ” — Skeptical Science

For 2016, Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations are Rising at the Fastest Rate Ever Seen

 

I’ve been monitoring climate science for many years and I’ve observed that this year’s worst case scenario often becomes subsequent year’s likely scenario. That’s a really bad sign. Where are the adults?

“What this means is that even if all of human fossil fuel emissions stop, the Earth environment, from this single source (soil), will generate about the same carbon emission as all of the world’s fossil fuel industry did during the middle of the 20th Century. And that, if human emissions do not stop, then the pace of global warming of the oceans, ice sheets, and atmosphere is set to accelerate in a runaway warming event over the next 85 years.”

“Sadly, soil respiration is just one potential feedback mechanism that can produce added greenhouse gasses as the Earth warms. Warming oceans take in less carbon and are capable of producing their own carbon sources as they acidify and as methane seeps proliferate. Forests that burn due to heat and drought produce their own carbon sources. But increasing soil respiration, which has also been called the compost bomb, represents what is probably one of the most immediate and likely large sources of carbon feedback.”

“The upshot of this study is that amplifying carbon feedbacks from the Earth environment are probably starting to happen on a large scale now. And we may be seeing some evidence for this effect during 2016 as rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation are hitting above 3 parts per million per year for the second year in a row even as global rates of human emissions plateaued.”

“What this means is that the stakes for cutting human carbon emissions to zero as swiftly as possible just got a whole hell of a lot higher. If we fail to do this, we will easily be on track for 5-7 C or worse warming by the end of this Century. And this level of warming happening so soon and over so short a timeframe is an event that few, if any, current human civilizations are likely to survive.

Furthermore, if we are to avoid terribly harmful warming over longer periods, we must not only rapidly transition to renewable energy sources. We must also somehow learn to pull carbon, on net, out of the atmosphere in rather high volumes.”

“In other words, even the optimists at this time think that we are on the cusp of runaway catastrophic global warming. That the time to urgently act is now.”

Beyond the Point of No Return — Imminent Carbon Feedbacks Just Made the Stakes for Global Warming a Hell of a Lot Higher

By Nick Breeze: On Climate Psychology

This is a thoughtful interview by Nick Breeze of Adrian Tait on the psychology of acknowledging the reality and implications of climate change.

What’s particularly interesting about this interview is that they are mostly talking about evolved denial of reality, yet because of their own inherited denial, they are not aware that denial is their main topic.

If you are not interested in or disagree with Varki’s denial theory, the interviews are still worth watching.

By Gail Tverberg: EROEI Calculations for Solar PV Are Misleading

Gail Tverberg has convinced me to stop using EROEI as a measure of the usefulness of alternate energies.

For me now the critical tests are: Does it pay more taxes than the subsidies it receives, and does it make a (small is ok) profit assuming a “normal” interest rate of at least 5%?

If yes, the energy is helpful. If no, the energy is not helpful.

I watch for alternate energy installations anywhere in the world that meet these criteria and have not found one yet.

Gail is this paper explains why EROEI is not a useful measure…

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/12/21/eroei-calculations-for-solar-pv-are-misleading

By Raúl Ilargi Meijer: Mass Extinction and Mass Insanity

mass-extinction-denial

This essay by Ilargi will break your heart, if you have the courage to read it.

He calls it insanity. I call it evolved denial. Same thing.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/12/mass-extinction-and-mass-insanity/

 

We killed 58% of all vertebrate wildlife just between 1970 and 2012, and at a rate of 2% per year we will have massacred close to 70% of it by 2020, just 4 years from now. So what does it matter who’s president of just one of the many countries we invented on this planet? Why don’t we address what’s really crucial to our very survival instead?

 

Two thirds of our world is gone, and it’s we who have murdered it, and what’s worse – judging from our lifestyles- we seem to have hardly noticed at all. If we don’t stop what we’ve been doing, this can lead to one outcome only: we will murder ourselves too. Our perhaps biggest problem (even if we have quite a few) in this regard is our ability and propensity to deny this, as we deny any and all -serious, consequential- wrongdoing.

 

We treat this entire extinction episode as if it’s something we’re watching from the outside in, as if it’s something we’re not really a part of. I’ve seen various undoubtedly very well-intentioned ‘green people’, ‘sustainable people’, react to the WWF report by pointing to signs that there is still hope, pointing to projects that reverse some of the decline, chinook salmon on the North American Pacific coast, Malawi farmers that no longer use chemical fertilizers, a giant sanctuary in the Antarctic etc.

That, too, is a form of insanity. Because it serves to lull people into a state of complacency that is entirely unwarranted. And that can therefore only serve to make things worse. There is no reversal, there is no turnaround. It’s like saying if a body doesn’t fall straight down in a continuous line, it doesn’t fall down at all.

The role that green, sustainability, conservationist groups play in our societies has shifted dramatically, and we have failed completely to see this change (as have they). These groups have become integral parts of our societies, instead of a force on the outside warning about what happens within.

Conservationist groups today serve as apologists for the havoc mankind unleashes on its world: all people have to do is donate money at Christmas, and conservation will be taken care of. Recycle a few bottles and plastic wrappings and you’re doing your part to save the planet. It is utterly insane. It’s as insane as the destruction itself. It’s denial writ large, and in the flesh.

 

Every species that finds a large amount of free energy reacts the same way: proliferation. The unconscious drive is to use up the energy as fast as possible. If only we could understand that. But understanding it would get in the way of the principle itself. The only thing we can do to stop the extinction is for all of us to use a lot less energy. But because energy consumption provides wealth and -more importantly- political power, we will not do that. We instead tell ourselves all we need to do is use different forms of energy.

 

Our inbuilt talent for denying and lying (to ourselves and others) makes it impossible for us to see that we have an inbuilt talent for denying and lying in the first place. Or, put another way, seeing that we haven’t been able to stop ourselves from putting the planet into the dismal shape it is in now, why should we keep on believing that we will be able to stop ourselves in the future?

 

After all, if destroying 70% of wildlife is not enough for a call to action, what would be? 80%? 90? 99%? I bet you that would be too late. And no, relying on conservationist groups to take care of it for us is not a viable route. Because that same 70% number spells out loud and clear what miserable failures these groups have turned out to be.

 

We ‘assume’ we’re intelligent, because that makes us feel good. Well, it doesn’t make the planet feel good. What drives us is not reason. What drives us is the part of our brains that we share in common with amoeba and bacteria and all other more ‘primitive forms of life, that gobbles up excess energy as fast as possible, in order to restore a balance. Our ‘rational’, human, brain serves one function, and one only: to find ‘rational’ excuses for what our primitive brain has just made us do.